Chapter Text
The Hound waited alone in the quiet and the dim of the Last Drop. The customers had all staggered home, the pups had been tucked into bed, and yet the Hound waited. Because the biggest question he had was coming by tonight.
When Silco strode through the door, Sevika at his back, the Hound felt many things. Joy, rage, hate, and love, all swirled up in his chest. But even more than the emotions that came from his own memories, memories of unadulterated rage and painful bloody betrayal, he had fleeting washed-out memories from the hive. Memories that go on further than his death as a man. And it was those memories, mixed with old stale memories of friendship, that gave him hope.
“So,” Silco drawled, trying to act nonchalant and unbothered even as his body language betrayed him. “The Mutt of the Lanes caught wind of the river-rat he failed to drown.” Silco’s lips twisted into a snarl, flashing his rotting eye as his voice turned scathing. Had he been the man he once was, it would have been a good strategy to unbalance him. Now, the wound Silco was trying to scratch at and reopen had long since scarred over, the skin toughened and dead.
“Sit.” He commanded, tilting his head at the chair across from him. Silco’s entire body stuttered at the sound of his gravelly voice, but he covered it well. It was unlikely that Sevika had even noticed, and, really, he wouldn’t have noticed himself had he not gotten so much better at reading people through their bodies. He may no longer have the enhancements Reveck had forced upon him, but he still had memories of them, still had more than a normal human man should have.
“I don’t know what makes you think you can order me around,” Silco said as he did exactly what Vander had told him to do, “but if you think you can just talk me back to your side, beneath your shadow, you’ll find yourself in for quite the shock.”
The Hound didn't rise to the bait, simply sitting and watching as Silco talked. He knew the man’s plan, knew what he wanted, what he strived for. But he also knew that he would one day give up everything for his pup. That alone brought his opinion of the man up to new heights.
Silco’s face twitched and stuttered as he tried to figure out how to take the Hound’s silence, “What, cat got your tongue? I don’t know what you called me here for; I don’t even know how you found out Sevika was working for me, but you’d better start talking before I decide this isn’t worth my time and spill your guts all over your precious bar.”
Silco spat his words like barbs, like nails aimed to stab him but scratching up the man’s own throat in the process. Everything he said was said with a snarl, like a panther desperately showing its teeth so as to appear a threat.
“I have been changed, Silco.” There was the slightest jump in the smaller man’s hands as he spoke, and he could see the little ways his body betrayed how startled he was. “All of me is different, now, and I no longer know how to think of you.”
Silco recovered quickly, scoffing loudly, “What, you had a near-death experience, and now you want to beg for forgiveness?!” Oh, if only he knew. “Well guess what Vander, you don’t get my forgiveness! Not after you turned your back on everything we stood for! We will never be-!”
“So you are Prey?” He interrupted, head tilted slightly to the side. Silco’s impassioned rant stuttered to a stop as he tried to process his words.
“What?” Silco asked, bewilderment flashing across his face.
“I have been changed, my mind is no longer a simple place. I cannot tell if you are Pack or Prey. You are saying you are Prey, yes?”
Silco spluttered; the entire conversation had turned on him in a way he could never have anticipated, even with all of his planning, just as Vander had known would happen. He needed Silco to leave here with an understanding that his claws and fangs were sharper than ever, and that he was ready to use them the moment he deemed it necessary. Even if nothing else came of this, he needed Silco to know, longed for him to understand, even if he knew nobody could ever truly understand him the way he was now.
“I am not your prey!” Silco spat, puffed up with offense.
Vander pulled his eyebrows into a confused face, “If you are not Prey, then you are Pack. If you are Pack, then we need to speak about how we will work.”
He spoke with complete certainty in his voice, and Silco looked at him like he had gone insane. The man had completely lost his footing at this point and was seemingly floundering now that he was getting a glimpse of what people meant when they said ‘Vander has changed’.
“That’s not-... we are not… pack. But we need not be enemies either.” There was a shine to Silco’s eye now, a greed. He wanted the Hound on his side. He wanted the Hound under his control. The Hound chuckled to himself. That wasn’t how this worked.
Ignoring the wariness in Silco at the sound of his gruff laughter he turned to Sevika, “Will you be my Prey, Sevika?”
Sevika seemed to have some modicum of self-preservation instinct, because the moment their eyes locked she immediately turned on her heel, “Nope, fuck this shit, I’ll be outside.”
Silco was left spluttering once more, and the Hound chuckled as the woman grabbed a bottle of alcohol on the way out. Ah, she didn’t know the half of it when it came to being a part of his pack. He’d have to make sure she got some water before she left.
The Hound looked back at Silco, who was yelling something at Sevika’s back. The words were muddled now as blood rushed to his ears, his entire body preparing to pounce. He stood, watching as Silco’s eye fell back to him, going silent as he trailed upwards. Their eyes locked, and the Hound grinned. Even if Silco was Pack in the end, he could use some time thinking he was Prey. It wasn’t like the Hound had anything to lose, doing what he wished with the smaller man.
Silco paled, and the Hound lunged.