loyalty.

[Danicka] When Lukas called, Danicka had sounded tired. She had not so much as hinted at resisting the idea of meeting him at the Brotherhood, though there had been a long pause between his summoning and her acknowledgement (obedience). The call had not lasted very long; there are few people on this earth that it is worth staying on the phone very long for, and a simple exchange of time and place does not take more than a few moments. The drive from North Kingsbury to The Brotherhood of Thieves takes longer, and for the duration of it, the stereo inside is cranked high enough to obliterate almost any outside noise.

She wastes no time when she gets there, shutting off the car and getting out, going towards the alleyway door into the kitchen rather than the front of the house. Danicka is wearing a chocolate-brown suede skirt that ends a couple of inches above her knee, a light green button-down blouse with a straight hem that is obviously not meant to be tucked. Stockings and heels. A coat that sits open even on the walk from car to door, its end past the edge of her skirt. For a woman who sounded exhausted, she looks as composed as ever, the dark circles under her eyes disguised lightly by makeup.

Danicka is slipping out of her coat when she gets upstairs, her straightened hair resting on her shoulders, and folding her coat over her arm. She goes immediately through the common room to the door of Lukas's and knocks twice with the back of her knuckles.

[Lukas] Even a human would be able to guess that the person knocking on his door fifteen minutes after he'd invited (summoned) someone over is likely to be that someone. For a Garou, there's little question: not when he can smell her through the door; not when he can recognize the very cadence of her footsteps.

"It's open."

His voice is lower than it rightfully ought to be, rougher, coarser, underlain with a growl. But when she twists the doorknob and opens the door, Lukas is in his human shape, lounging on his bed in charcoal-grey drawstring pants, a plain white undershirt, with a pillow propped between his back and the headboard, the clip-on lamp switched on over his shoulder. Not reading but writing: a leather pad holder folded open against an up-bent knee, two or three pages of letter paper flipped up over the top. His pen scratches busily over the paper as Danicka enters. It's not until he finishes his present sentence that he caps it, tucks it into the pen loop, flips the paper sheets back into place and the padholder closed. He sets it aside on the nightstand, beside a large bowl that probably used to contain a sizeable serving of the Brotherhood's signature beef stew.

The blinds on the window are not merely twisted open but drawn up; the windowpane is wide open. The room is freezing cold, but the Ahroun is flushed, his temples damp with sweat. Even with the windows open there's a musky, wild smell to the room, like an animal's room. Regeneration is hard work: the body burning through weeks' worth of nutrients to do weeks' worth of work, the temperature jacked up far beyond even the elevated setpoints of a Garou's system.

He doesn't look hurt, though, apart from a patch of red on one arm, like a bad sunburn. He certainly doesn't act hurt. He looks at her levelly, his eyes cool and clear, after he's set his ... what, notes? letters? aside. A moment's regard; then:

"Why did you call my packmate a coward?"

There used to be a chair in here, but a certain silver fang had broken it, and Lukas hasn't bothered to replace it. There isn't an easy place for Danicka to sit, and for the moment at least, Lukas doesn't seem wont to try and offer her one.

[Danicka] She has a habit of almost never opening doors fully. Danicka grasps the door's knob, turns it, and as soon as the door is open far enough for her rather slim form to step inside, she slips in and closes it behind her quietly. The smell of the room hits her, the chill in the air from the open window, before she even sees him. The setup of the room is nearly identical to the one beside it, the only bedroom up here she's been in, only this one is now missing a chair for the desk. Danicka's eyes track immediately to the only other presence in the room, one that would be compelling even in a crowd, and she does not take more than another step inside.

The woman stands with her feet together, coat folded over her arms in front of her, and regards him quietly, as though he merely summoned her from the other room and not from across town. She does notice the sweat making the hair closest to his scalp and the back of his neck curl up slightly the way it would naturally were it longer. She notices that his face is reddened but not with a blush or with anger. She looks back at him for a second, then two, and drops her eyes to his cheek. As always.

Almost always.

"I was in a fit of pique and overstepped myself," Danicka says smoothly, lowering her eyes and inclining her head, even, a slight amount. "I am grateful to her for being merciful with me."

[Lukas] And there's a distinct snort, equal parts derision and disbelief; perhaps something like amusement too, though there's no doubt that the joke is on her.

"Next time you decide it's a good idea to insult a Garou's courage, at least have enough courage of your own to do it in a language they understand." A beat. "Or did you want her to ask me?"

[Danicka] The man on the bed setting his letter-writing aside has the dubious distinction of being one of the few people -- incredibly few, painfully few -- who can claim to have ever seen Danicka lose her temper even for a moment. She's not a terribly dangerous woman, not someone you worry much about pissing off for your own health's sake. Being laughed at does not seem to upset her any more than being slapped across the face. Being snorted at does not seem to ruffle her anymore than being called a whore. Repeatedly.

She tilts her head slightly to one side as he lectures her, briefly, and bats her eyelashes once but not with an exaggerated air of innocence. It's just a soft blink, almost drowsy with patience. Danicka knows better than to say Is that all?, but that is still the message.

"Now what purpose would that have served?" she asks him, gently.

[Lukas] "You tell me." Her deliberate gentleness of tone isn't fooling him anymore. It possibly never did. He returns like for like: a flat, level tone. "You could've spoken Russian to her if you didn't care whether she understood or not."

[Danicka] Oh, she knows where this is going.

Danicka sighs quietly, as though she has been asked Why and Why and Why so many times in a row by the same curious child that she is having to call on new and untapped reserves of patience so that she doesn't respond this time by sending him to his room to color a picture and get out of her hair. On the surface, it looks simply like resignation that has not yet poked at her temper.

Her way of keeping him at arm's length is this softness, this deferential lack of eye contact, these sweet tones of voice that float to his ears and underline every word she says to him with distance. And he speaks evenly, holding his anger back and yet searching their conversation for information and understanding as though...despite himself.

"Yes," she says mildly, "I suppose I could have." A pause, and then she steps forward and lays her coat in a folded pile of wool on top of his desk. There's no purse with her. Danicka walks over to stand by the side of the bed. "Is this like not talking about Sam by talking about Sam?" she asks, an eyebrow flicking up.

[Lukas] "No. What happened between you and I -- that's only incidentally related. This is actually me pretending to be fooled by your sidestepping the first question I asked:

"Why did you call my packmate a coward? Or would you prefer I asked her?"

[Armstrong] True to form, Mrena went through her daily activities as though nothing had ever happened.

She was up before dawn, gone without more than a few words to whoever had the misfortune of being awake at some ungodly hour, and was back before lunch. Or, for some, was back before breakfast. The rest of the day, however, was spent doing whatever the Hell it was that she did during the day.

What did she do all day?

The theurge wandered out of her room, smelling vaguely of paper and graphite and charcoal and text. [And God, did she ever smell like text. Like the spoken and written word. It could be assumed that she had spent some of the day reading, or speaking, or being so engrossed with language that, for a moment, nothing else had mattered. Coherent and incoherent thought both treated with reverence and left to be mused upon at a later time. That, however, was not important in describing the fact that the Shadow Lord smelled like books and journals.] The theurge, for her part, had her fill of painting for the week- it was time that she moved on to a different medium for the day. Or, at the very least, wandered away from her "work" and took some time for play.

But first? Food.

She wandered out of the room, clad in a pair of sweatpants that were too big for her- they looked like they belonged to an older brother, or someone who was at least a foot taller than her. There was a good chance Mrena had stolen them from a packmate once upon a time and never deigned to return them, or she simply owned sweats that were too big for her. Coupled with a paint-splattered tee shirt advocating the release of a Dawson's Creek starlet being held captive by scientology and a slightly slower-than-usual gait, she wandered out of her room. The theurge tucked some of her hair back behind one ear and-

Hmmn. Voices. One familiar (familial? Not quite. Flat was more accurate. Senza affetto.) and one female (Familiar? Not quite. Danicka's tone didn't sag, so she couldn't call it flat. Dolce.)

Mrena didn't recognize words, or really tones at that moment.

A measure of rest. Then? A knock on the door.

[Danicka] She's quiet for a moment, standing there looking down at him. The moment is filled with calculation, with deliberate thought given to how to answer this question. The last time she saw him he was ordering her to leave and she had only let herself tremble as soon as she was inside her own car again. She'd snapped at him. Oh, god. She'd nearly yelled at him and her jaw wasn't broken.

Then:

Both of her eyebrows lift, not just flicking up and then down this time but staying up. "Ano," she says, rather simply, followed by: "I think she kn--"

Danicka's head turns when there is a knock at the door, but she doesn't stare at it, waiting for Lukas to invite the knocker in or not. She looks back down at him.

[Lukas] There's a moment of quiet; and as soft as Danicka can seem, as biddable and submissive and outright cowardly as she can seem, sometimes there is no question whatsoever that she is born of the same blood as the Ahroun on the bed.

She is calculating. He is watching her calculate. And unbidden, he thinks of her voicemail: I don't trust you. I lie sometimes because of that.

Ask your packmate, she says, or is as good as saying, when the crisp knock comes at the door. Both their eyes turn that way. Danicka turns back; a second later, so does Lukas. He's looking at her when he says, again,

"It's open."

Mrena this time. The Ahroun's pale blue eyes go to her when she enters. He is guarded with Danicka; if Danicka did not know better, she might think he simply is guarded, at all times, before everyone. But this is not true. When he sees Mrena he smiles.

"Hey, Mrena. What's up?"

[Armstrong] She slipped in, sketchpad under her arm. The theuge looked at the window- she didn't shiver, she didn't blink, she didn't flinch [Mrena never flinched, that wasn't the point.] Eyes turned to the door and she went ahead and come on through.

"You're looking better," she said. It came with a slight smile; at first, she didn't register that Danicka was there. The younger Shadow Lord took a moment to looka t her. Actually look at her, take in the colors and textures of her hair, her posture, her mannerisms. They were studied, but a second and a half can feel like an eternity to the wrong (or right) people.

What's up?
Oh! Right.
"I came by because I was headed downstairs and I wanted to see if you..." she stopped, looked at Danicka, and then back at Lukas "Well, I suppose either of you, really, wanted anything while I was down there."

[Danicka] Danicka is looking back at Lukas when Mrena enters. She is still looking at him when he turns back to the door and smiles at his packmate. Danicka blinks, then looks over at Mrena as well with a small smile. She is studied, and she smiles through it. The woman seems used to being looked at, stared at, even scrutinized, and doesn't flinch away even though this is the young woman who nearly made her weep from Inquisition. She remains poised, her coat folded on the desk and her hands at her sides, silent while the packmates converse.

In response to Mrena, she simply shakes her head slightly. "No, thank you."

[Armstrong] Danicka Musil had lovely facial proportions. Her eyes were just the right size; in this light the color seemed to highlight her hair, seemed to call attention to smooth skin and what White Eyes interpretted as a lack of a need for makeup. No need for concealer, no base, no powder. Mrena Armstrong looked at Danicka in pieces rather than as the sum of her parts. There was no imminent danger, nothing that the young woman had noticed to send her into the realm of quiet, intuitive interrogation.

She didn't have the bone structure to have the same impact as Torquemada.

A pause, and then she turned her attention on Danicka. "I haven't seen you recently," she said. It might have been an open ended question, an invitation to elaborate. Or, it could have been an observation.

[Lukas] "Yeah, actually," it's been said before, and it will be said again: Lukas is not the type to turn down an offer out of politeness. He grabs his big bowl off the nightstand, empty now, though certainly not clean -- hands it to Mrena. "They have a giant pot of beef stew down there. Could you grab me some if you head down? I'm starving."

[Danicka] The fact that there is no longer a chair in this room to sit in has as much to do with Danicka remaining standing as anything else, but it still gives off the impression that she does not intend to stay here for an extended period. Not long enough for a bowl of stew, or to wait for her body to metabolize a beer. She would make a good artist's model, for an artist who might want her: she stands almost perfectly still while Mrena looks her over, as though on some level she knows she's being painted piece by piece, feature by feature, limb by limb, in the girl's pale eyes.

And then she tips her head, going from sculpture to life again. "I thought it would be best if I kept my distance from the Brotherhood for a time. I was asked here today," is all she offers by way of explanation. Everyone in the room knows that 'asked' is a euphemism.

[Armstrong] It was a trade- sketch pad for a dirty bowl of stew. It was a familiar sight- the one that she kept close, the one that she seemed to be doodling in non-stop in her free time. The younger, distinctly smallest Shadow Lord in the room gave Lukas a bit of a look- brows raised, almost expectant. The look was a very distinct, very feminine watch my stuff look. The sketch pad had its own distinct scent; it was a mix of dirt and copper and various art supplies and burnt something.

"I'll be back," she said.

The theurge started to make her way out of the room, before looking at Danicka again. She had listened to what she said. Being 'asked' to the brotherhood that night. The fact that she was keeping her distance, and Mrena stopped for a moment. "You should come back," she said. "You cast interesting shadows in this light."

And, with that, she headed out and off down the stairs.

[Lukas] 'This light', Mrena calls it. What light there is in this room is dim, with heavy shadows: a single reading lamp clipped over Lukas' shoulder, on the headboard.

The Theurge leaves. Lukas holds, and presumably guards, her sketchbook. There's a silence.

"She's right, you know." There's a faint, almost unwilling curl at the corner of his mouth. "You do." And another pause. "I didn't actually ask you here to grill you about what you said to Katherine. I just thought I should get it out of the way."

[Danicka] She gives a slightly broader smile to Mrena before she leaves, the equivalent of a goodbye, see you later, but the artist's words to her are odd enough to make the smile falter and the woman's eyelashes flick rapidly in a blink. She turns to look back at Lukas, somewhat quizzically, and lifts an eyebrow to find her unspoken What the hell? answered by a reinforcement of the other Shadow Lord's claim: she casts interesting shadows. The look that follows on Danicka's features then, well...can only be described as

Huh.

Her face relaxes, falling into the quiet, placid mask...or a version of it, softer and more blurred, as though she really is just calm and content to be silent rather than hiding anything underneath that impossibly still surface. He almost-smiles, nothing like the expression he gave Mrena when she entered. Danicka merely stands there as she has for the last half a minute, waiting for him to speak. He always does, eventually, and she does not mind waiting.

"Since you could have grilled me rather effectively over the phone, I thought not," she replies, almost wryly. Danicka glances at the door, then back at him, and then reaches over and pushes a somewhat sweaty lock of hair back over one of his ears. "You all right?"

[Lukas] Her bemusement triggers his amusement -- the expression quirks wider, half a grin, before he schools it. "I only meant: you look good in this light."

... which may or may not be exactly what Mrena meant. Who the hell knows what Theurges mean, anyway.

Then she reaches toward him -- his amusement folds up. It's a reflex: his hand comes up and catches her by the wrist before she can quite touch him. His skin is burning hot. A human running this sort of temperature would be seizing up; his neurons would be frying. Lukas' eyes are clear, though: not fever-clear but clear. There's a second's pause. Then he lets her go, to draw her hand back or complete the gesture as she will.

"Perfectly fine." Cool and crisp; even formal. If she touches him anyway he doesn't move -- not toward, not away. "Do you want me to get you a chair?"

[Danicka] Inexplicably, her eyes brighten for a moment, then go subdued again. He can't see or sense any other reaction, any other hidden response to the half-grin, the compliment, that may or may not be motive for her hand reaching out to his temple. If she was almost smiling -- and she almost was -- it dies when he grabs her wrist, and then her brows furrow. He can see it as concern as easily as annoyance, the way her lips press against one another for a second like they do. Her eyes meet his, however, until he releases her and she goes about tucking that untidy lock back.

Her hand draws away then. He isn't going to know if she would have gone on touching him. What he does know is that his fingertips landed on her wrist in such a way that he could feel her pulse as surely as she could feel his temperature, and while steady, it was -- is -- rapid, like a hummingbird beating its wings underneath her skin.

Danicka quirks a Look at him at the question, then shakes her head and very nearly rolls her eyes before simply turning, smoothing her skirt, and sitting on the edge of the bed beside his waist. "Thank you. And no." A beat. "So why am I here, then?" she asks lightly. Drolly.

Since, of course...she already knows.

[Lukas] "You know exactly why."

[Armstrong] She had gone down the stairs, off to the kitchen and battled her way through people and crowds and customers alike, served herself, and decided to head back upstairs. BUt, first, not without lingering briefly. The theurge had dished out a healthy portion of the beef stew, looking at it for a moment before taking it in on her senes. It smelled like heaven. It always smelled good, really. It wasn't the smell that Mrena liked, but rather, the texture. And so, Lukas wouldn't miss a few bites before it went back up to him.

She refilled the bowl after she'd had her fill; it was as if nothing had ever happened.

On the way back, she went ahead and grabbed an apple. The theurge took a bite of that, took and then headed on her way. She had the grace of a veteran waitress when it came to maneuvering with a bowl in hand. Up the stairs like it was nothing. No sloshing, no spilling, no sullying the shirt that proclaimed "RUn Katie Run" in bright orange print. Who knew how long she had had the shirt, or realistically, why she had the shirt. But, then again, the same could be said about her sweatpants too. No one needed to know where Mrena's wardrobe came from, but they could count themselves thankful that she did, indeed, have a wardrobe.

The theurge soon, however, found herself with the difficult task of opening Lukas's door with her hands full. She paused, then took a rather sizeable bite of apple and opened it with her newly freed hand. For a brief moment, she looked like a Hawaiian roasted theurge.

She reached up to grab the apple, taking the apple back into hand and performing her trade with Lukas.

I give you stew. You give me a notebook.
Deal? Deal.

She took her notebook, then looked at Danicka for a moment. She was taking her time to chew and swallow.

"Danicka, may I have a word with you?"

[Danicka] When Mrena returns, apple in her mouth and bowl of stew in her hand, Danicka is perched rather neatly on the edge of the Ahroun's bed, her knees and her feet together. For all the appearance of familiarity, there's something oddly professional about the way Danicka sits there, hands on her lap and back straight. She would make a good nurse. Or nanny. It's already known that she made a fantastic governess; there were families wanting her when Yelizaveta turned seventeen the Sokolovs released her. There were phone calls, there were letters inviting her over for a 'chat'.

She could have stayed in New York City, where her father and brother are, where the memory of her mother and her deeds sings in the blood of Shadow Lords and other tribes alike. She could have stayed where she knew the lay of the land, where she knew where to go on a day off and where she had grown up. She could have stayed where the opinion held of her was as pristine as her unscarred flesh, her name as good as gold, where her reputation was as fine and bright as silver. Eventually someone would have gone to her brother and with his approval she would have taken her father's route and produced heirs for the Nation. They would be protected. Near family and the families of pack-affiliated Kin. She and any children she might have would be welcome guests at gatherings with one of the most prominent Silver Fang families on this side of the country.

And yet she's here, in Chicago. With no job. No family. And one, maybe two people that she would willingly call a friend. Only one that she has.

Despite that, she's sitting on the edge of Lukas's bed quite comfortably, though not with a great deal of evident relaxation to her form, and her head is turned towards him because they are talking, voices rather low but not in whispers. As the door is opening, Danicka is saying: "I think I shou--"

She turns when Armstrong enters, though, cutting herself off. She remains silent while Mrena hands over the stew, eyes on the Theurge while she chews her apple. There's a pause after her question, and then Danicka nods. "Of course," she says, though without any indication that Mrena is leaving or taking this outside, she remains where she is.

[Armstrong] Dutiful. Or, possibly, diligent. yes, Danicka was diligent. That was the word that the theurge was looking for to describe her. Danicka looked attentive; she was attentive. It was a blessing. Mrena had, previously, told her to listen. Actually listen and not hear, and the blonde woman had understood and kept herself attentive. She was diligent.

Mrena's voice was not filled with condescending overtones, nor was it given a silver edge. Today, there was little reason for it. Besides, having a silver tongue meant something completely different to Mrena than it did to the rest of the world- it was not something persuasive. It was something dangerous. Something that would leave lasting damage, that would scar beyond the words that had been used to do so.

The Shadow Lord's philosophy on beautiful words, both harsh and persuasive, was not the point though. Nor was it the reason that she asked to speak to Danicka.

No, the reason she desired the woman's attention was a simple one, and one more in-tune with Lukas' interpretation of her words. In that light, Danicka Musil was beautiful. In any light, Danicka Musil was beautiful. And some day, that pristine flesh and good-as-gold name would be connected with another, would bring them honor and children. She had the posture of a nurse, of a nanny. She had the breeding of a brood mare. And Mrena thought her beautiful, found the control of her body (evident in pauses and posture and patience) to be something worth recording.

And, hopefully, would be recorded before all that faded into the background.

She indicated to the door some with her head, then started to head that way herself. White Eyes expected Danicka to follow.

[Danicka] She rises to her feet in a single smooth motion, her suede skirt falling back around her thighs as Lukas tucks into his stew, giving his healing body something more to burn off. Danicka does not glance back at him, and does not take her coat from his desk. Her steps go one in front of the other, as graceful on heels as in bare feet. She follows Mrena out of the bedroom and -- presumably -- to the common room, unless she is led to another bedroom. The door to Lukas's bedroom? Is closed behind her, as it was when she first arrived.

[Armstrong] She walked out of the room, making her way to the common room. She looked at Danicka as she did; Mrena was one to walk and talk, it seemed.

"What color are your eyes?" she asked. It was a fairly simple question, yes, but she couldn't help but ask it. And, well, would no doubt ask the question of others after Danicka. It seemed to be a genuine question, filled with no ulterior motive. Because, well, it didn't have any motive other than an artistic one.

A followup.

"Have you ever modeled before?"

[Katherine Bellamonte] They were all -- or, mostly all -- quite the worse for wear the members of the Unbroken Circle after their battle with some (so she was told by various sources) gigantic gelatinous creature that had swallowed Samuel whole and almost burned the Fenrir to death. Katherine, never certain if her pack-mates were embellishing for her benefit or not, had neither betrayed clear disbelief or avid enthusiasm for their stories.

She had, rather, simply instructed the Modi to a bedroom in the spacious Loft and hired a bevy of nurses to fluff, primp and on more than one occasion, flee in terror from his rage alone. Not one to shy away from an extravagance to assist her pack-mates in healing, she could therefore not comprehend why he insisted on accompanying her on a routine stop by the Brotherhood. How he could feel stifled by a house that was (quite literally) equipped with every luxury money could afford was a distressing mystery to Truth's Meridian.

Still -- they arrived together, Katherine first through the wide double doors into the first floor restaurant and behind her at a slower rate, Sam. "You shouldn't even be on your feet, yet." The Philodox lamented, unfurling a scarf from around her neck and hanging it on a hook.

[Danicka] [Upstairs] What color are her eyes?

Danicka neither blinks at that nor furrows her brow. The first thought to occur to her is not that Mrena is asking this philisophically or to check and see if Danicka ever has used a mirror. The first thought is, as ever, of controlling her very expression in order to dissipate any reaction that might surface without her permission. The second thought is the possibility that Mrena is colorblind. The third thought is that it doesn't really matter.

"Usually green," she answers, an almost vague answer to a simple question, tilting her head. It is a mannerism she often displays, and it softens her. It does not make her look threatening, or even like the immovable object to a Garou's unstoppable force. She's too compliant for that. It isn't, however, an affectation. Danicka does this with everyone, conveying curiosity as much as confusion, interest as much as impatience. It all depends on the context.

"...No," she answers after a moment, the single syllable rolling out slowly.

[Sam Modine] It's taken everything out of him.

Last night there had been a battle, one Galliards the midwest over will hear the tale of in the coming weeks. Half a mixed pack of purebred Garou, Cliaths to the last, a Theurge of thunder's ilk doing the work of goblin and a single Lupus Child of Gaia had engineered a successful Trojan horse maneuver on the den of some of the Wyrm's more monstrous foot soldiers. A single Get of Fenris, the song and story will say was swallowed when the den itself turned out to be a hideous sort of monster istelf. Consumed.

Eaten.

To say it was hubris that got him there would be an understatement. To say his will was exhausted another. His very Rage, expanded and unleashed had been nearly emptied upon the thing and out of sight from the rest he'd even found himself on the verge of being ridden by the Eater of Souls itself. And still the night finds him accompanying miss Bellamonte on her trip to see the rest.

The Brotherhood.
Fraternity
Pack.

His leather coat is zipped up all the way, squeezing down the overlarge hood he waers to cover the face of this giant form. A few golden hairs shoot out past it's darkened depths to give a small halo around it's edges. His own covering is merely unzipped and not taken off. The young man's normally large but lean, long form is now bulky, overbig in the wrong places and his height rivals that of the NBA's starring centers and power forwards. This is the near man, the prehistoric thing humanity rose from.

Lucky too, that he's covered, scaly, seared bits of him are still missing in spots under his clothes. His face red and burnt to the first degree where the thing's digestive innards had washed over him at the end, flowed past his hand and next to his eye, over his cheek which now nearly reveals the angular bone on one side. That same hand is mangled, swollen, the space between two fingers almost skinless. Again, one is lucky not to see the flesh of his torso or the backs of his legs.

"Nonsense." gruff but with an air of forced humor through obvious exhaustion. "I'll be fine."

[Armstrong] [upstairs]

It was an almost vague answer, yes, but she had received worse. One could imagine how much Mrena had mused over the color (or non-color) of hazel. And she had. She had stared at Sam's kinsman for what felt like an eternity, complimented his color palate, and then committed the Fenrir to canvas, to a landscape instead of a portrait. Incorporated blues of varying degrees of softness and warmth into a complete composition.

Well, not yet complete. This is not the point.

"Would you be interested?" she said.
What was heard was completely up to Danicka.

[Danicka] [Upstairs] Her eyebrows flick up, pale in color but not as pale as her hair, which in the right light or lack thereof takes on highlights that are almost white. Danicka shifts her weight slightly onto one leg, arms remaining straight and loose at her sides. "Modeling." It's a question, but doesn't sound like one, with her tone of voice so level it's beyond dubious.

She thinks for a moment: "What medium?"

[Katherine Bellamonte] Katherine, dressed in monochromes as she so frequently seemed to be merely huffed a soft breath of disbelief at her pack mate as she shrugged her heavier overcoat off her shoulders and hung it over her scarf. She turned on Sam, hands on her hips and tilted her head to one side, surveying him.

"You resemble an overcooked ham." She chided flatly, flicking her fringe from her eyes (her hair this evening stylishly tethered back with a cropped bridge of layers falling over one eye) and rolling pale eyes heavenward in apparent surrender. "Pour le bien de bonté," Katherine turned and started through the empty restaurant toward the stairs.

She could be heard murmuring of course, beneath her breath: "Obstinate Ahroun."

[Sam Modine] "I told you-" He follows her when she turns, his black leather and blue denim a definite and strange juxtaposition to her black on white on black. An outside observer might see the beautiful woman of such class and obvious sophistication as slumming it for a night with the giant, the brute of means by no means. He's cut off midsentence by the pain brought about by the simple act of reflex.

He tries to put his hands into his pockets.

"-Augh!" Teeth find his bootom lips and draw, no suck the air in the room deep within audibly. "I'm not.." Shaking the overdone man paw out in the air as though he's just washed it and now does so over a sink. Rapidly and out of reflex, his already nearly refueled Rage outpacing his ability to properly control it. "being obstinate." He goes quiet then, perhaps conserving energy.

Following like a glimmer of the giant shadow the Silver Fang must cast to hold her head just that high.

[Armstrong] "Acrylic," she said. "Though, oil is more appropriate for portraits, it doesn't dry fast enough for it to be an efficient medium to work in in this environment."

This environment. Living in, essentially, a dorm. white Eyes had a room mate, she had a bed, and she had a communal bathroom. She lived in a dormitory, and (for the most part) she enjoyed it. It rang of things she had never experienced, would likely never experience, and could be left alone. She held her head high, her voice even, her shoulders back.

Danicka was... concerned.

Mrena was nothing but the epitome of confidence. If there was flaw, she did not present it. If there was doubt, she did not allude to its existence.

"I would say you lend yourself to marble, but I don't sculpt," she said, "And it's certainly an inconvenience to both acquire and to dispose of. I rather like the Coltranes, I don't want to leave them with a gravel mess."

[Katherine Bellamonte] Her laughter precedes her up the stairwell. That soft, appealing sound that seems entirely too carefree and buoyant to belong to such a creature as Katherine Bellamonte as she appears at the top of the stairwell and glimpses Mrena and -- ah -- Danicka. There is the briefest drop in her mirth at the sight of the Kinwoman, she surveys her with pale, almost gray tonight, eyes before they slide over toward Mrena.

"I have come to check on our other patient, and let Samuel out for some air. He is convinced he is fit for exposure, Mrena." Katherine sashays toward the other woman, bending to deposit a chaste kiss on her cheek, and play with her hair a moment as Sam slowly (and painfully) makes his way up the stairs.

[Danicka] Danicka is, actually, dubious. With the way she was standing at Lukas's bedside when Mrena first entered to ask him if he'd like some stew, and the way she was sitting by him when she returned with the aforementioned stew, with the imagery of a nurse or a nanny briefly superimposed over her presence, one might surmise that she was concerned. Then again, she had said it: she was here because, and only because, she was 'asked'. She is in the common room now because, and only because, she was 'asked'.

Ah-Danicka remains silent for a few moments after Mrena finishes speaking, long enough for Katherine to come upstairs and look briefly at her, then to her packmate. She has straight hair tonight, her eyes a clearer green than usual, deeper in color than the button-down pastel blouse she has on over her rich brown skirt. "Hello, Katherine," she says, inclining her head to the Silver Fang. She does not glance at the stairs. She looks back to Mrena.

"And what sort of compensation did you have in mind?"

[Sam Modine] [App + subterfuge, diff -1 (big clothes) //wearing a giant hoodie so you can't see my Mel Gibson face!]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 4, 6 (Success x 1 at target 5)

[Sam Modine] It certainly isn't fast.

Normally Sam would be seen to nearly glide up to the landing possessed of a grace preternatural and trained to the point of inspiring alternate awe and fear. Now though he only manages to shuffle with gritted teeth as the taped bandages ruffle at the up and down motion of his shoulders whilst his good hand guides him up the banister like a rope up and away from a spelunker's belt. By the time he makes his way up Katherine is laying a kiss upon the cheek of the youngest of their number. Youngest, though indubitably their wisest, their guide and shaman through half their own natures.

It's no suprise he gives half a pained smile under the giant hood. Icy eyes find the kinswoman not a second later. Features under that hood take an unseen cooling, the Rage snapping like fire at it's loosened chain. The smile disappears though no further indication does he give at any sort of emotion. He moves into the doorway, letting the overlarge hood obscure his marred visage.

"Mrena." He is though if nothing else, through the deep and gravelly basoon of a voice happy to see the Theurge unscathed.

[Armstrong] "Katherine, he is just a little digested, he'll be fine," she said with an almost exasperated tone. It was as though she was relaying that Sam had a paper cut and Katherine was trying to get him stitches. She looked at Katherine and let a slight smile come to her face and it was given permission to take up residence for a moment.

Then? Back to business. Mrena looked back at Danicka and inhaled. The theurge's voice was even. "Five percent of the resale value," this was where they started negotiating. "Plus a hand in naming the piece."

a pause, a look, and a bright smile. He was moving "Hey Sam, you eat yet?" She looked fine. Nothing about her posture or her appearance seemed to indicate that last night had been... unkind.

[Danicka] [Willpower: Stay put // -1 (Sleep dep)]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 3 (Botch x 2 at target 6)

[Katherine Bellamonte] "Oh yes?" She straightened, arching a brow as the man in question limped into view like an oversized bear, his features hidden beneath his hood. She glanced back down at Mrena a beat, her lips quirking.

"Dare I inquire how Lukas does? He wasn't digested as well, was he?"

[Sam Modine] [Same roll, forgot he's in glabro - diff, -1 die// can't see mah burns]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3 (Failure at target 5)

[Armstrong] (stamina: I'm hungry, but Sam's all gross lookin'...)
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 5 (Failure at target 7)

[Danicka] Once upon a time, a screen door slammed, and a little girl jumped so fast she knocked over her chair, she knocked over the glass of water on the little table where she was painting with watercolors. She didn't look over her shoulder, she didn't look to see if it was just a gust of wind, she didn't look to see if someone had come home and was barreling through the house, she just ran. And she went to any number of hiding spots. She was small. She could hide a lot of places. Cupboards. Closets. Under beds. Behind legs.

The option, at the moment, should be clear: to go down the stairs. But there are Garou between her and the stairs, including the one who is making her heart pound. She knows, from the moment he crests the top of the stairs, what is different. She understands why. She's seen Garou healing before, shifting into a form other than the one they were born to in order to let their bodies recover. She isn't stupid. She isn't inexperienced. What she is, however, is looking at a man who is not a man at all, obscenely larger than she's ever seen him before. Mangled. Wrecked. Monstrous.

Her pupils constrict in an instant, irises a vivid green no one here has ever seen before. A breath shoots out of her and then back in, shrill as a scream but unvoiced. She would be negotiating right now with Mrena about the price of her modeling for a portrait in acrylics, if she weren't suddenly caught up in a reaction that is steps, mere steps, away from one that is quite a bit worse.

Maybe it's because Katherine says his name.

The intelligent thing would be to quietly excuse herself to the restroom, walk there, and splash some cold water on her face to calm down. She could go downstairs and get a drink to relax. She could have 'forgotten' something in the car. Danicka does not do any of these things. She does the stupidest thing that comes to mind, the first thing that comes to mind, the same thing she used to do when she was still very little and knew almost nothing. She would run from one wolf to the other, Laura to Vladislav, not knowing when she was that young how mad that was.

Danicka has no color in her face at all after she sees Sam, and has no answer for Mrena. She turns immediately on her heel and does not walk but actually runs from the common room, around the corner, and right back into the room she was in five minutes ago. The door to Lukas's bedroom slams behind her.

[Armstrong] Mrena was about to take a bite of her apple, she really was. But, she made a horrible mistake. This horrible mistake was that she looked at her packmate. She didn't really see him, she was looking at him. And, at that moment, the fairly perceptive, deliciously creative theurge could only think of one thing.

Textures. Textures and colors and smells. The way his jaw looked, the fact that there was skin missing on his face, the fact that the poor guy already wasn't the most attractive thing. It was not the most appetizing thing either.

The theurge's silvery gaze fell to her would-have-been-a-meal and made a small whimpering noise that was not completely of her own accord. It was the sound of a woman who had, most definitely, lost her appetite.

At that moment, she looked away from her apple to the retreating Shadow Lord kin, having caught the look of something in her face.

[Danicka's eyes were green. vicious, beautiful, poisoned green. They were vivid and, in their own right, lovely. but at that moment they were tinged with panic, with terror, with things that Mrena did not understand on anything other than an instinctive level. And, someday, she would realize that admiring the color of Danicka's eyes while she was absolutely terrified was wrong. That thinking, briefly, that her skin was flawless when all the color had drained from it was almost cruel. Later in life, she would be absolutely disturbed by her thought process at that moment. But at the moment, for all her wisdom, she was nothing. She had no idea.]

Danicka ran to some room, presumably Lukas'. She shrugged some, then looked back at her packmates. Mrena just shrugged.

[Sam Modine] His head rises and sets back quickly enough his hood falls away from his face for just a second. It's trapped in his hair and doesn't fall completely away, allowing large but nimble fingers to catch it and pull it roughly back over these grievous wounds that will not even be scars. She runs. As she takes flight the Fenrir's mouth drops just a piece, his gigantic brow knits together before he again obscures all but the direct line of sight to how he looks. He's taken in that instant, back to another time of his own, a memory in visuals, like a silent movie in his mind.

There's a barn and a young boy inside it. The outer walls are Red like a cliche landscape of middle america and it's insides are dusty from the dirt floor. The light of summer cascades through the large open bay doors. The boy is chasing a rooster, one loosed from it's coop and now running wild through the barn. Afraid and free only to run from the thing that's scaring it so.

"Why'd she-?" Her choice of rooms to run to cuts him. Cuts him off. One lips snals back uncontrolled, the rush of sudden motion raising his heartrate, the sweat forming in tiny cascades all over him burns saline on his wounds.

The voice of the Modi is nothing if not pained. He isn't using his talents, his spirit tricks to fight off the pain, unwilling to exert the effort should something set him off because that day will not be one the Circle forgets and he for one would like to push it as far away as he can for now. "How am I supposed to stay away from her if she keeps showing up around him?" His question is turned to the Fang, his leige with downcast eyes. He's not looking for an answer perhaps as he merely allows his body to lean on the doorway, relieved only in the moment from the tireless thing that is the duty in just standing.

For that when it comes down to it is what this is all about, even the question.
It's a matter of duty.

[Katherine Bellamonte] (WP: don't laugh, don't laugh, don't laugh)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 3, 3, 4, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Erick Wujcik] *The communal bathroom that occupies the center of the second floor is the site of a ripple... then another.. as something pushes forth from the 'other side'. Finally a furred paw pushes though the mirrior, then a lupine head, then body and more paws and tail.

With a soft clatter of claws on tile the wolf lept to the floor.

Turning in a circle it sniffed the air. It chooses the door closest to the sitting room and pushes it open with it's head.

He's a wolf. There's no mistaking garou for dogs. Only the brain dead could ever make that mistake.. Garou were not dogs. Not even the lowest bread Gnawer could be anything less than 75% pure wolf. Barcode was a good deal more than 75% too.

Pushing his way out of the bathroom it walked around the corner to the arch of the common room and sticks his head in.

Large, well tall for a wolf. Pushing the upper limits of sizes for gray wolves as most garou do, this one has mostly black and gray fur, but there are splotches of neon green in the fur, in what would resemble a camo pattern. The lupine's ears perk up as the eyes scan the room and the nose bring even more sensory imput*

[Katherine Bellamonte] Katherine has no moment of deeper reflection as Danicka takes flight from the very sight of her pack-mate's injuries. She does, it would appear for the shortest of moments, have the rising urge to laugh at both the reaction and the effect it has on the Fenrir.

Her mouth twists, and she lowers her eyes from Sam and Mrena both in order to contain her mirth it would seem, an arm folding over her midsection and the other lifted to cover her lips for a measure of minutes until Sam asks, his anger bristling how he was to stay away from one who insisted on hanging around his own pack-mate.

Her hand fell away, and the Philodox moved to drop her body down beside Mrena.

"Perhaps we can council Lukas to keep his personal amusements out of the way of the general pack activities, oui?" Soft and genteel as she sounded, there was no denying the sharper edge to her words.

[Armstrong] "She won't be a fixture," she said. Presumably, about Danicka. Presumably, agreeing with Katherine that there would be talking. She nodded some, then looked between the two of her packmates. She stood rather comfortably with them, near with a sense of familiarity.

[Sam Modine] "That's in your hands, of course." Sam nods under the blue cotton covering. There's no fighting his nature at this point and with no dangers among them either clear nor especially present he cannot help but merely follow at her command. He won't be reminded until later at being called her tool by another ranking Garou. At that point though he may not even reflect on how much it had bothered him, how he'd brought the same point to Lukas in the heat of anger a month later.

No, now he is the loyal soldier. Couched in words and pledges of fealty and honor but at it's base nothing more than a need to believe in something greater than one's self. To have a higher calling and facilitate the whole over the self.

"Hrafn." He changes the subject, turning to the Theurge. "Raven, he came and visited today, outside one of the windows." His voice is that of a man torn to shred, rocks shaken in a gunny sack. "One of my tribe is looked favorably on by Fenris and Gaia. He's Adren, now to the Nation."

[Katherine Bellamonte] The Silver Fang leans over to steal the apple her pack-mate had discarded and sinks her sharp little teeth into it, chewing thoughtfully as discussion turns to spirits and things of the umbral world between Sam and Mrena. Katherine, idling on the sofa between them is perhaps the only to notice the Lupus head nudging its way into the common area.

She swallows a piece of apple; her tongue licking away the sweet traces left behind and greets the strange wolf. "You can come out and play, we do not bite." Her pale eyes flick over her pack-mates with a teasing gleam. "Not unless provoked."

[Lukas] It is true that Lukas asked Danicka here in the first place. Since then, however, he's done a remarkably poor job of entertaining. They spoke -- briefly. Mrena showed up. Lukas asked for stew. They spoke again -- even more briefly. Mrena returned. Lukas got stew. Mrena and Danicka left his room, and he returned to his letter writing and/or his recuperation.

For all of five minutes, anyway. Then, quite without warning, his room door slams open, a kinfolk flees in, his room door slams shut.

There's a second, just an instant, when the thing on Lukas' bed is not Lukas. Not as Danicka knows him anyway. It's a monstrous thing, like a wolfman from some horror movie, hirsute, with a cro-magnon brow and a fringe of furlike beard. It snarls at her on instinct to see its home territory thus invaded. It bares teeth too long and sharp for any human --

-- and then, not even a fraction of a second later, it's only Lukas, grimacing at her.

"For God's sake, Danička, have you forgotten how to knock?" Something Danicka would not know: some weeks ago, Lukas said almost the same thing to another woman who came flinging into his room looking for ... shelter, or comfort, or ...

That was a packmate, though. Lukas had broken off mid-sentence, gone to her. Danicka is not a packmate. Lukas stays where he is; he looks cross.

"What the hell's the matter with you, anyway?"

[Danicka] [Willpower -1 (Sleep dep): Ye gods. // +1 (Second verse, same as the first)]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 6, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 7)

[Erick Wujcik] *The ears perk up even more when the pretty lady speaks to him. Padding fully into the common room he stays well away from the stairwell and looks around. Passing the work table he slips behind the sectional couch and around by the pool table. Pausing there the wolf sniffed the air again. Sneezed once and then stretched... at the end of the stretch there was a flicker of movement and the garou reverted instantly to his breed form.

One moment a gray wolf with black and neon green markings, the next Erick standing and stretching to his full height of over 6'5".

The dedicated clothing falling into place as the mystical energy's that control such things form it. Sneakers, black cargo pants, a black teeshirt with GI JOE on it, over this is the German Flecktarn cammo jacket, and an equipment bag at his hip* Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Ugg. Don't you hate it when your boxers ride up when ya shift.

*Giving a bit of a hip swivel he leaned against the pool table and gave them a pleasant nod. One hand, tattooed palm and back with Black Barcodes, opens the equipment bag and rummages around in there, finally pulling out a near fushia fruit with scales on it.. The other hand, identically tattooed flexes and a wicked little knife appears.

The tall man eyes the fruit as if pondering how to best go about skinning it*

[Armstrong] Raven, he said. It made the theurge perk up briefly. She looked at Sam directly, her head tilting to the side ever so slightly as he mentioned the bird. There was, however, something interesting about this gesture in that it felt more avian than lupine. The mention of the bird- the common bird, actually, as that the Shadow Lord claimed raven as readily as any Fenrir would- caused her to look at him curiously.

Caused her to slip her hands from her pockets and expect some sort of news, gaze almost expectant.

One of his tribe was looked upon favorably by both Fenris and Gaia. It caused her to relax, to exhale in something like relief. That he wasn't going to ask her something about what Raven came to talk to him about. That there were no favors to be called in yet. [because, yes, it still lingered over her head, that the information they had been provided with for the hunt in the Show (excuse us, the Magnificent Mile) had been obtained via a little creative bargaining. Some mutual back scratching. Raven was a cunning spirit, that smelled like riddles and knowledge and feathers. Ravens were good at what they did and they knew it. And she knew that nothing came for free.]

His tribemate was adren now. It made her brows raise, made a slight smile come to her face, then widen ever-so-slightly. "Congratulations, did Raven mention who this was?"

We do not bite, not unless provoked.
She looked in the direction of Erick, pausing briefly, "... I always pictured you as a briefs kind of man."

[Danicka] She is rigid as a board when she flashes back into Lukas's room, door slamming behind her and her shoulderblades going immediately to the wood as though somehow her slight body is going to keep it closed should anyone else try to enter behind her. Danicka's hands are flat against the door behind her, her chest moving with hard, panicked breaths. What kind of a moron runs away from one Ahroun right to another? What kind of a weakling (coward) runs, at all, from a Garou who has done nothing more threatening than pull himself up the stairs?

There is a snarl to greet her, and Danicka sucks in a breath and holds it; this is so she does not scream. Yet she doesn't bolt again, doesn't hurl herself out the open window or any such thing. A split-second later there is Lukas, grimacing, and though he looks particularly displeased she seems to calm down and takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly and closing her eyes.

"Promiňte," she murmurs, ducking her head for a second. Danicka blinks a few times before lifting her head again, taking another deep breath until she can step away from the door. "I..."

He has seen her disheveled and out of sorts only one time before. Even her anger had a sort of grace to it. This is just the aftereffects of sheer terror, an odd sort of dizziness that completely saps her of her usual poise.

"Promiňte, Lukáš. Nevím, co se stalo."

[Erick Wujcik] Oh Nooo no no no no. Briefs bind ya junk up and lower your sperm count. Very anti Gaia. We're supposed to be fruitful and multiply. *He grined* I gotta swing free.

[Lukas] (disguise injury!)
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 4, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Danicka] [Perception + Empathy: Yeah, Uh-huh, W/E]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 8, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Lukas] In the five minutes since she saw him last, Lukas has completely devoured every last scrap of stew in the heaping bowl Mrena had fetched him earlier. It's just gone. Vanished. The bowl is empty again, set atop his bedside table. He's finishing his letter. Or notes. Or laundry list. Or whatever the hell he's writing.

Not that he's writing right now. He's staring at her. Glowering possibly. There's a beat of silence; then he flips his letterpad crisply closed, snaps the leather padholder shut a second later. Tosses it onto the bed by his feet, and the pen after it.

"Learn to knock before you enter an Ahroun's room."

He gets up off the bed. Smoothly. There's no hitch in his movement, no exaggerate grimace of pain; nothing of the sort. Still -- perhaps it's the sweat on his brow, the flush to his cheeks, the startling heat the last time, and the only time they touched. He doesn't fool her.

Lukas moves his bowl to the desk, drags his nightstand out and sits on that, a makeshift stool. Points her at the bed.

"Sit down."

[Sam Modine] "Kemp." Large teeth that seem more a distended showcase of Rage's gifts than a true display of mirth go on showing for just a moment after he says it. "Truth~in~Frenzy." His response is slowed, his mind obviously fuzzy there leaning in the doorway. He turns though to regard the newcomer that he doesn't quite see coming until their magnificent half moon deigns address him. Inwardly something flexes and Sam moves across the room. The dispersion of vital blood to points where it seeps into the bandages under his clothes has one foot unsure at first as he puts it down in front of the other.

He takes a seat on the opposite end of the sectional from Mrena, exhaling hard, at the sensation that coils about the exposed muscle on the back of his legs. He doesn't manage to leans back against it, instead balancing his hindquarters so that his full weight won't fully ease onto the seat. Still, it creaks loud under the stress of such a large being on top of it.

Absently one hand tugs at the hood over his crown, pulling at the obscenely large thing that it might cover the temporary battle damage.

"Who's that?" He's looking at the newcomer, but not talking to him. Caution superseding pleasantness.
The core of him.
The wolf of him.

It's the full moon's fight, it's burden.

[Danicka] That's what you get.

She'd never admit it, but this is her favorite thing of all time to say to children. Don't climb onto the windowsill, you might fall and get hurt. Child falls. Child gets hurt. That's what you get. It's not the most compassionate response, not the most measured or helpful thing to say to a kid who is crying because their knee is skinned, but it is pure and unadulterated logic. If you do something stupid, more than likely, bad things will happen to you.

If you panic because you see a Garou in glabro, something that as kin you should have long since become accustomed to and accepting towards, and then run towards the last place you were because of some age-old flash of association or because someone said a name at the wrong time...if you let this happen, and then are ordered to sit and most likely to receive a lecture, then, well.

That's what you get.

Danicka takes another deep breath, calming by several more notches, and nods. She walks away from the door, her spine straight and her shoulders squared, and goes to the edge of Lukas's mattress. Smoothing her skirt under her thighs, she sits down, lays her hands on her lap, and looks at him.

[Erick Wujcik] *The black blade twirled in his fingers and he taps the strange looking fruit with it. Still pondering his aveneu of attack on the bizarre thing. Soft blue eyes flicker up to look to Sam. Taking him in and pondering a bit. Then a nod as the knife bit into the flesh of the fruit and carefully carved out a wedge. The tall man looked at what he carved out and took a small bite of the wedge to chew experimentally.* MMMM Kemp. Good guy. I healed up one of his people a week or so ago. She was tore up pretty bad in the er... *The blade points to Sam's calf* Leg. Weaver spider. But we got her right as rain, then took and cleansed her.

*A larger bite of the wedge and he chewed thoughtfully. Unsure if he liked it or not yet*

[Armstrong] Kemp. Truth in Frenzy.

Something about that response made a smile spread across her face, slow at first and then somewhere it became something of a grin, an almost celebratory- no, no, it was a celebratory grin. Mrena knew that this sept was young. She knew that the Grand Elder wasn't aged beyond recognition, that he did not tower over all of them in terms of rank. To hear of an adren, someone ascending to adren in this city?

Well now, quite the feat. One that could be looked upon with praise.

But who is this? She looked from Sam to Erick, and then back to Sam. The theurge held her shoulders back and spoke clearly. She was many things to her pack, yes, and diplomat to the spirits was, at times, one of those roles she played. This, however, was a different sort of interaction. Not one that she was innately graced in knowing how to manage.

"Erick Wujcik, Barcode. Bone Gnawer of my rank and moon. He runs with the Cackling Shadows," she said. A little informal, yes, but all the vital information was there.

The theurge made her way to her packmate, sitting nearby but being aware of his injuries. Movements were not as graceful as they normally were, but still practiced- to make a long story short, she was sore. Then again, Sam was a bleeding, burned, scarred mass of healing Fenrir.

So she gave him an apple.

[Lukas] But he doesn't lecture her. And he doesn't seem to have asked her to sit in order to loom over her and lecture, either.

She sits on the edge of the bed. He sits straddling the corner of the nightstand, one hand planted on his thigh, elbow turned out. They watch each other for some moments.

"You want a drink?" he asks at last.

[Danicka] The color has not yet returned to her face. She is as pale as he is flushed, her eyes slowly returning to normal but her body still all but screaming unrelenting tension. Her shoulders haven't rounded, her neck is tight; she looks more herself, she looks...not so much like she is about to run but like she is listening very, very carefully to everything around her. She is watching her surroundings, and him, more closely. She is controlling her breathing not out of shame and embarrassment so much as so that it will not interfere with her listening.

The term is hypervigilance.

Danicka pauses a moment, then nods once. "Ano, prosím."

[Katherine Bellamonte] Truth's Meridian had, up until this point, been quietly eating Mrena's apple. When the introduction is made, however, her attention refocuses on the Bone Gnawer and she rises to her feet; extending her hand in greeting. "And I am Katherine Bellamonte, monsieur. Cliath Silver Fang and Philodox." A pause, she smiles a tad.

"Ah, and newly appointed Mistress of the Challenge for the Sept."

[Sam Modine] The apple is taken in his right hand. His good hand as it were and his eyes dance away to the red surface of the gift. Back to Mrena then, in in a sort of puzzled thanks, even bipedal it's an animalistic gesture before he eats. "Zeke's people." In between bites, he turns back, and nods alittle, the hood again shedding backwards from his face. It's not a question, but an appraisal.

"Good to meet you." The deep voice of the Glabro finally utters a decision of sorts. "I'm Sam, Get of Fenris, Full Moon," It's clipped, and not so formal as one might be used to hearing from Sam. Something at least of an aversion in his voice, something that through the pain can't entirely be fought away by the pretenses at humanity he can usually make so insistently.

He slows on the food, holding it roughly in his fist and shaking his head. Half the apple is already gone in four bites and he chokes back swallowing the too-fast indulgence. "We had one of yours along last night."

Beat.

"Saved my hide, the way I hear it."

[Erick Wujcik] *Brows raise and the knife blade is stuck in the fruit in his left hand, freeing the right. It extends, Barcode tattoos dark black against the pale skin, both palm and back.* Nice to meet you, Miss Bellamonte. And yes. I was there. *At the moot he means* Very impressive. Have your talents been called on overly much since?

*He shook her hand. No bull shit squeezing or silly kissing or anything. Just a nice normal shake. A nod in greeting then he lets go and pulls the blade from his fruit and carves off a wedge that he offers to Katherine, as she'd come close enough to shake hands* Dragon fruit.

*A look to Sam and he nods* Oh? How advantageous. You look a little worse for wear there, man. Want me to hook you up?

[Lukas] It's a second before he gets up. Then he goes over to his closet. The center of his back is damp with sweat; his shirt sticks to him. He pulls the sliding door open and takes out a glass, and also his own mug. Then he shuts the closet door again. In the few seconds it's open, she might catch sight of the shadows of his clothes: shirts and jackets and trousers and jeans hung neatly on their racks.

He hands her the glass. Opens the bottommost drawer of the desk, where apparently he keeps his personal stash of liquor. It's not the Royal Lochanagar he takes out but a shapely, curiously twisted bottle of crystal-clear liquid, almost certainly vodka.

Wyborowa Exquisite, it reads. It's almost a pity to be drinking it out of coffee mugs and water glasses. He uncaps the bottle; his hand is steady as he tips a doubleshot into her glass, perhaps a little more into his. Sets it down on the floor as he sits back down on the nightstand, facing her.

There's something like wryness when he clicks his mug (it's the ellis island one) against her glass, then tosses it back.

"Now," he sets the mug down with a click, turning aside briefly to make sure it's securely situated, "care to tell me what set you off?"

[Katherine Bellamonte] He offered her a slice of Dragon fruit. Katherine, reclaiming her hand glanced down at it curiously, a slight smile curving her pink lips. "Ah, thank you but I am quite satiated by Mrena's apple." He asks after her talents as Mistress of Challenges, and the Philodox exchanges a brief look with her pack-mates. "Not so much yet, it would seem we are in attendance at a peaceful Caern, at least, as peaceful as one can be.

I expect however," she moved to re-seat herself, crossing long legs over one another and draping her arms along the back of the sofa. "That I shall be called on soon enough."

[Armstrong] The theurge sat up a little straighter, inhaling slowly through her nose. It was a slow, quiet process. She held for a moment, leaning back into the couch and starting to fold her arms across her vaguely curved chest. It was not underneath her bosom, not that she was presenting them, but rather folded over the top. More a curling inward than a presentation outward.

She glanced at Sam, relaxing some and pressing her back against the couch and folded arms soon relaxed. The theurge exhaled from her mouth, blowing air out gently. No hiss, just a silent, but less-than-gentle sigh.

[Sam Modine] His head shakes back and forth on his neck, it's a rough instinctive motion. "No." One mangled hand rises palm forward to call the other off from the thought. "It won't kill me and I have a thing about people I don't know touching me."

His rocky intonation continues only a few syllables further. "No offense."

The apple is again attacked in his other hand, chomped at as though he's been starving for weeks rather than simply being at the mercy of a superpowered metabolic rate.

[Danicka] This could have been a rather clear case of going out of the frying pan and into the fire. Sam had not threatened her; Katherine had apparently chosen to ignore her; Mrena was just talking percentages. (Five? Five percent? Bullshit. Utter bullshit.) There was nothing in the common room that was indicating the sort of danger Danicka had reacted to. Thankfully, no one in the common room is analyzing this overmuch. No one trusts Danicka; she was dismissed, and would be glad of it if she knew that.

Still. She could have come in here and been torn apart. The others in the Unbroken Circle don't have as much of a right; she's never even met this 'Maevsky' person she's supposed under the protection of. She is, however, a Shadow Lord, and if anyone were to tear her apart as discipline it would probably be another Shadow Lord. That is not what happened. Nothing much has happened yet, other than the offer of a drink.

Danicka flicks her eyes over to Lukas's back as he walks to the closet, to the drawer, following him while keeping her ears open should footsteps come near the door, should...something...happen. Her breathing is no longer labored to the point of being audible, though. She blinks a couple of times, and watches the bottle of vodka come out to be poured into mug and glass.

"Ohthankgod, I thought you meant water," she says in a half-rushed sigh, the words tumbling out of her mouth almost before she realizes she's saying them. Danicka pauses a moment as she reaches out for the glass, then huffs a bit of unvoiced laughter out of her throat. Her eyes go to the mug when Lukas taps it against her glass, not to his face, but the tug on the corner of her own mouth is somewhat wry itself.

She takes the double-shot in one go, and then breathes out slowly as her eyes track up to meet his again. There's no wince; no grimace. She drinks it like water. "So we can prolong my embarrassment for another few minutes?" She looks into her now-empty glass. "I got...startled. Completely lost my head." The evenness with which she says this is, interestingly enough, motivated by the same thing that her apology earlier was.

And motivated by the same thing his apology almost two weeks ago was.

I lost control.

[Erick Wujcik] *A nod to Katherine and he takes a bite out of the declined wedge himself. Chewing and swallowing with a bit of a grin* Ohhhh I'm pretty sure you're right there, ma'am.

*Finishing the second wedge he carved out a third and held it up, eyes flickering to Mrena* Mrena? Dragonfruit?

Oh, has Zeke caught up to you? I know he was lookin' to.

*Blue eyes glanced to Sam and he shrugs* Your pain man. If you'd rather sit there in clear agonizing pain, annd for.. what? 3 or 4 more days by the look of ya, than trust another of your kind to patch you up. That's your call.

*Another shrug, showing that Erick thought it rather fuckin' stupid, but he let it go. The eyes do flicker to Mrena again though. Curious as to why their own theurge hasn't done so yet. But hey. Some got off on pain. More than one Fenrir among them. Erick? He hated being hurt and anyone that wanted to heal him was welcome.*

[Armstrong] "Pain teaches valuable lessons, Barcode. It is unwise to ignore them," she stated.

She looked at the fruit, then looked over the texture, silvery grey eyes glanced over at Sam. Mixed with the smell of burnt skin and aid and copper and chili dogs- the theurge's stomach made a sound that seemed as though it was planning a violent revolt against her.

"No thank you," a pause. Please a subject away from food. "What did Zeke want?"

[Lukas] She thought he meant water. He only gives her a look, eyebrow cocked, before he leans down to pick the bottle up and hand it to her. Up to her how much she pours this time, though when she's done, he holds his mug out as well.

"That's good, thanks." He stops her after a doubleshot, thereabouts. When she offers the bottle back he caps it first, then lowers it back to the floor. "And, no. I just thought it'd be polite to inquire. Interesting that you decided to dash in here, though. Do you expect me to protect you?"

There's no change in his tone; it's impossible to tell if this is a joke.

[Erick Wujcik] Indeed it does, but being a slow study and sitting around in pain for days to heal it, once the lesson is taught seems wasteful, but... opinions differ.

*A grin and when Mrena declines the fruit he goes a head and eats that wedge too, the black blade twirling though his fingers as he munches*

Oh! mmmmm No clue really. *Gesturing with the blade* He didn't say. Just said he'd been looking for you. I told him I'd seen you more than once but... just lucky I guess Miss Armstrong. *A bright smile (( no teeth showing)) offered to the Theurge. The wicked little blade was put back to work and trimmed off some of the scaly bits on the out side of the fruit*

You have his number?

[Danicka] Having never been a frightened-looking woman, Lukas has probably never been offered a glass of ice water when he would much prefer a shot of something far stronger. Then again, a lot of frightened people would want the water and not the depressant, not the fluid meant to dull the edges of reality to a more tolerable warm fuzziness. Danicka, however, wants the vodka. She takes the bottle from Lukas and pours herself another doubleshot, pours for him as well. The gesture could have easily been one of servitude, but the casual extension of his mug and the way the bottle tips til he says That's good is almost familial.

Clink.

This time she taps her glass against his mug before knocking back the Wyborowa. Her reaction to it is the same, if not smoother; people outside of this room have seen her drink with grimaces, winces, tiny shudders in reaction the strength of a drink. She leaves it at the door, and that could have something to do with the way she tore ass in here or with the dark circles under her eyes or it could just be because of why she's here in the first place.

She finishes drinking before she answers, flicking one eyebrow up at him. "Why yes, you big strong man, please save me," she intones. "Could we drop this and get back to our earlier conversation?"

[Armstrong] Inhale... Exhale... Breathe.

She took a moment to let her muscles relax, let her posture reform into something comfortable, and then continued on with the train of thought. The younger theurge pushed her hair back out of her face again, looking upon the Bone Gnawer with quiet, familiar interest. She looked at him in much the same way she looked at anyone else.

With vicious, confident scrutiny.
It was almost endearing.
It was almost unnerving.

"Care to speculate? If you find out before I do, I would like a heads up. I don't like to go into meetings blind," she said.

[Lukas] She gets the same look again. "Laughing it off isn't the same as answering the question." Apparently, they could not drop it just yet. "Do you?"

[Erick Wujcik] Ahhh Sadly I'm not in the habit.. Speculating that is. As to Zeke. Ragabash. *A roll of his shoulders and he grins meeting Armstrong's scrutiny with a curious look of his own. Sadly it's shared with Sammy and Katey, as there is much of interest here.* Do you have a cell number he could reach you at? *The blade twirled and paused and he made hat little hand motion for a phone*

[Danicka] She looks at him for a moment, plain and simple, her eyes fading from the brief venomous green they had been back to the milder, murkier color they were when she first got here. She isn't laughing. Danicka sighs slightly, leans over, and sets her glass on the floor next to the bottle. When she sits back up again, her hands are once more folded on top of her lap.

"We covered this at the motel," she says, her voice quieting. And if he has forgotten, which is possible, she lifts her eyebrows and explains: "No. I do not expect you to protect me, or comfort me, and speaking of which, thank you very much for the vodka."

[Sam Modine] The Modi looks up from his haunch.

Straight up.

There's no more affability in him left and his eyes watch the edge of the knife as the other wolf's fingers draw around and across it. he doesn't speak anymore in that low growl this form is capable of, merely directs a visual cue to his packmates in the stiffing of his form, the untouched half of his upper lip rising and curling backwards away from giant bones set in rows across his maw. "He's treading thin."

They hear him, a whispered thing of malice over the spirit bond.

[Armstrong] "I have his number, thank you."

She said so with a nod, an appreciation. The theurge shook her head no to the cell phone- truth be told, Mrena didn't own a cell phone. Her packmates did, then again, her packmates had people who called. It was then an interesting thought process- did white eyes lack a phone because she had no one who would call, or did no one call because she didn't have a cell phone. Chicken and the egg.

"And he can usually find me. Tell him I'm looking for him, we'll meet in the middle."

[Lukas] She tells him, or reassures him, that she expects nothing of the sort. He says nothing at all. He only watches her for some time, not even a trace of wryness or humor on his face now, his brow faintly furrowed.

Then she mentions the vodka, and he's reminded. Looks down at his mug for a moment. Then he drinks it down, sets the mug aside. Neither of them pick up the bottle again.

He hasn't bothered to close the window. It's frigid in the room. All the same, a drop a sweat rolls down the side of his face, caught on the shoulder he shrugs up to wipe it away. He's starving again, he realizes -- faintly annoyed, but not surprised. If his basal metabolic rate were measured right now, mid-regeneration, it'd be off the fucking charts.

"Let's get back to our earlier conversation," he says.

[Danicka] Because she is not dropping her eyes to the bridge of his nose, his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth, his jawline -- any of the little places she could look that indicate attention without allowing for or daring eye contact -- Danicka sees very clearly the slow, subtle reaction that doesn't come with any verbalization. She doesn't really need him to say it. Not again.

(I wish you would.)

When he sits up back from leaning over she is not looking at his eyes. She's not shivering, not yet, but it is incredibly cold. Danicka stands up after he speaks, nodding. "Switch with me."

[Erick Wujcik] Ahh good. Perhaps a call is in the future then. Hard to tell. Always in motion, is the future. *The blade twirls around and around. Blue eyes flickering back to Sam, a slight shake of the head. Blister boy there didn't wanna get frisky in his condition. It'd definitely be detrimental to him healing.

Wicked little blade bit into fruit again and carved out a wedge, this one offered to Sam and his threat display* Dragon fruit, Sam? Vitamin C might help you recover. Good for the eyes and all.

*Pushing off the pool table the tall theurge moved around the sectional couch to offer the fruit to the man, so he wouldn't have to move too much and aggravate the burns.

Then to White eyes* Ah'll be sure ta let him know. When I see him again.

[Armstrong] Shenodded some, then rose to her feet. The theurge stretched some, then rolled her shoulders back some. Shee made it a point to stretch, to get the most out of her position, her body posture, what-have-you. She nodded some, then looked at those gathered.

I have to ask Nessa something. I'll see you all in the morning, she said. Well, she said. She was the one who relayed the message, but the message was delivered and conveyed by the very bird she owed a Favor to. More a caw than elegance, but then again, Mrena could appreciate the bird for what it was.

"I would appreciate that," she stated with a nod. The theurge started to head off to her room. "Good night."

[Sam Modine] "No thank you." Curt. It comes out thick and rumbling no thk yooo. The core of his apple is raised with some trouble above his head in a mockery of a free throw from his seated position. The sleeves roll down enough on one forearm to reveal quite unintentionally the frayed and mangled skin and muscle that extends from his hand over one forearm. It's flicked off his wrist, even now with some concentration he does manage to sink it into the small trashcan on the room's far side.

Though not without leaving a small, dark apple smelling spot on the wall right behind it.

"Good night, Mrena. It's warm that sound through her mind.
Because it's Sam's voice. The real one.
Not this one.

"I need to get some things before we leave." A nod to the newcomer. "Thank your Shadow Lord for me." He stands at this point, a giant of over seven feet that stiffly rolls his healing body down the hallway toward the room he only sometimes anymore it seems shares with the dark skinned Ragabash.



Coda.

"Lukas, if you're home i'd like to see you before Kat and I leave again."

[Erick Wujcik] Good night, Miss Armstrong. Hope that it sees you well.

*Straightening up he nodded* Well take it easy Sam. Hope you feel better soon.

*A pause and he looks to Katherine* Mistress of Challenge. It was good to make your acquaintanceship.

*The wicked little blade was twirled around and around and then it was gone. Slipped away or the like. The last wedge of the dragon fruit was brought up to his lips and he munched. Empty hand dipped into a pocket and a rosery was pulled forth. The beads dark and polished, but instead of a Crusifix at the end there was a little pendant, with a stylized rat on it.

A final nod and he turned to go*

May Gaia watch over you all.

[Lukas] Their conversations are rife with pauses -- small moments he takes out to think, to calculate, to prepare and plan. Here's another one, as though even this, the innocuous act of switching places, he to the bed and she to the makeshift nightstand-stool, is worthy of consideration, of weighing, of decision. Then he gets up. Quarters are close, but he doesn't brush her as he switches places with her, grabbing his pillow from the end of the bed and tossing it against the wall.

These beds are twin-sized. When he slouches down, his shoulders and upper back against the pillow, loins and hips flat to the bed, his knee easily bends at the edge of the mattress, his feet flat on the floor. Locations switched now, he watches her a moment.

They both know why he asked her to come here. They both know what she said on his voicemail: difficult truths or expert lies spoken to an unlistening machine.

He wonders about that, of course; how much was true and how much a lie. Because it's worse when it's a recording, and just a recording -- no sense of her face, her eyes, her mannerisms, nothing to betray a truth or a lie. But then, careful as he is, Lukas stops short of true paranoia. And at some point, Occam's razor comes into effect. Lies compound; truths pare down, strip back. In the end he has to decide whether she's put an enormous amount of effort into a complex lie he can't find a reason for -- or given him one very simple truth.

Capable. Possibly willing.

Still. All this, a digression. Because the point is, they both know why she's here, and all the same, the topic is hard to broach; too large, too complex, too dangerous. He's silent for long moments. Then, he finds a point to start, a tangential ray to follow.

"I would have asked you to stay that morning," he says, "if I'd thought you would."

-- and then his attention diverts; his brow wrinkles and he sits up a little.

What's up, Sam?

[Erick Wujcik] *The fur lined hood of the German camo jacket was flipped up as he descended the stairs and departed, humming a bit off key to some song. The rosary twirling around his fingers, flip flip flip flip, then out, flip flip flip flip. Then he was gone.*

[Danicka] She knows how to move in a small space without trampling, or being trampled on. High heels don't tap against the edges of bare feet, elbows don't brush, shoulders down't touch. They circle, once, until Lukas is back on the bed near enough to the way he was when she came in and until Danicka is perched on the nightstand that was warmed even by just a few moments of his sitting there. She felt how feverish he is and even though the sight of a Garou in glabro seemed to send her into a panic, she seems to understand what's going on beneath the exterior of physical contentment.

Danicka crosses her legs at the ankle, toes touching the carpet, and waits for him. He didn't begin an argument about her staying where she is, but then, that's just a part of who he is: he doesn't turn things down just because it's polite. It would be rather pointless to pretend to her that he's uninjured, just as it would be ridiculous for her to fuss over him for being so. But still. She sits on the nightstand-turned-seat and waits for him to settle, waits for him to speak, to dive in and pick something to start with.

She is taking a breath to answer when his brow wrinkles and he sits up. Danicka closes her mouth.

[Sam Modine] "Having a tea party in there?" His hands are rifling through his dresser and dropping a few various things in an overnight bag. His actions are unhurried, mostly out of necessity. It would only hurt more to move quickly and further pain doesn't seem like anything he's particularly keen on.

The sarcasm, the subtext can't possibly be lost on the other Ahroun.
Though neither can the lack of malice.

"It's not easy to take a direct order when she's in the place where I live, Lukas." His lips purse there in the darkness of his on room. He hasn't and doesn't bother to turn the light over head on. "She's bad news, bro."

That, a borrowed expression. Sam is not generally taken to using the word 'bro' and even when he thinks it it comes through awkward.

[Lukas] Danicka gives him some modicum of privacy; his eyes are not on her anyway but on the wall beside his headboard. His attention isn't even in this room.

I know. That could be the answer to any one of the things Sam said, or perhaps all. I only called her here because it would have been inconvenient to go somewhere else. I haven't forgotten what happened between the two of you, Sam. And I won't. This whole business with her, and you -- I would not have wished it this way.

But for all that, some part of me needs to see this through to the end. A pause, ironic. You understand, I think.

[Danicka] It's unclear whether or not Danicka has any idea what is going on. His attention is elsewhere, and it could be anything, and she doesn't ask. His attention is elsewhere. She glances down, examines her fingernails.

[Sam Modine] He stops again in the middle of taking his black battle worn pants out from inside the drawer. The material ends up sitting in a pile, unfolded but set back down where it came from. "Not even a little bit. I never liked somebody else's girl Lukas.

Something in it says not even now.
Something in it says I was raised right.

and for the first time in that mind voice there is something Lukas has never heard his way before. Not seething anger, raw and tangible fury, not even comraderie and respect. None of the things he's used to. In that mind voice there is disappointment. Recognizable from the few times perhaps when Sam doesn't believe he himself did the right thing, or went far enough or even couldn't serve as best he was able. But this is turned outward on the Shadow Lord.

Something in his voice says-

"She lied to me the whole time, Lukas." Hands go back about their buisiness, grasping and dropping the pants into the open bag on the floor. Next a sweatshirt, a small zipped array of toiletries, and yet he still thinks, outwardly in the cires of raptors along thunderclouds. "Good people, worthwile people? They don't do that." They don't make a fool of me.

-I wish you were a better man.

[Lukas] Sam is outside the room, and cannot see Lukas' reaction. Danicka is in the room, but cannot hear the conversation. They each have a piece of the puzzle.

Sam's piece is this: a long silence. Then something like a mental sigh, an expansion and collapse of formless thought.

I have to see this through to the end, he repeats.

And Danicka's piece: a flexing of his jaw, a brief and distinct tension before he shifts on the bed, the sheets moving beneath him. He half-raises himself on the heel of one hand and then settles again.

Another moment's pause. Then he returns his attention to her.

"Pack matters," he says, simply -- something like an explanation.

[Danicka] Her eyes flick up, from fingernails to Lukas, her expression mild. The vodka is starting to hit her, taking the edge off considerably from her earlier panic. Danicka's expression is almost dismissive, as though the explanation itself was unnecessary. "Co je doma, to se počítá," she says, understanding.

She looks down again, switching hands.

[Sam Modine] This is why, odd that in the dark room, a sleeping Kenyan not five feet behind him Sam has the urge to laugh. Even without his packmate in the room it seems he can't shake his own sense of nerves on the subject. Or maybe he's just worn down, hurt and going a little mad as his Rage overreaches his ability to control it. "You cannot get angry when Katherine doesn't heed good advice." He knows she's heard it, the whole thing, all of them have.

But when families discuss things, it's rarely a private matter between just two, and this isn't any different.

He kneels, stuffing two t-shirts in with the rest of the bag's new contents, zipping it across the top, the small metal piece held awkwardly between to gnarled, red, and raw fingers. The bag and his colossal frame are lifted and propped on his shoulder. His hood is flipped back over his head as well, the leather jacket zipped up. Something strikes him as he does so and he takes a second stock to make sure perhaps that he had in fact grabbed something he needed.

Finally satisfied the door soon clicks quietly shut behind him. Down the hallway is Lukas' room, he passes on the way back to the common room, the long way in fact. "Goodnight." He calls through the door, his voice scarily stoic and thick with his overly big frame's inpropensity for speech.

"We should sit down and hash all this out soon Luke." His head rises under the hood to take in the vision of the Silver Fang in the shared living room. It takes a second, his words caught in his throat. "Whenever you're ready, Katherine." Soft, monstrous.

'Cause we are the pretty, petty things.
And you're standing on our street.

[Lukas] Sam, I have no intention of getting angry at Katherine over what happens between her and her kinsman. That's her business -- not ours. Just as what happens between my kinswoman and I is my business.

There's a stoniness there that wasn't there before. On this matter, Lukas is as immovable as a mountain.

A pause -- and then he adds, gentler, I appreciate the concern, Sam. I really do. I know this can't be easy for you, and you prove your honor by setting aside the petty grievances a lesser man would lay at my door.

But we will not sit down and hash this out as a pack. Not soon; not ever. This is a tribal matter, and a personal matter. It is not open to pack discussion. And this is the last time I will address it publically.

The last part isn't for Sam, per se. Lukas knows, just as Sam knows, that the whole pack hears every word of this. Which is, of course, the point.

Sam speaks through the door. Lukas replies, without even needing to look that way: "Night, Sam."

[Danicka] Goodnight.

Strangely -- depending on your point of view -- Danicka does not shudder when she hears that guttural, snarling voice call a farewell through the door. It is getting late, the night outside darker and the air coming through Lukas's open winder colder, yet she hasn't mentioned getting up and leaving for the sake of the pack matters that need discussing. That could be the two doubleshots of vodka now in her system, but despite how fast she took both drinks the blonde kinwoman doesn't look very much affected by the imbibing.

Then again, she's a healthy young woman from incredibly good stock. She's Kinfolk, a step up from a mere mortal. She may just have more stamina than the average girl, and given the way she drank those shots like water, her tolerance is apparently higher than one might expect from a woman of her age, height, weight, and...so forth. Lukas had expected her to be affronted, or unnerved, or insulted...or something...by motel with water stains on the ceiling and rough sheets and whatever else, and she had barely even seemed to notice.

None of this really matters. None of it makes a difference. She turns her head from her hand and looks out the window after Lukas calls Night, Sam to the voice at the door.

[Sam Modine] [WP. Pain. +1 diff// Don't lose your shit. ]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)

[Lukas] Silence for a while, after. A moment to regathered the threads, scattered again.

This is familiar, somehow. Fitful starts, hard stops. Interruptions. Unforeseen circumstances. After a moment, Lukas realizes why; he can't help but laugh at himself, humorlessly.

Then his attention refocuses on the woman. This is familiar too: "Are you cold?"

And then, "Say what you were going to say earlier."

[Sam Modine] He speaks up at that.

Well- once he's finished growling.

"Katherine, it's me, him or her, leaving." His lips reveal his teeth in an expression that is both pain and anger. "I'm doing everything I can to make sure it doesn't happen in a bag." He means it, that's clear. That's about all though as he does not characteristically wait for the woman to accompany him down the steps but merely trods down them alone. Not speaking.

And a little hurt, but she won't see that until later, when she's pushing him not to stay up so late and return to the bed he's been given. Chastizing after him that if he needs something he can ring the bell and someone will bring it. Not until he has her sitting up and speaking with him, barely in control of his own body, a broken lock on the anteroom where he keeps his most terrible monsters.

[Danicka] "I'm all right." That isn't a lie. That also isn't a direct answer to his question. She does it almost without thinking, this sideways answers and minute evasions that in some circles are considered the only way to speak to other people. With Danicka, he has been given at least some modicum of insight into ...why.

It isn't the same language he asked her that in before, and they aren't in the same situation, and the answer she'd given him then had been incredibly, almost achingly, simple.

She turns her head back from looking out the window into the alleyway and regards him silently; she doesn't need to ask if he's done with whatever pack matters reared their heads. "I probably wouldn't have," she answers quietly, which is the answer she's been holding onto without speaking all this time. She says it easier now than she would have earlier; the time has given her a chance to make herself okay with admitting it.

[Lukas] A flicker; another mirthless half-smile.

"But it would've still been nice if I asked, is that it?"

[Danicka] "Not exactly."

There's no smirk on her face, not even a genuine half-smile. "I just figured that with the way you were looking at me...and the way it's been since...you may as well have."

[Lukas] "I don't believe in chasing lost causes."

Doesn't that say it all.

[Danicka] Her eyebrows lift slightly, though not in surprise. Danicka's expression is very plain to read. She stands up. "I'll see myself out."

[Lukas] A half-inhale; he stops before he begins to sit up. "Danička. Don't leave."

[Danicka] She doesn't sit back down. Danicka is standing, between nightstand and bed, her eyes bright from drink and her skin having regained its natural coloring. "Again: give me a reason not to."

[Lukas] "Because I don't want you to." A flex in his jaw, his cheek -- his damp temple. "Because I'm asking you to stay."

[Danicka] Something about her is implacable right now, not so much cold or even hot as it is getting dangerously close to the edge. Her pulse has jumped too many times in perhaps an hour, for too many reasons. She is tired. She spent part of the afternoon at a detox facility. She is --

-- a lot of things that Lukas doesn't know. What he does know is her lineage. Russian and Czech. Warriors and Betas of warriors. Her brother is a Child of Crow, her mother was no Queen but closer to a god, and however demure or silent or placid Danicka can seem their blood and the blood of their ancestors is pounding through her veins whenever her heart rate spikes. As it does now.

Danicka takes a breath, exhales, and reminds herself where she is, and with whom. She forces her shoulders to round downward, but the relaxation isn't natural. "It doesn't matter. Whether you asked me to or not, whether I would have or not. It isn't important."

[Lukas] "No," quiet but unshakable, and for a second she might think he means to contradict her -- but then, "it's not important. It doesn't make any fucking difference at all now."

He does sit up after all. Another droplet of sweat rolls down the side of his face. This one he doesn't bother to catch, standing instead, smoothly, because whatever else, he will not appear weak.

Facing her now. Window wide open. Vodka on the floor. Empty cups. Rumpled bed, though from nothing else than his body, sometimes homid, more often glabro.

"I only asked you that because I didn't want to push you on this. I wanted to be patient. But fuck's sake, Danička, it's not easy when -- "

He cuts himself off. No excuses. A second's worth of pause. Then:

"Are you willing, or are you not? Give me a straight answer; no ifs and maybes and I-thinks."

[Danicka] Standing, Lukas all but towers over her. In these heels, Danicka still has a solid half a foot to look up in order to see his face. It's not a big room. It's small enough that being stuck in here with his Rage is uncomfortable, or should be. It's small enough that if he didn't have the window open the smell of sweat would be rank by now. It's cold. The walls are thin and some part of her feels a jolt of fear at the idea of going back out there. It wasn't until Sam walked by the door and said goodnight that she even realized it was him, he was the thing that 'startled' her.

Danicka doesn't look scared at the moment, or even angry. She looks vaguely impatient with him when he stands, and if she were a stupider woman she might roll her eyes. If she weren't so damned tired and if he hadn't given her vodka, he wouldn't be able to tell that she thinks this standing-up business is ridiculous.

Wanted to be patient, he says. Not easy, and her eyebrows lift keenly; he cuts himself off in time on his own, though, without that Look she probably picked up as a governess. No. No excuses. She's not a Garou, not an Alpha or even a fullblooded member of the Tribe, but excuses are hardly something she tolerates. Yelizaveta could tell him stories. Yelizaveta would not be able to stand being in the same room with him.

"I can only give you what I have," she says after a moment, as though stung -- or maybe just disappointed -- that he doesn't already understand this. "And what I have isn't very much right now. Not if you want me to be honest, and not if you want this to be something I...bažit...instead of just something I accept."

[Lukas] His mouth thins; he looks down, and this is not shame, or shyness, or an inability to meet her eyes. It's deliberate: to spare her his gaze, or to spare him hers. One or the other.

He presses his lips together for a moment, as though to hold back the truths that he cannot, in the end, hold back. No more than a king can command the tides; no more than a werewolf can refuse the moon.

Then he looks her in the eye. Takes a single step nearer -- nearly an arm's reach between still. Nonetheless she can feel the heat of him, shedding off his skin, palpable, nearly visible.

"I have never," he lays this out as he always does, word by careful word, "asked loyalty of any woman. I have never wanted to give it in return. It's never mattered enough.

"But this is different. The moment you spoke the word, it became indelible in my mind. Even before you spoke it, the truth was already there. Whether this lasts a night or a week or a month, I know I cannot bear the thought of sharing you. If I cannot have you to myself, I'd rather not have you at all."

There's a pause; his eyes remain level on hers.

"I know I'm asking too much, too soon; more than you can give. So," and he nods at the phone on his desk, a slight, efficient tip of his chin, "you know how to reach me. Let me know when -- if -- you're ready to promise loyalty again."

[Danicka] Too much, too soon does not even begin to cover it. It hasn't even been two weeks since the full moon. And since then he has grabbed her wrist twice, and she has tucked his hair behind his ear, and that is all. They have spoken once, in fits and starts, inside and outside of a cafe on the Magnificent Mile. They have spoken a second time, tonight, in fits and starts. Even when the moon was full, everything between them could be described as beginnings without endings and endings of things they didn't want anyway.

Danicka holds her ground when Lukas steps forward. Not with a defiant lift of her chin and a steely narrowing of her eyes, but as she always has: quietly, patiently, as though awaiting dismissal with as much acceptance as a hand across her face. Then again, where would she go? The bed and the nightstand and the window and the man are arranged around her in such a way that there is no speedy or easy exit.

If she were honest, she would tell him that he's an ass, and she doesn't expect that to ever change. She's still mad at him on behalf of the only person in the city she calls a friend. He is wishy-washy, going from berating her to almost insulting her to outright insulting her and back again without much in the way of warning or explanation. He's like a teenager. He's giving her a ridiculous ultimatum, an unfair decision, and she'd very much like to smack his hands with a ruler and tell him to Grow up! as sharply as the wood itself meeting his knuckles.

But it's been said that Danicka cannot be trusted. She's a liar.

And a good listener. And too smart, too insightful, too clever, for her own good. And at the moment, she is tired and fuzzy around the edges for more reasons than just sleep deprivation and vodka. Strong vodka. Danicka does not say anything for a few seconds after Lukas's quick, efficient indication of his phone. It could very well be the dismissal she was possibly waiting for; it could be as much a straight-arm as the motel. The way he tried to take her.

Then: she clears her throat lightly, takes a breath, and looks up at his eyes. "I made you your favorite koláče because I wanted to do something nice. For you. That would not be obvious to you or anyone else that it was...so much...for you.

"I said I would be as loyal as you are because for the life of me, I expected that to be the last thing you'd want when it was over."

This is getting more difficult for her. It shows in her face, in the strain in her voice, in the way her eyes keep trying to leave his. This is, in fact, more difficult in some ways than not screaming when he almost frenzied, when he could very well have killed her if he didn't stop himself. Danicka takes a deep breath, closes her eyes for a second, and then forces them open to go on.

"And I kissed you the way I did because I couldn't stop. I don't...do that. I don't kiss people I'm with because I want to, I'll kiss them because that's how they need things to go to get anywhere or because they want to kiss me but not because I want to kiss them, but I did want to kiss you, and I feel something when I'm around you that I...don't know what to do with and I certainly don't trust it," she makes sure to say, her hands trembling slightly as though her body cannot contain for very much longer just how panic-inducing this much disclosure is, "but I do feel it and I keep thinking about you and ..."

Danicka exhales. She's slightly pale, and without asking, she goes and sits on the edge of the mattress, gripping the side of it tightly. Better than fainting. She stops herself, and looks at the desk, and takes a deep breath until she can get her tongue and herself back under control. Not her pulse. It's back to where it was when he grabbed her wrist. Right after he smiled.

She doesn't look at him for a bit. "I can give you til the next full moon, and promise that you won't be sharing me," she says evenly, as though finally coming back to what she meant to say all this time. Her eyes lift again, clear but wary. "And then you can ask me again."

[Danicka] [Oh, 1 WP burnt]

[Lukas] Looking at them now, a stranger would never think that they have been lovers, if even for a night. The woman goes to the bed -- not as an act of seduction but as an act of self-preservation against imminent collapse. The man stands where he is, watching her while she forces truths out as though it cost her something, as though anything but deception and misdirection costs her dearly.

A few times, Lukas' jaw clenches; anger flickers through his eyes like lightning through a summer sky.

Once or twice, a shadow crosses his face.

Once, he looks away.

She finishes, and there's silence. He stares at her for some time. He lowers his head at the end of it, as though thinking. Folds his arms across his chest. An audible inhale; he lifts his head again.

"I didn't need an answer tonight, though I'll take what you'll give. But I won't ask you for your loyalty again and again. If you offer it now, then when you're done with me, Danička, you'll tell me and that'll be the end of it. Until then, if you betray me, I will not forgive you."

He speaks of this like a business contract, a political pact. Listening to him, she could easily imagine him discussing terms like this: with a collaborator, with a rival, with an enemy. If she didn't know better, she could almost imagine him utterly indifferent.

After a pause he adds, quieter: "So be certain of what you offer."

[Danicka] All hope of feigning indifference to each other effectively is long since gone. That is why Danicka was trembling, why she's pale, why she had to sit down rather than that embarrass herself further by going into a dead swoon. She has never tried to pretend that she is above weakness, that she is any less vulnerable than she is, but there are limits to how frail she can allow herself to seem. Danicka is the daughter of a Lord of the Summit, an Elder Ahroun, and this was drilled into her along with how to make a neat stitch and how to knead dough and how to keep herself from screaming when frightened.

Telling him all this, dragging the truth out of its dark hiding places and laying it out where even the dim light from the lamp can hit it before his eyes...it costs her. Over and over, she strains herself rather than lie to him even when that seems to her to be the only viable, survivable, option. When he promises to make her sorry if she lies to him again, the only thing she can think of to do is lie so that he doesn't keep it. She's said she doesn't trust him, and that is why she can't tell him the truth. What is she protecting, he asked her once.

The answer is simple, and yet would make very little sense to him in the face of his own threat:

Myself.

So she struggles, and sits down on his bed so she doesn't hit the floor, waiting for her blood pressure to return to normal, hoping that her mind will stop telling her body that it is time to panic, that he knows more than she wanted him to and she has to get out of here as fast as possible. Danicka breathes, and offers him a contract. That's what it is, after all: a period of time with a set end point, or at least a point where negotiations can be resumed. A trial period would be a good way to describe it, only with clarified boundaries. For most people it wouldn't be necessary. You could just assume that the woman burying her cries in your pillow at night isn't bedding down with anyone else later on in the week. You could just assume that when it's over, someone will say something.

For some reason, though, this is what they've come to. Feigning indifference and creating a contract with defined terms over loyalty, with clauses as to forgiveness and lack thereof, both of them knowing better and both of them simultaneously knowing almost nothing at all about the other.

The tip of her tongue flicks out to wet her lips, no more seductive than her presence on his mattress at the moment, because such a rush of adrenaline as she's faced with has drained the moisture from her mouth. Danicka's eyes track down from his to the center of his chest, and down the midline of his body, her gaze falling in an almost weary cascade. This is the first time she's been around him where her ability to tolerate his Rage is equal to that Rage, and while it does not come close to putting them on equal footing, it is...something. Her eyes move back up.

"All right."

To all of it.

[Lukas] There's an irony in this: putting so much trust in a verbal agreement, a spoken contract, when he's made it so clear he does not trust her. When she's made it so clear she does not trust him. When they've both made it so clear that trust not only does not exist between them -- it might not even be possible for it to exist.

Because implicit in trust is a certain lack of fear. A man afraid for his life will do anything, say anything, betray anything, to save it. Because implicit in trust is a lack of deceit -- and they've both lied, or tried to lie, to the other.

Nevermind.

All right, she says: he's quiet for a moment.

Then, "All right."

[Danicka] One thing Lukas has going for him, ironically, is that he has not lied outright to her. He has not feigned more than was there, though ironically he has tried to hide much that was. He carries around as much pretense of civility as any Garou, but she doesn't think much about things like their honor and glory, their perception of wisdom, their rank and file and how they see the world. It does not concern her.

Not for a moment has she lied to herself about him, about who or what he is or even what he's like. Even now, even admitting that there is something compelling enough about this -- about him -- that she would sacrifice even a couple of weeks to see it through, she does not think about anything beyond those two weeks.

She knows better.

He repeats her words back to her, and silence reigns for at least a few seconds. Five, then ten, then fifteen beats fall between them, and neither one says a word as they look at each other. God only knows what either of them is thinking during that quiet stretch. The Brotherhood of Thieves is relatively quiet. Finally, though, Danicka takes a breath and stands up, moving towards the desk. "I should go," she says quietly, though this time there is no sense that she is going off in a huff or that she is angry, or frustrated, or even afraid.

[Lukas] She stands.

I should go.

He dominates in the middle of the room, and the room is small. There's a sense that moving anywhere at all -- toward the window, toward the door -- means moving by him; moving past him.

A second passes. Then he steps aside, clearing the path to the door.

[Danicka] This is the part where another woman would momentarily ache, wounded by the fact that he does not ask her to stay. Or possibly where she might put on her coat, stand on her tip-toes, and smile at him tenderly while telling him to get better. It doesn't bear mentioning why he does not ask her to stay, and it's entirely possible that in that long interim of silence he gained the ability to guess that whatever concern she might show for him right now is coming in exactly this form:

her leaving.

They've finished the conversation they meant to have, and they've covered the bit that needed to be gotten out of the way, and it's clear that neither of them sees any reason to stay in the same room now that their business with one another is finished. Or...perhaps...the reasons to call it a night simply outweigh the reasons (the reason) to remain.

Danicka does not flash him a look of wounded pride before he steps out of her way, or wish him good health after she gets her unfolds her coat and pulls it on. She sweeps her long hair out from under the collar of her coat and buttons it up, and a thought occurs to her that is hidden while her back is, briefly, to him. There is nothing particularly dramatic or fast in the way she turns around, nor anything necessarily shy or hesitant. This may be the only time he's seen her where she has not decided long in advance what she wants, what she is okay with, but still...there is no unspoken need in her at the moment to act as though she is nervous or uncertain when she isn't.

Though it's entirely possible that later she will chalk this up to being tired, or the fact that she hasn't gotten laid in a week, or the fact that all this run-around with Lukas is (shockingly) not the only thing she has going on in her life but is in fact almost an escape from it...but it's equally likely that she will look back and have to admit that she knew exactly what she was doing, and knows exactly why.

Danicka takes two strides, reaches up to slide her right hand to the back of his neck, and waits to see if the muscles there are made of stone or if they relax under her touch.

[Lukas] For all the ways they are at odds, in opposition, in disagreement, there's still this one, searing exception to every rule. And the truth is, long before she puts her hand on his skin, he's already made up his mind.

It's not far, the distance between. The room is tiny, just enough room for a desk, a bed, a chair, a closet; he could probably cross the entire length and breadth of it in two or three steps. She turns to him and he comes at her, she advances her two steps, or one and a half, because then they're already flush against one another, his feet bracketing hers.

She puts her hand on the back of his neck. He takes her face between his. His skin is surreally hot, a hundred and four, a hundred and eight, synapse-frying temperatures. He brings her mouth to his and what he did not tell her, and perhaps would not tell her, is that he doesn't kiss either.

Not like this, anyway, his mouth opening unhesitatingly to hers, with a sudden, devouring hunger that belies every last shred of indifference or apathy or coolness that has come before.

[Danicka] So many times they could have kissed each other, right or wrong, have passed between them unmarked over the last few weeks. A great deal of what matters has not happened when they're trying -- and often failing -- to speak to each other, to say what it is they mean or what it is they want. In the silences, though, it seems they both know with far more clarity what is and perhaps always was...inevitable. Like this.

The last time was almost two weeks ago, Lukas propping himself up on his elbows and Danicka leaning over him, their mouths meeting without a word about staying, or seeing each other again. Both of them had seemed to be trying to invest -- and then leave behind -- all their desire in a single night. Though Danicka left him lying there and Lukas did not see the point in asking her to remain lying there with him, there had been moments that served as subtle warnings. Not sirens, not rolling thunder, but a certain sinister color to the sky and a lazy, threatening movement to the clouds overhead...signals that not everyone sees for what they are.

When he'd asked if she was cold, she'd merely tucked her feet underneath his own, her back pressed against his chest and her voice quiet and unguarded despite the fact that she had a monster at her back and their attitudes almost calm despite the fact that all they were doing at the time was resting, one against the other, his hand on her shoulder and her hair spread over the pillows. (Ne. Jsem v pohodě.)

When they'd finished the first time and he clung to her, all but burying her against his body while still inside of her, both of them catching their breath and her murmuring with incalculable (and uncalculated) reassurance that she was there. She was there.

The thunder, the loudest warning, had rolled every time their mouths met, alternately anguished and furious, craving and needing but never quite plaintive, over and over until it took no thought at all for either of them to discern a world's worth of intent and meaning out of a single point of contact. Now Lukas knows that this was different for her as it is for him, and Danicka can't take it back, and so in this she has made herself painfully vulnerable. He has her at yet another disadvantage, and it could be that soon she will hate him for it, depending on what he does with the knowledge.

It could be that she hates him already, but that's less likely.

Danicka finds the muscles underneath her hand relaxed and the skin burning hot to the touch, but she doesn't jerk her fingertips away and gasp, or comment on his fever. He's coming to her before her hand even finds its place, the intensity in the air ratcheting up suddenly enough that she breathes in deeply even as she's lifting her face to him and finding his mouth ready for hers, wanting for hers. If she had not kissed him before leaving the motel, if she left him again now without so much as touching him, it would be far more likely that both of them would belive that there really is nothing to be gained here but frustration and betrayal.

Except that this is the one place where they have yet to hesitate, or hold back, or deceive. Danicka does not even attempt to conceal the way she presses against him, through all her own layers and her coat and his thin, sweat-soaked pajamas, though she does control herself enough not to make a sound. She closes her eyes and gives herself over to her own longing for a moment, then another...then...

Danicka pulls away, taking in a quick but full pull of air and meeting his eyes. She doesn't say it. That she can't -- or shouldn't -- stay here, that if nothing else it's a relentlessly stupid idea to use any of his energy for anything other than healing, that the bed is too narrow and too uncomfortable for two, that she is certainly not going to stand around playing nursemaid, that he wouldn't ask her to anyway, that he doesn't need her there and she doesn't want to stay anyway. But, nor does she tell him that all the same, she should go now because if she doesn't she'll draw his hand to her thigh and urge him to slide his fingers up to the tops of her stockings and discover for himself what is and is not underneath her skirt.

All she does is lick her lips, and start to pull her hand away. And step back.

And walk out.

[Lukas] The kiss breaks -- for half an instant he leans into her before he catches himself, draws back. Then she starts to step back and he catches her, his hand at her arm, then at her jawline; he lifts her on her toes and it's another kiss crushed to her mouth, hard as the first, briefer.

They don't make a sound.

Then he lets go. She does step back. He's breathing harder, but he tries to control that, of course; suppresses it to a near-silent rhythm. He looks at her body as though he could see through the clothes, but it's only for a second; then he looks at her face, her eyes, their pupils vivid black, her irises green and his incandescent blue.

Her heels click on the bare wood floor on her way to the door. He doesn't follow her, nor bid her goodnight, but he does watch her all the way out.

The door shuts behind her and some tension bleeds suddenly out of him; he tips his head forward, brings his hands to his face, scrubs fiercely for a moment, and scrubbing, drops down on the thin-mattressed bed. By the time he finishes he's in another form, near-man, sub-human, monstrous, and the heels of his hands -- his palms faintly padded, his nails thick as claws -- are pressed to his brow, his eyes shut.

It's another moment or two before he puts his back against the headboard again, gets reaches for his letter pad. It's quite a while before he recalls the thread of the correspondence, and starts writing again.