The day was clear after days of rain, the winter sky a cold pale blue, breath misting in the air. The ground is cold, hard and without grass. The snow that dusts it only succeeds in fading the brown, rather than obliterating it completely. With it's faded one-room church and century old gravestones, from generations ago to present, it is a worn out looking grave yard, and no kind words of a priest, bright winter sun or blessing of the Father, Son or Holy Ghost could make it otherwise. The turnout is poor. A few men, dressed in thick woolen coats, caps pulled over their ears, their hands big, thick and gnarled from years working on a boat, or at the docks, good hard work with their hands, thickening the joints until the fingers drew inward automatically, drawing closer to the palm, so the hands resembled dull claws. A woman, whose name is Leona, plump, tired looking, dressed in a navy blue dress, that must have been the closest thing she had to black; and even she came, not for the man who was to be buried today, but his daughter. Thirteen, the redheaded girl is slight and small for her age, and dressed in clothing far too large and worn in a fashion that must make them second hand. She too wears a thick woolen jacket, the elbows of it patched, the cuffs falling well past her hands. Her flaming hair chin length and toussled, she fits well in the ragamuffin ideal and, Leona supposes, the orphan she is supposed to be. -- "'t was a nice fun'ral," Leona says in the car, glancing at the barely-teenager, silent and slouched in the passenger's seat, "Wasn't it just?" The slight girl had not shed a tear, during the funeral, before, after. In an uncharitable flash of thought, Leona considers that it is good that the dead man's daughter wastes no tears on him. Drunk, careless, Robert Slaughter was not a man who would be mourned in Mousehole. "M'great aunt didn't come," it's almost a question, even though the answer was obvious. "No, my beauty, she didn't. Though your father's friends did, and wasn't that nice, my gold? They came t'watch him be buried, didn't they just?" The car is old, though still running comfortably. It bounces over the potholes of the unpaved road as Leona navigates it toward her small home, just across the street from where the teenaged girl lives - lived. She wouldn't live there any longer. Nor in Mousehole, more's the pity. "'t was a ni' fun'ral," the child says finally as she crosses her arms across her chest, sinking lower into her seat. It would not be possible, were she wearing a seatbelt. Speeds like this, it simply wasn't worth bringing it up. The car was barely breaking ten miles. For a moment or two, there is nothing else in the car but silence and the sound of the vehicle's vents spewing luke-warm air to take away the winter's chill. Finally, it's the girl who breaches the silence once more, "When's they comin' t'get me?" It's sympathy that keeps Leona from correcting Imogen's grammar. She's known her since the girl was born and has had a vested interest in her since she was four, and her mother left. Leona had three children, all boys. Imogen, motherless and with a father who was never home, became a vested interest. Filling the part as daughter, where Leona had none. But it was selfish, more for Leona herself, than to assist Imogen - it never would have happened, had Leona had a daughter. And now, when it is time for someone to take care of her full time, Leona will watch her leave. She does not want to care for another child. But still, she is sympathetic. "Tomorrow, my beauty. I spoke wi' the blokes from welfare, and they said they would be by tomorrow." --- In the end, familial duty or a sense of honour, or maybe just a belated sense of sympathy for a teenager placed into the welfare system in England, caused Imogen Slaughter's great aunt to take her into her well-mannered home in Penzance, not too far from where Imogen had spent her first thirteen years. Annabelle Slaughter was a proud woman, aware of her family's good name, her family's good blood. She had been well mated, once, and though she had had no children from the union, she always remembered that, too. Imogen's father had been a disappointment to that good name, his marriage to her mother and her birth five months afterward a blight on the Slaughter honour. Annabelle, however, was determined that Imogen, her grand niece, would rise above such turmoils and be a kinfolk of good name and good breeding. Useful skills. Everything desireable for a mate to a Garou, and the mother of Garou children. There were some things that the Garou did which were perhaps not quite kind to the girl. Coming to get her, along with three other well-bred kin and marking her with a tattoo on her arm to show her tribal allegiance, but that only showed how they valued Imogen and her blood, and wanted to mark her with their protection. They backhanded her only because Imogen struggled. One of the other kin, a man in his early twenties, had struggled too. They'd broken his arm. Imogen got off lightly. The other two kinfolk, both women, had submitted quietly to the branding - Imogen could have gotten off that lightly, had she not been so headstrong. And perhaps the younger Fianna were a little presumptuous and wild, but eventually, when the girl was older she would attract a more seasoned warrior. It would go well. Imogen could be the first mother of a Garou child in the Slaughter family for three generations. -- "What I want to know, child, is what exactly you said to make him break your arm." Imogen's bedroom is well appointed. The queensized bed is made, trinkets filling nooks and crannies, and a bookshelf full of books that she might read. There is a violin in its case on a stand in the corner, and sheet music beside it. In it, the straight backed imposing figure of her great aunt fits perfectly, a matron of matrons. Imogen, seventeen years old, her arm in a cast and a spray of bruises across her throat and cheekbone and still dressed in her clothing from the night before feels rather out of form and place here. Like she and her bruises should be somewhere else, not belonging in a room of fine wood and such things. "I don't know," she lies. "Oh, really." Annabelle's sarcasm could cut. "Yes. Bloody really." The silence her aunt leaves after her statement leaves little doubt that Annabelle disbelieves her. "Watch your language. Well, there's not much else to do. I won't have you hear causing trouble on our good name, and stirring all of them up. When you're done school, you'll be coming back here to look for a mate, and I won't have memories of your troublecausing -" and as Imogen takes a breath to argue, "your trouble causing," as if to cement that Annabelle is right, and Imogen is wrong, "get in the way of that. You can go to St Dunstan's Abbey--" "That's all the way out in Plymou--" Imogen is cutting Annabelle off, but Annabelle, older, firmer and stricter is much better at silencing the girl and making her heard. She is Imogen's better and knows it, and the superiourity of her tone catches the girl up sharp, "You can go to St Dunstan's Abbey for the remainder of this year and for the next. After that you will go to University, young lady, and we shall go about getting you into medical school." Silence ticks out as Imogen stares at her great aunt, pale features marred by the bruise that blooms across her cheekbone, jaw set for an argument that fizzles before she begins it. "Yes, Aunt." -- Boston, Massachussetts "You know," his voice is low and like honey poured over coals. He can sing beautifully which is how she first met him. Later, when she discovered he was kin, she cracked her original resolved and stayed with him, "I'm every bit as good as They are." The woman in his bed cracks open her eyes to look at him, turning slowly to face him. In the darkened room, her hair is faded to the colour of embers, spilling over her white shoulder. "I'm not completely sure exactly what yeh blokes do 'ere in America," she informs him drily, "but in England, that would be considered absolutely terrible pillow talk." His laughter is a low musical thing as he grins, brushing some hair from her shoulder. It's not long before he grows serious again, his features setting back into set lines. "It's true, though. I've done a lot for the Garou. I think I'm owed a little respect. A little recognition." "Do what you want, Geoff. I want nothing to do with 'em. Fuck 'em. Fuck their war." -- “Where is he?” The man that paced her bedroom was not the man who normally frequented it. His presence jarred her; gave her something to focus on rather than the throb in her face. The zygomatic arch, the mandible, the maxilla. She names each aching bone with familiarity as she inhales, wetly, through her nose. The sound is as much from blood as from mucus. She does not answer right away. She's seated on the bed's edge, head bowed. Her hair is loose – her body only just covered by the folds of her robe. Truth be told, she is not concerned with a gape of fabric at her throat or riding up of a hem on her thigh. Her body was something he had seen before. Imogen's hand lifts, slipping beneath the curtain of her hair to touch her cheek gingerly. “I don't suppose it matters,” she says to her friend, her hand pulling away, falling to the mattress beside her. Her fingers spread along the coverlet, and her arm braces, lurching herself upward. And forward – as her balance fails her. Strong hands – pianist's hands, so many humans, she has met through music – catch her by the shoulders. A strong grip steadies her. Hands slide up her shoulders to her neck, one continuing to follow the curve of her jawline, tipping her head back. Her hair falls away – and he sucks in a breath. “Jesus christ, Doc.” -- His apartment was small; a bachelor's pad for a law student who came from good money, but lived on a budget in some misguided attempt to learn the value of every coin. A bed against one wall, a couch against another. A big screen TV opposite the couch. That left one wall, to be dominated by a drumset and a desk. Several boxes, filled with books. He glances at her, as he lets her in, “So,” awkwardness filling the space between them, “I'll take the couch, and you the bed. Stay as long as you need.” Imogen gingerly lowers her duffle bag to the ground, caution of motions that rattle the bones of her skull. Dressed in jeans and a loose sweater, her hair unbound, loose over her shoulders, her appearance unsettles him, vaguely. Beyond the injuries to her face, the subdued nature of her manner and the carelessness of her dress came across as so unfamiliar, he might as well have a stranger in his apartment rather than a woman he had thought he knew passingly well. She straightens, slowly, a hand lifting to push back the edges of her hair, tucking them behind her ear. A glance from her unlikely hero, gangly and tall, his hair standing on end from running his hand through it a hundred times since he'd come to her door until now. “We'll both take the bed,” she says quietly. -- She stands in line at the airport security, holding various pieces of identification in one hand, her bag at her feet. Her eyes move impatiently from the front of the line to the watch on her wrist to the man at her side. The bruises are faded to a hint of yellow across her cheekbone; only yesterday, he had marvelled at how quickly she had healed. She could not possibly explain to the human how this was due to the blood of a people he did not knew existed. That it were only a thing of genetics or luck that meant it took her this long to heal at all. She could not explain it to him, and if she could, he would not believe. It was not the only reason she was leaving. “I don't know what's taking them so long,” He is impatient. “You'd think at four am, there would be less people who need to take a plane.” “I ha' a few hours yet,” she murmurs, thumbing through her identification one last time. Green card, British passport, British proof of citizenry. A letter from her new employer, the Essex County Medical Examiner's Office, endorsing her move. She lowers her hand, the papers rattling together reassuringly. “You don't need to stay, you know.” A faint smirk tilts up the corner of her mouth, “I've been in an airport or two before.” “I want to stay,” he replies. -- At the other end of a long airport ride, she disembarks and steps through the arrival gate, shouldering her carry-on bag. It was easier for her to see the lanky bloke with a sign bearing her name, than it was for him to see her. The slightness of her height is lost within the exiting crowd, despite the tell-tale flame of her hair. The young man smiles at the similarly young doctor when he spots her coming his way. “Doctor Slaughter?” The question barely needed her slight, polite nod. The morgue administrator who had been tasked with picking her up, offers his hand and a grin. “Welcome to Newark, New Jersey.” -- New Jersey is cold and rainy. Imogen stands, cool faced in front of the chief medical examiner of Essex County watching as the angry flush from his face recedes a little and he stabs a meaty finger in her direction, "Explain to me, Slaughter, how you managed to drop a bullet down one of our sinks on a case that wasn't even yours?" The slight woman before him annoys him. She's too cool. Too together. Too confident. A woman doesn't belong in this career. They weren't logical enough. Thought with their hearts. Not their heads. She speaks quietly. "A mistake. The evidence was mislabelled. I thought it was one o' mine." "You haven't had any gunshootings this week." Shot back, accusatory. "That's why I took it out. I wasn't sure how it had got there." "And dropping it down the sink?" "I fumbled. It was a mistake." "A mistake. Damned fucking right it was a mistake. One that'll likely cost the state this case! Christ. 'A mistake'." Now he punctuates each word or order with a gesture. "Look." A finger stabs at her. "Get back down there." A sweeping sharp motion. The direction of the elevator. The direction of the morgue. "Go back to work." The elevator again, each gesture chopping the air. "I'm keeping my eye on you." His hand turns to point back at her, and stay there. "Understand?" The woman's porcelain features harden slightly, even as she nods, "Perfectly," and she turns to go. "Oh. And Slaughter?" Waiting until Imogen turns to look at him, and the smile he offers her is harsh, "Sortelli needs someone to cover his on-call shift. I've told him that you would be more than willing." Dark eyes narrow briefly before the small woman inclines her head in assent, "I'd be happy to," she says without inflection and shuts the door behind her. -- A year and a half later: “Why dontcha come wit' me.” -- The cafe was unfamiliar, and had taken her nearly twice as long as it should have to find it. The unknown streets had resulted in her getting lost, twice. Finally within, it was not hard to find a familiar face. “Long time,” Imogen greets Kris Oudekirk with a brief, darting smile. “No kidding,” he grinned, running a hand through his hair as he stands and pulls back her chair. Old world manners. “Welcome to Chicago. How was the drive?” “Long,” she answers, drily, as she sits. Her eyes flick over the assistant district attorney's frame, clothed in a rumpled suit, a smirk flicking across her mouth. “You look good.” The smirk fades like a dying spark. “Look,” a fraction's pause, “Thank yeh for arranging this. Especially on short notice.” The tall and lanky lawyer shrugs a shoulder, gesturing the slight redhead toward the doors. “Things just sort of fell into place. You have good timing. Though,” a glance, a question lighting his hazel eyes, “you mind telling me what the hurry was?” The redhaired kin shrugs slightly, “I suppose I needed a change of scenary.” -- January 9th, 2004, the caern in Chicago fell, sacrificed to keep it from the wyrm. March 26th, 2004, the Garou accomplished the impossible, and ressurected a new one.