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renferretMouse and Kaz discuss cubs, cliaths, and end up in a heart to heart.
Tenement Building - First Floor(#1738RA)
This long, somewhat narrow hallway is lined with plain brown doors on both sides; each door bears a brass three-digit number in the one-hundred range. The walls are a neutral tan color. The short carpet is a darker brown that doesn't stain easily. The lighting is both bright and easy on the eyes; there are smoke detectors spaced regularly on the ceiling and a couple of fire extinguishers along the walls. At the end of the hall, a large window leads to the fire escape.
Obvious exits:
119 Stairs
Kaz shifts back to homid almost immediately; once she's done with the Litany, and once they show a clearly tired Cordelia the cubroom, she finds a Coke in her pocket and sighs. "Cubs. All over th' damn place."
Mouse has finished crumbling her cookie onto the carpet, though no roaches have yet to venture out for dinner. "To think, I thought I'd get a break once I got Riley and Ishmael through." She dusts off her hands. "And no lost kids for the Lords yet on my end either." She doesn't seem terribly /displeased/ by this notion. "Though I suppose Salem's a bit hard to reach right now, even for an Adren Ragabash."
Kaz grins. "We just got one, too. /Who/, I might add, hadda fetch, too. So she's screwed twice over, not that she has the arrangement with me or nothin', but I don' figure she'll be any too eager to notice the distinction unless I remind her energetically." She adds, "I ain't seen hide nor hair of Ish lately. Mebbe should hunt him down... Unlike some've my /own/ ex-cubs, the kid got sense."
Mouse shakes her head. "I haven't either, and I need to talk to him." She rubs her face. "I'm two to two with this fucking newspaper story. He's the only one I haven't brow-beat yet, except for Saul, but I'm not brow-beating Saul."
Kaz looks sour. "Basil, may I add, is a fucking moron? Thank you, and goodnight. You gonna bark at Urick, too?"
Mouse's jaw goes very tight for a moment. It's subtle, but Kaz is good at spotting subtle. "Nah, already did that. He's already out of my bad book. Only one I've really talked to who could take some fucking responsibility for his own actions." Basil? Who is Basil? She doesn't say anything about Basil.
Kaz nods slowly. "Makes sense. He's... well, someone raised him right. I put my stamp of approval on him, even if it means I gotta actually prove m'self to him. Which's fine." She doesn't, yet, follow up on Basil.
Mouse sips the last of her coffee, and then sets that mug aside as well. "Yeah." She's verbose. There's another face rub, which ends with her raking her fingers back through her hair again.
Kaz taps on the top of her Coke can. "Speakin' of people apparently raised wrong, I kinda told Baz, by the way, to shut the fuck up and stop bugging you, until and unless he was willing to stop apologizing, stop /justifying/ himself, and just fuckin' submit. Which I think means fuckin' never, but it's... /possible/? Just FYI." She seems entirely willing to drop it, now that she's said it.
Again with the jaw tightening. Mouse is studying the palm of her upturned hand, head slightly bowed and turned in profile to the other metis. "...He hasn't apologized," she says, finally. "Just going on about how he was an Ahroun, so that somehow excuses it, and how he really truly cares so much for everyone, so the fact he's totally unreliable whenever it comes down to mattering should be okay too." There's no heat in her voice. No real volume. It just sounds tired.
Kaz blinks. "He didn't?" The Gnawer pops her Coke open and takes a swig. "/He/ seems to think he did. Or possibly that he intended to but you won't let him, or some shit. Given the way he justifies like it was goin' out of style, I imagine he mistook one for the other, though." There's a pause, while Kaz looks at her Coke, and then she asks, "Anyway, so should I shut up about that?"
"His reality's somewhat skewed," Mouse says. There's some attempt to inject bitterness into that, but it fails miserably. The question elicits hesitation, then a small shrug. "No, go ahead if you want."
Kaz takes another swig of Coke. "No, well." She sighs. "I'd like, try an' figure out how to help or whatever, but in this specific case, I'm kind of more inclined to... let him dig /himself/ out. Because maybe this time it'd... /sink in/." She sounds unhappy, though.
Mouse grunts. "Maybe." She doesn't sound as though she's at all convinced of that, however. "He isn't gonna do it by calling my phone non-stop though."
"Yeah, I tol' him /that/, too. I mean, talk about wantin' a fuckin' restrainin' order." Kaz taps the can on a tooth, and sighs. "I think I gotta start crackin' down, if people's gonna do this shit."
Mouse finally looks up at her again. "Which people're we talking about?"
Kaz says, vaguely, "Annoying ones." And then, she puts the can down. "Ones who don't got enough instinct in their little pea bodies to fuckin' /respect their elders/ at times when they /need/ to. I was a pain in the ass, but even /I/ got /that/."
"Likewise," Mouse says, and finally, there's a bit of feeling in her tone. "Jesus. And forget fucking instinct, did they go bury their common sense in a ditch? Last night? If Cael hadn't sent me a text? They'd be off, doing who knows what. Cops probably, and that'd go really nice with whatever they've got in regards to that newspaper report. Urick was in /both/."
Kaz nods grimly. "I mean. I'd figured on goin' down there eventually, but if I missed it? I mean, shit." She sighs. "Riot's got an excuse, she's a Gaian, she /has/ to think like that. But Sean..." She shakes her head. "I can understand not wanting to kill innocents, even if anyone connected that close to a vampire ain't much of an innocent. I can understand being reluctant. But..." She sighs. "Sean's second Rite didn't focus enough on his weaknesses. He ain't gonna be much use as a /city/ philodox until he gets some hard lessons. It's more than kinda irritatin', 'cause we /need/ one, but he ain't it."
Mouse rubs her face again, and now it doesn't take sharp eyes to spot the strain. "They're young and they haven't dealt with it before, I get that. Empathy's a better flaw than no feelings at all. Someone just needs to..." She twists her fingers. "Sit down with them. Lay things out. Rather than bite their heads off like I've been doing."
Kaz grunts. "I talked to Sean some, after Billy's cubnappin'. A cubnappin' durin' which Sean did not want to kill th' kid's grandmother, even though she'd seen Billy in Crinos. Sean was... pretty adament, even once things were calm. But I am perfectly willing to try again. Or have you try again. Forever and ever."
Mouse shakes her head. "I didn't mean to imply you hadn't. I just meant--" Grunt. "I don't know what I meant."
Kaz, suddenly, grins. "No, I didn't think you was. I was just sayin' it'd take time. And much as I'd like to just snap my fingers and have it be right, it ain't. So I gotta be /OK/ with it takin' time, and a lotta explanations of possibilities and excigencies. See."
Mouse nods. "Yeah," she says, once again sounding tired. "Meantime though, gotta make it clear that even if they don't /like/ it, or agree with it, they still gotta do it."
Kaz nods, slowly. "I been so busy being pissed I ain't figured out ways to think about it. And basically, I just never got into a discussion about this kinda shit with him myself-- I was assumin' his philodox teachers had. It's the same with Riot, and with some've th' other more homid-identified folks." She picks up the can, peers into it, and then tosses it in the trash. "It's just more acculturation. It ain't the end of the world."
"No," Mouse agrees. "Unless they do something dumb in the meantime because they don't understand it yet." She fishes for another cookie--once again, instead of eating it, she just starts crumbling it methodically into smaller pieces, which she then crumbles into even smaller pieces, over and over. "Actually, since you're here. I've got some news I'd like spread around."
Kaz says, philosophically, "Everyone does dumb things. It's just up to us to make sure they ain't /huge/ dumb things." At Mouse's request, she perks up. "Yo?"
Mouse eases out of her chair, crosses to the closet, and then returns bearing a scribbled note encased neatly in a sealed ziploc freezer bag. The note says, 'Please Do Not Touch, Needed For Important Rite.' "Someone left a whippoorwill statue sitting in the lobby with this attached to it a few days ago."
Kaz's expression goes from grin to frown in the blink of an eye, and she rockets to her feet. "The fuck?"
Mouse holds the note out toward Kaz. "I have no fucking idea. Whippoorwill, unmistakably, 'bout this big, made of cheap plaster shit. Right in the fucking middle of the lobby floor. Now, either I'm being fucked with by Dancers, except they tend to leave nastier presents and they'd have to be utter morons to be able to get in here to leave a statue and /not/ attack us, hence alerting us to their presence, or I'm being fucked with by someone else, except I don't know who'd do something this stupid or why."
"Someone with a fuckin' /bad/ sense of timing, given them dudes with silver and that thing on the Bawn." Kaz takes the note. "I'll bug folks. Just, you know, ask around some. If anyone knows shit about it."
"If I wanna be a really big pain about it," Mouse says, indicating the plastic bag, "Finger prints. Or smell. Or hell, handwriting. Or I could go asking around on the other side. So that's why it's in the bag. But mostly, I want to make it rather clear that if this was a joke, it's really not fucking funny. And if someone does it again, I'm going to hang them by their own intestines."
Kaz looks down at it. "Mrrm." There's a short pause. "I should do th' coincidence Gift with it. But you should do fingerprints first."
Mouse looks curious. "Coincidence gift? And fingerprints means taking it to one of the cop kin, and most of us /aren't/ fingerprinted. Plus, it'd mean using their database, and if I know anything, I know that anything you put into a computer can come back to bite you later, even if you think you didn't leave anything behind."
Kaz says, "You know. Find the Prize. It ain't worth much if you can't put 45 and 32 together and get Mu, but it's good if you can grasp the possibilities." She nods slowly. "OK. I'll go with talkin' first, but-- do fingerprints fade over time?"
Mouse shakes her head. "They don't /fade/. They can get messed up, or wiped away, or other such things. And that's presuming the person who did this left their fingerprints on it in such a way that they'd even be useful. And that we'd be able to pick out. Mine gotta be on there now, possibly Basil's."
Kaz nods. "OK, cool. So I can wander around showin' people this and not fuck with it, as long as I don' take it out. So if we /do/ decide to do the database thing later, that won't be fucked up."
Mouse nods. "Not any more than it already was before I put it in there, nope."
Kaz says, "Rockin'. Good t'know." She looks down at it some more, and shakes her head. "Jesus. Either /way/, I ain't a /fan/."
Mouse snorts. "Neither am I." There's the faintest shiver, starting at the the middle of her shoulders and working up to her face. "I was hoping for a break from this Dancer shit."
"Yeah, seriously," says Kaz, still looking at the note. But something makes Kaz look up at the other woman. "So, um. I keep not askin', but you're right /there/. Other'n you, who got... completely traumatized by them Dancers, anyways? I mean," she adds hastily, "That you knew. Not in general, 'cause that'd take all night."
Mouse's cheeks redden instantly, and the look she gives Kaz is reminiscent of a rabbit caught in a snare, sharp, sudden, cornered. "What?"
Heroically, Kaz does not roll her eyes. Quietly, she says, "Mouse. Every time there's even vague mention of Dancers, you freak. It..." She stops. "It just sticks out a piece."
Mouse takes a very forced, measured breath, in once, out once. "Oh." Yes, 'oh'. She has quite suddenly become the queen of single word sentences.
Slowly, as if feeling her way over unsure ground, Kaz says, "And I just thought I'd ask, because ignoring it ain't helpin'."
Mouse reaches out, finds her seat, and sinks back into it, slowly. A beat. "I'm sorry, I--" She shakes her head. "I missed the question. What was it?"
Kaz says, "Well." She's a little tentative. "It was basically, what the fuck /happened/? I mean, there were more words than that, but that's the general point."
Mouse sucks on the inside of her cheek. She spends a considerably few moments studying the crumbs on the floor, nudging a nearby roach gently toward them with the toe of her shoe, and as the moments pass there's a change, very gradual, but there, and by the time she speaks again, she seems to have pulled herself together. Her expression is unreadable, her voice calm and level, her muscles mostly relaxed. "Lost a friend to them," she says. "Didn't catch the danger signs in time."
There's a surprisingly short pause. "Yeah, OK. Is that why you're... allergic to packs, lately?"
"...Yeah," Mouse says. Quieter. One of her hands curls into the palm of the other, and that seems to be where she's concentrating her tension, as the knuckles whiten.
Kaz says, gently, "Yeah. OK." She looks at Mouse for a moment, the compassion clearly evident in her eyes, and then she looks down. "I'm gonna make a small speech, and then I'm gonna drop it before you break into little bits on the floor. OK?"
"I'm fine," Mouse says, firmly, if still quiet. "But yeah, okay."
"OK." Kaz takes a breath. "I... really do understand... just how... fucked up those situations can be. I mean. Up close and personal understand." She rummages in her pocket and finds a Coke can. "But I like you. And I keep thinkin', my pack sucks, I should go make another one. Lot more focused one. And I think you'n me'd work good together, but I ain't considered you in that equation because us two Elders, Gnawer and Walker, shouldn't be packin' together. We gotta distribute our resources and our knowledge. But. Mouse." She pops the Coke open. "You ain't packin'. And the Sept /actively needs/ you in a pack. Your expertise and your skills, along with a Totem, workin' in close concert with other like minded folks. So, not to be too pointed about it, but you really do have to... do some soul searchin', in some fashion, and get more of a handle on your pain and your fear, your sadness and your tears, /all/ of it. Because you're... we need you in th' full of your strength. We really do."
Mouse seems to close up a little, slowly, as Kaz speaks, as her hands slide away from each other, inward, until she's fairly hugging both elbows, and her gaze is fixed on those little crumbs of cookie and the investigating roach. There's a long, long silence. "...I'm not ready," she says, finally. There's no firmness to it now, however. It's wavering, uncertain. "I should be. But I'm not...yet. Not for that."
Kaz says, gently, "Yeah. I know. That's why I ain't sayin', you! Do this now." She taps the top of the can. "You just gotta... approach it, instead've /bein'/ in it. Y'know?"
Mouse ducks her head a bit lower for a moment, before lifting it again. "I don't know how." It's an admittance, and while she's obviously trying, trying to keep her voice level, get back to the firmness of a few moments ago, she's not quite managing. "It's not just packs. It's." Breathe. "Look at Basil."
"I think..." Kaz trails off. "I think the human logic is to talk about it, a lot, for intense periods of time, and then stop. And then do it again another time. But they use like, trained professionals." She grins, the ghost of one of her usual grins. "Need that shrink dude to come back." There's a short pause where she actually /drinks/ Coke, and then she lowers the can, looking at Mouse again. "But-- what about Baz? It-- felt good, you two, from this end?"
Mouse shakes her head. "I didn't want to. But I did trust him. And worse I trusted him when I knew, I /knew/, that for these things he wasn't going to hold up. And he just...he just picked up on all of this. And followed me around like a loyal puppy. I just wanted to help him, you know? 'Cause he walks around broadcasting his hurt, it's all over. I didn't want someone being.../close/. And it didn't matter, every time I tried to stick a crowbar between us, he ignored it. And then, last time we argued, I realized I didn't have anything left to help him with. I was out of words and arguments and things to say. And I got mad. And that felt safer. And then this thing happens the other day, and I realized there wasn't any distance between us at all, not /any/, And that..." Grunt.
Kaz narrows her eyes a little. "And that got you panicky, or am I misreadin' your silences?"
"No," Mouse says slowly. Carefully, as if she were trying to make her way through a swamp in dim light. "No, it was. It was like, I thought, if I have to do this, if I have to turn my back on him, then it won't hurt so much."
Kaz looks as if she's eating something sour. "It, uh. Don't really work so good that way."
"I know," Mouse says. "I knew. So of course it hurt just as fucking much, prior argument be damned." She looks up again. "I /needed/ him. That one time, I needed him to be with me. Really needed. But he couldn't do it. His pride was more important."
Kaz says, slowly, with quiet emphasis, "Yeah. I told him that. I told him that repeatedly, over the course of half an hour. Maybe it actually got through, because for once, for /fucking/ once, I refused to let him sidetrack me. But-- That ain't the point. The point is..." She trails off. "You got closer with him than you have with anyone for, what, how long?"
Mouse's eyes flick to the side for a moment, calculating. "....Maybe two years?" She makes a noise that sounds like a laugh, but very obviously isn't. "Hell, I don't even know if I /liked/ him."
Kaz admits, "I sure fuckin' don't, half the time, because he is a Big Black Hole Of Need. But he's... changin'. Slowly." She takes a swig of Coke. "And... Well, you basically had the /worst/ fuckin' way of dealin' with how close you were, when he did that to you, in front've them people. But that does mean that in future, it'll get minutely easier. This is years, y'know. This ain't months."
Mouse grimaces. "That's not why I did it, Kaz. I didn't do that to him...I didn't do that to him just because I wanted to push him /away/. I didn't want to hurt him. It took him three times to submit when I was sitting on top of him, I didn't want..."
Kaz starts to say something, then stops. "Didn't want what?"
"I didn't want to turn on him," Mouse finishes, lamely. "But he turned on me first. He put my back up against a wall, in public. Either I did what I said I was going to do, or I didn't, and then /no one/ would follow because they wouldn't be able to trust me."
Kaz says, with a quiet firmness, "You was in the right. That ain't in question. And in this specific circumstance, the pain in the ass nature of it is that you hadda choose between friendship and bein' an Elder." There's a pause. "Still means the next time you get this kinda shit, the next time you get closer to someone, it'll be infinitesimally easier."
Mouse grunts. "But packs are...packs are...different. More. More intense. Spiritual. You're linked by more than just regular things. You.../trust/ each other more."
Kaz says, quietly, "Yeah. Don't I know it. I couldn't..." She breaks off. "I couldn't deal, either. F'a long time. That's what I meant when I said it'd take years, not months. This shit don't heal quick or easy. So you get OK with gettin' close to just, you know. People. And it hurts a lot, and then it hurts less, and then less. And then you grit your teeth a lot and get with a /buncha/ people close enough to be actin' like a pack. And then y'get with a Totem. But I ain't /never/ meant to imply it's quick, or fun."
Mouse falls silent, and her eyes gradually drift back toward those cookie crumbs. "...Is it that obvious? That there's something wrong?"
Kaz looks uncertain. "Yes? No? I dunno! I dunno what other people think. But like, my /job/ is to pay attention to people, so it's obvious to /me/."
Mouse makes a face, looking considerably uncomfortable. "Basil picked it out right away. Zeke knows something's up. Now you just kind've nailed it right off. I thought I was doing a bit better than that. I mean. I didn't come here intending for anyone to /know/. Because it's been a while, it's settled, and I'm alright."
Kaz blinks at Mouse. "You're what? You are not." (She doesn't sound angry or upset; mostly she just sounds vaguely astonished; the strength of her voice doesn't really change much, in those two sentences.) With a bit more energy, she says, "You are the furthest thing from all right I can think of. You're /functional/, yes. You /cope/ great. But that ain't all /right/." Gently, she adds, "But Baz knows you good. Zeke does too. Me, I just notice things. I think most folks figure you're fine."
Mouse looks as though she's about to argue that point, but she settles again as Kaz continues. "Okay. I'm coping. I'm handling it. I'm not...broken, I'm not dysfunctional. I don't need rites, or..." She inhales deeply. "I'm not /Basil/. I don't need to broadcast it and I don't...I don't want to."
Kaz's smile is quiet. "No. You ain't broken. You're just bent a little. And you sure as /fuck/ ain't Baz." She finishes her Coke. "Lissen, I should... go do other things that don't involve fucking with your head. But I'll catch you later, huh?"
Mouse looks strangely reluctant, though her answer is predictable. "...Yeah. Alright." Pause. "You aren't g..." She stops. "No, you're not. I'll...yeah, I'll catch you later."
Kaz sticks the can in her pocket. "I ain't what?"
Mouse shakes her head. "Telling anyone. Which is a stupid thing to ask, so I stopped asking it before I finished."
Kaz blinks in surprise and immediately shakes her head. "Oh. Shit no. In case you need it in words t'calm y'anxiety down." She puts her coffee mug back in the sink, and adds, "Thanks. F'th' cookies and all." And then she heads out.
Mouse lets her go without further remark, though she does spend some time studying the two empty seats once the door has closed.
Tenement Building - First Floor(#1738RA)
This long, somewhat narrow hallway is lined with plain brown doors on both sides; each door bears a brass three-digit number in the one-hundred range. The walls are a neutral tan color. The short carpet is a darker brown that doesn't stain easily. The lighting is both bright and easy on the eyes; there are smoke detectors spaced regularly on the ceiling and a couple of fire extinguishers along the walls. At the end of the hall, a large window leads to the fire escape.
Obvious exits:
119 Stairs
Kaz shifts back to homid almost immediately; once she's done with the Litany, and once they show a clearly tired Cordelia the cubroom, she finds a Coke in her pocket and sighs. "Cubs. All over th' damn place."
Mouse has finished crumbling her cookie onto the carpet, though no roaches have yet to venture out for dinner. "To think, I thought I'd get a break once I got Riley and Ishmael through." She dusts off her hands. "And no lost kids for the Lords yet on my end either." She doesn't seem terribly /displeased/ by this notion. "Though I suppose Salem's a bit hard to reach right now, even for an Adren Ragabash."
Kaz grins. "We just got one, too. /Who/, I might add, hadda fetch, too. So she's screwed twice over, not that she has the arrangement with me or nothin', but I don' figure she'll be any too eager to notice the distinction unless I remind her energetically." She adds, "I ain't seen hide nor hair of Ish lately. Mebbe should hunt him down... Unlike some've my /own/ ex-cubs, the kid got sense."
Mouse shakes her head. "I haven't either, and I need to talk to him." She rubs her face. "I'm two to two with this fucking newspaper story. He's the only one I haven't brow-beat yet, except for Saul, but I'm not brow-beating Saul."
Kaz looks sour. "Basil, may I add, is a fucking moron? Thank you, and goodnight. You gonna bark at Urick, too?"
Mouse's jaw goes very tight for a moment. It's subtle, but Kaz is good at spotting subtle. "Nah, already did that. He's already out of my bad book. Only one I've really talked to who could take some fucking responsibility for his own actions." Basil? Who is Basil? She doesn't say anything about Basil.
Kaz nods slowly. "Makes sense. He's... well, someone raised him right. I put my stamp of approval on him, even if it means I gotta actually prove m'self to him. Which's fine." She doesn't, yet, follow up on Basil.
Mouse sips the last of her coffee, and then sets that mug aside as well. "Yeah." She's verbose. There's another face rub, which ends with her raking her fingers back through her hair again.
Kaz taps on the top of her Coke can. "Speakin' of people apparently raised wrong, I kinda told Baz, by the way, to shut the fuck up and stop bugging you, until and unless he was willing to stop apologizing, stop /justifying/ himself, and just fuckin' submit. Which I think means fuckin' never, but it's... /possible/? Just FYI." She seems entirely willing to drop it, now that she's said it.
Again with the jaw tightening. Mouse is studying the palm of her upturned hand, head slightly bowed and turned in profile to the other metis. "...He hasn't apologized," she says, finally. "Just going on about how he was an Ahroun, so that somehow excuses it, and how he really truly cares so much for everyone, so the fact he's totally unreliable whenever it comes down to mattering should be okay too." There's no heat in her voice. No real volume. It just sounds tired.
Kaz blinks. "He didn't?" The Gnawer pops her Coke open and takes a swig. "/He/ seems to think he did. Or possibly that he intended to but you won't let him, or some shit. Given the way he justifies like it was goin' out of style, I imagine he mistook one for the other, though." There's a pause, while Kaz looks at her Coke, and then she asks, "Anyway, so should I shut up about that?"
"His reality's somewhat skewed," Mouse says. There's some attempt to inject bitterness into that, but it fails miserably. The question elicits hesitation, then a small shrug. "No, go ahead if you want."
Kaz takes another swig of Coke. "No, well." She sighs. "I'd like, try an' figure out how to help or whatever, but in this specific case, I'm kind of more inclined to... let him dig /himself/ out. Because maybe this time it'd... /sink in/." She sounds unhappy, though.
Mouse grunts. "Maybe." She doesn't sound as though she's at all convinced of that, however. "He isn't gonna do it by calling my phone non-stop though."
"Yeah, I tol' him /that/, too. I mean, talk about wantin' a fuckin' restrainin' order." Kaz taps the can on a tooth, and sighs. "I think I gotta start crackin' down, if people's gonna do this shit."
Mouse finally looks up at her again. "Which people're we talking about?"
Kaz says, vaguely, "Annoying ones." And then, she puts the can down. "Ones who don't got enough instinct in their little pea bodies to fuckin' /respect their elders/ at times when they /need/ to. I was a pain in the ass, but even /I/ got /that/."
"Likewise," Mouse says, and finally, there's a bit of feeling in her tone. "Jesus. And forget fucking instinct, did they go bury their common sense in a ditch? Last night? If Cael hadn't sent me a text? They'd be off, doing who knows what. Cops probably, and that'd go really nice with whatever they've got in regards to that newspaper report. Urick was in /both/."
Kaz nods grimly. "I mean. I'd figured on goin' down there eventually, but if I missed it? I mean, shit." She sighs. "Riot's got an excuse, she's a Gaian, she /has/ to think like that. But Sean..." She shakes her head. "I can understand not wanting to kill innocents, even if anyone connected that close to a vampire ain't much of an innocent. I can understand being reluctant. But..." She sighs. "Sean's second Rite didn't focus enough on his weaknesses. He ain't gonna be much use as a /city/ philodox until he gets some hard lessons. It's more than kinda irritatin', 'cause we /need/ one, but he ain't it."
Mouse rubs her face again, and now it doesn't take sharp eyes to spot the strain. "They're young and they haven't dealt with it before, I get that. Empathy's a better flaw than no feelings at all. Someone just needs to..." She twists her fingers. "Sit down with them. Lay things out. Rather than bite their heads off like I've been doing."
Kaz grunts. "I talked to Sean some, after Billy's cubnappin'. A cubnappin' durin' which Sean did not want to kill th' kid's grandmother, even though she'd seen Billy in Crinos. Sean was... pretty adament, even once things were calm. But I am perfectly willing to try again. Or have you try again. Forever and ever."
Mouse shakes her head. "I didn't mean to imply you hadn't. I just meant--" Grunt. "I don't know what I meant."
Kaz, suddenly, grins. "No, I didn't think you was. I was just sayin' it'd take time. And much as I'd like to just snap my fingers and have it be right, it ain't. So I gotta be /OK/ with it takin' time, and a lotta explanations of possibilities and excigencies. See."
Mouse nods. "Yeah," she says, once again sounding tired. "Meantime though, gotta make it clear that even if they don't /like/ it, or agree with it, they still gotta do it."
Kaz nods, slowly. "I been so busy being pissed I ain't figured out ways to think about it. And basically, I just never got into a discussion about this kinda shit with him myself-- I was assumin' his philodox teachers had. It's the same with Riot, and with some've th' other more homid-identified folks." She picks up the can, peers into it, and then tosses it in the trash. "It's just more acculturation. It ain't the end of the world."
"No," Mouse agrees. "Unless they do something dumb in the meantime because they don't understand it yet." She fishes for another cookie--once again, instead of eating it, she just starts crumbling it methodically into smaller pieces, which she then crumbles into even smaller pieces, over and over. "Actually, since you're here. I've got some news I'd like spread around."
Kaz says, philosophically, "Everyone does dumb things. It's just up to us to make sure they ain't /huge/ dumb things." At Mouse's request, she perks up. "Yo?"
Mouse eases out of her chair, crosses to the closet, and then returns bearing a scribbled note encased neatly in a sealed ziploc freezer bag. The note says, 'Please Do Not Touch, Needed For Important Rite.' "Someone left a whippoorwill statue sitting in the lobby with this attached to it a few days ago."
Kaz's expression goes from grin to frown in the blink of an eye, and she rockets to her feet. "The fuck?"
Mouse holds the note out toward Kaz. "I have no fucking idea. Whippoorwill, unmistakably, 'bout this big, made of cheap plaster shit. Right in the fucking middle of the lobby floor. Now, either I'm being fucked with by Dancers, except they tend to leave nastier presents and they'd have to be utter morons to be able to get in here to leave a statue and /not/ attack us, hence alerting us to their presence, or I'm being fucked with by someone else, except I don't know who'd do something this stupid or why."
"Someone with a fuckin' /bad/ sense of timing, given them dudes with silver and that thing on the Bawn." Kaz takes the note. "I'll bug folks. Just, you know, ask around some. If anyone knows shit about it."
"If I wanna be a really big pain about it," Mouse says, indicating the plastic bag, "Finger prints. Or smell. Or hell, handwriting. Or I could go asking around on the other side. So that's why it's in the bag. But mostly, I want to make it rather clear that if this was a joke, it's really not fucking funny. And if someone does it again, I'm going to hang them by their own intestines."
Kaz looks down at it. "Mrrm." There's a short pause. "I should do th' coincidence Gift with it. But you should do fingerprints first."
Mouse looks curious. "Coincidence gift? And fingerprints means taking it to one of the cop kin, and most of us /aren't/ fingerprinted. Plus, it'd mean using their database, and if I know anything, I know that anything you put into a computer can come back to bite you later, even if you think you didn't leave anything behind."
Kaz says, "You know. Find the Prize. It ain't worth much if you can't put 45 and 32 together and get Mu, but it's good if you can grasp the possibilities." She nods slowly. "OK. I'll go with talkin' first, but-- do fingerprints fade over time?"
Mouse shakes her head. "They don't /fade/. They can get messed up, or wiped away, or other such things. And that's presuming the person who did this left their fingerprints on it in such a way that they'd even be useful. And that we'd be able to pick out. Mine gotta be on there now, possibly Basil's."
Kaz nods. "OK, cool. So I can wander around showin' people this and not fuck with it, as long as I don' take it out. So if we /do/ decide to do the database thing later, that won't be fucked up."
Mouse nods. "Not any more than it already was before I put it in there, nope."
Kaz says, "Rockin'. Good t'know." She looks down at it some more, and shakes her head. "Jesus. Either /way/, I ain't a /fan/."
Mouse snorts. "Neither am I." There's the faintest shiver, starting at the the middle of her shoulders and working up to her face. "I was hoping for a break from this Dancer shit."
"Yeah, seriously," says Kaz, still looking at the note. But something makes Kaz look up at the other woman. "So, um. I keep not askin', but you're right /there/. Other'n you, who got... completely traumatized by them Dancers, anyways? I mean," she adds hastily, "That you knew. Not in general, 'cause that'd take all night."
Mouse's cheeks redden instantly, and the look she gives Kaz is reminiscent of a rabbit caught in a snare, sharp, sudden, cornered. "What?"
Heroically, Kaz does not roll her eyes. Quietly, she says, "Mouse. Every time there's even vague mention of Dancers, you freak. It..." She stops. "It just sticks out a piece."
Mouse takes a very forced, measured breath, in once, out once. "Oh." Yes, 'oh'. She has quite suddenly become the queen of single word sentences.
Slowly, as if feeling her way over unsure ground, Kaz says, "And I just thought I'd ask, because ignoring it ain't helpin'."
Mouse reaches out, finds her seat, and sinks back into it, slowly. A beat. "I'm sorry, I--" She shakes her head. "I missed the question. What was it?"
Kaz says, "Well." She's a little tentative. "It was basically, what the fuck /happened/? I mean, there were more words than that, but that's the general point."
Mouse sucks on the inside of her cheek. She spends a considerably few moments studying the crumbs on the floor, nudging a nearby roach gently toward them with the toe of her shoe, and as the moments pass there's a change, very gradual, but there, and by the time she speaks again, she seems to have pulled herself together. Her expression is unreadable, her voice calm and level, her muscles mostly relaxed. "Lost a friend to them," she says. "Didn't catch the danger signs in time."
There's a surprisingly short pause. "Yeah, OK. Is that why you're... allergic to packs, lately?"
"...Yeah," Mouse says. Quieter. One of her hands curls into the palm of the other, and that seems to be where she's concentrating her tension, as the knuckles whiten.
Kaz says, gently, "Yeah. OK." She looks at Mouse for a moment, the compassion clearly evident in her eyes, and then she looks down. "I'm gonna make a small speech, and then I'm gonna drop it before you break into little bits on the floor. OK?"
"I'm fine," Mouse says, firmly, if still quiet. "But yeah, okay."
"OK." Kaz takes a breath. "I... really do understand... just how... fucked up those situations can be. I mean. Up close and personal understand." She rummages in her pocket and finds a Coke can. "But I like you. And I keep thinkin', my pack sucks, I should go make another one. Lot more focused one. And I think you'n me'd work good together, but I ain't considered you in that equation because us two Elders, Gnawer and Walker, shouldn't be packin' together. We gotta distribute our resources and our knowledge. But. Mouse." She pops the Coke open. "You ain't packin'. And the Sept /actively needs/ you in a pack. Your expertise and your skills, along with a Totem, workin' in close concert with other like minded folks. So, not to be too pointed about it, but you really do have to... do some soul searchin', in some fashion, and get more of a handle on your pain and your fear, your sadness and your tears, /all/ of it. Because you're... we need you in th' full of your strength. We really do."
Mouse seems to close up a little, slowly, as Kaz speaks, as her hands slide away from each other, inward, until she's fairly hugging both elbows, and her gaze is fixed on those little crumbs of cookie and the investigating roach. There's a long, long silence. "...I'm not ready," she says, finally. There's no firmness to it now, however. It's wavering, uncertain. "I should be. But I'm not...yet. Not for that."
Kaz says, gently, "Yeah. I know. That's why I ain't sayin', you! Do this now." She taps the top of the can. "You just gotta... approach it, instead've /bein'/ in it. Y'know?"
Mouse ducks her head a bit lower for a moment, before lifting it again. "I don't know how." It's an admittance, and while she's obviously trying, trying to keep her voice level, get back to the firmness of a few moments ago, she's not quite managing. "It's not just packs. It's." Breathe. "Look at Basil."
"I think..." Kaz trails off. "I think the human logic is to talk about it, a lot, for intense periods of time, and then stop. And then do it again another time. But they use like, trained professionals." She grins, the ghost of one of her usual grins. "Need that shrink dude to come back." There's a short pause where she actually /drinks/ Coke, and then she lowers the can, looking at Mouse again. "But-- what about Baz? It-- felt good, you two, from this end?"
Mouse shakes her head. "I didn't want to. But I did trust him. And worse I trusted him when I knew, I /knew/, that for these things he wasn't going to hold up. And he just...he just picked up on all of this. And followed me around like a loyal puppy. I just wanted to help him, you know? 'Cause he walks around broadcasting his hurt, it's all over. I didn't want someone being.../close/. And it didn't matter, every time I tried to stick a crowbar between us, he ignored it. And then, last time we argued, I realized I didn't have anything left to help him with. I was out of words and arguments and things to say. And I got mad. And that felt safer. And then this thing happens the other day, and I realized there wasn't any distance between us at all, not /any/, And that..." Grunt.
Kaz narrows her eyes a little. "And that got you panicky, or am I misreadin' your silences?"
"No," Mouse says slowly. Carefully, as if she were trying to make her way through a swamp in dim light. "No, it was. It was like, I thought, if I have to do this, if I have to turn my back on him, then it won't hurt so much."
Kaz looks as if she's eating something sour. "It, uh. Don't really work so good that way."
"I know," Mouse says. "I knew. So of course it hurt just as fucking much, prior argument be damned." She looks up again. "I /needed/ him. That one time, I needed him to be with me. Really needed. But he couldn't do it. His pride was more important."
Kaz says, slowly, with quiet emphasis, "Yeah. I told him that. I told him that repeatedly, over the course of half an hour. Maybe it actually got through, because for once, for /fucking/ once, I refused to let him sidetrack me. But-- That ain't the point. The point is..." She trails off. "You got closer with him than you have with anyone for, what, how long?"
Mouse's eyes flick to the side for a moment, calculating. "....Maybe two years?" She makes a noise that sounds like a laugh, but very obviously isn't. "Hell, I don't even know if I /liked/ him."
Kaz admits, "I sure fuckin' don't, half the time, because he is a Big Black Hole Of Need. But he's... changin'. Slowly." She takes a swig of Coke. "And... Well, you basically had the /worst/ fuckin' way of dealin' with how close you were, when he did that to you, in front've them people. But that does mean that in future, it'll get minutely easier. This is years, y'know. This ain't months."
Mouse grimaces. "That's not why I did it, Kaz. I didn't do that to him...I didn't do that to him just because I wanted to push him /away/. I didn't want to hurt him. It took him three times to submit when I was sitting on top of him, I didn't want..."
Kaz starts to say something, then stops. "Didn't want what?"
"I didn't want to turn on him," Mouse finishes, lamely. "But he turned on me first. He put my back up against a wall, in public. Either I did what I said I was going to do, or I didn't, and then /no one/ would follow because they wouldn't be able to trust me."
Kaz says, with a quiet firmness, "You was in the right. That ain't in question. And in this specific circumstance, the pain in the ass nature of it is that you hadda choose between friendship and bein' an Elder." There's a pause. "Still means the next time you get this kinda shit, the next time you get closer to someone, it'll be infinitesimally easier."
Mouse grunts. "But packs are...packs are...different. More. More intense. Spiritual. You're linked by more than just regular things. You.../trust/ each other more."
Kaz says, quietly, "Yeah. Don't I know it. I couldn't..." She breaks off. "I couldn't deal, either. F'a long time. That's what I meant when I said it'd take years, not months. This shit don't heal quick or easy. So you get OK with gettin' close to just, you know. People. And it hurts a lot, and then it hurts less, and then less. And then you grit your teeth a lot and get with a /buncha/ people close enough to be actin' like a pack. And then y'get with a Totem. But I ain't /never/ meant to imply it's quick, or fun."
Mouse falls silent, and her eyes gradually drift back toward those cookie crumbs. "...Is it that obvious? That there's something wrong?"
Kaz looks uncertain. "Yes? No? I dunno! I dunno what other people think. But like, my /job/ is to pay attention to people, so it's obvious to /me/."
Mouse makes a face, looking considerably uncomfortable. "Basil picked it out right away. Zeke knows something's up. Now you just kind've nailed it right off. I thought I was doing a bit better than that. I mean. I didn't come here intending for anyone to /know/. Because it's been a while, it's settled, and I'm alright."
Kaz blinks at Mouse. "You're what? You are not." (She doesn't sound angry or upset; mostly she just sounds vaguely astonished; the strength of her voice doesn't really change much, in those two sentences.) With a bit more energy, she says, "You are the furthest thing from all right I can think of. You're /functional/, yes. You /cope/ great. But that ain't all /right/." Gently, she adds, "But Baz knows you good. Zeke does too. Me, I just notice things. I think most folks figure you're fine."
Mouse looks as though she's about to argue that point, but she settles again as Kaz continues. "Okay. I'm coping. I'm handling it. I'm not...broken, I'm not dysfunctional. I don't need rites, or..." She inhales deeply. "I'm not /Basil/. I don't need to broadcast it and I don't...I don't want to."
Kaz's smile is quiet. "No. You ain't broken. You're just bent a little. And you sure as /fuck/ ain't Baz." She finishes her Coke. "Lissen, I should... go do other things that don't involve fucking with your head. But I'll catch you later, huh?"
Mouse looks strangely reluctant, though her answer is predictable. "...Yeah. Alright." Pause. "You aren't g..." She stops. "No, you're not. I'll...yeah, I'll catch you later."
Kaz sticks the can in her pocket. "I ain't what?"
Mouse shakes her head. "Telling anyone. Which is a stupid thing to ask, so I stopped asking it before I finished."
Kaz blinks in surprise and immediately shakes her head. "Oh. Shit no. In case you need it in words t'calm y'anxiety down." She puts her coffee mug back in the sink, and adds, "Thanks. F'th' cookies and all." And then she heads out.
Mouse lets her go without further remark, though she does spend some time studying the two empty seats once the door has closed.
