Sucking Poison Out of a Wound - 9.15.2013 [Hector]

Hector Ghosh

Hector was not sitting on the porch waiting for her when Lola returned to the Homestead from Las Vegas.

All of the texts she had received from him during the course of her 24-hour trip further west involved his shenanigans in the city. They were intermittent and, like all communiques from people on the front lines of a conflict, carried with them the aura of things not yet passed yet. She knew because she had been on patrol with him before that Hector could have been bidden to go into that house buried beneath countless children's toys by the voice of a ghost and not gone back out again. Or he could have come upon a Wyrm nest while tearing around on that golf cart.

He stopped sending messages sometime during the period of blackout between Thursday night and Friday morning. The last one she had from him said FOUND TAMSIN BRB.

On Saturday she heard nothing from him. She knew the Sept of the Cold Crescent was open again and she knew if anything had happened to him or Tamsin she would have news of their Gatherings being performed at the Caern. The Galliard is not possessing of psychic abilities. It wasn't a cold shoulder. He just didn't reach out to her.

On Sunday whether or not Lola sent a message to remind him of what she'd said in the note she left for him the night of their short-lived argument Hector took the light-rail to the end of the line. It was the first night of his moon. Not a single goddamn person stopped when he held out a ring-adorned thumb. He slung his pack onto his shoulder and walked the rest of the way.

During the hottest part of the day Hector appeared at the end of the washed-flat gravel road.

Lola Hawkes

Friday Afternoon:  Get home from airport.  Hate flying even more when hungover.  Threw up in one of those flimsy paper bags and got rid of it in the cramped closet-bathroom.  Touched down at the Denver Airport, found truck in parking garage and drove home.  Found gravel road had largely washed away in the downhill dip.  Had to move a couple of tree branches in knee-high water before being able to force the truck through the rising waters to get it back to the garage.

Saturday:  Wake up early, and finally without a headache or urge to vomit.  Still had only toast and jam for breakfast, just to be safe.  Could not go out for appropriate patrols, though.  One of the Park Rangers came by to warn that there was still a severe flood warning in effect and while they couldn't stop from traveling, they strongly advised against it.  For once, their advice seemed to be worth taking.  Instead focused efforts on reinforcing Homestead with sandbags with supplies in shed, and some extras that Park Ranger returned to deliver.  Maybe not all of them are so bad after all?  Weather forecast indicates it will continue to storm all through the night.

On Sunday morning, Lola woke at about the same time was normal for her routine.  Still dressed in her nightgown she'd stepped out onto the front porch and watched as heavy gray rain clouds pushed their way eastward.  To the west, the skies seemed clear at last.  After she was dressed and had eaten, she went for a stroll around the property to survey the damage.  She brought a cup of coffee with her.  Aside from a few petite landslides that shifted rocks, dirt and mud downward and some impromptu mini-ponds springing up over the weekend, damages weren't so terrible.  The land was quite waterlogged, but they weren't quite far enough north to have been hit by severe flooding.

That dip-point in the road between two hills, though?  That was another story.

This is where Hector would find Lola when he arrived at the sweltering hot point in the early afternoon, come by his own accord rather than summoned by any message, for Lola had been too preoccupied with the maintenance of her home to remind him he was welcome back.

She was sweating from manual labor, with her hair piled into a haphazard bun at the top of her head.  She wore a pair of jeans tucked into knee-high green rain boots.  She'd had a gray T-shirt on earlier, but now this was looped through the two empty belt loops at the back of her pants, and she instead worked in a sports bra.  She was dragging sandbags down to better reinforce this area instead, and appeared to have been working for some time now.  She had a pair of tan work gloves on her hands, to keep from blistering her palms while she threw sandbags from the back of her truck down onto the ground, and tossed them from there to form a wall on the Homestead side of the chugging, churning flood water's path.

When Hector appeared on the other side of the water, along the gravel road that was pocked with holes where water had flushed much of the gravel away, Lola lifted a hand to her face to shield her eyes from the sun to squint at him, then waved with her whole arm before calling to him over the sound of the flowing water.

"That's a hell of a jump!  I'd advise finding yourself some stronger legs to make it in."

Hector Ghosh

Physical exertion is the only thing causing sweat out here today. The sun shines but weakly and the air is cool from the receding wind and wet. Everything feels like the aftermath of a deluge and yet the threat of a resurgence hangs in the air. Water rushes through the property and Lola stops long enough to identify him and call to him.

He's not drenched but it is obvious he was outside when another tear opened up in the sky for the dampness of the hair not secured by the band and the dark stripe down the center of his t-shirt where the flannel does not cover it. It also becomes fairly obvious that he hasn't had access to a facility with full amenities in nearly a month. His jaws are covered in the black growth he never tries to pass off as a full beard. As he ambles up to the dip in the road Hector mirrors Lola's lift of the arm and squint and broad wave. He too calls over the rush of water.

"You got any lying around?"

Hector slips the bag off of his shoulder and unceremoniously shucks off the flannel shirt before peeling the t-shirt over his head. Were the rest of his pack present they would have teased him for the ease with which he stripped himself to the waist. This is the first time he has done so in front of Lola without hesitating since he came back bereft and angry. Whatever motivation he had had to maintain a sense of modesty that she might find him appealing gone now. He removes the band keeping his hair constrained and balls it up with the shirts and stuffs the entire affair into his bag. Picks it up and throws the bag across the divide.

It barely makes the journey and not for a lack of athleticism on his part.

A moment later Hector shifts up through his forms until he lands in the body of a skinny yet muscular grayish-red wolf. He trots back a ways so he can gain momentum and then he springs over the raging water with far more ease than he had had throwing his meager possessions across. Once on the opposite side he plants his feet and shakes out his fur and canters away from Lola so he can shift back into his birth form.

Once he's back on two feet Hector retrieves his t-shirt from his bag and climbs back into it.

"Can I help?" he asks, of the sandbagging project.

Lola Hawkes

Hector looked very much like a werewolf today.  It was his moon, and though the sun was still high in the sky and the moon itself wasn't showing its face, that still impacted the way that his Rage stirred and swirled about him.  His hair was long, shaggy and greasy as it hasn't seen a proper shampooing in a while.  His face was covered in the black facial hair that refused to make a full beard.  His clothes were well lived in, and he probably smelled something fierce.  He looked like he's been living out in the rough for some time, and Lola made a note to direct him straight through to the bathroom the instant he got to the house.

He mirrored her wave from across the impromptu stream of flood water and made a joke about whether she had any strong legs laying about.  She didn't answer with a shout back, but instead leaned forward and slapped her hands on the fronts of her thighs a few times.  The answer was there in the gesture:  I got your strong legs, right here!

While Hector stripped and changed, Lola halted her work for the moment.  She shed the work gloves and tucked them into her back pocket and lifted her hands to let her hair down from the bun that it was tied into.  This was only so that she could lean forward, tipped upside-down, and re-wrap that dense mass of black hair into a topknot once more.  By the time she had straightened back up and wiped the sweat from her forehead, neck and chest, Hector the Wolf was hurdling the distance over the flood water and landing easily on the other side.

He shifted back, pulled his shirt back on, and asked if he could help.  Lola nodded and tugged her gloves back on, then gestured to the truck where it was parked, backed up so the tailgate was about ten feet from where the water flowed.  "There's a second pair of gloves in the glovebox.  You'll want 'em, trust me on that."

And once he's ready to start working, they do so together.  Taking sandbags out of the back of the truck and lining them to prevent the flood waters from washing more of her road away, from climbing higher and trying to make its way toward the house (although she doubted [hoped] that it wouldn't get close at all).  A daisy chain was always the best way to do such work, so Lola directed him to hop up into the back of the truck and move the sandbags down to her.

"So," she'd make conversation while they worked.  "Spire Sept's opened itself back up, and we ain't heard from Beloved Horror in some time.  No errant Black Spiral Dancers to be found.  When do you think the napalm's gonna come pouring out at us?  Me?"  She'd interrupt herself with a grunt when she tossed the sandbag she was handling down to the wall she was making.  "I'll give it a month."

Hector Ghosh

Even if they were not outside and working in the wind and the rain Hector has been washing up in public restrooms. Not the easiest place to get the sweat and dirt out of one's body's coves but Lola cannot smell him as he gets his shirt back on and passes her on the way to the truck. He took off all of his rings and bracelets and necklaces so they would not catch on anything and stuck them back into his bag. Tied back his hair so it would not get in his face. After he finds the second pair of gloves he pulls them on and climbs into the back of the truck and does so easily.

Despite the stringiness of his build there is power in his physique. As he's gained confidence both in himself and his capabilities as a leader she has noticed his prowess in battle improving. No more attempting to subdue Fomori with his fists instead of shifting straightaway.

This is the first time he has been around her during his moon and not tried to whittle down his Rage or stuff himself into the persona that had fit him when he was a teenager in California with no more to worry about than whether he would wipe out grinding a skateboard down a rail in a public park or whether his mother would smell pot on him at dinner. He doesn't even try to act like he did when he was a fresh Cliath running with a good-sized pack with a Theurge and two Ragabashes and an Ahroun. Like he could run along without weight on his skinny shoulders and had nothing keeping him from cracking jokes and screwing around when there was work to do.

A part of him does still hold to his humor. If he had been born under a waning moon like his last surviving packsister was then Harano might have been an inevitability instead of something they fear. But he also hasn't given himself a chance to learn how to function without pushing away that part of him that makes him susceptible to things like frenzy or Harano.

But he's here now and he looks not like a lost young man but like a werewolf. He lugs the sandbags easily and can carry on a conversation without losing his breath. Muscles and veins pop beneath his skin.

"If that," he says. "I don't know. Do we even know where their Hive is or how many of them there are? Like... has anyone done any recon, ever?"

Lola Hawkes

"You know...."  Lola hefted again, shoving at a sandbag so that it fell where she wanted it to.  She stomped on it with one heavy work boot, making sure that it was packed down and that it would stay put.  "I'm not even sure that they have a Hive.  Maybe not around here anyways."

That was a curious statement to make.  Lola tended to make a point of being as up-to-date on all information concerning the Warfront as possible.  She's been known to track down Ahrouns and nag them for information.  She'd keep pace with the Guardians at Forgotten Questions from time to time, just long enough to harass them for updates on the war, for details on the history, and for any developments that she may have missed while living her life of semi-seclusion out on The Homestead.

That she wasn't aware of whether there was a Hive nearby or not was surprising, particularly to herself.  Frankly, she couldn't even take a guess at where the nearest Hive was.  She had a better knowledge of where the Great Old Banes slumbered, deep below the earth in subterranean caves, forever guarded by Bane Tenders from her tribe.  Of course she would know where one was, at least, because her mother gave her life to ensure it stayed put.

"Recon wouldn't be a bad idea, though.  You should talk to the Elders, get another pack to come with you and Tamsin and Jack too.  Not a War pack, obviously, but one built for the job at hand.  Maybe a real good Theurge could help try to track where Beloved Horror keeps coming from?"

It was easy to talk about War and current events, and that might be why Lola chose the subject in the first place.  That way she could avoid talking about anything that might round her back to where she was Thursday night and Friday morning, and what all she learned (and did) while she was there.  If she focused on this instead, and the work at hand, she could keep her mind from mulling too heavily on the new found knowledge that Hector had the opportunity to perform the Gathering for her sister but not only refused, but simply vanished and didn't even attend.

It burned her to think about, so it was better if she didn't.

Hector Ghosh

For not being able to lie Hector has kept a lot of things not only from Lola but from Corey and Tamsin. Easier to hide the things he does not want to talk about when it involves other people's pain and his hand in worsening that pain. Easier not to talk about it now that Lola has information from one of the other survivors and has an idea of what Hector has done that has kept his guilt alive for so long.

All she knows is he wasn't at the Gathering for the Departed. But he doesn't know that she knows.

So they set up sandbags and put together the first skeletal workings of a plan to figure out what it is exactly that they're dealing with and they don't talk about the past. Just as well, if one subscribes to the notion that ignoring things makes them go away. Hector has been ignoring the battle and its aftermath for months now and all it's done is fill him with the sense that everything in the world would be better if he had done one little thing different during the battle so that he died and nobody else did.

This is why people hit him.

"Yeah," he says. "Maybe. I'll see what the Elders want to do after the moot. Everybody's still kind of running around now that the church is done for and the Spire Sept is open again. You ask me, the more people involved the more likely it is we're gonna draw attention to ourselves. The three of us could go out there and get out again and they wouldn't notice."

Lola Hawkes

Rest assured, Lola had no plans to let the information she'd gained at the end of this week go to waste.  She went down there with the intention of finding out more about what happened that pained Hector so, and she walked away with at least a better idea of what went down.  She didn't know the whole thing-- of course she didn't, she couldn't.  Hector wouldn't tell, and he didn't reveal to Corey where he had disappeared to either.

But she did know that he had vanished, and that he and Corey had fought hard.  She also knew now that Corey did still foster a deep love for his old packmate, and that he would come if she were to call him.  That she was considering an ace in the sleeve, but she didn't plan to use it unless the circumstances she and the Rage-heavy Ahroun had discussed were met.

Rest assured, she would talk about this with Hector.  It just wouldn't be this soon, not unless she was somehow looped into it.  She was still digesting her own hurt and insult, nursing her pride and quietly stifling her embarrassment and (lack of) memory of Thursday night.  Maybe once the sour taste in her throat and on the back of her tongue finally faded away she could work her tongue around words without them being full of spite and razor blades.

For now, though:

"I mean, yeah, three people would be quieter.  But you're talking about tracking Beloved Horror and trying to find their Hive.  More bodies might travel less easily, but it would be safer.  Not that I think a half a dozen Garou from some mingled packs would be able to take them down if it came to a fight, but there's more options for escape and distraction tactics.  And you can cover more ground in less time."

She made her way back over to the truck and held her arms out for the next sandbag.  "I wish I could be of more help, but sneak and survey isn't really my forte."

Hector Ghosh

Up comes the next sandbag. His eyes are on her outstretched gloves and not on the rest of her as he deposits it atop her forearms. Where once he couldn't stop himself from staring at her even when she was completely covered in a sweater Hector doesn't even seem to notice she's a woman anymore.

Tonight he'll have to do something about the restless heat in the center of him but right now Luna isn't singing siren-like and loud to him and they're performing manual labor and talking about dark things they cannot comprehend. A pack of Black Spiral Dancers whose leader can stop speeding vans with his bare hand. The fact that Hector doesn't trust the rest of the Garou at this Sept to not blow something simple like a sneak-and-survey.

At least he's involving Tamsin and Jack in the planning stages of this. Or claiming he is. For all Lola knows that's all a load of bullshit and he's going to go off by himself because he doesn't trust Tamsin or Jack either, or doesn't trust himself not to get them killed. It took over a week for her to wonder if his valor during the fight in the run-down house wasn't latent suicidality. Like if he's going to get himself killed it's better to do it in the service of Gaia and not because he blew off his own head.

"That's alright," he says to her wishing she could be of more help. "I never learned how to sew."

Lola Hawkes

He said that he never learned how to sew and dropped the sandbag down into her waiting arms.  Lola's stance was prepared for the sudden weight, knees bent a little, back straight, feet apart.  She caught it and rolled it into her chest, bending her knees to take the momentum so that she didn't hurt her back.  In this current state, doing heavy manual work without a shirt on, it's easy to see that she really had grown up to be a warrior.  The muscles under her smooth brown skin were strong and stood out when they strained.  Her abdomen was defined, her shoulders and upper arms strong and dense.  Her forearms were hard like rocks when supporting the weight of that sandbag.

Yet despite that she still didn't seem to struggle too much when she turned about and walked the several feet to the wall she was building to deposit the bag.

"I didn't catch that lesson either, if it makes you feel better."  This other sandbag was added to the wall, and the work would continue.

This is how it would be until the truck was unloaded.  They'd speak on current events, but not of where Lola was on Thursday and Friday, or Hector's new tactic of running headfirst into battle when he had options to find a way around the back or along the flank.  They didn't speak of Corey, or the pack (aside from a brief 'so how are Jack and Tamsin and when do I get to meet your Bone Gnawer?').  Hector would refuse to look at Lola past hands arms and face, while she would steal glances his way a few times as though she were checking up on him-- worried and uncertain but only in those fleeting moments.

After about fifteen minutes they were loaded into the truck, and Lola was driving it the short distance back up to the house.

Once parked, she'd hop out of the truck and pull her gray T-shirt back on.  By now she was able to bring her temperature back to normal, as enough time had passed between physical exertion and this stated moment.  The cool wet air would catch the sweat on her back and give her goosebumps, so she was done traipsing about in just an athletic bra for the time being.  As she pulled her shirt collar away from her face and rounded the truck to head for the porch, she worked to untangle the elastic band from her hair.

"You clearly need the shower first.  When's the last time you were under a real shower head, anyway?"

Hector Ghosh

She parries his joke about not possessing a basic skill that would make his life as a transient easier and Hector laughs for the first time since he wandered onto the property today. It bares his teeth and gives him back some of his youth and his humanity but it's a short-lived thing. His eyes are still that mountainous sort of hard that serve as a herald for the sort of Garou he will be if he survives the mess inside his own head.

From how he carries himself and even how he stands in the bed of the truck with all the power in his spine and intelligence in his eyes one would not think that he keeps himself as busy as he does out of conflicting senses of duty. On the one hand he is not fabricating his commitment and his honor and his belief that every little battle they win is good. On the other hand he would not fight so hard if he were not trying to keep himself from declaring all of this to be pointless bullshit and nothing he does to matter in the long run.

That is not the stuff that stories are made of. He might like to think that one day his grandchildren will tell tales of the things he did and they will be good and honorable things. That the tale of Echoes of the Lost will be one filled with ass-kicking and raising up his peers. But he doesn't talk about the future. He just talks about what's right in front of them.

"Well, good," he says. "I know who not to ask for help when I need my socks darned."

In time they finish the damming and climb back into the truck. They are both sweaty and sapped but the work is done and when he closes the door for the ride back his Rage makes him feel like he takes up twice the space he actually does. They do not speak and after a few moments Hector rolls down the window to get some air. It tugs at his hair and whips it into his face and he just shakes his head and closes his eyes and lets it.

Back outside they walk towards the house and Lola asks how long it's been since he's known a shower.

"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh..."

And she knows. He hasn't taken a shower since that night in the motel when he took two, technically, because he hid in the bathroom after their fight petered out.

"I don't remember. But I also figured out if you act like you're supposed to be there, nobody at the Oxford Hotel notices if you use the bathrooms. Their bathrooms are pretty sick."

Lola Hawkes

"Well, then, the condition for coming inside is that you make a straight path for the shower."  She made the statement with a grin.  It wasn't like she was going to kick him back out or strong-arm him into the bathroom, but giving the go ahead that he go give his hair a proper wash, do what he will with his facial hair, and wash behind his ears and between his toes for the first time in a while.

When he does get into the shower, Lola's gone and vanished into her bedroom to swap out clothes for something she hasn't been sweating into.  He'd expect to find her in the kitchen or on the couch by the time he was finished.  That's how things probably would have gone if, upon settling on the couch with her heels propped up on one arm and her hands folded under her head, she hadn't chosen to ruminate.

Rumination turned into stewing.

Stewing, against her best judgment, turned into steaming.

Her Kinfolk father had advised her to practice patience and understanding-- that this was what Kinfolk needed to be truly good at being what they are.  Simple logic told her not to fuck with a Wolf during his Moon.  But let's be fair, Lola's patience has never been her strong point no matter how she tried, and her method of coping with loss by talking to nobody and yelling to the sky was dubious at times.  She missed her sister, and was insulted for her that Hector had buckled under his own stress and grief and couldn't even see his sister too off into What Comes Next.

She hopped off the couch and paced.  She took a few deep breaths to try and calm, but they felt mechanical and forced and that only bothered her more.

Hector got peace and quiet for about ten minutes before the bathroom door swung open and Lola coarsely planted herself in the doorway.  Hip and shoulder braced against the door frame and her arms crossed over her chest and her ankles crossed so she was standing on one foot.  This propped her up in the doorway in a forced casual looking stance.

"So I talked to Corey."

There.
Out in the open, no taking it back.

Here we go.

Hector Ghosh

This time when Lola interrupts whatever it is he's doing in there that causes him to startle so sharply Hector doesn't just shout the first half of a heathen's invective and pop his head up over the top of the shower to investigate what it is that's causing her to poke her head through the door and ask if she can come in.

For one thing she doesn't just poke her head through and ask first. She opens the door and stands at the threshold like this is the most natural thing in the world to do.

For another he hasn't drained his Rage down to the dregs fighting the Wyrm. He hasn't received praise for his actions and done something he feels makes him worthy in the eyes of the Nation. He's been in the city for the last month. He hasn't known safety or security because the Spire Sept was hit hard and they were relying on foot patrols and Cliaths to maintain what the Guardians ought to have been doing in the first place.

So Lola interrupts Hector doing the exact same thing he was doing in the shower the last time she interrupted him in there and this time he stops and he feels a pulse of strong anger ripple through his body and she can feel the crackling of it behind the curtain but it isn't enough to risk a frenzy. She hears the inhale and the exhale of an outburst turned to breath.

The faucets squawk shut. The water stops running. He reaches out a hand to grab the towel he'd set up and he starts to dry off behind the curtain.

"Before you say anything else," he says in a voice gone more taut than she's ever heard it before, "I just wanna say this is a really nice bathroom, and if I end up losing my shit and tearing it apart, I'm really sorry, and I'll put it back together."

He throws the towel out from behind the curtain and reaches out to grab his jeans. His voice takes on an air of forced good cheer.

"So! What'd ya talk about?"

Lola Hawkes

Rage snap-crackles through the air like a whip with barbs.  Hector's Rage was a living thing, and it grew when provided with fuel to do so.  Sometimes, that growth stuck around, and that has happened since he got in to Denver.  For a month solid the city was falling down around their ears, and the Spire Sept was too wrapped up in its own failure to defend itself to lend much of a helping hand to the streets below.  Where they slacked, other Wolves, including Hector, picked up the extra weight and carried it for them.  This left its marks, and on Hector they showed.  He's aged, and hopefully that would be for the better.

Certainly, it would be.

But for now, he just walked away with a harder jaw and hotter Rage, and now that Rage flooded the bathroom at the mention of his ex-alpha and having sprung on him the fact that his Kinfolk had sought this lousy Glasswalker out for a conversation.  He shut off the shower's running water and reached out first for a towel, and then for a pair of jeans.  There was a warning that he might not be able to handle the conversation in his current state, but then he went on to ask for details in a forced, falsely cheerful tone.

Lola, clearly, wasn't amused by the forced cheer.  When he glances out of the curtain to his Kinswoman, he'll find her posture steady, unswaying, untrembling, refusing to buckle against the force of his very being.  Her face is precisely as stone-solid as the rest of her, with a stern look of anger that was contained with a clenched jaw and furrowed brow.

"The fight that split you two up, and what caused it."

There's a beat, and then in a tone that was lower without being quieter, she added:  "We should take this outside, if you don't think you can clamp down on yourself."

Hector Ghosh

"Okay first of all..."

He shucks back the curtain with the same amount of forced restraint with which he'd asked after the topic of discussion. The Galliard can't lie for shit but he can imitate another person. A calmer person. Someone who doesn't feel his back get itself up at the mention of his former alpha or the sight of his kinswoman standing in the doorway like the only way she could have a conversation with him was to box him into the bathroom.

He's shirtless and barefoot and water still clings to his shoulders where it drips from the ends of his hair. His skin has a sheen to it born of dirt and dead cells gone and his hair has been shampooed and raked back from his face with his fingers. He hadn't shaved his face before Lola interrupted him and it doesn't appear as if he has any interest in doing it now.

"It didn't split us two up. He left Tamsin and me. And b: if you're so worried about me not being able to control myself when you're the one all pissed off out of nowhere, I'm just gonna go." He shrugs and steps out of the tub and balances on one foot to start putting on his socks and boots. "Actually, you know what, I'm just gonna go regardless."

Lola Hawkes

Hector might not be a liar, but he's better at pretending than Lola.  He pretended to be a calm person, and while Lola had given that her best shot out while hanging around out in the living room, she ultimately had failed the task.  That's why she stood here, looking ready to scold, like she was ready for a fight to break out, maybe even hoping for it a little bit.  If it came to a fight, a real one, then she wouldn't have to keep holding back.  It would be the perfect excuse to stop biting her tongue.  Release was a healthy thing after all, right?

And yet, when Hector pushed aside the curtain and set about putting his socks and boots back on and said that he was just going to go, Lola didn't bark at him.  Instead, her nose wrinkled and face scrunched up in clear disdain for what she'd heard.

Her jaw worked around words that she wanted to say, but stopped because she knew as soon as they reached her tongue that they were wrong-- inflammatory, antagonistic, unnecessary.  She became frustrated with her inability to use words like a calm adult, with her inability to calm herself down and her own unwillingness to just risk damaging the link she had with this man.

So Lola bit her tongue-- literally, mind you-- and pushed away from the doorway.  She took a few steps back, but moved like her feet were heavy and she had to coach them through the process.  She stood in the hallway for a second, lifted her hand like she was going to make a parting statement, but failed that too.

"Fuck," is all she says at the end, and with a heavy strike of her palm against the wall she skulked out of the hallway, back toward the open living area and kitchen instead.  Unless he's quick to follow, unless he calls something up the hallway after her, the sound of the front door swinging open and smacking shut punctuates her exit.

You're going to leave?
Fine, but I'm going to beat you to it.

Hector Ghosh

The second she looses that fricative curse into the air Hector stops stuffing his foot into his hiking boot. Before she hears anything else from him she hears the thud of the boot as it hits the linoleum. Cannot hear the sound of him tearing off the sock so that he has to run after her barefoot but she doesn't get very far down the hall before she hears his voice.

"Lola!"

Not loud and obnoxious like when he was stood on the bench at the botanical gardens guiding her into his location. Not even sharp and desperate like he fears never seeing her again. Just her name, startle-fast like he would if something were hurtling towards her in the heat of combat and the next word out of his mouth was going to be a command. Bare feet against the floor then.

And Hector would have made a better Kinfolk than Lola is. He's turning into a damned fine Galliard in her approximation but he did not start out that way and he has had to stand up straight despite a countless stream of blows with no notion of how he is supposed to weather them and he's figuring out that packs are temporary things and the rest of the Nation does not want to hear the same stories about Kinfolk as they would hear of Cliaths and he cannot just pretend his way through things he doesn't understand. More so than other first-ranks of his moon are expected to be, he is an honorable creature. He can read Lola better than she can read him.

Not always. But she hasn't had near as much practice being Kinfolk as he has had being Garou.

He catches up with her and whether or not she stops he grabs Lola by the upper arm. If it pisses her off, if she wheels around and strikes at him, if she hurls everything at him that she has kept to herself during the ten minutes he had to himself: good.

Lola Hawkes

This seems the perfect irony of their relationship.  He, the Garou, born under a moon swollen near to full.  He bolstered more Rage than other Moonsingers his rank tended, and carried with him dark knowledges passed down through his Tribe and Mentor.  He should be the one snapping and bristling.  Then Lola, the Kinfolk, who was so quick to anger, who held such a grudge against her own birthright and fate by proxy.  She couldn't express herself very well, as she was only expected to fight and win and lead up until her late teens.  Her temper had been tolerated for so long, because she was born to the Full Moon.

While she should be soothing his tempers, he instead gave chase when she stormed away.

Well, stormed away is a strong way of phrasing that.  She stalked away.  It wasn't a run or march, just the sullen long-legged walk of a woman through the house.  Hector's shout caused a jump in her shoulders, but her head didn't whip around.  She did stop walking, though, and stood at the mouth of the hallway with her arms at her sides.  Before she had the opportunity to take a breath and turn around he'd closed distance and seized her by her upper arm.  Lola tensed under his hand, but did not shrink back as though she feared being struck.  She turned to face him then and huffed a sharp, hot breath through her nostrils close to his face.  For a moment, eyes were wild, startled and defensive;  it was a reaction to the Rage.  Fight or flight had kicked in when seized by the Wolf under His Moon, and Lola was the type who consistently defaulted to fight.

But she didn't raise her hands or shove him away.  She'd brought herself uncomfortably close for a second, like she was going to step up and directly into a challenge, but stepped back halfway through, not effectively committing to the movement.  Instead, when she'd gone still again, she was standing with her bicep flexed into Hector's hand, spine tight as though wrought from iron and wire, staring wide-eyed up into his face.

"What, Hector?"  Her voice was just as tight as her back and shoulders.  "You want to do this, then?  Huh?"

She challenged him here, like this instead, but still there was hesitation.  It was like a hyena with a lion, testing and snapping and snarling but not confident enough yet to go in with teeth.

Hector Ghosh

His eyes blaze when she turns back around but with the Rage inside of him rather than some stoked-up hotness of emotion threatened to burst out of him. In the darkness is the only time she's seen him grapple with the monster inside of him before and they are not in the darkness now. The day is chilled and wet but it is not dark. Weak light pushes in through the windows and she can see that he has control over himself.

Far more frightening the monster that will stand there and let her scream at him and take the heat of her disappointment and her wounded anger and her disgust because he loves her than the one that could snap and tear apart the entire house before he realized what had happened to her or the one that could walk out of the house never having felt the sting of a lash because he wouldn't let her hit him.

All this time he's kept to himself the truth of the story of her sister's pack's demise. What he told her and the Warders that afternoon he came back to the Sept of Forgotten Questions was true enough. But it was about the deaths of First Light and Hornet's Nest and just their deaths. Not what came before or what came after. The Warders didn't care about that but Lola did and he kept that from her.

Lola did not stop her work and bank the coals when Hector arrived this afternoon and it's taken him more than several seconds to sort out what the hell happened between his arriving and her confronting him. Nothing happened but they aren't exactly dissimilar in this. If they stop moving then they start to think about the things that keep them moving so hard for so long in the first place.

He releases her biceps not so he will not hurt her but so she can have back her space and he holds out his arms like to say Here I am, let me have it.

"What'd he tell you, Lola?" he asks and his voice is loud because he's goading her. Like she won't let him have it unless he gives her something to swing at. Like they're sucking poison out of a wound. "That I was supposed to lead their Gatherings but I didn't even bother showing up? Huh?"

Lola Hawkes

"That's precisely fucking it!"

She doesn't scream it at him, doesn't bellow or roar.  He's loud, and she is too, but this is different.  She isn't goading, not as he is her.  Her response is precisely what he was hoping to get-- the poison sucked from the wound.

He got a rise out of her, and her voice was more like a tear of something raw and emotional through the gap of air between them.  He'd let her go, but she hadn't stepped back.  His Rage was a beast wide-awake tonight, and it was present enough that she could visibly see it in his face now.  In purposeful spite of that, though, she stood glued to the ground where she'd planted her feet-- bare now, mind you.  When she'd changed clothes she switched to jeans and a quarter-sleeve tee and that was all-- no socks or shoes, no original intent to leave the house in any timely way.

Tears didn't blur her eyes yet, though.  She still looked more like she was expecting a fight, like she had to keep her hackles up and her appearance tough and threatening.

"You choked on your grief and couldn't stand and howl for them.  That's forgivable, but you couldn't even fucking be there?  Where the fuck were you?  Huh?"

Hector Ghosh

"Oh, did he not tell you that?"

He knows damned well why Corey wouldn't have told her where he was. Even without knowing the medium or the place or the time of their conversation he has sussed out that a conversation did occur and it concerned his absence and she's already heard the disgraced alpha's side of things.

They're standing close enough that Lola can smell the city washed off of him and Hector can smell the dried sweat and the salt and the adrenaline on her and Garou are plenty dangerous as it is for their needs and their drives but she's in his space seething and shoving during his moon. But he isn't backing off either. He isn't retreating from the possibility of a conversation about What Happened and he isn't shutting down and he isn't grappling with the desire to let go his civility and tear apart everything around him.

He's fucking angry and she can see that he's fucking angry but he also knows he's right. No one but he and the spirits know where he was that night. His tone doesn't jangle with that affected calm anymore. This is the bitter sarcasm she's only heard him use once. The last defense he has before he coughs up what killed his pack.

"That's really weird. How can Corey not have told you where I was? It's almost like--ohhh. Oh, wait. Yeah, that's because when I got back, he kicked the shit out of me and left! I almost forgot!"

Lola Hawkes

Lola's hands flexed at her sides and her arms  clamped to her sides.  Her right shoulder had jerked, like she was going to throw the mean right hook that she'd defined herself with at age fourteen when she'd knocked some poor Half-Moon teen's molar loose.  But she didn't lash out and strike, even though Hector's retort made her want to punch his mouth.

While she was able to refrain from throwing fists, there was still plenty of sharp demand in her voice when she yelled back at him.

Yeah, we're yelling now.

"I'm not defending him!  And you're not dodging the topic.  Where.  Were.  You?"

Hector Ghosh

The sight of her preparing to haul off and strike him has Hector raising himself up to his full height and looking her right in the eye. Some reproach in his gaze but no disbelief. He knows every time he smarts off to someone who cares about him that violence is the next logical step. They are creatures born for violence. Were not for their violence Gaia would suffer even more than she already does.

But Lola knows what happened to the last person who struck Hector because of lost patience. Despite all the lingering feelings of attachment and affection they will probably never see each other again. It's easy to love Hector but easier to lose him. Solitude clings to him tighter than any person has since the cub finders came for him and she can tell he would have rather she hit him than persisted.

Tough luck, buddy. She persists.

Hector steps back from her then and a flash of pain comes up in his eyes. A scab torn off but at least he doesn't hit the wall or crackle with Rage threatening to spill over and engulf everything. He paces down the corridor a few steps but not in retreat. His hands rake through his hair and he stops maybe ten feet from her and she can hear him breathing and see the lift and fall of his ribs beneath the muscle and the skin.

When he's pulled himself together enough to talk his hands go to his hips. He's staring down at the floor.

"I went out to make talens," he says. Like a bereft human would start a story of personal loss with a trip to buy milk or toilet paper. "Like the one I made you, only for... weapons, you know, strengthening arrows. The Guardians of the Wendigo Caern used bows and I thought it'd be a good parting gift. I should have told Corey and Tamsin where I was going, but I didn't. I thought I'd be back in a few hours. I wasn't back in a few hours. I was in the Umbra and I pissed off a rock gaffling trying to bind it and it went running off. I'm like Oh that's not good. Couple minutes later a huge rock jaggling tracks me down and backhands me off a cliff. The blow hurt bad enough but then I hit the ground."

He turns around and holds out his arms again. His eyes are still molten but his voice has lost its heat. Hasn't yet turned to flint.

"Where was I? Lying at the bottom of a ravine with a broken back. Couldn't even shift to start healing up until I was awake again, and I didn't call for help because I..." And he knows this is a stupid reason. Hector sniffs to clear the congestion building up in his sinuses and that's as much a declaration of his refusal to cry in front of her as she's going to get while she's still furious with him. "I didn't want something to happen to Corey or Tamsin crossing the Gauntlet. I know they tried the Questing Stone because Tamsin said they did later but it isn't like GPS. It's more like a Go that way! and I was pretty far out and... I know I should have been at the Caern with them. Alright? I know."

Lola Hawkes

Finally, that dense electric cord of tension and challenge snapped between them.  This isn't to say that either of them has calmed down, or that they wouldn't go for one another's throats still.  It simply means that the close stare that they were engaged in had finally been broken.  Up until this point, when Hector had grabbed her arm, they'd been staring hard into each other's faces, refusing to break away or back down.

At last, though, when Lola insisted that he explain himself and tell her what it was that kept him from seeing her sister off, he stepped back.

At first it seemed that he would retreat into a different room, as he paced up the hallway just one extra step enough that the suspicion of him trying to escape the conversation flashed in her mind and burned as a small flash of insult in her chest.  But he stopped, and turned about to tell his story.  Lola stood listening, jaw clenched and fists balled up at her sides.  Her face didn't effectively show how she felt about his explanation-- it was stuck at a mask of defense and challenge.  His Rage and the situation altogether had not diffused yet, after all.

When he concluded, she was quiet for a few ticks of the second hand.  Then she was at it again.  Apparently the explanation alone wasn't enough to calm her-- she was worked up now and would need more than just an excuse-- nay, an explanation, let's be fair, to ease back and come on down to level ground once more.  It was the explanation she had demanded, but he knew her well enough to know that once she was all wound up as she was it would take some time for her to get back down.

"That's it?  Really?"  Her lip curled, and she looked about ready to gnash teeth at him.  "Something as fuckin' stupid as 'I Got My Shit Knocked Out'?  How fucking long were you out, Ghosh, huh?  Was it really a full two fuckin' days?  'Cause I'm no doctor or nothing, and I know y'all are an exception to most rules, but two days worth of unconsciousness would make you dead."

Hector Ghosh

And the Galliard raises his eyebrows and chews on his lower lip like he can't tell if she's serious or if she's stupid or if she's just held so tight to her anger the last however-many days it's been that she's slow to let go of it. Doesn't look like he finds this amusing. If anything he looks slightly baffled but it's quick to dissolve.

There's a reason he came out of the bathroom and grabbed hold of her. He isn't the only one still hurting from what happened in another land this summer. So much of her hurt came from his and the only time they've talked about it beyond his initial report in the cab of her truck was when he lashed out at her for apologizing. Neither of them are apologizing but Lola can't just let him off the hook even in the seconds that she stands absorbing his story.

A reason he came out of the bathroom and a reason he didn't tell her he's sorry.

"Okay, I know you're Kinfolk, and you can't cross the Gauntlet and see it yourself, so the Umbra is a concept beyond the scope of your comprehension--"

Yeah. He just went there.

"--but if you get hit over there, it isn't just your body. Alright. Wounds over there cut right to your spirit. We're half spirit. Physical bodies can't cross the Gauntlet unless they're bound onto your spirit. You following so far? Alright, and since you were having trouble following along with this complicated story the first time I told you what happened, I'm gonna go ahead and repeat myself: I spent a day making talens and I pissed off a little rock spirit so a bigger rock spirit knocked me off a cliff and I broke my back when I hit the ground and I couldn't shift to heal enough to drag my paralyzed ass out of the ravine until I wasn't unconscious anymore."

He frowns and scoffs like this just occurred to him:

"If you wanna hit me, just--" He gestures to his chin. "Let's go. Come on. Quit snapping your jaws and hit me."

Lola Hawkes

Emotions shift from one to the next on Hector's face, and when he answers her Lola was pretty sure that his tone couldn't be more condescending if it tried.

She looked stricken, first and strongest.  Eyebrows turned up in the middle and her eyes flashed for a second.  Then she took a breath, furrowed those expressive eyebrows back down, and listened to him continue.  She had her mouth open like she was ready to talk, but was stopped when he challenged her to hit him and pointed to his own chin.  She drew the inside of her lower lip between her teeth and bit down, holding back the urge to spit her ire at him.  Hands flexed again, but they didn't budge from her sides all the same.

"What I'm hearin' is a Sept of racist fuck-offs that had to be talked into letting a pair of Pale-Faces attend their own packmate's gathering....  Is that these assholes and their delight was worth traversin' away from your grieving packmates for?  Was worth puttin' yourself in a situation where ya could get lost, or turned on, or backhanded off a fuckin' cliff...  Tamsin and Corey weren't your focus, it was them, and your excuse to escape your fuckin' responsibility and guilt."

He wanted her to hit him because it would be easier than hearing her lay him out with words.  But she wouldn't give him that.  Remember that analogy, of sucking poison from a wound?

Lola was throwing dice, and gambling that she didn't draw too much Rage to the surface while trying to pull poison instead.

Hector Ghosh

"You know what?"

And he's standing in her hallway shirtless and hair dripping. It's her territory and he has no claim to this territory. For all the preemptive apologizing and the previous close-calls insofar as succumbing to frenzy went Hector doesn't look as if he's about to give into one strong emotion or another. Telling her what had caused the fight that effectively killed her sister's pack meant he had to confess to a misstep even graver than the misstep that caused the Gathering in the first place.

To call him vulnerable right now would be a gross understatement. But despite the Rage inside of him and the heft of the moon not yet shining in the sky, the things that make her far more vulnerable than him for the softness of her flesh and the finality of her last breath compared to if she were born True, nothing flares up in him. For as much as his goading condescension struck Lola he doesn't bristle with her accusations.

No threat of tears either like when he'd spoken Corey's name the last time or when he'd spoken of lying at the bottom of a ravine still but just barely alive moments ago. He sounds like he's throwing up his hands and conceding the fight.

"I don't know what else to tell you, man. You want to play Mad Libs with what I was thinking three months ago and make out like I'm that big of a pussy that I can't... just let me make sure I'm hearing you right. You think I didn't do what I'm supposed to do because I was sad? Is that it? I was sad, so I ran off into the woods to ditch out on my Pale-Face pack? You wanna frame it like that?"

Over the course of his retort the Galliard has managed at least to piss himself off enough that he can scowl and hold up his hands palm-out like to show her he's unarmed as he walks past her towards the front door. All of his belongings and his boots and his shirt and all the other stuff he lugs with him when he comes out here still in the bathroom.

"That's fine. That's totally cool. This is America. You can do whatever the hell you want."

Lola Hawkes

His refusal to rise and yell back now, to break and scream and cry and let his Rage beat violently at the banks of its own riverbed wasn't something that Lola was prepared for.

No!, her mind yelled.

This isn't how it's supposed to go!

They don't just walk away!

She was at a loss, her own temper sputtering and fizzling with nowhere to go.  He walked past her, not so much as brushing shoulders with her, not pushing her out of his way or giving her anything to lash at but the back of his shoulders as he walked for the door.  With nowhere to turn her own rage, it rebounded upon itself.

Keep him, make him stay, don't let him walk out.

But that wasn't exactly an option, now was it?

Go after him!  Things can't just end this way, you can't let Maria's pack just keep spiraling away from you.

But her pride, her anger, and her inability to make things right stopped that too.

So, while Hector went for the front door, Lola spun about and cut across the kitchen and dining area to the back door instead.  He probably wouldn't stop her, so assuming that he didn't, assuming he continued just as determined to vacate out the front door on his own, Lola throws open the door to the back of the house and slams it shut just as she would have if she were a sullen sixteen year old who had just lost a fight with her parents.  She was barefoot too, but luckily for her there was a pair of beat up sneakers that she kept at the back of the house.  They were soggy from all of the rain, but that was unimportant and she jammed her feet into them anyways before stomping off deeper into her own property, cutting across the backyard and down the hill's edge that a pack of young Garou would lay against to chatter and relax and share intoxicants and watch the sky.