Chapter Text
August 11th, 2021
There’s a plan forming in the back of Laura’s head, but it’s still vague and shapeless. She’s slept badly, her dreams haunted by images of werewolves, by the dull pain behind where her left eye used to be, by the dread clamped like a vise around her rib-cage. But it’s morning now, the sunlight filtering in through that tiny iron-barred window, and at least they learned something new the night before.
They have to get out of here and kill Chris Hackett, Laura knows that now, but it’ll have to happen when he’s a werewolf during the next full moon. Until then, Max and her will have to sit tight in jail and come up with some kind of strategy.
She lies on her cot, staring at the ceiling, still trying to get used to her halved field of vision. The dissonance between what she can see and what her brain thinks she should be able to see is giving her a headache. How is she going to function like this when she gets out of here?
If-
No, she will .
They will.
She can hear Max snoring softly in the other cell and suppresses the urge to call out to him. Sleep is the only respite they get from the horror and mind-numbing boredom. Even if he has just a couple of minutes more than her, she doesn’t want to take them away from him.
Laura tries to relax. Maybe she can fall asleep again, forget all of this for a few moments, but just as her eye falls shut, she hears the familiar noise of footsteps in the station.
Travis.
She tenses, preparing herself for a no doubt unpleasant interaction.
He’s been strange since the night he opened up to them. Strang er , that is.
Pissed but also sending weird little glances her way occasionally.
And now his brother knows, that probably doesn’t help.
Thinking about Chris Hackett’s little visit makes Laura sit up. He’s the one, and he clearly doesn’t have much empathy for her and Max, so there’s no reason for them to have any with him.
Travis’s boots scrape across the concrete floor.
She looks up just as he stops in front of her cell.
“My injury itches like crazy,” she says in lieu of a greeting. “I need to change the bandages. You got some hydrocortisone cream?”
Travis glares at her and raises his hand. “I got something else for you. You learned Latin, right?”
He’s holding a small book, leatherbound, kind of grimy looking.
Laura gapes at him. “What?”
“Remember how we talked about you helping me break this curse? Well, this is your chance.”
Is he serious? Laura gets up and walks closer to the bars. His expression is guarded, but she can see something flicker in his eyes.
Whatever this is, she gets the sense that he believes it’ll make a difference.
“If we can make this work,” Travis says, voice carefully controlled, “all this will be over and you and your boyfriend can go.”
“If we can make what work?” Max’s voice, still thick with sleep and tinged with confusion, comes floating over from the other cell.
“Tavis has a book,” Laura calls out, raising an eyebrow at Travis.
“Oh, does he need instructions on how to read? You know the harder stuff on the outside, you have to lift it and then inside there’s all this paper, that’s called pages and there’s little numbers on them usually, so that can tell you-”
“Shuddup.”
“Just trying to be helpful, T-Money,” Max supplies cheerfully.
Travis takes a step back. “I said shut up.” He turns back to Laura. “We’re gonna try this and I’m hoping, for your own good, that you’ll cooperate.”
A threat. Great.
Laura is too tired and itchy to be scared. “Or what? You’ll rip out my other eye?”
He could, they all know he could. But he gave them that speech about how he was trying to protect them. He still wants to see himself as some kind of hero, Laura would bet on that, is actually betting on that, her eye, her life .
He sucks his teeth, his gaze flicking over to the bandaged side of her face. And there is that twinge of guilt, a muscle jumping in his jaw, the string Laura found she can pluck, even though, truth be told, she can’t be totally certain it’ll always get her the same result. Can’t be certain it won’t break if she overdoes it.
“I just need you to take a look at this, see if you can read it, and then we’ll work from there. We all want the same thing. Break the curse and move on with our lives, right?” He offers her the book, putting his hand through the bars.
Laura accepts the small volume. There’s nothing on the cover, but it doesn’t look like a notebook. Specks of leather are flaking off at her touch. She opens it carefully and finds the pages inside yellowed and brittle. The first pages are empty and whisper in a way that reminds Laura of the voice in the woods. A shiver runs down her spine.
She can feel the weight of Travis’s gaze on her, doesn’t have to raise her eye to know he’s staring at her creepily.
There seem to be just a couple of pages with writing in the whole book, dark Gothic letters surrounded by flecks of… something that doesn’t look like ink.
“Is that… blood?” Now, Laura does glance up at Travis, whose face is impassive.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
She grimaces, which hurts. “What the hell is this? Where did you even find this?”
“Uh… What’s going on?” Max yells over.
“Travis just handed me what looks like the freakin’ Book of the Dead!” Laura informs him.
“Yikes!”
Travis ignores Max. “Can you read the Latin? Know how to pronounce it right?”
“Yeah, I think so, but what is this? I mean how’s reading this gonna help? You said the only way to break the curse was to kill the werewolf that bit you?” There’s something about the writing on the page that makes Laura’s empty eye socket hurt more and her skin crawl.
“Maybe there is another way, maybe this is it.”
“You haven’t answered any of my questions. What is this?”
Travis looks away, sighs.
“It’s a spell.”
“A spell? As in magic?” Laura wants to laugh, except, well, if werewolves and ghosts are real, why shouldn’t spells work too?
Because that’s crazy , a little voice in her head says. All of this is crazy.
“You’ve been doing magic?” Max pipes up. “Have there been outfits for that? Like pointy hats? A cape? Cause I would have loved to see that.”
“Funny,” Travis grunts. “I thought you’d be more interested in a cure, seeing how you maimed your girlfriend last full moon.”
Laura can practically hear Max’s mouth snap shut.
“Hey,” she snarls, fixing Travis in a death glare. “He didn’t want to hurt me; he didn’t have a choice. You did.”
Travis takes an angry step towards her.
“We’re doing this spell tonight. You’re gonna help me. And if it goes well, he’ll be cured and you both walk free. That not incentive enough?”
Laura smells a rat. She holds Travis’s stare.
“If it was that easy, you’d’ve done this already, so what's the catch?”
His upper lip curls in displeasure.
“Who says I haven’t tried?”
“So it doesn’t work.”
“Didn’t work that time, no.”
“So why bother trying again?”
“Your Latin’s probably better than mine. Plus, I didn’t have - I was alone when I tried. I’ve read rituals work better and are less dangerous with more than one person. It’s worth giving it another shot.”
“Rituals?” Max interjects, just as Laura asks,“ Less dangerous?”
“Are we gonna sacrifice a goat?” he continues, “because I don’t think I’m up for that. They’re kind of creepy but still cute-”
“Can we get back to the dangerous part?” Laura interrupts. “How is it dangerous? What is it even supposed to do?”
“Both of you shuddup. This is going to happen tonight.” Travis holds out his hand. “Gimme the book.”
Laura glares at him. She wonders what he’d do if she tore it up. But no, there’s no point. They need to humor him till the next full moon when they’ll break out.
She returns the book to him.
After that he actually lets her change her bandages in the bathroom, but refuses to answer any of her questions.
Then he brings them breakfast, toast, scrambled eggs and orange juice, hands Laura a printout of something in Latin, tells her to practice the pronunciation and make Max learn it too and vanishes.
Laura stares at the piece of paper in her hand.
“What do we think about Harry Copper?” Max calls over.
“Huh?”
“You know, Officer Abracadabra? Fuzz the great and powerful? I’m still workshopping it…”
Laura sighs. “I guess we play along.”
“It’s not gonna work, right? I mean, there’s no way… Right?”
“I don’t know. He said he tried it before and it clearly did nothing then, so…” She skims the lines on the piece of paper and frowns. “This text is pretty weird. It’s not about werewolves or breaking a curse.”
“What is it about?”
“Solve stamen fati… Undo the thread of fate?”
“Okay, and what does that mean?”
Laura lets herself fall onto her cot. The springs creak in protest. “Beats me,” she mutters. “I just hope this doesn’t end up making things worse.”
“Yeah, it’d be a bummer if we accidentally added deadites to this whole sitch.”
She closes her eye, feeling the dull throb of pain on the left side of her face. “Max?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
She hears him walk closer to the wall of his cell, imagines him putting his hand onto it.“Hey, come on, don’t say it like… like it’s goodbye. This isn’t gonna do anything. General Grindelwald has no clue about anything.”
“I know. I just wanted to say it.”
“I love you too, Honey. We’ll get through this, you’ll see.”
*
Travis returns in the afternoon. He serves them burgers, fries and milkshakes, which has a last meal kind of vibe that Laura really doesn’t want to address.
Then, he lets her out of her cell.
“I’m not gonna cuff you cause you’ll need to use your hands so don’t try anything. Did you practice reading like I told you?”
She nods as she steps over the threshold into the hallway. “What’s all that stuff about returning, undoing the thread of fate?”
“So you do know your Latin.” Travis studies her, looking slightly impressed.
“Yeah, I’m not stupid.” She rubs her wrists and walks over to Max’s cell.
“I’m bankin’ on that,” Travis mutters.
Laura wraps one hand around one of the prison bars and smiles when Max instantly covers her hand with his. They look at each other and he reaches for the bandaged side of her face, his expression darkening with regret.
“Hey,” Travis grabs her shoulder and pulls her out of Max’s reach. “Enough of that. You can be all lovey-dovey when this is done.”
“Way to be a dick,” Max snaps.
Travis ignores him and pulls Laura into the middle of the hallway. He picks up a leather satchel lying on the ground next to a trash bag containing the discarded take out bags and leftovers of their dinners and starts taking out little plastic ziplock bags with weird leaves and powders in them.
Laura raises an eyebrow. He’s really lost her now.
“You ever think that if you maybe actually explained stuff to us instead of being this cryptic asshole, we might be able to help you?”
This time he ignores her too. He starts creating weird patterns on the floor with some of the contents of the little plastic bags.
“This is the most messed up art project I’ve ever seen,” Max quips.
Laura catches his eye and they exchange equally confused looks.
“We gotta do this before sundown.” Travis presses a little baggy with some yellowish-white shards in them into Laura’s hand. “Put them in a circle big enough for both of us to stand in.”
“O-kay,” she says, hoping her tone conveys just how crazy she thinks he is. “Are you gonna tell us what this spell is actually supposed to do?”
Travis laboriously gets down on his knees and starts fingerpainting symbols onto the concrete floor, glancing at a crumpled piece of paper every few seconds. He huffs a breath, then says, “It’s supposed to take me back to the moment where it all went wrong, so I can prevent it.”
Laura stops scattering what she’s pretty sure are bone shards.
“Take you back, like… time travel?”
Max audibly sucks air between his teeth. “Jeez, T-Money. You gonna kill Hitler while you’re at it?”
Travis shoots them a glare. “It’ll work.”
He sounds way too defensive, Laura thinks.
“You don’t think if time travel was possible, future Max would have popped up and maybe told me to stay away from summer camps?”
“Fair point,” Laura agrees.
“It’s not easy . It’s actually pretty fucking hard to do. You need the book, the right ingredients. And last time -” Travis scowls and turns back to his creepy fingerpainting.
“Last time what?”
“It almost killed me. I was thrown into a wall, had a goddamn nosebleed for days.”
“So that could happen again? Or maybe even worse stuff?” Laura feels a twinge of nerves in her stomach.
“It’s not - I know what I’m doing.”
“Yeah, right,” she says sarcastically, looking at the bits of bone she has arranged on the floor. Talk about sinister.
“And if something happens to me, you can take the keys off my belt. You won’t have to starve in your cells.” He looks up at her as he says it, his eyes narrowed, watching her reaction.
Laura can’t help but imagine it, Travis stupidly killing himself or at least knocking himself out and her and Max finally being free. It would solve… well… one of their problems.
Travis’s lips quirk into an evil little smirk. “But you’re gonna be the conduit this time, so it’s not likely.”
“What? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You and Max will read the spell, which should focus the energy on you.”
Laura looks at Max, can see the realization dawn in his eyes. He shakes his head in disgust.
“Meaning you’re using us as some kind of… what? Magical lightning rods?” she asks, just as Max grunts, “Seriously, screw you. If anything happens to Laura-”
“We all want this to work,” Travis cuts him off and gets up, his knees popping audibly.
“Man, you’re one decrepit piece of trash,” Max mutters.
Travis clenches his jaw and ignores the insult.
Laura frowns. She still wants answers. “That moment you want to go back to. What is it?”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll go back, change it.”
She’s had it with him. She feels like kicking his little bone shards all over the hallway. Instead, she just snaps, “Jesus, Travis, just fucking tell us! You want us to risk our lives, so fucking tell us! After all the shit you put us through, we deserve that much!”
He stares at her stoically.
She feels like throwing up her hands in frustration, like hitting him. “What do you think telling us will do? We’ll still be locked up in here!”
“Fine.” He looks away, says slowly, “Six years ago. This traveling freak show called Harum Scarum rolled into town. They brought him. Silas, the dog boy. An albino kid in a cage. He was the one, a werewolf. Only no one knew, of course. Then there were these other kids, locals, just a couple of teenagers, a girl and a boy. The girl saw Silas in his cage. She wanted to help him. So she convinced her brother to start a fire as a distraction. But the fire spread too fast, burned down the show and everyone in it, and while they were running with the boy, he bit the brother, infected him, then took off into the night.”
Travis sighs, glancing down at the circle of bone shards.
“I’ll go back to that evening and kill Silas before they ever lay eyes on him.”
“Um… let’s say this works… You ever heard of a thing called the Butterfly Effect?” Max asks.
Travis just looks at him blankly.
“If you actually manage to change the past, you’ll change the present too!”
“That’s what I want, I come back here, no one’s cursed. No more werewolves in North Kill.” Travis folds his arms across his chest with an air of finality.
“Uh, sure…” Max holds up a warning finger. “But! That could also change other stuff. Like, you might come back and Robot Hitler is running for president or everyone suddenly has fifteen toes!”
Travis sneers at him. “What? That’s fucking nonsense.”
“I think he just means that you don’t know what this is gonna do.” She looks at him, then down at the symbols and bone shards and powders, and sighs. “Which you don’t.”
“It’ll break the curse. That’s all that matters.” Travis bends and pulls that weird book out of his bag. He hands it to Laura, then glances past her at the narrow window in her cell. The sunlight has an orange tint to it. He nods to himself.
“Okay, this is it.” He walks over to Max and holds out the printout of the text.
Max glares and snatches it out of Travis’s hand.
Then Travis comes over to her and flips the pages for her until they’re back to the strange writing. She shivers. It feels a lot different when she’s actually holding the book.
“On three, you’ll both start reading. Whatever happens, don’t stop.” Travis takes a deep breath. He goes over to the corner, picks up a bundle he placed earlier on the floor, which Laura thought was just another weird part of his ritual, and opens it to reveal a shotgun.
He brings the gun with him into the circle, stands opposite Laura, takes another deep breath and starts counting.
*
Laura sucks air in on one , bites her lip and looks down at that cursed page on two and starts reading on three .
For the first couple of seconds, she thinks, Wow, this is really dumb.
Then she notices something white out of the corner of her eye. The bone shards are floating up. Her heart starts beating faster.
She glances up at Travis, who is standing very still, knuckles white on that shotgun.
In his cell, Max is reading shakily.
Laura casts her eye down back to the page, her voice droning on, sounding distorted to her own ears.
Something rumbles in the distance. The light in the hallway dims.
Laura is nearing the end of the page. Her throat tightens around the words.
She looks back up, sees Travis’s eyes go wide and his muscles tense and then everything is swallowed by a flash of white.