you know better.

[Danicka] When Lukas goes to Kingsbury Plaza,

-- and he doesn't have to stop at the lobby doors and buzz the intercom anymore, doesn't have to stand there constantly aware of how uncomfortable he's making the doorman, doesn't have to wait to just swipe a card and walk to the elevator and ride up to use his key and enter his mate's apartment which in his mind is not his but is, still, a place he is welcome --

Danicka is not there. She's cleared out the boxes and packaging that were scattered all the way from the study throughout the rest of the apartment, but there are a few dishes in the sink and on the counter. This place never looks thoroughly lived-in. It never seems cluttered. Even her bedroom is a place of almost zenlike sparity. The furniture in the living room is soft and ample but doesn't have dents where it's commonly sat in. She hasn't bought new furniture for the study yet.

Whether he goes in there or not, the fact remains: it's a fucking mess. Where they put the microscope hardly mattered. It's going to have to be moved anyway. She had to scoot the monitor for her iMac out of the way just so they could sort-of fit it on her desk. It's a good thing there aren't frequent earthquakes in Chicago. The door is closed. Out of sight, out of mind.

Not so with Danicka, his reason for coming here, who is nowhere to be seen. And they don't live together here, so there's no note on the fridge to tell him where she is. She wouldn't expect him to be here.

Likely enough, he doesn't reflect on any of that. He just takes out his phone and calls her, discovering that she's just up the street in a circular, park-like courtyard centerd around a tree. She is having a picnic.

It only takes a few minutes for him to get there on foot. The little park isn't too big, and it's ringed on most sides by buildings that house both apartments and little studios for local artists, but when he spots Danicka

-- and he would spot her if she were on a football field crowded with people watching fireworks, if she were one of hundreds of blonde women sitting on blankets in a park three times this big, if he had nothing but instinct to guide him, it would take him right to her --

she appears to have picked a spot where she can both enjoy the shade of the tree and see the waterfront. There are boats parked right up along the sidewalk. Some of them are being taken out for rides. The blanket she's sitting on is a light summer quilt, patchworked. Her basket is not the lidded sort sold specifically as picnic baskets but one with a single handle, made of grapevine. She is wearing a yellow sundress that ties behind her neck. It's almost fifties-styled. Her sandals are just off the edge of the blanket, and she's reading Taran Wanderer.

Which he was reading to her, the last time he saw her.

Danicka, in sunglasses and a messy bun, waves when she sees him.

[Lukas] A picnic.

This is an idea almost foreign to him now, though once upon a time he had picnics with his family. On school trips. Perhaps even once or twice as a cub, with other cubs, in those rare moments of levity and lassitude between lessons and wars.

And it's a pleasing idea. He's wound tight, to be honest, and troubled -- but seeing her, none of that matters for a moment. She waves. He grins an unabashedly huge grin and waves back.

Then he's there, and he's sitting down on the blanket beside her, leaning over to share a soft kiss. "Hi," he says, close still, smiling into her eyes. The second kiss is lighter, and his eyes stay open. Then, drawing back, Lukas promptly tugs his shoes off, then his socks, and moves his feet off the blanket to feel the grass against his soles.

Green grass. Summer grass. Even that reminds him of her, the way the sun off the river as he's crossing a bridge always, always reminds him of the way she looks at him

over her shoulder

in her bedroom

when he's covering her and loving her, buried inside her.

[Danicka] Danicka smiles when he kisses her, his nose brushing aside a few wisps of hair before his lips find her own. She closes her eyes and the kiss lingers because she makes it so, slower and warmer than any kiss they've had in quite some time. He can't see her eyes, though, whether they're closed or open or if she opens them when he kisses her a second time.

She's smiling though, even when they part, and laying her book in her lap, closed. Her legs are stretched out before her, crossed at the ankles, her heels in the grass.

Of the topic Lukas wants to 'bounce off her', so to speak, Danicka has only the barest background. She came to dinner on a whim at some restaurant known for its deconstructions of popular flavors, sat down in the middle of their conversation, and asked no questions. She kept quiet while Ray and Lukas spoke, and kept quiet as Ray left, clearly but restrainedly upset. He mentioned Marni and Ray on the phone. She has not told him of her run-in with Marni in the park.

Danicka tips her head to the side. "So," she says, "tell me what's on your mind."

[Lukas] So he does.

He tells her -- simple, unadorned, but with as much clarity as he can -- what has happened. That literally the day after that discussion at the restaurant -- two days after Marni was warned explicitly against doing so -- he found the two of them together in Ray's apartment. That he came very close to literally throwing Marni out, preferably through the nearest window. That an agreement was reached instead: dire consequences for breaking her word again for Marni; Lukas's acceptance of her challenge, if and when she proved herself worthy. Which is to say, willing to accept responsibility for her own actions. Willing to see her own fault and take steps to correct it. Willing to acknowledge that what she wants is selfish, and very nearly childish, and to justify it with more than simply,

I want. iwantiwantiwantiwant.

That was months ago. Months in which Ray became withdrawn and perhaps embittered; months in which he barely saw or heard from Marni, much less of whatever progress she was supposedly making. Then yesterday Ezra came to him, blithe and unapologetic about clawing a kin that was not properly his. And Ezra challenged for this kin, this troublesome Ray, for the purpose of 'reeducating' him in the ways of the tribe.

"So I called Marni to me," he says, running his fingers through the grass between his feet. "I gave her her chance to challenge. I asked her three questions -- what she did wrong in the first place; what she has done to right that wrong; and what makes her justified to sever Ray's spirit and the spirit of all his unborn descendants from their tribe, their ancestry and their umbral homelands.

"To the first question, she essentially parroted me back at myself. I don't think she felt a word of it. To the second, she fed me some bullshit about obeying my edicts -- as if this was something to be congratulated for -- and then told me how she was fighting the war. And how she missed her babydaddy." There's a note of anger in his voice now, caustic.

"And to the final question: she didn't have an answer at all. She said something about caring for him. She said something about wanting him to know his child.

"Nothing about the repercussions that will echo down through his lineage until ... god knows when."


Lukas pulls a handful of grass from the earth, sprinkling the blades between his hands. He's frowning now, his countenance dark, shoulders tense.

"My instinct is to deny her. But then that leaves Ray stewing in his corner, getting more upset with the tribe by the day. I don't have time to deal with him. No other Lord has stepped forward, and to be frank, I wouldn't trust any of them with him. Mila, Theron -- they're too weak to handle a disgruntled kin. Simon's too much a blunt weapon; no subtlety or tact at all. Pariah I hardly know. Edwin's stewing in his own little corner.

"Then there's Ezra. Who's interested. And probably capable. But Ezra ... everything I've seen and heard of him tells me he'll break this man. He lost his last little toy. He's probably looking for another one."

[Danicka] The little park they're sitting in is mostly empty. People walk through along the paths but don't stop for a picnic like Ms. Musil did. They have places to be and things to do and people to yell at or laugh with and she had a book and a basket of snacks and her iPhone. Danicka is a somewhat solitary creature. It isn't hard to understand why. She isn't antisocial. She doesn't dislike people -- quite the contrary. But she has always been surrounded by them, these small groups of people who need, and need, and want, and want, and she always had to be certain things to certain people. She does not mind a little solitude these days. She is, when you get down to it, still getting to know herself.

Nor surprisingly, Lukas speaks and Danicka listens without interruption. Her eyes are unreadable, because they are unseeable. There's a tense stillness to her when he talks about Ezra clawing Ray, then challenging for him to reeducate him. Her fists don't clench, nor does her jaw, but she's motionless in a peaceless way for a few seconds. It passes.

Her hands are folded softly in her lap as Lukas finishes, plucking at grass and darkening with displeasure as though the shade of the tree behind them is a stormcloud sending its shadow over him like a welcome. Unapologetically, he discounts Mila and Theron as too weak. Simon as too rough. Pariah, who she hasn't even heard of before. Edwin, who she's trying to put a face to in her mind. And Ezra. Who may break this man, after losing his last toy.

Danicka is quiet for a little while after Lukas finishes. When she decides to speak, she begins with this: "You know, I met Marni the other day in the park on my way home from yoga class," she says, with the sort of offhand tone one would share this information if Marni were just some coworker of Lukas's, some acquaintance she hadn't been introduced to yet. "I am inclined to agree with your earlier assessment that she's immature, and I am reaffirmed in my own prejudgement that she is selfish."

She doesn't mention what Marni said. Or that Marni got a 'rise' out of her -- such as it was. Danicka does not tell him what she said with that smirking glance at Danicka's own midsection.

"If I remember correctly, you said that both Marni and Ray claimed not to love one another, and that she was fine with his 'dalliances'." Danicka is quiet again for a moment, processing gradually, with the sort of patience one can imagine she once expended on a spoiled Silver Fang princess in order to keep herself from slapping the otherwise likable girl across the face sometimes.

"Ezra..." she trails, then pauses, taking a breath. Danicka reaches up and removes her sunglasses. There's a faint red mark on the bridge of her nose where they rested. She's been out here for awhile. "The way you put it, he sees Kin as toys to play with, control, and damage as he sees fit. He openly offers to physically abuse Ray for the 'good of the Tribe', as though offering to 'reeducate' Mr. Ostermann and 'keep him in line' in the first place is not a slap in the face to your ability to manage the Kin under your guardianship. He is insulting you by the very act of challenging, and seeking to satisfy some sadistic need of his own in the process.

"If he desires so badly to toy with and abuse those who are weaker than he is, then do not give him your blessing to do so with the Kin of Thunder," she says, her tone still surprisingly light, given the topic. "He is going to do it either way. He has done it already. Giving him permission will not make him stay his hand or restrain himself. In fact, by brutalizing Ray without holding the claim on him he has already committed a crime very similar to Marni's."

And if that was not clear, Danicka pauses and summarizes: "I would be appalled if you allowed Ezra to challenge for Ray, and frankly, afraid for your spirit and Ray's life."

She does not go back to discuss Marni further. Not yet. She stops there, waiting for Lukas to offer reply -- if he has one.

[Lukas] Afraid for your spirit are not the kind of words Lukas hears often from Danicka. He knows, intuitively, that she means it. That there's weight to those words. That she would not bandy them about carelessly.

The last time he heard anything of the sort from her was more than a year ago. Was a night on a street outside the very same cafe where Lonna died, when she wheeled on him and said,

I am disgusted with you. I thought you were more.

Even then, there was a hot flush of shame beneath his anger. And even though now Martin's name is shrouded in far more history, far bitterer fights than that; even though in truth Lukas does not regret what he did to that kinsman -- the very memory of it still makes him flinch.

She has not said anything nearly so harsh here. But her mate winces anyway, and lets the blades of grass blow away. There's a hint of shame about his face anyway.

A moment later she knows why.

"I thought about letting Ezra have him just to get him off my hands. I'm so sick of the ... drama. I even went offered Ezra the chance to ward him for a month or so. I thought at best Ezra would actually manage to teach him something." There's a pause. "At worst, he'd learn there are worse things than not being able to be with some Bone Gnawer he knocked up."

He doesn't look at her. He's tense, a flash of muscle tight in his cheek, his fingers restless in the grass.

"Ezra didn't accept. I think I'm glad he didn't."

[Danicka] That, she didn't know. That Ezra was given a chance. But not full, free rein. And Danicka is still and silent a moment. Right now she is not touching him, caressing him, warming to him and reassuring him in the most basic way possible: physical contact. That alone makes her seem hard to him. A bit more distant. A bit colder. But she means what she says. And she does not spare him from it, or flinch from saying it. For a practiced and excellent liar, she does not shy from the reality of things, or the truth of the matter.

"I am, too," she says quietly, and that's the softest she is for awhile. Her voice is clearer, less fuzzy, when she goes on: "You know better," she chides, albeit gently. "You guard our tribe's Kin in this city for a reason, and it's not a burden you can hand off because you're sick of a particular kin's bullshit."

Sometimes it sounds so odd, hearing her swear so effortlessly, no matter how demure or elegant she may look. Then again, early on when he knew her he saw her slam two double-shots of some seriously strong vodka without batting an eyelash. Maybe none of her casual vulgarities surprise him.

"Not, at least," she goes on, softer again, "at the cost of breaking them utterly. You can be hard, Lukášek, but you are not the sort of heartless, careless brute so many think Shadow Lord Ahrouns are."

Or maybe he is.

Just not where she can see.

She moves the book on her lap over the blanket finally, drawing her knees up enough so that she can put her feet flat on the grass. It's cool in the shade, though there's a sheen of sweat on her skin from being out here for as long as she has. It's warm. She drenches herself in it as though she is not from a Tribe whose heritage traces back to mountains and ice-cold storms.

"As for Marni and Ray's drama, I still think what I thought before: they are giving absolutely no thought to the child beyond its basic welfare. Marni does not want to give the child up, and from what I have seen so far I am inclined to believe this has more to do with her own desires and her own belief about what should be best for a child rather than what actually would be. You said Ray does not seem like he wants the responsibility of raising a child, which is a moot point, since Marni will not 'hand it over' anyway.

"If you're right, and she just parroted you, then she is willing to dissemble in order to get her way." This, surprisingly, is said without judgement. Or maybe not so surprising: Marni is a Ragabash, and Danicka is...well, Danicka. "If she wanted to be excused for obeying your word and for doing her duty as Garou, then she feels entitled to get what she wants and will be resentful and bitter if she doesn't get it. If she misses her 'babydaddy' and 'cares' for him, claiming that he deserves to know his child, then one has to wonder -- if you also believe that she does not love Ray and does not want to tie him down -- why she is challenging."

Danicka goes silent again, watching him. It is not hard to imagine her as a governness all of a sudden, waiting to see if her charge can guess the answer. There's no game in it, no amusement, no coy playfulness. Just patience. She waits to see what answer Lukas comes up with, apart from her own opinion.

[Lukas] There's a deep truth in what she says. He knows this because it resonates with some core in himself when she says, you guard our kin for a reason. When she says, it's not a burden you can hand off because you're sick of bullshit.

When she says, You can be hard, but you are not heartless.

Or careless. Or a brute. Not yet; not quite; though sometimes Lukas wonders just how much of that is because of his mate. Her influence. Her warmth. Her very presence -- someone to love, someone to protect, something to remind him of these things that grow harder and harder to hold on to as he grows older, and stronger, and more cynical.

Just look at his pack. Look at how they're matured, grown powerful, grown dominant. For Shadow Lords, there's a fine line between sternness and cruelty. For a Shadow Lord Ahroun, there's a very fine line between strength and brutality, and it's one Lukas is so very careful to stay on the right side of.

Even so: what he did to Fons van der Noot.
Even so: what he almost did to Ray Ostermann.

He's quiet for a while, and perhaps she gives him time to think, to mull her words over, to digest and understand. When he looks at her again, she knows he's ready to hear the rest.

And she tells him. And he laughs at the end, but without humor. "Because she wants to get her way," he says. "And that's not a valid reason to exile Ray and all his descendants from their heritage."

He thinks a moment longer. Then, "I think I'll let him visit his child when it is born. But he will remain with our tribe. I'll find a way to take care of him, or if I cannot, then I'll find someone who can and will protect him.

"As for Ezra -- he won't be allowed to abuse the kin of his own tribe."

[Danicka] The faint sigh Danicka releases -- if it can be called that, the quiet exhale she lets go of after he answers her with Because she wants to get her way may tell Lukas, immediately, that was not what Danicka was thinking. But the sigh isn't irritated, nor disappointed. It's as likely she would have made the same small, quiet sound if he had come to the same conclusion she has.

There's the sense that she would listen. The way she notes that she makes that noise and then puts her lips together ot halt it, the way she keeps her eyes on him to let him go on. But Lukas turns to her, that mirthless laugh dying even from its alteration of his expression, and without a lift of his eyebrows or a word from his mouth, she knows he's questioning.

"Because she has no other way to get what she wants," Danicka says quietly, the difference small but apparently worth stating.

"I'm not saying that what she wants is worthwhile or allowable. I can't guess entirely at her motives. What I heard you and Ray saying at the restaurant all those weeks ago is not matching up with how she spoke in the park the other day or what I'm hearing about her from you now. I would guess that from the start, her challenge was essentially a shotgun wedding: if you take the Kin as your own, then no harm, no foul, right?" Danicka shrugs and turns her head, looking out towards the water. No breeze right now to blow around the tendrils of hair at her cheeks.

"Have you asked Ray if he's willing to give up his Tribe for the sake of a female he supposedly does not love and a child he did not want? Because if so, then I say good fucking riddance to him. Valuable and resourceful -- and, if I might say, generally intelligent and personable with an excellent taste in wine -- or not, you cannot force loyalty in anyone. You can only break them or let them go."

A beat. "And if he is not willing to sacrifice his lineage, his blood, his tribe for his offspring, then he should relinquish all claim on the child," she says, her voice harder than anything else she's said this afternoon. "Force him to make the choice. There is no reason you should be the whipping boy for all their angst over this. Having a common 'enemy' only unites them and fuels their melodrama further."

[Lukas] Lukas is not a blockheaded Ahroun. He has not replaced with brains with muscle. Amongst Ahrouns -- amongst anyone, for that matter -- he counts as intelligent. As thoughtful, and clever, and insightful. Yet what she suggests is still wholly unexpected to him. Ask Ray. Simple as that. Perfect as that.

Because when push comes to shove, Lukas is not particularly progressive in terms of his attitude toward kin. Because -- though it may be easy to forget this because of how he treats her, the regard and adoration he has for her -- Danicka is, in the end, an exception that proves his rule. Everything else he knows of kin comes from his mentor, who treated his parents and his sister with the sort of indulgent courtesy one gives pleasant but simpleminded children, and even then, only because one is polite. Comes from his brethren at Stark Falls. Comes from, even, his packmates; from Katherine and her downright dysfunctional relationship with her kinfolk; from Sampson and his four wives, none of whom were truly his mate; and from Sam Modine.

This is the Garou who held a kinsman's head under water for daring to besmirch his packmate's honor. This is the Garou who has let his knuckles crack brutally and dispassionately across any number of kins' faces. This is the Garou who very nearly let Ezra brutalize a kin for a month or two not necessarily because he's sadistic or cruel, but because he instinctively -- perhaps even subconsciously -- does not think of Raymond Ostermann as an equal. As anything more than a nuisance.

That's not a pleasant truth. But it is the truth.

"Máš pravdu," he says quietly. And, a moment later, "D&+283;kuju."

[Lukas] [gah! addendum! i swear i meant to write this!]

There's this, too, though: he's learning. Slowly, and perhaps haltingly, and with more than a little guidance from the kinswoman who is his mate -- he's learning.

At the beginning of their affair, before they would even touch each other and before either of them acknowledged even in implication that they wanted one another, Lukas tried -- very hard -- to maintain that traditional attitude towards her.

Weakness as an intolerable crime. Disobedience, even momentary, as tantamount to betrayal and punishable by swift and brutal retribution. Kinfolk as less than, as separate, as pawns with a few meager uses. You didn't apologize to them. You didn't ask them their permission for anything. You did not consider their opinion, or invite it. Or allow it, in most cases.

In his car at the time, before it was totaled in the process of avenging Mrena, he'd given her a ruthless, mirthless smile as he asked her if she would accept Sam as a mate. And, as though realizing that he would never have asked that question if he was not actually seeking to discover who and what she [i]wanted[/i], he tacked on:

[i]pretend it's your choice.[/i]

Oh, he tried. He threatened to beat her. He held her away and he assumed she would play games with him, try to seek some kind of power, he tried to dominate her and use her and he tried, he tried, he tried so many times not to give a shit about her. Her welfare. Her [i]feelings[/i].

Danicka is no fool. She knows Lukas is not evil, and she knows he is not heartless. She does not want to see him go down the path of her mother and her brother, or countless others. She also knows that this isn't obvious to him. Once upon a time, he tried to tell her he would never strike her without damn good reason and consideration, as though the idea of harming her willfully was not already fast becoming laughable. Unthinkable. She knows Lukas, possibly better than anyone now, and she knows it would not necessarily occur to him to give a Kinfolk -- and one who already made a mistake, at that -- the choice.

She smiles softly when she sees his expression change as a result of absorbing her suggestion. It is not a happy smile -- it is not a pleasant choice, in the end -- but there's warmth to it, and understanding. She reaches over to him and touches his temple, not to tuck back a curl of hair that isn't there but just to touch him. Just to graze her fingertips over his skin, over a drop of sweat beading there, and love him.

It is unnecessary to say now that Ray won't like it. Your heritage or your child. It is unnecessary to say that it's likely Ray -- and Marni -- won't even see it as that, but as a choice between the Shadow Lords and the Gnawers, or even more myopic, a choice between Lukas and Marni. Danicka still does not believe that the unborn baby is anything more than a cute concept to them, but that is unnecessary to say, too. She doesn't really know Ray or Marni. In the end, their mistakes and their fate do not make much difference to her except as how it filters down through what Lukas 'brings home', so to speak. And even then: it really isn't something she has much investment in.

So Danicka just smiles, and then leans over to kiss his brow. "Není zač," she murmurs, close to his skin, then licks the salt taste of him from her lips as she pulls back. Twisting at the waist, she reaches into the basket behind her, underneath the teatowel that covers it, taking out her water bottle -- one of those metal ones with the soft lip and the screw-off lid with a fingerloop -- and handing it to him. It's still pretty cold. She also unfolds the tea towel enough so that, if he likes, he can reach the grapes and the cheese and the crackers and the sliced meats and the chicken salad made with cranberries and pecans inside.

"Come," she says, and pats her leg, or the blanket near her thigh. "Stay for awhile. I'll read to you a bit."

And he stays.

And she does. They hear the footsteps and bicycle wheels of people passing by on the pavement. They hear the water being cut by boats cruising down the river. They hear some birds, and see some butterflies, and Danicka strokes his hair idly while she reads a few pages, a chapter or so, of an old book they both read when they were younger. It is lazy, these minutes stolen from a day when he has a Kinfolk Problem to deal with, when he has patrols to walk at the caern, when he has a battle to either prepare for or report on or whatever it is now.

Eventually he has to go. And Danicka says she'll walk him back to his car. Book and blanket go into the basket, nestled in with the leftover food. She wiggles her feet back into their sandals and he puts back on his socks and shoes. Lukas carries the basket. Danicka holds his hand. They part on the sidewalk -- he's parked across the street -- where she smiles and kisses him once before he crosses over to the BMW. Danicka waves before she heads upstairs.

As he gets into his car to leave and looks back, he can see her taking her hair down as she steps into the lobby. It falls around her shoulders, swaying: golden hair, canary dress, suntouched skin.