Celduin, A Meeting

Hector

The hazy quiet time between afternoon and evening. Hottest hours in the stretch of them and mammals feel the pull of shade on somnolence. He doesn't know where his pack is. Fog is not always with them and even if She were she is not a tracking device.

When they hear their alpha in their heads his mental voice gives no image of what his body looks like. They can practically smell smoke. He sounds drained and scared and murderous.

Erich started a bar fight with a Black Spiral Dancer and the Dancer lit the bar on fire and I'm all fucked up where are you?

Jack

First, We're at Cold Crescent. It comes in Jack's jowly wet voice, low and urgent like a growl.

And then, Where you at?

It echoes back, a question answered with a question. For his part, Hector might be able to hear and feel the tremors of that motorcycle coming to life, the way Jack's growls along the totem's tethers between them are alive with activity. Even the tendrils of fog are fragrant of gasoline and engine exhaust at he motors out the parking garage on Broadway.

Tamsin

Hector's voice comes crawling over voice, the way it sounds when it's carried by Fog, and Tamsin either looks over at Jack, alarm and adrenaline both hitching her breath to the suddenly galloping heart, or she heads for his damned bike to start and meets him there. He speaks first, but then it's Tamsin, Tamsin who sounds somehow more Fianna-touched, more moon-strung, a little more resonant when it's her spirit-voice, her spirit-dragged voice.

You're going to polish that story before the next Full [Moon] I hope [you're okay]. We're coming but if you need healing Jack can bring you back to the Sept I'll meet you guys.

Hector

Okay.

This to Tamsin. His voice is quiet like wherever he is he doesn't want to startle something or alert someone.

Meet me at Washington Park. I left my bag at Cold Crescent. Can someone grab one of the Gaia's Breaths out of it and bring it, please?

Hector never says please and tunneled over the Umbra as his voice is he sounds as dark and distant as the heroes of Uktena past. He is neither dark nor distant. He's young and stupid and still thinks the words "badass" and "cool" have a place in his vocabulary but he knows too much about things most Cliaths have no reason to know about and it isn't until moments like this when he's fresh out of almost dying that that darkness comes up out of him like it's borne on his blood.

The last time Tamsin heard him say please was between Corey breaking his arm and Corey leaving and it didn't accomplish anything but he'd said it anyway.

---

And they make it to the park sooner than he does for the speed of the motorcycle. They have to wait a spell. When he finally finds them darkness has fallen and he steps across the Gauntlet easy as some folks step through a door. Neither a Theurge nor a wolf-born but his tether to that side is strong all the same.

In the dark his injuries are not so obvious but he moves very slowly and he has his arm held across his chest like it's supposed to keep his ribs from stabbing into his lung and his mandible is visibly broken. Blood and saliva ooze from between teeth that can't close properly. Something punched a hole through the floor of his mouth. It still bleeds.

Pain has lit a fire in his eyes but his Rage is all but drained. He must have been wearing a t-shirt that was not dedicated when he shifted. He's naked from the waist up, but for the layer of blood drenching him from mouth to belly.

He doesn't even try to talk yet. Just waves to whoever showed up. If he were human or even Kinfolk he would have fallen down already.

Jack

The bike is left parked on Washington Park's corner, Northwest corner, to be exact, broadcasted over the ties that bind them. Though they trade tires for boot soles to make sure they're where they need to be when Hector crosses over.

Maybe he smells blood along displaced air when Hector climbs from one side of existence to the other before actually seeing him. Either way they find him and they approach him.

Rather than waste time giving his alpha a once over, Jack doesn't take a chance on the efficacy of that Gaia's Breath stowed away inside his leather vest. Instead it's a bit of himself, his own spiritual energies welled up, gathered, poured over it, that brings it to life before it's pulverized in his calloused hand.

The resulting dust, shimmering with the Mother's energies, gets cast over him first in scattered grains. And then? Clouds of white and orange and green bioluminescence as claps of his hands together hard and loud bring puffs of smoke like a powerlifter's chalk, as if the lupus thinks the noise will awaken the healing instinct of his own Garou form as the talen's boons. As if he thinks it might ward off whatever had done this, any lingering spirits, and let his alpha know by sound as well as sight and smell that his pack is there.

And finally... Well, there's reverence for the talen and there's curious Jack and there's furious Jack. They're all present. And one of them wins out when he finally gets to focus on flesh rebinding to flesh, his alpha being made whole - or at least closer to it- again. And that's the one that asks the question:

"Who's fuckin' ass am I kicking?" After that last word his teeth smashing together, nose scrunching and sniffing like he's trying to get scents off him for later reference. Something to connect the rage that builds up in him when he sees Hector's state.

What's of the dust on his hands? Jack spits upon them, mashing the saliva into a salve he applies to lingering wounds, not leaving any of the mending paste from fixing Hector.

Tamsin

Tamsin had had a few choice words to say about Hector 'meeting them at a park' + being around other garou and going off on his own in a terrible state after a Wyrm-fight + the impending fall of the night. Jack is more familiar with his packsister now: She hangs out with him as much as she hangs out with Hector, as content to be quiet and watchful as she is to talk or ramble about some story and maybe she's reading him The Hobbit (whether he likes it or not), solemnly avowing it an important Celduin text. Those 'choice words' were angry and foul and discontented and fuck this or fuck that or of course nary a word when the battle begins but now, now...

Then Hector actually appeared, sluicing from the Otherworld to Thisworld, and Tamsin looks him over, concern a shadow on her expression, but all the anger and annoyance she'd displayed while waiting all gone now. There's something measuring about the way Tamsin looks Laughing Battle, Echoes of the Lost over, looks at how bloody he is and his teeth and looks at them knitting together when their philodox takes that talen [hastily grabbed, along with a shirt and pants, just in case] and cracks it open and makes it work.

"And whose ass did you kick?" she asks, coming close (finally), in order to put a hand briefly (meant for reassurance) on Jack's shoulder, then to meet Hector's eyes. Her expression is intense, and all, all business, although it would be a mistake to say she is a cold business, because Hector can probably see the shadow of potential loss when she meets his eyes with her own.

Hector

For a brief moment Hector wears the expression of a small child being doted on by an overly enthusiastic aunt. This overly enthusiastic aunt is ugly as the day is long and heavy enough to kick the tar out of him and instead of pinching his cheeks and squealing about how big he's getting Jack is breaking a healing talen over his skin and healing up the damage done by a horn to the bottom of his jaw and claws to his chest.

Only after it's dissipated can they tell how much pain he was in and how stoic he can be when he wants to be, he who usually screams or leaps away from small slaps or thrown food. He who one time saw a spider and hid behind Glen and hit the Fianna Ragabash repeatedly until he killed it. He doesn't carry on now and once his wounds have healed he takes a deep gasping breath like a crushing air-stealing weight has lifted from his body and coughs. Puts a hand on Jack's shoulder to steady himself.

"Dude," he says, his speech sloppy from the fluid in his mouth. He spits to clear it. "That sucked."

Jack mixes the rest of the gourd dust with saliva and rubs it onto the ghosts of his injuries and asks whose ass they're kicking. Tamsin asks whose ass he kicked. Hector runs a hand first down his face and then through his hair. He's a mess.

"Nobody's," he says. "It was a drunk Dancer. Just hanging out in a bar like it was no big deal. Bar's probably burnt to the ground by now. They're packed under Green Dragon, did you guys know that? Holy crap..."

Then it sinks in that those six words were the longest sentence Tamsin has said to Hector since he made the crack about David Wenham at the moot and Hector all but throws himself at her. Wraps her up in a shirtless bloody lean-limbed embrace like who gives a shit if he messes up whatever she's got on he could have died tonight and the last thing she would have said to him was Uh huh.

Jack

Maybe, one day, Hector will meet one of Jack's aunts. And he'll be thankful for Jack's ministrations, not that he isn't already, but more so because they won't come with overt sexual innuendo and groping to 'check his wounds'.

The Bone Gnawer bears Hector's weight easily enough and seems glad to do it, an arm weaving as much as a tree-bough-sized limb can beneath him and under his other side's armpit. He mentions Green Dragon and it sets his jaw roiling underneath prematurely salt-and-peppered stubble.

"Been burnt to a crisp almost past redemption by 'em before. Raspberry Sky brought me back from the otherside," his gaze getting thousand-yards staring at the mention of it and the memory it stirs, of being embraced by Rat's brood ready to strip his bones and ferry him to whatever homeland of leftovers and booze and family it promised. The Wyrm's fire had been a more baleful warmth and by the look of him, the way his face gets solemn and even a little fearful (cautious, not for his own sake, but for the two around him) at the though, he's had a close encounter with them.

"Seen their alpha stop a passenger van one handed in 'is ape skin," like it's enough of the story that he doesn't want to remember it anymore, but realizes he has to in order to impart one last piece.

"Them's the ones took Champion of Honor. They're ballsy enough to go out drinkin' alone, and can't blame 'em. Entire Sept - both Septs - gone be needed t' take on a pack of 'em," finished, then, and looking to Hector for more.

Tamsin

The Fianna-girl tenses up when Hector, drying blood like some kind of extra for a Hollywood version of the apocalypse, or maybe just an extra in a documentary about urban warfare, flings himself at her, wraps his arms around and hugs and hugs, as if she weren't good at giving hugs or being hugged, although that's a skill that comes and goes. After half-a-second, she hugs Hector back, squeezing him rather more tightly then one might think from the exasperated-and-kind-of-gruff, "Man cerig? Av-'osto."

"See how Jack did it," she says, with a grin that shows a flash of teeth, "Hitting all the important points." 

The expression in her eyes is somber, in spite of the grin which sizzled up into being and is fading now. She ruffles Hector's hair, or pushes him away and pulls his hair.

"So it was just the ... The one Dancer? Did you guys kill it? Is Erich all right?" 

Hector

He turns his head to look at Jack as the lawgiver tells of his encounter with the alpha of Beloved Horror which thus far Hector has only heard in passing if he's heard it at all and when Tamsin jokes about how Jack's storytelling eclipses his he doesn't even laugh. Just keeps clinging to her.

And Tamsin does have to push him away before she can ruffle his hair. It's gone strung-hard from blood in places and reeks of smoke and hellfire. After they separate he stares off into space like he's either seeing across the veil or playing back what happened so he doesn't sound like a shell-rattled idiot as the questioning continues. His packsister's questions tear him back from whatever edge he was stood up against.

They can't stay out here all night. He's minus a shirt and looks like he just killed someone.

"Erich grabbed the bartender and ran off," Hector says. Rakes his hair back off his forehead again. Nervous gesture in someone who isn't normally nervous. "It... we didn't even scratch it, it threw me across the room and was going to barf all over me before it decided we weren't worth the trouble. Just the one guy. His kinswoman and their spawn were there too but... I think she was Kinfolk, this white girl with all sorts of metal in her ear ended up taking the baby out of there while we were fighting it and Thomas... have you met Thomas yet? One of Thunder's? He got the kinswoman out of there."

Jack

Jack can see that look on Hector's face, the nerves and the rattling, and it isn't so different from his that he can pipe up to try and alleviate it. "Don't worry. I can teach you a dozen ways how t' stop a car with one hand too. Hand full of dirt in the throttle, pull the right fuse, jack up the plug wires," Jack says, rattling them on in a way that isn't just a bit lighter than how he'd begun, but has meaning behind it. It wasn't all about strength.

It was about how it was applied.

And that's something he was beginning to learn from packing under Celduin. From the first night he'd met Hector, on to the battle at the park, and unto this very moment he's trying to apply it. "We ain't gone fight a dragon head on," looking over at Tamsin, who had been reading him the tomes of Celduin, though maybe he hadn't pieced together it all yet. Hadn't taken a look at that map. "We gone find the right chink in its armor. We gone do it the right way. And throwin' down in a bar ain't gone be the right way," a nod at this, like he's already agreeing with himself, and it's a thought he'd been piecing together bit by bit.

"They hit us movin' Fern, right? That's that night they took Champion of Honor, when we has moving her one Sept out to the 'nother. And now they burnin' down a bar with two o' you in it. Got to figure out how to use what they love, horror, against them," and then the smell really hits him. It's the burnt hair that's the worse, coming off Hector, and for a Bone Gnawer that's saying something.

"We got clothes. Let's get you off the street," leading them back to the bike, ready to jump under Hector's arm again if he needs it or if he doesn't more like if he'll allow it.

Tamsin

[I'm doing this thing subtle-like you don't even notice me doing it. Manip + Subt.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

Tamsin

The Fianna is clearly trying to put the pieces of Hector's story into something coherent, something cohesive that answers all questions. Something that isn't just worth telling, but something that fits into the memory of their people. Tamsin is a serious creature, especially when it comes to memory, and the look in her eyes is that of someone turning inward, even though she is still listening to Hector, she is still listening to Jack, the better to remember you both, my dears. Tamsin keeps ahold of Hector's arm after she pushes him away to ruffle his hair, not like they're about to go for a la dee da stroll by the river in their fancyfancy clothes or anything, just sort of hugging (more affectionate than she'd heretofore seemed), and she pulls him subtly -- really, it is kind of subtle -- thiiiiiis way, and thaaaat way, until oh wait, you're standing right there and Jack is moving this way and hold on look Jack is somehow, just somehow, talking in the middle of us both now and it's easier if she just moves Hector's arm like thiiiiiiis oh wait forgot to grab his other arm for sooomething and hey look now it's a group hug. Mission accomplished.

Tamsin, peeking around the philodox to look up at both the Bone Gnawer and the Uktena, says, gravely, "'My armor is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!' You're right, Jack Rabbit. It's going to be a matter of finding the weak point." 

Then she lets the boys go and scruffs her fingers through her hair, folding her arms behind her head, suddenly wide eyed, "Wait a second."

"So... A baby? You guys stole a Dancer's baby? Was it...?"

Was it True, is what she's asking, even though how can Hector know now?

Hector

Other than repeatedly sighing over how awesome and badass Jack's motorcycle is and talking about how awesome and badass Jack himself is and tracking him down mere days after taking down a couple of Fomori with him as a relative stranger Hector has kept his infatuation with the Bone Gnawer on the down-low.

Yet he allows a lopsided half-a-smile at the promise to teach him how to disable a motor vehicle with his bare hands and does not fight as Tamsin maneuvers him into the group hug and the offer of support that lingers afterwards.

"I dunno," he says of the baby. "Whatever it is they're taking it back to Cold Crescent. If they're smart they'll put it facedown in the dirt and call it a day."

Jack

"Ain't what they did with a cub, but I guess a baby's a different story too. Wonder what would've happened t' both of 'em took 'em by Forgotten Questions instead. Different Warder. Maybe might've put 'em both out of their misery," Jack ventures the possibility, wondering how that hardened Forgotten Warder would have dealt with the question of their continued existence.

Jack says this as, yes, he is placed into that group hug he leans into an makes up a large portion of, his arms wrapping around so his hands (knuckle dragging) is almost on Tamsin's back with his other one as well. It's a fine Celduin knot she's tied them into, one he relishes for a minute before worming free and continuing toward that motorcycle with the two of them, Hector bloodied and looking like he took the brunt of the scrim if they'd been in a rugby match.

Tamsin

Tamsin frowns at Hector. "How's that smart? Unless it's already Wyrm, in which case," and she stops, because Tamsin is a creature of many stories, and Tamsin is like Hector and Jack in that she has seen a lot of dark things. Can't be a garou, can't be a warrior for Gaia, and not have horror get its anchor in your spirit and haul up all sorts've nightmare images, and she's remembering one now. Usually, Tamsin remembering means Tamsin remembers aloud, but this time she doesn't.

They're by that motorcycle now and Tamsin is standing back, physically distancing herself from it as if to say without words (though she'll use words to say it soon enough) 'I'll meet you.' 

"You two think it should just be killed; the kin, too?"

There's a waver on 'the kin, too,' like maybe she thinks that as well, but she's not really sure yet. She could recite for hours the histories of lineages destroyed, salt the fields, make their women barren and their men seedless, the turn war takes sometimes.

Hector

They can see Hector wondering himself what would have happened if the ones they brought in had been brought to Forgotten Questions. But Hector was fostered at the Sept of the Painted Sands. The Athro whose pack was responsible for preparing him for his Rite of Passage is near legendary for his obsession with darkness. Tamsin has only ever heard him speak of his dead mentor after he's had too much to drink and he hasn't spoken of him at all since Willow died.

So he doesn't even seem to see her frown. He sees her distance and her wavering though.

He hesitates. Killed is a transitive and active verb. One has to kill the woman in the sentence Tamsin uttered. If they were to, say, let her die in the fire that the questionable progenitor of her spawn caused by breathing green everywhere, that wouldn't be the same thing. A Shadow Lord of all people saved her from that fate.

Hector swallows down the answer. The only way he knows how to lie is by not saying anything.

"That's not even the same thing. Nobody's talking about killing kin."

Jack

"I ain't talkin' about killin' no one I ain't met yet. And that's probably above all three our pay grade, anyway," this another of those things that sounds parroted from another mouth, like he'd heard it somewhere else and gotten the meaning enough to recite it in his head for use later.

"But if'n it's lame. If'n it's gone end up gettin' those I care about killed, 'n' if it's beyond savin', I ain't past doin' the soul a favor its mind done don't wanna recognize," he says, like killing isn't something he's afraid of.

"The night I thought they were gone take Fern and the kin, 'fore they got away, I went in that van ready t' snap both their necks 'n' end it," the revelation one he makes easily. "Would've put Champion of Honor out of his misery if'n I knew they were after him, too. Ain't easy. But a Hell of a lot better than what he's probably bein' put through now," he finishes, climbing onto the motorcycle a moment later.

Tamsin

Nobody's talking about killing kin.I ain't talkin' about killin' no one I ain't met yet.

Tamsin regards them both gravely, though her attention runs [if it is water] from welling around both of them to mostly Jack by the time the wolf-born makes his matter-of-fact revelation. He's wolf-born; killing wouldn't bother him (necessarily) as much, would it? But Tamsin nods like his logic is perfectly acceptable to her- and it is, most of the time. Her frown gets a little deeper, a little darker, at would've put Champion of Honor out of his misery, maybe only because that garou is her tribesmate.

"He'll come back," Tamsin says. "We'll," a plural 'we'll,' "find him bright in the darkness, bring him home again, if he's really Champion of Honor. If he's going to stay Champion of Honor."

In Tamsin's world, you stick to your name and once it changes... She doesn't realize how concerned she sounds.

"And I didn't mean kin in general, but that one. Probably is above our pay grade, but doesn't mean we shouldn't still think about it. Think about what we think is right and about what we'd do. Like, um, you know, if it were up to us. Maybe they'd make good bait." 

"Where we heading? I'll bring us some food." Then, dredging up a smile out've all that graveness, "And dude, Hector, I know you just survived an 'Encounter' and all, but when you hop onto Jack's bike try to contain yourself. Don't blow your wad all over his back. Think of something else, like Lo... oh, wait, what's that over there? Oh, nothing, whoops, sorry about that."

Tamsin

ooc: er. 'a plural 'we'll' that includes all Garou' that is.

Hector

No point quoting the Litany here. Of course Jack would have snapped the poor bastard's neck if he'd have known what was going to happen. Their laws command the suffering not to bid their people tend their sickness. Catatonia is sickness.

They would all like to think that if they met the same fate the ones left well would exhaust all of their options before shuttling them off to the Homelands but their options tend to run dry faster than their patience does.

And Hector doesn't want to talk about it at all. Doesn't think there's any point probably. They're Cliaths. The only reason anybody wants to hear what they have to say has to do with their moons. He's tired and bloody and Jack is climbing onto the motorcycle. They got shit to do.

So he slings himself onto the back of the bike behind Jack and lifts his eyebrows at Tamsin's advice.

"I got a load you can blow," he says. His heart isn't in backhanding an insult to her and it occurs to him half a second after he says it what he said and he scowls. "Ugh. You're gross. Go away, Tamsin."

He locks his arms around Jack's torso so he isn't thrown off when the other male hits the gas.

Jack

"Surprise me," is often Jack's answer when they order in at Broadway, usually because he's not the one paying, and if he is he doesn't want to be the one to make the call and deal with whoever in a loud kitchen or dining room is picking up on the other end of the line. And with that he turns the throttle and pulls out of the space, the engine's pitch a little different with each kick and shift that takes them off faster and faster.