Hector Ghosh
When she returns home from hunting elk Lola sees signs of another life inside the cabin she cannot claim to share with her mate because her mate has been gone near as often as he has been home. Yet he calls it home anyway. So long as Lola is here Hector will call this place home.
His boots are discarded by the back door and for all the walking and running he has done since June, for all the fights he has gotten into and missions he has gone on, he is going to need another pair before the baby arrives. One still upright but the other has fallen on its side. Laces splayed out like they're just as exhausted as he must be.
On the island countertop in the kitchen he has left his knapsack. A tall juice glass stands beside it. He filled it with water and drained it down at least once. Next to the juice glass sits a plate. At least he thought to grab a plate. Bread crumbs and small smears of whatever he'd found to slap between the slices still linger on its face.
The contents of his knapsack have spilled out onto the counter but Lola knows what he carries with him by now. Fresh socks and his cell phone and things he needs to bind spirits to make talens. A medicine bag and a hunting knife. A leather-bound journal he isn't embarrassed to have others read through because he likes to think himself unafraid to share anything in his past with those who know enough to ask and a tattered copy of The Fellowship of the Ring.
Hector did not bring The Hobbit with him. He left it here. Before he left he told Lola he intends to have the entire goddamn thing read aloud before Raksha is born. Most of him was joking when he said he doesn't trust her to make sure their child reads Tolkien but all of Hector's jokes come with a bit of truth anyway. He's probably the only Uktena this side of the Mississippi River who can't lie worth a damn.
Mostly he's just afraid he's going to die before he knows whether their baby's eyes are the colour of earth or whiskey. They might be green. Some of the women on his father's side have green eyes and Hector is still convinced their firstborn is a girl.
One of the last texts he sent said Tell Raksha I'm coming home. Also please tell me it's not snowing there.
The bathroom door is not closed. Lola can hear the shower running when she nears the hallway and she knows Hector is not slumped dejected in it like he was the last time he came home because he's singing as he rinses shampoo out of his hair.
Lola Hawkes
Sunday morning, before the sun had the chance to crest the horizon entirely, Lola was gone from the log house she called home. She had her bow and arrows with her, was dressed practically with flannel and a down vest and jeans. She was gone from the house all through the morning, so it was empty when Hector came home. When he returned he found The Hobbit on the nightstand on Lola's side of the bed with a shopping receipt serving the purpose of a bookmark partway through. Whether she'd been reading it aloud or not was difficult to say, but clearly she'd been reading it.
Around noon, when the sun was at its high point, a little less south in the sky than it had been last month, Lola was returning home. She had removed the down vest she was wearing and stuffed it into a traveling bag worn at her hip, supported by a strap across her back and chest both. The sleeves of her flannel shirt were rolled up, her hair was in a knot at the top of her hair, and flyaways stuck to her face thanks to the sweat that had been beading. She had ropes across her chest and shoulders and wrapped around her forearms and hands. She was dragging a young buck along on a sledge that was effective only because the unseasonably warm weather over the weekend had not yet managed to melt all of the snow down.
When she made it into the backyard of the property, she left the deer and the sledge near the outside of the shed for the moment. This, because she noticed the boots by the back door.
Hector was home.
Choosing to go inside and get a glass of water as an excuse to see him before before hanging and draining the deer, Lola kicked off her boots (crusted with mud and a little blood as well) and left them, as well as the bow and quiver of arrows by the back door as well. Clued in by the shower, Lola filled a glass of water from the tap before moving to the hallway and, from there, to the bathroom doorway.
"Oh," she started, sounding playfully remorseful from the doorway to announce her presence. "If only I weren't about to go drain the kill. I'd ask if there were room for one more in there."
Hector Ghosh
And he knows she's there before she's stepped into sight. Most times he comes home with his sight and hearing and olfaction still revving in the red from needing Gaia to get him through journeys without his pack or his woman. Still Hector waits until Lola has breached the doorway and lain down the last word of her lament before he pointedly takes hold of the curtain and shucks it back enough that she can see his face and upper body.
He hasn't shaved since the hiking incident that had her so afraid of him he'd thought deforesting his face would help her lie easier next to him. The growth on his jaws has lost its razor bluntness and reached a state of fur-softness. That mane he calls hair is no longer than when she last saw him but it has grown several inches since he returned from Winnipeg and damp as it is it curls along his shoulders.
That weariness come into his bones and his eyes just before he left is gone now. It would be easy to blame it on the moon. Luna blazing full has a way of sparking energy in even the tricksters. But the lifting of his mood has nothing to do with the moon.
"Well shit," he says as he turns off the water. Goes on to grab a towel and wrap it around his waist and step out onto the mat. He takes care to hold the towel shut with his hands strategically placed but there's only so much he can do to camouflage his current predicament. "Good thing deer meat won't go bad if you leave it for five minutes, huh?"
Lola Hawkes
When Hector shucked back the curtain, he'd find Lola standing leaned sides against the doorframe, supported by her right shoulder and upper arm. Her ankles were crossed, and the flannel shirt she was wearing was something she'd owned previous to the pregnancy, so it had to be left unbuttoned in the front to accommodate for a stomach that already seemed bigger from when he'd seen her last. This was the stage where growth came rapidly, and that wouldn't stop until the baby was born. A gray T-shirt was stretched across her front instead, and she was splashed with a little bit of blood across the chest and forearms. She was sweaty still, and had the glass of water to her lips so she could drink full.
Her eyes were dark, much like her mother's, and they soaked up the sight of him with a small light of pride. She watched quietly as he stepped out and placed his hands over the towel in front of him, and smirked a little at what they failed to hide despite his efforts. There's the flavor of a chuckle that didn't bloom to full when she spoke next.
"That's true. But fuck it, may as well anyway. I'm already wearing the filthy clothes."
With that said she straightened up and stepped into the bathroom to walk to him and greet him more properly. She didn't put arms around him or press her body close to his-- he was clean from the shower and she even smelled of the salt of exertion. But she did lean forward to kiss his mouth anyways.
"Welcome home. How was it?"
Hector Ghosh
A week is not so long a time for humans maybe but the only reason her mate stays back from her at first is he's marveling over how much more pregnant she is than when he last saw her. That same glowing pride and pleasure in his eyes as hers.
Last time they spoke he'd said he was going to just stay home once he finally got back. It had sounded like a joke and it had made Lola laugh for how frightened and confused she had been moments earlier but for all either of them know he isn't joking.
That kiss would have kept on if it weren't for her pulling back to ask a question. She hasn't touched him yet but Hector puts an arm behind her and tugs her in nearer anyway.
"It..."
The hand not on her back comes to rest against the side of her neck and face. He's breathing hard for the effort of controlling himself. But he is controlling himself. Staring up at the ceiling as he searches for a word to answer her question quick so they can get the deer dressed. When words fail him Hector laughs a laugh bereft of air and flashing teeth.
He looks back down to meet her gaze and then he swallows his wonderment. His thumb is tracing her cheekbone again and again. Lola knows she has about five seconds before he tries to pin her against the sink.
"It's a long story."
Lola Hawkes
She had a feeling going in that Hector would loop arms and entrap her anyways, despite her best efforts to keep sweat and blood from marring the work that his shower had done. So she doesn't seem surprised at all when an arm at her back prevents her from leaning or stepping away. She didn't wrench herself away from him, but stayed close while he touched her face and rediscovered its details after his time away. It was only a week, but Garou lived lives much faster than humans did. A lot happens in a week to make it seem longer even.
He expressed that it was a long story and was leaning subtly nearer still to her. She knew the look he wore, and where it led. Often times that look led to hastily discarded clothing and hungry mouths and demanding hands. Sometimes they'd make it to the bedroom if Lola was assertive on the matter, but other times, more often these days than before, she wouldn't even try to dissuade him.
Today, though, after he expresses that the story is long and leaves it there for now, Lola touched the clean(ish) edge of one hand to Hector's face, mirroring the affection he showed her, before leaning back and making the effort to pull away from him. As she did, she smirked.
"Alright, alright, we'll reunite after work's done. You can tell the story while we work. Or later." She added the 'or later' as an afterthought, deciding that a 'long story' might also be an 'exhausting story', and he may want to wait to tell it. Of course, she had stories of her own to tell for him-- tales of adventure, backstory to explain the phone call she'd made to him about blank faces and suits. This, too, could wait for later.
For now, Lola brushed hair stuck to her brow back from her face and leaned back from Hector, against his arm, to encourage him to release her, be that to assist with the deer or to simply allow her to complete the work she was taking a break from.
"Ya missed the Moot," she told him matter of factly to switch the topic.
Hector Ghosh
Maybe when he was a teenager he would jerk away from fetid bodily fluids and cringe at the sight of blood or the mangled monstrous corpses left behind after a confrontation between their side and the Wyrm's but that softness to him went away long before Willow and Glen and Maria found him wandering dehydration-blind and lost in the desert in the middle of winter.
The Nation knows the Galliard to be a brave fighter. He is more known for his conquests in battle than he is for the soundness of his judgment. And yet his cohorts do argue that is judgment is sound. They just don't always understand or agree with it.
More is misunderstood or disagreed upon between the tribes that make up the Nation and the Garou and Kinfolk who make up those tribes than is ever truly grasped or settled but their culture and their history would be terrible and more bloody than it already is if everyone got along all the time.
So: Lola disengages from the embrace and Hector draws a deep breath to calm himself down. He's home now. He's not going out again today. She isn't going to disappear if he doesn't wrestle her down right this second.
He can tell the story while they work. Or later.
"Pants," he says, snapping his fingers several times as he looks around the bathroom to find the pair he'd discarded.
The jeans he finds and steps back into need washing but that can wait until after they've strung up and dressed the deer. Even a month ago he would have let her go ahead and do it by herself but they're venturing into the premature labor chapters of the books Anthony gave them. Lola is strong and resilient but Hector has an overactive imagination. It won't kill either of them to have him do more heavy lifting around here than she's used to the next few months.
As for the Moot:
"Yeah, but I got to go to the one at Painted Sands and perform an hourlong rendition--" Oh good. There's his shirt. He performs a quick sniff test before pulling it back on. "--of The Tale of Beloved Horror versus Cold Crescent."
Okay. Out they go.
"Their Adrens told these amazing stories, and the Revel was... I almost shit myself. They let a spirit-talker do the whole thing and she summoned a fucking engling that messed up like twelve people before it took off. I thought I was going to die. Their Cracking of the Bone was probably way more boring than Forgotten Question's though."
It's so warm outside compared to the winter they've weathered that Hector decides he doesn't feel like putting his boots back on and leaves them by the back door. It isn't like he's going to get frostbite if he walks barefoot over some unmelted snow.
Lola Hawkes
While Hector spoke, stepping into pants and guiding them back outside, his woman was quiet. Her hands were busy with taking her dense mane of semi-waved dark hair out of its bun, only so she could rake it back up with her fingers and bind it in a new (more secure and complete) bun once again. She listened and walked beside him, depositing her glass of water on the kitchen island after taking a last drink from it.
When he spoke of the Revel, in particular, a pang of envy struck in the Kinswoman strong enough for Hector to be able to sense it. Her expression flinched its way into a jealous scowl for less than a second before she smoothed it back out to neutral. The fact that her neutral expression always seemed closer to a frown than a smile helped her to try and play off the moment, at least.
Once back outside, Lola kept her flannel shirt sleeves rolled up and didn't bother with the down vest again. The deer left on the sledge was a young adult, a four-pointer, but it would make plenty of food for two and was less difficult to drag across the landscape than a larger animal would be. She didn't hesitate to grab one sledge robe and toss the other to Hector so he could help her pull the animal around to the shed door. If Hector insisted on pulling the sledge himself she would allow it. She read the books like she did, and though she was far more convinced of her own hardiness and less worried about throwing herself into premature labor with some manual labor, she complied with his need to help mitigate risks.
"I don't know," Lola was answering about the Cracking of the Bone here at Forgotten Questions. She paused to push open the manual shed door (the sort that slid on a horizontal track, not like a garage door). "Eddie said that they talked about leadership at Cold Crescent. That's about all that he had to say on it."
Then, with the door open, she'd help and/or direct to bring the deer over to where a heavy metal chain and hook were hanging from a support beam in the ceiling of the shed.
Hector Ghosh
Hector lets Lola take one of the ropes. Like they have to slowly acclimate to the idea that one day he's going to stop letting her pick up boxes or move furniture. It isn't a matter of his being overprotective as much as the young man does possess a latent sense of honor that could one day blossom into overprotectiveness. It's more a matter of wanting to avoid human civilization as much as possible. If the baby comes early they'd have to concede defeat and find someone to help them.
They're both too proud to do that.
So he lets her take the rope but Hector is the one who crouches down and grabs the carcass by its hind legs and drags it over to the meat hook. Lanky as he looks fully clothed Lola knows he's just cut of lean cloth. When he spears its lower legs and hoists the rope to clear its head from the floor the action requires little effort.
"Oh," he says to the matter of Eddie the Skald giving Lola few words on the night's discussion. "That's..."
He doesn't say not good but he doesn't really have to. He clears his throat instead. The two of them will be able to dress and butcher this deer in under an hour. Hector isn't the most experienced hunter Lola is ever going to meet but he learns quickly and has fast sure hands. She's seen what he can do with a knife and enough patience.
"Cold Crescent still doesn't have a Great Alpha. That's probably what they were--" No. Don't say arguing. "--talking about."
Lola Hawkes
"If you ask me...,"
This was how Lola often started commentary on how the politics of the Garou Nation should function. She participated actively in them, as much as a Kinfolk was allowed, for she grew up viewing and understanding the social dynamic and political structure of the Garou world as though she herself was going to be taking place in it. She always believed that she would stand at a Warmoot and spit venom fire and experience around these politics to drive change and victory. So, of course, she had an opinion when she heard things like Septs not having Great Alphas.
"That Sept needs to be rebuilt from the goddamn ground up if it wants to be one at all."
Hey, it was a better start than shouldn't exist.
"New building entirely. New location. One that doesn't have so many regular people walking in and out, without that Pit in the basement. Maybe somewhere nearby, maybe not, but elsewhere." While Hector strung the deer up by its ankles, Lola fetched a 10-gallon plastic bucket from where it was propped against the wall. The thing smelled heavily of bleach. She dragged it across the floor and slid it under the deer's head. A hunting knife that she was wearing strapped onto her thigh for the morning hunt was taken to the animal's throat, and soon it was hanging and draining out. It would need to stay this way for a while before they began to butcher it.
Lola stood back and put her hands on her lower back to stretch it while looking at their work. She seemed content with what she saw.
"And, of course, it needs a leader goddamn quick. That place would blow the fuck over if a strong Wyrm Wind hit it as it is right now. If it's gonna be a fucking Sept--" the gall of that group of Wolves, wanting to be a society on their own, "--then it has to start standing like one."
Hector Ghosh
Plenty of them agree that it shouldn't have been built as a Sept in the first place. For all the arguing Hector has done that he can understand the rationale behind erecting a defense around an entity they cannot understand and is known to be of value to and used by their enemy he also has done nothing to conceal the fact that he is frustrated and sometimes angered by their lack of progress.
And then he had to go and stand up at the Moot and say he'd help get the goddamned building operating as a Sept again.
With the deer hung and the blood draining from its neck Hector stands back with Lola. The movement and the stretching catches his attention and he moves behind her to knead the muscles in her neck and shoulders as they settle in to talking politics. It's a poor choice on his part. His attention keeps drifting onto other things the nearer to her he gets but he doesn't interrupt her as she talks of his comrades' gall.
He sighs at the task she's just described and works at the muscles between her shoulder blades. For nearly a minute he doesn't speak. She can tell he's thinking. Thinking tends to have him falling silent for the effort he puts into it. Too many arguments and too many past conversations rattling around. In the end he abandons the effort.
"Yeah, well," he says. His lips find her neck. His hands start wandering. "That's their problem."
Lola Hawkes
The Uktena that blew into town a surly Cliath now came to stand behind Lola as a Fostern that was more tempered and experienced. He was a Wolf whose word was listened to at the Septs-- both Forgotten Questions and at Cold Crescent. Words of his deeds carried. Of his Glory and Prowess and Honor. So he thought hard on what Lola had to say, and contemplated the topic of rebuilding the Cold Crescent. He had to take his time with his thought, for the other Wolves valued his word. Whether he admitted it or not, people valued his input.
While he was quiet and thoughtful, he rubbed her neck and shoulders. He'd find the muscles there tight, with the small starts of knots working back up in his absence. She rolled her head forward to stretch her neck and give Hector's hands room. To show that she appreciated the attention and to encourage it to continue.
When he finally spoke, words were uttered near to her neck.
That's their problem.
Lola's eyes had been closed while thumbs worked at her neck, but they opened to hear those words. He'd moved on, was kissing her neck and moving hands down from her shoulders, down her arms, gravitating to more gratifying places. Lola blinked and tipped her head to the side, making room for him, not stopping him. Instead, she curled her arm up and over so she could cradle the side and back of Hector's head and asked: "Their problem, huh?"
Hector Ghosh
When her arm comes up to hold Hector against her his face is against Lola's neck. He breathes in deep from the corner of her jaw and leans flush against her back. His hands have traveled her hips and moved down to her thighs and he doesn't have any interest in discussing politics or Septs without hearts. Nothing to say except he thinks he made a mistake standing with those of them who said they'd defend the place with their lives.
He has no idea what they're defending. Only that what they're defending is of significant value to Beloved Horror. Maturity and advancing rank have tried to rein in Hector's curiosity and his recklessness but it's the rapid approach of fatherhood that has him wanting less to do with that place than he did before.
Fatherhood and blood-drenched nightmares and nearly dying in a dark place he still didn't understand even after he went down into it.
"Uh huh," he says in answer to her question. His respirations are not ragged yet but his voice has gone husky. He sets his teeth into the lobe of her ear and breathes out a hard hot breath and puts his hands back on her hips to turn her away from the deer. To urge her out of the shed where the blood splashes into itself. They aren't going to make it into the house at this rate. "They can handle it without me."
Lola Hawkes
His body curled in and around hers. Hands slid down from hips to thighs and she felt his breathing hitch and change, just a little. For the moment Lola was happy to revel in it. She arched her body into his, stretched so her spine curved and the rest of her pressed nearer. It was at about the same time that Hector guided her to turn by firm hands at her hips that Lola was realizing she didn't want to continue down this path here. Not that she objected to love-making in the shed, but to do so while the deer was draining just seemed disrespectful to the kill.
So, it didn't take much urging for Hector to get her to move. Lola started to unroll the sleeves of her flannel overshirt and took her place walking beside Hector. She would be receptive to his hands staying on her, his face near hers so he could kiss at her neck and cheek, but there's a certain determination to her steps that made it clear she was seeing to it that they did make it to the house.
"....Good," she said after a moment of thought on the topic, and lifted a hand (once finished with her sleeves) to brush at Hector's hair. She smirked at him some. "And how do Tamsin and Thomas feel about that? Ain't that Reese guy a Glass Walker?"
Hector Ghosh
It takes her physically leading him into the house for him to decide not to divest her of clothing the second they've left the shed but Hector is just as receptive to guidance as Lola is to his advances now. As infrequent as they receive visitors it does still happen. They don't need someone from the Sept stumbling on them rutting outside like a couple of animals.
His hair is still damp from the shower. He had bound it back to help with dragging and hanging the deer but big chunks have fallen loose as he's reacquainted himself with her neck.
Then she wants to know about how his pack feels about this. Hector links his fingers with hers to walk the rest of the way back to the house. Kisses her knuckles and wrist as they go.
"Who?" he asks. Thomas's boyfriend, Hector. Focus. "Oh, yeah. I think so."
As soon as they're through the door and inside the kitchen Hector sets upon her like a spring wound too tight too long. Unspoken compromise here. He'll go inside but that's as far as he's willing to behave himself.
The wall in the kitchen is just as good as the bed all the way across the house anyway.
---
Afterwards he lets her shower if she wants to shower. Wherever she ends up he's sitting not too far away. Sated but not spent. He's fiddling with the mala bead bracelet he found stashed in his pocket and considering the conversation they abandoned earlier.
"I've never thought we should reopen Cold Crescent as a Sept," he says. "I don't know why I stood up and said I'd die defending it if that's what needed to happen. I mean... I almost have once already. Like I know it's the most glorious honorable thing in the world to die defending a Caern but it's not a Caern, it's just a building. And I'm no good to anyone at all if I'm dead. You know?"
Lola Hawkes
Inside the house was just fine for Lola. Clothes were pushed aside, abandoned on the floor, and the wall served its purpose as a steadying surface. When all was said and done, Lola would treat herself to a shower and wash her hair and skin of the sweat and blood of the hunt. When she was finished she dressed herself in a skirt and T-shirt.
When they came to rest for the afternoon, Lola had settled onto the couch. She was against Hector's side, content to be near him while she read. It wasn't a baby book or any of the Tolkein novels that Hector and Tamsin both insisted that she just fucking get through reading already. Instead, she was reading some small hardcover with illustrations on every other page. An instructional on 'practical gardening'.
When the subject of leaving Cold Crescent came back up, Lola blinked the text on the pages out of her eyes and closed the book over to let it rest in her lap. Her legs were stretched out in front of her, bare heels propped up on the coffee table. She drew in a deep breath, like one does when they're about to rise from being settled. But, rather than moving away from Hector and climbing to her feet, she exhaled slow and smooth and added thoughtfully:
"It makes sense to want to be there with the Pit. No one knows what it is, really, and if anyone would be driven to find out it'd be Uktena. He loves this shit, and so we do as well. But, yeah, the whole thing about making it a Sept again just seems... politically murky, you know? It's all fuckin' haphazard."
He's not worth much to anyone dead, and this is true. Lola nodded her head to show her agreement, and pressed a hand into the side of her stomach-- the gesture suggesting discomfort and response rather than thoughtless touch.
"A lot of us are probably going to die to the fight. That's just how we live. It's what we're here for-- The War. But, y'know, I'd rather that not be too soon. Not for us."
Hector Ghosh
When Lola reacts to something Hector can neither see nor feel he still flinches with the registering of the movement of her hand to her belly so he can read her face. That she keeps talking means it's not worth further ratcheting of his alarm but Hector still abandons the bracelet he'd been worrying and splays his palm and fingers overtop hers. The arm nearer to her slides itself out from between them and he inches closer so he can tug her in against his side and holds her nearer as they talk.
The War is why any of them are here in the first place. It's going to be the War that takes them.
Nearly four years he's been Garou and Hector still has difficulty wrapping his head around the fact that he was somehow born to a race of warriors. That it's his duty to fight. It's a duty he does not shirk or shy away from and yet every time he realizes how easily this war could snuff out his life it hits him a little harder than the time before.
"I don't know if you'd call it an epiphany," he says. Sounds like a non sequitur at first. "I think I actually had more than one epiphany, while I was at Painted Sands. But one of them... this is going to sound really corny, and I apologize... but I never really understood what all this means until..."
Despite the fact that he composes his own songs and tells such animated stories at the moot and has no trouble commanding the attention of a room anymore Hector has never been one to wax poetic if the poetry would come anywhere near his feelings.
"When I was fostering, you know, it really felt like I'd been plucked off the sidewalk and told I had to go to Afghanistan or Vietnam or something. Some really long drawn-out stupid war that was never going to end no matter how many of us died. It used to make me angry all the time. Even when I met Willow, and your sister and Glen, I was just... I'm sure the Rage didn't help, but it took me a long time to accept that this is what I am and I can't just... ignore it. You know? I can't just be normal. And that sucked for a while, probably up until really recently."
She knows. She has had the most exposure to Hector and his maturation of anyone on Earth.
"Some days it felt like there was no point to even trying. Is what I'm trying to say. Like... so many of us have died already, and I used to think 'Well why'd they have to die, it didn't change anything, we're not winning this thing anyway,' but... surviving, you know, even just holding a line that they can't get through... I really didn't understand that until I met you, and started staying here and getting ready for the baby. And I don't think I even really got it until..."
Just spit it out Hector. Jesus.
"I had this... vision, I guess. Or maybe I was dreaming. I don't know, it was really vivid. Of this place thriving. Like it might have hundreds of years ago before the Wyrmbringer showed up. The people who lived here had just about everything they needed to survive, they got it from the land or they traded with their neighbors. And I thought it was a throwback at first because it was so... I don't know, they just seemed really happy. It was our kids. That I saw. All this worrying and fixating on the oh-my-god-I-don't-know-what-I'm-doing... it's pointless. Even if I die, or you die, or we never figure out what that thing in the basement is... whatever. It's going to work out alright."
Lola Hawkes
Their bodies shifted so that Lola was leaned more against Hector, and his arm looped about her. A hand splayed on top of hers, and she let slip a small and content smile at just he bare corners of her mouth and settled back. The book on practical gardening was left on the farther cushion of the couch. Her legs pulled back onto the sofa, curled instead of stretched now.
She listened to the story that he had to tell-- the vision that he had experienced while down at Painted Sands, the land of his Ancestors. He spoke his sentiments on the futile flavor of the war on his young tongue, and though Lola's brow flexed into something thoughtful but not disapproving. He took a while to round his way back to the point, back to the tale, but Lola listened and was patient. She had nowhere to go, and the deer would only become better the longer they allowed it to hang. If this warm weather kept up for long she'd have to take it down soon, for a cool dry place was better than baking in a shed drenched in sun. That wouldn't become a concern for another few hours, though, so for now she simply rested.
He assures her that it'll all work out, even after he and she were both dead and gone it would be fine. She chewed on this for a moment, and found herself gently and thoughtlessly nodding in reflexive agreement or consent of some sort while she pondered.
When she spoke, she did so in an almost plodding way, for she contemplated the words even as they were voiced.
"I can't say for sure everything will work out. I can't go Across. Can't see the Red Star myself-- can't judge if it really is a sign, or if that's just superstitious bullshit." A pause, and a new and different beginning followed close behind.
"I'm not one to say that we're losing the war either. Not really. Think of it like countries. In Europe. The numbers of wars that England and France and Germany and Spain and god so many fuckin' others have won and lost against each other-- it's not been the end for any of them. They adjust. They adapt. They fuckin' learn and they make alliances and they change their tactics and they keep on."
There's a passion to her voice, that of one born for and dedicated to War. He could see it easily, were she born true she would have been a goddamn general, and this would be the way she sounded when she presented a plan to a Sept, hair wild and fire in her eyes. Instead of that, though, she was a woman, no Rage in her breast but a knowledge and instinct in her bones none the less.
"You figured it out, though. Provided we keep diligence and we don't fuck it all up, it'll work out alright."
Saturday, March 15, 2014
A Doomed Quest - 2.11.2014 [Calden]
Lola Hawkes
The days have been outstandingly mild, and even today the blanket of gray clouds and misty rains have pushed back enough for peeks of blue sky and sunshine to make their way through. The day was no doubt full of work for the ranch, and come just a dozen minutes or so before the seven o' clock hour the sun has since gone down behind the mountain range and blanketed the world with night. It was probably dinner time, and hands and faces were no doubt washing up through the large house on the White Ranch property to prepare.
It's this time that unannounced headlights flash their way across the lane leading back to the house, up to the driveway. The vehicle itself is a used blue Subaru Forester, made probably sometime in the mid-2000's. The engine cuts quickly, and a harried looking woman gets out and goes to the front door to knock loudly.
Whoever answers gets a sight:
Lola Hawkes, the Uktena Kinswoman who burned her bridge with one of the Kinsmen here perhaps two weeks ago, stood on the front step (or porch, or what have you), looking disgruntled and stressed and a little worse for wear. Her hair was hastily brushed with fingers, a mane of dense black falling over shoulders and onto her chest and back. She had dirt on her clothes, particularly noticeable on the fabric of the gray floor-length skirt she was wearing -- there were scuffs and tears like she fell hard onto her knees. She was favoring her write wrist, holding it loosely with her left hand and frowning.
"Sorry to intrude," she'd explain to whoever answered. "Just need some help."
Calden White
After the way these two last parted, either could perhaps be forgiven for ignoring the other. And to be sure, when Calden opened the door to find Lola on his step, the first expression that flashes across his face is ... less than pleasant.
It passes, though. She needs some help. Calden's eyes scan her -- quick, objective. They come back to her face. He stands aside for her to enter.
"What's going on? Were you followed?"
Lola Hawkes
When it was Calden who had answered the door rather than a cousin or nephew or other family member, Lola wasn't sure if she was relieved for being able to cut right to the chase, or ratcheted tight because she wasn't sure how he'd react to seeing her asking for help. He might close the door in her face, or say something inflammatory before sending her on her way.
Thankfully, she looked pitiful enough to pass and he opened the door to let her inside.
Lola stepped inside, but leaned down to unlace her boots at the door-- there was dirt caked onto them, and she wasn't going to be knocking that around the big impressive house that she was invited into. It was slow going-- she only unlaced with her left hand. The right arm was kept close to her side-- from how she favored it particularly it seems she did something to her wrist, but it's hard to examine half-tucked into her clothes.
As she worked, leaned down and forward to reach her boots, she explained:
"No, I don't think so. Can't make promises, though, and I'm sorry about that. Couldn't have 'em follow me out to the Bawn, though." Her head turned so she could look up at Calden from where she was stooped. One boot off, and on to the second, she continued:
"There's some shit that I've been looking into, and I think that I'm bein' noticed lookin' too deep. Some Kin-- your tribe, specifically, have been missing for like a week. I'm trying to find 'em, and I had an- encounter leaving their house. It wasn't too far from here. I didn't know where else to go. I'm sorry."
Look at her, apologizing twice already for bringing this down on his head.
Calden White
"Stop apologizing." There's still a frisson of irritation in him, even now. "Whatever our personal conflict, this house is open to anyone who needs its shelter. Are you injured? Come in."
He leads her past the entryway, into the house. It's a large structure, grand in a rustic, warm way -- bare timbers in the rafters and beams, stones in the enormous hearth. There's a fire there, albeit a small one, casting flickering shadows to the walls. In the kitchen, which is a modern affair of striking accent walls and stainless steel appliances, Lola can see one of Calden's cousins pan-frying something for dinner. His friendly grin turns quizzical as he sees the state Lola's in, the tension in their faces.
"Go grab a couple rifles, Ian," Calden says. "And then get my dad and lock yourselves into the wine cellar. Play cards or something. I'll text you when it's safe to come out."
Lola Hawkes
The irritation and snap in his voice when he told her to stop apologizing earned Calden a small scalding glance, but she didn't say anything or argue. For as traditional a creature as she was, in certain mindsets and bones on her body, Lola respected territory and hospitality both. Calden at least let her into his home, despite their differences. As he explained, they weren't relevant now.
With both boots off and her coat shucked off, Lola made her way after Calden into the house. He'd asked if she was hurt, and she was saying with a small shake of her head as she followed after him: "Fucked my wrist up somehow. I think I fell down, or maybe hit something. I don't know." Her voice went a little more small, dark eyes crowded by furrowed brows, and she added: "I don't remember what happened."
This has her distractedly, protectively moving her hand to the increasingly considerable swell of her stomach. It's been a while since Calden's encountered Lola without a coat, and with that off it's revealed she's dressed simply in the long gray skirt that trailed the floor and a fitted long-sleeved white T-shirt. As they entered the kitchen, Lola made brief eye contact with Ian but didn't say anything or even go so far as to nod her head in greeting to him. Instead she looked down at her right hand, which was roughed up in ways beyond a hurt wrist. There were abrasions along her knuckles, and there was a wicked looking slice in the webbing between her forefinger and her thumb that had her unwilling to spread her fingers too far.
"What, you guys don't protect the place with all hands on deck?"
Calden White
"He'll protect my dad." Now the irritation is outright and obvious. "I'll protect my house."
There is, perhaps, an emphasis on the my. A less than subtle reminder that this is his land; his rules, one supposes.
"And what do you mean, you don't remember? Did you black out?"
Lola Hawkes
There's a begrudging nod, and that's all the more that Lola has to say on the matter of an able-bodied Kin being sent down into the basement with some of the firearms. To judge the fact that she was okay being in the kitchen and away from windows at the front or back of the house, she didn't seem to think she'd been followed. She had the look of someone who was still putting the pieces together to her, a constant expression of concerned thought.
He asked what she meant, and Lola invited herself to sit down wherever was nearest-- probably a kitchen stool or something. Left elbow hooked on the counter so she could lean on it some, and her right hand and forearm rested gingerly in her lap.
"I think. I got knocked out." She frowned harder, clearly trying to remember. She looked at Calden, frowned to find the irritation in his face (what the hell was she expecting to see there, though, really?). She continued the rest of the story with her eyes unfocused across the kitchen.
"There's this old Fianna couple, Seamus and Agnes Lane. They don't live too terribly far from here." Calden probably knows them. The family's been in the area for a while. They were an old couple of Kinfolk in their seventies, and they were known to be globetrotters. They were the sort that could never settle down, so they kept traveling and having adventures.
"They've been missing. I was looking into it, and when I left their house I was followed by this black car, and the man behind the wheel was in a suit and sunglasses and..." here, her brow finds a way to furrow harder, as she's trying to explain and make herself sound less insane -- "he had no face. Like, it was smudged out. No mouth or nose. He was tailing me, and when I tried to speed away another just like him came into the road in front of my fucking car. I missed him, barely, and kept going, but then another fuckin' No Face appeared in another car and tried to T-bone my fucking Forester.
"I stopped the car. Got my rifle and got out. The guy that tried to hit me got out with a gun too, but then one of them snuck up behind me and..."
Here, she puts her face in her left hand and scrubs vigorously, anxiously at her scalp with her fingertips. She made a growling noise through gritted teeth and exhaled through them like an angry animal. "It all goes black. I woke up behind my steerin' wheel and I can't remember shit anymore."
Then, as an added explanation, and almost an apology: "Hector's out of town. This all happened like five miles from here."
Calden White
"I know who the Lanes are," Calden interrupts. If his teeth gritted any harder he'd be grinding his molars. "They used to have Halloween parties for the kids when my brothers and I were young, for god's sake. I wish whoever'd told you they were missing had thought to tell me."
The rest of it, then. No-Faces. Calden looks somewhere between skeptical and alarmed and disturbed. When she finishes, a muscle stands out in his jaw. He folds his arms across his chest -- his red-flannel-clad arms and his red-flannel-clad chest, one might note -- his fingers tapping restlessly atop his bicep.
Then Ian's back with the guns. Calden grabs one, hands Lola the other. "Get down in the cellar," he tells Ian again, "and stay there with my dad until you hear from me."
And to Lola: "Come on. We're driving south. I'll call ahead to Cold Crescent, fill them in on the details. If your faceless men come for you, we'll meet them on the road. I'd rather lead them away and make a stand out in the open than wait for them to come here, where my father lives and my family and friends visit."
Lola Hawkes
"Fuck that, going to the Spire Sept."
Lola's words are as cold as the name of the Sept that Calden suggested they go to, and her eyes are hard. She waits until after Calden's handed her the gun to say this, of course. She didn't want to piss him off and lose rights to the weapon he was offering. Sure, there was still always the rifle in her car, but extra ammunition couldn't be argued with. She glanced brief and sideways to Ian, then slipped down from the stool to stand on her stocking feet again.
They were both on edge, clearly Calden was angry with the thought of this mess being brought to his home (and Lola couldn't blame him), but she was shaking her head anyways. She didn't seem to be in quite the rush that he was in.
"I don't think they followed me. I mean, hold on and think about it-- why the fuck would they bother to put me back in my car all intact and shit and just let me go? I don't think we need to expect an ambush. If they wanted me dead I wouldn't be here." The last sentence makes it sound like she's repeating words that somebody else has already told her-- a reassurance, no doubt, given on a phone call laced with mute panic being steered by focus on the side of the road.
"This..." She started to try and explain, but cut herself off and shook her head. Apparently she decided before she could really get started not to try arguing whatever point she was about to try and make. "Nevermind. But, no, I don't wanna run to the city and drag the Urrah into this. They got their own messes to deal with, after the airport and all."
Calden White
"You mean you want to prove to yourself and whoever else you think might be watching," Calden doesn't mince words here, "that you don't need help from the Garou."
Lola Hawkes
"That ain't what I fucking said." She snapped this at him, and her eyes flashed when she did. Her tone, when she was explaining that she didn't want to drag City Wolves into the mix, was flat and matter of fact. Her voice picked up fire and impatience when she was accused of just trying to prove herself.
Soon after that, though, she seemed to flinch just a little-- a chip in the exterior, a thought occurred or a pain was remembered. Then she simply eased back down to sit on the stool and shook her head.
"Look, man, I don't fucking remember pieces of my last couple of days. I know that I drove way out in the middle of nowhere on Sunday, but I don't remember where or why. I don't remember what I found at the Lane house. I don't remember what happened to me after some asshole without a fucking face got the jump on me after nearly murdering my shit in an auto accident not a few minutes before.
"I just...." She failed to continue there for a second, because she didn't know how or where to go or what to say. So she rubbed at her eyes with the pads of her forefinger and thumb and tried again in a quieter voice.
"Just wanna collect myself for a few fuckin' minutes."
Calden White
Calden stares at her, eyes flat, mouth a flat line. His fingers tap restlessly again; this time on the barrel of the rifle in his hand.
Then:
"I'll make you a deal. You don't want to go to the Sept with this yet -- fine. But we're not staying here. I can't take the chance that you're wrong, because then your magical Faceless Men show up here to raise hell on my family.
"So we're driving over to Fort Collins. It's less than an hour away. We'll get a motel room or something, you'll tell me what the hell is going on, and then I'll stand watch while you catch your breath and take a nap.
"If, after I hear the whole story, I still think we need to go to the Sept, then either we go together, or we part ways and you handle the rest of whatever it is you're mixed up in alone. I won't force you to ask help from the Garou, but I'm not going to go on a doomed quest either. Deal?"
Lola Hawkes
No hand is offered for shaking along with the deal. Lola Hawkes and Calden White are not friends. If they could be called that before (and if you were to ask Lola, they could have been-- Calden probably has a different concept of what friendships are than what she does), the could no longer, not after tensions at the rodeo and certainly not after the open fight they had on the side of the road at the end of January.
But hardship and circumstance outweighed hurt feelings and disagreements. Calden looked at her flatly, and she sat and rubbed her eyes and face and only looked up when he started to lay out his conditions. When he was finished, leaving the offer hanging in the air, Lola stared at him for a few seconds while mulling the terms over in her mind.
Finally, though, she would agree: "Deal." And leave it at that.
Beyond this she was fairly compliant and quiet as they got ready to leave. Calden didn't want to spend any more time around his home than necessary, but Lola had the requirement of a few minutes in the bathroom before they went. She utilized the facilities and washed the dirt and blood from her knees and the back of her hand both. Ran her swollen wrist under cold water but decided that she could wait until they were at the motel to actually ice it.
Soon, though, they would be on their way. They drive separately, so the option to go their own way later could still be available, and because there was no reason for her to abandon her vehicle at the ranch either. By the time they make it to the motel room Lola has recovered a letter and a better explanation of what they were walking into-- but that would all be discussed then. Later. Not now.
----------------------
Narrative: As this storyline never saw a full conclusion, the conclusion is presumed.
Lola went to a motel with Calden, as they'd planned. She rested, but did not lay down and did not sleep-- too uncomfortable and on edge. There she spent perhaps an hour with Calden, maybe a little more, sitting and recouping and trying to pull the details together.
When restlessness took over, she and Calden went separate ways-- Lola would not agree to go to the Sept, so Calden left the adventuring up to her alone, unwilling to be involved in nonsense if it's not going to be handled sensibly.
This storyline as a whole is assumed with the conclusion that Lola was able to locate the Lanes and get them home intact and healthy as anyone can hope.
The days have been outstandingly mild, and even today the blanket of gray clouds and misty rains have pushed back enough for peeks of blue sky and sunshine to make their way through. The day was no doubt full of work for the ranch, and come just a dozen minutes or so before the seven o' clock hour the sun has since gone down behind the mountain range and blanketed the world with night. It was probably dinner time, and hands and faces were no doubt washing up through the large house on the White Ranch property to prepare.
It's this time that unannounced headlights flash their way across the lane leading back to the house, up to the driveway. The vehicle itself is a used blue Subaru Forester, made probably sometime in the mid-2000's. The engine cuts quickly, and a harried looking woman gets out and goes to the front door to knock loudly.
Whoever answers gets a sight:
Lola Hawkes, the Uktena Kinswoman who burned her bridge with one of the Kinsmen here perhaps two weeks ago, stood on the front step (or porch, or what have you), looking disgruntled and stressed and a little worse for wear. Her hair was hastily brushed with fingers, a mane of dense black falling over shoulders and onto her chest and back. She had dirt on her clothes, particularly noticeable on the fabric of the gray floor-length skirt she was wearing -- there were scuffs and tears like she fell hard onto her knees. She was favoring her write wrist, holding it loosely with her left hand and frowning.
"Sorry to intrude," she'd explain to whoever answered. "Just need some help."
Calden White
After the way these two last parted, either could perhaps be forgiven for ignoring the other. And to be sure, when Calden opened the door to find Lola on his step, the first expression that flashes across his face is ... less than pleasant.
It passes, though. She needs some help. Calden's eyes scan her -- quick, objective. They come back to her face. He stands aside for her to enter.
"What's going on? Were you followed?"
Lola Hawkes
When it was Calden who had answered the door rather than a cousin or nephew or other family member, Lola wasn't sure if she was relieved for being able to cut right to the chase, or ratcheted tight because she wasn't sure how he'd react to seeing her asking for help. He might close the door in her face, or say something inflammatory before sending her on her way.
Thankfully, she looked pitiful enough to pass and he opened the door to let her inside.
Lola stepped inside, but leaned down to unlace her boots at the door-- there was dirt caked onto them, and she wasn't going to be knocking that around the big impressive house that she was invited into. It was slow going-- she only unlaced with her left hand. The right arm was kept close to her side-- from how she favored it particularly it seems she did something to her wrist, but it's hard to examine half-tucked into her clothes.
As she worked, leaned down and forward to reach her boots, she explained:
"No, I don't think so. Can't make promises, though, and I'm sorry about that. Couldn't have 'em follow me out to the Bawn, though." Her head turned so she could look up at Calden from where she was stooped. One boot off, and on to the second, she continued:
"There's some shit that I've been looking into, and I think that I'm bein' noticed lookin' too deep. Some Kin-- your tribe, specifically, have been missing for like a week. I'm trying to find 'em, and I had an- encounter leaving their house. It wasn't too far from here. I didn't know where else to go. I'm sorry."
Look at her, apologizing twice already for bringing this down on his head.
Calden White
"Stop apologizing." There's still a frisson of irritation in him, even now. "Whatever our personal conflict, this house is open to anyone who needs its shelter. Are you injured? Come in."
He leads her past the entryway, into the house. It's a large structure, grand in a rustic, warm way -- bare timbers in the rafters and beams, stones in the enormous hearth. There's a fire there, albeit a small one, casting flickering shadows to the walls. In the kitchen, which is a modern affair of striking accent walls and stainless steel appliances, Lola can see one of Calden's cousins pan-frying something for dinner. His friendly grin turns quizzical as he sees the state Lola's in, the tension in their faces.
"Go grab a couple rifles, Ian," Calden says. "And then get my dad and lock yourselves into the wine cellar. Play cards or something. I'll text you when it's safe to come out."
Lola Hawkes
The irritation and snap in his voice when he told her to stop apologizing earned Calden a small scalding glance, but she didn't say anything or argue. For as traditional a creature as she was, in certain mindsets and bones on her body, Lola respected territory and hospitality both. Calden at least let her into his home, despite their differences. As he explained, they weren't relevant now.
With both boots off and her coat shucked off, Lola made her way after Calden into the house. He'd asked if she was hurt, and she was saying with a small shake of her head as she followed after him: "Fucked my wrist up somehow. I think I fell down, or maybe hit something. I don't know." Her voice went a little more small, dark eyes crowded by furrowed brows, and she added: "I don't remember what happened."
This has her distractedly, protectively moving her hand to the increasingly considerable swell of her stomach. It's been a while since Calden's encountered Lola without a coat, and with that off it's revealed she's dressed simply in the long gray skirt that trailed the floor and a fitted long-sleeved white T-shirt. As they entered the kitchen, Lola made brief eye contact with Ian but didn't say anything or even go so far as to nod her head in greeting to him. Instead she looked down at her right hand, which was roughed up in ways beyond a hurt wrist. There were abrasions along her knuckles, and there was a wicked looking slice in the webbing between her forefinger and her thumb that had her unwilling to spread her fingers too far.
"What, you guys don't protect the place with all hands on deck?"
Calden White
"He'll protect my dad." Now the irritation is outright and obvious. "I'll protect my house."
There is, perhaps, an emphasis on the my. A less than subtle reminder that this is his land; his rules, one supposes.
"And what do you mean, you don't remember? Did you black out?"
Lola Hawkes
There's a begrudging nod, and that's all the more that Lola has to say on the matter of an able-bodied Kin being sent down into the basement with some of the firearms. To judge the fact that she was okay being in the kitchen and away from windows at the front or back of the house, she didn't seem to think she'd been followed. She had the look of someone who was still putting the pieces together to her, a constant expression of concerned thought.
He asked what she meant, and Lola invited herself to sit down wherever was nearest-- probably a kitchen stool or something. Left elbow hooked on the counter so she could lean on it some, and her right hand and forearm rested gingerly in her lap.
"I think. I got knocked out." She frowned harder, clearly trying to remember. She looked at Calden, frowned to find the irritation in his face (what the hell was she expecting to see there, though, really?). She continued the rest of the story with her eyes unfocused across the kitchen.
"There's this old Fianna couple, Seamus and Agnes Lane. They don't live too terribly far from here." Calden probably knows them. The family's been in the area for a while. They were an old couple of Kinfolk in their seventies, and they were known to be globetrotters. They were the sort that could never settle down, so they kept traveling and having adventures.
"They've been missing. I was looking into it, and when I left their house I was followed by this black car, and the man behind the wheel was in a suit and sunglasses and..." here, her brow finds a way to furrow harder, as she's trying to explain and make herself sound less insane -- "he had no face. Like, it was smudged out. No mouth or nose. He was tailing me, and when I tried to speed away another just like him came into the road in front of my fucking car. I missed him, barely, and kept going, but then another fuckin' No Face appeared in another car and tried to T-bone my fucking Forester.
"I stopped the car. Got my rifle and got out. The guy that tried to hit me got out with a gun too, but then one of them snuck up behind me and..."
Here, she puts her face in her left hand and scrubs vigorously, anxiously at her scalp with her fingertips. She made a growling noise through gritted teeth and exhaled through them like an angry animal. "It all goes black. I woke up behind my steerin' wheel and I can't remember shit anymore."
Then, as an added explanation, and almost an apology: "Hector's out of town. This all happened like five miles from here."
Calden White
"I know who the Lanes are," Calden interrupts. If his teeth gritted any harder he'd be grinding his molars. "They used to have Halloween parties for the kids when my brothers and I were young, for god's sake. I wish whoever'd told you they were missing had thought to tell me."
The rest of it, then. No-Faces. Calden looks somewhere between skeptical and alarmed and disturbed. When she finishes, a muscle stands out in his jaw. He folds his arms across his chest -- his red-flannel-clad arms and his red-flannel-clad chest, one might note -- his fingers tapping restlessly atop his bicep.
Then Ian's back with the guns. Calden grabs one, hands Lola the other. "Get down in the cellar," he tells Ian again, "and stay there with my dad until you hear from me."
And to Lola: "Come on. We're driving south. I'll call ahead to Cold Crescent, fill them in on the details. If your faceless men come for you, we'll meet them on the road. I'd rather lead them away and make a stand out in the open than wait for them to come here, where my father lives and my family and friends visit."
Lola Hawkes
"Fuck that, going to the Spire Sept."
Lola's words are as cold as the name of the Sept that Calden suggested they go to, and her eyes are hard. She waits until after Calden's handed her the gun to say this, of course. She didn't want to piss him off and lose rights to the weapon he was offering. Sure, there was still always the rifle in her car, but extra ammunition couldn't be argued with. She glanced brief and sideways to Ian, then slipped down from the stool to stand on her stocking feet again.
They were both on edge, clearly Calden was angry with the thought of this mess being brought to his home (and Lola couldn't blame him), but she was shaking her head anyways. She didn't seem to be in quite the rush that he was in.
"I don't think they followed me. I mean, hold on and think about it-- why the fuck would they bother to put me back in my car all intact and shit and just let me go? I don't think we need to expect an ambush. If they wanted me dead I wouldn't be here." The last sentence makes it sound like she's repeating words that somebody else has already told her-- a reassurance, no doubt, given on a phone call laced with mute panic being steered by focus on the side of the road.
"This..." She started to try and explain, but cut herself off and shook her head. Apparently she decided before she could really get started not to try arguing whatever point she was about to try and make. "Nevermind. But, no, I don't wanna run to the city and drag the Urrah into this. They got their own messes to deal with, after the airport and all."
Calden White
"You mean you want to prove to yourself and whoever else you think might be watching," Calden doesn't mince words here, "that you don't need help from the Garou."
Lola Hawkes
"That ain't what I fucking said." She snapped this at him, and her eyes flashed when she did. Her tone, when she was explaining that she didn't want to drag City Wolves into the mix, was flat and matter of fact. Her voice picked up fire and impatience when she was accused of just trying to prove herself.
Soon after that, though, she seemed to flinch just a little-- a chip in the exterior, a thought occurred or a pain was remembered. Then she simply eased back down to sit on the stool and shook her head.
"Look, man, I don't fucking remember pieces of my last couple of days. I know that I drove way out in the middle of nowhere on Sunday, but I don't remember where or why. I don't remember what I found at the Lane house. I don't remember what happened to me after some asshole without a fucking face got the jump on me after nearly murdering my shit in an auto accident not a few minutes before.
"I just...." She failed to continue there for a second, because she didn't know how or where to go or what to say. So she rubbed at her eyes with the pads of her forefinger and thumb and tried again in a quieter voice.
"Just wanna collect myself for a few fuckin' minutes."
Calden White
Calden stares at her, eyes flat, mouth a flat line. His fingers tap restlessly again; this time on the barrel of the rifle in his hand.
Then:
"I'll make you a deal. You don't want to go to the Sept with this yet -- fine. But we're not staying here. I can't take the chance that you're wrong, because then your magical Faceless Men show up here to raise hell on my family.
"So we're driving over to Fort Collins. It's less than an hour away. We'll get a motel room or something, you'll tell me what the hell is going on, and then I'll stand watch while you catch your breath and take a nap.
"If, after I hear the whole story, I still think we need to go to the Sept, then either we go together, or we part ways and you handle the rest of whatever it is you're mixed up in alone. I won't force you to ask help from the Garou, but I'm not going to go on a doomed quest either. Deal?"
Lola Hawkes
No hand is offered for shaking along with the deal. Lola Hawkes and Calden White are not friends. If they could be called that before (and if you were to ask Lola, they could have been-- Calden probably has a different concept of what friendships are than what she does), the could no longer, not after tensions at the rodeo and certainly not after the open fight they had on the side of the road at the end of January.
But hardship and circumstance outweighed hurt feelings and disagreements. Calden looked at her flatly, and she sat and rubbed her eyes and face and only looked up when he started to lay out his conditions. When he was finished, leaving the offer hanging in the air, Lola stared at him for a few seconds while mulling the terms over in her mind.
Finally, though, she would agree: "Deal." And leave it at that.
Beyond this she was fairly compliant and quiet as they got ready to leave. Calden didn't want to spend any more time around his home than necessary, but Lola had the requirement of a few minutes in the bathroom before they went. She utilized the facilities and washed the dirt and blood from her knees and the back of her hand both. Ran her swollen wrist under cold water but decided that she could wait until they were at the motel to actually ice it.
Soon, though, they would be on their way. They drive separately, so the option to go their own way later could still be available, and because there was no reason for her to abandon her vehicle at the ranch either. By the time they make it to the motel room Lola has recovered a letter and a better explanation of what they were walking into-- but that would all be discussed then. Later. Not now.
----------------------
Narrative: As this storyline never saw a full conclusion, the conclusion is presumed.
Lola went to a motel with Calden, as they'd planned. She rested, but did not lay down and did not sleep-- too uncomfortable and on edge. There she spent perhaps an hour with Calden, maybe a little more, sitting and recouping and trying to pull the details together.
When restlessness took over, she and Calden went separate ways-- Lola would not agree to go to the Sept, so Calden left the adventuring up to her alone, unwilling to be involved in nonsense if it's not going to be handled sensibly.
This storyline as a whole is assumed with the conclusion that Lola was able to locate the Lanes and get them home intact and healthy as anyone can hope.
Need Your Expertise - 2.11.2014 - [Hector, phone call]
Narrative: Prior to this scene, organized and discussed out of character without a written scene to accompany, Lola Hawkes had gone to explore the Lane house. She discovered some useful information, such as a journal hidden under floorboards. She was headed home from the Lane house when a dark car had fallen in to place to start driving behind her.
A glance in the rear-view mirror told Lola that the person behind the wheel of the car following her had no face-- no distinguishable features, at least, it was as though some great cosmic artist had taken an eraser and smudged the face of the man away. She drove faster to see if he would keep pace, and when she did this an identical figure appeared standing in the middle of the road.
A good Drive roll prevented Lola from hitting the man or rolling her car when she swerved to avoid him. Not far past this, a third figure (this one in another car) was idling at an intersection she was about to cross. When Lola drove through the intersection, the car moved to try and jack-knife her. Lola managed to avoid this car wreck as well, but fed up with the chase and unwilling to lead these things further home, she pulled off to the side of the road to confront.
One of the two cars pulled off to the side of the road ahead of her car, and the figure got out. Lola got out of her car as well, shotgun in hand. However, she didn't see one of the mysterious faceless figures creep up behind her. The figure behind her did something, Lola has no idea what, but whatever it was she was instantly rendered unconsciouss.
The scene that follows is what happens when she wakes.
-----------------
Hector Ghosh
He's been gone all of two days and he's already blown up Lola's phone so much it may feel as though he hasn't even really left. That maybe he's just a train ride away. Though he hasn't come out and said it yet Lola knows he is glad to be spending less time in the city after what happened two weeks ago.
Not necessarily spending less time in the state. He's been gone so much if their situation were any different it would be easy to forget he considers her home his now.
Anyway: it's early evening on a Tuesday when Hector's phone starts ringing. Lola never calls him. That only happens when something has happened.
Wherever he is it's loud.
"HELLO, BAAAABY!" he lows over the noise. It's a passable Jerry Lee Lewis impression but now's not the time. "Hang on, lemme go outside."
Clomp clomp clomp hinge-whine sudden fresh-air silence.
"What's going on?"
Lola Hawkes
When she came to, Lola was leaned forward over the steering column of the Subaru Forester. The engine was off, the car door was closed, and there was a mark on her cheekbone from where it was rested on the wheel. She was stiff and fuzzy feeling, but that uncertain discomfort and groggy sense of 'where am I' was quickly tossed by a sudden jolt.
The black cars (plural). The men with featureless faces. Swerving to avoid one only to nearly be T-boned by another at an intersection. Getting out with her rifle. Seeing the gun. Then...
Her hands went down her chest and stomach, and though she cringed to move and flex about her right hand she's experienced worse, and has bigger ice-bucket-in-chest concerns to focus on. Palms pressed to her stomach and pushed. Faint rolling and kicking answered, and she breathed a sigh of relief before doing an inventory check.
No blood, no wounds. The car started and the tires were all intact. There was dirt on her clothing and her hand suggested that she fell on it or hit something hard-- she wasn't sure. After a few minutes of worrying and straining her brain and cycling possibilities of what happened in her mind, she got her phone out of the center console of the vehicle and called Hector.
When he answered, she started to try and talk but cut off and was quiet until he had moved someplace he could hear. Once out wherever it was he'd vacated to, she tried again.
"I need your expertise. You ever heard of a type of Fomori that has no facial features and that's the only obvious abnormality 'bout them?"
Her voice was shaky and urgent. Something happened, but she didn't outright tell him what just yet.
Hector Ghosh
[wits + occult: IDK HAVE I?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Hector Ghosh
Give him some credit for not immediately panicking like he did when she called him to say she was in the hospital and needed him to come get her. Though he hears the breathlessness and the implication of an incident in her voice Hector focuses on the question. As far away as he is he can't help her if he doesn't keep his shit together.
"That could be a couple of things. Actually."
A short spell of silence as he gathers his thoughts. But there are few things in the universe Hector can't remember hearing something about if he hasn't actually seen it before. It makes the pit situation especially frustrating.
What can you do though. Tribal elders have no idea what it is either.
"It could be a--wait no it can't. It's still daylight. It's not a leech. There are some leeches that can walk around when the sun's out but they're practically not leeches. Fomori don't usually have... I mean they have these really grotesque, you know, mutations to their face structure... what do you mean, obvious abnormality? What's the rest of it look like?"
Lola Hawkes
"There were three of them. I think." She shook her head, and Hector can hear discomfort along with stress. Something about the way she breathed through her teeth with the next intake of breath suggested at least minor pain.
He'd hear the sound of the car engine turning over. It was cold, she wanted the heater running. She wasn't sure where she would be driving just yet, though, so she stayed against the shoulder of the road with her headlights off.
"They just looked like men. Average men, wearing black suits. But they had sunglasses on, and I couldn't see a nose or a mouth. It was just blurred out, like the reality in front of their faces was smudged like wet paint, you know?
"I'm worried they're Pentex. I'm worried they did something. I lost... Jesus Christ, I lost a fucking hour. They knocked me out."
Hector Ghosh
"You're alright."
That's the best he can do for her from six hundred miles away. Unless he wanted to take the moon bridge back home to Forgotten Questions and hope she could make it back to the Homestead without incident. Which she has to guess he does now want to do that.
"You're alright, I... I don't know what they're called, I've just heard stories. They're like... androids or something, or cyborgs, you know? Robots that are supposed to look like humans. Or humans that have robot parts. It's--"
Come on Hector you walking encyclopedia of fucked-up information help her.
"If it's not Pentex then I don't know what the hell it is. But if they were going to kill you they would have just killed you, they wouldn't have bothered knocking you out. Where are you right now?"
Lola Hawkes
He can hear her fussing around inside of the car a little. The ruffling of clothes, the sound of the heater blowing heavily when the engine has worked up enough heat to turn the air warm. He assures her that she's fine, and when she speaks next her tone is a little more even, at least, though no less grim and severe sounding.
"The baby's fine...," mostly announced for him, but a little bit for her as well. She was scared of what things the men in suits could have done to the still-growing baby while she was out, but Hector had brought up the point of motivation. She couldn't imagine that they had any interest in her pregnancy-- this was probably triggered by her snooping around.
She rubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand.
"Outside of Ft. Collins by a couple of miles-- out of the suburbs and everything at least. Along the highway, just parked. The fuckers tried to wreck my car to stop me, but I got out and one pulled a gun. The other snuck up on me and then--..." She stopped herself and sighed heavily. She sounded frustrated again.
"I gotta figure this out. But androids, 'eh? ....Shit."
Hector Ghosh
Until she volunteers information about the baby Hector had been focusing on Lola. She can tell it was a loud and blaring fear he was ignoring by the heaviness of the breath he lets go then. Like he had been holding it all this time and just remembered he needs to come up for air sometimes.
"Yeah, I mean, I don't know, but you only lost an hour instead of like, a limb or something." Or the baby. "I feel like if it were anything else you've be in seriously deep shit right now."
She cannot see him as he drops back against the side of the building and blows out his fear and the panic he didn't let himself feel to begin with. But she can hear something. Some rustling and some delayed-reaction breathing.
"How did they...? I just don't understand why they were messing with you."
Lola Hawkes
"An old acquaintance came by-- Sweet Caroline of the Fianna. She asked me to check on her grandparents. So I've been trying to track them down. They've been missing for like a fuckin' week. They off adventurin' and chasin' mysteries and shit. I was at their house and..."
She trailed off. She was having trouble remembering what the inside of the house was like-- specifically because she was trying to retrace her steps from room to room to remember what she'd found out. She couldn't remember which rooms she'd checked or what she'd found. Concern creased into her voice when she continued.
"...when I left they were following after me. I think the old fuckers got mixed up in something too deep."
Another pause, and then almost begrudgingly she stated:
"I'm gonna have to go save them."
Hector Ghosh
"You're gonna..."
Oh he doesn't like that. He doesn't like that at all.
"Wait a minute. Wait wait. Sweet Caroline? Oh, Lo, come on, her grandparents are like the fucked-up love child of Teddy Roosevelt and Indiana Jones. Twins fucked-up love children. Only they're not related because that would be-- Don't... no no no, don't go after them, if they can't get out of it themselves they're fucked."
Lola Hawkes
"Hector, I'm going after them."
She sounded firm about it. He can be sure that there's a stubborn set to her jaw even though he can't see it there.
"It sounds like it's real trouble. I mean, if it's bad enough that I got.. got... fucking memory wiped or whatever just for looking into it? They're in trouble. And they're fucking old. Whatever happened I don't think they're gonna be able to handle it on their own, and they might not be our Kinfolk but they're still, y'know, part of this."
She sounded distracted, like she was rambling a little bit. He hears the engine rev up a little and the phone shift and shuffle about, like she was adjusting her hold on it. She was pulling off the shoulder of the road and getting to driving again. Once comfortably on the road she worked the wheel with her left hand and cradled the phone to her ear with her right shoulder. "I've gotta get somewhere safe. I don't want these fuckers following me back to the Bawn."
Hector Ghosh
"I don't want them following you at all."
He would have lost this debate even if he were in town. He knows it. She can hear in his voice that he knows it. The only time Hector can win any sort of argument against Lola it's when he knows in his bones that he's right.
If he were a more traditional wolf he might have told her they dug their own grave and it wasn't worth the potential loss of life trying to bring them back.
Hector sighs.
"Alright." Like he's reassuring himself now instead of her. "Alright. If anyone can get these two old bats out of trouble, it's you."
That said:
"I swear, when I get back, I'm not leaving you alone again. Like, ever. I'm going to be a stay-at-home dad. The kind that actually puts on clothes and shit, not the bathrobe-and-sweatpants-all-day kind."
Lola Hawkes
The quip that Hector made about being a stay-at-home dad earned him a chuckle. That he managed this much in her current state of nerves spoke volumes.
"That's just fine. I'll go... I don't know, shoot fuckin' bad guys for a living. People get paid for that, right?"
She seems willing to let the conversation drift that way for now-- to just talk with him for a few minutes before letting him get back to what he was doing. Hector gave her an idea, a direction for the origin of those men in suits, and that's what she'd called him for. That, and he calmed her down-- that was the other reason she'd called. She wanted to hear him, reason things out with him, and they'd accomplished this as well.
So she'd spend the next minute or so continuing the 'what if' scenario of her getting a job as a bounty hunter and him staying home with the children. They'd make an A&E television series about her, and it would get cancelled three-fourths of the way through the first season. But at some point the conversation ends-- Hector goes back inside and Lola turns off onto a driveway to ask for help from a man that she'd broken her friendship with.
A glance in the rear-view mirror told Lola that the person behind the wheel of the car following her had no face-- no distinguishable features, at least, it was as though some great cosmic artist had taken an eraser and smudged the face of the man away. She drove faster to see if he would keep pace, and when she did this an identical figure appeared standing in the middle of the road.
A good Drive roll prevented Lola from hitting the man or rolling her car when she swerved to avoid him. Not far past this, a third figure (this one in another car) was idling at an intersection she was about to cross. When Lola drove through the intersection, the car moved to try and jack-knife her. Lola managed to avoid this car wreck as well, but fed up with the chase and unwilling to lead these things further home, she pulled off to the side of the road to confront.
One of the two cars pulled off to the side of the road ahead of her car, and the figure got out. Lola got out of her car as well, shotgun in hand. However, she didn't see one of the mysterious faceless figures creep up behind her. The figure behind her did something, Lola has no idea what, but whatever it was she was instantly rendered unconsciouss.
The scene that follows is what happens when she wakes.
-----------------
Hector Ghosh
He's been gone all of two days and he's already blown up Lola's phone so much it may feel as though he hasn't even really left. That maybe he's just a train ride away. Though he hasn't come out and said it yet Lola knows he is glad to be spending less time in the city after what happened two weeks ago.
Not necessarily spending less time in the state. He's been gone so much if their situation were any different it would be easy to forget he considers her home his now.
Anyway: it's early evening on a Tuesday when Hector's phone starts ringing. Lola never calls him. That only happens when something has happened.
Wherever he is it's loud.
"HELLO, BAAAABY!" he lows over the noise. It's a passable Jerry Lee Lewis impression but now's not the time. "Hang on, lemme go outside."
Clomp clomp clomp hinge-whine sudden fresh-air silence.
"What's going on?"
Lola Hawkes
When she came to, Lola was leaned forward over the steering column of the Subaru Forester. The engine was off, the car door was closed, and there was a mark on her cheekbone from where it was rested on the wheel. She was stiff and fuzzy feeling, but that uncertain discomfort and groggy sense of 'where am I' was quickly tossed by a sudden jolt.
The black cars (plural). The men with featureless faces. Swerving to avoid one only to nearly be T-boned by another at an intersection. Getting out with her rifle. Seeing the gun. Then...
Her hands went down her chest and stomach, and though she cringed to move and flex about her right hand she's experienced worse, and has bigger ice-bucket-in-chest concerns to focus on. Palms pressed to her stomach and pushed. Faint rolling and kicking answered, and she breathed a sigh of relief before doing an inventory check.
No blood, no wounds. The car started and the tires were all intact. There was dirt on her clothing and her hand suggested that she fell on it or hit something hard-- she wasn't sure. After a few minutes of worrying and straining her brain and cycling possibilities of what happened in her mind, she got her phone out of the center console of the vehicle and called Hector.
When he answered, she started to try and talk but cut off and was quiet until he had moved someplace he could hear. Once out wherever it was he'd vacated to, she tried again.
"I need your expertise. You ever heard of a type of Fomori that has no facial features and that's the only obvious abnormality 'bout them?"
Her voice was shaky and urgent. Something happened, but she didn't outright tell him what just yet.
Hector Ghosh
[wits + occult: IDK HAVE I?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Hector Ghosh
Give him some credit for not immediately panicking like he did when she called him to say she was in the hospital and needed him to come get her. Though he hears the breathlessness and the implication of an incident in her voice Hector focuses on the question. As far away as he is he can't help her if he doesn't keep his shit together.
"That could be a couple of things. Actually."
A short spell of silence as he gathers his thoughts. But there are few things in the universe Hector can't remember hearing something about if he hasn't actually seen it before. It makes the pit situation especially frustrating.
What can you do though. Tribal elders have no idea what it is either.
"It could be a--wait no it can't. It's still daylight. It's not a leech. There are some leeches that can walk around when the sun's out but they're practically not leeches. Fomori don't usually have... I mean they have these really grotesque, you know, mutations to their face structure... what do you mean, obvious abnormality? What's the rest of it look like?"
Lola Hawkes
"There were three of them. I think." She shook her head, and Hector can hear discomfort along with stress. Something about the way she breathed through her teeth with the next intake of breath suggested at least minor pain.
He'd hear the sound of the car engine turning over. It was cold, she wanted the heater running. She wasn't sure where she would be driving just yet, though, so she stayed against the shoulder of the road with her headlights off.
"They just looked like men. Average men, wearing black suits. But they had sunglasses on, and I couldn't see a nose or a mouth. It was just blurred out, like the reality in front of their faces was smudged like wet paint, you know?
"I'm worried they're Pentex. I'm worried they did something. I lost... Jesus Christ, I lost a fucking hour. They knocked me out."
Hector Ghosh
"You're alright."
That's the best he can do for her from six hundred miles away. Unless he wanted to take the moon bridge back home to Forgotten Questions and hope she could make it back to the Homestead without incident. Which she has to guess he does now want to do that.
"You're alright, I... I don't know what they're called, I've just heard stories. They're like... androids or something, or cyborgs, you know? Robots that are supposed to look like humans. Or humans that have robot parts. It's--"
Come on Hector you walking encyclopedia of fucked-up information help her.
"If it's not Pentex then I don't know what the hell it is. But if they were going to kill you they would have just killed you, they wouldn't have bothered knocking you out. Where are you right now?"
Lola Hawkes
He can hear her fussing around inside of the car a little. The ruffling of clothes, the sound of the heater blowing heavily when the engine has worked up enough heat to turn the air warm. He assures her that she's fine, and when she speaks next her tone is a little more even, at least, though no less grim and severe sounding.
"The baby's fine...," mostly announced for him, but a little bit for her as well. She was scared of what things the men in suits could have done to the still-growing baby while she was out, but Hector had brought up the point of motivation. She couldn't imagine that they had any interest in her pregnancy-- this was probably triggered by her snooping around.
She rubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand.
"Outside of Ft. Collins by a couple of miles-- out of the suburbs and everything at least. Along the highway, just parked. The fuckers tried to wreck my car to stop me, but I got out and one pulled a gun. The other snuck up on me and then--..." She stopped herself and sighed heavily. She sounded frustrated again.
"I gotta figure this out. But androids, 'eh? ....Shit."
Hector Ghosh
Until she volunteers information about the baby Hector had been focusing on Lola. She can tell it was a loud and blaring fear he was ignoring by the heaviness of the breath he lets go then. Like he had been holding it all this time and just remembered he needs to come up for air sometimes.
"Yeah, I mean, I don't know, but you only lost an hour instead of like, a limb or something." Or the baby. "I feel like if it were anything else you've be in seriously deep shit right now."
She cannot see him as he drops back against the side of the building and blows out his fear and the panic he didn't let himself feel to begin with. But she can hear something. Some rustling and some delayed-reaction breathing.
"How did they...? I just don't understand why they were messing with you."
Lola Hawkes
"An old acquaintance came by-- Sweet Caroline of the Fianna. She asked me to check on her grandparents. So I've been trying to track them down. They've been missing for like a fuckin' week. They off adventurin' and chasin' mysteries and shit. I was at their house and..."
She trailed off. She was having trouble remembering what the inside of the house was like-- specifically because she was trying to retrace her steps from room to room to remember what she'd found out. She couldn't remember which rooms she'd checked or what she'd found. Concern creased into her voice when she continued.
"...when I left they were following after me. I think the old fuckers got mixed up in something too deep."
Another pause, and then almost begrudgingly she stated:
"I'm gonna have to go save them."
Hector Ghosh
"You're gonna..."
Oh he doesn't like that. He doesn't like that at all.
"Wait a minute. Wait wait. Sweet Caroline? Oh, Lo, come on, her grandparents are like the fucked-up love child of Teddy Roosevelt and Indiana Jones. Twins fucked-up love children. Only they're not related because that would be-- Don't... no no no, don't go after them, if they can't get out of it themselves they're fucked."
Lola Hawkes
"Hector, I'm going after them."
She sounded firm about it. He can be sure that there's a stubborn set to her jaw even though he can't see it there.
"It sounds like it's real trouble. I mean, if it's bad enough that I got.. got... fucking memory wiped or whatever just for looking into it? They're in trouble. And they're fucking old. Whatever happened I don't think they're gonna be able to handle it on their own, and they might not be our Kinfolk but they're still, y'know, part of this."
She sounded distracted, like she was rambling a little bit. He hears the engine rev up a little and the phone shift and shuffle about, like she was adjusting her hold on it. She was pulling off the shoulder of the road and getting to driving again. Once comfortably on the road she worked the wheel with her left hand and cradled the phone to her ear with her right shoulder. "I've gotta get somewhere safe. I don't want these fuckers following me back to the Bawn."
Hector Ghosh
"I don't want them following you at all."
He would have lost this debate even if he were in town. He knows it. She can hear in his voice that he knows it. The only time Hector can win any sort of argument against Lola it's when he knows in his bones that he's right.
If he were a more traditional wolf he might have told her they dug their own grave and it wasn't worth the potential loss of life trying to bring them back.
Hector sighs.
"Alright." Like he's reassuring himself now instead of her. "Alright. If anyone can get these two old bats out of trouble, it's you."
That said:
"I swear, when I get back, I'm not leaving you alone again. Like, ever. I'm going to be a stay-at-home dad. The kind that actually puts on clothes and shit, not the bathrobe-and-sweatpants-all-day kind."
Lola Hawkes
The quip that Hector made about being a stay-at-home dad earned him a chuckle. That he managed this much in her current state of nerves spoke volumes.
"That's just fine. I'll go... I don't know, shoot fuckin' bad guys for a living. People get paid for that, right?"
She seems willing to let the conversation drift that way for now-- to just talk with him for a few minutes before letting him get back to what he was doing. Hector gave her an idea, a direction for the origin of those men in suits, and that's what she'd called him for. That, and he calmed her down-- that was the other reason she'd called. She wanted to hear him, reason things out with him, and they'd accomplished this as well.
So she'd spend the next minute or so continuing the 'what if' scenario of her getting a job as a bounty hunter and him staying home with the children. They'd make an A&E television series about her, and it would get cancelled three-fourths of the way through the first season. But at some point the conversation ends-- Hector goes back inside and Lola turns off onto a driveway to ask for help from a man that she'd broken her friendship with.
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