more than fair.

[Ilari Martin] There is a silence that coats the interior of a house in the moments before routine begins anew, like the insular world holding its breath until sheets are peeled back and feet returned to the cold floor. This isn't the case in a house occupied by creatures who hold no set schedule, who are on-call so far as the Nation is concerned. The amount of peace such beings are afforded only comes in stillness, if sleep itself is beyond reach.

Rage isn't an obtrusive thing, a blaring air raid siren in a time of war. It's more like the pervasive hum of electricity on an unprotected conduit, a third rail or a downed wire, louder and more unsettling in greater concentrations. It warns of consequence for coming too close. At the Loft, it is everywhere, constant. These days there are few Kinfolk who spend ample amounts of time at the Loft.

There is one, in particular, and he has grown complacent, comfortable, in the knowledge that he has thus far been able to sneak from Kate's bedroom to the front door without being accosted nearly every single time.

When he steps out of the master suite this morning, he is not remotely prepared to leave from the Loft to the office. He wears the same clothes he had had on last night, the smell of cigarette smoke settled into the fibers but only loud enough to be scented at close range. His hair is finger-combed into compliance, but he has not showered nor shaved. Compared to his typical means of presenting himself to the world in the winter of 2009, however, this is still a vast improvement. There is color in his cheeks; he is not a skeleton; he walks steadily, his vision bleary from sleep inertia and not hangover.

The door is closed quietly and cautiously behind him, and he shrugs into his peacoat as he tiptoes down the hallway. So far so good.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] ...but not for long. Three steps up the hallway and Ilari can smell someone cooking. It smells light, like cream and butter -- breakfast food. Pancakes, maybe. It can't be the hired help, though; Kate's housekeeper hit the kitchen at 5:45am every morning, on the dot, and it's only 5:30.

Besides, Kate's housekeeper is more experienced than this cook. Ilari can hear pots and cupboards banging. He can smell the unmistakable scent of something burning. And he can hear --

"Kurva. Shit. Fuck. Shit shit shit."

-- a low muttered string of curses that are definitely not Spanish, spoken by a voice that's definitely not female, definitely not fifty-something, and definitely, definitely familiar. At least passingly so. A second later the stove vents go on. Then footsteps, and then Lukas is jogging out of the kitchen and heading for the pool room to open the doors, open the windows, let out the smoke before Kate smelled it and woke up and freaked out because oh my god that's so unhygienic, burnt food will cause cancer don't you know -- and then he sees Martin.

The jog slows to a walk, a stop. He looks at the kinsman for a moment, his face setting into stone. A beat; then he twists his head on his shoulders as though something niggled at him. It passes.

"Morning," he says, cordially enough, and goes to open the windows.

[Ilari Martin] The amount of noise filtering out of the kitchen, alone, is enough to indicate that someone vastly inexperienced and probably more than a bit impatient is lurking within. Muttered Czech, a staccato burst of monosyllabic swear words, and then a streak of tall, powerfully-built Full Moon rushing out of the kitchen towards the pool room.

Without a sound, either exclamation or invective, the kinsman stills in his return of his peacoat to its place on his torso and watches. An eyebrow lifts, amused more so than alarmed; he gives a deft tug to return his collar to rights, and then he's spotted.

Lukas's face becomes stone.
Martin's is as legible as air.

Morning, the Shadow Lord says, and while the kinsman manages a game smile, neither tense nor particularly warm, he does not receive the greeting in return. The father of two looks after the Ahroun, looking to see what sort of a mess he's managed to leave in his wake, before dragging a hand down his face and pacing into the kitchen.

"I won't tell Kate you tried to burn the place down," he says, as though that's a concern on the Ahroun Elder's mind this morning; the stove, if it's been left on, is immediately turned off.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Windows opened, icy air immediately begins to stream in. Lukas is in what looks like an undershirt: plain, white, crew-necked. His jeans are nice, though. It likely means there's a buttondown shirt lying around here somewhere, and possibly a sweater over that, and a coat over that.

None of that's in easy reach. The hairs on his arms stand up from the cold, so he gets away from the open windows; heads back into the kitchen. The damage isn't catastrophic, thankfully. Just a thin, blackened -- oh, he wasn't making pancakes, he was making [i]crepes[i] -- crepe dumped upside-down on a plate, and a pan cooking in the sink.

Lukas snorts. He reaches past Ilari to punch the vent fan down to low, a wave of rage scalding the back of the kinsman's neck like flame. Then he's widening the distance again, pulling a fresh pan out of the cupboards to try again.

"Why don't you stick around instead," he says - it sounds midway between an offer and an order. "Help me make some crepes. I've been meaning to talk to you anyway."

[Ilari Martin] Now, for all of his standoffishness and his compulsion to keep talking well beyond the point where it has been proven necessary or even harmless, Ilari Martin is not a pillar of strength within the Kinfolk community. He cannot stand up to the mightiest of Black Spiral Dancers and casually lift a handgun before blowing it away; there are even some Gaians, like the one standing in this room, at his back, who cause a splash of cold anxiety to flood his stomach and flood up the back of his throat. There is little question that the hairs on his arms are standing on end not because of the cracked window but because when Lukas reaches past him to hit the vent he has no doubt in his mind that it is a monster standing behind him.

This is a monster who holds very little mapping in his memory banks, however. That night in the bathroom at the Brotherhood is a blur. His name, his position within the Nation, his relation to Kate, are all artifacts he has picked up since digging his way back into Chicago's landscape.

He takes a deep breath, washing the instinctive fear back down his gullet, and turns away from the stove.

"That sounds ominous," he observes, mild rather than mocking, as though this is the closest to making conversation he's capable of drawing. He shucks up the sleeves of his peacoat and approaches one of the sinks. It puts his back to the Ahroun, again, as Martin washes his hands. "What about?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "It's not meant to be ominous," Lukas replies. They're facing nearly opposite directions now, the Ahroun buttering the pan, the kinsman washing his hands. "We got off to a very bad start. And in all honestly, left to myself, you're probably the last man I'd try to befriend. Or even to know.

"But Kate seems to want you. Not just for a night or two, not just for a fling, but for the long term. And Dani&+269;ka," there's that name again, spoken the way no one else in the city speaks it -- not simply because he gets the Czech right, because god knows Chicago was chock full of Czechs, but because of the way it's intoned. The rare, involuntarily, unconscious softness that touches the edges of his voice when he says it, "seems to at least respect you enough not to write you off completely."

He turns the fire down a little. Low, this time, letting the butter heat up slowly while he picks up the mixing bowl of batter and starts whisking again. Lukas puts his back to the counter now, facing Ilari -- or Ilari's back, if that's the case -- his big hands holding the bowl and whisk with a comfort that says cooking, at least, is not entirely foreign to him.

"I love them both," he says then, and perhaps it's rare to hear a Shadow Lord -- to hear anyone -- admit such a thing with such unfaltering simplicity. "One's my sister, the other's my mate. I trust them, and I want them to be happy. And Kate, at least, is never going to be happy if we can't at least occupy the same space peacefully."

[Ilari Martin] When he has to be, when it's necessary, Martin can hold his tongue.

He washes his hands for thirty seconds, scrubbing under his nails and around his knuckles, spending far more time on his hygiene than a man who looks as though he quite literally just crawled out of bed and pulled on what was closest likely has any right to. It's a habit, perhaps, one small measure of serving as a model of appropriate behavior for his children when nothing else about his habits or his behavior could be considered remotely appropriate during their formative years.

Wash your hands before you touch something that someone else will touch. It's one of the few things the soon-to-be doctor and the soon-to-be Ahroun can claim that their father passed onto them as a direct life lesson rather than something they inferred via observation.

Drying off with a paper towel, Martin does not actually move to help prepare the crepes. Either the notion is beyond him--given that he and Kate have been conducting this affair of theirs clandestinely for several months now, one cannot imagine he has had much time to learn how to prepare her preferred dishes in her kitchen--or else he understands that the purpose of this conversation is not bonding, or preparation for breakfast, but to smooth out the wrinkles.

Martin watches Lukas adjust the burner's temperature, idle rather than with the sharp gaze of an anxious parent, and he comes to stand a sizable yet not ridiculous distance away from the Shadow Lord. He rests his hands, bereft of rings or tan lines indicating there was once a ring, on the edge of the counter and listens.

Strangely enough, he doesn't interrupt, doesn't even draw a breath to speak until Lukas has concluded.

"I'm willing," he says, with the good grace not to sound completely beleaguered, "to try to be civil." He makes no mention of befriending, or attempting to get to know, the younger creature. "For their sakes."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Well; Ilari Martin might think the only purpose of his hanging about is to talk, but Lukas is cut from a different cloth. Shadow Lords are many things. They run the gamut between charming and conniving, villainous and heroic. The best amongst their number are the most self-sacrificing Garou in the entirety of the nation; the ones willing to give up everything, even their own souls, in the name of victory. The worst are monsters, plain and simple.

They all have one thing in common, though. They're all pragmatists. Practical to the bone. Firm believers of hard work and results, even if that hard work is the manipulation of others. So when Martin's done washing his hands, he finds Lukas putting the mixing bowl aside and passing him some kiwi fruit. A small plastic clamshell package of blueberries. Another one of strawberries. And a peeling knife. Even at this hour, even performing so mundane a task as cooking crepes, Lukas's hands are not unadorned. There's a single ring on his left hand -- on the finger, if one bothers to check -- and it's brushed black tungsten with a thin rim in rose gold.

Kate hasn't even noticed it yet. But Martin knows what a wedding ring looks like, even one so nontraditional as this -- not by appearance, but by the where and the when, the ubiquity of its existence on a man's hand.

"Good," Lukas says. "So am I."

He picks up the mixing bowl again, then, turning back to the stove to tilt the pan this way and that, spreading the butter evenly before carefully spooning out some batter into the pan. Then it's more tilting and spreading, the Ahroun silent with concentration as he tries to get an even layer over the pan. It goes better this time than last. When Lukas sets the pan back down, nothing smells like it's burning yet.

"Why don't you tell me what you want from me," he says, "and then I'll tell you what I want from you. And then you can tell me what you're ... willing to give," a sense of stiltedness here, as though negotiating on such near-level footing with a kin -- not his mate or his sister and parents but just some kin that, for some reason he may never understand, is important to his packmate -- is still utterly alien to him, "and I'll tell you what I'm willing to give."

[Ilari Martin] He notices it.

There isn't much he typically does notice this early in the morning, the Martin that used to rely on cups upon cups of coffee to wash the sand out of his eyes, or line after line of cocaine to get his blood pumping again, who used to swear by the eye-opener to keep him from lapsing not into hangover territory but into profound alcohol withdrawal. Nearly two years of sobriety has not eliminated the fact that the twenty-one years to precede them were not only punctuated by but comprised entirely of words wrenched from the addict's diary.

These days he does not even drink coffee, on the advice of his doctor. A truce had to be called there, some sort of compromise between complete cessation of anything remotely resembling a chemical substance and being able to still smoke. Caffeine was sacrificed so that nicotine could remain behind.

That's neither here nor there. Martin functions quite well without caffeine these days, and while he notes the presence of the black metal on Lukas' ring finger, he does not question it. Not even a brow quirks as the considerably shorter, considerably smaller, considerably weaker kinsman reaches out to take the fruit from the Ahroun and begin the task of washing and peeling fruit.

It isn't surprise that has Martin's dark eyebrows rising up on his forehead but... disbelief, perhaps, or amusement, some strange melding of the two. Lukas wants to know what he wants. The last time he refused to answer a question he found himself met with the Ahroun's annoyance but not the threat of frenzy. He had not been beaten for his insolence or thrown into a bush or the fountain.

Kate had been thoroughly and unduly embarrassed, which was another matter entirely.

"I hadn't given it much though--"

Or any though, knowing him. At certain times throughout his speech, particularly as the previously sleeping man gains momentum, the Fang gesticulates.

"--but since you're asking: I would like if, whatever disagreements, ah... arise between us--and I do mean 'disagreements,' obviously any breach of Litany lies outside the sensible boundaries of my request--could be kept there. At my advanced age, Lukas, I've come to realize that not only am I difficult insofar as my personality is concerned but I'm also bizarrely resistant to change."

Fruit washed and chopped, he sets down the peeling knife. As he draws a breath to continue, Martin reflexively examines his palms, Kate's obsession with cleanliness subconsciously driving him to pluck a seed from the pad of his hand and flick it into the sink.

"Not unwilling, mind."

[Ilari Martin] [Don't ask how I typo'd "thought" twice. I did. It is "thought," not "though," though.]

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] While Ilari peels and slices, Lukas patiently makes the crepes. By the time the kinsman is done -- done slicing, done talking -- there's three or four laid out, and Lukas is spooning batter in for another.

And there's a silence. Thoughtful, not empty. There are Ahrouns who are empty-eyed, slavering monsters; Lukas is not one. Tries very, very, very hard never to become one. Even the times he's apparently lost his temper -- at Martin or at anyone else -- have been carefully crafted detonations, tightly reined, tightly controlled. He was taught early on that the only line between a Lord and a monster was control; that that line was particularly faint, particularly flimsy, for those of his auspice.

He clings to it, though. Sometimes to a fault.

"You want to make our relationship personal," he muses after a while. "You want to spare Katherine the humiliation of having to pick up after us. I understand that, and I can respect it. But that's a difficult request, Martin."

He turns from the stove again, letting the latest crepe cook over the fire. "We're not two men," he says. "We can't keep a sort of gentleman's accord the way men can. You're kin to the Silver Fangs, and I am a Shadow Lord. There's hierarchy involved; there's politics involved. For all intents and purposes, I am the Shadow Lords in this city. I represent them, speak for them, lead them. The same for my pack, and my auspice, though of all three titles, the tribal one is by far the most treacherous.

"My tribe abides no weakness. None. And my tribesmen only follow me until they smell or imagine vulnerability. It's not that I can't fend them off, or that I can't hold dominance by force if need be. It's that I don't want to. I want to lead them and keep our collective attention where it belongs: on the war. But to do that, I have to maintain my position in the hierarchy. And if I let a kinsman defy me, it'll look like a faltering. That's why every time you speak to me with disrespect -- and you are so very good at that -- I only have two choices. Bloody you myself, or drag you before Katherine for her to deal with. And while the latter might embarrass her, it'll at least allow her to maintain sovereignty over her own tribe."

The Shadow Lord's speech is almost formal; cadenced and measured. This isn't how he talks to his packmates, though Martin likely has no idea how he talks to his packmates. It's certainly not how he talks to the woman that wears the complement to that ring on his hand.

It is, however, at least thoughtful. Thought-out. Not a rant of fury but something about as close to a discussion as Martin might hear from him.

"So -- I suppose this is a roundabout way of telling you what I want from you in return. If you want me to keep things personal between us, to keep Katherine and politics and all the rest of it out of this, then I need your cooperation. I need you to restrain that difficult personality of yours as much as you can, at least in public. I don't need you to interact often with me or in any great depth, but when we do interact, I need some semblance of basic courtesy and respect from you. At least in public, I need you to minimize opportunities for 'disagreements.'

"In return," he adds, "I'll treat you with the courtesy and respect I'd give any kin of another tribe. I'll stay out of your private business and your tribe's business. I'll do my part in minimizing public disagreements as well. And when we're in private -- here or wherever else I might run into you in relative privacy -- I'll do my best to deal with you man-to-man ... such as we are, anyway."

[Ilari Martin] For what it's worth, the kinsman, nigh unto notorious for his refusal if not his inability to keep his thoughts inside his skull. It isn't enough that he can't seem to control what comes out of his mouth; it's that what does come out of his mouth is so articulate and well-constructed that there is not a doubt left in his audience's mind that he means to be this scathing, this thoughtless, this disrespectful. Perhaps it's true. Ilari Martin is, by the Nation's standards, an old man. He has borne and raised two children, one of whom will join the ranks of a people who are slowly dying out, the realization of their impending demise rising like a blood-red star on a distant horizon. He has buried both of his parents, buried a mate.

He looks old. The man standing at the counter is weathered, his skin like a map that has been beaten by the elements. Whatever has occurred in his life has driven him to drink, to insufflate a substance that contributed to a heart attack at a young age, and while it did not kill him, while he seems no more depressed or ungrateful to continue to live, anyone looking at him can tell that his life has been difficult. Even if it was only drugs--and with an addict, it is never 'only' drugs; there has to be an element of misery in place long before the first hit is taken, even if that misery is caused by an absence rather than an overabundance--it has been over half of his life wasted by only drugs.

That is enough for most people, let alone the demands placed upon him by the Nation, his family, his mate. He no longer wears a wedding band on his finger, has no reminder that he once loved a woman who was fair and regal yet tempered and immovable.

His daughter could draw comparisons between Marya Alkaev and Katherine Bellamonte if she were inclined to discuss the fact that her widower father is in this undefined relationship with a woman her age. She isn't.

Lukas is formal, structured, almost detached in the way he speaks to the kinsman, who is purposefully not making eye contact with a man larger and angrier than he will ever be. There is no fear written into Martin's frame. To anyone looking, he is just focused on his task of setting out fruit to be spooned into the crepes once they're finished.

When the Ahroun has finished, leaving space for a response, Martin uses the back of his wrist to push a shock of hair off of his forehead and turns to face him. In addressing him, his amber-colored eyes rise no higher than Lukas's nose.

"For what it's worth," he says, then pauses to switch gears. "This is likely to be of little consolation to you, but thus far I've treated you no differently than I treat anyone else. Hold it against me if you'd like, but the majority of my time here two years ago isn't a blur. It's nothing. What I know of you I've heard from Kate. What I know of our interactions prior to my first week here... I've heard from Kate. Anything I said to you, anything that... occurred... while we were in each others' undoubtedly pleasant company, I've heard from Kate. It isn't a memory, to me. It's... a story.

"Now," he goes on, pushing his hands into the pockets of his jacket. It's a nonchalant posture, keeps his body language open. "You speak of weakness, Lukas, as though it is something to be exploited or ashamed of, and maybe it is. Maybe your tribe is onto something. Maybe Kate's and my tribe is an ouroboros threatening to consume itself because madness is accepted rather than fought. My behavior was abhorrent and there isn't a thing I can do to atone for the fact that I neglected my children, drove away my mate and abused everyone who came into contact with me, but I'm not asking for forgiven for what I did, nor am I attempting to excuse myself on the basis that I was weak. All I can do is... try to be a better father and mate and... human being... now that I'm sober.

"We can dwell on the past, but it sounds to me as though it would be in everyone's best interests if we attempted to move past that.

"I'm not asking you to forget anything, or forgive anything, and I'm not attempting to use drug-induced amnesia to brush aside the fact that I said and did destructive things. Whether or not you respect me, or dislike me, is irrelevant. If it means anything to you, my word... my intention is to show you a greater allotment of respect than the average stranger is afforded. That doesn't mean I'm going to jump whenever you tell me to, but I also won't tell you where you can insert a request if you make one."

Get to the point, Martin.

"If we've moved on to what I'd like from you, I'd... I'm asking that you recognize that while I'm sure you have ample supply of instances where I was an insufferable prick when I was here two winters ago, my memory is not quite so hale as yours. The first clear recollection of spending time in your company is from that night in the park in... what was it? October?" A pause, and whether or not he receives assistance, Martin confirms, "October." His hands come out of his pockets. "A weakness, certainly, but don't mistake a weakness for an excuse. It is what it is. Kate's asked me to try; I will damn well try."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] This is perhaps the first civil conversation Lukas and Martin have had. Hell, it might be the first conversation they've had. Everything else falls under the category of interrogation, argument, or outright fight.

Or bullying. That's what Danicka called it, anyway.

And -- it is a conversation. There's give and take. There's speaking, and then there's listening. And Lukas is listening right now, leaning the small of his back against the counter, arms folded loosely, comfortably across his chest. He pauses only to flip the crepe on the stove, adjust the heat a little, and then turns back.

By then Ilari is wrapping it up, and after he's finished the Shadow Lord considers him another moment, lifting a hand to scratch idly at his beard-bristly jaw. Back when Martin lived with Danicka, Lukas never spent the night there. Never even visited. Now that Lukas spends the night more often than not, Danicka and Martin barely seem to be friends anymore. The point is: Martin doesn't know the Ahroun's personal grooming habits, that he shaves with a straight razor, old-fashioned and deft; that he shaves every other day or so, which is long enough for a decent crop of dark stubble to roughen his jaw. Even from his distance, Martin can hear the faint scritching his fingertips make across the stubble.

When he lowers his hand, he drops his arms to his sides, thumbs hooked into his jean pockets.

"I can't just wipe away what happened," he replies, "but you're not asking me to. You are asking me to try to believe that you're trying to ... do better with your life. For Kate's sake, if not your own. And I can believe that, because if you weren't you wouldn't even be having this conversation with me.

"As for respect -- I think we can agree to try, in our own ways, to give one another the respect we get in return. Sometimes that exchange won't be completely fair, and I suspect it'll only rarely truly be equal, simply by dint of what we are. But I'll try if you do. Is that fair?"

[Ilari Martin] Without the span of history on Martin's side that Lukas has dwelling on his, without the expansive conversations about what it is he's done and what it is the other man has done and how it is that they could potentially move past this rut that they've gotten themselves into, it is still somewhat impressive that they are able to not simply talk at each other but have a conversation. That first night they encountered each other in a year coming to a close, Martin had been dismissive, even rude, brushing off Lukas with the same attention he would have paid to a creature after his blood or his body heat. The kinsman does not appear the type to be capable of loving anything with which he does not share DNA; that he has taken on a mate in the past, that he returned to this city that nearly killed him to be with Kate--whether or not he would admit to this to what was, essentially, a complete stranger--says something about him.

What that is, exactly, is difficult to pin down. Closeness is something every human being needs, whether or not they will admit that it is something wanted, and yet Ilari Martin fights it. Whatever he and Danicka had shared in their relationship did not survive his sobriety and the physical distance between them. Every excuse he could find to keep Kate at bay, he had used. He used his addiction--his illness--as a reason to keep Imogen from seeking and finding friendship.

That his children not only continued to speak to him, let alone agreed to attempt a relationship with a man who was not the man they knew growing up, says more about them than it does about him. In Ekaterina and Peter Martin is a point in the favor of nature in the nature versus nurture debate. Those children essentially raised themselves.

Yet they, somehow, gave him an nth and final chance. It took.

When Lukas finishes speaking, Martin does not give a knee-jerk response; he does not offer up the first thought that comes into his skull, but rather draws a deep, almost cleansing breath, his eyebrows rising in due consideration of what it is they're discussing, and when he lets it out, what almost ends up being a smile twitches onto his lips.

In the presence of someone as primordially angry of Lukas, he can't bring himself to bear teeth.

"That sounds... more than fair," he says. After a moment, not quite so protracted as the previous, Martin lifts his right hand and extends it to shake, his eyes lifting higher up on Lukas's face for the first time since he emerged from Kate's suite.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas does not often shake hands like this -- like men, and not like bloody warriors or fabled beasts -- but there's no hesitation in the way he straightens up from his lean against the counter. His right hand comes up; he takes Martin's firmly.

The smile that doesn't quite make it onto Martin's face doesn't quite make it onto Lukas's, either. Different reason. In the end, Martin's memories are lost to the mists of addiction; Lukas's are starkly clear, and harder to forget. Harder to forgive. But then, that's not what they're trying to do here. They're trying to move forward. Move on.

They're trying, period.

After a moment, he lets go, turning around to take the crepe off the fire -- just in time to save it from charring past golden-brown into black. "Let's have breakfast," he says, a casual invitation to the oldest ritual of truce and peace of all; older than humanity, older than the Garou. "Do you want to go get Kate?"