promise.

Genevieve Breitenbach

Wed 11:21PM CST
Dust can penetrate. It can seep down into the bones, fertile as the darkest pitch of good soil. It has penetrated her like it penetrates the Amazon.

It refuses to admit defeat.
Though you cut the trees down.
Though you chop
Them
Down.

He sleeps, shall we say. And she enters, shall we say. Enters with a glass of cognoc, fragrant and amber-rich. To shift beneath his nose, as she leans over his prone figure. The glass... could be a dagger.
And she cuts to the quick.

"Wake up, Aurich. Our time is short."

Like she knows.
Like she has always known.


Aurich von Doenhoff

Wed 11:33PM CST
Sleep?
(No.)

Would you sleep in the last 48 hours of your life as you know it?
(Didn't think so.)

Merely resting his eyes. They are shut, yes. And his breathing is regular, yes. But the moment she leans over his eyes open, and he looks at her. She speaks; he tilts his head slightly, wryly; there's a wistful touch to his mouth.

"I am pleased to see you have returned," he says quietly.

Then he sits up, swinging his legs off the bed, alert and ready, taking the glass from her. A very small sip, and he sets it aside again.

Would you spend the last 48 hours of your life as you know it too drunk to feel anything?
(He wouldn't, either.)


Genevieve Breitenbach

Wed 11:37PM CST
"Did you doubt I would?"
Moving as he shifts to sit up, agile motions that speak of knowledge beyond what is, perhaps, fitting for she meant merely to be another matron of this incestuous Dynasty.
Are they cousins?

He sets the glass aside, and she settles one hand (stiched up and bruised, one fingerail gone black)on his cheek.

"Would you believe me if I told you I knew?"
Knew his time was up.
Knew it was over.
Knew to return.


Aurich von Doenhoff

Wed 11:39PM CST
He casts her a mild glance, amused. His large hand folds around hers and draws her palm to his mouth, where he kisses it.

"I would believe anything you say," he replies, so mild a tone for such heavy words. Then he stands, drawing her with him. The other hand flicks on a lamp, then takes her by the jaw. He turns her face this way and that, his narrowed eyes, green flecks in umber, studying the marks, the bruises, the scrapes and cuts.

"And where have you been, wife?"


Genevieve Breitenbach

Wed 11:42PM CST
Her face turned. A pretty, delicate doll to be manipulated. To be played with and cajoled.
No.
Her eyes, the depths of oceans, the scope of dusk where the sun does not reach; they narrow in turn and she jerks her face away.

"Fighting for you, as you would not fight for yourself."


Aurich von Doenhoff

Wed 11:48PM CST
His reply is almost flippant: "Why fight a futile war?"

One might ask the same of every Garou.

Then, gentler with an effort, "Do not resent my fate, Genevieve. You knew of it from the start. You knew."

He doesn't even ask if she has been successful.


Genevieve Breitenbach

Wed 11:53PM CST
She could argue.
ANd she has.
She has played over and over the arguments she would give.

Her good arm (the other in a sling, covered in plaster) reached out, one now-calloused thumb pressing down the flesh of his lower lip, then smoothly releasing perhaps all just to see the give and shift of living flesh.

She knows better...
...than to argue.
This.

"I have heard whispers of a final battle." Feral, she slides her head downward as the wealth of her tall, svelte form sighs downward in a crouch. Lupine, she strokes her nose up under the stubble of the sensitivity just below his jaw. "Tell me, husband, what is it to be?"


Aurich von Doenhoff

Wed 11:57PM CST
Having taken a seat at one of the two comfortable armchairs by the windows, his eyes fall half-closed in a certain animal enjoyment as she comes close to him, touches him, nuzzles. His large hands graze her hips and rest, warm, on her thighs.

He is unswervingly faithful. She knows this. And it has been a very long time.

His low rumble of a voice, halfway between murmur and growl, halfway between drowsiness and amusement and arousal and distance: "For me? Or for you?"


Genevieve Breitenbach

Thu 12:06AM CST
There is a place.
Just above the larynx.
Just below where under-chin becomes neck.
That place, is where she presses the end of her long, narrow, strong nose.
As a reflex, it opens the mouth... and with the fluidity of quicksilver, her own broader, fuller lips move to cover his. Deep. Full.

(drink me in.
I will keep you alive)

Broken off--
Her forehead to his. Her breath warm on him, moist and vital.
Eyes...
....open.

"For you."


Aurich von Doenhoff

Thu 12:13AM CST
"...mmph," when she kisses him.

And after, a laugh. "A small matter. Hardly consequential set next to the raising of the caern. There has been a thorn in the side of Chicago for too long; a thorn named Pyrell. On Friday we go to remove it. That is all. And after--"

His eyes halfshut, the umber and green seen through a thick weaving of black lashes. They slip shut entirely when he breaks off and seeks another kiss from her lips. Every one is one closer to the last, and so why should he not enjoy her, his woman, whilst he can?

Where he is going, there are no women. There is no love, no war, no pain, no life. It's an eternity of nothingness, a vast grey plain of wandering in which he will never grow old, never grow weak, never grow, never go anywhere.

It's immortality, in a way. A very different way from the immortality Garou imagine; the immortality of fame.

"...after, I mean to leave. I would not be claimed by my fate. I would claim it, when the time comes. But, lady; lately I've thought long and often of the one last option I have before me. One more fork in the road. What if I were to end my own life? Charge suicidal into battle. Win and die. Strip Gaia of me before she can strip me of everything."

A silence.

"Would that be cowardice, I wonder?"


Genevieve Breitenbach

Thu 12:26AM CST
Things are rarely taken from Genevieve. Things are given. As she gives him this kiss... and the next. And the last.
When it should come.

The thickness of his hair is a ripple of satin through the coarseness of the roughnened flesh of her fingers. The taste of him is a memory in the making. A memory fate dictates she shall forget.
And it is the forgetting...
...which has haunted her dreams. Ghost murmers behind shimmering shadows, where our ancestors dwell and mere mortals dare not go.

"What is cowardice?"
Again her nose at his neck. Curving upwards, to make a cresent of her face against his, to mark the completion of the moon in the touching of their flesh.
"All will forget you. Your name will not echo in the majesty of the eternity of those before you. But can a mark be truly erradicated? Will not Gaia remember? In the depths of her conciousness, you will be that which She bore. Bore to be obliterated from the feeble capabilities of our memory. But bathe her in the blood of Her enemies and to her you shall be Recalled. Gaia does not forsake you, Husband. Gaia claims you as her own. It would be cowardice to deny her the stretch marks of her final birthing rend."

Her good hand.
TO glide over his face.
Calloused-touch.. over his eyes.
"Now... let my last battle be yours. Allow me also to make my mark beside you."


Aurich von Doenhoff

Thu 12:33AM CST
He exhales: it's what he's known, and exactly what he's needed to hear.

Then his eyes snap open, the umber stormy, the green flashing. Pupils constrict with anger and he grabs her by the wrists, pulling her hands off his face in a fast, angry gesture. The predator's terror soaks the air of the room suddenly; above, on the roof, a nesting family of pigeons is awakened from their sleep and mills, nightblind and confused, where they cannot be seen.

"No." There is no murmur here; it is pure growl. "You will stay here. You will live."


Genevieve Breitenbach

Thu 12:44AM CST
"Is Fate your own to claim, mate?"
With the agility that bespeaks her skill with the long-daggers, she twists her wrists to snap around his own. Jarring her fractured arm something fierce. Something which turns her pale. With her eyes bright as artic flame.

"All knew your fate and yet to you I was mated. How many times have you settled between my thighs, Aurich? How many times and it never took seed. Why my barren union with you if not the fertility of joint final sacrifice?"

Even in anger, even in fervrent vehemenece are her words tailored, is her poise delectable.
"Husband... Mate... You above all know the power of fate. Of predestination. I've wrestled with this beast. I have lived with it time and again. I have prayed until rendered hoarse for some way to keep you alive; be it whole or in offspring or in memory alone. I have acted and still every road has lead here. To your side. I cannot keep you alive, so what more have I to give but my own blood to secure your place beside the Goddess?"

A slow, hauntingly steady intake of her beathe and then the dropped octave of her murmer, to settle as does the mist before the rise of eternity.

"I will not stand by and forget you."


Aurich von Doenhoff

Thu 12:51AM CST
"Don't," the word snapped out long before she finishes -- his hands gripping her wrists mercilessly, refusing to let go -- and much later, "push me, Genevieve.

"Don't push me."

He's sitting bolt upright as though the comfortable armchair had suddenly grown redhot. Tension sings through every bunched muscle, his thighs hard beneath hers, his chest close enough to hers for her to sense, subdermally, the furious pounding of his heart. She takes her slow breath; he sinks back, glowering turning to brooding.

She speaks again and his eyes drop from hers, not out of submission but out of contemplation. He spreads his blunt-fingered, swordsman's hands (killer's claws) on her sleek barren abdomen.

"A Garou does not allow his mate to die if he is worth his Name. A Silver Fang does not do that. It is impossible, Genevieve. I will not leave this earth a disgrace to my family and House, tribe and Nation. Fate is not mine to claim, but you are." His hands tightens suddenly. His fingers raze over her skin and then grasp a handful of her blouse, twisting tight, yanking her forcefully closer. "You are."


Genevieve Breitenbach

Thu 01:04AM CST
Held. Pushed. Pulled.
The sharp intake of her breath and the fluid give and adjustment of her crouched form the only indicator that his worlds, his actions, serve to penetrate.
For her gaze is kept steady.
Her good hand - albiet stitched - to slide over that which twists in her blouse forcing the arch of her spine. The cool gold of her wedding ring. Plain. To rest where his should be.

"Deny me this and I will die. As your mate I will perish. You know our ways. My family is already setting out it sights for a lesser Garou of lesser family who might deign to take a Kinwoman who is possibly barren. Or I shall be a widow who's mate is unrecalled, to oversee the frivolity of her society. Could I maipulate?" What remains of her nail dig into his flesh. The tenderness of under-wrist, where his pulse thrives. "Could I manuever and play may way to better position? Nothing more than a mover of Pawns? Would you condem me to either fate? I have always followd you -- do not force me to watch you go where I cannot follow." Snarled low, eyes narrowed and the flex of her jaw even as her chin rises up, her shoulders straigten.
Untouchable.
Touched.


Aurich von Doenhoff

Thu 01:20AM CST

He slaps her.
Correction: he backhands her, as brutally as he had in the airport many months ago. Only this time, the gesture is reined and sharp, short, and he does not relinquish his hold on her other arm. Thus, she cannot fall.

"Is this what you have come to, Genevieve? The inability -- the unwillingness -- to serve your life as Gaia has intended? Fear of the road that lies beneath your feet, when all your life you have walked it? If, after my passing you will be mated to a Garou of lesser breeding when once your were mine, mine, then so be it. If you are to live out your life as a mover of pawns, then so be it. If you are to live out your life destitute, in rags, serving Gaia in a way only She can fathom, then so be it.

"You would not allow me the easy exit of death in combat. And you were right. So why should I allow the same of you? No. Never. Put it from your mind."

A hissing long inhale. It is not an invitation for her to speak. If she should try, he would only strike her again, and again if necessary.

"You will lie with me tonight, wife." The first storm of his rage has subsided to something quieter, a little more dangerous. "Long have you been gone, and long have I missed you. You will lie with me tonight, woman; tomorrow, and the night after that, before I go to whatever fate Gaia has preordained for me. And on one of these three nights, you will conceive.

"You wish to preserve some memory of me on this earth? Then that is how you will do it. With your flesh. With the fruit of your womb."

Finally, he lets her go.


Genevieve Breitenbach

Thu 01:40AM CST
Backhanded.
With the metallic tang of her own blood within her mouth. To seep along the plumpness of her lips and paint them the red of vitality. Her eyes closed to steady the galaxies awakened behind her eyelids.

Tension.
Static between them, this bare distance to forge a lightening strike and melt them whole.
These moments tend to liquify.

Exhale.
Her eyes closing.
...tranquility is so fragile, so fleeting a thing...
As if he's said...
...what she needed to hear.

Then motion.
Surging upwards.
Surging against him. Her body clamped close; pressed sure to deny him to hook with which to push her away or strike her loose. Her grasp in his hair a white hot heat that becomes ice and the unrelenting momentum of glaciers.

"You never took me, Aurich. I gave myself." Somehow, even so close, she keeps herself distant. "Tell me I made my mark on you. Then mark me as you have not. Make me remember, husband. With your eyes on mine. You are not yet gone. You are not yet dead. You are not yet forgotten and this," Her abdomen - her covered womb - pressed tight up against his pelvis. Heat for heat and danger for danger. "This is your eternity. And mine. Now."


Aurich von Doenhoff

Thu 02:03AM CST
Firmly, he takes her face between his hands. Her body pressed close and his unyielding, he faces her from inches away.

"You have made your mark." Every word is a growl. Tonight there is little human about him; they are wolf and mate, garou and kin. It all comes down to memory--

--but this is not a memory yet.

That much is apparent in his irresistible strength. When he stands he takes her with him, his hands supporting beneath her thighs, his spine backarched for balance and pride both. He eats the breath from her mouth and grips and rips at her clothes. Then he drops her backwards on the bed. When his shirtcuffs do not come apart fast enough he uses his teeth. When he is naked he covers her, scooping her up against him with one hand beneath the incurve of her back.

And again, "You have made your mark."

It all comes down to memory.
Hers -- and his.

"I will not forget you."


Genevieve Breitenbach

Thu 02:44AM CST
She does not speak to respond to his words. His promises. His assurance. His demand. Language becomes the universe of the flesh, marking out a bright constallation with the joints and junctures of their forms in the darkness around them.
His darkness encroaching.
To swallow him whole.

Together they shall make of her womb - her femeninity - her divine chalice - a Milky Way and within this vista, they shall create worlds. Worlds within worlds, the cells to bond and divide and within each infentismal building block shall be the essesnce with which a new world shall be created.

Tonight conception is an act of will.
It is the force of unified purpose.
She is made unto him a glove of mind and body, to fit snug and sound. To keep warm and, perhaps, to conceal the nakedness of his unstopable fragility.

He will be forgotton.
But can they make his line go on?

After the Goddess stretched form her limbs of mind and essense; after the rush of initial creation; after the scorching, primal heat of their venture into the Divinity that is conception...
...there is the silence of retrospect.
The echoeing stillness of naught but thumping hearts that is the life-blood Sun to this solar system that throbs, throbs, throbs deep down to their very marrow.

And with her face...
...turned towards him in the shadows.
...she finally speaks once more.

"You're making me live. I'll set a price." Her fingers extended to trace out the scars she knows by heart. Her lips to drink in the last beads of the persperation that bear his mark. "In this life, I will forget you. But you will not forget me. And when I have left this life behind... find me. And we will build memories new. Find me."


Aurich von Doenhoff

Thu 02:56AM CST
His breathing has yet to slow.
His heart still pounds so loud it drowns all else out.
Almost.

When he lifts his head from her skin his sweatdamp hair hangs into his eyes. Every minute motion of his consummately powerful body is echoed through his skin onto hers. When he looks at her, even in the dark, the green flecks in his eyes gleam and glitter, glow. His are the eyes of a wolf. His is the hunger and faith of a wolf, unswerving, without the uncertainties of human love and fidelity, where a vow is so easily broken.

His vows are not voiced, save for these few ones. He breathes quietly as she touches him with her hands, and then with her mouth, as an animal does. His arms fold around her. Lock. His strength is unbudgeable, unbelievable. There's an irony in this, that the so potently physical should be doomed to become a fading spirit. His throat feels tight. Cool-eyed lady, her skin is nevertheless warm.

"I will find you." He speaks softly; intensely. His life is without finish, an asymptotic line petering out without finish, approaching infinity. His honor passes the boundaries of lives and times. "I promise you this."