Lola Hawkes
Last night Lola came home exhausted in
more ways than just physically. It was between the hours of one and two
in the morning when her truck crunched its way up the gravel path, and
from there to the dirt ruts that constituted a 'driveway' up to the
shed. She'd walked inside with two cardboard boxes balanced in her arms
full of harddrives and other similar things. The box of guns was left
in the shed for now, up on the work bench next to the saws and hammers
she used to break down bodies for burning.
Hector had greeted her,
because the man didn't sleep when the moon was this way. Affection was
accepted up to a point, but when hands had tried to help undress her
and lingered at her flesh she was gentle but clear in expressing that
she was dead on her feet and going to sleep as soon as her head hit the
pillow. This, it turns out, is precisely what happened. Hector would
do whatever it was he needed to relax and burn himself out and would, no
doubt, climb in soon enough after.
When she woke the next day
(or, later that morning depending on how you looked at it), Lola treated
the day as normal. She'd better tell the story of what happened to
Hector -- It's gotta be some kind of life lesson, realizing that it
takes so much more work and energy to save someone than it does to end
them -- before getting her pack ready for her patrols. Food,
water, grog, disposable instant heating pads in case the day got cold
out of nowhere, first aid kit, flashlight, cell phone. Good to go.
The
day is overcast but mild anyways, so Lola's got her hat and gloves off
and tucked into her coat pockets instead. At this current time, with
the sun starting its slow glide down toward the tips of the mountains to
the west, Lola is set up on a dry old log from a long-since fallen
tree, eating what she'll suffice to call 'lunch' today (dried deer meat,
an apple, and a thermos of juice). She's both accustomed to and
content with the silent solitude that came from these patrols, and not
anticipating to have it torn and tossed away by a buzzing phone in
T-minus....
Corey Seger
If she has not spoken to
Corey in two months she has probably not spoken of him in as much time
either. The last time his name passed between the two of them it came
from Hector's throat and he was telling a story in which Corey played
only a peripheral role. It was his Kinfolk who provoked the episode
where Glen and Maria picked up a car and moved it into the backyard. He
hasn't come up in any greater capacity since Lola shoved into the
bathroom to tell Hector she'd spoken to him.
They don't know that
was the day their unborn child was conceived but that detail is as much a
part of the story as anything else. Same as the fact that Hector is
asleep back at the Homestead when Corey calls. He'd climbed back into
bed with Lola at some point during the night and held her as they both
lay on their left sides but once Lola was awake he had floated up out of
his dreams and kissed his way down her torso and it became fairly clear
that he hadn't come to bed until nearly dawn when he got up long enough
to cook breakfast and chop some wood for the fire before wandering back
inside to shower and crash out on the bed.
So: he does call. As
Lola is resting and like as not thinking about one of any number of
things that have nothing to do with him.
He doesn't just text her,
either. He flat-out calls and it's his name blaring up at her for
however long it takes her to decide to answer if she ever does decide to
answer.
Lola Hawkes
The cellphone is seldom on
anything but vibrate. Lola hates the harsh blaring sound of a phone's
ring, and the tinny chimes and tunes to replace the standard ringing
sound were somehow obnoxiously far worse. She didn't like there to be a
chance that her phone would give away her position if she needed to
stay low and unnoticed for any reason, either.
So, when her phone
'rings', it vibrates in the inside breast pocket of the canvas jacket
that she favored during the seasons that exist between blazing hot and
frigidly cold. Hector might have made fun of her for it already, but
there was a very heavy wool cape that was hanging up in the closet of
her bedroom. Lola was waiting for the temperatures to reliably float
around freezing before she busted that out. Until then, the canvas work
coat more commonly seen on ranchers, farmhands and construction workers
was what she favored.
The phone buzzed near her left breast, and
she placed the apple she'd been chewing on down on the log beside her,
balanced so that it would stay upright standing on its bottom, and
fished the phone out of her coat.
Corey's name is read on the
screen as 'Corey', plain and simple. Lola chews at the apple chunk in
her mouth and her brows knit together, but she isn't one to just
outright ignore a call, especially if it's from someone who doesn't call
just to idly chat.
Chew, chew, swallow, answer.
"Well look who decided to drop me a line. How the fuck are ya?"
Corey Seger
The
Ahroun's laughter sounds tinned but not forced. It is not his moon that
will hang in the sky tonight but that doesn't mean he doesn't feel the
pull of frenzy closer than he would have had he called earlier in the
month.
Two moons have passed since they last saw each other. Two moons and Gaia knows what else.
"I'm alright," Corey says as the laughter tapers off. "How the fuck are you?"
Lola Hawkes
"Fuckin' exhausted, man."
Somehow,
it seems that since the two had connected in Las Vegas over copious
amounts of alcohol and spending Rage and rage all up and down the strip,
watching shows, killing vampires and threatening to fight with douchey
groups of twenty-somethings that wanted to laugh at Corey's height or
make cat calls at the leggy Hispanic-Native woman that was with him, the
Ahroun and would-be Ahroun had found their rhythm to one another
again. Lola was comfortable speaking with him, her tone wasn't tight or
on guard when Corey called. She didn't regard him as a rival or enemy
to her man, but as an old friend that she may or may not get the chance
to actually see again. Time would tell, but for now she just
appreciated that he thought to reach out again-- even if she didn't
quite know why he called just yet.
"I had to hold some
half-turned Fomori girl down last night for way too goddamn long while
some spirit-dizzy Silver Fang summoned Unicorn, of all goddamn spirits,
to come an exorcise the bane out of the bitch. So, things are
exciting."
Lola looked at her apple and considered taking another
bite, but decided that obnoxious crunching into the receiver would be
just that-- obnoxious. She instead tucked the phone between her jaw and
shoulder so that she could unscrew the lid to her thermos.
"What's up? I ain't heard from ya since Vegas, did something happen?"
While waiting for his answer, he'll hear a quiet 'slosh' from the thermos as she drinks deep.
Corey Seger
"Nah, man, nothing happened."
Which
doesn't mean much of anything. She can hear the rush of mid-day
downtown Houston traffic and knows it is warmer there. He is probably
sitting outside a cafe or a bistro with his laptop and his sunglasses
killing time. Doing whatever it is Glass Walkers do on their network all
day long.
"I nailed the second-rank test last week so that was...
good." He is definitely in public if he's talking about challenges like
he's in the military. "You know? Just wondering how Heck's doing. I
hadn't heard from you in a while, I wasn't sure what was going on."
Lola Hawkes
Lola
doesn't really bother to check the weather anywhere that isn't local.
Truth be told, she's only left the area on a couple of occasions, and
she's left the state even less frequently. That Corey managed to pull
her out of Colorado for a meeting said something about how far her
patience actually did stretch under the surface for the wolves that her
sister had packed with. The fact that it was for Hector's sake probably
helped, if we're going to tell the truth, though. She could hear
traffic on the other side of the phone and figured that Texas was
probably still much warmer than it was here, but she didn't necessarily
envy Corey for it.
After all, he had to sit there smelling exhaust
fumes and listening to assholes honk because a pedestrian tried to
cross the street. Lola got to breathe fresh autumn air and be left
alone. Their preferences in surroundings really spoke to which tribes
they identified with.
"So you're Fostern again, huh? Good for
you," She isn't throwing shade at the fact that he lost that same rank
once before, though he may be tensed and ready for it. It seems he
caught her on a good day. Though she would have been quite happy to
just kill the twin sisters and be done with it last night, she couldn't
deny the sense of accomplishment that came from knowing someone was
saved instead.
He wanted to know what was going on and how Hector
was doing, and Lola smirked into the receiver. The expression carries
over in her voice. "Aw, you care." The smirk fades out of her tone of
voice as she continues. "You're goddamn lucky that I like you, man,
Tamsin and Hector sure as hell wouldn't be answering your 'how you
doing' calls."
She screws the lid back onto her thermos and jams
it away into her pack, shuffles about some and adjusts her position so
that she can lean forward and rest an elbow on a knee-- or, well, she
tries this at least. Then the waistband of her jeans cuts into her
growing stomach, prohibiting the full stretch forward, so she instead
plants a palm on the log and leans back a little with a huffing sound.
"He's
a hell of a lot better. Getting close to going for Fostern himself,
actually. There's been some serious shit going down up here, and that
he's been standing tall through the lot of it is doing wonders for his
name."
The way she ends her sentence and the quiet that follows
suggests that she had something more to say, but was teetering on the
edge of whether or not it should be shared. Typically she would clam up
on things that she wasn't sure about sharing or not, just to be safe,
but today was a good day, see, and she was pleased to hear Corey's voice
again. It made it feel like there was a chance he could come back,
that she could get to see him and Hector reconcile one day. So, she was
generous with her information sharing, and stepped off that ledge.
"He's gonna be a dad, you know."
Corey Seger
"Is he really?"
Part
of his tone sounds shocked. It isn't that he can't imagine Hector ever
finding a woman who would be willing to lie with him. He'd thought Lola
was that woman when she was willing to fly out to Las Vegas to ask his
former alpha what the hell had happened and even barring that he and
Glen had been the ones who facilitated so many of his waxing-moon
hookups. Hector lost a lot of his game after his First Change because he
scared the shit out of girls his own age and didn't know how to harness
his Rage to draw them in.
The shock comes from knowing Hector as
he was over the summer. The baby of the pack, more or less, without any
idea what he was supposed to be doing or how to go about doing it. So to
hear that he's about ready to challenge for Fostern and is expecting a
baby all at once has Corey hesitantly proud atop the surprise.
"Who the hell's gonna be the mom?"
Lola Hawkes
There's
more shuffling on Lola's end. It didn't take long for her to decide
that stretching her back out and leaning back against nothing on the log
was uncomfortable. So, she decided to gather her things up, toss the
pack straps over her shoulders, and rise.
While she's answering
Corey's question, there's a low noise that sounds like an ironic
chuckle. One hand is now holding the phone to her ear, and the other
has fallen reflexively to cradle the strap of her pack as she walked.
"Well,
you remember when we talked and I said that I didn't really wanna be
with Hector in any romantic way? Well, as it turns out, that was just a
lot of crossed lines. I'm pregnant, Corey."
Corey Seger
"Hah HAH!"
He
hasn't been drinking but Lola knows the sound of Corey's exuberant
crowing laugh because he makes it every time he's right about something.
It doesn't happen often but it is distinctive enough that she can
almost imagine him rocking back in his chair and clapping his hands
together.
"I knew it! Oh, shit, Hawkes, that's... wow. Congratulations. When are you due?"
Lola Hawkes
There's
no one around to see it, but the sound of Corey's crowing laugh of
victory is met with a grin out toward the landscape. This conversation
was making her miss the way the pack used to be more and more.
"Yeah,
yeah, you called it, you smug son of a bitch," she says, but at least
there's good humor in her voice. If she was upset, insulted or bothered
he'd sure as hell know it right away. Her hand adjusts the pack, and
the sound of crunching rocks comes when Lola has to tip her weight back a
little to begin the descent down a pebble-and-rock strewn ledge into a
gulley.
He wanted to know when she was due, and Lola cleared her throat a little.
"I
don't actually know. We figure it'd have to be sometime this summer,
since Hector and I've only been together since I got back from seeing
you. Jeezeshit--," the exclamation came when her footing
slipped a little and she had to jerk to catch her balance and stay
upright. More rocks slid, and she wound up just sliding on the soles of
her boots the rest of the way down, one arm reached back and fingers
trailing on the gulley ledge to keep her balance. Pebbles were brushed
from her palm against the thigh of her pants when she had reached the
bottom.
"We found out last month when I wound up in the E.R. after
a mission went south. I got an ultrasound, but Hector and I flew the
fuckin' coop before we had a chance to find out how many weeks along I
was."
Corey Seger
"Uh huh..."
Corey didn't
interject to ask if she was alright when Lola lost her footing but he
would have had she not started talking again a moment later. Doesn't
sound concerned about the fact that shit went south or Hector had to go
collect her. Not so much that she isn't his concern anymore as it is
that everything obviously turned out alright. She's talking to him now.
Last month was when she found out.
When they cleared out of the
room at the Super 8 in September they had had to swipe the remains of
their night into a waste basket to spare the cleaning lady the injustice
of having to pick up other people's used prophylactics. They had only
found one wrapper and the contents of one wrapper.
As he goes on he sounds distracted but Corey isn't going to be the one to ask if she's sure it's Hector's kid. He jokes instead.
"Shit.
Seriously. That's great. You're going to be--well I don't know about
you, you're fucking crazy, but Hector's going to be a great dad."
Lola Hawkes
[Perception 3 + Empathy 2, +2 diff for phone conversation: Just 'cause.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (4, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Lola Hawkes
It
wasn't cold enough out for a minor scrape or abrasion to be that big of
a pain in the ass. There weren't words to explain the frustration with
how unreasonably much it hurt to bump your bones or scrape your skin
when it was freezing cold. Thankufully Lola got out of the
slip-and-slide down the rocks with just a small scrape on the heel of
her hand and nothing more. She put the scrape to her mouth and nursed
it while listening to Corey talk, glancing left and right to decide
which direction she wanted to go. She decided to take herself north
instead of south and started walking to her right.
Corey joked,
but there was a new tightness to his voice that didn't go unnoticed.
Sure, Lola couldn't see his face, so she couldn't go off of any cues
like avoided eye contact or fidgiting fingers. But while Lola was much
better adapted to being a Garou than she was a Kinfolk in many ways, she
was surprisingly astute at picking up on social cues from the Wolves
that she knew well.
"Hey fuck you, I'm gonna be an awesome mom.
Though you're right, Hector's probably gonna be a better dad." The
pause is brief, only to allow her tone to shift lower when she asks:
"What's wrong?"
She doesn't explain herself, say that he sounds
different or call him out on how his tone had shifted. She's
straightforward as always, and forces him to accept that she heard the
hesitation and distraction in his voice by asking him what caused it
instead of tip-toeing around the matter by confirming if he was okay or
not first.
Corey Seger
"Nothing!"
And his tone brightens like clouds burst apart by the sun after the threat of rain.
For
the time that Corey's tone had gone somewhat distant she could glean
from it though that he was thinking. She felt no negative emotions. No
anger or jealousy or concern. He sounded suspicious but it was not a
defensive sort of suspicious. If he gave it voice he did not know what
would happen.
Pandora in mythology opened the box filled with all
the sorrows of the world. She could have walked away but she didn't. The
men who wrote myths always needed a woman to blame for the way things
went.
"No, I was just worried, after you left. It sounded like he was really depressed. This is good. Tamsin's okay, too?"
Lola Hawkes
The
bright sunburst of 'Nothing!' that cut through the phone was followed
by quiet on Lola's end. Just as she had a background noise of Houston
traffic, both motor vehicle and foot, Corey had the steady crunch-crunch
of Lola's feet on the pebbles of the dried up old waterbed in which she
was walking. Water that was too strong to just be a creek and too
minor to be called a real river used to run through here a century or
two ago, but it has long since been dry. Someone put up a dam somewhere
and water hasn't flowed through here since.
Now, though, those
foot steps began to slow, and Corey can hear Lola coming to a gradual
stop. He'd asked how Tamsin was doing, but Corey didn't get an answer
about how the surviving Celduin Fianna fared.
Instead, he gets a
long bout of quiet. Pebbles shuffle with background noise, and he might
be about to use the Uktena's name like a question, to coax a response
from her and make sure she was still there. If he does try to ask, Lola
will cut off his first syllable when she finally speaks up. Otherwise,
she simply breaks the quiet on her own.
Either way, her voice has
dropped nearly an octave and there's clear, grave concern to it. The
only thing she can feel proud of is the fact that her voice doesn't
shake when she speaks.
"Jesus, Corey.... Do you think it could be....?"
Corey Seger
Unlike
Hector, Corey knows when to give up his charade. He isn't one for lying
or evading the truth. He's more of a shoot first and ask questions
later type of guy and it's better to recognize a potential snag from a
distance instead of when it's right up on top of them.
So she asks if he thinks the baby could be his and he scoffs.
"Do I think? No. We were so drunk that night I don't think anything even really happened."
Lola Hawkes
"Oh shut the fuck up, you know shit happened."
Life
snaps back into the Kinswoman's voice, but this time the good humor is
gone. She isn't angry with him, she isn't actually telling him to shut
up and stop talking. If she didn't want to hear him anymore he knows
full well that she would have shouted something defeating into the
receiver before simply disconnecting the call. But there is fire, and a
fine-tuned note of anxiety that's seeping into her words now.
He hears footsteps start up again, but he isn't there to know that it's because she's started to pace.
"We
were naked in bed together. I remember us getting way too chummy
before the blackout actually hit. I know there was a condom, but I also
know for a fact that I'm capable of round two, and I know how you Garou
bounce back too. I mean, it could have happened again and... shit!"
A
louder sound this time, a smash of rocks colliding with one another.
Lola'd probably kicked something, or hit something, or threw something.
That was just her way.
Corey Seger
"Jesus Christ, Hawkes, you need to chill."
He
doesn't feed off her fear and worry but she can hear him draw a breath
to steady his own nerves now jangling because the implications of their
having done more in the bed of their blackout than he'd originally
thought reach further than just their own peace of mind.
For not
having seen Hector since June he still knows what would happen if Hector
were to find out Lola had gone to Las Vegas and lain with him not all
that long before the Galliard started sharing her bed.
"Chill.
If you're throwing-shit worried you can just go downtown and get a
prenatal paternity test and confirm it's his. You just need a strand of
his stupid hair. It's alright. Are you chill?"
Lola Hawkes
"No, I'm not fucking chill, Corey!"
While
Lola's had plenty of friendships where she's called people by their last
names instead of their first names, she's typically referred to Corey
by his given name. Even now, when he was appealing to her more militant
side by being steady and calling her 'Hawkes' and half-commanding her
to calm down, she still refers to him by his first name.
Her voice
is drawn tight, strained and threatening to snap. He can hope that
she'll be more calm after having a couple of hours to mull this over and
work her way through statistics and logic and good ideas, but this
possibility just dawned on her like some alien sun that scalds eyes and
burns flesh, and she's (over?)reacting accordingly.
"How the hell
am I supposed to be chill about this, huh? Shit's looking up! He's
happy and doing well, I'm happy and doing well. We've got a good thing
going, and I could have fucked the whole thing up before it even
started!"
Corey Seger
She cannot hear the minute
sounds of him clapping shut his laptop and pushing back from the table
where he's been sitting but she can hear the rushing of wind past his
mobile's microphone and the quiet that comes when he finds a place more
isolated than the bustling urban restaurant where he'd been sitting
before.
"Okay, so what good is pitching a fucking fit in the middle of the fucking woods going to do?"
Lola Hawkes
Corey's
answer is a sound instead of a sentence, but it isn't directed into the
receiver. Instead, the rushing frustration and anxiety and crushing
sensation of This Good Thing crumbling around her ears came as a
snarling, roaring sound, and it was burst toward the gulley wall instead
of into the phone. The phone was pulled away from her head, held down
around her waist for a moment.
The Glass Walker was the one with
an active volcano worth of Rage bundled up in his skin, and yet it was
the fruitless, futile anger and violence within the Kinfolk that burst
first.
Somehow, perhaps out of a small niggling sense of
responsibility, Corey's patient enough to stay on the line and wait the
dozen seconds it takes for her to quit stomping around and talk to him
again.
"It does the same precise fucking thing that you assholes
rushing off after the kill during a full moon does, you asshole. It
makes me feel better." That was a lie. She still very much wanted to
simultaneously strangle the life out of something and throw up all of
that cured deer meat that she just ate for lunch. He can hear her
breathing, even though she isn't rushing wind into the receiver. She's
run her free hand through her hair about five times already in the past
minute, and if anyone were to stumble by the'd be immediately concerned
because Lola looked like she was in a lost panic, standing there alone
in the gulley with a cellphone up to her ear.
At least she's quieter, if still rushed and tense and angry (and distraught), when she speaks again. "I'm gonna have to talk to him about this. He's gonna know something's wrong when I get home."
Corey Seger
His
patience overpowers his Rage thanks to having led a pack in the wake of
its first alpha's confusing death. Of all of them he was the most
tactical-minded. Maybe in hindsight Glen or Maria ought to have stepped
up and taken the reins but they all trusted him and believed in him and
now Glen and Maria are dead.
It was Lola loving him more than the
impending arrival of a baby that pulled Hector out of that tailspin but
so far as either of them can tell she is right to worry about what will
happen if this baby isn't Hector's.
"Oh that's a great fuckin' idea," Corey says.
Lola Hawkes
"Fuck
off," she snaps at him. "You might be able to act like nothing's wrong
and lie to your mate's face when she asks what's eating you, but I
ain't so practiced a liar as that."
There's a punch of silence
that follows her words, venomous and spoken hastily. Again, the
crunching of rocks. Lola's lowered herself into a sit with her knees in
the air. She hooked her right arm, the arm not holding the phone, up
overtop of her knees and leaned forward to rest her forehead against her
forearm. When she speaks again the accoustics are different because
she's speaking with her face in the space between her belly and legs,
and some of the wind has gone out of her sails. She's suffering now
from a cringing sense of shame for the words she chose earlier.
"I'm
sorry." At least she's not so proud anymore that she's able to
apologize for putting her foot in her mouth the same moment that it
happens. "I just... I don't wanna tell him anything unless I have to.
I don't wanna worry him, get him all worked up, or make anything snap--
check the moon, man, I know what day it is -- especially if everything
ends up being fine. I mean, the chances are slim as hell but the timing
lines up and...."
She sighs, heavily. Her voice is thick now.
He can't see it, but she's scrubbing at her eyes with the joint of her
thumb and denying to herself that they were prickling hot with tears.
At least no one's around to see.
"He's gonna know something's wrong."
Corey Seger
At
the invective his Rage rears up its head but he is not the sort to lose
his composure or his shit because of something someone hundreds of
miles away said to him over the phone and even when he breathes heavier
for his anger growing hot inside his chest Lola is so distracted by her
own thoughts and her own decision that if she hears the rushing of his
breath over the microphone it becomes another background noise in a sea
of them.
Out here she can hear the wind in the trees and small
mammals rustling in the underbrush and the trickling of the nearby
stream. Most of the birds have gone south already but geese and smaller
songbirds still linger. They sing around her.
He's gonna know something's wrong.
"Lola, nothing's wrong.
You're getting yourself all worked up for nothing. You two weren't
together when you came out to meet me, right? And it's not like we meant
to hook up. It just happened. We were drunk. I'm telling you, the
chances of it being mine are so fucking slim it isn't even worth talking
about. Don't get yourself and him all lathered up over this. Huh?"
Lola Hawkes
A
day or two later Lola's going to look back at this phone conversation
and feel a very strong need to call Corey back. The intention of the
phone call won't be to deliver a confirmation of who the child belongs
to, not necessarily anyways. She hasn't yet decided if she's going to
go to town and do the paternity test or not. Something about having
doubt strong enough to need a manmade test to confirm paternity felt so
shameful that it burned her heart and made her stomach turn. Rather,
she'll want to call him to thank him, specifically to thank him for his
patience and for talking her through a spasming moment of fear and doubt
and sadness.
Now, though? Now she's too wrapped up in her own
worries, gone too far down that rabbit hole in her mind. She's already
picturing a nightmare-ish scenario where she delivers the baby and it
comes out light skinned with downy light hair. The lump in her throat
grows, threatens to overwhelm, and chokes her voice when she answers
back.
"Sure...," is all she manages to get out. She isn't
outright sobbing, but Corey'd be an idiot to not realize that the woman
on the other line is crying now. Her shoulders won't jerk or shudder
from it, but there's nothing she can do now to stop tears from sliding
down her cheeks. Again, only the geese and mice can see them anyways.
"I'll....heh-hem--"
she had to clear her throat in order to keep talking, and the sound was
rough and uncomfortable to behold. "I'll be in touch. I need some
time now."
Corey Seger
She gets a sigh in return
for her strained response but that is the best he can do considering
this seemed like such a great idea a few minutes ago.
No way of
knowing he was going to call and get a life update from a woman he
hadn't heard from in so many months the last time he saw her. Who had
come all the way out to a Weaver city in the middle of the desert on
account of she was concerned for a friend who was working on getting
over her rejection at the time. By all accounts she oughtn't have gone
out there in the first place but talking to Hector about the incident
that tore the pack apart hadn't gotten her anywhere.
When she gets
back to the house Hector will still be asleep. This pattern he falls
into this time of the month has him sleeping until nightfall just about
and then rising to go run himself ragged until he can't hear or feel the
moon anymore.
She has time. And Hector isn't as perceptive as
everyone thinks he is. He knows way too much about things most Garou
can't even begin to fathom. Lola at least isn't a master of subtlety.
He'll be able to tell something is wrong if she doesn't behave the way
she normally does.
Corey sounds resigned by now. No point arguing with a pregnant woman.
"Alright," he says. No I'm sorry. Maybe that will come later. "Take care of yourself, Hawkes."
Lola Hawkes
Once
upon a time ago there was a pack of twenty-something Werewolves that
would come by The Homestead to visit every dozen weeks or so. They
would drink and smoke and harrass the local Guardians and make a lot of
noise plowing through the grocery store in the nearest suburban town.
In these times, Lola connected with the pack as a whole, but also built
her own one-on-one connections with the Wolves individually.
Willow
she would regard with a distant respect and moderate sense of uncertain
caution that she couldn't shake. It probably had something to do with
coping with the loss of her mother and that the Black Fury reminded her
of Evelyn Hawkes a little bit. Tamsin was like a little sister, younger
and smaller and full of life and stories and laughter-- she was a
relief to be around. Glen would share too-strong drinks with her when
Maria wasn't around to scold and hold two-hour long conversations with
the Kinfolk if she would sit still long enough to hear them.
Hector
and Lola would smoke and talk and watch the stars and flames together.
He would waffle on whether he should or could reach out to touch her
and never did. With Corey, though, Lola held a different and very
singular kind of respect. He was an Ahroun, what she had expected to
be. He was full of Rage and war sense and battle tactics. He was young
enough not to be too hardened, so Lola would share battle stories and
shove playfully with him when they weren't mutually feeling distant to
the world around them.
She has to swallow back an 'I miss you, come back' and instead replaces it with:
"You too, Corey."
She'll
hang up the phone, then, and tuck it between her stomach and legs so
she can sit still and wait for the tears to stop falling. That time
comes about ten minutes later, and when she feels confident enough that
her breath doesn't shake and her eyes aren't so red and puffy she wipes
her cheeks and nose on her coat, stands up, and starts walking once
more.
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