Juliana nodded. She understood what he meant by the feeling that he owed them something, because this was a sentiment she'd seen echoed across countless other testaments (well, not countless— she didn't talk to so many werewolves who had bitten other people, but enough that there was a definite trend that emerged). Personally she found this fascinating, particularly when so many of them usually disassociated the identity of the full moon creature from their own. She knew Kieran did. In his letters he wrote It, capital I, when referring to himself on full moons, and yet he still assumed responsibility for the wolf's actions when things went wrong.

"Have you done anything else to... repay that debt, as it were?" she asked hesitantly. She didn't necessarily want to imply that she agreed with his assumption that he owed this person anything — she didn't want to influence his thinking on this one way or another — but she wanted to dig in deeper on this point, for the article.

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

Kieran sipped his tea. If T read Marlowe Forfang's writings, and he thought there was a fairly good chance she did, then if he admitted this there was a fairly good chance she would be able to figure out who A was to her. But he also didn't want to lie to Juliana; not about this, and not when her research was so important. (Even Kieran, a skeptic, had to admit it was important.)

So he stuck himself somewhere in the middle: not a lie, but not the full truth, either.

"I wrote to them," he said, "In the beginning. After the paper said who it was."

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She had been expecting that there would be something here (she would not have bothered asking the question if she didn't think he would have something worthwhile to say in response), but this was enough of a shock that Juliana stopped taking notes for a moment. She looked up at him and opened her mouth very slightly, then closed it again before she thought of what to say.

"Under what pretense?" she asked. This wasn't exactly what she'd meant, but she hadn't been prepared for this turn of events in the narrative and didn't have a smooth transition to questions in mind. This was a hint towards exactly what everyone she'd written to had always told her didn't exist: a sense of community among those who were afflicted with lycanthropy. A kinship, an ownership of their shared experience. "I mean, did you — what did you tell them? About yourself, or about your — involvement?"

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

The open-mouthed surprise Juliana gave him felt appropriate, the weight the admission deserved.

"I told them dittany helps with the scarring," Kieran admitted. He felt — exposed. He almost never told anyone about T. (Just Jude.) "I never — I never told them it was me. They hate the wolf that turned them. They've told me. Of course they do." He was a monster — not all the time, but that night, he had been. He was Topaz Urquart's monster.

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Juliana started to take notes as he was talking, but let her pen slow as she listened to him. Moments like this were some of the most difficult parts of being a researcher. She ought to ask a question and press a little harder, to really get to the heart of what he was saying. That was why it was research; leave no stone unturned in the discovery process. But she could tell from the tone of his voice that if she did that, it would hurt. It had already hurt him to say as much as he had — even thinking about all of this again was likely taking him to a dark place, one that hopefully he didn't return to often now that it had been so many years since the incident. It was difficult to recognize the hurt in someone — someone that she was ultimately trying to help, through her research — and do nothing to address it, but instead dig even deeper into it. That was what research was, though, and she was a researcher.

But she was also his friend. Juliana put her pen down.

"They don't hate you," she said gently. "It's easy to hate archetypes. People you don't know. It's an easy thing to say, in that context. But when you get to the actual person... the things you did afterwards, the letters and the advice... they don't hate you."

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

Kieran frowned. It was easy to hate archetypes. It was. He knew that, because sometimes he hated the werewolf who turned him — and sometimes he remembered the look on the man's face. He'd made a mistake. Kieran had made a mistake. "I could spend the rest of my life trying," he said, "And never quite make it up to — them." He'd almost slipped up, called T her on automatic — but that might have been a dead giveaway, and he was glad he caught himself.

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Juliana rubbed the edge of her quill over her thumb, leaving a trail of sticky black ink over her skin. "They'll never be whole again," she agreed. "There's nothing you or anyone else could do to undo what's happened. But — I do think it matters that you've tried." She offered a smile, small and sad, as she continued. "I've heard stories from a lot of people in your position, Kieran. The ones who have someone to help them in the beginning and the ones who are all alone. It makes a difference, what you've done."

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   Kieran Abernathy

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

Kieran smiled thinly at Juliana, less because he believed her and more because he recognized that she believed that she was telling the truth. "Well," he said, "There's that, at least."

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set by MJ!