Hector Ghosh
Try
to explain to someone how to keep breathing after you've had the wind
knocked out of you. It isn't a process or a conscious decision. You just
keep doing it. No choice in it and no analysis.
Twelve of them
down into that pit and they were bloody and torn-up when they came back
up out of it and they couldn't say they won because that would be
bullshit. Three of the Beloved Horror to include their terrible alpha
got away. But the portal is closed. The Spire Sept can rest. The twelve
didn't think of it like that. They didn't think much at all. Too
enormous an ordeal and too little time to sit and chat. Blood-drenched
in the middle of the city as they were they scattered.
They took
Thomas to see Fog as soon as it was over. Thomas went home to his
people. Hector went home to Lola. Took Tamsin with him. They sprayed
themselves down and he stayed with his packsister until she fell asleep
but then he went downstairs to find his woman.
Nobody needs to
hear about what they did when the door was shut. Hector
Echoes-of-the-Lost blurted out the fact that the woman is pregnant while
he was kicking Milton Pokes-the-Mind's-Eye in the ribs on the side of
the highway Thursday night. It's pretty obvious they aren't playing
pinochle out there in the cabin all but isolated from the rest of the
Nation.
---
Dawn comes. Dawn will come the morning after one
of them dies and it will keep coming after the last human life is
starved off the surface of the planet because that is what Dawn does.
And
after they eat and he tells her what happened and she peppers him with
questions and gloats for Lola's half-formed cleansing-bomb idea
contributed to saving them all from fucking dying Hector ties back his
hair and puts on his boots and says he's going to go bother Thomas. They
need to stop off at the liquor store first.
She's coming with him, right?
---
His
house skulks out there in the woods like some paranoid libertarian
millionaire's total-collapse-of-society hideaway shelter and even from a
distance as they wander up towards its front Lola can imagine what
Hector's reaction was to seeing it the first time. Like as not the same
one she has.
He's holding the brown paper bag into which the liquor store purchase went against his chest like it's a very small child.
"He
didn't mope too bad last night," he says to Lola as they mount the
front porch steps. "Maybe he's getting the hang of this
being-an-unstoppable-death-machine thing."
And he taps a one-handed rendition of his usual SOMEONE ANNOYING IS AT THE DOOR :D drum-line knock against the door.
Thomas Delacroix
It's
true. Thomas did not mope last night. They may not have destroyed
Beloved Horror but they survived. With the exception of Raspberry Sky,
but her death didn't seem to really so much as register to Thomas as
more than a thing that happened. (And so, almost certainly, he'll mope
about it later.)
He's relaxed when he comes to the door, because
he has learned Hector's knock. For a second he is smiling from the
automatic position where he is leaning into the doorframe with the door
only half open, because of course Thomas would answer the door
like it needs to be guarded reflexively. He steps back when it
registers on him that he is, in fact, guarding his house from Hector and
Lola, swinging the door open.
"Hey. Come in." It is the most
sane response Hector has ever gotten from him at a doorway, although it
probably seems less remarkable to Lola. Despite the impressive size of
the house, the furniture is mostly simple. Unremarkable. Wood and
leather with almost no ornamentation. Reese has brought in, gradually,
more and more bits of electronics, but most of those are tucked away.
Really, the only remarkable thing inside the house is that someone has
painted abstract murals over at least one wall in pretty much every
room.
Lola Hawkes
Yesterday, Lola, just like
everyone else, was under the impression that this was a simple
investigation mission. They were going townstairs to see, to peek at,
and then come back to make a battle plan. So when Hector had left to
meet with a mass of other Garou, Lola did not wring herself with worry.
She was assured that he would be home. When Tamsin and Hector returned
drenched in blood Lola had been out on the front porch in one of the
rocking chairs, taking advantage of the mild weather and watching the
land, as well as for the Wolves to come home.
When they did arrive
she had fallen asleep in her chair-- this was becoming a habit these
days. They made noise hosing one another off that roused the Kinswoman,
and she soon transferred herself to bed after reassurance that nobody
she knew well had died.
She was roused a second time in the wee
hours of the morning when Hector transferred himself from the loft
upstairs where Tamsin crashed (where most Garou that need a place to
crash while coming through, provided Lola likes them enough to let them
in) to the bed of his kinswoman.
---------
The next morning
they ate together, they spoke, and the Galliards would share the rough
edit of what happened last night. Lola's proud, of course, that the
first thought to fall from her mind and toss back to the Alpha of
Celduin was the concept that very well saved the day. She acknowledges
that there were casualties, but she didn't know Raspberry Sky at all and
was a bit callous with the concept of death at war. It was an
unfortunate loss, but it wasn't anyone she especially cared about.
Hector
asked if she would come along with him to go out and visit Thomas the
Shadow Lord. Lola didn't have any reasons not to, so she agreed.
---------
"Jesus
Fucking Christ," is what Lola says when they pull up to the front of
the Delacroix house in the middle of the trees. "Where the hell does
this money come from?"
But she's bored with the concept of wealth
almost as quickly as she is impressed by it. She's wearing a black
dress whose hem stops at the knee, because the weather was warm and the
skies were bright and this was likely her last opportunity to feel air
on her legs this way until next year. She has a knit wool cardigan
overtop, with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows, and brown boots that
stop a little way up her shin to end. Her hair's looped back in a
half-attempt at a bun, but really she'd just hastily wrapped it about
near the base of her neck and secured it sloppily with an elastic.
When
Thomas appears in the doorway and invites them in, Lola greets him with
an upward nod of her head rather than a bright and sunny smile. You
see, Lola wasn't a bright and sunny person. That she doesn't smile for
Thomas doesn't mean she has ill will toward him, and he likely
recognizes this by now. After all, he's seen what this Kinswoman prides
herself on doing.
"You a painting kind of Gibbous Moon?" She asks him this after stepping inside and seeing the walls.
Javed Anubis-Sight
It
is a funny moment in time, that the Strider shows up when Hector and
Lola do. One of those kismet things...or perhaps it is not. Perhaps
Javed was keeping an eye on one or both of them, to make sure that
Th'vak'nis or D'stok or Je'nash did not seek retribution against one or
the other members of Celduin.
In truth though, that's not the
case. The metis trusts the members of Fog's pack and has confidence in
them, never more so than after last night. The Strider may not express
it in the same way others might; he is not a creature that feels much in
the way of pride. But he was honored to fight with them, to do the
impossible. And the impossible is exactly what they accomplished. They
left bloody and torn and emptied of so much that was important to them,
but they left triumphant. Never mind the fact that three escaped.
Never mind that another Garou of Denver lost their life, albeit one who
had much sickness to tend to. They banished Green Dragon and they
killed three high-ranking Black Spiral Dancers. And they did it without
losing a single member of their expedition.
That's victory.
And
now healed and whole again, he makes his way to Thomas'. The Strider
is still walking slowly; healing fixes a lot, but it does not banish the
weariness. And the Strider is very weary, but it is a satisfied
weary. They could be much worse.
And so, moments after the door
closes, another knock sounds. Javed stands there in his single set of
clothes. The grey tank top, the loose pants, the worn shoes. He waits
after the knock, single eye scanning the area just in case. Always
ready, that one, even if now would be an unlikely time for the Spirals
to strike.
Hector Ghosh
Hector looks like a slob
next to Lola but he can't just throw on a dress and a cardigan and call
it a day. Or if he could nobody would want to be seen in public with him
because he's six feet tall and built like a festivus pole. He is
wearing a pair of pants that are not dedicated which means no one has
seen them before which means they're wrinkled. But they're black. It
doesn't matter. Black hides a multitude of sins.
He doesn't give a
shit that they're projecting it's going to be in the low sixties and
sunny today. The Uktena Galliard wears a long-sleeved gray henley
underneath an army jacket. Between the fact that he slept last night and
his Rage was drained to the dregs fighting unspeakable horrors Hector
only looks like a young man with a chip on his shoulder and not some
hardcore face-eating mass murderer who locked his parole officer in the
trunk of his car before continuing on his way.
A young man with a
chip on his shoulder and a HEY YOU'RE STILL ALIVE bright-and-sunny smile
on his face. Before he interacts with Thomas he lets the kinswoman go
ahead of him into the house. Has to take his hand off her back to do it
but they're around other people now so that was going to happen anyway.
"God, Lola," he says, "you can't just ask people if they paint."
Something
in the woods behind them perks his ears and Javed can see the Uktena
turn his head to look. His eyes unblinking but not scared. Just
observing before he shuts the door. Which he then hauls open before the
knock ends to face the visitor. Like this is his house.
Welcome to Celduin, Thomas.
"HEY!"
he says and that earnest happy-to-see-you expression comes back to the
Cliath's face. He's not going to be a Cliath much longer. Better get all
the acting-like-an-idiot behavior out of his system now while he still
can. "Anubis-Sight-rhya! What's up!"
They're not in the military
or some secret government organization. They're separated by one rank.
Hector lets go of the door to slap Javed a high-five. Keeps holding the
booze in the other. At Javed's inevitable confusion:
"Don't leave me hanging, man."
Thomas Delacroix
Thomas
gives Hector a puzzled look when he tells Lola she can't ask people if
they paint, because he isn't sure if that is something that is a real
thing or if words are just coming out of Hector's mouth. Sometimes,
it's just hard for him to tell. Regardless, he answers Lola, shaking
his head a little. "No. Reese painted them. He was...." Thomas'
expression darkens for a second, but then he blinks and whatever that
was about, the expression is gone. "Bored."
And then Hector is
taking over answering the door and welcoming Javed, and Thomas is only
amused. Really, the only way that could have worked out better is if he
somehow could have pawned off door-answering duties on Alexis. Alexis
is good at all those things like manners.
"Anubis-Sight," he says,
giving Javed a nod with just the slightest tilt to it. It leaves his
throat something like exposed, lets his gaze hit the floor. But he's
back to looking at Javed a second later, because Javed has never stood on ceremony with him.
Lola Hawkes
Rumors
must have circled by now that Lola almost died last weekend. For a
Garou that's no big deal really. For a Kinfolk that tends to carry a
little bit more weight. It reminds the community just how frail their
Kin actually are. Sure, they may seem invincible because they are full
of spirit and fire and are intelligent creatures. This one in
particular, this last scion of the Hawkes direct family line, was
deadly. She kills without flinching, for her bullet to miss is a seldom
thing indeed, and she takes care of business when all is said and done
to boot.
But teeth cut her flesh just as easily as they cut anyone else's, and hers doesn't grow back.
She
appears healthy, though, when she crosses the threshold into this giant
house. On their way up the path to the door Hector'd had his hand at
her back, the touch comfortable and affectionate and without thought.
It's with thought that this ends soon as the door is opened and they
step inside, though. Lola and Hector aren't distant from one another
when they cross the threshold, but Lola parts from him when he turns to
answer the door and hovers in front of one painted-on wall with her
hands in the pockets of her sweater.
Thomas said that Reese
painted them when he was (ellipsis) bored. Something flashed in Lola's
eyes and she glanced over to Thomas, watched his face when he concluded
his explanation with a storm cloud over his head. The look in her eyes
wasn't a negative thing or an accusing one, or anything of anger or
suspicion. Simply, it was a lightbulb moment. When she grasped a
concept firmly and added it to an equation.
She may have started
to say something she would regret later, but Javed is at the door and
Lola turns to greet him as well. We may notice she switches her posture
just a little when the Fostern Ahroun is introduced into the equation.
Subtly, she's trying to be more impressive.
"Javed. Afternoon."
Javed Anubis-Sight
Javed
does many things. He sleeps in strange places, because it is what he
is used to. He rips heads off, because he enjoys the effectiveness and
brutality of the move when it is time for combat. He apologizes every
time that he has to ask someone who they are, because he is ever
cognizant about the fact that it is his burden to bear, not theirs.
Conversely,
there are things that he does not do. He doesn't smile (or very rarely
does), because it does not befit an Honorful creature of heavy Rage and
many sins levied to his name. He doesn't communicate via a totemic
bond with his packmate, because neither of them wish that. He does not
ask for mercy, because he neither expects nor gives any. And he does
not high-five, because...
Well, because he just doesn't.
So
when Hector raises his hand high and asks not to leave him hanging, the
Ahroun does indeed show confusion. But it is true; he can tell who this
is by Hector's actions, not to mention his presence here with Thomas,
who he can guess (because who's house is this, after all?) and a woman
whom he does not immediately recognize. He can assume though, based on
the fact that she is with them and considerably shorter than Tamsin.
Reason puts together who the man is. And he placidly (for him; after
all, his Rage was largely depleted last night) reaches up and takes
Hector's hand, bringing it down into a clasping of forearms. For the
Falcon who is also a child of Owl, that is a gesture of camaraderie.
"Good
afternoon, Echooes of the Lost." He turns his attention to the
others. "Ms. Hawkes." He's almost got the pronunciation of Ms. down, though it is still somewhat eluding him. "Thunder’s Cry Echoes From the Sea. It is most pleasant to see you all."
Hector Ghosh
One
of the nice things about associating with Hector is that Hector does
not carry with him expectations. Not about himself and not about other
people. For shouldering the weight of a Cliath of Javed's moon he
conducts himself like someone who is in a decent mood most of the time.
Whatever temper one can ascribe to him is the fault of his Rage and not
his personality.
So he holds up a hand to slap five with Javed and
Javed quickly and quietly sorts out who the fuck this is based on the
presence of the other figures in the room and the mannerisms of the
skinny noisy creature in front of him. It is telling that Javed does not
ignore him. That he reaches up to properly position his hand and arm so
that he might clasp it high up on the arm so they greet each other like
warriors.
Hector's grip is strong and once the greeting is over
they step away from each other. He closes the door behind Javed and zips
off into the kitchen to put down the booze.
"DUDE," he yells from
the kitchen. Guess what his voice does. "You've got bitching acoustics
in here. You know what you should do? Never get furniture."
Thomas Delacroix
Thomas watches Hector go barging off into his kitchen and just laughs.
"Would
the two of you like to come sit down? Clearly he's-" Thomas waves off
to where Hector is yelling about the acoustics. "Just going to do
whatever he likes." He leads them to the main room, gathering up a
sprawl of books covered in sticky notes and setting them into a neat
stack beside the coffee table.
"You want anything? Drinks,
or...." What else do people want? Food? Blankets? Pinatas? Hosting
is clearly a complete mystery to Thomas. "....whatever?"
Lola Hawkes
Greetings
are all exchanged, and Lola looks just about as neutral as possible.
She's healthy, yes, and dressed in something besides jeans and her
canvas jacket because this isn't Lola on Patrol. This is Lola on a day
off, so to speak. Outside of her element, dropped into strictly social
settings, she's quiet and a touch uncomfortable. She is to
get-togethers as Thomas is to hosting guests.
Her hands stay in
her pockets, and she nods to Javed in answer to his greeting. He'd been
able to place a name to her today, and this pleased her. It made her a
bit proud, to be recognized by the stoic warrior who couldn't recognize
faces. She's seen him decimate two enemies in seconds flat, before
anyone else had a chance to do any work. All that Lola had contributed
that night was the bullet that put a greviously injured beast out of its
misery. He was a Metis, but he was an impressive one.
Hector
flounced off into the kitchen and shouted about accoustics. Lola
watched after him, then shifted her attention to Thomas when he spoke,
offering them drinks and another ellipsis. She felt for him-- social
was difficult. Weight shifted on the flat soles of her boots and she
turned to follow after where Hector had gone, into the kitchen. She
opted for this rather than heading into the main sitting area, stating
as she went.
"I'll help myself to water, thank you."
She didn't think to offer to bring anyone anything back.
Javed Anubis-Sight
Hector
runs off to the kitchen and the Ahroun watches him go, head cocking
curiously. The Strider may even show some faint level of amusement in
his eyes (eye), but it is brief and after a standard blink it is gone as
if it had never been there. He is then looking to the Shadow Lord
whose door he had darkened this day, and shakes his head politely to the
offer of hospitality.
"I am content, thank you."
He does
take the offer to sit down, finding a spot that is comfortable and
settling into it. Javed does not particularly sit on furniture in a
comfortable manner as a rule; he is more at ease when he can stand or
drop into a crouch. But to do either would be rude and instead he
settles into a seat, leaning forward slightly with his palms resting
flat on the tops of his legs near his knee.
"I trust you have
recovered appropriately?" This to the Shadow Lord of course, as Lola
and Hector are both off in the kitchen now (or heading to it).
Hector Ghosh
When
Lola joins him in the kitchen Hector is taking the booze out of the
brown bag and setting it onto the counter. He starts to fold the bag
back up all anal-retentive about saving room in the recycling bin and
then looks around and realizes there is no recycling bin. Fucking
Thomas.
The Galliard rolls his eyes even though no one is watching
him and he flips the bag over his shoulder. It lands half on the
counter and half hanging over the sink.
Lola says she'll get
herself water and appears in the hallway. Hector turns towards her and
then lifts his eyebrows and looks over her head to ascertain the others'
intentions. No sign of them. He must have figured they all would be
right behind him. That changes his game plan.
So he takes Lola's hand and puts his other hand on her hip and decides to waltz her around the empty kitchen while he talks.
"I'm
so glad he's not moping," he says. Doesn't even try to be quiet about
it. "I was worried. This place is sick, isn't it? Maybe he'll let me and
Tamsin use the dining room to record our EP. When we become
internationally-adored rock stars we can buy him some furniture."
He lets go of her and starts banging through the cabinets looking for glasses.
Thomas Delacroix
Glasses
are easy enough to find. All kinds of glasses, because generally Reese
stays here and heaven forbid there not be proper glassware. The
kitchen isn't entirely empty, but even being one of the most often used
rooms in the house it just doesn't feel like somewhere people really
live. Especially since the freezer is full of things when Lola goes to
get ice, but the refrigerator is mostly just drinks and condiments.
"Yeah.
I'm fine. You?" Thomas settles onto the couch. "Also, not that I
mind you knocking, but you do have a standing invitation. I know it's a
weekend and all, but still. As a rule...." He glances at the kitchen.
It would be just like Hector to walk in if he actually said anything
relevant. "It shouldn't be a problem."
Lola Hawkes
One Galliard and an Ahroun end up in the sitting room. Another Galliard and what would have been an Ahroun are in the kitchen.
Here
Lola enters and looks around the room, clearly impressed by the place.
The house was huge, and the fact that it lacked furniture and pictures
on the walls and knick-nacks and memories all over told her that Thomas
probably just moved here and hasn't bothered to actually live there yet,
to make it a home. It's impressive none the less, and Lola was on her
way over to observe the stove and the cut-out window in front of it that
allowed for something to look at other than a backsplash while
cooking. This is where she's interrupted by Hector, who takes one of her
hands up in his.
When he does this, she cuts him a semi-startled
look, but he goes on ahead and drops the other hand to her hip and
starts them moving in rhythmic circles in the open space. She isn't
sure what to do with her left arm (Lola isn't the dancing sort) when he
takes her right hand away, so she places it awkwardly on his arm at
first, decides that isn't right, and sets it on his shoulder instead.
She lets him pull her along, unwilling to rain on the mood of victory.
Lola's
pleased with the story of how last night went. She doesn't trust that
they should relax or expect it to be over, though. They still had the
airport to worry about.
"Why would he mope, anyways? You all tore
apart Beloved Horror and only lost one. That... tunnel, whatever it
was, it's closed off. It's a good day."
When he releases her and
starts looking for glasses, Lola shakes her head and, by some odd
intuition or another, manages to correctly guess the glass cabinet
before Hector finds it. She takes out a glass for herself, and then a
glass for Hector. If he's getting drinks for the other two, that's left
up to him. Lola's parched, so she's getting herself some water.
Javed Anubis-Sight
He
nods slightly at the point Thomas makes about Javed having a standing
invitation. "I recall, Thunder's Cry Echoes From the Sea. And I am
most appreciative of your offer. Sometime soon I will likely have a
regular place to rest with my packmate, but the offer is kept in mind."
He pauses there, and offers that slightest uptick of his lips that
could be considers (but really isn't) a smile. Its a gesture of
courtesy, of politeness. "That being said, offer or not, this is still
your territory. I would be remiss if I did not knock in all but the
most crucial of situations."
Translation: Yeah, that whole 'not knocking' thing? Don't expect that to happen any time soon.
As
to the question, Javed shrugs. "I am well, all things considered.
Last night was as unmitigated of a success as we could possibly hope
for. There is still much to do, however. Not the least of which are
the hunting of the remainder of the Beloved Horror, being present for
the judgment of the elders of Cold Crescent and, for myself at least,
attempting to keep the city Sept open."
Oh yes. He hasn't forgotten about that.
Hector Ghosh
It's a good day, she says, and for that she gets a kiss on her temple before he releases her.
So
they go back to doing what they were supposed to be doing in the first
place and Lola joins Thomas and Javed in the cluster of people who have
been confused by the older Galliard today. He appears behind her when he
hears the slide of a glass against the cabinet floor when she finds the
cache but doesn't trap her there. This isn't their territory and even
if Thomas is pack now the other two in the other room are not from their
tribe.
As she goes to the sink to fill her glass Hector hauls out
two more glasses. Accepts the empty glass but then lifts his eyebrows
and indicates the sink with his chin.
If she can't smoke or drink until June then neither is he. He's gonna get Thomas shit-faced though.
So
he takes up the two empty glasses and holds the whiskey bottle like a
bell and waits until Lola has filled the other two glasses before
leading her back down the hall.
"Wait," he says as he walks in at
the end of Javed's proclamation. "I think I took too hard a blow to the
head last night. Did you say you want to keep the city Sept open?"
Thomas Delacroix
Thomas
looks between Javed and Hector for a second. This isn't the alert,
wary thing he was doing at the war moot, this is just Thomas looking
over them both for a second while he's thinking. He stays perfectly
relaxed at the edge of the couch he claimed.
"There are good
reasons to have a base of operations in the city. Particularly if we
are going to be monitoring and guarding that place. But, considering
what that place is, it might be best if where we have our kin staying
and our people gathering isn't perched atop some unspeakable horror
cave. It may be best to find an alternate location."
Lola Hawkes
When
Hector had come up behind Lola upon her discovery of where the glasses
are, she had trusted that he wasn't going to try anything that he would
in the same situation in their own home. They have an unstated
agreement-- they didn't like flaunting what they had in front of people,
so they kept it out of eyesight instead.
She'd left a glass
behind for him to fill with whiskey, but he'd caught her attention,
looked at his glass and her and the sink all significantly. She took
the hint with a small smirk that's sort of like appreciation but
suggests she'll probably talk to him about this subject another time.
With two glasses of water, two empty glasses and a bottle of whiskey in
hand, the pair of Uktena rejoin the others in the sitting room.
Just
in time to hear that Javed feels that the Spire Sept should remain
established. Lola's expression wasn't a smile when she walked in, but
it was content none the less. That drops when she hears this, and she
looks somewhere between mildly taken aback and disappointed instead.
Hector voices his opinion, Thomas does as well, and Lola glowers for a
moment, appearing uncomfortable, before simply downing three fourths of
her glass of water in one go.
"I'm gonna go check out your yard,"
is what she announces to Thomas. Hector gets a glance with a small
raise of her eyebrows, but after that the Kinfolk goes roaming through
the house to locate a porch, a back door, whatever it would be that
would take her outside of the cavernous establishment.
She'll hang
out there for the rest of the visit, breathing the air and quelling the
surge of nauseated discomfort in her stomach that manifested in two
minutes flat, between filling glasses in the kitchen to standing in the
main room. This will be explained to Hector (not Thomas or Javed) when
they leave eventually.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Need A Plan - 10.22.2013 [Hector]
Lola Hawkes
The god thing about having a routine is that it's easy to fall back into after your world is disrupted. It's been three days since Hector retrieved Lola from the hospital that she'd been left at, since they had pinned a flimsy ultrasound print-out to the fridge because they didn't know where else to put something like that. Sunday was spent resting, processing, recovering. Monday, it was back to it. Lola had packed up her pack, bid Hector farewell for now, and went out on her patrols.
Today, Tuesday, Hector had left sometime in the afternoon. He and some others were going to check out the apartment where Champion of Honor had been discovered. They were going with that cub-- not Fern, the other one-- that they'd recovered from Beloved Horror's wake. Lola spent the day not too far from the home. She'd gone on a three hour patrol that didn't take her very far off of Hawkes Territory and raked leaves off of the churned and sectioned patches of dirt that would be a garden come this time next year. Then, with the sun setting, she started a fire in the backyard and settled down to spend the evening outside.
This is where Lola is around nine o' clock, long after the sun has set. It was a warm day, though, and the night was mild and comfortable. Lola didn't have a coat or a blanket out with her. Rather, she was sitting in one of the iron wrought chairs that she'd dragged down off the back porch to sit around the fire pit. She had on a pair of boots, jean cuffs tucked into those boots, and a large black hooded sweatshirt that was zipped up to her chest. The hood was up, her hair spilled out of it to rest on her shoulders and chest.
Her feet were propped up on a block of wood so that her soles faced the fire, and her hands were in her hoodie pockets. The way she was kicked back she might have fallen asleep in the chair.
Hector Ghosh
Hector left on foot before the sun went down. He had been cleaning up a mess in the kitchen when Lola left on patrols and had left a mess on the front porch where he'd been whittling something when his phone went off. They'd known for a while now that a trip to the apartment was in the pipeline but it was Keisha's mission, not Hector's.
He does not return on foot as he tends to when he goes off on his own. A vehicle older than most of the Sept's Cliaths comes clunking up the driveway and sits behind the truck for a couple of minutes. If Lola has not fallen asleep she can hear the engine running as it idles parked. Whoever drives the thing does not opt to come inside. A door opens and Hector says, "Alright girl, go get your drink on" before clapping the door shut again.
And the car reverses and turns around and goes back off into the night.
Hector stands still in the warm night. Does not join his woman at the fire. He takes long hurried strides the rest of the way up the drive and mounts the porch steps and slams into the house. If no lights are on in the great room he does not awaken any.
Lola Hawkes
Hector would be able to see Lola from where the car winds up idling. You see, the shed/garage is situated diagonally from the house-- to the back and to the left, if you're standing facing out from the back door. The duo of dirt grooves into the earth that serves as a driveway this far away from the main road goes to the garage's double doors, and Lola's truck is parked directly in front of them rather than inside. When the car pulls up, if Lola had been asleep at all she was awoken. She's sitting with her back out to the trees, facing the middle point between driveway and house wall.
She lifts her chin from her chest and watches while Hector and Keisha (identity determined after watching, investigating, squinting through dark, remembering) talk in the cab of the car while it idles. The door opens, Hector gets out, and Keisha goes to leave. Lola will lift a hand to wave to the Theurge as she goes. Perhaps the gesture is returned (it probably is, Keisha is a good soul).
Hector doesn't come to join her, though. He hustles around to the front of the house rather than coming around back where the orange light of the fire flickers and beckons. Lola stays seated long enough to hear the door slam both ways-- into the face of the house when thrown open, back into the frame when slammed shut.
Lola straightens up after the door slams, hesitates with a glance toward the sky, and then stands up anyways. He would certainly have reasons to rush to solitude, she trusted that.
But she was a Uktena too. They couldn't leave mysteries alone.
So a minute or two after Hector slammed his way through the front door, Lola enters calmly through the back.
Hector Ghosh
When he's fully dressed it takes him a long time to disrobe. He wears layers like he expects the weather to turn from sunny to snowy in the amount of time it would take him to put up his hood and unlacing his work boots is a task he tends to save until the very end of the day so he doesn't have to put them back on. The chances he'll pin her to the wall or the floor instead of taking her to bed tend to increase with the brightness of the moon. His patience hemorrhages when Luna shines as bright as she did the night he was born.
So in the hundred or so seconds that Lola sits in contemplation of what to do he hasn't managed to completely disrobe and throw himself in the shower. No light shines in the hall between the laundry room and the bathroom. He hears the door and her quiet footfalls. She hears a boot fall to the ground and then his voice:
"Warning! Pants are coming off!"
Like she hasn't seen that before. The second boot lands.
Lola Hawkes
"That's nothing new."
Lola calls this casually through the dark house. There's a big candle burning on the coffee table in the living room, filling the house with the smell of 'autumn leaves', as far as that candle is concerned. Other than that all of the lights are still off. Hector's somewhere up the hallway, as far as she can hear.
Lola doesn't shuck the sweater she's wearing when she's inside. Rather she leaves her sweater on, her boots as well, and ventures on slow feet through the house. Just as Hector had left the lights off, Lola does as well. With her hands in her hoodie pockets she comes searching for the Galliard.
Since he was disrobing she assumed he would be in the bathroom or the bedroom. Wherever it is that she finds him, she settles herself in the doorway and leans a shoulder against the doorframe, half in the hallway still.
"What did you find?"
Hector Ghosh
The knobs on the washing machine sing their metallic croaking song as Hector adjusts the settings before cramming his jeans in its mouth and slamming the lid. It rushes with water as Lola comes upon him in the dark. He looks over and the darkness occludes his features. All she has is his disrobed figure in the corridor, rings and bracelets and necklaces still adorning his flesh. When he sees her Hector takes a long step back from her. If she were to have kept approaching she cannot doubt he would have kept inserting distance between them.
He starts to pop the rings off of his fingers as he inches towards the bathroom. The washing machine keeps flooding its own innards with water. He'd even thrown his boots inside.
"It looked clean," he says. "Didn't feel clean at all. The things they did to him were..."
It isn't that he can't find the words. It's that he doesn't want to turn them over.
"Keisha made a rookie mistake and ate before we went inside. Hippies, man. They can't handle their torture orgy visions. I'm getting in the shower, I need to scrub the insides of my eyeballs."
Into the bathroom he goes.
Lola Hawkes
Having spent her entire life around Garou, Lola knows that there are times when you need to mind your distance. This can be for a number of reasons. They might not be able to handle their Rage or other urges in that moment, which makes it wise and easier on everyone if you keep your distance. They might have something toxic or tainted on their flesh, and you need to keep away to avoid having to contend with the Banes that come calling to your contamination a couple weeks later.
So, when Lola finds Hector in the hallway and he moves a long-legged step away from her in response to her proximity, she takes the hint and doesn't attempt to close distance or touch him. She just stands with her hands in her pockets still, watching the Galliard's sleek shape in the shadows of the house as he starts to explain, stops, starts again, and then announces that he needs to wash his eyeballs and moves to the bathroom. Lola sidesteps to give him berth to pass through the doorway.
She's quiet long enough for him to turn the knobs and get the water running in the shower, weakened by the fact that the washing machine was running but the water pressure was not necessarily dismal because of it. When she does speak again, it's in that tone that she has when she's being analytical-- seeking and soaking up information that she can use to make a plan, to continue the push of War. It's the same voice she has when they talk about current events, when she's discussing plans at a Warmoot with other Garou that respect her enough to allow her to lend her words to theirs.
"I don't think anyone doubted that he was tortured, though. You guys didn't go there just to find that out, I'm pretty sure. Did we get anything that we can use?"
Beat.
"...Should I leave the lights off for some reason? Or would you prefer not to shower in pitch dark?"
Hector Ghosh
He did not return from the apartment touched by the evil they found still lingering in the spirit of the place but as Lola watches him she can get the impression that he feels unclean all the same. Aside from offhand and surface jokes about the fostering he'd had in Arizona, the story he'd told her about the punishment rite he'd watched his mentor perform, she has heard little of how much he was exposed to before he had even been accepted into the Nation.
It's a wonder he didn't go insane. That takes a level of objective and detached observation. If the Children of Gaia had gotten to him before the Uktena he would be of much less use to the Nation. He would not know half as much as he knows.
No taint followed him home. He still doesn't have anywhere else to go to separate himself from her when she follows him into the bathroom. The drive back from the city gave him time to clear his head and she would know if he were upset or unbalanced. Agitation still rides beneath his skin and something keeps him from going to her.
"I'm waiting for Wolf's blessing to wear off," he says. Translates: "I can see fine without them. I didn't think to--"
Jesus. Hector reaches around Lola and hits the switch to grant the bathroom light. He's left his jewelry sat beside the sink. No marks or injuries mar him and he doesn't appear ill or in danger of becoming ill. His pupils adjust to the light as fast as they're supposed to. The water struggles to warm up behind him, competing with the washing machine for the heater's attention.
Okay. So they're going to talk.
He turns off the water, then glances down and yanks up a towel and holds it in front of his waist.
"I think all we need to do is destroy Green Dragon. No big deal."
Lola Hawkes
Hector explains that he's waiting for Wolf's blessing to wear off, and Lola squints at him through the dark-- not like she's struggling to see him, but rather like she's trying to place exactly what "Wolf's Blessing" is, or what it did. She's starting to piece it together when he says he can see fine without the lights, and she's about to tell him to nevermind, that she'll let his senses take a rest, but he reaches around her and turns the light on anyways.
She figured she'd just talk to him while he showered, but he turns off the water and holds a towel up in front of his waist. He spares her the details, cuts to the chase, and tells her that they need to destroy one of the Wyrm's greatest, 'purest' totems.
Lola's answer is a harsh laugh-- the sound not jovial in the least. "Oh, sure. That's a possibility that anyone can achieve."
She shakes her head and coffs her hood, then brushes her hair up out of the confines of her clothes so it can lay free and comfortable on her back and shoulders. Her hand moves to unzip the sweater, showing a plain white tee-shirt underneath. With all of that done, her hands go back into her pockets-- this time the pant pockets instead of the hoodie.
"So, operating under the assumption that we can't actually kill a fucking Totem... what else?"
Hector Ghosh
Ohho. Sarcasm. Hector looks as if he wants to laugh but he also wears a wan expression for the course of the conversation and what lies beyond tonight. In a few nights time a group of them are set to travel down into the basement of the Cold Crescent Sept and scout out an area that is supposed to be locked. It's only supposed to be a reconnaissance mission but none of them are going in thinking they'll be able to go in and come back out without some sort of resistance.
The Shadow Lord Ragabash who accompanied them tonight was spared the knowledge and the visions that he and Keisha gained. Keisha opted not to come inside because she wanted to get home to her packsisters and the promise of an alcohol-induced blackout. Hector came home because he wanted to be with Lola. For a time she stands still dressed for the cool air and then she looses the bindings.
That nabs his attention. He doesn't pin her to the counter like he did the night he came back stupid with spirit-sight but his eyes travel over her torso and he pushes a shock of hair back behind an ear with Rage-warm fingers.
"Remember how you thought they were something else? New, I think you were thinking. You weren't far off."
Hector glances down and adjusts the towel so it's tied around his hips instead of held in front of himself to maintain what little modesty he claims to possess.
"They're using a ritual that's rare even among their kind to basically empty themselves of their spirit to let the totem in completely. Gaians, when we're bound to a totem-spirit, it's just a tether. It's not... in us. Even if it lets us talk to each other, that's all it is. Same with Spirals, but these guys, they hollow themselves out. That's why they're so powerful. Problem is, it sounds like they have to kill within their auspice to keep their strength up. I guess it appeases Green Dragon."
Lola Hawkes
Hector's gaze becomes distracted when Lola drags the zipper down to open her hoodie up, but eyes find her face again quickly. His Kinswoman wasn't undressing entirely, as it turns out. For now, the show was over. So he expressed that she wasn't too far off from her assertion that these were not simply Black Spiral Dancers, not the garden variety at least.
Her eyebrows raise high as he explains what they actually are, and what they need to do in order to become what they have been, to maintain the power that they hold. It might be expected that she would balk as the reality of the situation washes over her. A Totem of the Wyrm-- not a Bane, not a spirit, but a fucking Totem-- has found a way to live in the physical realm along with them and wreak the havok that he so craves. She should grow pale and want to rest against a wall. This is what most Kinfolk and perhaps even wet-behind-the-ear Garou would do.
Lola, though? She appears smug and victorious.
"I knew it." She's so happy to find out that her conclusion was correct that she can taste how right she was. This celebration doesn't last very long, though. Her tone calms back down, the smug grin that wanted to settle on her face fades away, and she rubs a hand over her mouth and chin as she thinks-- already, he can see her brain whirling. Coming up with ways to win, ways to tear the Green Dragon back out of these shell-like vessels.
"...So. We need to cut the Totem. Suck it out of them."
Hector Ghosh
A more visible couple would eventually find themselves having to explain the dynamics not only of their relationship but the kinswoman's standing within the Nation. Since returning from Winnipeg Hector has treated her as he would have treated any other capable Gaian worth her salt in battle. He stood up in front of the Sept and his own renown took a hit as he bolstered hers.
Yet this weekend was as good a reminder as any that she cannot throw herself into battle as fearless as the rest of them. Not because of the new life she carries but because of how quickly she will bleed out if she takes a hit like that again. Hector has taken similarly terrible injuries. But Hector's body will not lose its grip on this side and send him plummeting into permanent darkness if he gives the earth all of his blood. He will never wake up in a hospital with no recollection of how he got there and neither will any other Garou in this Sept.
Somehow, during the Moot, he didn't attack the Glass Walker who was with her the night she was nearly killed. He is an honorable creature and he has more self-control than he credits himself with having.
Lola's near-gloating glow at hearing words that validate her months-gone hypothesis does not fill him with the same annoyance another wolf from another tribe might have felt. Their people are an insular and secretive one, and they do not have to explain themselves to the rest of the Nation. She says she knew it, and Hector lets himself relax enough to laugh a voiceless laugh. It seems sometimes as though he smiles less than he used to but he's also lost most of the people who used to make him smile.
"Yeah, there's no point trying to take them on if Green Dragon is still inside them. I have no idea how to sever another pack's connection to their totem, though." Hector drags a bare hand down his face and glances up at the ceiling brief as he thinks. "Blood-on-the-Leaves used to have us commune with Father Peyote if we were having a hard time solving one of his riddles. You know anybody who sells peyote buttons?"
Lola Hawkes
Hector laughs a little, quietly, and expresses that he's been taught to go to Father Peyote for help with riddles. He then asks if she knows anyone who sells peyote buttons. Lola's eyebrows hop back up again, for a different reason this time. For a second she contemplates making jokes-- What, just because I have relatives on the Rez I know where to get peyote? -- but decides against it, as she often does, and shrugs her shoulders instead.
"I can talk to Anthony. I go through him for my weed, he might know where to get some."
He'd said that they couldn't try to take the pack on while Green Dragon inhabited their bodies, and Lola couldn't agree more. She was headstrong, would volunteer for patrols and go out with her guns and fists, and would fight alongside the Garou as though she had every right to do so-- every capability to be there. This has landed her in the hospital over the weekend, but they both know that she'll be back on the battlefield again. Hector can only hope that she waits until after delivering the baby before trying to pack up her guns and go out.
She does more than a Kinfolk really should be doing, but she wasn't a fool. Lola learned battle tactics while growing up, right alongside English and Math and Geography. She knew better than to send a few packs of Garou up against a Totem. They would just be knocked down like pins.
"The first thing I'd guess is starve them out-- find a way to keep them from killing off more Garou that match their Moons. ...But if we can't even fight them, how are we supposed to contain them? And we can't keep them away from all Garou. We can't just hide away... Like, maybe we could use that as a way to lure them to us sometime? Make them come to us if they want to replenish... But we would need a plan for when they got here."
She moved away from the doorframe that she'd been leaning against, was standing freely on the bathroom tile. Her hands were out of her pockets now, and she was gesticulating a little as she spoke, waving away ideas and raising a finger when they came back as possibilities that needed more hammering out and smoothing of seams.
"I don't suppose there's such thing as a cleansing bomb? If that existed we could try to flush Green Dragon out."
Hector Ghosh
It's hard to tell if he was joking about the peyote. She offers to ask her cousin if he knows where to find some and he laughs but then they move on from that. They're both latched onto the idea that they can fix this now that they understand what the problem is. Nothing to be done for it tonight but dawn will come and with it will come Garou wanting to know the result of their investigation.
Lola begins to talk with her hands like they're giving her words flight. Hector who usually cannot be still while he's talking watches her and more than the distance and the darkness that tends to come across his gaze when he talks of terrible things can she read the adoration in him.
"There might be," he says. "I don't know. I can ask the Theurges, they'd know more about that than I do."
At mention of the Theurges he rakes his hair back out of his face and holds it still as another thought comes to him.
"Hey, listen. Speaking of, I talked to Phoebe and Keisha a few weeks ago. If something happens when we go to scout the basement in the city, I've already asked them if they'd help you find a spirit to bless you."
Lola Hawkes
Hey, listen.
Okay, Navi. I'll listen.
Lola stills, turns and leans back against the bathroom counter. Her rump rests back against the counter's edge, and the heels of her hands hook onto the top of the surface instead. Ankles cross, she makes herself comfortable, apparently forgetting the fact that Hector was postponing his much-desired shower and just standing with a towel in front of his genitals to continue this conversation with her.
He says the Theurges will get a spirit to bless her if anything happens to him while checking out the Broadway Building's basement. Lola makes a quiet huffing noise, pushing the wind out of her lungs and through her nostrils with a rush. Like a bull snorting steam into the air.
"What, I only get to learn from a spirit if you die?" This thought is chased away quickly, and followed up with one that has something in her chest cringing. "Besides, this is more information gathering. You're just looking at that portal, right? Scoping it out. The basement's not the battle or the Mouth of Hell come open."
Right?
Hector Ghosh
And he's opening his mouth to refute her rhetorical but Lola beats him to it. The D word has a flare of fear coming up out of the pit of him. He doesn't have the chance to express it that he might stamp it out and his mouth hangs open for a few seconds as she parades on through her rationalization.
By the time she's stated this is just information gathering Hector has pressed his back to the wall opposite the counter to mirror her posture but his hands have nothing onto which they can grab and he isn't wearing his rings so he doesn't have anything to worry.
"I'm just saying, if. We don't know what's down there."
Now his imagination is getting away from him. Lola can see his ribs moving as he breathes faster. That was the wrong answer, anyway. He didn't even bother trying to lie.
Lola Hawkes
There it is-- that panic setting in. This is the dread that Garou and Kinfolk live with, grow up with. They've all lost relatives, packmates, lovers, and if they haven't then it's assured that they will sometime. Lola has lost her mother to a slumbering Bane, her father to heartbreak, and her sister to Banes. Loss is not new to her. Hector has lost more than half of his pack over time-- three to death, one to a divide caused by those deaths and the grief that came along with.
And yet, to think of Hector dying and leaving Lola behind, never finding out if he'll have a daughter or a son, throws him into a bit of a tailspin. He's seen and suffered things tonight that shattered his mind, left the pieces to float back together and heal just as his body does. Lola's brow furrows with concern, though just a hint of it, as she watches this change of body language and hears his breathing become more strained.
The moon wasn't quite halved yet, so any irritation could become a hell of a situation. Lola straightened up, but didn't cross the room to him. Instead she moved her hands from the counter, let her arms hand at her sides instead, and frowned lightly. Her voice was steady-- not stern, but not gentle or coddling either.
"You're right. But it helps no one to dwell on it." Lola isn't great with words. This is why she stops here, abrupt as though she had lost her momentum before it had a chance to build completely. Before she could make her statement. This pause doesn't last too long, though. She sighs, the breath moving her chest and shoulders, and holds her hands out, palms up toward the ceiling.
"I'm not afraid for you, I've seen you tear beasts apart with your guts on the floor and walk home in the same night. What you do? It compares to what that Silent Strider Fostern does-- seriously. If shit does hit the fan, I trust you to come home. So, don't do that-- get worked up and focus on the 'what ifs'. It just eats you up is all."
Hector Ghosh
For as little as Lola knows about interacting with human society and thinks herself ill-suited for the Kinfolk's role she keeps proving herself adept at dealing with Hector when his Rage flares up.
Some part of her must remember how raw he was when Willow and Glen and Maria first brought him around. Not like Thomas, wet behind the ears and flayed despite having seen so little in his life, but: he was young and angry and had every reason and right to be. He could control himself if barely and his eyes were fiery with the things he'd seen in so short a time. He would laugh and screw around despite that chained-up fury inside of him. But Lola was eighteen maybe nineteen the first time she met him, and if she worried that fury would snap its tether and tear at whatever set him off, she was right to worry.
But he came around again, and again, and as time passed so did that sense that he was just barely controlling himself. Before Glen and Maria died and Corey left it seemed like he and her sister would have achieved the next rank next time they all came home. He was confident if comfortable following the Corey and Glen and he did not bristle even during his moon.
Only since coming back has Lola had to learn what to do with him when he cannot control himself. It was not a steep curve. She follows her gut. She knows he will listen to her because he loves her. Even split open on the ground and all but blind with impending frenzy, he loves her.
So she thinks she isn't great with words. Someone in the room would beg to differ.
She tells him not to get worked up and even when she first started talking Hector was focusing on his respirations and stepping back from that edge that could easily have him losing his mind. By the time she stops talking he's nodding. He crosses his arms over his chest.
"Okay," he says. His brow furrows and he chews his lower lip like to eat anything else he could say. Clears his throat. "Okay."
Lola Hawkes
She was notoriously bad with words. Or with her tone. Or body language. It always seemed to be one or the other, and she would set people off gnashing teeth at her because they took what she said without that grain of salt, and she would reliably rise to whatever challenge they presented to her. Lola didn't interract with humans because she's gone too long without. If she tried now she would surely intimidate and worry most, and be too willing to fall to violence when someone rubs her the wrong way.
Sincerely, it would only be a matter of time before police were called on her, and then she would certainly find herself arrested because she's so used to the Park Rangers simply backing away from her territory and leaving her alone. She would expect it of an officer in a face-to-face confrontation and find herself sorely mistaken when she's tazed and in the back of a cruiser.
Yet, somehow, this works with her people. Calden had not walked away from her when she virtually chewed him out in the diner, and here and now with Hector he did not fly off the handle when she tried to calm him. He focused on his breathing, and simply said: okay.
"Okay," Lola echoes back, with a note of finality to it. She crosses the bathroom to go near to him. Just outside of what could be considerd one's 'personal space' she hesitates, gives him a chance to move away or gesture for her to keep back. When that doesn't happen she closes distance and puts her hand on the center of his chest, fingers splayed out to cover as much surface as they can. She tips her face up so she can kiss his lips-- the gesture of affection simple and without the fire of passion behind it. It's brief, and she steps back soon after.
"Go on with your shower. I'm going back out to the fire. Maybe you can burn whatever you saw from your eyeballs by sitting in the smoke."
Hector Ghosh
The bathroom is not large and she does not have much distance to travel to reach him. He burned no Rage tonight and for a moment it felt as though the space inside the bathroom choked with it. Even with the moon thinning he still runs a high risk of a frenzy coming for him. Lola has never seen him give himself over to one.
If he goes the rest of his life without ever letting the murderous red rise up over his eyeballs in front of her then he can consider that a minor victory. Knowing as he does now that she's pregnant only gives him one more thing to potentially lose and she has never known him to be particularly fierce or protective because he has never had anything other than his pack.
She hesitates and she can see that stoniness in his eyes soften when he recognizes it. It is not a wounded expression. More of a silent reassurance. And she can feel his heart beating beneath his breastbone not because he is upset or angry but because that is what it does. Lean as he is he's strong and it takes a strong heart to keep him alive after everything that's almost killed him.
Lola's kiss is human and without hunger. She steps back, and he takes hold of her hand. He doesn't want to be alone right now but he doesn't blurt that out.
Something about her suggestion makes him laugh. An honest laugh this time and not just air.
"Thank you," he says, and lets go of her hand.
Lola Hawkes
Her hand is caught by Hector's, and the shift of her weight that was about to move her away from him is ceased. For a moment they stand, simple as that, holding on to one another's hands. Lola doesn't knit her fingers into his, nor does she squeeze. She simply curls her fingers around the outside of his hand, and rubs her thumb over the tendons on the back of it.
When he lets go of her and thanks her, she smiles as honestly as he had laughed. The expression is relieved, and more open than how she appears by default. As long as Hector has known her, Lola has been a straightforward person, and that by default tended to make her honest. However, she was never particularly open. She didn't talk about her emotions, her fears, her desires. She made a point to be strong, the pillar that she had aspired to be and continues to strive to remain despite being unable to Change. That left her neutral expression as a relatively severe thing, often with an unsmiling mouth and straight lines for eyebrows.
Tonight, though, and a number of times before when they're laying together, or sitting out on the porch or in front of the fire with no one around but them, he gets this smile. It softens her face, warms it. She looks more like her dad this way, more like her mom the rest of the time.
"Of course," is how she answers him. Because of course she will calm him when he needs calming. Of course she will protect him when he cannot protect himself. Of course she'll stay beside him, just like (of course) she will part from his side when the time requires it-- when he needs to go down into that Spire Sept's basement and look straight into the Mouth of Hell in order to determine the best way to close it.
She'll leave him now, just to allow him to shower, clean, take his time to gather himself and join her when he's ready. When that time comes, she's back outside in that chair, feet up on that block of wood, stoking the wood that she's just tossed on top of the ashes.
The god thing about having a routine is that it's easy to fall back into after your world is disrupted. It's been three days since Hector retrieved Lola from the hospital that she'd been left at, since they had pinned a flimsy ultrasound print-out to the fridge because they didn't know where else to put something like that. Sunday was spent resting, processing, recovering. Monday, it was back to it. Lola had packed up her pack, bid Hector farewell for now, and went out on her patrols.
Today, Tuesday, Hector had left sometime in the afternoon. He and some others were going to check out the apartment where Champion of Honor had been discovered. They were going with that cub-- not Fern, the other one-- that they'd recovered from Beloved Horror's wake. Lola spent the day not too far from the home. She'd gone on a three hour patrol that didn't take her very far off of Hawkes Territory and raked leaves off of the churned and sectioned patches of dirt that would be a garden come this time next year. Then, with the sun setting, she started a fire in the backyard and settled down to spend the evening outside.
This is where Lola is around nine o' clock, long after the sun has set. It was a warm day, though, and the night was mild and comfortable. Lola didn't have a coat or a blanket out with her. Rather, she was sitting in one of the iron wrought chairs that she'd dragged down off the back porch to sit around the fire pit. She had on a pair of boots, jean cuffs tucked into those boots, and a large black hooded sweatshirt that was zipped up to her chest. The hood was up, her hair spilled out of it to rest on her shoulders and chest.
Her feet were propped up on a block of wood so that her soles faced the fire, and her hands were in her hoodie pockets. The way she was kicked back she might have fallen asleep in the chair.
Hector Ghosh
Hector left on foot before the sun went down. He had been cleaning up a mess in the kitchen when Lola left on patrols and had left a mess on the front porch where he'd been whittling something when his phone went off. They'd known for a while now that a trip to the apartment was in the pipeline but it was Keisha's mission, not Hector's.
He does not return on foot as he tends to when he goes off on his own. A vehicle older than most of the Sept's Cliaths comes clunking up the driveway and sits behind the truck for a couple of minutes. If Lola has not fallen asleep she can hear the engine running as it idles parked. Whoever drives the thing does not opt to come inside. A door opens and Hector says, "Alright girl, go get your drink on" before clapping the door shut again.
And the car reverses and turns around and goes back off into the night.
Hector stands still in the warm night. Does not join his woman at the fire. He takes long hurried strides the rest of the way up the drive and mounts the porch steps and slams into the house. If no lights are on in the great room he does not awaken any.
Lola Hawkes
Hector would be able to see Lola from where the car winds up idling. You see, the shed/garage is situated diagonally from the house-- to the back and to the left, if you're standing facing out from the back door. The duo of dirt grooves into the earth that serves as a driveway this far away from the main road goes to the garage's double doors, and Lola's truck is parked directly in front of them rather than inside. When the car pulls up, if Lola had been asleep at all she was awoken. She's sitting with her back out to the trees, facing the middle point between driveway and house wall.
She lifts her chin from her chest and watches while Hector and Keisha (identity determined after watching, investigating, squinting through dark, remembering) talk in the cab of the car while it idles. The door opens, Hector gets out, and Keisha goes to leave. Lola will lift a hand to wave to the Theurge as she goes. Perhaps the gesture is returned (it probably is, Keisha is a good soul).
Hector doesn't come to join her, though. He hustles around to the front of the house rather than coming around back where the orange light of the fire flickers and beckons. Lola stays seated long enough to hear the door slam both ways-- into the face of the house when thrown open, back into the frame when slammed shut.
Lola straightens up after the door slams, hesitates with a glance toward the sky, and then stands up anyways. He would certainly have reasons to rush to solitude, she trusted that.
But she was a Uktena too. They couldn't leave mysteries alone.
So a minute or two after Hector slammed his way through the front door, Lola enters calmly through the back.
Hector Ghosh
When he's fully dressed it takes him a long time to disrobe. He wears layers like he expects the weather to turn from sunny to snowy in the amount of time it would take him to put up his hood and unlacing his work boots is a task he tends to save until the very end of the day so he doesn't have to put them back on. The chances he'll pin her to the wall or the floor instead of taking her to bed tend to increase with the brightness of the moon. His patience hemorrhages when Luna shines as bright as she did the night he was born.
So in the hundred or so seconds that Lola sits in contemplation of what to do he hasn't managed to completely disrobe and throw himself in the shower. No light shines in the hall between the laundry room and the bathroom. He hears the door and her quiet footfalls. She hears a boot fall to the ground and then his voice:
"Warning! Pants are coming off!"
Like she hasn't seen that before. The second boot lands.
Lola Hawkes
"That's nothing new."
Lola calls this casually through the dark house. There's a big candle burning on the coffee table in the living room, filling the house with the smell of 'autumn leaves', as far as that candle is concerned. Other than that all of the lights are still off. Hector's somewhere up the hallway, as far as she can hear.
Lola doesn't shuck the sweater she's wearing when she's inside. Rather she leaves her sweater on, her boots as well, and ventures on slow feet through the house. Just as Hector had left the lights off, Lola does as well. With her hands in her hoodie pockets she comes searching for the Galliard.
Since he was disrobing she assumed he would be in the bathroom or the bedroom. Wherever it is that she finds him, she settles herself in the doorway and leans a shoulder against the doorframe, half in the hallway still.
"What did you find?"
Hector Ghosh
The knobs on the washing machine sing their metallic croaking song as Hector adjusts the settings before cramming his jeans in its mouth and slamming the lid. It rushes with water as Lola comes upon him in the dark. He looks over and the darkness occludes his features. All she has is his disrobed figure in the corridor, rings and bracelets and necklaces still adorning his flesh. When he sees her Hector takes a long step back from her. If she were to have kept approaching she cannot doubt he would have kept inserting distance between them.
He starts to pop the rings off of his fingers as he inches towards the bathroom. The washing machine keeps flooding its own innards with water. He'd even thrown his boots inside.
"It looked clean," he says. "Didn't feel clean at all. The things they did to him were..."
It isn't that he can't find the words. It's that he doesn't want to turn them over.
"Keisha made a rookie mistake and ate before we went inside. Hippies, man. They can't handle their torture orgy visions. I'm getting in the shower, I need to scrub the insides of my eyeballs."
Into the bathroom he goes.
Lola Hawkes
Having spent her entire life around Garou, Lola knows that there are times when you need to mind your distance. This can be for a number of reasons. They might not be able to handle their Rage or other urges in that moment, which makes it wise and easier on everyone if you keep your distance. They might have something toxic or tainted on their flesh, and you need to keep away to avoid having to contend with the Banes that come calling to your contamination a couple weeks later.
So, when Lola finds Hector in the hallway and he moves a long-legged step away from her in response to her proximity, she takes the hint and doesn't attempt to close distance or touch him. She just stands with her hands in her pockets still, watching the Galliard's sleek shape in the shadows of the house as he starts to explain, stops, starts again, and then announces that he needs to wash his eyeballs and moves to the bathroom. Lola sidesteps to give him berth to pass through the doorway.
She's quiet long enough for him to turn the knobs and get the water running in the shower, weakened by the fact that the washing machine was running but the water pressure was not necessarily dismal because of it. When she does speak again, it's in that tone that she has when she's being analytical-- seeking and soaking up information that she can use to make a plan, to continue the push of War. It's the same voice she has when they talk about current events, when she's discussing plans at a Warmoot with other Garou that respect her enough to allow her to lend her words to theirs.
"I don't think anyone doubted that he was tortured, though. You guys didn't go there just to find that out, I'm pretty sure. Did we get anything that we can use?"
Beat.
"...Should I leave the lights off for some reason? Or would you prefer not to shower in pitch dark?"
Hector Ghosh
He did not return from the apartment touched by the evil they found still lingering in the spirit of the place but as Lola watches him she can get the impression that he feels unclean all the same. Aside from offhand and surface jokes about the fostering he'd had in Arizona, the story he'd told her about the punishment rite he'd watched his mentor perform, she has heard little of how much he was exposed to before he had even been accepted into the Nation.
It's a wonder he didn't go insane. That takes a level of objective and detached observation. If the Children of Gaia had gotten to him before the Uktena he would be of much less use to the Nation. He would not know half as much as he knows.
No taint followed him home. He still doesn't have anywhere else to go to separate himself from her when she follows him into the bathroom. The drive back from the city gave him time to clear his head and she would know if he were upset or unbalanced. Agitation still rides beneath his skin and something keeps him from going to her.
"I'm waiting for Wolf's blessing to wear off," he says. Translates: "I can see fine without them. I didn't think to--"
Jesus. Hector reaches around Lola and hits the switch to grant the bathroom light. He's left his jewelry sat beside the sink. No marks or injuries mar him and he doesn't appear ill or in danger of becoming ill. His pupils adjust to the light as fast as they're supposed to. The water struggles to warm up behind him, competing with the washing machine for the heater's attention.
Okay. So they're going to talk.
He turns off the water, then glances down and yanks up a towel and holds it in front of his waist.
"I think all we need to do is destroy Green Dragon. No big deal."
Lola Hawkes
Hector explains that he's waiting for Wolf's blessing to wear off, and Lola squints at him through the dark-- not like she's struggling to see him, but rather like she's trying to place exactly what "Wolf's Blessing" is, or what it did. She's starting to piece it together when he says he can see fine without the lights, and she's about to tell him to nevermind, that she'll let his senses take a rest, but he reaches around her and turns the light on anyways.
She figured she'd just talk to him while he showered, but he turns off the water and holds a towel up in front of his waist. He spares her the details, cuts to the chase, and tells her that they need to destroy one of the Wyrm's greatest, 'purest' totems.
Lola's answer is a harsh laugh-- the sound not jovial in the least. "Oh, sure. That's a possibility that anyone can achieve."
She shakes her head and coffs her hood, then brushes her hair up out of the confines of her clothes so it can lay free and comfortable on her back and shoulders. Her hand moves to unzip the sweater, showing a plain white tee-shirt underneath. With all of that done, her hands go back into her pockets-- this time the pant pockets instead of the hoodie.
"So, operating under the assumption that we can't actually kill a fucking Totem... what else?"
Hector Ghosh
Ohho. Sarcasm. Hector looks as if he wants to laugh but he also wears a wan expression for the course of the conversation and what lies beyond tonight. In a few nights time a group of them are set to travel down into the basement of the Cold Crescent Sept and scout out an area that is supposed to be locked. It's only supposed to be a reconnaissance mission but none of them are going in thinking they'll be able to go in and come back out without some sort of resistance.
The Shadow Lord Ragabash who accompanied them tonight was spared the knowledge and the visions that he and Keisha gained. Keisha opted not to come inside because she wanted to get home to her packsisters and the promise of an alcohol-induced blackout. Hector came home because he wanted to be with Lola. For a time she stands still dressed for the cool air and then she looses the bindings.
That nabs his attention. He doesn't pin her to the counter like he did the night he came back stupid with spirit-sight but his eyes travel over her torso and he pushes a shock of hair back behind an ear with Rage-warm fingers.
"Remember how you thought they were something else? New, I think you were thinking. You weren't far off."
Hector glances down and adjusts the towel so it's tied around his hips instead of held in front of himself to maintain what little modesty he claims to possess.
"They're using a ritual that's rare even among their kind to basically empty themselves of their spirit to let the totem in completely. Gaians, when we're bound to a totem-spirit, it's just a tether. It's not... in us. Even if it lets us talk to each other, that's all it is. Same with Spirals, but these guys, they hollow themselves out. That's why they're so powerful. Problem is, it sounds like they have to kill within their auspice to keep their strength up. I guess it appeases Green Dragon."
Lola Hawkes
Hector's gaze becomes distracted when Lola drags the zipper down to open her hoodie up, but eyes find her face again quickly. His Kinswoman wasn't undressing entirely, as it turns out. For now, the show was over. So he expressed that she wasn't too far off from her assertion that these were not simply Black Spiral Dancers, not the garden variety at least.
Her eyebrows raise high as he explains what they actually are, and what they need to do in order to become what they have been, to maintain the power that they hold. It might be expected that she would balk as the reality of the situation washes over her. A Totem of the Wyrm-- not a Bane, not a spirit, but a fucking Totem-- has found a way to live in the physical realm along with them and wreak the havok that he so craves. She should grow pale and want to rest against a wall. This is what most Kinfolk and perhaps even wet-behind-the-ear Garou would do.
Lola, though? She appears smug and victorious.
"I knew it." She's so happy to find out that her conclusion was correct that she can taste how right she was. This celebration doesn't last very long, though. Her tone calms back down, the smug grin that wanted to settle on her face fades away, and she rubs a hand over her mouth and chin as she thinks-- already, he can see her brain whirling. Coming up with ways to win, ways to tear the Green Dragon back out of these shell-like vessels.
"...So. We need to cut the Totem. Suck it out of them."
Hector Ghosh
A more visible couple would eventually find themselves having to explain the dynamics not only of their relationship but the kinswoman's standing within the Nation. Since returning from Winnipeg Hector has treated her as he would have treated any other capable Gaian worth her salt in battle. He stood up in front of the Sept and his own renown took a hit as he bolstered hers.
Yet this weekend was as good a reminder as any that she cannot throw herself into battle as fearless as the rest of them. Not because of the new life she carries but because of how quickly she will bleed out if she takes a hit like that again. Hector has taken similarly terrible injuries. But Hector's body will not lose its grip on this side and send him plummeting into permanent darkness if he gives the earth all of his blood. He will never wake up in a hospital with no recollection of how he got there and neither will any other Garou in this Sept.
Somehow, during the Moot, he didn't attack the Glass Walker who was with her the night she was nearly killed. He is an honorable creature and he has more self-control than he credits himself with having.
Lola's near-gloating glow at hearing words that validate her months-gone hypothesis does not fill him with the same annoyance another wolf from another tribe might have felt. Their people are an insular and secretive one, and they do not have to explain themselves to the rest of the Nation. She says she knew it, and Hector lets himself relax enough to laugh a voiceless laugh. It seems sometimes as though he smiles less than he used to but he's also lost most of the people who used to make him smile.
"Yeah, there's no point trying to take them on if Green Dragon is still inside them. I have no idea how to sever another pack's connection to their totem, though." Hector drags a bare hand down his face and glances up at the ceiling brief as he thinks. "Blood-on-the-Leaves used to have us commune with Father Peyote if we were having a hard time solving one of his riddles. You know anybody who sells peyote buttons?"
Lola Hawkes
Hector laughs a little, quietly, and expresses that he's been taught to go to Father Peyote for help with riddles. He then asks if she knows anyone who sells peyote buttons. Lola's eyebrows hop back up again, for a different reason this time. For a second she contemplates making jokes-- What, just because I have relatives on the Rez I know where to get peyote? -- but decides against it, as she often does, and shrugs her shoulders instead.
"I can talk to Anthony. I go through him for my weed, he might know where to get some."
He'd said that they couldn't try to take the pack on while Green Dragon inhabited their bodies, and Lola couldn't agree more. She was headstrong, would volunteer for patrols and go out with her guns and fists, and would fight alongside the Garou as though she had every right to do so-- every capability to be there. This has landed her in the hospital over the weekend, but they both know that she'll be back on the battlefield again. Hector can only hope that she waits until after delivering the baby before trying to pack up her guns and go out.
She does more than a Kinfolk really should be doing, but she wasn't a fool. Lola learned battle tactics while growing up, right alongside English and Math and Geography. She knew better than to send a few packs of Garou up against a Totem. They would just be knocked down like pins.
"The first thing I'd guess is starve them out-- find a way to keep them from killing off more Garou that match their Moons. ...But if we can't even fight them, how are we supposed to contain them? And we can't keep them away from all Garou. We can't just hide away... Like, maybe we could use that as a way to lure them to us sometime? Make them come to us if they want to replenish... But we would need a plan for when they got here."
She moved away from the doorframe that she'd been leaning against, was standing freely on the bathroom tile. Her hands were out of her pockets now, and she was gesticulating a little as she spoke, waving away ideas and raising a finger when they came back as possibilities that needed more hammering out and smoothing of seams.
"I don't suppose there's such thing as a cleansing bomb? If that existed we could try to flush Green Dragon out."
Hector Ghosh
It's hard to tell if he was joking about the peyote. She offers to ask her cousin if he knows where to find some and he laughs but then they move on from that. They're both latched onto the idea that they can fix this now that they understand what the problem is. Nothing to be done for it tonight but dawn will come and with it will come Garou wanting to know the result of their investigation.
Lola begins to talk with her hands like they're giving her words flight. Hector who usually cannot be still while he's talking watches her and more than the distance and the darkness that tends to come across his gaze when he talks of terrible things can she read the adoration in him.
"There might be," he says. "I don't know. I can ask the Theurges, they'd know more about that than I do."
At mention of the Theurges he rakes his hair back out of his face and holds it still as another thought comes to him.
"Hey, listen. Speaking of, I talked to Phoebe and Keisha a few weeks ago. If something happens when we go to scout the basement in the city, I've already asked them if they'd help you find a spirit to bless you."
Lola Hawkes
Hey, listen.
Okay, Navi. I'll listen.
Lola stills, turns and leans back against the bathroom counter. Her rump rests back against the counter's edge, and the heels of her hands hook onto the top of the surface instead. Ankles cross, she makes herself comfortable, apparently forgetting the fact that Hector was postponing his much-desired shower and just standing with a towel in front of his genitals to continue this conversation with her.
He says the Theurges will get a spirit to bless her if anything happens to him while checking out the Broadway Building's basement. Lola makes a quiet huffing noise, pushing the wind out of her lungs and through her nostrils with a rush. Like a bull snorting steam into the air.
"What, I only get to learn from a spirit if you die?" This thought is chased away quickly, and followed up with one that has something in her chest cringing. "Besides, this is more information gathering. You're just looking at that portal, right? Scoping it out. The basement's not the battle or the Mouth of Hell come open."
Right?
Hector Ghosh
And he's opening his mouth to refute her rhetorical but Lola beats him to it. The D word has a flare of fear coming up out of the pit of him. He doesn't have the chance to express it that he might stamp it out and his mouth hangs open for a few seconds as she parades on through her rationalization.
By the time she's stated this is just information gathering Hector has pressed his back to the wall opposite the counter to mirror her posture but his hands have nothing onto which they can grab and he isn't wearing his rings so he doesn't have anything to worry.
"I'm just saying, if. We don't know what's down there."
Now his imagination is getting away from him. Lola can see his ribs moving as he breathes faster. That was the wrong answer, anyway. He didn't even bother trying to lie.
Lola Hawkes
There it is-- that panic setting in. This is the dread that Garou and Kinfolk live with, grow up with. They've all lost relatives, packmates, lovers, and if they haven't then it's assured that they will sometime. Lola has lost her mother to a slumbering Bane, her father to heartbreak, and her sister to Banes. Loss is not new to her. Hector has lost more than half of his pack over time-- three to death, one to a divide caused by those deaths and the grief that came along with.
And yet, to think of Hector dying and leaving Lola behind, never finding out if he'll have a daughter or a son, throws him into a bit of a tailspin. He's seen and suffered things tonight that shattered his mind, left the pieces to float back together and heal just as his body does. Lola's brow furrows with concern, though just a hint of it, as she watches this change of body language and hears his breathing become more strained.
The moon wasn't quite halved yet, so any irritation could become a hell of a situation. Lola straightened up, but didn't cross the room to him. Instead she moved her hands from the counter, let her arms hand at her sides instead, and frowned lightly. Her voice was steady-- not stern, but not gentle or coddling either.
"You're right. But it helps no one to dwell on it." Lola isn't great with words. This is why she stops here, abrupt as though she had lost her momentum before it had a chance to build completely. Before she could make her statement. This pause doesn't last too long, though. She sighs, the breath moving her chest and shoulders, and holds her hands out, palms up toward the ceiling.
"I'm not afraid for you, I've seen you tear beasts apart with your guts on the floor and walk home in the same night. What you do? It compares to what that Silent Strider Fostern does-- seriously. If shit does hit the fan, I trust you to come home. So, don't do that-- get worked up and focus on the 'what ifs'. It just eats you up is all."
Hector Ghosh
For as little as Lola knows about interacting with human society and thinks herself ill-suited for the Kinfolk's role she keeps proving herself adept at dealing with Hector when his Rage flares up.
Some part of her must remember how raw he was when Willow and Glen and Maria first brought him around. Not like Thomas, wet behind the ears and flayed despite having seen so little in his life, but: he was young and angry and had every reason and right to be. He could control himself if barely and his eyes were fiery with the things he'd seen in so short a time. He would laugh and screw around despite that chained-up fury inside of him. But Lola was eighteen maybe nineteen the first time she met him, and if she worried that fury would snap its tether and tear at whatever set him off, she was right to worry.
But he came around again, and again, and as time passed so did that sense that he was just barely controlling himself. Before Glen and Maria died and Corey left it seemed like he and her sister would have achieved the next rank next time they all came home. He was confident if comfortable following the Corey and Glen and he did not bristle even during his moon.
Only since coming back has Lola had to learn what to do with him when he cannot control himself. It was not a steep curve. She follows her gut. She knows he will listen to her because he loves her. Even split open on the ground and all but blind with impending frenzy, he loves her.
So she thinks she isn't great with words. Someone in the room would beg to differ.
She tells him not to get worked up and even when she first started talking Hector was focusing on his respirations and stepping back from that edge that could easily have him losing his mind. By the time she stops talking he's nodding. He crosses his arms over his chest.
"Okay," he says. His brow furrows and he chews his lower lip like to eat anything else he could say. Clears his throat. "Okay."
Lola Hawkes
She was notoriously bad with words. Or with her tone. Or body language. It always seemed to be one or the other, and she would set people off gnashing teeth at her because they took what she said without that grain of salt, and she would reliably rise to whatever challenge they presented to her. Lola didn't interract with humans because she's gone too long without. If she tried now she would surely intimidate and worry most, and be too willing to fall to violence when someone rubs her the wrong way.
Sincerely, it would only be a matter of time before police were called on her, and then she would certainly find herself arrested because she's so used to the Park Rangers simply backing away from her territory and leaving her alone. She would expect it of an officer in a face-to-face confrontation and find herself sorely mistaken when she's tazed and in the back of a cruiser.
Yet, somehow, this works with her people. Calden had not walked away from her when she virtually chewed him out in the diner, and here and now with Hector he did not fly off the handle when she tried to calm him. He focused on his breathing, and simply said: okay.
"Okay," Lola echoes back, with a note of finality to it. She crosses the bathroom to go near to him. Just outside of what could be considerd one's 'personal space' she hesitates, gives him a chance to move away or gesture for her to keep back. When that doesn't happen she closes distance and puts her hand on the center of his chest, fingers splayed out to cover as much surface as they can. She tips her face up so she can kiss his lips-- the gesture of affection simple and without the fire of passion behind it. It's brief, and she steps back soon after.
"Go on with your shower. I'm going back out to the fire. Maybe you can burn whatever you saw from your eyeballs by sitting in the smoke."
Hector Ghosh
The bathroom is not large and she does not have much distance to travel to reach him. He burned no Rage tonight and for a moment it felt as though the space inside the bathroom choked with it. Even with the moon thinning he still runs a high risk of a frenzy coming for him. Lola has never seen him give himself over to one.
If he goes the rest of his life without ever letting the murderous red rise up over his eyeballs in front of her then he can consider that a minor victory. Knowing as he does now that she's pregnant only gives him one more thing to potentially lose and she has never known him to be particularly fierce or protective because he has never had anything other than his pack.
She hesitates and she can see that stoniness in his eyes soften when he recognizes it. It is not a wounded expression. More of a silent reassurance. And she can feel his heart beating beneath his breastbone not because he is upset or angry but because that is what it does. Lean as he is he's strong and it takes a strong heart to keep him alive after everything that's almost killed him.
Lola's kiss is human and without hunger. She steps back, and he takes hold of her hand. He doesn't want to be alone right now but he doesn't blurt that out.
Something about her suggestion makes him laugh. An honest laugh this time and not just air.
"Thank you," he says, and lets go of her hand.
Lola Hawkes
Her hand is caught by Hector's, and the shift of her weight that was about to move her away from him is ceased. For a moment they stand, simple as that, holding on to one another's hands. Lola doesn't knit her fingers into his, nor does she squeeze. She simply curls her fingers around the outside of his hand, and rubs her thumb over the tendons on the back of it.
When he lets go of her and thanks her, she smiles as honestly as he had laughed. The expression is relieved, and more open than how she appears by default. As long as Hector has known her, Lola has been a straightforward person, and that by default tended to make her honest. However, she was never particularly open. She didn't talk about her emotions, her fears, her desires. She made a point to be strong, the pillar that she had aspired to be and continues to strive to remain despite being unable to Change. That left her neutral expression as a relatively severe thing, often with an unsmiling mouth and straight lines for eyebrows.
Tonight, though, and a number of times before when they're laying together, or sitting out on the porch or in front of the fire with no one around but them, he gets this smile. It softens her face, warms it. She looks more like her dad this way, more like her mom the rest of the time.
"Of course," is how she answers him. Because of course she will calm him when he needs calming. Of course she will protect him when he cannot protect himself. Of course she'll stay beside him, just like (of course) she will part from his side when the time requires it-- when he needs to go down into that Spire Sept's basement and look straight into the Mouth of Hell in order to determine the best way to close it.
She'll leave him now, just to allow him to shower, clean, take his time to gather himself and join her when he's ready. When that time comes, she's back outside in that chair, feet up on that block of wood, stoking the wood that she's just tossed on top of the ashes.
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