Lola Hawkes
Since the storm blew in earlier in the
week, Lola had stayed around the home for the most part. Sunday had
been an adventure of its own, and had taken a lot of energy and strength
out of her. She spend Sunday evening and a decent part of Monday
recovering. By that night, bitterly cold weather, dumping snow, and
sharp winds had kept her indoors. Around Thursday the snow had stopped,
but the cold remained and the winds were on-again-off-again. No longer
willing to just remain inside and leave her lands unpatrolled, Lola had
started bundling herself up in her heavy cloak and many layers and
scarves and hats, slung her rifle over her back, and started making her
patrols again. They were shorter than what she did in November, but she
could still feel accomplished when she came home, even if she did have
to spend an hour and a half thawing out.
Earlier today (Saturday),
Hector had gone out to be with his pack, and Lola fully supported
this. She went out herself earlier that day, ran a five hour long
patrol, and had made it home in the mid afternoon while the sun still
glistened on the largely undisturbed snow.
The house was warm and
largely quiet when Hector and Thomas had arrived. The record player
that Hector had blown the dust off of and brought downstairs was
spinning a Frank Sinatra record quietly, for Lola was feeling nostalgic
and had found a box of albums that her parents had shared. She was
sitting at the kitchen table with a basket of unfolded laundry by the
legs of her chair, and was partway through folding some T-shirt or
another that must belong to Hector when the door burst open and the pair
of Galliards came in.
The sudden entrance had Lola straightening
immediately in her chair and any hint of relaxation flying away like a
leaf in a gust of wind. Tension was in all of her muscles, her
expression was hard and tough, like she was expecting that she was going
to have to fight whoever it was at the door.
When she saw it was
Thomas and Hector that eased back some. But then she recognized that
Hector appeared drained, that he was favoring his arm and shoulder and
cringing a little when he moved. She didn't rush to tend to him, she
didn't look stricken or fuss. However, her expression was quite serious
when she rose to her feet out of the chair and moved away from the
kitchen table to go to greet them. Her hair was in a loose braid down
her back and she was dressed in a gray floor-length dress with short
sleeves and a low neckline.
Hector would come to meet her, wrap
her up in a tight and bracing hug, then explain in a low voice that he
was going to go shower until his skin fell off before disappearing up
the hall and into the bathroom. Lola blinked in surprise, then turned
to Thomas with a grim set to her mouth.
"What happened?"
Thomas Delacroix
The
blood on Thomas is on his shins, mixed with mud and melted snow. There
are smudges of gore on his face and hands, though there are no wounds.
He doesn't move like he's hurt at all.
But he doesn't greet
her. Instead, he watches Hector until he's out of sight, then turns his
attention to Lola. For a few seconds, it seems he might not have
registered her question.
"We got in a fight with a dead thing?"
Thomas says. Blinks and tries to shift more of his attention onto Lola.
Detail. She'll want more detail than that.
He doesn't say
anything else though, not yet. Instead he drifts into the kitchen,
turns on the sink, and catches water in cupped hands to rinse out his
mouth.
Lola Hawkes
The woman that stood before
Thomas was scowling, but he was accustomed to that. Lola was a hard
thing, always has been. She didn't grow pale or look disgusted or even
very upset at the sight of blood on both of the men. Lola grew up with
herself and the world around her believing she would be an Ahroun until
she was sixteen years old, so blood and gore and ichor and death was
nothing unfamiliar to her. She always thought she would live and revel
in the stuff, and even after finding out she was a Kinfolk she still
threw herself into battles.
She listened to the sound of boots
clunking on the tile floor in the bathroom and heard the pipes grunt and
groan when Hector started up the shower behind a closed door. Her head
turned, focus up the hallway for a moment. Then Thomas stated
something about fighting a dead thing before moving past her, through
the open layout of the living/eating/cooking half of the house to enter
the kitchen. Lola's head turned to watch him, but she didn't follow at
first. Instead she moved to the front of the house, looked out the
window and stared hard into the dark to make sure nothing had swept home
along after them.
She could see nothing, so her attention
returned to Thomas. He was standing at the sink cupping his hands under
running water and rinsing what was probably blood from his mouth. Lola
shook her head and moved into the kitchen along with him. From a few
feet to his right Lola opened a cupboard, took down a glass and set it
on the counter beside the sink for Thomas to use instead.
"And
you're alright?" She turned to stand with one hip against the counter's
edge, facing the Shadow Lord. Her arms were folded under her bust and
her expression and gaze were just as hard as she had been before.
Though she wasn't in any position that suggested she expected a fight to
break out, there was still a string of tension to her-- square
shoulders, chin held high. That probably wouldn't go away until she had
a better understanding of what happened.
Thomas Delacroix
Thomas
spooks a little at the sound of the glass contacting the counter near
him. And then, in what is perhaps a better answer to Lola's questions
than what says after, he takes the glass, fills it, and hands it back to
her.
"Yeah. Fine." He starts to turn off the water, registers
that his hands are still smudged with something from that dead thing.
Old blood. Probably not its eyes. Those would have been dried right?
He doesn't remember now. He frowns are his hands and puts them under
the water. "We killed it. No one stayed dead." That thing hadn't
stayed dead. But now it would? Now it would. But now his explanation
is wrong. "No one who wasn't already dead at the beginning is dead.
All the people who are supposed to be alive are alive. We're fine."
Lola Hawkes
Those
expressive dark eyebrows of Lola's hunker down into a frown when she
watches Thomas startle a little in the shoulders and back, like the
flank of a horse when spooked. The frown is only cemented into place
when he fills the glass with water and hands it back to her. She
doesn't interrupt him while he speaks, but once he's finished by saying
they're fine she reaches out and cups one hand under his elbow and holds
it there. Grabbing his attention, directing him with firm but gradual
pressure to stand up away from the sink, to turn to face her more
appropriately.
His hands are still wet from rinsing under the
faucet, but she presses the glass of water into his palm anyways. She
doesn't say it, but the gesture is clear. No, you animal, the water glass is for you.
"No one stayed dead?"
Her tone is flat, and her eyes are hard and he finds himself pinned
down under the kinswoman's gaze. "Thomas-- did you have to come back?
Or did Hector?"
Thomas Delacroix
There is a second
where Thomas just looks at her when she tries to move him. He stays
very still, his eyes on hers. Steady. Intense. Not really like Thomas
at all.
Then he blinks and shakes his head. And lets her
position him. He doesn't lean into her like he leans into Hector, but
he lets her turn him to face her. Lets her put the glass in his
dripping hands.
"Hector."
Lola Hawkes
Thomas
will see something flicker across Lola's face when he expresses that
Hector had died that night. Yet, despite breath leaving Hector's lungs
that night, despite his heart ceasing to beat and the light leaving his
eyes, he was under the hot water in the shower now. A dead man not yet
dead, though Death had visited him twice in the last two weeks.
That
spasm is some sudden and jumbled mix of worry, panic, sickness, and
understanding. Then it was gone just as quick, chased away for now.
Lola liked Thomas, don't mistake that one bit. If she didn't, she
wouldn't abide by his typical greetings of pats and brushes, and she
certainly wouldn't answer the affection in turn on a regular basis. But
all the same, she didn't like to show weakness to anyone, and Lola's
definition of weakness was a skewed and harsh thing.
Besides, there was something else to be addressed at this moment.
Thomas
was behaving quite unlike anything Lola had seen him do before. He was
a reserved man, yes, but never particularly distant. Distracted
sometimes, sure, but this was different. He seemed half-here and
half-not, and while he wasn't her Mate (though, technically, in the eyes
of the Nation, she didn't have one of those either) she still felt some
semblance of responsibility for him. Celduin has been 'her pack' for a
very long time after all.
So she took her hands off of Thomas,
released his elbow and left the glass in his hand, and let her arms go
to her sides instead. Her tone of voice was still firm, but she was at
least making an effort to smooth and calm it some.
"....You don't seem 'fine', man. There something you need to get out?"
Thomas Delacroix
"Ah.
Wow." He sighs. "No. I'll be fine." He looks over Lola and the
kitchen, seeming to be paying more attention now at least, and runs a
hand through his hair. He has to uncurl his fingers from the glass and
that seems to be the first time he's consciously recognized its
existence since he handed it to Lola.
Now what?
"...how was your day?"
Lola Hawkes
[Perception 3 + Empathy 2: Fine, if you won't tell me then I'll figure it out myself.]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
Thomas Delacroix
[This is what happens when your alpha dies for a second, you rip out a dead things spine, drive home without freaking out too
much, and then start trying to process something when it's hitting
older, underlying things that had been quiet. Whatever is going on,
he's not fine. And this is about more than tonight. Which is probably
why he's so interested in not talking about it.]
Lola Hawkes
The way that Lola looks at Thomas when he asks how her day was couldn't be more unimpressed if she tried.
"Holy shit, I could not think
of a more irrelevant question to ask." The tone that she was trying to
affect for his sake had vanished with that sentence. While she'd tried
to sound calm, now she sounded precisely as impatient as her word
choice implied. But she didn't throw her hands up in the air to make a
show of this frustration with the Galliard or turn away from him to
leave him standing alone in the kitchen. Instead, Lola wrapped one arm
around her middle, effectively flattening the fabric of her dress
against her ribs and making more apparent the small beginning of visible
pregnancy in her lower stomach. The other hand reached up to brush
small hairs that had come loose from the braid back behind her ear.
"If you don't wanna talk about it, that's just fine. But don't stand there and lie
about how you're doing, Thomas. It doesn't help you, it doesn't help
Hector, it doesn't help me. Ya keep keepin' shit to yourself and your
rhythm with your pack's gonna go off-balance."
She spoke like she
assumed that Hector might have tried to have a similar conversation with
him on the way back, but probably with less pressing than what Lola was
doing. After all, the man had died. She imagined that he wouldn't
have had the energy to try and siphon old demons out of his young
packmate.
That's fine, though. That's what Kinfolk are there for.
Thomas Delacroix
"I
tried!" It's the first time Lola has heard him raise his voice. Even
when she and Erich and Erich were fighting Thomas had just said maybe
they should all get together at his place like 'oh, maybe we could just
have a picnic.'
He takes a deep breath. And then another. "I tried that." He starts to gesture, remembers again
that he's still holding a glass of water, and sets it carefully on the
counter. He doesn't look much calmer, but at least his voice is back at
its normal volume. "Earlier. It was kind of mess that ended with
decisions to just stay inside until the snow melted. And space Shadow
Lords. Named like the Roman god. There was...."
Lola Hawkes
On
the other side of the kitchen wall, which was shared with the bathroom,
Hector might hear the raised voice over the flow of water. That's only
if he's far enough outside of his own head to be paying attention to
his surroundings, though. There's an equal chance that it goes
unnoticed. Either way, Lola doesn't flinch when she hears the volume in
Thomas's voice increase. If anything, as is always the case with her,
the Kinfolk's chest pushes out a bit as she pulls a breath into it and
she jerks her chin up by a couple of degrees, like she's egging him to
come at her, to let fly whatever it is that has him chomping quietly at
the bit in his own mind.
But rather than continuing on the same
path and shouting at her, or waving his arms wildly, Thomas looked
surprised to find the glass of water in his hand again, then gently set
it on the counter before speaking further. When he continued, he was
level-voiced again, but there's a tight wire of some kind of anxiety
that Lola didn't understand.
She was trying to follow along with
what he was saying, but her train of thought and focus was sent flying
off the rails when he said something about space Shadow Lords. That
moment of derailment is abundently clear in how her expression slacks
and she stares at him in stunned bewilderment.
It takes her a
second to speak, and when she does she's got both of her arms loose at
her sides again, like she's getting ready to look unimposing and
approach an unhinged person.
"...You understand that what you just
said doesn't make sense to people who weren't there, right? I can
venture to guess that you're talking about Celestials and Ascended
Spirits, but 'Space Shadow Lords' makes no fucking sense."
Thomas Delacroix
"I was actually calm for a minute and Hector though that it was...I don't know. And then he told me to stop being a Vulcan."
She
was confused before, and so Thomas, at entirely the wrong juncture,
tries to supply a helpful explanation. "Those are apparently space
Shadow Lords.
"Anyway, I tried to tell him about my father, but
then...I don't know. He was trying to be apologetic and I was freaking
out because he was apologizing and...this probably doesn't make sense
again. I'm pretty sure it didn't make any sense then, if it's any
consolation."
Lola Hawkes
The bewildered confusion
melts away into exasperation instead. This even goes so far as to
bleed over into body language; Lola lifted a hand and pinched at the
bridge of her nose, scrubbing the corners of her eyes with the pads of
her forefinger and thumb. Hector made a pop culture reference at Thomas
recently and it translated poorly. Lola didn't know much about old
cult television shows, but she at least knew what a 'Vulcan' was
supposed to be. She did attend public school, after all.
She was outwardly quiet, but in her mind she groaned and moaned at herself.
How
is it that Galliards, weavers of speech and story, can't even have a
goddamn talk with one another? When they're packmates on top of that?
How do I get stuck bridging the gap instead? I'm a goddamn Ahroun, a
battlemaiden, this isn't my place.
But, with a quiet sigh and
deflates the defensiveness to her chest and shoulders, Lola took her
hand from her face and stated simply, blandly, in a tone that's lost
much of its gusto and sounds like she's relenting: "It isn't much."
Consolation, that is.
But to follow it up, she at least made an offer of hospitality.
"Look,
I know you've got your own home to get to and all, but it's been a hell
of a day and you're--..." She almost said 'unstable', but decided last
moment that the word was not appropriate, however true it may be. She
has to think for a second before finding something suitable to replace
it. "Beat. Stick around, thaw out in the shower when Hector's done.
Rest up in the loft room if you need to."
She turned to move past
Thomas, to return to the laundry that she'd been folding, because Lola
was not the type of person to leave a task unfinished. But she'd only
made it a step and a half on that path before stopping, her weight
swaying on her stocking feet, causing the hem of her dress to swing
gently a few inches above the floor as well. This put her nearly
shoulder to shoulder with Thomas, though she was still more in front of
him than she was directly at his side. Stopped here, she frowns
thoughtfully and looks back to the Shadow Lord's face.
"You... wanna tell me about your dad instead?"
Thomas Delacroix
Thomas
considers the first offer. "Reese does freak out when I come home
covered in blood. It might be best." And at any moment Black Spiral
Dancers could come flinging themselves through a grand bay window and
try to eat them. No. Lola doesn't have windows like that. Of course
she doesn't. But when monsters come in, she won't run. She'll stay and
fight and die. Maybe he should stay.
And then she offers
to listen, indirectly perhaps, to what he's thinking about now. "First
you have to promise not to hit him if you meet him. That would
go...very badly. I doubt you will. Meet him. I don't think he'd come
here. Not to meet people. Maybe to drag me home by the scruff of my
neck, but not in any way that means you'd meet him."
Lola Hawkes
When
an agreement is reached about staying here at The Homestead and
resting, Lola nodded her head, satisfied with the conclusion he'd
reached. The reasoning he gave behind his acquiescing, however, earned a
casual scoff from Lola.
"Of course he fucking doesn't," was what
she had to say about Reese's freaking out about blood. If it helps,
Lola wasn't necessarily trying to insult Reese directly. It was more a
note that she looked down on a large number of other Kinfolk on. Many
reacted negatively to their Wolves coming home with remnants of war on
them. Lola viewed it as a simple fact of life-- after all, war was what
Gaia built them for, right?
But, then, Thomas might not know that
Lola is scoffing at Kinfolk in general, and not Reese directly. He
could take offense, but Lola has already moved on and has shifted
trajectory, moving her path from going back to the laundry on the
kitchen table to stretching up onto her tip-toes and reaching for the
back of the cupboard that rests above the kitchen stove.
"I ain't
making promises about not attacking your dad if he comes onto my turf
starting shit. Or Celduin's turf in general. But I am willing
to listen, and I'll do my best not to get hackles up for you. You want
somethin' warm to drink? God knows how long Hector'll be in there
hogging the hot water."
Thomas Delacroix
"He calms
down. He just does this thing where he wants to disinfect things and
bandage them, and it's so unnecessary but kind of endearing." He
shrugs. "I was just used to Ry being like, 'are you dying? No?
Right. Take a nap then.' So it seems excessive."
"Um. Yeah. It is kinda cold. Thanks."
Hector Ghosh
Aside
from the occasional crash of something falling to the floor of the tub
and the persistent fall of water from the shower head they have heard
nothing of what has gone on in the bathroom while Hector has been in
there.
When the water shuts off the pipes squawk. Silence descends
upon the bathroom. They can hear him thumping around as he steps out of
the tub and drops something else. The low murmur of his voice and the
words lost to the walls and the door. It has the cadence of an
emotionless motherfucker.
Lola Hawkes
In
a fleeting moment of sharing, Lola nodded along with Thomas's
explanation of what Reese did in comparison to how 'Ry', whoever that
was, behaved instead. She touched a couple of boxes of tea with her
fingertips, found a tin of hot chocolate mix, and touched at a taller
tin of coffee beans. As she took an inventory of options she spoke in a
semi-distracted way.
"That's alright, I guess. I tell Hector to
wear other skins and heal faster, but fuck if he'll do it anyway. You
want... Coffee, tea, or cocoa? There's just black and mint teas, not
much variety, but..." She shrugged and eased back down onto the heels
of her feet. Whatever his answer may be, she's already getting started
with filling the kettle that rests on one of the stove's backburners
with water from the sink.
Somewhere on the other side of the
kitchen wall that faces into the house, the water turns off and the bass
of a male voice sounds indistinctly along with a couple of thumps.
Lola paused, listening, then shook her head and killed the water and set
the kettle on the stove. The pilot clicked a couple of times before a
low ring of blue flame bloomed underneath. With that done, Lola turned
to put her back to the stove. Her hands found the handle of the oven
door and her weight rested back through them just slightly. Her lips
pursed a little, mouth twisted to the side some, while she analyzed
Thomas for a second.
"We'll talk about whatcha want, and if that's
your dad I'll hear you out. But, I gotta say first-- I don't know
what happened tonight, and I'll probably find out my details in a few
days. But if it turns out he's alive because of you, if you pulled him
out from death's teeth..? Thank you."
Thomas Delacroix
Thomas glances up in the direction of the thumping and then back at Lola.
"What?
No. No. He did that all on his own. I just finished killing a
thing." Thomas says it like it was nothing particularly interesting, or
worth noting. "I don't know. Do you want to know? I guess I can tell
you. I was just kind of all nerves before."
Hector Ghosh
The
door opens eventually and Hector appears as a dark-lit figure in the
hall. He carries gore-soaked clothing in his right arm and shuffles to
the washing machine with it. Thomas might not want to look over. He has a
towel draped, not wrapped, over his head and hasn't taken pains to
conceal the rest of his body.
After he feeds the bundle to the
machine he holds his left arm against his damp chest like a bird with a
broken wing and uses his right hand to pour bleach as an offering to the
god of modern conveniences.
Lola Hawkes
Something
about the way that Lola looked back at Thomas suggested that she only
half believed what he was telling her-- Hector survived the night all
on his own. All that Thomas did was put an end to the thing that was
working on dragging Hector down to Hell along with it. No big deal or
anything, right?
He went on to express that they could talk about
his father if they she wanted to, and Lola shook her head at him with a
low sigh that passed over only slightly-parted lips. "No, Thomas, it's
not about what I want to hear, it's about..." She trailed off when she
heard the bathroom door open and the double-doors that went to the
laundry closet open up. From where she stood she couldn't see Hector,
so she didn't know that he was working on laundry while favoring one arm
with his whole body still damp and quite bare.
"...It's about
you," she finished telling Thomas, and shifted her attention back to the
Shadow Lord long enough to fix him with a significant stare, one
eyebrow canted just ever-so higher than the other.
Without looking away from him, she turned her head and called (but didn't yell) past her shoulder:
"Hector, the kettle's on. Can I pour you something?"
Hector Ghosh
[doo de doo]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
Thomas Delacroix
"No. No. I mean, I meant about toni-"
He
turns his head when he hears Hector coming and looks for a second like
he might go bounding in that direction but then he blinks and looks
quickly back to Lola. "I meant about tonight. But maybe later about-"
About the thing he was going to ask her but now won't because Hector is
there. Instead of explaining he waves a hand in a complicated and
completely non-helpful gesture.
"Tea is good?"
Hector Ghosh
The
washing machine's lid thunks closed and the dials crank and whatever
Hector does after that is concealed by the fact that water rushes into
the machine. He hears Lola call his name and ask a question but he
doesn't answer right away. Hard to give a coherent answer with a hand
over his face bidding himself pull his shit together so he can go out
there and be an alpha and a mate when all he wants to do is hide in the
bedroom until the apocalypse starts.
When he comes into sight
Hector has pulled on a pair of boxers from the stack he keeps on a shelf
over the laundry machines and still has the towel draped half-assed
over his head. He holds it off his face and wrings some more water out
of his hair as he walks. It's grown several more inches since he first
came to Denver and is now down to his shoulders.
Now that he isn't
covered in blood and moving with singular purpose towards a closed room
Lola can see what happened to him. His injuries are half what they were
earlier this afternoon but he's still hurting. A loud black-blue bruise
sits on his left cheekbone where his face was smashed in and another
spiderweb of bruising covers the same side of his neck.
The injury
that killed him was largely internal but his entire left shoulder is
bruised and swollen. What will one day only be a scar still shows as
scabs where bones snapped through the skin over his ribs.
As he
passes the two of them to go to the refrigerator he twirls the towel
into a lazy weapon and flicks it at Thomas's thigh. There's no jangling
manic energy in it like usually chases his actions. He drapes it over
his busted shoulder to free his hand as he reaches the appliance that
keeps their food cold.
Lola Hawkes
No
answer came when Lola asked Hector if he wanted a drink. Instead the
washing machine door banged shut and water started up again. Lola
wasn't bothered by the lack of response. If she was it didn't show, at
least. She was again more focused on Thomas and his clarifying what he
meant. He was offering to tell her what happened tonight, not about
that other thing. His hand waved the subject away-- something about the
lines of his stance and the aggravation in that motion of his hand cued
Lola off: We'll talk about it later.
"Alright," she
said with a shrug, and pulled down two bags of mint tea from the
cupboard above the stove. Her stomach bumped uncomfortably into the
edge of the stove when she did this, but her reach wasn't hindered yet.
That wouldn't be for another several weeks. Mugs came from another
cupboard after that.
Then Hector rounded the corner out of the
hallway and entered the kitchen. Lola's eyes followed him like a
predator will watchin another wolf stalking into and through her turf.
One side of his face was black and blue, the cheekbone looked tender and
swollen. The same story held true for his corresponding shoulder.
There were scabbed over puncture wounds, and Lola's imagination could
play with what those came from. Or she could ask Thomas for the story
after Hector had retreated to rest.
For now, though, she stayed
leaned against the stove and watched as her man lazily, loosely flicked
the towel from over his head to swat it at Thomas, then went to stick
his upper body in the fridge.
She didn't reach out for him or ask after him.
It's like she was going to hold a grudge for him dying again or something.
Thomas Delacroix
Lola
is totally willing to hold grudges about dying. She didn't know in that
horrible immediate cold way that he was gone. She wasn't there, trying
not to fuss over Hector because clearly he did not need that when the
awful sounds that his breathing made made her lungs ache just to hear
them. And she hasn't been slowly drawn back to admitting to having
feelings. Particularly after being told that acting like space Shadow
Lords was not the desired state of affairs.
So it isn't Lola who
goes to him. If Hector weren't still hurt, it would have been more
dramatic, but he is and so Thomas just moves to stand on the side that
is not so destroyed, drops his head onto Hector's shoulder, and leans
into him just barely enough to feel. And mumbles something barely
audible even to Hector.
Hector Ghosh
[jesus christ]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Hector Ghosh
For
two months now a black-and-white sonogram print-out has hung on the
refrigerator along with a few other random but necessary items. Maps and
notes and a calendar. It isn't anything they've gotten used to seeing.
It's
just about at Hector's eye level when he reaches the refrigerator and
he pauses before hauling open the door. That's the thing that nearly
undoes him. When he does open the door it's with more force than is
necessary. Everything housed on the inner door's shelf rattles.
He
forces himself to use his left hand to grab the orange juice. Drops it
on the counter instead of setting it there because pain rips through
him. Slams the door shut again. And then there's Thomas on his right
side. His head comes to rest on Hector's shoulder.
Lola can see a
wave of pain go up her man's spine and for a moment it looks as if he's
going to snap. But Thomas mumbles in his ear. The second word is the one
that calms him down again.
He's got to get used to being strong around less experienced young people before their baby shows up. Might as well start now.
"What is it," he asks, "Feelings Hour?"
Still.
He slides his right arm out from between the two of them and works it
around Thomas's shoulder and pulls him in for a proper hug. It knocks a
breath out of his lungs when his shoulder and the side of his face press
against his packmate but it's just pain. He'll heal.
"I'm proud
of you, Delacroix. And I wouldn't be standing here right now if I'd been
by myself. Quit apologizing. You're good. Alright? You're good."
Lola Hawkes
Hector
paused to stare at the black and white ultrasound that showed a tiny
embryo that could barely be made out for what it was, and pain of an
emotional variety flashed through him before he ripped the door open and
made himself use his bad arm to seize juice. That was dropped on the
counter, but before he had a chance to drink from the carton or go get a
glass Thomas went to his Alpha, taking over where Lola wasn't picking
up.
She was quiet and still, watching the interraction. Behind
her the kettle rattled quietly while the water inside started to boil.
Simultaneously, the record in the background went quiet and ticked away
when the record hit its end. Lola took both of these as an excuse to
busy herself, to leave the kitchen and let the two men embrace one
another. She couldn't hear what Thomas had said, but she suspected it
was what he'd been trying to say earlier through the mess of anxiety and
tension and unresolved something that the Shadow Lord had been trying
to cope with.
Meanwhile, the Kinswoman killed the flame on the
kettle's burner, then moved to pass by the Garou and take herself to the
small table against the wall near the stairs that the record player
rested on.
Thomas Delacroix
Thomas sighs when he's
pulled into a hug, half because the contact makes him calmer and half
because for the first time Hector has seen he's actually cold. There is
a little shudder when Hector winces, and he doesn't lean more into
Hector because all the broken bones, but he doesn't seem interested in
moving away at all. "It was almost dead already, I only had to bite it
the one more time." The one more, inconsequential time where he ripped out its spine. Nothing to see there.
Wait. Stop. Hector is trying to tell him everything is okay. Stop. "Okay."
He
doesn't notice Lola moving really, or tea kettles or records or
anything that is not Hector who is somehow still breathing even though
Thomas has felt their connection snap twice in the not so distant past.
Yeah. Definitely not moving right now.
Hector Ghosh
Hector
notices Lola leave. Though they have not spoken to each other since he
came in the door earlier they have been watching each other and as he
embraces his brother Hector watches her move around the kitchen with a
tight expression on his face.
The damage the two of them have and
the emotional scars they bear are not going to heal overnight. They
haven't healed in the last few months. But Hector is a stubborn and
optimistic little bastard even if he is given to the same wild mood
swings and inconsistency in behavior as any other moondancer. If he
didn't think Thomas could contribute to the pack and be better than his
history then Thomas would not be in this pack.
He doesn't think
himself to have an alpha mindset or an alpha's spine. But nobody in this
pack argues with him. They trust him even when he doesn't trust
himself. The rest of the Nation thinks more of him than he thinks of
himself.
All of them are working on it. They just don't recognize half the time that they're working on it together.
"You're
such a pain in my ass," he says with no small amount of affection as he
releases Thomas. Keeps a hand on the back of the Shadow Lord's neck as
he gazes into his eyes. Plants a big old loud kiss on his forehead and
then smacks him on the side of the face harder than he did in the car.
"I'm gonna tell everyone how you tore that thing's spine out at the
moot. Help Lola make tea, you're staying here tonight."
With that he picks up the orange juice and follows after his woman. She's next.
Lola Hawkes
With
Thomas left with instructions to make tea, he'll find that it won't
keep him busy for very long. There's already tea bags (still in their
individual paper wrappers) on the counter, already a pair of mismatched
mugs set beside them, to the left of the stove. The water's already
boiled. All he really needs to do is put tea bags in cups and pour hot
water over them and wait.
With orange juice in one hand and a
solid, affectionate clap to the face still felt in his other palm,
Hector persued Lola toward the front door, to where she'd stopped just
past the staircase.
She was looking down at the record player with
half-unfocused eyes, clearly elsewhere in her own mind and simply
keeping her hands busy. She'd removed the needle from the record and
switched the device off. She was about to take the Frank Sinatra
compilation off its setting and put it back into the album cover, but
Hector was approaching and she knew him well enough to guess that it was
better to leave tactile chores for later.
So she straightened up
and turned to face him. She stood tall, as she often did, even though
her bare feet made it clear that Hector did have a good fistfull of
inches in height on her. Her might made her seem taller than she
actually was-- when it came down to it, she wasn't actually any taller
than the average woman. She had a look and humming note of tension
about her that suggested she was clamped down and holding back from
whatever torrent it was that she would probably unleash upon him if
Thomas wasn't here to bear witness.
So, instead, she settles for something more flat and lackluster.
"You should actually try to heal up this time. The moot's coming around the corner."
Thomas Delacroix
Thomas
does pour the just boiled water over the tea that Lola already put in
mugs. He wraps his hands around one of them, because warm things are his
friend right now. He waits by the stove, watching the tea like he'll
see when its ready or something. Quiet. Patient.
Hector Ghosh
The
fact that he's so lean makes Hector seem taller than he actually is.
Lola at least has a couple inches on the average woman. She is a solid
strong thing and looks it. But her mate's build is deceptive. Stood
before them mostly naked they can see the muscles on his body because he
does not have much fat covering him. He has a runner's build and
inability to sit still.
But he isn't invincible. Twice in the last
month he's fallen in combat. The first time he was alone. This time he
only feels that way because everyone around him is upset and silent.
"Lola..."
Maybe
he was about to apologize. He certainly wasn't about to argue with her.
It's obvious that isn't what she wanted to say but Hector is exhausted
and he's as angry at himself as anyone else is.
He drops the towel
and leaves the orange juice both on the chair she'd been in and hauls
her into an embrace that is tighter than the one he'd given Thomas. It
is not a comrade's embrace.
Lola Hawkes
Towel and
orange juice go abandoned in a chair, and Hector pulls Lola to him in a
hug that is tighter than what he'd given his packmate. They way that he
was built, it was easy to believe that there wouldn't be much muscle or
strength on his frame when Hector is fully clothed. But here in boxer
shorts and bare feet the definition is easy to find, and it makes a
little more sense that he's able to lay so much damage down when he
fights-- how he was able to kick and smash and break a Ragabash on the
road (even though the Ragabash did nothing to fight back or defend
himself) with his human fists and feet.
Lola went rigid at first
when Hector drew her in, and he felt her teetering on some edge of
resolve or another. She was so accustomed to putting on a show and
being tough and hiding the closer, more personal displays of her love
for him in front of others that it had her reflexively thinking to
withdraw. But his arms were tight around her, and the note in his voice
when he said her name doubled up with the fact that he was dead, again
just hours ago.
The mental acknowledgment that if Thomas hadn't
been there Hector would be gone for good was too heavy a weight to
resist, though, and Lola leaned back into him within the first second.
Her arms went around his waist, careful to avoid his ribs and shoulders,
and she leaned forward to press her forehead and face into the right
side of his neck. A lump rose in her throat, her eyes stung, but she
swallowed all of that back with nothing but a shuddering,
whispered-on-vocals exhale to show for it.
Hector Ghosh
Today is not a day that Hector is going to tolerate false shows of strength it seems.
If
he had had more energy in the car earlier he would have seized upon
Thomas's issues with his father and pulled them out like he was pulling a
parasite out of the boy's body. His father could have been an honorable
and well-meaning male but the damage he did still lingers and Lola was
right. This pack won't survive if they don't trust each other.
And
Lola has gone so long believing herself to be a pillar and a stoic that
she doesn't allow herself to admit when she needs to let someone else
handle the things she carries around with her. Being Kinfolk is
exhausting even when one isn't pregnant but it isn't as if she's alone.
She
could have been if he hadn't come home. So Hector holds her tighter and
secures his half-useless left arm around her waist so the other hand
can rub her back before resting over the back of her head. Fingers firm
against her scalp.
"It's okay," he says. Though his voice is low
Thomas can still hear him from his place in the kitchen. "I'm here, it's
okay, I'm not going anywhere."
Lola Hawkes
Being
raised up to be a warrior, Lola was taught to be aware of injury and
weakness. It was something she had to become even more aware of when
she learned that she wouldn't have teeth and claws and spirits to carve
her warpath for her. Knowing when someone was favoring a limb would
give her a good point of attack to take advantage of. So, it far from
escapes her notice that Hector's left arm isn't as strong or mobile as
it usually is when it clamps at her waist.
His hand at the back of
her head is warm, and the bare chest and stomach pour equal amounts of
heat through the front of her dress. It's quite unlike last weekend
when she'd sat atop of him and held him down, kept him from attacking
her while something unnatural and unknown rode his muscles and bones.
He was cold like death then. Here and now, though, he was alive.
I'm not going anywhere, it's okay, he reassured her.
Lola
sucked in another breath somewhere under his chin, then put her hands
at his waist, not to hold him but instead to push him back and part
herself away from him. "You're fucking right, you're not," she said
sternly. When she looked at him her eyes were glassier, but did not
pool with tears. She'd locked it back down with that deep breath and
was holding her chin high again, half-scowling at him, but differently
than before.
Her head jerked toward the back room, and she turned
to finish the job of putting the album back in its case. "I've told you
before that I'll lay with a wolf in my bed. Now go be one and get to
healing."
Hector Ghosh
"Fine."
Hector
plucks up the towel and the orange juice and looks as if he's about to
leave on that note. In the end he just waits until she's got the album
back in its sleeve and then darts forward with the towel over his left
elbow and the carton in his right hand and presses his mouth to hers.
This
isn't one of those pecks on the corner of the mouth before he walks
away. He kisses her as hard and deep as she'll let him with both hands
off of her and Thomas in the other room and just generally being not all
that impressed with him right now.
When she pushes him away again
Hector blinks like he's seeing stars. Probably is. That thing Thomas
put down gave him the mother of all headaches when she smashed his face.
"I'm going, I'm going."
He goes.
Lola Hawkes
There
is relenting within the other Uktena, but after he's picked up his
things he stops to press a kiss onto the woman carrying a child that
he's certain in his gut will be a daughter, though Lola questions that
certainty frequently. The kiss isn't a mild peck or polite reminder.
Rather, it tries to crush and deepen even with no hands to hold her
still and enforce. It's an affirmation of life, an opportunity seized
that he could very well have never gotten again were it not for his
packmate tonight.
Lola sucked in and huffed out a surprised breath
before nudging him back away from her again. Before she had a chance
to scold him or shove him up the hallway he insisted that he was going
already and departed up the hallway to go through the door on the right,
into the room that they shared.
Lola watched after him for a few
moments, then lifted her hands both to scrub the heels of them into her
eyes, clearing the emotion that had tried to cloud them but failed.
Another labored breath is taken, then Lola went to rejoin Thomas in the
kitchen, where he's been watching the tea steep and politely letting the
couple reunite.
"Thanks," she tells the Shadow Lord when she
reaches his side, her upper arm brushing his briefly as she joined him.
He was holding onto his mug of tea, and Lola reached past to take hers
up as well.
It was hard to say if she was thanking him for the tea, for the discretion, or for bringing her man home again.
Thomas Delacroix
And
Thomas, because he's Thomas and generally likes the least emotionally
charged thing, picks the easiest to address of those options. "Well,
the water was already boiled. The tea was already out. It's probably
ready now." He hasn't tried drinking his yet, he seems to be more
intent on soaking up all its warmth with his hands.
He slides down
to sit on the floor. The motion is easy enough, barely stirring the
tea in his mug; he might be tired, but he's not nearly as exhausted as
Hector. This is all just crashing a little now that there is nothing to
fight and they're in place that's arguably safe and Hector reappeared
and magically made the world better again.
"Do you still want to know what happened?"
Lola Hawkes
Naturally,
being a creature of his upbringing and Tribe's hand, Thomas chose to
address the least emotionally vulnerable of the reasons why Lola could
be giving him thanks. To her credit, she didn't roll her eyes at him or
correct him when he went this route, and instead sufficed for taking
the tea bag out of her mug and transferring it to the sink for the
moment. She didn't add any sugar or honey to her tea, and brought the
mug up to her face to blow on the surface of it before taking a small,
scalding sip.
Rather than finding a place to sit that most people
would, such as a stool at the kitchen island, a chair at the table, or
the sofa out in the living room, Thomas slid down to sit on the hardwood
floor right there in the kitchen where he had been standing. Lola
looked down at the top of his head for a second, then shifted her gaze
out the windows of the dining room instead. Again, ever vigilant and
protective of her territory, Lola skimmed what she could see out the
windows to make sure nothing was slinking around or lurking nearby.
Satisfied
with what she found (though truthfully she couldn't see much out there
in the dark and the snow), Lola bent at the knees and lowered herself to
sit on the ground beside Thomas. She had a slightly more difficult
time of it than she would have were she not starting to grow and show in
the stomach, but at no point would Thomas feel a need to reach up and
help guide her down. Maybe in a couple months, but certainly not yet.
She
sat with her back against the cupboards and her knees up in the air,
kept together rather than apart as she would usually sit, because she
was needing to teach herself to be more mindful of skirts and dresses.
Jeans didn't fit anymore. The mug was held in front of her with both
hands, and when Thomas asked if she wanted to know what hapened she
nodded her head.
"Yeah. I'd like the story."
Thomas Delacroix
"So
we went out hunting in the park. It was really quiet and deserted. At
first we didn't find anything. Hector was joking about being a
terrible alpha for bringing me out there and talking about getting pho-" He smiles a little, because now that he's less upset about the entire
world, he can be amused about Hector's antics, even if this story is
about to get bloody. "-and then there was a noise behind us. We turned
around and there was this thing, Hector said later it was a revenant,
when a spirit or a ghost animates a corpse. I was maybe a little out of
it for the explanation, but they're pretty nasty animated corpses is
the basic idea of it.
'So, he said to be careful, because he knew
all that but didn't really have time for a lesson in kinds of walking
dead things, and to attack it from the back and he would attack from the
front. At first, it went okay. The thing punched Hector, but he was
still up and taunting it. I knocked it down and it flailed so hard I
couldn't blind it, but I still disabled one knee. Hector tore into it,
and I though we might have it, but it was tough and already dead. It
wasn't very worried about wounds.
"It stood back up and attacked
Hector, caught him in the shoulder and...well...you saw. That's when he
died." Thomas' lips press together. "Then I tore out its spine and
waited until Hector woke up." And he was making horrible sounds when he tried to breathe and coughing up blood and lying in the snow. "And then we got rid of the body and came here."
Lola Hawkes
Lola
listened to the story and sipped at her tea in tiny incriments while
waiting for it to cool enough for her to drink it comfortably. The
reanimated dead had come back and punched Hector hard enough to kill
it. She'd already heard that Thomas had laid the killing blow, but the
fact that Hector had died but then laid still-- that he hadn't come
slamming back to life with all the fury of Gaia and Luna's Rage, had
Lola frowning.
Thomas spared her the terrible details of the
noises Hector made while he struggled for air and laid face down in the
snow. This is no doubt for his own sake-- he knew Lola could handle
gristly details. Hell, not even a full week had passed from when
Hector's throat had burst wide open and sprayed her face with blood,
then continued to pour and leak blood when he tried to talk and breathe
and cough.
She wouldn't tell that story to Thomas, not here and
now at least. It would only call attention to the fact that Hector's
fallen so much in the past handful of weeks. She wasn't directly
concerned that Thomas would try to take Hector by the throat and wring
control of the pack out of him. But, well, he was a Shadow Lord after
all. Besides, there was no reason to explain in words what it was like
to hear Hector's voice and words coming out of that wound instead of
from his mouth.
So she quietly nodded and sipped at her tea.
"....We're
gonna be headed out from here for a little bit... maybe a week, maybe
two, I don't know yet. We're leavin' after the Moot. You're gonna be
alright to hold down the fort while we're gone, yeah? Keep an ear to
the ground and a finger on the Sept's pulse for Celduin?"
Thomas Delacroix
Thomas
almost ran a pack once, but he has no real interest in being alpha of
Celduin. It was a condition of his return home, but he meant what he
said about figuring out something new the night he met the rest of
Celduin. When only Hector's grip on his shoulders as he whirled Thomas
to face from to Tamsin to Jack kept him calm enough to stay relaxed. He
could challenge Hector, yes. But why? He needs Hector. He probably
can't keep Hector and challenge him. For now at least, he'll err on the side of keeping him.
"Yeah.
I can do that. Try not to let him do anything too crazy. You want me
to come by here too? Just to be sure everything is still standing and
all?"
There is a second's pause and then his head tilts to one side. "California?"
Lola Hawkes
The
Kinswoman's mouth curved into a bit of a smile-- and granted that it
was a small, closed-lipped thing, it was still sincere. She kept the
mug near to her face so the steam would warm it and the smell of mint
could be breathed rather than the smell of cold and old blood that the
two had brought into the house.
Sensitive nose, and all.
"Nah,"
she dismissed his offer to come check on the Homestead. "One of my
pals growing up, Eddie-- he's a Guardian at the Sept. I'll have him
swing by. He usually does if I have to be anywhere, anyways." Not that
Lola left home very often in the first place.
There's the pause,
then the guess. Thomas can tell he hit the nail on the head because
Lola's smile grew to something that tip-toed a line between wistful and
wry.
"That's part of the trip, yeah. We'll be going out to North
Carolina first, and then looping back to San Jose. I have no idea how
long we're gonna be out there, but if I were to take a guess after
weighing everything involved-- I'd bet that we're gone after two days."
Thomas Delacroix
"But he's going,"
Thomas says, smiling again. "I had hoped that he would." And that he
found out from Lola and not from Hector seems not to bother him at all.
He takes a sip of his tea, closes his eyes a second, and takes another. He doesn't ask about what's in North Carolina.
"I'm glad he's taking you with him."
Lola Hawkes
"Me
too," she said, and though the words were simple there was a bare,
honest relief to them. Kinfolk were meant to be liasons to the human
world, and the thought of Hector going and confronting a very human
(with the exception of his mother, and possibly his sisters as well)
family on his own was a tense and hazardous thing to consider. Without a
Kinfolk there to mediate, to be a buffer for the Rage and a shield to
the humans that might find it directed at them, there was no saying for
certain what damage could be done.
More than that, though, she was
glad that he'd decided to reach out and investigate if his sisters were
Kin. She wasn't sure yet if he would be bringing his mom into the
know, for she'd lived so long in her ignorance, but Lola still fretted.
She knew too well that unprotected Kinfolk were at terrible risk for
terrible things. It's why she was so insistent on keeping her cousin
Anthony as involved as she could make him be.
She drummed her
fingers against her mug, then after a dozen seconds or so of shared
quiet Lola leaned over toward Thomas and nudged at his elbow with her
own. "You look like you'd climb into that mug if you could fit. Go
take the shower-- the water heater's new enough that there'll be heat
left for you, I'm sure."
Thomas Delacroix
"I just
really, really hate old blood." Thomas says. "One day, I would love it
if we could just kill things that had normal blood in a place that
wasn't some blood and viscera plastered horror. I'm okay with the
fighting things, but I am really tired of dead things and things that
coat their lairs with layers and layers of blood. Soon, it will be dead
things that coat their lairs with layers of blood and when I come back
here completely mad telling you it finally happened, that will be what it is."
He smiles a little. "Still, a shower will help with that. Thank you for...everything."
Lola Hawkes
The
wordsmithing that Thomas pulls out concerning layers of blood in the
lairs of dead things had Lola raising both eyebrows at him, but not
saying much to whether he would sound mad if he told her that 'it'
happened or not. She just cocked a one-sided grin at him and chuckled a
bit and shook her head.
"If it ain't old blood it's Weaver oil or
slime or acid or any number of things. I'd rather have the old blood
than the acid, myself. Besides, if it was just normal blood all the
time then we wouldn't be doin' our jobs the way we're supposed to."
The
thanks that he gave was answered with a small dismissive wave of her
hand and an equally toned snorting sound. "Hell, I didn't do anything
but boil water and make you tell me what's up-- and we didn't even get
too far into that, either." This is followed up by a rolling shrug of
one shoulder, and the hand that had waved was returned to her mug.
"But,
if it helped, then you're welcome. You're part of Celduin. They've
been in and out of my house since before my parents died and Maria went
adventuring. You guys are the only heads that lay on these pillows and
bodies that share my fire. If I didn't at least try to help them,
including you, then I'd be fucking terrible at what I'm here for."
Thomas Delacroix
"The
first time I was in a place like that, it just ended pretty badly."
That's his deliberate understatement voice again, because in this case
pretty badly is what you call the shell you brought back from that place
playing host to something that caused the destruction of all the
Guardians of Cold Crescent. "The smell still spooks me a little. It's
more an association thing. I'm sure I'll find other things to hate soon
enough. Unceasing war and all."
He finishes his tea and sets his
mug gently in the sink. "I'm pretty sure you couldn't be terrible at
what you're here for. I'll see you in a bit."
Lola Hawkes
He
says that it's an association thing, and Lola nodded her head in
understanding. She couldn't summon anything to mind that would compare,
but that's not really how association works, is it? One day she'll
probably smell some mix of fresh blood and the cold smack of winter and
pine needles all mashed together and be taken back to a test gone wrong
that resulted in the death of a cub and the near-breaking of another
one. Or any other number of things out of her history, really.
For
now, though, she just smells mint tea. Thomas rose and put his mug in
the sink, and said that he didn't think she could be bad at what she's
here for. This earned him an appreciative smile, and she nodded her
head after him when he said he'd see her in a bit.
After he left
the kitchen to take over the bathroom and finish turning the tub pink
where Hector had left off, Lola stayed there on the kitchen floor for
another couple of minutes. Then, with a sigh of resolve and 'get your
ass back to it', she stood back up and brought her tea with her to go
finish folding those clothes. When that load of laundry was done, she'd
go into the bedroom to curl up with Hector and call it a semi-early
night.
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