Good-Bye and Good Luck
The wheels had been set in motion. Julie had given her notice to Nyx as soon as she came back from her hike into the mountains, not that it would have a huge impact on the bar. The past few weeks business had been terrible anyway, people had been staying close to home and could buy their own liquor cheaper elsewhere. It might even be better for the Lighthouse that she was leaving, Nyx and Jo wouldn't have a 'freak' working for them anymore as far as the public was concerned.
After a much needed shower, the werewolf dug her old duffle bag and backpack out of the closet and tossed them on the bed. She needed to sort through all her things and decide what was staying behind and what was coming with her. The furnishings had mostly come with the room, so she didn't need to worry about them at least.
Connor was sticking a lot closer to Searchlight these days. With the curfew in Vegas in effect, there was too much risk involved in going up the highway after dark, so he mostly poked around town and kept an eye out for anything resembling a news crew. KVBC had run the footage filmed at the Red Cross Center again, asking for people to call in if they knew anything about the driver of the pick-up truck that had taken Julie away, and the Destroyer had kept a mindful watch on the highway in case some jerk decided to show up and make trouble.
But nothing happened, though he could feel the possibility of it like an invisible weight, and so he remained alert. Better safe than sorry.
He had just finished unloading some beer into the coolers and was stacking the last of the plastic cartons off to the side for disposal, and he picked up the cold bottle of Coke he'd set on one of the stacks to take a drink. It was explosively hot inside the storeroom, and sweat trickled down the sides of his neck to wet the collar of his shirt. He closed the door behind him when he let himself out, padding across the main area of the bar towards the stairs. Maybe a shower, then a nap. He'd at least take this damn shirt off.
He was on the landing when he realized that Julie's door was open, and he poked his head into the room to find that she was packing. The Destroyer's eyebrows drew together as an odd feeling of deja vu stole over him, and he realized that the last time this had happened he was the one who'd been packing. Connor blinked.
"Taking a trip?"
Julie straightened her back and turned to look at him. Connor's disheveled appearance and the musky aroma of his scent mixed with sweat made him seem even more attractive than normal, and the werewolf swallowed. This was going to be harder than she thought, leaving.
"Something like that," she hedged, dropping the jeans she'd been folding back on the bed and moving toward him. Her expression was uncertain, the last thing she wanted to do was hurt Connor. They may not have been the most functional couple in the world, but they cared for each other in their own ways and she always would.
"I've been doing a lot of thinking the past few days...about where I am, what I am. I need to learn more control over myself and I don't think I can do that here." She forced herself to keep her eyes on his face, watching for his reaction.
Connor blinked again, his blue eyes wandering briefly away from Julie's face to the duffel bag on the bed, then back towards her. The damn newscast, he thought, and the hand not holding the Coke bottle waved towards the window.
"Why? Because of them? Some idiot with a camera?"
His tone was not precisely angry, and in truth if someone had asked him what he felt he likely wouldn't have been able to say. They'd done this before, after all, only with him being the one determined to leave. He supposed that now he knew how Julie had felt then, that particular mixture of frustrated aggravation and unhappiness. He took a drink of soda, leaned one shoulder against the doorjamb.
"Did you ever hear from your parents?"
"No, not because of some idiot with a camera. They didn't help any, but the fact that this is the second time I've changed recently when it wasn't a full moon out." She ran a hand through her hair and moved closer to him, staring up at his face. There were times when she was annoyed with how short she was and this was one of them.
"I don't have control over this, it's controlling me and its past time I did something about it." She didn't want to hurt him, but it was hurting her just talking about this. Julie had never imagined that she would be the one to leave, and wished there was something she could to do make it easier for both of them.
At the mention of her parents, her body language went still and she looked down at her feet. "Yeah...I called them last night....it didn't go well."
More blinking, and the Destroyer looked down at the floorboards as if they'd give him the right words to say. "They were upset?" he asked quietly, and that was probably the biggest understatement he'd ever made. 'Upset' was what parents got when you brought home a bad reprt card, not when you turned out to be a werewolf.
He looked at the bags on the bed again, then lowered his weight into a chair near the door. "Its not your fault, y'know? Not anything you did. I saw that....whatever it was. The rift. There wasn't any amount of control that would have prevented what happened."
"Upset is putting it mildly." Julie told him, glancing back down at the floor. "They accused me of being a demon in the form of their daughter and wanted nothing to do with me. I'm hoping they'll calm down in a few months and I can at least talk to them again. I haven't had the guts to call any of my brothers or sisters yet."
"And maybe this last time wasn't my fault," Julie allowed, letting herself sit down on the bed. "But I also changed when I found out about Hannah's death, I was so far gone that I didn't change back for two weeks, and almost killed Whistler in the process. The only bit of control I have is what I learned from an older werewolf that used to be around here, Devon O'Connell. He was the first werewolf I ever met that wasn't part of Brad's pack."
"Stress," Connor said, looking up at her. "I don't know much about how lycanthropy affects people, but I'd think that a really stressful situation could force the change." The soda bottle was warming rapidly between his palms, and he set it down on the floor."Its not..."
He fell silent, shaking his head. "You can't blame yourself, not even if they're angry." And wasn't that ironic coming from him, since self-blame was what he did best. "You're not a monster, you're just...different."
It was coming to an end, this false start he'd made at normalcy, but it was like watching the footage of Star being turned; part of him was incredibly sad at losing this, and the other part felt strangely intrigued at the thought of what his life would be like now for having known Julie at all. He didn't want her to go, to go out into the new world they'd been forced to live in, but maybe it had been unavoidable all along.
"What will you do? Where will you go?"
"I know I'm not," Julie assured him. Sometimes she even believed it. "People like you, Mallory, Nyx and Jo, Hannah, you've all kind of drilled that into my head."
She got up from where she'd been sitting on the bed and moved to kneel in front of the chair. The past two years had been an attempt at something resembling her old life, with people who cared for her and a boy who might love her in his own awkward way. The pressure had been building on her almost from the day she arrived in Searchlight, but the town had been something of an eye in the storm. A place where she could rest and recover from her earlier troubles.
"As for where I'll be going...I'm going to try and find Devon's pack, learn from werewolves who aren't sadistic bastards like Brad's pack was. Hopefully they can teach me how to control myself, help me learn how to be stronger."
"I don't want to go," she admitted softly, looking up at Connor's face and taking one of his hands. "I care about you a lot, Connor. You've been a good friend and we've tried to be more than friends, but I need to do this myself. It isn't your fault, you know. What I need to learn you can't teach me."
Blue eyes looked into brown before Connor dropped his gaze to where she was holding his hand, and his free hand wrapped over hers. He was still two halves of a whole in a lot of ways, and his forehead puckered with thought as he tried to sort through his emotions about Julie's decision. The false start was over, and the backwards half was mourning its passage with a heavy sadness that had a lump forming in his throat. But the demon half, that cold little bastard, was merely surveying the proceedings with a sage nod. It just wasn't the right time, for either of them, and that part of him had always known it.
"I'm sorry, you know?" he said, his voice soft and a little husky. "That I couldn't..." Head shake. He was going to have to stop beating himself over the head like this. He was making an effort at everything else, he should give that a shot too. The Destroyer lifted his head, looked at the werewolf through a fringe of hair before shaking it out of his face. "I care about you too, a lot. I want you to know that. And I want you to find...whatever it is you're looking for. I guess we both just have to do our searching on our own."
He made himself smile past the lump, and it actually obliged him by not getting any bigger. He might cry later, but not now, not in front of her. He rested his forehead against hers, letting the both of them have these final few moments. He'd come to care for her a great deal, and that meant they'd both grieve over this parting. Connor pressed his lips against her brow, then to both cheeks.
"Don't go too far away, though, huh? It'd be nice to at least have a place to send letters."
"You aren't getting rid of me that easy, Connor Reiley." Julie tried to smile through the tears she couldn't help but shed as his lips touched her cheeks. "I may be setting you free, but that doesn't mean you'll never hear from me again. I'll keep my phone, and once I know where I'll be I'll tell you what the address is. I'll want to hear all about your next girlfriend so I can be insanely jealous of her."
Teasing was the only way she was going to get through this. She was doing the right thing, but doing the right thing sucked sometimes and this was one of them.
It had been too soon, too soon after Brad. There had been Matthew and Judah, but neither of them had been anything close to what she'd shared with Connor. It was a shame that they'd found each other so early, in a way, when neither of them was truly ready.
The werewolf took both hands, and brought them up to cup the sides of his face before leaning up and kissing him firmly on the lips. She wasn't going to let him go without a proper goodbye.
He cupped her face between his callused palms and kissed her back, a kiss tinged with care and regret. He wished her well, wherever she went and whatever she found there. "I didn't say you were getting rid of me," he said gently. "Just that I wouldn't want you to wander off forever."
He put both arms around her and pulled her into a hug, forgetting that he was sweaty and gross and kind of heartbroken. His chin came to rest on the top of Julie's head, and he closed his eyes and just let himself breathe. He still hated good-byes, but maybe this one didn't have to be for always.
"Don't forget me, okay?"
"Never." She returned the hug, wrapping her arms around him, not caring that he was sweaty and gross, his scent was all Connor. "You're unforgettable."