whitewulf au branches
so! everything kind of begins rooted in whitewulf au but there are a few times that things can go different. here are the major ones
at the end of the show rex does the mass cure. canonically biowulf is snatched up by breach along with the other major members of the pack & vk - I like to think this is so they can go play soccer in her special floating town with vk as the ball - but in this au he doesn't have the sympathy of the pack and he doesn't have a reason for breach to know where he is to 'save' him. he'd also be at ground zero, so to speak. so.
Rex cures him.
for a lot of people this mass cure is a lifesaver. for biowulf in specific it is like being damned. being evo was the thing he was. it gave him power and purpose. identity. he and rex have only been working around each other in a positive way for a few months at this point and biowulf has generally done everything in his power to keep away from rex so they never had a conversation about, like, the possibility that for some people being evo is something that's Right for them (this post again, but the understanding comes too late for Rex). so when very suddenly the prospect of a mass cure is right in their hands there's no time or means for biowulf to say hey um no thank you.
the second it hits him just what happened he lunges to try and attack rex but fortunately he hasn't been human in something like six years and he doesn't get very far and he's freaking the fuck out and rex is like oh my god, what is going on. what are you so upset about. what's happening
and then he is just... human, now. because you can't stop being human anymore. the nanites are neutralized. he has no choice anymore. he has no identity anymore. he has no purpose anymore. when he was evo he could provide strength & power & protection to his master but he's just a human being, one among so many, weak and vulnerable.
he goes back to providence anyway bc what the fuck else is he going to do and because wk tells him to. wk also has no idea wtf is going on (he does) (he gets it more than he's ever going to actually say. he understands a thing or two about broken relationships with personhood). biowulf gets kind of folded into providence as an agent but he doesn't really have the skill that an agent should, unfamiliar with his human shape, and it doesn't help that he's doing incredibly badly mentally about the whole thing
there's a lot of dysphoria / dysmorphia / general utter disgust with his physical body. he keeps startling at his own hands and reflection. he either under-emotes or over-emotes because he's not used to having an expressive face. he gets a little dizzy sometimes when he stands up because he's used to being about two feet taller. he's supposed to be integrating with the other providence agents, living in the barracks, etc, but he doesn't really have the words to explain that it's too much for him - and he's too upset with himself to even admit that. he considers suicide at length. he adopts old bad coping mechanisms. there's a lot going on
wk has him train under six & calan to bring him up to speed. this ... works ... but a lot of biowulf's work regarding his jealousy gets kind of reset because now he's undeniably 'lesser' than them and he gets really aggressive and snappy for a while - he actually tries to fight rex once in a hallway when rex approaches him to see if he's doing, like, ok, and to say that he's sorry because he gets it now. it doesn't work because it turns out being a regular human being throwing a punch at the world's only evo boy isn't particularly effective. but it means wk has to wrangle him and figure out what the hell biowulf's deal is
he still has a weird relationship with wk but it takes time to adjust for both of them and also being touched at all makes biowulf kind of ill for a long time.
this is the standard progression of whitewulf. as detailed in this post rex figures out that a lot of people don't want to be cured before he ever does the mass cure, so he goes about it slightly differently and it means that ppl like the dog get to stay evo.
he still goes to providence after all is said and done, but he stays a doggy. this scares the fuck out of a lot of providence agents. what the fuck. every time they try to talk to the boss this giant dog guy stares at them from right outside the office... theyre scared
this is the Good End for the dog i think. this is the one where white knight has an Idea and decides that if he's going to have this dog, the dog may as well represent him, so he treats biowulf like a car or a mechsuit and repaints him into white and gold. and it breaks biowulf's brain BIG TIME. hey i got a fic for this
this is ... the romantic route ? there can be romance in the other ones but this one is inherently more affectionate and fond. this is the one where biowulf isn't just dedicating himself into service to a master, in search of being needed & treated like an object, but to white knight, as a soldier & a servant. and wk grows to like and care for this dog a lot.
something comes out of this that's close to love. maybe not exactly love but it's closer than anything biowulf has ever felt before. he feels pride in himself for the first time. holds himself a little straighter. wk grins fierce & proud when he sees the white paint glinting under the light.
very hard to explain this one to the rest of providence afterwards tbh
there's also things like biowulf in metawk au and what if wk died & became a nanite ghost possessing his own exosuit but those are neither here nor there OK ITS HERE NOW
so this gets its own thing now. what if when wk exploded his shit he actually died. the exosuit ruptured and he died. but because the exosuit ruptured he had that last moment of life to be flooded with nanites (greatest fear made manifest) and the nanites kind of latched onto his personality / spirit and kept him alive. but not in his own body. so wk as a nanite ghost possesses his own exosuit and has to find a way to continue on that way. yay
his own body is still in there. he has to find a way to deal with that.
au where wk actually died in the explosion but ended up haunting/trapped in his own exosuit. of course no one knows bc how does one begin to explain
extra bitter irony in the sheer amount of freedom he has now (from providence, from that room, from his own body) and being more trapped then he was before (in the suit, in the necessary lie that he's still alive, in being still tethered to life after being finally cut loose)
the explosion goes wrong→he thinks he survived it→there are tears in the suit→panic→these injuries should be unbearably painful→his sensation is not insjde his body→he is not inside his body
you wanted to be the knight, didn't you? you wanted to wear the armor? you wanted to protect these ideals? did you lose your humanity & your body & your spirit now, or when you started being willing to sacrifice innocents for your goals, or when you signed on as a soldier?
making the visor bright enough to be opaque so six & holiday don't notice that 'wk' is unresponsive inside the suit - finding a panicked moment at the plant to deposit his own corpse somewhere - maybe it isn't really dead but he can't feel a pulse w the suit's sensors
feeling the sudden urge to treat his body like it's empty trash. disgusted. disturbed. hiding it somewhere he hopes he'll remember and tearing himself away from it to go back to the matter at hand, the thing that really takes priority, his new work, six eyeing him suspiciously
the difficulty of course would be in convincing six & holiday that he was himself and not some wayward caesar project that got confused abt its directive and hey maybe he is. maybe he's borrowing his own history. holiday doesn't believe that he's him but six wants to, badly
he either keeps the visor super brightly opaque (thinkin abt bambs art of that) or else has a slightly different full-face helmet he uses to hide that it's empty in there. holiday is willing to just believe he's being kind of a dick but six is on edge abt it from day one
wk may have been physically out of reach but he's never hidden per se. maybe it's the right choice for someone who's supposed to be dead but not even letting his guard down at their base ... six neither trusts it nor likes it (wk isn't the only one who missed his partner)
LOL I just remembered the robot pawns bk has . surely this doesn't fill wk with a certain dread abt his own existence
'ough OUGH ough (inconsolable) stashing his body in one of those tubes that six was in in heroes united... in the corner out of sight out of mind... locked up... he's got other work to do!!'
enough time passes without him thinking about it that when he does think about it he locks up with anxiety about the possibility that when he goes to look it'll have started rotting away. or that when he goes to look it'll be in the same condition he left it. equal levels of fear
the bitterness of the suit is the same but different. knowing he finally breached that shell intentionally or not and now he's locked into it again. regular wk is bitter with what could be (touch, freedom, etc); ghost wk bitter with what cannot be
keeping this secret that he's no longer himself and watching six watch him (six knowing something is wrong, not knowing what) and feeling the last dregs of hope for a future where he could maybe put his hand on six's shoulder again fizzle out forever
on the other hand the new twisted yearning that comes from the semi-sensitivity of living inside the exosuit. having to hide that he can just about feel it when someone brushes past him
ghostwk hiding it well but the minute rex comes back he's constantly stopping short and squinting at wk bc something feels unnameably different about him. a weird reaching feeling rex half recognizes but can't identify. bk senses Something about him too which is much scarier
I think a theme to the ghost wk au isn't just continuation (continuation after death, of his specific imprisonment, etc) but division. splitting. his life was split into two by the bleaching and now in this 'death' it literally split him body & soul.
wk pinned inside his suit (the delicate way of a butterfly keeping every scale and spindling limb) pinned inside his office (still twitching animal opened up for educational dissection) pinned inside providence (a collapsed tower's bricks weighing down a body) pinned inside his own image
thisss is what compels me so much abt ghost wk au the furthering of his punishment. despite finally having committed to something beyond his station. despite finally in that last moment being exposed to the world like everyone else. that greatest fear of his took hold. cruelty. as the world turns
i bet ghostwk could still metananite. it could happen. horrible things could happen
he gets 'overriden' by the metananite. still wk attitude & actions but 'tainted' by the mn's motive - or he taints it - a teeming nanite mass full of power & formless need - maybe less 'brainwashing' more 'hijacking' - sliding thru touch & contact. still technopathy but w/the touch of human shape - the nervous system as a computer. he can just nestle into a living thing a parasitic sprawl
smth compelling abt wk becoming essentially ideology here. years as the figurehead of a paramilitary movement→now diluted down to a 'way of thinking'→inhabiting minds and bodies. overtaking existing consciousness. rewiring ppl to become him. etc
I know Im always comparing wk to vk but it encapsulates the parallels here - use of force to perpetuate ideals a potential standoff between this virus form of wk and bk would be . interesting
how does he recover from this? can he? it is hard enough when going evo to recover humanity - what's left about him in this state that is human? the metananite changes & empowers him; the draw of that is hard to resist in the standard metawk scenario but here - when he has/is nothing - when it becomes intrinsically part of his whole - can he withdraw from that? does he want to? can he be killed/cured? or is that a foregone conclusion
is he human again when he slides into a human mind&body? is he evo? is he something else/more? is it inhuman to fit so snugly into the space built by someone else? is it wrong to fulfill the power given to him by the metananite? how does he possibly stop using it? →does he do it to six? does he want deeply and desperately to do it to six. does he want to live in the warm worn tangle of six's nervous system and feel, again, real
the mn's motivation of connecting&controlling isn't so far removed from wk's own desires. control is already a major theme; be already wants to enact control over the nanites & the ppl they affect. the mn just burns away some of the sense of 'for the greater good,' makes it impersonal. the purpose of the system is what it does. proliferate, change, thrive, control
simultaneously: injecting humanity into the metananite. more directly so than may have happened had he still been human to begin with - there's an influence he has for being what he is now. bringing human illogic and desire to the metananite
the echoed yearning for comfort and belonging that he's long locked away and thought dead. is there a bitter confusion there, between the more-nanite wk and the more-wk nanite?
THIS freaken superpowered nanite ghost is more comfortable harnessing someone else's mind then living purely as his own thoughts !!!
"wk suddenly having this feeling, this urge, a need to be complete with the other meta-nanites... doesn't recognize that he's gone from needing one for power/keeping it out of consortium hands to simply wanting them all. the meta-nanite's wants are his. his wants are the meta's.... he's no longer the same person he was before the meta / before dying and going evo-ghost / before being locked into the exosuit / before he made his first order to use the bleach bomb / before the office / before six / before his first contract kill. etc etc" thanks bamb