Setting the Boundaries.

[Nash] It started three days ago.

First it was a brief write-up in the Tuesday edition of the Chicago Sun, which seems to grow thicker and more calloused with each passing day, offering scant details about an explosion in North Lakeview. He hadn't bothered her for that. What little the police gave to the reporter who was on the crime roster that night could barely fill the space necessary to make it worth printing. The same blurb made its debut on the city news websites, and all of them speculated that the explosion had occurred at the Hauer estate.

This name means little to most people. There are abandoned buildings, let alone abandoned estates, all over the country. This particular plot of land offers nothing of note on the surface, rings no bells for anyone not intimately familiar with Illinois state history, and yet the next day, the paper printed a retraction.

Since then, the papers have been quiet. Things at the medical examiner's office, however, have been quickening with the springtime thaw and the reemergence of violent crimes and sudden deaths. Winter kills off the elderly, the terminally ill, yet it isn't until the mercury rises enough that the bodies begin flooding the medical examiner's freezers.

It's entirely likely that Imogen missed the phone call that went to her line, or that whoever was in charge of channeling calls just didn't patch the Alabaman legal investigator through properly.

That's the only real explanation for why, weeks after their adventure in the elevator of the county clerk's office, he's hanging around waiting for her.

[Slaughter] She had spent the entire day in the morgue - and this is not the nine am to five pm day, but a six am to I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it day.

It ended with a resigned glance at her desk in her small office, the message-waiting light flashing on her phone, papers flooding an inbox, a depressingly void outbox. And she does a rare thing and leaves it for the next day, which after all, will start at six am or so, anyway.

The doctor hangs her lab coat on the coat rack and plucks her jacket and scarf from the same, pulling them on, but leaving her scarf unwound, her jacket open. Her heeled footsteps are muffled by the carpet as she starts down the hallway.

--

Hours ago, he had been shown to a rather neutral waiting area, the chairs not quite uncomfortable, the decor simple, inoffensive. It is so unadorned it is nearly sterile, though a potted, wilted plant and a few mainstream pastel prints on the walls try to combat that. When an elderly woman is led there by an administrator, her body bowed and sunken in on itself, a kleenex clutched and crumpled in her hand, it becomes clear the neutrality is meant for peace, and at least, if there is no peace, no more conflict than there already is.

The woman sits, quiet and desolate, her eyes red-rimmed and sniffing occasionally until a young intern comes to retrieve her. A little later, a young couple, leaning against each other, get a similar treatment. They are led to the waiting area, and after a little while, led away to see their dead. The hallway just beyond the waiting area is high-traffic. People in business suits, in lab coats and in cops in uniform pass by from time to time.

Five pm passes, and this is a county-building, committed to mostly business hours. The halls quiet but do not silence completely, a security guard passes from time to time - sticking his head in once, and at least confirming that he has not seen Dr. Slaughter leave and he believes she is still in the building. Beyond that, the same traffic still passes him by, only at a lesser frequency.

Then it trickles, almost entirely to a stop.

It is only a few minutes after the hall lights are dimmed and he begins to wonder, perhaps, that he has wasted his time, that Imogen starts down the hallway, drawing her handbag up her arm. She begins to pass the waiting area almost by habit, but the fact the light is still on causes her to turn her head, just as she is about to round the corner.

She stops, and comes back a few steps, touching the threshold of the waiting area with a toe of her pointed pump.

"Not lookin' fer another elevator are you?"

[Nash] He can't fall asleep in his bed at night but by god if he doesn't drop into a deep if disturbed slumber sitting in one of those uncomfortable waiting room chairs.

Though it is a Friday, and though he is on no payroll save for his own at the moment, he recognized, somehow, that he was going to have little luck if he showed up here in the morning. The hour before and after lunch was no good. Late afternoon was his best bet, so he had showed up at three o'clock with very little hope that he'd be able to gain access to what it is he wanted to know simply by walking up to the administrative assistant and flashing his identification.

Not to say that he hadn't tried that approach in the past; he has, and it hadn't worked, and so now he does what he does best, and he abuses what few connections he has to get the information he wants.

While he had brought work in the form of an accordion folder and a small stack of legal pads, had plugged away at whatever it is that has taken up residence on his lap, Nash found himself dropping off sometime around five o'clock. A tall man by even the most exacting standards, his head rests against the wall no matter how far down he slouches, anchoring him in place, and it isn't until the first clicking footsteps come past since the lights dimmed that he rouses.

That had been a nap by most people's standards, yet for him, it was better sleep than he'd had the night before. He's hardly rested, but when Imogen moves through the waiting room to find the long-haired blond lifting himself up out of sleep, neither is he fumbling for coherence, either. Perhaps he wasn't certain it was her at first, or he feared he was waking into a nightmare: Nash doesn't leap to his feet or call after her, but gathers up his scant belongings and turns to face her as she backs up into the waiting room and addresses him.

A ghost of a laugh enters the room, and he hauls himself to his feet. He's dressed in that similar lazy business casual attire he'd worn to the clerks office several Fridays ago, boots and dark jeans and a button-down shirt underneath a black leather jacket. It's remained on despite his being indoors. It's chilly down here.

"You mean you ain't taking the stairs these days?" he asks, his already craggy voice gone hoarser with sleep, and starts to walk toward the hall with her. He keeps walking, assuming Imogen doesn't stand in place like a tiny potted plant. "Got a minute? Got a missing peabrain to hunt down and whoever y'all got gatekeeping around here is tougher'n a one-eared alley cat."

[Slaughter] She is dressed as fashionably as he had seen her last - a white blouse beneath a black suit jacket beneath a woollen black coat. Black slacks, black shoes. The monochromatic attire makes her brilliant hair and dark eyes all the more shocking. Makes her pale skin seem paler.

He gets to his feet and she lifts her chin to accommodate the height change. Nash is considerably taller than the diminutive doctor. He speaks, and a line forms between her brow.

She had been on her way out, and her keys are in her left hand already, or perhaps still. They jangle gently as she makes a brief gesture with her hand, a reference to confusion. "I'm sorry, yeh started speaking code after 'got a minute' and I haven't got an earthly idea what you're talking about." Another woman might have been flustered at being confused. Imogen, for her part, appears to be mocking him, however subtly.

[Nash] "Well, shit."

His hair, it's worth mentioning, had been somewhat neatly combed when he walked down here several hours ago. Sleeping sitting up with his skull against the wall had mussed it somewhat, but he isn't paying any attention to it. When he rubs at his forehead, he just manages to disturb it further.

"I thought I was being charming. Lemme try that again."

When he clears his throat, it isn't a powerful theatrical, histrionic noise but as close to subtle redirection as the other man comes. Both of their shoes click as they move down the hall, though Nash's sound as though they'd be more at home with a set of spurs hooked to either boot, walking down a sidewalk or into a bar, whereas Imogen's are precise and modern.

"You had anybody turn up lately look like they either been in an explosion or been tore up by dogs?"

[Slaughter] Imogen walks with purpose. Every stride gets her somewhere, closer to a goal. She does not seem to hurry, but still, she keeps to a fair clip, which she has modified for Nash's longer strides.

She casts Nash a brief glance as she reaches down to press the button to release the outer doors leading them into the main lobby.

"And if I did?"

[Nash] Aha, the question of the hour. It's neither the information that he's looking for nor an outright denial, but given that Nash is something of an opportunistic asshole, it appears as though he'll take what he can get.

"Well, then I'd have to ask, 'What's it gonna take to get you to tell me if any of 'em have come in from the Rogers Park area?'"

[Slaughter] They step out of the glass doors of the lobby, leading to the steps which descend to the sidewalk. She lets the door swing shut, the soft click of the latch and the lock automatically snapping home completing before she turns to look at him, abruptly.

"Why." The question has no lilt, more of a thrust of a word than a query.

[Nash] "'Why?'"

That sudden departure from walking to the standstill separated by a foot of height doesn't alarm the other Kinfolk. What might have alarmed plenty of other women who have experience, extensive or otherwise, with his man is the fact that he doesn't tend to answer questions when they're presented to him.

Half the time he can get whatever it is he wants without having to be forthright and remotely honest. Imogen, however, is not a girl. She isn't incomplete and fumbling for some sort of a connection or an understanding with another human being. She just worked a near-twelve-hour shift and looks, while poised and professional, as though she wants to go the hell home.

"Got an associate back home. He called me up this morning tellin' me a buddy of his works in demolition, Jerry Matlin?" He pauses minutely to check for recognition, as if that name would have been on a toe tag recently. "Nobody's heard hide nor hair from him since Monday. There was some article in the paper 'bout three days ago about some shit blowing up out Rogers Park way, thought I might make sure no pieces've turned up since then before I took a field trip."

[Slaughter] "Alright, one last question," she says, wrapping her scarf at her throat, and beginning to do up her coat, fingers nimble on the buttons.

"Yeh doin' this fer the Nation or fer something else? I only ask because yeh mentioned dog attacks."

[Nash] "Yeah, I didn't want to say 'clawed to Hell and back' inside. The walls have ears and all."

As if that explains it. It doesn't. With one hand supporting the weight of his paperwork, the other one begins the task of finding a cigarette in the pocket of his jacket as he continues speaking.

"I don't think it's got nothin' to do with Them, and even if it does, that ain't why I'm snooping around. I owe this associate of mine a favor."

[Slaughter] She pauses, thoughtful, and nearly out of habit, slides her handbag from her arm, undoing the clasp to retrieve a cigarette case and lighter.

"In that case," she says as she flicks open the case, "I've not seen a body that fits yer description, certainly not since the explosion near Roger's Park."

A pause, and her gaze flicks up, her hand half way to her lips, the cigarette scissored between her middle and forefingers. "But if I had, I could not release anything to you according to the law."

[Nash] Lack of information is just as good, it seems, as information. Ignore, of course, the fact that she's only saying this because there is nothing to tell, because there is no rules governing confidentiality insofar as denial goes.

So they prepare cigarettes, hers coming out of a metal case and Nash's coming out of a battered red Marlboro 100 box, and he takes far longer, more savage drags off of his cigarette than the smaller woman does hers.

"Well, I'll keep that in mind for next time, then," he says, blowing a stained breath out into the dark air. "Flash my badge before I start askin' too many questions."

[Slaughter] Her mouth twists slightly around the filter of her cigarette. She smokes Dunhills, a flashy band around the filter making them distinctive.

Her first drag is a punch to the lungs and blood stream. She turns her head to exhale it slowly.

"Better yeh go through - how did yeh put it -" another drag as she thinks about it, "th'one eared alley-cat." A pause, as she taps ash toward the concrete beneath their feet.

"It's nothing personal," she continues, as if she says this phrase frequently enough, "but I prefer not t'be linked t'the Nation if I can avoid it."

[Nash] "Yeah, well, lucky for both of us--"

He smokes as though he doesn't know when he's going to be afforded the opportunity again, as though it's been an unfathomably long time since the last one. Imogen cannot feel the kink in his spine, the dog-tiredness in his bones, but she's no stranger to that inability to sleep, the simultaneous sharpness and lack of focus the world takes on after too many hours awake.

That said, after the first few voracious drags, the subsequent inhales are held onto longer, taken slower. He blows out another breath before continuing his thought.

"--I don't think this has nothing to do with Them."

He takes as long as necessary, which isn't long at all, to tap the ash from the tip of his cowboy killer before speaking again.

"Now if you don't wanna be linked with nobody's gonna recognize what that ink on your arm means, you know, that sorta linked, then that's a different story, now, ain't it?"

[Slaughter] I don't think it has nothing to do with Them, Nash says and Imogen lifts an eyebrow slightly.

"You do realize, of course," she says mildly, "that in this particular scenario, you are 'them' as well, don't you? As fer the tattoo," a beat, a tilt of her head, a sort of shoulderless shrug.

"I've not much choice about that except keep it hidden when I can and hope tha' whoever sees it does not recognize it when I don't."

[Nash] A younger man might have taken offense at the way he's qualified as 'them' just the same as the rest of them are, Trueborn or not, because he's asking for something from her. He might be able to save face, choose one form of assholism over the other, if he stated that the only reason he went to her at all was due to the fact that he had her name from the incident in the elevator.

It would have happened with or without his awareness of the tattoo, is what he could say. Without a time machine, though, or the kinswoman caring enough to read him for overt lies, all he would have at his disposal are words.

Of which he has an abundance, granted.

"Yeah, well, same here," he says, just as mildly. "And if I didn't see it then, we'd be in that same unpleasant situation tonight that we was in two weeks ago if I hadn't seen the damn thing. Unless you woulda just ignored me askin' about dog bites like the rest of 'em do."

He sniffs, then thrusts his wrist out of the end of his sleeve to check his watch. Whatever he sees matches up with what the world around them is saying: it's nearing nightfall.

"Now if you'll excuse me, I got an abandoned house to sneak into."

[Slaughter] Her mouth twists slightly. "I would ha' ignored the dog bites," she says, "and remembered that you had brought it up."

He has an abandoned house to sneak into.

Imogen regards him briefly, considering. Then, a moment later, she shrugs in a very 'suit yourself' manner. "Don't get caught," she advises, stepping forward to an ashtray to stab out the cigarette among its dead brethren.

[Nash] If the good doctor had immediately and effortlessly cast him off, perhaps given off the impression that she was waiting for him to write himself out of her presence so that she did not have to endure his bullshit for a second longer than was absolutely necessary, then there would have been no room for him to examine her eyes, her face, during that brief span of time when she's looking at him.

It isn't quite like what he'd imagine being dissected to be like, but it's the most obvious simile when dealing with a surgeon. Ignore, for a moment, the fact that her patients are, one could only hope, all dead during the operation.

Nash watches her as she watches him, and that shrug has him stifling a laugh.

"What?" he asks, and steps forward to, presumably, begin walking around her. His posture, open and yet retreating, somehow seems to add another layer of teasing--daring, perhaps--to his speech. "Look, if you wanna come, you know, make sure I don't end up dyin' because I fell down a well or got my foot caught in a bear trap or somethin', all you gotta do is say so."

Whether she's coming along or not, the Fenrir steps down off the sidewalk and begins the long walk across the mostly-deserted parking lot to reclaim the only vehicle in the lot that could possibly be his.

[Slaughter] She is an immoveable, closed object as he moves toward her, around her, her eyes on him as he approaches, passes her, her head turning to follow his progression.

"No," she says, "But I'll give you a piece of advice, shall I? Don't go near wells and avoid where bears tread."

He heads off in his direction, and after a moment, she starts down the steps as well toward the empty lot. Her car is some distance from his - the angle of her path is sharply different.

The Aston Martin is low to the ground, sleek and mean looking with its obvious grill and slanted headlights. It is a rich car. A money car. A statement car.

And then there's Bessie. Which one can only imagine is the kind of name that Nash has for his disaster of a Ford Ranger.