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.
No comments:
Post a Comment