Shenanigans [Pi]

[Pi dArtois]

They moved quietly together, Pi holding back to let Elliot take the lead. She watched his *** for like, ten seconds and smiled, lifting her eyes away to scan the area around them. What was competition but a chance to test your skill, to measure it against that of another. Usually it meant a level of rivalry, a need to win because you needed to best the other, prove something. Pi just liked to, well, she just liked to… win. Yes, she like that but what she felt with Elliot was more than that, more a … need to be.

Sometimes the silly nonsense she thought when she was around the man surprised her. Her brain would head off into weird places where she asked herself questions of why and when and how does this make her feel. She never used to do this. But she liked it.

Competition with Elliot felt like a reward, something they did as a couple. Like other couples went to have coffee or a drink in a bar and a quiet dinner alone chatting. Pi liked to bake, but couldn’t eat. Elliot could eat but it wasn’t something they could do together. They ran Lancaster’s together, him in the bar, her pilfering through the kitchen, driving the short order chef’s crazy with her tinkering. And then there was this. Another facet of the time she enjoyed with him.

They got to indulge their other side. The side that couples, human ones, the ones you see in movies didn’t indulge in. Well, not those non-psychotic ones.

Her and Elliot weren’t psychotic. They were normal. They were bread and butter, milk and coffee, they were a compliment to one another in a vampire world where date nights, bonding could happen in places like this.

She saw him open the beast up to her shot and she smoothly lifted Stella into firm grip, pulled it tight into her shoulder and took the shot, then another, lifting the bear off its haunches and watching it twitch on the floor in front of them.

Double or nothing, a daring lure; but an unnecessary one. She would be here anyway. Because this was a date night, a moment around a dinner table, eating nibbling bites of their food, staring at each other over the width of the tiny round table and talking late into the night.

“Merci” she said, taking lead easily, spotting the next target behind the first. She flowed around the door, into the small antechamber, firing once to slow the beast down before holding her spot at the entrance to let Elliot pass.

“I have been thinking…” she mentioned casually, even if… the thought itself had been far from casual at all. “I’d… like to try… it would be nice I think. To.. like you. Find another to … turn.” She announced baldly, watching for his reaction, wondering what impact her words would have.

She told Elliot everything… now. She hadn’t always. She was a hermit crab, poking her head in and out of its shell, her little crab claws peeking out, testing the air before ducking back in. Until him. She’d traded up her shell when she met Elliot. This one not so hard to crack, easier to leave. But still, sometimes, she felt the undeniable urge to crawl back in there. Like now. A retreat, just in case he looked at her like she’d lost her damn mind.

[Lancaster]

The first bear went down and neither of them even rifled the body for the loot that it might have provided. Pi didn’t skip a beat as she bypassed the twitching corpse and moved on to the next – a bit of give, a bit of take, she did for Elliot exactly as he had just done for her; he distracted the beast and opened it up for his attack. He slid past her, through the door. Around behind the bear so that he could leap, long legs cartwheeling and long fingers grasping at dead fur, in order, with the opposite hand, to thrust the heft of the sword deep into the creature’s skull. Once, twice – he’d heart Pi’s comment, and it was slowly sinking in. Slowly percolating in his brain even as the beast below him roared, faltered, and fell. Elliot lost his balance and toppled from atop the corpse. He regained his composure in a graceful roll.

He stopped, one knee still leaning against the cold ground. His sword was still stuck in the head of the bear. His fingers splayed against the brick as he regained his balance. When he finally lifted his attention to Pi, it was with a flick of his head, thereby forcing the lanky strands of disobedient hair out of his blue eyes. His brows were stitched together in a furrowed frown.

He could have laughed. It sounded like the beginning of the kind of conversation married couples might have; the wife coming to the reluctant husband, wanting to know when they could start trying to have a baby. That wasn’t a conversation that he and Pi would ever have, however. This would have to do, as a substitute. And yet, it wasn’t the same, was it? It was rife with all kinds of friction.

Without friction, he supposed, there couldn’t be fire. But then, Elliot was never much a fan of fire.

Slowly, he stood. Like you, she had said. As if it were something that he did on a whim, as if it wasn’t something that terrified him. As if it wasn’t something that had him often filled with shame and guilt, if he dwelled on it for too long.

”It’s not like I go looking for it. It’s not this whim that I get – like it’s a want and then I go find someone to…” he shook his head. Zane was the last, and Zane had asked for it. Jia had been an accident. Lex… oh, God. Lex. He stopped there. He refused to think about the rest of them. And yet, his voice remained calm, even. Although he could feel the emotion broiling in the core of his being, he didn’t allow it to leak to the surface. Not quite yet. He couldn’t be angry at Pi when she hadn’t been given the opportunity to explain herself just yet. Elliot slowly approached the bear’s corpse, to grasp the hilt of his sword and pull it from the flesh with a squelch.

”What’s got you thinking that?” Elliot asked without looking at Pi. One simple question. He wouldn’t expand it. Wouldn’t ask her why she’d want to thieve someone out of their humanity and force them into eternity. He wouldn’t yet assume she’d be capable of such cruelty.

[Pi dArtois]

She watched detached as he rolled, stopped and stood, pulling his sword free with a gut curdling squelch of ripping skin and tendon. There was no other sound like it, a shifting of body tissue and the gurgle of internal organs (this time the brain) as the animal twitched and convulsed its last. Limbs not knowing the brain was dead coming to a slow halt.

When she moved forward Stella was holstered. Crouching before the animal she rolled it over looking for the metallic glint and finding nothing. Nothing but blood and fur and the tang of blood.

This bear she searched for a key. Not because she wanted to win, because the last bear certainly indicated that she wasn’t that bothered by it really. (and expected Elliot would have done so there) But more for form, because searching is why they were killing these great hulking beasts for. And getting to the next level and finding the crazy ******** making all these creatures.

What Pi never did understand about this city was how all of this supernatural mumbo jumbo could happen under the noses of people and they not know about it. She’d have thought there would be a website solely devoted to the weird **** and mysterious disappearances of people from this tiny corner of Canada. If there were she didn’t know about it, and if there wasn’t one already, there damn well should be.

Weird **** wasn’t half of what was wrong with this small town, and it was only getting weirder. Like this bear in front of her, gutted by the man she loved. Gutted being a general term, since it was the brain that had been eviscerated this go around.

When he asked the question she looked up from her crouch, her position making her appear like she was posing next to the carcass of a kill, in some Hemingway-esque ‘great white hunter’ photograph. She shrugged. Not because it was a careless question but because she didn’t have a good answer. If she was honest, it wouldn’t be one he’d be all that happy with either. Because she wanted a bigger family? Because she wanted someone to need her, to want her, to be useful for?

Would Elliot hear those reasons and turn those soulful eyes on her and think her a monster? She bit her lip and held his gaze, trying to see beyond the blue and into his brain.

It wasn’t any good though, in some things his poker face had always stumped her, because she wasn’t intuitive enough to make logical leaps where he was concerned. She knew how much trouble he had turning people, his guilt and his… well, he wasn’t always an avid cheerleader of their lifestyle, of what they were. But he was always so good at being there for others, of being someone they could trust and turn to.

“I don’t know. It just feels like… I should be doing something. Something more I should be doing.” It felt like an inadequate explanation and she could already see the holes Elliot could swiss cheese out of that lame statement. Slowing coming to her feet she ran an agitated hand through her hair, mussing it and turned to walk out of the antechamber. It’s not that she was leaving him because she couldn’t finish the conversation so much as she needed to keep moving so she could… think about why she wanted to sire… to turn more. Yeah, she could see where Elliot had a problem with this.. and why. Like this city needed more of their kind. Didn’t she just think about how ridiculous it all was.

“God I don’t know Elliot” she said, her hand making another furrow in her hair. She didn’t make it two steps before she turned back around again, knowing that pretending to go on with this hunt wasn’t the answer either.

“It feels like I’m trying to wake up and that I need to do something. Mean something. That the reason I am what I am is meaningful to someone. We have each other and we have eternity but god, what do I fill that eternity with if we can’t grow into something… make something … more?”

She blinked and stopped. Her fingers rose to touch her lips as if she wasn’t sure where all those words came from and she looked him full in the face then, questioning. She needed him to help her figure out who she was and what she meant. She’d just walked through the damn door, didn’t he understand. That door, that bloody door not ten minutes ago where she promised herself to be here, to be present and not to give up. Except he didn’t know that did he? He couldn’t peek into her mind and see the shift she’d made, and try as she might, she really wanted him to see it. And help her figure out what the hell to do with it.

[Lancaster]

It seemed like it should be the next legitimate step in his development. At least, the way Elliot had pondered it when sitting in rare moments of silence, contemplating the things that he was capable of. The way he could reach out, and the closer he got, the more skin that he touched, the more that he could feel. Like vibrations through the air, miniscules of sound or hesitances in atmosphere, auras, perhaps, that he could see, hear, feel – he knew that what other were feeling. They could speak into his head, and he into theirs. So many channels, so many ways in which he could … but he couldn’t know what Pi was thinking. He couldn’t put words to her actions or reasons into her suggestions. He could only ask the questions and hope that her answers would be forthcoming.

Elliot’s largest flaw was that he wanted to please everyone. He wanted for no one to ever be unhappy. He wanted to be able to guide them through their woes, because he couldn’t stand seeing anyone sad or angry or stricken with grief or anxiety. Maybe his reasons were selfish, maybe not. He could feel what they felt, so was he, in the end, only trying to rid himself of their woe? No, he didn’t believe that either. He’d always been like this. Always, ever since he was young. Before he had any ability to legitimately empathise with others, on a higher level.

Pi had stopped and turned, and Elliot had followed, long strides leading him to stand in front of her. This might not be the time or the place for such a conversation, but it had been instigated and now there would be no avoiding the consequences. He almost wanted to throw it right back at her; wanted her to be able to feel what he was feeling, too. A vicious circle. He tried not to dwell on it. Tried not to think about how it sounded as if she were saying he was not enough, that he did not make her feel like she meant something. Because she did mean something, to him. And she always would.

Telling her how much he loved her and how much he might not be able to live without her didn’t seem to be the answer to this dilemma, however, and he had to fight hard to keep the fear in his own heart clamped down and out of sight. Secretly, he was overjoyed that she had not succeeded in joining Tytonidae, but he also felt guilty for being overjoyed. It was something that she had wanted, because it would have given her a path, a goal, something to strive for. Meaning, as she put it. He might ask her whether living in happiness and contentment was not meaning enough. But that would be assuming that she was happy and content. And obviously she was not.

And that was all Elliot wanted for her. To be happy, and content.

Instead of trying to fling his own guilt and despair at Pi, however, Elliot took the higher road.

”That’s just it though. We have eternity, don’t we? What’s the rush? Trying to build something without thinking about it, without…. Following the instructions, it’s not going to last, is it? Like something cheap from IKEA. It seems like a good idea at the time but in a few years you’ll wish you spent the extra money on that lovely man and his family-owned business and that proper oak shelf that would stand the test of time…” he ranted. He almost laughed. Look at him, talking about plans and thinking before acting! He, the fallen King of spontaneity. Oh, how people change.

The way she was looking up at him, as if he might have the answers for her, it was like a rope around Elliot’s heart and he wanted so badly to have the answers. He wanted to make it all better and was terrified that he wouldn’t. He brushed his fingers along the rise of Pi’s cheekbone. He did laugh, then. Not as full of mirth as the last time.

”Don’t fall apart on me, Pi. Don’t fall apart at the thought of eternity. That’s my job,” he said, teasingly. And then, breath hitched, he addressed the problem at hand: ”What I’m trying to say is… if it’s something you think you need to do, don’t rush into it. Don’t force anyone because you won’t successfully build much of anything if everyone resents you. Find someone who wants it. Someone who won’t hate you for it. Maybe… if you want to mean something to someone, you need to be their saviour. And be their anchor. Like you are mine,” he said, tenderly.

[Pi dArtois]

Pi tilted her head to the side and listened, really listened to what he had to say. Their location fell away and they could have been on a deserted island for all the notice she gave their surroundings. She didn’t care about the other inhabitants or what damage they could do to the unwary, instead she focused intently on his words, piecing them together.

At first she was insulted, as if what she’d said in any way indicated she was going somewhere, or worse yet, going out of her mind. She frowned at him then, brow knitting. She didn’t say anything, but she wanted to. Letting him finish when she really wanted to interupt him and tell him that she wasn’t going nuts, nor was she falling apart. Yet. Sorta.

Okay, so she was a bit checked out for a while there. Maybe it wasn’t as subtle as she thought. Maybe he had noticed and this was his way of telling her he understood. Dammit. Maybe she was going nuts and this was also his way of making sure she … knew he knew so she’d know someone knew so she’d do something about it. She blinked at the thought, rewinding it, trying to figure out what the hell her brain was trying to tell her. Probably, at this point it was telling her not to get pissed off, to shut up and listen to the man.

She was awful at subtext. If there was something she had to say she wanted to get it said, out there in the open so whoever it was she was speaking to couldn’t mistake her meaning. Except she was also awful at explaining what she felt or the why of what she wanted to do. Sometimes it felt like she was a monkey pointing at a banana and could no more communicate that a garbled ‘uh uh uh’ with a pointing finger, and frantic bouncing to indicate need.

But his words didn’t need translating and she didn’t see any hidden subtext. She breathed a sigh of relief at what he said because it’s how she was thinking about doing it anyway. She didn’t want to force anyone into this life. Gone were the moments she was so inexperienced that mistakes like Robert Pratt happened again. She had learned her lesson about not thinking before leaping.

With a frown she stared at him. “I’m not going anywhere.” She stated baldly, sure she wasn’t going to argue about it. But it seemed important to point this out. She’d walked through the door, she thought to herself and he should know that she had. Even if the door was in her mind and he’d not know what that meant at least these words would let him know she was.. here and planning to stay here. She held out a hand palm up. “And it’s not about that so much… I know I have been a bit… quiet lately. It’s just that I feel like I should be… active. I have to DO something Elliot.... don't you see? I can't... floating and 'being' isn't enough... I have to feel like I'm contributing... being effective and necessary...”

Pi was one of those people that spoke with gestures, her hand movements brought it to give her words and thougths emphasis and it was a good thing Stella was in her holster or she’d be using the rifle as a waving baton, the way her hands were moving. “And I don’t want to turn anyone to this life that doesn’t want it.”

Shaking her head she stayed put put her body moved instead, shifting at her shoulder and her arms, first coming to her neck to rub there and then out again as she replied.

“It just seems like there is so much we are able to give … but no one who.. wants it. So what is it for? What we have? But to try and make life better for people like us. But how can it help anyone if … we don’t have anyone around us that wants to make use of it. Charlie. I like Charlie… like Charlie. I don’t really want to populate the world with more vampires so much as .. open our home?”

It was about Canidae, and about d’Artois and the ones they had both turned and those that came after that. They were a line of people who were just like them who had the opportunity to be a part… gah, Pi didn’t know. She didn’t know what they wanted, but it certainly wasn’t anything d’Artois could give them.. or Canidae.

“But … I don’t know. If I can’t get our own bloodline to want what we have to give, then what chance does anyone new have. Not even those who are in our bloodline want… need what is built to help them. What good then is there is bringing out more. No maybe no new new… but maybe ones that make the choice to want.. a place to be?”

The statement sounded self defeatest but it wasn’t really. Pi just didn’t know where to go from here. If something didn’t work, and it certainly looked like Canidae had turned into an entity many in the bloodline chose to do nothing with. Then what was next? Does she let it die? Does she reinvent? Will bringing someone new into the fold really give it the revitalisation it needs to see the potential it could be?

[Lancaster]

Elliot didn’t want to know what it must be like to live like Pi was now. To always be craving something more. He thought that he had it bad, wanting to travel. Feeling itchy feet but forever denying their need to walk – to walk down that road past the city limits and to just keep going. He thought about it, every time he passed that road that led out of the city. His heart yearned toward whatever might be waiting. But there was enough waiting inside the city, at least for now. And he consoled himself, always, by remembering that time was no longer a constant. Time wasn’t something that could threaten him anymore. If he didn’t leave now what did it matter? Things would change. They always did. Nothing could stay the same forever; one day, everything would fall apart and movement would be a requirement. Lancaster’s could stay Lancaster’s, but he couldn’t remain the boss. There were too many regulars who’d grow old where he would not. He couldn’t stay.

But for now, he could play at being human, and normal. He could play at being just an average joe, and for now that would be enough. It would be okay. When lying awake before bed, or when zoning out in the middle of the night when not distracted by the things that required his attention, he thought about it. He thought about the stretch of time, long and impregnable. Once, it had terrified him. But now? Now, it almost made his heart sing. All that time. He could visit every single city on the Earth. He could circle back around and by the time he came back to Harper Rock? No one would remember who he was, or that he’d ever been there to begin with.

At first he had thought that immortality would be a constraint, but it’s a only a constraint until one’s human life is done with, and all the ties that one had when mortal were gone. Immortality was the biggest freedom that this life could offer.

But here was Pi, stressed out about… about what?

He cleared his throat and tugged the woman into a little alcove; something that might have once been some kind of closet, but whose door was now gone completely. They could see out, and things could see in, but they were no longer in the middle of the crumbling hall. No longer in the way, should anyone choose to join them. A far better place to have this kind of conversation, if they were bound to have it inside the raid.

Elliot’s hand laid on Pi’s shoulder. He licked his lips.

”Then open it up, Pi,” he hesitated. They’d both agreed on the terms of Canidae. But he’d agreed because he didn’t know what else to do. Since Charlie, however, he’d started to second-guess. They’d created this thing, this Den, this place for family but it was exclusive. It wasn’t open at all. Instead they demanded things, expected things before the members of d’Artois were allowed a safe haven.

”Sometimes you can’t ask for loyalty. It has to be given freely. And sometimes, to gain loyalty you have to earn it. You have to give. You have to make sacrifices. You can’t… build a wall around yourself and then demand that people respect you even though they can’t get through it. The Den? It is something grand that we have built but we demand things of people before we let them in. We haven’t made our home open to anyone. What do we have to give to those who are new, before we demand something of them first? Like Charlie – I’ve given her my help and whatever security I can offer. I have told her she can stay in my apartment in the Catacombs, in the sewers maybe. But neither place is impenetrable. I can’t keep her safe even if I tried. Before I do I have to grill her about her opinions and her loyalties and demand she pay me $20,000. I feel wrong doing that,” Elliot said.

It had been on his mind for a while. Or well, since Charlie, anyway, he’d been thinking about it. He hadn’t had the chance to talk to Pi about it, however. But, here they were. And she started it.

[Pi dArtois]

Pi had created Canidae using her own life experiences as the model for success. What she had needed in order to build herself into someone she wanted to be. She had needed purpose and structure and a worthy goal to strive for, so when she accomplished it she could point to it and tell herself she deserved to take it because of how much effort it had taken to achieve it. It hadn’t taken long for her to realise her own recipe for success wasn’t one she could recreate with the same level of success for others.

In her mind a person didn’t full appreciate what they had until they put effort into being a part of it, because that was how she thought. If she hadn’t put it together herself, sweat blood and tears into the effort, then it wasn’t of value. Wasn’t valued. So she had created the rules behind Canidae with that model in mind.

In her mind, it was something awesome, but it wasn’t a free ride. It didn’t come just because you were what you were. It was worth working for, worth giving yourself over to and at the end of the day surely they would look at what they had help put together and value it more.

But she was wrong.

The ones she had introduced the plan to hadn’t believed the same and they saw her rules and her milestones as millstones that made it too hard to belong. She listened to Elliot, her expression troubled. Pulling her lower lip with her teeth she gnawed on it as he spoke. She shrugged then, letting her head drop forward beating her forehead gently against his chest. Once, then again before resting her head where it lay.

“Ugh.” She muttered. “I thought it was right. How it was set up. Give them goals and reason to keep striving for something but… well, I know something is wrong and it can’t keep on like it is if it’s going to mean something to people.” She spoke, her voice bouncing off his chest before she lifted it to meet his eyes.

“I know it needs to change, but I need you to help me figure out how. Canidae should stay, I think, so we can keep the Den secure… but the other parts. Can you help with that? When …” she looked around them then, her smiled brightening when she realised the incongruous situation they were in.. “when we’re done … here?”

Not that Pi was entirely sure what exactly they were doing. Date night? Fight night? Who knew. It seemed a simple thing but once she started questioning her relevancy the tone for her had switched, spinning a full 180.

[Lancaster]

Pi’s forehead nudged Elliot’s chest and his arms easily fell around her, not pulling her close but instead just enclosing her in a comfortable and welcoming space. His fingers traced circles against her shoulders, oblivious of any muck or gore that might be clinging to her – or him – from the foes that they had vanquished thus far. She started to agree, to say that things needed to change, but then suggested that Canidae stay the same. Elliot’s brow furrowed. He didn’t understand.

The one thing they have to make any newcomers feel welcome is the Den; to make them feel secure, and at home, and as if they have a family that cares for them regardless of what they could do or how much money they could give. Keep Canidae, then, but what would the conditions of entry be? Elliot could understand Pi’s hesitance. She didn’t want to let anyone in who might ultimately do them harm. But what difference did it make? Tytonidae could get in. And there were those in d’Artois who were Tytonidae. It was a tangled web.

It was that thought which gave Elliot pause. No, they shouldn’t let all d’Artois into the Den, because all d’Artois included some Tytonidae. He wasn’t sure how he could help Pi in this endeavour when the two of them were at odds with what they did and did not like. If it were up to Elliot, he’d allow every new d’Artois into Canidae, and into the Den. Except if they were members of Tytonidae. Anyone who joined that god-forsaken faction could go to hell.

Except, he knew that Pi wouldn’t like that idea. Elliot knew he would have to give a little. He sighed.

”Sometimes something has to mean something to people before they’ll strive for it, not the other way around. Bring people into this world and they’re lost and confused and sometimes they’re in no state to strive for anything other than understanding what they have become. We need to make them feel welcome and offer them security before they’ll give one iota of loyalty or respect,” he murmurs. It’s all well and good to say as much but Pi had asked him for help as to how to go about achieving the goal of creating something.

It would be a challenge. And they would need time to think about it; and maybe a nice hot shower. Together, perhaps, to clear their heads. Maybe a nice quiet table with some pens and a notebook, and two brains focused on the one task rather than on two. They were in the middle of a raid. They had to finish what they were doing. Elliot shrugged, hands cupping either side of Pi’s face as she looked up at him.

”Want to kill some more ****? No way I’m making it to that boss big bad. I’m just in here for a bit of… therapy,” he said with a crooked smile that bordered on a grimace. ”But I can help you. Be your shoulders to stand on,” he added with a smile that was less crooked, and more giving.

[Pi dArtois]

“I’m only here for you really.” She answered his last question first, reaching a hand up to clasp loosely around one that gently cupped her from ear to jaw, letting that one lead while her brain percolated on what he’d said. It was easier to deal with the present rather than attempt to map out the future. There wasn’t a great chance they would get to the top before others had, moving as slow as they had, talking as they were. She hadn’t really thought about reaching the top at all, satisfied with just playing with him.

Letting herself settle in his arms she nodded.

Too much of her previous life had been an uncertain mess and she knew she had a tendency to want to manage everything down to its very nth degree. Knowing her challenge didn’t make it any easier to change the habit of a lifetime. It only made it that much more complicated when it came to unraveling what she’d created, as it went against her nature to just ‘let it be’. Which is what she thought he was asking her to consider.

They were a mess though, as they were, covered in … stuff. Stuff she didn’t want to examine too closely, so didn’t. The sounds around the building had quieted, making her think that those who were racing to the top had already passed them by. Not that she was worried about it.

“Lets get out of here.. meet you at the Crypt?” she offered, thinking they could pick this up there, after a shower, maybe together even. They needed to clean themselves off and give her time to really consider his words and how she felt about them. That would be nicer than trying to do it here in this place. They could have quiet and time and a couch to sit on, snuggle into and figure it out.

“I still owe you a default for the first floor… so how about we just leave and do something else?” she offered. “You have given me something to think about and I’m not sure my head is in the game if we stay. I want to pick your brain about how we can rebuild it... change it and make it better... more. I have no specific idea but I'd like to try ... something different. Better.”

And it wasn’t. Now that she’d brought up the idea of Canidae she really wanted to nut it out, figure out a way to make it different. It could mean blasting it to pieces and creating something different from the ashes but she was good at that. Nothing you had created stayed the same. It was a fact of life. Change happened and you had to be resilient enough to flow with the change and make something out of it. Failure wasn’t and ending but just one step on a longer journey. Pi had always believed that.

If she had accept that failure meant the end then she would never have got where she had, never developed past that dingy room with her mother burnt out and dead to the world, sprawled on the couch of a burning building.


“Oui?” she asked, turning her head to kiss the inside of his palm, rubbing her cheek and smiling up at him.

Pi had never thought herself an affectionate person. She had kept herself to herself so long that it hadn’t been an easy transition, but now she couldn’t imagine what it would be like not to have this easy tactile contact with someone. It was comfortable and comforting. There were expectations but they were easy ones to build into her life. No, she hadn’t thought herself an openly affectionate person but Elliot made it so easy to forget the walls she had built, tearing down her normal reticence.

Now she couldn’t imagine a life without it. Without him. And by God, if what they had created didn’t work. They would try again, re-imagine and try again. And then do it again if they needed to.

[Lancaster]

Elliot looked over Pi’s shoulder, peering out at the darkness of the crumbling ruins around them. Time had done a number on the walls and the bricks were weak, but still serviceable. He wondered whether time would do the same thing to them; outwardly they would stay the same, look the same, but inside? Would they stay the same, would they get stronger? Or would time weather their souls down to crumbling ruins? He swallowed. Best not to think about that – to think about how many times they might strive and fail, and how many times Pi might ask him to help rebuild, and ‘make better’.

He wanted to tell her that he wasn’t the person to ask. Yes, he knew that they at least had one thing in common – neither of them were experts at building and keeping families. Pi, for her own reasons and her own hectic past, and Elliot due to his wanderlust. Building a family was never something that he had planned for himself. They had tried, he and Pi, with both d’Artois and with Canidae. D’Artois hadn’t worked, not really. D’Artois, without Canidae, was where Elliot had tried his hardest. Where he had wanted to just be there for those who might require assistance; to be a pillar. It hadn’t worked. Canidae was Pi’s brainchild, and Elliot had agreed, had helped her to try it her way. The militaristic way. But that hadn’t worked, either.

What else could they try? He rarely saw any of their progeny – any of those that had been spawned from either himself or from Pi. They had tried, hadn’t they? They’d tried hard, for a while there, to bring them all together. But every family meeting, every get-together had devolved into some kind of drama. Insults. Anger. Of course it was probably easier to step back and admit defeat.

It had worked, for a minute. And then it had … it hadn’t fallen apart. It just dissolved into silence.

He wondered what she meant; she was there for him, she said. They had not planned to meet in the raid. They had happened upon each other, or so he thought. Or had she tracked him, and found him, because she wanted to? He didn’t ask the question. He was distracted by the notion of a shower. He remembered the first time they had showered together. He remembered it vividly. That was the night their relationship had started in earnest. He had to smile. He couldn’t help it.

”Yes,” he replied, echoing her French with his English. He didn’t tell her that his brain couldn’t be picked for the answers she wanted; that he didn’t have any answers to give to her. He didn’t want to dissuade her from her plan, because he was male. And she’d instigated his particular line of thought the first time she’d crawled up his tall frame when she’d found him, earlier. Even if they did go home and shower separately, the end game would be the same. Curled up in each other’s arms, somewhere warm and comfortable, with no person or monster to disturb them. To talk for hours, rather than for just a little while before he’d drop off into a deathlike sleep, before sunrise.

He reached into his pocket to retrieve the tome; he grinned.

”Race you!” he said. And he knew it was unfair, and that he had given himself a headstart, but his fingers clutched at the tome while his lips began to recite the spell that would take him home, to the Den. The one that he knew by heart, his eyes not leaving Pi’s face as he chanted. And, as the last word was uttered he leaned forward to press a chaste kiss to Pi’s lips—his own mouth would buzz with power, as the tome worked its magic, and his body began disperse in front of her.