eliška.

Danicka

Even to his warmth, there's no uncurling. Danicka just leans into it, overtired and overwhelmed. She will tell her father when they alone. She's not sure if she'll tell him the truth:

I had Vladik killed. I asked the wolf who did it to make sure he felt afraid, and make sure he felt pain, and to make sure he knew why he was dying. I told him to kill my brother the way my brother nearly killed me. They're both gone now. They can't hurt us ever again.

or simply tell him:

Vladik is gone. Another wolf killed him. We can visit his grave in the caern, if you'd like.

She can't make that decision yet. Not until the reality of this has sunk in. Maybe not until she goes to her childhood home for the first time since she was banished from it and reclaims it. Maybe not until they start figuring out what to do with her brother's worldly assets. They need to prove his death to free Emilie from the bonds of their marriage. There will be the question of what happens to Emilie now: a new mate? A new family? Will she remain with the Musils somehow?

Danicka thinks she'll tell Emilie to leave. Leave the city, leave the state, get out of there, just like her father told her to leave once upon a time. Don't wait for permission. Just go. As soon as they remember you're there, you'll become an asset to control, a favor to change hands. Just go.

Lukas tells her they can just go to bed. He'll book flights, rent a car, send their itinerary to Sarka. He'll do all the minor, mundane tasks that are normally the purview of Kin, the bothersome details of their lives because they cannot run on moonbridges. He'll give himself time to burn his rage down to a simmer before boarding. He'll get her suitcase down from the top shelf of her closet.

Danicka just nods mutely, wearily, and yet does not move otherise. Not for a while. Eventually he eases her up, and they walk to her bedroom, and she takes him in there the way she did over and over. It's the room where she first told him that she wanted him to challenge her brother for the right to have her. It's where he told her that he couldn't. Not yet, not as a Cliath. It would be too easy for Vladislav to deny him, and then he'd never get another chance.

It's also where she bound him for the first time. Because he asked her to. Because he trusted her.

Trusts her.

She wakes in the middle of the night. The moon is waxing tonight; it will be full over Vladislav's Gathering. Lukas is beside her; he may even be as used to this already as he is to her frequent headaches, her ceaseless bouts of nausea, her constant exhaustion. Despite how tired she is, Danicka can rarely sleep through an entire night without waking at least once. Tonight, though, she gets up and she goes to her living room.

He finds her there, when she doesn't come back. Not curled up on the couch -- and sometimes he has found her sleeping on the couch here or the couch at their den, as though one of their beds suddenly became intolerably uncomfortable out of nowhere -- but sitting on the ground in the middle of that broad patch of silver light, hands over her face,

sobbing.

Lukas

Hard to say why Lukas wakes: the subconscious awareness of her cooling side of the bed, maybe. Or something deeper than that, a spiritual sensation of pain and sorrow in the one he is so deeply connected to. But awaken he does, albeit slowly, groggily, stirring up from the depths of sleep like some great leviathan surfacing. He doesn't sleep like this when he's away from home. When he's on a mission or a quest, sleeping in shifts on unfamiliar or hostile territory. It's only here -- here in his mate's home, or at the den, or perhaps on those rare nights he and his packmates share Katherine's loft -- that he sleeps this deeply, this soundly; comes this lazily to wakefulness.

His eyes open, crystalline even in darkness. He's alone in bed. The warmth of his mate, her body against his, is gone. His open hand reaches across to find her side of the bed cool. Folds of the comforter tumble softly down his shoulders, his chest, as he sits up. The waxing moon comes through the window.

Lights his foot when he swings his legs out of bed and stands. It's never cold in Danicka's apartment -- the building's constant, central ventilation prevents temperature extremes even at the edges of the unit -- but they keep it cool when they sleep. Goosebumps rise on his arms. He lifts a pair of clean boxer-briefs from his drawer in her wardrobe and he steps into them.

An Ahroun does not move with the same unsettling silence that most Ragabashes seem blessed with from birth. Still, he's quiet, his footsteps sure. He wanders out of the bedroom, rumpled and sleepy still, standing tall but uncertain at the entrance of the hall, frowning about. Then he sees her. The furrows on his brow deepen. He comes to her -- doesn't run to her, doesn't rush, but comes directly and at once. It's his rage that touches her first, somehow more potent in the midnight stillness, breaking across her in a wave.

Then his hand. He is nearly naked, primitive and strong, touching her shoulder to let her know he's there. He lowers himself to the floor behind her. The moonlight spreads over his back now, and his shadow envelopes her instead. He envelopes her: bulwarking her between the long bones and hard muscle of his legs, his arms wrapping around her from behind. He's all warmth, all darkness, all solidity. He urges her to lean against him, turn and cry against his arm if she wants to; doesn't say a word, doesn't ask why, doesn't ask her to stop.

Just leans against her in return, his brow to the top of her golden head. "Láska," he murmurs, tenderly, naming her.

Danicka

Just a few months ago, with their house full of parents and siblings and children, Danicka curled against Lukas's chest and admitted quietly that she missed her mother. The mother who frenzied once in the house, who came very close to killing her mate and two small children, who even then was not convinced that she should walk away. The mother who would appear out of nowhere in Danicka's room at night, soundless and terrifying, watching over her. The mother who insisted she learn Russian, speak Russian, because Laura was not Czech. The mother who raised Vladik to believe he was better than Danicka, that it was his job to control Danicka, who stumbled so greatly in teaching him how to love that all he really knew how to do was obsess over her, possess her.

Danicka missed that woman. Or missed something about her. The part that was the same. The part that was blood, and memory, and the longing for what should have been but couldn't be.

She cries so hard now. Not far from where he stared at her, painted in shadow and dim color as the rain came down across a lit-up city, as she came over him, leaned down to him, whispered the confession that she was falling in love with him. Not far from where he called himself a coward and an asshole, and she thought

he's leaving me

and even at the thought, could not put herself back together again.

Danicka is hunched over, and when she senses Lukas she cries all the harder. He's awake; she doesn't have to try and keep herself quiet to stop from waking him. If she's honest with herself, she was hoping on some level he would find her. Come to her. She just didn't want to wake him. She has realized what she feels about this. She just doesn't know how to admit it to him.

She wonders if he is this tender with anyone but his family. It's hard to imagine him at the sept, or with his pack. It's been so long since they fought together, or since she's even seen him in another form. She knows he's a leader in that side of their world. Already, though, she can feel them splitting apart. She is not afraid that she will leave him because of his rage. She is, sometimes, afraid they will lose each other because of the nation. But that isn't why she weeps. And it doesn't stop her from being grateful for that tenderness, or that warmth, that he gives her now. She leans into it. Cries until she is almost choking, because

her mother is dead

and her brother is dead

and her father is slowly dying.

"I miss him," she says eventually, finally, the words bitter and tattered. They fall apart even as they leave her mouth, crumbling like sandcastles at high tide. Even saying them, hearing herself say them, seems to make Danicka crumple in on herself even more. "PÅ™ála bych on nebyl jaký byl. PÅ™ál bych on mohl býly můj bratr."

Lukas

"Oh, baby," Lukas murmurs. His arms are around her. His hands are warm over her shoulders. She didn't want to wake him, didn't want to disturb his sleep, didn't want him to come and worry and ache but --

if she is honest with herself she hoped he would come to her. And he does. Of course he does. Of course what she says makes him ache, makes him hurt inside where his love for his parents and his sister lies. He can't imagine it; being split from family like that. Having a family, but not having a family. A long time ago she told him what her brother did and he could barely comprehend it. Could barely understand having a sister, or a father, or a mother, and treating them like that. Feeling no love at all for them. Only possessiveness, and dominance, and bitterness.

It took her so long to even accept that. Accept that what Vladik felt for her could not have been love, or he would not have acted this way.

It means something, too, that she doesn't mourn Vladik after all. It's not Vladik she cries for, even now. It's what he could have been, and should have been. A brother. Not what he was.

"I know," Lukas whispers. "Já vím, láska."

And he kisses her hair. And he holds her, rocks her gently, sways her like an ocean. He remembers that night -- was it her birthday? -- they sailed out on the lake on a tiny chartered yacht. Slept over the waves and under the stars. It seems a long time ago. It seems, sometimes, that ages have passed since they were young and foolish and resisted belonging to each other even as they belonged to each other so completely. Perhaps she's right to fear. His rank rises. Their family grows. With cubs on the way and a nation always calling at the door, the time they have together -- just together, just to themselves -- will diminish.

There's this much, though. He can't imagine loving her less. He wouldn't know how.

"I'm sorry he wasn't a brother to you," he murmurs. "I'm sorry it ended like this. I'm sorry you're hurting. But I think ... it was right. He shouldn't get away with what he did to you. And he shouldn't continue to poison your family."

Danicka

There are so many divisions between them. Lines between men and women, Garou and kin, and this is one: he knows what it is to be raised in love, to be protected, to turn around and protect. Danicka's upbringing was twisted in on itself, as gnarled as a poisoned tree. It's a wonder she could ever bear fruit. It's a wonder she even survived. But he cannot entirely comprehend what that was like. What it is like, still, to have a family

and yet not have a family.

She cries so hard, and he rocks her, carefully and softly. She is surprisingly immune to nausea as a result of movement. It's mostly smells, in part because her sense of smell has gotten unreal. But he rocks her and she doesn't gag or ask him to stop. She just cries against his arm, wetting his bicep, mourning her own life in a way she hasn't since --

well, she never has.

You did not cry much, or at all, in the house she grew up in. Not even if you were in pain. Especially not if the pain was caused by those who claimed to love you. You did not mourn -- what did you have to mourn for? You did not show weakness. There were so many reasons to stay quiet, to keep things hidden, to build steel boxes around things like sorrow or fear.

Danicka has never been allowed, or has never allowed herself, to truly mourn for her mother. To purge that long-banked anger and simply feel sad that her mother was so strange, and frightening, and unlovable, and yet left her so young. She didn't weep when Laura died. She lit a cigarette. She started her period. She cut her hair, and Vladik nearly tore her head off.

She doesn't think she should mourn Vladik. He beat her until -- well. She thinks now that her heart must have stopped, or at least skipped. She can't even remember the pain. She shouldn't mourn the man who was so furious that she let a Fianna touch her there that he started raining blows on her head, her shoulders, her spine when she curled into a ball and covered her stomach. She shouldn't mourn the man who was standing outside of the bathroom staring at her, who stared at her with hatred and obsession while she was dizzy from blood loss and pain. She should not cry for the monster who made her wait in the dark, listening for him to leave, so she could call someone who knew someone who knew someone who had known Danicka once and say I need help.

Danicka does not cry for him, though. Or for Laura. She cries for her mother and her brother. The one who carried her, and bore her, and nursed her, and will forever be tied to her in blood, spirit, scent and even their faces. She cries for the one who took her hand and ran upstairs with her to hide from their monstrous mother, holding her in the dark while they were both still so small and wrapping his body around her the way that Lukas does now. Danicka doesn't know when her mother died, or when her brother went away. But they were gone long, long before that day that Night Warder's Galliard found Night Warder's daughter standing alone by the front gate.

Time goes by. Not enough. It will be weeks, months, and maybe longer before it feels like Enough Time. It will come to her in flashes years from now, a sudden wave of sadness. But less, and less, as the days pass. Even now, it abates gradually. Yes: he did not deserve to live. He could not get away with it. Danicka doesn't argue with Lukas, and does not want to. She cries, in part, out of sheer relief: by the time her first child takes a breath, no blood relation they know of will be someone to be protected from, shielded against.

Just love. Some with rage, some who only come by when the moon is dark and the battle is eased. Some with easy smiles, distant relatives by bond-not-blood who give gifts like Annoy-O-Trons or weird t-shirts. Some with serious, stern faces and light, warm hearts. Survivors. Tricksters. Older cousins to visit and learn from and fight with.

And father, who sometimes hugs them so close but who they do not fear to say: daddy, too tight! to when he squeezes them.

And mother, so fierce and firm, holding them against her chest at night, smoothing their hair and whispering soft in their ears when the fever will not cool, when the nightmare lingers, when they made a mistake and know it.

Danicka is shaking by the time her tears are wrung out of her. She is dry-throated and her eyes feel like they're burning. She has worn herself out again, trembling in Lukas's arms.

He, being a fool, thinks sometimes that it's so rare that he gets to take care of her, and not the other way around. She, no less foolish, thinks of how silly she is to need to be cared for at all.

A very long time later, she whispers hoarsely: "I am glad he's dead," and there's no vengefulness in it, no ferocity, no anger. Merely acceptance: that he is dead, and that she is glad of it.

Reaching up, she wipes her cheeks with her bare hand and exhales. She curls against him, limp and dehydrated and spent, and asks him something that is not about death, or murder, or grief:

"If we do have a boy," she whispers, "what do you want to name him?"

Lukas

To this day Lukas doesn't know what Vladik did to his mate. Not the details. Not the true horrors. The ones that didn't involve books, petty cruelties. The ones where he beat her, broke her, damaged her, took her to the very doorway of death, pushed her so far down into her own demise that years later, a thousand miles away, she would wake after being shot in the back, after nearly bleeding out on the highway, and think instantly that she was back in her brother's hands.

And the ones where he watched her. Stared at her and watched her and owned her with a queasy possessiveness that stank of violation. Lukas doesn't know the half of that, either.

He might not be able to handle knowing. He might hate himself forever for not being there somehow; not stopping it. Nevermind that he's younger than she is. Nevermind that he was a boy when it happened, not even a cub but just a boy who always stood very straight and thanked her father for inviting him over to play. And later, at Stark Falls: stood very straight and thanked his mentor's mate for inviting him over on those rare, precious evenings for a square meal and a hot bath. He was just a boy, and she was just a girl, and there was nothing he could have done; nothing she could have done, either, except survive it.

And she did. She did survive it.

The truth is also: if he knew what had happened to her, all of it, Lukas might always be too caught up in the pain and horror. He might never be able to see through it and past it again -- not the way that other wolf had been able to, the one that was the blade in her hand, the one that was cut from the same cloth as she.

Or maybe he would be able to. Maybe he could, with time and effort, remember what he already knows now. That no matter what happened, what matters is that she was strong enough to survive. She was strong enough to come through that hell with some inviolable core of herself intact. Some heart of hearts where she is fierce and gentle and warm and strong; where she is love and strength and light, untwisted and undarkened by all that had befallen her.

Her grief recedes eventually. She cries for herself, she cries for the childhood she should have had but didn't; she cries for the mother she had and lost long before Night Warder died. She cries for her brother, who disappeared much the same way, turning slowly and insidiously into a monster.

She cries until there are no tears left. And Lukas is still holding her, his arm wet from her tears, holding her the way he always does when she trembles in his arms.

"I'm glad you didn't ask me to kill him," Lukas replies after a while, whispering. "I'm glad you didn't ... sever something between us."

And it makes sense, he thinks. Even from the very start, when he had won her from Vladik forever, it was like this. The right of retribution was not his. The right to champion her against her brother was not his. He gave those rights up for something far more precious. Her trust. Her love. The right to stand beside her for the rest of his life; to love her and comfort her and take care of her, and to receive love and comfort and care from her in turn. That was the deal; the unspoken pact, not between him and her brother, but between the two of them.

She asks him a question, then. It's not one he expects. It draws a faint huff of laughter from him. He leans back, then -- scooting back until he can rest his back against the window, or the wall, or the couch, or something. They rest together on the floor like animals, forgetting and forsaking the use of furniture.

"I don't now," he murmurs. "I haven't thought about names yet. I just know I don't want to name our children after someone else. I want them to have their own names so they never feel like someone else's monument.

"Something simple and strong, though, if we have a boy. And easily Anglicanized, so he doesn't have to go to school with a weird name."

Lukas

[he doesn't KNOW. ffs.]

Danicka

"I like that," she whispers. She is leaning on him while he leans on the side of one of the armchairs she bought two days before she invited a great cloud of kinfolk to her den, which unnerved her and dismayed her and filled her with hope and frustration all at once. The furniture is barely used. Most of the furniture in this apartment is like that.

She sniffs, and closes her eyes, and huffs a laugh. "Czech names are not weird," she says diffidently. "I am not anglicizing a perfectly good Czech name just because some American doesn't want to learn how to pronounce a glottal stop."

They seem to have agreed on this without even discussing it: their child, their children, will have Czech names. That isn't even a question. But she has a point: "We both have easily-anglicanized names. And I'm sure school was no more perfect for you because of it than it was for me. Children are creative."

Not cruel. Not that. Just creative.

Her hand moves on the back of his hand. "I want them to be proud. Not arrogant, or afraid, I just... want them to be proud."

There's a pause there. She drowses, saying softly: "And a girl? Also simple and strong and not too weird?"

Lukas

With the cessation of her tears, Lukas's arms have loosened a bit. His body still brackets hers, though. His hands are laced over her stomach; quite unconsciously, his hands are resting on her belly. Her fingertips stroke between his knuckles. His fingers open; their hands interlace.

"All right then," Lukas answers. There's something dreamy and dreaming about this conversation. They are dreaming, after all. About their children. About the proto-cub growing inside her. Male or female. Blond or black-haired. Like her; like him; like no other. "We'll give him a name and let the children deal with it.

"If we have a girl," he goes on, his voice a low murmur in her ear, a low vibration against her back, "we should name her something strong, but a little bit complex. Very unique. And maybe without an obvious male counterpart, so she never feels like we just wished she was a boy."

And he laughs a little, nuzzling aside her hair, laying a very soft, very gentle kiss behind her ear. "I'm sorry," he whispers. "I know you're named for your grandfather. And your name has an obvious male counterpart. I don't mean to insult your name.

"You're Danicka to me, though. Danicka Musil, moje láska. You always have been."

Danicka

Neither of them consciously notice Lukas's hands over Danicka's belly. Maybe it's as low and primitive as his nuzzling of her when he is not fully awake; something his body will do even if he does not quite realize it. That belly feels different. It is not quite as flat as it used to be. There is a sloping, firm roundness there now, her skin starting to stretch to accommodate the cub inside. They have a visual reminder now, something tangible. She feels it every day when she bathes, Lukas feels it when he holds her.

And now they dream of names. Options, at least, or ideas.

The way Lukas talks of names is, Danicka thinks suddenly, the way he sees the two of them. Simple and strong. Strong and complex, unique, special. She laughs softly at his apology and his worry: "I'm named for my half-sisters' grandfather, actually," she murmurs. "But I never felt like my name didn't belong to me, or I was just a monument, or that my father wished I'd been a boy. It was... as though he was telling me how special I was to him, as though he wanted me to know that he and I shared something apart from what my mother and brother shared. He never knew his own father. His first mate's father sort of adopted him. He loved that man, and he gave me his name."

She closes her eyes, resting her head on Lukas's chest, her profile illuminated by moonlight. She exhales a soft sigh.

"I like Eliška," she murmurs. "And Konrád. Or Jakub."

Her head turns further toward his skin. She rubs her face on his arm wearily.

Lukas

"Eliška is beautiful," Lukas replies,

his chest clenching just for a second because he remembers those dream-cubs in that dream-world. Remembers them so clearly: the chubby baby, the boy with Danicka's chin and her golden coloration and her eyes behind those glasses that he needed so young. And his eldest, his daughter, the one who lost her glove and had to wear another but it wasn't as good because it didn't have sparkles on it and everyone knows sparkles made it warmer,

daddy, are you listening?

He still has that glove. They still have it, tucked away in a drawer somewhere; a memento of a world that wasn't quite real but became real the way fairies do: because people believe. He wonders if some thread of those imaginary children will pass down into these real cubs. A weaving of his spirit into his children's. Is that how it works? It's all such a mystery.

She's a mystery to him, sometimes. In a good way. She's right to see the echo of how he sees them, or at least their names. Simple and strong. Strong and complex and unique. He gives her a gentle squeeze as she rests against him. Kisses her temple, shifts his hand from her belly

to her breast

cradles her there, an odd errant desire coiling in his core. It's not that he expects to fuck; it's not that he'd dream of demanding it now or ever. It's not even that he wants to, precisely. But it's there: his want for his mate, his adoration.

"And I like Konrád," he adds. "But maybe not Jakub. Too Biblical, and the original was sort of an ass." He stirs; nudges her gently. "Let's go back to bed. We can think about names there until we fall asleep. I booked an afternoon flight so we can sleep in a little."

Danicka

Eliska, then.

Danicka smiles, warm and content. She mouths the name; all Lukas senses is the movement of her lips against his arm. She is determined to have a daughter, but still: they both like Konrad, too. So they're covered. "We won't tell anyone," she whispers. "Because as soon as we meet her, we might realize that's not her name at all."

His hand moves, and she leans more firmly into him. He feels that curl of want; she feels it, too. And it is hardly a demand, a hunger, a need like it sometimes is. But it's there. She feels warm. She feels comforted. She feels love for him, moving in her like molten gold, illuminating her from within. It makes her feel... cleaner, somehow, as though the heat and the brightness of it pushes out the impurities and banishes the shadows.

And she laughs. Softly, because she is tired and sad and worn out and thirsty, but she does laugh: "Fair enough," she tells him. She doesn't mention it, but both names -- all the names she mentioned, in fact -- are changeable, are easy to mask. Eliska could be Elise or Elisa. Konrad could easily be Conrad, Jakub could be Jacob, could be Jake. If they wanted. If they didn't want to be made fun of, if they didn't want to explain the accents over their names, if they got sick of hearing the wrong pronunciation over and over. If they liked, they could choose. Even if their mother disapproved.

"Thank you," she murmurs, as he starts to stir them, nudging her with his nose and his arms and his body like he would even in another of his forms. come. come, mate. bed. sleep. mate, come. come with. She sighs as she rises, and there's no struggle in it. She isn't heavy yet, has not yet begun to feel the rearranging inside as though her very bones are changing shape. She moves with as much grace as she ever has.

But they don't go right to bed. No: Danicka stops in the kitchen and stares into an open fridge for a while until she pulls out thinly-sliced turkey breast and a wedge of brie and some raspberry jam. She gets buttery crackers down from the shelf and makes herself tiny sandwiches of meat and cheese and fruit and eats them standing over the sink, drinking a tall glass of milk. This has also become common: when Danicka feels hungry, or feels a hankering for anything, she feeds it. Lately she never knows when she'll be able to eat without losing her composure, so she does what she can, when she can.

She puts chocolate syrup in the last half of the milk and stirs it up. Drinks a form of dessert, licking her lips. Brushes her teeth again. Kando woke up halfway through all this and started following her around, mewling quietly. Danicka fed her a bit of cheese from her fingertips, scritching the animal behind the ears and at the base of her skull with rough-tender affection, purring endearments back at her in Czech.

When she finally does crawl back into bed, she is fed and comforted. She tries not to think of tomorrow. She thinks of names. Konrad doesn't quite fit, she thinks. She doesn't like Ondrej. Her nephew is already named Tadeas. Maybe Josef. She yawns, curling with her back to Lukas's chest, pulling his hand up to her breast and holding it there. She falls asleep.