The Feral North

Getting caught in an insanely private moment like singing into a stapler in a public place such as your work was bad. It was along the vein of accidentally tucking your skirt into your pantie hose on your way out of the women's bathroom. Hell, she'd been guilty of that more than once. She tried to keep those kinds of things from happening at work, she honestly did. However it was often when you thought things couldn't possibly get any worse they always did. It went along with the saying when it rains, it pours. She would have liked to slap the person that coined that phrase at that at this particular moment.

In fact, things did get worse. Much worse. Jenner worse.

Like a knee jerk reaction the moment he had spoken harshly, her body tensed. There was no mistaking the voice, but there was no way it could have been him. Bright eyes swung in Jenner's direction. Of all the people to walk through the doors of RPiT right now, Jenner had not been one to come to her mind. Yet, here he was standing there. That wasn't quite accurate, he wasn't simply standing there, he was advancing. He was shortening the small distance between them with every step. This was one of those moments that happens in all the good movies. The world around you was supposed to slow, somewhere a happy melody would play, there might even be birds chirping. Lovers reunited, slow motion running to one another and as they touched they broke out in song, or even kissed. It was supposed to be magical, it was supposed to be anything but this.

It happened fast, if she had blinked she would have missed it entirely. Frozen in place, she could only stand there when his arms wrapped around her and pulled her in against him. Her heart was in her throat then,and she felt it harder and harder to remember to breath. She wanted, to touch him, to know that he was real. A long forgotten habit, to hug him even if he never hugged her back. She hadn't even noticed that the stapler fell to the floor as trembling hands found their way around his back. Eileen finally let out that breath she had been holding against his shoulder the same moment he buried his head into her still damp hair. In this brief moment, there was only herself and Jenner, everything else had become background noise. Drinking in his scent she sighed almost wistfully, losing herself to a sea of memories. He smelled, just as he had years ago, when they sat together on a park bench, at night. Too bad he vanished shortly after that. Would he leave after all this too? Her arms tightened around his back suddenly, as if that small action would keep him from wandering off. It really wasn't fair that he entered her life just as she was beginning to forget him.

Ginger what? She blinked open her eyes that had grown heavy with dreams of wedding bells, holding hands and all other manner of things, that her diary was a testament to, concerning all things Jenner. Her head lifted from his shoulder letting her her blue eyes refocus on what was happening around them. There was no magical sparkle filter floating around them, shielding them from the rest of the world. They were up to their elbows in 'oh shit.' as people continued to shout for him to step away from her. She threw a hand up in the air, to signal stop and called out, "It's alright. He's my boyfriend! Please, don't do anything!" If there really was a Hell all those Christians went on about, she was sure all those lies she just spun would be her ticket in. Sure, she was dating Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, they were just one big happy dysfunctional love story waiting to be made into a book. Whatever. They all began to slowly move hands away from their pea shooters and slowly return to their regular scheduled work program. That's all that mattered.

When everything had settled again, she turned back to Jenner, and tried to untangle herself from him. What she really needed, was to get a grip on herself, you didn't hug people you swore to loathe for all eternity. Her brief walk down memory lane was quickly replaced with anger. As eyes settled on Jenner, fixing him with a stare the kind all women inherited the moment they were DNA. It probably had no affect on him, but it made her feel for a moment better. Like usual bad ideas, she reacted without thinking. "Oh my Goddess! Can you act normal for once? Instead of being Mr. Creepers Stalksalot? News flash! Other people exist!" Anger was quickly swept away by blind rage. Her fists began slamming into his chest and shoulders, as hot tears burned her eyes. She couldn't speak for a long time, only hit him and cry. She had a one way ticket to crazy town for sure, if she kept this up. Was this what a complete meltdown was? Slowly her fists stopped pounding into him, as she leaned forward pressing her forehead against his shoulder, sobbing softly. Eileen forced herself to calm down, taking a deep breath, and letting it back out against Jenner's shirt

It was then that Katrina had poked her head around the corner to tell her McDreamy wanted her take a gander at what was inside the box that had just arrived. Right. This thing with Jenner...whatever it was would have to wait. She had to work now. She finally shoved him away as best she could, an action that resulted in her more pushing off of him than anything else. Hands moved to her face, rubbing red eyes with her palms and offering a heavy sigh. It was the first time she had noticed Jace, there and her entire face turned red. She just wanted to crawl back under her comforter and never come out. Looking back at Jenner she offered, "You need to leave. Right now. I have work to do and you are totally not welcome here." She even considered trying to push him toward the exit if she one didn't already know that Jenner didn't get pushed around and two that she could control herself not to start windmill slapping him again.

She had to ignore him and press on. On legs of jello she moved back to her desk and the box sitting on it, reaching into a drawer she pulled on her gloves and offered a half hearted apology to Kae and to Jace. It was as if all the wind in her sails had been let out and she had hardly enough energy left to talk. With her gloves on, she reached out for the box and opened it. The already spinning world quickened around her, as something grabbed deep inside her belly and twisted. Was she going to faint right now? That's all she needed.

"...J..enner.."

The Bolverk waited while Eileen cycled through all of her little phases, patiently holding still while she hit him with all the force of a swarm of butterflies. He released her arm, hand drifting upwards to card through hair that was the wrong color, fingers twisting about the strands as if he could use the feeling to erase the years spent without that feeling. Arms tightened about her frame as she subsided with her face buried against his shoulder. Relief flooded through the black wolf even as she gently pushed herself away from him. Part of his brain had been whispering at him for years, sibilant and almost unnoticed, that since she had disappeared all those years ago she wouldn't want to see him. But that voice, for once, was proven wrong.

Which was probably a good thing, because every time he thought about what he would have done if she didn't want him around, all he heard was laughter. The only thing that had held him together after the institute, after being packless for years, after severing every tie he had and being subject to things he could only imagine were probably against several laws somewhere...had been the drive to find Eileen. Without that he was certain he would have slid farther to that place he had been in when the pack found him.

So as she slid away from him, he blithely ignored her insistence that he leave. "You think I'm gonna fuck off an just leave when it took this long to find you? Fuck that Ginger." Belatedly, he took in the rest of the room as well as the Ulfric that had somehow ended up next to him. Fear caught his attention, pulling pale eyes towards the fox that seemed like she might slip skins any second. Oops? Whatever. He pulled the sunglasses off, not giving a shit about his eyes at the moment, only that the dark glass made it harder to see the one thing he had been searching for for so long. Just when he had been about to reach out to Kae to give her a reassuring touch, he twisted back around at the sound of Eileen's voice.

A hand settling on the human's shoulder, steering her away from whatever it was in the...oh right, severed arm. Curiosity tilted his head to the side as he stretched out to tip the box enough to catch sight of the limb. Yep. Pretty standard severed arm from what he could tell. Absently he slid around Eileen, trying to get just a little bit closer to see what the end looked like.

Professional curiosity.

"Hey Jace? If we're taking Kae back, I'm bringing Ginger too." The box scooted back across the desk as he pushed it away to turn back to Eileen. "I don't give a shit if you're working for the blue boys or what the fuck ever. You're done. I didn't spend this much time looking for you just to have you shoot yourself or some shit because there's a psych job nosing around."

If there was a god, he was sitting on the edge of cloud, laughing and pointing at the situation that was unfolding in this office space. Jace bit his bottom lip hard and kept his brown eyes moving from face to face, hand on gun to hand on gun. He wanted to scream a warning at the men, to threaten that unless they were packing silver bullets that he would personally tear throat from neck from each person that drew on him and his pack. BUT, shit like that tends to get you shot a little more fervently then if you just keep your mouth shut on the whole, killing thing. Be more human then monster. Easier said then done when your a six foot three, two hundred and sixty pound monster of an individual who was clearly rushing with intense metaphysical energies. Oh, and he had great hair too.

Ginger? The Ulfric rolled that nickname over his mind again and again, trying to comprehend. The girl Jenner's been trying to find? Of all the luck. Jace very slowly craned his neck to get a better look at Ginger. Who was blond. Er, maybe the drapes don't match the carpet. Was the only mental thought he had about how 'Ginger' just didn't fit the woman. "Oh, hey, you found your girlfriend. Now we're going to get shot in the heads and die. I love Wednesdays." Sarcasm mission, accomplished. This was not the time for being sentimental and demanding the girl run away with you. And yet here was his Bolverk, spilling like he had never heard before. He actually sounded like he had emotions somewhere inside of him. Wow, this chick must of had kryptonite between her legs or something. Not to self, keep a safe distance.

And then the sunglasses came off, eliciting several small gasps and clicks of holsters being opened. Great, just great. "Jenner." he warned in a soft snarl, watching as Ginger seemed to snap out of her little daze to call the dogs off. Alright, maybe she is a natural blond. he thought to himself as it seemed to take her for god damn ever to get everyone to relax. Jace straightened and kept his hands up, visible. It would keep him and the others safe. As the minutes passed, the Ulfric reserved himself to watching the dialogue between Jenner and Ginger. Kae got tucked into his arms, her back pressed hard to his chest as he coated her with his hard protective flesh and the comforting warmth of his wolf. "Easy Kae." he whispered down into her hair, pecking her scalp with soft almost there kisses. "I'm here, which means it's all alright, yeah?" Brown eyes never left the Bolverk or the blond as the arm was called into question and other things as well, like dragging the other woman back home with them.

He drew the line there. "No, she can't come." he said quite bluntly, his body relaxed as he slowly unlaced the arms that held Kae. He stepped around the young woman and strode up to the Bolverk, his hand out of nowhere reaching out to grasp him by the back of the neck. "After the shit you pulled today, you think I'm going to let you drag some female I don't even know, a human female at that, back to my house? Your more out of your mind then I give you credit for." his hand clenched and bit fingers into flesh and muscle, his power poured into Jenner like a conduit made of bone and brain, pushing in all of his dominance and anger that he felt in that moment. "You left me alone downstairs. Your suppose to protect me, aid me in the things I do. And you left. I can't really ignore that at all. And so now, I've got to drag your ass out of here in front of your girlfriend, and deny you from seeing her cause you put us all in danger!"

He was trying to keep his voice hushed, but failed to do so. Brown eyes gone black flicked toward 'Ginger', it wasn't meant to scare or threaten her. She was just, there. "What am I suppose to do with you?" he growled, giving the man a small shake. "Is it really that easy to break my trust to service what petty shit you think you need?" Jace wrenched Jenner's face to the side so that they were eye to eye, glaring at one another. "You caught her scent and knew she was here. Did you really think she was going anywhere?"

Through the pain of her fox trying to pull a Houdini, she was seriously distracted. Jace helped, how? She didn’t have answers. Maybe because she trusted him, knew that he would keep her safe. Even if she still had moments when she felt like she let the Pack down, or they were going to kill her. Early morning phone calls probably didn’t help with that at all. It took a long time before she could find her breath again, much less her voice. Still, the Ulfric was right. He was there; things were going to be better or alright. Better than what she could have ever accomplished on her own. It still didn’t make her want to be there, she really would rather be anywhere else. That was not the case however; she knew that she had to wait until the Officer released her to go home. And here was hoping that the other woman did that soon, she couldn’t promise that she could keep herself controlled if Jace left or if the situation managed to find itself different once more.

When he let go, Kae managed to push herself to the front of the desk. The woman, Ginger, or whatever the Bolverk had called her.. Was still an Officer. With a job to do. All she wanted to do was go home, and it wasn’t like she could contribute to the conversation Jace was having with Jenner. Not her place and it was easier if she didn’t know. There was still so much of it that she didn’t understand anyways. Kae looked at the other woman, trying to keep her eyes anywhere but at the box. Once had been more than enough. “I-I-I’m s-s-sorry.” And then another glance at papers and such on the woman’s desk. “T-there w-w-was n-nothing else. I-I-I am always g-g-getting t-things. S-sound r-r-recordings and t-transcripts. I h-h-had n-no r-r-reason t-to t-t-think it w-was anything else.” Kae gulped softly, wondering where her box had really gotten to. Her eyes found the other woman’s once more, fear filtering on her face. “Is it s-s-safe t-to g-go b-b-back to w-w-work? Are t-t-there any l-leads?” She really wanted to know that they had caught the bugger, clearly that was not the case. But maybe, they were close?

As if the situation was not already stressful enough, what with an arm in a box and all. Jenner needed to make demands that seemed everyone around him disapproved of. Well, at least that was settled, she was going nowhere with Jenner right now. She quickly put the lid back on the box, and pulled a glove off throwing it over the top of the box. She felt a new wave of nausea take hold of her and she bit down on her lower lip. The smell was too much too bare, and she began to gag. When her stomach had finally stopped churning, there were tears in her eyes and her heart was racing. She really did not want to throw up right here in front of civilians. While Jenner was distracted she reached out to the phone on her desk and punched a few numbers bringing the receiver to her ear. "It's Mann. I need someone to come up and take some evidence to the lab." She nodded into the phone, even though the person on the other end could not see her and hung up. She brought a hand to cover her nose and mouth for a moment feeling the bile burn in her throat.

It was then she felt the familiar brush of Mr. Fiddlesticks against an ankle before he jumped on top of her desk and hissed at both Jace and Jenner in turn. As always the cat was right, they both needed to shut up. People were slowly drifting back to the scene of the drama, curious to know what exactly was going on over in the spook squad. Losing her patience with the entire situation, she slammed her hands down on the desk, and leaned into it. Bright blues fixed them both with a stare that all women seemed to know the moment they became DNA. "How about we all sit the fuck down and shut the hell up. This is a police station, not your playground where you all play king of the hill. I'm this close to having you both escorted out or thrown into a cell until this is finished." She kicked out her chair, just as one of the guys from the labs had come to collect the evidence.

It was then she looked away from them to turn her attention to Kae as if she misplaced her for a few moments amongst all the chaos. With a hand she gestured to the seat on the other side of her desk, for the other woman to sit. She reached back to pull her own chair closer to the desk and sat, a hand moving to the mouse and moving it back and forth quickly to get the screen saver on her computer to stop it's endless loop. For a moment, she ignored them all, while she clicked on various things on the desktop and began typing absently. "Don't apologize for the things that are out of your control. I sure you would like to forget about what happened and go home but I'm going to have to get your statement." She looked away from the computer's screen to Kae and offered the other woman a reassuring smile.

The entire process had taken all of ten minutes, with questions being asked and answered while fingers bounced over her keyboard. At Kae's questions, she pushed away from her desk a little bit. "We are working on it, so far however there hasn't been anything concrete. What you brought in, might hold something we need. As far as you going back to work. I can see no real danger in work as it's public but I highly recommend you do not go out alone until all of this is over. I'm sure you have friends you can stay with as well." At this, she turned to look at Jace, it was obvious to her now he was the big kahuna of puppy land. "I'll assume she is under your care, in which case I will say it again. It's in her best interest to be with you. We can put a police detail on her to watch her home but let's be honest with one another. You're better equipped to handle that job." There it was, no matter how much she wished it was not true, they were simply outgunned when it came right down to it. "We're done here. I would suggest going home and getting some rest if you can. Thanks for coming her right away."

The second the Ulfric's hand landed on the Bolverk's neck, the smaller wolf fell to his knees. It was a terribly inhuman response, to simply cave at a touch like that instead of shrugging it off with a curse. But there was terribly little that was human left in him anyway. Things like that were unavoidable in his case, unless he was paying attention enough to play human better. With Ginger right there and a pissed off Ulfric bearing down on him, now wasn't one of the times he could hold up the act at all. Fingertips splayed against the floor as his spine arched to keep his neck elevated, a small thing that was all he could do at the moment to try to make less distance for the larger wolf to reach. With a whine his weight shifted to bump a shoulder against his dominant, seeking contact and forgiveness.

Grey eyes slewed sideways as Jace twisted his head around, bringing him eye to corner-eye with the larger male. For a moment he held the darker gaze before pale eyes flicked downwards, unable to make himself look the other in the eye for longer than it took to hopefully let the Ulfric know he was listening. That grip on his neck shorted out the few pieces of him that thought like a human just long enough for him to have missed ... something. Oh he had heard what was going on, but at the time it had been filed under 'not fucking important right now'. Licking lips, the Bolverk tried to catch glimpses of what was going on in his field of vision.

That plan was discarded as soon as pale eyes found Eileen again. What he wanted to do was shrug out of Jace's grasp, to oil away and wrap around the false blond. But he was held fast. Fingernails rasped against the floor as his hands drew into fists, knuckles pressing against the hard surface hard enough to bruise.

"You caught her scent and knew she was here. Did you really think she was going anywhere?"

"I can't..." The growl was frustrated more than anything else. Nothing but a sound to vent what he felt for not being able to find some way to make things make sense. "She disappeared last time." Panic started inching icy claws up his spine, sending slivers into his stomach. If Jace took him away, dragged him back to the car, would she be gone again? There wasn't really anything to do about that though, not with an Ulfric holding onto him. Not when just about every fiber of him wanted nothing more to do than to roll over and give the other wolf his stomach. Of course...there was the possibility that she actually wasn't going anywhere.

But that meant she would probably keep hanging out with cops and shoot her damn self somehow. Upside to that, at least she'd get an ambulance faster. He realized how fucking sad it was that that was the silver lining.