iwtv2007:

Okay, next chapter! It’s pretty angsty. Thomas and Anne do some angsty bonding. Thomas struggles with his guilt.

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The waist coat and boots came on quickly. He shifted around in the coat. It too felt like a foreign thing, unbelonging to the body that now wore it. He’d forgotten the weight of it, of the material and all those buttons—ridiculous, really. He placed the hat on his head, giving it a tug for good measure as he used to.

He stood facing the bed, unwilling to turn and face the mirror. When at last he did turn, his pulse quickened. There he was. His hair was much shorter now, with no queue, but even so the face that stared back at him was James McGraw. Everything was as it should be…and yet it was all horribly wrong.

His face carried more worry lines on it now; the lines curving beside his lips were deeper. And his eyes…Christ, were those his eyes? The same color as before, but somehow darker.

It was like someone had thrown a stone into his reflection and it had twisted on itself. 

Chapter 6 of Into the Maelstrom is up on AO3