Work Text:
Meskin did not remember the process or birth being so…slimy. To be fair, the pain and terror and crushing sadness that colored his own memories probably left him in a bad spot to recall any particular details. He’d always hoped that the alphas who’d taken him in his heats would be inspired to—care, somehow, by the knowledge that he’d birthed their children. Would take one look at their own squalling bairn, their flesh and their blood, and dredge up some sort of love from their hearts for the helpless little thing. Perhaps, by extension, find some little love for Meskin as well.
If those alphas had even taken a second glance at the children they’d helped create before throwing bairn and dam both aside—Meskin didn’t know. His memories were moth-eaten, tattered things that fell apart no sooner than he touched them.
The flocks were lambing, which Veld and every other member of the pack swore up and down was a sure sign of spring, even though the ground was still hard and snow-bitten. The pack took the lambing in four rotating shifts, so that there was always someone awake and ready to help the ewes give birth; and Veld and Meskin were on the earliest morning shift, which also happened to be the busiest.
Meskin’s first lucid encounter with the miracle of life had made his stomach turn so abruptly that his vision had gone black and he’d come to himself to find Veld leaning worriedly over him, a pink-streaked and soggy lamb held close to his chest. Meskin hadn’t been asked to handle much of anything in that part of the process since. Luckily, there was still much to do—keeping the fires going, drying off the newborn lambs so that the wind did not freeze them. It was enough to stay very busy indeed.
He rubbed a ragged cloth over the newest lamb, a little brown thing that kept trying to suckle his fingers. Veld was helping the mother, wiping her clean to prevent disease and easing her with gentle words, but he spared a moment to glance over, grinning as he watched Meskin struggle.
“Let her suck,” he suggested. “it’s good practice, and it’ll keep her still for you.”
The advice worked. The lamb’s soft little tongue worked furiously and fruitlessly at Meskin’s fingers as he wiped her off the rest of the way. He had to chuckle.
“Your mother can feed you, little one,” he said, pulling his hand away. She wobbled after him, bleating sharply, and he guided her back to the mother ewe, before leaving the pair in contented silence.
Veld picked up dirtied rags from the ground, bringing them back to the fire. Clean rags were folded in baskets by the pit, while a copper tub filled with vinegar soaked the dirty ones until they were ready to be washed and dried, so Veld dumped his handfuls into the tub.
A third tub sat close to the fire, soap and pungent vinegar sitting beside it. Meskin scrubbed his hands with soap and rinsed with the hot water, then tipped a little vinegar over his palms, rubbing it into his skin and letting the burning scent sear the stink of lamb-slime out of his nose. Veld followed after him, washing his hands and his arms up to the elbows, careful and thorough, as he was with everything.
“Do you think there will be time to wash some rags?” Meskin asked, looking out over the field. The ewe and her new lamb were already wandering back towards the herd. Veld followed his gaze.
“There should be,” he said, flapping his hands lightly in order to speed the vinegar drying on his skin. “D’ye need more water?”
Meskin hesitated. He did, was the thing; but the thought of Veld picking up the skins in order to jog away down to the river made him want, ridiculously, to grab hold of Veld’s sleeve and hold him here—keep him, as if he was in danger of not coming back. As though Meskin had any claim upon him at all.
It was silly. And he did need water, so Meskin nodded.
“I can start what we have boiling, but that will be all of our supply,” he said, and Veld nodded, then looked at Meskin more carefully, a slight furrow forming between his brows.
“Are you all right?” he asked, soft as though he was speaking to a frightened ewe, and somehow the question let Meskin realize that—no, he wasn’t all right. He wasn’t even a little bit all right, which was stupid, because he was fine—he was safe, and unbruised, and in a pack that would not even treat a sheep with the careless cruelty he had grown used to from every alpha he’d known before.
He was trying to draw breath to say that he was fine, because he was fine, this was just a feeling that would pass, when Veld put down the waterskin he’d picked up and walked over, setting his hands lightly on Meskin’s arms.
“Come on, sit down. It’s okay, we can just sit down.”
The breath Meskin had been trying to draw got stuck in his throat, and he all but collapsed into the trampled grass, covering his face with both hands. His eyes stung and his chest felt like a weight had been placed on it, crushing into his very ribs. The only points that grounded him without hurting were Veld’s hands on his arms, gentle and solid, unmoving even as the alpha folded down to sit in front of him.
“Hey, it’s okay. Let it out. It’s okay.”
Meskin didn’t want to let it out. He wanted to be collected, and fine, and helpful. He didn’t want to sob on the grass like an overwhelmed child—but the tears kept streaming down his face all the same. There was a pain in his chest that was not allowing itself to be ignored, not any longer, and Meskin was helpless in the face of it, shaking and barely able to keep himself from screaming at the awful, awful weight.
“Can I hold you?” Veld asked, soft and gentle, and Meskin nodded. The young alpha wrapped his arms around Meskin’s shoulders, holding him tightly, and Meskin let his head fall into the hollow of Veld’s neck, as though he were some less damaged version of himself who could be calmed by a friendly scent. Veld’s hand rubbed along his back, slow and steady, and he let Meskin weep into his shirt, neither telling him to stop or demanding to know why he wept.
“I wanted to keep them,” Meskin said, finally, the words bubbling up out of him without so much as his say-so. “I wanted to keep every one of them.”
“Your packs?” Veld guessed, and while that was true too, Meskin shook his head.
“My children,” he said. “They took them. Every one of them—even though I begged, I begged—”
He thought he might have even tried fighting. He remembers the taste of blood, the feel of breaking skin beneath his teeth, a burning rage that, somewhere alone the way, he lost. The memories are fuzzy and incomplete, and they leave him feeling sick to his stomach.
“I’m so sorry,” Veld said, and his voice sounded heavy with all the grief that Meskin had never allowed himself to feel. It started a fresh bout of tears coursing, and that kept him from speaking for a while. He could hear footsteps approaching, and a murmured question—one of the pack, checking in. Veld murmured an answer back, and the footsteps left again.
“Sorry,” Meskin rasped. “There’s—this is silly. There’s work to be done, and I’m just—” he pulled himself out of Veld’s grasp, and blinked blearily at the fire, which needed fuel again, and the rags, and they still needed more water. He didn’t look at Veld. The thought of catching the young alpha’s gaze with his own hurt, somehow.
“Weris just wanted to let us know that the next shift is up, actually,” Veld said. “We’re okay to go back to our tent and sleep for a bit.”
“Oh,” Meskin said. He’d been half-looking forward to being able to numb himself with work, burying the pain under the feeling of work-sore muscles and wind-bitten hands. But sleep—that sounded good, too. He’d worn himself out with crying. He nodded.
--
The tent was dark, the brazier burnt down to barely-flickering embers. The thick wool blankets were a comfort, as was Veld’s solid, quietly breathing weight on the other side of the bed.
“Do you want to be alone?” the young alpha had asked. Meskin had grown so used to this pack, to their consideration and kindness, that he hadn’t even been surprised that Veld might give up his own rest, his own bed, out of concern for Meskin’s comfort.
He hadn’t wanted to be alone, though. Even in other packs, even with alphas who took their displeasure out on him in blood and in bruises, Meskin had always craved the solid presence of other people, had always hung on every small and wilted scrap of kindness like a freezing man huddling over an ember for warmth.
Veld shifted in his sleep. Meskin grew automatically tense, his sense-memory expecting grasping hands to come at him in the dark. This was Veld, though, so the only thing that happened was the young alpha shifting yet again, making a quiet, restless sound.
Not asleep, then. Meskin shifted to face the alpha, even though he could hardly see anything in the dark, and Veld went suddenly still.
“Sorry,” he whispered. “Did I wake you?”
Tired as he was, Meskin wasn’t going to sleep.
“I can’t sleep either,” he said, and pulled himself up to sit, gathering the blanket closely around his lap. After a moment, he felt Veld follow suit. It’s quiet, sitting here together, in the dark; but Meskin can’t help the prickle of discomfort in his stomach. Perhaps he had revealed too much, earlier. Perhaps Veld won’t want someone as used, as broken, as Meskin had revealed himself to be. Perhaps he was trying to find some kind, gentle way to tell Meskin that he has to leave.
When Veld finally did speak, it took Meskin a moment to realize what he said, mind still couldy with everything he’d been expecting to hear.
“I was a foundling,” he said. “Old Bjarn found me, looking for a lost ram, and brought me home to his wife, and I’ve been a part of this pack ever since, but I, ah. I always wondered. Why whoever birthed me didn’t—why I wasn’t wanted.”
Meskin’s heart was thundering. Veld is young, for a pack alpha; less than thirty, though not by much. Meskin was certainly old enough to be his dam, but—there’s no way to know. There was no way to know, he never got to hold his children after they were born, and a baby was so very different from a fully-grown adult anyway.
“Um. Obviously, I don’t want to—I don’t want you to feel that you need to offer me anything. You’re valuable to me, to this pack, just as you are. And I don’t want to try and overlay what you—you’ve gone through so much, obviously, but you smell like home and you said you’d had children and—”
He was stuttering, nervous, and Meskin was a tight twist of nerves at the thought that one of his children could be like this—alive, and safe, and good.
Veld stopped, took a deep breath.
“I’ve got a—a mark? On my back, it’s like spots—”
Meskin’s eyes widened.
“Purple, like a splash of wine on your spine?” he asked. He remembered that. He remembered the squalling child being taken away, remembered glimpsing the strange splatter of markings on that tiny back. He remembered begging, crawling after the midwife as she took the babe away from him. Screaming with every bit of breath he had left, wanting to hold on to the little life he’d created.
They’d told him the bairn was dead, exposed to the snow and the wolves.
“Yes,” Veld breathed, “Exactly like that.”
Meskin launched himself forward, wrapping Veld in his arms. He’s so big now, grown and weathered and healthy. He’s perfect, just as perfect as the day he was born, and he’s Meskin’s. He’s his.
Veld is laughing in his arms, weeping too, and holding Meskin just as tight as Meskin is holding him.