A slow, lazy smile comes across Danicka's lips when Lukas kisses her. She rubs her thumb over his thumb where their hands interlace. She withdraws, gently, and the two of them part, encircling their little family: the toddlers are have forgotten that they do not want to wear clothes and are running over to toys, to Kando, clearly happy to be home. Home is the wild place where it does not matter if they wear shoes. No one stops them to replace a bow in their pigtails. They are free here in a way they are not anywhere else. They bring Miloslav toys they have to show him, even though they did this when he first arrived. Eliska crawls in his lap when he sits on the couch, carrying her favorite book and starting to put her thumb in her mouth as she curls up next to him. Tatiana, usually so much quieter, is taking every single toy out of the living room toy box as though she's looking for a particular one.
Danicka heads for the kitchen but Miloslav stops her, telling her in Czech to come, sit -- he says that it is her day. He says that he and Lukas will make dinner. Sit, read with your babies. So Danicka, albeit with traces of uncertainty that have not yet left her completely, comes back to the couch and sits down to read with Eliska. Tatiana abandons her toy search and, for once, is not told to go pick up the toys she got out before she crawls up on the cushions next to her mama to read books. And look at pictures.
So Miloslav makes dinner. He is comfortable in the kitchen. He taught Danicka how to prepare meals, how to make kolache. It is nothing fancy: some leftover roast, some salad, a pan of vegetables roasted in the oven. It is exceedingly cold outside, though currently not snowing. The oven warms the kitchen. Maybe Lukas helps him: slicing a loaf of bread that Miloslav made the other day, putting together the salad that he likely won't have any of, helping chop up root vegetables and toss them in oil and seasoning for the oven. Simple fare, and not much of it: everyone's portions will be small, but they snacked at the reception already. They reheat some boiled potatoes. Lukas makes up the little plates of food for Tatiana and Eliska first, so everything will cool off a bit before they eat it. This is common practice: a few bites of roast, a bit of each vegetable, tiny salads with half a cherry tomato on each. The little forks. The glasses of milk.
Danicka and the girls are late to dinner. She wants them to pick up first: books on the shelf, toys back in the box. They need bibs before they sit down to eat, because they are still in their nice dresses they wore to their mother's graduation. They eat with focus and only occasional chatter, as usual, at their own little table while the adults eat nearby. Miloslav, between bites, wants to know everything Danicka plans on doing, which currently turns out to be not that much: she wants to be home for a little while, at least a few months. She has been in talks with a few firms in and around Chicago, but she doesn't go into details. She says there are other opportunities, too.
--
Things wind down. Dinner is finished, cleaned up. Girls are excused from the table and held, their bellies full and their eyes drooping from the long day. Teeth are brushed and hair removed from pigtails, combed out gently. Dresses are removed and hung up, diapers changed, warm pajamas put on. Tatiana's have unicorns. Eliska's have rainbows. One more book is read. Girls are tucked in, brows kissed, questions about whether or not their grandpa will be there tomorrow, too answered patiently, and in the affirmative. Giggles are calmed. Hair is stroked, and more kisses pressed on soft skin.
Danicka, still in her dress and her earrings, feels her heart clench in her chest as she says goodnight. What she feels she cannot quite name: a euphoria so intense it feels almost like pain. Joy like a wound so sharp it leaves her breathless. The desire to be afraid of how quickly she could lose all this, how devastating it would be, is carefully and rather consciously pressed down by deciding, instead, to feel gratitude. Gratitude that this exists: the little room with its little bed and the little girls under their blankets, the house around them, the cat and the old man inside that house, the man she keeps this house with, the love they have that led to this house, to that cat and the man, to the little girls and their little bed and their soft, soft cheeks. The sound of their breathing. The visceral knowledge in the core of her body that they are hers, connected to her in a way not even they will ever fully understand. Mine. Mine. Mine.
She closes the door. She murmurs to her father that she and Lukas are going to take a drive for a while, if that's all right. Which it is. He is going to watch the news. It is almost nine o'clock when Danicka and Lukas get back downstairs, in his car rather than hers, the one with the carseats and the kid-friendly CDs and the detritus of her schoolwork and so forth still littering seatpockets and dash compartments. To look at their cars, you'd think he did no childrearing at all. But his car is the one that on at least one occasion had a certain midwestern blonde galliard in the passenger seat bleeding from a gut wound and digging through his glovebox for an extra healing talen. His car goes to war. Her car does not. But his car is certainly nicer for an evening drive.
LukasWhen he's home with his family, Lukas rarely stays up very late these days. There's something so thoroughly comforting about that little ritual of bedtime. The baths, the books, the tucking-ins, the turning out of the lights. He looks forward to it. He looks forward, too, to those moments alone with his wife: brushing their teeth over the sink. Taking turns with the shower. Shaving while Danicka lays out her clothes for the next day. Turning down the heater and climbing into bed, where they find each other under the covers; sometimes to love, and sometimes simply to wrap their arms around each other and sleep.
Conditioned to that routine as he is, there's a part of him that misses it right now. Wishes they could go upstairs and do just that. But there's another part of him, wilder, the part that stays up all night and runs through lightning-streaked umbra; the part that hunts, that goes to war -- that part, telling him nighttime is not for sleep. Nighttime is for strange and savage and wondrous things; blood and passion and
perhaps
just a drive with his mate. There is room for that, too.
His breath frosts in the night. His coat is thick and warm, the wool soft. His gloves are snug. He opens the door for Danicka, then circles around to climb in the other side. Sometimes he remembers the first time they drove together. Taking her home in the dawn, wondering what she could have seen in his pack-brother that she hadn't seen in him. It was a long time ago. It doesn't hurt anymore.
He turns the key in the ignition. Backs out of the driveway. No traffic this time of night; just that great, dark city rising out of a web of lights. They could east, west; anywhere.
DanickaWhen was the first time he felt that? Not the satisfaction of it, the pleasure of tucking children in and bedding down with his mate, but the longing for it. The pang of wanting-without-name. Was it that night in his 'dorm', walking in and shaving, Danicka laying out in her t-shirt on his narrow bed, watching him? Was it earlier? When did he realize what it was that he was looking forward to?
The car is cold. She's in her coat, still in her sleek sheath dress that she wore under her graduation robes. She put heels back on, of all things, to walk out to the car. Not stilettos. Just the same ones she walked in today. Graduated in. She's in her coat, not the white one of that very very first night together -- that one has been retired, resold or given away some time ago -- but a different white one, thicker, warmer, though she didn't bother to zip it up. Lukas turns the car on, starts to warm it up. Pulls out, and
starts driving. Nowhere in particular. No where do you want to go because perhaps after this much time he knows that if she had a plan, she would be the one driving. Or she'd tell him. He knows that for Danicka, no plan is better. Just going. She's good at plans. But she thrives on the times that are unplanned, open,
wild.
After a while she shrugs out of the coat, looks at him across the empty space in the dark car.
"I don't think I'm taking any of those jobs I mentioned at dinner," she says quietly.
LukasWarm air huffs out of the vents. Lukas's car is not new, and not even like-new; it is rather old, because he was not wealthy when he bought it -- though he pretended to be. These days he is wealthier than he was. They both are. But they don't pretend at it, and they are frugal: they have mouths to feed, after all, and large families to care for.
Never mind all that. Point is: his car is older, but it is dependable, and it is well-made. Some luxury touches. Leather seats, heating that warms up quickly. It is soon warm enough for Danicka to shrug out of her coat. Seeing her do so, Lukas begins to as well. She helps him so he can keep a hand on the wheel. These things have become second nature as well.
When they've settled back, a quiet settles. He heads toward the city, and the lake. He thinks that would be nice; to look out across the freezing lake, moonlight sheening off the ice.
A glance her way when she speaks. Lukas processes this quietly, and solemnly. After a while, "What will you do instead?"
DanickaHer eyes drift out to the world passing by outside. Mostly void. Lights, and the lights bouncing off of objects: another car, the ground itself. "I don't want to start some bottom-tier job with my little B.S. Tinker away on someone else's projects with no real hope for serious advancement." She shakes her head a little bit, takes a breath, and sighs it out as she looks back to him. "I think I'd like to go to graduate school." Now she's hesitant. Now she's honest, watching him though, gauging what he thinks.
"There's a very highly rated program for materials engineering at Northwestern," she says. "But it's half the size of some others I've looked into. And not the most expensive, but it's up there."
Danicka gives a little shrug. Looks at her hands. "A couple of my professors think I would do well at MIT. Or Stanford. Cornell is comparable to Northwestern, but almost half the cost." She rubs her thumb over one fingernail. "I haven't applied anywhere, so regardless I'd take a gap year, but... I wasn't sure until today that I didn't want to just take my degree and... leave it at that."
LukasGraduate school, she says. It makes him smile -- immediately, thoughtlessly, a quick-skating expression.
Northwestern, she says. Okay, he thinks. It's close. It's within walking distance of the downtown condo. Well; summer walking distance. Winter -- less so.
Then: MIT. Cornell. Stanford. And she's looking at her hands now, as though worried about what he'll say, and he's thinking it's so far and thinking of their little home, all its spirits. He tries to imagine moving. He thinks of Kate, and Sinclair, and Maddox, and Sarita. He thinks of moving them all.
A silence. Then, quiet still: "I think you should absolutely go on to graduate school. I think your mind would be wasted if you were someone's technician. And I think you should go where you'll get the best education. We'll work something out. Move, or spend part of the year with you and the other part here, or... something."
He reaches across the center divide. His hand covers hers, warm and secure.
"Cornell would be close to our parents. Stanford's close to Sinclair and Anezka. And MIT's in Kate's hometown. We'd have friends and family, wherever we go."
Danicka[note to salf: IGNORE BITS BOWT COST.]
DanickaLooking down, Danicka doesn't see that fleeting smile across his face. That flicker of golden pride that was, earlier today, literally shouted out across the crowd as he crowed THAT'S MY WIFE! She doesn't try to read his thoughts now as she's talking, to adjust where necessary. She doesn't do that so much anymore. One of the biggest decisions of their life, she just came out and told him -- sighed as she curled up with him one winter morning that she wanted a baby. Didn't wait for him to bring it up, or ask for it. Didn't circle the idea over and over, slowly getting closer to the point. Didn't manuever him into suggesting it, so that he would think it was his idea all along.
She just told him what she wanted, and she knows now: even if he wasn't ready, even if she changed her mind, it would be okay. Somehow, though, it's harder to tell him that she wants to go to graduate school. Somehow, it's harder to tell him that she --
well. She knows why. The pack he runs with here has been together for years now, no matter how scattered they are. He became a Fostern here, an Adren. This is where they met, and fell in love, and bought a house, and got married, and had their children. This house is where the oak and magnolia are planted. Thinking of it makes her want to cry, a bit.
Lukas speaks. Tells her what he thinks. Absolutely, he says. Your mind would be wasted, which is unlike so many things he's ever said to her. Danicka looks over at him. And he reaches for her, so she gives him her hand. Smiles a little, achingly, as he tells her that in all of those places, they'd already be close to people. To family, of one sort or another.
"I wonder a little if your pack would just move with you," she says, which -- truthfully -- is a bit of circling. But not coyly. Not maliciously. Not to distract him. Just because she lets her thoughts come to her, and speaks them, and because she really does think it: "Sinclair moving to the other side of the continent didn't hurt your bond. Kate's brother and sister have both left... she's restless here. As hard as she tries to be the steadfast half-moon, she's not the sort to want to stay in one place forever, unchanging.
"I don't know Maddox or Sarita as well, but Sarita's one of the traveling tribe, isn't she? She comes and goes, already, you said. Maddox seems like an Irish traveller," she adds with a small bit of laughter. She licks her lips, just a bit. "Moje láska... I zde rád náš domov." She breathes deep, and sighs: "Ale myslím, že chci se vzdálit od tohoto m sto."
Danicka[Czech: My love... I love our home here. But I think I want to move away from this city.]
Lukas"I think Kate would come with us," Lukas replies. "I think Sinclair would be happy if we were closer, sad if we were farther. But either way she'll adapt and be fine. And Maddox and Sarita will come and go as they do."
He glances at her -- across the span of seats, the darkness lit in waves by the tall lights flanking the freeway into the city. And then he looks back out at that city: its towers, its lights. Feels an ache. Thinks of her condo; the multicolored lights that lit her up as they made love on the floor. Thinks of their little den with its oak and its magnolia. Thinks of the storms, the thunder, the little pockets of immigrants who share an ancestry with them, a culture with their parents.
"I would miss it," he confesses quietly. "I would follow you, if you wanted to leave. But I think I would miss this city."
DanickaIt's comforting, that he agrees -- Kate, Sinclair, the rest of his pack. The look he gives the city as he drives, aimless and wandering, is... less so. Makes her ache. She looks down at her hands again. He confesses he would miss it. And she thinks -- and as she thinks, she says:
"I remember you saying the same thing when I said I wanted to get rid of my apartment," she says quietly.
LukasHe lets out a quiet laugh. Gives her hand a gentle squeeze.
"I suppose I grow attached to things. Homes."
Danicka"But I still have that apartment," Danicka tells him. "It's been convenient, with school and the girls and everything, but... that could have been any place. I only kept that one because you wanted me to keep that one," she confesses, her voice wincing away from it even though she doesn't. She knows it sounds like -- could sound like -- resentment. She doesn't want it to. She thinks, though, deep inside, that maybe there is some there, whether she likes it or not.
"It's not that I don't get attached. I lived in the same house from the day I was born til I graduated high school, and back again when we came back from New Orleans. In New Orleans there was even a particular corner of the garden that felt like... mine. And... I love our house," she says, the word hurting like her joy, like her euphoria, made her hurt when she stood over her daughters tonight.
The oak. The magnolia. The symbol of Perun carved into the very rafters. Her first Christmas with Lukas. Their families, coming here. Being pregnant that seemingly endless summer and fall. The girls, newly born, coming home with her. Every night. Every bathtime. Every walk home from the park. Every time she's heard Lukas on the steps, or seen his car there and felt her heart thumping. She sniffs without quite realizing it.
"I don't want to leave our home. But I don't care about Chicago itself the way you do," she admits. "My home is our house, you, the girls. Kando. Home was never that apartment, especially with all the things that happened there. And it's just... not this city."
She withdraws her hand a little. Gently, carefully, slides it away and puts it together with her own hand again. It isn't a rejection; it's anxiety. She fidgets, in this very small, silent way she has, a thing she never ever used to do. She never could show that she was anxious. Not unless she lied. Lying was how she soothed it. Even if at times it was compulsive: lies that meant nothing at all. Now she fidgets.
"A lot depends on where I even get accepted," she says very quietly. "I haven't applied anywhere," she repeats.
Lukas"I know," he says. They are both speaking softly. He takes the next exit: doesn't have to think about it. Soars over that long curving overpass, past the Bronzeville sign, past the convention center, down to Lake Shore Drive. Dark and quiet at this hour, just a few cars now and then. Skyscrapers behind Grant Park. The lake frigid and still to the right.
"Where would you want to go?" he asks after some time. "If you could go anywhere."
DanickaOnly silence, to that. She doesn't know what he's replying to, when he says he knows. Knows that she only kept the apartment because he wanted her to, knows that she loves their home, knows that nothing is certain yet. Maybe he means all of it. She looks out the window again.
She feels lonely.
His question makes her heart sink. Not because it hurts, or because he causes pain with it. It's just an odd little sensation that she feels, so immediate that it seems physical. A vast silence opens in her thoughts. Like standing on an empty plain, a salt flat -- nothing for miles but the sound of wind. Your own breathing. Your own heartbeat.
"I don't know," she eventually says, each word distinct, cared for before being released quietly into the wild.
She exhales a moment later. Something in her breathing has shifted, almost imperceptibly. "I don't want to go too far away from New York. I don't know how long my father has left. I want Irena to be able to stay relatively close to her family while she's fostering, too. But I also want to get away from good old boys and unspoken racial segregation and how cold it gets, and fucking deep dish pizza. Plus, the drama and politics of the wolves here do not make me want to raise my daughters anywhere near this sept. I want to get away from all these memories of Martin and Sam --"
after all this time, she still spits his name,
"-- and even Lee. I don't know how much I told you when it was happening, but she was still in my guild in WoW and she went off the deep end. She kept talking about this one night with Alex, Sinclair's mate? Just... over and over and over, obsessively. She got convinced that everyone in the guild hated her and kept quitting toons and making new ones. While I was pregnant all she could do was talk about how much she hates kids. Utterly batshit. She ended up leaving, but it made me re-evaluate certain conversations we had when she lived with me. Pretty sure she was always crazy."
Danicka has gotten off track. She pauses, and sighs. "I don't know, baby. There's a lot of things I don't like about Chicago. At all. I left New York because of my brother, came here because of Martin, and I stayed because of you."
She's still for a moment. "And I don't know where I would go, if I could go anywhere. I've never gotten to think about it."
LukasHe listens.
She speaks -- she gets a little off track -- she lets out words that sound like they've been inside her a long time, even if she's only known they were there for a few hours. She speaks and her mate listens, a large, dark, quiet warmth beside her. Eventually they turn off Lake Shore Drive. Eventually they pull to a stop -- on the back side of the Navy Pier, outside the closed shops and confectionaries and rides and ferris wheels. Just out near the end of the pier, looking out over the vast, dark lake.
The engine idles. The heat stays on. And after a while Lukas reaches out again. Takes Danicka's hand in his.
"Think about it," he says. "Apply anywhere. Apply everywhere. When you get accepted, we'll look at our options." He turns his head; his eyes glimmer in the shadows, sheer blue even here. "We'll go somewhere with a good program for you. Safe schools for the girls. Storms for me. We'll move the trees and I'll have Maddox figure out a way to bring our spirits with us.
"Budeme v poÅ™ádku, láska. Budeme šÅ¥astní."
["We'll be okay, love. We'll be happy."]
DanickaThey stop. They stay warm. She thinks that he could turn off the car and wrap himself around her, heart thumping against her chest through their clothes, and she'd feel warm still. She'd always feel warm with him. She always has. From that first car ride, when she said such light things, when she was exhausted, when her will was depleted, when there were moments when all she wanted to do was crawl onto him and tell him to fuck her. Push her dress up out of his way and fuck her. It would have been so different, she thinks, if she'd done that. If he had.
(She doubts he would have.)
They might never have gotten to where they are.
He tells her: anywhere. Everywhere. Options. We, we, we. Schools and storms and trees and our and us. And we. we.
Danicka takes a breath, her brow wrinkling. "Tell me what you want. How you feel." Squeezes his hand. "I know you don't want to hold me back. I know you said you'd miss this city, too, but... baby, I don't really know how you feel right now. You're not telling me. I don't want to end up wondering if you just... followed me.
"Like when you asked me to marry you. You didn't want me to say yes just to give you what you wanted," she reminds him, very softly.
Lukas"I..."
He starts. He stops. He frowns, and he realizes he has no answer. A breath is drawn; he lets it out. Their hands are still linked, and he returns that squeeze now: a silent language of signs, like a morse code of the flesh.
"I don't know," he admits. "I want to be with you. And I want you to be happy. I want you to thrive. But as for where I want to live -- it'll be hard to give Chicago up. In some ways I came of age here. We all did. My pack. Me. Even you, to some degree. I feel close to the Tribe in this city; not the way I hate, with all the machinations and the backstabbings, but in the way I love. I see our kin in the streets. I feel Thunder's presence in the skies. Perun is strong here, and I feel his strength in my bones. I'm afraid he -- and the pack, and I -- will be weaker in another city.
"I don't know, láska," he repeats, softer. "It's ... sudden, to think of leaving. It seems like a big leap, and I was not prepared for it. It's too soon to ask me how I feel. I haven't even decided that for myself.."
DanickaSo rare that she sees him hesitate like that. Younger, more certain of everything and ultimately thus more foolish, he never spoke if he was not sure. He stayed silent. He never displayed any hint of weakness, especially to her. He does now, and has for some time -- she knows that these days, she is one of the few people he truly shares his hesitancy with. He shares so many things with her now.
There's that wild, disruptive part of her that looks at him in the darkness of the car and wants to kiss him. Put her hand in his hair and pull him close, breathe his breath, drink him in. She's always distracted by his mouth. The shape of his lips. The sound of his voice. She has never not been attracted to him. Just looking at him sometimes thrills her. Feeling him drives her out of her mind.
Danicka does not kiss him though. They hold hands and he breathes, thinking. Time goes on, and he confesses that he just doesn't know. Like her, he's torn. The things he wants are not all compatible with one another, and all of them -- at least in the moment -- seem equally important.
"I'm sorry I didn't bring it up earlier, when I first thought of it," she says softly, after a while. Is looking at their linked hands. "I wasn't sure until tonight. But also... when it was such a small idea, and I was so uncertain, I was afraid that if I told you, and you were unhappy, then... it would dissipate, somehow. And I'd never really know if it was what I wanted, or let myself entertain the notion." Her hand strokes his, thumb against thumb. "I'm still learning how to deal with those sorts of worries."
Breathing in deeply, she looks up at him again, and seeing his face half-shadowed and half-moonlit makes her smile. Lopsided, lazy, small, aching. Small, strange little thing, that he would make her smile. It's not as though she hasn't seen him plenty of times. Blind, she could sculpt his face from clay, she knows it so well.
"We've had such different lives in this city," she says quietly. "Even while we've been together." Her brows wince toward each other: "I don't want you and your pack to be weaker somewhere else, but I don't think you will be. The sky is everywhere."
Leaning over, the leather seats creaking a little and her clothing rustling, Danicka lays her hand on his jawline and kisses him. It's a small, tasting kiss, equal parts tender and luxurious. When she withdraws, her eyes have closed and she has to open them again, staying close enough that she can see the vivid blue rings of his irises around his wide, black pupils. Close enough that he can see green, hints of gold, circling darkness in her own eyes. Her hand stays where it is on his face.
"I'll start applying in a few months. All over the place, every good program I see. Keep thinking about it. We'll take some trips here and there, see how some of the places feel. And we might stay. I just... I think ultimately, I want you to know that I don't see myself living here forever. I don't think I want that."
She tips her head forward, resting her brow against his. "But we'll be okay. We'll be happy."
Sounds like she believes it.
LukasSitting there by the frozen lake, in the warm darkness, Lukas listens to his mate. He holds her hand in his and blinks slowly, that view of the icy shore shuttering away now and then. When she tells him,
the sky is everywhere
he turns toward her: and she's right. The sky is in his eyes, too. She leans over and he closes his eyes; accepts and returns that kiss as tenderly as a gift. Her hand touches his face. When it falls, he catches it, clasps it softly with the other.
"We'll look around," he echoes -- imperfectly, but an echo all the same. "We'll find a place we can be happy."
DanickaA sly, small smile quirks at her lips. She remembers him suddenly as he was only five years ago -- seems a lifetime ago, five years. Like it was two other people circling each other the way they did, wary and recalcitrant. Other people, strangers, who felt surges of rage and panic whenever they had to soften towards one another even a single iota. She doesn't recognize those people anymore, not when she's sitting with him in a warm car by a frozen lake. Yet somehow she recognizes him, and remembers him, all the same.
"Jsme rádi," she murmurs, staying close to him, wearing that smile. Her eyes lower for a moment, from his gaze to his cheekbones, his mouth. Lift again, meet his. "Jsem s tebou velmi spokojený."
Something about the way she says that, low but lilting, sounds almost like pleased with.
LukasLukas laughs -- that open, warm sound that once was the exclusive purview of his packmates. Not even his family heard it; even with them he had to be the Shadow Lord, the master of the domain, the alpha of the pack.
Thought he did.
Didn't, really.
So: he laughs now. And he wraps his arm around her comfortably, familiarly, affectionately. "You sound so smug," he points out, amused. Tips the side of his brow to hers, exhaling. "Lake looks beautiful," he murmurs. "We should go somewhere with an ocean."
DanickaDanicka can pinpoint with laser accuracy the moment when she felt something other than lust for Lukas -- something other than the warm, liquid desire that made her limbs weak and her blood hot, her mind undone. When she felt aching fondness, when she felt delight, when she felt her heart leap to make him look like that again, sound like that again, feel that way. She wanted to be the one to make him laugh. She wanted to be the one to make him smile.
At the time, it made her heart race with fright. At the time, it made her backpedal. Retreat.
Now she only looks back, and she feels that feeling again, and then is flooded with every time he has smiled because of her, laughed because of her. The way he looks when he laughs with their daughters. Wears a soft red clown nose to make them laugh, too.
Every sharp pain is gone. Every dark memory is soothed, at least in part, because of present happiness.
He laughs. She smirks, eyes twinkling. They are awkward in the car across the center dash, but she leans into his arm snaking around her middle. She's smug. Her eyebrows quirk. "I have reason to be," she informs him. "I got you. I kept you. And you please me."
Kisses him. They are close enough for this. Kisses him softly, but not without heat, not without some tracery of longing that house and marriage and children and the mundanity of her life now have not managed to temper in her. She could go to bed every night with him and still long for him like this. She's certain of it.
The lake. Beautiful. Ocean.
She laughs too, though more softly. "Do you remember that night you asked me what I would want, if I could have anything? And I said spring. And you said the sea." She tips her head, looking at him in the dark. "Why did you say that?"
Lukas"Did I?" he muses, smiling. She looks at him. He has to rear back a little to see her; does so. "I don't know. I suppose..."
Lukas settles again. Leans his head back against the headrest; keeps his arm settled where it is. "I suppose I've always liked the ocean. Vast and dark and powerful as it is, I've never been frightened by it.
"When we first came to America, my parents were still holding out hope for going back. One day we went out to Coney Island. We were quite poor, so this was a big deal. I still remember taking the subway and the bus for what seemed like hours. When we finally got there, my parents splurged on cotton candy for us. One for me and one for my sister. There was so much of it, I thought. We sat on the beach and ate our candy and my father pointed east across the ocean and said, that's where home is.
"I stopped thinking of it as home a long time ago," he finishes, "but I suppose the ocean still feels a little like that to me. A connection to home, wherever it is."
DanickaThere's a flicker of motion and emotion at the corner of her mouth that he doesn't entirely catch in the shadows. It's when he says vast and dark and powerful. Of course he was never frightened by it. No more than Eliska and Tatiana are truly frightened by the raging thunderstorms that sweep through their neighborhood. Awed, perhaps, but their cries of startlement never sound like terror to her.
She likes to think that she would know if her children ever felt terror. Know it in her bones, from their eyes or their crying. She knows terror so intimately. She knows her children so intimately. And not at all, in a way. Even now, they are their own people. It can hurt so deeply, realizing that, and feeling the knowledge have absolutely no impact on her own devotion. Even young as they are, she thinks she might need them more than they need her.
Her mind comes back to what Lukas is saying. The story he tells her. She smiles, faintly.
"I'm sure you came by after that," she murmurs. "Told me all about it. Asked me if I'd ever had cotton candy without waiting for an answer." As if she would have given him one anyway -- she was so reticent then, so simultaneously awed and unnerved by the ease and loudness he and his sister had. She doesn't remember, of course, if he told her about Coney Island. But she imagines he would have told her.
Faintly: "I don't think of it as home either, but it's different. I wasn't born there." She shakes her head. "It felt... right, when we went back. Seeing my sister, seeing everything there. But I still felt like a visitor. We'll have to go back sometime after Irena changes, anyway."
Danicka lifts from her reverie, looking at him. "Why didn't your parents ever go back? You didn't stay so poor."
LukasLukas laughs, almost-soundless, a movement of his chest beneath her. "I'm sure I did," he agrees; turns his face, presses his nose briefly and intimately against her hair. The crown of her head. And then, curious: "Did you ever have cotton candy, back then?
"I think they got used to it here," he adds a moment later: a reply. "I think they learned to like it. Barely post-Communist Czechoslovakia had its drawbacks, I'm sure. And New York City had its benefits. Plus, once my sister and I started putting down roots, I don't think going back was an option anymore. I suppose in a way they stayed for us."
Danicka"Of course," she murmurs, almost automatically, but then, more thoughtfully: "I think I went to a fair once. Or Coney. I don't remember very well." Musing to herself, she says slowly: "Blue."
Blue cotton candy.
Danicka stays where she is, leaning on the center console and leaning against him. Wishes this were some older car, a bench seat. She could be closer to him. She thinks, suddenly and half unwillingly, of a truck, and a bridge, and of Decker, and of being sixteen and having some modicum of freedom for the first time in her life. Lukas said she came of age, in a way, in Chicago. She thinks: she came of age in New Orleans, too. Different ages. Different eras. She is never separated entirely from any of them. No one is, she supposes.
It feels so good to feel him breathing. The expansion of his chest. The warmth. The comfort it gives her is deep. Elemental. Danicka sinks into it for a while, silent. Her breathing begins to match his. Her heartbeat. This happens when they sleep beside one another, their bodies within a few paces of one another's rhythms. She remembers, as she often does these days, that she has known him for a very, very long time. Not since five years ago. Not since they were children. But before that, even. Lifetimes. She's never really been alone.
"One of the hardest things I ever learned," she says quietly, after a while, "I learned with you. Or because of you, at least." Her eyes are out, through the windshield, across the dark lake. She breathes in, holding it for a moment, and then exhales slowly. "I tried so hard, all my life, to believe that my family loved me. Deep down. That's why I was so... resigned.
"But love's not just this warm, fluffy feeling of affection or... possession," she murmurs. "If it was, then I'm sure they all loved me, and just couldn't help hurting me. Allowing me to be hurt." Her hair whispers as it moves across the lapel of his coat. "That's not it, though. I think of all those times we thought that love was weakness, or surrender. Because that's how it feels, when you want to do one thing but you do something else, because it's better for the person you love. Staying when you want to go. Telling the truth when it's easier to lie. Controlling your temper instead of lashing out. Being patient even when they haven't earned it. Forgiving when you've been hurt. Protecting them even if it means you put yourself at risk. All those things feel like... submission.
"Or they did," she adds, softly, like a correction. "I don't know if it's the same for you, but it doesn't feel that way to me anymore. Like today at the reception, when the girls started throwing that little fit about the shoes. I was embarrassed. I didn't want to go home yet. I was frustrated. But I didn't want them to feel like I was ashamed of them. And they were getting so tired and overwhelmed. And I never want them to be scared of me. So we all went home. And it wasn't what I wanted or what was easiest on me, but I didn't feel weak. I felt very strong."
Her head nuzzles up under his jaw. Turns he face so that she's well and truly tucked right there, gazing instead out of the driver's-side door.
"My mother, my father, and my brother all felt... something... for me. Fuzzy warm feelings of fondness or connection. Possession. I think my father feels real love, too. But he never even tried to get us away. He never called his daughters in the Republic to try and get help. I know that my mother... broke him. I don't... blame him, really. She damaged him irreparably. I blame her for that. But his love wasn't enough to overcome his fear." She pauses. The words hurt, but don't choke her.
"Please don't think I hate my father, or that his love means nothing to me," she whispers. "I just... I have something to compare it to now. Because of what we have now. But also because of you, and your family, and how they are with you and your sister, and how you are with them. Also because of my sisters, and their families."
She breathes in again, deeply again, closing her eyes as she rests against him, blocking out most of the world but for the sound of his heartbeat, the steadiness of his breathing. "I was important for me to come to terms with the fact that they didn't love me. Or love me enough, or in the right way... however you want to put it. I know it probably hurts you to hear it, but... I needed to learn that, láska. I couldn't learn how to really love you, or let you love me, until I understood that what I'd always known had never really been love."
LukasThough neither of them are aware of it, they're both wishing the car didn't have bucket seats. They're both wishing it was a bench, a couch, something where she can slide over and wrap her arms around him and nestle right against his side.
She's thinking, too, of the first time she ever tasted freedom. She's thinking of the proverbial gates opening, and the way she ran, and ran, and ran; did all those things she never would have been allowed to do under her father's roof. Under her brother's eye. She's thinking of their souls entwining through the centuries, and how she has never really been alone. Just felt that way until they found each other again.
She's thinking of the way she grew up. She's thinking of that painfully, but: there is her mate, solid and dark and warm beside her, calm, steady. He is thinking his own thoughts: family and love and distance and how much a city matters, really. If it matters at all.
He is thinking of what she's saying. He is wincing through some of it. Wraps his arm closer around her. Turning his face into her hair, the two of them turning their faces to each other the way animals do.
"I don't think your brother ever knew what love was," he murmurs; heard through his chest, heard in the air. "I think your mother confused it with ownership. And your father... I think you're right. His fear was stronger than his love. It was stronger than anything else.
"I don't think he's afraid anymore, though. And I don't think it's too late, between you and him. Not yet."
DanickaA faint smile softens the edge of Danicka's mouth, though Lukas cannot see it. Just hears a moment of hesitation, and a tenderness in her tone: "I knew you would worry over how I feel about my father anyway."
Nuzzles under his jaw with the crown of her head, her hair scuffing his chin. "I didn't say I think or feel it's too late, baby... or that there's something missing between he and I, even," she tells him, that tenderness still gentling a bit of correction, a nudge to turn away from worrying that Danicka might not feel loved, might not feel valued, in some way that erodes her or harms her... something. Whatever it is, in his heart. She eases at him to turn away from it, look this other way, back towards the rest of her words. Back to what really matters to her.
"I was just remembering asking you, a long time ago, if... if you thought they loved me. Or something like that. And you told me how you couldn't imagine ever treating your parents or sister that way, or treating me that way. Or something like that," she echoes herself, wry at her poor memory of such a turning point in her own life. "You didn't tell me whether or not I was loved, because you didn't know, and you don't lie to me."
This, more than anything for her, is a foundational truth: Lukas does not lie to her. Lukas could be the most conniving Shadow Lord in history, he could be wicked and deceitful to all others, and this would still hold her to him: he never gives her anything but his honesty. Even when it hurts.
"I don't know why I thought of that now," she muses, "other than the girls and the tantrum and... coming of age, and all of it. I just wanted you to know. I don't think I could have gotten here without accepting that truth. Painful as it was, it's part of how I... became myself. And you were with me, holding me through it."
LukasHolding her through it.
That's what he's doing even now. Holding her through this conversation; its turns, its shadows of a darker time. It's a two way street, though. She's holding him too. He is comforted by her nearness; made quieter and more content by it. In the darkness, he feels himself smile.
"Slysim te," he murmurs. "Jsem s tebou."
A little time passes. They rest together there in the car. It's quiet here. The city is quiet; the world is quiet. They, too, are quiet. After a while Lukas speaks again:
"I'm glad the girls will always be loved. I'm glad they'll always know it."
Danicka"I hope so," Danicka says softly to that. "I think we're doing okay so far."
LukasLukas laughs, just as soft. "For first-time parents, I'd say we deserve five stars and a pat on the back."
Danicka"Of twins," she says. "Two of them. At once. All the time."
She sounds amused and horrified at once. Stepping outside of her life for a few moments, she sometimes is still stunned at what it is. What it has become. That she lives in a house and has a cat and right now her aging father is watching the news and half-dozing on her couch while her children sleep upstairs, one of them still with her thumb stuck in her mouth, the other drooling on the satiny corner of her blankie. She has a stroller. She just graduated college. Their nanny is currently working on researching preschools here and there, building up a spreadsheet for Danicka and Lukas.
Preschool.
Danicka would be lying if some part of her didn't balk a little at her life. The routine of it. The necessity of going home at certain times, of letting mulitple people know where she'll be and when. The mundanity of certain Sundays. The way she sometimes misses Lukas just because he's her partner in this, and he's not always around, and she goes a little batshit with all the thoughts she has that she can't share with anyone else. There is a part of her that squirms away from all of it, even if the rest of her would not give it up for... anything. Kill her first. She would never let go.
Still. She does not want five stars and a pat on the back.
"I graduated college today," she murmurs, still watching the lake, the land outside, the glittering night city. "I want you to buy me a bottle of vodka, get me expensively trashed, and fuck my brains out on someone else's thousand-dollar sheets."
