liar.

[Lukas] About a week later, Danicka gets a phone call. It's Lukas' number. And his voice. Which is quite cool, the sort of tone you use for a business associate; or worse, the maid. The babysitter.

"Danička. Have you got time to grab a coffee with me?" It's 10:45pm on a weeknight.

[Danicka] About a week. Almost exactly a week minus a few hours since she looked up from her table -- and what was she doing sitting with a group of three barflies like they were old pals when she said she didn't know them, she didn't know why that one was passed out, she had only been there for a few minutes? -- and looked at him standing just inside the door. She hasn't called him, either, or texted an address, or wondered much why the two-day rule had not been dutifully observed.

Danicka picks up on the third ring, says "Hello, Lukáš," quite warmly, and that oh-so-expressive, oh-so-mutable voice of hers is smiling even after his half-demanding, half-icy tone comes through the connection. "Of course. Where?"

[Lukas] He doesn't even offer her a ride. Then again, she probably wouldn't accept.

"Blue Chalk cafe. On the Mile. Do you know it?" If she doesn't, he gives her the address, reading it off something -- a webpage; a GPS; something of the sort. "I'll see you there in about fifteen."

--

Fifteen minutes finds Lukas pulling up to the Blue Chalk in his Ford. The temperature's right around freezing. He's not in his overcoat. It's a leather jacket instead, fine-grain, subtle, european-cut, no zippers and buckles and studs and spikes. He wears this over a collared shirt, which is white or near enough not to matter, and the usual expensive jeans. The last time she saw him, he was stark naked in a rumpled bed -- his face taut with exhaustion, running on fumes alone, and his eyes still blue as a dawn sky. Now he's composed, distant, the same as he always was.

He also has a disposable cup of coffee, which, as Danicka walks up, he drains and crumples in his hand. Tosses into a wastebasket. His hair is wind-ruffled; even if he were not already drinking coffee, she would know this is not the first stop of the evening. He looks at her as she approaches, his eyes flickering over her, then back to her face.

"Thanks for coming out." He doesn't offer his arm, but the turn of his body includes her as he mounts the steps into the Blue Chalk. Another man might offer excuses for not calling earlier -- Lukas doesn't even bother.

[Danicka] What Lukas should have realized by now, not being particularly obtuse, that he can only rarely predict what Danicka will or will not do. If he is being distant on the phone it doesn't seem to phase her; she speaks as warmly as before to tell him that yes, she knows the place, and she'll see him soon. Eighteen minutes later, the silver BMW with the convertible made for hotter climates than this slides into the cafe's lot and Danicka gets out, wearing a combination of white skirt and black boots that end and begin far enough apart to bare just her knee. The blue-gray shirt she's wearing is long-sleeved and simple and follows her form without squeezing it; her jacket is not unlike his, and is the same one she wore the last time he saw her.

Clothed. Poised. And leaving.

She walks towards him, hands and keys going into her jacket pockets, the top layer of her hair pulled back with a barrette while the lower layer rests softly on her shoulders. She feels his eyes on her as certainly as she knew where he was standing when she got out of the car and walked immediately in that direction; the moon is half the size it was the last time, but that doesn't change who or what he is.

Danicka half-smiles at his thanks and follows him into the cafe. "Don't mention it."

[Lukas] Lukas is no longer surprised that she does not allow him to flank her. He leads the way up the steps; pulls the door open and holds it with a hand open on the glass until she takes it from him.

It's warm inside. It smells of coffee beans, dark and rich. There's a general hum of conversation in the air, undercut by whirring blenders, milk foamers, espresso machines. This is the sort of cafe where you sit down and a waitress takes your order, and later brings it to you. Lukas takes a look around; then he picks a pair of armchairs in the back, in the corner, facing one another at an oblique angle, secluded. He tosses his coat over one and sits down, looking up as the smiling waitress approaches.

Danicka can see -- they can both see -- the second she steps into his corona of rage. They can see the second of hesitation, the falter in her smile before she soldiers on.

Lukas orders a strawberry scone and a caffe corretto cognac; specifies Rémy; shows his ID when asked. The waitress doesn't look very long. She can't seem to wait to hand it back and move on to Danicka, and then away.

Left to themselves, Lukas is quiet a while. The armchairs are low and comfortable, a small knee-high table off to the side. He brushes a crumb off the edge, then raises his eyes to hers.

"I asked my parents about you," it should no longer surprise her when he jumps right into it like this. "We were children together."

[Danicka] It's amazing how little seems to surprise Danicka, even at the outset of a conversation, or an acquaintance. At least, it appears that almost nothing catches her off guard; she could be faking that as well as anything else, and she is a master pretender. Still, given that in three weeks she has literally turned her back on him only two times -- entering a room and exiting it a matter of hours later -- it cannot strike him as odd that she hangs back and waits for him to go first. Many have seen this, and continue to see it, as deference rather than an assertion of feminist creed. In her, it's fear. And with Lukas, she doesn't bother to walk ahead of him and act as though it doesn't make her entire body go tense.

Danicka, notably, does not slide out of her coat when they enter, even though it's warm. She walks after him to the armchairs, slipping her hands out of her pockets, and takes the seat that he chooses not to occupy. Her legs cross, at the ankle, knees together. All she wants is a caffè macchiato, her eyes and voice far calmer and far easier for the waitress to tolerate. She turns her eyes on Lukas when the young woman departs, and waits.

Because: no. She is not surprised when he just leaps into whatever it is he wanted to say to her when he asked her to come here. Of course there was a reason, a specific one, rather than --

Well.

Her face remains placid as she tips her head eversoslightly to one side. "How are your parents, Lukáš? My father was asking."

[Lukas] His eyes lid over once: a slow blink. His lips part a second before he speaks. Other than that, no real indication of surprise -- if that's even what it is.

"You knew."

[Danicka] The fact that no surprise sparkled in her eyes or lifted her brows was telling. The fact that she simply, quietly asked after his parents was enough. She knew, and his expression in response could mean just about anything. Still tilted slightly, Danicka gives a pair of small nods.

[Lukas] He takes a moment to absorb this. Lukas has a certain bearing about him: absolute confidence. He never jitters. He never fidgets.

No; that's not true. The last time they met, sitting at the bar, watching her sit across from him, and then stand, and then come to his side: he'd shifted then, adjusting his weight, his lean, his position on the chair as though he just could not get comfortable.

None of that tonight. Absolute stillness. He considers her words, and he considers her, his brow faintly knit.

"Why didn't you tell me earlier?"

[Danicka] She considers his question, pausing as though she really never so much as thought of telling him about the conversation at the tail end of January that she had with Miloslav Musil, as though it never occurred to her to mention that upon hearing this Shadow Lord Beta's name her father had reminded her of several years' worth of intermittent memories of childhood. A childhood that, at least briefly, converged with Lukas's. Before he Changed. Before Laura died. Before Vladislav Changed. Before a lot of things.

Danicka takes a breath, as though finally reaching a conclusion while her eyes wander off of his face, and then looks back at him and gives a small shrug. "It didn't seem important."

[Lukas]

[Lukas] They're interrupted: the waitress sets down her caffè macchiato; his coretto cognac. Lukas' pale eyes follow her as she does this, and then he smiles at her, close-lipped, thanking her.

She departs. Lukas picks up his spoon, gives his cognac-infused espresso a stir, then removes it and sets it on the saucer. Leaves the cup alone for now.

He continues as though the interruption had not occurred: "But it was important enough for you to make me my favorite koláče."

[Danicka] When the waitress walks over, Danicka keeps her eyes on Lukas. A thin pair of arms extend between the two Shadow Lords, setting down two saucers, one of them with a scone resting alongside the cup...and Danicka keeps her eyes on Lukas, her hands loosely laced together on top of her lap. He stirs; she keeps her eyes on him, level and blinking when necessary, as though she is simply waiting on him to continue.

She doesn't touch her drink. It's very hot. Patiently, and silently, Danicka just observes the Ahroun until he gets around to mentioning the baking. "My father suggested it," she answers, one corner of her mouth quirking with wry chagrin. Old men.

[Danicka] [Manipulation + Subterfuge // Shenanigans!]

[Lukas] He watches her for a moment.

Then, very softly: "You're a liar."

[Danicka] [Willpower: Oh god, Danicka, be good...]

[Lukas] GRR.

[Danicka] Her eyes don't flash and her nostrils don't flare. Her jaw doesn't clench and her brow doesn't furrow. It's her stillness that reads, to him, like displeasure. It's the fact that her tone of voice has been so warm, so soothing, without being tender and without being relaxed. Even when he calls her a liar and there is a moment, a second where she pauses before saying anything else, Lukas cannot look deep enough to see what her true reaction is to this; Lukas cannot see whatever it is that she's holding back.

Maybe he's getting used to that.

Even a regularly-timed blink from Danicka seems softened somehow, as though nothing about her is ever in anything like a hurry, as though she is never flushed or frantic or gasping. At least in that respect he knows better, though to look at her it seems like that would have had to have been a different woman. Or a dream.

"What do you really want to talk about, Lukáš?"

[Lukas] "Why don't we start with why you deliberately withheld the fact that you and I have known each other a lot longer than three weeks?"

Danicka is warm without being tender; Lukas isn't even warm. He sits the way he had in the wingback chair by the fire - feet apart, hands on the arms of the chair, his weight well back in the chair. His eyes are steady on her, unflinching and ungiving.

"And then we can move on to why the hell you walked up pissed off. What; did I not call you soon enough?"

[Danicka] They're in a corner, or close enough to it that there aren't a lot of the cafe-round tables very close to them. They are far enough from other patrons that Lukas's presence is not driving away the cafe's customers...yet. He's not pleased. She's not pleased. If she were like him, Garou and not Kin, the two of them sitting together would be too much for most people to tolerate sharing any amount of space with while they are this...

To use Lukas's words: pissed off.

Her eyes, infuriatingly, drop from his at the word withheld and find the corner of his mouth instead. They stay there, while he stares at her, and though both gazes are unwavering, they do not meet. The corners of Danicka's mouth curl upward at his suggestion of why it is she might be unhappy, and with him in particular, but that smile is no more a smirk than the flat line of his own expression: the smile is almost sad, and it fades.

"We haven't known each other longer than three weeks," she says quietly, as though disagreeing with him is frightening enough to hush her voice. "We may have known each other once, but that was nearly fifteen years ago."

Danicka's eyes trail from the corner of his mouth to one nostril, but no higher. "And yes. It would have been nice if you had called earlier."

[Danicka] [Manipulation + Subterfuge: Come on, Dice, WORK WITH ME.]

[Lukas] (HAIL KAHSEENO.)

[Lukas] It would have been nice if you had called earlier--
"You're a liar."

He says this again to her, hard on the heels of her words, cutting the last curling vowel of her word off. He says this softly as the first time, and as absolutely, with a growing hardness behind his tone.

Not: you lied. Or, you're lying.
Not that, but this: You're a liar.

There's a pause, his eyes locked on hers, or as near to hers as she would allow.

"Tell me the truth. The whole fucking truth."

[Danicka] A lot of people would get offended, or upset, when a deed becomes their label. When the child is told not that their behavior was inappropriate but that they are 'bad'. When Lukas called her a liar the first time it seemed to ruffle her no more than it did when he called her a whore. When he says it the second time she just blinks calmly. Slowly.

"About what?" she asks, her eyes trained on his cheekbone, following the path of tears that she can easily imagine haven't likely been there for fifteen years or so.

[Lukas] She can see his teeth grind.

Then, with elaborate patience: "About why you're pissed off, Danička."

[Danicka] His patience seems to take more effort than hers does. Then again, as he likely knows by now, she spent a great many years caring for a child as that child grew into adolescence and young adulthood; it would be a sad state of affairs if a woman who worked as a governess for the better part of a decade was as impatient as a Shadow Lord Ahroun. It would be a dangerous state of affairs. She remains smooth. Placid. Whatever else she's not showing him, he has to look at her sideways even to realize that she's so much as displeased.

Danicka certainly doesn't look angry. Or sound angry. She still hasn't touched her drink, though.

"The only reason you care is because you don't like being disobeyed, or lied to," she says evenly. "Knowing won't, ultimately, make any difference." To whom, she doesn't go on to say.

[Lukas] They've both forgotten their drinks. He's forgotten his scone too: strawberry-filled, not candied oranges, but then they don't have candied oranges in a place like this. Or koláče. They've both forgotten these items, and they sit on the adjoining table, abandoned, like still life. Like props. Like this whole damn coffeehouse is a prop, an excuse for him to --

"You're right," this is abrupt, though not loud. "I don't like being disobeyed, particularly by kin. And I cannot abide being lied to. You have something of a right to privacy, Danička -- " maybe he wishes he could stop saying her name, " -- but if I ever catch you lying outright to me again, ever, I promise you will not like the results."

And a beat; a second.

"And you're wrong. That's not the only reason I care."

[Lukas]

[Lukas] (erp -- adjustment!)

They've both forgotten their drinks. He's forgotten his scone too: strawberry-filled, not candied oranges, but then they don't have candied oranges in a place like this. Or koláče. They've both forgotten these items, and they sit on the adjoining table, abandoned, like still life. Like props. Like this whole damn coffeehouse is a prop, an excuse for him to --

"You're right," this is abrupt, though not loud. "I don't like being disobeyed, particularly by kin. And I cannot abide being lied to. You have something of a right to privacy, Danička -- " maybe he wishes he could stop saying her name, " -- but if I ever catch you lying outright to me again, ever, I promise you will not like the results."

-- she's not listening anymore. He stops there.

[Danicka] He has the honor and the privilege of being only the third person to witness so much as a candle-flicker of Danička Musil's temper and recognize it for what it is. Poor Sam caught a flash of it and did not know why it was there; had never gotten an answer beyond I'm tired, and still does not know why his asking her to stay awhile and maybe watch some television or talk had irritated her. Poor Martin was so drunk at the time, so very very high, that her spat curse in one of the languages he does not know is as distant as a forgotten dream to him.

Lukas sees this subdued, gentle, soft-spoken woman on the surface. He sees that deep inside of her eyes and in the sweet amicability of her company that she is 'pissed off'. He will remember it. He still has not seen her lose her temper, though. Then again, Kin -- Shadow Lord Kin especially -- are perhaps not supposed to have tempers. They certainly can't risk losing them with a fullblood.

Her chest rises and falls a little more noticably with her breathing, but she doesn't clench her hands or fidget with her skirt. His words that follow his promise could calm her, could placate her, could make her ask why he cares if it isn't just his own pride at being deceived by a mere Kinfolk. They don't. She waits a moment, and flicks her eyes to his before they drop again.

"Why didn't you call earlier?" Curiously, without judgment.

[Lukas] "Why don't you answer the question first."

[Danicka] [DELETE LAST TWO POSTS.]

[Lukas] (DELETE MY 1:11AM POST. MOVE ON.)

[Danicka] She gives a small laugh. "What, why I'm 'pissed off'?"

A shrug follows, a simple up-and-down of her shoulders. She could say anything. Any lie. Any truth. It wouldn't really matter; if he believes it's a lie, he doesn't ask why she lied, he doesn't necessarily know what parts are lies. But if he catches her in a lie, if he believes she's lied whether she has or not, she...won't like the results. So she shrugs, and smiles at him, slowly turning to stone from the inside out.

"I got a phone call earlier today with some bad news. Rumor-mongering by an old friend that concerns me and my reputation."

[Danicka] [Manipulation + Subterfuge]

[Lukas] (O RLY.)

[Lukas] Can a liar tell the quality of her lies? Can Danicka tell the difference between a lie god himself would believe, and one a child could see through? Does she know, opening her mouth to craft this one, that she's building a house of cards in a hurricane?

No matter. She surely knows the minute she's done that he doesn't buy it; he's caught her, again, lying outright to him, again. It's in his eyes: a flare of anger, bright and hot.

There's a silence. His earlier threat -- promise -- is still hanging in the air. Maybe he's about to drag her outside and beat her in the parking lot. Maybe he's going to shatter his plate on the wall, find a sharp shard and carve up her face. Who knows what she knows of Lukas and his ideas of discipline; striking a woman across the face for daring to gainsay him, half-drowning a man in a fucking toilet for daring to say his packmate had nothing to do with the situation; and all of it cold, impersonal, cognition and logic-driven rather than emotional. Who knows what she knows, not of Lukas per se but of the tribe, the Shadow Lords, their treatment of their kin -- because clearly she knows something.

Nothing happens, though. The anger comes, it beats in the air, it goes. After, he only looks at her, his brow knit as though troubled, or pained.

"Danička." He never sighed her name like this when he was in her bed; in her. "That wasn't even a very good lie."

A pause. He picks up his cup; he drinks his corretto all at once, every last drop, hot on the verge of warm now, not longer remotely close to scalding. Afterward he sets it down, a click of ceramic on ceramic.

Then: "What exactly are you protecting that you think it's worth anything I could do to you?"

[Danicka] There has to be some reason why she lies to him less than she has to so many others, a reason why she struggled even in the car when he drove her home before sunrise one morning so that she would be honest about something as innocuous as whether or not she saw her tryst with Sam leading to anything more serious. She had been painfully, but quietly, truthful that morning and at that point Lukas did not know this woman well enough to realize even that she dissembles more than she enlightens, that her response to him in the club -- sideways as her answer had been -- was the norm, rather than a coy exception on a night out. When he took her home that day, he did not know that telling him the truth just then had cost her spirit as much as fighting off a frenzy had cost his.

And there has to be a reason why she sits there so still and so placid when her heart is hammering in her chest hard enough to hurt, when she has to be careful to not take gulps of air instead of simple, thoughtless breaths as usual. There has to be a reason why Danicka lies about things that don't matter. Why she made his favorite pastry and why she's angry and why the hell she really would not consider Sam a suitable mate if his happiness does not matter, why right now she won't let her hands shake and she doesn't try to play for sympathy that is probably not there no matter what he said, no matter if he cares about the answer for reasons other than his severe dislike of being lied to.

It's hard to breathe. And it's hard to understand.

Her coffee remains untouched. She hasn't moved at all since she sat down, other than tips of her head, shrugs of her shoulders, movements of her eyes and lips. Her hands are as they have been since she laced them to begin with. Right now the answer to his question, the true answer, is incredibly simple. He might even understand it, and yet she can't say it. Even if she wants to.

Does she want to?

"...This is so ridiculous," she breathes out. "What good will it do to tell you? I'm not even angry."

Anymore.

[Lukas] This is so ridiculous-- that's as far as she gets.

This is not the way it was with Martin, when Lukas stood there calm as a mountain lake and waited, patiently, for a mistake. This is not like that at all. This is her speaking half a sentence and Lukas losing his temper, losing his precious fucking control, taking the flat of his hand and slamming it down on the table hard enough to make his plate jump and his empty cup clatter.

Conversations go silent. Everyone stares.

Lukas doesn't wait to be stared at; he gets to his feet, tugs his jacket on in short sharp jerks, grabs Danicka by the wrist, a firm unbreakable grip; hauls her toward the door. Some good samaritan steps up, quailing already before he's even played the white knight,

"Miss, is this man--"
"Get the fuck out of my way," Lukas,

and the good samaritan falls back. So much for that. The Ahroun pulls the door open, it's frigid outside, he tugs her down the steps to the sidewalk, down the block halfway to where his car is parked, stops in the shadow of a leafless tree. Here he lets her go, and -- this is important -- unless she had struggled, he had not gripped her arm hard enough to leave a bruise.

"I want to know why you're angry with me." He is not shouting; he is laying his words down like stone. "I want to know because I fucking care that you're angry with me. I don't like it; not a bit more than you do; but there it is. I didn't call because I wanted to. I don't trust you and you've proven to me tonight, over and over and over again, exactly why I shouldn't. I hardly ever believe a word you say. I didn't believe your bullshit about loyalty and I still don't. I don't think you know the meaning of the word any more than you know the meaning of honesty. But I laid down my arms and armor, Danička; I trusted you for the space of a few hours. You owe me twenty seconds of the same."

[Danicka] [Willpower]

[Danicka] For the second time in three days, Danicka is faced with a living, flesh and blood reminder of things long since passed away. She did not cope, the last time. She ended up hiding. She slid under her bed where it was shadowy, where no one could see her because no one was coming through the unlocked door, and she held her hand over her mouth to keep herself quiet, and she cried. No one saw her. No one heard her.

She doesn't cry now. Coffee she has not had so much as a sip of sloshes up and over the rim of her mug when Lukas smacks the table; Danicka does not jump when he does that, but one of her hands clenches briefly into a fist on her lap before uncurling. Everyone stares at them, at him; Danicka looks at his shoulder, her head as well as her eyes dropping slightly this time. Her shoulders do not hunch, but barely. Just barely.

When he grabs her, she doesn't resist. Her arm goes limp in his grasp, the better to avoid being broken. This is the second time he's felt her arm do this in his grip. Once at that shithole bar in Cabrini-Green and now. When he held her wrist while she knelt on the bed, just before she touched him and told him to let her go, she had not forced her limb to relax like this. She had embodied herself completely, reaching for his body, looking up at him without flincing away from his gaze. And this is not the same. That is a world away.

Danicka quickens her steps like a pro to keep up with him as he hauls her out of the cafe and down the stairs, down the sidewalk. People outside look and stare; he commands attention and moreover, he is dragging a beautiful woman towards a car like an errant child. And she is not crying, or crying out, or calling him an asshole. She is silent except for her footsteps clipping across the cement, til they get to the gnarled and scrawny shadow cast by the streetlights. She won't look at him when he lets her go, but she does not hunch over, cradling an arm that isn't truly hurt. She just lets her arms fall, still limp. Still relaxed.

She could answer him at junctures. I said I'm not angry. She could argue with him. I don't care if you trust me. She could delve into recriminations and accusations of her own. You threw me on a bed. You didn't trust me then, even for a few hours. And you know it. She could...

...and simultaneously she can't. Danicka closes her eyes and gives a hard shudder, from the cold or from fear, and does not open her eyes when she sucks in a deep breath to fill her lungs and finally forces out from between clenched teeth: "I am angry because you are less than I thought you were."

[1 WP burnt.]

[Lukas] His hands curl into fists until he forces them to relax.

"Explain to me what the hell that means."

[Danicka] Being pissy for the sake of it, holding back to hold back, using attitude or a snide smirk to keep people at arm's length...this doesn't come naturally to Danicka. Looking at her, at the blood swimming in her veins -- rapidly right now -- she does not bring to mind the cold craggy mountains of the homeland where he was born, where her father was born. Danicka has the heritage of heroes in every move she makes, every word she says, but there is something warm about it, more like spring than winter, the lowlands versus the high. She's the food and the smells and the familial touch, not the sharp teeth and the raking claws and the vicious glory of a coup.

Or if she is, then it's well-buried, well-hidden, quieted in her because she does not have the Rage to back it up and her temper is hardly made of edged steel.

Her eyes are still closed. She won't look at him, she won't wrap her arms around herself. She doesn't want to see it coming, whatever it is. "You are the sort of jackass jock I wouldn't even fuck in high school, Lukáš. You are like m--" Danicka swallows, stops, goes on: "You assaulted and humiliated a drunk man half your size, twice your age, and not even a fraction of your strength, and I am disgusted with you because of it, and I am angry at you because I thought you were more."

[Lukas] There's a dead silence.

Her eyes are closed, so his expression -- well; it doesn't matter. All that matters is the silence pressing on her ears, broken when the wind rustles through the wintry trees; broken when a car swishes by on the street.

Lukas could ask her how she knows that. He could ask what the fuck, really, was her relationship to this troublesome Martin that keeps on cropping up left and right. He could ask these things, or demand them --

He doesn't.

"If you'd think that of me," Lukas says instead, forced-level, "and if you'd take the word of your drunk, addicted, weak Martin without so much as asking me what I did and why, then I have absolutely no obligation to explain myself to you."

[Danicka] Her head lifts after a few moments, and she opens her eyes in time to see as well as hear no obligation leave his lips. Her eyes go to his.

"He's not 'my' anything...except my friend. I don't care why. And I wasn't going to ask you to."

There's just a beat of silence.

"But I wasn't going to tell you I was angry, either."

[Lukas] Let's be honest: the urge to explain, to lay the facts down from his point of view, to make her understand, to redeem himself in her eyes -- that urge is there. It would be there in any man; except, Lukas is not any man, and he rarely feels himself obligated to explain himself to any kin.

So he doesn't. He keeps his mouth shut; looks away on a grimace until she goes on, and then his eyes snap back to hers. He bares his teeth in a rictus smile.

"No, you were just going to lie to me, again, and again, and again. Whatever you may think, Danička, I am a man of honor. I can't remember the last time I broke a promise, and I made you a promise the second time you opened your mouth and lied to me. So why don't you explain to me now," he shifts his weight, balances it evenly between his feet, "why the hell I should make an exception for you."

[Danicka] He lays out so much on the line without meaning to, without giving any of it voice. In the way he looks at her, then looks away, the grimace on his face the things he's already said. But he doesn't explain himself, his treatment of Martin or his behavior with her tonight.

Perhaps because, as with calling her or not calling her, he wants to. And he denies himself what he wants as much as Danicka refuses to do the same.

She frowns slightly, her brow furrowing in puzzlement even as the hairs on the back of her neck raise in response to that subtle shifting of his weight. "Did I ask you to?"

[Lukas] There's a sharp pause.

"I wish you would."

[Danicka] The frown on her face doesn't go away; it deepens as she looks up at him. Her mouth is open; she closes it after a second when she realizes that she has no ready answer for that, no immediate question she feels safe asking. After perhaps three seconds, Danicka takes a breath and says:

"The first thing I learned when I started governing Yelizaveta was that punishment is nearly useless. The promise of a reward for good behavior is effective conditioning; the threat of punishment for bad behavior will work...to a point, and only for a limited time. It's one of the easiest forms of conditioning to extinguish. If even one time the threat isn't backed up by action..." she shakes her head, shrugs one shoulder. "And if it goes on long enough, then the punishment has to consistently get more and more dreadful in order for the undesirable behavior to remain suppressed."

Why a lecture on conditioning. Why?

Danicka is standing straight; she always has been, since they came out here. Her eyebrows are pulled together, as though she's concerned. "So essentially, if you shout at me for lying, then eventually you'll have to hurt me. And then you'll have to keep on hurting me, worse every time, until the only way you get what you want is that I believe you'll kill me otherwise."

She won't step any closer. At least she is looking at his eyes. "I think the fact that you wish I'd ask you to make some kind of exception for me means you're willing to. I don't know if you're capable. And I think all you really want to know is if I'll make any kind of exception for your sake."

Her mouth closes. She blinks. And swallows.

[Lukas] For once, there's no question on his face. She knows about conditioning in terms of childcare. He understands it on a far more visceral level:

Make a promise, good or dire. Keep it. Or no one will ever believe your promises again.

But he listens anyway, and when she gets to the last of it: what he's willing and capable of; what he wants -- when she gets there he blinks once, longer than usual, a brief shutting of his eyes before they open again.

The ochre of a sodium lamp has no wavelengths blue eyes can use. His eyes are not blue in this light; they're strangely colorless, strangely grey-dark. He looks at her and he thinks: I wish you did not see me so clearly.

"And are you?"

[Danicka] At no point had Danicka spoken of conditioning as solely relegated to the rearing of children. It was where she learned about it, the reason she learned about it. But those rules don't change, no matter who you are or how old you are, or whether you're a monster walking around pretending to be human: driving cars, drinking coffee, eating scones, wearing clothes. His mind is at least partly human, though, and her words still apply to the human mind. But then, she wasn't really talking about conditioning or training him.

She was talking about her.

Danicka doesn't pause to ask, to evade, to wait for him to tell her whether he's talking about being willing or being capable or whatever else. She knows, she sees, and so she just gives him an answer.

"I'm capable." He is not going to like hearing this. "I don't know if I'm willing." For you.

Or maybe: yet.

[Lukas] He is not going to like hearing this: that's what she thinks, or assumes. It's strange that as well as she can read him, as clearly as she can see to what even he cannot, sometimes she can misjudge him so utterly.

Of all the things she has said tonight, this probably causes him (costs him?) the least anger. He simply studies her a moment.

Then: "Can I ask this much, then? Don't lie to me again. If you can't tell me the whole truth, then don't. Only don't lie to me, Danička." A pause. "I won't break my promises to you a second time."

[Danicka] "Give me a reason not to."

[Lukas] A stitch in his brow. He doesn't answer her directly.

"What you said the other night at the bar. Is that still the truth?" Give him this much: he didn't ask, was it ever?

[Danicka] She knows what he's talking about. Not the part about fucking his brains out; that was the truth. Not the part about making him come hard enough to see god, the end of time, whatever it was; she didn't ask him and he didn't cry out anything, even her name. Not the part about making him kolache, probably. Danicka looks at him, who doesn't believe that she knows the meaning of honesty nor loyalty, and she knows what he's talking about. She already knows how important it is to him, and it doesn't make any sense at all why he's still standing here and her face is still intact when she knows how important it is to him.

Danicka huffs slightly, but it's not laughter. "...After I said that, you tried to turn me into a whore." Beat. Then: compassion. "I understand it. I do." And something harder than that, steelier than a human but far from the sort of Kinfolk who can stare down a Garou and not piss themselves. "But forgive me if I wonder, when I'm told every time I see you that I'm not worth your trust, what your loyalty would look like and whether it's worth mine."

[Lukas] A flare of temper: "I don't trust you because you lie to me, Danička."

-- and he closes his eyes after that, doesn't even try to hide it; shuts them and clenches his jaw and forces his anger back down the way a man might subdue a fighting animal.

"And I tried to turn you into a whore," he adds, quieter, "because I didn't want you to be something different from the rest."

It can be argued that their conversations are in the silences. Here's another one.

Then: "But if you give me your loyalty, I'll give you my trust. For as long as this ... " he doesn't have a word for it; goes on, "lasts. And that's a promise too." A pause, and his brow darkens. "But if you doubt my loyalty," he adds, "then you doubt everything I am, and there's absolutely no reason for us to have this conversation at all."

[Danicka] She sighs, in the end, after so much standing there and looking as though this conversation is draining her. It is; the effort of not just pulling back now is a constant strain, as much as him keeping his Rage locked away so that it won't end in her bloodshed or so...she doesn't even know what. Danicka just shakes her head, rather wearily and very quietly asking: "Can't you just..."

And she won't finish.

[Lukas] "Finish your sentence."

[Danicka] Again her eyes close, this time her brow furrowed; it gives the impression of a child trying to remember the answer to a difficult math problem, secretly hoping it's hidden in the dark somewhere.

"Can't you just be inside of me without all this?" Her eyes open, find his. She looks as bewildered as she sounds. "I don't care if you don't trust me or believe a word out of my mouth. I don't care if you fuck anyone else. I'm not...expecting...anything from you. Why can't you just have me like this, like it is, and not try to go any deeper?"

[Lukas] Lukas draws a breath and releases it, a sound like a laugh, or a sigh, or nothing at all. Or simply itself.

"Danička," and he does: he does wish he could stop saying her fucking name, over and over, like an incantation, "if I could, I would. If this could be absolutely nothing to me, I would be glad of it. I wish you were absolutely nothing to me. And then I could treat you with kindness and no fucking care whatsoever."

A pause.

"Now what I want to know is, a week ago you were ready to promise me loyalty. What's changed?"

[Danicka] And she has said his name twice tonight. On the phone, and once in the cafe. She said his name once when he first laid on top of her, murmuring a plea to him like it was a comfort and not a terror to have him there. She almost never uses his name, especially lately, while hers tumbles out of his mouth over and over as though he is making up for fifteen years or four orgasms spent nearly silent.

Danicka lies; Lukas tells the truth as though it's dying to get out of him.

She frowns at him and shakes her head slowly. "You humiliated my friend. I care enough to be angry. And you have to ask me if I'm even capable of loyalty? Then you give me some vague promise because I dare to want to keep my thoughts and feelings to myself? What do you think changed, Lukáš?"

There it is again.

[Lukas] There's a pause.

"And what happened that night has nothing to do with it." It's not a question; nor a statement. It's a challenge of sorts, low, quiet. "Is that what you're telling me? Because I think you're lying again."

[James Wagner] ( Open? )

[Danicka] what happened that night

"The fact that you could have killed me?"

had nothing to do with it

"Or kissing like...that?"

what you're telling me

"Or the fact that you didn't ask me to stay? Or call me until you found out we used to --"

you're lying again

Danicka takes a breath, lets it out slowly rather than talk about whatever it was they used to do when they were both in grade school and barely cognizant of the world around them. "If it was just what happened that night, I'd already have said yes."

[Lukas] There's a fire in him. Call it rage; call it fury; call it lust. It might not matter much. They might all be the same. There's a fire in him -- not red but blue, blue-hot, and it gleams and twists in the darkness of his pupils, which are wide, which are opened to receive the light that is not there, in the dark, in the night; which are opened to receive the image of her, this fucking unremarkable woman, this pretty woman, sure, but this unremarkable one, who is far from brave, who is not the most beautiful woman in the world, or this city, or even in his long and variegated history; this woman who ...

... does it really matter? Because whatever she is: she has his attention now, completely; she rivets him. And he does not know why.

There's a fire in him; and there's ice in him. A solid wall of control. The ability to rein himself in, which is a precious rare thing amongst the children of the Full, which is what he is.

There's a sense he wants to reach out to her. Surely she can read that without even trying.

There's a sense he wants to turn the fuck around and walk away. Go back to before it was so fucking complicated.

"What do you want of me?" -- that, finally.

[Danicka] [Willpower, -1]

[Danicka] What do you want o--

Danicka's not fire. She's not ice. Even his simile of a stone egg isn't on the mark; she could give him a dozen examples of ways that she is not evenly remotely inviolate, could demand to know where the hell he thinks he gets off saying she's got so much as a chip on her shoulder, much less a perfectly walled-off source of anything inside of her. She doesn't seem to have much of a temper; she was reserved and distant in the cafe in such a way that most people wouldn't notice she was reserved or distant at all; she seemed happy, on the veil of the surface, to be there with him.

She doesn't remember Lukas's mother very well, or his sister. She doesn't remember whether or not they were outspoken women, or if they had sturdy backbones, and she doesn't know if they are anything similar now to how they were then. No one in this city has seen her lose her temper, has seen a flare of true anger rise up so fast or so vicious that she could not stop herself from expressing it. Danicka has practiced so many tricks, knows so many ways to stop herself from letting anyone see the anger that tonight she has barely shown and only loosely mentioned.

But she snaps before he even gets the question out, because she is tired, and she is drained, and she has no car ride coming to an end to give her a countdown, an escape from this man. So she snaps.

"I want you to stop asking me so many goddamn questions all the time! Zkurvysyne, Lukáš! Be a little fucking patient with me!"

[Lukas]

[Lukas] There's a jolt of anger from him, sharp as electricity.

He controls it.

And a silence follows -- his breathing elevated, if only slightly: fast and deep. A second or two goes by. Then he drops his head, he raises his hand to the bridge of his nose, his brow furrows, he pinches for a moment until he can put aside his anger.

"Fine." Calm now; controlled. "Enough. Go."

[Danicka] In that silence, after that jarring strike of his anger, Danicka takes a deep breath and if she were naked right now, if she were on a bed in a motel room she would be already curling into a ball, waiting for it. She would be preparing to absorb the blow as she did when Sam hit her across the face, but the blow does not come, and her open eyes stay that way.

Danicka stands there for a moment as he pinches the bridge of his nose, and he does not see that she looks stunned: she blinks, her lips part, and she stares at him almost warily...but not fearfully.

What have you done to me? What have you done?

Ultimately they haven't gotten anywhere resolved. Loyalty. Trust. Anger. Nothing's been made sense of, he doesn't know when she found out that they were once children together -- whether it was recently, whether she knew the moment he saw her at the club, whether that's why she's here -- and he doesn't know why she made a half-dozen candied orange kolače in amidst the strawberry and cream cheese and blueberry that were, ostensibly, for the entirety of the Unbroken Circle. And yet: she looks at him in a way that is a calmer cousin to the way she met his eyes the first time she came in his arms and that is what makes her take a step back and silence her expression, give herself steely reminders.

Not his anger.

Danicka doesn't stop to speak to him again. He says Go; she turns and walks away.