It is currently 12:47 Pacific Time on Sat Jun 4 2005. Currently in Saint Claire, it is a cloudy day. The temperature is 58 degrees Fahrenheit (14 degrees Celsius). The wind is currently coming in from variable directions at 5 mph. The barometric pressure reading is 29.99 and falling, and the relative humidity is 66 percent. The dewpoint is 47 degrees Fahrenheit (8 degrees Celsius.) Currently the moon is in the waning New Moon phase (18% full). 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 wooden 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. Jeren twirls a finger through the air and pretends to quote, "--To the greatest in station goes the first ass reaming. Cubbies get to wait until Natalie's done." She turns, eyeing Kevin carefully. "So...do I have to guess? What's going on with you?" Kevin grunts. "You shouldn't have to guess," he responds in the same annoyed manner. "If you -- or any of this tribe -- actually gave a damn about me, you'd know." Jeren pages to the room: Kevin and Jeren are in the kitchen, putting away groceries--lunchmeat, cheese, bacon, mayonnaise, croissants, Mug rootbeer, mustard, etc. Jeren's wearing really weird clothing, a flannel button up shirt and old jeans, both of which are way, way too big for her. Her left wrist is bandaged, and it looks like the bandaging goes all the way up her arm at least. Jeren twitches, and her eyes narrow. The show of temper, however, is brief. Instead, the cub gets a rather flippant, "Sorry, Cliath rank does not bestow mind reading powers. Spill." Grey's arrival is, as usual, heralded by the familiar sound of the Torino's growly engine. He enters through the front door a few moments after the sound cuts off, wearing the shirt and tie combination that he left the house in early this morning. As usual after his times out, the Philodox smells strongly of cigarette smoke, and his expression's aloof and uncheery. From afar, to the room, Jeren has also been gone since Thursday afternoon. But she returns bearing food! Kevin jams his hands in his pockets. "Okay," he concedes. "You might not have known, I grant you, but Thomas and Natalie damn well did. Today... is..." He slows down as though reluctant to reveal the end of the sentence. "Is my sixteenth birthday." Jeren blinks. Her mouth has been caught in a half open 'o'. And then she fits the pieces together. "--Cake then? It'd have to be store bought, you don't want to see me trying to bake one." She eyes the selection of food still laid out on the counter. "Or we could put candles on the croissants?" Grey is a step away from the door to the Walker side when he catches the sound of voices in the kitchen. He listens for a moment, catching a word here or there, perhaps, and then wanders over in that direction, one hand coming up to loosen the black necktie. Kevin's expression changes from annoyed to hangdog in an eyeblink. "Gahhhh. I shouldn't make such a big deal of it, should I? Only... after everything that's happened recently, I thought I'd never see this day... and I kind of feel that now I have, it's like a barrier I've broken through..." He drops his head, then raises it again as Thomas Grey enters. Instantly, Kevin's body language tenses right up. "Hush," Jeren orders. She cracks open the first package of croissants, picks out the largest one, and sets it on the counter. Grey's entrance is noted only with a passing glance, as the elder Ragabash crosses the kitchen to go and dig through the drawers. She does not, obviously, find birthday candles, but nevertheless she emerges with a box about the size of her palm, and she proceeds to pluck out sixteen toothpicks and stick them into the pastry. "Ta da." Grey stops at the hallway entrance into the kitchen, mismatched eyes blinking slightly at the activity. As usual, he looks like he got perhaps two or three hours of sleep. He regards Jeren curiously. "What the hell...?" Kevin goes a fetching shade of pink as Jeren's impromptu cake is set before him. "Jeren... I withdraw every uncharitable thought I ever had about you." Seemingly overcome with emotion, he suddenly lurches forward and throws his arms out, seeking to wrap them round Jeren in a sudden and demonstrative hug. "It's--hnn!" Jeren's reply to Grey is cut off immediately by Kevin's sudden embrace, her expression turning to swift surprise and a considerable amount of 'ow'. "Ah--it's--Kev--really....hnn, no prob...lem..." Grey blinks again, looking completely and utterly baffled by this, and he's not the kind of man who's made cheerful by confusion. His brows lower, mouth tightening into a grimace, and with a muttered, "Nevermind," he turns to head back down the hallway to the front end of the house. Kevin releases Jeren, still blushing a bright shade of red. "Was that the door?" Why yes, it was. Though it doesn't ring again. Kaz has her own version of politeness. Jeren continues to hold herself rather stiffly, even after the hug. She gives Kevin a tight lipped 'smile', eyebrows arching upwards, and then turns her head toward the door in which--Grey is no longer standing. "Ehm. I think so." Kevin moves to the kitchen door, peers out towards the front of the house. "Has Thomas -- Oh, I'll get it." He scampers down the corridor to the front door and unfastens it a crack, peering through. "Yo, hi." Kaz is cheerfulness itself. She's also carrying a small bag. "Is, uh, Jeren around? I didn't just up and come in 'cuz I dunno the general rules and shit yet." Grey's irritation sharpens up a notch as Kevin zips toward the door, like the cub's boundless energy and youth happened to be a personal and calculated insult. He's not in sight of the door -- at least not yet -- but the voice that comes through it catches him off-guard; he stops still in the middle of the hallway and cocks his head, frowning. Jeren takes the same route Grey's on to the door, through the hallway, albeit much slower, and far, far more stiffly than the sprinting cub. "M'eh? Yeah...coming..." Except that she's not, as there's a Philodox in front of her. Kevin looks at the woman in the doorway carefully, as though trying to place her. "She's here," he says cautiously. "Who shall I tell her's come calling?" "'m just Kaz. I used t'hang out around here, but then I left." She hands him the bag. "Here, have some donuts." Grey moves aside to let Jeren past, and the Ragabash catches a glimpse of blank surprise flitting across the halfmoon's face. And then wariness. He follows after the injured Ragabash, but slowly -- even considering her own impaired pace, slowly -- his hands vanishing into trouser pockets. Jeren flicks a curious glance in Grey's direction before she continues down the hall. She's trying to move with some semblance of normalcy, but there's really no hiding the stiffness of her walk. "Hey," she greets, as Kaz comes into view. Kevin gives a somewhat wild laugh as Kaz passes the bag of donuts to him. "Stone me!" he yelps, as though the gift is out of all proportion to its value. Turning, he skitters back towards the two cliaths, a grin now fixed on his face that even the sight of Thomas can't dislodge. "Jeren? Kaz is here for ya." He waves the bag of donuts at them as though it were a victory trophy. "I don't usually have quite such a good reaction t'donuts," mutters Kaz, as she heads in the door. "Hey," she says, to Jeren. "Like I said t'Kevin, I figured I'd just come like, check the place out. Figure out the rules, written and unwritten. All that good shit." Kevin turns back to Kaz and gives her the broadest, happiest smile that's probably been seen in the Glass Walkers' house for many days. "Happy birthday to meeeee!" he croons, and still waving the bag of donuts aloft with as much triumph as Gollum ever displayed over the birthday present of his magic ring, he vanishes through the door into the tribal side of the house. Thomas Grey -- with the scars of a man Kaz'd know by quite another name -- comes into view at the end of the hallway as Kevin goes dancing away with his magic donut. For once, he ignores the cub's antics in favor of eyeballing the Bone Gnawer with a hesitant, wary frown that, to her, just doesn't seem quite in character. Jeren gives Kaz a shrug and a brief smile. "--You just gave him a birthday present without realizing it. He was upset because no one knew." Rather than continue on though, she trails off, as if feeling the expression angled past her from the Philodox. She turns her head again to look at him. "Well, glad to make /someone/ happy," mutters Kaz, before getting sight of said Thomas Grey. There is a long, long pause, as she looks at him. She's certainly aware of his wariness; she can't help but mirror it just slightly, in among the shock and the relief and the fondness and the confusion. She finally says, conversationally, except for the tension in her posture and voice, "Y'know, I thought you were dead. Given as I got into town, checked on the Questin' Stone, an' got nothin'." She rummages in her pocket, comes up with a slightly battered bag, and offers it to him. "Here. Have some bagels. An' tell me why you look like total shit, huh?" Beautiful, this woman isn't. Most people wouldn't even call her interesting, although there is a spark of something, deep down in there. Even so, most people would call her homely, if they bothered to call her anything at all. She's about 5'6" tall, and burly. Not fat -- It's the kind of burly that's all muscle, just not well defined muscle. Her hair is brown, distinctly curly, and in her eyes. Constantly. The part that's not in her eyes is about shoulder length. Her eyes are distinctly odd, although it's hard to tell, given how often she hides behind her hair. They're yellow, and look almost cat-like. The rest of her face isn't offensive, just boring. The nose is a bit big -- maybe it's been broken, or maybe she was just born that way. Her chin is broad, as are her cheekbones. Classic features for a man that don't at all work on her. There's a wry, cynical smile often playing about her lips that does nothing to add to her mostly non-existent charm. Makeup, it's clear, is of very little use to this person. "Battered" would describe her choice of clothing quite well. Grey trenchcoat, tired blue jeans, an oxford shirt hanging open, with a t-shirt underneath. Her sneakers are black, and she often has a black hat jammed over her head. "Jack Salem," says the apparition, who's still regarding Kaz with a great mixture of emotions that's too muddled to read well, "has been dead for over a year. Which... would explain why you couldn't find him." He glances over at Jeren, clears his throat slightly, and moves forward to take the proffered bag. The ever-familiar 'mask' of neutrality settles over his face by degrees, but the guarded, hesitant (diffident? is that /possible/?) manner remains. "It's a long story." She takes a step to the side, as if to get out of the line of the emotions passing between the two. Jeren, for her part, looks suddenly, completely uncomfortable, and a flicker of something else, something completely unreadable, passes over her face and disappears. "Ah." She grunts. "I'll...sandwiches. Get you some." Talk like Yoda she will. The Ragabash beats a hasty if stiff-legged retreat back toward the kitchen. Kaz is paying very little attention to Jeren, now. "Yeah. Ok. So what the hell name're you /usin'/, so I don' gotta call you 'Hey You'?" She watches the reactions, posture -- though not expression-- becoming just slightly more confused. Grey is left holding the bag of bagels, which he looks at for a bit before turning back to Kaz. "Thomas Grey. Still Philodox, in case you were wondering." He pauses a beat, then adds, "Cliath," before looking away and nodding in the direction of the living room. "Care to have a seat?" Half a minute later, the clear sounds of someone fumbling about the kitchen become quite audible. Mostly drawers and cupboards being opened and closed. There's another long pause, and then Kaz says, "Yeah, I guess I do kinda wanna." She shakes her head faintly as she does so. Though as usual, she perches on the arm of the couch, rather than actually sitting on it. "I'm imaginin' it's the kinda long story you don' wanna talk about much, huh?" Grey sets the bag of bagels down on the coffee table before settling wearily into one of the other chairs. "Do you want the short version or the long?" He looses the half-mast necktie further and slips it up off his head. It ends up on the coffee table near the bag. Kaz says, almost without thinking, "Short, then long." Rattle, rattle. Thump. Clatter. Then the microwave is turned on. Grey rakes fingers back through hair that, like the Gnawer's, keeps wanting to fall over into his eyes. "Short is easy," he says, and then unbuttons his right cuff and rolls up the sleeve to bare his forearm... and the glyph for 'charach' that's been scarred and ash-darkened into top of it. He avoids looking at her, keeping his own face quite, /quite/ bland. Kaz looks at his arm for a very long moment. "Huh," is her eventual comment. She doesn't seem angry, or disappointed, or worried, or caring. Just kind of blank. "Huh," she says again, and then, suddenly slightly urgent, she asks, "Here, or somewhere else?" The microwave beeps--though Jeren seems slow in answering it, as it continues to beep for several seconds after. This is followed by yet more clattering noises. Grey shrugs and leans back in his chair, slouching. "It's not exactly a /secret/," he says flatly, hazarding a look at Kaz's very blank face. "Not since Megan pulled it out of me at the Philodox moot." His mouth twists, but the bitterness has a stale, tired quality. "You remember that Ronin, back in Vegas?" "...Yeah," Kaz eventually says. "Helped you folks out a treat, she did." Footsteps. Jeren emerges from the dining room, bearing two plates in each hand--though the left one is having a considerably harder time holding onto it's burden. Each plate bears a croissant that has been sliced open, spread with mayonnaise and a small dab of mustard, and then stuffed with several layers of turkey, ham, cheddar cheese, and bacon. Wordlessly, she offers one plate to each of the other garou. "And got out when she realized..." Grey hesitates before finishing. "How unnecessarily... /vicious/ it was. Without what was coming to her." He glances down at his scarred arm, studying the glyph in an abstracted kind of way. "We were close. And we kept in touch. Then she disappeared, and I went looking for her--" He pauses to look bemusedly at Jeren as though he'd forgotten all about her. "...Thank you." The distraction's enough to derail his story for a few seconds. Kaz mutters, "You rock," in Jeren's general direction. "Went lookin' for her," she prompts. She's no longer quite so urgent, and sympathy is starting to bleed into her blank tones. (Sympathy, and no condemnation at all. Not that that's surprising.) Jeren turns and disappears back into the kitchen, but only long enough to fetch her own plate. She takes up a spot on a chair a small distance from the other two, and pretends to be completely engrossed in eating her sandwich. Grey holds his plate, as bemused by the sandwich as he is by the appearance of it. He sits up, trying to shake off the distracted fugue. "...Right. I went looking for her, and by the time I found her, she was tainted. Badly. Unintentionally, but." His mouth thins out again; he glances sidelong at Jeren but makes no objection to her presence. "I was near enough to Hundred Stars to get help from there, and the Gaians there Cleansed her. During the Cleansing... she talked. Said just enough to cause an inquiry, at which point it all came out." He has yet to bite into his sandwich, though he's certainly looked at it a lot. "...So you got Satired." Kaz is briefly silent, before she asks, again just slightly urgently, "But she's still alive and all that shit? I mean, she came through it ok?" This seems fairly important. Jeren is eating her sandwich. Certainly she's much too involved in this important task to meet Grey's glance, or to make any remark of any kind to his story. In fact, it seems like the Ragabash has decided that if she stuffs enough of the food into her mouth at any one time, and doesn't allow it to be empty for longer than it takes to recover from a swallow, she can't possibly let any words slip out. Grey nods. "And rejoined the Nation. Jackaled until the Gaians decide she's reformed, or some such. Joined them, more or less provisionally, and Speaks-Through-Pager's keeping an eye on her." He looks at Kaz again, and this time the bitterness is not quite so stale. "I would have stayed, but the Alpha decided we're a bad influence on each other, and I wasn't welcome." "Aw, yeah. That's them Gaians all over. /They/ know what's best for you, even if /you/ don't." Kaz wrinkles her forehead. "Fuckers." She meets his gaze, now. "I'm sorry. It's worse, when she's still alive, and you're like, taunted with her bein' out of reach." However much Jeren is trying to keep her mouth occupied with the sandwich, there is sadly only so much sandwich. And her face is twitching before she's downed the last bite. Even so, her only contribution at this point is a grunt. A nice, neutral grunt. Grey rolls his shoulders into another shrug and, finally, picks up his sandwich. "She's alive. Her skills, at least, are appreciated there. And better Bearpaw's judgement than Megan's." He takes a bite. Kaz says, with blissful ignorance which is probably quite clear, "Shyeah. Talk about your hardasses." The door leading to the Walker's side of the house chooses this moment to open, admitting a skinny, bright-haired girl wearing headphones and toting a book titled 'Understanding Firearm Ballistics'. She glances at the adult trio with an impassive, unsmiling expression and pauses en route to the front door, narrowing her eyes at the stranger. Grey grunts around his mouthful of fancy Jeren-made sandwich and looks over at the arriving cub. He swallows and sits up, calling over to her. "Cy. Come here a moment, please?" Jeren attempts to rake her fingers through her hair, though at this point her hair is such a lost cause of tangles that she barely gets very far in at all. As if this were somehow the breaking point, Jeren sets her plate aside and stands up abruptly, flashing an apologetic look to both Kaz and Grey--though mostly Grey. "Have to...basement...I'll be right back." And without further ado, she moves toward the basement door even faster than she retreated to the kitchen. Kaz looks after Jeren, baffled, and then says, "Yo," almost cheerfully, to the newcomer. Pushing the headphones down around her neck, Cy obeys the request readily enough. She picks a vacant armchair and flops bonelessly, leaving the book in her lap. Switching her dark-eyed gaze from the older Philodox to the stranger, she offers solemnly, "Cy Larsen. Glass Walker, Philodox, cub." She stares at the unknown woman expectantly. There's not much to look at beneath the ratty shock of crimson hair; she's scrawny, and 5'4" would be a generous height estimate. The girl has a pale, weak-featured face that adds to her apparent youth--she could be taken for about twelve at first glance. Round cheeks, snub nose, and large brown eyes are haloed by a hacked-off bob of hair that's been dyed fire-engine red, with an inch of dark roots starting to creep back in. She's not wearing any piercings, but her earlobes are notably stretched into loops more commonly seen on people in tribal body-modification documentaries. She rarely smiles, and tends to squint; her eyes seem to be incessantly dark-circled from lack of sleep. On the occasion she does show her teeth, it's obvious that she's missing her upper left incisor. She's in a worn black t-shirt and baggy jeans rolled up at the cuffs, belted around her hips with braided leather. Though clean, none of it fits her quite right: it seems like the garments are hand-me-downs. Halfway hidden by her large clothing, she's got a sexless build with a short torso and wiry limbs. There are black no-name sneakers on her feet, and her small hands show evidence of compulsive nail-chewing. Grey takes another bite out of his sandwich, watching Cy keenly. Jeren disappears down the basement steps without a backward glance. The sounds that follow after include no roars, no growls--just something really heavy hitting something really hard. Repeatedly. Kaz puts her plate on the couch. "Hiya, kid. I'm Kaz. Ears, t'Garou. Bone Gnawer Galliard. I'm a Fostern an' a metis--" she watches Cy's reaction carefully, here-- "An' I used t'hang out here a lot. Well, not /here/, this joint's new. But I was a member of the Walk, helped take it back from them Dancers. Half my pack died in the process, an' it got kinda depressin', so I left. An' here I am again." The young girl blinks at the introduction--her eyes sliding in Grey's direction sharply at the word 'metis'--before refocusing on Kaz with a new kind of intensity. She opens her mouth as if to ask something, then snaps it shut quickly. "Welcome to the safehouse," she offers dryly, with a glance towards the basement door and the thumping from beyond. Kaz glances downstairs, then back at Cy. "Was it something I said?" she asks, wryly. She finally takes a bite of sandwich and asks, once she's done chomping, "What, though? I mean, it looked like you wanted t'ask somethin'." "I think you're the first metis she's met," Grey remarks to Kaz. His right sleeve's still rolled up, showing the charach glyph; he's either forgotten about it, or apathetic. Thump, thump, thumpthumpthump. Whatever snit Jeren's in, it at least ends fairly quickly. There's one final '/thump/', and then silence from the basement. Cy glances sidelong at her elder, drumming nailbitten fingers on the cover of the ballistics book as she regards Kaz once more. "You don't look deformed," she says finally, after a long moment of squinting thought. In apparent answer, Kaz shifts, slowly, into glabro. "I got it easy. It don't show in homid." Grey watches Kaz, but watches Cy more, interested in her reaction to the batwing-eared Bone Gnawer. "Black Spiral Dancers often have ears like that," he informs the cub, blandly. Jeren emerges from the basement, in glabro, instead of homid. She's in the process of fumbling to re-button that oversized flannel shirt she's wearing with fingers that don't seem to want to cooperate--and this would be because they're pulling themselves back into natural angles, with the gashed skin around her knuckles likewise mending with visible swiftness. The Ragabash glances tiredly toward the living room, and then does an abrupt doubletake, for a moment looking absolutely alarmed at Kaz's appearance. Jeren's bandages are also completely gone from her left arm, probably not surprisingly. The arm itself looks almost like it's made of raw hamburger. The cub cocks her head in an almost puppylike fashion, peering up curiously at the glabro'd metis. "Huh," she grunts, tugging at one of her own very small and human ears absently. "Do they help you hear better an' shit?" Grey's good eye gains a touch of life. He doesn't smile or anything, but he seems pleased enough by 'his' cub's reaction, and he takes another bite out of his sandwich. "Please to not attack me at random," Kaz says, with wry tiredness, to Jeren, then shakes her head. "Nah. Sometimes I can wring a /slight/ advantage out of 'em, but mostly when I do that, it gives me a headache." She falls back down into homid, and adds, "An' it gets me so much shit from the Garou world, I... try and avoid bein' in anything but homid, except when I'm fightin'." "/Shit/," Jeren mutters, pausing just long enough for her fingers to finish healing, as she's getting nowhere with that button in the meantime. "--Give me a damned heart attack." That said, she seems to fall back into 'tired' mode, making her way stiffly back toward her previous chair. When Cy glances towards Jeren, her expression turns cold. She twitches a bit and lifts her legs to cross them beneath her on the armchair, switching her sharp attention back to Kaz. "Did your parents get the thingy too?" She gestures with a hand towards the other Philodox and his scars, vaguely. Grey, in the meantime, finishes off his sandwich. Cy's gesture seems to remind him about his scar, and he sets the empty plate down on top of the discarded necktie, next to the still-somewhat-warm bag of bagels on the coffee table. He starts rolling his sleeve back down. Kaz looks faintly bemused. "I dunno if you're pissed at her on my behalf, there, but her reaction was about 3/4 instinctive, and entirely reasonable, especially in a Sept that, not long ago, was taken /over/ by Dancers. 'Course, you could just be hatin' her for different reasons, in which case, pardon me for assumin'. Um. My folks." She blinks a few times, and then refocuses. "Oh. No. My dad died before I was born, and Gnawers, if it's an all Gnawer Sept, we don't give a shit, really. But she died when I was two-- for a lotta reasons, but havin' me was part of it." With the way Jeren reacts to Cy's change of expression, the cub may as well have slapped her. Her eyes narrow, and her own expression turns rather dark, but Kaz's explanation glosses over most of that, and then it's back to looking tired. Just this time, she's looking tired with a little bit of piss thrown in. "--I've only been here a month," she murmurs toward the metis. "I can't use that as an excuse." Kaz snorts. "Whatever. I'm a primal nightmare and shit, I don't got a problem with you havin' a heart attack." Grey, meanwhile, fusses with the button on his shirt-cuff, his head bowed and overlong hair falling back into his eyes. Jeren watches Kaz go from under hooded lids. Once she's out of sight, the Ragabash groans audibly and lifts her right hand to pinch at the bridge of her nose. Grey finishes with the button and looks over at the Ragabash with an arched eyebrow. "Headache," Jeren mutters past her fingers. "Let me know if you see any more fine opportunities for me to act like an asshole." Grey grunts. "And to a Fostern, no less," he says blandly. Getting up, he collects his plate, the bag of bagels, and his tie. "I wouldn't worry about it. Kaz knows who she is. And what she is." Jeren clamps both hands over her nose now. "Hnnn." The noise sounds absolutely bizarre, like a groan mixed with a not-so-human sounding whine. "God damn it. Damn it, damn it, dammit." Grey grimaces. "Get over yourself," he growls, and stalks off to the kitchen. Jeren stands up fast enough that her plate is knocked off of where she sit it. Grey's back is turned, so the dark glare she sends his way is likely completely lost, but moments later she's snatched up her own plate and is also moving toward the kitchen, trailing a little cloud of temper. Grey puts his dish in the washer, then stows the bagels with the bread -- though not, one may note, without taking one for himself. Onion. He glances over at Jeren with a guarded frown. "What the hell crawled up your ass?" "This," Jeren snaps, being less than gentle with stowing her own plate into the dishwasher. She makes a vague gesture with both hands, the right more active than the left. "All of.../this/." Because that, of course, explains everything. The Ragabash plants both hands on the counter and leans over, letting her hair fall into her eyes. Then, in a much quieter, more even tone, "I feel like I'm going to explode. Literally. Splatter tiny little pieces of New Moon Moron all over the walls. I can't even antagonize the fucking /Get/ correctly." Grey's frown deepens. Standing near the counter, he absently works at separating the bagel's two halves. "Why are you antagonizing Get?" Jeren grunts. "Because I can't /stand/ Brom. And the last time we got into a staredown, and he won. And I was fine with that for all of five minutes, until I found out he was carting around a bloody saw and a fucking finger in his duffel bag. And because the man's recently gone off on a Walker bashing binge, and because I wanted to test his temper." She pauses, and then adds, "...But mostly because I wanted something to hit besides the walls." Grey absorbs all of this, still frowning, still looking at her with a 'what the fuck' sort of expression, confused and irritated. "So you fought him." The bagel becomes two halves, one of which is bitten into. "I fought him." Jeren turns to face Grey, though she still isn't looking anywhere near him. "I had to practically drag him into the fight too. Him, a son of Fenris. He held his temper better than I did. So yeah, we fought for all of about half a minute, and then he frenzied." She finally glances up, gauging his expression. Grey grunts. "Probably didn't think you were much of a challenge." Jeren's face twitches---she looks as though she might be trying to take offense at that, but then her head gives a tight shake. "Well I wasn't, was I?" The Ragabash falls silent, her gaze dropping again, this time to Grey's bagel. Grey shrugs. "I don't know many Ragabash who would be." He squints a bit at her. "You wanted a fight. You got a fight. Why are you acting like there's sand in your panties?" Jeren doesn't reply right away. Her visible temper at least, seems to be leaking out of her stance and expression. Finally she murmurs, "...How have you stood this, Thomas?" Grey hasn't yet taken another bite out of his onion bagel yet. His expression goes flat, his whole body growing still, like an animal that scents something dangerous on the wind. "What do you mean, exactly? Stood what?" "This," Jeren echoes. "All of this. No pack. Leaving for however long you were gone. Plus all of--" she gestures vaguely toward his covered arms, "--that and what it entails. I've only been gone from my sept and my pack for a month, and I'm already falling to pieces." "Mnh." Grey bites into his bagel and chews deliberately, as though using the time to consider his answer. "I used to be a Shadow Lord," he answers at last, and despite his generally run-down appearance, that shouldn't be difficult to believe. Certainly he /looks/ like one, especially in Crinos. "And do you know what the first thing a Shadow Lord learns is?" Jeren rubs her right hand carefully over her left, bandage-less elbow. "--No," she says after a moment. "That no one is your friend," says Grey tonelessly, staring at her. "No one is your ally. No one cares about your pain. Or, if they do, it's only as far as they can use it, and use you. You learn, in short, to be self-sufficient." And he takes another bite, still staring at her. Jeren regards Grey carefully, jaw tightening, before she turns back to face the counter. "Sounds like a shitty way to go through life," she murmurs. "--And particularly typical of Shadow Lords." If she's trying to put any sort of accusation or barb into that last remark, it fails before it makes it out. "You're not a Shadow Lord anymore." Grey's shoulders lift and fall. "Old habits die hard." He starts for the hallway, still eating the bagel. "I'm going to go take a shower. Thank you for the sandwich, by the way." Jeren looks as though she's going to add something, but then she gives a brief shake of her head. "You're welcome. I'll see you later."