"But that was long ago, before the urges of the world were set into patterns by the Weaver. The Wyld wanted life. The Wyrm demanded sacrifice. The Weaver took both and made it ritual."
This is all Harvest's Dread says, the snow turning her hair white, the dimming light shadowing her features with the wrinkles of deep middle age. It happens more quickly than any of her other transitions, but she does not quite become the ancient Elder they saw at the beginning, at Blood Summons's gate.
She starts to walk, and reaches into her bandolier for the largest, heaviest, final bell. She does not ring it yet, but they walk. Into the fog. Into the rising snow of deep winter. They huddle together, pack to pack, wolf to wolf, until their steps sink into the whiteness all around them. Finally, Harvest's Dread, Wasted Winter removes the bell that secretly she knows is called
The Sorrowful
and rings out a low, reverbating B note.
The fog rolls away a little bit, and they find themselves at a door to a house they've never seen before. On a neighborhood street they aren't familiar with. There's a car in the driveway they don't recognize, lights on inside, the promise of warmth.
Wasted Winter, or the Garou who is becoming her, puts her bell away.
[Wyrmbreaker] This time, Lukas doesn't hesitate, doesn't look amongst them to see who recognizes the gate.
He doesn't recognize the house, or the car, or any of it -- any more than any of them do. What he does recognize, if only obliquely and distantly, is that promise of warmth. Or maybe even that's imaginary. Maybe all he really recognizes:
is that this is the seventh gate. And it's his.
The Ahroun's hands open and close, stretching as though he were preparing for battle. Then he steps forward, a little ahead of the rest, and goes to the door. If it doesn't open for him, he reaches for the knob. Only if it's locked does he knock at all.
[Waking Dream] The Wyld wanted life.
The Wyrm demanded sacrifice.
The Weaver took both and made it ritual.
The words touch her, and she looks as though they do; she looked touched (fey), as if those words, that ritual, this ritual, struck a chord on her wishbone and it reverbated up to the expression in her wide-eyed and unblinking glance. Her breath hitches, again. Maybe because she's tired. She didn't have time to drowse when she was teaching the cubs, and she didn't drowse, later, while they waited out the storm in the pit, and now, now her eyes are limned in brightness when her gaze tracks from the old woman (wasting [withering] before their eyes) who is so much older than old to Lukas, Lukas' back, between Lukas' shoulderblades when he tries the door. And Kate must be damned cold by now, so she stays close to the Silver Fang, offering her warmth as necessary.
[descent.] The door doesn't open the moment Lukas steps forward. It does, however, give when he turns the knob, and heat rushes out at them. Light. Smells of cooking food. Nothing special occasion, just... hearty winter fare. Maybe some kind of pot pie, who knows.
"Taťka!"
Not a single voice. A chorus. And a yell from a throat too young to do anything but make noise. A pair of socked feet pound towards the door and as soon as it's open a very small person who can't be more than five, probably more like four, jumps onto Lukas as though she expects to be caught and held onto. And it is a she, the oldest She, legs long and skinny and arms stronger than they look. Her hair is dark. They can't get a glimpse of her eyes, because she's snarling and play-biting at Wyrmbreaker's jaw and neck, razzling him like a pup might do with another dog.
[descent.] His mind aches with the name: Klára. And they call her: Klárinka.
to Wyrmbreaker
[Wyrmbreaker] What sort of test did they expect Lukas, so upright, with armor so unchinked, to face? Futile death, perhaps, or the unwinnable battle: nightmares, both, of an Ahroun.
What they get is a house full of warmth. Full of smells of food, comfort, home. Full of children running to greet him at the door.
At the door, hand on the handle, the Ahroun's shoulders suddenly sag. Oh, no, he thinks, which is all the respite and preparation he allows himself before he sweeps the door open, and there's the girl, dark-haired and clear-eyed like her father, and she's jumping as though she expects to be caught:
which, of course, he does. Without hesitation or hitch. Catches her, Lukas does, and sweeps her up effortlessly into a bear hug, swaying from side to side, kissing her cheek.
"Klárinka, princess. Hi." He shifts her to his hip, which feels natural to him though he can't remember the last time he held a child, and turns to the rest of his tonight-pack. They can't quite read his eyes -- a happiness like pain, a sorrow like helplessness -- but he waves them in, smiling. "These are daddy's friends, baby."
[Truth's Meridian] There does come a point where you simply cannot get any colder; any more chilled to the bone than you are. Katherine has passed this point, so while she still shivers, and feels the cold through her bare feet, she does not complain of it. Rather, she simply follows quietly with the others who have survived their gates.
When they reach that door, and it's opened and the child rushes out; something catches in Katherine's throat; she is revealed to be smiling, to be staring at her pack-mate in just such a way as she has never before; as if she had never seen this side of the Ahroun before. And in truth, she has not.
these are daddy's friends
One of which has no pants on, and looks like she was just birthed from the earth itself. Katherine waves, it's absurd.
[Waking Dream] "Hi there," she says, low-voiced and pleasant. But she has looked, thoughtfully, at Lukas Wyrmbreaker who earlier confessed he never even uses his last name. And that thoughtfulness stays in her expression, even though she smiles at the little girl.
[Rain of Brass Petals] He's so happy.
Genuinely. She didn't know him that well, but... some part of her wanted to believe that this really was real. She knew it was a test, she knew it was some kind of trial, she knew there was some kind of catch here, that this could not stay. She tries not to think about it, or at least for too long. The Fury smiles, and she gives the little girl a wave. All brightness and something content.
[Truth's Meridian] After a moment's consideration -- and a glance at her current state -- the Half Moon slides behind the cover of the two female Garou; passes Adam back her shirt and shifts down into a snowy [dirty] white wolf. She whuffs, and her head pokes around; tongue lolling out as if to say: there, better?
At least her teeth don't chatter in this form.
[Rain of Brass Petals] And her shirt goes right back on.
[descent.] She's quite big to be carried like that, Klara is. Too old, definitely, but her weight's nothing to him. She swings around to his side, legs dangling, as though they do this every day. She has her arms around his shoulders, one cupped over the other, peering past his nose at the seven of them. Kate waves. Klara lifts a hand and waves back.
It isn't just the kindergarten-aged girl. It's the three year old boy -- wearing glasses, with hair as bright gold as his mother's and eyes as bright blue as his father's -- over near the stairs, half-hiding from his own father, staring at the mass of Garou at the door. And yes: the baby, whose highchair is positioned between the living room and the kitchen, and she is banging on the tray table while she kicks her pudgy legs and yells at the top of her lungs as though to say Pay attention to me, goddammit! I see you over there! Don't think I don't!
And it's Danicka, coming out of said kitchen, wearing a white jacket over whatever sweater she has on underneath. Her cheeks are flushed. Like Klara, she's a bit chilled, as though they just got inside themselves. She's drying her hands on a towel, and when she sees him -- and everyone else -- she pauses. Then, after a beat, picks up a second later:
"Alright, come inside," Danicka says to the lot of them, "You're letting my children's college fund out the front door, thank you."
None of them -- even Lukas -- knows her as this firm. This unafraid. She beckons them all in, walking forward. The baby in the chair stops yelling and gives a whine, a plea, reaching upward. Danicka pauses and murmurs softly to her, reassuring as she unlocks the tray and picks up the baby, as though they're not all there watching: "Shhh, shh. Nebuďte smutná. Jsem tady. Táta je doma. Nikdo se na vás zapomněli, buclatý dítě.
Like Lukas, she puts her child on her hip. Like the girl, the baby wraps around her parent, watches the newcomers past her chin. They close the door, hustle inside -- or stay outside, if they do, and if so Danicka doesn't argue. She just heads over to them. Kate becomes a wolf and the boy on the stairs cries out, jerking his legs back as though she's going to bite him. Danicka frowns, halting in the middle of the room. "Kate, don't. Just... go upstairs and get cleaned up. You can borrow some of my things. Petříček, it's okay. It's just Katherine."
She comes to Lukas, and stands on her toes, kisses his cheek when he bends to her, as though she knows he will. Klara makes a face. Danicka rubs the baby's back, since the baby -- who wanted so badly to see her papa -- is now shying from him, curling into Danicka's chest. "I don't even want to know," she says blithely, about the mud and the eight Garou suddenly in their living room. "So don't tell me. Just show them where the towels and things are and then get back down here, the mixer broke and the potatoes just finished boiling."
[Wyrmbreaker] Something sank its claws into him when Lukas heard children running, a chorus of Daddy!s. Something plunged a knife into him, and it twists now when he sees the boy
(his son)
flinching from the wolf; when he feels the baby shying away when she's brought close to him.
The girl on his hip feels natural. This house, though he's never seen it before, feels familiar. All his children feel familiar to him, recognized, as though they were his and always were, always have been, always will be. Strangely, though, the Danicka that approaches, the Danicka that looks and smells and feels and sounds and moves just like Danicka, but not quite like the Danicka he knows -- that alone gives him a moment's pause.
He hesitates a second before he bends to receive the kiss to his cheek. He does not turn to catch it on his lips, though when her lips touch his skin and feel just the way he remembers, his eyes close.
Ow, he thinks.
And: What do you really want of me?
Keeper of the seventh gate.
He lets the girl down when he straightens. The girl, Klárinka, his eldest and firstborn daughter, whom the seers would name a Galliard. Then he laughs -- a little self-conscious, a little abashed, turns to the rest of the Garou.
"Come on. Follow me. Let's get cleaned up for dinner."
He leads them up the stairs. He does not falter. He finds he knows the house as he explores it; does not have to hunt for lightswitches or doors, bedrooms, bathrooms.
[Truth's Meridian] Katherine as a wolf brushes against her Alpha's side when they go up the stairs; she pads on light paws, leaving a little scattered trail of prints in her wake. She looks up at Lukas, and tilts her head to one side; inquiring. She pushes against his hand at one point and licks it in some universal sign of reassurance -- probably when he leads her to clothing and wash-cloths, if we're honest.
When she's cleaned her face as much as she can; and wiped away as much of the grime as possible and borrowed a pair of tennis shoes from not-quite-Danicka's closet and run a comb or her fingers through her hair -- she emerges from the upstairs and stands at the top of the stairs, unsure. Her own challenge was done, but it had not involved the sacrifice of what could be for what must be. Her gate had been about facing it alone -- but this is no longer her gate.
She wonders if she should, if any of them should, go down-stairs.
But in the end, she cannot abandon him to this alone.
[Waking Dream] The fostern philodox is joined by the fostern galliard. The rest are, no doubt, milling about whatever rooms they were shown to -- maybe leaning, no! That's rude! NOT leaning! against a wall. Lila looks, for a long, long, long moment at Naomi, trying to coax from her some signal, some sign, and touches Kate's elbow, briefly: "Maybe we should give him a little time. Before we go down. I don't know what this means to him, but I suspect he needs, at least for a little while, to face it. He knows we're here. And so does his -- that -- family." A brief pause. "Was that blonde woman Danicka?"
[Truth's Meridian] "Yes," Katherine replies with softly, her voice still scratchy-worn from her own adventures earlier. "That is - was - Danicka, but not as I know her." A beat. "At least, not yet."
[descent.] There are things he knows that he cannot know, things he knows by heart: the layout of this house that he's never seen before. Where the towels are, where the guest bedroom is, where Danicka keeps extra clothes, where the robes are for those who can find nothing else. He knows the names of these children he's never seen before, knows their nicknames, knows that Danicka never sang Spi mladenets over Petr, but she would sing Hajej, můj andílku to all three of them, revealed a knowledge of a wealth of lullabyes over the years, which wasn't surprising.
He knows in his mind that this is not Danicka, that it cannot be his mate, though she smells and feels exactly like her. Cruel trick, universe. Cruel trick, umbra. Cruel trick --
Wasted Winter, aging before their eyes, catches his gaze when they're upstairs being directed to places to wash, things to put on. She looks apologetic. Almost. Maybe she's just sad. Pats his arm as she passes by, while Klara -- the only one of the children who doesn't seem afraid of him or Katherine, but seems wary of all the others -- tells him about their day. She follows him around, up and down the stairs, up and down the hallway, skating in her socks on the hardwood, getting underfoot, chattering nonstop.
They went ice skating. And they went shopping. And she got new shoes. And Petr ate too many koláče last night and he threw up and Zlata cried because she thought he was dying or something I don't know, babies are kind of stupid. They couldn't find her favorite gloves today the pink ones you know the pink ones, taťka, with the green stripes and the white dots the ones with the sparklies taťka you're not listening we couldn't find my gloves so I had to wear the purple ones and they're not as good because the sparkles help keep her fingers warm you can tell cuz the way they glint when the light hits them. But her hands stayed warm anyway while they went skating and they had to go skating because maminka promised they'd go skating soon as it got cold enough and now it's cold enough --
"Lukáš!" calls Danicka, calls not-Danicka, calls the gatekeeper, from downstairs. He has to keep reminding himself it isn't her. He has to keep reminding himself that isn't his mate, though every fucking fiber of his being tells him this is his den, this is his mate. Instinct is roaring in his ears, clawing at his heart, tearing him open as though he is not strong enough as he is to survive what he feels, so he has to be opened up and made new. Made stronger.
His heart is telling him that what he feels for these children is completely different, no less deep, than what he feels for Danicka. He would die for them. If they were hurt, if they were threatened, if they were sad, he would slaughter wholesale whatever he could to make them safe again. If they failed, if they wept when they should let out a battlecry, if they were weak, if they fell to the Wyrm, he would bare his throat to keep them from harm, all the same.
There is his heart. Walking down the stairs away from him, and her socks are slippery and the hardwood is too but she's not holding the railing and she's going so fast and the words are boiling behind his lips, begging to be said the way he's certain he's said them a thousand times a day by now:
Klárinka, zpomalit!
There is his heart, sitting on the couch now, putting together a small set of Legos and the tiny pieces keep skittering down towards the cracks between the seat cushions, and he can't remember how many times he's had to bite back a surge of frustration, even rage, when he's stepped on a toy in the dark and it's stabbed him in the sole of the foot and
-- he remembers Danicka's hand on his arm and her eyes on his eyes once, shaking her head, one child's face buried in her stomach, her hand protectively on their back, and her mouthing Stop it at him, pleading with her eyes: Stop. You have to stop. --
there's his heart, quirking up, glasses sliding halfway down his nose only to be pushed up again like they are a thousand times a day.
"Lukáš," Danicka is saying, coming out of the kitchen again, still holding Zlata and carrying her towards him. "Here. God. Please. She won't go back in the chair and she won't let me put her down. Taaake herrr," Danicka says, all but shoving the wriggling baby at his chest.
[Wyrmbreaker] This is beyond cruel.
He can't meet Wasted Winter's eyes when she touches his arm. He doesn't see the apology in her eyes, and he doesn't want to, because it's not fair, they can't put him last, they can't ask this of him. It's not fair and
it never was. Because she might never go home again. And he can never go home to this.
Or -- maybe he doesn't look at her simply because she'll remind him of that. She'll remind him that this isn't real, none of it is real, the Danicka downstairs is not his Danicka and these are not his children. That is not his daughter chattering at him nonstop, and oh god she talks about last night, and yesterday, and it's like she has a real life, an existence beyond this one night, this one hour he'll spend here.
He finds himself saying things like:
I know, princess, sparklies totally keep your fingers warmer.
and
We'll look for them together, okay?
and
When I was a little bigger than Petr, I ate too many koláče and threw up and your maminka cried too, did you know?
and when she goes skidding down the stairs too fast he finds himself literally clapping his hand over his mouth to keep the words in, clamping his own hand over his own mouth as he follows his not-daughter down the stairs of his not-den to see his not-son, and his other, infant not-daughter, and he actually has memories of them, he actually remembers the four or five years they've existed, the six or seven he's spend with Danicka, making them and making this home and making these memories that are so real that they even remind him
exactly why
this cannot be.
Lukas's heart is breaking. He stands at the bottom of the stairs, locked in place, and then there's his mate who is not his mate, pushing the infant into his arms. He does not take the child.
He backs away.
"I can't." He lowers his hand just enough to say that. "I can't, Danička, whoever you are, I can't. I -- "
he searches for a reason, hunts for one,
"I can't."
Comes up with nothing better than that.
[descent.] She always saw him clearly. What was it he always thought, always wanted to be able to see her with?
perfect fucking clarity.
And this child that is not his, the little girl who is getting in the way and tickling Zlata's toes and cooing at her as though she can make her stop whining for one or either of her parents to give her nonstop attention -- that's her very name. Because when Danicka got pregnant,
no,
several months into the pregnancy, long after the initial tears and fear and the night-long conversations had been subsumed into acceptance, he laid with her and had his hand on her and told her about those nights when he wanted nothing but to be able to see her as clearly as she always seemed to see him. She didn't say anything then. She touched his hair and understood, and months later, when he was finally able to see his daughter for the first time,
-- there'd been a battle, and he couldn't be in the hospital anyway, and Danicka couldn't have him in the room, god no, he'd been fighting a war while the girl was taking her first breaths and screaming them back out at the world, and he thought the same thing he's saying now, I can't, I can't do this, I can't live like this, I can't fight like this, knowing what I might leave behind, I can't --
Danicka told him her name was Klára, introduced him to the newborn, and introduced the newborn to him, and he remembers thinking briefly
I can't.
But I will.
Danicka always saw deeper into him than he thought she did. And she sees it now, as he's refusing to hold Zlatuška, sees more than what he says. Her brow furrows in a hard, sudden frown. She lowers her voice to a whisper, aware that there are Garou upstairs, crowding the tops of the steps. So she keeps her voice down, but they can still hear hints of it filtering upward.
"I am so not in the mood for this fight again," she says, the voice of someone worn out from a long day, strained by unexpected changes in her evening plans, strained by rage, struggling to hold onto some scrap of positivity.
Their five year old goes quiet then, sensing the tension between them, and holds onto her sister's foot, wiggling it back and forth a bit. Zlata kicks reflexively, whining. Danicka bounces her gently on her hip, eyes turned up to meet her mate's.
"You went through this with Klára, you went through this with Petr, and now you need to go through it with Zlata," Danicka murmurs, with as much patience as she can muster. "She. Will be. Okay. Just hold her."
[Wyrmbreaker] He has memories of all this. It's not merely an illusion conjured up for the right-now, the right-here. He has an entire history unfurling somehow in his mind; he remembers missing the birth of his firstborn,
and the second, and the third,
and he remembers nights when he came home to his family but had to leave again because the baby just wouldn't stop screaming and he could neither comfort it nor stand its wailing, and if he didn't get out right-now-right-now he'd kill someone.
He remembers thinking:
I can't live like this. I can't deal with this. I can't bear this, knowing I might snap any second and...
I can't. But I will.
And there's the woman who looks and smells and may as well be his mate, but is not his mate; not yet, anyway -- holding the baby out to him again, and somehow it'd be easier if she were just infinitely patiently, saintly, loving, because then he'd know this was an illusion, but she's not. She's impatient and strained, it's been a long day, and he brought home seven other Garou to tromp around their house and frighten the children and:
she will be okay. Just hold her.
Lukas reaches out for the baby, hesitantly, utterly uncertain. How does one hold something so small and fragile? How are his hands even clean enough for such a thing, he who killed more things than he can count; he who killed his own? I can't, he thinks,
but I will.
Lukas finds the knowledge there in his bones when he reaches for the baby. Memories that were not his but are somehow his, nonetheless: guiding him to place this hand here, that hand there; to cradle the child against his forearm and his bicep, his ribs, and the thought flashes in his mind then:
from this you were made.
He looks at Danicka: some storm quelled now, swallowing once. "Okay," he says. "I'm holding her."
[Blood Summons] Blood Summons, normally so light- and sure-footed, stumbles as they're entering the house--den--belonging to the blond gatekeeper. It's hard to tell if he's getting worn out or if he's just distracted by the scene before him now. They've come to the last gate, and just as with the rest of them, as it has been at every gate prior to this one, Lukas has to go on alone. There is nothing the rest of them can do to help.
He follows the females up the stairs and into the bathroom, where he waits his turn to get in there and get the muddy blood off of his arms and face. It's a wonder they didn't scare the children, tromping in there torn up and smelling like sweat and cold and toil. Maybe they were too focused on Daddy to notice. In either case, Bob is the last one up the stairs, the last one to reach the landing, and he's one of the last ones in the bathroom. Perhaps he shares the sink with Adamidas, pulling his black t-shirt over his head to reveal a sweat-stained white A-shirt underneath. Perhaps he has to jostle her out of the way while he soaps his flesh and washes grit and filth down the drain. Perhaps he lets the females go first. In either case, at some point he's joining the other Fosterns on the top of the stairs.
He eases his thin, long legs between their shoulders and parks himself on the step in front of Lila's feet, leaning back against them as though bone-weary and yet shot through with potential energy, with the need to keep moving. Feeding had sated him for a time, but now it's sublimated into movement.
He sits still. He watches.
"That's his mate?" he asks, his gruff voice held low and quiet so as not to filter downstairs.
[Rain of Brass Petals] She shared the sink, though the mirror was a little harder to get from the theurge. She borrowed a hairbrush, taking a moment to inspect in, convinced that this is an odd motion. She is using someone else's hairbrush, letting dark brown hairs mingle with lighter ones. She strokes down, and hte sound it makes once it makes its first pass is one that sounds like something snapping or tearing. Adam winced, more at the sound than the gesture, and continued.
Eventually, her hair didn't make that sound anymore; the impending hairball was discarded in a nearby trashcan. She eyes the Listerine warily, instead choosing to rinse her mouth out with water. Gargle, don't swallow, spit and repeat. It's a dance she's used to performing, moving between the Godi and whoever else was sharing the space.
She finally goes to the stairs, sits below Katherine, wherever she may be, and takes to watching and idly braiding a couple strands of hair together.
[Truth's Meridian] Katherine, now clean again in borrowed clothing, perhaps jeans and a long sleeved shirt of some order with her fair hair combed smooth against her shoulders is tugging at the sleeve ends with her fingers like a fidgety child might; her blue eyes fixed on the landing of the first floor as if she could not imagine tearing them away.
Blood Summons joins them, once he's also clean, followed by Rain of Brass Petals, who sits a step beneath her. As she did with Lila, Katherine answers him thoughtlessly, softly as if she herself were a little uncertain: "Yes, that's Danicka. But also not. It's some sort of glimpse into a future Lukas must want." A beat, her voice sorrowful. "Or might have, should he live so long."
[Waking Dream] [seriously, Lila. Don't cry like a wuss. WP!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 7, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Waking Dream] Lila combs her fingers through Blood Summons' hair when he leans against Kate and herself, playing with it as if he were a girl, as if his hair was much longer. Her fingers tighten, once, when her throat constricts, when her eyes very nearly close, lashes kissing. When they peel away, there's a brightness to her eyes that wasn't there before, something salt-washed and tidal, and she exhales quietly, leaving the Fostern theurges hair alone to continue watching, silent, hopeful, her heart in her eyes, because Lila's glass (not ice, never).
[descent.] And there in his memory is the torrent of swearing Danicka let out when she found out she was pregnant again, and losing her shit while he tried to wrap his mind around going through all of it again, when Petr was barely a year old as it was. Getting home in the middle of some night and washing the blood off of himself, forcing himself through the motions before he allowed himself to check on his daughter and son because it wasn't worth the risk of having them wake up and see him like that, then crawling into bed beside Danicka and breathing her in and closing his eyes
only to be woken by the hiccuping wailing of that little blonde boy who would later need glasses, only to rage inwardly at his children and at himself for being angry with them. The irony of his exhaustion being that if he weren't so drained from battle, he might have snapped. The cold, heavy dread that he might snap anyway. The anger unleashed on packmates putting him up for the night because, well
he couldn't be home right then, could he?
There's more, though. Like that night stroking his hand aimlessly over and over and over on Danicka's belly, still flat, unable to stop himself. Til she laughed and caught it and kissed his palm and told him he was ridiculous. And being able to be home so many other nights, not special occasions but just... walking in and managing dinner with them. Watching first Klara, then Petr, grow to trust him even though he scared them, believing that even though he always seemed angry and even though he sometimes yelled, he loved them. Reading to them. Those incredibly rare, infinitely precious evenings where he actually got to participate in putting them to bed,
and the way Danicka would quietly and gently guide him through a routine he wasn't familiar with, using her eyes to tell him the stuffed lamb goes with Petr and the stuffed puppy goes with Klara
and later
she has to set out her clothes for morning now, before she gets in bed, so make sure she doesn't forget socks
and later
he can brush his own teeth, now, just stay nearby to make sure he actually does it.
Now there's his youngest in his arms, and Danicka has more than once said quite firmly that she doesn't care if her half-sister had six children, she's done at three, she was done at two but clearly Gaia had some other plans, that capricious bitch. Zlata's the last. Instinct and memory tells him what to do when he takes her from the gatekeeper. She's tiny enough still, even though Danicka calls her chubby baby, that he barely feels her. Feels like she'll fly out of his arms if he isn't careful. Feels like he could crush her, if he isn't careful.
So he'll have to be careful.
His daughter whines, and twists, and does not lie still and thumb-sucking in his arms. She arches her back and cries out, struggling because he scares her, because she can't bear it.
Danicka stays where she is. She puts her palm over Zlata's forehead, shhing the baby in at least a couple of different languages. "Hold her like this," she instructs quietly, helping Lukas turn her more upright, head to his chest, arm under her bum. "She likes to look around."
Zlata isn't looking around, though. She's whimpering, and yet laying her head right on Lukas's chest where his heart is, torn between fear and comfort. Danicka rubs her back, and meets Lukas's eyes, and the routine blossoms in his mind. They're going to walk together, Danicka touching the baby and him holding her, so that the mother can move away without abandoning the child to her father's rage. And they're going to be in the kitchen together, where Zlata can see Danicka working on the potatoes.
So this is what happens. Without taking her hand off of the baby, Danicka starts to walk with Lukas to the kitchen, where there's poultry and yes, potatoes needing to be mashed, and peas because apparently Petr thinks green things are fun if they at least roll around.
But then she has to take her hand off of Zlata. And instantly, the baby starts to struggle again, crying and whimpering, burying her face in exhausted frustration on Lukas's chest.
[Blood Summons] Kate answers him, while Lila just sweeps her thin fingers through his unruly if now damp curls, her fingernails scritching against his clean scalp as he rests against her shins, his shoulders pressing against her knees. It appears to calm him down somewhat, for he leans his head back, but then she's stopping, and she's swallowing thickly, and then she's blowing out a breath that sounds almost agonized. Bob looks up at her, tilting his head all the way back until the back of his head touches her thighs, then reaches his right hand down to wrap it around the top of her foot and squeeze, gently, not because he's afraid of snapping off one of his nails but to reassure her, to let her know It's okay.
"Does he have kids?" he asks. "I mean, back home? Or you think he just wants them?"
[Wyrmbreaker] This is another memory Lukas has, that he's never actually lived:
Telling Danicka, I was happy with two, when she said she's done with three. Telling her that while his hand was on her still-flat belly, his head laid in her lap, the two of them sprawling in their bed late at night when the children were finally asleep. But I'll love this one just the same.
He remembers kissing her stomach, then. He remembers her fingers in his hair,
and how, with children in the house, they had to be quiet.
None of that really happened. He hasn't lived any of it. Has he?
She shows him how to hold the baby, which she has to do every time because he's home so rarely, and his children can stand him so rarely, and Lukas is wincing because she's afraid of him and she wants comfort from him, and he can't help either impulse. He is not a creature built for comfort. He cannot let go of the rage that burns inside him, which is so deeply woven into the weave and weft of him that he would not be himself without it.
He is not a creature built for any of this. Mate. Children. Family. A life outside the war: a precious, precarious family that cannot work, but will; a life that will inevitably shatter one day
when he dies.
"Danička," he tries again, low, "I can't do this. Look at her, she's afraid of me. She's too young. And this..." he draws a breath, "Danička, none of this is real. I just..."
Lukas squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. Open again, flaring blue.
"I don't know what you want of me."
[Truth's Meridian] Katherine merely shakes her head at the Metis; no, no children. Did he want them? This Katherine cannot answer. Were it asked of her prior to this night, years before she might have laughed and said don't be ridiculous, Lukas? Her Lukas, with a child? Laughable, laughable. If she were asked only last week, she would have paused, and thought it over, mulled it as she does now before answering much the same.
"I couldn't say. It is not my place to answer."
[Waking Dream] "I just," Lila murmurs, loam-soft, loam-under-moss, underthing voice, under-breath voice. "I hate the idea that anyone is afraid to have -- this. This kind of life -- if they want -- because -- because it'll be hard; because of what might happen -- I don't know. But," humor, lean against it: "I bet they argued about whether or not they were gonna read The Giving Tree to 'em."
[Blood Summons] "What's 'The Giving Tree'?" Bob asks.
[Rain of Brass Petals] It's a Black Fury who would watch this intently. The commentary goes on; Adam takes in what she is hearing around her. She does not, however, waver in watching him. There are children, there is a mate, there's a kid screaming and there's all sorts of normal household things going on here. A daughter who was unhappy, demanding for things to be better, but having little luck. Dinner being made.
And at the same time, there was an ahroun conflicted. Don't train them for this, do they? And her mind reels over things that they all learn through their training and Rites oF Passage. What she has learned, that motherhood is sacred but... but now she looks at him, and she wonders if her tribe, or at the very least the people who taught her, neglected to discuss something very... very important.
What's The Giving Tree?
She turns to Bob, puts her hands together like she was going to clap, then opens them so her pinkies are touching. She then gives a nod and a thumbs up after that gesture is completed.
[descent.] Upstairs, the Garou who have all gone through their own gates, their own trials, their own sacrifices, sit and watch and listen. They hear the quiet, labored breathing of Wasted Winter down the hall, where she laid down on the guest bed with her bells and her ancientness, staring at a wall that slowly becomes more and more blurry the longer this goes on. They comfort each other, staying quiet. Or they simply listen and watch. Occasionally, the little blond boy on the couch looks past the railing of the stairs at them, staring curiously before going back to his Legos.
In the kitchen, Danicka's hands tighten around bowl and potato masher as Lukas tells her he can't do this, that this isn't real. Their eldest is still with them, trying to help with Zlata, but it only seems to distract and overstimulate the baby more.
"Klárinka, sweetheart," she says, "go play with your brother for a few minutes." She doesn't add 'okay?' to the end of her sentence the way many adults are wont to do with children, trying to make instruction sound like negotiation. And maybe it's her tone, or maybe it's the fact that she's not really Danicka and that's not a real child, but Klara doesn't argue. She looks between her parents, lets go of her baby sister's foot, and thumps quickly out to the living room to jump on the couch and scatter Legos and
she and Petr get into a brief argument where he snaps at her for disrupting his work and she rolls her eyes and gives an exasperated Sorry.
Danicka puts down the potato masher and turns on Lukas. Her eyes are that vivid green they are when she's the most frightened, or the most angry. "We want your life, son of Gaia," she says, as Zlata is reaching up and grabbing at his ear, hiccuping with unease and tears against his chest. "We don't want you to win the war. We don't want you to try to guide the wheel of seasons. We don't want you to save the world. We want. Your life."
[Blood Summons] "It's a book?"
The mule drops his head back against Lila's knees, his hand still resting atop her shoe. He doesn't squeeze anymore, though. It's just there, a solid warm presence atop her foot; he smells like soap and water, with thin overlays of sweat and dirt coming from his beaten-to-death clothing.
"What's it about?"
[Wyrmbreaker] Lukas takes Zlata's tiny hand --
but gently
-- and guides it down from his ear to his shirt and the buttons there. It shakes him to the core to know how familiar this feels, how natural: here, chubby baby, play with Daddy's buttons. Don't pull Daddy's ear.
And now the adults are staring at each other, the Garou and his mate, the Garou and the gatekeeper, and what she says makes him frown in sudden, spasmodic confusion, or denial.
"You want me to give this up?" Anger rises in him now, so fast it dizzies him, blanches the blood from his cheeks, makes his eyes hard and vicious as ice, as gemstones.
Lukas cannot hear the speculation at the top of the stairs. All the better, because he wouldn't be able to stand it: the thought that six strangers -- well, one packmate and five fucking strangers -- were discussing him, dissecting this most intimate slice of his not-life, picking him apart under the goddamn spotlight. They wonder if this is what he wants, or what is ahead for him. Lukas would have said he didn't want this. This is the last thing he wants: a family he cannot be close to, a mate whose hard-won freedom and life was derailed and offset and postponed by children, by cubs who bear his face and his blood and so much of him, that he hardly ever sees. That he will not live to see grow up, graduate school, get married, succeed in their careers and their lives, grow old.
This is the last thing he wants,
but when the Gatekeeper asks it of him, his anger is white-hot, beats from him like a silent storm.
"You want me," he seethes between clenched teeth, "to give this up for your fucking rite?"
[Truth's Meridian] At some point between Blood Summons asking about The Giving Tree and the sudden sharp spike of anger from downstairs; the Silver Fang breathes out and rises to her feet. "I can't do this. I can't sit here and half listen, excuse me," she steps back up onto the second story landing and moves back down the pretend hall of Lukas and Danicka's not-real home and into the guest room where their resting guide lays; her breathing even.
Katherine stops in the doorway a moment, just observing Wasted Winter, and then steps fully inside and settles herself against a wall, keeping watch.
[Waking Dream] "A book," she affirms, voice sifting even further toward -- what? Smoke, ash, quietude. "Every library has it. I'll show you. It's bright, bright green and it's about a boy who talks to a tree. The tree gives up everything." And then, Kate is standing, and Lila watches her stand, turns her head to stare down the hallway toward the door to the room that Wasted Winter is sleeping in. She winds her fingers through Blood Summons' hair, again, but this time it's more absent (vaguer [dreaming, again]). "I think I'm going to watch Youngest Mother, Oldest Friend as well." Then, gently -- tender, even, eyes closing against what's going on downstairs, she stands, wiping her hands on her thighs. Pauses, to look down the stairs at the blond-child-who-may-never-be, the dark-haired-galliard-who-might-not-ever, the shadows that Lukas and not-Danicka throw from the kitchen. Then: she follows in Kate's wake.
[Waking Dream] ooc: strike the 'as well' and add a 'over' before Youngest Mother. and add a rhya, too! sheesh.
[Sorrow] Sorrow is a shadow. She has cleaned herself up like the rest of them; found her way through the home, washed the blood and filthy from her hands and from her hair, rinsed away from the earth from her mouth, the blood and bile, the memory of the needle and the matched little stitches that bind her eye and tongue and heart and the stone of memory under the skin, the thread that attaches the shapes she inhabits and the worlds she walks to herself.
She's quiet; she watches. There's a faint twist of recognition on her mouth when Lila mentions The Giving Tree, but she does not offer him explanation, leaves that to Lila, to the Fostern, to the Child of Gaia. Kate brushes by her; refuses this moment of pain and finds another.
Deathwatch -
- Sorrow turns, dark eyes tracing in the wake of the Silver Fang. Hands in her pockets, her attention loose, limited, passing - she follows in their wake, finds the room, finds the bed, finds the death-to-come.
"Thank you for acting as our guide, -rhya." Sorrow does not settle against the wall. She circles the bed, stays close, her voice low and rich and sure.
[Blood Summons] The female Fosterns decide that they're going to head downstairs and see what is happening with the seventh gatekeeper, and Bob sits quietly as he watches one and then the other stand and descend the staircase to watch the proceedings. He looks over at his auspicemate, then reaches out to clasp her shoulder, once, strong, before hauling himself standing. He's a tall figure on his own, without the eclipse offered by the other male, and rather than heading downstairs after the others, turns and trudges up the rest of the stairs to hit the landing. His nostrils flare once, and he follows the presence of the Galliard to stand in the doorway of the bedroom where Wasted Winter is lying, breathing heavily, perhaps preparing for death.
While Sorrow circles, Blood Summons just watches, hands in his pockets and shoulder against the doorjamb.
[descent.] The look of compassion, of ache, comes so quickly and so familiarly to not-Danicka's expression that the ground rushes out from under him for a moment. She puts her hand on his cheek, past the struggling and stressed baby, past the daughter he doesn't have, to touch him with a hand he finds so known and so warm that it hurts.
"No," she whispers, and strokes her thumb over his cheekbone. "No, son of Gaia."
Danicka -- the gatekeeper -- withdraws, and wraps her hands around the baby's midsection, lifting her away from Lukas and taking her back, holding her close. It's been long enough, for someone so young. And he knows: it's minutes at a time, at first. Mere moments with his child, to bond with them in infancy, to start getting them used to him. Over time he'll be able to hold her longer, meet her eyes, even play with her. But it takes patience. It takes so much patience. So much time.
Upstairs, when Katherine and Lila and Kora and Blood Summons go to check on the ritemistress, they find a woman withered and shrunken by age, her breath wheezing softly on the bedspread as she stares blindly at the window. She's alive. She isn't moving. She's listening. And she is dying.
The gatekeeper's hands are as manicured as Danicka's. Oval fingernails, given a light, clear polish. She doesn't always have time or energy to do certain things for herself that she used to, but she maintains her hands. She sits at the kitchen table on Sunday mornings and pushes down her cuticles and trims and files and buffs and polishes them while she drinks her coffee, does this one tiny thing for herself that makes her feel like a girl, she says. She holds one hand on the back of Zlata's head, the other rubbing Zlata's back.
Her eyes hold his.
"We want you to live."
Her head turns, her lips pressing to the baby's temple. She's calming now, her hiccups slowing, her breath steadying as her mother sways slowly from side to side. "Give up the peace of an early grave. Give up the clarity of fatalism. Give up the control that cold distance will give you."
Those on the stairs see a dark-haired and a light-haired child, both blue-eyed though their baby sister has green ones, slide off the couch and link hands, walking into the kitchen. Lukas, standing with the gatekeeper in front of him, sees them out of the corner of his eye, filling the doorway between one room and the other, watching their parents. Danicka does not take her eyes from him, or slow the lazy circuit of her palm over her daughter's back.
"This is the one gate where we cannot take from you what you will not give. So you must choose: the war, or why you fight it. The comfort of letting go, or the agony of holding on. What is easy or what is hard.
"Death or life, son of Gaia."
[Waking Dream] Winter's dying. This has to be good. Winter's dying, going down, seeing blind, and it has to be good. There's always death before life and life before death and it's a cycle. It's a rite. It's a ritual. It is what it is. It's an old woman, lying in bed, listening, so frail, so withered, she looks as if all the years are tugging at her at once.
Waking Dream (Breaking Heart) kneels by the edge of the bed and takes Wasted Winter's hand. There's something tentative there, because, as with the cubs, she's just not sure what the etiquette is, not certain what she should do. Knows, though, what she wants to do. Does it.
[Wyrmbreaker] A tension quakes through Lukas when his not-mate takes his not-child: an instinct to hold on, to snap his teeth and snarl mine! mine! my! mine! even when she is not (yet); even when the one who takes her away is the one who bore her.
Then he relinquishes the baby. Danicka-the-gatekeeper takes Zlata, and it aches to see how much better at this she is: how practiced her hold, how gentle and firm her hands.
Lukas looks at her for some time, torn, not quite understanding. He doesn't know what that means: we want you to live. He doesn't know if they mean to take from him his rage, his wolf, that which makes him Lukas Wyrmbreaker. He doesn't know what they want, really, because:
we want you to live
could mean so many things.
He turns away from the vision of his mate after a moment. He looks at the two elder children, the two cubs that bear his face and hers, but do not exist yet. And slowly, almost unwillingly, the Ahroun sinks to a crouch, holding his hands out to them.
"Pojď sem," he says to them, as softly as he can. "Dovolte mi, abych vás vidím."
If they come to him, he puts his hands on them: their tiny faces, their soft hair, their thin limbs. Touching them as though to ascertain that they are real, or at least the possibility of them; to remind himself of the memories he does not yet have. The lamb goes with Petr. The wolf, with Klara. He's going to buy Klara a bicycle for her fifth birthday, a red one with a white seat, and it'll have training wheels that rattle for the first sixth months. He'll take them off and he won't be here to see her ride it, most the times she rides it, and when he is, he'll have to bite back the words:
Klárinka, zpomalit!
And someday Klara will change, and maybe one of the others too, and he'll know that heartbreak too. That his children are just like him, and will face the same early death,
or hard life full of loneliness and apart-ness,
as he does now.
He lets go his children-that-are-not-yet. Lukas stands and faces the gatekeeper, and speaks to her as his mate.
"Jste šťastní, takto?"
[descent.] It makes him tense, and it makes him ache. It confuses him, and he doesn't know if this will be or if it is all just an illusion. It kills him when Klara and Petr walk over to him and let him touch their faces, bravely. And his hair is gold, and her eyes are a slightly murky sort of blue that can change with her mood and hide as much as they reveal. That hurts, too. Danicka's jawline in Petr's face. The slope of his own brow and his nose in Klara's features. The mingling of both, until it's impossible to say who they look more like, or if they simply look like themselves.
The gatekeeper gives him a soft smile. And he knows this too, and it hurts.
"Ona tu není tady," is the gentle reply.
[Wyrmbreaker] He knows that, of course. But it hurts anyway to hear it: that all this is a could-be, that all is could just as easily be a could-never-be.
Lukas closes his eyes for a moment. Bows his head, raises his hand to the bridge of his nose, conceals his face for a moment.
Then, softly and clearly:
"I cannot choose, because the choice is not mine. But whatever comes to me, I will accept.
"If it is to be war, a glorious death, an early grave, and little left behind, I will accept it. And if it is to be this -- a family that must struggle to love me, and that I must struggle to love; a life that I did not plan and did not prepare for and can neither foresee nor control; a life that might tear asunder any moment --
"Then I accept that, too. Gladly."
There's a pause. Then he puts his hand out, resting the curve of his palm gently, tenderly, on the curve of the infant's head.
"Chci ono."
[descent.] Upstairs, a Theurge, a Philodox, and two Galliards watch as their guide's thinning ribs expand to take in the deepest breath she can, rattling in her mouth and throat and inside her chest. She cannot feel Lila's hand on her hand, cannot see her in front of her eyes, but she can feel her there, smell her dimly with senses that are giving way. The quilt on the bed looks old. Not as old as Wasted Winter. There's a tree in the back yard, and its branches scrape the window of the room they're in.
The others -- two young girls, two Cliaths of tribes that are traditionally at one another's throats -- sit on the steps, listening to Lukas tell the gatekeeper who is not his mate that he cannot choose. Perhaps they close their eyes, waiting for everything they have done in the rite to be for naught, waiting to be told that he has failed because the best he can say is I will accept. A small green stone pulses faintly in Joey's palm, like a heartbeat, like life, like that which is worth loving despite the grief of its loss.
"Your death is inevitable, and unforseeable, and uncontrollable," intones the gatekeeper, her hand and his hand meeting on the youngest child's. "You cannot choose it, and accepting it is not a choice. It will come as surely as the spring.
"It is weak," she says, as behind him his daughter and his son give small gasps, their hands coming unclasped, their outlines trembling in his peripheral vision, "to let fate decide for you."
Upstairs, Wasted Winter is shaking, her mouth open to breathe, her hands growing thinner and thinner in Lila's own palm.
Downstairs, Lukas's children begin to fade into their own nonexistence. The spirit that is not his mate stares at him. "The gate is open. The way is filled with pain and uncertainty. You must choose to walk through it."
[Wyrmbreaker] Unaware of what happens upstairs, unaware of Lila's hand on their guide's failing hand --
Lukas reaches forward, catches the gatekeeper's hand in his own. Holds, knowing she is not really here: holding, anyway.
"Then I choose it." Firm now; no hesitation. "I choose life, and -- "
not a hesitation, this, but simply a searching for words that better encapsulates what he means. There are none. The rest of it, the laundry list he could go down: the children, the memories, the struggle that every single fucking day is, the unexpected setbacks that blindside you, the unexpected joy that hits you the exact same way, all of that -- only pieces, only facets, fragments of the whole:
"I choose life."
[Blood Summons] Lila holds onto the hand of the figure who has not been with them since the first gate, since Blood Summons was the last one left standing after sleep had claimed all six of his fellow travelers, since she'd rested her hand on the bloody remains of his hand and whispered something to him that even the most reluctant of them had not been able to pick out. Bob watches, his gaze steady and his jaw set, as Wasted Winter breathes weakly and wheezing, his sinewy arms crossed over his chest and his shoulder and hip resting against the bedroom door.
He watches, and his breathing is quiet and unheard. It's as though he's attempting to listen to the above and the beneath at the same time, as though his full attention is not on the dying Theurge in front of them. The youngest of them are left out on the stairwell, listening to what is happening downstairs while the older females and the metis are left behind with Wasted Winter. Blood Summons draws a breath, then stands away from the doorframe, taking long loose-limbed steps over to the bed to sit down beside Lila.
"Come on," he says, his sandpaper voice quiet.
[Rain of Brass Petals] Her stomach was tense, uneasy, daring to bring up the food she had managed to force down earlier. She listens, with her elbows on her knees and her eyes distant. She is sitting on the steps with a female Fenrir, with someone who she had said before had astounded her. Adam gave no gestures, there was only stillness and she waits.
She waits to hear some kind of notion, that he had failed, that spring would not come, that her faith in him, in all of them, had been misplaced. She waits to have her suspicions, her prejudices confirmed, and
The way is filled with pain and uncertainty.
He chose life and-
No and. He chose life, there was nothing else in that. The Fury looked at Joey, mouth closed, before she looked back down the stairs.
[Sorrow] Sorrow looks up, looks from Wasted Winter to Blood Summons, to Lila, who holds the hand of the dying Theurge. They dug a grave for winter, and now the death rattle is in her lungs.
She is a still thing, watchful; her hair is loose again. It catches the failing light in the room as she walks, hands in her back pockets now, the line of her arms foreshortened by the dark bracelets she wears on either wrist - reminders of other lives, other deaths, other worlds in which they live. She has two runes tattooed on her inner wrists, just above the point of the pulse - visible beneath the bracelets, dark against her pale flesh. One says thought and one says memory. Sorrow stops at the foot of the bed, quiet now, quiet ever, considering the dying theurge - once for each - then lifts her chin to Blood Summons in passing acquiescence, circles the room, walks in front of Katherine and behind Blood Summons and Lila, out into the hallway, her shadows multipartite crawl and swim along the walls as she walks toward the top of the stairs.
[descent.] At once, though no one will ever know it happened at the same instant, Wasted Winter's hand tightens like a vise on Lila's
and Lukas's hand wraps around the hand of the female-bodied spirit who is not his mate, his Danička, the mother of his children that may never be, the chosen form of the keeper of his gate.
The world shatters for the second time during their rite. The first time it was a plunge into darkness, a wide chasm opening up and swallowing them in a black abyss. This time, the ritemistress opens her mouth
and Lukas makes his choice
and everything they know explodes into Light, shaking the very foundations of the house they stand in, breaking them down in cracks and chunks, crumbling around them. Wasted Winter holds onto Lila. Joey and Adamidas tumble downwards as the stairs give way. The hallway around Kora begins to break apart on either side of her, above her, the floor shuddering under her feet. Blood Summons and Katherine see the tree outside disintegrating, falling to dust, pieces of it becoming indistinguishable from the snow coming down.
She who is not his mate clasps Lukas's hand in her own, laces their fingers. Light auras around Zlata, golden and shining, searing like a sunset, til he can't see her, and he can't see the gatekeeper, he can't see anything other than
white.
The ground is cold, and snow is falling, misting downward. There are trees overhead, still barren. Their branches creak in the breeze. Sunset has come and gone. Their hands are empty, except
Joey's, which holds a small green stone, and
Kora's, which is wrapped around the neck of a guitar that was not there before, that she tried to leave behind, and
Kate's, which is grasping tight at a handful of earth itself, fingers dug deep into the dirt, and
Lila's, holding a single spine broken from the rack of a stag, and
Lukas's, which is wrapped tightly around something so small that his own fist eclipses it entirely, and his grip refuses to let it go.
In the distance, they hear voices. Song. Smell fire and food and alcohol. Their kin. Their people.
When they open their eyes, they see new shoots poking up out of the snow, out of the cold ground, bright green and defiant of winter. They see the underbrush rustling with the escape of a small, lithe body, the flash of moonlight on long red hair, the muffled chiming of seven bells.
[descent.] He knows what it is before he opens his hand to look. He feels its softness and smallness. Feels the crackle of that fake silver thread that gives the weave those sparklies. Knows: pink. Green stripes. White dots. He knows the other one is still missing.
to Wyrmbreaker
