Touching him now is terrible for her. Danicka trembles and hides her face, and he shudders. But she doesn't let go, and his body melts back to his birth form. They are both filthy. Danicka's arm is bloody, too, stained in a fragile black web on her skin where the eagle tore through Red and somehow awakened her. He has so much blood on him. He can taste --
When his hands lift to cover hers, his mate's fingers flex. She grips his hands, recognizing them, and then she must open her eyes because she gasps.
They are naked. They would have no reason to wear clothes, these ghosts. Red is in hispo, though, and she is no lean, sleek-bodied creature as she was when she was wearing -- and changing -- Danicka's form. She is a nightmare given flesh, her eyes gleaming gold and her fur thick, glossy black. Her sides heave with powerful breath, and every exhale through her nostrils moves the mist around them. She is dead, as she has been dead for centuries. But finally -- finally -- he can see just how strong she was in life. God, what she must have been like in battle, roaring in the faces of their enemies like a hound at the gates of hell.
The man beside her does not look incorporeal, translucent, half-there. He seems solid and real enough. His skin doesn't have the swarthy olive cast of Lukas's, but is surprisingly pale. He is very tall. He is on the lean side, with a muscular athleticism that seems more flexible than stalwart. His eyes are green. His hair is the same inky black as Red's fur. He is, when Danicka gasps, kneeling beside his own body, his fingertips hovering a few centimeters above the wound that ended his life.
Ended all of this.
That gasp makes his eyes lift, sharp and canny. He wears a close-cut beard even in the first steps of his afterlife. He looks at Danicka first, though. His eyes widen a bit. They settle on her right arm, wrapped around Lukas. He blinks, and his eyes track to meet his brother's.
Then: Silver Warning lifts his eyebrows. And without ever seeing this man before, without knowing him in this life, Lukas knows exactly what his brother is thinking. It is, to put it bluntly, an appreciative, admiring, approving thumbs-up of a glance.
Niiice, he might say, laughing, if he had been born into this new era, this same age that Lukas and Danicka themselves took.
Black WindThere are four of them.
It's almost inconceivable, what it took for that one statement to finally stand true. How many centuries, how many sacrifices, what burdens, what torments. How very close their strength came to failing, so many times. How far Silver Wind's mind drifted from him. How many times Red Vengeance must have watched her brother and sister cycling through yet another reincarnation and wanted to follow. How many times Lukas and Danicka themselves might have been born; how many of those lifetimes they might have spent without one another; how many of those lifetimes they might have come so close to one another, and to the gateway, and to Red Vengeance, without ever quite making that connection.
It's over now. He did unforgivable things, but maybe it was worth it. They suffered unimaginable things, but there are four of them now. Two of them are spirits that still recall their last life. Two of them are flesh, wholly different from the forms they wore --
Lukas doesn't know how long ago. He never asked, either.
A ragged laugh escapes him as he sees the look in Silver Warning's eyes. His hand closes a little more firmly over Danicka's forearm. It's not a possessive gesture. It's a sort of acknowledgement. Who they were, and are. And that they found each other.
There's a little room here. Enough time for words. Apologies; explanations. But Lukas ran out of words a long time ago, and no more are coming easily to mind now. He thinks maybe he doesn't need to apologize or explain himself now, anyway. Not to them. A few moments go by, and he's just looking at them, seeing them for the first time, remembering them from a past life.
He asks quietly: "When will you come back to us?"
The SphinxA few centuries ago, more or less, Black Wind would have nearly torn Silver Warning's head off for that glance, that smile. He would have misunderstood it, snarled at the other wolf. Hell: Wyrmbreaker might have, too, not so many years ago. Here and now, though, he understands it for what it is. Silver Warning is happy for them. Happy they found each other. Happy they are together. Happy that his sister, who was fragile and breakable and ...a little dotty the last time he knew her, is whole and hale and loved. God knows how many times his heart broke in those endless years of imprisonment; this helps a little.
Those he loves are together, and loved.
Silver Warning looks down at his own body, the wound he isn't touching, and then simply... walks away from it. He rises, too primitive in life and death both to feel shame, and puts his hand in the ruff at Red's neck. She gives a low, comforted whine, a whuff, and they come closer. He kneels down, right in front of Lukas, and Red follows, flopping onto her haunches. She thumps her tail on the ground, enormous in this form and refusing to shift from it. One of them has to be ready to protect, seems to be her mentality. Danicka is looking at her, arms tight around her mate's shoulders still, and though she quakes a bit, she doesn't bolt.
Silver Warning just stares at him, unable to look away. He just stares at them, both of them, like his eyes can't get enough. Like he's trying to memorize them. Lukas asks him when they'll come back. The question makes him blink. He hasn't spoken yet, and he looks to Red Vengeance for a moment. She just exhales a huff out from her nostrils. He looks at Danicka then, expectantly, like she'll be able to tell him. It takes a few seconds for Silver Warning to remember: she's not a Theurge anymore. She's not even, really, White Vision.
"I..." he begins, in a voice that is a stranger's and is intimately familiar all at once. It's low, but not the same depth as Lukas's. He doesn't sound tired or rasping, or like his voice hasn't been used in lifetimes. Like Red when she took Danicka's body, he speaks only Czech. "I do not know." His brow is furrowed, heavily, and without fear of awkwardness or strangeness, he reaches over and grabs Lukas's jaw.
Silver Warning, with that deep frown etched on his face that Lukas somehow knows means he is only thinking, wipes his blood off of Lukas's jaw. Scrubs at it with his palm, not energetically or fearfully, but firmly and efficiently. "We can now. That is what matters." His hand is bloody. He drops it, trades it for the other, lifting Lukas's face like he might a child's. As before, it seems like he simply can't help himself. He has to see him. He has to stare at him, after all these years. Just as Red, first waking in Danicka's body, reached to hold him.
"We will find you," he says, almost a snarl, and absolutely an oath. Without missing a beat, he takes that same hand and reaches for Danicka -- then pauses. He looks at Lukas, then puts his hand on the woman's forearm, where Lukas himself holds her. Gentler. He is more careful. She was broken before; she is kin now. He doesn't know how strong she's become. His frown eases at the edges when he meets her eyes, green to green. Something seems to pass through the two of them, some kind of understanding. "We will," he says again, quieter, as though to assure Danicka, too.
Red grunts. She thumps her tail, restless. Silver glances at her, that frown flickering for a moment into a wry half-glare at her. It's pained, though. "Impatient," he mutters at her, intrinsically mocking and incredibly... tender, actually. She rumbles in her throat at him; he grins.
Black WindThe blood on his jaw is all Silver Warning's. The blood from the snake is gone; perhaps it never was at all. The blood on his hands, which is his own and Danicka's as well, never touched his face.
He lifts his face when his brother takes it. He closes his eyes for a moment as he is cleansed. The swipe is heavy and unhesitating; it doesn't come close to removing the stain. The blood is still there. But it's on Silver Warning now too, and somehow that seems to make a difference. It makes his heart hurt a little less.
As Silver Warning reaches out to Danicka, Lukas spreads his fingers open. His hand overlaps his brother's for a moment. Then he gently disentangles himself, standing. If Danicka stands, he reaches out to her again. He takes her hand, and now they are facing each other, two and two.
"She's not." Old habits don't die at all, it seems. Even now, he has to argue with Silver one more time: "She's just been patient for a very long time."
There's a small silence. He looks at Red Vengeance; at Silver Warning; back again.
"We'll see you again," he says. "Soon."
The SphinxDanicka does rise with him, half-hidden behind his arm, partly because of Red Vengeance's shape. The two look at each other, Silver and Red, not understanding, but not asking. Red rises to all fours, and her tail gives one heavy swipe through the air.
She's not, Lukas says, and Silver Warning gives a sharp exhale. "Even once!" he exclaims, exasperated. "Even once, you can not stop from arguing. I am dead and you are many lives ahead of me, and still you can not stop." He waves his arm in midair, dismissive and fed up and, at least this time, giving in.
Danicka laughs, softly, against Lukas's arm. She slides her hand down his forearm, his wrist, to lace their fingers together. Her other hand reaches toward Red, full of anxiety, and Red keens quietly before nuzzling against that open palm. They shared a body, for a time.. Neither even so much as speaks. They had their own understanding, in that life and in this.
Silver Warning watches the two of them, aching, then meets Lukas's eyes. He nods. This one last time, he doesn't argue. No more words are spoken between the four of them. No embraces, no more promises. They have made the only oaths they must, the only promises they can keep.
The world melts into white, the mist covering the four of them, swirling among them and between them. Danicka's hand tightens on Lukas's.
The world is dark now. Colors, smells and noises all rush back. Rain falls on cobblestones around them, filtering the scent of dirt and stone and motor oil up to their nostrils. It's the middle of the night and, blessedly, this street is briefly deserted. Danicka shivers, suddenly and violently, pressing herself to Lukas's always-warmer flesh. They are naked. They are naked and wet and cold and exposed, and she says the first words she has said since she named him her love:
"Oh god. Oh god, oh god. Lukáš, my ring is gone. Lukáš," she says, her voice wracked, even as rain begins saturating her hair. She's holding herself but, suddenly, the only thing that seems to matter to her -- nevermind the street, the emptiness, the exposure, all of it -- is that she can't find her wedding ring.
Black WindEven once! Silver Warning bursts out, and Lukas laughs. It's the first time he's really laughed for longer than he can remember. Since before this realm. Since before Red Vengeance. Since before Danicka fell ill. Moments ago he wasn't sure he'd ever laugh again, but --
he does. Wounds heal; life goes on.
There are no real goodbyes. Perhaps there never are, and never should be, for the four of them. Their eyes meet; Lukas doesn't look away or close his eyes, but he loses sight of his brother and his sister all the same. The world goes to white,
and then to dark.
And it's wet, and it's quite cold, and his cheeks are wet too, and he doesn't know if it's rain or tears. He swipes his hand over his face -- there's still blood there -- and then he wraps his arm, protective, around Danicka. She panics: her ring! He laughs, even though he has no right to. He's the one that stopped in the middle of the third and final and most wracking gate just to dedicate it to his spirit.
"It's on my hand," he says, laughing still, hugging her, kissing her temple, her cheek. "It's okay. I have it."
DanickaDanicka is shaking, from cold and from fear and, simply, being overwhelmed. She doesn't even seem to mind or care that Lukas laughs. She tucks herself against him as soon as his arms come to shield her, her breath shaking.
"Give it back," she tells him, panting from the cold.
Black WindHis arms are wrapped around her by then. He has her tucked against his chest, her back to his front; he responds by holding his hand up where she can see and opening his fingers. Her ring is there, as he promised. It glints that soft, rosy gold, but it's far larger than it was; large enough to fit at the base of his fourth finger, snug against his own, darker ring.
It shrinks as she pulls it off. Like a visual trick, an optical illusion, it grows smaller as his finger tapers; when she gets it off entirely, it's the same size it ever was, and warm against her skin.
"Let's get off the street," he says. He's looking around now, growing aware of where they are -- how exposed they are. "We can ... go along the rooftops. If you can stand my form."
DanickaHer ring should never fit on his hand. Not his ring finger, not his little finger. But it does. There it is, glinting white against his light-absorbing black. She exhales, in shock and in relief, and reaches for it. Watches it grow smaller as she slips it off of his finger, returning to its normal size when she slips it onto her own.
Danicka was raised by wolves. She doesn't ask him what he did. She knows. Her hand closes into a fist. He says they should get off the street and she nods, shivering despite being held. She closes her eyes. "I'll stand it."
Doesn't matter if she can or not. She will.
Black WindLukas doesn't ask again. He doesn't look for confirmation. He doesn't even acknowledge. Not verbally, anyway. He crouches: his back to her, the complex musculature flanking his shoulderblades standing out against his skin as his hands press against the concrete for balance. For a moment his skin is hot against hers, wet with rain. The press of her thighs against his sides is jarringly familiar; it feels intimate and out of place, as though they should not be here at all but somewhere private, hidden, wild.
And then he changes. Her arms wrapped around his thickening neck, his broadening shoulders, find themselves unable to stay wrapped. She has to grasp handfuls of fur -- because he has fur now, thick and musky with the scent of strength and health and alpha-wolf -- to keep from sliding off altogether. He's still growing, pulling her up his back with the sheer expansion of his skeleton. Her knees are tucked against his ribs now, just under his scapulae. The handpaw that touches hers, securing her grip, is huge, is burning hot, is padded and rough.
The strength coiled in this body is surreal; explosive. He launches forward. The first leap eats half the plaza and the width of the street. Wind claws through her hair, his fur. The next is purely vertical, launching them upwards, rain stinging her bare skin. Stone crumbles under his claws as he scrabbles for purchase. Then that detonation of force again, and they're on the rooftops, leaping, running, running, leaping again.
Maybe some part of Danicka remember what this is like, now. Felt it when Red Vengeance shared her body. Remembers it from a past life, one where she wasn't blind and crippled and dotty. Remembers what it was to run tirelessly, to leap so far she could nearly fly, to thrash foes apart with silver-tipped claws. What it was to curl around her mate, to be vigilant even in sleep, because sometimes in those lifetimes he was not her brother, and not her wolf, but
her kin. Hers.
They drop onto their terrace from above. His weight makes the structure shudder. Danicka slides off his back and he plants his feet, shakes rain off. Pushes up on two legs. Shifts down, dripping, skimming rain from his hair and his face and his shoulders, shivering now with the sudden loss of his fur.
They get their terrace door open. They tumble inside, and the hotel still smells like a hotel, but it's beginning to smell like them. Her suitcase is still open on the bed, where he put it to find clothes for Red-Vengeance-in-her-body. No time seems to have passed at all. A handful of hours, at most.
Lukas isn't sure what to say. He isn't sure it's necessary to say anything at all. He closes the door behind them; he closes the curtains.
They are two again.
DanickaDanicka remembers. Remembers Red in her body. Remembers the deal they made. Remembers the promise Red gave her: no, not that form. I swear, sister.
And Danicka remembers some hints of her other lives that all this brought back to her, but none so clear as those Lukas was given. She doesn't, truthfully, remember being White Vision. She doesn't remember her crippled arm, her prophecies. She doesn't remember the secret the Sphinx-Snake gave her in that test, or what it was like to be any of the things she has been.
She is only kin in this life. She is cut off, powerfully, from her ancestors. She cannot enter the homelands until her death. She sacrificed much, in this life, to find him again and be his mate and not his sister, not his mother, not his child or his friend. The way Silver Warning looked at her, she almost remembered him. But mostly, she just knew that he understood.
What Danicka remembers most is horror. She is shaking, violently, even as Lukas begins to change. Her will is strong enough now that she doesn't scream when she climbs onto him and he shifts. She closes her eyes and locks her jaw, hard, until her teeth grind against each other. Tears are already in her eyes. Terror makes her cling. Terror makes her think, briefly and madly, of letting go to get away from him.
She can't remember those lives where she leapt like this. The only life she has, tonight, is her own. And those memories overpower the dim ones she touches in dreams.
Danicka slides off of him, nearly jumps off of him. Her legs give out as she grabs the door, all but running from him. Inside, onto the bed, grabbing at the covers as violently as she held his fur. She's hyperventilating, or close to it, pulling the covers up to her body madly, her body heaving with panic. Her face is wet from rain, from cold sweat, from tears.
It hurts to see. It hurts, surely, that she can't help it. He can't know that she even made Red promise not to change her body to crinos. He felt her shaking even when Red nuzzled her in hispo. Danicka fights for control, while he... maybe he closes the doors and the curtains still, maybe he simply gives her the time to calm down. She knows he isn't shaped like that anymore. All the same she wants to wash away from herself the feel of that fur against her body, and when that thought passes through her mind, it renews her crying all over again. Her hands cover her face as she inhales and exhales sharply, shallowly, choking on her own tears and her own horror.
Still: when she can, though it is quiet and it is truncated by the tightness and thickness in her throat, she says his name.
Lukas's heart breaks a little when they've hardly landed on the terrace before she's getting off of him, getting away from him, scrabbling at the door, flinging it open with panicked strength and running away.
He stays where he is. He shakes rain from his fur, blinks rain out of his eyes. And much slower, taking his time, he follows her in his human shape. Closes the door. Turns on a light, so she doesn't have to be in darkness with his rage. Closes the curtains. Gives her room, as much as he wants to go to her, curl around her in his largest, warmest form, protect her.
She can't stand that. She never could. He thought for a moment, there in the spirit-world, there where she wrapped her arms around him while he wore his most terrifying form, where she reached out to her sister while she wore her dread wolf form -- he thought ...
he was wrong. It doesn't matter.
He's in the bathroom, and the bathtub is plugged and the water is running, when he hears her say his name. So he comes back out, drying his hands on a washcloth, coming to the bed. His hand searches for hers and finds it, covers it.
"I'm here," he says. And gently, "Come wash."
DanickaIn that strange place, half-spirit and half-form, she remembered how he reacted when she fell ill. How he was when Red took her body. She felt the blast of his rage when she woke up, suddenly, to searing pain. She was with him, though it was like walking in a dream, when he killed Silver Warning. And coming back to her own body, feeling Red Vengeance leave her forever, Danicka thought
if I do not love him now
...but there were no words to follow that. No thoughts. Only certainty, and a gathering of her shaken will. She felt herself burning when she touched him. Kept her eyes closed to try and pretend he was in some other form, but the smell is different. The feel of him is different. It isn't as soft. His breathing changes. Even his heartbeat seems unfamiliar. It is a weakness and a shame she has borne since she was a child. She was told for years on end how worthless this made her, how soft, how broken she is.
He thought that maybe it was over, that maybe she was okay now, she was healed, that something had changed, but... he wasn't quite right. She has healed so much. She is so much more okay. She doesn't think she's damaged anymore, broken, empty, weak. All that has changed is her love for him.
And all that has done is grown.
Danicka is half whispering, half whimpering his name. She wants him near. She doesn't want to be alone, abandoned. She doesn't want him to think she hates him. When he comes back to her she is struggling to open her eyes, as though afraid of what she'll see. That is the longest contact she has had with a crinos-formed werewolf for twenty years. But he's not in his war form. He's Lukas. Her Lukas.
She almost cries out when she sees him, and then it isn't almost. Danicka all but climbs onto him, curled tight, burying her face against the side of his neck. Her hands are small, hard fists against his back when he lifts her up in human arms. Her tears are hot.
She keeps telling him she's sorry. He keeps telling her no.
Two tub-fuls of hot water later, Danicka has stopped shaking. She is molten in his arms now, her eyes heavy-lidded with weariness and emotion. But she's gone quite, and is turned in such a way to hold him, too. The fear has passed. One of her arms is looped around his shoulders, though her head rests on his chest. The water laps at the side of the tub. Her left hand, wearing the ring that is still dedicated to his spirit, rests atop his right pectoral. She can feel his heart beating on the inside of her forearm.
"She showed me a little of what it was like," Danicka whispers, after a very long silence. "In the snake's chamber. What it was like for her all that time ago, though. She said it..." Danicka's head shakes a little. "She didn't really have words for what it did to her. I asked if it made her stronger. And she said that maybe one day I would remember."
Her hand opens over his skin, the same temperature as her own. Her voice falls to a whisper: "Are you okay?"
Black WindWhen she was terrified and shaken, he barely dared to touch her. He only took her hand because he didn't want her to feel him looming over her, didn't want her to feel his hand suddenly descending on her back or her head. Didn't want to feel her flinch.
But she doesn't flinch. She opens her eyes, she sees him, she climbs onto him and wraps herself around him so tight. The way he holds her then -- it's the way shipwreck survivors cling to land. It's the way long-lost lovers
(or packmates)
cling to each other.
Much later, they are cleansing themselves. The blood is gone from his skin. The rain is gone. The smell of his fur, too. And they are holding each other. And his pulse is beating in his chest, and against her wrist. And the water is warm; it makes him whole again.
"I wasn't," he admits. "And for a while, I wasn't sure I ever would be again."
He stirs. The water laps softly at the edge of the tub, and at the edges of their body. His hand passes warm over her back, sluicing water along her spine.
"But then you put your arms around me. And then I could open my eyes, and they were there, and...
"I'm not quite okay yet. I have to think. To put it all together in my head. And ... maybe tomorrow, or maybe some other day altogether, I have to tell you what happened in the snake's chamber, and I have to tell you what happened in that life we shared with them so long ago. Because you were there too. And you deserve to know.
"I'm not okay yet," he finishes softly, "but I will be. I will, love."
