Lola Hawkes
Even though it was the first day of the
month of December, which is supposed to be the doorway into a long,
cold, dark winter, the Uktena pair had awoken that morning to bright
blue skies, fluffy clouds, and enough sun to make the top of your head
and shoulders warm. It was in the fifties, and sweaters would suffice.
No need for that big winter cape that Lola wears when it's frigid.
Over
the past week or so the number of naps that Lola's found herself
falling into has decreased. Though she still smells everything with the
similar sensitivity of a wolf (but only in obnoxious ways), the
queasiness has since quelled as well. She was out chopping up wood with
Hector when he suggested that they get away from the house and the
typical patrol paths. They could go out for a hike along one of the
beaten down trails, like a normal Colorado couple. Lola was bemused,
and found herself not only unable to argue with the idea, but actually
pleased with it.
So, about two hours later it's close to noon and
the big rusty white truck that Lola drives is parked in a small dirt lot
at the bottom of a trailhead. Lola's been running warmer than typical,
thanks to the way your body works while pregnant, so she's left her
canvas jacket in the car. Instead she's dressed in the one pair of
maternity jeans that she has procured, for over the past two weeks her
stomach has swollen enough that even her loose jeans don't want to
button anymore. Over this she wears a comfortable brown sweatshirt with
an almost scarf-like bunching of fabric around the neck rather than a
hood. The sweater isn't loose, but fits comfortably. Over the past
week or so her stomach has gotten to a point where it's impossible to
mistake that she's pregnant if she's wearing fitted clothes, but in this
sweater it's still possible that she's just rocking a little extra
weight about the middle.
She has a backpack on her back, both
straps about her shoulders, and is wearing a ball cap with her ponytail
looped through the back. The trail that she'd selected for them is out
in the woods, so that their path is surrounded by trees and rocks. It's
approximately two miles deep into the woods, and after about half of a
mile it curves and starts to hug a shallow, rocky stream.
At this
point in time, they're just getting to the place where the trail curves
and meets the stream. Lola suggests that they pause here, not to sit,
but so that she can turn the backpack to Hector and ask: "Would'ja get
the water bottle out?"
While he's probably complying and digging
about through a backpack stuffed with rags, a first aid kit, a hunting
knife in its sheathe, and a secured thermos of soup, Lola stands with
her hands on the straps and watches a couple not too different from them
(aside from birthright and skin tone) hesitating further up the trail,
not particularly wanting to come down close to the man that feels like
he may snap and stab them.
"I told'ja that I made up with Erich,
didn't I?" She'd neglected to mention it to him directly, but Hector
may have heard this through the rumor mill by now.
Hector Ghosh
"Gee, I dunno, did you?"
Like
Hector can't remember something someone told him yesterday. Or five
years ago. The male has been gifted the ability to recall anything he
wants from whenever he wants and to recall it perfectly. He knows that
she didn't tell him. That he had to hear about it from someone who was
hanging around the Caern and feeling in a gossiping mood that day.
But
he is always in a gossiping mood. He wants to know what's going on
because it's his job to know what's going on. Someone did tell him. She
can almost hear him smiling that smile that says he thinks he's
hilarious as he zips up her pack again and hands the water bottle to her
over her shoulder.
He leans over the pack to press his lips to
her temple. Puts his hands on her hips. It's somewhat awkward with the
pack pressed between them. The pack he has been carrying isn't even his.
He found it up in the loft.
If they linger here long enough the skittish humans will continue on their way and stop looking back at them.
"Erich's
a good Ahroun. I mean, he's completely insane, but I've followed him
into some nasty situations and come out okay. You know? I'm glad you
guys made up."
Lola Hawkes
He fires back with a
'gee I dunno did you?', and Lola responds by rolling one shoulder in a
shrug and reaching back for the water bottle when she hears him zipping
the pack back up. Truth be told she didn't quite remember. She was
just trying to make conversation, was all.
The water bottle gets
its lid screwed off and Lola was about to take a drink, but paused as
Hector had leaned in from behind to kiss at her temple under the fabric
of the cap she wore and place his hands at her hips. This was awkward
with the backpack in the way-- typically if she was feeling like
reciprocating the affection she would lean back into him and hold her
face to the side of his and be still with him for a minute. Since the
backpack prevented that she instead just tipped her head toward his
mouth some and shifted her hips enough that one could press further into
his palm.
She tends to avoid sharing their relationship with
strangers, but that seems to apply more when they're around other Garou
and Kinfolk. Humans don't much seem to register on her radar. So the
couple that are uncomfortably shifting up the trail from them are
ignored utterly, and eventually they decide to go off the trail, cross
the creek, and move along the other side of it to get past them. Lola
turned to face Hector again, moving away from his hands in doing so, and
watched the couple with a half-amused smirk before she drank from the
water bottle.
A quarter of its contents are gone before she
finishes, and with a swipe of her mouth with the back of one hand she
offers the bottle to Hector next.
"Well, I thought about it and
figured that I'd said shit that didn't need saying. I mean, he's still a
fuckin' bitch for losing his shit at the ceremony, but there's no sense
in telling him that. Truthfully, I didn't know how well it would go. I
figured I'd try and say sorry and if he wouldn't accept it then fuck
him, and I'd leave it there. But he was alright-- said he was impressed
that I bothered to come apologize in the first place. So we're back on
good grounds.
"Went and saw Javed and met his packmate, that
Silver Fang, too. Eddie told me they claimed turf just north of the
Bawn, so I checked it out."
Look at you, Lola, being a regular socialite.
Hector Ghosh
Figures
Hector wouldn't want to take his hands off her once he put them there.
If one can call it a problem he has had this problem since they began
sharing a bed. That he loves her and desires her wasn't ever anything
anyone doubted. Even the Skald could tell.
So she turns to him and
since they're standing still and talking of positive things he's
watching her face with eyes that are stupid with the love he has for her
and he's petting her hair off her brow. Though the day is warm Hector
has only admitted it by virtue of leaving his gloves and hat in the car.
Leaving his outerwear in the car and wearing his sweatshirt with the
hood down.
He's acclimating to the shitty weather.
"Look at you," he says, "cavorting with the upper crust. What was it like? Is everything blinged out?"
The
forecast isn't calling for snow until Tuesday but the sky overhead is
beginning to darken and rapidly. As if night is falling.
Lola Hawkes
As
is the case whenever someone with long hair wears a ball cap, strands
like to fall loose and dangle around the face anyways. Hector's looking
at her with the puppy-dog stupid-in-love stare that he keeps when
they're just being together-- not out around people, not talking
business or politics, just existing simultaneously. Lola's face
defaults to a hard setting of strength and stone, but in times like this
it's softer, warmer, more alight. She smiles her small (but not shy,
never shy) smile back when he tucks some loose black hair back up under
the brim of her cap and chuckles at his comment.
"Yes and no. It
was all sleek and clean in there, but it's a new house. You wouldn't
believe the spread, though. She invited me in to have food and
conversation, and goes to the fridge and pulls out these pre-prepared
trays of, like..... snacks, I guess. Meat spread and cheeses on
crackers and cut up vegetables and shit. Like one of those fancy
parties where people in suits carry trays of this stuff to you."
She means to say hors d'oeuvres, but doesn't have the word for it. For some reason that one never made it into her vocabulary.
She
might have been about to say something else, but Hector's face casts a
shadow all of a sudden. Lola blinked and tipped her head back up to
check the sky through the trees above. The weather on the radio she
keeps in the kitchen said that there would be clear skies and warm
weather, but that would change in the middle of the week. When they'd
gotten out of the car the only clouds in sight were fluffy white ones
scattered here or there.
When she looked up, she saw that it
wasn't cloud cover blocking out the sun, but rather the sky itself was
darkening as though the sun had gone behind the mountain ridge already.
Her brow furrowed, and she reached into her pants pocket to check the
time on the front screen of her outdated little flip-phone.
"....The
hell...?" She asks this outloud, cautiously, and with a frown on her
face she shows the front of the phone to Hector, who has no doubt
noticed the change of light by now too. The time on the phone reads
12:28pm.
Hector Ghosh
Correction: the time on the
phone read 12:28pm when she looked at it the first time but then the
minutes began to rocket upward from 28 to 35 to 52. The hour dropped
from 12 to 11 to 10. As Hector looks at it the numbers keep on dropping.
And
he had started to say something about the spread Avery had prepared for
them but then a frown claimed his words as the darkness deepened. Now
his eyes lift from the phone's face that he might stare around at the
world around them. His nostrils flare. Lola cannot tell exactly when his
senses sharpen themselves but she can see his posture change. He holds
himself more like an upright monster than a hyperactive young man.
"I don't know," he says. "Hold onto my hand, I don't wanna lose you."
[perc + occult: sense wyrm? -2 diff because heightened senses.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN4 (3, 3, 7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
Lola Hawkes
The
expression on Lola's face while she watches the numbers on the phone
shift and change is difficult to put into words. Her brow knits
heavily, her eyes widen, and her lips part like she's going to vocalize
her confusion and concern but she doesn't quite know how to. It takes
Hector's telling her to hold onto his hand for her to pull her eyes away
from the screen of her phone, and when she looks at him her expression
is worried and confused, but not scared. Lola hasn't shown fear easily
before, and she sure isn't going to start now, even though she's never
seen time flip itself around like this before.
Her lips press
together and she nods sternly. Quick as a lick she slips the phone back
into her pocket, no longer wanting to lose herself in watching to see
where the numbers go. She tosses the pack off her back and drops it on
the ground in front of her. One hand wraps itself up in Hector's,
fingers interlacing and locking with his. Her grip is firm without
being crushing, and he can feel the tension going all the way up her arm
from her hand alone.
She leans forward, though, the other hand
working to grope about in the back pocket of the backpack, pulling loose
the handgun that she'd stashed away. She never leaves home without
some sort of way to defend herself, and this is what she opts for now.
Gun
in hand, she straightens up and looks around, standing near to Hector,
scoping the landscape around them rather than the skies now, trying to
spy anything that may come slinking out of the trees toward them.
[Perception 3 + Alertness 2]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (3, 4, 4, 5, 6) ( fail )
Lola Hawkes
[Reroll, that was pitiful.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (1, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Hector Ghosh
[ignore this]
Dice: 8 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 5 )
Hector Ghosh
[ahaha. ahaha. hah.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN10 (2, 3, 7, 7, 7) ( fail )
Hector Ghosh
In
the darkness they find each others' hands. Hector's is warm and
calloused and strong and it clasps to hers instead of knitting them
together. Not as if he's dragging her along but to give her guidance and
strength as they continue onward.
His intention appears to be to lead them back down to the truck and to get the hell out of here.
Somewhere
in the distance not so far from where the other two hikers once were
although it's hard to tell now because the clouds have covered up the
sliver-thin moon and the stars but somewhere off behind them Lola can
hear the sound of something hitting something else.
And then the sound of someone falling.
And then the sound of something chewing.
And then a scream. A high-pitched pain-drenched end-of-the-world scream.
"It
doesn't feel corrupt," Hector says. He sounds worried. More than that
he sounds if his insides feel as if they've turned to water. Ice-sweat
doesn't slick his palms but for someone who has seen some dark corners
of the Umbra it is rare that Hector does not recognize something when he
encounters it. "I don't think it's Grandfather Serpent. It reeks, though, do you--"
Just
before he cuts off Lola feels the vertigo of someone grabbing her by
the back of the neck and forcing her over a chasm though no one grabs
her and the ground is still solid beneath her feet. That internal
yawning sensation though. If this were a film it would make a sound.
All
she has right now is sound because the dark around them is so complete
and when the sensation starts to fade something hits Hector. He grunts
as the impact knocks the air from his lungs and the impact goes through
him so hard Lola feels it jolt his arm. His hand lets go of her hand and
he falls to the ground.
Lola Hawkes
They begin
making their way back down the trail, down the way they came, and Lola
snatches her backpack up and tosses it onto her back again, this time
with only one strap securing it. She wasn't going to release Hector's
hand to get the other strap on, and he probably wasn't going to let go
of her even if she wanted to anyways. Security of a first aid kit and
knife wasn't worth that risk, not in circumstances like this.
While
the world goes dark, noises reach her ears even though she can't see
much. There's a falling and crunch-crunch chewing, and her hand grasps
Hector's more firmly. Then the scream, and her muscles spasm tight, but
she doesn't startle or yelp or look afraid as much as she just looks
more serious, storm-cloudy, and worried.
Hector says that it
doesn't feel corrupt, and Lola growls out between clenched teeth: "It
doesn't have to be of the Wyrm to mean us harm." This is a fact that he
knows just as well as she does, and that's why they keep going. He's
in the middle of telling her that it smells terrible when the world goes
dark and feels like it's going to tip, even though nothing has touched
her and she's still holding Hector's hand.
Her feet stumble to a
stop and she stands bolt upright, muscles locked and still and
struggling to maintain reality though her head swims and dizziness
threatens to spill her sideways, backwards, or maybe even completely
updside-down. She's never been to a halloween amusement house, but the
sensation is not unlike walking through those tunnels that spin
black-light splashes around you. It's like that, but ten times worse.
The
sensation fades, and Lola shakes her head and pushes the wrist of the
hand holding the gun against her forehead to try and clear it. Then
there's a 'whump!' noise and Hector tenses, then goes limp to
the ground beside her like a rag doll. Lola's stomach twists
uncomfortably and she blinks hard and rapidly to clear her mind and
eyes. "Hector! Shit!"
When she's able, she crouches
down beside him and inspects him for damage. Did something hit his
head? Was he bleeding? What the hell happened to him? This analysis
is something that she only allots a few seconds for before she's
flipping the safety off her gun and looking around with wide, wild eyes
for the culprit. Her lips are peeled back from her teeth, and she
positively snarls into the darkness around her.
"Stand the fuck up and show yourself!"
Lola Hawkes
[Perception 3 + Investigation 1: Spending WP, this is important]
Dice: 4 d10 TN8 (4, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Hector Ghosh
As
close as she is Lola does not have to wrack her brain to draw a
connection between the impact and the fall. Her imagination may do as it
will. But before she crouches down beside Hector she hears a small wet
writhing sound near where he landed and then she hears that crunching
chewing sound faint earlier for the distance between them and the other
two hikers.
Her hands find him prone in the grass and as they
grope to find an explanation for what happened the sound abates. Unlike
the human Hector does not shriek as it does to him whatever it is it's
doing. Lola finds a long thick tubular thing attached to the back of his
neck.
Though she no doubt snatches it from his body Lola feels it
deflate if she tightens her grip on it. It leaves its skin in her hand.
Her mate was right. It does reek.
Stand the fuck up and show yourself!
Hector
makes a strangled noise where he lies on the ground and then he starts
to laugh. The thing hijacking his body has a voice thicker than his and
if Lola is willing to stretch her imagination she can convince herself
that it makes him sound as if he's been gargling with gravel but that
would imply that it sounds like him at all. This does not sound like her
mate.
It starts to stand the fuck up.
Lola Hawkes
Her
inspection of Hector had to be done mostly with hands-- all she could
see was Hector's shape prone in the grass, crumpled where he fell.
She'd felt his chest and pressed fingers to his throat. Lola was
surprisingly well trained when it came to first aid. If she had a
better way with people and any desire to leave The Homestead and start
earning a living, she'd make one hell of an EMT. But she didn't want to
go save people that had choked on chicken bones or stopped breathing
under the weights of their own obese chests. She learned this to be of
use on the battle field, to know what to do when someone gets part of
their belly blown open or takes shrapnel to the neck.
Still, the
basics are there, and she knows he's alive because he's breathing and
his pulse is there. While she was inspecting his neck she found
something slimy, like an oversized leach, attached to the back of it,
under his hair. Her eyes widened, her jaw clenched, but she said
nothing about it. No one was listening anyways. She instead wrapped
her bare hand around the slimy thing, biting her short fingernails into
it to keep her grip, and yanked it free. It deflated, and she tossed it
on the ground and adjusted her position to crush it under her boot.
When
she'd turned and yelled for whatever it was that was doing this to show
itself, the only response she got came from the man on the ground
beside her. He started to laugh... if you could call it that. The
noise was wet and rocky and deep and unlike anything she'd heard from
him before-- even the strangled noises of Rage boiling over and trying
to seize control.
Lola blinked, surprised, and felt her heart
seize in her chest. There's a cold dread that wraps over her like a
damp quilt in the middle of winter.
I can't kill this enemy, she realizes.
Hector's
body begins to stand up, and Lola tosses the backpack off her back and
is quick to climb on top of Hector before whatever's controling him
manages to find his feet completely. She's going to try and pin him to
the ground and keep him down there. The gun is left on the ground,
within a few inches of the discarded pack.
Lola Hawkes
[Strength 3 + Athletics 3]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Hector Ghosh
[monster!hector's str + athletics]
Dice: 8 d10 TN10 (1, 1, 3, 5, 6, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 1 )
Hector Ghosh
The
yawning sensation comes for her again. Off in the distance comes the
sound of splintering bones and splattering blood. Another shriek follows
it but this one is grief-warped. This is the closest Lola will ever
come to blindness without permanently losing her eyesight. That alone is
explanation enough for the vertigo.
That and the fact that she
climbs onto the back of someone four inches taller than her in his human
skin. It's a minor blessing that he stays in that skin. Lola has seen
him when he takes on his war form. Even his dire wolf form would be
impossible to kill.
It isn't impossible to kill him in his human
skin but homid Garou can shrug off bullets. This is what gave birth to
the myth that werewolves cannot be destroyed with anything other than
silver bullets. They are not immortal. They're just tough.
And
Lola cannot bring herself to shoot the thing out of him because it's
wearing her man's skin. So she pins it to the ground. It goes down with
another grunt of lost air that sounds nothing like Hector's voice and
then it lies still a moment. She can hear it working Hector's jaws and
gnashing Hector's teeth. Tasting Hector's blood.
Beneath her Lola can feel the thing move Hector's hand towards where she left the gun.
Lola Hawkes
Lola
managed to knock the legs out from under Hector's body and caused him
to topple onto the ground again. She was virtually blind, the darkness
was so thick and palpable, but her hands groped and managed to find his
rib cage, his shoulders. From there she was familiar enough with his
body to know his proportions and where she would need to be to keep him
down. So she clambered on top of him, swung a leg over his waist and
set her weight down square on his stomach. He tried to struggle, to
dislodge her, but Lola was strong and capable and he was kept firm to
the ground.
She put her forearm on his collarbone and leaned her
weight forward to keep his chest and shoulders down. She can hear the
clack-clash of teeth coming from his head, but for a moment she's
distracted when another scream cuts through the night-dense air around
her. She twisted her head, trying in vain to see what was happening
even though she already knew that her eyes could find nothing, no matter
how they struggled.
Panic tried to squeeze at her heart, tried to
force a noise that was small and wretched from her throat, but Lola was
a proud thing and wouldn't let whatever was out there causing this have
the satisfaction, especially not if it could hear her through Hector's
ears.
His arm moved, hand groping off to the side where her gun
had been discarded. "Oh, no you don't," she growled and moved the arm
that wasn't pinning his chest down to snatch at his arm, to try and drag
it back. If she's successful in this struggle she'll have his arm down
at his side, clamped there and held in place with her knee.
While she's struggling, she's trying to reach Hector through whatever it is that's possessing him.
"Hector, Jesus fuck, snap out of it. Please, come on, push through! I don't wanna bash your head open, come on!"
Hector Ghosh
[come on heck]
Dice: 5 d10 TN9 (1, 2, 5, 7, 8) ( fail )
Hector Ghosh
For
a moment it feels as if Hector hears her. Doesn't sound like it. It
sounds as if the thing inside of him is enjoying this. The violence and
the threat of violence and the weight of her healthy hot-blooded fertile
body atop this meat sack it's inhabiting.
But the body stills.
She cannot see his face in the dark to know what his eyes look like
right now. No light to glint off of the corneas and let her know if
they're open or closed. If they're rolled back in his head or bloodshot.
It stills and it listens to her and a ripple courses through her mate's
spine. Like he is fighting it.
Then a laugh comes out of his
throat thicker than before. She can smell blood on his breath and the
metal smack of it is louder than anything she's heard tonight. With her
hand on his wrist she can feel the heat as it leeches out of his body
into the ground. With her forearm on his chest she can feel that he
isn't breathing like a normal person would be breathing.
She can't feel a heartbeat in his chest.
Do it, says the voice. She can feel it in her mind more than hear it.
Lola Hawkes
For
a moment, and only that, the writhing and thrashing under her stills.
She's still trying in vain to see, her eyes are aimed where she knows
his face would be and the pupils are as wide as they can go without
chemical influence, trying desperately to take in light that she already
knows isn't there. There's a chew-chew in the distance, floating in
the air like spider webs, and she's certain that whatever it was that
hit Hector has already found the hikers that were out enjoying the day
along with them. She's tense, worried that they're going to spring on
her.
Well, not too worried, really. Those people she's not afraid to kill. It's Hector's well being that she's invested in.
That
stillness passes quick enough, though, and the wet-gravel laugh comes
again. Lola lets out a shuddering breath, something between frustration
and the budding beginning of despair, and she leans forward on his
body. Her weight doesn't shift off of him by any means, she's still
able to hold him down, but the small round firmness of her stomach
presses into his and she touches her forehead to her own forearm. The
cap had come off during the struggle, was on the ground not too far from
everything else she's discarded.
His skin is growing cold, his
heartbeat isn't thumping in his chest anymore although she's certain it
should be like a jackhammer. And there's a voice in her head that's
urging her, trying to pull her toward violence. She grinds her teeth
against it and shakes her head, forehead still against her arm. She
wished desperately that there was a Theurge there with her, to peel back
the layers and find this thing and chase it off, but there's no one
else but them and the other fallen hikers out there in the trees.
What do I do? What do I do? Get a fucking grip, that's what you do.
"I
ain't doing shit," she mutters to the voice in her head, to the thing
in Hector's. Just holding him here is accomplishing nothing, so she
takes a chance and removes her arm from his chest. Her hands seek the
sides of his face instead and upon finding it hold it firm, fingers
avoiding clamping teeth. She shifts her weight on top of him, stretches
her body up his further and touches her brow to his now instead. His
breath is metallic like blood, he's probably bitten up his tongue and
cheeks, but she tries anyways.
"This is your chance, Hector. You push through or I'm knockin' ya out and dragging your ass back to the truck. Come on, help me."
Hector Ghosh
[hectorrrrr?]
Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (1, 5, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )
Hector Ghosh
[ignore this]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 4, 8, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Lola Hawkes
[Stamina 4]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Hector Ghosh
[rage check, +1 because reasons]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 4, 4, 4, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )
Hector Ghosh
If
Hector were gone she would know it. She would not know it as fierce and
fast as Tamsin and Thomas and Jack would know it. They would feel it
like a bullet to the gut. Like something burst inside of them. When he
dropped to the ground in the Umbra and lay still for a few seconds while
his spirit railed against the trip back to the Homelands Tamsin and
Thomas felt it. They panicked. They did not know what to do. They were
far away and did not know where he was. Tamsin thought he was with Lola.
He wouldn't do anything stupid if he was with Lola.
Something has
blotted the sun out of their eyes. Made them think it was night. That
time had ceased to be a relevant thing. Something plucked off two hikers
and took over Hector's body faster than it took Lola to realize she
could not bring herself to shoot him.
Their baby is not big enough
for them to feel her yet. They do not know if she is even a she. Hector
calls her a she. Neither do they know if she is Kin or True. If she
will scream to be so near his Rage or if his heartbeat will calm her.
Lola's
belly presses against his. His teeth show themselves in the dark and
that rank blood smell comes out of his throat again. A sigh without
breath. Her anguish could nourish it. It wants to hear her scream the
way the hiker screamed when her lover burst apart in front of her.
It
gets nothing from her steeling herself against the impossible and
grabbing her mate's cold face. Small solace that it is his face she
finds and not the face of an unfamiliar or a monster. No warmth in it
though. This is what his face would feel like if he were dead. The blood
oozing out of his mouth, over her thumbs, is still warm.
She begs
him. The thing pushes that awful dead-breath at her again. Then Hector
twitches underneath her. Snuffles and exhales through his nose. Hits her
with blood-spray as it catches the breath and rides it out of his
airway. He arches his back not to get her off of him but like to get
this thing out of him and she can hear him grit his teeth so he won't
scream but there's only so much he can do.
It went in through the back of his neck.
Lola
recognizes the sound it makes as it leaves: cracking bones and
splattering viscera. He doesn't have time to scream and he's still alive
she knows he is his blood is hot when it sprays her in the face and it
spurts out of him with every beat of his heart after that but that sound
is the sound that killed the hiker in the distance.
The thing
doesn't feel like a leech when it rushes away through the space between
their bodies. It feels like smoke. Huge and hot and hungry still.
That
yawning sensation hits her again and she feels it acute and hard this
time. Feels it in her stomach. She weathers it like she has weathered so
many other things but she has to steel herself against it.
Beneath
her Hector trembles from the stun of what happened and he chokes and
coughs around his blood and his hands grab hold of her elbows. She can
see the outline of his body. The sky is lightening but everything is
blue-black for the slowness of its lightening
Footsteps in the
sodden dead leaves. Something is behind her and Hector is trying to
speak but he can't. She can feel the tension in him though. The panic
and the flare-up of his Rage. He wants to get up. He wants to kill this
goddamned thing. If he takes another hit he's going to walk out of here
with another battle scar if he walks out of here at all.
Lola Hawkes
The
struggle that takes place is a vicious one, and contained within the
non-existant space between their two bodies. Lola stayed on top of
Hector, legs on either side of his waist, belly and chest pressed to his
and her face up beside his. This is very similar to a position they'll
take in bed when tossing about sweat-slicked between the sheets, but
there's nothing heated or lusty about this. It's wanting, but not
wanton. She wants Hector, but only because she wants him back.
He
coughs and he struggles and there's a crunching noise of bones snapping
and grinding. His spine arches, presses him nearer against her, and
blood sprays from his mouth and hits her face. It gets in
wide-searching eyes that were unprepared so she has to squeeze them
closed, and coats her lips, but she doesn't care. She's not worried for
poisons that may lay there, she's just trying to brace him and get him
through this, encouraging him to come forward with low urging whispers
against the side of his face, with hands that move from his cheeks into
his hair and tremble there, wanting to feel the warmth rush back into
his scalp.
Then there's a burst of dense heat that comes from his
face, not the slug that had burrowed through his neck but some tangible
smokey substance instead. Then he's holding onto her arms and trembling
and snarling, but his body is worn and half-broken. Lola makes a noise
of relief, animal sounding and a cousin of a sob but not quite there
yet.
Then, crunching behind her. Lola's nerves are strung tight
like an over-tuned piano wire waiting to snap, and the sound of
something approaching behind her triggers a response that is as beastial
as the man that lay beneath her. The sky was lightening, her head was
still dizzy and muscles still sore from that vertigo sensation that
tried to rattle her bones and burst her skull, but had failed for this
Kinfolk is wrought from iron and blood.
Whatever it was that came
up behind her was sprung upon without a second thought. She didn't even
stop to sweep the blood from her stinging eyes and register the fact
that she could see properly again. She'd ask questions only after this
thing was no longer a threat.
[Init! Dex 3 + Wits 3 + ....]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )
Hector Ghosh
So:
Lola springs to her feet the moment she realizes something she can
actually attack has coalesced out of the darkness. The sky continues to
lighten as the creature's hold lessens but as it lessens its hold it
gains its own body.
Hector left his medicine bag in the truck.
Sometimes Hector does not make intelligent decisions. In this instance
it proves to have been an unintentionally intelligent decision. It would
have smashed when he hit the ground earlier and then he would really be
in a world of hurt. But it means he has to lie there and let Lola kill
this creature on her own.
His ego is going to be more bruised by the end of this than he is now.
The
sky is dawn-bright when the creature appears to her as a sexless pale
thing. Bloodless pale. Pink eyes and white hair pale. Big enough it
could take on a wolf without quailing. When Lola runs at it it bares
teeth like razors and hisses at her.
If it can't get her to scream it'll find another way to feed from her.
[+7]
Hector Ghosh
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )
Lola Hawkes
[Oh hell it's going first. Gonna try something new and go on the defense!
Splitting Actions: Dodge, go for gun]
Hector Ghosh
[action: chomp lola!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
Lola Hawkes
[Dodge: Dexterity 3 + Athletics 3, -2 dice for split, spending WP last minute!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Hector Ghosh
The
creature launches itself at her as Lola launches herself at it. Its
teeth would have caught her neck if she had not woven out of its way.
Pregnancy has not yet proven to be a terrible burden to her and it does
not start today. She shoots away from it and goes back for the gun.
On
the ground Hector gives up trying to stand. It isn't that he thinks
she's got this and doesn't need help but that will be a way to save face
later when he tells the story. As she runs back away from the thing he
knows she's going for the gun and not for him.
The Galliard grimaces and pushes the gun across the dirt closer to her. She nabs it up and whirls to face the creature.
It's right behind her.
Lola Hawkes
[Round Two: Fight!]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )
Hector Ghosh
+7!
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )
Lola Hawkes
Lola
had burst forward before registering what it was that she was
attacking. The figure was a bit blurred, but impossible to mistake as
anything but inhuman. She sees a wash of bloodless pale skin on a
humanoid being that would be large enough to grapple with a wolf with
bare hands-- probably hovering somewhere between six and seven feet
tall. There are pink eyes and sharp teeth that flash, and Lola's weight
hasn't changed enough that it makes it difficult for her to move
quickly and maneuver as she's so used to doing.
That thing opens
its mouth and lunges at her teeth first, its face flying quickly toward
her own. Lola's heels dig into the dirt and she bends at the waist,
dipping and ducking under the leech-looking thing's extended torso.
With her boots still ground into the dirt she launched herself back,
back to where she left Hector, back to her pack, to the gun that has
saved her life and the lives of others many times before.
Hector
was struggling to get up, and Lola's eyes flashed at him. She wanted to
yell at him to stay down, but this wasn't the time, and she had other
things to worry about. She was thankful when he found the gun for her
and slid it toward her, so she wouldn't have to fumble and hunt on her
own. She stooped down to snatch up the gun, and was thankful that the
safety was already off.
The woman wouldn't fall to her knees to
gather it up, or twist herself prone on her back to get a better shot.
She kept her feet on the ground and lifted the gun, lining up a shot
with center mass and pulling the trigger twice-- blam blam.
[Spltting Actions: Two Shots. WP on second shot
Shot 1: Dexterity 3 + Firearms 3, -1 dice for split Diff 4 for Close Range]
Dice: 4 d10 TN4 (2, 3, 6, 8) ( success x 2 )
Lola Hawkes
[Damage 1: Base 6 for Heavy Revolver, +1 Suxx]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Hector Ghosh
[yeah okay you can soak lethal i guess]
Dice: 2 d10 TN8 (1, 5) ( fail )
Hector Ghosh
[Gaia is like "bitch no you can't"]
Lola Hawkes
[Second Shot: Dexterity 3 + Firearms 3, -3 split, Diff 4 for Close Range, spending WP]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (7, 7, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Lola Hawkes
[Damage 2: Base 6 + 3 Suxx]
Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 8 )
Hector Ghosh
[lolllll]
Dice: 2 d10 TN8 (9, 9) ( success x 2 )
Hector Ghosh
Two
shots ring out at the edge of the woods. This close to a hiking trail
the person caught discharging the weapon would be in all sorts of legal
hot water if the park ranger weren't missing. If the two hikers who were
around earlier hadn't gone missing too.
They don't have time to
investigate the ranger base or the hikers' fates whether or not they'd
want to. The sky is bright as it was the segment of an hour ago before
talk of buried grudges and amnesty between tribes was occluded by
darkness.
The creature rises up before her. Lola cocks back the
hammer and blasts a round into its chest. Wisps of smoke not born of the
barrel leave out its front and back and it leaks tendrils of darkness
out through its milk-white shell. She cocks the hammer again and when
she shoots it a second time its head does not blast brain and blood onto
the trees behind it.
The entire body sublimates into smoke that
moves up through the air like ink and a chorus of hell-fettered screams
bursts underneath the gunfire. That swell of vertigo comes at her one
last time weaker than its first lashing. It's gone.
One bird chirps. Then another.
"Fuck!" Hector says from his place on the ground.
Lola Hawkes
BLAM
The
first bullet drove through what would be a left pectoral muscle on a
creature more developed, less sexless and sleek and amphibious looking.
Smoke drifted from the wound instead of blood, and Lola didn't take
time to stop and ask questions. She cocked the hammer back and fired
again.
BLAM
This time the bullet flies
true, strikes the thing in the head, and it would be the kind of shot
that sent the back of a skull flying in pieces into the creek nearby,
that splashed blood in a wide and gruesome arc across the land behind.
Rather than blood and gristle flying free, though, the entire body
dissolves before it even has a chance to fall to the ground from the
force of the killing blow. Screams and smoke waft up into the air, and
then the sky is blue and the air is clear and warm once more.
From the ground where Hector had fallen, a curse is let loose.
A bird chirps tentatively, and its partner answers it back.
All clear? they ask.
All clear, they confirm.
Lola's
hands don't shake often, but today they do when the revolver is
lowered. They shake badly enough that the gun slips and hits the
ground, but thankfully does not discharge upon doing so. She stares in a
semi-stunned state at the place where the thing had been standing, and
her bronze-brown face takes on an ashen cast. Her feet move, finally,
shuffling at first, but then a quick three-four steps are taken to move
her off the side of the trail. One hand grasps the trunk of a tree as
she leans forward and empties the contents of her stomach, lunch that
they'd had before leaving, onto the black dirt between some bushes.
Hector Ghosh
The beauty of the swear he chose is that most of its power is in the lips and teeth. He only needs his throat to end the word. The concussive force of its last phoneme is swallowed up by the wound where Hector's throat was a few moments ago.
Whatever it was that took him over burst out beneath his Adam's apple. Looks like something went at his throat with a chainsaw. No artistry in its escape. He evicted it by force of will alone and as he lies on the ground struggling to breathe and process what just happened to them the birds are singing and the sun is shining and the stream is trickling in the distance.
His woman does not come back to him but rushes off to vomit into the bushes instead. She glared at him so he would not get up as she fired shots into the corporeal nightmare. As he lies there he hears her empty her stomach and the sound of it hurts him near as bad as the wound does.
Lola can hear him snuffling wet through his mouth and coughing to clear his throat. Blood has pumped down the front of his sweatshirt so that the gray material has turned rust-red. He is not shaking or shivering anymore but he's in a fair amount of pain. If he had to run right now he would be slowed by the force of it. Staggering instead of running.
And it occurs to him that he doesn't remember what happened between the darkness falling and coming to with Lola sitting astride him like they'd been making love instead of fighting a monster out of him. He knows something was inside of him and it came out through his neck.
That's what sends a shiver through him. Not the injury itself or the pain but the thought of what caused it. He doesn't want to lie here anymore. Hector rolls onto his stomach and pushes himself to his hands and knees. Blood splashes the ground. He coughs. Everything fucking hurts, not just his throat.
"L--" The beauty of his woman's name. He has to spit his own blood to clear his throat. If he has never needed her before he does right now. "Lola?"
Lola Hawkes
At least she didn't have to hit her knees. Lola reassured herself with that, the one handle of pride that she's still able to cling to, much as she grasps the bark of the tree trunk with her left hatnd while bracing her right hand on her knee. There's a sickening splatting noise that comes with throwing up, and Hector has to listen to her retching and dry heaving for a dozen seconds longer before her panting breathing starts to even our, with one little gasp for air tucked in somewhere in the middle.
Behind her, Hector rolls himself off his back and onto his knee and coughs and splatters blood from his throat with his struggle. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, which in turn is wiped onto her pant leg, and twists to look under her left arm. That she finds Hector half-gargling her name behind her creases a scowl of concern and strain and rage, livid and hot and terrible across her face.
She's exhausted, spent, burnt out emotionally from the ordeal they just went through. She couldn't quite wrap her mind around what just happened. It wasn't a Fomori, and Hector had already told her that it wasn't of the Wyrm so she knew that this wasn't a Bane or anything of that sort. She didn't know of any spirits that were able to force their way through skin and possess a Garou. She knew how difficult it was to fix a Bane into a Garou, and that those created Abominations. There was a reason that Abominations were as rare as they were-- she knew that something shouldn't be able to take Hector over, and by transferring physically into him through a leech no less.
That the sky had gone black and time had folded in upon itself couldn't even be considered yet. She had to push that to the side or she may break right then and there.
Lola turned away from the tree and the edge of the trail and walked back to Hector. Her steps are slow and deliberate, and her face is still ashen as she comes to kneel beside him. He can clearly see how her hands shake, for it is so abnormal, they are always so steady and sure after all. She braces one hand on his flank at first, as she would were he wearing his Wolf skin instead of his Man body, and as she pats him there she tells him, simply: "Shut up. Stop talking." Her voice is a thin, strained thing, but at least she still means exactly what she says and says exactly what she means.
The hand that isn't touching him goes to the pack again, and this time it pulls out two of the rags that she'd packed along with her. These are shaken out, then folded together to create a dense rectangular mass of fabric. She turns back to Hector and guides his body to move as she needs it to. She takes his left hand from the ground, dusts the debris of dirt and crushed leaves from it, and places the rags in his hand. She then guides his hand to his throat and places it there, puts her hand over his and forces firm pressure-- not enough to choke, but as much as is needed for a wound like that. Her eyes are hard, even though the hand over his trembles, and she ducks her head to enforce eye contact when she tells him: "Hold it, and hold it tight. I'm getting you to the truck. Stand up."
She'll then swing the pack up over one shoulder and position herself to tuck a shoulder under his and guide him up to his feet.
Hector Ghosh
It is a good thing no spirit ever blessed him with the gift of ignoring his injuries. The pain of his wound means he does not argue with her when Lola comes to his side and kneels with him in the dirt and tells him to shut up. Brusque but he doesn't flinch with the harshness of her speech.
If she did not love him and he did not love her they would not be here right now. They are tore-up and spent and terrified but at least they're alive. At least she can put a hand on his back and shaking though they both are Lola knows that the touch settles him. His Rage is hot and high now but he's stronger than he used to be. It does not overwhelm him.
So he leans back into her hand and ends up falling on his ass in the dirt. Tries to tuck himself in against her side to seek and give comfort but they need to get the hell out of here. Lola finds clean cloth to press to his gushing neck and Hector lets her move his hand to hold it there.
Up they go. Hector does not have to lean on her but they want to move and they want to move fast. That shoulder latches onto her and he starts to snarl but the noise hurts him. It turns into a sharp whine high in his throat.
It takes them fifteen minutes to make it back down the trail to where they parked the car. Maybe longer. He shakes with the same uncertain anger that makes her shake but his is tinged with Rage and the void where his experience ought to be. And he's staggering like a drunk. Like he's dizzy off of something potent. These days he cannot drink at all because his scar runs deep. His tolerance is shot. He would get drunk off of one shot of alcohol.
He holds it together until they get to the truck and then he stumbles and nearly falls. That's the thing that makes him make this godawful noise like he's fighting something off. Given what they just went through it could mean the thing got him again. It's nothing physical or mystical. He's overwhelmed. He's bleeding everywhere. Something happened and he doesn't remember most of it. This sucks. But he does not fall apart or throw a tantrum or burst into a frenzy.
With one hand on his throat and one hand on Lola's shoulder the kinswoman has to be the one to get the truck door open. At least Hector is still here with her. He does what he can to help but he knows better by now than to get in her way when she's set on a path.
Lola Hawkes
Not too long ago Hector probably thought that the only type of person that would be able to take Lola as a mate would be someone whose strength and experience could double or triple her own. She seemed the kind of Kinfolk that could only be tamed by an Adren Ahroun, or something similar. Were it not for the purity of her blood and how deep her family line runs with the Water Serpent, it would make perfect sense if she were traded off to the Get of Fenris tribe. She was made of the sort of iron that they needed, and showed no fear and balked at no challenge.
But it's a fortunate thing that she's found Hector. His youth and inexperience in comparison with that unknown, imaginary contender was what helped her grow. That they tested one another's patience, that they leaned so heavily on each other, that's what made them stronger. He was overtaken where an Adren would have no doubt batted the challenge away and left no work for Lola to do. That Hector was fallen meant that Lola had instead stepped up and fought. She would be stronger for this. That Hector was able to push the entity from his bones by sheer force of will, forceful enough that it burst through the very flesh of his throat, would make him stronger as well.
They were stronger for one another.
But it sure doesn't hurt that she's physically strong in body already, and this is what is important in her helping him down that trail at double-pace compared to how they'd come up. He's hurt seriously, and the blood that stains the front of his shirt is unmistakable. It's beginning to seep through the rag at his throat as well. He doesn't make her carry him, but she still keeps a shoulder against him, her flank to his, and supports what weight he gives her while ushering him back to the truck.
To his credit, he keeps up well. To hers, she doesn't show him that the force of his Rage is unlike anything she's ever experienced from him. She's never left a situation by his side as drained as she is now, and though his Rage is like standing and staring an unfamiliar beast with hunger and rot on its breath right in the open maw, she does not quake or shy from him. There's no time for that, and this is certainly not the place. The Rage conflicted with what her heart and mind told her-- that Hector was where comfort was, and this would bother her deeply if she had time to contemplate it. But instead she maintains grim quiet save for the occasional urgent couple of words when he lags or stumbles.
They get down to the trail head, the truck parked a few spaces from another car that won't be driven by the same people that brought it there ever again, and it's here that Hector almost collapses. Lola has to stop and bend her knees and flex the dense muscles in her thighs and calves to keep him supported, but she manages to keep him on his feet and mutter: "We're here. We're gonna get you healed. Hector, come on, get in." Her voice is still thin and strained, but all the same she pulls open the heavy metal door on the passenger side and helps support Hector on his way up into the passenger seat. When he's there, she stands in the doorway looking like she may be sick again. But rather than throwing up she grasps the door and truck frame in either hand and stares up at him with a haggard look on her face. She's worried, clearly, about the blood loss.
"You need to shift. Regenerate what you're still losing. I'll drive us to a Theurge."
Hector Ghosh
"No--"
That word sounds like it comes out the wound in his throat instead of making it to his mouth. Blood makes it to his mouth. She can hear the wetness of his speech as it burbles against the dressing and see the pain lash at him as it vibrates through his vocal cords.
Hector flinches at his own lapse in judgment and tamps down on the urge to growl though he does end up banging the back of his head against the truck's rear window as tenses up with pain. Doesn't shout fuck! again but it's in his muscles and in the harshness of his breathing when the tension goes out of him again.
No Theurge. No driving. No idea what the 'no' is for but Hector retrieves his little medicine bag from where he left it on the floor of the passenger side of the truck and fumbles out a healing gourd with one hand. Leaves his hand pressed hard against the dressing as he crushes the gourd with his hand.
Huge gasp when the water-spirit leaves its binding and wraps itself around him. Takes away the hurt and the injury causing the hurt and seals up his throat so he can breathe again and talk again. He gulps air like he's had his head held under water all this time and it's a whooping desperate noise he makes for several seconds afterwards.
"That SUCKED!" he says. Still breathless as he stares at her from across the bench seat. She's standing outside the truck and he's never seen her wear that expression. Even when she was in the hospital. The exhaustion in her sobers him. "I'm... are you okay?"
Lola Hawkes
He says no and blood bubbles and drips from his lips when he does so. Her jaw clenches again, to the point that it will no doubt ache when she remembers to feel pain, but she's stationary and solid in the doorway of the truck. She'll watch as he hits his head against the glass pane of the back window that hugs the truck bench, as he growls and seizes his muscles while dealing with the pain, but she doesn't move or cast her eyes away because it's too awful to watch. The only time she breaks her gaze from him is to glance through the windshield and behind her to make sure that no one is coming to see what the fuss is. As she was born believing she would be, Lola is a sentry, a line of defense that refuses to be passed.
When he leans forward her attention is drawn to him again, and some of the tension written into her shoulders changes-- it doesn't go away, she doesn't relax, but there is relief there none the less. At least Hector would be okay.
She'll watch while the gourd crushes to his throat and water joins the blood in dousing the rag and front of his shirt. That gasp of air, to her, sounds like a breath of life confirming that someone you thought was dead is alive after all. She swallows hard and eases up her grip on the truck frame and door.
Are you okay?
Lola doesn't say anything to confirm whether she's alright or not. She doesn't like being in the habit of lying to him, so she won't tell him that she's just fine. She isn't. She's shaken beyond anything she's felt before-- even when she's had Crinos hands wrapped about her throat and body and maws snarling hot breath into her face. Even when Hector had come back with blood coming from his eyes and nose and ears because he had actually died. She's not had her world tipped around like this since she was told she would be Kinfolk and not Garou-- and even that was based in reality, it was just a difficult pill to swallow.
So, instead of lying, she moves her hands from the metal of the truck and instead places her left hand on the rough fabric of the truck seat that Hector sat at, about where the lumbar would be. Her right hand holds onto his knee that is closest to her, and she lays her head on his thigh. For the height that the lift places the truck at, she doesn't need to bend down to accomplish this-- it's an easy position that doesn't require stooping or bending. Here, he'll feel her shudder hard and hear it in her exhaled breath.
"What was that?" She asks him after a few seconds of just being still like this with her eyes left unfocused on the glove box.
Hector Ghosh
He doesn't remember that he fell down hard in the darkness and left Lola standing on the path without any idea what was happening. That when he fell and that thing overtook him it swallowed up his mind as well as his body. If he had stayed in control of himself he could have told her what he thought was going on.
And he doesn't remember how she had to wrestle him to the ground to keep him from fighting her. If the creature that took him over knew his body came with different settings it had not availed itself of them. That it had to share space with Gaia's fury must have bought them some time.
If their positions were reversed Hector would not have known what to do either. As much as he cherishes and uses the advice she gives him and the perspective she adds when he's considering problems plaguing the Nation Lola and he are equals in his mind. They have held their roles for the same amount of time and in their human skins they fight just as hard in combat. She's a certain shot even when she's so rattled she's barely staving off emptying her stomach.
Even though he could have survived a gunshot to blast the thing out of him Lola could not bring herself to do it. She felt the rumbling of another consciousness in her man's body and felt him grow cold as he tried and failed to fight it. Her voice was the anchor that kept him from going away from her forever.
And he doesn't remember.
She stands firm and immovable outside the truck as he recovers. In time his gasping slows to panting and he starts to wipe his skin clean of the blood and the dirt. So much blood he looks as if he bathed in it. Most of it caught in his sweatshirt.
Lola rests her head on his thigh. It quiets the last of his jangling energy. Hector looks down at her and the chasm between parts he remembers crows up at him as he gazes into it. His right hand is clean. He rests it on her head where she lost the baseball cap and eases his fingers through her hair.
"I don't know," he says. Does not sound worried by it now that the darkness has gone. "It didn't have a scent. I could smell death on it, but I couldn't smell <i>it</i>, you know? Might've been a vengeful Wyldling. They can mess with how you see things sometimes."
Or something the Garou have not encountered before that tore a hole between its part of the Deep Umbra and the Realm and let itself through. Lola is shaking though. Drained like he's never seen her drained. He doesn't want to scare her so he keeps that supposition to himself.
"Babe, the last thing I remember is I was holding your hand and... telling you the same thing I just told you. When I came to--"
He came to with her atop him. Her voice pleading him back up into the darkness. Something inside of him tearing its way out again. That wasn't when he came to his senses. That was when he came back from wherever that thing had buried him.
"--it was light out again. How long was I out?"
Lola Hawkes
How long was I out?
The question hangs unanswered for a moment, and Lola is still with her head rested on her mate's leg. Her cap was snatched up and shoved hastily into the back of her jeans (that stretchy waistband came in handy for something, at least). The gun was picked up and shoved into her back pocket, where it still was, covered only by the length of the sweatshirt that she wore. She had the forethought to put the safety back on, at least. She's heard too many stories about idiots shooting themselves in the hip, leg, groin, or ass because they tried to pocket a gun without remembering the safety.
The shaking hands had stilled for they could now rest and had no tasks ahead of them. Hector's throat wasn't a fountain of blood any longer. The gourd had done its job in mending the tear in his flesh and, one assumed, replenishing his supply of lost blood. His fingers threaded through her hair-- her ponytail had largely fallen out from the struggle and the elastic had hastily been jerked out of her hair when she found it to be more of an inconvenience than help on their way down the trail. She considered the question, recapped the mayhem in her mind, and finally provided him with the best guess she could provide.
"Probably about seven to ten minutes, I think. It felt fast, but time was doing what it pleased."
Her voice is still thin and tired, but it was at least more calmed, steadier than it was previously.
"You'd said that you smelled something bad and everything went dark. I felt like someone was trying to throw me off a building-- gravity flipped itself around in my head, and you dropped like a sack of bricks. I found this... slug thing attached to the back of your neck and yanked it off, but I guess it already deposited that thing in you. You--..." she struggled for a second trying to separate Hector from that thing that inhabited his body in her mind. This was the reason she wouldn't use the gun on him. "--it started to take you over, started to laugh and stand up. So I pinned it down-- it tried to make you reach for my gun but I kept ya down. It wanted me to hurt you, but we fought and we won. You banished that thing-- it burst outta your throat in this gush of hot air and blood, and I guess found a physical body for me to fight it in instead, since you weren't letting it use yours anymore."
She's no Galliard, but she tells the story as she remembers it. More details will likely come when time has passed. Tomorrow she'll be able to tell a better story, when she isn't still shaken from the experience. For now, though, she moves her hand from his knee and settles it overtop of his own. She's still like this for a second, and hefts a deep sigh before saying in a low, quiet voice.
"We should go."
Hector Ghosh
Hearing Lola fill in the dead space where his recollection cuts out is akin to listening to details of a blackout. Though he remembers nothing and cannot force himself to remember anything a slow trickling of shame comes into him at the thought that he had tried to attack her.
It. It used his body to try and attack her.
A hard shiver goes through his body.
Later they can talk about what happened and speculate on what the thing actually might have been. With the portal in the basement of Cold Crescent and his own knowledge of the fact that some things in the universe do not actually belong to the Triat there is room for them to learn from this. But as Hector calms after that long trek back to the truck and the healing he so rarely endures because he so rarely weathers such bad injuries he starts to realize Lola is not full of swagger and celebration as she tends to be after they survive a hunt.
The thing left no body. It turned to smoke and vanished. Lola's hand rests overtop his and she cannot see him frown and cant his head at her. They should go.
Now that the danger has passed the park is peaceful again. Birds chirp around them. Nothing of civilization but the rush of traffic in the distance. Hector slides his hand from beneath hers and hooks it beneath her chin to lift her face from his leg. Slides himself down out of the truck so they're standing together beside the truck.
He'd asked if she was okay already. She isn't injured. He still has streaks of blood on the palm of his left hand and his face and neck are splattered in gore. All he wants to do before he takes her home is look at her.
It doesn't occur to him that his Rage is impacting her as it would not on another day. No cognizance of how drained she is or how hot it burns in him.
"I'm so glad you were here," he says.
That bloody hand rests on her hip while the clean right hand moves over her face. Fingertips graze her brow and cheek, thumb smooths dirt and tears she never shed from her cheekbone. It travels down her neck and across her collarbone. As he reads the beat of her heart through her breastbone and clothing Hector draws a deep breath. His eyes shadow the trail paved by his hand already.
Hector rests his temple against hers and slides the pack off her shoulder and onto the floorboard behind her. His arm wraps around her lower back and guides her in against him. A sigh leaves his unscarred throat when the top of her belly meets the base of his and he locks his other arm around her upper back, wrist to her shoulder blade so he does not smear his blood across her back.
"I'll drive. You should rest."
Lola Hawkes
It's been witnessed before by both of them throughout their lives in the Nation-- when a Kinfolk cannot withstand the brunt of a Garou nearby. They all react differently, in their own ways, but the sum of the response is always to either try and put distance or to tremble and grow ill if they refuse to space themselves from the Rage that beats against them.
Lola is no normal Kinfolk, though. She withstands Rage like other Kinfolk cannot and do not. She doesn't bend or break to anything-- hell, he saw it while he was still trying to push his way out of the bleary red-with-pain-and-Rage state that he awoke in. His woman didn't stop to question the beast behind her, but upon hearing steps on the ground she'd spun about and thrown herself into the fray anyways. She hadn't even bothered to make a grab for the gun first-- that had been a second thought at best, and one that had saved her life, possibly both of theirs tonight.
So even though his Rage threatens to burn the air from her lungs before she has a chance to pull the oxygen from it into her bloodstream, she doesn't pull away from him. When he lifts her head from his leg and slides out of the truck to join her, she doesn't back away to give him space. When he touches her face she doesn't cringe, and when he wraps her into a hug she doesn't whimper in fear. Lola's too proud a creature for any of that, and trusts Hector too much to let the force of him terrify her (or to let that show, at least). She'd promised him that she didn't worry that he would do her harm, and she intended to make that abundantly clear even here and now.
All the same, though, when he wraps her up in his arms and holds her close, a shudder wracks through her body, caused by a suppressed urge to rip herself away from him and find air to breathe once more. In defiance of her own instinct she pushes her face into the front of his shoulder and nods it there when he says that he will drive, and she should rest.
"Good," she tells him. "I want sleep more now than ever."
His blood has dried onto her face, she didn't bother to wipe it away apart from what was needed to clear her eyes, nostrils, and mouth. Some of it flakes onto his sweater during her time wrapped up in him. When he releases her, Lola slips around him and climbs into the passenger side of the truck. She'll be quiet all the way home, and nod off with her head against the passenger window. It will take her until later that evening to find a shaky confidence once more. By tomorrow morning, though, she'll be right as rain.
Hector Ghosh
If Hector were a more ignorant creature he would have made nothing of the stiffness in her form when he presses himself to her. That Rage grown up in him is not driving him to horrible violent thing. The moon is thin enough to cut through that. It gives him a violence though. Appetites he is still learning how to control.
He grows stronger with each month he fights along side her. Each month he shares his life with her and wakes up in bed next to her and sets about the task of readying their home for their child both of them grow stronger. Lola holds esteem in the Nation that she did not have before the summer. Hector is almost ready to call himself a Fostern.
As he grows into his experience and his stature Hector has learned to stop and read a situation before he barrels into it. This will help him to read people as well as he reads history. It helps him tell that Lola is wary of that monstrousness in him. That she's exhausted.
That it scares her when he realizes she does not want him near her and a shudder of suppressed anger courses through him. He lets go of her and his nostrils flare when she climbs into the passenger seat. Alone in the sunlight and the clear air with his blood sticky and pungent on him Hector decides he doesn't want to wear it anymore. He peels it inside out and over his head. Wipes his face and hands with it. Pitches it hard into the back of the truck like the thing itself has offended him.
Lola hears the impact through the frame of the truck's bed. He burned his excess Rage to throw it but that won't help them on the ride home. The Rage Luna gives him on bright nights burns at her. She sleeps but she sleeps curled up against the door. Hector buckles his seatbelt so the human lawgivers will not pull them over and he drives with the radio off and his mouth shut.
He keeps his hands to himself the entire way home.
When they reach the end of the drive he kills the engine but does not get out of the truck. The journey back to the Homestead forced him shut off his mind so he could focus on not speeding or colliding with anyone else. As the engine ticks in the cold he gnaws a thumbnail and stares through the windshield and lets the weight of what just happened settle on him. Then he gets over it. Takes the keys out of the ignition and lets himself out of the truck.
"I'm gonna get in the shower," he says over the top of the truck as he shuts the door. His boots crunch the gravel as he walks towards the front door. "Are you super freaked out, or can I... I mean I can sleep on the couch if you are. I won't take it personal."
Lola Hawkes
What sleep she caught in the truck was restless and intermittent. When Hector glances to check on her, the seldom moments that he might, he'll find her knees turned toward the door, shoulder tucked against it and arms curled around her torso and chin tucked down. There's a soft frown creased on her face when she's actually unconscious, and a harder one when she's half-awake but keeping her eyes closed anyways.
Thankfully, the trip from the hiking trails outside of Boulder back to the Homestead is a shorter one than driving all the way from Denver proper. Time slips by, and Lola comes to with the truck rocking on its squeaking suspension over dirt ruts carved into the earth to make a haphazard 'driveway' up to the shed that sits beside/behind the house. By the time Hector jerks the gears and pushes the parking break into place so that he may kill the engine, Lola is already upright. While the engine ticked quietly, settling from running for so long, Lola dragged her fingers through her hair and scrubbed at her forehead and worked to pull herself together.
She'd hoped that dozing during the drive would help replenish her, but she felt just as worn as before.
Her head turns like she's going to say something, but the keys jangle and Hector is climbing down out of the truck. The Kinswoman grasped at the fabric of her pants, just above the knees, squeezing nad wringing the denim for a moment in a fleeting second of frustration. What the hell is wrong with you?, she was asking herself. This was an unfamiliar situation to be in. Hector's Rage has never burned her before, even while he was bellowing with it under the light of the full moon.
The moment passes, she hefts a sigh, and Lola climbs down out of the truck as well. She's trailing about seven feet behind Hector or so when he called over his shoulder, asking if he should sleep on the couch. Lola's steps paused and a spasm of guilt crossed over her face, gone just as fast as it had arrived. It was replaced by a worn resolve, like rock that has been half-eroded by centuries of river water and rains. She'll double the pace to catch up to him, though her motions are stiff and she can't do anything to change that.
"Don't encourage this bullshit by catering to it. I've... I don't know what the fuck's going on, I know you're pickin' up on it. But there's no fuckin' reason for it. You're not going to anything to me, I know that for a damn fact, so don't hide away and shelter me from somethin' I've got no reason to be tense about. I'm just.... worn. I guess."
She doesn't reach out to stop him, doesn't put a hand on his arm or shirt to pull him back and stop him from walking away. But she does catch up to his side to walk by his elbow, even though her heart hops once-twice-thrice before finding its rhythm once more.
Hector Ghosh
"Yeah, well, I don't know about you..."
When they reach the front door Hector opens it and holds it for her but he can do little about the fact that an unpleasantness comes into his stomach when he sees the way she keeps a sort of distance from him. How she doesn't want to have her hands on him now.
And she's seen him do impersonations of human girls before. Glen and Corey were fond of hitting the bars when they would roll into town. Boulder was full of vacationing young co-eds with morals made looser by alcohol and they would go there all the time to hit the bars. The party scene in Littleton wasn't anything to write home about and they avoided Denver because Corey and Hector started too many bar fights when they went out in cities.
But Corey and Hector scared a certain caliber of human. He liked to bare his teeth and tense up like he'd been hit by a downed electric wire when imitating what the average girl was like.
Lola is not at all like those empty-headed high-voiced tittering stupid college girls that Corey liked to push Hector towards when they would go out. If Hector wanted to get laid he went to a library. That's where all the smart girls went. That's how Corey met his mate. They were in the goddamn library. Just so happened she was Kinfolk.
Anyway. Hector lets her go in ahead of him. Stripped out of his sweatshirt she can see the low halo of blood oozed into his undershirt and smell the sweat dried on his arms. The muscles in his upper body. She's right to be afraid of him but they'd been over this before. How she trusts him.
As he walks from the front door to the bathroom he continues ranting. It's clear he's going straight for the bathroom.
"... but I'm not a huge fan of forcing myself on people when they don't want me around. I just... I'm freaked out."
If she does not follow him his voice grows distant but he does not close the door. It bounces off the walls once he reaches it and she can hear him lean against the sink and start to undo his laces.
"Alright? I'm the one..." A boot hits the tile. "You know what? Never mind. In here talking to myself like some kind of freaking lunatic..."
Thunk.
Lola Hawkes
The tension that rides on her mate's shoulders, the edge and grind that she can feel to his teeth without needing to see them or watch him actually clench his jaw has Lola uncomfortable and bothered, and the sensation mingled unpleasantly with the stiff-spine cold-sweat discomfort that the Rage that lives in his bones was causing her as well. Still, she won't hold her breath when she passes by him as he holds the door open, and she is very conscious of her body language when she passes him as well. She doesn't touch at her stomach, because she knows that the gesture might come across as protective and sting at his heart. She doesn't shift her stride to give him a wider berth while he holds the door open, but she doesn't brush familiarly against him either.
She's stooped down near the door, unlacing her boots, when Hector strides past and into the bathroom. Lola's got one hand on the wall to help with balance, the other working the laces, and she looks up at his back while he walks past, still talking as he goes.
She's been frowning since he came back too, and the expression didn't seem close to relaxing any time soon. That she was getting his back and a solid understanding of how her discomfort with his presence was impacting him did anything but help soften the scowl. But it isn't an angry look near so much as it's pained-- guilty, bothered, unsure, tired.
He's thumping about and talking to himself and the bathroom tiles, thumping boots onto the floor. As he trails off accusing himself of sounding like a lunatic, Lola appears standing in the hall, just outside the doorway. A shoulder brushes against the door frame, but she doesn't stand solidly in the doorway like she's going to make a door of herself, not as she usually does if she's going to trap him there and make conversations happen. Her arms are wrapped about her lower rip cage and her expression is inwardly disgusted now. Apologetic without understanding how to be with her words.
"I...," She starts, and fails. She doesn't understand completely what is different about today from other days that they come back from battle, bloodied and exhausted. She'll blame it on the fact that they couldn't call this thing the Wyrm, on the fact that she was up against an opponent that she couldn't actually hurt, on the fact that Hector's throat had burst and tried to bleed him out while she half-staggered half-carried him down a hiking trail to the truck.
"I want you around, Hector. I don't know what's happening here...," and she makes a tight circular motion in front of her chest before folding her arms again. "But...," and, again, words fail.
So she settles for a sigh and hanging her head a little, just for a minute, before saying in a low voice.
"I love you."
It sounds like surrender.
"I'm laying back down."
Hector Ghosh
Of all the things he struggles with the most these days the thing that causes him the most grief is the fact that he does not know how to internalize the good things that he's done in his short time in the Nation. Doesn't mean he dwells on all the bad things he's done or that have happened. Just means he doesn't feel like he's earned anything.
It's basic psychology and the young man is still young by human standards. By Garou standards he has learned his way around and he knows right from wrong and he knows his auspice role and he knows it well. His cohorts know when he hears about something he will craft an entertaining if not stirring tale exalting those who took part in the story.
They see him with Lola and some folks can't figure out how on earth that happened. Lola is so wild and rough. An untamed creature that did not want to be tamed. Some folks see them together and they think it makes sense. Most folks don't. Hector is not with her because he worries about what folks think.
His mess of a head is what kept him from being with her sooner but they had to learn this on their own. They have to learn a lot of things on their own. How to deal with the discomfort of his Rage butted up against her exhaustion is one of those things because he will have to deal with the discomfort of his Rage butting up against their children's fragile and untempered spines.
Hector doesn't know how to be a parent any more than he knows how to be a lover or a life-mate. Any more than he knew how to be a Galliard or a Cub. He doesn't know shit but he's stronger and smarter than he gives himself credit for being.
It does lash at him that Lola was not comforted by his presence. In the past she has held him when he was moments earlier bleeding and screaming and moments from frenzying. In the past she has not had to fight so hard to protect him or herself.
He's trying to cut her some slack. Look: he does not turn on the shower so he will have something to do besides stand and bear witness to her uncertainty. With his feet bare and his shirt off and his hair down Hector stands blood-stained and dark-eyed but alive. He listens to her.
And then he shows off the fact that one of the first things he learned how to do during their conjoined guitar-and-Spanish lessons was roll his r's. Even in the midst of this he's trying to keep them from spiraling into despair.
"Mi amor, mi amor, I'm not angry at you," he says. His voice is soft but not saccharine and a flicker of what wants to be a reassuring smile comes across his face but Hector does not want to show her his teeth. "It's okay. We're okay. You saved both of our asses today and you're pregnant as hell. If you weren't worn out I'd be scared of you."
He wants to go to her more than he wants anything else right now but Hector makes himself stay where he is.
"I'll be in in a few minutes."
Lola Hawkes
Look at him, trying.
Look at them, trying together.
Hector doesn't lash his anger at her for not knowing how to handle it. He's better able to break down the reasons behind his fury than he used to be, to segment them and make reason of them to some degree and prevent himself from shouting and pushing away until he's better able to understand it. And even when he doesn't completely understand what has him riled up, or why Lola is being the way she is that gets him there in the first place, he's still much better about setting that aside, taking a breath, and giving the leeway that they need from time to time.
Lola, in return, does not snap her teeth at her own frustration and vent it at Hector. A year ago if she were in this same exact position she would be pacing angrily and yelling that she can't help how tight her chest feels and that she hates it precisely as much as he probably does but there's nothing that they can do so he should just get the hell over it. She doesn't remove herself from the house to wait for that temper to pass and her resolve to build itself up again. Another lesson in being a good Kinfolk is knowing to weather the storm: when and how both.
So Hector stands with his lengthy hair down about his face, with blood on his bare chest and sweat salting his skin. He smiles without flashing teeth that seem so much more dangerous and worrisome to her today and reassures her that he's not angry. He brushes his words up with humor, and even if it the jokes themselves don't lighten the mood automatically the fact that he's making the effort and showing that he won't be holding a grudge against her helps immensely.
So it's Lola's turn to help.
He wants very much to go to her, she can see it in how his weight shifts forward but his shoulders and chest stay back anyways, how his hands stay at his sides instead of reaching toward her but are disciplined in doing so. Lola helps by bridging that gap for him. She has to take a breath and square her shoulders, steel herself for what she's about to do, but her motions are smooth and certain and her steps are slow, but they do not hesitate when she walks into the bathroom and reaches up. Perhaps it's how weary she is, but her smile is softer than it's been when she looks up at him. There's no doubt that there's pride there when she reaches up to touch the side of his face, hand cupping his jaw and cheek. She could have physically blasted the thing within him out of its host, but he had forced it out himself and not put that burden upon her.
She leans up and kisses his mouth, and while her lips are soft they're still and not opening to encourage heat or passion. It's a gesture of love, plain and simple.
"Alright," she says after leaning back again.
She doesn't have to tell him that she loves him a second time, she doesn't have to bid him any kind of farewell. She steps backwards for a few short slides of her stocking feet on the tile floor, but remembers what point she's trying to make and deliberately gives him her back (see? i trust you) when she exits the bathroom.
He'll find her on top of the bed's quilt and comforter with the hoodie discarded but the rest of her clothes still on when he's done with his shower.
Hector Ghosh
Once in their lives has he yelled at her the way his Rage stokes him to yell at everyone all of the time. If it stokes at him now his intelligence and his love for her tamp it down but it is never an easy thing. Only something that becomes easier with time and practice. Even the tricksters among them feel that raw-nerve tension in them when it comes for them the first time. The tricksters among them are blessed with the least of it that they may test the rest of them and walk among the humans and be teachers in way even the oral traditions do not paint them as teachers.
The ghosts of his dead packmates do not haunt him or visit him at times like this. When he thinks of them it is a subconscious thing. Nearly six moons have gone since Glen and Maria fell in Winnipeg and Corey walked away from him and Tamsin. Twelve almost, a full year, since something grabbed up Willow in the Umbra and the kind-faced gentle-souled creature so strange and so much like a spirit herself disappeared. It would be an easy bit of recovery if they could tell themselves Willow had just gone to be with her brethren. That she was never really body at all.
No point thinking of what life would be like if Glen and Maria were still alive and Corey still leading. He knows because he lived three years with them that they would be traveling and screwing around and solving problems at each Sept they visited before leaving again. That he may have grown himself or grown distant from them. But Glen and Maria were wanderers and wanderers do not gain renown in the Nation's eyes. Their people value loyalty as much as they value valor and wisdom.
Yet he knows what Maria would think if she could see this. How her pride would glow knowing her sister was finding her strength not in the Change but in being the daughter and the sister and the mate of monsters.
It's the same pride that lights Hector when she comes toward him and brings her shaky hand to his face. Hard to separate the Rage from the male but she cannot do that any more than she could separate that thing from her man by leveling a weapon at him. She had to call out to him that he would know she was still there. Help me, she had to say.
His eyes close with the comfort of her hand on him and he bows his head to meet her mouth when it finds his. Their throats are raw from acid and blood both but that is not why he does not seek to deepen the kiss.
As he told her, as he promised, Hector showers. He brushes his teeth under the rushing water and he shampoos his hair. Shaves off his beard for the first time in three moons. Goes down to tend to the furnace. They need it glowing but not roaring. The weather will soon turn on them again.
When he comes to her twenty minutes after she leaves the bathroom he comes to her quietly and wearing a t-shirt and a pair of boxers that he grabbed down from a shelf over the washing machine.
He does not stare at her as he crosses to the bed to climb on behind her. She feels him hesitate before he lies down and molds himself to her. An arm cradles her shoulders and locks a pair of their hands together over her heart. The other comes overtop her hip that his hand may find the swell of her belly.
His Rage is hot at her back and it is no easy thing to sleep with a monster's arms around her. Few things in their lives are easy. But they rest together and he breathes slow and easy. If anything came through the door to attack them they would end it together.
The fighting is done this day and Hector holds Lola until she falls asleep.
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