homecoming.

June 5
6:12pm EDT

Three years and this brownstone has changed little, if at all. Lukas can remember when he first saw it. It was the summer after his First Change, a few short months before his Rite of Passage. There are three bedrooms and a tiny study. It seemed like so much room compared to the tiny apartments and boardinghouse rooms of his childhood, even when it was full of moving boxes. It still seemed small compared to the enormous house he remembers, dimly, from when he was very small.

One of the bedrooms is ostensibly his. His childhood bed is in there, some of his childhood belongings, his books, his toys. These days that room is a sort of storage. The bedspread is faintly dusty. There are boxes stacked in the corner. He never sleeps there. He's not sure he ever slept there at all.

The doorbell sounds the way he remembers -- assertive, loud, echoing behind the heavy door. He hears footsteps on the stairs, indistinct voices that make something inside him clench up and twist because he recognizes them.

The door opens.

Lukas smells hovězí polévka; svíčková and opékané brambory. He doesn't remember Jaroslav's hair being so grey. He doesn't remember the new lines on his face, the new stoop to his shoulders. Lukas sees, with something like unease and pity, that Jaroslav is sliding inexorably into old age.

Man and Garou face one another for a moment. Lukas remembers when Jaroslav seemed to tower as tall as the sky, as broad as a mountain. There's still something of that in the set of his jaw.

Then Jaroslav bows his head. "Welcome home, Wyrmbreaker," he says.

Lukas has to hide a wince. "Dobrý den, otec."

--

Dinner is a quiet, awkward affair. Lukas sits at the head of the table. The view from here is strange; he's not used to seeing his father at his right hand, his mother at his left. He's not used to the way they pass dishes to him first, always; to how his mother stands and comes around to his right side to refill his wine.

The third time she does it, he stops her. "Please," he says. He doesn't know what he's asking. "Please, maminka, I can manage."

He doesn't know what to say to them, either. Should he talk about his pack? Should he tell them how it's falling apart, spinning to threads, lost to the ether? Should he talk about Chicago, the Sept there ... the kin, the woman he loves? Should he tell them about how Mrena died, how Ed and Kate failed?

They don't ask him anything. He doesn't say anything. His mother talks, filling the silence with genteel little comments about her flowerbed, the curtains upstairs, how his father fixed a squeaking step on the stairs.

She mentions how Jaroslav liked the video on Anezka's iPhone, Lukas speaking into the camera: I love you guys a lot.

Lukas looks at Jaroslav then. His father keeps his eyes on his plate and says nothing.

--

"Anežka called last night," Marjeta broaches the subject delicately. "She told us there's a young man in her life. A kinsman by the name of Daniel Adamczyk."

Lukas sets down his knife and fork, turns his eyes on his mother. Hers are dark; so are his father's. He and his sister inherited their eyes from farther back on their ancient and illustrious family tree -- some recessive gene, some half-hidden thread in the tapestry of their history.

"She ... seems happy with him. But we thought -- " Marjeta falters, glances to her taciturn husband for support, looks back at her son. "We thought, with your being Trueborn, perhaps you could find her someone more suited."

Lukas frowns.

"A Garou," Marjeta adds. "Perhaps -- "

"No."

He cuts in far harsher than he'd intended, grimaces to see his mother flinch. A flicker of memory: his mother picking him up at school, walking home with him. A summer's day, scorchingly hot. They thought maybe if they ran the distance from one stand of trees to the next, lingered in the shade, the heat would be more bearable. He remembers running with his mother, laughing. He can see no trace of that now.

"No," he modulates his tone. "Anežka should choose her own mate. And she'd be happier with a kinsman anyway." A sip of his wine. "Safer."

The topic is not raised again.

--

After dinner his father leads him upstairs to his room. "You mentioned you wanted your books," he says. "We found the boxes. They were buried deep. Took your mother and I a while to move them out, ha! But they're waiting for you. Do you want a hand moving them out to your car?"

Lukas looks at his father, shoulders stooping, arms wasting away with age. He imagines his parents digging heavy boxes out of storage, hefting a box full of books out from the back. His hands move at his sides. He wants to embrace his father suddenly; doesn't know how.

Instead, gently: "I'll be fine, tatínek."

The steps still creak when he walks upstairs.

--

His mother comes to the door while he's taping the box shut, writing an address onto the side in black felt-tipped pen.

"Oh," she sees the address, "you're sending it to Miloslav's girl."

His hand pauses for a second. Then he finishes writing:

DANIČKA MUSIL
520 N KINGSBURY ST
APT 23-C
CHICAGO, IL, 60654

"Yeah." He lies easily, hates lying to his mother, "She's going to hold onto them for me until I get back in town. The Brotherhood's a mess; if I send it straight there it'll get lost or dumped out with the trash."

"Oh." His mother seems disappointed. "We thought -- well, I thought, after you asked about her and her brother, that maybe ... "

He sits back on his heels, capping the pen, looking at her with his eyebrows raised, a faint smile sitting quizzical on his mouth.

"Maminka, are you turning into a matchmaker? First Anežka, now me?"

She doesn't smile in return. She gives him a level, pitying look that goes right through him.

"What else is there for an old kinswoman to do but plan for and raise her children's children?"

Lukas puts the pen on his desk, cluttered with his father's books. Then, in a single smooth heave, he lifts the box of books. Passing his mother, he bends on instinct and kisses her cheek.

"I'm going to put these in the car."

On the way down the stairs, Lukas tries to pretend he hadn't felt his mother flinch away from his rage.

--

Out at the car, he stops in the middle of arranging the boxful of books as his mind fills with totemic conversation. His hands on the opened trunklid, he grips the cold metal with his fingers and closes his eyes, focusing his will.

Your path lies outside the Circle, Sampson says.

And Lukas severs Sam from the pack.

--

"But you just got here," Marjeta says.

"I know, maminka." Lukas is trying not to grit his teeth as he pulls his coat on.

"Your father wanted you to spend the night. I was going to make your favorite koláče in the morning."

"Please, Mom. I'm sorry. I can't stay."

His father had come to stand in the kitchen doorway.

"Lukáš, you haven't been home in three years."

"Marjeta," it's his father cutting in, and Lukas remembers that tone, quiet and steady, stern. A decision made. He doesn't realize he sounds the same, the exact same, sometimes. "Let him go. He wouldn't if it weren't important."

Lukas faces his father briefly.

"Thanks," he says. It's quiet. A pause, "I'm sorry I wasn't home for your birthday."

--

They don't embrace at the door. His mother reaches up to touch his hair once, with a sort of shy and unfamiliar fondness. His father grips his hand briefly.

Then he gets in his rental Camry and drives away, north, away from the heart of Manhattan, away from the Bronx. It's not until he's halfway to Albany that he realizes he should've told them:

I love you guys. I really miss you.

And,

I'm fine. I'm happy in Chicago. Don't worry about me.

The sun is setting. Lukas drives on. He's back in Chicago two hours after sunset.