CoR Boop the Badger

illirica

Well-Known Member
Location
Railyard, Naughty Cage (remains)
The werebadger had been out for a while. Since it didn't seem to be doing him any harm and was probably doing him some good, and since the Bloodstones had very much had other things to attend to, policy had more or less been to let him sleep it off and use the time to deal with all of the other matters at hand.

Rhetta had been checking in, and making sure someone was keeping at least half an eye on him when she wasn't there. They didn't have enough people to keep a proper watch on him at all times, which was unfortunate, but that was probably part of the reason behind Ragenard's decision to turn a train car into a prison - not that she could ask him, because he'd passed out as soon as the most recent situation had resolved, leaving no direction on what to do with the werebadger. The cage was barely standing, and none of them harbored any illusions that he couldn't get out if he wanted to, but at least it was somewhere for him to be and to sleep off whatever he'd done to himself, during the attack.

At least it felt kind of familiar, being behind bars. She'd been taking her watch shifts on the inside of the cage, half because she had an image to maintain for the new kids and that certainly presented a fucking image... and the other half because he shouldn't have to wake up alone, behind bars - not if she could help it.

The axe was there, too, now, propped up against one of the bars. Rhetta was currently using it as a backrest, because it suited her, and because that meant that if he woke up and wanted to get to it, he'd have to go through her - but also it would be there, because that might matter.

His name was Broch Asvaldr, which she had gotten the hang of pronouncing the first bit. The second was a work in progress, but it wasn't like she'd had a lot of time to practice. There was an entire question of whether he was the Broch that Ragenard had apparently known, except somehow a whole lot younger and having been dropped out a magic portal. Rhetta had refrained from comment on this situation. It wasn't like she'd known the original anyway - she'd heard a few stories, but he hadn't been around the Pack when she had been. Apparently he'd been there for a while, while she'd been in prison, because everything fucking happened when she'd been in prison.

It kind of made her wonder what the werebadger was missing out on, while he was stuck in the train cage over here. Did he have people back there? How many of them were dead? How many of them thought he was dead?

It seemed to have been kind of a close thing. She looked him over once more, determined that he was still holding steady, and returned her eyes to the Iverian dictionary on her lap, every other sense carefully attuned to the slightest hint of anything that might need her attention - either outside, or in here.

Better that than the waiting, again.
 
Five faces smiled back at Broch, all of them laughing and holding each other in some form or another. They seemed so happy, and it made his chest ache terribly. He couldn’t seem to get up from where he sat cross legged on the ground. No matter how hard he tried to move, to speak, to ask them to please stay or to take him with them, he’d find it an impossibility.

The first two to leave were his mother and father. Hand in hand, they hugged his brothers before his mother led his father over to where Broch laid. She gently kissed his forehead, and smiled sadly at him for a moment. His father gently patted his shoulder without a word. He watched them walk into the snowy forest behind them, fading before reaching the tree line.

Next were the twins, the middle children. Finn and Niall walked up, the two redheads looking very much like their mother. Both of them punched either of his shoulders in a friendly gesture before racing each other towards the same treeline his mother and father had run towards just moments before.

Broch tried harder to move. Please don’t go. Please don’t leave me behind! He thought.

His oldest brother, Caden, moved closer and stood in front of him. He knelt down in front of him and placed a hand on Broch’s shoulder.

“You cannae come with us this time, little brother.” He said quietly. “Ya ‘ave a life to live. Go live it.” He gently laid his forehead against Broch’s. “We will see each other again, when it is time for ya to ‘ang up the axe.”

With that he stood up and slowly backed away, gazing sadly at his little brother for a long moment before starting off towards the forest. “I’ll be watching you. And I’ll let mom know you’ll be okay.” Broch watched as the last of his family disappeared to the forest.

Soon after, he realized he was falling..

Falling into darkness..

Broch opened his eyes and was immediately blinded by the sunlight streaming through the bars. It wouldn’t have been the first time he woke up in a prison cell. Few too many drinks and well..

He closed his eyes again, ignoring the wetness in them for the moment. He was alive, somehow. He was pretty sure if the wounds didn’t take him out, the werewolf pack would have. And then there had been the snake creature..

The air smelled differently here, enough to feel like he was suffocating on too much smoke. His stomach growled to let him know he needed to replenish the calories burned healing his broken body.

How long had he been out? A day? A week?

Still, he had to get up at some point.

Groaning as he sat up, he took stock of where he was. His prison seemed rather.. Odd. He’d never seen construction like this before. The bars, at least, seemed way sturdier than any he’d ever seen before. Well, what he hadn't taken out. Slowly he turned and–

His eyes locked onto the sitting form of the she-wolf that had given him an inkling of hope he could trust the pack. He stood frozen for a solid moment, analyzing her. His axe sat behind her. It was obvious what she was trying to say with that. You have to get through me to get it.

“Can ye understand me at all?” He asked, his voice still like a rolling storm as it carried.
 
He was coming around. Rhetta moved a little bit, her position changing from a casual I could probably kill you from right here to a remarkably at ease but slightly better balanced I could definitely kill you from right here: Still more or less seated, but one foot tucked beneath her to give her the point she needed to springboard for the throat. The dictionary was still in her hand, loosely held, something she could throw at his face and use the distraction to go for the knives, maybe even get them in before he'd dealt with that, depending on how fast his reactions were waking up.

He didn't move at first, and Rhetta waited him out, imminently patient, until he'd sat up and had a chance to look around. He'd managed to get up under his own power, and he'd stopped leaking blood all over the place. Strong regeneration, then - incredibly strong, but he'd been suffering until he slept it off. She'd noticed that the first time, too, after they'd found him. He'd been healthy enough when he'd risen during the attack, at least until the ghouls had had their say about it. Rhetta added keep him awake to her mental list of how to take him out if need be, but he wasn't attacking - not yet.

Assessing, she thought, and then deciding if he needed to. He asked a question, one of the three that she had anticipated enough to figure out ahead of time - the other primary contenders being Where am I? and What the actual fuck is going on? She'd prepared answers for the first two - the third, his guess was as good as hers, and she didn't intend to try to answer if she could help it.

Her fingers moved, bringing thumb and forefinger together in a gesture that hopefully translated well enough, though her other hand never strayed far from her knives. "Little."

Very little, even if she was working on it. "Yes, no, wolf, kill, hello, goodbye, your dick couldn't please a rabbit, fuck." Rhetta knew a few other phrases, too, but a lot of them were either threats that she didn't want to make at the moment or started with your mother and variants thereon, and she'd seen enough of the other side of the magical crevasse when he'd first shown up to know that family could very well be a subject that she shouldn't touch on right now, at least not lightly.

She gave him a shrug that had a bit of self-deprecation in it, a slight gesture, not enough to unbalance her or take her out of a place where she could attack if she had to. "Talk slow, Broch As- Als...vadir?"

It wasn't quite right, but hopefully it was close enough. At least he'd come out of it talking rather than swinging. There was always a question about how people were going to wake up. He seemed to be in his right senses, at least, which meant that if this went horribly wrong, it would have been his choice and she didn't have to feel bad about what happened next.
 
His storm grey hues stayed on her, watching her every movement. She portrayed at ease, but he could tell she was ready to spring at any misstep taken from him.

Still, he showed genuine surprise and amusement at the phrases she spewed back at him. Her accent was awful, and some of the words were barely understandable. But he could tell, she was trying.

“Asvaldr.” He said slowly, pronouncing it so she could hear the syllables. There was an amused twinkle in his eyes as he raised his hands in a show of I’m not going to hurt you. Slowly, he moved over towards the wall, staying the same distance between the two of them as he looked outside his cell. There was less fog out there now than there had been before, and he could see much further than when he had seen Liam and the ghoul.

It was still weird out there. More so now. Big metal boxes, he supposed like the very one he was in, could be seen. He looked up at the ceiling of the train car, where the metal bars met and were attached.

“Where am I?” He asked slowly. “How much trouble am I in for trespassing on your land?” He added.
 
"Asvaldr." An echo. It was at least much closer this time. Rhetta tended to have a pretty good ear for things, but figuring out how to repeat the sound didn't always follow from that. She could tell the difference, but perfect mimicry would take more practice than just once.

He was looking at the Railyard, maybe critically. That was fine; Rhetta didn't think much of it either, and that was even before consideration of the damage the ghouls had done to the place. He gave the same looking over to the car they were in, which they were both fully aware couldn't hold him, as evidenced by what had happened earlier. She had a feeling that he wasn't the only one - Ragenard could probably just bend the bars and walk out, as well, if he ever got stuck here.

Then again, why would he build a cage he couldn't escape? It made sense, if one thought about it in a convoluted enough sort of way. Broch didn't seem inclined to put his own abilities to the test at the moment, so she supposed they could both sit in here and pretend they were being polite about it.

Another expected question - and a second one added on to it, though Rhetta wasn't entirely sure what that one was. She flipped a few pages in the book, scanning based on sound and hoping her ear was acute enough.

"Trouble? <Trouble.>" A repetition of the Lutetian, hoping she'd gotten it correct, not that he would know anyway. If that was the right word, he was probably wondering what the shit and how deep it was.

"Hm." Her Iverian was definitely lacking here. "No... not me. <Ragenard's decision.>" She had no idea how to say the latter, but maybe he'd pick up something from the tone and the little bit she'd been able to offer. It's not my call to make. Also, given that Ragenard was passed out, maybe that made it Desmond's decision, but she wasn't about to bring up the full extent of the Pack's situation to an outsider.

Her hand went to her pocket - this with slowness, knowing he'd be tracking it, pulling out her phone carefully, making sure he knew it wasn't a knife. Not that she didn't have a knife, but she hadn't gotten it out yet.

She could text one-handed, at least, to the currently conscious upper levels, keeping the other hand available in case she did want that knife.

[Badger's awake. Seems lucid. Hasn't killed me yet.]
[Send someone to bring him a sandwich before he eats my liver, I can't be fucked to regenerate that shit today.]

She put the phone back and stood up, not too quickly, not too slowly - there was a fluidity to it, or maybe more of a sense of gravity: this is happening now. Grounded, stable, deliberate - but not immediately dangerous. She'd flipped the pages back once more, walking over to him, stopping a few paces shy - his reach was better than hers, so she'd need to make sure she was either out of range for both of them or in range for both of them. If he went for the axe, he'd have to cross her guard to get it.

Awareness didn't equal action, not until it was necessary. She held out the book instead, at one of the very first pages, which presented a map. Could he read a map? Hell if she knew. "Lutetia. Here." A fingertip, on the area where they were. Rhetta had no idea whether it would mean anything to him, but maybe it was a start. She had no idea what part of the map was the part filled with magic and the scent of corpses. Certainly nowhere she'd ever been.

Not with magic, anyway.
 
He finished his inspection of the weird box he was in before turning back to her to listen and watch. She said a word and then repeated ‘trouble’ for him. She was trying her best to communicate, the book seemed to have the language. It spoke well for her ability to adapt at least. So he tried too. “Trou.. Trouble..?” He muttered to himself in a broken form of Lutetian.

It wasn’t her decision to make. “Ragenard?” He asked, wondering who that was.

He watched as she pulled out a.. Well what looked to him like a flat rock with glass in it. She tapped at it a few times before stuffing it back in her pocket.

This place was weird.

When she moved towards him, he raised his hands up again, alert now. He felt a little cornered at this point. He knew from previous experiences to never underestimate a woman, and despite the fact he might have the ability to snap her in half, he’d bet both testicals she’d take him with her.

“No trouble” He said in both Iverian and broken Lutetian as she approached. “No trou-”

He saw the map. A confused look of disbelief bunched his brow as he grabbed the book from her. He hadn’t meant it to be aggressive or mean, but in his shock it may have seemed that way to someone who didn’t know him.

“Yer map is wrong.” He stated slowly. “Yer map shows a city that does not exist in Issunar.” He looked at her, a bit frustrated as he handed the book back, more gently than he grabbed it. “That map is wrong.”
 
"Ragenard-" Fuck. What was the Iverian for First? Hell if Rhetta knew that. "...One." Good enough? It was going to have to be good enough. He was smart, she'd noticed. You didn't manage a conversation in broken languages and manage to get the general idea of it without a fair degree of intelligence and ability to put things together. A lot of people probably would have taken one look at him and assumed he'd never needed to be that bright.

Rhetta would bet he used that to his advantage.

He didn't seem to know what to make of her phone, though. Maybe he was from one of those low-tech sorts of places. He'd known what the book was, though, enough that he'd gone for it pretty fast. She'd let go of it, because she wasn't going to win in a test of pure strength, stepping back and into a guarded position, knife opened in her hand and at the ready almost instantly, in case he decided to try to kill her with the book.

Instead, he just looked at the map. Rhetta didn't exactly relax, because that wasn't really a thing that she did, but she loosened her positioning a little bit and flicked the knife closed once more, sliding it back into her pocket as he objected to the map, his frustration evident in his tone. He was speaking slowly, still, but she felt like the words would have come out in a rush if he had let them.

"Not wrong." He didn't have to like it, but it was accurate as far as she was concerned. Probably something to do with all the magic. There were reasons Rhetta tried not to get tangled up in that sort of thing. He'd tried to hand the book back, and she shook her head a little. "Take it. Keep."

It'd do him more good than her, and she could always get another one. If he could puzzle out a bit of Lutetian, it'd be good for him if he was going to end up sticking around here. A few of the Pack members spoke Iverian, to be sure, but Rhetta was already noticing a bit of a divide there between the ones who did and the ones who didn't. A little bit of linguistic solidarity might be a good thing right now, especially as broken as the Bloodstones were right now. They didn't need anything else to tear them apart.
 
One huh? He gathered that meant Ragenard was the alpha. Ragenard would be the one who would decide his fate, should be a free man or a dead one it seemed. He hadn’t seen the knives she pulled out, but he assumed she carried something small and quick on her.

Still, he wondered if there was a language gap of her understanding him. This map was most definitely wrong.

He flipped to the pages and realized that both Iverian or.. a dialect of Iverian anyway. And whatever language she spoke was in here. So he ruffled through until he could find the words he needed and tried sounding them out.

“Mmmmm.. Mmmmm ahhhhhhh pee? Mmmm aaapppee? Mahpee..” He flipped back to the other word. “The fuck is this language..” He muttered to himself before attempting the word ‘wrong’. “Roong?”
 
"Map," Rhetta corrected, just as slowly and carefully as he'd corrected her own pronunciation earlier. The next sentence at least had some of the Iverian that she was thoroughly confident on, resulting in an almost snicker at his objection to apparently all things Lutetian.

"Wrong." Another careful pronunciation, but she shook her head firmly. "Not wrong." She was probably mangling the Iverian just as much, but the point was more important than the pronunciation at this very moment.

"Where you?" Where the hell are you from, that you don't like the map here? She'd been thinking Iveria, but none of the Iverians she'd ever known had insisted that the entire map of the continent was wrong. There had to be something more going on - of course, that much had been obvious from the moment the sky had turned red. It was just a question of what, and what to do about it.
 
He repeated the words after her, sounding much better than his previous attempt but no more so than she was with her pronunciation in Iverian. Still, she seemed insistent that the map was not wrong.

He turned back to the map and stared at it hard. “The fuckin’ map is wrong” He grumbled in Iverian.

Eventually he relented and pointed to Iveria, then quickly looked up the words he needed. “Froom.” He pointed again at the map. Then he pointed to Lutetia and circled it with his finger. “Wrong.” He stated again before looking for more words.

It took him several before he finally settled on what words to use. When he said them, he also made sure to point to them so that she knew what he was trying to say at the same time. “_Note Heh-ere. No..” He scrunched his brows as his stomach growled again, louder this time. Between the hunger and the attempts, it was giving him a headache.

He simply pointed after that. ‘Not here. Not exist.’ He circled the city again, and then circled several other marked indicators that seemed unfamiliar to him. He’d been in this region before, if he was truly in the city area. There had been nothing here except maybe a small human settlement that had some Iverian werewolves mingled in.

“Not from me maps, anyway..” He muttered before closing the book. He was done trying to translate for now. He leaned it against the wall very gently, as if it were precious and turned back to stare out the window again. The world was strange around him, and it smelled like shit. But he needed food soon.
 
Yeah, he still had issues with the map. Rhetta didn't know what to tell him, there. He didn't strike her as geographically challenged; it was pretty obvious that he'd seen a map before, knew what he was looking at, and was looking for something that just wasn't a thing, or was looking at something that he didn't think was a thing.

He was trying to get the issue across to her. Rhetta understood... well, she understood what he was getting at, it was just that it was diametrically opposed to what she had in mind. He'd closed the book again, but set it down with a kind of reverence that implied he wasn't usually the sort who threw books at people.

Eh. He'd probably do it in a pinch, if he thought he was threatened. She'd been trying to make sure she wasn't a direct threat, while she'd been in here. An indirect threat, sure; Rhetta was an indirect threat all the fucking time. That was why she was in here with him, wasn't it? But there was a difference between actively being a problem and being comfortable being a problem, if the situation called for it, and she'd settled on the second. So had he, she figured.

A crunch on the gravel attracted her attention, the sound of someone who hadn't yet learned to move quietly, as distinct from the sound of someone who had and was making noise on purpose so as not to set anyone off. Telling the difference was second nature at this point, and not being able to perform either was just one of the many issues with the current set of prospects.

Rhetta walked over and pushed open the door to the train car, aware that this was putting her back to the sitting badger and curious to see what he'd do about it. He could go for her, or he could go for the axe, or he could sit there and grump at the book. Or he could process whatever it meant to him that the door hadn't been locked, which was what she was actually curious about.

The prospect was certainly processing that information, with rather wide eyes and one of those I don't want to ask but am I supposed to ask? sorts of expressions. Rhetta offered a pointy sort of smile and took the lunchbox the kid was carrying.

"Got a pen, by any chance?" The kid nodded, handing over one of the cheap blue ballpoints. "Thanks." She returned to the badger, handing over the pink sack and switching to her abysmal attempted Iverian again. "Eat." He'd need to, after whatever he'd been through. That, first, before he got grumpy instead of just confused. She gave the pen a little wiggle, then moved it left, right, up, down, watching his eyes to see if he tracked it. Medical professional, Rhetta was not, but they all knew how to look for concussion signs. She didn't think he had one, but it was always good to check.
 
Broch’s head spun in the direction as soon as he heard footsteps outside the train, tensing slightly. He watched as the woman who had been keeping him company simply turn her back to him. Nothing was keeping him in here. Nothing but his own damned morales, at least. If he had committed some crime, he’d pay for it. It’s what his father had taught him at any rate.

Fortunately a garishly colored.. Bag? Was handed to him before he could continue on that train of thought. He blinked and looked it over, wondering how the ‘bag’ was holding its shape as well as it was. Rather rectangle for something made out of cloth. And how did one open it?

It took a few more moments to realize there was something you pulled. It made a zip sound, but it opened the weird package. Inside was the prize, albeit a tad odd looking. It all smelled wonderful right now. He may have actually started drooling. Picking up the first sandwich, he placed the ripped lunch box to the side and bit through the weird seal that was around it. Maybe it was to keep the sandwich fresh? Magic man. Regardless, the ‘seal’ didn’t taste that great. He eventually decided to spit the seal out and remove the rest from the sandwich altogether. But the sandwich inside? Divine.

He was in the middle of the second sandwich, which he ripped the seal first before devouring it, when Rhetta started her weird thing with the stick. What was that anyway? He focused on it while she moved it around, trying to study it. It looked clear with bright blue liquid inside it seemed. Poison? A magic wand? He wasn’t quite sure what to say to any of this and was about to ask what the fuck she was doing, when it suddenly was heading towards his face.

With speed that seemed unlike someone of his size was capable of, he stood up and grabbed her wrist with a growl and raised it above her head, bringing her close enough that they were staring at each other on even ground. His grip was firm, but spoke of a controlled strength that stated if he wanted to he could simply crush her bones now.

His eyes had small flecks of red inside those stormy grey hues, threatening her with more than she bargained for if she tried that again. He spoke then with a word that seemed universal no matter what language you spoke.

“No.” He growled.
 
Oh... that was interesting. He'd tracked the pen for a while, and then suddenly he'd reacted in an entirely different way. The speed didn't surprise her - Rhetta sparred with Ragenard, after all, and she was used to things happening faster than it was usually assumed they would.

Not that they had last time, but that was because Ragenard was having weird issues that he didn't want to talk about. His prerogative, she supposed, but she still didn't like it, mostly because it was likely that sort of thing was going to come around and bite the Pack in the ass. Hell, it might be already, given that he was passed out and none of them knew exactly what was going on.

Neither here nor there - here was the werebadger, who'd grabbed onto her wrist and pulled her in rather than pushing her back. So - he liked to fight up close, then, did he? If he crushed her wrist, there was a knife in her pocket - as soon as the bones were shattered, she could cut through the flesh easily enough, leave him with a remnant and back off. Stabbing him would have been easier, but it would have been a lot of trouble to bring him back and wake him up and then put him under again.

He'd stopped, though, and so she stopped as well, her eyes meeting his, her smile slow and easy and oh, are we doing this? Because she was absolutely up for doing this, if they were heading in that direction.

Within his eyes, the crimson was rising - and his expression... no. That wasn't the expression of someone who'd gotten annoyed with her bullshit and decided to give her the ass-kicking she probably deserved. She'd spooked him, somehow - her read on him was that he was genuinely concerned, and that whatever she'd been doing had registered as a real threat to her and not a playful one.

So, instead of tensing up, she relaxed - not limp, merely steady, supporting her own weight but not pushing him further, keeping her eyes on his and her stance ready rather than active.

"Hey." It was the same tone she'd used before, back when he'd dropped out of the magic death zone. Calm, steady, even. "What's this, hm?" She'd slipped back into Lutetian, but the words didn't matter, not really. "Easy. You're all right. Come on. You're smarter than this. If I were going to hurt you, I had plenty of time. Guess you've been through some shit, haven't you?" Her other hand came up, slowly, absent the knife she'd been thinking about pulling, fingers resting lightly on his forearm where he was holding her.

"Broch. Let go."
 
The smile had thrown him off. She was enjoying this. His brows furrowed further, and he had to concentrate to not fully shift. He was healed, yes, but he was not looking forward to fighting a member of a clan he potentially broke the rules of.

Still, it seemed she realized that he wasn’t joking. Once again, she used that tone of hers she had used before to coax him to shift. He understood not a damn word she said, and he grumbled about it under his breath. If she weren’t so damn cute..

Slowly, carefully he placed her back down and released her arm, backing away fully. Still, he seemed irritated, eyeing the.. Stick with blue liquid before going back to the ripped bag for more food.

“Why are yer attackin’ me with that poison stick?” He asked. He doubted she knew his words any more than she knew his, but he spoke slowly enough that if she wanted to grab the book she could. “I’ve been behavin’.” He grumbled. “‘Ell, I’ve been a fuckin’ saint..”
 
He definitely was trying not to kill her. There was a part of Rhetta that appreciated that, even if there was also a part of her that would have been fine if things went the other way as well. His not killing her was deliberate, though. There was a difference between not trying to kill someone and trying not to kill someone. She knew where the line was.

He'd gone back to eating, but his eyes kept darting back to the pen, which was odd, because he should have been watching for a knife. He grumbled something else in Iverian, and she echoed "Yeah. Fuckin' saint," without needing to think about the translation on that part.

The rest of it, though, that just made her curious. She moved back towards him, slowly, giving respect to the space he apparently needed, picking up the book again and turning a few pages, relying on her ear for the words she was looking at.

Poison? What poison?

"Do you not know what a pen is? Pen." The last, with reference, in Iverian, probably mispronounced, but close enough, or maybe not. Rhetta uncapped it, slowly, sticking the cap back on the end of it, and scrawled her name on the back of her hand, then carefully offered him the uncapped pen.

"I don't know what to make of you." She sat back, thinking. "They shot you with arrows. Not guns." He hadn't reacted to having a gun pointed at him, either. She'd thought he was just figuring he could shrug it off, but now she wasn't so sure.

"I'm not sure you're from Iveria. Not our Iveria, anyway. What was that spell, anyway? Fuck."
 
He was honestly surprised what phrases she could repeat back fluidly and which ones she couldn’t. The translations she obviously knew were damn near flawless. Couldn’t tell the lass wasn’t from Iveria herself if that’s all the words she said. But then she’d attempt some other phrase, and you didn’t have to be from Iveria to know she wasn’t Iverian.

“The fuck is a ‘pen’?” He asked, watching her closer now. The poison stick was back in play now, and she pulled the top off, and he visibly tensed. But she didn’t use it on him, she used it.. On herself?

He blinked, and blinked again, suddenly feeling rather foolish. “Yer usin’ a weird quill, there.” He grumbled, face a tad red. “Never seen one like tha’.” He took it carefully and studied it, biting his lip. Then he looked at the garish bag she’d given to him earlier. He picked it up and, on the bottom where it had the least amount of pockets and other things, he began to draw with it.

He took a few minutes, and he seemed careful with what he was doing. But once he was done, he tossed it over at Rhetta for her to catch or let bounce. He’d redrawn the map, in perfect memory, with other details that weren’t on her map. Details of old landmarks that had either been lost to time or were no longer noteworthy. He went back to the remaining sandwich, looking a bit sad that there weren’t more.

That’s it. The punishment was they were going to starve him to death.

He was also starting to pick up on some of Lutetian based on how she said the words right after his.

“Fuck.” He said in plain Lutetian.
 
Rhetta let him have the pen, looking up quill while he looked it over, which added more questions than answers - unless it did add answers, in which case she was starting to get a feeling that the answers weren't adding up to something she liked. Once he'd gotten the idea behind it, though, he'd started drawing on the bottom of the lunchbox, laying out a map that was detailed, careful, deliberate, and completely devoid of... Lutetia.

There were other things on the map that she didn't recognize, as well, though she was hardly a cartographer. She knew Lutetia well, but whatever happened beyond its borders was very much someone else's issue, as far as she was concerned.

He'd said a word, quite clearly, and Rhetta didn't stop herself from an amused smile. Well, if he had to have only one word of Lutetian down, that was probably a good one, as far as she was concerned.

Fuck, indeed. Cautiously, she looked up one more word, because he didn't seem to know what a pen was, or a gun was, or a phone was - or a lunchbox, or a zipper, or a sandwich wrapper. The more she thought about it, the less he knew. She'd thought maybe he was from some backwater, but then... he used words like quill.

Carefully, in the same let's not panic tone as before, she inquired, in broken Iverian: "What year?"

It's not 'where is he from,' is it? It's 'when' is he from.
 
He left her to her devices, she seemed to be trying to study more from the book after looking at the map he had drawn correctly. He was starting to relax slightly again, and he stretched enough that bone and ligaments popped in his joints.

He was wondering if there was any point he was going to meet this Ragenard she spoke of earlier. He had to be a busy person, being a leader of a pack was rough or so old Ruan had said. Lots of people relied on you to know what you were doing.

Her question, though butchered, gave him pause though. He raised a brow, wondering what new game she was playing.

“It’s 1624. Or does yer clan not do calendars right too?” He asked, sounding amused.
 
Hell. This was why Rhetta didn't want to be in charge of anything. Dealing with shit like this. Broch seemed decent - as decent as any of them were, anyway. Probably better than some. He could hold his own, and she respected that - and now someone had to break his entire world.

It shouldn't have been her, but Ragenard was out and Desmond was juggling a million things already, and Baron was trying his damndest not to step up, because that was just going to confuse things when Ragenard was back up and around, and also she wasn't a fucking coward.

She didn't look away, because again, she was not a fucking coward, and he deserved someone to at least look at him when they said it. "2024." She'd looked up the numbers. "May. Spring." If it mattered. That wasn't going to be the hard part, for him, she didn't think.

"Fucking-" She didn't know the word in Iverian. "Magic."
 
At first Broch stared at her, confused. And then he started to chuckle, thinking he either misunderstood her translation or she had mistranslated ‘1624’. Or maybe it was just some joke she was playing that he did not understand the punchline? He shook his head, chuckling but stopped when he noticed she was not laughing. Or smiling.

He had only known her for a short half hour or so, but he thought he had a good read on this woman. She was no coward. She also did not seem the type to pull a prank on this. Slowly, the realization dawned on him and suddenly it felt there wasn’t enough air in this metal box. He looked outside the windows again, at the strange buildings outside. He quickly looked at the box around him, and then back to Rhetta.

One time, Broch’s mother once told him that normal people had 5 stages of grief. It had been after his paternal grandfather had passed, and his father had disappeared for a while to ‘deal with the situation’. She then told him, Werebadgers did not follow the same rule, that they only experienced one stage: Anger. At this moment, Broch wondered if it was because his father only showed anger after his grandfather was murdered or if it was by chance because werebadgers experience all stages all at once in rapid succession.

Broch shook his head repeatedly. “No.” He said, breathlessly. “No. No no no. No!” He growled the last, beginning to pace the back end of the train cart. Suddenly he had too much energy and not enough to do with his hands. He couldn’t take it out of Rhetta. He wasn’t angry at her, and even then, she wouldn’t understand if he suddenly took a tuffling with her. So he gave into punching the wall. Over and over again until his knuckles bled, until the wood splintered and warped. He ignored the tears that ran down his face. If he ignored them, they didn’t exist. They would not exist.

He ached in ways he never thought possible. Nuadha had not only murdered his family, he had taken Broch's entire world away from him. He had taken everything away from him. He growled, trembling in the effort of not shifting in the moment.

“Fuckin’ Nuadha. I will make ‘im suffer. I will enjoy rippin’ ‘im into tiny pieces.” He growled, a deep guttural sound of hatred and promise. “I will end ‘is existence.
 
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