Carter Roth
They had had a great fucking time the last time Carter had been around. They had gone out, gotten a drink, then come back and spent the night plastered and plastered to one another. Carter had decided to show up this time, a bold move, a ballsy move, but you know what…sometimes you do that after a shit day at work. She could be fucking someones brains out right now, and if that was the case….well he can always go home.
He steps up to the door of her tiny ass apartment and adjusts the set of his old leather coat, before banging on the door.
Izzy Montoya
They had a great time last time – but that was before… before she was certain she’d lost her damn mind. She’d called him and he hadn’t gotten back to her. She’d called Derek, and he’d come, and he’d promised to try and find answers, but he has fallen short as well. So she suffers alone. Which is likely good, because as much as she detests weakness in others, she abhors it in herself…
It’s the echoes, you see. Even Carter doesn’t know of them, and now they’ve gone completely haywire. She isn’t sleeping, she is barely surviving, and she cannot hardly function at this rate. It’s been over a week, maybe longer – she has lost all track of time. THe sleeping pills, the booze is no longer helping, and the only reprieve is the few hours at night when everything fades to a dull roar… then it’s back again.
and worse now. She is forced to relive every moment through their confessions – even those of her own capture and torture – and she is… losing her goddamn mind.
He knocks on the door – a bold move truly, and she drags herself up from the bed, grabs her gun and thumbs off the safety, and moves to the door. She doesn’t even bother to look through the peephole, she just opens it, and aims a gun at his chest.
SHe looks like shit. She hasn’t slept and exhaustion is written deep into her bones, dark circles carved under her eyes, eyes that flick to him almost unseeingly… she hears too much… and it never.ever.stops….
The question she asks is an odd one… “you really here?”
Carter Roth
[Nightmares]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Carter Roth
A shit crazed woman comes to the door instead of the poised and powerful Detective Montoya, it is almost enough to make Carters hands raise in difference, but he keeps them down, keeps them out of immediate line of sight….because if he needed to grab for the gun you didn’t want them seeing that first move.
Carter didn’t look much better himself, his own eyes held bags and his stubble was a little less manicured then normal, patches here and there slightly longer then one would want. Carter has suffered in his own right, he had no voices to scream at him regularly, his was simply nightmares, nightmares he could wake from…Izzy on the other other hand.
He looks from the gun, to the woman who held it and he raised a brow slowly. “I am so long as you don’t pull that trigger.” His basso voice rolling out to meet her ears, to assure her that this was different…this sound came from without…not from within…if she could tell the difference at this point.
“What the fuck happened to you?”
Izzy Montoya
His voice rolls over her, and triggers some recognition deep inside, and her hand begins to tremble, the muscles giving way to relief as she thumbs the safety on again and lets the gun fall to the side, all but sagging back against the door as she runs her hands through her hair, and closes her eyes.
She holds her temples a moment, then manages to push herself away from the door and inside, the fact she’s left it open a clear invitation for him to come in. She grabs the bottle she’s been consuming from the counter on the way by and falls to the couch with it in her lap and the gun still held losely in her other hand falling to rest on her thigh.
“I called you.” When it started, she means. Though her voice is cracked from exhaustion. She looks up at him, her dark eyes moving back and forth as if she’s tracking a conversation he can’t hear, adn that she doesn’t want to hear, before she forces her focus on him again.
Carter Roth
Carter watched as Izzy stepped back from the threshold, the gun lowered and her form slipped once more within the dimly lit apartment. There she snagged a bottle, and it seems she held close her two remaining security blankets, the two things keeping her just barely on this side of bat shit crazy.
Carter moved in after her, closing the door behind them and shutting them both into what was surely Izzy’s personal little hell. Carter looked worse for wear as well, eyes tired and red, bags hanging beneath his eyes and the stubble on his face barely manicured, threatening to return to the scuffy insanity it had once been.
“You did…” An apology in the tone of his voice, if not in the words he spoke as he moved towards the couch and joined her there, stripping off his jacket as he did. “I’ve not been sleeping well….getting maybe an hour…maybe two of sleep for the last week or so…not to mention all the other fucked up shit happening in this city.”
He shakes his head as he rubbed his own eyes and looked back to Izzy, watching her in the half light.
“You never answered my question…what the fuck happened to you?”
Izzy Montoya
He hasn’t been sleeping well, and she huffs an amused snort, as she leans forward, her head hanging as if she’s too tired to even hold it all the way up anymore. She manages to get the bottle on the coffee table, and grab her cigarettes, but her hands are shaking so much she can’t shake one free – not without letting go of the gun, and it takes a good 30 seconds before she decides that’s ok, and sets it on the coffee table too. Both hands to find a cigarette, and she’s shaking so hard she can’t quite light it either.
“Fuck.” Another try, and finally she manages to set flame to the tobacco, and inhales, dropping the bic to the table top as well. She pushes her hair back, and nods, slightly. “No sleep.” She’s lost track of time. But it’s more than that, of course. So much more….
“Never told ya, did I? shutupshutipshutup!” A pause, a breath, and then… she tries again. “I have somethin of a fuckin’ gift, though it’s no fuckin gift right now. It’s gone fuckin haywire, an’ I’m pretty fuckin sure I’m losin’ my goddamn mind… I hear everything without try, an’ it doesn’t stop, an’ its from now, an’ yesterday an’ eons ago, an’ I can’t… now they’re fuckin confessing to me all the goddamn time an’ I don’t… I can’t… ohforfuckssakeshut them UP…”
Carter Roth
Carter watches her try to light a cigarette, an action that usually takes so little action was becoming a chore, not just a chore…but a challenge to the woman. He almost…almost reached over and helped her despite her hatred of weakness of any form.
She spoke then of a gifts, of abilities that were now forcing her to listen to words that would not stop, to voices that dug into her mind and demanded that she listen. She freaks on the voices and Carter keeps a straight face.
“That…sounds absolutely fucking insane.” He says as he leans forward with her, listening in a friendly manner. “Seems that a bunch of us are having trouble. A good number of us can’t sleep, we’ve got nightmares riding our asses….others are having…other problems it seems.” He says looking into her face.
Izzy Montoya
“They keep askin’ for help… jus’ before they stop for a couple hours, then it all begins again… I can’t… it’s so… the things I hear…” Her voice breaks, and she wraps her free hand around the back of her neck, letting her head fall, curtained by her hair, so that she can’t see him, can’t… let him see how fucking weak this makes her feel… how out of control…
Then it filters through… slowly… what he means… “It ain’t just me…?” There’s a hope there, a slender thread to cling too, that if it’s not just her than she doesn’t have to put a bullet through her brain to shut them up een if it’s a more immediate solution…
Carter Roth
“From what I hear yeah….” He says with a shake of his head as he watched her, she might not want to let him see her weakness, but that was already to late, he had already witnessed it when she had shown her relief that he was real, when she had fell upon her couch. “Seem’s its mostly like me…none stop nightmares.”
He frowns then and pats her on the back. “Seems like you just got the shit end of the stick on this one. On the plus side…some garou are trying to sort this shit out….get it dealt with you know?”
Izzy Montoya
Some garou are trying.. and she scoffs. “Fanfuckintastic. Anyone I know?” She holds little faith that they can do it, at best. And at worst, she never wanted them to know what she could do… only select few have ever known before, and now she’s losing the choice to decide who she tells, who she helps.
He pats her on the back, and she reaches forward to put her cigarette into the tray, and under that touch, he can feel how she trembles, how much it’s taking for her to remain coherent, to keep control, when all she wnats to do is sleep, give in, give up…
“Whatever it fuckin is, they’re askin for help.. though they got a fuckin’ shit way of doing it an’ if I ever get my fuckin hands on them, I’m gonna fuckin tell them so. With a bullet or ten.” Assuming she survives. No one can go on for long like this. Not even Izzy fuckin Montoya.
Carter Roth
“Some guy named Hunter, and a…well a rat guy named Walley, they seemed to be particular driven on this, wether they get anywhere is another question.” He wasn’t holding his breath either, but anything that might help his ass get back to sleep on a regular basis would be a wonder.
She trembles beneath his touch and he looks her over ever so briefly. “I take it you’ve gone through the cupboard on all the different sleep meds and shit like that?” He asks looking around, most likely spotting a variety of different pill bottles.
“Tried anything else?” He asks coming back to her body and looking her in the eye if she meets his gaze.
Izzy Montoya
No one she really knows then. And he’s not holding his breath, so it certainly can’t be all that good. “…fuck.” Ever eloquent, Izzy. “Derek’s made some calls too… ain’t heard nothin back, though. Dunno that I can count on them… an’…” And when it’s over.. there will be no hiding from them when they decide they need her to do her thing. She hates that part – she was always able to choose before… now? Likely no longer an option…
He asks what she’s tried, and she snorts, slightly, as she looks up at him. “Everything..” She takes a breath, and shakes her head. “Is called Echoes – what I hear. usually it ain’t more than a week ago at best, but this thing… it’s like.. hyperstated it… so I fuckin hear everything that’s ever gone on in this room, every lil fuckin thing… since before it was even built.. an’ its like that in every room, every space, everwhere I go, but for a couple hours at night… then it all starts all over again. An’ now, I fuckin hear the confession of every goddamn scumbag I ever picked up on top of it all… It’s too much…”
Her voice breaks at the end, and she shakes her head. “It’s too fuckin’ much…”
Carter Roth
“Double shit.” He says as he watches her, can see the visible tension as she comes close to the raw edge of perhaps far more then just a mental breakdown. This was not what he had expected when he came here…he had expected bad, but nothing quite like this.
He leans in against her then, pulling her closer with a shake of his head. “There ain’t a damn thing I can do for ya Izzy, not that I know of at least.” Its all he can offer is comfort of something real, the presence of a live person, someone to ground her rather simple voices in her head.
Izzy Montoya
He pulls her close, and part of her wants to resist it, part of her wants to pull away and re-exert control, but the rest of her knows what that tiny seed doesn’t… she hasn’t got the control to exert. There’s nothing left… nothing at all.
So she lets him pull her close, all but folding into him as her hands wrap in the fabric of his shirt and she holds on, white knuckle tight… he can see how close to the edge she is, how little it would take for her to snap and for her mind to break. This is the woman who survived three days of rape and torture at the hands of a spiral pack in miami – reduced to a trembling mess, clinging to something real, as if that will save her…
“…if they want help… i gotta find a way… to stop this…” There’s tears in her eyes, in her voice… she can’t take much more of this… “anyone know anything?”
Izzy Montoya
He pulls her close, and part of her wants to resist it, part of her wants to pull away and re-exert control, but the rest of her knows what that tiny seed doesn’t… she hasn’t got the control to exert. There’s nothing left… nothing at all.
So she lets him pull her close, all but folding into him as her hands wrap in the fabric of his shirt and she holds on, white knuckle tight… he can see how close to the edge she is, how little it would take for her to snap and for her mind to break. This is the woman who survived three days of rape and torture at the hands of a spiral pack in miami – reduced to a trembling mess, clinging to something real, as if that will save her…
“…if they want help… i gotta find a way… to stop this…” There’s tears in her eyes, in her voice… she can’t take much more of this… “anyone know anything?”
Carter Roth
“A girl I know…names Fiona, don’t know if you’ve met her.” He says licking his lips as the normally potent woman held onto him, clung to him like a life preserver in the middle of a hurricane. “She says its something to do with Fae, or faeries or something like that.” He says with a shake of his head. “Seems like Hunter has the same inclination, he says he has some woman who’s confirmed that….but hell he says I was there too when it happened…and I don’t remember shit all but some flashbacks…like a dream.”
“I’ll let em know next time I talk to one of em, hell I’ll put them on notice that your willin to help.” Carter had some numbers, some people he could call…he knew Izzy’s distain for the garou, his used to be just as strong…but here..now…she seemed to be willing to try anything.
Izzy Montoya
she has a disdain for useless garou, and a great deal of the ones she’s dealt with have been just that. But to that end – yes. She’s willing to try anything, anything at all, just to make them shut up… just to let her sleep…
“Can… ya call ’em… now?” Her voice breaks ago.. and he knows how it grates against her nature to ask for any kind of help at all. If nothing else, that should tell him how very bad this is…
Carter Roth
Carter looks at her silently for a moment as she asks that, as if he thought perhaps she would change her mind, that her pride would win out suddenly and she would retract the need for aid, but her voice broke again, and she made no attempt to do that so he simply nodded and pulled out his cell phone. No words to her request and started dialling numbers.
Maybe it was the wrong time of the day, but ever person he called, ever number he dialled he was left with an answering machine, but to his due dilligence Carter left a similar message on each. “I need an update on the whole princess situation, any word? any ideas? I got a friend here who needs help.” His tone spoke of it being in a bad way. “I’m not leaving details here, so call me back, soon as possible.”
When hes been through five or six different numbers he re-pockets the cell phone and shrugged. “I’ll try them again soon if I don’t hear from them in the next few hours alright?”
Izzy Montoya
He understands. He knows her well enough to know exactly how bad of shape she must be in to actively ask for help. He also knows that once this is over, she will never ever admit that she was this weak… that she was this human, this… frail. She is Fenrir, and for all she has met few of her Tribe to foster pride in, she is still a very proud woman. And normally so very strong.
Truth is, she’d rather be back in that shed in Miami, where she got the scars he’s seen along her lower belly, than to suffer another night of this…another minute of this…
“Thanks.” It’s all she says, but he can feel the gratitude in her, feel how she relaxes just a tiny touch, though she still clings to him, breathing deeply of the scent of his skin – mingled with the leather of his jacket, all things familiar and real and remembered with a sort of fondness, a visceral delight…
Carter Roth
Carter simply nods in response to her thanks. IT was one of those moments when words would do little good, what does one say to someone who is suffering like her, bombarded by words and voices day and night wihtout end. She had been strong surviving this long, Carter is simply pleased he found her in her weakness, rather then after she had gone beyond desperation….
He relaxes back into the couch, arms drawing Izzy close, giving the woman what she needed, an anchor, something to remember and feel in this realm of illusions and voices.
“You need anything else Izzy? Anything I can do…get..kill?”
Izzy Montoya
The last gets a brief huff that is likely laughter, or would have been before all this started. He knows her so well. Of course, the first time they’d seen each other, she turned a friendly shooting range into a contest, that she won, handily enough. Of course, it’s because he was teaching, and she was showing off, but well – if it weren’t for her being undeniably female, her competitiveness strikes of too much testosterone. Maybe it’s just too much Fenrir.
She shakes her head though, slightly… there’s nothing anyone can do, nothing she’s tried that can fix this, can get her some relief… there’s only this… “Jus…stay… a while.”
Help her remember that she’s not alone…
Carter Roth
“I got a few hours, and nothing to do with them.” He says as he rubs her back gently, using a large calloused hand, a hand of death, for something a little more constructive, for helping others…he found himself more and more in the roll of protector of late, he wasn’t at all certain if he preferred this…or not.
“They are all yours.” He says as he settles back a little more, getting more comfortable as he reached out and took the bottle, taking a swig of it. “Not like I’m getting much sleep tonight anyways.”
Izzy Montoya
he settles in and takes the bottle, and she curls up against him, touching him on as many points as possible, reminding herself that this is real, and while the things, the voices, are real enough too, they are inside her head, they are in the past, and he is the present and in control.. where she is not.
She takes a shakey breath, and nods slightly. He won’t sleep much… “..tell me about them…” the nightmares, whatever it is the others are saying – maybe there’s some corelation to the things she’s heard…
Carter Roth
She asked about the dreams, and Carter shook his head, not at all wanting to recall them in his waking hours as well…but he did so anyways, something to help Izzy, something to maybe taker her mind off the voices which whispered in her ears even now.
“Its pretty fucked up, I get images of creatures that dwarf the garou at their biggest, of blood and death and war. Thats all common place though, the big thing…the part that matters most is the lady in white. Beautiful woman, long black hair, tired sad eyes…she fights, fights the good fight you know? But in the end, like always she captured, and run through by a great shimmering sword at the demand of some asshole on a throne…some self titled king.”
He shakes his head and takes another swig. “Fucked up right?”
Izzy Montoya
At the end, she is always captured and run through with a sword. At that, Izzy envies this woman in white, the one in the dreams, because then her fight is ended, and Izzy still must suffer through all of this… He asks if it’s fucked up, and she nods, slightly.
“…think she’s the one askin for help?” as when the voices swell, into two words, just before they ease for a while – it’s always in a plea: help us.
Carter Roth
“I think so yeah…or at least whoever shes fighting for, or with.” He says with a tired sigh, he would love to pass out right here on this couch…but it would be impolite…and he really didn’t need to wake up screaming and sweating….one of them had to be strong for the other at the moment. This time it was his turn.
“Eitherway I wish we could get a memo rather then a brain rending fucking nightly message. We might be able to help her alot fucking faster if we had some real information to go on rather then just that image over and over again.”
Izzy Montoya
She nods, slightly, her brow furrowing… “an’ ya said ya went somewhere, or they said you was someplace?”
She’s trying desperately to piece something together, anything together that might help her.. help them both… and hell, she tends to wake up throwing up – screaming is nothing.
Carter Roth
He nods at that. “Was in the park, golden gate park, was looking for Wally, the rat guy and then bam, some kind of explosion or blast, the rest i only get in bits, a woman, fighting something off…and then swimming, saving the woman again..and some giant ass shark that tried to eat us all.”
He shook his head once more. “I think Hunter remembers more of it then I do…but then he still has the lady with him far as I can tell. So he probably knows all sorts of shit.”
Izzy Montoya
She nods, slightly. If he has this lady with him, then it’s him that she’ll need to talk to most likely – in order to get to her to get this fixed to finish this… before she ends up putting a bullet through her brain.
“Same woman you saw? Or another..?”
Carter Roth
“I’d say shes a pretty fucking close match yeah.” He says looking down at her then. “Far as I can tell at least, plenty of beautiful dark haired women out there….though most of em don’t hold a candle to this lady.”
Izzy Montoya
Always the ladies man, even now. That pulls her gaze up to his, briefly – only a moment so he can see the amusement shine briefly from the madness that’s growing within… She tucks her head against his shoulder than, and nods.
“So hopefully he’ll answer th’ fuckin call, and this bitch will get the fuckers outa my head…”
Well, it’s a hope. Not much of one, but a hope none the less…
Carter Roth
“Exactly my thinking.” He says as his hand wraps around her waist, pulling her closer, letting her feel the solidarity of his body, this is real…real…real.
“At the very least if she can’t she can probably point us in the right direction to get it dealt with, tell us which fucker needs to die in order to get us all back to our sleep schedules and non fucking ridiculous stress levels.”
He shakes hsi head. “We got enough to fucking worry about, this shit is unnecessary.”
Izzy Montoya
He pulls her closer, and she wants to react, she wants too, but she doesn’t have the energy left – everything she has is take up with trying not to listen to the voices, to just concentrate on his being here for the moment and what he’s saying, instead of what everyone else is… if only he knew the things that happened here in this apartment, in the land before it was cleared, in the area… if only he knew the confessions she’s had to take in the past, and the ones she relives now.. if only he knew how much it is taking for her to simply hold on, and last another day…
And all she wants to do is go back to being the Izzy that fucks a whole bunch and is really good at her job. That’s all. Well – that and a weeks of solid sleep.
So all she can do is nod, and close her eyes and listen to the voices drone on and on in counterpoint to his…