[Danicka Musil] In the end, Jesmond doesn't stay long. She's exhausted from the emergency at the hospital, and after the tension with Simon the atmosphere of the dinner party -- never terribly relaxed to begin with -- was a bit splintered. Kandovany appears to adore Jesmond while simultaneously disliking the scents currently covering the nurse, and Ms. Krutova excuses herself before even the cat starts yawning.
Danicka closes the door behind her after insisting that she take several kolache with her, and without stopping to ask Lukas if he's staying or not, she turns the locks and cracks her neck, exhaling.
"Well, that was interesting," she says mildly, turning away from the door to go start gathering what plates and dishes weren't already brought to the kitchen. As she's cleaning up, she gives Kandovany a bit of leftover lamb from someone's plate, feeding the eager cat from her fingertips. It's a thoughtless gesture, even as she pauses to let the animal lick her skin for more.
"Thank you, by the way," Danicka adds, as she's turning her wrist and cupping her palm over Kando's head in a brief, gentle caress that the cat -- like Lukas himself, so often -- rubs her head into, purring in response. If it isn't already obvious who she's thanking, she turns her head to find her mate and looks at him a moment after she says it, her eyes quiet.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas helps with cleanup, as Danicka must have known he would have. Truth be told, when Simon had asked Danicka where to leave his plate --
off of which he'd eaten serving after serving of his hostess' food while running his mouth at her, insulting her, and doing his best to intimidate her; which he now apparently expected her to clean up now that he was done and leaving
-- Lukas had very nearly told him to wash it himself. Would have, probably, if he hadn't kept his peace to let Danicka speak first; if she hadn't answered first.
He looks at her now as she turns from the door, feeds Kando a scrap from a plate. He's loading the dishwasher, putting all the plates in a row, distributing silverware into the baskets. If she's helping him toss lamb bones and the like into the trash, he holds his hand out for the next plate as she finishes with it.
"For what?"
[Danicka Musil] The sad thing is, Danicka is a better reader of people than Simon will ever be. Lucky for him that's not what he's supposed to be. He's an Ahroun, not a Philodox. Telling truth from falsehood isn't his forte. In fact, it doesn't even bear being surprised that he misunderstood the very essence of what Danicka had been saying, and reacted in the way so commonly expected of young, angry Ahrouns.
But she knew he was trying to intimidate her as soon as he chuckled, as soon as he tried to smirk and use sarcasm with her. And it took effort not to roll her eyes, where once it would have taken effort for her not to duck her head, where once it would have upped her pulse as she thought of how important it was not to let her frustration show, don't invite the hand, don't stir him up any more.
He tried to intimidate her. Belittle her. In her apartment, her territory. He did so with the food she'd made him in his hands, and he did so because she had told him she didn't want to hear stories of idiotic Ahrouns throwing themselves at death and corruption to prove how 'badass' they were. Because she didn't think that was funny, because she would rather hear tales of glorious sacrifice than tales of moronic arrogance, and she doesn't really like tales of glorious sacrifice, either.
She's been hearing them since she was fourteen, after all.
"For letting me handle that," she says, bringing the rest of the dishes and wine glasses into the kitchen and scraping them clean into the trash before handing them to Lukas. She doesn't bother rinsing; the dishwasher is going to be turned on pretty much immediately. She's thinking idly off to the side of how to store the extra wine and the numerous bottles of rum. She supposes she'll send some back to the Brotherhood with Lukas, for him to keep and share from his 'office', for Reuben and the staff, and so on. A case. Good lord.
She huffs a small laugh as she passes a wineglass to her mate. "I suppose if you weren't here he wouldn't have even pretended to be calm and would have threatened me outright or refused to leave, etcetera, but... thank you for letting me handle that."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "You were right," Lukas replies simply. He fits another plate in, then hooks some wineglasses over the racks and straightens to get the dishwasher soap out from the cabinets. "I don't know why Simon might think a Shadow Lord dancing the Spiral out of hubris is even remotely a good story to share, let alone an example to follow. Then again, this is the same wolf who sees the world in black and white, friend and foe.
"If he brings this up to me later, he'll hear my take on his idea of glory. But you didn't need me to fight your battles for you."
Lukas holds the dishwasher open for Danicka to add two more wineglasses, and then closes it, sets it, hits start.
"You should ... be careful around him now, though," he adds, quieter. "I don't mean that you should be afraid of him, because you shouldn't. He's the one that tucked tail and ran tonight, and everyone saw it. But Simon seems thinskinned and more than a little vengeful. If he catches you alone, he might try to compensate for his submission tonight."
[Danicka Musil] "I remember what you told me about his view of the angels you fought," she says consideringly, when he tells her that this is the wolf who sees the world in black and white. There's little judgement in her voice, at least. She doesn't seem to expect any better. She's known too many Ahrouns, too many Shadow Lords. And the exceptions are few and far between.
She moves away from the dishwasher as Lukas closes it. They've done this so many times by now, here and at the den. Here, they have a dishwasher. There, they wash everything by hand because there's seldom enough dishes to warrant using the old, kind of cranky dishwasher. And they inhabit the same space easily in part because Danicka is used to being quite still, and letting the world swirl in chaos around her. She is used to being near those who are larger than her and not expecting them to watch where they put their limbs.
Lukas has only increased in lethal grace in the time she's known him. He knows his body well enough that even in an unfamiliar space -- and her kitchen is not -- he knows how to carry himself. Danicka lets herself brush against him sometimes, and it's a feeling not entirely unlike the way his packmates will, in lupus, rest their sides against his in passing. Well:
entirely unlike that, in the fact that she is his mate, and stirs entirely different feelings in him when she touches him than his packmates. They borrow his strength, share their own, communicate whole sentences, worlds in the flick of their ears or the wag of their tail. They submit when they brush against him, they connect.
Danicka connects, too. She comes near to him because she wants to be near to him, because she doesn't have to stay-out-of-his-way-or-else. She can accidentally (or not so accidentally) bump into him as she reaches for a drawer because he won't slam her against the cabinetry. He won't shove her aside. He won't yell at her, or sniff at her and call her a whore, batting her eyelashes at him. She lets herself sleep against him when they share a bed because, in part:
he lets her. He wants her close. He holds her in the circle of his arm against his heartbeat and breathes steadily in sleep with her there. He doesn't hold her as tightly as he used to, as though he was scared to let her go, scared he might wake and she wouldn't be there. She wants him here. She's given him keys and passcodes and cards and there's space for his things in the bathroom, the closet, the bookshelves. He puts his watch in a little leather-lined valet on the nightstand so it doesn't get scratched or dented, and often it nestles up against her earrings or the bracelet he gave her, occupying the same space.
Danicka's smell fills his nostrils when she passes him, her side touching his, and she smells like her home and the food she cooked and she smells of herself. He knows the way she feels when she turns over in her sleep and moves against him, waking him for a moment either because his energies are already close to the surface or because he is so hyper-aware of her nearness. And something about the way she passes him, going to grab a towel and wipe her hands, feels... luring. Because she's his. Because she draws his eyes and his senses after her without even meaning to, draws his alertness.
Sometimes, she could be the only living creature for a hundred miles, for the way that he focuses on her. Sometimes, that's a lot of attention to bear.
She's his mate. His female. His Danička, who he met in childhood but knows now. His instincts are, in fact, honed, and centered on her, and he knows her. She hides so little from him now, and he can see in the way she moves that she's a little bit tired. She cooked all afternoon, entertained guests, and it was really the first time she invited Garou here, welcomed them. That sort of thing used to terrify her. And it didn't even go that well.
But she's relaxed. Comfortable in her apartment, quietly if a bit distantly pleased to be cleaning up with her mate after saying goodnight to her friend. Her feet are bare, now, as she goes about finishing up the cleanup. She's not happy about Simon. One more Ahroun she has to watch out for. One more fucking idiot who's decided he's been offended and needs to have a problem with Lukas, or with her, or with them, or with the world. It's not a happy topic.
Her eyebrows flick upward slightly, then lower. She hangs the towel over the bar on the oven. "Of course he tucked tail," she says. "He was in your territory. The submission wasn't to me." She looks at him over her shoulder, smiling softly. "I'll be careful around him because I know better. But unless he really is as stupid as he acts, he won't go out of his way to nip at my heels."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] [i roll empathee!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 7 (Failure at target 6)
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] [SHADOW LORDS DON'T FAIL!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 4, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 7)
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] The dishwasher is cycling up now -- machinery humming quietly, water sloshing distantly. Lukas is washing his own hands, scrubbing under the faucet before shaking his fingers dry.
There's a sort of quiet comfort to the thoughtless, simple labor of cleaning up with his mate. Picking up plates and utensils; throwing out the bones. Loading the dishwasher and making room on the counter. Done with his self-appointed task, Lukas leans against the counter, the tile edge hitting him at his lower back. He's so much larger than she is, and so much stronger, and so much more ...
intense. That's one word for it. It can't be easy, even for her, even now, to have him so close to her.
He watches her, though, with tenderness in his eyes. She looks comfortable in her own domain. She looks a little tired, too, and she looks wearied by the prospect of yet another foolish young ahroun to be wary of. She hangs her dishcloth over the oven handle and Lukas straightens, coming to her. He wraps his arms gently around her waist. He kisses her shoulder, and then her neck.
"Leave the rest," he says: what remains of the lamb, Jesmond's potatoes, their sides, the kolaches, the alcohol. "I'll clean up. Go to bed."
[Danicka Musil] The machinery is, like most of the things in this apartment, this building, top of the line. Its whirring and sloshing is so quiet that once they close her bedroom door they won't hear it. She's covering the kolache with tea-cloths again: they're not even completely cool yet.
She spent her whole life learning how to be quiet. How to be still. How to make room for others, how to make herself small and invisible when necessary so that she wouldn't anger those bigger and stronger and more intense than her. She learned how to not take up a lot of space or ask for much that she wanted. She learned how to be...
accomodating. That's one word for it.
What takes effort is to know when to push back against Lukas. She's learning that. She's learning when it's necessary and when it's not. She's learning not to reject him for the sake of rejecting him, or just because she feels like he's sweeping her along in the storm of his own desires. She's exhausted, sometimes, from trying to figure out how to be strong externally, and not just endure. Lukas, she knows, does not want to be a thing she endures.
And he isn't. Most of the time. Most of the time his rage is so well-controlled that she has learned by now not to be afraid of constant explosions. Most of the time he's so careful with her that she knows all she has to do is give him a word, a signal, something, and he'll gentle. He'll back off. A part of her hates having that kind of power. A part of her hates that he needs to be so controlled. A part of her hates that this is the only way for them to be together, to constantly try and find a balance between the freedom they give each other to just be, and the vital necessity of watching how they treat each other.
Mostly, she worries that he'll think she doesn't love him. Doesn't want him. Hasn't forgiven him.
She refuses to allow herself to think of what there needs to be forgiveness for. Tells herself only: I have. It's done. It's over.
Lukas comes up behind her and Danicka closes her eyes. She breathes in slowly as he frames her body with his own, wraps himself around her. This close, he can feel a familiar tension coiling up from the base of her spine to her shoulders, relaxing again as she exhales. It's sometimes hard to tell if it's desire or startlement or both or something else entirely, but he's felt it before. He feels her ribcage expand as she breathes, feels it contract again as she exhales.
Turning her head slightly, she nuzzles her face to his, brushing a kiss over his cheekbone. "I'll feed Kando," she negotiates quietly, nuzzling him again, "and we'll go to bed together."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] His head bowed to her, it takes little strain for her to kiss his cheek like that. They're close enough that he can feel her breathing. She can feel him breathing, steady and even, chest rising against her back as he inhales
and exhales again, his neck bending further, his face nuzzling briefly against the juncture of her neck and shoulder. Now Lukas's eyes are closed, as though he wants to rest right there for some untold time -- like something out of myth, living lovers turning to entwined trees, jagged mountainsides.
It's ironic that Danicka fears that Lukas doesn't know she loves him. If there's anything he knows now, that he trusts now without reservation, it's that she loves him. If he has a fear, perhaps it's that love will not be enough, in the end. That one day he'll grow too rageful and she'll leave anyway. Or perhaps more accurately: he's afraid that love shouldn't be enough. That if he grows too rageful, if he becomes too much for her, or anyone, to handle -- that she should leave. She shouldn't stay.
He's afraid, then, that she'll go. And he's afraid that she'll stay.
But he doesn't think of that, either. Not often, and never for long. He lifts his head, and he smiles, and he kisses her brow. "Okay," he murmurs, and unwinds himself from around her. And, because neither of them are really the sort of laze about idly while the other works, "I'll take the trash out."
[Danicka Musil] Neither of them think of things like that for long. They shuffle them to the side, and some of that is pure and simple avoidance, and some of it is pure and simple necessity. You can't think, nonstop, every day, about everything that is wrong, or could go wrong, or how things will be when they both know that every day they have is limited. Is precious. May not come again.
Danicka sways slightly against him, leaning into him, breathing with him. She has to go feed the cat, set out those pretty bowls again and give Kando some food so Kando will stop doing what she's doing right now, which is twining around their legs, rubbing against Danicka's calf, purring coyly for food.
She opens her eyes, loathe to let him go, when he steps back. And they work: she gets the cork mat and the glass dishes out again, feeds Kando some canned food with a bit of leftover lamb mixed in because Kando is her kitty, and she loves her, and Kando was so good to stay in the guest bathroom most of the night.
And Lukas puts away the leftovers that are still out. He takes the trash out into the hallway, lets it down the chute. Danicka is crouched in the entryway when he comes back, stroking her cat head to tail while Kando laps up the food. Lukas enters, the door closing as quietly behind him as the dishwasher runs, and she breathes out, her hand pausing on the cat's head, loosely caressing.
"I don't tell you often enough," she says quietly, "how grateful I am for this."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas is stepping back out of the shoes he'd only slipped on, barefoot, as he took the trash out. He looks at his mate; there's a quizzical tilt to his head.
"For what we have?" he asks, quiet. Her cat is eating. Her apartment is expensive enough, nice enough, that the only background sounds are the soft hum-swishes of the dishwasher; the soft huff of the air conditioning. He can hear Kando lapping at her late dinner. "You don't have to be grateful for that, baby. Not to me and not to ... the universe, or whatever.
"Baby," he holds his hand out to her, "zasloužíš si všechno dobré v životě."
[Danicka Musil] It almost sounds like a greeting card, what he says, or a wedding vow. A statement of belief, of faith that the universe should be one way when they all know it's not. She deserves better than she's gotten. When you get right down to it, almost everyone does. But that's life. And Danicka, more than most people, is willing to face the reality of life and accept it. She swallows the truth, even as she learned to hold it in.
Danicka tips her head to the side and shakes her slightly. "Don't tell me not to be grateful," she says softly. "Nobody I know has this."
She moves away from Kando, holds her hand out to him. "Jesmond deserves better. More even than I do. But her son is in another state being raised by his tribe, and her mate is gone. My sister is sick and her mate's gone, too. Some people fall in love outside their blood and have to choose between the two, or choices are made for them. My father lost two women he loved."
Danicka shakes her head, her voice barely above a whisper. "Don't tell me not to be grateful."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] There's a common thread in what she says, whether Danicka sees it herself or not. Gone. Gone. Lost. Gone.
Lukas doesn't have the heart to tell her what she already knows. Whatever she's grateful for now, whatever she has now, is fleeting. Temporary at best. They're lucky to have it at all, and fear of loss doesn't prevent him from taking what joy he can find now, but --
it's not forever. Sooner or later, sooner rather than later, he'll be gone, gone, lost, gone. Or she will. And there'll be years after that. Maybe decades. There may be other men, other women, who look at the one who remains and thinks,
I'm so lucky. I'm so grateful for what I have.
Lukas takes her hand when she holds it out to him. He raises her gently to her feet and he draws her closer. He wraps his arms around her, tighter than he had moments ago; the embrace is warm and rocking, swaying side to side.
"I love you," he murmurs. "And I'm grateful too."
[Danicka Musil] She goes to him. It's a simple thing, never really bears mentioning, but when he takes her hand Danicka moves instantly towards Lukas's body, as though by doing so she can erase what she just said about gone, gone, lost, over, dead. As though, by curling to his chest while he wraps his arms around her, she can undo the fact that she tenses up when he comes up behind her, that even to this day it unsettles her when she's had a long day and she's tired and he comes to her bed with his rage running high and his very presence wakes her up.
Danicka puts her arms around his neck, stretched out against his front, holding him as though if she uses all her strength, and if she tries hard enough, it won't matter that she's terrified of becoming like her father. It won't matter that Lukas almost killed her.
Because Lukas also stood back, quietly, and let her tell the rude Ahroun in her apartment that he didn't know what he was talking about, and he could get out. Lukas helped her clean up dinner, load the dishwasher, take out the trash, take care of the cat, as though he's not what he is but he's just her boyfriend and maybe tomorrow he'll get up and go to some real job, some normal job that offers him a 401(k) and stock options or at least a paycheck every week so he doesn't have to mooch off his rich blonde girlfriend. Lukas holds her and kisses her and she doesn't know, honestly, if she would want him to be some nice, normal man who doesn't ever --
Her arms are locked around his neck and shoulders now, too tightly, as she starts to breathe in such a way, move in such a way, that he knows before the first drop hits his collar that she's crying.
-- scare her.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas doesn't, as he once might have, instantly push her to arm's length, search her face, demand to know what's wrong. Nor does he leap to conclusions: she's crying because Simon scared her. She's crying because she thought of the inevitable end. She's crying because she wanted a nice dinner party and it ended up weirdly tense, or any of the dozens of reasons another woman in her position might dissolve into tears.
He just holds her. His arms are firm around her, and solid. He's solid against her, too: a monolith of warm and strength
and rage and terror.
Eventually, he trusts, she'll cry until she's emptied out her sorrow. She'll cry until she's all right again, or at least until she can talk about it. And then, if she wants to, she will. For his part, Lukas waits.
[Danicka Musil] And once, he might have shoved her away and asked her what sort of game she was playing, assumed her tears were a way to manipulate him, to try and play on a soft side she imagined he had, to ply him with her vulnerability. Lukas revealed more about himself with those demands than he ever thought he could have.
I want to protect you. You have to know how badly I want to protect you. And you must be using that weakness against me, you must, because it is a weakness.
And she knew him, so long ago, by the many ways he resisted himself, all the while pretending he was resisting her. She learned about him, and who he was, and what he was really like beneath all the immaturity, the idealism, all of it.
His rage is greater, now. So is his will. He's stronger in many ways. Spirits all but nuzzle him now, the other world calls to him almost as much as his own drive for violence. Danicka's stronger, too, but in subtler, softer ways. More to do with resistance, with internal strength, than with spirits or war. And so it is. And so it always is, with Garou and Kin.
But not this: that he waits for her to cry, to calm down, to talk to him,
and she doesn't.
She breathes in harshly, and pulls away, because this isn't some sorrow that can leave her if she just gets it out of her system. This isn't something she can fix. And she doesn't know how to talk about it, because if she talks about it, something's going to break. She can't bear the thought of it. So she cries, and pulls away from him, pushing her hands into her hair for a moment, bringing them down. Danicka exhales.
"Je mi to líto. Lukáš ..." her eyes close. It's hard to say what she's apologizing for. Crying. Pulling away. "Je mi to líto."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] There's a moment when she first starts to pull away that he doesn't quite let her go. A second, a split-instant, where his arms stay around her, and they both know, with a sort of dreadful certainty, that if he doesn't want to let her go she won't go anywhere.
That's part of the problem, after all.
He does let her go, though. It was barely even a second's worth of resistance before his arms are loosening, and she's pulling free, turning away, bringing her hands up into her hair like she's overcome and overwhelmed and doesn't know what to do, say. Lukas doesn't know, either. He doesn't know what she's apologizing for. He doesn't know why she's drawn away, why she's crying; any of it. Lukas suddenly feels very much at a loss, standing in her entryway with his mate retreating from him.
"Baby," he says quietly after a time. There's ache on his face. Ache in his expression. Ache in the way he looks at her, and the way he keeps himself away from her now; keeps himself where she left him, standing still under the hallway light. "Láska, proč pláčeš?"
[Danicka Musil] That half-heartbeat when Lukas doesn't want to let Danicka go is a microcosm of almost everything else they have. He could keep her if he wants to. He could lock her up if he wanted to and no one would stop him. Anyone who had a mind to try likely couldn't accomplish it. He's killed Garou before. They used to whisper that he engineered the deaths of his own packmates to gain power. There's no one in the Nation but her half-sister who might challenge for her, and even then, even then, there's every chance he would just set the terms of challenge as single combat,
and every chance he would win. Every chance he would kill Sabina, to keep his mate. If he wanted to. If he let himself follow that vicious animal instinct that has been in him from the beginning.
They have no equality but that which they make for themselves. In the end, Danicka has no freedom but what he lets her have. No matter how gentle he is, how hands-off, he can never trick her. She is not one of those dew-eyed kinswomen who grew up fantasizing about the strong Ahroun mate she would have one day. She knows what this life is, and even though Lukas's ironclad control fools even his own people sometimes, Danicka will never believe that the world is not as it is. As it has always been.
So she cries, and she presses her palms to her face to cover it even though her tears often make her only that much more lovely, that much more soft-looking, warm, tender, special somehow. She works at getting her breathing under control, at getting herself to stop weeping. She moves back til her spine touches the wall of her hallway, and Kandovany lifts up on her back legs, laying paws against Danicka's slacks. Her whiskers twitch curiously.
She doesn't know how to answer his question without breaking his heart. The temptation to lie is almost overwhelming:
I don't know.
Almost.
Danicka takes a deep breath, her hands still over her face, rubbing at her brow now. The last thing he said to her before she started crying was that he loves her. That he's grateful. And it doesn't make sense why that, why embracing, would lead to this. Truthfully, though, it didn't.
"I'm... afraid of losing this," she finally says, her voice barely above a whisper. She bends without thinking and gathers her cat into her arms, and Kando goes easily, staring at her face, then leaning forward to try and lick her tears up. Danicka discourages this, covers the cat's head, holds it close for a moment. Kandovany does not purr. She tolerates this, rubbing her head under Danicka's jaw for a few seconds. "Of what it will become."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] There's a moment, a flash of instinct, in which Lukas is disappointed that Danicka will seek and accept comfort from her cat -- a cat, a housepet, a sly little creature more concerned with her next meal than the hand which provides it -- than him.
He doesn't crush it down ruthlessly. He lets it play out: takes it, examines it, understands it, sets it aside. Irrational, that disappointment. Not worth it. When Danicka answers him, anyway, Lukas understands a little better.
And there's little he can say. After a moment, he moves, himself: slides back until his back is to the opposite wall. Not a whole lot of room here. If he stretches his legs out, his feet might just touch the other wall. He folds his legs, though, knees bent up, hands folded loosely into one another.
"You're afraid that ... we won't love each other anymore?" It's the only point of reference he has.
[Danicka Musil] They know they're not the same. In a few ways, at least, Danicka has more in common with that sly little creature than she does with Lukas. Declawed. Vulnerable. Beautiful, self-interested, sleek, excellent at hiding. In a few ways only.
At the same time, she understands Lukas better than his own parents do. She knows he doesn't want to be Wyrmbreaker when he is at home, and that this is part of why their house is no longer his home. She remembers, still, the way he told her he preferred Lukáš or Lukášek to Kvasnička. No one else calls him Lukášek. Even then, no one else called him by that childhood name, but he permitted it to her without so much as blinking.
Danicka knows why he didn't like that she kept from him the fact that they met as children. She knows the way he'll react if she doesn't eat much when he's around, so she tells him if she's already eaten, and she eats a few bites with him because it soothes something in him he can't entirely suppress, and her indulgence of that instinct is, itself, a way of showing him that she cares for him. She knows how badly he wants to be close to her sometimes, how it twists in him like a knife when she needs to be apart because she's exhausted and he's a fucking Ahroun, terrifying even to his own kind.
She understands that sometimes he wants to pretend that all the realities of their life together aren't there, or are distant enough to be ignored. She knows that this is at odds with his cold, hard practicality in other areas, and that this does not make him inconsistent, or hypocritical, but... human, as much as something like him can ever be human. She knows he is patient with her, sometimes, when her history oppresses her present. And she knows, better than she knows the back of her own hand, that he does this because he loves her. Wholly, completely, sacrificially, in all the ways one must in order for it to mean anything or overcome anything at all,
he loves her.
"I don't think I'll ever not love you," she whispers, holding onto that sly little creature who can never scare her, who could never hurt her, with whom she doesn't have to take a deep breath in order to accept comfort from. Danicka doesn't know if this will help Lukas, if it will make him ache any less or understand any more. The way she says it, though, it may almost be part of the problem.
He can see her face, now. He can see the tear tracks on it, the pink high in her cheeks, the glistening of her eyes. She strokes her cat, massaging it behind its ears, along its neck. She's looking at Kandovany, something to focus on that helps her speak the way she does, and the way that has always been hard for her: openly.
"I'm afraid of losing what we have now." She pauses, because that's not as true, and so this is tinted with the quietude of shame: "What I have."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] At the beginning of all this, Lukas was cold. Distrustful. Keeping her at armsreach; stiffarming her away every time she tried to get closer. Every time she tried to show him that she wanted him. That it was all right to want her back. That she was not some creature out of myth, some seductive siren here to lure ever-so-dutiful Lukas into the depths of self-gratification and dereliction of duty. And yet even then -- even from the start -- the first time she called him Lukášek, he didn't protest. He didn't say a word. He can't say for certain now whether he liked it or not, only that -- for some reason he didn't understand -- he didn't mind. He didn't want her to stop, stop, stop patronizing him, stop talking down to him, stop pretending she knew him at all.
That's behind them now. What they have is so far beyond what he could have hoped or planned for. What they have
is precious, and she's afraid of losing it.
He thinks for a moment, then. He watches her hands; he watches her face. He looks out the window, far across the living room. Then back to her.
"Our closeness?" he asks quietly. "Your freedom?"
[Danicka Musil] Part of the maturity Lukas has gained in the last two years -- not even that long, really -- is realizing that giving himself room to breathe does not make him less of a warrior, does not make him less dutiful, does not make him weak. In the Underworld, apart from concerns of tribe, pack, sept, all of it, with only the war against the wyrm and against himself on the table, the keeper of the last gate tried to show him that.
It was always okay to want her back. It was always okay to want a life with his mate, to feel and follow that instinct. It was always okay to make a home where he did not have to be some paragon of control, of prowess, or even the Beta -- or Alpha -- of his pack, leading them, protecting them, showing them the way to go. It was always okay to want the things he wants, and to try and carve them out of what life offers him.
In a dream world, Danicka would be strong enough to put him down if he frenzied. And she would be strong enough to walk away from him if he ever hurt her. She would be allowed to do so. In a dream world, they would both be much more free than they are.
When he mentions freedom, fresh tears come to her eyes. It's one of the first things he realized about Danicka when he truly came to know her: she never had freedom. She finally has it, here in Chicago. And he's tried, so hard, to not take that away from her. To not ask her to give it up.
Danicka nods once or twice, holding Kando a little tighter. The cat squirms, and so she bends and lets her go. Kandovany goes quickly back to her food dish, tail swishing a few times. Danicka, with nothing else to focus on, looks over and down at Lukas. She doesn't say anything for a few moments, and when she does, she's quiet.
"Sometimes I wonder if I should have left that first night," she says, the hesitance more in her eyes than in her voice, "when you almost frenzied. I think I knew even then that being with you once wouldn't be enough, and... I think I knew even then that you would do it again."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] As soon as that word leaves her mouth -- frenzy -- Lukas's eyes flick away; not fast enough to hide the flash of a wince that crosses his face. She says the rest to his profile. His eyes, ice-clear as they ever are, are on the window and the city beyond.
That strap of muscle anchoring his jaw to his cheekbone has pulled tight again. His anger is back, just as irrational, but harder to dispel this time. So that's what this is about, he wants to say, but doesn't. He knows he doesn't have a right to be angry. He doesn't have a right to insist that she let it go, let it lie -- not when she's the one that would have died.
There's nothing he can say to that, either. No promise he could make that wouldn't take a lifetime to fulfill. Or worse: simply be a lie. He can't promise that he'll bite back every frenzy from here on out. That's not possible. Even if it were -- he didn't bite back the one on the street. He can't promise, either, that he'll restrain himself every time. That even in the depths of frenzy he could love her so much, love her enough, that he would turn his attention away.
Those are not promises he can make. And if nothing else, Lukas has always tried so very hard not to lie to Danicka.
So in the end, all he says is, "Do you?"
His eyes come back to her after a moment. "Wish you'd left."
[Danicka Musil] "Sometimes I wonder," she repeats slowly, and softly, "if I should have."
Once he would have taken -- and might take it even now -- that as patronizing. Talking down to him, as though he's so stupid he couldn't grasp what she said the first time. Danicka only lets it sink in for a moment, though, before she starts to talk again. She sinks down into a crouch, balanced on the balls of her feet and resting slightly against the wall behind her, facing him. She puts her hands together, lacing her fingers, her forearms folded against the tops of her legs, and takes a breath.
So that's what this is about. Frenzies. He frenzied. Like he can help it. Look, if she doesn't want to be with someone who might frenzy, then maybe she shouldn't be with him at all. There's about a dozen things he could say to express that irrational, sudden, unfair anger, and each one would make him sound more petulant and childish than the last.
After all, that's what she's been doing: letting it lie.
She's looking at the floor, past the peaks of her knuckles. "When you frenzied back in July --" which makes her stop, realizing it was only July, it was only a couple of months ago, "-- I know we talked about it then." Sort of. "And that in the future I should run. Even if it's a new moon, because even then you have..."
Danicka cuts herself off there, as though what she's about to say will hurt him. That's where all of her hesitance in this is coming from. She might hurt him. She might say something that makes him so hurt it makes him angry, instantly leaping from heartache to biting defense, causing destruction as though that will help save what he's so scared of losing.
"...so much rage," she finishes, quiet about it.
She swallows. "But we never really talked about it. And it was just like... okay. Let's move on. Get over it. Go back to our lives. I think we just came back here and watched a movie, for christ's sake." Her hands uncurl, and rub at her face again.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] We just came back here and watched a movie, she says. For Christ's sake.
There's every possibility that Danicka doesn't mean anything by that except to indicate how ridiculous such a thing really is, all things considered. There's every possibility -- every probability -- that she isn't somehow turning it around on him. She isn't saying, look, this is what you did. You brought me back here and we watched a goddamn movie after you nearly ripped my head off.
Still, it's hard for him not to hear a tinge of blame in that. Lukas shifts where he sits, moving slightly, drawing a little tenser.
"I thought that's what you wanted," he says. "I thought you just wanted to leave it alone."
[Danicka Musil] "I didn't feel like I had much of a choice," she says, and the quickness with which these words come to her mouth, how they leave her lips with a hard breath behind them, indicates how little thought goes into saying that aloud. So her eyes are on him a second later, watching how he tenses, how he keeps his voice level, how that energy rises in him as dark and wild as a storm stirring up in the sky.
So he has to be made to understand, before it coils, and before it unleashes. After all, the moon is waxing tonight. Not yet full -- that's several days off, still -- but heavy enough in the sky that she's aware of it, as though she can feel it pressing against her through the windows. Lukas has to understand, before he thinks
you're blaming me for this.
I can't help what I am.
I won't make promises that would take a lifetime to keep.
are you ending it?
any of the things he might think.
"What was I supposed to do?" she asks, speaking as though they're held in a cell in this entryway -- where, truthfully, so many of their hardest discussions have taken place, as though they want to leave them near the door rather than bring them further into the apartment -- and no need to speak louder exists. She speaks, too, a little helplessly. "I didn't want to end up arguing with you about it, after everything else. I had my leg ripped open. I watched you tear those things open and shake them. You'd turned around and looked at me and licked your lips before you turned on the vhu-- that thing."
It isn't that she's afraid to say it's name. It's that she's not sure she remembers exactly how to pronounce it. She exhales. "And when it was over you came back," as though she realizes that
If Lukas + Frenzy Then Lukas = Not Mate Else Mate = Frenzy
which is intolerable. Which breaks the system. Her mate cannot be a frenzied monster. Her mate cannot be rage incarnate, and nothing else. No recognition, no love, no protective instinct. Nothing but death.
"...and I knew you didn't remember what you'd done, or how you'd looked at me, or what almost happened. I knew you were freaked out and just glad I wasn't dead." She closes her eyes, remembering, and the ache she felt for him them overwhelms her voice even now, months later. "You were shaking."
Danicka sinks down finally to sit on the ground. She's not crying, but she might, at some point. Her eyes are closed because if she looks at him she very well might cry, and then she'll be crying on the floor like a child, like a weakling, like she's given up. And she didn't give up even when the hound tore her fucking leg apart and she was trying to crawl away to save her neck
til that thing lifted its weapon and aimed it at Lukas. Lukas, who at that moment was not her mate, was just a beast, was legend and terror and nothing else.
"I didn't want to make you any more miserable than you already were."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas's brow knots when she says that -- didn't have a choice. The frown deepens as she goes on, but his eyes stay on her, level. It might take an effort not to flinch, sometimes.
"I remember," this is the detail he picks up first, the one thing he focuses on first, the one knot in the interlaced web that he grasps first, "thinking you were my mate. And if I hurt you then there would be nothing worthwhile left of me.
"And I remember wondering if I'd killed you anyway afterward. Nothing in between."
He takes a breath then, raising a hand, rubbing at his face.
"I don't want you to hide something or push it away just because you want to protect me. I don't want that sort of protection. I want the truth, even if it makes me miserable then. To feel like it's ... not okay, but at least done with, and then this, months later... it's worse.
"I don't really know how to talk about this either. I don't know where to begin, or what you want to talk about. I can't promise you it won't happen again. I don't think that's what you want, anyway. I can't even promise you I won't eventually become -- "
a break here. They can both hear the words he doesn't say:
like your mother. like your brother.
" -- controlling. Only that I'll try."
[Danicka Musil] my mate was the first thing Lukas thought when he came back tohimself that night, in boxers and belt and watch and little else but blood. Sticky, cooling, saturating blood all over him. He grabbed that thought and held onto it like a rope, pulling himself up out of the pit, clawing his way back towards sanity. my mate. zlatý. jaro. That was the thought that he wrapped himself around until the rest of him coalesced.
She doesn't really know that, and can't really understand it, because Danicka has never frenzied. She can only survive the frenzies of others, until the day she can't.
Talk of thinking it's 'done with' and then having this come up now. Talk of promises. She closes her eyes, exhaling a sigh. Her eyes are closed when she reaches up, rubbing her forehead. If she's frustrated, it's dim, but she's been on edge since Luana's rather vulgar idea of dinner conversation and Simon's general idiocy. "It's easy for you to say that now," she says quietly. "That you don't want me to protect you, or that hearing about it now is worse, but you don't know what it was like to see you like that."
Danicka lifts her head, looking over at him. "And you don't know what it's like to watch someone you love frenzy and know there's nothing you can do but run, or hide, only to... have them come back and need you to help them."
Her brow is furrows slightly. "I'm not looking for promises. I wish we could talk about things that happen without you thinking I want you to promise me it'll all be okay, or wave some wand that fixes everything. I'm not even asking you to tell me you'll try, and then I accept that, and then we go on with our lives like that makes it all easier to deal with." She pauses a moment, and draws her legs up towards her chest. "I know you'll try. I know you do try. That doesn't make it any easier."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "It's not that I think you need a promise," Lukas says, and this is quiet. He's trying: trying to explain, trying not to assume the worst, trying to talk like she wants to, trying to understand and be understood. "It's that I don't know what you need. Or want. I don't know what to give you, if I can't make you a promise that I'll change, or fix what's wrong, or -- any of that.
"What do you want to talk about?"
That could so easily be accusatory. Or aggressive. Or simply angry. It's not; or at least, it's not meant to be. It's a genuine question. Lukas tries to voice it as such.
[Danicka Musil] "I don't know," she says, echoing him. She starts to shift, but doesn't get up. Not yet. That would be too easily seen as rejection, as denial. She checks the urge to stand, and stays where she is. "I didn't really mean to bring it up. I think I'm just worn out."
She closes her eyes, hands on her knees, and exhales. Her eyes open. "I'm sorry," she adds, shaking her head a little. "I don't even know if talking about it would be helpful. Maybe I just wanted to let you know it was on my mind."
Now, Danicka starts to get up, as though extricating herself from this conversation is wound up in lifting herself from the floor. She does seem worn out. There's reason for her to be. And as far as he can tell she's at the same point he's at: a loss. Not quite sure what to say, what to do about it. Nothing to be done about it.
He's an Ahroun. She's afraid of him. They love each other.
What else can they really say, that will change any of that?
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas looks up as Danicka rises. It's a rare thing, that: this difference in their height, her standing over him. He's frowning again. It's not anger. It's something closer to sadness, or ache.
"I'm glad you brought it up," he says. "At least now I know. Danička... don't go yet." His hand moves. He doesn't extend it to her. He's not sure that's the right thing to do right now. "Let's try."
[Danicka Musil] Which gives her pause. That he doesn't stand along with her. That he doesn't get angry, start venting his frustration. Not that it would be out of place if he did. Not that he doesn't have a right to be. But that he doesn't, and asks her not to go: that makes her pause a moment.
She sighs, and it isn't the same hopeless-sounding noise as before, the giving up, the weariness. "I'm just so tired," she says, caught between leaving and staying now. "I don't even know what there is to try, and I'm just worried we're going to end up arguing again over something we can't change anyway. I don't want to circle each other like that til we just... give up."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas doesn't stand yet. He does stir, though, gathering his legs under himself, leveraging himself against the wall. He could stand at a moment's notice like this. He could always stand,
and lunge, and kill,
at a moment's notice. That's the sort of thing she loves. The sort of creature he is. The monster in her bed, in her home, invited here as all mythical monsters must be.
"We don't have to talk about it now," he relents. "But if it's on your mind -- and it's on mine, now -- we shouldn't bury it. Even if we don't know how to voice it." A moment of thought. "Maybe you can just say things to me as they occur to you. Whatever, whenever."
[Danicka Musil] "I try," she says, like whispering it will make it easier. "But you get so frustrated if you think it's something I've been hiding from you. I feel like I have to know exactly how I feel and what I think because if I tell you a week later or a month later it starts an argument. Then we don't even deal with it, we just fight about whether or not I should have told you earlier."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "I wasn't angry because you didn't tell me immediately," Lukas replies. "I was frustrated because I thought you didn't tell me because you thought it would be better for me that way. Because I was too upset, too weak, to handle hearing it."
[Danicka Musil] "I didn't tell you because --"
She cuts off, unable to keep going for a moment. The heels of her hands go to her brow.
The only arguments that are this tiring are the ones that matter. And this never quite reached the pitch of an argument. She never snapped. He didn't hit the wall in order to not hit her. Nobody stormed off just to get a few minutes to take a break and breathe. Which means that inside her there's a bowstring pulled taut still, pulled just as tight as it was last night, a week ago, a month ago, the night she went to bed with him after watching a movie and joking about the characters as she stroked Lukas's hair
because she needed, so desperately, for everything to just be okay. For it to be over, for it to be done, for them to be together and the fact that he almost killed her to not be that important.
Even if she can't, two months later, let it go. Or even figure out how to deal with it. If she should deal with it. If she shouldn't just pack her things at the den and give him her keys to the house and his bedroom back and tell him
I'm sorry. I can't.
The thoughts are swimming around in her mind as she looks at the floor, taking a deep breath, huffing it out, at a loss. "When you were like that, all I could think of was what would happen to you if you came out of it and found that you'd killed me."
nothing worthwhile left of me
She sniffs. "Baby, you were so scared. You needed it to be okay. For me to still be there, and be with you. And I needed --"
my life to go on the way I like it. my happiness. my mate. my nights in your arms. my freedom from my brother, from other Garou. my love. my mate. my nights spent sleeping with you at my back, knowing I'm safe.
"I needed that, too."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Were he in another form, Lukas's fur would be on end. He would be unable to stand still, forepaws rising and falling, tag wagging low and hard; perhaps pacing. He's not in another form, though. He's in this form, this skin, his human one, and he sits still. He looks up at his mate with his knees drawn up, his feet almost under him; his forearms relaxed over his knees, but just barely. Something flares in his eyes when she says, you needed it. Dims again when she says,i needed that, too.
He looks away then. At her feet. At the wall. Up at her again.
"I don't want to pretend everything's okay if it's not," he says. "I know everything's not okay, and never will be. Not perfectly, not always. Not for anyone, but least of all for us. There will always be danger and heartbreak and ...
"It's worth it. You taught me that." Something faintly imploring in the way he looks at her now; subtle but present in his voice. "Didn't you?"
[Danicka Musil] [Empathy!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 5, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[Danicka Musil] [MORE.]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 4, 4, 6, 9 (Success x 1 at target 7)
[Danicka Musil] When she sees that flare in his eyes, Danicka looks at Lukas for a moment, the way he's poised, the way he could move at any second, and thinks to herself that sometimes he would be easier to understand, easier to read, if he were in his smaller four-legged form, ears and tail telling her his thoughts and feelings more than the body he was born into.
Even so, she can read what's there. So worried, after all this time, about being called weak. She doesn't point it out. She doesn't want to be exasperated. She doesn't want to argue. She's worn thin, strung tight, and she feels like that sculpture, that piece by Rodin:
I am falling under the weight of my stone.
She leans against the wall, as her mate says that he knows everything's not okay, and never will be, she puts her hand over her face at those words, almost unable to hear the rest. She does, though: hear him. It isn't perfect for anyone. But it's worth it. And when he gets to the end, asking her didn't you? it sounds very much like
...isn't it?
There are tears in her eyes when she lowers her hand again, looking over at him. The way she goes straight to telling him: "I just don't want to be scared of you. I wish I wasn't."
sounds very much like
yes.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] It's hard for her to hear those words. It's hard for him to hear, too. That she's scared of him. That after all this time, she's scared of him, and always will be.
Just as after all this time, he's afraid when she calls him weak. Not anyone else, because he knows what is true and what is not, there, and cares little of what others think. For a long time now, Lukas has been gifted with that much. That ability to see clearly in the face of insults and jeers; the ability to separate what must be done to maintain dominance against a challenger from the rage, the humiliation, the anger that could so easily run under any retaliation. He wasn't acting out of unbridled anger when he pinned Ezra to the ground and told him to fall in line or leave the city. He wasn't acting out of sheer rage when he killed Fons
(...the first time.)
in the challenge circle. He wasn't uncontrolled when he nearly strangled his kinsman, and he wasn't raging when he nearly drowned Kate's kinsman.
Danicka, though. She's different. Always has been. What she thinks of him matters, somehow. What she said to him when she found out what he'd done to Martin stung like a lash. Burned like a flame. When she tells him yes, you failed. but i do not think less of you, it matters to him. When she tells him you did well, that matters to him, too.
It's not that he seeks her approbation. Or fears her scorn, even. It's simply: she matters.
She's worth it.
"Are you scared of me right now?" he asks at length: a whisper.
[Danicka Musil] Every time Danicka speaks up and says Please don't do that or I wish you wouldn't or Sometimes I wonder or any of the ways she knows to carefully, carefully bring up an issue before it makes her snap in half, she worries about the argument to follow. The argument over whether she kept it from him and just held onto it like a grudge, the argument about whether or not he's really wrong or whether he can help it, the arguing, which for them always grows so tangled and so intense that there seems no way out of it but a so-called 'clean break'.
Telling him I'm scared of you is tantamount to telling him she isn't sure she can be his lover anymore. Hell. In everything but human law they may as well be married. They share homes. He claimed her from her family. She knows him better than his own does. He seeks her counsel; she opens her life to him. To tell Lukas I can't be with you anymore would be like a divorce. They would have to extricate themselves from each other, and even then they couldn't.
There'd be issues of claim to deal with. He would still be her guardian in Chicago. She'd try to give back his talens. He'd refuse. Every time she looked at them, or the gun he gave her, or the microscope he helped her put together, or the cat he met the day she brought it home, or anything she has, she would think of him. Miss him. Good Polish vodka. The look and sound of a decorative tabletop fountain. The taste of oranges.
It isn't all these small things that make her want to stay, make her not want to end it. She doesn't dread asking him if he wants her to delete his toons off of her World of Warcraft account so much that she would stay in this relationship because of it. But the thought of living without him, of knowing he's out there and that they aren't together, that they love each other but just can't make it work --
that's unbearable. That's more than she can stand.
Her eyes find his, and stay there. Her brow is furrowed. "No," she whispers, shaking her head. A moment passes, before she steps forward and sinks to a crouch. She's closer to him now, within arm's reach. He wouldn't need to jump up, lunge at her, grab her. Just reach out to her. "Sometimes it's just flashes. I can't predict when they're going to happen, and sometimes they go away quickly. Sometimes they linger. I don't mention it because I don't want you to start changing every little thing you do about the way you are with me. I don't want you to think I can't handle it if you clench a fist, or get frustrated with that drawer that sticks at the den and slam it. I don't want to tell you I've had nightmares since you frenzied and have you stop holding me in bed." She closes her eyes, wincing as she says that, and as she says: "I just want you to be you with me."
Her eyes open again. "I wish it weren't like that. I wish that I was never nervous around you. But it doesn't mean I don't love you, or that I don't trust you. I'm just frightened of what you might do, sometimes. And I think..."
She shifts downward, putting one hand on the floor, her knees bent and her legs to one side. Danicka sighs. "Sometimes I'm just apprehensive and it isn't because of you at all. Sometimes I'm just reacting to twenty-odd years of being constantly afraid. I know what this could become for us. I'm scared that it might be inevitable, and I'm sad at how hard we have to work to keep it from being like that."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] She winces when she tells him she's been having nightmares since the night he frenzied.
He flinches.
Lukas listens, though. He hears her out. All of it, painful or not. When she's finished he's quiet a while, eyes downcast, hands winding thoughtlessly together. After a while he looks at her again. She can always recognize him by his eyes, no matter the form. Maybe that made it all the worse that night on the street, when those eyes she's seen laughing, seen dark with lust, deep with love, seen glazed with the sheer sensory overload of what she does to him sometimes
looked at her without recognition on the street. Looked at her with nothing but lazy, primitive violence, as though she were nothing more than a small rack of tender meat he might or might not devour.
"I was starting to fool myself that you're never afraid of me anymore," he says. "But I don't want to love a perfect little fantasy. If I frighten you, I want to know so I can stop.
"I don't think anything is inevitable though. You told me once a long time ago, I'm not your mother. I'm not your brother. If I become like them," and perhaps it's significant that even on this, Lukas doesn't make the assumption that this is impossible, that this would never happen, "it won't be fate or genetics or hard-wiring. It'll be because I let myself become like that."
[Danicka Musil] What he says is true. All of this is the truth, finally dug out like a splinter working its way out of a wound you thought had healed. She didn't want to tell him sometimes I wonder if I should have left, and she didn't want to tell him that she's been having nightmares for two months, even if he isn't right there beside her. All this anxiety has been kept buried. It has to come out somewhere. But Danicka has always been good at hiding her fear.
The first lesson she learned was: I must be afraid.
And the second was: But I must not show it.
Sometimes it frustrates him to find out later, days or weeks or months later, that something scared her or upset her or made her angry. Sometimes he has to be reminded what telling the truth earned her in childhood. Adolescence. Even early adulthood. Even as recent as two years ago, she dared tell Sam she didn't want to be with him as anything but a friend, and he coerced her into his lap, mauling his face, as though the violation would teach her a lesson.
Joke was on him. She already knew that lesson: don't ever be honest. you will be punished.
Danicka sinks down, completely sitting now, moving closer to him by degrees. As though cold, she turns until their sides are together, and she wraps her arms loosely around her knees, looking at them. "If you do something that you probably shouldn't, and it scares me, then I'll tell you and if you can manage, then you can stop. But I don't think we'll survive if every time I'm nervous or apprehensive or scared, you try to find a way to stop or fix it."
She turns her head to look at him, her brow furrowed slightly. "You can't stop being what you are," she whispers. "And what you are is frightening to me. I love you, all the same. But that's the truth."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] There's a deeper wisdom in what Danicka asks for that most kinswomen -- most women, most people in general -- would be incapable of.
There are plenty of tittering, silly things out there who grow up fantasizing about the big strong men they'll love. Who pretend the jolt of adrenaline that comes with fear is a sort of thrill, a sort of love. Who pretend they love their abusive spouses -- or their Garou -- because they're dangerous, and aggressive, and ruinous.
Lukas has no respect for such individuals. He would not be here if Danicka were one of them.
But then there are those who would ask him to bite it back entirely. To stop, stop, stop at once if he so much as made their hearts jump. Not because he's angry, not because he's doing something he shouldn't, but simply because of what he is. If Danicka asked that of him -- asked him to stop frightening her, for god's sake, just stop -- he would agree. And he would try. But the trying would eventually drive a wedge between them. She'd be asking him to deny or control some part of himself as intrinsic as his heartbeat. She may as well as the tide not to ebb and rise. She may as well ask him not to breathe.
And he would grow to resent her for forcing him to control what he can't. And she would grow to resent him, when he failed.
What she asks, though, and what she tells him: it's a hard truth. And painful. But they're shadow lords. They do not shy for hard truths. And he's quiet a moment, his side pressed to hers, that contact -- so slowly, so carefully reestablished, like a wild fox creeping closer by the inch -- a reassurance in and of itself.
"Okay," is all Lukas says in the end, softly. "I can handle that if you can."
[Danicka Musil] They come at each other sideways. He sits very still on the ground and waits for her to come back, to come closer. He's made no move in her direction since she pulled away from him at the start. He's not even held out his hand to her. He's only said don't go. And waited for her to do this.
Take a step closer.
Crouch.
Sit.
Scoot near to him, then beside him.
And now this, finally, nestled against his side with their arms and bodies still self-contained but close enough that they can feel each other breathing, he still doesn't immediately move to wrap her up in his arms. He doesn't touch her, or nuzzle her, or reach for her with all the longing he's ever had for her and more. Lukas sits, and he waits quietly, and he uses a soft voice.
Small wonder that when they were first lovers, lying in bed, they talked of that chapter of that book. Small wonder that they spoke of taming, long before they could over speak of love.
His rage makes him what he is. His rage frightens her. It doesn't excite her, it doesn't arouse her. It was the single biggest obstacle to letting herself love him, from the beginning. To want him, fine. To desire him, alright. To enjoy fucking him, to like getting away with it, to do any of those things: fine. But to fall in love with him was, itself, terrifying, because she knew better than any of those tittering fools what kind of a life that would eventually -- perhaps inevitably -- be.
A life of constant strain, interspersed with mere moments of relaxation and calm. A life of stress and startlement and outright fear, of constant risk, punctuated with tense, careful arguments that might have to be abandoned before resolution just because he couldn't fucking take talking about it anymore. A life of swallowing the fact that all her freedom, all their equality, is something she has to work for and he has to work at allowing her.
With moments, mere moments, of peace.
Danicka curls forward, resting her forehead on her knees, breathing deeply. "Just don't take it personally -- as an accusation or an attack, I mean -- if I tell you I'm scared and there's nothing you can do about it but give me some room. It doesn't mean I want you away from me. It doesn't mean I blame you for it, or that you're doing something wrong. It shouldn't give you reason to doubt how I feel about you."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "I don't ever doubt that you love me," he says. "Not anymore.
"But," and this is more careful, choosing his words carefully so that he means what he says and says what he means, exactly, "if you had told me you'd actually come to the conclusion that you should have left that first night, I would have doubted whether you were still with me out of love. I would have wondered if you were here out of fear, or ...maybe just wishful thinking."
He quiet for a moment after that. And then he reaches out to her for the first time since she first drew away: his hand finding hers where it wraps around her knee, covering hers. He says nothing. The contact is all there is, speaking for itself.
[Danicka Musil] Her head lifted not long after she spoke while it rested there, her body still leaning forward. Danicka looks at him, one corner of her mouth tugging out. Her brow is still full of anxious wrinkles, her face still drawn with weariness.
So now he touches her. He reaches out his hand and slowly, carefully lays it over hers. Danicka doesn't jerk back as though burned. She doesn't ease away gently, indicating no, not right now, not yet. She doesn't try to lace their hands together; there is no need. She just lets him hold her there.
"Sometimes I wonder," she says, as though she must say this in the interest of full disclosure. "But it's just because this is so hard. And because I want to make sure I'm not still with you because I'm afraid to leave, or because I want to pretend this is easier than it is."
Danicka takes a breath, and leans against him now as she exhales. "Lukáš, I'm sorry, I'm just so tired. I just want to go to bed."
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] It's like subconsciously or instinctively, Lukas was waiting for a sign. Some indication that she wouldn't draw away now. That it wasn't too soon. She leans against him, and he leans into her; he nuzzles the side of her face, his nose stirring her blonde hair.
He kisses her, too. His lips are warm against her temple; his beard-bristle faintly scratchy. A moment he rests there, mouth against her skin.
Then, "Let's go to bed."
[Danicka Musil] Even now, he doesn't overwhelm her. She's tired, and she had a run-in with an Ahroun tonight that stirred her enough to make her order him out. That stirred her enough to list off the names of her long-dead mother, something Lukas has never heard her do though he grew up hearing them in songs. The verse about her Rite of Passage, where Night Warder came from, how once upon a time this great deceased Elder was just like them, just like those new Cliaths listening. And so on.
One has to wonder if Danicka ever heard those songs. If she knows any of the stories told about her mother other than the last one, the one where she died, the one given to her on the front lawn of her house while she stood in stunned, cold silence.
Danicka is tired, and Lukas is just as much himself as he always is. Her inner strength is just barely enough to cope with what he is now. It's possible that as he grows older he will only become more filled with rage, and she might not get much stronger of will than she is right now. It might go back to the way it was at the beginning, when his mere presence made her flinch, made her drain herself dry trying to endure the stress of being around him
for the sake of desire, and for the sake of loyalty, but ultimately
for the sake of love.
She leans into him, curls against his side, til her head rests on his chest, til she can hear his heartbeat. She breathes in, absorbing the smell of him, holding it. "Thank you," she whispers, which is the first thing she said to him after they were alone, too.
[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] So naturally it's thoughtless, Lukas's arm wraps around his mate. She breathes him in. He kisses her hair. She thanks him, and he nuzzles against her a moment, then exhales a soft breath.
"Thank you too," he says.
Another moment or so, and then he gets up. He holds his hand out to her, and he holds her hand as they move out of the hallway. Her cat is on the back of her couch, eyes slitted, head turning lazily to watch them move.
His things still live in her closet, her medicine cabinet. It's a little bittersweet for him to see it now. To know that these little tokens of unity, these little signs of their entwined lives, may not be permanent. Are no more a promise of forever than anything they can give each other. It's possible that one day his rage will simply be too much. It's possible that one day he'll frenzy again, or lose his temper and slam the door shut in her face again, grab her by the wrist and refuse to let go again, and she'll just leave. She'll say, enough, that's it, the end, and leave.
Or worse: she won't.
Or worse: she'll stay. And everything they have will die a slow, cold death.
So Lukas is a little quiet as he brushes his teeth and washes up alongside his mate. Even in reflection, they're so starkly contrasted: the male large and dark, the female slight and fair. He bends almost double to wash his face, big hands splashing water up where it drips off his nose, runs off his brow, wets his hair and his neck. Afterward, while she's rubbing lotion into her skin, he razors his jaw clean and then wipes up the water he's left around the sink.
Lights out. They go to bed. He's on his back tonight, his arm inviting her against his side. She doesn't stay against his side. She moves over him and her hands are exploring, her mouth is exploring, his mouth opens to ask her are you sure but he just gasps, instead.
She rides him tonight and he holds her by the hips, holds her at the sides, covers her breasts with his hands, reaches out and grasps the edges of the bed when she's driving him out of his mind. In the end he holds her on him, holds her firmly on his cock as he comes, muffling groans in her mouth. When they're finished he doesn't want to move. He wants to think there's no way she'll have a nightmare tonight; she'll have the memory of his love for her, of his making love to her, and that will banish everything else.
He knows that's not necessarily true. He doesn't sleep apart from her, though. He wraps himself around her the way he always does, thinking to himself that if he lets himself change his ways for fear of what might be, then he may as well have never gone into the underworld and returned at all; he may as well have never won that hard-won battle against himself at all.
Before he sleeps, he whispers what she is to him. Mate. My mate. The words are blurry; he's so very sleepy. His hand cradles her breast. His palm holds her heartbeat.
In the morning he's awake before she is, but he drowses until she wakes, unwilling to leave just yet.
celebration.
9 years ago