That is so COOL… [Hatchet, others]

He could still see it happen in slow motion, could still watch as the large man from the station wagon torched the quiet, too perfect filling station, could still see the clerk move from cringing fear to… whatever it was that made him feel like Death had him by the skull and was draining the very substance of his being.

At least he had taken the time to get the car; much as his periodically blurring vision and pounding head had made that a herculean effort. The black Crown Vic rested silent, a mere couple buildings away from the front of the Brotherhood, its owner’s usual attention to detail and care for unseen watchers having given way to his all encompassing fatigue.

Mrena had enough time to think, enough time to react, and for now, she was taking time to plan. And to plan well at that. She was critical, especially of herself. Especially right now, and especially after last night. The theurge was looking at herself, and hoping to find flaws. To find failures and find all the imperfections and places that she could, and would, improve.

Amidst the middle of her mental SWOT analysis, her stomach had growled. It had made a sound unhappy that demanded that she placate it, posthaste.

So that, ladies and gentlemen, is where we see our would-be heroin today. Mrena Armstrong- of small stature and silvery gaze had the desperate desire to eat something, and was not going to rest until she had. Which, of course, was when she found herself staring at the back of a fairly familiar detective. And then? There was a hunger of a different variety; it was a hunger that she could not leave alone. That would not rest until she at least said something.

Couldn’t very well pass him by and not say something, now could she?

Bloodshot eyes take in the Theurge’s gaze without comment for a few moments, as a wan cheshire smile touches but briefly the edges of the detective’s lips.

“Why, hello there…”

The right hand eases from the grip of the .45, its passage to his knee as calmly covered as its obverse motion.

“What’s wrong?” Straight and to the point.

She took a seat nearby. One seat over, nothing between the Shadow Lord and the Fenrir by a bar and silence. At that moment, he seemed to be the object of Mrena’s direct attention. At that moment, one could say that it was a little disconcerting. Not quite intense, but… something else. Whatever she was looking for could not be so easily defined by the English language.

He turns back to his coffee and aspirin, and takes a solid drink of the steaming black liquid. It was hot and bitter, without a hint of sugar or creamer or whatever else people liked to put in their coffee these days for taste. At the precinct, the coffee was so bad as to be inedible; the creamer and sugar were used to cover the foul brew, meaning it typically ran out after but a few had enjoyed the caffeine fix for the morning.

All of which meant one got used to drinking terrible coffee for the heat and caffeine, in spite of the taste. Which made every half decent coffee taste grand by comparison.

A curious brow raises over one hazel eye, as the rumpled-looking detective’s cheshire and untelling smile remains playing about the otherwise untelling visage.

“Nothing a few days’ rest, plenty of aspirin and coffee can’t fix.”

His eyes tell the lie to his tale, their look slightly haunted perhaps…

The jacket stood out a bit. It was Prada. But she slid free of the thing as soon as she’d stepped indoors, draping it over one arm as she moved towards the bar. Blue-green gaze registered the presence of the white eyed girl from last night, and she glanced between her and the man she spoke to, but politely seated herself a couple of stools down.

Her steps carry her toward the bar, heels clicking a herald of her arrival. She nots the women from last night, before she forgoes sitting at the bar, and instead chooses a nearby table, that puts her back to the wall, and those at the bar in her line of sight.

Some things never change.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is something that we like to call relentless questioning. Or, rather, just a line of questions that Mrena would not leave alone until she knew the answers to… because she knew what his normal was. She knew that he didn’t sleep enough, but those circles were too dark to be his norm. She knew his eyes were hazel, not bloodshot.

She knew that his reaction time was much faster, normally. That he would have noticed her faster unless something wasn’t quite right. His hand wouldn’t have stayed on his gun as long as it had.

She stopped, taking a moment to notice… someone else. Blue green eyes, a rather pleasing figure, and Prada. yes, Prada, because Mrena had spent enough time around people who cared about these things to notice. And, on an artistic level, she looked at the Galliard and took in quiet details, because she was nothing if not observant. There was a slight nod-

only to find herself looking at the incredibly tall AnneMarie.

She didn’t know her name. Mrena had never asked. AnneMarie had never said.

AnneMarie never said anything, but that was beside the point.

Inwardly she was grumbling, though. Another thing she would have to get used to about the States.

As she drank her beer, her senses were alive to the sights and sounds around her. She was careful enough not to gaze at any one face for too long, of course. But she did watch. And listen. Curiously and unobtrusively.

She waits patiently until a waitress makes her way over, sliding a bar napkin onto the table in front of her. Only then does she request a bottle of beer in neat, even lettering across the whiteboard. Fingers slip into her pocket, and the cash for said beer is then set on the board, to be retrieved in exchange for the bottle that will soon make it’s way to her.

Pale gaze flicks from Serafine, to Mrena and the man at the bar, then back to Mrena once more. She lifts her chin, slightly. One could suppose it’s a greeting of sorts. They would be correct.

Another swig of hot coffee, before the detective continues.

“I met a man the other day. He was a magician; he showed me a neat trick.”

Another couple aspirin down the hatch, as bloodshot hazel eyes noticed the lady in the Prada shoes and the incredibly tall woman at a table nearby. Setting the bottle of aspirin down on the table, the hazel eyes drift over AnneMarie, before returning to his coffee cup… The steam rising, the heat of it calling to life memories he would as soon let pass…

The thousand yard stare within them made it apparent he wasn’t seeing the bar anymore.

Cigarettes burst into flame, as the large figure from the station wagon demanded the cigarettes… Fire, then pain…

In an instant, all too brief yet entirely too telling, the moment passes, the detective blinks… His gaze moves back to Mrena with that cheshire smile covering the lingering chill in his bones, the fatigue suffusing his limbs.

“Then I met another magician, but his trick was better… So the two magicians fought, until neither one lived to tell the tale.”

His voice drifts lower, so that only Mrena can hear.

“He drained the life right out of me, with but a look… Quite the trick indeed…”

Which, on a crescent moon, is easier than some nights. Hatchet isn’t drinking anything, and the waitstaff and bartender — the skinny, redheaded Danny — don’t glare at him for taking up space and tensing up the customers. He is quietly playing something by Bob Dylan. No singing, tonight. He just plays.

She set down her things and pulled out a chair quietly before lowering herself down into it. Elbows were rested upon the table… crossed neatly as she leaned forward…listening.

There was a time, not two years ago, where those hands and nails would be perfectly manicured. THat’s not to say that they are filled with dirty bits under them and ragged or anything now, but she certainly spends her money on other things now, and takes care of her hands on her own, instead.

Not that she has much money to speak of – she has just enough.

Sam’s bright hair is still caked with blood, his wounds are still, for the most part open and oozing blood all over the floor next to the bed he’d told Mrena he didn’t want to ruin. Neither of his legs has found it within their power yet after a day’s healing to move when he’s asked and so he’s crawled with one good arm so that he can sit upright against the small cabinet between the two beds in the room. That same good hand tosses a baseball into the air and snatches it over and over again in rhythm that rings just on the other side of the door as skin smacks against the smooth white cover on each catch. The door to the room is open just a crack as he’d tried unsuccessfully twice during the day to wave down company-

-just someone to talk with.

But still he’s there in the dark, unable to reach the switch without help. A single beam of moonlight plays on straw blonde locks and washes them out grey, reflective almost. Luna’s halo, perhaps. The guitar and conversation downstairs doesn’t reach this far and he couldn’t applaud for the player if he tried.

These are the times when rooming with a Ragabash seems like fun.

There’s something to be said for a name, among their kind.

And now, AnneMarie’s getting her beer, and Serafine’s coming closer, but not close enough to intrude on Hatchet’s space. She doesn’t move to occupy the other chair in front of the burning, flickering fireplace. And for his part, he seems caught up in what he’s doing, at least until the last few bars of the unsung song.

He looks at Serafine, lifts his chin. “‘Sup.”

She met his gaze, blinked once, and canted her head slightly to the side… as if the one-syllable vocalization wasn’t quite comprehensible to her. She was a logical thinker, though, and made a safe assumption. “It is nice to hear you play.” Her voice came softly, accent tickling at the words but not overpowering them. “Do you take requests?” Here, a knowing smile curled at one corner of her mouth.

That said, he’s also quite pretty. It depends on the perspective, though. To some his jaw is too sharp, his eyes too alien, his mouth too wide. To others there’s something compelling about the way he looks, and a great deal of that is how…inhuman those looks are, right down to the way he tips his head to the side right back at Serafine, his longish hair tucked behind his ears.

He’s ragged, except for in the details: his face bears a beard, but his throat is neatly cleanshaven. His hair, which is blond in sunlight but far more reddish indoors by the fire, has split ends. His eyes are a drowsy, misty gray tonight. And his hands, which are covered both in minute scars and plenty of callouses but retain an incongruous grace — especially with an instrument on his lap — stretch out briefly, then curl back in on themselves.

“Sure,” he says idly, with a one-shouldered shrug. “Though nothing by the Beatles. I’m still…figuring them out.”

John spoke of magicians, and tricks… and tricks made her think of games. And games? Games were things she knew, puzzles and riddles and Games. She played them, but what he spoke of?… well, now, that seemed to inspire a sort of quiet need to prod. more importantly, it inspired something inside of her that said that she needed to investigate further. To make confirmations.

That look in his eyes was something akin to shell shock.

“That look was a lot more than a look,” she said. “Meet me upstairs.”

He’d accepted her offer, and suddenly she found herself at a loss for an actual suggestion. Her pleasantly shaped lips parted slightly, then closed again, pressing together in thought. “I think… my knowledge of American music is sadly lacking.” Something she would have to remedy. Finally she seemed to perk up. “Do you know any Jeff Buckley?”

With that, the rumpled detective slips from his bar stool, as a hand withdraws a well worn and beaten leather wallet from his pocket. It bulged with too many slips of paper, as though it could scarcely contain the mass of information inside. And yet, as John opened the wallet, he seemed to find in an instant the object of his search. Some few small bills are withdrawn, placed errantly upon the counter. Then, the wallet is replaced, as well as the lid to the aspirin bottle, which an errant hand deposits in an outer pocket of his trenchcoat. His saucer taken carefully in hand, the detective moves to follow Mrena.

His black tie was askew, loosened as of its own accord, while his simple white dress shirt rests open at the collar. His shoes are recently polished, and save for the bit of dirt on his trenchcoat, his clothing seems in remarkably good shape. The whole of the effect is somewhat lost with the bloodshot eyes, the hazel eyes narrowed as every step hammers at his skull, the whole of his person belying the fatigue that shadows him.

She lifts her beer to her lips, and takes a long swallow, seeming as if she hasn’t a care or worry in the world. Maybe she doesn’t. (…maybe that’s the biggest lie of all…)

He rolls his eyes towards the ceiling, pauses, then swivels his head back around to look at Serafine. “No.”

She let the matter drop, then, lifting her previously forgotten glass to her lips to take an absent sip. “My name is Serafine, by the way.” It really was about time she’d offered a name, wasn’t it? More of one would have been given had they not been in a public area.

And with that, she was going to the kitchen, through there and lingering for a moment. John said that he would follow her, and the theurge was on her way to the upstairs anyway. AnneMarie watched as she stood, in her full, tiny glory, and made her way to the back. Mrena gave her a half nod, an unspoken goodbye.

Yes, please. It’s carried in the talons of a lone chickenhawk it’s meek though and weak. But i’m in my room and I can’t really get out without getting blood everywhere again. The disdain with which he’s been staring at the sliding stain that marks his path into the room is palpable as he looks that way again, his giant glabro form scowling at his own vitals and gore.

Whatever’s the easiest to get is fine, don’t go out of your way or anything The last instruction is made in passing before the connection goes steadily quiet again and the one hand begins to spin the ball like a top against the hardwood of the floor.

“Lucky for me it isn’t daytime, then.” It was a playful joke, and her eyes glimmered as she said it.

“So…carnage and destruction didn’t scare you off?” he asks as she takes the guitar, leaning back in his chair and crossing one leg over the other, ankle resting on his knee.

But Mrena Armstrong had inspected and found the quintessential apple before heading upstairs. She looked back and John briefly. “I’ve got to drop off some fruit, my room’s unlocked so..”

The implication was clear; they would talk there.

She wasn’t an expert player, but she wasn’t bad either. Many an afternoon had been whiled away alone in her room with the guitar her father had given her on her fourteenth birthday. Initially, her fingertips tested the strings, listening for the tuning. It was indeed perfect, so without further ado, she started to play. The notes were bittersweet and melancholy. Full of memory and regret, as was her voice when it joined in.

She sang quietly, so as not to disturb those others present in the room, and she closed her eyes as she did it. Perhaps remembering something herself.

“There is a child sleeping near his twin
The pictures go wild in a rush of wind
That dark angel he is shuffling in
Watching over them with his black feather wings unfurled

The love you lost with her skin so fair
Is free with the wind in her butterscotch hair
Her green eyes bloom goodbyes
With her head in her hands and your kiss on the lips another
Dream brother
With your tears scattered round the world.

Don’t be like the one who made me so old
Don’t belie the one who left behind his name
‘Cause they’re waiting for you like i waited for mine
And nobody ever came

I feel afraid and i call your name
I love your voice and your dance insane
I hear your words and i know your pain
Your head in your hands and her kiss on the lips of another
Your eyes to the ground
And the world spinning round forever

Asleep in the sand with the ocean washing over.”

“I’ll wait.”

Then, continuing, he makes his way to Mrena’s room and opens the door. After entering, he closes it quietly behind him…

If for no other reason than to leave it as it had been found.

Then, making his way to a comfortable place to sit, the detective waits… Hazel eyes taking in the room proper.

…until Serafine takes her turn at the guitar and sings. It’s a simple thing that so many people take for granted – a voice. Good or bad, the way it weaves through notes and pitch and tone and even finds a melody. It’s something she will never know herself. Thus, she watches, and listens.

He simply sits, as he has all day…

and waits.

She stopped outside of his door, and knocked- because that wasn’t her room.

“Hi…”

It’s been nearly 24 hours since he’s had contact with anyone else and in that time he seems to have gone quiet. Dimmed even. The smile doesn’t linger on her like it normally would but instead hides as his face casts itself back down on the floor. “I didn’t think anyone was going to come.” He chuckles to himself. “That’s dumb, I know.” There’s something in that half laughter that doesn’t seem right, doesn’t seem like Sam.

None of it does.

His eyes glaze. That’s the extent of it. He doesn’t drop his hand, or move his head into the upright anatomical position. He listens, attentively watching Serafine, but there’s an edge to it for awhile: that’s his guitar in her hands. Not his baby, not his child, not his secret lover. It’s a guitar, and not his first, but he doesn’t want to see its strings broken in part because he simply can’t fucking afford to get a new set anytime soon. When she proves that she knows her way around the instrument, however, he relaxes a bit. He lets his eyes glaze over.

Which could indicate boredom. Which could indicate a lot of things.

When she’s done, he does in fact drop his hands and clap lightly, then leans forward and holds out his hand to take the instrument back. “Fabulous, darling. You learn that the same place you got that accent?”

She took the moment to sit down beside him, or near enough to him to pass the apple. it wouldn’t be lost on him… well, or maybe it would, that she’d spent a great deal of time picking out something that looked almost exactly like it should be wax fruit. It was too damned perfect. More art than fruit.

Let it be said that she was strange about these things.

“Guess you’ve had a lot of time to think, today,” she said.

“What about yourself? Are you a Chicago native?”

“Trying not to use my gift, conserve my energy.,” He looks up at her for only the second time since she came in and he’s wincing. “It hurts.”

his baseball is set down between them on the floor and he makes sure to press it down into the wood that it might not roll out of arm’s reach. The apple then he reaches for, inspects and manages to smile a little bit again. “Thank you very much.” He’s staring at the fruit but speaking to his packmate while his eyes drop again and he takes a first, hesitant bite.

So, she poked him in the stomach. Or, rather, she poked him wherever it hadn’t healed yet. Something quick, something curious, but a poke none-the-less. Needless to say, the motion was… unpleasant.

“Of course it hurts, it’s supposed to hurt,” she said. “Pain teaches nothing if you don’t feel it.”

“You’re Fenrir,” she said.

That meant a lot of things. It meant that he had to play through the pain, it meant that he would deal with things accordingly. That pain, int he long run, was nothing… as she had told him,spirits of pain were spirits of respect. The lessons they taught were different, they were harsh and sometimes difficult to understand, but they taught them. And the wise would learn from them, or be doomed to anger them. Or be damned to repeat the same mistakes.

The theurge dispensed what wisdom she had.

He thanked her for the fruit, and she looked at him for a moment. Despite its absolute perfection, it was real. She wouldn’t settle on anything that was flawed, and she wouldn’t tolerate anything that was unworthy.

You’re Fenrir, she said.
“You’ll live.”

“Hardly,” is the answer she gets, after a beat. He’s got on a dark green thermal shirt, with the trio of buttons at the collar like any good henley. There’s a huge tear across the middle that’s been tidily mended. The long sleeves and the clinging fabric hide the scars she glimpsed last night when he used the t-shirt he was wearing then to wipe blood off of his skin like the garment was nothing better than a rag.

“Been all over. Just got here back in…December?” he says, mouthing the name of the month slowly, like it’s a foreign word. He peers at her. “Where’re you staying? You said the other night –” last night, he means, “– that you just introduced yourself.”

And now…she stood, moving back to the table where she’d left her jacket. “Don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll run into each other again. Sweet Dreams.” She looked back and smiled, and there was a kind of enigmatic humor to her gaze, then she turned and made her way outside into the night.

“Because I didn’t do anything disrespectful.” The speaking, this much of it has his lungs filling with enough unpleasantness that he sputters the last few words out, deciding to bite and chew once more using the spirit link. You were there. I made a challenge ‘at any time during peace’ exactly to the letter of the law and he… he attacked me. Again. I’ve been running it over and over all day and the only thing I’ve learned is that I shouldn’t trust anybody. Then I pledge my fealty all over again to the totem, the same way I did with Ed, ‘Until the day I die’ I told him… and he tells me I’m not his brother. I tell him my life is forfeit before I’d abandon him and he tells me I’m not his brother.

He swallows the bite, lays his hand in his lap atop the blanket over his legs.

“I’m all ears if you saw something else happen I’m not aware of.” He’s not angry sounding when he speaks again, just sad in the way he casts his eyes up the empty wall at the delineation between the moonlight and the shadow, letting his vision halt there for a time on the edge of the light and the dark.

What he is, however, is…if one wants to get technical…the tribal elder of the Kin who run the Brotherhood of Thieves. He realized this in the shower this morning. He’s thinking to himself, as she gets up to leave, that if he can just keep that under wraps for a long enough time, no one will cause any trouble forcing him to deal with it. Hatchet, every so often, engages in highly delusional thinking. This is one of those times.

So he doesn’t drag Serafine back by the hair and demand a full introduction to him, here and now, in front of the fire. He gives her a nod, and a “Thanks for the song,” and watches her as she leaves.

And then glances over at AnneMarie again.

Then Hatchet turns in her direction once more. She lifts her beer in his direction slightly, acknowledging the look, before she tips it back to take several long swallows, finishing it out. When she catches the waitresses gaze, she wags the bottle at her in silent request for another.

She doesn’t seem to be leaving anytime soon.

That’s how he knows that Silence is more than Imogen’s boyfriend.

He strums once, swings himself out of the armchair, and strolls over to AnneMarie, carrying his guitar with him. He sets it down, leaning it against the bar with one hand still loosely wrapped around the neck, and props his elbow onto the top of the bar to peer at her, fist against his cheek.

“Stop making eyes at me,” he says, with exaggerated flirtatiousness, “and just buy me a beer.”

She inhaled, and her voice was even. He said he would listen, and so she spoke.

“You both made mistakes. What I saw were two full moons who had a difference in opinion who, instead of waiting for the ruling of an impartial philodox, jumped the gun. And this could have been avoided, and this could have been abated, but it was not… and now we all live with the consequences.”

She inhaled.

“Hatchet-rhya said that in the event of a pack’s alpha was gone, anyone could challenge for the position unless the alpha designated a second in command. That second in command, in our case, is Lukas. And we follow, or challenge their leadership for their position.”

She brushed her hair back out of her face, and for her part the petite, relatively fragile Shadow Lord was unshaken. White Eyes didn’t flinch. She never flinched.

“There was already a challenge issued before you issued yours. You have the right to challenge for a position in any time of peace, however, until that last challenge is settled you might have been challenging the wrong person and having two running at the same time would be unfair to all parties involved. The situation started in miscommunication and misunderstanding and escalated into this.”

A pause.

“And it wasn’t an attack, it was discipline and an assertion of dominance.”

Though he doesn’t know that, either.

He makes the comment, and exaggerates his interest, and she simply looks at him. A brow arches over a pale eye, just slightly, and lips curve into something of a bemused smirk. All expressions are micro-expressions, there quickly, yet controlled completely. It’s rather disconcerting, all told. She flicks her gaze toward the bar, and the waitress about to return with her own second beer – a lift of her chin toawrd Hatchet, and a lift of a finger orders him his current hearts desire.

She does not make eyes at him, and she buys him a beer.

Now, Hatchet has no qualms about living up to the standards and stereotypes of his tribe. He takes to it quite eagerly, but he does not ask the waiter to bring him a bottle of Jameson’s and a glass. He just gets a beer — oddly enough the same one AnneMarie is drinking, as though he simply remembers what is in front of him and nothing more — and grins at her, deliciously pleased.

Both elbows are on the table now, his chin resting on the meeting heels of his hands, fingers curled around his cheeks. “Obedience and everything,” he says, with delight. “What’s your name?”

He asks her name, and she lifts her bottle to her lips to take a slow swallow before she answers. The bottle hits the table lightly, and fingers trail through the condensation that clings to it’s surface before she picks up her pen and tugs the cap off. Her writing is fast, neat, and easily read, despite the speed with which the felt tip bleeds ink across the oft used board.

—AnneMarie Hoch—

that anyone-

has ever-

seen the Modi speak with food still in his mouth.

He swallows though, covering his mouth with the back of that hand gripping the food. “But I don’t trust him enough anymore to follow him. I didn’t jump the gun, I knocked him down and took a chunk out of him to defend myself. But Fenris tells us we may never back down when a fight is fair, and i can’t simply show him throat if he comes at me with tooth and claw.” He sighs, heavily, the hand rolling off his lap and making a heavy clunk of knuckles on hardwood between them. His head makes a similar noise when it hits the bedside cabinet. “I just wish Kat were here, she always knew what to say when it got rough between me and him.”

He is Fenrir, built for strength.
Made to overcome at all cost.
Unbendable in the face of Ragnarok.

But he’s still for all his battles only a Cliath and even as close as he is to making that next step toward the destiny all of their pack is said to share-

He is still fallible.
Still, perhaps more human than he should be.

And it should be only something of a surprise that as Mrena Armstrong, White-Eyes to the Nation looks over the few inches to see her packmate’s moonlit silhouette-

That there are tears cutting saline marks through the crimson stains on his cheeks.

AnneMarie drinks, and he asks a question, and she takes another drink. He just peers at her, an off-kilter little smile on his wide lips. His eyes flick down when she writes on the whiteboard, his arms fold across the tabletop to read it a second time, and then he lifts his head. She had the whiteboard last night, and he’s not an idiot. He acts like one, and often, and with glee. But he can figure it out.

Hatchet noted, as he peered at the board, that it wasn’t brand new. It wasn’t purchased yesterday, or a week ago, because of an injury to her throat or something. As far as he can tell, she has a tongue. So he doesn’t ask what seems most obvious to him.

“My name’s Taggart,” he says, and then he looks at the whiteboard again. His beer is brought, and he offhandedly thanks the one who brings it without looking at them. A thought occurs to him, and he looks at her with childlike glee that is utterly out of place with that beard, with those eyes that shift between looking eight years old and forty-five.

“Can I use that to scrawl a more private introduction at you?” He peers at it again, then beams at her. “That is so clever.“

One might think that something that is so much a part of her would be difficult for her to pass along – but that would be incorrect. Often it is the only form of communication. Her own pack does not hold any who have learned a single sign to allow her to communicate with greater ease and privacy. Sometimes, it is the board or nothing, and some things one simply does not wish to be broadcast across Eagle’s wings.

Unfortunately, for her, her pack also hates to read.

It is an oft lonely and silent world in which she lives, though she does so without complaint. It is her way. She is far too stubborn to ask, far to stubborn to let on that she cares of something so simple. She is, through and through, Fenrir.

That is neither here nor there, however, and now the whiteboard is no longer here, but there in front of Hatchet as she slides it across the table, and sets the pen atop for Hatchet to use.

I didn’t jump the gun.
“You both did. Instead of waiting for an impartial philodox to interpret the litany, which seems to be what the issue was initially over, and going to the caern, you both chose to fight in the common room on neutral ground.”

Just stated, it seemed. Saying what she saw, because the theurge was nothing if not observant. She seemed to acknowledge both sides, but she was no Philodox. And she knew this. She caught the look of tears on his cheeks, one hand reached up to gingerly wipe one away…

But not before observing them briefly, and not before marveling.

“You’re out-of-sorts,” she said. “Because Katherine isn’t here. And our dynamic has changed… and it’s hard to know where we fall when things change. You were out-of-sorts when Katherine challenged Edward, too.”

He swallows hard, eyes still closed. Weeping, only not.

“I just don’t have a taste for the infighting. I don’t want to fight him or you or Ed or anyone, but I don’t want to leave either.” His chest rises and falls in stops and starts. “You’re my family.” With that he falls silent, trapped right behind his own eyes, inside a place darker than normally exists between his ears. A place that touches at the big bad sad that all of them can only whisper about.

A pause.

“we are supposed to help each other, in any way possible… but helping does not mean holding our hands. Sometimes it means letting you fall, and sometimes it’s letting you make mistakes so you can learn from them. Just… talk to him. Ask him what you did wrong in his eyes, and if you wish to make things right, don’t make excuses. Give results. And don’t make the same mistakes twice. Know your faults, know where you go awry, and don’t let it happen.”

Conversely, AnneMarie, often…needs this.

But it’s a fucking whiteboard, and you can get one for less than five dollars. He’s not too worried about being respectful and reverent when she slides the board over and sets the pen atop it. He grabs it, uncaps it, and scrawls out several glyphs, then flips it around and caps the pen again. The swirly, elongated symbol of his tribe is there, along with a more geometric half-moon. There’s no indication of breed, or of rank. He waits for her eyes to take it in, a matter of seconds, and then sweeps his bare hand over the glyphs, erasing them.

That’s the hand he offers her. “Buried Hatchet.”

She adds her glyphs to the board. Her Tribe. Her Moon – though it can hardly come as a surprise. Her rank. And then – her name.

Ruhiger.

If he has listened and listened well to the stories at the Caern, this is enough to trigger memory. Ruhiger is Eagle. Not only is she Eagle, she served as second for some time for the Tribe when the Eagles were part of the Sept. She followed her Alpha when they left, without hesitation. She then killed Baaku in a challenge that is still debated to this day – fair? cowardly? honest? deserved? [what really happened on that grassy knoll?]

All debatable, though it was undoubtedly Fenrir.

She is steady. She is oft times bitter. She is steadfast. She is often the silent calm before a Rage-Filled storm. She is deadly when crossed. Also, as he discovers now as her fingers slide into his in greeting…

…she has remarkably soft [yet incredibly strong] hands.

The whiteboard is grabbed with her free hand after he reads, and swiped across her thigh to clean it. The stain there already suggests that this is a common occurrence. She sets it back on the table between them, so that she may pick up her beer to drink from again.

Not his problem.

His hands are calloused as all fuck, with little scars here and there. He’s got the callouses to suit the instrument he has there, leaned up against her table. He doesn’t shake for long, but he does do one thing after seeing what’s on the whiteboard that may be a ploy, or it may be a communication: when he clasps her hand, he turns his hand slightly over hers, exerting the barest pressure, the most momentary and subtlest displays of dominance. It doesn’t last long, and he grabs his beer with that same hand when the ‘handshake’ is done.

“Good to meet you, Ruhiger,” he says, but doesn’t take a drink. He moves to stand. “Thanks for the beer.”

Respect – for his Rank, at least. All else must be earned.

He says his goodbyes, and she lifts her chin in what can be assumed is a farewell. Though it looks suspiciously like her hello too. Eagle nod. Useful for so many expressions.