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.
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