[Linus plus] Gertrude
It was a name printed in large black red letters, with baby blue shading. It had long since stopped being an idyllic sort of representation and was by no means accurate any longer. One didn't even know who Gertrude was or what possible service or good she could have been selling. It was simply a faded name somewhere on the inner domains of Cabrini's small industrial zone where once Meat Packing made a living using the ghetto as a waypoint between the industrial zones further south and the long hauls coming off the freeways and coast lines.
It was a large space. An empty one at that, barely suitable for storage and that was more than forty years ago. Now, it was a tertiary location on a squatter's list, with the old, soiled blankets tucked into the most cover providing corners. The bricks were falling to pieces, the mortar crumbling. The roof above was pock marked with holes and dents, while the rafters were the only standing thing and thus the only thing keeping standing Gertrude's.
What this place had that few others had, however, was the storage facility once used for overnight deliveries made to the city and ready to be shipped out directly come the following morning. Late night preservation fridge space, barely more than enough room for a single truck load of merchandise but the perfect little tuck away for that fresh delivery that needed to hit the shelves by monday morning and no where else to put it on the Sunday afternoon.
It's here, down a small flight of metal grate steps past a pair of loading bay doors, around back in a parking lot long since blocked off by plywood construction panels and graffiti. Down the stairs, through the broad tunnel, past a half dozen small office spaces that were once occupied by low level employees slaving out wages toward the locker where the freezer storage could be found with it's aging shelving units, pushed off to the side walls and it's flicking florescent lights that stare garishly down at the concrete floor, newly swept and cleaned. The lights blink. Intermittently. Purely coincidental.
The room is large but lit only down a single strip of those fluttering bulbs, the walls to either side a good twenty feet off and dark. Within that line of illumination, a pair of chairs, facing away from one another. Within those chairs, a pair of individuals stripped naked and breathing awkwardly through the rags tucked into their mouths. At wrists and ankles, the same bindings.
At shoulders and thighs, evidence of tearing. Like claws dug into tendons, meticulously carved for hampering purposes. Even the shift would do little to help the wounds.
Linus had gone Umbral several times already to drag one of them back after he'd crawled a hundred feet down the tunnel like some flopping mess.
Tonight, they were both homid. One was lanky, the sort of teenage skinny one got from a bad diet and a worse attitude. His hair was a mop of brownish black, while his face was a sallow collection of exhaustion and tear tracks. He'd been crying since waking up here.
The other was brutish. Hulking, even. Breathing heavily through his nose and shifting about whenever he got the chance. The cold didn't seem to bug him as much as his companion though the tufts of thick fur and hair gave evidence to the Glabro shape he'd yet to quit since waking up here. It also meant re-applying the 'incisions' to his shoulders and legs periodically.Usually when finger movement became evident enough to suggest the middle finger.
Linus was a shadow nearby. Facing away from the pair, the inaudible murmur of several candles dancing infront of the Godi. Coupled with a small host of odd ingredients not entirely visible.
This was the Stage.
[Kora] Kora's steps ring out down the metal steps. She takes them one at a time, but staccato fast. Roman and Gwen trail somewhere behind her. It has been no more than 24 hours since the packhouse was attacked by these cursed Garou. No more than 24 hours since they fell and raged back to life.
Kora still has fading claw marks on her shoulder, just enough to pull her skin as she swings her hand up to ghost her palm over the rusted metal bannister as leads the other Garou through the abandoned warehouse, past the piles of stinking blankets, the abandoned nests of the squatters who found someplace better to be, all the rest of it, deep into the bowls of the old building.
"They're restrained," she explains, almost casually - a brief, skimming glance back over a narrow shoulder up at Gwen as they descend the stairs. "Recovered enough to speak. We can't keep them any longer, though. A decent no-moon could find them in a heartbeat. They have too much information about us to risk using them as bait for an ambush. C'mon."
Linus can feel their approach, but Kora announces, We're here, when the trio are just outside the freezer. She reaches up to pull the rusted latch open, then holds it for the others, a brief look, grim and direct, for Gwen as she walks by.
[Gwen Sullivan] Gwen isn't too difficult to hunt down, she tends to stick to the north side of the city, never finding reason to venture down to the Bronze or Chinatown unless invited exclusively. She'd ghost along the outsides of Last Watch's turf sometimes, other times she'd check in on her parents. These nights she's been more apt to a cluster of residential homes tucked away in some nondescript neighborhood a couple miles away from the Church, where she's been sapping all of the allegiance she had out of a human boy with pale skin, messy hair and round shoulders. He'd let her stay on his couch from time to time, but she was becoming steadily more difficult to relate to, putting him on edge moreso some times than others, but always at least a little bit.
Kora and Roman had tracked her down, given her a brief explanation of what was going on, and brought her out here. She'd followed obediently enough, out to the forgotten meat packing district, into a building whose roof was dented and dilapidated, down a flight of stairs and into a room that could only be lit by some deal Linus had to have made with electricity spirits-- there was no way the city had the power turned on to this place.
Gwen was dressed in a pair of jeans that were too long at the legs, too loose at the waist, too broad at the thigh. They were held up by a thick black belt, the cuffs didn't drag only because they were bunched up and tucked into her black winter boots. Her heavy black coat was zipped up to her collar bone, and her plain brown hair was left out to swing near her shoulders. She'd walk between Kora and Roman, because Roman would likely insist that ladies go first.
Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs she passes through the door that Kora held open with a nod to the Skald, hands in her pockets, and look at the naked men under the harsh light of the naked florescent bulbs. Her eyes widened some, just a touch, for just a second, and she took in how they were strapped down, the cuts visible on their flesh. The different builds of the men, how they were positioned in the room, and from there the rest of the room. Her tongue swept over dry lips, and she muttered in a low, muted rasp of a voice. "What're we looking for...?"
[Roman Turner] He let Gwen go down between himself and Kora. All the while as they went deeper down the tunnel, he fought the growing desire to be out in the open. The stench here was enough to make his eyes water and leaving the moon behind to go where only rats should go, make him feel closed in as if he gave away his freedom. In other words, it was unsettling, making him sweat beneath his winter clothing that he was sure he'd have to burn because the smell would stick with him.
Gwen he'd offered a place to live at the church with them. Never forcing the Cub to stay because it wasn't his way.
When they reached Linus and his little project, Roman was sure he was going to lose his dinner. This too was not his way.
[Linus plus] He's murmuring. The sort of incomprehensible flutter and snap that comes with feathers and beaks. It is a subdued thing that barely makes it past the corner he's chosen to cloister himself away in. It leaves their two guests relatively alone upon the Trio's arrival and neither seems to have been using the time wisely, well or even productively.
Both have been dozing in and out due to blood loss (caking the floor and one another) and exhaustion. Heat deprivation. Malnourished. Waning. The Father's stuff was made of far less resilient material than one would be led to believe. Weakness, afterall, was something of an artform among the bastards. Much like the Fenrir though the ideologies separated at several distinct levels.
Both wore signs. The Lanky one was 'Harold' and the Glabro one was 'Tiny'. Some crude permanent marker on a strip of cardboard, hung by dental floss which coiled and sprung out of some natural conformity to shape.
As the door winges open and the Trio enter, there is a snuffling sound that erupts from Tiny, facing the western Wall. Harold is stuck facing the eastern. Neither is facing the direct angle of the Three that enter, nevermind that the dark on the outskirts and the light over them eliminates much of their natural eyesight beyond themselves.
Tiny turns anyway, squinting into the dark, his eyelids having been painted with an odd charcoal mixture, smudged and gelatinous and dried over. A pair of 'X' sit over either eye. Harold is much the same.
"Who..." It is a word before it is a question. The emphasis of a query dropped as Tiny seems to register what 'visitors' could mean. He grunts. Bravado.
Harold lolls in his chair, snoring softly.
[Roman Turner] "Dang...."
That's what came out as his throat worked, swallowing so hard his Adam's apple bobbed once, twice and a third time. Sure enough, his color was leaving him.
[Kora] "Li tells me you want to be Fenrir." - this Kora says, low voiced, a glance back at Roman as he comes up behind the pair of them. She's already stripping off her winter things - her scarf and gloves, her wool coat. She keeps them out of the immediate miasma of blood and rot, the stink of urine a sharp ammonia tang in the air, wandering back toward the offices for a convenient place to put them down. When she returns, she's stripped down to her dedicated things. A new outfit, enough to accommodate her growing stomach for another few inches at least - gray t-shirt, boat-neck, fine, over a white thermal, longsleeved, and jeans tucked into her black Doc Marten's.
There are bracelets on her wrists, dark leather, knotted hemp, bits of rope, of suede, of fishing line. A choker around her neck on the same lines: three thin pieces of dark leather, braided and taut around her long neck.
" - that true?" Her voice rises, just so at the end. Roman begins to look pale, and Kora gives him a brief look. Direct, before returning her attention to Gwen. "These cursed ones attacked my kinswoman. They tracked her to the packhouse and attacked, thinking to find a couple of wounded animals gone to ground. They found us instead. This is the face of your enemy."
Kora steps forward, nudging Tiny with the toe of her booted foot. "Say hello."
Then cuts a glance back to Gwen, her mouth still. "What do you think we want to know?"
[Linus plus] Tiny spits. Or tries to. It's more of a dribble that passes his lower lip and splatters on his chest, for the lack of forward force he can't gather. His movements are not restrained, but restricted, the severing of the broad swathe of tendons connecting the muscles of his shoulders to anything else has brought a degree of awkward maneuverability to an already insensate body. He seems to be taking as much of it in stride as he can, even flashing the pair of girls a welcome grin, at once meant to be intimidating...
...and caged slightly in tremors that may or may not be the cold of the night and his current state of dress. He doesn't speak. Simply, casts a quick eye at Gwen and makes a solid show of looking her up and down appreciatively.
[Gwen Sullivan] Kora leads on with what Linus ('Li' to her, never to Gwen) had told her about the Cub-- that she wanted to be a Get of Fenris. Gwen didn't need to do much to confirm this but dip her chin once in a nod and shift her gaze from the men in their chairs to Kora. She's stripping of her winter clothes, bundling them up and finding someplace safe for them. Gwen's hanging back nearer to Roman, and his strained exclamation had her glancing over to him, observing the color shift in his face.
She frowned, the expression a half-sympathetic thing, and lifted a hand to scrub the back of his upper arm and shoulder reassuringly. It consists of a few quick up-down rubs, and she's then unbuttoning her jacket and tossing it over with Kora's things, bringing her down to a loose fitting faded red long-sleeved tee with some scrawl advertising some band no one cares about dominating the right side, both front and back. An elastic is snapped off her wrist, hair gathered into a knot at the back of her head, and as she does so, elbows out in the air, she confirms when Kora asks aloud if that's true.
"It is." Simple as that, professional and respectful rather than curt or snippish. The Jarl moves forward to nudge the conscious one, who spits and glances at the pair of them, but takes time to let his eyes drag up and down Gwen moreso. Probably because she wasn't the one with child. Maybe because she appeared easier to overcome than statuesque Kora. Who knows. Gwen's stepping forward, rolling her sleeves up to her elbows, and staring Tiny right back down.
"...Probably 'where is your hive' and 'who are your leaders' and weakpoints and entrances and stuff like that."
[Roman Turner] He kept his outer wear on, though he managed to give Gwen a grateful look for her sympathy where his sensibilities were concerned. Tiny however managed to get a huff out of Roman.
"Dang boy, best consider your situation before ya let all the blood go from the small head on your shoulders to the smaller one down between your legs. Besides, ain't no telling how long ya gonna have that little fella if ya gonna give the lady looks like that."
[Kora] "Do you think they'll tell us that?" Kora's voice is low, an instrument - though not a musical one. There's an evenness to the tone here, dark eyes cutting from Gwen to the cursed Garou. It is cold down here; outside a bitter night, and there's a tension in Kora's spine, in the way she holds her shoulders just forward as if that might ward off the chill.
"Confess all?" A brief flicker of a look from Kora to the Spiral, grinning back at them. Her features are hooded, but her mouth is flat with a revulsion so deep she feels it in the root of her spine, in the core of her body. "If you were captured - " here, quiet, she flicks a glance at Gwen. " - like they are. Would you? Through yourself on the enemy's mercy offer whatever few scraps of information you had for an early death?"
A brief, narrow pause - the line of tension pulling taut, underneath her quiet voice. "Or a new life?"
[Gwen Sullivan] "No, I really don't."
Think that they'll give that information. Gwen's got her hands on her hips like she's looking at a piece of broken machinery on a workshop table and she's trying to decide the best route to take in repairing it. Not just for the studious expression on her face, ignoring that the guy staring at her and getting scolded by Roman from behind her shoulder... Also for the pushed up sleeves, her hair tied back save for a few whisps of overgrown bangs hanging about her face. She looked like she was ready for work.
She looked to Kora when she asked her questions of what Gwen would do in their shoes, and her eyebrow lifted. She looked at the Skald's face for a few seconds, long and hard, before frowning more with her upper lip than any other muscle. "No. But I'm not like them. None of us are."
Back to the first question... She looks away from Tiny, to the scrawny guy with 'Harold' as a makeshift nametag, and nods toward him. "He might have something to say." Judging by the tear marks already staining his face.
[Roman Turner] "There's more in common than ya think. Might of been a time ole Tiny here was going to school just like anyone else. Had a ma and pa, just like anyone else. Watched cartoons, ate Captain Crunch and listened to his Ipod. Things happen, folk change even when they think they never could."
[Linus plus] "Ain't like I gots somewhere else tah be, boy 'r y'all gonna let me go on mah way tah find me a nice pretty 'un?"
The accent is thick. Suggestive of somewhere similar to Roman's own native nature. Tiny speaks back at the Ragabash with something akin to bitterness, though not quite. Irony would be the word that he probably can't right pronounce or know the full meaning of if the vaguely glazed look in his features is any indication. He claps his jaws at Roman, like he were imitating a Cow's chewing methods. His eyes travel and follow Gwen's own movements absently, roving where they may.
He seems to be doing his best to avoid looking at Kora. Avoid looking around the Skald. Those same awkward leans of body mass unresponsive to tendon pull and tautness, make each shift of his neck a painful experience. A pain he seems immune to for the most part, though he jostles no less strangely in place.
"Pfft, Him? Fuck'n...Fuck'n Wet~ears? Fuck'r ain' got no brain 'cept tha shirv'l raisun 'e keeps 'tween'z legs!" A rolling guffaw from Tiny who can't seem to do much more than that.
[Kora] Kora skims a look from Gwen to Roman; dark eyes linger, brief and still - on her packmate. Her expression is close, and still, her gaze half-hidden by pale lashes. The stench here is ruinous enough that she breathes shallowly in through her mouth and out through her nose, such that her nostrils flare with every breath.
Then she looks back to Gwen - a moment of frank, clear assessment. For the first time, since they walked into the derelict warehouse, her mouth finds its natural curve, deepens as if she were beginning to smile. There's no pleasure in it. "You think we're all different from them?" Both brows rise, pale blond arches above her deep blue eyes. "Where the fuck do you think they came from?" Underneath, a skin ripping disgust surfaces. All those memories of the fallen. All those memories of the fall.
"You." There's a starker tone to Kora's voice as she sidesteps toward Harold, the one with the tears. And nudges his foot with her booted toe as well. "Wet-Ears. Do you have something to say?"
[Linus plus] "Lemme alone."
It's the equivalent of Tiny's own bravado in the lanky kid's assessment. He wakes with a start and a shift of movement that immediately brings tears of pain to his eyes as the lack of nerve deadening effort forces him to still as much as his handicap will allow. He sniffs loudly and squints, trying to endure the agony of severed tendon and muscle while maintaining a strong front of some sort or another. Which is head held high and eyes forward.
The breathing is laboured and the jawline trembles. The eyes are watery and the features, thin and terrified.
[Gwen Sullivan] Gwen looks back at Roman when he talks, then frowns at Kora's joyless smile. Her cool swamp-colored eyes follow the Skald as she walks over to the scrawny one who was passed out. She licked at her dry lips once more, let her eyes flit over to where she'd found Linus against the wall, chanting, keeping to himself, maintaining something she didn't understand but wouldn't question or disturb.
"I'm not saying we don't have similar origins. That much makes itself obvious. I'm saying what they are, right now, is not what we are."
But Kora's nudging the little guy, moving on from the big one, and Gwen finds herself hanging back, hands jamming into the pockets of those pants that obviously belonged to a male before they did her, and frowning quietly into the shadows. She'd ask the questions, if she knew what they were. She'd rip them out of their mouths by the teeth, dragging truth out along with bloodied molar roots. But with Kora in the front, Gwen took place in the back, where she was supposed to be.
Letting the Jarl Lead.
[Roman Turner] "I ain't got much stomach for torture, I prefer clean cut myself, besides it makes me feel a little too close to what you are if I stoop to your level."
He leveled a look on Tiny as he spoke as soft as water sliding over rounded stones.
"Though them looks ya given the girl here bring to mind this bull calf we had back home. Ya know how ya settle down a bull calf ya ain't intending on using for breedin? Ya band it. Ya take a bander loaded with rubber bands and ya slip it over his testicals and let go. What happens is a constriction of blood flow. First them testicals start to turn blue, then deep purple and black and after a few days. Plop, they fall off. Now in your case, it might be the best thing what come down the pike."
[Linus plus] "We...Well...Fug Yew!"
It's the only real response from Tiny in Roman's direction. Not even much of a defiant shimmy in his bonds, with his restricted mobility. He juts his jaw forward, mouth slightly agape to reveal yellowed teeth. His attention shifts back to the far wall and there is an almost unconscious flicker of nervous clenching of thighs and knees. His ankles cross and his jaw sets and his breathing is loud through his nostrils.
[Roman Turner] His sniffed and instantly regretted it when the added rush of stench it sucked in. He could taste blood in the air. Urine stung the back of his throat. Worse of all was the stench of fear that tainted the air.
"That's what I thought."
The change in attitude told him he'd gotten his point through. Wasn't any man he knew, sane or insane that wanted to entertain losing their boys.
[Kora] Kora's breath flares out of her nostrils, a sharp breath. The sort that might sound like a faint snort of laughter, just suppressed, were the setting different. She's a healthy animal, the Skald - long limbed and confident, not yet made awkward by her pregnancy. Her hair is fine as stranded silk - too fine to hold a curl or fall down in great planned waves - and it gleams even in the dull light seeping into this grotesque little room. Bound twice behind her head, the weight of it falls halfway down her spine, stray strands clinging to the subtle nap of her loomed cotton tee.
"We're the same. We're Garou. They're Garou. The difference is, they fell."
A glance back at Gwen, contained now, her rage banked with that bark of bitter human.
"You can too."
Kora cuts a look back to Wet-Ears, struggling audibly against the assault of enduring pain, and taps his toe with her boot. "Tell her the story of the White Howlers. Tell her how you fell."
[Gwen Sullivan] Gwen's scowl deepens gradually. She's watching Roman intimidate the big guy with promises of castration, and on another day she might've cracked one of her small lopsided grins at the back-and-forth. Today, though, the frown doesn't budge an inch. She's looking back to Kora, irritation buzzing in her skull and Rage thrumming a faster and faster rhythm through her veins.
She takes a deep breath through her nose, stomachs the stench (barely, pretending it didn't bother her as much as it actually did), and exhales with a shake of her head. "Can and Will are separate things. That's what's important. Anyone can, that's not the question. Question is will you."
Kora's trying to coax the tale of the White Howlers out of Tiny, tapping his foot with hers, and Gwen is practically vibrating. Impatient, shifting her weight here and there, arms at her sides, then folded over her stomach, then hands in her pockets, then at her hips. Easy to perceive as being impertinent, whether or not that's the case.
[Linus plus] "I 'unno!"
He yells, head lolling around with an audible and wrenching gasp of pain. He hisses, sucking in breath through gritted teeth, partial sobs escaping on the exhale. He whimpers slightly, trying to adjust himself to keep the pain to a minimum, head shifting tenderly back to a position of relative evenness with his spine.
"I dunno, I dunno. T-they ran down...a-a big hole..."
"Fuck'n useless-" Tiny provides, shutting Harold up quickly, who continues to sniff loudly and try to harden his expression. The tears and shaking don't do much.
"I wanna go home..." He says it quietly. Softly, face beginning to crack into a full blown sob. Eyes shutting and head bowing slightly forward.
"...Howlahs were tha' 'uns tha' had tha' bes' chance a' doin' things right. Wen' 'n did tha' bes' thing you can do." Tiny grins. A flash of something before slamming a foot into the ground with a muted thump and a harsh bellow that doesn't make it to loud or the bruising around his throat. No doubt they'd had trouble with him yelling before.
"Shut'cher fuck'n belly ache! Fuck'n give you sumthin' to cry 'bout!"
[Roman Turner] He was thinking he wished they had finished these two off instead of keeping them like this. It still bothered him that he felt like a tidal pool who's level was sinking towards sludge by indulging in these tactics.
"Never say never Gwen. Life has a way of turning around and biting folk on the tail end when least expected."
[Kora] "If it's all a matter of will," Kora says, a flicker of a look back at Gwen, fidgeting, impatient. "Then control yourself, Cub." Her mouth stills as she steps away from the pair.
"They ran down a big hole," she echoes as she moves, shouldering Gwen physically forward as she does so. The gesture is rough enough that Gwen has to lock her knees not to sway or stumble forward. "As Wet-Ears says, - to do the best thing you could do. I can almost imagine them saying that. As they stood on the precipice of the last battle they ever fought in her name, wild with adrenalin, the great - fucking - victory to come so heady they could taste it, so assured they could hear their names echoing across history before it swallowed them "
She glances up, tipping her head toward the pair. The dynamic between them, Tiny shutting
Harold up before he can finish. One feeding the other. One leashing the other.
I want to go home, sobs a cursed Garou.
"They're yours," Kora says, "What next?"
[Linus plus] (Pause!)
It was a name printed in large black red letters, with baby blue shading. It had long since stopped being an idyllic sort of representation and was by no means accurate any longer. One didn't even know who Gertrude was or what possible service or good she could have been selling. It was simply a faded name somewhere on the inner domains of Cabrini's small industrial zone where once Meat Packing made a living using the ghetto as a waypoint between the industrial zones further south and the long hauls coming off the freeways and coast lines.
It was a large space. An empty one at that, barely suitable for storage and that was more than forty years ago. Now, it was a tertiary location on a squatter's list, with the old, soiled blankets tucked into the most cover providing corners. The bricks were falling to pieces, the mortar crumbling. The roof above was pock marked with holes and dents, while the rafters were the only standing thing and thus the only thing keeping standing Gertrude's.
What this place had that few others had, however, was the storage facility once used for overnight deliveries made to the city and ready to be shipped out directly come the following morning. Late night preservation fridge space, barely more than enough room for a single truck load of merchandise but the perfect little tuck away for that fresh delivery that needed to hit the shelves by monday morning and no where else to put it on the Sunday afternoon.
It's here, down a small flight of metal grate steps past a pair of loading bay doors, around back in a parking lot long since blocked off by plywood construction panels and graffiti. Down the stairs, through the broad tunnel, past a half dozen small office spaces that were once occupied by low level employees slaving out wages toward the locker where the freezer storage could be found with it's aging shelving units, pushed off to the side walls and it's flicking florescent lights that stare garishly down at the concrete floor, newly swept and cleaned. The lights blink. Intermittently. Purely coincidental.
The room is large but lit only down a single strip of those fluttering bulbs, the walls to either side a good twenty feet off and dark. Within that line of illumination, a pair of chairs, facing away from one another. Within those chairs, a pair of individuals stripped naked and breathing awkwardly through the rags tucked into their mouths. At wrists and ankles, the same bindings.
At shoulders and thighs, evidence of tearing. Like claws dug into tendons, meticulously carved for hampering purposes. Even the shift would do little to help the wounds.
Linus had gone Umbral several times already to drag one of them back after he'd crawled a hundred feet down the tunnel like some flopping mess.
Tonight, they were both homid. One was lanky, the sort of teenage skinny one got from a bad diet and a worse attitude. His hair was a mop of brownish black, while his face was a sallow collection of exhaustion and tear tracks. He'd been crying since waking up here.
The other was brutish. Hulking, even. Breathing heavily through his nose and shifting about whenever he got the chance. The cold didn't seem to bug him as much as his companion though the tufts of thick fur and hair gave evidence to the Glabro shape he'd yet to quit since waking up here. It also meant re-applying the 'incisions' to his shoulders and legs periodically.Usually when finger movement became evident enough to suggest the middle finger.
Linus was a shadow nearby. Facing away from the pair, the inaudible murmur of several candles dancing infront of the Godi. Coupled with a small host of odd ingredients not entirely visible.
This was the Stage.
[Kora] Kora's steps ring out down the metal steps. She takes them one at a time, but staccato fast. Roman and Gwen trail somewhere behind her. It has been no more than 24 hours since the packhouse was attacked by these cursed Garou. No more than 24 hours since they fell and raged back to life.
Kora still has fading claw marks on her shoulder, just enough to pull her skin as she swings her hand up to ghost her palm over the rusted metal bannister as leads the other Garou through the abandoned warehouse, past the piles of stinking blankets, the abandoned nests of the squatters who found someplace better to be, all the rest of it, deep into the bowls of the old building.
"They're restrained," she explains, almost casually - a brief, skimming glance back over a narrow shoulder up at Gwen as they descend the stairs. "Recovered enough to speak. We can't keep them any longer, though. A decent no-moon could find them in a heartbeat. They have too much information about us to risk using them as bait for an ambush. C'mon."
Linus can feel their approach, but Kora announces, We're here, when the trio are just outside the freezer. She reaches up to pull the rusted latch open, then holds it for the others, a brief look, grim and direct, for Gwen as she walks by.
[Gwen Sullivan] Gwen isn't too difficult to hunt down, she tends to stick to the north side of the city, never finding reason to venture down to the Bronze or Chinatown unless invited exclusively. She'd ghost along the outsides of Last Watch's turf sometimes, other times she'd check in on her parents. These nights she's been more apt to a cluster of residential homes tucked away in some nondescript neighborhood a couple miles away from the Church, where she's been sapping all of the allegiance she had out of a human boy with pale skin, messy hair and round shoulders. He'd let her stay on his couch from time to time, but she was becoming steadily more difficult to relate to, putting him on edge moreso some times than others, but always at least a little bit.
Kora and Roman had tracked her down, given her a brief explanation of what was going on, and brought her out here. She'd followed obediently enough, out to the forgotten meat packing district, into a building whose roof was dented and dilapidated, down a flight of stairs and into a room that could only be lit by some deal Linus had to have made with electricity spirits-- there was no way the city had the power turned on to this place.
Gwen was dressed in a pair of jeans that were too long at the legs, too loose at the waist, too broad at the thigh. They were held up by a thick black belt, the cuffs didn't drag only because they were bunched up and tucked into her black winter boots. Her heavy black coat was zipped up to her collar bone, and her plain brown hair was left out to swing near her shoulders. She'd walk between Kora and Roman, because Roman would likely insist that ladies go first.
Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs she passes through the door that Kora held open with a nod to the Skald, hands in her pockets, and look at the naked men under the harsh light of the naked florescent bulbs. Her eyes widened some, just a touch, for just a second, and she took in how they were strapped down, the cuts visible on their flesh. The different builds of the men, how they were positioned in the room, and from there the rest of the room. Her tongue swept over dry lips, and she muttered in a low, muted rasp of a voice. "What're we looking for...?"
[Roman Turner] He let Gwen go down between himself and Kora. All the while as they went deeper down the tunnel, he fought the growing desire to be out in the open. The stench here was enough to make his eyes water and leaving the moon behind to go where only rats should go, make him feel closed in as if he gave away his freedom. In other words, it was unsettling, making him sweat beneath his winter clothing that he was sure he'd have to burn because the smell would stick with him.
Gwen he'd offered a place to live at the church with them. Never forcing the Cub to stay because it wasn't his way.
When they reached Linus and his little project, Roman was sure he was going to lose his dinner. This too was not his way.
[Linus plus] He's murmuring. The sort of incomprehensible flutter and snap that comes with feathers and beaks. It is a subdued thing that barely makes it past the corner he's chosen to cloister himself away in. It leaves their two guests relatively alone upon the Trio's arrival and neither seems to have been using the time wisely, well or even productively.
Both have been dozing in and out due to blood loss (caking the floor and one another) and exhaustion. Heat deprivation. Malnourished. Waning. The Father's stuff was made of far less resilient material than one would be led to believe. Weakness, afterall, was something of an artform among the bastards. Much like the Fenrir though the ideologies separated at several distinct levels.
Both wore signs. The Lanky one was 'Harold' and the Glabro one was 'Tiny'. Some crude permanent marker on a strip of cardboard, hung by dental floss which coiled and sprung out of some natural conformity to shape.
As the door winges open and the Trio enter, there is a snuffling sound that erupts from Tiny, facing the western Wall. Harold is stuck facing the eastern. Neither is facing the direct angle of the Three that enter, nevermind that the dark on the outskirts and the light over them eliminates much of their natural eyesight beyond themselves.
Tiny turns anyway, squinting into the dark, his eyelids having been painted with an odd charcoal mixture, smudged and gelatinous and dried over. A pair of 'X' sit over either eye. Harold is much the same.
"Who..." It is a word before it is a question. The emphasis of a query dropped as Tiny seems to register what 'visitors' could mean. He grunts. Bravado.
Harold lolls in his chair, snoring softly.
[Roman Turner] "Dang...."
That's what came out as his throat worked, swallowing so hard his Adam's apple bobbed once, twice and a third time. Sure enough, his color was leaving him.
[Kora] "Li tells me you want to be Fenrir." - this Kora says, low voiced, a glance back at Roman as he comes up behind the pair of them. She's already stripping off her winter things - her scarf and gloves, her wool coat. She keeps them out of the immediate miasma of blood and rot, the stink of urine a sharp ammonia tang in the air, wandering back toward the offices for a convenient place to put them down. When she returns, she's stripped down to her dedicated things. A new outfit, enough to accommodate her growing stomach for another few inches at least - gray t-shirt, boat-neck, fine, over a white thermal, longsleeved, and jeans tucked into her black Doc Marten's.
There are bracelets on her wrists, dark leather, knotted hemp, bits of rope, of suede, of fishing line. A choker around her neck on the same lines: three thin pieces of dark leather, braided and taut around her long neck.
" - that true?" Her voice rises, just so at the end. Roman begins to look pale, and Kora gives him a brief look. Direct, before returning her attention to Gwen. "These cursed ones attacked my kinswoman. They tracked her to the packhouse and attacked, thinking to find a couple of wounded animals gone to ground. They found us instead. This is the face of your enemy."
Kora steps forward, nudging Tiny with the toe of her booted foot. "Say hello."
Then cuts a glance back to Gwen, her mouth still. "What do you think we want to know?"
[Linus plus] Tiny spits. Or tries to. It's more of a dribble that passes his lower lip and splatters on his chest, for the lack of forward force he can't gather. His movements are not restrained, but restricted, the severing of the broad swathe of tendons connecting the muscles of his shoulders to anything else has brought a degree of awkward maneuverability to an already insensate body. He seems to be taking as much of it in stride as he can, even flashing the pair of girls a welcome grin, at once meant to be intimidating...
...and caged slightly in tremors that may or may not be the cold of the night and his current state of dress. He doesn't speak. Simply, casts a quick eye at Gwen and makes a solid show of looking her up and down appreciatively.
[Gwen Sullivan] Kora leads on with what Linus ('Li' to her, never to Gwen) had told her about the Cub-- that she wanted to be a Get of Fenris. Gwen didn't need to do much to confirm this but dip her chin once in a nod and shift her gaze from the men in their chairs to Kora. She's stripping of her winter clothes, bundling them up and finding someplace safe for them. Gwen's hanging back nearer to Roman, and his strained exclamation had her glancing over to him, observing the color shift in his face.
She frowned, the expression a half-sympathetic thing, and lifted a hand to scrub the back of his upper arm and shoulder reassuringly. It consists of a few quick up-down rubs, and she's then unbuttoning her jacket and tossing it over with Kora's things, bringing her down to a loose fitting faded red long-sleeved tee with some scrawl advertising some band no one cares about dominating the right side, both front and back. An elastic is snapped off her wrist, hair gathered into a knot at the back of her head, and as she does so, elbows out in the air, she confirms when Kora asks aloud if that's true.
"It is." Simple as that, professional and respectful rather than curt or snippish. The Jarl moves forward to nudge the conscious one, who spits and glances at the pair of them, but takes time to let his eyes drag up and down Gwen moreso. Probably because she wasn't the one with child. Maybe because she appeared easier to overcome than statuesque Kora. Who knows. Gwen's stepping forward, rolling her sleeves up to her elbows, and staring Tiny right back down.
"...Probably 'where is your hive' and 'who are your leaders' and weakpoints and entrances and stuff like that."
[Roman Turner] He kept his outer wear on, though he managed to give Gwen a grateful look for her sympathy where his sensibilities were concerned. Tiny however managed to get a huff out of Roman.
"Dang boy, best consider your situation before ya let all the blood go from the small head on your shoulders to the smaller one down between your legs. Besides, ain't no telling how long ya gonna have that little fella if ya gonna give the lady looks like that."
[Kora] "Do you think they'll tell us that?" Kora's voice is low, an instrument - though not a musical one. There's an evenness to the tone here, dark eyes cutting from Gwen to the cursed Garou. It is cold down here; outside a bitter night, and there's a tension in Kora's spine, in the way she holds her shoulders just forward as if that might ward off the chill.
"Confess all?" A brief flicker of a look from Kora to the Spiral, grinning back at them. Her features are hooded, but her mouth is flat with a revulsion so deep she feels it in the root of her spine, in the core of her body. "If you were captured - " here, quiet, she flicks a glance at Gwen. " - like they are. Would you? Through yourself on the enemy's mercy offer whatever few scraps of information you had for an early death?"
A brief, narrow pause - the line of tension pulling taut, underneath her quiet voice. "Or a new life?"
[Gwen Sullivan] "No, I really don't."
Think that they'll give that information. Gwen's got her hands on her hips like she's looking at a piece of broken machinery on a workshop table and she's trying to decide the best route to take in repairing it. Not just for the studious expression on her face, ignoring that the guy staring at her and getting scolded by Roman from behind her shoulder... Also for the pushed up sleeves, her hair tied back save for a few whisps of overgrown bangs hanging about her face. She looked like she was ready for work.
She looked to Kora when she asked her questions of what Gwen would do in their shoes, and her eyebrow lifted. She looked at the Skald's face for a few seconds, long and hard, before frowning more with her upper lip than any other muscle. "No. But I'm not like them. None of us are."
Back to the first question... She looks away from Tiny, to the scrawny guy with 'Harold' as a makeshift nametag, and nods toward him. "He might have something to say." Judging by the tear marks already staining his face.
[Roman Turner] "There's more in common than ya think. Might of been a time ole Tiny here was going to school just like anyone else. Had a ma and pa, just like anyone else. Watched cartoons, ate Captain Crunch and listened to his Ipod. Things happen, folk change even when they think they never could."
[Linus plus] "Ain't like I gots somewhere else tah be, boy 'r y'all gonna let me go on mah way tah find me a nice pretty 'un?"
The accent is thick. Suggestive of somewhere similar to Roman's own native nature. Tiny speaks back at the Ragabash with something akin to bitterness, though not quite. Irony would be the word that he probably can't right pronounce or know the full meaning of if the vaguely glazed look in his features is any indication. He claps his jaws at Roman, like he were imitating a Cow's chewing methods. His eyes travel and follow Gwen's own movements absently, roving where they may.
He seems to be doing his best to avoid looking at Kora. Avoid looking around the Skald. Those same awkward leans of body mass unresponsive to tendon pull and tautness, make each shift of his neck a painful experience. A pain he seems immune to for the most part, though he jostles no less strangely in place.
"Pfft, Him? Fuck'n...Fuck'n Wet~ears? Fuck'r ain' got no brain 'cept tha shirv'l raisun 'e keeps 'tween'z legs!" A rolling guffaw from Tiny who can't seem to do much more than that.
[Kora] Kora skims a look from Gwen to Roman; dark eyes linger, brief and still - on her packmate. Her expression is close, and still, her gaze half-hidden by pale lashes. The stench here is ruinous enough that she breathes shallowly in through her mouth and out through her nose, such that her nostrils flare with every breath.
Then she looks back to Gwen - a moment of frank, clear assessment. For the first time, since they walked into the derelict warehouse, her mouth finds its natural curve, deepens as if she were beginning to smile. There's no pleasure in it. "You think we're all different from them?" Both brows rise, pale blond arches above her deep blue eyes. "Where the fuck do you think they came from?" Underneath, a skin ripping disgust surfaces. All those memories of the fallen. All those memories of the fall.
"You." There's a starker tone to Kora's voice as she sidesteps toward Harold, the one with the tears. And nudges his foot with her booted toe as well. "Wet-Ears. Do you have something to say?"
[Linus plus] "Lemme alone."
It's the equivalent of Tiny's own bravado in the lanky kid's assessment. He wakes with a start and a shift of movement that immediately brings tears of pain to his eyes as the lack of nerve deadening effort forces him to still as much as his handicap will allow. He sniffs loudly and squints, trying to endure the agony of severed tendon and muscle while maintaining a strong front of some sort or another. Which is head held high and eyes forward.
The breathing is laboured and the jawline trembles. The eyes are watery and the features, thin and terrified.
[Gwen Sullivan] Gwen looks back at Roman when he talks, then frowns at Kora's joyless smile. Her cool swamp-colored eyes follow the Skald as she walks over to the scrawny one who was passed out. She licked at her dry lips once more, let her eyes flit over to where she'd found Linus against the wall, chanting, keeping to himself, maintaining something she didn't understand but wouldn't question or disturb.
"I'm not saying we don't have similar origins. That much makes itself obvious. I'm saying what they are, right now, is not what we are."
But Kora's nudging the little guy, moving on from the big one, and Gwen finds herself hanging back, hands jamming into the pockets of those pants that obviously belonged to a male before they did her, and frowning quietly into the shadows. She'd ask the questions, if she knew what they were. She'd rip them out of their mouths by the teeth, dragging truth out along with bloodied molar roots. But with Kora in the front, Gwen took place in the back, where she was supposed to be.
Letting the Jarl Lead.
[Roman Turner] "I ain't got much stomach for torture, I prefer clean cut myself, besides it makes me feel a little too close to what you are if I stoop to your level."
He leveled a look on Tiny as he spoke as soft as water sliding over rounded stones.
"Though them looks ya given the girl here bring to mind this bull calf we had back home. Ya know how ya settle down a bull calf ya ain't intending on using for breedin? Ya band it. Ya take a bander loaded with rubber bands and ya slip it over his testicals and let go. What happens is a constriction of blood flow. First them testicals start to turn blue, then deep purple and black and after a few days. Plop, they fall off. Now in your case, it might be the best thing what come down the pike."
[Linus plus] "We...Well...Fug Yew!"
It's the only real response from Tiny in Roman's direction. Not even much of a defiant shimmy in his bonds, with his restricted mobility. He juts his jaw forward, mouth slightly agape to reveal yellowed teeth. His attention shifts back to the far wall and there is an almost unconscious flicker of nervous clenching of thighs and knees. His ankles cross and his jaw sets and his breathing is loud through his nostrils.
[Roman Turner] His sniffed and instantly regretted it when the added rush of stench it sucked in. He could taste blood in the air. Urine stung the back of his throat. Worse of all was the stench of fear that tainted the air.
"That's what I thought."
The change in attitude told him he'd gotten his point through. Wasn't any man he knew, sane or insane that wanted to entertain losing their boys.
[Kora] Kora's breath flares out of her nostrils, a sharp breath. The sort that might sound like a faint snort of laughter, just suppressed, were the setting different. She's a healthy animal, the Skald - long limbed and confident, not yet made awkward by her pregnancy. Her hair is fine as stranded silk - too fine to hold a curl or fall down in great planned waves - and it gleams even in the dull light seeping into this grotesque little room. Bound twice behind her head, the weight of it falls halfway down her spine, stray strands clinging to the subtle nap of her loomed cotton tee.
"We're the same. We're Garou. They're Garou. The difference is, they fell."
A glance back at Gwen, contained now, her rage banked with that bark of bitter human.
"You can too."
Kora cuts a look back to Wet-Ears, struggling audibly against the assault of enduring pain, and taps his toe with her boot. "Tell her the story of the White Howlers. Tell her how you fell."
[Gwen Sullivan] Gwen's scowl deepens gradually. She's watching Roman intimidate the big guy with promises of castration, and on another day she might've cracked one of her small lopsided grins at the back-and-forth. Today, though, the frown doesn't budge an inch. She's looking back to Kora, irritation buzzing in her skull and Rage thrumming a faster and faster rhythm through her veins.
She takes a deep breath through her nose, stomachs the stench (barely, pretending it didn't bother her as much as it actually did), and exhales with a shake of her head. "Can and Will are separate things. That's what's important. Anyone can, that's not the question. Question is will you."
Kora's trying to coax the tale of the White Howlers out of Tiny, tapping his foot with hers, and Gwen is practically vibrating. Impatient, shifting her weight here and there, arms at her sides, then folded over her stomach, then hands in her pockets, then at her hips. Easy to perceive as being impertinent, whether or not that's the case.
[Linus plus] "I 'unno!"
He yells, head lolling around with an audible and wrenching gasp of pain. He hisses, sucking in breath through gritted teeth, partial sobs escaping on the exhale. He whimpers slightly, trying to adjust himself to keep the pain to a minimum, head shifting tenderly back to a position of relative evenness with his spine.
"I dunno, I dunno. T-they ran down...a-a big hole..."
"Fuck'n useless-" Tiny provides, shutting Harold up quickly, who continues to sniff loudly and try to harden his expression. The tears and shaking don't do much.
"I wanna go home..." He says it quietly. Softly, face beginning to crack into a full blown sob. Eyes shutting and head bowing slightly forward.
"...Howlahs were tha' 'uns tha' had tha' bes' chance a' doin' things right. Wen' 'n did tha' bes' thing you can do." Tiny grins. A flash of something before slamming a foot into the ground with a muted thump and a harsh bellow that doesn't make it to loud or the bruising around his throat. No doubt they'd had trouble with him yelling before.
"Shut'cher fuck'n belly ache! Fuck'n give you sumthin' to cry 'bout!"
[Roman Turner] He was thinking he wished they had finished these two off instead of keeping them like this. It still bothered him that he felt like a tidal pool who's level was sinking towards sludge by indulging in these tactics.
"Never say never Gwen. Life has a way of turning around and biting folk on the tail end when least expected."
[Kora] "If it's all a matter of will," Kora says, a flicker of a look back at Gwen, fidgeting, impatient. "Then control yourself, Cub." Her mouth stills as she steps away from the pair.
"They ran down a big hole," she echoes as she moves, shouldering Gwen physically forward as she does so. The gesture is rough enough that Gwen has to lock her knees not to sway or stumble forward. "As Wet-Ears says, - to do the best thing you could do. I can almost imagine them saying that. As they stood on the precipice of the last battle they ever fought in her name, wild with adrenalin, the great - fucking - victory to come so heady they could taste it, so assured they could hear their names echoing across history before it swallowed them "
She glances up, tipping her head toward the pair. The dynamic between them, Tiny shutting
Harold up before he can finish. One feeding the other. One leashing the other.
I want to go home, sobs a cursed Garou.
"They're yours," Kora says, "What next?"
[Linus plus] (Pause!)
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