no no no, guys, you don’t understand
the timelines revolve around henry and his choices
but that doesn’t mean everyone else is gonna sit down and leave it up to chance!
take ellie for example. ellie knows that henry could choose to leave her behind. so what does she do?
as soon as henry is thrown into the waiting cell with her at the Wall, she sidles up to him and whispers “hey help me up to that vent”
he looks back confused, as if HE already had that idea. he pauses for a moment. “how do I know you won’t leave me behind?” he asks, eyes narrowed.
because of course he’s taking into consideration the chance that ellie might betray him. he was probably already considering that same action.
ellie just huffs. “come on, help me up. what other options do you have?”
she knows full well what other options he has, and is fully prepared to not let him take them. not without her at least.
eventually, henry nods. with his help, ellie swings to the vent, breaks her handcuffs, and helps henry up.
(she wouldn’t dream of leaving henry behind. no matter how funny the payback, she knows that he would end up screwing her over somehow.)
everything else plays out mostly the same, except ellie keeps reacting a bit too fast to henry’s ideas. they get to the two guards and ellie is already stepping forward to take them out before henry has even suggested it. they’re cornered behind boxes and ellie is holding out her hands for her taser even though henry has yet to pull it out. they’re trying to get past the guards without being spotted and ellie holds up the hats– it’s not “maybe these will come in handy” it’s “these will definitely come in handy”.
and the different endings for the wall still play out, but they’re not the same. henry could choose to bolt out of the waiting cell and ellie would bolt after him, saying she “saw her chance” and “wanted to team up”. henry could refuse ellie’s offer and wait it out ‘till his transfer and ellie would bust out and find henry’s cell, climb down to where henry is waiting for the toppat clan/charles to pick him up, and wait with him.
of course, these endings only work a couple of times before dimitri (who also remembers the timelines) starts putting higher security around their transfer cell or goes there himself to supervise or even just puts henry in a maximum security cell from the get-go because he knows where henry needs to go, why wait for a transfer?
everyone adapts and changes to the knowledge they’ve gained from the last timeline, and they all start to realize that having henry on their side practically guarantees their success, so the only obvious solution? get henry on their side before anyone else can.
henry infiltrates the airship using the comm to communicate with charles and finds reginald already waiting for him, offering henry a place in the toppat clan.
henry is waiting for the toppats to pick him up with ellie and when they come, ellie gets on the airship first and gives a stern lecture to reginald about “not letting him drop this time” (“i wasn’t GOING TO” “well how was I supposed to know that? you’re a jerk!” “hey, I understand he’s a good leader now! I’m not so prideful I won’t admit my mistakes!”)
henry wakes up in the helicopter with galeforce telling him that he’ll be getting onto the airship with an earpiece to talk to charles and pepper spray to spray in the faces of any toppats he sees.
henry is captured by the wall and immediately shoved into max security, no windows, no doors, nothing except for dimitri swearing that “he won’t get away this time”.
the only constant is that the airship mission always happens and henry is always captured by the wall. everything else is devolving into everyone predicting each other’s actions and reactions and actions they haven’t even done yet but did do in another timeline so who’s to say they won’t do it again!
but it always centers around henry. because as much as everyone else has the free will to act differently in the timelines, so does henry. he might not remember any of the other timelines, but everyone acting differently means he would react by having different plans, different choices, different endings. anytime henry does something different, the next go around everyone either tries to do their best to remove that option or make it the only option. and even then, henry finds something else to do that throws everyone off.
this au is pretty much just everyone going “pst pst pst come on henry come to our faction come onnn you wanna join our faction right? yes you do, yes you do!” while henry stares at them all utterly flabbergasted as he screams internally “WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON WHY DOES EVERYONE KNOW EACH OTHER WHY DO THEY KNOW ME WHAT IS THIS”
