Decker Rohl

Danicka
Once, there was a bonfire out in the middle of a field. They had them a few times, over a couple of years, but so much changed in those two years that they tapered off. They still happen, usually for the autumn equinox when the weather is good for such a thing and everyone's mood leans towards fires burning in the woods as the air turns chill. The Fianna still run the show, for the most part, and there is drinking and music and football and so on. Danicka goes sometimes, and Lukas goes sometimes, and they lay in the grass turned brown by autumn and eat from the same plate, look at the stars. Wander off into the woods and fuck.
But once, one of those very first times in those first two years, Danicka started to wander over to a group of Garou and Kin who had been in Chicago for years longer than her. To pay her respects. To network. To ask a question. She doesn't even remember. There was the redhaired doctor who knew Martin from way back but hated everyone, there was a dreadlocked Godi who died far too soon, there was the gay paramedic, and there was a hulking, dark, beast in their midst. Danicka turned away because someone snapped at someone else and she decided not to mess with that group, but when she turned on her heel to change course,
the beast's eyes caught the movement, zeroed in on her when her back was turned, and said Hey. She didn't look at him and all he saw was the golden hair resting on her shoulders, and scents and breeding were rich and confused in the air and his mate was beside him and her mate was across the way and she didn't turn back. Something about him struck her as familiar, and she chalked it up to the wall of rage burning at her back, singing the tips of her hair. Reminded her of her mother before she died.
Maybe it was moments later or weeks later, but she lived in Chicago a good while. She fought fomori, undead, wyld spirits that tried to possess her, all manner of strange and horrific things. When Garou spoke of her, they spoke of her in regards to her mate, who went from unofficial to official to married. They would say Wyrmbreaker's mate is a clever one or Wyrmbreaker's mate is brave, but who has time for the stories about kin? Better stories to tell.
Like the ones about Silence. Silence-rhya. Oh, the glory. Greater than some Elders. Songs about strength and grit, songs about Eagle and Fenrir both. Songs about battles, about challenges. You didn't live in Chicago for more than a few months and just not know who Silence was. Decker Rohl. Silence-rhya. Never needed any other name. Never got one.
Danicka knew of him. She was a Liaison for the Sept. She knew members of almost every tribe. She helped other Kin with their computers. If she had been born to Glass Walkers or born Garou, it's entirely possible she could have ended up creating some seriously dangerous supernatural code. But that's not who she is. As technologically minded as she is, as brilliant as she is, Danicka is a daughter of the earth, looking up into the sky when it rains, when it storms. And in the past two or three years, she has grown so much stronger than she ever was as a child. She has lost the brashness and recklessness of her youth, been broken by her own cold heart, rebuilt herself as something so much warmer, so much deeper.
She realized, after that bonfire, who he was and why he was familiar. She sensed the difference in his rage, and she was glad she walked away. She was glad he never got up from where he reclined to come after her, talk to her, make her look him in the eye. She was glad that they never spoke, that she was never friends with Imogen, that their lives were as separate as distant stars though they inhabited the same city.
For awhile.
And then he left, and she didn't hear about that. If he knew anything of her it was through whatever people at the sept said about her, and they didn't say much, and he wasn't a part of that sept for the longest, longest time. As far as she knows, he was unaware of her. That is okay. When he left, when he was gone, Danicka didn't know anything about it. She didn't know the Eagles. She didn't know much of their deaths, their losses, the one left behind. Lukas never talked about Silence. She didn't wonder; she never asked. No reason to ask; what good would come of that?

It is April 19th, and Danicka is in St. Paul, Minnesota for a conference whose name was simple enough that she could even tell Lukas what she was going for and it would make sense. He was very excited. Robots. He had questions. She had a book she shoved in his hands to make him be quiet because going to this conference means taking a week off of school to attend. Her electrical engineering degree changed, very quickly after she chose it, to engineering physics, which really is more about R&D than robots, but it's still a great opportunity. Whitby helped. She is winning no awards for any papers, she is not part of a team for the robotics challenges, but she is getting credit for attending and she is determined not to fall behind during that week.
When they came back from Prague, they talked about whether she should take some time off of school. Take off a year, even though she's so close to graduating, just one more year. Danicka doesn't want to decide until she knows she's pregnant. She's willing to take the risk of finding out in the middle of a quarter, but the conversation made her start getting upset because it was three months, already, three months since getting off the pill, and she wasn't pregnant yet and she didn't want to talk about it anymore and
now it's the middle of April, and she's in Minnesota, and she is leaving a restaurant called Meritage. The Farewell Reception is done. Dinner and drinks with some of the professors and so forth that she's charmed is done. There were at least a couple of Eastern Europeans who were delighted by her linguistic abilities, a Swiss lecturer impressed by her keen mind, a chair from Korea intrigued by her seriousness and her grace. She thinks she's going to bump her flight tomorrow, pay the fee, and skip the last lecture on robotics in nuclear decommissioning; she wants to go home. She wants to see her mate. Badly.
Danicka walks down North Market Street, and she passes the Landmark Center on her right, the park with the brass sculptures of Peanuts characters that made her smile when she checked in to her hotel. She passes that on the left. And then, just... keeps walking. She doesn't think about it. She doesn't question it. It is night, and the sun has only gone down recently because the days have gotten so long, and the closeness of the river reminds her of her entire life: New York. New Orleans. Chicago. All cities cut through by rivers and bays and lakes. She doesn't mind St. Paul so much; she wouldn't want to live here.
But she likes that there's the river, right there.
So she keep swalking, and after North Market there's a turn onto Kellog and then another onto the bridge. She keeps walking, and it's a Thursday night and it's chilly outside so she wears a navy blue wool coat with a military-esque collar and stylings over gray slacks, one of her more comfortable pairs of ankle boots with their thick, stacked heel. The buttons of her coat cut diagonally from left shoulder to the center of her body, each one a gleaming disk of steel. It fits close to her body, and it is an early birthday present to herself because she saw it, and she wanted it, and so she got it.
Danicka doesn't have her gun on her. Not while traveling. But she does have talens. The ones made for escape, the ones made for healing. She trots down the stairs from the bridge to the little island in the middle of the river, the lovely park there lined with helix-styled pathways and Japanese maples. She thinks, starting to walk along one of those paths, that normally she'd take out a cigarette right about now, but
she had the last cigarette of her life standing on the balcony of her apartment back in January, the day of her appointment with Dr. Katz, the day before school started up again. And she doesn't really want one right now, anyway. She walks with her hands in her pockets, her feet slow along the path beneath the bridge.
Decker
Beautiful, unaccompanied women have a tendency to attract a certain amount and a certain type of male attention, as though some men felt themselves entitled to approach by the simple virtue of her beauty and her solitude. Danicka knows this; she probably also knows how to deal with this in a number of ways from polite to disarming to devastating. At this very moment she might well be cataloguing her methods in her mind, because as she walks along that river's edge, thinking about that small addiction she's given up for the sake of a still-nonexistent fetus, she can that up ahead there's a man on a bench who keeps looking at her, who smiles at her as she gets closer, who's obviously readying some sort of one-liner when
his eyes stray over her shoulder and the smile freezes on his face.
In the same moment Danicka feels it: the wall of rage behind her, like an electric field on the very verge of discharging. It might remind her of her mother. It might remind her of that long-ago bonfire. It might remind her of that even longer-ago night, nearly ten years ago now, not so very far from another river in another city on the other side of the continent.
A monster falls in beside her. He jerks his chin off in the direction of the road and tells Danicka's would-be suitor:
"Git."
The fellow gits. Silence watches him go, and then he turns to look at Danicka, staring, watchful. Ten years. His hair and beard still look shorn by the same blade, a bare bristle in both cases. He's a little bit taller; still not tall at all by the standards of his Tribe. He's stronger, though that hardly seemed possible ten years ago. He's wearing some of the most archaic clothing she's ever seen. His rage has grown cold as ice.
He still has grey eyes. They are still grey as a storm. He looks at Danicka a long time; then he shakes his head a little, exhaling.
"Was you down in Chicago, weren't it? At tha bonfire, couple years back."
Danicka
The ring helps. It at least deters the men who are looking for a relationship or the men who have any honor or self-preservation instinct. That doesn't get rid of the ones who don't care who she is or if she's available or if she wants to be looked at, talked too, touched, and sometimes she thinks goddammit can't I just take a walk without it turning into Open Season but most of the time she just rolls with it. So far, she has never gone Shaolin Barbie on anyone. Hasn't had to. This guy, the one on the bench turning to look at her, chancing a smile at her, can't see her ring because her hands are in her pockets, but even that doesn't matter a moment later.
Danicka's shoulders tighten. She still reaches for her gun, you know. Every time the door to her apartment opens and she feels that burn, that crawling heat followed by a shaky, feverish chill. She thinks of exit strategies before the secondary recognition, the knowledge of Lukas himself. The sight of him, or his voice, or the vibration of his footsteps which is unlike any other. It kills her that she is still so afraid, on nights when the moon is full at least. Just as much, though, is the ache caused by her gratitude that Lukas does not 'pop' in. Not to her apartment. Not to their home. Not the way Vladik used to, not the way her mother used to. Truth be told it's one of the most lingering things left of her primordial terror that has grown more subdued as she has grown stronger. She can't bear that sound, that sensation, without instant fear.
Instant fear, instant primordial and gut-clenching terror, like the kind she feels right now. The man looks like the blood has drained from his face, his eyes have glazed over, and Danicka has kept walking, determinedly, breathing carefully. She keeps that electricity at her back even though it is making her dizzy, making her nauseated, but
then
it isn't behind her anymore. It's beside her, and it's rough and dark and she has her hand wrapped around her keys, metal digging into her palms, her other hand falling out of her pocket to the strap of her bag, which is where nightshade and darts wait, if she can get to them fast enough, but it's right beside her and she won't. She won't.
Git, it says. Danicka hears a Southern accent, but she doesn't know that voice. It doesn't ring true in her ears like nothing else she's ever heard. All she can hear is the buzzing of rage around that syllable, like the drone of hornets so thick it almost covers the sound of jackhammers.
She is still walking. More than likely, he keeps walking with her and she is finally turning her head to look at the thing that may very well kill her, which snuck up on her the way these things can and do and will. She has no way of telling the difference between Gaian rage and a Spiral's rage. He could be anything.
He could have eyes like concrete, like lead, like thunderheads. And a heavy jaw and brow, and startlingly soft lips, with a deceptively beautiful curve to them.
That's when she stops walking. That's when her left hand unfurls around the keys in her pocket, and when her right hand slips off the strap of her purse to fall to her side again. Her shoulders don't quite round down with relaxation, but she stares at him, right at him, though her will still cannot compete with his rage. It's hard to look him in the eye. Even other Garou find it so. And she's not Garou.
What he says takes her aback, but only because he jumps right into it. Doesn't ask oh my god Danicka is that you! or anything like that, not that he would. But there's nothing expected, either. Just... it was you.
And it makes her ache. That shows in her eyes. She looks so different. She looks older, maybe even more than ten years older, but she always looked a little old for her age, had lines around her mouth and eyes before she should have. Hard to tell with the coat on and everything, but even her face shows that she isn't quite so skinny anymore. The strength shows, less rash and bold than it was when she was 18 but deeper and quieter now, more flexible, harder to break. It shows in her eyes and the way she holds herself.
She's still beautiful. Not quite warm-colored with summertime; she's paler than she was that August, and her hair is long enough now to show that it isn't razored or sharp or straight but soft. Wavy. Still gold. In the dark, her eyes are the same verdant green they were before. He's never seen them in daylight. May never.
There's fear in those eyes, too. But it's beneath the ache.
For a moment, even though he isn't really asking, Danicka doesn't answer. And then she nods. Slowly, then a quick finish.
Decker
It was you.
Would have been easier if it hadn't been. Would have been easier still if it wasn't her tonight, either. Or if he weren't Garou, if he couldn't recognize her breeding by smell, by sight, from a hundred yards away. Would have been easier if their lives had intersected that once and never again; if they had come close but never recognized one another again.
Not how it turned out, though. And here they are -- stopping now. Facing each other. It's past dinnertime, but they're far in the north. Some light still lingers. Enough that she can see he's still harsh-cheeked, deep-browed; that his mouth is still almost sensitive. Enough that he can see
she's still beautiful. She's grown more beautiful; stronger without hardening. That's not fair, either. Would have been easier if she had become bitter, or cold, or fat, or ugly. He doesn't wish that on her though, and wouldn't.
She nods. He takes a breath - in and out, almost a sigh.
"Yeah," he says, like an agreement. "Thought so."
He doesn't so much trail off and the thought simply ends there, unfinished. Decker raises an absent hand, scratches at his chest where that roughspun laced shirt of his hangs open. Drops his hand, nods off the direction she was going.
"Walk ya to yer car."
That feels familiar; it stings a little. He walked her to his car once. He walked the woman he called mate to her car, countless times. That's both in the past now, finished.
Danicka
The way Decker is dressed is... bizarre. At least, it is in this day, this age, this city. It isn't rough cloth sewn to look like it was made in the dark ages for a Renaissance festival or something like that. The cloth itself looks homespun. It was crops or stock in a previous life. The leather lacings were definitely an animal, maybe leftovers from someone making a bag, a pair of boots. He looks so strange that the guy on the bench was as bewildered as he was afraid.
That man is still hurrying down the path, away from them, back to the bridge up to the street away from this. That man is thinking this woman belongs to this monster and he is grateful to be chased off and not torn apart.
Danicka is thinking, however, not of Decker's clothing or about the man Decker sent scurrying, but of that night. The one that started with her on a balcony, isn't that a laugh, ended with her closing the door to a lovely hotel room. Somewhere in between, though, and where she first felt something deeper and more frightening than any wolf's rage, they were under a bridge beside a river. A muddier, drier river. A more industrial, less gentrified bridge. A place far warmer than this one. She's thinking of that night, and what she felt, and why she ran from it.
When he asks if she wants to be walked to her car -- except he isn't asking, he's moving from awkward to something else, and that something isn't a request or a suggestion or an offer. He's just saying that's what he'll do. And she exhales. It almost sounds like an apology: "My car is in Chicago." Which is nice and all, but: "I'm... at a hotel back that way," the way she came, down the path and up the stairs and across the bridge and into St. Paul itself. "I was just going for a walk."
And then a pause. She could ask him anything. Why he's dressed like that. If he came to find her for some reason. What he's doing now. Anything. What she does ask is: "What are you doing here?"
Decker
"Huntin'," he replies. Beast like him - that can't be a surprise. "With my warband outta Storm Hammer," he adds a moment later. Then a more general answer: "Left Chicago almost two years ago."
That's an answer he could give anyone. That's something he might tell anyone. Somehow it feels a little false to tell her that, so rote and plain, as though it denied what history they had - as though they had history at all. As though they ever had anything more than a night, a name, a face to remember.
Another moment. Then:
"Look good." A flicker to his brow, a furrow as he adds, "Better'n I remembered."
Danicka
Hunting. Danicka huffs a breath that could be a laugh. He wasn't hunting in New Orleans a decade ago -- at least, not as far as she knew then or now. That night he just seemed to be waiting for something to happen that could grant him a little release from himself. A fight. A fuck. He got both, in a sense. But the fight barely deserved to be called one; the fuck nearly killed him.
Looking at him now, she doesn't think he looks so much like he needs release from himself anymore. He is what he is. He inhabits it. She didn't know him in Chicago, didn't know him at all over the past ten years, didn't even know him that night.
Except she did. Danicka can't look at him and deny that she knew him, just like she couldn't deny what happened with Lukas that first night, either. She tried. Oh, she tried. She nearly broke things between them forever when he found out just how hard she tried to deny that she cared, that she felt it too, that she knew him as she did. She's learned. She doesn't run now. And she doesn't deny a thing.
The truth is that she knew Decker that night. And he knew her. The truth is that right now she senses hurt and she can't tell if it's his or hers or just the universe's. Her throat moves when she swallows, and her lips part when she breathes, slowly exhaling. She doesn't have a damn clue what Storm Hammer is, but it doesn't matter. She wants to tell him that she's mated and married and trying to have a baby but it would sound, to her ears, like staving him off from something he isn't even asking for. It wouldn't be that, but she doesn't want to sound that way.
He tells her she looks good. Better than he remembered. She makes that sound again, the corner of her mouth tugging, trying to smile, but unable to. Something hurts very badly. Danicka has very little but pain in her eyes right now, when she
holds out her hand to him, her palm turned up. "C'mon," she says quietly, like she's stolen his accent for a word. "Come sit with me for a minute."
Decker
He inhabits what he is now. Or maybe he's just capitulated. Given up trying to be anything else. Given up trying to be someone's lover, someone's brother, someone's captain, someone's hero. These days he's a weapon. A Warclaw, it's called. It fits him. He might even like it.
It still hurts, though. There's pain in the air. Pain in this moment. It hurts to see what he had once, if only for a night.
He looks at her hand. A quiet struggle, himself against himself. Then he takes it in his. He can't remember ever holding her hand that night, ten years ago.
They go to the bench the other man vacated. He sits hunkered over, elbows on his knees. He misses smoking weed suddenly, though he hasn't for years now. Decker's seen the mightiest cities of man now. Lived in them. Walked the streets, owned the alleys. Given them all up again. These days St. Paul seems like a big city again.
"Ain't never expected ta see you 'gain," he says after a while. "Wasn't even sure it was you. Here 'r in Chicago. Weren't sure I didn't just dream ya up, sometimes."
Danicka
For her part, Danicka seems so... settled, now. At least compared to the girl who kicked a beer bottle to the street just to watch it shatter, who slipped her panties down her legs and shoved them in her purse before going down to see the brutal young man with bloodflecked knuckles who terrified her. And yet, something in there is still her. Still the girl who drew his hand to her chest and said there are six in a whisper, who touched his face, who fainted so frighteningly but with so much grace right there in his arms. A little bit of a deviant. Shockingly gentle for a deviant, though.
Like this: offering him her hand, and wrapping hers around his when he takes it. She holds his hand and no, she doesn't remember ever holding his hand that night either; she doesn't think they did. But they walk over to one of the benches that look across the river to the city, and it's not too far of a distance, really. In the dark it seems farther.
They sit. He leans forward but Danicka is holding his hand, and she doesn't let go. It's her right hand, warm from her pocket, her left one out now, laying on her lap aimlessly. She looks at the water, sits with him like this is normal, like this is okay, like it wouldn't confuse and maybe even anger Lukas if he came upon her holding Decker's hand. She's not sure how she would explain it to him. She is not sure how he would feel. She hopes he wouldn't be hurt, but he is easily hurt
by her.
Still. There's not longing or lust in the way she holds Decker's hand. It's warm. It's companionable. There is something intimate about it, but only as intimate as holding onto a ghost. She doesn't let go. She just looks at the water, and the city lit up, and listens to him as he speaks. Danicka is being so quiet, so withdrawn -- she doesn't look at him much now, hasn't said much, doesn't seem inclined to. She drops her eyes from the edges of the city to the slope of the bank to the water itself, turned black by nightfall.
Then to him. For a long time.
"I knew it was you," she says softly. "Not at the bonfire, then you just... seemed familiar, a little. I thought it was your rage that made me feel that way, because --"
God, he knows nothing about her. Nothing at all. She hesitates, but goes on:
"My mother was a full moon," Danicka tells him now. "Athro when she died. They made her an Elder in the grave, because she fatally wounded the ones who killed her before she died. Most of her pack lived. So they made her an Elder." She's rambling, stumbling over her own story, because somehow it feels like he should know. He should already know. She's not sure why it matters. "Her rage was... very, very strong. It was like yours. So at the fire, I just thought that was it."
Only the barest beat of a pause. And her voice is quiet but somehow it gets smaller, like a light dimming. "But it wasn't. I knew about you. Heard your name in Chicago. I remembered it." She turns again, perhaps a little too fast, looking at the water. "I knew you were with Imogen. I knew you had a pack, and they were mostly Fenrir. I found out your tribe that way, just... hearing about you here and there."
She takes a deep breath that turns out far shallower than she'd like it to be, and the way her chest lifts and then deflates too quickly seems like someone in a confessional booth. After ten years.
"I knew it was you," she finishes, and under the whisper and the admission of her voice,
there is an element of devastation.
Decker
It's a self-protective posture he adopts, but it makes holding hands difficult. Seems rude for him to just yank his hand out of hers, too, so he doesn't. He sits up after a while. She gives him a confession. She's so different now; he supposes ten years will do that to a woman. She seemed different at the fire, too.
More grown. More settled. Warmer. Stronger. That word comes back to him again and again, perhaps because a Fenrir recognizes strength above all other things. She's stronger, and she feels
so much farther away, even though she's holding his hand. So much farther away, even though she's not stiffarming him away with those low, dark laughs, those maddening whispers. There were six. Don't make her regret this.
"'m an Athro too now," he says. "While I was out challengin' fer rank most'a my pack died 'r left." It's not sudden, but words like those always seem sudden. Words like these: "The last of 'em was kind enough ta wait 'til I came back. Then he died too.
" 'Gen 'n I grew apart. Kemp died. Ya pro'lly don't know 'im. Boy was like a son to me ... one I ain't never talked to. Tribe moved on 'n tha Sept moved on 'n one day it was time fer me ta move on too. Quit pertendin' I had anythin' in common with tha Cliaths 'n Fosterns down in Chicago, or anythin' like a relationship left with my woman, or that I ain't belonged right here in tha North. A tooth in Fenris's mouth."
This has the quality of confession too. It might not even make sense to her. They know so little about each other; what they do know they know from scatters and flashes, instants of intersection across a decade. In the end none of what they tell each other really matter at all. Silence isn't sure he'll see her again after today, either. Might be best if he doesn't.
"Pro'lly best that we never talked in Chicago," he adds. A moment passes. Then he asks it anyway:
"Why ain'tcha come ta me if ya knew?"
Danicka
For that short while that Decker leans forward, Danicka still holding his hand, she has her arm outstretched. She isn't sitting with a wide gulf between them; that would be easier. Nor is she snuggled up to him, as though seeking his body's warmth to take for her own; that would be even more awkward, even more bewilering and painful. But she's near. And holding his hand seems like something she's decided to do, is going to do, is doing, so after awhile he straightens up. Throat and belly are more exposed. No one is around, though, to attack him.
It's just Danicka.
They both purge themselves. Her mother was an Ahroun. She knew who he was and that he was in Chicago. He's an Athro, too. He has lost everyone. He's just a tooth.
And Danicka understands that. A tooth in Fenris's mouth. It makes instant, indelible sense to her somehow. How different that is from what Lukas is. How different a destiny it is. How lonely, no matter how many other teeth you are crowded against, biting with. He mentions 'Gen. Mentions Kemp.
"I knew him," she says quietly, a brief interjection. "Well. I met him. Saw him with Imogen a couple of times. We went back in time together once." But she doesn't explain that, and she actually doesn't think that will shock Decker at all -- the time travel. And it doesn't interrupt him much.
The sept and tribe and the world moved on and he didn't. Not til he left. Even then it wasn't moving on so much as going back, coming back, to something else. Himself, maybe. But it sounds so sad to her. So bleak. To have heard such things about him, such glory, and now to see that none of it matters, really. In the great grand scheme of the universe, he is a tooth. One more inevitable death for the war. Not even some famous hero, really. Just another wolf, though one stronger than most and longer-lived than many. He just stopped pretending. And that, Danicka understands most of all.
He asks, then, the question they both knew was coming, the one they both knew he would ask first. And she is watching him, staring at him as he speaks, her fingers wrapped around his hand, their thumbs crossing each other. That question makes her go still, at least inside. It makes her ache, too.
For a moment, she looks away from him, out at the water again. She could tell him so many reasons and none of them would really be lies: he was with Imogen. Her brother would kill her. She was afraid: of him, of what would happen, of what wouldn't, of hurting him. But none of them are the real reason.
"What we were looking for back then," she whispers finally, and her eyes drag slowly from the black water to his eyes, only a few shades lighter. "I found it."
Decker
For a moment she looks so sad. Not for herself. Silence is no mindreader, no facereader, but even he can see that. She's sad for him. It makes him uncomfortable in his skin; makes him twist his head on his shoulders, a slow powerful writhe.
There's a question. There's an answer. His head turns. He looks at her. Surprised, eyebrows up. Only a moment though. Then they come back down, and the look on his face is complex, shifting -- a flash of envy, or maybe disappointment; but then it settles. A sort of resignation. A sort of acceptance.
"Good," he says softly. "Glad fer ya."
He's still holding her hand. His thumb runs alongside hers, strokes a few absent times, the callouses rough. He looks down, his eyes shadowed in their orbits, the curve of his skull a clean and flawless arc.
"He good to ya? Yer boy."
Danicka
There's that ring on her finger. It was hidden before, tucked away on her hand in her pocket. It's out now, resting on her lap, an adorned twin to the one he's holding. There's a hint of rose gold at the edges of that ring, the brushed white gold outer surface. That ring bespeaks hidden things, private, sensed but not seen.
Like her sadness. He can sense it, feel it, and it makes him uncomfortable, but he can't see what's really there. Danicka is sad for them. And sad for Lukas because she doesn't think she'll ever tell him how close she came to what they have before, without truly recognizing it and without honoring it any more than she did when she met the man who is, as trite as it may seem, the love of her life. She's sad that she didn't stay longer with Decker, kiss him more, love him another time, try to get to know him. She's sad that the truth is: it's better that she didn't.
The truth is always so sad. Why else would she evade it so masterfully, for so long? The truth is agony.
Danicka almost shivers when he runs his rough thumb down the outside crest of her hand. She exhales and clenches her hand, squeezes his hand with her strength, which is eclipsed by the shadow of his. He only notices if he decides to. Danicka doesn't know if he means it, if he's lying, and she chooses not to question it, not to look deeper. That's very nearly a first for her. But all of this is already too hard.
When he asks if her 'boy' is good to her, it nearly kills her. Decker was a boy -- in a sense -- when he met her. And Lukas was a boy, in every sense, when he met her, too. Wasn't hers, though. Wasn't hers until years, years later, past Decker and past Christian and past everything and everyone else, when being called a boy would be an insult. And when he was hers, he was only hers.
Is he good to her, Decker wants to know. Or asks, a least. She can't tell if he really wants to know or if he is just making conversation. She can't tell if it will hurt him to know. But still, he asked.
Danicka gives a small nod. It isn't very different from the one she gave when Decker first spoke to her tonight, confirmed that it was her. What is there to say other than yes?
He told her he would hit her if he had to, but never on accident, and she rolled her eyes at him. He let Sam backhand her across the face because pack mattered more to him than this whore, this yellow-haired cat in heat, this slut who was just going to fuck her way through the Unbroken Circle and make a mockery of its name. He let her push him away, left her when she recanted, begged him to stay, begged him because she loved him, please, please. He frenzied and nearly killed her. Might have eaten her.
And it's all pittance. Compared to the rest. Who she's become, what she's turned into, what she has found inside of herself that was always there, but hidden, afraid to come out of the dark. The way he has held her when she's cried. The way he has laughed with her. The home he made and all the things he's done to try and make it safe, make it warm, make it good for her. All the things he has taken out of her angry, panicked past and turned good again. Oaks and magnolias. Books. Boundaries and doorways he won't cross without her invitation, not because he owes it or because she can keep him out but because that is what she needs, that is what was always missing, that is what he can give her that no one else ever has thought she deserved. Trust, when half the time even now she thinks she can hardly trust herself.
It's as though her entire life was spent in the dark, airless and terrified. Now the night is a comfort. Fear is a passing thing. And she can breathe.
"He is," she whispers, and she is holding his hand so tightly still, so very tight.
Decker
Another man, another ex-lover thrown into this unexpected interaction, might have asked that question as a politeness. As a way to fill the empty silence. Not him, though. His words are so few; like he can scarcely bear to give them up out of his mouth. Wouldn't waste them being polite.
There's this too. He asks, and she answers, and he watches her this time, watches her eyes and her mouth, looks for truth. It's there. That aches a little too, but not so much as it might have ten years ago,
the morning she left,
telling him she shouldn't stay. Couldn't.
Silence nods a little, again. He lowers his head, paws the palm of his hand over its curvature. Wraps around the back of his neck, kneads a moment. Always in motion, this one. As though the burn of his rage were a thing that needs to be fed, exercised, worked, lest it sear a hole clear through him.
"Good," he says again. And softer: "Good."
Some time goes by. No glow left in the west now. The river slips by quietly, but they're quiet enough themselves that they can hear it. After a while Silence releases her hand, but he spreads his arms along the back of the bench. It's not a rejection, or a withdrawal.
"Woulda tried to take care'a ya, y'know," he says then, low. "Woulda tried ta do right by ya. But 's pro'lly fer tha best that we never had more'n that night."
A few more moments. Then:
"I ain't never found what we was lookin' fer. Not even with 'Gen, 'n I was with that woman eight years. We had somethin'. It was good. I must'a loved her once. But it grew outta what's human in me. When I lost the last'a that I lost her too.
"Don't think 'll find ... 'it'. Don't think 'm meant ta, 'n that's all right. Know what Fenris wants from me 'n made my peace with it. But god damn if I ain't hurt a lotta people along tha way, lookin' fer what wasn't meant ta be mine."
He turns to look at her again. The wind's caught her hair. It's longer than he remembers. He doesn't have a right to brush it out of her eyes, back behind her ear. He does it anyway -- but his fingertips never touch her skin.
" 'm glad yer happy," he adds. " 'n alive."
Danicka
It feels so strange to call the man she had a one-night stand with -- when they fucked relentlessly, like they were going to die once the sun came up, like they'd die if they stopped, and when she didn't even sleep with him -- an ex-lover, but that's how Danicka is thinking of him. He knew her. He crouched beside her with his hand on her when she fainted, looking for all the world like waiting for her eyes to open was cutting his heart out of his chest, every second a new incision. He put his arms under her back in the truck, kept the springs from digging into her, but even then she knew he wasn't doing it to protect her; he probably wasn't even thinking about the springs. Just her. Just getting her closer, somehow, sealing her body more securely to his.
She knew him, too.

They are so quiet for awhile. They can hear the water moving, hear the city beyond that. They are a long way from the emptiness and stillness of the northern reaches and the unpopulated areas, where all these buildings and churches and monuments to civilization are cast aside for blank stretches of ground and small, single-story buildings with no partners for miles. Still, it's a pocket of quiet on this little island, in this little park, on this bench, between the two of them.
Danicka looks at her hands. She looks at her wedding band. No engagement ring to go with it, nothing flashy about it. Everything about that ring is understated, even the shin of it muted by brushing. She loves this ring. Many couples put rings on each other that stake some kind of a claim, that imply the presence of the partner who gave it. Hers is different. So is Lukas's. This ring is... her. It feels like a representation of who she is and not a representation of Lukas's love for her, claim on her. But no one else would see her drawn to that ring and understand. No one else would see the warm edges of the rose gold and think of how gentle she really is, what parts of her softness are not an act, how tender her strength actually is. No one else would see it and know, instantly, the beauty and delight that secrecy holds for Danicka, and love her for it.
Not even the man beside her, who came the closest, knows her so well. Could ever love her so much. She turns the ring on her finger with her thumb, because her hands are cold and the ring is loose enough to turn, turn.
And after awhile, Decker tells her quietly that he would have tried to take care of her. Not be good to her, but... take care of her, if she had been his own. She imagines he tried with Imogen. She already knows that in the end, it wasn't enough. For either of them. He says he must have loved her, like it's a dream now, like he truly can't remember what that felt like or even imagine it anymore. Danicka hears him say he lost the last of himself that was human, and strangely enough, she understands. She thinks maybe it is a form of mercy from Gaia.
Let him feel human for awhile. Let him love a woman and hurt people and have friends and pack and... some of those things. Let him learn, too, how hard they all were to keep with the rage burning in him so hot. Let him see, so that when the time came to take it all away or leave it all behind, he could accept it. He could lay it down and submit to the only thing Danicka imagines he's ever submitted to in his life.
She looks at him as he goes on. He never would have surrendered to her, or anything between them. He couldn't have, she thinks. As much as he might have tried, it isn't a part of him. He never would have belonged to her, not truly and not forever. He belongs to the war. To Eagle. To Fenris. To Gaia, the solid core of every hollow shell of a spirit that descends from her. A reverse Matryroshka doll, with the mother on the inside. Danicka licks her lips and a hair moves and then his hand is there.
It surprises her, and possibly him, that she doesn't flinch. Her eyes close, and though he doesn't touch her face she can feel his heat emanating off of his fingertips. With all the light and sight blocked out, she swears she can hear his heart beat, so she opens her eyes again.
"I'm glad you're alive," she says back to him, so quiet. Not happy. No comment on happiness. Happiness is a human thing. She thinks for awhile on whether or not to say more. What's in her heart. What she has wanted to say since he said what he did about being a tooth in Fenris's mouth.
So finally, she does. Taking a breath, Danicka does. "I was taught that kin can't enter the homelands. That our souls are smaller, or weaker, and just linger in between worlds to be reborn. In a void, or... limbo. That we weren't really part of Thunder or Fenris or Stag or anything, that our breeding was blood and nothing more. I was taught that we existed only as complements to the Garou and our souls were only as good as a wolf's claim on our bodies."
She exhales. "I was twenty-six before my mate told me the truth. And I still don't understand much of it. But I think... sometimes what we have there bleeds over into this life and we can find it here, and not just in between lives." Danicka pauses a moment there, giving a small shake of her head. "I do think I know my mate there. I think that's how I knew him when I met him here. But in the end, I don't think that's the 'it'. I think it's just... home.
"And even that -- even the home I found -- is just a shadow. Like a memory of a dream, with no images or sounds or even smells, just a... knowing." Her eyes move away for a moment, focusing elsewhere, as though even now she can sense it. "Something you know is there, right on the edge of your mind.
"I think you're meant to find it, Decker," Danicka whispers, looking to him again, "or you wouldn't have even recognized the craving. But maybe you aren't meant to find it here."
Decker
They were lovers, if only for a night. They could have been more than that. Real lovers. A couple. Mates even. In love ... at least for a while. If she hadn't run away. If he hadn't just let her go.
But he did, and she did, and though there's regret there -- for what might have been, for what might have been had -- there isn't a lot of it. She has arguably less reason to regret. She's found what she was looking for. He hasn't, but he doesn't regret it either. He meant it: he's glad for her. What he doesn't say is that he's glad for himself too. It would have been hard to let go of her. He can admit that to himself now, ten years later, ten years older and colder and stronger, the last of his humanity shorn away like filth before the offering, like wool before the sacrifice.
Fur. He's no sheep. He is a wolf, though. And he is sacrificial.
He doesn't mind that either. He came to terms with this a long, long time before, not long after he met her, long before he lost everyone else. Back when he was still trying to hold on to what ties and connections he had. To die, so that others could live: the ultimate honor and duty of a Modi.

She tries to give him some comfort. Or maybe she's just telling him what she believes. He listens to her; there's doubt in his expression. He doesn't bother to, or can't, mask it.
"Maybe," he says when she's done. Doubt's in his voice too. "I been to my Homelands. Back when I was a Cliath. Firs' Alpha of tha Eagles took me there ta clear an honor-debt, learn tha worth'a kin. Somethin' like that. Ain't nobody came lookin' fer me there. Not even all them ancestors that made me Fenrir."
Feels like it happened to someone else. It was so long ago; he was a different person then. Strange that he remembers her so clearly though. If he closes his eyes now --
he does close his eyes for a moment, a long slow blink
-- he can still see her hand clutching the handle on the door of his old blue Ford. Her nails turning white with pressure. Her head flung back with pleasure. Unafraid.
A shake of his head, short and subtle. Exhale, "Well. Maybe when I go back there after... all this shit... someone'll be waitin' there fer me." The quirk of his mouth is onesided, grim. "Who kin say, right."
He shifts restlessly. Lifts ankle over knee, rubs a spot of mud out of his shoe. Looks her way.
" 'm I gon' hear from you 'gain after this? 'r issit easier if we don't?"
Danicka
It is not in Danicka to comfort quickly, or greatly, or even very well. Her heart almost never aches for others' pain. She doesn't imagine pain where it isn't just so that she can reach out and hold someone's hand. So it's unlike that she tells Decker what she does to comfort him. She hears that he is alone now, or good as, and no comparison of their lives makes her swell with guilt or shame that she tries to alleviate by trying to make him feel better. He doesn't seem like he feels all that bad.
What she sees, looking into their past and imagining what an attempted life together might have been like, she has trouble believing that they could have been anything for very long. They might have only held each other back. Made each other weak. Resented each other for all those nights they would spend in each other's arms trying to capture something that was just out of reach for them. Grown apart, bitterly. Lost each other, far more painfully than they did. Than they have.
He speaks of no one coming to find him in the homelands when he went. She doesn't argue with him. What she believes, he doesn't need to. What she really meant, he may find out. Home isn't just another soul.
Danicka thinks, looking at him now, feeling his rage, that maybe he will find what they sought in those last raging moments of this life, staring into death and knowing straight down to the marrow, that he will not come back from it. She wonders if then he will see. She wonders if death is home for him.
Apocalypse. Ragnarok. Born to die.
Decker thinks of her hand grasping the handle of his truck door, moaning as she came. The memory that sticks in Danicka's mind most firmly, most clearly, is that moment right before she lost consciousness. His voice in her ear, growling and gasping, one arm locked around her upper body, the other on her hip, reaching for her cunt, pulling her more firmly onto his cock all over again when she hadn't even caught her breath. She passed out because she was exhausted. But really: she passed out because she was so aroused she couldn't bear it.
So Danicka swallows, and clears her throat quietly, glancing away and aside, because the thought comes unbidden and is usually followed by others: the way he looked when he would stare at her as he stroked himself off, the fold of his arms under her back when he was on top of her, the lazy drape of her leg over his middle when he run his hand up her calf, followed her body with his eyes til he looked at her and asked if she wanted to go again.
It's different than the memory of Lukas, sweat sheened on his skin, asking as though he didn't care, as though she was nothing to him, how many more times he got to fuck her before she left him. That turned her on, too. Even if she couldn't see through him then, even if she didn't know how he would have fucked her all night and well into dawn if it would have meant she wouldn't just get up and walk away. Even if he was so crude, so cold, stiffarming her away: he muttered as he pulled her to him, I've waited long enough.
Different memories. Very different men. Neither of them men, at all.
Her eyes come back to Decker, slowly. And he asks what he does. Her eyes deepen in color for a moment, and her mouth tightens, the corners stretching into a small, sad smile. "My mate's a full moon, too. I don't think it would end well for any of us if I had you over for game night."
The mirth dies quickly -- it was never very strong to begin with. The smile fades with it, small and fragile as it was. "I don't think you want to hear when I have chidren. And I don't think there will be anyone to tell me when you die."
Decker
Danicka never really answers that question outright. She softens that impact: tells him the context, suggests to him the eventualities. Never really says it, even though he hears it anyway, sees it in his mind like a note passed back with a box checked:
No.
She's done this to another Modi, too. Given out this sort of sad, gentle rejection. That one was years older than the Decker Danicka first met in New Orleans, but that one was a boy still, and she was only sad and gentle on the surface. She was only sad and gentle because she was afraid, on some level, of what he might do if she wasn't.
She doesn't seem particularly afraid of retribution from this Modi. Which is odd, because he is a monster. He burns with rage. He lives for war. There are Garou who cannot hold his gaze for long. There are Garou who wouldn't dare deny him like this, because
what might he do.

What Silence does is this: he accepts it. He doesn't even seem surprised. Faint huff of a laugh under his breath: another full-moon.
"Yeah okay."
And he doesn't make the obvious quip about 'types' and 'preferences'. He knows it's not that. Could see it when she said it, plain and simple and painfully clear:
I found what we were looking for.
And even so.
Even so -- that flash of a memory, her hand on his door handle. Her body beneath his. All fours, her elbows almost buckling when he entered her. That look in her eyes a moment ago. Just for a second. Just a second, when she remembered too.
The laughs fades. He draws another breath, slow and easy. Then he looks at her.
"Wanna go someplace with me, anyway?"
Danicka
Most kin cannot bear Decker's presence for long. Many Garou don't look him in the eye. Danicka even avoided it for stretches when she met him a decade ago. She's older now. She all but pulses with strength the way he pulses with rage. It's such a warm, living thing in her, that resolve. It comes from a different place than resistance, than defiance. And when she looks him in the eyes now, and when she smiles and when she aches and when she tries to explain that yes, it's easier if they don't try to reach out to each other again.
She isn't afraid, telling him no like this, that he will make her want him anyway. She doesn't think he'll look her hard in the eye and draw her to him, just to have her one more time. She knows he won't do it to humiliate her, use her, only to whisper in her ear a moment later that that's how I feel every time I look at you. He isn't Sam. He's worlds away.
Truth is, he's worlds away from Lukas, too. Lukas would never, ever ask her what Decker does now. Danicka looks at him quickly, though not sharply. She's surprised, turned still as a deer with one hoof raised. For a moment it doesn't seem like she breathes. But then she exhales, and she closes her lips where they've parted and licks them, swallows moisture to wet her mouth.
Looks away. But that isn't an answer. Not really, because she says:
"Yes."
It's a whisper. Because for one moment her mind is giving her heartbeat-quick flashes of Decker on top of her, all that strength in him thrusting heavy and rough into her, and it startles her how well she remembers the cadence of his breathing, the panting, the way he groans, his brow tight with pleasure, when he comes. But the next moment...
Walking over here, she was thinking of Lukas. Changing her flight because she misses him so badly. She thinks if she doesn't smell him soon, if she doesn't feel his arms around her soon, if he doesn't give her one of those tight hugs that pull her heels from the earth, if she can't put her fingers in that thick black hair of his, she's going to cry. Decker doesn't even know what láska means. Nor moje.
Her eyes come back to Decker, and they're sad. It's different. It's for different reasons now, too, harder to puzzle out. "But he has so much... joy in his eyes when he sees me. No one's ever looked at me like that." There it is, in that one harsh and yet unalterable truth. That's where that sadness comes from. That loneliness that even Decker could sense when he met her all those years ago. So isolated. So singular, burning gold and hot in his memory for ten damn years. Untouchable, in some ways. Unfathomable. Unknowable.
So lonely. So very alone.
Those dark green eyes of hers are wet; she doesn't know why her emotions are so high, so intense, as livid as a watercolor in the rain. She takes a shaky breath and exhales it.
"If I went with you, I'd tell him. He might even forgive me. But he wouldn't look at me like that for a long time. Maybe not ever again." She looks down at her hands, twisting together, her fingertips pulling at her own knuckles as though to loosen something that has knotted up in her very bones. "And if I lied to him, what does that make me?"
Danicka looks at him, stares at him, harder than she is at heart. "A part of me wants to take you somewhere. But I'm willing to let you go. Not him."
Decker
Maybe they both surprise themselves. Maybe he doesn't surprise her, asking her what he does. Asked her to go somewhere with him within ten minutes of meeting her, after all. For all she knows he propositions everyone he meets. Or maybe every kin he meets. Or every purebred kin. Or maybe just her.
Here's the truth: Danicka's far from the only one night stand he's had. For a long time one night stands were all he had. For a long time, even with Imogen, it felt like a one night stand every time.
Here's the truth: Danicka's the only one he's remembered. Months later. Years later. When he sold the truck. When he saw sunlight hit blonde hair a certain way. When he saw a woman at a Chicago bonfire that made him think of a girl at a party in New Orleans...
And here, too, is the truth: he's never propositioned a mated kinswoman before. Never, not once. Silence is not made for love, is not made for tender things, is not made for devotion. Was never made for mateship. But he understands it. He must, or he wouldn't have recognized something so close to it when he found it. He must, or he wouldn't have kept looking, wouldn't have felt himself tempted again and again and again all through those seven, eight years with Imogen.
He must, or he wouldn't respect it. He wouldn't instinctively avoid the claim he couldn't stake. He wouldn't instinctively understand what a sin it is, what an unforgivable thing it is, to try to take her from the one who belongs to her.

It doesn't surprise him that she refuses him. It surprises him that he asks. It surprises him
that she admits that a part of her wants to.
But then this: I'm willing to let you go. Not him. And it stings just a little to hear that, hurts even though he already heard it between her words, in the actions, ten years ago when she didn't even quite remember Lukas existed. It seems to hurt her more to say it. Silence surprises himself again: he reaches out, he wraps a heavy arm around her shoulders and pulls her roughly against his side. Turns to press a kiss to the crown of her head. It's fierce, but then everything about him is fierce. It's protective, and very little about him is protective.
He is nothing like her mate. He is ice and lightning and burning cold. He is a brute, and he is a weapon, and there is almost nothing of tenderness or gentleness left in him. But still there's this: he would have loved her. He would have tried, as long as he could.
Danicka
What doesn't surprise her -- what should, maybe, if only she knew him better -- is that he asks. Truth be told, Danicka can't and doesn't fault Decker for that. One night. Four times. In the great grand scheme of things, how could that be enough? Even ten years ago she asked herself week ever week how she could have left so soon. Nothing else she was finding was satisfying her. Not really.
The sad truth is that he couldn't have, either. As close as he came, now that she's found it, he would never be enough. She tells him that truth, though: him, she's willing to let go. Even if it hurts. Even if it aches. Even if she mourns him, misses him, even if it twists a knife in her that no one is going to come find her, tell her when he's gone, even if she knows now that they won't end up in the same homelands, they won't meet each other again in either lifetime,
she knows she'll live through it. Danicka is certain of this, just as certain as she is that losing Lukas -- like this, losing him by letting go of what matters between them -- would kill something in her. Something important. Something vital to who she has become.
But she doesn't blame him for asking. Or for wanting. She would have been surprised if he didn't.

Of course it hurts when she says it. She knows it will and in a way, that itself is a mercy. So he has no doubt to linger in him, so he has no wound kept open. Clean. She remembers this from when Lukas all but tore it out of her, forcing her to tell Sam not just
I want him
but the other part, the just-as-important part, the brutal part that led to an Ahroun's hand across her face, spitting at her that she was a lying pig,
and I don't want you.
It hurt Sam to hear that. He denied it. He convinced himself in an instant that she had played him, that it was some sort of epic game on her part, that it couldn't just be that she didn't want him. That there might be a reason for it that had anything to do with him. It had to be her. It had to be something wrong with Danicka, if she wanted Lukas and not Sam. If she fucked someone she didn't want to end up with. Danicka knows this, and remembers it, and hates Sam, and resented and did not trust Lukas for a long time because he let Sam do that.
But she also knows this: she had to tell him that. It didn't stop Sam from pining, or chasing, or pretending they could be friends, or stalking her through parks and to her apartment. But she had to say it.
I want him. And I don't want you.
She says it to Decker now, too. She could say it to any man, any woman who wanted her. It has been true since long before the words first left her mouth: she wants Lukas. She doesn't want anyone else. It hurts to hear that. It hurts her to say it. It hurts to lose Decker. It hurts, too, when he reaches for her.

Rough and sudden, he hauls her against his side, pulls her close and kisses the top of her head. Her hair smells like rosemary and mint, hotel shampoo, oatmeal and vanilla soap on her skin. Danicka closes her eyes and she leans into it. She lets herself turn her head to him and curl into that fierce, abrupt embrace. Oh, it stings. It twists in her, the edges of that knife proving themselves serated and silvered. She lets out a harsh breath, and though everything else around him and on him has changed, some element of his smell is shockingly familiar.
And suddenly it is not so easy to let him go. She shakes her head against his side, breathes in raggedly, feels those dizzying swells and drops of emotion like she is riding a life raft over deepest waters. And she lifts her head, looking at him.
"Let's get coffee. Or something to eat. Or just sit here. I want to talk to you. I'm leaving tomorrow," though she hasn't changed her flight yet, still needs to, "and going home, but I want you to tell me who you are and what you've done and I want to tell you, too." Danicka takes a deep breath, exhaling: "I just want to know you before you're gone."
Decker
He knows better than try to convince her to change her mind. Don't go. Stay. Be with him tonight, and every night thereafter. Or if she couldn't give him that -- then at least don't remove herself so utterly. Visit. Call. Write to him.
He knows better. He has more honor than that; more importantly, he's smarter than to fool himself like that. To badger her like that. Besides; he doesn't even have a cell phone these days. How would she call? Who would she write, when he was in a different city every week?
Time passes; people change. And time circles back on itself. He ends so very close to where he began
( -- and for the first time, knows it.)

This, though. What she asks, and offers. This is possible. Coffee, she says. Something to eat. Or just sit. Talk. He thinks a while, squinting into the darkness. That's just habit; there's no light to glare in his eyes.
Looks at her again, down the lee of his shoulder, where for a moment she still rests against him as though they really were old lovers, still familiar.
"How 'bout I show ya?" he says quietly. "Have ya got time 'nough fer that?"
Danicka
Her eyebrows lift. She's curious. She doesn't know what he means. Truthfully, she doesn't know him. Not enough to trust. Not enough to go with him into the dark without any understanding. Blind.
"I've got all night," she tells him, instead.
Decker
"Come with me," he says. Different this time: "Ta Storm Hammer. Three hours by car. Come 'n see. 'n on tha way, 'll tell ya anythin' you wanna know."
A pause. No, correction:
"On tha way we'll talk."