present tense.

[Cold Victory] Lukas stays where he is. He stands a long time, waiting for the night to take him back where he belongs. It doesn't happen, and after a while he sits.

He wonders if Night Warder has gone back to her family. He thinks about the little girl that lives in that house, and he thinks about her brother. He wonders if he took out his petulance on her tonight, denied recognition by his mother, denied the chance to hunt like the big bad wolf he really is.

He wonders where Night Warder's pack is; those wolves moving in such swift synchrony, a hurricane around him as he fought. He wonders if he'll see them again years from now, fifteen, twenty years older, that much stronger. He wracks his memory; tries to come up with the names. Surely they're beyond Adren now. Athro, or higher. Surely he would've heard of them, unless --

And then he goes. He moves through the black night, a man dressed all in black, and then a black wolf. He hounds the city streets, tears shadows apart where he finds them. He goes all the way to the Bronx, where the brownstone is already weathered but not quite so weathered; where at the last minute his nerve fails and he doesn't look in

to see himself, seven years old and sound asleep in bed; his sister nine or ten. His parents, much younger then, his mother's hair thoroughly blonde still, his father's only barely beginning to grey.

He watches over that house, though, silent and dark, guarding his kin. Guarding himself, and that precious, painful future that, for better or for worse, and at terrible cost, he's managed to preserve tonight.


When Wyrmbreaker comes out of the past, there's no indication, no change. Just an entire and soundless shifting of all the world in the space of an eyeblink. The surface beneath him is not a rooftop but asphalt. The vast, old, crowded sprawl of New York City has been replaced by the broader streets, the looser webwork of Chicago.

He knows what to do. He knows what he should do -- go to the Caern, alert the Guardians, call the packs, hunt en masse. But he's tired of responsibility tonight, sick of the right way; has no right to claim any of that, anyway, when he was so ready to fuck the future over for the sake of one little girl's not having to suffer through beatings she'll survive past, and thrive past, anyway.

So he hunts alone. And they are fewer, these shadows. One or two at a time, skittering along walls, slinking into bedrooms. Maybe they're dying out with their prey; isn't that the way of the world? Or maybe they've simply infected so many now that there aren't so many left to run amok. Wyrmbreaker doesn't care. He shreds them as he finds them, and moves on. He clears the land around the den; around the Brotherhood; around 520 Kingsbury.

When the moon sets, he feels it like a weight lifting from his mind. The sky is beginning to turn. He wonders where his mate is. She said she'd be out with her pagans. Celebrating the night and day; their balance. Wolf-shaped, shadow-shaped, he turns west toward the preserves and the forests, the woods.

[Danicka] Westward, through the forest preserves that dot the landscape towards Stickney. Silly little name for a silly little town. There's the community center where Danicka has joked about running for some local government post after she graduates. We should get you on the school board, she laughed to Lukas, driving past it one day to pick up their mail from the P.O. Box where they have everything routed since they're not at the den enough. I'm pretty sure we'd have the healthiest school lunches and the most epic athletics improvements in the state after your first meeting.

And a library expansion, he'd answered, if only to remind her that he's more than a musclehead, a jock. Well, you are Jaroslav's son, she'd retorted, as though the library was a given.

How easily they talk about such things now. Having children together. Him being in their lives, invested in their futures, their education. Danicka has even asked him how he feels about, in a few years, making up the downstairs bedroom for Irena. Of course she wouldn't be able to stay there all the time, she'd be at the Caern most of the time and with Lukas, trotting along after him trying to learn how to be a good monster, one with open eyes and cunning mind. And a heart. A heart that would, sometimes, have a place in her mentor and half-aunt's home.

He runs towards his home, his den, his mate. His mate, who has not thought of the name Call of Thunder in many, many years.

Though sometimes in the summer, she thinks about the day he stood on the other side of the gate in front of her house and told her where her mother had been for the last two weeks. In the summer-warmed ground, body wracked with silver-burnt holes.


Dawn begins to search for him, reaching slowly lightening fingers across Chicago. The sun comes up, hitting the awakened windows of his den. Danicka's car is in the driveway. All the lights are off.

[Cold Victory] The first few times he came out to the silly little house that would become his den, Lukas took the long way. He took the 290 out to Harlem, and Harlem down to 40th. These days -- more familiar with the area now, its little brick houses and its open forest preserves -- he takes the 55 to Cicero, and from there, a quick left onto Pershing.

Which takes him past little community center where Danicka joked about local government. Where he pointed out the Mayor's name was already Daniel A. something or other. Where they pass the Czech deli every time they come home, and the dentist next door that shares Danicka's last name, and the pet store just down from that where Lukas once bought a little ceramic bowl for Kando

(that she turned her nose up at, but that's beside the point.)

Tonight, he doesn't drive at all. He runs all the way from Chicago, and he's been running so much, running and fighting and running and fighting again, that he's tired, his paws are worn, his muscles aching from exertion. Dawn is at hand when he closes in on his den, panting, a run slowing to a trot to a walk.

He can see the vague shape of Danicka's car in the driveway. He can see the glass spirits shimmering in the windows, glistening a hello at him as he paces past. The lights are off. The electricity spirit huddles in the meter, grumbling. He scents the air. He's uncertain, a little nervous; he can't easily say why, except he already knows:

he hasn't been with her all night. He should have, he should have, but he couldn't. And his mouth and paws still stained with shadows, still stained with her mother's blood from eighteen years ago, he paces behind the house, into the shade of that fast-growing oak of Perun, to whom he whuffs a low hello before gliding across the lowered Gauntlet of this area.

The lights aren't on in this world either. He lets himself in the back door instead of the front -- takes a quick moment to wash the blood off his hands, his face, before climbing the stairs to the second floor.

[Danicka] The only reason Danicka's car has any shape at all in the Umbra is because of her love for it. Her car. She didn't ever have a car before she moved to Chicago, and then she had that ridiculous convertible that completely ignored what Great Lakes area winters are actually like. She laid atop the hood of this car naked one summer for some of the hottest sex of her life, Lukas mauling her mouth and running hands up her sweat-slicked skin. In the spirit world, that vague shape has a sleek, sexy look to it. It has a thrum of youthful delight. The taste of freedom, of independence, of ownership. She bought it. It's hers and no one else's. And it's so hot.

The oak of Perun groans softly in the wind, an answer to his hello. For such a young tree, it has such an ancient voice, thunderstruck though the tree itself has never tasted lightning. The shadows of the spirits fade as Lukas crosses over, fleeing his vision if not his awareness. His key fits quietly into the lock. There's no meow; Kando isn't up at this hour, roaming the downstairs. Sunlight has started to glint through all the windows, turning the air a hazy white-gold. There's a smell in the air, burnt herbs and flowers, lighter than incense but potent enough to his nose. The house is veritably spotlessly clean; he can sense it as he washes, as he walks through it, as he climbs upward.

The door to the bedroom is closed, keeping the warmth in. The heat in the house is very low, and at the moment the air is crisp and cool. As slowly as he turns the knob, dawn is coming and Danicka -- however late she got in -- has a rather normal circadian rhythm. Her sleep isn't terribly deep at the moment. He can see her when he enters their room, stirring gently in their bed.

There's something comforting about this. When he comes to her in her apartment she's usually somewhere near the middle of the bed. It's just what she's used to. He usually crawls in beside her anyway and she scoots over, drops back asleep. Sometimes he wraps his arms around her and she turns to him, nuzzles into him, holds him against her body until their nuzzling turns to kissing, until their kissing turns to gasping, until he's rolling her under him with a quiet groan.

But here, she's always sleeping on the right side of the bed, farther from the door, lying on her left side as though always, always waiting for him to come and take his place beside her.

There's a dress hanging on a hook over the closet door, a length of white that, shapeless when off her body, she probably wore tonight at whatever ritual she attended. Knee-high boots set nearby, a shawl tossed over the bottom corner of the bed. There are flowers scattered across her nightstand, lavender and daisies that she had braided into her hair before she came home and unwound them. She smells clean, though, he can tell that from across the room. She showered when she got here. She smells like her chamomile and bergamot bar soap, that French-milled finery that lathers so richly when he washes her with it sometimes.

She doesn't wake completely, when he comes in. Just stirs, and then returns to sleep.

[Cold Victory] It's a little warmer in the bedroom. Only barely. Morning light, grey and golden, is beginning to wash through the windows that they keep pristine, keep clean, wash with nothing but water and a little vinegar because cleansing is a form of prayer, and chemicals would be an insult.

Lukas lingers near the door, closing it silently behind him. His mate stirs as she feels his presence, the warmdark of him that his packmates can literally sense across their pack bond. He thinks of what the shadow said, dying; about their kin, about the corruption.

Lukas hates himself for wondering, for doubting, knows very well that it could have been a lie designed to twist the Garou against their kin. But he can't help it: he wonders and he doubts. None of the guardian spirits of his den seemed agitated. Frightened, or angry. The glass was bright; the oak was calm. He tugs his pullover off first, pulling it over his head, dropping it on one of the beanbags to keep it from staining the carpet. Just in case. He sheds his shirt as well, and as he does so, he stretches his senses into the spirit world again, looks across the Gauntlet to see the other side.

And he stays by the door. The shirt is dropped atop the pullover. His socks, next.

[Danicka] The room is as it always is. Those flowers aren't awakened but they seem blessed somehow, stronger somehow. The glass glints happily, cleaned to gleaming before Danicka went to sleep. The house is full of Danicka's forms of prayer.

And she stirs again in their bed. The noise of the door, that soft click, woke her a little initially, not his presence. Just a surface awareness, quickly submerged again. In sleep, his presence does begin to seep into her, warn and warm her all at once, til she's breathing in again, not just stirring but waking.

When he returns his sight to his own room, to the world he can share with her, Danicka's eyes are half opened, watching him as he undresses. "Hey," she murmurs sleepily, when he meets her gaze. She's smiling softly, still drowsy. "No twigs?"

[Cold Victory] There's still blood on his chest and shoulder -- trickles where it ran down his neck, smears where Night Warder took a chunk out of him. He pushes his pants down and steps out of them, unashamed, unlascivious, meeting her eyes as she wakes.

His smile is sudden; it looks relieved, a little sad. He shakes his head. "No," he says softly. "I went somewhere else tonight." And straightening, tossing his pants over the beanbags as well, "Let me shower, and then I'll come to bed."

[Danicka] The blood on him doesn't make her breathe in sharply, panic like she's seeing a nightmare. She knows he was going to hunt tonight. She doesn't know it's his blood. That tonight -- that eighteen years ago -- he took her mother down from a thrall frenzy. That her mother took him down from one, too. All the blood means to her, right now, is that it will be a little longer before he comes into their bed with her, holds his warm body against hers. A little longer.

She does breathe in, deeply, and nods, drawing the covers back and sitting up. She's wearing a nightgown, but it isn't much of one. Not quite a teddy, but it is a silk blend, falling a few inches down her thighs, trimmed in lace that embellishes but is kept from her skin by the lining. "Okay," she says, and rises, walking over to him.

Her hair is tousled; she went to bed with it still damp. She wraps her arms around him from behind, nightgown and blood and all, and makes a low noise of sleepy contentment. "Mate," she mumbles, her hands resting on his stomach. One rests on his scar.

[Cold Victory] Her hands on his body. Her warmth against his back. There's dried blood under her hands -- thin streaks of it dropping down the cut planes of his chest, past the musculature of his abdomen that tightens reflexively as she touches him.

For a moment it feels almost obscene to be here with her. He can hear Night Warder's voice -- a few hours old, nearly twenty years old -- you speak to me about sex with her? she's eight years old. He can still taste her mother's blood in his mouth. See the fury in her eyes, blazing, helpless. She can't change the future. She's already dead.

Then his hand comes up and covers Danicka's. Folds over her slender knuckles, her long fingers. He raises her hand to his mouth and kisses it; replaces it over his heart.

"Baby," quiet, "did your mother ever ... talk to you about me?"

[Danicka] Once upon a time, when he was resisting her, pushing her away, because she was the sort of woman who could drive him mad, the sort of thing that could change his life and he didn't know how, he didn't know how to prepare for it, he didn't know how he'd survive if he let her change him and then

she just left --


Once upon a time, Danicka walked into a shower with him as he was scrubbing blood off of himself. She wore her dress, a pretty dotted brown thing that was utterly ruined after that, and touched him even though he was sticky with ichor, and it... well, from her perspective, it horrified and disgusted him, angered him. Confused him. The blood didn't bother her. The savagery of how he looked that night didn't bother her. The way he demanded that she leave him be, let him go back and clean up the mess he'd just made in the alley, get rid of the metis-formed bodies of Spirals -- in a way, it turned her on. That dedication. That focus. She liked him. She liked that she could, whatever sort of a prick he could be, respect him.

Now she just holds him, not caring if he's bloody, not feeling even remotely obscene. She's not eight, and while it would be a lie to say she doesn't think about her mother very often, Laura has been dead for a decade and Danicka is warm and gentle with sleep, as far from those harsh, cold memories as she can get.

Lukas can taste those sorts of memories even now. He carried them back with him. His blood. Her mother's blood.

"Thump-thump," she drowses, feeling his heartbeat against her palm. He can feel her smile against his back. "Thump-thump."

And he asks what he does, which makes her smile fade, confused. She yawns, and squinches up her face against him, holding him. "My mother never met you, baby," she reminds him tenderly. "At least I don't think so. Maybe she was there once or twice when your family came over, but she was usually away." A beat. "Did you mean like... when you were..."

Another beat. Her voice sounds a little sleepy-plaintive: "Baby, that's a very weird question, what are you talking about?"

[Cold Victory] A few moments of quiet, his breathing steady and lulling against her cheek. He wants to tell her to go back to sleep. Forget he ever said anything. He wants to wash her mother's blood off his body and leave Laura where she belongs: in the past, long gone. A monster. A legend.

"I think," he says instead, slowly and quietly, "I met her tonight. I can't be sure. It might've all been a dream, or some trick of the Umbra, but... I think I was in the past. In 1993, the last time the moon was this close. I think maybe I was called there to ... protect you. I don't know. All I know is I was standing on the street where you lived, and you were riding your bicycle, and there were shadows following you but you couldn't see them. So I followed you to keep you safe.

"And then your mother was there, so suddenly that you slipped and fell. She didn't know me. She was warning me away from you. Speaking to you in Russian. I think she must have told you to go home, go home now, because you did." A pause. "Do you remember any of this? It was a full moon night. You were eight years old."

[Danicka] The way Danicka lets go of him is... abrupt. Rejecting -- not him, but what he's saying. Recoiling. This is not...

Danicka steps backward, and she's quiet. He's facing forward, and he was thinking of telling her to go back to sleep, forget he said anything. And then he tells her the truth. Danicka doesn't walk around to see him from the front. If he turns, she's rubbing her face, tense.

[Cold Victory] Of course he turns. Almost the instant she lets go of him, he's turning, facing her,

her mother's blood on his body.

She doesn't know that yet, though. And he's watching her, holding his hand out toward her, some mute plea that falls away entirely after a moment. He's been naked this whole time, but now he feels altogether bare, vulnerable, as defenseless as he was when he had no consciousness at all.

"Danička," he whispers. Nothing more or less.

[Danicka] Her hands move from her face, hearing him turn. She looks at him, so much wearier than she was a moment ago, and exhales. That he's naked and she's so close to it doesn't affect their intimacy tonight, somehow. That she stepped away from him might, but... even now, reaching out to take his hand without a thought, holding it warmly, it seems like it's okay. Or will be.

The truth is, she just woke up. She's tired and emotional and all she wanted tonight was for him to come home, and be safe from yet another hunt where he didn't die. She wanted him to make love to her, welcome spring with her. Hell. It's why she's wearing that pretty little slip, so that he'd feel lace and satin under his hands when he got into bed with her and want to tug it up over her hips, pull it down from her breasts, fuck her rough and tender all at once because she's his mate, and it's spring, and the moon is so full and their den is warm and clean and safe.

She doesn't even know how to process what he's saying to her. But for Danicka to tell him I was sleeping and missing you, why are you doing this? sounds too much like whining to her. She's vaguely angry for a moment, and he may very well think it's at him, but it passes quickly. She just sighs, holding his hand, looking at it.

Her eyes lift to his slowly. She looks... tired. Depressed, maybe. Overwhelmed, absolutely. She knows why he's asking -- at least part of it. To know if it was real. Danicka just nods. "I remember that," she says quietly. "Because she wasn't around, most full moons. She usually stayed away."

There's a pause. "Though I think that was the first time I found out that on a lot of those full moons, she was there, just... on the other side. Watching us."

There's no warmth in that. No comfort, no feeling of being protected. Jesus. No wonder she's so hypervigilant. No wonder her heart starts racing every time she hears, feels, senses a Garou coming through the gauntlet.

Danicka looks faintly desperate. "Baby, I don't know if I can handle talking about this. I --" her throat moves in the growing morning light. "I really don't know if I can handle you telling me about this."

[Cold Victory] Once already tonight Lukas just would not stop, said more and more and more until Night Warder had to just turn away from him and try to forget his existence; everything he ever said.

He doesn't know if four years later -- twelve years ago -- Night Warder, dying on silver lances, remembered any of what he said. He doesn't know if she remembered that her mate would be alone, her son would be twisted, but her daughter would be strong. He doesn't know if, even at the hour of her death, she could bring herself to believe any of that. Or take comfort in it. He supposes in the end it doesn't matter. Nothing changed; the past is still the past.

This time, riding the fragile meniscus of the present, Lukas doesn't go on. He doesn't talk, and talk, and talk, and rend Danicka apart with everything he could say. All the things he can barely hold in himself right now. She says she can't handle it, she really doesn't know if she can handle it

and he reaches out to her, touching her face with his free hand, pulling her closer even as he steps forward.

He doesn't kiss her mouth. Not like this. He kisses her brow, though, a solid press, flush and warm and full. He closes his eyes and nuzzles roughly against her for a moment, whispering okay. okay.

"We won't talk it about it now," he adds, wrapping his arm around her shoulders, pulling her against him. "When you're ready to talk about it -- if you want to talk about it -- we'll talk about it then."

[Danicka] She closes her eyes as he kisses her forehead, because she can smell the blood on him, though her nose isn't sharp enough to detect whose it is, how old it is, what part of the body it came from. She stands there, and though she's slept a few hours she's suddenly exhausted. There's some mercy in the fact that he stops, but hearing what he says, she lifts her head and shakes it. "Baby... no. I don't mean I don't think I can handle talking about it right now. I can't, but... I don't know if I can wrap my mind around you being in my past like that, with my..."

She looks away, and takes a breath, and looks back to him. "I'm afraid to even try to process what you've already said to me. I'm afraid it's just going to break my brain. I don't...want you to talk to me about this."

Which is hard for her to say. He can see that clearly enough, see and hear the ache in her eyes and voice as she says it. "I can't hear you talk about my mother, meeting her as one adult to the other and seeing me as a child. You being there when I was a child, seeing me --"

Danicka winces. "I can't listen to you... resurrect her like that. I had to make my peace with everything she was to me after she died. And if you tell me everything, talking about her like she was alive just yesterday and you were talking to her, then I have to go through that again. Only then it changes her, and it changes you, and it changes me and... I'm not sure that would be a good thing."

Her hand squeezes his, and she steps forward, laying her brow to his chest, in between two streaks of blood. "She died a long time ago," Danicka whispers. "She needs to... stay dead. So... I don't want to talk about it. If you talk to... I don't know, Katherine or someone about it and you figure out there's something you really need me to know, something you really have to ask me... then maybe we can talk.

"But the past is the past," she whispers then, after a breath. A sigh. "You're here now. With me."

[Cold Victory] In some ways, this feels like a hollow victory. Because it was a victory, wasn't it? He was called into the past by powers beyond his ken; set before a little girl who was his past playmate, who would become his future mate. Tasked with her protection, with destroying those things that had threatened her,

which he did, though only with great effort, little triumph. So that must be a victory, then. But everything else -- everything --

It was Night Warder who unlocked the secret: how to attack these things without the help of some time-lost Ahroun. It was her pack that hunted down and killed most of those things haunting New York, 1993. All he's done is give Night Warder a truth she didn't want, and couldn't believe. Disappoint her hopes of discovering, knowing, if only through a stranger's eyes, the woman her daughter would become. The man she would be mated to. Couldn't sway her, change her, couldn't ask her to do what she was already trying so hard to do.

Protect your cubs. Protect them. Keep them safe.

And then he returned to the present. And there was no great war here to be fought, no vast number of shadowmen to tear apart, tear down. There was nothing but a few unimportant scuffles and a quiet return to his mate

only to find that she doesn't want to know, either. Doesn't want to hear the one, bitter message her mother had for her. Doesn't want any of it, because she can't handle it.

And he doesn't blame her. He can barely handle it all himself, right now. The past is the past, she says. You're here now, with me, she says, and his heart twists because it's hard not to think of what price paid in pain and blood and terror bought this present. Him, with her.

I don't know why any of it happened, he thinks -- desperate, fervent, saying not a word of it. I don't know what I was supposed to have accomplished,

only that I've failed.

Which might not be true, either. But it still makes him wrap his arms around her with a sort of desperate strength, pressing his mouth to her brow, her temple.

[Danicka] He had a thought when he went back tonight: that maybe it had all already happened. And what if that's the truth?

That if he hadn't gone back, Danicka's mother might have watched, helplessly, as shadows infected her daughter, twisted her when she was still a child. She might have spent years tormenting the girl, or cleansing her, or abandoning her pack to try and find an answer.

But the shadows could see Lukas when, in the umbra, they couldn't see -- or be affected by -- any other Garou. Which meant there was a way to touch them. There had to be a way. They were not completely outside of her ability to conquer. And her mind, so cunning, wicked and honorable enough to achieve Adren -- later Athro, in death Eldership -- worked back to the simplest answer. Even she berated herself for not thinking of it earlier.

And as a pack, they tore into the shadowmen. Saved Shrieking Sky's sister so that Shrieking Sky did not go mad, did not kill her, did not have to be punished, did not leave his pack without a Theurge so he was there to heal Night Warder, and Call of Thunder, and so many others. As a pack they destroyed the threat for another eighteen years. Went to their kin. Told their cubs and those they mentored what to expect, and when, and how to fight it, until a future when the shadowmen are seen so rarely that they're even less than a myth.

Maybe Lukas went back and so

Danicka is right here, as she always was, as she always has been. And why him. Why this night of all nights, why the world tipping and pouring rage into him, why that street at that moment, and if the spirits of Gaia and Luna and time and the Tellurian could send him back at all, why not just tell him in a whisper what to do in the first place, or tell Laura?

This is the trouble with gods of any breed. They move in mysterious ways. And Danicka herself could tell him that time isn't a line from point A to point B, it's a ball of... timey-wimey-wibbly-wobbly stuff. And he wouldn't get the joke, and she sure as hell wouldn't tell him that she watches Dr. Who, because that's one element of her geekery that she's kept a tight, hard lid on, thank you very much.

Right now, Lukas can only wonder why it happened. Feel it all twisting inside of him, clawing to get out, but he doesn't dare wound Danicka. Make her hear him talk about Laura as though she was alive just a few hours ago, alive and with her children. She doesn't talk about her mother often. She might be able to explain to him one day how often her mother talked to Vladik, told him that his sister was broken, that she was fragile, that what happened when she was three shattered some part of her that will never, ever be repared. But even Danicka doesn't understand that her mother was, desperately, trying to get Vladislav to listen. To protect her. To keep her safe. And she doesn't understand that from a very, very early age, Vladik just did not grasp what his mother was actually telling him.

She said broken and he heard flawed. She said protect her and he heard because she's weak. Maybe some harsh ancestor whispered in his ear the darker things Shadow Lords have believed for centuries, maybe he was already being influenced by the Theurge that would mentor him after his change. Maybe he was just so very, very

deeply angry at the world for all the ways he, too, felt broken.

She remembers her mother's hands on her shoulders saying you are better than them and Danicka not hearing I believe you are strong but seeing only that her mother wanted to tear her teeth into boys that might lay a hand on her precious possession, her dear little cub. There is no book of laws that hearts and minds follow when it comes to what we hear when someone says I love you. Everyone believes what they want to believe. Everyone sees this life as though through a fogged, grimy glass, but that's as clear as it gets in this life. If we could hear the truth, if we could see each other perfectly --


Nothing is ever so simple as we like. Nothing ever so tidy.

He sees his night, his mate, her mother, her brother, the past he was not there for and the one night he had a chance to make a difference, and by god, how he sees that he's failed. Through his own glass, dimly lit and dirty. Danicka sees him standing there, sees the twisting in his chest, wishes she could help but she can't grieve her mother again, she can't face the fact that she grieved someone who terrified her so much and let Vladik hurt her so much that she wonders did she even love me?... and Danicka closes her eyes, wrapping her arms around his waist as he kisses her head and her face, loves her with elements of his own desperation, his own pain. His 'failure'.

[Danicka] [repared? repaired!]

[Cold Victory] As hard as he'd tried to change the future, to protect Danicka from her past, the truth is that some small corner of himself howled with terror at the thought of coming back to the present and realizing that the den was cold and unoccupied; that 520 North Kingsbury had some stranger living in it; that room 2 in the Brotherhood was the only place he ever lays his head because

Danicka had never come to Chicago at all. Some small, selfish corner of himself feared that more than anything else. Feared it even as he feared he'd find her corrupted, infected; feared it right up until the moment she woke, and recognized him, and got up and came to him even though he wanted to wash first, clean himself of the past and the blood and all of that and just

forget it all. Forget it ever happened.


It's a strange concept: going through so much, doing so much, only to accomplish nothing. Only maybe it's not nothing at all. Maybe in the days and weeks to come he'll sort through his thoughts, think about everything he did, every breath he took and every word he spoke in 1993, and come to the slow, strange realization that what he accomplished wasn't quite nothing at all. It was simply -- maintaining the present.

Protecting what had already happened by making it happen again. Playing the role he's always played, will always play, not because of predestination or divine guidance but simply because he is who he is.

Just as Laura was who she was. And Vladik. And Danicka, here now with him.

And that's what matters. The mind could cave in on itself thinking about the rest. He doesn't think about it. Not right now. He holds his mate, he holds her ferociously close, thinks to himself that he failed to protect her -- not from the shadows but from her brother, her past, that past he wanted so much to protect her from. He thinks to himself that he tried, he really did. He thinks to himself -- half-shamefully, afraid to even let the thought come fully into being -- that he's

glad

that he failed. Because she's still here with him.

Maybe that's why there's desperate strength in the way he kisses her brow, her temple. And in the way he holds her against his bare body, faintly sticky with blood. He doesn't tell her now how much of that is his, how much of it her mother's -- the woman she was terrified of, whom she loved and mourned, just the same way that woman loved her, mourned that she would never see her grow up, grow strong. He doesn't tell her that, either: that love and terror are not necessarily opposites. That the best intentions can turn out wrong, so wrong. That the glass they each see the world through is so fogged, so dirty, so smeared,

that sometimes he can hardly believe that they could have seen each other at all, and recognized each other.


"Come on," he whispers, drawing away a little at last. "Come shower with me. And then let's crawl back into bed. I just want to sleep with you until ... whenever."

[Danicka] That's all she wants. All she wanted when she laid down to sleep without him was to wake later and find him there. Whole and safe, left alive another full moon, another hunt, another night. Even if he came in exhausted and he didn't want to fuck her, didn't want to wake her and welcome spring like that, if all he wanted was just to be near his mate and know that she was safe, and that he could keep her that way one more night

all Danicka wanted was him here tonight.

It's morning now, though. She's only slept about three hours, really. Came in around two, feet sore from dancing and phone battery low from turning the screen on over and over to check if he'd called, if he'd sent her a text, if he was heading back to the den, if his rage was low enough to trust himself with her. Her mother never sat her down and said here is what you do if you're with an Ahroun, and it's a full moon, and he's about to lose his cool. Her mother never said whatever you do, when you're dating an Ahroun, you make sure you prove your loyalty perfectly. What her mother told her -- told Vladik, in front of her -- was that if Danicka were to be mated to a Garou, he should be a Philodox at worst. Preferably a Theurge, or a Ragabash. Someone who would not damage her further, or be likely to frenzy on her.

That's all in the past now. The past Lukas doesn't know if he had any influence on at all.

Danicka holds him more tightly, a little longer. She doesn't care if he's bloody. They'll wash it off. She'll make him smell of bergamot and chamomile, and tomorrow they can have breakfast together and she can tell him that she wishes she could help him, but it's just too close to home. Tell him, more rationally and calmly, that she does think he should talk to Katherine, or someone else in his pack, if it might help him sort it all out in his mind. Tell him that she trusts him to be gentle with her, and that she wishes she could have --

of course he might just stop her. Kiss her. Tell her he understands.

For now she kisses his chest, and draws away, looking up at him. He's so much taller than she is. He keeps getting so muscular, so strong, that it almost scares her. Danicka lifts up on her toes and puts her hands on his face. He didn't kiss her earlier -- she knows why. She can smell the blood in his mouth. She closes her eyes and kisses his cheek. Kisses his brow. Lowers her heels to the carpet again and nods. "Me, too."

[Cold Victory] Lukas's eyes close when Danicka kisses his chest. That's always struck him as such a close gesture, so tender and genuine -- even when they were still so new to each other that he wasn't sure he could trust her at all. Trust any of this at all.

Then she rises on her toes. And he is so much taller, so much stronger, that sometimes even he wonders how she can trust him. How she's not terrified of him, this woman who just a few hours ago was a skinny little eight year old who was so terrified of her own mother that she fell.

Fell, but didn't weep. The root of that strength is heartbreaking -- but it was strength all the same. Strong, he called her, over and over, trying to convey to Night Warder somehow, somehow, that in the end, of her two cubs, it was the younger and the so apparently weaker who would carry some aspect of Night Warder's own strength on. Her strength. Her protectiveness. That faint, flickering promise of tenderness that lay under her rage, under her implacability.


In the shower, Lukas scrubs the blood from his skin, from his hair, until it all washes away down the drain. Gone, the last tracery of Night Warder -- swept away and washed clean. When his skin is flushed from heat, when his hair squeaks clean, when he smells like bergamot and chamomile and himself again,

he turns to Danicka and wraps her in his arms. Lowers his mouth to her shoulder and holds her just like that, close to his chest, close to his heartbeat.

Precious, precious girl, he whispers. It's a little akin, perhaps, to the way she touches his face sometimes. Calls him her beautiful boy, when they both know that they are neither of them children anymore.

It's well past dawn when he steps out of that shower with her. They towel off on those thick, fluffy towels Danicka bought, because she spends where it matters -- on things that are close to their skin or close in their lives, or simply on things that make them happy. He kisses her as he wraps a towel around her, his hands tenderly lifting her hair out from under the terrycloth. He tastes like himself too, now.

Lukas hadn't intended to make love when he came back to the den. He just wanted to sleep. He wanted to pass Night Warder's bitter, desperate message on -- leave him -- and then he wanted to curl up and sleep and forget, forget, forget. But that wasn't what happened. Danicka didn't want to hear it. Couldn't handle hearing it. And what was true two hours ago, eighteen years ago, is still true now.

He loves her more than he respects her mother. Far more.

So: that message dies with the night. Perhaps someday he'll journey into the Umbra, find the Homelands. Find Night Warder's spirit. Perhaps then, with a lifetime behind her and her rage not so visceral, he'll be able to tell her what she wanted to know. What sort of mate he is. What sort of woman her daughter became. Why he never gave her the message he promised to,

and why she stays with him at all. Chose him in the first place.

It doesn't matter now. They go to bed, and though he hadn't intended on it when he walked in the door, moved up the stairs, he turns to his mate in the morning light. Their kisses are soft. Their caresses are gentle at first, exploratory. He has a scar on his stomach, and her fingers find it. He has no scars on his back, and her hands find that too: the broad smooth expanse there, the muscles beneath the skin, the hard arches of the shoulderblades growing more prominent as he rolls her under him, puts his weight on his forearms -- transduced up through the biceps, the triceps, all the way to his back.

They don't say anything. Nothing needs to be said. It's the first day of spring, and a long time ago she wished for spring when she could have anything at all. He took her to a restaurant named spring a few weeks later, hurrying to do it as soon as he found it because it wasn't spring yet, it wasn't truly jaro, and he wanted to give this to her before the season came.

These thoughts move through his mind as he moves over her. They don't matter either. They're in the past, and the past is as it is. Her body still feels the same beneath him; he'd recognize her anyway. He wraps her in his arms, lifts her arching and open against his body. Entering her, his groans are quiet against her neck, rough and tender at once,

which is the way he makes love to her, grinding heavy between her thighs, weighing into her, nailing her tenderly, lovingly, to their bed.

He pauses when she comes. Stays deep inside her, flexing against her in slow waves, letting her have that moment, have him. It's thirty seconds, a minute, more, before he kisses her mouth. Softly, softly, catching the last whimpers from her lips. Giving them back as a single word, the one and only whisper between them:

"Okay?"

And when she nods -- moving again, tightening the clasp of his arms, his hands grasping at her back as he pounds her, hammers her, slow and heavy and rough, loves her.

When he comes, he doesn't bite her. Not this time. He turns his face and nuzzles roughly, blindly against her neck; groans out his release there, shuddering against her body and in her arms, thrusting into her the way he always does -- mindlessly, involuntarily, bucking against her as though he has no other choice.

His pulse jumps in his neck when she kisses him there. When her mouth finds his, he breathes against her, shivering though he's not cold at all.

They sleep facing. His leg over hers, arms wrapped around each other's sides. Dreamlessly, endlessly, hour upon hour on the first day of spring: they sleep with his hand open over her back as though to keep her warm; her hand over the center of his spine as though to shield his heart.