[Henry Allard] He’s not moving too fast these days.
Although Wentz bumped up his dosage yesterday he hasn’t been hit in the head with a hammer like he was when he first started the drug almost two years ago: he’s still able to get up and function while Tristan is at work, and although Tristan is at work now, and although Tristan isn’t terribly pleased with the week they’ve been having between the incident with Aidan and the bar fight that Henry can’t even remember and the trip to the emergency department and fucking Detective Lloyd showing up at their apartment minutes before he came home on Thursday, he’s still out and running nearly every day.
That’s what he’s doing now, or was in the process of doing, in the nicer section of town for once rather than the area where they lived. It’s overcast and chilly and it’s prime mugging weather, so he’s trying to stay out of trouble by running in places where people are liable to hear him if he catches a baseball bat over the side of the head or has his shoulder dislocated again.
His shoulder is hurting him by the time his cellphone starts to ring, and he’s standing underneath the awning of a bookstore talking on it as the rain threatens overhead.
“I mean, I can’t really talk about… no, he was out on patrol at Grant Park… I mean… no, they think… yeah. Yeah.”
[Joss Lehrer] The rain threatens, as is has off and on all day – and Joss doesn’t seem bothered by it in the least. In fact, she seems to enjoy the scent of storms on the air. Her steps are light, her slender form all but bouncing as she wanders through Lake View, still using the excuse that she’s exploring – and that she needs another book. She’d already finished “metal magic” and “jewelry making for beginnings” along with “bee keepers – feel the sting!”
Time for something new.
Thus, she rounds the corner, her skirts swaying about her calves, alternately clinging to her skin and flowing free from the damn state of her clothing from an earlier rain. Both skirt and sweater are soft brown, earthy colors, and her dreads are tied back with a leather tong at the name of her neck. Her little ballet type slippers make hardly a sound as she wanders, simply content to enjoy the day.
Wonder if the bookstore has “candle making 101”? That would be fun.
[Sam Modine] Sam’s already done his jogging for the day. Already he’s been out hunting for a couple of hours and found nothing to sink teeth but not these teeth into. There’s nothing to take his mind off the week he’s having. From the way his Rage whips about him passersby brave enough to get that close might think him out looking for a fight or worse.
Fortunately most passersby don’t get that close.
He’s not though, he’s walking the inside line of the sidewalk, taking long strides toward a place not far from the loft where he might find something to read. It’s a quick idea and one that turns over quickly and spontaneously when he sees the sign that juts from the wall above the –
kinfolk. Like twelve o’clock.
patrol in Grant Park…they think…
There’s a part of him that wants to just walk by, that visibly steels himself to keep going and pretend that man is talking about something else. But it’s just not part of his nature. Sam won’t let a bad thing lie if he thinks there’s some sort of good to be done, he cannot even fathom it.
Henry might think it odd the way he stops with his head staring down to the sidewalk and waits for him to finish the phone conversation. Odder yet the way this creature of suffocating Rage’s whisper comes so softly after he’s done. “I’m sorry if I’m bothering you but…were you just talking about the man in the park, the officer?”
[Henry Allard] [Intuition+Perception: If Damon’s Gonna Post This Shit, I’m Gonna Use It!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 7, 8, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 1 at target 10)
[Henry Allard] The guy she’d met at the diner in Eagles’ territory a few weeks ago is dressed almost exactly the same as he had been that day, in black gym shorts that reach down to his bony knees and do little to conceal the gawkiness of his legs, and a gray t-shirt and floppy brown hair that are soaked through with sweat rather than rain. He’s sporting facial hair today though, several days’ worth, and he looks tired but as though he’s functioning at least.
He’s functioning enough to notice the dreadlock-wearing, hippy skirt-wearing Godi Eagles-prospective coming up the walkway looking as though she doesn’t have much of a care in the world other than what’s on the other side of that doorway–
And then there’s one of the few men in this city who are his height without also being bulky enough to snap his neck with one twist of their hand, standing awfully close and threatening to smother him with his Rage. And it’s Rage that Henry recognizes, as if he were wearing Brute or something, and the beanpole of a man’s lichen-colored eyes drift up from their focal point on the sidewalk to glimpse at Sam as if to ask if he needs something, but he’s too polite to just end his phone conversation and put it into words.
Hell, he probably would phrase it that way even if he were to end the phone conversation right then. He and Tristan haven’t gotten that far in their assertiveness training yet.
“Hey, Petra, I gotta go, something just came up. I’ll call you tonight… Yeah, I’ll tell him… okay no I won’t tell him that, that’s disgusting. Bye.”
Punching the ‘End’ button on his antiquated piece of technology, Henry pockets the phone and takes a breath to eliminate the notion that this guy’s Rage is almost too much for him.
He’s sorry if he’s bothering him. Was he just talking about the officer.
“You have good ears,” Henry manages. He almost manages to look him in the eye as he says this. The man’s breeding ought to be telling enough: it rides the air like the scent of his sweat, though isn’t as pungent.
[Joss Lehrer] The man in front of the book store looks her way, and recognition floods his face, his eyes, just seconds before he’s all but suffocated by anothers rage. She arches a brow, but that doesn’t stop the smile – warm and soft and sparkling in the blue of her eyes – and her step quickens just a touch. She knows Sam, but she knows Henry’s sudden tenseness just as well and it’s easily read from where she nears.
Sam’s sorry to bother him, Henry tells him he has good ears and takes a deep breath and Joss skips (..yes, skips, why?) those last couple steps to join them, her arm slipping into Henry’s as she kisses his cheek. “I’m so glad you were able to meet me!” Wait, what? “I like the mountain man look! Reminds me of home.”
A pause, then she turns the warmth of that smile on the Modi. “Hi Sam.” she adds, as she settles in for some good conversation. “What’s up?”
[Sam Modine] “Yeah. I guess I do.”
Sam isn’t quite thin the way Henry is. He’s lean, the way a professional athlete might be. Not skinny but simply nothing wasted and even lines of muscle become visible under his t-shirt when he reaches up to scratch his scalp on one side with two fingers. “I just…”
The man is bred well, not that he isn’t from all appearances your average caucasian mutt. No he’s bred the way great peacemakers and healers of the past are bred, genetic and spiritual markers that hail back to the fertile crescent and the birth of humanity. About to speak again he’s glad it seems to be interrupted by the Godi. “Hi, Joss.”
Finally he looks up. Sam looks awful. He hasn’t slept in at least two nights even with the copious amount of alcohol that had done it’s best to replace guilt with distilled and bottled fun on that first. It hadn’t been enough. He tries though, valiantly though to feign all that normalcy he normally projects so easily.
Because usually it’s real.
“I was actually,” It strikes him the two know each other, “Talking to your friend here. I think…is there a place the three of us can go?” It seems important and the direct implication is that Sam means somewhere private.
[Henry Allard] Unlike most mortals and even some Kin, Henry is not bending under the strain of Sam’s Rage, but neither is he holding up like a tall oak under a massive wind. He is visibly breathing to try and control his respiratory and heart rate, his blood pressure shooting up as he prepares himself to take off running not for exercise this time but in case the kid–and he is a kid comparatively, most of the Nation’s warriors are kids compared to this guy, who normally looks less than his thirty-one years but now is wearing just about every month of it–decides to descend upon him.
It could be weeks before he stops seeing fear and worry and threat wherever he looks. As he ran he had to try to get thoughts of his husband cracking up the truck going down the freeway towards work, had to try and convince himself that they weren’t going to find a piece of hair that he’d shed near the crime scene while running or weren’t going to examine Travis’s phone and see that the younger man had called him over a week ago but he hadn’t answered… staring at Sam and breathing audibly, it’s clear that Henry is sizing him up while trying to calm himself down and he’s having variable degrees of success with either.
Then Joss comes up, billowy and smiling, and Henry seems to relax slightly when he realizes they know each other.
She likes the Mountain Man look.
Henry drops his gaze and huffs out a touch of laughter, but doesn’t answer her. That seems to be as close to a response as she’s going to get. He embarrasses easily, and the scruff is the only thing hiding his blush.
Is there someplace the three of them can go, Sam wants to know, and when Henry looks back up he appears to be thinking. He doesn’t volunteer anyplace though, not with another Garou right there.
[Joss Lehrer] With her arm tucked in Henry’s, she can feel the tension ease slightly, once she greets Sam as someone she knows, she can feel his huff of laughter even more than hear it, as she makes him blush – and that? Makes her day. She is many things (Magic 8 ball says – all signs point to insanity), but she’s always been conscious of her Kin, and how they react in a situation. Her mama raised her well.
She doesn’t tease him further, doesn’t ask what Tristan thinks of mountain men, doesn’t ask what he’s doing, as she’s already established – somewhat to his surprise – that they were meeting here. She studies Sam instead. Both of them look as if they’ve seen better days, and Sam clearly needs to speak with Henry, and she’s clearly not leaving and he asks her where they can go.
She laughs, softly. “I’m still new here – not sure where anything is really… but there is a park I passed just thataway, that’s empty due to the rain. Table with umbrella’s might work if you keep your voices down.”
[Sam Modine] “That sounds nice.” Only the way he says it not much sounds nice at all.
“Come on.” It’s ‘if you’re coming’, a suggestion. Even so far out of his normal wheelhouse that he doesn’t know which way is up Sam doesn’t generally go about ordering around mortal men. Especially when they’re some seven years his senior. That equates to something like giving an order to his father.
Something anathema to sense.
With that though Sam is heading back up the street toward where Joss had suggested, making idle chat on the way and trying his best to pretend things are good when they are so clearly not. “How are things on your side of town?” This to the Godi. “All quiet on the western front?”
[Henry Allard] It’s strange that Henry ought to be weathering physical contact like this, particularly from a girl he has met once and has no relationship with whatsoever outside of potential pack affiliation, without adversely reacting or stiffening. The girl is shorter and smaller than him, and although her Rage will be overpowering if he doesn’t start getting some more sleep, if he ends up in a state like Sam where haunts and strains come to him in the night, right now he appears to be okay.
Granted, he doesn’t put his arm around her or otherwise indicate that they are familiar enough that physical contact like this is Okay, but neither does he stiffen again or push her away.
Rather he glances over at her while she speaks of being new and thinking she saw an empty table in the park. He doesn’t react to being told that it could work if he keeps his voice down: there are maybe three people in this city who have ever heard him raise his voice outside of a work environment, and only one of them heard him do so because he had completely lost control of himself for a moment.
A moment. More like the entire week leading up to that and the entire evening after.
When Sam suggests they get moving, Henry readjusts his arm in an almost gentlemanly way to accommodate Joss’s grasp as they walk, his strides slow enough to allow her to keep up and to keep him from running into Sam. He is silent for now, the conversation between the two Trueborn requiring little input from him.
[Joss Lehrer] She grins up at Henry as he adjusts his arm to lead her in a gentlemanly fashion, mischief dancing in the brilliant blue of her eyes, impish and gleeful at all once. He shortens his stride so as not to leave her behind, and for her part she seems to glide more than walk, a natural inborn grace that speaks to the animal within, one that he is Kin too by Birth – though distantly from her own Blood. Her touch on his arm is light, comforting, much as when she soothed Evan’s near explosive rage the day she and Henry met.
She is an empathetic creature, and also sometimes annoyingly curious. The effect, however, despite the piercings and dreads, makes her almost… cute.
She laughs softly at Sam’s question. “Of course – as quiet as it ever is on Eagle Territory. Cept when I was playing tag with an electric elemental – minor explosion there. He won!” She’s kidding… right?
[Sam Modine] 2+
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[Sam Modine] “My friend Mrena used to play with those sometimes. Once I was with her in the umbra when she was answering a challenge for the Rite Mistress and she just…” He smilies lazily, bringing a hand up to rub his eyes and chuckle softly. “…kept touching it. It was kind of hilarious.”
There’s a little solace in the memory some goodness to be found in the past if not the present. Alternately it’s picking a fresh sore. It hurts to think of how wonderful someone is and then realizing you’ve got the tensing wrong.
“I’m Sam,” One arm cocked sideways across his body at the elbow splays hand at the end toward the kin sandwiched between two Fenrir. “Sorry, I should’ve said that first.” He’d done the same thing last night, his exhausted mind running in the wrong direction, speeding and slowing cognizance of it’s own accord.
[Henry Allard] He’s Sam.
Henry jolts as if he hadn’t been paying a considerable amount of attention to what was going on around him. On the contrary: he’s been so attuned to everyone and everything else that he had stopped listening to the Garou flanking him, and when he is addressed it seems to startle him a bit. Clear eyes look over with dissipating surprise, and then he gives a closed-lipped but nonetheless genuine smile as he offers his kinked right arm and the hand attached to it to shake.
“It’s alright,” he says. “I’m Henry. Nice to meet you.”
[Joss Lehrer] She smiles as he remembers his friend, and how she used to play. It’s not many who think that what she does is normal, or natural – but it’s second nature for her, something she’s prepared for since she could walk and talk. Spirits are so much more willing to come and help, when one has made friends with them first.
Sam and Henry introduce themselves, and she is content to let them do so. The park isn’t far away, and though they shorten their strides for her average height, they still make it there in mere minutes. The park itself is virtually empty, and the table she mentioned is completely so until she squeezes Henry’s arm lightly, lets go and takes a seat.
She rests her elbow on the table, her chin in her hand as she watches them. “So, what’s all this about?” Sometimes, she cuts to the chase. Sometimes she keeps them guessing. Always, she has her own reasons for doing either.
[Sam Modine] Sam smiles too when the other man introduces himself, it’s short though and it can’t seem to stay as long as the wide grin Sam hadn’t been able to get rid of when he went over the finer points of his idea with Joss, even offering her a high five at a particularly good addition of thought from the Godi. They reach the table soon though and he sits across from the others.
Hands fold nervously on the table, scratching at one another for a few seconds beforehe looks up to make eye contact with the man some years his senior. “You were friends with that man, the policeman, I mean?” Followed quickly with a confirmation of dread fact, “mister O’Leary.” There’s so much weight and regret and hesitation in his voice that it almost hides the fact that he’d used past tense in describing the mounted cop’s state of being.
He waits for an answer, nods and continues just a bit further.
“I was there…it was the day before last.
[Henry Allard] [Subterfuge+Manipulation: I Am Dice Woman!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 4, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Henry Allard] When Joss squeezes Henry’s arm she can feel how strength and thinness are competing for his build. His muscle is hard and prominent, but it’s lean, and the bone beneath is thin and palpable. This man could defend himself in a fight if he were not caught off-guard like he was Monday night, but he doesn’t look as though he would win it.
He doesn’t look sick like he did two autumns ago, though, which was long before Joss and Sam’s time in Chicago and far enough away that he can pretend as though he isn’t plummeting like he did then.
They get to the aforementioned park, small and family-friendly and yet still empty all the same. Joss leads them to a table, and Henry swipes a few drops of water off of the bench that have been resting there overnight before he folds his gangly frame into a seated position. He’s picked a spot with his back to the street rather than the park proper, and he’s sitting across from Sam because Sam was the one who had said he wanted to talk and there’s a hideous icy feeling in Henry’s stomach that it has something to do with Travis.
Henry’s hands are clasped between his knees, and he sits up as straight as he can considering how tired he is. Nowhere near as tired as Sam has to be, but he doesn’t know about that.
And then there it is: he was friends with Mister O’Leary. Something flickers across Henry’s face, colors his eyes, but it could be recognition as much as it could be anything else. Sam’s too distracted but Joss could likely read him like a book if she took the time to.
“What do you mean, ‘you were there’?” Henry asks, looking more concerned for the man in front of him than with the details that lurk underneath his words.
[Joss Lehrer] (I can read you like a book, buddy!)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Joss Lehrer] She can feel his strength, but it doesn’t take a genius to understand what he’s going through – or one empathetic little Godi That Could. She studies the mountain man with an even gaze, understanding there in her eyes if he looks for it, clear and sparkling in depths of blue. She hasn’t much to add, just yet, as she’s not sure what they’re talking about, as she was not involved in whatever incident they are speaking of.
But it’s clear that Henry knows the man, and it’s clear Sam is off-kilter about something for sure. This can only mean one thing in her mind (chocolate bunnies for dinner! Wait, no…) and she watches them both, closely.
Silently.
[Sam Modine] “He was-” Sam’s face twists up on itself, curls into a display of something wholly unpleasant. In all reality it looks like the Modi might throw up. He’s never been reluctant toward matters of duty or even to becoming Garou fully. After changing first he’d spent the last two or three days settling affairs and tipping the tassel on a graduation cap before hugging his parents for the last time in near six years and had gone willingly into the unknown. The fear had been beaten out of him, the Rage of his birth moon tempered and expanded, made a weapon.
Never had he shied from any of it until now.
Still with that nauseous look he does manage to go on, trembling out unsure words that seem nothing like the Sam Modine Joss had met a week ago. “He ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. There were these dogs and a man, possessed, you know?” He keeps his voice down, powers through. “There were two of us and two kinfolk. If he hadn’t come by….” There’s a sigh and for a moment Sam is looking over the shoulders of the other two. “His mind was too strong, it pierced the Veil, he began to yell and to fire at us.”
A hard swallow. “It’s one of our greatest laws. I had to-“
“I had to-“
He can’t say the rest. Long fingered hands reach up to cover eyes and face alike for a short while. Just buried there. “He was a person.” And there’s the crux of it. This was an innocent and this young man of twenty four who sometimes seems more like one of seventeen cannot fathom the fact that beyond the curse, beyond the inability to lead a normal life and beyond even everything else he’s lost or been forced to sacrifice on the road to Ragnarok-
Now he’s a murderer.
[Henry Allard] Henry’s heart is slamming against his sternum.
As soon as the word ‘was’ leaves the blond kid’s throat the unidentified paramedic knows exactly what happened. There isn’t any other explanation for it. He knows what a hotbed of activity Grant Park is, and he knows there have been attacks there in recent years, attacks that the media couldn’t explain on the rare occasions that they got ahold of the story, and he knows that Travis was on mounted patrol and they don’t do mounted patrol anyplace but where there are tourists and tourists flock to Grant Park but he forces himself to listen anyway, breathing visibly as Sam gets rolling.
He ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time.
There were monsters out there.
If he hadn’t come by.
He’s clenching his hands together so hard that they’re turning white, and his jaw is set hard and almost invisible underneath his covering of brown facial hair, but Joss can see that the mild-mannered, quiet man is trying to appear impartial and restrained.
It’s just barely working.
“You had to kill him,” he says, his voice painfully low. A pause, an audible breath, and he waits for a response before speaking again. Maybe he’s misunderstanding.
[Joss Lehrer] Oh.
Oh dear.
She sits up straighter, and then her hand slips under the table and finds Henry’s where they’re clenched tightly together. Her touch is warm, her touch is calm, her touch is simply that of one who understands. He’s barely controlling his reaction right now, he’s barely managing to be impartial and restrained, and her concern is for her kinfolk by proxy rather than Sam.
By definition, they are murderers. The Vigilante works outside the law, and often for the good of the people, but he is just as guilty of murder and mayhem as the human who walks the street stalking the unaware. The Vigilante, the Garou, they have their belief that they are fighting for the Good of Mankind, and fool themselves often in thinking that killing a possessed kid before he kills many makes them less a murderer, makes them justified in what they do.
In their world, they are the Good against all Evil, and occasionally an innocent bystander.
To the rest of the world, they are murderers without conscience, especially of innocent bystanders.
He was a person… he says, and she arches a brow. Her voice is soft. “We are all people, though some of us are more monster than most. If there was nothing you could have done, than you acted within the confines of our laws. Henry…” here, she sighs, with her hands resting on his, her eyes filled with a sympathy so few of them can still feel.
There is nothing she can say. She does not try to ease Sam’s pain, as they are Warriors, it is what they must do. Henry, however, is Kinfolk, and understanding on one level, while feeling on another is a difficult thing at best, and impossible at worst.
[Sam Modine] To know on a conscious level that something is your duty is one thing.
Sam’s got that part, it’s what’s gotten the man in question dead in the first place.
“Yeah,” he responds. “I had to kill him.” This still through palms that hide his face from view.
But for someone like Sam, someone who’s never taken on a duty like that before it’s not an easy thing to simply let it go to the side so the path might be continued on. “I’m so sorry, if there was another way…” His hands slide down from sleepless features and grief stricken facade. There isn’t though, another way. I had gone as it had be proscribed by the tenets of the Litany, exactly. It doesn’t keep him from seeming as though he’s restarted the imperigium though with a single set of actions. Biting and clawing himself into damnation.
“I don’t know what to say….”
[Henry Allard] Henry’s fingers are painfully thin, even compared to the rest of him. They are cold and clammy and bony, all but the last indicating that he is in a constant state of hyperarousal where everything around him is something that might potentially require a reaction, and they don’t twitch beneath or grab at her own touch. They just exist there between similarly cold knees, sharp and hairy, and he swallows thickly as he looks at Sam.
Both of them speak, one trying to use her innate sense of empathy and calm to convince the young warrior that he didn’t have much of a choice, and Henry’s brow is knit into a show of disbelief and shock, now. People have been telling him that Travis is going to show up; people have been accusing him of not having a solid enough alibi, have been telling him that he could lose his job and be dragged into court if even a shred of evidence shows up to support the theory that Travis was murdered.
This wasn’t murder. He knows that. That doesn’t change the fact that someone he knows and cared about once is dead, that he hasn’t faced the death of someone close to him since Matt Granger went through the goddamn floor in that warehouse fire seven years ago, and he swallows again as he tries to pull himself together.
“Did you have to say anything?” Henry asks, as if he can’t figure out why Sam is telling him this.
[Joss Lehrer] It puts Henry in a bad position to know this, though she isn’t aware of just how bad – no one but Henry is aware of that, and by his question that at least gives her some hint, some knowledge of just how badly this could go for him.
His question, however, is a valid one. Travis O’Leary was not one of the nation, so why the confession, why bring it to his friend that is, adding to the burden of cover-up on a grieving kinfolk?
She has no answer, so she offers none.
[Sam Modine] “Somebody ought to know.”
There’s no more direct looks for anyone else at the small table. His own hands fold up on each other and knead themselves against one another. There’s a short pause between sentences, enough for Sam to collect himself as much as he’s going to.
“He was brave.”
[Henry Allard] “How the fuck do you know!”
Okay, he was subdued up until that last sentence, up until Sam makes a judgment decision considering a man that only one of the present gathered was acquainted with. Now he’s shooting to his feet, barely avoiding smacking himself in the head with the edge of the umbrella as he stands.
He’s making no effort to keep his voice down, and he doesn’t seem concerned with the fact that he’s yelling at a Trueborn, either, without even knowing his rank or pack affiliation.
“How can you sit there and say all that when you don’t even know who he was to me? You were just doing your duty but I didn’t need to know all that and now you’re going to tell me he was brave because he was a fucking moron and didn’t run?“
He can’t tolerate this anymore. Henry turns away from the table and slams into the bench hard enough that his shin is going to be bruised later but he doesn’t feel it. He just steps around it and starts walking back towards the road.
[Joss Lehrer] She doesn’t stop him. She lets Henry get up, and yell. She doesn’t even tell him to keep his voice down, because even now, he’s careful in what he says, even now he does not do what many others might have under the stress. He starts walking, and she watches him, and then turns to Sam. Her voice, by contrast, is low and soft, but there is something behind there, a slow burning anger…
“Are you really this stupid, Sam? You just burdened a man that you just met with the news you killed someone he knows – without knowing who he was to them, friend or enemy – without knowing exactly who Henry is, who he is affiliated with. You put him in a fucked up position, because now he will know what happened, and what if he’s questioned? What if he’s brought in on charges? Before he had plausible deniability, and now? What if your decision to make yourself feel better for doing your duty just fucked up his life? Do you really care so little for those we are sworn to protect?”
She shakes her head, and stands. “I hope you feel better, Sam, as that was clearly your intention, in confessing to a stranger. Following us would not be a good idea. Remembering what and who you are would be a very good idea.”
And with that she turns, and walks away quickly, intending to catch up with Henry.
[Sam Modine] “Oh for Gaia’s sake!” He glowers as Henry moves to get up, if Joss is speaking he doesn’t hear any of it at all. “I was there so don’t tell me what I saw. Stupid would’ve been not to run but to fall and cower at the sight of us or at of those disgusting creatures.” He’s a little angry now but little of that is truly directed toward the kinsman.
“He didn’t, he fought. Drew his weapon and did what he thought was best, I think. Protecting his people, preserving his oath. He died fighting, not pleading or afraid.” His face hardens. “If that isn’t the mark of a brave man, the will to see monsters and to stand up and fight them? I don’t know what bravery is then.” If the kinfolk is trying to get away Sam is standing to follow. To intercept.
“I told you because I had to tell someone. Nobody deserves to just disappear. Especially not somebody like that.” He glares right into the man’s eyes for a second more before turning his neck and looking away, coming back to Joss momentarily on the way back. “I wasn’t trying to upset you. I was trying to do what’s right by someone who I wish hadn’t had to die.”
If he minds overmuch being yelled at by the kin it’s gone now, that fire piqued but returning to it’s regular thrumming internal drive. A steady furnace held by an iron boiler of his own will.
[Sam Modine] ((Amending and appending. DLP))
[Sam Modine] “Oh for Gaia’s sake!” He glowers as Henry moves to get up, if Joss is speaking he doesn’t seem to hear any of it at first. “I was there so don’t tell me what I saw. Stupid would’ve been not to run but to fall and cower at the sight of us or at of those disgusting creatures.” He’s a little angry now but little of that is truly directed toward the kinsman.
“He didn’t, he fought. Drew his weapon and did what he thought was best, I think. Protecting his people, preserving his oath. He died fighting, not pleading or afraid.” His face hardens. “If that isn’t the mark of a brave man, the will to see monsters and to stand up and fight them? I don’t know what bravery is then.” If the kinfolk is trying to get away Sam doesn’t yet follow.
“I told you because I had to tell someone. Nobody deserves to just disappear. Especially not somebody like that.” He glares right into the man’s eyes for a second more before turning his neck and looking away, coming back to Joss momentarily on the way back. “I wasn’t trying to upset you. I was trying to do what’s right by someone who I wish hadn’t had to die.”
If he minds overmuch being yelled at by the kin it’s gone now, that fire piqued but returning to it’s regular thrumming internal drive. A steady furnace held by an iron boiler of his own will.
And then Joss is lecturing him at considerable length and his neck turns sidelong while she speaks, exposing the corded length of muscle along that and his shoulder. Were she not of higher station, were she not of his own tribe the words might bounce off from an aggrieved exterior.
Before she stands he looks up and gives her an aghast and incredibly confused look. “You’ve completely misread me, I think. Feeling better is the least of my worries. I know what I am and why I had to do what I did. But Goassamer~Wing-rhya, I told him because someone should know.”
[Henry Allard] Henry isn’t paying attention, and he isn’t listening, two hallmarks of his personality shucked out the window in the face of this flash of angered grief and agitation. It isn’t all directed at Sam. He isn’t wondering how the man could overhear him talking about Travis on the phone and think it okay to unload all of this on him without first asking how he knew the missing police officer; he’s wondering how Trav could be so stupid as to think that he could take down two Garou and all the monsters that Sam described when he couldn’t even handle opening a bottle of champagne without breaking a window or throwing Henry onto the bed without knocking a lamp over.
The man was overzealous and overconfident and he overestimated his abilities. He was stupid, and now he’s dead.
Even though he isn’t paying attention and he isn’t listening the kid’s words are still hitting him in the back of the head, and he doesn’t know what his problem is, unchecked anxiety disorder or not: it’s pissing him off, and he takes a swing at a tree to his right with his dominant left hand, exhibiting why it is he leaves his wedding ring off and at home when he goes out running.
[Brawl+Dexterity: Take That Tree! Spending WP to not look dumb.]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 4, 7, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6) [WP]
[Henry Allard] [Damage, because I’m an asshole. Strength+2+1 (treez r hrd).]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 5, 6, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Henry Allard] [Soak it!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Joss Lehrer] “BULLSHIT.” It’s explosive from such a small, slender form. She turns back to face him, and she leans on the table toward him, and despite her being smaller than him in stature, there is the maturity of a Fostern of their Tribe behind her glare. “SIT there, and SHUT THE FUCK UP and listen.”
“If someone needs to know, you tell the story at a moot to those of the nation. You do not unduly burden a stranger – not even YOUR kinfolk – with the news that hurts him and could fuck his life up all because you happened upon him and overheard that he knew the victim.”
She stands back and crosses her arms. There is no smile in her eyes now. She is furious. “You are an idiot, Sam Modine, and this was 100% about making yourself feel better. If you cared one wit for that dead man’s friends and family, you’d leave them the fuck alone. IF you must tell the story, you do so under SAFE and CONSIDERABLE circumstances. For a man who has years in age on me, you’ve a great deal of maturing to do. I suggest you get your act together, before someone decides it’s better to muzzle you.”
And with that, she turns to follow Henry, the Tree-Hitting Kinfolk.
[Joss Lehrer] (Considerable? CONSIDERATE. I think. *L*)
[Sam Modine] Sit there shut the fuck up and listen.
Godi do not get to be Fostern for their lack of wisdom and so following that brief explosion there’s only the downcast gaze and silence from the Modi when addressed by his elder in stature if not age.
…you tell the story at a moot…
Nod.
…You do not unduly burden a stranger…
Nod.
You are an idiot Sam Modine…
“I know.”
Sam speaks the words when she’s done, fully and he’s sure of it. For all he’s done so far for the Sept, for his friends, but never for himself there’s little to show for it but loss and the ache that surrounds his every motion. “But I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody, really.”
And he lets her walk.
[Joss Lehrer] She stops, and turns – she is still furious, that is clear, but her volume is lower, just enough to carry.
“Then try thinking before you speak – something you should have learned years ago. Contrary to popular belief, Modi are not mindless. Next time, prove it.”
And then she’s turning and catching up to Henry at a light jog, before falling into step with him, quietly.
[Sam Modine] ((Okay, I think I’m pretty much removed IC unless a wave of fomori attack or something. I’m gonna stay and watch the last of it though if that’s alright :)
Thank you guys! awesome scene!))
[Henry Allard] When Joss catches up to him, Henry is getting ready to break into a run to return to the metro station. He is gaining speed, his strides lengthening and his running shoes thudding harder and harder and on the ground, when he hears the clapping slap of the Godi’s footwear as she trots after him, catching up and ultimately coming to stand abreast of him.
He has shaken out his battered fist already, although he has not inspected it for scratches or bleeding. The bark on the tree was smooth, and it did not catch his knuckles or the shafts of his fingers when he threw a punch for the first time in almost a decade. When Joss catches up to him, Henry is dragging the palm of his hand down his face, calluses scraping over his facial hair as he turns his head to look down at her.
Dropping his hand, he says, weary, “I’m sorry. I lost my temper.” He doesn’t say ‘Again.’
[Joss Lehrer] He does her the courtesy of slowing down, which is good as she’s not a runner, and with his longer legs, he could have pulled away far too easily and quickly. She doesn’t say anything for a long moment, even after he needlessly apologizes. She’s still angry, and once she reaches this level, it’s hard to come back down again. She tucks her hands into the pockets of her skirts, the light material flowing about her legs as she moves, a graceful compliment to her own movements.
She takes a breath, and then softly. “You have nothing to be sorry for. So did I. That was completely out of line, and I made sure he knew it. I am sorry for your loss – if there’s anything I can do, please call me.”
A pause, and she looks up at him “Want me to look at your hand?”
[Henry Allard] The offer to field a call should Henry need to talk or have Joss do anything else is fielded with a distracted nod of his head. Henry doesn’t look over his shoulder to make sure that the Rage-choked Garou they left at the umbrella-covered table isn’t following them, and when they exit the park and start back onto the sidewalk he lets out a breath as though he’s been holding it.
A question, and Henry glances down at the back of the hand he had used to assault the tree before smiling tensely.
“I didn’t break the skin,” he says, handing over the reddened but otherwise unharmed appendage. “The tree wasn’t as tough as it looks.”
[Joss Lehrer] She takes his hand when he offers it, letting loose a brief chuckle as he says the tree isn’t as tough as it looked. “Perhaps I should check on the Tree Spirit, instead then..” You’d think she’s kidding, but then again it is exactly the type of thing she’d do.
The appendage is reddened, but not really damaged, so she lets him have his hand back, and looks up at him with a brief smile. “If it hurts still, I can fix it. It’s entirely up to you.”
She is not the typical Fenrir. She smiles easily, warmly, and it always reaches her eyes – but, as recently witnessed, she has no small amount of Fenrir Fierceness within her veins as well. When the smile no longer reaches her eyes, it is time to duck and cover. Now, it is still difficult to smile, but she makes that attempt for him, because of what he just suffered at the hands of one of her Tribe.
[Henry Allard] If Henry had suffered minutes ago, or if he is still suffering, he doesn’t appear to be wearing it on his face or in his posture. He looks tense, still, but now that the shot of adrenaline that just coursed through his veins has decided it needs to get out of his system he is not as keyed up as he was earlier. Then again, neither is he holding up as well under the Rage of those around him. Even Joss’s comparatively low levels are making him wary of taking his eyes off of her.
“It doesn’t hurt,” he says, reluctant to turn down help yet at the same time nearly embarrassed to have the attention on him to begin with, “but thanks.”
[Joss Lehrer] He’s wary of her, and she understands where he is coming from. Not only is she new, having only met him a couple of times, but within her entirely average frame, she holds the potential for great violence. It’s enough to make anyone think twice about looking away.
She walks a few steps with him in silence, and then offers softly, “Do you want me to walk with you home, or leave you to your jogging?” There is the sense that either is fine by her, as it’s his call, a control offered to a Kinfolk who may not be used to it.
[Henry Allard] Henry considers the question for a long moment. He had left the apartment because he was alone, because he was driving himself insane thinking about all the affairs in his life that had no outlet and had no immediately discernible dénouement, thinking about everything that he can’t change, and he runs because he knows that one day he is going to have to, that he isn’t going to be able to stand and fight like so many others have, like he himself did once.
“You’re staying at the house?”
[Joss Lehrer] “On the westside? Yes.” She nods, and chuckles. “I sorta took over the attic. After that last explosion, I think the rest of them are scared to come up stairs.” There it is – there’s the sparkle back in her eyes as she grins, thinking of it. “James thinks I’m… how did he say it? ‘Fookin nuts’…”
She doesn’t seem bothered by that pronouncement, however, because it’s likely very close to the truth. One doesn’t deal with the unknown and unseen without getting a little crooked round the edges when it comes to sanity. “If you’d rather go there, I can get us some drinks and something to eat…” She knows he has been there before, with Tristan, so doesn’t hesitate in the offer.
[Henry Allard] He has been there before, but from the flickering expression on his face that isn’t his first choice of places to go. Not that he’s going to admit that he doesn’t want to be in a house full of Rage-filled Garou and God knows who else when he’s this anxious and sleep-deprived, but he might have well have, for as perceptive as this young woman is.
“Why don’t you come back to the apartment?” he asks, instead, coming to stand at the crosswalk that will take them to the metro station. “You can meet Tristan when he gets home from work.”
[Joss Lehrer] She loops up at him, and the smile returns full force as she nods. “I’d like that. I’ve heard a lot about him… He sounds like quite the guy.”
She doesn’t tuck her arm back in his this time, just keeps them in her pockets, but it’s clear that she has a lot of energy in the lightness of her steps, the way she swings her skirts as she moves, the way she constantly looks around but always seems to have her full attention on him – Where as he is clearly tired and dealing with things she has the good sense not to ask about, not to even suggest she notes anything but the simple invitation to join him at his place.
“How did you two meet? And if I ask too many questions, tell me to shut up…”
[Joss Lehrer] [aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand fade… That’s a wrap, folks!]
[Henry Allard] [Thanks, guys!]