inn.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] [per + alertness]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 5, 7, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Danicka Musil] If he was facing another Ahroun, things might end differently.

If Night Warder were still alive, there would be no question: a price would be paid. Proof would be offered. Fitness of every. Fucking. Kind would be tested. If Night Warder were still alive, she would possibly have already given Danicka away in challenge, she may never have gone to the Sokolovs, Lukas never would have met her again, would have forgotten

forever

about candied orange kolace and an enormous gnarled oak swaying its branches across the back windows of a house in Ridgewood. About some girl falling out of that tree's branches but not crying, not making a sound.

But if things had happened so that Night Warder lived, and Danicka still crossed paths with Lukas again and wanted him, and loved him, and mated with him on the summer solstice without warning him that she was taking him as her own, he could not rightfully challenge for her unless flat-out invited to do so. But he's not facing the tall, thin blonde woman with the sharp chin and piercing eyes who he never saw in person but heard songs about, listened to tales of, even all the way in Stark Falls.

He's dealing with a completely different animal.

Nobody stops him. He can feel the swell of rage behind him, the dampening of it, the seething. He can hear Miloslav's breathing. Danicka's footsteps fading as he gets towards the front of the house, when her bedroom is in the back. The silence behind him is almost palpable as he goes outside, back into the world that knows nothing of him, nothing of these people, the monsters, their memories.

He waits outside for nearly an hour. Forty-eight minutes. The night gets colder. Emilie and Sarka and the children don't return, though it's been long enough for all of them to get dinner and come back. Maybe they were called; told to wait. But nearly fifty minutes after the door closed behind him, it opens. And it takes time for Danicka and her father to bring out everything she could get together in forty-eight minutes: it isn't much. It's what they can get out the door in a single trip, the two of them, going to Lukas's rental.

Danicka's hair is neater than it was when walked out of the dining room. The style is the same, two barettes on each side holding her hair off her face, but the strands are all smoother. There are no flyaways now. It's freshly arranged.

She does not go back to the door with her father. He kisses her cheek before he heads back in. They embrace, but it's brief. Now would be the time for a normal father to tell Lukas to take care of his little girl, something like that. Miloslav does not even look at him. The door closes again. Danicka, wearing a light coat and looking at a set of luggage and a couple of boxes beside Lukas's rental car...

...reaches up and covers her face with both hands.

"Je mi to líto."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Forty-eight minutes.

Not a single of which is spent idly waiting. Lukas's rental is parked at the curb, a handful of yards from the front door. He could easily lean against it. He could easily wait inside.

He doesn't. Lukas paces the sidewalk, stalks it like an animal, wears a goddamn groove into the pavement. Back and forth he goes, head bent, stride long and low, a sharp, impatient turn at each end. From time to time he stops and looks up at the second story of the Musils' house, the inside of which he supposes he will never see again after this. He thinks briefly of the oak tree in the back, which remembers him. It is the only thing he might regret not seeing again.

Toward the end he no longer paces. He stands on the sidewalk in front of the gate, if there is one; at the end of the walkway, if there is not. He stares at the house, fixedly, as though he might summon her out with the force of his attention. When the front door finally does open, he's looked at it so long that he almost doesn't register it for a moment.

Then he does.

Lukas does not run up the walk to embrace Danicka. He waits where he is, motionless, all but vibrating in place, and Danicka and her aging father are carrying luggage and boxes and ...

They get to the end of the walk and Lukas reaches forward. His strength, compared to theirs, is surreal. He swings her things out of their hands and sets it behind him on the curb, watches silently as she bids farewell to her father, watches Miloslav and the open front door, but mostly Danicka.

No words pass between the Ahroun and the Ahroun's mate. After Miloslav is gone, and after the door closes, Lukas reaches almost immediately for Danicka.

Who covers her face. And apologizes.

He takes her by the wrists, gently. Then the hands. He pulls her hands from her face and then looks at her, carefully, keenly, his eyes all but colorless in this light, clear as ice.

"Proč jste se česat si vlasy?"

[Danicka Musil] And the night is afraid of him. His impatient waiting, his refusal to leave the protectorate handed from Night Warder to Heals by Pain, the way he watches that house like he's going to make it break down by the sheer force of his will, the power of his staring. Nobody steps out of doors, though it's still early yet.

When she comes out and she and her father walk through the gate she is laden down with luggage and he is carrying two boxes and god only knows how much was left behind. He takes everything, takes it all in however many handfuls he needs to get it away, to get it to the curb, but he's not thanked. One of the Musils doesn't even look at him before going back inside.

The other hides.

And when he wraps her hands around her wrists she doesn't say No, doesn't resist, but her hands and arms go limp. She doesn't resist. Which is familiar, but it's been some time now. It's not the same as her simply flowing into his grasp, into his hands. It's not the same as her pulling against him and then relenting. It's that immediate, deliberate looseness he felt when he grabbed her half-dragged her out of the Blue Chalk Cafe. When he told her to stop sucking on him that first night and he pulled her up to him, against him, to kiss him.

"Chci odejít," she says, which isn't an answer. "Můžeme prostě jít?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Why did you brush your hair? he asked. Why are you going limp like that when I touch you? he could ask. Except there's no point. There's a growing certainty in Lukas; a suspicion he had before he ever left the house that's slowly but surely festering into knowledge.

Why do you think, she could say to him, if she were cruel.

But she's not. So she covers her face. She apologizes. She tells him she wants to leave, and she asks him if they can just go, and all the while rage is beating at Lukas like waves on the shore, a rising tide that leaves his spine cold and his fingers cold and his head hot with adrenaline. He has to let go her left hand, because he has to press his right fist to his mouth; he bites down on his knuckle hard enough to leave tooth-marks in his flesh. The pain is bright and sharp. It cuts through the haze, gives him something to focus on.

He lowers his hand. Releases hers. Puts his hands on her shoulders instead, strokes his palms over her upper arms, returns them to her shoulders. She can see him struggling: for words, for control, something.

"Kde je tvůj bratr?" This is what he asks, finally. "Kde je tvůj bratr právě teď?"

[Danicka Musil] [WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 7, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Danicka Musil] He bites his knuckle, and she is not cruel, but whether or not everything else seems so at the moment is a matter of some internal debate for her. He runs his hansd over her arms, her shoulders, his teethmarks in his hand. Danicka shudders at the touch, starts to shake.

"Prosím. Lukáš, prosím, narodil jsem se v tomto domě," she says, on the verge of tears, and covering her face again. "Nenuťte mě stát tady."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "Okay. Okay."

This is something of a relenting, or it seems so. She's shaking. He doesn't know whether to draw her closer or simply stop touching her altogether, so he does neither; he keeps one hand on her shoulder, on the side of her arm, while he finds his keys in his pocket with the other.

The lights on the rental flash when he unlocks the doors. He steers her toward the car, but not the passenger's side. The driver's side. And he presses the keys into her hand, along with a small, flat card -- a credit card. No. Wait. A hotel keycard.

"Nastup do auta." There's very little anger in his voice. His tone is curiously low; very steady. "Jsem v 325 místnosti.

"Počkejte tam na mě."

[Danicka Musil] [...WP.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 7)

[Danicka Musil] Her body relaxes with relief when he says okay, okay like he does. She feels reassured. He takes her to the car and she breathes a little steadier. She still is not crying, and she lets her hands down, uncovers her face, sees that he is not taking her to the passenger side. She's momentarily bewildered but figures silently that he means for her to drive because... he's had vodka? Because he's too angry to drive? She feels a pang of frustration with his selfishness.

And then she feels something else entirely when he gives her two sets, two kinds, of keys. Her things sit by the curb. He's in room 325. And she's supposed to wait for him there, as he waited for her outside. Which is fair, in a way. And she understands. Which is why she snaps at him. Shoves the car keys and the keycard at him as though she would throw them if he weren't right in front of her. The edges dig into the cloth of his shirt.

"Jdi do prdele, Lukáš."

She almost snarls it, and pulls back, and drops whatever he hasn't taken from her, and she does indeed get into the rental on the driver's side.

And crawls over to the passenger seat. The driver's side door stands open.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Key and keycard are not accepted. They clatter to the asphalt. Lukas may as well be concrete; his eyes may as well be diamonds, hard, cutting. For a moment he stares at her, stonefaced, and just when it seems inevitable that now he'll take it out on her

just like Vladik did

he closes those fierce, steelcutting eyes. And he takes a deep breath. Then, without a word, he leans down and pops the trunk. Goes around back. The car rides lower and lower on its springs as he loads her things into the trunk. A few suitcases. Two or three boxes. Surely not the lump sum of her childhood in that house; this home. The trunk slams closed.

Lukas gets in, picking his keys off the pavement as he does so. He sets the keycard on the console; inserts the keys in the ignition. Closes the door.

Looking straight ahead, speaking softly, he says, "Měl bych mít vás nikdy neopustil. Měl bych mít vědět."

The engine turns over, catches. He lowers the handbrake and pulls away from the curb, doesn't look up, drives away from her father's house as though he had no intention whatsoever of coming back here, or tracking Vladislav down elsewhere, or --

"Je mi to líto." There's a break at the end of the apology. It's impossible to tell if it's grief or rage or both. "Je mi to líto, Danička."

[Danicka Musil] This is weakness. This is Danicka not just nearly breaking down but losing her temper. This is Lukas being all but ready to kill Vladislav, tear the fucking house down around his ears, for touching her. This is Lukas packing her things into the car because she swears at him and gets in, will not move. This is pathetic, this is laughable, this is...

...an exercise, on both sides, of intense control. Intense restraint. Because she belongs to him now, entirely and officially, formally, by the only laws that matter to their people. And another Garou did something to her after that was spoken and settled.

She is making him let it go. Or if not let it go: not kill the Garou in question.

Danicka stares out the window, doesn't bother with her seatbelt. She doesn't say anything.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Interminable minutes pass in silence. He drives; his hotel, which is the one she recommended, is not far. He arrived only this morning. Only this noontide. He came to her house at 6pm. Now it's scarcely 8, scarcely dark. Her half-sister and her sister-in-law are not back yet. Her father is in that house alone with her brother. Lukas cannot think about these things; the possibilities would drive him mad.

At last, when he can't take the silence anymore --

"Co udělal?"

[Danicka Musil] The truth is, ten minutes after they leave, Sarka and Emilie and the children come back. Emanuel needs to go to bed soon, Irena soon after. But ten minutes, fifteen, however long it takes them to get from her house to the hotel she told him to go to, is a long time to be alone with Vladislav. Then again: Miloslav has known Vladislav since the day he was born. He laid his hand on his mate's belly and felt the savage kicking of the son inside. He held him when he cried. He has raised two Garou, is taking a hand in raising two others. He has had two Garou as mates.

Miloslav, aging as he is, can likely handle himself with his own son.

She never interrupts Lukas. She always listens. Except tonight. He gets through Co and she just mutters wearily: "Don't."

A beat passes. She takes a deep breath, and turns away from the window to look at him. There is an apology to her tone, though it's unspoken. There's plenty enough grief. There's no rage left. "What did you say to him, just before you left?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] It takes only a second for Lukas to understand.

In that time, he brakes, he slows, he stops in the middle of the road. It's not a small road at that point. They're on a major boulevard, one of the main thoroughfares of Ridgewood. Cars pile up behind them, confused, then irate. Drivers shout. Horns honk.

Lukas folds his arms around the steering wheel, almost as though to embrace it, and sets his brow against the top rim.

He's silent for a long time. He may have gone to sleep like a small child tired from an afternoon of climbing trees, dashing around a house many times larger than the one he lives in. He may have, except his rage keeps climbing, and climbing, clawing its way up from the pit of his belly until he either has to bite something, or scream, or kill something, or --

he balls his hand into a fist and he pounds at the dashboard of the rental Chevy, six or eight or a dozen times in rapid, devastating succession. Plastic pops free, rubber deforms; the clear shield over the speedometer and the tachometer cracks and he's still pounding, slamming his fist against the dash like a sledgehammer, knocking the air vents loose, crumpling the entire top of the dashboard down. Some driver that's climbed out of his car to come yell in person at the fucktard stopped in the middle of the street sees him, sees him doing this, and thinks better of whatever it was he wanted to say.

The human retreats, whitefaced. And Lukas, worn out at last, slows, stops.

Moments go by. Then, without lifting his head, in a flat monotone, he answers her.

"I told him I knew what he called honor and protection. I told him I would wait for you outside."

[Danicka Musil] [WP nnngh]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 8, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)

[Danicka Musil] Six or eight or a dozen times, Danicka flinches. She still does not have her seatbelt on. She could grab the doorhandle when he brakes and slows in the middle of the street. She could run. She could go somewhere. She has her purse. She knows this city. She could find a place to stay until the moon's waned.

But Danicka doesn't run. She holds onto the door's handle and she flinches every

single

time

that Lukas pound his fist on the steering wheel, the dash, destroying something because he could not go in and destroy Vladislav. She remembers him telling her needed to come in her or break someone's face in ten minutes or he'd lose his mind. She has a feeling this is not the same, nothing remotely like it, but she wonders if this is what Lukas losing his mind would look like.

Not once does she beg him to stop, plead with him to calm down. She is dead silent when he clings to the steering wheel, she is biting back gasps when he pummels the Chevy, she is leaning against the interior of the passenger door and praying he doesn't turn on her. And again, she is shaking, and no deep breath makes it stop. All it does is allow her to speak.

But

"...Oh."

is all she says at first.

Her breathing is silent but deep and unsteady, as tremulous as her fingers. There's a longer silence, then a breathy intonation just loud enough to be heard: "It took... I don't even know how long... for me to make myself believe it was never my fault, Lukáš." That rests for a moment, with the implication that should follow it, though he may not believe her. Horns honk still. People are furious. The night around them is far from silent, far from quiet.

There's something empty, exhausted, and ancient about the way she tries to comfort him: "Neměl mě opravdu bolelo."

Her eyes slide to the decimated dash, move quickly back to him. "Please... please just take me somewhere." She doesn't claim that she's alright. She's far from alright.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] The silence is ragged, shredded by blaring horns and angry shouts and the harsh, audible breathing of the monster in the driver's seat.

Lukas doesn't lift his head. His left hand grips the steering wheel. It's a fucking deathgrip. His brow rests against his knuckles, against the wheel. His right hand is red with impact, scratched across the knuckles, scraped. It doesn't matter. He could shift and it'll be gone in seconds.

"Tell me what he did to you."

It's possible she's never heard him speak quite like this before, only -- no. That's not entirely true. He sounded a little like this, hollowed out, deadened, flayed raw, when he slid to the ground and asked her

how could you think that of me? you, who always saw me so clearly.

and when he bent over in his chair in his room in the brotherhood the night she wanted to leave him; saying

just go. christ, Danička, if you're going to go, go.

[Danicka Musil] She looks at his hands. She looks at his face. She can't look there for very long, so she turns and looks at the devastation to the rental car. Her mind flickers to the natral consequences. He has to return this car. Jesus. What do they say? And because she is Danicka, with the life she's led, she starts thinking about lies to tell. It's habit. It's meditation, almost.

Danicka takes a small breath and looks back at him. She reaches over and she does what she's afraid to do and yet afraid not to do. She's afraid not that he'll strike her, but that it won't work. That it won't make a difference. Her hand touches his hand, where it's red, where it's scraped, where it's livid and angry as he is.

"Take me to your room," she says softly, "and I will tell you anything you want to know. I will, baby. Just not here. I need to not be here anymore."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] The first, last, and very often only point of communication they have is simply this. Contact. The touch of skin on skin. The press of some part of her to some part of him.

Her fingers wrapping around his brutal fist, skimming over the scratches and the weals. Wrapping into his palm when all at once he releases his hand, opens it, clenches it tight again around hers.

He takes a long, shuddering breath. And then he turns his head, just far enough to press his mouth to her hand. His brow furrows, works. Pain and guilt and regret and fury pour over his face like clouds across the sky. He kisses her palm as though her paw had been injured, and his adoration could heal it

but that's not how it is. He's not the one with the healing touch.

Lukas shuts his eyes for another second. Three. Then he sits up, taking another breath, steadier. He holds her hand until he lets it out. When he lets her go, he reaches for the key, knocked loose in his destructive outburst. Cars are swerving around them. He ignites the engine and rejoins traffic.

It's not far from there to his hotel. Lights from the lobby cast out onto the parking lot as he circles around to the side of the inn, parking near the side door. Unless she wants to get an overnight bag from the back, he leaves all her things in the trunk. He imagines she'll have to move them to Chicago somehow. UPS. FedEx. Carry-on luggage. Dedicated to his soul, ferried back on a moonbridge.

When she gets out of the passenger's door, he wraps his arm around her shoulders, hugs her hard against his side. Turns, almost ferocious, to press his mouth to her hair. He doesn't let go as he walks her into the inn and to the elevator.

[Danicka Musil] Perhaps that's where she learned in. Things like her father touching her hand, calming her down, even when they both knew that calming down wouldn't help matters, that calm itself was perhaps its own end. Lukas didn't see that, though. He saw the public embrace, the brief kiss, the dry-eyed goodbye as he helped her to the car with as much of her childhood packed up as they could get in half an hour.

Tomorrow she will send most of these things to her apartment in Chicago via FedEx. She got a one-way ticket. She can go back anytime. The return trip will be expensive. No matter. Danicka doesn't think much about material cost, isn't thinking about it at all right now.

She doesn't take her hand from Lukas's until the ignition is turned, and then her palm returns to her own lap. She looks out the window and watches her old neighborhood disappear behind them like an event horizon they are somehow escaping, a hole she is always being pulled back to.

At the inn she looks at him and lets herself out. When he grabs her she flinches. When he holds onto her she stiffens. She tries to move away, and if he lets her, she stands by herself in the elevator, only the suitcase she came from Chicago to New York with going up with her. She holds her hands by her head, heels pressed to her temples, as though she has a headache.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] He grabs her. She flinches.
He lets her go.

Lukas doesn't kiss her hair, after all. He doesn't walk her to the door. He swipes his keycard and unlocks it, ushers her in, stands behind her while they wait for the elevator.

She presses her hands to her temples. He looks at her. He worries about her rubbing her head as though she had a headache; he worries about what happened in those forty-eight minutes she was out of his sight, what was done to her, what was or wasn't done to heal her.

"Danička, jsi v pořádku?"

It's a stupid question. Of course she's not all right. The elevator arrives; he turns away, follows her in. He thumbs the button for the third floor and then steps back as the doors close themselves.

[Danicka Musil] As though his question reminded her that she was allowing outward expression, Danicka starts to lower her hands when he asks her if she's okay. She doesn't have a headache. She isn't upset. Everything is --

-- far from okay. Far from fine.

She covers her forehead with one hand, and lets her suitcase stand on its own, and while they're riding up in the elevator she reaches over and holds his hand. It's loose, her hand wrapped around his, under his thumb, rather than lacing their fingers together. It feels like she's searching for something with that grip, as though she's blind, but she is only covering her brow, not her eyes.

Danicka lets herself show that her head is pounding. And she has to take her hand down to grab her suitcase when the elevator doors open and they head down to his room, but she doesn't let go of his.

"Jsem v pořádku," she says quietly, and this could be snapped, dismissive, short, but it's not. It's also not the complete truth. But it will be.

When they get to his room and inside the door she sets her suitcase against one wall, keeping her coat on, going to the edge of the bed and sitting down. Her elbows go to her knees. Her head goes to her hands. She rubs at her face, exhales.

Tell me what he did to you.

"He questioned me after you went outside," she says, her words half-muffled. "He did not like my answers." A beat. Her hands fall and she looks at her nails. "Though he wouldn't have liked any answer, really." She touches one glossy fingernail, strokes it thoughtfully with the pad of her other fingertip. "He held back. He didn't really... hit me. Grabbed my hair and made me bare my throat, but... he didn't bite me."

As though that would be expected. It does not sound like she's talking about a love bite, a hard suck, a lock of groan-stifling teeth. Not even remotely.

She looks at the dresser across the way from the foot of the bed, stares at the wooden doors. "He threw me down but he didn't touch me after that."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Danicka carries her suitcase into the elevator, but when the car arrives on the third floor Lukas bends, rather automatically, and picks it up.

His other hand holds hers. It's a gentler grip than the one in the car. He has to use one hand to open the hotel room door; he chooses to set the suitcase down rather than let go of her.

A swipe, a click, the light turns green over the doorhandle and the lock clicks back. Lukas opens the door, nudging it with his shoulder as he picks up her suitcase again. He leaves it against the entryway wall, across from the three-quarter-length mirror he dressed in front of when he decided he would not, after all, wear a tie to see her father, because he was seeing her brother as well.

He planned all of that, so carefully. The facade he would put on, how much he would allow himself to show. How closely he would attempt to approximate the sort of Lord he thinks Vladislav might want him to be: cold, detached, with superficial charm and a stone for a heart. How he would approach the subject, and speak to Vladik; how he would ask for her; how he would never, ever betray that he loved her lest Vladislav turned it against him.

All his plans, all his strategies, worked out about as well as they ever do. There's an old saying that no strategy lasts past the first twenty minutes of battle. He had not torn into Vladislav; had not tried to tear him apart.

It was a battle nonetheless.

They part somewhere inside the door when she goes to the bed. He drops his coat atop the luggage rack, slips his shoes off.

She begins to speak. He pauses. Looks at her. She finishes, and she's not looking at him, so she can't see the look on his face. She can hear the wince, though, in the hush of his voice.

"He used to bite you? With -- "

Silence; he turns his face bodily away, as though to avoid the truth. A moment later he comes to her, sits carefully beside her on the bed. And he, too, stares at the dresser.

[Danicka Musil] It helps, when he comes to sit beside her.

She doesn't know how carefully he thought about tonight's wardrobe, how carefully he planned. Danicka doesn't know anything about Lukas's strategic way of approaching battle. She's seen him fight once, and then he was in hispo, and then he lunged in front of her and destroyed the thing that wanted bite her, hurt her, touch her.

And now he's listening to her tell him, as though it were normal, about her elder brother forcing a primitive display of submission and biting her throat the way that one wolf might do to another, the way that he might do to someone he's bested, but that he would never do to Anezka, his mother, his...

...mate.

It is not alright that Vladislav did such a thing after giving her to him. It is not alright by their laws or by their instincts that he so much as laid a hand on her. Which is why, outside, he saw her carefully rearranged hair and asked her too softly where her brother was. Right now. Yet here they are. And Vladik is alive, welcoming his mate and his half sister and his nieces and nephews back into the house he does not live in but claims as his territory, and Miloslav is putting away the leftovers from dinner, silent as his son explains to the women and the children that Danica is gone.

Her boots are still on, her jacket, her sweater and pretty skirt. He cuts off his own question and she takes a breath as he sits beside her, then:

"Think," she says, "about what you want to really know. Because I won't lie to you."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Danicka doesn't know how carefully he thought about -- everything, really.

Danicka doesn't know, either, that the scene in front of her childhood home was a goddamn strategic retreat. She doesn't know that when Vladik opened his mouth over dinner and spoke about Danicka under him, breeding with him, he thought to himself:

I am going to hurt this thing.

And Danicka doesn't know that when Lukas saw her hair put up again, straightened up, neat, recombed, he thought to himself:

I am going to destroy this thing.

And that was that, a decision made. This isn't a change of heart. It's patience, and planning, and care. Danicka can surmise that he tried to usher her into the car so she wouldn't have to watch it. She doesn't know he drove away with her so she wouldn't have to worry about it. She doesn't know that after he closed the door and told her he was sorry, he was sorry, what he really wanted to tell her was --

Well. What he'd already told himself.

And now here they are, in his hotel room, and she's offering to tell him everything, and all he has to do is ask, just ask, and a part of Lukas wants to crumple on himself because now he's the one with secrets. He's trying to think of what he might ask her now, when all he can think of is how he's waiting for her to fall asleep so he can leave

and do what's necessary

and come back and hope she never finds out.

"I want to know," he says, quietly, "something good about Vladik. I want to know if there was ever anything good about Vladik."

[Danicka Musil] There is no way. Danicka is connected to her family. Miloslav would tell her. Or Emilie, or Sarka, or one of the children who all have their aunt's e-mail address and phone number. Or perhaps one of the Sokolovs. There is no way her brother could go missing, could be found a corpse, and she would not hear about it.

And know.

But his question startles her. She looks at him suddenly, her brows drawn together, her expression almost hurt. "Lukáš, of course. No one is born like that." She watches him, her hands still in her lap. "I told you. When we were little, he would try to hide me from our mother when she was...well When she was out of control. He was rough even then but he was protecting me." There's a longer pause this time.

"He's an excellent pianist."

Another beat.

"He did not have to let me work for the Sokolovs. He has looked for a mate for me before and tried to find one without so much rage, maybe one that could be patient with me, maybe one that wouldn't be around so much. He did not have to care about that, either. And I know..." she exhales. "I know that for you it seems like a given, that these things aren't surprising, but he could have always done worse to me. I know it isn't much. But..."

Danicka takes a shaky breath. "Lukáš, on je to můj bratr. I cannot distill for you twenty years of knowing him and line up the good against the bad to see whether or not it even comes close to balancing. On je to můj bratr. On je bratr mé krve a z bratr mé duše. Nedokážu vysvětlit, proč že záležitosti, poté, co všechno, co má udělat, aby mi ublížil. A nemohu změnit to."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas hates hearing Danicka speak well of her brother. He hates hearing her tell him Vladislav is her brother, flesh of her flesh, blood of her blood. He hates being reminded that they come from a common root; that they're the offspring of gentle, patient Miloslav as much as they're the offspring of ferocious, uncompromising Night Warder.

Which is, of course, why he asks her these things. Not because he wants her to convince him otherwise, somehow, but because -- he wants to know.

He wants to remember.

He sets his elbows on his knees, now. Bends double, lacing his fingers, pressing his thumbs to either side of the bridge of his nose. He closes his eyes for a moment, breathes quietly.

"Řekni mi to poprvé, co on porazil ty ... k okraji. Řekni mi, nejhorší doba."

[Danicka Musil] She told him two things tonight: that she would tell him anything, without lies or obfuscation, if he would just take her away from her neighborhood, from the house she was born in, beaten in. And she told him to think, carefully, about what he really wanted to know before asking. Danicka knows what he's thinking, knows because of the way he rubbed her arms as though to keep himself from shattering eveything around him and asked her, too gently, where he was, where the fuck her brother was, though he didn't swear. He was so calm.

Danicka knew then what Lukas doesn't say, what he wants to hide from her: that he is going to destroy Vladislav. Maybe he hasn't thought beyond that. The fallout. What it would earn him in the tribe, in New York, in the entire fucking Nation. What it would do to her to become, suddenly, her father's only child, her mother's only descendant.

She knows the answer. She doesn't have to think about it. And that's chilling.

"After our mother died. When we finally found out." She pauses. "It's stupid. I... well. My mother liked my hair long. It was always past my ribs. Huge, thick curls in some places. Tangles. I hated dealing with it, and she wouldn't let me cut it.

"A little while after she died, I cut it... so it was here?" Danicka lifts her hand, holds it a little below her jaw, a slicing gesture where the ends of her hair must have fallen then. Her hand drops again. "He thought I did it to dishonor her. He was... god, maybe... nineteen or twenty, I think. He had already been a Cliath for some time." She frowns slightly, her brows together. "That was the first time that I think he almost didn't stop."

The first time he could have killed me if he didn't.

"That wasn't the worst time, though." She turns and looks down. "I already told you about that time."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Beside her, Lukas shudders once, all over, when she says she thought he almost didn't stop. He doesn't lift his head.

Some part of Danicka must wonder if what she's always feared most is coming to pass. Not that he's finally going to snap, he's finally going to beat her, he's finally going to reduce her to blood and broken bones. Not that, but that she's finally breaking him. Altering him somehow. Destroying, forever, something necessary, something good, something blind and idealistic and -- unsustainable, ultimately.

He presses his palms together, now, fingers interlaced and curved over the knuckles. Over and over, he rubs the base of his thumb over the center of his forehead, as though he had a headache of his own.

"When he discovered you were pregnant," Lukas says. It's all so quiet now.

[Danicka Musil] It's true. Only now it's not just about breaking Lukas. It's not just about breaking something in him that she loves, something she also disdains and hates even while adoring it. It's not just about destroying some part of him that is so intrinsically, essentially part of her view of him that losing it seems like the end of something, it's now about breaking something precious between them. Changing it. Changing the way he views her, the way he sees himself, the way he sees what they have.

She's his mate now. Not in whispers in the dark between them where no other Garou need even be aware of it, but out in the open. As much as he -- as much as she, in her way -- might want that openness and validity, some of their privacy seems stripped away.

And for her it was always so. It was always a fear. Now she sees him feeling it, the exposure, the frustration, the wrongness of what her life has been, and she wonders if how he loves her has changed. Will change.

She nods. She looks at her palms, at the lines on them, and says nothing else.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] So they say nothing else.

He could ask her anything right now. She'll answer. She said she would, and he believes her. But she told him -- admonished him -- to think carefully on what he wants to know. And she's right to do so. Some things, he doesn't want to know. Some things might break him to know.

Right now, anyway.

He understands why she never wanted him to meet Vladislav. The stories, the suspicions, the patches and pieces he knows from her -- they did not even begin to paint the picture of the man. It was something else entirely, like a cataclysm of the mind, to stand before Vladik in person. To see the gloss at the exterior and the rot at the core. It's impossible to witness this and not be somehow...

affected.
Maybe altered.

Lukas lets out a breath. This is barely more than a whisper, just a few breaths of sound given voice: "Can I hold you?"

[Danicka Musil] Which breaks her. Only not in the same way Vladislav could, not in the same way she's afraid all of this will break the both of them. "Prosím, lásko," she says, and folds forward, folds towards him, already seeking his shoulder with her face, openly and carelessly craving comfort. "Prosím."

The second time the word leaves her mouth it's almost a sob.

When his arms are around her, somehow, when he holds her, somehow, she whispers raggedly: "Nepouštěj."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas is only beginning to straighten when Danicka leans into him. For a moment this embrace is as awkward and sudden and heartfelt as the one in her entryway months ago -- her slight body leaning into his; her arms wrapped around his shoulders and his curled backward over her bicep.

Then he does straighten. He wraps his arm around her, swings her onto his lap. The counterpane rumples under her knees. He pulls her against him with something like desperate force, burying his face against her shoulder, her neck.

"Nikdy." He inhales; he can smell her, but he can smell her father's house, too. The meal they cooked. Her brother's hands. His heart bumps hard -- it's rage, and as though to ward against it, he holds her tighter. "Nikdy, má lásko."

[Danicka Musil] On another night this sort of agonized, rushing meeting of their bodies would be something else entirely. The way Lukas swings her onto his lap, the way her legs part smoothly and naturally as though her body knows before even she does how to be closest to him, the way he holds her so tightly would all add up to a passion of a different sort. This, though, is the older, more archaic meaning of the word, and it's revealed in the way she shudders in his arms.

They twine their heads together like lovebirds, each one burying their face against the other's neck, seeking warmth and comforting darkness.

But his rage spikes when he holds her, and his arms tighten, and she makes a noise that might've been a whimper, if she hadn't stifled it.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] So his arms loosen. It's as instantaneous as his hands letting go of her wrists, outside her childhood home. They slide down, wrap loose and low around her waist, her hips. He kisses her shoulder through her clothes, murmuring over and over -- "Promiňte. Promiňte, lásko. Je mi to líto..."

It gradually subsides to silence. And he holds her.

[Danicka Musil] She kisses him after the first apology, and there's no denying it, no attempt to: she is shutting him up. Her hands are on his cheeks, pulling his face up, pulling his mouth to hers to keep him from saying he is sorry again

and again.

Even upset, there is something inordinately, unfairly skillful about Danicka's kisses. Every time she has crushed her mouth to his as though she cannot help but do so, there is still a finesse that he's only noticed a lack of when she's quite vividly drunk. Gaia only knows how, if kissing her conquests was something she avoided. Maybe after being with as many people as she has, there was simply no way to avoid frequent and intensive practice. Which is a digression: she kisses him fervently, furiously, and if the evening had not been a rollercoaster of surprises and fury and whatever else they might call this, that close-lipped physical endearment would still be enough to light him up.

Which is perhaps why she ends it as soon as she does, her hands still on his face, her thumbs sweeping his cheekbones, her eyes...

...haunted.

"I'm so sorry."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] His face all but pulled to hers -- his cheeks smooth under her hands, cleanshaven after his shower -- Lukas quite literally can't help kissing Danicka back.

His will is worn thin after that conversation under the oak; that dinner; those forty-eight minutes on the sidewalk; that car ride. There's something like a survivor's desperate, incendiary passion in the way he eats at her mouth, suddenly, silently.

Which is perhaps why she stops as soon as she does. Which is certainly why his hands have opened over her back, and why his breathing is fast and ragged, and why his eyes are closed even after she stops, until she speaks.

Then they open. He looks at her for a moment as though he were dazed, the breath knocked right out of him. Focus clears his eyes a second later. Lukas frowns.

"Baby," softly, "why do you keep apologizing?"

[Danicka Musil] "Because that was awful," she says, breathlessly, laughingly, pained. "Because of the things he kept saying, because you had to be in the same room with him."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas looks like he can't quite believe what she's saying, or can't quite understand why. He moves, bringing his hands up, mirroring her palms on his cheeks with his own. Gently, he takes her face between his hands.

"Danička," he says, "he terrorized you, abused you and beat you. For years. To the very brink of death. He said those things about you. In front of your father. To ... shame you, or frighten you, or make you crack.

"He's -- monstrous. And when you asked me to take you away from him months ago, I told you I had to play it by the goddamn books.

"So tell me. Why are you apologizing?"

[Danicka Musil] A part of her wants to correct him. Or elaborate. Tell him everything else Vladislav ever did -- to her, to others. An equally strong part of her wants to avoid ever having a conversation like the one they just had, wherein he asked her to tell him the first time, the worst time, tell him something good, tell him something about Vladik that makes his existence something other than a neverending stream of brutality and sin. She has asked him in the past not to make her talk very long about her brother.

She does not understand why a part of her wants to purge everything, say everything, drive him half-mad with rage he can only express by destroying what's around him or killing her brother. She knows something would break in him, something sacred to her, and yet:

a part of her wants to tell him that no. There was even more. And that she knows exactly why he said those things. In front of her father.

Danicka kisses him again instead, closing her eyes, her hands gentling on his cheeks. It's softer than the last one. Slower. She does not let it last, either. She stays close, though, hardly any light or air between their torsos, her forehead just inches from his. "Because it was awful," she whispers, again.

Because I couldn't protect you.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] The second kiss doesn't last, either.

But there's a third, and this time it's Lukas that lifts his chin; that touches his mouth gently, almost delicately, to Danicka's. It's a soft kiss, slow to open, and his hands stir a few strands of her hair loose.

Then it's his brow to hers again. He exhales quietly.

"Jsme pány stín."
(Ano, jsme.)
"Budeme přežít."

[Danicka Musil] What is echoed from her thoughts is voiced, even as the murmur is leaving his mouth, even as stín is lingering in the air and he is taking a sip of air to utter budeme. Danicka rests her brow to his and closes her eyes.

"Ano, jsme."

And a moment later:

"Ano, budeme."

It has the quality of ritual, as some things between them do, whether actions or conversations. She lets her hands fall to his shoulders and her body is a warm weight on his lap, her skirt rumpled up here, rucked up there, caught between their legs, covering the space between them. She's wearing knee-high boots. They aren't the same ones he saw by the door. Those are back in her suitcase. These are black, and hug her calves. She rests against his brow, and the words die with the quiet sanctity of vows.

"Will you stay with me tonight?" she whispers after awhile, as though they are not sitting in his room, as though he did not come all this way to be able to keep her, stay with her. As though she knows, damn well, what he would do otherwise.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Give him this much: he doesn't stiffen. He doesn't start.
And this much: he doesn't lie to her, either.

There's a short, breathing silence. Then he tips his chin up, kisses her mouth again, briefly but firmly. His arms tighten around her when he gets to his feet, lifting her on his body easily. Danicka is on the lower end of her ideal weight range; Lukas used to assume this is because she's from New York City, for god's sake, but then he found out she doesn't eat when she's stressed, and then he found out she doesn't eat when she's stressed because when she was young, an infant, before conscious memory, food was inextricably associated with stress.

Her and her brother were both consistently underweight as children.
Her and her brother.

Lukas is peeling back the bedspread on the hotel mattress, holding her onehanded while he tugs at the sheets with the other. They haven't really bothered to turn on lights in here; the single light in the entryway is the only one. The shades are still open, though it's night outside now, and not the glittering endless glow of Manhattan. Suburbs, out here. A quiet street, though they can't see it. A quiet atrium with a quiet garden, which they can see.

He sets her down at the edge of the mattress. And, sighing a little, drops easily to one knee to unzip her boots.

"Sundej si šaty," he murmurs. "Lehnout dolů si se mnou. Já jen chci držet tebe."

[Danicka Musil] [WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Danicka Musil] Her hand flinches when he doesn't answer. Danicka curls it into a ball on his shoulder, holds onto the fabric of his shirt, his coat, and stares at him as he kisses her. She does not kiss him back. At least she does not pull away, but her mouth does not melt to his, her body does not relax. She finds herself lifted into the air and she doesn't fight it. After everything that's happened tonight a strong and loud part of her does simply want to be held, to be wrapped in arms she's never seen fly to strike her. She wants to lay down and let him hold her.

And she wants him to stay.

All night.

Danicka takes a breath as he pulls the covers back and sets her down, kneels and begins removing her boots. These are not like the ones he took off of her that night at the W, that first time, when underneath he found white lace stockings. Underneath tonight he finds silk hose, black, which she was wearing at the house, coating her legs as they emerged from under the hemline of her dress. He cannot see the tops.

She sits on the edge of the mattress and wraps her hand around the edge of it instead of him. Him, she just stares at.

"No."

She pulls back her leg, reaches down, zips her boot back up. She does this without looking, without taking her eyes off him. "I'm not going to fucking sleep here alone while you pull this."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] So his hands return to his lap, resting loosely atop his thighs as he sits back on one heels. He looks at her, patiently, which in and of itself is a sort of tell.

Lukas has never been able to keep his patience when Danicka snapped at him. Not really. Not once.

"Pull what, Danička?"

[Danicka Musil] She holds onto the mattress so she doesn't slap him. He's never kept his patience like this when she's snapped. He's never struck her, even when he all but promised to. And Danicka has never hit him. She has never performed the humiliating but barely even painful act of an open-handed slap across the face, and truth be told, she is quite excellent at its delivery. The sting always comes more from her disdain than her palm. But what she's feeling now isn't disdain. It's anger. That much is evident. Whatever's beneath that is lurking, stirring, bubbling up and yet not finding her eyes, or its voice.

"Whatever you're going to do," she says, her tone falling, her voice quieting, "that makes it so you can't say you'll stay."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] And Lukas takes a long, slow breath. Looks away, to the side; a beat, two.

Looks back.

"Nebudu zabít svého bratra. Nebudu ho nechal zabít mě." He reaches for her hands, carefully, dropping his own back to his thighs if she makes the slightest motion away. "Ale když to neudělám aby to bylo naprosto jasné, že on už ne již žádné právo tě dotýkat, on už nikdy přestat."

[Danicka Musil] And she does move away. Her arms tense, her hands clenching on the mattress even more. There was a flicker of something almost like -- not relief, not relaxation, but horror -- at first, and then a vague recoiling. She does not, for once, want him to touch her, to hold her, to help her out of her clothes and lay down beside her in a large, soft hotel bed as evening dips down towards true night.

"Lukáš..." she exhales, not quite a sigh, but it's an exhausted sound. "If he did not know that, he would have hurt me."

She unclenches one hand. Clenches it again. "I didn't want this so you could save me." She is nearly gritting her teeth. She is trying -- failing, and that is something, for someone as accomplished at deceit as she is -- to conceal her disgust.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "To, co udělal, bylo nepřijatelné!"

He cuts her off after the hurt me, instantly, his voice cracking like a whip. What calm there is, what calm there was, was a veneer, a crust of cooled rock over molten magma; was all but a lie. The aftershock of his shout, his rage, lingers in the air like an echo. His hands have not dropped to his thighs again after all but are braced on the edge of the bed, inches from hers, gripping down just as hard. Harder.

He lowers his head and draws a slow, unsteady breath. Bolts of tension pull every muscle taut from fist to shoulder to shoulder to fist.

"To není o vás."

It's an admission, a confession, shameful. Selfish after all.

"Je to něco co já muset udělat pokud chci být schopen držet hlavu nahoru."

[Danicka Musil] He's too close. The snap of his anger, the roar of those words, hit her in the face like a blast of searingly hot air, and Danicka closes her eyes, her shoulders squared for a split second before she remembers: it hurts less if you relax. So she rounds, and relaxes, and when he doesn't do anything else, she takes a small mouthful of air and opens her eyes again.

She moves her hands from the mattress to her lap. Maybe he knows, maybe he can tell: it's just to get her skin a bit farther from his, to take fragile bones out of proximity to his grip.

For a long time she says nothing. Her face is mercilessly pale except for a pair of pink spots high on her cheeks, her eyes almost glassy. Her hands fold in her lap. Her tone goes soft. Her voice, when he hears it, is accepting.

"Jak si přejete. Počkám na tebe v Chicagu."

The way they are situated, he is bracing her. Caging her. She looks down at his arm. "Excuse me."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] It takes him a moment to untwist his hand from the counterpane, the edge of the mattress. It takes him a moment to remember how to let go, to relax the fingers one by one, straighten the knuckles, bend the elbow, lower the arm.

He drops his left arm to his side, giving her room to get by him. When she does, he folds forward onto the edge of the bed, his elbow to the mattress, his palm to his forehead.

When he was a boy, his parents cut his hair longer than it is now, and it curled more. Now, when he pushes his hand into his hair, his fingers disappear into thick silky black that curls almost not at all. Only at the tips. Only at the temples, the back of his neck. Only when it's wet, or damp, or especially tousled.

Lukas closes his eyes for a moment, listening peripherally to the sounds of Danicka ... packing, presumably. Getting ready to go back to Chicago.

Nothing tonight has gone the way he expected, or even could have planned for. He came here to win her for himself. Permanently. Irrevocably. Forever. He came here to keep her, to hold her as he once thought it was impossible to hold her, and...

he did. He won. Didn't he? And yet she feels farther away than she has since the very beginning; since before the beginning.

It feels like she's slipping away from him. Like something is changing, or has changed between them, and he doesn't know where the ground is; the path is lost in the fog of his rage, her past, what happened to tonight, what he wants to do. He never wanted her to know. Not what he wanted to do, not any of it. He never wanted her to know because he's afraid she would hate him for it, or loathe him for it, or fear him for it. Her father became a prisoner of his mate's love. Lukas wonders if this is the first step: righteous fury, retribution, indignation, war.

And he didn't want her to know because: it's not for her, except perhaps only peripherally and incidentally. It's for himself, selfish, just like loving her was, in the end, for himself.

Open. Clear and blue, his eyes: ice-strewn, steel-cutting. He takes a breath, does not turn to face her.

"Am I losing you?"

[Danicka Musil] As soon as his arm is at his side, Danicka slips out from between bed and mate. Her skirt brushes against him, the edge of her coat, the side of her boot. That's all, before she's out of arm's reach, but there is no room big enough that could let her get far enough away fast enough, if he wanted to hold onto her. She knows this the way people know that they must breathe, that water is wet, that fire is hot. It is so basic, so intrinsic to her experience of life, that she doesn't even think about it. The idea of being 'safe' is one it took her literally months to even contemplate, even longer to allow herself to think fully, even longer to voice.

Not so long to regret.

There is no packing to do. Her rolling suitcase, the carry-on she came to New York With, is sitting by the door with the handle pushed down and her purse resting beside it. She didn't take off her coat when they came in. She zipped her boot back up when he tried to get her to take it off. Danicka does not, this time, have to stand in front of the mirror and brush her hair, put her barettes back in. When she moves away and Lukas covers his brow with his hand, she takes her iPhone out of her trench's pocket and begins making a flight reservation for this evening, standing in the middle of the room.

Once upon a time, some boys held her, and touched her, and she did nothing. Could do nothing. Once upon a time, her mother handled it. Because she was her kin. Because she was Night Warder and such disrespect would not stand. And hardly anyone spoke to Danicka after that, for nearly a year. Lukas knows that story. Danicka is thinking about it now. He can't know that, not with the way her back is to him, the focus she gives the screen as she flicks through flights that will get her back to Chicago before dawn.

He speaks.

She looks at the confirmation screen. Her eyes close. He can hear her inhale, could see her shoulders lift and her back flex beneath sweater and coat if he turned and looked at her, but they have lost even eye contact. At least it seems lost.

"The way our world works, you have every right to go to him and tear into him for laying a hand on me after he gave me to you." She looks over her shoulder at him. Her tone is flat. And she proves she doesn't need to lash out physically to make something hurt. "But the way our world works, he always had every right to do what he did. He had every right to keep me from running off with a kinsman not of our tribe after getting knocked up, by whatever means necessary. He had every right to punish me when I was disrespectful, when my behavior threatened the reputation of our family name, when my actions dishonored the memory of our mother. He had every right to beat me when he found out I was giving it away to some Cliath in Chicago."

Danicka relaxes slightly. Her voice does. It doesn't soften, though. She turns a bit more so she's not craning her neck. "I belonged to him, Lukáš. I belonged to my mother." A beat. "I belong to you."

There's more warmth in those four words now than she's shown him since the last time he saw her in Chicago.

"If for the sake of your pride, or your honor, or your self-respect, you need to go get into a fight with my brother, then I am not going to beg you not to. Not for the sake of my brother, not for the damage that could be done to my family's standing, not for the consequences that might fall on you from this sept and Sabina's. And I'm sure as hell not going to plead with you to spare him for my sake." There's ice in that. An edge. A razor. "The only person alive who may have more reason to hate him than I do is his mate, and she's broken."

Danicka breathes. She turns back to her phone, taps a button, and confirms her flight.

"If you need to need to break his face because he touched something that's rightfully yours, then go right the fuck ahead, Lukášek."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Danicka starts to speak. After the first sentence she turns to look at him. He's where he is, crouched, folded on himself as though to protect vital organs, vulnerabilities, but that's not entirely it. There's a searing anger about him. One that's twisted up with guilt and hurt and uncertainty, to be sure -- but anger nonetheless, and vicious. And violent.

Midway through what she says about her brother, he lifts his head. And he looks at her, over his shoulder. They look at each like this, heads turned, bodies facing away, but it's still enough to see the wince when she says

every right to beat me when he found out.

And when she speaks of belonging. And draws the lines that lead from one Garou to the other; one act of violence and dominance and ownership to another.

She goes on, she goes on. He breathes as steadily as he can. She confirms her departure. He looks away though he can't be certain of what she's just tapped on that sleek little phone of hers.

"That's not how it is." Breaking Vladik's face because he touched what was Lukas's, he means. He doesn't explain it; perhaps can't. "It's not."

And then he gets to his feet, all at once. Motion takes the place of -- whatever the hell else he might be doing. Thinking about it. Mulling it over. Debating with himself. Playing chess with himself, the black pieces and the white. He rakes his fingers through his hair, takes off his watch and puts it atop the TV, his wallet beside it.

[Danicka Musil] These are little signals. The fact that she is still looking at her iPhone's screen even while she talks, the fact that she won't face him, the fact that her mind seems made up as far as going back to Chicago immediately is concerned. The fact that he is so furious, and so controlled. The fact that he starts to do the masculine equivalent of a woman taking off her earrings. His watch and wallet go to the side. These are signals, or could be. Masters of signals and body language, masters of manipulation, can use them to imply they're doing something they have no intention of following through on. Or that they won't do something they plan to.

Danicka sees it. Danicka knows. And she does not call the airline. She looks at Lukas and doesn't answer when he insists that she's got it wrong. She calls an old number, one she used to use a lot. Their cabs are usually cleaner than the others, and it's worth it to her even if she has to pay more. Danicka puts the phone to her ear: he gets to listen to her quietly inform dispatch of where she is and when she'd like to leave.

Her flight that he doesn't know about leaves in six hours. She tells them to pick her up an hour from now.

By that time he may have undressed more. He may not have. She ends the call and decides ...to take off her coat. She shrugs out of it, drapes it over the back of a chair. She looks in the mirror and removes her barettes, lets her hair fall around her face, combs it into place with her fingers. She puts the clips in her coat pocket and goes to a chair at the table where the innkeeper might bring breakfast if ordered. At least now she's facing him, her elbow on the arm of the chair, her chin against her loosely furled fist, her eyes on

her mate.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas has, indeed, undressed further by the time Danicka ends the call. He's undone the cuffs of his shirt, unbuttoned it, removed it and set it aside. It's summer; he has no undershirt. He goes to his suitcase and it's neat, as one might expect his suitcase to be, all the shirts neatly folded on one side, creases straight and lined up; the jeans and the pants beside them. Belts and ties are neatly rolled up. Underwear is tucked into the mesh compartment on the lid.

From the bottom of his suitcase he pulls out a nondescript cotton shirt, shortsleeved and dark. It looks old, comfortable, a favorite t-shirt someone might sleep in or kick around the house in. He pulls this over his head and she's putting down the phone and while she takes her coat off he looks at her.

"I can drive you to the airport," he says quietly.

[Danicka Musil] "I know," she says, matching the volume of his voice, the cadence of it.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] So he tries again: "Let me drive you."

[Danicka Musil] This time Danicka's response is not so instantaneous. She just watches him for a moment, as she watched him while he took off the Nice Shirt he wore to visit her father and see her family and, ultimately, tell her brother that he wanted her for himself. As she watched him pull one over his head that reminds her of what he was wearing when she first saw him at the Brotherhood, away from humans.

His second attempt is more honest. She doesn't tell him no immediately. She doesn't tell him yes. She looks at him, looking up because she's seated and he's standing, and something flickers through her eyes that she doesn't say aloud, or give more time to alter her expression.

"I can't stay," she whispers, which isn't an answer. Nor is it, really, the truth.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] The shirt he wears reminds Danicka of the one he wore the first time she saw him away from humans

(in this city).

He undoes his pants, then, the belt and the fly, lowering it down his legs. There's a lack of self-consciousness here that's somehow startling, though it's certainly nothing she hasn't seen before. Touched before. But they rarely dress or undress in front of one another without having fucked already, or without preparing to fuck. They don't dress and undress like this -- as though they lived together. Occupied the same space on a daily basis. Changed in and out of their day clothes, their nightwear.

He folds his pants over his arm, drops them in the suitcase. And gets out another pair, softer, drawstring, also dark.

His clothes remind her of what he wore the first night at the Brotherhood. They should remind her, too, of what he wore the night he cleaned up the mess on the highway where she can Liadan faced men with shotguns and chained werewolves.

"I know," he replies -- echoing her, though perhaps unwittingly. "I'm not asking you to stay." The elastic snaps into place just below his waist, atop the waistband of his boxer briefs. He hesitates a moment, then faces her.

"Just let me drive you to the airport."

[Danicka Musil] Her legs are not crossed. Her skirt covers her thighs, her knees, completely. She watches him almost analytically, fully aware of the strangeness of this. She's seen him dress and undress so many times. She's watched him leave her as she's laid there with sheets up to her waist and her breasts bared and her hair askew, her eyes cloudy from sleep. She's only dressed with him a couple of times, really. But...yes. Usually they've made love, or are about to, or are going to bed together. Danicka doesn't even take off her boots, though presumably she's going to be waiting her for an hour for her cab.

She stirs slightly in her chair, shifts, resettles. "Why?"

But she knows. She thinks she knows.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] The strangeness of this.

The whole damn night is strange. He can't say he's found his balance since the moment he called her at noon, heard the distance and carefulness in her voice, heard her say Emilie is here, Vladik is here, would you like to come for dinner?

He reaches for his keys, blindly, his fingers curling around the chain. It's simple tonight: a car key. A remote keyless entry fob.

"Because you hate cabs." He's almost whispering.

[Danicka Musil] She takes a breath at that, and exhales it.

"Lukáš..."

but that's as far as she gets, whether because the longing in the way she says his name triggers something in her (or maybe him) or because she simply had nothing, really, nothing at all to say after that. She is getting up out of her chair with a startling fluidity of motion, hands going to the curved ends of the chair's arms and body rising smoothly, skirt rustling around her knees, and rustling against him when she stands on her toes. Her sweater is cashmere. It feels decadent against his neck when she wraps her arms around him like that, pulling him down if he'll come, holding him around the shoulders as though she could comfort him.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] The very first night, it was nothing like this when she came to him because he asked her to and he put her hands on his belt and she put them on his shoulders instead and he lifted her and she climbed him and

and it was something like this. The underlying emotions, the conflict, the sudden rush of her from her chair, across the space; the way he surges to meet her, and the meeting of their bodies, together, the wrap of his arms around her waist.

He doesn't lift her. He embraces her. Bends to her. Crushes her, nearly, against his body. She's slender compared to him -- she's slender compared to anyone. He has a flash, unbidden, of her bare back on a stripped motel back, her body curled to protect her underbelly, ready for him to beat her, ready for him to tear her to shreds. Survival instinct, even when she must have known she could not have survived if he'd frenzied; if he'd lost control entirely, hurt her, torn her apart.

He is not a Theurge. His temper is sometimes red and all-consuming.
His hands cannot heal.

Lukas's exhale is short and choppy, as though pained. He buries his face against her neck, tightens his arms, his forearms laid one over the other, barred over the base of her back. When he straightens his back he does lift her after all, but only a few inches -- the difference between their heights -- and then he turns his face and kisses her furiously at the line of her jaw.

Mine, he thinks, fierce, aching. Oh, mine.

[Danicka Musil] So she says what she should have said earlier, when he asked. He kisses her and her eyes close, her head tips back as though to bare her throat but she doesn't, not quite. She makes room for his mouth, for that passionate fury, for the pain of it, and she exhales across his cheek and his ear, her upper and lower eyelashes lacing together. The last thing on her mind is the night they bared skins and opened their mouths, the last thing she's thinking of is the way he told her he could tell she'd been beaten before, that whoever had done it to her had really known what he was doing.

She is thinking, and whispering:

"Nejste ne ztrácejí mne." And nonsensically, pleadingly, holding him tighter though he's all but crushing her already: "Prosím, neztrácejí mě.

"Prosím, neztrácejí na čem záleží."

Then, perhaps most tellingly: "Je to za to nestojí."

She kisses his face with almost bruising force, with ferocious, devouring heat, pulls his mouth to hers and turns her head and grasps the hair on the back of his head, kissing him as though she could seal this between them, seal him in some promise or vow or simply to her. She kisses him like she's trying to keep him.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Danicka's whisper is secret, is fierce, and it makes Lukas literally gasp, literally pant a breath in that expands his chest against hers even as they're clutching at each other

(like children in a storm)

and embracing one another, holding each other as though they could get closer, seal tighter, protect or repair or fill one another somehow. Keep one another. They're kissing one another's faces one, or she's kissing his and he's just turning his head, blindly, mouth open, nuzzling and nudging her face until he finds her mouth, her mouth, kisses her mouth like he wants to eat her alive.

Or: like he wants to give up the last breath of his body.
Like he wants to give up everything --
-- and let her give it back.

"Mm--" he says, something, should've been a word. One hand leaves her back to cup the back of her head; he holds her where she is, which is where she belongs, and he angles his head the other way, devours her mouth. Their mouths part. He turns his brow against her face, the bridge of her nose; his temple against her cheek. Like blind things, like animals, they rub their faces together, press their bodies together, and all along he says, fierce as she:

"Nebudu. Nebudu."

a descending cadence, quieting, until the sudden storm-ferocity of their love, if such a thing, so fierce and wild and desperate, could be called love, subsides. Then he's just holding her, breathing harder, and her tiptoes are barely skimming the floor and

he closes his eyes.

"Nebudu."

[Danicka Musil] There are a lot of people who would ache for the earth right now, stretch their toes down and ask to be given that connection to the ground again. Danicka all but dangles and simple abides there, not because she trusts Lukas so deeply but because she does not need to feel anything under her feet. She is used to lacking that certainty in all things, that resolution.

One would think she'd have some now. He did what she asked all those months ago. He told Vladik that he wanted her, he took her from him without blood being shed, without Danicka being beaten, without his challenge being denied. It may feel like he has not been tested. It may feel like he has been tested so brutally and unfairly that even the 'victory' is utterly tainted.

It may feel like Danicka is holding to him now with something like abandon, her breath shuddering as she inhales and exhales and he promises her over and over

Nebudu.

like ritual. Like a vow.

She opens her eyes, as he is closing his. She doesn't look past his shoulder for more than a moment but closes them again, rests her head on his shoulder, breathes in the smell of him. "Come with me."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Danicka knows, even before Lukas speaks, what the answer is.

She knows because he is silent, and because he lowers her then. Her toes touch the floor, then the balls of her feet. Then her heels. The Ahroun's powerful arms loosen. He straightens, but his hands rest at her waist, and he looks her in the eye, steadily.

"Nemůžu."

And then he leans forward and, if she lets him, he kisses her at the center of the brow. Where one's third eye is said to open. Where Cain is said to bear his mark. Lukas's mouth is warm, nearly hot; he presses his lips to her brow for a long time.

If she lets him.

Then, "Nebudu ztrácet na čem záleží. Já slibuji."

[Danicka Musil] The third eye is represented by light. It gives the gift of seeing through illusions. She has always seen through him. He has always seen something her, even when he tried to deny it for the sake of... of pride. Or pack unity. Or his own sanity. He kisses her there as he lets her down and Danicka knows -- of course she knows that he is going to tell her that he can't go with her back to Chicago. Instantly she kicks herself inwardly for even asking, for going back on what she promised herself.

When Danicka takes a deep breath as he kisses her, she does not look pleased. She doesn't look satisfied. She does not look comforted. She looks vaguely pained, as though she has a headache that his kiss has only exacerbated. She looks tired

(and she is)

and she looks down at the floor between their feet, leaning forward until her brow touches his chest. She stares at the floor.

"Věřím vám. Já prostě chci být blízko vás."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas thinks for a moment.

"Kdy bude váš let odejít?"

[Danicka Musil] "One-twelve." Middle of the goddamn night. It'll be a small flight. Small plane. "I have to check everything though."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] 1:12am. Middle of the night. Four hours. He thinks for a moment; then he nods. "Rezervovat jeden letenku pro mě. Budu tam."

His hands leave her waist at last. He looks around the room; his things, hers.

"Come on. I'll take you to the airport."

[Danicka Musil] She blinks at him when he says that. Her brows draw together. Because he said he couldn't. Because she said she trusted him and she wants to trust him. As close as she wants to be to him, she wants to leave him here and believe that the next time she sees him he will have nothing to tell her but that he missed her as he slept, that he wished he had stayed. A part of her wants to know he stayed his hand even without her there to watch the restraint.

They are both going against what they said. She could stay. He could, too. I can't, she said. And I can't, he said. But they do.

He has never traveled with her before. She's thinking of the plane, the people on it, his Rage, the length of the flight, everything. She's thinking that he used a moonbridge to get here, used a moonbridge to travel between New York and Chicago last time, too. And yet he tells her to book him a flight. It's not the sense of paying for him that surprises her: she's bought meals, rented hotel rooms, does not think of it, does not believe he does, either, at least not very much.

"We have time," she says, though, instead of just Okay. Instead of asking.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas's expression is a little like a wince.

He knows she wants him to go back to Chicago with her. He knows she wants him near, right now, from now until she gets on that plane, from then until she lands, from then until --

The future stretches ahead of him. She's his. His. For a brief moment, the reality of it breaks in his mind like an egg, a dawn.

Then he remembers her brother, and what he said, and what he did, and --

"You have time," he says, as gently as he can. "I need every minute."

[Danicka Musil] Her confusion is evident and immediate. He almost winces, but not quite. Her brows pull together tightly in a bewildered, heartbreaking furrow. "What...?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas brings his hand up to his face, mops his palm over it the way a swimmer clears his eyes of water. It's not exasperation. It's -- discomfort, an inability to meet her eyes for a moment.

"I'm taking you to the airport now," he explains, that same gentle, methodical tone. "I'll leave you there for a few hours. Then I'll be back. And we'll go back to Chicago. Together.

"Okay?"

[Danicka Musil] "Why, though?" she insists, stepping back from him, though her arms are still laid over his, her hands curled loosely around his elbows, biceps, maintaining that contact even as she moves back enough to see him more clearly. "What are you..."

And abruptly, something falls into place, and she lets go of him. She steps back completely from him, the frown of confusion turning into one of frustration.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas doesn't answer. He doesn't have to.

He waits.
It falls into place.

He watches her draw away from him, the furrow to her brow changing somehow, shifting. She's always read him so easily. He can read her easily enough, right now -- can read that, anyway. He watches her recede from him.

A few seconds go by. Then he goes to pick her suitcase up, holding it at his side as he steps into his shoes.

[Danicka Musil] [WP]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 3, 4, 5, 9 (Success x 1 at target 7)

[Danicka Musil] "Zmrde zkurvenej," she snaps. The words lash outward as she stands there, and then she turns, grabs her coat, sees him out of the corner of her eye picking up her suitcase. "Put it the fuck down!"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] So Lukas puts it the fuck down.

And he turns -- looks at her steadily to see what she'll do.

[Danicka Musil] That's all, really. She keeps her tongue in her mouth after that, closes her lips as she pulls on her coat. There's a grace even in this, the way she belts the trench and sweeps her hair out from under her collar, the way she shakes the curled ends back and even the way she crosses the room. Were the floor anything but thick carpet her heels would click sharply against it, but she doesn't stomp.

And she doesn't say another word as she grabs her suitcase in passing, walking to his hotel room door and grasping the handle to let herself out. All of the boxes and luggage she has are in the car with the now-smashed dashboard. She doesn't mention them. Or ask for keys. She just walks out.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas follows, of course. The car keys in hand, keycard in the other hand, he follows her out of the motel room. The door latches itself behind him. He follows her to the elevators, if she takes them; down the stairs otherwise.

Either way, when they get out -- of the elevator, of the stairwell -- he starts turning toward the side door that'll take him out to his car.

She turns the other way.

Lukas takes a breath, audibly, as though he were about to call after her. An instant later he thinks better of it, holds it. And he just follows her instead, out to the lobby, out the front door.

It's almost nine p.m. People are coming back from dinner; some are going out to late dinners. They're not in the heart of the city where an army of cabs rotates between the major hotels, but even out here cabs swing by the inn every few minutes. She won't have to wait long, and the doorman is beginning to smile at her and ask do you want me to get you a cab, miss? when he sees the look on her face; when he sees who's following her.

Lukas is in his socks, in what might be loungewear or exercise gear. He says nothing to the doorman, and nothing to Danicka. Silently, and perhaps stubbornly, he waits while she asks the doorman to get her a cab; he waits with her while he flags one down.

When she starts forward he reaches out to catch her. By the hand, not the wrist.

"Počkej na mě na letišti. Prosím."

[Danicka Musil] "Do not touch me right now," she says.

She's allowed him to follow her. In the hall, in the elevator, stairs, lobby, sidewalk: she didn't stop him from following her. She didn't turn around and tell him to leave her alone. But when he reaches for her hand, she clenches it into a fist and says those six words -- which she's never said before and may never say again -- with a carefully calculated, barely maintained control.

"Říkal jsem vám, co jste chtěli vědět. A ty se ke mně chovat jako blázen."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas's hand doesn't merely drop to his side. He all but flinches back, his own hand curling into a fist at his side.

The doorman watches this exchange with the sort of terrified silence of abused children, hoping whatever was going on between the lovely blonde and her dark, handsome serial killer of a boyfriend won't boil over onto him.

"Jak dělal jsem vás léčí jako blázen?" Not so patient now, though he's trying. Not so gentle now, though he's trying there, too. "Byl jsi na odchodu. Chtěl jsem řídit vás na letiště. Jste řekl, abych šla s tebou, teď. Říkal jsem vám nemohu, ale budu k vám přidali v několika málo hodin.

"Nevím, co jsem bude dělat teď. Vím, že jsem nebude se zabít tvuj bratra. Vím, že jsem nebude si dovolit ztratit na čem záleží.

"To je vše.

"Jak jsem se k tobě chovat jako blázen? Co jsem to neřekl?"

[Danicka Musil] It's almost as if she isn't listening. And maybe she can't. Anger is coming off of Danicka in waves. If he were in another form he could smell it. If he got closer and laid his hand under her left breast the way he does when he wraps around her in sleep he could feel her pulse pounding. But she doesn't want him to touch her.

And even when she's been afraid of him, that's a rare thing.

So what she says... may not answer him. May not even recognize him.

"I thought you might let it go," she confesses. There is the quality of embarrassment in the words, underneath the seething. "I thought maybe it wasn't a horrible idea to ever let you know what he was really like. I thought you could take me and that would be enough. That that's what mattered."

She takes a breath. It's cold out here. Not so much so that her breath steams, but close.

"What will it fix?" She glances at him, then away. "Will you feel like you've done something? Will it be over for you, then? Then you can move on, and not feel so powerless, and not be afraid, and not be so angry, not feel so fucking unsettled anymore, is that it? You can walk away with your goddamn head up, right?"

The questions are rhetorical. There is the sense that she has stopped talking about him. If, in fact, she ever was.

"You do this," she says, lowering her voice as cabs carrying passengers whip by and empty ones neglect the street, "you take something from me. And give nothing back."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Her cab -- the one that doorman who is trying so very hard not to look at them called -- has slammed its door shut and taken off. Fuck it, the cabbie thinks. Plenty of customers in the sea. Didn't need to stick around listening to some crazy bitch yell at her boyfriend.

He doesn't think it consciously, but what he's really afraid of is what might happen if that boyfriend, whose eyes crackle with sheet lightning, whose presence feels like nitroglycerin on a hot day, suddenly lost his cool. He's afraid of what might happen if the boyfriend decides he need to kill something, now and picks him over the blonde on the sidewalk.

So the cabbie's gone. The entryway of the hotel is barren. The staff is avoiding the main entrance. They're essentially alone, and she lashes out at him, or perhaps not at him; but she lashes out, she goes on, she says it all and then it's silent.

She's not even looking at him anymore. He's still looking at her. Staring. Glaring, maybe. His regard is fixed and ferocious; it goes on and on.

At last:

"What exactly," this is low, and quiet, but not soft, "do you think I mean to do, Danička, that I will at once rob you and accomplish nothing?"

[Danicka Musil] She looks forward. He can only see her in profile now, the right side of her face, the nearly flawless skin already showing signs of premature aging. From dealing with a mother like Night Warder, a brother like Heals by Pain, vampires in New Orleans, insane Fangs breathing quite literally down her neck, Fenrir stalking her to her home, roommates with cocaine addictions and heart attacks, a child who saw ghosts, two children who haunt her, the war she can't fight lurking in the shadows since she was young enough to believe in monsters under her bed.

The tiny wrinkles around the corners of her mouth are from smiling, though. Danicka has laugh lines. And plays games. And wants to go to school. Danicka speaks of Emilie as though that woman is too frail, too weak, to be anything but broken by what Shadow Lords so often do with their Kin, how Kin in general are so frequently treated by their larger, stronger cousins. Danicka is not broken. He's known it from the start, seen the lie in her pretty submission, seen the backbone she reveals by stroking his hair back with her fingertips as well as turning around and shouting at a goddamn Modi.

Somehow she was not broken. Not by struggling just to gain sustenance from birth, not by falling out of oak trees, not by waking up time and again under the healing hands of the brother who had beaten her to begin with. Somehow.

"It doesn't matter," she says after a moment, staring forward still, sounding tired now. "It isn't about me. It's about you and him."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas's hands come up without his permission, almost without his notice. He presses the heels of his hand to his brow the way she had, standing before the elevator -- as though he had a headache. As though he had to keep his head from flying apart. The Ahroun grinds his teeth, bares them, drops his hands in a sudden, sharp gesture.

"Fuck's sake, Danička!" It bursts out of him like artillery-fire. "What did you expect me to do?

"You told me everything that happened to you, and I couldn't do anything about it because it was in the past. Fine. I had to live with that. But what do you expect of me now? Do you honestly expect me to watch that -- thing degrade you, denigrate you, speak to you and of you like that, without a shred of retaliation?

"The only thing that kept me from trhající obličej pryč was the thought of you and your father watching. The only thing that kept me from skartace ho u jídelního stolu was the thought that once he gave you up it would be over, that would be it, he'd never again lay a finger on you.

"And then he did, anyway. And then he went back on his goddamn word and behaved as if you were still his kin, his possession, his toy to play with or break as he pleased.

"You can't ask me to turn the other cheek to that, Danička. You cannot ask me to -- to accept that and move the fuck on."

Lukas is out of words. His breath is coming in fast, short bursts. The doorman isn't even there anymore; he's found some excuse to get away, get anywhere, get far enough from the horror outside that it can't stifle him in his sleep. Lukas doesn't register his absence, nor when he departed.

He's not looking at Danicka anymore, either. He too stares forward -- the cars passing on the street.

"I know," he says at length, much quieter, "that you need to move on from this. Move past it. And I think if he hadn't done what he did after I left your father's house, I could have let everything else go. But he did do it. And I ... cannot forgive it, Danička."

[Danicka Musil] They both have reactions they can't control, most of all when angry. Tired. Stressed. Lukas's hand flies up to his forehead, and Danicka flinches. If it were any other woman maybe it would seem like she were only flinching away from his anger, from his frustration, from the horror of having upset him. With Danicka, he knows the instinct is far more simple, more primitive, about survival and not emotion.

What he wanted to do -- and likely imagined himself doing -- to Vladik is hidden in Czech, which the doorman -- who runs away -- and no one on this street speaks. To hear anyone talk of ripping faces off and shredding another person is horrific; to look at and feel this man's presence as he speaks of it is brutal to listen to. Terrifying. No one but Danicka knows what he means. And she weathers it.

"He's not a thing," she says quietly, when all is said and done. She turns to look at him, seeing him now in profile the way he had to look at her while he followed her, questioned her, even snapped right back at her when she very nearly yelled at him.

That argument is left where it rests.

"But to answer you: you've had to live with being able to do nothing to him for a months. I've lived with it since I was ten." A beat. A pause between each answer, each damning belief. "I expect you to think more of me than yourself tonight." She tips her head slightly. "He pulled my hair, Lukáš," she says, almost sighing it, and it's hard to think then of what else he's done, how much worse it's been. "And not because he wanted or needed to prove something to you, or to me."

There's a longer pause this time. "I am asking you to move on. I am asking you to... zůstala se mnou, se pojmout mne, a pojď se mnou domů." She looks at him fully now, her brows drawn together. "I am not asking you to forgive anything. But I'm here. And you have me. Take what you can keep and don't leave me so you can go... yell at him, or beat him, or punish him somehow."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] He's weary now. She's weary, and he's weary, and they're both so sick of --

all of this.
all of it.

Expressions flit over his face, almost too fast to be seen. If she looks, there's fury there. Not merely rage, but fury: anger. And ache. And something like guilt. And something like frustration. Then he closes his eyes, and he takes a long breath that expands his chest beneath his loose, utilitarian clothes; the things he wears when he expects to bathe in blood.

"Pojď sem," he says. To the street. To the night.

And then, turning, to her. He holds his arm out, catches her by the shoulder, around the shoulder, pulls her into him if she'll come. Wrapped in his arms, held against his chest, the length and breadth of his hard, war-honed body, he holds her ferociously, silently.

And then he presses his mouth to her temple. "Slibuju nic pro budoucnost." It's low, a whisper, a growl. "Ale pojďme se vrátit domů dnes večer."

[Danicka Musil] Though Danicka comes to him when he tells her to, there's as much submission in it as affection. Resignation as a desire to be close. And when he holds her, so tightly she's pressed hard against his chest, she just takes a breath and looks past his bicep at a dark storefront window. She stares at that, while he kisses her temple and tells her that for tonight --

"Then let me go."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] The change in his body comes long before he steps away or speaks. It's a stiffening, a hardening, a locking down -- as though flesh were turning to stone, or ice.

A moment later he lets her go. His face is rigid, expressionless; his eyes burn. Where her body had lain, his feels abruptly cold now, as if her presence had made him intolerant of its lack. He doesn't bother cursing at her, or growling, or snarling, or asking her just what exactly that meant.

Lukas only looks at Danicka for a moment. Then, without another word, he turns and goes back into the hotel.

[Danicka Musil] She is not so tired, or so underfed, or so cold that when he steps away and releases her she is unsteady on her feet. Danicka's toes and heels are planted firmly on the concrete; she doesn't so much as move when he pulls back, other than to look up at him. There are times when she's been so hard for him to read he's projected awful things into her silence, times when he's been convinced of one thing because he could not see the truth. She has no idea what he is thinking now, his eyes nearly white with heat, his face a blank.

Once, when he started to leave her, she lost all composure. She begged him to stay. She sobbed. She curled up into a nearly naked ball and pleaded, over and over, for him not to go, to come back, just hold her, just love her, just stay.

This time, she waits and watches him go into the hotel. And when the door swings closed behind him, she turns around and hails a cab.

"La Guardia," she says, taking her suitcse and purse into the back seat with her. She does not look out the window to see if he's coming back out. She does not pull out her phone to send him a text message. She looks at her hands in her lap, unfurling and then flexing her fingers, taking a deep breath. When she exhales, it rattles. The cab driver doesn't ask if she's alright, and she's relieved.

A little while later, she's checking in.

A little while later, she sits at her gate, reading a book, and waiting to go home.