![](http://cobalt-company.wdfiles.com/local--resized-images/writing:2024-10-02-the-mating-and-lifecycles-of-men-and-moth/style="margin:/medium.jpg) |
| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | Still reeling from the news that he's going to be a father, Reniya takes along Joelle to go tell Lathrik and Natalyah about how babies are made (they know, Ren, thanks), and what he might do about it. Natalyah has strong opinions on the matter, and Lathrik has even stronger opinions on his loved ones fighting, and also, a whole lot of really strong whiskey later, really strong feelings about the mating cycle of Bagworm Moths. Personal plot RP with some conflict and also possibly alarming facts about moths and butterflies. 9200~ words. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
The evening of October 2nd is a reminder that summer is well and truly over, the cloudy day giving way to the chilled twilight blanketing the city in heavy purples of shadows. In Old Town, a little house with a set of tidy, completely weed free flower boxes, and neatened yard, glows faintly golden behind the paned glass of its windows, the result of a merry fire and several candles lit for light and warmth both. In this house is the smell of well-cooked food, properly seasoned, with nothing burnt at all. The butterfly decorations have increased again in another two garlands that float down around the doorway leading to the bedroom, and a commemorative paper boat (not the original, which was missing when they came back) has been set up on the shelves near the kitchen.
Natalyah is dressed for home, which means a fancy dress from her former noble life, a long, sleeveless gown of a dark, shimmering green with two bright slashes of emerald green and turquoise that form a V from the sides to her waist, the hem scalloped into dots of the same sequins, reminiscent of the butterfly known as the Emerald Swallowtail or the Green-Banded Peacock. Her hair is free from constraint, looking especially shiny and sleek now that she has been able to afford small luxuries like proper hair care products, courtesy of more and more bounties done for work. With dinner done and dishes waiting for washing, she's left off chores to sit on the couch, one of her note-journals and a pencil with her, and an invitation for Lathrik to join her for snuggles while she writes.
Lathrik, dressed in his usual at-home clothes, a plain white long-sleeved shirt with brown ties near the collar and a brown pair of pants, has just finished consuming his nightly post-dinner mana potion and joined Natalyah on the couch when there is a hasty knock on the door. He rises with a groan, having only sat for roughly three seconds, and stares balefully at the ceiling.
"That'll be Ren," he says. "Come to explain himself for bailin' on his shift this afternoon, I'll bet."
"He did get permission," Natalyah says archly. This knowledge is all the keeps her on her cozy position on the couch. "You better go see what he wants."
Lathrik obediently answers the door, and is swept aside by Reniya, who enters without even stopping for a greeting, pulls out a chair at the table, and takes a seat. Joelle pauses respectfully at the door, waiting to be let in.
"Oi, Ren," Lathrik protests, but something in the other man's expression kills any words that would have followed. He glances at Joelle and gestures him inside. Both men are dressed for work, an oddity in Reniya's case, as he hasn't been at work for most of the day.
Natalyah looks up from her notebook, and at the sight, sets it and her pencil down on the coffee table. "Sinners and martyrs, Ren, you look like you either really need to stop drinking or start drinking a whole lot more," she observes tartly from the couch, frowning at the man. The kitchen table — not expecting so much company — is only set up for two, the rest of the four possible chairs stacked neatly in their proper place. "What's happened?"
"He's having a baby," Joelle says from his new spot beside the fireplace.
Lathrik eyes him. "Elle, that's not how ye say that. What ye mean to say is —" His brows snap together as realization suddenly hits, and he whirls to face Reniya. "I'm sorry?"
"I'm sorry," Joelle echoes. He's learning!
Reniya stares back at Lathrik, eyes wild with panic. He opens his mouth and nothing comes out.
Natalyah looks from Elle to Reniya to Lathrik to Elle to Reniya like she's watching a high powered tennis match, and sits up straighter on the couch. "What? What do you mean, a baby?" she asks the room at large and then specifically, "Who is pregnant, Reniya Middle-Name Hartrim? I swear to the damned graceless gods, if you have knocked up that Ilanya woman — " she doesn't even finish the sentence, making instead an aggravated sound that has just enough of an edge of a growl to remind everyone that under the woman is a beast with quite a lot of teeth.
Reniya lowers his gaze to the table.
Lathrik moves to stand beside him, resting a hand firmly on his shoulder even as he turns back to Joelle. "Who?"
"Tabiana," Joelle dutifully reports.
Now Lathrik needs a chair. His hand tightens on Reniya's shoulder to a painful degree, which the other man at least seems to appreciate.
"Really?" Lathrik asks. "Ren, mate, she's got a career, and you've just…"
"It's not as though a woman can't have a career and a baby," Natalyah counters immediately, ready to be up in arms about it. "That's even to assume though that she's going to go through with the whole of it. But even if she does, it's not like her entire life is over. You don't need to treat it like Ren's given her some terminal condition." She crosses her arms over her chest. "But this is some fine mess, Ren, really. Are you two even in a relationship at all, or was this just another one night stand for you that now is going to leave a mark?"
"It was… I went to apologize," Reniya finally says. "She was avoiding me, acting all weird ever since the bruises, so I tracked 'er down on a night shift and… startled her."
Lathrik rubs at his forehead. "Tabiana," he repeats, trying to get it to sink in.
"I'm sorry, maybe I'm just not up to date on my Kul Tiran slang," Natalyah says, her voice now as tart and sour as a summer lemon, "but if you are about to try to convince us that this all happened because you were walking around without any pants and just so happened upon Tabiana in the middle of changing and you startled her into pregnancy, I think we can all say that we can very well guess what happened to lead to this point, Ren."
"She threw me into a wall," Reniya says. "And I… called her a goddess. And then…"
At this, Lathrik finally does take a seat, grabbing the chair from the other side of the table.
Natalyah puts her hands over her ears like a small child who doesn't want to hear a thing, and then, genuinely, cries out, "LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LA LA LA." She even closes her eyes as if to avoid the potential for reading his lips. "WE DON'T NEED DETAILS, REN. EVERYONE HERE KNOWS HOW BABIES ARE MADE, THANK YOU." She huffs out a full body breath, opening one eye to peek at him, her hands still over her ears. "Seriously, Ren, I'm not going to sit through a play by play of you and Tabiana, least of all because I am a thousand percent sure that she would die of mortification if she knew that we knew. So for Light's sake, skip to the end here, and what is going on with you two now?"
"Well, she's… keeping it," Reniya says. "And I'm… going to help pay for it. I don't think I should marry her. There was talk of it, but she doesn't seem to want… It might be for my sake, she does seem to have Feelings, and normally I don't bed people who have those sorts of Feelings — not that a bed was involved, we were definitely on the floor."
Natalyah, who had lowered her hands from her ears as he started to speak on relevant details, picks up her pencil and throws it at him across the room, where it plinks off Reniya's armored arm harmlessly. "Stop telling us details about the Startling, Ren!" she scolds. "And yes, you idiot, anyone with eyes can see that she has Feelings for you, which means if you don't, you really shouldn't do something stupid like jump into a marriage with her just because there's a baby, especially when she's saying she doesn't want it. Light knows that someone like Tabiana deserves better than someone who would look at marrying her like she's snapped a bear trap over his leg. She deserves the freedom to choose someone who wants her and to share her life, as much as anyone does, baby or no.
"And it's not like even without marrying as if she's going to be alone. We'll make sure she's taken care of, and figure something about with the baby when it arrives. There's plenty of us to go around and we'll all help, won't we, Lathrik?" Natalyah turns this question onto Lathrik, her brown eyes fierce and determined. It's confirmation she's looking for, sure that the answer would not be no.
"Aye," Lathrik says with a sigh. It's probably not the idea itself that he's sighing at, but the extra responsibility and the exhaustion that might come with it.
"She's got an arrangement with the Fallons," Reniya says. "Some sort've contract, where she lives with them, and raises the baby for them, and then it becomes a… a retainer for one of their sons."
Natalyah jerks back as if she's been stung by something, staring at Ren like he has just burst from his armor like a chrysalis and has opened his newfound wings to declare actually he is the Swallowtail now!
"I — you — the Fallons — she — " Natalyah sputters. It's too many things. "//What?!" Natalyah looks over accusingly at Lathrik, as if somehow he has anything to do with all this. "What in the great green world is he talking about?" She looks back to Ren. "What in the great green world are you talking about?" she demands for a second time.
"I dunno, she dragged me out to their house this afternoon, and there was contracts, and questioning, and I was told to keep my mouth shut, but then the Vice Admiral got me alone," Reniya says, escalating as Natalyah has.
"House Lynds," Lathrik says in resignation. "She explained a bit during Harvey's trial. Her House was sworn to serve House Morningdew, but, with Harvey's death, that arrangement has been nullified. She found a new House to serve, then?"
"I s'pose so, yeah, and the baby's gonna serve them too. Not as a baby. I think." Reniya frowns, trying to remember the finer points.
"Well, of course they can't be expecting a baby retainer," Natalyah argues, in faith of the Fallons for being reasonable people. She's a storm of parts of emotions, equally incredulous as she is curious. "Listen, I know what a retainer is and does. As a matter of fact, I had one for Light's sake, an actual knight as my personal guard contracted to my House for my protection. There's no way that the baby is going to be that while it's still a baby. That has to be some sort of generational promissory thing going on, you know, 'I swear my House to yours.'" You know, like Nobles do.
"So, she's, what, going back into private service to a House, now? That's what happening? And it's the Fallons, as in Siamus Fallon and the duchess he married?" she asks as if it's possible that maybe a whole other set of Fallons might have sprung up in the past ten years and she's only just now finding out about it, and honestly, if it was like that it wouldn't be even the top ten weirdest things that have changed since she was last on this side of the Gilnean wall.
"Those Fallons, aye," Reniya says, nodding to all of it. "Lathrik knows 'em, he's even been to their house a couple times. I've got an invitation to go back and talk boats with the Vice Admiral, myself."
"In other words, we now have two nobles on the House interested in us," Lathrik says. "And if Lescovar decides to take interest in my involvement with Cobalt's Rozalin situation, that would make three, assuming he is as involved as I've heard."
"I'll have you know, I've been to that House more than a few times, as a guest to balls and by invitation," Natalyah says, irritated. Oh, yeah, she was a noblewoman of Elwynn, after all. "As a matter of fact, I was friends of a sort with Sintha, Siamus' younger sister, through Lucy, who was friends with both her and myself. Siamus I didn't know as well, he wasn't often home, at first studying at the Academy of whatever it was, the naval one, and then later off doing the naval thing with his father, but when he was home, he was always a very agreeable flirt, if too much of a gentleman all the time. If you get him started on boats, though, I suggest you pack a lunch and a drink. He really will go on and on about them if you let him, and it's almost worth it because the man's so annoyingly handsome.
"Or at least he was, ten years ago. I assume not that much has changed, although for all I know now, he's disfigured, all gray and wrinkles, and wears an eyepatch," she grumbles, in a strangely threatening way, as if she just dares Siamus to have altered so much. "I also know his wife, sort of. She's been friends a long time with Priscilla, who is Lucy's older sister. Lucy was my friend, but I knew Scilla as well, and we've reconnected lately, what with Lucy…" She doesn't finish that, a tremble of grief a dark shadow over her face before she tosses her head, trying to toss the emotion out with it. "I hadn't actually met Duchess Esprit until just a few months ago, but I was surprised that she married Siamus, introduced herself as Lady Fallon, and honestly thought for a moment she had meant Siamus' father, Simon Fallon, until I learned he was dead. The Siamus I knew was one of those people you sort of assumed would live and die a flirtatious bachelor married to the sea. It's weird imagining him settled down with babies. And a Vice Admiral." She pauses, frowning as she looks up. "Is that better or worse than plain 'Admiral'? I can never remember."
"Admiral's a higher rank," Reniya confirms, "and the Vice Admiral is not gray, wrinkly, or eyepatched. He's also not the sort I'd go to a bar with unless we'd plans to leave together. Too much competition, that 'un. You're right about his looks."
"So if we want to help you or Tabiana, we'll have to parade through Fallon House?" Lathrik asks, rising to pour himself a glass of whiskey.
"Least we've all been there?" Reniya says. "Well. Except Elle."
Joelle is still standing quietly and obediently by the fireplace. He looks content.
Natalyah is considering something with a stormy expression on her face. "That seems wrong," she says. That Elle hasn't been there? That they have to go through the house? "'Vice Admiral' feels like it should be higher than Admiral, or else what's the point in having 'Admiral' in both names? There should be two different names, or the one with more to it should be higher. 'Vice' has to mean something then. I wonder if it's the same as Viceroy, like the butterfly." Or, like the designation of viceroy, as in someone below a king, for which the butterfly was named.
She draws her leg up more onto the couch, setting her elbow on her knee, and her chin on her hand. "So, what's going to happen with you, then, if Tabiana becomes a vassal of House Fallon?" she asks Reniya.
Reniya sets his hands on the table in front of him and stares at them for a moment in silence. "I'm… helpin' 'er pay, right? But, as you know, a Guard's salary… We don't make much. I was considering shippin' out to Tol Barad."
Lathrik chokes on his whiskey.
"In other words, leave Tabiana there, alone in a house full of rich and noble people she doesn't know — who, by the way, have more than enough money to pay her plenty — pregnant with a baby she probably didn't mean to happen, while you get off the hook likely dying at sea by evil kraken or whatever, or in the middle of an active warzone with the Horde and who knows what, claiming it's for 'her sake' again, probably without even talking to her about it, while you're really just off punishing yourself?" Natalyah scoffs, glaring accusingly at Reniya. "Really, Ren?"
"I've thought about it," Reniya says, serious for once. "Really, I have. She doesn't seem t'want my help, and besides that, she's got the Feelings. If I'm near, they might get worse, and as you said, that's not what she needs. It's not about how much money the Fallons have, it's about what I can do, and stayin' here, goin' on as I have isn't… It's not the right thing."
"Don't dress this up in for her, Ren" Natalyah says scathingly. "If you do that, you're running away for you and only you, don't pretend otherwise. Distance doesn't do anything to lessen a feeling like that. You know what it does? It freezes it. Because nothing else can happen, you can't get annoyed at them or realize they're not what you really want after all. They're forever at what point you left it as, stuck in perfection of that feeling. The only people who forget when you're gone are the ones who never really cared about you anyway. And you don't get to decide how she feels, Ren. I didn't say anything about what she needs or doesn't need to feel about you, only that she deserves someone in marriage who really cares about her back. You deciding you're going to control how she feels by claiming you're helping and putting yourself in direct danger halfway across the world where you can't be there if she does need you is pure selfishness on your part." Natalyah grabs her canes and rises to a stand, her cheeks flushed hotly with anger.
"And what if something really does happen to you out there, where you die and don't come back, and she has to not only live with the knowledge that you went out there because of that baby and her, but then has to tell that baby about it, of what happened to their father? You ever think about how that is going to make her feel? How it will make that kid feel?" She looks over at Lathrik for a beat before she returns to unleashing her ire on Reniya. "And that's just Tabiana, what about the rest of us here who care about you, and need you here with all that's been going on? Sinners and martyrs, Ren. When are you going to learn that you can't treat yourself like you're worthless and replaceable when people care about you, and that you can't just take yourself off and turn off their feelings because you don't want them to have them." Natalyah hits a cane against the floor, as sure as a footstomp.
"I don't know how those feelings work, I've never had them," Reniya says, rising himself, as if to challenge her anger. "But I know Tabiana by now, enough to know that if I pay the money to her, she'll save it all for the kid. I can't do anything for her, except hire someone who can, and to do that, I need more money. If that means shippin' out to fight for the Alliance, I dunno where the problem is. The Alliance needs soldiers. I need money. The other soldiers out fightin' have friends an' family too, but they still fight, an' they still die, because if no one did, we'd all be slaves t'the Horde."
Lathrik leans over the counter in silence, his back to everyone in the room, just listening.
Joelle's eyes are deep and serious, twin pools of dark chocolate as he gazes between Reniya and Natalyah in concern. He knows better than to interrupt.
Natalyah bristles so much in anger that it isn't metaphorical — a roll of dark black fur ripples over her skin, the full transformation halted through what must be pure willpower, but there is still something there in her that seems sharper as sweat beads her brow, the anger giving her a sense of the beast. "You know how I know that's all bullshit, Ren? Because you're trying to have it both ways, so which is it? Is Tabiana someone with real feelings for you, or is she some cold hearted bitch who only cares about money? Because if you think that Tabiana wants money from you, if she'd rather a paycheck and some hired servant, than you actually there, then you really don't know her. And you haven't thought a single real thing about it from her perspective to realize how she'll feel when a man she cares about decides that he wants to be hundreds of miles away from her now that she's tied to him, because you should know by now she's going to think it's saying that it's something wrong with her, instead of you.
"And you're really going to try the whole childish 'other people are doing it, so it's fine' reasoning to justify yourself? Well then fine, how about this: Other people give up their careers to go become vassals to a House to support their kids. Other people become fathers who stop being soldiers to become masons or farmers so their family has both parents. Other people put their children first, because if no one did, we'd all be dead and gone generations ago! The world doesn't run on only soldiers! If you want to run as far away from responsibility for what you've done, and put up walls of money and buying people to do things you won't, then at least own up to your own cowardice about it, don't make it out to be some sort of noble sacrifice you're making on behalf of Tabiana, who will have to live with the consequences of your decision for the rest of her life!" Natalyah shouts, rage having made such a storm in her that she snaps her jaw together, no other words forthcoming immediately because of the internal struggle going on as the woman fights off worgen within her.
Reniya's cheeks redden with anger, and he takes a breath to say something scathing in return.
"Quiet!" Lathrik snaps, slamming his glass down on the counter. "The both of ye. Ren, sit." He turns from the counter to face the rest of the room, his eyes blazing.
Reniya sinks back into his chair, still seething, but silent, at least.
"It's the first day," Lathrik says firmly. "Aye? We've only just learned of the situation, and none of us knows what Tabiana really wants. I'll not have ye make hasty decisions, or tear each other to shreds over assumptions."
Natalyah's expression grows dangerous, as she turns her baleful glare from Reniya to Lathrik, deep hurt and rage fighting such a war over her face that tears spring to her eyes while she growls deep in her throat. Her hands clench hard on her canes, and then it's impossible to catch it in the blink that it happens: Natalyah shifts to worgen form, and makes such a rapid dash to the front door to open it, leap out through it, and slam it behind her that the gust of air she creates moving out of the house is still blowing the little butterflies on strings one way before the displaced air from the door swats them out the other way.
Joelle glances from the door to Lathrik, a question in his eyes.
Lathrik sighs, pouring himself another drink and setting out two more glasses. “She’ll be back,” he says. “Meantime, I’ve somethin’ to discuss with ye both.”
Many Hours Later
The certainty of whether or not Natalyah will return is not clear, but one thing became so as the hours passed, which is that she would not be back soon. The early evening gave way to full night, and the night crept along into the early hours of the morning, and Natalyah did not return to the house. She did, however, leave something of a trail of her movements. At 9pm she was spotted by a night guard on patrol as a dark shape up on a rooftop, leaping from one to the other. Another saw a glimpse of the same twenty minutes later, heading deeper into Old Town towards the northern side of where Old Town meets the Dwarven District. No guard saw her beyond this, not in the Dwarven District or towards the Cathedral. She was not found in any of the taverns in either form, and no innkeeper within this area had been approached about renting a room.
A reasonable conclusion could be assumed, then, that she had not left the Old Town area, and from there, the options of where this particular worgen lepidopterist outside with no shoes and no money could go were limited, and one such possible place where she might go presented itself in the form of the late Lucille Moore's house, well locked and shut for future sale, the interior dark and untouched, the form of a worgen on the center of the roof curled into a black ball of hurt and angry fur unseen from the street.
Lathrik occupies his late night and early morning hours drinking and fighting down increasing worry, as the hours pass with no sign of Natalyah. The worry peaks at around 1am, and Lathrik, dressed in his black cloth and leather outfit — the same one he wore to infiltrate Count Amerith's manor — finally steps outside. After a methodical circuit around Old Town, asking night shift guards and taking in the data, with brief stops in both the Trade and Dwarven districts, he settles on the only place that makes sense to his whiskey-addled brain; the home of her deceased friend.
The locks, while time consuming, do not stop the rogue paladin, who seems entirely too unconcerned about breaking this particular law, and who perhaps hasn't stopped to consider how Natalyah would have gotten in, with the place locked up so tight. As the final lock gives way and surrenders, Lathrik steps into the darkened house, which shows no sign of anyone inside. At least, not anyone who bothered to turn the lights on.
Lathrik strides into the house with drunken confidence and no light source, tripping (and falling) over the first obstacle in his path — a chair. He does not, miraculously, hit his head, but it's enough of a tumble that he brings the chair with him, and has to untangle himself before he can get up.
"N'talyah?" he calls when he has achieved his feet again, resuming his wandering until he finds the stairs. Hearing nothing in response, he climbs them.
At the top of the stairs, he pauses to drink a mana potion, scanning the room while he does. His eyes are at least a little adjusted by now, enough to see that there aren't a ton of rooms upstairs, actually. A bedroom, a bathroom, and a lot of open space. He checks the two rooms, and, seeing no sign of Natalyah, strides over to one of the front-facing windows, fumbling with it until he gets it open, and leaning out for a breath of night air.
"N'talyah," he calls again experimentally. "If ye don't come out, I'm gon… A report's gonna be filed."
On the roof, Natalyah startles awake from her thin, restless sleep, scrambling briefly on the roof tiles having forgotten exactly where she was. There are thumps along the roof loud enough to give just enough warning before Lathrik encounters the upside down face of Natalyah in worgen form. "Lathrik?"
Lathrik observes her casually. "There ye are," he says. A pause. "Ye comin' down?"
It's very difficult to read Natalyah's expression, between the dark and her worgen form, everything lost in the general blackness of her fur against the black of the night. All he knows is there's a pause, a huff of what is maybe irritation or annoyance, before she says, "Fine." She pulls herself up, and she's gone from the window, the sounds of thumps over the roof — and then silence.
Uh oh, now where did she go?
Lathrik settles down on the floor by the window to wait, an unhurried air to him, now that he knows she's safe. He'll give her ten minutes, before he gets up to look again, and in the meantime, he pulls out a whiskey flask. It is a whiskey flask, rather than a flask of whiskey, because when he stuffed it into his pocket, he forgot to fill it first, and now, in the dark, starlit house, he's left playing with the lid of the empty container.
Natalyah meanwhile gives Lathrik much less time than ten minutes, waiting outside Lucy's house, before she opens the door to the house, and navigates through it with the benefit of a worgen's eyesight, the sound of her obvious as her canes thump in one hand as she starts up the stairs. "I know for a fact that this house was locked before you got here, Lathrik," Natalyah grumbles at him. "This is breaking and entering, even I know that."
"Oi, now hold on," Lathrik says, remaining seated. "I din — didn't break anythin'. Except maybe the chair. Is the chair broke?"
"You picked the locks, Lathrik," she scolds. Her expression is too difficult to make out, but she sounds angry. "That's illega — why am I telling you what is and isn't illegal? Sinners and martyrs, Lathrik, how drunk are you?" She doesn't get any closer to him than her place at the top of the stairs, stretched up to her full height as she holds onto the bannister, her canes held in her other hand.
"I've had a few," Lathrik says, peering at her. A few what he doesn't specify. "Ye didn't come back."
"You didn't come after me," she counters, and then has to relent because, uh. "Not after at least an hour, anyway." She ducks her chin down, a silhouette in the dark, still in her worgen form. "And I'll have you know, I was going to go back tomorrow. I told you I wouldn't leave leave. But I wasn't going to stay where I was being told to shut up and sit down, I've had more than enough of that in my life from men." She's bristling again, the way her muscles bunch into a tighter stance suggesting she may very well run off again.
"In my def — defense," Lathrik says, pointing with his whiskey flask, "I told Ren t'sit. An' I trusted you'd be back, an' then ye weren't. 's it still count if ye come back a year later? Where's the… the cutoff point for leavin'?"
"I don't know," she says irritably. "I wasn't trying to leave Elwynn and Stormwind and everything when I went to Gilneas, but that didn't mean I didn't get stuck there for almost ten years, not that anyone cared enough then to go after me except for Rhodes because he had to go where I went. And I came back when I could. It's intent more than anything. And you were supposed to come after me. You did before." Again, Natalyah — where is he? It cuts some of the wind out of her storm. "And I guess you did, again. Like you said you would." She seems more penitent now, and at last leaves her position at the stairs to lope over to him at the window, and there's a visible shimmer of the magic that holds her forms in the darkness.
He has, as usual, almost no warning at all to brace himself before she throws herself into his arms, flinging her arms around him, and burying her face against his neck. "I'm still mad at you," she tells him angrily, her lips moving on his skin.
"If ye weren't, I'd be wonderin' what ye did with N'talyah," Lathrik says, wrapping his arms around her. At least he has the wall for bracing. "Y'know you're faster'n me, right? Last time I chased ye, I needed an ex — extrat… estraction team to get me out, and I never found ye."
"That's why I waited," she says accusingly, as if she didn't make this as fair as possible. "I was just on the roof of Stinky Pete's," a neighbor she refers to by the fact that his overall cleanliness habits leave much to be desired by a sharp nosed worgen, "watching, and then you didn't come at all. It was cold and I didn't have my shoe and so I came to Lucy's house, but the spare key wasn't there, and none of the windows were open, so I just went to the roof."
This leaves a puzzled frown on his face, and it's nearly possible to see the wheels turning in his head. "Why'd ye run if you were gonna wait for me?" he asks. "I thought ye ran 'cause ye didn't wan — want me near. I was givin' ye time to cool off. Not… th' weather, I didn't mean get cold." He rubs a surprisingly warm hand over one of her arms.
Natalyah is, by contrast, cold compared to him, her arms completely bare and having soaked up the chilled autumn air on a second story building. "I ran off because I was angry at you, and I wasn't going to stay where I was being told I could stay only if I shut up. Why wouldn't I want you near?" Natalyah asks, as if the first could not possibly logically explain the second. "When have I ever told you to go away, or that I didn't want you near me?"
That is, potentially, a good point. Even in Duskwood, while she might have told him that he didn't need to follow her, that she didn't need his help, and didn't need an escort, or at the bar in Goldshire when she suggested he could go back to his date, not once did she actually tell him to not follow her or to go away.
"Ye ran off because ye were angry at me," Lathrik repeats, still frowning, "but ye wanted me to follow, even while ye were still angry, which was what made ye run in the first place, an' yet, ye still want me near ye. N'talyah, I'm gonna be honest here, I've no idea what you're on about."
"What does one have to do with the other?" she asks into his neck, scooting herself into his lap. "I can be angry at you and still want you there, maybe even more because I am angry, because that you show up there, it means that you don't only like me when I'm nice and well behaved." I-is she ever well behaved? "Just because I'm angry doesn't mean I want to be angry all alone. And it's not like I'm going to love being angry more than I love you."
"Mm," Lathrik says, maybe tucking a new rule away in his head. "Well, now, here we are, aye?"
"Why are you so drunk?" she demands, poking a hard finger into his shoulder without lifting her head. She's warming up in his arms, the press of her face into him especially so. "Did you all go off and celebrate Ren shipping off into the army, or whatever?"
The topic sends an involuntary twitch through him, a tightening of his shoulders. "Why's it matter?" he asks, avoiding the question. "I been drunk before."
"Why are you avoiding telling me?" she counters, the anger rising once more. "I either know why you were drunk before, or it doesn't matter because I didn't even know you. I'm asking about now."
Lathrik groans in annoyance. "Bec — because I'm worried," he says. "About Ren, an' the lass. An' about you when ye didn't come home. 'at's why I'm bleedin' drunk. Ye happy?"
"Why would that make me happy?" she asks incredulously. "So, if I'm not around, you'll just drink yourself into a stupor, is that what you're saying?"
"Worked before," Lathrik mumbles, leaning his head back against the wall and staring at the ceiling.
"Wouldn't you rather have me than the drink?" Natalyah asks after a long enough silence, in small enough, hurt voice, that something about either his behavior or the timing perhaps, has made her doubt it.
"Obv — ovbious… Yes," Lathrik settles on. "'at's why I don't do this much when you'reroun'. But I didn't know the rules, an' I was alone, an' there was whiskey."
"Well, next time don't be alone, be with me, even if that means you have to run to catch up," Natalyah orders, but it sounds less angry, and she seems to be holding onto him harder.
"'m sorry," he says after a silence. "For snappin', before. Ye were insultin' Ren, an' I couldn't… take any more of it."
Natalyah's penitence is immediate, and ducks her head down low enough that it has that almost-literal hangdog sense to it. "I wasn't — he was — " Whatever sentences those might have turned into justifications or defenses instead becomes a mumbled. "I'm sorry for that. I was upset with him, but… I wasn't trying to hurt you in it, too."
"We had a… a talk, 'bout Tol Barad, the curse, an' all — I don't want him leavin' either, y'know — an' we agreed t'have Tabi — Tabiana over to fill 'er in…" Lathrik frowns at the sound of his own words, and tries again. "To up-date — talk. We're goin' to talk. On ever — everythin'."
Natalyah, oscillating wildly between a huff, a surprise, a mollification, and then an irrepressible wicked giggle at the attempts at finding a way through the stumbling weeds of Lathrik's word choices, finally settles at last into a sense of rest over him. "Good," she says pointedly. "It's about time." She hesitates and then pulls back to study Lathrik's face in the dark, her eyes just ever so faintly lighter than the darkness around her, that strange sense of something lupine lurking in the velvet brown of them. "Ren wasn't angry or anything with you, about you telling him the curse only just now after all this time, was he?" The sense of her words is that while she might have understood some other emotions of how he felt, anger wouldn't be one Natalyah is willing to countenance so easily.
Lathrik looks a bit surprised at the idea that Reniya might be angry with him for keeping secrets. "Angry? No, he was… There was huggin'. Lot of huggin'. Elle, too. They both know I got sec — secrets. An' I learned… y'know babies're violent? We came t'the deci — decision that we'd rather be the ones havin' the babies."
How drunk were they when they arrived at that decision?
"How drunk were you when you arrived at that decision?" Natalyah asks, looking him over again with a part rueful and part disbelieving air, and she tips a finger on his shoulder, pushing against him as if testing his balance, like he was a barrel so full of sloshing liquor that if unsettled he might just fall over to one side or the other, gravity's pull an unaccountable force.
Lathrik does tip to one side at her pressure on his shoulder, and he has to catch himself on his arm with a startled "Oi — !"
Her expression twists though, and she purses her lips into a tight, painful pinch. "And really, as a matter of fact, I do know. It's not just the babies that will kick you and go on. Your whole body breaks a little in it. I mean it — your bones stretch, your ribs and your hips, and they don't just grow out away from your belly like one of those backpacks on your stomach, they grow in, crushing all your organs. And when the birthing comes? They can tear you straight through, straight down, and you have to be sewn back up. And you bleed and bleed, and sometimes, you die in it, from blood loss or some strange quirk. I knew a lot more pregnant women out in Gilneas than I ever did here, the nobility all secretive about it from ladies, and confinements away from society when pregnant women got further along." There's a dark cloud that passes over her face, something harsher, a memory maybe, and she just huffs out a breath. "Anyway. You can't have them, and we don't get the choice to hand it off to you if we decide we'd rather not go through with it but want the baby anyhow."
He rights himself as she starts in on the details, frowning more and more the further she gets until, at the end, he pulls her close, his body trembling as if he's afraid he'll lose her right there. "Why?" he asks. "Why would anyone…?"
"You think that's bad, I'll have you know that the way that a Bagworm Moth is, the females never even grow wings, they just make a little case like a home that they will never leave, and just wait for a male to finally make their way over, then as soon as one does, she fills up the case with hundreds of eggs that suffocate her or crush her to death, where she'll then rot alongside the eggs until they hatch, or the case might be picked up by a bird, eaten, and it will poop out the eggs to spread them around," Natalyah relates. Sorry, Lathrik, you have the All Access Pass to all her Butterfly and Moth Facts and some of them are horrifying and also weird. "The males die shortly after because they're born basically without real mouths, all they do is fly out to try to shove their abdomen through a case window and spray a female down before they die."
So, you know, in comparison maybe humans do okay, all things considered.
"Th'moths're murd — murderers," Lathrik insists. "Female jus' mindin' 'er business an' livin' 'er life an' then the fatal spray through a window an' it's all over." He might be getting a little emotional about the moths.
Meanwhile, his extremely normal companion, snorts into a wild cackle of laughter at this representation of the odd mating cycle of the Bagworm Moth. She pulls him into her embrace more, setting his head on her shoulder with a pat, pat. "They're only moths, honey. That's what they do. As a matter of fact, most moths die after the eggs are laid. The Bagworm is mostly tragic because the females never even get to move out of the home they were born into, never know flight at all." She lets that sit for a moment before she adds, "Butterflies are the ones who usually get to live to their version of old age, even after they lay eggs, although some males, like in the Monarchs, will just drop off after a mating frenzy, so as not to compete with their…offspring." Wow. That's… hmm. Maybe not a good example.
She turns her head to place a firm kiss to the side of neck. "But you, my sweet man, are too drunk to be thinking about the mating cycles of winged creatures, and we need to get you home because you're going to get either sick or sleepy. So, we have to go before one of those happens, because if I have to carry you across the rooftops we'll probably get a citation for illegal aerial bile spraying or whatever." Sure, that could be a thing. Look, she knows Butterflies and Moths, not penal codes. "Come on. We're not supposed to be in here, yet." She nudges him to encourage the whole standing up on his own two legs idea.
Lathrik does attain two legs, but it is an awkward struggle of balance, in part because he is also occupied by tears. "Aerial bile spray… like th'Bagmoth," he says, sniffing and wiping his eyes as he stumbles towards the stairs. He's fine.
"They have basically no mouths, Lathrik," Natalyah corrects, as she rolls up to her feet and gets her canes under her. "They die off shortly after themselves because they can't eat anything, just fly around mindlessly, starving to death."
Nature can be real harsh sometimes.
"Fly around mindl — mindless doin' murders," Lathrik mutters, somehow making it down the stairs. "Watch out for the chair, it's a real piece 'f wood." He points accusingly into the dark.
Natalyah scoffs with an affectionate tone to it, as she pushes ahead of Lathrik, and with a worgen shift, rights the chair, setting it out of the way — and therefore leaving a clear sign that someone has been in the house behind — and she doesn't shift back.
"It's hardly a murder, Lathrik. They're doing exactly as they were supposed to, in order to keep the species going. Now, if you want to hear about a male doing a murder, that's the more the Gatekeeper Butterfly, where the male has to determine when to terminate coupling, and many male butterflies die after they have no more sperm within them, and if he misjudges the whole proper transfer, and dies in copula, the female cannot remove him, and she cannot fly well with his body on her. With him dragging her down, she usually dies soon, and before she can lay her eggs, eaten by some predator or other, or unable to get enough lift to eat anything. That's a murder." B-butterfly Facts!
Lathrik stops halfway through the door. "Oi, 'at's like that one stage production, aye? Whassit called… Romulo an' Julianne? Only if Romulo had poison seed." He does not say this quietly.
Natalyah, meanwhile, is looking at the door in dismay. "You unlocked the doors," she tells him. (He knows this.) "How do you lock them back up again?" she asks him.
Lathrik shrugs. "Pick 'em again?" He jingles his lockpicks.
"Can you even do that?" Natalyah asks, having no idea how lock picking works, let alone how to reverse it. "Maybe I should just lock it from inside, and then go out a window. But then I would have to leave the window open."
Oh, no, Lathrik. An open window. What if the Bagworm Moth gets in to spray?!
"No," Lathrik says firmly, accentuating it with a finger point. "I got 'er open, an' I can get 'er closed again. I jus' needa minute. Or a few. Ask Elle."
"Nine minutes, forty-one seconds," Joelle says.
Natalyah, not expecting Joelle at any point, yelps — a high pitched canine noise — as she jumps half out of her skin, and closer to Lathrik, her canes clattering to the ground.
"Right, that." Lathrik, completely unconcerned, starts on the door. Whether or not he has even registered that the gentle giant has, at some point joined them, is unclear.
Joelle is standing some distance away still, dressed, not unlike Lathrik, in all black, making him significantly harder to make out in the dark. His clothes are looser though, not designed for stealth or heists as much as comfort. "I added time because of drunkenness," he explains.
"Oi, I'm only a little drunk," Lathrik protests. It's definitely more than a little. "When'd you get 'ere?"
"Two hours and fifty-nine minutes ago, approximately," Joelle replies, smiling. "You found Natalyah."
"Two hou — why din… y'beat me here?" Lathrik asks. "Y'weren't here when I went in."
"Oh, I was peeing," Joelle says. "In a bush. I can show you where."
"Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should," Natalyah says archly, picking up her canes from the ground. Something does occur to her to ask, because she is a scientist, "Wait, Lathrik I understand how he would look for me here, but how did you find me, Elle?"
"I was worried after you left, so I climbed to the top of the barracks and used a spyglass," Joelle says. "I made it."
"Cheatin' eng — engineer," Lathrik mutters, still fiddling with the door.
Natalyah looks at Joelle like she's not really properly looked at him before. "You went after me? Wait, why were you even looking on the roofs for me?"
"Ren said you run on roofs as a worgen," Joelle says. "It's safer, and people don't look up."
Natalyah bristles defensively. "I don't regularly run around on roofs like I'm getting my jollies. I didn't have my shoe on, and I wasn't going to walk around barefoot as a human, so I had limited options," she says, as if Joelle has accused her of roof surfing for fun.
Joelle glances at Lathrik and falls silent. Apparently, he has decided it's best to stop talking.
Lathrik finally moves the lockpicks away from the door and tests the handle. It doesn't open. He takes a step back, satisfied. "How's'at?" he asks smugly.
Natalyah takes a step forward and tries the door herself, pushing on it as if to check the deadbolt is in place as well. "Well, it's locked again at least." She looks Lathrik over, up and down, and not with the usual lusty-eyes, but evaluating ones. Okay, mostly evaluating ones. Fine, honestly, it's about a 50/50 split, and she might have lingered for a little too long on the way the pants fit him. "Are you going to be able to walk home like this?"
Lathrik evaluates her right back, swaying a little. "An' why wouln — wouldn't I be?" he asks.
"Because you're swaying when you stand up," she answers, and for a second — just a second — she reaches out as if to poke him in the shoulder as she usually does, but this time it isn't the usual human finger, it's a worgen claw, and she sees it just in time, clenching her hand and snatching it back to her as if she had tried to reach for a fire and remembered suddenly that it could burn her.
Lathrik observes the gesture and, probably because he's drunk, completes the action for her, poking himself in the shoulder the way she usually does. "Got myself 'ere, didn't I?" he asks with a grin.
"Just because a cat can get himself up a tree doesn't mean he can himself back down it," she argues, but rather than a tartness, there's laughter in her voice, and even with the darkness of her fur making it difficult to see her worgen expression, she sounds like she's smiling. She looks over at Joelle. "I really don't want to find out how well I can carry him through the streets if he does go down. Will you walk home with us, Elle, just in case he really does need to be carried? He doesn't now," she adds hastily. "Let him walk. It's just in case."
Joelle, for his part, looks pleased to have been asked, and falls in dutifully beside them as Lathrik begins to lead the way home.
They are about half the distance, following Lathrik's staggeringly slow, meandering pace, when a series of bird calls pierce the quiet of the early morning. It's early, but still not early enough for birds. Both men stop.
Natalyah does not, continuing on along at a fast pace, eager to be off the street, her form hunched over like she's afraid at any moment someone is going to open their window, look out into the darkness, see her as a worgen and start screaming about monsters in the streets.
Lathrik nods to Joelle, who responds to the call while Lathrik attempts to catch up to Natalyah. At the end of Joelle's response, the distant call comes a second time, and suddenly Joelle is with them again. Neither of them comment directly, as if the inclination to have a conversation as a bird is a completely natural one.
After some distance more, Lathrik finally says, "Pennings is gonna murder us."
"She better not, I haven't learned how to resurrect anyone properly yet," Natalyah grumbles.
"Good practice, then," he says.
When they get home, Lathrik pulls the lockpicks one more time, and starts working the lock on the door. Their door. That he should have keys for.
Natalyah looks from him to the door then back to Lathrik. "Lathrik. I realize I'm probably asking an obvious question here, but why are you breaking into our house instead of using your key?" she asks in the tone of someone who is pretty sure she knows the answer and yet, she's holding onto a tiny bit of hope that maybe, just maybe, he's just in Spy Lathrikpick lockpicking mode and hasn't switched his action bar back to Regular Citizen Lathrik yet.
Lathrik pauses, looks at her, and checks his pockets. When a key emerges from one, he stares at it, then slowly sticks it into the lock. The door opens. Amazing. "I was jus' testin' ye," he says unconvincingly.
"Right, because you seem really on top of your mental acuity game right now," Natalyah teases, as she waits for him to open the door. "I'm half-afraid you'll try to say something like, 'even every eventuality ever happens' and get stuck in the middle for so long that I'll have to kiss you to get you out of the loop of it." That's not exactly the worst kind of threat she could make, really.
"How about ye jus' kiss me anyway?" he asks, stepping inside. He stays in the doorway, but leaves enough space for her to enter around him. "Elle, ye gonna make it home?"
"I will make it home in time to return, if I take no detours along the way," Joelle reports.
"Don't take any detours then," Natalyah orders, as she steps around Lathrik, shifting from her worgen form to her human one as she crosses the threshold like that wooden frame itself had some transmutative property, as if the house itself has restored her lost humanity, the silhouette of her inside the dark house the wild silken strands of her dark hair and the faint sparkle of the sequins of her dress creating something of a magical moment.
Magic moment over. "Lathrik! Did you let the fire burn all the way out?" she scolds as she pushes her way towards the fireplace. "You didn't throw any mana potions in it while I was gone, did you?"
Lathrik opens his mouth like he's going to say something to Joelle, but the man's already turned to follow orders, and Natalyah's scolding distracts him further. "'f I did, it was just the one," he says, following her the rest of the way in and closing the door behind him.
"'Just the one?!'" Natalyah screeches. "Lathrik Hazard Dinnsfield, that's all it takes to have glass and alchemical — " She makes a noise of frustration as she halts in place to balance just for the sole purpose of angrily shaking a cane at him like an old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn. "No kissing until you clean it up if you have thrown even one mana potion in the fireplace." (This is a threat.)