Much earlier, not long past dawn, a bedraggled Strikes with Valor had returned to the Brotherhood covered in blood, his clothing torn to shreds in places and his eyes red-rimmed. He'd climbed the stairs and wordlessly shut the door to the room he shared with his Alpha, Liam.
None had seen the boy since, though less than a half hour past the door had once again been opened and Art had emerged in the same clothing he'd been seen in earlier, crumpled from sleep, his dark hair a tangled mat atop his head. One of the Kinfolk who worked the kitchens at the Brotherhood had commented to another in passing that the sheets in Room 6 were stained with blood, and the Full Moon she'd seen exiting to the rooftop was also covered in it.
They were common enough exchanges at the Brotherhood between the folk who worked the restaurant downstairs, and kept things running efficiently for those of Gaia who lived above.
Now, long past sunset, Arthur Morgan was sitting on the edge of the roof, legs dangling over, staring out over the cityscape below. His feet were bare, as they had been when he returned home, and in one hand a cigarette was slowly burning down, ash floating away in the breeze.
[Charlie] [YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO FUCKING CHANGE CHARACTERS AGAIN *SMASH*]
[vikthya] [SHE CAN DO WHAT SHE WANTS. *COUNTERSMASH*]
[Charlie] [YOUR MOM DOES WHAT SHE WANTS *COUNTERCOUNTERSMASH*]
[Joey] [DON'T MAKE ME BRING IN ELLIOT]
[Arthur Morgan] [CHRIST ALMIGHTY]
[Sinclair] [YES SHE DOES *HADOKKEN*]
[Charlie] After the ministrations of Saint Jenny, the second floor of the Brotherhood is smelling a little less like dank marijuana smoke and a little more like fresh linen Febreze.
That isn't what Charlie's thinking about as he claps down the hallway in shower shoes and jeans. There's plenty on the young metis's mind tonight, and that is precisely why he is going up the stairs and out into the biting cold November evening rather than into the shower or up to the Caern.
Luna is slowly swinging away from full, is making herself slimmer and darker not for the sake of the Garou who live and die by her light but because that's the natural order of things, because time marches on and brings the rest of the universe with it. As the last Theurge left on the floor mounts the stairs and pushes through the awakened rooftop access door, he lifts his face to the luminescent sky and takes a deep breath to clear his lungs.
And then he sees Art.
It's been a little over twenty-four hours since Charlie brought his presence and his pipe into Room 6. He's silent but for the slapping of his shoes as he moves across the roof to kneel beside the man he'd invited into his pack last night.
"Hey," he says, his bony knees settling on the concrete.
[Joey] She hasn't seen Art around. Ever since she came home early yesterday morning, the Rotagar living in room 7 has been scarce. Whatever happened Saturday night, and she hasn't really told anyone about the scene in the pub, wiped her out.
Joey is feeling much better today. She's just coming in from her evening patrol of the neighborhood. It's the duty that used to fall on the shoulders of Charlie's brother, Curata, who left without a trace. So now it's Joey's duty, and it's one she does willingly. Gladly, even.
Her booted feet tramp up the steps to the roof. Her bat is in her room, and she's wearing jeans and her purple hooded sweatshirt with the white filigree on her left breast and right upper arm. Beneath that, though it can't be seen, is a long-sleeved t-shirt. And beneath THAT is another t-shirt. She was born in the desert. It's as cold tonight as it gets in the middle of the night in the desert. She's still getting used to the chill, but she's not quite there yet.
She still thinks Charlie's an asshole, when she sees him up on the roof, for wearing nothing more than a pair of jeans, flip flops, and a sweatshirt while Joey is buried beneath layers.
He's settling himself down beside Art when Joey pushes her way through the roof access. She hesitates only a moment, brow furrowed and mouth quirked to the side, and then her boots are scuffing across the concrete rooftop. She comes up on Art's other side, and settles herself so that her back is to the view Art faces.
"How the hell do you jerkwads walk around with no shoes when it's this fuckin' cold out?" is her greeting to both young men.
[Alexander] Meanwhile, Alexander rumbles down the second-floor hallway like a train wreck. He has a new set of drumsticks. They're carbon fiber. They're featherlight. They're not terribly good on rolls and rimshots, they're shittastic on the ride, they make a distinctively flat and unorganic sound ... but they're strong as shit. Even when he beats on the walls. Which is exactly what he's doing, all the way down to room 7, where he beats a rhythm out on Sinclair and Joey's door in lieu of knocking.
When it opens, he flashes a close-lipped, manufactured smile. The drumsticks do a slow spin through his fingers, which are surprisingly graceful. He's in cargo shorts, though it's long past shorts weather, and a red muscle shirt stamped with the Tribull logo. Alexander likes red. Of course he does.
"I'm bored," he announces at whoever opens the door, Joey or Sinclair. In the next breath, "Wanna go a round with me on the roof?"
[Arthur Morgan] The last words he'd exchanged with Liam had happened less than twenty-four hours ago. They had been in the midst of a battle, a brief calling to and fro from one pack-mate to another even as they both bled, even as one of them had already died and Raged back to life again.
Neither of them had expected that fight to be the last time they spoke.
I can't leave you alone for an instant!
Good thing you're here then!
Neither of them had expected the light to go out of Liam's eyes twice in one night, and for the Ahroun to bear the corpse of his fallen brother in arms home to the Caern, his body shaking not with exhaustion but with a bone deep grief. Arthur Morgan had known death intimately, had dealt it to his enemies and experienced it more than once on the field in the course of protecting the Caern.
But he had never experienced first hand the sensation of grief twisting his stomach to knots, and the numbing certainty that this was forever, and he couldn't heal it, or use a Gift to soothe it. Even when he'd left his home Sept and Marianne behind, he'd known in the back of his mind that she still existed somewhere in the world. That she could feel the sun on her face every day, and breathed in and out.
Liam was never going to grow old.
Or tell Jeremiah he was sorry.
Or know with certainty that his last fight was glorious, and they won.
There is a hollowing taking place inside Arthur Morgan's chest; the naivety of a young boy is abandoning him and grief is making a man of him. Already there is something harder about him, about the lines of his face, the darkness dwelling beneath his eyes. He does not turn his face toward either Charlie or Joey as they join him, the latter greeting them with light-hearted banter.
He merely taps the ash from the end of his cigarette and lifts it to his lips.
Smoke trails from the boy's lips as he says quietly: "Liam's dead."
[Sinclair] Sinclair is on her bed, asleep, curled in a ball wearing jeans with a hole in one knee and an old Nine Inch Nails t-shirt over a thermal. The top half of the Glass Walker is hidden under a big athletic jacket, purple with white sleeves. There are championship patches down the sleeves, there are various teams in black letters:
Super Novas
which is below the Comets patch but above the Galaxy patch, all of which are above the smaller Shooting Stars patch. The emblem across the back says Cheer Eclipse. The white embroidery over the chest says Sinclair. The jacket is several years old, but not ancient. She does not snore. She does kick in her sleep.
When someone decides to drum on her door to say hello, it doesn't wake her.
The door is not locked, and he knows for damn sure she's been in his room multiple times without his permission or presence to play his Xbox. Very likely he does not enter. This is the den of a monstrous animal...
...and it looks like the college dorm of a couple of girls. There's a whiteboard on the back of the door, there's a laptop of lots of books on one desk, and the thick red -- of course it is -- comforter Sinclair sleeps on is rumpled. Maybe she fell asleep while the sun was still coming through the window, and that's why she's under her jacket. Who knows.
Who cares.
The drumming didn't wake her. The door opening didn't wake her. Vaughn talking doesn't wake her.
[Sinclair] [Or rather, he DOESN'T know for damn sure... >_> _> ]
[Bai Chou] Bai paused outside of the Brotherhood. He glanced down at the cigarette hanging from his lips before he put it out against the side of the entrance. Restaurants generally frowned on smoking within its confines. He glanced up though, imagining if he had gotten the right directions from the Guardian, that the restaurant really wasn't quite that busy. He moved inside, just giving a glance to the host...pointing past the entrance to the kitchen and instead gesturing towards the stairs.
He then continued to make his way inside...there were no howls of introduction...there were no calls ahead. He was simply there and would deal with what came once he ran into the others. He trudged up the steps, coming to the living quarters and gathering room for the Brotherhood itself.
[Charlie] He's aware of the metal door swinging open out of the periphery of his eyes, but it's the presence of his packmate that draws his attention more so than the sound of hinges whining. Charlie's gaze pulls away from the Child of Gaia for a few seconds as he turns toward Joey, and he grins at her when she speaks. He looks immensely amused.
"I keep telling you," he says: "It ain't that cold out."
And then Art speaks, his voice so soft that it only serves to drive home the grim finality of the two words he gives the Sentinels. He flinches as though the Ahroun had hauled off and elbowed him in the chest, and for several seconds all he can do is slide one shower shoe and then the other off his feet and onto the rooftop, is shimmy his legs out from underneath his body and lower himself onto his ass on the ledge.
He'd been at the Caern last night when the body had been brought back from battle but he hadn't drawn closer to see who it was or what had happened.
"I'm sorry," he says. It doesn't sound natural, coming out of his throat. It's not a phrase he uses very often.
[Alexander] Alexander doesn't bust in on Sinclair. If he knew Sinclair was in his room
It doesn't keep him from rapping on her door again, though. Or yelling through it: "HEY. HEY, JOEY. SIN. ANYONE IN THERE?"
[Sinclair] It takes close to ten, fifteen seconds of prolonged rapping and shouting -- enough to not just aggravate but frenzy most Garou of more than a Theurge's birthright of Rage under this moon -- before there is even a groggy:
"Go the fuck away, Vaughn!"
[Joey] If Joey were another kind of girl, she might pull a face filled with concern. She might wrap her arms around Art the Ahroun without asking his permission, might stroke his hair back and make soothing noises. If she were another type of girl, she might be more motherly.
But Joey is not that kind of girl. She grew up trailing after her older brother and trying to fit in with boys. And she will never be a mother.
So when Art announces that Liam has died, Joey does nothing that another kind of girl does.
Charlie says he's sorry. Joey extends her arm to bump Art's, a light physical contact to remind him there are others here, that even though Liam is gone, Art is not alone.
"I'm sorry, too, man. He was a good guy. And a good Garou."
[Bai Chou] So I'm not totally confused, where everyone be?
to Alexander, Arthur Morgan, Charlie, Joey, Lonna Larson, Sinclair
[Alexander] hallway in front of room 7!
to Bai Chou
[Alexander] "DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS?" Alex hollers through the door. "NINE P.M. WAKEY-WAKEY, PRINCESS."
[Bai Chou] Bai finds his head craning in the direction of the yell...staring through the plastic framed glasses directly towards Alexander, eying him. Just staring as if analyzing the man before him...almost as if saying 'there a reason yer so loud?'. He idly reached into the pocket of his gray pea coat, sliding out another one of his cigarettes, his gaze still locked on him.
[Arthur Morgan] Charlie tells him he's sorry, and Joey expresses solidarity with a shoulder bump that draws the faintest of smiles from the Ahroun's lips. They can tell he has not slept well, nor changed his clothing since the fight, there is still blood beneath Art's fingernails and matted throughout his clothing where it hangs in tatters across his back.
He had gained another battle-scar last night, though he is yet to discover the source of it. "I was gonna ask you," the Southern born Garou begins, as he turns his head from the view finally and meets the Fury's gaze. "Would you do the funeral rites for him? I think," Art swallows back a lump forming in his throat as he forces himself to correct his tendency to still speaking as if Liam were among them.
"I think he woulda liked that you did it. If you don't mind."
The boy's brows knit together, and he looked back at the place where the horizon met the earth. "I been sittin' here just watchin' the city and thinkin' how fuckin' small we are. We're ants, and here we are thinkin' we're big tough heroes when all it takes is one good blow an' --" Art breaks off his words, and instead tosses his cigarette over the edge.
It glows amber as it falls before darkness swallows it up.
"I ain't ever lost nobody close to me before." He finally confesses, his features drawn back into a grimace.
[Charlie] The incredulous words coming out of Art's mouth are fairly typical of the sort of reaction that people experiencing sudden and painful loss for the first time find swirling through their thoughts. Death is something that all of them grow used to doling out, to raining down upon the heads of those who would oppose and attempt to corrupt Gaia and her children, but it's harder for them to accept the loss when it happens to those they have fought alongside for weeks or months or years. Then it isn't a matter of a worthy warrior willingly giving his or her life in the fight against the Wyrm; it's just a gaping, bloody hole where a piece of their humanity used to be.
The Fury sitting next to Art has known loss before. The Fenrir sitting next to Art knows this about him. The very first thing he ever knew, one has to imagine, is loss; he grew up without a mother, was well into his teens before the concept of a father was something that he could begin to understand. His first pack, the only pack that he had had before he came to Chicago, is mostly dead.
But this isn't about Charlie. It isn't about his losses. It's about Art, and as Art speaks, the Theurge listens, eyes on the youth who considers him a friend rather than a weed supplier or a potential future packmate. His bare feet dangle over the edge of the building and his hands hold themselves between his knees, and he doesn't speak again until Art confesses that he's never lost anyone close to him before.
He doesn't know what to say to that. Charlie's role within the Nation is that of an advisor and a counselor in addition to his duties as a spirit-talker; he's supposed to provide some sort of explanation for and meaning to the loses that they all suffer.
"It's gonna suck for a while," he says, slowly, as though he's carefully choosing his words. "Like, a lot. And you're probably gonna wonder what the point is, and nobody's really gonna be able to give you a good enough answer... but Liam ain't really gone. You know? I mean, his body's not up and moving around anymore, but that's just a shell for that part of him that can't die. He's not feeling pain or sadness or any of that anymore. After I do his Gathering, he'll be heading towards your guys's homeland, and he'll be there when you get there. In the meantime you just gotta heal, you know? It's like a really bad wound that you can't heal by laying on hands, but it'll get better and kinda leave a scar but you'll be able to keep going eventually."
His dark eyes glimpse to Joey briefly as he draws a breath, as he draws some sort of conclusion to his speech.
"So think of some stories you wanna tell at his Gathering, and just... let it suck right now. It won't always."
[Sinclair] It's been said that Sinclair sleeps like the dead. Even in high school she had four alarm clocks just to get up on time. She can nap just about anywhere, can stay asleep for long stretches despite noise, storms, pretty much anything. Joey has witnessed firsthand how long it takes Sinclair to wake when it is not natural, when it is not a slow rising tide of energy that makes her eyes open of their own accord. Sinclair is not a morning person. Sinclair is not an awake person, period. She loathes getting up when she is not done sleeping, and she is disoriented as hell as Alex keeps yelling at her.
"Go away!" she shouts back again, all but groaning.
[Lonna Larson] Lonna was rather enjoying the temperature drops. This meant that there would be a completely different sort of storm systems that would blow by. Lonna, by and large, liked snow. She liked snow, she liked ice, and she even liked sleet.
She was one of the few people who could boast that she liked sleet.
The blonde headed up to stare at the moon, to get some air, to enjoy the evening and what-have-you. She headed up the stairs and was more than happy to go on and think about the day. Or, at the very least, run into someone she knew.
[Joey] Joey tilts her head, considering Art's words for a moment. There aren't many in the sept who would think the Rotagar to be a deep thinker. Most days, she acts before she thinks. But she's learning.
Art says he's finally realizing how small they are, and for once, Joey doesn't punch. She doesn't rant and rave. Maybe she's still tired from the weekend. Maybe she's subdued by Art's grief.
She reaches up and scratches at the side of her nose. And Charlie speaks. Joey's eyes remain fixed on her boots, her legs stretched out in front of her. She knows that Charlie knows loss. She knows that he lost most of his pack, that he lost his mother because she was a charach. Charlie has known suffering. He tells Art that it's going to suck for a while. Joey remembers telling someone else something similar. That sometimes you have to hurt, sometimes you have to hit the bottom to be able to bounce back.
She doesn't repeat these things to Art now, not when Charlie got there first. It's been said once, and it doesn't need to be repeated just yet.
"You know. It's important." She turns and looks at Art's profile. "To know how small we are. Because we don't fight to be heroes. I mean, yeah. We're tryin' to save the world from the Wyrm an' all, but that's the big picture. And it's not gonna happen in our lifetime. We could all be dead tomorrow, and the Wyrm will still be there. So you realize that we're small, Strikes With Valor, and you find that small thing to keep figthin' for. When you're ready, we should celebrate Requiem's life." A corner of her mouth quirks in a small smile, and she slaps her hand to his shoulder to give it a squeeze.
[Arthur Morgan] Art stares at his hands for a while after Charlie speaks, tasting the bitter aftertaste of the cigarette he'd been holding onto for an hour at least in his mouth. As much as the Theurge might find himself struggling to properly articulate what it is he wants to say, he can rest assured that the full moon beside him is just as ill-equipped to deal with this emotional onslaught as he is.
After a while, Joey chimes in about their place in the scheme of things and she has the boy smiling as his shoulder is squeezed. He lifts his hand and lays it atop the blonde's briefly in a silent communication of thanks, and turns to administer a light nudge of his shoulder against the Metis' own bony arm. "I wanna celebrate his life. I jus' can't think with this feelin' like my gut is cavin' in and my head won't stop talkin'." He shoots a half-way pleading glance Charlie's way.
"Say, got that pipe of yours handy? I could sure use somethin' about now, y'know?"
[Charlie] If Charlie was struggling to put his thoughts into words just now, he did a fine enough job of pretending otherwise. Then again, Charlie doesn't have much in the way of airs to put on or fronts to display. He seems fairly comfortable in the skin that he's in, or else doesn't feel as though he needs to try overly hard to impress anyone. There are times when this leads to people questioning his intelligence or thinking that he lives his life in something of a dopey fog; his deeds, though, speak of a wisdom that goes beyond simply running off at the mouth and hoping what he says hits the mark.
His deeds are almost enough to support a bid for the second rank. That may not be the case when the truth about his relationship with the blonde sitting on Art's right side, but for right now, his honor and wisdom are still intact.
There's a question about whether he has that pipe of his handy. The Theurge gives a nod, then reaches into his pocket and holds up his unloaded pipe with a muted flourish.
[Alexander] (*finally catches up*) "Fuck you, Sinclair!" Alexander shouts back through the door. "Should've known you were nothing but talk!" Then he pivots on the slight fellow standing down the hall. "What the fuck are you looking at, buddy?"
[Bai Chou] "...someone yelling at a door and apparently getting cock blocked. Any others around other then you and whomever is barricading you out?"
Bai stared back at Alexander evenly as he put the cigarette to his lips. Not that he wasn't hesitant or thinking he could take the man. He had once gotten his ass beat at a moot of all things by a ranking Theurge because he wouldn't shut his hole. But it didn't stop his mouth. Or his tongue. The blue eyes just bore into Alexander with that same deadpan expression.
[Lonna Larson] She was a smart woman, and not only that she was an empathetic woman. The blonde saw the gathering of people there, saw the fall in shoulders and smelled cigarette smoke and familiar silhouettes. Lonna headed by, and her approach was somewhat hesitant. She looked at those gathered, from Art to Charlie to Joey and back again.
"... am I interrupting something?"
[Alexander] Alexander gives Bai a disgusted look. Then he flips him the bird.
"Suck it, Baby Blue."
[Bai Chou] "You before me, Nick LeGay."
Bai snorted before he glanced around, noting another set of stairs to the roof. The roof sounded like a great place to smoke. He then moved towards the stairwell, heading up.
[Sinclair] The door to Room 7 opens, and a bedraggled Galliard with a baseball jacket hanging off her head like a nun's habit stands in the frame, hands braced on the wood. She must have washed her face, because there's no caked on or smeared makeup around her eyes. She ignores Bai for the moment, staring at the back of Alex's head.
"If I beat the shit out of you, will you go away and let me sleep?"
[Joey] Joey squeezes Art's shoulder, and the southerner reciprocates. For a moment, they are just three young people bonding over tragedy. Joey doesn't know that Charlie approached Art about joining their pack. She doesn't know that the kid could be her brother soon. But she smiles at him all the same.
She releases his shoulder when he says he'd like to celebrate Liam's life, if only his mind would be quiet. And Charlie produces his pipe with a flourish. Dark blonde brows rise, then fall as Joey considers whether or not she should stick around. She's still debating when Lonna appears. Joey recognizes her as a friend of Charlie's, as the girl from the swings the day she called Charlie a dumbass, and briefly she remembers speaking to her at the bonfire.
"Hello," she says, dragging out the Oh. "I don't think so, but it's really up to this guy." She nudges Art in the arm again. "She interruptin'?"
[Arthur Morgan] Charlie holds up his pipe, and the Ahroun's smile grows in strength as he stretches out muscles sore from a single held position. "Light 'er up, man." He drawls, and then catches sight of something beyond the pair with him that causes him to fall silent again; his spine stiffening.
The smile slides off his mouth and is replaced for a moment by a grim sort of wince.
"Hey," he greets his Kinswoman softly and rises to his feet, hoping that his appearance is not quite as startling as he imagines it might just be. Art's shirt was torn in several places and splattered with blood both his own and Liam's. His dark hair was pasted together with dried gore and he most definitely had not slept particularly well recently, if his palor was any indication.
Art pushed himself to his feet with a soft sigh, and glanced at Charlie.
"Jus' gimmie a minute, yeah? One last crappy moment comin'."
That said, the boy moves toward Lonna, his eyes holding hers steadily as he reaches her side and lightly traces a palm down to her wrist, taking both her hands in his and leaning in to whisper something to her.
[Alexander] Alex's head cocks to the right with such quickness and precision it's nearly avian. "What did you--" but he's turning away already, and Alex, so sharply mindful of not looking like a fool that it borders on a sixth sense, an instinct for such situations. He immediately changes tack:
"Yeah, you better scurry on up the stairs, you l'il midget!" He turns back to Sinclair, regardless of whether Bai stops or not. "Heh, you see that? Scared him right off. Did I ever tell you I kicked M--"
and then he shuts up. Bites the insides of his lips for a second as though it took a physical effort to keep his mouth shut.
"Yeah," and he smirks, "I'll go away after pwn your face. C'mon. Wanna do this on the roof? 'less you wanna make it a barfight down in the dining room. Might cause another strike though."
[Bai Chou] That does make Bai pause...as he stops, then looks over to Sinclair then to the dubbed 'Nick'. He glanced at his cigarette...the thought of a smoke was really tempting. But then again, he didn't know this guy from Adam...and he definitely wasn't Decker or Hyde or any of the old folks he knew. In fact, Alex was new meat to Bai. Granted, the same applied to him. But right now, Bai didn't like new meat. New meat meant new idiots. He was going to have problems enough dealing with the old ones.
The small Eurasian man began to walk over, reaching to slide the cigarette back into its pack, almost sighing as he marched to Sinclair and Alexander. He bowed his head slightly before he turned to Alexander.
"...lean down and repeat that...then tell me your rank in the same sentence. If you don't mind."
[Charlie] Lonna's voice draws Charlie's attention away from the pair of Garou next to him. His face is devoid of any real discernible emotion, unless exhaustion counts as an emotion; he doesn't look as though he's been sleeping overly well lately. Then again, he never looks as though the rest he'd had that day has been enough to rid his eyes of the smudges they carry around.
He lifts a hand to wave at Lonna, though there is little mirth about him, and when Art gets up and asks for a minute he gives a nod and turns on the ledge so that he can face Joey. He hauls his legs up onto the concrete to fold them up, bony knees sticking out on either side, and pulls a baggie of marijuana out of his pocket.
"So how was your Halloween?" he asks Joey, anchoring the pipe over his crossed ankles as he feeds the bowl weed. He's had a haircut since the last time Joey saw him. Jenny must have gotten a hold of him.
[Lonna Larson] She looked up at Art, cocking her head to the side and observing him quietly. The blonde inhaled slowly, squeezing his hand a little. He's being surprisingly tender with her, and she seems to appreciate it-
but it makes her tense for a second. He leans in to tell her something and she pulls back to look at him. Brows knit and she moves away from being curious to being concerned. Her eyes flickered from the ahroun in front of her to the other two garou.
She looked back at Art and gave him a quiet nod and a half voiced okay.
[Alexander] Alexander Vaughn stands five-nine. Advantage of height isn't something he's really used to, so when he gets it, he damn well holds it. As Bai approaches, the Glass Walker turns to face him, squared shoulders and raised head.
He's in summer clothes; shorts and a sleeveless shirt. What's bared is taut with compact, corded muscle. He's still holding on to the last of his miami tan, and there's something of a bantam rooster to his affect: small, strutting, too quick to lash out and defend his fragile pride.
He barks a laugh when Bai asks for his rank. "I don't have a rank, dumbass. I'm not a goddamn flea motel."
[Joey] Joey watches Art rise and go to his kinsman. He looks like shit, he looks like he just rolled off the battlefield and yet it's been hours since he brought Liam's body back to the Caern. When he leans in to whisper to Lonna, Joey averts her eyes.
To Charlie. The guy who will never be anything more than her friend and brother. She watches him prepare to smoke, and she's still undecided as to whether she'd be willing to join him.
He asks her how her Halloween was. Joey's brows hop up, and her mouth curves in something like a smile but without genuine mirth. She laughs, and it's a strange, incredulous sound.
"Oh, Halloween." Both of her hands come up to her face to dig the heels into her eyes. Joey stops laughing, lets out a sigh. "I fought these weird ghosts in a pub in Lakeview."
[Sinclair] "You're one to call anybody a midget, Short Stack," Sinclair mutters, her cheerleading jacket still hanging out on top of her head, several strands of pale blonde hair hanging in font of her face. She yawns.
And while she's yawning -- it takes awhile -- Bai turns on back. She doesn't see the incline of his head, her eyes closed with the enormity of her yawn. She does, however, hear what Bai says, and it makes her nearly choke.
She starts laughing when he asks for Alex's rank, and since she's mid-yawn, she gives herself the hiccups. The Galliard tosses her head back, and the jacket slides off her head to the floor, and she keeps laughing. "Oh, man, I don't know who you are, but you just made his night."
[Bai Chou] "...I thought I told you to lean down and repeat that."
Bai merely says with that same dead pan expression before he lashes out. Not with a punch...not with a stomach jab. Not even with a kick to the balls. He raises his foot and slams it down at the instep of Alexander's foot. If the man wouldn't bend down willingly, he would make him come down a few levels.
[Arthur Morgan] When Lonna nods her assent, the Ahroun turns and points downwards with one hand to indicate he was heading downstairs for a few minutes, then, taking the girl's hand he began to lead her down from the roof, past doors until they reached the half open entry to what had been Art and Liam's shared bedroom and was now simply Art's alone. He had not had time to process what he would do now with the empty bed, whether he could stand to watch another Garou lay in it, night after night knowing, as he did, that eventually Liam's scent would be replaced, and no trace of the man he'd come to know as a brother as well as a friend would be left.
His chest aches momentarily, and Art has to focus his mind back to the moment.
The boy waits for Lonna to step inside and then softly shuts the door, turning to face her. He watches her carefully, judging her mood, the expression of concern etched on lovely soft features before he breathes out slowly and lifts a hand to press against his sinuses as if to ease the tension, closing his eyes.
"Christ, I ain't got no idea how to say this right." He mutters, and then clears his throat, dropping his hand and moving around Lonna to sit on the edge of his unmade bed, the covers still unmade. "Lonna, last night I came on a fight already in progress, there were a buncha us there all fightin' against this pack and Liam got -- " Art's voice breaks, and he is forced to break off his speech to clear it several times before he can continue.
"Liam got hurt, real bad. He came back, y'know, we all did but he got hit again and it was jus' too much damage for his body. It was real quick," It wasn't so quick. "An' I don't think he felt much pain." He's lying to spare her.
"But Liam's gone, Lonna. He's dead."
[Lonna Larson] [per+empathy: try and read this...]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Charlie] The last time Joey saw Charlie with weed in his hand, he had thoughtlessly offered her the joint as she joined the small congregation of bodies underneath the rain-drenched oak tree in Grant Park. Its leaves were turning orange and yellow, and there was a waxen cardboard box-turned-home nearby, and Charlie had not been alone. Somewhere along the line he seemed to have gotten it into his head that the athletic young blonde who became his friend quickly and effortlessly did not approve of his marijuana use, or else just didn't like the smell of it, and he started making sure not to light up if he knew he was going to be seeing Joey later on.
Either he's forgotten about his own rule, or he's gotten it into his head that Joey doesn't care about the weed-smoking, or she'll accept him regardless, because he carefully loads up the bowl as he waits for Joey's answer.
That laugh sends a chill up the Theurge's spine. He doesn't join her in it; if anything, he stops what he's doing to stare at her, his fingers stilling. It's as if he's trying to read deeper than the words she's supplying, and when she drops her hands, he's still staring.
"What happened," he asks, his voice lacking inflection. There's too much suspicion for his voice to rise up at the end.
[Lonna Larson] [WP: don't freak out]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 8)
[Joey] If Joey thought about it, good and hard, really considered it, she doesn't like that Charlie smokes marijuana. She doesn't care about it's affects on his mind. It's the smell that bothers her. Her nose isn't any stronger than any other human's in this form, but Joey is driven by her olfactory system. She gets care packages from home that smell, well, like home. They smell like the desert, like sun and Downey and her mom's perfume. So it's not because her sense of smell is any different from anyone else's that she doesn't like that Charlie smokes pot. It's because the smell interferes with the scent of him.
But Joey is a curious creature. She once tried to tear her way through the umbral reflection of a building because her curiosity overrode her common sense. So when Charlie offered her a joint, she plucked it from his fingers and gave it a try.
It wasn't bad. Weird, but not bad. When Charlie readies his pipe, Joey doesn't wrinkle her nose. She watches what he does, learning by sight how to do what he's doing. He asks her what happened, and she pulls her eyes from his fingers to meet his face.
"Well, I went to this place called The Red Lion? And, like. Well, Alex ran into me there, and John and another couple kin were there, too. And this girl just sat herself down at my booth. And one of the kin, Beth, she's Fenrir, she started walkin' over to this dude and I saw his beer just, like, vanish." She watches Charlie, gauging his reaction, trying to see if he believes her or not. She's a New Moon, she could be lying for all he knows. But Joey can't lie to save her life, and maybe by now Charlie knows that.
"The kin all went for the door when we all started noticin' some weird shit was goin' on, but then all the stuff inside vanished and we were locked in when these ghosts just, like. They'd appear and then they'd vanish and show up somewhere else. And they're punches were like ice and they hurt like a bitch. One of 'em grabbed John and disappeared, and so we all tried to fight 'em. Took forever. By the time we were done, I wore myself out. The regular people in the pub reappeared like nothin' ever happened."
She sniffs, reaches up to rub her index finger beneath her nose. "John showed up in the bathroom, passed out. So I took 'im home. That's why I didn't get back until yesterday morning. I just sorta zonked out on his couch and didn't move for, like, all of Sunday." She doesn't mention the blanket, or the remote for the TV close to hand, or the bowl of dry cereal left with a note.
[Lonna Larson] She knows how battle works. She knows that it lasts for a brief moment, she knows that, at its times, it's painful. That, while the body can take quite a beating, being torn into, bitten, and clawed hurts. For now, she was in a decent mood. Her eyes travelled over his features.
He closes his eyes, breathes slowly, and there is a feeling of dread that comes over her. She, at her core, knows that this is coming. He wants to take her aside, Art wants to tell Lonna something that is going to hurt to hear. Liam's bed isn't turned back, the room feels different.
He has no idea how to say this.
It was quick.
it wasn't quick.
He probably didn't feel much pain.
Bullshit.
But, Liam is gone.
She inhales. She feels her stomach turn. She wants to do a lot of things. She wants to scream, she wants to tell Art that he's a liar, that this didn't happen, that he was mistaken, that this couldn't be real... but... but she knows it's not going to help. Shereaches forward, and the blonde covers the space between them, wraps her arms acrond him and holds the ahroun as best she can in some impulsive attempt at mutual comfort. And whatever she says is for his ears alone.
[Charlie] The entire time Joey talks, Charlie doesn't move. Granted, his gaze softens somewhat so he isn't boring into her with his eyes the entire time, but if he were in another form, if there were fur on his body instead of dark human hair, his hackles would likely be raised. His attention is no longer on preparing a pipe of marijuana to ease the tremendous ache in his friend's chest, or to try and take steps towards alleviating the different yet equally painful yearning in his own; it's on hearing Joey's story, making sure that there is no breach of the Veil or injured Kinfolk that they're going to have to deal with three days after the fact, attempting to ascertain what sort of lasting damage has been done to his friend.
She was wiped out after the fight. He's seen her in battle, knows that even if it's a small threat easily extinguished that she throws herself into it as though it's the last thing that she's ever going to do. It makes him proud, sometimes, to see the way the Fenrir girl fights, but it scares him, too. Hatchet had told him why this is. That doesn't make it any easier to deal with, doesn't give him any sort of idea how it is he's supposed to make it stop.
When her story reaches its conclusion, Charlie reaches up to scratch at his protruding collarbone, then clears his throat and sets about finishing filling the bowl with weed. His eyes dart between the task and his friend, spending more time on her face than on his ankles.
"So that's where you were," he says, sounding thoroughly distracted, as he pushes the last bit of herb into the bowl and zips the baggie back up.
[Joey] [percept + emp: I see you lookin' at me, but do I know what it means?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 5, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Alexander] Alexander is an asshole of the highest grade. Alexander is arrogant, prickly, quick to insult and quicker to come to blows.
For all that, there's this: Alexander is one hell of a fighter. He's not a warrior, not the way Garou are, and he'll never be. He can't shift his skin. He can't change his face. But what he has, he's made the most of; honed his body into a compact little engine of destruction.
He sees the stomp coming. And he jerks his foot up, catches the flat of Bai's so perfectly on the upstroke that it's almost enough put the smaller(!) man off his balance.
Almost simultaneously, Sinclair's moving forward. And Bai Chou tells her it's no her business. And Alexander yells What the fuck, Sinclair. And Sinclair says something like
Oh HELL no
before her forehead smacks into Bai's face ... and leaves a faint bruise.
[Joey] So that's where you were.
Joey watches her friend as she tells her tale, as she tells him she had to protect several kinfolk alone from spectral adversaries. It's when she tells him she took John home and zonked on his couch that he has a reaction beyond tension. He sounds distracted, and he looks upset.
They're supposed to be getting over these feelings that have sprung up between them. They're supposed to be trying to be friends, comrades-in-arms. They're not supposed to get jealous when one of them spends the night on someone else's couch.
Joey frowns. And she slides off the ledge so that her back is resting against the small wall designed to keep the idiots that come up to the roof from falling off. Her legs stretch out in front of her. Cold from stone and concrete seeps into her jeans, tries to reach her through her layers of clothing. Charlie said it's not that cold, but it is to her. She's not like Alex, she hasn't honed her body into a furnace, and she doesn't have the rage of most of the other Garou in the sept. She doesn't shiver, though. She doesn't curl herself up to conserve heat.
"Yeah." Joey doesn't reiterate that nothing happened. She doesn't tell Charlie that she's not interested in the older kinsman, that she wouldn't try for him even if she was interested. He's seen the scars on her belly, but they've never talked about them. She's never told him what they mean to her. She feels like an asshole, like she's keeping secrets from her best friend, but maybe it's for the best.
"What about you?" She tilts her head curiously at him. "What'd you do Saturday night?"
[Sinclair] Sinclair is an asshole or a psychopath, depending on the day or who you ask. She is blessed in ways neither of the males are. Bai does not have her prowess as a warrior or her Rage. Alex... well, Alex is Kinfolk. If Sinclair used her full strength, shifted to another form and lunged for Bai's throat, this would very likely be over much faster, and much bloodier.
That is not what happens.
She jumps in when Bai tries to stomp Alex's instep, and the speed with which she does so might suggest she feels particularly protective of the tattooed man who stands just three inches taller than she does. That is not the case, but Bai has no way of knowing that. He shifts in an eyeblink into a taller, bulkier, stronger form, but the female in the hallway with him remains in homid even when he tries to kick her back into her bedroom. The blow lands but it does not make her so much as lose her footing. In fact, she bears down on him with increased fury as the other blue-eyed Garou yells
"Heel, girl!"
punching him twice in quick succession with bare human fists. The first lands more solidly than her skull did, a hard blow to Bai's jaw, but the second glances off his cheekbone, barely a tap.
The Unbroken feel, wherever they are at that moment, a pull on their totem's power that was not there a second ago. They cannot see or feel why: Sinclair just got angry.
[Arthur Morgan] Lonna comes into his arms and if Art is startled by the girl's response he does not visibly demonstrate it. Perhaps he is simply too exhausted, physically and emotionally to attempt to keep her at a distance. She approaches the boy where he sits on the edge of his own bed and wraps her arms around his slumped shoulders, whispering into his ear.
Whatever she says causes a shudder to run the course of the boy's body and his spine does as straight as an arrow before he breathes out a long, steady sigh into the side of Lonna's neck, his own hands coming to lightly rest around her body, he does not cry, but rather soothes the woman in his arms, his hands rubbing circular patterns over her back gently.
Or as gently as he knows how to be.
He would never be Liam, with a bard's tongue.
Art begins to speak then, the halting matter of it evidence that speaking from his heart was not exactly his forte. "I'm not gonna say I'll be as good at -- at this stuff as Liam was, cuz' I know you both were close," the boy's eyes were drawn, and his lips pulled down in a deep frown. "But from here on out if you wanna talk you can come to me, or t'Evan."
He pulls away from Lonna enough to let her evidence a tentative smile. "You feel up for a bit of downtime on the roof with Charlie and Joey? We were gonna relax," Read: get high, "'nd remember Liam." There was a profound sense of relief for Art in telling Lonna this news, a sense of shared grief, of a burden now not solely his to bear.
[Charlie] If Charlie's even aware of how he's looking at Joey, or he's aware of the tension in his body, or he's aware that what he's feeling has a name, he doesn't seem interested in addressing it or resolving it. What Joey reads in his body hangs there like a curse, like some reminder of something unpleasant that they've been trying to move past, and she slides down off of the ledge so that she's sitting not on the heat-leeching ledge but on the composite cover of the roof instead. She winds up parked not far from Charlie's time-flattened shower shoes. They have no discernible smell.
He pushes the baggie back into his pocket, unfolding one of his legs so that his foot dangles over the side of the ledge. There's a slight breeze coming in off the lake, tugging at his sleeves and wicking heat away from their bodies; but Charlie's Rage burns hotter than Joey's does, even if it's tempered by his self-control and his spiritual clarity, and it's enough to keep him warm in the places where his acclimation to brutally cold climates might be remiss in its duties.
She says nothing about the jealousy that she senses in her friend, and instead asks about his Saturday night. The pipe is loaded and ready for use whenever it is that Art and Lonna come back upstairs. If he has to guess, if the way that he has seen Kinfolk act before in the face of news that their Garou guardians and friends and sisters have fallen, they're not going to be back upstairs for a very long time, if they ever make it.
The Theurge squints as if that's going to help him focus on the information he's looking for.
"What day's today?"
[Lonna Larson] [I'm good!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 8) [WP]
[Lonna Larson] Lonna held onto Art for what felt like an eternity. She didn't let go just yet. She didn't pull away, she didn't try to go anywhere for now.
She was quiet for a long, long time.
Lonna pulled back and smiled something quietly comforted. Whether it was genuine or not was debatable, but that was neither here nor there. Tears, frustration, pain was all stuffed away for the time being. Brave faces and all that.
"I... I'm fine... I think I'm just going to head home... I'm kind of tired," she tells him, "I'm sorry."
[Arthur Morgan] [Per + Emp: "Would you liiiiie to me honey?"]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 6, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Joey] "Today's Tuesday," Joey answers, screwing up her face as she calculates the days. She doesn't have a regular job, or antything that would help her keep track of her days. Since she came to Chicago, her time has been measured in fights, and her days tend to blend together.
"But Saturday night was Halloween. Did you go to the Caern? How's your challenge with Darkensky goin'?"
[Bai Chou] Bai is getting pissed. Not pissed pissed but the female is becoming a damn annoyance. This wasn't her shit, wasn't her business and she had to step in when he was going to bring Alex into line. And then she had to headbutt him. Of all the demeaning things she decided to crown him with her brow. When he sees her go in for it again..he meets her half way...their heads cracking simultaneously. The sound of it could be heard like a clap through the hall as skull collided with skull.
And then their heads collided again. But it was Sinclair who had to wince this time, a nice splotch mark appearing across her forehead where Bai's own thick cranium had collided with her own.
[Charlie] Today's Tuesday, she says, and the metis immediately begins mentally counting the sunsets that have passed between Saturday and Tuesday. Of course, that requires that he figure out what days of the week exist between Saturday and Tuesday. She reminds him that Saturday was Halloween, and Charlie swings his legs entirely over the ledge so that his back is to the lake. He starts to maneuver his feet back into his shower shoes, the foam scratching against the rooftop as he uses his toes to position them properly.
"The challenge was supposed to be over on the full, but I haven't seen him in a while," he says. "Saturday I... well, the night before that Art and I went out hunting and I got kind of messed up, but yeah, I kinda did the same thing I usually do."
That is, smoked weed and went to the Caern.
"You know what's really weird? The room being all empty again. I'm not used to coming back in the morning and Curata not being around."
[Alexander] Alex watches the two of them crack noggins again.
And again.
His expression is, simply put, priceless. Or maybe it's the situation that's priceless. Warriors of Gaia, fur and fang, clashing heads like.... he doesn't even know what the fuck.
"You're doing it wrong," he points out. And then he uses the tip of a drumstick to trace his hairline. "You're supposed to crack 'em right there. And aim for the nose. Forehead on forehead, man." He winces. "Makes my head hurt just thinking about it."
[Arthur Morgan] He did not smile back at the girl now, but rather frowned.
Art sat back far enough to turn his body around so that he was sitting directly facing Lonna and lifted her chin up with one finger, his hands calloused and rough from a life lived in the heat of battle. Pale eyes studied her intently, intently enough for it to become uncomfortable being in this room with him, with his Rage, with this sense of grief tangible around them.
With the specter of Liam's ghost still felt in the air around them.
"No," he corrects her quietly, his face suddenly older in its sombre assessment of her. "You ain't alright in the least, Lonna." Art takes her face between his hands and it is must be terrifying to know that should he want to he could crush her skull with these same hands that carefully cradle her head now.
His thumb rubs across her cheek, touches her lip.
"Stop pretendin' all the time," he shakes her gently. "You don't gotta do that shit with me, okay? I ain't like everyone else. Trust me.
Let it out."
[Sinclair] There is a bruise on Sinclair's forehead. It will not heal in a matter of seconds in her birthform. There is also a bruise on Bai's forehead. And his jaw. They are already fading from the glabro-formed Theurge's skin. Sinclair is much, much shorter than he is now, rather than a few inches over his height.
"You're pathetic," she all but spits at him, ignoring Alex, as well as his advice. "Look at you. Can't tell Kin from Garou. Can't even go a round with one of your own kind without shifting. Weakling," she snarls.
[Bai Chou] Bai just watches her but already he's shrinking back. He reaches down to pick up his glasses which fell and then slides them back on.
"I wasn't aware Garou came equipped with kinfolk sensing sonar. I also just was gonna rack his nuts before you decided to come barging in like a wilderbeast. But, if you have to protect your mate....that's understandable."
He adjusted his glasses, fingers reaching down into the pocket of his coat to pull out the cigarette he had put away earlier. A smoke was sounding better and better, he could feel the bruise that he hadn't let fully heal starting to welt now a little across his face.
[Alexander] "I'm not her mate," Alex says immediately. There's no snap of defensiveness, no protesteth-too-much about it. "Anyway, it's not like I'd need her to protect me from you."
Unexpectedly the muscular kinsman throws a hard arm around Bai's neck, all rough, macho camaraderie that's really only another form of posturing. "Whatever," he dismisses, "you were here to look for your wolfy buddies, right? C'mon, I'll show you where they hang out."
[Lonna Larson] [keep it together!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 7 (Botch x 2 at target 8)
[Joey] Charlie starts to put on his shower shoes. He doesn't rise, but Joey does, taking the act of cover his feet to mean he's getting ready to leave. Even though he came up to smoke, and his pipe is yet unlit. Or maybe Joey's finally getting cold.
She pulls herself up to her feet and stretches her arms out to either side before rotating them back and in, popping the vertebrae in her upper back. She shoves her hands into her pockets and looks up at the sky, as if she might catch a glimpse of the moon through the clouds. The moon is still mostly full, but it's beginning to darken ever so slightly. In a couple of weeks it will be her moon, and she'll have been in Chicago for five months. Almost half a year.
A shiver of tension runs through her when he says he got kind of messed up the night before Halloween. That was the night before they went to add her to The Sentinels, the night before she gained the ability to communicate with her new brothers with thought.
She looks down at Charlie, if he's still sitting, her expression thoughtful. Her expression is usually thoughtful these days. There are lines on her young face, signs of the smile that was at one time nearly always settled on her face. "When Art's feelin' better, you should ask him to room with you." She reaches up to scratch at her temple. "I don't think either of you should be by yourselves."
And then a thought occurs to her. She doesn't know that Charlie talked to Art about this just yesterday. She blurts out the first thing that comes to her mind. "Hey. What about askin' him to join us? The Sentinels? He definitely shouldn't be without a pack."
[Lonna Larson] Emotions were intense. They were vicious and blooming into something oppressive and suffocating. She inhaled, and tried to keep her head together. She was trying her damnedest to keep herself togehter and it wasn't working.
She looked up at Art, and even if she tried to lie, and even if she wanted, desperately, to hide the fact that she was hurt, she couldn't. She should have been more nervous than she was. Right now, it hurt too much to be uncomfortable about the closeness between the two of them.
And she had such things to say. She had things that might make this easier for both of them or make the fact that they were grieving easier by any means. Alas, this was not the case. Instead, she looked at him. Looked through him.
"No-" she all but snaps at him. Her eyes are full of tears and her hands were shaking. She laid her hands on top of his chest and shoved. It was the quiet sort of violent behavior that came from pain. Lashing out at someone who was there, close to her who wouldn't go away.
Who wouldn't leave her alone.
Who wouldn't let her wallow in quiet frustration and quiet desire to crawl in a hole and hide.
"I don't- I-I can't... this can't be real-I-and-" coherent thought was abandoned. Lonna was shaking. Her knees felt like they were going to give out. By now, she was a bawling mess.
Even then, she wore it beautifully.
"I need to go home. I need to go home right now-"
Fixate on something else.
[Charlie] There have been times in the past when Joey has gotten up to leave before Charlie was ready for her to depart and anxiety has gripped him, as though he's been afraid to watch her walk away because he hasn't known when he was going to see each other again, if she was going to be killed in battle and no one would think to tell him before her Gathering. He's managed to suppress that anxiety at times, but she's seen it in his eyes before, the desperate desire for her not to go.
That's not there tonight. He doesn't look suddenly panicked, as though Joey is going to go someplace that he can't follow. Even if they aren't in the same room, the same building, the same state, he can feel her over the connection that they share with Bear. He knows she's there, even if he doesn't always know that she's safe. He has to trust that if she ever gets into trouble that she can't handle that she'll call for him over the totem's link.
Trust isn't something that he knew much of before he came to Chicago. Charlie's a fast learner, though, and thus far the individuals in whom he's placed his trust haven't given him a reason to regret having invested in them in the first place. Despite the events of his life up until this past summer, despite how many times he has been mistreated and outright abused since he was born, he doesn't seem to expect the worst from people. Maybe it's a sign of insanity, this maintaining an almost sweet disposition despite the brutality he's known his entire life.
While the brawl downstairs comes to its conclusion, while a kinswoman loses her composure in the face of overwhelming grief, Charlie is able to look at his friend preparing to depart and not feel as though he's watching her walk away for the last time.
Joey asks him about asking Art to join the Sentinels, and a lop-sided smile comes across the kid's lips. He transfers the pipe into his right hand, then lightly socks the Rotagar in the side of her thigh.
"I'm way ahead'a you," he says.
[Sinclair] "Jesus Christ, seriously? Protect him from you? My grandmother could take you in a fight," Sinclair retorts to Bai. She pauses, then snaps her fingers. "Wait, no. You could probably stand up to her, but you'd have to shift to crinos. See, she's a tough old bitch." She points to the reddish mark on her brow. "But I shall carry this wound to the end of my nap as a reminder of your great prowess, fear not."
Her hand drops back to her side. Some of the flippancy leaves her demeanor, leaves her eyes, which are more the color of a summer sky than glacial runoff. Mate she might not be, but there's a visceral and savage possessiveness in what she says next. "And by the way, make damn sure he deserves it next time you so much as think of laying a hand on him." A beat. "And leave his balls the fuck alone."
Sinclair takes one step back, which is really all she needs to get back in her room, slam her door, and return to her nap.
[Sinclair] [And I'm out! Thanks for the RP, folks!]
[Bai Chou] Bai gives a slight frown when Alex puts his arm around him, not really a touchy feely person to begin with as he reaches up to brush it off.
"...if its the caern...I've been there. If there elsewhere in the building, I'll find them later. Right now, I'm going to go have a smoke and inspect my old stomping grounds."
He vaguely eyes Sinclair for a moment as he brought a cigarette out, the hand rolled paper squeezed tightly around the tobacco before he turned to make his way downstairs as well as out of the Brotherhood. He hadn't even given his name but it wouldn't take much to narrow down the Asian Garou populace within Chicago. There were not that many to name off hand.
Bai paused outside, his facing aching and for a moment, he felt like Jack Nicholson as he started to stroll towards Chinatown. Alex may deny being her mate but she certainly had the air of someone would hump him if it so pleased her. People had fucked up relationships. He was an expert on that matter himself.
[Joey] They're close enough to touch. This is usually a bad thing. They've been struggling for weeks to come to terms with what transpired on this very roof. When Joey started to leave and Charlie, in a moment of panic, closed the distance between them and kissed her.
Lately, instead of diminishing, their feelings seem to be getting stronger. It makes them awkward with each other at times. Usually, Joey winds up bolting in the face of a sudden rush of emotion, and in the realization that there are times when they are alone. With Curata's abrupt departure and Hatchet's continued absence, there are no packmates to keep an eye on the pair, make sure they don't get into trouble. There are times during the day when the second floor of the Brotherhood is all but empty.
And that's when Joey, ashamed on many levels, bolts.
She doesn't feel like bolting right now. Not yet. Charlie says he's way ahead of her, shoots her a lopsided smile. Joey's face transforms with the smile that spreads across her features. She flashes straight white teeth, her eyes crinkle at the corners, and that smile beams. She leans over and socks Charlie in the shoulder.
"'Course you are, Charlie boy. I'm gonna go down and get somethin' to eat, I'm fuckin' starvin'. You want anything?"
[Arthur Morgan] No!
It's instinctive.
He's a warrior, and his moon is not so far gone that he cannot feel the overwhelming pressure of it thrumming through his veins. Lonna pushes at his chest and meets an immovable object; it is like pushing at a brick wall with your bare hands and hoping it will topple.
His eyes flash dangerously in the dark, however and there's a flare as his lips peel back in a grimace so feral it is almost inhuman. And to Lonna at this moment that is precisely what Strikes with Valor is -- simply another barrier between herself and freedom. Freedom to cry, to break down, to be alone with her sadness, if only he would let her go.
But he doesn't, rather the boy's hands shift to her wrists and he circles both with his hands, pulling her grip easily from his torn clothing and holding her at bay while he shakes her once roughly like a mother might an unruly pup. "Lonna, stop it!" And then Art is rising, towing her along and forcibly taking her in his arms, despite her protests.
"You can't will this away and you can't jus' ignore it cuz believe me it ain't gonna work! Liam is dead and there ain't anything we can do about that. It's a god damn hateful fact and you gotta face it, head on. You just, you gotta, okay? Because I don't know what I'm doin' or how I'm gonna get through this but I know that tellin' people, good people like Charlie 'n Joey, it helps. It don't take the pain away, but it makes it bearable cuz then it ain't jus' yours. Now I want you to promise me, promise me," here he holds her tighter. "That you won't go home and close what I said away inside you. You hear me? That's an order. You're gonna feel every last drop of pain, and then you're gonna smile again."
He lets her go, now, his face unreadable.
"Liam cared about you, girl. Don't let his memory be one more thing in this fucked up world that you hurt over."
It's a speech from Art, a rather inarticulate speech.
[Alexander] Well, that's just great. No fights. A half-interesting headclonking tournament. And a slightly worrisome air of possession from Sinclair. Alex frowns at the closed door of room 7 for a moment, then spins his drumsticks once in his hands and goes back to his own damn room.
Maybe Gabbie'll be in. And then he could appall her by scratching his balls and belching in her ear as he went by.
[Charlie] The last several times they've been close enough to touch each other, Joey has wound up putting as much distance between herself and Charlie as she's been able to without leaving the building. More often than not these days, he's the one watching her leave a room or walk through a door. She's the one who has the least amount of tolerance for the feelings that are failing to dissipate between them, or else she doesn't trust herself to be around the Theurge without someone being around to make sure that they don't do as everyone who knows about them seems to be waiting to happen.
For Charlie, it's as if someone is always watching them. He knows that even if the rest of the Sept isn't aware of the fact that the two of them have already faltered and had to catch themselves, the spirits around them are. Those same spirits may not be talking, may not be going to the powers that be and alerting them to the fact that even after confessing to Judgement of Sterling Silver that the Rotagar and the Fury metis continue to seek out each other's company and struggle with feelings that neither of them are entirely sure what to do with.
They're tempting fate, is what they're doing, but they know what would happen if they weren't getting these moments together, if they weren't finally bound under the same totem. One or both of them would have snapped already, and they'd be even worse off than they already are.
That smile makes it hard to breathe, but when she taps his shoulder with her knuckles he manages to playfully roll with the hit, wobbling back and forth before fielding her question. He holds up the loaded pipe and squints again.
"Yeah," he says. "Smoke this thing with me first."
