wichita to miami.

[Alex] The next morning, they don't leave until well after breakfast. Alex is up with the sun, so he jets out to the grocery store and gets fresh fruits and eggs and juice to make breakfast with the blender. Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair sample the thick, sweet, icy power-smoothie he's concocted, but Alex doesn't take it too personal when eggs get scrambled and hash browns get fried and everyone sits down to a proper Kansas breakfast once Sinclair's finally out of bed.

They take their time loading the car, and it's proof positive that Alex is feeling comfortable around Sinclair's parents now because when Kenneth tries to get him to rearrange their luggage he resists, says he likes the laptop bags way in the back so they can get 'em out at night even if it means they get a little squooshed. Kenneth harrumphs over the contents of the little Hyundai a little longer before he lets it go, and later, as a sort of surreptitious thank-you, Alex helps the Sinclairs install a special antivirus program the Walkers in Miami baked up. Totally ironclad, he says proudly, and then Sinclair staggers by with a billion bags full of goodies Samantha packed them and Alex jumps up to help her.

It's close to noon when they finally pull out of the Sinclairs' driveway, Alex waving from behind the wheel, Sinclair leaning out the window with Tripoli. Come visit us! Alex yells out the window as they're leaving, and Sinclair keeps waving right up until their car takes a turn and the Sinclairs' house disappears behind a corner.


From there it's a long straight shot across the Great Plains to Chicago; the longest day of driving yet. They swing by St. Louis, hitting the Arch right around dinnertime, and they grab dinner at a hole in the wall fish'n'chips joint right on the Mississippi. Summer's in full swing and the sunset lasts forever, but then the mosquitos chase them back to their car. There's a bit of discussion of maybe staying there a night, but they're both a little sick of the plains, and anyway it's sofuckinghothere, and so it's onward, onward. Night falls and they take turns napping. It's a little after two a.m. when the lights and towers of Chicago rise up out of the flatness,

and thunder's rumbling on the horizon,

and something in Sinclair's chest swells and aches at once with the knowledge that her pack, and her totem, are here. Right here.

They crash at Kate's. The Loft is an oasis of elegance and luxury after their marathon day of driving. Alex is asleep the second his head hits the pillow, and in the morning, for once, Sinclair is up before him, reuniting with her pack. Swimming in the pool. Catching up on the latest news from Lukas; the latest gossip from Kate. Alex chills on Kate's Xbox while Sinclair runs down to the Caern, pays her respects to the spirits and the totems that live there, and when she gets back he's not there so she calls him, and he tells her he's out taking a look at, y'know, apartments and stuff. For when they come back. Maybe.


So it turns out they're staying a second night in Chicago. Then the morning after they're on the road again, another long straight shot across Michigan, through Detroit, and then across the international border into Ontario. Some part of Alex wonders, there, if this is Sinclair's first time in a foreign country. Some part of Alex wishes he'd gone to Easter Island, wishes he'd called her from there even if they were broken-up then, wishes he'd had that talk by the beach with her a long, long time ago.

Niagara Falls roars all night when they camp again. In the morning they hike the wilder trails by the falls, avoiding the hordes of tourists, snapping silly pictures, watching an ocean of whitewater go tumbling down, down, down. A little after noon and they're back in the car, zigzagging their way through Boston and upstate New York, stopping to hike the Alleghenies, camping in the Susquehannock forest just next door. It's a short-ass day of driving, but that's okay because they spent almost all of it outdoors, moving, exerting themselves, breathing fresh air,

and when night comes Alex is quiet for once, lying on a blanket with Sinclair, pointing out stars in the sky and telling her about quasars, nebulae, all the literally worldchanging forces out there in the great wide universe.

Sometimes it's hard to wrap my mind around the idea that what happens on our little tiny blue planet here will decide the fate of everything out there, he says. But then I guess most of what you're doing really is out there, on some level. I just can't see it.

And there's a wistfulness in his tone, there, and it makes her wrap him tight in her arms. They fall asleep like that, only to wake up at 2am with sore necks, only to crawl into their tent

and sleep until morning.

[Sinclair] The Sinclairs -- that being Mr. Sinclair and Mrs. Sinclair, in this case -- aren't quite sure what to make of Alex's industriousness and thoughtfulness. They silently wonder if he's actually this very hardworking and kind person, or if he's kissing ass, or what. They don't worry much about his ego because Sinclair declares at breakfast that Alex fights for a living, he doesn't eat normal-people food, and goes to make something with butter and bacon grease as a base, and Alex just laughs, unruffled and unbothered.

They laugh when later on, he sucks a mouthful of his smoothie, then goes AAAH! in Sinclair's ear. Then takes another sip, and does it again: AAAH! And a couple more times for good measure, while Sinclair puts on her father's reading glasses and stares over the rim at a newspaper, pretending to ignore Alex while going mmm fatty fatty fat foods, mmm so good.

Outside, Kenneth and Alex argue about how to pack the car, while inside Sinclair argues with her mother about the food she's sending with them, they really are fine, they can just buy Pringles on the road,

but she comes out with some muffins (blueberry) and muffins (corn) and sandwiches and cookies anyway. There is no staggering. That doesn't mean Alex doesn't jump up to help her, all the same.


"You know they're actually going to visit when you say that, right?" she jokingly half-warns Alex when she wriggles back inside the car and twists around to let Tripoli get into his playseat in back. She doesn't seem homesick or sad as they drive away, merely slipping back into the Self she is when she's not with her family like it's a warm bath after a long day. She does call them later though, letting them know they got to St. Louis okay, no, don't mess with the settings of that program, no, mom, I'm serious, if the screen resolution has changed it's because of something else, just leave it alone, it uses less processing power than Notepad. Because it's magic.

They keep driving. Sinclair says she doesn't see any reason to stop, they've got plenty of food, they've got a pillow, they've got energy drinks, and they've been on the road since-like-forever. So they keep driving. And driving. Alex doesn't let her drive past the point when she's yawning, knowing full well she could stay awake with literally supernatural will and stamina, but it means he drives for longer than she does. It's hard to wake her up once she's gone down. She sleeps as deeply in a 'nap' as she does at night.

But then the skyline of Chicago is looming, and he's thinking about waking her soon, but at that first roll of thunder, her eyes slide open. She recognizes it like a scent, blood to blood, and sits up gradually, her bleary eyes fixing on the skyline. Alex goes up to 'her' room in the Loft earlier than Sinclair does, intuiting the moments she wants to spend with Katherine, with Lukas -- who isn't really there, but is in her thoughts -- and with Sarita, who drove over and glomped on. But she doesn't stay up too late. She goes and sleeps with her mate, wrapping herself around him in the bed she claimed, protecting him even though nothing could hurt him here.

In the morning she gets up and, yes, takes the chance to swim, one of her favorite pursuits. He's seen her out in the Pacific, swimming as comfortably and confidently as if it were the pool. She jumps out of the water and goes sloshing over to Lukas when he drops by to visit, to say hi, to hug her and say they miss her, but despite the gravity in his ever-gravid voice, it's not a command from her alpha.

Nor is it a command when the Guardians' eyes follow her as she pays those respects. Nor is it a command when she kneels at Maelstrom and gives the swirling, devouring totem some of her mother's cooking, gives it a small vial of Pacific water as though this will help it understand where she has been, and what she's had to do. It eats everything. No one throws her into Maelstrom as they did that Walker who threw in a pan of lasagna, namely because she is explaining to the great totem what the offering really is. She calls the muffins succor from my dam, and that they are.

"Oh," she says, hearing him say what he's doing out in the city. Then she blinks. "Oh," she repeats, but the tone is different, and warm, and pleased. He can hear her smile, almost. Sees it later, when they reuinite at the Loft. She admits, when they get to bed -- together this time -- that she thought they were just going to drive through, hug some people, and move on. She's glad they stayed. They'd keep talking, but

she's out.


Sinclair is asleep as they cross the border into Ontario. She isn't awake to be asked if this is her first time in a foreign country, so she isn't awake to stare at him in shock, appalled, until he goes Oh! Shit! and remembers that he took her virginity in Rio de Janeiro. Maybe he just remembers on his own, thinking about that talk by the beach, the way she looked, the way she looks sometimes, all the times. Sinclair wakes up later, and she does tell him she's never been to Canada before. She's never been to a lot of the places they've gone.

She has had a little map of the US that she's been tracking their route on with a marker -- not just the roads but the stops they make, the campsites, the tangents. Sinclair is keeping track of all the states she's been to now. She is taking few pictures. She is staring at things a lot. She tells him, curling in the sleeping bag with him as the falls roar loud, so loud, that she's glad they're taking their time. So happy they're stopping and seeing things, that they're not just driving as hard and fast as they can.

She also tells him his hand is really warm, and she likes that he's so warm. She likes him. And they sleep soundly, getting up again to drive, to hike, to run around in the wilds. To camp again, to stare up at the stars.

On that blanket, she lifts up her left leg towards the sky. There are constellations around her ankle but they don't match this sky, and there are no palm trees where they are. She lowers her leg again, smiling, crossing it over his. Listening to him as though his voice is a recording from a hundred years ago, a thousand, and she can learn the whole history of a people from this one clip of a man talking about stars. She asks him to tell her about black holes, and he does. Asks him to tell her about the different stages a sun will go through, how it dies, and he does. Asks him to tell her why Pluto isn't a planet anymore, like it's a bedtime story.

And he does. And she tells him about Meros and Rorg, about Eshtarra. She admits she doesn't know much beyond their names and their alignments. She knows the story of Rorg, she says, but it's too sad. She'll tell him another time. I think you'd understand, she says, which is more than most Galliards would say about any Kinfolk, but Alex, he knows the stars. She snuggles up against him, saying everything she's doing, that her pack is doing, is as much here where he can see it as it is out there. It's about training his eyes to see it. He can't see the spirits and the safety of an area where people are kind to one another, but he can see the kindness and the cleanliness, breathe the fresher air. He can't see the wyrmlings and banes that scour places of war and pain and abuse, but he can see the war and pain and abuse well enough.

"Everything you do is part of the war," she tells him quietly, staring up at the stars. "Knowing about all these things you do is part of it, just being who you are and trying to be better today than you were yesterday, every day, is part of it. I can go through the veil and tear apart some creature that's whispering madness in a person's ear, but I can't tell a human being about the wonders all around them and open their eyes, because all they'll feel is fear and anger. The Garou who think their kin are there to support them and take care of them and breed for them forget that we're fighting a war on two fronts, and one of those fronts is... almost inaccessible to us. Our very presence there can lose the battle for all of us."

She is holding him tight in her arms, musing aloud more than trying to reassure him -- teaching him, in a way, and admitting a truth that unfolds itself in her own mind even as she's speaking him. There's understanding, more than sorrow, in her voice. It isn't fair to anyone, Garou or Kin, to have a whole half of this war they're fighting be all but invisible to them. To be unable to fight in that way. She's met Garou who don't have much rage, who don't want to claw shit to pieces, who want to change the world -- and she's watched them go into the mortal realm and send humans screaming. She's met Kin who want to do something other than just be a good person who recycles and tries to help others and tries to keep the madness and evil at bay in their own soul just so there's one more beacon of hope on the damn planet, and she's watched them go up against spirals and war wolves and all manner of things and only escape with their lives intact if Garou watch over them, if Garou waste talens on them, if Garou stretch themselves even more thin. And sometimes they die.

I love you, she tells him, looking at the stars but holding him to her body. Soon enough their breathing begins to match pace. Soon enough her arm is heavier on his chest, and his head lolls against hers, cheek to crown. Soon enough they sleep, their combined warmth enough to combat even the faint chill of a summer evening this far north.

...til 2 am, at least, when Alex stirs and nudges her half-awake, crawling with her the six feet or so to their tent to drop asleep inside of it, a tangle of limbs and sweat and a sort of bone-deep, athletic, pleasurable exhaustion.

[Alex] The landscape is full of mountains and lakes the next day. Green country, beautiful enough to leave them in a hushed silence over and over again. They take their time wandering through the tiny towns and vast deciduous forests of upstate New York, wind their ways into the gentle slopes of the Adirondacks, which are so very different from the stately Sierra Nevadas, the towering Rockies. These are old mountains, Alex explains while Sinclair drives them through rolling hills, sloping countryside. Worn down, worn smooth, gentled by time.

They get to their next campsite in the afternoon; pitch a tent and go fishing. Alex is terrible at it. Sinclair manages to catch a couple of trout, and they roast them over an open fire with marshmallows for dessert. Another's day driving takes them into Boston, where they get a little motel in Southie and go drinking at the local dives, and where Alex nearly gets into a full-scale bar brawl because, well, he's Alex.

The next morning he's got one hell of a hangover, which he beats down with three advil and a quart of water. They drive over to Cambridge and Alex shows Sinclair around Harvard, shows her the old quad, shows her John Harvard's statue with its foot rubbed shiny by generations of high schoolers hoping for admittance, shows her the cafeterias and the alumni hall and the college he was a part of, shows her the basement of the Slavic Language department where he slaved over his honors dissertation. He shows her the library,

and they sneak deep into the stacks that smell of the peculiar fragrance of old books, maul each other in a sort of laughing silence way in the back of the reserves where the shelves slide apart at the crank of a lever,

until they're not being so very silent at all and a disgruntled grad student trying to write his PhD thesis tells them to get a goddamn room, already.

So they hop on the metro and go downtown; walk the tiny distance from one end to the other, check out Beacon Hill and all the rest of this quintessentially new england city.


By afternoon they're on the road again. It's not a long drive, and they're in New York, New York before nightfall, and New York New York is so damn expensive that they get two beds in a huge shared room at a hostel, except they don't even really stay there because they catch standing-room-only tickets on Broadway and then go clubhopping all night; watch the sunrise from Central Park; catch the subway down to the lower east side at 8am and find out for themselves, bleary-eyed and pale from a night without sleep, exactly why Lukas keeps telling anyone who'll listen to go to Katz's for the pastrami on rye.


It's another short drive that day, which is a good thing because they take it in one-hour shifts, each of them napping while the other drives. When they hit DC Alex wants to see the Smithsonian museums, of course, and especially the aerospace museum; they catch some IMAX special on black holes, but Sinclair is asleep again the second the lights go out,

and so they retire back to their little hotel on the outskirts of town and sleep, sleep, sleep.


Another day takes them down the broad coastal plain, and around them the enormous cities of the northeast give way to the large cities of the mid-atlantic seaboard, and then to the small towns of the south. They camp by the sea in the Francis Marion National Forest, which is really more like carolina pines growing on thin, sandy soil. It's warm at night, and the air smells like salt, and even though they don't talk about it they know they're getting to Miami tomorrow, and the one Garou who's officially responsible for Alex lives there, and no matter what Alex says,

this meeting between Sinclair and Aaron will matter. Will make a difference.

They make love quietly, fervently in their tent that night. The ocean booms in the background, over and over, and they love each other over and over, her fingers grasping at his back, his hands twisting into the sleeping bag beneath her. It's well past midnight when they fall asleep, tangled and naked, their sweat lifting slowly into the humid summer night.


It's a full day of driving the next day; a solid five, six hundred miles down the coastline. Crossing Charleston and Savannah, those storied southern belles of cities; crossing a hundred other tiny towns where the less glamourous sides of the South are still dug in deep. Eventually they cross the Florida state line, and Alex announces this is now officially farther south than they've been this entire trip, and eventually they pass through those little coastal towns of Florida one by one by one, and all the while the land and the people are changing around them.

The ocean is everywhere when they get down to Miami. It's in the east, in the west, in the south, in the very air. Even the land seems to be decaying slowly into water, falling into keys and marshes. Long bridges suspended over their expanses linger on as though the land has simply fallen out from under them. The streets are full of people again, and everyone seems to speak a different language, and Alex mentions that he actually grew up in a little suburb called Pembroke Pines, and maybe sometime they can go look at them, but his brother lives in the city now and anyway he doesn't really want to stay with his brother or his parents tonight.

They check into a little two-story motel a few blocks from the sea. Their room has a view of the ocean through a crack between two taller buildings. The pool downstairs is full of splashing kids, and Alex is taking a shower when Sinclair's cell phone chimes. It's a number she doesn't recognize:

Heard you were in town. If you want to meet up tonight, I'm free. Otherwise tomorrow's good too. - Aaron

[Sinclair] [dex + brawl + perun -3 (split): first hit]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 4, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
to Sinclair

[Sinclair] [damage. str + suxx -1]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 4, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
to Sinclair

[Sinclair] [dude soak, let's say he's got stamina 2]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 1, 6 (Failure at target 6)
to Sinclair

[Sinclair] [second hit, -4]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6) Re-rolls: 1
to Sinclair

[Sinclair] [damage]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 5, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
to Sinclair

[Sinclair] [soak]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 4, 5 (Failure at target 6)
to Sinclair

[Sinclair] [third hit, -5]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 5, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6) [WP] Re-rolls: 1
to Sinclair

[Sinclair] [dmg]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 7, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)
to Sinclair

[Sinclair] [soak]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 5, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)
to Sinclair

[Sinclair] [hmph]
to Sinclair

[Sinclair] [damage 1 + glabro strength]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 3, 5 (Failure at target 6)
to Sinclair

[Sinclair] [damage 2]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 1, 8 (Failure at target 6)
to Sinclair

[Sinclair] [damage 3]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 2, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
to Sinclair

[Sinclair] [oh right, the WALL ALSO HURTS, NOT JUST HER STRENGTH. LET'S SAY THE WALL HAS A STRENGTH OF 5.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 5, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
to Sinclair

[Sinclair] [two!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 5 (Botch x 2 at target 6)
to Sinclair

[Sinclair] [three!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 6, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
to Sinclair

[Sinclair] Let's be honest: they're both terrible at fishing. Sinclair at least has done it a few times -- there are man-made ponds in Kansas, after all, made specifically for fishing, and her father had no sons, and he insisted she learn how to do things like that, and she liked the outdoors -- but it's been ten years or so. She vaguely remembers how to prepare a fish after catching it, but they end up running around til they find a signal and use Alex's smartphone to make sure they're doing it right, then run back to camp.

"Fish! Heads! Fish! Heads! Rolly, polly fish! Heads! Fish! Heads! Fish! Heads! Swimming in the soup!" she sings as she's slicing and chopping and gutting and de-boning, even though Alex is gagging and begging her to stop singing. They eat trout with some raw vegetables. Sinclair eats potato chips, too. She jokes about telling ghost stories, but then says she doesn't know any that aren't true, and that's too scary.

Of course their next night is so far different from that evening it's insane. They're not in a tent, they're in a hotel room. They're not fishing from the shoreline, they're bar-hopping and doing shots whenever a particular overplayed song comes on over the speakers and there's that one place where there's actually dancing, which Sinclair loves, but Alex is ravenous suddenly so he's eating,

except then he's hearing Sinclair snap do you wanna keep that hand? and hearing the asshole in question guffawing, because she's fit but she's a 5'6" girl in cutoffs and red cowgirl boots in Boston and he says something about lookin' wicked haht but Alex is already heading that direction

only to have the jackass literally thrown at him by the blonde girl in the red boots. "Shit! Baby, I'm sorry!" she yells, when the guy hits Alex instead of the wall or the bar or the floor, but Alex

is very drunk, and quite happy to end up pinning the guy on the floor and pummeling him until someone is threatening to call the cops and then someone actually is calling the cops --


"You know, last night we were just roasting marshmallows," Sinclair remarks with a little amusement later, coming up behind him and slipping her arms around his midsection. He's about to answer, but he notices then that she's holding a gourd, which she crushes in one hand against his sternum.

For a moment he's annoyed, he has like half a bruise, what the hell, but Sinclair isn't getting pouty or defensive. She's sliding around him, easing him onto his back, kissing his jaw, telling him she knows he's not hurt. You were just really drunk, she says quietly, sitting up to peel her shirt up and off, putting her hands back on his chest afterward, and I want you.

It's sort of a waste of a talen, only not. She's warm and she's kissing him richly after that, and he's tugging down the cups of her bra and starting to pant quietly, and either they both realize they haven't made love since that afternoon by the pond in Kansas or their bodies do, because when they fuck that night it's eager, and it's as vigorous as the fight was, and he makes some gasping crack about defending her honor more and she answers by grinding down on him with a fuck yeah and his laugh cuts off in a groan when she

does what she does then, the way she does.


Oddly, the girl in the cutoffs and cowgirl boots and t-shirt the night before tries to dress reasonably well when they go visit the campus. She doesn't dress up, not by a long shot, but she wears a pair of jeans and a short-sleeved white peasant-y top that is almost bizarre in how cute it is on her. She looks utterly delighted while they walk around, fascinated by everything. It's like Harvard was, til now, just this mythological place where maybe she thought people rode unicorns around or something but it's all real and tangible and she's so happy that he starts kissing her in the library, catching her in his arms and holding her by the waist while he sucks the breath out of her mouth.

Sinclair likes it when he holds her by the waist, and when his hands slide around her lower back and down, and she tells him she likes it with a moan, and then they're getting snapped at. She doesn't snarl. She just grins at the guy, tells him don't be hatin' and lets Alex steer her out of there before the frazzled doctoral candidate frenzies.

They don't stay overnight in Boston again. They go to New York, which Sinclair is bewildered about, except Alex insists they can't be this close to New York City and not go to New York City and she's just going okaaay while he gets them a room at the hostel and buys tickets on Broadway and pours energy drinks down her throat all night.

The most exciting thing in the middle of clubbing is when Sinclair walks past an alleyway, sniffs the air, looks repulsed, then grips Alex's hand and goes into the dark with him. It's rank and it's disgusting in there, but the thing that made her get that look on her face is a man in that alley holding a gun to the head of another man, a man who is on his knees, shaking and angry and crying as he undoes the gunman's belt.

It means something that she held Alex's hand and took him with her. The man has a gun, and there's always this thin chance that the trigger is going to get squeezed before Sinclair can move, but for a moment, there's no fear, just surrealism, because Sinclair -- complaining that she's tiiired, no more Monsterrr, I don't liiike Red Bulll -- is quietly, almost gently telling the man with the gun

I don't want to have to kill you. I don't.

and he doesn't even know how to reply to that. He tells them to just go on, and Sinclair cuts him off, saying flatly this time:

But I will.

Something's burning in her, and he can feel it. Alex can feel it. That man on his knees is sobbing, oh Jesus, Jesus God, and he doesn't even seem to know how else to continue, what else to pray, but Sinclair keeps her hand so tight on Alex's it almost hurts, as though she doesn't want him to go. The gun's barrel comes their way. The guy is afraid now, his sweat stinks of fear and cruelty both, but he acts tough, he starts to give them some line about how he's not going to tell them again,

and that's the first time Heather Jane lets go of Alex's hand. There's a single shot that goes off, but the man's wrist is broken against the wall by then, the gun pointed upward, and he can scarcely hear it over the sound of his skull hitting that same wall one, two, three times in rapid succession. There's blood on the wall the second time, and he's already unconscious by the second sudden smash, but there's that last, particularly brutal slam, and the man who was on his knees is running.

Anyone sane would be. Because Alex felt that brush of rage against him when she snap-shifted, and even in the dark she suddenly looks like a demon. She's in a shape he's never seen her in, those eyes of hers glittering like cut diamonds in the dark and her teeth sharpened viciously, her hand covering almost all of the man's face, the hairs on the back of that hand as wheat-colored as the rest of hers but tipped with the color of raw iron.

The man crumples, the gun dropping, and Sinclair, snarling in the shadows, crouches down over him. She shifts back to her birth form, and Alex can just barely make out her fingertips on his neck, feeling his pulse. Quietly, she says: "Baby? I don't know if people call 9-1-1 around here when they hear a shot." She sounds sort of lost.

They get out of that alleyway quickly. And yes, there are sirens, called by someone, maybe Alex himself, and the only blood in the alleyway is the man's, and the only living person in the alleyway is the man but just barely and there's the gun and his prints and no one else's and Sinclair is holding Alex's hand tightly again, so tightly, that he asks her if she wants to go back and she asks him if he does,

but they don't. They go to another club and it's particularly rough here, the bass heavy like a constant drum, and she stays close to him here, oh she does. It doesn't seem protective. What it feels like, when she wraps her arms around him and kisses him on the dance floor during a hard rise of the music, is that someone pointed a gun in his direction, and then she nearly killed a man with her bare hands. Because that's what she does. She isn't tired anymore, though. She stays up all night with him, holds his hand when they end up watching the sunrise, and she sings Beatles tunes to him after they visit the Strawberry Fields even if he says it's cliche of her to do so, and she leans against him on the subway.

Eats two pastrami on rye sandwiches. Calls Lukas from Katz's to say oh my GOD to him, and maybe that's when Alex knows she really is okay, because they're both here eating sandwiches and this is far from the first time she's had to do something like that and that guy, that dickhead, is recovering from a near-fatal beating in a hospital somewhere and probably getting therapy and it's entirely possible his brain will never work right again, and she knows that, and he might end up being a janitor the rest of his life

but if he'd fired a second or two sooner, he wouldn't be anything anymore. And she doesn't know what will become of him, if she did a good thing or a bad thing back there, because that's not the front she fights on.

When they get into the car again to drive to D.C., Alex doesn't wake her in an hour. He drives as far as he can, and when he can't anymore, he has Sinclair take the wheel on the way into the city. He's seen it before, after all. She gets lost though. Wakes him up and he tells her she's ridiculous, the Smithsonian is like right there and she laughs. About thirty minutes later she's sleeping on his shoulder in the IMAX theater, which, truth be told, is the thought he got into his head when she was lying out under the stars with him asking him to tell her about the stars and planets. It's too bad she misses it, he tells her when he's helping her into their newest hotel, but she grumbles two things:

she liked his version better anyway, and

she misses their bed.

And then she's asleep.


Sinclair sleeps a lot from then on. Their nights aren't as late. She spends more time out in nature, being quiet more than raucous. They're going to see Aaron, and now they're not tooling around New England it's feeling more and more real. She touches Alex at night the way she touched him the very first time she came to sleep in his room at the Brotherhood, when she thought -- no, knew -- that he didn't really like her, didn't trust her, wasn't comfortable around her at all, and it made her so sad. She didn't even want him to be warm with her, cuddly or affectionate. She just wanted him to look at her like... an entity. Like a person.

And that was when she touched him lightly, her hand brushing over his abdominal muscles, telling him she liked it. Knowing he didn't do it for her, or for all the other girls that liked it. Trying to tell him, like that, that she did understand him a little. He can sense it then, feeling her eyes on him, because he does see her now, understands her now. Feels a certain vulnerability in her, unspoken, not because she isn't sure he'll respond, but because she doesn't know how Aaron will.

He catches her hand where it passes over him, and holds it on his body. Kisses her. And comes down over her.


In the morning she seems settled. Rested, finally. She gets them a carwash while they're stopping in Charleston for some snacks and a pit stop; the poor Elantra is pretty much a mess. They clean it out of various bags of trash, rearrange a few things. Tripoli, who has spent a great deal of time in the spirit world because he gets bored in the car very quickly and has learned not to invade girl-wolf and not-wolf-male touching-time and they touch all the time, gets polished during one of Alex's turns at the wheel.

"Yes," Sinclair says when Alex tells her they're so far south, "you can tell because it's hot as balls."

She's fascinated by Florida. She is, but she doesn't ask questions about it. She's quiet again. Calm, centered, but quiet. And tells him she does want to see Pembroke Pines later. Tells him she thinks that's probably a good idea, that it was great that he stayed with her and her parents but... yeah. It's probably a good idea if they don't try to stay with his folks or Aaron yet. She's nervous, and he can hear it. So can she, her heart reflecting back to her in her voice, and so she takes a breath and hugs him across the center console.

Upstairs in their room, she sits on the bed and watches the ocean while Alex washes up, remembering the Pacific and thinking of Maelstrom. Her phone chimes and she picks it up idly, thinking it's maybe a packmate or her parents, but it's not.

Tripoli peers over her shoulder at the screen, even though he can't read. He's not a computer elemental, he can't understand the signals either, but he likes how shiny it is and the chrome-looking rim around the screen. "Aaah?" he asks, swiveling his head around to peer at her with bright blue eyes, and she breathes in deep and taps back an answer.

Just got in. Tonight's fine -- when's good for you?

[Alex] They do a lot of stuff in their long meandering path across the nation. They hike and they explore and they take pictures and they stargaze and they get in fights and

they get in a fight, a real one, a battle,

but the truth is they also have time, a lot of time, to just cruise. To just sit together in the companionable closeness of Alex's little Hyundai with Tripoli clattering around the backseat or poofed off somewhere, their hands loosely linked, their conversations drifting with whatever comes to mind. Sinclair's parents are actually going to visit. Of course they are; he wants them to. He likes them. He likes that they're taking their time, too, that they have this time together. He likes that if they look at their path across the country, they can see the states lighting up like a child's game on that map of Sinclair's.

He likes that at night they tell each other bedtime stories that are true. That in the end even the stars will die, but somehow the universe will live on, maybe be reborn. Maybe it has something to do with that world only she can see, but he can still feel. That world where everything real has an echo, and where echoes are more real, more important, than reality.

She tells him everything they do matters. And sometimes what he does, what she does, what they do in the everyday course of their lives, matters more than what they do in those few heartpounding seconds where something needs to bleed, something needs to die.

He thinks of that when they get into that first fight, the one at the bar, fighting because some people just need to get an ass-whupping but also because, frankly, it's fun.

He thinks of that, too, when they get into that second fight. The one in the alley. Fighting because some people just need to get put down. But also because it's right.


When the one guy goes down and the other goes running, Alex takes off after him. He screams, he thinks they're coming for him now, but Alex grabs him by the back of the shirt and hauls him back and tells him no, no, they're not here to hurt him, but you gotta get help, okay, you can't let this shit just fester in you. go get help. go get get, and when you're done getting helped, go help others. okay?

He doesn't know if any of that sinks in. He lets the guy go and the guy is out of sight in seconds; he comes back and Sinclair is feeling for a pulse, and he doesn't ask if the other guy's dead, and he doesn't tell her about what he said to the guy they saved(?), but

later on, when they're watching the sun come up, he does tell her after all. And she tells him. And they just mull on it a little, and he rubs his cheek against her hair, and she kisses his collarbone through his shirt, and a little while later they're okay. They're eating at Katz's. And Alex gets a pound of pastrami to go, because, my god.


Alex is still in the shower when Sinclair replies to his brother. He doesn't know his brother has already contacted her; frankly, he wouldn't quite understand how his brother even knew she was in town. Magic. Her phone is chiming with another return text,

I'm free all night. Do what you need to and come down to the Caern when you're ready. Marina Blue, 888 Biscayne. I'll let security know we're expecting you.

when Alex comes out of the shower, padding barefoot across the motel carpet, wrapping a towel around his waist. A few drops of water drip on her as he bends over her to smooch her cheek.

"There's a great tapas bar a couple blocks away, if I remember right," he says. "You wanna grab some late-night munchies?"

Her phone chimes again:

And bring sunscreen!!

[Sinclair] The thing about that second fight in the alleyway, Sinclair tells him later when she can feel him warm and solid next to her, is that she isn't sure it was right. She's not sure that was the way to handle it. She's not sure if that man running away will remember anything but terror and become just as much of a monster -- and she's glad when Alex stops her there, tells her what he said, glad solely because even if it didn't sink it Alex thought to do it and that's all either of them could even hope to do -- and she's not sure if that man she nearly killed is going to be brain damaged for the rest of his life or not, if he'll even survive, because at the point she left him,

people with a pulse still sometimes die.

She needs it when he holds her, and she needs the sun to come up and maybe give her a hint that the world isn't over because she's uncertain. Sinclair thinks of these things, and that's meaningful, too -- but then, she's a Galliard. Not an Ahroun, not a Theurge either. She's also a Walker, and she thinks about the impact their actions have on humans all the time. She can't just say Good, Bad. Black, White. Alive, Dead. She can't do that and think that's the end of things, that the stones don't leave ripples.

Still, she can't drown in the water with those stones. She has to keep going, and hope. It's easier, really, when she can tell Alex all the stuff she just did, and fight in front of him and know he's not gonna run scared from her. She tells him this while they're mulling. She tells him this and tells him it makes her feel better when he holds her, so he wraps his other arm around her, too. She almost falls asleep, til he nudges her to get up and go get some food.


It takes forever to get down to Florida.


Sinclair flops backwards on the bed as she gets another text. She's in the middle of adding Aaron's name to her contacts. Truth is she could have added his number a long time ago, found it out one way or another, but that would have been a breach of privacy. The honor of Glass Walkers, she reflects idly, has a lot to do with the information they can get, and don't. The things they can do, and don't anyway. The honor of restraint, first and foremost. And respect.

Was going to be my first stop. Thanks.

Alex smells like steam and soap and male and like mate, which ignites some light in Sinclair no matter where they are. She looks up as he comes out of the bathroom and smiles. "Oh, are we making another softcore porno?" she says, and grins when he bends to give her a kiss. Her phone chimes, but she doesn't look at it yet, smiling up at Alex instead. "We might have to save that. Aaron apparently couldn't wait for me to pay my respects on my own," she tells him, waggling her phone. "What I don't know is if he means for you to come with me or if I'm supposed to ditch you and go be Garou."

She glances at the newest message, and her brow wrinkles for a half second before she seems to realize something, then she drops it and turns back to Alex, sliding her hand into his, lacing their fingers, keeping him close even if she doesn't pull him down over her or next to her.

"Have you ever gone to this Caern?"

[Alex] Another, she quips, and he fires right back: "Oh, so you found my secret webcam stash?" -- and then drops another kiss on her lips, shockingly soft considering who he is and who she is and just how energetically they fuck sometimes.

But then he frowns. She waggles her phone and he grabs it, grumps at it, hands it back. "Ugh," he says, "let's just go in the morning." And that's a sort of answer for her. As for the next question -- a tiny beat of pause. "Just once," he admits, "and I was in trouble. I mean, moreso than usual."

[Sinclair] "Wait, a sta--" she's starting to say, but he kisses her, and the truth is,

when Alex kisses Sinclair, Sinclair tends to melt slightly. Not in this girlish, sentimental sense, though it is both girlish and sentimental. Something inside of her unlocks. Aches, too, with the tenderness inside of her that she so often can't show, or won't show, other than to Alex himself. She wants suddenly to draw him down and wrap him in her arms and just lie there, holding him. There's no fear or stress or vulnerability in it except the vulnerability she has to him because she's given him her heart. She just wants to be close.

Her eyes open when he draws back from that soft, small kiss, but then blink brightly as he grabs her phone. "Hey!"

Ugh, Alex says, which catches her attention, but she doesn't interrupt. She does finally tug him down towards her, to lie on the bed next to her if he will, her eyebrows lifting a little at his answer. She's quiet a moment, thinking about something, then says: "I need to go to the caern," she says. "I should have done in Kansas and Boston and New York, especially since I shifted there, and most other places, but we haven't stayed more than a night at most anywhere so it wasn't super-super necessary and the caern in Kansas is forever away from my parents' house. But I'm going to be here for at least a couple of days, maybe more, and meeting with one of the sept members about some pretty serious stuff." She doesn't add:

I may be undergoing a challenge here.

because she doesn't want to remind him, and she doesn't know if Aaron will or not, and she doesn't know if Alex will want or need to know about it if she does. What she does say is: "I need to make myself known to the caern's guardians, and their totem. And since Aaron already magically knows I'm here -- and also because I kind of already told him that was going to be my first stop -- I'm going to go tonight."

Not I should or I think I'm going to. More decisive than that.

Sinclair strokes her fingers between his own where their fingers are laced. "So I'm going to take a quick shower, and maybe while I'm in there you can tell me about this big trouble in little Miami you got into, because I'm really curious." Draws his hand near, kissing two of his fingertips and holding them there, so he can feel her mouth moving against them, breath fluttering under his touch. "Then I'll go, and you don't have to come with me if you don't want to, or you can if you want to, and then we'll go find food someplace and come back here and curl up and zonk our faces off."

[Alex] Alex is nothing if not solidly built. When he flops down on the bed next to Sinclair, it's a palpable weight, rocking the springs. His knuckles are rough, as are his fingertips. It's ironic that her hands are far softer than his.

He's quiet for a while. There's a restlessness in that quiet, his eyes flickering. Then, as her fingers squeeze his, he looks over at her.

"I'll go with you," he says. It sounds like a decision too. He sits up. "At least as far as they'll let me go. And I'll tell you on the way over, okay? I'm gonna run downstairs and grab a hot dog or something from the 7-Eleven while you're showering." He's off the bed already, whipping the towel off and stepping back into the same clothes he wore into Miami. "You want one too?"

[Sinclair] "I want," she tells him, agreeable almost immediately to this plan even if she grabs hold of his arm tight and doesn't let him get up yet, "a banana, if they have a bowl of fruit somewhere in the lobby or in that 7-Eleven. I'll eat more later, but right now the idea of a hot dog or microwave burrito is going to make me yak."

She doesn't get up right away thought. She rolls towards him, unabashedly snuggling to his side and then resting her chin on his chest, peering at him. "You okay?"

[Alex] Caught, Alex doesn't bound to his feet just yet. Somehow mention of yakking makes him roll toward her even before she rolls toward him. He throws an arm over her, squeezing her on the bed like that. "I'm okay," he says. "I've just got 'history' with the sept here." She can almost hear the airquotes, and then he throws his lower leg over hers as she turns toward him. "Are you okay?"

[Sinclair] They end up tangling up on the bed, Sinclair grinning because of it, wriggling closer and hugging him to her, no matter that he's All Clean and she's still road-oogy. What matters is that he can tell, in these subtle hints, that she's uneasy. That it bugs her that she was in her hotel room, in the city, for maybe ten minutes before Nightfall's Edge was chomping at the bit. That it's unfair that Alex gets to go to meet her parents and have this nice relaxing time with her family but she has to go be Garou, she has to go meet his brother in the middle of the night. That it makes her angry that Aaron contacts her first, she's not his twin brother. That she's nervous.

That, really, she's had so much junk food and not-good-for-her food over the trip that right now the thought of more makes her nauseous, and even if she doesn't say oh baby I'm so worried or something like that, Alex can see the connection and comes closer to her in response. So Sinclair curls close to him and rests there for a few seconds, thoughtful.

"Yeah," she says. "It's just stuff." Stuff. (Tm.) "This is different than the whole rest of the trip, y'know?"

[Alex] "I know," he says quietly. "I totally get it."

And he's silent for a while, touching her hair, stroking it with his fingers as he thinks. She can see him thinking, this active, physical, unexpectedly intelligent boyfriend of hers. Mate of hers ... though not officially. Not in the eyes of the Nation. And that, of course, is what Shakespeare would call the rub.

"Aaron's a good guy," he says eventually. "I'm not sure why he's being all douchebaggy right now. Maybe he just doesn't know how to act, or how he's supposed to act, or whatever. But he's not going to ... y'know, be a dick just to be a dick. He's not like that.

"I'll go with you," he says again. "Not 'cause you can't handle it or whatever. But I wanna be there. You were there when I had The Talk with your folks. I don't want your talk with Aaron to not even include me. And I think if I'm there things might be a little smoother all around." Pause. "Maybe."

[Sinclair] He gets it. Of course he gets it. It's just stuff, Sinclair says, and Alex is like yeah. She smiles at that, and the playpen under the little desk in the hotel room jostles suddenly as Tripoli appears in the middle of it, hugging a soda can. Sinclair lifts her head from Alex's chest for a moment to peer over; the elemental's eyes are a pale, stormy indigo, which she has secretly and quitely told Alex she thinks is Tripoli's 'emo' mood eye color, since his eyes seem to be indicators of...something. They've joked that he's like a teenager now, all eager to explore and preening for attention yet sometimes getting horribly cranky and fucking off into the ether.

At least he's not writing emo poetry, she'd said.
Well he might be, Alex had answered. All in vowels.
Eee AAAH. AAah oooh uuuh eeeee, Sinclair had answered, overwrought.

Sometimes, Alex just gets it. She lays her head back down close to him, letting him stroke her hair, the mere action making her close and open her eyes in a drowsy blink. It feels nice. Being near him feels nice. Being understood by him feels better. He's warm and he's hers and he's petting her with the sort of idle familiarity given to a beloved pet, and that feels right, even if she isn't a pet, because she is beloved.

He can feel the movement in her cheek when he says he doesn't know why Aaron is being all douchebaggy, and she lifts her head for just a moment to look at him with an expression that reads sort of well I wasn't going to say anything, but.... She lays back down again, and listens.

"Aw, baby," she says. "I know you don't think I can't handle it. And... I didn't want to go without you. It didn't feel right. It'd be kind of bullshit. So I'm really glad you want to go, even if there's weird history with the sept." She wraps her arms around his middle more, nudging his towel down so she can see his navel, which for some reason she likes, and wriggles down on the bed til her legs are half off of it and kisses him on the third in his six-pack. "It's okay if it's not smooth," she adds, a little quieter. "And for what it's worth, I don't think your brother is a douchebag. For all I know he's just all eeee ohmigod that we're finally here and doesn't want to wait to see us and just wants to get all this other shit out of the way so that we can go surfing or something."

A beat. She lifts her head. "People surf here, right? Your brother knows how to surf, doesn't he?"

[Alex] "He's not a douchebag," Alex agrees, his abdomen flexing involuntarily -- ticklishly -- under her lips. "He's just acting like one. But yeah. It's been a long-ass time since I've seen him so maybe he just can't wait. 'Cept then there's no reason why he couldn't just call me, for fuck's sake."

"Anyway, people do surf here, but the waves kinda suck. Too many whassits. Barrier islands. I mean there are a few decent spots, but ... mostly people just lie on the beaches and get tanned. And my brother does not, in fact, know how to surf. I don't think Aaron knows how to do anything physical. Except, y'know. Pop heads off."

They lie there a little longer. They're at the end -- or the midpoint, if you count the inevitable return journey -- of a very, very, very long drive. He's tired. She's tired. He's annoyed at Aaron, even if Sinclair's giving him the benefit of the doubt. Or maybe he's just annoyed at the city, which is suddenly there, suddenly real, suddenly full of the same old bullshit as ever. Like L.A., he thinks. Only worse.

Eventually, though, they have to mobilize. And when they do, she goes for a shower; he goes for a 7-Eleven, where he picks up a prepacked sandwich for himself and an equally prepacked 'seasonal fruit' cup. And a banana. And some Red Bull. They recharge the best they can with what they've got, and then they pile back into the Elantra.


Miami by night is beautiful, glittering, so very new. It's hot and there's a line of thunderheads off the coast; the beaches and the streets are full of people. There's music on the streetcorners, and where they're going -- not quite downtown, but the ultra-posh brand-new developments just down the street and right by the beach -- the neighborhood's too swanky, too superficial, for hookers and lowlives.

Marina Blue turns out to be a sixty-story-tall highrise. An asymmetric, gently convex sweep of blue glass, it cuts into the night sky over Biscayne Boulevard. There are offices and shops, restaurants, businesses in the lower floors, but the lion's share is devoted to condos, each more expensive than the last, each with a view to die for.

They circle the block three times before they find parking. By then it's nearly midnight. The lobby is spacious and tastefully lit -- a modern, urban space in zebra wood and raw concrete, touched here and there with zen-esque sprigs of greenery. Alex fits the city with his tan and his immaculately kept muscles and his short sleeves, but he doesn't fit this building. He's tense and irritable, his arms folded across his chest, hands tucked under his biceps, frowning as they approach security.

Behind the desk, the security guard is a cut above your average rent-a-cop: young, fit, sharp, cool-eyed. There are more ethnicities represented in his face alone than in the entirety of one of those small southern towns they passed. He wears his suit like he knows how to wear a suit, and it's tailored close enough that they can see the weapons he carries under his coat. A resident of the building walks ahead of them, smiling at the guard as she heads for the elevators. He returns her nod, waits until she's out of sight, and then turns to them. Alex gets a moment's glance; Sinclair gets the bulk of the attention.

"Penthouse elevators." There's no need to ask who they are. The guard slides a keycard across the granite counter, then points with two fingers. "All the way in the back. Slide the card through the scanner and you'll get where you need to go."

The keycard makes Sinclair's fingertips tingle faintly. A talen, no doubt.