black friday (ii)

[Danicka] "Darling," Danicka says calmly just before they settle into an easy quiet, "at some point you are going to have to come to peace with the fact that one day we are going to find ourselves in a situation where we have both children in the other room and a desperate need to fuck, and when that day comes, you're going to have to make some decisions about your attitude towards Right and Wrong."

So easily, now, she talks about children. Maybe it's spending the day with his family. But then: she decided a long time ago she would welcome a family with Lukas. She decided a long time ago she would be all right with it, however difficult it would be for both of them. She spoke -- however sidelong -- about managing both education and career and family, which Danicka knows better than most would be triply challenging since Lukas genuinely could not do as much in the way of childrearing as she would need to.

But to speak of it so... simply. So realistically, as though it's a foregone conclusion that one of these days Lukas is going to be lying in bed with his mate and muttering in her ear that they have to be quiet,

because the baby is sleeping.

It's surreal.


Danicka actually does doze off during that thirty, forty-minute interim between conversation and Manhattan. She drifts off til Lukas gently wakes her, just enough to suggest she recline her seat, and Danicka -- being Danicka -- doesn't protest. She naps as easily as a child, despite the stop-and-go of the car, and then they're in Manhattan and it's noisy as hell and she's stirring, blinking her eyes and plotting out with him how to most efficiently get checked into the W before they head to Queens.

When she picks him back up he's grinning as he gets back in. She cocks a brow at him, inviting explanation. Which he gives. Freely. She glances at his lap, flicks her eyes at his face with her eyebrows still up, and just murmurs, "Well we couldn't have had that. Cunningulus in the middle of the day." She tsks, shaking her head a couple of times before he has to focus on driving.


And on to Queens. They talk about the den more than the book, though as they get closer to the address she calls ahead to let Sarka know they're almost there. Going back to her conversation with Lukas: she was serious. She thinks the stone facade would look lovely but not fit so well with the neighborhood -- though she admits that doesn't matter too much in the long run. They can call some contractors when they get back to Chicago, or sometime in spring. Maybe see about getting the whitewash removed. The truth is, the house is... quirky. It's got an odd floorplan, an odd exterior, and though internally it's in perfect working order and surprisingly cozy, it still needs work.

Danicka likes that it needs work.

"That one," she says, as Lukas slows on the street her directions have brought him too. It, unlike their own, doesn't look like it needs a bit of work. It's beyond charming, this little yellow house stuck between two brick boxes. The roof slopes neatly from the apex, and the living room in front has a curved bay window. It almost looks like something out a fairy tale. It is not, even remotely, the sort of place one imagines Shadow Lords living, least of all Shadow Lords who just immigrated.

Then one remembers: one doesn't know the situation with Sarka's deceased mate, or what the tribe is willing to do for the mother of two Garou and four Kin. Get her to America rapidly. Help her get treatment for cancer. One doesn't know just how much clout Sabina has in the tribe, with her rank and her lineage. It's not the nicest house in the world, but it's large, especially for New York. It even has a little bit of room out front for a small garden. It has a porch with a couple of white Adirondack chairs and a little wrought iron table. There is a windchime hanging from the awning.

As soon as Lukas parks the door of the little house blasts open and out comes the little girl -- though she's shot up several inches in the past year -- who stared boldly at Lukas at the Musil residence when he came for her aunt. Irena barrels off the porch and is at the car before Danicka has even managed to get it open, barely contains herself long enough to let Danicka get out before she throws her arms around her waist. It's too cold for Irena to be out here in just corduroys and a sweater, but even as Lukas exits the car, he can sense -- ever, ever so faintly -- the intensity of the girl, the inner heat, the ferocity.

But then there comes Emmanuel, too, someone -- Renata, probably, the voice is female and young -- calling after him in English "Shoes! Close the door!" which he ignores, socked feet slapping through snowslush all the way to greet Danicka.

She is all but cooing to them in Czech as the two youngest grab a hold of her, touching their hair and smiling, cautioning them about being cold. She does not, notably, tell her nephew that running outside in November in socked feet, getting them all wet, is going to make him sick. She gives Irena a kiss on the head and starts to urge them back inside, glancing over at Lukas as he circles the car and smiling.

"I would say they are not usually this rude, but you know better," she says archly, her hands becoming firm on the children to nudge them back towards the gate.

Irena's eyes latch onto Lukas for a moment, flaring briefly with a reaction he knows all too well. It's the 9 year old version of how he looked at Daniel when the poor man opened the door.

[Lukas] Long after that casual mention of children, when Lukas is watching Danicka get pounced by children that have very clearly learned to adore their aunt in the few weeks she spent with them in the summer, he remembers that again with a sudden, aching poignancy. How easily she speaks of their nonexistent children. How easily she greets these very much existent children, her blood by her sister's blood.

They all but bound around her. The elder boy ignores Lukas utterly while Lukas is getting out of the driver's seat, locking up the car. As he comes up on the curb, though, Irena gives him the sort of stare that, in fifteen or twenty years, will frighten kin and terrify humans.

Lukas stops when he's still a good yard or two from the girl. And, because he is so very tall even compared to her rapidly growing frame, he stoops down almost to one knee, eye to eye with her.

"I'm your aunt's mate," he says quietly. "I've come to visit your family's home. I mean no harm to your mother or your siblings." And then, if she hasn't bared her teeth outright at him, he holds out his hand. "I'm Lukáš."

[Lukas] [the YOUNGER boy. i got order wrong.]

[Danicka] Their breeding is like Miloslav the elder's. It's like Danicka's. This house is suffused with it -- and rightly so, two trueborn and several Kinfolk living together, every one of them tied to the Musil line deeply. Their blood is just as rich as Danicka's, and just as reminiscent of the fields and the meadows, summer storms, hearthfire and the full belly that comes after a hunt. It's in their hair -- not quite as fair as hers, but not as dark as a 'traditional' Shadow Lord's. It's in their colorful eyes.

Emanuel just ignores the hell out of Lukas, hugging Danicka tightly. He's gotten bigger, too. He's had his hair cut closer. Irena, however, takes a moment to notice him. When she does, she locks on, her gaze flickering with something that wants to be warning. That wants to be jaws snapping

mine! mine! my house! my kin! mine!

but isn't. Not quite yet. Falters, before it gets that far, because he is large, and he is full of wrath she can't tap yet, and she balks from challenging him on pure instinct. Slips away and holds Danicka's hand, ready to drag her inside of her aunt doesn't get moving.

But Danicka stays where she is, waiting for Lukas to reach the sidewalk to join them. They can see Renata at the door, curly-haired and gentle-eyed as she was last year, though... growing older, like they all are. Becoming more and more of a teenager, more and more of a young woman who seems older than she really is. She's waiting for them, her calls to her baby brother halting for now. As before, Miloslav is nowhere to be seen just yet.

Irena follows Lukas's face downward as he crouches, keeping his knee off the salted pavement just barely. Balancing with what looks like no effort. After he talks, she wrinkles her face up, giving him a Look. "Duh," she says, her proud Americanism that is yet tinted heavily with a Czech accent. Danicka gives her hand a sharp squeeze and Irena forces her expression into something more respectful. "I know!" she says diffidently, and slaps him five on his outstretched hand before turning and bolting back into the house, which sets Renata off harping at her about tracking snow in, Irča!

Emanuel hides behind Danicka's leg, staring. His nose is running. He sniffs. Loudly.

[Lukas] Lukas looks bemused -- and amused -- as his handshake is met with a five. He glances up at Danicka, perhaps about to comment that their kids better not slap fives when they're supposed to shake hands, but then his eyes shift to the boy instead.

Possibly steeling himself for mooing, he offers his hand to Emanuel as well. "You want to gimme five too?" he offers.

[Danicka] "Ne," Emanuel says simply and calmly, not to be rude, just answering what he assumes is an honest question with his best honest answer. He is young enough -- seven at best -- that most statements still seem very literal to him, or perhaps it's his still-slim familiarity with English. Given how wide his eyes are, it's actually possible he didn't 100% understand 100% of what Lukas just said to him. Or to Irena.

Danicka doesn't seem particularly bothered one way or another by Irena's behavior, but then she could sense the rippling tension in the girl, the unwillingness to let Lukas close his hand on hers, the simultaneous rage and fear, the ache inside her to protect her family and her territory coinciding with her self-awareness that she was too weak to do so against this man. And Danicka knows, too, how out of Irena's control all of that is. How powerful those feelings are even when they fly in the face of what she intellectually knows: that this is Lukas, her aunt's mate. That he means no harm to her family -- her kin. That he is visiting, and not conquering.

And she knows that Emanuel knows all that, too. Knows that living with two Garou siblings and being the youngest of six total children and having a mother who has nearly died repeatedly in his young life has given the child backbone few his age can lay claim to. She knows that despite that, his most primitive, most instant feeling when Lukas looks at him is terror, and it makes his hand flex and relax where it grasps her coat behind her back.

"Let's go inside," she suggests gently, and helps the boy turn with her, shouldering her purse to head inside. "Eman, Lukáš byl asi ve tvém věku, když přišel do Ameriky. Musel se naučit anglicky, taky. Měli byste praxe, zatímco on je tady. On nebude zahanbit vám."

"Miloš bude! On dělá legraci ze mě," Emanuel argues, grousing as he squelches back towards the front door.

Danicka glances past her shoulder over at her mate, her eyes that strangely luring green, the glance so much like the one she gave him the night of that summer solstice. "That," she says, switching to English and slowing down a bit, "is because you are learning English faster than he is. Do not let him make you give up."

[Lukas] There are children clinging to Danicka as she moves toward the door. Trailing a step behind, Lukas follows with a faint, thoughtful little smile on his face. She looks over her shoulder. The looks she gives him pierces him through, like light through clear water. He feels inexplicably drawn -- a clench low in his belly, equal parts poignancy and eroticism, as though the very sight of her moving into someone else's home with someone else's children reminds him of what they have already. What they might -- will -- have one day.

Up the few steps, then, and in the front door of that almost storybook little house. Lukas stamps debris from his shoes as he enters, his hand coming to Danicka's midback for a warm, protective moment.

Then he turns to the eldest of Sarka's children, this young female caught at the cusp between girlhood and womanhood. Even the last time he saw her -- a glimpse at the door of Danicka's father's house -- she seemed more a girl than she does today. There's a look to her that reminds him of Danicka, though he can't put his finger on why. They're all family, all related by blood. He wonders, briefly, if Danicka saw the resemblance in his own family so clearly too.

"Hello," he greets the girl with a nod, and then looks past her to see if her mother is in sight.

[Danicka] The way she looks at him is so familiar. She looked at him in a measured, half-veiled version of that the very first night he saw her in Chicago in SmartBar. He wanted her even then, felt the deep clench of it even as he was repressing it, denying himself as he did so much, so often, back then. And the weight of it has changed over time, every time she's looked at him like that: lifting her eyes to him as he entered his room at the brotherhood. Over her shoulder in the summer, in the woods. That first glance when she came down the stairs in her own house and he could not stop himself, that time, from saying her name -- even in front of her father, her brother.

Always drawing him in. Always drawing him closer. Not to toy with him, not to play a game, not even to get him to fuck her, but because -- as she confessed after he claimed her as his mate -- all she ever wanted was to be near him.

Emanuel has to stop just inside the door and be stripped of his icy, saturated socks. Irena is wiggling and hopping out of her hastily-donned sneakers and getting scolded in rapid Czech by her older -- but not eldest -- sister for leaving the door open and tracking rock salt and moisture in and being rude. Renata, her eyes too tight at the corners for someone so young, stops almost instantly when Lukas comes inside with Danicka, their shoes scraping on the mat.

She knows better than to stare, and wouldn't want to, anyway. She exhales and breath and looks at Lukas's chin instead. "Haló," she echoes quietly, and seems rather relieved that he doesn't go further than that. She is trying to get a hold of Emanuel, who is quite insistent on not being gotten a hold of, murmuring to him to go put on some clean socks and try to stop acting like a little monster.

Irena is long gone, tearing ass into the living room to leap onto the couch. They can't see her, but there's a whump! of her impact on the cushions and a skittering sound as some loose toys go hitting the floor. Emanuel's head snaps up.

"My Legos!" he snaps, and his bare, damp feet slap against the hardwood as he runs after his sister, fire in his eyes. "Irena those are mine!"

Danicka is shedding her coat and hanging it an arm of the coat tree by the door, which stands in addition to a long rectangular mirror bearing half a dozen pegs from which dangle hats and coats and scarves and mittens and gloves and keyrings and so on and so forth. There is an equally long bench beneath the mirror and pegs, with several pairs of sneakers and galoshes and other shoes in various sizes and states of repair. The neatness with which the footwear is placed under the bench, too, varies widely. She takes Lukas's coat as well, simply because the entry hallway is narrow and she's closer to the coat tree, and then she's sitting on the bench to remove her boots and setting them aside -- all while conversing with Renata. In English.

"Don't worry so much," she says, to her niece's stressed expression over the two youngest siblings. "They don't have to be perfect just because Lukáš is here." She rises after removing her boots, leaning over to give Renata a kiss on the cheek, which Renata returns with the ease and carelessness of familiarity with the gesture, at least with Danicka. "Ani dělat vás." She straightens, smiling, then looks at Lukas.

"You were never properly introduced last year. Lukáš, this is my niece Renáta. She worries almost as much as you do. Renáta, this is Lukáš. Do not let him find out that you bake."

Renata -- who struggled obviously with not freaking out about her siblings' behavior, who also rather obviously is wearing herself thin by being thrust into a new country, into suddenly being the eldest sibling, into a new house, into trying to make sure everyone is Okay even while her mother is Sick -- actually smiles at that, huffing a small breath of laughter as she offers her hand to Lukas.

"Where are your mother and brother?" Danicka asks, after Lukas has had a chance to greet the teenager -- who, despite her better efforts, colors slightly when Lukas takes her hand and seems a bit flustered when she takes it back.

"Meditating," Renata says, a word she's likely said so often in the past year it rolls off her tongue now. Her accent is strong, like Emanuel's and Irena's, but soft, the way Danicka's is when she speaks Czech, every consonant a light tap of sound. She glances at Lukas, and Danicka reaches to hold his hand, as though to silently indicate again to Renata: it's okay. don't be perfect. don't hide. don't lie. he's family.

he's not like Vládík.

Renata flicks her eyes back to Danicka. "More bad dreams," she confesses quietly. "Some, he's awake. Teta Sabina said... maybe it will help."

[Lukas] As difficult as it was for Danicka to grow accustomed to Lukas's family -- particularly to Anezka's unabashed assumptions of closeness -- it's nearly as difficult for Lukas to fit himself into Danicka's. There are so many children here, and they're not at all like the dream-children he met in the Underworld. Half of them seem nearly feral. All of them are afraid of him, afraid to a degree utterly unsoftened by long familiarity, by blood-ties.

He can so easily guess which are the kin and which the future Garou, too. There was Irena's direct stare, which was so nearly a challenge -- like a half-grown pup growling at a wolf. There was Emanuel's inability to so much as meet his eyes, much less speak to him. And then there's this, Renata's quick handshake, her attempts to hold her little family together now that that role has all but fallen to her.

Legos! Emanuel snaps, and he's gone. Lukas starts, not because it was sudden and loud (though it was) but because it reminded him so starkly of a different little boy, with his mother's hair and jawline, his father's impossibly clear eyes. Almost on instinct he glances at Danicka to see if she felt the resemblance, too -- but no, of course not. She wasn't there. His attention comes back. Danicka is introducing him to her niece.

"I remember you from last year," Lukas says. A touch of awkwardness -- he obviously has no idea how to behave around children and adolescents, particularly those that have very little to do with him -- before he adds, "You've grown taller."

And then he listens, intent and curious as Renata speaks of dreams, meditation. "How old is your brother?" he asks at the end, gently.

[Danicka] It's easy for Danicka to be here. She grew up around Kin of her tribe, and unchanged Garou. She was a caregiver of children from as soon as she could be trusted to hold an infant to her early twenties. These are her nieces and nephews, who she did not meet until last year but who she lived with for almost a month over the summer. They are affectionate towards her, but even then it's not the same as family she grew up with, family she's always known.

Even between Danicka and this branch of her family tree, there's awkwardness. There's uncertainty. Moreso for Lukas, who does not have any idea how to behave with people of this age, particularly ones who are at turns scared of him, challenging him, or -- in one case -- trying to reconcile instinctive terror with equally instinctive attraction.

Thankfully for everyone's sake, Lukas is probably clueless about that, too. As clueless as Danicka is about the memory that strikes him of a little boy who never existed and may never exist, fiddling with his Legos on the couch and only getting angry or even showing backbone when his would-be Garou sister messed up his hard work.

Danicka tries to soften the awkwardness with traces of humor, with thin ties of what Renata and Lukas have in common, trying to humanize him a little and get Renata to relax. Renata does, a bit, but one gets the impression she just needs a vacation from trying to be the glue holding everything together -- or some therapy, to tell her that she doesn't have to be the glue in the first place.

Renata blinks slightly, not quite sure whether getting taller is a compliment she should thank Lukas for or not, but before she can stammer, Danicka asks about Sarka and Milos. Her eyes drift to Lukas's shoulder when he asks how old Milos is. "He is...čtrnact," she finally gets out. Numbers are still a struggle. All English is, frankly. Emanuel, Irena? They seem to be catching the language like a cold. Everything is work for her.

Danicka looks over at Lukas as he asks that. Even a year ago, Milos was close to the Change. Close enough to be talking to trees. Close enough now that he has walking nightmares, bizarre dreams, visions. Voices. Old enough, now, that he should already have a mentor. Old enough that, ten years ago, he would no longer be living with his family. Not a cub of his lineage, his breeding. And, truth be told, his auspice, in a tribe where Theurges are so deeply respected.

"Šárka is trying to put Vladislav off," Danicka says quietly. Renata is watching them both, close, but then there's a crash in the living room and Emanuel starts wailing and off she goes, as though grateful for the excuse to get back to her more familiar routine.

For a brief time, Danicka and Lukas are alone. Danicka finishes, keeping her voice low: "I think he expected that Miloš would come live with him when they all came to America, and I think that's what the string-pullers who helped them get their papers expected too. Sabina is looking for someone at Stark Falls who might take him on, but the... the politics are complicated."

Of course. She squeezes his hand, smiling with what looks like sympathy. "Come. We'll go wait for them in the kitchen."


Which is actually quite the modern little room, all dark wood and brushed-metal rods for drawer pulls and cupboard handles. It looks like dinner is going to be roast, cooking slowly away with potatoes and carrots and various other hearty vegetables. The remains of lunch are by the sink, some stacked plates and a few errant crumbs on the counter. There's no sign of turkey sandwiches or leftover cranberry sauce, but then: there wouldn't be. Thanksgiving means nothing to this family.

[Lukas] The terror, Lukas sees. The attraction, he does not.

It's not that he's typically obtuse, or unobservant. His powers of observation have never, will never quite equal Danicka's, but he's sharp. He has to be. Sometimes a battle hinges on what he can see first. Always, a battle hinges on what he can react to first.

This, though -- it's outside his sphere of comprehension. She's so young. He's mated. And worst, worst of all -- if he accepts that a fifteen-year-old kin can be attracted to him in spite of her fear simply because it's written into her genes, then he has to consider the possibility that perhaps all he has with Danicka, in the end, is purely instinctual. Nothing but age-old decrees handed down by fate, by genetics, by Gaia.

So, no. Lukas doesn't notice, or makes himself not notice. And Renata is awkward and soft-spoken and frightened, and soon enough gone, anyway, returned back to the role she knows so well. Caregiver. Child-watcher. The very role she was born to play, that Danicka herself played when she was her age. Sometimes Lukas wonders if his mate sees an echo of herself in her niece.

Sometimes he wonders how she ever survived her life, when even this family -- perhaps the best and most wholesome family she's ever had -- is so obviously and deeply fractured. A dead father. A sick mother. Children that are overwhelmed or half-feral or both, Garou and kin, their young lives already bifurcating in ways that, in truth, echo the old world far more than the new.

Following Danicka into the kitchen, Lukas asks, "Do you want me to talk to Istok about it the next time I'm at Stark Falls? See if he can help?"

The kitchen is small by Chicago standards, but it looks recently renovated. It's sleek and dark and well-fitted, and Lukas drifts over to have a look at the roast before taking up a position by the stove, back to the counter.

"I don't think he'll foster a Theurge. He's always said only a Theurge can teach a Theurge, and I've never seen him make an exception to that. But maybe he can at least ... help smooth the way."

[Danicka] As far as Lukas's reaction -- nonreaction, really -- to Renata goes, it's all to the good. Danicka understands, better than he can, what could possibly be going through the mind and hormones of a girl Renata's age, in Renata's situation. For instance: when Danicka was her age, she had lost a parent, too. When Danicka was Renata's age, she got pregnant.

Danicka is thankful for whatever differences there are between her and her niece. For the fact that Renata, given even just a word of reassurance, can relax enough to be honest about what's going on with her family in front of someone who is a stranger to her and feels -- on a base, primal level -- like a threat. She is grateful to know that Renata is simply lonely, and Lukas is reserved and polite and hot, and as far as she's concerned the girl simply has at least that much good taste -- and the decorum to blush and excuse herself.

She's met fully grown Silver Fang kinswomen she can't say the same about, but that's a year in the past now.

Ahem.

If she knew that on some far-back, deeply buried level, Lukas senses Renata's reaction to him and has a faint flicker of wonder if that's all it is, if it's just breeding calling to breeding, Kin to Garou, like to like, soul to blood --

if she knew that for a fraction of a moment he wondered --

well, the truth is, she might yell at him. Or, given her easy mood today, she might laugh at him and kiss him and tell him that he underestimates both his appeal and the hormones of a teenage girl. She might cup his face in her hands and rub her nose against his cheek, breathe the scent of him, and tell him he's a stupid, stupid man. Kiss him. Ask him if he could ever really think that after all they went through, the obstacles and the fear and the fighting, she was drawn to him because of what he was, and not who.

It doesn't really matter, because it's all under the surface, but chances are, he would say No. Ne, láska.


Echoes of their own childhoods, though Emanek is more cranky than Lukasek and Irena is the one with the latent Rage and Renata has so much more of a chance to grow up sane and safe, skitter away and make distant noise in the living room. Danicka leads Lukas to the kitchen, pointing out where the living room is, the downstairs bathroom, the guest room.

She does pause there on the way to the kitchen just to show him where she stayed for those three weeks in the summer. It's a small but tidy room, not really personal, as a guest room typically isn't. But he can stand there for a moment if he likes. Imagine her there, talking to him on the telephone. Sitting in that chair. Lying in that bed. Looking at the moon through that window, and thinking of him every time.

To Lukas, unaccustomed to children, the behavior of the younger two seems half-feral. Danicka might laugh and say Seven and nine, baby. You just had stricter parents. But unlike the way she did when she was annoyed by Anezka's familiarity, Lukas doesn't comment. He wonders to himself, quietly, about how Danicka turned out the way she did. About how wounded this family is, what a narrow precipice they stand on from day to day.

Alone in the kitchen, she goes to get them some glasses of water. Her hair sways over her shoulder and back as she glances at him when he speaks, her eyebrows lifting slightly. Her eyes soften as he goes on.

"I think you should ask Šárka that," she says, taking down two tumblers and closing the cupboard again.

There's a photograph on the kitchen wall, in an oval frame. In it, Sarka has hair. In it, Emanuel is a baculaté dítě on his mother's lap, looking everywhere but at the camera. In it, there is a stern-looking man with vividly bright, intelligent eyes standing beside his wife, his hand protectively on her shoulder. There are five other children gathered around them, the eldest a boy on the cusp of adulthood who looks a great deal like his father. A teenage girl with a goofy, lopsided grin. Milos with mussed hair, age nine. Four year-old Irena in a dress she is very clearly proud of because she's stiffly holding the skirt out to each side like she's about to curtsy. Renata leaning against her eldest brother's side.

Danicka is answering him, though, filling the glasses from the fridge door. "Perhaps even Sabina, though because she's so far away they are under my brother's guardianship until Miloš is a Cliath." She pauses a moment, turning to him and holding a glass of water out to him. "I think Miloš trying to become like the Lords of Manhattan and the Sept of the Green would be an unmitigated disaster and turn him into an asshole. I think he'd thrive in Stark Falls. He'd... fit better there, from what I know of it. And I think getting him as far away from my brother's influence as possible is vital."

She sips her own water and steps closer, leaning against him for a moment with effortless, contented closeness. "Miloš is talented, and he comes from strong bloodlines," she says quietly, as though this is the real truth, the sidelong glance that means more than any words: "If someone well-respected offered to foster him, maybe it would put pressure on Vládík not to offend them by refusing."

Lukas, having met the man, might very well know: that's the sort of Garou Vladislav is. That sort of thing would matter.

Danicka squeezes him, still talking quietly. "I don't want to ask you to put yourself on the line," she admits. "I don't want to... use you, like that. But I don't want Miloš to --"

She doesn't need to finish that sentence. She just kisses his shoulder, and smiles thinly, and moves back to drink some more of her water.

[Lukas] Indeed, Lukas does stand in the doorway of that guest-room-that's-not, looking in. He's a quiet, solid presence there, filling the frame almost edge to edge, and untold thoughts flicker behind his eyes as he considers the window, the floor, the walls, the bed.

When he turns away, he wraps his arm around Danicka's shoulders and kisses her temple, pressing his warm mouth against her warm skin for a longer moment than usual. She can feel the scratchiness of his new beard: unlike his father, impeccably groomed no matter what day of the week it is, Lukas sometimes goes days before razoring back his stubble.

There's no explanation for his sudden, aching affection, either. But perhaps she knows. For those weeks she was here, he missed her terribly. She could look at the moon and think of him. He, on the other hand, had trouble looking at the moon and not thinking, every time, that his mate was too far away to hear him howling for her.

Later on, in the kitchen, he asks if she wants him to talk to Istok about it. She suggests that he ask Sarka, or perhaps even Sabina, and he nods.

"I was going to ask them about Irena, anyway. For when she's a little older."

She goes on, then, coming to lean against him, coming to wrap her arms around him. He inhales as she squeezes him, as though to reinforce the contact, make it stronger, closer. Use you like that, she says, reluctant, and he turns with a frown.

"Baby, I don't feel used. Not in the slightest. I want to help. And I'm hardly being wholly altruistic. I don't want another Vládík in the world.

"I'll ask Istok to recommend a Theurge. And then I'll see what I can do, if Šárka and Sabina are willing."

[Danicka] Though Danicka wrinkles her nose when Lukas kisses her, nuzzles her with his beard a day or more grown and scratchy, she's never pushed him away. She's never asked him to shave before he puts his hands on her face or her waist and puts his mouth on her lips or her neck. Especially not this afternoon, trending towards evening now after a late lunch and later shopping and an hour's drive. The sun is dripping towards the horizon and will turn a vibrant, burning gold all too soon. Danicka briefly closes her eyes as Lukas holds her, pressing his mouth to her. He doesn't explain, and she doesn't need to be told.

There were nights over the summer, on the phone or in messages, where she could sense him right on the verge of outright begging her to come back. Where she could hear a sort of howl under his breath, could feel the pressing ache in his chest. To his credit, he never broke down and asked her, please, baby, please come home. But she knew. And she knows now, as he holds her for a moment, what he's remembering.


Danicka smiles faintly when Lukas mentions Irena. Her fondness for the girl is subtle, but strong. Renata she identifies with. Emanuel she knows how to handle perhaps better than any of his siblings. Milos she worries for. Irena, though, she is terribly amused by and endeared to. Smiles play at the corners of her mouth and her eyes when the little Ahroun is nearby. She felt a faint surge of pride when Irena was staring at Lukas, a pup about to bark at a full-grown dog.

It says something, too, about her trust in Lukas that she doesn't rush to get the children to be more respectful, to be calm, to be quiet, to not do something that might somehow set him off -- particularly under a waning moon that is still thick and gibbous in the sky. She doesn't caution Irena not to stare, not to make eye contact. Certainly don't bare her teeth or growl.

Lukas has been studying self-control since he was a little older than Irena. Danicka doesn't, for a moment, fear to bring him here among her youngest relatives and all their wildness. She seems happy, though mild, when he says he plans on talking to the little Full Moon's mother and aunt. Her arms slide around his waist as she stands there with him, worries about using him to smooth over the troubles in her own family, holds him and holds onto him all the same.

She tips her head back and smiles softly at him. "Thank you," she says quietly, and then quiet footsteps are entering the kitchen. This whole house is suffused with the scents of a whole family-pack of Garou and Kin, every last one of them purebred -- it's sound more than scent that indicates one of them has come closer, and though Lukas has yet to greet the lady of the house, perhaps he's not too surprised, or even disappointed, to see that it's Irena.

Who is not running willy-nilly into the kitchen to escape with her brother's Legos. She's actually settled down a bit since the initial excitement of seeing Danicka and the unease of letting Lukas into the house and stands next to the arch into the kitchen, one hand on the frame. Her eyes have the color Danicka's sometimes do, a forest in shadow.

When she sees them see her, she grins. "What are you talking about?" she asks, and though she speaks slowly to minimize her accent's affect on her speech, the cadence and rhythm of the question matches Czech structure more than English.

The question, too, is too innocent. It is 9 year old code for: I heard my name.

[Lukas] There's a certain ease in their affection here that they don't necessarily have in most situations involving others of the Garou Nation. Just as Danicka hadn't been afraid to be so obviously delighted with, in love with Lukas at his parents' home, Lukas isn't afraid now to wrap his arms around his mate. To hold her while she smiles at him; hold her when she came close to him a moment earlier.

When Irena enters the kitchen, he doesn't spring apart from Danicka, either. He glances over, and then smiles when the child does. Extricating himself from his mate, Lukas bends to the girl again, this time dropping easily to one knee on the kitchen floor.

"You," he says, easily and honestly, "amongst other things. Irena, you and I have a lot of things in common. I was thinking maybe when you're a little older you might come out to Chicago and let me teach you. Do you think you might like that?"

[Danicka] Danicka doesn't pull away from Lukas when Irena pokes her head in. She turns to look at the girl and smiles a little, setting her water glass aside on the counter. Irena's eyes are intent on them both, almost demanding in a way, vitally curious.

If Lukas were not one and a half times as tall as she is -- and she is tall for her age -- Irena might be insulted that he crouches down like she's a baby. As it is, her curiosity seems to be overtaking anything else, and she just stares at him as he all but kneels. And Lukas, on his knee, is eye-to-eye with the nine year-old.

There's a flicker of pleasure when he says you, the simple nature of children who, by and large, adore themselves. Her brow furrows at things in common, a slight confusion. She doesn't take her eyes off of Lukas to glance at Danicka for help, but continues to frow at him as though willing him to make sense -- or, more likely, willing herself to understand anyway. It doesn't really matter what 'things in common' means, though, because she understands the rest.

She's still holding onto the frame of the arch. The television plays in the other room, some cartoon or another. Irena tips her head to the side. "How much older?" she asks, as though mentally calculating what will be on t.v. that day.

[Lukas] "I don't know," Lukas replies.

He doesn't know how much the girl knows about her own fate; he can surmise, given the puzzled frown he just got, that it's very little. Some instinct tells him not to reveal too much; that if Sarka hasn't told her yet, she probably doesn't want her to be told by some visiting boyfriend of her half-sister's.

"Maybe four, five years from now," he adds. "When you're a little bigger. And if your mom is okay with it."

[Danicka] Lukas -- perhaps being so familiar with his own family's accents, perhaps because learning English was something he did two decades ago -- misunderstands Irena's confusion. She's trying to work out in her head what things that she and Lukas have that are low and regular and everyday, because as of yet she only knows the one definition of the word. She learns a great deal from context. From inference.

But she knows exactly what she is. She knows more than he did about the Nation when he was her age, but that's not saying much. Knowing the moon you're born under, knowing that you are going to change just like the sibling you feel you are the least like, knowing that it's not fair that he's older so he gets to change first, knowing that your mother cries -- it's not the same as it happening. It's not the same as living the life that is destined for her.

"Oh," she says, as though that makes things a bit more clear. As though: oh, not next year or later this week, then. "When I'm Garou." She looks past him at Danicka, but it's very quick, before her eyes snap back to Lukas's face. Her hands go gradually to her sides. "Why don't you two just move here? Miloš needs a teacher, too."

[Lukas] So she does understand. The realization is a quick, surprised flicker on Lukas's face. Then he settles his other knee on the kitchen floor, sitting back on his heels with his hands on his thighs. Balanced, poised.

"Yeah," and he nods. "When you're Garou. Because we're born under the same moon, and to the same tribe. That's what I meant when I said we have a lot in common.

"I can't move here," he continues then, a hint of apology in his tone now. "My den is in Chicago. My pack is in Chicago. And Chicago needs me more than New York does." He pauses a moment. "In four or five years, it'll probably need you more than New York does, too. Chicago doesn't have as many Garou, and the Sept isn't as strong as the ones we have here. I can make more of a difference there, see.

"And," he adds, "I can't teach Miloš, I think. He's a crescent moon. They're very different from full moons, and very different, really, from all the other moons. I wouldn't know where to begin teaching him."

[Danicka] The truth is, Irena understands a great deal. Irena is nine and energetic and every single day it seems like she rides the razor's edge of her own temper, trying not to lose it and end up hurting someone. Already she worries about hurting someone. The first time they let her hold her baby brother she worried about hurting him. Every time they play, she loses track of herself and then hits a point where she balks, feeling a flash of something inside that wants violence, that wants pain, that wants the screaming of an enemy, and she doesn't know why it comes to her when it's Emanek, it's the baby.

These days she's starting to worry even about hurting Renata, or huting her mother. Not as much. She knows her mother is still frail, though she's healing, they tell her. She knows that Renata is tough but that Renata worries all the time and that's annoying and sometimes she just wants to yell at her, and yet she knows

what yelling sometimes turns into.

Irena is not a sick, fragile little thing, startled by her own rage. She knows what she is. She knows what it means when the moon is full and her insides twist up into knots. She knows it will only get more intense. She forgets a lot -- she's nine -- but sometimes she remembers. Sometimes she looks at her future, and feels her ancestors.

She asked Milos once, when they were packing up to leave Prague, if they were going to America because he and she were Garou. He said it was because their mother was sick and their father was dead and the tribe was honoring her duty to the Nation and his sacrifice to Gaia by sending them to doctors who could help her. Irena was quiet for a minute. And she asked, again, if it was because they were Garou.

Milos knows that Irena understands quite a lot, too. Milos, who hears the voices of their ancestors even more loudly, ringing in his head from before he was Irena's age. Milos, who talks to trees and -- more impotantly -- listens to them.


Irena rocks back on her heels a moment, then shifts her weight to her toes, then back again, swaying to and fro idly. Behind Lukas, Danicka watches and sips her water. The roast cooks.

"Okay," she says, when he explains why he can't just move to Chicago. It doesn't put her at ease -- but then, he's talking to a child about moving again, and though it's four or five years away she can't quite think of what four or five years away is going to look like, feel like. So: okay. She can accept that.

And she can accept that Milos can't accept fosterage from an Ahroun, that it wouldn't work. She looks momentarily distracted, maybe even bored, then looks over at Danicka. Her eyes are so big, so round, so familiar in many ways. She peers at her aunt, then licks her lips and leans forward to Lukas, not to whisper in his ear but almost nose to nose, gaze to gaze.

Secretive, almost, she asks in the quietest voice she can wrangle, "Budete mě učit, jak se zabít?"

He doesn't see vengeance in her eyes. Doesn't see hatred or powerlust. He does see hunger. He sees eyes tracking prey. Eyes watching the darkness outside the den, where pack sleeps soundly behind her. He sees dim flickers of the rage to come on her in force, a spiritual knowledge of what is out there,

what her destiny really is.

[Lukas] For what it's worth, there's no sudden shock, no reel of horror from Lukas. But then, there wouldn't be. He remembers what it was like to close in on his own first change. Those flickers of rage that ran ever stronger beneath his skin. Those dreams, and those things they called dreams: the waking moments when his mind would shift long before his body knew how to, and the world suddenly became snapshots of colors, scents, instinctive momentary thoughts that flashed a thousand miles an hour through his mind, red and raw and bloody and so, so vital,

and how, when he was told what he was and why and when, it all fell into place.

"Ano," he replies, quietly, a little gravely. "A já tě naučím, když se zabít."

Implicit in that: and when not to. When to control herself. When to rein herself in, hold herself back, because if there's one thing Istok Promised-Rain drilled into him, engraved so deeply in his mind that he will never let it go, it's that control is the only line between a Shadow Lord and a monster.

He doesn't repeat those lessons to Irena now. There will be time for that later. He sits back on his heels, regards this little girl that in four or five years -- if he hasn't died, if she hasn't died, if the war hasn't already come to its bloody, vicious climax by then -- would be a cub, and his ward. He regards her, with all the nascent wildness in her eyes and the knowledge and fate in her blood, and he finds that he's pleased. Pleased to meet her. Pleased to see that the first thing she did was ask questions, and the first question she asked was bold, and unflinching, and honest.

"We can talk more about it when you're a little older. I'm just happy to meet you right now, Irena."

[Danicka] Despite Irena's lowering of her voice, Danicka can hear her. Clearly. And Lukas scents no jolt of fear or panic from his mate, hears no intake of breath. Likely, he knows not to expect it.

His answer satisfies Irena, though it's impossible to say if she catches the implication of his words. That ano would have been enough for her. To know how to express what's inside. To know how to follow the instincts that are already tugging at her. To have the ability, to know what to do. For her the whole world of it seems to come down to that single, brutal question.

The truth she doesn't know yet is that how to kill will come so easily, so naturally, that even if no one ever trained her to fight her body would guide her, her rage would direct it. Time enough for her to learn what a frenzy feels like, though. Time enough for her to realize that when not to is ten times as important as how.

Irena continues watching him, not shifting her staring eyes away or turning to bolt into the other room. There's a determination to her staying right there, a forceful tension in her to resist whatever weaker, more human instincts are telling her to do. There's also, interestingly, respect that wasn't there before, which means there is interest that wasn't there before. She nods in understanding, willing enough to let this go for another year or more, and -- proof, again, that she's awkward when it comes to etiquette -- she thinks for a second before answering his I'm just happy to meet you with

"Okay!" and turning a bit to bolt over to Danicka, who welcomes the impact of the child into her side with little more than a faint noise, an exhale as though the wind is knocked out of her.

Danicka puts her hand on Irena's back, as Irena hugs her and stares at the oven where the smell of the roast is coming from. Outside the sun turns gold, pierces through the curtains. And footsteps follow voices down the stairs through the hall and around the corner, bringing a teenager and his mother into the kitchen as well. Sarka is much as she was last year, tall and lean-limbed and with round eyes that all but bulge. Her hair is just an inch or so long, her head uncovered.

Milos, who walks in just ahead of his mother, has a thick mop of golden curls that, paired with the searing blue eyes he shares with his grandfather, make him look like something out of a Renaissance portrait. He is, like most of his family, on the tall side -- Miloslav's first mate must have brought that height to her children -- and long-fingered, leanly muscled. He's grown in the past year. He's wearing a white t-shirt and jeans, barefoot. Unlike his little sister, he doesn't instantly go on an instinctive defensive when he walks in and sees Lukas.

He seems calm, and regards the Ahroun thoughtfully before inclining his head. "-Rhya," he says, though he is not even Changed yet himself. It's a far cry from the wild thing that dropped out of a tree and went crowing into the house, all dirt under his fingernails and trees talking in ancient memory to him. His eyes go to Danicka, and he smiles without showing his teeth. "Welcome back," he tells his aunt, the vowels a bit too round off of his tongue.

Danicka is extricating herself from Irena to go greet her much older half-sister. "I am very glad the two of you could come," she says, slowly and carefully, with English that is heavily, richly accented but meticulously pronounced. Too meticulous, really. But there it is. She gives Danicka a quick hug, smiling, and then turns to Lukas -- who, notably, Milos greeted first. "You will have to tell us more about you. Danička was very secretive about you."

Danicka huffs a laugh. "She's making fun," she says. "I never stopped talking about you." She squeezes Milos's shoulder as the teenager passes by -- he bumps against Irena gently to get her out of her way, and Irena snaps her jaws at him with a bright, ferocious light in her eyes as she scoots aside. Danicka looks at Lukas, smiling.

[Lukas] It is, in truth, a family of Shadow Lords that hardly look like Lords. Danicka's been mistaken for everything from Fenrir to Silver Fang to Glass Walker. Milos has the look of a Michelangelo cherub. Lukas rises to his feet as the teenager and his mother enter, the last of this house full of women and children. Burgeoning, wolf-blooded children.

Rhya, Milos calls him. Lukas's mouth quirks; he's not entirely sure what to make of this boy, the changes; some part of him wonders how much of this is Vladik's influence. What other influence the Adren Theurge may have had. He recognizes a certain defensive instinct in his own heart against the boy, and tries not to let it get the better of him. He tries, for what it's worth, to give Milos the benefit of the doubt.

"Cub," he returns, though even this, in truth, is a bit of an exaggerated honor. Milos isn't even that, yet. Then his eyes rise, though not that far, to the mother. "Šárka," he greets her, holding his hands out for hers -- some echo of his father there in that warm, two-handed grasp, "děkuji vám za pozvání k vám domů. Jsem rád, že vás poznávám a vaše děti."

[Danicka] Cub gets Milos's eyes flicking at Lukas. Could be interested. Could be defensive, as though thinking Lukas is making fun of him. Could be wary. Could be surprised. Could be... all of the above, really. It makes him hitch, though, before he's over with his baby sister, who takes to him --

exactly like what she is. Like a newborn pup finding another wolf in a den full of squishy humans, folk of a similar but not same species. For the moment, Irena adores Milos. But then, a year ago, Milos seemed to adore Vladislav. And that was a year ago, and they are siblings, and there is no telling how things will stand in about three minutes. Or less.

Sarka, for her part, seems a little tired, but there's a vitality to her that wasn't there even in the glimpse he caught of her back in October of last year. She's healthier now, though it's a long road. A risky road. An uncertain one. She clings to survival, to health, with the exact same viciousness as a bear defending her cubs, because in many ways that is exactly what her survival means. There is no guarantee that the children would go back to Prague, to Sabina, if she were to fall. There is no guarantee that they could swing it so that all four of them became wards of their half-aunt's mate. There is no guarantee that Vladislav would not suddenly inherit all the children his mate doesn't seem capable of giving him, and all the honor of raising orphaned Kin and cubs, and

all the possibilities of crafting them in his image.

Sarka's grip on Lukas's hand is shockingly strong, her hands calloused and warm. "Je--"

Irena, naturally, pipes up. "Lukáš chce být můj učitel!" She looks pleased, at least, saying this. "Takže když jsem větší, budu se stěhovat do Chicaga s Danička." As though it's settled and done, decided. There's a serene sort of smile on her face. She's not trying to be rude. "Oukej?"

Sarka just blinks, looking from her next-to-youngest to Lukas. Milos is standing near Irena, looking not so much startled as -- if one had to put a word to it, bereft. As though some rug has been pulled out from under his feet. Trying, at his best, to rein that reaction in.

"...I suppose we should talk," Sarka says to Lukas, without much matching tension.

[Lukas] The look on Lukas's face is startled, and then rather mortified. He grimaces, folding his hands at his back; a sort of reserved, courteous posture that suggests he's about to apologize. It's possible in his mind he's already adding another clause to the List Of Things To Teach His Fosterling.

Thou shalt not kill gratuitously.
Thou shalt learn tact.

"I meant to ask your permission first," he says, still wincing, "and the permission of her aunt, your sister. I was hoping Danička had already mentioned my interest back in the summer so it wouldn't come as such a shock to you, but -- "

and here comes the apology,

"I apologize if it looks like I've been trying to swindle your daughter from you behind your back. That was never my intent."

[Danicka] Lukas looks startled, then mortified. And Sarka looks terribly, terribly amused. This might be why Emanuel runs outside in socked feet and why Irena blurts out whatever's on her mind. This might be why the first time Lukas met Milos he was dropping out of a tree. It might be why Renata runs around trying to put out fires that are barely more than sparks -- her mother takes all of this in stride. And that might be the reality of living with cancer, for her.

She will survive. She will protect her children. They will not be like her half-brother. Beyond that, there is so much freedom in this house. These children, let loose in the home Danicka grew up in, probably would have shocked her more than Lukas and Anezka ever did. These children, let loose in the Kvasnicka home, would have gotten in so much trouble.

For what it's worth, though, Renata seems very composed, seems to have tact and restraint and consideration. Milos, too, in his own way. Sarka herself is very polite, with the exception of leaving her guest waiting downstairs while she helped her son come down from whatever nightmarish heights his spirit took him most recently -- and that can, one hopes, be forgiven. Perhaps she was even about to apologize.

Sarka reaches over and puts her hand on Lukas. There's a beat of hesitation before she actually puts her hand on his arm, another beat before she squeezes him. Then she simply lets go. Behind him, he can hear Danicka saying quietly to Irena:

"You interrupted your mother."

But in front of him Sarka is shaking her head. "It is not a shock," she says. "Danička spoke to me about it." She seems to have meant that squeeze to be reassurance; she's not angry, she's not surprised, she's certainly not opposed -- or isn't seeming so, in front of the children. "But we will talk after dinner," she says, with a brief glance at her son before she looks back to Lukas. "To je pro nás nové, které mají být sestry. Ale vy jste moje sestra je lodní důstojník. Jsme rodina. Jste není zlodějské neznámý člověk k nám."

A beat, and then Irena breaks in from across the kitchen: "Je mi líto, jsem přerušil vás, mami!"

[Lukas] When Sarka's hand -- workworn, surprisingly strong -- comes to his arm, Lukas unclasps his hands from behind his back. For a moment he sees himself through her eyes: scarcely older than her eldest children. In her own way, Sarka is revered and respected amongst kin; the mother of so many cubs and children. Experienced, toughened by life. Compared to her, Lukas is young, so young, despite the honors and titles he's managed to earn and accrue already. Young despite the mate he has, and is devoted to; the children he hopes to have; the student he's gathering to him already, years in advance, the way his mentor gathered him.

Gently, he hopes. Gradually. Softening the blow of the inevitable parting, when Irena Musil becomes, very simply,

whatever name it is she will earn for herself.

His hand cups the underside of Sarka's forearm for a moment, a milder version of the warrior's handgrip he so often shares with other Garou. "We'll talk after dinner," he agrees, or promises. And then a quick-flickering smile, unexpected and -- well, happy. "Děkujeme vám."

[Danicka] It's not likely -- at least, in Danicka's mind -- that Lukas will visit here throughout the coming years to bring gifts to Irena and her family. Jewelry, music, whatever little games or gadgets her siblings might want. She understands, or thinks she understands, what Istok was doing. What he might have been thinking. What motivated him. But she can't see Lukas doing the same thing. She's never met Istok Promised-Rain, but he sounds like -- for all his influence on Wyrmbreaker -- a very different Garou.

As Irena will be. The changes that she'll undergo in personality between now and her Change are mind-boggling, because she will simply start to grow up. And it's possible that by the time Irena Changes, Lukas will go home from teaching her some night and go upstairs and down the hall, to look through the partly-open door and check on his own sleeping child. Sleeping children. Close the door left open just for this purpose and crawl into bed with his mate, bury his face against the back of her neck, breathe in the scent of her, and feel

absolutely nothing of the wariness that level of responsibility might induce in him now. Just exhaustion from dealing with Irena today, relief from being home, from looking in on his children and seeing nothing but peace in his presence because they are deep asleep and protected, from laying down (finally) and drawing Danicka into his arms, settling into his den to sleep.


Right now, though, Sarka stands before him, amused by his nerves and yet appreciative of his apology, trying to put him at ease. Trying to say what she does not want to say in front of the children but will say later, in private: that Lukas offering to ward and teach Irena is an honor and a relief. That it will be hard, no matter what, to send her daughter away to any Garou, to enter that life. That it will be hard to watch her move several states away. That because it is Lukas, some measure of that pain and fear and loss will be lessened, and that Sarka -- who knows pain, who knows loss -- is grateful to know that when the time comes, Irena will still be with family. Not gone. Not taken away.

After dinner, though, Lukas echoes, agrees, and promises. He thanks her and Sarka laughs, patting his arm again. It's not at his expense, really. It's just... happy, too. Pleased with him, and pleased that he's here. She goes over to Danicka to give her an embrace, then pats Irena's cheek. "Běh a křičí, Irča, she says, the 'tsk' implied more than spoken. Then, with a hint of warning that seems to sink in immediately in Irena's features: "Pokud máte tolik energie, možná můžeme najít lepší využití pro něj."

Irena's shoulders hunch slightly and she nods. "Promiňte, maminka," she says, more subdued, her hands tucking behind her back.

Sarka kisses the top of her head. "Go tell Renátka and Emánek it is time to wash up. Miloš?"

Her son, who has been standing quietly during all this exchange and watching Lukas and his mother like a blue-eyed hawk, looks up. "Jo?"

"Set the table, prosím."

Milos gives a quick nod, glancing at Lukas one more time before he reaches into the cupboard and starts taking down plates, getting out knives and forks, finding a stack of cloth napkins. He moves with the same grace and quickness he had while tree-climbing. There's obvious tension in him, a certain tight hold on every motion he makes, as though if he's not careful it will get away from him and turn into something he never intended. He is like a man trying to grab every marble that's spilling out of bag

dozens of them

all at once

when he only has two hands.

Sarka is telling Lukas: "I'm sorry there is no wine. I cannot drink it. Medicine," she adds, and gives a small shrug. Milos is in the dining room, and Sarka lowers her voice, nodding in that direction. "We will talk about him, too, after dinner. If you will."

[Lukas] Earlier, Lukas had noticed a flicker -- almost a twitch, a spasm -- in Milos when he found out his sister apparently wanted to go to Chicago to learn from this man that had reputedly known his half-aunt in childhood; this man who had, not so very long ago, walked into his grandfather's home and stolen that half-aunt away.

Here comes another theft. Perhaps that's how it feels to Milos, no matter what Sarka might say or believe. No matter if Sarka feels that this is preferable to giving her daughter over to someone utterly unknown, utterly separate from her. Family, she called Lukas, which for a moment reminded him so starkly of his own family, his own sister or his mother, that an aching sort of warmth bloomed beneath his breastbone.

It was different for Milos, though. Lukas didn't get a chance to look, to see, to understand -- he was looking at Sarka, trying to see if she was offended, frightened, distraught,

and seeing, gladly, that she was not.

Milos is directed to set the table. Irena goes to fetch her siblings. Sarka asks to speak about her son as well, and Lukas nods. "I was hoping to," he replies. Then, smiling, "No apologies. We drank too much last night, anyway."


They go in to dinner, then. This family is so very different from his own: so young, so many children. He's the only grown man at the table. That feels odd, too -- he realizes with a start that he's used to having his father at the head of the table when he's amongst kin. He's even growing a tiny bit used to having another man beside his sister -- balanced, three complete pairs gathered around dinner.

This is far from that. This is a middle-aged woman and her rather vast flock of children, two of whom weren't even present. Were old enough to lead their own lives. And Danicka. And him.

And dinner -- roast from the oven, a few sides. A simpler fare, perhaps, than what was laid out last night; but then, this is not a holiday for Sarka, and Sarka has been very sick until very recently. Is still battling back from that precipitous edge. Besides, Lukas is not so haughty as to expect a feast. It's possible he didn't even expect a dinner.

He carves the roast, though, if he's asked to. He serves Sarka first, and though this might look like simple courtesy, it's something a little more akin to respect -- not merely for the brood she's raised, but for the battle she's fought and, for now, won. For her tenacity in holding on, holding tight for the sake of her children, when so many others would have let go.

Then he fills the plates of everyone else who puts them before him. He heaps too much meat on Danicka's, as usual, but he gives equally over-generous servings to the children. Irena gets far more meat than even a burgeoning little carnivore like her can handle. She's only nine, after all, and Lukas clearly has no idea how much children are supposed to eat.

Over the meal, Lukas talks more than he did with his own family. Perhaps he feels this new family, more distant though they may be, needs more to connect to him. Needs to understand him more. He tells them about knowing Danicka in childhood. That kolache story comes up again. He tells them about their den and, with a quick glance at Danicka to ascertain it was all right, invites them to visit if they were ever in Chicago.

He tells them about Chicago -- the wide-open spaces. The forests and preserves dotting the suburbs, and the ice on the lake. Strange -- for the first time, he hears a strain of homesickness in his own voice, talking about the city that's become his own as much as New York ever was.

When he's finished with his fare, he leans back in his chair; drapes his forearm over the back of Danicka's. He's quieter, then. He listens when she speaks, listens when Sarka speaks. Smiles when the children speak, and -- finally aware of Renata's persistent blushes -- learns not to look to directly at her.

As conversation quiets, and dinner cools, Lukas gets up to get a glass of water. When he comes back, he sits a little closer to his mate. He listens a little longer; then he asks a question that's been on his mind since they set foot in this city. He asks it carefully, though, and a little gingerly -- afraid of hurting Danicka:

"Have you been able to see Mr. Musil often since coming to New York?"

[Danicka] Milos is almost as hard to read, even as young as he is, as his aunt and uncle. But then, Lukas is not training his eye on the youngster, not focusing his energy on trying to understand those flickers of emotion, those flashes of intensity. Easy to guess -- but hard to know if his guesses are based on the boy himself, or on what Lukas imagines Vladislav's influence to have been.

For what it's worth, Irena seems contented -- even pleased -- by the prospect of having a teacher ready for her years in advance. She puts it out of her mind as soon as it seems the adults in the room aren't telling her No, and she's off to get her sister and brother to wash up for dinner, off to -- quite possibly -- brag about her conversation with Lukas to Emanuel until Renata cuts her off.

She needs so much tutelage. One can only hope that in four or five years the simple process of growing older will start to smooth some of those rough edges.


When they gather for dinner, Lukas is seated at the head of the table, and there seems to be less submission in that than pure etiquette. Sarka seats at the other end. Danicka places herself to Lukas's right, and Renata -- as eldest, though not Garou -- takes the seat to his left. The table is uneven -- on one side there sits Renata, Milos, and Irena. On the other side it is just Danicka and Emanek, flanked by mother and aunt as though this will both keep Renata from fussing constantly as well as keep him in line during a long, boring, grown-up dinner.

Though really, the formality only goes so far. Everyone helps seat dinner on the table, roast and potatoes and carrots and bread and butter and a simple salad. They drink water, though Irena and Emanuel have glasses of milk as well. They say no grace, but there's a moment of silence before the food is taken to. Perhaps not surprisingly, it is Sarka who initiates it, but she does so by giving a glance and a small nod to Milos.

Milos, without so much as a glance at Lukas, places his hands palm-up on the table, and his brothers and sisters -- and Danicka -- follow suit. Nothing is said or explained. Renata, Sarka, and the two youngest close their eyes, but Milos and Danicka do not. The only sound is of breathing, for a few short heartbeats. When Milos turns his hands and shifts the way he sits, exhaling, the moment passes, and Danicka suggests that Lukas carve the roast. Now is when Milos is looking at him, watching him without much intensity to the intermittent gazes.

Sarka is served first, and she thanks him. Danicka, then, and plates are passing by him for meat as side dishes are going around. Others help serve, too. Danicka laughs under her breath at how much Lukas gives her, and everyone else. Irena's eyes are slightly wide and a bit intimidated when her plate comes back to her. She looks at Lukas. Looks at her mother. But nobody's looking at her. She looks at her plate. And her face becomes a mask of determination as she picks up her fork.

During the meal, the children show rather impressive manners. Emanuel has to be reminded to stop kicking his legs under the table, but he's quite concerned with eating rather than talking. Irena has three times the amount of meat she normally eats to put away and she'll be god damned if she fails to succeed at the trial her future teacher has obviously set before her to test her. Conversation flickers between Czech and English, depending on who is talking and what is easiest for them at the moment. Nobody is pressured or reminded to practice English -- they are at home, and this is the dinner hour. That they practice anyway says something about them as a family.

Renata seems to relax a bit -- the children aren't being monsters, Milos is right there to tease her if she blushes, and Lukas doesn't look at her much -- so she ends up talking about school a bit. She is the only one of the four who is not being homeschooled, and she is going to join the drama club because it will help her improve her English.

And, one can see in her eyes, because she likes it.

Emanuel speaks up, quite proudly, to say that next year he's going to go to real school. Irena interjects that she is, too, lest Emanuel get all the attention. Milos does not talk about next year. Or about school.

Danicka just smiles when Lukas talks about the den. She brings up the tree in back, tells them there's a lot of gardening to be done in the back yard still. She tells Milos, in particular, he should visit. Milos is noncommittal but his eyes gleam briefly with the same sort of flicker they had in the kitchen, hearing about Irena becoming Lukas's ward. Irena looks, near the end of dinner, a bit queasy, and there's still meat on her plate. Sarka just reaches over to pat her slightly. "Slow down," she says. "You will be too full for dessert."

Which seems to right all wrongs, and dismiss the worry over impressing Lukas. Because, well. Ice cream, hello.

Danicka shifts her chair over when they're all winding down from eating. She squeezes Lukas leg gently as he talks about Chicago with that faint strain of homesickness. She doesn't lean on him as she did at his parent's house. Dinner is, by and large, a pleasant affair. Calmer than anything else -- which may introduce to Lukas the concept of the children being wild because they were hungry. Up until now, he's only ever seen them in the short time before they've eaten dinner, and they've all acted a bit agitated. Fed, they seem calmer, more willing to share, more relaxed.

When Lukas comes back to the table after getting his water, Milos is speaking up -- one of the rare contributions he's made to dinnertable conversation -- and telling Danicka that he's looking forward to the eclipse next month. He half-glances at his younger siblings and says he'll tell her more later, as though there's a secret to be kept from Irena and Emanuel. Renata, reminded, just grins.

Irena catches it, though, and is quite irritated that nobody will tell her what Milos is talking about. She starts to get worked up to yelling and is quelled, instantly, by a glance from Milos. One would think it's her mother saying "Irena," firmly as she does, the same way Marjeta spoke to Anezka last night, but it's that glance. It's the way his pale eyes cut to her and tell her, wordlessly, to chill... before she loses her temper.

After that, there's a brief quiet, and Lukas asking -- carefully -- about Mr. Musil.

Danicka doesn't look hurt. Her eyes are a murky green, flecked with amber right now, but Sarka nods slightly. "A few times, since we moved here. It is hard for him to travel. It is hard to do so with so many of us. But we visit, some."

Not often. Not a lot. No one mentions the real reason for that. No one needs to. And Milos is looking at his plate, pushing a bite of potato with his fork.

[Lukas] Earlier, as they took a moment before dinner, Lukas joined them in this ritual they seemed to know so well. He thinks of Danicka speaking of worship. Calling making kolaches worship. Calling making love worship. This too is a form of worship; a prayer that is not a prayer.

Here, now, Lukas nods a little to the answer he is given. "I'm glad," he says, quiet; that's where he lets that subject rest.

A little bit more conversation, then. Lukas is all but done eating now, leaning back in his chair, spearing a bit of vegetable or a bite of meat now and then. He listens. He watches. He notes how the children defer to Milos, who is not the eldest, but is the eldest Garou they know. He wonders, too, if that's Vladislav's influence as well, and is angry to think of it. He's angry to think of Vladislav, period, angry at the echoes and the sway he holds over this family even now. It takes effort to drive that anger aside before it can rise and taint this meal. Once or twice, his fingers tap on the tabletop, half-impatient; he takes a swift swallow of water, sometimes glances over his shoulder in an instinctive, restless gesture before settling again.

Always, he settles again. There's that, at least.

When dinner's drawn to a close, Lukas surveys the remains. Then he sits up and, without asking or being asked, begins to gather up the plates. Dessert, Sarka said: he clears up for it, plates clinking lightly against one another.

"In the dishwasher?" he asks -- a quiet aside, getting up from his seat.

[Danicka] "Thank you," Sarka says, as Lukas is getting up to gather plates, "but it is Miloš's job this week to set and clear the table."

And so it is -- the young Theurge-to-be is already, too, pushing back his chair to rise. His mother says it is his job, but she also said plese when she told him to set the table. Emanuel, once again kicking his feet, swinging them under the table, pipes up: "I wash dishes."

They do have a dishwasher, Lukas saw it in the kitchen, but there was also a dish rack beside the sink, and a scrub-brush next to the faucet handles.

And thus begins the domino effect. Sarka tells him it's Milos's duty to do this, and Emanek chimes in with his job, so Irena has to interject that her dinner job this week is bread, which might explain why the loaf they cut from was a bit on the misshapen side, and extraordinarily simple in texture and taste, but

then there's the reality that the six year old's job is to wash all the dishes, by hand. And the nine year old is to mix, knead, rise, and bake bread and rolls for the week, and given how fast a family of five can go through a loaf of bread, this must constitute the early part of her education in chemistry and preparation for her arm muscles to do any number of other chores. Renata does not feel it necessary to chime in what her job this week is, so Danicka fills in:

"Which means Renáta is our cook. Thank you for the roast," she tells her niece, smiling. Renata -- not shockingly -- blushes slightly. "It was lovely."

Milos does not seem irritable as he starts gathering up plates and silverware. He is not, apparently, exempt from the joint household chores. Given that they have a whole house to care for and laundry to do and a yard to tend and carpets to vacuum and windows to wash and so forth, chances are that all four of the children also have other housework that they have to do, and it seems that in this respect there is no lack of discipline. The dishwasher is there, but then again: one can also easily buy loaves of bread from the store. They go the harder route -- or maybe the more familiar one.

The teenager, glancing over at Lukas, hesitates a moment, then says with a barely-suppressed note of strain, "You may help, if you like," he says, caught on the hook of not wanting to be rude but very, very clearly wanting a moment with Lukas. Inspiration strikes, but his tone is still measured and steady, every word of his English work for him, though he tries to infuse it with a note of humor: "If you hurry, you will be able to serve dessert before maminka stops you."

[Lukas] "Really?" Lukas is genuinely surprised -- he assumed, despite that Danicka had mentioned Renata's cooking when they met out on the sidewalk, that Sarka was responsible for the roast. It's one of the few times since the penny dropped that Lukas looks directly at Renata -- "I'm impressed. That was truly excellent."

-- but, warm though his tone and compliment is, Lukas's gaze doesn't linger very long, and soon enough he's turning to Milos. All things considered, it's a surprisingly tactful, subtle invitation to talk, but Lukas's eyes flicker with recognition all the same a beat before he smiles.

"Sure." And he tosses his dinner napkin on the table, getting up from his chair. "Let's do it."

He follows Milos into the kitchen -- the slender boy somewhat absurdly carrying all the dishes, Lukas trailing behind empty-handed. In the kitchen, Emanuel hasn't taken up his post at the sink yet. Probably will after dessert. For now, though, it's just the two of them: Garou and near-cub. Lukas lets a polite moment elapse while he's shown where to find the ice cream scoop. Then, setting bowls out all in a row with mild clicks, he glances over at Milos.

Mildly, "You look like you have something on your mind, Miloš."

[Danicka] There will have to be multiple hands carrying ice cream back into the dining room once Lukas finishes scooping. Milos points out the smaller-than-cereal bowls they use for desserts, bowls that can hold -- at most -- two full scoops. It might be no surprise that all of this branch of the Musil family is slender. Not unhealthily thin, but with a lean athleticism that hints at an avoidance of luxury or overindulgence. The scent of their bloodline is so similar to Danicka's, but with differences that hint at their father, at their grandmother, Garou that Lukas doesn't even know the names of. He does know that this family goes by the name Musil so he has no idea what their father's surname was, even.

Milos is careful with the dishes he carries. He does have a certain grace to him. Every motion is balanced, efficient, though not quite smooth. Not quite yet. There's too much tension in him, too much rage waiting for its chance to erupt. He struggles, at Lukas's question, not to explode right there. He is putting scrapings in the trash, all but vibrating with what is in him, waiting to come out. "I...I need help," he finally gets out, the words tight, but blurted.

"Já jsem bojování tak tvrdě k zastavení proměna," he says, and gives a single, sharp shake of his head, a denial. "Zatím ne." Milos keeps his voice low, on par with the talking in the next room. "Pokud jsem změnit budu muset jít do mého strýce. Máma mi říká, že nemám dělat starosti. Říká že pracuje ona na tom, ale nemohu držet zpátky navždy."

The strain in his voice is almost painful to hear, like a teenager's voice cracking. Only it isn't his voice. It's him.

He sets a plate down a bit too hard. "A pokud se to stane příliš brzy, budu muset jít do že parchanta."

[Lukas] When Lukas asks his question, he's not looking at Milos. He gives the boy some anonymity there, some solace: to not be pinned down by those ice-blue eyes; to not have to face the rage that flames in Lukas, that echoes in himself.

The moment those first words come out of Milos, that changes. The Ahroun's hands stop. Ice cream forgotten in its scoop, he half-turns -- heels of his hands braced on the counter, head and shoulder swiveling to face the young almost-Theurge.

And his eyebrows draw together. His expression is equal parts concern and worry and ache and -- somehow -- guilt. Because he was so uncertain of how much influence Vladik has already had over this boy. So untrusting of him. Holding him at a distance already, when what Milos needed most

was help.

"Když jsem naposledy viděl ty, ty zbožňovaný Vladislav." Lukas's voice is low, even -- but with a certain gentleness that he has not, until now, shown the boy. "Co udělal pro změnu svou mysl?"

[Danicka] Milos looks away with a sharp turn of his head, a sound that in a few years' time -- or less -- will be a chuff, a grunt. He seems disgusted with the reminder.

"On popřel Danička," he says, forcing his voice quiet again, exhaling. "Protože ona našla lodní důstojník," he goes on, disbelieving. "I would...never do that to Renátka. Or Eman. My aunt did not do it to my mother."

He looks at the ice cream on the counter next to Lukas, then up at the Ahroun himself. In low tones, in Czech, he explains how when they got home that night over a year ago, Vladislav explained to them that Danicka was no longer welcome in that house, that she had chosen Lukas over her family. Milos tells him, reaching for a second scoop to help fill the bowls -- and pausing once to mention that Eman and Irena only get one scoop, not two -- that it didn't make sense to him.

It was an honorable mateship. Why should Vladislav be so angry with her? And then there were other things, Milos says, his voice barely above a whisper now. Sometimes he looked at Renata, and Milos doesn't expound on that. He looks like he's about to break something when he mentions it, though. He says his mother talked to him and his siblings, saying only that they should not question Vladislav while they lived with him. Why, he adds, should his mother be wary of making him angry?

They only lived with his namesake and his uncle for a few months after that, Milos fills Lukas in. They kept the peace, but he listened to his dreams and he listened to the oak and his ancestors tugged on him when he was around his uncle, ringing in his ears when he heard false words.

Milos startings putting spoons in the ice cream bowls. In the dining room, someone laughs and it seems to grate on him. There's a flash of angst there, too, that laughter should make him so angry. When everything does. "Půjdu k němu, pokud budu muset. Nebudu utíkat pryč a nechat moje rodinu. Ale já nechci být tak lpí na něm."

[Lukas] "Nikdo by neměl jít do Vladislav," Lukas says, so low and tense that it nearly snaps off the end of Milos's words.

Milos puts a spoon in the bowl in front of him. It seems to snap him back to the moment, and he resumes his task. Two scoops for everyone except the smallest children. Lukas wonders half-distractedly if Irena could even handle a single scoop after the way she gnawed determinedly through that mountain of meat Lukas heaped on her plate, but gives her that full scoop anyway in the end. It's ice cream.

His mind, though, remains elsewhere. His brow remains knitted. There's a hardness on his jaw now, an anger when he thinks of Danicka's brother that no amount of time might ever quite dull. The last scoop of ice cream is dropped into the last bowl, but he doesn't reach for them yet.

"I owe you an apology, Miloš. I was not certain of you, and not certain of how much influence your uncle has already had over you. I underestimated your insight and your wisdom, and I thought worse of you than you deserved." He meets the boy's eyes unflinchingly: responsibility shouldered as duty, as fact. "But I've already spoken to Danička about helping you. Even were you already deep in Vladislav's sway, I would have tried to help you. Because no one deserves to be brought up by one like him.

"I was going to mention you to my own former mentor, Istok Promised-Rain-rhya. He's a Philodox of the Stark Falls Sept, where I'll be going to challenge for Adren in ... perhaps a month or so. He will be able to find you a good mentor. A Theurge to teach you properly. But if your Change is imminent, I can talk to him before I go back to Chicago. And then you'll only need to hold on for a week or two.

"If you can't wait that long," Lukas goes on, quieter, "I can bring you back to Chicago with me now, as my ward, at least until I find you a better mentor. But Vladislav will consider that an insult, doubtlessly, that he -- a Theurge and an Adren and blood-uncle to you -- was passed over for an Ahroun, a Fostern, and an uncle by matehood. And that is something you and I will have to live with for a very long time.

"I would be willing, though. Don't think for a moment I wouldn't, or that you would be beholden to me."

[Danicka] The only child in this house who does not fear Lukas at all is Miloslav. Renata feels it, and Irena and Emanuel. Milos doesn't fear him on instinct. Doesn't jump when Lukas says what he does, the way he does. He just nods in agreement, quiet, and waits for Lukas to speak.

An apology comes, and Milos's eyes cut to him, surprised. He frowns, but he doesn't look angry. His adoration for his uncle, so early on, is something he is ashamed of now. Loathes in himself. Is viciously determined to never repeat, never to be fooled again by charm and flattery, to see Garou like Vladik for what they truly are. He doesn't speak of it, but there is a brutal hunger for truth now in Miloslav, because of what he has seen in his uncle. For rightness, because of what he has seen in Vladik's eyes.

"Děkujeme vám," he says, softly, when told he was underestimated. Then a flash of new relief, to hear that Lukas has already thought of him. Would have thought of him, regardless.

Give him this -- on top of the discernment Lukas now knows he has, the talent Danicka spoke of -- Miloslav the younger considers what Lukas says. He doesn't gasp and beg to be taken to Chicago, please. He thinks, lifting bowls into his hands, balancing three of them in his palms. And then, quietly, looking over to Lukas:

"You honor me," he says, staying in English because Lukas does, and regardless of other factors, Lukas is his elder. It is a mark of his respect, as much as his determination: determination to master something that challenges him, the same determination that had Irena eating herself to the point of looking faintly ill. "I can not leave my family to him. Not if he will be insulted." A beat, and then a sharp nod. "I can hold on."

I will.

[Lukas] There's a moment when the grown Garou looks at the not-yet cub: a singular, piercing assessment of a stare. It's not that Lukas doesn't believe Milos. He believes him, or at least he believes Milos believes himself. What he's looking for is something a little deeper: confirmation that he can, in fact, hold on. Control himself. Persevere long enough for the appropriate parties to be contacted, the transfer negotiated, the fostering confirmed. Long enough for some Theurge out of Stark Falls to come for him.

A moment later, Lukas returns the nod with one of his own -- quiet, a single motion of the head. "Okay," he says quietly.

Then he gathers up the remaining ice cream bowls in his big hands. And he smiles at Milos, a touch rueful. "Let's go have dessert," he says. "I want to talk to your mother about you and your sister afterward."

[Danicka] "I heard," Milos quips, once the moment of tension has passed, now that relief is flooding through him. A couple of weeks. Maybe even longer. But that's a light at the end of the tunnel. That's more than he's had for months. He can hold on. And if he can't, he'll lie if he has to, tell anyone who asks it hasn't happened yet, he's just waiting for his mentor.

"Irča je tak hrdý," he adds, a bit wry.

They bring dessert into the dining room and Emanuel is suddenly on his absolute best behavior and the full-looking Irena is perking up, hungry all over again. Lukas and Milos serve -- and Milos gives a bowl to his mother first, then to Renata, then sets down his own, leaving Lukas to serve Danicka, Irena, Emanuel and himself. Once seated again, Milos is the first to rejoin the current of conversation, and he starts to smile here and there.

Danicka, when Lukas sits beside her again, smiles at him. Warm. Beyond warm, really -- her eyes are bright, and she stays close to him while everyone eats their small portions of ice cream, a rather special treat because they have guests tonight. But dessert doesn't take very long, and Emanuel is getting beyond restless. They don't lounge around the table like they had the luxury of doing at Lukas's house. Sarka gives Emanuel leave to go start on the dishes, and Irena goes after him because she can't sit still any longer --

they argue, on their way to the kitchen, about whether or not following him around means Irena has to help him do his chore

-- so then it's just the adults and the teenagers. It's Milos's job to clear the table, meaning dessert bowls as well, so he goes to do that. As he takes Lukas's, he meets the Ahroun's eyes for a moment, wordlessly grateful. They can hear him in the kitchen a moment later, cautioning the two younger ones to stop yelling, tells them that no, Irena does not have to help wash the dishes, but if she wants to stand there and annoy Eman, the least she can do is help dry them.

Renata excuses herself along with Milos, drifting back and forth for a few minutes to start putting leftovers away. On a summer night they would send the kids outside to run around and burn off some energy before going inside, but tonight it's cold outside, too dark and too frigid to do so. Tonight they'll end up watching some kid's movie, a big pile of children on the couch.

Sarka looks a bit tired, but not drained. Not exhausted. She smiles as her children are shuffling off, leaving the adults to be boring, sedentary adults together. She regards Lukas for awhile, sharp-eyed, then says: "I like you." Nods, and leaves it at that.

[Lukas] Recognition tugs at Lukas as the children settle into their chores. There weren't so many children at the Kvasnicka house, but he remembers chore rotations well. Cooking and washing dishes were mutually exclusive: if he did one, Anezka would have to do the other. Every week, they straightened up the house, sweeping the floors and dusting the furniture, wiping the mirrors down, cleaning the counters. In the fall, after they got a house, someone would have to sweep the leaves off the porch steps. In the winter, someone would have to shovel the snow.

There's a tiny biteful of icecream left on Lukas's spoon. He eats it, savoringly -- patient now with sweets as he never was before. He can feel Sarka's eyes on him, and after his ice cream is gone, he meets them frankly. Openly. After a moment, she tells him she likes him.

Lukas smiles, a little lopsidedly. He sets his spoon back in his bowl and then shifts a little, leaning forward, folding his arms at the edge of the table. Large and dark and warm: a wolf in man's skin, or the other way around.

"I suppose at this point the announcement is redundant, since you already know," he says, "but I'd like to foster Irena when she comes of age. With your permission, and the permission of your sister, I'd like to bring her to the Sept of the Maelstrom after she's Firsted and teach her all that I know.

"I'd also like to help find Miloslav a mentor. Danička and Miloš have both spoken to me of his predicament, and I agree. Vladislav is a talented Theurge, but he is not a good man. I think we all know this. Miloslav is different; he's sharp, and he knows what he wants. He knows to become like his uncle is not what he wants.

"I want to go to Stark Falls on Miloslav's behalf. With your permission, I'll talk to my former mentor, who is a Philodox of Vladislav's rank. I think he'll be able to find a Theurge to teach your boy. If it comes from a pair of well-respected Adrens, I think even Vladislav will have a hard time finding an honorable reason to scorn their offer."

[Danicka] Sarka smiles faintly at the truth -- she already knows what he's going to ask her permission for. For her daughter, essentially. And it's not even so much a request for permission as an offer. Too many cubs these days have no mentor, no promise of a mentor, not even the knowledge of what they will become. She knows that in many ways, they are lucky. They were well-connected enough in Prague to have every child's fortune told, essentially, and they have been honored for years because of what Sarka has ...produced.

That her half-sister should so happen to fall in love with, mate with, and bring home a Fostern Ahroun of Thunder and one from such ancient lines as his -- well, that's lucky, too. That he should be so willing to take on Irena. To help Milos. That she should be alive, with her youngest nearly seven years old. That too, for Sarka, is lucky.

She also knows better than to trust in luck.

After Lukas has finished speaking, Sarka is quiet for a few moments, her thumb rubbing over the handle of her spoon. She considers. Her eyes are dark when he speaks of Vladislav, but dark at the thought of the man, not due to any anger or disagreement. There are flickers of pride when Lukas speaks of her son, but sadness, too, and that could be attributed to any number of things. That Milos is in the situation he is in. That she has so little power to help him herself. That she has another son, and another daughter, and they are so very far away from her. That they wonder still why Gaia chose Milos and Irena, and not them.

She meets his eyes. She is fearless, and strong, in a way that Danicka was not when he first met her. In that glance, his mind snaps back to Danicka as she might be, Danicka as the underworld took her from his mind, his imagination.

"My son is very close to his change," she says, though Lukas already knows this -- probably understands where Milos is on his arc towards Changing better than anyone else in this room. "I would be thankful for your help." There's a 'but' coming. It's in her tone, in her eyes. And ah, there it is: "Irena is not so close," Sarka says, her voice just loud enough to carry across the table, no further. Her eyes glance at Danicka, almost apologetic to be talking about this, but going forward despite her compassion: "What will she do, if you can not teach her by the time she changes?"

[Lukas] A quick flicker across Lukas's mouth -- it's more irony than humor. There's no answering glance toward his mate, but almost by instinct his hand reaches out as he leans back. His palm rests warm over her leg for a moment. Then he sets his hands on the table, considers a moment.

"If I die before Irena's training is complete, or even begun," he says, unflinching and level, "someone else will doubtlessly accept her as a pupil. I will try to make ongoing arrangements with Garou, particularly Ahrouns, I feel I can trust. I'll keep you informed as much as I can. But there is a chance she'll go to someone neither of us might have predicted. At least in Chicago, you can be reasonably sure she won't go to Vladislav."

[Danicka] It's hard for Danicka to hear about this, to think about it. What do we do if Lukas dies? Sarka knows. Sarka has already lost her mate. But that's their life. That's what choosing someone like Lukas meant, and Danicka doesn't quail from it. She stays close to him though, covers his hand with hers for a brief second, and Lukas...

well, he does what he always does. He tells the truth, and makes no promises he can't keep. A strained but real smile tugs wanly at the corner of Danicka's mouth to think of it like that, but Sarka just nods slowly in acceptance.

It is not as though they have to create and settle terms tonight, never see him again til Irena is of age and he comes out of the mists to take her away. Lukas is Danicka's mate -- he came here for dinner because they were in town. He is no stranger. He is, as she said earlier, family. Their family. And they are his.

"Thank you," Sarka says, finally, quietly. There is splashing in the other room. Irena yelling at her little brother; Renata scolding them both. Milos telling Emanek that he doesn't care what Irena was doing, Emanek threw the water so Emanek has to clean it up. Sarka doesn't so much as glance up towards the kitchen. She keeps her eyes on Lukas.

"Děkujeme vám," she says again, more heavily, her voice a touch thicker.


Sooner or later, things break up after that. The dishes are being finished and Irena is asking for Pirates of the Caribbean, but Sarka says no movie until they've said goodbye to their guests. She mentions that they can use the guest room if they like, but Danicka smiles and tells her they've already checked into their hotel so they can get an early start back to the airport. Sarka doesn't push, and for all intents and purposes seems far less invested in having them stay under the same room than Marjeta was. But then, neither Lukas nor Danicka are her children. She embraces Danicka like a sister and kisses her cheek, and Danicka gives her a squeeze.

Renata has gotten their coats for them, making herself useful as she always, always does. She shakes Lukas's hand and gives Danicka a kiss -- doesn't even blush this time, as she thanks them both for coming and tells Danicka she'll write to her. Sarka, one hand clasped between Lukas's, brings her other hand to cup around one of his as well, smiling up at him with a mutual understanding and

perhaps

mutual respect.

Milos, too, shakes Lukas's hand. "Thank you," he repeats, his eyes seeming all the more vivid than they were even in the kitchen when his rage and strain threatened to snap. Danicka hugs him, and the teenager wrinkles his expression at the feminine affection. He does not flinch so much, though, when she parts from him and puts her hand on his cheek for a moment. He just seems to understand, when Danicka meets his eyes, and gives her a nod as though she asked him a question, as though that is his answer.

Hugs, however, are how Irena and Emanek express themselves. Emanek won't hug Lukas but gives him a rapid handshake, standing very stiffly with his arm straight out and his eyes on Lukas's knees. He does give Danicka a rib-crushing squeeze, though, antsy to be released from grown-up interactions yet again so he can go fight with Irena to watch Harry Potter instead. Irena throws her arms around Danicka and smiles at her from her hip.

"You should come here every summer," she says firmly, and Danicka just laughs, smoothing the girl's hair.

"We'll see," is her answer. "Maybe for a little while."

She bows down to kiss Irena's head, and then Irena goes over to Lukas and grabs his hand and pumps it three times with a firm wildness. "Sbohem, pane!" she says with a boisterous child's imitation of what she thinks, perhaps, she's supposed to act like with him now. It doesn't last after that, though, because she grabs him and gives him the sort of crushing squeeze that Emanuel gave Danicka, a little growl of effort making its way out of her throat without her seeming to intend it.


When Danicka and Lukas make it out the door, Sarka is waving goodbye to them, but she doesn't leave the door open much longer. It's cold outside, several degrees colder than when they arrived. And Danicka is wrapping her coat tighter around her and taking a deep breath, stepping closer into stride with Lukas, into his side as they head past the little gate towards the rental.

"Miluju tě tak moc," she says quietly, though loud enough that the wind doesn't steal her words. "A myslím, že když se dostaneme do hotelu já budu váš kohout vysát až dokud zapomenete své jméno."

[Lukas] It's at the door, saying goodbye to Sarka and her children, that it truly strikes Lukas how similar they all look. The same blood runs in all of them - like a river of warmth from the sunlit valleys of fertile earth and strong oak, in the shadows of those great knife-edged mountains on which the Lords prowled dominant.

They're family. They're his family now, too, all of them: this extended webwork of kinfolk that are inextricably tied to him. Holding Sarka's hands, he realizes this in the very marrow of his bones, and returns her smile with one of his own. A nod: mutual respect.

Then he's saying goodbye to the children. To Milos, who shakes his hand like the man he's becoming. To Emanek, who imitates his brother but can only manage the briefest contact. To Renata, who doesn't blush this time, which makes Lukas smile with something like pleasure, something like pride, and lastly to the little girl that,

in some inarticulate way that makes all the sense in the world,

reminds him of his own spirit-daughter. He shakes her hand, biting back a smile. When she flings her arms around him, Lukas is momentarily startled. Then he puts his hand on her back for a moment, warmly and gently. When she draws back he bends down to her.

"I'll be in touch, all right?" And his eyes move to her elder, though not eldest, brother -- "And with you too."


They depart, then. And it's dark, and New York is getting cold, and Lukas hugs Danicka to his side almost with her needing to step closer to him. He bends to hear her; looks at her with aching tenderness in his eyes,

which flickers into something quite different, a surprised, half-shocked sort of arousal, and all of it laced in humor.

He thinks for a moment.

"Wow," he says. And then nuzzles her, biting gently at the crest of her ear. "Wow," he murmurs again, muffled now.

[Danicka] Outside, Danicka smiles at Lukas's startlement at what she says. She turns her head to kiss him -- wherever. His mouth. His cheek. His jaw. Whatever her lips can reach as they keep walking. He repeats his initial Wow, his teeth setting softly to her ear, and Danicka shivers against him.

"I've been thinking about what you said after you checked us into the hotel all evening," she confesses, as they get to the car parked alongside the curb. They don't part just yet, Lukas to the driver's side or, for that matter, Danicka, since he had to drive all the way here. She looks at him, the moonlight and lamplight together changing the color of her hair, her skin, her eyes.

"And I've been thinking about everything you've been giving today," she goes on quietly. "Offering to take vital responsibility for Daniel if it will protect your sister's future happiness. Promising to teach Irena when the time comes. Helping Miloš." Her voice has gotten softer with each one, her eyes closer to his. "Helping all of them, by helping him in this."

Danicka reaches up, putting her hand on his cheek. "It's not that I want to repay you or something twisted like that. I always want you. I always want to make you feel good." She stands on her toes, lifting her chin to kiss the corner of his mouth, to kiss his lower lip softly before drawing back down. "But tonight I want you to feel really, really good."

[Lukas] They linger outside the door of their rental -- streetlamps sheening on the gunmetal grey like frost. The corner of his mouth is turned up, a mute and playful expression that, with time, settles into something a little more quietly fond.

She lists all his good deeds today, one by one, softer and softer. He bows his brow to hers when she leans up to kiss him, covering her hand on his cheek with his own. When she lowers herself back to her heels, he wraps his arm around her and keeps her right there for a moment, mmming as he kisses her back.

A quiet, then. And,

"Miluji tě."


Lukas never says 'too'. He never, ever makes it sound like something he's saying because it was said to him first.


They go back to the hotel, then. Traffic is a little better, this time of night. The city rises up across the bridge, and then it swallows them: row upon row upon row of skyscrapers, glittering in the darkness.

Parking is impossible on Times Square, so they give the car to a valet. They get out, just the two of them, this beautiful couple, somehow exotic, out of this world, even in their casual clothes, with their rental Accord. Lukas takes Danicka's hand, and they're already checked in, so they bypass the front desk altogether and take the elevator up, up, up, and by the time the doors are open he's kissing her already, kissing her again,

kissing her all the way down the hall even when all he can kiss is her neck, her cheek, because someone has to look to see where they're going.

At the door, he's kissing her while she's fishing his keycard out of his pocket. The little green light on the lock goes on, something clicks, they're inside -- and then they're pulling each other's clothes off, buttons coming open, zippers down, coats pushed off shoulders, arms lifting for shirts tugged up and off. He tumbles her onto the bed and she rolls him under and,

just like that,

gets up off the bed. Leaves him sitting up half-dazed, disoriented, asking co to kurva, until she puts her hands on him and pulls him up, kisses him in front of that big bed, leads him across the room and pushes him down on that armchair so like the one he opened her up and ate her out in, a year ago.

That's where she sucks him off. That's where she blows his mind when she sucks his cock, and he lets her not because he wants or feels he deserves a reward, but because she loves him, loves doing this to him, loves watching his head fall back and his eyes shut and his face go stark with the sensation.

He holds her hair back. She makes him shudder and moan, makes him grab at the armchair by the fistfuls, fingernails digging into upholstery. When she's finished with him he's fallen to pieces, and she's climbing up over him and he's taking her face between his hands and kissing her, kissing her, kissing her until he's hard again and lifting her up and walking across those few feet to the bed to lay her out.

Her hair spills off the edge of the mattress. And the pillows, and half the comforters by the time they're through with each other. When they're quiet, exhausted, they're tangled up in each other and he's still inside her and the air feels raw with the noises he made, she made, while they fucked each other like the animals they are. His back is wet and hot under her hands. He shudders softly every time he jumps inside her, pulsing away the last of his pleasure.

"We should," he whispers then. "We should visit again in the summer."


In the morning, he'll be up early. Their flight out is in the mid-afternoon, but he'll go to the Sept of the Green first; take a moonbridge to Stark Falls. Of course he will: Lukas Wyrmbreaker never comes to New York without paying respect to his mentor. Such a good pupil. Such a respectful Garou.

Only this time, he'll go with a request. And Ahroun and Philodox will take a slow patrol around the Caern, walking side by side with heads lowered and voices low, discussing a young boy who is almost a cub. And his uncle. And the sort of man his uncle is. And who might be able to take his stead.

He'll do what he can, Istok will promise. And maybe in a week, maybe in two, some Adren Theurge from Storm Hammer, some woman with a haughty face and an aquiline nose, with no time for nonsense and no patience for deceit, might just show up at that ridiculously cute little house in Queens and ask to speak to Milos.

It'll be nearly ten am when mentor and pupil part at the edge of the bawn. Istok will inquire briefly after Lukas's own family: his parents, his sister, his mate. He'll want to know if he's taking care of them. Happy with them. No Garou is worth his name, Istok says, if he has no family, no pack, no blood to protect.

I know, Rhya, Lukas will say. You've taught me well.


By eleven he'll be back in the city. They'll have lunch at that Greek place, and they'll be back at JFK by three, four pm. Back in Chicago by evening. Back at their den, warming up the little house, showering and crawling into bed and pulling up the comforters and --

-- and reaching for each other, just as they do now. Just as he does now, rousing to his mate again, holding her shoulder gently in his teeth as he holds her breast in his hand, feeling her heartbeat jump faster as he touches her, tastes her,

loves her all over again.