Did you pass, 'natch?
His words came like a rush of water. And suddenly Geneva felt as though her mind was a thimble, too small to contain everything he said all at once. His words flowed about her, through her, and she was unable to contain them all, let alone put her thoughts in order. She just stood there, blinking at him. Her mouth was closed, held in place by the tenseness of her jaw. She didn't trust herself to speak. She had grown past this point of her life, but it would always be part of her. That little pocket of pain that Hendrix's questions resurrected was not usually raw and ugly like this, but he talked about Jordan was though he was breathing in the present. Oh, to go back to those days...
Geneva was glad, a small bubble of joy in the dark pit of her stomach, a little ray of sun in this otherwise strange and terrifying night. She had not thought she would see Hendrix again, yet he was whole and alive in front of her. She swallowed hard, feeling as if she was forcing down bits of barbed wire. He expected answers, his voice was a rush of excited sound. She was finally able to make sense of it all, and although she did not want to speak, she forced the words through her grimacing mouth.
"I lead here," she said, her voice without expression. "I am capable of going out by myself. I ensure my own safety and the safety of my pack." It was a robotic, automatic response. It was the easiest of Hendrix's questions to deal with. She looked at him helplessly, the answers to those other questions poised deadly at the edge of her tongue. She did not want to see the knowledge bloom on his face, like a bruise after a blow. She didn't want him to know, but she could not lie to him. "Jordan...and Papa...died last year." She inhaled shakily, her composure almost ready to give. She tried to distance herself, tried to come off as cool, and she failed. "Our children did not survive after that...except for one, a girl...but only for a day."
That last part crushed her, and she did not think it would effect Hendrix like the news of his brother's death. Reliving that part of her life, the single day of her daughter's life, was a blow to her heart. She felt like she was locked in her own personal circle of hell. Because there wasn't just pain, there was an unabashed joy that part of her, part of Jordan, have lived to know her.
The woman strode forward again, the pain settling in the familiar grooves of her heart. She carried it with her, as she always did. The shock of reliving those days directly always hurt, but as she set it aside, she was able to regain emotional equilibrium. Despite the pain of remembering the end of Jordan's life, of Shea and her father's lives, her happy memories of them outweighed that pain. Despite the fact that they were gone, the fact that they had lived at all was enough to ignite the strength in her to live again. "Please stay here, Hendrix. At least for a while." She laid a hand on the man's arm, watching his face.