Ivan Press

Hilary

Left alone for the first time since that harrowing escape from the other-Fiores and that awful mist, Ivan takes her hand. Hilary startles a bit, but doesn't jerk away. She looks at their hands, then at Ivan, and tells him:

"The useless one is going to tell us when the one that's hunting - the one who said his son escaped - comes back. He says he's 'intense'." She smirks.

But it fades. And she is quiet, walking with him, as he carries their bags. Her silence turns slowly into a frown.

"How delightful," Ivan says, droll.

They walk in silence a while. That soft meadow grass runs down nearly to the lakeshore, giving way to rounded stones only in the last few yards. Their footfalls are cushioned, and as the air cools around them the trapped heat in the grass casts a soft warm around their ankles.

He glances at her in the gathering darkness, noting her frown. "What are you thinking?" he wants to know.

They are nearly at the door to the cottage Ivan has chosen. Hilary looks over at him, perhaps a bit surprised, as though she forgets that her emotions show on her face, and that other people can interpret them. Ivan, most of all.

"I want to go home," she says. "I don't want Anton to grow up alone."

She's quiet again, pensive, as they stand in the deepening darkness.

"I do not think this is... just madness," she admits, only now putting into words a slow realization she's had over the last ten or fifteen minutes. She didn't quite recognize her fear turning into something else. "If it were...it this was all in my mind? I believe it would be much worse."

That they were being observed earlier didn't stop him from touching her, reaching out to her, trying to comfort her. Now that they're alone, it's perhaps no surprise that he wraps his arm around her, pulling her closer to kiss her temple.

"It's not your madness," he says. "It's insane, but it's not you." A small pause. "I think we can get out. I have to believe that, anyway. I don't know how these people can stand it in here. If it was just like this, day after day, I'd lose my mind."

This, she permits: for him to draw her close in private, to wrap his arms around her, to hold her as he has not since before they got into the car on that long and winding and (now, she knows) doomed drive.

After a moment, she puts her hand on his lower back, too. Her arm half-heartedly encircles his body, but this is so much more than she usually gives.

"They all seem very stupid," she tells him, and it doesn't even sound like she's just being venomous. "The girl fusses over the old woman like a nurse. The useless idiot busies himself being sarcastic, but doesn't really question anything. And the one that wouldn't shut up, their leader... it is as though he has decided all of this is normal. Decades here, a private little hell, and he frets over who might be fucking." She scoffs, sounding disgusted. "Their brains have turned to mush."

He's still carrying their overnight bags. He's still got his fashionable sunglasses tucked into the collar of his fashionable shirt. It seems so strange now, so naive and absurd: their weekend plans, their private little getaway. They'd never expected a getaway quite like this. She wants to go home now. She misses her son. Truth be told, Ivan thinks he might miss his boy too. And his home. The ocean, the city, even their staff. Loyal Dmitri and dour Polina and earnest, ever-present Miron.

He huffs a faint laugh. "At least I wouldn't have to worry about who I'd fuck," he quips. "Come on. I want to get these bags off my back."

She swats him for that. But at least she opens the door for him, putting her shoulder into it because she is weak-armed little thing. "Someone must have built them," she points out, holding the door as he goes inside.

"Or something."

It's quite dark inside. This cottage is smaller than the communal one -- two rooms in total. A front room with a stove, a hearth, a table and bench, a couple armchairs. A back room with a bed, a wardrobe. The air feels undisturbed, faintly stale. A fine layer of dust coats the surfaces.

Ivan finds a box of matches atop the table; a small stub of a candle much like the one in the common cottage. After lighting the candle, he puts their bags on the bed, as though they were checking into the world's worst bed and breakfast. Coming back out, he halfheartedly goes through a couple cabinets in the kitchen, moves the bench a few inches, squeezes the back of the armchair. There's a rack for firewood by the hearth, empty. Ivan looks at it, vaguely disgruntled that whoever-whatever created this place didn't bother filling the rack.

"I suppose I'll go get some wood."

But Hilary doesn't understand the Umbra, or the Deep Umbra, or all that nonsense the old woman was talking about. She also thinks Fiore is a liar, and nothing she says can be trusted. She believes someone built these cottages, for some purpose, whether it was something forgotten or part of this strange prison built specifically for one little old woman and any fools who came after her.

She follows him inside, and lets the door close behind them. Some fading light drifts in through a window or two, but she is glad it's dark: this place looks filthy, and her skin crawls slightly. "I'm sure you love this," she mutters at Ivan, while he sets bags down, finds matches - how convenient - and lights candles. "Always talking about living like peasants in mud huts."

A shake of her head. She does not go around touching anything. She crosses her arms over her chest, and when Ivan says he's going to go get some wood, she asks:

"And... is there anything I should do?"

Reflex makes him start to laugh -- one of those faint scofflike laughs of his, anyway -- but it falls flat. He grows serious.

"I don't," he says quietly. "I want to leave as much as you do."

She asks if there's anything she should do. This, too, gives him a moment's pause. At the door he turns to look at her.

"What you're already doing," he says. "Try to figure out how we get out."

[wits (4: sharp) + enigmas (1)]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 ) Re-rolls: 1

[Some things to ponder:

1. Who's the only one who (supposedly) got out?

2. Is this a trap for Fiore? Why?

3. Who was the first to come after Fiore? Why?

Not all answers are in hand yet.]

She glances at him, when he says that. When the laughter dies in his throat. He did not tell her that he wants to go home before, or that he thinks of Anton too. But it seems in that glance that she sees it, all the same. Suspects it, at least.

Her head tips at his answer a few moments later: that she should try and figure this out. She looks thoughtful, looking away as he departs.

--

When he comes back, Hilary is sitting on the bench by the table, much as she had at the communal cottage. Her back is to the table itself, her body facing the room. Her ankles are crossed. Her hands are folded. She is staring across the room, watching the shadows cast by the flickering candle behind her.

It is hard, in that first moment, to forget that she is a mad, mad, mad, mad, mad thing. It's something in the darkness and intensity of her eyes, the hints of dark wonder in them, and the knowledge that sometimes when she is left alone, Hilary's mind goes to some disturbing places indeed.

He wasn't gone long. But there she is, her body so taut, her face numb with focus, the room so shadowy around her, and it's... unsettling.

She looks up at him a beat too late, a beat after anyone else would look up.

"I think I should speak to Aldric alone."

Ivan is only gone a matter of minutes. Just long enough to step outside, where the air has become bracingly cold, the stars overhead so searingly clear. Just long enough to step around the side of that worn little cottage, where he isn't at all surprised to find firewood stacked neatly against the stone wall. Apart from the minor details, each cottage is like the others. Everything here -- as idyllic, as quiet, as peaceful as it is -- feels just a little off. Looped, just as Bérénice had said.

He grabs a few split logs, tucks them under his arm. When he opens the door, the sight of her makes him startle. She's sitting so still, so silent. She's staring across the room so fixedly he would've thought her in a trance, checked out of her body, if not for the intensity in her eyes.

She looks at him and he looks back at her. When she speaks, he frowns faintly. Before he answers, he closes the door, dumps his armful of wood in the rack by the fireplace. It gives him time to think.

"Why?"

"Because with me alone, he will not have his guard so high as with... one of you."

Ivan hesitates; he's trying to find the right phrasing.

"All right. Just... take care what you say," he says at last. "Don't anger him. Sometimes I worry you'll get hurt."

Don't speak to this 'intense' werewolf the way you speak to most, because he might kill you.

That is what Ivan means, and there's a savvy look in Hilary's eyes that tells him she knows what he's talking about, for once.

"You shouldn't, in this place," she says, and means it as a joke though it's anything but: "I'll be like the deer."

The set of his shoulders relaxes a touch. He smiles a little, lopsidedly.

"Okay," he says softly. "When you go to talk to him, I'll stay behind."

--

It takes Ivan longer to build a fire than it had Franco. He has less practice. After all, it's something the servants usually do for him. He's still working on getting the logs to catch when there's a knock on the door, brisk.

Franco's standing outside. "Aldric's back," he says. "He's in the big house."

[OKAY I MISUNNASTOO. DLP.]

Ivan isn't the least bit amused. He frowns.

"That's not funny."

For once, Hilary simply... acquiesces. She gives a small nod.

It isn't funny.

"I will take care with my words," she tells him, and means it.

The set of his shoulders relaxes a touch. He nods, once.

--

It takes Ivan longer to build a fire than it had Franco. He has less practice. After all, it's something the servants usually do for him. He's still working on getting the logs to catch when there's a knock on the door, brisk.

Franco's standing outside. "Aldric's back," he says. "He's in the big house."

Hilary knows how to build a fire. Small ones, the sort you might build in a wood-fired stove. She hasn't done it in a very long time, though, and doesn't entirely remember, but as she watches Ivan she thinks she could do that, if she had to. She doesn't offer to help him, though. It doesn't occur to her.

Then there is a knock. Hilary and Ivan, neither one accustomed to answering their own doors, both take too long to react. But in the end it's Hilary who opens it, simply because she's closer, and gets there first. She doesn't say a word of greeting to Franco. She knows what his presence there means.

Nor does she thank him. She just nods, and looks over at Ivan, and after sharing a look with him, walks outside and closes the door behind her.

"Have a good evening," she says to Franco in French, which (especially since she does not call him a Useless Italian again) is the politest form of dismissal she can offer. With that, she heads back towards the shared cottage, the one that no one sleeps in.

Ivan remains by the fire. They both know what the knock means, and what Franco's presence means. That shared look: he holds it as long as she does, watching her as she leaves with the other Ragabash.

For his part, Franco glances over her shoulder at her mate. "He's not coming?" he wants to know, but in the end it matters little to him. Her polite little dismissal amuses him, and he gives her that mocking little bow again. "Any time, signorina."

Franco's path diverges from Hilary's at the shuttered house. Alone, she continues on to the largest cottage. Firelight flickers through the windows. The front door is unlocked.

So she strides in. She does not knock, and she does not hesitate. She swings wide the door and steps into the main room again, tall and fair, the breeze from outside shifting her hair on her shoulders for a moment.

A wave of heat rolls out the moment she opens the door. The fire in the hearth is blazing, casting bold light across the walls. The table where she and the other Garou had gathered now holds the carcass of a deer. Several arrow wounds puncture its hide, and its throat has been slashed, blood drained in the field. Its antlered head drapes off the edge of the table, eyes dull.

Aldric Iron Jaw stands with his back to the door, hulking even in the homid form to which he has been confined. His head is bald and tattooed. He wears braids in his beard. Knife in hand, he works savagely and efficiently, disemboweling the creature, working hide from flesh. Slowly but surely, what was a deer becomes meat.

"You're the newcomer?" His French is excellent, but clearly not his native language. There is an accent there, something northerly.

It takes a moment for Hilary to bother to look at the deer.

No.

No, that's not quite true.

--

The heat is there, first thing, and it washes over her face. She can almost feel it drying her skin, abrading her hair. But there is something else, almost as instantaneously noticed,

and recognized.

There is something dead inside. Something slaughtered, something cut into. Something being cut into. There is, beneath the crackle of the fire, the sound of hide being sawed through, of organs sliding against one another, hitting the table. There is the wrenching, then snapping sound of sinew being stretched, sliced, separated. There is the crack of bone as limbs are moved unceremoniously aside, out of the butcher's way.

In childhood she cut into dead things. It was just a paring knife, all she could sneak from the kitchen, and they were all small things, found things, never things she had killed. Without asking her mind to do it, her thoughts flood with memories of miniscule hearts and tiny ribcages. She remembers the stench of it, and how it was only once or twice before she found herself very excited to have found something that was still moving when she saw it, only went still a moment before she ran up to it in the woods,

and she remembers something else she thought she had forgotten: that some part of her, even then, knew this was wrong. Knew there was something strange and awful about being excited at finding that freshly dead bird, that there was something terribly sad about its death, and that her fascination with it meant something was broken, something was not working right inside of her. Hilary remembers crying over that one.

But only later, only in shame. Because in the moment, she couldn't help herself. She was so curious. She was trying so hard to understand -

--

The deer on the table is the largest dead thing she has been in a room with since she was three years old.

Its head lolls, its mouth parted, its eyes open but sightless, and there is something about the angle of it, something about the sound and smell of flesh,

and she remembers something else, too.

Someone else.

--

So this is how it seems, when one is not lost in the way Hilary is, when one cannot look into her thoughts and see and feel memories that have no names and no words to them because it was too early for her to ever name what she felt, or what it was really like. To Aldric, there is just

the door sweeping open, and this creature striding in, a wave of purity and beauty and fearlessness, a starlit meadow behind her. And she pauses for a moment, her eyes directly on him, fixed on him, unblinking for almost too long.

A brief flick of her eyes downward, after a moment, at the body becoming meat. The body that was always meat, in a way.

Then back at him.

Hilary shuts the door. "That implies I will be staying," she says, though not with arrogance. Especially not when it is followed by this: "I told my son I would return to him. So I shall."

Aldric has yet to turn from the table. So he doesn't see her. The beauty, the madness, the staggering purity of blood. None of it.

He smells the latter, though. Sense it in some indefinable, indefinite way that makes him curl back his lip, animal-like, and inhale. He keeps at what he's doing all the same. He is in the middle of a particular bit of butchery, the separation of a hindleg from a hip. What Hilary says does not seem to even register. He works steadily and precisely, though not delicately, and only when the limb has come off the animal does he answer:

"I told my son the same. I've lost track of how long ago that was."

He tosses the leg atop the table. Several dozen pounds of meat moved as easily as a drumstick, a lamb shank. Aldric wipes the blade on a patch of soft fur before slamming it point-down into the table, turning at last.

"What makes you think you'll get out when I couldn't?"

None of her mates have been Aldric's sort. No matter their moon, no matter their history, they were Silver Fangs. First. Last. Always. The refinement of their blood always, at least in her presence, was like a set of silver manacles around their rougher qualities, their rage, their spirit.

Hilary does not know this is at least one reason why the tribe is faltering, in the End Times. These pure, beautiful shackles.

--

She stares at him in a way no one not of his kind, or any beneath his rank, should stare at him. She hardly ever blinks. Ivan surely has noticed this by now. Perhaps he's even noticed that his son has the same long, dark way of staring at things. But if he were here, he would certainly notice it, and worry for her, because she should know better.

"Your son was not a wolf. Yet." She tips her head. "I am not a wolf at all."

A beat.

And then another thing to give the absent Ivan a heart attack: "Unless you were lying."

She doesn't mean to be rude.

Hilary may be nearly oblivious to the subtleties of the heart, but she is not blind. Even trapped in one form as he is, the Skald has violence in his bones. The echoes of that bloody past are etched into his skin. There's a particularly large scar, ragged-edged, that consumes a good portion of his left cheek. Once upon a time, something must have torn off half his face and failed to stop him.

When he shifts his weight, the very air in the room seems to stir with him. His eyes narrow, and his arms fold across his chest, bloodied fingers tucking under massive biceps.

"Plenty of wolves have lost their tongues or their heads for saying less to me. You'd do well to watch your words carefully, kinswoman."

There's a little glimmer of distaste across Hilary's features when he folds his bloody hands over his chest like that. So messy. So foul.

Her eyes flick back to his. She does not apologize, nor ask forgiveness. But at least she explains herself a bit: "There are secrets here. And not all of the wolves we have met since arriving are entirely forthcoming. The one who acts like a nursemaid tries to keep the old woman from telling us things. The disrespectful Italian has told us things the others did not even mention.

"It is my hope that you --" are not lying, she almost says, but he doesn't seem the sort to take that any better. So she tacks on, instead: "-- see no reason to hide things."

She pauses a moment. Her words may seem daring, but her tone is not. Her stare is a blank one, absent of challenge -- and of a great deal of what would be considered normal human emotional range. Her voice is pitched low, as close to imploring as Hilary gets with strangers. It's almost soft. "I do not mean to offend you. But I also care very little if you are offended. My son is a small child still. If there is a way back to him, I will find it. And I will use it to get my mate out of this place, as well."

A beat.

A small shrug. It isn't a manipulative effort. It's literally because she's just realizing this side benefit: "Perhaps then you could also be freed."

For a long, cold moment the Skald stares at her. His eyes are piercing; his own expression, shuttered. Many are the wolves of Fenris whose hair is flaxen, whose eyes are blue, but this one's beard is dark, his eyes pale as ice. After some time he abruptly sniffs, nostrils flaring.

The exhale is a snort. "Silver Fangs," he growls, as though this alone was sufficient was explain her strangeness, her disturbing logic: straight lines through a warped mind. "None of that was a lie. My son was not a wolf yet. And he made it out." Aldric's eyes glitter with a ferocious pride. "He is strong, my boy."

It would not be the first time someone has done exactly that: mentioned the name of her tribe with a huff, a chuff, an exasperated shake of the head. It will not be the last. But Hilary takes no offense, or considers it offensive. She has little connection to her tribe. They are all she really knows, but she has nothing more than the shallowest loyalty to them. Her loyalty is to herself, to her mate, to her cub. And it is fierce.

Her head tips. "Did he walk back through the fog? Or was there another path?"

The look on his face is complex, hard to read. A beat; then words, abrupt.

"There is only one path. We came here together to find Umbral Song-rhya. We owed her that much. We were beset by her duplicates, dozens of them, perhaps hundreds. We ran through the fog in hopes of finding a chokepoint, an ambush, somewhere we could make a stand. We found ourselves here, and we found Umbral Song.

"Three days we stayed here, gathering provisions, making weapons. Then the three of us walked out together. Umbral Song-rhya to my left, my boy to my right. Umbral Song told us she had tried to escape again and again, only to find herself turned back. I believed I could change things. I thought I would be strong enough.

"Hand in hand we walked into the fog." Aldric turns, jerking the knife out of the table, returning to his kill. "When it cleared my boy was gone. Umbral Song and I were still here, trapped. I never even felt his hand leave mine."

Oddly, this is the part where Hilary understands him best. When his face is challenging, when he speaks in clipped approximations of sentences, relaying mostly facts and little else, until he gets closer to the end.

Hilary understands the way things rise inside of you. How they choke. How they threaten to pull you under completely. She recognizes it.

It's just that most people would... care. They would ache for Aldric, and his loss, and the entrapment of his soul and the souls of the wolves around him. Or at very least they might put themselves in someone else's shoes for a moment and imagine how awful they'd feel, if it were them. And of course a mother, longing to ensure that she will see her son again, might feel some pang of sympathy for Aldric, so long apart from his own.

Hilary notices. Recognizes. Even understands.

But there's simply no pity in her. Not for him. Not for most.

--

And then there are her bright black eyes, flicking here and there, sneaking glances at the dead stag, darting quickly to Aldric when he says certain words. Otherwise she sits very still, uncannily so, as focused and motionless as she was when Ivan found her in the cottage.

Finally, as he is turning around, she asks:

"Why did you owe her?"

The answer should be obvious, to anyone who understands the honor of Garou, the honor given to the Elders.

So of course Hilary doesn't think it's obvious.

A stony silence, punctuated only by the soft susurrance of knife through flesh.

At last, "Is it your habit to pry into others' business?"

A slow blink. Slow as an animal who, having observed something making noise, has determined that it is not a threat, and is returning to sleep.

"No. But it may help me find a way out," and she stops herself there, before telling him what she thinks of his privacy, under current circumstances.

A dismissive flash of the knife before it plunges back to its work. "You have your way out. If you're right, this realm will no more hold you than it did my son. If it's your mate you want, perhaps he'll be free to go too. He has nothing to do with any of this."

Hilary hasn't moved, though he is rather summarily dismissing her. Her hands remain folded before her.

"Any of what?"

The knife slams into the table. Aldric wheels around, his temper abruptly shredded.

"All this," he snarls. "Our lives. Our problems. Our relationships. It has nothing to do with you, kinswoman. Take your nose out of it and get out."

She doesn't flinch, but she does blink. Not quite as slowly as before, but not as fast as she should, if the correct pathways in her brain were lighting up the way they're supposed to. Her heart rate has increased slightly, too, but not enough. Not like a normal person's. Not the way they need to, for the sake of primal survival.

Her head cocks. Her brow furrows a bit. "Why won't you tell me? You are trapped forever here, killing the same animal for the same meat over and over and over. What do any of your secrets matter anymore? Does keeping them make you feel as though you aren't going mad?"

For the most part, she only sounds curious. A trifle bewildered by his behavior. At the end, she almost sounds sympathetic.

Aldric's jaw tightens, as do his fists. They are perhaps both conscious of the bloody knife in his hand. Or perhaps only he thinks of it. What it can do. How quickly his torment by this strange, fearless woman could end.

Might end. Or perhaps she was right. Perhaps she would only return, again and again, to drive him mad with her questions.

"You are a mother," he says at last, low. "You have a son. Would you not do anything for him? Bear any pain, suffer any torment?"

Only he thinks of the knife. Hilary can't imagine he'd be daft enough to try and kill her. Hilary thinks she probably would miraculously come back to life in this bizarre place. Hilary also is only selectively concerned with her own survival. That concern is often misplaced, timed poorly, and comes and goes based on some inner barometer of danger that is not always related to the presence of real or imagined threat.

So she just keeps looking at him while he gets more tense, waiting for an answer because - of course - her questions were sincere. Why on earth is he being so secretive? What benefit is there to it?

Again, he sees how strange she is, what a mad little thing: his question makes her pause. She first has to try and understand that he is not answering her, which is slightly offensive and rude in her mind. Then she has to process what he is asking. And then... she thinks about it. Would she do anything for Anton? What threat to him would make her submit to torture, for his sake?

Her eyes briefly fall on Aldric's bloody knife, and return to his ferocious eyes.

"I am a very bad mother," she tells him. "I do not think my son knows what he means to me. I am terrible at loving him. I do not always like being a mother, or his mother." There's a small pause. In her voice there's no remorse, no shame, no embarrassment or guilt, even. There should be. She's not confessing. She's just giving him context: this is reality. She is not a good mother, and she's awful at loving her own child.

"But for his sake, I would let you butcher me like that deer, and it would not seem an unfair bargain."

Something flickers in Aldric's eyes. He looks disturbed; repulsed. He looks away, long enough to pull the knife out of the table and lay it on its side, less threatening, less intrusive.

"Then you understand why I won't tell you," he says. "It involves my son. It affects him. Wherever he is, I will not risk harm to him. I'd rather rot here for all eternity."

Bizarrely, selfish though she is, Hilary does understand. She nods.

"What is his name? And where is your sept?"

"The boy's name is Wulfric," answers the Skald. "The Sept lies hidden amongst the peaks. The road that took you here leads to one of its entrances, but you will not be able to find it yourself. The Guardians will find you, though.

"Why do you ask? What do you intend?"

[puzzling things out: wits (4: sharp) + enigmas (1)]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

[1. What sort of secret might affect his son if it got out of the meadow-realm?

2. Why is Aldric so sure Hilary would escape if his son escaped?]

To the information he gives her, Hilary gives only a short nod. And then she moves to leave, not because she isn't aware that pleasantries are usually exchanged when one is departing a conversation, but because she assumes a wolf butchering a deer on a dining table likely does not care about such things. She's always been relatively good at faking normalcy in polite society, but Aldric certainly wouldn't count as such.

But then she pauses, as he asks her why she wants to know.

"Well, that's where I'm going when I get out," she says, as though this should have been obvious.

"Kinswoman, wait."

Aldric swings that severed leg off the table and follows her across the room. It is possible no one has ever in her life tried to hand Hilary a dismembered leg of deer before this. Blood is still dripping from the cut end.

"For your evening meal," he says. "And if you should see my son... tell him his father thinks often and proudly of him."

She waits. Her hands unfold and rest at her sides. She frowns when he comes nearer, especially with that awful leg.

So he offers it, then, which is the last thing she expected. And Hilary recoils. It's only partly disgust; fear flashes in her eyes that should have been there as a reaction to any number of moments between herself and the wolf before her. Her hands tighten into fists at her sides, anxious for self-control, but her shoulders are tense, risen towards her ears, and stay that way. It's bizarre behavior; it didn't bother her very much to see him butchering it. Yet it disturbs her now, somehow.

"I will... ask Ivan to fetch it," she says, exhaling, but not relaxing. To his request, though: she nods. "Of course." If she remembers.

She'll mean to, at least.

Hilary backs away a few steps, and then heads quickly for the door, and the night-drenched meadow beyond.

With the common cottage's door closed firmly behind her, between her fragile body and the deer's broken body and the wolf's enraged body, Hilary pauses a moment. She feels as though she is about to step onto a stage; she remembers the feeling, the tightness between her shoulderblades, the anxiety not that she would be mocked, but that she would forget something, that the perfection achieved in practice would abandon her somehow, and she would create something flawed that should have been so beautiful.

And with that in mind, she exhales. She gently forces her shoulders down and unclenches her spine. She feels the tall meadow grasses against her uncovered ankles, and she walks towards the small cottage she is sharing with Ivan the way she would walk onto a stage: toes before heels, almost as silent as her mate. The stretch forward of her leg brings on a muscle memory not just from ten or more years in the past but just a day or two before, when she was in her little studio, listening to the music she had chosen, listening to her own footfalls on the studio floor, listening beyond that to the waves from the shore of Nice, which are strangely similar to the sound of grasses rustling as she passes through them.

Hilary takes a few moments to dance in the spaces between one cottage higher on the hill and another cottage, lower. She does not perform any grand leaps or twirls, as it is dark and in the starlight and through the long grass she would never see a hillock of dirt or a tangle of old roots or a small rodent's burrow-hole. But she does dance, her entire body elongating with the movement, her ribs expanding, her arms flowing through the air. The tea-length skirt she chose for their picnic this morning does spin around her calves when she does a gentle turn. For a moment she holds a pose, a side-bend so delicately arched that her body resembles a crescent moon. In that moment, it is hard to believe she will not, in a moment, surrender utterly to gravity, and fall.

But no: she swings one long, straight leg out in an arc, her foot landing lightly, a pittance offering to the inexorable downward pull of the earth. And when that foot lands, she is walking again, nothing more, exiting a dance of no more than thirty seconds or so as though it was a stroll.

--

She comes inside and tells Ivan:

"He wants to give us a leg. Go get it from him."

It might sound like an order, given imperiously, but Hilary says it almost awkwardly: an obvious thing to do, but one she thinks Ivan may not get if she doesn't say it. She also does not want to spend much time thinking about the butchered, bloody leg, or the creature it came from, or what she was thinking about when she first looked at the corpse.

Ivan goes.

Ivan returns.

Hilary is sitting down. Not staring, this time. Just sitting down, looking

rather tired.

There is no audience.

No one witnesses that strange, graceful moment in time. No one sees the breathtaking shapes her body is capable of, the gravity-defying snapshots in time. No voyeur peeks from a cottage or a window, and even if they had, it is possible they wouldn't see her in the darkness.

There is no moon in this world. There was a sun, or a facsimile of one, but no moon -- crescent, full or otherwise -- has risen to take its place. The meadow-grass is faintly sweet-scented, though, and the fragrance of wildflowers is on the air. If one forgets that one is in prison, one might almost want to stay here.

--

Ivan is sharpening his knives when she comes back. It has been a very long time since she has seen him handle them. Perhaps not since that night in Grant Park so long ago. Certainly she has never seen him taking care of his weapons, gliding the edges across a whetstone he has found ... somewhere. In one of those cabinets, perhaps. He looks up as she enters, setting the knives down at once, coming across the small room to her.

Only to be ordered to pick up meat. He pauses, bemused. Then he goes.

Later, returning, the butchered limb carried over his shoulder like a bat. He has no idea how they'll eat it. Perhaps he'll saw a piece off and pan-sear it. He doubts she'll want to cook.

He doesn't want her to cook. She looks tired. He puts the meat down on the counter and washes his hands. Then he locks the door, closes the curtains. He comes to her, standing before her a moment, observing her. Then, wordlessly, he runs his hands through her hair. Steps into her, drawing her forward against him, cradling her head and her shoulders against his body.

Her eyes close at the contact. It's not startling. It doesn't even seem unexpected, though until he does it she had not considered that he would. There is something familiar and right-seeming about his hand moving through her hair like that, stroking her like some pet he's incredibly fond of. The comparison, the idea of that, does not disturb her. And she doesn't resist when he pulls her close. She rests her head against his body, feels his abdomen beneath his thin shirt, and breathes in deeply. She holds that breath a moment, living in his scent and his warmth and the press of air in her lungs, before she exhales.

Then she looks up at him, her eyes gleaming, reflecting firelight from the hearth.

"I think I should leave in the morning," she tells him.

Her hair between his fingers is cool from the night, sleek as water. He pauses only a fraction of a second when she speaks, the faintest of lines appearing and fading between his eyebrows.

"Okay," he whispers. "If you get out, you have to be careful. If you see those crones again, run. Come back here if you have to."

Hilary nods, and doesn't argue. Truth be told, she thought he might try to stop her, and then she would have to explain to him her reasoning, which she only half understands.

"I will come back here, one way or another," she promises him.

"You shouldn't."

That's what that flicker of a wince had meant. A more perceptive woman, a more empathetic woman might have caught it. For Hilary, human expressions are as alien as a hieroglyph, a rune.

"You should go home to Anton. One of us should."

"Don't be stupid," she tells him. "I'm either going to find out how to get you out as well, or...or I'll bring Anton and the others here." She scowls at him, saying it like a threat; he's so stupid.

"Hilary," Ivan looks genuinely shocked. He takes her face between his hands, looks her right in the eyes. "You can't do that. You can't. Anton cannot come here. Do you understand? Even if he doesn't die at the hands of those crones outside, he cannot grow up in here.

"If you get out, I want you to go home. I can't make you do anything, but that's what I want. I can find my own way out. I don't want you coming back here."

Hilary is tired, or she'd flap her hands and swat his off her face. She is tired, though, so she just goes on scowling at him. It's in her to argue, to threaten, to bluster, to defy just to defy, but then

she sighs. She reaches up and puts her hands on his wrists and gently moves them downward. Doesn't let go.

"I am not going to bring Anton here," she tells him, with what passes in Hilary's world for tones of reassurance - though there is a lingering trace of rebuke, too, because Ivan is so stupid. Of course she isn't going to bring her son here, and all their servants, and doom him to live out his life in a place so hellish she thought for a moment that her last madness had finally taken her.

"And I will not leave him alone," Hilary adds, quieter. This, she almost sounds guilty about. She certainly looks troubled by saying it aloud. And why wouldn't she? There has always been a fear in her of loving one of them more than the other, choosing one of them over the other, and somehow losing them both. It's what happened to her mother. It's what she thought might happen, when she looked at Anton for the first time and realized that he was Ivan's, and that she loved him with all her breath, all her being, so much it made her bones tighten and ache inside of her.

Her hands hold Ivan's, though.

"But I do not want to think about that. Not yet." She takes a breath, straightening her back, and exhales. "Tomorrow I am going to leave, but I am not going home. I am going to find the sept, and Aldric's son, and find out what he - or others there - may know. I want to find a way to free you."

Her eyes hold his, too.

"If I can't, I will still come back to say goodbye." Before he can interrupt again, she reaches up, putting her fingertips on his mouth. "If you argue, I will slap you. I am very upset, it has been a thoroughly trying day, and I have not eaten since breakfast. I swear to god, Ivan, I will slap you silly."

Perhaps it says something that he takes her idle threat for actual intent. Perhaps it says something that, confronted with this strange world, her first thought was that she had finally lost her mind entirely.

Hilary is not stable. She's not right. They both know that. Perhaps it says something too that he still adores her so. Perhaps it says something that, in spite of that staggering burden, she is still capable of so much.

He is not about to interrupt when she hushes him. He is aching: at the thought of separating from her forever. At the thought of her returning only to say goodbye. He hasn't the breath to interrupt her then, but she thinks he will fight her, and she is so vexed by that that he -- despite it all -- finds himself amused. It helps. It quells the sudden pain; makes it tolerable again.

And he takes her hand in his, gently, laughing under his breath. Her fingertips fall to his chest instead, warmed under his palm. He kisses her spontaneously, impulsively, nevermind that she has threatened to slap him silly. It deepens after a moment. When they part, he is no longer smiling.

"I'm not going to argue," he says softly. "But I'm going to miss you."

She doesn't slap him for kissing her, though. Kissing her is permissable - even desired, given the way she kisses him back.

But it changes, after the first moment or two. It becomes heavier. Her hand leaves his chest and she touches his face, holding him there as that kiss lengthens, and deepens, and becomes something else.

He is not smiling when they part. She has a wrinkle between her brows that is not weariness, or hunger, or vexation.

"I can't think about that yet," she whispers back to him, though it's clear she already is.

"So don't," he answers, as though it were just so easy.

It's never so easy. They're both thinking of it now. He doesn't know how she thinks of it, but to him it is all but an inevitability. He tries to picture it: parting from her beneath the dazzling sky outside, in the shadow of those towering peaks. He tries to imagine his life without her, which in and of itself seems incomprehensible. The rest of it he can barely stand to fathom: a life, perhaps an eternity, confined in this place where nothing changes. Where everything loops. He thinks he'll probably lose his mind. He thinks he might try to kill the others before long, or himself. He wonders if he'll come back the way the deer does, but it's too terrible to imagine.

So he doesn't. It is that easy. It is that easy when he can look at her; when her skin is smooth and cool to his touch, her mouth far warmer. He kisses her again, stepping into her this time, their elegant bodies pressing together. He doesn't know she danced beneath this alien sky, either. He does know she dances, though. Sees her sometimes moving from her little cabin to her little studio. Joins her there, occasionally, just to watch.

His hands on her waist, he pauses for breath. Firelight alone lights the room. There's no electricity here, no cell phone coverage, no internet. There's nothing here but the two of them. As far as he's concerned, everything else may as well be empty.

"Do you want to?" he whispers. "We don't have to."

So don't.

And she doesn't. She doesn't contemplate any of it.

But this is what it would be: leaving this place, alone. Finding a way back down the mountain on her own, and going back to the villa. Summoning Dmitri and telling him what has happened, and everything he would have to do to Fix It: the calls to Ivan's parents, the coordination with Max regarding funds and then tentatively asking Hilary what to do about various assets, finding out whether or not Ivan ever though to provide for his family legally when he and Hilary still had never married. Telling Anton that his father is never, ever coming back, even though he isn't dead. Never having a brother or sister for him. He'll be even more alone in the world than she was afraid he would be.

Then the first night, of thousands of nights. Nights of empty beds: her cottage, the villa, his loft. And the long, interminable days, even emptier.

She cannot fathom what she would do. Killing herself would not be a permissable option. Nor is she the sort of woman who finds strength in adversity; she would never be some kind of war widow, marching along for the sake of her children or the memory of her mate. If it comes to it that she has to think about these things, she will, and there is no telling what it will do to her.

So don't, Ivan says.

Hilary doesn't.

--

He is looking at her. Some of the burden and pain is missing from his face now. She follows the softening of his features as his thoughts move away from the things he is telling himself not to think about. She sees the first glimmer of it in his eyes, and at the corner of his mouth, a change in his regard that she has seen hundreds of times by now. She knows he is about to kiss her again; she lifts her chin a fraction of an inch, just a fraction of a second before his mouth touches hers. And she doesn't resist when he pulls her to her feet, moving into her, pressing against her. She only kisses him back, feeling his hands move down her body, cup around her waist, rest on her hips.

Is watching him, when he parts. Tilts her head, at what he says.

"Feed me," she tells him, "and then you can fuck me."

Once again Ivan can't help but breath a laugh. It's such a simple, primitive equation; a pact from the dawn of time. Feed me, and then you can fuck me. Provide for me, and you can be my mate. Even Ivan, creature of the hypermodern world that he is, can understand that.

His hands leave her body. He catches her fingers in his, though, and brings her hands to his mouth. He kisses those fingertips that had hushed him not so long ago. That made him smile, too. Never let it be said she only brings misery into his life. The truth is she makes him happy quite often. Strange; he'd never thought of it that way before.

"Stay by the fire," he says. "I'll bring dinner over when it's ready."

Hilary

So very many people, even someone like Ivan, might slow down when they reach a place of such lovely serenity. They would want to see it: the tall green-gold grasses, the dots of wildflowers, the fluttering butterflys and dancing bees, the mirror-finish water. Even in a near-panic, as they are, someone else would look. Some part of them would see the beauty, recognize it, take half a second to appreciate it.

Hilary drives until the car stops. She does not look around in wonder or even bewilderment. They are through the fog and she can see now. They are, as far as she can tell, not being chased by those terrible old women anymore. So she will keep driving, not taking much note of the time jump, only looking frustrated when the car sputters, slows, stops dead. She stomps on the gas pedal angrily then, then glowers at Ivan as though it's his fault it won't start.

Which isn't what she's thinking, or how she feels at all. It's just that nothing is going the way it should, and she is very upset.

Perhaps it's for the best that Ivan doesn't realize he's being glowered at. He stares through the windshield in open wonder. They are not where they were. Time has changed. Space has changed too -- those mountains, though just as tall, just as sudden, just as snow-capped and snow-draped, are not the same as the ones they were in just moments before.

Birds call from the tops of swaying pines. A gentle wind rustles through needles. After a silence, Ivan opens his door and steps out, his feet finding soft earth beneath pliant grass.

He doesn't even do her the courtesy of noticing that she is looking at him, and Hilary huffs. She looks at the dash again. It's pointless, but she puts the car in park anyway. She unbuckles her seatbelt.

And then she gets out of the car. It so happens that Ivan is doing the same thing at the same time, but they perform these decisions separately, each one choosing the risk even if they are alone.

Two car doors shut tidily behind them. Hilary, in low flats, feels the grass tickling the sides of her feet. She looks down, and swishes her foot back and forth for a moment, idle. Then she turns to Ivan.

"Does this look familiar to you?" she wants to know.

He is a New Moon after all. No matter how jaded he is, curiosity and exploration is a part of his soul. In the time she takes to investigate the grass, he has wandered forward a few steps, keen and alert, senses wide open. When she speaks, he turns back to her. The beauty of their surroundings enhances their own. He is lambent and golden, even bloody and ragged. He sees her loveliness too; always does, but is struck anew by it, his eyes widening, pupils dilating.

He comes back. Takes her hand. "No," he answers, simple and truthful. "I don't know where we are. But we're certainly not where we were."

The road that brought them here has not vanished. It is still there, winding into that thick fog. He looks that way a moment. No terrible old woman stumbles slowly through. They are, for the moment, safe.

There is, of course, a side of her that belongs here: some ancient-seeming place, untouched by modernity and all that silliness. But there's a contrast, too. She is so dark, so cold, and this place is not. She belongs here and she does not. She looks the part and yet something is off. She is still, but she is not at ease.

Does not move when Ivan comes nearer. Hesitates, because her arms are crossed over her chest, but gives him her hand when he holds out his own. Eventually. His answer does not satisfy nor comfort her. She looks over at the cottages with their slanted roofs, suspicious.

"I don't like fairy stories."

This, both out of nowhere and the most appropriate thing she could possibly say.

He huffs a laugh, wry. "I don't think we're in a fairytale," he says. "Perhaps a wolf's tale, though.

"Come on." He tugs her hand gently, but firmly. When her eyes refocus on his, he's looking right at her. "Let's get our things from the car. We'll have to leave it here. Unless you're inclined to try our luck with those crones, I suggest we look for another way out of here."

"I know that," she says, her voice tight, talking while he mentions they might be in a wolf's tale. "I'm only saying I don't like this type of story."

Her eyes, normally dark as coal, are somehow blazing when she tells him that. Lets go of his hand, though it isn't really anger that makes her do so. It's that rawness to her, that tension, as though she is collapsing in on herself, starting at her core, dragging everything else inward with an intractable and ravenous gravity.

She only has one thing in the car: her little purse, which she picks up. She frowns at the Ferrari, then at Ivan. "I'm going to ask whomever is in those houses," she informs him, and begins heading that direction with an alarmingly purposeful gait.

Well, actually, Hilary also has an overnight bag. But of course she is not aware of this, because servants packed it for her, and servants loaded it for her, and now in the absence of a servant or a bellhop Ivan is the one who pulls it out of the trunk. There is a second one for him. He slings them both over his shoulders, one on each side, leaving his hands free for other things. Like knives.

By then Hilary and her sudden sense of purpose are quite some distance ahead. The wildgrass grows past her knees, bending easily to allow her passage. Those small cottages she approaches are clustered at the near shore of the lake. A sense of antiquity hangs over the tiny settlement. The tiles on the roofs are weatherworn, the stones in the walls faded with time. The cottages are clearly occupied, though. As she approaches, she can see smoke curling from one of the chimneys, firelight through the windows. Someone is chopping wood behind one of them; she can hear it, the sharp hollow crack!-thud of logs splitting.

Out of the blue, a sudden thrum; a concussing thud at her feet. In the gathering evening shadows, it takes a moment to spot the arrowshaft amidst the grass.

"Non un ulteriore passo avanti," an unseen voice shouts. "Tu chi sei?"

["Not another step. Who are you?"]

Of course she forgets about the bag. It was never her job to be involved with the bag unless she momentarily had a whim to be involved with it. So it's Ivan's problem. She doesn't even notice what he's up to, carrying both. Nor does she offer to take her own, or to carry both so that he can fight if need be. Hilary never carries anything she doesn't deeply desire to carry, such as a glass of champagne or occasionally her son, though he's very big now and doesn't get carried much at all.

He doesn't catch up to her in time to make some quip about her carelessness or selfishness, one of those amused veneers over how painfully fond he is of her, and all her foibles, and flaws, and even her cruelty.

The ground shakes. She does not fall. She almost never falls. She catches herself and exhales, then blinks as her eyes catch on the sudden appearance of an arrow in the middle of the meadow. Hilary is not a fool, though she is quite often foolish. She thinks the earthquake was caused by the arrow hitting the land, which is very odd, because arrows do not cause earthquakes, and are seldom seen.

Hilary frowns. She despises fairy stories.

"How dare you," she retorts, in English, because she hardly knows any Italian at all except for the names of some cars and pasta.

"Ha! Un trasgressore americano."

Another hiss of a projectile cutting through air. This time it lands not with a thud but with the sound of splintering wood, the second arrow splitting the first. This time Hilary catches movement atop one of the cottages -- the shadow of a man well-hidden beside a chimney, bow in hand.

"Nome, tribù e grado, trasgressore americano. Oppure la prossima freccia passa attraverso il tuo cuore."

"Hey!" Ivan drops their luggage in the grass, sprints up to rather unceremoniously shove Hilary behind him. "Okay! Listen. No need for unpleasantries. We don't speak Italian. Do you speak English? Parlez-vous français? Russki?"

A silence. Then:

"Français, oui. Nom, tribu et rang. À présent!"

["Ha! An American trespasser."

"Name, tribe and rank, American trespasser. Or the next arrow goes through your heart."

"French, yes. Name, tribe and rank. Now!"]

She does know the word americano, because it is obvious. And also because it is a phrase commonly found on coffee shop menus. She can guess at trasgressore, and it makes her scowl, especially as everything else devolves into gibberish.

Hilary has just decided that Italian is gibberish, because she is terribly annoyed.

Another arrow. She hops back, huffing out an angry breath. She begins swearing, but not in French. In Russian. She spits words out incoherently, not even managing a passable insult, because her Russian is still... not that good. It's lucky, then, that Ivan catches up with her before an arrow ends up through her neck. Or heart, but she isn't imagining that, because she stopped listening after grado, whatever that's supposed to mean.

She is unceremoniously shoved behind her lover, and the Russian filth stops flowing from her mouth. She scowls at him, too.

Then: French! Her eyes almost light up at the familiarity of it, even though this is all still very offensive and improper and she should not be treated like this. But she responds in the same language, if only because it comes easily to her to do so:

"Tu es très grossier," she informs the shadow up on the roof, looking right up at him as she tells him this. She sounds scoldy. "Un demi-moment." Looks to Ivan, and tells him in English: "He wants to know our names, and tribe, and rank. I only have the two. What are you, again?" she wants to know. She means his rank.

[Translate: You are very rude. Half a moment.]

Ivan turns his head to listen, keeping his body squared to the shadow on the roof. "I'm a Fostern," he says. His eyes go back to the rooftop. "Ask him what he is."

The blankness with which she regards him reminds him how little these ranks mean to her: should she be impressed? Proud? Disdainful? It means next to nothing to her. She clears her throat and nods to Ivan, apparently unbothered when he's the one telling her what to do.

"This is Ivan Priselkov," she informs their 'host', slipping back into French. "He is a Fostern Silver Fang. My name is Hilary de Broqueville, and I am also a Silver Fang. Whatever are you?"

"He is, as you say, very rude," interjects a second voice.

A final crack! from around the corner of one of the cottages, and then the woodcutter shows himself. A large man, powerful and deliberate, black hair receding from a prominent widow's peak. A simple felling axe is balanced over his shoulder, at odds with the dignity in his bearing.

"It's all right," he calls, not to Hilary or to Ivan but to his own. "Come out. I think we can assume they are friends."

Leaning the axe against the cottage wall, he strides to meet the Silver Fangs. "I am Cesare Seizes the Storm," he says, "Athro Philodox of Thunder. Our rude archer is Franco, better known as Strikes First. He is a Fostern Ragabash of Rat."

With that, the man on the roof steps from the shadows. He's young, lean, cagey. His hair is brownish, and looks in need of a washing. He eyes the newcomers with suspicion, swiping his knuckles across his nose. The bow looks homemade, and poorly at that. It's a minor miracle he shoots so well. He goes to the edge of the roof where it hangs low over the ground and jumps off, joining a tall ash-blonde woman as she steps out of the cottage.

"Bérénice, She Who Keeps the Vows, Adren Ahroun. She's one of yours, of Falcon." As Cesare introduces her, she nods to Hilary and Ivan, imperious. She doesn't linger long. She walks across the short distance to another cottage, knocks gently on the door, and slips inside. The door remains ajar. Meanwhile Cesare continues, "Then there's Aldric Ironjaw. An Adren of Fenris, calls himself a Skald. He's out hunting. You'll meet him when he returns."

Bérénice has reappeared. She backs out of the cottage, leading someone out with great care. Wrinkled hands clutch a walking stick; grip the doorframe for balance. Step by step, shaky, very careful, an old woman emerges into the evening.

Her face is familiar. It's possible neither Hilary or Ivan could ever forget that face. Not after what happened on the mountainside. Not after they killed her, over and over, only to have another and another appear.

This one is different, though. This one looks at them, and despite her great age there is nothing clouded or blank about her. Her eyes are calm and clear. She studies them.

"This is our Elder Theurge," Cesare says, "who is beloved of Unicorn, and who has too many names to speak. She prefers Fiore Umbral Song. I assume you were sent here in hopes of releasing her from this prison."

Hilary squares off.

Her back straightens, her head held imperiously high. She crosses her arms over her chest, each hand resting with its fingers gracefully, symmetrically spread over lower bicep and elbow. Her eyes move from one to the other to the other to the other as they appear, only growing more tense. And for her, tension often translates into anger, because she cannot tolerate the presence of uncertainty and anxiety. She has to do something with it, transform it into something that can be acted upon somehow, externalized, even if she has to warp reality to get there.

Then: the old woman. Hilary all but stamps her foot, arms flying down at her sides. "Non," she snaps, and then she really does stamp her foot. "Absolument pas."

She is livid; her face actually reddens. She hasn't even thought to translate anything for poor Ivan. She turns back to Cesare, furious. "What sort of a ploy is this?" She points, straight-armed, at a Garou of such rank she could likely wither that arm of Hilary's with a glance. "What kind of monstrosity is she?"

"Hilary," Ivan whispers, instantly pressing her hand rather insistently back to her side.

It's too late. Everyone saw. Bérénice looks appalled. Franco curses long and hard in Italian. Even Cesare's face darkens with anger, but Fiore Umbral Song, whose eyes are steady upon Hilary, holds up her hand.

Immediately, Franco shuts up. Cesare, who had been on the verge of saying something himself, holds his tongue. The Elder speaks instead.

"You have seen my ghosts, have you?"

The werewolves up by the house are all offended. Hilary knows enough about etiquette to know that it's the pointing and her yelling that has them so affronted. She actually feels a bit bad for behaving so rudely herself, though it's based less in empathy for their outrage and more in shame at not hiding better what a monster she is.

Ivan presses her hand down and Hilary glares at him, but she doesn't resist him either. She looks a bit sullen, when she turns back to the wolves who are staring at her. Then at the old woman. Her disgust is palpable, at least to Ivan. She does her best to keep it off her face. Sometimes, she is very good at pretending. She hasn't had to for a very long time now, and she discovers how much she dislikes it. Pretending.

To be normal.

Ghosts, the old woman says. Hilary scowls. "Ghosts are not meant to bleed," she says. "These did." She points at the car behind them. The windshield, streaked with the drying remnants of one of the ones she hit. It only occurs to her a second after she has pointed that, perhaps, showing them how she plowed through at least one or more of the 'ghosts' of their Elder might be considered just as bad as pointing. Maybe even worse.

She frowns, caught between her anger and her awareness that any minute now, someone is going to start scolding her.

"We were attacked. Why did you attack us?" she wants to know, not believing for a second that this old beast is in any way disconnected from the violence of her dopplegangers.

"Show some respect!" snaps Franco.

"It's all right, Franco," Fiore says. "You cannot fault them for being angry." To Hilary, "I did not attack you, but it is true that I am responsible for those who did."

"You're not responsible," Bérénice insists. "You did not devise this mad prison that holds you, let alone its darker workings."

"I didn't," Fiore answers, "yet the result is the same."

"What," Ivan interrupts in English, having caught only a fraction of what has been discussed, "the hell is going on here? None of you are making sense."

There is a streak of defiance in Hilary that wants to turn on Franco and say See? as soon as Fiore absolves her of her anger.

Then Ivan breaks in. She blinks. She turns to him.

And then, in a string of English, quickly tells him what she's heard so far: the names (the ones she remembers) and tribes (some of which she gets wrong) and the discussion thus far about prisons and 'ghosts'. She skips over their ranks entirely, and does not deign to even acknowledge Franco as existing, meaning Ivan has quite a gap in his knowledge about the one who was shooting arrows at them. Or near them.

Still in English, she tells him: "You're entirely right, though. None of them are making sense, especially the old one." Her frown softens, aches a bit: "I don't know how to tell them that they need to let us go so we can go home. They're very rude, Ivan."

As Hilary repeats the introductions -- some of them, anyway, and with some accuracy, anyhow -- Ivan looks from one Garou to the next. When she finishes his eyes return to hers. He turns his back to the others, if only briefly, to speak directly to her.

"I don't think they're holding us here," he says quietly. "I heard the Shadow Lord say something about a prison. I don't think they can get out any more than we can."

"Well that isn't my fault!" she tells Ivan, but she turns back to the Garou, her voice dropping into French again as easily as sipping a glass of wine.

"We should not be in prison with you," she explains to them, assuming that if they are imprisoned, they probably did something to deserve it, "so if you would just let us know how we might leave. I told my son I would come back."

Franco snorts. "I knew it. She's crazy. Fucking Silver Fangs."

"Watch your tongue, Ratling," Bérénice bristles.

"What did you say?"

"Stop." Cesare ends the burgeoning argument. "This helps nothing. Silver Fang. Hilary, was it? Tell me straight: were you sent here to free us, or no?"

Hilary's eyes snap at Franco, blazing. There's a challenge in them, as though she's daring him to walk over to her and say that to his face. He likely doesn't even notice; his packmate is insulting him far more directly, and she is being addressed by the one who actually started with words rather than arrows.

"We were not sent here at all," she insists. "We were chased."

The disappointment is palpable. Franco groans. Bérénice's mouth twists, and she turns away.

"Do you know nothing of us, then?" Cesare asks. "You were not sent by our Sept; not told of our plight?"

"I think that much is clear." Fiore is the only one who looks unsurprised. "And I think, in that case, they deserve to know what is happening here."

Cesare looks at the Theurge for a moment, then levels on Hilary again. "I can't say that isn't fair. But there's no reason for us all to stand about calling to each other. Let's go inside. I'll tell you what I know there."

Disappointment, for some reason, is something Hilary can recognize rather readily. Understanding it, however - empathizing with it, even pitying those who feel it - is a tad beyond her on a good day, and next to impossible with strangers, and utterly impossible in their current situation.

All the same: she sees it, and because she is piqued and bewildered, it bothers her.

She defiantly (petulantly) does not want to shake her head to answer Cesare, but she is saved from that by the little old woman. The wolves up by the house move towards each other; she turns toward Ivan and relays to him what has been said, ending with:

"Should we go inside with them?"

because a moment ago, he seemed so worried.

She asks him these things as though he would know the right answer. He doesn't. All he can do is -- well; perhaps it is more than she is capable of. He can watch. He can listen. He can intuit and sense, even when he cannot understand grasp the words.

"I don't think they'll hurt us," he says quietly. "I think we might have a chance at figuring this out if we work with them."

Hilary frowns at him in a way that paints her suspicion all over her face: she clearly is not quite so convinced yet that these terrible people didn't send zombie dopplegangers after the two of them. So her eyes are steely, and her back straightens, and without a word, she turns from him and strides up to the houses, head held high.

There are half a dozen little cottages clustered here by that still lake. Though rather charming from afar, up close Hilary can see the wear and tear evident on every one of them. The stones are weatherworn, the mortar chipping. Here and there, tiles are missing from the roofs. Only three of the houses appear to be lived in: the one Franco perched atop with his bow and arrows, with a cracked front door and shutters that are hanging by threads; the one Fiore emerged from, with windowboxes populated by rather wan-looking flowers; and the one they approach now.

It is the largest of the lot, this one, though in no better repair than the rest. Its front door squeals as Cesare opens it. He holds it open, and together with Bérénice they help Fiore across the threshold. Franco, bringing up the rear, sweeps a mocking bow as he gestures for Ivan and Hilary to go ahead of him.

The floors are hardwood inside, knotted and creaking with nearly every step. The floorplan is simple. A single story, three rooms; one that serves as living, kitchen and dining room all, and two smaller bedchambers. Neither bed looks slept in. It seems none of the Garou actually dwell here, though it seems they use it as a common gathering area. The furniture is plain, simple, wooden. There is little in the way of luxuries, and it is nearly as cold inside as out.

Cesare, blowing on his hands, stops Franco before he closes the front door. "Vai a prendere della legna da ardere," he says. The Ragabash snorts but complies. The door thuds shut. They see him through the front windows, circling around to the side of the house where firewood is stacked against the outer wall.

"Please." The Shadow Lord gestures Ivan and Hilary toward the kitchen table, which is so rustic and rough-hewn it might have been lifted from some Manhattan socialite's loft. Repurposed raw furnishing trends, and all. In place of dining chairs they have two long benches, one on either side. Ivan, after a moment, takes a seat on one bench.

Cesare takes the other. Bérénice drags an armchair over for Fiore -- easily the most comfortable seat in the house. As for the Silver Fang herself, she takes a post leaning against the kitchen counter. There are pots and pans on the shelves, and simple dinnerware made mostly of wood or clay. No modern appliances. No electricity either, for that matter, and as dusk falls they are increasingly in shadow.

At least, until Cesare lights a fat, squat candle in the middle of the table. Then flickering light traces their faces out of darkness again. By then Franco bangs back into the cabin, arms laden with firewood. While he unceremoniously goes about lighting a fire in the hearth, Cesare speaks.

"We are Garou of the Sept of the White Summits," he says. "We've been caught here longer than we care to remember. Years, at least. Perhaps even decades. Fiore was the first of us to fall prey to this prison. Our Caern lies hidden amongst the tallest peaks, and the trap was laid along a path home that we all knew. Like the rest of us -- and perhaps like you -- she walked that pass and found it shrouded in mist. When the mist cleared, she was here, and her Wolf had been stolen from her."

"Difference was," Franco says, stacking logs and lighting kindling, "she wasn't chased in by a horde of zombie Fiores."

"Franco," Bérénice says sharply. The Ragabash only shrugs.

"Fiore was our Mistress of Rites, and a powerful and prized elder of our Sept. When she vanished, we thought she had gone on one of her journeys into the Deep Umbra. Yet as the months went by we grew suspicious, then worried. Eventually the Grand Elder commanded the Sept to seek her wherever she might have gone. Aldric Ironjaw volunteered. Alone he followed rumors and echoes for weeks until he too came upon that mist-shrouded pass. He doesn't speak much of what happened, but Fiore says he appeared here bloodied and harrowed.

"After that, the Grand Elder called for an entire pack to investigate the disappearances. I volunteered my pack. Bérénice, Franco, and I. Like Aldric before us, we investigated. We followed clues. We found our way to that pass, where we lost our Wolves and met -- well. The duplicates Franco so respectfully termed 'zombie Fiores'. They pursued us into this valley, and we have been here since."

Perhaps surprisingly, Hilary has a greater tolerance for the disrepair of these cottages, and their generally rustic appearance, than she does for the inhabitants, or for the mystery of how they came to be in this valley. But then, one only has to remember what the villa looked like when she first saw it: the heavy layer of dust, the dried leaves and needles littering the courtyard, the silent fountain with its spots of algae slime, the creaking doors, the windows that stuck when one tried to open them, the cracked terra cotta here and there. And that is where she wanted to be, perhaps for the rest of her life. That is where she wanted to raise their son.

Or one could look at the place she wanted built for herself: nothing at all like what Ivan would have had made for himself, or even for her. It feels older than it is. It feels a bit like these cottages, though it is better taken care of, smaller, and filled with a veritable riot of color that hints at the proofs that Hilary indeed has a soul: her love of dance, of food and cooking, of a child.

She thinks of her cottage, and the villa, when she comes into the largest cottage. She misses it. And she thinks of Anton, and she worries about getting out of here. So at the threshold she pauses for Ivan, and though she doesn't take his hand - that is a bit too weak, in front of strangers - she does brush hers against his, as though she needs to remind herself that he is no ghost, no phantom, and this is not just her madness finally taking its full hold of her.

The mockery in Franco's bow goes unnoticed, if only because she gives him a small, regal nod of acceptance as she passes him. It seems that she will take it as her due, whether he intends it as such or not.

--

She observes the table with some trace of curiosity before she sits, sweeping her skirt beneath her legs and settling in beside Ivan. Her posture is straight, her shoulders back, her ankles crossed. Her sunglasses, perched atop her head when she first entered, are completely removed, folded, and set on the table slightly to her right. She folds her hands in her lap, one atop the other.

The onset of dusk and the arrival of candlelight makes her distractingly lovely. It plays up the darkness in her eyes, turning them liquid. One could imagine themselves nightswimming, sinking beneath the water to cool fevered skin. The warm light softens the fall of her hair, brings up the tone of her skin. When she tips her head slightly to one side, she almost seems welcoming.

Whenever Cesare pauses, she takes a moment to translate quietly for Ivan, though she says things like:

the old woman got lost and isn't a wolf anymore

and

the idiot one says nothing useful

and

none of them are wolves.

In the end, she is frowning. She murmurs to Ivan: "They know nothing." Then, slipping back into French: "If you attempt to depart, do they chase you back? Or is there simply no way through the mist?"

If one were to ask Ivan, she is always distractingly lovely. Even in these dire circumstances -- even with the two of them locked in some suffocating little paradise -- he notices. His eyes follow her as she touches his hand; again, as she sits beside him. The others converse in French. It taxes him to understand. It is easier to wait for her to translate -- if only in approximations and summations -- and to watch her instead.

The old woman isn't a wolf anymore, he discovers. The idiot says nothing useful. None of them are wolves anymore.

Not even him. Ivan redirects his attention where it should be. He watches Cesare now, intently, trying to ferret the meaning from that fluid, foreign tongue.

The idiot one snorts again. He is still working at lighting that fire, striking flint with a rather large hunting knife. Over his shoulder, "Oh, yes, attempt to depart. That's exactly what we need right now."

"Franco," Bérénice is clearly losing her patience, "if you have nothing useful to say, don't say anything at all." To Hilary, then, "We have attempted to leave. We get nowhere. We walk into the mist and no matter how hard we try to keep our bearings, to keep moving forward, we find ourselves walking out back into the valley."

"It is worse than that." For the first time in some time, Fiore speaks. "It seems -- "

"Elder," Bérénice whispers. "You needn't -- "

"They deserve to know." Cloudy eyes turn unerringly toward Hilary. "It seems every time one of us tries to escape, some part of us passes through. Not ourselves, our conscious willful selves. But something. A shell."

A silence. Cesare adds reluctantly: "Aldric told us he tried to escape three times. And when my pack came to the pass, we saw three ... three Aldrics who were not Aldric."

"And untold Fiores," the Elder adds dryly, "who were not Fiore. So you see, Hilary, you were not altogether wrong to blame me for your woes. I can only say: I did not know. And I wanted -- so very much -- to go home."

That sounds like a nightmare, what Berenice says. Walking into a mist, and finding oneself trapped. Finding, even worse, that one's self is splintered, is taken away from you and warped into something else, turned into one of those things.

That sounds, in fact, like some very specific nightmares Hilary has had.

She is very still beside Ivan, and forgets to translate. Her hands, beneath the overhang of the table, have clenched on one another.

It is hard even for her to meet Fiore's eyes, because for not the first time today, she is wondering if she has simply... gone mad. Fully, and inevitably, and inescapably. She is wondering if this is where her mind will be, forever, even if her body is somewhere else. Perhaps she is drooling on herself in that body already. Perhaps, until she dies, her reality will be an idyllic meadow filled with strangers, everything gradually decaying around her, while every attempt at escape unleashes horrors back upon her.

So that is what is behind her eyes, when she looks at the old woman.

And nothing in her throat. Nothing in her mouth. Not even breath, for a moment.

She turns to look at Ivan, and it takes quite a bit for her to whisper:

"Have I gone mad? Is it done, then?"

She's not quite right.

Even if they didn't know she was a Silver Fang, they would guess it. It's in her bearing, her beauty, her thoughtless expectation of privilege. It's in all those things, but most of all, it's in her strangeness. The way she doesn't quite react the way one should when confronted with such things. The way she's just a little off.

She's more than a little off, right now. There's something in her eyes which the old woman cannot see, and which no one else quite catches. Everyone intuits it though; the sense of unease in her, coiled like a snake. The way she turns not to Fiore, not to Cesare, not to any of them but to the one she came here with. Her mate, surely. The way she doesn't ask the questions another might, but instead --

whatever it is she asks, in English and so softly, that makes his brow furrow like that. That makes him put his hand on her cheek and his brow to hers, and damn whoever might be watching.

"If you're mad," he whispers, "then so am I. We're in this together. I'm here with you."

They are uncomfortable, watching. Bérénice averts her eyes. Cesare clears his throat softly and looks at his hands, folded together atop that table. Franco keeps working on that fire, which is finally starting to smoke, starting to lick. Only Fiore keeps those sightless eyes of hers on Hilary, on Ivan.

The fact that Hilary does not wince away from his hand on her cheek shows just how close she is to convinced that none of this is real. His response makes her brow furrow, too, and he can see that the idea of Ivan being just as lost as she is, their son abandoned, does not do much to comfort her.

Eventually she looks away, though, and moves from his hand, and then...

she leaves the table. She slips off the bench and rises to her feet, not to go anywhere in particular, but to pace a few steps away, thinking to herself. Of course, what does it matter if she makes phantoms uncomfortable? The demons her mind has summoned up will wait for her, perhaps. So Hilary goes over to the fire. She stands a bit away from Franco, terrible and useless Franco, and watches the fire he's building.

Eventually: "What do you do, then?" she asks, of no one in particular, though still in French. Perhaps she's asking herself, but a moment later it becomes clear she does seem to want to know: "If you cannot leave without multiplying your horror, if there is no escape you know, then how do you spend your days?"

A beat. She frowns even deeper, realizing the most obvious question: "What on earth do you eat?"

Franco gives the fire one last prod, then rises. Dusting his hands, he shoots Hilary a glance when she says if you cannot leave -- but then she has questions, and Cesare is the one to answer.

"We live as Garou." Firm, that, though it only sparks yet another derisive snort from Franco. "We remember who and what we are. We spar with each other. We tell stories of our people. We hunt. We sleep in separate houses, the males in one and the females in another, that we are not tempted. We try to keep these houses in good repair, though -- " a wry turn of his mouth, " -- that seems to be a futile endeavour."

"It's like we're in a loop," Bérénice offers. "When we try to leave, we loop back in. When we fix something, it loops back around to being broken. Even ... even the animals we hunt." She casts a glance toward Cesare, a hint of worry in her look. "Sometimes I swear I've killed the same deer over and over."

"Is anyone going to tell her the other thing?" Franco abruptly interrupts. He glances from one packmate to the other, back. "Anyone? Or do I have to do it?"

Her back is to the rest of the group, so it's only Franco who sees Hilary deeply roll her eyes when Cesare tells her we live as Garou. It ends up perfectly timed with Franco's snort, but that's unintentional on both their parts. She would never synchronize disdain with someone who shot arrows at her. Not on purpose.

Then of course there's the look of disgust when he talks of being 'tempted', the way a teenager might look when her parents start talking about Making Love.

But the loop that Berenice speaks of, killing the same deer over and over, makes Hilary frown in thought, and finally turn around, her slender arms crossed low over her chest. She finds that oddly interesting, which is another telling sign of how warped her mind is: of all the horrifying things she's heard today, that one should disturb her, not intrigue her.

Franco interrupts, and she pauses: "Un instant," she tells him, holding up a finger, and then looks over at Ivan, translating a summary of what they've just heard.

(they live very dull lives and fret over sleeping arrangements
everything fixed breaks itself again
they hunt and kill the same animals over and over)

Her finger lowers only after she's finished. "Vous pouvez continuer," she tells Franco, waving a hand to indicate that he may get on with it.

"No?" Franco makes a show of waiting. "Okay. Fine. I'll tell her. There might be an exception to the rule. Someone who got out."

"Franco..." Cesare's tone is half warning, half beseeching. "It's Aldric's business. Not ours."

"Cazzate. Siamo tutti bloccati in questo insieme. Anyway, the jackass was more than happy to tell everyone." He turns back to Hilary. "Now, I can't promise this is true. None of us were here to see it. But Aldric told me -- told us all -- he didn't come here alone. He came here with his son, a stripling pup of twelve, not even Changed yet. Stupid as hell to bring a kid like that, if you ask me, but of course the mighty sons of Fenris don't ask the bastard of Rat to give their opinions on that sort of thing. No, Aldric was proud as a peacock of that boy. His trueborn heir, so on and so forth. Wanted to make him strong and tough, wanted him to be the biggest baddest wolf in the pack one day. You know the drill.

"Anyway. To hear him tell it, the boy got out. Rest of us cocksuckers apparently walk in circles every time, but that twelve year old brat? He walks right through the mist and gets out." Franco shrugs. "Don't know how much of that is true and how much of that is Fenrir piss in the wind. But you can make of it what you will."

["Bullshit. We're all stuck in this together."

Also, earlier Cesare said "Go outside and get some firewood."]

Hilary listens. And she frowns. And walks back over to Ivan. She tells him quickly what Franco has said, and sits on the bench again, but facing outward. She is trying to piece this together, like a math problem, or a difficult recipe handwritten into an old book. Probably some sort of bread, and all the measurements are based on the hand size of the person who wrote it down. A handful of this and that, which don't translate into grams at all and thus throw off the chemistry.

She turns to Fiore for a moment.

"Where do you think the mist comes from? Do you believe it was... made? As a trap?"

Fiore is silent for a beat. Whatever thoughts turn behind those eyes are her own; she is placid and opaque as a nighttime sea.

Then: "Yes. I believe we are in an Umbral realm -- a pocket separated from the rest of time and space. There are many in the Deep Umbra, some of which will trap a Garou as surely as this place. But those realms are strange, often incomprehensible, and almost always inhospitable. This place is different. It feels so deliberate, so directed. So perfect a prison for us, where we can survive forever but never escape.

"But I do not know who creates the mist. Or who created this place."

"The Wyrm," Franco says dryly, "obviously."

"That is not at all obvious to me," Fiore counters. "You are young, Franco, and very brash. When you have seen all that I've seen, you'll know that all is not as easy as you think it is."

Give her credit for this: Hilary does not understand, but she is trying to. And it distracts her, at least, from her terrors. She is actually rather well practiced in spending endless days stuck in her own madness, and this is quite a bit more curious than ennui and emptiness. So she listens, intently, to Fiore.

"It sounds positively mythic," she observes, though perhaps no one quite grasps from just a few words that she means specifically Greek mythology, with all those perfectly just (yet mercilessly unfair) punishments for hubris or offense to the gods. Only in this case, she can't quite think of who might want to trap them all, without killing them.

Or trap Fiore, specifically, without killing her.

So she adds: "You said 'us'," she mentions, directly to the Elder, disregarding respect. "But it isn't about anyone else here. If it is a trap, it appears it was set for you."

[perception (2) + empathy (0)]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (5, 8) ( success x 1 )

It must be quite the feeling to take an Elder of the Nation aback like this. Or perhaps it would have been had Hilary been anyone but Hilary. Fiore's reaction is subtle, controlled, but present. And Hilary, shockingly, catches it for what it is:

Surprise.

Guilt.

A secret, somewhere. Something she doesn't want everyone to know.

There and gone. Fiore grasps the arms of her chair and begins, shakily, to stand. Bérénice is instantly at her side, helping her up. "Perhaps so," Fiore acknowledges, "but whether this trap was laid for me alone or for all of us makes little difference. We are all caught in it now, and I do not know if there is a way out. Gaia knows I have tried. So many times, I have tried.

"Sono stanco, Bérénice. Andiamo a casa. We will speak again, Hilary. But not tonight."

Of course Hilary doesn't think anything of knocking an Elder werewolf off her guard. Hilary doesn't consider that someone else might feel shame, or guilt, or fear. Hilary also does not think anything of arguing with werewolves, or even insulting them. For a minute there she was considering kicking Franco while he made the fire, to see if he was real.

She frowns up at Fiore and Berenice together, and for a moment there is clear disgust on her face that seems directed at the Silver Fang, not the Child of Gaia. But her attention, otherwise, is focused on the Elder. "It makes all the difference," she says peevishly. The echo of and you know it is not spoken aloud.

Regardless, she does not try to stop the old woman from leaving with her nurse. She frowns at Ivan and tells him, in English:

"The old woman is a liar."

Ivan's eyes, which have traced from one speaker to the next, flit quickly to Hilary. He adds yet another language to that confusing mix:

"Mi pogovorim pozzhe."

Cesare looks from one to the other, a faint stitch in his brow. He watches the Theurge leave with the Ahroun, disquieted, then stands himself.

"Umbral Song-rhya is right. We can speak more tomorrow. There's no shortage of time here, to be sure. Let's get the two of you settled -- I assume you'll want a cottage of your own. Aldric will be back from the hunt soon, and you'll have a share of the kill."

[dammit i forgot to translate again. Earlier:

"I'm tired, Berenice. Let's go home."

Just now:

"We'll talk later."]

Hilary's nose, unsurprisingly, wrinkles at the mention of 'share of the kill'. She looks rather put off her meal, so to speak. But her eyes glint when Aldric is mentioned. She nods.

A wild hare enters her mind to suggest that Franco fetch their bags from the car, but even Hilary knows that he won't, which would sour the amusement of asking. So she rises, picking up her sunglasses, and looks to Ivan. "I suppose it's a good thing we packed," she says, and presses her lips together.

Ivan laughs under his breath, dry.

"We packed for the weekend," he says, rising with her. "And I don't intend on staying any longer than that."

"Nor do I," she says, a bit testily, though it's not quite directed at him. No more than it's directed outward, in all directions, a flood of radio waves relaying to everyone that she is displeased with this whole situation, thank you. She turns to Cesare, returning to French. "So where are we staying?"

"Show them to one of the empty cottages, Franco." Cesare, clearly the Alpha of his pack, doesn't seem inclined to perform the task himself. "Bérénice and Fiore live in the house with the flowers. Aldric, Franco and I live in the one with the shutters. This house we keep as common space to gather around the fire at night. Any of the others would suit you well, I think."

Franco, just as clearly the Omega of the pack, dusts his palms off and pulls the front door open. "Come along, transgressori americani," he says, smirking. "Time to pick out real estate for the rest of eternity."

"Thank you kindly, inutile italien," she tosses back, striding out of the door.

Again, with her head held high.

Outside, night has begun to fall. The sun has set, and a fresh chill fills the air. A blue glow still lingers in the west. What passes for the west, anyway. If Fiore is right, that's not even the sun in the sky. Those aren't their stars, their mountains, their world.

Franco walks ahead of them, bypassing the cottage with the shutters and the cottage with the flowers. A little farther away along the stony lakeshore are the other three cottages, all three about the same size, all three in some state of gentle disrepair.

"Well, you can have your pick," he says. "Probably nothing like the palaces you're used to, but Bérénice hasn't died of want yet."

Hilary observes what's available and does not give Franco the satisfaction of seeing her wince or grimace. She glances at Ivan and gives the faintest shrug, an indicator that the choice is his.

She does turn to the useless Omega, however: "Someone will let us know when the other one returns, yes?"

Franco tilts his head at the inquiry. "Wasn't planning on it. But I guess if you want, I could let you know. Not sure why you'd be in a hurry to meet him though. He's ... intense."

Her eyebrows flick slightly at that. She almost rolls her eyes again, and one of Franco's persuasion can surely see how close she comes. She waves a lithe hand. "Do let me know, yes. I wish to speak with him."

Franco shrugs. "You asked for it."

With that, he heads back toward the cottage he shares with the other males, his stride swift and silent. A matter of steps and he becomes indistinguishable from the evening shadows, gone.

Left alone, Ivan raises his eyebrows at Hilary, then starts heading toward the one most distant from the others. As he walks, he reaches out, his fingers snagging Hilary's.

Ivan

Terminally afflicted by wanderlust and inconstancy, it's never long before Ivan wants to leave home again. Today it's a trip north, the idea springing spontaneously to mind sometime over a breakfast of fruit and fresh cream. He wants the car readied. He wants an overnight bag packed. He wants lunch in a picnic basket, but make sure the cold things stay cold and the warm things stay warm. The staff scrambles to comply; he only gave them an hour.

And now they're on the road. Just the two of them, enfant à la maison. He's driving one of his more tasteful pieces, a Ferrari of yesteryear. The top is down; the wind is in his hair. The wind is in Hilary's hair too, which possibly infuriates her. He is not speeding, though. For once he is driving at a sane speed, meandering along winding blacktop. They cross the border into Italy; it's a small road, and a single patrolman guards the pass. A cursory glance at passports gets them through. The road they're on leads to Turin, and perhaps eventually to Rome, but they turn northward again and snake into the mountains.

The radio is on. He let her pick the station. It is beginning to fade into static, though. He drives with one hand on the wheel, the other draped over her seat.

"I thought we might stop somewhere picturesque for lunch," he suggests. "Perhaps spend the night in the mountains. Come back through the vineyards tomorrow and buy some more of that delicious Rhone."

The staff ends up with more than an hour, but only because Hilary - unlike the people whose salaries Ivan pays - will not be rushed. It certainly isn't due to any consideration for their labor on her part; it's more a perversity of her character, as inevitable as Ivan's restlessness. He has a whim, and he wants it all now, and so she denies him. Obviously.

Hilary finishes her breakfast, leisurely appreciating each strawberry, having a little chat with Anton in French about the blueberries he is eating with a spoon. Contrary to expectation, that spoon is not silver but highly polished steel. The bowl is fine china. Her son has never used trash neon-colored plasticware, and she will be perfectly content if he never does. Then again, she's never had to sweep up the shards of something he's broken, but that is what servants are for.

And for packing bags. This, Hilary wants to oversee, so Ivan's is waiting by the door long before the lady of the house has excused Darya from her closet, which is a room unto itself. The last time Ivan took her on one of his jaunts she had only the clothes on her back, and made him go out to buy her something new the next morning. She won't get into that trouble this time. He took forever, after all.

Then Anton has come running down the hall asking Hilary where she is going, and so she is having yet another conversation with him, holding his hand (freshly washed, free of blueberry stains) as she walks towards the stairs. It is in French again, and how much of it Ivan catches depends on how much effort he's actually been putting in to learning, and who can say how much that is on a given day? It depends on his mood. But she is telling Anton that his maman an his papa are going on a little drive, that's all. And Anton wants to know if they will be back for bedtime, and she breezily says it is unlikely, and he is old enough now to try very hard not to cry, but he is upset, and

there is a moment, there. Hilary, standing at the top of the stairs, holding his hand. There is something stricken about her features, brokenhearted to have upset her beloved son, to be the cause of his stifled tears. There is something flashing dark and violent behind her eyes, annoyed by this pathetic thing's neediness. And a slightly-too-long hesitation, where she is torn and uncertain, having not the faintest idea what to do with the sudden storm that Anton's feelings stir up in her.

Then: resolve. A version of it, at least.

"C'est triste," she agrees with him, uneasily, because this is almost too close for her to her own sadness, her own terror of being left behind by the one she loves, her own childhood nightmares, especially when so many of them came to life. "
Cependant, vous ne serez pas triste très longtemps. Et puis nous reviendrons. Ton papa et moi ne te quitterons pas pour toujours."

Anton sniffs, and marshals himself, and nods. Hilary squeezes his hand, leans down, and instructs: "Bise." so he lifts his chin and gives her a peck on the cheek. She smiles, and his eyes spark with the sort of adoration a child his age can't quite help but show clearly. Then she is letting go of his hand, drifting away down the stairs, and now it is well past an hour and Ivan may be incensed and impatient or may have half-forgotten his whim, or he may have seen his son's beautiful mother walking away from him and remembered his own mother, his own boyhood.

Or perhaps he sees none of it, hears nothing, is out waiting by the vintage car, sunglasses perched on his face, watching Hilary come towards him.

--

She is dressed in a tea-length skirt and a pair of flats, a little camisole and a pretty cardigan half-buttoned over it. She's cut her hair a bit shorter than he likes, closer to the shoulders, and it's straightened today, which he also doesn't like, but she is putting her sunglasses on while she more or less ignores him, and for some reason that usually seems to darkly delight him.

The Ferrari does not offend her, due to its antiquity. He has learned a thing or two. He won't put the top up, so she removes a silk scarf from her purse and ties it over her hair, looking all the world like she belongs somewhere in the middle of the last century, rather than the present day. His speed is more relaxed than usual, though, so Hilary is - perhaps surprisingly - in a rather good mood. She thinks she did well with Anton. He stopped crying. She did not frighten him. He gave her a kiss on the cheek and he is okay, because she did better this time.

She has to remove her sunglasses for the guard who looks at her passport. She does not smile, and yet all the same, he's a bit stunned, a little taken aback to look at her. It is not unusual; many men are, and not all of them are as isolated as this man is every day on the job. Her sunglasses slip back on; Ivan keeps driving. Hilary is thinking that she doesn't speak a lick of Italian, despite being so close, and despite having such a degree of competence in other so-called romance languages. She considers learning Italian, but she doesn't much like Italy, or Italian people, or even most Italian food. All those tomatoes, she thinks. Pick a different vegetable for once.

Ivan is talking. She blinks behind her shades and looks at him. It's only just now she's noticed that the classical music from the radio has turned to stuttering noise. "That sounds adequate," she says, which is an odd thing to say, especially since her tone is that of a woman who might have said 'lovely' or 'fun' or 'delightful'. She means it as praise. It is just - as so much, with her - slightly off the mark.

[French: It is sad. However, you will not be sad very long. And then we'll come back. Your daddy and I will not leave you forever. Kiss!]

Adequate. That is the word she uses, though her tone is -- rarity of rarities -- pleased. He glances at her, the shadow of his eyes and eyelashes visible behind his dark lenses, and smiles. Anton is old enough now that she can see the resemblance; they have the same smile. Anton employs his less, though, and with far less finesse. Ivan's smile is a well-honed weapon, by turns charming and deadly.

Right now it is neither. Right now it's something real. Which is rare for him on the grand order. But not between the two of them.

They drive on. They climb. The road coils on itself; one side drops away while the other rises, sheer and bare. Turn after turn brings them ever closer to a dazzling blue sky. The sunwashed scrublands of the Mediterranean shore drop away; in their place, a dense pine forest rises. Those peaks that haunt the horizon of the Côte d'Azur are before them now, close, rearing miles into the sky. From time to time they have a view toward the southwest where they can see how high they've climbed, how far they've left the earth and sea below -- until they are so deep in the mountains that there is no more view of the coast. Even then, the tallest peaks tower overhead, so immense they seem nearly to bend over the valleys below.

There's a highway through these mountains, bold and wide, four lanes of large sweeping turns and arrow-straight tunnels engineered to move freight and commerce between countries. The route they take, however, is older and meandering; a parallel course following a river through its natural passage. A string of resorts dot this road while other paths, narrower still, twist off into the peaks.

Ivan picks one of these little roads. It's a random choice, a whim. The road is quiet; they're the only car for miles. The rest of the world has to work. It is possible they don't even know which day of the week it is, nor care.

The radio is nothing but static now. Ivan turns it off. This road is so small it bears no dividing lines. It is steep, hairpinning back on itself, leading toward some minor summit. Up ahead, a little turnout: a cafe, closed today, with a few patio tables set out for its guests.

Ivan pulls to a stop. The engine falls silent, leaving birdsong and wind to fill the silence.

That is one strange little thing that she and Ivan have in common: beautiful smiles, captivating smiles. Smiles that can lead people astray, destroy lives. Smiles that are, for most people, entirely false. And then, rarely: like this. Genuine smiles, even touched with warmth and sometimes affection and occasionally even their love.

Hilary looks outside the car at the drive. She watches the world fall away, then turns her gaze to the sky, the vast blue above the treetops. Ivan can, just barely, hear her sigh; he can see the lift and fall of her shoulders. And then she turns back, glances at him. Ivan is turning onto ever more obscure roads. If this were the first time, she might be quipping about him murdering her, biting her, taking her into the woods to devour her. But this is not the first time. They are years into each other, and much of the brittleness has been smoothed over, the cracks between them sealed.

So she leans back in her seat, head tipped against the rest. She feels the sun overhead and the forces at work as they move along the road, back and forth, up and around. She listens to snatches of music, to wind and engine, wheels on road, a bird soaring past. She alternates her observations between the sky and the world around them,

and Ivan.

--

The radio skips and fuzzes, and what is left of the music turns to white noise, collapses in on itself, becomes all sounds, no sound at all. Just noise. Ivan silences it. Hilary looks around and realizes, finally, just how deep they are in the middle of nowhere, how far from everything, how terribly high up.

Ivan stops the car. She turns to him.

"This is a very strange place for a picnic," she tells him,

a bit tartly.

Ivan laughs under his breath as he opens the driver's side door. "We're falcons," he says as he gets out. A small break in the conversation -- he walks around to the trunk, gets the picnic basket out. Comes around to her side to open her door, "High ground seemed appropriate."

And he offers his hand, gallant. "Come on," he says. "After this we'll take the Mont Blanc tunnel to Chamonix. Find ourselves a nice little hotel there."

Hilary almost laughs at that, but doesn't. She sits in the passenger seat, waiting for him. While she waits, she unties her scarf and flips down a mirror, smoothing her hair back into place. Then Ivan returns, carrying the picnic basket, opening her door. And she tells him: "I've never really though of myself as a falcon."

It isn't a denial by any means; just a statement of fact. She's never considered that term applicable to her own self. She sounds curious about it. She sounds thoughtful, but ultimately unconcerned one way or the other. Rises from the car looking unconcerned, too, smelling of herself and of some faint perfume. Floral, definitely. It's a delicate scent, well intermingled with her own. Tantalizing, teasing, escaping classification except at very close proximity. It lures, just like a flower does to a honeybee.

Her hand covers his, then slips within it, holding his as surely as she held their son's. She sounds a bit lost, and perhaps hesitant, when she says: "You should... get me a new book." It sounds so out of the blue. Reminiscent of when they discussed birds, and types of birds, and getting both she and Anton books about them so she could learn and tell her child. Except, a moment later, it becomes a bit more clear: "An atlas." She remembered the right word for what she means. And just in case Ivan doesn't understand: "A book of maps. So I know better... where things are."

Something in his regard softens. It is visible even with his eyes hidden behind those ever-fashionable sunglasses. He pulls her closer by their joined hands, their arms winding, his forearm against hers. Leaning down, he shares a kiss with her, which feels soft and secret though they stand under a limitless sky.

"If you wanted, I'd have a map of the world painted onto your studio floor for you," he says, smiling, "but I suppose a book will have to do."

He sets the picnic basket on one of those patio tables. During the height of ski season, when these peaks are alive with tourists, this little cafe might see a lively business. Right now -- early spring, and the middle of the week besides -- they're the only ones in sight.

"Let's see what poor Evgeny has made for lunch, hm?"

Even in such romantic scenery as this - on a little jaunt into the mountains, on a picnic in the middle of nowhere - it's impossible to tell whether Hilary will permit him to kiss her, or if she will turn her head away, annoyed with him for one reason or another. Particularly when she is alluding to her desire to understand more than she does, which itself alludes to a certain lack of understanding, which ultimately alludes to the darkness and strangeness of her early life, he might expect her to recoil from his attention to her, and her desires, and her lack, and her strangeness.

This time, she does not. She allows him to tug her body closer, her long torso pressing against his side, her back slightly arched under his hand to hold her balance. She regards him from behind amber-colored sunglasses, the wind tugging at her hair now that she's put away the scarf. He is taller than her, though only just; a lowering of his chin, a lifting of hers, and their mouths meet. He feels just a hint of softness enter her, a relaxation to her limbs and her breath. Even in the middle of nowhere, alone like this, she holds on to some odd ideal of decorum and restraint.

Of course, that makes it all the more delightful to break her from it.

In any case: she kisses him back. She kisses him softly, and it's very sweet. He is close enough to see her eyes opening again after they part, just as he saw them drift closed for a moment at the end of the kiss. Then he, being ridiculous, talks about painting maps on floors and she scoffs at him.

"Absurd," she says, with a touch of irritation that must amuse him terribly. "I don't want to dance on it, I have to be able to read it." Idiot, she says, at least in tone of voice.

They head for one of the tables outside, and Hilary observes the chairs and such for dust and grime. She's suspicious. "Why is it closed?" she wants to know. "It's the middle of the day." How dare they. Layabouts. She has nothing whatsoever to say about the picnic basket, even to inquire why Ivan regularly refers to him as 'poor Evgeny'.

[FAK.]

[BE FIKSD PZ]

"Off-season, darling," Ivan replies, unconcerned. "Anyway, you'd be annoyed if we were surrounded by loud teenagers and their snowboards."

He pulls out one of those little chairs for her; hands her into it. Taking the one beside it for himself, he lifts the lid on the picnic basket and begins to unpack. A fresh baguette emerges, followed by an olive-truffle spread; slices of melon wrapped in smoked salmon on ice; a large, squat, tightly-sealed thermos of bisque. Evgeny is leaning into the French. He's trying, anyway.

"We should buy ourselves an alpine cabin, though," he muses. "Do you still hate the cold when there are mountains involved?"

Hilary actually has no argument for that. She would, in fact, hate to be surrounded by teenagers and snowboarders and their families and to have overly solicitous shop owners hovering. But she doesn't like it when Ivan is right, so she scoffs at him anyway.

The chairs are, perhaps due to melted rain or wind or simply the freshness of the air, deemed clean enough by Hilary to sit on. She sits and is tucked closer to the table. She does not offer to help. She watches what comes out of the basket thoughtfully. Her eyebrows lift a bit at the spread that follows the baguette, perhaps intrigued. She keeps expecting some awful cold soup made of cabbage or some slab of overly peppered meat, but no: everything that Ivan unpacks is tolerable. If Ivan had not mentioned his own cook by name, she might have thought Elodie packed this basket.

She glances up, however, realizing Ivan is speaking to her. She is also realizing she's quite hungry, and the olive-truffle spread is appealing to her, so she was not paying much attention to Ivan. In answer:

her nose wrinkles.

Hilary looks interested by the spread. Someone should tell Evgeny, Ivan thinks. He supposes it should be him, but then -- it seems such a bother. He unpacks plastic cutlery, disposable dinnerware; tacky, perhaps, but preferable to doing dishes.

"Perhaps not, then," he says, amused. When he opens the thermos, the bisque is still quite hot, steaming in the cool mountain air. He ladles out a bowl for her and another for himself. While she samples the spread, he helps himself to the salmon. A companionable quiet settles for a few moments,

broken when Ivan looks across the table at his lover, frowning.

"Do you feel all right?"

One day he may convince her to vacation with him in some cold, remote place, surrounded by snow. He'll want to go skiing. Anton can play in the snow. She'll go to the spa at the lodge, receiving endless massages and facials and hair masks and pedicures, drinking champagne before getting fucked senseless every night.

One day.

Steam escapes between them from the thermos. Hilary smells it and, with a chef's senses, recognizes it for what it is. Who even taught that brute what a bisque is? She takes a napkin and unfolds it across her lap, as delicately as she would something made of fine linen rather than paper. Reaches for the baguette, meaning to begin slicing it, if she can just find a knife. Perhaps there isn't one, and Evgeny means for them to tear it, which certainly doesn't create a lovely surface for that nice spread, and then she can judge him all the more ferociously for trying and failing so terribly.

Ivan interrupts himself. She has her sunglasses perched atop her head now, a casual look that makes her seem a bit younger, a bit less worn by her own madness. She blinks at him.

Thinks a moment. Considers whether she feels anything at all.

Then: "Yes?"

She's not seen this look on his face before. Not ever. His frown is not anger. It is puzzlement, but also concentration. He looks past her; tips his head, as though listening to something she cannot hear.

"I feel..."

He halts. Perhaps because he does not want to alarm her. Perhaps because he does not know how to describe it. A beat or two. He sets his food down. Stands.

"Something isn't quite right. I feel different. Off." He holds his hand out to her. "I think we should leave."

It isn't the way he looks at her, when he's trying to understand her. That's so focused, so intense it looks like hunger, ravenous hunger that drives all the rest of the world out of his comprehension. Or the way he looks when he's amused. There's no amusement in him right now, which alone is strange. Ivan is almost always amused by something, or exasperated by it. This look on his face almost seems childlike, and it makes him look strikingly like Anton. She's always seen their resemblance, especially as the boy gets older and his features take on more and more of his father's shadow. And she often sees Anton with an expression or mannerism that reminds her of Ivan. It is rarely like this, reversed, where Ivan takes on an expression more common to his son's face.

It unsettles her.

Then he sets his food down and she's annoyed. They drove all this way to have a picnic, and it's already unpacked, and she was just about to see if that olive-truffle spread is worth a damn, and now he wants to leave.

"I will not," she says, affronted, refusing to take his hand. "Sit down and eat."

His eyes flick back to her; there's something sharp in that motion, something quick and animal. He swipes his sunglasses off.

"Hilary," he says. It's not a tone she's never heard before. It's a tone she's heard precisely once, long ago, when he said to her: run.

He doesn't say it now. He breaks off. That quick raptor turn of his head again. He's staring at the closed cafe, fixed, intent. For a long few seconds, nothing -- no movement, no sound. He begins to relax. Then a shadow moves inside, and tension leaps jagged through his bones. She's been mated to warlike Fangs before. She may recognize the look, the reaction, rare as it is on this oft-amused, oft-exasperated, rarely-warlike current mate of hers.

It's the look of a Garou reaching for his wolf. Ivan doesn't burst into another form, though. He tenses. It goes nowhere. He exhales in a single rushing burst, equal parts shock and realization: "I can't shift."

A thud from inside the cafe.

The angriest Ivan has ever been with Hilary - at least that she is aware of, remembers, categorizes as angry with me - there has always been an undercurrent of fear. When something happened (and honestly, who can remember what it was?) on the streets of Chicago, and he told her to run, and she didn't. Or the time he found out that Oliver Grey had tracked her down, had bent her over a railing, had bounced her head off of it, was going to do god knows what to her. And the time she left, because she was angry with him, and they could not make sense of themselves or each other and he could not reach her, nothing he said could make anything right, and it was unfuriating and it was terrifying, because they almost came apart forever.

Hilary does not recognize his tone as angry with me, though. She can't even quite call it irritation, this look on his eyes. He says her name and she tips her head, more curious than defiant now. God, isn't that just the way with her? So incurious and empty about so much, except now, except lately, when she is curious about everything, even when she should be worried.

Though, outrageously, she never seems to be afraid of actual danger.

He looks at the cafe, so she looks at the cafe, and there's a shadow, and she sounds simultaneously annoyed and relieved: "Oh, someone is here," because now maybe she can have a proper napkin. Ivan, of course, is being very dramatic, and for the purposes of her desire to dismiss his whims, she decides he is often - always - dramatic. It hardly matters if that is reality.

She does not recognize what is going through him. Looks at him again. Does not realize what he is trying to do until he says he can't do it. She can hardly think of times he's shifted in front of her; she can scarcely bring to mind what he looks like in some other form. She feels something odd, to hear this, but has no name for it at first. It takes an awfully long time, somehow, for the hard-wired instincts granted to all living creatures to slither through her brain and ignite reactions that are meant to be instantaneous. It's as though they're all muffled, all wrapped in cotton. But she finally does begin to feel some flicker of real unease.

The thud! startles her at just this moment, the right moment, and she gives a little jump. It seems to get the pilot light going. Her spine is very straight, now. She is staring at Ivan and not blinking. She is motionless, as perfect a prey animal as ever Gaia made.

"Oh," she whispers. "Oh, dear."

If he weren't so unnerved, he would be angry. And if he wouldn't be so angry, he'd be amused. She just sits there. She doesn't move at all. He almost wants to laugh, but then: no room for amusement. Or anger.

Only fear. That's what this is, and Ivan has never been so bound up in his own ego not to admit it. He extends his hand to her -- never withdrew it in the first place, but extends it all the more now, hand outstretched, fingers too.

"Take my hand," he says. His eyes don't leave the cafe. Shift or not, he doesn't seem to have lost all his tricks. There's suddenly a blade in his hand, and not something with which one might cut a baguette. "Stay behind me."

A flicker of movement in the dim interior. A figure inside. A person? Yes, a person -- coming closer. The gait is slow, unsteady. It comes forward, this person, until all of a sudden the bright sunlight catches it through the windows. Ivan blinks once, quick, a miniscule flinch. Then he sees who it is, what, and very nearly scoffs.

It's an old woman. Hair white and askew, skin creased and worn. Eyes cloudy with age. She stares in their direction. She keeps shuffling forward. She doesn't stop, not even when her head hits the plate glass door with another, louder THUD. She keeps walking, her feet repeatedly running into the door, her face mashing into the glass.

Oh, but taking his hand means moving, and moving means that something moving in the dark will see her, and if she is seen,

she will be gobbled right up.

--

Ivan will probably never know what it takes Hilary to take his hand. He likely can't guess that if it were dark, if the sun weren't shining so gloriously above them, she would probably not be able to move at all. What he knows of how she was truly broken is not spoken of, because it is unspeakable. It's a miracle she can walk and talk and love him, love Anton, care about how much saffron is in the paella, appreciate art, do anything but stare at a wall and replay horror over and over and over until her brain is made up of nothing else. She must have been born with an iron will, an inner strength enough to put demigods to shame, for the pillars of her personality to have survived at all.

Regardless: the sun is shining. It is a beautiful day. There is something in the darkness, but it's separated from her by a wall, and she is not alone. So she hesitates, and then she takes his hand, not quite holding his, but likely he grips hers hard enough for both of them. She is rising to her feet, but very slowly, as though her fear response is still not flight, not fight, but freeze.

Hilary doesn't even notice the knife, which may be for the best, because did he not notice her looking for one.

Obediently, silently, she ducks behind him, shrinking herself a bit as though she could really conceal herself. She isn't looking at the cafe at first, until she hears another thud. Behind his back, she flinches. She squeezes her eyes shut the way a child does against a night terror. She exhales, and forces them open, the way a child does who knows they have to look. Under the bed. In the closet. Down to the bottom of the stairs. If they don't look, they'll always wonder. Wondering is worse.

Hilary opens her eyes when she realizes: she doesn't really have to wonder. She's seen the worst thing a person can see. She's still here.

So she peers, carefully, past Ivan. Watches the woman thumping into the door. Her brow furrows. Another woman, another person - most people, in fact - would feel at least some pity for the woman. She's sick, obviously. Something is very wrong with her. Naturally, such a thought doesn't begin to occur to Hilary. She is disgusted. She is repulsed. And she is bothered.

No, not bothered: she's disturbed.

"Make her stop that," she whispers to Ivan.

He does indeed grip her hand tightly. He holds on even when she ducks behind him. He feels her against his back, her brow to his shoulder for a moment while she hides, closes her eyes tight.

Then she looks over his shoulder. Perhaps he has some idea of the depths of her terror now. The depths her mind goes to. That horrible, horrible trauma inflicted upon her when her mind was not at all able to cope. His hand is still so firm on hers, and when she looks and sees what he sees, he squeezes once.

"I don't think I can," he says, low and even. "Let's go. Let's leave."

He leaves the food where it is. Those salmon-wrapped melon wedges; that delectable bisque. That tantalizing spread neither of them had the opportunity to try. Poor Evgeny. He takes a step back, then another. Then he turns.

And halts. Ivan's face is blank with incomprehension. There, between the two of them and the car, is another old woman. Except it's the same one. The exact same, shuffling slowly toward them on bare, scrawny feet.

This is absurd, and unfair, and she's upset. She wants the picnic now, wants it quite badly, perhaps partly because she can't have any of it. She wants to have a nice time, as though she wasn't entirely nonchalant about the whole enterprise as soon as it was suggested. It bothers her to leave the food, and the basket, which is ridiculous, because she's never cared about the dross they leave behind. But she cares right now, because nothing is stable, there is no order to anything.

Ivan turns, and so she turns with him, holding his hand (or rather: letting him hold her limp one) and staying by his side this time.

Then he hears her shriek, loudly and in terror, clapping her free hand over her mouth before the sound has fully left her throat. He's never heard her make a sound like that. He's never startled her enough, she's never been afraid like this in front of him. It's an utterly alien noise to hear her voice take on. Behind her hand, then, a low whine of distress, not a child's scream any longer but an animal whimpering. It's only traces of humanity that have her even trying to stifle it.

She starts moving backward, making Ivan's hand pull at her. Jerks her head back to look at the cafe, to make sure she's not backing up into the arms of another old woman, or something worse.

Ivan has never heard her make that noise.

Not in all the times he's made her scream. Not the times he's made her angry. Not even that time in Chicago, when he told her to run and she didn't. Not even that time she was so very angry at him, they were clawing at each other, he wouldn't relent and neither would she and her psyche was threatening to shatter under the strain like glass pulled too hard.

It might be the noise that galvanizes him to action. She is pulling backward, but he tugs firmly in the other direction. Her wild glance over her shoulder catches a third doppleganger -- this one shambling from around the corner of the little cafe, coming slowly but inexorably toward them.

Ivan's arm is around her shoulders now. "Move," he says. He propels her forward, and to the side. They are faster than these bizarre creatures, at least. He's trying to circle around the one that stands between them and the car. She -- it? -- stumbles after them, though. Beelines toward them, drawn like iron to a lodestone.

There's a fourth now. And a fifth, and a sixth. More. A whole cohort of them coming up the very road that brought Ivan and Hilary here. It's getting harder to avoid them all. All of a sudden one is quite close. She reaches for Hilary. Bony fingers swat mindlessly against her arm.

Three now. Now Hilary isn't even making noise. She's choking on whatever sounds she might make, shrinking further in on herself. It is exactly the wrong response, when it comes to survival, but... her brain is broken. It doesn't recognize danger, it doesn't react to danger correctly.

In the end she moves only because Ivan gets her moving. Literally grabs her and moves her body until she can start to do it on her own. She sees more and more of these women showing up and then

one almost touches her.

Hilary screams. Her arm flails out, lashes at the thing, even though the scream is still one of terror more than anything else. "No!" she shrieks, sharp and insistent.

Perhaps she expects the thing to be vicious. Tough. To take the blow without a flinch, and to keep coming.

She lashes out. It's instinct, untrained. The side of her wrist smashes into the nose. The bones are fragile with age, osteoporosis. A distinct crunch. The old woman topples back, blood immediately beginning to pour from her nostrils. She doesn't make a sound.

Neither do the others. They keep coming forward. Thin, dry hands skate off Hilary's arm, glance off her shoulder. Ivan shoves one, punches another. Then he begins using that knife. It flashes out pristine, a vicious and curving thing. Plunges between ribs, comes out red and glistening. One of the women collapses without a sound. The rest don't even react.

"Get to the car." His free hand is on Hilary's back now, physically propelling her forward. "Keep moving. Go."

The crunch makes Hilary recoil all over again. She dances back from the blood, effortlessly graceful even in her panic. She stares, her mouth open, her face contorted with distress. And then they keep coming, touching her, and Hilary lashes out again. She shoves them away from her, straight-arming them, knocking them over, shuddering even as they fall away. She doesn't look at Ivan's knife. She cannot look at Ivan's knife.

The car. Go.

She keeps moving. She goes. And - perhaps shockingly - she does not get into the passenger seat. She gets behind the wheel.

There are so many now. It's hard to tell where they're coming from. Somewhere. Everywhere. Closing in, a dozen, dozens, more. The same face, over and over again, withered and blank. The same skeletal hands. The same brittle bones, the hips that break with every fall, the cheekbones that crumble with every blow. Ivan, cynical and jaded Ivan, flinches with every flash of the knife. His teeth are bared. One of them has caught hold of his shirt, and he can't figure out which one to cut. Another blind, batting hand grazes off Hilary's face and finds purchase in her hair.

And then the car is there, brilliant red amidst a sea of faded floral-print fabric. The door opens and someone still has a hold on her, someone else has grasped her ankle. She tumbles in behind the wheel. Ivan doesn't even bother with the door. He vaults directly into the passenger's seat, shoving a doppleganger back.

"Go!" Survival has reduced his vocabulary down to just a handful of syllables. While she turns the key in the ignition, he rolls his window up furiously, then turns to yank the top up. Hands are reaching in, grasping at the edges of the windshield, the windows. The engine turns over and catches.

Something grabs her hair and Hilary's fear briefly - with the tug of pain on her scalp - turns to anger. She wheels for a moment on this one, kicking and hitting it until it tumbles, and then kicking it a few more times before getting into the car.

Keys are right there. No reason to take them out. She stars the car. Ivan lands in the passenger seat. The word hasn't left his mouth before Hilary is going. She doesn't drive often, but that does not mean she has forgotten how. She doesn't execute a perfect three-point turn, however. No no no.

She shoves the gas pedal to the floor enough to plow over the ones on the front, then slams that same foot on the brake.

Then she does her three-point turn to get out of there.

A vintage Ferrari was never meant for such things. The engine roars as the wheels go over two, three dopplegangers. There's no screaming. They can't even hear bones snapping like this. But there's blood in the rearview mirror, bodies broken on the ground. There's blood in the tire tracks too, darker still against the blacktop.

They leave the cafe behind. And their goddamn lunch. A few tenacious hands grasping at the edges of the windows are torn away as they accelerate. Ivan slams the top closed, then reaches across Hilary to crank her window up, too. They bump out of the little parking lot and the curving mountain road is before them, two directions only. Down the way they came, where a veritable army of mindless geriatric monstrosities are still shuffling their way toward them -- or farther up the winding mountain road.

If Hilary could appreciate fine cars and if Ivan could be attached to the pretty things he breaks, they might both feel a little bad for the sweet little Italian thing they're brutalizing over the bodies of old ladies.

Neither of them feel bad. Her heart is beating harder than she can ever remember feeling it beat, and her blood is screaming in her ears, and she almost loses control of the car when Ivan reaches past her to the window. She sees a horde of the things coming up the road and for a moment idles, shocked, appalled.

Then she turns hard and heads up. The road is still winding and tight and she has to go fast, so in a few seconds she's just saying:

"I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want to."

Neither of them have a seatbelt on. Vintage or not, freshly over human(?) speedbumps or not, it's still a Ferrari. It takes that corner on rails, centrifugal force flinging them both half out of their seats. She accelerates. He turns, watches the shambling duplicates follow mutely in their wake, a few of them breaking into hobbling runs.

I don't want to, says Hilary. He doesn't know what she means. She doesn't want to go up? She doesn't want to go fast? She doesn't want to have to kill any more of them, maybe, or she doesn't want to see any more. He puts his hand on her shoulder, a firm grip.

"You're okay," he says. "We're okay."

They follow the road around a curve, a tight one, and the cliffside blocks their view of the horde. For a moment Ivan can almost believe none of that happened. There's blood on his knife, though, and blood on his hands. His shirt is torn. Her scarf is gone. A sudden thump brings his attention back to the front: another thing flings itself into their path and they go right over it. Ivan swears under his breath.

They whip around another hairpin curve. Without warning, as they pull out of the turn, they hit a wall of dense fog. Visibility drops to nothing.

"No, I am decidedly not, Ivan!" she snaps at him, distraught. She says nothing of the 'we' aspect. She's going slower though, because she doesn't want to fly off the side of a mountain or hit a tree. She's shaking.

At least he got her to stop repeating I don't want to.

Then, another one, sudden, and she screams again. Does not go right over it. Slams on the brakes again, which jerks both of them forward and flings the new one off the front of the car. Hilary is gripping the wheel hard, foot pressed to the floor on the brake pedal, but she doesn't move the car again.

"I don't want to!" she yells again,

like a fucking child.

Well. She's right about that. She's not okay. He's not either, for that matter. It may have been the first lie he's told her, and she calls him on it.

Whatever he might've said in response goes out the window. They hit another one. This time Hilary hits the brakes. Ivan hits the dash, grunting. The car jerks to a stop, the engine idling choppily. There are dents in the hood.

Ivan turns to her. He leans over, facing her, close.

"I know," he says, low, steady. "I know. But Hilary, we have to keep moving. Or those things are going to catch us, and we are going to die."

That actually makes her feel bad for a moment. That he hits the dash.

At least the look on her face is one he knows, now. That almost infantile unhappiness, that pleading for him to fix it all, make everything bad go away, make her happy again. Except that now is not the time.

"I'm afraid. I'm going. To crash," she says, not for emphasis but because she cannot help but speak choppily.

Half a beat; no more.

"And then we'll die."

It isn't a plea, that. It's something else; a realization he did not walk her to. One she reached on her own, and one that brings a startling, sudden calm to her fingers and her shaking shoulders. She looks away from him. She takes her foot off the brake and the car, hungry for motion, begins rolling. She eases her foot onto the gas pedal and accelerates back up. Glances in the mirror and sees the old things coming. Focuses ahead and sees the one she flung off the hood running toward them again, and

accelerates harder.

This time she doesn't stop.

This time the car rams into the decrepit thing with such force that it goes over them rather than the other way around. For a terrible instant it smashes face-first against the glass, thuds over the soft-top. Then it's gone, a crumpled pile of limbs left in their wake. There's a smear of blood on the windshield.

They keep going. They whip around another hairpin curve. They pull out of the turn and, without warning, hit a wall of dense fog.

Can't see now. Can't see the side of the mountain, can't see the cliffside to the other side. Can barely even see the road beneath them.

Hilary turns on the wipers after a second.

Hilary slows at the fog but does not stop.

Hilary exhales.

She turns on the headlights, after fumbling for a moment to find where they are.

It doesn't feel natural. Fog this dense, this sudden. Banner clouds over mountainpeaks are common enough, but they would've seen it from below. There was nothing but blue sky then.

Then again, none of this feels natural. They have little choice. She goes on. He's silent and watchful, finally thinking to reach over and help her with her seatbelt. Finally clicking his own on.

They drive on. Slow now. It's silent outside. Nothing else impacts their car. Nothing else leaps into their path. An interminable amount of time seems to pass.

Then, gradually, the fog begins to thin. They can see the road now. They can see its curves and turns. They can see they're no longer climbing, no longer coiling amidst perilous cliffs, but instead descending into a valley between peaks. As the last tatters of mist scatter across their windshield, they find themselves in a soft green meadow strewn with wildflowers. Snowmelt cascades from the shoulders of those craggy peaks, tumbling into wide streams that feed an impossibly blue lake. On the shores of that lake are a handful of solitary cottages, each with steeply slanting roofs and stone walls.

The sun seems to have jumped in the sky. It's early evening, the light golden and slanting. Soon the valley will be in shadow. The road beneath them peters out just a few yards ahead, though it hardly matters. As soon as they emerge from the fog, the engine begins to sputter. Yards later it dies. The Ferrari rolls to a stop, and no amount of cranking will convince the engine to catch again.