P.D. Killough
In another season this drive would have
been scenic. Gone west out of Littleton Lola and her Subaru Forester
handled the winding sylvan mountains and the snow-slicked roads and did
not bow underneath the fog and the mist. But if she started to think she
had made a mistake after the first fifty miles she also made the
decision to keep on going. Hours of daylight still left and she had made
a promise to Caroline.
Besides. She had already made the longest
drive of her life a couple months back. Even if she has to stop to pee
and can feel her feet swelling it isn't that bad. At least she isn't
driving across the country to be the sole source of emotional stability
in her mate's quest to reclaim his blood relatives.
As of 2010, 72
people lived in this place. It is designated as an unincorporated
community by the U.S. Census Bureau. Nothing can grow here. Its climate
is highly variable and the winters are extreme here.
It is 37
degrees outside when Lola finally reaches the town limits. It will be
ten degrees colder and snowing in Littleton by the time she starts to
head towards home but along the Yampa River the sky is choked with thick
gray clouds and threatening drops instead of flakes. The temperature
will hold. One of the only things she can consider herself grateful for.
Here
is the unfortunate part of her day: it isn't until she gets to town
that Lola realizes the return address belongs to the Maybell Post
Office. Which she will have trouble finding since all of the buildings
along Collom Street look like they could be anything else.
There
is a General Store. And a bar. And a Game Processing Station. And a gas
station. And an elementary school. And a couple of double-wide trailers.
A
green library sign and a smaller white POST OFFICE sign point her off
of Route 40. The bar has no fewer than five vehicles in its prideful
parking lot and the lights are on.
Welcome to Maybell, Lola.
Lola Hawkes
The
drive really wasn't all that bad, in comparison. Lola had gotten used
to driving a big ancient truck everywhere she went, so the smoother
handling and lower center of gravity that the Subaru had to offer made
the wet and foggy roads nothing for her to be concerned with. She'd had
to stop once to pee, finding a gas station off the highway to do so.
Once
in Maybell, which really was just some homes surrounding one
functioning street-- probably some city that sprang up around a mine or
large ranch or something. Nothing could grow out here, though. It was
difficult to understand precisely why people lived out here except
simply to be away from everyone and everything (which was something Lola
could honestly understand).
When she found herself parked up in
front of the post office she cursed and idled for a moment, glancing
here and there. The bar, eventually, was where she wound up. It was
the only place with vehicles, and perhaps she could ask around to see if
anyone knew who this Killough person was.
Lola wore a pair of
jeans and brown work boots, with a red-and-other-colors flannel shirt
and a navy blue down vest, both of which had to be unbuttoned to
accommodate her stomach, which stretched out against the gray tee she
wore beneath it all. There was a red knit scarf about her neck and her
hair was back in a ponytail, and the persistent gray glare of the sun
against the blanket of gray clouds above was cut away by a pair of
sunglasses as well. She walked into the building with her chin high and
her shoulders square, as she ever would and probably ever will enter
new territory. Posturing and challenging and daring anyone to try and
push for dominance of the room right out the gate. All in body language
and nothing more.
The sunglasses were pushed back up into her
hair and she approached the bar, envelope folded up and in the inside
chest pocket within her vest. There she would lean and wait, elbow on
the bar and other hand in an exterior vest pocket.
P.D. Killough
This
isn't the sort of place where everyone in the joint stops what they're
doing to turn and glower at the door when it opens but it sure feels
that way. The floorboards groan underfoot and the whole place looks and
smells like it's been here since the land still lived within Mexican
territory.
On the inside the bar has the appearance of a
restaurant with booths and tables. One cowboy-looking young mestizo sits
at a booth by himself with a newspaper and a plate of food and a bottle
of beer. Everybody else is hunched onto a stool at the bar.
Hank Williams is playing over the stereo. That kind of place.
The
bartender looks over at her and he doesn't step up to meet her clear
challenge. Everybody else glances over and she can see interest and
confusion mingling in the men's eyes as they read her obvious pregnancy
with her unfamiliar face. It ends quickly though. The men turn back to
their drinks and the bartender finishes washing his glass before he
addresses her.
"You lost, ma'am?" he asks in a rural drawl.
Lola Hawkes
Her
entrance earns her a moment of notice, but then dismissal and
acceptance and little else. Honestly, Lola preferred it that way. She
didn't walk into places actively wanting fights-- not always, at least.
Today she was simply seeking information.
When the bartender came
and asked if he was lost, Lola answered back in the very competent
English that she possessed, tinged ever so slightly with Mexican Spanish
accents or rhythms here and there.
"Just a little," was her
confession. She didn't look distressed for the fact, though. Lola was
always sure to give the demeanor of somebody who was in control. She
could not be intimidated, oh no. That only worked the other way around.
"I'm looking for a man named Killough. I think he's an older man. You know where I could find him?"
P.D. Killough
"Aw, shit, Paddy, what'd you go and do now?"
This
come from one of the older ranch hands sitting nearest the door. He
like many of the rest of them are weather-beaten and leather-skinned
with laugh lines in more plentiful number than teeth. He has to turn his
head and raise his voice to catch the attention of a similarly
well-worn fellow who has taken up a place at the stool closest to the
wall. Keg taps or other men's shoulders and heads partly obscure his
face from Lola's vantage point but when he leans to see better Lola gets
her first glimpse at P.D. Killough.
If the folks she is looking
for are in their 70s he looks to be about the same age. He wears a
flannel shirt and jeans same as she does. A trucker cap on his head and a
can of chewing tobacco in the breast pocket. Blue eyes bright even in
the dim light.
All of the other men seated at the bar laugh at the
question and the older fellow who posed the question grins and cackles
at his own wit. The bartender just rolls his eyes at them and jerks his
chin towards the one fellow in the place who isn't laughing.
"That'd be him, right there," says the bartender.
"Well god damn, Loujunior," says the buddy of the guy who'd make the first wise remark. Says it like it's one word even: Loujunior. "Ain't no secrets around here, is there?"
Loujunior
just shrugs an open-armed lack-of-fucks shrug and by the time the
exchange has run its course P.D. Killough has taken his tall boy can of
Pabst Blue Ribbon and carried it over to meet Lola. The ribbing carries
on without them. He stands 5'9" in his cowboy boots and is slightly
stooped. Hair gone the colour of silver underneath his hat. Little more
than skin and sinew overtop his bones.
"Ma'am," Killough says. "What seems to be the trouble?"
Lola Hawkes
The
bar lit up with laughter-- as luck so had it, P.D. Killough was there
in that very bar, so she needn't go far to find him and continue her
errand. When the man in his seventies at the other end of the bar
straightened and peered over at her, Lola did precisely the same. Her
elbow left the bar, she distractedly nodded her thanks at the bartender,
and after that she was simply watching the old man-- she assumed an old
Kinfolk, but couldn't know for certain.
When the older man came
nearer, Lola stuck out her right hand and turned to face him straight
on. If there was one thing that her father and mother both managed to
beat into her brain, it was that good first impressions were important.
Of course she interpreted that as a strong impression, and whether it
was good or not was debatable on the other side.
Either way,
regardless of whether the man shook her hand (and he seemed like he
would), Lola would hitch her thumb toward the door. "I'm here huntin'
after some friends, and I think you might have seen them recently." The
way she spoke, you'd think she was a fucking police officer or
something. That might be what some of the locals start to think,
especially since next she asked:
"Do you mind if we step outside for a minute?"
P.D. Killough
"Not at all."
Yep.
Pretty much everyone in the place is watching to see what happens. Only
person who doesn't give two shits about the proceedings is the young
man sat in his booth. It isn't that he doesn't speak English or that he
can't hear. It's just that he's been coming to this goddamned bar every
night after work since he landed this job at the coop farm outside Craig
and he's had it with listening to the old coots tell the same fucking
stories over and over.
Killough is the only one who hardly ever
talks. When he does talk it's some dry one-liner come out of nowhere.
Lola has no way of knowing that. He holds the door open for her as they
step back out into the gravel parking lot and coughs a rattling
death's-door cough that ends in his spitting something big and thick
into the shrubbery as the door closes behind them.
"Which friends're we talkin', here?" he asks once the din of the inside has died.
Lola Hawkes
Whatever
it was that the old men in the bar would say after she left couldn't
matter less to Lola. As far as she was concerned, she would probably
never interract with any of them again. That said, she didn't burn the
bar as she walked from it or break anything on her way out the door.
She simply left, nodded politely to the old man who held the door for
her, and stood outside near the headlights of her parked Forester and
waited for the man to join her.
When he did she stood with her arms crossed between her chest and her stomach, work boots set firm in the gravel.
"Seamus
and Agnes Lane. They're grandparents of a friend of mine. She hadn't
heard from them in a while and had a friend swing by their house since
he was in the area. He found this."
It's here that she unfolds
her arms just long enough to fish the envelope from her pocket and hand
it over to the man. She'd wait patiently for him to recognize it before
continuing:
"Given your name's there on the return address, I figured you'd be a good place to start and see where they're at."
P.D. Killough
And
he does take the envelope. His answer isn't instantaneous because he
has to check and confirm that that is his return address and that is his
handwriting but the answer comes as a gritty affirmative noise in his
throat and the envelope coming back to her.
"I sure do wish I
could tell you where they're at, ma'am. You're talkin' 'bout Caroline,
ain't ya? Nora's girl, lives out near the Caern?"
He pauses in his
answer to take his tobacco can out of his pocket and prep a plug to
push between his lower lip and gums. The older man coughs another of
those sickly coughs but does not spit again. Old timer like him will
spend the rest of the conversation gutting the tobacco juice. He's
dying. What the fuck does he care what it's going to do to his stomach.
Doesn't give a fuck if she isn't actually Kinfolk but dropping the C word is a good way to gauge if she is or not.
"Listen,
I'm real sorry you had to drive all the way out here just fer me to
tell you this, but Jim and Nancy came on out here 'bout a week or so ago
to root around and I got no clue where they gone off to. Started out a
month'r so back, folks was sayin' their dogs were running off and comin'
back changed. Sick in a way their people would rather put em down than
let 'em keep on sufferin'. Then last month it got worse." He doesn't
elaborate on how it got worse. "That's about the time I wrote to Jim and
Nancy."
Another cough. This one he buries in the side of his fist.
"I'm sure they're fine."
Lola Hawkes
The
old man dropped the 'C' word-- not the vulgar one, the one that flagged
him as In The Know, and Lola barely batted an eyelash. If anything she
simply let her chin sink a little lower and sharpened her eyes to give a
significant look of recognition to him (Kinfolk, she now knew. If he
was a Garou she would have recognized that, plus he would probably be
dead by now). Beyond that, she was simply quiet and listening.
Up
until he coughed and said he was sure they were just fine she was
still. Her arms had returned to folded after she'd tucked the envelope
away again. When she spoke again she didn't sound aggravated or
impatient, but simply matter of fact. This was a woman out here for
business. She didn't have desire to waste time and wasn't the sort to
beat around the bush. So she cut to the quick, just the same out here
on the gravel as she had done in the bar.
"I'm not so sure
myself," she stated flatly. Someone with more social grace would flinch
and give a no offense here, but Lola did not. She simply continued.
"Who
was Honora and what were the circumstances of her death? The letter
asks for them specifically to come help figure out someone's passing."
P.D. Killough
"Christ, I'm gettin' my girls mixed up."
Blame
it on the wet cold or the hardship of standing when he's clearly got
one foot in the grave. Killough is mixing up names. It happens even to
people who are in the prime of their lives.
"Nora was Jim and
Nancy's older daughter. Caroline's aunt. She had some trouble when she
was 'round your age, her folks sent her out here to stay with me hopin'
it would straighten her out. Reckon it worked. She was doin' alright for
herself up until the end. Way I heard it she was huntin' elk with her
husband Bob last year. He shot her in the head. Done himself later on. I
got the coroners' reports back at the house. Jim and me were up talkin'
it over a few nights past. Might not have nothin' to do with what's
goin' on now but we got reason to suspect Nora weren't herself the night
Bob shot 'er. Or Bob weren't himself."
Another more wracking cough than any he's loosed so far.
Lola Hawkes
Lola's
face had otherwise been fairly blank throughout the encounter. She
didn't smile much, it didn't seem her style. She would be described as
gruff, though some argued she was simply too young for that to apply to
her just yet, and 'surly' better matched the description. Up until that
point she hadn't seemed in a particularly bad mood either, though. It
wasn't until this point, when she listened to the story of Nora and
Bob's demises, that the Kinswoman's face pressed into a scowl.
Her arms snugged a little more over her ribs, and she raised her dark eyebrows and asked next:
"You know where they were when this happened, by chance? And when was it that they died, respectively? Like, how long ago?"
If there was anything left in the area that might be worth looking into, Lola could go for a walkabout and see what she found.
P.D. Killough
"Ma'am."
Like
he's trying to stop her from asking any more questions. Has to be he
recognizes where this stranger is going with the ones she's dropped so
far. He holds up a palm to slow her down or to barter for more time. He
readjusts his stance and turns his head to spit out whatever comes up
when he clears his throat.
"If you come out here just to ask
questions, you're askin' too many. If you come out here to find Jim and
Nancy, you ain't gonna do it tonight. Now, you can come on back to the
house and I'll answer anything you wanna ask me and I'll put you up for
the night, or you can come on back later. This ain't nothin' you're
gonna do nothin' about tonight."
Lola Hawkes
The
way the old man put his hand out to slow her was met with a furrowing of
eyebrows for a moment and not much more. She did quiet herself,
though, and begrudgingly with a scowl on her face accept his terms. She
had wanted to make this a whirlwind one-day adventure, but that
wouldn't be the case it seemed. He was unwilling to answer her
questions just yet-- not here out in front of the bar, anyways.
He
said she could come back later, or he would put her up for the evening
and they could have this conversation in the morning. Lola shifted
uncomfortably. He could imagine that she wouldn't want to sleep outside
of her own bedroom, but this drive was a very long one and she didn't
like to burn that much gas money going home empty-handed just to come
back later.
Besides, what was the worst that an old Kinfolk would do to her?
So, with a nod, she relented.
"I
appreciate the offer, Killough. Provided we can talk about this more
effectively in the morning. Or tonight, whenever you're ready to leave
here and we can get some privacy." Her eyes flitted to the bar, then
back to the somewhat hunched coughing old man. "I'd prefer tonight,
frankly. Got a home to get back to. I'm sure you can understand."
Which
translated into: Lola would wait up on the man to let him spend what
time he needed to finish wrapping things up socially at the bar. She
would hover outside if it was less than fifteen minutes, go inside and
drink some water if it was more. She would then follow the man back to
his home in her Forester, and when they were done having whatever it was
they would speak about (The Lanes, the sick dogs, the death of Nora and
Bill's later following demise and what evidence there was surrounding
that itself) Paddy Killough would offer to put Lola up for the night but
despite the time on the clock Lola would shake her head and decline the
offer.
She would sooner just drive back home, despite the hour and the cold and the promised snow.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Nothing Else Going On - 2.9.2014 - [Sweet Caroline, NPC'd by jamie]
Lola Hawkes
The weekend has been a damp one, and that's made Lola stay around the house rather than go out on patrols. It was a cold damp, the kind that sank into your bones and whispered promises of bronchitis and pneumonia into your lungs. Though Lola had never been sick from damp before and doubted that this would be the time to start, she still heeded Hector's request and stayed around the house.
Saturday had been a good day, one of spending time together and recharging. Hector had produced a pair of bright hex nuts and declared them rings. They dusted off a flamenco guitar album that Lola recommended because her dad would listen to it often and she liked the sounds and sat about near the furnace with baby books because God damnit if we're not doing anything else today we're naming this poor child.
Sunday came and Hector left that morning through a dense blanket of fog that draped the land. The day was still damp and cold, so Lola opted to stay around the house again. Sure, she went out into the shed to practice with her knife and hand-to-hand. She would be spending more time practicing with the bow and arrow, but there wasn't enough room in the shed for that. She'd wait until the weather dried some more. She was decent enough that she managed to kill a small buck the previous week and drag it back home to drain and clean and butcher. There was now a good amount of roughly but effectively cut meat in the deep freeze in the shed.
It was now about mid-day and Lola was standing in the living area, fists on her hips, looking at the twin walls of pictures that carried faces of generations within them. It was tradition to maintain the wall-- something her mother took particular pleasure in, and something she figured Maria would be more responsible for than herself. She was contemplating the fact that there were no pictures of her and Hector up there when her otherwise quiet day was interrupted.
Sweet Caroline
Everyone at Forgotten Questions knows by now that the only living daughter of Knows the Whispering Ones and Javier Tirado still lives in the Homestead at the edge of the Bawn. That she'd just as soon put buckshot in your shin as invite you in for tea. That if she hasn't gotten more violent since her pregnancy became public knowledge she at least hasn't gotten any less violent.
She's also recognized for her battle prowess and her bravery in combat. Probably because her mate made the mistake of telling a story about her at the moot when he was supposed to be acting as Talesinger. For belonging to the Uktena Hector has made it difficult for Lola to maintain much in the way of privacy.
Nobody said loving a Galliard was easy. Neither is being Kinfolk. Or part of the Nation.
Anyway: a knock. That's how these things always start. A knock on the door and a cloaked figure stood on the porch in the midst of the frozen rain. A tall slender freckle-faced Ragabash. Her skin tells of mixed-race parents and her eyes are bright and mischievous.
It isn't a laughing matter that's brought her to the Hawkes family's door this afternoon but she always looks as if she's about to laugh. She can't help it.
Lola Hawkes
The knock on the door came as a surprise, but did not cause Lola to startle or worry immediately. Her property was far displaced from the rest of society. She didn't get salespeople coming to her door, and she wasn't an easy target for crime. The only people who really knew she was out here were the Sept and the DWR, but most of them were Kinfolk anyways.
This close to the Bawn, it was unlikely that a Wyrm agent would brave to step out here either. So, really, aside from a ruffling of feathers at the concept of somebody coming to her territory unsummoned, Lola wasn't storming the door with negativity. She didn't bother to peek to see who it was, either-- simply pulled the door open inside and looked to see who stood on her porch through the screen door.
"Sweet Caroline," Lola announced, immediately recognizing the face for how long she's known it and how unique it is. She's known the Ragabash long enough to know to say the whole name to avoid a tail-circling conversation about its relevancy or authenticity to her persona. Sweet Caroline used to pal with Maria a little, but was better friends with Ivan (age difference and all).
Lola didn't push the door to invite the woman in, not just yet at least. She stood in a pair of slippers, dressed in leggings and a figure-fitting T-shirt with gray and white horizontal stripes. Over that, left open, was a comfortable gray cardigan. The world knew of her pregnancy by now, and she was big enough that it was a hinderance to actively try to cover up any longer anyways, so Lola was no longer shy to detracting attention from her stomach. She stood with one hand on a hip and the other hand braced in the doorway. Her hair was in a ponytail gone a bit loose for lack of care.
"What can I do for ya?"
She'd see how long this conversation would take before inviting the wet Ragabash into her home.
Sweet Caroline
Though the Ragabash looks pretty cold she is also just about humming with anticipation and excitement and oh my god look at her little baby bump she's getting so big it's like a goddamned hand magnet but everybody's already heard about Hector beating the shit out of Milton because of how that intel-gathering mission went last October she isn't going to be the one to test and see if that shit-beating extends to people touching Lola's stomach.
Besides. The screen door's in the way. Lola isn't stepping out yet. Sweet Caroline beams at her anyway and wrestles one arm out of its knapsack strap. Whatever she's carrying with her has to be sodden by now.
"Hey, Miss Hawkes," she says. "I'm real sorry to bother you, but this isn't something I can take to the Sept, you know? Everybody's even more stick-up-the-ass about utilization of resources and oh we can't spare the bodies than usual but this is important. You got a minute?"
Lola Hawkes
For the fact that Lola suffered a severe lack of social skills, she seemed to be genuine enough a personality that she managed to forge alliances despite it. Typically, it had to be with people who were patient enough to forgive her tempers, or charmed enough by them not to care. Sweet Caroline had always regarded Lola with a distant air of fascination. She'd made a point of being careful with Lola's ego time and time again, particularly when she'd been hanging around with Ivan on a more electric and intimate basis and the Ragabash and Kinfolk were seeing more of each other. Lola appreciated that the woman made a point to be nice, so she regarded the freckle-faced New Moon to be simply 'my older sister's nice friend'.
When asked if she had a minute, Lola did not hesitate to push open the storm door and step back to allow Sweet Caroline inside. She'd gesture to the hooks on the wall for coats to be hung on, and retreat into the kitchen. Body language invited the Ragabash to sit where she liked, but if she wanted a conversation that would probably be at the kitchen counter.
While Lola busied herself with putting hot water on the stove (because the cold and the wet combined were far worse than any dry cold, Lola knew on a basic survivor level), she asked:
"Well alright. You've got my attention." The way her eyes had lighted when Sweet Caroline explained herself were evidence enough-- she did have the Kinfolk's attention. "What's going on?"
Sweet Caroline
The door opens and Sweet Caroline about melts with the stoic act of kindness.
"Oh my god, thank you so much. It's freezing out here."
Once inside the Ragabash doesn't peel out of her boots but she does drop her knapsack to the floor and start undoing the buttons on her overcoat. She knocks back the hood. There was a time when the young woman would keep her kinky orange-red hair tied underneath a handkerchief but she doesn't make the effort unless she knows she has to interact with people who are primed to form a first impression about her. Lola already knows who she is. Her hair springs out from underneath the hood and she does nothing to try and contain it.
"You're probably going to laugh, but I'm still worried. It's my grandparents. You know they live in the area." A beat as she turns around. "Sort of. They're pretty far out in the sticks. I asked my buddy Redbone, you know Redbone, since he was coming back from Wyoming anyway if he wouldn't mind dropping in on my grandparents, I hadn't heard from them in a while--"
She drops into a crouch and starts to rifle through her knapsack.
"He came back with this... shoot, where is it..."
Lola Hawkes
"Don't mention it," is Lola's similarly stoic dismissal of the thanks. Lola was a territorial creature. Around the Sept it was common knowledge that you risked being shot if you crept up on her property the wrong way. She protected the Bawn and her lands with a fire in her breast and her weapon as well. But along with being territorial, this made her proud of her land and her home within it. That made it a point for Lola to offer hospitality. She might not have snacks and meals at the ready, but she would offer hot drink to cold travelers who came through. She carried the heavy duty thermos of grog when patroling for a reason.
While the Ragabash crouched and told her story and searched for something to show, Lola was getting down two mugs and a pair of green mint tea packets. Up until the point that it was made evident there was tangible evidence to share with this story Lola hadn't paid the Ragabash much mind on a visual level. She knew the woman would respect her property, so she busied herself readying things for easy tea pouring.
When the rifling about began, though, Lola's interest was snagged and she looked back over to the mop of vibrantly red hair and the bag it hovered over. Her hands went into the pockets of her cardigan, for comfort's sake, and she wandered closer to see.
"...Were your grandparents not there?"
Sweet Caroline
"They weren't."
Sweet Caroline finds what she was looking for and yanks it free with a plastic-crinkling flourish. She crosses the distance between them. She has to in order to hand Lola the plastic freezer bag responsible for keeping a postmarked piece of correspondence dry. Envelopes are not waterproof. Everyone knows that.
"Have you ever met my grandparents? I love 'em, but holy moly, they're--"
She's about to describe people who belong to the same social stratosphere as her host. She cuts herself off before she can say anything inflammatory in the woman's house.
"--theeeey get cabin fever real easy. When they were younger they were always going someplace and having some kind of wild-ass adventure, you know, fighting Pentex and all that good stuff, and that was totally great and all, but Ma was hoping they'd settle down once they started having to take calcium supplements. Right before she died she said to me, she was like, 'Now, Carrie, you keep an eye on your grandparents, you know they don't want to settle down' and I was like 'Okay Ma' and then, you know."
Sweet Caroline's mother died of brain cancer not too long ago. The stories make it sound like that's why she left New York where she was born. Her mother was from Colorado. A few people knew who her mother was when she arrived not too long ago but those people have dwindled even more with the ages. Her grandparents are about the only Kin she has left.
"Anyway Redbone said he found this on the kitchen table. You can read it. I was hoping you could do me a solid and look into it. I'm sure they'll be back pretty soon. It's probably not that big of a deal. It's just... argh, you know? Just stay home and be old!"
Lola Hawkes
The wet freezer bag was caught with a snatching motion, snagged from the air like a slow cobra strike. Lola was fast and capable, but not impressively fast. Not like Hector was. Where Lola could take a hit and break someone's fist on her jaw without blinking, Hector in turn could land the first hit almost every time. They were impressive in their own different ways.
Anyways. Lola nodded along with the story, either not noticing or neverminding the tip-toe around potentially touchy topics of conversation, and opened the bag to find the envelope inside.
She had started walking back into the kitchen, and abandoned the freezer bag on one corner of the counter. The teapot-- a modest little copper bottomed thing that was dinged up but reliable-- wasn't whistling just yet, but steam was beginning to pour from the spout. It'd be ready to pour soon, and she was hovering nearby in anticipation.
In the meantime, she didn't answer anything that Sweet Caroline had said. Not verbally, anyways. She just flicked her eyes over to the Ragabash, made a moment of eye contact to confirm that yes, she was still paying attention and had heard what she'd said, before she turned her eyes down to the paper within the envelope.
Sweet Caroline
If the Ragabash continues rambling on while Lola is reading the contents of the envelope she has learned by now to tune out pointless conversation. She has already admitted to knowing little about her grandparents' fate and asking for help in showing up at the Homestead unannounced. But Sweet Caroline does not ramble on while Lola reads. She just stands on the threshold between the great room and the kitchen.
This is her first time inside the cabin since Hornet's Nest passed. She and the Uktena trickster were not exactly best friends forever but Maria never was shy about inviting the townies over when they were having a bonfire. The more the merrier.
The outside of the envelope was postmarked 19 January 2014 in Maybell, Colorado, and addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Seamus Lane. The stationary on the inside is adorned with flowers and written in spidery uncertain handwriting.
Dearest Jim and Agnes,
I hope this letter finds you well. I'm terribly sorry to have heard of Honora's passing. Were not for the circumstances of her death I would never even think of asking you two to come out of retirement, so to speak, but I believe this matter is one that we can use your expertise in resolving.
The nature of the problem is sensitive, as you can imagine, and I am reluctant to disclose too many details through the human post. My phone number has not changed, nor has my address.
May Gaia bless you and keep you.
Sincerely,
And she will find deciphering the signature difficult. The return address belongs to a P.D. Killough of Maybell, Colorado. So maybe it's a Peter, or a Patty.
"Do you think you can help?" asks Sweet Caroline. Her expression is dubious and contrite and anxious at once.
Lola Hawkes
Whatever the Fianna Ragabash might have been saying, Lola didn't hear it. She wasn't the kind of person that was able to split her attention between what she was reading and what she was hearing while retaining information from and following the threads of thought of both mediums. So she held the letter with her left hand while taking the now-whistling kettle from the burner and pouring it over the teabags in both mugs. The mugs themselves mismatched and borderline eccentric: one a vivid orange and crafted from baked clay, the other black with turquoise designs on the inside.
When she finished reading, the letter was tucked back into the envelope, the envelope abandoned near the bag it had been transported in. She offered the black-and-turquoise mug to the woman, kept the orange to herself, and allowed time for the tea to steep.
In the meantime, she considered the return address written on the envelope and had to think to remember where Maybell is.
"Isn't that out near White turf?"
Sweet Caroline
The Ragabash accepts the mug with a murmur of gratitude but does not immediately start to quaff it down. Steam still rises from the surface of the steeping tea. It warms her cold-reddened hands while Lola thinks.
"What, the ranch?" she asks. Like there are so many Whites floating around that a Garou of Caroline's lineage ought to have to worry about. "I thought they were in Fort Collins. My grandparents and them are practically neighbors. Maybell... I don't know where that is."
When someone gets around to checking a map they will see that Fort Collins is about fifty miles north of Denver and Maybell is more than two hundred miles west.
Lola Hawkes
To be fair, Lola was the kind of person who stuck to her turf. She knew Roxborough like the back of her hand, but her concept of the world on a geography stand-point only went so far. She was a smart woman, but her attention in school was selective at best, let's remember that. She thought she was going to grow up to murder bad guys.
In a way, she still kind of did. She was happy with it.
So Sweet Caroline explained that Lola was confused, and the would-have-been Ahroun accepted the correction with a single-shouldered shrug and a nod of acceptance and moved on from there. She plucked up the tea bag's tag between her fingers, with nails cut short and clean, and dunked the bag a couple of times to mix the contents up.
"Yeah, I'll check it out. I've got nothing else going on today, anyways."
Sweet Caroline
"Oh my gosh. Thank you so much."
Between the effusiveness of her tone and the lifting of a weight from the young woman's shoulders Lola can almost expect she's about to rush around the island to throw her arms around her. But Sweet Caroline does not violate her personal space like that. Friends with her sister or not she doesn't know Lola all that well.
Lola can hear it in her tone though. The rush of relief that comes into the Ragabash's voice is nearly enough to have her staggering.
"They used to do things like this all the time. Cinder-Song had to have heard some stories. She's packed with Echoes of the Lost, isn't she? Yeah, stories, man. Back before they had my mom and my aunt they were like, Fomori-killing machines. You should see their gun room. Yeah. My granddad's got a room that's pretty much just all guns. They're locked up and everything, but..."
Sweet Caroline clears her throat and mimics Lola's dunk-dunk-dunking of the bag.
"If this is the buddy of Granddad's who I think it is, the dude's got a few screws loose. It could be nothing. Or he could've found something and now they're off trying to deal with it themselves and somebody broke a hip or something. I don't know. It's just a real far drive and we all pretty much suck at talking to people, you know? Even Kinfolk. So. Yeah. I really appreciate it, Miss Hawkes. I owe you a big ole favor."
Lola Hawkes
For a second there, just a brief flash of time, Lola braced herself as though she sincerely thought the Ragabash was going to come throw arms around her. She didn't look like she would have fought her off, hands didn't curl into fists or anything, but she did ground herself on the floor just a little heavier and square her shoulders up some. When no such approach happened the Kinswoman relaxed and left her tea alone, settling for simply warming her fingers on the sides of her mug.
"Well, when I'm an old bitch pulling stupid stunts like that, I'd probably appreciate someone looking out for me too. Whether I said so or not."
Her eyes flickered toward the clock that hung on the wall over the dining room table. It was thirty minutes past the noon hour. She could get there by early evening if she left promptly. She looked down at her mug, then nodded her head to indicate that the Ragabash should take a seat.
"I've gotta go change before I leave. You sit, though. We'll stick around long enough to at least drink this fuckin' tea since I made it and everything."
And, with that, Lola would retreat back into the hallway and to her bedroom to do as she had said.
The weekend has been a damp one, and that's made Lola stay around the house rather than go out on patrols. It was a cold damp, the kind that sank into your bones and whispered promises of bronchitis and pneumonia into your lungs. Though Lola had never been sick from damp before and doubted that this would be the time to start, she still heeded Hector's request and stayed around the house.
Saturday had been a good day, one of spending time together and recharging. Hector had produced a pair of bright hex nuts and declared them rings. They dusted off a flamenco guitar album that Lola recommended because her dad would listen to it often and she liked the sounds and sat about near the furnace with baby books because God damnit if we're not doing anything else today we're naming this poor child.
Sunday came and Hector left that morning through a dense blanket of fog that draped the land. The day was still damp and cold, so Lola opted to stay around the house again. Sure, she went out into the shed to practice with her knife and hand-to-hand. She would be spending more time practicing with the bow and arrow, but there wasn't enough room in the shed for that. She'd wait until the weather dried some more. She was decent enough that she managed to kill a small buck the previous week and drag it back home to drain and clean and butcher. There was now a good amount of roughly but effectively cut meat in the deep freeze in the shed.
It was now about mid-day and Lola was standing in the living area, fists on her hips, looking at the twin walls of pictures that carried faces of generations within them. It was tradition to maintain the wall-- something her mother took particular pleasure in, and something she figured Maria would be more responsible for than herself. She was contemplating the fact that there were no pictures of her and Hector up there when her otherwise quiet day was interrupted.
Sweet Caroline
Everyone at Forgotten Questions knows by now that the only living daughter of Knows the Whispering Ones and Javier Tirado still lives in the Homestead at the edge of the Bawn. That she'd just as soon put buckshot in your shin as invite you in for tea. That if she hasn't gotten more violent since her pregnancy became public knowledge she at least hasn't gotten any less violent.
She's also recognized for her battle prowess and her bravery in combat. Probably because her mate made the mistake of telling a story about her at the moot when he was supposed to be acting as Talesinger. For belonging to the Uktena Hector has made it difficult for Lola to maintain much in the way of privacy.
Nobody said loving a Galliard was easy. Neither is being Kinfolk. Or part of the Nation.
Anyway: a knock. That's how these things always start. A knock on the door and a cloaked figure stood on the porch in the midst of the frozen rain. A tall slender freckle-faced Ragabash. Her skin tells of mixed-race parents and her eyes are bright and mischievous.
It isn't a laughing matter that's brought her to the Hawkes family's door this afternoon but she always looks as if she's about to laugh. She can't help it.
Lola Hawkes
The knock on the door came as a surprise, but did not cause Lola to startle or worry immediately. Her property was far displaced from the rest of society. She didn't get salespeople coming to her door, and she wasn't an easy target for crime. The only people who really knew she was out here were the Sept and the DWR, but most of them were Kinfolk anyways.
This close to the Bawn, it was unlikely that a Wyrm agent would brave to step out here either. So, really, aside from a ruffling of feathers at the concept of somebody coming to her territory unsummoned, Lola wasn't storming the door with negativity. She didn't bother to peek to see who it was, either-- simply pulled the door open inside and looked to see who stood on her porch through the screen door.
"Sweet Caroline," Lola announced, immediately recognizing the face for how long she's known it and how unique it is. She's known the Ragabash long enough to know to say the whole name to avoid a tail-circling conversation about its relevancy or authenticity to her persona. Sweet Caroline used to pal with Maria a little, but was better friends with Ivan (age difference and all).
Lola didn't push the door to invite the woman in, not just yet at least. She stood in a pair of slippers, dressed in leggings and a figure-fitting T-shirt with gray and white horizontal stripes. Over that, left open, was a comfortable gray cardigan. The world knew of her pregnancy by now, and she was big enough that it was a hinderance to actively try to cover up any longer anyways, so Lola was no longer shy to detracting attention from her stomach. She stood with one hand on a hip and the other hand braced in the doorway. Her hair was in a ponytail gone a bit loose for lack of care.
"What can I do for ya?"
She'd see how long this conversation would take before inviting the wet Ragabash into her home.
Sweet Caroline
Though the Ragabash looks pretty cold she is also just about humming with anticipation and excitement and oh my god look at her little baby bump she's getting so big it's like a goddamned hand magnet but everybody's already heard about Hector beating the shit out of Milton because of how that intel-gathering mission went last October she isn't going to be the one to test and see if that shit-beating extends to people touching Lola's stomach.
Besides. The screen door's in the way. Lola isn't stepping out yet. Sweet Caroline beams at her anyway and wrestles one arm out of its knapsack strap. Whatever she's carrying with her has to be sodden by now.
"Hey, Miss Hawkes," she says. "I'm real sorry to bother you, but this isn't something I can take to the Sept, you know? Everybody's even more stick-up-the-ass about utilization of resources and oh we can't spare the bodies than usual but this is important. You got a minute?"
Lola Hawkes
For the fact that Lola suffered a severe lack of social skills, she seemed to be genuine enough a personality that she managed to forge alliances despite it. Typically, it had to be with people who were patient enough to forgive her tempers, or charmed enough by them not to care. Sweet Caroline had always regarded Lola with a distant air of fascination. She'd made a point of being careful with Lola's ego time and time again, particularly when she'd been hanging around with Ivan on a more electric and intimate basis and the Ragabash and Kinfolk were seeing more of each other. Lola appreciated that the woman made a point to be nice, so she regarded the freckle-faced New Moon to be simply 'my older sister's nice friend'.
When asked if she had a minute, Lola did not hesitate to push open the storm door and step back to allow Sweet Caroline inside. She'd gesture to the hooks on the wall for coats to be hung on, and retreat into the kitchen. Body language invited the Ragabash to sit where she liked, but if she wanted a conversation that would probably be at the kitchen counter.
While Lola busied herself with putting hot water on the stove (because the cold and the wet combined were far worse than any dry cold, Lola knew on a basic survivor level), she asked:
"Well alright. You've got my attention." The way her eyes had lighted when Sweet Caroline explained herself were evidence enough-- she did have the Kinfolk's attention. "What's going on?"
Sweet Caroline
The door opens and Sweet Caroline about melts with the stoic act of kindness.
"Oh my god, thank you so much. It's freezing out here."
Once inside the Ragabash doesn't peel out of her boots but she does drop her knapsack to the floor and start undoing the buttons on her overcoat. She knocks back the hood. There was a time when the young woman would keep her kinky orange-red hair tied underneath a handkerchief but she doesn't make the effort unless she knows she has to interact with people who are primed to form a first impression about her. Lola already knows who she is. Her hair springs out from underneath the hood and she does nothing to try and contain it.
"You're probably going to laugh, but I'm still worried. It's my grandparents. You know they live in the area." A beat as she turns around. "Sort of. They're pretty far out in the sticks. I asked my buddy Redbone, you know Redbone, since he was coming back from Wyoming anyway if he wouldn't mind dropping in on my grandparents, I hadn't heard from them in a while--"
She drops into a crouch and starts to rifle through her knapsack.
"He came back with this... shoot, where is it..."
Lola Hawkes
"Don't mention it," is Lola's similarly stoic dismissal of the thanks. Lola was a territorial creature. Around the Sept it was common knowledge that you risked being shot if you crept up on her property the wrong way. She protected the Bawn and her lands with a fire in her breast and her weapon as well. But along with being territorial, this made her proud of her land and her home within it. That made it a point for Lola to offer hospitality. She might not have snacks and meals at the ready, but she would offer hot drink to cold travelers who came through. She carried the heavy duty thermos of grog when patroling for a reason.
While the Ragabash crouched and told her story and searched for something to show, Lola was getting down two mugs and a pair of green mint tea packets. Up until the point that it was made evident there was tangible evidence to share with this story Lola hadn't paid the Ragabash much mind on a visual level. She knew the woman would respect her property, so she busied herself readying things for easy tea pouring.
When the rifling about began, though, Lola's interest was snagged and she looked back over to the mop of vibrantly red hair and the bag it hovered over. Her hands went into the pockets of her cardigan, for comfort's sake, and she wandered closer to see.
"...Were your grandparents not there?"
Sweet Caroline
"They weren't."
Sweet Caroline finds what she was looking for and yanks it free with a plastic-crinkling flourish. She crosses the distance between them. She has to in order to hand Lola the plastic freezer bag responsible for keeping a postmarked piece of correspondence dry. Envelopes are not waterproof. Everyone knows that.
"Have you ever met my grandparents? I love 'em, but holy moly, they're--"
She's about to describe people who belong to the same social stratosphere as her host. She cuts herself off before she can say anything inflammatory in the woman's house.
"--theeeey get cabin fever real easy. When they were younger they were always going someplace and having some kind of wild-ass adventure, you know, fighting Pentex and all that good stuff, and that was totally great and all, but Ma was hoping they'd settle down once they started having to take calcium supplements. Right before she died she said to me, she was like, 'Now, Carrie, you keep an eye on your grandparents, you know they don't want to settle down' and I was like 'Okay Ma' and then, you know."
Sweet Caroline's mother died of brain cancer not too long ago. The stories make it sound like that's why she left New York where she was born. Her mother was from Colorado. A few people knew who her mother was when she arrived not too long ago but those people have dwindled even more with the ages. Her grandparents are about the only Kin she has left.
"Anyway Redbone said he found this on the kitchen table. You can read it. I was hoping you could do me a solid and look into it. I'm sure they'll be back pretty soon. It's probably not that big of a deal. It's just... argh, you know? Just stay home and be old!"
Lola Hawkes
The wet freezer bag was caught with a snatching motion, snagged from the air like a slow cobra strike. Lola was fast and capable, but not impressively fast. Not like Hector was. Where Lola could take a hit and break someone's fist on her jaw without blinking, Hector in turn could land the first hit almost every time. They were impressive in their own different ways.
Anyways. Lola nodded along with the story, either not noticing or neverminding the tip-toe around potentially touchy topics of conversation, and opened the bag to find the envelope inside.
She had started walking back into the kitchen, and abandoned the freezer bag on one corner of the counter. The teapot-- a modest little copper bottomed thing that was dinged up but reliable-- wasn't whistling just yet, but steam was beginning to pour from the spout. It'd be ready to pour soon, and she was hovering nearby in anticipation.
In the meantime, she didn't answer anything that Sweet Caroline had said. Not verbally, anyways. She just flicked her eyes over to the Ragabash, made a moment of eye contact to confirm that yes, she was still paying attention and had heard what she'd said, before she turned her eyes down to the paper within the envelope.
Sweet Caroline
If the Ragabash continues rambling on while Lola is reading the contents of the envelope she has learned by now to tune out pointless conversation. She has already admitted to knowing little about her grandparents' fate and asking for help in showing up at the Homestead unannounced. But Sweet Caroline does not ramble on while Lola reads. She just stands on the threshold between the great room and the kitchen.
This is her first time inside the cabin since Hornet's Nest passed. She and the Uktena trickster were not exactly best friends forever but Maria never was shy about inviting the townies over when they were having a bonfire. The more the merrier.
The outside of the envelope was postmarked 19 January 2014 in Maybell, Colorado, and addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Seamus Lane. The stationary on the inside is adorned with flowers and written in spidery uncertain handwriting.
Dearest Jim and Agnes,
I hope this letter finds you well. I'm terribly sorry to have heard of Honora's passing. Were not for the circumstances of her death I would never even think of asking you two to come out of retirement, so to speak, but I believe this matter is one that we can use your expertise in resolving.
The nature of the problem is sensitive, as you can imagine, and I am reluctant to disclose too many details through the human post. My phone number has not changed, nor has my address.
May Gaia bless you and keep you.
Sincerely,
And she will find deciphering the signature difficult. The return address belongs to a P.D. Killough of Maybell, Colorado. So maybe it's a Peter, or a Patty.
"Do you think you can help?" asks Sweet Caroline. Her expression is dubious and contrite and anxious at once.
Lola Hawkes
Whatever the Fianna Ragabash might have been saying, Lola didn't hear it. She wasn't the kind of person that was able to split her attention between what she was reading and what she was hearing while retaining information from and following the threads of thought of both mediums. So she held the letter with her left hand while taking the now-whistling kettle from the burner and pouring it over the teabags in both mugs. The mugs themselves mismatched and borderline eccentric: one a vivid orange and crafted from baked clay, the other black with turquoise designs on the inside.
When she finished reading, the letter was tucked back into the envelope, the envelope abandoned near the bag it had been transported in. She offered the black-and-turquoise mug to the woman, kept the orange to herself, and allowed time for the tea to steep.
In the meantime, she considered the return address written on the envelope and had to think to remember where Maybell is.
"Isn't that out near White turf?"
Sweet Caroline
The Ragabash accepts the mug with a murmur of gratitude but does not immediately start to quaff it down. Steam still rises from the surface of the steeping tea. It warms her cold-reddened hands while Lola thinks.
"What, the ranch?" she asks. Like there are so many Whites floating around that a Garou of Caroline's lineage ought to have to worry about. "I thought they were in Fort Collins. My grandparents and them are practically neighbors. Maybell... I don't know where that is."
When someone gets around to checking a map they will see that Fort Collins is about fifty miles north of Denver and Maybell is more than two hundred miles west.
Lola Hawkes
To be fair, Lola was the kind of person who stuck to her turf. She knew Roxborough like the back of her hand, but her concept of the world on a geography stand-point only went so far. She was a smart woman, but her attention in school was selective at best, let's remember that. She thought she was going to grow up to murder bad guys.
In a way, she still kind of did. She was happy with it.
So Sweet Caroline explained that Lola was confused, and the would-have-been Ahroun accepted the correction with a single-shouldered shrug and a nod of acceptance and moved on from there. She plucked up the tea bag's tag between her fingers, with nails cut short and clean, and dunked the bag a couple of times to mix the contents up.
"Yeah, I'll check it out. I've got nothing else going on today, anyways."
Sweet Caroline
"Oh my gosh. Thank you so much."
Between the effusiveness of her tone and the lifting of a weight from the young woman's shoulders Lola can almost expect she's about to rush around the island to throw her arms around her. But Sweet Caroline does not violate her personal space like that. Friends with her sister or not she doesn't know Lola all that well.
Lola can hear it in her tone though. The rush of relief that comes into the Ragabash's voice is nearly enough to have her staggering.
"They used to do things like this all the time. Cinder-Song had to have heard some stories. She's packed with Echoes of the Lost, isn't she? Yeah, stories, man. Back before they had my mom and my aunt they were like, Fomori-killing machines. You should see their gun room. Yeah. My granddad's got a room that's pretty much just all guns. They're locked up and everything, but..."
Sweet Caroline clears her throat and mimics Lola's dunk-dunk-dunking of the bag.
"If this is the buddy of Granddad's who I think it is, the dude's got a few screws loose. It could be nothing. Or he could've found something and now they're off trying to deal with it themselves and somebody broke a hip or something. I don't know. It's just a real far drive and we all pretty much suck at talking to people, you know? Even Kinfolk. So. Yeah. I really appreciate it, Miss Hawkes. I owe you a big ole favor."
Lola Hawkes
For a second there, just a brief flash of time, Lola braced herself as though she sincerely thought the Ragabash was going to come throw arms around her. She didn't look like she would have fought her off, hands didn't curl into fists or anything, but she did ground herself on the floor just a little heavier and square her shoulders up some. When no such approach happened the Kinswoman relaxed and left her tea alone, settling for simply warming her fingers on the sides of her mug.
"Well, when I'm an old bitch pulling stupid stunts like that, I'd probably appreciate someone looking out for me too. Whether I said so or not."
Her eyes flickered toward the clock that hung on the wall over the dining room table. It was thirty minutes past the noon hour. She could get there by early evening if she left promptly. She looked down at her mug, then nodded her head to indicate that the Ragabash should take a seat.
"I've gotta go change before I leave. You sit, though. We'll stick around long enough to at least drink this fuckin' tea since I made it and everything."
And, with that, Lola would retreat back into the hallway and to her bedroom to do as she had said.
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Quick Hot Burn of Anger - 1.27.2014 [Calden]
Lola Hawkes
Mondays are probably pretty uneventful out in the rural region north of Denver, Colorado. Anybody who lived out that far was either working their lands or gone into town to work their day jobs. The weather was cold as winter snapped itself back below freezing, and the skies above were gray. Most people who weren't out working were staying home and keeping warm and waiting for the snow to come and liven up the landscape later that evening.
Calden must have been out on business or something. Perhaps visiting a business prospect or acquaintance, or lending his services to a neighboring farm that his family had good history with. Who knows? All the same, he would find himself winding his way along a narrow, rural two-lane road that was lucky to be paved, making his way back out to a main highway to take himself back home. It wasn't too far from his ranch, perhaps twenty miles if even that.
Out here there are trees that line the road. They aren't especially tall in most places, and scrub lined the floor between the trees, poking out through the snow. They're still dense and clustered enough to throw some shadow across the road. Not a deep one, but the fact that the sun wasn't out and the skies were gray and wanting to go slate with the coming snow made it dim lighting to begin with. The roads ran the small risk of ice, due to the snap in cold, but Calden's truck was well equipped to handle conditions much worse than this could dream of being.
Goodness knows what that man kept himself entertained with while in his truck, be it radio or book on tape or simple silence.
Whatever it was, it was interrupted by a god damned arrow flying across his windshield, from driver's side to passenger's. The feathered tail of the arrow cuffed on the passenger side frame of the truck and went twirling haphazardly into the trees.
Calden White
An arrow.
Just smacked his truck on the A-bar.
And went spinning into the trees.
Now if Calden hadn't noticed the feathered tail, he might've just assumed a pebble had smacked his truck, cursed road hazards quietly, and driven on. But he does notice. And so he does curse, but quite a bit more loudly, and certainly not at road hazards. Maybe at goddamn kids! And then he hits the brakes.
About thirty yards down the road the truck comes to a hard stop. The driver's side door opens. Calden shoulders out, jamming his hat on his head with one hand, grabbing his rifle off its roof rack with the other. Which he promptly lays over the side of the bed, taking cover behind the truck cab.
"Now, I assume you're either a blind bowhunter," he bellows at the treeline, "or an idiot kid raising hell. Which is it?"
Lola Hawkes
The truck skidded tires on crumbling paved road and came to a stop a couple dozen yards away from where the arrow had cut its way across the road. Either side of the road was dense with trees, but the lack of leaves and the deeper shadows and cover they created meant that Calden wouldn't have too difficult a time spotting someone if they were trying to hide. He got out of his truck, grabbed his rifle, and took cover behind his vehicle. He was prepared for anything-- including another arrow, bullets, and since he was a Kinfolk probably even monsters too.
He bellowed out into the trees, but didn't get a shouted answer immediately, not just yet anyways.
Instead, he sees movement behind skeletal bushes and passing through layered tree trunks. Then comes the crunch-crunch of boots on snow and fallen twigs and branches. Whoever it was, they weren't trying to keep quiet anymore-- the sound of a truck screeching to a stop and the shouting that Calden did would have spoiled whatever quiet they were previously trying to achieve anyways, and apparently the weren't trying to hide their existence from the person whose truck the arrow had clipped.
Rather than finding a blind person or an 'idiot kid' (although that was probably highly debatable), Calden would see a woman with her head down, watching her feet, making her way down the sloped hillside to the driver's side of the truck, walking toward the road. She was 30 yards back, where the arrow had come from, and appeared to be dressed not in standard American attire but rather wearing a winter cloak-- no arm holes or sleeves, and it swept too close to the ground to be considered a poncho. It looked like it should be an inconvenience, but she moved without being much hindered anyways.
He'll recognize that it's Lola Hawkes only once she reaches the gravel of the road's shoulder and lifts her head to peer up the road at the truck. The distance is too far to see the details, but she wrinkled her nose in distaste before lifting her bow (no arrow in hand, they're all in a quiver at her hip) and pointing out toward the trees on the other side of the road. If Calden glanced quickly, he'd spy a deer fleeing across a field that's on the other side of the trees there.
It's her voice that gives her away. She doesn't recognize him just yet, having never heard him yell she didn't know his voice right off the bat.
"More like a hunter that had a clear shot 'till your fuckin' truck was the first in an hour to make its way down this road." There's a pause, and then a follow up that sounds more indignant than before: "Is that a fuckin' gun? You gonna shoot?"
Calden White
Oh of course it was Lola. Who else would be mad enough to fire an arrow across a road? Immediate anger -- not the diffuse, undirected damned kids sort but a focal sort -- flares through Calden. She dares him to shoot.
He immediately fires a single round into the air. The gun's report cracks sharp as ice through the winter air.
Then Calden throws the safety on, shoulders the rifle, and steps around his truck. "I know you're young, Lola, but damned if you aren't the worst sort of young sometimes. You're reckless, you never admit a mistake, and you just do not give a damn about anyone who isn't in your little circle.
"Who the hell hunts across an open road? What if a kid on a motorcycle came by instead of me? You could have laid someone out on the asphalt with an arrow through the neck."
Lola Hawkes
With the crack of the gunshot firing through the air, Lola's entire body tensed and bucked much like the deer that she'd been aiming to kill when she clipped the Silverado. Shoulders hunched up, knees bent and leg muscles bunched like she would have to run. The bow was brought forward, but it wasn't as quick to aim and fire as a gun was. She didn't have the reflexes for a bow and arrow built into her like she did for a gun, so she didn't reflexively reach for her arrows at her hip to defend herself either. She just startled, stood lower and steadier to the ground like she would be ready to run if need be.
Before she had the opportunity to really make a decision where to run or how to react, the rifle was shouldered and the man was coming around from around the truck. He called her by her name, and she looked more carefully now that she had a better view of the man, no longer blocked by much of his truck.
"Fuckin' Calden," she announced, more to herself than to him, and straightened up once more. Her teeth were clenched and bared a little in front, and with her hand grasping her bow too tightly around its middle she walked toward the truck. In the middle of the road, too, like she was making a statement about how little it was used by vehicles.
As she walked, she barked back with the same sort of fire and indignant anger as he felt flare up within him.
"There ain't no goddamn kids on motorcycles out here, it's the fucking sticks. That hill--" she gestured fiercely with the bow, pointing to the side of the road she'd been shooting from-- "gives good vantage of that sweet spot." And she gestured just as harshly to the other side of the road, where the trees thinned a little more and apparently, if you were to believe Lola, deer liked to be.
She didn't try to get into the older man's face (yet), and instead stopped to stand a few feet from the back of his truck, feet finding the gravel on the shoulder of the road again. She had a knit cap on her head to keep her head and ears warm, but the broader hat that kept sun out of her eyes and off her face was pushed back to rest on the backs of her shoulders, supported by the attached twine that stretched across her collarbone. Her eyes flashed, her cheeks were red (probably from the cold more than anger, though), and she looked at him as though he was the instigator in this whole thing.
"What the fuck was that last bit, White? 'Bout not giving a damn? What the hell kind of mud are you slinging, huh?"
Calden White
Calden gives a short, angry shake of his head. He yanks the driver-side door of the truck open, slams the rifle back into its roof rack.
"Do I have to repeat myself? There's no hidden meaning here, Lola. You are literally firing across a public road without giving a single damn about who might come rolling down that road. When I call you on it, you fall back on stereotypes and assumptions.
"What, you've never seen a kid on a dirt bike out here? You've never seen a farmer on a tractor using the roads to get around the snow? That's a hell of a thing to bet innocent lives on. What exactly were you going to do if you hit someone -- yell at them for using a public road?"
Lola Hawkes
The way the grown woman scowled at him, it had her looking for a moment like a petulant teenager. Her nose was turned up, and acknowledgement that she'd fucked up flashed clearly in her eyes before they had clouded up with anger once more. Calden slammed doors and guns and gun racks while lecturing her, and Lola simply frowned almost defiantly.
Almost. Soon the young 'fuck you dad' air had faded and been replaced with something that was more of a slow burning anger. Violence trained and written into bones for years upon years that had been left with no outlet mid-pubescence. If Calden had friends who hung out in bars and liked to tell stories, he may have heard by now about a fight that broke out in Castle Rock, where some Mexican chick threw some girl to the ground by flipping her chair. How the criminal playing guitar that night had dragged her out of there in a fury like he was going to beat her raw for it later. How they ripped off up the road in a car and no one got the plates but thankfully no one really got hurt. If Lola still thought she could get into fights with everyday people, she clearly hasn't completely transitioned that part of herself from Wolf to Kin just yet.
All the same, she just scowled hard and heavy and retracted her arms back under her cloak, for the sake of warmth-- to reach out from under the cloak meant to open it up in the front, revealing an outfit consisting of jeans and three layers of shirts stretched over her stomach and chest both. When she wasn't gesticulating actively, it was warmer to keep her arms by her sides. The bow disappeared under there as well.
"Well, no one got hurt, so dig that stick out of your ass. Jesus, man, did I fuck up your truck? Or were you already having a bad day?"
Calden White
Calden shakes his head, the quick hot burn of anger transitioning into something more like disbelief; disgust. " 'No one got hurt, so dig that stick out of your ass'. Can you even hear yourself? I've got eight year old nephews who understand responsibility better than you."
The door of his truck is still open. He plants a foot on the running board, ready to swing back inside, and for a moment it seems like he's about to. Seems like he might just slam the door and drive the hell away. Then -- perhaps against his better judgment -- he stays. Tries one more time:
"It's not about whether or not someone got hurt. It's that someone could've gotten hurt. It could've been me, it could've been a stranger, it could've even been you. And you don't seem to give a damn.
"You're out of control, Lola. You do reckless, dangerous things. You think that's the same thing as bravery, but it's not. It's really not."
Lola Hawkes
He accuses her of having the responsibility of an eight-year-old, and whatever ground he may have hoped to gain crumbled out as though pushed loose by the foot that moved to propel him back up into the truck's cab. It may have been better if he just chose that moment to drive away and left the Kinswoman to stew and rage and curse his name at the empty wilderness. Instead, though, he paused and looked back to try again.
Lola's arms were under her cloak still, she wasn't gesturing madly at him or trying to take a swing to defend her name by forcing words back through they mouth they'd fallen from.
However, she is seething. It's a quieter, slower thing than the explosive Rage that she would've had were the soothsayer's initial prediction of her heritage an accurate one. Instead of bellowing at him in a show of teeth and brute force, she crossed her arms tightly over her chest so that the bow created a curious, sharp-cornered looking lump under the big wool garment she kept the winter away with. Her eyes hooked onto the Fianna Kinsman's face, and she all but sneered and threw back at him:
"Nah, I don't give much of a damn. The worst that happened today was I lost the deer and you spiked your blood pressure. I clipped your fuckin' truck with an arrow and you wanna call me outta control? Wanna accuse me of having no responsibility?" Here, a huff. She sounded like she wanted to laugh, like she was assured of her own victory in her argument here. Under her cloak her shoulders tensed and trembled with ready energy, like she was expecting what was to come next when she swung the limelight around wouldn't be good at all.
"I've got my responsibilities where they need to be. With the Nation. And my Tribe."
She didn't have to say more. The way she rocked her weight like she was waiting for him to throw a fist and the sharp anticipation in her eyes was plenty enough to speak to what she meant.
Calden White
No fist comes flying, no matter how much Lola might expect -- or want? -- it. Instead, only a short glance; a hint of exasperation in his tone.
"Really; this again, Lola?" He steps down from the running board, turns toward her. "I don't tell you how to live your life. I don't tell you to sit at home and I don't tell you to be a good little kinswoman. Whether or not I agree with the choices you make, and whether or not I think they're good choices for you and your loved ones, you're a grown woman and it's not my business to mind yours.
"By the same token, I'm a grown man with no ties to you other than a tenuous friendship that you keep trying to blow up. It's not your business to mind my business, either.
"As for Tamsin. I get it. She's your friend and you don't want to see her hurt. I don't either, and she's my blood. But she's also a grown woman, and you need to stop minding her business. Give her this much credit: if she has a problem with me, she can -- and I believe she would -- come to me with it. She doesn't need you to help her fix problems she doesn't ever have."
A small pause, as though considering whether or not to go on. In the end he does --
"I gotta say, Lola: you surprise me. And not in a good way. For someone who's so vocal about kin being more than the studs and broodmares of the Nation, the property of their respective tribes, you sure as hell seem to have different opinions deep down.
Lola Hawkes
It's surprising to say that Lola was still and quiet and heard the man out. She didn't appear to enjoy it, by any means, but she set her lower lip firm and stubborn and wrinkled her nose and clenched her teeth and she kept her quiet until he was done. By the time his final statement was presented she appeared to be seething-- boiling with indignance and chewing on tacks. Her chest was alight with fire that she used to think would propel her to take up claw and fang, but that day never came.
She didn't gesticulate violently, though. Just shook her head sharply and scowled hard. When she spoke, her voice was strained from the effort not to shout.
"You're confusing 'minding your business' with 'giving a shit', White. If you wanna take responsibility for yourself and no one else? Fuckin' fine. But I'm looking out for Tamsin 'cause I care. Don't you tell me how to watch over or care for my loved ones when in the same breath telling me to stop fuckin' around with what you do with yours. Goddamn hypocrite anyways."
At this point she shrugs her cloak back, exposing the layers of snug insulating clothing underneath and freeing up her arms. She now pointed at Calden's chest with the bow. If the thinning thread of respect that she had for him weren't still intact, and if she didn't hold appreciation for hospitality shown before, she would have whipped him in the chin with the handcrafted weapon instead.
"And another thing you've got all mixed up: Just because I know I'm worth more than a broodmare, as you put it, doesn't mean I don't know what duty is. I respect my Tribe, my Family, and our traditions. I know they exist for a reason. And just because you're content to fantasize about human life and live away from everything out on your land, that doesn't give you the right to shit on the way things are supposed to be and then drag everyone down with it.
"I'll tell ya who you should be worried about-- your Avery. She's a fucking Silver Fang Philodox, Calden. You think diddling with some fuckin' Fianna Farmhand is gonna go over well with her Elders?"
She took two slow, dragging steps backward. Ready to be on her way, wanting to leave before more damage was done, but unable to turn her back on the fight just yet. She gripped her bow and brought it back to her side and the cloak fell closed once more. She had a look on her face like she could both smell and taste something horrible.
"But nah. You keep on. No one's complained or said anything yet, right? Everything's sure to work out okay."
Calden White
Somewhere in the midst of that, sometime between when the bow is jabbed at him like a spear, and when he's as good as told he's disrespecting tribe, family and tradition, and when he's called a Fianna farmhand, and when she tells him -- the height of sarcasm, here -- that everything'll be just fine,
Calden's face just closes like a book. After that, he's just waiting for her to finish: stone-faced, stone-eyed.
When she does finish, a beat of silence goes by. Then: "I think we're done here." He pulls his car door open again and, unless she stops him, gets in.
Lola Hawkes
Oh, she saw when Calden's face closed up and his eyes when stony. She knew he was done listening to her, but she kept on anyways. Sometimes it was just about having your say-- the release of getting the words out itself soothed whatever ache of pride or hurt she might have felt for the exchange by substituting the balm of victory. When she was concluding she was already moving backwards and away. So, when Calden announced they were done and got back in his truck, Lola was already leaving. Again, she was trying to steal the chance to say who ended it, so as he tugged his car door Lola was turning already, moving off the road and into the trees.
Still on the hunt. Not for the same deer, clearly, it would be too alert now. But there was food to bring home, and now she'd probably have to drag the carcass farther to her vehicle than she was hoping before.
She could try to blame that on Calden, on his truck getting away, but she wouldn't. That was a minor offense in light of the confrontation itself.
As far as Lola figured, she would be done with the White family for the time being. If he wanted to shame himself and his lover then so be it. It would take high water and harsh circumstance to get her back onto that man's side again.
Mondays are probably pretty uneventful out in the rural region north of Denver, Colorado. Anybody who lived out that far was either working their lands or gone into town to work their day jobs. The weather was cold as winter snapped itself back below freezing, and the skies above were gray. Most people who weren't out working were staying home and keeping warm and waiting for the snow to come and liven up the landscape later that evening.
Calden must have been out on business or something. Perhaps visiting a business prospect or acquaintance, or lending his services to a neighboring farm that his family had good history with. Who knows? All the same, he would find himself winding his way along a narrow, rural two-lane road that was lucky to be paved, making his way back out to a main highway to take himself back home. It wasn't too far from his ranch, perhaps twenty miles if even that.
Out here there are trees that line the road. They aren't especially tall in most places, and scrub lined the floor between the trees, poking out through the snow. They're still dense and clustered enough to throw some shadow across the road. Not a deep one, but the fact that the sun wasn't out and the skies were gray and wanting to go slate with the coming snow made it dim lighting to begin with. The roads ran the small risk of ice, due to the snap in cold, but Calden's truck was well equipped to handle conditions much worse than this could dream of being.
Goodness knows what that man kept himself entertained with while in his truck, be it radio or book on tape or simple silence.
Whatever it was, it was interrupted by a god damned arrow flying across his windshield, from driver's side to passenger's. The feathered tail of the arrow cuffed on the passenger side frame of the truck and went twirling haphazardly into the trees.
Calden White
An arrow.
Just smacked his truck on the A-bar.
And went spinning into the trees.
Now if Calden hadn't noticed the feathered tail, he might've just assumed a pebble had smacked his truck, cursed road hazards quietly, and driven on. But he does notice. And so he does curse, but quite a bit more loudly, and certainly not at road hazards. Maybe at goddamn kids! And then he hits the brakes.
About thirty yards down the road the truck comes to a hard stop. The driver's side door opens. Calden shoulders out, jamming his hat on his head with one hand, grabbing his rifle off its roof rack with the other. Which he promptly lays over the side of the bed, taking cover behind the truck cab.
"Now, I assume you're either a blind bowhunter," he bellows at the treeline, "or an idiot kid raising hell. Which is it?"
Lola Hawkes
The truck skidded tires on crumbling paved road and came to a stop a couple dozen yards away from where the arrow had cut its way across the road. Either side of the road was dense with trees, but the lack of leaves and the deeper shadows and cover they created meant that Calden wouldn't have too difficult a time spotting someone if they were trying to hide. He got out of his truck, grabbed his rifle, and took cover behind his vehicle. He was prepared for anything-- including another arrow, bullets, and since he was a Kinfolk probably even monsters too.
He bellowed out into the trees, but didn't get a shouted answer immediately, not just yet anyways.
Instead, he sees movement behind skeletal bushes and passing through layered tree trunks. Then comes the crunch-crunch of boots on snow and fallen twigs and branches. Whoever it was, they weren't trying to keep quiet anymore-- the sound of a truck screeching to a stop and the shouting that Calden did would have spoiled whatever quiet they were previously trying to achieve anyways, and apparently the weren't trying to hide their existence from the person whose truck the arrow had clipped.
Rather than finding a blind person or an 'idiot kid' (although that was probably highly debatable), Calden would see a woman with her head down, watching her feet, making her way down the sloped hillside to the driver's side of the truck, walking toward the road. She was 30 yards back, where the arrow had come from, and appeared to be dressed not in standard American attire but rather wearing a winter cloak-- no arm holes or sleeves, and it swept too close to the ground to be considered a poncho. It looked like it should be an inconvenience, but she moved without being much hindered anyways.
He'll recognize that it's Lola Hawkes only once she reaches the gravel of the road's shoulder and lifts her head to peer up the road at the truck. The distance is too far to see the details, but she wrinkled her nose in distaste before lifting her bow (no arrow in hand, they're all in a quiver at her hip) and pointing out toward the trees on the other side of the road. If Calden glanced quickly, he'd spy a deer fleeing across a field that's on the other side of the trees there.
It's her voice that gives her away. She doesn't recognize him just yet, having never heard him yell she didn't know his voice right off the bat.
"More like a hunter that had a clear shot 'till your fuckin' truck was the first in an hour to make its way down this road." There's a pause, and then a follow up that sounds more indignant than before: "Is that a fuckin' gun? You gonna shoot?"
Calden White
Oh of course it was Lola. Who else would be mad enough to fire an arrow across a road? Immediate anger -- not the diffuse, undirected damned kids sort but a focal sort -- flares through Calden. She dares him to shoot.
He immediately fires a single round into the air. The gun's report cracks sharp as ice through the winter air.
Then Calden throws the safety on, shoulders the rifle, and steps around his truck. "I know you're young, Lola, but damned if you aren't the worst sort of young sometimes. You're reckless, you never admit a mistake, and you just do not give a damn about anyone who isn't in your little circle.
"Who the hell hunts across an open road? What if a kid on a motorcycle came by instead of me? You could have laid someone out on the asphalt with an arrow through the neck."
Lola Hawkes
With the crack of the gunshot firing through the air, Lola's entire body tensed and bucked much like the deer that she'd been aiming to kill when she clipped the Silverado. Shoulders hunched up, knees bent and leg muscles bunched like she would have to run. The bow was brought forward, but it wasn't as quick to aim and fire as a gun was. She didn't have the reflexes for a bow and arrow built into her like she did for a gun, so she didn't reflexively reach for her arrows at her hip to defend herself either. She just startled, stood lower and steadier to the ground like she would be ready to run if need be.
Before she had the opportunity to really make a decision where to run or how to react, the rifle was shouldered and the man was coming around from around the truck. He called her by her name, and she looked more carefully now that she had a better view of the man, no longer blocked by much of his truck.
"Fuckin' Calden," she announced, more to herself than to him, and straightened up once more. Her teeth were clenched and bared a little in front, and with her hand grasping her bow too tightly around its middle she walked toward the truck. In the middle of the road, too, like she was making a statement about how little it was used by vehicles.
As she walked, she barked back with the same sort of fire and indignant anger as he felt flare up within him.
"There ain't no goddamn kids on motorcycles out here, it's the fucking sticks. That hill--" she gestured fiercely with the bow, pointing to the side of the road she'd been shooting from-- "gives good vantage of that sweet spot." And she gestured just as harshly to the other side of the road, where the trees thinned a little more and apparently, if you were to believe Lola, deer liked to be.
She didn't try to get into the older man's face (yet), and instead stopped to stand a few feet from the back of his truck, feet finding the gravel on the shoulder of the road again. She had a knit cap on her head to keep her head and ears warm, but the broader hat that kept sun out of her eyes and off her face was pushed back to rest on the backs of her shoulders, supported by the attached twine that stretched across her collarbone. Her eyes flashed, her cheeks were red (probably from the cold more than anger, though), and she looked at him as though he was the instigator in this whole thing.
"What the fuck was that last bit, White? 'Bout not giving a damn? What the hell kind of mud are you slinging, huh?"
Calden White
Calden gives a short, angry shake of his head. He yanks the driver-side door of the truck open, slams the rifle back into its roof rack.
"Do I have to repeat myself? There's no hidden meaning here, Lola. You are literally firing across a public road without giving a single damn about who might come rolling down that road. When I call you on it, you fall back on stereotypes and assumptions.
"What, you've never seen a kid on a dirt bike out here? You've never seen a farmer on a tractor using the roads to get around the snow? That's a hell of a thing to bet innocent lives on. What exactly were you going to do if you hit someone -- yell at them for using a public road?"
Lola Hawkes
The way the grown woman scowled at him, it had her looking for a moment like a petulant teenager. Her nose was turned up, and acknowledgement that she'd fucked up flashed clearly in her eyes before they had clouded up with anger once more. Calden slammed doors and guns and gun racks while lecturing her, and Lola simply frowned almost defiantly.
Almost. Soon the young 'fuck you dad' air had faded and been replaced with something that was more of a slow burning anger. Violence trained and written into bones for years upon years that had been left with no outlet mid-pubescence. If Calden had friends who hung out in bars and liked to tell stories, he may have heard by now about a fight that broke out in Castle Rock, where some Mexican chick threw some girl to the ground by flipping her chair. How the criminal playing guitar that night had dragged her out of there in a fury like he was going to beat her raw for it later. How they ripped off up the road in a car and no one got the plates but thankfully no one really got hurt. If Lola still thought she could get into fights with everyday people, she clearly hasn't completely transitioned that part of herself from Wolf to Kin just yet.
All the same, she just scowled hard and heavy and retracted her arms back under her cloak, for the sake of warmth-- to reach out from under the cloak meant to open it up in the front, revealing an outfit consisting of jeans and three layers of shirts stretched over her stomach and chest both. When she wasn't gesticulating actively, it was warmer to keep her arms by her sides. The bow disappeared under there as well.
"Well, no one got hurt, so dig that stick out of your ass. Jesus, man, did I fuck up your truck? Or were you already having a bad day?"
Calden White
Calden shakes his head, the quick hot burn of anger transitioning into something more like disbelief; disgust. " 'No one got hurt, so dig that stick out of your ass'. Can you even hear yourself? I've got eight year old nephews who understand responsibility better than you."
The door of his truck is still open. He plants a foot on the running board, ready to swing back inside, and for a moment it seems like he's about to. Seems like he might just slam the door and drive the hell away. Then -- perhaps against his better judgment -- he stays. Tries one more time:
"It's not about whether or not someone got hurt. It's that someone could've gotten hurt. It could've been me, it could've been a stranger, it could've even been you. And you don't seem to give a damn.
"You're out of control, Lola. You do reckless, dangerous things. You think that's the same thing as bravery, but it's not. It's really not."
Lola Hawkes
He accuses her of having the responsibility of an eight-year-old, and whatever ground he may have hoped to gain crumbled out as though pushed loose by the foot that moved to propel him back up into the truck's cab. It may have been better if he just chose that moment to drive away and left the Kinswoman to stew and rage and curse his name at the empty wilderness. Instead, though, he paused and looked back to try again.
Lola's arms were under her cloak still, she wasn't gesturing madly at him or trying to take a swing to defend her name by forcing words back through they mouth they'd fallen from.
However, she is seething. It's a quieter, slower thing than the explosive Rage that she would've had were the soothsayer's initial prediction of her heritage an accurate one. Instead of bellowing at him in a show of teeth and brute force, she crossed her arms tightly over her chest so that the bow created a curious, sharp-cornered looking lump under the big wool garment she kept the winter away with. Her eyes hooked onto the Fianna Kinsman's face, and she all but sneered and threw back at him:
"Nah, I don't give much of a damn. The worst that happened today was I lost the deer and you spiked your blood pressure. I clipped your fuckin' truck with an arrow and you wanna call me outta control? Wanna accuse me of having no responsibility?" Here, a huff. She sounded like she wanted to laugh, like she was assured of her own victory in her argument here. Under her cloak her shoulders tensed and trembled with ready energy, like she was expecting what was to come next when she swung the limelight around wouldn't be good at all.
"I've got my responsibilities where they need to be. With the Nation. And my Tribe."
She didn't have to say more. The way she rocked her weight like she was waiting for him to throw a fist and the sharp anticipation in her eyes was plenty enough to speak to what she meant.
Calden White
No fist comes flying, no matter how much Lola might expect -- or want? -- it. Instead, only a short glance; a hint of exasperation in his tone.
"Really; this again, Lola?" He steps down from the running board, turns toward her. "I don't tell you how to live your life. I don't tell you to sit at home and I don't tell you to be a good little kinswoman. Whether or not I agree with the choices you make, and whether or not I think they're good choices for you and your loved ones, you're a grown woman and it's not my business to mind yours.
"By the same token, I'm a grown man with no ties to you other than a tenuous friendship that you keep trying to blow up. It's not your business to mind my business, either.
"As for Tamsin. I get it. She's your friend and you don't want to see her hurt. I don't either, and she's my blood. But she's also a grown woman, and you need to stop minding her business. Give her this much credit: if she has a problem with me, she can -- and I believe she would -- come to me with it. She doesn't need you to help her fix problems she doesn't ever have."
A small pause, as though considering whether or not to go on. In the end he does --
"I gotta say, Lola: you surprise me. And not in a good way. For someone who's so vocal about kin being more than the studs and broodmares of the Nation, the property of their respective tribes, you sure as hell seem to have different opinions deep down.
Lola Hawkes
It's surprising to say that Lola was still and quiet and heard the man out. She didn't appear to enjoy it, by any means, but she set her lower lip firm and stubborn and wrinkled her nose and clenched her teeth and she kept her quiet until he was done. By the time his final statement was presented she appeared to be seething-- boiling with indignance and chewing on tacks. Her chest was alight with fire that she used to think would propel her to take up claw and fang, but that day never came.
She didn't gesticulate violently, though. Just shook her head sharply and scowled hard. When she spoke, her voice was strained from the effort not to shout.
"You're confusing 'minding your business' with 'giving a shit', White. If you wanna take responsibility for yourself and no one else? Fuckin' fine. But I'm looking out for Tamsin 'cause I care. Don't you tell me how to watch over or care for my loved ones when in the same breath telling me to stop fuckin' around with what you do with yours. Goddamn hypocrite anyways."
At this point she shrugs her cloak back, exposing the layers of snug insulating clothing underneath and freeing up her arms. She now pointed at Calden's chest with the bow. If the thinning thread of respect that she had for him weren't still intact, and if she didn't hold appreciation for hospitality shown before, she would have whipped him in the chin with the handcrafted weapon instead.
"And another thing you've got all mixed up: Just because I know I'm worth more than a broodmare, as you put it, doesn't mean I don't know what duty is. I respect my Tribe, my Family, and our traditions. I know they exist for a reason. And just because you're content to fantasize about human life and live away from everything out on your land, that doesn't give you the right to shit on the way things are supposed to be and then drag everyone down with it.
"I'll tell ya who you should be worried about-- your Avery. She's a fucking Silver Fang Philodox, Calden. You think diddling with some fuckin' Fianna Farmhand is gonna go over well with her Elders?"
She took two slow, dragging steps backward. Ready to be on her way, wanting to leave before more damage was done, but unable to turn her back on the fight just yet. She gripped her bow and brought it back to her side and the cloak fell closed once more. She had a look on her face like she could both smell and taste something horrible.
"But nah. You keep on. No one's complained or said anything yet, right? Everything's sure to work out okay."
Calden White
Somewhere in the midst of that, sometime between when the bow is jabbed at him like a spear, and when he's as good as told he's disrespecting tribe, family and tradition, and when he's called a Fianna farmhand, and when she tells him -- the height of sarcasm, here -- that everything'll be just fine,
Calden's face just closes like a book. After that, he's just waiting for her to finish: stone-faced, stone-eyed.
When she does finish, a beat of silence goes by. Then: "I think we're done here." He pulls his car door open again and, unless she stops him, gets in.
Lola Hawkes
Oh, she saw when Calden's face closed up and his eyes when stony. She knew he was done listening to her, but she kept on anyways. Sometimes it was just about having your say-- the release of getting the words out itself soothed whatever ache of pride or hurt she might have felt for the exchange by substituting the balm of victory. When she was concluding she was already moving backwards and away. So, when Calden announced they were done and got back in his truck, Lola was already leaving. Again, she was trying to steal the chance to say who ended it, so as he tugged his car door Lola was turning already, moving off the road and into the trees.
Still on the hunt. Not for the same deer, clearly, it would be too alert now. But there was food to bring home, and now she'd probably have to drag the carcass farther to her vehicle than she was hoping before.
She could try to blame that on Calden, on his truck getting away, but she wouldn't. That was a minor offense in light of the confrontation itself.
As far as Lola figured, she would be done with the White family for the time being. If he wanted to shame himself and his lover then so be it. It would take high water and harsh circumstance to get her back onto that man's side again.
Injuries - 2.3.2014 [Hector]
Hector Ghosh
When Hector came home very early Saturday he came home without his Wolf.
Kinfolk know what this means even if they cannot feel it. If they cannot possibly imagine what it takes to drain their cousins so completely that they lose their will to move. That he got home at all was a miracle. A Garou who has lost his Wolf cannot function as a human would. As if he's simply misplaced it and must only walk into the other room and pick it up.
If he had had his spine torn out he would have to wait for it to regenerate on its own. At least his spine might grow back if something tore it out. The two of them have a fondness for terrible analogies. They are not technically proficient but they understand each others' fumbling attempts when they do make them. Crap analogies paint more vivid pictures of their beliefs in each others' strength and the endurance of their love.
So: that is the analogy for this episode. Something tore out Hector's spine the night he went to investigate the airport. Saturday he escaped the agony of it by sleeping. Lola could at least assure herself that he had made an attempt to shower when he got home so he was somewhat clean. Even if all he did was sit under the water. Even if she had to turn off the water herself and would have had to bodily lift him from the tub if not for the fact that Hector is still in there somewhere. She is nearly six months pregnant. Hector did not make her lift him to get out of the tub. As long as Lola talks to him she can be assured he'll hear her even if he does not act.
Help me has gotten him back to her before. Hearing Lola say those words seems to hit some sort of a button in his brain. He cannot ignore her if she says those two words but the only time she has ever said them to him, he was dying.
But she did have to coax him out of the shower. She had to shuffle him towards the bed because he tried to curl up on the floor in the bathroom after she tended to his injuries. Once he got into bed he tried to explain how he ended up like this and that's when the tears came instead of words. When all Lola could do was stroke Hector's hair or rub his back until he fell asleep.
All he did Saturday was sleep.
---
Sunday Lola would have risen before he did because she awakened before he did. For all she knew Hector would sleep away the weekend and then some. Maybe she recognized the condition he was in last night. That dead cast to his eyes like something was gone from him. They eliminated death or near-death or the End Times as culprits. Hector was just drained. He'd made a bad call but at least he had made a call. At least he tried. He can't see that yet.
The injuries he sustained cut to his spirit. They would not stabilize or heal without spiritual medicine. Lola's first aid early Saturday would have passed muster in the back of an ambulance or beneath a hospital tent.
If she tended to him during the day she would know that his injuries were not healing and his bandages needed changing. If she decided to stitch him up with sewing thread Saturday would have been the day to do it. He would not react to pain and he would not fight her. Neither did he heal.
A strong wolf would just grit his teeth and get up. Would shift to another form and spend the rest of the day in another form and life would go on. But Hector's Rage had gone from him and he could not shift in the state he was in and when he awakened he felt the pain of his injuries like he hasn't felt them since he was a Cub. Maybe not even then.
Sometime around eight o'clock in the morning he fluttered up from sleep. Fire roaring up from his calf and his chest where those things had had at him.
She could hear panic in his voice when he lifted it for the first time in over 24 hours.
"Lola?"
Normally he can bellow from across the house and she will hear him as if he's standing right behind her. Sunday morning he didn't have the guts to shout so loud.
"Lola?!"
When she went to him she knew he was panicking because he was injured and he couldn't do anything to make the injuries go away and he didn't know where Lola was.
He kept crying and saying he was sorry. Broke down and clung to her and sobbed at one point. Begged her not to leave. It's a goddamn flesh wound that would heal in a week if he had no other options. An hour feels like an eternity when one is in agony. The only thing he could do was sleep and he wouldn't fall asleep if he was alone.
No one would blame her for not letting anyone near the house that day.
---
By Monday Hector is weak as a kitten but he isn't screaming or sobbing or telling her he's sorry anymore. The horror of the day before comes to him like slideshow images out of a nightmare. He doesn't want to get out of bed. He doesn't think he's going to.
It's supposed to snow again tomorrow. Bitter cold and burying snow coming their way. If he were in his right mind he wouldn't be lying in bed letting Lola cart in wood from the shed and make sure they had enough water and candles in case they lost power.
This morning may be when Lola starts to realize whatever happened Friday night damaged more than just his body. It may take her longer. She has never seen him like this. No one will blame her for thinking he only needs a few days to recover.
He will not be able to shift forms until his Rage comes back to him. Luna is in her waxing crescent phase tonight. That will help. He can lie in his wolf skin for a couple of days instead of languishing for a week.
Conscious as he is now he isn't crying those silent cold tears he'd cried Saturday morning. He isn't hysterical like he was hysterical on Sunday. He hasn't eaten anything since Friday and the only time he drank anything yesterday was when Lola forced him to.
He's just staring at the wall today. Accepting the throbbing hot pain of his injuries instead of screaming about it. It isn't going to kill him.
Lola Hawkes
Saturday
For how territorial she was, Lola hadn't learned to sleep lightly enough to hear every sound that ticked abnormally through her home. So, in the small early hours of the morning far before dawn, Lola did not hear when the door opened and closed, or when the shower started. It was only by chance that Lola was awake before seven in the morning, which was approximately when she usually woke on her own accord. Hector had been sitting in the shower with the water running over him for about twenty minutes when Lola's bladder was what brought her out of bed.
With a light knock on the door that no doubt when unanswered, Lola let herself into the bathroom and squinted against the lights that were left on. She found Hector with blank dead eyes and no life in his bones or flesh aside from what basic functions his lungs and heart and brain kept going without him.
She didn't react strongly as most Kinfolk would. Lola was accustomed to battle, and after trying to talk to him for a couple of minutes recognition of what she was seeing lit in her mind. She'd seen Maria without her wolf twice before-- it was easier for her to do for herself, as her Rage was less boisterous a thing than Hector's. She remembered Maria sleeping and stirring for two days before ambling her way out one morning to share oatmeal with her sister as though nothing had happened. The difference there, though, Lola would realize after a few days but not quite yet, was that Maria had been able to joke weakly through the exhaustion and recovery. Hector would do no such thing, but that would come later. For now, she simply cut the water to the shower and draped a towel over Hector's head and shoulders and back and coerced him out of the shower. She could lift him if she had to, but when she'd reached of point of trying to gather his knees by hooking an arm under them he finally stirred-- even through this, he wasn't going to let her try that, not with their baby taking more and more of her strength and abdominal space with each passing week.
On the bathroom mat, where Lola tried to curl up, Lola cleaned his wounds and covered them with large gauze pads that she taped to his skin. She wanted to make sure that they were covered at least before she let the sheets get glued to them. She wouldn't bother with stitches, even though she knew how to do them and had the materials on hand in her first aid kit. In her experience, they were pushed from Werewolf skin before they had a chance to do much of their job anyways.
Again, it took coaxing and pulling, but Lola was diligent and now very fully awake. She got Hector to bed, and as she was pulling the sheets and quilt up over his shoulder he dissolved into quiet tears. Lola frowned sympathetically and laid down in the bed beside him. She'd brushed his wet hair from his eyes until it was all smooth and slicked back, rubbed comfortingly at his back and shoulder until the rhythm and his own exhaustion lulled him to sleep.
It was about 4:00am by the time Hector was asleep and Lola found quiet in the house. Realizing she couldn't rest after that, Lola slid from the bed and made herself busy.
Sunday
Throughout the day on Sunday, Lola is in overdrive. She walks the house with a new kind of fire in her bones and determination written into the fiber of her being. She would let Hector sleep and rest, because she understood that this was precisely what he needed. Garou had the habit of burning themselves out. They threw all fibers of their being-- Primal and Spiritual and Physical alike -- into the war that they waged. For all that they accomplished and survived, it made perfect sense that they'd need to reset from time to time to avoid actually burning themselves out.
It was as Lola was moving pans about to start breakfast that she heard her name from up the hallway-- not the searching healthy call that she was used to, but a weak sound that was wound tight with panic. She was there before he'd find need to cry out for her a third time, and when she had come to see what he needed she found herself with Hector holding onto her and sobbing and apologizing. He was suffering pain that was physical and something else as well. The moon was New, he couldn't bring his Wolf back and so was left handling his injury and pain with nothing to cut it-- like a Kinfolk would if no one were there to heal them. Lola scowled heavily, but she tucked her head near to Hector's and put her arms around him and comforted as well as she could. There was only so much that either of them could do, and after he'd eased to sleep once more Lola reluctantly left him to rest.
She didn't patrol-- she was unwilling to leave the house from her sights with Hector in this state. She made herself busy with cleaning and household chores, and when there was nothing more of that for her she set up space on the dining room table to dismantle and clean and reassemble her guns, one at a time.
If anyone came by to visit (and Hector, if he was asleep, may be none the wiser to this), Lola would bar the door and refuse to let them in. Hector may have callers after what happened on Friday night, but their business would need to go through his Kinswoman today. It would take an overpowering show of force for anyone to enter The Homestead today.
Monday
This was the third day of Hector's time recovering in bed. Lola was stressed and uncomfortable. That morning Eddie had come to visit, but she wouldn't let him in the house and wouldn't leave with him either. She did bring two coffee thermoses out of the house and had a conversation with him, brief as it may be, in the bitter cold of the morning air on the front porch. The Skald didn't get many details as to what was happening inside, but he did stick around long enough to help the Kinswoman chop wood and bring it to the back porch with her. The forecast promised snow tomorrow, and Lola wanted to be sure they were prepared if they needed to ride out a blizzard instead of a snow shower.
By the time Eddie Luske and Lola Hawkes were finished with that chore it was mid-morning. Lola sent the Skald on his way and went back inside. She showered the sweat of work from her skin but did not wash her hair, unwilling to deal with drying it as she still needed to bring the wood into the house from outside.
It was when she went into the room to get dressed in new clothes that she found Hector laying in the bed, staring blankly at the wall instead of sleeping. Lola looked at him with an expression of muted, cautious surprise on her face, and laid the towel she'd wrapped around herself on the foot of the bed before hunting for clothes to dress herself in. Nudity was hardly something to be concerned about between the two of them by now, anyways. As she pulled clothes from her dresser, she looked over to Hector and spoke as though she was worried about stepping on eggshells that had fuses attached.
"The moon comes back tonight. Just a sliver, but it'll be enough to recharge your batteries on." A pause, and as she put on undergarments she continued. "You're gonna need to eat something...."
Hector Ghosh
If the fuses are attached to anything they are attached to his sense of self-worth and that has already been thoroughly shredded. Though he has not suffered the same fate as Warning Threshold and he will recover now that his inner strength is coming back to him his Rage is a dampened thing now. She cannot hear it thrumming under his skin like electricity through a high-tension wire.
Hector hears her come into the bedroom and he does not roll to watch her dress. In his periphery though she may be he does not respond to the sight of her nude. His eyes trace over the swell of her belly and a new stab of pain goes through him.
He couldn't protect his family if something happened right now. He might be able to fight as well as a human would fight something trying to kill his unborn child but Hector could not swipe away a crafty Fomor picked through the front door's lock or tear through a pack of Black Spiral Dancers if they came in out of the Umbra.
This realization does not drive him to tears again but Hector sighs heavy and miserable before Lola reminds him of the moon's swinging towards brightness again. A necessary reminder. He hasn't been outside in nearly three days.
No tears or panic or anger or anything at all behind his words. Hector just sounds flat.
"I'm not hungry."
Lola Hawkes
There was no attempt to sway Hector from the misery and lethargy that he'd fallen to with seduction or romance. Lola did not make a show of dressing herself or try to climb onto the bed naked to coerce him back in more intimate ways. She had moved from bra and panties to the skirt that she'd pulled out-- one that she wore commonly these days for how easily and comfortably it rested low on her waist. It was a few inches from dragging on the floor and full rather than sleek. She'd pulled this on and was just securing the waistband when Hector sighed heavily and answered plainly. This caused her pause, and her fingers stilled on the garment while she looked back over at her mate.
Laid in the bed as he ways, unwilling to move, with the covers looking as though he's been living in them for how rumpled and warm they were. Lola's expression pressed into something that was conflicted and uncomfortable. Her nose wrinkled and her brow creased. When Maria had been like this, needing to sleep and rest and recover, she was at least willing to get up and move around after two days worth of hibernation. She wasn't back out at the Sept or with her Pack on their exploits for another few days, but at least she was herself, albeit a tired still-thin expression of what she usually was.
She was expecting this morning to start with Hector slumping out of bed to take a shower. She figured she would find him in the kitchen with a cup of something warm looking tired at the counter or maybe even on the couch. She'd hoped he would have at least moved.
With the shirt she'd selected to wear left abandoned on top of the dresser for now, Lola moved to the side of the bed that Hector was facing and crouched down. Her arms and head and shoulders and chest were all up on the bed with Hector. Arms reached out toward him, and though one lay a few inches away on the matress from actually touching, the other hand rubbed an arm and shoulder.
"I know that. But it doesn't mean that your body doesn't need food. You've been tryin' to heal with just your human skin. You've barely even had enough water. You're just gonna make yourself worse layin' around past this point."
She wasn't pleading with him, but speaking in what he was learning to be her I'm being patient, see? tone of voice. It was when her voice lowered and her words were spoken more clearly than she usually bothered to keep them. It was a velvety voice, like that was the closest thing she could think of as being soft and comforting and gentle. But it was like velvet draped over iron, because behind and under all of that she is firm and unmoving. She isn't here negotiating, she's explaining what she would call 'The Way Things Are'.
Hector Ghosh
At his most tired Hector will still argue if he thinks he's right or if he's got his mind hung on something. Even when he's wrong. Even when nobody else agrees with him and he wants to do it anyway. It would take something monumental to get Hector to not argue. His will is more akin to a sapling than an oak but he has the resiliency of youth that has thus far allowed him to bend without snapping.
Some would argue it was only a matter of time before he had a total nervous collapse. His fostering being what it was and his entire world being based upon his place within the pack. How devastated he was after Glen and Maria died and Corey left and how he went on anyway because he had to take care of Tamsin and he promised Maria he would look after her sister.
Good fucking job he's doing, there.
Her hand finds his bare shoulder as strong and sinewy as it ever is. Can feel the tack of two days' worth of sweat on his skin and the heat of his body without the Rage behind it. The lift of his clavicle as he draws a deep breath and grits his teeth to keep his composure as she soothed him.
As much as he never learned how to deal with frustration he never learned how to deal with people comforting him either. Sure as shit isn't used to Lola comforting him. Lola knows him. He doesn't like being comforted and when people who love him touch him when he's upset he tends to fall apart. He brings the opposite wrist up to his eyes to shield them from her. Like if she has to see him lain like a slug in her bed he's at least going to stop crying.
No God damn it Lola I'm fine I'm resting I'll eat later comes up from the muffled place made by his bent arm. No attempt made to haul her down to him that she might bring him up out of his inertia with affection. That's what he ought to be doing about now.
His eyes are glassy when he lowers his wrist but he isn't crying. His voice as weak as he is.
"Okay," he says.
Lola Hawkes
Hector's expression was hard for Lola to read in confidence. She wasn't sure if he was trying to hide his face to block her out or to hide coming tears or to cover his face up while he clamped down on something that he was trying to keep buried. As far as she could know, it was any of the above. Maybe something she hadn't thought of yet.
She stayed where she was and her hand stilled on his shoulder when he covered his face, but she didn't say anything just yet. Some set amount of time would have to pass before she pressed further for a reaction. His wrist moved before that time came, but the answer that he gave was lackluster at best.
Lola's lips pressed into a thin, bothered line. Her brow stayed heavy and furrowed, she was unable to smooth it for his sake. She'd never thought herself to be built for comfort before. But she was trying.
Her hand scrubbed his shoulder a little more and then retreated so she could tap lightly on the mattress about twelve inches from his head. It was a motion that seemed final, like a decision had been made, like a gavel made of fingertips instead of wood.
"Okay," she repeated, and rolled her shoulders and situated her hands like she would use them to push herself back up to her feet. But she didn't actually stand, and had no plans to rise with that motion until he showed he would move the covers and get up as well. When he didn't immediately move, she continued with: "I ain't bringing it to you in here, though. You gotta get up and move around a little, too."
Hector Ghosh
The lacerations are not keeping him in bed. Though she can see the gray-white of the tissue against his brown skin on the shoulder that she touches Lola knows his old death-scars are not crippling him either. Hector is made of stronger stuff than that.
And yet he lies on his side half curled up on himself right hand against his sternum as he averts his eyes from her. Not much hair there but where before Hector was a boy barely out of his teens over the last six months he's grown fur places a man tends to have it. With his ethnic heritage he will never grow to resemble the Mexican rancher Maria used to joke her little sister would always end up with but if Lola wanted a Mexican rancher she wouldn't be with him right now.
Three days before she was with him she was with Corey though. Up until He Who Waits For Dawn took over his body and called Lola stupid for goading him they weren't even sure it was Hector's baby. Maybe Lola still isn't sure. But the spirit that rode Hector's bones that day knew whose descendant grows inside of her. It isn't one of Cockroach's.
Lola doesn't need him. If he died Friday night she would have grieved for him and she would have screamed at the moon because she cannot shift to howl and she would have gone on. It's actually sort of a comfort knowing if something happened to him Corey and she are still talking.
Do not suffer thy people to tend thy sickness.
"I'm sorry," he says with a hollowness in his voice where the desperation screamed yesterday. A bone-tired realization riding the apology. She can hear the tone of them though he does not say it: something's wrong.
But he sniffles and shucks back the covers. Smell of old blood and sweat and something more cloying than that. Hopelessness. Like a tar he has to slog through just to sit up.
"Ugh. I'm up. I..."
He sits up. Dirty hair falls over his shoulders and into his face. He braces himself on both hands and stares down at his thighs like if he looks anywhere else he's going to see the abyss gaped out in front of him. Fall into it instead of stepping back from it. Though he is not looking at her Lola can see how he grits his teeth and clamps down on himself to keep from crying again.
It coughs out of him in a sob but he gets to his feet anyway. It's an effort but weak as he is and as close to tears as he is for no reason Hector does not lean on his woman.
Lola Hawkes
Though she has worked on it, and though it has improved greatly like a new muscle group being focused on over the past six months, Lola's patience wasn't a fully formed thing just yet. It didn't stretch near so far as it ought to for a Kinfolk. Patience was necessary when living with and loving and caring for the True Born-- her father had told her so from the very beginning. Situations like this were better dealt with by the type of Kinswomen who were gentler and more mild, better able to wait and care and tend.
But Lola has never been gentle or mild. She's terrible at waiting too. She will care and she will tend, but she will not coddle and when she decides that continued softness will cross the line into coddling she switches hard into 'tough love'.
This, for Hector, is Lola's easing into tough love instead of slamming gears as though it were a truck she was planning to abandon across state borders anyways. She encourages him out of bed rather than yelling at him and shoving him forward, as she probably would have done were he a packmate and not a lover. She's rewarded by his compliance, halfhearted and slow and painful as it looks. He peeled back the sheets, and she frowned when the smell reached her sensitive nostrils but did not recoil as though it offended her greatly. She did scowl to see his continued refusal to even look at her, though, much less make eye contact.
Just sitting up he seemed ready to cry again, and when he finally swung his feet off the bed and worked his way onto his feet Lola pushed herself up onto her feet as well and went to retrieve her shirt from the top of the shelf. It was simple, black, and long-sleeved, made from a material that stretched greatly. It fit comfortably over her stomach without riding up, this was another shirt she wore often. After she'd tugged the hem down where she wanted it, she looked over to see how far Hector had made it.
Not far at all.
With a small quiet sigh that was for the purpose of pushing irritation away, she approached the foot of the bed to meet him after he'd rounded it. Just watching him, she scowled and held out a hand for him to come towards. It's hard to gauge whether she's trying to offer her arm to support him or whether she's asking for him to hold her hand. Either way, she says: "You're not gonna tell me what's going on, are you..."
Hector Ghosh
"I don't know what's going on."
The first step to fixing the problem is admitting the problem. That's as close an approximation to the problem as he can get. Lola can observe that Hector is moving slow and he's tearful and he has no appetite. That he keeps apologizing even though he hasn't done anything wrong.
Could have chalked that up to losing his Wolf but it's been two days now. Even he knew the night that he came home that something was wrong but he'd hoped it would get better. It may still get better. Maybe he'll snap out of this.
Her hand is stretched out to him. Hector looks at it but he doesn't just stand there staring without comprehending. He doesn't want to keep her away from him right now. Maybe she could help him.
Instead of just holding her hand Hector comes forward and hauls her into an embrace. Buries his face in her neck. Does not start sobbing again but she can feel the pain in him bubble up and knows it when Hector tightens his grip on her.
"I don't know what's going on," he says again. "Nothing's wrong, I just don't know what's going on."
Lola Hawkes
The confession was met with raised eyebrows and a bland stare. The look that his woman gives him is one that tells Hector she is hardly going to accept that as an answer. She was expecting something more-- perhaps not a spot on explanation, but maybe something that she could pick apart and figure out. She would be happier with a hint than she was with nothing at all.
He looked at her hand, but thankfully had more within him than to just stare at it alone. She wanted to help him into the kitchen, to the bathroom. To encourage him to spend time out in the living space instead of the bedroom, so she could try and keep him active and talking until she could get his eyes on the moon. She knew that was significant. She was under the impression that the utter lack of Rage within him was doing this. It was a part of him as it was a part of any wolf, and she imagined losing it would be to lose a piece of yourself. That would explain the hollow exhausted behavior.
She couldn't guess that it was something different entirely, not yet. She only assumed he reacted to it differently than Maria ever had because they were different people, and he was far more dramatic by nature and birthright alike.
When he grabbed onto her and pulled her to him, Lola didn't dig in her heels to stop him. She did look a little surprised though, and paused only a moment before adjusting to how he held her. She rolled up to stand on her toes and give herself another few inches of height to work with. Her stomach and chest both pressed to his, because it was impossible for them not to now. She wrapped her arms up around his head and tucked her face to his hair despite how unwashed it was. For how tightly his arms gripped about her, she braced her arms around his head. She didn't squeeze his skull, no, but her arm muscles were tight like she was prepared to block and soak up an onslaught of blows.
"It's a funk," she explained somewhere behind his ear. "Ya spent yourself. Wiped yourself clean, completely. You need Gaia and Luna to get back up to your feet, and you won't find them in bed, baby. S'why you gotta get up. Go to them both."
Hector Ghosh
Tears flow as if he'd torn a scab off but he doesn't sob or fall apart. Lola can hear him breathing heavier for the congestion in his sinuses but Rage and grief are not driving him to choke on an outpouring. When he had fallen apart yesterday he had not seemed lighter afterwards. It's like the more he cries the thicker this funk gets.
That's the word she uses and he nods his head brisk against her shoulder. Yes. Okay. Good. It has a name. It's a funk. Blows out a shaky breath against her collarbone and smooths the hair at the back of her head. He is a goddamn mess. Trying to comfort her like even in the midst of this he knows what this is doing to her.
With her belly pressed against him he has a physical reminder of why he has to stay alive. One of his hands leaves the embrace to lay against her hip.
Nights past he would make her lie still so he could massage her muscles and ligaments. Hard as she pushes herself normally the added work is palpable now that she's pregnant. Hector has been devouring those books Anthony gave them because he wants to help her. He wants to be part of this baby's life and that has started as soon as he broke her out of the hospital.
God damn it Hawkes hold still I'm going to massage your stuff with my big manly hands and it's going to be awesome, he'd said once. Gentle even as he was berating her.
Now he's just touching her belly and breathing fast and repeating what she's said to him. He's drained. He has to get up. He has to get back with Gaia and Luna. By the time he speaks his voice is not damp. It's still flat but he's not crying anymore.
"Okay..." That hand still behind her clutches the back of her neck. "I'm okay. I'm up."
Lola Hawkes
For all of the time she spent enforcing strength and endurance, Lola wasn't one to judge a man for his tears. If the situation was appropriate and the stress was understandable, she'd never shame someone for the crying they did. When she'd held hard feelings and judgment against Storm's Teeth, it wasn't for his tears but for his outburst and how inappropriate she'd found it to be in general. So, as Hector cries into her neck and hair, quiet and without the harsh sobs of release, Lola just kept her arms up around his head and shoulders and stayed close.
She gave him time, but not much. The touch of his hand to her stomach probably earned him those few extra moments that he needed, truthfully. When he did that she understood he was dwelling or processing or chewing on a new set of thoughts entirely.
When he repeated 'okay, okay', but made no move to let go of her, Lola loosened her arms from around his head and neck. Switched her hands so that she was rubbing his shoulders first, then nudging his arms so they weren't wrapped around her anymore. She moved so she was standing rotated away from his front, trying to turn herself to his side instead. To guide and encourage, to catch if his legs stumbled after two days of lethargy. It was almost like a border collie getting ready to herd a particularly young sheep along after the herd.
"Yeah, Hector, I know. It is okay. Now come on. Into the kitchen."
Though she's still got the velvet-on-concrete tone of patience going, he can feel the edges of that velvet fraying. The concrete beneath this analogy was threatening to crack and buckle, and the fissure in her tone warned that this may not last for much longer if momentum wasn't gained.
Hector Ghosh
Luckily Hector is more perceptive than folks tend to give him credit for being. Even when he's bleeding from a wound he cannot fix and has spent the last two days in bed and feels as much like hell as he looks he can tell when his mate has had enough.
A truth he won't be able to tell until he actually does it is that Hector needs to talk to other Garou. He needs to talk to the Fosterns who understand what it is to make a bad choice and understand why it is he made the bad choice that he made and can help him sort out how not to do it again. If he could just talk to Lola about what happened he might be able to gain some perspective or closure or whatever it is that he doesn't have lying in bed but that isn't Lola's responsibility.
One could argue it isn't her responsibility to get him out of bed and make sure he's eating and not making things worse by staying lain down all day. They are bound by no law or code of honor. That baby grown in her belly is not a tether. They stay together because they love each other and difficult moments like this one are going to serve as a foundation for the millions of other difficult moments ahead of them.
They have no idea how much sleep they are going to lose once their baby is born. How frayed their nerves are going to be or how impossible the task of parenthood seems some days when they're fighting a war on top of it.
They don't spend much time thinking about the future because they have enough trouble getting through today, some days.
Lola puts an arm around him just to get him moving and Hector sniffs and goes into the kitchen.
---
The rest of the day goes by with similar difficulty. Hector has no appetite but he forces himself to cook anyway. Makes that soup his mother claims will cure anything and forces himself to sit down and eat and try to make conversation to keep his mind off the burning pain of the laceration and the yawning pit of despair opened up behind his breastbone.
At least he doesn't start crying again.
Sometime later in the afternoon he drags himself up into the loft and comes back down with a book. Crashes on the couch like that was a monumental effort. It was a monumental effort. He's still injured and the moon won't be up for another couple hours and he's so morose he's surprised the despair hasn't actually swallowed him up from the inside. He needs to distract himself.
When he sees Lola passing through he says "Baby?"
What, Hector. You incredible pain in the ass.
"I think my problem is I have to go through life knowing you've never read The Hobbit and it's slowly killing me. Come here."
When Hector came home very early Saturday he came home without his Wolf.
Kinfolk know what this means even if they cannot feel it. If they cannot possibly imagine what it takes to drain their cousins so completely that they lose their will to move. That he got home at all was a miracle. A Garou who has lost his Wolf cannot function as a human would. As if he's simply misplaced it and must only walk into the other room and pick it up.
If he had had his spine torn out he would have to wait for it to regenerate on its own. At least his spine might grow back if something tore it out. The two of them have a fondness for terrible analogies. They are not technically proficient but they understand each others' fumbling attempts when they do make them. Crap analogies paint more vivid pictures of their beliefs in each others' strength and the endurance of their love.
So: that is the analogy for this episode. Something tore out Hector's spine the night he went to investigate the airport. Saturday he escaped the agony of it by sleeping. Lola could at least assure herself that he had made an attempt to shower when he got home so he was somewhat clean. Even if all he did was sit under the water. Even if she had to turn off the water herself and would have had to bodily lift him from the tub if not for the fact that Hector is still in there somewhere. She is nearly six months pregnant. Hector did not make her lift him to get out of the tub. As long as Lola talks to him she can be assured he'll hear her even if he does not act.
Help me has gotten him back to her before. Hearing Lola say those words seems to hit some sort of a button in his brain. He cannot ignore her if she says those two words but the only time she has ever said them to him, he was dying.
But she did have to coax him out of the shower. She had to shuffle him towards the bed because he tried to curl up on the floor in the bathroom after she tended to his injuries. Once he got into bed he tried to explain how he ended up like this and that's when the tears came instead of words. When all Lola could do was stroke Hector's hair or rub his back until he fell asleep.
All he did Saturday was sleep.
---
Sunday Lola would have risen before he did because she awakened before he did. For all she knew Hector would sleep away the weekend and then some. Maybe she recognized the condition he was in last night. That dead cast to his eyes like something was gone from him. They eliminated death or near-death or the End Times as culprits. Hector was just drained. He'd made a bad call but at least he had made a call. At least he tried. He can't see that yet.
The injuries he sustained cut to his spirit. They would not stabilize or heal without spiritual medicine. Lola's first aid early Saturday would have passed muster in the back of an ambulance or beneath a hospital tent.
If she tended to him during the day she would know that his injuries were not healing and his bandages needed changing. If she decided to stitch him up with sewing thread Saturday would have been the day to do it. He would not react to pain and he would not fight her. Neither did he heal.
A strong wolf would just grit his teeth and get up. Would shift to another form and spend the rest of the day in another form and life would go on. But Hector's Rage had gone from him and he could not shift in the state he was in and when he awakened he felt the pain of his injuries like he hasn't felt them since he was a Cub. Maybe not even then.
Sometime around eight o'clock in the morning he fluttered up from sleep. Fire roaring up from his calf and his chest where those things had had at him.
She could hear panic in his voice when he lifted it for the first time in over 24 hours.
"Lola?"
Normally he can bellow from across the house and she will hear him as if he's standing right behind her. Sunday morning he didn't have the guts to shout so loud.
"Lola?!"
When she went to him she knew he was panicking because he was injured and he couldn't do anything to make the injuries go away and he didn't know where Lola was.
He kept crying and saying he was sorry. Broke down and clung to her and sobbed at one point. Begged her not to leave. It's a goddamn flesh wound that would heal in a week if he had no other options. An hour feels like an eternity when one is in agony. The only thing he could do was sleep and he wouldn't fall asleep if he was alone.
No one would blame her for not letting anyone near the house that day.
---
By Monday Hector is weak as a kitten but he isn't screaming or sobbing or telling her he's sorry anymore. The horror of the day before comes to him like slideshow images out of a nightmare. He doesn't want to get out of bed. He doesn't think he's going to.
It's supposed to snow again tomorrow. Bitter cold and burying snow coming their way. If he were in his right mind he wouldn't be lying in bed letting Lola cart in wood from the shed and make sure they had enough water and candles in case they lost power.
This morning may be when Lola starts to realize whatever happened Friday night damaged more than just his body. It may take her longer. She has never seen him like this. No one will blame her for thinking he only needs a few days to recover.
He will not be able to shift forms until his Rage comes back to him. Luna is in her waxing crescent phase tonight. That will help. He can lie in his wolf skin for a couple of days instead of languishing for a week.
Conscious as he is now he isn't crying those silent cold tears he'd cried Saturday morning. He isn't hysterical like he was hysterical on Sunday. He hasn't eaten anything since Friday and the only time he drank anything yesterday was when Lola forced him to.
He's just staring at the wall today. Accepting the throbbing hot pain of his injuries instead of screaming about it. It isn't going to kill him.
Lola Hawkes
Saturday
For how territorial she was, Lola hadn't learned to sleep lightly enough to hear every sound that ticked abnormally through her home. So, in the small early hours of the morning far before dawn, Lola did not hear when the door opened and closed, or when the shower started. It was only by chance that Lola was awake before seven in the morning, which was approximately when she usually woke on her own accord. Hector had been sitting in the shower with the water running over him for about twenty minutes when Lola's bladder was what brought her out of bed.
With a light knock on the door that no doubt when unanswered, Lola let herself into the bathroom and squinted against the lights that were left on. She found Hector with blank dead eyes and no life in his bones or flesh aside from what basic functions his lungs and heart and brain kept going without him.
She didn't react strongly as most Kinfolk would. Lola was accustomed to battle, and after trying to talk to him for a couple of minutes recognition of what she was seeing lit in her mind. She'd seen Maria without her wolf twice before-- it was easier for her to do for herself, as her Rage was less boisterous a thing than Hector's. She remembered Maria sleeping and stirring for two days before ambling her way out one morning to share oatmeal with her sister as though nothing had happened. The difference there, though, Lola would realize after a few days but not quite yet, was that Maria had been able to joke weakly through the exhaustion and recovery. Hector would do no such thing, but that would come later. For now, she simply cut the water to the shower and draped a towel over Hector's head and shoulders and back and coerced him out of the shower. She could lift him if she had to, but when she'd reached of point of trying to gather his knees by hooking an arm under them he finally stirred-- even through this, he wasn't going to let her try that, not with their baby taking more and more of her strength and abdominal space with each passing week.
On the bathroom mat, where Lola tried to curl up, Lola cleaned his wounds and covered them with large gauze pads that she taped to his skin. She wanted to make sure that they were covered at least before she let the sheets get glued to them. She wouldn't bother with stitches, even though she knew how to do them and had the materials on hand in her first aid kit. In her experience, they were pushed from Werewolf skin before they had a chance to do much of their job anyways.
Again, it took coaxing and pulling, but Lola was diligent and now very fully awake. She got Hector to bed, and as she was pulling the sheets and quilt up over his shoulder he dissolved into quiet tears. Lola frowned sympathetically and laid down in the bed beside him. She'd brushed his wet hair from his eyes until it was all smooth and slicked back, rubbed comfortingly at his back and shoulder until the rhythm and his own exhaustion lulled him to sleep.
It was about 4:00am by the time Hector was asleep and Lola found quiet in the house. Realizing she couldn't rest after that, Lola slid from the bed and made herself busy.
Sunday
Throughout the day on Sunday, Lola is in overdrive. She walks the house with a new kind of fire in her bones and determination written into the fiber of her being. She would let Hector sleep and rest, because she understood that this was precisely what he needed. Garou had the habit of burning themselves out. They threw all fibers of their being-- Primal and Spiritual and Physical alike -- into the war that they waged. For all that they accomplished and survived, it made perfect sense that they'd need to reset from time to time to avoid actually burning themselves out.
It was as Lola was moving pans about to start breakfast that she heard her name from up the hallway-- not the searching healthy call that she was used to, but a weak sound that was wound tight with panic. She was there before he'd find need to cry out for her a third time, and when she had come to see what he needed she found herself with Hector holding onto her and sobbing and apologizing. He was suffering pain that was physical and something else as well. The moon was New, he couldn't bring his Wolf back and so was left handling his injury and pain with nothing to cut it-- like a Kinfolk would if no one were there to heal them. Lola scowled heavily, but she tucked her head near to Hector's and put her arms around him and comforted as well as she could. There was only so much that either of them could do, and after he'd eased to sleep once more Lola reluctantly left him to rest.
She didn't patrol-- she was unwilling to leave the house from her sights with Hector in this state. She made herself busy with cleaning and household chores, and when there was nothing more of that for her she set up space on the dining room table to dismantle and clean and reassemble her guns, one at a time.
If anyone came by to visit (and Hector, if he was asleep, may be none the wiser to this), Lola would bar the door and refuse to let them in. Hector may have callers after what happened on Friday night, but their business would need to go through his Kinswoman today. It would take an overpowering show of force for anyone to enter The Homestead today.
Monday
This was the third day of Hector's time recovering in bed. Lola was stressed and uncomfortable. That morning Eddie had come to visit, but she wouldn't let him in the house and wouldn't leave with him either. She did bring two coffee thermoses out of the house and had a conversation with him, brief as it may be, in the bitter cold of the morning air on the front porch. The Skald didn't get many details as to what was happening inside, but he did stick around long enough to help the Kinswoman chop wood and bring it to the back porch with her. The forecast promised snow tomorrow, and Lola wanted to be sure they were prepared if they needed to ride out a blizzard instead of a snow shower.
By the time Eddie Luske and Lola Hawkes were finished with that chore it was mid-morning. Lola sent the Skald on his way and went back inside. She showered the sweat of work from her skin but did not wash her hair, unwilling to deal with drying it as she still needed to bring the wood into the house from outside.
It was when she went into the room to get dressed in new clothes that she found Hector laying in the bed, staring blankly at the wall instead of sleeping. Lola looked at him with an expression of muted, cautious surprise on her face, and laid the towel she'd wrapped around herself on the foot of the bed before hunting for clothes to dress herself in. Nudity was hardly something to be concerned about between the two of them by now, anyways. As she pulled clothes from her dresser, she looked over to Hector and spoke as though she was worried about stepping on eggshells that had fuses attached.
"The moon comes back tonight. Just a sliver, but it'll be enough to recharge your batteries on." A pause, and as she put on undergarments she continued. "You're gonna need to eat something...."
Hector Ghosh
If the fuses are attached to anything they are attached to his sense of self-worth and that has already been thoroughly shredded. Though he has not suffered the same fate as Warning Threshold and he will recover now that his inner strength is coming back to him his Rage is a dampened thing now. She cannot hear it thrumming under his skin like electricity through a high-tension wire.
Hector hears her come into the bedroom and he does not roll to watch her dress. In his periphery though she may be he does not respond to the sight of her nude. His eyes trace over the swell of her belly and a new stab of pain goes through him.
He couldn't protect his family if something happened right now. He might be able to fight as well as a human would fight something trying to kill his unborn child but Hector could not swipe away a crafty Fomor picked through the front door's lock or tear through a pack of Black Spiral Dancers if they came in out of the Umbra.
This realization does not drive him to tears again but Hector sighs heavy and miserable before Lola reminds him of the moon's swinging towards brightness again. A necessary reminder. He hasn't been outside in nearly three days.
No tears or panic or anger or anything at all behind his words. Hector just sounds flat.
"I'm not hungry."
Lola Hawkes
There was no attempt to sway Hector from the misery and lethargy that he'd fallen to with seduction or romance. Lola did not make a show of dressing herself or try to climb onto the bed naked to coerce him back in more intimate ways. She had moved from bra and panties to the skirt that she'd pulled out-- one that she wore commonly these days for how easily and comfortably it rested low on her waist. It was a few inches from dragging on the floor and full rather than sleek. She'd pulled this on and was just securing the waistband when Hector sighed heavily and answered plainly. This caused her pause, and her fingers stilled on the garment while she looked back over at her mate.
Laid in the bed as he ways, unwilling to move, with the covers looking as though he's been living in them for how rumpled and warm they were. Lola's expression pressed into something that was conflicted and uncomfortable. Her nose wrinkled and her brow creased. When Maria had been like this, needing to sleep and rest and recover, she was at least willing to get up and move around after two days worth of hibernation. She wasn't back out at the Sept or with her Pack on their exploits for another few days, but at least she was herself, albeit a tired still-thin expression of what she usually was.
She was expecting this morning to start with Hector slumping out of bed to take a shower. She figured she would find him in the kitchen with a cup of something warm looking tired at the counter or maybe even on the couch. She'd hoped he would have at least moved.
With the shirt she'd selected to wear left abandoned on top of the dresser for now, Lola moved to the side of the bed that Hector was facing and crouched down. Her arms and head and shoulders and chest were all up on the bed with Hector. Arms reached out toward him, and though one lay a few inches away on the matress from actually touching, the other hand rubbed an arm and shoulder.
"I know that. But it doesn't mean that your body doesn't need food. You've been tryin' to heal with just your human skin. You've barely even had enough water. You're just gonna make yourself worse layin' around past this point."
She wasn't pleading with him, but speaking in what he was learning to be her I'm being patient, see? tone of voice. It was when her voice lowered and her words were spoken more clearly than she usually bothered to keep them. It was a velvety voice, like that was the closest thing she could think of as being soft and comforting and gentle. But it was like velvet draped over iron, because behind and under all of that she is firm and unmoving. She isn't here negotiating, she's explaining what she would call 'The Way Things Are'.
Hector Ghosh
At his most tired Hector will still argue if he thinks he's right or if he's got his mind hung on something. Even when he's wrong. Even when nobody else agrees with him and he wants to do it anyway. It would take something monumental to get Hector to not argue. His will is more akin to a sapling than an oak but he has the resiliency of youth that has thus far allowed him to bend without snapping.
Some would argue it was only a matter of time before he had a total nervous collapse. His fostering being what it was and his entire world being based upon his place within the pack. How devastated he was after Glen and Maria died and Corey left and how he went on anyway because he had to take care of Tamsin and he promised Maria he would look after her sister.
Good fucking job he's doing, there.
Her hand finds his bare shoulder as strong and sinewy as it ever is. Can feel the tack of two days' worth of sweat on his skin and the heat of his body without the Rage behind it. The lift of his clavicle as he draws a deep breath and grits his teeth to keep his composure as she soothed him.
As much as he never learned how to deal with frustration he never learned how to deal with people comforting him either. Sure as shit isn't used to Lola comforting him. Lola knows him. He doesn't like being comforted and when people who love him touch him when he's upset he tends to fall apart. He brings the opposite wrist up to his eyes to shield them from her. Like if she has to see him lain like a slug in her bed he's at least going to stop crying.
No God damn it Lola I'm fine I'm resting I'll eat later comes up from the muffled place made by his bent arm. No attempt made to haul her down to him that she might bring him up out of his inertia with affection. That's what he ought to be doing about now.
His eyes are glassy when he lowers his wrist but he isn't crying. His voice as weak as he is.
"Okay," he says.
Lola Hawkes
Hector's expression was hard for Lola to read in confidence. She wasn't sure if he was trying to hide his face to block her out or to hide coming tears or to cover his face up while he clamped down on something that he was trying to keep buried. As far as she could know, it was any of the above. Maybe something she hadn't thought of yet.
She stayed where she was and her hand stilled on his shoulder when he covered his face, but she didn't say anything just yet. Some set amount of time would have to pass before she pressed further for a reaction. His wrist moved before that time came, but the answer that he gave was lackluster at best.
Lola's lips pressed into a thin, bothered line. Her brow stayed heavy and furrowed, she was unable to smooth it for his sake. She'd never thought herself to be built for comfort before. But she was trying.
Her hand scrubbed his shoulder a little more and then retreated so she could tap lightly on the mattress about twelve inches from his head. It was a motion that seemed final, like a decision had been made, like a gavel made of fingertips instead of wood.
"Okay," she repeated, and rolled her shoulders and situated her hands like she would use them to push herself back up to her feet. But she didn't actually stand, and had no plans to rise with that motion until he showed he would move the covers and get up as well. When he didn't immediately move, she continued with: "I ain't bringing it to you in here, though. You gotta get up and move around a little, too."
Hector Ghosh
The lacerations are not keeping him in bed. Though she can see the gray-white of the tissue against his brown skin on the shoulder that she touches Lola knows his old death-scars are not crippling him either. Hector is made of stronger stuff than that.
And yet he lies on his side half curled up on himself right hand against his sternum as he averts his eyes from her. Not much hair there but where before Hector was a boy barely out of his teens over the last six months he's grown fur places a man tends to have it. With his ethnic heritage he will never grow to resemble the Mexican rancher Maria used to joke her little sister would always end up with but if Lola wanted a Mexican rancher she wouldn't be with him right now.
Three days before she was with him she was with Corey though. Up until He Who Waits For Dawn took over his body and called Lola stupid for goading him they weren't even sure it was Hector's baby. Maybe Lola still isn't sure. But the spirit that rode Hector's bones that day knew whose descendant grows inside of her. It isn't one of Cockroach's.
Lola doesn't need him. If he died Friday night she would have grieved for him and she would have screamed at the moon because she cannot shift to howl and she would have gone on. It's actually sort of a comfort knowing if something happened to him Corey and she are still talking.
Do not suffer thy people to tend thy sickness.
"I'm sorry," he says with a hollowness in his voice where the desperation screamed yesterday. A bone-tired realization riding the apology. She can hear the tone of them though he does not say it: something's wrong.
But he sniffles and shucks back the covers. Smell of old blood and sweat and something more cloying than that. Hopelessness. Like a tar he has to slog through just to sit up.
"Ugh. I'm up. I..."
He sits up. Dirty hair falls over his shoulders and into his face. He braces himself on both hands and stares down at his thighs like if he looks anywhere else he's going to see the abyss gaped out in front of him. Fall into it instead of stepping back from it. Though he is not looking at her Lola can see how he grits his teeth and clamps down on himself to keep from crying again.
It coughs out of him in a sob but he gets to his feet anyway. It's an effort but weak as he is and as close to tears as he is for no reason Hector does not lean on his woman.
Lola Hawkes
Though she has worked on it, and though it has improved greatly like a new muscle group being focused on over the past six months, Lola's patience wasn't a fully formed thing just yet. It didn't stretch near so far as it ought to for a Kinfolk. Patience was necessary when living with and loving and caring for the True Born-- her father had told her so from the very beginning. Situations like this were better dealt with by the type of Kinswomen who were gentler and more mild, better able to wait and care and tend.
But Lola has never been gentle or mild. She's terrible at waiting too. She will care and she will tend, but she will not coddle and when she decides that continued softness will cross the line into coddling she switches hard into 'tough love'.
This, for Hector, is Lola's easing into tough love instead of slamming gears as though it were a truck she was planning to abandon across state borders anyways. She encourages him out of bed rather than yelling at him and shoving him forward, as she probably would have done were he a packmate and not a lover. She's rewarded by his compliance, halfhearted and slow and painful as it looks. He peeled back the sheets, and she frowned when the smell reached her sensitive nostrils but did not recoil as though it offended her greatly. She did scowl to see his continued refusal to even look at her, though, much less make eye contact.
Just sitting up he seemed ready to cry again, and when he finally swung his feet off the bed and worked his way onto his feet Lola pushed herself up onto her feet as well and went to retrieve her shirt from the top of the shelf. It was simple, black, and long-sleeved, made from a material that stretched greatly. It fit comfortably over her stomach without riding up, this was another shirt she wore often. After she'd tugged the hem down where she wanted it, she looked over to see how far Hector had made it.
Not far at all.
With a small quiet sigh that was for the purpose of pushing irritation away, she approached the foot of the bed to meet him after he'd rounded it. Just watching him, she scowled and held out a hand for him to come towards. It's hard to gauge whether she's trying to offer her arm to support him or whether she's asking for him to hold her hand. Either way, she says: "You're not gonna tell me what's going on, are you..."
Hector Ghosh
"I don't know what's going on."
The first step to fixing the problem is admitting the problem. That's as close an approximation to the problem as he can get. Lola can observe that Hector is moving slow and he's tearful and he has no appetite. That he keeps apologizing even though he hasn't done anything wrong.
Could have chalked that up to losing his Wolf but it's been two days now. Even he knew the night that he came home that something was wrong but he'd hoped it would get better. It may still get better. Maybe he'll snap out of this.
Her hand is stretched out to him. Hector looks at it but he doesn't just stand there staring without comprehending. He doesn't want to keep her away from him right now. Maybe she could help him.
Instead of just holding her hand Hector comes forward and hauls her into an embrace. Buries his face in her neck. Does not start sobbing again but she can feel the pain in him bubble up and knows it when Hector tightens his grip on her.
"I don't know what's going on," he says again. "Nothing's wrong, I just don't know what's going on."
Lola Hawkes
The confession was met with raised eyebrows and a bland stare. The look that his woman gives him is one that tells Hector she is hardly going to accept that as an answer. She was expecting something more-- perhaps not a spot on explanation, but maybe something that she could pick apart and figure out. She would be happier with a hint than she was with nothing at all.
He looked at her hand, but thankfully had more within him than to just stare at it alone. She wanted to help him into the kitchen, to the bathroom. To encourage him to spend time out in the living space instead of the bedroom, so she could try and keep him active and talking until she could get his eyes on the moon. She knew that was significant. She was under the impression that the utter lack of Rage within him was doing this. It was a part of him as it was a part of any wolf, and she imagined losing it would be to lose a piece of yourself. That would explain the hollow exhausted behavior.
She couldn't guess that it was something different entirely, not yet. She only assumed he reacted to it differently than Maria ever had because they were different people, and he was far more dramatic by nature and birthright alike.
When he grabbed onto her and pulled her to him, Lola didn't dig in her heels to stop him. She did look a little surprised though, and paused only a moment before adjusting to how he held her. She rolled up to stand on her toes and give herself another few inches of height to work with. Her stomach and chest both pressed to his, because it was impossible for them not to now. She wrapped her arms up around his head and tucked her face to his hair despite how unwashed it was. For how tightly his arms gripped about her, she braced her arms around his head. She didn't squeeze his skull, no, but her arm muscles were tight like she was prepared to block and soak up an onslaught of blows.
"It's a funk," she explained somewhere behind his ear. "Ya spent yourself. Wiped yourself clean, completely. You need Gaia and Luna to get back up to your feet, and you won't find them in bed, baby. S'why you gotta get up. Go to them both."
Hector Ghosh
Tears flow as if he'd torn a scab off but he doesn't sob or fall apart. Lola can hear him breathing heavier for the congestion in his sinuses but Rage and grief are not driving him to choke on an outpouring. When he had fallen apart yesterday he had not seemed lighter afterwards. It's like the more he cries the thicker this funk gets.
That's the word she uses and he nods his head brisk against her shoulder. Yes. Okay. Good. It has a name. It's a funk. Blows out a shaky breath against her collarbone and smooths the hair at the back of her head. He is a goddamn mess. Trying to comfort her like even in the midst of this he knows what this is doing to her.
With her belly pressed against him he has a physical reminder of why he has to stay alive. One of his hands leaves the embrace to lay against her hip.
Nights past he would make her lie still so he could massage her muscles and ligaments. Hard as she pushes herself normally the added work is palpable now that she's pregnant. Hector has been devouring those books Anthony gave them because he wants to help her. He wants to be part of this baby's life and that has started as soon as he broke her out of the hospital.
God damn it Hawkes hold still I'm going to massage your stuff with my big manly hands and it's going to be awesome, he'd said once. Gentle even as he was berating her.
Now he's just touching her belly and breathing fast and repeating what she's said to him. He's drained. He has to get up. He has to get back with Gaia and Luna. By the time he speaks his voice is not damp. It's still flat but he's not crying anymore.
"Okay..." That hand still behind her clutches the back of her neck. "I'm okay. I'm up."
Lola Hawkes
For all of the time she spent enforcing strength and endurance, Lola wasn't one to judge a man for his tears. If the situation was appropriate and the stress was understandable, she'd never shame someone for the crying they did. When she'd held hard feelings and judgment against Storm's Teeth, it wasn't for his tears but for his outburst and how inappropriate she'd found it to be in general. So, as Hector cries into her neck and hair, quiet and without the harsh sobs of release, Lola just kept her arms up around his head and shoulders and stayed close.
She gave him time, but not much. The touch of his hand to her stomach probably earned him those few extra moments that he needed, truthfully. When he did that she understood he was dwelling or processing or chewing on a new set of thoughts entirely.
When he repeated 'okay, okay', but made no move to let go of her, Lola loosened her arms from around his head and neck. Switched her hands so that she was rubbing his shoulders first, then nudging his arms so they weren't wrapped around her anymore. She moved so she was standing rotated away from his front, trying to turn herself to his side instead. To guide and encourage, to catch if his legs stumbled after two days of lethargy. It was almost like a border collie getting ready to herd a particularly young sheep along after the herd.
"Yeah, Hector, I know. It is okay. Now come on. Into the kitchen."
Though she's still got the velvet-on-concrete tone of patience going, he can feel the edges of that velvet fraying. The concrete beneath this analogy was threatening to crack and buckle, and the fissure in her tone warned that this may not last for much longer if momentum wasn't gained.
Hector Ghosh
Luckily Hector is more perceptive than folks tend to give him credit for being. Even when he's bleeding from a wound he cannot fix and has spent the last two days in bed and feels as much like hell as he looks he can tell when his mate has had enough.
A truth he won't be able to tell until he actually does it is that Hector needs to talk to other Garou. He needs to talk to the Fosterns who understand what it is to make a bad choice and understand why it is he made the bad choice that he made and can help him sort out how not to do it again. If he could just talk to Lola about what happened he might be able to gain some perspective or closure or whatever it is that he doesn't have lying in bed but that isn't Lola's responsibility.
One could argue it isn't her responsibility to get him out of bed and make sure he's eating and not making things worse by staying lain down all day. They are bound by no law or code of honor. That baby grown in her belly is not a tether. They stay together because they love each other and difficult moments like this one are going to serve as a foundation for the millions of other difficult moments ahead of them.
They have no idea how much sleep they are going to lose once their baby is born. How frayed their nerves are going to be or how impossible the task of parenthood seems some days when they're fighting a war on top of it.
They don't spend much time thinking about the future because they have enough trouble getting through today, some days.
Lola puts an arm around him just to get him moving and Hector sniffs and goes into the kitchen.
---
The rest of the day goes by with similar difficulty. Hector has no appetite but he forces himself to cook anyway. Makes that soup his mother claims will cure anything and forces himself to sit down and eat and try to make conversation to keep his mind off the burning pain of the laceration and the yawning pit of despair opened up behind his breastbone.
At least he doesn't start crying again.
Sometime later in the afternoon he drags himself up into the loft and comes back down with a book. Crashes on the couch like that was a monumental effort. It was a monumental effort. He's still injured and the moon won't be up for another couple hours and he's so morose he's surprised the despair hasn't actually swallowed him up from the inside. He needs to distract himself.
When he sees Lola passing through he says "Baby?"
What, Hector. You incredible pain in the ass.
"I think my problem is I have to go through life knowing you've never read The Hobbit and it's slowly killing me. Come here."
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