He Who Waits For Dawn - 12.19.2013 [Hector, possessed by Ancestor]

Hector Ghosh

Weep for a vision. Do peyote til you forget your name, whatever it takes, but it's like I said before: just because every answer so far hasn't worked doesn't mean we stop looking for one. Even if we have to look into the past for it.

Echoes of the Lost was in a sour goddamn mood the day after the moot.

He spent three days in a funk after coming home bloody and death-rent under Thomas's arm. Not the funk of healing but the funk of not wanting to get out of bed because what was the point he was stupid and weak and what kind of a father was he going to be if he couldn't stay up during a fight he would get up long enough to placate Lola but then she'd leave him alone and he'd drift back to bed like a ghost to its fetter at the end of a haunting.

Then his packsister came by and nobody has a clue what she said to him but on the third day Hector showered and changed his clothes and washed the sheets and life went on.

But the day after the moot he was not in a funk. He was in a mood. He was thinking and he was brooding and he was making a decision that he did not want to make. It was not his decision to make. The Spire Sept was staying open and nobody knows what the thing in the basement is but they can't stop trying.

Warm enough that he can go outside to chop wood to keep his mind off of this and when night fell and the temperature with it there was the room across the hall from theirs. The one they need to clear out because their baby will be here before summer comes and they don't have anything they need.

Hector lost his temper when he'd swung at and missed a log. Hit the thing with the axe like the axe was a golf club or a baseball bat and then threw the axe and sat down heavy on the splitting log and panted not because he had overexerted himself but because he was overwhelmed by the necessity of what he didn't want to do. He dug the heels of his hands into his eye sockets and from a distance it looked as if he wept. Maybe he did. Maybe he just growled until he had his shit back together.

He got back up and he went back to chopping wood and that night he took Lola to bed. He didn't tell her what he was thinking until after they'd both come and were lying still but not silent under the blankets.

"Tomorrow," he said. "I'm gonna call my great-grandfather. Vigor and Rigor-rhya thinks it'll help if we all do it. Lola..."

And she knew what he was going to say next but that didn't stop him from saying it. He sounded scared and determined all at once. Scared but fuck it. He's been scared for years.

"I don't want to do it."

---

Part of the condition of his contacting the old dead bastard was Hector wanted to do it outside where Lola could see him and, more, see him coming if it wasn't him who came back but the old dead bastard.

"The government called him Adam Cree but his Navajo name was Ashkii. The Nation called him He Who Waits For Dawn. He was an Athro spirit-talker and he died closing a rift that had opened up in the Umbra. He used to go into Tucson and get into bar fights. That's how he met my great-grandmother. Got into a fight with her brother and then had sex with her in the parking lot. She never saw him again after that. She kept the baby and the baby ended up being my grandfather. I don't know what happened to my grandfather. But my grandmother dropped my mother on the steps of a church after she was born. He Who Waits For Dawn knows about her. He's already met me."

He doesn't want to do it.
He does it anyway.

Sits himself down cross-legged on the porch right at the edge so he'll stumble and fall down the steps if it isn't him who tries to stand up afterwards. Lola can see him through the front windows. She can see him go still with his purposeful breaths and see the steam rise from his nose and mouth as he mumbles a prayer a plea to a male who died before his grandfather was born.

She can see him seize up when the spirit comes to him. She cannot see his face though. Cannot see his eyes. She has to wait for him to stand up.


Lola Hawkes

A new coping mechanism with being restricted from lengthy patrols every couple of days, thanks to harsh cold and early nights, was in being particularly productive around The Homestead proper.  Lola has used the break in snow to put on heavy work gloves and a few layers of pants and shirts alike, and go outside.  In two afternoons last week she'd turned the posts she had driven into the ground with Tamsin's help into a complete fence, wrapped neatly and meticulously with chicken wire rather than barbed or anything else of that nature.

The room across the hall was still a mess, but at least now it was a deconstructed one.  The knick-knacks were taken from where they'd been long since abandoned on a shelf and dresser top, packed away into a box.  The comforter and sheets were all pulled up and being washed and folded back on top of the mattress.  Lola hadn't gotten around to pinning Hector down long enough for them to focus and move the furniture that would not suit an infant out into the shed or up into the loft, so for now furniture stood askew from its regular spots, waiting to be moved.

Last night Lola had observed Hector's mild, self-contained break down from the edge of the property, where trees become woods.  She was coming back from patrol, and decided to loop her way around to the front of the house instead, hugging the property's edge and allowing Hector to work through whatever it was that he was struggling with a little further on his own.  She knew the mood, it had been haunting him for some time.  That night, through the nigh-breathlessness that lingered, he'd told Lola his intention to call on his great-grandfather, the one they'd discussed.

He said didn't want to do it, and stared at her with wide, determined, terrified eyes.  She had breathed out slowly through her nostrils and pulled him to her, put her hands at his head, behind his ears, and touched her face to his from brow to nose-tip.

"I'll keep track of you.  I'll keep watch."

-------

As Hector sat out on the front porch, before the steps, with his legs criss-crossed and his body still, Lola stood inside the house watching him blatantly.  The only light she had on in the house behind her came from the hood light above the stove in the kitchen and from a lamp in the living room.  She wanted to be able to see clearly out through the window to the dark of the world beyond the front porch.  There was no gun in her hand, she didn't anticipate violence nor was she prepared to shoot Hector unless the worst possible scenario unfurled itself.  Even then, she wanted to have enough time running across the house to the back door to think about it first.

The curtain's drawn back from the window, and Lola stands with her hip against the wall and shoulder against the window frame.  She's dressed in a floor-length black dress, the one with the low neck and three-quarters sleeves, with a sleek maroon cardigan overtop of it.  The hand that isn't holding the curtain open is tucked thoughtlessly near her mouth.

When Hector seized, went rigid and stiff and sharp, Lola nearly did the same.  She stood up straight, stopped leaning against the wall, and her nostrils flared as she pulled a sharp breath in through them and held it without realizing.


She hadn't told Hector, and she didn't realize it herself until about three hours ago, but his anxiety had rubbed off on her.  She was scared for him.


Hector Ghosh

The man the government called Adam Cree stood six-foot-six and wore his hair long down his back in a braid and had skin gone the color and quality of leather for all the time he spent in the sun and all the tobacco he smoked. Heavy with muscle as a youth he wasted away as he passed through the ranks.

Adam Cree who the Nation called He Who Waits For Dawn was a drunk. He didn't just go for the stuff he could get at the bars or the stuff they brewed at Window Rock. Towards the end of his life he liked to awaken the spirits in the stuff he drank and the tales say he could have been a great leader could have had a strong family a good family if he hadn't slowly drank himself to death.

The tales say the rift closure was a suicide mission. He did it without telling anyone what he was doing. That and his wolf nature. Those are the things he gave to the great-grandson he did not meet until he was already dead. Until the boy was eighteen years old and made the mistake of needing him. Not a boy by then but he was so scrawny and terrified he looked like a boy even if he filled humans with unease.

Lola knows by touch how Hector reacts when something else tries to take over his body. He goes down hard and he comes up harder. The thickness of her father's parka conceals the work his ribs do breathing in cold air. But from behind she can see him fight.

This is not a vision. This is a possession.

He fights. Jesus he fights he lets out this hoarse hard wordless shout that has the tone and fever of an invective and then his spine goes electric-taut and she cannot see his eyes roll back up in his head but she can see his head tip back like he's seeking the warmth of a dying sun and his arms fall down at his sides and his fingers curl limp on the floorboards. Ankles still locked together under him even when his head slumps forward again chin resting on his chest.

He does not laugh that sinister laugh that sounded like blood bubbling up from a wound torn into the earth. He doesn't have to. He told her weeks ago what he was afraid was going to happen because it happened once before. This is a difficult thing he tried to do. Even if he were just calling out for anyone to help him he would have failed miserably. Would have just gone catatonic if it were a general plea.

This was not a general plea. This was an invitation.

And the spirit of a long-dead Theurge draws a breath into his great-grandson's healthy lungs and tests the youth's strong fingers and when he unfurls his nimble legs expecting to find a solid surface from which to boost himself he does as Hector figured he would do because the old dead bastard died the way he did everything else towards the end. He died drunk.


He Who Waits For Dawn loses his balance and pitches off the porch and into the snow.


Lola Hawkes

A woman of action, Lola is only still for as long as Hector is.  Her eyes sharpen and widen both when she sees Hector's body begin to jerk.  She could sense this wasn't how things were supposed to go, his movements were to hard and too clearly a struggle.  She pushed away from the wall and let the curtain fall closed as she parted from the window.  It was cold outside, but she didn't snag a coat to take outside with her.  She had no plan of staying out in the cold for long, nor did she intend to let any demons or old spirits take Hector's body out into the cold night to freeze after abandoning him in the snow drift like a car after a joy ride.

The front door swings open, but doesn't quite slam shut behind her.  Lola had caught the door knob and twisted it, slid the door back into place before letting the latch fall to keep it closed.  When she'd gotten outside, Hector's head had rolled around and just settled with chin to chest.  Cautious, now, slow and watchful, Lola stayed in front of the door and watched, hunting for the plume of breath to show on either sides of his head from behind, checking for shoulder movements or any other that would indicate condition.

Sure enough, when movement returns, the person who tries to stand up expects ground where it is not and missteps, throwing himself off the porch and into the snow that, aside from a few tracks of boots here and there, was untouched and sparkled under the fat Gibbous moon.

Lola stepped forward away from the door when Hector's body flew down off the porch.  She didn't rush, but there was an initial jerking of shoulders and back to show some repressed reflex to spring forward and into action without entirely understanding the situation.  When Hector's face is pulled free from the snow, Lola is already coming to stand at the top of the steps.  She has her arms folded tightly over her chest, the cardigan drawn closed over chest and upper stomach, but split open below her ribs for her arms weren't pinning the garment closed any further down than that.  Though her nose and cheeks are already tinting pink-to-red with the chill, and though her hair (left down) tried to whip about when a breeze kicked up, Lola looked like she could be cut from a more serious granite.  Her lips were pressed closed and her eyes were narrowed, staring down expectantly at the man in the snow.

"Who's on my land?"  She asked the question flatly, simply, posed as a demand instead of a request.


Hector Ghosh

He is slow in rising the way a larger man would be slow in rising. Like he has more bulk and height to negotiate than the buck-seventy pounds and seventy-one inches his great-grandson gives him.

Though the weather has shifted on them in recent years a hundred years ago no snow fell in Arizona. The dead spirit-talker never left Arizona in his lifetime. Not realmside anyway. It is a villainous thing to his senses and though Hector wore a the parka outside he had not worn gloves. When he gets to his feet he does so touching fingertips to the frosted earth. A creature that ought to be lithe and easy in his movements gone to an unsteady lunatic having left himself too open to his ancestor.

Not much snow on the ground after the recent thaw but bits of it still cling to her man's chest as he stands. Grass and dirt streak his unshaven face where he hit the ground but he did not bite his lip or bust his nose.

He rises and he lifts his head and eyes to glimpse the woman addressing him. They are Hector's eyes still but she sees no trace of the warmth or the wild-animal energy that stay in them even when he's upset or angry. An impenetrable darkness in his gaze now. His features are more still than they are even when he sleeps. The spirit in his body was unflinching in life. Drunk all the time but he was fierce and proud and wise once.

So who is on her land -

The spirit riding her mate's bones drinks in the sight of the native woman before him. The horned serpent sings to him through her and Lola can see his eyes move up and down her body like he's never seen her before. Nostrils flare with an intact of breath and he makes a thoughtful prelude to speech. Her man's voice is not a deep thing unless he is in a mood. Unless he is performing and the tale he's telling calls for gravity.

His voice is deep now. Gravel in his tone like she never hears gravel in his tone. This is not the gruffness of first waking in the morning and he does not speak English. Hector warned her he would refuse to speak English.

Whatever he says is in a language Lola does not speak and cannot hope to glean based on the sounds or cadence of the language. He sounds amused and cruel for it. The spirit starts to walk towards her.


Lola Hawkes

A part of what she'd studied to learn how to be a brutal warrior was understanding how bodies move and work.  The whole while she had known Hector, he was a light and rangy thing.  Speed and ferocity where what made him dangerous in a fight-- that and, in recent months, experience and know how.  Once he stopped being a teenager he was comfortable with his own body and knew how to manage it.  When he stands up out of the snow, though, he isn't joking or cursing or anything that she would expect from Hector having taken that spill.  Rather. he stands up more slowly, with similar motions that she would expect from someone broader, taller, and heavier.

Lola's feet (shoved into unlaced boots-- she didn't grab a coat but she wasn't ready to lose ground to frozen toes) shifted a little on the boards of the deck.  They were now set further apart, even with her hips, so that her weight was squared and anchored.  She had no plans of retreating.

Even when Hector (no, not Hector, but He Who Waits For Dawn) stood up and turned about to see her, she didn't flinch.  His eyes were darker and more severe than she'd seen them, to the point that they were unfamiliar even though aesthetically no change had been taken whatsoever.  All the same, she was painfully aware of the way that this old ancestor spirit looked at her; how his eyes slid from face of familiar heritage to bare neck to covered chest to hips and legs that the weighty fabric of the dress she wore draped over nicely.  She knew he was drinking her in, but if that made her uncomfortable it didn't show.  She just bucked her chin up a little higher, her nostrils flared as she took another breath in through them, and her gaze sharpened while watching to see what he would do next.

Ashkii, Adam Cree, uttered something in a language that Lola could not understand, and though she didn't know what he'd said she could still read tone and expressions all the same.  He was entertained, but not in any light-hearted way. 

Then he approaches, righting himself to face the deck and walk up the front steps that he'd spilled over less than a minute before.  Lola's spine went stiff, but from readiness rather than fear.  Hector told her once that she should lock herself inside the house and wait for him to get bored and go away, but he couldn't have honestly expected that she ever would.  Lola didn't hide from challenges.  She grabbed great, metaphorical (and let's not doubt that she wouldn't do the same for literal) Auroch-sized bulls by the horns and headbutted them while she was wrestling them to the ground.

So the spirit within Hector made his way up the stairs to approach her, and Lola didn't move an inch from the top step.  Instead, she unfolded her arms and dropped them from her chest, letting the cardigan fall open as it would naturally hang.  Her hands went to her sides, fingers apart and loosely curled, like she was ready to turn them to fists and break his nose if she had to.


Hector Ghosh

Last time this happened it took two tricksters holding him down and a Black Fury Theurge cajoling the spirit that took over the youngest of the pack's Cliaths into leaving his body. She learned its identity and its devices and she warned Hector about attempting such contact with the dead Athro again.

She didn't say not to ever do it again. He needed to study his own history and develop a deeper understanding of his roots and the people who formed the roots before he tried to contact them again. This undertaking was not a last-ditch thing. Though he did not understand he had learned enough to three years later not have tried to contact any of them again.

Now He Who Waits For Dawn stands before Lola with his shoulders powerful-straight and his posture tireless and his face a dark sort of stony she may not live to see her mate acquire naturally. If he lives to be Athro himself he may never look like this. This is a visage that has seen horrors and felt loss and pain more acute than someone with Hector's upbringing and vitality can imagine.

And Hector has seen some terrible things in his life. He has seen things that he could not comprehend. The nightmares he's lived through are only useful to him in hindsight. He never looks or moves like this.

Sometimes he speaks the language He Who Waits For Dawn speaks now. She has heard him chant it during cleansings. It is a crystal-fluid dancing sound that drives away evil. This spirit-talker could use the youth's throat to form human speech but he doesn't. He doesn't care about imparting anything to this half-blood in front of him.

He Who Waits For Dawn sees the tension in her hands and tilts his head alert but not curious and makes a deep noise. A "Hm" of observation or amusement or both. Like she can't possibly think striking him is going to be a good idea. He reaches the top of the stairs and turns from her to let himself inside the house like he belongs here.


Lola Hawkes
Lola wasn't entirely sure what to expect, but she was braced for the worst.  Her familiarity with the mechanisms of Ancestor spirits possessing the bodies of their descendants was weak, hardly there at all.  Anything she knew was remembered like the lessons you learn in geography from the eighth grade-- the information is there, dull, buried, but there wasn't much of it there at all.  Lola knew this possession wouldn't be permanent, but she didn't know how long it would last.  She knew the spirit in Hector's bones was much stronger, older, and experienced than he was.  She didn't know if it could carry any of the skills from its past life along with it, though, or if its actual power was limited to what Hector could do himself.

For a moment the two stared at one another-- He Who Waits For Dawn observant while Lola was on guard and waiting for his move.

That move wound up being a noise somewhere in his chest before he stepped around her.  Shoulders brushed, and Lola's nose and lips flexed into a silent snarl and locked her body so that she wouldn't be moved when he brushed and bumped his way past her.

She doesn't stop him from entering the house, though.  That was what she had wanted.

Rather, she huffed out a breath, scrubbed her cold hands over one another, and turned to accompany the old Theurge in the young Galliard's skin.  When they were both through the threshold, Lola closed the door behind her and knocked her boots on the rug that was set right within the front door.  One hand raked back through her hair a few times, undoing any tangles that the breeze had tried to knot in that dense black mass.  The other hand tugged at laces so that she could step out of her boots and leave them near the door.  This dropped her height by an inch and a half, and on feet wrapped with wool socks Lola moved away from the front door, shadowed after the Wolf in her house.

"Hey," she stated before he was able to get too deep into the home.  Whether he paused or not didn't matter, because she'd continue anyways.  "Let's make a deal."  She'll wait for some sort of acknowledgement that he was listening (Hector told her that he refused to speak English, but that didn't mean that he wouldn't have learned to understand it.  He didn't live that long ago, after all).  When she continues on, her words are thick with ire and caution alike.  It helps to mask the fact that her certainty was a bold front that she wore like a riot shield.  "I'll show hospitality to you, but that's in exchange for your words.  You were called on with a purpose."


Hector Ghosh

He does not move through the place as if he knows the layout or where anything is. More he wants to see what is here and what the place can offer him before he goes on on his way.

Gatherings for the Departed are meant to sing the dead back to their Homelands and for the most part the Homelands are where their spirits stay. Rumors abound of purebred Kinfolk who reincarnate as Garou as if that is just reward for a lifetime of servitude without recognition or praise. But ancestral memory and possession are different things. He is supposed to aid his descendant with visions or insight the youth could not glean on his own.

Instead He Who Waits For Dawn moves through the great room and lifts his eyes to take in the high ceilings and the presence of rooms above. Shows no interest in what lies up the stairs or down the hall. Lola cannot see his nostrils flare to take in scents or note the keenness of his hearing. Their people become more like wolves than almost any of the other tribes through their gifts and the sharpness of their minds.

Her man moves with an animal grace but the spirit of his great-grandfather in his body is like a predator. Stalking something Lola cannot see. Even more than Hector on his dizzy nights is he aware of the land beyond the curtain. He dwells there now. It is his breath and his body and he belongs there but to inhabit flesh again brings with it long dead appetites.

The bottle of bourbon Hector brought over this summer is not yet consumed. A bottle of whiskey Thomas brought over between joining the pack and Hector's first battle scar still sits in the cupboard with only two shots gone. They have the odd packet of cigarettes or ounce of pot stashed away. Used to be Hector would drink a beer here and there if it was going around and he'd drink whatever fucked-up Fianna brew someone shoved at him.

Then a Bane hooked him through the ribs and killed him. Left his insides scarred.

The spirit-talker rummages through her cupboards until he finds the near-full bottle of whiskey and takes it down.

"'Purpose,'" he says. Still in that lower register that does not belong to Hector. If you give an alcoholic whiskey he's going to want a glass. As he speaks English now she can hear the Navajo accent Hector sometimes affects when imitating the members of his fostering pack. "And who are you, Little One, to show me anything?"


Lola Hawkes

The way that the Old Wolf moved did not surprise Lola, but it intrigued her on some level or another none the less.  She hadn't spent much time around higher ranking Garou besides her mother, and her mother was the type of Theurge that became more ethereal than animal.  She observed how the change in movement looked on Hector's body, and responded on some subconscious level by moving around him like someone would an actual wolf more than she would another human being.

Through the front great room and into the kitchen, Adam Cree started to go through the cupboards.  Lola came to stand in front of the fridge and watched him through narrowed eyes.  While he pulled a bottle of whiskey from some top shelf off in the corner of the kitchen, the Kinswoman was busy being a little taken aback by the accent in that low register of voice coming out of Hector's body, and being a lot relieved that he was speaking English for her.  He had already moved on to searching for a glass when she registered that he was holding a bottle of whiskey.

"Lola Hawkes," she answered when he asked who he was to show her anything.  She wasn't answering it as though she confused him for asking who she was, oh no.  She was telling him that that was who she was to show him anything.  She came up to his left side and snatched the bottle of whiskey out of his hand.  He probably clasped after it, but Lola was quick and assertive and had no hesitation about her in grabbing the amber bottle away.  He was taller than her, and the spirit itself came from a man accustomed to being even larger than that.  But all the same, Lola would hold the bottle back behind her, left hand outstretched to maintain distance between the old Uktena and the liquor.  She had her chest stuck out and her body open in general, inviting whatever challenge may come to greet her face first.

"And I'm not saying I know anything more than you do.  I was just offering to be nice."

Clearly, she's the nice one.


Hector Ghosh

He Who Waits For Dawn does not wear the awed expression of his descendant when the Cliath is finding the space between worlds to have grown shorter for the weakening of his will throughout the day. Exhaustion tends to have Hector coming home with miles of stars in his eyes and rambling on about the things around them like he's stoned or drunk or both.

Yet here in the glow of the oven-hood light with him still Lola can observe the mastery of his sight. How he sways slightly as she tugs the bottle free from his grasp. He has other ways to accomplish the numbness he sought in life but no greater numbness exists now than death. This is a habit that dies hardest. These are not his hands and this is not his body but when he was flesh his hands sought and knew where to find numbness.

If she expects him to fight her for the bottle at least she has this going for her. This is not his territory. He is willing to play at respecting it as such for now. He blinks slow at her deflecting left hand. His eyes move from her splayed fingers to her breasts and her belly.

Doubtless he knows her ancestry. Both of her parents are descendants of heroes and her mother at least earned a proper Gathering at the Sept of Forgotten Questions. Her spirit could have found its way back to the Homelands even without one. She was strong and wise and He Who Waits For Dawn must see that in her daughter.

So this is the one his mutt of a great-grandson beds with. The one who will bear a child or children capable of righting the lineage He Who Waits For Dawn steered towards wreckage so many decades ago.

She was just offering to be nice.
He scoffs without his gaze gentling.


Lola Hawkes

Truth be told, Lola was expecting the situation to fall face first into violence at any turn.  Her body language was confrontational and aggressive, and her muscles were strong and taut and tinged with adrenaline that had started to spike up.  She had been braced like a wall to keep the Old Theurge from trying to seize the bottle back, but no such thing happened.  He Who Waits For Dawn just stared at her, at the hand ready to curl to fist or dull human claws.  From there he looked down the front of her dress at breasts fuller than they'd ever been before, further down from there to the mild but tell-tale swell of her stomach.

He put two and two together, and at least had the grace to pay mind enough to hear what she was saying to him.  He scoffed, and she scoffed right back.

Lola moved around him, not entirely giving him her back as she passed by.  The cupboard that he'd been scavenging in was left open, and Lola replaced the whiskey bottle before closing it again.

"Look, we need your....--" she would call it wisdom, but she's been rubbed the wrong way by the very idea of this great-grandfather of her mate's before she ever had the chance to meet him.  He wasn't doing the best job of changing her mind about that since he seized control of Hector's being, either.  "--...knowledge."

"You were called on for help identifying this pit that's come up in the city."  She was stiff and uncomfortable still, but there was a sense of duty about her.  A sense of finishing the job.  Hector had set out to tap into He Who Waits For Dawn's experience and understanding, and if he couldn't do it then Lola was going to try and make up for it as well as she could.  So, even though she still wouldn't show submissive or let down her hackles (so to speak), she still gestured toward the couches in the great room, where they were accompanied by the wood burning stove, a lamp, and a wall full of photographs for decor.

"Will you sit?"


Hector Ghosh

Humans have built cities since ancient times and the cities they built during ancient times were just as delicious to the Weaver as any of the sprawling concrete-and-glass tumors that appear on coasts and continental hubs. The cities that the Aztecs and the Mayans built were no less impressive or technologically advanced as the cities born in Europe.

But the Spaniards came and they brought with them their religion and their diseases and they infected the land and the people who came to the land with a need to spread themselves all the way to the opposite coast. They were not content with what they took from the natives they encountered in the Caribbean and Mexico.

People like Adam Cree were born into long lines of people shackled if they were not outright slain. Who showed hospitality to the Wyrmbringers and had nothing left to show for it but squared-off parcels of land.

Hector does not hate cities for their history. He hates cities because they are loud and crowded and he cannot hear himself think. Because his Rage is like a flame flickering close to something that could catch and burn if a gust carries it far enough. He avoids them and he is happier and quieter for avoiding them. Out here he can learn to breath and what it means to build a home.

This is not the home of He Who Waits For Dawn. He was from the Sept of the Painted Sand and Window Rock was not a city. Up until he was a young man about Hector's age his people called it Center of the World and it had no official name. He is not a namer of cities nor does he care for cities. He died before television and sport utility vehicles and cell phones.

He died before the Weaver found its footing. And this child wants him to identify something that's come up in the city.

His nostrils flare and if he was not standing at what he thought to be his full height before He Who Waits For Dawn draws himself up to it now. Spirits have no sense of time and their sense of direction doesn't amount to much outside of the Umbra so he does not know which city she speaks of. Ignorance shows as indifference in his lightless eyes.

"No," he says.


Lola Hawkes

"Don't be an obstinate asshole."

Lola snapped at the man when he drew himself up and tried to shut her down with a simple 'no'.  He should have known even from his very brief interaction with this Kinswoman that she wouldn't listen if he denied her the first time.  The arm that was outstretched to offer him a seat dropped, and once more her arms fell to her sides with hands at the ready.  She felt a tightness in her chest, for she knew this was a confrontation that she was entering and she may need to struggle and find a way to assert dominance on some platform or another.  Just enough for her to be able to pull even a little gleaning of information from him.

She didn't approach him, though, not as she had done with Erich.  The blond-haired wide-eyed Shadow Lord was simple for Lola's understanding to wrap about.  This cruel Theurge from a few generations back was largely a mystery to her.  She couldn't anticipate him well enough for her to be comfortable getting up into his space like that.  Instead, she returned to holding her ground and stood between the kitchen counter and the kitchen island, with another stretch of counter about three feet behind her.

"This thing needs to be closed up.  It's dangerous.  Green Dragon Himself is trying to get at it and use its power.  Don't shame yourself--" and her eyes swept down his body to his feet, the way that she looked more of a flourishing gesture than her actually searching for anything.  They're flashing, provoking when she looks back up to his face.  "--by refusing your aid and dooming a Sept and Caern as a result."


Hector Ghosh

He comes from an age to whom modern Garou point at when they speak of traditional societies. Traditional ideals involve the strict adherence to custom and the Litany. To Kinfolk subservience and Garou dominance. It makes no sense to egalitarian tribes. The Uktena are like the Get of Fenris in their treatment of Kinfolk as important and necessary to the functioning of their society but to call them equals would be foolish.

They are beneath the Garou. One must treat those beneath them with respect. All are of Gaia.

Towards the end of his life word of He Who Waits For Dawn fluctuated between songs of praise and tales of contempt. He solved mysteries and located lost items and brought back into the Nation those who had strayed and yet he beat his women and fell down drunk in public and started fights with those much younger than him.

Those who would not fight back against him because he was weak and so advanced in rank as to make fighting back less of a hassle than it was worth. One must always challenge honorably.

Yet Hector does not on an average night hit people or feel the need to hit people just because of his Rage. In Winnipeg he waled on his soon-to-be ex-alpha only after the other man had punched him so hard he broke his jaw and knocked him to the ground. He kicked the shit out of a Glass Walker because he by omission of action had allowed Lola to sustain devastating injury and nearly lose a child they did not know she carried.

Of all the stories people tell about him those are the two that fade from memory the quickest. They were rare reactionary goddamn incidents. His hands are strong and calloused but his knuckles are not cut up from many old fights.

Lola does not know what Ashkii He-Who-Waits-For-Dawn's hands looked like. When she tells him not to be an obstinate asshole, when she tells him of what is happening without context or history or anything a spirit-talker could use to help and then casts that gaze over the body that does not belong to him he cants his head to one side.

And Hector's hair is hanging in his face because the spirit does not care that his vision is part-obscured by thick black strands. It slides over one shoulder as the spirit of his great-grandfather looks at his mate with a blood-thirst sparking life into those voids Hector's eyes have come to resemble.

His arm bothers him still but Hector does not complain about it. When He Who Waits For Dawn closes the gap between them and jacks her up against the counter by her throat he grabs her with Hector's right hand. His fingers are cold and the metal on his fingers colder and He Who Waits For Dawn aims to choke off Lola's airway so she cannot talk.


Lola Hawkes

There it is.

That spark of violence and blood-thirst.
It had come to play, as Lola had predicted.

If this were any body other than Hector's closing the distance with the heat of Rage preceding him, Lola would have looked excited at the prospect of a fight.  In this circumstance, though, she looked pissed off than anything, but none the less ready to rise to the occasion.  Her body didn't cringe away from him, but rather rolled upright, ready to meet him.

Ashkii and Hector both were faster than she was, so the arm that shot out made its target before she could react.  Long fingers and the cool metal rings that decorate them clenched around her throat and pushed her back.  Her feet half-stumbled at first, but voluntarily moved to carry herself back the last couple of steps before her legs and rear hit up against the counter.  He squeezed tightly and her eyebrows flew up when she felt that sharp reflexive spasm of panic in her chest when her throat and airway closed.

She didn't struggle under his hand or try to push his arm away.  There was no writhing or crying out or clawing at his hand.  Lola's left hand went up to seize hold of his wrist and brace against it.  The right hand curled into a hard fist and a strong arm pumped forward.  Her fist struck hard and cruel right in the liver (thank you, medical know-how), and she let the blow carry through until all of the momentum was soaked by his body.  There was no holding back on that one.

She stared at him hard all the while.  Apparently she wanted to see when that spirit within her man's bones recognized that she could make him hurt.


Hector Ghosh

He Who Waits For Dawn had on his side the sharpness of his wits. The ability to size up this tall strong female and decide how he was going to use her body against her so that she would stop talking. Violence is not a natural state for those just barely planted on this side of the Umbra but that was the first option he chose.

Later Hector can speculate on what the hell happened to that man's mind towards the end of his life. He Who Waits For Dawn was no more insane than any other Athro of his auspice. He was in full possession of his faculties when he died in defense of his Caern.

Spirits make terrible decisions though. He has been spirit longer than he was alive. Lola knows because she knows her man's body and she can judge the instability of the creature inhabiting it that he could kill her. She knows where to hit him to get his attention because she knows his scars and she knows what pains him.

It is a disheartening thing to throw a beautiful and brutal punch and watch it have no impact on the person for whom the punch was meant. Lola connects with the scar on Hector's right side and the spirit inside him just scoffs that arrogant joyless scoff before applying upward pressure to the hinge of her jaw. It causes pain but relieves the airlessness caused by compressing her windpipe.

Whatever he says to her he says in his native Navajo. Disdain drips from his teeth. And then he tosses her aside not with the brute strength of a berserker but the same unfeeling power that she's seen in his eyes all this time.

She can breathe again and he's given her his back because he's heading for the door.


Lola Hawkes

It really was damn near heartbreaking to feel the punch fly so hard and easy, to feel her knuckles land firm precisely where she intended them to land, but for there to be no fruit of that violence.  Hector's flank barely cringed back against the blow, and his hand shift to pinch at her lower jaw and make her hurt.  Lola stomped a foot down near his, but missed her target for the rest of her was clenched and her eyes were squeezed closed.

Then she stumbled two steps to the side when he shoved her away by her face.  Lola's hand caught onto the counter, helped her regain her balance quickly, and she cast a heavy glare to the Uktena's retreating back.  She didn't know what he'd said to her, but she was sure it was condescending.  She wasn't sure if warning was layered in there or not, but she acted as though there was none at all.  Chances were that if he were speaking English she would have dismissed most of what he had to say anyways.

"Fine," she snarled, and stomped along after him.  Lola's legs were long and the bottom of her dress was loose enough that she covered distance and caught up with him quickly.  She seized the back of the burnt orange colored parka by the back of one shoulder and the front of the other, reaching across his chest to accomplish the latter.  Again, the precision was uncanny.  Lola moved like a woman well accustomed to physical violence, and unafraid to face it head on.

Ashkii, however, was powerful.  He twisted his body away from her, jerking quick and hard so that the fabric of the coat slipped and wrenched out from Lola's fingers.  He was going to leave, to be merciful rather than show the woman continuing his line the back of his fist.  But the Kinswoman was tough and born a child of the Full Moon.  She'd plant her feet and stand her ground once more, like it was something she did by default.

"Don't you take him away from here, don't you fucking dare.  If you want to sulk and keep what you know to your selfish fucking self, that's fine, but you do it here."


Hector Ghosh

The land around the Hawkes homestead sprawls for acres. The woods this time of year are dense and silent with the animals that cannot tolerate winter gone to ground or keeping south for warmth. Snowfall provides a means of tracking a creature's footprints. But if the creature pushes his way across the Gauntlet and carries on its journey on foot and its pursuer cannot follow him that makes the following near to impossible.

With what He Who Waits For Dawn knows he could take Hector's body into a realm from which he could not escape. The least she has to fear is that he would decide to take on a wolf's form one last time and race against the moment when he has to return to the Homelands and then leave Hector unconscious in a stream or a snowbank.

Lola does not know the worst she could fear from a situation like this but when the spirit inside her man's body allows his malice to slither out in a language she does not speak she knows enough to threaten him if he tries to walk out that door. At the door the spirit turns and his movements are slow. Purposeful. Like he could lose his balance again just as he lost his balance standing on the front porch.

He does not tilt his head the way he has the last two times he's come towards her. Might be that he's starting to figure her out. That her behavior and her triggers are tied in together. The way she talks about the Sept and her mate's affairs one could almost suppose that she was the trueborn in this situation and Hector the kinsman.

That isn't the case. Hector's head was stuffed with as much knowledge as his obsessive half-insane mentor could fit in the scant amount of time between the boy's First Change and his Rite of Passage and then he was loosed upon the world with little more to him but a strong memory and an earnest disposition.

The strength and speed came from being the youngest in a pack full of crazy adventurers. That strength and speed could kill her now even if He Who Waits For Dawn was not a fearsome fighter in his twilight years.

He comes back across the kitchen towards her and when he moves to backhand her his face betrays nothing of the spirit's thoughts. Lola ducks out of the way and he scoffs again. <i>Alright</i>, says that scoff.

The number 3 appears in many human religions. It appears in ancient mythology. Many Garou beliefs are based upon the notion of the number 3. The trinity is an ancient and powerful concept and different cultures ascribe to it both luck and ill fortune.

Three arms of dark mist begin to climb up through the floor at Lola's feet.


Lola Hawkes

Well, at least he wasn't trying to go for the door anymore.

He'd responded poorly to being grabbed, as Lola expected.  He came toward her, and she moved back a couple of steps back until they were crossing into the kitchen again.  His arm lifted and he swung to lay the back of his hand across her face, but Lola jerked her body and face backward and fixed a hard glare at him.  There wasn't shock or offended 'How dare you?' to be found in the way she looked at him, but she certainly wasn't pleased.

She was about to say something more, no doubt, when something flexed in the air in a way that made the light hairs on her arms stand up.  She looked moderately surprised for half of a second, and immediately suspicious after that while she was all the while surveying Hector's face, as worn and puppeted by He Who Waits For Dawn.  Something brushed against her socks and Lola glanced down, then made a small sound as she sucked breath in quickly past barely-parted teeth.  They clacked lightly together as her jaw clamped shut, and Lola's head tossed some for how quickly she snapped her eyes back up to his face.

The next move she made was not to flee, but to throw a hand forward and make a grab for his throat.  She nearly had him-- fingernails skimmed flesh at his throat, but he'd pulled back just in time to avoid being seized.

Lola's eyes flashed and she snarled at him: "Cut that shit out, now."


Hector Ghosh

In life this man must have been terrifying.

She recognizes this is Hector stood before her. Those are his clothes and she recognizes the way his skinny legs fail to fill out the jeans. How his hair refracts instead of reflecting the light. His heritage is strongly South Asian and it is easy to forget his mother's ancestry was lost because of the actions of her grandfather the spirit-talker. His black hair has red tones to it that speak of British or Northern European influence.

So much of him is lost by takeover of his personality. She has seen him angry enough to lose his ability to form sentences before but Hector can only look at her for so long before the love he has for her causes the rest of him to cave. Hector has never hit her before. He would rather cut off his own hand than hurt her. The tale of his first battle scar involves his storming off into the Umbra to vent his Rage so he would not snap on her. Better that he died than she.

Lola is going to have to edit her account of this encounter with some heaviness of hand. He will blame himself. Of course he'll blame himself. He should have been smarter and stronger if he thought he was going to convince He Who Waits For Dawn to help them.

Tendrils of mist begin to creep towards her ankles. They could bind her up long enough for the spirit-talker to escape but Lola snaps her teeth and commands him to cut that shit out. It is enough for him to lose his concentration and abandon the coiling altogether.

His face still betrays nothing as he walks towards her and reaches for the back of her head and Lola can practically see the intent in the way he holds himself. The way he pilots Hector's body. He Who Waits For Dawn intends to smash her face into the wall.


Lola Hawkes

That uncomfortable sliding sensation along the top and ankle of her sock ceased as the shadow-tendril dissolved into air.  Lola didn't manage to snatch the man up by the throat, but at least his focus snapped and she didn't have to contend with anything more than the fists and bodies that she was used to.  She straightened up to stand upright, and Hector-No-Not-Hector walked up to her and reached around to snatch up the hair on the back of her head.

She didn't try to dart away from him this time, but instead stood up straight and stuck her chin out and flared her nostrils at him.  He grabbed the hair on the back of her head, though not the most effectively, and she repaid him in kind.  However, when Lola's arm shot up from her side again, this time she managed to entangle her fingers in the thick black hair on the side and top of his head easily.

If she had less of a grasp of his weight compared to her weight and how his balance fared, she might have tried to keep her body from his while yanking him down by his head alone.  But Lola knew better, and was unafraid of closing distance.  So when she'd seized his hair in kind with hers she stepped up near to him, close enough that her chest brushes his and her nose gets uncomfortably close to his face as well.  She didn't say anything to him this time, not yet, but she did flex her eyebrows down into a harsh scowl of concentration.  One leg stretched and hooked behind his legs while the other foot braced on the ground, and she let her weight pitch forward to topple him over.

He falls like a tree cut at its base, and Lola's still small enough in the stomach that she's unhindered in her regular movement.  So she's just as quick as she would ever be to tuck her legs and hit the ground on her knees.  Her left palm caught the weight of her torso on the hardwood somewhere above He Who Waits For Dawn's head, while the right hand did its best to help smack him into the floor and keep him there.


Hector Ghosh

Hector would have at least attempted to leap over her sweeping feet if he could not just hold her at arm's length or pick her up to stop her from trying to knock him down. The longer this go on the less imagining how Hector would behave warrants any thought and yet. For as strong a hold as he has over his great-grandson Ashkii can reveal himself nowhere but his eyes.

The spirit cannot avail itself of Hector's strength or his fury or his numerous forms but it does not need them. He Who Waits For Dawn brought with him his own powers. If he has not been able to outright dominate the kinswoman he has been able to at least parry her violence. Neither of them have hurt the other yet but where she wants him to stay he wants to leave. She has kept him here this long owing to the spirit-talker having been more of a menace mystically than physically.

Small consolation for Lola.

She takes him down to the floor without difficulty and if he were to have tried to rise on his own she could have pinned him back down. The spirit has no need to breathe. That Hector's heart keeps beating and his lungs keep cycling air is a courtesy owed to his brain. As she settles herself on the floor above him she can see the darkness in his eyes giving way to Rage.

Fear and Lola are not close companions. A proclamation of feeling more of it since Hector came into her life would meet an answering sentiment in her mate. To love others leaves a person vulnerable. Hector's fear before calling on his ancestor had nothing to do with the discomfort born of blacking out while another entity assumes control of his body. For the same reason he swallows every frenzy and removes himself from her presence if one is imminent Hector did not want her left alone with his great-grandfather.

But they master their fears. They stand their ground despite them.

The same oily discomfort she felt having those tendrils creep over her stockinged feet creeps over her entire body now. In his eyes Lola can read an ending and she knows in her heart she can fend him off for as long as it takes him to leave her mate's body but this is not a rational fear. This is a fear that would freeze her even if she were an Ahroun. More powerful and baseless a fear than that which would have come to her if out onto a path stepped a beast she knew she could not reason with or kill.

Running is the only option sometimes. Now is not that time but her heart begins to race and her palms slick with sweat and the only thought she has isn't a thought at all. It's a primal instinct. Something ancient and furious and wrong is going to rise up out of him and get her if she does not get away from him.


Lola Hawkes

Two bodies hit the floor, one on its back first and the other overtop of it, with weight catching on knees and one outstretched palm.  This was the second time this month that Hector had lost control of his body to something else, something darker and more malicious.  Granted, Lola was certain that Adam Cree would do nothing to actually kill her or cause her too much harm, and that was one big part of what made him different from the thing that possessed Hector at the beginning of the month.  She could try to reason with this spirit, whereas she wasn't sure that the other thing was even really a spirit at all.  This spirit had an extended, vested interest in her well-being, unless he decided all at once that he had no care whatsoever for the continuation of his own family line.

She didn't know if he would be able to shift.  She assumed that he could, since Hector's body was capable of it, and because the spirit of He Who Waits For Dawn knew how to do it as well.  She took the fact that he hadn't shifted to overpower her yet as a good sign that he didn't want her dead or severely damaged.  That was a card she could play in her favor.

For the second time this month, Lola figures the best way to contain Hector is to use her weight against him and pin him to the ground.  She parts her hand from his hair to press both of her forearms into his shoulders, and the rest of her weight hovers above him.  She didn't settle to sit on his stomach yet, but instead seemed to be waiting for him to actually struggle before she locked her weight on top of his and rode the struggle out until it fizzled and burned away.

What she was met with was no physical struggle, though, and nothing she could contend with.

Dark, dark eyes locked onto hers and clouded with Rage that seemed more like an abyss than the blazing hot furnace that she knew to come from Hector.  That moment of locked eye contact imprinted something upon her that wasn't there before.  It poured a primal, undeniable fear into her, and it dropped down her spine to make it quiver, dribbled into her belly to make it turn and clench and become upset.  Sweat sprang up on her skin and palms, like how a spooked horse will sweat when the coyotes come to circle and nip.

Run!, her brain screamed at her, and her muscles begged to comply.
For a solid three seconds Lola refused.

Pride alone, and sheer stubborn will kept the Kinswoman planted over top of the man's fallen body, although every nerve and instinct within her insisted that this was how she was going to meet death.  Hands grasped firmly at his parka and her clenched leg muscles locked in place, but soon both began to shake.  That scant handful of proud, stupid seconds ticked by, and with a small burst of sound that was best described as a roar-- mingled with frustration and effort and terror alike--, Lola pressed feet and hands into the floorboards and removed herself from the man and stumbled backward two steps before turning about and racing away.

She ran deeper into the house based on a snap decision of her panic-riddled mind trying to decide how to best contend with The Beast;  she could take her stocking feet out into the cold to freeze or she could try and barricade herself in her room, where the rifle was.  So, he would hear feet thump quickly up the hall and a door slam behind her.  Inside the room, Lola would press her back against the door and struggle to breathe against the hammering of her heart and the dousing of adrenaline that her blood stream had introduced to it.


Hector Ghosh

At first he does not pursue her. Lola loses the war with herself and the fear welled up out of a deep place inside herself and she runs from him. No laughter or even words follow after her and if she hears He Who Waits For Dawn scuffing her man's boots and using his legs and arms to get himself off the floor it will not register for another minute that he did not just lie on the floor in wait for her to come back.

Whatever he does while she presses her back to the door he does in secret. All she has for a time is the roaring of her own ancient fear. The fear of the madman moving through her house in her man's body.

Before she hears anything else she hears the sound of a glass breaking. It does not find flight. It topples off of a higher surface and crashes onto the floor and that is what breaks it. Heavy footfalls and unsteady movements follow. And then she hears the thumping of boots as a big being in a small body starts to stumble its way through the house towards the bedroom.

She can feel him on the other side of the door. A darkness made flesh. At least the world around her is not dark. At least her mate is not a conduit for that darkness. At least she can use words against this foe.

The doorknob starts to whine as a hand finds and turns it on the other side.


Lola Hawkes

Crushing panic was something that Lola was unfamiliar with.  Sure, she's been in plenty of situations where she should have felt this same impending death fear that she was suffering right now, but in those situations she would default to rational thought.  She could calculate seconds, carefully gauge her foes and her own odds, and be able to think and coach her way through whatever she was confronting.  When she had pushed a very young Ivan to a point of shifting and grabbing her up off the ground by her throat, she did not feel this same panic.  When she was feeling progressively more and more faint with a belt wrapped around her upper thigh to slow the blood that gushed and pooled under her from a bite wound, she gauged time and distance and options rather than panicking.

Still she stands with her back against the door, breast heaving with quick breaths that felt restricted in her tight chest, that sounded too loud and harsh in her ears.  Her head felt dizzy, and a cold sweat had washed over her.  Nerves were in a jangle, and every sound that came from the other side of the door made her flinch and jump.  When something struck the floor and shattered, Lola gasped in a breath that was almost ragged with a sob, but bit on her lower lip and squeezed her eyes shut and tucked her chin to stop the noise instead.

Then the boots came up to the door behind her, and Lola hovered on the threshold of whether she should go for the closet or not.  She struggled with the decision of going for the rifle-- she very much did not want to lay Hector's insides dashed across the wall behind him.  But this Thing, this Dark Beast, it wasn't her mate.  It just hid behind his body like a meat shield that it knew she couldn't lay too much harm upon.

Beside the curve of her waist the doorknob started to turn, and Ashkii would hear a quiet noise of distress before the doorknob held fast.  Lola had seized it and was grasping it tightly, shoulder and hip still braced against the door to prevent it from swinging open into the room.  She lay her brow against the door as well and struggled to keep her breathing under control, but it was around this point that the effort was becoming less of a burden.  She felt her heart slowing its hammer, she felt her head swim less and start to steady out.

What was she so afraid of?
What was he going to do to her, really?
Nothing, came the answer.  He ain't gonna do shit.

So, some handful of seconds after Adam Cree had initially tried to turn the knob and found it stopped, it twisted independent of his own efforts under his fingers and Lola pulled the door open from inside the bedroom.  She stood in the doorway, reeking of adrenaline with a sheen of sweat visible on her forehead and chest.  She looked hesitant, cautious, and still jangled, but she'd rediscovered the ability to stand and face him at least.  So she stood in the doorway, one hand on the doorknob still (just in case she decided it would be better to bash him with the door, just in case), and glowered at him.

"What did you do?" she asked.  Deciding that he probably wouldn't explain to her his trick, and figuring that it was some gift or another that he managed to carry over, she followed up with;  "That was low."  And, deciding that this wasn't the foot she wanted to step out on, some whining complaint that he'd bested her, she followed that up with:  "Are we still fighting, or are you gonna just stay?"


Hector Ghosh

The darkness that took over Hector's body a few weeks ago fed off of her fear. Even if her fear only showed itself as a sharpness in her voice and a pleading quality to the words she spoke in bartering with the thing. Calling back her mate from the death-cold that was consuming him.

If she had not acted and acted in spite of her fear that day neither of them knows what would have happened. Even as she jolts and cries out with the attempted entry Lola fights back. She does not crumple under the weight of it or abandon the door to seek refuge further inside the room. She doesn't go for the gun.

Loving and accepting love is not a problem Hector has. For all of the insecurities flaring up in the face of his growing renown within the Nation he does not think himself unworthy of praise. He just does not sing of his own accomplishments. He has no standard to which he holds himself that does not involve overcoming the mistakes made by his forebears or the ignorance of his parents.

To call He Who Waits For Dawn evil would be a caricature. He fought for Gaia and the Nation his entire life but he did it without conviction. So far lost in the evil he was seeking to study that they took the place of his honor.

This is not an honorable creature before her. When she opens the door and demands to know what he did he almost looks as if he's smiling. The muscles in Hector's face don't move but that careless amusement shines up out of the nothing in his eyes. The story Hector told of his first possession made it sound as if his strength was more than his trickster packmates could contain. Gifts exist that boost the power in the Garou's body. He never said if the old dead bastard shifted. If he even can shift.

"'Stay.'"

Oh Hector is going to be so angry. He Who Waits For Dawn was just going to stay here until she made him leave. She didn't invite him in but she asks him if he's going to stay.

He steps inside the bedroom and claps the door shut behind him. Closed up as they are now she can smell alcohol fumes on his breath. He would not have had to imbibe a great quantity of the stuff to feel its effects. Hector's body cannot process alcohol anymore and he has not attempted to test this new impairment because Hector was not a drinker before his first death.

He Who Waits For Dawn reaches out his right hand to touch Lola's hair. Not to grab it. He wants to feel it between fingers that are not his.


Lola Hawkes

That the man who inhabited Hector's body stood in the hallway when Lola pulled the door open.  His hair was down, hanging about a face that hadn't been shaved in the past few days, but hadn't regrown into the dense fur on his jaw and upper lip that he'd worn over a stretch of two months.  She was struck by a sense of conflict-- her love and attraction for the face and body that stood there, the familiarity of having him step into the bedroom with her, mingled up with the adrenaline still cycling through her system and the fact that her heart was still working its way back down to normal.

He announced that he would stay, and He Who Waits For Dawn stepped into the room.  Lola stepped back, giving him the space to do so, and her eyes hopped from his face to his hand when he closed the door behind him.  If she had hackles, they would go up.  Since she did not, her lips pressed together and nose wrinkled instead.

"Good," she told him, a one word answer in response to his relenting and returning to English so she would understand.

The smell of alcohol on his breath trailed its way into Lola's sensitive nostrils, and her scowl hardened.  Disapproving eyes went from his face to his hand as he reached up and brushed fingers over the hair that fell down in front of her shoulder.  A strand was rubbed between fingers, and Lola's upper lip curled but she didn't shake him away or step back from him just yet.

She stood her ground and stared at him, that hard defiance seeping into her expression and gaze to fill the hole that the terror had left.

"Will you hear me out about the pit?"

This would be a last ditch attempt to get the information from him.  Whether they resumed violence or not would depend on what he did next, and he could tell from proximity that she was ready to pick their fight back up where it had left off at a moment's notice.  Supernatural fear had done its job, but when it faded away all that was left was burnt pride and a bad temper.


Hector Ghosh

Her pride and temper have kept her alive this long. Against a stronger foe she would have had to change tactics but this one at least did not come into a Cliath Galliard's body with the intent to smear everything he encountered upon the canvas of the earth with borrowed claws.

With the door shut he finds his sea legs and stands before her taking up her hair between his fingers like a weaver testing the strength of silk strands he intends to lash to a loom. His nostrils flare and he holds the length of hair up away from her shoulder.

Will you hear me out about the pit?

"'The pit.'" Another scoff. He doesn't care about the pit. He will never care about the pit. He isn't scared of Green Dragon or Her followers. He isn't scared of anything. He's dead. "Everything answers if you know what to ask."

He gathers a bigger swatch of hair and brings it up to his face to scent her. Might be that she tolerates it at first because she takes his non sequitur for cooperation. Even if she does not, even if she swats away his hand and makes a grab for the wrist that so offended her, he moves to grab her by the hips and shove her towards the bed.

Whatever he says after that nestled its way into her brain. She may latch onto it. She may retain it. It has to do with the nature of pits that find their way into the realm. But it's a little hard to focus on cosmology and ancient lore when a dead Athro wearing her mate's body is trying to force her onto the bed they share.

Whether she understands or retains what he says: it will be gone by dawn. He has no vested interest in helping her. He barely has any vested interest in not harming her.


Lola Hawkes

The answer that he gave was something to lift her hopes.  Maybe the situation was salvageable yet.  He said that she just needed to ask in the right way, and that was how she could tap into the well of knowledge that he'd earned himself over many years of skimming too close to Evil and learning its ways in the intimate manner that only Theurges seem able.  Her eyes drifted past his shoulder, unfocused, while she struggled to think of the best way to frame a question to play into his game of riddles.  She was even starting to think of bargaining chips when she felt a tug on her hair and realized that he was leaning forward and guiding the dense strand that he'd claimed between his fingers to his face.  It smelled of shampoo and the sharp metal tang of winter air.

A hand lifted to wave him away like one does with a fly buzzing too near to their ear.  She pulled her hair from his grasp rather than trying to seize his hand or wrist.  As she did this, she started to speak.

"Alright, then."  It had the tone of now we're getting somewhere.  "So, how is it that I need--,"
But she wasn't able to finish her thought.

His hands had given up on her hair and helped himself to better prizes.  Something that his great-grandson had claim to, and that he was planning to take for himself as well.  He seized hold of her hips, gripping firm through the warm but not-very-thick fabric of her cardigan and dress, and started to push her back toward the bed.  For half of a moment he gets the reaction that he's probably more accustomed to.  Her eyes went wide with surprise, a small and incredibly feminine gasp passed by her lips, and she stumbled back enough that the backs of her legs hit the edge of the mattress.

It was just when he thought this was going to go his way, that perhaps she would relent or be overpowered, that she ruins his night.  Lola's eyes flashed hard and bright like embers in the belly of a long-raging fire, and her body flexed hard under his hands.  She didn't fall when he pushed to get her onto the bed, but stood up and leaned into him instead.  This made it easier for her to pump a fist forward, throwing from the shoulder as she had done before.

Again, the blow itself is beautiful.  She strikes hard and swift and her fist buries itself through the wall of his belly and into the already-limping liver that she was aiming for.  This time he's unprepared to deflect the hit and roll it off his side, and his liver cries out in pain and the sensation drops into his gut, buckles his knees, stuns him entirely.

Lola wouldn't continue her beating from there.  One hit was enough.  She stood in front of him, with the mattress of her bed against the backs of her legs, and crossed her arms over her chest.  Her feet spread, her nostrils flared, and every inch of her looked victorious as she stood over the man, be he leaned forward or on his knees entirely.

"I'm gonna tell ya this once and trust that you actually listen:  Do not fuck with me.  We clear?"


Hector Ghosh

This is why Hector has so much loathing for someone who died before his grandfather was even born.

Aside from the fact that he has been possessed by the dead spirit-talker once before he knows the stories about the man. He is a moondancer. Even if he did not want to accept his role as historian and lore-keeper and morale-booster when he was a cub he has grown into it now and he continues to grow into it. Time passes and with it fades the image of a teenager with wild eyes and gangly limbs.

That is the Galliard Lola first met. That is the boy his sisters and his parents remember. That isn't going to be what walks back into his sister's life or shows up on the front step of his parents' house. It isn't going to be this, either. As much as they won't recognize him as an adult they would not recognize him with another spirit inside of his body.

The blow would have knocked Hector to his knees too. Hector is not stoic about absorbing or weathering pain. He has not had an abundance of physical pain in his life. Does not find pleasure in it and he does not think it's cute when his body tries to limit him with it.

Lola strikes him sure and she strikes him hard. Even if the spirit of her mate's great-grandfather does not feel and register it as pain the body he's borrowed does and he swoons onto his knees. It knocks the wind out of his lungs and in that brief burst of uncontrolled air she can hear Hector's voice. Not the spirit's. Not that husky rasp in which he'd spoken since he stood from his snow landing. When he inhales again his breath is labored.

She did not beat the spirit out of him though. The body crumples to its knees. The brain attempts to protect the torso from any further damage by curling up so Hector's forehead rests on the floor. His busted left shoulder seizes up so the forearm crosses his chest. Nothing the spirit tells the body to do provokes a response.

So she stands over him and the spirit does not even wheeze out a laugh to taunt her. All Lola can see from her vantage point is her mate's body responding to the injury.


Lola Hawkes

The satisfaction that Lola found when the man in front of her hit his knees was tainted by the fact that the uncontrolled outward gasp and sound of pain that carried on it was in Hector's voice, not the deep gravelly register that she was starting to recognize to belong to He Who Waits For Dawn.  Her brow flexed down in a frown that's almost sympathetic just for a second, but that smooths away for she remembers who rides those bones, that Hector will heal quickly, and what the drunkard's intent was had she not stopped him in his tracks.

He was on his knees, and his body curled forward to protect itself from further harm.  Hector's difficult left shoulder seized and locked while his forearm crossed over his chest.  There was quiet in the room for a minute, it seemed that he was unable to find his breath to answer Lola's blunt and savage warning that he was not to fuck with her.

In that time, something about the rigid hardness in Lola softened.  It was a tricky and difficult thing to try and separate the man in front of her from the man that she loves.  To see him curled forward like that, unanswering, she couldn't help but wonder if perhaps the spirit had decided to recede or not.  Perhaps it had grown fed up with her and decided it would be better to return to the Homelands so that she would stop harassing him.

So she leaned forward and touched her fingers to his back, in between his shoulder blades, and scrubbed a little.  Her other hand was on her knee, bracing herself while she leaned forward like this.  He dress gaped open at the chest, nigh-inappropriately, but she wasn't concerned about decency.  Truthfully, it was a seldom thing that she ever was.  She was probably going to make a few people uncomfortable with how open and thoughtless she was going to be with breastfeeding once the baby arrived.  For now, though, she offered a lot of cleavage with how she stood and did little to correct it, as she was more focused on the man that she'd dropped to the ground.

"Breathe slow," she coached.  It was a conflicting sound to hear, words of encouragement and healing carried on a tone that was so cautious and resentful and harsh.  "You'll get your feet back."


Hector Ghosh

The labored breathing does not stop even as initial seizure wears off. As the brain acclimates to the visceral and invasive pain blossomed up from where she hit the deep scar on his body it becomes obvious that Lola did significant damage. She did not just knock the wind out of him. He's practically crippled.

Finding his feet is not going to happen. If Hector were hearing her he would have taken comfort from the fingers on his back. If Hector were hearing her he would nod his head even as he labored to breathe. She can see his shoulders moving as the muscles in his back work to assist his lungs.

Though the fingers of his right hand find the floor that he might anchor himself and take his forehead from the floor Hector does not lean into her. He does not make an animal noise of relief and pain. He does not try to ask what happened as he comes back into his body battered and confused.

She cannot see his face with his hair draped like curtains past his features. All she has as he starts to get his wind back is the quiet gasping of his brainstem forcing Hector's body to keep breathing.

The spirit-talker riding him is concentrating. It hasn't gone. Hector would have reached for her by now. Said something. She knows him. The man called her name with his throat blown out yet he hasn't said a word in over a minute.


Lola Hawkes

Fingers stopped rubbing small circles of comfort when no response came from him in turn.  Were this Hector he would have made some quip, or at least said her name by now.  He would have responded to her touch by leaning into it or exhaling with a note of comfort riding his breath.  No such thing happened, so Lola stilled her efforts.  Her hand would remain on his back, though.

While He Who Waits For Dawn concentrated, Lola removed her hand from her knee and touched her fingers to the floor instead.  Instead of leaning down, she now crouched beside him.  Her skirt had to ride up past her knees for this to be accomplished, but we've already established that she didn't care.

She brought her head low, near to his (but not near enough for him to headbutt her, she wasn't that wreckless), and tried to peer past the hair that covered his face to see him more clearly.

"So you're still here," she stated in a low voice, the statement merely an observation, although it would be impossible to deny the thread of disdain there.  The hand moved from his back to push the hair from one side of his face, holding it up so she can look at him more clearly.

"I don't want to keep beating you down.  Do you think I enjoy exploiting my mate's weaknesses to conquer you?  Stop fighting me, and this will end."

Spoken like a true interrogator.


Hector Ghosh

She does not have to be near enough for him to headbutt her for him to hurt her. Twice now he's tried to simply get her away from him so he could continue on with whatever his plan for the evening was. He has failed to backhand her and to slam her face into the refrigerator. Had she hit him any harder it would have knocked him unconscious and all Lola would be able to do is wait for her mate to come back into his own body.

No notion of how long he's going to sleep after He Who Waits For Dawn vacates. How he's going to react when the spirit of his dead ancestor does vacate. If he managed to see anything while he was gone from his body or if all he's going to remember is nothing.

Crouched down next to him as she is Lola does not find it an easy task to peer past his hair. It hangs dark over his face even as he props himself up with one hand. When his eyes tick to find her through it all she can see is a glimmer of white where before was nothing.

He's still here.

When she pushes back a handful of hair the dead spirit-talker holds up his head to glimpse her more clearly and she can see ruin in his gaze. She bids him to stop fighting her so she can stop hitting her mate where she knows it will do the most damage. All this time he has been still and silent. Saving up his energy for what he does next.

She feels a wind pick up in the room before she feels anything else. It is not a cold wind. No draft has found its way into the house. It is a wind born of a gift come across the Gauntlet with the spirit inside her mate's body and it picks up heavier and harder in the seconds before the old spirit-talker holds out his hand like to push her away from him.

He does not lay a finger on her but Lola's feet leave the floor and the wind grabs her by the bones and flings her across the room hard enough to have broken bones in a lesser woman but she does not break. She hits the opposite wall and crumples to the floor and will not carry so much as a bruise with her.


Lola Hawkes

When Lola pushed his hair back, He Who Waits For Dawn canted Hector's chin to look her more fully in the face.  The old spirit was still certainly there, and there was intent in his eyes.  She didn't curl her lip to snarl at him, she didn't push his head to the side when she let go of his hair.  It seemed that she was willing to hold true to her word and cease the abuse provided that he stopped fighting her.

But then a breeze, smelling purely of the dust in her room and possibly some hint of something far away and spiritual, the scent of an Umbral realm that it was highly unlikely she would ever witness herself, picked up within the room.  Lola's head lifted higher, she glanced about to seek the source, but it was a quick realization that there was no outward source.  This was no draft, she would find no chasm ripped in reality to see in the corner of her room.

She had enough time to fix her eyes back on his face, her expression not startled anymore but resigned more than anything, waiting for his move.

He shoved his hand out in the air, and Lola was ripped through the room by this impossible wind that He Who Waits For Dawn summoned forward.

Lola made no sound when the wind tore her away from the floor, but she did grunt as wind tried (and failed) to leave her lungs when she slammed into the wall.  She hit hard with shoulders, hips, back and skull.  She was flung like a rag doll, and a more brittle woman would have suffered a concussion and possibly even a broken collarbone or couple of ribs from the impact.

When this Kinswoman slid down onto the floor, though, she landed crumpled with her back against the wall and knees up and akimbo.  Her hair was tossed about and in her face, and her chin was dipped down, just a little, while she did a quick inventory of her own physical well-being.

The next that Ashkii would know would be that Lola was chuckling.  The sound was venomous, bitter and cruel, and she tipped her head back and moved a hand to comb her hair out of her face and sweep it back from her brow.  Her eyes flashed and she bared her teeth when she barked out the last of her laughter hard, forced, and mean.

"Is that all you've got left in your old bones, Adam Cree?"  She chose the name that White Man gave him for she was being antagonistic.  Rising to meet the cruelty and selfishness that he tried to dole out.  She didn't try to stand yet, though, but stayed sitting on the floor with her back to the wall on the opposite side of the room with him.  She even went so far as to lean forward, hook an elbow on one uplifted knee, and leer at him through the space between opened knees and legs.  Snarling, teasing, and provoked.

"I figured if you were all that Hector was talking you up to be, such a fucking monster, then you'd have at least managed to rape or break my spirit by now."  She turned her head and made a noise like she was spitting.  The gesture was more important than actually sending phlegm onto the floor (which she didn't plan on doing where she slept, no matter how she would have liked to show the disrespect in full).

"What a goddamn let down."


Hector Ghosh

From where she sits she can see the slumped body and hear the labored breaths. It is her man's body and her man's voice. The nothingness in his eyes persists though. Little has come across his face to show either emotion or intent since he took up residence in his great-grandson's bones. Not until she calls him by the name the white man gave him.

That is when Lola sees a grin cut across her man's face. It is not a happy grin. It is a stiff and sharp-toothed sneer.

And when He Who Waits For Dawn tries to get to his feet that he might show her the fight he has held back from her all evening Hector's body balks. His arm has abandoned the protective clutching but Lola knows he will feel pain when he comes back to himself. It's possible he's bleeding internally. That he's breathing hard because of swelling or a rupture. She could have cracked a rib.

He is not faring well. The spirit works the body to its feet but when he stumbles and collapses onto the floor again that is not the fault of his poor coordination and Hector's prior planning. Air bursts out of her mate's lungs with the impact and his inhale is another arduous gasp and its still his voice staining these sounds because He Who Waits For Dawn is not using his throat.

Nearer to her now as he is Lola can see her man is sweating. Part of the blame lies with the parka he has not shed. But he's short of breath and his heart must be racing and even if he is not present to feel pain the damage that would cause the pain is still crippling him. The spirit cannot feel it and he cannot dull it.

But He Who Waits For Dawn does not stay sprawled. He pushes himself kneeling again and mirrors Lola's dry spitting show of contempt.

"Ignorant woman," he says. Husk back in his voice. Rasping more for the work the body does in breathing. His eyes find her belly through the shadows carved from her bent knees and he scoffs again. "Stupid woman."


Lola Hawkes

He calls her ignorant, and Lola barks out another harsh laugh.  He calls her stupid, and by this point she's just shaking her head and leaning herself forward.  Her shoulders weren't near the wall now, for her torso was curled in over itself to allow that elbow to hook up onto that knee, for her to be able to leer out from the space just above and between her legs alike.  His eyes fixed on her stomach and he called her stupid.  Lola glanced down, then made a huffing noise to counter his scoff.  The arm that was rested on her knee moved, so that she could move her hand down.  She touched the small swell of her stomach, pressed fingers to the underside of it, which drew the fabric of the dress close and exaggerated her state.

"What, you remembering that's there?  That this--..." and she took a moment to push herself up from sitting on her rear.  She found her knees much more easily than he did and mirrored his kneel across the room from him, but was clearly in much better physical state than he at this moment.  The way her fingers curled against her stomach and pulled the dress material close was antagonistically provocative in a way.  The sneer on her face was still disdainful, dishing back as much awful as he was trying to serve her.

"--is likely the last line you've got that has Wolf in it?  Hector's where your end game is, and however you feel about that be what it may, this--"

Lola interrupted herself to pat at her stomach one last time before moving her hand and pushing herself up onto her feet.

"--is how your name finds itself again, and the last conduit you have for your line continuing."

She straightened her dress and cardigan, raked her hand through her hair once more, and moved to close some of the distance between them.  He was kneeling in the middle of the room, and Lola stalked to stand near the foot of the bed, which she then leaned back against.  The sneer had faded away and returned to the same hard, impatient scowl that she'd been wearing previously.

"So, that's another reason I don't wanna keep fighting you.  You want or need somethin'?  Say so.  I'll try to work with ya.  But between the stubborn, the violence, and the handsy, you need to step the fuck off.  Alright?"


Hector Ghosh

Hard to tell if the spirit is hearing her let alone listening to her. His eyes aim themselves at her but they do not appear focused as they did when he first stepped into the house intent on making himself comfortable. When he has deigned to answer her questions the answers have mostly been monosyllables. Of the two full sentences uttered one was practically an insult and the other was practically a riddle.

Later Hector will be able to elucidate what the half-mad spirit-talker meant when he said all things will answer if one knows how to speak to them. It wasn't what Lola thought it meant. He wasn't even remotely close to conceding to answer her questions. He was drunk and he has always been selfish and impulsive and destructive in the fulfillment of his wants.

His life ended sudden and violent and instead of helping his descendant and the mother of his descendant he possessed his great-grandson's body and threw his great-grandson's mate around the kitchen and frightened her so badly she fled and then he tried to rape her. Lola was not truly frightened of him. She was not a fragile young thing that could not fend him off.

If Hector had chosen a thin and high-voiced girl who had known since birth what was expected of her. If he had wound up settling down with any of the fine-boned empty-headed young things whose blood sang pure and whose eyes showed equal parts desire for and dread of him. He'd met girls like that in his travels before and he could have claimed any of them to be his mate. He didn't want a girl. He wanted Lola.

Lola broke his body fending off his ancestor and she doesn't have so much as a scratch on her to show for it. The spirit stares at her through her mate's eyes as she speaks. She tells him he needs to step the fuck off.

Must be he's had enough of this. He isn't going to be able to accomplish anything.

The consciousness goes out of Hector's eyes and the stoniness out of the muscles in his face. He doesn't blink and come back into himself when He Who Waits For Dawn peels himself out of his bones and pushes back into the Umbra. His eyes go dead and his spine jerks and then Hector slumps onto his left side on the floor.


Lola Hawkes

One day not too far up the road, Lola will stand proud and gloat about the fact that she had beaten back an ancestor spirit that sought her and potentially her mate ill will.  She would puff up and hold her chin high and cross her arms over her chest, all the while doing her best to angle the story so it was less impacting on Hector's sense of pride and accomplishment.  After all, it was his body that she had beaten down.  This would be one of several stories that she would gloat about over intoxicants and campfires where she talks herself up and simultaneously balances keeping Hector from looking bad.

When she sliced up a Fomori with a hunting knife because her gun jammed and Hector was on the ground sliced open from a wicked blow that, mercifully, hit him instead of her.
When she shook and pleaded with his possessed body until he expelled an invading force, and how she blew that invading force to smithereens while Hector tried not to lose all of his blood through the terrible exit wound in his neck.
When she challenged the Ancestor Spirit of He Who Waits For Dawn and physically beat the body he occupied so that he could not attack her with it, or drag it out into the night to freeze.

For now, though, she stood leaned back against the foot of the bed, surly and simultaneously victorious looking, a reflection of his own cruelty staring down at him, knowing she's won.  She watched while he stared blank and stone-faced up at her, and was a statue of unmoving granite to his will.  When eyes rolled and fluttered shut to indicate that the spirit had left, that posture blew away like dry leaves in the wind.  Her shoulders slumped, her weight leaned more against the mattress, and she let her head fall back so her face was aimed up at the ceiling.  Her lips formed a silent 'Thank God,' that was an expression rather than a declaration to a Christian deity that she hardly believed in.

She looked back down to see Hector collapsed on his side on the floor, and Lola pressed her lips together and crossed the room to meet him.  She got down onto her knees at his side, up close to his shoulders, and ran fingers through his hair with one hand, brushing it back out of his face, while the other hand jostled and pressed and pinched and swatted along his chest, neck, cheek, and right shoulder.

"Wake up, baby," she spoke to him in a voice that wasn't as firm and serious as it tended to be when she was rousing him from traumatic unconsciousness (funny how often this seems to happen, huh?).  Instead, she spoke gently as someone would if they were waking a small child from a nap.

"Come on now, you need to shift and heal.  I busted you up a bit.  It'll be easy to fix, just shift."


Hector Ghosh

Of all the times he has been knocked down in front of her this is the quietest Hector has been.

They have gathered around the campfire before when their numbers were greater. So many of Celduin's stories involved Hector doing something stupid and getting hurt. He was young and cocky and easily influenced then and he still is now. Glen and Maria used to talk him into doing all sorts of borderline suicidal stunts just because it would look hilarious later. He was always getting carried away horsing around with Tamsin and Corey.

It's one thing to laugh about Hector getting bored during an overnight watch and mattress surfing down a flight of stairs or having too much caffeine at a house party they'd crashed and jumping off a balcony into a pool. There's only so much damage a teenage boy can inflict upon himself.

He could have died had Lola not pulled the knife off his belt and cut that Fomor up. He couldn't move. Its partner blasted him down.

He could have died had Lola not pled with him to come back into his own body. Not from the wound he sustained evicting the parasite inside of him but from its draining the life out of him.

Both times she coaxed him into shifting or healing himself afterwards and he complied as quick as he could. He was conscious during the wounding both times. He can remember the things that Lola said to him even if he was wracked.

For nearly a minute after the spirit departs from him Hector lies heavily unconscious and capable of nothing more than labored breathing. He doesn't feel his woman's fingers in his hair and doesn't respond to her attempts to rustle him awake. He isn't screaming or gurgling or writhing around in agony. He's still and far from her for what has to feel like an eternity.

When he finally does surface Hector grimaces and makes a thin pained noise through his teeth. His arms curl over his chest to protect his midsection though it is not a strictly conscious decision. She bids him shift and heal, tells him she busted him up a bit, but he doesn't burst into another form to escape it.

Hector buries his face in her lap. His breaths are erratic and hot through the fabric. His right arm abandons his side to wrap itself around her lower back to hold her there and she can hear saltwater in his voice when he takes a snuffling breath in. Aside from the pained respirations and the threat of tears Hector makes no other sound.


Lola Hawkes

It took a while for Hector to stir, but Lola was diligent.  She had all night and no place else to go, after all.  So, though he was still and unresponsive, she continued to jostle and touch and tug at him, careful not to disturb the whole of his body too much.  She felt how hard she hit him, and she knew that the scar on his side was deep enough that it was so much more than just surface scarring-- it went deep, damaged and crippled organs.  She could very well have ruptured this old wound and caused him to begin bleeding on the inside.  This would be very worrying, were it not for the fact that she knew he could save himself by waking and healing.

She knew he was strong.  She knew he'd come to.

All the same, she was beginning to contemplate whether it would be wise to move him from the floor to the bed when he made a hissing, pained noise through his teeth to announce his reintroduction to consciousness.  He curled immediately into himself, cradling the pain in his midsection, and Lola's hand left where it was tapping steadily on his collarbone to give him space.  The other hand, however, stayed at his head, already caught in a pattern of slow and affectionate strokes to his hair.

She urged him again:  "You need to change.  You need to heal."

But, contrary to her instruction, he instead wrapped his unhindered arm around her lower back and pulled himself up far enough to rest his head in her lap.  Lola's eyebrows lifted, but her expression relented and softened quickly.  Rather than immediately pushing him to do as she advised, she instead adjusted how she was sitting-- moved to being seated on her rear with her legs folded off to the side, away from Hector, to make her lap a more level and comfortable place for his head to be.  He breathed harsh and emotional against the threatening well of tears, and Lola kept one hand steady at his head while the other moved to his upper back and rubbed a figure eight of circles.

"Hey," she said in a level tone of voice that was dropped so it was quieter for the two of them.  He was close, she didn't need to be loud or forceful.  He didn't need her to be loud or forceful in this moment.  So she leaned down some, curling her torso over his head.  She couldn't bring her brow to his in this position or breathe him there, but the sentiment was present none the less.  "It's alright, baby."

I don't blame you for letting Ashkii take over your body.
Who can blame you for trying?   That's all that we ask.
I'm okay-- you're okay (mostly).  Everything's fine.

These are the unspoken assurances that her simple and seldom words of comfort offer for the next minute, or however much longer Hector will take.  She feels actually saying such things outloud might be inappropriate, perhaps a little too soon.  She didn't know what it was like to be possessed-- the experience could have been terrible for him as far as she knew.  So Lola would give Hector the time he needed to let loose or pull himself together, and she'd stay rubbing his back, combing and stroking his hair, holding his neck and face and shoulders.  Soon as his breathing carried less the whisper of a sob to it, though, she'd be back at it:

"Hector, I'm not letting you just carry the damage I dealt you.  You gotta shift now."


Hector Ghosh

Perhaps it would be less painful to listen to him giving himself over to whatever it is that has his eyes flushing with hot tears and just supporting him while he got it out of his system. Garou have other means of venting their frustrations and their anger and their grief though. He is not an untapped well of pain. He runs through the woods once a month and destroys whatever gets in his head and he throws back his head and he howls. And it is triumphant and proud and sad and furious all at once, all the time.

This is reactionary. He shakes as he starts to come back to his senses and she can hear him refusing to break down over something so minor as--

Well that's the problem isn't it. Easier said than done to shrug off being possessed by one's violent great-grandfather. Last time he had come to with his packbrother and packsister pinning him to the earth with his alpha straddling his waist. He had been scared out of his mind and panicking but they'd talked him back down.

Lola tells him it's alright and he sobs and his grip on her dress and the hip beneath the dress tightens. Makes this strangled noise that almost sounds like an appeal to Gaia but he doesn't get past the first phoneme and then a pair of teardrops escape his eyes. He pants through his nostrils and snarls, furious at himself. She can hear it. Like he's near enough to frenzy just from what happened or what's going on inside his head and the only thing keeping him calm are her fingers moving through his hair.

He squeezes his eyes shut and another small flash of hot hits the place where his head meets her lap and that's the end of his outburst. His left arm is trapped between his torso and her thighs and he does not try to extricate it. Powerfully wounded as he is Hector is not going to die from it.

You gotta shift now.

"I'm sorry!" he says. Makes another pain-thick sound more animal than human. He does not shift. "I don't remember anything, I don't remember anything, the last thing I remember I was sitting outside, why are we inside, what did I do?"


Lola Hawkes

The first actual sob that wretched from Hector's throat and moved his shoulders stilled Lola's hands for a moment, so that they rested where they were.  He doesn't see any of what her face is doing, for his own was buried into the black fabric of her dress, face against her thigh and hand desperately grasping at her hip and the fabric between it and his palm.  She looked down at him, but not down at him.  Her expression was pained, tight in the eyes and the corners of her mouths.  She didn't have practical knowledge of comforting people-- this wasn't something she did typically.  She's been a shoulder for Ivan and Eddie and occasionally her elder sister.  Beyond that, though, Lola was used to being a rock, a steel weight support that was as harsh as it was steady.

That wasn't what felt appropriate, here.  It wasn't what felt right.  So she ground her molars once, chewing through that hardwired part of her brain that said to be hard, and went back to smoothing his hair away from his face, back behind his ears and down the back of his neck.  Her other hand moved from his back to his right shoulder, bracing him and how he held onto her.  It wasn't still, though.  It worried at him through rubs and pats, like the motion of her hands was soothing her as well.

She felt tears on her dress, but she didn't address them verbally or squirm uncomfortably under him.  Lola had some black-and-white views on life, and leaned toward the traditional when it came to roles and stations in life.  But she wouldn't fault a man for crying, no more than she would anyone else.  The snarling, the ragged breathing, the muffled sobbing, all of it was weathered through and accepted.

After she found it appropriate to speak up, he barked out an apology that sounded almost panicked, then followed with his plea:  I don't remember anything, what did I do?

She made a sharp "Tsst!" noise and shook her head at him, and was swift to correct him.

"You didn't do anything besides what you could."

She paused, considering for a moment before deciding her next words and carrying on.

"He didn't do anything that I couldn't handle.  We're inside because I didn't want him abandoning your body for fuck knows how long out in some snowdrift where I couldn't find ya.  We're in the bedroom because he cornered me here, but clearly I won that fight.  I'll tell you the rest after you change-- he was drinking, I don't know how much, and I suckerpunched your liver.  You could be bleeding out, and you're tough but if you keep ignoring that we're going to have a harder time with this.  Please, just Change.  I'll fill in the blanks after that."


Hector Ghosh

"Baby, Garou don't bleed out..."

It's weak bravado coming from someone whose liver ruptured when his mate punched him. But at least it's something like compliance. Hector doesn't want to lie here in agony any more than Lola wants to look at him lain there in agony. The only thing stopping him is something stupid. He sniffs the last of the panic-tears out of his sinuses and grimaces as he tries to sit up and finds it nearly impossible.

Rage ripples through him not as a forewarning of frenzy but to allow him to ignore the pain enough that he can sit up and rest his back against the foot of the bed.

"I don't wanna tear your dad's coat," he says as explanation for whatever it is he thinks he's doing. Shrugging out of the parka has him grimacing but not deflecting her help if she offers it.

The parka fit him just fine but if he did not take it off to shift forms it would have ripped up the back and Hector is a memory-keeper. He weathers a few more moments of agony just to preserve something that belonged to her father.

When he shifts it's only into his near-man form. His boots and jeans shift with him. The t-shirt he wore outside was Glen's once. Stitching threatens to pop but the fabric holds onto him. And then he drops his head back against the bed and closes his eyes and breathes for the five minutes it takes for his wounds to heal.

They are all internal injuries. Lola can see no signs of improvement aside from an easing of his agonized breathing and a smoothing of the frown in his forehead. The loosening of the muscles in his torso. When the last of the jarring pain goes away Hector draws a deep-deep breath and melts back into his human skin.

He doesn't say anything. She can read shame in the tension at the edges of his mouth and the way he will not look at her. But he doesn't throw himself at her or weep or ask her forgiveness again.

Hector just sits and breathes through the secondhand guilt the way he'd breathed through the healing and when the worst of that has passed, if she's still near to him, he reaches out for her hand without opening his eyes.

"You still wanna meet my parents?" he asks.


Lola Hawkes

When Hector flashed hot with Rage, Lola was braced, as she ever was, for the threat of him boiling up and nearly finding his way to a Frenzy.  She couldn't predict what one surge of that supernatural strength, heat, and anger meant when compared to the next.  He pushed himself up to sit beside her, back against the bed, and Lola lifted her hands and leaned away, not immediately sure what he was doing or where he was going.  But that heat sizzled out of the air and reduced to the ever-present bank that she was used to, and the Kinfolk relaxed again, no longer tensed and ready for either grabbing him or leaping away from him.

He shrugged and flinched and squirmed his way out of the parka, and Lola helped, pulling the sleeves by their cuffs down his arms.  The garment was tossed up on the mattress behind him, and that gave room for Hector's body to grow.  He was significantly broader in this form, with muscles to the chest and arms and thighs that were better suited to a gorilla than a man, with a middle made thick with muscle, with sloping brow and heavy jaw.  She thought nothing of the appearance, though she seldom saw Hector take on his Glabro skin.  It was one less utilized on the field, after all.  Hispo or Crinos was what Lola was more accustomed to seeing in her brethren.  All the same, as he leaned against the bed with his eyes closed, Lola settled in beside him, rested her flank and head against his arm, and waited for his body to knit itself back together along with him.

While they sat, Lola told him the story of what had happened.  The highlights:

...tried to get him to tell me what he knows about the Pit....
...stubborn old fuck had me by the throat, but didn't keep hold.
...tried to leave, and I got him on the ground, but then...
I thought I was gonna get him to talk again, but he tried to force himself on me-- oh, don't worry, he didn't get far at all.  That was when I wrecked your liver.
...threw me into the wall, but he didn't account for me being a fucking badass.

She kept levity to the tale where she was able, the best that she could considering she was no talesinger nor a trickster.  Her sense of levity was a dark and ironic thing more often than not.  But she had done what she could and recounted the tale for Hector to know all of what had transpired.

He reached for her hand, and she readily laced her fingers through his and gave them a small squeeze to answer his question.  She was smirking, lightly, when she looked up at him.  "Well, of course.  I've already chased off your great-grandpa, I figure I can face anyone else now."