it's time, rhya.

[Brutal Revelation] When Sinclair comes back to the Loft, where she sort of kinda mostly lives now, she's wearing a red zip-up jacket, the hood -- and possibly the rest of it -- lined with sheepskin. This is the girl who grew up in Kansas and decided that she wanted to go to school in Southern California partly because, y'know, it's really cold up in Massachusetts. To her, the mid-fifties are damn well cold enough to want at very least a sweater. One has to wonder why she came to Chicago, why she bothers to stay, how she tolerates the cold when winter really hits.

The answer is the same to each question: pack.

pack.

pack.

There was a brief period of time when Sinclair lived in a whole lot of places. She moved out of the Brotherhood but she would stay there sometimes, stay here sometimes, stay in her car sometimes, stay... somewhere else, sometimes. And then an incredibly brief time where she took everything she had and moved it into a tiny shoebox of an apartment and it was cozy, and she was happy, and

well, a little while after that, she claimed the single room next to Lukas's at the Brotherhood. She claimed a room at the Loft, and that is where she usually stays. When her moon is waning, she's almost certain to be found there night after night until the worst of it passes, until the moon turns half.

She was never very close to Theron, but after he earned his second rank when she saw him she was less brusque with him, less vicious. She never knew Caleb as anything but this cousin of Kate's who came around every few months and treated everyone like his best friend. She was glad to see Edward go. She misses Asha. She has varying relationships with other septmembers, everything from respectful to wary to downright antagonistic, but ultimately she has few relationships, total.

She has her parents, anew after years of separation. And she has her pack. Her pack, asking her why she was rolling in mud and getting the simple answer that it seemed like an exceptionally good idea at the time, which is another way of saying: I don't totally understand why I acted that way. I need to think some more.

Which is another way of saying that in a little while, she might just up and have Shit To Say about it.

Not tonight. She's not here tonight to go to bed, though she's tired and there are dark circles under her eyes and underneath her summer tan she's a bit gray-looking. She's not here to raid the kitchen and avoid Lucille because Lucille, even Lucille, is not sure how to act around Sinclair. She's not even here to play Wii (yet). She's here because as she left the Caern she cast about in her mind for the dark, solid presence she knows as her Alpha, and she did not so much ask where he was as nudge that presence, sniff at it, and receive something of a curious welcome, a

yes, i'm here. what's up?

So now she's at the Loft, pushing her hood back and walking quietly inside, looking around for Lukas. She checks the pool room and she checks the kitchen before she ever considers going upstairs, even though there's an invisible thread running from her mind to his, telling her here. here. over here.

olly olly all-come-free.

[Lukas] He's not swimming tonight, that rather largeish Ahroun whose presence in their minds is nothing so vain as a fully-formed version of himself, and nothing so amorphous as the loose collection of thoughts and inquiries and questions and uncertainties Theron so often was. Dark and solid and quiet and warm: that's what he is, like a piece of a summer's night hewn and compacted and folded into being.

He's not raiding the kitchen either. Or playing on the Wii. Lukas is, in fact, laid out on the couch. His feet are up on one arm of the sofa, his head pillowed on the other. He's reading: something he used to do so often in the Brotherhood that a stretch of the sectional sofa became 'his'. He doesn't hang out quite so much in the Brotherhood these days. His room there is more like an office now, and his clothes and belongings seem to be slowly migrating elsewhere.

Sometimes he stays here at the Loft. He hasn't officially claimed a room, but he leaves a change or two of his clothing here now. Most nights he stays elsewhere.

He's here now, though. Pages turn quietly as Sinclair enters. He lets her check the pool room, but on her way to the kitchen he intercepts her, setting the book down on his chest to raise his eyebrows wordlessly at her.

Yes, he's here. What's up?

[Brutal Revelation] It's disconcerting for some young Garou to enter a fully-formed pack that's been around for some time, running together, learning each other. Their bond changes as it deepens, mental presences becoming instantly familiar where to a new packmate they might be confusing. To know intimately and without a moment's consideration that the dark presence you can reach out to with a thought is Lukas, is Alpha, is Shadow Lord, is something that comes with time, like learning to read the expressions on someone's face.

To know that the steady, unblinking light in the distance that casts a silver-white glow, fuzzy and gray at the edges and growing more and more blindingly clear the closer you get to it is Kate is like knowing that Sinclair searches for Lukas as though by ritual, that she checks on the pool room partly because it gives her an odd little centered feeling, settling into a different kind of home.

To know that the livid red pulse surrounded by shadow is Sinclair, and to know that its intensity of color alters according to the moods and thoughts she shares with her packmates, to know that the beat of it falters unevenly when her moon is waning, is like understanding without having to be told what exactly is going on that something in Sinclair is wounded, and taking its time to heal.

But is, in fact, healing.

She unzips her hoodie as she 'looks' for Lukas, revealing the blue t-shirt underneath that has Grover the Muppet on it. Her long hair is up in a ponytail. She hasn't cut it since she moved to Chicago, but has no split ends. The benefit, one could say, of melting and reforming her body again and again and again, every time she rages.

Eventually she meanders her way into the living room, coming over to one of the armchairs and lowering herself onto it with a quiet whumpf. She smiles softly, folding her hands in her lap. "In April, the night I challenged for my rank, you told me: I'm almost Adren. I knew that already. I'm no Theurge, but I've seen and talked to --"

as best as one without the gift of speaking to spirits can 'talk' to one,

"-- spirits of renown more than you might think. I knew what they were saying about you. I know what they've been saying about you since. And I understand why you weren't ready in April to challenge."

Sinclair leans back into her chair, settling in a bit more. "In July, when we sat in the Caern and you gave me your testament, I thought: 'okay, maybe now'. I thought that being able to look at your death without thoughts of either glory or fatalism but acceptance was sign that you were ready.

"I thought, when I learned that you'd begun to mentor Christian, 'any day now'. I figured that if you were ready to teach a Cliath in the ways of your auspice, without even a flicker of hesitance to do so for a worthy pupil, then it would be a matter of days or weeks before you challenged. When you didn't, I thought perhaps you were going to wait until he was more settled into the pack and more secure in his teachings before leaving for your challenge."

Sinclair takes a breath. "It's been nearly half a year since you earned the right, if not the readiness, to challenge for Adren. Nearly half a year since you admitted that waiting was unwise, and in dereliction of your duty. Nearly half a year ago, I understood and I could accept that. Now Christian has left to try and build on your teaching or abandon it, as he will, and while he is gone you are relieved of your responsibilities as his mentor. Now Katherine, who is your Beta in everything but battle and name, is coming so close to Adren herself that she can almost taste it. And I have to know, because I am going to be the one who keeps the memory of your life after you're gone --"

There's a pause there. A softening of her stance, her voice, her eyes. "And I want to know, as your friend and packmate and sister... why haven't you challenged yet, Wyrmbreaker? Why won't you be recognized for what you are?"

[Lukas] Sinclair has Shit To Say.

That much is so obvious it's all but a scent on the air. It's there when she sits her ass down. It's there in that soft little smile of hers, which is so unlike her usual grin that Lukas would have taken notice at once had everything else not already tipped him off.

And, true to form, Sinclair says it. What she's come to say. She says it like she's telling a story, which is ironic because when she actually tells stories she makes them sound like reports. Not even news reports, but briefings. Passing intelligence on with minimal subjectivity. She lays this one out for Lukas, though: the buildup, the times, the dates, all of it. April. July. August. September. Her challenge. The spirits. Christian coming, Christian going.

And all through it: Wyrmbreaker, a Fostern with the renown of an Adren. Halfway to fucking Athro by now, though that meteoric rise has slowed in recent months ... perhaps not least of all because as ready as his renown says he is, as ready as his actions say he is,

he simply. won't. challenge.

So Sinclair asks what everyone else must wonder. She asks it bluntly, because that's what she does, and when she's finished Lukas's eyebrows pull together. The frown looks a little like pain. He sets the book aside and rises, all in one motion, sitting up smooth and sure as a cobra rising out of its basket.

"Because," he says softly, "I don't want to die in pursuit of my personal power and glory and leave all my loved ones to pick up the pieces."

[Brutal Revelation] The name that Waking Dream, Breaking Heart gave Sinclair when she completed -- won -- her challenge in April has proved itself to be just as fitting as the first name she earned, just as appropriate as the name they gave her when she was brought into the Glass Walker sept in San Diego and locked her away til she stopped raging.

Havoc, then, screaming and gnashing, changing shape uncontrollably in the first few hours, throwing herself at the walls like something in a frenzy. Havoc, getting into fights just while trying to walk through the hallways, destroying almost everything that got within arm's reach til she was sedated or overcome. Havoc, even in the game room where she was marginally calm, leveling her opponents because it seemed to give her some kind of internal peace to defeat what was outside,

since she couldn't defeat what was finally breaking open inside of her.

Then Warcry, a little more controlled, a little more directed, opening her maw and roaring at the Wyrm because here was something to kill, here was something to tear apart, here was something she was actually made for. Because it had become so clear she wasn't made to be a cheerleader or someone's girlfriend or a human or a scientist or any of the things she'd thought she might be. It had become so clear what she really was, she could do nothing but voice it, and throw herself into it, carrying everyone who could hear her into it with her.

Now this: Brutal Revelation. It doesn't need to be explained once someone has heard her speak at a moot. Lukas has heard her speak like this even more than Katherine, but Katherine has heard her be a human woman in her early twenties more than Lukas ever will, so it pans out. It's not flippant. It's not harsh. But it's unflinching, yanking all of this to the surface and laying it before him as though to say

explain this. deal with it.

His explanation is rather simple, and Sinclair doesn't stir from where she sits. The look on his face causes an echo on her own, a tightness of her brow that lasts for only a moment and is restrained by whatever inner strength causes her -- lets her -- put these questions to him so firmly, even if she knows it might make him angry, it might make him defensive, it might be the wrong time, it might it might it might --

but it needs to be said.

"Do you really believe," she says gently, after a moment or two, "that challenging for rank is just a pursuit of your own personal power and glory?"

It's easy enough to hear in her voice what Sinclair thinks, and what she thinks Lukas's answer is.

[Lukas] "I know what the party line is," Lukas replies, and there's this, at least: his voice is even; he doesn't seem angry. It's possible he's asked this of himself on occasion. Never very deeply, and never for long before he pushes it aside, pushes it under again, buries it like the bone that Brutal Revelation has finally dug up for him, cracked open in her merciless teeth, and laid out for him to pick clean.

"I know," he goes on, "that the strength I gain is meant to be used for Gaia. And for Thunder, and for Perun, and for the pack and for my mate and for ... everyone whose welfare I have a stake in. I know that, and that is what I intend. But it's still so very hard to reconcile that with the fact that I'm going to be the one walking up to a Garou the spirits call Adren and saying, recognize me. Give me more power. Make me stronger."

[Brutal Revelation] "It's not a party line," Sinclair says, just as calmly -- as gently -- as before. It's hard for her to be roused to anger -- true anger, at least. Deep, snarling anger that comes from a real source of frustration or hurt. Petty, surface anger is easy for her to find when her moon is waning. Nothing about this conversation is petty, though.

She listens to what Lukas says, what he puts out there intentionally, and she doesn't look deeper than that right now. She doesn't probe further than what he is willing to show her, what he absolutely can't or will not conceal.

Her legs bend, drawing up into the chair. Well, halfway. She looks down, realizing that she was out and about in Chicago after rainfall and that the hems of her jeans are muddy from tromping through the caern. The armchair is white. Sinclair stares at her feet consideringly, then sets them back down. It's a small thing, the sort of consideration and respect one would assume be showed to the home of another, but in a way it's not what people would expect of Warcry.

As she settles back into her seat, slouching somewhat, she looks back at Lukas. "I'm not going to try and tell you not to see it that way. If that's how you feel about it -- and you aren't entirely wrong -- then maybe it's best that you have those thoughts lurking at the back of your mind, reminding you not to slaver and pant after power like a wretch or a dog.

"But," she goes on, carefully enunciating the word though her voice never grows past its somewhat fuzzy softness, "being recognized in your rank isn't just about using the strength you gain for Gaia, Thunder, Perun, etcetera, etcetera. Look, I don't want to turn this into an oral exam. I'm just going to tell you what I think."

Her left pinky hits the air. "I think it's about giving lower-ranked Garou some hope. Especially for Ahrouns, most of whom these days can't shut the fuck up about how they're probably going to die before they get anywhere near Fostern. And that fatalism is self-centered, and it distracts them from the war, and it makes them less effective as a unified force if they think 'this is it, this is all there is for me, I'm cannon fodder, nothing I do matters'."

And her ring finger. "I think it's about keeping the worthy consistently above the unworthy. We're not humans. Might does make right, as much as wisdom and leadership and charisma do. Rank and rulership belong to those who deserve it and can keep it, and you're going to have a damn hard time holding onto those things if the reputation you get is the Fostern who could have been, but didn't want to be. They'll call you a coward, and whatever else you do, if the spirits hear that enough, they'll believe it, too. Then we'll be led into war by selfish, powerhungry morons, thankyouverymuch."

Her middle finger joins the others, fanning out in midair. She has her elbow propped on the arm of the chair, her eyebrows lifting. "I think it's about understanding that if you won't challenge for rank because you might die and leave all of us behind, then you may as well stop fighting, altogether. You can tell yourself that in battle you're at least fighting for something, but you know as well as I do that a lot of those random skirmishes barely even make dents in the war overall. We fight them anyway. We need to fight them. It may seem like we don't get anywhere or we're just looking for ways to get our rage out and our rocks off, but that still doesn't mean we can turn away from them."

Sinclair pauses a moment, then drops her arm, sighing. "Look, I'm sure I have other reasons, but my head kinda hurts. And I love you, and I honestly do understand, better than I can tell you, what you're saying, here. But seriously? The thing I really want to say is just: it's time, -rhya."

Though they are of equal rank. She has been calling him -rhya for months now. But of course: he's her Alpha. He's the Ahroun Elder. It makes sense that she might call him -rhya.

More sense, now.

[Lukas] It's not often that one sees this side of Sinclair. Half the Sept -- perhaps most of the Sept -- thinks of her as a raging beast. Thinks of her as unhinged, bloodthirsty, vicious. They look at her and they see the beast that killed three Garou, one of whom never came back. They look at her and they see, even now, the Garou that stood in a ring of shame while all her allies and compatriots carved glyphs of shame into a stone as heavy as sin.

And in all fairness, these things are part of who Sinclair is. They're in her history, and for a Galliard, history is everything. There's more to her, though. The Garou that Lukas sometimes sees staying up til 4am typing, typing, typing away on her laptop to take down the stories of all the Garou she meets and interviews and hears: that's Sinclair, too. The Garou that lays her muzzle across the back of her youngest borther: that's Sinclair. The Garou that sits here now,

counseling him, which is something none of his packmates outside of Sinclair and Katherine ever seem to do:

that's Sinclair, too.

And he listens. Because he trusts her counsel. Because he trusts her, period. Because they've been packmates for a long time now, and their bond is deep. They understand each other without words. She knows what he wants done after he's gone. She knows what this pack means to him, and what she and Katherine mean to him; she knows that he does not fear death at all, but he fears leaving his loved ones behind almost more than words can say.

When she's finished, he doesn't have a lot to say back. It's not necessary. She knows he heard her, even if he didn't nod; even if he didn't voice assent. She knows she's gotten through to him when he does nod at the very end, and just once, and says:

"I know."

A small pause after that. Then he adds, quieter:

"And I know there's never going to be a perfect time. A time when everything fits together, and is neatly tied off, and is so self-sufficient and self-managing that if I were to fall, everything would go on without a hitch. I know it's foolish to keep waiting for such a time. I know it's ... just as selfish not to challenge as it is to challenge for power alone.

"Maybe I did need to hear it from someone else, though." His mouth moves: a faint smile. "The proverbial nudge when I won't jump."

[Brutal Revelation] She huffs a small breath of laughter out. "Waiting for the perfect time to do anything is like those couples who wait to be able to 'afford' having a kid. It ain't never gonna happen."

Her hands go to the armrests of the chair, as though she's about to lever herself up. Her duty's done. The reason she sought him out tonight -- a night at random, a night when it occurred to her and the moon overhead seemed to shrug and say okay, a night like the night she thought okay. I'm ready. -- is fulfilled. But she doesn't stand up yet.

Heather Sinclair's eyes are more winter than seadepths, moonlight-on-snow rather than crystal. There's a diffuse light to them that's different, in its way, from the piercing intensity of Kate and Lukas's blue. At times they can look almost gray. At other times they seem nearly white. They're opaque, which makes them ethereal, and yet they hide very little of what she thinks and feels. They don't make her seem untouchable or so inhuman she can't be reached.

"Yeah," she says softly, as he mentions a nudge when he won't jump. "Just don't make me start nipping your heels."

Now she stands, pushing herself to her feet when he knows two things: one, she wouldn't normally need to do that, and two, she wouldn't do it anyway in front of anyone but her packmates. She lets herself rise slowly, like her joints ache, like her skin feels stretched too tight over her bones, and she reaches over to Lukas and scuffs her hand over his head.

"Get a haircut, too," she grouses, though he doesn't need one. Sinclair goes on muttering advice and nags at him as she starts to head off, fully intending to go upstairs and let herself crash... after she writes in her journal. After she records this, too, while it's fresh in her memory.

"And floss yer teeth. An' getcher feet off the furniture. An' do yer homework."

Mutter, mutter.

Grumble.

[Lukas] Lukas doesn't duck away from the hair-ruffling, though he does squint his eyes shut like a dog suffering unwelcome attention from a toddler. When she's finished, he catches her by the hand, hauls her back as he's standing, and wraps his arms around her in a big hug. Big bear hug. Complete with growling and pretend-razzling and side-to-side rocking.

Lukas has never pitied Sinclair for her bad days. He's never felt bad for her or even wished that she didn't have them. He sees them, but he sees her good days, too. He sees how bright she shines then, how glorious she is, how sure, how certain, how invincible. And he understands -- far better than your average Ahroun -- the concept of balance. Of give and take. Win some, lose some.

That's her balance, like Achilles, heroism traded for a shortened lifespan. In return for those days of sheer glory, these days of ... well. Very nearly misery.

Still; pity isn't the same as compassion. Caring. He cares about his packmates. He knows when she isn't feeling her best. He knows not to coddle her; knows that's the last thing she wants. This is what she gets instead: a big bonecrushing hug, followed by a smooch on her forehead.

"I love you, kiddo," he says. "Get some sleep."

[Brutal Revelation] "Gaaaaagh," hacks Sinclair, wriggling away from his bear hug --

though not really

-- the way he pretend-tolerated her hair-scuffing. She's smaller than he is, and it's hard to look at them like this and acknowledge that she comes very close even now to matching him in sheer speed, sheer lethality. She's slender and athletic and pretty; it's difficult to imagine her lunging into battle after Lukas and tearing out a throat, ripping a Spiral in half, just as he does.

Though frankly, while he's razzing her and mock-growling and bear-hugging her and she's batting at him with her palms going "Ack, ack, stoppit, ack," it's hard to imagine either of them doing all that. She even wrinkles her nose when he smooches her forehead, making a face usually seen on bright green stickers that used to get slapped on bottles of cleaning products.

When Lukas lets her go Sinclair stumbles away from him, windmilling her arms in wild flails for balance. "Kiddo," she huffs, but there's no followup grumbling. She just flaps a hand at him on her way out, aching inside, but she can't tell him that, can't explain why, or what it even is. "G'night, weirdo," she murmurs fondly, and heads out of the sitting room to go upstairs.

the blood circle.

[eden] [Everyone make a hearing-based perception + alertness roll.
Christian: diff +3
Kate: diff +2
Lukas: diff +1
Sinclair: diff +2]

[eden] It's been raining in Chicago. The clouds cover the moon, and the mud squelches underneath their paws as the Unbroken -- some of them, at least -- tread through the woods. In the distance they can smell the smoke from the bonfire, the food. They are not headed that way. They're tracking some beast to bring down in honor of the equinox. Perhaps they mean to drag back the carcass of a deer, or catch several rabbits and haul them back to be roasted and fed upon. Autumn is coming, and the breeze that sifts through their furs is cool, cooler than it was a week ago, two weeks ago.

This is no tense, taut hunt. They are not going after the Wyrm right now, not hunting down Spirals that got it into their heads to attack a gathering of Garou and Kin. They are preparing instead to usher in the season of bountiful harvest, of full tables and full bellies. Overhead the moon is starting to wane from full. All of them feel the curl and whisper of rage inside their skulls, crawling up their spines, longing to take them. Control them.

Quietly they go through the trees, quietly because no wolf packs are known to live in Tekakwitha Woods. Quietly, because people are camping out here in various designated areas, while it's still warm enough. Quietly, because they are a pack, and they have no need to growl or bark to speak to each other beyond the intricacies of physical contact, of body language.

For her part, Sinclair brings up the rear. She's the second-best fighter in ...well, the pack as a whole, as well as the current grouping. She watches their backs as they go ahead, her ears perked, alert.

Overhead, the clouds start to drift past the face of the moon, eased away by the wind.

[eden] [perception + alertness -1 (moon)/ diff +2 (see above), -2 (lupus)]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 5, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Honor's Compass] [Per + Alert, +2 Diff, -2 Lupus]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 7, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

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

[Christian del Piero] (( Perc + Alert. Difficulty -2, lupus. ))
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 4, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 7)

[Wyrmbreaker] At the head of their narrow file, dark fur dull and light-devouring in the light of the full moon, Wyrmbreaker runs with his tongue lolling, feet light. In this day and age of 24 hour supermarkets, the reap and the harvest means little. Still, the ancestral memories of thousands of years of agriculture echo down through the holidays of the humans -- and in their blood, in their bones, memories of an older time still.

This is not the harvest season, their wolf-instinct whispers to them, but the season of the hunt. This is when the leaves fall from the trees, and the prey is still fat from summer and easy to see. This is when the pups have grown old enough to first scamper along on the hunters. This is when they take down the largest, heaviest prey of the year.

Later, winter. When the prey is easy to track for the leafless trees and the snow-covered ground, but thin, too. When the days are cold and the nights colder, and the pack huddles together for warmth.

There's a small stream crossing their paths. Their sharp ears picked it up a quarter-mile away, and now they've come to it. Wyrmbreaker slows from his steady, ground-covering trot. He plants his forepaws apart and lowers his head to lap at the water eagerly, ears panning out of unconscious reflex: taking in whatever there is to take in.

[eden] All of the Unbroken hear something. It's as distant as the voice of the moon herself, a faint whisper that seems to come from miles away, or miles above. Perhaps the stars are whispering to them.

Ev--ing d--s. Di--ny is --nv--ble...
to Christian del Piero, Honor's Compass, Wyrmbreaker

[Honor's Compass] Katherine, a lovely white wolf in this form is padding along with her pack; she is a smallish creature when put beside her Alpha, the black-as-coal son of Thunder, even her paws speak of her nature; so small and precise about where she treads as they come upon the trickling stream that Lukas lowers his head to drink from.

Honor's Compass does not drink, but rather straightens her body and stares; growing very still.

I hear a voice, her thoughts project to her pack-mates, clear as a bell. It says 'everything dies, disharmony is inevitable'. The wolf lowers her nose, scents the ground, paws at it. The ground too changes, the trees do not seem the same as before.

[eden] Slowest by determination, lurking behind because her moon is waning and it makes her wane, Sinclair tenses a moment, then walks forward to meet the others at the water's edge. Katherine speaks to them, and in their minds they all hear an echo, a confirmation that yes, Sinclair heard it too, noticed it, too. She looks up overhead at the moon and the stars, shifting her weight from one side to the other. It's an anxious motion.

[Christian del Piero] He hasn't hunted for the sake of hunting in ages. Christian almost seems confused when he's told that's what they're doing tonight. Like he can't fathom not going after the Wyrm when it's got them surrounded. But he doesn't protest. Any chance to do something besides pretend to be civilised is a good thing. So he walks along with his pack, just as small and pure white as his tribesmate and sister. Something's changed about him. Even though his Rage is still high he isn't half mad with it. It's easier to think and breathe these days. It helps that the full moon is waning.

They come upon a stream. They all hear something. Christian's ears prick. He snaps to attention like a gun shot has gone off. Taps at the ground with his paw. He makes a questioning whining sound...and then Katherine voices the concern he has.

Where did that voice come from?

[Wyrmbreaker] Wyrmbreaker's head comes up as that whispers threads through his mind. His coat, thick and black even in midsummer, is growing ever heavier for the winter. His ruff is wide, his jaws massive; water drops from his upper lip as he stares into the darkness.

The words are indistinct. The memory they spur, so long untouched that it's almost forgotten, is not. That's sudden and vivid as a hallucination; vivid as blood: a memory of a different world from his, a world in balance; a memory of facing another so evenly matched to himself as to be almost indistinguishable; a memory of gathering to leap, to kill, to despoil that balance, to introduce, like original sin, that inevitable disharmony.

I've heard that before, he thinks at his packmates. There's a flash of thought, an entire narrative compressed into a few fleeting impressions. He shows them a slice of his memory: how he and a few others met a strange Garou who spoke of coming from a world where the Triat was in harmony; who spoke of being sent to blood circles; who did not know where she came from or how she might get back. They meditated together in the end. All night. And when the Garou of Chicago opened their eyes, she was gone.

Even as that memory is unspooling into their minds, Wyrmbreaker is moving. He wheels on his hind legs and begins to run, following the sound to its source the best he can.

[eden] In a moment, what Lukas remembers of the night he met that strange sinborn who could scarcely breathe their air passes along to his packmates. Sinclair is quiet, hanging back. If she has thoughts to add she keeps them to herself, til Lukas starts to head off ahead. It takes effort for her not to bark aloud. She takes a few strides forward, into the creek and past it, going with the other wolves, but then holds back again.

Wait, she says into their minds, the words sounding like a struggle for her. It's like Kate said. The woods feel different. Even if what we heard came from somewhere, I'm not sure we can find that place anymore.

She tosses her head once, hackles up. Her tension is high. But then: on nights like this, Sinclair always feels a little off. She might have been looking forward to a raw meal, animal blood steaming in the cooling air. Little chance of that, now.

Whatever they have to say in response, whatever they do, doesn't change what happens next. This time it takes no straining at all to hear it: there's a crash up ahead, the sound of wood splintering and something heavy skidding across the ground. There's a yelp, and even as they listen the sound grows so steadily it's hard to imagine they could be this close to it without noticing it. Dozens of voices: barking, yowling, snarling, teeth chomping together, growls of encouragement, of viciousness, of rejoicing. Claws scraping the ground,

the smell of blood in the air.

[Honor's Compass] The Half Moon is wary, as befit her moon.

She watches her Alpha wheel and begin to run and instinct tenses her muscles and has her fur bristling, has her heart-rate exhilarating with the desire to follow the pack, to run, to jump, to hunt. But something, be it the voice she heard or the strange, unsettling feeling in her belly makes her hesitate for a moment.

She wades through the water, and up the other side of the bank and again stops, tossing her head with a whuff of air. Her wet nose lowering to the ground, head rising only as Sinclair speaks to her. The white wolf turns and regards her sister.

Then there's the splintering of wood, the unmistakable sounds of creatures fighting. The snapping, snarling; the tang of blood in the air. Katherine's teeth are displayed for a moment, two rows of razor sharp incisors before they drop back beneath her gums. She looks after Wyrmbreaker.

Waiting.

[eden] There's a problem, here. The creek they lapped at, stood in, crossed over --

gone.

[Christian del Piero] His father was a Galliard. Like Sinclair...and not like her at all. He tried to teach Christian not how to be an Ahroun but how to control himself. How to go into battle. How to think before he acts. How to do lots of things that Christian has just been ignoring lately. It's coming up on the anniversary of his death. Christian loses track of time easy but he's got a weird memory for dates. Like today was the 25th. Greg died a month ago. He didn't go out and do something stupid trying to absolve himself. If he still blames himself for what happened he didn't tell anyone that. He patrolled. And then he sat by Greg's grave for a spell. And now he's hunting.

Having another's memories in his head startles him. Christian shakes his head like he's trying to get water out of his ears...then he gets used to it. Pays attention. He doesn't just run head long toward the sound when it comes either. His alpha starts to. But Sinclair stops him. Christian's fur stands on end when they hear those sounds nearby. His lips pull back in a snarl he never actually makes. He sneaks forward a bit, but doesn't run ahead of his alpha. He looks around. Paranoid of being surrounded. That's when he notices the creek is gone.

His tail wags a few times. Then it stops. It lowers, along with his ears. He looks at his higher ranked packmates...suddenly uncertain.

[Wyrmbreaker] It was never really joy that spurred that sudden rush, but something much more like urgency. Urge. He wants answers. He wants to chase them down like prey.

When Sinclair barks a warning into his mind -- and certainly when the sounds of an altercation ring out ahead -- Wyrmbreaker halts. He stops so suddenly the ground sheafs beneath his feet. Pale eyes narrowed, the largest and darkest of the gathered lifts his head and scents that air. A moment's indecision, seen in the uplifted forepaw, the tail held at a low angle.

Then he starts forward again, slower this time, belly low to the ground, creeping. Everything around them feels different. Cleaner. Now would be a time to quote the wizard of oz. Wyrmbreaker resists the urge.

[Honor's Compass] The vanishing creek-bed does little to comfort Katherine.

She narrows pale eyes at it the place where it had just been accusingly, as if it were somehow the reasoning behind this entire scenario. The Silver Fang too lifts her nose to the air, scents it, shakes out her fur coat as if she'd just been for a swim in the water and then moves after the others; her posture changing, movements slowing into the crawling prowl of the wolf on the hunt.

Her tail low to the ground; ears flattened against her skull.

[eden] All of them wait for Lukas. Lukas, whose rank is shared by Katherine and Sinclair -- even if everybody knows he should have challenged months ago, should have earned Adren, should have at least started making moves in that direction -- but who leads the pack without Beta, without second. They look to him as they always do, and there's trust in that. There's faith, as well as submission.

The ground is dry. The soil is thick and loamy, and they can feel acres of root networks from grass, trees, bushes, all the plants around them. They are in a different set of woods than Tekakwitha. Still a temperate northwestern forest, but -- different. They can't smell the bonfire. They can't sense humans in the distance, at least not the civilized, camping sort. The moon is in the same phase but now the sky is cloudless.

And there is violence up ahead. Violence and joy.

Sinclair takes up her position in the rear again, following Lukas and Kate's examples. Low to the ground. She waits for her youngest brother to go on up ahead, and they follow Wyrmbreaker slowly towards

a place he knows from vision, if not memory. A place where images and sensations, feelings flew at him without interpretation, without explanation. Everything dies. Disharmony is inevitable. And where he thought: I brought that disharmony. Sank my teeth into the throat of an evenly matched opponent and brought crashing down the death, the disharmony, that was warned about.

The vision did not show him this.

The blood circle is not all that large. This is no gladiator's arena, ringed by bleachers. But there are wolves all around them in the fern and underbrush, circling this clearing. They don't stay still, but they stay out of the small open area. There are no markings on the trees or in the ground to designate this place; they don't even seem to notice the approach of Wyrmbreaker and his pack. In the clearing, though, two wolves are fighting. They fight in hispo, one gray and one more reddish, jaws snapping and claws swiping. Both are bloodied. They are fighting to the death.

[Christian del Piero] Katherine's ears and tail lowering doesn't exactly set him at ease. He doesn't stand there fretting though. They're moving. Lukas hunkers down. The subcliath doesn't hesitate. He also doesn't go as low as he can. Christian is still a young wolf. He eats a lot because he's active and has a high metabolism. But also because he's still growing. He isn't the same height he was a year ago...or 2...or 5. If he survives another year he won't be the same height then either. He's athletic and quick on his feet...but there are times when he has normal teenage awkwardness that comes from not knowing his own body. Like right now. All he really does is duck his head and keep his tail down and he thinks he's smaller.

When they get to the clearing he stops dead. Stares. Seems to forget Sinclair is right behind him.

[eden] Luckily for Christian, Sinclair isn't so distracted by the tension of where they are or even by her moon waxing that she runs smack into him. He stops short and she takes a step to the side, coming up beside him. The anxiety evident in her body language is changing as she views what's going on in the circle. Her body was tense, slightly lowered in submission as well as stealth, her tail lowered a bit, ears turned partially back, but now, the longer she watches the violence in front of them, she's changing. Her ears are up and alert, her body rigid. She's soundless, alert, her eyes wide open and staring, a surreally opaque blue that almost seems white in the starlight.

Sinclair's nostrils flare. She's scenting the air. Scenting the blood. Her mouth is closed, her voice silent. She doesn't even speak in their minds. Her tail is low, straight. She's lowering her body closer to the ground, ready to spring forward.

[Wyrmbreaker] They don't seem to notice him. The fighting wolves. The watching, pacing wolves. Wyrmbreaker wonders if this is a challenge for leadership. It could be that. This world feels so pure, so untouched. They might still go by those fabled old ways here, where the pack watches the challenge; where the challenge is always to the death, and the pack falls upon the vanquished as one.

It doesn't quite feel like that, though. The posture of those watching wolves is wrong. They don't have the look of gamma-wolves and omegas. They don't hold their heads the right way, or move the right way, or ... any of it.

Blood circle, he thinks into their minds. It's not entirely certain; the thought carries a hint of question, of uncertainty. Blood circle?

[eden] There's no answer from the Galliard in their midst. She's staring, ready to lunge, and the rise of her --

no, it's not rage. It's that other part of her, the part that makes even her parents scared of her, the part of her that she's convinced drives away every Kin and human she cares about, drove away the one she --

that predatory, savage part of Sinclair is stirring, waiting for opportunity, waiting for weakness. They all feel it to some extent, it's in the air in this place, but it doesn't threaten to overtake them. She doesn't answer Lukas. She can't, right now.

Many of them are in the shadows but they move around, and the Unbroken see more and more wolves surrounding this circle. Perhaps a dozen, maybe even more. If this is a single pack, it's enormous. If it's two packs or more come together... still large. Still strong. They are right there beside the Unbroken now, briefly sniffing at them but then focusing their attention forward again, barking to spur on the combatants.

The sense of rage is like a tang in the air, as coppery as the blood on the ground and under their claws. Their eyes are wild. They can start to see it; Christian, too: these wolves are frenzied. They will keep fighting til death comes, maybe even past that. The thing is, they're so well-matched it's hard to say who the victor will be. It isn't like so many of the battles they've been in: five seconds, ten, and it's over.

It isn't because they're particularly skilled or mindful, even. They're just tearing at each other again and again, ripping free chunks of fur and flesh on every pass.

Then, suddenly, the gray one leaps and bites down hard on the reddish one's foreleg, tears tendons out. The reddish one stumbles, and his opponent leaps on top of him, gnashing again and again and again on his throat. Blood soaks them both. The gray wolf doesn't eat him, doesn't start to devour him as a Thralled Garou would, but she doesn't stop biting at him, ripping what's left of him apart.

She starts to turn towards the other wolves, her maw opening in a huge roar of challenge.

Christian feels nipping at his heels. More than one wolf is urging him towards the circle. Go, go their excitedly wagging tails are saying. Go. Fight. Fight. Go. say their barking, whining cries.

[Honor's Compass] The smallish white wolf known as Honor's Compass is not happy. Not comfortable around the bloodhaze, the ripping, shredding, frenzied wolves. While her own Rage is nothing to scoff at, while she can feel it, prickling away beneath her fur and flesh, turning her stomach in knots; brightening her pale eyes til they shone an almost unfathomable blue --

she does not enjoyit.

There is something innately primitive in the manner these wolves pace the length of the circle, in the way they nip and bark and snarl in encouragement as the red wolf goes down beneath the onslaught of the gray. Her ears are pinned flat to her skull and there's a near-constant whine growl building in her throat.

When the wolves nip at her tribemate's heels, she snaps her teeth at them.
Defensively.
Protectively.

[Christian del Piero] He glances over when his sister comes up beside him. The youngest of them isn't shy about asking questions when he's confused or doesn't understand something...but a lot of times when he is confused or doesn't understand something you can see it on his face. Christian knows how to hide how he's feelings. It's just that most of the time he chooses not to. Right now he's curious but a little lost. It's not like when Lukas and he went to the Battleground Realm and he was excited until he realised what the place could do. This is weird. It doesn't smell like the woods he's used to.

He keeps staring when he realises he's looking at a pair of wolves in frenzy. It's horrifying to watch. Maybe he's thinking about all the times he's done this. How he blacks out and turns into a rabid monster who's had to be put down more than once. When the victor, as it were, roars at the others the subcliath's Rage flares up to meet it. Then he feels nipping at his heels.

It's like a horror movie moment. It takes him a second to register that it's not Sinclair nipping at him. She's standing right next to him. When it does register he whips around like he's going to attack whatever's behind him. They're trying to get him to fight. The Full Moon starts to snarl, to snap his jaws to get them to back off...then he looks dubious. This is the kid who has no problem pushing and punching a bigger, older wolf for talking to his girlfriend. Clearly he likes fighting. But he's not -stupid-.

[Wyrmbreaker] They're pressing at Christian now. Pushing him forward. Urging him to fight. They can feel Wyrmbreaker's mind connected to theirs -- he's not hiding his thoughts from them. They can feel the questioning, the subconscious not-quite-words: why? why? why him?

It's not the hysteria of one being frightened for the life of another, a brother. The protective instinct Honor's Compass is so quick to bare teeth and show is there in him, too, abiding and deep -- but this is his mind at work, trying to puzzle out answers. They're new here. The wolves do not seem to register that, or else do not care. There are four of them, but Christian is the one the press. They want him to fight. His rage brims so close to the surface already, even if he's learned some control, and they want him to fight.

Watch and see. This time these are actual words, crafted thoughts. See who goes next if Christian doesn't.

[eden] There's no time. There's not even any thought. Sinclair isn't answering her packmates, though they can still feel her presence. She hasn't gone mad, gotten possessed, but that primitive sense all around them is saturating her, consuming her. She's as much a wolf as her shape suggests, nevermind the metal in her ears, nevermind what they know her to truly be.

Really fucking good at MarioKart, for one.

Right now you'd never know, in the shadows and dark, that she isn't one of them. One of the wolves surrounding them, nipping at Christian to get him to jump into the fray against a frenzied werewolf. But there's no time, as he's snapping his jaws to get them off, as Katherine is snarling, as Sinclair is drifting, for anything else.

The frenzied gray, deprived of something to fight, lunges into the trees

and is met in midair by four wolves, moving in such beautiful concert it's undeniable that they are somehow bound together. And then, suddenly, it's like the fights the Unbroken have against their own enemies.

It's over in seconds.

They withdraw, leaving the body of the gray where she fell. She reverts to a lithe human form, bloody and torn apart. Either her rage could not bring her back or she has already died once and returned tonight. She was darkhaired, her skin tan from a great deal of sunlight and from the fading summer. She's wearing brightly colored but roughly made robes --

Lukas saw robes like that once, and all his packmates recognize them because he shared that memory.

The wolves pull themselves out of the circle again. They leave behind a homid female and a metis male, and then begin to come to the Unbroken. They're sniffing. They're curious. They're watching Christian with bright, alert eyes. They are unafraid.

"Smell like blight," says one, chuffing the words out. The word is hard to translate. It has no connotations of Wyrm taint. It does not quite mean 'scab'. Something else.

"Little one should have been in circle." says another, accusingly, as though they are all at fault for Christian holding back.

[Wyrmbreaker] There are too many of the others to fight. They're hopelessly outnumbered. These are all awarenesses in Wyrmbreaker's mind; things he keeps track of so quickly, so smoothly, that it's all but subconscious now. He stands at the forefront of his little cadre. He keeps his back to his packmates, his posture asserting dominance, asserting protection. Saying without words: look at me. i'm the leader here. focus on me, not on them. leave them be.

"Only way out of circle is death," he responds. It's a statement, though the pack knows very well he isn't sure. He's testing for response.

Meanwhile, mentally: Look around. Try to find some sign of where or when we are. Look at the stars, look at the trees. Do you recognize them? Look to see how we got here.

[Honor's Compass] "Why fight to death? Where is reason? Where is point?" The Philodox whuffs out, making her auspice as clear as the wet nose that lowers and scents at one of the wolves doing the same to her in return. She moves out from behind Lukas, her movements cautious; respectful as she scouts around the area.

Sniffing.
Staring.

her breeding is as clear as the air around them, breathed into their lungs. No other tribe had such purely white pelts.

[eden] For her part, Sinclair can't really help Lukas figure out what he's puzzling over. She inspects the other wolves as they come near. There is much sniffing, back and forth, as they introduce themselves to one another. Yet there's this, too: they sense in her all the strength she possesses, and they back down a little without her growling at them. They test her a little, nudge past her. She growls and snaps; they retreat, sniff at the others instead.

She has no words left. They've all gone. Been forgotten. Are unnecessary.

"Wise sister," comments one of the wolves, and it doesn't sound like the sense they know of wisdom, the wisdom they are lauded for, the wisdom Sinclair is becoming renowned for. Wise almost sounds like... separate. Different. Close to something else, but not close to them. It is not a negative statement. It is not really positive, either.

There's a chorus of half-snarled agreement to what Lukas says. Only way out of circle is death. Yes, yes. Obviously. So why little brother not in circle?

Then Kate speaks up. She sniffs at their air, at their tradition, she and Christian the only pure white wolves in the gathering.

As Lukas is the only pure black one.

"Balance," comes her answer. "They out of harmony. Little one is out of harmony. Will only get worse."

[Christian del Piero] The wolves that fly out of the woods are unafraid. Christian tries to act unafraid too. He holds his head up high and puffs out his chest and stares back at them. It's not a challenge, really. Just posturing from someone who's not very good at being submissive. He rankles when mentions "blight," says he should have been in the circle. -That- seems like a challenge. He doesn't bark or growl...just lets his alpha and sister handle it.

Until that last answer. He tries not to make any noise. Like he knows reacting is going to be proof that he is out of harmony. But he can't really help it. His eyes flash and he bares his teeth. He's silent, though. They don't even hear him over the totem phone. Still. They know him well enough to know that he thinks attacking people - even if they're twice his size - is a good way to shut them up when he doesn't like what they're saying.

[Wyrmbreaker] "Because he is angry." Again, the statement-that-is-a-question. Christian bristles at his pack. Wyrmbreaker's hackles come up too; he shakes out his fur to make himself calm, or at least hide his aggression in his briefly ruffled fur.

[eden] "You, too," comes the retort, quickly, right back at Lukas's face. "Rage is not disharmony."

One of them has come forward as speaker, if not leader. Nothing special. A lean, small gray wolf with streaks of black down his face. He tosses his muzzle in Kate's direction. "Her, too. Will crushes spirit. Not so bad yet."

He stops, looking at Katherine, then chuffs. "Listen to her, though. Will get worse, too. Will too strong, crushes everything else. Out of balance. She die in circle one day, too."

This doesn't seem aggressive, strangely. So he's talking about all of them ending up fighting to the death in the blood circle. No big deal. Moves along smoothly to what else is on his mind, his curiosity echoed in the perking ears of the others as they hear him asking: "All smell of blight. Cleared ground. Fire. Humans. Why smell of blight?"

[Honor's Compass] Honor's Compass, a wolf that the spirits herald as being quite honorable, quite wise, does not take outright offense at being told she's too full of willfulness, of intellect versus the primal instinct of the hunter. Of the Garou. Rather she cocks her head to one side and lets out a little huff of breath.

It sounds almost amused.
Almost, but not quite.

"Circle may be end for those who cannot control balance in selves. But not end for us, not how we find our harmony. We find ours in other ways." She does not end that with better ways, for how can she be so certain that they are? These primal wolves solved what they perceived as imbalance the way they likely did most things.

Physically.
Bloodily.
Finally.

[Wyrmbreaker] There's a moment's silence from Wyrmbreaker -- a distinct sense of thought, of consideration. Then he whuffs, "We smell of blight because we do not come from your world. We come from other-world, like this but blighted. Many humans.

"One of yours visited us four moon-cycles ago. Female, born of two Garou. Do you know her?"

[eden] There's a communal bristling through the group as Katherine starts talking about how they find their harmony. It grows like a wave moving outward, a ripple of reaction that seems to come back in like a tide when Lukas explains that they come from Somewhere Else.

The black-masked wolf before them glances around at the others. He looks at Christian for a moment, inscrutable. Turns back to them. "Humans killed. Many, many of them. They grow. We cleanse soon. First we cleanse selves."

They are beginning to withdraw. As though they move with one mind, as soon as the black-marked leader starts to turn away, the others begin to drift off, as well. He looks at Kate, though. "Harmony is harmony. If disharmony gets worse, not better: the circle is the only way. Not all go to the blood circle to die. You two -- already so imbalanced. And so young. How will you find your way to balance, if you have not already?

"Your scents mark you -- all of you except for the other sister. Your dams and sires -- not part of the great pack. No wonder you do not understand harmony."

He nods his head off into the woods. "Go. See the blight here, or in your world. Look at little brother's scars, your own coats and how they mark you as separate, outside the great pack. You are out of harmony. That is death, itself. Circle at least gives peace."

There are only a half dozen or so wolves left now, sniffing at Sinclair, scratching their claws on trees, waiting for the one that speaks to come with them.

[Wyrmbreaker] They are departing like the tide, and like the tide, Lukas suspects there's no way to reverse the ebb. He bounds forward a step, following, to bark one more question: "What spirits does the great pack follow?"

[Honor's Compass] When the black-masked wolf speaks of killing humans, it takes a considerable amount of effort on the Silver Fang's behalf not to launch herself at him, not to snarl, or spit horrific accusations at him in a bid to mask the sudden flux of shame she feels about her own tribe's method of handling the humans that they now walked among.

Fought beside.
Protected and shielded.

He looks at Kate, and she straightens, stares back at him with mingled anger and pride.
Perhaps that only makes what he says seem truer, somehow. That she does not understand harmony, this wolf who stares at him as if he does not know what he speaks about. As if she knew better than him.

Pride did go before the fall, after all.

Honor's Compass watches them retreat, fade into the woods. When Lukas bounds forward she watches intently, but she does not speak to the black leader wolf. Perhaps she has nothing to say.

[Christian del Piero] If someone he trusted told him that he was just going to get worse it would hurt. If any of his packmates told him he'd be better off letting some feral wolf tear him to pieces he wouldn't know what to do. They tell him he has potential though. They give him advice and stand by him while he tries to figure out what to do to be a better Garou. Hearing that he's out of harmony and is just going to get worse from a bunch of wolves he's never met before - who don't know him - just pisses him off. It doesn't wound any more than anything else that pisses him off. And his alpha and sisters don't say "Yes you're right here take him."

Christian doesn't calm down exactly but he doesn't launch himself at his accusers either. He stands and watches. He deflates too. Stops trying to appear bigger and tougher than he is. He doesn't pace or paw the dirt. He stares at them until they start to go...and when Lukas asks his question his ears prick up again. He's curious. Still angry...but curious.

[eden] Only the one wolf turns back, as the others slip into shadow, seem to become shadow. He is alone now, against four strong wolves who would fight together against him, but he is unafraid. He seems so calm, just as the wolves who leapt onto the gray and killed her seemed calm. Perhaps the word for that is balance. Maybe he's balanced.

"Mother, and all her children," he says after a moment of consideration, before he turns and leaves.

Sinclair starts rolling in a pile of slightly damp earth, tongue lolling out. She rolls to her feet again and nudges Christian, leaving a streak of mud on his white fur. We no fight, but we find meat, she says happily to him, as this is pretty much the only comfort she has to offer. Meat meat meat meat meat meat meat

and off she goes, as though now that all that business is done it's time to get back to what they were doing. She's hungry, after all, and these woods are thick and filled with prey.


They don't find prey, though. Walking through the trees, perhaps discussing what they just experienced or wondering how they're going to get out of here, the first thing the Unbroken find is a hillside. The trees grow sparse. They look down on

cleared land. They see huts, built into hillocks, carved out of sod. They see a thin trickle of smoke from a fire. Strange, that they would be brave enough to build their homes so close to woods inhabited by Garou. By monsters. But these humans are many: there are several houses, and they can hear the squalling of more than a few infants waking in the night. They are becoming bold: they killed a Garou. They don't need visions to know the truth of what the black-striped wolf in the woods said. Soon, these humans will be cleansed. Purged.

Sinclair, whose tribe was once called the Warders of Men, looks down on the village, and says nothing.


In the end it makes little difference if they go forward, or back into the woods, or try to circle around. The ground underfoot starts to become muddier, more familiar. The trees are not so tall. The air is colder, and the sky is cloudier. In the distance, they can smell the remains of the bonfire.

They can smell humans, camping in the single, small pocket of woodland that they have to run through when the urge to hunt strikes them.

[Wyrmbreaker] There are so many questions that Lukas just lets the little ones slide. Like: why do they all feel so much more feral? Why is Sinclair rolling in the mud?

They move, though, after the wolves are gone. Wyrmbreaker stays behind just long enough to sniff at the blood-circle, to confirm what he already knows: many, many, many, many Garou have died here. Killed by their own. Willingly, it seems, and without great turmoil or strife. Just like hitting a reset button, he thinks. As though the Great War wasn't breathing down their necks. As though another generation, another lifetime, was no big deal to wait for.

They lope through the trees, four in a loose file. Their paws pass over rich, loamy earth. Trees so thick around that their arms will not stretch all the way around even in Crinos. They ascend a hill; they look down on the burgeoning human village. So primitive. Barely out of nomadic hunter-gatherer age.

The stars tell the tale, though. The stars and the moon: they match the ones over Chicago, tonight, September of 2010. The date is the same. The world is entirely different.


And then -- with no more warning than when they slipped into that other-world -- they're out again. The air smells stale and flat and familiar. They can hear human revelers in the woods. Campers with their composite-material tents and their hydrocarbon lighters, their 40-degree summer sleeping bags, their cars. Wyrmbreaker slows his pace to a walk.

He speaks into their minds: I don't know if that was an umbral realm, or a different timeline, or ... what. But the Garou I met in the spring was from that world. It seems like their entire world is 'in balance'. The Wyrm isn't out of control. The Garou are sent to the blood circle -- to die -- if they drift out of balance. Not just rage, but will and gnosis as well.

The Garou I met spoke of a purging too. I think she meant a culling. Like the Impergium. Maybe that's why their humans are so primitive: they've never allowed them to grow out of control.

[Wyrmbreaker] [nix the line about many garou dying there!]

[Wyrmbreaker] [let's just make it "Wyrmbreaker stays behind just long enough to sniff at the blood-circle, where Garou were killed by their own. Willingly..."]

[Wyrmbreaker] I don't know how we got there, he goes on, or even if that world is 'real' as we understand it. But I think if we're brought back there again, we'll have to make a choice: to support their cull and keep their balance, or to oppose it.

Nothing more than that. No indication of what he feels the right choice to be. He picks up the pace until they're trotting again, rangy legs covering ground.

the inevitability of loss.

[Danicka Musil] In the end, Jesmond doesn't stay long. She's exhausted from the emergency at the hospital, and after the tension with Simon the atmosphere of the dinner party -- never terribly relaxed to begin with -- was a bit splintered. Kandovany appears to adore Jesmond while simultaneously disliking the scents currently covering the nurse, and Ms. Krutova excuses herself before even the cat starts yawning.

Danicka closes the door behind her after insisting that she take several kolache with her, and without stopping to ask Lukas if he's staying or not, she turns the locks and cracks her neck, exhaling.

"Well, that was interesting," she says mildly, turning away from the door to go start gathering what plates and dishes weren't already brought to the kitchen. As she's cleaning up, she gives Kandovany a bit of leftover lamb from someone's plate, feeding the eager cat from her fingertips. It's a thoughtless gesture, even as she pauses to let the animal lick her skin for more.

"Thank you, by the way," Danicka adds, as she's turning her wrist and cupping her palm over Kando's head in a brief, gentle caress that the cat -- like Lukas himself, so often -- rubs her head into, purring in response. If it isn't already obvious who she's thanking, she turns her head to find her mate and looks at him a moment after she says it, her eyes quiet.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas helps with cleanup, as Danicka must have known he would have. Truth be told, when Simon had asked Danicka where to leave his plate --

off of which he'd eaten serving after serving of his hostess' food while running his mouth at her, insulting her, and doing his best to intimidate her; which he now apparently expected her to clean up now that he was done and leaving

-- Lukas had very nearly told him to wash it himself. Would have, probably, if he hadn't kept his peace to let Danicka speak first; if she hadn't answered first.

He looks at her now as she turns from the door, feeds Kando a scrap from a plate. He's loading the dishwasher, putting all the plates in a row, distributing silverware into the baskets. If she's helping him toss lamb bones and the like into the trash, he holds his hand out for the next plate as she finishes with it.

"For what?"

[Danicka Musil] The sad thing is, Danicka is a better reader of people than Simon will ever be. Lucky for him that's not what he's supposed to be. He's an Ahroun, not a Philodox. Telling truth from falsehood isn't his forte. In fact, it doesn't even bear being surprised that he misunderstood the very essence of what Danicka had been saying, and reacted in the way so commonly expected of young, angry Ahrouns.

But she knew he was trying to intimidate her as soon as he chuckled, as soon as he tried to smirk and use sarcasm with her. And it took effort not to roll her eyes, where once it would have taken effort for her not to duck her head, where once it would have upped her pulse as she thought of how important it was not to let her frustration show, don't invite the hand, don't stir him up any more.

He tried to intimidate her. Belittle her. In her apartment, her territory. He did so with the food she'd made him in his hands, and he did so because she had told him she didn't want to hear stories of idiotic Ahrouns throwing themselves at death and corruption to prove how 'badass' they were. Because she didn't think that was funny, because she would rather hear tales of glorious sacrifice than tales of moronic arrogance, and she doesn't really like tales of glorious sacrifice, either.

She's been hearing them since she was fourteen, after all.

"For letting me handle that," she says, bringing the rest of the dishes and wine glasses into the kitchen and scraping them clean into the trash before handing them to Lukas. She doesn't bother rinsing; the dishwasher is going to be turned on pretty much immediately. She's thinking idly off to the side of how to store the extra wine and the numerous bottles of rum. She supposes she'll send some back to the Brotherhood with Lukas, for him to keep and share from his 'office', for Reuben and the staff, and so on. A case. Good lord.

She huffs a small laugh as she passes a wineglass to her mate. "I suppose if you weren't here he wouldn't have even pretended to be calm and would have threatened me outright or refused to leave, etcetera, but... thank you for letting me handle that."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "You were right," Lukas replies simply. He fits another plate in, then hooks some wineglasses over the racks and straightens to get the dishwasher soap out from the cabinets. "I don't know why Simon might think a Shadow Lord dancing the Spiral out of hubris is even remotely a good story to share, let alone an example to follow. Then again, this is the same wolf who sees the world in black and white, friend and foe.

"If he brings this up to me later, he'll hear my take on his idea of glory. But you didn't need me to fight your battles for you."

Lukas holds the dishwasher open for Danicka to add two more wineglasses, and then closes it, sets it, hits start.

"You should ... be careful around him now, though," he adds, quieter. "I don't mean that you should be afraid of him, because you shouldn't. He's the one that tucked tail and ran tonight, and everyone saw it. But Simon seems thinskinned and more than a little vengeful. If he catches you alone, he might try to compensate for his submission tonight."

[Danicka Musil] "I remember what you told me about his view of the angels you fought," she says consideringly, when he tells her that this is the wolf who sees the world in black and white. There's little judgement in her voice, at least. She doesn't seem to expect any better. She's known too many Ahrouns, too many Shadow Lords. And the exceptions are few and far between.

She moves away from the dishwasher as Lukas closes it. They've done this so many times by now, here and at the den. Here, they have a dishwasher. There, they wash everything by hand because there's seldom enough dishes to warrant using the old, kind of cranky dishwasher. And they inhabit the same space easily in part because Danicka is used to being quite still, and letting the world swirl in chaos around her. She is used to being near those who are larger than her and not expecting them to watch where they put their limbs.

Lukas has only increased in lethal grace in the time she's known him. He knows his body well enough that even in an unfamiliar space -- and her kitchen is not -- he knows how to carry himself. Danicka lets herself brush against him sometimes, and it's a feeling not entirely unlike the way his packmates will, in lupus, rest their sides against his in passing. Well:

entirely unlike that, in the fact that she is his mate, and stirs entirely different feelings in him when she touches him than his packmates. They borrow his strength, share their own, communicate whole sentences, worlds in the flick of their ears or the wag of their tail. They submit when they brush against him, they connect.

Danicka connects, too. She comes near to him because she wants to be near to him, because she doesn't have to stay-out-of-his-way-or-else. She can accidentally (or not so accidentally) bump into him as she reaches for a drawer because he won't slam her against the cabinetry. He won't shove her aside. He won't yell at her, or sniff at her and call her a whore, batting her eyelashes at him. She lets herself sleep against him when they share a bed because, in part:

he lets her. He wants her close. He holds her in the circle of his arm against his heartbeat and breathes steadily in sleep with her there. He doesn't hold her as tightly as he used to, as though he was scared to let her go, scared he might wake and she wouldn't be there. She wants him here. She's given him keys and passcodes and cards and there's space for his things in the bathroom, the closet, the bookshelves. He puts his watch in a little leather-lined valet on the nightstand so it doesn't get scratched or dented, and often it nestles up against her earrings or the bracelet he gave her, occupying the same space.

Danicka's smell fills his nostrils when she passes him, her side touching his, and she smells like her home and the food she cooked and she smells of herself. He knows the way she feels when she turns over in her sleep and moves against him, waking him for a moment either because his energies are already close to the surface or because he is so hyper-aware of her nearness. And something about the way she passes him, going to grab a towel and wipe her hands, feels... luring. Because she's his. Because she draws his eyes and his senses after her without even meaning to, draws his alertness.

Sometimes, she could be the only living creature for a hundred miles, for the way that he focuses on her. Sometimes, that's a lot of attention to bear.


She's his mate. His female. His Danička, who he met in childhood but knows now. His instincts are, in fact, honed, and centered on her, and he knows her. She hides so little from him now, and he can see in the way she moves that she's a little bit tired. She cooked all afternoon, entertained guests, and it was really the first time she invited Garou here, welcomed them. That sort of thing used to terrify her. And it didn't even go that well.

But she's relaxed. Comfortable in her apartment, quietly if a bit distantly pleased to be cleaning up with her mate after saying goodnight to her friend. Her feet are bare, now, as she goes about finishing up the cleanup. She's not happy about Simon. One more Ahroun she has to watch out for. One more fucking idiot who's decided he's been offended and needs to have a problem with Lukas, or with her, or with them, or with the world. It's not a happy topic.

Her eyebrows flick upward slightly, then lower. She hangs the towel over the bar on the oven. "Of course he tucked tail," she says. "He was in your territory. The submission wasn't to me." She looks at him over her shoulder, smiling softly. "I'll be careful around him because I know better. But unless he really is as stupid as he acts, he won't go out of his way to nip at my heels."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] [i roll empathee!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 7 (Failure at target 6)

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] [SHADOW LORDS DON'T FAIL!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 4, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 7)

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] The dishwasher is cycling up now -- machinery humming quietly, water sloshing distantly. Lukas is washing his own hands, scrubbing under the faucet before shaking his fingers dry.

There's a sort of quiet comfort to the thoughtless, simple labor of cleaning up with his mate. Picking up plates and utensils; throwing out the bones. Loading the dishwasher and making room on the counter. Done with his self-appointed task, Lukas leans against the counter, the tile edge hitting him at his lower back. He's so much larger than she is, and so much stronger, and so much more ...

intense. That's one word for it. It can't be easy, even for her, even now, to have him so close to her.

He watches her, though, with tenderness in his eyes. She looks comfortable in her own domain. She looks a little tired, too, and she looks wearied by the prospect of yet another foolish young ahroun to be wary of. She hangs her dishcloth over the oven handle and Lukas straightens, coming to her. He wraps his arms gently around her waist. He kisses her shoulder, and then her neck.

"Leave the rest," he says: what remains of the lamb, Jesmond's potatoes, their sides, the kolaches, the alcohol. "I'll clean up. Go to bed."

[Danicka Musil] The machinery is, like most of the things in this apartment, this building, top of the line. Its whirring and sloshing is so quiet that once they close her bedroom door they won't hear it. She's covering the kolache with tea-cloths again: they're not even completely cool yet.

She spent her whole life learning how to be quiet. How to be still. How to make room for others, how to make herself small and invisible when necessary so that she wouldn't anger those bigger and stronger and more intense than her. She learned how to not take up a lot of space or ask for much that she wanted. She learned how to be...

accomodating. That's one word for it.

What takes effort is to know when to push back against Lukas. She's learning that. She's learning when it's necessary and when it's not. She's learning not to reject him for the sake of rejecting him, or just because she feels like he's sweeping her along in the storm of his own desires. She's exhausted, sometimes, from trying to figure out how to be strong externally, and not just endure. Lukas, she knows, does not want to be a thing she endures.

And he isn't. Most of the time. Most of the time his rage is so well-controlled that she has learned by now not to be afraid of constant explosions. Most of the time he's so careful with her that she knows all she has to do is give him a word, a signal, something, and he'll gentle. He'll back off. A part of her hates having that kind of power. A part of her hates that he needs to be so controlled. A part of her hates that this is the only way for them to be together, to constantly try and find a balance between the freedom they give each other to just be, and the vital necessity of watching how they treat each other.

Mostly, she worries that he'll think she doesn't love him. Doesn't want him. Hasn't forgiven him.

She refuses to allow herself to think of what there needs to be forgiveness for. Tells herself only: I have. It's done. It's over.


Lukas comes up behind her and Danicka closes her eyes. She breathes in slowly as he frames her body with his own, wraps himself around her. This close, he can feel a familiar tension coiling up from the base of her spine to her shoulders, relaxing again as she exhales. It's sometimes hard to tell if it's desire or startlement or both or something else entirely, but he's felt it before. He feels her ribcage expand as she breathes, feels it contract again as she exhales.

Turning her head slightly, she nuzzles her face to his, brushing a kiss over his cheekbone. "I'll feed Kando," she negotiates quietly, nuzzling him again, "and we'll go to bed together."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] His head bowed to her, it takes little strain for her to kiss his cheek like that. They're close enough that he can feel her breathing. She can feel him breathing, steady and even, chest rising against her back as he inhales

and exhales again, his neck bending further, his face nuzzling briefly against the juncture of her neck and shoulder. Now Lukas's eyes are closed, as though he wants to rest right there for some untold time -- like something out of myth, living lovers turning to entwined trees, jagged mountainsides.

It's ironic that Danicka fears that Lukas doesn't know she loves him. If there's anything he knows now, that he trusts now without reservation, it's that she loves him. If he has a fear, perhaps it's that love will not be enough, in the end. That one day he'll grow too rageful and she'll leave anyway. Or perhaps more accurately: he's afraid that love shouldn't be enough. That if he grows too rageful, if he becomes too much for her, or anyone, to handle -- that she should leave. She shouldn't stay.

He's afraid, then, that she'll go. And he's afraid that she'll stay.

But he doesn't think of that, either. Not often, and never for long. He lifts his head, and he smiles, and he kisses her brow. "Okay," he murmurs, and unwinds himself from around her. And, because neither of them are really the sort of laze about idly while the other works, "I'll take the trash out."

[Danicka Musil] Neither of them think of things like that for long. They shuffle them to the side, and some of that is pure and simple avoidance, and some of it is pure and simple necessity. You can't think, nonstop, every day, about everything that is wrong, or could go wrong, or how things will be when they both know that every day they have is limited. Is precious. May not come again.

Danicka sways slightly against him, leaning into him, breathing with him. She has to go feed the cat, set out those pretty bowls again and give Kando some food so Kando will stop doing what she's doing right now, which is twining around their legs, rubbing against Danicka's calf, purring coyly for food.

She opens her eyes, loathe to let him go, when he steps back. And they work: she gets the cork mat and the glass dishes out again, feeds Kando some canned food with a bit of leftover lamb mixed in because Kando is her kitty, and she loves her, and Kando was so good to stay in the guest bathroom most of the night.

And Lukas puts away the leftovers that are still out. He takes the trash out into the hallway, lets it down the chute. Danicka is crouched in the entryway when he comes back, stroking her cat head to tail while Kando laps up the food. Lukas enters, the door closing as quietly behind him as the dishwasher runs, and she breathes out, her hand pausing on the cat's head, loosely caressing.

"I don't tell you often enough," she says quietly, "how grateful I am for this."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas is stepping back out of the shoes he'd only slipped on, barefoot, as he took the trash out. He looks at his mate; there's a quizzical tilt to his head.

"For what we have?" he asks, quiet. Her cat is eating. Her apartment is expensive enough, nice enough, that the only background sounds are the soft hum-swishes of the dishwasher; the soft huff of the air conditioning. He can hear Kando lapping at her late dinner. "You don't have to be grateful for that, baby. Not to me and not to ... the universe, or whatever.

"Baby," he holds his hand out to her, "zasloužíš si všechno dobré v životě."

[Danicka Musil] It almost sounds like a greeting card, what he says, or a wedding vow. A statement of belief, of faith that the universe should be one way when they all know it's not. She deserves better than she's gotten. When you get right down to it, almost everyone does. But that's life. And Danicka, more than most people, is willing to face the reality of life and accept it. She swallows the truth, even as she learned to hold it in.

Danicka tips her head to the side and shakes her slightly. "Don't tell me not to be grateful," she says softly. "Nobody I know has this."

She moves away from Kando, holds her hand out to him. "Jesmond deserves better. More even than I do. But her son is in another state being raised by his tribe, and her mate is gone. My sister is sick and her mate's gone, too. Some people fall in love outside their blood and have to choose between the two, or choices are made for them. My father lost two women he loved."

Danicka shakes her head, her voice barely above a whisper. "Don't tell me not to be grateful."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] There's a common thread in what she says, whether Danicka sees it herself or not. Gone. Gone. Lost. Gone.

Lukas doesn't have the heart to tell her what she already knows. Whatever she's grateful for now, whatever she has now, is fleeting. Temporary at best. They're lucky to have it at all, and fear of loss doesn't prevent him from taking what joy he can find now, but --

it's not forever. Sooner or later, sooner rather than later, he'll be gone, gone, lost, gone. Or she will. And there'll be years after that. Maybe decades. There may be other men, other women, who look at the one who remains and thinks,

I'm so lucky. I'm so grateful for what I have.

Lukas takes her hand when she holds it out to him. He raises her gently to her feet and he draws her closer. He wraps his arms around her, tighter than he had moments ago; the embrace is warm and rocking, swaying side to side.

"I love you," he murmurs. "And I'm grateful too."

[Danicka Musil] She goes to him. It's a simple thing, never really bears mentioning, but when he takes her hand Danicka moves instantly towards Lukas's body, as though by doing so she can erase what she just said about gone, gone, lost, over, dead. As though, by curling to his chest while he wraps his arms around her, she can undo the fact that she tenses up when he comes up behind her, that even to this day it unsettles her when she's had a long day and she's tired and he comes to her bed with his rage running high and his very presence wakes her up.

Danicka puts her arms around his neck, stretched out against his front, holding him as though if she uses all her strength, and if she tries hard enough, it won't matter that she's terrified of becoming like her father. It won't matter that Lukas almost killed her.

Because Lukas also stood back, quietly, and let her tell the rude Ahroun in her apartment that he didn't know what he was talking about, and he could get out. Lukas helped her clean up dinner, load the dishwasher, take out the trash, take care of the cat, as though he's not what he is but he's just her boyfriend and maybe tomorrow he'll get up and go to some real job, some normal job that offers him a 401(k) and stock options or at least a paycheck every week so he doesn't have to mooch off his rich blonde girlfriend. Lukas holds her and kisses her and she doesn't know, honestly, if she would want him to be some nice, normal man who doesn't ever --

Her arms are locked around his neck and shoulders now, too tightly, as she starts to breathe in such a way, move in such a way, that he knows before the first drop hits his collar that she's crying.

-- scare her.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas doesn't, as he once might have, instantly push her to arm's length, search her face, demand to know what's wrong. Nor does he leap to conclusions: she's crying because Simon scared her. She's crying because she thought of the inevitable end. She's crying because she wanted a nice dinner party and it ended up weirdly tense, or any of the dozens of reasons another woman in her position might dissolve into tears.

He just holds her. His arms are firm around her, and solid. He's solid against her, too: a monolith of warm and strength

and rage and terror.

Eventually, he trusts, she'll cry until she's emptied out her sorrow. She'll cry until she's all right again, or at least until she can talk about it. And then, if she wants to, she will. For his part, Lukas waits.

[Danicka Musil] And once, he might have shoved her away and asked her what sort of game she was playing, assumed her tears were a way to manipulate him, to try and play on a soft side she imagined he had, to ply him with her vulnerability. Lukas revealed more about himself with those demands than he ever thought he could have.

I want to protect you. You have to know how badly I want to protect you. And you must be using that weakness against me, you must, because it is a weakness.

And she knew him, so long ago, by the many ways he resisted himself, all the while pretending he was resisting her. She learned about him, and who he was, and what he was really like beneath all the immaturity, the idealism, all of it.

His rage is greater, now. So is his will. He's stronger in many ways. Spirits all but nuzzle him now, the other world calls to him almost as much as his own drive for violence. Danicka's stronger, too, but in subtler, softer ways. More to do with resistance, with internal strength, than with spirits or war. And so it is. And so it always is, with Garou and Kin.

But not this: that he waits for her to cry, to calm down, to talk to him,

and she doesn't.

She breathes in harshly, and pulls away, because this isn't some sorrow that can leave her if she just gets it out of her system. This isn't something she can fix. And she doesn't know how to talk about it, because if she talks about it, something's going to break. She can't bear the thought of it. So she cries, and pulls away from him, pushing her hands into her hair for a moment, bringing them down. Danicka exhales.

"Je mi to líto. Lukáš ..." her eyes close. It's hard to say what she's apologizing for. Crying. Pulling away. "Je mi to líto."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] There's a moment when she first starts to pull away that he doesn't quite let her go. A second, a split-instant, where his arms stay around her, and they both know, with a sort of dreadful certainty, that if he doesn't want to let her go she won't go anywhere.

That's part of the problem, after all.

He does let her go, though. It was barely even a second's worth of resistance before his arms are loosening, and she's pulling free, turning away, bringing her hands up into her hair like she's overcome and overwhelmed and doesn't know what to do, say. Lukas doesn't know, either. He doesn't know what she's apologizing for. He doesn't know why she's drawn away, why she's crying; any of it. Lukas suddenly feels very much at a loss, standing in her entryway with his mate retreating from him.

"Baby," he says quietly after a time. There's ache on his face. Ache in his expression. Ache in the way he looks at her, and the way he keeps himself away from her now; keeps himself where she left him, standing still under the hallway light. "Láska, proč pláčeš?"

[Danicka Musil] That half-heartbeat when Lukas doesn't want to let Danicka go is a microcosm of almost everything else they have. He could keep her if he wants to. He could lock her up if he wanted to and no one would stop him. Anyone who had a mind to try likely couldn't accomplish it. He's killed Garou before. They used to whisper that he engineered the deaths of his own packmates to gain power. There's no one in the Nation but her half-sister who might challenge for her, and even then, even then, there's every chance he would just set the terms of challenge as single combat,

and every chance he would win. Every chance he would kill Sabina, to keep his mate. If he wanted to. If he let himself follow that vicious animal instinct that has been in him from the beginning.

They have no equality but that which they make for themselves. In the end, Danicka has no freedom but what he lets her have. No matter how gentle he is, how hands-off, he can never trick her. She is not one of those dew-eyed kinswomen who grew up fantasizing about the strong Ahroun mate she would have one day. She knows what this life is, and even though Lukas's ironclad control fools even his own people sometimes, Danicka will never believe that the world is not as it is. As it has always been.

So she cries, and she presses her palms to her face to cover it even though her tears often make her only that much more lovely, that much more soft-looking, warm, tender, special somehow. She works at getting her breathing under control, at getting herself to stop weeping. She moves back til her spine touches the wall of her hallway, and Kandovany lifts up on her back legs, laying paws against Danicka's slacks. Her whiskers twitch curiously.

She doesn't know how to answer his question without breaking his heart. The temptation to lie is almost overwhelming:

I don't know.

Almost.

Danicka takes a deep breath, her hands still over her face, rubbing at her brow now. The last thing he said to her before she started crying was that he loves her. That he's grateful. And it doesn't make sense why that, why embracing, would lead to this. Truthfully, though, it didn't.

"I'm... afraid of losing this," she finally says, her voice barely above a whisper. She bends without thinking and gathers her cat into her arms, and Kando goes easily, staring at her face, then leaning forward to try and lick her tears up. Danicka discourages this, covers the cat's head, holds it close for a moment. Kandovany does not purr. She tolerates this, rubbing her head under Danicka's jaw for a few seconds. "Of what it will become."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] There's a moment, a flash of instinct, in which Lukas is disappointed that Danicka will seek and accept comfort from her cat -- a cat, a housepet, a sly little creature more concerned with her next meal than the hand which provides it -- than him.

He doesn't crush it down ruthlessly. He lets it play out: takes it, examines it, understands it, sets it aside. Irrational, that disappointment. Not worth it. When Danicka answers him, anyway, Lukas understands a little better.

And there's little he can say. After a moment, he moves, himself: slides back until his back is to the opposite wall. Not a whole lot of room here. If he stretches his legs out, his feet might just touch the other wall. He folds his legs, though, knees bent up, hands folded loosely into one another.

"You're afraid that ... we won't love each other anymore?" It's the only point of reference he has.

[Danicka Musil] They know they're not the same. In a few ways, at least, Danicka has more in common with that sly little creature than she does with Lukas. Declawed. Vulnerable. Beautiful, self-interested, sleek, excellent at hiding. In a few ways only.

At the same time, she understands Lukas better than his own parents do. She knows he doesn't want to be Wyrmbreaker when he is at home, and that this is part of why their house is no longer his home. She remembers, still, the way he told her he preferred Lukáš or Lukášek to Kvasnička. No one else calls him Lukášek. Even then, no one else called him by that childhood name, but he permitted it to her without so much as blinking.

Danicka knows why he didn't like that she kept from him the fact that they met as children. She knows the way he'll react if she doesn't eat much when he's around, so she tells him if she's already eaten, and she eats a few bites with him because it soothes something in him he can't entirely suppress, and her indulgence of that instinct is, itself, a way of showing him that she cares for him. She knows how badly he wants to be close to her sometimes, how it twists in him like a knife when she needs to be apart because she's exhausted and he's a fucking Ahroun, terrifying even to his own kind.

She understands that sometimes he wants to pretend that all the realities of their life together aren't there, or are distant enough to be ignored. She knows that this is at odds with his cold, hard practicality in other areas, and that this does not make him inconsistent, or hypocritical, but... human, as much as something like him can ever be human. She knows he is patient with her, sometimes, when her history oppresses her present. And she knows, better than she knows the back of her own hand, that he does this because he loves her. Wholly, completely, sacrificially, in all the ways one must in order for it to mean anything or overcome anything at all,

he loves her.


"I don't think I'll ever not love you," she whispers, holding onto that sly little creature who can never scare her, who could never hurt her, with whom she doesn't have to take a deep breath in order to accept comfort from. Danicka doesn't know if this will help Lukas, if it will make him ache any less or understand any more. The way she says it, though, it may almost be part of the problem.

He can see her face, now. He can see the tear tracks on it, the pink high in her cheeks, the glistening of her eyes. She strokes her cat, massaging it behind its ears, along its neck. She's looking at Kandovany, something to focus on that helps her speak the way she does, and the way that has always been hard for her: openly.

"I'm afraid of losing what we have now." She pauses, because that's not as true, and so this is tinted with the quietude of shame: "What I have."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] At the beginning of all this, Lukas was cold. Distrustful. Keeping her at armsreach; stiffarming her away every time she tried to get closer. Every time she tried to show him that she wanted him. That it was all right to want her back. That she was not some creature out of myth, some seductive siren here to lure ever-so-dutiful Lukas into the depths of self-gratification and dereliction of duty. And yet even then -- even from the start -- the first time she called him Lukášek, he didn't protest. He didn't say a word. He can't say for certain now whether he liked it or not, only that -- for some reason he didn't understand -- he didn't mind. He didn't want her to stop, stop, stop patronizing him, stop talking down to him, stop pretending she knew him at all.

That's behind them now. What they have is so far beyond what he could have hoped or planned for. What they have

is precious, and she's afraid of losing it.

He thinks for a moment, then. He watches her hands; he watches her face. He looks out the window, far across the living room. Then back to her.

"Our closeness?" he asks quietly. "Your freedom?"

[Danicka Musil] Part of the maturity Lukas has gained in the last two years -- not even that long, really -- is realizing that giving himself room to breathe does not make him less of a warrior, does not make him less dutiful, does not make him weak. In the Underworld, apart from concerns of tribe, pack, sept, all of it, with only the war against the wyrm and against himself on the table, the keeper of the last gate tried to show him that.

It was always okay to want her back. It was always okay to want a life with his mate, to feel and follow that instinct. It was always okay to make a home where he did not have to be some paragon of control, of prowess, or even the Beta -- or Alpha -- of his pack, leading them, protecting them, showing them the way to go. It was always okay to want the things he wants, and to try and carve them out of what life offers him.

In a dream world, Danicka would be strong enough to put him down if he frenzied. And she would be strong enough to walk away from him if he ever hurt her. She would be allowed to do so. In a dream world, they would both be much more free than they are.

When he mentions freedom, fresh tears come to her eyes. It's one of the first things he realized about Danicka when he truly came to know her: she never had freedom. She finally has it, here in Chicago. And he's tried, so hard, to not take that away from her. To not ask her to give it up.

Danicka nods once or twice, holding Kando a little tighter. The cat squirms, and so she bends and lets her go. Kandovany goes quickly back to her food dish, tail swishing a few times. Danicka, with nothing else to focus on, looks over and down at Lukas. She doesn't say anything for a few moments, and when she does, she's quiet.

"Sometimes I wonder if I should have left that first night," she says, the hesitance more in her eyes than in her voice, "when you almost frenzied. I think I knew even then that being with you once wouldn't be enough, and... I think I knew even then that you would do it again."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] As soon as that word leaves her mouth -- frenzy -- Lukas's eyes flick away; not fast enough to hide the flash of a wince that crosses his face. She says the rest to his profile. His eyes, ice-clear as they ever are, are on the window and the city beyond.

That strap of muscle anchoring his jaw to his cheekbone has pulled tight again. His anger is back, just as irrational, but harder to dispel this time. So that's what this is about, he wants to say, but doesn't. He knows he doesn't have a right to be angry. He doesn't have a right to insist that she let it go, let it lie -- not when she's the one that would have died.

There's nothing he can say to that, either. No promise he could make that wouldn't take a lifetime to fulfill. Or worse: simply be a lie. He can't promise that he'll bite back every frenzy from here on out. That's not possible. Even if it were -- he didn't bite back the one on the street. He can't promise, either, that he'll restrain himself every time. That even in the depths of frenzy he could love her so much, love her enough, that he would turn his attention away.

Those are not promises he can make. And if nothing else, Lukas has always tried so very hard not to lie to Danicka.

So in the end, all he says is, "Do you?"

His eyes come back to her after a moment. "Wish you'd left."

[Danicka Musil] "Sometimes I wonder," she repeats slowly, and softly, "if I should have."

Once he would have taken -- and might take it even now -- that as patronizing. Talking down to him, as though he's so stupid he couldn't grasp what she said the first time. Danicka only lets it sink in for a moment, though, before she starts to talk again. She sinks down into a crouch, balanced on the balls of her feet and resting slightly against the wall behind her, facing him. She puts her hands together, lacing her fingers, her forearms folded against the tops of her legs, and takes a breath.

So that's what this is about. Frenzies. He frenzied. Like he can help it. Look, if she doesn't want to be with someone who might frenzy, then maybe she shouldn't be with him at all. There's about a dozen things he could say to express that irrational, sudden, unfair anger, and each one would make him sound more petulant and childish than the last.

After all, that's what she's been doing: letting it lie.

She's looking at the floor, past the peaks of her knuckles. "When you frenzied back in July --" which makes her stop, realizing it was only July, it was only a couple of months ago, "-- I know we talked about it then." Sort of. "And that in the future I should run. Even if it's a new moon, because even then you have..."

Danicka cuts herself off there, as though what she's about to say will hurt him. That's where all of her hesitance in this is coming from. She might hurt him. She might say something that makes him so hurt it makes him angry, instantly leaping from heartache to biting defense, causing destruction as though that will help save what he's so scared of losing.

"...so much rage," she finishes, quiet about it.

She swallows. "But we never really talked about it. And it was just like... okay. Let's move on. Get over it. Go back to our lives. I think we just came back here and watched a movie, for christ's sake." Her hands uncurl, and rub at her face again.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] We just came back here and watched a movie, she says. For Christ's sake.

There's every possibility that Danicka doesn't mean anything by that except to indicate how ridiculous such a thing really is, all things considered. There's every possibility -- every probability -- that she isn't somehow turning it around on him. She isn't saying, look, this is what you did. You brought me back here and we watched a goddamn movie after you nearly ripped my head off.

Still, it's hard for him not to hear a tinge of blame in that. Lukas shifts where he sits, moving slightly, drawing a little tenser.

"I thought that's what you wanted," he says. "I thought you just wanted to leave it alone."

[Danicka Musil] "I didn't feel like I had much of a choice," she says, and the quickness with which these words come to her mouth, how they leave her lips with a hard breath behind them, indicates how little thought goes into saying that aloud. So her eyes are on him a second later, watching how he tenses, how he keeps his voice level, how that energy rises in him as dark and wild as a storm stirring up in the sky.

So he has to be made to understand, before it coils, and before it unleashes. After all, the moon is waxing tonight. Not yet full -- that's several days off, still -- but heavy enough in the sky that she's aware of it, as though she can feel it pressing against her through the windows. Lukas has to understand, before he thinks

you're blaming me for this.
I can't help what I am.
I won't make promises that would take a lifetime to keep.
are you ending it?

any of the things he might think.

"What was I supposed to do?" she asks, speaking as though they're held in a cell in this entryway -- where, truthfully, so many of their hardest discussions have taken place, as though they want to leave them near the door rather than bring them further into the apartment -- and no need to speak louder exists. She speaks, too, a little helplessly. "I didn't want to end up arguing with you about it, after everything else. I had my leg ripped open. I watched you tear those things open and shake them. You'd turned around and looked at me and licked your lips before you turned on the vhu-- that thing."

It isn't that she's afraid to say it's name. It's that she's not sure she remembers exactly how to pronounce it. She exhales. "And when it was over you came back," as though she realizes that

If Lukas + Frenzy Then Lukas = Not Mate Else Mate = Frenzy

which is intolerable. Which breaks the system. Her mate cannot be a frenzied monster. Her mate cannot be rage incarnate, and nothing else. No recognition, no love, no protective instinct. Nothing but death.

"...and I knew you didn't remember what you'd done, or how you'd looked at me, or what almost happened. I knew you were freaked out and just glad I wasn't dead." She closes her eyes, remembering, and the ache she felt for him them overwhelms her voice even now, months later. "You were shaking."

Danicka sinks down finally to sit on the ground. She's not crying, but she might, at some point. Her eyes are closed because if she looks at him she very well might cry, and then she'll be crying on the floor like a child, like a weakling, like she's given up. And she didn't give up even when the hound tore her fucking leg apart and she was trying to crawl away to save her neck

til that thing lifted its weapon and aimed it at Lukas. Lukas, who at that moment was not her mate, was just a beast, was legend and terror and nothing else.

"I didn't want to make you any more miserable than you already were."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas's brow knots when she says that -- didn't have a choice. The frown deepens as she goes on, but his eyes stay on her, level. It might take an effort not to flinch, sometimes.

"I remember," this is the detail he picks up first, the one thing he focuses on first, the one knot in the interlaced web that he grasps first, "thinking you were my mate. And if I hurt you then there would be nothing worthwhile left of me.

"And I remember wondering if I'd killed you anyway afterward. Nothing in between."

He takes a breath then, raising a hand, rubbing at his face.

"I don't want you to hide something or push it away just because you want to protect me. I don't want that sort of protection. I want the truth, even if it makes me miserable then. To feel like it's ... not okay, but at least done with, and then this, months later... it's worse.

"I don't really know how to talk about this either. I don't know where to begin, or what you want to talk about. I can't promise you it won't happen again. I don't think that's what you want, anyway. I can't even promise you I won't eventually become -- "

a break here. They can both hear the words he doesn't say:

like your mother. like your brother.

" -- controlling. Only that I'll try."

[Danicka Musil] my mate was the first thing Lukas thought when he came back tohimself that night, in boxers and belt and watch and little else but blood. Sticky, cooling, saturating blood all over him. He grabbed that thought and held onto it like a rope, pulling himself up out of the pit, clawing his way back towards sanity. my mate. zlatý. jaro. That was the thought that he wrapped himself around until the rest of him coalesced.

She doesn't really know that, and can't really understand it, because Danicka has never frenzied. She can only survive the frenzies of others, until the day she can't.

Talk of thinking it's 'done with' and then having this come up now. Talk of promises. She closes her eyes, exhaling a sigh. Her eyes are closed when she reaches up, rubbing her forehead. If she's frustrated, it's dim, but she's been on edge since Luana's rather vulgar idea of dinner conversation and Simon's general idiocy. "It's easy for you to say that now," she says quietly. "That you don't want me to protect you, or that hearing about it now is worse, but you don't know what it was like to see you like that."

Danicka lifts her head, looking over at him. "And you don't know what it's like to watch someone you love frenzy and know there's nothing you can do but run, or hide, only to... have them come back and need you to help them."

Her brow is furrows slightly. "I'm not looking for promises. I wish we could talk about things that happen without you thinking I want you to promise me it'll all be okay, or wave some wand that fixes everything. I'm not even asking you to tell me you'll try, and then I accept that, and then we go on with our lives like that makes it all easier to deal with." She pauses a moment, and draws her legs up towards her chest. "I know you'll try. I know you do try. That doesn't make it any easier."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "It's not that I think you need a promise," Lukas says, and this is quiet. He's trying: trying to explain, trying not to assume the worst, trying to talk like she wants to, trying to understand and be understood. "It's that I don't know what you need. Or want. I don't know what to give you, if I can't make you a promise that I'll change, or fix what's wrong, or -- any of that.

"What do you want to talk about?"

That could so easily be accusatory. Or aggressive. Or simply angry. It's not; or at least, it's not meant to be. It's a genuine question. Lukas tries to voice it as such.

[Danicka Musil] "I don't know," she says, echoing him. She starts to shift, but doesn't get up. Not yet. That would be too easily seen as rejection, as denial. She checks the urge to stand, and stays where she is. "I didn't really mean to bring it up. I think I'm just worn out."

She closes her eyes, hands on her knees, and exhales. Her eyes open. "I'm sorry," she adds, shaking her head a little. "I don't even know if talking about it would be helpful. Maybe I just wanted to let you know it was on my mind."

Now, Danicka starts to get up, as though extricating herself from this conversation is wound up in lifting herself from the floor. She does seem worn out. There's reason for her to be. And as far as he can tell she's at the same point he's at: a loss. Not quite sure what to say, what to do about it. Nothing to be done about it.

He's an Ahroun. She's afraid of him. They love each other.

What else can they really say, that will change any of that?

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas looks up as Danicka rises. It's a rare thing, that: this difference in their height, her standing over him. He's frowning again. It's not anger. It's something closer to sadness, or ache.

"I'm glad you brought it up," he says. "At least now I know. Danička... don't go yet." His hand moves. He doesn't extend it to her. He's not sure that's the right thing to do right now. "Let's try."

[Danicka Musil] Which gives her pause. That he doesn't stand along with her. That he doesn't get angry, start venting his frustration. Not that it would be out of place if he did. Not that he doesn't have a right to be. But that he doesn't, and asks her not to go: that makes her pause a moment.

She sighs, and it isn't the same hopeless-sounding noise as before, the giving up, the weariness. "I'm just so tired," she says, caught between leaving and staying now. "I don't even know what there is to try, and I'm just worried we're going to end up arguing again over something we can't change anyway. I don't want to circle each other like that til we just... give up."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas doesn't stand yet. He does stir, though, gathering his legs under himself, leveraging himself against the wall. He could stand at a moment's notice like this. He could always stand,

and lunge, and kill,

at a moment's notice. That's the sort of thing she loves. The sort of creature he is. The monster in her bed, in her home, invited here as all mythical monsters must be.

"We don't have to talk about it now," he relents. "But if it's on your mind -- and it's on mine, now -- we shouldn't bury it. Even if we don't know how to voice it." A moment of thought. "Maybe you can just say things to me as they occur to you. Whatever, whenever."

[Danicka Musil] "I try," she says, like whispering it will make it easier. "But you get so frustrated if you think it's something I've been hiding from you. I feel like I have to know exactly how I feel and what I think because if I tell you a week later or a month later it starts an argument. Then we don't even deal with it, we just fight about whether or not I should have told you earlier."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "I wasn't angry because you didn't tell me immediately," Lukas replies. "I was frustrated because I thought you didn't tell me because you thought it would be better for me that way. Because I was too upset, too weak, to handle hearing it."

[Danicka Musil] "I didn't tell you because --"

She cuts off, unable to keep going for a moment. The heels of her hands go to her brow.


The only arguments that are this tiring are the ones that matter. And this never quite reached the pitch of an argument. She never snapped. He didn't hit the wall in order to not hit her. Nobody stormed off just to get a few minutes to take a break and breathe. Which means that inside her there's a bowstring pulled taut still, pulled just as tight as it was last night, a week ago, a month ago, the night she went to bed with him after watching a movie and joking about the characters as she stroked Lukas's hair

because she needed, so desperately, for everything to just be okay. For it to be over, for it to be done, for them to be together and the fact that he almost killed her to not be that important.

Even if she can't, two months later, let it go. Or even figure out how to deal with it. If she should deal with it. If she shouldn't just pack her things at the den and give him her keys to the house and his bedroom back and tell him

I'm sorry. I can't.


The thoughts are swimming around in her mind as she looks at the floor, taking a deep breath, huffing it out, at a loss. "When you were like that, all I could think of was what would happen to you if you came out of it and found that you'd killed me."

nothing worthwhile left of me

She sniffs. "Baby, you were so scared. You needed it to be okay. For me to still be there, and be with you. And I needed --"

my life to go on the way I like it. my happiness. my mate. my nights in your arms. my freedom from my brother, from other Garou. my love. my mate. my nights spent sleeping with you at my back, knowing I'm safe.

"I needed that, too."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Were he in another form, Lukas's fur would be on end. He would be unable to stand still, forepaws rising and falling, tag wagging low and hard; perhaps pacing. He's not in another form, though. He's in this form, this skin, his human one, and he sits still. He looks up at his mate with his knees drawn up, his feet almost under him; his forearms relaxed over his knees, but just barely. Something flares in his eyes when she says, you needed it. Dims again when she says,i needed that, too.

He looks away then. At her feet. At the wall. Up at her again.

"I don't want to pretend everything's okay if it's not," he says. "I know everything's not okay, and never will be. Not perfectly, not always. Not for anyone, but least of all for us. There will always be danger and heartbreak and ...

"It's worth it. You taught me that." Something faintly imploring in the way he looks at her now; subtle but present in his voice. "Didn't you?"

[Danicka Musil] [Empathy!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 5, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Danicka Musil] [MORE.]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 4, 4, 6, 9 (Success x 1 at target 7)

[Danicka Musil] When she sees that flare in his eyes, Danicka looks at Lukas for a moment, the way he's poised, the way he could move at any second, and thinks to herself that sometimes he would be easier to understand, easier to read, if he were in his smaller four-legged form, ears and tail telling her his thoughts and feelings more than the body he was born into.

Even so, she can read what's there. So worried, after all this time, about being called weak. She doesn't point it out. She doesn't want to be exasperated. She doesn't want to argue. She's worn thin, strung tight, and she feels like that sculpture, that piece by Rodin:

I am falling under the weight of my stone.

She leans against the wall, as her mate says that he knows everything's not okay, and never will be, she puts her hand over her face at those words, almost unable to hear the rest. She does, though: hear him. It isn't perfect for anyone. But it's worth it. And when he gets to the end, asking her didn't you? it sounds very much like

...isn't it?

There are tears in her eyes when she lowers her hand again, looking over at him. The way she goes straight to telling him: "I just don't want to be scared of you. I wish I wasn't."

sounds very much like

yes.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] It's hard for her to hear those words. It's hard for him to hear, too. That she's scared of him. That after all this time, she's scared of him, and always will be.

Just as after all this time, he's afraid when she calls him weak. Not anyone else, because he knows what is true and what is not, there, and cares little of what others think. For a long time now, Lukas has been gifted with that much. That ability to see clearly in the face of insults and jeers; the ability to separate what must be done to maintain dominance against a challenger from the rage, the humiliation, the anger that could so easily run under any retaliation. He wasn't acting out of unbridled anger when he pinned Ezra to the ground and told him to fall in line or leave the city. He wasn't acting out of sheer rage when he killed Fons

(...the first time.)

in the challenge circle. He wasn't uncontrolled when he nearly strangled his kinsman, and he wasn't raging when he nearly drowned Kate's kinsman.

Danicka, though. She's different. Always has been. What she thinks of him matters, somehow. What she said to him when she found out what he'd done to Martin stung like a lash. Burned like a flame. When she tells him yes, you failed. but i do not think less of you, it matters to him. When she tells him you did well, that matters to him, too.

It's not that he seeks her approbation. Or fears her scorn, even. It's simply: she matters.

She's worth it.

"Are you scared of me right now?" he asks at length: a whisper.

[Danicka Musil] Every time Danicka speaks up and says Please don't do that or I wish you wouldn't or Sometimes I wonder or any of the ways she knows to carefully, carefully bring up an issue before it makes her snap in half, she worries about the argument to follow. The argument over whether she kept it from him and just held onto it like a grudge, the argument about whether or not he's really wrong or whether he can help it, the arguing, which for them always grows so tangled and so intense that there seems no way out of it but a so-called 'clean break'.

Telling him I'm scared of you is tantamount to telling him she isn't sure she can be his lover anymore. Hell. In everything but human law they may as well be married. They share homes. He claimed her from her family. She knows him better than his own does. He seeks her counsel; she opens her life to him. To tell Lukas I can't be with you anymore would be like a divorce. They would have to extricate themselves from each other, and even then they couldn't.

There'd be issues of claim to deal with. He would still be her guardian in Chicago. She'd try to give back his talens. He'd refuse. Every time she looked at them, or the gun he gave her, or the microscope he helped her put together, or the cat he met the day she brought it home, or anything she has, she would think of him. Miss him. Good Polish vodka. The look and sound of a decorative tabletop fountain. The taste of oranges.

It isn't all these small things that make her want to stay, make her not want to end it. She doesn't dread asking him if he wants her to delete his toons off of her World of Warcraft account so much that she would stay in this relationship because of it. But the thought of living without him, of knowing he's out there and that they aren't together, that they love each other but just can't make it work --

that's unbearable. That's more than she can stand.

Her eyes find his, and stay there. Her brow is furrowed. "No," she whispers, shaking her head. A moment passes, before she steps forward and sinks to a crouch. She's closer to him now, within arm's reach. He wouldn't need to jump up, lunge at her, grab her. Just reach out to her. "Sometimes it's just flashes. I can't predict when they're going to happen, and sometimes they go away quickly. Sometimes they linger. I don't mention it because I don't want you to start changing every little thing you do about the way you are with me. I don't want you to think I can't handle it if you clench a fist, or get frustrated with that drawer that sticks at the den and slam it. I don't want to tell you I've had nightmares since you frenzied and have you stop holding me in bed." She closes her eyes, wincing as she says that, and as she says: "I just want you to be you with me."

Her eyes open again. "I wish it weren't like that. I wish that I was never nervous around you. But it doesn't mean I don't love you, or that I don't trust you. I'm just frightened of what you might do, sometimes. And I think..."

She shifts downward, putting one hand on the floor, her knees bent and her legs to one side. Danicka sighs. "Sometimes I'm just apprehensive and it isn't because of you at all. Sometimes I'm just reacting to twenty-odd years of being constantly afraid. I know what this could become for us. I'm scared that it might be inevitable, and I'm sad at how hard we have to work to keep it from being like that."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] She winces when she tells him she's been having nightmares since the night he frenzied.

He flinches.

Lukas listens, though. He hears her out. All of it, painful or not. When she's finished he's quiet a while, eyes downcast, hands winding thoughtlessly together. After a while he looks at her again. She can always recognize him by his eyes, no matter the form. Maybe that made it all the worse that night on the street, when those eyes she's seen laughing, seen dark with lust, deep with love, seen glazed with the sheer sensory overload of what she does to him sometimes

looked at her without recognition on the street. Looked at her with nothing but lazy, primitive violence, as though she were nothing more than a small rack of tender meat he might or might not devour.

"I was starting to fool myself that you're never afraid of me anymore," he says. "But I don't want to love a perfect little fantasy. If I frighten you, I want to know so I can stop.

"I don't think anything is inevitable though. You told me once a long time ago, I'm not your mother. I'm not your brother. If I become like them," and perhaps it's significant that even on this, Lukas doesn't make the assumption that this is impossible, that this would never happen, "it won't be fate or genetics or hard-wiring. It'll be because I let myself become like that."

[Danicka Musil] What he says is true. All of this is the truth, finally dug out like a splinter working its way out of a wound you thought had healed. She didn't want to tell him sometimes I wonder if I should have left, and she didn't want to tell him that she's been having nightmares for two months, even if he isn't right there beside her. All this anxiety has been kept buried. It has to come out somewhere. But Danicka has always been good at hiding her fear.

The first lesson she learned was: I must be afraid.

And the second was: But I must not show it.

Sometimes it frustrates him to find out later, days or weeks or months later, that something scared her or upset her or made her angry. Sometimes he has to be reminded what telling the truth earned her in childhood. Adolescence. Even early adulthood. Even as recent as two years ago, she dared tell Sam she didn't want to be with him as anything but a friend, and he coerced her into his lap, mauling his face, as though the violation would teach her a lesson.

Joke was on him. She already knew that lesson: don't ever be honest. you will be punished.

Danicka sinks down, completely sitting now, moving closer to him by degrees. As though cold, she turns until their sides are together, and she wraps her arms loosely around her knees, looking at them. "If you do something that you probably shouldn't, and it scares me, then I'll tell you and if you can manage, then you can stop. But I don't think we'll survive if every time I'm nervous or apprehensive or scared, you try to find a way to stop or fix it."

She turns her head to look at him, her brow furrowed slightly. "You can't stop being what you are," she whispers. "And what you are is frightening to me. I love you, all the same. But that's the truth."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] There's a deeper wisdom in what Danicka asks for that most kinswomen -- most women, most people in general -- would be incapable of.

There are plenty of tittering, silly things out there who grow up fantasizing about the big strong men they'll love. Who pretend the jolt of adrenaline that comes with fear is a sort of thrill, a sort of love. Who pretend they love their abusive spouses -- or their Garou -- because they're dangerous, and aggressive, and ruinous.

Lukas has no respect for such individuals. He would not be here if Danicka were one of them.

But then there are those who would ask him to bite it back entirely. To stop, stop, stop at once if he so much as made their hearts jump. Not because he's angry, not because he's doing something he shouldn't, but simply because of what he is. If Danicka asked that of him -- asked him to stop frightening her, for god's sake, just stop -- he would agree. And he would try. But the trying would eventually drive a wedge between them. She'd be asking him to deny or control some part of himself as intrinsic as his heartbeat. She may as well as the tide not to ebb and rise. She may as well ask him not to breathe.

And he would grow to resent her for forcing him to control what he can't. And she would grow to resent him, when he failed.

What she asks, though, and what she tells him: it's a hard truth. And painful. But they're shadow lords. They do not shy for hard truths. And he's quiet a moment, his side pressed to hers, that contact -- so slowly, so carefully reestablished, like a wild fox creeping closer by the inch -- a reassurance in and of itself.

"Okay," is all Lukas says in the end, softly. "I can handle that if you can."

[Danicka Musil] They come at each other sideways. He sits very still on the ground and waits for her to come back, to come closer. He's made no move in her direction since she pulled away from him at the start. He's not even held out his hand to her. He's only said don't go. And waited for her to do this.

Take a step closer.

Crouch.

Sit.

Scoot near to him, then beside him.

And now this, finally, nestled against his side with their arms and bodies still self-contained but close enough that they can feel each other breathing, he still doesn't immediately move to wrap her up in his arms. He doesn't touch her, or nuzzle her, or reach for her with all the longing he's ever had for her and more. Lukas sits, and he waits quietly, and he uses a soft voice.

Small wonder that when they were first lovers, lying in bed, they talked of that chapter of that book. Small wonder that they spoke of taming, long before they could over speak of love.

His rage makes him what he is. His rage frightens her. It doesn't excite her, it doesn't arouse her. It was the single biggest obstacle to letting herself love him, from the beginning. To want him, fine. To desire him, alright. To enjoy fucking him, to like getting away with it, to do any of those things: fine. But to fall in love with him was, itself, terrifying, because she knew better than any of those tittering fools what kind of a life that would eventually -- perhaps inevitably -- be.

A life of constant strain, interspersed with mere moments of relaxation and calm. A life of stress and startlement and outright fear, of constant risk, punctuated with tense, careful arguments that might have to be abandoned before resolution just because he couldn't fucking take talking about it anymore. A life of swallowing the fact that all her freedom, all their equality, is something she has to work for and he has to work at allowing her.

With moments, mere moments, of peace.

Danicka curls forward, resting her forehead on her knees, breathing deeply. "Just don't take it personally -- as an accusation or an attack, I mean -- if I tell you I'm scared and there's nothing you can do about it but give me some room. It doesn't mean I want you away from me. It doesn't mean I blame you for it, or that you're doing something wrong. It shouldn't give you reason to doubt how I feel about you."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "I don't ever doubt that you love me," he says. "Not anymore.

"But," and this is more careful, choosing his words carefully so that he means what he says and says what he means, exactly, "if you had told me you'd actually come to the conclusion that you should have left that first night, I would have doubted whether you were still with me out of love. I would have wondered if you were here out of fear, or ...maybe just wishful thinking."

He quiet for a moment after that. And then he reaches out to her for the first time since she first drew away: his hand finding hers where it wraps around her knee, covering hers. He says nothing. The contact is all there is, speaking for itself.

[Danicka Musil] Her head lifted not long after she spoke while it rested there, her body still leaning forward. Danicka looks at him, one corner of her mouth tugging out. Her brow is still full of anxious wrinkles, her face still drawn with weariness.

So now he touches her. He reaches out his hand and slowly, carefully lays it over hers. Danicka doesn't jerk back as though burned. She doesn't ease away gently, indicating no, not right now, not yet. She doesn't try to lace their hands together; there is no need. She just lets him hold her there.

"Sometimes I wonder," she says, as though she must say this in the interest of full disclosure. "But it's just because this is so hard. And because I want to make sure I'm not still with you because I'm afraid to leave, or because I want to pretend this is easier than it is."

Danicka takes a breath, and leans against him now as she exhales. "Lukáš, I'm sorry, I'm just so tired. I just want to go to bed."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] It's like subconsciously or instinctively, Lukas was waiting for a sign. Some indication that she wouldn't draw away now. That it wasn't too soon. She leans against him, and he leans into her; he nuzzles the side of her face, his nose stirring her blonde hair.

He kisses her, too. His lips are warm against her temple; his beard-bristle faintly scratchy. A moment he rests there, mouth against her skin.

Then, "Let's go to bed."

[Danicka Musil] Even now, he doesn't overwhelm her. She's tired, and she had a run-in with an Ahroun tonight that stirred her enough to make her order him out. That stirred her enough to list off the names of her long-dead mother, something Lukas has never heard her do though he grew up hearing them in songs. The verse about her Rite of Passage, where Night Warder came from, how once upon a time this great deceased Elder was just like them, just like those new Cliaths listening. And so on.

One has to wonder if Danicka ever heard those songs. If she knows any of the stories told about her mother other than the last one, the one where she died, the one given to her on the front lawn of her house while she stood in stunned, cold silence.

Danicka is tired, and Lukas is just as much himself as he always is. Her inner strength is just barely enough to cope with what he is now. It's possible that as he grows older he will only become more filled with rage, and she might not get much stronger of will than she is right now. It might go back to the way it was at the beginning, when his mere presence made her flinch, made her drain herself dry trying to endure the stress of being around him

for the sake of desire, and for the sake of loyalty, but ultimately

for the sake of love.

She leans into him, curls against his side, til her head rests on his chest, til she can hear his heartbeat. She breathes in, absorbing the smell of him, holding it. "Thank you," she whispers, which is the first thing she said to him after they were alone, too.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] So naturally it's thoughtless, Lukas's arm wraps around his mate. She breathes him in. He kisses her hair. She thanks him, and he nuzzles against her a moment, then exhales a soft breath.

"Thank you too," he says.

Another moment or so, and then he gets up. He holds his hand out to her, and he holds her hand as they move out of the hallway. Her cat is on the back of her couch, eyes slitted, head turning lazily to watch them move.

His things still live in her closet, her medicine cabinet. It's a little bittersweet for him to see it now. To know that these little tokens of unity, these little signs of their entwined lives, may not be permanent. Are no more a promise of forever than anything they can give each other. It's possible that one day his rage will simply be too much. It's possible that one day he'll frenzy again, or lose his temper and slam the door shut in her face again, grab her by the wrist and refuse to let go again, and she'll just leave. She'll say, enough, that's it, the end, and leave.

Or worse: she won't.
Or worse: she'll stay. And everything they have will die a slow, cold death.

So Lukas is a little quiet as he brushes his teeth and washes up alongside his mate. Even in reflection, they're so starkly contrasted: the male large and dark, the female slight and fair. He bends almost double to wash his face, big hands splashing water up where it drips off his nose, runs off his brow, wets his hair and his neck. Afterward, while she's rubbing lotion into her skin, he razors his jaw clean and then wipes up the water he's left around the sink.

Lights out. They go to bed. He's on his back tonight, his arm inviting her against his side. She doesn't stay against his side. She moves over him and her hands are exploring, her mouth is exploring, his mouth opens to ask her are you sure but he just gasps, instead.

She rides him tonight and he holds her by the hips, holds her at the sides, covers her breasts with his hands, reaches out and grasps the edges of the bed when she's driving him out of his mind. In the end he holds her on him, holds her firmly on his cock as he comes, muffling groans in her mouth. When they're finished he doesn't want to move. He wants to think there's no way she'll have a nightmare tonight; she'll have the memory of his love for her, of his making love to her, and that will banish everything else.

He knows that's not necessarily true. He doesn't sleep apart from her, though. He wraps himself around her the way he always does, thinking to himself that if he lets himself change his ways for fear of what might be, then he may as well have never gone into the underworld and returned at all; he may as well have never won that hard-won battle against himself at all.

Before he sleeps, he whispers what she is to him. Mate. My mate. The words are blurry; he's so very sleepy. His hand cradles her breast. His palm holds her heartbeat.

In the morning he's awake before she is, but he drowses until she wakes, unwilling to leave just yet.