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alcalavicci · 4 years

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So there’s a really interesting interview with Deborah Pratt here. If you don’t want to pay for it, I’ll paste what I can below, but a few points first.

Deborah says she doesn’t know where Dean is, and says she misses him. I guess she hasn’t had contact with him since he left for NZ? And with Russ Tamblyn saying Dean’s hanging in there in answer to a recent Twitter question, that brings up more questions about his condition.

Deborah claims she came up with the idea of Quantum Leap, which I’ve never seen come up before. Also Don wanted to send Sam home?? I feel like she’s misremembering a lot of details/making herself seem better than she is.

“Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished… He woke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own, and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time tht his next leap will be the leap home…”

The premise of Quantum Leap succinctly and empathetically explained by a voice that spoke to viewers week to week, setting the scene at the opening of the episode. It is a voice that left an indelible print on the show, from its inception to its finale. This is the voice of its Head Writer. No, not Donald P. Bellisario, but a woman of color who was leaps ahead of her time – co-executive producer and uncredited co-creator, Deborah M. Pratt.

Deborah wrote or co-wrote 40 episodes of this sci-fi gem and her authorship of the show runs deep through its five seasons. Aside from the opening narration, Deborah is audible as the voice of Admiral Al Calavicci’s pocket computer, Ziggy. She also guest stars in the episode ‘A Portrait for Troian’ (S2, Ep11) as a grieving widow who hears the voice of her husband calling her.

Deeper still, Quantum Leap was a family affair. It was co-created with her husband at the time, Bellisario, and their daughter, also named Troian, appears as a little girl in ‘Another Mother’ (S2, Ep13, who can not only see Al, but also sees Sam as he really is, rather than as her recently divorced mom.

Prior to helming Quantum Leap, Deborah rose through the ranks as an actress, racing the screen in Happy Days, CHiPS, The Dean Martin Show and many more, and was also a writer on shows such as Airwolf and Magnum P.I. She is a five-time Emmy nominee, Golden Globe nominee and winner of countless other awards. She went on to produce CBS comedy cop show, Tequila and Bonetti, and then to co-create and produce the TV series adaptation of Sandra Bullock tech thriller, The Net. But Quantum Leap was Deborah’s brainchild – one which is emblazoned on the hearts of its faithful fans.

Deborah has since moved into directing, including on hit show Grey’s Anatomy (2020), but was generous with her time when spoke in late 2020 to leap back into the past.

It does seem that you were really ahead of your time as a female head writer and a showrunner in the ’90s, especially in science fiction TV. Was it hard for you to progress and to get Quantum Leap made?

“Usually women were relegated to comedy, very rarely was it drama or heavy drama. It’s changed, finally, with people like Shonda Rhimes (Grey’s Anatomy, Bridgerton, Scandal). But yes, I was a true pioneer, even though I don’t have a ‘created by’ credit, it was a ‘co-created by’ show – with Don. I brought him the original concept, and we were married, and he said ‘Let me just run with this. I can get it made.’ And to his credit, he understands how to tell a story to the audience. He simplified it in a way that you could welcome Quantum Leap into the world. But it was still a tough show to sell.

“I think we went back three times to pitch it to the network. It was complicated to explain. Brandon Tartikoff [the executive] said ‘It’s a great idea – It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen on TV. Let me think about it.’ Then he asked us to come back, ‘I want you to pitch it to me like I’m six years old, then pitch it to me like I’m 80 years old’ and finally he took it. Then even after the show first aired, they decided to introduce that opening where I tell the story. That was created to explain every week to a new viewer what was going on and it worked really well.”

On rewatch now, the best part of three decades later, the show feels groundbreaking in terms of the subjects you cover. Did you feel like you were pushing the envelope?

“I feel we got to do so much on that show. I remember when I did ‘Black on White on Fire’ [S3, Ep7], the networks in the South in the United States wouldn’t air it because it was a black/white relationship. Even though there is no scene where you see a black person and a white person being intimate.

You saw Sam, who was white, and the girl who was white, but because he was playing someone who was black, it was an issue. They wouldn’t air the show in the South. This was around 1992.

“It was challenging for sure. I think we pushed the limits.

“The beauty of the show too, was that it was about hope, which I see so little of on television today. Everything’s so dark, so mean, so vicious, bloody – how many people can you kill? How mean can you make your lead characters and antiheroes. I think it’s why I didn’t work as much afterwards. A) I was a woman, and B) a black woman. There weren’t any black female executive producers that I knew of in drama. I got to do The Net because it had a female lead, but that was almost ten years after Quantum Leap was created. Any show I brought in that had a black lead was never bought, or a female lead, was never bought.

“I remember I wrote a big action piece – like an Indiana Jones, but female-driven, feature film – and pitched it and the studio executive said, ‘Yeah, yeah, but when did the guy come and rescue her?’ And I said, ‘She doesn’t – she rescues him.’ The look on his face. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.”

The show darted around TV schedules, but the fans remained with it, and still to this day hold it dear to their hearts. Was that palpable at the time, or has that grown since?

“I think near the end of the first season, Harriet Margulies [Production Assistant on the show] found a chat room after an episode where people from across the country talked about it and it became the ‘watercooler.’ We were the first television show that had a chat room as a watercooler. Before that, it was literally you going into your office and standing around the watercooler and talking about movies or TV shows you were watching. Suddenly, it was online. So we started to go into the chat room and talk to people about what they liked and what they didn’t. Not necessarily telling them who we were, but that fan base is what kept us on the air because the network didn’t know what to do with us. There was no show like it, so they couldn’t like pair us with anybody.

“In the five years we were on, I think they moved the show six times and the fans still found it, they followed it, they watched it. That’s how we knew we had something unique and special. To this day, I’ll go into a meeting with a young executive who’ll go, ‘I have to tell you, I loved Quantum Leap. I used to watch it with my mom and dad’.”

Scott Bakula was such a great hero and heartthrob as Dr. Sam. What was he like to work with?

“He was so approachable, you know, in the sense that he had this great, easy acting style. He took chances and he was likeable – in a way that he could be a man’s man and a woman’s man at the same time. He’s really a brilliant actor. I am saddened by the fact that he has not had the opportunity to do movies in the way that could really have lifted his career. He’s had an incredibly successful television career. He’s a good actor. He’s a kind man. I’ve always admired him and felt like when we were working together, I had a friend that I loved to write for because he was always so giving and willing and wanting to take chances as an actor. So it was fun to go down to the trailer and say, ‘Guess what? You’re going to be pregnant this week’.

He does everything in the show from sing and dance to baseball, football, hopping over car bonnets to fights and martial arts. Did you know he had such a wide skill set from the outset, or did you write the challenges for him to rise to?

“I think we had conversations with him about that. I also knew that he had been on Broadway doing musicals. I knew he could sing and dance. When I wrote ‘Sea Bride’ [S2, Ep20], I wrote a tango number – that was unique for him. When Don knew that he could play the guitar… We asked Scott, ‘What do you want to do?’ And he said he wanted to do a musical and I think that’s how the ‘Catch a Falling Star’ episode [S2, Ep10] came about, which involves a performance of ‘Man of LaMancha’.”

Admiral Al Calavicci – he’s so much more than wisecracking and surface jokes or flirtation. There’s so much depth to his character. Was that fleshed out early on with an end to end journey for him in mind, or did his character evolve through the seasons?

“It was a little bit of both. Dean Stockwell had been on Broadway at five-years-old and had been a major child movie star. I remember when we wrote the show where Sam had the chance to save Al – ‘The Leap B4, Ep1] – he was so good in that. I’ll never forget how beautiful that was. And then in the very, very end, I love the fact that Sam did change history and Al ended up wih his beautiful wife with five kids.

“I remember once asking Dean, ‘Do you want us to write more drama for you? Big dramatic moments?’ And he said, ‘I want you to look at me right now. I want you to tell me what you see.’ And I said, ‘Well, your performance, the pain, fear and loss and all that, because you’re such an incredible actor.’ And he said ‘For me to perform that, I have to be it and live it. So don’t do too many.’

“He had that depth of acting talent. He is so good – Dean, wherever you are, I love you. I miss you.”

The episodes that follow later in the seasons involving celebrities – Sam as Elvis, Dr. Ruth, or Lee Harvey Oswald, was that kind of a direction that you always foresaw? It feels like a sea change as the show progressed.

“The stories were designed, for the most part, to be so, so simple in that they were everyday stories. They weren’t change-the-world stories. I think the biggest one was Lee Harvey Oswald, and maybe the one involving Marilyn Monroe – those were with people that could have had a ripple effect.

“But there were other little kisses with history in the show, but they were very hard to do. They ran into a child version of Donald Trump in a taxi cab, [‘It’s A Wonderful Leap’ – S4, Ep18], then they ran into a little boy who is supposed to be Michael Jackson – Sam teaches him to moonwalk [‘Camikazi Kid’ – S1, Ep8]. The first time I did a kiss with history was ‘Star-Crossed’ [S1, Ep3] – Sam meets up with the woman that left him at the altar and they’re at the Watergate Hotel. That was fun stuff.”

Sam managed to awkwardly kiss lots of ladies in that sense of ‘Oh God, they’re going to kiss me and I’ve got to be this person, what am I supposed to do.’

“We never, ever really discussed what happened to Sam. We didn’t want him to be encumbered by a relationship. But I didn’t get to kiss him. My husband wouldn’t leave the set on the episode I was in!”

Your move into directing – from your TV drama Cora Unashamed back in 2000, to Grey’s Anatomy just last year. Is that something you wanted to do sooner? Were there barriers prohibiting you?

“I was supposed to direct on Quantum Leap four times. Every time it was coming up, something would happen. The only women who directed on the show were two black women – Debi Allen [Fame, Everybody Hate Chris, Jane the Virgin] and the other was a woman named Anita Addison. They each did two shows.

I said, ‘If I’m not doing this, I want black women.’ There were no other black women. And it was a fight. I tried to get black women directors on the show, but I could never get them past.

Then when I went to do The Net, the studio blocked it. I give huge amounts of credit for executive producing to Shonda Rhimes and what she has been able to do. She did what I thought I was going to be able to do. She’s so talented and I’m such a fan of her and her shows. I’m looking forward to what she’s going to do on Netflix. And it was an honour to do Grey’s Anatomy because I’m a fan of the show and I’m really grateful to have that opportunity.”

Has there been progress in terms of female directors and filmmakers being given opportunities?

“It’s very hard for women because there aren’t a lot of women executives at the studios. There are more now. And so there is an evolution that’s happening, but it still feels slow. There were shows run by people I gave opportunities to back in the day, but when I said, “hey, I want to direct on your show,” the response was, “oh, there’s too much machismo. There’s too many male hormones around here. They’ll eat you alive.” And I went, “no, they won’t, you’ll protect me. How about if I do my job?” And that was only last year. But there are more opportunities. There are more women making decisions, but we have to do more because women’s stories and women’s voices are more than half the population – we need to hear those stories. The historic ones as well as the contemporary ones.”

Is there a leap that was your favourite overall? That you feel made you made your mark with?

“’The Color of Truth’ [S1, Ep7] touched so many people and it opened a dialogue. I remember we got a letter from a teacher who said she brought the VHS in and she played it to her class, up until Jesse [Sam as an ageing black chauffeur in ’50s Deep South] goes and sits down at the counter in the restaurant. Then she stopped it and asked the students what they thought happened next. They thought that he just ordered lunch. And then she played the rest and that hostility and the animosity he endures and the fact that he had to get up and leave really incensed these children. They had never heard of or experienced racism. They didn’t want to believe that it really happened. This is how history gets buried and why television is so powerful and important. It opened a conversation that she could not have necessarily had in her classroom, according to her, had she not brought that show in to share with her students.

“We had another letter that was very moving, and I want to say it might’ve been ‘The Leap Home’ [S2, Ep1-2]. There was a couple who wrote and said they had a child that was on a cancer ward and every Thursday the whole ward would watch Quantum Leap. Their child was dying and they had kind of given up and it was just time to help that child transition out of this world. They watched the show and she said, ‘We realized we gave up hope. When we watched the show, we realized we didn’t have to give up hope and we wanted to write to you. It’s now six months later and the crisis has passed. The cancer is in remission. Our child is up and going back to school. And we just want to thank you for reminding us that hope has its own power’.”

Its power and poignancy has never diminished. Though the final episode, ‘Mirror Image’ (S5, Ep22), with the caption saying Sam doesn’t get to go home, does leave a sucker punch.

“That was our last fight. Don was going to send him home. And I said, ‘You can’t, you can’t send him home. If you ever, ever, which we’ve not ever been able to get Universal to let us do it, want to do a movie… If you want to keep the story going, you have to leave Sam out there in the hearts of people, leaving people thinking he could leap into their lives’. And at first Don said, ‘No, no, we need to bring him home’. And I said, ‘Do not bring him home. Or you will end the show. If you leave the hope out there, that Sam is out there and he could leap into your life and make a difference’. You keep the show alive in the hearts and the minds of the fans. And I think I was right.”

The ending was poetic for me as a viewer, but your point about Sam still being out there – Is there a leap back to the future for Quantum Leap?

“I started writing a project called Time Child about Sammy Jo Fuller. I actually wrote a trilogy in Season 5 where Sam leapt back three times into the same family and the second time he leapt he ended up in bed with this character and conceived a child. Then the third time he leapt in, he met her at 10 years old – a girl named Sammy Jo Fuller. So in my vision, Sammy Jo Fuller grows up. I actually have Al say, ‘Sammy is in the future with me. We’re trying to bring you home.’ That was my set-up way back in 1993, in Season 5, to say someday, Sammy Jo being his daughter might take over….

“This was the ’90s. Women heroes didn’t exist really – other than comic books – Wonder Woman was there, Super Girl was there. But I set it up in the show that Sammy Jo was going to bring him home. Sadly, I have not been able to get Don and the studio to give me the green light for Time Child. It might happen someday.”

Right now, it feels like we need more shows that offer hope. Is there a place for a reboot on streaming platforms?

“Universal keep saying they want to bring it back. They’re not going to give it up to Netflix because they have [US streaming service] Peacock now and still have NBC. I personally think it should be on a full blown network. The hard part would be that it would have to be recast if there was a female version using my character Sammy Jo Fuller. Or if they just redid the show, it would be interesting in the sense that there was such an innocence about the show. I still believe that there is an audience out there that wants it, that longs for looking at the past through the eyes of somebody in the present. But who would that person be if you did the show now, what are those eyes like?

“We’re living in the time of COVID and suddenly you go back in time. How do you warn people that this is going to happen? How do you warn people about 9/11? How do you warn people about things in the future?

“I mean, one of the beauties of that innocence too, and I thought that was a great gift from Don to the concept, was that Sam’s memory as Swiss cheese – he didn’t remember things and that made it a lot easier, and Al was not allowed to tell him what was happening in the present. There’s a lot of detail woven into the mythology that allowed it to be innocent and in the moment of time travel. You didn’t have to drag the future back with you.”

Do you have an actress in mind to play Sammy Jo in a reboot?

“Oh my gosh, Jennifer Garner. I always felt she would be a great female Sam. She’s an ‘every woman.’ She’s funny. She does great drama. When I think of a female Sam or even Sammy Jo, I think Jennifer – in a heartbeat. She’s so great in Alias. That show just never stopped. You couldn’t take a breath. If I had to go younger, somebody that would have that kind of believable humour that you think could actually rescue you – maybe Jennifer Lawrence. She’s pretty formidable in that sense.”

“To bring Quantum Leap back. If they’re thinking about it, now’s the time to happen. Tell people to write to Universal! Write for the attention of Pearlena Igbokwe – if anyone can bring it back, she can do it. Write! Write to Pearlena – she’s the one that’ll make it happen. That’s how we stayed on the air for five and a half years. Fans unite and write!”

#quantum leap #article

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aion-rsa · 5 years

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Justice League Keeps Building the Wider DC Universe

https://ift.tt/2MMAInz

Justice League has embraced the sheer lunacy of the DC Universe in ways fans never could have expected.

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If you've been following Justice League over the last year or so, you'll know that this isn't a book that does small stories. If you're going to roll out the heaviest hitters in the DC Universe, then the threats and situations you put them in have to get even bigger and wilder to compensate. For some, the ultimate apogee of "big Justice League ideas" came during Grant Morrison's tenure as writer of JLA in the late '90s. But it's been 20 years since then, the DCU itself has become even bigger and weirder in that time with the return of its storied multiverse, and many creative teams are no longer aiming for blockbuster movies on the page, and instead are embracing all of the storytelling possibilities that only comics can offer.

And the writers of Justice League, Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV, are certainly in the latter category. After rising to fame as the writers of Batman and Detective Comics respectively (and Tynion will return to Gotham City to take over writing duties on the main Batman title in 2020), the pair have gone from outsized detective stories starring the Dark Knight, to tales that play with the very foundations of the entire DC Universe, from the Source Wall itself to the source of heroes powers, to nothing less than the very nature of humanity and where heroes and villains fit into it all. Justice League is sometimes a dense read, even for DC continuity scholars, but nobody would ever accuse this book of being unambitious or resting on its laurels.

It's a story that has been building across the entire DC line for quite some time. The pieces were set in motion in Dark Nights: Metal in 2018, have continued through Justice League all the way through "Justice-Doom War," into the pages of Superman/Batman with the machinations of the Batman Who Laughs, the line-wide Year of the Villain event, and will ultimately lead to Hell Arisen. "It's one huge story, and we want fans to feel rewarded," Snyder says. "If I had one thing I could say to fans, it's that everything matters."

It's all building to a still-unspecified event in DC's future (one we're willing to bet features the word "Crisis" in its title), and a brand new timeline of DC Universe continuity.

“The reason that we're doing the time-spanning, geographical scope of the story where it goes everywhere and everywhen in the DCU and incorporates all these different characters is because it is meant to show that the stakes of this story are the highest they can be,” Snyder says. “It's going to roll into the very thing that begins setting up the reestablishment of that kind of a timeline. The idea is to show you all these characters in one universe.”

A key point of this "one universe" philosophy came in a recent Justice League issue. You would think a story that is responsible for finally returning the Justice Society of America to DC Universe continuity for the first time in nearly a decade would have enough heavy lifting to do. But a key detail about this "first" meeting between Barry Allen and Jay Garrick reveals much about how DC continuity is being constructed, and the teamwork it takes to make it happen behind the scenes. While it has long been teased in The Flash that Barry has merely forgotten his past interactions with Jay (as he had with Wally West before Rebirth), this was the first time it was explicitly discussed. Specifically, the more time Barry spends with Jay, the stronger the feeling he has that they already know each other. Jay, on the other hand, has no idea who Barry is. Why? Because the Jay of 1940 hasn’t met Barry Allen yet, that event is still in his future, while it’s in Barry’s past. Snyder and Tynion say they often consult with Joshua Williamson (writer of The Flash and Batman/Superman) and other writers to keep little details straight.

“We trade scripts and all of that stuff,” Tynion says. “Sometimes, and this is, I think, true of our entire Justice League run, there's an element of lunacy to all of this, and sometimes you've just got to point at it. Because if you don't point at it and you pretend it's not there, fans are just like, ‘Wait, they don't realize that this is nonsense?’ The Flash, especially, is a character who's time-traveled, he's experienced so much in his life, so of course, he is the perfect voice to be like, ‘Oh, yeah, this is all just fricking nuts.’”

Justice League is often gleeful in the way it plays with the weightiest concepts in the DCU, none moreso than with the recent introduction of the Ultra-Monitor, which is what happens when Crisis on Infinite Earths baddie the Anti-Monitor, the Monitor, and the recently introduced World-Forger, join together like Voltron to become an even more powerful cosmic being. It's the kind of reveal that could have been set up with an entire issue of exposition, and instead it's presented in an almost matter-of-fact way, the universe-shattering madness of it all just one more big idea in a book that's been full of them from the start.

“We had talked about that idea so many times, that the brothers form together one singular monolithic Guardian Monitor, that it didn't even occur to me that we hadn't really shown it before,” Snyder says. “Some of this stuff we've talked about so long that it's almost like I don't even remember we made it up and that it's not old DC mythos. ‘Oh, right when Jim Starlin was writing about Perpetua…’ You know what I mean? 'Oh wait, we made that up.' It's tremendous fun dealing with these huge cosmic figures and getting to revisit some of the real touchstones of the DC Universe in terms of its mythology and its legends and its own origin story.”

But despite all this cosmic weirdness, there's an almost primal question driving Justice League, and that's the matter of whether or not human beings are inherently good, like the heroes we admire in superhero tales, or willing to give in to our baser instincts, like the villains they fight.

“I feel like it's a story that's really personal and urgent and resonant for us, because it's about Lex Luthor believing that we're essentially designed to be selfish and cruel and that that's our final form,” Snyder says. “The Justice League is fighting against that belief, and it's a leap of faith in either Justice or Doom, what they meant in their original forms. But like James was saying, the best thing is to be able to have Jarro or whatever be like, ‘It's time for us to cosmically link all of the multiverse threads, stop the meteor of Vandal Savage's moonbeams,’ like that. It's such a fun combination of absolute bombastic ridiculousness and also deep, emotional, truthful storytelling from the two of us. It's just a pleasure. I love working on this book. I really do.”

Snyder isn't alone in his enthusiasm. "The stories that we're telling are some of the most exciting work that I've done since joining DC Comics eight years ago," Tynion says. "It's freaking amazing working with Scott and bringing it all to life.”

Don't believe us about how big this book is? Check out a preview of Justice League #35, which hits stores on Nov. 6. Here's the official synopsis...

It’s called the “Year of the Villain” for a reason— in this issue, Lex Luthor wins! Everything Lex has been working for over the past year and a half comes to fruition as he finally possesses the fully powered Totality and plans to bend Hypertime to his will. The Legion of Doom's leader will defeat the Justice League once and for all and make his final pitch to serve at Perpetua's side-and the Multiverse will never be the same! Francis Manapul returns to Justice League for a key issue on the path to Year of the Villain: Hell Arisen—and beyond!

Justice League #35

Written by Scott Snyder & James Tynion IV

Art by Francis Manapul

Color by Manapul & Hi-Fi

Cover by Rafael Albuquerque

Variant Cover by Tyler Kirkham & Sabine Rich

In Shops: Nov 06, 2019

SRP: $3.99

And check out these killer Francis Manapul preview pages! Even without words, everyone's body language sure says a lot about what went down at the end of the previous issue, doesn't it?

Mike Cecchini is the Editor in Chief of Den of Geek. You can read more of his work here. Follow him on Twitter @wayoutstuff.

Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

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Feature Mike Cecchini

Oct 17, 2019

DC Entertainment

Justice League

Scott Snyder

James Tynion IV

NYCC

NYCC 2019

from Books https://ift.tt/2BlCLcK

#aion-rsa #Books

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thisdiscontentedwinter · 7 years

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Hunger - chapter 21

Hunger master post

The wolf can hear three heartbeats outside the door. The wolf likes those odds. He has his alpha to lead him and his human pack mate by his side, and the two other humans as well. The two others are not pack, but also not enemies. The wolf is confused by them, but his alpha trusts them, and the wolf trusts his alpha.

The wolf is wearing his human skin now, but he is pushing away his human thoughts. They are waiting like the hunters behind the door, ready to burst in and try to overwhelm the wolf. It is easier, for now, to think in the wolf’s terms. His alpha is here. That is all the wolf needs to know. The human clambering in the back of the wolf’s mind is to be ignored for now. That human, Derek, that boy, who wants to hug Uncle Peter and cry and demand the answers to a hundred questions there is no time to answer. That boy who thought his uncle was dead along with the rest of them. That boy who thought he was the last surviving Hale. That boy retreated long ago and left the world to the wolf. And the wolf is ready to fight.

Beside him, his Stiles is armed with a piece of chain.

The wolf feels a growl begin to rumble in his chest. It is a sound that signifies a hundred different things: a warning to his boy to be careful, a warning to the hunters that his boy is deadly, a signal to his alpha that he and his boy have his back, a reminder to the moon that he knows she is watching him, and an acknowledgement that he will soon be tasting blood.

The wolf is proud of his boy right now. Stiles has been so small and so scared, but here at last is the anger he has honed to a sharp edge. Here at last are his teeth and claws. Here at last is his chance to fight. Here at last is the measure of him, and the wolf knows he will be magnificent. Stiles has the heart of a wolf.

The heart, yes.

Not the muscle though.

The wolf won’t only be guarding his alpha’s back out there.

His boy catches his eye and nods.

The door bursts open.

***

Stiles has never been in a fight in his life. He’s not even counting that one time he spent a week in a group home waiting for a new placement and that kid stabbed him in the arm with a pencil, because that was an ambush, and Stiles didn’t even have time to retaliate. He was twelve and Lewis didn’t like crybabies. As though stabbing Stiles in the arm with a pencil would make him cry less. Physical confrontation has never been Stiles’s thing. He prefers to be a safe distance away before he detonates a few verbal bombs, but that’s not how things are going to work here. Stiles thinks he has the stomach for violence, he’s just afraid he doesn’t have the skill.

Chris Argent sidesteps a guy, then spins around and cracks him in the face with his elbow. The guy drops to the floor, blood pouring out of his busted nose, and Stiles feels a stab of envy.

Peter takes two bullets as he launches himself at the second hunter through the door, and slashes the guy’s throat with his claws. Stiles is standing close enough that he’s hit in the face with a spray of blood like hot rain.

Derek goes for the third guy—Readbeard—and Stiles watches in horror as he’s jerked back as the guy fires a taser at him, the probes hook into his chest, and Redbeard lights him up.

“Hey!” Stiles yells, and swings the chain.

He’s not expecting the effect to be so dramatic. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting, really, but the end of the chain catches Redbeard right across the face, right across the eyes, and it opens his skin up like it’s a piece of ripe fruit.

Redbeard goes down fast. The bloody chain is still arcing wildly through the air when he hits the ground.

Derek pulls the taser probes out of his chest by the wires. His eyes are flashing blue, and he’s in a type of shift that Stiles hasn’t seen before. He’s standing upright like a man, but his face isn’t human anymore. He has fangs, and his ears are pointed, and Stiles wants to reach out and touch his sudden wild sideburns. His lips are pulled back in a feral snarl. It should be terrifying. Maybe it is. Derek and Peter are objectively terrifying, but isn’t it about time Stiles had something scary on his side?

Derek doesn’t make Stiles cringe and cower. Derek makes him stand taller.

He reaches out and puts his hand on Derek’s shoulder. Slight tremors are still running through Derek, but he growls, more pissed off than hurt. Stiles squeezes his shoulder.

I’m here.

Derek meets his gaze steadily.

The hunter that Peter dropped is dead, but the other two are still breathing. And bleeding. There’s a lot of bleeding going on. The raven-haired guy produces a bundle of zip ties from one of his pockets and sets about restraining both of the survivors.

Peter Hale leans back against the wall and roars as Chris does his lighter-and-gunpowder trick. It’s…wow. If Stiles’s body could do that, he’d probably have built up a sideline in liquor store robberies by now.

“The situation is this,” Chris says while jamming burning ash into Peter’s sucking chest wound. “This place is fenced. We’re half a mile from the gate. There are infrared cameras and motion detectors set up everywhere outside, and since there aren’t any monitors here, I’m guessing some sort of remote access. Probably with cell phone alerts. There were two other guys on the gate to the south when we arrived, and the fact they’re not here right now tells me that they’re waiting for reinforcements. So we arm up as best we can, and we head north.”

Peter unpeels himself from the wall, inspecting his now-unblemished skin.

“What’s north?” Stiles asks.

“North is where the rest of the McCalls are waiting with wire cutters and my truck,” Chris says.

The rest of the McCalls… Stiles stares down at the raven-haired guy.

“Rafael McCall,” he says, grunting as he pushes a zip-tied Redbeard into the recovery position. “Nice to meet you, Stiles.”

Stiles’s heart skips a beat. “You’re…you’re FBI?”

McCall nods.

“Can you help me get my dad out?”

McCall climbs to his feet. “Let’s get ourselves out first, Stiles.”

Stiles nods, and uses his hoodie to wipe the blood off his face.

***

The outer room yields a few weapons, but none the wolf is interested in. He has claws and fangs, and knows how to use them better than any firearm. He growls when Stiles’s clever fingers reach for some sort of gun, and Stiles levels him with a stare and shoves the gun into the pocket of his hoodie.

“Let’s move!” Chris says.

The wolf shifts back into his favorite form as he steps outside into the darkness. It’s past dawn; it’s cool and it smells of heavy dew. The day is fresh and new. The chill in the air reminds the wolf that the winter he thought he would never survive is still waiting, teeth not quite bared yet. The grass is cold on his paws.

The alpha is shifted into wolf form too. He is rangier than the wolf remembers. More angular. Sharper. The wolf lifts his nose to catch his familiar scent, and falls into step on his flank. His boy follows him. The wolf hears his boy’s breath rasping, and the rattle in his chest.

Too thin. Too cold. Too weak. His boy has a lot of anger in him, but he is not as strong as he should be.

The alpha hears the rattle too, and slows.

Pack.

His boy might not feel it with his dull human senses, but the alpha does. The alpha slows his steps for the boy. Glances back to make sure the boy is keeping up.

The alpha hasn’t scented the boy yet, hasn’t asked him to bare his throat, but he’s already making room for him. He’s already accepting him.

Pack.

And the wolf will tear apart anyone who tries to hurt them.

***

They’re somewhere in the Preserve, Stiles thinks. Must be. There are trees everywhere. He keeps pace with the shifted wolves--one brown and one black--looking back every few moments to check that Chris and McCall are still with them. His mind runs faster than his body. He’s suddenly convinced that Rafael McCall is going to cop a bullet in the back, because Stiles needs him. He’s an FBI agent. He’s going to be the one to get Stiles’s dad out of prison. And the way Stiles’s luck has been going lately? He expects to hear a shot any second now.

Instead he sees a fence.

“Cut it!” Chris yells.

Figures dart forward from the trees. Scott and Allison. Allison stands there with a compound bow raised, while Scott works on the fence with a pair of wire cutters. The fence must be electrified: Stiles can hear popping and hissing sounds, and Scott does that weird half-shift thing that Derek did before. He keeps cutting though, and stands back and peels the fence open as they reach it.

Peter and Derek wait to each side.

“Come on, Stiles!” Scott says, wincing as he holds the chain link.

Stiles dives through, gets zapped when he moved wrong and bumps up against the fence, but Scott uses his free hand to grab him by the back of the hoodie and pull him all the way through.

Stiles lies on the ground, and watches his fingers twitch. At least he didn’t pee himself, right? It takes a moment to get his motor functions back, and by that time Derek is standing over him. He presses his cold nose against Stiles’s cheek, and then licks a stripe up his face with his rough tongue.

“Let’s move!” Chris and Scott’s dad are bringing up the rear.

“We have to get out of here,” Scott says, hauling Stiles to his feet.

The wolves lead the way through the woods.

Stiles is getting out of breath by the time they stumble onto what looks like a fire trail. Chris Argent’s black SUV--with a layer of dust over it now--is parked on the dirt road.

Melissa McCall is standing by it, and so is some guy with a hunting rifle slung over his shoulder. He looks just like--

Stiles stumbles. “Deputy Parrish?” Stiles’s brain must have got fried. “I saw him die!”

Is Stiles going to have to re-evaluate his entire understanding of the universe thanks to Beacon Hills? If werewolves are real, why not something fire resistant? Like a dragon? Or a phoenix? Or a charizard?

No, probably not the last one.

Would be cool though.

“Let’s go!” Chris Argent calls from behind them.

It’s a squeeze getting everyone into the SUV. Rafael McCall and Chris Argent take the front. Parrish and Melissa and Allison take the back seat. Stiles and Scott and the wolves clamber into the cargo space, and Scott pulls the door down behind them.

Stiles has a lapful of wolf. He puts his arms around Derek’s neck, and leans over to bury his face in his warm fur. His lungs ache from the cold air. He really, really wants this to be over now.

“Shit,” Rafael McCall says from the front, and Chris Argent slams on the brakes.

Dread and fear tighten in Stiles’s gut. He looks up, and cranes his head to see.

There’s a police car blocking the dirt road in front of them, strobes flashing, and a group of men standing in front of it. One of them is in uniform. The others aren’t. Behind them there’s a couple of dark SUVs.

“It’s Sheriff Haigh,” Parrish says.

Stiles looks past the sheriff to the old man standing next to him, and his blood runs cold.

It’s Gerard Argent.

#fan fic #teen wolf #sterek #discontentedwinter #hunger

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