I don't know if you got my ask about your werewolf!au. I was just wondering how Iris thought she was held hostage for a few hours while Barry said she was gone for month.
I didn’t! Sometimes tumblr can be wonky and it probably ate your ask. :(
Would it be a cop out to say magic?
Or, a more realistic answer: Oftentimes when someone is knocked out or unconscious, they are unaware of how much time passes. So Iris was knocked out when she went snooping, and she woke up later, tied to a chair in a warehouse. She assumed she was out for only a few hours. In reality, this werewolf pack knocked her out when she was snooping, probably thought about killing her, then thought better of it, then wondered what to do with her, all the while keeping her drugged or unconscious (possibly via magic; witches do exist in this AU - Felicity is one, as is Cisco).
For Iris, very little time has passed between when she was knocked out and when Barry finds her. For him, a month passed.
If I had longer/was going to rewrite that fic, I’d explain it a little more. Start out with Iris and Barry as humans, have her get kidnapped, turn him into a wolf. Maybe have Barry break away from Oliver’s pack and start his own, with Cisco and Iris and a vampire they meet named Caitlin who is disowned for loving a werewolf (Ronnie) who goes missing. Then they all fight the evil vampire that can control paranormals, Eobard Thawne. Iris is instrumental in helping defeat him. It’s great.
Not going to lie I'd really love some werewolf!au for Westallen. Maybe one where Iris(or barry or both) fights another werewolf to be able to claim the other as their mate. You decide I'm not picky.
“You’re never going to get away with this,” Iris said. “My dad’s a cop, okay? A detective. He’s going to find me, and when he does, you’ll be so sorry.”
It was so cliche: she was tied to a support beam in the middle of a warehouse, surrounded by old pallets and boxes of things that she couldn’t identify but she assumed that they smelled because that would hide her scent the best. If these guys were smart (and they had to be, because they caught her and she was usually so careful) then the warehouse should be filled with things that could distract police dogs. Now all she needed was a white cloth stuffed in her mouth to complete the scene from all of those old movies she watched.
The man who was standing watch (probably in his mid-twenties, blonde hair, a bad beard on his face) growled in frustration. “If you don’t shut up, girlie, I’m going to rip your arm off,” he told her.
Iris stuck out her tongue at him. He sneered at her, then flicked her off. Douche. Flicking off a teenage girl. Once her dad got here, she was totally going to spray this guy in the face with one of her wolfsbane canisters. That’ll teach him to be a rude asshole. “If you were going to do that, you would’ve done it hours ago,” she said.
“I wanted to,” he muttered and looked away, “but I have an order not to harm you. Not yet, at least. We need you, girlie.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Stop calling me girlie,” she told him. “And what do you need me for, huh? You pissed off at my dad, or something? Did he do something to hurt your alpha?”
She watched the guy extend his claws, watched his eyes glow blue as he turned and looked at her. Iris felt a chill run up her spine. She had always been good about sensing paranormal people in Central City. She had this feeling in her gut that crept up her spine and danced along her shoulders, a feeling that let her know there was something different about the person staring at her. Sometimes, depending on the feeling, she could tell whether they were werewolves or vampires or witches, but not always. This guy, though, was a werewolf, and judging by the tattoo he had on his arm in an outline of a bite, he wasn’t a born werewolf. She didn’t know if that was a good thing; born werewolves cared less about humans and were so vicious, but bitten wolves were unpredictable, messy, angry, and violent.
“We don’t care about your father,” the man said, grazing a claw up her throat. Iris stared him down until he withdrew his finger and backed up. “We need you for leverage. My alpha has a vendetta against the Queens.”
“Well, then you grabbed the wrong hostage,” she scoffed. “Oliver Queen and his merry pack of werewolves don’t care one way or another about me.”
He grinned. “That’s not what we heard,” he told her. “In fact, we heard you were a very valuable hostage.”
Iris frowned. “You heard wrong.”
The man just laughed and turned away from her, going for his regular patrol of the warehouse. They seemed to happen every fifteen minutes, but Iris couldn’t be sure; if they did, though, then she had been here for four hours. She wondered if he dad was on her trail, if he was going to be coming through the door anytime soon to get her. He must be worried, but it would be hard to track her. She was knocked out investigating something down by the docks at the river, even though her dad told her not to, and she woke up here. She didn’t know where here was - presumably in Central City, if the logos on some of the crates and boxes were anything to go by, but there were a few warehouse districts in the city, and she could be in any of them.
Also, she wondered if this guy was serious about using her for bait for the Queen pack. If so, they really did choose the wrong girl. Oliver Queen would just as soon leave her as save her; she was as much a thorn in his paranormal side as anyone else. And they hadn’t exactly left things on great terms, last time, when she realized her was turning teenagers into werewolves for his pack.
He came back, and after a set amount of time, he walked away again. She slumped against the beam and stared at the ceiling. “Please,” she whispered. “Please, someone. Help me.” A tear ran down her cheek. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”
She heard something outside, then; a crash, followed by what sounded like a wolf howling. Iris squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to be too happy about it, because if Oliver and Thea were really coming to save her, then they were going to want something. Maybe a spell book she’d found for Felicity, maybe her help in tracking down their missing wolf, Sara. But whatever it was, she would owe them for this.
Or maybe, it was another pack. Or maybe a coven smelled her and were coming to attack this lone wolf to get her out, for both her blood and what she knew. Maybe, she thought, she shouldn’t make such a name for herself as a teenage investigator of the paranormal. Maybe, she thought, she’d end up in a lot less dangerous situations that way.
Another wolf howled and she heard a loud growl echo around the warehouse. “I’m here!” she called, and hoped it was at least a pack she knew. The second howl sounded like Thea, at least.
“Iris?”
His voice sounded far away, but she recognized it, and she almost melted in relief. He was here. He’d come for her.
“Barry? Barry!” she called. “I’m, uh, I’m tied to one of the support beams. Which isn’t helpful, I know...”
“No, keep talking! I think it’s helping me find you,” he said, and he did sound closer, so it must’ve been working. She kept calling his name and trying to describe what she could see (the loading down door, for one, and a lot of boxes, but that wasn’t helpful).
Finally he rounded the corner, and she smiled at him. “Barry!” she called, and he looked at her with a smile on his face, too.
A chill ran up her spine.
“Oh, thank god,” he said, running toward her. She stared at him. She’d never known her gut feeling to be false, but this was Barry. Her best friend. Her human best friend. She’d seen him a few hours ago. There was no way that he was anything other than what she’d left him. Oliver wouldn’t dare do this. Oliver never bit someone without their permission, even if he made the bite seem better than it was. So there was no way, she thought. She had to be wrong.
He stopped next to her and started untying the numerous knots that kept her stuck on the support beam. Iris looked over her shoulder at him, waiting for some sign. Something to point her in the right direction. Was his hair longer? Were his teeth pointed? If he was a wolf, she reasoned, he’d be cutting the ropes off with his claws. Right?
A growl tore her out of her thoughts, and she looked up just in time to see her guard whip around a crate of boxes and come barreling toward them, claws extended and eyes aglow. There must have been guards outside, if he wasn’t taken out by now.
Barry heard him, and Iris watched as his eyes lit up, a warm and bright gold. She gasped. His ears changed shape, and she saw his nails grow into claws, saw the fangs that came out of nowhere.
“We thought you would come for her,” her guard said. “At first, she was just a nuisance we kept because she was snooping, but once we found out about you, we knew how to trap Queen and his pack.”
“I will kill you,” Barry growled. “And if I find out you’ve hurt her, I will have our witch raise you from the dead so I can kill you again and again.”
Her guard laughed, and Barry snarled at him. “Don’t get haughty with me, boy,” the man said. “It’s Queen’s fault she’s here. If you want to blame anyone, blame your alpha.”
Barry howled and launched himself at her guard, his claws sinking into the man’s neck. Her guard hollered and threw Barry off of him, tossing him into one of the crates. The wood shattered underneath him and Iris screamed, but Barry jumped right back up again, something hard and heavy in his hand. And when the man ran at Barry, he smashed her guard with it. The man crumpled to the ground, bleeding and unmoving but, she hoped, not dead. Barry’s not a killer.
But then again, she thought Barry wasn’t a werewolf, too.
“What did you do?” she asked, looking at him, staring hard at his golden eyes. “What the hell did you do, Barry?”
“I took that guy out, Iris. I had to, he was going to hurt you.”
She shook her head. “Not that,” she said. “You... you finally let him do it. After years of telling him no, that you weren’t going to join his pack, you finally accepted the bite. Just because I was gone for three or four hours? What were you thinking?”
Barry reached toward her face, but Iris flinched away. He drew his hand back quickly, and she could see the hurt on his face, but before she could apologize he started untying her. “You’ve been gone for a month, Iris,” Barry said quietly. She tensed. “I felt useless. I don’t have your skills, Iris, I’m not some teenaged detective. And none of Felicity’s locator spells were working, and Cisco couldn’t get a read on you, either. Your dad was going out of his mind.”
The ties were looser, now. “But you didn’t have-”
“I did. I had to. I... I couldn’t help you as a human, but Oliver was right.” She bit back the retort on her tongue. Oliver had told Barry for years about what Felicity had envisioned for him. The skills he would have, the abilities. There was something in his blood, or something in his soul, that would make him more powerful than even a born wolf. But she’d always hoped that he’d resist it. Because she knew that the more powerful a paranormal was, the harder it was for them to resist the darkness inside of them. “The skills that I have as a wolf are even better than what he told me they’d be. I’m fast, faster than even he is. I’m strong. And I could pick up your scent when no one else could. I found you, Iris.”
She closed her eyes, a single tear running down her cheek. If all of this were true, if he was turned, if he was that powerful; she would have to be there for him. She would have to remind him of his humanity.
“Thank you, Barry,” she said, the last of the ropes coming loose around her chest. She wrapped her arms around his neck and cried into his shoulder, feeling the heat rolling off of him. He was changed irrevocably, and now, more than ever, he needed her. “Thank you for finding me.”
He hugged her back, and she could feel muscles in his arms and chest that weren’t there before. She could sense the power that was boiling, just under his skin, power that ached to come free. “I 'm glad I found you, Iris,” he said. “I can’t imagine what I’d do without you.”
She just clung to him tighter. “You won’t ever have to worry about that,” she said. “I’m here. I’m safe.”
laurel throws her voice with everyone. She especially loves teasing Barry with it.
BARRY OF COURSE IS A JUMPY LITTLE SHIT AND LIKE IT JUST TAKES LAUREL THROWING HER VOICE OF HER SAY “HEEEEEEEEEEEEEY BARRY!” AND BARRY JUMPS OUT OF HIS SEAT AND SPEEDS TO WASHINGTON AND BACK
