Rest in Peace, Little Police Care.

[Slaughter] She takes the back staircase, her car parked in the alleyway, out of sight. The staircase leads her directly to the upper room where Garou and their kinfolk make their home, and as she places a hand on the door, she wonders, not for the first time, what kind of protection might be on this place that is beyond her ken. For certainly, according to her own eyes, it is less protected than even her own apartment.

From there leads to a consideration of logic - what kind of protection might there be. How might it work, in a place such as this. Does it recognize her by her blood? Or because she came here once in the presence of a Garou? The thoughts flicker absently through her mind, a half-distracted game she plays with herself, an answer she will never know, because she will never ask. This will never go beyond idle musing.

It barely lasts seconds, from the time she opens the door to pushing it open and stepping into the domain the Garou, outwardly distant and inwardly reluctant. She is dressed in jeans, a woollen overcoat, a scarf around her neck. She reaches up with one leather gloved hand to undo the buttons as the heat begins to seep through her clothing, but she makes no move to take it off. She has one hand in her pocket, and it remains so, leaving her one handed to open her coat and shut the door behind her.

Her eyes flicker over the common room. Should Night's Reprieve be there, she'll approach him now - if anyone else is there, they might receive a polite but distant greeting, but only in response to their own. Otherwise, she will head for room 5 to knock on the door.

[Night's Reprieve] Night's Reprieve cannot be found in the common room because he isn't usually very sociable. It isn't because he lacks the care or skill to engage in social activities, but simply because he is a busy man. How can he sit on the couch and watch TV when the spirits of the Caern are asking for so much? Oh and they do ask. They bitch and moan and whine, and always do they ask for more. They have it about as good as a spirit can have it, but they are ungrateful. It is the way of spirits to be so, it is nothing personal towards the Godi.

So he isn't curled up on the sectional like so many of the other occupants of this brotherhood tend to do, he is in fact in his room and Imogen doesn't have to wait long after knocking to find the door swinging open and NR standing in the doorway wearing a thick woollen shirt of red and black tartan. Oh there are jeans of course, and socks - thick warm socks - and also a strange look on his face. It's surprise.

"Doctor Slaughter." He says, as if to confirm to himself who has come knocking on his door. And then, rather more relaxed, "It's good to see you, what can I do for you?"

Past his shoulder she can see a made bed in a rather clean room. There is a bottle of clear liquid on the bedside table along with an upside down open book.

[Slaughter] The surprise has no impact on her - Imogen is self-aware, and that she is the least likely person to enter the Brotherhood voluntarily and knock on a Garou's bedroom is hardly a fact which requires much self reflection.

He says it's good to see her, and there's a flicker of amusement - the smallest suggestion of a smirk across her mouth. If her expression were to be given a dialogue, it would be: is it? in a tone of mild wryness. It is only transitory, however, and not long enough or intense enough to require speech or conversation. There is only the expression.

"Hello," she greets him. The kinswoman does not use his name, and it is questionable if she even recalls it.

"I seem t'recall tha' you're a Godi," the apparent Fianna asks, using the Fenrir term familiarly. Her hand remains in her pocket, "ha' I got that right?"

[Night's Reprieve] There is so much about Imogen that Night's Reprieve fails to grasp, the thing that makes a difference is that he is aware he has failed to grasp it. So hello she says and he crosses his arms over his chest and lets out a breath, but remains otherwise unchanged.

"You recall correct, you are familiar with my tribes language." He states, once again more to himself than her, like he is making a special folder of information with Imogen Slaughter written on it.

[Slaughter] The phrase is innocuous, but it provokes a brief tension in her jaw, a tendon shifting as she tightens it; there, then gone. "I'm familiar with your tribe," she says, almost as if it were a correction.

"I ha' somethin t'show you," she says. "May I come in?"

[Night's Reprieve] And this is where Night's Reprieve does something rather strange. He steps forward, possibly invading her personal space but it's not to her that he looks. He peers down the corridor to the right and then straight ahead. After a few moments he is apparently satisfied and turns his back on her to make way into his room.

"Shut the door if it is required." He states after turning to face her again. There is a single seat pushed up near to the bedside table which he indicates to with a raised eyebrow and a movement of his hand.

[Slaughter] Night's Reprieve steps forward invading her space - and Imogen, she steps back, her movement as smooth as silk, unhurried, perfectly comfortable in her avoidance. As he looks both ways, her eyebrow arches, the smirk flickering back to life across her mouth.

"Worried about gossip?"

She does not wait for his answer, stepping into the room. When he offers that she may shut the door if necessary, she pauses a moment, glancing at the open doorway, then choosing to shut it. She does so near silently, in control of the door's sway toward the frame as she is of her own movements.

He offers her a seat, which she declines by not taking it, instead removing her hand from her pocket, flattening her fingers so he can see what she had been holding.

A small car sits in the flat of her palm, a toy police vehicle with a broken siren light, and tires completely and utterly worn to nubbins. The paint on its hood and bumpers have been re-touched with a colour that is not quite a match to its original. To any human, the next moments might be startling, but to a Godi, it is perhaps merely telling.

The car whirs its tires with a tinny, high pitched whoop of a siren, trying to scurry up the slope of the heel of the Doctor's palm.

Imogen's dark eyes are on the car, studying it with an absent, distant expression. She keeps her emotions under her skin, so deep as to be invisible.

"Another Godi made this," she says. "To protect her packhouse. It sought me out even when she was alive." A brief pause, as she chooses her words.

"The pack it used to serve is disbanded and she is dead," she says, her voice steady. "I think it deserves its rest."

[Night's Reprieve] Worried about gossip?

A grunt, if that, is all the response she gets to her question which is not quite a question and more of an observation. The seat is not taken and Night's Reprieve doesn't seem phased. Maybe it's because the offer was merely a formality or because she has something far more interesting than her polite denial of a polite offer to share with the Godi.

The car is alive. Well, technically not alive, but in motion. It is inhabited. Made by one such as him. He reaches out an upturned palm and asks, "may I?" And if he may then he takes a closer look at the small car, even making himself more comfortable on the chair previously declined by Imogen.

"You say to protect her packhouse? As a scout I take it? If I am not mistaken that is usually the purpose of awakening something like this."

She thinks it deserves its rest.

"Is it of no use to you?"

[Slaughter] The car makes a sound of dismay as it is picked up by the Godi, its wheels spinning as if, even airborne, that might allow it to return to the red-haired doctor. Imogen watches the car, her mouth tight, the only betrayal of her tension.

She shook her head, "I don't know," she says. "I never asked its purpose. But I had the impression it was defencive, not offensive."

He asks if it is of no use to her, and her mouth moves, an expression which is entirely mirthless. "It wants t'be with me all the time. I ha' to lock it in the laundry room when I go to work, or I ha' humans over. S'hardly the respect a spirit deserves."

[Night's Reprieve] She speaks of respect for spirits, this kinswoman from another tribe. Perhaps she has been familiar with those of his moon, or perhaps she deserves more credit than that.

"Unfortunately I cannot remove the spirit from within, at least not in a way that would constitute rest. All objects contain spirits, most are asleep or inactive, this one has been awoken and apparently is a rather lively spirit. Most objects continue to behave more or less the same once their spirit has been awoken. My spear for example.."

And he holds out his palm face down above his bed in which the spear appears.

"Ugh." He grunts and his face loses concentration for a moment.

"I'm sorry he talks a lot, and is rather distracting. He is also rather rude. But as you can see, as awake as Gungnir is, he performs the task more or less the same as he did before being awoken."

And the spear disappears.

"This one however." He indicates by looking towards his other hand in which the car rests, "This one is something else."

"Do you wish to rest?" He offers in spirit tongue to the car, because after all, Imogen sought help based on the spirits wants and needs.

[Slaughter] She would like to tell him she does not need to know these things - that spirits inhabit every object, that they can be awakened, and so on. But she is here for a favour - and thus stifles her natural inclination to remain in the dark.

The kinswoman's expression might be described as intense - even turned toward the bed, his hand out, he can almost feel the the weight of her gaze with a predator's awareness. She watches the spear materialize the tendon in her jaw flexing again.

The spear appears to slide from his skin, a blue ephemeral glow slowly washing from his palm and gaining cohesion. Air becomes wood, becomes metal, becomes leather. She wonders if she were to put her hand near the forming weapon, would she feel the air rush away, as its displaced? Or would it rush in, the air molecules changing and becoming something altogether different? Would it be warm with the heat of the energy required to perform this feat of apparent magic?

It is supernatural - beyond the knowledge of humans, and beyond her scope of experience. She has never felt a talon or fetish leave her skin, though she has seen it - an axe drawn from the arm of a Fenrir warrior, and laid her hand on the tattoo that had replaced it while the weapon slept.

Still, her mind seeks the science of it, refusing to believe that it is not there.

When he speaks to the spirit, she cannot hear it. Even if she could, she could not understand. Nor does she hear the car's reply, much as she had not heard the rudeness of his spear, or from any object as he claims that each contains a spirit.

What Night's Reprieve hears, however, is hardly intelligible.

Rest? Rrrr. RRRRRRRRR. Reeeeeeeeeedddd haaaair. Pretty pretty pretty! vroooooommmmmmmmm! the latter as the wheels spin, and the vehicle propels itself toward the Metis' maimed fingertips.

Red, red, red!

[Night's Reprieve] The act of drawing forth his spear from his skin is something the Godi has become accustomed to over years and years of use. It felt natural to begin with, but still strange and unfamiliar. Now it is like walking or breathing or talking, he doesn't need to think about it. Imogen on the other hand does. She needs to rationalise it because otherwise she has to come to terms with the fact that she will most likely never know what it feels like for the skin beneath the tattoo to send signals of tension where there is none, through axons in the brain only to be turned around and ushered down different pathways to end up in a waiting palm.

It isn't natural for her, and it shouldn't be. She stands different and changed among kinfolk that are remarkably similar to each other and yet she is still just that. Kinfolk. But the car likes her, the car wants to be with her and it makes it known through it's movements as much as it's spirit ramblings. Red hair it says, pretty.

The Godi nods his head, agrees with the car. Yes, he says. Pretty. But he has another temptation for the car. Power. Fuel.

And it's what sets him apart from a Theurge of another tribe, he doesn't talk to the Car about it's feelings or try to persuade it that the red haired girl needs a break because what's a car to do? It won't make the car feel any better about being left alone simply because it has the knowledge that the recipient of it's affection requires time alone.

"This." he says to it, and it can feel the trembling of his inner essence, his spiritual power. The Gnosis at his core. It can feel it just out of it's grasp, tempting, teasing. "If you sleep.. This time during the Luna cycle I will awaken you, feed you. And the red haired woman will play with you. Once on the full moon. Do you accept?"

[Slaughter] The car abruptly stills. Night's Reprieve can feel its wheels trembling with restrained motion, can hear the hush of its anticipatory silence.

No more closed doors and tiled floors? it asks, its voice lilting with hopefulness.

Imogen watches in silence. She is preternaturally still, in her motionlessness, more like an animal than a human.

[Night's Reprieve] "You will never see a tiled floor again. You will know only sleep and red hair and energy."

[Slaughter] The car does not truly answer, not in words - it is a simple spirit, its mind filled with its purpose and simple pleasures. It whirs a happy escalating sound, far different than its siren whoop of alarm earlier.

Near the closed door, Imogen's eyebrow arches, but she does not yet speak.

[Night's Reprieve] "You should say goodbye for now, I will explain after." He speaks and his eyes find Imogen, handing her the car in all it's whirring glory.

[Slaughter] Imogen's expression is unfathomable as Night's Reprieve gets up and hands her the car. It is a moment before she actually reaches out to take it.

She is no Theurge. She is not even Garou. A kinfolk. Just that.

She does not speak to the car, or reach out and stroke it. She merely looks down at it, expressionless as it makes chirping sounds. Night's Reprieve with his gift can hear it telling her all about the promise, and swearing it will play with her every full moon, so don't be lonely. The words are disjointed and not quite full sentences, but the Godi, with his awareness of what has already been agreed to, can understand.

It is only after its silent and slowly rocking back and forth in her palm, that Imogen hands it back, wordless and expressionless.

[Night's Reprieve] "Take it, and sleep. Until the next full moon."

He can feel that vital essence of his slip away from him and part of him protests. He closes his eyes. No it says, it isn't worth it, she isn't worth it. But that part of him is silenced and outnumbered. Now to the explanation for Imogen. The now seemingly normal toy car gets looked at for a moment before being placed upon his bedside table.

"Doctor Slaughter." He says, and turns back to face her. "The car will sleep, but I will awaken it at this time of the full moon so it can keep you company. It told you not to be lonely, and promises it will awaken again for you. I shall help it keep that promise."

He purposefully leaves out the part where he is giving away a vital resource in order for this plan to work. Imogen doesn't look like the type who would relish being in that sort of debt to a Garou.

"If you wish you can take it with you and bring it back to me. Or it can stay here."

[Slaughter] When he opens his eyes, Imogen's gaze is on him - watching him, her expression illegible, her eyes sharply direct. That she noticed the effort, whatever it is, is clear.

He relates what the spirit said, and the arch of her eyebrow belies the sudden flicker of tension across her mouth. He puts the car on the table, where it sits, still and broken, worn tires and cracked sirens and poor paintjob.

"Leave it here," she says, quietly, her gaze flicking toward it, before she starts to turn toward the door. "Thank-you."

[Night's Reprieve] He is silent for perhaps a heartbeat while he tries to gather the courage to ask what has been troubling him. He isn't sure why he asks her and not someone else, maybe it's because he doesn't have anyone else to ask or because he thinks she might be able to offer advice.

"Wait." He grunts, and turns away from the car. "I, uh.." And he rubs fingertips over the back of his own head, looking towards the ground for a moment.

"Okay, just to be certain, this isn't about you despite what the facts I am about to give you might tell you. But I have a question for you, that would usually be answered by my cousin. He isn't around anymore, I don't really know who else to talk to about it."

He raises an eyebrow, obviously waiting for some sort of go-ahead.

[Slaughter] Wait, he asks, and she does so, stopping midstride, and before turning back, and returning a half step. He speaks, and says it's not about her, though she might think it is, and her eyebrow lifts.

It lowers by the time he's finished. There is the space of several seconds where she is silent, unmoving, her gaze on him, studying him, before she makes a gesture with a long fingered and delicate hand. His go-ahead is received.

[Night's Reprieve] "Okay, logic tells me that maybe it is about you, but it is more about your kind than about you specifically." He is rambling, getting caught up on semantics.

"You may have noticed.." A pause. She most definitely noticed. "My caution earlier when you asked to come in. I shouldn't.."

A frown and he is obviously unhappy with the way he is wording this.

"I shouldn't be alone with your kind. It would be looked down on. But I have been, and a part of me wishes to be."

A hand gets rubbed across his rough stubble lined jaw in frustration.

"If say, someone such as you --" A pause, "Not you, but one of your kind--"

This isn't going well at all.

"Should I make certain that all female kinfolk I am around know what I am? Is that something you think your kind should know?"

He asks her like there is no question in his mind that she knows what he is, and he obviously doesn't just mean a Garou.

[Slaughter] Night's Reprieve's explanation receives a rather long stare from the kinswoman. It is unrehearsed and frankly, a ramble. Then suddenly her expression clears and she blinks, once out of place. He realizes then, that she did not know, not until this moment, exactly what he was. However, it does not seem to come as a shock or a disappointment. It comes as nothing at all.

"I presume you mean Metis." Her eyes go deliberately to his bandaged fingertips. She puts it baldly while he has couched it in vague terms.

Perhaps he answers. Perhaps he does not. Either way, his answer or his silence is responded to be silence of her own. A stillness. Her gaze cuts away, to the floor, hardwood and battered. A tendon moves in her jaw.

Then it lifts again, meeting his gaze. "Yes, it is," she says. "And yeh should tell her the challenges and shame that carnal knowledge wi' you would bring her. And you."

[Night's Reprieve] Where before he was rambling and incoherent and vaguely excited about the prospect of discussing this, now he is simply crushed and with that crush comes staunch indifference. His jaw clenches and ticks, eyes narrowing, and his body tenses. He stands perfectly still and after a moment he simply nods his head.

"Thank you."

Of course he knew it already, he just sometimes lets hope destroy knowledge of hopelessness. Then he turns, he sits in his chair which he faces towards the small desk and picks up his book.

Their meeting is obviously over.

[Ivers] Their meeting is obviously over, and Night's Reprieve is obviously sharing a communal living space with a bunch of assholes--or, more like it, one in particular, the rest of them don't seem to share this blight upon their personality--who have no respect for things like closed doors or quiet.

Someone knocks on the door with both sets of knuckles, producing a percussive effect that isn't entirely unlike the drumline of a marching band.

"Oi, gat!" he yells through the door. "When you borrow a fuckin' lighter you're supposed to give it back! Jesus Christ some of us have addictions around here!"

[Slaughter] She watches him a moment, though he is not watching her. And then, she nods, though he is not looking. She reaches out to open the door, and the unmistakable voice of Howard Ivers comes through. Her back is turned to the Fenrir and there is several inches of door between her and Ivers. Her expression is seen by no one.

After a moment, she opens the door, the redhaired and slight kinwoman looks at him, before reaching into one coat pocket, then another, retrieving a bic lighter.

"Keep it," she says, before stepping around him and starting down the hallway.

[Night's Reprieve] His head raises from the book as soon as he hears Howards voice and he lets out a little groan of displeasure. Seriously, now Howard? Right now? You have to come ask for a god damn lighter right the fuck now?

Of course he does. It's Howard.

He half hopes the Fianna Theurge will go away, but Imogen opens the door and Night's Reprieve puts down his book and pushes himself out of his chair in time to see her give him her lighter.

"See you next time Doctor Slaughter." Night's Reprieve says, as if to make it clear to both of them that even if they wanted to never bump into each other again, they still have a promise to uphold.

And then he stands there with his arms crossed. Waiting for the inevitable onslaught from Howard.

[Ivers] He's standing in the hallway looking like--well, like a tall, skinny dickhead who has put on the bare minimum of clothing necessary to go two doors down the hallway without being charged with public indecency. When Imogen opens the door, the Fianna Theurge is wearing white boxers with little red hearts on them and black aviator sunglasses. Clearly he has recently rolled out of bed, making his hair an even bigger affront to Gaia than it normally is, and his normally thin face is filled out from sleeping sprawled on his stomach.

Rather than the Godi, he gets Imogen. Thick eyebrows fly up over the frames of his sunglasses, and he covers his mouth with his left hand, stuttering laughter leaving his sinuses even as she's handing him a lighter and telling him to keep it.

"Hey, cheers," he manages, his speech muffled by his palm, as he's stepping back to allow the much smaller woman passage. Without making any attempt to hide it, Howard turns his head to watch her go. It isn't until she's reached the threshold between the hallway and the common room that he looks back at Night's Reprieve with a look of amused shock on what little of his face is visible.

Pointing at the Godi with his lighter, he yells, "And you said I'm disgusting?!"

[Slaughter] Though she can clearly her him, and perhaps even guess his response. She does not turn back, she merely turns the corner, and enters the common room - from there, the door leads her to the outer stairs, and her car.

Within minutes, she is gone.

[Night's Reprieve] Night's Reprieve does not look at all amused, he points a finger at Howard and when he speaks it is most certainly a threat.

"Not another god damn word about it."

And after that, he pauses breathes, calms himself. It takes time to prepare oneself to deal with Howard Ivers.

"Lets go get high."

He reaches for his desk to grab the bottle of clear liquid and sees the toy car sitting there. With a grunt he picks up the awakened vodka in his right hand and moves towards the door.

"I'll meet you on the roof. Don't come empty handed."

And he's already walking down the hallway towards the stairs.

"And put a god damn shirt on."

[Ivers] He doesn't utter another word, but he does crow a "HAh!" as he steps back further, bumping his backside against the opposite wall in an apparent loss of orientation with the world around him. The sweetest words he have heard all day leave the Godi's lips, and Howard rolls his shoulders, the vertebrae between them crackling like dry firewood.

Don't come empty-handed, he says. He waits until Night's Reprieve has his back turned before he makes an obscene and somewhat unhygienic gesture involving his hand and his crotch, then swiftly lets go and starts to pad down the hallway after him.

"Just a shirt?" he asks, even as he's pushing into the room he shares with his brother. "I'm good to go with my cock half hangin' out?"

[Night's Reprieve] The moon is full, and Night's Reprieve can feel it despite the fact that he isn't an Ahroun. So when he hears Howard calling after him about his cock he does the only thing that is appropriate: He punches the wall with his left hand.

"You son of a whore."

He calls out, but to the roof he goes with bottle in hand. And when Howard gets there he will find him sitting on the ground against the barrier, eyes staring at blood stains that simply refuse to be swept away by the weather. Much blood has been spilt on this rooftop, his own included. He wonders if Howard has had the pleasure yet.