November 30th, 1887. Jude's flat.

Kieran woke up.

He did not move for a few minutes. He exhaled and saw the fog of his breath in the gray light. His bones felt heavy. The only thing encouraging him to move was the increasing pain coming from his ankle, and finally he sat up, and felt the cold chains drop off him. 

He blinked.

They were not wrapped around his wrists and both ankles as they had been when he fell asleep. His wrists were raw where the beast had pulled and so was his left ankle. He was a yard away from his tree, the beast having pulled itself as far as it could go. His right ankle was not raw but bleeding profusely, and Kieran scrambled, hopping on his other foot to his pile of clothes with the bottle of dittany on top.

He applied the salve to his ankle and watched as his skin knit itself back together, leaving him with just the blood on his ankle. He touched his fingers to the new scar in disbelief and horror,and then grazed them over the chain itself.

It had tried to chew off his ankle and free itself, like a chained coyote.

Merlin only knew why it had stopped. Kieran's hands shook - not from the cold - and he pulled his wand off of the pile of clothes, unlatching the chains with a wave. His hands did not stop shaking and his heart was beating too fast and all he could think was this: I almost did it again.

He could not stop thinking that. Not as he pulled on his trousers and shirt and coat. He walked in a circle around the tree and the chains, kicking at them once - clearly he had not bound himself tightly enough. If he bound his wrists and ankles more tightly tomorrow, then it would be - fine, probably. It would be fine. His hands still shook and his ankle wobbled, as if something structural had been a bit damaged - something that he ought to get looked at sooner rather than later. And Finn would know of the cause of his injury - perhaps he would even guess at the cause. And then there was tonight. He pressed his palms against the tree.

I can't do this anymore.

Normally this would be when he picked up the chains and apparated home to catch a nap and make tea. But he felt as if his chest was splitting open and like It was taunting him and instead he gave the chains one last formidable kick and apparated away with a loud crack!

He wasn't home; instead he was in the kitchen of a substantially nicer London flat. There was a kettle on the stove. His fingers curled towards his coat sleeves. His wand dropped from his hand and clattered on the floor. Kieran wavered on his feet, the dehydration and exertion of the last night settling in with the heart-pounding terror and - 

There was Jude, sitting at the table, looking at him like you looked at a person when they apparated into your home unannounced shortly after dawn.

And all Kieran could say was the truth, or the most recent bit of the truth, because he had not planned coming here - had not really thought of anything at all since he was looking at those chains and thinking that he could not face this again, that he could no longer handle the weight of his life and his crimes on his chest.

And so finally he said it: "I've done something terrible." 

---

  

The kitchen was always warmer than the front room in the mornings, the warmest in the flat. There had been frost spiderwebbed against the glass of his bedroom window when he’d gotten dressed and padded down, but from the kitchen table, Jude could watch the windows gradually condense.

It was still early - the Daily Prophet had not yet been delivered - but Jude had laid out some work to get on with while he thought about tea or breakfast but wasn’t quite ready for either. Though accustomed to getting up at this time, he hadn’t touched the work much either; instead, he’d been gazing at the streaks of clouds in the lightening sky, with his elbows propped on the table and his hands under his chin.  

It was almost unfair to say it, that the full moon could possibly instil any dread in him when he was safe in the middle of the city every night, his body heavy with sleep, his head comfortable against a pillow. At the end of the day, he - most people - could get away from the awful truth of it, let it be a distant nightmare. Kieran, and T., and the others out there, their nightmare was a prison. They lived it.

Worrying about Kieran had become rote now. More alarming was the force by which this practice had intensified in recent weeks. By this point, Jude thought he might actually be relieved if he discovered this inability to stop thinking about him was all through fault of his own - some, some problem of focus, an odd kind of fixation in his head, perhaps even attachment - but at the same time and more seriously, he was convinced all his concern was not unwarranted. Kieran hadn't been right, recently.

After a while, he'd put the kettle on and returned to his spot at the table. And then came the crack of someone apparating. Jude’s head snapped up, instinctively expecting to see his flatmate, despite knowing full well that his hospital shift wouldn’t finish until at least lunchtime. But it wasn’t his flatmate he saw: it was Kieran. The next idea in Jude’s head, for a wild split-second or so, was that somehow, amazingly, he’d conjured up a vision of Kieran by having been just thinking about him, right that moment. That in itself was a lie, since Jude had just managed to move off the topic of Kieran (though, admittedly, not before resolving to stop by later today - maybe in the afternoon - to check up on him, replete with good intentions and flimsy excuses and perhaps some pepper-up potion, or another of his flatmate's remedies bottled up in the cupboard that might take the edge off utter exhaustion).  

But no, Kieran was actually here - in the kitchen, right now, of his own accord. And he looked beyond utterly exhausted. His wand had slipped out of his grasp, he was nearly swaying on his feet - like he wasn't standing right, his weight not distributed properly, perhaps - but it was the look on Kieran's face that was worst, ashen and haunted, like he'd been to hell and back.

I've done something terrible.

Jude's heart leapt into his throat, the worry skyrocketing all at once. "What?" His chair scraped horribly as he pushed it back, rising up and rounding the table towards him in an instant. Done something terrible echoed only as something terrible in his imagination, visions of the Werewolf Capture Unit stumbling across him or hunting him down in the forest or - "What happened? Are you hurt?"

---

  

---

Kieran still swayed as Jude's chair scraped against the kitchen floor. The horrible sound felt almost like the only real thing that had happened all morning.

Now that he was in the process of admitting it, the process of his confession, he felt almost - relieved. Maybe. There was no going back now, wasn't there? And he couldn't go back; could not face the risk again with the knowledge that it could have happened again. He could not think of his future past this conversation, past Jude's kitchen.

Suddenly he could not really think of anything.

He reached out one hand to grab onto Jude primarily because he was not actually entirely sure about standing, but also because more than anything he wanted to hold onto something. There was blood on his fingers, and the obvious literary references almost made Kieran laugh, never mind that it was his own. 

He did not know how long his ankle had been bleeding; the wound had veered towards gruesome, and besides that there was the feeling that he had had since looking at the ankle and those chains. That shaky out-of-body feeling, the horrible anxiety and the knowledge and more than anything that perpetual guilt.

It had been so close.

"I almost got out last night," Kieran said, in a tone he did not quite recognize, "I - it tried to chew off my foot."

---

  

---

set by MJ!

Kieran reached for him, and Jude gripped his arm in return in order to steady him. His hands were bloodied slightly. Shit. As he raked his gaze over Kieran, Jude tried to settle his heartbeat from this frantic thrumming, but it was hard to with his thoughts hurtling towards the picture of Kieran bleeding out on the kitchen floor. No, but he was conscious and he was standing - just about - and he had managed to apparate, that was something. He was fine, he would be fine.

Jude glanced up again when Kieran explained what had happened. He flinched involuntarily, more at the horror of the second statement than the first. It might have been different, if he had gotten out... but no, it didn't even bear thinking about. He had said almost. Almost. The word wasn't much, usually, and in this case exposed the possibility as a very narrow miss - but still, almost was an extraordinary comfort. It was enough. It made all the difference in the world.

But what Kieran had done to himself - what the creature had done to itself in the night - was as terrible as he'd said. Still trying to steady him, one hand holding on firmly, Jude knelt down to get a better look at his foot. He swallowed uncomfortably at the sight of it, quietly examining how the skin had been fused back together already but had left the damage scarred and plain, the whole ankle mangled somehow, and blood smeared everywhere.

He'd had the vague idea that some animals would do that sort of thing to free themselves from a trap out of sheer desperation, but it was another realisation altogether seeing the effects of it, the work of a wolf's maw, on a human body. How awful for him to have awoken to this. "I'm so sorry," he breathed, not sure whether he was battling the urge to recoil from it or to keep staring.

Jude got to his feet again, his brows knitted. "Here, sit, you should sit," he instructed, hastily hooking a leg of the nearest chair with his foot to drag it out towards Kieran. He could prop his foot up on the other chair: take the weight off it, that sounded like a clear first step, and elevate it to stop more bleeding. He ought to clean it up a bit, Jude thought. As well as he could. He wracked his brains for how to go about that, sure that they had some medical supplies in one of these kitchen cupboards. His flatmate was the healer though, obviously. That at least made more sense about why Kieran had come here, anyway; although Jude's flatmate didn't know, and what was more, he wasn't home, and Kieran might also have gone to Finn's, though maybe Finn didn't know either. Taking him to the hospital was clearly out of the question, so Jude let out a breath to steel himself. "It's just me at home but I - I'll do what I can -"

---

  

---

Jude was sorry, he was sorry for him, and he would not be once Kieran confessed. Still, he sat. He was weak and wavering and it was time to do his penance, but he had never envisioned this moment before and there was dried blood thin on his fingertips and his ankle.

The ankle was somehow far down on his list of concerns. Jude was thinking of it, though, with that familiar little line of concern between his eyebrows. The angle of his body projected it, concern and worry and Kieran already felt awful.

He slumped in the chair and looked down at his feet. With one foot, Kieran nudged his shoe off the foot attached to the damaged ankle. "It's not that bad," Kieran said, although it absolutely demonstrably was, "But - I just -"

He had to confess. I've done something terrible. He could not keep this a secret any longer, could not live with it, the wolf itself had rejected the secrecy. Finn knew, or had guessed. T did not.

"It's not working anymore. What I'm doing. It's not."

---

  

Now that Kieran had sat and had kicked off his shoe, Jude rounded the table and began to root through the drawers for - anything that might help. Not that bad, he said now, like he hadn't just shown up at the break of dawn in this sorry state, sounding more serious than he had ever done!

Jude scoffed in wordless dissent. There wasn't much he trusted himself to say in protest, in case it came out as trembling as his hands suddenly seemed to be. No sense in panicking, he told himself, as he lifted up various jars of medicinal pastes and creams to read whether they would be of any use. Kieran had gotten hurt, but he'd made it here, he was safe, it was over. There was nothing else to worry about.

So he waited intently for Kieran to finish his fractured sentence, pouring the last of the boiled water from the kettle into a bowl and setting a cloth to soak in it.

It's not working anymore.

Jude hastily carried everything back over to Kieran, where he sank to his knees again to treat the wound. He didn't reply in haste - didn't have an answer, an easy solution - but surely, he thought, talking about this could wait. Not long, not nearly long enough: the moon would be back out tonight. But a few moments more. One thing at a time.

Rolling up the bottom of Kieran's trouser leg to see it better again, he wrung out the warm cloth over the bowl and began washing off the worst of the dried blood. Biting his lip, he worked in careful circles around the wound, getting as close to the scarred area as he dared. No, Kieran was right, what he was doing wasn't working. They couldn't have this happen again.

"Alright," he agreed, eyes still on Kieran's ankle but nodding anyway. Perhaps the forest wasn't the best place to be, to begin with. For one, it was dangerous - out where someone might just happen to come across him - and maybe the setting made the creature more restless, being chained up. "Is this the first time?" Jude asked. "That it's happened?" He was utterly unaware if it weren't, though he wasn't sure he trusted Kieran not to have been battling against the werewolf trying to maim him for months already. But perhaps it had only been this time, perhaps something had provoked the creature to wrest more with its chains last night. Heard something, or seen something, maybe.

"Maybe something was different last night?" he wondered aloud. There had to be something to do. If the chains had worked all the rest, then Kieran maybe wouldn't have to create a new plan from scratch, maybe he'd be able to avoid what had happened this time. It would do no good to make this ankle worse, of course...

---

  

---

He couldn't lie anymore.

It was the overwhelming sense of guilt and the perpetual anxiety; the sense that sooner or later he was going to drink himself to death if he didn't confess; the sense that if he hurt someone else there would be no repentance.

"It's the first time that I've hurt myself this badly,"Kieran said in a low voice. He studied the bow of Jude's head, the way the slowly-advancing sunlight shone off of his hair. There were the usual scrapes and bruises of the beast flinging itself against the chains, but this was new - although it was not, really, why he was here.

He was failing.

There was blood on the cloth in Jude's hand and the sharp ache in his ankle and he was failing, Kieran was just as bad as the werewolf who had bitten him, and what did he do now?

"It hurt someone else," he said, finally, "In August. I hurt someone else."

---

  

He grimaced in sympathy at Kieran's first answer, most of his attention still on the wound in question. Having to chain himself up couldn't be a sustainable situation if it made the werewolf more aggravated, but at the same time there was no way to be outside without them, lest someone stumbled across his path -

So what had Kieran just said?  

"No," Jude replied, sincere and certain of this. How could he have? He'd always been careful, chained himself up, had never wanted to hurt anyone, Jude knew this without question. "No, you couldn't have," he added gently, eyes flickering upwards in an attempt to be reassuring, to settle the misplaced sense of guilt Kieran was clearly feeling about last night's near miss.

He found his gaze caught on Kieran now, slow to decipher the expression on his face. But it was probably the last thing Kieran had needed, for this to happen, when Jude supposed there must have been a seed sown of this feeling already. He'd been acting differently in the last few months, had seemed to have found a new agitation about his condition. Jude had been worried about him.

Since... since August.

Since the news about Topaz Urquart.

Jude's hand stilled suddenly, the bloodied cloth halfway between Kieran's ankle and the washbowl. His grasp on it tightened without him noticing, wringing a few accidental droplets out onto the floor.

No. There was no connection there, there wasn't. Hurt didn't mean bitten. Jude pushed away the idea that was burrowing its way into his head, offended by the mere notion of thinking it. No, because it made perfect sense already that Kieran had cared so profoundly when the news had broken, without being personally involved. It was natural. He'd... if he'd done anything, it had been try to help...

"You're exhausted," Jude said steadily, meaning you don't know what you're saying.

---

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   Ophelia Devine

---

There was no going back now, and Kieran was suddenly hyperaware of the things around him, of the bloodied water dripping onto the floor, of the kettle on the stove, of that still-gray morning light spilling through the windows. This was, Kieran supposed, the last time they would be this close, the last time that Jude would look at him without animosity in his gaze.

"Jude," Kieran said, meeting Jude's gaze. He spoke in a steady tone, the most grounded he had sounded for the entire conversation. Because Jude had seen everything, over the past few months - knew that Kieran was writing to Topaz - probably could have guessed it himself if he would ever expect something so terrible of his friends.

"I woke up outside Irvingly with a burn down my side," Kieran said, gesturing with one hand, "I didn't want to think I had hurt anyone. Then the news broke."

His universe had pivoted on that headline.

"I could have killed her."

---

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   Ophelia Devine

It was the calmness in Kieran's voice. The look in his eyes.

Jude felt himself frozen in it, the colour draining from his face, a numbness creeping through his limbs at the task of trying to fathom this new truth.

He pushed off from his knees to combat the feeling, the cloth now slipping to the floor from his slackened grasp, forgotten. He almost felt dizzy to be standing, his thoughts violently awhirl. It was the truth, wasn't it? His first instinct would otherwise have been to protest it, to challenge Kieran's recollections, find a loophole, exonerate him from some false spiral of guilt - maybe this had happened, maybe that, maybe - but it had been long enough since then; there had been plenty of time spent dwelling on it for Kieran to do so himself, if he could. Instead, he was here, perfectly serious, perfectly calm: he was sure. He'd gotten loose that very night. And he'd been writing to her.

A wealth of new questions flooded in, most pressing among them you didn't tell her this, did you? Jude could feel his pulse in his neck, erratic with every new realisation of horror, dread and dismay. This couldn't - it couldn't... It had been the spark, the final nail in the coffin of Urquart's administration. All that time they'd spent talking about it... And if Kieran had gotten out before - it had nearly happened last night - it could plainly happen again to someone else. No; that could be avoided. But this? This couldn't be undone. The poor girl.

And at the same time as all of that, Kieran's position was more perilous than ever. (If anyone found out -)

Jude had meant to step back, or turn away, as if pacing would help clear his head. He found he'd barely moved at all; hadn't managed a word yet. He should say something, anything.

There was a lump in his throat that he did his best to swallow down.

"But you didn't." Kill her, at least. Small relief.

---

  

---

Kieran braced himself for a blow that did not come. Not a physical blow - the thought of Jude hitting him was anathema - but a verbal one, some anger or condemnation. But there was no anger in Jude's expression (yet) - just shock, and perhaps horror, and Kieran had never seen Jude at a loss for words before.

He reached one hand upward, intending to catch Jude's sleeve, but thought better of it. His hand froze in mid-air, not quite touching Jude, but almost.

"No," he said, "I didn't."

But he had condemned her to a life of public disdain, a life of disgrace. He had toppled her father's government and brought the werewolf discourse back into the public sphere.

"But I could have."

---

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   Ophelia Devine

---

set by MJ!

He couldn't imagine what was going through Kieran's mind, what it was like to go through this. To have woken up that morning, to have read the news that followed, to understand what had happened - and to somehow bear it.  

But Jude knew how he would feel, if he'd been the one to do it. And it was terrifying, even pretending it: like being torn apart by a black hole from the insides, or into open wounds, oozing shame.

A second or two was all it took to wrench him back to reality, to Kieran before him with a few hollow words and a faltering hand, like he was scared to touch him.

Moving with more conviction than he could attest to have, Jude leant forwards and placed both hands on Kieran's shoulders, holding them there, face to face. "Not you. It isn't you," he said firmly, whether to remind Kieran or to persuade himself: it was the wolf. Kieran may have used I to tell the story, but he had not done this knowingly or willingly, could not control the thing he became, had not asked to become it in the first place. In no world did Topaz Urquart deserve the fate of becoming it, nor of having her life ruined, and that was unforgivable - but Kieran, Kieran had never deserved this either. "It's not your fault."

It felt inadequate, but he was at a loss. He didn't know how to fix this.

---

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   Ophelia Devine

---

And suddenly Jude's hands were on his shoulders as a tether to the earth, and Kieran's offbeat too-fast pulse started to slow, returning to some semblance of normalcy. Jude was here. For whatever reason, he was not blaming Kieran, no matter how much Kieran deserved to be blamed. He leaned forwards and tucked his head against Jude's arm, a position that should have been awkward and uncomfortable but wasn't entirely, either because Kieran was mostly limp or because Jude was still the only thing tying him to reality.

"Someone has to be responsible for what It does in my body," Kieran said in somewhat of a whisper, "It might as well be me."

There was no alternative, after all. He wasn't in control when the wolf took over, but it was still his body that the wolf wracked its way through - and he still didn't know what to do about tonight's full moon. He had left the chains in the woods, was not sure in this state he could even find them again - was not sure that the WCW would not find them first. Fuck, what had he done?

---

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   Jude Wright, Ophelia Devine

The truth was still foreign, and Jude still felt numbed to it all, the world a little hazy at the corner of his vision. Kieran felt more real, with his head resting there - and Jude wasn't sure holding him there like that was helping, but he couldn't find the will to let go just yet. If anything, he felt a compulsion to pull him closer, wanted to fold him into his arms properly and stay there, eyes closed tight, until enough time had ebbed away for all this to be forgotten, if not undone.

As it was, his gaze was still fixed on Kieran's bowed head, receiving his next words with careful consideration.

"It could be me," Jude said suddenly. "It could be me, too. You don't have to do this alone." All their friends would be there for him, if only they had any inkling; and surely Eileen already was, through it all; but this was different, this truth was more terrible. And for some reason, he'd come here.

So it was up to Jude to do something. Kieran couldn't be severed from the monthly transformations or spared the torment of them - Jude would have spared him in a heartbeat if he could - but there must be some way to share the responsibility. To lessen the weight of what lingered past each full moon... to make it survivable for him, somehow.

And this would not happen again. It couldn't.

But nature was pitiless, and the moon would be full again tonight.

"I want to help." He added softly. "If you'll let me."

---

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   Mathias Beaumont

---

Kieran could hear Jude's heartbeat through his shirt, a steady drum-beat underlying the words. And maybe he didn't want Jude's help - maybe he didn't want to drag him into this - but the truth was, if he wanted to remain free and if he wanted to avoid hurting anyone else, he needed it. He needed Jude's help, more than he needed anyone else's. (The other truth -- Eileen could have helped him, would have forgiven him, he went to Jude anyways.)

"Are you sure?" Kieran said. He lifted his head, finally, to meet Jude's gaze. This wasn't easy. It wasn't easy, and with Jude's help it would become easier on Kieran - and so much worse for Jude. He had already made it worse for Jude, he knew, by telling the truth. The truth was a selfish beast and it was too late to take it back.

He needed help; as much as he needed Jude's help, he needed to make sure that Jude knew what he was doing.

"It's every month. Three nights every month, and it never stops, and it might not get easier. You don't have to do this - but if you're going to, you have to be sure."

---

  

Kieran, as ever, didn't sugarcoat it. His explanation was matter-of-fact; he was being kind to them both in giving it, Jude thought.

But he felt as though Kieran would see it immediately, if there were the barest flicker of hesitation in his eyes. If his heart weren't in it, if this wasn't going to work. So he gave himself no time to discern his misgivings, if he even possessed any - if he did, they were quashed by the simple thought of Topaz Urquart.

So that was that.

Now that Kieran was looking up, one of Jude's hands eased from his shoulder to the curve of his neck, as if the pressure there would say I'm not scared. "I understand." It was a commitment. A costly one, maybe, but Jude had never lacked in commitment, when it mattered. And this would be worth it, a hundred times over, in a hundred different ways. He could try and make things better for Kieran, somehow. He could prevent this from happening again, from tearing into another innocent person's life.  

"I'm not going to give up on you," he said slowly, wanting to make quite clear to Kieran that he had thought this through, and wasn't going to get impatient, or disheartened, or distracted. As long as Kieran was willing to try, he would do whatever he could. "We won't let this happen again."

It dawned on Jude again that this required planning, and strategy, and care, and that the minutes were ticking away relentlessly towards moonrise, and that Kieran would also need something more concrete than promises.

First things first. A new plan. "But you can't go back to the forest." Not after last night.

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