Nora Judd

52 || Marked Hunter || Mother

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heavendestroys:

Silence around Nora was rarely an uncomfortable thing, if anything she thought they were alike enough that they didn’t waste unnecessary words when they didn’t have to. As it was, there was a goal ahead that demanded too much of their attention, and she’s already mimicking her movements when she sees the glass of the door up ahead.

Zoe doesn’t question the warning, steps slowing to accompany Nora’s. Her fingers tighten on her gun, shoulder brushing the wall next to them as she settles her body lower. Trying to pick out the shift of shadows somewhere beyond the barricaded towards, but that’s all she can make out, nothing more distinguishable about it.

There used to be a constant frustration for that. Sometimes there still was, those subtle, quiet reminders that came every day of just where she lacked. She couldn’t tell whether a car engine was running clearly just by listening hard enough, she couldn’t pick out the same details from a hundred yards away. Whatever physical strength she worked hard to carry herself with, it would never match up to just how much resided in every bone of Nora’s body.

It was something she was more than practiced at swallowing down. She’d spent enough time in her brother’s company that she was used to accepting when someone had advantages she did not, and if anything it makes her quick to question just how much it could aid both of them now. “Can you tell if it’s human or monster?”

Nora’s quiet, calculating, standing there like a predator whose spotted movement in the grass. She’s distinctly aware of Zoe beside her and there’s a fierce protectiveness of the woman that halts her from simply making a rash decision here and now to go in and fight. She’s aware that the woman is more than capable of taking care of herself, but it’s not something she wants to put to the test needlessly. 

The movement behind the boards stills and Nora watches without blinking. Zoe asks the question, whether it’s human or monster and some days it’s hard to tell, but as Nora watches, she doesn’t see a barrel of a shotgun or an eye peeking out through the cracks. She just sees movement with nonsensical wavering. 

There’s no call from the movement inside, no voice calling out for them to stay where they are, nothing that suggests whatever is inside is something that is capable of talking to them so Nora tightens her grip around her crowbar and takes a few more steps closer to the door. 

“Monster,” she answers with confidence before there’s a bang on the door that almost makes her jump. Something was inside of there and maybe it had been human at one time, but now it was nothing but a mindless creature, hearing something stirring on the outside of it’s prison. 

Nora positions herself, ready to tear the boards down. “You ready?” 

[nora-judd-blog]

heavendestroys:

It’s about the answer she’d expect from Nora, the way she puts it allowing only for the slightest crack in that coat of armor she strapped on. Wounds that had been stitched shut and covered, but it didn’t mean they were healed and she didn’t presume on it.

It might’ve put that moment in the tower in better perspective, the thought crossing her mind that maybe she refused to let Zoe die because she’d already lost enough. It’s an oddly selfish thing to consider, that she might mean that much, or that her life serves as a consolation prize when her sons are gone. 

There’s just a nod of her head, a simple “I’m fine,” the only answer worth giving. 

Her footsteps are quiet as they approach the building, the tall grass and the heat beating down a sure sign that they’d slipped into summer. She couldn’t say when that had happened, at what moment they’d truly abandoned that winter behind them. Only that it was a reminder of how much time was slipping by around them, how much farther away that end goal was.

Maybe there would be nothing left by the time if they ever made it there. No gate, no hope, nothing but demons filling up the world. 

It’s a thought she can’t waste time on, because it’s nothing she’ll have the answers to until they get there. Right now the greater question is whether there’s anything left on the other side of the brick wall before her, listening intently as she circles the side of the building in search of a door.

I’m fine, Zoe tells her and she believes the woman. Has enough faith in her that she knows if the woman wasn’t fine, she’d at least make mention of it. At least in the physical sense. She didn’t know if any of them were fine in any other sense of the word anymore. Some maybe pretend to be, but Nora wasn’t buying the act. 

“Good,” she tells her in return before they slip into an easy silence between them, coming up on the building in front of them with a silent approach. The medical building would hold supplies for them, if it hadn’t been ransacked already. But Nora still held her crowbar out in front of her, ready for any trouble that might be around the corner as they turn. 

There’s a door a little further up the side of the building, glass panes separating them from what was inside, but already she can see the boards that have been put in place. Someone had definitely been there before, had made the place their home, even.

She slowed a bit, made sure Zoe did the same. The last thing either of them needed was to be surprised by a shotgun blast coming from between those boards. Nora tilted her head to the side, trying to see just how barricaded it was. 

“Somethings inside,” she said when she saw movement behind those boards. 

[nora-judd-blog]

heavendestroys:

The question’s an unnecessary thing when directed at Nora, and the quick answer doesn’t disappoint. She has just as little to say about the crowbar she draws instead, well aware that the woman doesn’t need ballistics to be dangerous. She’s seen it first hand, and with that simple thought comes a quick spiral of her own. 

She’d turned back to save Zoe. The Lich in front of them, and instead of taking a swing at that awful, demonic entity, she’d come to protect her instead. At the time there had been that odd mix of guilt and gratitude, because no matter how ready she liked to believe she was to meet her own death, it didn’t mean she was anxious for it.

And she isn’t one to dwell on ‘what could’ve been’ when the results worked out in their favor. The only problem is that some part of her thinks it was probably the wrong call.

Right now she just nods her head, turning her attention to the road as she starts to head across it. Aware they’ve spoken little since they’ve left. “How’ve you been?”

They hadn’t spoken much since the monolith. It wasn’t out of spite, it wasn’t out of anything but poor timing on both their parts. Too much to do otherwise. She didn’t envy Zoe her position, wasn’t looking at taking anything on more than what she was already doing. 

How’ve you been? she asks and Nora gives the smallest of smiles to the woman, because she deserves the smile. She deserves to see that Nora was doing fine, doing alright. She remembers who had come to her and who had comforted her after she’d found out about her sons. Zoe deserves to know that it hadn’t destroyed her. 

“Getting by,” she told her. There was nothing that felt right about saying she was doing good, when her sons were dead and gone. 

She falls into stride with Zoe as they head towards the medical center across the street and she turns the question back around on the woman herself. “And you?” 

[nora-judd-blog]

heavendestroys:

It feels almost uncomfortably obvious, the sides of the building painted a bright blue, with an obnoxious yellow sign hung on the side. Like it’s own kind of signal flare set up in the midst of a swiftly crumbling landscape, the buildings around them already starting to fall into decay.

Including the one across the street, the squat brown building that holds Zoe’s attention now. Gun always at her side, four lanes of abandoned highway and broken down cars separating them from the medical center. It seemed worth a look at least, even if she has little optimism what might be found inside at this point.

The sound of footsteps behind her draws her attention, a glance back at the approaching figure before she nods her head at the building.

“Got a gun?”

It hadn’t been her intention to seek Zoe out. Mostly, she’d been scoping out the area, trying to see what was around them in the immediate vicinity to help them restock their supplies. The IKEA itself would be a good place for supplies, but like Zoe, Nora’s eyes had fallen on the medical center across the street. 

Spotting the woman out front, she headed over to her and wasn’t surprised when Zoe wordlessly accepted the offer of someone wanted to go with her. She smiled at the girl, lightly, before coming to stand next to her. 

“Always,” she replied, tapping her gun at her side. But it wasn’t the gun she pulled. It was the crowbar. The one that had helped them bring down the golem inside the monolith. 

[nora-judd-blog]

jackwesson:

 “I was in Baltimore when the shit hit the fan.” He rubbed at his jawline. “695 filled up with, things.” He shook his head. “I managed to book it into the suburbs where it was a little quieter. But only a little.” 

He’d fought his way down and through the burbs all right. Sheltering in an apartment complex and hopping block by block, day by day. That’s where he’d met the first people who would make up the group that had stabbed him in the back. When people could still be trusted. 

“It didn’t go all at once, but it wasn’t slow either. I got lucky.”

Nora nods. That was enough detail for her, not wanting to make him walk down that memory if it wasn’t a pleasant one. He was a survivor, just like they were, and that’s all she really cared about. 

When she’d been in New York, she hadn’t known the scope of it all. She’d been on a hunt, a rather big one and when the hell gate had opened up, she’d thought it was localized. A tragic event, but nothing that could possible be nationwide. It wasn’t until a few days afterwards that she had realized exactly what was happening to the world. 

“Who knows if we’re the lucky ones,” she said dryly. Then she nodded her head towards a man sitting nearby. “That’s Sam.” 

[nora-judd-blog]

kane-e:

“Fuck off,” the words come out before he can stop himself. 

Seven. He can very clearly remember each of his younger brothers at seven. None more so than little Kaleb. Seventeen wasn’t mature by any means but even he had the good sense to look at a seven-year-old and know what they shouldn’t be put through.

Twelve. The birthday of his brothers he dreaded, knowing it was their last of year of a normal life. The age when he was simply Kane, big brother, and the man of the house. More mature than he should’ve been, maybe, but nothing extreme. 

“What –” Kane blinks. Stops.

It’s a rare thing but he’s stumbling over his words. If Jed was a sick bastard, he was already thinking much harsher things about Nora’s parents. Kane was in his late teens the first time he’d killed a man. Older than Nora but still young to have a fucking life weighing down on his conscience. The next weekday he was back at school, listening to his friends worrying about an upcoming exam. Kane felt a step removed from everyone that moment. A step he’d never taken back.

The violent contrast would’ve broken him if he hadn’t already been living this messed up double-life with good ol’ dad.

‘In their teens’ makes his scowl stay in place. If a man in his boxers, patching up a hole in his jean’s ass should be a funny picture: he’s thinking of nothing but how calmly Nora is telling him all of this.

“What the fuck is wrong with you lot,” the rhetorical is said almost to himself before he looks up at her again. A brief pause because this is Bryce’s ‘friend’ and he should attempt to play nice. Maybe. “Is this some hunter tradition we were lucky enough to still experience? Put your kids through —” Kane flares his nostrils as he bites down on the anger, the want to rail at the woman for the basic bits of information she doled out.

Her son’s started in their teens. Kane could force some naivety and pretend teens meant seventeen, eighteen. Reasonable ages if there had to be a number put on it. Playing dumb was never his style, “Your sons – did you start them off in their late teens or what?”

His response is a more volatile response than she imagines him giving and it has her closing her mouth, head tipped back. There’s no part of her that regrets what she is. There’s no part of her that regrets what she’d wound up teaching her sons. Maybe the only thing she regretted was trying to give them a normal life in the first place. 

Maybe it would have changed things. 

She can make a wild guess and say that Kane’s upbringing wasn’t a typical hunter’s upbringing. There was training and learning and then there was over the top pushing, there was abuse. It was nothing she had suffered and it was nothing her sons had suffered. She’d seen to that. But the man’s reaction would speak to the contrary if it was to be believed and she didn’t like what he was insinuating with his question of whether or not she had started them in the late teens or what. 

It leaves her quiet for a moment, eyes narrowed as she looks across at him. She thinks about not telling him, because there’s no part of her that thinks she needs to explain herself and the way she raised her children to a man just because of who his brother was. She thinks about not telling him because still just thinking about her sons for too long was a painful trip she didn’t like to take that often. 

But this was Bryce’s brother and she thinks that alone gets him to deserve something. Not everything, and it’s nothing she’ll dwell deep with him if he continues to insist that what she’d done was wrong. But something. 

“Early teens,” she said. “But if you’re mistaking what I did for my boys as something it wasn’t, stop.” It’s a stretch, because she doesn’t truly know. Doesn’t know what happened, because Bryce had been tight lipped about it and she wasn’t going to read too far into it. But if his response to the moment was that livid, she could make guesses. 

“I tried to give my boys a normal life, they chose the opposite. They wanted to own their mark. So I taught them about monsters, I taught them how to kill those monsters, I taught them how to be hunters.” 

She pauses there, because that wasn’t true. She wasn’t with them in the end. They had been with their father and they had died alone. They had died while they were eating breakfast and their father was out getting milk. They had died living their normal lives that she’d wanted for them. 

“So whatever you’re insinuating,” she gives him a stern look. “Don’t.” 

[nora-judd-blog]

jackwesson:

When she didn’t answer Jack’s question with a question of her own, he tried not to heave a sigh of relief. Lying wasn’t nature to him, to like it had been when he was younger, but telling that story would require more than a kind word. 

So bit of here, and a bit of there. People that trusted each other. They’d have to, to have survived this long together. That much boded well at least. Last thing Jack wanted was to find out they were eating people or some equally ludicrous shit. 

“Hol-y shit. Color me impressed. I was…further south, and that was bad enough.”

Nora leads the way inside, intent on finding Sam or Zoe to show Jack who he could talk to about joining up. She didn’t think much of it, there wasn’t some big ceremony or oath they had to take, but it was out of respect for the people running the show that she wanted to introduce him in the first place. 

“It was bad down that way. What was it like further south?” she asked, curious to see if it was an immediate falling of civilization or if New York had just been the start. If there were other Hell Gates, if there was something else out there. The monolith they’d just fought hadn’t built itself in a day, she reckoned. 

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kane-e:

His capability was a very clinical term to use when describing a so-called-friend. Perhaps he should be enjoying this women’s practicality. Her matter of fact tone. It only rubs at him the wrong. Slightly. He’ll have to give her a little bit of slack. 

At the very least, B knows about their not so special family mark. She reiterates and he doesn’t like the sound of it. Born hunters. A group they belonged to yet remained completely unaware. Some group that from the sounds of it put their strength to better use than the Edwards ever did. “Apparently.”

There are questions. Plenty. The main one is a sudden curiosity if other hunters knew each other: Would someone know about Jed? The man was a mystery to all the boys. Apparently even to his wife, poor Jada. That thought’s derailed quickly, though, when Nora tells him her qualifications to answer his questions. 

“Little girl?” he repeats the words back. More judgment in his tone that he means too – but he doesn’t think it’s wrong the moment he hears his own tone. “Exactly how old is that?”

Kane watches her carefully. Now stuck wondering if Jed was simply following some Hunter tradition Zoe neglected to tell him about. Maybe all Hunters scooped their kids up at too young an age and hurt them for the sake of ‘training’.

So far, her impressions of Kane are similar to her first impressions of Bryce. A hunter who didn’t know what they were. Wasted potential, the hunter in her thinks, but she doesn’t let that thought stick around long. She knows very little of Kane and can’t fault him for something that was out of his control. Hell, even if it had been in his control, she couldn’t fault him. Hadn’t she tried to do the same to her sons? Give them normal lives? Take away the hunter responsibilities that came along with the marks on their hands? 

It’s a painful and poignant thought. 

He seems shocked that she’d done this for so long and she just waits for him to elaborate, waits for him to ask just how young she was when she first started. “I knew about monsters since before I can remember,” she tells him. “Other kids waited for Santa, I learned how to ward against Krampus.” 

She speaks nonchalantly because her childhood wasn’t bad. It simply was what it was. It was the one she’d had and while yes, there’d been painful lessons in all of that, they were lessons nonetheless. 

“I was seven the first time I went on a hunt and I was twelve the first time I killed something.” 

It’s the blunt answer to his question and she wonders why he’s asking it in the first place. What motivated that type of incredulous look on his face, because it seemed deeply personal to her. She gives him a half smile, though she can’t quite keep the pained look out of her eyes. 

“My sons started in their teens.” 

[nora-judd-blog]

jackwesson:

“A few months.” 

He wasn’t gonna win himself any friends from lying, but there were different kinds of lies. White lies to make someone feel better, all-out lies where you were bound to get caught eventually, and his personal favorite: half-truths. Lies of omission. 

She hadn’t asked for details, just if he’d been running solo. So technically it wasn’t a lie. He wasn’t exactly bouncing to go trotting out those details though. If he told her why he was on his own, then she’d want to know how it happened. That was a more complicated question than he wanted to answer right now. 

“How about you lot, been together long?” 

His own question. Could he trust these people? Were they decent, or just pretending to be while they fell apart. 

A few months on his own. She didn’t ask what had happened before that because it was none of her business. Nora had been in a group before this one as well and it had been vastly different from this one. Vastly different from the do-gooders and honorable decision makers. She’d done things she wasn’t proud of just to survive in that group. 

At his question, she nods her head. 

“Some of them have been together since the beginning,” she tells him. “But there are some recent additions from a military base up the road a bit.” 

She didn’t see the harm in telling him those details. If he did turn out to have ill-will towards the group, if his intentions were anything but what he claimed them to be, she’d protect the people in this group fiercely. 

“Some of them are from the heart of New York City, where the Hell Gate opened.” 

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jackwesson:

“Sam and Zoe it is then.” He said with a smile and a nod. Least he could do was try a good first impression. God knew how a. bad impression would end these days.  

The fact that she’d given him their names was a good sign though. Definitely better than the group in Kentucky that had tried to kill him when he’d offered up his services. 

“Nora it is. Take the lead, I’ll behave. Scout’s honor.” He followed her a few steps behind, still keeping an eye out but easily keeping pace without outstriping her. 

Jack was an agreeable sort, at least. He followed in step with her, keeping his distance, however, when she started to lead him inside. They’d find Sam and Zoe, he’d get acquainted and Nora would stick around to make sure he didn’t cause any trouble for either one of them. Especially for Zoe. The woman would be able to take care of herself, she was sure, but she shouldn’t have to. Not with Nora around. 

“You’ve been on your own long?” she asks as they walk, wondering about his past and why it was he didn’t have anyone with him. 

[nora-judd-blog]

kane-e:

Nora Judd. Cool. He nods once. Bryce hadn’t filled Kane in on anyone that he felt was important in the group, there was a vague mention of someone possibly important but it hadn’t come up. There hadn’t been any issues so far, and he doesn’t think this Nora woman could possibly need some prior warning from Bryce to deal with.

“Friend?” he shouldn’t laugh, but he does because it’s B they’re talking about, “You seem too responsible to be his friend.” He had grown, though. Going completely straight-edge was a shock enough, proving that while the general essence of Bryce was there, something had changed.

Nora doesn’t elaborate beyond that. Tight-lipped. He’s beginning to understand how she could claim the title ‘friend’. She lifts her hand and he sees it then: a hunter’s mark. “Snap,” he drawls, lifting his own hand, flashing the birthmark. That is enough for Kane to put down the jeans, he slips the needle into the thick fabric and focuses solely on the stranger called Nora.

“Guessing if you’re friends you’ve filled B in on this mark business?” he asks, even though he hasn’t the faintest idea if Bryce had actually learned any more about their ‘special’ marks. “Zoe, from your group, had to fill me on ‘hunters’.” He wiggles his fingers, some theatrics to go with his emphasis on the word.

Kane laughs when Nora calls Bryce her friend, or vice versa, and she just gives a small smile at that. “I admire his capability,” she tells him. That’s really what it had come down to. A marked hunter who didn’t truly know what they were, but who had come with the capability of a hunter all the same. If she’d had to teach him what the mark meant, at least he hadn’t squandered that power and ignored it. 

He reacts to the mark similar to the way Bryce had when she’d first showed it off. The man hadn’t known that other people had it and from the sounds of it, Zoe had to fill Kane in on the details as well. She trusted Zoe to be accurate enough, even if the woman didn’t bear a mark of her own. She came from a family of hunters and Nora trusted the girl enough. 

“I did,” she nods her head at the confirmation. “And if Zoe gave you a rundown, then now you know the gist of it. You and your brother are born hunters.” She leaves it at that, leaves him to draw his own conclusions about what that means. She doesn’t have to tell him that it means she admires his capability too, but a hunter who hadn’t known what they were, that could have been a dangerous thing and she wonders how Kane had dealt with it. 

She thinks about offering more. Offering to teach him more if he wants it, about the mark, about the lifestyle. But trusted Zoe to do a complete job of filling him in. She stands there for a moment, because it’s hard not to think of her sons in this moment. She’d wanted them to meet Bryce, because she thought they would have liked him. 

“If ever you want to know more about the mark. Or hunters,” she offers at last. “You let me know. I’ve been doing it since I was a little girl.” 

[nora-judd-blog]

jackwesson:

He’d lived a full life before everything had gone to hell in a handbasket. A misspent youth, more mistakes than he cared to tally up on a regular basis, a house and a wife and a shop that he’d called his own. 

Sure, most of that had gone to hell before the rest of the world. But it didn’t really matter now, did it? None of the before mattered as much as it had, and instincts he. thought he’d buried and killed decades ago had come swarming back to him.

If they hadn’t been honed from months on the road by himself, and fresh on the heels of a beytrayal he should have seen coming he might have ignored them. As it was, Jack was more inclined to listen. And this woman, if his instincts were anything at all to go on, was dangerous as all get out. 

“Jack. Jack Wesson.” He paused, keeping his hands easy to see. “Not looking for any trouble. Fact is I was hoping you lot might be interested in another pair of hands good with a firearm.” He kept his body language neutral, face calm and placid. “Just me and my truck, and if you aren’t interested I keep moving. Just not keen on staying solo these days.”

“Not my call to make,” she tells him with all seriousness. He claimed he just didn’t want to be alone anymore. Claimed he didn’t want to fly solo and it’s a good excuse, because truth be told, she wouldn’t want to either. She could, if the circumstances called for it. But she knew the practicality of having other people around. Of being able to rely on others to watch her back when she couldn’t. 

“You’re going to want to see Sam or Zoe,” she tells him evenly. 

Jack Wesson. He looked tough, like his name called for. Looked like he could handle himself and she guessed that he wouldn’t be out here alone if he wasn’t able to. Though she wonders how long he’s been out here all by himself and what were the circumstances that had made that so. If it was from the beginning or if he’d lost people along the way. 

“Nora Judd,” she gives him in return for his own name. She starts walking towards the travel center and looks over her shoulder at him. “Come on, I’ll show you inside. Don’t make me regret it.” 

[nora-judd-blog]

theruinous:

For a moment Daniel’s left simply watching her, words shrugged off and answered with that simple sure. A quick, unexpected flash of hurt settles on his chest, a wave of exhaustion that’s gone just as swiftly, because it wasn’t fair to say any of it to her. It’s unfair to voice it at all, and maybe that’s all this is. Self-pity, dwelling in his hurt and his guilt, and he can’t deny that some part of him simply doesn’t want to let it go. He’s felt so little for so much, it’s as much to punish himself as it is to hold onto those reminders that he’s still human. Does it matter if she offers him absolution or condemnation now?

Daniel can’t even say with any certainty which one of those things he was looking for, if it was for either at all, but there’s something like embarrassment left in its wake that has him dropping his gaze to the ground. 

She talks about getting better, doing better next time. Even if he won’t contemplate the idea of it happening to Ezra again, he can’t accept that as simply enough. He can’t erase that thought that it’s all pointless. What does it matter to him what the next demon feels like, when he’s already failed Ezra? There isn’t another life here that means as much to him.

The thought brings with it the awareness of just how swiftly all of this is slipping away. Every emotion that had pulled those words past his lips, confessions that were both ill-timed and laid on someone who shouldn’t have to shoulder his burdens. He’s left colder for it, a slow nod of his head as his gaze drifts away from her. It isn’t out of some noble self sacrifice to do what she says. He just can’t connect to why he’s standing here telling her these things anymore. What he hopes to gain, what it’ll accomplish, why he cares about any of it. 

It’s a familiar deadening of his insides, but he couldn’t stop it this time even if he wanted to.   

“Okay.” It’s all he says, and if the words aren’t cold, there’s little inflection to them either. The answer simple, little else to say about it. His gaze focuses back on the canister, the task she’d given herself and one he’d offered to help with.

“Do you have another gas can?”

Okay. Is all he says and for a moment, Nora just looks over, studies him. She doesn’t think the words have the effect she wants, but he’s moving on from the emotions just as easily. There’s a slackness to his face, like a deadened nerve end that had forgotten how to feel. She doesn’t know what to say to him or to that. The one thing she’s always been bad at throughout her life is emotion. Is feeling. 

It’s something she can relate to, written on his face. A deadened emotion because her sons are dead and while she’d cried once for them, had let Gabriel see that broken hurt, she had pieced herself back together and locked away those emotions so she wouldn’t feel them again. She knew how to block it off and she tried to make herself as dead as he looked just now. It hurt less that way and there was less room for mistakes. 

If he thinks he let down Ezra, she thinks about asking if the man would say the same. If he would put any of that blame on Daniel’s shoulders. It’s not words that she says, because this part she’s never been good at. This part she’s never known what to say or how to react, not even with her sons at times. They’d called her on it, of course. Called her cold and for them, she’d tried to be different. For Daniel? 

“Yes,” she says, because business she can get down to. Business she knows how to be and how to focus on. She steps around the car, finding the other partially filled gas can she was using to help them fill up the cars and brings it over to him. It gives her time to think, time to come up with what she could say to try and make it better than just okay. Because she thinks that it’s not. She thinks he needs something more. 

It’s not words that find their purchase with her. It’s a hand that comes out and rests on his shoulder. That small offer of comfort, whether he needs it or not. Whether he wants it or not. Because if words fail her when it comes to these things, the most she can do is offer that small non-verbal comfort of simply being there. 

She gives his shoulder a squeeze before she gets back to work. 

[nora-judd-blog]

jackwesson:

Jack didn’t hear the woman approaching him from behind. If she’d been hostile he’d have paid for it, and he knew it. Apparently there were more folks holed up inside her than he’d bargained for. Tunnel vision was a bitch, and it was gonna get him hurt one of these days. 

With a sawed down crowbar in one hand, and a duffel over her other shoulder he could tell she wasn’t gonna take shit from him or anyone else. Reminded him of mam honestly, and Jack ran a. thumb over the necklace around his neck. Maybe he’d been sent this way for a reason. 

“Hope so. I passed thru a few days ago, met a few of your people looking for a part. Seemed like good folks, and I’ve been…alone for a time.” He rubbed a hand along the back of his neck. “Was hoping you might be willing to take in a straggler. I’ve got some food, know how to use a weapon, and and I’m a real treasure if you’ve got any firearms broken down and need a firm touch.” 

Nora eyes him closely. It seems like a good excuse, a good reason to be out here, though her trust in people had shifted ever since Cobb. He’d come back with a group of vampire lovers and had almost destroyed their little group. She had to watch out for people who wanted to do similar. 

But that didn’t mean she needed to be cold to every stranger that came their way. At least, not colder than she was normally. Her own personality was one to be desired and it had only grown worse over the years. Some days she wondered what Gabriel had seen in her at all. 

And if he still did. 

“What’s your name?” she asks the man, rounding the car to come and stand near him. Out of arms length, in case he decided to try something, but she wasn’t going to let her guard down for anything. 

[nora-judd-blog]

kane-e:

It’s an unexpected response, one that actually has him looking up away from his little patch up job. He gives her a look up and down. Trying to see if there was anything he could work out about her from appearance alone.

“Yes I am,” he flashes a smile at the woman, friendlier with less sharp edges than usual because she’s guessed who he is and there isn’t a hint of any bad feelings towards B. That alone tells him to be nicer to her from the get-go, “Kane Edwards. Nice to meet you.”

Satisfied that he won’t glean everything from just looking he’s turning his attention back to the jeans, “Who are you?”

“Nora Judd,” she says when he confirms who he is and asks for something in return. She doesn’t expect the name to carry much meaning, doesn’t expect Bryce to be talking about her in any fashion. She cared for the man and she’d like to think the feeling was mutual, but she had no delusions that she would overshadow the reunion between brothers. 

“He’s a friend,” is all she says, because anything else just seems like a betrayal to Bryce. Like when she’d given him a pep talk after the wild ones had come and taken away people in their group. He’d needed it then, but it was nothing she thought twice about. Everyone needed to be reminded of what they were and what they could do once in a while. 

But if it helps any, she lifts her hand to show off her own mark. 

[nora-judd-blog]

kane-e:

Kane’s perched on top of his van, Kidz Bop classics playing from inside the van, trousers off and in hand, sewing up a hole that was starting to grow. Who knew sitting down would be worse for making holes in his jeans opposed to constantly walking around? Either way, he’d worn a hole into them and he’s busy with a thread and needle, carefully stitching it up in the waning daylight.

His legs are out and he’s grateful it’s warm. If he were younger or the world circumstances different, he’d be shy about sitting in just his boxers but his self-consciousness had died a while ago. The worst of his scars are out of sight, anyhow, nothing but a few long scratches and bullet wounds from good old dad. It was the arms ( and face ) that took the brunt of them.

Vaguely he’s aware of someone hovering nearby, Kane sees enough in his peripheral to know they’ve stopped because of him or his terrible taste in tunes. “Get your free looks in now,” he deadpans out, not looking away from his sewing, “Stick around too long and I’ll have to start charging.”

Nora was settling down in the truck, her feet propped up out of the window and her crowbar hugged to her chest. While she could have gone inside and found some place else to rest, there wasn’t really a desire to be surrounded by people right now. Feeling the comfort of the vehicle she drove here was something she needed, even if it lent itself to a more open and vulnerable spot should someone or something happen upon their group. 

Though it wasn’t revenants or vampires or monsters that stirred her as she started to doze. It was the sound of music and it was such a strange thing to hear in these times that she laid there for a minute just listening to it. Faint enough that she had to strain her ears. Some kid’s songs or at least versions of them. 

Sitting up, she hopped out of the truck and went to find the source, pausing when instead she found a man in his boxers, sewing at his pants. It was such an odd sight to see out here that she didn’t say anything at first, thought she was quiet enough to not be heard, but knew her mistake when the man called out to her. A smirk passed across her lips, because she could see his mark from here and could put two and two together. 

“You’re Bryce’s brother,” she chances the guess. 

[nora-judd-blog]

theruinous:

Good, she tells him. Daniel nods his head, but he can’t look at her, because it doesn’t feel good. It feels like too little too late, and he hates how hard it is just to see beyond that. It should be enough, that he destroyed it. It’s gone, Ezra is Ezra again, there are few things left on his list of concerns besides those simple facts.

He repeats the motion when she says to just give him time, even if he hates that it’s the only there really is. Time had yet to heal any of their wounds, it just put enough distance between moments that they could convince themselves they were moving on. 

There are questions he should be following up with, things he hadn’t thought to ask that he should now. He’d had every intention of it when he came out here, some better reason to pull her away from her work. Little doubt that she’d have those answers too, because she knows more about this world than he can even begin considering. He still stalls out when she asks if he’s alright, staring at that can of gasoline on the ground. Hands finding a home in his pockets because his fingers feel too cold.

“No,” he finally says. It’s too long in coming, it feels selfish even after he says it. It’s just nothing he can say to Ezra right now, because the reasons for it are multitude.

Still, it’s the guilt that sits heavier on his chest, and after a moment his gaze flicks to her face. Something like panic rising in his lungs as the words come out like a quiet confessional. “It’s my fault. I did this to him. Every second of guilt and pain he’s walking around with is just one more moment that I didn’t see it. What’s the point of any of this power if I can’t…“

The words break off. His hand runs across his mouth before his hands fall loosely to his sides. “I love him. And I let him down.” 

It’s not an answer the expects from him and it has her stilling where she stands. It’s truth and honesty and an open wound exposed to her. She doesn’t know what to do with it, at first. Doesn’t know if she wants that kind of responsibility because the last people she’d held that responsibility over had wound up dead. Dead the very first day the apocalypse had come. 

“Sure,” she says and if it’s cold, it’s cold. Nora only knows how to be one way and the word is said with such casualness, she just shrugs along with it. 

If he wanted to blame himself, she wasn’t going to stop him. Yes, he should have seen it. He had the power to see the demons, the power to expel them and when one had affected his lover, it had taken him too long to figure it out. That was a mistake. It could have been a grave one, but it wasn’t. He’d figured it out in the end and had taken care of it. 

“But pitying yourself isn’t going to get you anywhere,” she tells him and again, she knows how cold the words sound. Tough love. The same type of love she’d given her children and as she stands there and looks at him now, she realizes that’s exactly the kind of thing she would have said to her sons. She wouldn’t have allowed them to wallow the way Daniel was. She won’t let Daniel do it, either. 

She turns to the gas canister, stopping the flow of gasoline because the canister was full now. She’d be able to fill up a tank or two with what she has, depending on how low they were. The last thing they needed was one of their vehicles running out of gas in the middle of the highway. But right now, she wasn’t thinking about the convoy, she was thinking about the man standing across from her, professing love and feeling sorry for himself. She wouldn’t allow it. 

There was nothing to feel sorry for. 

She speaks as she works with the canister. “You were there for him in the end, and now you know better,” she tells him. “You’ll learn from your mistake and next time, you’ll do better.” She stops, looking across at him because she knew how her boys would take the lesson, she knows less how Daniel will take her tough love attitude. “Right?”