#tunstall

Please don’t read this if you haven’t finished Mastiff! Too many spoilers!

We need an AU where The Thing happened differently. It seemed forced the way it’s written! Now, three books in, we’re going to mention Tunstall has major insecurities and is willing to go against everything he ever stood for at a whim? For Sabine, who would murder him for doing that? And he honestly kept on that path when Achoo almost died and Pounce is in trouble? Long enough to MURDER A CHILD? He’s friends with the Provost before Terrier even really starts! He won’t take a flower from a public garden!

And when they’re escaping he says they’re on the loosing side? They have the strangest, strongest patchwork mage on their side! So many things just don’t fit. And I don’t think he just went crazy. Pierce did a good job setting up the clues, but character-wise and narrative-wise, it doesn’t fit quite right.  

In my AU, he agrees to do The Thing in the heat of the moment but then spends the rest of the book regretting it and trying to make it stop and living this complicated life of double-double crossing. He does something heroic that shows he’s still him, and NEVER MURDERS A CHILD. He ends up surviving (though barely). 

Sabine hates him and breaks up with him, but she is his biggest advocate for a punishment other than execution or prison. So, he ends up getting put on house arrest. Tunstall would complain a lot at first, saying he prefers being dead to being trapped. But then his house is the most wonderful, colorful array of plants. Over time, Farmer probably helps him create mini-climates in different rooms so he can grow the coolest, craziest indoor plants. He can have some cool desert plants! And hill plants! Beka’s pigeons love hanging out in Tunstall’s gardens. 

Sabine probably goes on some long, crazy quest for a few years. She and Tunstall never stop loving each other, and when she can bring herself to talk to him again, she does so. Maybe they reunite, maybe not, maybe just for a night here and there. I don’t see her ever fully forgiving him, but I don’t think she could stop loving him either. Maybe Toby is a descendant of Tunstall and Sabine’s illegitimate child! But that would be sad about how Toby got to be so neglected and abused.

Between his Dog friends and his Rogue friends, Tunstall stays pretty well informed. Goodwin eventually, gradually gives him some non-confidential  paperwork jobs to keep his mind occupied. He starts a log of the Gentle Mother’s crazy ungentle deeds, and a log of awesome women with varying degrees of gentleness (Myles somehow ends up with these logs 200 years later, of course). He helps Beka and Farmer out on their cases whenever they let something mention them in front of him. He breaks house arrest once or twice because he hears Beka or her latest scent hound in trouble nearby. He manages to sneak back in and everyone blames Rosto or Farmer for whatever amazingly helpful thing just happened. Beka doesn’t tell on him, but she yells at him at his house later.