Walk [John]

[John] When last their paths crossed, the city was plunged into a white darkness, the streets choked with snow and abandoned cars, bodies driven indoors by the threat of freezing, of death. They no longer concern themselves with this though the temperature has risen by insignificant degrees and winter is far from over. The denizens of the Nation have other concerns to contend with: the Wyrm doesn't seem to sleep, to feed on anything other than death and decay.

One particular denizen of the Nation is beginning to question whether the only safe kinswomen belong to his own tribe. Thus far none of them have deluded themselves into thinking that he is anything other than present, into thinking that he will ever be anything other than that. From that he could distill a lesson, perhaps, but it only truly confirms something he knew before.

He would rather face the potent wrath of one of his blood than the nebulous jealousy-fueled sort of an outsider. At least Fenrir women speak their mind. They do not hide themselves behind veils of coyness and secrecy. There is strength in that, strength beyond simply being able to throw a punch and weather broken bones.

That's also neither here nor there. It's cold outside, but it's balmy compared to a week and a half ago. In the moments before sundown, when the world is pushing home for the weekend, the subway stations of the city are crowded not because of homelessness but because of routine. Friday means something to most people. To John, it means more people.

There is a monster among them, though, and while he has a boyish face and affable manner despite an inability to speak, he has an aura of menace around him. It keeps people at arm's length. He has a bubble around him, and he's bobbing his head and drumming his hands on his thighs as he stands with his back to the wall; he isn't wearing headphones so Christ knows what he thinks he's doing.

[Drew Roscoe] Kinfolk of other tribes were hapless because of one painfully obvious detail: they were of other tribes. Fenrir prided themselves on strength, it was the highest virtue. They did not look to race or gender or particular skill when they selected wolves into their ranks for they breeding, they only cared for strength-- be it of body, of mind, of spirit, of character... Whatever, so long as it was strong. This was why the Kinfolk of the tribe were capable, because they were bred and/or raised by the strongest that the Nation had to offer. Because Fenris wouldn't accept anything less.

This is why Drew stood straight backed and sure near the back wall of the subway station, waiting for the specific train that would let her out closest to her neighborhood. It wasn't for ignorance or falsely placed confidence, she didn't believe herself to be safe, she didn't believe people would leave her alone if she pretended at straight shoulders and a level chin. She was bred of Fenrir stock, she was strong enough to fend for herself, smart enough when to know to run, and equipped with the talen worn on a chain about her neck, tucked under her blouse, to call for help if need be.

The truck was in the shop for basic manual upkeep, a tuning up here, a change of this, a set of new tires. She'd smiled sweetly and they'd agreed to keep it overnight, since she'd promised so nice and sincere and smiled like that when she she'd come by in the morning first thing to pick it back up. So, for today, it was public transportation. She waited with her back leaned against the wall, with the top few buttons of her navy winter jacket undone to ventilate some of the warmer air in the substation. Beneath the collar of a pale blue work blouse stuck out, going uniform with the gray work slacks and the black low-heeled dress shoes she wore. Her hair was down, front swept to one side and pinned out of her face, her make-up was light because it would do nothing but wear away as the day went on.

John was an easy face to spot in the crowd, not because it was so familiar but because everyone else kept as far away from it as possible. They didn't understand the correspondence with the sensation of chilly murder that they gave him with the fact that the moon had swollen past its half point, but Drew did. She recognized that almost instantly, especially when the face found a place in her memory.

She called to him not by name, but with a sharp whistle to catch his attention over the din of the crowded station. When he glanced up, her hand came out of her pocket and gestured to him, wrist and fingers twitching back toward herself twice to indicate he should come over. She's smiling, and while her face is still round and warm and cute, there's something that suggests business at the corners of her eyes anyways.

[John] He has very little reason to suspect that Drew should have anything for which she'd care to give him grief, yet even for being as inept at reading the emotions of other people, there is something that he can near-to-always glimpse from looking at a woman's face, and that's when she has Something To Say. John looks over sharply when he hears that whistle, not because he expects the source to be who it is but because it grabs his attention like a sharp tug on a leash, and when he looks over his silent rocking-out stops. Eyebrows lift, recognition lights upon his features, and then he sees that seriousness encroaching on the edges of Drew's friendly smiling.

Whatever good mood he'd been in a moment ago visibly leeches away. He could not look any more unamused if the blood had drained from his face, and if anyone were to be paying attention to him they'd be able to tell that the look on the male's face was one typical of most males being beckoned by their female acquaintances or partners. It's the look of detached scanning, the brain poring through the memory banks to answer the ever elusive question:

What did I do wrong this time?

Peeling himself away from the wall like a large feline extracting himself from a beam of sunlight, John picks his way through the crowd without murmuring platitudes or niceties. He doesn't have to, with most people getting the hell out of his way as he passes through, yet more than once he accidentally brushes against a professional who refuses to look up from his or her Blackberry to save his or her body from being hit by Rage.

He is in dire need of a shave, she can see, but he is hardly out on the street and starving by the looks of things; he just can't be fucked finding a razor. Blue eyes attempt to veil their caution as John comes to join Drew at her portion of the wall, but he is not too intently focused on the effort; when the PA system bings with an incoming train, he looks up as if to check for an incoming attack before looking back to her, curiosity on his face. He says nothing, but he doesn't have to. The What's up? inquiry is written on his features.

[Drew Roscoe] "Good Christ, John," she greets him with as opposed to a more polite, traditional 'hello' or 'how are you doing'. "You make it look like I kicked your puppy across the finish line."

He had worked his way through the crowd, though truth be told that didn't really require much work all things considered because as the tides did for Moses, the crowd parted for him. It was a subtle shift, they didn't split to make a clear aisle for him to walk through, but rather they moved like scuttling beetles along the beach of the Great Salt Lake, a clumped up tide that would create small holes for your feet to be in, giving enough range that they wouldn't be stepped on, harmed, or picked up and carried away by the beaks of birds, but always moving back to fill that space once the threat had gone, never able to truly predict where the threat was going, merely responding by instinct.

When he's near enough, she greets him both with those words and by reaching out to scrub a hand against the outside of his upper arm, the gesture a curious one like being patted on the back was being mixed with an implied attempt to warm him up from the cold, though her palm against his coat wouldn't do any good at all in that respect.

His face inquires as to what is up, why she would've called him over in the first place, and her hands return to her coat pockets, shoulders go even against the wall once more (she's obviously unconcerned with getting the back of her coat dirty against the wall, or the hair that was pinned between the two for that matter). She glanced briefly upward with the announcement of the next train, then looked back to John, doe-brown eyes meeting wolf-blue ones. Her smile is a little more dominant with one corner of her mouth than the other. Maybe she had a long day and that was why it looked tired, half-attempted rather than having her whole heart in it. Maybe she had something to say that he wouldn't like, that she didn't like. Maybe the past week had worn her down with all its sour words and apologies and twisted arms.

Nonetheless: "You look well. Kora's housing you?"

[John] When he laughs, it looks as though it would be a loud pronouncement of amusement than what it actually ends up sounding like, which is a scattershot of air undirected by vocal cords and a flash of teeth--whiter than one might imagine someone who looks as backwater and uneducated as John to possession--to accompany a crinkling of his eyes. It's quick and over far too soon, but that wary tension leaves him when Drew makes that joke. Only after he laughs does he realize he doesn't entirely understand the joke, and bafflement hits him, visibly.

Oh, well.

The kinswoman rubs his arm, the friction between her palm and his heavy winter jacket buried underneath the screech of the train roaring up to the platform and all the processes that comes along with it, and John seems comforted by it. There is no sense of yearning beyond that, no escalating reaction to the muffled physical contact, but his concern is well and shelved by the time she looks up at his face and asks after where he's being housed.

John shakes his head, quickly, negating the idea. Reaching up with his left hand, he scratches at a heavy brow, then gestures over his shoulder, as if to indicate the past. He points between them, mouthing Now, and shakes his head again.

[Drew Roscoe] She tips her head to the side some, eyes hopping from his face to his hand when it moves quickly behind his shoulder. Drew was accustomed to Rage, steeling herself against the likes of Joe and Thomas for so long had calloused her up to it-- she wasn't so flinchy as she once had been. However, nothing ever numbed you completely to something like that. She'd still glanced quickly when his teeth flashed, though she relaxed to the fact that, despite lack of sound, it was obvious laughter. Now, with his hand moving quickly, it could easily be a death blow to her skull, or a grab at her throat. She wanted to trust him, but instinct was what kept her alive amongst other things, she followed it and kept her eyes on the parts of his body made for dealing death.

Charades takes a second to figure out, her lips move silently and wordlessly as she works through possibilities before coming up with one that made sense.

"You did, but not anymore." A statement rather than a question. She takes her hands from her pockets and rubs at her wrists. She'd stayed late at work tonight to make up for time she'd taken to herself yesterday, time to go visit a good friend come back to town, a face she realized on the drive out to Bronzeville that she needed to see more than she'd realized since it had disappeared. She'd installed several new programs in several different offices, and all the typing and hunching down to fit cords through a plethora of holes and behind desks and cabinets just left her wrists sore and her fingers mostly jammed and tired.

"So did you pick up a room at The Brotherhood then?"

[John] There is no childlike jubilation at Drew's understanding his pidgin signing, no glee at being able to hear that the woman he's attempting to converse with is having little difficulty. He should expect no less from a daughter of Fenris, half-blooded though she is, and rather than seeming triumphant the Modi just nods his head, the movement more restrained and purposeful than his earlier silent enjoyment of a song playing in his head.

His eyes flick away from her face when Drew massages her wrists, his brow kinking slightly as they search for any signs of injury, as though he's beginning to suspect that everyone he comes into contact with is going to appear with some new mark or mystery on her flesh. There is nothing visible, and after a few seconds John looks back up at her, tongue pushed into the back of an incisor, seeming content to simply stand and wait for his train with her now that the possibility of an interrogation or a tongue-lashing has sufficiently passed.

The next train is in three minutes. The current one squeals and roars away from the platform, taking with it a small chunk of bodies. They still are not alone, but the humans would rather brave a speeding silver bullet than the light-eyed man talking to what they can only assume is going to be his next victim.

A question as to whether he's staying at the Brotherhood, then, and though John shakes his head he can see where this is going. The Modi unzips his jacket, revealing himself to be wearing a nondescript dark t-shirt that likely came out of a pack of three and hauls out a leather-bound journal. Rather than writing, he flips through the pages--she can't see what is housed in the previous entries, he being nearly a full foot taller--until he finds one that has the answer on it already. Amidst a sea of glyphs is an English word, poorly spelled:

Soth sid.

[Drew Roscoe] She understands his signs and gestures, and though she wouldn't tell him where she got most of this insight from (because it could come across as insulting and she'd never mean it to be), truth be told it came from toddlers. The pointed, they babbled. Half of their words were jumbled up and you couldn't entirely understand what they meant, so it often came down to body language, pointing and gestures. Take that and combine it with more than one booze-lubricated party where she was declared charades master, and she was setting herself as one of the experts in communicating efficiently with the mute Ahroun.

He pulls open his jacket, from an interior pocket comes his notepad, and after flipping through a few pages (she's glimpsing the glyphs, eyeing them with interest to the point that she nearly misses that he stopped on a page with English-- her answer) he lands.

First thought: Sid the Sloth?
Second thought: Idiot. South side.

She nods, showing comprehension, and shoves her hands back into her pockets, shifts her gaze to watch the train as the tires screech and metal groans and it's back in action, rumbling away with a new load of passengers filling it to the brim.

"Not bad stomping grounds there. My mate and his used to roam Bronzeville. Always a fight, always some action, always something that needs to be done." She flashes a grin, bright despite the fact that it was relaxed and half mast. "At least you'll be busy." Her eyes hop down near his chest and stomach, then back to his face. He didn't look like he was going hungry, his eyes and cheeks weren't sinking at all, and she figured if he spelled the way he did, moved the way he did, he probably wouldn't see as much use behind a razor as others might.

She runs her tongue along the back of her teeth for a second, feeling the sharper tip of an incisor with its edge before she asks, casual as pie. "S'where you're heading now then, I'd imagine. ...You found a pack alright, I'm guessing? You look like you're not wanting or scavenging for anything." There's a pause, then an amendment. "Don't suppose you would be even without a pack anyways, save the companionship."

[John] There is little more than wry agreement when Drew states that there is always something needing to be done around Bronzeville, a slight slant as his lips quirk into a lopsided, close-lipped smile, and then he tips his head to one side before nodding his assent. He isn't bitter, but being as she was there his second day in Chicago when the so-called elder of his auspice accused him of having too much free time if he could devote thirty seconds to half-heartedly brawl with a Bone Gnawer it wouldn't be much of a stretch to presume that he has very little time for anything other than the war, now.

Part of John's appeal, females have stated both jokingly and otherwise, is that they don't have to pretend to listen to him talk. On the flip side, he has no choice but to listen, and closely, for it's nigh unto impossible for him to pretend when he does not give a fuck about what his companion is saying. Right now, he's listening to her, journal closed over a finger, other hand dangling at his side.

When she states he doesn't look like he's wanting or scavenging, the solid man pats his abdomen with his off right hand, the sound muffled by the fall of cotton over his skin and muscle, by the bustling of humanity around them. Someone his size likely requires a great deal of food to keep weight on, yet he hardly looks as though his metabolism is chiseling away his reserves.

A question about being without a pack has him flipping again. He frowns, folds his lips into a flat line, and tears out part of a page. What he's left with, he hands over to her to read.

My name is Drawn~in~Blood. Born to Stonehammer son of Clawfinger and Bitter~Summons niece of Wrath Jarl of Sept of the Dry River. Both dead. Sept of Dry River now Fallen.

Pack since Rite of Passage gone. Dead. Ashes in north. No home. Come to Chicago becus nowere to go. Find new pack.

[Drew Roscoe] He pats his stomach, and she just grins at him. It was an affirmation of what she'd seen already in his face, his agreeing that, if nothing else, he was eating and resting well. His eyes weren't bruised for lack of sleep, weren't sunken or half lidded. His energy did not wane, he didn't lean against things or sit to rest his weary feet. He was alive, strong and ready to take on whatever may come his way. Drew recalled an incident from the subways before-- when a puffed up stretched out man and his zombie mother, then some others in a whirlwind of motion, had attacked her along with a handful of other Kin.

With weapons, they'd managed. Thanks to preparedness they survived. Without, they would have been dead, captured, or some eventual combination of the two. They'd burst out of a maintenance closet, or a security office, or something of the like. Virtually out of the woodwork. Almost literally out of the cementwork.

John was here, though, able-bodied and conditioned for such things. A train could derail and they would probably be okay. Them, though, just he and her, because he wouldn't concern himself with bystanding humans and she wouldn't ask him to.

He's flipping the pages in the journal, pointing to something she was pretty sure she'd read before. It rang familiar, maybe she'd heard Lukas relaying it, or pieces of it, after reading the night they first met. Either way, she knew that he was here looking for a new pack, and she nodded her head to show that she understood.

"Right. I just thought maybe you'd found your new one already."

[John] She just thought maybe he'd found his new one already.

It isn't sheepishness that has his lips quirking again, another huff of laughter--this one more muted--escaping from his throat; he does, however, seem to recall having told her this at one point, or else he's forgotten that he told her and just now been reminded. Perhaps he's met so many people he's having trouble remembering who knows what. Even were they not located in a city teeming with human life, he does not have the capacity to even howl.

He's tried. It's a pathetic endeavor he hasn't repeated in over a decade.

Even without words, without empty promises, without boasting and bragging, there is an assurance looking at this man that whatever happens he will respond to it without question. Beyond the quiet, spine-straightening strength exhibited by the Kinfolk, John has a physical presence that eliminates the idea that he is incapable or unwilling to fight. He is hardly skinny. Clothing, while not tight, fits his form, and there is muscle underneath even his thick jeans and his bulky winter jacket; she could feel not softness but warm stone beneath the padding.

It's misleading. The general consensus is that metis are wasted, sniveling things, hideously deformed. Most of them are; they're kept at the Caern never to walk amongst humanity. This one simply can't talk, and his confidence and his curiosity, the friendliness that shines through despite the hardness he can exhibit, makes remembering his origins difficult.

To her thought, he nods, then flips and writes out a new series of words. When he shows them to her, the first two are so carefully constructed it appears as though he's been practicing them.

Defiance. Eagle.
Hunter alpha
Joey beta

[Drew Roscoe] The nod and the writing that follows up the pre-written explanation is answered by Drew with a bit of a grin, this one triumphant in its own small way. She'd been correct in her assumption. When she's been corrected so many times over and over again, told what she was wrong at and what she needed to change to be right, it was rather nice to be on the money the first go around. She felt like things were coming together, like she could boast herself a Good Kin now.

Even if all she did was figure whether someone was in a pack or not. It was the little things that helped.

She reads the names that he writes. Defiance and Eagle don't mean much to her, but the four words following do. Alpha and Beta hold meaning, and the names hold faces-- one instant and the other she has to search for before it settles in her mind. Again, she nods and straightens up, her way of showing that she was done reading and that nothing he'd scrawled down in that horrible handwriting of his had confused her.

"I know them," she answered. "Knew Joey from the earlier days, when I still knew everybody. She's one of the few left around from that time." Whatever opinions she may have on Hunter are left alone. He was John's alpha now, after all. It would be understandable if he jumped to the defense, even if he was the very man that he'd gotten into a brawl with the first night she saw him, before she even got a name to call him by.

[John] Hunter is John's Alpha, but his most vocal critic has to be the one person in this city who is incapable of producing human speech. He has already expressed that the Bone Gnawer has to prove himself to be as good as he purports himself to be, that he has to show that he produces stronger warriors, that he is committed to fighting the Wyrm, that he truly does not believe that the Garou in charge now are fighting with as much purpose and strength as they can and that they are the reason things are the way they are now.

Unfortunately, being in a pack means that he has exposure to them that the rest of the city does not. He knows how much effort is being put in and how much is not. He knows what plans are being discarded and which ones are simply words, the blustering of a Bone Gnawer who comes up with incredibly convincing speeches that have minimal follow-through.

Nobody but his pack knows his thoughts, and those are only which thoughts he deigns necessary to share with them. For all they know he is secretly plotting to break all three of their necks, but he isn't talking.

Standing in this crowded subbasement, it is not the full moon, yet his patience is waning even as it waxes. The next train is not for two more minutes, and he is not watching the announcement board. It will come when it comes, yet the terrified hush of the crowd, the heat of their bodies, the smells of perfume and cigarette smoke would be aggravating were he paying any mind to it.

In his form, his eyes, though, Drew reads no tension. He's focusing on what she's saying, trying to learn more about this place from someone who has been here. Maybe her voice is calming. Her physical appearance dissolves any thought of violence one might otherwise have against her. She's so tiny, so youthful, yet there is steel in her spine.

When he shows her what he's written in response, the question mark is, as usual, on his face.

Why did you leev

[Drew Roscoe] The moon grew closer to full every day that it wasn't waning down to nothingness. This was something that Drew understood, was acutely aware of. The fact that this Modi, tall and strapping and unable to simply tell someone when they were getting too close, when they were crowding him or stepping on his toe, was going to try and ride a crowded subway train was a curiosity in and of itself. Drew'd glanced toward the board, briefly, contemplating this, then looked back to John, or more to the point, the notepad he flashed to her when he'd finished writing.

The question is met with a small nod at first, showing understanding, then followed quickly by a loose, dismissive shrug of her shoulders.

"Joe heard that he was needed somewhere else, out west. I think they were trying to establish a new Stronghold. He wanted to go out there, figured they could use him more than Chicago could... I guess it was quieter then on your guys's front." She nipped at her lower lip for a moment, glanced away from John toward the people hovering near the platform, waiting for the next train. "He wanted to go, so I went with him. My place was by his side." For a mated Kin, it was as simple as that. It needed to be, that was their Duty after all.

"When he died there was nothing there for me. The Tribe wanted me there as much as I wanted to be there. I knew you guys could use my help more than they would ever think to ask for it."

The nibbling at her lip stopped with the story, and she looked back up to John with a resolved hardness at her brow. While she was telling the story she was deciding something entirely unrelated. "You want me to ride the train with you? I make a decent buffer to the crowds." Not physically, of course, that would be laughable. She meant she'd make a good focus, something to concentrate on apart from the strong perfumes, the mutters, the close crowding. Physically she couldn't do much for him, but she figured that he knew what she meant.

[John] The question she asks doesn't require a written response. He either wants her to ride the train with him, or he doesn't, yet he stops and thinks anyway. Before he descended the stairs, this probably seemed like a good idea. They're in a city, and the means of getting around in a city are governed by a system of vehicles for which one has to pay in order to get to where one wants to go. That they are in a city, one could posit, means that he is going to run into humans. The concept of a work day, of rush hour, of there being times of day when there are greater concentrations of humans means that eventually he's going to run into swarms of them.

Humans do not understand the relevance of the phases of the moon. Unaware of werewolves' presence, of vampires' inability to walk during the day, of the sheer soul-crushing banality of their existences making life for the fae folk dangerous if not impossible, humans continue through life destroying their planet, diminishing their resources, killing off animals that cannot fight back, and the thought that there is another world out there never occurs to them.

He understands it. Prior to wearing a man's flesh, the idea of humans was beyond him, as well. Being among them hasn't helped him to understand them any better, but he recognizes that Kinfolk play an important role in enabling all of them, not simply the sin-born, to function in a world teeming with these soulless barbarians.

It is a noble suggestion that Garou exist to protect humans, but there is no protecting them when their greatest enemy is their own ignorance and destructive tendencies. Though the earth will still be here long after the humans are gone, it is Gaia, not these apes, that the Garou protect.

Those apes could drive him to frenzy if they aren't careful.

John does not shake his head 'no,' or nod his head 'yes.' He writes:

Shod walk insted. Too crowded.

[Drew Roscoe] Eyes skim the writing on the notepad once it's tipped toward her, take a moment to decipher the chicken scratch (she's getting better at it, the poor spelling hardly registered anymore), then move to the announcement board once again. There's a half a second of thought at best, decision making, before she nods in agreement with him.

"You're absolutely right."

So her fingers fall to the buttons of her navy winter jacket and move from bottom to work their way upward until the coat was closed once more, up to the hollow of her throat. She's fishing a tube of chapstick from the coat pocket and applying it as she nods her head toward the stairs, pushes away from the wall, and starts walking. Lips rub together, evenly applying the balm as the chapstick itself was tucked away into her pocket once more. That hand stays, the other hand goes into its pocket to mirror the first. Shoes clack quietly on the hard floor as she walks to the exit of the subterranean levels of the city, to be back out in the closest semblance of fresh air you could ask for within city limits.

As she walks, she's quiet, chewing at the edges of her tongue like that's the closest she can get to tangibly chewing on words. The quiet breaks when they reach the stairs and start ascending against a last-second crowd to make the next train. "'Scuse us," is vocalized as she moves to the side, out of the way of the crowd, toward the railing. She's touching John's elbow to guide him as well, though a Modi might be less than inclined to move for a herd of humans.

[John] It seems as though they have to cross the Sahara rather than a few hundred meters in order to extricate themselves from this pit of overtired, overanxious bodies that are afraid of the tall grizzled young man standing by the back wall with a woman far too adorable to possibly be acquainted with him for any reason other than happenstance or commonality. They might be subconsciously attempting to figure out what it is she's doing with a guy like him, coming up with reasons like She's his sponsor or She's his parole officer or She's his sister.

What they actually are to each other doesn't mean much to them because it has no translation in their minds. John isn't thinking about what they're thinking about Drew and himself. His attention isn't solely on getting the hell out of here so he can breathe again, but when Drew tells him he's right, buttons up her jacket without protest, something like relief comes to him.

This will probably be the last time he takes the subway before it's utterly pitch dark outside. He's a smart creature, but not terribly perceptive. He knows that in the mid-mornings, the subway stations are empty. They are not empty in the evenings. He'll have to walk.

Cabs won't pull over to pick him up. This was easier out in the desert, in the woods. He doesn't say that, either. He has the beleaguered acceptance of his surroundings that a man in an unhappy marriage possesses when he begins to trudge home from the office. His marriage is to this city, though, to the totem to which he has pledged loyalty.

Unhappy isn't the word, either, but he's certainly having difficulty adjusting. Drew's hand on his arm, on his elbow, is welcome for a reason wholly different to that of a fertile human male. It isn't loaded with potential, or teasing flirtation: it's an anchor for him. It means he isn't alone.

So he goes with her.

==========

There is plenty they could discuss on the walk south, were it not so cold, were the effort of reading his writing while they walk not opening up to the potential of distraction followed by an attack. Once they're out on the sidewalk, he gives her a missive in his journal:

Tel me about Joe.

And he listens, for however long or short she chooses to talk about Joe, or his pack, or what it was that happened out there on the west coast. It would be better to ask it of a Skald, perhaps, but he asks her. Kinfolk know a different more about their mates than their packmates have. There are sides. Whether or not Joe's were softer, or hidden, she saw a side of him that the rest of the Nation didn't.

They speak of him differently than she does.

They walk until they arrive at her house, and John does not invite himself in. Hovering at the sidewalk, he squints in thought, and writes:

Thank you

For what, he doesn't say. It could be anything; he has more stored inside his skull than he would otherwise let on. His spelling belies his intelligence.

[Drew Roscoe] The walk back to where Drew lives-- because it's closer, on the way to wherever he's going, because he can get himself home safe just fine but there was always the chance that a simple-minded mugger could be the end to her (though this was very unlikely, she'd been taught how to keep herself safe, she's staved off Spirals and Fomori before [but she's also been overtaken by them just as easily]). As they walk, he flashes her his journal, asking about Joe.

So she tells him.

Her story is not a brief thing so much as a collection of anecdotes, of tales that she flourishes not with the great poetic skill of a Skald (though, truth be told, that's precisely what she would have been of genetics had turned just a little differently) but with the potentness of someone who trusted, who loved, and furthermore who believed. She regaled him with the story of him saving her and Lonna from a man with a tranq gun and his Spiral counterpart, how he'd dominated another Garou for her honor even after dying, savaging back, and maintaining a hole in his side she could see the pink of his lung through.

She told him about Alaska, how they'd soldiered through a blizzard and how he'd challenged some great snow beast and managed to get away without the mountainous monster gobbling him up whole, luring it away from something precious and out where it needed to be. She told him about Thomas and Kemp and Decker in there, too. She tells him about Ratkin on a runaway bus, about how she had been abducted by Spirals and how Joe, along with a Fianna named Curata, had murdered them both in moments and busted the place down to free them.

She told him about how deep his love for her ran, how honor bound he was to wait and make sure that challenges were appropriate, until he was Jarl, until he knew he could meet whatever challenger that could come calling for her with teeth and come out intact enough to come home to her. About how he was so sure about Portland. About how he was glorious, about how he was honorable, and about how wise he had always been.

She doesn't seem sad through any of this, tears never glass Drew's eyes in all of this storytelling. More than anything, she is proud.

He may note, though, that through all of this his death is not mentioned. That might be something to look into later. For now, though, they are at her home and he is thanking her-- for the story, for the walk home, for taking him from the substation... Perhaps for all. It doesn't matter, she just smiles and thanks him for the walk home, pats the back of his arm just above the elbow, and bids him goodnight.