It's the summer of 2002, and it's been almost two weeks, of waiting, a Sunday and a half of hoping, but there she is. Green shirt, white skirt, golden hair, seeing him and calling out his name like she can't help herself before she runs his way -- again, like she can't help herself. It's a hot day outside, and she carries all that warmth with her when she throws her arms around his neck and presses her body to his. He lifts her, hugs her tight around her slender middle, burying his face against her shoulder and neck, breathing her in like it's been a lifetime since he saw her last. They get frozen lemonade and sit on a bench to watch the sharks. She's leaning on his shoulder, and he's resting his head against hers, and they don't talk. There is nothing they can say. She puts her hand on his leg, and he covers it with his own.
It is a month later, and her second letter came today. It sits in Istok's home for three days before it gets to Lukas. There is a photograph inside of fireworks over Lake Pontchartrain, purple and gold and green. There is a small lock of blonde hair tied with black thread enclosed in the letter, though no mention of it on the paper. Danicka has told him twice now how unbearably hot it is in Louisiana, once in her first letter and again in this one. She tells him a little about Lizzy, about Giselle, about the two men-at-arms, in the interest of giving him some context whenever she mentions them. Her letters are surprisingly pragmatic more than they are emotional. It's jarring at first, her warmth hard to remember when her letters are so plainspoken and she is so very, very far away.
August. The letter is written hurriedly, doesn't even cover a full page. They were out, she and Christian and Rick, and she doesn't remember much of what happened. She remembers a woman leading her out of the club by the hand and kissing her against a wall. She remembers being shushed when she cried out in pain as teeth sank into her neck, and remembers being unable to disobey. She remembers gunshots, and the woman's head exploding inches from her face, Rick's hand over her mouth when she started screaming, Christian wrapping her in a blanket in the back seat of their car as Rick drove back to the plantation, Giselle helping wash the blood out of her hair, off of her skin, making her tea.
I remember all the worst parts, her letter says, the ache in that realization almost palpable on the page. I feel like that's always the way it is with my life. Except with you. I know we fought but I don't remember it at all. But if I close my eyes I'm right back at the aquarium with you, and I swear I can feel you against my cheek.
It's the first reference she's made to the brief time they had in New York in the handful of letters she's sent.
Anyway, I just wanted you to know. It just happened, but by the time you read this, it will be old news. I didn't think they were real. Christian says my neck won't scar, which is good. I don't know what I do if my brother found out about this. I should sleep, though.
The letter closes the usual way, with a 'Sincerely'. She never puts her full name on the return address on envelopes, just 'DM'. She signs with a single initial. But scrawled underneath it all:
p.s. I wish you were here.
LukasSunday. June. Lukas at the shark exhibit. Somehow he looks a little different, as though in the two weeks they were apart he's grown another inch, widened at the shoulders another two. It's not that, though. It's simply that he's not looking at her, his eyes on the predators in their cool blue tank, humming with subdermal tension as he waits. It dissipate the instant he hears his name. His head snaps up and around, he bolts up from the bench he's on, she flies into his arms and he catches her, solid against her slightness, hugging her so tightly as he presses a small, secret kiss to her neck.
I thought maybe you wouldn't come, he wants to say, but doesn't. What he does say: "Hi. I missed you."
They sit there together, their heads leaning together, their hands resting together. They don't say much, and they don't really watch the fish, either. They just ... sit together.
The next day, he went back to Stark Falls. Hana was driving and Rolf was spacing out, Lukas and Benny in the backseat. The young Ahroun stares out the window the whole time, his heart sore, his appetite gone. They stop for drivethru; this is usually when Lukas would chow down on some obscene amount of food, but he barely makes it through his hamburger. A little later, Benny, who's way more astute than he acts and way nicer than he pretends, leans over and asks quietly,
Everything cool, bro?
to which Lukas can only shake his head. No. Not really. He doesn't elaborate, though, and Benny knows better than to ask.
Lukas writes his first letter the night he's back. It is short; he doesn't know what to say. Is he allowed to say he misses her? He doesn't write it, he thinks it might be suspicious. He writes about something dumb Rolf did, and how he thinks Rolf might be cognitively impaired. Then a little later on he takes it back because he feels bad; Rolf isn't impaired, just ... different. He writes about swimming in the clear lake, and how he missed doing that while he was in the city. The letter ends awkwardly, but the next one a week later is a little smoother, and the one after that, three weeks after the first, is almost natural in its flow.
In July there's a letter from Louisiana. Lukas is so angry when he sees the postmark, sees how long ago it arrived before it was delivered into his hands, and he knows Istok notices. And even though the return address is innocuous, nothing more than initials, Lukas is pretty sure Istok also notices the letters are significant to him. Aren't just idle correspondence with some fifth grade penpal. Are probably from a girl.
Istok doesn't say anything about it, though. Not to Lukas, and not to the Sept. Strange, but of all the acts of honor and valor Lukas has seen his mentor perform, this above all others is proof of Istok's basic decency. It is possible to be a good Garou without being a good man. It is possible to be honorable and valorous, even, without being decent and kind at your core.
Lukas puts that in his next letter, musingly. He adds that Istok is taking him on an extended hunting trip across the northeast, and that he would write as soon as he was back. He never mentions the possibility of danger, of death, but it's not denial. It simply doesn't need to be mentioned. They're intelligent people.
In the northeast, Istok steps back from the front lines. Lets Lukas lead. It's the first time but not, Lukas senses, the last.
On the way back, Istok tells him one night: You're almost ready.
So when the August letter comes, Lukas is not at Stark Falls. He returns two weeks later and she's right, it's old news, it's happened and done with and she's still safe, that's all that matters, but
god, he's furious and scared, his blood pounds in his temples as he reads, pounding so hard he's afraid his head might explode from the pressure. He doesn't get to I wish you were here before he's throwing the letter down and bursting out of the cub barracks, snapping into the terrible, fourlegged monstrosity that will -- is already -- becoming his weapon of choice. He races into the woods as Benny calls after him, hey, where you going -- hey! -- doesn't stop, doesn't care, he has to get out of there. Branches snap across his chest, sapling trees crushed beneath his massive paws.
When Benny finds him, he only has to follow the path of destruction. He comes ten minutes later, when he hopes Lukas has calmed down. He comes with Rolf and Hana in case Lukas hasn't calmed down. But Lukas is sitting on an uprooted maple, the trunk snapped into splinters, sap on his palms, his head in his hands. He looks up when he hears them. He looks remorseful. He didn't want to hurt the tree, he says, and bursts into tears; furious, frustrated, helpless tears, and Benny and Hana have never seen such a thing before and are frozen with shock; they don't know what to do.
Rolf does. Rolf shifts into his wolfskin, jumps up on the trunk beside Lukas, and lays his chin over the Ahroun's shoulder. Just stays there, warm and thickfurred, until Lukas calms down. And calm again, dry-eyed and with the sort of fierce focus and quiet drive that will define him for the rest of his life, Lukas tells his friends
that as soon as he was a Cliath, he's going to New Orleans to hunt vampires. For a girl. And he can't tell them why, or who, because she'll get in trouble and maybe so will they. And Rolf just stays there with his chin on Lukas's shoulder, and Benny and Hana are sort of agape for a second. Then Hana says, Cool. And Benny says, I've always liked Cajun food.
Later that night, he comes back and reads the rest of the letter. I wish you were here warms him, makes him ache. He sleeps in his lupus form that night, muzzle laid over the letter where he can still pick up faint traces of her scent, but
in the morning he discovers he's drooled on it in his sleep, and is mortified.
His reply letter comes a week or so later. He tries not to sound too worried. He tries not to fret in print. Take care of yourself, he says. Protect yourself. I heard they don't like fire. He doesn't tell her about his plans to come south. He doesn't want to make her a promise he might not be able to keep. He can't wait to go, though, and he thinks if he pushed Istok will let him take the Rite soon, very soon. He wonders if he should push, but
later that month, he goes to his friends and tells them, Istok said I'm almost ready for my Rite. But I'm not gonna do this without you guys. So ... whatever you need, however I can help ... tell me. Let's do this together.
And Rolf said: I think you just officially became ready.
Summer to fall. Lukas writes Danicka as frequently as he can, which is sometimes as often as once or twice a week; sometimes as infrequent as once a season. They're sometimes sent to her in little waves, too - two or three letters arriving at once, some dated a month or two ago. Through them, she can sense slices of his daily life. He tells her about running the water-slick cliffs behind the waterfall for which the Sept is named. He tells her about hunting elk in the dense forests, and how this is so much harder in summer than in winter. He tells her about helping Rolf learn how to fight, or at least how not to suck. He tells her about learning tracking with Hana, learning to hide and be silent with Hana, or at least not to be a dinosaur in a china shop. He tells her, as the year draws closer to its end and the leaves fall from the trees,
that his parents have invited her father over for Thanksgiving. Do you think, the letter reads, I should drop some hints with my parents and see if they can talk about, you know, us?
The letter ends the way the others do:
- Lukášek
Lukas[ALL MY DOUBLE PARAGRAPH-SPACES VANISHED WTF]
DanickaOf good men and good Garou, Danicka has nothing to say. It is as though she didn't even read that part, or simply forgot, or -- something. She writes back to him that she hopes the hunting trip goes well. She writes again later, about being hurt, about being bitten, and he never tells her in his letters what reading about that did to him. How he felt. What his pack said to him when they found him.
Danicka's letters to Lukas are more regular than the ones he sends to her. Well: he writes more often, strangely, the stack of saved letters in her possession growing larger than the stack he has. But hers come regularly, sometimes answering several of his at once, sometimes just writing to him. He comes back from a three week long hunting trip in September to find several waiting for him, and each one gets longer. The weather is getting tolerable but it's still so warm. Christian and Rick have taught she and Giselle how to play various games of cards, some more traditional than others. Danicka has become very good, and says of the bodyguards that Rick is an unapologetic cheat and she can't imagine Christian cheating at anything in his life. Giselle cannot lie to save her life, or else she is the greatest liar ever known. Danicka's not sure.
In October, she tells him about Yelizaveta and the ghosts. It's always been a quirk of hers, since I came to work for them. It gets worse in autumn and winter, but down here's it's been worse all year round. Her parents would be furious if they knew I was telling anyone. They think she's just touched, and part of my job is to teach her how to keep quiet about it. I don't think she's crazy, though. New Orleans feels full of death some nights. There are so many secrets here. She came to my bedroom last night and told me about the people she was seeing, the voices she was hearing. She just sat there in the dark talking like she was asleep or in a trance, telling me about the ghosts that live with us. I pretended to be asleep. When she (finally) went back to her room I got up and went out to the garden --
Have I told you about the garden? I didn't really find it til awhile ago. It's overgrown but it used to be cultivated. One of those classic French gardens with neatly trimmed hedges and rose bushes, I imagine. There are enormous magnolia trees and weeping willows out there. All the walls are crumbling. Yelizaveta won't go out there, which makes me wonder what I'm sharing that garden with. I think the boys know I go out there, but they leave me alone. Giselle is scared of anything outdoors. (Fangs, you know?)
There's another piece of mail in October. It arrives right on the 18th, but he doesn't get it til the next morning. Všechno nejlepší k svátku! says the outside of the card, which she certainly did not get in New Orleans. Maybe she had someone in New York send it to her. It's lying on top of the tissue paper inside the care package, which holds a collection of chocolate, candy, bubble gum, some magazines, Chapstick, and a few little toys like a miniature Slinky and an UNO deck -- it's like she raided the impulse purchase counter somewhere. There is also a new book of stamps. The note inside the card says: And a belated (or early) one to Rolf, Hana, and Benny! Share, or I'll feel guilty. There's a smiley face beside her name.
Autumn rolls through their letters, which get longer each time. She doesn't hunt elk or run on cliffs; she goes to bars and clubs, she has a fake ID, she stays up late with all the doors and windows open and a fire blazing in the hearth, drinking wine with Giselle and Richard or Giselle and Christian because one of the men, she says, must always be sober. Their rule, she says. They are good men, she says. They're her friends. So is Giselle, who as it turns out has taught Danicka some choice swear words in French and is not as delicate and tenderhearted as she seems.
In November he writes to her about his parents and her father and Thanksgiving. When she reads it, Danicka holds the letter and stares at it, uncertain and confused, not sure what to write back, not sure if it will even reach him in time, chewing on her lip.
His life is... waterfalls. Hunting elk -- and other things. These friends of his who are all about his age and learning things that ...just don't mean much to her. He's the same distance from her as he's always been and lately the content of their letters is so vastly different he somehow feels even farther. She lays the letter down and curls up in bed, staring at it on her nightstand. Through the wide French doors to the veranda that overlook much of the estate, she sees a thin curl of smoke rise past the dark sky, obscuring the stars only as much as do the gauze-thin curtains in her room. She wonders if it's Christian or Rick, knowing it's likely the latter -- Christian doesn't smoke much. She thinks of all the nights feigning propriety when it wasn't what she wanted, when the wine was in her blood and her twisted little mind was instigating an orgy while her trembling little heart was aching for Lukas, and she doesn't know what to do.
She curls up, pressing her face into the pillow, asking herself what kind of person leads a boy on like that. Asking herself what kind of person feels the way she does for him and is tempted regardless, what that says about her, what that says about her ability to even care for someone else. She asks herself if she wants to end up mated to an Ahroun that her father and her brother have approved of, if this is her life, and why, because she's only nineteen and it's not her fault if Lukas doesn't want any other girl, she didn't ask him to wait, she in fact told him not to, why should he be so certain all the time and why is she the sort of person who isn't?
Rick hears her crying and taps on her door awhile later, cracking open the door from the veranda and murmuring her name into the darkness. She can't stop sniffling, even as she's wiping her face, but when Rich comes to sit on her bed, wondering what's wrong, she ends up asking him what's wrong with me? why am I like this?, spilling out everything about Lukas, about prom night, about the letters, about Lukas's question, about how she feels, about wanting and not wanting the same things.
What do you want and not want? he has to ask, his voice accented where Christian's isn't.
"Everything," Danicka ends up sobbing, and covering her face, her hair -- which grows like wildfire, is already to her shoulders again -- spilling over her face, her hands, her wrists, her knees. He cups his hand over the back of her head. He's a good man. He is a good man in a way that Christian is not. He has done bad things. He's hurt people, and he's thinking of the people he's hurt and led astray as he tries to be comforting and simply waits out the girl's tears. He thinks of how easily people set themselves up to be wounded, horribly wounded, when they begin to care about someone else and do not simply do what their instinct tells them. He thinks of how, when you stop caring and when you do what instinct tells you, you are the one who does the wounding. Rick is a philosopher, you see. Deep down past the scars and the hardened knuckles and the will for the violence and the total lack of self-preservation, he is a deep thinker who sees the world in a brutal, vicious way most blind themselves to.
People like Christian, he thinks, who is such a good man that if he were here he would finally fucking grow some balls and act on the way he so very fucking obviously feels about Danicka, tell her in the moonlight, and he'd be oh so goddamn understanding and he wouldn't be trying to manipulate her or anything, he'd just be so fucking earnest and Rick has a feeling right now Danicka would collapse under the weight of all that sincerity. The little shit would feel so guilty, too, afterward, and come crying to Rick about it, wouldn't he, yes he would. And Rick thinks maybe it's for the best that they're all keeping their fucking outside this team of caregivers they have, because the tension would be unbearable if they started screwing each other. The drama. Jesus.
So he kisses her. And she thinks it's permission or something, and she's a good kisser so he almost says whatthehell and just goes for it, but in the end he draws back, holds her face in his hands, and says, in the bluntest Irish accent that was ever heard:
"Yeh'r no' a bad person, Danicka. Yeh'r nineteen 'n horny 'n yeh don't want ta promise yehr 'ole life te anyone yet. Nor should yeh. Tell 'im the truth. Yeh 'ave a hunnred lettars from this lad er somethin'. If he hates yeh fer the truth, yeh'r bettar off without 'im anyway."
The next kiss is a hard press to her forehead before he goes, standing up before he changes his mind and walking back out onto the veranda. She can hear his bootfalls as he walks over the planks, around the corner, away from her room. She sits there, tears still staining her face, and blinks a couple of times.
Gets out her stationery and writes a letter.
Dear Lukáš,
I don't know what to say so I'll just tell you the truth. It isn't easy for me to do that. I know it is for you, but I'm not you. I've been punished for telling the truth before. I'm always afraid that if I tell people what I know they don't want to hear they're going to hurt me. I know they're going to. When I was with you in New York it didn't feel like you would do that, though. But all the same, my heart is pounding while I write this. I'm not even scared that you're going to find a way to hurt me. I'm scared of hurting you.
I like you so much. And I know I don't write about this a lot, but I do miss you. I've never had many friends -- not real ones, I mean, who I was close to at all. I wish you were here because you're one of those few people, and because I do have so many feelings for you. But you aren't here, and sometimes I feel like I'm on hold, just waiting for you to finish everything so we can be together, but ... I don't even know what I want right now. I'm nineteen, and I'm not like you. Every day that goes by that my brother hasn't mated me off feels like a surprise party. This is the only time in my life I've felt like I have any freedom, but if I belong to you somehow, I don't even have that.
A big part of me wants you to talk to your parents and have your parents talk to my dad and my dad talk to my brother, even if it's just so we can be friends without having to pretend we don't know each other. I don't want to think about not knowing you anymore or not being able to talk to you ever again. But I'm so scared that if our families start talking about this, then it'll snowball faster than I'm ready for. I'm scared that if I act like this is just a little thing, and shrug and say okay, then what I have right now is just going to get taken away.
I guess what I'm saying is that right now I don't want a mate. I don't even want a boyfriend. I don't know if that's a real answer, much less a clear one. I trust your judgement with your parents. I trust you. That's the only reason why I'm able to write any of this. I hope you understand.
- Danicka.
LukasThe care package in October is received with great enthusiasm, which Lukas reports in a return letter. And perhaps it's as early as that letter that Danicka first begins to feel the cold snare closing around her so recently freed ankles: there's a line in his letter where he mentions,
Benny says he wished he had a girlfriend as awesome,
but then maybe that goes under the bridge without a ripple because, well, it's what Benny says, and Benny always says all sorts of shit. And while Danicka can't possibly be blind to what a sixteen-year-old boy who lost his virginity to her, who keeps writing her letters even as he's undergoing some of the most grueling rites of passage he'll ever pass, must feel about her - perhaps she can still convince herself that it's not like Lukas asked her to be his girlfriend. Or worse, assumed she was.
But then there's that letter in early November. And he is asking then, without really asking. Or worse - perhaps assuming it a little already. Assuming that the sex, and the kisses, and the way she laid her head against his the last time they met meant something. Meant everything. And there's that snare again, the trap that wants to drag her away from the freedom that she, for the very first time in her life, is tasting. And she reacts as honestly as she can; as gently as she can.
It is not, in the end, very gentle. Not to an infatuated sixteen-year-old werewolf, anyway.
The letter in November is not received very well at all. Lukas's friends don't know what was in that letter he read, only that afterward Lukas was a black cloud of bad temper for days. He's distracted when they train together; he's furious when he makes mistakes and is berated. He spoke rudely to them all; even got thoroughly beaten by one of the Fosterns for speaking rudely to him. He stiffarmed his friends away when they tried to talk to him. He's never talked about Danicka, so that doesn't change. He talked about New Orleans all the time, though, until suddenly he stopped talking about New Orleans completely.
And when he's alone, ranging the territory on patrol duty or hunting for the Sept, he's endlessly angry. Sometimes he runs full-tilt for miles just to work the fury away. Sometimes he tears into prey like a savage, forgetting to bring it back to the kin. Sometimes he finds a bane lurking somewhere in the undergrowth, and he knows the scale of the violence he unleashes then has some of the Sept alphas talking speculatively, interestedly. He knows, also, that some of the other Garou are simply suspicious. They think maybe he's giving in to rage. Growing addicted to violence.
It's not that, though. It's not that at all. Buried under the anger is a core of wounded incomprehension. Lukas just doesn't get it. It's like he missed a connection somewhere. Didn't she say she wished he was there? Didn't she send him a lock of her hair? Didn't she hug him like he meant something the last time he saw her? Hadn't she said she didn't want anyone else, and hadn't she told him,
you're different, you're not insignificant, you mean something?
In Lukas's mind, these things add up to something. The letters, all those letters over the months, add up to something. He wonders if maybe he just spoke up too soon. He wonders if he's read her wrong from the start, if all along she's been trying to tell him let's just be friends. Did she even kiss him at the aquarium? Did that mean something? Maybe all they ever had was a one night stand,
maybe she used him the way the girl at the rite of reawakening used him.
The letter back is stiff and formal and short. Lukas apologizes for being too forward. He hopes she didn't feel pressured. He respects her wishes. He wishes her well. It is signed with his cub name. After that he throws himself back into his training. Gives it his all; gives it more than he's ever given it before.
And he stops checking the mail at Istok's house.
(They have a conversation about it one night, Istok and his mate, getting ready to go to bed. Whatever happened to Lukas's letter writing friend? Istok asks, locking the doors, securing the windows. I suspect it went the way of most teenage romances, Emese answers. Istok thinks about it for a moment. Oh, he says. That's too bad.
It doesn't come up again.)
Snow comes in the north, though in New Orleans it's still warm enough to leave the windows open at night if one uses a reasonable comforter. December comes, and then the solstice. And the cubs are very nearly ready, and they know it. They think perhaps they will take the Rite in spring, when the equinox comes. They live their lives by the sun and the moon in Stark Falls; keep the old ways, keep the old days.
They are given time off for the shortest day of the year. Lukas is turning seventeen in a few days, and the cubs go to the city to celebrate. Benny, showing off, gets them into a 21-and-over club just by smooth-talking the bouncers. Hana steals them booze. They get drunk, and they get loud, and then Lukas gets very drunk, and the anger simmering inside him is suddenly there again, pent-up and boiling over; he's throwing shit and kicking tables over and yelling and everyone's afraid of him, even the bouncers, so instead of tossing his ass out they call the police
and there's a couple Urrah kin in attendance, and they hustle the cubs out of there, and later at their crash pad everyone's getting acquainted and someone breaks out the weed, which isn't even very good weed but it's still the first time Lukas has tried it and
then there's a girl, and
in the morning Lukas wakes up with his brain pounding out of his skull, and she's saying hey, maybe he can visit her when he gets done with being a cub, maybe they could like, go out, and all he can think of is
a) a certain blonde down in NOLA, and
b) what a fucking douchebag he is.
He rereads Danicka's letter a few times over the next month. It might be the first time he's able to see past the no, the I don't want a boyfriend, I don't want a mate. It might be the first time he's able to stop assuming all that also means I don't want you and never did. It's definitely the first time he reads the lines that say I'm scared of hurting you and I trust you.
There's another letter from New York in February. It is short, and awkward, but not cold. It begins with an apology - for being an ass is how Lukas puts it - and then there's a bit of small talk about how he might be taking his Rite next month. Maybe the month after. When that's out of the way there's a line break, and then the meat of it.
I really like you, he writes, and I know it's all really sudden. We've only known each other two days plus a stack of letters and some playdates as kids. So maybe it's all too sudden, but I don't know how else to feel, and I have to be honest about it. I have to be honest with this, too: it really hurt to hear you say no last time. I felt led-on and a little betrayed, and I was really angry for a long time. That's why I was so cold.
It took me a long time to hear what you said about having freedom for the first time in your life. And how being with me would ruin that. I do get it now, though. And I can't blame you. I don't. It doesn't make the 'no' any easier to stomach, but ... you know, I shouldn't have written that. It's not my intention to guilt you out. I just wanted to say I hope we can still be friends, if it's not too weird for you.
There's a spot on the paper there, ink bleeding into the page where he pressed his pen too long before writing. Then:
I've been thinking about going to New Orleans since I found out about the vampire. I think I'd still like to. But if you want me to keep my distance, I will.
Danicka[I'm an idiot. All the mentions of Danicka being nineteen should be eighteen. She hasn't had her birthday yet!]
DanickaA letter comes around Thanksgiving. Everyone at the estate is in a foul mood. The Sokolovs flew Yelizaveta to Paris to spend the holiday with Giselle's family. They are given a few days to do whatever they like. Danicka does not want to go home and spend Thanksgiving at the Kvasnicka household with her father, is afraid Lukas might be there, afraid he might not be there. She makes an excuse, and because she stays, so do Rick and Christian. She had been quiet for days, her appetite low with anxiety, and then one morning after getting the mail she was even more withdrawn, crying in her room one night, quieter this time so neither man would come in. She makes a small turkey.
Time goes on. And she doesn't write again, because she doesn't know the name he signed that note with. She doesn't even know what it means. She does know what it means when he responds with three or four lines and a signature, though. So she leaves him alone.
(They have a conversation about it one night, Rick and Christian, while cleaning their guns. You know what's up with Danicka? Christian asks, dismantling his rifle on the long cloth over the table. The fire behind him crackles. The wind outside hums, stirring a rocking chair to motion. She's eighteen, Rick answers without looking up, sounding like a man much older and grumpier than he should be. Christian just lifts an eyebrow and goes back to work.)
December feels like it takes forever. Yelizaveta is back and full of airs after a week in France. Giselle is tense and unbearable as the child, though for different reasons. It's not a special night, not an interesting night, it's just another winter night when the bodyguards leave Giselle and Yelizaveta in the spirit-warded estate and go out with Danicka. She isn't crying at night anymore, became very determined one night to simply get over it. If Lukas wants to cut her out and not talk to her because she dared to want a life before she goes back to being a dutiful kinswoman, fine. The whole point of writing to him was to keep that freedom and not get tied down the first second she's cut free.
It's just another night. But this time she convinces Christian to dance with her. It's all downhill from there. Her hand on the back of his neck, and his brow to hers, hands on her waist. Rick is over at the bar watching, sipping his whiskey, rolling it over his tongue, and it's impossible not to notice when she looks over at him. Truth be told it's hard to tell her no. No matter what she wants. It's hard to say no to that look in her eyes inviting him out onto the floor and it's impossible to refuse to kiss her after she kisses Christian and turns her head to him next. Hard to tell her no, this is a bad idea, maybe you two can just run off on your own
when she sits between them in the front seat, and asks him to take them somewhere, anywhere, just not back to the plantation. He doesn't want to say no. Christian is over the moon for her and for his sake Rick really wants someone to stop and say no, but she's in the hotel room taking off his shirt and everyone's skin is very warm and this is wrong on so, so many levels but he thinks, at the same time,
well. this was a long time coming, I guess.
when they all go down on the bed together.
A week or so later Lukas gets high for the first time and there's a girl, and --
Sometime after that she goes home for Christmas, this time she goes and spends a few days with her father. He says that he had Thanksgiving dinner with the Kvasnickas, they used to bring their two children over to play. Miloslav shares remembrances while Danicka makes strawberry kolache, and she smiles to herself, achiningly. She was rolling dough, thinking about getting back to New Orleans to fuck Rick and Christian and Giselle again, go out by herself without being tailed by damn bodyguards, find strangers and kiss them on the dancefloor, go to one of the high-class clubs in a short skirt and let some married man pick her up,
then her father had to go and mention that. She pauses, pressing her lips together, holding a handful of flour, and then just goes ahead and sprinkles it over the dough, nodding.
"I remember them," she says quietly, rolling, rolling. "Lukášek was my friend. I liked him."
Miloslav is surprised. "You did? That loud little boy? I thought he scared you."
Danicka's heart clenches, cramping, shriveling for a moment in her chest. "You know me," she says, putting on a smile and looking at her father over her shoulder. "I'm scared of everyone."
He smiles, too, but there's sadness in it. He knows her better than she thinks. She thinks he still believes she's a virgin. He just pats her shoulder as he gets up to go out to the living room to make a fire. "V noci kazdá kocka cerná," he recites, shuffling out of the room.
Alone again, Danicka looks down at the dough, tracing her fingers through the flour dust over the smoothed surface. For no reason at all, she presses her finger hard, creating a hole. And starts over.
New Year's in New Orleans is mad. Is wild. There are masks. There are drugs. Giselle goes absolutely apeshit and someone is pounding on the bathroom door where Danicka is doing a line off of a mirrored tray, that someone is Christian and he is annoyed as hell that Danicka won't stop running her hands over his shoulders, because Jesus Christ, someone slipped Giselle something bad, would you wake the fuck up? which just makes her laugh, laugh, oh, she's so awake, can't they tell how awake she is she's SO awake you guys you guys look at how awake I am --
so Rick reaches back from the front seat and slaps her. Giselle is vomiting into a bag and Danicka's vision is swimming, she's slurring, Well you don't have to be so Mister Rogers about it, which she thinks both 1) makes perfect sense and 2) is hilarious. They're just not getting it, the losers.
February is only worse. Fat Tuesday rolls around and Danicka goes out by herself this time. The tensions between the four 'adults' that take care of Yelizaveta are unreal at this point. She's smoothed a lot of things over in the past month with Giselle and Christian and Rick. She isn't out to get high, to get fucked, to do wicked things to wicked people. She just wants to watch the parades. She drinks but not a lot. She finds some tourists and makes new friends, goes out on a houseboat for the night and watches fireworks. She thinks of the picture she took back in July for Lukas, who she was pretty sure wasn't celebrating Independence Day up in Stark Falls. Maybe he didn't even care. It's really pretty American.
She misses him. Like she's missed him for the past three months. Or the past eight. Her hair is getting longer, and she doesn't bother cutting it. She wears jeans a lot, torn t-shirts, wears things she could never get away with in Manhattan and nobody here cares. She goes back to the city to an all-night diner and gets some beignets, takes them back to the estate, and that night
stays up playing Uno and poker with Giselle and Christian and Rick. Giselle goes to bed alone, scared straight after New Year's. Rick goes to walk the perimeter on his shift. Christian eats some pizza with Danicka and they talk. About all the shit they've all done. About when it started, when she instigated that threesome. She asks him if she's screwed up everything for him and Rick, if they won't ever work together again, and he asks her if she really buys all that stuff about how women ruin everything and men can't trust them because they're just too easily waylaid by Womanly Wiles(tm). She says she's serious, and he says
they're fine. They could all see she wasn't doing okay. Nobody fell in love, he says, so nobody got hurt.
Danicka looks at the fire, and looks at her fingernails, and nods.
A letter comes. She didn't expect that. She reads it walking back from the mailbox, which -- to be fair -- is a long damn walk up the drive and around the fountain to the veranda. She reads it a second time as she goes up, and Rick notices and gives Christian a raised eyebrow, which he returns. Without speaking, they both come to the conclusion that she hasn't looked that intently at a letter since sometime in November, and isn't that when she stopped getting regular letters entirely, and hmm.
Danicka doesn't write back immediately. She has to pace, and re-read the letter a lot, before she ever writes back. And when she does, it's too late. He's taking his Rite. He's forming his pack. And he's not reading that letter til after all that, til Istok gives it to him, remembering the 'DM' letters from before.
Dear Lukáš,
I hope you're well.
He has no idea, but Danicka pauses on that first line, not knowing what on earth to write next.
I don't think you were an ass. I don't blame you for being angry or hurt. I was sad when you stopped writing, but to be fair, I stopped writing, too. All I mean is that I understand.
Sometimes I wish I was more certain about what I want and who I am. You seem like you have all that figured out. I don't know how I can explain how I felt -- and still feel, to some extent. It's intimidating and a little overwhelming to be so wanted, so focused on. It isn't that you meant nothing to me and came on too strong; almost no one really knows me deeply, and that's partly because I don't let them, but mostly because very few people seem to want to. You and I were so close, so quickly, and ... you wanted me so much. It scares me, and not just because I'm afraid of being 'tied down' or something like that.
At the same time, I have so much -- this is underlined, those two words -- affection for you. I think about you every day. When I'm with friends I wish you were there, because ...you're Lukáš. I know we hardly spent any time together in New York, but I still miss it. Sometimes I forget that all the times I've imagined just hanging out with you didn't really happen.
I'm so sorry. This is turning into another rambling, confusing letter, and I feel like I've already jerked you around and messed with your head. For what it's worth, I'm not trying to. I don't want to. I usually don't talk this openly about how I feel with anyone -- ha, this might be why. I can't just stick to one thought or one feeling.
I do know this, thought: I miss you terribly. I've been behaving like a selfish little monster for months now and done so many things I'm not proud of, and I think part of it has just been trying to figure out what I want. I do want you in my life. I definitely want you to be my friend again. I want to see you, because sometimes I wonder if all of this weirdness is just --
those last words, everything from 'because' to 'just', are scribbled out, but still vaguely legible,
if you can forgive me.
- D.
LukasThere's no letter back in the month between Lukas's missive and his Rite of Passage. He didn't really expect there to be, but still he checks every day with Emese. It still sucks when there's nothing.
The night before the Rite, he and Benny and Hana and Rolf lounge around a fire. They've trained, they've practiced, they've done all they can to ensure their success tomorrow. Nothing left to do now but catch a little break before the plunge, and as they pass around a little flask of brandy that Hana stole they talk about what next. They talk about going back to New York, going to Boston, going to San Francisco, going to motherfucking Paris, France -- all these brilliant cities of the world that they might want to see. None of them mention the possibility of failure. None of them mention New Orleans, not even when they all get a little tipsy.
Later, when the fire is burning down, they lie on the ground with their heads together, their feet pointing in different directions. And they talk about their families, and their futures, and Rolf says he'd like to have a mate and cubs, and Benny agrees, which surprises everyone. Hana says fuck monogamy, she's going to have a stud stable. Lukas smiles and says she just hasn't met the right one yet, and
Benny asks what happened with that girl in New Orleans, and
Lukas's smile dies a slow death. I miss her, he says, which doesn't really answer the question, but no one asks further.
In the morning there's still no letter. Emese gives him a hug as he's leaving. When he got here, Istok brought him to his home on the first night for a hot meal. Emese greeted him at the door, and she bent down to hug the stripling boy. Now he's over six feet tall, and she has to stretch up to him. He's seventeen years old. He's been here for four years.
He meets his friends in the woods. They go to find the elders, and they are quiet now, focused, determined.
A week later, they return. They trade a chain of misshapen skulls for their names. They stand as one as the Master of the Rite calls Thunder, and before Thunder they recite the Litany like the vow it is. As cubs they entered the Caern. As Shadow Lords they leave, and on his way out Istok stops him, hands him a letter.
He reads it in private that night, standing alone outside the cub cabin, squinting by moonlight. He reads it several times, over and over, and every single time it's hard to remember anything other than
I want you in my life. I want you to be my friend. I want to see you.
The next day, and the few days after that, there's all this business of formally leaving the Caern that fostered them: paying chiminage to the totem, paying respect to their teachers, participating in a final moot, making a final patrol. They don't, in fact, petition a pack totem just yet. They all agree they want to wait to see where they end up. They want something suitable to the land and the pack alike, and they're secure in their bonds; they don't feel the need to bond as soon as they can simply to prove that they're a pack. They've been a pack for a very long time.
There's also the mundane matter of simply packing up all their shit and jamming it into Benny's car, all four of them taking turns throwing their weight against their bulging luggage to make it all fit. There's an argument over whether or not they're going to bring Rolf's hiking stick, which Benny wants to throw away because he can just pick another one up somewhere, Christ, but Rolf wants to keep it because this is the one he was using the very first time he summoned Thunder, and
it's ridiculous, really, that it's not until they're driving away from Stark Falls that they start thinking about where they're going. Benny's advocating Boston while Hana talks about New York City. Lukas is riding shotgun, looking out the window the way he does, when he says:
"Did you guys still want to go to New Orleans?"
It is March 28th, 2003, when Danicka's cell phone chimes with a text.
Hi, this is Lukas. Sorry didnt write back sooner. Just got done with RoP and didnt see your letter til I got back. This is my new cellphone #.
A moment later a second text follows:
Driving to NOLA now. Should be there in a few days. Maybe we can meet?
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