The Day After [Frank-Carmen]

[Linnea Bartlett] Even the cozy, well-appointed basement of the Church feels empty now. Most of the Guardians are dead, their rooms - a day or two after the battle - already seem dusty from disuse. The doors hang half-open; there's no need for privacy, but someone must sort through their belongings and return what their is to return to their families.

If anything remains of their families.

Linnea spends the few hours she snatches between sleep and patrols sprawling on the library floor, sorting through the contents of a footlocker. There's little left of interest, little to even tell what or who might have made use of the thing: a few changes of clothes, books, an old cookie tin with something rattling inside it. A thick blanket, hand-knitted - nothing, nothing at all.

[Frank St. Pierre] The banged up late 80's era Oldsmobile pulls up about a block away from the church, the driver sliding out and shaking off the residual heat from the car as he taps the lock shut. Lighting up a smoke and stuffing his hands into his leather jacket to yank it closer around his shoulders, he pushes the door shut with his foot. Walking the rest of the way was half habit and half wanting to finish the cigarette. When he finally gets to the front doors, he stubs the smoke on the heel of his red sneakers and flicks it between thumb and middle finger behind him, sending it sailing for the street. A hand on the door, he pushes it open and enters. A hand reaches out and dips two fingers in the stoup and shakes off the excess holy water, a few gestures out of habit and he continues through the church. Destination for him is really pointless, he's not a destination kind of guy. He hits the Library first though...

[Linnea Bartlett] There are Guardians flanking the steps leading down from the Church, two of them, pale and drawn and jumpier than shit, both homid - here, where someone tucked away in the sanctuary might catch a stray glimpse of them - and both moving stiffly, the way humans do the day after a big move or a game of touch football gone hard-contact. Except Garou never move like that unless they've been in a fight, and a real one. Bruises heal real easy, real quick. Whatever questions Frank has - if any, it's a passing moment on a dark winter night, the stairway isn't well-lit either - are passed off with a mutter and maybe - maybe -

In the library, the warm woods, the books, the chairs, there's only Linnea, a baby Garou, just firsted, a Guardian. She's thoroughly unremarkable to human eyes, just an ordinary girl, terribly young, her features still unfinished, her gangly limbs awkward. Among Garou, however, the pure breed seems to outline her every gesture with significance. As Frank enters the library, the girl shoots a glance upward, jumpy just like the rest of them. Her eyes - hot and dry now, although she's had a few embarassing moments of tears - widen until their catch on his profile, and then narrow in vague familiarity. Usually, the girl has a smile and a sing-songed greeting for everyone she sees, but not tonight. Tonight she narrows her eyes and - and - can't quite think of anything to say. There are rumors flying, everywhere, on dark black wings.

[Frank St. Pierre] His eyebrows raised at the jumpy Guardians, his eyes catching the motions... the signs. I've missed something big. Uh Oh.

He moves through wordlessly though, until he gets to the Library, the girl. His attitude around his own 'kind' is different than anything else, just another mask he wears. He flicks the cold off the coat as he adjusts it, letting it fall over his shoulders limply, exposing the white 'wife-beater' on underneith, such an unfortunate nickname to be honest. He looks over the girl a couple times, wordlessly and makes his way over closer. He leans down on his haunches and glances over what she's doing, still wordlessly. Only then does he finally look at her, blue eyes moving to meet her own.

"what happened here?"

simple question? Yea... not the best hello though

[Linnea Bartlett] "You - you weren't - " the girl blurts out. She has at hand a leatherbound journal, the sort of gift a parent gives a child, or a lover gives a mate. Write down your thoughts. Don't let this pass. Don't forget - except there's never time, not even in the endless roundabout tedium of life as a Guardian at a Caern so secure, so long-established. It's a handsome piece of work, handmade, the seams fused with a running stitch. The paper's handmade too, rough linen open beneath her long fingers, but every page is blank. Who has time to write? " - you weren't here." Flatly, it is half-way between an accusation and a question, and it didn't come out the way she intended it. Her brow creases, the sharp blonde eyebrows drawing together. Stupid, stupid. Her breath huffs out in an exagerated sigh, but the deep breath is lashed by pain and she hisses at the unexpected sting.

"They - you - you " if she were a Galliard she'd say it, say it well and true, or just outright. Her voice is wrought with tension, iron-bound. At first it seems like shame, or the usual teenage sullenness, or even just grief, but there's anger beneath her voice, choking off her words, a sort of wild fury, undirected, unvented. " - you should ask Swallows the Sun-yuf. She's the - the only - the only Galliard - they - "

Linnea stands abruptly. The journal falls from her hand, back into the footlocker. God, the words are rising up inside her, choking her - and she needs to move. "I'll show you." With that she takes off, toward the stairs leading from the basement to the catacombs worming their way around the Caern's heart.

[Frank St. Pierre] AH shit....
He runs his fingers through his hair as she stumbles, trying to complete at least a single sentance. He shakes his head as she sifts through the blank journal. He nods when she tells him who to talk to and finally stands up when she does and follows her deeper into the Caern. He'd only been gone a week, only a damn week. What the hell can happen in a week?

how much can you miss in a week?
"An attack, I can tell that much... It's got to be, the Guardians look as jumpy as a pair of greenhorn lookouts on a Vegas Casino heist." A glance behind him and he shakes his head "You know, last time I went to New York, my cable got shut off. I'm not going back there, no matter how much cash is in it for me"

[Linnea Bartlett] "You shouldn't watch television - " the girl responds, at last managing a complete sentence at one go, a sharp retort that drifts up the steep stairs. Still charged, she glances over her shoulder as he descends behind her, her round features a pale smear against the deeper darkness of the catacombs. " - it'll rot your brain." She seems deadly earnest about the statement, although it catches her offguard, to hear her own mother's words spilling out from her own mouth.

Linnea waits until Frank has gained the rough-hewn floor of the catacombs and then starts off again, although the next time he looks at her, in the deep safety of the underbawn, she has taken Glabro form - taller than she already is, the narrow shoulders gain heft and weight, her skinny arms an extra layer of muscle. She is silent the rest of the way - and, strangely enough, so is the Caern, or at least more silent than ever he can remember it, with the caverns and the catacombs, the constantly movement somewhere, their weird way of holding onto sounds, echoing them back and forth like a perpetual motion machine.

"I - " she stops just outside the Caern's heart; stops and turns to him. Her voice is deeper, ungirded with the strength and resonance the form gives her lowered voice, but she's still uncertain. The words bubble and pop in her mouth, like soap bubbles. So she shakes her head and leads him onwards, south of the Caern, where the catacombs broke open and a vast caern, the size of half a football field, appeared, coughing up the bones of the Caern's ancestors and an army of the Wyrm.

[Frank St. Pierre] "So do cigarettes, women, booze and large caliber firearms but I'm not quitting any of the above" Said as easily and in passing as one who reads the morning sports scores. He's mostly watching, the eerie calm of the Caern. His eyes look over everything and sure, an eyebrow raises when she shifts. He stays how he is and almost wishing he was wearing his pistol right about now for some reason.

Then they arrive, and he stops short.
"Oh raging motherfucking fuckberry hell god damn gunbunny pisscock fuck...." He advances slowly, taking it all in. He passes her as he does and finally turned around. He's definately older than her and taller in Homid than she is in Glabro form. He looks her in the eyes and shakes his head in pure disbelief "What in the hell did I fucking miss?"

[Linnea Bartlett] Under any normal circumstances, such language spoken aloud would deeply embarass her - for the speaker, for the listeners, for herself. It's an easy way to bring color to her cheeks, no matter how much she would prefer to forestall or hide her embarassment. But now - but here, at the edge of the strange field of battle, where the Wyrm's minions have been fused into a river of black glass - where such words seem to be the least expression of disbelief and fury, Linnea is barely touched by them, except as the play across the tightly strung strings of her own fury. The Glabro Silver Fang vibrates with each curse. She wants to launch herself across the breach once more, and tear down every terrible centimeter of the foulness. All those possibilities, all those potentialities are ripe and terrible beneath her skin - a closed circuit fed by and refed -

- he meets her eyes; pale blue, still cloudy in this form. They lack the clarity she gains in the WarForms, Crinos and Hispo. He meets her eyes, and she holds his firmly for a heartbeat, for two - a shadow of experience behind the callow youth - and then she looks away, out toward the black glass. "The first - the first - " Breathe, Christ - " - the first battle of the Apocalypse?" Her voice tails upwards at the end, the universal teenage statement-in-a-question, question-in-a-statement, and she meant it as a joke, but fucking hell, it hurts, worse than it hurts to breathe, with the furrows from the Dancer's claws still burning down her chest.

"They came from - they came - from I don't know where, and they were everywhere, all over the fucking place and we - and I - Blood-Eclipse-rhya, we couldn't hold - and then the Caern's heart and it broke open and there were two bears like bear except one was all black and corrupt and and - bear all but died and then Kincaid-rhya " her voice, deep as it is, catches, she chokes off a sudden breath, and another one, more shallow than the last, "and she was dead but she came back" another reference, blind, how impossible to follow her twisting narration. Now that she has started, however, she simply cannot stop vomiting forth information. " - and he stabbed it with the - and she had his hand, and then we all ran and it came down and - and " the young Silver Fang looks back at him at last. What her words lack in eloquence, well, perhaps she makes up for it with passion. " - everyone was dead, almost. Kinfolk too," she adds as an afterthought, unthinkingly, unkindly. Perhaps he lost someone there, too. A mother, a sister, a wife. "Hundreds of them. Something - "

[Frank St. Pierre] He nods with everything, getting if not the words the feel. The emotion and the pain and the rage that boils within him comes to a froth as he stands in front of her, listening intently to the stuttered tale. Fists are clenched tightly and every inch of him wants to turn the clocks back to be there... to get some killing done. Would one more body have helped? would his fighting prowess (what prowess he has) have helped? Would the addition of a single Ragabash have turned the tides? Slaughtered the hordes? not likely. But he wasn't totally numb, not a moron and first and foremost... he was Garou.

He breathes through his nostrils hard, calming himself (nothing to be done here by getting pissed, Frank... not a damn thing) down and walking a little closer, arms reach from her. His arm streaches out and he places a hand on her shoulder, rubbing as reassuringly as he can possibly muster without making an unconcious effort to shatter every bone in her arm from the sheer anger that's rising up his throat, burning his windpipe like sulfer and bile. "You did what you could, you survived where others did not. Be proud of what you did and that those that fell did not fall in vain." he's no Galliard himself, but that doesn't mean he couldn't talk smoothly, it's what he did "I was not here, and for that..." he shakes his head, eyes shut. He looks to her again "...for that, you can't even fucking imagine what a failure it is to me. But if what you're telling me and you and I standing here is true? We're not all lost, this building stands, this room? Still here.. albeit a bit more roomie than before. We have few things more important than our duty here... and that is what I hear in your voice, one who did her duty and came out the other side to attempt to blurt out the tale in the best way she knows how. Now come outside with me...". He releases her shoulder finally and shudders as he passes "I need a god damned smoke"

[Linnea Bartlett] The tension wreathing her seems to be limned in silverfire; perhaps it's the Fang's pure breed, everpresent, the depthless insane nobility still clinging to those (once) born to rule. Her shoulders - broad in this form as in her homid form, but solid rather than skinny - are rock hard. She starts to pull away from him as he grips her shoulder; but no, it's soothing too - to feel the connection with another Garou, to feel that living spark above the field of so much death. "I know - " she says, she whispers, an echoed amen chorus, like a call and response, when he affirms their existance, the existance of the caern. The existance of everything that means to goddamned much at the center of everything. It fills her up; her shoulders swell beneath his hand, her lungs are expanding in her chest. There's so much. She blinks, steps back as he takes lead again, and finds herself falling into step, her long strides matching whatever devouring pace he sets, wanting to say more, wanting -

They pass the Caern's Heart, the light coalesces briefly, and she regards him from behind. The moment sparks a shaft of recognition; and later, as they pause again at the stairs, she stops him with a tap of her hand on his shoulder. "I - I'm sorry. I should remember your - your name, I - "

[Frank St. Pierre] He turns to look at her over his shoulder, eyes softening a bit and a roll of his shoulder with a resonating pop. "Frank St. Pierre, The Killing Joke." Back to walking up the stairs again to the Church proper "Shadow Lord Ragabash, if you can believe it" I know I can't sometimes. "...can't say I remember you either." His hands stuff themselves into his pants pockets "Normally? I'd be talking up a storm, likely would've hit on you about five or six times, made a lewd comment and about a baker's dozen's worth of unsavory and dirty jokes. Somehow?" He pushes through to the doors "Somehow I don't feel very fucking funny today"

He stops when they're clear of the steps, in the basement. A glance around and he shakes his head, then glances over again "You smoke? ahh probably not with that TV comment you made earlier... Bad for you anyhow."

[Carmen Losada] ooc: Thanks! Heh, I'll plop her in the basement, seeing as that is where the scene has gone.

PMed to: Frank St. Pierre, Linnea Bartlett
[Carmen Losada] The basement is the typical mish-mosh of collected ruble. Keeping up appearances, of course. Old pews set up ina row and covered in sheets. A form that could be an alter, likewise covered. Boxes upon boxes. Organ pipes, battered, bruised, beaten. Christmas ornaments. Easter ornaments. Choir robes no one uses anymore. Like most basements it evokes a sense of bittersweet memory: all that was once present, all that has been forgotten, a mark of community, a testimony of celebrations, inanimate witness of survival.

Carmen Losada sits among a stash of neglected - mostly broken - bicycles, tricycles, a box marked 'for the sacriment', an open box of forgotten toys. There's a box of cigarettes at her feet and she seems to be using a chipped, plastic tea-cup [some little girls abandoned playset] as an ashtray. Her knees drawn up, jeans ripped and threaded so latte-coloured flesh shows here and there. A dusty bit of faded afhgahn throw - depecting the Last Supper - tossed about her shoulders. The hood of her baggy jumper drawn up over her head, hiding away most of the mass of sun-streaked curls, though a few of the forever unruly locks spill out. There's a legal-pad open on her knees... but the hand [she's left handed] poised to write is unmoving, her lovely face [even in such garb, even in such a state, there is no hiding her captivating appeal] set in a furrowed expression.

Frustration. Grief. Rage. Anguish. Relief. Sorrow.
Bittersweet, like everything else around her. Perhaps that is why she's chosen this place.

[better that, than the truth that she is afraid to go into the Records Keep, the sole survivor of all who fullfilled roles there. likely the most logical choice for taking up the mantle of the new Record Keeper, seeing as such is what she was trainign for... but how can she? How can she possibly hope to fill such shoes?
There are ghosts down there.]

Amber eyes [oddly, they always seem to almost be lit up from behind, as though there was some source of light - flame - lingering behind the orbs] shift and raise as the 'Lord and the 'Fang move up the steps. And full, sensual lips quirk slightly. A Shadow Lord and a Silver Fang. Comforting one another.
The stuff of survival.

[Linnea Bartlett] "I think that's illegal," the girl replies, strained humor ungirding the double meaning. Jailbait, by standards both human and Garou. Like Frank, however, she isn't feeling very funny, and she cannot summon the will to laugh at her own joke.

Between the catacombs and the basement, the young Silver Fang shifts forms again. Glabro might be necessary to heal the wounds she suffered, and the basement of St. Michael's might be secure from all above, nevertheless, it felt distinctly different, dangerous even, to stay in the form, in such civilized surroundings, without cause. "Linnea Bartlett." The girl herself might not be familiar, but the family name might, to any with a long history of the Sept. She was not the first Silver Fang of that name to serve the Caern of Echoes, although she might be the last. Her voice drifts upwards from the darkness, the bass notes gone as she returns to her homid form. Now it's just a girl's voice, thin but still charged. "Vanguard of the Dawn, Silver Fang of House Wyrmfoe, and Ahroun. Cliath," although given her age and inexperience, that almost goes without saying. "Daugther of Atlas. Descendant of Eventide, DeathWatch, Vision-of-the-Fall - " the litany of names feels wrong, feels terrible at the moment, and she stops it before digging deeper into the family tree, even if the iterations are familiar enough that she can get through a dozen words without stumbling over the circumstances. "I - I - " they emerge into the light, and she's just a girl, such an ordinary girl, her brows again drawn by the problem of cigarettes and television. " - aren't - aren't they - wyrm, I mean, if I - if I - - " If I were the Wyrm - there's a thought to choke her - and cigarette smoke, as well.

Tobacco smoke is distinctive in the damp, subterranean air. Linnea emerges ducks out from the alcove shielding the steps downward, behind the Shadow Lord, and catches sight of Swallows-the-Sun. "That - you - she," that started off well, Linnea, Christ. Her shoulders round with frustration at her own inability to stuff her thoughts through her mouth and have them emerge as - well, anything anyone would want to listen to. She looks at Carmen instead, smiling one of her weird, inscrutable smiles that isn't quite a smile or even - "I told him that he should look for you. That you could tell him - you know - " The toe of her sneaker stubs at the floor, hard. " - what happened, the - the whole thing. I - I tried."

But she's no Galliard.

[Frank St. Pierre] He instintually rolls his eyes at the lengthy introductions made, as all Silver Fangs make like he's supposed to give two good god damns who thier great great great grandmother's second cousin's best friend was. He feigns interest in the young girl's speach until it trails off. A Camel has found it's way from the inner jacket pocket and into his mouth, a black zippo retrieved from his pocket, turned sideways and lit (left handedly) as if it were a gun, his head turned to the side as he sucks in, the sound of burning paper crackling as he sucks inward the thick smoke.

He turns to look at who she's speaking to, stutteringly. A Fang without confidance and a Lord with a heart... will the wonders cease today? He nods to Linnea, the 'hey' nod that starts from the breastbone and moves up. His stance has even changed slightly, leaning on his left leg mostly with his right foot slightly extended. Hands once again dive into his pockets as he shifts and returns the lighter. Sucking in the smoke and blowing out his nose a few times before he speaks, choosing words and deciding on his exact attitude. Should he be a good boy? The girl was green, but for all intents and purposes... so was he. Just seemed to have more life experience.

He finally speaks, blowing smoke from his nostrils and mouth as he does. The smoke curls around his head and through the thick black hair, yet another curtain to pull up, wool for the eyes. "Carmen. Good to see that you made it out alive. Wouldn't want to come back to see that pretty face of yours frozen in the etternal serene calm of screaming agony. I think I get the idea but you and I are going to have to sit down and you're going to have to tell me a hell of a story" He walks over and offers his arm to her, no handshake meant though. An armclasp, if it would mean a damn to her "....I'm sorry I was away"

[Carmen Losada] The Uktena Galliard regards the Ahroun and then the Ragabash [drawn first to the abundance of Pure Breed] with a steady, penetrating gaze. Something smoulders in the depths of those eyes. Passion. Passion in all its forms, both the beautiful and fiery-poetic.. and the dark, the brooding, the homicidal. Normally the woman is a fair hand at keeping what she thinks and feels to herself... not as good as the skill of others, but decent enough. What she wears on her sleeve is appropriate for each situation, if anything at all. Typical of her Tribe, really.

But what happened a few nights ago [slaughter. trechery. they tried to exterminate us and made a fair fucking attempt at it, too.] has a way of scrubbing you raw and exposed. And you can try to hide away somewere, but that would seem to be the hight of cowardess. So she doesn't hide [not completely at least. baby steps, she tells herself. a pit-spot. I'll get to the Records soon. Any minute now. Yep. Soon.], and she doesn't avert the gaze that shows too much...
....the only salvation being that it shows so much it's rendered just as unreadable as a blank expression might be. Opposite ends of the spectrum, becoming one and the same.

Inhale.
Exhale.
When the blue-wraith smoke drifts away from her features, the expression - and she once again regards Linnea alone - has... softened? It's hard to say. There is compassion. Companionship. And those two things are strong - strong enough to form a sort of resolve. So it softens even as it streghtens, momentarily losing a good amount of the anguish, the rage, the ire, the fatigue....
"You fought in a manner to make your ancestors proud, Vanguard of the Dawn. They live in you and you did not forsake them." Soft spoken, as is her usual manner, an earthy, slightly husky voice that is gilt with the honey of her native Spanish. "Furthermore, you Inspired many of your fellow Gaians - myself included.... and that can be the difference between pressing on and giving up in such dire circumstances. You did well, Ahroun of House Wyrmfoe, and from me all shall hear the same." From many others it would seem a stuffy speech. But delivered with that soft, steady voice - from a woman sitting on the floor, smoking a cigarette - with that expression of compassion, proud companionship, and earnesty... well, it's a little something more. Hopefully it means just a little something more.


[Carmen Losada] The amber gaze slides along to Frank then and the expression within them alters once more. Subtle and slight, but there... a rekindling of ire. A flittering of wary suspicion. Not the sort of things he's ever seen in her gaze when she's regarded him before. And to accompany it, she frowns at his offered hand....

....but then accepts it, clasping at the arm, but not with the heartiness of comraiderie she might have just given Linnea. And for a moment within that gaze there is also a deep sorrow, mingled with hope... sorrowful hope. [I hope your Elders treachery did not go so far as to taint you as well. For all our sakes, I hope not.].
"I am sorry as well, Frank. We could have used you." It isn't even an accusation, just a statement of fact. Followed by a canting of her head, a serpentine movement. "And yes. We should find the time to speak sometime... soon."

[Linnea Bartlett] Some sort of internal clock ticks off, somewhere inside Linnea's head. With the Caern so de-populated, everyone has doubled shifts, tripled shifts. Only the wounded get respite, and the definition of wounded has changed as well, from wounded to incapable of locomotion. Capable of locomotion as she is, it is her turn.

She is arrested, however, by the Galliard's recognition. She stops still; her rounded shoulders unfold, straighten - still skinny but broad and capable - full of such possibilities. "Thank you - " the young woman says, not stuttering, not stumbling over her formal thanks, which are charged with enough passion that they must be heartfelt. "Thank you. I'm sorry," to one, to both, "I have duty below. Goodnight."

With that, she turns on her heel and disappears below.