The drive back seems to pass entirely too fast. Some part of Lukas recognizes that this little trip -- this little errand, almost -- is special to Irena. It might be the first time she's traveled all by herself (sort of). It might be the first time she's really been on a roadtrip. It might be the first time she, the fifth of six children, has been singled out and special in some way. It's certainly the first time she's been around so many wolves; the first time she's seen a glimpse of the sort of life that awaits her.
He stops, when they get back on the main highway, to get gas. Before they get back on the road, he pulls over at a McDonald's and buys Irena a burger. She looks hungry. The girl always looks hungry. He gets cheese fries for himself, sharing them with Irena as they get back on the road. No soda, though. Juice.
Taylor Swift gives way to an audiobook. The miles pass easily, and Lukas finds himself pulled into the story as well. He makes a mental note to get the book from the library when he gets home. Or he could borrow an ebook; Chicago's public libraries were awesome like that. By then it's dark, their headlights sweeping the gently banking freeways down from the Catskills, into civilization, into the city.
Lukas drops her off at her mother's house. She hugs him, and he hugs her back tightly, smiling as he pats her back. It was fun, he tells her. I'm glad we got to spend some time together. And then he stays a little while and talks because it's polite, and because he likes Sarka, and because he wants to assure her that her son is growing up well. Is a good man, a good wolf. But the truth is he's eager to be back with his mate. His footsteps are quick coming down from the porch, getting back in his car. It takes entirely too long to get from one Musil residence to the other; entirely too long to find a spot to park in; entirely too long to lock the car up and get his stuff out of the back and
walk up the steps to Miloslav's house, where his mate is waiting for him.
He sees at once that she's wearing his shirt. His aches. She hugs him right there on the threshold, like he's been gone much, much long than he has. He drops his luggage and wraps his arms around her and squeezes her almost harder than he dares. Neither of them speak. The moment speaks for itself.
Quite some time later, they draw apart. And he nuzzles her, his arm still around her, leaning down to pick his bag up again. They go inside; lock the door. It's quiet in the house. Just her and her father; the ghost of her brother exorcised.
"Vsechno v porádku?" he asks her quietly.
Danicka"Jo," she mumbles against his chest, softly. She takes a couple of steps backward without letting go, and pulls him inside, and holds onto him even as he reaches back to pull his stuff in after them.
They lock the door. One light burns in the kitchen, and the living room is dim. There is Miloslav's carefully-wrought cabinet that holds knick-knacks, not a single one as precious as the carving his hands are able to do on the cabinet doors. There is the piano Danicka learned on. There is the clock, ticking steadily in the darkness.
They were children here once. Falling asleep on that couch. Going upstairs to play. Going outside. He threw up in the kitchen from too many sweets. But strangely, last night was the first time he stood here and kissed her, or held her. The last time they were here together, she served her brother, then Lukas, then her father, then herself. She cleared their plates. She wore her hair the way Vladik wanted her to.
Drawing back, she lifts her hands up to his face and pulls him down to her. Kisses him, warm and intent and almost hungry. She smells like toothpaste and her moisturizer and his t-shirt and her skin, her shampoo. Her fingers slide up his neck and into his hair, and she goes on kissing him.
Going upstairs, she warns him of the step that squeaks. She brings him to her bedroom, which he hasn't seen since they were children. In the dark he can make out the window, half-covered by thin curtains. The moon shines through the branches of the oak, casting shadows in the room that might have frightened her once, if she hadn't had better things to be afraid of. It's not the room of an eight year old or a ten year old though; she left this room when she was in her early twenties and it hasn't changed much even before then. She always liked white and purple, but he always knew that about her. She kept no diaries, she had no books in here. Yet still there is the detrius of a life she's left behind: her high school diploma on the wall, a stack of yearbooks, the rumpled linens on a full-sized bed.
Danicka closes the door and kisses him again.
LukasIs this the first time he's ever come this way? Lukas can't remember for certain. He knows he's been in this house before. He knows he's been upstairs. He's not sure he's ever been in her room, though. As a boy. As a man. As her mate, coming to take her away,
but not before Vladik abused her one more time. Brother hardly even seems the right word for him, and so Lukas doesn't use it in his mind. He's not her brother. She misses her brother, but her brother died a very long time ago. Perhaps when their father was thrown through the wall. Perhaps even before that. She hates the monster that wore his skin for so many years.
That monster is gone now. He would have never let Lukas come up this way, and Lukas -- for fear of retribution against Miloslav, against Sarka and Irena and Emanek and Renata -- would have never forced the issue. He passes the closed door. He knows instinctively what lies beyond it, but it doesn't make him hesitate. She takes him to her room, where she lived at least part of the time until she left New York. Came to Chicago in that new car of hers, the very first she ever had; lived in that new apartment of hers, the very first she ever chose.
Met him. Not her first man, or her first Garou, or her first Ahroun. But the first she chose.
He stands in the doorway, looking in. He discovers he has been here after all. Came up here to play when they were children; when he and Anezka were loud and wild and ran all over this house that had never seen such abandon before. Lukas hopes Emanek and Irena come here more often now. He hopes they're still young enough to run and play and shriek and skid. He hopes his own children come here on the holidays and fill the house with noise and laughter. He hopes the oak in the back, looking in the window, sees them and remembers them and recognizes them for who they are.
They kissed downstairs, silent but intense, her fingers in his hair, his hands clasping her waist, pulling her body against his. She reaches for him again here, the door closing with a light thump, and he goes to her without hesitation. His mouth meets hers. His eyes close and his hands are combing through her hair, touching her cheek and her jaw, stroking over her sides.
There's something primal and hungry about this. They've said so little to each other, but they hardly seem to need to say more. He knows to be quiet because her father sleeps down the hall. He would be quiet here anyway: there's something sanctified about this space, which is so thoroughly suffused with her past and her essence. Which is, perhaps for the first time ever, truly hers now.
She lifts her arms as he pulls his t-shirt off her. His hands are on her body then, caressing her breasts and exploring the ever-changing terrain of her abdomen. His mouth curves, a faint and secret smile; he knows what she hides there, the secret inside her. Stone egg, he thought of her once. Mate, he thinks of her now, mother of my cubs. Her hands slide his jacket from his shoulders. It's leather and old and brown and not at all stylish; it's the sort of thing he wears when he's with family, with her, with people that he doesn't care about projecting confidence and style and mastery to. It thumps to the floor, weighed down by his wallet and his keys.
His turn to lift his arms. Her turn to pull a t-shirt off. Her hands touch his chest, find his heartbeat beneath the thick pectorals. He undoes his pants and lets them fall. She slips out of her pajamas. He picks her up and she steps off the ground lightly, lightly, caught aloft the way she was the very first time. Her bed creaks as he sits on it, and then lays back. She straddles him. He flexes his head back as she takes him inside her, and then he lifts up from the bedsheets, catches her mouth and kisses her.
They make love like that, slowly at first. And then harder, but still close; aching. His hands run over her body over and over. She gasps against his mouth. He turns her under him toward the end, shadowing her under his broad shoulders, the solid weight of his torso. He drives her to the bed on those last ferocious thrusts, biting her shoulder, holding back a groan the way he hasn't for so, so long now.
Panting, afterward. Laying his head down beside hers, trying to hold his weight on his elbows. Slumping a little to the side, twisting just enough so as not to crush her. Her leg slides down from his waist, crosses his at the thigh. He kisses her softly, his eyes opening afterward, watching her.
"I love you," he whispers. "More than anything."
DanickaOnce or twice. As a child, looking blandly into a girl's room and wondering what on earth could be interesting in there. Danicka at that age was, not surprisingly, secretive. She was uneasy with Anezka in her room, or Lukas. Her toys were few and it startled her how excited they got about... well, everything. She didn't know at the time how little they had. She didn't know at the time -- no one did -- what Lukas was meant to become.
But he never came up here, in here when he was a Fostern, fresh from his recognition, because he wanted her. Because she wanted him, and asked him to. Because he had to. She could only ask him that because he knew what Vladislav was, and she could only tell him what Vladislav was when she already knew that he loved her, that he wanted her for his own. Anything else, anything sooner, and she would have wondered if he was just saving her. If she was using him. If he really wanted her at all or if he just felt a need to get her away from her brother, because she was precious, because of her blood, because he was infatuated with her, because the wrongness of it seeped into his bones and made his rage burn.
Except he's still infatuated with her. As much as he would be if he'd fallen in love with her in childhood. As much as he was the first time she brushed his hair from his forehead and he pressed his lips to her upper chest in something more intimate than worship. They are still hotly, newly in love. They are also this:
Danicka kisses him and he knows, without words, it isn't just that she missed him. It isn't just that she is carrying their cub and she's tired and needful of him, his warmth, his strength, his protection. It isn't just that there's been a death and it's a hard and bitter truth that this death has more life and renewal in it than any sacrifice. It isn't just that she wants to feel whole, and alive. It isn't just that she's grateful that he's here again. And: it's not just that he has adopted her family as his own, the kin and the children and the cubs, this home, the oak and its spirit. It's all of these things. It's everything between them. It's everything that has always been there.
Since before this life, even.
Wordless, quiet, but not entirely silent, they undress each other. It's unhurried but lined with a sharp edge of need. Lukas smiles in the dark and Danicka shivers at the touch of his fingers running down her sides, trailing to her hips. He touches her and she trembles, leaning into him, kissing his chest. Lifting her chin; kissing his mouth. She moans softly into it when he lifts her up and her legs wrap around him.
It's unlike the way they cuddled together in his room when they visited his parents for Thanksgiving. It isn't playful, it isn't quite as headlong a rush into stifled laughter and bitten-back groans. The house around them has seen so much pain, so much terror, and she was alone in this very room so often, sleeping soundly only because she was used to the pain, used to the terror. She had made it a part of herself; it was nothing new. She never brought some teenage boy here with the door only just barely cracked so that they were technically following the rules even if their hands were all over each other, their mouths untrained but eager. Starved. She and Lukas were never teenagers together, not in this incarnation.
They aren't teenagers now, either. They are very much adults. They are mates, and this belongs to them as they belong to each other.
Afterward, Danicka is covering herself with a sheet, all too mindful that she's home, that she just did in this bed what has never been done in this bed, that her father is asleep down the hall. Her skin is flushed, her hair pulled down from its bun when Lukas was pawing his fingers through her hair. Her eyes are closed and her lips barely move when Lukas kisses her, adjusting their bodies on the bed so they both fit. She just drowses, nearly unconscious already. He tells her he loves her. She makes a noise, which is almost a response, and wraps her arms around his chest, all but forcing him to lie back again, cuddling to his side without so much as opening her eyes.
Danicka's arms are firm around him. She holds him as though he might go away if she lets go.
Morning comes and, like in Danicka's apartment in Chicago and their den in Stickney, sunlight pours into the room far, far too early. Lukas might stir to the unfamiliar bed, the unfamiliar scents and sounds of the house. He has never, ever slept here before. Danicka is still curled around him nakedly, still holding him, her limbs heavy with the sheer depth of her sleep. He can hear Mr. Musil starting to putter around down the hall. A little while later, at a slightly more reasonable hour, the door to Danicka's bedroom opens gently and
there is her father, in slacks and one of his shirts and a pair of loafers that are just barely a step above slippers and have been well, well worn. He looks blandly at the sight of the two of them curled up in her bed, her bare shoulder only slightly visible above the sheet, and all he does is shake his head and tell Lukas, in a quiet and rough voice:
"When you have babies, you will get a lock," as though this is not so much a suggestion as a certainty. "There is breakfast. She should eat." The door closes again, and he goes shuffling off down the hall and down the stairs again. Danicka, normally so hyper-vigilant that a new voice or a strange sound will jar her instantly from sleep, just yawns and rubs her face into Lukas's chest, re-settling again.
Breakfast is the way it was while Danicka was growing up. There are thinly sliced, fried potatoes and slices of seared ham. A jar of apple butter sits in the center of the table next to a tub of butter for spreading on the homemade rolls that they take from the bread-box. There is coffee and juice and milk. Danicka, who has shown a remarkable affinity for all things tart and all things salty, unabashedly puts dabs of apple butter on her ham, as well. She dressed simply and comfortably when she got out of the shower earlier, in yoga pants and a blue cashmere sweater over a white camisole. Her father debates with her over breakfast on whether or not those things count as pants or not. She primly tells him that if his loafers still count as shoes, then her yoga pants count as pants. He asks Lukas, gesturing with a fork, to look, see? That is how you raise a smart child. Oh, but then they argue with you then.
Danicka just smiles into her breakfast, and her father pats her hand, and
they seem okay.
Later on, the house does in fact become filled with people again. Sarka is bringing Renata, and Irena, and Eman is even feeling well enough to come visit. Their morning began late, so when Danicka's sister and nieces arrive, it's almost lunchtime. They brought sandwiches. Irena and Emanek want a picnic. Outside. With their grandfather. Eman, who does look a little pale and his eyes a little too bright, but he has the seeming of a child who will only get better if he is allowed out of bed and into the fresh air for awhile, getting the blood moving in his limbs again. Renata picnics with them outside. After the other night when her mother came home to find Renata in frustrated tears and Emanek in a fit, Sarka had a talk with her daughter about not trying so hard to take care of everyone. Not fussing over everyone. Outside, Renata tries to act like a teenager and not the mother hen of her household.
Indoors, Danicka and Sarka and Lukas have a chance to talk over more... arrangements. None of them are attending Vladislav's Gathering, not even Miloslav; they think to do so would undermine Milos, even as young as he is, even as far away as he is. It comes out that someone even told Sarka that Vladik's kin would not want to see him. Whatever his murderer did to him left him unfit to be seen by fragile kinswomen and elderly kinsmen and children. Whatever his murderer did to him, it left him unrecognizable. Danicka hears this and her face remains impassive. Lukas, and perhaps only Lukas, can see the way that affects her.
Deep in her verdant, secretive eyes, there is a glint of cold, hard, vicious satisfaction. Good, some animal part of her seems to say.
"We will say goodbye in our own way," she says. "Here. At home." There's a long pause, then something they have never quite said, even while silently sharing the truth about their brother: "We're saying goodbye to someone else, anyway," Danicka whispers, meeting Sarka's eyes.
And Sarka's brows tug together. She gives a short, pained nod, reaching over to touch her sister. She did not grow up with Vladik. She never knew, not even a hint, of what he was. Not til she came here. Not til she saw the way he looked at Renata, the way he snapped once so sharply at Emanek that the boy froze in the kitchen and lost a trickle of urine down his pant leg. No; what they have to say goodbye to, good and bad, is not the Garou who will be honored at the moot. Night Warder's son.
Outside, there's shrieks of laughter. Occasionally a cough from Eman. The wind moves heavily, and the boughs of the oak groan like an old man being woken from sleep.
For the first time in many, many years, Danicka and her father are able to invite the Kvasnickas over for dinner. This time without Anezka, but, as Danicka says when she hugs Marjeta hello, that's Anezka's own fault for living in California. She says the name of the state with pure east-coast disdain, as though she can't imagine why anyone would give up living in places like New York City and Chicago for someplace like California. It's all fruit trees out there, isn't it? Granted, the farthest west Danicka has ever been is...well, Stickney, Illinois.
She's changed into what her father would concede are Real Pants for dinner, but the children are in whatever their mother could get them to wear earlier today. Irena looks only slightly less wild than she did in Stark Falls after spending the majority of the afternoon outside playing in the yard with her brother, or her sister, or by herself when everyone else got worn out. She is very pleased to see Jaroslav and Marjeta again and tells them that Milos ate their stew for breakfast, and he told her to tell them that it was very kind of them to share their food with him and to say it just like that. Emanek is up from a midafternoon, mother-imposed rest up in his grandfather's room and looking dazed and hungry. Sarka, Miloslav, Jaroslav and Marjeta all see each other with reasonable enough regularity that their greetings are informal, are everyday.
The mood is unexpectedly, but not strangely, more familial and festive than funereal. The last time they were all together -- or most of them together, as Milos and Anezka and Daniel's absence is certainly felt -- was Christmas, and it was five months ago. It's a miniature reunion of sorts, and Irena wants to talk, a lot, about her trip to Stark Falls. Eman is understandably more quiet than usual, but oddly, being sick brings out a more contemplative side. He eats a little at dinner and asks if he can go draw for a while, then just lays stomach-down on the piano bench, legs sticking behind him, drawing in a sketchbook he got for his birthday with what he calls his Real Artist's Pen, which was in fact the more expensive part of the gift. Irena eventually can't sit still at the table anymore and goes to peer over her brother's shoulder and,
rather than telling him she can totally draw better than that,
she starts asking him to draw different things that she wants to see. They're like challenges. Can you draw an frog with butterfly wings?
Yeah but why?
Cuz it's weird! I wanna see it. You should draw stuff nobody can see all the rest of the time so they can see it.
Like a little frog? From the Amazon?
YEAH. The POISON ones.
Back at the dinner table, as the adults and lone teenager scrape the last of dessert from their plates and sip the last of their wine, Danicka leans against Lukas's side and smiles at their family. Sure, there are members missing. Some are in the Czech Republic. One is in Stark Falls. A couple of them are in Los Angeles. She thinks, suddenly, of the two spirits they met -- again -- in Prague. The one that inhabited her, and the one that Lukas had to kill to set him free again. She wonders what the homelands are like. She thinks of them together there, resting, after one waited so long and one was gone for so long. It's a nice thought. A sad one, but she is glad to have it.
"I'm pregnant," she says, during a pause of conversation that has not yet become awkward. Renata looks elated. Miloslav just looks at them, scooping a bit of cream pie up with his fork, and huffs.
"Of course you are," he says, the way that Eman might say duhhh.
LukasMorning comes all too soon, and all too bright. The sunlight does, in fact, stir Lukas. He finds his mate beside him, her arm laid across his chest. Lax now, limp and heavy with sleep. He pulls the blankets up; covers her shoulder with his hand
and sleeps.
The next time he wakes, it's instant and startled, lifting his head and then popping up on his elbows as he sees Danicka's father. It's not like they're teenagers. It's not like they're doing anything bad or wrong. Still: that's her father, and he's quite aged, and Lukas finds himself scrambling to make sure they're both covered while Miloslav looks at them with completely unsurprised and unshocked eyes.
He makes a prophecy. Lukas huffs a laugh. "Thanks," he calls, a second after Miloslav has already turned to go. They don't get out of bed immediately, though. Danicka sort of glomps him. And Lukas settles again, stroking her back under the covers, rubbing the heel of his hand over his forehead.
Later on they gather around the table. It's just the three of them: Danicka, her father, her mate. Lukas eats more ham than anything else. Or anyone else, for that matter. He tries a little apple butter with it and finds that he likes it. As Danicka and her father debate yoga pants, he sits back in his chair, smiling at them, thinking to himself that he would count himself blessed indeed if he could live long enough to be out-debated by his daughter.
The house fills up. It doesn't feel like a funeral. Children are running and shouting. They discuss Vladik, but they discuss him like the memory of someone long passed. Lukas hugs Irena when he sees her again, and Emanek -- because he's sick -- doesn't get picked up and turned upside-down. He does get picked up, though, at least once, lifted until his head almost hits the ceiling, hefted, set down and pronounced so much bigger by his so-much-bigger uncle.
Renata has grown again, looks more the young woman every day. Lukas tentatively makes friends with her this time; they have a short conversation of no consequence whatsoever in the mid-afternoon, interrupted because Emanek has launched into a run of coughs outside. It's not Renata but Lukas that goes out with a cup of water for him, telling him to slow down a little.
At dinner, they gather around the table. It is like a mini-reunion. It is a mini-reunion, and -- achingly -- the first one they've been able to include Miloslav in since Thanksgiving at Lukas's parents' house years ago. Sarka and the kids weren't here then, either. Anezka and her boyfriend aren't here now, and neither is Milos. Danicka can all but see the thoughts in Lukas's head as he looks at the family: he's thinking ahead already, thinking of Christmas, thinking of the holidays and their little den and oh god, they might have a baby by then. If she comes a little early.
And suddenly, just like that, they're talking about it. The baby. Danicka is leaning against his side and there's a small lull in the conversation and she just says it:
I'm pregnant,
which makes Lukas look more shocked than anyone else at the table. Miloslav takes this news much the same way he told Lukas he'll have a lock on the door by the time they had babies: blandly, unsurprisedly. Sarka is congratulating them, warmly but understatedly, because really: babies are less of a big deal to someone with four. Jaroslav is chuckling and reaching across the table to shake their hands as though they'd won something, and Marjeta --
well, Marjeta is setting her fork down and clasping her hands to her chest and gasping, giving a tiny clap with her fingertips, getting up and coming around and hugging Danicka into a cloud of faint fragrance. "We are so happy for you, Danicka," she says, and then she's hugging them both, squeezing them with both her arms while across the table Emanek puts his chin in his palm and looks puzzled and perhaps a little bored. He doesn't see what the big deal is.
"We think she'll be arriving around Christmas," Lukas adds.
"Oh, it's a girl!" Marjeta is beaming.
"Well," Lukas demurs, "we're not sure yet. But Danicka," he quirks a half-smile her way, "claims she's having a girl."
And then everyone seems to be asking questions at once. Marjeta wants to know everything: are they seeing a doctor, are they getting good prenatal care, are they going to determine whether it's a boy or a girl or wait until delivery. Irena loudly demands to know if they have a name picked out. Lukas is laughing, his arm around Danicka's shoulders, answering what he can: yes, they're seeing a doctor. yes, they're getting good care. they haven't discussed finding out the sex yet.
As for a name: he glances at Danicka, and his mouth turns up at the corner again. He leans in to her on impulse, kisses her soft and open-eyed on the mouth. Emanek makes a BLECH sound. Lukas smiles against her lips, laughs, shakes his head.
"We're toying with a few ideas," he says. "Nothing really set in stone yet."
Lukas[edit!!! BAD MEMREE. "It is like a mini-reunion. It is a mini-reunion, though Anezka and her boyfriend aren't here now, and neither is Milos. Danicka can all but see the thoughts in Lukas's head..."]
Lukas[oh god. sarka has SIX kids. SIX.]
DanickaBetween one Christmas and the next, Lukas realizes, they are going from a couple who was thinking maybe in another year or two to being parents. It's stunning. And Dr. Katz did say that she's due on the 13th, but given that this is Danicka's first and -- in the no-nonsense, not-even-wry tone of a pro who has delivered more babies than Lukas's entire pack has killed minions of the Wyrm -- the uncertainty of the conception date because of the frequency of intercourse, that's a general estimate. They come when they come, she said, spreading long-fingered but slightly wrinkled hands apart and then putting them together again, palm to palm, with a shrug.
Sarka is happy for her, because within a half-moment of saying it Danicka looks so pleased. She's scoffing that her father didn't know, he couldn't have known, and he just says bah to her, says she has that look, that look saying a woman is having babies, and if she is not having babies, she wants to be. Irena and Eman do rush into the kitchen, hearing a hubbub, wondering what they've been left out of now. Renata is the one to fill them in, and Eman just wonders ...yes. What the big deal is. Irena wants to know if it's a boy or a girl, and which kind do they want, and what's it's name, and when will its birthday be, and to tell the truth
she has more of a stake in that child than most other people there. None of them are going to be living with it later on.
And Marjeta is over the damn moon. She's squeezing Danicka, thrilled, because though this is Miloslav's eighth grandchild, it's her first. Eman copies Jaroslav and says congratulations. Danicka tells Marjeta: her name is Dr. Katz, and she's great, and I'm taking vitamins and gaining weight and I'm fine. and I'm not 'claiming' anything, I just think she's a girl, but we'll see.
Eman is grossed out by the kiss. Irena just rolls her eyes impatiently but comes forward, asking baldly why Danicka doesn't look pregnant yet, and Renata -- who did very well in her Health and Human Development class -- uses her fingers to show Irena, on Irena's own stomach, about how big the baby is now, and Irena is staring at her belly sort of weirded out and sort of fascinated all at once. "Huh," she says, and then she looks worriedly at Lukas. "But Christmas is your birthday!"
Danicka tells her it's okay, laughing. It won't matter. It will even be special, if she gets to share a birthday with her dad. Irena screws up her face, considering this, then agrees.
Irena never agrees with something just because it's suggested. She always takes that moment, that frown, to think it over. To weigh it in her mind to see not if it's good or bad, morally right or wrong, but simply if it makes sense to her.
"We need to call Anezka and Daniel," Danicka proclaims. "Milos... already knows, I didn't want him to just have a phone call." She says this almost in apology, but her concern is misplaced: no one, right now, is all that concerned about who heard first. And Marjeta is already dialing her daughter's number, so Danicka goes to sit by her father, holding his hand against the table. He smiles at her.
She smiles at him.
He draws her over, kissing her cheek, and he's not a very expressive man or a physical one, rarely hugging even the children, but he goes on holding her hand for quite some time, occasionally rubbing his thumb over her knuckles.
They call Anezka on speaker phone. Irena wants to say HI! because, let's be honest, if you can have a favorite aunt-in-law, even if you only have one aunt-in-law, Anezka is totally Irena's favorite aunt-in-law. She, too, is loud and physical and energetic and sometimes sticks her foot in her mouth and loves everyone so so much and is a little angry at them and heartbroken at once when she upsets them and she's also competitive and thinks babies and getting married is dumb.
But they are on speaker with her only after Marjeta has gotten to break the news. For a while, the family minus one is together just as they were over Christmas.
Things do eventually wind down. Emanek is worn out. Irena still hasn't had nearly enough time to just Be At Home the past few days, so she's unsettled and rattled. There are deep hugs, long hugs, particularly the ones that Danicka gives Marjeta and Sarka at the end, when everyone is going to head home. She doesn't say it, and she doesn't need to, but the two women understand. One is the mother of an Ahroun. One was the mate of an Ahroun, mother to a Theurge and an Ahroun, sister to a Philodox. There are going to be times when Lukas cannot be there. And she is going to need them.
Irena's hug to Lukas is pretty tight, too. She looks... worried, when she is dangling from where her arms link around his neck. She whispers a question in his ear, asking if he's still going to be her teacher, as though she's forgotten that Lukas just took her to Stark Falls and introduced her as his student, as though maybe he didn't know Danicka was pregnant until she said so tonight, or maybe just as though she's ten, and she's afraid of being shoved out of the picture when she needs to be in the frame the most. She is squeezed tight. She is reassured. She is reminded: she will always be his niece, and he will always love her very much, no matter what.
Finally, in the end, Danicka closes the door behind them all and it's just her, her father, and her mate again. They clean up dinner. They wash the dishes.
The hard part comes next.
They sit for a while, listening to the news, Miloslav in his chair and Danicka curled up against Lukas on the couch. The night winds on. They talk about the house, the cabinets, the oak tree and how fast it grows. He remembers the story of Danicka falling. They've told it so many times; he remembers it though, and they listen. He says, after a while, very softly:
"Your brother... he was not born that way." Miloslav stares at the carpet, shaking his head. "When we were waiting for you he would sit at the table eating apples almost as big as his head, asking me about you. What you would like to play, what your name would be. He was like Emanek. He was like Irca.
"He would watch you as you nursed. He looked so upset when you cried, begging your mother and I to make you stop, to fix it. He was convinced you were hurt. He did... he did know how to love.
"He was not a bad little boy," her father whispers, and it seems that he might weep, he might fold over in his chair and cover his face, but that isn't what happens. His lips are hard together, and almost shaking, but not with tears. "She taught him the wrong way to love. And then it was not love anymore, Daniela. He forgot how to love anything."
Miloslav just shakes his head. He cannot fathom it. His sons in law, his grandchild, his daughter with the sickle, and then... his son. All of them so warm-hearted, so loving, as though they could not help but adore the ones they cared for. Die for them, if that's what it took. But never willingly, willfully hurt them. Never do to them the sort of things that Laura did to him, or that Vladik did to Danicka.
With a shuddering breath, he lifts himself up to go upstairs to bed. He pats Danicka as he goes, touching her hair the way he might if she were Irena's age. He thumps his palm, heavy and rough, against Lukas's arm as he passes. Son. Also a good boy, once upon a time. Now a good man.
Danicka, in bed with Lukas later, has a headache. She puts a cold cloth on her face while Lukas rubs the back of her neck. She falls asleep while he's doing that, and her pores are tight when he removes the cloth. They go home tomorrow, late afternoon, after they've had some time to pack up a few things from Danicka's room.
Her hand covers his hand when he wraps his arm around her from behind, holding her to his chest.
LukasAnezka, over the phone, is nearly as loud as she is in person. She talks to everyone. She remembers them all -- associated their voices with their identities with startling finesse. She jabbers with Irena for a while, and during that time Lukas gets up and goes to the fridge, gets some juice, refills his glass because he's had enough of wine.
And because Danicka can't have wine right now. And though he knows she doesn't care, wouldn't care, he doesn't want to leave her out.
Eventually Anezka comes off speakerphone. Lukas picks his mother's phone up, talks to his sister a while in private. Whatever she says makes him laugh softly, head bowed. Makes him smile.
Let me know the next time you're in Chicago, he says as they hang up.
All too soon, it's time to say goodbye. Lukas is a little sad as they clean up, as they see everyone to the door. He is, after all, so devoted to family; so happy when surrounded by family. But then, it's only seven months to Thanksgiving. Eight to Christmas.
Hugs, then. And Irena, whispering a question in his ear that makes him give her an extra tight squeeze. He forgets that she's getting too big to pick up like a child, then. He picks her up anyway, squeezing her, and then sets the girl down and kneels to look her in the eye. He makes her a promise he knows he can keep:
she will always be his niece. He will always love her very much. And she will be his student, and he her teacher, and when the time is right,
soon, now,
he will come to New York City to get her. To bring her back to Chicago, where she'll learn how to be what she was born to be.
Lukas hugs his parents, too, as they get into his car. He throws his arms around his father and embraces his mother. There are no back-thumps this time. Just hugs, and kisses on the cheek, and quiet muffled words of love, because Lukas is private about such things. When everyone drives away in their respective cars, Lukas waves from the porch, walks down the steps, follows a few paces down the sidewalk until they turn the corner and vanish from sight.
Then comes the hard part.
And the truth is, apart from a few childhood memories of Danicka's -- vivid but disjointed and with little context the way all memories of early childhood are -- this is the first time Lukas has heard Vladik spoken of with anything other than anger, or fear, or revulsion, or pain.
It's strange to think of him this way. It makes Lukas's brow furrow, his eyes ache, to think that once, Vladislav Musil was not a monster. He was a boy. He was good the way Emanek is good, or Irca, or Lukas's own, yet unborn child. Somewhere along the way that shifted, though. And he was lost. And Miloslav's voice falters and Lukas is afraid for a moment that he would weep, afraid that his mate would weep, but
they don't. It's not sorrow or pity, but anger: at the thing that Vladik became, and at the one who made him so.
It occurs suddenly to Lukas that they don't even speak their names anymore. Vladislav and Laura. Heals by Pain and Night Warder. Not here, not in this house. It's as though their names have been exorcised along with their presences, along with those monstrous personas they became, and along with their memories; all but the scant few that were tender, the bare handful that were good.
Those, they've attached to other names. Brother. Mother. The people they were, once. They people they should have been.
Briefly, Lukas's hand covers Miloslav's. "Goodnight, tchán," he murmurs, quiet, as their hands slip apart. Then it's just Danicka and Lukas downstairs, the TV reflecting them dimly.
Danicka has a headache again by the time they get in bed and turn out the lights. He's worried, and he rubs her neck, and he starts to murmur that maybe they should see a doctor about these headaches, but
she's asleep by then. He's comforted. If she can sleep, she can heal. Lukas kneads her nape gently, slowly, recounting in his own mind the past three days. The past three hours. The past three minutes, when his mate's breathing grew steady and deep. Then he shifts, turning on his side to wrap his arm around her. Her hand on his makes him smile. He kisses her tenderly behind the ear, and then he closes his eyes.
