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paperstarwriters · 3 months

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When Things Go Wrong (Feat. Inanna)

I know the larger trend is to lean comedy, but I couldn't help myself lmao. Also oof, the fic ended up with a lot less focus on things going wrong and a lot more focus on repair. Whoops lmao Pairing: Inanna & Reader (Platonic; familial), Muriel & Reader (Platonic, though could also be viewed as romantic)

Warnings: slight angst, hurt/comfort, Reader deals with feelings of inadequacy, Inanna acts a lot like Muriel.

Summary: Inanna had lost her pack once before, but here, she found a new pack with you and Muriel. It's small, but it's hers, and she will do what she can to protect every member of this little pack. So, when things go wrong, she has to fix it.

Vesuvia Weekly Prompt | Masterlists | The Arcana Masterlist Word Count: 4,085

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"And? When it all goes wrong, what will you do?"

When Inanna was a pup, she would have flashed her teeth in a terrifying snarl, gnash her jaws and howled her answer: "Fight! I would fight, I will fight!" But that is the bark of a child, of a pup, though she knows many grown wolves who would yowl the same sentiment.

Perhaps she shouldn't treat this as if she was somehow wiser. After all, it is wise for a wolf to solve problems with their fellows in a wolfish manner. The predicament occurs when you're dealing with a not-wolf-pack. Two strange magicians with one that too often loves to leave the pack and explore like an overeager puppy, while the other stumbles around occasionally like a newborn. Of course, then there was the snake, mischievous in the same way their wandering puppy magician was, and yet somehow much worse from their small intimidating size, and ability to slip behind and between and into things, without other people knowing. It's terrifying sometimes to see a snake and fear for your life only to realize it's your friend, covered in mud, intent on scaring you to death.

There were others as well, the tall slim bird-man. who sometimes had the face of a bird with cold unblinking eyes which he could somehow remove and leave on a wall, with his own raven friend who freaked out at the slightest inconvenience. There was the soft one, with her tiny little cat, who blinked and "meep!"ed at random intervals and fascinated Inanna to no end, unless she got angry which made her far more terrifying.

There was the wispy one, dressed in spiderwebs with an owl by her side. Inanna liked the owl, for their conversations, but she could never get around the sight of it turning it's head all the way around to stare her down. She's tried it before, it's very very hard to do, and yet the owl can do it without even blinking. Not to mention how irritatingly silent she can be sometimes as she flies around them.

Ah, but in short, they were an eclectic bunch, and though they didn't stay as closely together as a typical pack would, they were close enough, visiting often and being kind to each other. Especially her familiar, and the stumbling magician-ling. Muriel rolled his eyes at the title she gave you. Magician-ling, as if you were a newborn magician. She knew that wasn't true, but she thought it was a fonder title than, the undead. Muriel certainly seemed to prefer it.

Muriel certainly seemed to prefer you.

She remembers the delight in watching the two of you grow close, how you seemed to open the floodgates of connection and re-established his ability to find solace in a pack, to have friends, to have fellows he could rely on. Perhaps not fellow wolves, but someone at least. After he grew close to you, suddenly he was eating with others, suddenly he wasn't so alone anymore. And neither was she. She loves you for that, for giving her a pack to be with again, even if it was more spread out, and even if there were sometimes where they'd end up alone again, it was a little pack she found herself a part of all over again. Her pack. Her home.

And as you spent more and more time sleeping in their den, sharing Muriel's warmth, and cuddling up with her, she found her delight as a member of a pack of three. Muriel was happier with you to, so, so happy as his face grew soft, and his smiles grew wide, and when he did his chores, or wandered through the forest, you would sometimes jump up and delight her in a game, in a chance to chase, and jump and throw and catch, and sometimes, Muriel would join in too, and like a pair of wolves chasing after an agile deer, she would hunt you alongside Muriel peppering your face with kisses instead of bites when they inevitably found and caught you.

It was fun. It was happy. Small as you may be the three of you were a pack, which was why she had to fix this.

She knows why it happened, why you left so suddenly, and she's ashamed to know she had a paw in your sorrow large and clumsy as she was, she had knocked over your inkwell onto your book. You had been working on that so intently, staying up so late... too late in her and Muriel's opinion. It was the source of so many of your disagreements, and when you found it soaked in ink, all you did was cry.

She didn't mean to. She really didn't mean to. Her tail hit the bottle when she saw you finally taking a break and it just spilled all over the pages. And in that moment, you didn't dare to even look at her.

"Don't follow me," you had told Muriel with a frightening look in your eyes. You didn't say the same to her, though Muriel tried to argue for her to follow regardless.

"They don't want to be bothered," he insisted. "I... I think they just need to take a breather."

She could tell, in the way that familiars could, that more than anything, he wanted to defy that request. Instead, with his dexterous hands, he tries to salvage your work, to clean up the mess that she made, that she's helpless to fix, that she would only ever worsen if she even dared lay a paw upon it.

Still, she had to do something.

Muriel doesn't call after her when she slips out the door. The sound of wood creaking open, the sound of it slamming shut after was unmistakable, but he says nothing, despite that deep connection that would have allowed her to hear him despite the distance. He's silent, and though her chest pangs at the thought of leaving him in that state, she knows finding you, and fixing her mistake would surely bring you back, would surely fix his mood. So she tracks you down, the agile deer she's caught many times before, following your familiar scent, the familiar prints you leave in the forest around you, and finds you far far far away, crying, and gasping, panicking in that way she's seen Muriel do so many times before.

And in that way she's done to Muriel so many times before, she curls around you, lets you rest your head against her pelt, and quietly speaks, though she knows you can't hear.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "I didn't mean to."

You lean into her touch, sob into her fur, and don't accept her apology, unable to understand a word she speaks. Her distress, is visible, is audible and you try to sniffle and pat her but you're too caught up in your own distress to try and console her. He licks at your tears, wiping them away like she's seen Muriel do with his hands, and you giggle at the feeling. She doesn't intend to make you giggle, but she keeps licking over and over again, if only to hear you laugh instead of cry.

"Inanna!" You bat her away, as gently as you can manage, and it pains her to be unable to tell you the same things Muriel does. You sound so sweet when you laugh, so why must you cry? Why cling to the sorrow she's given you when all she wants is to make you smile?

She wishes you could understand when she says how sorry she is.

Still, she curls around you, tucks her head atop your lap, and tries to keep you warm, to keep you company as you struggle to terms with the mistake she's made in you. At the very least, you sweep the tears from her eyes, and you fix her with a sad and tired look, like a puppy denied her mother. A pup denied her home.

Inanna knows she is giving you the same stare.

"I'm sorry Nana," you mumble perhaps in reply to her own sorrow, and she presses her face further against you, agonized at the idea that she has made you sorry. That you feel the need to apologize at all. Was it not her mistake that made you cry? Was it not her mistake that sent you running?

You lean in, and bask in the feel of her fluffy pelt, rubbing your hands against her fur, in that soothing manner that all you humans so loved to do. She basks in the feeling, the soft and tender feeling, and presses herself further into you, as if it would grant her more. It's greedy perhaps, but it seems to soothe you as much as it does her, as tears slowly dribble, then drip to a halt.

And you look to the forest your soul somewhere far away. And you look the spitting image of Muriel before you came into his life.

And she wonders what happened to you, when you made their life better...had... had they been making your life worse?

She nudges her face into your stomach, hoping and praying that you would get the message. She is curious, she wants to hear your thoughts. She does not want you to be alone in whatever suffering she and Muriel had left you to endure alone.

You look down at her, and as if by some miracle you smile and hear her silent plea.

"Do you ever feel like you're not what you're supposed to be?"

And Inanna curses the fates, the heavens and the moon who guides her. Curses that she was given such a wonderful pack to be a part of an eclectic mix of creatures big and small who all share that connection of affection with each other, who, though not often can sit at the same table and eat their shared catch together, and share whatever meal they've caught in their hunts. She curses that she's been given such a tiny intimate loving pack amidst the larger one, and that she is powerless to protect either when she cannot bear her teeth at the problem.

She wishes, again, begs and pleas to the very moon she just cursed that you could understand her once more.

"I do not understand," she would whisper in sad sorry sound "I am what I am and you are what you are, what is incorrect of our existence?"

And you look down at her, and twist that smile into a pitying thing. With a hand on her jaw you rub at your cheek and chuckle as she allows you this minor cruelty, forcing one eye shut, as she stares with the other.

"You're so tame Inanna, so kind. People say wolves should be fiercer, scarier than this. You seem almost more like a dog sometimes."

It's another cruelty that she must allow. If you could hear her, she would bear her teeth, scold you for thinking such cruel terms, as if others' thoughts could make her any less the wolf she is. But you would not hear her words, and you would not know her anger was not at you. Her jaws remain shut, though she could open them to remind you of her nature. And she leans further into your touch, to inform you of the rest of her.

She can be scarier, she can be fiercer, to her prey and any threat, but only a foolish wolf would bear her fangs at a pack-member in need.

"Inanna, did you know me when I was alive?"

She stares once more, eyes turning up to observe you from where she rests in your lap. She knows you now, and you are alive now. Is that not enough?

Again that sorrow pools in your eyes, sags over your shoulders and brings pains to your fingertips as you clutch at her fur. She wants to whimper to whine in pain but her silence is her gift to you, and an urge to listen to more.

She is here to fix, perhaps this is more than her mistake, but she has caused you pain and she wishes to know how to fix it—if she could fix it. The job seems grander and grander with every word that falls from your lips, every twist of your expression in pain and sorrow, and she is left helpless at her inability to talk to you as she so wishes.

"I knew more magic then, right?"

She tries to nod. It's true, before your death you knew far more than you knew now, but then you had seemed so unhappy as well. Wouldn't you be pleased to let go of such sorrows?

"I wish I still knew all that magic."

It clicks then, and she wants to speak. She begs for the ability to speak.

"Asra mentions it sometimes, how I used to be smarter, stronger, more capable."

"I wish I knew more magic too," she wants to say. "I wish I knew how to tell you that you're enough."

"Does Muriel ever mention it? How it would be nice if he didn't have to cover for my clumsiness all the time?"

"I wish I could tell you how much we love you."

Inanna does what she can. She shakes her head furiously, as she's seen you and Muriel do many times before, and she bears the brunt of dizziness that the movement brings. She wants to tell you that you're wrong, she wants to tell you that you are loved, she wants to tell you that to her, newborn as you are, you are just as powerful as the you of that past, that you had magic that your old self never could have reached. You had the ability to bring people together, to make a pack from a crowd of such different animals.

You had the magic to give her a pack again.

A pack of her, you, and—

"Are you okay?"

Muriel! Inanna leaps up, and she wonders at how she hadn't thought of it before. In a manner reminiscent of the day she first truly got to know you, she rushes behind Muriel, forgoing telling him what he needs to do in favour of telling him all that you were suffering alone. Muriel, she knew was clever. He'd know what to tell you, and he could speak for her too.

And yet when they turn to look at you, when she drags Muriel by his clothes yanked from between her teeth, she catches sight of your eyes growing wide, of your brows drawing down and your own body retreating from the both of them.

"Ah, sorry," Muriel tries to say. "I know you said not to follow you, but Inanna sounded distressed and—"

And you looked at her as if she had betrayed you. Hot tears building up on your face as you look away and try to hide, to hide from the both of them, of course, but to hide from yourself, she thinks as well.

"I'm fine. We're—Inanna and I were fine," you speak, around a mouthful of your own flesh and clothes. She can hear the shudder of your throat the warble in your tone, and she knows it is not merely from her keen ears that the sound carries through.

Muriel fixes her with a look, concern worry and curiosity, but when he whispers to her, in a voice only the two of them can hear, he asks her not to tell him. Not right away at least. She knows. She accepts, she never would have even if he didn't ask.

"Nana... Inanna wasn't fine."

You go still for a moment, back straightening, as if you're about to turn, before you burry your face deeper into your lap an attempt to hide more shame. Still the source of your sorrow, Inanna curls up beside Muriel, intent on doing the same.

"I'm sorry," and you sound so, so small.

Was this what he meant? When Muriel once fussed over his towering size. You sound so small, smaller than a bunny, smaller than a squirrel, you sound as if you could be held between her jaws and locked behind her teeth, and if she held you like she held a pup, she would have to take extra care not to bring you any harm.

It sounded like even before starting, she had already failed.

"It's not you," Muriel clarifies, shuffling close to lean against you. He starts with a hand on your shoulder, gives you ample time to shrug it off before he comes in with the rest of himself, pulling you into his embrace, into his affection and care.

And Inanna watches as you relax, suddenly wishing she was more like you.

She is a member of an eclectic pack of many different animals, but one mostly made of humans. Maybe she could take better care of you all if she traded her fangs for a form like yours. If she traded her fur for your skin.

She curls up beside you, trying to amend her inadequacy, and your hand finds her fur, stroking once more, calming even more.

If she can soothe you like this, then perhaps it isn't so bad.

"Inanna wanted to talk to you, but you can't understand what she says."

You say nothing, but you look away from the both of them, and Inanna understands. You still long for that magic so far out of your reach, you still long for the spells that you once had before your demise. She's sorry that she had stood between you and your goal, sorry that she had ruined your hard work to achieving it.

"She says she's sorry," Muriel says, and you sigh, shoulders sagging, as your hand returns to her fur.

"Its okay Nana, it was an accident I know."

"no, no, not only for that," she whispers.

"Not only for that," Muriel says.

"I'm sorry you think that you are lesser now than you were before"

"She says she's sorry that you think you're lesser now than you were before."

"I'm sorry that you think you are inadequate"

"She's sorry that you think you're inadequate."

"I'm sorry that you think we don't love you so much as you are now."

"She's sorry—" and Muriel falters, words dying on his tongue. "Do... do you not think we love you as you are now? Do you think we'd love the you from before... more?"

"It's not.... I know you didn't even really know me then" you try to argue back, but your voice warbles and cracks and though you try to deny it, it's clear the feeling was there. "But I... I was such a skilled magician before. Asra tries not to mention it but.... but I hear it sometimes. In the way that they speak.... they look so sad, so disappointed, as if they're upset that I'm not like that anymore—and I know that they're probably more upset that I've forgotten them," you're hiccuping now, gasping for air, that your lungs deprive yourself of a self harm that mirrors your words, cruel bitter things, where you pretend as if it's foolish for you not to be so hurt. "It's just that... I... I ... It'd be nicer wouldn't it? If I wasn't so clumsy, and if I knew all those spells. I'm sure I knew a spell to understand familiars once, I could've talked to her—I could have talked to you Inanna. And I just... I thought that maybe if I studied a little more I could do it again. That you know, maybe I could do other things too, and you wouldn't need to help me so often.

"I just feel like there's just so many things I can't do anymore. So many things I don't remember how to do, that would be so, so helpful."

And Muriel speaks exactly what Inanna thinks, without a word of encouragement from her side. "Do you think you aren't really helpful right now? Even if you aren't helpful, it doesn't make you any less...wonderful."

With his dexterous hands, Muriel slips your cheek into his palm, cradling your face, as he shuffles around you to make it easier for you to turn to him, to make it easier for him to wipe away your tears, to make it easier for him to tug you into his chest, let you sob into his shirt as he holds you tight. Inanna nuzzles up beside you, rubs her cheek against your shuddering ribs, and though it's hardly the same as the affection Muriel gives you, she hopes you can feel it too.

"You've done so much for me. For Inanna too. You remember how you told me that my past doesn't define me? The same applies to you, you know. You're amazing now, what does it matter how skilled you were before?"

"I don't know," you sob. "But... gods, it still makes me feel like I've somehow failed. Like I've grown worse over time instead of getting better. I should be getting better, shouldn't I?"

Muriel opens his mouth to say something, but grimaces at the thought. Inanna knows. Inanna knows full well what he's thinking, and she speaks for him, before he chooses silence.

"I... um... oh... Inanna says that.... no pup learns how to walk without stumbling, and.... and that no hunt future hunt will be better if the current one is successful. And.... and she says that even if she fails to catch her food, she is no less a wolf. And... and that applies to the both of us."

Muriel's face turns a little pink at the mention, and you turn to look up at him, your own hand coming up to mirror his own, cradled on his cheek. As you ask with your heart of concern, "You think you're not good enough?"

His brows dip though that pink colour doesn't go away. "I should be saying that to you, you know. You already know so much magic..."

"And you know so much about the forest, about life."

Muriel scoffs, eyes growing dark. "I know a lot about ending it."

"And a lot about healing it. Even without magic, you know how to mend wounds so well."

"And even without as much knowledge as before, you know how to do so much." You scoff at his retort, and Inanna buts her head against you, something Muriel is eager to translate. "Inanna agrees."

You roll your eyes, at their shared agreement, and smile. Muriel smiles in turn seemingly satisfied with this outcome, but Inanna is not convinced.

She speaks through Muriel, wagging her tail as she squirms into the space between the both of you, hoping to curl up around both of you and emphasize her points.

"Nanna!" you yelp

"Pfft." Muriel swats at her tail, likely stuck in his face. She doesn't regret a thing, only that it makes him slower to speak. "Inanna, oof, Nanna says that she loves you by the way."

"Both of you. I love both of you."

Muriel stubbornly refuses to voice the latter part. She swats her tail against his face again. "Hey! Okay, okay, both of us she says."

"You are my pack."

"She says we're her pack," and Muriel further translates. "She says we're her family."

"Inanna..." You open your arms, and let her into her lap, showering her with affection and cuddles, hands scratching and petting and fluffing and rubbing. "I love you too Nanna!"

From the side Muriel watches with a small smile on his lips as Inanna peppers you with slobbery kisses, and before he dares lapse into any feelings of isolation, Inanna twists, intent on pulling him into this pile of affection and play, as for the first time in a long time, she shows her love for her family the way a wolf does best.

So perhaps she cannot fix her pack's problems by bearing her teeth. She can fix them with play and affection with kisses, and with help. She's not alone anymore. And neither are either of you.

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