The Elephant In The Room
Julie had returned home after the raid, despite the concern that agents might be waiting to arrest her there. Others may run, but Julia Katherine Sanchez had done enough of that and the werewolf was standing her ground. Searchlight was her home, and she'd be damned if she'd let anyone send her packing before she was ready.
She'd arrived back to business as usual, nothing had changed in the small sleepy town in the time she'd been away to the meeting. Julie came home to an empty apartment and proceeded to take a shower to rinse off the stench of tear gas and cigarette smoke before watching tv for a while and turning in.
Strangely enough, the raid on the bar wasn't even mentioned on the evening news.
The next morning the werewolf made her way to Mallory's trailer. It had been some time since she'd talked with her friend and it wasn't like the redhead not to at least pop into the bar and chitchat every so often. Julie reached the front steps to the trailer and knocked on the door.
Well, at least now Mallory had something new to be upset about.
She'd come home at around dawn and collapsed into sleep for a few hours, then checked the news. There was nothing about the raid, which stood to reason. The redhead looked at her badge, which was still attached to her government-issued jacket, then looked at the uninformative television.
What she had seen had not been what she'd signed up for.
She was just starting breakfast when there was a knock on the door, and Tuffy barked once before trotting into the living room as if he could answer it. Dumb dog. Mallory shook her head and called, "One sec!" before finishing putting on some coffee and following suit.
She paused for a second too long when she found Julie standing on her front porch, but her voice was casual when she finally spoke. "Well. Long time, no see. I just put on some coffee. Want a cup?"
The pause hadn't gone unnoticed, but Julie pretended she hadn't. "I'd love one, thanks." She stepped into the trailer and knelt down to scratch Tuffy behind his ears for a minute. "You hadn't been around the bar for a while so I figured I'd come to you."
"Ive been busy." It was actually kind of true, since she'd been busy grieving and hadn't wanted to have anyone around for a while. Didn't want to hear Julie say things she didn't mean. Mallory walked back into the kitchen and set a pan on the stove to fix some eggs. Did she still have any cheddar cheese or had she thrown the last of it out?
It occurred to her that her jacket was lying on the couch where anyone could see it, and she wondered how much the werewolf knew about the government's presence in Las Vegas. Hopefully not much, if she could catch any kind of break at all.
"What have you been up to?"
"Oh, you know, working at the bar mostly." Julie replied, standing up from petting the dog and moving further into the main room. "Dealing with old timers and locals along with the occasional tourist..." her voice trailed off as she spotted the government issue jacket where it lay on the couch.
The werewolf picked up the jacket and took a sniff, and gagged at the overwhelming scent of tear gas. It also had Mallory's scent all over it, leaving no doubt that the redhead had been wearing it the night before.
Oh no...not Mal... Julie felt her guts twist and her head lifted back up to stare toward the kitchen.
The sudden silence in the living room was a warning signal, and the coffee maker had just started making its customary gurgling noises as Mallory cracked the last of the eggs into the pan. She looked towards the kitchen door, opened her mouth to say something, then closed it with a snap.
She was done apologizing, done with explaining. She'd made a mistake, maybe, but she'd deal with it. Somehow, she'd deal with it.
"You want some breakfast?" As if nothing were wrong. "Have you eaten?"
Julie stared at the kitchen door. How could the redhead have joined them? Didn't she realize what that meant?
"Yeah, but you know me," Julie replied with forced casualness as she dropped the jacket back onto the couch and walked toward the kitchen door. "Bottomless stomach." She wasn't sure she could bring herself to eat at the moment, her world had just shifted on its axis.
How well did she really know Mal?
The redhead got down a second plate, and there was the sound of the silverware drawer opening and closing as she retrieved extra cutlery. "Its just eggs and cheese," she explained. "I had some bacon, but when I cleaned out the fridge last week, it had taken on a life of its own. So its no longer with me."
The coffee pot was half full, and she picked it up to fill one cup before pouring steaming black liquid into the other. "I have milk and half and half," she offered. "I forgot which you take, or if you even drink coffee."
She set both cups on the small kitchen table, hunted up the plastic-wrapped cheese in the dairy container of the refrigerator. Just like any other morning, only with anther person sitting down for a meal with her. The redhead stirred some sugar into her coffee nonchalantly.
It was funny what breaking up with the love of your life could do.
"I'll take milk thanks," Julie was still struggling to get her equilibrium back. The sense of betrayal was almost as strong as if Connor had gone over to the government. Mallory was her best friend, a packmate even.
She sat down across from the redhead, but couldn't bring herself to eat. Instead the food was pushed around the plate.
If Mal would just admit it, tell her why...
Mallory ate a little, watched Julie pretend to be hungry. She let the silence continue for several minutes, drinking her coffee and wondering which of them was going to give the elephant in the room a name.
Finally, it looked like it was going to have to be her, and the redhead let out a sigh as she got up to refill her cup. "Stop trying to make a sculpture out of that and eat it," she chided Julie good-naturedly. "Before they get cold."
She filled her cup, re-took her chair. "You're pissed. I didn't know how much you knew."
"I'm not sure what I feel," Julie told her honestly. "Betrayed, shocked, confused? Mal...why?" The aerial photograph of her parent's ranch flashed in her mind. "It's like they're Storm Troopers! Nobody gets to be neutral."
The werewolf took a forkfull of eggs and stuck them in her mouth. They tasted like sawdust as she chewed, but Julie managed to get them down without gagging.
"They have a few good ideas," Mallory said in response, setting her cup down next to her plate. "Get the worst cases off the street, get those who will cooperate to help out. I sat down with one of their agents for over an hour to talk it out, and it made sense at the time." The redhead waved a hand around at nothing.
"I got lost out here, y'know?" she said. "Forgot what I was doing, maybe. It seemed like this was the way to get back on track." The redhead flashed back to being in the back of that van arguing with some smart-assed vampire with a hick accent so thick she sounded like a cartoon character. The government had found her under what rock, exactly? "I don't know. It still doesn't sound entirely terrible. In practice, though..."
"I understand being lost, but Mal, they aren't the good guys even if they're the government." Julie stabbed at the eggs, forcing them up onto her fork. "They threatened my parents! Not directly, but they implied it. I don't have a problem in theory with what they want to do, but the wrong folks are running it. People should be allowed to make their own decisions and not be forced into one side or another."
She shoveled the eggs into her mouth and chewed, going through the motions of eating. "Besides, anyone who recruits vampires into a law enforcement agency needs their heads examined."
"Well, you didn't hear their sales pitch," Mallory said, a little impatient, a little defensive, the way she always seemed to get when Julie was involved. "I think any program like this can go wrong, especially if unstable elements are being focused on."
Unstable. She had a sudden mental flash of Oliver Jerzyck being carted away in one of the vans. The spellcaster had been unconscious at the time, and she hadn't heard anything about him since then. Oliver was the dangerous sort, in her opinion, his skills with magic making him unpredictable. Where was he now?
"You were there, at Davey's Locker," she said unnecessarily. "That was not what I signed up for."
"I did hear the sales pitch." Julie informed her friend, annoyed now. "It was a good one, except for the fact that they weren't giving folks a choice to stay out of it. They threatened my family! You've met my folks, Mal, do they look like dangerous supernatural types to you?"
"I wasn't..." The redhead bit her tongue, then the inside of her cheek. This was going to be one of those conversations, she reflected, the kind where no matter what she said it was going to be wrong. "I wasn't talking about your folks, okay? And no, they don't, if you really insist on an answer."
She got up from the table on the pretense of getting more coffee, looked around for a spoon to stir in some sugar. "Do you want an apology, is that it?" she asked, the utensil rattling against the inside of the cup. "I always feel like I'm on the verge of saying 'I'm sorry' to you for one thing or another anyway. Is that what would make you happy?"
"For what?" Julie regarded the redhead quizzically. "What on earth would you have to say you're sorry for? I think you made a bad choice to join up, but you haven't done anything to hurt me, not that I know of anyway. You've always been there for me and I trust you not to rat on me. I'm just saying these folks are bad news, and I was using my parents as an example."
"Is this about Vicky? Just because I think having a vampire girlfriend is dangerous doesn't mean you don't have the right to tell me to keep my nose out of your business." The werewolf put down her fork and regarded the other woman evenly. "I don't want to wind up fighting you in another raid Mallory, you're my friend. Just because you joined this stupid program isn't going to change that."
She hoped not anyway.
Mallory's shoulders stiffened, and she looked into her cup with great concentration. Hannah's visit had shored her up to a large extent, and she hadn't cried in almost a week, but to talk about this with Julie was a different matter. She looked out the window above the sink, watching Mr. Dandridge tottering out to his car. One of these times, he was going to put the ancient Caddy in a ditch and not be able to get it out.
"I don't have a vampire girlfriend anymore," she said, still looking through the dirty window and wondering where she'd put her bottle of Windex. This place could really use a top to bottom cleaning. "Me and Victoria are over with. I broke up with her."
Make something out of that, why don't you? the redhead thought. She wondered if Julie ever really looked at herself in the mirror, if she'd reconciled the demonic nature of the wolf within to her human self and what that might mean about her when the moon wasn't full. If Victoria was 'tainted' in the werewolf's eyes, then weren't they kind of in the same boat?
"I'm still working my way through it, but its over. For good this time."
"Oh." Well, don't I just feel like an idiot now? Julie looked down at her plate for a moment and then back up at Mallory. "I'm sorry." She meant it, she really did. Not so much that Victoria was out of the picture, but that it had hurt her friend in the process and that Julie had rubbed salt in the wound.
She didn't like vampires and doubted she ever would, but that didn't mean she wanted to see Mallory suffer.
"Please, you're thrilled and you know it," Mallory responded, but there was no aggravation in her voice, just a kind of tired acceptance. She looked into her coffee cup as if searching for the answer to something, then shook her head. "I'm working through it. Hannah came by, that helped." She took a drink of the hot liquid, sat back down.
"I don't regret it. There was too much love for it to have been totally bad. But we want different things, and I just finally came face to face with it." She smiled a little, the tears having been mostly shed. "I just don't know what happens next, at least not yet."
There was a silence between them, and finally the redhead said, "So what are you going to do now? I'm not planning to arrest you, if that's what you're worrying about. Not while I feel like this about the whole thing."
"I'm sorry that you're hurting. Whatever I've thought about Victoria I never wanted that." Julie's tone was a bit defensive. She hadn't come here to argue about Victoria or be accused of dancing on the grave of a dead relationship. She was glad that Hannah had been able to help Mal out some, something Julie wouldn't have been able to do very well.
At the question of what she was going to do, Julie sat down her fork and sighed. "I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm not worried about you, Mal. I trust you. You saved my life and I will always owe you for that."
She drummed her fingers. "I just don't know. I ran from Brad, I don't want to go running again. Especially not from my own government. But they're being thugs, not police."
Thugs. Maybe Julie was right, maybe she wasn't. Mallory had a sudden mental image of Oliver Jerzyck's unconscious body being lifted into a federal van and hauled away. She would never claim she knew the spellcaster well, and she certainly didn't claim to like him, but it did kind of leave a bad taste in her mouth. She finished her coffee, looked down at the place where the government's medical staff had made the incision for the tracking device, then leaned forward and lowered her voice.
"I shouldn't tell you this, but I will," she said, because she and Julie were friends, differing feelings about relationships aside. "Your buddy Oliver got whacked on the head or something and taken into custody. I assume they took him to the Henderson facility, but I haven't seen him since then. I'm not part of the questioning team."
She really didn't know how she felt about Jerzyck being incarcerated. He read as dangerous to her; not violent, necessarily, but off-kilter somehow. Unstable. Plus the whole magic thing, and she knew full well how he'd used that at least once before. But maybe she owed Julie one. Her expression clearly stated how at war with herself she was over it as she leaned back in her chair.
"That's all I can say. But I thought you should know."
"What?!" Julie's jaw dropped. "They got Oliver?" That was a shocker. The spellcaster was abrasive in personality sure but he was very good at what he did and Julie couldn't believe that he'd been taken. "If they can get Oliver then they can get any of us. They could get Connor." The werewolf's jaw set and she felt a cold anger brewing. Oliver hadn't done anything illegal and yet they'd taken him into custody and were probably beating him with rubber hoses right now.
The werewolf shook her head. "Mal...just be careful. I know we've wound up on opposite sides on this thing, but my gut tells me that they're bad news. I don't want to see you get hurt."
She stood up and ran a hand through her hair, agigated. She had to talk go someone about this, try and help bust him out of jail. But who? How? She was no fighter despite her protests. Trying to get everyone together again clearly wasn't a good idea since the government goon squad had found out about the first one.
But she had to do something..
Mallory spread her hands out. "Don't worry about me," she said with a headshake. "Worse things have come around to Nevada besides this government thing. Besides, I think they're kind of laying low for now. Too much noise at Davey's Locker or something like that. I haven't really heard much about what's supposed to happen next."
She watched the werewolf in silence for a minute, and one eyebrow went up. "Is he, like, your boyfriend now or something?" she asked, because there was a disturbing thought, not to mention ironic considering the werwolf's opinion of where danger lay. It was hard enough imagining Oliver having friends, much less anything else. And Julie wasn't Jill, all fucked up and attracted to that sort of thing.
Weirdness abounded.
"If I knew more, I'd tell you. But they're keeping a tight lid on the detainees for now."
"Oliver?!" Julie stared at the other woman as if she'd grown a second head. "My boyfriend? You're joking right?"
She liked Oliver, true, but as a friend. He'd been there for her when she'd needed his help in sending Judah back to his own time and the two had developed an odd kind of friendship over the years. "He's kind of abrasive yeah, but he can be a good guy if you get under the surface. He's just a friend, Mallory. An odd one, true, but a friend."
"Well, I don't know, do I?" Mallory asked with a faint smirk, teasing now. "I guess if you like the type, he could be a fixer-upper project. All sullen and brooding." She looked at the eggs the werewolf had abandoned, decided to call them a lost cause.
"Look, just....if you're thinking about doing something about it, be careful. I get the feeling it'd be like stepping on an ant hill to get someone out of there." She waved her hand at the outside world in general, adding, "I don't want to see you get in trouble over this."
"I've got enough work trying to work on prying Connor out of his shell." Julie smirked back. "Compared to him Oliver's not just a fixer upper but an entire rebuild. Thats too much work even for me, Mal." She'd never thought of herself as the type of woman that tried to 'fix' her boyfriends, but maybe that's what she was.
The werewolf's expression sobered and she nodded at her friend's warning. "I'll be careful, Mal. I promise. At this point I'm not even sure where I'd begin to bust somebody out of jail." She shrugged. "I'm not exactly Jane Bond after all."
"Be careful of him, too. Oliver." Mallory held up a hand to forestall any protests, because she was going to say this. "I believe you when you say you trust him, but I know what he's capable of. I've seen the results. He's as dangerous as any vampire when he's been crossed." The redhead lowered her hand, picked up hercup. Her coffee was cold, but she drank it anyway.
"That's it. No more lecturing."
Her shoulders went up and down when she was finished, and she gestured at the abandoned plate of eggs that was still on the table. "Want me to cook you something else? After the other night, you must be doing that whole nervous eating thing."
Julie took the warning at face value. Oliver was dangerous. She didn't think that he would turn on her, but Julie knew a thing or two about being held against one's will. It could change people.
"Mal, if you keep offering me food I'm going to eat you out of house and home." Julie protested weakly. Now that things were resolved between the two of them she could eat something. "You know what my metabolism is like. I can always raid the fridge in the Lighthouse and fix something."
"What's a little over-feeding between friends?" Mallory asked lightly, getting up from her chair. She picked up Julie's plate and took it over to the counter near the sink. There wasn't much in the fridge since the grand clean-out,but she could improvise. Since Sonya moved out, she'd been missing having someone else to talk to. Which reminded her, she needed to catch up to the Russian.
"I'm glad you made it out of there. I don't know what I'm going to do about where I am now, but I'll think of something."
Julie admitted defeat and leaned back in her seat, letting Mallory take her plate. "I know the feeling." The situation with the government had thrown her for a loop, but she just knew she wasn't going to give in and be a meek little drone. Mallory had chosen a different path, and maybe it wasn't the right one, but the redhead had done it for the right reasons.
"Whatever you decide to do, Mal, be careful. This is the government we're talking about."
"Yeah, yeah." The government. She'd faced a demon army and the possible wiping out of all of humanity. Some suit was supposed to worry her? Not likely. She'd find Connor later, talk it out with him.
"Meanwhile, we'll eat and talk about something harmless. Like...baseball." She'd work it out, use her brain. It was nice to have something to occupy her that didn't involve her disastrous love life.