a baker with guns and garrotes and nerves of steel.

Jake Novak

The agreed-upon Sunday rolls around, and Erich gets a text from Jake: Today isn't going to work. Raincheck?

The next weekend, it's Erich who isn't around. He's waking up in a tent with a naked girl, warm and golden, and grilling at Jake's place is the furthest thing from his mind.

So it's some time after the fight in the alleyway before Erich and Jake manage to get together for a barbecue. Jake has sent Erich his address: it's out on Red Hille Way, west of Browntown and south into a heavily treed area. When he comes out there in his white, racing-striped Mustang, he passes home after home that still stands empty after the strange mists and multiple deaths that came last fall. It is a good mile or so in any direction before you reach Jake's nearest neighbor. He doesn't live that far from Drew's, either. Within walking distance, if you have some time.

The house he pulls up to is larger and nicer than Drew's, though. It looks new, though in truth it has just been thoroughly renovated. Red brick and white siding. Two-car garage and smooth cement driveway. Not much in the way of landscaping, but one hardly needs it when the house is backed by and nearly surrounded by thick trees. It is much too big for a man living by himself, but Erich already knows that Jake has a child. Maybe not one he gets to see very often. Maybe one he would like to have live with him some day.

It's sunny this weekend. And as soon as the car pulls up, it disrupts the silence of the area enough that Jake hears it. He comes out to the front door, wearing the sort of jeans you wear when you work on your car and not the kind you wear when you're going out. His t-shirt is white. His feet are bare. When he sees Erich, he gives one of those wry smiles of his that looks like he's trying to remember how to smile at all, and a nod.

"You want a beer?"

Erich Reinhardt

Erich hasn't been in Browntown very much since Drew. There was that one night he was in the area, stopped off for a drink at Liberty's, ran into Celia at the gas station. But even that was a very long time ago. Rolling through the quiet streets with the empty houses -- neighbors who have finally pulled up roots, some of the last country holdouts who have finally fled to the city never to return -- Erich is struck by how much the place hasn't changed. Doesn't change. Simply falls a little more into disrepair as its population dwindles.

Though, maybe that's a grim way to look at it. For all he knows reconstruction and renovation are actually well underway. And maybe in another few months they'll attract new neighbors, new people. Folks who are tired of the city, who don't want the glamourshot version of the country. And maybe a few months after that, there'll even be a hangar in town for all the flying pigs.

Erich pulls up to the address he's been given. Jake comes out the front as he's getting out, looking more casually dressed than Erich's ever seen him. The (much) younger wolf raises a hand in hello, shutting the door of his Mustang without bothering with the lock or the windows or ... any of that.

"Sure. I brought an ice cream cake."

And so he did. Because somewhere in his past someone taught him never to be the sort of guest that shows up empty-handed, and because he likes ice cream. Also, he brought a jug of hard apple cider. Because it seemed like the thing to do.

"How you been?" he asks as he comes up the steps to the porch. He looks every which way as he follows Jake into the house, openly exploring Jake's den with his eyes. And his nose: sniffing, or at least taking a few deep whiffs. "This is a nice house. Really big."

Jake Novak

Erich is not just younger, he's also a werewolf. He could be fifty years old and would still probably have that six-pack, those iron-hard shoulders. Jake is entering the latter half of his thirties with something akin to grace and, certainly, with more strength than most men his age could lay claim to, but some of that is because his refrigerator is full of vegetables, fruits, lean white meats and wild-caught fish. Some of that is because half of that large garage is taken up by his BMW and the other half is taken up by weights. He did not get this way, and does not stay this way, with

ice cream cake, burgers, and beer.

Still: some occasions call for it. And if he doesn't eat ice cream cake and steak with Erich, there's really no one in his life who he would be doing such a thing with. So his eyebrows quirk at the mention of the cake, and he nods approvingly. All right, then.

"Come on in," he says, as though that isn't obvious when Erich steps up to the porch. And yes: it is big. And it's quite nice. Inside the foyer there is a long runner rug. To the left of the door there's a plastic mat for muddy shoes, or even just dirty shoes. The house is well-lit today, windows thrown open. A tree-scented crossbreeze flows through the rooms. And there are many rooms: a bookshelf-lined study to the right with a large desk, a formal dining room to the left that has yet to be decorated much, even after five months of living here. Down the hall Erich can see the door to a small bathroom, another door that stands closed.

As they head into the great room, he's treated to something that has to be a new addition: over the stonework fireplace mantel is a large portrait in a dark, understated frame. It's Jake, who is only barely smiling, and a five year old girl with long, straight dark hair that is more chocolate-brown than Jake's jet-black. Her eyes appear dark at first, but only because they are a deep blue-grey. She didn't get those from Jake. If going only from the symmetry of her soft features, she's going to be quite lovely one day, if perhaps in a more 'cute' way. She is beaming, caught laughing, and Jake's head is half-turned. That's why he's almost-smiling. He's watching her, and she's laughing. She has a small stuffed elephant in her hands. He's dressed in dark blue. She's dressed in pink. They must have gotten their picture taken while she was here with him, just after Erich first met Jake.

He can see through open glass doors to the back porch, the stairs leading down to the yard, which is even more uncultivated than the front. There's a grill on that porch, and Erich's nose can probably pick up the smell of raw meat in the kitchen waiting to be cooked. On the mantel of the fireplace, as if for decoration, there is a long matte silver-colored cloth, like a woman's scarf almost. At one corner is sewn a silver coin covered in some strange markings. It looks like it was just tossed there.

"Thanks," Jake says, because he didn't just buy this place. It is incredibly clean, as though he just moved in, but the scent of him permeates it. They haven't even seen half of the whole building, walking in as far as they have. He's taken the ice cream cake from Erich and is heading toward the kitchen with it to put it in the freezer for later, to get some beers out of the fridge.

There are a child's drawings on the fridge, too. Most of them show a small figure with long hair, a tall figure with short hair, and a medium figure with curly hair and glasses. Usually they're all holding hands. Sometimes there's a figure above them with long hair, horizontal, floating overhead.

Also the small figure has a pet elephant. And signs her name on every picture: LENKA.

"Ale or stout?" he asks, digging around in the open fridge. Which is, as said before, full of vegetables. You can almost smell the produce section when he opens it.

Erich Reinhardt

Erich

is

like a puppy in a new place. The truth is, if he were a wolf, like a real wolf, he really would be just out of puppyhood. Two or three years old. A year past sexual maturity. A year past the time he'd be leaving his birth pack and seeking out his own pack, his own mate, his own land. He'd be big, adult, full-grown, but sometimes, just sometimes, a wolf-watching naturalist might catch him playing with a stick or chasing crows or bounding straight up in a meadow on a sunny day for nothing more than the apparent joy of it.

But that's a digression. The point is: he explores. He looks at absolutely everything with very little regard for what may or may not be strictly polite in a first-time guest. He takes his shoes off because he sees the mat, and while Jake take the cake to the kitchen he takes the long, meandering scenic route, peering at the portrait over the fireplace --

"Hey, you got her an elephant! Good choice, way better than Barbies."

-- and inspecting the scarf-thingie with the coin; wandering through the dining room to pop into the kitchen from the other way. Pictures on the fridge! He goes over and looks at them, recognizes instantly the small figure as the girl in pink and the tall figure as Jake. The other two are more of a puzzle. Medium figure with curly hair and glasses doesn't really fit what he'd assumed of Jake's wife/ex-wife/mate/ex-mate. To be frank, he assumed -- with Jake's evident strength and bearing and self-control and breeding, which isn't terribly overwhelming

(the way Melantha's is)

but is still a thing to be noted -- that he'd have been mated to a Garou. Produced a daughter, maybe a future warrior, with this Garou. Which, of course, makes the sideways floating figure all the more intriguing.

Erich doesn't ask, though. Yet, anyway. He's being called upon to answer a question, and he hesitates for a second. Erich's experience with beer runs something like this: hefeweizen, because a distant cousin microbrews, and Miller's, and Coors, and Budweiser, and Heineken.

"Ale," he guesses. "What's up with that scarf on your mantle?"

Jake Novak

Jake huffs a laugh: "She's had the elephant since she was born," he says, which is true. But he doesn't deny that he got it for her. The truth of that story is that he didn't know what to do, he was standing in a grocery store at a loss, his eyes stunned and unblinking, his spine rod-straight, holding a dripping bouquet of flowers in one hand and staring at a shelf full of stuffed animals trying to wrap his mind around what had just happened to him. To his life.

The elephant was the softest thing on the shelf. A bit floppy. It looked happy. So he got it. And she kept it.

Erich explores his way through the dining room and the landing leading up to stairs that go up to the slanted room above the garage and into the kitchen, with its refinished surfaces and brushed-steel everything. Jake doesn't seem to mind the way Erich peers around every corner, looks eagerly at everything his eyes find. He had a fling with a young, curious Theurge not so long ago, and he's father to a five year old. He takes most things in stride, when it comes to wolves.

Jake pulls an IPA out of the fridge at Erich's answer and hands it over to him. "Opener's over there," he says, nodding to a gadget on the counter. There's a tray with two enormous steaks on it, just barely seasoned with a bit of salt and waiting to be thrown on the fire. "And the scarf," he says, taking out a stout and taking the opener from Erich when it's handed over, "is a Rum l." He takes a drink, swallows, adds: "A garrote."

There's a brief pause there. He shrugs. "It was a gift from a gentleman I had occasion to run into regularly in my twenties who was obsessed with the Thuggee cult and was, in a way, a modern member of it. He had a saying he loved: the Wheel turns." Jake gives a small shake of his head. "Bit of an odd duck. Gave me the creeps sometimes."

Jake takes a drink.

Jake Novak

[fucking jove. there is an 'a' with a line above it in that 'Ruml'.]

Erich Reinhardt

Rumal means absolutely nothing to Erich. He thinks it might be a designer's name. Like Hermes-with-an-accent, or something. Then Jake explains, and meanwhile Erich is twisting the cap off his beer because openers are for sissies and also because he doesn't know how that gadget works. He blinks: it's a garrote.

"Seriously?" He laughs. "You keep a garrote next to a picture of your daughter, and you're complaining about some wheel-turning dude creeping you out?" A pause, a bit awkward. "No offense intended. I can't eat anything that didn't die a horrible bloody death, so."

He takes a swig of beer. And he looks around again. Nice furnishings, nice brushed steel everything. Nice steaks. His eyes linger there a moment. Then they come back to Jake.

"I met this girl," he says, just out of the blue like that. "Well, actually, I met her a few months ago. But she's sort of a secret agent too. And she might have to get out of town soon, and when that happens I probably have to get out of town too." His mouth makes this wry little turn. "Because of reasons.

"So," he concludes, "if I just up and leave someday with very little warning and maybe not even much of a goodbye, I just wanted you to know why."

Jake Novak

Jake just raises his eyebrows at Erich's laugh, at his rhetorical question. And Erich pauses, awkwardly apologizing a moment later. "Except for ice cream and beer," he says. There's no point in arguing about complaints, or talking much about his daughter, or his decorating schemes. In part because Erich makes a fair point: that's a little weird. It hadn't even occured to Jake to see it that way.

He met this girl. Total subject switch. She's a secret agent. Jake just smirks, wry but not unkind. The slightly more teasing sidelong grin happens later, when Erich says it's because of reasons. Sure. Sure it is.

But he does frown a touch at that. "Well... that would be a shame," he says. "I know we haven't hung out much, but I was hoping to."

Erich Reinhardt

"Yeah," Erich says. It seems like a lame, limp thing to say. He takes another sip, and then sets the bottle down on the counter. "Me too. But you've got my number. You can call and stuff. I'll let you know where I go and we can grab a burger if we're in the same area. Or I can stop by if I'm in the Chesapeake again."

All that sounds a bit like flights of fancy. They both know it. The world is digital now, hyperconnected, but affection and friendship are slower to evolve. Ties like these almost inevitably dissolve with distance. Particularly for their people: more archaic, more instinctive, to whom eye contact and voice and body language still means so much. Still means everything.

"For what it's worth," he adds, "I'm glad we met and hung out a bit."

Jake Novak

Jake sips his beer. He watches Erich, and the truth is, he knows. He doesn't say anything about numbers! Visiting some random place where Erich ran off with some girl! They can grab a burger!

He just shakes his head. "You know that probably won't happen," he says, in as gentle a tone of voice as someone like Jake gets. He shrugs, though. "But that's okay. Not everyone is meant to stay."

He says that like he means it. Like he believes it. And nods to the jug of cider, as he picks up the tray of meat. "Grab that. We can sit on the porch while these cook. I'm guessing you take yours rare?"

Erich Reinhardt

Erich looks at Jake gratefully as he voices the truth that Erich hadn't quite been willing to. For voicing it, and for being gentle about it, and -- for lack of a better word -- for being cool about it.

The truth is this whole possiby-leaving-DC thing is turning out sadder than Erich would have anticipated. He's pretty sure he can convince Charlotte to tag along. He thought he could get Ingrid to come along too, but then Ingrid started talking about going to New York. And then there's Jake, with his nice big house out in the woods and the picture of his daughter that lives in the area.

And then there's Melantha. Who Jake assumes -- not unexpectedly -- that Erich is leaving town to be with. Because he met a girl and she's leaving and so is he, so obviously! He's running off with her. But that's not it, and Erich knows that, is quite unsure about the where and how and when and what now about it all. He hasn't even talked to Melantha since she walked out of her hotel room

because Jack called.

"What about you?" Erich asks as he follows Jake outside. He has the cider in his hand; his beer in the other. "Are you staying around? And, medium-rare please. I only like it raw if it's really fresh." And he plunks the cider down on the patio table.

Jake Novak

Mr. Novak the Baker of Browntown has no patience for bullshit. And the idea that they, having met three times, will become brothers whose bond reaches across state lines and for all time, is bullshit. But that they can hang out now, and have steak and cider and so on, even if Erich leaves and Jake stays here and keeps building a life where he can bring his daughter, that's true. So that's what they'll do.

"Don't see why I'd leave," he says, setting the tray on the side of the grill and opening it up. He lights it, and lets it heat up for a while, the lid closed, leaning against a railing while he drinks his beer. Jake shrugs. "The truth is, all the reasons why I lost custody of my kid were valid. I have to change those reasons. I think... living in a small town, running the bakery, and building a life here will help. She's only a couple of hours away if she needs me in the meantime."

He glances down, and then nods. "Yeah, I'm staying. Maybe not for all time -- I've seen what the high school in this area turns out, and I think she deserves better -- but for now. For the forseeable future,"

though they both know how short a future anyon can see into.

Erich Reinhardt

While Jake is up and about and working, Erich doesn't sit. He leans against one of the posts on the porch, watching the grill start to smoke as it heats. When Jake talks about his daughter, the young Ahroun's eyes flick to him, eyebrow quirking.

"What's the story with your daughter anyway?" he asks. "Hell, what's your story? A baker with guns and garrotes and nerves of steel. You don't have to answer me, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious."

Jake Novak

A baker with guns and garrotes and nerves of steel, Erich calls him, and it's one of the more accurate descriptions of Jake to date. He looks over, and the truth is: Erich is a Shadow Lord, too, and one of the few to be so curious about him. Jake's not ashamed of his story. Jake is quiet about it. Jake chooses carefully who he talks to about it. But it's not a dark secret. There's just some people -- like Drew Roscoe, who seemed to get fed up even before she questioned him -- who he knows better than to discuss his life story with.

Some people can't just leave well enough alone.

Jake takes a deep breath. "Well. I was born in Czechoslovakia." That's the old name for it, pre-80s name, but that's to be expected from a man who is pre-80s himself. "My father was a Philodox. My mother died of breast cancer when I was four. I was sent to live with relatives in America. I saw my father maybe three times in ten years. When I was fifteen, the told me he'd died."

He shakes his head. He says all this easily. The past is the past, and he has long since come to terms with it. Jake seems like the sort of man who comes to terms with things as they happen. "I just snapped. I ran away, but no one was chasing me. I lived on the street. I was... an angry kid. And living like that, you fight for everything. Even just a place to sleep for a few hours. So I fought. Sometimes things came at me that weren't human, and I fought them, too, because they would have killed me otherwise."

It's that simple, to him. He was sixteen, seventeen and fighting for his life against fomori. Maybe with crowbars, planks of wood, baseball bats. Maybe with his bare hands. And he lived.

Jake turns to the grill, setting his beer down on the railing and lifting the bloody, thick steaks onto the grill. They hiss and sizzle and the smell of blood and juices dripping into the heat sends up a delicious smoke, pleasing to the senses of both god and beast. He goes on talking.

"I was a few weeks shy of eighteen when I first killed a man." He doesn't discuss that story, or why he killed that first man, or how he felt afterward. "It was an isolated incident. I didn't do it again for a long time. About a year later, I started doing errands."

It's a tidy euphemism, and one that Erich can likely easily figure out. Odd jobs. Runs. Deliveries. The sort of thing a gangster wants some young homeless kid to do for him. Pay them cheap, they'll lap it up like pigs at a trough. No one minds if they go missing. They barely exist as it is.

"I did well. I kept my head down because I didn't want them to own me. I didn't want a ring on my finger and I didn't want to kiss anyone else's ring. Or ass. I did the work, I got paid, and I left. I tried not to work for the same people too many times in a row, and I tried not to say yes to every job that came my way. I didn't try too hard to avoid beating the shit out of someone. Some didn't want to use me much because of that. Some others saw it as an asset." He turns, steps away from the grill, picking up his beer again.

"On one job, we were taking care of this guy. I knew the score by then; he wasn't going to pay, he was never going to pay, and he knew that when he got into business. So when someone put a gun in my hand, I just ended it. We wrapped him in a tarp, cleaned things up, and buried him outside the city. I got a bonus."

His face is impassive. He looks at Erich easily enough, as though he doesn't expect the other wolf -- the other Shadow Lord -- to think much of this. It is not the first time he's told this story.

"After that I had a very different line of work. They didn't call me 'the Kid' anymore." He smirks, wryly, taking a drink. "They called me the Bastard." His lower back rests against the railing of the the porch. The smell of cooking meat rises ever upward. "I did my job well, I kept things tidy, I didn't try to add flair or flash or smirky little speeches. I didn't start doing any weird shit or going off the rails. I was never really a part of their crew, which was a double-edged sword for them. They couldn't control me as easily, but I was also... separate. I made it very hard to tie what I did to anything they were up to, and they were willing to pay me very well for that. And I didn't waste it on coke and whores and poker. I started a security consulting firm when I was twenty-one and laundered my earnings through that. Put some in tax shelters overseas."

Says the Baker of Browntown, living in a house like this. Buying and renovating the bakery like he did. Driving what he does, wearing a watch that cost six thousand dollars. He tells people it was a gift. That isn't true; he didn't take gifts. He never took trophies. He bought that damn thing himself. No wonder he can afford to live the way he does; he was making grotesque amounts of money for some truly grotesque work. Jake lifts a hand and scratches at his jaw idly.

"When I ran into things that could smell my blood, I either took care of it or I ran. I didn't know any Garou. I was in my twenties and I thought I was immortal. Looking back..." Jake shakes his head, huffs a laugh. "There are so many times I should have died. There are a lot of fights I walked or limped away from and it wasn't that I was better or faster or stronger. Sometimes I was. Other times? I just got damned lucky."

He seems nostalgic, smiling fondly at the planks of the back porch's deck. "Twenty-five and I could have retired. I took jobs because I wanted to, not because I needed the money. Took me ten years but I went from fighting for a place to sleep to living in a high-rise downtown, driving one of three new cars anywhere, taking any woman I wanted to a hotel for a few hours. So of course half the time I was on my computer in that wonderful apartment, getting my GED and ordering books." Jake smirks at the memory of himself. "And then I went to Italy overnight, killed a couple in their fifties, came home, made some muffins, and fell asleep in my living room chair."

Stirring, he shakes his head. "As for my daughter, the rest of it... that was around when I met Emilia. I didn't bring women back to my place, but I did with her. She caught me a few nights later stuffing a body into my trunk and she didn't even bat an eye. I took her home again after I buried the corpse. Sun came up the next day and she was still there." He's quiet a moment. This isn't wry, or smirking. This isn't even proper nostalgia. He is staring at the planks now, hard, like he can see her there. It takes a while before he says: "She was an Ahroun, actually."

This time the drink he takes from his stout is longer, and he sighs when he finishes it. Sets the empty bottle aside, taking a seat in one of the two padded chairs on the porch. Sits like a king on a throne, though a primitive one, looking at Erich.

"There was no one to challenge for me, so we were mated. We got married two years after we met. I worked a lot less. I was completely mad for her. She wanted me to fight alongside her and her pack, so I would, if she pressed. It was always an argument. She didn't like me going off in the middle of the night. She was 'worried' for me, nevermind I'd been killing people since before she even Changed and doing just fine. I hated that she was turning me into some kind of house-husband." He exhales, shaking his head, remembering frustration as keenly as he remembered falling in love with her. Glances aside. "Three years after we got married, she got pregnant. She had Lenka. I... wasn't really around that much. She named her for the diminutive of her mother's name, Helena, a woman who hated me from the start. I didn't have much input. Or opinion." His fingers tap on the armrest of the chair.

"Helena pretty much raised her, though. Ostensibly, Lenka had a nursery at my place, but when Emilia was fighting or I was gone, Helena wouldn't come babysit her there. She'd come pick her up. I never even changed a diaper. Sometimes Emilia and I weren't even visiting her at the same time. We were both... getting better at what we did. She in the Nation, me in my own business."

Which was, as he has made clear, killing people for payment. Rather indiscriminately, it sounds like: he never mentions but only bad people or but only bad men, no women or even no kids.

"Everything faded," he says, quite flatly, looking at Erich directly again. This is where new anger kindles, though it is banked by ashes. "She got pregnant again. It wasn't an easy pregnancy on her this time. We fought like we wanted to kill each other. And then several months in, she just ...vanished. She wouldn't visit me, she wasn't even visiting Lenka."

He nearly bites his tongue. There is high, angry color in his cheeks, but it's only a memory. It's all over now.

"They dragged me out to the caern for her sentencing and punishment, later on. I hadn't seen her for three or four months and had no idea where she was. They just showed up and took me out there. I got to see the baby. Which was in crinos." There's a beat. "You ever seen a crinos pup, Erich?" he asks. There is so much rage in that question, so much fury laced through the memory. "It was miserable. It wouldn't stop screaming, but... it doesn't sound like a baby crying, or like a wolf crying. It's an awful sound. Sounds like pain. And for all I know, it was in pain. It had one arm withered. I hardly had any idea what was going on. For a few mad seconds I thought it was still mine, and I was brought there because I'd done something wrong, and that was how I'd fathered something like that. Even then, a part of me just wanted to put it out of its misery."

His thumb is rubbing against the inside of his palm, the callouses below his fingers. He looks away, again, and into the trees. "I was just overwhelmed. I knew who it was. Everyone knew. He was up there to be punished, too. And as much as I hated her then, I hated myself, because there was a time in my life I would have shot myself in the head for that woman's sake. I don't really know what all they did with her. I didn't care anymore. The marriage was dissolved, and she got custody of Lenka, and I walked away. A couple of months later, both she and that son of a whore packmate of hers died in battle. Custody was transferred to Helena because my three year old barely knew who I was. I didn't put up much of a fight.

"But when they handed down the decision, I gave her a hug at the courthouse. She was sucking her thumb and holding the elephant I gave her when she was born." He is frowning, his brow knitted tightly, but it eases when he looks over at Erich again.

"I didn't know what I had in common with this kid other than blood. Not til then. And suddenly all I could think of was that we both lost our mothers so young, our fathers walking away. I thought of how angry I always was. How much... violence I had in me because of growing up that way. Now the weird thing is," he goes on, inexplicably earnest, as though it's vital Erich understands this part, "I was holding her there and I was smelling bread. Some kinds, when they're really little and someone has given them a bath recently, they almost smell like fresh-baked bread. Which is bizarre, I know, but... I used to watch my mother bake. I baked with those relatives I grew up with. And even when I was working, I never stopped. Killing gave me an outlet for the anger I felt. Baking just took it out of me. Even something as basic as biscuits. I don't know how to explain exactly what I felt when I realized that I had this child, and I'd ignored her for three years, but that she was the only thing in the world that felt like home to me, and I was terrified of the thought that she might end up just as angry and bitter and heartless as ... as I had been."

Jake exhales, and sighs, and leans backward. "I retired two years ago. I gathered my capital, created a trust fund, eased out of some long-term business relationships, and came here to open RiSE. Everything I've been doing for the last two and a half years has been to make a life here, and a home, and get custody of Lenka.

"Everything."

Erich Reinhardt

Meat cooks. Just beef over a fire. A bit of salt. A bit of salt. Other than that: flesh, rendered in its own fat. A barbaric, primitive way of eating. Close to the way the first Garou ate, a million years ago when wolves still ruled the night; when man was just crawling out of his cave and striking flint to stone.

And while meat cooks, Jake tells Erich a story.

It's a rather harrowing story, all told. It turns out Jake isn't really a Soviet James Bond after all. Or if he is, he's Bond in the coldest possible reading: amoral, hollowed-out, a contract killer who finished the job no matter what it was. Spent his off-hours buying nice things for himself. Saving up for himself. Taking women to hotels for himself. Educating himself.

And then for a while there was a woman who wasn't just another notch on the bedpost. For a while there was a woman who wasn't a woman at all but a wolf, an Ahroun with a pack, a creature that didn't flinch from blood and death because she was blood and death, herself. Jake talks about how he met her. Took her home. Later on she saw him doing his work. Erich wonders, quietly, how much of that was really chance. How long she might have watched him before that, stalked him, known him and his bloodline, his history, his spirit

before she came out of the night to take him.

And for a while it's almost a nice story. For all of ten seconds, anyway. Then Jake talks about the frustration, the 'worry', the arguments. Guiltily, Erich's mind strays to Melantha. He remembers telling her:

you are vulnerable,

wonders if he'd said the same if she looked like Jake, had Jake's build and his steely black stare.

And a little after that,

Jake talks about everything fading. Talks about that second pregnancy, how it was different, how they fought, how she vanished. He knows where the story is going when Jake talks about dragging him out to the caern to bear witness, because even though everything was dead between Jake and Emilia by then, they were mates in the eyes of the Nation, one and the same,

bound.

"No," Erich says softly. It's the one time he speaks in all that: and it's to answer Jake. No, he's never seen a crinos pup. He's barely even seen metises, and by the time he's met them they were grown, gelled, either stronger for their adversity or -- all the more often -- twisted and embittered by it.

Then the rest of it. The marriage fell apart, the mateship fell apart, his ex-wife died. The mother in law had custody. The woman with the glasses in the pictures, maybe. Erich isn't sure how much a child that small would remember, would know. And now Jake's here, the Baker of Browntown, with a nice house and a nice car, living a nice life. Trying to convince the courts he's a model father.

Erich is quiet a while. Jake's taken a seat, but Erich is still standing, his back to the post, slid down a little now. Feet braced, apart. He taps the butt of his bottle against his thigh a time or two. Takes a drink that drains his pale ale down to the dregs.

"When you let that girl go that night," this is what he asks after all that, "was that for Lenka too?"

Jake Novak

Jake gives Erich a slow, deep nod, matching his gaze. "Everything."

Erich Reinhardt

Erich thinks about that for a minute. "How is that for Lenka, and not just because you're not completely heartless?"

Jake Novak

"I'm going to make a small, but important distinction," Jake says then, watching the other man. "What I said was that everything I do is to make a life here. A home. So I can get custody of my daughter. It's not the same thing as doing everything for Lenka, and doesn't carry the same illusion of nobility. I don't fool myself about what kind of a man I am."

Jake rises to his feet. It's time to flip the steaks.

"I meant what I said to that woman. And I've been keeping an eye on the situation since we left. If I find out that she's spoken to anyone, I will indeed kill them, then kill her." He uses tongs to turn each steak, smiling faintly at the sear. Good timing. He doesn't feel defensive. All the same, he turns to Erich, frowning slightly. "I'm not completely heartness, Erich. I haven't been for a long time now."

There was a time when he was. Or thought he was.

"I don't kill people for a living anymore, for one thing. And I have never taken a life for no reason at all. That night? It would have been safer for all of us if I'd shot her in the head. The gun I used isn't registered. I could have left a bullet in her skull and called it a day. But I am trying to not be a man who pulls the trigger without at least weighing someone's life against his own interests."

Erich Reinhardt

"I know," Erich says firmly. "I never doubted that. But for a second there, I thought you were saying everything you're doing now -- which is good -- was because of your daughter. And that actually didn't seem noble to me at all. Just kind of sad, like you were linking everything good about you to your daughter.

"I think you're a decent guy," he adds, shrugging. "Of course my standards are probably a bit skewed. But even I can figure out you weren't always. You probably still aren't, always. You're right, though. You're not completely heartless. So," he shifts too, dropping off his finished beer on the table and starting to uncap the cider instead, "I hope it works out for you and Lenka.

"Maybe move into the city when she's a bit older though. Small towns are shitty places to grow up. Personal experience. Some people are like 'oh it's the simple life!' but kids are like puppies. You gotta socialize them with lots of different kinds of people."

Jake Novak

I think you're a decent guy. Of course my standards are a bit skewed...

Jake half-smiles, a bit wry. "Not many Shadow Lords -- or any Garou -- I met when I was with Emilia gave a damn what I did for a living. One of them actually praised me for my 'good work'. He was a bit of a jackass, though."

Erich goes on, and Jake listens, and they talk about Lenka. Who is, as Erich saw in the photo, adorable and happy and energetic. Who has, as Erich saw a few nights before Christmas, a father who would probably stay up all night worrying over her if he had her. Who might do that anyway.

"Big cities are shitty places to grow up, too," Jake points out. "In their own way. But then, I had a rather unique experience."

Erich Reinhardt

"It's burbs and minivans for you then, my man." The cider open, he sets the jug back down. "I'm gonna go get some plates and glasses. Where do you keep 'em? I don't want to snoop and find like a morningstar somewhere."

Jake Novak

Jake laughs, lightly. Easily. "I'm more organized than that. And far more modern. Just dig around in the kitchen. There's some clean dishes in the washer, too."

As Erich heads inside, Jake considers what he said. Burbs and minivans. Driving with Lenka in a booster seat behind him, listening to the Giggles or the Jiggles or whatever it is on the stereo. He thinks he'd keep the car he has now. Living here, within driving distance of two caerns he wasn't looking to find, with hurricanes and harsh winters and the occasional semi-insane blonde Garou in his woods, it doesn't sound like such a bad idea.

When Erich comes out again, Jake looks at him, frowning. "So where are you headed, when this mystery woman of yours runs off into the night?"

Erich Reinhardt

Emerging, Erich has two large plates in his hands. Two tall glasses, too. He's found the icemaker on Jake's fridge and there are a few cubes of ice in each glass.

"I don't know," he says. "I might try to follow her, but I don't know if that's possible. I don't know if that'd put her at risk or ... something like that. I don't know," a third time, wry, "I don't have much experience with this secret-agent stuff."

Jake Novak

"Just about done," Jake tells Erich, of the steaks. He smiles at the other man. Younger, but no less lupine. No less of a killer. A friend, oddly enough, though one Jake barely knows.

He doesn't say much about following the girl. Where they're going, what will happen. Erich doesn't know. Jake has no advice for him. He takes one of the glasses and uncorks the jug of cider, filling Erich's cup, then his own.

"So what about you?" he asks. "Your story."

Erich Reinhardt

Erich's standing next to Jake when he asks what he does. He's looking at the steaks, not even bothering to hide that he's nearly licking his chops with anticipation. The question jerks on his attention like the tug of a leash, though. He flicks a glance at Jake. His brow furrows a little.

And then he just launches into it. Maybe because Jake told him -- everything he told him. Held so little back, laid it out there. Maybe because he likes Jake. Or maybe just because telling the story makes it a little easier every time, even if just a week ago he was physically turning away, pulling away, because he didn't want to think about it.

Which isn't to say he wants to think about it very much right now, either. But there's something to be said about telling the story like this, casually, almost detachedly, over a couple glasses of hard cider with the smoke and smell of grilled meat rising into the air. So he tells it: the family he grew up in, the big sprawl of he and his cousins and his parents and his uncles and aunts out in corner of Nebraska, middle of nowhere, close to Dakota. The farm and the tractors and big van that took them to school in the nearest town. Those endless summer nights,

and how they ended when he was old enough to be Fostered. To Change. To become a Garou, which was also when he began to realize he had so very little in common with all the wolves he grew up around; all the kin that reared him.

"I told you about how when I finished my Rite, I turned out to be a Shadow Lord instead of a Fenrir, right?" -- and by then the steaks are off the fire; they're sitting at the patio table with the comfortable padded chairs, and Erich's fair cheeks are starting to show the faint flush of intoxication. "Well, my family didn't take that very well."

And then comes the rest of that story, which he tells in the same unadorned prose he gave to Melantha. And Charlotte. And Drew. Kicked out, chased out, threatened, exiled. A little different this time, though. Doesn't end it with something deliberately and understated: so that sucked. Lets it hangs for a moment, and then adds:

"I'm still angry about it. I try not to dwell on it because there doesn't seem to be much I can do, so it's not worth ... flipping my lid over. So most the time I just tell myself and everyone else that it's okay, I'm over it, I like being a drifter and a lone wolf and all." A pause; a gulp of cider, and then he looks Jake in the eye. "I don't, though. And I'm not. And it's only okay when I don't have to deal with it.

"So." His smile is faint and wry. "That's my bit of heavy in this conversation."

Jake Novak

Standing like that, peering past Jake, as though he's unaware of human norms of personal space, Jake can almost imagine Erich in lupus. Well; he doesn't have to imagine. He's seen Erich in hispo, at least. If he were in a four-legged form his tail would be wagging eagerly. Meat. Meatmeatmeatmeatmeat.

Maybe the way that Jake tells his own story makes it easier to talk to him. It's heavy, and it's painful, and it's long. But it is what it is. Jake doesn't want to go back in time and fix any of it. He hasn't flown to the Czech Republic to try and visit two graves. He doesn't keep a photo of his mother or father around to stare at, to drink over, to wish he could bring himself to burn. He can remember the time when he ached for Emilia. He can remember, just as easily, wanting to kill her. He can remember, and is currently living with, the strange mixture of sorrow and relief he feels around her death.

He held almost nothing back. It just is. So everything Erich tells him can just be. It's his story. It's different. It has its own agony. Its own joy. Jake listens, and takes the steaks off the grill at some point, laying them on plates to sit for a few moments. They need to settle a bit, cook in their remaining juices. He nods when Erich asks if he told him how he ended up a Shadow Lord and not a Fenrir. He doesn't say a word. He sips his cider.

Erich doesn't need to tell him that it sucked. It sucked to run away from home, look over his shoulder, and realize that no one was coming after him. It sucked to stand there surrounded by wolves and struggle to connect the dots between the metis pup and the woman he used to love, the mother of his child, the daughter with a metis half-brother, the packmate that always rubbed Jake the wrong way, and it sucked to know that he struggled with it only because he was fighting so hard to deny it all. To pretend he didn't understand. It sucked to realize how much he needed his daughter right when he'd lost her, only when he'd lost her. It all fucking sucks.

Still: they drink their cider. Erich admits that he's still angry, and he tells Jake the lies that he tells himself, trying to believe them, and Jake very simply gets it. He meets Erich's eyes. He offers no comfort, no hand on Erich's hand, but he also gives no dismissal. He hands over a plate, laden with nothing but a thick, juicy, beautifully seared steak.

Jake says nothing. Nothing but: "Here. Eat. We'll have ice cream after."

Erich Reinhardt

It's not that their stories are the same. The sort of pain inherent in their pasts isn't even the same. The sort of men they've grown into, both because of and in spite of that damage, is not the same either.

But on some level, they seem to get it. Get each other. And at the end of it, Erich looks at Jake with profound, mute gratitude when -- in lieu of a hug or a handclasp or anything like that, anything that would force him to have to confront all that shit more directly and more head-on than he ever wants to -- Jake simply hands over a plate heaped with

quite simply

the best steak Erich has had in a very, very long time. Maybe since he left Nebraska. At the very least, the best meat he's had in recent memory that he hasn't had to kill himself.

"Thanks," he says. There's a moment where he might say more -- define that thank-you. It passes. He smiles a little, crookedly, and picks up his cider to tap against Jake's glass. "Happy noms," is his idea of a toast.

Jake Novak

Jake chuckles. It's odd when his smiles aren't small, when they spread over his face. He just grins, and lifts his cider, and nods. "Happy noms, Erich," he returns, and taps their glasses together.