Once Upon a Werewolf - for ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
makethestory
1. In another place, with a different sequence of events, Henry is the one it happens to. Graduated, gone abroad. Come back in the end to warden. A certain port, a certain night, a certain bite.
This time he tells her right away that something feels wrong. They--all of them, anyone on the Barge with a mind for it--spend the next two days looking for signs of what's wrong and coming up empty. Henry sings wordlessly in his sleep and can't go five minutes with needing to eat. The third day he knows it's too late. He feels steadier, clear-headed for the first time since the attack. Queasy, where before he couldn't get enough calories from moment to moment for him to stay awake.
He kisses Saga, meets her eyes, and says he hopes he'll see her in the morning. Then he goes down to Zero to wait it out.
He gets sick. His body works at rejecting the change. He gets sicker. By the third day the options are let him die or pull him out of the cell. Henry can't weigh in. Saga's choice.
The next night, he shifts in the infirmary.
2. From here, two stories diverge in a Wood: in one, one we'll visit, the couple stays aboard the Barge to figure things out from there.
In another, they take the chance that someone at the Market will have a cure and get caught in a fae game that ends with the two of them emerging from the woods and into town seven years later, not knowing anything more than a day has gone by.
The Barge, of course, is well gone.
3. The couple that stayed aboard, however, had a very different problem. Long discussion, longer argument, eventually led to the conclusion that if a cure or a better solution than Zero doesn't surface before the next change, he has to protect the people on board. It will solve the problem one way or another. They can't afford to experiment with whether or not he can learn to control it.
The universe has more interesting plans, and the Barge loses her grip on him. He comes back in days, only loses five minutes himself, but that was the end of the possible clean slate. And the port, well, that was left behind weeks ago. No help to be found there, either.
He can feel the electricity starting in his bones. But this time it feels good.
2b. The universe works in mysterious ways, and in another place entirely, this happens again. But not to a pair of wardens. No, this time Henry is still David, and when they step back into the flow of time, David should be dead.
This time he tells her right away that something feels wrong. They--all of them, anyone on the Barge with a mind for it--spend the next two days looking for signs of what's wrong and coming up empty. Henry sings wordlessly in his sleep and can't go five minutes with needing to eat. The third day he knows it's too late. He feels steadier, clear-headed for the first time since the attack. Queasy, where before he couldn't get enough calories from moment to moment for him to stay awake.
He kisses Saga, meets her eyes, and says he hopes he'll see her in the morning. Then he goes down to Zero to wait it out.
He gets sick. His body works at rejecting the change. He gets sicker. By the third day the options are let him die or pull him out of the cell. Henry can't weigh in. Saga's choice.
The next night, he shifts in the infirmary.
2. From here, two stories diverge in a Wood: in one, one we'll visit, the couple stays aboard the Barge to figure things out from there.
In another, they take the chance that someone at the Market will have a cure and get caught in a fae game that ends with the two of them emerging from the woods and into town seven years later, not knowing anything more than a day has gone by.
The Barge, of course, is well gone.
3. The couple that stayed aboard, however, had a very different problem. Long discussion, longer argument, eventually led to the conclusion that if a cure or a better solution than Zero doesn't surface before the next change, he has to protect the people on board. It will solve the problem one way or another. They can't afford to experiment with whether or not he can learn to control it.
The universe has more interesting plans, and the Barge loses her grip on him. He comes back in days, only loses five minutes himself, but that was the end of the possible clean slate. And the port, well, that was left behind weeks ago. No help to be found there, either.
He can feel the electricity starting in his bones. But this time it feels good.
2b. The universe works in mysterious ways, and in another place entirely, this happens again. But not to a pair of wardens. No, this time Henry is still David, and when they step back into the flow of time, David should be dead.
