[Boy]
How long had it been since he'd been here actually looking for someone? Even the kin in the kitchen are surprised when Boy shows up, much less for something other than food. He's looking good: Clean, healthy, and with clothes that hadn't been stitched or patched. He was even wearing sneakers that both came from the same pair.
Red chuck tailors trotted up the stairs, turned the first corner through the common room, and the several other corners taking him to room 8 where--Woah!
Where the hell was Hatchet? Had he changed rooms since Boy had been there? Of course he had.
[Hatchet]
Room Eight is now occupied by a man named Jesse and a woman named Callie, neither of them even remotely similar to Hatchet. They or someone else points Boy to Room One, the private room right across from the commons where the Fostern now resides. Alone. Something about kicking a cripple downstairs -- ah yes. They heard about that at the moot.
The door to Room One is closed. When Boy knocks -- or whatever he does -- he doesn't call It's open! in his rich baritone as he has before, that voice that Boy didn't realize could sing -- and damn well -- until the bonfire on the solstice. There's a gap between Boy's arrival and the door opening into a dim room, the blinds down over the window. Hatchet stands there wearing red boxers with tiny white diamonds patterned over them, bearing every scar above the waist and below the thigh. His hair is messy. His throat is bristled with growth.
With a yawn, he leans against the doorframe. "Howdy."
[Boy]
Boy isn't as used to hiding his reactions as the fostern is. He isn't used to needing too. Perhaps, if he lasted longer, saw a bit more, that would change. For now his eyebrows dart up involuntarily.
"Sorry. I can give you a minute."
[Hatchet]
"If I needed a minute I would've taken it," he says mildly, if a bit drowsily. Hatchet doesn't flick on his light but walks back to his -- currently unmade -- bed, flopping down on the thin mattress and gesturing at the desk chair. "What's up?"
[Boy]
For whatever reason he shifts from foot to foot before entering properly, heading directly to the indicated chair and sits, swiveling to face Hatchet on his bed.
"Ran into one of your Kin the other day. Her names Eleanor Connolly. She owns an antique shop around Lakeview or thereabouts. I told her she should see you." This last bit sounds like he's trying to convince Hatchet that he was trying to convince her. "Told her were to find you, and that Wendy would take her there if need be. I don't know if she was too interested in the idea, to be honest, but I figured I'd let you know."
[Hatchet]
The other Half-Moon's hesitance doesn't raise a question in Hatchet's mind or eyes. This is his territory. There are no empty beds in this room, no place to sit other than the bed, floor, or desk chair. It smells of him, though he opens the window frequently to air it out. There is no denying that this place is his, even as he sprawls on the bed and leans agains the wall between his room and the one beside it. He occupies it. He rules it. The very posture of his body relays things to Boy's instincts, things he would know even without being told: that he is in the territory of an older, stronger, higher-ranked wolf.
Whose eyes look colorless, in this lack of light.
"What's the name of the antiques shop?" he asks after a moment.
[Boy]
"Uh...I missed it. Its a new place, don't think she had a sign or anything. But I know where it is, if you need me to take you there. She'd been robbed when I met her. Was chasing down some Asian kid that had one of her artifacts. Lots of old things in that shop. Lot of it worth money to somebody. Maybe more than money. I think she might need some lookin' after in that regard."
[Hatchet]
"My god," Hatchet says drolly, yawning, "a Fianna kinswoman with a talent for getting herself in trouble. I may have a fucking heart attack."
He covers his mouth when he yawns. It's polite, and it's incongruous, considering he's sitting there in his skivvies, in the dark, rolling his eyes as though he does not care about his Kinfolk. It's not the truth, but sometimes that's impossible to tell with Hatchet. What he cares about. What he doesn't. What he takes seriously. What he dismisses. No wonder so few Garou trust him.
The man's hand drops back to his lap. He looks over at Boy. "I'll scout it out. If I can't find her, I'll come by and get your help. Thanks for letting me know, Brother of the Lost."
[Boy]
Boy nods. Once. Slowly. An indication of understanding. But he doesn't leave just yet. His eyes glance around the room cautiously, never lingering anywhere for too long, especially not on Hatchet.
"Can I ask, Hatchet-Rhya? How come you're in here by yourself?"
[Hatchet]
That question makes him pause. He was in the process of gently dismissing Boy, thanking him for the information so he could send him on his way and either go back to sleep or go take a shower and get a shave, but Boy makes his eyes flicker when he asks that question.
"A multitude of reasons," he says after a moment, his voice level. "After the incident with Thought's Resolution, for instance, Jenny Coltrane sent me a very nice note suggesting that I switch rooms." This was mentioned during the Child of Gaia's Challenge of Grievance against him, but that had been at the challenge circle while the rest of the moot went on as scheduled.
"It's good for me, to have some solitude amidst the closeness to pack and sept. I am used to being on the road; I am still getting used to being constantly surrounded by my own kind." A beat. "And I am still getting used to my own Rage."
[Boy]
He doesn't nod this time, but he still hasn't left.
"Has this been...since we met you on the Road? Before that?"
[Hatchet]
The flinch is only in his eyes. It's the way that aforementioned Rage spikes in the room that gives him away, rather than any tension in his jaw or sudden change of expression. It isn't even anger, really, that causes the minute and momentary change.
"Around then," he says quietly. When his packmate died. When their sept was decimated. When all of them, for different reasons, found their Rage unfurling into new and dangerous territories.
[Boy]
"Not that long then." He says with another slow nod. Not an understanding nod, though. It couldn't be. He was a Boy. Seventeen if he was a day. What was there that he could understand?
"I hope, for you, that its not too long. I've seen..." He stops himself, his eyes drifting to somewhere else, somewhere not at all in this room. He whispers something under his breath. He may have heard this one does that sometimes. He may have heard him in the halls of this very place, late at night, whispering to no one anyone else could see.
Finally he stands, as if willing himself out of a trance, and he clears the waking dream out of his throat.
"Ahem. Uh...You remember Marrick saying something like...if you needed anything, our Home was open to you?" He avoids the Fostern's eyes noticeably. "Well that still stands. Just so you know."
[Hatchet]
Hatchet is not dissuaded. He watches Boy, his face shadowed. There is moonlight coming through the edges of the blinds, but not much; his window faces an alleyway. The alleyway where Garou and Kin come and go, in fact. He can look down at odd hours of the day and watch them slipping into the kitchen's back door, past the dumpsters and cars and into their home, their pockets of territory in one supposedly neutral cluster. He knows all their faces, not all their names. He knows that the orange toothbrush belongs to so-and-so, if they leave it in the bathroom. He remembers flossing side by side with Mrena, nearly half his size and in a pack that seemed diametrically opposed to his own.
His own is gone, now. Word around the moot is that he and Curata and Lights Out are packing up. Bitter Heart was going to but she's gone, suddenly and far away, underlining with striking fervor that no matter how loyal or intense a pack's bond is, they are all ultimately transient.
"Chances are," he says, with a slightly dry twist to his words, "my Rage will only continue to grow worse as time goes on. Chances are, my control will rise to meet it. And certainty is, I will not be here forever. I will either walk away or be killed." He shrugs. He's just rambling.
Hatchet glances at the window, then back at Boy. "You've seen...?" he prompts. He doesn't answer the bit about the house. The home.
[Boy]
He blinks once, surprised that it even caught his attention. His hands slide into his pockets as he speaks.
"I've seen people get lost in it. I've been lost in it. Not anything like you, of course, but...well...maybe something like it." He shakes off the thought.
"There's no harvest for the heart alone." He says out of nowhere, toe scuffing at the floor inside the room. "The seed of kinship must be...eternally...resown. Somebody told me that once."
[Hatchet]
His head tips slowly to the side, lazy as an animal considering a beast of prey already caught under its paw. Then Boy speaks, and Hatchet is silent for a long moment.
"The seed of love," he corrects, his voice quiet in the dim light and thick shadow. There's a pause, and then he goes on: "For whom the love locked up in the heart that is left alone? That golden yield split sod once, overflowed an August field, threshed out in pain upon September's floor, now hoarded high in barns, a sterile store."
The words rest in the air. Hatchet looks at Boy, standing there. He recites well the poetry, or at least that piece of it, in that warm and rolling tone of his. The voice that booms across the sept during the Cracking of the Bone or sings in agile tenor during a guitar-accompanied song has a way of dragging the listener into the words when spoken like this, like a lullabye, like a prayer.
"I am forming a pack," he says finally, though this is as much deflection as anything. His two would-be packmates live together in a room down the hall. He lives here in this room, or at the Graves, or at the area where the challenge circle is so frequently drawn and re-drawn. It says nothing of his heart.
[Boy]
There's a lightening of his face as the tension in his brow and jaw ease slightly, and he rubs at the back of his neck. "Love." He reminds himself. "That's it. Love." And at the rest he only nods, his eyes finding Hatchet's face again. At the very least they find his mouth, his brow, and dance across his eyes on quick and rare occasion.
"I heard. At the Moot."
The hand at the back of his neck slides back into his pockets.
"You uh...mind if I go now?"
[Hatchet]
"I'm not keeping you," Hatchet says mildly, his mouth twisting in a wry smile. He stays where he is as Boy makes his way to the door, but as that rectangle of light from the commons casts entirely new beams of brightness and shadow into Room One, Hatchet adds: "And yes.
"I remember. The same goes in return. I don't have a Home, but... don't ever hesitate to knock on this door, Brother of the Lost. Should you need anything, you can come to me."
[Boy]
He gives one last nod. Someone should tell the boy to use his words. The door closes behind him but Hatchet could almost track his movement through the common room, and later exiting into and through the alleyway, by the way he whispers to himself. Its not mad rambling, thankfully. The Uktena half moon was strange enough without speaking in tongues.
The last thing Hatchet hears as Boy makes his way out into the alley and away?
"For whom the milk ungiven in the breast when the child is gone? When the child is gone...when the child is gone...when the child...."
