June 8th, 1895 — The Reach

The heavy wooden door creaked on its hinges as Murdock shouldered it open, letting the sharp morning air follow him into the main hall. His breath still steamed in the light spilling through the high windows, faint and grey, filtered through the island’s ever-present mist. The scent of pine and salt clung to him, along with the metallic tang of blood, old and drying, and the faint earthy musk of the forest where he’d spent the better part of the last twelve hours in feral company.

He was shirtless and the visible skin was marked and scarred from years of transformations. Long, angry claw scars—some fresh, some faded into ghostly silver—crisscrossed the thick corded muscle of his chest and shoulders. His beard was damp, his hair matted with a smear of mud at one temple. His ribs ached, and his left bicep throbbed in time with his heartbeat. He needed food, badly. And a pain potion. Maybe not in that order.

Still, there was a pleasant heaviness to his limbs that came from surviving another moon and the call of his bed if he could make it up the winding stairs to his suite. The night had gone well enough. Alasdair hadn’t lost control. Young Ruaridh had shifted clean. There'd only been one injury bad enough to limp back with, and even that looked worse than it was, Merida could handle it. No one dead. Not a bad run.

He closed the door behind him with a solid thunk, already picturing the tray he’d left instructions for: oatcakes, bannocks, bacon, eggs, and black pudding. Maybe a hot toddy to go with it—hell, he’d earned it.

Then—

“...Titania.”

His voice caught, low and half-cracked from disuse. He stopped short at the foot of the staircase, steam rising faintly off his bare skin. She stood there like a memory had taken shape. Still upright and proud, as if no time had passed at all. As if they hadn’t once stood right in this hall and promised each other a future that had shattered like dropped glass. It felt like a lifetime ago.

His mouth twisted into something that wanted to be a smile but didn’t quite make it. “Didn’t expect a welcoming committee.” His blue eyes flicked up to hers, unreadable, but not unkind. “You have impeccable timing.”

He ran a hand through his tangled hair and exhaled slowly through his nose. “To what do I owe this?” He didn’t move closer yet. Not until she gave him reason to. The last time they'd spoken, it hadn’t exactly ended with warm words.

But still. He didn’t look away.

Titania Allaway

  

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MJ is a National Treasure

She couldn't do this any longer. She'd reached this decision so many times in the last eighteen months. She couldn't bear this uneasy tension between them, the shock of learning they had both suffered a year of separation to a lie, had fractured something already broken. They hadn't moved forward; they hadn't moved at all. There had been no resolution.

She was still in contact with the children who felt like her own. She still met Mannon and Blair on any Hogsmeade weekend they requested her presence. She still sent owls and gifts, but the girls had been in school. Maintaining the uncertainty and dodging their questions had been easier. Titania couldn't continue the ruse.

It was the first full moon since the girls were back home, and Titania wasn't going to join them in London. She wasn't there to guard the Reach. She wasn't protecting the pack. She was working an additional shift at the hospital because she couldn't tolerate sitting idle another full moon and worrying. She still found herself nauseous every full moon, knowing she wasn't there to aid the pack. It was a ridiculous feeling that now clung to her heart - the pack. She hadn't been able to strip the Greybacks from her heart.

Against her better judgment, she came directly from her shift before night had turned back to morning. The house elves that remained at The Reach during the moon had been kind enough not to comment on her unannounced arrival or the length of her absence. The tea they brought her remained untouched as she'd paced between the drawing room and the entryway. She was at the top of the staircase as soon as she heard the door.

She hated what the sight of him did to her heart.

Titania almost had her healer's stoic mask in place as she took the first few stairs toward him. She hesitated as she thought better of it. She was still mourning the loss of a love she couldn't move beyond. "Murdock," she tries to keep the word from gathering weight or emotion. Her reasons for visiting could wait. She was afraid she would always give him such priority.

Doing her best to keep her observation clinical, she was absolutely refusing to be impressed by the sight of him without his shirt. She tightened her jaw as she noticed the freshness of several marks. "We must speak, but it will wait. Are you alright? Anything more than these claw marks to know about?"

She had moved to stand on his level, but she didn't dare touch him. The hesitation still hurt. "Anything hurting I can heal?"

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MJ revealed this beauty

He hadn’t expected her. That wasn’t true. He had expected her, every full moon since she left. But expectation was not hope, and Murdock had never had much use for the latter.

His name landed too gently. Like a kindness he didn’t deserve. Or maybe a cruelty he couldn’t stomach. He stood in the entryway, shoulders still squared from the walk back, shirt in hand and boots still muddy. The moon’s pull had gone, but the wear in his bones remained.

Now she was looking at him like she had every right to, like she still had the right to, and the sight of her made something twist sharp behind his ribs that had little to do with the injuries from his shift. She was clinical. Cold, almost. Not like her. Not like them. And yet—he still drank in the sight of her.

in response to her question he grunted softly, an old reflex. His eyes didn’t leave hers. "Fine." The word came short, clipped. He offered nothing else.

S She was standing so near now, but not touching. That, more than the claw marks, was the ache he wouldn't speak of.

"Anything hurting I can heal?"

He scoffed lightly, almost smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. "Just pride, but it’ll scar over. Like everything else." He meant it as a joke. Mostly. He finally looked away then, not because he didn’t want to look at her—but because it was too easy to. And that was dangerous.

A long silence stretched before he spoke again, quieter. “I’m fine, Titania. You don’t have to—” He stopped. Adjusted the shirt slung over his shoulder. Looked toward the stairwell, away from her, before his voice dropped lower, quieter. “…But I won’t stop you if you want to.” He couldn’t say what it was. Tending the wounds. Speaking the truth. Coming back. He wasn’t sure himself which he wanted more.

  

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MJ is a National Treasure

She didn't bother to hide her exasperation, her eyes rolling but a tiny smile pulling at the edges of her lips. If he had bothered to say more, she would have worried in earnest. For a moment, it felt simple; domestic. It would be so simple to wipe the mud from his temple, to ease the pains of the full moon, and see him settled.

But it wasn't her place. He'd withheld her right to worry about him. She was a woman without a place, and she felt it acutely.

She met his empty smile with her own, both turning away to collect what they could of their thoughts. She was solving nothing by being here, all she would accomplish is to further break her heart.

She wasn't certain if her name was a mercy or an act of violence. It was a beautiful thing that cut like glass. She looked to him then, her sea-blue eyes full of storms. She tightened her arms over her chest, needing some way to hold them that didn't tempt her to reach for him.

She forced her tone to be gentle, to allow him a genuine response that didn't seek to protect her heart. "I don't have to, but I desperately wish to. I never wished to stop."

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MJ revealed this beauty

That flicker of fond irritation, that little twitch at the corner of her mouth — it cracked something open in him, raw and too close to the bone. If she'd met him with silence or scorn, he could've kept walking. Could’ve clung to the ache he knew how to carry. But that look, that near-smile, shattered him quietly, the way waves do to cliffs over centuries — not with violence, but persistence.

He didn’t know where to put his hands. Let them fall uselessly to his sides. She didn’t cross the room. He didn’t either. That breath between them stretched, pulled taut like a stitch he wasn’t sure would hold.

And yet—he felt her. The weight of her gaze, the longing pressed down beneath those folded arms, her voice soaked in grace and ache all at once. The way she said "I never wished to stop" nearly brought him to his knees.

He looked at her then, really looked — not like a man seeing a memory, but like a man facing a choice.

His voice was quieter when it came again. No flirtation now, no shields. Just him. “Then why did you say you did?”

He turned his gaze to the floor, ashamed of how much he’d counted on her still caring. How cruel it was to have taken that for granted, and how cowardly it had been to let her carry the silence alone.

“But I understand it, that you deserved more than a disappearing act. More than a man who can't offer you peace, or plans, or a bloody house that doesn't reek of blood and ash after every full moon.”

He finally lifted his eyes to hers again — sea blue met storm grey, and for a heartbeat, the whole house held its breath.

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   Titania Allaway

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MJ is a National Treasure

“Then why did you say you did?” They had never recovered from the senseless mayhem that was the bodyswapping teashop. Two years of their lives lost to senseless magic; two years that had seen the death of her father and someone sabotaging their engagement while wearing her skin. It had been over a year since they finally spoke and learned the truth: someone wearing her skin had broken Murdock's heart and rejected him in the privacy of a stolen moment with his intended, in a moment meant for her.

She looked at the man paces away and nearly crumpled. She had found him charming, petrifying, and intriguing in equal measure five years ago. Anya learned, in their careful courting, that he was a principled leader, a selfless champion, a devoted father, and an impish trickster. He was so many things to her, but now he was demanding she account for actions she never consented to. She had betrayed the man she loved without living the experience. How was she ever to atone for that?

"I did not end us. We still never found out who was in my skin for those days, but I never walked away from you." She was almost ashamed of her vehemence, of how much she needed him to hear her. She was grateful, when he spoke, that she had been looking away. His next words landed like hexes.

"Stop," it was a command and a plea to him. He was the wolf, but Titania found herself blaming the planets and stars when she closed the distance between them. It was idiotic, aggressive even, but his apparent resignation snapped some thin leash she had on her control. "Do not speak of what I deserve when you alone decide our future. Whatever you think of me, or of that me, I have never asked you for social niceties."

"Never have I recoiled from you or the pack. My only argument with the bite is its threat to your survival." She'd begun checking things off on her fingers, a certain sign that Murdock should fear for his safety. "I am not a fragile princess who faints at the sight of blood. I earned my designation, same as you, and I won't have you questioning my nerve." This close, it took effort not to spear him with an accusatory finger.

That thought struck her about the exact moment her rational mind concluded she would never be able to look at him with an impartial eye. She wanted to hex him for doubting her, while she also wanted to hunt down anyone who ever scarred him. Her professional mind was already planning mending and numbing potions for his ribs while some besotted, foolish part of her couldn't believe she was seeing him like this.

"I have never asked you to be something other than who you are. I've been deluding myself that you intended ever to formalize our association." It felt weak to voice her anxieties when she'd already felt his rejection, but she spoke them anyway. There was no future for them that didn't hinge on these next moments.

Titania loathed the mixed signals her head and heart were sending, but every ounce of her agreed with her decision to shove him square in the chest. "I made a vow, Murdock. Vow. I made a promise. I did so because I love you. At what point did you forget that?" She recognized how unfair the question was. The conflict was bright in her eyes, but so was her frustration. Frustrated was the kindest word to describe the perpetual vice in her chest that told her she was doomed to mourn him. She had the taste of him; of them and it had been ripped away. Her children, the man she envisioned as her husband, all gone.

She raised her hands, but warred over their destination. They landed on his shoulders, injuries be damned. "I didn't stop loving you. I couldn't.

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MJ revealed this beauty

He should have let her finish.

But Titania never argued softly—and he’d never loved her for her silence. She came at him in full gale, a storm of grief and fury and conviction. Every word lanced deep. Every pointed finger, every checked-off accusation, every tremble in her voice cracked through armor he’d spent months rebuilding.

"I've been deluding myself that you intended ever to formalize our association."

He flinched like she’d struck him—and maybe she had. Maybe she’d meant to.

But his voice was hard when it came, like stone cracking under pressure.

"You think I didn't intend to formalize it?" He broke off, running a hand through the mess of his hair. It wasn't anger now—it was exhaustion. Regret. A great, gaping hollow where something used to live between them.

And then she touched him.

Not lightly, not cautiously. Her hands found his shoulders like they still belonged there, and that simple weight—gods, it undid him.

He didn’t respond right away. He couldn’t. Her words hit too many places at once—his guilt, his longing, his fear, all jostling for breath. He swallowed hard. Eyes still fixed on hers.

"why not?” The question escaped him—quiet, almost boyish. His voice was no longer biting. It carried the weight of someone who had been waiting, stupidly, stubbornly, under every full moon—carving her name into the dark. He wasn’t accusing her anymore. Just… asking. Because he’d held on. Gods help him, he still was.

And if she was telling the truth—if she was still his, even after all this—

He had no idea what he was supposed to do with the hope that started blooming in his chest.

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   Titania Allaway

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MJ is a National Treasure

In no book would you find the advice to shove and/or otherwise harass an exhausted werewolf. Somehow, Titania found herself doing just that, and with gusto. The shove had almost scared her back into her right mind. Almost, but not quite. It also felt good. It was, perhaps, as brutal as she could imagine being with the man she still loved. The man she still loved who broke her heart and still had her standing here, her hands now tight on his shoulders. She wasn't sure if her nails dug into punish him or confirm he was real.

His first question insulted her. "What else was there to think?" She didn't manage to stop the question. She also didn't miss how rigid he went beneath her hands. The sane decision was to step away, but it was only a fleeting impulse. She met his eyes, but she didn't know how to answer him.

Why hadn't she thought him serious? The list was long; painful to rehash. All she could offer him was, "We are forever linked by my vow to protect this family. It seemed clear to me you wished that to be the extent of our association. You no longer wished to marry me."

This was not how she imagined today progressing; Titania wasn't sure what was progressing. She had no map for this development, for this dangerous trail that pushed her to ask, "Was I wrong?" She rarely prayed to be wrong.

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MJ revealed this beauty