Justin wasn’t a tall kid at all but he was faster then the average...er...being. So it was that when the accident occurred on the road between two cars, Justin darted over and managed to reach the scene before most people had gotten their phones out and called in the emergency. He’d watched as if it was all in slow motion. One car had been moving right along but another had run the red light entirely, sweeping into the passenger side of the first car. The woman who’d run the light had lurched forward just as the air bag went off. She was now climbing from the car, her arms bloody where shattered glass had sprayed her. The man from the first car had flown through the windshield, shattering the glass, and landed more then a body’s length from the mess.

The woman was fine, she was standing, staring at her arms, crying, but otherwise fine. Justin rushed past her. He was a cute, if not hansom young man, no more then seventeen. Cute with his wisp of baby soft brown hair, his wide brown eyes. His brown eyes showed worry and intelegance. He wasn’t paniking as the rest of the crowd was, he had his wit left about him. He wore a pair of blue jeans with more holes then material, boots, and a jean jacket, his chest bare beneath.

He rushed forward and knelt beside the man, reaching out and gingerly touching his back. He didn’t roll him over. If he had a concusion or a broken neck, that would make the injury worse. Instead, he lowered himself so that his face was near level with the man’s.

“Sir?” His voice was nice, tenor, he spoke loud and clear so the other would be sure to hear. His fingers found the other’s heart beat below his hand, slid up to find a pulse in his neck. “I’m Justice. You’ve been in an accident. I’m going to try to help you.” He paused. What else was he supposed to do? Oh yes? “Blink twice if you can hear me.”

It had all happened so quickly. One minute he was fine. The car was working fine and it was a rather nice day. In fact, he was enjoying his day as it was going. He'd been given many compliments at work, his wife had been to the doctor and the pregnancy was going fine and his daughters were in perfect health. In an instant the day was shattered into flecks of blood and glass.

Cynthia had always gotten onto Luther about not wearing a seatbelt. She said it could save his life. It hadn't. In fact, if he had a seatbelt it might have knocked his head into the stearing wheel and given him a concussion or whiplash. The airbag hadn't worked, either. That didn't raise his confidence in vehicle safety any.

Then for a few moments there was nothing. He remembered hitting the wind shield then nothing. All of a sudden he's lying on the asphault staring into broken glass and his own blood.

His whitening hair was in every direction and his grey suit was ruined. The white shirt underneath already sported stains. A shoe had landed somewhere in the vacinity of his left. Luther was faintly aware of someone speaking to him. His blue eyes stared at his totalled car and his brain screamed for him to remember something.

Phaedra

Phaedra

"Phaedra!"

Nevermind the person trying to get him conscious, Luther was struggling to get to his feet to the small body that had been at the precise point of impact. His baby girl, his beautiful baby girl was still in that mass of twisted metal!

He screamed. He screamed something that Justin didn't understand. Something not English. Just wondered if he was speaking another language or if he was delirious. He was voting for delirious as the man struggled to get up. Well, he must not have a broken neck if he's able to struggle. Normally, a kid his size wouldn't be able to hold a man down, but a werewolf of almost enysize could lift his car.

Justin put his hands flat on the man's back and held him there. His touch was carful, incase something else was broken, so not to break him if nothing else was broken, to keep him calm.

"Sir? I don't understand you. Blink if you can hear me. Tell me what you mean." He looked up. There wasn't much of a crowd, three people, one on their cellular speaking franticlly fast. One helping the bleeding woman. He looked back down. His hands were bleeding from little cuts, glass that was on the man's shirt. The cuts were healing almost as quickly as they were forming.

His mind was frantic and barely working coherantly. He was sick with worry and fear but he couldn't get up. Why couldn't he get up? There was someone holding him down and Luther couldn't for the life of him think why someone would do that. A brief flash of his memory and before he went crashing through the front of his vehicle he heard a small shriek. Tears washed his eyes and he tried desperately to get to the car.

"PHAEDRA!!"

It was Greek, actually. But it was a name. He had a four-year-old daughter whom he was taking to ballet lessons. She'd been so excited. Had they actually reached their destination, Phaedra would be beginning her first lesson ever. He remembered how she clutched those pink slippers with childish glee...

But all those thoughts rushed by too quickly to sort through and consciously register. Luther clutched to the man who was holding him. "My daughter! Please! My daughter's still in the car!" He couldn't see anymore, there were too many tears.

The scream was too much. Sensitive hearing does that to you. Have you ever wondered what your dog thought when you shouted too loudly? Well, Justin didn't wonder. He knew. He blinked.

"Your daughter?"

He'd not seen anyone else in the car. But a child, dear god. He hesitated, then lowered himself.

"I'm going to go get your daughter. I'm gonna roll you over but don't move from here. If you get up you'll want to come over and help. If I'm trying to get her out and your over there your just going to be in the way and neither of us will be able to get her out. Understand?"

He didn't wait for an answer, he was sure his oh-so logical reasoning would make the man restrain himself. He gently rolled the man over by his shoulders, looked at his face, then stood and jogged to the car.

Justin looked in through the broken windsheild. The car was a mess, the second car still protruding from it's side. He blinked, looking for this daughter.

There, just in the back seat where the SUV had impailed the smaller car. Past the stuffing that fell from the front passenger seat and just around the twisted steel there was a child. She was young and bleeding from what seemed like everywhere. Blood dripped from her small fingers onto the fabric of the seat.

Her breathing was ragged and slowing and her heartbeat went frantically in her chest. Little Phaedra's golden hair was caked with blood and if he listened close enough Justin could hear a small whimper of fear.

It hurt so much and she didn't know where her daddy was.

He smelt her before he heard her. Justin hopped onto the hood of the car and scrapped his boot along the edge of the windshield, breaking away the jaged glass to leave a smooth line of rubber and metal. He slid into the car, feet first, and crouched in the driver seat, the steering wheel biting into his back. He could smell gasoline. One of the cars was leaking, but there wasn't spark and it wasn't hot outside so he didn't worry.

Justin leaned over the seat to find the little girl, still in the carseat and looking like a mess. He leaned near but didn't touch her. Thought back but couldn't pronounce her name.

"Little girl? Phae?" He said it fay. He was speaking in his most gentle voice. It wasn't hard, his tenor voice soft, his tones light, his face innocently blank. He didn't want her to be afraid of him. "I'm going to help you little girl." Could she even hear him? It didn't matter, he would let her see his lips moving, his eyes blank. "But you've gotta be strong. You gotta go with me, I'll take you to your daddy."

He reached over but couldn't make sense of how to work the car seat so instead he grabbed the strap and pulled. The straps broke free as though they were nothing. He held his hand to her, closing distance very slowly.

"i'm going to help you alright? I'm going to help you. My names Justin." He made a smile on his lips. "Maybe, if your good and I can get you outta here, if your strong, I'll buy you an icecream." Another smile. All that blood. From such a small body.

Pronouncing it fay was correct. Her mom called her that sometimes when she read to Phaedra before bedtime. She recognized it and her eyes opened looking for that familiar face.

She couldn't find it. There was just a man she didn't know and she hurt. Why did it hurt?

"My mommy..told me not to talk to strangers.." she didn't want to obey her mommy right now..it hurt too much..

"Where's my daddy?"

Shit. Why do parents do that? It always bites them in the ass when a crucial moment comes and the child refuses to cooperate. Mommy says not to talk to strangers. He blinked his brown eyes at her. Her she was, just a baby, bleeding everywhere. She had to be in a lot of pain, and she's listening to mommy's stupid rule. He wanted to growl but didn't for fear that his all too real growl would frighten her. At least he knows that she can hear him.

Justin let his hands drop casually over the back of the driver's seat, as though they weren't sitting in a car wreck.

"Daddy's already outside the car. He's laying down resting. This made him..." not hurt, it'll frighten her. "Tired. He needs to lay down and rest." He leaned further over the seat and reached out slowly to touch her pulse. "Look. Mommy's good to tell you not to talk to strangers. Because there are bad strangers. But there's good strangers too. I'm a good stranger. I want to help you. You want to get out of this car right?"

He asked her this while holding his hands out to her.

Children really are amazing. Their deficiency in understanding complex problems helps them realize the simple and most important things. Phaedra understood that she needed to trust this stranger, if only she realized it on an unconscious level.

When she didn't cooperate with him, it wasn't because she didn't want to. It wasn't because Mommy had said 'no.' She simply couldn't.

Her big blue eyes filled with fat tears that dripped down her stained face and her chin screwed up with hundreds of tiny wrinkles when she tried to speak, staving off full blown panic. A small whimper escaped her throat and she tried to reach for him. She couldn't, one of her arms was trapped between the seat and the metal.

She shook her head. At least her neck wasn't broken.

"It hurts.."

That was all he needed. Her attempt to reach out to him was all he needed to tell him she would not freak out if he tried to help her. He nodded, examining her arm. Justin crawled over the seat and spilled into the back seat, moving like he had muscles in places he shouldn't have.

"I know little girl. I'm going to try and help make it not hurt." He frowned and grapsed the car seat, rocked it to see if this would loosen her arm from the trap. It did not. "My name's Justin. I'm seventeen. How old are you?" He could have guessed, but her talking would take her mind away from what was happening, if only a little.

He leaned across the seat, his jacket falling over her legs, and grasped the metal that had folded in agaist her arm. He pushed. With very little strain, the metal that would have taken at least ten men's strength to move folded away from her arm. He looked at it and saw bone. He turned so that he blocked her arm, she would not be able to see it. She probably couldn't even move it.

Normally, Phaedra might have held up four fingers and said "this many" to anyone who was asking. Instead, her eyes were trained on everything that Justin was doing. She told him in a small and shakey voice that she was four. She'd squeaked in surprise when he did everything that he did, but her eyes began to droop and she wasn't able to focus anything.

He reached under her arms, taking her silence as a yes, and lifted her carfully out of the car seat. Tucking her ruined arm against his chest, smearing her blood all along her bare skin, he curled her against his body and crawled over the seat, exiting through the windsheild and walking unceremoniously across the hood of the car and dropped to the ground.

Still he could hear no sirens. One of the three to gather had gotten the woman to sit, another hovered near the man he'd helped. Justin craddled her head to his chest and went to his knees beside her father. He would not give the child to him. He couldn't. Not like this.

"She's...hurt badly. She's..." he covered one of her ears, pressing her other to his bare chest. "she might...loose her arm. It's bad." He removed his hand, turned so she could see her father, if she were still awake, but held her arm between his body and her's where neither of them could see it.

Phaedra was asleep in the stranger's arms. Whether she was passed out from the pain, the stress or a concussion was difficult to tell.

Luther was beside himself. He had no idea what to do and hated feeling useless, especially when the matter at hand was his daughter's life. That's why he was so upset when Justin wouldn't let him hold his child. He felt even worse and more of a failure when he saw and was told his daughter's condition. How could he have let something like this happen? He reached his fingers out to brush her cheeks and to clear away the tears that still remained. Luther's heart plummeted in his chest when he thought of his Phaedra trapped in the car, wondering where he was.

He raised his voice, angry at the onlookers for just being there and doing nothing.

"Hasn't anyone called the police yet?!" He looked at all but Justin with an angry, accusing glare. At least this boy had done something.

Justin let him touch his daughter, leaned in closer even to allow him such guestures. He did not think, no matter how much the man would think he could, he did not think that this man could handle holding his daughter once he glimpsed her arm. He watched and felt his own heart wrench for a child he didn't even know.

No. He knew her name. That was the problem. It's said if you can think of someone as a piece of meat you can handle anything. But Justin knew the child was four, her name was Fae. Her daddy loved her, her mommy told her not to talk to strangers. He knew this and so knew she was a person of her own.

And she was going to loose her arm at this age.

Without thinking about what it is he was doing, Justin called to his beasst inside of him, teased it, provoked it to the surface and pushed the power of it into the hand that rested under her back. He felt his skin stretch, muscles under the surface that shouldn't be there stretched outward, the bones snapped and grew longer. His fingers became long, thin versions of clawed, animal-like fingers. He slide his hand under the child's shirt along her back and scratched her several times, like scratching an itch. His heart hammered in his throat. He'd never infected anyone before.

Phaedra didn't do much when he scratched her. There was a little bit of shifting around and small noise of protest, but to anyone else it would simply have looked like she was in pain from the crash.

That is exactly what Luther translated it as and he was really moving more than he should be for just getting thrown out of a moving vehicle. He probably wouldn't stop moving until his daughter was fine and the paramedics had arrived.

They were, finally. He could just hear the sirens in the distance and they were quickly moving closer. Luther looked at Justin.

"You'll go with us, won't you?" There was no way he'd be able to let Justin leave without thanking him properly or allowing Phaedra to see him.

The high sound of the siren made Justin nearly flinch, straining his ears to block out the horrible sound. He retreated his hand slowly and felt the bones popping, snaping painfully. It didn't hurt so badly to become a werewolf while riding the full moon but to force yourself to change and focus only one part of you to change, this was painful.

Go with them? He was about to tell the man no but the realization of what he'd just done came to him. He'd not just scratched the girl. He'd put the family in danger for the full moon. She would be wild for her first few turns, without any control. It was exactly how he'd been, how everyone in the back had been.

He nodded. He'd need their name to find them. He could get their name at the hospital.

"If they'll let me." He looked down at the girl in his arms, the blood smeared all over his chest, arms, probably his face. He looked at her father.

"Lie still until the ambulance comes."

Lying still would take an amount of control that Luther didn't want to possess. Not after being hit by a car and his daughter's arm nearly being taken off.

Then the banker side of him kicked into gear and he began to think of all the costs. If this woman decided to try and get out of paying for their car, the costs for them alone would be staggering.

And, amazingly enough, thinking like a banker got him to stay still.

If Justin knew what he was thinking he'd argue that she had no right to sue him since she ran the light. But he didn't know what the man was thinking and thinking that seemed to have calmed him anyways.

As the sirens wailed closed, Justin closed his eyes trying not to hear then, the screaming in his ears. The ambulance arived, then a police car and then another ambulance. They rushed them, one going to the woman, as she was obviously not severly hurt.

They flocked them. Justin was suddenly very busy trying to tell them he wasn't hurt. But they insisted he was bleeding.

"I'm not. She is. I got her out of the car. Here." He practically deposited the little girl into a medics arms, keeping her arm pinned to his chest so not to joslte it.

He looked over his shoulder at the man. "I'll stay with her." Would that be a comfort?

It would only be a comfort to Luther if neither he nor his wife could make it. While the emergency response technicians did their jobs, Luther tried to stay near to his daughter, caring nothing for his own health. In fact, he'd broken his fibula on that fly out of the windsheild and his body was still numbing the pain.

However, the EMTs knew that Luther was still bleeding and forced him to allow them to take a look at him. He wasn't happy about it, but at least Justin was watching over Phaedra.

When she was loaded into one Ambluance and he into the other, Justin made it clear that he was coming. He faught to stay with the little girl as much as he could then eventually hit one of the medics in the face, causing blood to trickle from his nose. It got his point across and he climbed into the ambluance.

The ride to the hospital was miserable with the wailing and when there he was left in the sitting room, unallowed to go into either examining rooms for Fae or her father. So here he sat in the waiting room looking very much like an abandoned puppy. Blood still cacked his skin, he'd sheded his jean jacket and lost it somewhere. Not one nurse had yet offered him to clean up a little. Everyone was busy. Except him.

They did what they could. Luther had been given stitches and that was really it, but Phaedra faired much worse.

The side the car had hit was severely damaged and she had to be kept in the hospital for observation. A lung had collapsed and her arm was terrible. Thankfully, the doctors had been able to save it. She'd have some scars, they said, but new techniques were able to minimize the visible damage.

Luther was now sitting next to Justin. He was putting off calling his wife. He didn't want her to freak out and go into premature labor.

He looked to the man without a trace of a smile. Not only was he feeling guilty, he was confused. He knew that without any ability he'd given her, she would have lost that arm entirly. He'd watched small signs of it's healing already while in the ambulance. He didn't know if he should feel bad or triumphant.

"I'm sorry." That all of this happened to you. He turned his eyes to the floor, scraping of bits of Fay's blood with his thumb nail. "I called her Fay. How do I pronounce it?"

Luther's head rested in his hands. He'd have to tell Cynthia soon. She'd worry. She was like that. He was so worried about Phaedra, though..his little PhaePhae..

"Hmm? Oh, no, you pronounced it right," he didn't miss the little bit of cleaning Justin tried to do, "And I'll give you money for some new clothes. Sorry about all this, really..and thank you for getting her. I don't know what I would have done.." He'd probably have broken his tibia, too. The doctors had set his leg and put on a temporary cast.

He frowned at the coment, his finger's pausing for a moment. New cloths? He looked down. The jeans were more flesh then material. He'd had them for a very long time, only a stripper would be comfortable in them. The jacket was old too. The most expensive thing on him had to be the nikes, and they didn't need replaced.

"What kind of good citizen would I be to let you worry about paying for clothes after what you've been through?"

He continued to scrape blood off of his chest, flakes falling to the floor.

"I'm Justin. Fletcher." It just struk him that he'd introduced himself only when the man wasn't listening and by the name Justice, not Justin. Not good.

Justin, Justice. It wouldn't have made a difference to Luther anyway. He'd even forgotten that Justin had introduced himself before. It was kind of a blur to him, now. At least he knew that he'd do something for the boy. He'd feel horrible, like he really had done nothing, if he didn't.

"I'm Luther Pearl. I work for some bank downtown somewhere..." It was tough for him to keep everything in. No father should have to see their daughter in such a state.

Which is why Justin let him see less then the whole deal. It would have broken the man's mind.

"Some bank somewhere." He smiled but it wasn't happy. "Is she alright?" He already knew the answer. "I mean, will she keep her arm? She's not in shock is she?"

He really was worrying about the little girl. His thumb scratched quicker, pressing harder, turning his skin red and raw under the abuse.

The white hair and the lines that pulled on his face really made Luther look older than he was. It was very apparant in his worried state.

"They said she'll pull through..they had to go into surgery but the doctor says she's fine now..." he took a deep breath, "They won't let me see her yet.."

Justin sighed. He shook his head, picked more at the dried blood, frowned. The man really did look old, especially next to Justin. Seventeen but he could have passed for fifteen on a noraml day. Worryng made his face only younger then it was in the first place.

Justin stood so abruptly that a woman sitting across from them jumped, he paced a step, thought better of it, and sat back down.

"What about you? Your going to be alright?" He did not mean physically.

His palm pressed tightly on his forehead, covering his red, tearing eyes. Luther was holding on by a very thin thread but he knew he was going to break down and cry in front of the entire hospital.

What he needed was his wife and his other daughter Claira to help him share the burden of worry. Cynthia would put her arms around him and tell him it would be ok, Claira would climb on his lap and lay her head on his shoulder.

Luther nodded, but the loud sniff to stave off oncoming tears echoed through the waiting room and he tried to get a hold on himself. It wasn't working too well, but it was enough for now.

Justin looked at him. Clearly the wolf didn't believe him at all. He eyed Luther for a long time then nodded, turning his eyes to the floor and rubbing his palms along his thighs.

"I really should go then," he didn't know if he could sit here and wait all day for the doctors to OK their going in and seeing the little girl. "I was suposed to be at work."

Thus the reason he's wearing so little. That, and Justin always wore very little and very revealing clothing. He looked around the waiting room. He didn't have to be at work now though. He'd called Gabriel while the doctors had patched up Luther. He'd told the cat to tell their master, when he woke at nightfall, why he'd been unable to make it.

Oh..well he supposed he understood. After all, asking someone who just happened upon the accident to stay when he might have other obligations..

"You're sure you can't stay? She'd love to see you, I'm sure..."

On the other hand, Luther didn't want to wait on his own. He really didn't. He'd feel so alone..but he couldn't ask Justin to stay. It would be imposing.

Justin hesitated.

"I would like to see her too."

Yes, twenty minutes with the child and he's becoming attatched. This is strange because, well, no one, including Justin himself, would have ever thought that Justin would like children. He looked down the length of his chest, frowned.

"I need to get clean." He stopped a nurse who was carrying a tray of utensils and medication and asked where the restroom was. "I'll be back. I'll stay a little longer."

Luther nodded vaguely when his daughter's rescuer went to the restroom. He was focused too much on keeping it together to do much else.

After a few minutes, someone brought him a cup of coffee (probably a nurse or something) and he sat with it in his hands. He wiped his eyes on his sleeves, took a deep swig of coffee and asked at the nurse's station for the phone. He couldn't use his cell phone in here, it might interfere with the equiptment. Luther would never intentionally do something that could harm his family, so he kept it off. He would probably have a few voicemail messages from his wife, but he was calling Cynthia anyway.

It took what seemed like forever for him to dial the number. Every time it rang, his lungs drew in shakey breath. There was a click. The reciever on the other end must have been picked up.

'Hello, Pearl's residence.'

"...Cyn?"

'It's Daddy', he heard her tell Claira, their other daughter, over the phone. 'Yes, dear, what is it?' Surely she could hear his distress through his voice.

"There's been an accident..."

When Justin returned, his brown hair was damp at the hairline and bangs, though his very short ponytail remained dry and clumped togather with streacks of dried blood. His bare torso was clean and rosy, his jeans stained heavily and ruined. But he was now clean. And he now wore a doctor's jacket that fit several sizes too big for his frame.

The jacket wore no name tag and fell to his knees, hanging open down the front. He'd rolled back the sleeves in able to keep use of his his hands.

Justin spotted Luther through the Nurse's staion glass window. He was using the phone and Justin could only guess what he was doing. He sat down in the corner.

The chair he'd been occupying had been removed from the room, probably by a janitor, and probably because he'd gotten Fay's blood all over it.

As expected, Cyn went half-crazy with worry. She'd wanted to come over straight away, but thank fully the live-in nurse and Luther had both been able to convince her otherwise. Claira wanted to see her sister, too. Luther promised both Claira and Cyn that he'd let them know as soon as he did.

He felt better once he'd talked to his wife. He went back and sat with Justin again, waiting for someone to come back and let them know when they could see Phaedra.

"Your family?" He asked when Luther returned. He was almost positive. He could smell the stress, the worry radiating from Luther like flashing neon signs. He folded the jacket closed over his chest.

"Are they coming down as well?"

(Jesus. Fogive the shortness of this post. My mind seems to have drawn a blank.)

Luther took a sip of his coffee and slipped out into space while he stared at the pristine white of the hospital's waiting room. He rolled the cup between his hands and his elbows rested on his knees. He wasn't one for great posture tonight. No, he wasn't trying to keep up an image here.

At Justin's assumption, he nodded.

"They want to come right now, but Claira has school tomorrow and Cyn needs her rest. She probably wouldn't deal well with the waiting, either. It's best if they just come tomorrow when we know more."

After Phaedra is let out, he and Cyn should invite Justin over for dinner. That would probably be a nice way to repay him. Or something, at least. Luther didn't think he'd ever be able to do enough for the boy.

((That's alright. It worked, right?))

Justin nodded.

"Claira?" Great! Another child involved. "How old is she?" Please be older, how is he suposed to explian that the only way her sister kept that arm was because 'she's going to become a doggie once a month?' He almost groaned. "Did the doctors say how much longer? I really....can't stay too long."

He asctually could, but he was finding it harder and harder to sit here and think about what he'd done. He'd need to go home to his master soon and confess, or to the alpha. Perferably the alpha. His wrath was the lesser of two evils.

"Claira's eight."

Forget explaining to another child, Justin should be figuring out how to explain such a thing to an uninitiate father. They're overprotective and overbearing at best, just think of the effect this news will have on Luther's paternal instincts.

It was that moment that a nurse decided to walk up to them and announce that they were free to visit Phaedra. Perhaps under normal circumstances, only immediate family were allowed, but maybe she just assumed Justin's relation to the family. In any case, neither of them were denied entrance to her room.

Phaedra was sitting up in her bed, looking for all the world like nothing had happened to her. She was looking at a picture book and had fun looking at the murals painted on the wall of the pediatric's ward. She was sad that she couldn't see her daddy before, but she didn't like being sad so she looked for something happy. That didn't change the fact that the room seemed a little less dreary when she saw her father. Innocent, childish smiles seem to have that sort of effect.

"Daddy!"

Her arm reached out for a hug--the other was wrapped and kept still. Luther, of course, waisted no time in getting to her side and giving her half the hug he would have liked to. He didn't want to hurt her, after all.

"Phaedra, there's someone I'd like for you to meet. His name is--"

"Justin!" It was amazing that she remembered. What was also amazing was that she had the ability to laugh after being stuck in that car and after being in that pain.

Luther treasured that laugh like nothing else. After being afraid that he'd never see her smiling face again, afraid that she was dead, simply seeing her alive and upright in bed was a miracle.

"Daddy, Justin's nice!"