Hector Ghosh
When Hector came home very early Saturday he came home without his Wolf.
Kinfolk know what this means even if they cannot feel it. If they cannot possibly imagine what it takes to drain their cousins so completely that they lose their will to move. That he got home at all was a miracle. A Garou who has lost his Wolf cannot function as a human would. As if he's simply misplaced it and must only walk into the other room and pick it up.
If he had had his spine torn out he would have to wait for it to regenerate on its own. At least his spine might grow back if something tore it out. The two of them have a fondness for terrible analogies. They are not technically proficient but they understand each others' fumbling attempts when they do make them. Crap analogies paint more vivid pictures of their beliefs in each others' strength and the endurance of their love.
So: that is the analogy for this episode. Something tore out Hector's spine the night he went to investigate the airport. Saturday he escaped the agony of it by sleeping. Lola could at least assure herself that he had made an attempt to shower when he got home so he was somewhat clean. Even if all he did was sit under the water. Even if she had to turn off the water herself and would have had to bodily lift him from the tub if not for the fact that Hector is still in there somewhere. She is nearly six months pregnant. Hector did not make her lift him to get out of the tub. As long as Lola talks to him she can be assured he'll hear her even if he does not act.
Help me has gotten him back to her before. Hearing Lola say those words seems to hit some sort of a button in his brain. He cannot ignore her if she says those two words but the only time she has ever said them to him, he was dying.
But she did have to coax him out of the shower. She had to shuffle him towards the bed because he tried to curl up on the floor in the bathroom after she tended to his injuries. Once he got into bed he tried to explain how he ended up like this and that's when the tears came instead of words. When all Lola could do was stroke Hector's hair or rub his back until he fell asleep.
All he did Saturday was sleep.
---
Sunday Lola would have risen before he did because she awakened before he did. For all she knew Hector would sleep away the weekend and then some. Maybe she recognized the condition he was in last night. That dead cast to his eyes like something was gone from him. They eliminated death or near-death or the End Times as culprits. Hector was just drained. He'd made a bad call but at least he had made a call. At least he tried. He can't see that yet.
The injuries he sustained cut to his spirit. They would not stabilize or heal without spiritual medicine. Lola's first aid early Saturday would have passed muster in the back of an ambulance or beneath a hospital tent.
If she tended to him during the day she would know that his injuries were not healing and his bandages needed changing. If she decided to stitch him up with sewing thread Saturday would have been the day to do it. He would not react to pain and he would not fight her. Neither did he heal.
A strong wolf would just grit his teeth and get up. Would shift to another form and spend the rest of the day in another form and life would go on. But Hector's Rage had gone from him and he could not shift in the state he was in and when he awakened he felt the pain of his injuries like he hasn't felt them since he was a Cub. Maybe not even then.
Sometime around eight o'clock in the morning he fluttered up from sleep. Fire roaring up from his calf and his chest where those things had had at him.
She could hear panic in his voice when he lifted it for the first time in over 24 hours.
"Lola?"
Normally he can bellow from across the house and she will hear him as if he's standing right behind her. Sunday morning he didn't have the guts to shout so loud.
"Lola?!"
When she went to him she knew he was panicking because he was injured and he couldn't do anything to make the injuries go away and he didn't know where Lola was.
He kept crying and saying he was sorry. Broke down and clung to her and sobbed at one point. Begged her not to leave. It's a goddamn flesh wound that would heal in a week if he had no other options. An hour feels like an eternity when one is in agony. The only thing he could do was sleep and he wouldn't fall asleep if he was alone.
No one would blame her for not letting anyone near the house that day.
---
By Monday Hector is weak as a kitten but he isn't screaming or sobbing or telling her he's sorry anymore. The horror of the day before comes to him like slideshow images out of a nightmare. He doesn't want to get out of bed. He doesn't think he's going to.
It's supposed to snow again tomorrow. Bitter cold and burying snow coming their way. If he were in his right mind he wouldn't be lying in bed letting Lola cart in wood from the shed and make sure they had enough water and candles in case they lost power.
This morning may be when Lola starts to realize whatever happened Friday night damaged more than just his body. It may take her longer. She has never seen him like this. No one will blame her for thinking he only needs a few days to recover.
He will not be able to shift forms until his Rage comes back to him. Luna is in her waxing crescent phase tonight. That will help. He can lie in his wolf skin for a couple of days instead of languishing for a week.
Conscious as he is now he isn't crying those silent cold tears he'd cried Saturday morning. He isn't hysterical like he was hysterical on Sunday. He hasn't eaten anything since Friday and the only time he drank anything yesterday was when Lola forced him to.
He's just staring at the wall today. Accepting the throbbing hot pain of his injuries instead of screaming about it. It isn't going to kill him.
Lola Hawkes
Saturday
For how territorial she was, Lola hadn't learned to sleep lightly enough to hear every sound that ticked abnormally through her home. So, in the small early hours of the morning far before dawn, Lola did not hear when the door opened and closed, or when the shower started. It was only by chance that Lola was awake before seven in the morning, which was approximately when she usually woke on her own accord. Hector had been sitting in the shower with the water running over him for about twenty minutes when Lola's bladder was what brought her out of bed.
With a light knock on the door that no doubt when unanswered, Lola let herself into the bathroom and squinted against the lights that were left on. She found Hector with blank dead eyes and no life in his bones or flesh aside from what basic functions his lungs and heart and brain kept going without him.
She didn't react strongly as most Kinfolk would. Lola was accustomed to battle, and after trying to talk to him for a couple of minutes recognition of what she was seeing lit in her mind. She'd seen Maria without her wolf twice before-- it was easier for her to do for herself, as her Rage was less boisterous a thing than Hector's. She remembered Maria sleeping and stirring for two days before ambling her way out one morning to share oatmeal with her sister as though nothing had happened. The difference there, though, Lola would realize after a few days but not quite yet, was that Maria had been able to joke weakly through the exhaustion and recovery. Hector would do no such thing, but that would come later. For now, she simply cut the water to the shower and draped a towel over Hector's head and shoulders and back and coerced him out of the shower. She could lift him if she had to, but when she'd reached of point of trying to gather his knees by hooking an arm under them he finally stirred-- even through this, he wasn't going to let her try that, not with their baby taking more and more of her strength and abdominal space with each passing week.
On the bathroom mat, where Lola tried to curl up, Lola cleaned his wounds and covered them with large gauze pads that she taped to his skin. She wanted to make sure that they were covered at least before she let the sheets get glued to them. She wouldn't bother with stitches, even though she knew how to do them and had the materials on hand in her first aid kit. In her experience, they were pushed from Werewolf skin before they had a chance to do much of their job anyways.
Again, it took coaxing and pulling, but Lola was diligent and now very fully awake. She got Hector to bed, and as she was pulling the sheets and quilt up over his shoulder he dissolved into quiet tears. Lola frowned sympathetically and laid down in the bed beside him. She'd brushed his wet hair from his eyes until it was all smooth and slicked back, rubbed comfortingly at his back and shoulder until the rhythm and his own exhaustion lulled him to sleep.
It was about 4:00am by the time Hector was asleep and Lola found quiet in the house. Realizing she couldn't rest after that, Lola slid from the bed and made herself busy.
Sunday
Throughout the day on Sunday, Lola is in overdrive. She walks the house with a new kind of fire in her bones and determination written into the fiber of her being. She would let Hector sleep and rest, because she understood that this was precisely what he needed. Garou had the habit of burning themselves out. They threw all fibers of their being-- Primal and Spiritual and Physical alike -- into the war that they waged. For all that they accomplished and survived, it made perfect sense that they'd need to reset from time to time to avoid actually burning themselves out.
It was as Lola was moving pans about to start breakfast that she heard her name from up the hallway-- not the searching healthy call that she was used to, but a weak sound that was wound tight with panic. She was there before he'd find need to cry out for her a third time, and when she had come to see what he needed she found herself with Hector holding onto her and sobbing and apologizing. He was suffering pain that was physical and something else as well. The moon was New, he couldn't bring his Wolf back and so was left handling his injury and pain with nothing to cut it-- like a Kinfolk would if no one were there to heal them. Lola scowled heavily, but she tucked her head near to Hector's and put her arms around him and comforted as well as she could. There was only so much that either of them could do, and after he'd eased to sleep once more Lola reluctantly left him to rest.
She didn't patrol-- she was unwilling to leave the house from her sights with Hector in this state. She made herself busy with cleaning and household chores, and when there was nothing more of that for her she set up space on the dining room table to dismantle and clean and reassemble her guns, one at a time.
If anyone came by to visit (and Hector, if he was asleep, may be none the wiser to this), Lola would bar the door and refuse to let them in. Hector may have callers after what happened on Friday night, but their business would need to go through his Kinswoman today. It would take an overpowering show of force for anyone to enter The Homestead today.
Monday
This was the third day of Hector's time recovering in bed. Lola was stressed and uncomfortable. That morning Eddie had come to visit, but she wouldn't let him in the house and wouldn't leave with him either. She did bring two coffee thermoses out of the house and had a conversation with him, brief as it may be, in the bitter cold of the morning air on the front porch. The Skald didn't get many details as to what was happening inside, but he did stick around long enough to help the Kinswoman chop wood and bring it to the back porch with her. The forecast promised snow tomorrow, and Lola wanted to be sure they were prepared if they needed to ride out a blizzard instead of a snow shower.
By the time Eddie Luske and Lola Hawkes were finished with that chore it was mid-morning. Lola sent the Skald on his way and went back inside. She showered the sweat of work from her skin but did not wash her hair, unwilling to deal with drying it as she still needed to bring the wood into the house from outside.
It was when she went into the room to get dressed in new clothes that she found Hector laying in the bed, staring blankly at the wall instead of sleeping. Lola looked at him with an expression of muted, cautious surprise on her face, and laid the towel she'd wrapped around herself on the foot of the bed before hunting for clothes to dress herself in. Nudity was hardly something to be concerned about between the two of them by now, anyways. As she pulled clothes from her dresser, she looked over to Hector and spoke as though she was worried about stepping on eggshells that had fuses attached.
"The moon comes back tonight. Just a sliver, but it'll be enough to recharge your batteries on." A pause, and as she put on undergarments she continued. "You're gonna need to eat something...."
Hector Ghosh
If the fuses are attached to anything they are attached to his sense of self-worth and that has already been thoroughly shredded. Though he has not suffered the same fate as Warning Threshold and he will recover now that his inner strength is coming back to him his Rage is a dampened thing now. She cannot hear it thrumming under his skin like electricity through a high-tension wire.
Hector hears her come into the bedroom and he does not roll to watch her dress. In his periphery though she may be he does not respond to the sight of her nude. His eyes trace over the swell of her belly and a new stab of pain goes through him.
He couldn't protect his family if something happened right now. He might be able to fight as well as a human would fight something trying to kill his unborn child but Hector could not swipe away a crafty Fomor picked through the front door's lock or tear through a pack of Black Spiral Dancers if they came in out of the Umbra.
This realization does not drive him to tears again but Hector sighs heavy and miserable before Lola reminds him of the moon's swinging towards brightness again. A necessary reminder. He hasn't been outside in nearly three days.
No tears or panic or anger or anything at all behind his words. Hector just sounds flat.
"I'm not hungry."
Lola Hawkes
There was no attempt to sway Hector from the misery and lethargy that he'd fallen to with seduction or romance. Lola did not make a show of dressing herself or try to climb onto the bed naked to coerce him back in more intimate ways. She had moved from bra and panties to the skirt that she'd pulled out-- one that she wore commonly these days for how easily and comfortably it rested low on her waist. It was a few inches from dragging on the floor and full rather than sleek. She'd pulled this on and was just securing the waistband when Hector sighed heavily and answered plainly. This caused her pause, and her fingers stilled on the garment while she looked back over at her mate.
Laid in the bed as he ways, unwilling to move, with the covers looking as though he's been living in them for how rumpled and warm they were. Lola's expression pressed into something that was conflicted and uncomfortable. Her nose wrinkled and her brow creased. When Maria had been like this, needing to sleep and rest and recover, she was at least willing to get up and move around after two days worth of hibernation. She wasn't back out at the Sept or with her Pack on their exploits for another few days, but at least she was herself, albeit a tired still-thin expression of what she usually was.
She was expecting this morning to start with Hector slumping out of bed to take a shower. She figured she would find him in the kitchen with a cup of something warm looking tired at the counter or maybe even on the couch. She'd hoped he would have at least moved.
With the shirt she'd selected to wear left abandoned on top of the dresser for now, Lola moved to the side of the bed that Hector was facing and crouched down. Her arms and head and shoulders and chest were all up on the bed with Hector. Arms reached out toward him, and though one lay a few inches away on the matress from actually touching, the other hand rubbed an arm and shoulder.
"I know that. But it doesn't mean that your body doesn't need food. You've been tryin' to heal with just your human skin. You've barely even had enough water. You're just gonna make yourself worse layin' around past this point."
She wasn't pleading with him, but speaking in what he was learning to be her I'm being patient, see? tone of voice. It was when her voice lowered and her words were spoken more clearly than she usually bothered to keep them. It was a velvety voice, like that was the closest thing she could think of as being soft and comforting and gentle. But it was like velvet draped over iron, because behind and under all of that she is firm and unmoving. She isn't here negotiating, she's explaining what she would call 'The Way Things Are'.
Hector Ghosh
At his most tired Hector will still argue if he thinks he's right or if he's got his mind hung on something. Even when he's wrong. Even when nobody else agrees with him and he wants to do it anyway. It would take something monumental to get Hector to not argue. His will is more akin to a sapling than an oak but he has the resiliency of youth that has thus far allowed him to bend without snapping.
Some would argue it was only a matter of time before he had a total nervous collapse. His fostering being what it was and his entire world being based upon his place within the pack. How devastated he was after Glen and Maria died and Corey left and how he went on anyway because he had to take care of Tamsin and he promised Maria he would look after her sister.
Good fucking job he's doing, there.
Her hand finds his bare shoulder as strong and sinewy as it ever is. Can feel the tack of two days' worth of sweat on his skin and the heat of his body without the Rage behind it. The lift of his clavicle as he draws a deep breath and grits his teeth to keep his composure as she soothed him.
As much as he never learned how to deal with frustration he never learned how to deal with people comforting him either. Sure as shit isn't used to Lola comforting him. Lola knows him. He doesn't like being comforted and when people who love him touch him when he's upset he tends to fall apart. He brings the opposite wrist up to his eyes to shield them from her. Like if she has to see him lain like a slug in her bed he's at least going to stop crying.
No God damn it Lola I'm fine I'm resting I'll eat later comes up from the muffled place made by his bent arm. No attempt made to haul her down to him that she might bring him up out of his inertia with affection. That's what he ought to be doing about now.
His eyes are glassy when he lowers his wrist but he isn't crying. His voice as weak as he is.
"Okay," he says.
Lola Hawkes
Hector's expression was hard for Lola to read in confidence. She wasn't sure if he was trying to hide his face to block her out or to hide coming tears or to cover his face up while he clamped down on something that he was trying to keep buried. As far as she could know, it was any of the above. Maybe something she hadn't thought of yet.
She stayed where she was and her hand stilled on his shoulder when he covered his face, but she didn't say anything just yet. Some set amount of time would have to pass before she pressed further for a reaction. His wrist moved before that time came, but the answer that he gave was lackluster at best.
Lola's lips pressed into a thin, bothered line. Her brow stayed heavy and furrowed, she was unable to smooth it for his sake. She'd never thought herself to be built for comfort before. But she was trying.
Her hand scrubbed his shoulder a little more and then retreated so she could tap lightly on the mattress about twelve inches from his head. It was a motion that seemed final, like a decision had been made, like a gavel made of fingertips instead of wood.
"Okay," she repeated, and rolled her shoulders and situated her hands like she would use them to push herself back up to her feet. But she didn't actually stand, and had no plans to rise with that motion until he showed he would move the covers and get up as well. When he didn't immediately move, she continued with: "I ain't bringing it to you in here, though. You gotta get up and move around a little, too."
Hector Ghosh
The lacerations are not keeping him in bed. Though she can see the gray-white of the tissue against his brown skin on the shoulder that she touches Lola knows his old death-scars are not crippling him either. Hector is made of stronger stuff than that.
And yet he lies on his side half curled up on himself right hand against his sternum as he averts his eyes from her. Not much hair there but where before Hector was a boy barely out of his teens over the last six months he's grown fur places a man tends to have it. With his ethnic heritage he will never grow to resemble the Mexican rancher Maria used to joke her little sister would always end up with but if Lola wanted a Mexican rancher she wouldn't be with him right now.
Three days before she was with him she was with Corey though. Up until He Who Waits For Dawn took over his body and called Lola stupid for goading him they weren't even sure it was Hector's baby. Maybe Lola still isn't sure. But the spirit that rode Hector's bones that day knew whose descendant grows inside of her. It isn't one of Cockroach's.
Lola doesn't need him. If he died Friday night she would have grieved for him and she would have screamed at the moon because she cannot shift to howl and she would have gone on. It's actually sort of a comfort knowing if something happened to him Corey and she are still talking.
Do not suffer thy people to tend thy sickness.
"I'm sorry," he says with a hollowness in his voice where the desperation screamed yesterday. A bone-tired realization riding the apology. She can hear the tone of them though he does not say it: something's wrong.
But he sniffles and shucks back the covers. Smell of old blood and sweat and something more cloying than that. Hopelessness. Like a tar he has to slog through just to sit up.
"Ugh. I'm up. I..."
He sits up. Dirty hair falls over his shoulders and into his face. He braces himself on both hands and stares down at his thighs like if he looks anywhere else he's going to see the abyss gaped out in front of him. Fall into it instead of stepping back from it. Though he is not looking at her Lola can see how he grits his teeth and clamps down on himself to keep from crying again.
It coughs out of him in a sob but he gets to his feet anyway. It's an effort but weak as he is and as close to tears as he is for no reason Hector does not lean on his woman.
Lola Hawkes
Though she has worked on it, and though it has improved greatly like a new muscle group being focused on over the past six months, Lola's patience wasn't a fully formed thing just yet. It didn't stretch near so far as it ought to for a Kinfolk. Patience was necessary when living with and loving and caring for the True Born-- her father had told her so from the very beginning. Situations like this were better dealt with by the type of Kinswomen who were gentler and more mild, better able to wait and care and tend.
But Lola has never been gentle or mild. She's terrible at waiting too. She will care and she will tend, but she will not coddle and when she decides that continued softness will cross the line into coddling she switches hard into 'tough love'.
This, for Hector, is Lola's easing into tough love instead of slamming gears as though it were a truck she was planning to abandon across state borders anyways. She encourages him out of bed rather than yelling at him and shoving him forward, as she probably would have done were he a packmate and not a lover. She's rewarded by his compliance, halfhearted and slow and painful as it looks. He peeled back the sheets, and she frowned when the smell reached her sensitive nostrils but did not recoil as though it offended her greatly. She did scowl to see his continued refusal to even look at her, though, much less make eye contact.
Just sitting up he seemed ready to cry again, and when he finally swung his feet off the bed and worked his way onto his feet Lola pushed herself up onto her feet as well and went to retrieve her shirt from the top of the shelf. It was simple, black, and long-sleeved, made from a material that stretched greatly. It fit comfortably over her stomach without riding up, this was another shirt she wore often. After she'd tugged the hem down where she wanted it, she looked over to see how far Hector had made it.
Not far at all.
With a small quiet sigh that was for the purpose of pushing irritation away, she approached the foot of the bed to meet him after he'd rounded it. Just watching him, she scowled and held out a hand for him to come towards. It's hard to gauge whether she's trying to offer her arm to support him or whether she's asking for him to hold her hand. Either way, she says: "You're not gonna tell me what's going on, are you..."
Hector Ghosh
"I don't know what's going on."
The first step to fixing the problem is admitting the problem. That's as close an approximation to the problem as he can get. Lola can observe that Hector is moving slow and he's tearful and he has no appetite. That he keeps apologizing even though he hasn't done anything wrong.
Could have chalked that up to losing his Wolf but it's been two days now. Even he knew the night that he came home that something was wrong but he'd hoped it would get better. It may still get better. Maybe he'll snap out of this.
Her hand is stretched out to him. Hector looks at it but he doesn't just stand there staring without comprehending. He doesn't want to keep her away from him right now. Maybe she could help him.
Instead of just holding her hand Hector comes forward and hauls her into an embrace. Buries his face in her neck. Does not start sobbing again but she can feel the pain in him bubble up and knows it when Hector tightens his grip on her.
"I don't know what's going on," he says again. "Nothing's wrong, I just don't know what's going on."
Lola Hawkes
The confession was met with raised eyebrows and a bland stare. The look that his woman gives him is one that tells Hector she is hardly going to accept that as an answer. She was expecting something more-- perhaps not a spot on explanation, but maybe something that she could pick apart and figure out. She would be happier with a hint than she was with nothing at all.
He looked at her hand, but thankfully had more within him than to just stare at it alone. She wanted to help him into the kitchen, to the bathroom. To encourage him to spend time out in the living space instead of the bedroom, so she could try and keep him active and talking until she could get his eyes on the moon. She knew that was significant. She was under the impression that the utter lack of Rage within him was doing this. It was a part of him as it was a part of any wolf, and she imagined losing it would be to lose a piece of yourself. That would explain the hollow exhausted behavior.
She couldn't guess that it was something different entirely, not yet. She only assumed he reacted to it differently than Maria ever had because they were different people, and he was far more dramatic by nature and birthright alike.
When he grabbed onto her and pulled her to him, Lola didn't dig in her heels to stop him. She did look a little surprised though, and paused only a moment before adjusting to how he held her. She rolled up to stand on her toes and give herself another few inches of height to work with. Her stomach and chest both pressed to his, because it was impossible for them not to now. She wrapped her arms up around his head and tucked her face to his hair despite how unwashed it was. For how tightly his arms gripped about her, she braced her arms around his head. She didn't squeeze his skull, no, but her arm muscles were tight like she was prepared to block and soak up an onslaught of blows.
"It's a funk," she explained somewhere behind his ear. "Ya spent yourself. Wiped yourself clean, completely. You need Gaia and Luna to get back up to your feet, and you won't find them in bed, baby. S'why you gotta get up. Go to them both."
Hector Ghosh
Tears flow as if he'd torn a scab off but he doesn't sob or fall apart. Lola can hear him breathing heavier for the congestion in his sinuses but Rage and grief are not driving him to choke on an outpouring. When he had fallen apart yesterday he had not seemed lighter afterwards. It's like the more he cries the thicker this funk gets.
That's the word she uses and he nods his head brisk against her shoulder. Yes. Okay. Good. It has a name. It's a funk. Blows out a shaky breath against her collarbone and smooths the hair at the back of her head. He is a goddamn mess. Trying to comfort her like even in the midst of this he knows what this is doing to her.
With her belly pressed against him he has a physical reminder of why he has to stay alive. One of his hands leaves the embrace to lay against her hip.
Nights past he would make her lie still so he could massage her muscles and ligaments. Hard as she pushes herself normally the added work is palpable now that she's pregnant. Hector has been devouring those books Anthony gave them because he wants to help her. He wants to be part of this baby's life and that has started as soon as he broke her out of the hospital.
God damn it Hawkes hold still I'm going to massage your stuff with my big manly hands and it's going to be awesome, he'd said once. Gentle even as he was berating her.
Now he's just touching her belly and breathing fast and repeating what she's said to him. He's drained. He has to get up. He has to get back with Gaia and Luna. By the time he speaks his voice is not damp. It's still flat but he's not crying anymore.
"Okay..." That hand still behind her clutches the back of her neck. "I'm okay. I'm up."
Lola Hawkes
For all of the time she spent enforcing strength and endurance, Lola wasn't one to judge a man for his tears. If the situation was appropriate and the stress was understandable, she'd never shame someone for the crying they did. When she'd held hard feelings and judgment against Storm's Teeth, it wasn't for his tears but for his outburst and how inappropriate she'd found it to be in general. So, as Hector cries into her neck and hair, quiet and without the harsh sobs of release, Lola just kept her arms up around his head and shoulders and stayed close.
She gave him time, but not much. The touch of his hand to her stomach probably earned him those few extra moments that he needed, truthfully. When he did that she understood he was dwelling or processing or chewing on a new set of thoughts entirely.
When he repeated 'okay, okay', but made no move to let go of her, Lola loosened her arms from around his head and neck. Switched her hands so that she was rubbing his shoulders first, then nudging his arms so they weren't wrapped around her anymore. She moved so she was standing rotated away from his front, trying to turn herself to his side instead. To guide and encourage, to catch if his legs stumbled after two days of lethargy. It was almost like a border collie getting ready to herd a particularly young sheep along after the herd.
"Yeah, Hector, I know. It is okay. Now come on. Into the kitchen."
Though she's still got the velvet-on-concrete tone of patience going, he can feel the edges of that velvet fraying. The concrete beneath this analogy was threatening to crack and buckle, and the fissure in her tone warned that this may not last for much longer if momentum wasn't gained.
Hector Ghosh
Luckily Hector is more perceptive than folks tend to give him credit for being. Even when he's bleeding from a wound he cannot fix and has spent the last two days in bed and feels as much like hell as he looks he can tell when his mate has had enough.
A truth he won't be able to tell until he actually does it is that Hector needs to talk to other Garou. He needs to talk to the Fosterns who understand what it is to make a bad choice and understand why it is he made the bad choice that he made and can help him sort out how not to do it again. If he could just talk to Lola about what happened he might be able to gain some perspective or closure or whatever it is that he doesn't have lying in bed but that isn't Lola's responsibility.
One could argue it isn't her responsibility to get him out of bed and make sure he's eating and not making things worse by staying lain down all day. They are bound by no law or code of honor. That baby grown in her belly is not a tether. They stay together because they love each other and difficult moments like this one are going to serve as a foundation for the millions of other difficult moments ahead of them.
They have no idea how much sleep they are going to lose once their baby is born. How frayed their nerves are going to be or how impossible the task of parenthood seems some days when they're fighting a war on top of it.
They don't spend much time thinking about the future because they have enough trouble getting through today, some days.
Lola puts an arm around him just to get him moving and Hector sniffs and goes into the kitchen.
---
The rest of the day goes by with similar difficulty. Hector has no appetite but he forces himself to cook anyway. Makes that soup his mother claims will cure anything and forces himself to sit down and eat and try to make conversation to keep his mind off the burning pain of the laceration and the yawning pit of despair opened up behind his breastbone.
At least he doesn't start crying again.
Sometime later in the afternoon he drags himself up into the loft and comes back down with a book. Crashes on the couch like that was a monumental effort. It was a monumental effort. He's still injured and the moon won't be up for another couple hours and he's so morose he's surprised the despair hasn't actually swallowed him up from the inside. He needs to distract himself.
When he sees Lola passing through he says "Baby?"
What, Hector. You incredible pain in the ass.
"I think my problem is I have to go through life knowing you've never read The Hobbit and it's slowly killing me. Come here."
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