The Cowboy [Ryan Sheperd]

That Uktena hadn’t told her Alpha that he’s back, or she told him and something happened, or she told him and he doesn’t give two snorts, and either way he isn’t going to be spending too much time trying to track down someone who’s just going to keep lying to him anyway. What she said was right, though. Ryan can do what the rest of them do and track the Gang’s leader down on his own.

So here he is, dressed as though he hasn’t known rest or sustenance for days and miles, dusty and sweaty and carrying a duffel bag with him. He’s dressed like he’s come straight from the state that’s responsible for the way he talks, in cowboy boots and Levi’s and a plaid work shirt, leather cowboy hat upon his head, and once he makes his way through the kitchen he pops out into the dining room to check and make sure he isn’t hanging out on the first floor before he makes the trip up to the dormitory floor.

He stands looking around too long and gets bumped in the backside by the swinging door. A step forward, and he heaves a breath out of his thin chest before walking to the bar. Danny recognizes him from a long time ago. How couldn’t he, the way he was carrying on?

So Gabriella pulled her car into the Brotherhood’s parking lot around a quarter to eight in the evening and entered, as was becoming custom, through the kitchen door. She considered the backseat of her car as a locker, so she didn’t need to carry any bags or books in with her. She came in with her purse over her shoulder and nothing else, and lifted a hand to offer a wave to anyone/everyone that was currently working the kitchen before moving to a fridge, be it walk-in or standing.

Fruit sounded awful good right now.

Thus, for the past hour, or two – maybe even three, she’s been sitting sideways in a corner booth, with her back pressed against the wall, her beat to hell boots on the seat beside her. Even as warm as it is in here, she has that same old hoodie on, with the hood up and pulled low over her face, hiding her features from the rest of the room. Her jeans are threadbare, and oft repaired – though threatening to bust through the patches at her knees again.

On the table is a soda, half dunk, and a plate of cheese fries, half eaten. She’s not quite as starving as normal – part of those “with benefits” of the friendship with William. The other benefits will go unmentioned, as not only is he a decade older then she, she’s also under age.

Tsk.

Her journal is open on her knees, and she idly sketches while she works her way through that plate of fries, one at a time.

It’s the bootsteps that get her attention, moving toward the bar. There’s a glance, and then a double take, and somewhere hidden in shadow there’s the ghost of a smile that appears and flits away again. “…Ryan?”

He’s dressed to go out — not the soft pajama bottoms and strictly-optional undershirts he wears around the Brotherhood, but nice clothes, sharp and well-tailored, expensively casual with an urban edge. His hair is wet and he’s doing up the buttons of his shirt, which is striped dark and pale blue, deliberately rumpled. His feet are still bare in his shoes, the socks hanging out of his shirt pocket.

“Got any more of those lamb kebabs, Jennifer?” He finishes with the buttons, rolls the sleeves up to his elbows. “I’ll take a plate by the fire. Couscous on the side if you have any. And … maybe some of that mediterranean salad. Thanks.”

The swinging door admits him to the dining room, which is seeing pretty good business on a Friday night. Lukas is glad to see the wingback chairs are, for the moment, deserted — though there are dirty plates piled on the side table near them. He clears the plates away, transferring them to an empty table instead, and takes a seat, kicking his shoes off to put his socks on. His bare feet are big and bony, and after his socks are on he leaves them out of his shoes for a while, stretched toward he fireplace, soaking up the warmth.

… Ryan?

Looking over he finds a girl who is far better fed, far better groomed than the hitchhiking, near-mute girl he had picked up on the side of the road that hot, dusty day last year. His young–the man had never given his age but he didn’t look too much older than Maija, if one were willing to ignore his height–brow bunches up with bewilderment, and his posture tightens up almost as if he were startled.

“Maija?” he counters, somehow making the simple two-syllable name sound longer, his Texan twang sounding out without apology. Once the shock wears off he blinks and moves further forward, coming to stand by her booth and removing the hat from his head. “Ain’t thought I were gonna see you ‘gain, miss, what’re you doin’ up this way?”

The way he winces, he’s got to know how he sounds to the educated Yankees sitting around him.

Huffing a little to herself, she fetched a bowl and moved out into the dining area from the kitchen as well. The weather was very warm and humid out, despite the overcast skies and constant threat of rain, so she had dressed for that by wearing a pair of denim capris, white sandals with a tall cork heel, and a white halter top with a clunky necklace with gold, turquoise, and coral colored trinkets and gems handing off it.

Not much of a look-around was made. She knew where Lukas had his favored areas to sit– either in that ‘claimed’ chair upstairs, or that certain spot on the sectional, or in the very wingback chair in front of the fireplace that he was settling into now. She made a beeline for the fireplace, and without bothering to ask if she could sit, she came to sit in the chair beside Lukas’s. Her feet slipped out of her sandals so she could cross her legs indian-style, set the bowl in her lap, and start peeling the orange into it.

No ‘hello’ or similar greeting was offered. Rather, she jumped right to the punchline. “Have you figured out what’s going on with Ed and Kate yet?”

For the first time in the Brotherhood since she’s been coming here, she actually reaches up to tug that hoodie back a little bit, to let Ryan see that it is, indeed, her. Still painfully thin, for all the carbs and fat she’s currently shoving down her throat, still with expressions sliding across ehr face so quickly it’s almost impossible to catch before they fade away again. Her hair is shorter now – cut due to the impossible tangling hitch-hiking cause, but the important things… the things that make her Maija, are all still there.

Including the little smirk that tugs at the corner of her lips at his question. What is she doin up here? “Followin’ you.” A bony shoulder lifts in a shrug as she waves toward the empty half of the booth in invite. “Seen ya a few months back a ways from here. Since I was comin north anyway, thought I might follow a familiar face. Seem’d t’thing to do at th’time.”

There’s a wealth of story behind those few words, but ain’t none of it told. Not outright and upfront, anyway.

There isn’t any indication of what has brought him back to Chicago, what he’s doing in this particular place. There’s no reason for him not to be here. This is where the Garou go for warm beds, warm showers and warm food. Sometimes there are alcohol and carnal relations to be had, but for the most part this is just a place to recuperate from the horrors of war and get back on the road again.

Something in Ryan’s eyes is an indication that while the war is still out there waiting for him he isn’t going to be hitting the road for some time.

“It’s real good to see you,” he drawls, with honesty in his tone, as he thunks his forearms on the table. The sleeves of his work shirt have been rolled up to his ashy elbows, and his forearms are left bare, tanned and roped with thick veins. “Where’re you stayin’?”

The wingback chairs are enormous, large enough that even Lukas’s six-four, vast-shouldered frame is comfortably ensconced within. Coming from behind, all anyone would see of him are his legs and a forearm, a hand on the scrolled arm of the chair. Gabbie, much smaller and slighter, can easily curl up and disappear into it.

Which is nearly what she does, lifting her legs up to sit crosslegged with her orange and her bowl.

She jumps right into it, but Lukas looks at her a moment, possibly bemused, possibly startled. Then he smiles faintly. “Hey, Gabbie. You’re underfoot again.” The smile doesn’t last long; it drops off his face soon thereafter. “The Talons of Horus spoke of some sort of extended emergency quest in the Umbra. I don’t have a lot of details, and I get the feeling that the less we know about it, the better. Kate, Ed and Dylan have all been recruited to the cause. They’re fine, and together — but they may be gone for some time.”

The more things change…

“You too.” is what she says, and then she shrugs a shoulder idly. “Was stayin’ here for a while, fella named Decker sent me this way. Then met a friend – stayin w’ him in th’Green for now.”

She doesn’t say how uncomfortable it was for her upstairs, or even how often she sat here in this booth huddled and hoping no one would see her, while she sketched various faces that came across her path. “Things went bad in Florida while back. So was movin this way steady – random coin toss o’direction, ya know – when I saw ya rig.” A pause. “How ya been?”

He mentioned a spirit, the pack spirit as far as she was aware, and that her siblings were ‘somewhere in the Umbra’. …Well isn’t that dandy? That was about as informative as saying that they were somewhere in space. That could be anywhere, she sure as hell didn’t know how big the Umbra was, but she suspected it was much larger than the planet Earth. Honestly, she didn’t think many Garou knew how big the Umbra was.

But she’d nod all the same and, after a few moments of silence, pull the orange in half and hold one half out to offer it to the Ahroun. “Who’d the leave as my babysitter? Or did they not specify?”

“They didn’t have time to specify anything,” he says. “They had to leave immediately. We — the pack — didn’t even know until I asked the totem personally.”

A pause; Lukas has a sister, but she’s nearly two years older, and he’s never had to take care of her in any way. How does one take care of a sister? He hunts in his mind, remembers idle comments about school, lessons; realizes he doesn’t even know if Gabriella is in college or high school.

“Are you still staying … at the loft?”

He’s lost weight since the last time she saw him. Not enough to be worth stirring up a fuss over, but enough that it’s noticeable–his face is thinner, his clothes don’t fit his rangy body as well, and he seems more like a terrifying modern day Marlboro Man than a prepubescent ranch hand now. He hasn’t been taking care of himself recently, and it’s likely he would just keep his mouth shut were it not for the fact that she asked, and he hasn’t got any reason to lie.

“I done quit the trucking gig so I could stay up here permanent. Got a friend here what said he was gonna help me out, get me settled an’ all but I’m runnin’ into a spot’a trouble tryin’a track him down.”

Rather, he asked a question that was a little more significant, of course after adding that she wasn’t left with a proper guardian, which made a part of her all kinds of happy inside. She hid this well, though, primarily because there was too much weight in her mind and heart at the moment to be estatic about something that trivial. Rather, she lifted her eyebrows at his question, pulled a slice apart from her half of the orange, and ate it.

“I was, yes, but it’s very large, very empty, and very quiet. Depressing to stay there, particularly when I know that my siblings are all but lost to the rest of you. So, for now, I’d rather stay here.” Another slice was consumed. “Company’s precisely what I feel I need right now, not a summer spent cooped up and alone.”

“Some chick here paid for me to sit for her – like i’m some interestin subject or some shit – she saw ya face in my journal, an said she knowed ya. Ain’t run into anyone else – but then again, I ain’t much for friendly banter most days.”

There’s a glance toward the shadowlord in the wingback chair, then her attention falls on Ryan fully again.

“Good. I was going to ask if you wanted to do that. It’ll be easier for us to watch out for you, and we’ll be around if you need anything.” A moment’s thought. “I think you can probably take over Dylan’s bunk while she’s gone. Or if you’d prefer a room to yourself, I think there are empty ones available.

“How are you doing for money? Are you in college yet?”

That had been one of many clues that day of who and what she was, what her role in the war was.

As she explains what she’s been doing to keep busy since arriving in the city he finds her falling back into old habits that weren’t all that surprising once he talked to Delia about them. The girl was running from something. She was being vigilant. That was something all of them would do well to be.

So when Maija looks over towards the unlit fireplace, he turns around and catches sight of the back of a pair of heads that he cannot recognize from this distance.

“Yeah,” he agrees, somehow managing to pronounce each syllable, as he turns back around. “Who’s this lady says she knows me?”

“There’s an empty one that I’m using for now. I think I’ll just stay there, in case Dylan comes back just as unexpectedly as she vanished and wants her bed back.” Hey, if it could happen with Dylan it could happen with her brother and sister, right? She could hope. Nay, she needed to hope. She would hang onto this notion, and try and rely on the Umbra’s unexpectedness rather than be fearful of it.

Then, two dinnertable questions. The kind that older relatives asked their nephews and nieces when they ran out of things to talk about and needed to kill the silence. She smirked just a little at him in reply, popped an orange slice in her mouth, then answered verbally. “Our family fund will be fine for quite a time to come, I’m hardly concerned about money. And it’s actually final’s week right now, Lukas. I took my math exam this afternoon.” Finals. Exams. These were college terms. Christ, a whole year already?

He never asked for details.
He gave up his shampoo.
He didn’t make her feel like a bitch for wanting to pay her way when she could.
He gave a shit.
That was enough to gain her trust.

“Name’s Mrena.” The terse way her name falls into the air between them tells a story in and of itself – she’s don’t trust her, she isn’t exactly keen on the arrangement, but it was money and beggers can’t be choosers. She then lifts her chin toward Lucas. “He hangs w’her from what I kin tell.”

“If I understand correctly the ‘family fund’ has something to do with this dreaded uncle of yours. He might sit up and take notice if you start withdrawing more from the fund than he expects, and he might not approve of you running around Chicago without family supervision.”

She tells him about exams and finals, and Lukas frowns at her. “Are you in college already?”

“Yes, I came out here to start the fall semester at the De Paul University of Art. ….Lukas, why do you think my spending habits would change?”

“I ain’t know much about ’em,” he confesses, turning back around. “Mrena helped me out oncet, though. Got hurt real bad when I weren’t expectin’ it and she and this other fella in their group got me on my feet again. Reckon I owe ‘er one.”

An uncouth clearing of a frog in his throat, and he continues.

“Fella I’m looking for is with the other group out this way. Them’s what aren’t with us call him Oscar Taggart. Rest’a us call him Buried Hatchet. Or jes’ Hatchet. If you met him once you’d remember him.”

They’re interrupted: Lukas’s order has finally arrived. It’s more of the lamb kebabs he enjoyed last night, couscous on the side, and a salad that he might just pick the cherry tomatoes off of and leave otherwise untouched.

He thanks the waitress, whomever it may have been, and as she departs, picks up a skewer of lamb before offering the plate the Gabbie.

“I always assumed your siblings were responsible for the day-to-day fees of your life. You know; the food bill, the cleaning bills, the laundry bill, the utilities. Now that they’re away, you’ll have to shoulder those yourself.”

She hasn’t met anyone named Hatchet, but she’s seen a few people around. She takes up her journal and flips through a few pages. There’s one of Danny behind the bar, a couple of quick sketches of the waitresses, general people she’s seen here, all on the same page, occupying all the nooks and crannies with a decidedly doodling feel. On the page opposite is a man playing a guitar, sitting in the wingback chair that currently holds Lucas. “these’re most folks I done seen round here. Not much details t’go on, but…”

She shrugs, slightly, and slides the journal across the table to him.

He offered the plate, and she looked at it thoughtfully, then nodded her thanks, popped the last slice of orange in her mouth, moved the bowl onto the table between the chairs, and accepted a kabob. Rater than eat the food directly on the stick, she’d pull it apart one piece at a time, starting with a still-hot vegetable that she’d pop into her mouth and chew behind a covered hand so she didn’t burn her tongue and the roof of her mouth by chewing with closed lips.

From there, after swallowing, she waved a hand dismissively. “While that is true, he’d find out even if I didn’t pick up these expenses. He and Katherine have frequent phone conversations. After a month of no contact from her he’ll figure it out.”

A moment of quiet passes with Gabriella staring into the fire. Then, quietly, without looking over at Lukas, she spoke. “I don’t want to live with him, Lukas.” She wasn’t whining. She wasn’t asking for him to find a way to stop it if it came around, pleading for him to come up with a way that it wouldn’t have to be. She was just stating what she never bothered to hide.

“Why does he have such power over you and your family, Gabbie?” The question is almost abrupt, and genuinely baffled. “He’s kinfolk.”

And honestly? Tonight she didn’t want to. He was, in the absence of her siblings, slowly shifting away from ‘cousin’ to ‘surrogate brother’ in her mind.

“Because he’s ruthless.” She popped some lamb into her mouth to eat before expanding on that. “When my father passed, Edward was too young to shoulder the responsibility of patriarch. In most opinions, mine included, he’s still not mature enough to take on that responsibility and all it entails, including heading up Bell Textiles. Lucien is as smart as he is brutal. It came down to him and Edward when Daddy died, and that was all.”

Simple as that.

He eats with a swift efficiency: politely, always chewing with his mouth shut, keeping his face and fingers clean, utilizing his napkin judiciously. Even so, there’s something faintly unnerving — savage — about the way he pulls meat from the skewer, tears into his meal with such gusto.

“Though, he might cut off your funds, if he’s feeling particularly uncharitable.”

He’d seen her doodling on a napkin that first night they’d met. If it weren’t for the fact that there’re folk out there that can’t afford to even travel the distance to finish high school he’d be wondering if she were going to be going to art school when she got to be old enough. That isn’t even a dream he has for his own little girls. They’re going to be warriors and mothers, and that’s about it.

Unless she looks closer, she won’t see much more than a flicker of pleased recognition on his stoic features.

“You got him,” he says, fondly, before pushing the book back towards her. “That’s who I’m looking for. If you see ‘im can you tell him I’m looking for him?”

As for money… Gabriella shrugged at that and took another bit of food off the kabob to eat. “While I do enjoy the luxuries of life, I don’t need them. He can cut me off all he likes. He’d be doing me a favor to disown me.”

Will keeps telling her that she needs to persue it, to do more than idly doodle and keep it all locked away in her journal, that people will play good money for her “doodles”. She don’t quite believe him, but figures that if she ever does become rich an’ famous, those she likes enough to give their portraits too can sell em for millions an’ live off the cash in some sort of long range repayment for helpin her when she ain’t had no one at all.

“I think he stays upstairs with th’rest o’em. But yeah, I’ll tell’im if i see’im again.”

She studies him a long moment. “Ya look beat, dude. An’ in need of a shower. Don’t try’n stay awake for my sake. I pop round often enough, we ain’t gotta do all our talkin tonight…”

A pause.

“He doesn’t know about Sam, does he?”

“I doubt it. If he did, I probably would have gotten a phone call warning me to ‘halt my promiscuous ways’ complete with an hour long lecture about how it’s my God-given duty to continue the family line in mint condition.”

As mint as a line of insane royalty could be.

If Lukas pities her, or feels sorry for her, it’s hard enough to tell. His eyes are pale and clear as ever; they flicker over the girl, and then to the fire.

“If you don’t think you can fight your uncle or escape his influence,” he says, quietly, “then I think you should make the most of whatever freedom you have, for as long as you have it.”

Besides, have you ever had a meal with a Garou? They’re garbage disposals. It’s always ‘Are you gonna finish that?’ this and ‘Hey, can I have a bite?’ that.

If he took it, great. If not it was balanced on top of the bowl of orange peelings, and a napkin was used to clean her fingers and the corners of her mouth before that, too, was tucked into the set-aside bowl.

“That’s precisely what I’m attempting to do.” Then, quietly. “Until I can figure out something better, anyways.” She wanted to talk about it, really, but this wasn’t something she could report to Lukas. She couldn’t tell him that she entertained fantasies of escaping the entire Tribe and living a relatively more ‘normal’ life. Or, at the very least, the life of a Kinfolk that wasn’t attatched to the Silver Fangs, able to chose or decline their own suitors. If these words went in Lukas’s ear, then out of duty they would somehow, eventually, find their way into Katherine’s.

She couldn’t blame him too harshly for it, it was a part of pack obligation or something.

He hadn’t known him back then, but now that he does he still doesn’t have any sort of pictorial reminder of what he looks like. Perhaps that’s been for the better. It’s been less to explain.

“I don’t need one’a my ugly mug,” he says. “If you don’t mind partin’ with the one’a Hatchet that’d be mighty kind of you.”

That settled, she moves on to the obvious condition of his exhaustion, his hygiene, and their status as settled for the time being. Ryan doesn’t smile or laugh or do anything so human as acknowledge that this young girl’s right, that they don’t need to stay up half the night further wearing him out when Gaia knows what he’ll encounter in the morning, and so he nods and starts to stand.

“Thank you kindly,” he says. “Maybe I’ll see if’n I can’t get a room’er somethin’ upstairs, too. Beat stayin’ in the woods, I reckon.”

He doesn’t say it, but it would also make it easier for her to find him if she needed to. So far as he can tell there ain’t too much Trueborn Gnawers left in the city, and this William fella isn’t going to be able to protect her much if he ain’t one of them.

“You have a good night, miss,” is his farewell. The last time, it had been ‘Good luck.’ He’s the one walking away now, drawing in one hand, everything he couldn’t bear to leave behind in Texas in the other.

He lets her know he’s gonna room here, and suddenly the Brotherhood don’t seem to be so unfriendly anymore. She nods, slightly. “Does indeed. Night, Ryan.”

She watches him go, and for the first time anyone could say so, she’s almost… relaxed. Well, cept for when she’s at home with Will and they’re….

…reading. Yes. Reading.

Only after Ryan is gone does she turn her attention to the plate of now cold fries in front of her. Ain’t bother her none that they’s cold though – not judging by how she digs into them all over again.