Brigitte Fitzgerald

**TW: Mentions of suicide, homicide, general violence, harm to animals**

## Personality

They may be Canadian, but Brigitte and Ginger are hardly your nice Northern neighbors. They have been shutting other people out for as long as Brigitte can remember. It has always been the two of them - together forever, united against life as they know it. In comparison, Brigitte thinks the rest of the world is pathetic - especially their hopelessly normal parents, Pamela and Henry. The sisters formed their own little isolated world from an early age, surrounded by the thickest barbed wire they could find: grungy, unfashionable clothes, acidic wit, morbid accessories (literally bird skull necklaces), and a snarl to anyone who might try to separate them. When they aren’t complaining about how insipid their classmates are, they are laughing - because it’s so easy to find someone to laugh at.

Growing up Brigitte had little sense of self-worth, because she always compared herself to Ginger, who is strong, fearless, and bold. That being said, Brigitte knows she is both smart and clever - she started Kindergarten early to be in the same year as Ginger and could have skipped farther ahead, but why would she leave her sister? But she is also very introverted and has social anxiety that keeps her locked in a very cerebral world. This has led to an interesting dynamic, where Brigitte has bizarre and often morbid ideas, but would never actually act on any of them if it wasn’t for Ginger egging her on. And because she has always admired and wanted to be like her sister, Brigitte lets herself be talked into carrying out her fantastical plots, even though she is far more aware of potential consequences than Ginger.

Through dealing with Ginger's powers,  Brigitte has really started to value what she can do as far as coming up with solutions and carrying them out. She has discovered that she thrives on having a purpose. For a long time that was keeping her and Ginger strong and united, now it is keeping them safe and alive and mostly human.

Unlike Ginger, Brigitte doesn’t think that *all* people are inherently bad... just most people. You can prove yourself worthy of her attention if you are both smart and useful. And once she cares for you, you fall under her protection. And she is fierce in protecting those she loves.

## Powers

* **Precognition of violent death:** Brigitte can see visions of the future, or potential futures, that involve intentional violent death. It is only triggered when someone she has a connection with (is emotionally close to or feels protective of) is either the victim or the perpetrator. As in, when her sister is about to kill the school counselor, she gets flashes of seeing her attack him and his dead body. She can also see when Ginger kills animals. When she has these visions, her irises go black and she can’t see or hear the world around her. They are usually only fractured images or bad dreams, but over time they will be slightly longer and will give her a little more information. The visions are triggered by the perpetrator deciding to kill, therefore they may not actually come true (aka the killer could still change their mind). She can also act to change the vision (aka tell Ginger “no killing!” very firmly).
* **See the dead:** Brigitte doesn’t know it yet, but she can also see dead people who have some connection to her (so, not all dead people, but people who know her and want to talk to her). They appear to her like they are fully alive and unharmed. They can talk to her, but don’t physically interact with her. She can’t force them to leave, but she does have some ability to summon them. It is up to the spirit to choose to come.
* **Transmitted limited lycanthropy:** Ginger can transmit her lycanthropy through blood, and Brigitte knows the most reliable data she can get on the cure is from experiencing the results herself. She has been infecting herself to try to make the monkshood cure, well, more of a cure and less of a poison. When infected, the first things to show up are increased healing and sense of smell, then her ears and teeth become pointed, her fingers grow claws and her eyes become golden, and she becomes stronger and a lot easier to anger. But this repeated exposure has triggered a secondary lycanthropic mutation within Brigitte, and over time more and more of those wolf behaviors and attributes will stick around. Eventually she will have to take the monkshood cure continuously to moderate these effects.

## Talents

Photography, academics, science, resourcefulness

## Interests

Death, the occult and mythology, medical history, old/classic movies, making sure Ginger doesn't kill anyone (without reason)

## History

At the start of their Junior school year, Brigitte knew that Ginger was done with their tiny town, and maybe with life in general. But at 8 years old they promised each other “out by 16 or dead on the scene,” and Brigitte would never break a promise to her sister. But while Brigitte could accept going through with a suicide pact, she had no idea how to handle Ginger reaching (late) puberty. Boys were *hitting on* Ginger now. The seeming nail in the coffin was Ginger getting the “Curse,” starting her period as they were walking through the woods. Immediately after resigning themselves to that tragedy, Ginger was attacked by some huge bizarre creature that dragged her off through the trees. Brigitte ran after the creature and attacked it with her camera, allowing them to get away, but Ginger was hurt. Badly. Thankfully the creature was hit by a car as it chased them and Brigitte could drag Ginger to safety.

But when they got home, though Ginger was in shock, her wounds weren’t bad. In fact, they were already closed. Ginger begged to just forget about it, and Brigitte was helpless against a Ginger who was shaking and afraid and covered in her own blood. So Brigitte didn’t press going to the hospital, but she didn’t forget. That meant, when Ginger started wearing revealing clothes and flirting with - kissing! - jocks, when Ginger would rather do pot than listen to Brigitte’s concerns, when her hair started changing color and she was acting more and more aggressive, Brigitte was watching and putting things together. And, well, if mutants were real, why not werewolves?

She found an unexpected ally in the local greenhouse owner and pot supplier, Sam, who was the driver of the car that killed the beast. He figured out something weird was happening, and - sensing a potential source of information - Brigitte tells him that she was the one bitten and was slowly changing. Together, they came up with silver as a traditional werewolf cure, and Sam even gave her a pure silver earring to try. As he gave it to her, something strange happened to Brigitte’s vision as she met his eyes, almost like everything was sharper, clearer, for half a second. But Brigitte dismissed it as her just not being used to making eye contact with people other than Ginger. As she and Sam grew closer, Ginger moved farther away. One night, Brigitte woke up from a nightmare about blood and a fogged up car and dogs crying out to see that Ginger had come back from a date with the jock covered in blood. Ginger revealed that she had just had unprotected sex with the jock, and then overwhelmed with bloodlust murdered - and ate - the neighbor’s dog. Brigitte wondered if the dreams were from hearing the dog’s yipping, but that was unimportant when Ginger was freaking out in front of her.

Brigitte thought maybe now Ginger would listen to her theories, and after giving Ginger an unsanitary at-home belly button ring using the silver earring and helping her sister to tape down her tail (seriously, how was Ginger in denial when she had a *tail*), Brigitte thought that they could salvage things between them. But things were getting worse at school, not better. The jock boy showed up to school with cuts and claw marks (Ginger was not a gentle lover), but he left school early when blood started leaking from his urethra. Ginger was amused, but Brigitte was horrified that Ginger passed on the werewolf curse through biting the jock. Ginger was also getting angrier, constantly getting into fights, which wasn’t helped when Sam - apparently dumber than Brigitte thought - showed up at their school a few days later to talk to Brigitte. Ginger freaked out that Brigitte spilled the secret, even though Brigitte tried to explain how she lied to Sam. When Trina (Sam’s ex) went after Brigitte in PE, Ginger violently retaliated on her behalf, but Brigitte couldn’t tell if that was Ginger wanting to protect her, or just wanting to hurt someone.

Ginger insisted on meeting Sam, and Brigitte’s hopes that Ginger finally wanted to work on a cure were crushed when Ginger spent the whole time calling Sam a pedophile. Frustrated, and angry that her sister wasn’t taking this seriously, Brigitte kicked Ginger out to discuss monkshood - aka aconite, aka wolfsbane - with Sam as a possible cure. If only they could find some, and if only it wasn’t poisonous.

Both hopeful and disheartened, Brigitte returned home only to be confronted by Trina. Apparently Trina’s dog was missing - and, god, walking home she kept on imagining a dead dog, did she have some sort of psychic link with Ginger? Also, what the hell, Ginger? - and was blaming the Fitzgerald freaks for it. Just when Trina was losing steam and starting to cry about her drama with Sam (awkward), Ginger barged out, raging, and started to drag Trina into the house. Brigitte tried to stop her sister from doing anything stupid when the world disappeared.

Suddenly, she was in the kitchen, and Trina was holding a knife, but then Brigitte blinked and Ginger had Trina’s hair in a tight grip, and Trina’s head was hitting the counter. And then there was just blood, everywhere, swirling into the spilled milk like water colors and then Ginger was lying in the blood - why? - and smiling and licking it off her fingers and -

And Brigitte was back outside with Ginger in her face, concerned for some reason and telling her that her eyes just went black. Trina ran away, calling them mutie freaks, and Brigitte is smart, by the time she let Ginger shuffle her to their room she had started to figure it out. They *were* mutant freaks. She told Ginger about the visions she had of the dogs, and she told her about what she just saw happen to Trina. Brigitte felt sick at the memory but Ginger, Ginger seemed delighted.

The next few days at school were awful. Trina had spread the word that the Fitzgerald freaks were mutie freaks, too, and the students were not kind. Verbal harassment edged towards physical harassment, and the teachers were too used to the sisters being ostracized to do anything about it now. It probably would have been manageable if it wasn’t for Ginger almost killing the kind janitor who was only trying to help Brigitte clean up after getting attacked by some asshole preps. Luckily, Brigitte talked Ginger down, and they decided that it was probably best for Ginger to stay home from school.

Ginger was sullen at home over the next few days, but Brigitte didn’t get any more visions so she counted it as a win. One day the jock, who had been home “sick,” shoved her into a supply closet. He looked half transformed and he was not happy, convinced Ginger turned him into a mutant. After revealing that he had grown a tail and killed his dog (and at least Ginger didn’t have some weird dog killing fetish, it seemed like it was part of the package), he moved towards Brigitte and she had the awful, horrifying experience of seeing him crouched over her corpse, tearing her throat out with his teeth, before the janitor interrupted and Brigitte ran away.

That night at dinner, Pamela confronted Ginger about skipping school and getting into fights. Pamela stopped Brigitte from storming out after Ginger and the only thing that saved that awful, awful day was that, as Brigitte was trying to convince their mother that her hands off approach was totally cool, she spotted dried monkshood on the top of Pamela’s crafting supplies.

Brigitte tried to immediately tell Ginger the good news, but she was horrified to find Ginger in the bathroom, trying to cut off her tail. Brigitte stopped her and tried to comfort her; it worked, until Brigitte said that she found monkshood and all they have to do is go to Sam’s to have him teach them how to turn it into some kind of medicine. Ginger was still irrationally prejudiced against Sam and refused to contemplate getting his help. Unable to calm her sister otherwise, Brigitte promised that she wouldn’t go to Sam, that they would figure it out on their own.

But she knows her own limits, and Brigitte knew that the best person to figure out how to make dried flowers into a cure was Sam. So she locked Ginger into the bathroom the next morning and got Sam to show her how to extract, well, something from the flowers by heating it in alcohol and they prepared a syringe of the purple liquid. It came just in time, too. As they capped the needle, Brigitte was struck by a vision of Ginger, at the school, slashing the throat of the counselor.

Brigitte raced to the school, but on the way there she got another vision. This time, the jock boy was attacking some little kid in a dog costume (it was the Friday after Halloween). Thankfully Brigitte recognized where he was and took a detour, but when she arrived the jock boy attacked her instead. Brigitte did the only thing she could: she injected him with the cure. And it worked. He returned to normal, if a little dazed, in under a minute.

Fueled by hope, Brigitte made it to the counselor’s office just in time to stop Ginger. She got Ginger out of the office and the school, away from any potential victims, but when she tried to explain about the cure, Ginger wouldn’t hear it. Ginger was so angry, she actually attacked Brigitte. Brigitte, lying on the ground, almost gave up hope when she got another vision. Ginger, with silver hair and a face more wolf than human, was killing Sam in his own greenhouse. Then, Ginger collapsed and transformed into a hideous creature that, honestly, looked more like a rat than a wolf, but it still hunted like a predator. And the walls of the post-Halloween party Sam was hosting were painted red, red, red.

Brigitte decided, no. That wasn’t happening. So she rushed over to Sam’s and once again tried to pull Ginger back from the brink of murder, but this time Ginger wouldn’t let her. Brigitte didn’t have any cure prepared, but she knew that it worked now, so she sliced her palm and reminded Ginger, “together forever.” She pressed their bleeding palms together in the blood oath they had made so many times before.

Except Sam really wanted to prove that all boys are freaking idiots, and as they were going to steal a car to get home (Ginger thinking they’re running away, Brigitte knowing that she was going to cure them both first), he hit Ginger over the head with a shovel. Pissed off, Brigitte told him to make himself useful and give them a ride home. He did, and they made more of the monkshood solution, and just as Ginger started to move (thank something that they decided to tie her up) they injected her with the cure.

And everything was good, for a few days. The jock seemed fine, Ginger was in a lot of pain from the monkshood but seemed fixed, and miraculously no one died. But then, Ginger’s hair started to go silver again. Realizing that the cure was only temporary, they gathered up as much cash and monkshood as they could, stole Sam’s van, and ran.

After a month of being on the run, they slipped up. Brigitte had been trying to figure out the best methods of treating Ginger, and she got the most accurate data if she experienced the symptoms and the cure herself. She had been infecting herself every few days to get a sense of the disease progression and attempting to figure out the parameters of the cure (injection is best; Ginger will always and Brigitte will sometimes pass out afterwards; injecting every 3-5 days balances monkshood poisoning vs killer tendencies). She and Ginger had found that healing rate is a good measure for cure effectiveness and “disease” progression, and because of that they have a ladder of cut marks up their arms (someone will tell Brigitte that it looks like she really sucks at suicide).

It’s on a “day 4” for both of them when Ginger attacks a Toronto librarian who got a little too close to Brigitte. Brigitte managed to inject Ginger with the emergency dose of monkshood she carries and Ginger passed out. Noticing the librarian staring at her pointed ears and knowing that he was probably about to call the cops, Brigitte hurriedly injected herself with the small amount of excess monkshood in the vial. Except this was a new formulation and caused Brigitte to pass out too.

They woke up in a rehab clinic.