[Drew Roscoe] There was absolutely no reason in the world for Drew Roscoe to still be living here. She was a single individual renting out an old two-bedroom house with a big yard and no children to run around in it. Besides that point, no one should be putting children in Bronzeville in the first place, and in many eyes Drew was still a child. She shouldn't be here alone, that burly dog of hers wouldn't stop a robber so much as lick him in the face. Sure, she was a sharpshooter and most of the Garou in the city knew that, but that was only 0.2% of the population here, if even that. The rest saw her as easy prey, and she could so easily become so. Plus, the pack that had her protected, the whole reason she moved into this neighborhood in the first place, had migrated north.
Yet she stood out on the street still today, dressed for the summer heat in a pair of cut off denim shorts, flip-flops, and a light pink floral button up blouse with the long sleeves rolled up past her elbows, something that would be too hot for the weather were the material not so thin and flimsy. Her hair was piled into a ponytail at the top of her head, looped through the elastic at the bottom so it wouldn't tickle her neck. She was making progress up the sidewalk, hands at her hips, eyes intent on the ground, flitting from curb to gutter to the weed-infested cracks in the pavement-- she was searching for something lost.
Cars rolled slowly by, occasionally one would linger a little too long, windows rolled down and dark eyes staring hard from within, before taking off again for any number of reasons-- intimidation tactics not getting a rise, better places to be, too many warrants out for their arrest for them to be toying with some prissy little white girl in the wrong part of town... Or perhaps just sheer dumb luck up to this point.
[Wyrmbreaker] If Drew Roscoe stands out in Bronzeville, then Lukas Wyrmbreaker is a goddamn neon sign. There's just something different about him. It's not just the clothes, though those are undeniably quality. It's not that they fit him properly, either, or that the colors and fabrics are crisp and light for summer, and that the shirt looks tailored and the jeans look like they might cost a few hundred dollars.
It's not any of that. Any of those things would make a man stand out in Bronzeville, but a man with nothing more than a suit of fine clothes would never come to this part of town. No, what Wyrmbreaker has is a different air altogether; a strange and dissonant sense of being other. Not human. Not quite of this world of asphalt and grease.
A piece of another world. Savage under that civilized skin; a predator transplanted into human skin, human guise. That's what the air around him breathes. Evolutionary superiority. There are gangbangers here, and lowlifes, and all manner of crooks and criminals petty and grand. The smartly dressed young man leaning against the low hood of the gleaming black BMW coupe -- the sort of danger that shrouds him like a mantle is a wholly different sort.
He's relaxed, though. Quiet and at ease, his sharp eyes brilliant and pale, keen without caginess. He's eating out of a to-go container. It might be Chinese, but it smells more like Thai. One of those lowriding gunships rolls by on the streets, bass bumping, southside youths leering out the window. He glances at them and away, unhurriedly, blinking once like a leopard in the sun.
And fixes on Drew. The corners of his mouth turn up a little; a quiet, private little smile. He watches her until she notices him. Then he stands, setting his carton of to-go on the hood.
"Lose something?"
[Drew Roscoe] It was impossible not to notice someone like Wyrmbreaker, again not for physical appearance or manner of dress, but for presence. Drew was becoming accustomed to it, that chill that settled and pooled in the spinal column and had the small hairs on your arms standing on end. She felt it whenever Joe came around to prove he was still alive, used to sense it out in her living room when Thomas would invite himself in through the curtain between worlds. It was savage and horrifying, and she was sometimes appalled that she'd begun to relate it to the root sensation behind the word 'trust'.
Naturally, her eyes flicked upward and the quiet slap-slap of her flip flops against the bottoms of her feet silenced when she stopped walking. She studied his shoulders, checked out where his hands were positioned, and then looked at his face. Insanely blue eyes, that seemed to be a trend with werewolves. It took her a few seconds, but recognition came to her.
"Yeah," she stated after a few seconds of tension and silence fizzled into a considerably more casual air, then shifted her hands into her shorts pockets so they weren't simply planted at her hips and rested her weight between her feet in a way that suggested she was willing to stand for a while. "My house keys."
There's a pause, then a slight lift of one eyebrow as she glances to the car, the food, then the man(monster) once more. "You are the guy from the other night, right? At the fire?"
[Wyrmbreaker] Startling eyes did seem to be a trait amongst werewolves, as though all their rage coalesced and crystallized there. Startling, light-colored eyes seemed to be a trait amongst the Unbroken -- there was a joke for a while that you had to be beautiful and fierce-eyed to even be for membership considered -- but Lukas's are unique chiefly in their paleness. The blue is crystalline and fiery; like a diamond in the sun.
"I am," he confirms. "My name is Lukas." Which is not really his name at all, the way he pronounces it there -- americanized, with a soft, short second vowel; a sibilant 's'. No matter, though, "Your mate and I share a moon."
She can't be blamed for being uncertain of his identity. Firelight and dancing shadows play tricks. More to the point: that sort of lighting is primitive, made him seem primitive. That sort night was a night for unity too, for celebration and revelry.
He's not here to celebrate. And since the Get have moved north, it's equally unlikely that he's here to feel at one with his Septmates -- not that he and Drew's mate's pack were ever close, at that. It must be something else, then: something that makes his manner crisper, his eyes alert, his back straight. Lukas would simply term it business, though the word encompasses anything from stock portfolios in a Charles Schwab downtown to bloody, torn bodies in a backalley in Cabrini.
Probably closer to the latter than the former.
"That's unfortunate," he adds. "Any idea where you might've left it?"
[Drew Roscoe] "I probably would've guessed that on my own." The moon, that is. Her smile when she says this takes it far from the route of 'egotistical' or 'self-assured' and places it firmly on a path that seems to have been under her feet for most of her life: good-natured. It was, as ever, a charming and winning thing without trying, too easy to be pageanty, too small to be forced. "I'm Drew, but I guess you already knew that, seeing as how you know who Joe is and that we're together."
She glanced toward the ground again, briefly, before looking back up to Lukas. He was at the bonfire, he was friendly with her then, which told her that he was an alright guy, he was in, he was family. But she didn't know him well enough to not keep an eye on him for very long, particularly not when he seemed so sharp tonight. Sharp like fangs and claws, not like crisply tailored clothes and the smell of money.
"I figure somewhere along this road. I'm retracing my steps. Took my dog on a walk and he took off after another dog, so I figure I dropped them while I was running after." The corners of her mouth pressed with displeasure at the canine, and she mentally noted that Basil would need to be on a leash again for at least another month before she'd take him on a walk without again.
There's a pause, one where she looks at the Shadow Lord long and heard, then turns to survey the buildings he was parked in front of. Her expression goes somewhat more concentrated, perhaps slightly concerned, and she speaks in a tone that's still congenial, but more mellow. Serious. "Is there gonna be a fight? That why you're here all tight-shouldered and bright-eyed?"
[Wyrmbreaker] "Yeah." That bring a quiet laugh, "I suppose you would have."
He knows what moon is in the sky; where it's headed. Half to gibbous. Gibbous to full. His moon, beating in his blood, fierce and full of wrath.
What wrath there is in Lukas -- and there is a lot of wrath in him -- is tightly reined, controlled, bitten back. He leashes it the way she leashes her dog. The difference is his gets away from him a lot less often. And the difference is when it does, the results are ...
well. Devastating.
The tall Shadow Lord folds his hands behind his back, looking up the street, down. He has the wide, high cheekbones of a Slav -- his face in profile is all angles and planes, strong as the Carpathians. He seems to consider a moment before turning back and shaking his head.
"I don't think so," he says. "Not tonight. I'm here because I'm hunting."
[Drew Roscoe] "Hmm."
That's all she has to say at first when he mentions that he's hunting, but it's replaced by a slightly sardonic chuckle and a lopsided grin as she goes back to skimming the sidewalk. "And I don't suppose it's for your keys too."
And speaking of... She caught a bit of a gleam in the gutter, just inches shy of a drainage grate. Had there been rain that day she wouldn't have spotted them at all, they'd be swept away and lost for good. She'd have to pay for a locksmith to come and change her locks and get herself a new set of keys. Rather than that, though, with a stroke of sharpened eyes and good luck, she stooped down and swiped the trio of keys out of the gutter and jammed them securely into her pocket. No 'ah-ha!' of victory, no gasp of surprise or relief. Just something that she was certain would happen, keys didn't get up and walk away after all.
She looked up the street as well, then back to Lukas. He had high, handsome features. Strong like the things that girls would find in cologne ads for magazines, tear out and put up inside their lockers, but more fearsome for reasons they would never ever understand. Drastically different from herself, a girl with a soft face, wide brown eyes and a stronger jaw and chin that paid homage to her ancestry, something faded faint by the mutt blood of her father but kept alive because her mother's was too strong to stamp out entirely.
"...Is it not my business to ask what? Just curious if I should hop home more quickly than planned."
[Wyrmbreaker] There's a politeness about Lukas -- something that might almost be termed dignity. It's not that he speaks in seven-syllable words and elaborate turns of phrases, but something about his inflection, his modulation, the tenor of his voice, bespeaks courtesy and reserve. He watches the girl rediscover her keys, and when she looks back at him he's smiling again.
"Congratulations," he says. He sounds like he means it.
And then there's another pause; another moment of silence in which the Shadow Lord consults with himself. Then his mind is set. He swivels from the waist to pick his to-go carton up, smoothly, as different a beast from Drew's mate as their moons were one and the same. No hurry here; no impetuousness. Nothing raw and unconsidered about him. They're both weapons, War-Handed and Wyrmbreaker, but one is a bludgeon and the other is a blade.
"Come and see," he says. He's using chopsticks -- he picks out a chunk of roast duck, some rice, and then closes the carton and begins to walk. Lukas is well over six feet, with legs to match. His stride is long and steady. Drew needs to hurry to catch up -- or would, except that Lukas is too polite to make her trot alongside like a cocker spaniel. His pace is relaxed, easy. A strange sort of hunt, this.
They pass an overflowing dumpster. He chucks the carton in. Hands free now, he brushes them off against one another. At the corner, he makes a right turn onto a smaller side-street.
[Drew Roscoe] Wyrmbreaker and War-Handed were drastic contrasts of one another. One was handsome, tactful, controlled and precise. The other was ugly, brutish, but devastatingly effective. They were posterboys for their respective tribes, and each fine examples of their auspice, two separate castes perhaps, but neither less than the other.
Except for rank, but Drew didn't understand that well enough to know any better.
He congratulated her on finding her keys, and she replied with a cheesy grin and by patting her shorts pocket. He offered for her to come and see what he was hunting, and that took her by surprise. She blinked at the back of his shoulder when he straightened away from his car, but fell into stride beside him (perhaps a quarter of a step after his pace so that he remained leading, as she had no idea where they were going) as though it were natural as day and night to do so.
He minded his pace for her short legs, for which she was grateful. She was learning to make her steps bigger and faster, even if it did look a little goofy, but it helped her keep up with.. well, pretty much everyone around here. Her legs were toned, but certainly not slender. Thighs were thicker than what fashion would call beautiful, but it was what came from being a gymnast and furthermore a dancer. But they let her run like hell when she needed to, and meant she could deliver one hell of a kick to the nuts or the gut if she could get her aim right.
Around one corner they found their way onto a side street, and Drew was examining the buildings framing their path, glancing for movement and alleys that things could be lurking in. She didn't think he would invite her to view danger, but she couldn't help but be wary. It's been too calm for too long, she felt like all the danger in the world was holding back and building up for a huge wallop to the chin. Hands kept busy by adjusting how the flimsy thin sleeves were rolled, securing where they stayed.
When finished with that, they checked the lump of a holster under the back of her shirt. Just in case.
[Wyrmbreaker] He takes her down one street and then another, around one corner, down another alley. Soon they're passing beyond the borders of her daily life -- deeper into streets and backalleys that she probably knew enough about to know not to come here. At least not alone. At least not at night.
But it's not night yet, and she's not alone. The creature with her is wholly different from her mate, but they're ultimately of the same blood. Of the same people. Perhaps she trusts that his honor won't let her come to harm. It's more likely, young and in love as she is, that she simply trusts that the threat of her brutish, effective mate's retaliation would keep this near-stranger from putting in the direct path of harm.
Or -- maybe -- she's just brave. And curious.
Regardless, after a while he's walking a little faster, and this is deliberate. He opens the distance between them a little, until he's a good yard or so in front of her. She's behind him now, in the shadow of his broad-shouldered frame, and he's moving with purpose, like a hunter, footfalls solid and quiet, hands loose at his sides.
Another corner. Another straightaway. And then he stops beneath a rickety old fire escape, rust flaking from the metal. Even Lukas isn't tall enough to simply reach up and grab the last stage. He jumps, though, a swift, powerful spring straight upward to clamp solidly onto the bottom rung of the retractable ladder. For a moment he hangs there, triceps tensed, elbows bent and body taut, like an athlete chin-upping on a bar. Then he lets looses his arms suddenly, lets all his weight drop to his hands. The momentum shudders through the fire escape and jolts the ladder loose, carrying it crashing and clattering down. Wyrmbreaker's feet hit the alley floor. He arrests the fall of the ladder, lowering it down the last few feet until it hangs a foot or so above ground.
And he turns to look at Drew, smile a faint gleam in the dimness.
"Up," he says, with a nod of his head toward the ladder. "Third story. Quietly now."
[Drew Roscoe] She finds herself pondering compare and contrast as she follows, as he pulls into the lead and places himself in front of her. Her eyes follow the shape of his body, the roll of his gait as he moves. He was broad at the shoulders, but more trim at the waist, like a drawing or a man shaped for viewing. Legs were long, muscles were strong. He moved like a big cat, she thought. She wondered for a moment if he turned into a panther, then scolded herself for dreaming something so ridiculous.
Joe, however, was like a rough mold of man made from clay, hardened in the fire, then bolted with iron plates. He was rough like boulders placed atop one another, thick and heavy throughout. His muscles were overinflated from drugs in years before, but that didn't stop him from speed. He walked like she imagined the embodiment of determination would. Lukas smiled polite, Joe smiled manic. It was interesting to have someone to really compare him against.
Musings were set aside, though, when they came to a stop underneath a fire escape that was an orange-red, bold enough that she was wondering whether it was painted like fire for irony's sake, or if it was truly so coated in rust that it looked that way. Lukas jumped up to grab it, sending flakes of rust dusting into the air and all about her, and she dusted some out of her hair, figuring that answered her question.
Then with a loud CL-UNK!-clatterclatterclatter the fire escape dropped, the Ahroun's feet slapped into ground, and he lowered the ladder the rest of the way until it was fully extended, slow enough that it didn't fall right off its joints. He looked at her, grinned, gave direction and warned her to be quiet.
The Fenrir Kin laughed, albeit quietly, and shook her head. "Cute," she commented on the humor of his making a racket then warning her to be soft with her sounds, but was compliant enough, taking a hold of the rusty ladder, testing how it held her minimal weight, then climbing upward.
Perhaps it was because she trusted the Jarl would remove this man's head from his shoulders if this was a trap that she went so willingly. Perhaps it was a lust for adventure and a break from the grind of normal day-to-day life. More accurately, though, it was that she believed this man to be Garou, that she believed the manners in his speech and the curves of his smiles. It had nothing to do with trusting honor or wisdom or a sense of political relations when it came to handling another tribeleader's mate, but rather what good she believed the Shadow Lord to have.
[Wyrmbreaker] The structure shifts on its bolts as Lukas's weight joins Drew's. The Shadow Lord pulls himself up hand over foot, quiet and purposeful, methodical. On the first story landing the fire escape proper begins: steps instead of ladders, diagonal instead of vertical. They pass dusty, begrimed windows -- cramped bedrooms, mildewed bathrooms, greasy kitchens, cluttered living rooms with balding carpets. There's noise inside. It's evening, about time for dinner. Kids are squalling. Tempers are short, parents snapping at each other. In one window, an addict is tourniqueting his arm, tapping for the vein.
It's different on the third floor. Quiet. Still as a grave. The windows are dark, all save one. There's a lamp burning in one of the tiny bedrooms. Lukas takes the lead again, back to the wall, leaning around to snatch a quick peek before returning for a second, longer one.
When he's satisfied, he motions Drew to have a look, carefully and silently stepping around her. There's a crack in the curtains where she can just see the inside of the bedroom, which is a child's room. That much is clear enough from the little bed, the shoddy, plastic, superhero-knockoff toys on the floor. There's a clip-on lamp on the headboard, which is on. There's a man sitting by the bedside, his big palms cupped together. It takes a moment to see he's holding onto the tiny hand of a child; that there's a boy in the bed, so wasted and frail that he hardly seems much more than a lump in the comforters.
He's alive, though -- breathing threadily, thin chest rising and falling in heaves. Sweat beads his brow. His face is ashen beneath his dark complexion, lips almost colorless.
Lukas is silent beside Drew, waiting while she looks and sees. Eventually, if she lingers too long, he taps her lightly on the shoulder and nods toward the fire escape. Time to go.
[Drew Roscoe] Drew pulled her way up the ladder with the kind of ease and grace that came from someone to whom physical activity was no stranger whatsoever. Others may doubt the sureness of their feet, their grasp on the bars, but not Drew. She'd kept her grasp sure when being tugged at by unnatural spiritual winds from some ripped open hole between the worlds, gravity had nothing on her.
Heights, however, were another story. They got to the top of the ladder, where the platform began, and Drew took a moment after her eyes had drifted downward, looking forward, to the brick at the same level as her, and borrowed time for a few deep breaths. Lukas had caught up quickly, urged her forward, and she began to move again. She walked past windows gone blurry with smoke residue from the residents, quiet enough that none would glance up to see who was sneaking outside their window, not that any thought anyone would. There were children, adults fighting, and she swallowed a throat full of contempt and disgust at the image of the man cutting the circulation in his arm off so he could raise a vein.
Lukas moves ahead when they reach the third story, leads the way to the only window with a hint of light. He peers inside, then makes room for Drew to do the same. She come up close to his side, unafraid of being close, judging by how careless she is about her shoulder against his arm. She peered inside and first noted that it was a children's room, second noted the man sitting beside the bed. Her eyes flitted along his figure, over his big hands, and her heart and mind flashed to her father. She needed to go see him again, the phone call made yesterday to wish him a happy Father's Day had fallen flat and tasted bad in her mouth.
Then the child had her attention, a sickly little thing wasting away, in pain and weakness with the color faded away from his flesh save for what melanin could save. This kept Drew's attention the longest, and ache splashed over her face at the sight. Lukas would have to tap her shoulder and gesture for her to get moving again. She would, but slowly, like someone being ushered away from the scene of a horrible accident where you couldn't help but stop and stare.
Quickness came, though, but not at the expense of silence. She seemed suddenly quite intent to be reunited with solid ground.
[Wyrmbreaker] They're quiet on the way down, the smiles and humor gone now. At the ladder, Drew goes first again. Lukas doesn't follow, instead hauling the ladder back up and fastening it in place. Then he vaults nimbly over the side, dropping, the bend of his knees absorbing the impact.
"I don't think he'll last the night," he says quietly, looking up the gray concrete side of the building. "There are others like him in this building, dying of a mystery disease with no known cause and symptomology so diverse no hospital will spot an epidemic. And then there are those whose sickness has infested their soul instead.
"There are more arguments and fights in this building than any other in this area. More domestic violence, more petty theft and robbery, more drug abuse. There's a bane in the area, born of the rot and feeding on it. I'm sure of it. But it hasn't shown itself yet.
"So," he lowers his head, glances at Drew, "I'm hunting."
[Drew Roscoe] The way down goes much faster than the way up had. Curiosity and caution didn't lace Drew's steps any longer, uncertainty of where she was going didn't hold her back. She slipped down the ladder nimbly enough, waited at the bottom for Lukas to come down as well, and watched with a certain distinct lack of spark in her eye while he jumped down after pulling the ladder back up. Some time ago she might have had a miniature heart attack of concern from someone taking such a high jump, but only a handful of months ago she'd watched someone near and dear to her heart take a literal dive off the edge of a cliff and vanish into the swirling white of a blizzard. This was nothing.
He landed with bent knees, straightened up, and explained what he had noticed, and Drew turned her gaze upward along the side of the building to join his.
She's quiet for a while after he drops his eyes to her and concludes that he was hunting, still looking up toward the top of the building, trying not to feel sick or the sways of vertigo knowing that she was just up that high off the ground. It's an easy task, she was focused on the weight of his words explaining that the child wouldn't survive the night. She licked her lips slowly, let her arms rest heavy at her sides, and finally looked to the Ahroun.
There aren't tears in her eyes of remorse or pity, she doesn't seem overcome with despair for the fate of the building, but rather there's resolve. Because there has to be. "Is there anything I can do?"
[Wyrmbreaker] "Yeah."
That's one thing about Lukas; a line drawn between a Shadow Lord and a Silver Fang. Polite as he may be, courteous as he is, he's never one to turn down an offering out of mere manners. If she offers, he'll accept.
"If your mate allows it, you can try to canvas this area. Pass out flyers for Hill House -- their counseling services, their free clinics, their shelters. This sort of thing is a vicious cycle. Some gets possessed by a bane, or someone hits rock bottom and a bane comes to feed on his grief. It grows stronger. It taints others in the region. They sink into despair. Their despair draws other banes, and on and on.
"Garou tend to go for the direct approach. We crush the Wyrm where we find it. But when we can't find it, sometimes we have to snuff it out by removing the fuel. If we can get the residents out of the area until it's cleansed, we can reverse the damage, or at least lessen it."
[Drew Roscoe] "I don't think I need Joe's go ahead to help anyone out..." The curious thing is she doesn't sound defiant or self-righteous when saying this, but rather genuinely thoughtful. She didn't understand a lot about how the Garou world worked, how their politics functioned or their physics either. She did, however, know that territory was a very big issue, and that lines were delicate and difficult for someone like her to find, and what's more? Issues were typically resolved with some form of violence. At least with her Tribe, anyways. Almost always with Joe.
This is followed up by a resolute nod, and the Kinfolk slipped her hands into her shorts pockets, toying with the rediscovered keys idly with one hand, a string and bit of lint with the other. "I've got the phone number at home." There's another pause, and Drew looks down at the coral-colored nail polish on her toes as she speaks further.
"I can't say this was the highlight of my month. It's a thought that's hard to get off the mind... but I guess that's the way it should be, huh? If we forget then there's no fight left in us." Her shoulders lifted and dropped in a quick shrug, and she looked back up. "But I'm proud to help where I can. Next time you come through here, you'll find change."
She glanced over her shoulder, out to the front of the alley they'd come in, up to the building being fed on by a 'bane', something she would likely never see and hopefully never experience, then to Lukas once more. Her grin was a small thing, weakened by what she'd seen but completely nonetheless. "Could I bother you to see a girl home? Gets pretty sketchy around here past sunset."
[Wyrmbreaker] [er. someONE gets possessed by a bane.]
[Wyrmbreaker] There's a quick flit at the corners of his mouth. The mood's too heavy for more. "With your mate's knowledge, then. Because if it were my mate, I would want to know." A moment's pause. "If it were your mate too, I think."
She promises change: an idealist at heart. Lukas's smile spreads a little, but there's that same ruefulness to it: a realist at heart. The truth is there probably will be change. But not a lot, and ultimately, perhaps not enough. Fear of defeat never did stop them from fighting, though.
"It's enough that you try," Lukas says. "And, yes, that you remember."
Then the grin comes a little easier, a curling at the corners of his mouth, a glimmer of his teeth in the dim light. His charisma is genuine, and potent. Drew doesn't know Lukas, and she doesn't know much about the politics of the Sept. He hasn't told her, either, that once upon a time her mate and he stood in the challenge circle together, vying for leadership of their auspice. She doesn't know, either, that that although the deal was sealed hours later in a bloodbath, the challenge itself ended without violence; won by sheer force of personality and --
well. Ideals.
Maybe not such a realist after all.
"Sure," he says. "I'll walk you back."
celebration.
9 years ago