The Red Wolf

O, Exalted Thirteenth

You're seventeen when you meet him.

You're seventeen and you're angry. You're so fucking angry. How many times has the world tried to kill you? Twice? Three times? Even one time is too many for someone of only seventeen summers old, but that's the thing - life isn't fair, and you don't expect it to be (yes, you do) so you swallow it all down and you stew in that anger and you wonder which time will be the time that'll do the job properly.

But then you meet him.

And you're covered in grit and dust and dirt and blood and your father's exiled you from your family home and your mother is gone, her body returned to the earth and her soul to whatever horned god she used to pray to. You're alone. You sleep in alleys and let yourself get beaten and bloodied for a handful of coppers just to buy moldy bread to keep yourself going.

You don't know why you're still going.

Until you meet him.

And he's two years younger than you but he carries himself like someone who's lived twice as long as everyone you've ever known. When he looks at you, he looks through you, right to the core of you.

Your father used to look at you like that.

Your father weighed and measured you and found you wanting. And so, to preserve the dignity of his family name - a name you can no longer use, much less say - he tried to kill you.

"Three times," your Savior murmurs one night. You look up from the small fire between you and meet those seaglass green eyes. "He tried to kill you three times."

He sees everything, your Savior.  Though it's not like you've tried to hide much from him. It's not like you could. You look into that soft brown face and let the waves of his gentle stare wash over you. It's warmer than the fire.

"I was three days old the first time," you say. "He tried to smother me with a pillow."

"And your lady mother fought him."

"My lady mother died fighting him."

Your Savior reaches out. He threads his fingers through a thick lock of red, red hair and tilts his head.

"You look just like her," Yeshua says quietly. "Acca. Mother of Wolves."

Gooseflesh rushes down your arms. You run your calloused palms over them; your throat is thick with the smoke of a grief you've never truly faced. Your eyes burn and itch and sting. Your Savior hums and brushes a knuckle over your cheek.

You don't remember the last time you were touched gently.

You don't know if you've ever been touched gently.

"And you are," Yeshua whispers. "A wolf. Judas, the Red Wolf. I think it suits you."

And you're seventeen and your Savior is fifteen and when he grins it's lopsided and toothy, loose and awkward in the way all pubescent children are. But behind that soft, childlike smile is a tongue that holds the wisdom of men toeing their eightieth winter. When Yeshua speaks, anything he says tends to become law. It becomes reality. Your reality.

You begin to drop the shadow of Judas, the Unwanted Son. The phantom of who you thought you were sloughs from you in painful fits and starts. Some days you beg yourself to put a knife through your heart and end it. You think of begging Yeshua. You think maybe, if he really loved me as he says he does, he would do me this one thing. This one kindness.

"It would be a kindness," Yeshua says one day. You're twenty now. Yeshua is eighteen. You've shot up another foot and built a suit of armor around yourself in the form of hard-won muscle. Yeshua is all elegant lines and sleek muscle, hands calloused by the handles of hammers and scythes and lengths of rough-hewn wooden boards.