beautiful name, hard thing.

[Danicka] "Okay," she murmurs, still holding him, even after he's set her feet back on the ground, even after he's relaxed his hold on her eversoslightly. She can smell the night on him, the cold, the churned earth, the aftermath of adrenaline, and she kisses his face softly one more time. "Get something to eat," she says, because that is apparently what she does now -- she tells him to eat now, nudges at him, urges him to make sure he's not hungry. "I'll pack my computer up."

There are some keystrokes behind him as he gets some eggs and sausage -- they're a bit dry, but still warm, and the milk isn't quite as ice-cold as it was when it was first set out on ice this morning -- because Danicka needs to tell her guildmates that L just woke up, time to go, sorry! And the guildies collectively moan about L's interference with their gaming. One of them makes a joke about some anime character named 'L' and is getting yelled at for making that joke the umpteenth time when Danicka logs out, logs off, and shuts down her laptop.

She's ready to go upstairs when Lukas is, the computer in its stylish little sleeve -- made of sustainable materials, no less. She refuses to let him carry it, and curls into his arm instead over to the elevator, down the hall.

Danicka opens the door with her keycard. Lukas shuts the door behind them. The bed is unmade still; it's not yet checkout time. They won't be checking out just yet, anyway. Danicka puts her computer down as Lukas puts his plate somewhere and sits so he can start eating. She has heard almost nothing from him but Hi, and a request to go upstairs. She is trying not to make any guesses about how things went: if he's just back for a rest before he continues his challenge at Stark Falls. If it's over and he succeeded. If it's over and he failed.

All that matters is that he's here, now, and he's alive. Exhausted, dirty, but alive. She sits close to him, and when he nudges his plate a little closer towards her she smiles faintly, fondly, and takes a bite of sausage.

"Are you okay?" she asks, still smiling.

[Cold Victory] Danicka, sharp as she is, perceptive as she is, can probably intuit at least this much: it's over. He's not going back to continue his challenge. That chapter is read, closed, done with. There's a sense of completion there; none of the pride or exhilaration, though, that one might expect of a Garou attaining yet another rank. One more up the ladder, as many below as above now. More, if the cubs and kin are counted.

The bed dents under his weight as he sits. He doesn't mind that it's not made, but he doesn't want to dirty it, either. He lays his coat down first, inside-out, lining against the sheets.

And he eats: hungrily, almost furiously so, as though he'd burned through some great store of energy tonight. If she weren't his mate, if he didn't love her so much, care so much, want so much to see her protected and cared for and fed and warm and --

all that --

he might not even remember to offer her the plate. Remember he does, though, and offer he does: nudging the plate her way, holding it for her while she samples the sausage. Nothing gourmet, but hearty, hale, still warm if not quite hot.

When she asks, he pauses a while, chewing, eyes on his food. Then they lift to her face, and he nods. He smiles a little. It looks tired, maybe a little sad; but happy, too. Happy to see her. Happy to be here.

"I'm all right. I'll be all right."

That's all he says until he's finished eating. He tries to make her eat more than she needs to; it's only when she assures him that no, baby, I'm full, that he takes the plate back and simply -- shovels it all into his mouth, mindless of manners, devours it, swallows it down.

Then he sets the styrofoam plate aside. The plastic fork atop. He peels out of his clothes unceremonioiusly: shoes and socks, sweater, shirt, belt, pants. "I passed," he says as he's dropping it all in a bundle by the bed, "but it was ... challenging. Hard. Iceriver -- that's the Ahroun I challenged -- named me Cold Victory. It fits better than I would've wished."

[Danicka] It matters that her first question has shit all to do with his challenge. It does not mean she doesn't care. It does not mean that his success or failure, his performance, his fitness, do not matter on some barely even conscious level for her. But it means something -- means even more because she cares about his strength and his reputation and all of that -- that she asks, first, if he's okay. If he will be.

Danicka, having taken an almost ritualistic bite of his food that she did not need, nuzzles his temple and kisses his cheek through the dirt on his skin. She murmurs no, she's okay. She already ate. And he's hungry. Eat, baby. Eat.

And he does. She stays close to him as he does, leans on him, then shifts away when he's done so he can move. She watches as Lukas strips down to his skin, not overtly lascivious, but her eyes track over his body in a way that is mutely, constantly aware. Wanting, however much that want is subsumed by other thoughts at the moment. A light goes on in her eyes when he says he passed, but whateve emotion spurred it finds no other expression on her face. She is not a normal kinswoman, or she would immediately pick up after him, tidy up after him, clean the clothes and throw out the dishes, scurry to do these things.

Danicka sits on the bed next to him and just breathes while he tells her. Another spark of light when he tells her his new name. She doesn't ask him to tell her more. She puts her hand on his leg and listens.

[Cold Victory] Now he's down to his underwear; his boxer briefs and his skin. Her hand is warm on his leg. It's hard to say who's warmer right now. He leans over, puts his elbows on his knees without disrupting her touch. Scrubs his hands hard over his face, yawns hard into his palms. Sits up again.

"I want to tell you the whole story," he says, "if you want to hear it. But later, maybe. After I've showered. And slept a little. And I still need to go back to the Sept. I want to ask after Miloš. And maybe tomorrow we can drop by my parents' before we fly back -- "

he's getting ahead of himself; thoughts disjointed and disorganized, a heap on the floor of his mind. He laughs quietly at himself. He can't seem to easily decide on an emotion to hold on to, stick to.

His hand finds hers, though. That, he can hold on to.

"I just want to say this much now. It was hard. I was told to ... help a pack find its Fostern Ahroun Alpha. To lead them in her stead. But something was afoot, and skeletons were walking, and humans were devoured, and someone had secrets. I could almost smell it.

"I ... did a pretty bad job of leading. I didn't know who to trust, so I didn't trust any of them. Made it impossible for them to trust me, when already the Beta was turning them against me all along.

"In the end we found the Alpha, and when we did the Beta ran. We caught him. The Alpha caught him. She ... killed him because of my pride." A flickerflash of frustration; the moment echoed through this one. "Christ -- I'm not even making sense."

He shifts again. Elbows back on his knees, hands in front of him, gesticulating as though to etch the map of the battle out into midair.

"It was like this. We had to go underground to find her, the Alpha. The cavern was collapsing, and we were climbing out of a tunnel. The Beta was running first. Then the Alpha. Then me, then the other three. The tunnel caved in as we reached the surface; one of the pack was trapped. She told me to help her pin her Beta so she could help the buried one, but she'd refused to give ground before, refused to give answers, refused me over and over when I was older and stronger and her better. That's what every ounce of my instinct told me: I was better than her, and she was refusing to acknowledge it. So when she asked -- when she ordered -- I refused. And she killed her packmate instead.

"For all I knew, she was the turned one at that point. I let him die because I was too proud to -- do something."

He hadn't intended to say so much. He doesn't know where the words come from now, but they won't stop. He presses his palms together for a moment, thumbs folded along the blade of his hand, brow to the base of his thumb.

"He came back. I put him down, and then -- finally, when I threatened to attack her if she didn't -- the Alpha told me the truth. They had broken the Litany, she and her Beta. Consumed human flesh. They'd done it for months, and when she tried to confess, her Beta turned on her and ... called spirits or raised creatures, set them on her. They dragged her off and kept her underground. Her strength cowed them into submission, but they wouldn't let her go. She wouldn't call to her own pack for help.

"When we returned to the Caern, the Elders took them away. They killed the Beta and stripped the Alpha down to Cliath, stripped her from her pack. Laid the Jackal Voice on her. And after all that, after all the shit she'd done and been through and seen, she was still so proud. I saw her before I left. If there was remorse, I didn't see it then. All I saw was anger."

Lukas is quiet a while then. He doesn't know if Danicka can make heads or tails of the story. He doesn't know if any of it made sense at all, but there will be time later for details, for a narrative, an accounting. Right now, he needs these words out of him. He needs these things laid out more than he'd realized.

"I wanted her to talk to her pack before they weren't her pack anymore. I wanted her to tell them why she fell. That it was her own weakness, her own fault. I wanted her to teach them how to move on from her. I wanted her to say ... something. Something that proved she was once fit to be their leader.

"She didn't say anything. In the end Iceriver told me to say what an Alpha should say to them." A small, short, helpless exhale. "So I told them it wasn't their fault she ate human flesh that first time. I told them it was at least their fault, in part, that they didn't confront her when they started to suspect. I told them she was wrong to keep them in the dark, but they were wrong to let her. To rely on her so utterly that they did not, could not, think for themselves.

"And I told them they could, and would, move on from this. That if they didn't lock themselves away from each other, didn't trust an Alpha so utterly and follow so blindly, they'd be all right. I told them to trust each other again, and ... to move on."

There's a pause.

"I told Iceriver, too, that I didn't think I was worthy of my rank. That I wanted to be a leader, not a mindless bludgeoning weapon. I told her I'd failed at that. She disagreed."

[Danicka] When she first met Lukas, he was... well, to call him reserved was being kind. He held so much back, especially from her and in front of her, wearing a mask just as impenetrable as her own -- though at the time he never would have admitted it was a mask, and wouldn't have expected that Danicka of all people could not see through it. But seeing him laugh for the first time made her heart ache, made her delighted, made her want to be a part of it, made her want to be held close to him while he laughed like that.

A few times they met, early on, he would suddenly loose a torrent of words at her, telling her every thought in his mind, every rush of emotion in his heart, everything he knew and thought he knew and suspected and --

and she'd listen to all of it. Silent, without interrupting, tasting every word as he gave it to her, learning him and knowing him because of these seemingly wild launches into expression. Even then, though, he seemed to know where he was going. He seemed to know what he wanted to say and what he wanted her to hear. He did, simply put, make sense.

Right now, this morning, Danicka hardly understands anything he's saying. When he huffs that he's not even making sense, she squeezes his leg once, but neither reassures him not agrees with him. But he doesn't even know how to feel right now, can't settle on one emotion, and he's still in exhausted turmoil from the challenge that, he says again, was hard.

She cannot tell him she thinks he did well, and she can't tell him what she thinks of the challenge or his performance in it. So she doesn't try. She hears certain points loud and clear. When he says he did a bad job of leading. When he says he didn't trust, and so he was distrusted. Those words twist in her, reminding her of a saying she once read about the liar's punishment. That much she understands perfectly, just as she understands what it costs Lukas to say -- to have seen in himself -- failure as a leader.

Danicka hears him when he speaks of his pride. What that cost, too.

She sees the effect it had on him to watch the Alpha punished and still prideful, unbowed and enraged even in her shame.

And she feels a strange, sad sort of pride in him, quietly, when he says that he told the Adren he challenged that he did not think he was fit. That he didn't think he was worthy. That he saw his failture and said Don't give me this.

When he's done, Danicka leans over and she kisses his temple, though it tastes still of sweat and earth. Brushes her lips off, and puts her fingers in his hair, gently suggesting with the press of her fingertips that he look at her. "Even if you don't think you showed that in the challenge, I know that's true. You're not a mindless weapon, láska," she says gently. "I'm glad she could see that, too."

Her hand on his leg squeezes again, then turns so she can lace her fingers with his, palm to palm, holding his hand. "Miloš is fine," she says, all but whispering. "Šárka told me that a Garou came to see them just before Christmas -- I'm sorry, I thought Istok would have contacted you to tell you, or I would have mentioned it before." She massages his scalp where her fingers are buried in his hair, a gesture even more hypnotic than the way she strokes his hair sometimes as he's falling asleep beside her. "It's been arranged. She's spoken to my brother. Šárka said she's visited a couple of times since then, watching Miloš. When he's close enough to his Change that it isn't safe to leave him there any longer, she'll take him to Stark Falls."

Danicka moves closer, wraps her arms around his shoulders. Nevermind her nice sweater. Nevermind the dirt. He can feel, dimly, the difference between the skin of her fingers and the thin, small spot where it's flesh-warmed gold touching his arm. Her ring. Or even: his. The one he gave her. The one he got for her, got to represent her, to represent their bond, the one he put on her. The one she takes off so rarely that come summer there will be a white band of skin against the golden tan she wears in the sunnier months.

"Baby, we can go back tomorrow if you still need to, but ...you don't have to think about any of that right now. Thank you for talking to me." Her arms tighten around him briefly. "Take a shower. Come get in bed with me. Let me hold you while you sleep."

[Cold Victory] When those words - roiling, tumultuous - are out of him, Lukas is quieter. Danicka comes closer and he wraps his arm across her lap, around the outside of her thigh. She's dressed for the day. He's peeled down to his underwear, as though ready for night. For sleep. She kisses his temple and he closes his eyes, leaning into her as heavily as a child or an animal.

Consistency, she told him once, is for children and animals. Sometimes he wants to tell her even that's not true anymore. There's no consistency in what he needed to say, how, what he spilled out, a torrent of failure and frustration wrapped around some cold, hard little core of victory that doesn't come close to triumph. He turns to her, though, and his eyes open slowly when her fingers urge him to.

She tells him something that he perhaps needs to hear. She can see the understanding in his eyes, which are almost alien right now: very far from human indeed. She can still see comprehension there, zinging down those black pupils like a light cast into a well.

Iceriver could see that, too, Danicka says. She may as well say, Iceriver could see that, and judged you accordingly. Judged you on your potential, on what you've done, what you tried to do. What you did do, despite your failures.

It helps. She holds his hand. That helps, too.

Then she tells him about the rest of the world, which turned on while he was down in the darkness, down in the earth with the bones of the long-dead risen before him. She tells him where Milos is now, what arrangements were made. She wraps her arm around him and he leans into her again, his brow to hers, quiet now, resting while she tells him:

wash. sleep. rest.

"D&+283;kujeme vám," he says softly. His hand comes to cover her cheek briefly.

Then he draws a breath so deep his shoulders rise against her arm. He nuzzles her briefly but unabashedly, a heavy rubbing of his face alongside hers before he straightens. Gathers strength, and solidity, and all his weapons and tools of logic back to himself. Arranges them before himself, looks them over, tucks them away into his mind, and manages, at the end, a faint little smile.

"See you in a little while, okay? You don't have to stay with me until I wake. But I'd like it if you stay with me until I sleep."

[Danicka] Danicka wrinkles her nose -- though fondly -- when Lukas rubs his face against hers. She nuzzles him back all the same, smiling as she does so, as he gets her face dirty. No matter; she'll wash it, and she'll brush her teeth, and then she'll crawl back in bed with him.

She kisses him, too.

And huffs a laugh at what he says. "Baby," Danicka explains, "I'm not going anywhere. You don't have to ask that. I'll be here when you wake up, even if I'm not in bed with you." She kisses him again, like she can't help herself, and touches his face as she withdraws. "It's a beautiful name for a hard thing," she whispers, like a secret, so close it's hard to tell if he heard it aloud or if she somehow transferred it to him with her eyes alone.

"I'm glad you're back with me," she says. "And I'm proud of you. For everything."

[Cold Victory] The corners of his mouth move; are smiling when she kisses him that last time. He thinks a moment as she withdraws.

"It is," he agrees. And, a second time, even quieter now: "D&+283;kujeme vám."


In the shower, hot water blasts the night away. Dirt, leaves, twigs, blood, bonedust: it runs off his skin, swirls around his feet, runs and runs until nothing's left but clear water. He bears no wounds, no new scars. This challenge was never about that sort of thing.

Long after he's clean, long after his hair literally squeaks between his fingers and his skin is pink from the heat and the moisture, he stays in there. Finally, when Danicka comes in to wash her face and brush her teeth, he starts: he'd literally dozed off on his feet. He turns off the water then, one or two brief gestures, and then steps out of the shower with his fingertips wrinkled from water.

He wraps his arms around her from behind. Clean now, smelling faintly of motel shampoo. He says nothing, just holds her, rocking gently to and fro. After a while, he begins to smile. She can feel it, the curve of it against her neck when he bends to her.

They leave the window curtains open. Lukas doesn't mind. He says he likes it like that; wants to sleep in the pale sunshine of winter. Maybe if he's up before dark they can grab a quick, late lunch together, he says. In either case, they can order pizza when he gets back from the Caern,

because he will come back from the Caern. There's no question about it this time.

Lukas is in the middle of musing over whether they should get meatlover's or barbecue chicken when he drops off. There's little warning; just his voice getting blurrier and blurrier, his breathing deepening, attaining a rough, unconscious edge. He's hot from the shower, clean and naked and warm, and he wraps around his mate and sleeps deeply, heavily, like a man who hasn't slept for well over a day. Well over two days, perhaps: since sometime before taking the moonbridge to Stark Falls.

By the reckoning of the Nation, he's changed indelibly. He's mightier now than when she met him; mightier than when she mated herself to him, and when she married him. Perhaps some small part of him worried that it would change things. That she would recognize his rank as being the same as her brother's, so similar to her mother's. That she would, on some subconscious level, reject that. Reject the ever-stronger, ever-more-terrifying thing he's becoming.

Nothing changed. Here in the confines of these walls, away from the Nation and away from the Garou, nothing's changed at all. She still looks the same to his waking mind and his sleep. She still smells, feels, is the same,

and so is he,

and so are they.