Lark has fallen asleep next to Alec countless times. Sometimes, Alec pretends to sleep to make it easier, and Lark is used to that. He's never been the other end of the dynamic, staying awake for Alec instead. It flips various switches in his mind, makes him very aware of what's around them and how the mood in the area is.
He's afraid of waking Alec, so when Riley speaks his attention snaps to her and he hesitates before answering. "Yeah?"
Riley isn't concerned. She knows, before either Lark or Alec knows, that he won't be able to sleep much, not out here; not like this. He's exhausted and he thinks he wants to sleep but she knows he won't let himself.
He's taking something for himself, certainly, but it won't be rest.
"I'm not going to be here much longer," she says at last, and hates how helpless it sounds. She doesn't even know what she's asking, her gaze on him without raising her head or turning it. She just knows that it didn't feel like abandoning him, before.
"I know you won't be," he says. He'd missed having her presence last time, but it hadn't felt like she was really gone, either. This time, with so much changing, he can't pretend it isn't harder.
The unspoken question lingers but he's already answered it in his mind. It takes more time to find words. "We're taking time apart to figure...this...out. But I'll still be paying attention. I'll still be there."
She's scared, is what she doesn't want to admit to; what he doesn't want to admit to. Other people look at him and think progress but he knows he's been coming apart at the seams stitch by stitch and there's nothing good inside. Nothing good but Riley, who of all the things she's unsure of knows this was not a mistake.
Lark, in this terrifying new place, will shore up the pieces of himself while he can't. She'd all but told Lark that last time and she still means it but now she feels so much more precarious.
So much younger. "He doesn't know what to do. I don't know what else to do."
Lark has always known what to do. Sometimes what he knows is the wrong thing, but he can count on one hand the number of times he hasn't known which way to turn, and he'd still have fingers left over.
He isn't actually lost right now. He knows that he desperately wants to keep going, that he wants Alec--that he wants Knox. But he also knows that wanting something, even so badly it makes your teeth ache, is not how major decisions are made. And this nebulous thing feels major even if he can't say why yet.
He's not in a good place mentally, or emotionally, or physically. But he is built to keep a pack together, and as long as Alec is hurting, Lark will have moments of clarity. The pain isn't lessened, but the fog sometimes lifts. (What he doesn't know, because he never went through it and never stuck around when other wolves were, is that if Alec dies a permanent death at this point, it will tear open a part of him that is entirely wolf, that doesn't heal).
"You know I'll do anything I can." Including sitting here, letting Alec sleep on him, after they've decided this might be it. "He asked for time--I have to give him that."
Alec is also not usually at a loss for clarity, at least in situations where most other people would be lost. Drop him in the center of a battlefield and he'll find the quickest way out, possibly even win the battle on his way; he mapped his way out of the Land of the Dead and back in and back out again and again. He knew he would be able to survive where others didn't stand a chance. He was right. He's been right about that since Manticore.
But this is different. This isn't something he can outmaneuver or pick his way past with logic and solid tactics - and he knows that because he's been trying. He hasn't cried, not without being in overwhelming physical pain, since the day they took Teek away when he was seven years old. It unnerved Riley - and him - as much as it did Lark, but that didn't mean any of them could stop it.
"I do," she agrees, sincerely. "I wish I could give you more. I honestly do. I wish I could stay. But I need you to know that if you each take time, and you each decide to let go of this based on something as temporary and circumstantial as fear? It is a mistake."
(If Alec died, Lark would never heal; if what he has now with Lark fails, Alec will never open himself up to it again, and shortly after that he'll self destruct in a truly spectacular fashion.)
It's the way she phrases it that allows her words to slip past Lark's tension and exhaustion, his anger and his panic and his longing. All those layers that deflect so much of what others advise him to do, but Riley manages it because how often has Lark told his pack not to be ruled by fear? Not to be pawns to lust, or gluttony, or even boredom?
He can't outthink this. Neither can Alec. But he can watch himself to see what emotion is battling for control, and he can make decisions with it in mind.
It's not much, all told. But it's a start. And for a moment, his expression has a shade of resolution under the weariness.
"I don't want to make mistakes with him," Lark says quietly, despite the pang he feels at knowing Alec will know this anyway because Riley does. "Not thoughtless ones. I won't take this lightly."
She knows that; she does. And because she knows it, so too does a part of Alec, although it isn't a part of him that he's had the luxury of exercising with any regularity. It, like her, is not a part of himself that he's been able to allow out where others can see before the past year.
So if there's anxiety for Lark in knowing that Alec will know that he's committed to getting them right, the tradeoff is that some part of Alec knows that it would be the worst kind of mistake they could make to give up because they were afraid of what would happen.
She still has as much of herself pressed against Alec as she can get, but Riley hooks a paw up over the side of Lark's head, pulls him close enough to be able to twist her head and groom the side of his face, his hair, his neck, anything she can reach without disturbing Alec between them. Her claws are duller than any other big cat's would be, more like a dog's, strong and likely uncomfortable; her tongue is rough enough to peel flesh off bone with enough repetition and focus, but then, both of these have always been the only possible way either of them know how to love.
The advantage here is that Lark is not just a strong human, nor is he just a clever werewolf. He knows how dangerous Riley could be, and because he's Lark, he finds both a thrill and a certain kind of peace in leaning in close to her. Because if he loves Alec--cantankerous, unpredictable, angry pieces of him as well--then of course he loves Riley, who represents the purest and strongest parts of him.
His hand strokes her shoulder in turn. If he'd been in wolf form he'd have groomed her back, like he'd done not an hour ago for Alec in a desperate, instinct-driven bid to offer comfort. But he's not so shaken up now, and there is a difference between licking fur and merely dirty skin. So: petting will have to do.
He's never been this close to her. The nearest he came was an accidental brush on the Barge, when touching the daemons was not just taboo. And now here they are; Naki has found a place to rest on Alec's hip, as easily settled there as on Lark's shoulder. But he thinks again of that first touch, and of the way Alec had reacted, and he thinks of the little pieces he has of Alec's life. Of the things he's done to keep his soul together, and healthy, and not like the damaged souls Lark saw here and there.
"Do you wonder how we got this way?" he asks her, quietly bewildered by it all.
"Which way, Lark?" she asks, pausing briefly in her licking to do so, though even now she's still purring deep and low by way of soothing both herself and Alec.
Her fur is illogically cool to the touch, but other than that there's no surprises there: her coat is thick and glossy and vibrant, her frame light and her muscles lean and hard beneath her unmarred pelt. Whatever damage Alec carries with him - and to be sure, there is a lot - it hasn't touched her at all.
He licks his lips because he's not sure how to say what he means. "This way. Here." Being together but also, the moment they get on the Barge, falling apart.
How they ended up in a frame of mind where Alec would ever fall asleep on him, even though not an hour ago they decided that for the moment they're "done". How Lark ended up being willing to see where this goes, if it can be salvaged, even though smart and safe money says he ought to run.
"It's not obvious?" she asks, honestly surprised. Then, of course, she realizes it's Alec; just because nothing he does surprises her doesn't mean he doesn't intentionally obfuscate his behavior and motivations to others.
Lark is so good at, if not seeing through it than realizing there's always something going on under the surface of her boy, that she just thought he already knew.
"The Barge is a prison and, on board it, he is a prisoner. Out here - temporary as it may be, but the Carnation? Ankh-Morpork? Here? Here he's free."
"Yeah- I mean, I suppose I understand myself less than I understand him when we're like this." When they're well and truly attached. He didn't even see it coming. "I know or can at the very least imagine why he does some of the things he does, just like he seems to understand me. But it's harder to...to pull myself apart in the context of being with him. It's just murkier."
"Because you're enjoying yourself," Naki says dryly. "You aren't analyzing yourself because you like what you're doing. Or you did." Right up until the decision to back off.
Riley drops her head a little, brushes Naki with her chin; goes back to what she was doing with Lark, giving him a few moments to process what his own daemon has said to him.
Then, quietly enough to get lost in the sound of her purring, "Neither of you are very practiced at happy. Not really. So it feels strange and, when you notice it, uncomfortable. It feels temporary."
It's true enough to strike a chord in him. "Isn't it? No matter how good we are at surviving, no matter how well we get through the Barge, when we graduate I'm still going to California and he's still going his own way."
"Lark," she says in quiet admonishment. "I may be the most intelligent parts of him, but neither of us are philosophers. So when I tell you that maybe you're right but that's no reason on its own to make this even more temporary..."
She sighs, butts her head against him, the scent glands at the corners of her mouth against his chest.
"You are both so difficult for such good and silly reasons."
He knows enough about cats to know what she's doing and it gives him a pang of relief and sorrow at once, because dammit, he does love her, too. While they're being honest about that word, he can admit it to himself.
"It's not that I expect anything to be permanent. I usually don't want permanence of any kind, it leads to stagnation and decay, but.... But on the Barge, I'm actually in a position to want things. I'm encouraged to think past the wall. And I try not to because I believe he's right: thinking of the future while in a prison with no set release day, that's just going to make it worse. But I want this, and..."
And that's dangerous because he'll never recover.
"Wolves mate for life," he says absently, and then scoffs and focuses. "It's such a fucking cliche and it's not as literal as people think. If I'd wanted to, I'd have had three 'mates' by now, not even counting Violet. It's only literal when it grabs you by the feet and yanks you under before you can scream."
"Paint it as black as you want," Naki drawls, "But this is the first time you've tried to fight being pulled 'under' with him. You should think about that. I'll make sure you think about that."
Riley has, in her time separate from Alec, taken great delight in short cutting past a lot of his games and kneejerk insecurities by just saying whatever he's thinking. She's translated for him directly when he would have preferred to be circumspect. But she would never actually betray him - herself - by giving away his secrets.
So even though she desperately wants to tell Lark how often he wonders about if he could truly build a life among wolves, to reassure Lark who she loves because her boy does that it likely won't be as temporary as they both insist on thinking, she doesn't. Instead: "Is there truly a place for us there? Once you have your pack again, your new girls and your new structure and your kingdom. There's always a place for a soldier like him, but is there space for him who will never be a wolf?"
She doesn't, won't say this is the main reason, the main fear that makes Alec dismiss the idea on those many occasions he considers it in silence. She fears it too.
Lark looks down at her, glances down a little more at Alec. "There's space for him even if he stops being a soldier. I can picture it sometimes; he'd have to knock some heads together to get respect. He smells like a cat--well, obviously. It would make my pack foolish at first. But they'd learn the hierarchy. They'd play with him, they'd listen to him."
And that's all without them having any idea what Lark's feelings are. Alec wouldn't need anything from Lark in order to find his place.
Riley listens, of course, transferring her attention back to Alec, to cleaning some of the grime from his skin, to soothing some of the minor abrasions into numbness with her tongue. She doesn't care about harpy residue or anything else clinging to him from out there in the waste - it's already in his blood, and she'll disappear.
She - like Alec himself - is confident in his ability to make himself an asset, a part of any group, to hold his own even among wolves; that much isn't in question, if he chose to do so. Or if nothing else, Alec doesn't need the pack the way Lark does, only acknowledges that it's part and parcel.
There are things he would tell her because he feels safer with her than he does with anyone else, because she is Alec, but that's also why he can't tell her certain things. Like what life without Alec would be like.
"With a new girl, with a large pack, with California under my control...there would still always be a place for him. There will be a place for him," will be he almost doesn't mean to say but doesn't take it back, "Even if he never comes for it. I don't expect him to. I'm not telling you that to try to push him one way or the other."
Riley doesn't miss it, of course. And though she might be the most trusting part of Alec, it's also true that there just isn't much in them at all; she has to digest it, has to turn it over in her thoughts until it sinks in, until she can see it for what it is. For honesty, not manipulation, not a ploy. It's a language she speaks, of course. Manipulation. And this isn't it.
So: "Maybe I just won't tell him," she says instead. "Maybe I'll just keep it and if he wants to know it, he'll find it." A notion sitting in the deepest parts of his subconscious, a truth alongside half a dozen other truths that he can choose to believe if he finds the courage, or ignores if it costs too much.
"You know what's best for him." His hand hasn't moved on Alec at all really, but his thumb does now, just a light stroke that manages to be completely protective. "But if it ever came up I might tell him. I think I would."
Hale and hearty and conscious, of course, Alec wouldn't stand for the gesture; at peak health he doesn't need anyone to protect him, at least not physically. Even now if there was an attack he would be in the top percentile for surviving it, one way or another. It's both a fact and what he's built his own self worth on, literally.
"And if neither of you have learned more common sense by then, he'll pick a fight, you'll meet him there, and maybe a week later you'll actually talk about it," she replies, but fondly. She's noticed the pattern, too, of course. Even though she wasn't obviously there for it.
"I'm sorry I can't be there to trip him at the door."
"Is it bad-" No that's not the word he wants. "Is it damaging that we do things that way? Fight over something that we actually care about, make up later and talk like we should have talked to begin with?"
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He's afraid of waking Alec, so when Riley speaks his attention snaps to her and he hesitates before answering. "Yeah?"
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He's taking something for himself, certainly, but it won't be rest.
"I'm not going to be here much longer," she says at last, and hates how helpless it sounds. She doesn't even know what she's asking, her gaze on him without raising her head or turning it. She just knows that it didn't feel like abandoning him, before.
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The unspoken question lingers but he's already answered it in his mind. It takes more time to find words. "We're taking time apart to figure...this...out. But I'll still be paying attention. I'll still be there."
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Lark, in this terrifying new place, will shore up the pieces of himself while he can't. She'd all but told Lark that last time and she still means it but now she feels so much more precarious.
So much younger. "He doesn't know what to do. I don't know what else to do."
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He isn't actually lost right now. He knows that he desperately wants to keep going, that he wants Alec--that he wants Knox. But he also knows that wanting something, even so badly it makes your teeth ache, is not how major decisions are made. And this nebulous thing feels major even if he can't say why yet.
He's not in a good place mentally, or emotionally, or physically. But he is built to keep a pack together, and as long as Alec is hurting, Lark will have moments of clarity. The pain isn't lessened, but the fog sometimes lifts. (What he doesn't know, because he never went through it and never stuck around when other wolves were, is that if Alec dies a permanent death at this point, it will tear open a part of him that is entirely wolf, that doesn't heal).
"You know I'll do anything I can." Including sitting here, letting Alec sleep on him, after they've decided this might be it. "He asked for time--I have to give him that."
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But this is different. This isn't something he can outmaneuver or pick his way past with logic and solid tactics - and he knows that because he's been trying. He hasn't cried, not without being in overwhelming physical pain, since the day they took Teek away when he was seven years old. It unnerved Riley - and him - as much as it did Lark, but that didn't mean any of them could stop it.
"I do," she agrees, sincerely. "I wish I could give you more. I honestly do. I wish I could stay. But I need you to know that if you each take time, and you each decide to let go of this based on something as temporary and circumstantial as fear? It is a mistake."
(If Alec died, Lark would never heal; if what he has now with Lark fails, Alec will never open himself up to it again, and shortly after that he'll self destruct in a truly spectacular fashion.)
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He can't outthink this. Neither can Alec. But he can watch himself to see what emotion is battling for control, and he can make decisions with it in mind.
It's not much, all told. But it's a start. And for a moment, his expression has a shade of resolution under the weariness.
"I don't want to make mistakes with him," Lark says quietly, despite the pang he feels at knowing Alec will know this anyway because Riley does. "Not thoughtless ones. I won't take this lightly."
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So if there's anxiety for Lark in knowing that Alec will know that he's committed to getting them right, the tradeoff is that some part of Alec knows that it would be the worst kind of mistake they could make to give up because they were afraid of what would happen.
She still has as much of herself pressed against Alec as she can get, but Riley hooks a paw up over the side of Lark's head, pulls him close enough to be able to twist her head and groom the side of his face, his hair, his neck, anything she can reach without disturbing Alec between them. Her claws are duller than any other big cat's would be, more like a dog's, strong and likely uncomfortable; her tongue is rough enough to peel flesh off bone with enough repetition and focus, but then, both of these have always been the only possible way either of them know how to love.
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His hand strokes her shoulder in turn. If he'd been in wolf form he'd have groomed her back, like he'd done not an hour ago for Alec in a desperate, instinct-driven bid to offer comfort. But he's not so shaken up now, and there is a difference between licking fur and merely dirty skin. So: petting will have to do.
He's never been this close to her. The nearest he came was an accidental brush on the Barge, when touching the daemons was not just taboo. And now here they are; Naki has found a place to rest on Alec's hip, as easily settled there as on Lark's shoulder. But he thinks again of that first touch, and of the way Alec had reacted, and he thinks of the little pieces he has of Alec's life. Of the things he's done to keep his soul together, and healthy, and not like the damaged souls Lark saw here and there.
"Do you wonder how we got this way?" he asks her, quietly bewildered by it all.
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Her fur is illogically cool to the touch, but other than that there's no surprises there: her coat is thick and glossy and vibrant, her frame light and her muscles lean and hard beneath her unmarred pelt. Whatever damage Alec carries with him - and to be sure, there is a lot - it hasn't touched her at all.
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How they ended up in a frame of mind where Alec would ever fall asleep on him, even though not an hour ago they decided that for the moment they're "done". How Lark ended up being willing to see where this goes, if it can be salvaged, even though smart and safe money says he ought to run.
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Lark is so good at, if not seeing through it than realizing there's always something going on under the surface of her boy, that she just thought he already knew.
"The Barge is a prison and, on board it, he is a prisoner. Out here - temporary as it may be, but the Carnation? Ankh-Morpork? Here? Here he's free."
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"Because you're enjoying yourself," Naki says dryly. "You aren't analyzing yourself because you like what you're doing. Or you did." Right up until the decision to back off.
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Then, quietly enough to get lost in the sound of her purring, "Neither of you are very practiced at happy. Not really. So it feels strange and, when you notice it, uncomfortable. It feels temporary."
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She sighs, butts her head against him, the scent glands at the corners of her mouth against his chest.
"You are both so difficult for such good and silly reasons."
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"It's not that I expect anything to be permanent. I usually don't want permanence of any kind, it leads to stagnation and decay, but.... But on the Barge, I'm actually in a position to want things. I'm encouraged to think past the wall. And I try not to because I believe he's right: thinking of the future while in a prison with no set release day, that's just going to make it worse. But I want this, and..."
And that's dangerous because he'll never recover.
"Wolves mate for life," he says absently, and then scoffs and focuses. "It's such a fucking cliche and it's not as literal as people think. If I'd wanted to, I'd have had three 'mates' by now, not even counting Violet. It's only literal when it grabs you by the feet and yanks you under before you can scream."
"Paint it as black as you want," Naki drawls, "But this is the first time you've tried to fight being pulled 'under' with him. You should think about that. I'll make sure you think about that."
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So even though she desperately wants to tell Lark how often he wonders about if he could truly build a life among wolves, to reassure Lark who she loves because her boy does that it likely won't be as temporary as they both insist on thinking, she doesn't. Instead: "Is there truly a place for us there? Once you have your pack again, your new girls and your new structure and your kingdom. There's always a place for a soldier like him, but is there space for him who will never be a wolf?"
She doesn't, won't say this is the main reason, the main fear that makes Alec dismiss the idea on those many occasions he considers it in silence. She fears it too.
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And that's all without them having any idea what Lark's feelings are. Alec wouldn't need anything from Lark in order to find his place.
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She - like Alec himself - is confident in his ability to make himself an asset, a part of any group, to hold his own even among wolves; that much isn't in question, if he chose to do so. Or if nothing else, Alec doesn't need the pack the way Lark does, only acknowledges that it's part and parcel.
Alec would be there for Lark.
"That isn't what I meant."
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"With a new girl, with a large pack, with California under my control...there would still always be a place for him. There will be a place for him," will be he almost doesn't mean to say but doesn't take it back, "Even if he never comes for it. I don't expect him to. I'm not telling you that to try to push him one way or the other."
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So: "Maybe I just won't tell him," she says instead. "Maybe I'll just keep it and if he wants to know it, he'll find it." A notion sitting in the deepest parts of his subconscious, a truth alongside half a dozen other truths that he can choose to believe if he finds the courage, or ignores if it costs too much.
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"And if neither of you have learned more common sense by then, he'll pick a fight, you'll meet him there, and maybe a week later you'll actually talk about it," she replies, but fondly. She's noticed the pattern, too, of course. Even though she wasn't obviously there for it.
"I'm sorry I can't be there to trip him at the door."
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