A/N: This, apparently, is what I refer to as "smaller projects." Updating may be slow. Or it might not. XD We'll see how it goes.
For not-ruining-the-ending reasons, the point of view in the first part of the prologue is unknown. I ruin it soon enough, anyway. No reason to do it now.
And I've cheated and am using the name I'd set aside for Seth's imprint/wife in "A Year with Quil and Claire." Not that she shows up or anything. But she's still got a name. :-P
And, finally, because this initial author's note is not up to my usual standards: Laura's first line of narration is fully derived from Edeet Ravel's "Ten Thousand Lovers" first line, "When I was twenty, I was involved with a man who was an interrogator."
Prologue
It started out innocently enough. All tragedies do, probably. Well, not Shakespeare's tragedies, maybe, but the real ones. This one didn't start out with anyone plotting to overthrow a king or being murdered.
Sure, it ends with that. That's why it's called "a tragedy."
No one ever expects these things to happen to them. They don't expect to be made for the same girl as their friend. They don't expect to watch their friend die.
No one expects that. No one wants that. And certainly no one wants the feelings of guilt that come with it.
That's the overwhelming feeling in all this, I think. Guilt. Knowing you're nowhere near worthy. Knowing that the better man is the one who lost.
I don't even know where to start. The beginning seems like a pretty logical place. But whose beginning? His or mine?
Maybe I should just start at the overall beginning. Chronological order. Yeah. That makes sense.
It was Claire's sixth birthday. That's as good a place to start as any.
Laura POV
When I was eighteen, I became involved with a man who was a werewolf.
It sounds fantastical, I know it does. I've gone over it in my head a thousand times since it started, and it still makes my head spin.
You know, when I was a little girl, I always dreamed of having one of those fairy tale romances. A knight on a white horse would come and sweep me off my feet.
I didn't get the fairy tale ending, but I got the fairy tale romance, at least. And I was lucky, I guess, in that I got it twice.
The first time was like I'd imagined it as a little kid. He came into my life, swept me off my feet, and I never had the time or desire to look back. It was fast, and it was beautiful, and everything good that a first love is supposed to be.
The second time was different. It was subtle. It snuck up on me. It waited in the background for a long time until I finally noticed it.
That's how it happened. Through my eyes, at any rate.
There was, though, one thing that I kept from both of them. Not intentionally at first, because for a long time I didn't even think about it. But a long time later, it occurred to me that one little fact could have changed the entire outcome.
I wasn't supposed to be at work that day.
A/N: If you're confused, no worries. At any rate, it's hard for me not to be ambiguous in the prologue. Otherwise it'd defeat the purpose of that whole not wanting to ruin the ending thing.