Arctic Light

(I also found the perfect icon for this.)

So I was thinking about werewolves and the wolf!Peter (White Collar) universe, as applied to other canons. It really doesn't work at all for Agent Carter, because it needs a canon where at least some of the characters are longtime friends or siblings/parent-child/etc.

But it works beautifully for Steve and Bucky!

So, the way werewolves work in the wolf!Peter 'verse is that werewolves become wolves involuntarily on the night of the full moon. They need to be with their pack at that time; otherwise they go off the deep end and become homicidal monsters. Being with their pack keeps them sane. (Well, in theory. None of them have every actually tested this in the installments I've written so far; it might not be that simple, because the rest of it isn't.) Traditional werewolf packs are just wolfpacks -- nuclear family and mate, plus a few more distant relatives if they're around. But basically close blood relatives and mates. "Nontraditional" werewolf packs involve friends and chosen family and generally people who aren't included in the standard definition of "family". Traditional werewolves don't believe this could possibly work, but of course it does. (And there have been blended packs like that since forever. They're just not the dominant werewolf paradigm.)

In the MCU, then, either both the Barnes and Rogers families (werewolf Winter Soldier, can you even imagine D:) or just Steve and his mom are werewolves. And after his mom dies, Steve is sort of de-facto adopted by the Barneses, so things are still all right. (Uh, I need to figure out what happens during his time with the showgirls; maybe there are Barnes siblings and one comes along, or something? Or maybe he pack-bonds with the showgirls or something.)

Anyway, after they rescue Bucky things are good again because he has his favorite packmate, and after Bucky "dies" ... well, things are obviously terrible, but he's still got the Howling Commandoes. And then he goes into the ice and wakes up in the future and his whole pack is dead.

And Steve is not just a wolf; he is a SUPERWOLF. Werewolves in this 'verse aren't particularly supercharged normally. They're really just normal wolves, except their mass doesn't change between wolf and human, so large humans (like Peter) become very large wolves. Steve would be a really big wolf to begin with, but after the serum, he's a werewolf ON STEROIDS. He can probably bite through steel.

So all he can really do is demand to be locked up or sedated at the full moon (and sedation would only be moderately effective because of the serum). For 8-12 hours a month he's totally out of control, potentially homicidal, and incredibly dangerous, ON TOP of being isolated and depressed and alone.

Poor Steve.

But then there comes a time when he starts to bond to the people here. He can't quite trust it, though. What if he's wrong? If he's wrong, he'll kill someone! But if he can bond with a new pack, he can get through the full moon like most werewolves do, by sticking around his pack. But he can't trust himself anymore ...

(This Steve would probably get along REALLY well with Bruce. Actually, a fusion between this 'verse and the MCU works wonderfully for the Hulk too, because they must have been trying to create another supersoldier, but all they really got right was the "enormous ragey werewolf" part ...)

I thought those of you who read my White Collar werewolf AU series might enjoy this gif, via Tumblr, that demonstrates how big wolves actually are:



Now consider that wolf!Peter is probably even bigger than this, because one of the "rules" of the werewolf AU is that werewolves change shape, but not mass, so wolf!Peter weighs about the same as human Peter, and therefore has to be well over 200 lbs. (By the same logic, wolf!Diana is quite small; Marsha Thomason is not that large and therefore Diana's wolf version is nowhere near as big as Peter's, more like a very large Husky or Malamute. I also imagine she's a quite lean and leggy wolf, whereas Peter is more powerfully built.)