Ornature

Erich has a whole entire corner of the KFC across the street from a Pep Boys' shop and next door to a strip club and beside a rather large tire pile / used tire lot. None of the other patrons are willing to sit near him, to come close. The weather outside is bright, sunny, warm. Impossible to believe that a storm will dump a foot of snow on the mountains in the next 24 hours.

Maybe he waits for Charlotte before ordering.

She said she was looking for something and then she said she was close and then she was distracted by a black-breasted gnatcatcher and then there was a huh and then she was on her way again, finding him as much by that supple thread of pack awareness as by any human familiarity with streets and the way men name them, with the littered detritus of this low-rise, high density, concretized development of the city.

Then, here she is. Slipping through the front door, such an odd little thing with her pale blond hair, the ends dyed a rich and shocking pink, which Erich may have noticed lately comes from Kool-Aid more than any ordinary hair dye. She has her hands in her front pockets and her bag slung against her hip and is wearing old jeans and hiking boots and a wringer tee.

Doesn't look like she belongs here, but she doesn't look like she belongs anywhere. "You order already?" When she comes up alongside him, glancing at the board, the scrawl of it.

"Yuh," Erich says, which is a lazy full-mouthed way of saying yes. Full-mouthed not because he's ordered already (though he has) and gotten his food already and started eating already but because he is eating something else; namely, the small cup of BaskinRobbins in his hand. "I got three double-downs and a big coke. Waiting for them to call my number. You want anything?"

He is, in fact, taking up that whole empty corner. Or at least that coveted corner booth with its red faux-leather seats and its faintly sticky linoleum tabletop. He is lounging sideways on that seat, his back to the wall, one knee up, other foot on the floor. It is cool-ish outside, so he's wearing his hoodie -- not the heavy one with the sherpa lining but the light one, plain grey, zip-up.

"Did you catch the bird?" he also wants to know. Because: she huh'd, so he imagines the bird was interesting.

Charlotte gives Erich a brief but skeptical look. Can (even Erich) eat three double-downs? She must by now actually know what they are, given that he is a devotee. This flash of her pale eyes at his profile as she considers whether to tell him that she wants biscuits or not. She decides not to tell him and flashes him this sidewinder of a half-smile, all coiling and nearly coy, except that there is nothing coy in her.

"I'll order myself," and she removes her small hands from the cheap tabletop, picks her way across, and puts in her order. Strange, the way people sometimes even give way to her, isn't it. Less the rage, likely, than the animal strangeness.

The conversation continues when she comes back and slides into the booth opposite him with a neat little shrug. "I wasn't trying to catch the bird. Anyway it flew away. There was a girl who was fighting with her boyfriend. A scrag was trying to suck out her brains and turn her into a fallen, and had mostly gotten there. But that girl with the stick who did the last moot and her Alpha were there."

A small, brief, thoughtful frown.

"I gave the boy a clearwater talen. I hope he drinks it."

Erich grins as Charlotte says she'll order herself. He's happy about that, absurdly so. Also proud of her. Also absurdly so. He watches her as she makes her way to the counter, puts in her order, comes all the way back.

By then he's finished his little cup of ice cream. He puts the emptied container up on the tabletop, spoon akilter, a few gooey drops of melted ice cream still on the wax-coated bottom. Charlotte tells him what she was actually up to, and by the time she finishes Erich's got a bit of a frown on that ever-so-cornfed-midwestern-boy face of his.

"Me too. What happened to the girl? Was she okay?"

Charlotte gives Erich the smallest of narrow-shouldered shrugs when he asks if the girl was okay. It means both yes and no and I don't know, all at once, all wrapped together into one sort of space.

"They got it out of her." Charlotte tells him, quietly, The bubble his rage gives him also gives them a level of privacy, and Charlotte is settling in, considering everything that happened, tonguing the idea somehow, playing with the idea of it. Her delay in continuing is not precisely reluctance, so much as it is a quiet, rather professional consideration. " - even cleansed her a bit. But that doesn't mean that it'll stay away. They don't go around eating clean or even just kinda-dirty hearts.

"You have to have holes for them to worm into, see? She still has holes. I don't know what anger manager classes are but I don't think it's enough to heal the holes. They found her once, I bet they'll find her again."

"That's really depressing," Erich announces,

and so it is. But then! A distraction: his number is called. The Get of Thunder jackknifes forward, grabs the edge of the table with one hand and the edge of the seat with the other, leverages himself easy-effortless out from where he's wedged himself, lands with both feet on the floor.

"Be right back," he says,

and so he is. Across the room and back, lines of humans parting like a certain biblical sea; carrying a tray with three (3!) double-downers and a large coke. He sets it down, takes a big drink of coke, then offers Charlotte one of the double-downers.

"You were okay though?" The conversation resumes as it had last time, without a hitch. "I mean, no trouble?"

Charlotte shakes her pale head, all no to Erich's offer of a double-downer. Watches him as he settles in and just nods her head: yes she was okay, yeah, of course. No trouble.

She's still stuck on something else he said, though, lifting her chin in a rising lilt after affirming that she was just fine.

"I don't think it's depressing. I think it means: that they cannot eat up people who don't let them. Maybe it's bad for the girl, but it also means that the people who get their hearts eaten by darkness aren't normal people who didn't do anything wrong, and just got unlucky. They had to do something, open themselves up, somehow, see.

"Which I guess means they can close their hearts again, too."

This little frown crests the bow-curve of her mouth.

"But I bet that's harder than anything and most people won't ever. And if you want them to do it you need to work at helping them instead of just hoping for it all to change."

And lo! Charlotte's number is called.

She disappears and returns with three biscuits, one double-down, and one container of mashed potatoes and gravy, and another of potato wedges. Proceeds to pick apart the double-down, tear open a biscuit, and begins to build a: biscuit, double-down, mashed potato gravy sandwich.

As you do.

"Huh," says Erich, which carries much the same intonation as her huh when she wandered down that alleyway following that bird.

A hiatus. She goes to get her food. She comes back. Erich, who has rearranged himself to lounge sideways in his side of the booth again, sits up to peer curiously over at her spread. Three (3!) biscuits. Double-down. Mashed potatoes. Potato wedges. He'd tease her about the amount of food she was eating if he didn't think Melantha would instantly roar into their heads about how horrible that was, how young women today already had horrible self-images, how he was just perpetuating the problematic aspects of modern society vis-à-vis subtle misogyny.

So he doesn't say that. He just huhs, and thinks about it, and smirks a little at her food, and then takes a big bite out of his double-downer.

"I hadn't thought of it that way," he says, and he hadn't. "It's a good way to think of it, though. Maybe I'll try to think of it that way too."

Pause.

"Hey, can I ask you something?"

That is a helluva lot of food, and Charlotte has it all spread out assembly line fashion, she is creating something from something into something else, see - but over the course of the next ever-how-long, whatever she creates with that massive order, she is likely to eat less than half of it. Still a helluva lot of food but listen: it speaks to her lack of experience with scarcity. Her damned wealth, that she is willing to spend so much and secure so much to get just exactly what she wants to have.

Even in a KFC.

From the value menu.

--

Erich says he'll try to think of it that way and Charlotte flashes him a smile and it is warm and familiar, see, but also somewhere beneath that it is a shy smile, a shying smile, this quiet and inherent pleasure that he has taken her thought into himself and... yes. Turned it over and found it good, or at least reasonable, or at least, not-mad.

Beam.

Such purity has a mouthful of biscuits and fried chicken and bacon and cheese and squishy mashed potatoes and chews somehow delicately for all that, and nods her assent back to Erich.

Hey, yes, you can ask me something.

Which, really, is the way you open far more benign inquiries. Like: hey, can I ask you something? Why do you dye your hair with kool-aid? Or: hey, can I ask you something? Why on earth did you get potato wedges and mashed potatoes?

Erich does know that. He's not completely blind and deaf to social mores, social cues. He's quiet for a little bit, hesitant -- then he barges on.

"Remember how you told me about ... I mean ... how you told me you had a kid?"

Barges. Right. On. In the middle of a KFC no less.

"What ... happened with all that?"

Charlotte -

freezes.

- makeshift sandwich falling apart in her small hands.

For several seconds, minutes, moments, it seems all she can do is inhale. She has to stop that or her lungs will burst, right? Isn't that how our fucking anatomy works?

"Hey,"

again, a second time, and this time with his legs swinging off the bench, his feet hitting the floor. Erich reaches across that table, puts his hand over Charlotte's, nevermind the bits of makeshift sandwich still clinging to her fingers.

"Hey," a third time now, "I'm not asking to shame you or drag you through the mud again or anything like that. It's just, you're my packmate. I wanna know about you. So I can help you, or protect you, or ... whatever I need to do."

Pause. Then, belatedly:

"We don't have to talk here. We can talk somewhere else. In my truck or, y'know, someplace quiet."

Erich says hey. He says hey a second time and a third time which means that there was also a first time, and he's reaching across the table and touching Charlotte and perhaps for the first time since he has known her she

snatches

her hand back from his, holds it against her body like a wounded animal. He's talking and he's talking then and nothing that he says is bad or wrong or frightening, but something - some noise inside her - makes it very hard to hear.

"I don't." Harshly, beneath her breath, she somehow manages to force out words. Her teeth are half-bared in a rictus grin that is all cornered animal and her shoulders are rounded forward and her body is stark in its shape. "I don't have a kid. It was a - "

Sick. She sounds so wretchedly sick when she says it. Forces herself to say it.

"-- mule."

Erich goes still. When Charlotte snatches herself out of his reach like that, he goes animal-still, watchful, troubled. He watches her, troubling, until she manages words. Harsh ones. Hurtful ones, when you're talking about your own kid.

Not-a-kid. Mule.

"I know," Erich says quietly. "I mean -- I knew you were pregnant by another Garou, so I knew the baby had to be metis. That doesn't mean it wasn't your kid though." Pause; verb tense. Wait. "Did they ... kill him?"

Charlotte doesn't think about it. That is how she bears it. That is the only way she bears it and Erich processes all of it in his own way - which is somehow both remarkable and remarkably ordinary - and Charlotte is so shamed and so -

- so

- it is so noisy -

"I don't - I don't - "

She doesn't know.

Charlotte drops the make-shift sandwich and is on her feet, looking remarkably queasy, Converses slapping the ground as she heads for the ladies' room.

There were people staring at them as it was. Well; perhaps not staring per se, but looking. Sneaking glances. Chancing peeks. Not daring much else or much more, not with Erich sitting over there with his Full-Moon muscles and his Full-Moon stare and his Full-Moon rage. Until now, that is: until Charlotte lurches up, runs for the bathrooms. Curiosity overwhelms. Heads turn, eyes gawk.

Especially when Erich gets up and goes after her. Chases her across the dingy vinyl floor and down the grimy short hallway -- no recently-renovated McCafe, this -- pushes through the door so prominently marked WOMEN.

An unfortunate patron caught within shrieks in startlement as Erich bursts in. Sorry, he says, not sounding it at all, because apology or not he grabs her by the shoulders and pushes her out. Stalks up and down the stalls banging on all the doors yelling EVERYONE OUT, EVERYONE OUT but there's no one else.

They're alone then, and Erich latches the door so it stays that way. A beat of quiet.

The bathroom is cramped and filthy. It smells like bleach and bodily waste. The trashcan is overstuffed, erupting onto the floor. One of the faucets leaks, and all the sinks are streaked with corrosion. Erich near the door, Charlotte -- running for a toilet perhaps? Erich standing suddenly uncertain.

Management outside. Sir, you can't be in there. Erich wheeling, not uncertain at all, kicking the door very hard and shouting through it:

"GO AWAY."

Management goes away, probably to call the police. Erich turns back to Charlotte.

"Let's go talk somewhere else. Okay?"

It is just some instinct to purge. Something inside her that she has to get out and cannot ever expel. Something foul and wrong and broken that shudders through her, again and again and again, sourness like ichor in the back of her throat, her diaphragm spasming, spare frame hunched over, heaving.

She doesn't want him here.

She doesn't want him here.

She doesn't want him here -

- but she always wants him here, the packlink stitched into their thumbs, thrumming invisibly in the back of her mad little mind is a solid refuge, an anchor.

Charlotte finishes throwing up, senses filled with the foul scent of the place, and washes her hands and rinses her mouth at the cheap little porcelain sinks, looking pale and shaky in the dingy flourescent light. Washes her hands three or four times, as if that might do something, make her clean, make her right, make her okay and takes the scratchy paper towel he offers her when she's done and he tells her that they should go talk someone else and the noise has receded; has ebbed but it is still there and she knows, she knows that it will come back, won't it.

But she nods. Spare and shamed and shameful, gives him this sharp little nod and presses her mouth together. Okay, they can go talk somewhere else.

Her breathing still comes hard and a little bit fast and she doesn't say anything until they have escaped that dingy KFC and are out on the sidewalk of the trashy commercial strip.

"I hope you got enough to eat?" Something safe, something easy. "I didn't meant to mess up your dinner."

Erich stays by the door, equal parts guardian and sentry, while Charlotte retches and throws up and dry heaves and finally, finally, finally calms. Sort of. She goes to wash her hands, seeming paler and thinner than she usually does -- and she usually seems pale and thin already when she stands next to her robust, meaty-midwestern-boy of a packmate.

He holds a handful of paper towels out to her wordlessly. She dries her hands and her mouth and then he unsnaps the latch on the door. Everyone is staring at them -- everyone who hasn't just packed up and run the fuck away -- and Erich scowls at them all and curls his hands into fists and they get the idea and mind their own goddamn business.

Management is on the phone, watching them with wide eyes. Mutters something over the line as they walk out the door.

Then they're out on the sidewalk. Erich is squinting up and down the road trying to remember where he parked. Charlotte broaches a safe, easy topic, and he frowns. "It's okay," he says. "We can always stop for more food or hunt or something if we get hungry later. I'm fine. Come on," he nods down the street, "let's head home. We'll talk on the way. Stop if we have to."

"Okay." Charlotte returns; breathes out. Her arms are crossed over her lean torso and she does look so - harrowed, doesn't she? Harrowed and hallowed and harrowing and royal, even in a ringer tee and slowly raveling jeans, pale hair swimming across her features as the wind rises and plasters the find strands across her face. "Okay."

She doesn't want to talk. She does not want to talk. Miserable at the thought, prickling and uncomfortable, Charotte matches Erich's stride and mirrors it unconsciously.

Pakemates. Pack animals, somehow they move together without thinking about it, and Erich has a longer stride but Charlotte is such a quick little thing that she matches his pace if not his footsteps until they find, and climb into, the truck.

This is the truck they crossed half the country in. This is the truck they bought together, stopping for two whole weeks so they could pore through classified sections in newspapers and Pennysaver magazines and Auto Traders and Craigslist listings at the library; so they could go out to look at truck after truck after truck after truck until finally they found one that had the torque to pull a tinyhouse, that had a reasonably not-sky-high number of miles on its odometer, that had a price tag that Erich could afford. This is the truck they built and latched a tinyhouse to. This is -- perhaps even more so than it is the pack's truck -- their truck. Just him and her.

They climb into it together. He starts the engine and they are wordless; he swings it around and points it mountain-ward and they are going home now. He hopes that makes her feel better. They drive for some time, through city streets, past city blocks, up city onramps, onto the city's freeways. When they're finally on the open highway, Erich clears his throat a little. It is a prelude.

"Look," he says, very quietly, "I know you don't want to talk about it or even think about it. And I wouldn't bring it up again if I thought we could just leave it buried forever and not think about it at all. But ... Charlotte, I don't think we really can leave it buried forever. I feel like we're pretending we can, but it's like... it's like putting plywood on top of a huge pit and painting it up like a sidewalk and pretending like we're not gonna fall down if we even tried to walk across it, except we are, so we just never walk that way.

"What I'm trying to say is, I feel like what happened to you in the past is keeping you from ... from opening up a whole part of your life. I mean. I'm not trying to embarrass you but I have never seen you look twice at a cute kinsman. Or a cute kinswoman. You don't even look at Melantha and me when we're being kinda cutesy. And maybe that part of life just doesn't interest you? Which is fine. I mean not everyone has to go get a boyfriend and have babies. But I think you should at least be able to think about it and go there and look around and decide not to stay. Right now, you just don't even go there. You can't.

"So, I think maybe we should talk about what happened before." He exhales; it's an imperfect, meandering speech, but he thinks maybe he got where he needs to go.

The longer Erich talks, the hotter Charlotte's skin becomes. The deeper her dusking flush of shame. She sits in the passenger's seat with the seatbelt drawn across her spare frame, watching the city speed by, watching the scenery change, as it is, these spreading spokes of the city as they head out to Evergreen and the tinyhouse.

The farther out they go, the less densely populated the surroundings, the easier it is for Charlotte to think.

"I don't like to think about it. It makes my head hurt."

Obstinant, see. Then, the smallest measure of relenting.

"I told Melantha about it. You could ask her."

"I could," Erich says doubtfully, "but I don't think I should. I mean, that's counter -- counterproductive. Because A, you'd still be not-going-there, and B, we'd be treating you like a child or something and talking about you behind your back.

"So I'd rather ask you. And it's okay if you can't tell me today, or tomorrow, or a month from now. But at some point, even if it takes a long time and it's hard to do, I'd like to know what happened and ... and maybe not how to fix you completely, but at least how to help."

Charlotte is breathing so fast, her heart is beating so fast. She doesn't know how to make it stop. She tastes the possibilities against her tongue.

Something, somehow, dislodged beneath her skin.

"Okay. When the moon's dark."

It'll be easier for her, then.

Erich glances over. She is nearly hyperventilating. She is nearly shattering to bits, or so it seems. There are days when Erich has to remind himself she is not so frail as she seems. Not so fragile that she could break at the touch of a breeze. She is not glass.

Which isn't to say she isn't frail or fragile at all. Because she is. She can be. Her mind most of all. But she is a wolf, like he is. She is not a child. She is not -- not even when she is like this, not quite -- an invalid.

All of which is to say: he does not stop the car or reach over or do anything he might do with an invalid. He just glances over for a moment. Then Erich nods.

"Okay," he affirms. "When the moon's dark."