[Izzy Montoya] The corner booth has been commandeered again, by the Detective. Her laptop open, files spread on the table next to her, she works her way through the never ending trail of paperwork that comes with the job. There’s a glass there too – of whiskey, and a unlit cigarette in an ashtray that she takes outside on occasion to smoke.
She says nothing to anyone – but to ask for a refill occasionally.
[Izzy Montoya] (CORRECTION FOR THE OCD: IZZY FILLS HER OWN DRINK.)
[Izzy Montoya] (hell, just delete the last phrase completely.)
[Edward Bellamonte] Ed slides in through the back door. He’s been largely incommunicado both by mundane messaging and totemphone, though they can feel his presence – they know he’s in the city, he’s just nonresponsive. He was charged to do something and, honorable (and Honorable) soul that he is, he takes it seriously. Far more so than anyone would give him credit for, quite likely. Regardless, he stops by the bar on his way through, tucks a large bill into a note by the register with what he’s taking and his signature on it, and liberates a bottle of scotch, which he promptly takes to Izzy’s booth, with a glass for himself.
He knows she’s badly off.
He doesn’t know how badly.
He looks at her, head tilted to the side as he studies, and sighs. “Who?” The question comes as he pours each of them a drink.
[Edward Bellamonte] (Today I feel . . .)
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2
[Kate] [See Kate. See Kate try. See Kate try and use her Empathy.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 10 (Failure at target 4)
[Kate] [WTF, man. It’s your BROTHER.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 7, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 5)
[Izzy Montoya] She looks up as she’s joined, a slight twist of her lips an appreciation for the bottle he brings. She finishes off whats in her glass, and nudges it toward him for a refill. She finishes entering the data she had been working on, and then closes the laptop, the files, and tucks them under the computer as she moves it off to the side.
He waits as he looks her over. He knows what happened. She’d told him, the same as she told a couple others. Only one did she beg not to do anything, to trust her, to let her work it out. That one was not Edward.
She sighs, and reaches for her cigarette, then puts it back down again. If she lights up she has to go outside – so instead, it’s back to the drink. As he slides it back her way, she reaches for it, her fingers brushing across his lightly during the exchange. She’d told him most of it – all but the answer to the question he most wants to know. “Does it matter?”
[Wyrmbreaker] From the cluster of wingback and dining chairs near the fire comes a shout of glorious triumph:
“BAM! 100megatons, motherfucker! Let’s see you survive THAT.”
Lukas is playing Nuclear War.
[Edward Bellamonte] “Of course it matters,” he says, with a weight to his words that says he means what he says – but she knows him, has spent time with him. Even the last time she’d seen him, he was . . . well, some say he’s weak, and it’s possible (probable) that Izzy’s heard it. “So does why, I suppose, but not as much.”
He is no Philodox, and he is very. very. traditionalist, but that doesn’t mean he understands what would drive anyone to do this to a woman, to a kin. Maybe it was a mundane fight, something on her job. He can hope, anyway.
[Sinclair] “…You just said ‘motherfucker’,” says the athletic blonde in the chair across from Lukas, squinting at him with a deeply furrowed brow and deeply troubled expression.
“Are you going to melt now?”
[Kate] It’s never enough.
Edward Bellamonte was gone for some time from the pack then called the Unbroken Circle and so did not witness the things which his younger sibling had achieved, and, because the universe required balance in these things, accordingly, he also has no idea of the things which she has lost, or been forced to allow to slip away from her. In this, as in many things, there is a world of difference between brother and sister.
Edward grew sad, he tended toward melancholy.
Katherine grew angry, and in turn drew her strength from her anger.
It drove her onward, never ceasing, never giving up.
Because she could not. Because surrender was not within her to give.
She has been standing for several minutes now just shy of the doorway to the restaurant, observing her elder brother with her open, avid stare. The wings of the Falcon observing the eyes of the Falcon. She does not approve, of what she sees, that much is clear in the manner she frowns; manner she shifts her weight; manner her expression deepens to one of evident concern.
Of course it matters.
“Does not everything matter, brother?” She speaks, finally. Low-voiced and genteel, always so damnably genteel. “Do not you matter?” She knows him; she knows him better than any other creature on the face of the planet and at present; she fears for him.
[Wyrmbreaker] “You’d be shocked,” Lukas says, all mock mystery as he reaches forward to pluck population cards off Sinclair’s array, “at the things I say. Let’s see, ten, twenty, thirty million… you dead yet?”
[Izzy Montoya] There’s a flick of her gaze toward those by the fire. She’s not sure when they arrived, or how long they’ve been there. Like so much else at the brotherhood – she simply doesn’t care one way or the other. Her attention returns to the man across from her.
She knows a lot about him – has heard even more, but pays it little mind. She knows the man who has spent hours with her – enjoyable hours – and still let her be herself, without placing demands on her. She knows the man who is manic. She knows the man who is melancholy. She knows him.
“I asked repeatedly that he use my name. The last time I snapped – so did he.” That’s the base of it -the fiery underbelly, the bare bones. There’s more to it – there always is. There are so many reasons that she is the way she is, she does what she does. But no – it never matters. “They’ll just tell you it’s a Tribal matter.”
And then there’s Kate, and Izzy fall silent once more.
[Sinclair] She snaps her jaws at his hand when he reaches over to snag her cards, but the gesture is playful. To another wolf, at least. To a human it looks mad, it looks bizarre, and it looks like she’s asking to get backhanded. It’s intensely feral, despite the modern look of her clothes, the metal and ink she uses to adorn herself.
All of which have been added to her body with needles, not sharped bits of bone. Just… so that’s out there.
Grumblingly, Sinclair looks like she’s about to threaten to fold, to bow out, but then she — quite simply, gets distracted. She looks over at Katherine when she comes further into the dining room, perking slightly. Her eyes flick over to Ed and Izzy, since they’re over there as well, then she turns back to Lukas.
“Card games,” she says mock-archly, “are for pansy-asses.”
[Edward Bellamonte] “…..” A tribal matter. A . . . “One of us did this to you?” There is disgust in that tone, so very much of it, though whether it’s with himself or the one who did it is unclear. But it’s not disbelief, not for a moment. He knows her tribe, knows some members of it, has called one of them packmate. It’s not even really surprise.
Kate is there, asking him if he matters, and (of course he doesn’t) he answers, wry. “Yes, everything matters. Kate, this is Izzy – I don’t know if you’ve met. Izzy, this is my sister, Kate. Would you care to join us?”
He is brooding, pensive. He is so much more (less) than that. And now, he is drinking. This never ends well.
[Izzy Montoya] Lips quirk slightly, almost into a smirk, until she’s abruptly reminded that that? hurts like a motherfucker still. “Imagine the fun of explaining it at work. It’s been a long fuckin’ week.”
To Kate, she lifts her glass, briefly in hello, before taking another long swallow.
[Izzy Montoya] Under the table her foot lifts, nudging his thigh gently, before she stretches her leg to rest next to his, a comforting presence, a connection hidden when she cannot make one in public.
Especially here.
Especially now.
But she risks this, just to let him know she’s here.
to Edward Bellamonte
[Kate] Katherine’s pale eyes cut to the battered Kinswoman.
Her lips tighten, but other than that she does not comment on what is — as Izzy (perhaps with a touch of resignation, or spite) says herself — a tribal matter of the Fenrir. She inclines her head very slightly and responds prettily: “Greetings, Izzy, I am charmed to make your acquaintance.”
Then, to her brother, she moves to his side, and puts a hand to his arm, her mouth very near to his ear. “I would speak a moment with you in private, Edward.”
[Edward Bellamonte] Under the table, there’s a slight tensing of muscles when contact comes, a hesitation (I do not matter, I do not deserve . . .) before he relaxes, lets his leg press gently against hers. It’s acknowledgment, acceptance, and offering in kind. He is here, for certain values of the word.
to Izzy Montoya
[Edward Bellamonte] “…..I can’t really imagine. To hard times, may we come out of them stronger,” he says, and tips her glass his way before downing the measure of scotch he’d poured in it – a hefty, generous pour – before pouring again. There is a flicker-flash of something in his eyes as his sister whispers in his ear, relaxation at her touch (he is nothing if not part of his pack, he is nothing alone, he is a piece of a whole more than most of them) when it comes. So it is, with some Garou.
“Excuse me for a moment.” It’s almost, but not quite, apologetic, and he allows himself to be drawn away with his sister. Glass in hand, of course, as he’s no intention of stopping at one drink.
[Edward Bellamonte] ((His glass, her way. Oops.))
[Izzy Montoya] He can’t. It’s true. And maybe some day she’ll tell him all of it. Not tonight though. Kate bids him to go speak with her, and she waves away his excuse, with that slight, barely there smirk of hers – a pale representation of what he’s used to seeing.
They move away, and she simply reaches for her laptop once more, opens it, and takes the first folder off the pile.
[Kate] Katherine moves before him and draws him into the corridor that doubles as the entrance to the brotherhood proper. It is not quite private in the truest sense of the word, but she keeps, for the moment, their discussion from the totem-link. His younger sister [only recognized sister now] swings to await him, her arms neatly folded over her chest.
There is no anger in her but for the natural tightness that the full moon draws.
“Edward,” she says quietly, her pale eyes clear and focused on him. He knows this face, it is the one she adopts when she is afraid, or uncertain, or working as a Philodox, less so his sister. “Word has come to Lukas from another Garou that you are in the grips of Harano. That you are full of despair, and despondent I have noted since the very night you returned.
But I know now enough to suppose what you went through would leave lasting marks on any of us.
I had hoped that given time you would stir yourself out of it, but you have not. You have become withdrawn, sullen, prone to slipping away for days at a time without contacting your pack, those who would care for you if you would let us.”
She breathes out slowly, and breeches distance to cup his cheek in her palm, her mask of indifference melting to one of sisterly concern. “You are not replaceable to me, do you understand that? I cannot lose you as well. I will not, so you will talk to me, or talk to Lukas. Share your burden with us, Edward.
Reclaim your place among us. Do not turn your face from us, for it is to invite despair in.”
[Wyrmbreaker] “And pixels on a screen are just so much more badass,” Lukas retorts, as playful a sally as the snap of her teeth had been. “Come on, Khrushchev, I’ll buy you a vodka to wash down your tears.”
Lukas has large, capable hands; not quite slender or artistic, but well formed, strong. He gathers up the cards in them, shuffling them neatly before putting them away.
Lukas’s back is to the entrances and exits of the Brotherhood. That’s a rare thing; it says something about his trust in his packmate, her ability to watch his six. Even so, he recognizes the perking up of Sinclair’s face when Kate shows up, and knows where her eyes flick when she looks toward Ed.
He can sense it, too, when his packmates come together. He can just barely hear them murmuring to one another.
Eyes on the cards, he speaks quietly to Sinclair:
“Let them talk alone for a while. Ed’s slipping into Harano. I thought it’s best to let Kate handle it first. She knows him best.”
Cleanup is a very efficient effort. In under twenty seconds everything’s packed away, and Nuclear War is back in its box for the next residents of the BroHo to enjoy. As Lukas slides the lid back on, he stands.
“So, how about that drink?”
[Grace] She’s heard this story at least four times.
It’s a long one, and it plays in her head backward and forward, time and time again. In times of stress, the faux English, soothing voice seems to calm her. She mouths along with the words, trying to commit them to memory if for no other reason than the fact that she likes them. It’s odd, doing something for its own sake, especially listening, especially shoving something in homid ears that dampens the sound of other things, that reverberates in her entire being (until one of the earbuds falls out)
Occupied in observing Mr. Bingley’s attentions to her sister, Elizabeth was far from suspecting that she herself was becoming an object of some interest in the eyes of his friend. she hearsit play in her ears and the Fianna gallops down the stairs in a one-two rhythm.
Da-dum-da-dum-da-dum-da-dum-da-down.
An earbud fell out of her left ear. Grace frowned, and she reached up to try and put the little sound piece back in one ear. Mr. Darcy had at first scarcely allowed her to be pretty; he had looked at her without admiration at the ball; and when they next met, he looked at her only to criticise. But no sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she hardly had a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes.
She thought she heard people above the dulcet, soothing tones of the English woman reading Jane Austen to her. She thought she heard people. SomethingsomethingsomethingKhrushchev-
Khrushchev. Hmn. She thinks about the word, not realizing it’s a name, and imagines the English woman reading to her saying the word. It makes her smile. She isn’t sure why, it sounds like a percussive word, a word with purpose. She observes it, though, and goes out to see who all precisely is in the downstairs. The earbud goes back into her ear.
To this discovery succeeded some others equally mortifying. Though he had detected with a critical eye more than one failure of perfect symmetry in her form, he was forced to acknowledge her figure to be light and pleasing; and in spite of his asserting that her manners were not those of the fashionable world, he was caught by their easy playfulness. Of this she was perfectly unaware; to her he was only the man who made himself agreeable nowhere, and who had not thought her handsome enough to dance with.
Off to the front room to observe.
[Edward Bellamonte] “Those who would care for me.” It’s dull, that tone, and for a moment it seems as if he might pull away from his touch, from that of the sister he’s worked so hard to keep as his through everything – through Lucien, through their original arrival in Chicago, and then he’d picked it up again with his return, fighting against the inclination to disengage, to distance, even as that felt like ripping out a part of himself.
“And who are they? You, yes, that has never been a question in my mind. The friend – once my best – who brands me a liar and a fool, who says, point blank, that I am less than my blood, who quotes our uncle without a thought? Sinclair, the Galliard who would beat me as soon as speak? Theron, the Theurge I’ve spoken with twice?” Or thrice, but he can count the occasions on his two hands, no doubt. “I am not turning my face from anyone, and I. am. trying.”
So very hard, he tries – to prove himself, to be what others want him to be, expect him to be.
Expected him to be.
“I was charged with a task, by our Alpha. When I’ve completed it, reached my own satisfaction, you will know. Until then . . .” He shrugs, sips (swigs) from his drink. Until then, things will go on as they have.
[Sinclair] She might argue that video games actually take some skill, or that card games are for old people, but Sinclair would also like vodka tonight, and besides: she’s distracted. Her packmates are near, at least a few of them, and then Lukas is telling her about them. The Galliard’s reaction is undeniable, instant, and unmistakable to anyone who happens to look at her face just then:
her frown is tight. The corners of her mouth are down. She looks displeased, anxious, but not exactly worried. There’s something else there, too, something she actually puts effort into concealing.
They scoop cards into their box, and Sinclair climbs out of her seat, popping her lips once for no good reason but to make the noise. “Once upon a time,” she says, “the night I met Dee and Joey in Vegas, he made himself a Vodka Red Bull in his hotel room. I told him to make me one with one hundred percent less vodka and two hundred percent more Ketel.”
She walks towards the bar, arms swinging slightly and legs loose, looking up and over at Lukas with an arched brow. “He made me a drink exactly like his, and when I asked him if he was retarded, he stomped off. But dude. It’s math.”
[manipulation + subterfuge]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Wyrmbreaker] (i use my empathee-fu!)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Kate] “Edward,” her tone turns disbelieving, she draws his chin between her fingers and keeps his eyes focused on her. “Have you even tried to speak to Theron more than a handful of times? Have you stuck around long enough after Lukas spoke out of frustration more than anything else and allowed for understanding to come between you? Have you worked to listen to Sinclair as well as work to enrage her? Non,” she drops his face, her lovely features drawn to a deep frown.
“You ran away into the Umbra like a child, to sit and dwell by yourself. You tell me that you are trying, and you are sincere I can see that much, but how hard are you trying? It is not enough simply to want to change, you must work at it, constantly, every day and every night. You do not see that you are slipping away, that I am losing you, too, as I did Gabriella. But I know you, Edward. I think that I know you so well that when you disappear forever, it shall destroy some piece of me forever.”
She looks inconsolably sad for a second, then her eyes spark and she jabs at his chest.
“So knock it off! Things will not go on as they have, for mark my words, brother, if I have to stalk your footsteps, pin spirits to your behind, or sit and wait for you endlessly, I will do it to bring you back, and keep you with us. We need you, Silver Jester-rhya,” she echoes herself again, softer.
“We need you. You are a part of us, you are more than your honor, or your glory or your wisdom to us. You are our brother, and we are the Unbroken”
[Wyrmbreaker] Sinclair, actually, doesn’t get very far before the Shadow Lord catches her by the arm — gently, but firmly — and draws her back. He speaks to her quietly, face sober, though not for very long.
Then he lets her go, bumping her with his shoulder as he heads for the bar. It’s closed now. Danny’s asleep. The restaurant is shut down and dark except for emergency lights and the fireplace. Lukas reaches over the swinging half-height door and lets himself in behind the counter, smiling faintly as she tells her story.
He does not, in fact, reach for Ketel One. He bypasses it for Chopin, removing the bottle from its place high up enough to suggest it’s not one of the more popular brands on the shelf.
“I will serve you Ketel and Red Bull if you insist,” Lukas says, setting out two shotglasses, “but it is, in fact, a gross misconception that the best vodkas are Russian grain vodka. The Poles may have lost every war since the beginning of time, but damn if they don’t make a good potato vodka.”
He tips a shot into each glass. Slides one across the bar to Sinclair, raises his own.
“Na zdraví, Warcry.”
[Edward Bellamonte] There is exasperation.
There is defeat.
Kate has, in fact, never seen her brother look defeated. Not when their father died, not when he voiced his suspicions about their uncle, not when they lost Gabbie. He may look devil-may-care. He often looks immature for his age, for his stature, for who and what he is. But this is what it takes to bring defeat to those eyes that she knows so well, that face she holds so dear.
Not just a friend, once his best, who speaks the same poison as his hated uncle.
But his sister, who says it’s not enough. It’s never enough.
The last of his drink is downed as quickly as the first one had been, and his eyes are shuttered after that glimpse, darker than she’s ever seen them. There is no boyish sparkle, no laughter no mirth, and though a smile does pull up the edges of his mouth slightly, it’s an ill-fitting mask. You ran away into the umbra like a child . . .
“I had a thing to do. Have a thing to do. I am called weak, I am called honorless, and I will not have it, Kitty.” There’s a pause, and then, “I can’t have it. You, of all people, should know this. I will check in, you will know that I am well, but I will do what I’ve set out to do.”
He falls quiet, still, finds a place to set his empty glass and leans in, a hand behind her head, to place a kiss on her forehead.
“Je t’aime, ma sœur. Je ferai de vous fier.”
And then, as quickly as he came, he’s out the back door.
[Sinclair] There’s a flash of sharp, vicious resistance when Lukas takes hold of Sinclair’s arm. She was playful at the table, playful talking about Nuclear War and silly card games, but she comes dangerously close to snarling at him when he does that. Her face has whipped around, and the expression on it, despite the flare of her rage… isn’t anger. If anything, it’s very close to the way she looked not so long ago when she was coming out of a frenzy, asking what she’d done.
Memory flickers. Dies. She works her arm out of his grasp as he speaks to her, eyes looking at some distant point between wall and floor intently. When Lukas finishes, she looks up at him, her eyes hardened now. “If I didn’t already understand that, or if I were going to advise you otherwise, I would have,” she says flatly, and does not look like she’s in a mood to slide elegantly back into joking around when they get to the bar. He bumps into her shoulder, and she does not lean into it as usual. She simply bears it, and
in the end, doesn’t say a word about vodka, or about Red Bull, or about Dietrich.
[Kate] I will make you proud, he murmurs in French, and draws her in to press a kiss to her brow. Her eyes close, and she is still frowning, still unconvinced as she says quietly: “Vous faites déjà.”
You already do.
Then, before she can do more than call his name, once, again, he is out the back door and Katherine is left looking after him, wrapping her arms around herself as if chilled not by the wind that cuts through the opening and closing door, but by the fact that he had done the very thing she feared he would — he’d run away.
Damn it, Edward, what, what do you have to do that is worth sacrificing everything for! You do not have to be our father, you do not have to prove that to yourself, these words, projected across the totem-link are angry.
“Edward, come back!”
[Wyrmbreaker] In the end, she doesn’t say a word about vodka, or Red Bull, or Dietrich.
In the end, Lukas — who had looked at her quizzically and curiously when she whipped around, who had studied the look in her eyes with a great deal of intensity and very little anger at all — doesn’t say a word about Polish vodka, either, nor about the sudden tension that had flared in her.
In the end, they don’t get a drink, because angry words suddenly lash across the totem, and then Katherine shouts at the back door. And Lukas turns away, frowning, the pivot of his body wordless invitation for Sinclair to follow.
He heads across the room to Katherine.
“Where the hell is he going?”
[Sinclair] Something is wrong. The shift in the Galliard happened immediately when Lukas touched her arm, and seemed separated from the words between them. It was her right arm that he touched. It’s covered by a long thermal sleeve underneath the shorter sleeve of a t-shirt, hiding the ink there, the four names, the black script list of people who mattered. One way or another.
Then her head comes up, whipping towards Kate and Ed, and whatever it is, whatever was wrong inside of her… fizzles out. She falls into step behind and to the side of her Alpha, heading towards Kate, frowning again. Her teeth are on edge.
[Izzy Montoya] She glances up as they call after Edward, and then simply returns her attention to her computer, and the never ending trail of paperwork.