[Drew Roscoe] Drew didn't know what sort of greeting she was supposed to expect when she sought out one of the remaining people in Chicago that she knew, that she regarded as trustworthy and family. People had a tendency to die and vanish around here, she was pleasantly surprised to find Kora still intact-- pregnant even, she realized when the statuesque Skald turned around.
This was met with a pang that she chased away and didn't acknowledge, and the smile on her face didn't falter until Kora's did. It slipped from her mouth and was replaced with faint confusion and concern when Kora's reaction was to curse, grow serious, and seize her by the wrist to drag her up the apartment hall and into a bedroom. Drew went along willingly, easily, but with question written all over her face.
Once in the bedroom, Drew had the idea that whatever they were going to talk about was supposed to be private, she could only guess that it was going to be in regards to the Boys, so she closed the door behind them and settled to stand nearby it, unless gestured to sit or settle elsewhere by the Skald. She had a good idea of Wolves and Territory, so she wouldn't dispute with one in their own home, not over something so small as standing or sitting or leaning on a door.
The Kinswoman's arms would fold loosely over her stomach and she'd try that smile again, an easy and small thing that pulled one corner of her mouth a bit higher than the other the other. "You look well." Not avoiding the topic, just being friendly while waiting for it to come up. To be too serious was to damn herself just yet.
[Kora] The apartment is small enough that there's nothing down the hall except for a bathroom and a pair of bedrooms. The doors are both closed for privacy among the guests, but Kora opens the first bedroom door and gestures Drew inside. There's a bed, low, made, and a pair of bedside tables, a dresser - everything is neat and orderly, the the closet doors closed, the shoes neatly aligned, the colors muted earthtone, the possessions and extraneous toiletries mostly male, except for a few of her things scattered about.
That first impression, that quiet curse, is nothing more than a chasing surprise, the moment between seeing something and recognizing it when the creature's dark eyes narrow, her pupils contracting as Drew's familiar features swim into focus.
When the bedroom door clicks shut behind them, Kora turns, her generous mouth still, her dark eyes flickering over Drew - not impersonally, but observantly, her focus intense as it ever is.
"Where's Joe?" she asks, that faint frown of thought still framed on her expressive mouth, her hands coming to rest on her hips, her elbows out, her body language unconsciously animal.
[Drew Roscoe] If there was one thing you had to become used to if you were going to live your life around Werewolves, it was that while they may look human they never ever acted like it. She had grown used to being stared at with eyes that were too intense and honestly focused to belong to anything but a predator, better suited over a muzzle rather than set into the soft face of a human's. So when Kora squared her body, elbows out and hands on hips, posture ready and demanding both, Drew did not quaver. She was far too accustomed for that.
Of course that was the first question.
The smile on Drew's face faltered, the warmth and sparkling confidence in her eyes dulled like flames dashed with sand. She leaned more resolutely back against the door, moved her arms so they were crossed more snugly, higher up her stomach so they were under the modest swell of her chest. One corner of her mouth pulled back, the same that had lifted with the smile, but now it appeared uncomfortable.
"He's... not gonna make it tonight." True, but not nearly the entirety of it, and Drew didn't have the energy or motivation to put an effort into a lie.
[Kora] The room is dark. There's just the soft glow from the lamp on the bedside table, the gleam of the city's light through the filter of wooden blinds to illuminate them. There's Drew - the sparkle in her eyes dying abruptly - and there's Kora, her nostrils flaring as if she could somehow scent the truth from the air between them, even in her soft, utterly human skin.
She's pregnant; four and a half, maybe five months, and athletic enough that she did not show early. Some women seem softer, somehow, billowy - but there is nothing soft about her, and the animal inside is somehow brighter in the discs of her keen dark eyes.
Outside the door, down the hall, the murmur of voices, of music in the background, something low on the stereo, the echo of voices as the radio announcer inserts himself for the top of the hour news. Kora's attention is entirely fixed on Drew. The wide neck of her argent-white tee revealings the solid architecture of her shoulders. The downslope of her trapezius, the hard, jut of her clavicle against her pale skin. The muscles are taut underneath her skin, with a sort of tension that seems both - liminal and electric, that could be read about her as a halo energy for all that the young woman is unmoving.
Some other night the dimming of Drew's brightness might make her soften. Or, not soften, but shift to accommodate what she might read as grief or sorrow. Tonight, the generous line of her mouth just - hardens. Minutely, but it hardens.
"What does that mean?" - low-voiced, even. Without quarter.
[Drew Roscoe] "Means...."
A hand twitched where it rested, uncertain, then both hands moved up to pull the plait of hair over her shoulder and onto her chest. Fingers pulled and smoothed the dark strands of hair, and her eyes fell from Kora's-- but not for fear. She could look Thomas and Joe in the eyes even on their worst days, not because she was tough and resolute (if you asked her why, anyways), but because of trust. She trusted them not to attack, not to betray. She trusted Kora similarly, she had no fear of holding her gaze for any length of time.
It was the emotion that had her eyes dropping, sadly settling at the stomach of Kora's shirt without her really realizing what she was staring at. She swept her tongue over her upper lip, took a deep breath and shook her head. "It means he's not making it tonight or any other night at all." Her mouth was grim, set hard to prevent her lower lip from quivering. The last thing she wanted a grip of new family members to see when they first met her was wet, red eyes and a weak faltering smile when she left this bedroom. "He's gone."
[Kora] Something in the tension evidence in the Skald breaks; or shifts rather. She does not slump, but her dark eyes sharpen against Drew's features, the direct gaze, the grim set of her mouth, the way her eyes fall to settle without thinking on the curve of Kora's stomach. She breathes out once, audibly, and though some of that evident tension in her shoulders and arms eases, a span of tendon joining her jaw spasms as she swallows back - more questions, most of them.
"And Thomas?"
[Drew Roscoe] "I don't know."
Fingers work through the hair further, and when they stop a stray strand comes away with them. This Drew shakes off her hand thoughtlessly, lets it float toward the floor. Her breathing is irregular without being erratic. It feels better to take a deep breath and hold it in, like the air could cool the burn of grief in her chest. When she exhales it's a tired sigh that she breathes out almost each time. Her hands stuff into the back pockets of her pants, causing her elbows to point outward, not unlike how Kora's did, but with shoulders rolled back rather than squared strong.
"He was supposed to meet us... He was in the Umbra from what I understood. He just.. never showed up. I haven't seen him since last summer."
It was an odd thing, a curious realization. Since Drew learned about Garou and Kin and what they were to one another she'd always been supporting and supported by either Joe or Thomas, telling stories of them or fondly smiling when either name was brought up. To have both of them removed from the picture, hopelessly so, it made her seem older somehow. More worn out, tired by the day, like trying to get past their absence was a monumental task for her.
One day she would be okay, though, Kora knew that certainly. Drew had a track record in Chicago for strength and glory, enough to be given a Name and revered with Renown. She's sent bullets between the eyes of more than one spawn of the Wyrm, she's suffered through the losses of loved ones on numerous occasions. She would hold the memories dear, but she wouldn't mourn forever. This must have been a recent occurrence, no doubt the entire reason for returning home.
[Kora] "Okay."
At first, that is Kora's only acknowledgment of the news. That the remains of the pack did not survive even move out west, that Thomas never showed and Joe found his end, glorious or otherwise. Her voice is pitched low - if she ever sang, she would be a contralto - but she doesn't make human music, now, not Sorrow. She does not sing human songs.
The creature's hands slip from her hips, until she has wedged her fingers into the front pockets of her jeans. They're new enough that the denim is dark still, that she has not worn the hems to shrews on the streets of Chicago.
"And you're back to stay?" - this is quiet, easy. Made easier, in any case, because Kora has shifted her gaze just away from Drew, so that the kinfolk isn't subject to the full-on, dark-eyed stare. She waits a beat, long enough for Drew to acknowledge with a flicker of a look, with a quiet murmur that she is indeed back to stay.
"I'm still Jarl of the Fenrir." Kora looks back then, begins to move. It's subtle, the intimation of pacing - animal in a cage - "I'm pretty sure you know what that means. You are my responsibility in the eyes of the nation. I have the right to discipline you, and no one else. I will see to your protection, and I'll require your cooperation in that. If anyone - even a son of Fenris - wishes to claim you, he has to challenge me for the right. You understand that, don't you?"
[Drew Roscoe] The pacing, again, wasn't anything new, subtle and in-place or full-functioning and carrying about the room. The sheer amount of beast in her people did not cause her to shy away or fret, as she was Kin and as much theirs as they were hers. Family stuck together, did not harm one another, sought only to teach and strengthen and protect one another. The news is accepted with a simple 'Okay', a question, and then business.
The question is answered with a nod, simple and quiet.
The business is met with a flat stare at first, but it softens into a grin that didn't chase the sorrow away completely. "I do. It's unnecessary to say out loud, but I get the reason behind the disclaimer." The points of her canine teeth nipped at the skin inside her cheek for a second, and she shook her head after a second. "Won't be any claiming for a long time, though. Joe's....," and it's hard here, for a moment, because she hasn't spoken of him in past tense outside of raging and throwing fists at the culprit's head before now. "He's a tough act to follow."
[Kora] When Drew pauses, when her throat closes, so minutely because she means to speak in present tense, not past, because grief is a thing not of stages but moments. The first hour. The first day. The first sunrise. The first snowfall. The first - past tense - Kora acknowledges this with no more than a flicker of her eyes. She does not manage even a neutral acknowledgment of Drew's comment that Joe would be a tough act to follow except for a flicker of her eyes.
They had not parted on good terms, War-Handed and Sorrow, but she will not impugn the dead. Would not have done so in front of Drew even were he living, no matter the names she called him when she founds herself alone - tending their Alpha's grave, walking their just-claimed territory, keeping their compact with the scab-birds scrubbing the damn bell in the watchtower with brillo every Sunday afternoon, the tips of her fingers abraded to shreds - wounds she healed thoughtlessly moments after.
Finally, Kora makes a noise in the back of her throat.
"Are you pregnant?"
Kora does not soften the question; does not try to shape it into something else.
[Drew Roscoe] Kora asks questions unabashedly, drops them like bombs, like a hand in a game of cards, and dares people to protest the fact. She doesn't cushion blows, she doesn't try and cut corners or be delicate or polite. They were Fenrir, the both of them, they didn't need to be coddled with softness, to do so would be a disrespect to either party.
The question is met with a laugh that sounds surprised and just a tiny, worrying bit sardonic.
"Pregnant? No, no, no. Could you imagine?" There's a shake of her head, the question of what Kora was to imagine easy to answer without saying aloud-- Joe Holst, the seventeen year old death machine, a creature of hate and zealous belief, fathering a child. Drew fit the concept of a mother much easier, but Joe was the furthest thing from family-ready. Despite that, and though she'd never say so now that it was impossible, the couple had been on the threshold of trying for a child. Had Joe parted three or four months later, perhaps the answer would be different.
That wasn't the case, though, and Drew waved a hand dismissively of the very thought. "Naw. You look healthy, though. Due... what, in April? March?"
[Kora] The surprised laugh brings Kora's eyes right back to Drew's. The Skald does not join in the laughter, does not make it ring in the dark bedroom. There's a scent in the room of - cleaning products, some natural brand infused with oils. Sandalwood, attar of roses - those sorts of scents, and a strange stillness here juxtaposed against the murmur of the overlarge crowd in Trent's small living/dining rooms. Kora's attention lingers, she reads - well, the skepticism there, that they might have tried for a child - and the hint of wistfulness that must attach near the end, before she waves it off with an efficiently dismissive hand.
"Me?" - the Skald's turn for surprise, etched in her fine, pale brows above her fine, dark eyes. On a human, these might be attractive features, played up with make-up - a smokey eye, mascara to darken the flaxen lashes and frame her eyes. Kora is not human, however - and it is impossible to read something so facile as prettiness in the regularity of her eyes, in the quickened curve of her mobile mouth as she drops her gaze from Drew's dark brown eyes to the sure, subtle curve of her pregnancy against the t-shirt she wears.
That surprise - or maybe just the look, the way her eyes fall half-closed, pale lashes a pale shadow over her pale cheeks, her focus drawn inward - makes her seem - softer, somehow, more vulnerable, though nothing like that imprints itself in her tone of voice. Or even the laugh she breathes out before continue with the answer, quiet and nearly voiceless, as if she were holding it back in her body, swallowing it down.
" - no, I don't know. Haven't been to a doctor for obvious reasons, and don't know any midwives in the city." Kinfolk midwives, she means. "So we're not sure."
Then, a moment later, with something like resolve - "Drew," relentless, but still quiet, as if there was space for both strength and sorrow, grief and stoicism. "I'll ask you for the story of his death, and soon, but you needn't tell it tonight. And I want you to know that we did not - " a pause, her mouth thins around it as she reaches for the appropriate euphemism. " - end things well, Joe and I, but I will not hold that against you."
[Drew Roscoe] "Understandable. It'll come when it comes." This is Drew's answer to what Kora has to say about not knowing her due date. Her shoulders lift and fall in a shrug, and a hand moves to tug the warm red fabric of her sweater back up her shoulder, then settles into her pocket once more. She had no medical skills aside from basic knowledge, CPR and tourniquets and the like, and even if she did have any idea about child birth it was a deeply personal thing to volunteer to help someone through. She'd help how she could, in any way asked, but she wouldn't offer up skills she didn't have.
As for how Kora and Joe parted...
"I know." The answer seemed a little bit short, but not clipped with anger or impatience. She was being matter-of-fact on the topic, in a sense. She already had a pretty good idea when Joe told her they'd be leaving. She thought of Kora, losing Kemp only to have the rest of her pack leave so soon after, content to let her stay behind while they went forth to pursue other cities and adventures.
As for the story of how Joe went... Drew might not have heard it at all for how little she reacted to it. More than likely she pretended she didn't, didn't acknowledge because she didn't want to share the tale, recounting it too soon would be too hard. Tonight she needed composure, to shake hands and drink beer and make new friends, to congratulate some and ask questions of others. But she wouldn't, couldn't do that with tears on her face.
There's a moment of quiet, and Drew reaches back and lets her hand rest on the doorknob, eyebrows lifting in question, a faint smile on her face that looks soft and warm and sweet as honey, but Kora can be pretty sure that there's an effort to put it there and it didn't manifest naturally as it ought to. "Should we go back, then?"
[Kora] Some sharpening of that animal attention, quickening to the resolve, to the effort put into that smile. They've not been gone long. Five minutes, maybe ten at most, their voices low. Maybe no one's noticed that they've gone.
"Let's do - " the Skald says, reaching for the door as Drew pulls it open, holding it for the kinswoman as she goes ahead, then pulling it firmly closed behind them. The hallway is dark, the door to the bathroom half-open, the living/dining room at the end of the hall blazing with light and full of people, strangers mostly.
"Drew," says the Skald, quietly as they walk back down the hallway. Oh, she is what she is, and her voice is soft but pitched to carry with the skill of a storyteller, the surety of someone in full control of her greatest instrument. "Welcome home."
This was met with a pang that she chased away and didn't acknowledge, and the smile on her face didn't falter until Kora's did. It slipped from her mouth and was replaced with faint confusion and concern when Kora's reaction was to curse, grow serious, and seize her by the wrist to drag her up the apartment hall and into a bedroom. Drew went along willingly, easily, but with question written all over her face.
Once in the bedroom, Drew had the idea that whatever they were going to talk about was supposed to be private, she could only guess that it was going to be in regards to the Boys, so she closed the door behind them and settled to stand nearby it, unless gestured to sit or settle elsewhere by the Skald. She had a good idea of Wolves and Territory, so she wouldn't dispute with one in their own home, not over something so small as standing or sitting or leaning on a door.
The Kinswoman's arms would fold loosely over her stomach and she'd try that smile again, an easy and small thing that pulled one corner of her mouth a bit higher than the other the other. "You look well." Not avoiding the topic, just being friendly while waiting for it to come up. To be too serious was to damn herself just yet.
[Kora] The apartment is small enough that there's nothing down the hall except for a bathroom and a pair of bedrooms. The doors are both closed for privacy among the guests, but Kora opens the first bedroom door and gestures Drew inside. There's a bed, low, made, and a pair of bedside tables, a dresser - everything is neat and orderly, the the closet doors closed, the shoes neatly aligned, the colors muted earthtone, the possessions and extraneous toiletries mostly male, except for a few of her things scattered about.
That first impression, that quiet curse, is nothing more than a chasing surprise, the moment between seeing something and recognizing it when the creature's dark eyes narrow, her pupils contracting as Drew's familiar features swim into focus.
When the bedroom door clicks shut behind them, Kora turns, her generous mouth still, her dark eyes flickering over Drew - not impersonally, but observantly, her focus intense as it ever is.
"Where's Joe?" she asks, that faint frown of thought still framed on her expressive mouth, her hands coming to rest on her hips, her elbows out, her body language unconsciously animal.
[Drew Roscoe] If there was one thing you had to become used to if you were going to live your life around Werewolves, it was that while they may look human they never ever acted like it. She had grown used to being stared at with eyes that were too intense and honestly focused to belong to anything but a predator, better suited over a muzzle rather than set into the soft face of a human's. So when Kora squared her body, elbows out and hands on hips, posture ready and demanding both, Drew did not quaver. She was far too accustomed for that.
Of course that was the first question.
The smile on Drew's face faltered, the warmth and sparkling confidence in her eyes dulled like flames dashed with sand. She leaned more resolutely back against the door, moved her arms so they were crossed more snugly, higher up her stomach so they were under the modest swell of her chest. One corner of her mouth pulled back, the same that had lifted with the smile, but now it appeared uncomfortable.
"He's... not gonna make it tonight." True, but not nearly the entirety of it, and Drew didn't have the energy or motivation to put an effort into a lie.
[Kora] The room is dark. There's just the soft glow from the lamp on the bedside table, the gleam of the city's light through the filter of wooden blinds to illuminate them. There's Drew - the sparkle in her eyes dying abruptly - and there's Kora, her nostrils flaring as if she could somehow scent the truth from the air between them, even in her soft, utterly human skin.
She's pregnant; four and a half, maybe five months, and athletic enough that she did not show early. Some women seem softer, somehow, billowy - but there is nothing soft about her, and the animal inside is somehow brighter in the discs of her keen dark eyes.
Outside the door, down the hall, the murmur of voices, of music in the background, something low on the stereo, the echo of voices as the radio announcer inserts himself for the top of the hour news. Kora's attention is entirely fixed on Drew. The wide neck of her argent-white tee revealings the solid architecture of her shoulders. The downslope of her trapezius, the hard, jut of her clavicle against her pale skin. The muscles are taut underneath her skin, with a sort of tension that seems both - liminal and electric, that could be read about her as a halo energy for all that the young woman is unmoving.
Some other night the dimming of Drew's brightness might make her soften. Or, not soften, but shift to accommodate what she might read as grief or sorrow. Tonight, the generous line of her mouth just - hardens. Minutely, but it hardens.
"What does that mean?" - low-voiced, even. Without quarter.
[Drew Roscoe] "Means...."
A hand twitched where it rested, uncertain, then both hands moved up to pull the plait of hair over her shoulder and onto her chest. Fingers pulled and smoothed the dark strands of hair, and her eyes fell from Kora's-- but not for fear. She could look Thomas and Joe in the eyes even on their worst days, not because she was tough and resolute (if you asked her why, anyways), but because of trust. She trusted them not to attack, not to betray. She trusted Kora similarly, she had no fear of holding her gaze for any length of time.
It was the emotion that had her eyes dropping, sadly settling at the stomach of Kora's shirt without her really realizing what she was staring at. She swept her tongue over her upper lip, took a deep breath and shook her head. "It means he's not making it tonight or any other night at all." Her mouth was grim, set hard to prevent her lower lip from quivering. The last thing she wanted a grip of new family members to see when they first met her was wet, red eyes and a weak faltering smile when she left this bedroom. "He's gone."
[Kora] Something in the tension evidence in the Skald breaks; or shifts rather. She does not slump, but her dark eyes sharpen against Drew's features, the direct gaze, the grim set of her mouth, the way her eyes fall to settle without thinking on the curve of Kora's stomach. She breathes out once, audibly, and though some of that evident tension in her shoulders and arms eases, a span of tendon joining her jaw spasms as she swallows back - more questions, most of them.
"And Thomas?"
[Drew Roscoe] "I don't know."
Fingers work through the hair further, and when they stop a stray strand comes away with them. This Drew shakes off her hand thoughtlessly, lets it float toward the floor. Her breathing is irregular without being erratic. It feels better to take a deep breath and hold it in, like the air could cool the burn of grief in her chest. When she exhales it's a tired sigh that she breathes out almost each time. Her hands stuff into the back pockets of her pants, causing her elbows to point outward, not unlike how Kora's did, but with shoulders rolled back rather than squared strong.
"He was supposed to meet us... He was in the Umbra from what I understood. He just.. never showed up. I haven't seen him since last summer."
It was an odd thing, a curious realization. Since Drew learned about Garou and Kin and what they were to one another she'd always been supporting and supported by either Joe or Thomas, telling stories of them or fondly smiling when either name was brought up. To have both of them removed from the picture, hopelessly so, it made her seem older somehow. More worn out, tired by the day, like trying to get past their absence was a monumental task for her.
One day she would be okay, though, Kora knew that certainly. Drew had a track record in Chicago for strength and glory, enough to be given a Name and revered with Renown. She's sent bullets between the eyes of more than one spawn of the Wyrm, she's suffered through the losses of loved ones on numerous occasions. She would hold the memories dear, but she wouldn't mourn forever. This must have been a recent occurrence, no doubt the entire reason for returning home.
[Kora] "Okay."
At first, that is Kora's only acknowledgment of the news. That the remains of the pack did not survive even move out west, that Thomas never showed and Joe found his end, glorious or otherwise. Her voice is pitched low - if she ever sang, she would be a contralto - but she doesn't make human music, now, not Sorrow. She does not sing human songs.
The creature's hands slip from her hips, until she has wedged her fingers into the front pockets of her jeans. They're new enough that the denim is dark still, that she has not worn the hems to shrews on the streets of Chicago.
"And you're back to stay?" - this is quiet, easy. Made easier, in any case, because Kora has shifted her gaze just away from Drew, so that the kinfolk isn't subject to the full-on, dark-eyed stare. She waits a beat, long enough for Drew to acknowledge with a flicker of a look, with a quiet murmur that she is indeed back to stay.
"I'm still Jarl of the Fenrir." Kora looks back then, begins to move. It's subtle, the intimation of pacing - animal in a cage - "I'm pretty sure you know what that means. You are my responsibility in the eyes of the nation. I have the right to discipline you, and no one else. I will see to your protection, and I'll require your cooperation in that. If anyone - even a son of Fenris - wishes to claim you, he has to challenge me for the right. You understand that, don't you?"
[Drew Roscoe] The pacing, again, wasn't anything new, subtle and in-place or full-functioning and carrying about the room. The sheer amount of beast in her people did not cause her to shy away or fret, as she was Kin and as much theirs as they were hers. Family stuck together, did not harm one another, sought only to teach and strengthen and protect one another. The news is accepted with a simple 'Okay', a question, and then business.
The question is answered with a nod, simple and quiet.
The business is met with a flat stare at first, but it softens into a grin that didn't chase the sorrow away completely. "I do. It's unnecessary to say out loud, but I get the reason behind the disclaimer." The points of her canine teeth nipped at the skin inside her cheek for a second, and she shook her head after a second. "Won't be any claiming for a long time, though. Joe's....," and it's hard here, for a moment, because she hasn't spoken of him in past tense outside of raging and throwing fists at the culprit's head before now. "He's a tough act to follow."
[Kora] When Drew pauses, when her throat closes, so minutely because she means to speak in present tense, not past, because grief is a thing not of stages but moments. The first hour. The first day. The first sunrise. The first snowfall. The first - past tense - Kora acknowledges this with no more than a flicker of her eyes. She does not manage even a neutral acknowledgment of Drew's comment that Joe would be a tough act to follow except for a flicker of her eyes.
They had not parted on good terms, War-Handed and Sorrow, but she will not impugn the dead. Would not have done so in front of Drew even were he living, no matter the names she called him when she founds herself alone - tending their Alpha's grave, walking their just-claimed territory, keeping their compact with the scab-birds scrubbing the damn bell in the watchtower with brillo every Sunday afternoon, the tips of her fingers abraded to shreds - wounds she healed thoughtlessly moments after.
Finally, Kora makes a noise in the back of her throat.
"Are you pregnant?"
Kora does not soften the question; does not try to shape it into something else.
[Drew Roscoe] Kora asks questions unabashedly, drops them like bombs, like a hand in a game of cards, and dares people to protest the fact. She doesn't cushion blows, she doesn't try and cut corners or be delicate or polite. They were Fenrir, the both of them, they didn't need to be coddled with softness, to do so would be a disrespect to either party.
The question is met with a laugh that sounds surprised and just a tiny, worrying bit sardonic.
"Pregnant? No, no, no. Could you imagine?" There's a shake of her head, the question of what Kora was to imagine easy to answer without saying aloud-- Joe Holst, the seventeen year old death machine, a creature of hate and zealous belief, fathering a child. Drew fit the concept of a mother much easier, but Joe was the furthest thing from family-ready. Despite that, and though she'd never say so now that it was impossible, the couple had been on the threshold of trying for a child. Had Joe parted three or four months later, perhaps the answer would be different.
That wasn't the case, though, and Drew waved a hand dismissively of the very thought. "Naw. You look healthy, though. Due... what, in April? March?"
[Kora] The surprised laugh brings Kora's eyes right back to Drew's. The Skald does not join in the laughter, does not make it ring in the dark bedroom. There's a scent in the room of - cleaning products, some natural brand infused with oils. Sandalwood, attar of roses - those sorts of scents, and a strange stillness here juxtaposed against the murmur of the overlarge crowd in Trent's small living/dining rooms. Kora's attention lingers, she reads - well, the skepticism there, that they might have tried for a child - and the hint of wistfulness that must attach near the end, before she waves it off with an efficiently dismissive hand.
"Me?" - the Skald's turn for surprise, etched in her fine, pale brows above her fine, dark eyes. On a human, these might be attractive features, played up with make-up - a smokey eye, mascara to darken the flaxen lashes and frame her eyes. Kora is not human, however - and it is impossible to read something so facile as prettiness in the regularity of her eyes, in the quickened curve of her mobile mouth as she drops her gaze from Drew's dark brown eyes to the sure, subtle curve of her pregnancy against the t-shirt she wears.
That surprise - or maybe just the look, the way her eyes fall half-closed, pale lashes a pale shadow over her pale cheeks, her focus drawn inward - makes her seem - softer, somehow, more vulnerable, though nothing like that imprints itself in her tone of voice. Or even the laugh she breathes out before continue with the answer, quiet and nearly voiceless, as if she were holding it back in her body, swallowing it down.
" - no, I don't know. Haven't been to a doctor for obvious reasons, and don't know any midwives in the city." Kinfolk midwives, she means. "So we're not sure."
Then, a moment later, with something like resolve - "Drew," relentless, but still quiet, as if there was space for both strength and sorrow, grief and stoicism. "I'll ask you for the story of his death, and soon, but you needn't tell it tonight. And I want you to know that we did not - " a pause, her mouth thins around it as she reaches for the appropriate euphemism. " - end things well, Joe and I, but I will not hold that against you."
[Drew Roscoe] "Understandable. It'll come when it comes." This is Drew's answer to what Kora has to say about not knowing her due date. Her shoulders lift and fall in a shrug, and a hand moves to tug the warm red fabric of her sweater back up her shoulder, then settles into her pocket once more. She had no medical skills aside from basic knowledge, CPR and tourniquets and the like, and even if she did have any idea about child birth it was a deeply personal thing to volunteer to help someone through. She'd help how she could, in any way asked, but she wouldn't offer up skills she didn't have.
As for how Kora and Joe parted...
"I know." The answer seemed a little bit short, but not clipped with anger or impatience. She was being matter-of-fact on the topic, in a sense. She already had a pretty good idea when Joe told her they'd be leaving. She thought of Kora, losing Kemp only to have the rest of her pack leave so soon after, content to let her stay behind while they went forth to pursue other cities and adventures.
As for the story of how Joe went... Drew might not have heard it at all for how little she reacted to it. More than likely she pretended she didn't, didn't acknowledge because she didn't want to share the tale, recounting it too soon would be too hard. Tonight she needed composure, to shake hands and drink beer and make new friends, to congratulate some and ask questions of others. But she wouldn't, couldn't do that with tears on her face.
There's a moment of quiet, and Drew reaches back and lets her hand rest on the doorknob, eyebrows lifting in question, a faint smile on her face that looks soft and warm and sweet as honey, but Kora can be pretty sure that there's an effort to put it there and it didn't manifest naturally as it ought to. "Should we go back, then?"
[Kora] Some sharpening of that animal attention, quickening to the resolve, to the effort put into that smile. They've not been gone long. Five minutes, maybe ten at most, their voices low. Maybe no one's noticed that they've gone.
"Let's do - " the Skald says, reaching for the door as Drew pulls it open, holding it for the kinswoman as she goes ahead, then pulling it firmly closed behind them. The hallway is dark, the door to the bathroom half-open, the living/dining room at the end of the hall blazing with light and full of people, strangers mostly.
"Drew," says the Skald, quietly as they walk back down the hallway. Oh, she is what she is, and her voice is soft but pitched to carry with the skill of a storyteller, the surety of someone in full control of her greatest instrument. "Welcome home."
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