The Records Room

[Charlotte]

Continued from: Drake’s Bedroom.


Swinging the door lightly closed behind her but not actually ensuring it clicked shut, Charlotte looked around ‘her space’, and sighed quietly to herself. Setting Figaro down on the ground, she watched the cat trot over to the water bowl that was set in the corner, and then smiled as the feline looked back and up at her. “Okay, Figs.”

There was a small ‘closet’ in the records room, though really, she supposed it had once been one of the cheaper bedrooms the hotel boasted, and this had once been a bathroom of sorts, meagre or downright pitiful though it might have been. When the pack had moved in to The Four Seasons, it had been fitted for her needs, and completely adapted. She had a sofa to one side of the room, away from the stacks of paperwork, should she ever need to relax or even nap, but other than that, everything was practical rather than personal… though there were little touches to the room that just screamed ‘Charlotte’, she supposed.

[Charlotte]

After getting Figaro settled with some fresh water and a generous handful of her favourite biscuits, she had gotten herself comfortable at her computer. Even though the departure of Drake still weighed heavily on her mind, for a variety of reasons, part of being the pack historian was to document such comings and goings. So, she had set herself to the task of updating the files she had on the pack’s history and its members, with dates, times and events surrounding Drake’s separation from the pack.

It was too quiet in the room, save for the rhythmic click-clacking of her short nails against the keyboard, her eyes fixed on the screen, watching what she typed without having to keep an eye on what keys she was pressing. Typing had become one of her more useful skills, which was part of why she had excelled as historian.

With a sigh and a soft smile as Figaro hopped up carefully onto the organised desk to settle in a sunbeam, Charlotte went through the Start menu to open up the iTunes she had installed months ago, activating the shuffle before just letting it play. It helped her concentrate, kept her alert and distracted her from the mental replay of Drake biking away from the hotel.

[Charlotte]

POST TIMESKIP.


Later Charlotte would feel terrible for not realising it herself sooner. It was shameful that a werewolf -- especially one with more than four centuries behind them -- could lose themselves in something so much that a domesticated cat noticed the scent and sound of danger before they did. That was what happened to Charlotte. So caught up in her work, connecting this historical event to that, this pack mate with that incident she didn't hear the sounds of shattering glass and shouts of surprise over the sound of the instrumental music playing from the stereo across the room; if she heard the sounds, she immediately mistook them for a prank or game gone wrong, nothing to worry about, certainly not anything to fear.

Figaro had been resting peacefully on the couch across the room, tail curled lazily over her nose. Unseen by the wolf working at the computer sorting files and adding notes to documents, the cat's head had lifted, ears and nose twitching, before a soft mew of growing distress had sounded. Figaro had leapt from the couch, crept closer to the door, only to trot back towards Charlotte and hop up enough to prop her forepaws on the she-wolf's leg.

"Not just now, Fig," she mumbled to the cat, never taking her eyes from her work, glancing from the screen to the papers she had set out to one side of the keyboard. "In a little while, okay?"

Figaro didn't take no for an answer, only recognising the danger, the scent of smoke and the sounds of running and panic. Instinct made her dig her claws in and heave herself up, forcefully making her way onto Charlotte's lap. The historian gave a startled, indignant sort of squeak of a noise, hands leaving the keyboard to disengage the claws from her pants. It was only then, her eyes finally taken from her work, that she realised something was wrong. Her own instincts fired and her arms went around the cat on her lap, hugging the feline to her chest as she rose and inched towards the door.

Fire. She could smell fire. Charlotte backed away from the door and looked around the room, the room where she spent so much time, where she sorted years and years of history. The pack's entire existence was contained within this room, every year of every decade somehow documented. Charlotte stood in the middle of the room surrounded by the work she had dedicated her life to, rooted to the spot. She didn't know what to do. She knew she needed to leave, escape the fire and the smoke that could kill even a werewolf, but she couldn't just leave everything behind. In her arms, Figaro mewed at her imploringly and clawed at her sweater.

[Adalina]

Adalina had been starting up one of the back staircases when she had heard the first sounds of breaking glass. At first, she had thought it was a bit of roughhousing gone awry. It could happen occasionally and she had thought very little about it until she had heard the sound repeated and started smelling smoke. That, she had known, was not simply roughhousing gone a little overboard or a prank of some sort. It would have been nice if it had been, but she had known that it wasn’t. She didn’t know what exactly was going on, but it wasn’t anything that had started out harmless and gotten out of hand.

Knowing that there would probably be stream of others heading for any stairs they could get to, Ada had retreated back down the stairs, wanting to be well out of the way when they came rather than standing there, trying to figure out what exactly was going on and blocking one of the ways out while doing so. Instead of taking that risk, she made her way back down and started going through, letting anyone who seemed uncertain about things know that it was best they get outside while they could. She might not have known what the whole situation really was, but she knew what she needed to. Fire wasn’t good and it seemed to be spreading quickly.

Along the way, Ada had been opening up every door she passed, sticking her head in to see if anyone was there. She had found few others that way, most seeming to have either been elsewhere or already on their way out, having caught the scent of smoke and acting on their instincts to get away from it as quickly as they could. That was why, when she peered into the records room, she hesitated for a moment when she saw Charlotte in the middle of the room, holding Figaro and seemingly without any intention of leaving. It took her a moment to get over her surprise at finding someone who wasn’t already heading for the door.

Finally, she stepped inside. “What are you doing?” She doubted they had very much time to spend where they were, but she wasn’t just going to leave while the pack’s historian could easily get trapped by the fire if she stayed where she was.

[Charlotte]

As one of the older wolves in the pack, Charlotte should have, by all rights, already been on her way out and gathering and herding others as she went, doing what some might consider her duty as someone of considerable age and experience. But she couldn't move, all she could do was stand there; she wasn't a fighter, quite the opposite, and she had another purpose within the pack altogether. All she could think about as she stood there were the countless historical accounts around her, hundreds of years of the pack's timeline. If she ran, if she left and never looked back, what would happen to it? The idea of it all going up in smoke filled her with a nauseating kind of dread that she simply couldn't ignore. She couldn't leave. She couldn't just abandon everything, the work she had dedicated most of her life to.

Wide eyes turned and found Adalina as the other female stepped into the room with that question on her lips. "What? I--" She shook her head, loose curls swaying and bouncing softly around her shoulders. In her arms, Figaro continued to mew and whimper in muted distress, looking almost imploringly at the other she-wolf who had joined them. "I can't leave. I can't just leave." Her voice was almost strangled, her eyes just hinted at with tears as she turned them towards Adalina again after another sweep of the room. "I can't leave it all behind."

It might not make sense to anyone else -- it probably wouldn't, she knew -- but Charlotte had dedicated hundreds of years to the contents of this room and it was like a piece of her. She might not have had a family, a mate or even close friends -- really all she had was the cat in her arms -- and she had poured so much of herself into the work which she had taken upon herself after joining the pack. How could she just leave it?

[Adalina]

She could understand Charlotte’s reluctance to leave the records behind to be consumed by the fire. A great deal of time and effort had gone into the documents and Ada knew that, had their positions been reversed, she probably wouldn’t have wanted to leave it all behind either. It would be time consuming to replicate the files and, very likely, impossible. She knew there was information within the records room that dealt with pack members who had left or died over the years and, unless Charlotte had everything memorized perfectly, there would be no chance of getting that information back. She could see how leaving so much history behind just so it could go up in flames would be hard, but it wasn’t worth dying for.

“You’re going to have to anyway,” she stated, steeling her resolve as she stepped farther into the room, ready to drag the historian out if that was what things came down to. She wasn’t going to just leave her there. “I’ll help you put as much of it back together as we can if you want, but staying here isn’t an option.” What came out of her next was, perhaps, a low blow, but she had to do something to convince Charlotte to leave. “Either all three of us get out of here or none of us do. I won’t leave you and Figaro to the fire on your own.”

[Charlotte]

Charlotte had put everything into the records room, all of herself and even more over the years she had been with the pack. It was a responsibility she had taken upon herself in all seriousness and she never wanted to just abandon it, but the air was thickening with smoke and even from where she stood she realised she could feel the heat from the fires. There was more than one, she knew that right down to her bones, there was no doubt in her mind, not even a shadow of it. The wolf inside of her was railing against her stillness, commanding her to move if only out of instinct and that deeply-rooted wariness of the dangerous element that was currently claiming the hotel they had all called home for so many years. God, she didn't want to just leave it behind, she didn't know if she could, but was it worth more than her life? After all, if she died, all the history she could remember would die right along with her.

Her eyes stung with tears that she did her best to blink back as a lump formed in her throat, making it hard to swallow down her reluctance. Finally she settled for nodding when her voice just wouldn't obey her; she couldn't say the words, couldn't openly agree to turn her back on what had essentially been her life's work so she just had to nod. It was all she could do. It felt like she was lifting cement blocks when she put one foot forward and then another to get herself underway, trying not to look back over her shoulder at what she was leaving to the heat and the smoke and the flames but she couldn't stop herself. In hindsight, it probably wasn't the best idea. It only made leaving all the more painful for her.


CONTINUED IN: Hallways with Adalina.