the man
A/N: okay, first of all, thank you so much for requesting teen wolf. TEEN WOLF FANS OUT THERE IM HERE AND I WANNA WRITE SO YEAH, REQUESTS PLEASE. second of all, im sorry this took so long for me to do. the lyrics integrated throughout the story are from 'the man' by taylor swift, and i recommend listening to it as you read. i hope you enjoy and please send requests!!!
I'd be a fearless leader, I'd be an alpha type
Cora watched her brother with envy, watching as he roared in the unfamiliar beta’s face. The golden-eyed werewolf flinched back, cowering from the alpha, even without knowing who he was. The brunette panted, clutching the large claw wounds on her stomach as she waited for them to heal. Yes, they were wide and deep, but they hadn’t hit anything vital, and although it hurt like she was going to die, the wounds would heal.
Her pride, however, would not.
She’d been watching the beta from the shadows, testing the waters. She hadn’t expected him to whirl around in uncontrolled bloodlust and rake his claws through her flesh. Cora could have fought him off there - she was strong, fast and young, full of adrenaline and her own untapped rage - but Derek had arrived. As her alpha, it was expected he would assist her, but that didn’t mean her pride wasn’t wounded.
And it wasn’t even really about her. It was about her and every other female werewolf. Carrying that opinion with her had weighed her down heavily, but she was growing to use it, sharpening it as a weapon. Female werewolves received the same unprecedented misogyny that female humans received, the same all females received.
One time, Cora had been out at a bar, sipping happily on a drink and grinning from the burn it left behind in her throat. She hadn’t expected a man to approach her, drunk and daft, misogynistic and creepy. She’d snarled at him - without canines, she wasn’t that stupid - but he’d merely laughed, creeping closer. It seemed a girl couldn’t seem to get a guy to leave. She’d beaten him black, blue and bloodied afterwards, the feeling of his blood on her knuckles and apologies dying on his lips was like a taunt to her and her gender.
Cora couldn’t blame Derek for coming to her aid, in fact she was always grateful. She was glad he had arrived, in the slim possibility that the beta had dug his claws in and hurt something vital, he would have been there to rush her to help. But that didn’t mean the desperate feeling to prove herself had flickered out in her stomach. In fact, it had grown. Burning bright and hot, scorching her insides and filling her with bubbling, red hot rage.
She shot him a grateful smile, but she could tell from the way his eyes traced her wounds and figure that he sensed something was off. He could properly feel the conflicted waves rolling off of her, crashing into him like a tsunami. Luckily, he didn’t say anything, just shuffled to help her make their way back to the house. Cora bit her tongue, coughing when blood stained her mouth, no doubt coating her teeth a brutal yet brilliant red. She choked back the desperate strive to prove herself and her fellow females, biting down the rage and storing it away for a later date, letting her brother guide them home.
When everyone believes ya, what's that like?
Malia watched as blood dripped from a gash on her cheek, trickling down her skin and leaving a dark trail of reminiscence behind. She stared at the droplet in the mirror as it rolled over her cheek and down her neck, disappearing into the collar of her shirt. She watched yet another droplet follow the same path, conjoining with the original trail at the top of her neck.
The gash on her cheek was already starting to heal, she could see the skin fading to her normal skin colour. The wound wasn’t deep, just a small scratch as a result of one of the beta’s from the pack invading Beacon Hills.
What bothered her was the way she’d been ordered to stay on the outskirts of the fight, even though she could hold her own and then some. Malia was as strong as any other member of the pack, and she had her shift fully under control now. So, in her opinion, that left one thing; prejudice against her as a girl.
As a kid - before the accident - Malia had of course known of sexism, but she’d never really experienced it. And then she’d spent eight years as a coyote, and all prior knowledge about things as fickle and simple as gender were erased. It had been Stiles who had reexplained sexism to her. He loathed it as much as a girl did, and she’d seen him stand up to his own gender before in protection of hers, but never in a way that made girls seem weak.
Of course, not a single person in their odd pack was sexist, and yet Malia always seemed to notice the lack of female opinion in weighted decisions. Tonight had been one of them. Of course, Scott was making the authoritative decisions, and that was fair, as he was the alpha. The factor that didn’t make sense was that whenever Malia or her fellow girls attempted to add on to the plan, they were shut down or ignored.
It was clear the misogyny was unintentional, and Malia knew that if she was to tell the boys her opinion, they’d be overwhelmed with guilt. But that didn’t stop the annoying bubble of frustration building in her gut. Her first real, clear look at sexism had been at school when a boy had uttered a sly, hormonal comment about Lydia near Malia. With her enhanced sensors, she’d easily heard the comment, and butted into the duo of boys’ insensitive conversation.
That was one of the times Stiles had rescued her, placing a hand on her shoulder in an attempt to subtly calm her, but encouraging her to reply verbally.
The look on the pair’s faces had been thrilling, but also chilling when she’d thought about it later. It was as though a girl had never talked back to them, as though no one had ever made a quip about their disgusting comments on a girl’s body. Malia had torn a pillow to shreds that night thinking about how ashamed of her fellow females she was, if none of them were standing up to males like that.
I'm so sick of running as fast as I can, wondering if I'd get there quicker if I was a man
Allison dropped the formerly white cloth she was grasping in the sink again, before retrieving it in a slick motion and gliding the soaked fabric across the arrowhead she was holding carefully in her other hand, scrubbing at the dried blood methodically. She’d lost two arrows this time, both broken in half by the enemy, but she’d retrieved the arrowheads after the werewolves had fled, and those were what really mattered. Sure, she could get more arrowheads, but they weren’t as easy to replace as the rest of the arrow.
She gazed over the arrowheads laying on the towel she’d placed on the floor as she cleaned her equipment - something her and her dad did after every battle. At first the process was a chore, something she tried to do as fast as possible. Now, cleaning her weapons and gear afterwards was methodical, a habit, and a good pass-time.
But this time, Allison’s thoughts weren’t in a cloud of daydream, and instead fixated on the battle. She’d spent the battle on the edges of the clearing, firing arrows whenever she could get a good shot. But what bothered her was a loose comment one of the beta’s had thrown. ‘A girl? Yeah, right, like you’re a threat.’ It swam around in her head over and over, like it was repeat. No one else had heard the weak insult, and usually a comment so dull was easy for Allison to brush off, but this one hit deep.
Part of her was always wary, of course, it was in her nature as a hunter. Wary of the time, of the temperature, of the light, anything that could impact her safety. After Matt and his creepy photos, Allison had found herself wary of another thing. Men.
This was also in her nature, but her nature as a girl, as a female, as a woman. Men weren’t something she feared, but they often made her feel unappreciated without realising. When her dad had explained that women in the Argent family made all the important decisions, joy had shot through her. Women in power, at the head of the operation, the brains of everything.
Allison froze abruptly as a comment said in a conversation weeks ago hit her roughly. Around two months ago she and Derek had sat down and talked about everything, which involved a lot of apologies. At some point, Derek had said; “hunters are just hunting us for existing, for what we are.”
It was the same thing with sexism.
That beta had insulted her for being a girl, something she didn’t exactly get to choose. She was born that way, and that was who Allison was, and he was insulting her because of it. It was the same way that they’d been hunting werewolves for just being werewolves, even when they weren’t doing anything wrong like murder or maiming.
And I'm so sick of them coming at me again, 'cause if I was a man, then I'd be the man
Lydia hadn’t been at the battle, instead she’d been at the house with Stiles. The boy had been pacing the whole time, annoyed he couldn’t assist in the fight. But she’d been rather content with staying out of claws’ reach. Whilst she hated the idea of her pack members being hurt just as much as the brunet, she also wasn’t as self-lessly stupid as he was.
That being said, Lydia almost wished she was a werewolf, if just for the fact that she could get rid of the ‘I can’t fight cause I’m a girl’ feeling, which was completely incorrect. Cora was out there fighting - even after her injury a day prior - and so were Allison, Kira and Malia. But Lydia couldn’t seem to shake the feeling.
Being a banshee took it’s toll on her. Same as being a werewolf took it’s toll on Scott, and being human took it’s toll on Stiles. It was a weight she had to carry, but it was a different kind of weight. Being a banshee was being surrounded by death. Every time she had a feeling about something - the way she did as a banshee - her thoughts leapt to who might die next. And it hurt.
Being a girl took it’s toll on her, especially being a pretty girl. She heard every hormonal quip, every rumour tied to her name, every whisper of her. She heard all the snide comments about her body, so profoundly disturbing it made bile rise in her throat. Lydia was Lydia, she wasn’t just her body, she was a person with a brain and feelings.
But even know after she’d been clawed, scratched, tortured, and terrifired by the supernatural, there was one thing she couldn’t seem to stop bothering her. The comments. Simple words, sometimes drunken, mostly in lust, a lot of the time from people who’d never even exchanged a greeting with her. It was so misogynistic and awful that Lydia couldn’t do anything about it.
She hated the idea that one limp compliment that was worth less than pocket lint was supposed to have her naked for a guy. The idea that a simple statement was supposed to get her to have sex with just anyone was infuritaitng, but mostly it was vulgar. Lydia had said something about it as an off-handed quip to Stiles back when they were sixteen, and he’d looked so sympathetic she’d wondered momentarily why she hadn’t befriended him earlier.
But mostly Lydia despised the idea that girls were all body and no brain, that nothing about them mattered except for the way they might please a man. She was quick-witted, intelligent, smart, she was frankly a genius. And she knew it. Coming to terms with her smarts took Lydia a while, but along with it came a whole new level of confidence she’d never even known existed.
I'd be the man, I'd be the man
Kira had been at the battle, and now she was staring out the window at the night sky, flickering with stars. She’d already cleaned the small and weak cuts she’d attained, and was comfortably lying in a pile of blankets and pillows. However, her thoughts were elsewhere.
During the fight, a male beta she’d been fighting had laughed at her, before she’d even swung her blade. As though she were inferior. That never bothered Kira, she was okay with the enemy thinking she was inferior, but what bothered her was the reason why he thought so. He’d said something, she couldn’t remember what, but it was sharp and misogynistic, and brutal.
Kira had replied without words, instead swinging her blade through the air and slicing a chunk off of the beta’s shoulder, grinning widely when he’d wailed in pain. A sexist comment wasn’t just a comment to her. No. It was a comment aimed at all girls. It was a comment insulting Cora, and Malia, and Allison, and Lydia, and every girl she knew.
Misogyny was something every girl dealt with, one way or another, at some point in their life. Teenage girls and young women seemed to get the brute force of it, in Kira’s opinion, but she was proud of one thing. She was able to move past it, able to use it as a weapon, to aid her.
Kira had long ago learned to twist her intake of sexist comments. She’d long ago translated ‘useless girl’ to ‘someone better than me’. The attention girls received because of sexism had become something Kira had seen as humorous. Of course, it wasn’t funny, but if you think about it, sexism had to come from somewhere. And to Kira, it came from boys being insecure about girls being better than them, and feebly attempting to lower the females self esteem in turn.
Kira watched as a cloud drifted over the crescent moon. Women were just as good as men, neither was superior. It just so happened to be that different genders were better at different things. Sexism was a feeble thing, a stupid thing meant to harm girls for no reason.
She ignored the sting of her shoulder as she rolled over, thinking about the look in the beta’s eyes when she’d proven him so brutally wrong. Kira didn’t enjoy inflicting pain upon others, but he would heal, and the wound she’d given him would serve as a reminder.
A reminder that women could be dangerous, a reminder that women were smart, that they weren’t just bodies made for pleasure. Females were just as good as men, and Kira had reminded him that. He wouldn’t scar physically, but he’d forever glance at his shoulder where the flesh and skin had regrown and remember that women were dangerous.
A/N: tysm for reading, and please send requests!!!
