he led well.

[Resistance]
This is not a normal hunt.

This isn't really even a hunt, to be honest, it's a siege. It's an ambush. It's Gaians. And a door, backed in and half waiting, half expectant, half waiting for things to happen. How did it get to this? How did they get this tip? Were they waiting to make their move, or waiting until there was, finally, a chance for them to survive the fight outside?

This is not where we start our scene.

But this is where it begins.

----

[Earlier]

They were at the caern, all of them. In some form or fashion, these garou were at the caern, and given a task by a passing Glass Walker. There was something going on in the industrial district. There were some things that needed to be checked out. A package to be retrieved.

This was not how it was supposed to happen.

---

The air is cold and smells like foetid meat.

The moon is not full.

They are an impromptu war party.

[Wyrmbreaker]
Wyrmbreaker has spent much of the past few weeks in the north, near the Hive; it's anyone's guess exactly what he's up to. Sometimes he's seen talking to the Warder. Or the Grand Elder. Other times, he's consulting with the ragabashes; the theurges; the Mistress of the Rite. Once or twice, he's seen in the company of the epiphling who calls herself Meka'il. Michael the Archangel. Attended now by the knights of the church, she seems stronger these days. Her wings more expansive. Her righteousness more certain.

Tonight, though, he's in Chicago. He was at the Caern. He's there with Sinclair, and he's there to meet Christian, whose patrol had just ended. The purpose was simple: hunting. Together. The party gathers, and then they depart.

Wyrmbreaker drives. He's not a wrathful wolf. Rageful, yes, but not wrathful; not out of control with his own anger and supernatural fury. His hands are steady on the wheel. He drives swiftly, but not recklessly. The car pulls to a smooth stop. The Ahroun killed the engine and stepped out of his car, footfalls heavy, hands slapping heavy against his own thick musculature as he activated talens, geared up for war.

--

And now here they are. In a cold, clammy room; cold and clammy though the season is warm. A shut door, several wolves.

He's waiting by the window now, his breathing level and deep and even. His fingers move gently at his side now and then, as though mapping some unseen surface. He speaks quietly:

"Not much longer now."

[Wyrmbreaker]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 3, 3, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 9 (Success x 7 at target 7) [WP]
[oh! for the record: -1 gn BB, -1 gn soak talen. sometime in the waiting-time, -1 gn to Luna's Armor, rolled thusly!]

[Wyrmbreaker]
[also, he'd provide soak talens and GBs for anyone who needs them; bloody bandages for christian and resistance, if they didn't have their own.]

[Night's Reprieve]
The God stands by the door, occasionally he moves forward to peek through the keyhole to find out what is out there. But most of his attention is focused on the others in the room, their moods and how they react to one another. It interests Night's Reprieve, but it also is of crucial benefit. The young Fang he knows, he has fought with him three times now. He knows that he is constantly on the edge, constantly fighting not to break out of his skin at the slightest provocation.

The other two though, are completely new to the Godi. The shadow lord, who arrived late and took over without even needing to say anything. He's like seething magma by the window, calm and cool on the outside though burning on the inside. They share much in common, the fang and the Lord. But there is much to separate them also.

The girl he finds a most unusual puzzle. A woman at odds with herself.


[-1WP Resist Pain
-1G Soak talen +3]

[Night's Reprieve]
[ He wishes he was a God. +i]

[Resistance]
Outside, something gurgles, screeches a disgusting sound.

And the air is silent again.

Next, there is a roar. A loud, ear-splitting sound that rattles the glass of the window nearby, that they can feel in their chests, their bones, before anything else.

[Locked doors.] groundrules:
1: I want to get this done in four hours because we've got a time constraint. So, please post in alphabetical order until inits!
2: Taking hits for someone else/blocking for them/etc. is not a reflexive action in this scene. You have to declare it, or you can take it as a substitution. You do not, however, take a +1 penalty in changing your declare to a defensive action for someone else.
3: try and keep posts under 8 minutes before inits
4: I might not pay attention to the chat. If you have a question, IM me!
5: Don't die. If you die, I will kill you.
5: Enjoy the scene!

[Warcry] [On the way:
-1WP, Resist Pain
-1G, Soak Talen (+2 Soak)]

[Locked doors.] [you don't see this: per+PU...]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 8)

[Locked doors.] Outside, there is a muffled sound, and the sound of an argument-

"You fucking son... set... we had..."

it fades out, and the air grows tense. The Gains behind the door can hear the argument, though onesided, growing heated, intense, angry. Flaring, fuming, horrible rage from the other side of the door. It gurgles and growls and grows. It is an inferno without feeling too hot. Christian knows this feeling all too well, but we digress. The argument continues-

"YOU SET ME UP! WHAT IS THIS?!"

-and something snaps The screaming, angry and unpleasant is replaced by a roar. Which is suddenly, unexpectly replaced by a snap, and another roar. A distinctly monstrous one- and it's different from hearing a crinos garou, though it soundslike a bastardization of the high tongue. So many voices piled on top of itself. Something in the umbra screams, and cries in panic, in terror.

Something in the physical realm does the same. And is silenced with a bloody gurgle and a wet slap.

Everyone in that room knows what the sound of flesh tearing sounds like.

The Gaians had waited, and rather faithfully, heard gurgling, crackling bone and the sound of pitched battle. Things clashing until there is nothing else. In theory, whatever is outside should be there. Should be injured grievously. Their job should, essentially, be half done for them by now. The smell of rotting meat still lingers in the air, seeps under the steel door and clings to their skin. Lingers in the air, and sticks to their noses, their hair, their consciences.

Outside, something else catches a scent. It is the smell of steel and cold and lightning and kings. It is the unspoken, and a heavy thumping is heard, approaching the door.

[Christian del Piero] Christian doesn't wait very well. He tries. He does what he can to keep busy. But he doesn't have talens to activate...he doesn't have a weapon to clean. So he paces until someone tells him to knock it off. Or until the argument starts. In his wolf form his ears would prick. Instead his eyes flash. He looks at the door like he's about to run at it. Then he shivers. Grits his teeth. Scratches at the scar on his throat. Feeling the Rage on the other side makes his own unbearable. It's a wonder he's not biting back frenzy. Or letting the Wyrm in again. He flies around at the sound of thumping. Looks to Lukas.

[Night's Reprieve] NR freezes by the door at the sound of arguments. He listens, trying to gain information.. but the talking ceases almost as quickly as it started. When the bone breaking and flesh rending begins he's already shifting. Jaws and claw-less paws erupting in a blur of long grey and black streaked fur. His spear at his side he waits by the door. When footsteps begin to sound he doesn't step back from the door, not unless commanded. He is born for the front lines, its what he has known his whole life.

But he is also a Godi, a warrior shaman. He knows when to look elsewhere for answers. He stares into the shiny steel door, he stares right through it.

[Peeking! -1dif!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 5, 6, 6, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Wyrmbreaker] [what's going onnn?]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5 (Botch x 1 at target 6)

[Locked doors.] Blood splatters across the window, which obscures the ahroun's view.

[Night's Reprieve] His jaw clenches and his lips curl into a deep snarl emitting from his throat at what he sees. He speaks to the others.

"Banes... many banes... too many to count.. The item is there, outside the door. A small box, they can't open it. It repels them when they try to touch it. The box.. it exists both here and in the umbra.."

[Warcry] Since they got trapped in this godforsaken room, however that happened, Sinclair has been sitting against the wall facing the door, leaning against it. Her legs are bent and her eyes are closed and her arms are loosely laid over her knees. It is a relaxed pose. Her breathing is steady. She could be sleeping. She isn't looking into the umbra or peering through the window. She makes the slightest noise of acknowledgement when Wyrmbreaker speaks, saying it's not long now. A muscle in her cheek tightens when there's screaming outside, violence. Her breathing hitches, then steadies again.

Warcry looks relaxed. Occasionally one of her hands will flex slowly into a fist, unfurl just as slowly. Occasionally her breathing will twitch, her chest clenching, her shoulders held so motionless it has to hurt her spine.

Normally she is, no matter how she feels, what emotion is dominating her, somewhat at ease within her own skin. She's a Fostern Galliard of the Nation. She knows who she is, and who she is not. What she is to do, and what she should not. She knows what she can take. For some reason, she's doing her best to not react right now. It's almost meditative, the way she is after she's made another round of talens, trying to regain her spiritual footing.

Sinclair doesn't have her footing right now.

[Warcry] [Nix! Swapping for the wyrmish lurkness.]

[Wyrmbreaker] Wyrmbreaker goes to the window at the sounds of struggle outside. What uncertain, dim light there is sketches across harsh bones, slanting planes. His eyes are crystalline and clear, but they see nothing. There's a smear of blood on the window. It's fresh. He relies on his allies instead: the Godi whom he had not met before this night, whose eyes briefly go clouded as he Peeks.

The report comes. Wyrmbreaker nods. Then he passes Christian a scrap of bloodied cloth, wrapped around a small token of clay carved with a shield. I really need to teach you how to make talens, he says into his packmate's mind, wry.

Then the Ahroun shifts into his preferred warform: hulking, blackfurred, hispo. "Can you heal, Fenrir?"

[Night's Reprieve] "Of course Wyrmbreaker. I do it all." The Godi grins.

[Christian del Piero] Christian is agitated. Somewhere under all that anger and scar tissue there's an intelligent 18 year old. One who is interested in something other than killing. He has books in his room at the Loft. Not comic books. Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau and Shakespeare. Stuff that isn't real easy to sit and read if you're worked up. But he knows there's a world beyond his fists.

He jumps when he hears his alpha's voice in his head. It's still kind of weird. There's wordless agreement in response. Then he takes the talens. Christian grinds his teeth. Breathes heavy. That's nothing new. "What's in the box?" he asks.

(( Rolling to activate soak talen then -1 Gnosis for BB. ))
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 1, 6 (Botch x 1 at target 7)

[Wyrmbreaker] There's a faint whuff; perhaps amused. "Then be ready to. Let me take the brunt of the blows. Christian, be ready to get behind them and [fuck] them up."

As for what's in the box:

"A fetish. Balance-rhya didn't get into specifics, but he wouldn't send us if it weren't important."

[Night's Reprieve] Night's Reprieve nods his head, his hand reaches to his waist and he withdraws a small metal capsule from his fur. He reaches to the tip of his spear and cracks the talen over the end of it. The leader says to heal, and heal he shall. But he will prepare for everything regardless. He steps away from the door to allow Wyrmbreaker to take the front.

[damage talen]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 5)

[Wyrmbreaker] Wyrmbreaker shakes out his fur, forepaws planted. One last check:

"Ready?"

[-1WP to resist pain!]

[Christian del Piero] He doesn't really need to understand why they're here to do his job. His job is as Lukas says...get behind them and fuck them up. His thoughts are too red for him to really worry beyond the initial question. What am I maybe going to die tonight for? "Getting something for the grand elder" is a less stupid reason than the other times he's died this month. The soak talen ends up breaking. Why do people keep giving him these stupid things anyway? Lukas can feel frustration from his packmate but it has no words. Christian just growls and shifts to hispo.

"Ready."

[Night's Reprieve] "Ready."

[Wyrmbreaker] There are no more words, and nothing left of subtlety. With a snarl, Wyrmbreaker leaps at the door. He slams into it with all his weight. Bursts the hinges, splinters the frame. As it slams down to the floor, he's already in motion, leaping forward with jaws unhinged, ready for blood.

[Night's Reprieve] He's not used to being at the back, even at his previous sept amongst his tribe he was in the forefront. But he allows the raging fang to step ahead of him, allows the young angry mess of a kid to burst through that doorway first in hispo before he squeezes himself through less elegantly.

[locked doors.] They come through the door, and find themselves in a room. The body is nowhere in sight, namely because they have to contend with the fact that there is rotten factory worker strewn over the assembly line equipment. They've been here for several weeks. It's a horrible scent. It's a horrible sight.

On the ground, there is a twisted, crinos-sized jawbone on the floor. An arm here, a leg there. What's strange is that none of those bodyparts seem to give off anything but taint and wrongness. There would be time to describe the grotesqueries made evident here.

Now is not the time for that.

The garou have their vision obscured, partially, from the poor lighting and the factory equipment. What they can see is that they have four foes. Two are impossibly beautiful, sprightly creatures with long limbs and dead eyes. They are only barely glad. Their attire suggests that they are identical clubgoers with identical blonde bobs. That, however, isn't the biggest concern. The biggest concern is a large figure , huge like a crinos garou, but... proportioned like two of them, fused and stacked until it had two heads, one protruding from the chest of the other, like some sickly vestigial twin. Its arms are huge, and they wield what look to be crude swords, bloodied and used.

Its impressive size makes it difficult to see the lithe, but ultimately unimpressive hispo folk with its head poking only barely above one of the pieces of factory equipment.

This is what they open the door to. The twins seem unphased. The Thing, however, hungers, and lunges for its attack.

[locked doors.] The Large Thing: +6
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5

[Night's Reprieve] [+7]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9

[Christian del Piero] (( +8 ))
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 8

[Wyrmbreaker] 20
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4 (Failure at target 6)

[locked doors.] Cleric: 20
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 8

[locked doors.] Enchanter: +20
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9

[locked doors.] Tiny : +8
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1

[locked doors.] Tiny!
Thing
Enchanter
Night's Reprieve
Christian
Lukas
Cleric
Enchanter

[locked doors.] Tiny: actions!
1a: Vault over the equipment
1b: bite Christian
r1: Bite him again!

Thing:
1a: slash the glowing Lord
1b: Do it again (off hand(s))
1c: slash the Fenrir!
r1: Do it again!

[Wyrmbreaker] [reflexive orders: focus fire! right now, lukas would call Tiny as the target, but there's a high likelihood he might change targets after cleric and enchanter get their chance to declare]

[Night's Reprieve] [1a
1b - spears on Tiny (hold till after his turn AKA when he's in range)]

[Christian del Piero] (( 1a: Break through barrier
1b: Get behind Tiny
1c: Bite Tiny
1 Rage: Bite him again! ))

[Wyrmbreaker] 1a. True Fear on Thing!
b. wait for Tiny to get close enough to ... grapple Tiny for buddies!
R1.
R2.
R3. -- bites on Cleric or Enchanter. unless tiny isn't dead. then biting tiny!

[locked doors.] Cleric: Corruption (Corrupt the Fenrir!)

Enchanter: Incite Frenzy (Lukas)

[locked doors.] Enchanter: Incite Frenzy
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7 (Success x 1 at target 7)

[locked doors.] Cleric: Corruption!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10 (Success x 3 at target 5)

[Wyrmbreaker] There's an instant between recognition and action, intent and outcome, where Wyrmbreaker looks across the concrete and the conveyor belts; sees what the unearthly creature intends for him reflected in her (its?) eyes. Time enough for four words only:

"Christian, lead the battle!"

-- and then, nothing but red frenzy.

[Wyrmbreaker] [after frenzy sets in: -1WP to avoid hitting allies!]

[locked doors.] [Lukas' action:
1: Eat The Big Thing (because Tiny isn't readily accessable or appealing in terms of noms)
r1: same
r2: same
r3: same. Will switch to nearest nonfriendly if dead]

[Wyrmbreaker] 1. RAAR! big thing!
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 5) Re-rolls: 2

[Wyrmbreaker] [i said RAAAAR! +6]
Dice Rolled:[ 15 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[locked doors.] Big Thing: Oww!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 5, 5, 6, 8, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Christian del Piero] The closest translation of the noise Christian makes is "Oh shit." He watches his alpha give himself up to frenzy and skids his forward halt. Just for half a second. Then he barks out "The far one!" And changes his target.

(( Declare staying the same only he's going for Enchanter instead of Tiny. ))

[Christian del Piero] (( 1a: Str + Brawl - break barrier. Str +3, hispo. Brawl +3, Perun. -3 pool, 1st split. ))
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Christian del Piero] (( 1b: Move!
1c: Dex + Brawl - bite Enchanter. Dex +2, hispo. Brawl +3, Perun. Difficulty +1, changing targets. -5 pool, 3rd split. ))
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 6, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Christian del Piero] (( Str +3 hispo +2 bite +2 staging ))
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[locked doors.] Enchanter: OW!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 3, 3 (Botch x 1 at target 6)

[locked doors.] The Big Thing: Slash!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 4, 6, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[locked doors.] Damage:
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Wyrmbreaker] [PH'NGLU MGLW'NAFH KAHSEENO R'LYEH WGAH-NAGL FTAGHN!]
Dice Rolled:[ 17 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)

[locked doors.] ... what the Hell was that?! Roll 2: slash a lord! (off hand)
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 4, 5 (Botch x 1 at target 7)

[locked doors.] Self damage
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[locked doors.] Soak
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[locked doors.] Action change: SERIOUSLY, WTF STAB LUKAS
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 1, 9 (Success x 1 at target 7) [WP]

[locked doors.]
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 2, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9 (Success x 6 at target 6)

[Wyrmbreaker] [KASHEENO FHTAGN!]
Dice Rolled:[ 17 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 9 at target 6)

[locked doors.] Tiny: action change! Ohshit!
1a: run back to Enchanter and Cleric
1b: Bite Christian (no!)
r1: seriously, bite.

[locked doors.] Bite? -3
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 6, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 5)

[locked doors.] Damge: str3+hispo3+hispobite2+3=11
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)

[Christian del Piero] (( Soak! ))
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 4, 6, 7 (Failure at target 6)

[Night's Reprieve] [change actions 1a move to cleric 1b stab 1b -3 (split) +1dif change action (WP)]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 10 (Success x 1 at target 7) [WP]

[Night's Reprieve] [dmg str+3+1 (talen)]
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[locked doors.] Cleric: OW!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 7, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Wyrmbreaker] [R1 - Chomp Biggun again! Iä! Iä! KAHSEENO FHTAGN!]
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 5) Re-rolls: 1

[Wyrmbreaker] [seriously kahseeno? GO BACK TO THE DEPTHS IF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO HELP ME!]
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 8 at target 6)

[vikthya] [ There hath he lain for ages and will lie,
Battening on huge seaworms in his sleep;
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die. ]

[locked doors.] [Thing: ow]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 5, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Christian del Piero] (( R1 - bite Enchanter. Difficulty +1 change targets. ))
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Christian del Piero] (( +2 ))
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 5, 5, 5, 7, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Christian del Piero] (( +2 ))
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 5, 5, 5, 7, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[locked doors.] Enchanter: Owwww
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[locked doors.] THing: SERIOUSLY LUKAS
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 4, 5, 6, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[locked doors.] damage
Dice Rolled:[ 16 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 5, 5, 7, 7, 7, 7, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 8 at target 6)

[Wyrmbreaker] [KAHSEENO FHTAGN!]
Dice Rolled:[ 17 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 11 at target 6)

[locked doors.] Tiny: rarnom on Xian
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 5)

[locked doors.] Damage?
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)

[Christian del Piero] (( Soak! ))
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Wyrmbreaker] [R2 - still biting like a lunatic!]
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 5, 5, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 10 at target 5) Re-rolls: 2

[Wyrmbreaker] [+9]
Dice Rolled:[ 18 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 6, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)

[locked doors.] Soak
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Wyrmbreaker] R3 - RARGH BIG THING DIE.
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 5)

[Wyrmbreaker] [dam!]
Dice Rolled:[ 14 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 8, 8, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[locked doors.] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Night's Reprieve] Almost the instant that Night's Reprieve first lays eyes upon what it is that they face, his mind is assaulted. Whispers of horrible things crash through his mind.

Do not heal them. Do not heal them. You musssssn't heaaaal them Night's Reprieeeeeeeeve.... you cannot... you shall not..

He watches as Wyrmbreaker froths at the mouth and manages to snarl out one last order before the frenzy takes him. Watches him assault the large double crinos mutant by himself. The Godi's eyes fall upon Christian and he heeds the Fang's commands, he moves swiftly towards the two fragile looking women through the gap that Christian creatures. He plunges his spear.. but he doesn't even draw blood. The thing shrugs it off like he just hit it with a foam bat. He only has one thought as he snarls at the creature.

You die soon, pretty young thing. I will pin you against the wall and spill your entrails on the floor.

[Wyrmbreaker] This is not the first time Wyrmbreaker has given himself over to the savage, raw beast that exists at his core. This is not even the first time this year, or this season.

It's still a rarity. A rare thing, when he lets himself go like this. When he lets go of that control that he so prizes; that he wants to teach to Christian. A rarer thing still when he does it by choice, by will, knowing that he could bite it back if he wanted to -- and deciding not to.

Because he trusts in his packmate, perhaps. Or perhaps because he weighed the pros and the cons and decided that he couldn't leave himself incapacitated for a critical three, six seconds. Or perhaps simply because when push comes to shove, and when one gets down to the wire,

Lukas is, in the end, a beast. A snarling, raging beast: eyes glassy blue and staring, terrible teeth snapping, foam flying from his jaws. Mixing with blood. Splattering on equipment, on rollers and conveyors, on the floor. Focusing fire is beyond him right now. Restraint is beyond him. He throws himself at the largest of the lot, the most obvious of all the foes. He thinks only of destruction.

[Christian del Piero] Christian is not going to die of his injury. He might die if he takes a hit like the one that ended the short life of his bloody bandage...but he might also die if the Godi does not use his spear instead of his gifts. There are 3 of them left versus the 2 Gaians. The subcliath isn't worried about his alpha. Blood is flying everywhere and none of it belongs to Lukas. A gash opens up somewhere on Christian's body. If Greg were here he knows exactly what the stupid idiot would be doing. NR isn't Greg. But he's still a Crescent Moon. So he snaps "I not-hurt! Kill it!"

[locked doors.] Tiny:
1a: defend cleric
1b: defend enchanter
r1: bite the fenrir.

Thing:
1: FUCK. YOU. SHADOW LORD (staaaab)

[Night's Reprieve] [1a
1b
r1
r2 - all stabs on cleric, changing to Tiny when it dies]

[Christian del Piero] (( 1:
3 Rage: all bites on Tiny, Enchanter if it goes down. ))

[locked doors.] Lukas:
1: Big thing, I keel you dead
r1: seriously
r2: yeah
r3: SERIOUSLY. (change to nearest non-friendly if available)

[locked doors.] Cleric: Corruption: The fenrir!

Enchanter: Stunned!

[locked doors.] Cleric: Corrupt!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 5, 6, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 5 at target 5)

[Wyrmbreaker] [i am so sorry, guys, i didn't realize i'd fallen out!]

[Wyrmbreaker] [KAHSEENO SEZ: WILL YOU PLZ DIE NAO.]
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 5 at target 5)

[Wyrmbreaker]
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 7 at target 6)

[locked doors.] [Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)

[Christian del Piero] (( 1 - bite Tiny. -1 pool, wound penalties. ))
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 6, 6, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 5)

[Christian del Piero] (( +3 ))
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 3, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 8 at target 6)

[locked doors.] [Rage back!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 6, 6, 6 (Success x 1 at target 8) [WP]

[locked doors.] Tiny: Oww! Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[Night's Reprieve] [wp can I hurt you cleric?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 4, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 7)

[Night's Reprieve] [1a -2 (split)]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 5, 5, 7, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[locked doors.] Tiny: try to block! -3 (split) -2 (oww)
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[locked doors.] (blocked)

[Night's Reprieve] [1b -3]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 4, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Night's Reprieve] [dmg str+3+1+2]
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)

[locked doors.] Cleric: ACK!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 4, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[locked doors.] Thing: Raged back to incap

[locked doors.] Tiny: action change.
1a: Bite Christian +1 diff
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 3, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6) [WP]

[locked doors.] damage:
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Christian del Piero] (( Soak! ))
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Wyrmbreaker] [R1 - i'm too insane to focus on anything else! KB on the biggun!]
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 9 at target 5) Re-rolls: 1

[Wyrmbreaker] [...wait, no, this is just a straight damage roll. cuz it's like. inert.]
Dice Rolled:[ 21 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 10 at target 6)

[locked doors.] (soak?)
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 4, 7, 7, 7, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)

[locked doors.] (Big thing: X_X)

[Christian del Piero] (( R1 - bite Tiny. -2 pool, wound penalties. ))
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 4, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 5)

[Christian del Piero] (( +3 ))
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 5, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)

[locked doors.] Tiny: SOAK
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[locked doors.] Tiny: rageback!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 4, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 8) [WP]

[Night's Reprieve] [r1 stab cleric!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Night's Reprieve] [dmg str+3+1+3]
Dice Rolled:[ 14 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)

[locked doors.] Cleric: soak
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 5, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[locked doors.] Cleric: X_X

[locked doors.] Tiny: BITE NR!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 2, 5, 5, 6, 9 (Success x 3 at target 5)

[locked doors.] damage
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)

[Night's Reprieve] [soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 6, 6, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)

[Wyrmbreaker] [WP: do i come out of frenzy now?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 8, 10 (Success x 1 at target 7)

[Wyrmbreaker] There's no grace, no finesse, no even much skill in the Ahroun's butchery tonight. Tooth and claw, fury and hate, and sheer blind tenacity eventually drag the heaping mountain of a conjoined-crinos-beast down.

In the wake of it, Wyrmbreaker's furious snarls abate. Dim. Die off. He shakes his head once, eyes clearing. He looks dazed. He looks like he barely recognizes any of them -- but when he turns on his haunches and leaps, it's straight for the enemy.

[R2 - die tiny!]
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 6 at target 5)

[Wyrmbreaker]
Dice Rolled:[ 14 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 8 at target 6)

[locked doors.] [tiny soak, bit this isn't happening until R3]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 5, 6, 9, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[locked doors.] [Tiny: Dead at R3 X_X]

[Wyrmbreaker] [erp - delete that. R2 is spent moving to Tiny!]

[Christian del Piero] (( R2 - bite Tiny. -2 pool, wound penalties. ))
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 6 at target 5)

[Christian del Piero] (( +5 ))
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)

[locked doors.] Tiny: ?
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 3, 5, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[locked doors.] Tiny: X_X

[Night's Reprieve] [R2 spear on enchanter]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Night's Reprieve] [dmg str+3+1+2]
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[locked doors.] Enchanter: Oww!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Wyrmbreaker] [R3 - changed to biting enchanter! +1diff]
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 8, 9, 10 (Failure at target 6) Re-rolls: 1

[Wyrmbreaker] [KAHSEENO, WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME?]

[Christian del Piero] (( R3 - bite Enchanter. -2 pool. ))
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 5, 6, 7, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 8 at target 5) [WP]

[Christian del Piero] (( +7 ))
Dice Rolled:[ 15 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[locked doors.] Enchanter: Ow!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 1, 7 (Failure at target 6)

[locked doors.] Enchanter: X_X

[locked doors.] There is blood. There is always blood.

Their bodies are strong and their reason is sound, in normal circumstances, but right now? Right here? Something is fucking with them. The enchanters, the sorcerors, the banedaughters with their dead eyes and thousand whispered, silken voices play on their ears. The first is enough to drive a seasoned, professional soldier lose his mind, and instead of fighting it, instead of pushing it, he tells Christian to lead, and he takes a risk.

And dives for the large, four-armed monster. He bites hard into its flesh, tips off some extraneous arm while the other two garou wage their own battle.

Christian redirects Night's Reprieve, tells him that they are to attack the enchanter- the object that whispered those horrific commands and insults and terrible things to the Shadow Lord ahroun. He tells them to charge the enchanter, the clubgoer blonde with her dead eyes and her terrible voice. There is violence, and Christian takes hit after hit, and while the desire might overtake Night's Reprieve to heal him, there is that suggestion, that thought htat he doesn't want to do that.

He promises to kill her.

The world becomes red. Not from the frenzy, not from the haze, but from the battle itself. There is so much blood.

The hispo wolf, their enemy, fights. Bites, claws his way through it all while those damned spirit-talkers worked whatever sorcery they had. In the end, it wasn't enough. For any of their enemies. By the time Lukas calms himself, by the time that the world stops being red for him, the world has stopped being red in general. CHristian stands, a bloody mess and with his intestines barely held in with muscles and tension. Night's Reprieve's spear is all that is holding the other summoner's body to the floor. Its eyes stare, dead, into the air.

Both are tired.

But by the time it's all over, they have done well. He might wonder what happened, but in the end, it seems that they worked well as a group. That they held their own. That Night's Reprieve and a nameless Silver Fang endured, and will walk away from another night of battle.

[locked doors.] (close that tag)

[Wyrmbreaker] Not his best effort, all told.

When it's over, the blackfurred Ahroun looks as though he barely has his wits about him. He lunged across the room to go after the lithe one. It died before he got there. He turned and snapped at the other. Missed entirely. It's his younger packmate that puts them both down; his younger packmate that, the night before, was telling him he didn't want to die and be remembered as the one who could never control himself.

Well; Christian wasn't the one that was uncontrolled, tonight.

Now there's nothing left but corpses, and Wyrmbreaker gives his fur a thorough shake, as though he'd come out of water. He paws at his face once, and then he turns toward his packmate. Sniffs at the wound, making a low keening sound in his throat. When he turns away he twists a tiny gourd out of his side, crushes it between his teeth, lets the dust spill onto Christian. His own hide is conspicuously unmarked. This is not a point of pride.

There's a mingled apology and -- reassurance, or perhaps congratulation -- in the way he bumps shoulders with Christian, after. Then, looking to Night's Reprieve:

"Theurge, should we cleanse the box before we open it?"

[Wyrmbreaker] [-1gn for +4hp]

[Wyrmbreaker] [int + occ!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 5, 5, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 7)

[locked doors.] Lukas remembers being a child, briefly, and refrigerator box forts. He remembers, maybe from misplaced nostalgia or things he's heard through the folksy wisdom of others, that children care nothing for expensive toys. They'll play with the box.
to Wyrmbreaker

[Night's Reprieve] [int]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 5, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 8)

[Night's Reprieve] The Godi places his furred claw-less foot against the chest of the cleric, gives a twist and yanks his spear out with a sickening crunch. Blood spills from the wound, blood everywhere.. but none on the Fenrir. He stands without a scratch whilst the fang beside him holds in his own guts. But it is not he who heals Christian, it is not he despite his gift who fixes those wounds. It is the boy's alpha who comes to his aid, using talen's crafted by his own hands to stitch the Fang back up.

Night's Reprieve doesn't respond to that, it doesn't bother him like it might bother another of his auspice. He is one of fenris. Though skilled in healing and dealing with spirits; he is still a warrior. Their foes lay vanquished all around them and his allies still breathe. His job is complete. Or perhaps not, for Wyrmbreaker has a question of him, he asks if they should cleanse the box before attempting to open it.

His first instinct is that they should not open the box at all, that they should perhaps take it as is back to the caern. Though it warrants further investigation. Regardless, the corpses require cleansing so he must get to work.

"The box glows silvery golden in the umbra, it hurts the Banes.. It may hurt us or it may not, we should investigate it further before doing anything. I will attempt to reach the spirits for the tainted corpses."

And he turns away from the Ahrouns, eyes searching for something that they cannot see.. cannot hear..

[piercing gaunt]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 10 (Success x 3 at target 7)

[Night's Reprieve] [wits+rituals dif 5]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 6 at target 5)

[Night's Reprieve] [gnosis]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[locked doors.] The water rolls in, congeals onto the floor, from the air, hands loosely like a vapor in a vaguely androgynous form. It floats, flickers, wavers and stays while regarding the theurge, with the blood on his face. Its hand runs across her cheek, smears the blood and leaves a fine layer of condensation-

You bring us to a desert..

[Christian del Piero] (( Int + Occult ))
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 1, 4, 5 (Botch x 2 at target 7)

[Night's Reprieve] "She comes.. gather the bodies.."

This offered to christian and to lukas moments before the spirit arrives. He stands firm while she caresses his cheek, he does not shy away from that touch. He speaks through the tongues of his auspice, speaks to the woman made of water.

I call you here to aid in cleansing the taint of the wyrm.. I bring you to a desert so that we may leave it a better place than we found it.

[Christian del Piero] (( WP -1 ))
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 8, 8 (Success x 2 at target 8)

[Wyrmbreaker] "It's also possible," Wyrmbreaker says, "that it's the box itself, not what is within, that's the fetish. Twice now you've seen that the banes cannot touch it. Maybe that's its purpose. Maybe it cleanses whatever is within."

Shifting to his Crinos shape, then, Lukas picks up the object in his hands. Carefully, he turns it over once, and then tucks it under his arm like a football. Or like some precious burden to be protected.

"We'll take it back to Balance-rhya," he says -- then nods. A water-spirit has come. The Godi directs the cleansing; another Shadow Lord would bristle at this. Lukas doesn't. He shifts his precious burden and then bends to help heap the bodies, keeping a respectful silence.

[Night's Reprieve] "It comes.. gather the bodies.."

This offered to christian and to lukas moments before the spirit arrives. He watches the water spirit, watches it gather and pool. Watches as it touches against the cold corpse of one of the fallen.

I call you here to aid in cleansing the taint of the wyrm.. I bring you to a desert so that we may leave it a better place than we found it.

[locked doors.] You bring me a desert and expect me to stagnate... what can you give me in return, iceandnorthandcoolcoldreprieve? What will you give, would you abandon me here?

[Christian del Piero] When it's over Christian is calm. Maybe surprisingly calm. That madness in his eyes is less. Of course...he's hurt. So he's distracted. But his Rage is as low as it ever gets. It's hard to tell what he's thinking when he looks at his alpha. Before tonight he didn't think he was capable of leading. No one's dead and he's the only one who's harmed when the fight's over. So maybe he is. His ears flatten when Lukas makes that noise. He doesn't return the shoulder press. He's fixated on the box. Trying to figure out what it is. All he knows is that he really really wants to open it. Lukas picks it up. He watches the summoning with less awe and interest than last time Night's Reprieve did this. It's because he can't stop looking at the box.

[Night's Reprieve] I give the gift of gnosis, gladly. That you may have the strength to return back to where I summoned you from.

And he reaches out a hand towards the spirit, should it be willing.

[Wyrmbreaker] While Reprieve bargains with the spirit, Wyrmbreaker tilts his head at his packmate. Then, rather deliberately, he shifts the box so that his body blocks it. And he watches the reaction.

[locked doors.] It slithers up, leaves his fur feeling cool and wet, and curls into his palm. It is no more than a puddle. It is no more than a cup full of water, but it expands outward and falls downward, slips between his fingers with an icy splash. It hits the ground, hits his knees, hits the bodies and expands outward still. It's infinite, something from nothing, and for a second it feels as though the spirit may cause a flood. But the water only rises a few inches before it recedes again. It crawls up and touches anything, everything around it.

It feels clean.

[Christian del Piero] He doesn't get angry. But his ears flick. His tail lowers. The huge red splattered youth makes a low noise. Doesn't try to keep the box in his sights. His interest in it doesn't go away though.

[Wyrmbreaker] Christian. It's a thought-voice this time. Why are you fixating on the box?

[Night's Reprieve] The Godi watches the exchange between the two pack mates with a quirked lip. He doesn't speak, though he steps slightly closer to the two of them now that the cleansing has been completed. They aren't speaking.. but they stare at each other and there is definitely communication there.

[Christian del Piero] Christian doesn't even look away when he realises the Godi is watching them. Or maybe he just doesn't realise it. He's distracted. He doesn't know -why- he wants to open the box. But he's driven to. It's annoying. Frustrating actually. But he's not in danger of frenzying. He just paws at the ground as he tries to figure out what to say. Thoughts are more abstract in this form. So Christian shifts. He's more horrific in his birth form than any of the other ones. His shirt didn't survive shifting in the first place. He's drenched in blood. His eyes look white with all that dark red on his face. The teenager shrugs.

[Wyrmbreaker] Even in his warforms, Christian is not amongst the largest of his auspice. Or his species. In his homid form, he's utterly dwarfed by the hulking crinos-form of his alpha. It's somewhere between surreal and comical, then, to see the much larger werewolf tilt his head at the small, bloody human. Homid. Wyrmbreaker's claws tick lightly, thoughtfully over the box's surface. Then he secures his grip on it.

"We'll take this back to Balance-rhya. It does not belong to us." His nod includes the Godi, then. "Let's go. And thank you. Both of you. For ... doing well, when I gave in to Frenzy.

"Are you staying in the Sept, Fenrir?"

[Night's Reprieve] He grunts, a short bark.

"I am staying at the place you call the brotherhood.. and no thanks required. You tore that thing to pieces single handedly. Your young Fang lead well, you can be proud of him.

[Christian del Piero] Wait. Is this the same guy who called him a disgrace the other night? Christian stares at the Fenrir like he can't believe what he's hearing. They can't see the blood rush to his cheeks because...well, of the blood -on- his cheeks. He looks down. Puts his hands in his drenched pockets. Scuffs his toe.

[Wyrmbreaker] Your young Fang led well, Night's Reprieve says. Wyrmbreaker's reply to that is simple enough, "I know. I wouldn't have let go if I didn't think he would."

Then, an amused sound -- "I meant, are you planning on staying in the city? Because if you are, you should talk to Kora She-Who-Offers-Sorrow. She's your tribal alpha here. If you're looking to join a pack, hers could use a Theurge, too."

[Night's Reprieve] "Your city is plagued by the wyrm, four nights and four encounters." A pause, he's not intending insult and he grins at Ahroun. "But what city isn't. I think I shall stay.... This name Kora.. It is not new to me. A kin folk Imogen Slaughter spoke of her. I shall announce my presence to her at the first opportunity."

[Wyrmbreaker] "Slaughter," Wyrmbreaker echoes, returning the smile. "That woman almost has enough renown to become a Cliath Ahroun. I'd heed her word."

He looks at the bodies strewn about, then. Cleansed now. Still very dead. "All right. Let's grab trophies and get this box back to its master."

[Night's Reprieve] His eyes narrow a moment about the comment of Imogen's renown. He doesn't comment though and only nods his head.

"Lets."

It's bloody work, it always is. Butchering trophies. Thankfully most of the work on the dual-crinos beast had already been done by Wyrmbreaker in his frenzy. Two of the great arms are taken, swords still clenched in the dead fists, along with the mutated skulls of the abomination. The hispo and the two female skulls join it.

Another victory for Gaia, another set of trophies for the Wyrm Pole. They make their way back to the caern, and return the box to Balance without Fault. A job well done, by all of them.

sharing strength.

[Wyrmbreaker] Since the night Christian was recruited into the Unbroken -- in name, anyway, since the totem bond was yet to be forged -- Lukas has been all but absent. Sometimes the younger Ahroun will scent his packmate in the Loft, or at the Brotherhood. Sometimes his presence will linger in the area like a smell, like rage, as though they'd only just missed one another. Sometimes they'd seen each other in passing at the changing of the guards at the Caern -- but always, always, these encounters are rare and brief.

Perhaps Christian feels a little abandoned. A little tricked, even. Wasn't Lukas supposed to be his mentor? His Alpha?

Well; tonight, he's at the Loft. He's in the living room, laid out on Katherine's couch. He's reading. The book is called The Book of Revelation: A Novel, and it must not be a very good one because Lukas is frowning. He's apparently also waiting for Christian, though, because as soon as the Fang Ahroun appears Lukas sets his book aside and sits up.

"Hey," he calls quietly. "Can we talk?"

[Christian] When Christian gets back he's not bloody or injured...which is a nice change of pace seeing as he's died and come back three times since the 16th. He's sweaty. It's hot out and he's been throwing a rugby ball around. But he kept his shirt on to walk back from the park. It doesn't hide the scars on his throat and arms. He hasn't shaved since they brought Greg back to the Caern. That doesn't really hide the scar on his throat either but it's a distraction. His Rage is not as high as it usually is...but he still feels like a guitar string pulled too tight.

He stops dead when Lukas calls to him. He hasn't seen his alpha in weeks. He stares for a few seconds. It isn't the thousand yard stare his sisters had found him with last week. Still. His eyes do nothing to calm any fears about his mental stability. Christian clears his throat. Tries to smile. It turns into a grimace. "Ok," he says.

[Wyrmbreaker] Lukas gestures Christian into the couch opposite him. A few feet of space between. A coffee table, on which Lukas has a glass. Water, not wine. He sets the book down beside it, whatever page he was on unmarked, and leans his elbows on his knees, fingers folded loosely together.

"I haven't been around for you much," he says. "I know I promised I would be, and I'm sorry."

That, first and foremost. A quiet apology; genuine. Delivered with a faint grimace. Blue to blue, the Shadow Lord's eyes search the Fang's for a moment. Then he says, "You want to tell me what's going on with you?"

For what it's worth: it sounds more like an invitation than an order.

[Christian] He doesn't sit down right away. He's reluctant. Either he knows what's coming...or he just doesn't want Katherine to catch him on her furniture when he's covered in filth. The teenager looks between Lukas and the couch a few times. Takes a breath and sits down. As close to the edge as he can get. He holds the rugby ball between his hands. He has a death grip on it. He's not agitated. He's nervous.

Lukas apologises. Christian doesn't know what to do with it. Nobody ever apologises to him for anything. Especially not when he isn't in their face telling them what they did wrong. He swallows. "Um..." Frowns. "It's okay."

He looks back when the Fostern looks at him. Not forever. Just long enough to realise that Lukas is looking for something. Then he drops his gaze. He's still looking at the ball when the question comes. It wasn't an order. If it were an order he might have lied. He doesn't lie. "Not really."

[Wyrmbreaker] There's just a quiet to that; a pause. Then: "Why not?"

[Christian] His pause is longer. He turns the ball in his hands a few times. Picks at the stitching. "Because..." Christian grits his teeth. He still looks at the ball. "Because you're not supposed to make your people deal with you when there's something wrong with you." Now he looks up. His head flies up is more like it. "I'm not saying there's something wrong with me! I just...people think there is."

[Wyrmbreaker] "The Litany says Do Not Suffer Thy People to Tend Thy Sickness," Lukas quotes. He sounds like a Philodox when he does that. There's a reason for that: his own mentor was a goddamn Philodox. A hint of wry humor, then, "I'll let you know if I start suffering.

"I'm your packmate," he continues. "I'm your Alpha. I don't know you very well yet, Christian, but I know this much.

"I know I saw enough potential in you to want you in this pack. I know you carried one scar when you joined us, and now you've got... what, two more? three? in the space of a few weeks. I know that sort of thing doesn't happen by accident. You have to look for danger to run into that much. And I know that if you throw yourself recklessly into battle after battle until you die, which is what you seem to be doing right now for no reason I can understand, that's going to be a real shame and a hell of a waste of potential.

"So." His hands come apart, spread palms-up. "Come on. Talk to me, Christian. What's going on? Why do people think there's something wrong with you? Why are you out there playing chicken with death?"

[Christian] Christian tries to smile again when Lukas says he'll let him know if he starts suffering. At least it's less effort this time. He still looks uncomfortable. Even more uncomfortable than he looked at the Silver Fang moot. Lukas might have seen him before he and Katherine left for the Signature Room. Maybe he heard the teenager griping - as good natured as he ever gets - about how tight Katherine tied his tie. That was the last time anyone saw Christian in a good mood. His suicidal rampage started after he escorted Hilary Durante to her cab.

...what, two more? three?

"Three," he says. Quietly. Not to interrupt. He drops his gaze again. It stays down until Lukas implores him. It comes back up slower than it did when he tried to assert that there was nothing wrong with him. Christian doesn't want to talk about it. The older Garou can see that. Or maybe he just doesn't know how to talk about it. Or how to say that he doesn't know how to talk about it. He isn't exactly in touch with his feelings. He expresses anger by breaking things and frustration by swallowing tears and -then- breaking things.

He keeps squeezing the rugby ball. He's breathing heavy. Christian looks away with his jaws clenched. When he gets himself together he looks down again. It's easier to confess when you don't have to look at the other person. He's used to confessing through a wall with a slat in it. "I did something I shouldn't have. Like...I could have not? But it was really hard not to and I just...I did it. And I hurt someone. And I felt guilty. I mean...I am guilty but I couldn't deal with feeling that way so I just...I got into a lot of fights. And I didn't care what happened when I would fight like...Wyrmlings." He makes himself look up. "I know it would hurt Cordelia and I know it would suck for you guys but I just didn't care, -rhya. And then I wasn't even looking for a fight...I was just standing in the park talking to Greg and I..." He looks back down. "I did it again. Frenzied so bad the Wyrm got in. And Greg got hurt because of me."

[Wyrmbreaker] Greg got hurt, Christian says, and a frown skates across Lukas's brow.

He's heard that story already. He heard it from Katherine first. He heard about Greg; he heard about what really happened to Greg. Where his body lies now. Who was left to mourn him. Who was left to avenge him. What Christian thinks happened, or what he simply blocked out completely.

He doesn't correct Christian right away. Not yet, anyway. It's filed away; he goes back further. Down to the basics.

"Everyone screws up, Christian," he says. "Me, Sinclair, Kate. All of us. When I met my mate, I was so afraid of becoming weak and vulnerable that I wouldn't let myself love her. After months of my idiotic behavior, I tried to walk away from her. And that fucked me up so bad that I just fell off the radar and went on a week-long tailspin. I was the Beta of this pack then. During that week, I was totally useless to my packmates. During that week, my Alpha got ambushed by a pack of fomori. She died. Alone. While I was passed out in some dive motel on the other side of town.

"I am an Ahroun, and I was a Beta. It was my job to keep my Alpha safe or to die by her side. I wasn't even there. Whatever you've done, Christian, it can't possibly be worse than that.

"And even if it is worse than that -- even if you've danced the goddamn Spiral -- it's not over unless you refuse to come back from it. Everyone screws up, Christian. The difference is not everyone takes responsibility for it. Not everyone tries to make things right and move on from it."

Another pause, here. There's a sense that Lukas wants to speak carefully; that he doesn't want to crush his young packmate with the weight of guilt, or responsibility, or What He Should Have Done. There's a sense that he wants to be righteous and just, to not pull a punch he shouldn't, but at the same time --

to be merciful. Maybe that's the best way to put it.

"Throwing yourself headlong into deadly conflicts," he says gently, "is not the way to make things right. You're a part of a pack now. You have friends in this Sept. If you died senselessly, we would mourn you. It would hurt us. You don't have the luxury of not caring what happens to you anymore, because you don't have the luxury of living and dying alone."

[Christian] Men don't stare at rugby balls when they're trying to talk. Christian's in that strange place between childhood and adulthood. It only gets worse when you figure that his childhood ended when he first changed. And that even if he lives to be 50 he's never going to really be a man. He's Garou. There's a difference. So when Lukas answers him he makes himself look at him. Even though he's ashamed of himself. Even though he doesn't really believe him when he says they've all screwed up. Sinclair told him her story. And Christian looks dubious when Lukas tells him his. Like yeah...what he did was definitely worse than that. But he doesn't say what he did. He keeps squeezing the rugby ball.

"I know." It isn't an empty answer. Christian doesn't usually talk unless he has something to say. Or you're questioning him. He looks down for a second. It's hard meeting Lukas' gaze. It's harder to meet Christian's. His eyes don't look human when he's like this. "It's just...I feel like my skin's on fire all the time. And...the stupidest stuff pisses me off. But I'm trying. I...don't want to be that kid who dies and all people can talk about is how he was controlled by his Rage. You know?"

[Wyrmbreaker] "Yeah," Lukas says, the corner of his mouth tugging faintly up. It's more sad than amused. "I know.

"Just ... stick with us, okay? It's not weakness to share your pack's strength. Call us up if you're going on a hunt. Or even if trouble finds you. And for god's sake, Christian, make your appeal to Perun already so you're not going into combat unarmed."

[Christian] He looks like he wants to laugh. He also looks like he wants to throw that ball through the window as hard as he can. He does neither. He takes a breath. It shudders. It's like his body won't stop making adrenaline when his Rage is this high. Like he's got to be ready for a fight always whether he wants to be or not. Christian taps the ball on his thigh a few times. Then he nods.

"Okay." He takes another loud breath. Frowns. Like what he's about to do is more difficult than throwing himself at a war wolf or a Black Spiral Dancer. "Um...will you help me with that? I don't really know what I'm doing."

[Wyrmbreaker] This time when Lukas smiles, it's genuine. He looks oddly pleased. And surprised. It might be the first time he's seen Christian reach out at all to his packmates. It might be the first time he's heard him say, will you help me?

"Yeah," he says. "Go grab a shower and let's head down to his shrine at the Caern. I'll call him for you tonight."

[Christian] There are times Christian seems like a normal 18 year old. He can be cocky and funny. He can say what he's thinking because he can actually -think-. Most of the time he's like this though. He seems lost. He looks crazy. He's angry. He has no idea how to say what he's thinking. He doesn't want to admit he needs help. All he wants to do is lash out but he manages to say as much - he doesn't know how to appeal to Perun. Will Lukas help him.

When Lukas smiles he almost deflates. Like he's relieved. Like he didn't expect that. He doesn't have the words to really tell Lukas what just happened. And he isn't the hugging type. So he bites his lip. Loosens his grip on the ball. Stands up.

"Okay," he says. A pause. That's where words would be if he has them. Instead he just nods, says "Okay" again, and hurries upstairs to take a shower.

kandovaný and the homelands.

[Danicka] Between one day and the next, one night when he is able to come home from this guard duty, that meeting, this report from Sinclair or Katherine on what their youngest packmate has been up to --

After one long stretch of being away from her, away from her lofty den that overlooks the river, away from their home with the thriving sapling in the back yard, away from the feeling of their two bodies packed close together on his narrow bed in the Brotherhood --

Feeling as though it has been longer than it has, feeling as though if she is not where he first looks for her it won't be quite as fun and delightful to spend hours looking for her but tiring, and a little sad --


One night, Lukas lets himself into Danicka's apartment and knows instantly that he is not alone there, just as he knows instantly that Danicka herself is not there. It's a sense more trustworthy than sight, knowing these things. One has to do with so many years spent training for this war that he's now not just fighting but leading, at least in Chicago and its surrounding territories. The other has to do with whatever recognition echoes through his bones when he wraps his arms around his mate, or folds his body over hers while they're joined.

So he knows he is not alone, and he knows she is not there, a split second before he sees the cat sitting in the entryway, staring at him, tail twitching. His presence has been recognized. The stare of the almost too-lean, marmalade-colored adolescent feline almost seems to say:

Excuse you.

[Lukas] Sometimes the days start running together. Patrols. Hunts. Meetings with the Warder or the Grand Elder, maps, plans, intelligence, information, orders, relays, reconnaissance, frenzies, death. Another one dead, another one buried; more to take his place, but a dying race nonetheless.

Sometimes it's not so much fun to hunt for his mate. Sometimes he's not sure how long it's been since he's lain beside her and slept with her heartbeat against his palm, and he's just tired now, and when he lets himself into her den tonight he knows immediately, with a sort of quiet disappointment, that she's not there. An instant later it registers -- he's not alone, nevertheless.

Then he sees the guest, who he supposes isn't so much a guest as a new permanent resident. A small creature, narrow and long and pink-nosed and orange: a half-grown cat, staring at him. Lukas stares back for a moment, and then huffs a quiet laugh. He has a messenger bag over his shoulder, which he lets down to the floor. His laptop thumps quietly inside. He steps out of his shoes and then holds a hand out to the cat, murmuring wordless encouragement.

[Danicka] The laptop bag hits the ground and the cat is on its feet, tail up and slightly tilted at the end, ears swiveling and body preparing for... well, whatever. Lukas can't tell if this thing is male or female, just that it does what all cats do, and inhabits the space as though it owns it, and always has, and that he is the one who is a guest, thankyouverymuch.

Cat regards wolfman for a long moment, motionless and green-eyed. It watches as he exits his shoes, stares as his scent fills the entire apartment. There are traces of him here. In his clothes, in the robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door next to Danicka's. Faint, faint hints of him in the bed. Stronger on his favorite pillow.

The feline pads forward after several seconds, stopping a few inches away from him and straining its neck to sniff at his fingers, inspecting this supposedly benign offering. There is no food there. The cat remains wary, whiskers twitching.

[Lukas] Lukas doesn't have a whole lot of experience with cats. Or any pet, for that matter. For the most part, animals shy away from him and his blistering rage, no matter how well-masked it might be by his control. Dogs encountered on the street bark hysterically, tails between legs. Wandering cats -- well, they simply tend to stay out of sight. Out of his way altogether.

This is different. This cat belongs here. This cat seems convinced, the way felines always are, that this place in fact belongs to him. Or her. And while it accepts the friendly offering of fingersniffing, its body language is all caution and reserve, and Lukas knows enough about cats -- from TV shows, or books, or perhaps hard experience with some childhood friend's cat or other ten-plus years ago -- not to try to reach out and pick kitty up.

That way lieth pain.

Instead, he restrains himself to a quiet, "Hi, cat," while his fingers and his scent are being inspected. After the cat draws back, ears a little back and eyes wary, Lukas slowly rises back to his feet. "Where does Dani&+269;ka keep your treats, hm?"

And it's off to the kitchen, the light flicked on, cupboards opening and closing as he looks for cat snacks.

[Danicka] At very least the cat has not decided to extend its claws and try to fuck the Ahroun's shit up. The cat's body isn't fluffed but sleek and smooth. It's a little on the thin side, but Danicka didn't procure for herself a kitten, so it's very likely this is a shelter cat. Maybe a rescue. There are no notches in its ears, no massive scarring that he can see. It's a lovely little animal, and yes: legendary.

This cat is not staying out of his way because this is not his territory. His scent is here and there but that doesn't mean much. This cat has already taken over the apartment, yet the apartment doesn't smell like Cat Owner to him. Not that Danicka seems like she would let the apartment end up smelling like Cat Owner. Danicka hires a maid every couple of weeks to do the cleaning that Danicka doesn't want to bother with. Maybe now it will be every week.

Kitty pulls back, dancing out of reach, when Lukas rises. He is, after all, very big. It seems to disappear when he goes into the kitchen, opening cupboards and cabinets and finding nothing. Nothing at all. When he turns in the direction of those vast windows he finds the cat sitting on one of the barstools, staring at him much the same way it was when he first entered.

The front door opens and Danicka struggles in, carrying several of those canvas grocery bags she keeps around. She nearly trips over Lukas's shoes and swears viciously in Czech, the sort of thing that sets his ears on fire when he hears it. "Do you have to leave them right in front of the --"

Danicka, hair tousled and down around her shoulders, lugging bags that contain things like food and litter and a box and treats and toys and there's jingling somewhere in there, stops and blinks. "Oh," she says, finding Lukas.

The cat is off the barstool and has darted off somewhere. Hiding, now.

Danicka's flushed face begins to change, the expression growing into one of those lopsided grins of hers, quirky and oddly uncertain even when she's happy. "Hi," she says, and wiggles the rest of the way in, letting the door shut behind her.

[Lukas] There are, in fact, no cat snacks in the cupboards. Not even a bag of kibble. Which leads him to think that this cat is, in fact, a very Recent Addition. That's confirmed when the front door opens and he doesn't have time to say watch out for my shoes before Danicka is tripping over them and saying things that make Lukas want to blush, her arms laden with food and litter and treats and toys and perhaps a basket for the yet-unnamed orange cat to sleep in.

Hi, she says, as he's stepping out of the kitchen and reaching out to help her with her things. Lukas has seen her flash her brilliant glamorous smiles; the genuine ones are, ironically, more uncertain, less stunning. Perhaps a little more poignant, or perhaps that's only because he knows enough of her history, now, to assign reason and meaning to that uncertainty in her smile.

And he smiles back. It's the way he always smiles at her, ever since he let himself actually smile at her: slow and growing and focused, utterly focused on her.

"Hi," he replies quietly, and lifts the litter and the kibble out of her arms, setting them on the kitchen counter. Then he comes back for the litterbox and the scratching post, leaving her with just the light loads, the little things. Stating the obvious, "You got a cat."

[Danicka] Even after he admitted -- to himself, to Sam, to her -- that he wanted her (badly), Lukas didn't smile at Danicka. He didn't laugh with her. He turned his head sharply to the side one night as he escorted her to his car because he didn't want her to see his pleasure at being her worst, best, only werewolf boyfriend. Or maybe just being called her boyfriend. And when she laughed, he thought it was mockery. When she smiled, he didn't join her.

When Lukas finally started smiling, it was around the same time he started to trust her. And when she started smiling like this, so different from the way she would grin in public, it was the same.

Bags are handed over gratefully. Danicka doesn't actually have a scratching post yet, or a bed -- though those may be downstairs still. The bags are heavy though, as food and litter are wont to be. There's kibble but there's also canned food. There's more toys than even a human child would need. The litter box she got is ever-so-swank, ironically. There's some books in there, too. Someone ran a train on PetSmart. Or PetCo. Or whatever it was.

Danicka puts her bags down too, after locking the door, and steps over to wrap her arms around his waist. Doesn't matter if his back is to her, or his side, or his stomach. She wraps her arms around him and closes her eyes, laying her head against his body. "You," she says, and squeezes him.

When she steps back she doesn't let go. She just tips her head back and smiles. "Yeah. This morning. Is she awake, then? She was asleep the whole way home and didn't really wake up when we got here."

[Lukas] It was, in fact, his side to her when she wraps her arms around his waist. He's reaching up to put the kibble up in the cupboards, though later on he'll think better of it and move it down to where his smaller mate can reach without needing to stand on footstools. You, she says, as though in visceral recognition, and she can feel his laugh in his chest.

The cupboard closes and he turns in the circle of her arms, wrapping his around her shoulders in turn. "Me," he agrees, and holds her a moment: his head bowed to her hair, his hands warm on her back.

There's a quiet gladness there that he doesn't speak aloud. He's glad to see her here. Glad he doesn't have to look for her across the city, here and at the den and at the brotherhood. Glad of her presence and glad of her warmth. Glad.

Then they're drawing back a little, and Lukas nods. "She was watching me when I got in," he replies. "And then a minute ago she was sitting on the barstool. But she darted off when you came in." He drops a kiss on Danicka's brow, then reaches out to the counter and picks up a can of cat food. "Bet if you fed her she'll come out."

[Danicka] All the words they use in these moments mean the same thing, in the end. When he crawls in bed with her and murmurs Mate, when she closes her eyes to tip her head back and nuzzle him and whispers Male, when he groans her name as he pushes inside her, when she hugs him like this and says You. It's recognition, and it's deep as their marrow now. They have the freedom to play with each other now when they never allowed themselves that early on. She'll do things like play-bite at him

the way the daughter the spiritworld and his own imagination created razzled and bit at him when he picked her up, as though she had learned not to be afraid. To trust. To love, and accept, though he is a monster.

In any case, they hold each other tightly for a moment, and speak nothing of how long it's been, how he felt when he came here, how he was disappointed when he entered and realized she wasn't here. She's here, now. And so is he.

Danicka's expression is one of gentle amusement. She no longer hides her thoughts from him behind masks of inscrutability. Well: she does. When driven by shame, by old hurts, by anger, Danicka wears that veil of passive immutability so easily and so well it's as though it happens without her conscious decision. She doesn't want to talk about certain things, doesn't really need to, and sometimes she hides the fact that they're even there only to look back later with regret at having kept it from him.

Right now she's not thinking about any such things, though. She's thinking about the fact that Lukas is here, and with her, reaching for cat food as though he's excited about it. She laughs. "Look who knows so much," she says fondly, getting into one of the bags to take out a sheet of cardstock-thin cork. She steps around the corner and lays it out in the entryway, where the hall is wide enough to walk past without stepping on the cork, where it's not yet carpeted, where it's close to but not in the kitchen.

Pleased, she comes back to reach into another bag, taking out two rectangular glass dishes with a smoky, iridescent bluish color. No metal bowl with a fish skeleton on it. No bowl with the word 'MEOW' at the bottom. Not in Danicka's apartment. She slides one over to Lukas, who has the food, and fills the other with some cool tap water. The can of food opens while the two Shadow Lords remain quiet, the smell of the food filtering out.

When the dishes are set down on the cork mat, there's a little orange shape slinking out from under the couch, creeping forward with a quivering tail and ears pricked high. omigodfud. She doesn't quite wait for their hands to be out of the way before she's sniffing at the food and then, frankly,

going to town on it.

"Aw," Danicka murmurs. "She was hungry."

[Lukas] "I totally do," Lukas replies, unoffended, rather cheerful. "I totally know everything there is to know about cats despite never having had one."

He studies the little can for a moment before popping it open. It's doubtful Danicka bought her new pet economy food, but somehow Lukas doubts it's gourmet, restaurant-priced cat food either. While she's setting out the bowls, Lukas drops the lid in the trash, then laughs as he sees what she's setting out.

"Is that from Petco or the Guggenheim?" he quips while Danicka's emptying cat food into one of the dishes. Lukas helps: he puts water in the other dish, then sits back on his heels to watch the feline dig in.

"She's cute," Lukas adds after a while. He chances to run his hand down the cat's back, wary, ready to draw back if he gets a growl or an upset yowl. "Where'd you find her?"

[Danicka] One never knows how much Danicka is going to spend on something. She buys bar soap at the grocery store -- though it's nice bar soap, it's not the fanciest one could get -- instead of some high-end body wash. She takes care of her hair and skin and uses nice makeup and her clothes and lingerie cost hundreds of dollars an item but some things she simply buys... well, if not cheap, or thrifty, conscious of her money. Danicka could live like a goddamn queen if she wanted to. Buy some mansion on the north shore, own several cars, live like a Fang with a yacht club membership and country club membership and so on

but she doesn't want to. She wants these pretty cat food and water dishes, yes. She wants the five hundred dollar pair of shoes. She wants that three dollar paperback from the bargain bin at the library's booksale because it has a tiny coffeestain on the flyleaf.

She plucks the metal lid out of the trash and puts it in the sink to rinse off and put in recycling later, as thoughtlessly as she's done this any other time. Lukas puts his life on the line for mother earth. Danicka recycles. She washes her hands while the cat goes to eat, leaving it be for now. She doesn't like to be stared at when she eats, after all.

"Hush," she says archly, when he asks her about the dishes. "They're pretty." And they are.

He lowers himself to try and pet the cat, who twitches away at first and gives him a Look, half watch it, buddy, this is my dinner and half you may pet me but no touchy my dinner. She goes back to eating, and doesn't react again if Lukas decides to try and give her a stroke again.

Danicka leans a hip on the counter, drying her hands on a towel. "Just a shelter a few blocks from here. I was all set to just look around for a few weeks and consider it and make the decision at home but I just... saw her, and thought of what you said, and then they told me she'd been declawed by her first owner and...well. Now here we are."

[Lukas] Lukas has decided to camp out by the cat. He's sitting with his back to the wall while his mate dries her hands on a towel, leaning slightly to the side to see her. His eyebrows twitch briefly together when she tells him the cat's been declawed; he looks a little sad.

"Oh," Lukas says. "I didn't realize she was declawed." And he runs his hand down the lean feline's back again, his palm broad against narrow bones, slender frame. "I like her," he adds, and looks at Danicka again. Smiles. "What are we naming her?"

[Danicka] There's a pensiveness to Danicka's brow when she mentions the declawing. It isn't quite sadness. It's something else, and deeper. Unhappy in a way, but more complex. She hangs the towel on the bar at the stove, and now it may be long enough since realizing that his mate is here, his female is close to him and within reach, that he notices the other things about her, the little details that escape his notice in the face of that instant joy.

She's wearing a colorful skirt, all different kinds of fabrics with a general scheme that ties them together without being too patchworky. Mostly florals, cream and pink and brown. Her top is chocolate-colored, with just enough sleeve to keep it from being a tank top, and there's a crotcheted detail across the neckline. It looks soft. Her shoes are slides: a low, chunky heel, a place for her pedicure to peek out. She's not wearing the bracelet he gave her but she's wearing medium-sized gold hoops in her ears, and she's wearing a necklace made up of tiny cylindrical coral-colored beads ending in a burnished circular pendant, not unlike a mandala or a dreamcatcher in design.

"Kandovaný," she says, turning her head to the side to cast a small smile at him. It's an odd name, a verb in its past tense. "We can call her Kando for short though, sometimes."

Lukas takes up quite a bit of space in the entryway. He can't sit lengthwise across it and extend his legs fully, but it's reasonably comfortable. The cat's tail is twitching a little as he pets her, curling around her legs a bit in contentment. She goes on eating, though, far more focused on this than on paying attention to the large living things around her.

[Lukas] [i empathee!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Danicka] She is actually pretty :[ that her kitteh was declawed. That not okay! Poor kitteh no has main mode of self-defense anymore. One of the things that makes her able to stand up against things that are bigger than her or scare her is gone. Someone took it away from her for their convenience, or because it was troublesome, or because they just didn't think about what it would do to her in the long run. A major part of What She Is got brutalized out of her.

So maybe Danicka. Y'know. Kind of feels some understanding for the kitteh. A little.

Also: she wants to pertekt. Kitteh will be safe on 23rd floor of high rise where she can't get out and have to survive fights with other mean nasty animals, so even though she not have claws she be okay. Danicka pertekt.
to Lukas

[Lukas] Danicka's mate is not an ignorant musclehead. He's not the sort of Ahroun that's best termed a blunt weapon, an attack dog of the nation. He's quick-witted; there's intelligence in him, and it shows in how quickly he gets the pun, the joke, the reference. It shows in the quick flit of a grin, the spark of appreciation and humor in his eyes.

And it shows in how shortlived that humor is; how perceptive he can be, and how deeply he can see into her sometimes. When she lets him. His smile comes and goes, and then he studies Danicka for a moment. His eyes trace her face, then drop to the cat, who's steadily making her way through her dinner. He pets it again, slowly and soothingly, his hand traveling down its back before coming back to its shoulders for another pass.

"Kandované pomeran," he says, fondly, and then shakes a few stray cat-hairs loose. "Budete mit miloval te&+271;, malá ko&+269;ka."

He draws his knees up, then, and loops his wrists over them, hands loosely clasped. Another moment or two, Lukas looks at his mate. Then he holds his hand out to her. "Nebu&+271; smutná, lásko."

[Danicka] Once upon a time, where Sam could hear her, she told him in the language that at the time only the two of them shared that she wanted him. She wanted his mouth, tasting of oranges. She knew then his favorite, brought them to him without admitting that she knew. She wanted to do something kind for him, without it being obvious to anyone. Including him. She wanted to make him happy.

Danicka still does. The cat isn't a gift to him but a companion for her, in this life that seems to take her farther away every day from the Nation. It was never the Nation that caused Danicka the trauma and trouble. It was individual Garou. It was her life, and all the things denied to her in that life. Those things aren't denied anymore.

She can have books. She can live alone. She can go to school and she can study whatever she wants. She can shop and do yoga and visit the firing range and wear silver and nobody haunts her steps every day. Nobody knocks on her door night after night demanding she help with this, deal with that. The Nation leaves her alone. And she lives in something like peace because of it, rarely interrupted.

So now she has a cat, because she is coming ever closer to feeling like not only can she take care of herself, she can take care of something else, too. Like, for instance, an animal that doesnt have a scratching post because it doesn't need one.

By now Kandovany is quite calm about the Ahroun petting her while she eats. She is quite hungry, as though she hasn't eaten all day, or perhaps longer. This is true. Given enough time with Danicka she might end up a fat and lazy kitty, or Danicka might make sure she exercises and might watch what she eats and keep her sleek and let her get muscular but not turn into a rolling ball of fluff. He can lay his own bets on which is more likely.

She comes around the corner as Lukas is shifting away from the cat, leaving her to her dinner. She's noticed how he keeps looking at her, and suspects why. Her head tips to one side. "Já jsem v po&+345;ádku," she says quietly, walking over to stand beside him. Her thigh is aligned to his head. She reaches down and doesn't take his hand, but puts her own on his hair, stroking it back a little. "She's a very pretty cat, isn't she?"

[Lukas] Lukas bumps his head into Danicka's thigh as she comes to stand beside him. If there's a similarity there, an echo -- he petting the cat, his mate more or less petting him -- it seems to escape him. Or at least, it doesn't bother him. He's an animal. She knows this. She's an animal, too.

Her fingers sink into his hair, which is as thick as it ever was; a little longer these days, a little messy. He needs to have it trimmed, he reminds himself -- perhaps tomorrow. Or the day after. Never mind: he leans into her touch, tilting his head to let her scritch his scalp.

"She is," he agrees. "Do you think she'll be all right if we call the tribe together here in a week or two? It's a lot of Rage."

[Danicka] "Hmm," is Danicka's answer, which is a half-affirmative, half-dismissive sound. She strokes his hair thoughtfully, knowing that soon he'll come see her again or she'll show up sometime and it will be trimmed back short and neat as it always is. She's never told him she likes it when it gets like this, a little wild and thick. It seems unnecessary to say so. Like pressure to do something, to conform somehow to her whims.

She enjoys it while it lasts, and leans against his shoulder even as he's leaning into her leg. "I'll put her in my room with her toys and check on her. But she seems alright with you. And you're... well, love, I don't know if you've noticed, but you're not exactly the gentlest soul."

Danicka bends at the waist to kiss the top of his head, scruffing her hand over his hair. "She might be fine. As long as they remember they are here at her pleasure and can be dismissed or destroyed just as easily, they'll do fine," she says lightly, and steps aside to go remove her shoes. She looks at him over her shoulder. "So a week or two? Maybe Labor Day weekend?"

[Lukas] Lukas huffs a laugh, half-muffled as Danicka's hair tumbles over his face. He closes his eyes -- an echo of her kiss, perhaps, or in response to her hair falling across his brow. When she straightens, his eyes open again, and he watches her fondly, head tilted back against the wall.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he replies, mock-innocent. "I am an icon of mildness. The patron saint of gentleness."

A little more serious, then, nodding. "Labor Day sounds like a good excuse to party. Would that be all right?"

[Danicka] "Oh, indeed," she says agreeably as her shoes and his get tucked to one side of the entryway. Danicka comes back, sweeping a hand through her hair and stepping over his lap, going to Kandovany's other side to kneel down and stroke her fingertips lightly across the cat's head, then down her neck and between her prominent shoulders. The cat pauses in its eating, apparently getting full, and rubs its head on Danicka's palm as though they've known one another far longer than a day, mostly spent sleeping.

It goes back to eating, and Danicka looks mildly charmed by this turn before she looks over at her mate again. "Of course. I was mostly just waiting for you to tell me when a good time would be. You're more involved with the tribe here." She pets her cat again, as said cat moves from food dish to water, lapping it up with quick little flicks of its pink little tongue. "I'll have to get in touch with Jesmond to see if she'll help me cook. Find something for Dora to do to keep her out of trouble."

[Lukas] Ultimately, Kandovany is Danicka's cat. She's not their pet; she doesn't represent the sort of furry engagement ring some couples get in order to cement their relationship and commitment to one another. Danicka comes to stroke the orange feline, and while a small smile hooks up the edge of Lukas's mouth, he only watches.

There's a strand of orangeish fur on his jeans. He picks it off, lets it drift. The last days of summer are always the hottest in Chicago. His mate is nearly in a tanktop; he's in short sleeves himself, the fabric of his shirt light but stiff, a roughspun linen blend that lets him breathe.

"Do you want to be?" he asks. "More involved with the tribe," he adds.

[Danicka] This cat has a home now, and it is not at a little white house on the outskirts of Chicago's suburbs. It is an apartment in a high rise. She belongs here, and not in the den where they might have children. She has a mistress, not a master. Her toys and food and bed will be here, and this is her domain. When Danicka goes to the house that is really her home but only her home when she shares it with Lukas, Kadovany will stay here. When she visits her mate in his bed at the Brotherhood where he hesitated to fuck her lest it seem like flaunting his love, his good fortune, his well-earned trophy,

she won't be bringing the cat. Her cat. Her pet. Who likes Lukas well enough and tolerates his presence in her demesne, but who was curled up against Danicka's heartbeat in the taxi cab on the way from the shelter to the apartment, who stirred and slept on as Danicka carried her upstairs and made her a little bed of towels on top of newspaper spread out in the second bathroom before waffling over whether or not to run out and get the necessaries for the pet's existence in her apartment.

In the end she left the cat here, the cat who had a name even before they stepped over the threshold, the name that makes her think of Lukas. The cat is obviously even more on the independent side than most. Which is good: Danicka is not ready to take care of something that needs her. All the time. Intensely.

She strokes her cat, and as it turns away from its water dish it neatly walks into her lap, as she and Lukas sit in the hallway. Kandovany pools on top of her skirt and stretches out, staring at Lukas while Danicka's hand lowers to the cat's side and begins to pet her once more.

This is a question she's considered already on her own, in musing thoughts realizing how disconnected she is. Or can be. She looks at her cat and shakes her head. "Not particularly," Danicka admits quietly. "I do not mind giving help where it's needed, when I can. And I don't have any real aversion to being around them."

She looks over at him, now, thoughtful. "I don't want you to think you need to protect me from them, or keep the Garou and Kin of Chicago away from me. But I'm... content."

[Lukas] Lukas shakes his head a little. "I wasn't worried about protecting you from them," he says quietly. "I know I don't have to. And if I did, I know you'd tell me."

He reaches over them -- almost thoughtlessly, almost by reflex or instinct. His larger hand joins Danicka's on the cat's side: the fur soft, the flesh beneath lean, the bones hard and fragile. Small. The cat's still young, still growing, and not so well-treated as it will be now. It made Lukas sad to hear that it had no claws. It made Lukas ache to see that that was part of why this cat called to Danicka; why of all the cats Danicka could have adopted, this was the one she brought home.

It makes him happy to see that it trusts her already. That it goes to her without having to be called, and rests on her lap as though it had some right to her, and to the strokings and pettings she gave out.

"It's just that I remember when you tried to set that kin coalition up. And how it sort of fell apart to in-fighting and bickering. Sometimes I wonder if that soured you on the whole experience and ... isolated you from other kin and Garou."

[Danicka] This is a hard but well-understood truth. He doesn't drive himself mad and push her away from him trying to protect her. That instinct is there: to lock her away, to hide her from others so no one scents her breeding and takes her or tries. To keep her in one place so he always knows where to find her. To own her in a way he has no right to. It's restrained to protecting her when there's an actual threat. To protecting her when she tells him she needs him to, though he may suspect this is one thing she still hides from him.

Ragefilled or animal, Lukas is no meatheaded attack dog. He knows better than to try and contain Danicka in order to keep her 'safe'. He sees her more clearly than he ever thought he would, and he has seen how she's changed since he came into her life. Since what they have became everything it is now. He has not yet asked himself if one day she'll grow so much that she grows apart from him, no longer wants him, looks for something else. Maybe he knows better than that, too.

She never loved him as a crutch. Or as a guardian. Or for what he gives her.

They pet the cat together and the cat seems to become boneless in Danicka's lap, eyes closing and the purr starting up, content as Danicka says she is. Full of food, sated by water, sleepy from all it's been through. This is a good den. Not too hot. She can look out the windows and there are high places to look down from. Interesting smells that she explored while Danicka was gone, before Lukas arrived. And the service is excellent, as well. Five stars.

"A little," Danicka confesses, looking over at him. She rests her hand, cradling Kandovany's skull, scritching her along her neck while Lukas pets her. "I think..."

Here she hesitates, as though wary. "I remember the way other people treated my father, sometimes. Some ignored him, and that was sort of par for the course, but... everyone knew, eventually, who my mother was. Who his mate was. And they treated him accordingly, for better or worse. But it separated him. The greater her rank became the more distant he was from everyone else we knew in the tribe. The whole sept, really. They either despise him because they despised her, or they treated him with distance and deference because they feared her."

The cat's eyes drift open lazily and fall closed again. Danicka smiles gently down at her, amused. It fades as her thoughts turn back to the matter at hand. "There isn't really anyone I've met in awhile that I connect with, or really want to be friends with. And outside of friendship, I just... have so very little interest in the ins and outs of their craziness."

[Lukas] In a way, this is the one effect they didn't prepare for; did not quite foresee. From the start, they were afraid of what each could do to the other. They were afraid the other would break them somehow, weaken them, destroy them; and then later, they were afraid that they might break the other, or weaken them, or destroy them. They were afraid that his strength, so utter and dominating simply because that is all he was ever taught to be, might crush what little strength she was finding for herself. They were afraid that he might lock her away, or try to own her, or break her when she wouldn't bend.

This, though: a more insidious effect, not deliberate or even active but simply an effect, an echo, and all the harder to avoid for it. She knows it better than he does. She's seen it reflected in her father, in her mother. He's never seen it at all. His parents were both kin. His sister is kin.

In some ways, Danicka knows more about Garou than Lukas does. Than he ever will.

He's quiet, then. Their hands sometimes brush as they stroke over Kandovany's soft fur, her delicate paws. After a while, as Danicka speaks, Lukas's hand turns over altogether; he holds his fingers out for hers, the back of his hand resting against the cat's ribcage, which vibrates with every purring breath.

"If it becomes easier for you to not interact with the Nation at all unless you have to," he says quietly, "I'll understand. But I don't ... want that. I don't want us to end up having almost nothing in common except that we're mated to one another, and I don't want you to grow apart from the Sept. They're your people too, in the end.

"What can I do to help?"

[Danicka] Easily, her hand finds is. It is no great thing, no work of import, for their hands to touch. For her to take what he offers, or for her to offer it in return. There was a point when she decided to give freely and all, or to give him nothing, ever. She doesn't know what that point was, what day or what hour, but she knows it came and passed and this was the the outcome. Perhaps that says something, too: that she doesn't remember making the choice, because it was the most natural thing she could do:

love him. Be with him. Open to him.

The cat is asleep, purring unconsciously. It is exhausted from its own trials and tribulations just to get here. So she sleeps, the purring fading away and her sides rising and falling quicker than a human's would.

Her head tips. "It isn't really about 'easier'," she says thoughtfully, but that tone goes away, too. Lukas is saying something else. Not fussing over her the way he sometimes does, worrying that she's more upset than she is, looking for pain that might not be there because there is so much pain and he knows like a kick in his gut that he has not yet seen the end of what Danicka endured long before she met him, before she was his age. Before Chicago.

Danicka's eyes find his, that muddy green to his would-be omniscient blue. "Baby," she says gently, "I'm content." Which is to say:

there's nothing to 'help' with.

Her hand is still in his. She frowns a little, watching him. "Are you afraid that if I'm not involved in pack politics or tribal socializing or whatever it is I'm... 'growing apart' from, that it will make what we have less?" It bothers her. He can see how much, too, what he said affects her. Is, even as she tries to voice it by questioning what he means, what he's worried about, getting riled. So to speak.

[Lukas] Lukas hesitates for a moment; not for fear of the answer but because he's unsure what the answer is. He isn't stroking the cat anymore. She's asleep, and he lets her sleep, his hand resting warm and gentle on her side. There's gentleness in Lukas. He's no patron saint of kindness, no epitome of gentleness -- but it's there in him.

If it weren't, it's quite possible Danicka would not have loved him at all. Would not have chosen him, just as she would not have chosen him if there was no strength in him at all. They are, in the end, true Shadow Lords. They understand the difference between strength and tyranny; between mercy and weakness.

"No," he says then, quiet. "I'm not afraid of that. We're mates. I don't think it's possible for what we have to become less except by what we do, ourselves. I don't think it's something any external force can change.

"It's just that you told me once you wanted to be more ... involved, or connected, to what my life is. I didn't want you to feel cut out or cut away from that. I know that your association with the Tribe and the Nation has not always been easy," an understatement, to be sure, "but I remembered how you were at Jesmond's dinner party, too, in the company of your blood-kin. I don't want you to lose that.

"I just want you to be happy, láska. And if you're happy now, then I am too. If you're not, then I want to know what I can do."

[Danicka] The cat sleeping in her lap seems to keep Danicka from moving. She stays quite still while Kandovany flops over her thigh, and the bed is down in her car waiting to be brought up. Maybe she won't mind sleeping on a nest of towels in the second bathroom tonight. Danicka has no intention of allowing the cat to shed hair all over her bed, or startle her mate awake and end up thrown against a wall. He joked when they mentioned her getting a cat about how if it walked on his face in the morning there would be blood. Probably his. He doesn't have to worry about Kandovany's claws.

Danicka strokes the cat with a sort of poignant affection, an evident protectiveness that he's known for a long time now is a deep part of who Danicka is. For things that are hers. For things that she can rightfully claim, however few those things may be. The cat is hers. This apartment is hers. She's willing to let their tribesmates into it, as long as they respect her claim.

Even if, on some level, they respect it only because of the claim Lukas holds on her.

She very slowly, very carefully scoots across the hallway to be closer to him, trying not to disturb the cat on her lap. The cat flops over, stretching, and instead of waking up, just rolls over again and curls up in the cradle of Danicka's skirt as she comes to sit beside Lukas. The second bowl is nearly empty of food now. Kitty was hungry.

Danicka nudges against him until he lifts his arm and puts it around her shoulders, and then she curls up to his side, against his chest, holding herself and her pet beside his warmth. She doesn't speak for a little while, but when she does, it's quietly:

"I don't like talking about what we have breaking down," she murmurs, holding Kandovany more than stroking her now. "Even hypothetically, or...at all. I know I have to lose you one day, and I try not to think of that, either."

They could go down that path for a long time. Reality. Fear. The way things are, could be, will be, and how ultimately worrying over it and dwelling on it changes nothing. He is an Ahroun of the nation and he has not died yet but one day.

One day, he'll widow her.

Or one day he'll come back home as the Rage in him slowly dies, subsiding into nothing, til he is an old wolf who neither suffers his pack to tend to his weakness nor goes out in a blaze of glory before his teeth and fangs are dull. But that's a dream, and one no Garou in ages has fulfilled. These are not the times for growing old with one's mate and children, or watching the next generation move forward.

She listens to his heart. She feels his breathing, slower and deeper than the cat's. She loves him. She has been changed by how she loves him.

"I remember telling you that," she goes on, just as quiet. "But I meant that I don't want you to leave your work at the door, so to speak. I don't want you to hide what happens from me. I don't want that part of your life so separate that you share nothing at all with me."

He mentions the dinner party and, well. There isn't much to say there. She was content then, and enjoyed herself, as she believes she'll enjoy herself when they have their tribesmates over for a dinner here. But she was by his side the whole time, or close enough. She was polite and amicable with the others. She did not connect on any deeper level with a single one of them. She goes to a martial arts class with Jesmond now sometimes. That's about as far as their relationship has gone.

Truthfully, Danicka has few friends. No close ones. She has Lukas, and she has acquaintances, and she has people she gets along with, but she doesn't confide in people. She doesn't seek out their advice. She doesn't long for closeness with anyone else. He has that drive: he needs his pack like he needs to breathe. Danicka is, for all her ability to be gregarious and charming when the situation calls for it, sort of introverted. She was a nerd for a long time, and had one very good friend

who she lost.

Looking back over her life it has always been so. One person she is extraordinarily close to, and others who she cares for or who care for her, but none with whom she shares any intimacy or great connection. She strokes the pad of her thumb over her cat's paw, feeling a small stab of sorrow for the lack of claws inside that dainty little forepaw.

"I'm happy," she says, turning her head to look at him. The first time she said those words to him she barely whispered them. She couldn't even say it aloud. One of her hands comes up and the backs of her fingers graze his jaw. "I don't feel like I'm losing anything."

[Lukas] The first time Lukas saw that protectiveness, it was directed toward what he considered an unworthy, weak target, and it infuriated him. The first time Danicka tried to turn it on him, Lukas was uncomfortable, uncertain that it was all right, or even possible, for a kinswoman to protect a Garou. An Ahroun. A Shadow Lord.

Time has passed. He knows her better now than he ever did before. And that protectiveness makes him adore him. Makes him ache, quietly, because --

well. Maybe because no one has ever protected her like that when she needed it. Maybe because all the psychology and the cause-and-effect of the world suggests that she should have turned into some monstrous, cold, vicious thing, utterly incapable of love and caring and the very sort of protectiveness that's woven so deeply into who she is.

So he watches her as she scoots nearer, and he knows what she wants, so he meets her halfway. The cat doesn't stir. It sleeps in her lap like it trusts her; and like it's been afraid to sleep, alone in a new home after god-knows-what, until she returned.

Lukas opens his arm. Danicka fits against his side like she belongs there, or like she fits there, or like they were made out of one another, just so. He nuzzles her hair and kisses her brow, and she speaks of losing him, and his brow furrows once, sharply; tension shocking through him palpably against her side, against her cheek where it presses to his shoulder.

She goes on. He listens. He smiles a little when she says she's happy. He kisses her hair again, and reaches to stroke his hand over her pet, and then over her leg. A few seconds of pause.

Then, "You won't lose me, Dani&+269;ka. I'll wait for you in the Homelands. Baby, you're not going to lose me forever."

[Danicka] What he says almost makes her sigh. That she said I don't want to think about it, that she moved on, spoke of something else, and that he went back to this anyway frustrates her. She doesn't want to talk about losing him, she doesn't want to dwell on the thought of losing him. It's like she said: she doesn't feel like she's losing anything. So there's a small furrow in Danicka's brow as Lukas worries over the one thing she didn't want to focus on.

Gnaws on it like a bone. Like all his worries. Like all the things he wants to protect her from, even her own unhappiness. Or the potential for it. Danicka with a cat is no surprise, particularly a cat that seems to need so little from her. Danicka herself, with all she's been through, seems to need so little.

It's not that he wants to harangue her. It's not that he thinks her incapable. And she knows it. She can't remember a time when she felt stifled, or felt that Lukas considered her weak. Useless. He would not be with a weak mate, never would have found himself attracted in the first place if she had been some needy, clinging kinswoman with soft-colored eyes and interested in nothing but pretending to avoid love.

It's that he loves her. And cannot bear the thought of her sadness, the thought of her alone without him. Which, even as her forehead crinkles, she knows. She knows intimately, because when he was on the verge of ripping her throat out in mid-frenzy

she could not bear the thought of his sadness. Of him, alone without her.

Danicka reaches over and puts her hand on his knee, and her hair rustles as it moves over her shoulder so she can turn to look at him. Something else is making her expression dark -- half-angry, pained -- as she says: "Lukáš, I don't know what's going on tonight to make you do this, but you've never lied to me to comfort me. Don't start now."

[Lukas] Lukas feels awkward already. He knows what that sounded like. Idiotic, romantic tripe. The stuff of romance novels and Lifetime television. We'll be together in heaven, baby. He feels stupid for having said it at all; like a sappy, lovelorn mooncalf, but the last thing he would have expected was for her to reject it so utterly. To call him a liar.


Later, of course, it'll make sense to him. That she was taught only enough about spirits to assist her brother in his tasks. Or to be terrified of the spirit world and its power, its ability to destroy the things she loved, to help her brother keep tabs on where she is at all times, to terrorize her. Of course she was never taught the rest of it. The hopeful parts. The things that would have reassured her:

that this is not the only life they get. That their spirits return home after death, and are reborn. That there are second chances.

Next time, her mother might not be so monstrous. Her brother might not be so twisted. Next time Lukas might be her kin instead; or perhaps her packmate. Next time, they might both be wolves living so deep in the wilderness, protected by the shapechanging-large-strong-wolves that prowl the borders of their territory, that they never even see the towers of mankind in their shining edifices of glass and concrete.


Later, that might all make sense to him. Now, however, Lukas's reaction is an instantaneous recoiling, his body drawing subtly back into itself; his tone flattening.

"What am I supposed to be lying about?"

[Danicka] One constant, even after he began to trust her, even after he began to smile at her, open his eyes while he loved her, let her hear what being with her did to him, Lukas still avoided sentimental turns of phrase. He called her love, tried to pretend it was an endearment no more meaningful than baby until she called him my love -- one more subtle stripping away, on her part, of his would-be pretenses between them.

He tells her that she can't lose him forever, because when he dies he'll go to the homelands where constant storms crest on the horizon or rage across the sky and he will wait for her. He will make a den and search out the lost glimmers that might have been the souls of Danicka's children, those barely-there sparks of potentiality, and keep it all warm and safe for her until she joins him. He will wait, where time is nothing, and only go back to the living world when he can be reborn with her.

Wherever that takes them.

Lukas makes this promise not out of sentimentality or an urge to placate Danicka's sorrow but because it is the truth. His truth. He knows a little of what her family taught her about the spirit world. Enough that she prays. Enough that she believes she can have some kind of connection to it. He might think quite naturally that she knows there is something after all this for her. He might not know why Danicka flinched when he used the suffix -ikthya in her presence a couple of weeks ago. He might not know just how deeply it was ingrained in her by experience more than education that Silver Fangs are not safe.

He also knows she would not mock him. That she doesn't reject him, that she loves him. But that is rationale. That is reason. That is more intellect than emotion now, and emotion has him recoiling, taking offense or wound. Danicka looks at him as he pulls away, her hand moving easily into place to keep the cat from sliding off her lap as though Lukas is physically moving away from where they lean together. Even though he isn't moving away. Even though it is only the suggestion of motion.

"The homelands," she murmurs, looking confused. Looking, frankly, a little hurt.

[Lukas] Lukas is frowning now. It's hard to say if it's annoyance or something else entirely; closer to confusion. He does shift now. Away from her, yes, but also: turning, facing her more fully. He sits crosslegged. Neither of them have bothered moving in past her entryway, and the kitchen overhead lamps are the only light source here.

"What about the homelands, Dani&+269;ka?" Lukas asks. "Do you think I'm making them up?"


[he's sort of caught between annoyance and confusion. the annoyance is kneejerk: his standard ARE YOU CALLIN ME A LIAR! reaction. she can deeply enough to see that it's greatly toned down from what he'd be doing if it was some random little cliath calling him a liar. the confusion, though, is the truer emotion right now, and is slowly overcoming the initial "grr!" reaction. he's confused because he's not sure, exactly, what she thinks he's lying about. he's also starting to have faint inklings that she doesn't believe in the homelands, or doesn't think she'll make it there herself, or ... something! this in turn leads to some very slight hints of "ow..." because he's starting to get a sense that she really doesn't believe that they'll be together again, or ... something.

so. yes. annoyance-->confusion! (flavored with some ow).]

[Danicka] [EMPAFEE]
Awesome Dice Rolled: 1, 2, 4, 4, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6) Re-rolls: 2

[Danicka] "No," Danicka says, frowning back at him, though her expression does not match his in motivation. Not confusion. Not annoyance. Frustration, perhaps, but it might just be hurt. Something like hurt. He's warm, this close to her, and hasn't taken his arm from her, but there's a distance between them because

she thinks he's lying to her.

"Just... Kin don't go there." She says the way she believes it: this is the way things are. This is the way he knows things are. She says this as though what she's really saying is so don't lie to me.

[Lukas] Dark brows drawing together now, Lukas leans forward, elbows on his knees. There's a stir of motion in his hand, as though he wants to reach for hers. In the end, he doesn't.

"Dani&+269;ka," he says quietly, "who told you that?"

[Danicka] "Nobody."

This is a lie, but not an intentional one.

"Everyone knows that."

Meaning someone told her. Maybe several someones. Maybe by the time someone got around to telling her flat-out that when she died that was it, or that when she died there was somewhere else for her, or that when she died she would come back and be Kin and that's that, Danicka already believed it so wholeheartedly that it really didn't strike her as significant that someone would say it aloud finally.

The sky is blue.

Everyone knows that.

Her brow is still furrowed, not in that pretty way that makes her look adorably confused, that falsified lack of intelligence that has gotten her out of trouble time and again because so many Shadow Lords see their Kin like children to be indulged on a whim, so long as they are harmless, punished only when they really step out of line or produce some kind of challenge to the authority of Garou. This frown is blatant confusion, and discomfort, because she didn't want to talk about this. But here they are. Talking about it. And he's breaking the first sacred law of their love and he's telling her pretty little lies, making her sweet promises that he can't keep.

[Lukas] If there's one bedrock their relationship is founded on, it's that he will not lie to her. He will not make her promises he cannot keep. He's never told her he'll be with her all her life. He's never told her he won't leave someday, without word or warning, and die in some nameless battle so far away that it'll take them a week or a month to finally remember to come tell her. He's never told her that he won't ever hurt her, or that he'll always protect her, or --

any of the lies, the pretty little lies, that Garou tell the kin they love. That men tell the women they love.

This is not a lie, either. But she thinks it is. And that makes him angry; and then that makes him sad. It breaks his fucking heart, and she can see it in the way his face changes, in his wince, in his frown and the way he's shaking his head even as she says that everyone knows that. Everyone knows that his paradise, his homeland with all its strength and storms and closeness to their root and their totem, is not for her.

"Baby," he's whispering almost as soon as she finishes, "baby, no. That's not true."

He does hold his hands out to her now. He takes her hands, and then his hands are on her forearms, her biceps; coming to her face and holding her cheeks between his rough palms. He shifts up onto his knees. He leans into hers, his back bending to her -- a smooth arc, effortlessly strong -- his eyes closing as he presses his brow to hers.

"That's not true."

[Danicka] Sometimes Lukas is a creature of such strong emotion it's no wonder he fights so hard to keep it in check, to cerebralize himself, to control not just his rage but all these vast impulses that rock him from within like waves eroding the shoreline. It's that part of him that meets her, at times, that crashes against her and finds that it doesn't knock her over but flows into her, and she recognizes him.

She, who remembers him as he was when he was a child. Dimly, but it's there: this existence he once had of running wild, of making noise, of being excitable and cheerful and loud and eager. That part of him comes out sometimes when he's trying to learn to make kolache with her, when he's eating a dozen of them in one go and then lying on the couch sick to his stomach.

Danicka knows that a year ago he never would have let her see him ill. She remembers when he was healing once, he behaved as though he felt nothing. Perhaps he used his gift. Perhaps he literally felt nothing. But a year ago he wouldn't have tugged her down to lie beside him, wrapping his arms around her and burying his face in her hair, claiming that holding her made his stomach feel better.

Now a wave of emotion seems to take him as he comes closer to her again, taking her hands and the cat in her lap stirs and jerks awake, disturbed by all the movement and by the intensity of the male's presence. She swipes uselessly at him, bats at his leg, and then slinks off of Danicka's lap, leaving a few cat hairs in her wake. Kandovany walks away then, to go get some water and find some more stationary place to nap. Quite enough of their nonsense, thank you.

Danicka looks at him, eyebrows together, watching him with something like irritation. Or distrust, which breaks his heart not only because she doesn't believe him but because of why she doesn't. Reaching up, she gently moves his hands from her face, onto her shoulders. It isn't a rejection. Nor is it a rejection when she moves back so she can see him, so she can hold the heartbreak in him, the need he has to suddenly curl like this towards her, so strong it's almost overwhelming to be the focus of his attention, of his emotion. She holds his hands on her shoulders, her fingertips seeming so very light, because

she is so much slighter than he is. And that will never change.

"Don't say that to make me feel better," she says quietly, because

as ever

Danicka is not quick to hope. Not very a very long time now.

[Lukas] So his hands move to her shoulders instead; remain there as she draws back, as her cat flees the premises, as they look at one another.

His eyes are brilliant. In this light; in any light. He looks at her with his dark eyebrows drawn together, a frown etching a line between them. They look at each other with their faces darkened, hers with distrust and his with ache, and she says

what she does, which makes him turn briefly aside with a quiet breath of a curse.

Back, a moment later. "Dani&+269;ka," he says -- quiet, but steady now, "I have never lied to you just to make you feel better. I've only lied to you once that I can remember, and it was when I told you I would punish you for lying to me again. I wouldn't lie to you now. Not about this.

"I don't know what you were taught, or by whom. I know what I was taught, and I know what my mentor took me to see. We're Shadow Lords. I can see it in you, and it makes every last fiber of my being want to protect you and keep you. The spirits that guard the Homeland -- they'll see it in you too. And they'll welcome you."

Low as his voice is, there's a break in it there, when he says those words. An unsteadiness before he draws a breath, closes his eyes a moment, opens them again. His right hand rises to her cheek. His thumb traces the arch of the bone, back to the ear.

"I'm not lying to you. I'm not ... deluded, or telling you myths. I don't cling to pretty lies and false hopes. If this life were all we had," and the very thought of it twists in him, makes him pause to catch a breath, "I wouldn't lie to you about that. I wouldn't waste time like that."

[Danicka] There's not only distrust in Danicka's eyes but frustration. Confusion. She doesn't know why he would say this to her when she's known all her life it isn't true. She can think only that any time his death is mentioned he can't seem to cope with it. He doesn't want her to think about it, and he doesn't want her to worry about it, as though it's going to change how she feels about the prospect one iota. As if it's going to make her forget that one day, he will die. As if she will ever be the sort of person who does not face the coldest, most brutal parts of her reality without flinching.

Lukas, who is so cold and brutal himself in many ways, who does not sugarcoat the world for anyone, who has lied to her once -- and then he was promising to hurt her -- should know better than to shy away from this, the last and hardest truth. That when they are parted, it is going to be forever.

He tells the truth: he's never lied to make her feel better. He tells the truth: he lied to her once. And she doesn't believe, not really, that he would lie to her. She just doesn't understand why he's saying something so absurd, and she's wearied by it.

Nothing really gets through to her, past that near-impenetrable shield of pessimistic experience and self-protection, til he gets to the words what my mentor took me to see. It isn't all that about their tribe, about her blood and breeding, about the instinct to keep her and protect her snaps him in half when paired with how he feels about her. It's the fact that he says he's been there.

Again he touches her face, and this time she lets his hand go. Her skin is smooth under the gentle pass of his thumb. Her brow is still furrowed, but for different reasons now. She's thinking about this. "When you went there," she says quietly, with some caution, "did you see Kin?"

[Lukas] More than anything else, it's the caution in her voice that makes Lukas ache quietly. He's reminded all at once of her cat, of all things, standing wary and self-contained in the foyer as a stranger entered her domain. Something of the same, here. Caution and wariness, which is not the same thing as fearfulness and uncertainty, as a strange thought intrudes into what she thought to be truth. He can almost see her tasting it, examining it, trying to decide if it meant her well or ill.

There was a time Lukas thought his mate a stone egg. She's not -- but sometimes, she has a certain quality of stillness, of quietness, that makes him think of it all over again.

His hand touches her cheek a while. Then it falls away, back to his lap.

"I saw spirits." He answers her the way he always does: truthfully, not sacrificing authenticity for simplicity. "They had lived many lives. Some were so old they had too many lives to name. Others had only seen one or two. Most of them wanted to talk about their glorious lives, the ones where they were Garou of note.

"Some of them talked about the lives they spent as kin, though. One of them told me to be just and fair even in my dealings with kin because sometimes kin are heroes reborn, and other times kin are reborn into heroes." A faint turn of his mouth, ironic. "I didn't learn that lesson very well back then."

[Danicka] He can almost see Danicka mulling over this information as she takes it in, parsing it, categorizing it, re-integrating it. He can almost see those gears turning that were supposedly left to rust when she left high school. He can almost see her the way he saw her when she was putting together her study, which is all but a laboratory at this point. Danicka is far from unintelligent, or stubborn about refusing to learn new things. But she tests everything she hears. She mulls on it. She does, indeed, taste it.

And then leans into him, finding his shoulder with her cheek and just... laying on him. As though she's a bit overwhelmed by what he's just told her. As though she's accepting it, trusting it, but can't quite react to it otherwise yet.

It's a bit much to take in, being told you have an afterlife. Being told you might come back from it one day, and that you might be stronger the next time around.

Danicka takes a deep breath and slowly lets it out. "Oh," she says.

Then, thinking back a couple of weeks, comes the information seemingly out of nowhere: "My brother used to call me Danikthya." She can't even say it, though she pronounces it perfectly, without a certain flattening of her tone, a hitch, a verbal flinch. "Like a joke."

Why she says this now might take a little thinking to puzzle out. Maybe nothing more complicated in the end, though, than the fact that she was taught she was an outsider by virtue of birth, even to her own tribe. Not like us. Not good. And it explains, rather suddenly, why she flinched physically when Lukas uttered that term as he spoke of the archangels.

[Lukas] It's a lot to take in at once. It's almost too much to take in at once, and Lukas doesn't particularly expect tears of joy; some grandiose response. Oh, she says. He nods a little, as though to confirm it.

Then she offers up something else. Another man might laugh. Someone who doesn't spend his life fighting the Wyrm, doesn't march out in combat against the Wyrm over and over and over every other night, doesn't watch his compatriots and brothers and sisters and self die against the Wyrm every other night, might laugh.

Lukas doesn't laugh. His eyebrows flash together, and his jawline tenses.

"That's not funny," he says quietly.

[Danicka] "I know," she says back, just as quiet. She processes the rest like it's on the backburner, trying to let it seep in before she forces it to affect her memories, her beliefs, her prayers to Earth and Thunder, Volos and Perun. She knows what -ikthya means. She always has. Because the first time her brother called her that he told her. Because she knew better than to tell her father that Vladik had said that.

Most of the time he pretended kindness to her. He called her Danka, Danushka, while everyone else called her Danicka. He made her his own, made her special to him alone. It was only when he was angry, when he was sneering and belittling, that he called her this ridiculous nickname. That he called his sister of the Wyrm. Like a joke.

Danicka doesn't speak against Vladislav even now. She doesn't go around telling people he's a dick, that he was abusive, that he hurts his mate, that he very likely killed his rivals for her or had them killed or had something to do with their endings so he could have Emilie. She doesn't even tell Lukas, who knows, just how bad it was, or everything he did, all the strange ways he'd look at her.

She is afraid he'll go back to New York, if he knows.

Where is your brother? Where is your brother right now?

She closes her eyes, and moves closer, and then there's a warm stroke of fur walking between them, rubbing against the fronts of their thighs, insistent for attention. God forbid they hug without including the cat. Danicka reaches down and runs her hand over Kandovany, who purrs, and then wraps her arms around Lukas's neck again, breathing with him. "I've missed you," she confesses, and she rarely says this. Even when she was gone for weeks, taking care of her half-sister and her nieces and nephews, she didn't tell him over and over again how much, how badly, how deeply she missed him.

Even now, Danicka keeps most things close to the vest.

[Lukas] Quite early on, Lukas had asked Danicka what her name really was. Then he asked her what she wanted him to call her. What you've always called me was her answer, which didn't bother him or upset him or make him feel somehow less special. Still -- it was faintly noteworthy. There are women who would want their lovers to call them something else; some name no one else has a right to use. In truth, they have those, too. Mine. My. Mate. But not some other name; not Danielle or Daniella or Danka or Danushka.

If Lukas knew these were names her brother called her, that he used them like he used everything else to bind her to him and him alone, he would understand immediately and intuitively why Danicka has never given him a pet name to call her.

She doesn't tell him, though. And perhaps it's for the best. It's for the best that Lukas doesn't know about all the things Vladislav did, and does. It's for the best that Lukas doesn't have it all inside him, eating away at him like acid, burning at him and his sometimes stiff sense of honor. Of what is right. Of reparation and vindication. Lukas was a very rigid creature before he met Danicka; in a way, that was a sort of immaturity. Even now, she knows -- she can guess -- that if pushed too far, or in ways he is not familiar with, he might fall back on those same, ingrained tactics.

There may be some things he will not be able to forgive. He might try anyway for her sake, or for theirs.


She doesn't tell him anything more than that, though. She moves closer to him instead, and he welcomes her this time. He wraps his arms around her and pulls her into the circle of his embrace, against his body, on his lap. Her cat squirms between: me too! -- and Lukas laughs quietly, and then quiets.

"I'm here now," he murmurs.

[Danicka] She'd had to think about that question when he asked it, lying on a hotel bed tangled naked or near-naked with each other.

Martin had started calling her Daniela whenever he was broken down about something or whenever he was fucking her. Nobody ever really called her by her given name at home, or growing up. It was odd to her, that Martin always went by his last name but seemed to want her to call him Ilari if they were naked. Otherwise he called her Danicka. Danny. Danny Boy.

Vladislav called her Danka, Danushka, Danikthya, teased her name into various endearments, some teasing, some cruel. He owned her by her name, like he owned her name. Like he owned her.

Her father called her Dani&+269;ka. Lukas and Anezka called her Dani&+269;ka. Steven called her Dani&+269;ka even though he struggled to pronounce it correctly. Kids at school called her Danicka or Dani, Danny. Christian called her Dani&+269;ka when he wasn't calling her Ms. Musil. So when Lukas asked her what he should call her, now that he knew she was named for her father's first mate's father, that she was named for someone her father had a close and respectful and understanding relationship with, that it was an honorable name to have but more of a formal one than a daily one,

she thought about it. People who have loved her called her Dani&+269;ka. Who truly loved her, who let her be some measure of herself. The fathers of her unborn children called her Dani&+269;ka. So she told Lukas to call her what he had when they were children, what made her feel most herself, the name that belongs to her.

And over time he started calling her other things that no one else can, even if others might have in the past, or might have tried to. Love. My love. Baby. My mate, my female, mine.

Which also make her feel herself. Which also belong to her. But him, too.

Danicka doesn't like to think about the things she thought she saw in her brother's eyes sometimes. She doesn't want to talk about them and might never. She might also never talk about Yelizaveta's father, or about why the lesson she learned in childhood -- never to lock her bedroom door, never to bother -- was reinforced time and again in adolescence. She can't think of a reason she would need to burden Lukas with it. Anger him, hurt him, make him worry for her, make him all that much more protective of her, as though by holding her and keeping her safe now he can undo all the little damages and little hurts

and great ones

that have come through her life before he entered it.

When he pulls her into his lap, sitting on his knees, Danicka lets him. She nudges the cat out of the way but it comes back, rubbing the top of its head against Lukas's leg like there's something between its ears that desperately needs to be dislodged. She purrs all the while, a very different sound from the one Danicka makes when he licks his tongue over her breasts,

only now she's just sighing softly, settling against him, against his chest. "Já vím," Danicka says. She's quiet for a little while, just holding onto him, while he holds her. "The cat bed is in the car downstairs," she mentions. "But she'll be okay without it another night, if you just want to go to bed."

[Lukas] Irrationally, but intensely, Lukas wants to protect Danicka from everything that's ever hurt her, ever. She knows this -- she's seen it in his eyes, in the way he aches, the way he grows angry, when she tells him little things about how things were for her. What happened to her in those years between when they were children together and when they met in Chicago. What happened to her even in those years when they were children together, when he was loud and cheerful and utterly oblivious, utterly ignorant of even the possibility that anyone could live the sort of life the little blonde girl who couldn't even climb a tree was somehow managing to survive.

In a way, perhaps that urge to protect is only a reflection of something deeper; a remorse for the way he himself treated her. Or perhaps it's simply what it is: the urge to protect what is his, what was given to him not because he took it but because she chose to give herself to him.

They don't talk about that now, though. She slides onto his lap and he wraps his arms around her, and they're just quiet for a while. He's not kissing her breasts. He's not sliding his hands up until her shirt. He's just holding her, closing his eyes after a moment, enjoying her nearness and her warmth and her presence.

The cat rubs against the side of his thigh. He smiles; she can hear him laugh quietly, a sound in his chest. He wraps his arms a little tighter around her, breathes in. Breathes out.

Then he lifts his head and kisses the side of her neck. "No," he says, "I'll go get it."

And one arm unwraps from around her. He reaches down, strokes his hand down Kandovany's back, picks her up in the crook of his elbow. He's separating from Danicka a little, then, the solid block of his torso twisting to the side to lift her pet. He deposits the cat between them, on the cradle of their intersecting legs, smiling down at the small orange feline before turning that same smile -- widening now -- on Danicka.

"She's yours," he says; there's a childlike simplicity to this. "I want her to feel happy and safe and loved. Maybe you can draw a bath while I'm getting Kando's bed. I want to soak a while before bed."

[Danicka] Oftentimes that childlikeness -- not childishness -- endears Danicka to Lukas so utterly she doesn't quite know what to do with the feeling. She remembers him vaguely as a child, how he taunted her into climbing that tree and then went running madcap inside yelling for her father. She remembers his eyes lighting up when it turned out that there was another child who spoke his language, who could understand he and his sister without forcing them into pantomime and struggling English. She remembers how heavily he would sleep, when the parents' card games and conversations went on late into the night and the children fell asleep in piles on the couch.

She looks back on that, knowing now that the Kvasnickas didn't have some nice row house like hers with a tree in the backyard but a one-room apartment while his parents worked two or three jobs each to scrape a living together before the tribe realized they had a purebred Ahroun with great potential and a long line of heroes in his family's past. She knows now how terribly exciting it must have been to get to come over to that rare treat, the nice big house in Queens where people spoke Czech and ate proper Czech food and had toys and a back yard where they could run around outside even when it got dark.

Danicka adores him now, knowing what she knows, laying it over what she remembers. She smiles as he pulls back a little, and she does as well, looking down as he curls the cat up to his body. It rubs its head on his bicep now, purring so loudly it vibrates. Kandovany is poured into their laps and wiggles around a few times before settling. She is a lazy kitty, given to sleeping more than running around like a maniac. Danicka bought her so very many toys, all the same. There's a big basket in the car, too, just to hold all the toys so they can be gathered up and put away, rotated to keep the cat from getting bored. Or to keep Danicka from getting bored, maybe.

Danicka leans in again and nuzzles the side of Lukas's neck, folding over the cat, who has a closed-eyed expression of divine contentment on her face where her head rests on their thighs. She laughs softly to herself at Lukas, at his desire for this little animal that doesn't flinch from his rage for some reason, to feel happy and safe and loved, as though she is an extension of Danicka herself, and should have all that he wishes for Danicka.

"Mmm," she hums, burying her face against his skin. So warm. So very warm. "Okay," she murmurs, kissing his neck.


They slide apart, after awhile. Danicka moves her bare feet to the floor and rises, very gently taking Kandovany from their laps so she can hold the cat against her chest. It looks right. A little odd, since he's never seen Danicka with an animal before, but she scritches the cat under her chin like she knows the right spot, and she holds her like it's familiar. Maybe a little unusual. Maybe a little half-forgotten. Or maybe something she's never done, ever in her life, but is right for her, all the same.

Kandovany permits Danicka to give her affection, and droops along the woman's forearm, lazy as a much fatter beast. She strokes her, and Lukas goes to get his shoes on again. His mate's keys are where they usually are, on what looks like a piece of curved wood attached to the wall. It's magnetized, the keys hanging artfully from the smooth surface.

While he's gone she rinses out Kandovany's food dish, leaving the water bowl alone. She goes to the second bathroom and sets up the cat's litter box on a bunch of newspaper, leaving it in there since her plans for turning an IKEA cabinet into a combination hidey-house-slash-litter-box-closet need some time and tools to bring to fruition. She puts the cat in said litter box to sniff it out and consider it as an acceptable receptable for her piss, and goes to draw a bath.

The water is still running when Lukas comes back upstairs with the bed and the toy basket. The bed itself is just a cushion, really, but inexplicably soft. Danicka, who comes out of the hall when she hears Lukas come in, is down to underwear and her shirt -- one white, the other still chocolate-colored -- and is putting her hair up. It's braided, and she's coiling that braid across her scalp to pin it down, smiling when she sees him. "I think for now she should sleep in the hallway near the other bathroom," she says. "I don't know if she'll sleep there tonight or not, but I'm not sharing my bedroom."

This, firmly, like a girl who has never had to.

[Lukas] It takes a little while before Lukas works up the will to slide apart from his mate. When he does, he sits back on his heels, waiting for her to gather her pet up, smiling up at her when she stands. Like this, he's briefly lower than she is: relaxed and folded down, large and warm still where he sits. It makes him happy to see her with her pet. With something she chose for herself, that she loves and is loved by, that she did not and could not have before.

He gets up, then, his hand touching the outside of her elbow gently as he bends to kiss her cheek. "Right back," he says, and turns to slide his shoes back on.

Lukas likes Danicka's keyring holder. He likes her bedspread, too, and all the random little things she gets for herself, and for their den, that he would've never thought to get himself. That he doesn't even know exists. So he pulls her keys off the magnetized holder and shuts the door behind himself, and a few moments later he's coming back up with a bedcushion and a toy basket, one under one arm and one in the other hand. He finds her in the hall; she tells him where they go. He was the one that didn't want the cat walking all over him in the morning, but now he's the one to hesitate. Won't she get lonely? he wants to know; Danicka has to assure him that no, no, Kandovany is not, in fact, a neurotic clingy little thing.

Lukas sets the bed where she indicates, then, and sits on his heels there for a while watching Kando explore it. He sets a squeaktoy on the cushion too. He resists the urge to provide a blanket. Cats have fur. They can sleep without blankets. He, of all people, should know that basic logic.


Danicka comes out of the bathroom again a little later. The bathtub is filled up, she tells him. So he gets up and he leaves Kando there on her new, soft, warm little bed in her new, safe, warm home. When he catches up to his mate, he reaches out for her hand. He laces his fingers through hers. They don't talk about the past anymore, or what happened then. They don't talk about the future, or what might come. They've said enough. He gives her time to percolate now. Worldviews don't align in a moment.

In the bathroom, he undresses easily, unselfconsciously. He climbs into the bathtub first because he's larger, and if he's going to cause spillover he wants to be ready to open the drain. When he's sure the water level's safe, he holds his hands out to Danicka; helps her in. He helps her wash her back, and then leans forward so she can wrap her arms around him and wash his. When they're done he sighs a little, contentedly, as she turns; as she settles in front of him and leans back against him, and everything's warm and liquid, and his arms wrap loosely around her like they belong there.

Just that, for a while. Lounging together, lazy and sleepy as her new pet now, water rippling around them gently now and then when he stirs or she does; when he lifts an arm and lays it over the side of the tub, or reaches back over his head to turn the water on, let in some fresh warmth. At one point he glees quietly about the baseball game they're going to tomorrow. He starts going on about the yankees, their record this season, how he thinks they have a shot at another world series title -- and then he remembers his mate doesn't really care about baseball, is going to the game with him because she's going with him, and he quiets. He nibbles at her earlobe gently, laughs when she swats at him to stop.


A little after that, she arches her back against his encircling arms. She rubs herself against him slightly, subtly, and he doesn't laugh this time. He wraps his arm around her a little more securely, just under her breasts. They don't need to say anything. He knows what she means, and what she wants, and Lukas is, as ever, more than willing to oblige.

He slides his hand between her thighs and he presses his mouth to her neck, eyes closed, murmuring and growling low in his chest as he touches her, strokes her, brings her off on his hand. He's so hard after that that it's hard not to pull her onto his cock then and there. They get up, though, and there's a hasty rinsing shower; there's water dripping on the floor because they're too lazy or too aroused for towels until they're most of the way to bed. He lifts her in his hands and they share a long, pulling kiss that makes the world spin on its axis. He lays her out on her mattress, panting a laugh as he moves over her. It's not really anything funny. He's just happy. She wraps her legs around him, and he wraps his arms around her, and

who knows how long it is, really, before he can think straight again.

Lukas doesn't move away from his mate, afterward. He rests on her, letting her hold him. Letting her cradle him, and protect him; sighing as her fingers comb through his hair, which she likes a little longish like this, a little messy. When his thoughts recoalesce enough for movement, he nuzzles against her chest, her small breasts that are barely a handful in his large palms, a sweet little mouthful on his warm tongue. He finds himself growing aroused again. He raises himself over her and he's smiling when he asks,

Více?


In the morning, he's still asleep when she wakes: his brow to the back of her neck, his hand covering her heartbeat -- to shield it, or to hold it. He sleeps deeply and he sleeps trustingly, as though he believes, now, that she protects him as much as he protects her.