unchanged.

[Danicka] The car outside has been running for awhile. A conversation inside the motel room full of long, awkward silences. And the other blonde is still in there -- everyone else has gone, at least for the time being. Danicka's in Lukas's BMW, sitting in the driver's seat, wasting his battery to keep warm. She's drowsing, her head against the rest, her shawl wrapped close around her.

[Lukas] The night air feels cold to Lukas. He wonders passingly if his rage had given him some sort of supernatural buffer against such things, the way it creates an almost-physical buffer around his person. He dismisses the thought; there are others in his mind anyway, crowding him. So he doesn't go straight to his car. He stops a moment outside the Travelodge. Puts his head back. The moon is still eclipsed -- a big bite taken out of its round disc. His breath is white in the air, a plume of it exhaled before he lowers his head and steps down to the driveway, the sidewalk, walks to his car.

He's glad to see it's running when he gets there. He's glad to see his mate has heat, has been warm this while. She can't feel him coming -- there's no preshock of rage preceding him. Nothing but his footsteps, barely audible over the engine, and then the click of the door unlatching.

It's strange. His physical presence is at once the same and utterly changed. He's still as large, as warm, as heavy, rocking the car on its shocks as he gets in. He doesn't choke the air, though. He doesn't burn, like lightning in a vacuum. The door shuts and he reaches out to her without explanation, wrapping his arm around her and drawing her against his side for a moment.

"Hi," he says quietly. A strange sorrow tugs at him. He kisses her temple before he lets go, putting the car in gear. "Let's go home tonight, okay?"

[Danicka] It isn't the rage that alerts Danicka to Lukas's presence. And the fact that she lifts her head from the rest and opens her eyes long before it's likely she would hear his footsteps may tell him that it was never him, it was never his rage or his nature that had her so wary. That's part of her now, that hyper-vigilance. It was seeded and born by her childhood, yes, but it's served her for years since then. Werewolves aren't the only things that lurk in the dark. Sometimes it's just a mortal man out there in the shadows, dangerous enough.

And tonight it's Lukas, as close to mortal as he'll ever get. She knows he's there because Danicka pays closer attention to her surroundings even with her eyes closed than most people do when they're on edge, afraid, hopped up on some stimulant or another.

She sees him coming, and touches a button to unlock the door for him before his hand touches the latch. It clicks, and cold air rushes in and hot air rushes out and it swirls around him as he slides his bulk into a seat that is still pulled up a little too far for someone his size. Danicka doesn't instantly move to start driving. She sits sideways in the driver's seat, watching him. She hardly blinks.

Danicka comes to him so easily. It isn't as though she never has before, even on a full moon. This is the woman who -- twice -- all but mauled him on his birth moon, even after he came so close to frenzy, even after he warned her that it might happen again. This is the woman who, over a year later, watched him actually lose that thin hold on control and snap. The woman who is still here. Sharing his bed. Laying her head against his shoulder, just like she does now, as if there's no difference at all.

Danicka would sense that sorrow two years ago. Two years ago, he would have hidden it. And she still would have noticed. She doesn't pursue it, partly because he says he wants to go home.

"Yeah," she says softly, as he lets her go.

It takes only a moment to buckle herself in, to put the car in gear. Danicka drives quietly. While they're on the highway, she lays her hand over the center console, and holds his.


The house is dark. There's no Christmas tree up there yet. She might not feel like she has almost twenty years to make up for now. His birthday is coming up, and Christmas. If she has anything planned, she hasn't alluded to it. But then, she didn't hint anything last year, either.

Home is dark. Danicka is quiet, but there's a calm to it, a lack of the uneasiness he feels. She's herself, unassailable as she always seemed in the beginning. And she has a bag in the backseat, which she twists around and grabs after the garage door has closed behind the BMW.

"You hungry?" she asks softly, but they're inside the front door by then, and she's sliding her feet out of their boots.

[Lukas] This is what it might feel like if he weren't Garou. This is what it might feel like if they could actually live together in the same house, every night. Drive home to a little house out in the suburbs with a young oak in the back and a fallow flowerbed in the front. With room for a growing family that hasn't begun to grow yet, a supermarket down the street, a Czech eatery around the corner and a dentist that might just be some distant relative of Danicka's next door. Lukas is quiet on the way there, thinking of this; he's quiet and calm, but sad, a little bit withdrawn.

When they get there she asks if he's hungry. He stays close to her. They haven't been here for a while. It's dark and cold, and he turns on the heater as they pass the thermostat. The light.

"No," just as soft, that. "I'm all right. You?"

[Danicka] Danicka lowers her second boot to the entryway floor and stepping back, her skirt falling around her legs again. She straightens, looking at him. Looking at how close he stays to her. Seeing how faraway his glacial eyes are, how troubled. They go inside though, and upstairs, and into the living room. She has to hold her long skirt up as she ascends, lets it go when they pass by the lightswitch, the thermostat, their handprints on the wall, marking this as their territory and serving as a reminder of what happens when he tells Danicka not to do something.

What happens when he tells her she might get dirty, or hurt. What happens when he looks at perfection and knows it could be marred. She mars it, and says: see? beautiful. better.

She shakes her head. "I actually ate quite a lot at the rite," she says, and she means the rite he picked her up from.

There were so many people there. It was indoors, a lodge sort of building with a circular fireplace in the middle of the room. No one shied from him. There were children running around, older ones mostly, old enough to stay up late and see the eclipse. Some were just babies, sleeping in carseats or on the shoulders of their parents. There was a tall man, dark-haired, without Lukas's bulk, and he was holding an infant against his chest, its heavy head on his shoulder, drooling. The baby had on striped tights and a long t-shirt. It slept, and its father rubbed its back while conversing with a woman in a white, embroidered robe.

When Lukas passed by them, going towards Danicka, the baby didn't wake, and the man didn't do more than cast him a brief glance before continuing with his conversation. Nobody was afraid of him. A couple of children actually bumped into him. Before they realized he was making a beeline for the black-clad blonde near the fireplace, more than a few women were eyeing him. Newcomer. Tall, muscular, handsome newcomer with the most intense eyes and some instinct that isn't even lupine told him seduction via rage wouldn't even have been necessary, that self-destructive tendencies weren't what would draw them.

Then again, he might not have noticed any of it. At the time, he hadn't known if he was ever going to feel like himself again. Now he does.

At dawn.

Danicka turns to him now, reaching up and putting her hand on his jawline. Her hand is surprisingly warm, but they were just in the heated car. She's never all that cold. She's healthy. Strong. Underneath all her seeming fragility, that's always been the case.

"You're not all right," she counters softly, her brow wrinkled with concern. "Why did you ask to stay this way til morning?"

[Lukas] Strange, but now, after the fact, he starts to understand a little of what Sinclair felt and wanted. I could have this, he thinks to himself, walking up the half-flight of stairs, following his mate -- his girlfriend, if they were just human -- into their home. I could have this, all the time, and all I would have to give up is ...

half of his soul. Half of himself. All of himself. Everything he is.

Still; it's a seductive notion, a knife in the gut that can't be withdrawn. Danicka reaches out to him and he bows his head to her hand, presses his cheek to her palm. Even that is animalistic. Is not really human. He's not human, even like this -- never could be. She's not, either. He kisses her palm and his mouth is warm, his breath is warm, her palm is warm.

When his eyes open they're shockingly blue, shockingly clear. He draws a breath and says, "For you.

"For us. I wanted us to have a night, a few hours, when you wouldn't have to try to not be afraid of me."

[Danicka] It doesn't seem to take her aback when he tells her it was for her. For them. She knew. When they stood in that strange realm she had no business being in, that place that was, itself, a gift to someone like her, she knew. Her hand in his, feeling every suggestion of motion and emotion under his skin, she knew. He did this for her.

"I know," she says, still barely above a whisper. "But ...I've never wished for this, lásko," she tells him, as though he needs to hear it. Now, of all times. "This isn't who you are."

Danicka moves closer, though, til they're touching, til she's close enough for him to put his arms around her, til he could hear her heartbeat if he quieted his own enough.

[Lukas] He doesn't put his arms around her. Not quite, anyway. He puts one hand at the center of her back as they close the distance to nothing, as they touch all along their bodies.

There on the other side, in some spirit-world as foreign to Lukas as it was to Danicka, he didn't once let go of her hand. He barely thought of it: it was natural to hold her hand, natural to hold on to her. Here, they connect again, her heartbeat palpable in her slender body, his the same strong engine of war it ever was.

So much about him is unchanged. So much more is unspeakably altered. Not who he is.

"I just thought," he murmurs, "it's been hard for you ever since the night I frenzied. I just thought this might ... help." His eyes close. He bends to her, his brow alongside hers, temple to temple. "I don't know," he confesses, and this is a whisper. "I don't know what I was thinking."

[Danicka] The dress is soft. Not velvet, not silk, but something thin. It transmutes her warmth to his touch, and it follows the lines of her body, and it's so rare that she wears anything like this. So rare, in fact, that she wears the supposed color of their tribe, the color he's in so often. It makes her skin look like cream, sets off the gleam of gold in her hair. She dresses like this during rites shared with mortals, with humans trying their best to connect to Gaia even if they don't understand what it all really means.

And without his wolf, without even quite being able to sense her breeding, it was still so patently obvious she was Different from them that it's hard to imagine her not attracting the attention of every human, goodwilled or otherwise. Maybe it was easier to see her as they see her, on some level. Beautiful woman, touched by Something Else. Special, somehow. It wasn't hard to see why a group of people like that would pay attention to her when she was among them.

Their faces are close, and she closes her eyes. She can smell his scent, and feel his warmth, and it's the same. So much the same, except for how sad he is. Danicka says nothing for a long time after he admits he doesn't know what he was thinking. And after that long time, her hand on his cheek and their temples resting together, she whispers:

"Thank you."

[Lukas] After that long time, Lukas isn't quite sure what she's thanking him for anymore. He doesn't know, but he doesn't ask. It doesn't seem important anymore. He thinks about the way she looked at that rite, with the humans that tried in their own way to touch Gaia. He thinks about the spirit they saw, that claimed to speak for Gaia; who may have been a shard of Her or may have been simply some epiphling that dreamed itself into shape. He thinks about the dress his mate wears, which he can feel under his hands, sliding and stretching as his hands move over her to wrap around her after all. He wraps his arms around her and pulls her close, holds her tight.

She almost never wears black. It doesn't suit her, truth be told. It makes her look striking, stunning, a little severe. More than herself. A representation, suddenly: a symbol of the season, of the Tribe. He thinks of her asking the spirit what kin are to Gaia. Their purpose. Their nature. The answer to that was no clearer than the answers he sought, and received.

"I don't think there's any difference," he says suddenly. There's no explanation, no preamble to this. "Between kin and Garou," he adds, and then -- because that sounds patently ridiculous -- "between our spirits, I mean. I think our spirits are the same, only in different lives.

"If they weren't the same, I wouldn't recognize you like this. Even without my Wolf. I wouldn't feel so different from the humans even like this, and you wouldn't feel so different from the humans to me."

[Danicka] It is important.

But he doesn't ask.


Danicka, he could tell, wasn't so sure about that spirit that spoke to them. Not sure if it really was Gaia. She has a certain amount of healthy doubt in her, no wide-eyed, instant acceptance of everything told her. Of course not. That's her curse, isn't it? That's the tradeoff, for being able to conceal so much of herself from others: she always wonders what they're hiding.

There's so much for him to take in, like this. He pulls her close, holds her tight, and there's still that momentary flicker of tension that never quite makes it to stiffness in her. Even without his rage, that's there. He sees her in black and thinks it doesn't suit her, makes her too severe, makes her a symbol. And the truth is, however he sees her, she looks beautiful in black. She looks very much herself, steps into a part of herself that is otherwise left waiting quietly for these holidays, and

Lukas doesn't know that part of her very well at all, even now. So he looks at her, feels that dress under his hands, and thinks: it doesn't suit her. more than herself.

Danicka blinks, eyelashes fluttering with it, as she lifts and pulls back her head a bit to look at him. "I know that," she says, when he says what he believes: that there's no difference, not in spirit. He goes on, though, and her brow furrows again. There's worry in it, but more than that, there's a strange ache. It only lasts for a moment.

"That spirit..." she says slowly, "I don't know what it was trying to accomplish. If anything. I don't understand how I was brought to that place. It spoke in vague riddles. I'm not even sure it knew what it wanted to say." She takes a moment, thinks, then shakes her head slightly. "Right now you're telling me what you told me when you promised me we'd meet in the Homelands, and you're a wreck because you're without your wolf."

She's frowning. "You're you. That's what didn't make sense, in that realm -- the implied divisions between beast and spirit and humanity. We aren't the sum of parts. And you don't see it, I'm not sure any of you saw it, but you're you with or without the wolf. It might be like losing a memory, or losing an arm, but it doesn't -- couldn't -- change who you are. Your recognition of me, and mine of you -- that isn't something confined to some notion of 'spirit', just like the fact that I love you and want to care for you can't be confined to the idea of my 'humanity'."

[Lukas] Some reaction -- like a flinch controlled at the last moment, an instant before it becomes palpable -- flashes through that larger, warmer body pressed so close to Danicka's. It comes when she says you're a wreck, and it comes at once unbidden and instinctive and unstoppable: because it sounds like weakness. Because he feels weak.

He draws back from her a little. After a moment, he leans against the wall, drawing her to stand between his feet, his hands still at her waist.

"I'm me," he agrees, or affirms, or echoes. "But the Wolf is me, too. And without it, I feel ... incomplete. Less than a whole." That's quiet - a confession, half-ashamed. "And I know how hypocritical it is to say that in my next lifetime I might be born kin, but it'll still be me -- and then turn around and say I feel incomplete without the Wolf. I know that. I don't know how to reconcile it."

Reconciliation. That's something he used to talk about a lot more, two years ago. How does she reconcile herself with herself. How does she maintain consistency between all the different faces and facets of herself. It was always Lukas who wanted unity, synergy, fusion: ironic, then, that now it's Lukas who seems to subdivide more into human, wolf, spirit.

"And I have to confine my recognition of you to the spirit," he adds, quieter. "Because the spirit is the only thing that persists after death. And I have to believe that I'll recognize you and love you in this life or in any other."

[Danicka] On any other night in his life, that flash might feel to Danicka like rage. It's a pure force, a smell like ozone, a wave of heat hitting her in the face sometimes. Tonight, she's not even sure it's anger. Tonight, she senses it, doesn't know what it is, and doesn't have to figure it out instantly so that she knows if she needs to soothe him

so he doesn't kill her.

That's always been the method. That was always the reason she learned to read people so well, to lie so expertly. Survival depended on figuring out what the Garou around her were feeling, and what they wanted from her, and what would keep them calm, keep her in their good graces. What would keep them in control. That need was always lessened around humans and other kin; she could relax a little. When she manipulated them, it was for her own ends, not just to escape with her life.

Danicka moves with him, stays close to him. The house isn't warm yet, and she's just glad that Kandovany is so independent and was fed before Danicka went to the rite. She keeps her body against Lukas's, her hands laid lightly against his chest. She listens, her mutable eyes on his, like being watched from the shadows of the woods.

"I don't believe that," she says quietly, when he's done. A small smile curves her mouth, an eyebrow lifting. "But then, I don't believe that the spirit is separate from humanity, or from animalism, or anything else that makes you yourself."

Her hand comes up, pushing a lock of his dark hair back off his brow. It's no small gesture, though it is tender: she runs her fingers into his hair, over his scalp. Her palm crosses his temple, then cradles the back of his head. "It isn't just some spiritual facet of myself that knows you," she whispers. "My body knows you. Instinct. Memory. Everything. And that can't be confined."

[Lukas] Problem-oriented, goal-oriented Lukas: he wants to answer that. He wants to question, confirm, affirm. He wants to know what she's trying to tell him, what she's trying to teach him, what the main point is, the thesis, the conclusion --

but he wants to kiss her, too, suddenly and overwhelmingly.

So he does. Her hand cradles the back of his head, and his comes up to cup the back of her neck. He leans forward, his back still to the wall -- draws her forward to meet him across that last inch or two. There's only one light in the living room, and it's by the sofa, behind her, haloing through her blonde hair. The space between them is full of shadows, warm and soft, and so is the kiss.

Warm. Soft. His hand moving gently down her neck, then stroking back from her cheek again. When it starts to deepen, he draws back and takes a breath, brow to hers.

"Miluji tě, lodní důstojník," he whispers. Then, angling his chin up again, seeking her mouth and finding it,

seeking some truth and finding that, too,

"Tak dlouho, jak někteří šrot ze mě; ještě existuje někde, já bude tě; miluju."

[Danicka] There's ache in that kiss. From him more than her; Danicka is, strangely enough, a bastion of calm right now. She has lost nothing. She has been given more than most kin find in their entire lives. Tonight Bridget was shot, held her own against Spirals. Tonight Danicka entered some realm of the spirit, and that it happened on the night of the solstice, the night of the eclipse, means more to her than she is saying. Than she would possibly ever say aloud.

Once, really, she talked to Lukas about what it means to her to worship, to pray. She talked about faith, and it hasn't come up again. They fought later, and he was so tired and their lovemaking was intense but somehow off and all of that was during a period when every time they met, they had to wonder if it would be the last time. He never really asks about what she believes and why; he changed her entire world when he told her that when she dies there is a homeland waiting for her. She couldn't even tell him how deeply it was changed, could only try to stay standing while her foundations were jarred.

She's not jarred now. She's calm, and yet charged underneath that serenity. Fulfilled, almost. Even if that wasn't Gaia's Voice, even if every word it said was suspect, she was there. She was invited, and welcomed. That in itself is a blessing not easily dismissed.

They kiss, and he is aching, needing, not wanting to ache or need because he doesn't want to be weak. He doesn't want to feel weak, seem weak. He left her once because she made him weak, he said, lying. Lying through his teeth, lying to himself, lying so convincingly that even Danicka believed him.

Now he puts his hands on her and kisses her, again and again, and she melds to his form as he does. Her breath smells faintly of honey, and more distantly of wine. She breathes in, leaning towards him as he pauses, drawing back a moment. Her eyes flicker open, close again in comfort, and kisses him again.

She could tell him there's no such thing as becoming a scrap of himself. That it can't happen. That he is not so easily tattered. She could tell him that he is not less, not half, that being unable to change doesn't make him unable to protect her, that being like this doesn't make him unable to recognize her, know her, be with her. That whatever they have, it is -- regardless of history, frenzy, rage, or fear -- not grounded as deeply in the fact that he is Garou and she is his Kin as he seems to think.

Danicka doesn't talk, though. She doesn't even answer him. Her hands are on his face, kissing him deeper as the last of his words are plummeting from his lips. She finds his hand with her own, guides it to her breast. Her heart beats against the heel of his palm. Faster.

[Lukas] Almost two years he's known her now. Much longer, if you count the years their families' paths intersected in their youth. He knows her: he says this, thinks it, believes it. Knows her the way the sea knows the shore, and the moon knows the tides: intrinsically, unquestionably.

And yet, at the same time, there are entire swaths of her history, of her person, that he still only has the vaguest grasp of. Years lost to the time they spent apart. Entire facets of her personality -- like the one she shows now, adorned as some priestess of the season, some embodiment of the season itself -- that he only barely, vaguely grasps.

Entire tracts of belief they've barely only talked about. He doesn't know, except in the loosest sense, what a sea change it was when he told her he would wait for her in the homelands. That she would be there, too. He can only begin to intuit through his own ache, and confusion, and worry over his packmate, and everything else crowding his mind right now, what it must have meant for Danicka to be there. To not only have to trust the word of her mate but to see it for herself: that she was wanted, invited, welcomed across the Gauntlet she could never breach otherwise. Taken into the spirit world by some spirit, some powerful, benevolent thing that -- if nothing else -- tried, tried its very best, to say what it thought might comfort her. Or guide her. Or make her feel --

wanted.
invited.
loved.

Danicka draws his hand to her body, then, and all that tumult, all that turmoil in Lukas's mind falls silence. In that silence there's only the beat of his mate's heart, fast against his palm. He exhales - it's a sound, caught and low - and then his hand shapes around her breast, cradles it as he kisses her, suddenly harder, deeper, needful in a way that even now he's sometimes afraid to show. Especially when he feels like this: raw and confused and halved and torn.

Except -- he doesn't feel that way. Not right now. Not in this moment. Self falls away, and with it, the questioning of who he is, what he is, what it is that makes him who and what he is. His hand passes down Danicka's side, takes her by the waist. Whatever he feels, he's lost none of his strength after all. He lifts her as easily as he ever has, and as instinctively, tilting his head back to follow her as she rises against his body.

Her back to the wall, then. They miss the thermostat by inches. Warm air is beginning to blow out of the vents, and as she folds her legs around him he sheds his coat in a puddle behind him. He left his room in such a hurry that he's hardly dressed: a soft sleeping t-shirt beneath, and the first pair of jeans he could get his hands on. His mouth leaves hers for a moment, a breath, a whisper:

"Chci, tě milovat."

-- before he's gathering her long skirts by the handfuls, drawing it up her calves, past her thighs.