[Lukas] When the moon rises tonight it'll be full. Even with it well below the horizon on this clear and rather cold Wednesday afternoon, Lukas can feel it in his blood. It pulls at him as it pulls at the oceans, inexorably.
Passing pedestrians feel it too. Lukas sits on the edge of the largest fountain in Grant, at the intersection of two of the widest, busiest pedestrian paths. True, Wednesday 2pm isn't a high-traffic time, but there are still plenty of people about -- walking by, tossing coins into the fountain, talking on their cell phones, eating late lunches.
His rage is a low and insidious drumbeat. It mutes conversations in his vicinity. It pushes people away within a radius of several feet: a no-fly zone where no one can bear to stand or sit for long.
Perhaps this is why he didn't wait until evening to call, the way he usually does. When the moon rises round it'll only get worse. He calls Danicka at a little before 2, leaving a message on her machine if she isn't around to pick up. He asks her, quite simply, if she'd come out to Grant Park and meet him at the Buckingham fountain. It could've been texted, but he's always preferred voice to text, eye contact to voice.
He doesn't give a specific time. He doesn't seem to care.
The life of a Garou is a strange juxtaposition of laziness and frantic activity: missions and quests and pitched battles that run them sleepless, that run them on pure adrenaline, for days on end; and then days that idle by with no regular job to attend to, no children to raise, no dinner to cook. Typically, Lukas has less of this latter than most. In his downtime he keeps an eye on his investments, he patrols the umbra, he familiarizes himself with the caern totem and he thinks. He doesn't have the presence of mind for these things today. He doesn't give a fuck, today. He gives himself the goddamn afternoon off, so to speak.
So when Danicka shows up, whenever she might show up, he's still there. He's stretched full-length on the rim of the fountain, arms folded across his chest, seemingly asleep. The air is cool, but he's wearing his leather jacket, which is buttoned up, and the sun is warm. He probably could sleep like this, at least until sundown, but he's not: when she's near enough that she breaches the invisible wall keeping humans away from him, Lukas turns his head and opens his eyes.
Which are keen and crystalline, a very precise and pale blue. Which flicker over her, take her body in, and then her face.
"Hey," he greets her, quietly. He doesn't get up, or move to get up.
[Danicka] At about fifteen after two, Danicka comes strolling up towards Buckingham Fountain. She is dressed in dark blue jeans, brown boots with a heel -- of course -- and a beige sweater with a long hem and sleeves that cover the heels of her hands. There's a hint of dark brown lace at the v-neck of the sweater, obscured by the loosely-wrapped silk scarf around her neck. It has no fringe but a variegated, swirling pattern that shifts from maroon to hunter to navy to gold and back again. She has a small bag from Sephora, and an equally small one from Vosges Haut, and a larger one from H&M.
She's been shopping. Her hair is slightly windblown, though she's wearing it straightened today: she walked here, from wherever, and did not stop at her car...if she indeed drove it. Maybe she took a cab, and the faint flush of pink to her cheeks is from just walking through the park. It doesn't really matter. She knows the phase of the moon, has watched it growing outside her windows every night since the last time she saw him, and she can sense it when she walks into the invisible sphere of his Rage.
Danicka is not so much stronger than most of these mortals: she takes a breath when she steps closer to the bench he's lounging on. She has seen him at night when the moon is full, has not only tolerated being near him but having him inside her, and yet here she is, knowing what she does, having been through what she has. He says Hey, and she sits down about twelve inches from his side, setting her bags down carefully at her feet. "I take it this isn't a business meeting," she says, with a mild smile passing across her lips.
[Danicka] [AMENDMENT]
Danicka is not so much stronger than most of these mortals: she takes a breath when she steps closer to the edge that Lukas is lounging on. She has seen him at night when the moon is full, has not only tolerated being near him but having him inside her, and yet here she is, knowing what she does, having been through what she has. He says Hey, and she sits down a few inches from the top of his head, setting her bags down carefully at her feet. "I take it this isn't a business meeting," she says, with a mild smile passing across her lips as she leans over and peers down at him.
[Lukas] All winter long this fountain was shut down. Sometimes it was sheeted over in ice. Sometimes it was a solid block of ice, and children played on it. Most times it was simply dry.
It's alive now -- continuously aflow, a murmur of white noise in the background that somehow makes the piercing shrieks of children, the yapping of small dogs, and the rest of the pedestrian noise of a sunny afternoon more tolerable.
Lukas knows Danicka had a long stint as a glorified nanny, as she puts it: many of her formative years, in fact, between adolescence and adulthood. He doesn't know the exact length of her term, but it began before she was eighteen; it ended rather recently. More than five years. Possibly less than ten. A good portion of her life, when the woman was only twenty-five.
Lukas knows she was a glorified nanny, a governess, and he imagines her warmth, her natural charisma, her ability to hold onto her temper even under undue stress was helpful in the post. At the same time, he has trouble imagining her with children, perhaps because of the manner he rather often sees her in
(which is to say: not wearing any clothes.)
and perhaps only because he, himself, has no great affection for children. Which is to say: he considers them mild disruptances at best, unholy terrors at worst, and they consider him a ravening monstrosity, and stay away. It works out well.
Since he hasn't gotten up, and Danicka has sat down and set down her spoils of the day, he continues to look up at her. She leans over him and they're nearly antiparallel; she's nearly upside down to his regard, her hair falling forward to swing a few inches from his face. He unfolds his arms and reaches up -- the angle of his hand on her face is unusual, the fingers along the cheek, the thumb along the jaw.
"My excuse for calling you here was to give you some talens," he says. Some whats? "But now that you're here, I think I just wanted to see you."
Smiles are a little rarer around the full; humor a little milder. The jolt of touching him is more pronounced than ever -- a shock like electricity, both numbing and hypersensitizing the skin. The truth is, it's not entirely pleasant. It may not be pleasant at all.
His hand drops away, rests atop his chest. He turns his head to the side, looks at her bags. Looks at her. "May I ask you something?" And provided she agrees, he simply asks her question back at her: "Who pays for your existence?"
[Nessa] (Shadowlord Park!!)
to Danicka, Lukas, Vasily Zaitsev
[Danicka] The crash of the water in the fountain behind them sends the faintest dust of a spray across them, light enough that even the faint sunlight and cool air does a fine enough job of evaporating it quickly. Danicka, for her part, does not -- apparently, and appearances are sometimes tantamount to meaningless with her -- have such a fondness for children that she watches them play or smiles at them as they pass. She leans over and peers down at Lukas, oblivious or indifferent to the other people walking through the park at the moment.
When he reaches up her heart jumps in her chest, and there's a flicker of some primal terror in her eyes. The human expectation would be that this hand is going to tear her lower jaw off, that he is going to grab her by the hair or the throat, but that flicker passes and that is not what happens. Lukas just touches her face, and Danicka smiles quietly. It's not her quirky, oddball grin, but a more serene expression that comes more naturally to her when she is out in public, in the middle of the day.
Notably there's no frown of confusion or flash of bewilderment when he mentions talens. Maybe she just doesn't care, or wasn't going to ask. Her eyebrows hop up on her face when he admits that he probably just wanted to see her. Her cheek tingles where his fingers touch her, but she doesn't jerk away. Maybe that's training. Maybe it's not a bad sort of tingle.
But she does exhale slightly when he lets go. "Mmm," she hums in affirmative, to his first question, reaching over and touching his hair idly. His second question, however, makes her grin. "I do," she says archly, repeating his answer back to him.
[Nessa] Bet I can outrun you. If you don't use tricks. She had sort of grinned at his good eye, as close to a grin has she has come since she lost her son. Hell if she's gonna look at the bad side.
Nessa had showed up at the pack house with her oversized messenger bag, a tidy one which today had her disguise kit. What she had done was simple enough, a cheap fix, and she'd left enough supplies for Vasily to do it for himself, later.
Sunglasses, in the wrap around mirror-shade style, which concealed the ... Oh gaia. Well, it concealed, at least. She hadn't watched him put them on. ick.
Large bandages, in a flesh tone similar to his skin, arranged to hide the worst of his scarring on the bad side of his face. People would assume his injuries were recent, healing and would look, but not think the sort of thoughts which would require that he rip their heads off.
Last, she had added stage makeup, a little here and there, to fill in some of the edges which the bandages did not cover, to trick the eye into thinking the hellish scars less than they were.
It's a quick fix only. Her brow had furrowed at the results, but she had finally just packed her stuff up and left a supply on the table for him, to use or discard as he would wish.
All this, to have company today in the park, all that to have someone against which she can compete without fear.
Someone to talk to.
She had almost even smiled, twice.
The sun shines against the utter black of her hair, left to wave and curl a little where it wishes, warms her skin where her running clothes do not cover, porcelain skin which is well protected with layers of sunblock sufficient to block a supernova. She's still gonna run him into the ground if she can.
[Nessa] (Disguise roll for Vasily, man+disguise)
[Lukas] Rage is often mistaken for many things. In the way it makes Garou behave, it's frequently confused with testosterone, with some hormone imbalance that makes werewolves bad-tempered and carnal, prone to lust, prone to anger, prone to reacting majorly to minor irritations. In the way it makes humans shy away, it's often thought of as all-consuming anger, as a wrath so terrible and unstable that bystanders keep away just in case some of it is directed their way.
The truth is Rage can take the form of either, but it runs deeper than that. In the end Rage is not a cause to the effect, nor an emotion all its own. It's a lens that colors the world, and colors its bearer as well. It's a sharpening of the senses around a Garou. It makes everything more present, more absolute, more sudden, more real. The bad is intolerable. The good is unbearable.
Under a full moon, it makes Lukas stand out like a roman candle on a dark night. It makes him vivid and present, until the very air in his presence seems to sear and bend.
Under a full moon, it makes her touch to his hair stark and sharp: he can feel every finger, every individual hair bending under her fingertips. It makes him close his eyes for a moment because the touch and the sight together is overwhelming.
A moment later his eyes reopen, focus on hers. It's the archness of her tone that makes him smile. It's faint but genuine, amused, a little lopsided. "Are you going to elaborate?" he asks.
[Vasily Zaitsev] *The disguise was good, although out of habit the hood part of his jacket was still up. He kept the supply left for him, putting them into his duffle bag that held all that he basically owned at the packhouse.
Running...the kin would ask to run, in homid. It wasn't that he was terrible, he was just more sprinter then distance runner. Mostly, he stayed in nearly one place...observing things after all. He ran gritting his teeth, he would not show too much weakness if he could at help it. But it didn't help him that he wore his leather jacket still, the dark canvas material pants and boots made more for hiking then running*
[Nessa] The sad thing is that she still considers this the warm up stage. Warm up on what many might consider a chilly day. Vasily's gonna be sore tomorrow-- no, no he's not. What damage she causes him will heal in seconds. Still, she can dream.
She pushes him like she did Mrena, staying such a tiny half pace, no less than that, ahead of him in stride that he must surely, if he is competitive at all, want to lengthen a step, speed slightly, push a little harder to not let the girl win. Not let the kin win. Just.. win. Her instincts, though, perhaps not his own motivation.
A month ago, she would have laughed, have flown over the ground in joy. Today, the run is a grim thing, but she is not alone.
It helps.
"Race to fountain?" Her eyes are blue, and the way she asks is, well. It's a sort of challenge, isn't it? Prove his strength. Show his weaknesses. An intimate challenge.
[Danicka] Being around a Garou on the full moon is like walking across a mine field. Being around an Ahroun on a full moon is a little more like realizing you have just stepped on one and knowing that if you lift your foot even a little, you're going to disintegrate. Danicka does not have his hypersensitivity to motion and sight, his intensified reality. What she has is the knowledge that if she moves wrong, she could end up splattered.
Regardless. She strokes his hair, watches the dark strands bend and then fan out as she toys her fingertips through it, as thoughtful as a kitten faced with a ball of yarn for the first time, as serious as a scholar. She may or may not be aware of how this feels to him. He has no way of knowing if she's ever played with the hair of a werewolf before this, full moon or not. It always seems to happen when she's around him, though.
And to an outside observer, they look like a couple. Her shopping bags by her feet, him laying all but in her lap, her smiling at him as she talks and touching him in a comfortable, loose way. It isn't until someone gets a little closer that they can feel his Rage, that they suddenly wonder if she's safe there with him, if those long sleeves are hiding bruises because by god he can't possibly be a nice guy. A good guy. A sane guy.
Her hand pauses when his eyes open again, and she lifts one eyebrow. "I started working for the Sokolovs when I was sixteen," she says quietly. "They let me go last fall with a severance package that is enough to keep me financially solvent for years even without my savings and investment portfolio built up over the last nine years." She pauses, and returns her fingers to his hair. "I've had a Roth IRA since I was eighteen, I am debt-free, and I worked for every. Last. Dime."
[Vasily Zaitsev] *The man runs, however he notices the interplay...the easy way she runs, and how she holds back...trying to push him further. His strengths were ones of perception and thought. No, his instincts are to not play such games on the terms of others. He keeps running at exactly the same speed as if making a point of it....
At her suggestion, he shakes his head* "Nyet, you race ahead.... It is good to run at your full potential..... clear the head....... I will keep eye..... on the surrounding....meet at fountain." *He says inbetween breaths while running*
[Nessa] Nessa pushes hard, but not as hard as she could.
She could leave him in the dust behind her. And be completely exposed in case Today Is The Day.
Instead, the kinfolk with the Shadowed eyes has waited, kept to his pace, until he tells her to go on ahead.
Like a hawk set free, she bursts into flight, her muscled legs flying over the ground, pushing off and launching her into the air with each stride, the speed making her soul crave for more,for the run to never, ever end, to find a way to fly forever...
Or until she reaches the fountain, huge, dramatic, a taste of the art which lies waiting for admiration inside the museum just across the way.
The sprint ends, and she is there, sucking in air, slowing to a walk, glowing and flushed. The feeling is heady, until the hairs on her arm raise in reaction to an ahroun near, a full moon on a full moon.
[Lukas] Nine years, then. One short of a decade. Over a third of her life. Where was he nine years ago? Fourteen years old, freshly Firsted -- ah, that's where he was.
He remembers now.
She goes on to describe, in a nutshell, her financial situation; savings, investments, retirement accounts. The last amuses him, but only faintly: that a kin would invest for the long term. Lukas doesn't have a single account that isn't liquidatable within six months. Most are freely withdrawable. Then again, roth IRAs are also accessible under circumstances of major life changes. So maybe that wasn't her retirement account after all. Maybe it was her emergencies account.
That's a less amusing thought. It wasn't that amusing to begin with, anyway.
And one can't help but draw the parallels between his investments and hers, with one major exception: she worked for every last dime of hers. He ... merely grew up. He was merely born with the particular spark in his soul that makes him more than human, and had the good fortune of having a father forward-thinking enough to put away some money for his future; a father wise enough to teach him how to manage his own finances. A sort of last and lasting kindness for when his son was no longer his son, and no longer his to raise and protect and support.
Another Ahroun might feel that she were trying to one-up him, or slight him in some way. Another Ahroun might grow bad-tempered, prone to anger, prone to reacting majorly to a minor irritation. Lukas simply reaches up to catch her fingers in his. He brings her hand down to his mouth and he kisses her fingertips, and his eyes never fall shut; never fall away. They seem to mirror the sky, only she knows that color is all his own.
"I suppose you have a better claim to paying for your own existence than I do," he says, faintly ironic.
In public but not, so far as either notices yet, in the company of anyone who actually knows either of them, there's a distinct impression of intimacy about them. Anyone would think them a couple. Lovers. Anyone would think him terribly abusive and her possibly so cowed as to no longer realize her misfortune -- but that's beyond the point.
The point is, Nessa runs up, and she does know Lukas, and furthermore, she knows what he is. Faintly but perceptibly, the interaction between Lukas and Danicka changes. Some of the intimacy dissipates. He lets go her fingers and he raises himself on his elbows, lounging now, eyelids low as he looks into the afternoon sun to see Nessa walking it off after her recent ... what, jog? Sprint? Race?
"You know Agnessa Malikoff, don't you?" he says to Danicka. "She's Milo's sister." And, raising his voice to be heard -- as if Nessa could mistake his presence -- "Hey! Nessa."
[Vasily Zaitsev] *He keeps his measured pace, eyes observing the area around him. He watches as Nessa runs far ahead, content that she was in eyesight, and not yet too far to have to resort to scope sight. Where he's done much of his overwatch of her this last week or so.
It wouldn't be too far long until he would get to the fountain, but he wasn't in any particular hurry to get there.*
[Lukas] (sorry bout massive posts. they'll get smaller.)
[Vasily Zaitsev] ((naa, post away. it's all good *grins*))
[Nessa] At least babysitting Nessa isn't precisely boring. She has led him allll the hell over and back during the week on some very strange outings.
This one, though, she could be anyone, from a distance, a woman seeing two friends, called over, walks over as any friendly person might.
"Privyet, Lukas, Danicka." She offers no cheerfulness, no smile, but on the other hand, she isn't crying on them like she might have two weeks ago. Not a tear in sight, if no joy either.
Nessa doesn't keep her distance from them, walks right into the kill zone without a seeming care, chooses an appropriately social but not intimate distance at which she can pace around, keepign her legs warmed up. Black workout gear today. Any other month, for any other reason, the color would be a joke.
[Vasily Zaitsev] ((whew, sorry all. I'm hitting the wall here... need sleepy... Vasily is just going to sit back and observe from a distance))
[Danicka] She is not yet twenty-five years old, and nearly ten of that was spent all but indentured to a single family. However, a family that was able to keep her from being claimed and mated off by her own Tribe by virtue of their influence and her family's desire for that alliance. A family that could pay her enough that she drives a late-model BMW and lives in an apartment whose rent is over three thousand dollars a month. And she hasn't even touched her savings yet. No wonder he has never seen her in the same lingerie twice. Hell. Not even the same dress.
Danicka does indeed point out that whereas Lukas's month that he calls 'his' was planted and grown for him, like an orange orchard for him to become steward of when he was old enough, plucking its fruits without ever having dug a hole for the sapling, she gave up nearly a decade of her life for what she has. She gave up college. She gave up a lot. He does not know what all she has given up. He may never. She does not point this out to tease or belittle him, however; she knows now how he grew up, and she does not compare their experiences, or how they came by their bank accounts.
It doesn't really matter to her, but she teases him. She teases him because she does not mean it. And that's the difference.
She breathes in when he kisses her fingertips, because he might bite them off. That's the difference, too: between a new moon and full, between the last time she saw him and this. "We both come by it honestly," she says, equally ironic, but for separate reasons.
Ness comes running up then, and there is a rippling separation between the two of them on the edge. They don't jerk apart or suddenly sit up straight like teenagers caught making out on the couch in the basement, but there's a definite shift that occurs in both of them at once, without a protracted and knowing glance between them or hesitance. They just part, as though the motion was born in both of them at the same time. But they stay close. Danicka turns her head and looks at Nessa, nodding at Lukas's question on whether or not she knows her, blinking -- but not in surprise -- when he tells her the woman's relation. She glances past Nessa at the hooded man, a hint of revulsion passing through her eyes, and looks at the other woman again instead.
"Privyet, Ms. Malikoff," she says. Her pronunciation is perfect.
[Lukas] "Are you jogging?" Lukas looks past Nessa to her hooded, disfigured -- or at least bandaged -- and apparently shy companion. "Or running for dear life?"
[Nessa] She must have seen his face without the bandages. Bless the bandages. Ick.
Nessa nearly grins, as in there is a surge of energy which is not painful, something which raises her chin a little and brings warmth to her blue eyes.
"If I were running for dear life, I would be out of shouting range by now. Vasily is keeping watch. Or something. " She peeks back at the philodox, inspects whatever the hell he is doing. "I don't know what he is doing, but am sure he has good reasons for ahh whatever is."
It is likely that if Danicka is quite selective about clothing, that Nessa briefly inspects her clothing with appreciation. The fine art of wardrobe expansion is a relaxing past time, and mostly free. For her. Maybe the Russian woman hasn't so indulged lately though. She has looked better; her grief interfered with too many meals, too many hours of what was previously her sleeping schedule. Nessa is too thin, the bones of her high cheeks too visible, with signs of weeks of frequent sleep deprivation.
"I do run as often as possible. Always looking for companions during, too, if you care to stretch your legs sometime." The offer is politely offered to both of the clearly-a-couple.
[Danicka] In point of fact, Danicka has never seen Vasily before. He's disguised, and well. He's concealed, and expertly. There is no genuinely good explanation for the flicker of disgust -- or fear -- in Danicka's eyes, the aversion that glints off of the amber flecks in her irises. She is sitting next to Lukas, though, close enough that her reaction to his Rage is apparently not enough to make her run screaming for the hills.
Danicka is indeed...selective. Her scarf is fine, her sweater expensive, her jeans maybe two weeks old, her boots well-loved but you would love them too if you'd spent three hundred dollars on them. She considers the other woman briefly, and briefly only, before reaching into one of the bags and withdrawing a square purple box. She removes the lid, revealing nine truffles nestled inside.
"Chocolate?" she asks mildly, extending the box towards Nessa.
[Lukas] "I think I'll pass." On the run, not the chocolates. Well; he passes on the chocolates too, but perhaps only because they haven't been explicitly offered to him. These little politenesses are so ingrained in Lukas that he doesn't even think about them.
His eyes are on Vasily instead, measuring and curious, even. As even as an Ahroun's eyes can be during his moon, anyway. They return to Nessa: it's like being slapped in the face. With a burning baseball bat.
"I haven't met 'Vasily'. Who is he?"
[Nessa] "Thank you." Polite words, and one of the truffles is selected, Nessa's touch as delicate as if she were defusing a bomb. Not that she ever has done so before, but she sure has hell has dropped a few.
Not truffles. She has never dropped a truffle in her life. This one, she nibbles on one side, a slow pleasure with no guilt at all. If it were food, per se, she might not eat it. Chocolate, however, that's more a... sacrament.
She is not far from Lukas at all, not close enough to threaten Danicka's claim to him, if it were even possible to do so. When he turns his gaze to her, she meets his eyes evenly, without flinching, more firm than the last time they had met. Answers him, then lets her gaze drift deliberately to her treat, avoiding too long a contact with him, for whatever reason.
"Vasily Zaitsev. He is philodox of our tribe. A friend of my brother, is I think going to join my brother's pack." Nessa has had two nibbles so far, stares at the chocolate as if trying to decide what to do next with it. "I hope you will find him as or more interesting as I do. He is another of our tribe who resets my understanding of our ways, restores my faith. As does Milo, Mrena, yourself, Lukas."
Another taste. Life is better, with chocolate. A little better.
[Danicka] It would be impossible for Nessa to threaten Danicka's claim on Lukas. Not because they are just so very bound to one another, so very trusting, that it would be unthinkable. It's simply impossible for something to be threatened that is not there. Danicka has no claim on Lukas. The other way around, however...
When Nessa takes one of the truffles, Danicka smiles politely, then turns and offers the box to the Ahroun beside her. She does not say anything, but holds it towards him mutely, without looking at him. The box simply floats there, waiting for a few moments, maybe a quarter of a minute or so, before she draws it back to herself -- whether he has taken a chocolate or not. She plucks one out of the box that has a pecan laying on the top, puts the lid back on, and returns the box to the bag by her feet.
She sits quietly, and demurely, her legs crossed at the ankle and her hands to herself. She is attentive, or at least seems so. She listens, or appears to be listening. She eats her chocolate quietly, and neatly, and slowly.
[Lukas] Lukas does, indeed, take a truffle. And he doesn't nibble politely. He eats the whole thing in one gulp.
And, chewing, he continues to watch Vasily, his eyes narrowed -- not suspicion but interest.
"I'll try to have a talk with him sometime." He looks at Nessa again, finally. "Is Odin's Eye still with Milo? Or have the Goblins gone wholly with Thunder?"
[Nessa] Odin's Eye.. Ah... She wades through the names she never uses, till the face matches. Fenrir. Her face goes blank. "Oh, da. Still. More to join soon. Also new one with them, but since your sort don't always use doors, is hard to keep track of who comes and goes there. Is good, Danicka. What chocolatier is this?"
In place of marijuana, kinfolk would be well advised to keep chocolate around when they meet with garou. It's a good close second in effect. For Nessa, anyways. She sighs, and licks the filled center of her truffle with the tip of her tongue,
[Danicka] She would have been happy to sit there, eating her chocolate, quietly observing the two of them and the fountain and the passerby...until Nessa asks her a question. Danicka looks up, her eyes a little wide, blinking twice. "Oh...Vosges Haut," she answers simply, nudging the bag with the toe of one boot.
She goes back to eating her truffle.
[Lukas] "Good," Lukas seems genuinely pleased. "I'm glad to hear that. Last I heard Zeke was concerned about your numbers being thin."
[Nessa] She hesitates, lowers the chocolate. Her attention aims at Lukas, her words a little more than a hint.
"I see many, many of our cousins, larger and smaller, around lately. Always it seems when this happens, ahh... trouble follows. As if we instinctively come where more danger will be, where more threats are. Bracing..."
Her stomach clenches tightly at what she knows, has seen, expects to see and what she cannot possibly imagine. Just knows-- it's bad.
[Danicka] [[Skip me!]]
[Lukas] Throughout all of this Lukas has remained more or less in repose -- sprawled on the wide lip of the fountain, propped on his elbows, his legs stretching away from Danicka. At this latest bit from Nessa, the Ahroun's mouth moves. It's a smile, but only barely: wry rather than amused.
"When the Circle left the eastern seaboard, we chose this city precisely because it was relatively unguarded. I'm sure your brother had the same in mind when he chose to return." And he sits up, swinging his legs down to the ground, his upper body coming upright. The motion is slow and smooth, but his rage crackles around him -- it's impossible not to feel some threat in it, whether he means it or not. "Instinct had little to do with it."
A beat.
"That reminds me." He doesn't bother to explain his thought process. "Has Andrew left you alone recently?"
[Nessa] "No, he finished his duty where he was, long long mission, and returned as he said he would, to find me. Then stayed, and I don't care why, I am just grateful to my soul he is alive and back."
She isn't alone. How many times a day does she repeat the words to herself? A new mantra. Her arms are still empty.
"Andrew?" the question draws her back from bad thoughts; the lupus is bloody cheery incomparison. "No, I have not seen him for some time. With having to give up my son and why, I have been only very rarely where might run into Andrew anyways."
Ugh. Nessa looks at the chocolate, unfinished, a bad taste in her mouth and heart again. "I shouod get on, Vasily is waiting. I am sure he ahh wishes to run many many more miles. "
There's a lie.
[Lukas] There's no doubt that Lukas picks up on the mention of her son and the words, give up. But there's no reaction; no avid questioning, no outpouring of sympathy. Perhaps it's a mercy.
Instead he focuses on the question he'd asked and the answer he'd received: "Good. I'm glad to hear that, too."
No more or less. She mentions Vasily is waiting, wants to keep running. Lukas's pale eyes flicker toward the reticent Lord again, and back.
"Well, I won't keep you waiting, then. Pass on my regards to your brother and his pack for me. And tell Vasily I'd like to make his acquaintance next time."
[Nessa] "I will. Enjoy your day together."
It may be your last. Ahh, the power of positive thinking.
Doom and Gloom join up again, and run off if not into the sunset, at least towards the lake wall.
[Nessa] (night, thanksfor scene)
to Danicka, Lukas
[Lukas] (night! thanks for joining!)
to Danicka, Nessa
[Danicka] [Sorry I was afk for so much of the end! Thank you for the RP, share!]
to Lukas, Nessa
[Danicka] For all this while, little Danicka has been eating her little chocolate with a small smile on her face. She enjoys the simplicity of it, makes it seem simple, even while one has to acknowledge that a three-dollar truffle should probably not be called 'simple'. Truly, she's the perfect Shadow Lord Kinswoman. Seen -- and nice to look at. Not heard, because she has nothing to say.
She doesn't glance around furtively or look shocked. She doesn't ask questions. She eats her chocolate on the edge of a fountain, properly and permanently infantilized. She exists, and apparently with great happiness, in a state of perpetual, blissful dependence. Danicka does not even hitch when Nessa says give up my son. Her pretty brow furrows and her mouth pouts softly with sympathy.
"Poka, Ms. Malikoff," she says, as Nessa is jogging off again.
Danicka licks a bit of chocolate off the pad of her thumb, her eyes gently hooded.
[Lukas] Lukas watches Nessa and her quiet friend go, thoughtful, perhaps faintly frowning. When she's gone around the bend of the path he turns to Danicka, looks at her diminishing box of truffles, and helps himself to another.
"Why do you do that?" he asks, suddenly, so out of the blue that there's no way to answer simply because there's no way to tell what, exactly, he's really asking. A beat; then he adds, by way of explanation, "Act so empty and placid."
This time when he looks at her, he looks at her, his ragesharpened eyes on her face.
"Is it because you were taught to? Or because it's easy? Because it lets you watch others?" He could be peppering her with questions, but he's not. He throws out all the possibilities he can think of off the top of his head, haphazardly, uninvestedly, like playing cards tossed into the wind. Last, and with a gentleness that he has to struggle for in this moon phase, when the easiest thing for him to do would be to snarl and growl and snap, "What?"
[Danicka] When the moon's full it's hard enough to sit here calmly by his head, in reach of his arms and his teeth, eating a truffle. When the moon is full it's hard enough for Danicka to sit there smiling down at him, stroking his hair and gently teasing him.
Or maybe it's not.
She sees his eyes looking -- with something between calculation and interest, which is the way he first looked at her -- at the bag from Vosges Haut at her feet and smiles, reaching in and pulling out the box again. It is set on her lap, the lid pulled, as he goes for another. Danicka puts the lid back on but does not put it away, not just yet. She tips her head, the mask still in place, but a faint smile at the edges of not only her lips but her eyes. She meets his eyes, but only for a moment, and then drops her gaze a bit.
"In that case," Danicka says, looking at his hand, wherever it is, "...it's because it's easier than feigning interest where I have none." She looks up at him again, quite content with this somewhat dismissive, fuck-other-people attitude, and gives a small shrug. "I had nothing to contribute to the conversation, so I contributed nothing, ate my chocolate, and let my mind wander."
That's not all there is to it. But nothing ever is, with her.
[Lukas] His hand is holding the truffle, which is slowly melting onto his fingers. His hand is paused in midair, where it would be an easy swing up to his mouth -- but he seems to have forgotten the chocolate.
"And in other cases?"
[Danicka] They're sitting side by side still, close together but not as close -- or not as close in the same way -- as they were when he was reclining. Danicka is looking at him along the line of her shoulder, but she turns a bit more towards him and leans in slightly, considering his question.
"Force of habit," she says slowly, reaching over and touching his hand, the one that's forgotten it's holding a melting truffle. She rubs her thumb on the heel of his hand, feeling the bands of muscle underneath. "Or ...because it's just...safer," she adds, and lowers her head to take the truffle in her mouth, her tongue sweeping out deftly to get some of the melted chocolate off his fingertips as well.
[Lukas] Something elemental and inexplicable happens when she touches his hand, long before she bends to eat his truffle. Which is really her truffle. Which -- doesn't really matter at all, at that point.
But that's still in the future. For now: it's just her hand on his, and he looks down, his sharp eyes dropping from hers to look at her thumb sweeping the heel of his hand. It's such a simple thing, that. Contact is such a simple, uncomplicated thing, and yet it loosens something inside him; chips at some wall, some tension.
His hand turns over a little, palm rotating skyward. It's almost as though he were offering up the chocolate, though that isn't his intention, or even on his mind. He's thinking about what she said, and he's thinking about her hand on his, and why even this is enough to change the tenor of their interaction.
To establish a connection.
Then she's bending to eat the chocolate he's forgotten, and this doesn't remind him that he's holding a piece of chocolate, though it certainly rivets his attention to his hand. His fingertips move slightly, wholly of their own accord, as her tongue sweeps their contours. She can hear him draw a very slow, very carefully steady breath.
"I don't mind," he continues, after, and rather stoically. "I just find it strange, how easily and thoroughly people believe it."
[Danicka] It takes Danicka a few moments to savor, and eat, the truffle she just stole back from his fingertips. She ate the other one over the course of several back-and-forth passes of conversation between Lukas and Agnessa, but this one she scooped up and chews thoughtfully, taking her time. It is not exactly an oyster, and it is good enough to deserve some savoring. It also gives her a moment to consider his comment, even though she already knows how she is going to respond. Even though she knows that no response is truly necessary.
Now he can stop and wonder if she touched his wrist and hand for the sake of touching him, the same way she stroked his hair when she first sat down or leaned on his arm on Saturday morning, or if she touched his wrist and hand because she was planning on stealing that chocolate out of his hand. And not just by snatching it up with her fingers but by licking his. It was quickly done but by god it was shameless.
She does not, notably, let go of his hand even after she takes the chocolate. Even after she tastes it, chews it, swallows it and lets the ganache melt in her mouth. So that's something. "I know you don't mind," she says with gentle teasing when she's done, using her free hand's thumb to check the corners of her mouth. There's no flecks or smears of chocolate along her lips, but she checks anyway. She's rather tidy, her kitchen sink standing as evidence to the contrary.
She knows he doesn't mind because he told her, at Spring-the-restaurant, that he in fact likes these pretenses, these masks, the difference between Danicka-with-everyone and Danicka-with-him. The difference between politely offering Nessa a truffle and literally licking one out of his hand as though she's an animal.
"People believe what they want to believe," she says dryly, and finally lets go of his hand. "And it usually isn't very hard to guess what they want to believe, and not very hard at all to give it to them."
[Lukas] Lukas watches her dabbing her thumb over the corners of her mouth with perhaps more interest than the gesture warrants. He watches her mouth a moment longer even after, and let's be honest: he's not thinking of chocolate, or even his fingers, in her mouth at all.
When she lets go his hand his thoughts settle back into order.
"Out of habit?" he echoes back to her, as though tasting the words. He doesn't wipe his fingers dry on his jeans; instead, his hand rests on his thigh, matching the other. "And because it's safer?"
[Danicka] She lays her hands in her lap, less firmly perhaps than his, less spaced. They tangle loosely on top of her knees, fingers laced but not quite woven, and looks at him in...that way she has. It's not the way she looks at him when he's smiling, or when he's making her tense, or that way she looked at him when he was washing up in the bath and she was sitting in a silk robe on the bathroom counter.
It's that way that tells him he's being read, that she sees him better than most people have a right to and better than anyone currently wandering through the park even could, especially with the moon the way it will be upon rising. It is, in fact, the way she looked at him the first time she saw him...in Chicago, at least.
(The first time she saw him, period, she had been instructed to be polite to his parents, and nice to he and his sister, and when she looked at him she had simply said My name is Danička. Do you want to go outside? And when he had looked back at her understanding nothing but her name and appearing a little troubled by this, she had -- suddenly brightening with excitement, in fact -- asked Mluvíte česky?, and she had not bothered to speak English to him or to his sister again until her father told her to do so.)
She nods to answer him, because that is all it takes to answer him, and tips her head to one side. "Jsi v pořádku?" she asks, her voice quiet, her lips barely parting to let the words out.
[Lukas] She nods -- it's not hard to guess what people want and give it to them out of habit, and because it's safer.
And then she asks him, quietly, and in Czech, if he's all right. The last time she asked him this, they were in a hotel; she was arched like a bow, and he her string; he was still inside her and the world had just collapsed to ashes around them.
He was okay then. He told her so.
Today, sitting on the edge of a fountain, he only brushes the question off -- it's perhaps deliberate that he also stays in english and out of the language that was his first and, when he met her, his only.
"It wasn't safer with me," he points out. It's somehow more self-deprecating than anything else.
Far clearer than what murky memories he had of their shared childhood -- though not so clear as his memories of her bend backwards to rest against his shoulder, his chest, her body taut beneath his exploring hands -- is the memory of the night at the Blue Chalk cafe, where she lied to him, three times, and he called her a liar, twice, warned her, once, and never hit her at all.
But he could have. Just like he could've bitten her fingers off instead of kissing them. Just like he could've torn her face off for eating his food. Not because he wants to -- but because he can't help it.
Being a werewolf's lover is a little like playing with a loaded gun. It's a lot like that.
"I should get back to the Brotherhood," he says, then. "The moot's in a few hours. Why don't you follow me back to my car? I left the talens there, and I'll explain what they're for and how to use them."
[Danicka] "One could argue," Danicka says drolly, "that I was too concerned with what I wanted to think much on whether I was safe or not."
The implications of that are, depending on the state of mind he's in, charged or chilling. She says it almost dismissively, though, offhand, brushing away the comment like he brushed away the question. This practiced but not altogether comfortable distance is understandable: the moon is full even if it's daylight still. And they are not catching their breath on a hotel armchair but sitting by one of the more familiar, famous structures in Grant Park. And they aren't touching.
She's called him her boyfriend. Liadan has referred to him in a sentence as your man and it nearly made Danicka's heart stop. No one is using the word lover. It's sticky business, what to label one another, and much easier to just use each other's names. Which is what Danicka does.
"All right, Lukášek," she says simply, and moves to stand. She uncrosses her ankles and bends to pick up her bags, putting the truffle box back in its bag, gathering the others. Her scarf flutters slightly in the breeze as she moves, as does her hair, and they continue to move when she stands.
[Lukas] Almost automatically -- only it's not -- Lukas bends to help Danicka with her various bags, if she lets him. They stand more or less together, and he looks at her a moment before tipping his head to show her which way they were headed.
Which she would have known, anyway, when he begins walking. They leave the large fountain and its admirers behind; he's parked at the nearest parking lot, which makes his choice of Buckingham fountain as his napping spot less poetry and more coincidence. It's not a long walk to Lukas's car, and unless she speaks, it's a silent one.
Though he'd put it there himself, Lukas finds himself regretting the distance between them now without knowing quite how to breach it. When they're at the car he puts her bags atop the trunk; gets his keys out of his pocket, unlocks the doors. He looks at her over the top of the car, or over his shoulder, wherever she might be.
"Are you parked close by?"
[Danicka] She doesn't bother stopping him. More than a few people -- though none Lukas will ever meet, none who know her family in New York or who could start rumors among other Kinfolk and Garou -- have referred to her as 'twisted', and she she does take a sort of warped delight in watching Lukas walk through Grant Park carrying bags from a cosmetics shop, a chocolatier, and H&fuckingM. She retains her purse, however, walking alongside him as they head to his car.
It does not upset her to think of people looking her way and thinking of what sort of woman she may be, not carrying her own bags. It does not bother her in the slightest for Nessa to think she's an empty-headed doll. People believe what they want to believe, and it doesn't have to touch who she really is. So she doesn't let it. There's no reason for her to refuse what is meant to be a gesture of courtesy or even just an expression of Lukas's own ingrained habits, and so...she doesn't refuse it.
She lengthens her stride to closer match his. He shortens his own to not outpace her overmuch. Which is how it almost always is, at least lately.
At his car, Danicka leans against the side of the vehicle, on the same side as he is, her arms loosely crossed over her belly and her purse hanging from one hand. "Not too far," she answers reassuringly, if vaguely. Then, with some confusion and definite wariness: "...Why are you giving me talens?"
[Lukas] Not too far, she says. He looks at her a moment. Then he lifts her bags off the top of his trunk with his left hand, opens the trunk with his right, and lowers the bags in.
"I'll drive you over," he replies.
Provided she doesn't protest, he circles around to the passenger's side door -- not merely out of courtesy, but because the talens are in the glove compartment. He leans in to retrieve them, and they're in a small cardboard box, white, smaller than the one that had held her gun.
He holds the door long enough for her to get in. Then, circling around, he climbs in the driver's side and shuts the door, and doesn't start the engine yet.
"For the same reason I got you a gun," he replies. Wry, then: "So you can die fighting and screaming."
It's not really funny. It's not funny at all. The joke falls flat in the air; he winces and turns his attention to the box, which he opens, and passes to her.
There are an assortment of odd little curios inside: four darts -- actual darts, the sort one might fling at a dartboard at an old-fashioned pub, though these gleam with an odd iridescent light; five tiny, stoppered test tubes of an inky black liquid; and, wrapped in cellophane, a stack of three rather unsanitary-looking gauze bandages, soaked through and crusted dry in some red-brown substance that was almost assuredly blood.
[Danicka] On the first full moon that they spent together -- in any sense of the words 'spent' and 'together' -- Danicka had no trouble arguing with him, even though she did it gently. She stayed when she should have left, she told him to stop when he almost not bear to, she threw condoms at him and he did not snarl but sort of laughed...and Danicka knows how rare even dry amusement can be when the moon is full. She knows how quickly humor can turn ugly. Just because an Ahroun smiles on the night of a moot doesn't mean you're safe. You're never quite safe.
On the second full moon, he warned her that he might lose control, and she pleasured him. He hurt her and she welcomed him -- which is different, vastly, from welcoming the pain. He told her that he wasn't sure how he would have put himself back together again if she had cast him aside, and she told him... vám náležet zde.
It is not that she isn't afraid of him. It's evident in the way she picks her battles now, out in public. She doesn't stop him from carrying her bags. She doesn't argue when he -- irrationally -- decides to sweep her bags into the trunk and drive her a few parking lots over to her car. She waits for him to open the door, and follows the white box with her eyes, staring at it with an utterly blank look on her face and a faintly calculating expression in her eyes. Danicka does not protest, and doesn't resist anything he pushes for. It's a conversational, touchless equivalent of the way she has made her body go limp in the past when he's grabbed her in anger.
Which he has not done for awhile, come to think of it.
No, Danicka is definitely afraid of him. She's careful with the land mine, the loaded gun, the werewolf who shares a moon with the ghost that used to be her mother. She'd be stupid not to be. It's just that when they aren't out in public and the battles are really more inside each of them than between them, Danicka's wants outclass her fears by miles.
He gets into the car as well, closes the door, and blocks out the last traces of sound from the Park. Danicka looks from the box to him when he mentions the gun. She huffs out a breath of non-laughter from her nostrils, either sharing in his wry attempt at humor or expressing her opinion of it...or her opinion of the idea of her fighting and screaming, period. That's all. He winces; the box opens, and Danicka peers inside without touching anything. She does not seem repulsed, even by the bloody bandages, or scared.
If anything, she looks curious. It's almost childlike, completely open, judging nothing. Her eyes take them all in, then drift up to his face again. "You are a profound worrywart, Lukášek," she says patiently, lifting an eyebrow ."Do you know that?"
[Lukas] Lukas doesn't rush into an explanation. He lets her look at the talismans in the box -- the assortment of darts and bandages and test tubes that make no sense at all on their own. Perhaps he's learned that when confronted with something wholly new, Danicka needs a moment simply to take it in, and anything he says now will be attended to with only half an ear, if that.
When she looks at him and calls him a worrywart, he exhales a humorless laugh.
"I'd rather arm you now and hope you'll never have to use it, rather than wish I had armed you when it's already too late."
A pause.
"Why are you so troubled, Dani�ka?"
[Danicka] The woman he's sharing a car with at the moment, and a bed with when he can get away with it, has no higher education. He does not know what her high school GPA was. He knows that she listens to indie music in her car rather than NPR, classic rock at home rather than classical, and the only thing he's ever seen her watch on that enormous television of hers is The Fifth Element. She's a reader, but only seems to have that one tiny shelf of less than ten books on her nightstand. But regardless of all of that, he knows that she's intelligent.
It's not because she has a diploma on her wall or because she asks insightful questions or even because she seems so adept at bullshitting people. Lukas is getting to know Danicka, whether either of them want that or intended it, and it's moments like this that tell him that she is quite bright. Moments like this and, perhaps, that 'tip' she gave him about going for the thing's joints when she did not even know what the thing was. Right now, however, she's peering at the box of talens and he's astute enough to just let her look as long as she needs to, taking them in and considering them -- and her reaction to them -- in her own time.
He asks her what's troubling her, or more specifically why she is as troubled as she is, and it seems that there being a closed door between them and the rest of the world makes all the difference for her. Danicka casts her eyes down from his for a moment, takes a breath, and sits back in her chair. Her body is turned somewhat in the seat to ease the strain on her neck while she looks at him. And she does look at him, her eyes sliding back up to his almost alien-vivid blue gaze.
"I'm just...not used to being worried over." She pauses, then reaches over into the box and pulls out one of the cellophone-wrapped bandages, frowning slightly at him. "Is this your blood?"
[Lukas] There's light in the sky. When she meets his eyes, hers are blue as well. It's unusual for him to see how sharply blue her eyes become in the daylight, as though its native greenness only lasted so long as there wasn't a sky to reflect. His own eyes never reflected the light around him. They remain perfectly, icily blue. Dark or light, day or night.
"Would you like me to pretend I'm not?"
His eyes flicker down to the bandages when she asks him about them. He looks at the small stack for a moment, and then back at her.
"Some of it, yeah." There's a shred of rueful humor here that wasn't in him a second ago. "Sorry. It's a requirement for that particular talen."
[Danicka] In the dimmer light of his car's interior her eyes are slowly dampening back to green, but when the sunlight has her pupils dilated and the sky is blue enough for the sun to even be seen, they're a watery blue. Never vivid or burning or icy but as lightly colored as the sort of crystalline pond only ever seen or described in fairy tales. It's serene. No: serenity in Danicka is a lie. When her eyes are blue, and at least when she's looking at him, their color is not placid but peaceful.
"No," she answers simply, and somewhat quietly. The corner of her mouth tugs outward. "I like that you're honest." Remember?
At his answer, she just sighs and sets the bloody bandage back in the box. Danicka picks up one of the test tubes and looks at him. "What's this made of?"
[Lukas] Sometimes a conversation with Danicka feels like a series of irrevocable choices. That's true for any conversation -- words spoken can't be unspoken; a conversational path taken can't be untaken, and all -- but he feels it more with her than any. Because he doesn't know or understand her, though he's beginning to. Because he'd like to, and at any given moment, it seems there are so many things to say and ask, any one of which precludes the rest.
Would you like me to pretend, he'd asked, and by doing so, eliminated the possibility of asking whatever else he might've. The moment's past now. She's moving on, asking about the nightshade talens.
The test tubes are rather thickwalled and sturdy; not the kind you might buy at a party store to hold shots in but smaller, about the size of a finger, and made of tough pyrex. It will not break easily, even if dropped from a moderate height. The liquid within is a little more viscous than water, and does not cling to the sides when the vial is tipped.
"Water," he says, wry. "And a piece of a spirit of night."
As though her question had flipped a switch, Lukas becomes businesslike and matter-of-fact. He reaches out and takes the tube from her. It's small and fragile in the palm of his hand.
"This is called a nightshade talen," he says. "If you drink it down, it will turn your body to shadow. You will have no mass, no scent, no tangible presence. To all observation you will simply be a three-dimensional patch of living shadow, very hard to see. Be aware, though, that you won't be able to speak or physically manipulate objects either, and if you are spotted, you're as vulnerable to attack as you ever are. The effects last for an hour."
He says this levelly, academically, listing off effects and caveats as though he weren't talking about impossible, mind-bending feats. When he finishes there's a silence as he replaces the tube of nightshade beside the others and very carefully picks up one of the darts instead.
"This is called a sensory deprivation dart. It's better termed a sensory overload dart. You activate it by focusing your will, the way you might with a particularly difficult task. If you've successfully activated it, it will come alive, and may look or feel slightly different to you.
"Once activated, if it pierces the skin, it will flood the senses of the victim instantly and completely. For exactly three seconds, the victim is be unable to see, hear, smell, taste or feel anything but the chaos in his own mind.
"If you're ever cornered and outmatched and escape is not a possibility, use a dart on your attacker and drink down a nightshade talen. While your foe is overloaded, find yourself a dark spot and hide. You'll have to plan ahead and move fast. When his senses return to him, hopefully it will look as though you've simply vanished into thin air.
"It's not much so far as protection goes, but it might give you a better chance of survival if worst comes to worst."
[Danicka] When talking to Danicka, Lukas sees forks in the road, choices to be made. If not one, then the other, and he never knows if he'll ever get a chance to go back to a certain point and find out where the other might have led. He asks her one question and they move on, so he cannot ask the others. When he's getting lost in talking to her, he sees forks in the road. He forgets sometimes there isn't even a real path.
Danicka does indeed play around with the tube a little. She holds it up to what daylight is left, she tips the vial back and forth, and considers both the color and the movement of the fluid inside. Water, he says, and a piece of a spirit. She looks askance at him, one eyebrow cocked, dubious...not of the veracity of his statement but with a sort of and I'm supposed to drink this?. One can imagine her asking what the caloric content of a piece of a spirit of night is.
In reality, she's wondering what it tastes like, as she hands over the tube somewhat reluctantly. Then he explains the darts, and both of her eyebrows hop up in curiosity, and even a sort of vague amusement. I'll have to practice at the bar, she thinks, but does not say. Not today, when it's a full moon and he might very well flip out at the idea of her in a dive bar, even though a dive bar is where she seemed perfectly at home even while wearing cashmere.
She listens while he speaks, hands loosely folded, and then raises one like a child in a classroom. "Ooh! Are the bandages for healing, Mr. Kvasnička?"
[Lukas] Between the two of them, Danicka is the more likely to act -- well -- childishly at times. Unpredictably. This is so even though she is also the elder of the two, and while this matters little now when they're in their twenties, and one is a werewolf, and the other kin to wolves, it mattered much more when they were young.
Despite his seriousness, Lukas has, in the past, tolerated Danicka's ... moments more often than not. But for whatever reason -- the moon, the situation, what it cost him to make the talens; the fact that he is handing over a box of talens at all to someone the Shadow Lord tribe would consider barely a member of their society, but indubitably a part of their possessions -- whatever the reason, Lukas is not amused.
She can see that plainly. His lips do not so much as twitch. He looks at her, not quite frowning, but with his face set and expressionless. A beat goes by.
"Dani�ka, this is not a joke."
[Lukas] Between the two of them, Danicka is the more likely to act -- well -- childishly at times. Unpredictably. This is so even though she is also the elder of the two, and while this matters little now when they're in their twenties, and one is a werewolf, and the other kin to wolves, it mattered much more when they were young.
Despite his seriousness, Lukas has, in the past, tolerated Danicka's ... moments more often than not. But for whatever reason -- the moon, the situation, what it cost him to make the talens; the fact that he is handing over a box of talens at all to someone the Shadow Lord tribe would consider barely a member of their society, but indubitably a part of their possessions -- whatever the reason, Lukas is not amused.
She can see that plainly. His lips do not so much as twitch. He looks at her, not quite frowning, but with his face set and expressionless. A beat goes by.
"Danička, this is not a joke."
[Danicka] She lowers her hands, unaffected by his stoicism, and tips her head to the side. "Is the only time I laugh when I think something is a joke, Lukáš?"
[Lukas] Lukas looks away for a moment, likely to get ahold of his rising irritation. "Why don't you spare me the guessing game and tell me why you're laughing, then."
[Danicka] He looks away, and she turns towards the passenger side window as well. He is trying to get a hold of his increasing annoyance. She is hiding the fact that she's rolling her eyes. They both do a superb job of creating the set-up for a commercial, turning away from each other. Any minute now the image will freeze and cut to the two of them sharing a milkshake in the car or playing a board game in a nondescript living room.
Or not.
"Maybe you should make me a list of things we can talk about with good humour. Sex: yes. Handguns: fine. Talens: rozhodně ne." Her head turns back around, eyes going to him.
[Lukas] Lukas props one elbow up against the Lincoln's door, pinching his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose. A short pause before he answers, and when he does, he's straining for a level tone.
"It's not about good humor, Danička. It's about you doing me the kindness of listening to what I'm goddamn saying to you when I'm trying to be serious. This is important."
[Danicka] "Where did you get the idea I wasn't listening to you, or that I don't get that this is serious, or that I don't think it's important?" she shoots back, not as harshly as the word even implies. If anything, she sounds exasperated. "What do you want, reverence?"
[Lukas] "I want some sense that you value your own life as much as I do!"
Danicka may not have shot her answer back, quite, but Lukas certain does: harshly, instantaneous, whipping around to glare it into her.
[Danicka] She takes it. The sudden lurch of his head, too graceful and too fast to be jarring. She takes the snap of his voice that makes her, momentarily, fixate on his teeth. She waits a moment, watching him, remaining still either because she is waiting to see if he goes for her throat or because she is giving herself -- or him, god only knows -- a couple of seconds to step back.
Whether he does or not, she can't control. She does, however, lower her voice, removing from it the exasperation but not the patience. "I can tell you...that I don't want to die, and that I generally try not to die." Danicka pauses, quietly adding: "I can also tell you that I think you're overreacting, and being kind of unfair."
[Lukas] Lukas turns his head forward again, looking through the windshield at ... whatever there might be to look at. His brow is furrowed. He frowns, considering her words, or because he's angry -- it's hard to say if it's one, the other, or both.
A few seconds of silence go by.
Then, low, "You're probably right. I'm -- " he looks for a word for a while, and comes up with nothing better than what she's already said, "overreacting. I'm sorry." A second later he looks at her, his forehead still beetled. "And yes. The bandages are for healing."
[Danicka] It's worth noting that when she had asked him if the blood on the bandages was his, Danicka had not appeared or sounded troubled by this. There was no hand-wringing sympathy for him, nor disgusted, nor even bewildered. The question had been asked with the same openminded, almost academic curiosity with which she had first gazed at the talens and with which she had observed the liquid in the test vial. The nightshade.
Lukas had, quite appropriately, explained the talens and their use -- at least to an extent, she still doesn't know how to use the bandages -- as though giving a lecture in front of a classroom, steadily but not too slowly describing how to use them in conjunction with one another and so on. It's possible that Danicka was teasing the both of them with her hand-raising and reference to him as a teacher.
That does not mean she was not learning, or listening. Quite the opposite, it seems, because now she doesn't dwell overmuch on the momentary miscommunication or Lukas's admitted overreaction to her sense of humour. He's said he's sorry. She still wants to know how the talens taste, or what that sensory overload feels like, but now...she's not going to ask.
Danicka looks back at him as he frowns, answering her in the affirmative as far as the bandages are concerned. "How do they work?"
[Lukas] "Like the darts," Lukas replies. "Focus your will on the bandage. You don't actually have to put it on a wound, but some people find it helps. They can be used before injury, too. As a precaution, and a protection against injury."
Simple. Clear, or at least clear enough. Afterward the silence is a little awkward and he fills it by putting the key in the ignition, wrapping his hands around the wheel as though he were driving already.
The car stays where it is, though: in the parking lot nearest Buckingham fountain, engine dead.
"It's not that I want reverence, Danička," he says eventually, and quietly. "I suppose it's that I hate being made to feel ridiculous, particularly when I'm doing my level best to convey something of importance to me. Most times I know that's not your intention. This time I misread you."
[Danicka] His explanation of how to use the bandages is, indeed, clear enough. She's practiced at playing the airhead (and her hair color only helps her, there), but he's getting to see her in ways most don't. She's not an idiot, and she catches on quickly. She has not, however, asked the most obvious question: why he made these for her, why he's trusting her with them. Asking would only serve as a means to hear again what she's already heard, both in utter private and in the last few minutes.
Danicka doesn't ask because she doesn't need to. There's no way Lukas can phrase it that will take away the sinuous discomfort in the pit of her stomach that has nothing to do with whose blood it is, or why she'd have to use any of these if it came to that. Knowing why he made them and is handing them over is just as disturbing as looking at them.
It doesn't show in her face. She takes the box from him, putting the lid back on, and holds it in her lap as he goes through the steps that would lead to starting the car and driving away if he continued. She looks at the lid thoughtfully, then turns to look at him while he stares forward. There's no response for a moment, til she offers: "It's okay."
[Lukas] Silence follows that for a few moments. She looks at the box, lidded now; he looks through the windshield as though he expected the view out there to spontaneously change.
Then he turns toward her again. He drops his hands from the wheel. She can feel his regard even if she's not looking at him -- if she is, he meets her eyes. Studies her, wordlessly, his eyes moving between hers, and to the details of her face, her mouth and eyebrows.
"What are you thinking?" he asks her. This is no louder than anything else in the last few minutes.
[Armstrong] Down in the green and shady bed, a modest violet grew. Its stalk was bent it hung its head, as if to hide from-
She wasn't sure why the poem was so important today. Or at all, for that matter, but there she was, making her way through the parking lot torwards Buckingham Fountain with the distinct impression taht she was going to get some semblance of work done. She wasn't sure what it was about the place, but there was something about Chicago that was actually starting to... well... grow on her. Deserving of the cliched, almost fungal reference.
As per her usual, Mrena was walking. Small footsteps, but relatively confident ones. Then again, wasn't she always confident? False or not, she presented herself as a creature with utter self-assurance.The young lady wouldn't have it any other way, wouldn't present herself as anything other than a creature without fault.
Confidence aside, the theurge in the off-the-rack jeans was making her way through the parking lot. And happened to settle on a familiar vehicle. And so, without much further ado, she made her approach.
[Danicka] "A lot of things," is her honest and yet impossible answer. At least she does him the kindness of elaborating, as her fingernails trace a few invisible lines on the white box in her lap: "About other times you've gotten mad at me for things like this. And what you said to me...the other night? With your head on my chest?" She glances at him, wondering if she'll see recognition, but doesn't glance long.
She looks back towards the windshield, saying: "These made me think of Vládík, too," and she uses her brother's diminutive, the nickname that Lukas never heard him called during his own fostering, "for a sec-- "
Her eyes see Mrena approaching, and her lips close, as though the other Shadow Lord Theurge can, somehow, overhear her in the closed-off car.
[Lukas] The recognition is there, unconcealable; so too is his discomfort -- the wince at the edges of his expression. Such things are hard to say even in the dark of night, after the act; hard to say, then, but harder still not to. In the light of day it's quite different, and when she reminds him, it's sudden and stark. He has no way to defend against it, or prepare for it. He hasn't even touched her since before they left the fountain.
Then she turns away and so does he. She begins to speak of Vladislav, her brother, who Lukas knew but mostly by reputation, and then she cuts off and he turns to her to ask her why she stopped, only he already knows in the marrow of his bones, because that's his packmate out their, and their bonds are deeper than blood.
At least there's no way Mrena can mistake this for a particularly intimate moment. Shadow Lord and kin are sitting each in their own seat in the front row of the MKZ. Danicka is facing forward and Lukas more or less is; they are not leaning toward each other. If anything, Lukas is leaning away, his shoulder against the window, half-pivoted to better face the woman. When he turns to look at Mrena, he looks half over his shoulder, and then shifts his balance in the driver's seat to face forward.
The key turns in the ignition. He doesn't start the engine, but he puts the key to the ON position, thumbs down the window.
"Hey, Mrena." This, as she comes within earshot. He realizes he can't remember the last time Mrena and Danicka were in one another's presence. For all he knew, they haven't seen each other since that night at the Brotherhood.
[Lukas] (WTF, out THERE.)
[Danicka] [Their, their, don't feel so bad...]
[Armstrong] There were things that could go through her head at that moment. Not awful or terrible or paranoid or confusing, just... things. Like, for a second, she found herself looking at the windows of the vehicle. Not the passengers, but rather just the windows. The collection of colors behind safety glass and a four star crash test rating.
It took her a moment to register that there were people in the car. It took her a moment longer to recognize Danicka... how long had it been? Not quite ages, but long enough that Mrena was reminiscing. That she was thinking about the color of her hair and her eyes and- [And fifteen percent commission, plus a hand in naming the piece. True to form, later that evening Mrena had not realized that she shouldn't have admired Ms. Musil when she was a state of hysterical, fleeing terror.]
Truth be told, Mrena and Danicka hadn't seen each other since that night int he Brotherhood. Not the one where there were pastries and interrogation, but rather, the night that they had briefly passed in the hall. The night that Danicka had all but fled. They had not spoken more than a few brief words to each other. The last thing Mrena remembered asking Danicka was what her eye color was.
And there they were. Lukas and Danicka in the car. Eggplants were more intimate than they were at that moment.
"Hey, Lukas," she said. Nodded slightly, then looked over at the other passenger. "Hey Danicka, haven't seen you in awhile."
Just a statement of fact.
[Danicka] In fact Danicka's body is at least somewhat turned towards Lukas, still, though for the most part she's resting her shoulderblades against the leather seat. She's not leaning across the center console and no, they aren't touching. Ironically, Mrena has never seen them touching one another, but she was the first member of the Unbroken Circle other than Lukas himself who knew -- with reasonable certainty -- that Lukas was fucking her. She was at Mr. C's that first night. Danicka still doesn't know this.
The last time she saw Mrena was in passing, after Caleb and Lukas fought a trio of Spirals in an alleyway. They had not exchanged words before Danicka followed Lukas...to the showers. Before that? Danicka's terrified bolt from a conversation about modeling for Mrena because Sam walked upstairs. This was all after Mrena had made some comment about how Danicka looked in the light that was in Lukas's bedroom at the time.
Either way: Danicka has not seen nor spoken to Mrena Armstrong since the tail ends of February. She has not called her to see if Mrena would like her to sit for a portrait. It isn't, as Lukas knows for sure and Mrena can guess, like she needs the money. She gives the Theurge a nod, looking at her briefly and giving the younger woman a soft smile. "Hello, Mrena. Yeah, it's been some time."
[Lukas] "Moot tonight," half reminder, half commentary. "Do S'n'S need a ride?"
-- as if a moot were some sort of party; as if they were not werewolves but twenty-somethings, college kids and just-grads with fairly cushy white-collar jobs that they won't have to worry about losing for years and years until they're the aging ones, the obsolete ones, the ones that cost too much for too little return.
That's not their life, though. Chances are they won't live long enough to age. Chances are Lukas won't even live out the year, or the next, or the next.
[Armstrong] Would they need a ride?
"Probably, I'll find out and give you the heads up but I'd bet on it," she said. Stated. "So long as I don't get stuck in the middle? I'm fine."
Which was such a twenty-something year old college kid's concern. When you were small and when you hung out with large, possibly frightening men [males], it was just a simple fact of life that you were going to get stuck in the middle. it was a fact of her five-foot-three-inch life that she was still coming to grips with.
Truth be told, Mrena had been reminded recently of how fleeting her existence was. She and Lukas have had this sort of conversation before. They weren't about to have it again.
And then there was Danicka. The woman that had known first, but never really seen. She had kept to herself that night at the seedy little bar. She... well, Mrena's thought processes were her own. They were something quiet and that, at least int he night in question, had managed to keep to herself. Danicka offered a soft smile and, for her part, she returned the pleasantry with a quiet one of her own. "Please tell me life's been boring," she said.
Boring was good. Boring meant that nothing horrible had happened. Boring meant a lot of things, and it was also quite a relative term.
That was neither here nor there.
[Danicka] Please tell me life's been boring.
The blonde woman doesn't miss a beat. Her head is tilted slightly and her smile is immediate, flashing across her face in amusement. It looks like she's just about to laugh but isn't quite struck enough by hilarity to go over the edge. Her eyes sparkle slightly, and the smile stays right where it is for a few seconds, fading only gradually, and on its own. "Pretty much."
Her expression quirks to one side, as she tries to restrain her smile. It gives her an almost mischevious look as she says with faux excitement: "I went shopping today. Got some coffee at somewhere other than Starbucks. Very dangerous of me. It was thrilling."
[Lukas] A faint snort of humor -- less than it would be on a smaller moon; a different mood. "If Dyl or Caleb need a ride and the Bells," possibly the first time Danicka or anyone outside the pack has heard this particular diminutive for the Fang siblings, "don't show up in their cars, I think you're going to be stuck in the middle." Pause. "So you need to either sabotage someone in no-showing, or wheedle someone into showing up."
Then Lukas -- whose seat is a little further back than Danicka's to begin with on account of his longer legs, taller frame -- leans back to let the women converse over him. Danicka agrees that her life was boring, and Lukas, to his credit, manages to suppress a snort.
"Hop in," he interrupts then, speaking to Mrena. "I was driving Danicka to her car. You two can catch up there. I have some errands to run."
[Lukas] (my ass is sleeping in 10!)
to Armstrong, Danicka
[Armstrong] "Somewhere other than Starbucks, you rebel," with faux excitement... but for her part, this was a game. And for her part, she enjoyed them.
He told her to hop into the car. Mrena made her way to the backseat and, well, opened the door and climbed on in. The theurge buckled up, looking forward into the front seat and laying her hands in her lap. So far away, alone in the back seat, the girl with the pale grey eyes looked almost childlike in her manner. Alone in the back while the older, slightly more mature people sat up front. It was brief, though. The illusion of youthful innocence lost once she pushed her hair back and sat up.
[Danicka] To this, Danicka just half-smiles, and winks. Oh yes. She's a huge rebel.
Her eyes, slowly turning that murky shade of green again the longer she is out of the light and not looking into the light, flick to Lukas when he says You two can catch up there, but the glance is so blank it could easily be appreciative as it could be considering.
As Mrena gets in, she glances over her shoulder, then back to Lukas. "I talked to Liadan, by the way," she mentions, as he starts to pull away from the curb to go to one of the other lots, where her car is parked. This doesn't start a conversation. This seems like the conclusion of one, perhaps whatever they were talking about before Mrena walked over. She has nothing else to say on this.
When Lukas does as he said he was doing in the first place, she gets out of the car without waiting for a door to be opened and slips the white box she's carrying into one of the shopping bags from the trunk, whether Lukas gets out to open it for her and hand them over or whether he merely pops the trunk so she can reach in.
[Lukas] (EMPATHY! HAIL MIGHTY ONE!)
[Lukas] Mrena isn't old enough to drink legally yet. Lukas is by two years; Danicka, by four.
All of them, in the broader scope of the Nation and the War, are no longer children. They're no longer even properly young. The young are the cubs and the fresh Cliaths, the thirteen-year-olds on the front lines with the proverbial rifles and arms thrust into their still-growing hands. The young are the cubs and the fresh Cliaths dead on the front lines before they were old enough to drive.
Compared to that, this car is full of hardened veterans.
It's not a long drive over to the other lot. Two minutes, no more. Sometime during the drive Danicka tells Lukas she talked to someone named Liadan about something or other. Lukas glances at her and responds, "Oh yeah?" and doesn't really seem to require a reply. That piece of information is tucked away.
Then they're at Danicka's car, which is a silver BMW coupe, expensive as shit. Lukas doesn't bother to park properly. He leaves the engine idling, pulls up the handbrake, and then follows Danicka out the door.
The trunklid of the sedan rises, and it's while Lukas is getting Danicka's bags out of the back that he says, low, "Would you prefer I brought Mrena with me?"
He has two or three bags in each hand; he walks her to her car and waits for her to open the back so he can put them in.
[Armstrong] There were things that she was aware of, and there were things that she was not aware of. Mrena, for her part, was an observant creature. Observant, yes, but not the most understanding. And, for her part, she could recognize the what but did not understand the why. At least, not yet. Someday, all that people watching would pay off-
Until then, Mrena was in the back seat of the car, simultaneously too young and no longer youthful at all. She looked at Danicka for awhile, somewhat quiet. Somewhat curious... but that seemed to be the theurge's default expression. Quiet. And curious. She had spoken to Liadan; Mrena found a spot on her jeans intensely interesting for a moment. All things picked to pieces, fixated on before being discarded as no longer worthy of her attention. Something felt... off. Danicka seemed a little wary, just as White Eyes' new next-door-neighbor seemed a bit wary of her.
Danicka had too much dignity to call Mrena ma'am though, and for that the theurge was thankful. [And conflicted. But thankful none the less]
"Hey, it's okay, Lukas if you need help with errands I've got not problem with helping," as if she would ever have an issue with helping her packmates. "But if it's something solo, I have a fountain to sketch. The lighting's perfect right now."
[Danicka] She's the oldest of the lot, at least at the moment. She knew the Bellamontes when they were children. That's about all most of the Unbroken Circle knows of her, of her history. The fact that she runs or weeps or wilts when threatened tells them what they need to know: however long Danicka has known what she is and however long she may have known about the War, she's not an active participant. She should not be seen as a veteran, she isn't hard at all...she's weak, and she's unreliable, and as Mrena put it, she won't become a fixture. Probably get herself killed first.
Whether what she calls Mrena has an iota to do with dignity or not, Danicka does carry herself with a certain composed grace, from getting out of the car to walking towards her own. Lukas carries three bags, from a clothing store, a makeup shop, and a chocolatier. Danicka only pauses to slip the white box of talens in with her chocolate of all things, unlocking the trunk to the BMW when they get over there.
"I'll be all right," she says airily, taking the bags from him to stow them in her trunk. She could just as easily put them in the passenger seat of her car, but it doesn't really matter. She isn't looking at him until the trunk is closed again, and then her eyebrows merely lift a bit. "Nemohu se dočkat, až vás zase kurva," she says after a moment, the faintest furrow passing across her otherwise smooth forehead. Her tone is thoughtful, as though this is a secondary answer to his question and not an entirely different topic.
"Zavolej mi," is the last thing she says to him, and this is exactly what her tone implies: Call me.
[Lukas] She'll be all right.
Lukas is frowning at her, very faintly: it's the same expression she'll give him a second or three later, though by then, his expression will have changed.
We're not there yet, either. For now, he's frowning faintly at her, and he's drawing a breath -- perhaps to tell her that Mrena was all right, Mrena (probably) won't bite, Mrena is his packmate and he trusted her not to harm anything he cared for; though perhaps, all things considered, that's not the best argument to be using right now.
He doesn't get around to that because she goes on, and now in Czech, and whatever it is she says to Lukas makes his brow smooth out, if only because he's too controlled to show surprise here and now.
Not too controlled, though, for his eyes to flicker down to her mouth for a second.
And back up. "Budu," he says, and he starts away, backing up, reaching up to thump the lid of his own car trunk down. "Uvidíme se, Danička."
He turns after that. He hadn't closed the driver's side door, so it's just a matter of folding his tall frame back into the Lincoln. Before he takes off he glances into the back: "Wanna sit up front, Mrena?"
-- and whether or not the Theurge moves, Lukas lets down the handbrake soon thereafter and rolls out of the lot. No jaunty wave; no honk of the horn by way of goodbye.
[Danicka] [I think we can wrap there unless Mindy wants one more?]
[Armstrong] (we are wrapped, ladies and gents!)
[Armstrong] (thanks for letting me crash, I had fun!)
[Danicka] [Thank you for joining!]
celebration.
9 years ago