Webisode: Calm Before the Storm

After Georgie had gone downstairs to get some coffee she stopped before she entered the kitchen because Richard was already there, writing in something that looked like some sort of notebook or journal. Since she didn’t want to interrupt him she waited a moment and didn’t storm in like that but then the coffee machine peeped and he looked up, seeing her watching him, and she noticed that he immediately put the notebook away. Georgie always noticed those kind of details. She adapted many things while living with a lawyer for most of her life, things like paying close attention to what was happening around her.

“Hello Georgie”, Richard said while he quickly put the little book in his pocket.

She sure was curious about that book but she decided not to ask him immediately. “Hi Uncle”, she said teasingly while she grabbed a cup and poured herself some coffee. “Have you seen Lenna and Rome by any chance? It’s weirdly quiet in this house.”

“I think Lenna is practicing how to shoot, with Rome’s help, of course.”

“Oh, Jesus”, she mumbled, then she cleared her throat. “So…what have you been up to? Anything particular?” She just couldn’t resist asking.

“Not really.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you just write?”
Yes, Georgie knew she was sometimes a little too direct, but that was just another thing she blamed on the lawyer DNA.

“Hm?” Richard pretended that he didn’t know what she meant but she wasn’t that easy to trick.

“You just wrote something in some kind of notebook or journal…” That reminded her of her mom’s journal again and the fact that she still hadn’t really looked in it although Lewis had told her to do so. “You keep a journal? Something like ‘Dear Journal, today I had a great day. I killed a monster, and the sun was shining as well.’”, she added jokingly.

“Oh, that…” He paused for a moment. “It’s nothing important.”

Georgie raised her eyebrows. She could totally tell when someone didn’t say the truth and she was very tempted to get the truth out of him, but on the other hand she didn’t want to be too annoying, maybe he really didn’t want to talk about it.
“Okay.” She just shrugged her shoulders and took a sip of her coffee.

"Lenna!" Rome cried.

Clearly, this wasn't about learning to shoot.

He gently scooped the gun out of her hand, thumbed the safety on and laid it on the table so he could bring his hands back to cup her face. "Lennie, baby, you were, like, nine years old when she died! She was trying to protect you."

Lenna started actually crying, so he wrapped his arms around her. "Lennie, baby," he whispered. "It's all right, okay? Easy," he told her, rubbing her tiny back, and feeling a swell of protectiveness. "She wanted to protect you," he said again. "When people love each other they want to protect each other."

"But she's not here anymore!" Lenna wailed, now weeping openly, and clinging to his shirt. Rome was struck by his own loss, missed his own mother, his father, missed his brother. A lump formed in his throat.

"I know, chica. But I am. And I'm gonna protect you."

Lenna had a hard time catching her breath. She wasn’t even sure why she suddenly was so upset about this, he parents were dead since a long time and she thought she had made her peace with it, but apparently not.

“I know you are. Sometimes I think it was fate that brought us together.” She broke off before she said something wrong. She didn’t intent to ever tell Rome about their true first time they met.

“I know you gonna protect me, you always have. You mean so much to me, sorry I’m such a mess. It’s just all those stuff Mrs. Gilmore gave me from my parents. It is messing with my head.” Lenna whispered, just before they heard the door to the shooting range open.

“Hey you two, get upstairs I looked through all the files Lewis Gilmore gave you. Tidy up here and meet me in the kitchen.” Tex as so often didn’t say anything about Lenna’s and Rome’s closeness. Lenna sighed, and nodded at the other woman. She turned around back to the table and together with Rome she packed his weapons back into the duffle he had carried them down. Just before she looked at the target she had shot on. “Hey look I hit the target.” Even though it was easy to see that Lenna had cried a few moments ago she was now smiling proudly, while she and Rome were walking back upstairs.

As he poured his own coffee, Richard mentally braced himself for the next question. Answers along the line of ‘doesn’t every hunter keep notes’ shot through his mind. But no questions were forthcoming, leading to an awkward silence.

“I’ll see you in the passing later,” Richard eventually broke the scilence. “My guitar isn’t going to play itself.”

“You play the guitar?” Georgie asked in surprise as they headed to the door, just as Tex walked into view, carrying a large wad of files and blocking their way.

“No going anywhere you two. Rome and Lenna are going to be here in a moment. And then where going to talk about this lot.” Tex half placed half thumped the group of files on the table for emphasis.

“They callin’ themselves ‘SWORD’,” Tex said, immediately down to business, with zero formalities or sugar-coating. “Near’s I can tell, stands for Supernatural, Witchcraft and Occult Reconnaissance and Defense. Sounds like they should be the good guys, like us, like hunters, taking out the things that go bump in the night. But,” she paused for a long moment. “There’s problems…

“First of all, no witnesses. All dead. Civilians, victims, too. Dead or disappeared.” She threw a stack of papers—obits, police reports, census data—down on the table as her proof. “When these guys clean up after themselves, they don’t leave nothing behind. It’s almost as if they don’t want anyone to know about anything supernatural, much less them.

“Couldn’t find much of a paper trail,” Tex told them. “And I got the best working on finding one. They might be government, could be freemasons for all I know. And based on your descriptions, I was able to find the three that were after you:

“Ex-Special Agent John Holyfield,” she said, tossing down a printoff picture of a face they already knew all too well. “Left the actual FBI a year ago, has since been impersonating an FBI agent. He’s been getting closer to your trail this whole time, in Jackson and at Roanoke, and I’m not even going to mention Boston.

“His partner, Agent Justice.” Now she added another picture, of a severe-looking black man. “This guy might as well be a ghost for all we know about him. I can’t find anything on him. Which is a far cry from this guy,” she said, concluding with a picture of the guy Georgie had used as a hostage to make their getaway from Boston. “Alexander Colt. Don’t know what’s going on there. He comes from a good hunting family. Talked to his folks, but they haven’t heard from him in a few years. Anyway, I got everything on him, could pull up his old myspace page if you want. Seems to be a low-level grunt working for them, anyway.”

“Do they have, like, a base?” Rome asked.

“This ain’t Mission Impossible, boy! Ain’t no such things as volcano bases and—“

“Fine, do they have an HQ, then?” Rome tried again.

“Probably. Couldn’t tell you where, though. All I know is that you’ve got their attention something fierce, and that ain’t a good thing. They got files on all y’all, and…” here she glanced around at the assembly, giving them each a hard, probing look in turn. “And in a lot of cases, they seem to know more about you than I do. And I don’t like that.”

Rome looked at the stack of papers, pictures, newspaper articles, and police reports that Tex set before him as she gave him the evil eye. “I…” he flicked through the papers, almost afraid to look at them. He swallowed hard past the lump in his throat. “Uh. These are—I don’t even remember…”

“That’s just what the actual FBI wants you for,” Tex explained, and Rome dropped the file, with a sick sense of relief that he didn’t have to look through that pile—like, Oh, thank God, that’s only the normal everyday felonies that I committed when I wasn’t in control of my own body, as if that was any better. “Here’s your SWORD file, Remington,” she said, and slid a piece of paper to him.

This looked more like it:

[[REMINGTON, ROMULUS STEVEN
>DOB 01/03/83
>SSN 555-55-5555
>US MARINE CORPS 1st BATTALION, 2nd REGIMENT, INFANTRY
>>RANK: LANCE COPORAL
>>PRESUMED MIA
SUPERNATURAL PROFILE
>>PSYCHIC, UNKNOWN. POSSIBLE TELEP, TELEK, PRECOG, FORCE, CONDUIT
>>>LEVEL: UNKNOWN. PRESUMED 10+
>THREAT LEVEL: EXTREME
>PROFIT LEVEL: HIGH RISK
>CODE: A]]

“Well. Shit.” Rome said. “What the hell does all this stuff even mean? Psychic? I’m not psychic! It’d be a lot easier to score chicks if I was psychic, let me tell—“

“Rome, this isn’t funny,” Tex scolded.

“And I ain’t laughing! What the fuck’s their scale, here, anyway? Is ‘10’ good? Bad? What does ‘Code: A’ mean? And what the hell does ‘force’ mean? If I was a Jedi, I think I’d frakking know!”

Richard narrowed his eyes after glancing at the paper. “Telekenesis…. You can move things with your mind?”

“What? No!”

Lenna looked at him.

“Well. Maybe! Yes. It happened once. But I don’t have any control over it! I don’t know,” he groaned, settling back into the chair, his head in his hands.

“Rome, are you okay?” Georgie asked worriedly.

“Psychic headache,” he snapped, kind of sarcastically, kind of truthfully. “From dealing with too much bullshit today.” He sighed, and looked up at his friends. “I don’t know. Whatever you guys think, I don’t have any weirdo powers—that, you know, I can control. Stuff just happens, like, through me.”

“Since Andre?” Tex asked.

Rome looked up sharply. “Yeah. Since—but how’d you know—do they have his name, too?”

Tex nodded.

There was a silence.

“I…don’t mind admitting that these SWORD guys scare the freaking bajesus out of me.” Rome said.

Lenna was holding the holding the file that had her name on it. It should be empty, she is not having any powers…

[[FEE, ELENNA A.
>DOB 12/22/85
>SSN 351-26-2064
>>PRESUMED DEATH 09/20/05
SUPERNATURAL PROFILE
>>WITCH, MEDIUM, SORCERY, HELLENIC ELEMENTALIST, POSSIBLE DEMONIC TREATY
>>>LEVEL: UNKNOWN. PRESUMED 8
>THREAT LEVEL: EXTREME
>PROFIT LEVEL: HIGH
>CODE: A]]

Lenna gasped this wasn’t possible, she is not a witch or any of the things S.W.O.R.D thought she is. “I’m not a witch.” Lenna mumbled.

“I don’t know about that you do can do some freaky little tricks.” Georgie said partly impressed partly worried.

“I never made a deal with a demon to gain demonic witchcraft. I don’t even have any powers I just channel the energy that is around. A few years ago I got a book from…” Lenna looked up at Rome, she wasn’t sure how to tell him, “… Andre… that showed me how I can use the powers of the elements. But I never made a pact with him, my soul is still mine. So I am not a witch!” Lenna starred at the file, wondering what it meant that her profit level was high. What profit, profit for whom?

“This sucks they are totally lying about me!” Lenna was sulking like a little child she looked at Rome worried now that he found out that they met before they had met.

"Wait, what? Andre was after you, too? When did--" Rome began to ask, and then did the math. The pause was long enough, and Lenna wasn't looking at him enough to confirm his suspicion:

"You're kidding me. Andre gave you a spellbook while he was riding my ass around?" Strangely, that was kind of embarrassing, as if letting someone see him possessed was like someone seeing him naked--if, you know, being naked embarrassed him at all. And then another thought struck him: "And you didn't do anything?" he demanded angrily, before Tex slammed a fist down on the table:

"Okay, okay, that's enough, hotshot," Tex ordered. "I think you should be more worried about Andre, and SWORD, than getting bitchy at each other."

Lenna waited until Tex well not looked less authority and Rome was silent when she mumbled. “I did try to safe you, and I thought for a minute the exorcism worked but then he was back or never had left and then you vanished into thin air and left me in the cold in the middle of nowhere in South Dakota. You were the reason why I left Bobby to find you and exorcise Andre properly, which in the end nearly killed you.”

Lenna had never told Rome because she didn’t want him to know that he was the reason that she left Bobby so early, no hunter in its right mind would work on its own when she was barely eighteen. She didn’t want him to be angry that she couldn’t have saved him earlier.

“I tried my best but it wasn’t enough.”

Lenna looked guilty at the table. She knew she should have saved Rome earlier. She should have.

“You were a child Elenna it is a wonder that you are still alive.” Tex looked from Lenna at Georgie and Richard they were rather quiet while they looked at their files. If they knew about their powers, or if they were in shock that they had powers?

[[GILMORE, GEORGINA E.
>DOB 07/04/83
>SSN 172-12-7825
SUPERNATURAL PROFILE
>> PSYCHIC EMPATH
>>>LEVEL: UNKNOWN. PRESUMED 5
>THREAT LEVEL: LOW
>PROFIT LEVEL: HIGH
>CODE: A ]]

This file didn’t make any sense. According to those SWORD guys she had some sort of supernatural power as well. The only ‘supernatural’ power she might have was that she could run really fast in high heels, which most women didn’t manage, but other than that…
Well, she did notice, or at least she sometimes thought that she could feel what others felt. It was not just random guessing, she could really ‘feel’ others’ emotions. But maybe that wasn’t anything unusual and she didn’t have to worry about that. She had also noticed that it had gotten stronger from week to week. Sometimes, when she was in a room with more people, it felt like she received all their emotions at the same time- which wasn’t fun at all. That’s how a pregnant woman must feel, having so many different emotions at once. And she sure as hell wasn’t pregnant.

“It wouldn’t hurt if you’d look into your mother’s journal, Georgie, that will give you some answers concerning your powers”, Tex said.

Georgie looked up in surprise. “Wait, what? How do you know about my mom’s journal?”

“I called your uncle briefly, just to check in if SWORD hasn’t shown up at his house again, and he mentioned something about a power that had been given to the women of your family for generations, and he guessed that you might be affected too, and it either hasn’t developed yet or you just haven’t mentioned it...”

This was a bit awkward.
“I…I’m not sure what he’s talking about.”

“Then it’s time you’ll check out that journal, maybe then you know what he’s talking about.” Tex had this ‘don’t-you-even-think-about-coming-up-with-excuses’-look on her face.

Georgie crossed her arms, giving her an equally tough look. “Fine”, she said, not liking the fact that someone pressured her to do something.

“Now don’t you give me that attitude, Miss Gilmore”, Tex said sarcastically. “I hope you’re all aware that this matter is serious.” She looked from one to the next, hoping they would listen to her for once.

Great, reading her mom’s journal was especially tough now, since it was no longer just something that reminded Georgie of her mother, but apparently it would also reveal the kind of power she had. How wonderful that Lewis –once again- forgot to mention this tiny, little, insignificant detail about the powers that have been passed on among the women in her family. But Tex was right, Georgie had no other choice but finally read this journal to find out why SWORD might be interested in her as well. It was probably not because she could run in high heels…

"That's weird. You mean to tell me that psychic powers like this are, what, like, genetic?" Rome barked out a derisive laugh. "There's no way any of my family had this problem."

Tex pursed her lips. She looked like she was about to say something, but stopped herself. Then, apparently, she changed her mind, and, with a put-upon sigh, said, "You do know your Momma was a Campbell, don't ya, boy?"

"Um. Like, her maiden name? Yeah. But I don't..."

"And you never met her side of the family, did you?"

"Um. Well, no..."

"Trust me, son. It's in your blood."

How did Tex know more about his family than he did? This was getting beyond weird.

Petulantly, he snatched Georgie's sheet from her hand and read it out loud. "'Psychic, empath'? What does that mean? You're not psychic--are you?" Because if she was, he had reason to worry.

"Rome, that's private!" she cried, snatching it back and whacking him over the head with it.

"No, really, it's not," he said, standing up. "We are all of us up to our necks in a river of crap. We can't help each other if we keep lying to each other!" He rounded on Richard, who had been suspiciously silent this whole time. "And you!" he said. "What's your story, anyway? Back on Roanoke, what was that? I was willing to let it go before, but now, shit just got real. You the ghost whisperer or something?"

Richard gave a dry humourless chuckle from the corner of the room. He had glanced at his file, it now sat discarded on the counter-top. SWORD didn’t know everything, but they knew far more than most.

“Not a whisperer, if anything I’m the opposite of that. You really want to know? I don’t have any flashy powers like you three.”

“I think we still need to know, especially if SWORD does,” pointed out Rome. Richard spent a few moments gathering his thoughts, trying to work out the best place to start.

“Have you ever died? Have you seen what’s on the other side?” Richard didn’t give them a chance to reply. “I have walked the plains of Erebus and returned. My first hunt, before I was even a hunter, ended badly. As in being crushed by a falling roof badly. Then next thing I knew I was in a dark, cavernous unending plain. And it turns out some old myths are true. Some of those ancient pantheons do exist. Because I was approached by one of the Greek Gods. Hades, the ruler of Erebus, the pathway of the dead. Hades offered me a deal, a chance to return to life.” Richard shrugged. “Erebus scared the crap out of me, I took it. SWORD knows I made a deal, but they don’t know exactly who with or its conditions.”

“Are what were the conditions? What would a Greek god want with you?” asked Georgie.

“I was given ten years of life. Ten years to track down those who escaped from Erebus or never arrived. The undead, ghosts, zombies and so on. If I retrieve enough I get my life back. If not, I end up back in Erebus.” Richard looked back up at the group.

“I think I have an idea where Reapers come from.”

Rome opened his mouth to speak, but it hung open for almost a full minute before he closed it again. He sort of felt like Hooper in JAWS during the showing-off contest, where Brody points to that one scar Quint clearly doesn't want to talk about, but Hooper's drunk and teasing and makes him talk until Quint tells them he served on the freaking Indianapolis and it's like, whoa, buzz kill.

Everything else was kind of been a blur, all except--

"You...died?" Rome couldn't believe he was saying it, couldn't believe he was repeating it, but it was somehow the only thing that mattered. Tex looked like she was about to smack him for his insolence, but she refrained, barely.

Richard only nodded, and didn't look at anyone.

And Rome thought he had problems.

No, in fact, he was being stupidly selfish about this whole thing. He was definitely not the only to whom freaky things happened. Why did the world revolve around him and his own problems? That would be a pretty frakking stupid solar system.

"Well," Rome said, stepping forward. "It doesn't matter." He got a few sharp looks for that until he explained, "It looks like these SWORD people are after all of us, indiscriminately, and that's a giant problem if these guys are as nasty as Tex says they are. Speaking of, Texie, if these guys are so good, how'd you get all this intel?"

Tex snorted. "You kids think you invented the internet!" she said, by way of explanation. "And I know some people. Good people. Let's leave it at that."

Rome shrugged. "Okay, fair enough. So. First order of business: Tex, can we stay here? We need to lay low, but I wouldn't blame you if you didn't want all this on your doorstep. I'm sure we can find other places--"

"Here's as safe as you'll be," Tex said, folding her arms, and that was clearly the end of that discussion.

Rome nodded, wanted to thank her, but she'd probably just roll her eyes at him, so he continued. "Okay. Also, we need to come clean with each other as much as possible. So if anyone's unclear about anything, we should--"

"I have a question," Richard said, giving Rome a hard look. "Who's this 'Andre' character?"

When he'd made his gallant speech, Rome hadn't quite expected it to come back and bite him in the ass so immediately. But he tried his best, though he was sure he was telegraphing all the signs of please-not-this-I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it-I'm-scared-and-embarrassed-and-please-can-we-talk-about-something-else:

"A demon, we guess--"

"We know," Lenna jumped in.

"We know," Rome corrected. "Like, from hell, possession, The Exorcist type of demon. He's the reason the Feebs are after me, because he was--I was possessed for, I think, about eight months, and he--I think he killed a lot of people. I don't remember everything," Rome concluded.

"And he visited me," Lenna said. "Gave me the spell book." Rome reached out and took her hand, and squeezed it, apologizing for his harsh words before.

"And me," Georgie said, as all eyes turned back to her.

“Wait, what?” Rome looked surprised at her. “You met Andre as well?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t think that this little detail might have been important for us to know?”

“Look, it wasn’t like he gave me a spelling book or possessed me, actually, nothing happened at all, so I didn’t see the need to tell everyone that I met him.”

Lenna crossed her arms. “Well, great thinking, Barbie. So where did you meet him?”

“At a college party, back in Yale.” Georgie didn’t even blink while she said that.

It was quiet for a moment, but she could already see a stupid grin on Rome’s face. “Come on! Do you want to tell us that he was dressed like a preppy boy, wearing corduroy pants and a pastel Lacoste shirt?”

“As a matter of fact, yes”, she said dryly. “And I knew you would think this is a joke, but it wasn’t. I just started my second year at Yale, but already during my first year I had this feeling that I shouldn’t be there, especially since I always knew what my parents did and how they died, so pretending to be the normal, all-American college girl wasn’t really working for me. Anyway, the second year had started and I went to one of the bigger party events when I noticed that some guy had watched me the entire time. Now, that wasn’t anything unusual, but a bit later he approached me and started talking to me, first about random things, nothing particularly important. I could actually tell from the moment I saw him that something was weird about him and before I got the chance to turn away from him he mentioned something about how tragic it must be to lose both parents at the same time. There was no way a normal stranger could have known that, and when I asked him where he got this information from, he said he had known them and had looked for me ever since they died. At that moment I knew he wasn’t any normal college guy but we were surrounded by a large crowd of students, so getting out my gun was kind of risky. I was about to get my gun out anyway because I worried that he could harm everyone who was there, but at that moment a group of drunk guys pushed me aside, and a second later this weird guy was gone and didn’t show up anymore. That night I looked everywhere for him but he didn’t come back.” Georgie paused for a moment. “I knew I had to call Lewis, so I did, and then he told me about this demon who is apparently around for a while now, looking for specific hunter families. After that I knew two things; I wasn’t safe at college anymore, and I definitely had the final reason to become a hunter- which, of course, was something Lewis wasn’t particularly thrilled about. I later found out that this demon was going by the name Andre…”

Lenna had her typical ‘thinking-face’ on. “So, there’s obviously a connection. I mean, it can’t be coincidence that we all ran into the same demon.”

Georgie was quiet. She quickly looked at Richard, not knowing what to make of his story yet. She was sort of mad, not at him, but at the fact that she had found a family member and –oh, what a surprise- he had already been dead. What a perfectly normal family she had... She needed some time to get over that news but she also knew that this wasn’t the appropriate moment to start a discussion. Georgie crossed her arms and wondered if Lenna was right and there really was a reason why Andre had appeared to all of them before.

Rome knit his brow, thinking, staring off into space, as if he could bore a hole in the refrigerator with his mind.

Rome didn't really do thinking.

And since he probably could bore a hole in the refrigerator with his mind, he decided that it really wouldn't be a good idea to try.

"I'm sorry," he said softly, to the room at large.

"What?"

Rome was silent.

"Rome," Lenna said, gripping his arm tight enough to hurt, "You didn't do these things. Andre did. And anyway, no harm done."

"You shouldn't use that book, Lenna," Rome said. He was responsible. If only he had been stronger. "I'm sure it's a trap of some kind. Whatever Andre was doing giving you the spell book, I'm sure it wasn't out of the kindness of his heart. And that might get SWORD off your back, too."

He turned to Georgie. "But why would he visit you just to taunt you? Why all three of us--before we met each other? Was he trying to get us together for a reason? G, did you--did you come find me? In Gallup, when we met, did you remember me? Did you only just now realize that the guy who you met at the party--that I was possessed?"

Lenna starred at Rome, was he right? Shouldn’t she have used the book? She knew it was a trick, she knew she was dealing with a demon but it was just too tempting to use it…

“No I had no idea it was you Rome, it took me a long time to realize I was talking to Andre and he was in your body. Only because Lenna mentioned it once that you were possessed and I put one and one together.” Georgie said looked at Lenna, she knew they had to talk about their past but she couldn’t deal with that right now it would be too much.

Tex looked from Rome to Lenna to Georgie. “Did you ever hear about the legendary trio?”

Everyone looked at her. “What?” Lenna asked confused what this had to do with their situation.

“Three hunters, three women, three mothers they just did a few hunts together but they always stuck together one helped the other until one day they never spoke again, they denied they ever knew each other. No one knows what happened but something did. I thought you knew Lenna but me and your mom we always had a close friendship, well but even this broke up after I got the last letter it must be after the breakup of the legendary trio.” Tex went through a few stacks of paper in one of the drawers of the kitchen. She showed them a picture an old picture of five children. In the middle was a blonde girl smiling the little laughing brunette while a blonde boy stood near them smirking at the blonde girl. While on each side another boy was standing both blonde both looking like they didn’t like seeing the three children between them together.
Lenna stepped closer still confused who the legendary trio was. “That’s me and Georgie, and that at the left corner is Nick, but those two boys I don’t know.”

But when she turned around and saw Rome’s face, she knew who the boys were.

“Wait are you telling me my mom and Blondie’s mom and… Rome’s they knew each other?” Lenna starred at the picture. She actually started to feel sick.

“You never knew?” Tex asked.

Lenna shook her head. This was too much she ducked away from a few hands that tried to get a hold of her, and she ran away. Not enough did she found out that her parents were hunter but they were famous hunter? Her best friends were having those powers and Richard had been dead, the list went on endlessly. She wished she could create a bubble around her letting nothing come near her. She didn’t care how it looked that she ran away from her friends but she just needed some time to digest. Time to think, and which place was better as the library. So there she was sitting in the corner so long ago with Rome when he taught her the first time how to clean his Desert Eagle. All this seemed so long ago. What would they do when SWORD gets them? She was actually scared to think about SWORD, what they would with them. Lenna didn’t do anything she just stared into space letting her mind wander, trying to figure out when SWORD found out about her, when it all went out of control.

Rome nodded. He was absorbing the information, he just wasn't thinking about it.

When Lenna left, the meeting was pretty much over. Nothing more needed to be said.

The shit had just hit the fan, and apparently--to Rome, who as much as he disliked the idea of Fate, he believed in it--it had been gearing up to do so since they were all kids.

After Lenna left, they all stayed silent, unmoving, not making eye contact. Richard, looking a little uncomfortable, left next.

Then Georgie left.

Finally, with an ancient-sounding sigh, Tex patted his arm, looking at him with more sympathy than Rome would have guessed she was capable of, and also left the kitchen.

Rome stayed where he was for a few minutes longer before standing abruptly. Surprisingly, the picture of his brother hurt more than thoughts of his mom. He had kind of known she was a hunter for a while, since Andre--

Presumably in the time it took to blink, Mariane had pulled a handgun from her purse, cocked it, and aimed it at his heart, taking on an aggressive stance he'd only ever seen her assume when a teacher had accused him of cheating on a math test.

"You're not my son. And I'm going to give you three seconds to get out of him before I blast you so full of holy lead you're gonna be Satan's paperweight for the rest of eternity."

"Well, it's lovely to see you again, too, Mariane."

"One...two...."

Now Romulus noticed that mother's hands were trembling faintly, and tears threatened to blur her vision. Okay, that was good: she wasn't some sort of terminator or cylon skinjob. She did have some explaining to do--about why she had the gun, how she knew who this demonic frakker was, and how the hell she got off calling bullets "holy"--but that could wait...

--since Andre had made him murder her. But he did not like being reminded of his brother. His own brother, his twin, his best freaking friend who was still alive and didn't bother to even call him on his birthday. On their birthday. So it wasn't like he forgot.

Rome had meant to go back to the shooting range to take out some of his anger, but his feet led him upstairs, to his room, instead, almost without him realizing it. Apparently, he wasn't angry.

The room was big, and the bed was King-sized. He and Rawson had bunked down there together (they had grown up sharing each others' space so much of the time that that sort of thing really didn't faze them); he and Lenna had shared this bed, too--again, perfectly platonically. In fact, it was weird looking at a bed that for once did not recall sexual exploits. He'd have to fix that.

Maybe if Georgie was free later.

There was a small dresser next to the bed. These were mostly full of electronics, a few magazines, and clothes. But there was a package in the bottom drawer, beneath a pair of jeans that were too small for him. It was brown and small, and rather heavy, and Rome's name and Georgie's uncle's address written unmistakably in Rawson's handwriting.

Raws hadn't forgotten their birthday.

But Rome had been too busy, too pissed at him at the time, to open it.

He was, apparently, right now, still too pissed at his stupid, freaking, AWOL, asshole brother, who didn't even care about him, to open it.

Only now he was crying, too. He threw the package back into the the drawer, kicked it shut, and then rolled over on his bed and curled up in on himself with his back to the door, and stayed there until it was dark.

Georgie had gone straight back into her room and this time she finally opened her mom’s journal and read it. She had to find out what kind of power had been passed on among the women in her family, and if she was affected too. Obviously there must have been something that caught SWORD’s attention.
Georgie flipped through the first pages until she found what she was looking for. Josephine Gilmore described it as ‘ESP’, also known as Extrasensory perception. It could almost be described as some sort of sixth sense, especially regarding human emotions. People with ESP were able to read the aura of others as well as getting a sense of their emotions, no matter how deeply hidden they were. Josephine also mentioned that there were different levels and it often took some time for this particular power to develop to its fullest until it reached the last level. ESP made it possible to scan someone’s aura for emotions, and so far almost every generation of women in Georgie’s family had been born with this gift. For some of them it had developed earlier than for others, such as in Josephine’s case, who had started to feel others’ emotions when she was in elementary school. In Georgie’s case it stayed hidden for a while longer, not until a few months ago had she started to feel this change, but ever since then it developed steadily. She hadn’t taken it very seriously though, not until today when she realized that this gift had apparently caught the attention of SWORD.
Georgie took a deep breath and continued reading. At least she finally managed to go through her mother’s journal without hesitating any longer.

Somehow everyone stayed away from the other as if they were afraid to face the other’s powers. Lenna was sitting in her room and went through her mom’s journal, and the few pictures they had taken. Lenna is pulling on most of them a face, especially the ones with Rome, Georgie and her. It felt all so long ago. Somehow she missed those early days, when they were still a team and not when everyone tried to be on their own. They were a family and somehow those files have changed everything.
It took Lenna a few weeks to knock at Georgie’s door. She was shy and scared.

“Come in.” Came Georgie’s voice muffled and gentle through the door. When Lenna was standing in the open door frame Georgie smiled. She knew it was Lenna long before she had knocked at the door and she didn’t need to tell her how she felt.

“Hey.” Lenna mumbled.

“Hey.”

“Crazy February is already over.”

“Brownie, are you here to talk about the date.” Georgie blow on her nails she just had put fresh nail polish.

“No I’m not. I feel like it’s been ages ago we talk how are you doing… Dordie?” Lenna grinned cheeky at her best friend. “I found this in the box of mom’s stuff. Pictures of you and me… I think I remember the time I visited you. Well sort of. I… Georgie I think I had you as my invisible friend. You were dressed all pink and you had a knife and fairy wings. And when I got older I forgot this special fairy but the feeling of having a best friend stayed. It never left me and when I talked to other kids I miss this best friend but I didn’t know where it was. I could never explain it but now that I see those pictures and… there is a film of us, of the weekend we visited you. Um Georgie you maybe wanna watch this we me? And just so you know mom said in her journal that I talked about you none stop. And there was this song, and I always get sad because I felt well someone was missing in my live. Here listen.” Lenna got out her phone and after several minutes of Lenna trying to figure out how her phone worked she found the song she had downloaded earlier –another moment she missed Rome even when he was just down the hall but she didn’t feel like bothering him with a silly problem like downloading a song- but she had managed after several hours, and now the song was playing from her phone.

Georgie smiled when she heard the first seconds of the song. She recognized it immediately despite the fact that she hadn’t heard it in ages. In all those years she came across this song once in the radio, and it reminded her of something but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Now she finally knew why it was so familiar to her.
“I can remember you too”, she said after they were done listening to the song. “But you were called a different name back then…”

“Elle.”

Georgie nodded. “Yes, it was Elle. That’s why I didn’t recognize you again when we first met in Gallup. I mean, the last time I had seen you, you were a toddler who couldn’t pronounce the letter ‘g’ and you were talking about Peter Pan, so of course I didn’t immediately recognize you when we met after all those years.”

“It’s weird, isn’t it? If you think about it, we knew each other all this time”, Lenna said.

“Honestly, it’s all weird. The fact that you and I knew each other since we were little, or that all our mothers had a connection…And I’m not quite sure what to think about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“If it’s actually good that we are all connected. There seems to be some sort of plan behind it, a plan that we didn’t choose, and now look at us; some strange agency is chasing after us.” Georgie was quiet for a moment. “Well, at least I got to know all of you.”

Lenna smiled. “Yeah, agreed.”

“By the way, you might not tell people you had an ‘imaginary friend’ when you were younger, people get confused by crazy kids like you”, she said teasingly.

Lena grinned, she pulled out a few pictures of her and Georgie. "Georgie did you really have a knife under your pillow when you were Little?"

"Someone had to protect you from the shadow outside." Georgie smiled when she saw the pictures.

"It's so weird if your uncle would have known that your parents were my godparents I would have grown up like you. In a big house..."

"... and with manners." Georgie laughed.

"I do have manners, sometimes, in a way. Oh look Auntie Phenie." Lenna had found a piture of her and Georgie's mom. "Do you miss them?"

"Yeah." Georgie looked a little sad at thepicture of Lenna and her own mom.

"Oh look there is a video. You wanna watch it and see us in little?" Lenna was really excited, she had like one video from her and her faily and that was still safe at Bobby's she had planned to one day get it back but it never never happened and now that he thought she was dead it was impossible ot get it unless she would ask one of her friends to get it for her but it is not said that Bobby would give them the video.

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

Rome was in the shooting range, where he tried to spend every day. In all honesty it was harder to keep him away: he limited himself to about an hour or 300 rounds, whichever ended first, because he didn't want to look like a freak.

Freak. Poor choice of words.

Tex was kind of...perfect. When he had first gone to her--about a week or so after the crap had hit the fan--to ask her about his mom's hunting days, she had been clear, concise, and to the point, and just sentimental enough that he could cry about it later without embarrassing himself. The way Tex described Mariane as a hunter reminded Rome a lot of his brother. Rome always knew he was more like his dad, while Rawson had always taken after mom: the strong, silent, bad-ass-mother-fucker type.

Which was why he needed to practice. Raws wasn't around to protect him. He was still alive, sure, but he had--well, chosen his own path, Rome guessed. A path that didn't involve Rome, despite 20 years of inseparability, despite being twins. Rome liked to think that maybe Raws had gotten into some really deep dark shit, because as scary as that was it was a better answer than that his brother had simply forgotten about him.

So Rome trained. He actually went for runs longer than was necessary to keep him at his usual good-enough-for-a-hookup caliber (not that he was getting any more tail than occasional low-lying forays into town allowed, but still). He lifted weights. He sparred a bit with Richard, but really, the guy was kind of old, and more with Georgie, but seriously, a girl, so mainly Rome punched a bag by himself.

Rome didn't say anything, but his dreams were getting worse.

No one really noticed how but suddenly it was March. They had spent over two months at the Safehouse and after a little fallen out they grew stronger than ever as the weird patchwork family they became.

“How can I dice onions, isn’t a die suppose to be all sides the same size?” Lenna said sniffling from the onions. Rome chuckled. “Yeah well just cut the onions in small pieces without cutting off your fingers.”

“Hey I would never cut my… ouch.” Lenna put her finger in her mouth where she just cut herself.

“You were saying?” Rome asked laughing.

“Oh shut up, you made me cut the onions on purpose so I’m the one that is crying.” Lenna tried to sound angry but she was widely grinning. “And how come all that Georgie has to do is set the table?”
Lenna more chopped the onions more randomly with just one hand so that she couldn’t cut herself a second time than proper cutting them into dice.

"Dammit, Lenna!" Rome laughed, whisking the knife out of her hand and shooing her away, chopping the last of the onions and sliding them into the frying pan. "Can't stand the heat, get outta Hell's Kitchen!"

It was Sunday, and they were having Dinner.

Rome had initiated, had insisted on it, needed it. He had gone to the store early and had picked up enough food for at least twelve armies, and had started off the afternoon baking cookies. The smell was slowly luring everyone to him, at which point he cheekily told them he hoped they had no plans, because they were having Sunday Dinner whether they liked it or not. They couldn't say no. Actually, they probably couldn't say no to the apron.

Now the mountain of cookies waited on top of the refrigerator where they were most easily defensible. Lenna had already stolen one, but he had whacked her good with the wooden spoon, so it was all right.

Tex had scoffed at him and been on her way, but she promised to come back. Richard had smiled and nodded, mumbled an excuse but also promised to return by 6:00. Georgie and Lenna, when they found him, offered to stay and help, but it was becoming clear that Rome's painful duty as the only domestic in the household was to single-handedly build the most epic of meals.

"All I can say is, I am not doing any dishes," Rome laughed as he flipped potatoes in a frying pan so high that they almost hit the ceiling before he caught them back in the pan. He added spices willy-nilly, picking up hot food and shoving it in his mouth to taste. "Especially because--" he tried, with his mouth full, as he flipped the green beans with as much flourish as he had the potatoes, "you are about to experience Chef Remington in action. I am making my specialty: Stuffed pork tenderloins with a red wine gravy; spicy papas for a bit of a kick; long-stemmed green beans with lemon and garlic; a cranberry-almond rice pilaf; and caesar salad with fresh parmesean."

The girls stared at him, open-mouthed. He was pretty sure Lenna was drooling. Georgie was calculating how much give there was on her jeans. Rome just managed to restrain his cackling.

"What's on top of the refrigerator?" Tex asked, coming down the stairs.

"Oh, cookies," Rome said dismissively, though truth be told he was a cookie-baking god. "Glass of wine for you, Tex?"

"Sure, hun," she said, accepting the glass he was already pouring. Georgie and Lenna's cheeks were already pink from the glass they'd had each, and Rome hummed with delight.

"So we got five on the pork, and the veggies are done. G, you wanna set the salad out for me, beautiful? Thanks. And does anyone know where the hell our Richie Rich got to?"

“Not hell. Just out for a Sunday drive,” Richard replied from where he’d been leaning casually against the opposite doorframe. His eye’s drifted to the fridge. “Though I should have kept quiet and nabbed a cookie first.”

“Don’t you dare,” warned Rome, brandishing a spoon in a comically threatening manner. Richard put up his hands in mock surrender.

“Ok, the cookies are out of bounds. I’ll settle for a beer.” Richard headed to the fridge, Rome watching him in case Richard pulled a sudden grab for the cookies, but he just took a beer from the fridge as he’d said. “I’ll be back in a moment. Don’t want to swamp your cooking in dust from the road.” Richard headed off to his room for a clean set of cloths.

After a few minutes he returned to the dining room where the girls were finishing off setting up the table and Rome was triumphantly escorting the main course to its place on the table. Richard gave Rome a hard look, with humour and a slight smirk behind it. “I had no idea you were such a domestic goddess.”