Morning Jog

If there was one part of Mystic Falls that reminded him of home, it was the woods. Summer had always filled them with life there – of the plant and animal kind as well as his own sort – leaves spreading thick and green overhead, offering some shade from the sun that’d warmed his shoulders as he ran. He’d known every part of them, had played in the hollows of the roots as a kid, fished in the river that’d run past the village, had bolted out among those trees on his first full moon, his family following in a pack.

Marc pounded along the track that ran from the Whitmore campus towards the Falls. More miles than he’d put in since he’d still been in uniform, but easy still. In some ways he’d lost all that conditioning, but not the physical. There wasn’t a single physical scar on him from what had happened. No creaking joints like most former servicemen and women suffered from after years of operating at peak performance. All of the scars, all the damage was on the inside, and even that had finally started to heal.

He adjusted the earpods he wore, the music a low hum through them that allowed him to still hearing his breath, and the sound of all the other living things that had woken up early. Bird song filtered through the woods, as big an indicator that there wasn’t any trouble up ahead. You got any sort of disturbance in a place like this and the wildlife reacted – birds took off, insects were quiet, you could practically feel the tension in the air silencing them all. Nothing to watch for here, no reason to let that non-existent tension creep into his own brain.

In the end it was almost meditative. Focus on where each foot fall landed – it didn’t matter that he could heal a turned ankle almost in an instant, if you didn’t roll it in the first place there was no need to waiting those painful seconds for strained ligaments to knit themselves back together again. His life would’ve been better if he hadn’t rolled that either, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself then and it’d caused damage that had taken more than a decade to heal. It was finally healing though, and getting back into that old routine was proof of it. Get in a few miles before he either picked Ria up to drop her off at school, or headed to whatever job he had on that day. After breakfast it’d be the latter today, Mrs Roberts’ gazebo replaced before summer was over and the grandkids wouldn’t want to be out in the yard again. They’d poured the foundation yesterday, today he'd get the frame up, maybe have the shingles in place tomorrow. He’d definitely be out of there by the weekend. Maybe if he didn’t have anything else come up he’d be able to talk Ria and Toni into taking a weekend trip with him.

Thoughts of a beach and a little time splashing in the sea drifted through his mind like they were carried on the breeze. A distraction so faint that he didn’t hear the other runner coming along the track that bisected his. So much for his feathered early warning system and the low volume that was meant to allow him to listen out. Twisting awkwardly to avoid knocking the guy on his ass, Marc threw both hands up. ”Sorry, sorry. My bad. Shoulda looked where I was going. You OK?” He’d handle a rolled ankle easily enough, but you hurt someone without enhanced healing out here and there was a chance you were either carrying them out over your shoulder or you were bolting back to civilisation and cell phone range to get some help out here for them.

Tagged: ATLAS BUMILA * Word Count: 639

If there was one positive about suffering from hyperawareness, it was that you saw things coming. A year ago, even, he would’ve fixed on the motion through the trees immediately, flinching away from the guy before the two of them collided. The edges of that razor sharp focus had dulled – a blessing, he wasn’t about to will himself back to a state where just a bird taking off from a tree could have his heart thundering in his chest.

Marc felt it kick against his ribs now, in a way the run hadn’t had it pounding. He took a couple of steps back, drawing in a deep breath as his hands came up higher. The guy who’d careened off of him hadn’t come off so lucky. Both of them had been caught in that mental fog, not paying attention to their surroundings – an idiot move in a town where you should’ve been at least a little on edge. He hadn’t been something to worry about, if he had been he’d have been down on his knees already, taking advantage of the situation with teeth and claws. Instead he was already brushing his hands off against the front of his t-shirt as though he could offer the man a hand up off the ground.

Woah - yeah, maybe both of them shoulda been doing just that. Marc’s fingers curled agaisnt the damp front of his t-shirt as he offered the man an apologetic smile instead. ”I guess that’s good for me. The cops have got enough to deal with here already.” And he had enough here to want to avoid trouble clawing at him again. Every decision was weighed with Toni and Ria in mind now and there was no way he wanted his daughter to see him behind bars like the asshole who’d broken into her mom’s house to take her in some twisted bid for revenge. He had to keep his nose clean, keep working his way towards being the dad she needed, the man that Toni had loved enough to marry and try to build a life with.

She needed the guy who took that offered hand to shake it. No hard feelings it seemed, just that hand shake before he buried his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants and nodded to Atlas. ”Marc. I guess we both need to watch out a little more, Atlas.”/b] Marc made some kind of sound of agreement, glancing around at the woods that crowded thick and close to the thin paths cut through the trees. He understood that need to be somewhere else, had run himself to exhaustion when his brain was doing everything possible to derail his life. It was harder for every thought to misfire when you were too tired to have them in the first place – not easy to manage when your body constantly fought any sort of biological weakness.

His brows rose faintly as he glanced in the direction Whitmore lay in. Close enough to run from to where they were out near the falls. This was a midway point he guessed, one of those connections between the town and the college. ”You’re a student? I guess college isn’t exactly easy.” Not that he’d actually know. Even he hadn’t lit out of Woodstock to enlist, he wouldn’t have ended up at some Ivy League school. His place would’ve been working at his dad’s side, grease ingrained in his skin, a wife and a half dozen kids probahly waiting for him at home.

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Being called to the sheriff’’s station to come and take custody of his kidnapped daughter had left him feeling a little like he was losing his mind, but he’d gone there all the same and had found a life that he hadn’t known a thing about. Marc knew that it could’ve happened at any point along his route from Texas to Virginia, but with how weird things were in Mystic Falls, now it seemed like this was the only place it could’ve happened. The shattered remains of his marriage, his supernatural side and that part of his life that had been going on without him having a clue had collided here. On the full moon he’d been out here with Ria, feeling the hair on the back of his neck rise as he tried to scout the area to make sure that there was no threat here. The police still hadn’t found who had taken her and until they had Marc wasn’t sure he’d be able to rest all that easily.

This guy seemed just as jumpy about it as he had then. Hearing the thread of worry in his voice, Marc left off of drying his hands and held them both up like he was surrendering. ”Not that I know of. I haven’t seen anybody else out here, but it seems like a daily occurrence in this town.” He dropped his hands, but his brows were still furrowed. They’d decided to stay put in Mystic Falls for the moment for Ria’s sake. She was going to school here and the stability was gonna be good for all three of them – if they could get it. ”Has it always been like this here? People constantly vanishing?” It shouldn’t have been, it wasn’t like Mystic Falls was New York or LA after all. This was a small town, the sort of place people came to for a sleepy life, even if they were the sort of people who ran out here, covered in fur, on a full moon.

Shrugging to relax his shoulders, Marc let go of the guy’s hand and huffed out a breath. Watchfulness wasn’t what he’d expected to need here, but maybe it was time to start going about that the right way. Too many years had been spent going OTT with it, seeing snipers in every open window, hearing gunshots in the slamming of doors or the back firing of cars. ”We’ll both watch out the next time,” Marc promised. A second later, he was barking out a laugh, swiping the back of his hand against his mouth as he choked it back. ”Me? A college student? Nope.” Amusement continued to wrap his words, the laugh bubbling up again. ”I missed my chance on that a couple of decades ago. I’m a carpenter, general contractor if you need a little something else handled.” He wasn’t about to include that he was a former soldier whose career had ended brutally. That Marc Fraser should be left in the past now.

Jogging had never been just for wellbeing for him, not the same way that it seemed to be for Atlas. Back in Woodstock you ran on the full moon, maybe chased each other around as kids, but there weren’t gyms and running trails and all those same sort of facilities you got outside. The army had drummed the routine of it into him and Marc guessed that was why he’d returned to it now – to condition himself again, even if it was just to be the best father he could be. ”It’s good for that,” he agreed, nodding as he slipped his hands into his pockets. ”Gets your mind off of everything. You see many other students out here?” He’d have asked about people in general, slowly picking away at that underbelly of weird people in town, but right now he was pretty sure he didn’t want to start down that rabbit hole. This run had been about bleeding those intrusive thoughts away, not seeking them out.

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Years of walking into the line of fire instead of running from it meant he was cool-headed under pressure, had been cool-headed under pressure. The slaughter of his team had snapped something inside of him that had held all the fear that was in any sane person under the circumstances under control. Thin threads had been woven back across that gap over the last couple of years, enough that Marc didn’t flip at the mention of dead bodies now. He slipped his hands into the pockets of his shorts, his shoulders hunching, pulling tight against the damp cotton of his t-shirt. Missing people were one thing, there was always a chance of them being found, but bodies….

The chill that ran down his spine had him curling tighter like he was protecting that part of himself. ”Sounds like a curse more than anything,” Marc said tightly. This situation was growing stranger with every passing second, the urge there to take a couple of steps back before he just bolted growing. That part of his brain that had been disrupted by the ambush was starting to ring like a bell, ready for that last blow that would have him hitting the flight part of fight or flight at full speed. ”A hunter?” he huffed out a breath, his throat feeling tight around it. ”I know we’ve got a wild animal problem in town, but hunters? No, I don’t know anybody by that name.” He suspected that the guy wasn’t just talking about some old guy who strapped on his orange vest and came out here when October hit to shoot at wild turkey.

Maybe there was a reason for the guy’s odd demeanour, enough of one that Marc felt sympathy rolling through him, but this situation was still strange enough to keep that bell in his head ringing. Hunters had been on his parents’ warning list when he’d been growing up, their version of the bogeyman, the nightmare lurking out there in the dark to keep them all on their best behaviour. Knowing that they were in town wasn’t gonna leave him sleeping any easier when Ria had barely gotten her feet under her with turning every full moon. ”Having someone on your side under those circumstances helps,” Marc admitted. Toni’s support had been her team, his … her now, as it had once been before. Dark brows rose, a faint thread of amusement working into his smile for just a moment. ”It’s on the front page of both local newspapers. I hadn’t heard much about the deaths though. I guess the sheriff’s keeping those under wraps.” For good reason if it was the hunters behind it all.

He’d be watching his back, and his family’s, for more than one reason now. Another weight on his already fractured mind, pressure put on that part of him that was paranoid enough to still flinch under the right circumstances. Marc nodded, huffing out something close enough to a chuckle. If the guy was lucky then the next person he ran into out here wouldn’t be the sort of trouble he’d just mentioned. ”College’ll give you the chance to do that. I didn’t go, I enlisted instead. It’s not the sort of work you’d go into if you wanted to work with animals.” They’d had dogs embedded with the team, highly trained animals that’d suffered just as much as the team had when their world had exploded. He didn’t know if they’d made it back, it had been the last thing on his mind after.

It had taken months to even admit that he’d been left with wounds he had to heal. The surface, as it was now, was pristine, what he was erasing the scars that would have seared and cut their ways deep into his flesh. What had happened to his mind hadn’t been so easy to hide but bit by bit that had started to heal. Finding a routine that had once been as natural as breathing had helped, having Toni back in his life … Ria … his daughter had become the star around which his world revolved. Marc made a low sound in his throat, shifting lightly on his feet as he studied the man in front of him. ”Routine helps too,” he said honestly, although he couldn’t claim experience on the hyperactivity side of things. ”That’s my thing…” He wasn’t about to explain the rest of it to a stranger. Usually he did that alone, but if running into this guy out here was a sign of things to come, maybe it was time to find another trail. ”It’s a clear my head kind of thing,” Marc admitted. ”Get outside, get some fresh air, just let it all go blank for a while. Of course, running alone is the best way of doing that.” And apparently it was the best way of watching your back.

He'd come here knowing that the supernatural was thick on the ground here. They’d stayed knowing the same, that maybe Ria could grow up for a while in a place where people understood that, but apparently it wasn’t as big an unspoken secret as Marc had expected. Wary as soon as the question rolled out, he took a step backwards down the trail. His hands hung lightly at his sides but it was like everything inside of him was already tensing. ”I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about. Whatever you’ve gone through here is nothing to do with me. How about we just chalk this up to a bad run and go our separate ways huh?” There didn’t seem like there was gonna be much to diffuse the situation. The only question now was if he could run fast enough to get away from whatever this guy was.

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Marc’s hands went up, like he was warding off the guy’s words (far easier than trying to shrug off the accusations of being a hunter if they ended up sticking). ”I’m not upset,” he said honestly. Disturbed maybe, a little warier now than he had been when the two of them had just stumbled into each other’s paths. Things in this town had decent hearing, and despite the lack of contact with others out in the woods today, and during previous trips out here, you never knew when someone would happen to catch a whisper of conversation. Having the word ‘hunter’ stamped on you was as bad as being labelled as a vampire or a witch or a shifter. Each side took labels like those and used them as an excuse for violence (a notion drummed into him as a kid that’d only proven to be true after he’d left home).

How this guy had lasted to college suddenly felt beyond him. His parents had stamped the warnings about revealing what he was into him from childhood – it had been the reason they had left Scotland during the highland clearances, avoiding the English who were hunting down everything they could find, denying Scotland its claws, so to speak. Either Atlas hadn’t heard the same from his, or he was just naïve enough thanks to whoever had told him there were things here. Marc dropped his hands, scrubbing them over his face for a second. There was a razor thin line between being able to warn him now and revealing that he was one of those things that appeared to be human. ”You believed them enough to ask, though,” Marc said on a sigh as he dropped his hands away. ”You’ve still gotta be careful, joke or not. With all the deaths that have happened around here, people are twitchy, and when they get that way it’s easy for things to get out of hand.” One gunshot didn’t mean death when you were like him, like this guy might’ve been, but that could be all it took to have everything avalanching.

He curled his hands lightly at his sides again, not wanting to look down and see his brother-in-law’s – his teammate’s – blood on them. That only took one little comment to start an avalanche too, although these days he could see the signs of it, could sometimes dig his heels in before he got swept away on the wave of it. Marc drew in a deep breath through his nose, focussing on his heartbeat as Atlas spoke, willing it to slow back towards its normal level. ”That’s something you oughta be more careful of,” he warned, as lightly as he could manage. ”The sheriff put it in place for a reason – to keep people safe.” And he’d broken it whenever the moon had gotten full, that wasn’t within his control though. ”I’d wondered about the accented,” Marc admitted, gesturing up at him. ”Did you find him?” If he’d listened to his family, the army wouldn’t have been for him either. He’d still be back in Woodstock now, maybe married, maybe with some kids, but he’d never have met Toni, wouldn’t have had Ria and he wouldn’t have swapped that for the world.

Figuring maybe he’d swing by and pick them up when he was done – it’d probably take some talking to convince Toni to go for a family dinner – he took another step down the trail. Atlas was making an offer though. Marc raked his teeth over his lower lip, studying the guy for a second before he nodded. ”Alright,” he said finally. ”I’m heading back towards Mystic Falls … that alright with you?” If it wasn’t then they’d go their separate ways, he’d spent enough time out here today and had that hankering to see his family bleeding in hard now.

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The guy hadn’t been joking when he’d asked about the supernatural, the lie covering it up now as just ‘a joke’ was paper thin. You could try and back out of it all you liked, or double down, but the truth was that using the wrong words around the wrong people was always going to paint a target on your back. No amount of abilities would get you out of trouble then. If it was just his own safety at sake, he might have cracked and admitted to the truth just to talk this guy around on what not to say around strangers. It wasn’t just him though, Ria and Toni were here and their safety meant everything to him.

Conscience still nagged at Marc and he dipped his head, breathing heavily through his nose. This was a minefield that he didn’t want to end up stumbling straight into, even if it was just to drag someone less capable out of it after they’d blithely strolled into it first. ”You’d be surprised,” he said dryly. ”Sure, kids talk about that horror movie stuff and they prank people, but have you seen the local newspapers? People are scared about what’s going on out here and scared people think they’re seeing things they’re not.” The last thing anybody wanted was some idiot playing tricks by turning furry in company getting shot by someone who was a little too trigger happy out of paranoia. Shaking his head again, Marc half wished he had one of those newspapers out here. ”On purpose? Yeah, maybe there are some that would, especially if they thought it wasn’t just a kid out there.” How many different ways could e warn this guy to just be careful?

Not enough times obviously. As a soldier he’d dealt with plenty of guys too young and green to be sensible when the crap hit the fan, but he’d thought those days were over. He didn’t have to worry about anybody else’s safety anymore, except for his own family’s. More fool him for trusting it. Marc sighed, trying to let the tension that had started to build in him bleed away. ”I wouldn’t go testing that theory. Just … don’t go poking any bears out here.” Especially not on a full moon when those grizzlies were smarter than the average bear. Marc held up his hands, warding off the laughed comment. He hadn’t been the one to bring any of this up, but it looked like he was going to be the one letting it drop now.

]”Good luck with the search. Losing someone you care about like that is one of the worst feelings in the world.” He hadn’t even known that he had a daughter before Ria had shown up at the sheriff’s office, passing his name over to make that first connection between the two of them. Toni had felt her world torn apart when her daughter had been taken, she’d had to live through months of torment, not knowing if Ria was even alive. It was a parent’s absolute worst nightmare. It had to have been just that for this guy too.

Maybe that sympathy was what had him extending the invitation to the guy to run back towards Mystic Falls with him. It wasn’t exactly in the same direction as the college campus, but maybe the guy had parked his vehicle up near town instead of making a loop in the other direction. ”What are you studying?” he asked as he took off next to the guy, moving easily despite the cool down period their conversation had given them both. He’d never considered college, but he wanted Ria to have that option – to take after her mom instead of him.

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Even compared to Mystic Falls’ standards, his upbringing hadn’t been what you could consider normal. His ancestors had got tired of the English oppression, of the constant hunting and death of those close to them. They’d come here and had isolated themselves in that hidden corner of upstate New York. Instead of it being almost 50-50 supernatural-human as he it seemed to be here, they’d spent 99 percent of their time with only pack for company. It had been safe, the world outside kept at bay and the local town had seemed happy to let them do it. Maybe there’d been rumours about the weirdos who lived miles out in the middle of nowhere, but Marc didn’t think he’d ever heard them. Here it was different and he wouldn’t have turned a blind eye to what happened on that border between the humans and supernaturals here, especially not now that both Toni and Ria were here with him.

This guy seemed aware of those borders and more likely than not, he was on the same side of things as he was, but Marc could see a recklessness in the way he handled it. Not reading shit like the stories about people going missing or running into the local wildlife, jogging alone out here despite the warnings from the sheriff. Marc puffed out a breath as he brushed off the idea of what was really behind the attacks, holding his hands up again like he was warding off the ideas the news was putting forward. Marc dragged the back of a hand over his mouth again, mopping the fresh dusting of sweat from his upper lip. ”You tell me you’ve seen either one of those out here and I’m gonna find myself a different running route,” he muttered. The state had mountain lions and bears like most, but doubted either one had ever killed someone out here. ”You ever think that those myths had to start from somewhere?” He wasn’t gonna be surprised if the guy just brushed that idea off too. Holding onto a secret, or just delusional, he’d denied everything weird they’d discussed so far.

That should’ve been reason enough to take off running again and leave this guy to jog on alone, but he’d already got himself too deep into the conversation. There was gonna be no changing the guy’s mind, but that his cousin was missing had Marc lingering a little longer. ”Seems she was lucky to have been find,” he said tightly, not wanting to compare the case with how Ria had been taken. Unlike the girl this guy had found, Ria had managed to escape by herself and had found her way to the cops. If there was someone else taken girls in town he’d be keeping his daughter closer than ever. Mark nodded, the knots in his stomach tightening. ”Good luck to you both.” He’d been devastated by what Ria had told him about her own captivity, for Toni, for this guy, it had to be far worse. They knew the people they loved were missing, they’d lived with it for weeks or months.

Basic training couldn’t exactly be compared to college, but it had given him an education of sorts. The army believed in keeping their people well trained and not just with the weapons that had become as familiar to him as breathing. Marc felt a gratitude to them for it as he ran on beside the kid. ”Sounds like a decent load. I’m sure if you work hard enough you’ll get there.” He huffed out a breath as he vaulted over a log, landing sure footed on the path and immediately kicking off again – thanks to what he was the physical training side of things had never been a problem for him. ”I guess you’re not from around here. Europe?” None of that was probably his business, but these were far easier subjects than the supernatural or kids going missing in a town where they should’ve been able to feel safe.

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