...and concessions.

[Liadan] After a beat, maybe longer, the Fostern concedes. He backs down to the lower ranked Garou, tribe to the renter of this room. This isn't his territory. Lee isn't his tribe. Whatever friendship lays between the Godi and the Kinswoman, it has no power here, is meaningless to the Galliard.

The clothes the creature inhabiting Robbie Murdoch's body were not made for Líadan. The shirt is a simple olive green t-shirt, made for a man broader in the chest. The jeans, a pair of dark-washed carpenters, might fit.

And Lee helps with the clean up. She does so quietly, not trusting her ability to speak, or her ability to hold back. If Robbie needs her to disjoint and carve up the Wyrm-creature, she does so. If he just needs her to mop up the blood soaking into her carpet, or get him another bowl full of water, she does so without hurling things across the room. Even though she wants to. Oh, how she wants to. Lee has never felt this angry before. It's different from a Garou's Rage, but it seethes in the air around her, almost palpable. With the fury, there's also a sense of wonder, that she's capable of feeling something, anything, this intensely. A year ago, she wouldn't have thought it possible.

They do what they can, cleaning up as much as possible. The carpet is ruined. Lee's furniture destroyed. Her front door broken off its hinges. In the end, she's more a mess than when Robbie first popped into the room, her hair pulled back, wisps of red loose and floating around her pale face streaked with blood where she rubbed her face. Before they go, she washes her hands and face. The pieces of the creature are secured in big black trash bags, the door is propped up into place to be worried over later. When they've done all they can, Lee leads the way to the elevators, and down they go into the belly of the building, to the underground parking and a blue Ford Fusion. The bags are taken to places around the city, the contents burned or buried or whatever.

Hours later, bone weary and still without caffeine in her system, Lee pulls into the lot behind The Brotherhood. If Robbie, or whoever he is, has tried to talk to her, she's kept her silence. Furious at first, pale cheeks marred by ugly red splotches of color. Some women are beautiful when they're angry; Lee is not one of them. As they worked, her anger receded, dying down from raging fire to glowing embers to finally silent exhaustion. She wasn't built for this work. She's a fashion photographer for Christ's sake, but she worked without complaint.

She hesitates, considering, for a minute or more, staring out the windshield at the building of The Brotherhood. Then she kills the engine and gets out.

[Robbie Murdoch] The creature in Robbie Murdoch's skin is a different Garou altogether. There's no awkwardness in him, no uncertainty in his voice, no hectic flush and stumbling over words in the heat of the moment, no flickering-away of the eyes when pressured too hard. It's not even ferocity or orneriness, that confidence that traces every line of him now -- not anything so unstable or undependable.

It's certainty. Absolute fucking certainty of superiority. In some strange, ironic way, the personality finally fits the motion. Here is that feral grace of presence Robbie has always had, that absoluteness of balance and motion, finally cast into behavior.

So: he talks to the Fostern dismissively, carelessly, as though he ranked so far above him that the gulf between them was uncrossable. He doesn't hesitate to put his back to the angry stranger, or to pause and look down to work out the buttons of his shirt as though he were unfamiliar to them when Robbie must have put this very article of clothing on every other day. Literally. He takes the shirt off and then he puts Curata's shirt on, and in between everyone can see how lean, how borderline skinny, the Galliard is: his ribs a shadow through his skin when he stretches his arms upward, his hipbones visible juts, the definition of the musculature in his abdomen and chest more the result of a lack of overlying fat than any real build.

He doesn't move like that, though. He moves with a certain heavy deliberation, as though he weighed half again as much, and all of it muscle bulk. When the shirt falls loosely down to his hips, he rolls his shoulders as though he expects it to fit too tightly across the chest and shoulders.

The Fostern's departure gets barely a glance. Then he goes back to working out the zipper of Robbie's jeans. It takes him literally minutes on end to get the fly down, and the button open. When he's finally getting them off, if Liadan happens to be looking his way, he smirks at her.

"Don't bother looking, kinswoman. This boy won't impress in that category, either."

He steps into Curata's jeans, then, and apparently the fly is too bothersome to bother with. He lashes the belt closed and that's good enough.


Cleanup, then. The stranger in Robbie's body twists the monster apart, ruthlessly and literally shredding it with his bare hands. In homid. Robbie isn't strong enough for that; Liadan is almost sure of it. It doesn't seem to matter. He can't perform the feats of strength he does, but he does anyway: cracking spines, tearing flesh, rending it all and setting it into trash bags that the kinswoman provides.

Her job is mostly that. Running for bags, for buckets, for water. Mopping up. Putting away. When he's done chunking the monster, the Garou is apparently done. He stands back, bloody arms folded, leaving bloodstains all over again on the front of his shirt. And he directs Liadan.

Go there. Wipe that. No, you missed it. Go back. There you go, you're not as stupid as you look.


Hours later, they're pulling up to the Brotherhood. The stranger talked less and less as cleanup wore on. By the time they finally propped the door up in its frame, he was almost silent. The trip over was silent, though the Garou's eyes were brilliant and intense, flickering everywhere at once, watching the buildings and the cars as they rushed by. When she parks, he looks up at the Brotherhood, silent - and then shoves at the car door once, twice, before scowling deeply and closing his eyes.

When he opens them again, he finds the latch easily and pulls it open, stepping out. He gestures for Liadan to go first, and follows her.

[Liadan] The clothing did not belong to a Fianna Ahroun, just as it didn't belong to a Philodox, or any man in particular. They belong only to the woman who handed them over, spares kept on hand for an occasion like this, when spares would be needed. Lee doesn't watch Robbie's body undress. She doesn't steal quick, furtive glances at him when he pulls the t-shirt on or drops Robbie's jeans to the floor. If her gaze happens to drift in that direction, the look on her face isn't difficult to read. One might assume the kinswoman is too angry with the destruction of her apartment to care about the body of a strong, healthy young man. One might be right. But there is nothing, not a spark or a glimmer or even a suggestion of interest when she looks at him. Only that seething anger.

The creature's commands, his insults, do nothing to stoke her anger or help it recede. Chances are, he says nothing she hasn't thought herself. But at least she's useful, a pair of hands to do the shit work of clean up. And the work isn't foreign to her. Even though her apartment is full of expensive luxury, nice furniture (what wasn't destroyed), nice view, nice location, Lee works like she's used to this.

She doesn't offer to help him with his door. She doesn't offer a quiet instruction, or get out and run around the vehicle to open the door for him. She just got out, let him figure it out himself. Robbie gestures for her to go first, and for a moment she stares at him, her face impassive, blank as marble and as cold. And then she does, opening the back door into the kitchen, holding it a fraction longer for him to grab. She makes a beeline for the coffee pot.

[Robbie Murdoch] The Garou doesn't even glance toward Liadan as she goes for coffee. He doesn't. He heads immediately for the stairs instead, footfalls heavy on each step. Where he was so crushingly dominant before, he's almost withdrawn now, taciturn and introverted. She can hear his footsteps overhead for a while; then nothing.

When she comes up the stairs -- provided she does, eventually -- she'll find him in the hallway. In front of room 7. Sitting on the floor, back to the door, elbows one knees and head in his hands. His keys are on the floor next to him.

When he hears her coming, he lifts his head. He squints in the light. He looks disoriented and uncertain, but there's a clear recognition in his eyes. He sets his head back in his hands, palms against his forehead.

Mutters, "Christ, Liadan, you always stab people who're trying to help you?"

[Liadan] Caffeine helps. Food helps. Letting Robbie go up the stairs alone helps. Sitting in the kitchen, letting the staff bustle around her, her eyes closed and her head back, helps. When the remaining tension is finally loosened and drifts away, then Lee goes back out to her car. She considers climbing back into it, driving away, ignoring Chicago for a while. Instead she gets her bag from the floor on the driver's side and retrieves a small box from the back seat, clutches it close. There's a guitar back there, too. Not her beautiful Hummingbird. This one's a little older, a little plainer. Of all the expensive finery left behind in Lee's essentially completely open apartment, only two things came out with her, balanced with the bags of body parts and waste. She wasn't about to ask the angry Fiann to help her with these things.

Robbie is left alone upstairs for a while. Two cups of coffee, a sandwich and some fries later, and he can hear footsteps on the stairs. Eyes closed, he can feel her breeding almost before she rounds the corner. It's purer than his, stronger, calls back farther to the ancient warriors and heroes of their ancestors. Then there she is, standing several feet away. Her feet are apart, her knees bent toward each other. One shoulder slumps lower than the other. Her upper lip is gone, sucked between her teeth while her left hand twists at her side. The box is held against her hip, supported by her bag.

That fist clenches when he speaks. His face behind his hands, he can't see her dark eyes flash. She's not like him, when her anger sparks it doesn't charge the air around her. But it's there, hanging around her for a few seconds. Then her hand relaxes. Then she steps a little closer, slowly lowering her things to the floor.

She sits down across from him, knees up with her arms wrapped around them. The box by her hip lets out a morose croak. When she herself speaks, her voice is low and flat.

"You brought the Wyrm into my living room."

[Robbie Murdoch] There's no mistaking that he's tired, that he's drained and worn in a way no Garou should be after a battle and a cleanup, no matter how strenuous. He looks like he can barely get up off the ground. He looks like he can barely lift his head.

But he does. His head snaps up when she says what she does, and a renewed anger, a surge of what it was that made him lift her right off the ground in her living room, echoes again in the green.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he snarls, direct and present and forceful in a way she's never, ever heard him -- him, not the other-him -- speak. "Did I ruin ya illusion of noninvolvement? Was I a rude fucking awakening that even your glass tower couldn't protect ya from? I didn't mean to upset ya. I didn't mean to inconvenience you. I didn't mean to make this goddamn Great War we're all fighting and losing real for ya. Next time I'm fighting for my fucking life I'll be sure to stop everything and ask the fucking Wyrm to reschedule for some other nice neutral venue so we can avoid trashing ya precious little living room and your, your fucking mirages of exemption -- how's that sound?"

It's falling apart; he's losing his grasp on his words, incoherent with sudden hot anger. Robbie surges to his feet, grabbing his keys off the ground, fumbling them into the door.

"You can be a really self-centered woman, do ya know that?" The key scratches on the knob once, twice, then slides into the lock. "And I don't mean 'bitch'. you gotta go outta ya way to be a bitch. No. It's you, and you don't even realize it. You know, I -- I wondered why a kinswoman like you hasn't been snatched up and mated off already. Hospitable, resourceful, and that fucking breeding, my god. Well, now I know, don't I. Minute push turns to shove and you throw ice water in my face. You stab me in the back when I thought I was protecting you. Now you got the audacity to round it all up by bitching about a, a fucking snake in your living room. Boo fucking hoo.

"Get -- just get over yourself, Liadan. You think I wanted to fall in your living room? Taint the home of a kinswoman who's been nothing but good to me with a, with whatever that thing was? Think about it, woman."

He twists the doorknob open, flings open the door, gestures her inside.

[Liadan] She doesn't get up. She sits there on the floor, her very few most precious belongings close to hand, and she stares up at him. Reddish brows come together, her mouth parts, and she just. Stares. Completely shocked.

That she, of all people, would be self-centered. That she would think she wasn't involved in the war he fights and her friends have died fighting.

Months ago, she would have sat there and taken it. No. Months ago, she wouldn't have said a word. She wouldn't have gotten angry in the first place. She would have let his anger wash over her because she deserved it. Who was she to complain?

Today, though. Now. Now her face twists up in anger again. Fury surges through her all over again.

"I don't want to be involved? D'you think kinfolk just walk around this city, completely untouched? That...that you guys just come to us and we don't give a shit that we have to clean up another wound, or that another friend died? Did you think Spirals just ignore us and fomori let us live our lives in peace? I can't even tell you how many times I've almost been taken by Spirals. And then you," she gestures at him, not a point but with her whole hand, accusatory, "drop into my goddamn living room, and I don't know who the fuck you are. I thought you were gonna take me to Morraine Hills."

She struggles to her feet, bends to retrieve her things. But she doesn't go into room 7. "You get over yourself, asshole."

[Robbie Murdoch] "I don't think that," Robbie snaps; he doesn't bother to clarify what he's talking about. "I don't think that at all. And if you don't think you're untouched either, then don't bitch at me about 'bringing the Wyrm into ya living room'. Your home isn't any more sacred to the Great Destroyer than anything else is.

"Christ. And if ya really think killing a Wyrmling and asking you for water so I can cleanse it somehow means I'm a Dancer, you've got ya relationships all wrong. How does that even work out in your head?"

[Liadan] As his anger rises, he loses his grip on his words. For Lee, it's her accent. The carefully articulated words start drawl. Not southern, nothing even so strong as to be called redneck, country, or hillbilly. But there's a slur. Word-endings drop. Unconventional contractions form.

"I know it's not," she snaps, clutching the box tightly in both arms. "And how was I s'posed to know that's what you were doing? I don't know your rituals or whatever. All I know is we're in a war and a strange Garou--" the word is accented strangely, the same way he calls her Liadan "--popped into my apartment, wrecked some shit and threw me around." She glares at him, takes a step back. The heel of her shoe scuffs the molding, and she stops, keeps from backing so far her back is against the wall.

It makes her stop yelling, at least. Whoever's in today can hear them, clear as day, shouting at each other in the hall. Garou and kinswoman, at least one of which is red-faced, her head down now, looking away.

"If you want an apology, I'm sorry. If I knew who you were I wouldn't've thrown the bowl at you."

[Robbie Murdoch] Robbie huffs a breath out as she turns away, folding his lean arms across his lean chest, tucking his hands under his biceps. This hunches his shoulders. He hunches all the damn time, as if embarrassed to be so damn tall and such a beanpole.

"It was more the fucking punctured lung I object to, but I'll take what I can get," he grouses. A beat or two. Then, "I'm sorry I wrecked ya apartment," and yes, Monki, you should read that as apahtment. "What it's worth, I was going to help fix it."

[August Grant] The loud voices down the hall caught her attention - and lord knows, she was a curious yong woman. So, the kin crawled (more like rolled and tried really hard to sit up) out of her bed where she had been reading and headed to the door. August cracked it open just enough to poke her head out.

Hrmp. Two people she didn't recognize. She nudged the door open just a little more and stepped out into the hallway. Maybe if they saw her - they'd realize that maybe they shouldn't have this conversation in public. Afterall - arguments like this between kin and true usually ended up in fierce love making. That didn't need to be done in the hall.

[Liadan] It's not much. It's not even as good as it could be. But they apologize, sullenly. Both sulky and huffy. It's a start, though.

Robbie closes off his posture, Lee keeps that croaking box between them. It's unlikely these two will end their argument with fierce love making, or even so much as longing looks with soulful eyes. "I wouldn't've done that if I knew who you were, either."

The next door over opens and a blonde head peers out. Lee wonders if this is Taggart's old packmate, the one she never met. That was the room the Sentinels occupied, after all. But they're gone now, that pack fractured apart as soon as their alpha left. Lee dips her head to August, eyes darting away, embarrassed. No doubt the woman heard the angry shouting.

Conscious of the fact she must look like a whipped dog, the redhead tries to stand a little straighter. She lifts her chin to look up at the Galliard. And she shakes her head.

"Don't worry about it. I can get it all replaced. Are you still hurt?" She doesn't think he is. Blood Summons, gruff though he is, is an excellent healer. And gone, though she doesn't know that yet. But Robbie, and the creature that inhabited his body for a while, didn't move like he was injured.

[Robbie Murdoch] "I'll survive," he says, and then says not more. Someone else joins them. Robbie's tall enough not to have to look around Liadan. He just looks over the top of her head. That's a rare thing, for a woman that tall.

Perhaps not around Garou, though. A warrior race with genes to match: it's hard to find a Garou under six feet. It's hard to find one without powerful shoulders, a thick chest, strength in the biceps and the thighs. Robbie might be one of the outliers. He's lean, lanky, on the point of skinny. All his strength is sinewy and tough, bones and elbows, tension.

"We wake ya?" he asks mystery kin +1. Not a thick accent, there, but still noticeable: flat vowels, dropped r's. New England. Massachusetts. Boston-area, but not quite Boston. "Sorry."

[August Grant] "Oh.. no. I wasn't sleeping. Just reading. I just wanted to make sure everything was alright." A beat, and a smile. "Sorry for intruding.. just not used to living here again I guess."

"I'm August." She offered after a brief pause. Lightly glossed lips slid into a brighter smile. The young woman was just so sweet. She just oozed 'I'm a nice person.'

"I live here now.." She thumbed towards her room.. and then blushed - duh - they knew that.. she walked out of the room just a few moments before!

[Liadan] With her positioned across the hall from room 7, Robbie doesn't have to look over Lee's head to see the slightly shorter blonde woman. Lee herself looks a mess. Her red hair is back, but falling in wisps around her pale face, still slightly splotchy with an unattractive blush. Her clothing is wrinkled and splashed with blood. The Fianna are here after a battle, and tempers are high, which is more or less the truth.

"Lee," she says, shifting the box in her arms. It shifts on its own occasionally, a weight inside that moves around on its own.

August jerks her thumb back at the door to room 8, Lee follows the motion. "Ah." Reddish brows twitch, not quite forming into a frown before her expression smooths again. "There was a pack in there before. Are they, um. Are they all gone?"

[Robbie Murdoch] "Robbie," the last of their number offers. "Fianna Galliard." He jerks a hitchhiker's thumb toward Room 7. "Live in there. Sometimes my kinfolk crash there too."

[August Grant] "The room was empty when I arrived. I'm sorry to say I don't know where the former occupants went too."

"It's really nice to meet you two.." A beat and a concerned look for that box Lee holds. "Do you need help with that - or somewhere to set it down? My room is pratically entirely empty.."

[Liadan] Her early morning temper tantrum notwithstanding, Lee can come across as fairly reserved. She watches the world around her and reacts accordingly. This morning she snapped, and very nearly threw her life away.

On learning that room 8 was empty when August took up residence, there's a shift in the Fianna kinswoman. It's slight, but the look of relief is unmistakable. "Ah, cool. Oh. No, I got it he's pretty light," she adds. "Thanks." The box croaks, and Lee's mouth quirks.

[Robbie Murdoch] "Who was in 8 before?" Robbie wants to know.

[August Grant] August shrugs and rests a hand on her obviously swollen belly. "I don't know.. but there were people here back in the winter when I was in room four.."

[Liadan] "The Sentinels," she answers simply. "My old guardian's pack. Room 4? Did you room with a guy named Alex?"

[August Grant] "No.. that one was empty when I got there too." A slight shrug. "Maybe I scare them all away.."

[Victor Oseragighte] (( Whoops. ))

They're between seven and eight; he's in nine, or rather was, as the door to that room opens and he steps out. A black tank-top, blue jeans, and the omnipresent hard-toed boots make up his very simple garments. Not having expected anybody else to be out there, the Wendigo pauses and cants his head to the side before it straightens again and he nods to them. He'd been taking a brief nap, ready to ready out and about once more.

[Liadan] "Ah." Then she smiles a small, polite smile. "I doubt it. People come and go a lot here."

The door to room 9 opens, and out steps the Wendigo who brought Lee a sandwich the other night. "Hi, Victor."

[Robbie Murdoch] "I'm sure it's not you," Robbie says, and there's an offhand quality to this now. He yawns; rubs his arms like they're sore. August is a friendly woman. She's a Coggie. Her very presence soothes; makes his anger a thing of the past. Or maybe it's just because apologies were exchanged. Words are powerful things. Robbie might not be a particularly good Galliard, but he's a Galliard, and he knows this. Whoever came up with the sticks and stones adage didn't know what they were talking about.

"Sounds like people come and go," he adds. "I'll be staying a while though." He reaches back, pats his door like it was a living thing. "So you'll see me."

He raises a hand in mute hello to the occupant of 9, who he vaguely recognizes. Then he twists open the door to 7. "Tired," he says by way of explanation. "Gonna take a nap."

Without much more hello or goodbye than that, Robbie ducks into his room.

[August Grant] "Sleep well Robbie. If you ever need anything - do let me know. I'm not quite sure what to do with myself now that I don't have a pack to take care of."

August glanced back over her shoulder and once she spotted Victor, she grinned. "Hello Victor. I didn't know you lived here.. all kinds of surprises today.."

[Victor Oseragighte] "Oh. Ah, yeah." He jerked a thumb back to his room and shrugged, smiling to both of them. "For now. Good place. Nowhere else really to go." While that was not entirely true, it was the best option of the moment.

[Robbie Murdoch] Robbie's head turns at the offer. He nods again, offering up a smile of thanks. Then he lets the door tap quietly shut behind him.

[thanks for RP, folks!]