Background: ============================================================================== Sometime in the middle of last night (Sat Mar 26). Very broken and tearful. (It's Rina.) "It's me... I-- I wish you were there, I really--" Her voice is thin, unsteady, and it's obvious she's crying. "Somethin' happened. With John. And he's hurt and it was my fault-- there's no point, is there? Not if I hurt /him/, too, not if--" A choked sob. "I thought I could do it, but I can't, I can't d-- *do* this anymore.. I'm sorry. I love you. I love you like a brother but nothin' is enough, it's /never/ /enough/. I'm so sorry... I know you'll be pissed at me, I know, but I-- I'm not strong. Not anymore." Some sniffling. She's outside, in the wind. "I hope-- everything's all right. I saw the moon and I thought of you, I thought of everyone... she's so beautiful tonight. I love you. An'I hope-- I hope you'll f'give me." ============================================================================== Grey calls her back repeatedly. Gets no answer. She's not at home, either. Finally, he does some Questing Stone work and discovers that she's at the hospital. The Blighted one. [...] It is currently 15:36 Pacific Time on Sun Mar 27 2005. Currently the moon is in the waning Full Moon phase (84% full). Currently in Saint Claire, it is a cloudy day. The temperature is 47 degrees Fahrenheit (8 degrees Celsius). The wind is currently coming in from the northwest at 7 mph. The barometric pressure reading is 29.57 and rising, and the relative humidity is 93 percent. The dewpoint is 45 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius.) Harbor Park -- The Meadow One of the last bastions of green left in the city, mottled and withered grass and weeds covers the earth like a badly stained carpet, with the construction work turning what is left into just bare dirt. The vegetation seems marginally healthier the further it is from the river and much healthier towards the central area of the park around the fountain. Construction work is ongoing here: a raised earthen berm about five feet tall is being built all around the park perimeter, with two breaks each at the Bridge Street entrance and the First Street end. Wooden posts are being erected at regular intervals all along the earthen wall, while tasteful iron gates and fences are being added at the entrances. Overpowering the scent of living vegetation are the exhaust fumes from a busy street to the west and an unpleasant stench from the Columbia River to the east. From the street view or river view, the park is now isolated, as if it existed apart from the city. People in tall buildings have an excellent view of any goings-ons for now, though. In the center of the park, a small glade of six tall trees and a flower bed surrounds the fountain. The murky waters of the Columbia River flow swiftly along the east side of the park. Bracketing the park to the west is First Street and the city of St. Claire. Grey prowls restlessly through the park meadow, smoke trailing back from the cigarette in his mouth. The Glass Walker doesn't look like he's gotten much sleep (if any) in the past day or so; his eyes are shadowed, and his face is drawn, tight, and thrumming with repressed fury. Ask how many Gnawers does it take to pick a pocket, and one would have to muse on the auspices. As it is, Yi and Joey, the notorious pair of ragabash, come jogging into the park at a fast clip and from relatively different directions. Yet, they are in sync, and with a quick glance behind her, Yi tugs at the brim of her baseball cap and nods at the other Gnawer, shifting her path to intercept with Joey. A wide, smirky smile is on the Asian ragabash's lips, as she makes to compliment her apprentice in crime. "Good job Joey. I think we've lost him after that last turn." As the pair make their way further into the park, Yi is looking out to see who else might be occupying the park. Joey grins widely at her mentor, giving a big nod. "That was sweet. Holy crow!" She takes in a large breath to catch the air back, and stretches her arms up. "We get anything good?" Grey's restless movement through the meadow slows as the two familiar figures come jogging into view, and by the time they come together, he's stopped, watching from a distance with a thin-lipped frown, the breeze tugging at the tails of his coat. Yi heads towards a bench and does catch Grey's figure, but is distracted with the question from her companion. Taking in a few more quick, panting breaths as the adrenaline rush fades slowly, she digs into her jacket, extracting the leathery wallet plucked away from some hapless victim further uptown. "Hm..." Yi replies with a short, quick estimate. "A hundred seventy, about?" She closes up the wallet, and tosses it towards Joey. "Here - this one is your prize." The smile on her face doesn't fade too much, though Grey again draws her attention away as she now takes a closer look. The mouth of the young Gnawer drops wide open and another expletive is offered, "Never held so much at one time in my life." She hurriedly takes the cash out of the wallet and begins stuffing it down the waist hem of her jeans, a wide smile on her face. "What do we do with the rest of the crap?" Grey is still looking in their direction as Yi looks in his, and their eyes seem to meet briefly, across the distance. His expression remains cold and harsh, but after a few terribly long seconds, he turns away and looks out toward the river as he takes a long drag off his cigarette. Yi wets her lips, eyes meeting Grey's for the few seconds before he turns away. Once he does, she turns back to Joey with a more tempered smile. "We give Mr. Carson his wallet back. Or, at least, his driver's license and the credit cards. We have no uses for those, and I don't like to deal with the card information dealers." She beckons for Joey to come with, as Yi changes from heading for a bench to heading towards the section of park where Grey is standing. "And give Mr. Carson a note to be more careful about keeping his valuables safe." As the two approach closer to the Walker, Yi's demeanor gains a bit more tension, but nowhere rivaling that of Grey's. Joey follows along once the money is safely stuffed down her undies. She glances to their destination and gives the older Ragabash a curious look. "We don't hand it back ourselves though, right? I mean, duh." As they get closer she grows more quiet, falling into step slightly behind Yi, hands sliding into her pockets. Grey gives the two Gnawers a sidelong glance, then looks away, back toward the river. He waits for them to approach, still smoking. "It is up to you how you want to return it," Yi answers her tribemate, "but I just place it in their mailbox, or in their newspaper." The next smile she gives Joey is much more wry, and fox-like, before it disappears to be replaced with a serious straightline. "Have you heard from Rina?" she asks aloud, keeping at a polite distance suitable from the halfmoon. Joey continues to narrow her brow at the information Yi gives her, then lets out a final shrug and looks around idly as the two converse. Grey focusses on Yi, ignoring Joey entirely. His eyes narrow at the CantoGnawer, and he reaches up to take the cancer stick from his mouth. His expression turns suspicious, and this is reflected in his voice. "Why." Yi casts a brief sidelong glance to Joey, before shifting attention back to Grey. "Because," she says with an attempt to keep the emotional connection out, "she called me last night. And she is now... I suspect... in the hospital." The mention of the hospital gets the older raggie to glance in its direction, further uptown. Joey looks up at the mention of someone in the hospital. "Who's Rina? Should we be getting her out or something- I mean that place is like, bad mojo." Grey's gaze bores down on Yi, making it clear to the older Ragabash that, yes, he's still got that grudge against her. Nobody keeps a grudge like a Serb. Joey's voice jerks his eye toward her, and then he grunts and glowers at the river again. "No shit. And I know. I got a message from her, too. Figured out the hospital last night." He inhales smoke, exhales it in a dull grey cloud, simmering with anger. Yi hasn't forgotten about the grudge either, but she presses on underneath the stare. "You don't need any help then," she states quietly, forcing back the tension again with a mental broom. Turning to Joey, she explains to the younger, "Rina is Walker kin." She pauses, before adding on, "And a good friend." Then, her eyes swing back to the halfmoon. "Will you be getting her out of it?" Joey ohs very softly, shrinking back into her denim jacket. "I'll help if anyone needs it." Grey utters a deep-throated snarl as he whirls back toward Yi, face contorted into a mask of fury, the hue of his good eye flickering from dark brown to wolfish gold. "No, you backstabbing piece of shit, we're going to let her /die/ there." The sarcasm's obvious and ugly. His nostrils flare as he pulls back on his temper, and his next words are more modulated, though still sharp and stabbing, like daggers. "Of course we're getting her out. I've already alerted the family." Joey, for good or ill, is ignored. Yi tenses under the insult, jaw tightening. "I offer my help still," she hisses out, "regardless of what I owe your family. This, I do on my own choosing." The ragabash's eyes both glare back, daring and defiant. "And I am tired of your stubborn hold on to the past. What we did was judged to be wrong, and you of all should have known that." The ragabash gives ground though, taking a step back. "For one who decided to take a new name and renounce his past, you certainly still cling on by your fingernails." Joey flinches a bit at the sudden eruption, one foot sliding back a step as if distance would save her from the fury. Her eyes glance up to Yi briefly, and a defensive look is donned for her tribe mate. The cigarette is all but bitten off between the Glass Walker's clenched teeth. He remains balanced on the knife's edge between self-control and reckless violence. As Yi steps back, he steps forward; his stride's longer than hers, and the distance between them is closed. "Fuck you," Grey snarls. "Fuck you /and/ your self-righteous dogshit. You are not my judge." Yi only gives that one step, and forced to look up to rather than at the halfmoon, he gets a better view of her own rage and turmoil through her eyes. "I am only doing my job," she mutters back, an invisible prickling running up her spine. The younger Ragabash, meanwhile, looks completely on edge now- and not the grizzled angry one. Her face draws into a deep frown and a serious fidget overcomes her hands as they wring at her jean jacket. Joey gives another glance around her, then sighs nervously. "/Piss/ on your job," is the Glass Walker's venomous reply. He looms over the CantoGnawer, one hand clenched into a tight fist. But somewhere beneath all that hate and anger is a thin thread of rationality, and it yanks back on the screaming animal that clearly would like nothing more than to beat Yi into a bloody mess. Grey jerks himself back a step, jaw clenched, and abruptly turns himself away from them. Yi waits a time, watching the halfmoon with a tensed frown before she too takes another step back. "If that is what it takes to get things done instead of letting the Wyrm chew at us," she utters softly, "then I will do that gladly too." She makes her way back closer towards Joey, expression grim but a great deal more steady that the Walker's. "Let's go back to the Odeon," she tells her tribemate. Joey gives a rushed nod of agreement, silent otherwise. Her bottom lip gets pulled up between her teeth as she watches the other man turn away. It is only after they start moving that she leans up to whisper at the other. "What was that all about?" "I'll tell Natalie you're interested," Grey rasps, loud enough for the two Gnawers to hear. He doesn't turn back around to look at them, saving his bile-filled stare for the sluggish Columbia River. Yi pauses long enough to be significant when Grey speaks again, and with a short nod continues on her way with the other. "It is about a mistake made, and a secret that shouldn't have been," she replies to Joey with a long sigh. A good few more feet away, Yi looks back over her shoulder at the lone Walker. Grey has, by the time Yi looks back, lit another cigarette to replace the one flattened between his teeth. His posture is tall and straight and unrelentingly rigid. Joey lets out a short sigh, "And the night was going so well too." Her shoulders slump and her hands go deeper into her pockets. "Can we get a pizza?" Yi looks back to Joey, and with the mention of the pizza, she forcibly cheers a level. "Sure," she notes with a change of direction. "You earned it, after all." Sparing one last long gaze at Grey, she lets another sighing breath out and says aloud so he can hear, "Please send Natalie my best wishes for her challenge. Gaia keep you, Thomas." Another nod to Joey, and she leads the way towards Regan, and Garcia's. Thomas Grey offers no reply, or any sign that he's heard Yi's parting words. Joey tries to cheer up a little once it is decided pizza is on order. She gives the other Ragabash a little elbow to the hip and bops her head in the direction of the pizza parlor. [...] (It eventually occurs to Grey to call up Rina's father in Chicago, on the off-chance that he'll be able to just get Rina transferred out to a private hospital, like the one she was committed to a couple of years ago.) Safehouse: Porch The front porch of this sprawling, multi-floored house is the decorated centerpiece despite being offset within the footprint, a two-story layer-cake structure replete with several support pillars and decorative eaves in contrast to the clean planes and angles of the rest of the building, the windows of a third story piled on top of that. To the porch's right is the jutting spire of a three+ story, castle-like octagonal tower, complete with tall pointed roof; to the porch's left, the roof decreases gradually in height to an end that is at most a story-and-a-half. Windows abound: down the face of the tower, in every level of the porch, to the two-story unit immediately next to the porch and even a few at ground level far to the end. Access to the porch is reached from seven steps up from a walkway which runs most of the front length of the house, between the porch and the driveway to the house's left. Trees and bushes landscape the front lawn, and a tall hedge blocks most of the eyes of curious onlookers on the main street. There are two discernible entrances to the structure, the most obvious being the twin doors on the front porch, the less obvious being a single door off a much smaller stoop just off the driveway. The footpath running alongside the driveway and the driveway itself lead to breaks in the hedge allowing an exit to the street. Grey is out on the porch, cigarette in one hand and cellphone in the other. The Glass Walker paces back and forth restlessly as he speaks and listens. Mostly listens. His face is tight and drawn, his eyes shadowed from lack of sleep; smoke and tension and repressed rage surround him like a cloud. Another person is abroad on the street outside the safehouse this evening. Cole approaches the place with a wary glance towards the figure on the porch. Striding up, he tries to keep the tension he feels from his face. "Evening," he says, drawing to a stop. [Cole] Before you stands a man, looking to be around twenty years of age, or in that neighborhood. Either he's in a rebellious streak, or has had something unfortunate happen to him, judging by his appearance. The young man is completely hairless. From his crown to his brow, there's no hair visible at all. Strangely enough, there's no sign of what could have caused this. His eyes are a warm grey, curiosity showing in his glance. His 5' 10'' frame shows signs of an active and healthy lifestyle, though he's by no means 'buff'. He wears a pair of brand new jeans, not even broken in by their appearance. A thick grey sweater spans his shoulders, while a pair of elderly hiking boots serve his footware needs. Grey stops short and turns narrowed eyes onto the new arrival. Then he gives a curt nod of acknowledgement and speaks into the cellphone again. "Yes, sir. ...Yes, absolutely." He listens a moment more, then clicks it off and, as he turns back to Cole, pockets the phone. "Good evening." The greeting is only minimally polite. Cole doesn't allow himself to be ruffled by the coldness of the reply. At least, not overly so. "Is Rina about," he asks, bluntly, folding his arms tightly across his abdomen. Grey's mouth turns into a thin line, the muscles in his jaw tightening. "No," he says curtly. "She's fucked up and gotten herself into the hospital somehow." He takes a drag off the cigarette and exhales sharply through his nose. And just like that, a tic in the Galliard's jaw is born. "Pardon me. She managed to get herself into a hospital? How," he asks, growing agitated. Grey bares his teeth slightly. "Not /a/ hospital. /The/ hospital." He inhales a breath, tightening control over an obviously bad temper. "Exactly how, I don't know. But it's not like it's the /first/ time she's been committed." Cole scowls, the expression tightening his features. "Somehow, that doesn't surprise me," he responds, sourly. "Then maybe you can help me out with something." He clears his throat. "Name's Cole, by the way. Natalie knows me. Anyway, I came back today to a phone message from her. She sounded not good. Has anything happened the past few days that you know of to make her that way?" Grey takes another drag off the cigarette. "Fuck if I know." He shoots Cole a narrow-eyed look, guarded and suspicious and seething with ill-controlled rage. "She called you, too?" Cole pulls himself up straight. "Yeah, she called me, too," he responds, eyes narrowing in a fashion similar to Grey's. "Seems she couldn't stay in the area anymore, or some bullshit like that." He eyes the house behind Grey, and then the man himself. His stare is just shy of being challenging. "Makes me wonder." Grey's nostrils flare angrily, but he forces himself to look away, turning to glower at the nearest support pillar. He takes in another lungful of smoke. "Rina's unstable," he says curtly, after a second or two. "Has been ever since her husband died. Hell, before that, too, but at least she wasn't obsessing over ghosts." He takes another drag, then strides a long step away and crushes the cigarette out on an ashtray that's been placed, just for this purpose, on a windowsill. "We can talk about this inside," he says, already heading for the front door. Cole pauses, considering for a moment. He nods, then moves to follow Grey as he moves inside. "So you've heard about the ghosts, too. Any idea whethere he's real?" There's more than a passing interest in his voice as he steps through. Safehouse: Common Area The foyer of this house is set off from the living room with its octagonal bump-out by a four foot high halfwall. Stairs lead up from the foyer, turning and disappearing to the right, and a steel door with a keycard lock claims the wall opposite the living room. The rest of the main floor is taken up by a small bathroom across the hallway from a dining room which is separated from the kitchen at the back of the house by another half-wall. The decor is decidedly sparse - white walls, beige carpeting in the living and dining rooms and down the hall, unremarkable vinyl in the foyer and kitchen. A used couch and a pair of recliners are grouped around a coffee table in the living room, with a foursome of wooden chairs claiming the bump out for quieter conversation. The dining room boasts a white laminate table with four aluminum and vinyl-upholstered chairs - too new to be 'vintage', too old to be trendy. The appliances and cupboards in the kitchen are new - or at least refurbished to look like it - and a door leads out to the backyard from there. Up the stairs are a number of empty rooms where anyone affiliated with the Sept can crash and an office for private meetings. The Glass Walkers have their own area accessible via a locked door off the foyer. The main doors themselves lead back out to the front porch of the house. Grey avoids looking directly at the Fianna as he lets him in and closes the door behind them. "All I know," the Glass Walker says sharply, "is that his Gathering was performed by one of the most skilled ritualists this Sept has ever known. He /should/ be in the Homeland, though it's not like I can pop over there to check." He shrugs out of his coat and hangs it up. "Maybe it's a spirit fucking with her, though I've been to the Umbra at her place several times, and it looks clean. Clean enough. Honestly?" He looks over at Cole, mouth set in a grim line. "I think it's all in her head." Cole sighs, rubbing his hand back over his skull. "Fuck. That's frigging bizarre. I saw the guy," he responds. "Trying to strangle her to death. Must be a pretty god damned strong delusion. Nasty, too," he comments, almost as an aside. He leans against a cupboard, looking nonplussed. Grey goes absolutely still, his gaze focussed on Cole. "What do you mean, you /saw/ him?" Cole taps his brow, shifting his weight to another foot. "It's a Galliard gift, making contact with someone else's mind. He was there, dark as death and twice as serious. And it was trying to choke her to death. Apparently, if it really is him, he's not a guy who's without issues." Despite his flippant tone, he seems concerned. The older Garou's expression turns positively thunderous. "I know about Mindspeak," Grey says impatiently. "Where did this happen?" Cole looks up, scowling. "Does it matter," he asks, shifting again. "In her studio, one night." The door jostles briefly, then opens, allowing Tu and Jervis into the safe house. As they step in, the Walker ragabash closes the door behind him. Seeing his packmate and Grey, Tu frowns slightly. "Sorry, I wasn't expecting anyone." He turns his gaze to Jervis and says, "Why don't we use the office?" "You haven't been fucking her there, have you?" Grey asks Cole bluntly, just as Tu and Jervis come in. His manner has all the threat of a violent older brother. Jervis smiles, blinking a little at what's walked in on, but other than that, seems entirely disinterested. "That would work best, it would seem." Cole jerks slightly, as if struck across the face. Instantly, his face flushes red. It's an interesting effect, what with no hair to hide it. "Watch what you say," he warns, perhaps ill-advised. "And if I am or not is none of your damned business." Grey's words have the same impact on Tu that a brick wall might have on a car. It stops him suddenly. Jaw slightly open, he looks from Grey to Cole, then to Jervis. He hesitates for a moment, before shaking his head and heading towards the office without a word. One disaster at a time. Grey advances a step on Cole and glares down at the bald Fianna. "Actually, it /is/ my damned business, if it gets her hurt. It's very fucking /much/ my business." Cole turns his gaze upward, grey eyes boiling and ominous. "You her brother or something," he asks, defiantly. "All you need to know is that she wasn't hurt," he responds. Tensed, the Fianna waits. "Her brother is /precisely/ what you should consider me," says Thomas Grey, not budging an inch. His hands open and close slowly at his sides. "And if she was standing right here being happy and fucking /content/, I wouldn't give two shits what the hell you two might or might be doing. /But/ considering how fucking /jealous/ her late husband was and how much she's beaten herself over letting him down, causing his death, or otherwise making him unhappy, then, yes, I think whether or not you've been fucking her makes a whole lot of fucking difference. Or if you've made /any/ kind of advances on her. /Especially/ in that studio, in their /home/." He advances another step toward Cole, blossoming into full rant mode, spilling anger verbally down on the Fianna's bald head. "Can you think of any /other/ reason she might have told me how she'd /hurt/ him? Any /other/ reason she might have gone off the fucking deep end again?" Cole, despite his best intentions, begins to wither in the face of the tirade, suddenly looking unsure of himself. He forces himself to keep staring up at Grey. "Find her and ask her yourself," he returns. His arms uncross, falling to his sides. "And get the fuck out of my face while you're at it. Just because you seem to give a shit, then no, I have no frigging clue what sent her over the edge again. I didn't even know she'd gone the first time!" A pause. "I didn't know how she apparently caused his death, either. Looks like there's lots of things neither of us knows. Look, we weren't having sex, in her studio or anywhere else." "And," the Fianna amends, with a sneer, "If you're so up on what she's up to, you must know she has a girlfriend. Think that would matter?" Grey's upper lip wrinkles up in a distinctly lupine manner, baring teeth. "I know about Jenny, yes," he says bitingly. "/And/ about her daughter. Both of whom were part of her life before John. Interestingly, /their/ visits have never caused any problems. /Those/ two /do/ make Rina happy." He does, though, back off a step, though his body language remains threatening. "Let me completely blunt." Like he wasn't before? "If anything's happened to her, or god forbid she /dies/, and I find out that you were somehow responsible, I will skin you alive and feed your balls to the rats." Cole's hands clench, knuckles whitening bisibly. "Guess I won't have anything to worry about, then," he spits back. "Because I have no frigging clue what's going on!" He shakes his head, snorting. "But I want to find out," he adds on. "And you can take a valium or two and help out, or you can go find some nails to chew out of a fence." "I've already taken care of one angle," Grey says, taking firmer control over his temper. His voice is bitingly cold. "If we're lucky, it'll be nothing more complicated than her father having her transferred out of that fucking place." Cole nods, relaxing by increments. He still looks as if he's on the edge of smashing something, though. "Good. Great. She needs to get out as soon as fucking possible. Even if it means going to some place out of state. Better than that hellhole." The grey eyes shut. "What was his name? Her husband? He looked like a Shadow Lord, almost." Grey grimaces. "No. Glass Walker. John Smith, called Walks-Thin-Ice. Ahroun. He was our Elder when he died, and he died on his Fostern Challenge." He shakes his head, lips thinned. "And, yes, she still blames herself." Cole opens his eyes, cocking his head. "Damn. Why'd she do that? It's not like she set the challenge or anything." Grey pushes his hands into his pockets for want of a cigarette. "I'm sure it makes sense to her." He grimaces again and turns his good eye back to the Fianna. "Your pack's been working on the hospital issue, haven't they?" Cole nods, grimly. "Yeah, doing our best to figure out how to get in to do reccon on it right now. Hopefully soon, we'll actually have something we can use." He shakes his head. "Seems more likely it'll just be through one of us getting put there, every day." Someone's certainly pessimistic. Grey grunts. Now that he's not winding himself up to beat Cole into a pulp, he's almost calm. Calm, that is, in the manner of a tinder-dry forest at the height of summer. "Yi's interested in this, too." He speaks the Gnawer's voice with obvious distaste. "So you know. And while I /personally/ wouldn't trust her further than I could throw her... I'll let you and your pack make your own judgement." He gives the door to the house's inner sanctum a glance, then looks back at Cole. "Now, unless there's something else you wished to ask me, I have some other business to attend to." Cole shakes his head, shoving his hands into his pockets. "No, nothing. Thanks for the tip about Yi. " He looks oh so thankful too. No, really, he does. "I'll come back and let you know if I hear of anything happening with Rina." He turns around, considering the way he saw his packmate go earlier. "Talk to you later." "Be seeing you," says the Glass Walker, already turning away. Long strides carry him quickly toward the inner door, and within moments, he disappears into the Cockroach side of the house. Cole looks around for a moment longer, and snorts to the empty room. "What a week." (By early the next day, Rina's been transferred, the only delay being the shuffling of paperwork. Isn't it nice when the simple solution actually /works/?)