Taste of Hope

It was three in the morning when Max convinced Jack to come to bed. The woman could not help it. She had been pouring over her documents all night because new information had given her evidence of where James Blood pack lair might have been. For hours, she continued to pour over the information, even going as far as to call her Coach and call in sick for her evening Quidditch practice. At seven, Max tried to get her to eat dinner. At nine, he asked if she wanted him to put Sunny to sleep. At eleven he asked if she wanted to come to bed. It was at one in the morning that she figured out the location of the lair, and devoted the remaining time to making preparations. And at three in the morning, Max came out into the living room and kindly demanded that Jack return to bed.

She was exhausted, but she supposed Max was right. She promised to follow after him as she quietly packed away her documents, doing what she could to calm her adrenaline-soaked nerves and begin to approach sleep. All night she had been so focused on her work that she had forgotten to take care of herself. Her stomach was tossing and turning, so she quickly ate a protein bar to appease her writhing appetite and then did a quick review in the bathroom. Mussed up hair, pale skin, bags under her eyes… so she looked like she usually did… but about four times more exhausted.

Still, she was feeling something she had not felt in a very long time – hope. They had the lair, so Jack was certain she could send someone in to begin collecting information as she needed. They were closer to taking the threat that was James Blood out –closer than they had ever been before. The information had been sent off, and they would begin investigations in the morning. Jack, however, would not. Tomorrow was going to be a peaceful family day. She would sleep in, be fed breakfast by Max, and they would take the little family to the zoo. It was going to be a great time.

With thoughts of hope and family, Jack stiffly climbed the stairs to her room – the room she now shared with her husband. She opened the door and made her way inside, quickly changing into pajamas, and collapsing into bed. After a pause, she curled up against the back of Max Morrison, assuming he was asleep and therefore unable to tease her about it. She had had a long day – some warmth right now would ease her to sleep.

Michael had always been a night owl, and Robert had always been an insomniac.  They were both at Khaat's estate and both awake tonight, and not entirely by choice. Tonight, Robert was working relentlessly in the potions lab at Khaat's estate, and Michael was seeing to details about Robert's farm and about the organization in Paris, and other details that Robert couldn't focus on.  

With the curse, Robert and Kate had taken to living at Khaat's massive estate because, flat out, Robert needed the help that family and friends could provide more freely at the massive compound. Michael's lifetime friend rarely slept anymore, and it showed. The fact was that Robert Lupin looked like hell. He still exercised daily to try to keep what he still had toned up, but it wasn't a cure all. He'd lost a massive amount of weight. He was very thin. There were dark circles under his eyes, hollows in his cheeks, a deathly gray pallor to his skin, and he looked like he was doomed to be exhausted for the rest of his mortal days. There was a certain haunted quality now about the man, one that Michael was getting to understand too well.

The curse kept Robert trapped within himself, unable to touch any energy worker, unable to speak, unable to control his emotions, unable to stop the violence when it came.  He had lost much of his zest for life, and he had, for the most part, stopped eating or drinking or sleeping, except when Michael managed to coax him into it.  Michael had become Robert's handler because there was no one else to do it.

Robert had been working on some sort of a potion for days--since Thaor's death on the Hogwarts ground. He was brewing something that Michael thought looked entirely disgusting. It smelled, vaguely, of black licorice, and it looked a lot like hot road tar on an August afternoon.  Odd stuff, Michael thought.

Michael was working on some new techniques for teaching breaking and entering to a band of folks in Paris, and so he was working in the lab with Robert simply to have some human companionship.  

"What the hell is that?" Michael finally asked Robert.  Robert looked up, and picked up a handkerchief from the worktable. He dipped it in the black goo and withdrew it again.  Michael didn't see the handkerchief anymore. What he did see was some sort of an opague black mist hanging off the end of the spoon. "Well, that didn't turn out very well, did it?" Michael scowled.  

Robert gave him an 'Oh, really?' look and then proceeded to drape the handkerchief over his own face.  The moment he did that, Robert's face disappeared from view behind the black mist.  

"Oh, now, that's attractive," Michael said sarcastically. "What the hell good is that? Halloween isn't for another 8 months."  

Robert went over to the closet, took out a hooded black cloak that brushed the ground and an old death eaters mask that he'd picked up decades before in the Second Wizarding War.  To a young man, it had seemed a trophy, and Robert had forgotten he had it til now. He dipped the mask in the goo, put on the cloak, put on the mask and raised the hood.  

"Jesus," Michael breathed in, "you look like the Grim Reaper.  You're just going to scare the shit out of everybody.  Including your friends. Why can't you just continue to use polyjuice like anyone else? Take that thing off. It's creepy as hell."  Robert took the mask off and lowered the hood. "Look, I know you can't be seen like this but must you go about dressed as a dementor?"

Robert shrugged, hanging up the cloak again.  It was a valid disguise if he needed to go out, and he wasn't afraid to use it.  He suddenly turned sharply to Michael, feeling a surge of panic.  Alarm.  Something was horribly wrong.  

"What?" Michael asked.

"Where's Khaat?" he signed to Michael.

"With Belby," Michael said. "They popped out to Sparks for a short bit. They'll be right back."

"No," Robert signed. "They won't be. Its gone wrong. Something's wrong."

Michael knew there was likely some validity to it.  When Remus had passed, Khaat's deep grief for Remus had nearly killed her. Robert had used a life support spell for so long that it had, at some point, gone a bit sideways. Now, when she was in some lifethreatening danger, Robert knew. He just knew. He didn't know where she was or what the issue was. But he knew there was trouble.

"You want me to check it?" Michael asked. Robert nodded. Michael drew his wand and the portkey to Sparks and ported to London.  He went in the kitchen door.  

"Oh, God," Michael breathed softly.

"up!...Wake up!" Someone was screeching in Marcus's ear. He groaned and woke. Lizzie, the Sparks' chef was standing over him and was frantically shaking him. It took him a moment to get oriented.

"What happened?" he asked. He looked around for Khaat. He didn't see her. "Where's Khaat?" he was immediately alert when he saw her missing.

"She's gone!" Lizzie was upset.

"What did you put in my tea?" he frowned.

"It wasn't me!" she insisted. "They used a petrificus spell. I didn't do it. When I woke up, she was gone and the kitchen door was hanging wide open, and they spilled something on the floor...." She was pointing to a puddle near Khaat's desk chair in the restaurant's office.

Marcus got to his feet. He looked at the puddle. "That's not a spill," he said, with dread in his voice. "Her water broke." He saw a few more signs of a struggle. "And she didn't run out voluntarily. She was taken." He was about to hit his distress signal when Michael came in.

"She's gone," Marcus said. He picked up a long red hair off Khaat's desk chair. "Match anyone you know?"

"I'm afraid it does," Michael said. "The only one I know with hair like that is James' alpha female--Moira."

"Oh, God," Marcus felt true fear, a rare thing for him. Khaat's water had broken, she was surely going into labor with the twins, and had fallen into James' hands. How much worse could this get? "I'll find her. I swear," Marcus promised. "I'll track her..."

"Go home," Michael ordered firmly. "This is beyond one person's abilities now. Go home and wait for my instructions. That's an order, Belby."

Michael had taken time to take the necessary first steps and now he ported to London--he and his Grim Reaper friend. They stood outside on the street.

"For God's sake, take that off before she kills you by mistake," Michael whispered. Robert shook his head, clothed in black from head to foot. Black pants, black turtleneck, black boots, black leather gloves, black cloak, and now that damned creepy black death eater's mask that made Robert look like he had no head at all.  

"Shit, why do I do this stuff with you?" Michael rolled his eyes. He was going to work on undoing Jack's protection spells, but in his irritation, Robert summoned some powerful magic of his own and made a wide swiping motion with his hands and seemed to merely wipe away her protection spells.

They entered much too easily now and very quietly.  Michael had not intended to be completely quiet. He didn't want to terrorize her family or give Jack a heart attack.  Neither one. Truth be told, he could not have loved Jack more if she had been his own child.

"At least stand behind me," Michael said. "Breaking in is bad enough."  Because Robert could not afford to be seen, breaking in had been the only option Michael knew of in such a desperate situation. He could only hope Jack forgave them.  

"Jack!" Michael called, in as gentle and soft as he could, and in as nonthreatening a tone as he could manage. "Please.  I need your help.  Its an emergency.  Jack!"

ooc: sorry, y'all for monopolizing the posts.  Yes, I know its a triple post, but I needed to set this up a bit, and I was either going to have to write a novel or break it up into posts.  *begs forgiveness for rp etiquette breech.*

((No worries))

Sleep had barely cloaked Jack in its warm embrace before she was suddenly stock straight in bed, tensed in every limb, her ears and eyes straining in the quiet darkness of the house. She had never been one to fear bumps in the night. Mostly because  she was not afraid of anything that she could fight. But also because she had recently revamped the security spells around her home. Becoming an Unspeakable had reawakened some of the old paranoia the young woman often faced, and she had used pretty much every spell she could to protect her family. The only people who could break them were so powerful she could not stop them if she tried, or they were the people who had given her the spells.

She slowly sat up in bed, careful not to do anything to displace her bedmate. She did not want to wake him after all. She slowly reached over and pulled on a cardigan over her tank top, before slipping her feet into the slip on shoes next to her bed. She rose stealthily, keeping the bed from moving and the floor from creaking. In a swift motion, her wand was caught between her fingers and she was creeping across the room, out the door, and down the hallway.

She was halfway down the stairs when she heard her name. She paused and then turned on her foot, apparating into the kitchen behind the intruders.

One of them looked like Michael Tremaine, but Jack was clever enough to know someone really sneaky would have known to use Michael. Her wand went straight up to him and she said, "What was the first thing you ever gave me to help me with my pranking?" It was a question only the real Michael would know. Jack knew he would remember the small marble as it had been sort of a token of the new friendship they had taken up.

ooc: need to buy a bit of time for khaat to have gone through even a quick labor to have the babies before we get her out.  

"Just a minute," he said with a smile. He rooted in his pocket and handed her a little marble.  It was identical to the one he'd given her. For some reason, the day he gave it to her, he had gone home, selected a duplicate from his jar, had put it in his pocket, and it had always stayed there. "Nobody should lose all their marbles. Keep it. Start a collection."  

He looked at the ghastly specter that had accompanied him.  He looked at Jack, wanting desperately to unleash a mouthful of sarcasm about Robert, but time was of the essence. In another day and time, the urge to toss endless snark at Robert would have been irresistible. The black mist business annoyed the daylights out of Michael.   "One moment." He looked at Robert. "Halloween is over." He unceremoniously snatched the mask off Robert's face. "She works for you.  You're safe here."

Robert looked at Jack. She was the first person outside of his household he'd seen in nearly six months.  But he would do almost anything to find his daughter--including coming out of hiding with those he could trust. He merely nodded at her, a serious stone faced look on his face. It was how he characteristically dealt with stress. The higher the stress, the higher the stone faced expression. He'd developed it as a teen as partly an offensive tactic, or it had been what he told himself. Beneath that, there was a part of it that was defensive--protecting himself from being too telling. Once practiced to the point of it becoming automatic, he had somehow largely gone on to master it without thinking. It was just part of him now.

He barely made a glance in Michael's direction after having his mask removed.  He didn't like anyone seeing him these days and seeing what Thaor had done to him.  He had honestly expected more of himself, expecting himself to bear up better under this than he had. He didn't like what he had become, and even though he had spent every possible moment of his life in nonstop research and experimenting, trying desperately to rid himself of Thaor's bungled up curse, it had gained him nothing.  He hadn't wanted anyone to see him like this.  Michael's quick movement to rid him of the mask, although necessary, had left him feeling completely exposed and vulnerable. Naked.

"Forgive us for disturbing you, Jack, but this is urgent. We need help. More people," Michael said, trying to redirect both the conversation and Robert back to task before Robert had a chance to overthink it. He glanced at the clock, handing the gruesome mask back to Robert who found it pointless to put it back on at the moment.They'd lost valuable time because of the sleep potion Marcus had been given and the petrificus spell that Lizzie had been hit with.  

"We have a serious problem," Michael continued to explain to Jack.  "Khaat and Marcus went into Sparks about 3 hours ago.  They were ambushed. Someone had already struck Lizzie with a petrificus totalus and had hidden her and impersonated her with a polyjuice. When Khaat and Marcus got there, the phony Lizzie served them tea and slipped him a sleeping potion. Then they obviously overpowered Khaat and took her.  The only clue we have is one long red hair that we found on her desk chair. And one more problem.  Khaat's water broke.  We found that on the office floor. She's gone into labor with her twins. Its a high risk delivery."

He handed her an envelope with the one long red hair. The only clue they had. He did not like that the only woman with long red hair he could think of was Moira Crawford.  "This is all we have."

"We have to find her--like three hours ago," Michael said. "We don't have any clue where the devil to look.  But if we don't find her, she or the babies or all of them could die, and very, very soon. We need as much help as we can get, and I don't know where this is going to lead us--but I don't like where my thoughts are going."

Jack held her ground. In the muggle world, she surely would have been mistaken for an ex-soldier. The discipline and carriage of a soldier had somehow become second nature to the redhead that had always felt steeped in battle, whether it was against her peers, the Death Eaters, or the various other groups that had come into aggressive contact with her. She had been ready for a fight for a longer time than one had been even in the cards, so all of her training and determination was focused on him.

He answered properly and she slowly pocketed the marble, before she turned her eyes and wand on the odd hooded figure next to Michael. Michael bid the figure reveal himself and Jack's eyes widened with surprise. Robert - where had he been? Their Minister had been so absent and the political system had been collapsing. Why had he left them for so long? And why hadn't something been in place to prevent disaster from happening, as it has so obviously happened.

Jack soaked in all of the information, her brain tripping into action as the red hair was revealed. Of course she recognized the hair of the alpha female - she had been collecting information on the entire pack, not just James Blood. "Blood," Jack said. "I know his lair. We have to confirm that it's him, and then I can call people in. If we just send people in and it's not him, it could start a war that we don't need to fight."

(sorry it's short. Dying laptop. Misplaced charger)

Michael saw confusion in Jack's face when he took the mask from Robert.  It was completely understandable.  He felt for her.  There was so much she didn't know and, now, as one of those who was considered part of Robert's very trusted, intimate, inner circle--a circle no one new ever was admitted into--she was entitled to know.  

"I'm sorry, Jack," Michael said, truly feeling pained that he had not been able to tell her sooner himself.  The secrecy had been tantamount to everything.  "I will explain--I swear.  And It really will make sense.  You're entitled to know now.  But its a long story--best done over a pint. Or five. If he could physically speak, he'd tell you himself. This is the result of one of Thaor's greatest hypocrisies. For now, suffice it to say that this is still active damage--legitimate injury--that is still taking place from the attack that happened on Robert's life in August--the one that nearly killed him.  This isn't recovery. What you're seeing is damage from deep, dark magic that is still occurring. You're the first to see him outside of immediate family, and you're allowed to see him now because you are now part of his closed, tight inner circle he is depending on to protect him, his family, the ministry, and, ultimately England. We trust you, and I will be giving you details that nobody that isn't a Lupin ever gets. When this mission is over, I'll explain it all."

Robert turned to Michael and began to sign to him.  Michael translated to Jack.

"Robert says he's okay with starting a war if need be.  He feels its been coming, and Blood needs caught or killed."  Robert signed in Jack's direction, even though he knew he wouldnt understand his particular sign language.   Michael continued to translate.  "If you know where the lair is and you want to check it out, he's fine with that--in whatever way you want to do it.  He says he made you an Unspeakable because he trusted your judgment.  He'd like to hear your plan first, but he believes that an attack might ultimately be necessary because Blood is so remorseless."

Michael said to her, "You can go alone if you like.  Or I will go with you if you want.  By qualifications, the other logical choices are either Marcus--her bodyguard, or Edward.  I believe you know him. And not that you don't know this, but you will be hard pressed to even think about keeping Brian away if you need to go into Blood's lair."

Robert signed sgain.  "He says he is willing to go if you like," Michael said. "Ill as he is, he's still a damned good fighter.  He believes you know his skills already.  He says this is your command, though because of your knowledge of Blood and the local werewolves. The choice is yours, Jack."

Jack knew that the Lupin clan was an entity all on its own that very few were allowed into. That was the worry Jack had always had with them being in power - they worked well as a unit, but they existed as a unit, and it worried Jack that the family came before the country sometimes. Since she had been taking care of Sunny, however, Jack had come to find herself in the very place she had at times scorned. She still sometimes doubted having people with such attachments in power (she was a Star Wars fan as a muggle, after all, so she knew the whole Jedi feeling of attachment) but she also found she was no longer in a place to judge, as she was in the same position.

She listened with interest, as she had been curious for so long as to the state of their country and the leader they had needed for so long. How many times had people eagerly approached her with news on their Ministry and Jack just had to glance away, crack her knuckles, and walk away. The woman had her own method of behavior she could not explain and people just had to deal with it, unfortunately.

"I understand," she said.

Michael translated to Jack and Jack glanced to Robert. "With all due respect, I'm not up for starting a war unless it's necessary. I don't want to have more blood on my hands than I already do."

She paused and considered it. "I need a quick glance at the lair. If you have someone who could tell whether or not Khaat was there without having to fully explore the lair, that could be useful, but otherwise I just need someone to back me up while I search."

Robert signed back again directly to Jack, and Michael translated it exactly, word for word.

"With all due respect," Robert signed, "I understand what you're saying, but I won't order a war prematurely. I never have.  If I do, though, the blood will be fully on my hands.  Its my responsibility."

"Robert, who would you send with Jack to just check and see if she's there?" Michael asked.

"Kate," Robert sighed. "Or Escobar. They will know. I will know but their skills are better."

"Then let's ask Kate," Michael said.  "Escobar sometimes doesn't like playing nicely with others. Shall I summon her?"  Robert reached up to a chain around his neck under the turtleneck and activated the signal that summoned any or all of the members of the household.  Robert pointed to the street. Kate would be arriving there.

A moment later, Michael saw Kate's distinctive silhouette port in and stand in the street.  Her silver hair was a telling contrast to the belted black leather coat she wore.  She paused for a moment, trying to get an idea on where she was being summoned to specifically.  

"She's here," Michael said.  He went to the door and opened it, and motioned to her.  Kate went up the steps and inside.  She saw the three others gathered.

"Hello, Jack," Kate said.  She looked at Michael and Robert. "Alright, why am I here? What are we doing?"

"Jack," Michael said. "Kate knows Khaat's gone, but this is your mission.  Please ask Kate what you need her to do."