Disclaimer: I don't own Wolf by Wolf or Blood for Blood; I only have the plot and any original characters.
I wrote this about three years ago and finally decided to doctor it and post it. This was prompted by a reread of this fantastic duology, after which I fell into a depressive state and felt compelled to rewrite the ending. Since the fanfiction for this amazing series is pretty much nonexistent, I figured that I'd release this. Please read the end note; it's quite expansive.
Luka was running . . .
running . . .
running . . .
run . . . ing . . .
run . . .
r . . .
. . .
And then he wasn't. He wasn't anything. He was gone, his body just a husk of what used to be the Double Cross victor. A phantom of a girl, the most furious of monsters, knelt by his side, attempting not to cry out in remorse as she stood up. Then Yael left, feeling as though her soul was split in two, but determined to do her job nevertheless. She aspired to make this grievous sacrifice worth it.
But her Luka hadn't give up on life quite yet.
The first sign of survival came with too much light in his eyes, coupled with a headache. He groaned, because his side was wracked with pain. Then his lips twitched, because pain was good. Pain meant Luka was still alive.
"Where . . . I am?" he started, his voice only a hoarse whisper as he strained to create the words. "Am I?"
There was mumbling, but all he could make out was, "Don't worry. You're safe. You're safe . . ." Although he wanted to say something, anything, ask if Yael was still alive, he couldn't form the sentences before the depths of sleep claimed him again.
"You're safe now, Mr. Lowe . . ." came the words of the stranger, and it was the last thing he heard before returning to his slumber.
"How . . . " he coughed, feeling as though silt had invaded his lungs. He had woken up previously for mere minutes, getting half-second glimpses into the world behind unfamiliar bedsheets and drowsy clouded lobes, but this was different. For the first time, he could see and hear relatively clearly. Though his eyelids longed to drift closed again, he painfully gritted his teeth and forced them open. Focus, verdammt. Luka could make out the faces of a teenage girl and another woman, probably her mother or aunt. Both were blonde, with healthy layers of fat and long pale limbs, no sharp elbows or gaunt cheekbones. The typical Aryan family, and well off, he had to presume. "How long was I out? Where are we?" His hand was patted by the older woman, her pinched features softening into something more sympathetic.
"You were shot in the chest. I'm a nurse . . . or I was, a long time ago. But I was forced to operate on a few patients before and was able to keep you alive." She looked at the victor with a steely concern, almost as if debating what to say next. "You're currently at my apartment, Luka. You've been here for two weeks, recovering from the major internal effects of . . . well, since there's no way to put it delicately, your shooting. You were dead for a few minutes." Her fingers knit together and the ex-nurse squirmed in her chair. "Your heart stopped beating . . . well, it was already stopped and you were clearly already gone when I got to you. But in the commotion of evacuation, I was able to smuggle you out and jump start your body, like a car."
"Great," murmured Luka, experimentally stretching his fingers out inch by careful inch. Slowly, they unraveled, and never before had such a simple motion felt so relieving. "I remember running . . . farther and farther into a forest . . . and then, well, and then . . ." He trailed off, letting the subject drop, the words shriveling to nothingness. Somewhere, deep in the recesses of his mind, he knew that he had bigger things to worry about than how he was still alive. Fraulein.
"Where is Yael?" he asked, voice still scratchy. He looked down at the bandages, wondering if she had been hurt or killed. Had she had a near miss like him? Was she running with her tattooed wolves now? Luka touched his fingers to the edges of his wraps, wincing at the agonizing prickling that flew over his body. Not healed up yet.
"It's a bullet wound, you silly boy!" snapped the nurse, but her voice was still laced with worry. "You'll just hurt yourself or slow the healing process by poking it! Honestly, you dummkopf!" She batted his hands away.
"But . . . Yael?" he breathed weakly. She simply shook her head sadly, her face the perfect picture of pity despite the anger.
"I've no idea who she is, let alone where she is," mumbled the woman with a sigh. "But I hope she's okay."
"She has to be," he muttered, mostly to himself. "I really love her." And he did.
There was a widening need to say the words out loud. These people, these strangers - they didn't know Yael. They didn't understand who she was, this strong and unshakable leather-hard girl. But he had feared, more than anything else, that he would die without truly making a difference. That he would die without getting the chance to say that he loved her out loud, where she could hear the words and know that she didn't need to be alone.
He just hoped he'd be able to see her again. He hoped that, like himself, she had miraculously survived, and he would get the chance to tell her.
The nurse pursed her lips. "We'll see." And with that, nodding his head slightly, Luka began to slip back into unconsciousness.
"Your name . . ." he whispered, almost asleep. The woman smiled wryly.
"Mia." Then she left, and the world was black again.
"Finally, you're awake," huffed the girl. She couldn't have been more than eighteen, with her line-less eyes and overall young demeanor. Today she was wearing a long, faded blue dress and holding a tray of food. "We can't sustain you with pumped supplements much longer; you need to start eating again. Open up." Luka was still fairly drowsy from sleep, and when he opened his mouth to yawn, a spoon was shoved into his maw. He began to sputter, resulting in a fierce stinging within his lungs. It felt strangely like swallowing cigarette fumes, which was a surprising comfort.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" cried the girl, trying to pat his back like an infant. "It's Aunt Mia that's the nurse, not me. I have no patience for it."
"I can tell," Luka replied, voice still hoarse. She winced.
"Yeah, well . . ." She paused when she saw Luka attempt to hobble to his feet. He slowly swung sideways, toes touching the ground, and then he gingerly began to apply pressure on them. The effort, though usually so simple, was impossibly tiring, but he continued, determined to walk again. And Luka knew exactly where he wanted to go. "What are you trying to accomplish, Luka?"
"I need to leave," he said. "The world thinks I'm dead; I have some people I need to see. It's been nice meeting you all, though." He paused, there. "I think. I was asleep for most of it. But I appreciate being kept alive."
"You can't leave! You're still healing!" exclaimed the younger girl, eyes wide.
"I have to," he protested, despite the aches in all of his limbs. His legs, the stubborn arses they were, gave another mighty heave before falling on the ground, folded in on themselves like a crumpled deck of cards. From behind him, the girl shook her head, curls bobbing up and down.
"I don't think you could get anywhere if you wanted to." She hefted him back onto the mattress with much difficulty, grunting and nearly falling to the ground herself. Whoever she was, she was small and slight, not made for much physical work. Privately, he thought that she was the perfect Aryan ideal; long limbed, blonde, and probably bred for dresses and housework and husbandry. A small child or so away from golden standard.
A shame, really, that Luka never wanted to be the golden standard. He supposes he ended up a poster boy, anyways, though.
"You're really heavy," she huffed all the same, as if it wasn't obvious that he felt weighed down by leaden bones. "I wish Aunt Mia could help." Aunt Mia. Not mother, not father.
"What about your parents? They on vacation or something?" Luka questioned. When she didn't answer, he sighed in sympathy. If he had nothing else to his credit, it was that he knew what it was like to be disappointed in one's family, to wish that they were better. "You have issues with them? That I can understand."
"No," she replied softly. "They're dead." She breathed deeply. In and out. No bruised and struggling lungs like Luka, but she had just as much trouble. Eventually, with a shake of her delicate head, she extended a hand. "I'm Bernice." Luka shakily held out his left arm.
"Luka Lowe, but I guess you already know that."
"I like you, Mr. Lowe. I have a feeling I'll be seeing you around," Bernice responded, a small smile curling at her lips. Luka laughed wryly, mostly without humor. His chuckles were becoming painful spurts of breath, but at least he was still alive. At least his heart was still beating.
It's as Mia's applying more gauze to the sizable hole in his chest that he realizes he really doesn't know them at all, his rescuers. They are complete and utter mysteries.
It's a puzzling predicament, being so reliant on strangers. He's been in this verdammt bed for nearly three weeks and he has never questioned their motives. He now knows their expressions, how Mia draws her lips tight into lines when she's concerned, how her nose twitches when she is annoyed. When she is happy, her eyes crinkle just so, and her smiles are small and slight. He knows that Bernice is talkative, and that it is her way of coping with the silence suffocating the walls. There is a big absence to fill (one house - two parents = quiet rooms) but she makes up for it by pouring all her thoughts out loud. She loves her aunt and wishes that they had had more chocolate over the course of the war. Before the occupation they had had chocolate, and a whole cake of it come her birthday. At the beginning, when she turned seven, there was still cake. And then, her father was given the boot, and chocolate was gone.
"I can still remember the taste, melting my tongue," she whispered once. "It was like gold, behind my eyelids. Bright gold, laced with browns so dark they were living, rich and beautiful. That was chocolate. It was warm, and it was family, and it was life. Once here, now gone, just like my mother. Almost one and the same, you know?"
"A brown so dark it was green, a green so fresh it was living." He coughed, then. "Or something like that. And maybe now there are flecks of gold, too . . ." Scheisse, it really was the same thing, wasn't it? A home, seen in different ways. In chocolate cake, in people's eyes. All of it was just belonging, distilled into thoughts. "Yes. Verdammt, yes, I know."
He still has no idea why the woman of a thousand faces and Bernice with a mouth speeding a hundred miles a minute decided to take a dead boy and bring him back to life. He still has no idea why they continue to try to save him. This had to change.
"Why are you helping me?" he finally asks after days of trying to find the words, looking up. It's not exactly subtle, but it's a way to get an answer, and he was tired of searching and searching for an eloquent way to speak. For once, let raw curiosity be the mouthpiece and not solely the motivator.
Mia's face is as steely and unwavering as ever.
"I quit being a nurse, but it never really leaves you. I was in the building, in the nearly empty wing, bringing over fresh curtains. I deliver laundry, now. They wanted all the drapes to be rewashed and hung in case they decided to air another Chancellery Chat after everything died down. So there I was, while the building was deserted, trying to reupholster fresh curtains." She laughed wryly at this, and at silence following that statement. "Mundane, isn't it? While you were getting shot, I was hanging up drapes. But that bang, and the shouting - it was louder than life." She paused, knotting the gauze around once more for good measure and then tying it off. "I suppose I just . . . I don't know. Instinct kicked in, perhaps. Sometimes you just know you're needed. As everyone left, it was just something I had to do."
"You did that something rather well, in my opinion," he replied, running a shaky hand through his blonde locks. "This saukrel owes you his life."
"No, you don't. You needed help, so you received it. What goes around comes around." Slowly, Luke nodded, silently reveling afterwards in the fact that this action didn't cause him to wince.
"Alright then." Silence overtakes them again, eating away at Luka. There had to be more. He just has to find more to say. After briefly biting his lip, he calls out at her again. "Why is your name Mia, then?" That, much more so than the last question, gives her pause for consideration.
"It's short for Minna, actually. After my grandmother. She was a stubborn old bird."
"Huh." She continued fixing his blankets, as she had been doing previously, and he batted her hands away. "I've got it." She looked up with so much iron in her eyes he nearly saw a shred of Yael.
"I know you do." And that was that.
He talks to Bernice and Mia often, in the lonely afternoons. There is little else to be done. He hears them whisper, when they think he is asleep, about his bullet to the side, his sacrifice in front of the entire world.
"Dead as a doorknob," they say.
"A nothing shell," they say.
"A miracle," they say, too, after all the conversation on death and departed souls has concluded. Then Bernice and her aunt continue about their lives, watching the war rage on to its inevitable and approaching end outside their windowpanes. Fights in the streets, scuffles he would have joined had he been physically capable. As it is, he can hardly walk across the room (and that alone was a cause for celebration in the small but comfortable flat; when he first managed a complete series of strides, making it off the bed and to the doorway, Bernice began to clap emphatically and Aunt Mia declared that she would be making sweet bread that night). Sometimes, he imagines Yael is down there, blasting her way through the enemy battalions with polished pistols and her hidden knives, clawing out their men just outside the building.
It's a daydream, he knows, but it is what Luka must do for now. He must find a way to get by until he can see her again, the only fraulein that could make him feel alive and needed and entirely himself.
"That girl you talk about," Bernice begins one night as they eat, munching on dinner quietly, "is the one, isn't she? The girl on the Chat who begged you not to die. The girl you came there for." He swallows, and then smiles sadly, for the girl you came there for is such an understatement. She is the very thing that kept him from collapsing into everything. She is the very reason he's still going.
"Yes, that's Yael," the blonde victor finds himself saying instead. "And she's the most incredible fraulein I've ever met and ever will meet." The older woman hummed, squinting her sharp eyes, examining his face. She must have found something odd, something more in his expression, for she pulled back with the most curious, understanding look.
"You really love her, don't you? It's not just some teenage whim. She's really left her mark, hasn't she?" Mia asked in a way that wasn't really a question. Luka nodded.
"I do."
"Tell us about her," Bernice pipes up again, grinning softly. "I want to know about the girl who can take down the government and steal the heart of the Double Cross Victor Lowe."
He tries his verdammt best, but he cannot truly do her justice. Yael is someone with so many sides, so many layers of steel and compassion and mercy and humanity that he cannot begin to encapsulate all that is her in a single night. But he tells them her story, all the cobweb pieces he can remember at the moment, because she deserves to be remembered as the heroine she is.
"She sounds . . . amazing," the other teenager finally sighs, exhausted and full. "I hope I'll love someone like that someday."
Luka still doesn't know if he did her justice, but for now it is good enough.
"I have never had children," Mia tells him softly one night. Bernice is asleep, slumping in a chair beside them, baby doll curls falling over the upholstered arm. Aunt Mia strokes the ends of them, her very fingertips made of love.
It is late, and Luka probably needs his rest, but something in him strains for his old endless endurance and forces him to continue staying up, fighting to remain awake.
"Oh?" he says, because he now knows her well enough to understand that when she shares her life with someone, it is not a thing to be taken lightly.
Calloused hands tremble ever so slightly. They nearly snag in Bernice's hair. "I had a husband, once. Alix died in the initial war efforts. We'd never had a child, but we'd been trying for so long. We were younger then, too, and we thought we'd have more time. We were so incredibly wrong, but Alix was a good man. I never found another that could compare." She pauses, smiles a tight, quirked thing. "My niece helped to fill the void. In so many ways, she's the daughter I never had, and especially after my sister and her husband died. We were all eachother had."
A wavering candle flickers across their faces, a far off warmth that turns the whites of her eyes gold. "I always wanted a son. I've imagined his face in my mind, so very many times," she breathes, eyelids fluttering backwards. "He would be taller than me, just shy of his father, but with the broader shoulders of my family. Dark blonde hair, like Bernice, and her mischievous smirk. A strong jawline, a mirror of Alix's, paired with a slightly slopping nose and my fair skin." She glances at Luka sideways, almost shyly. "I think you're the closest to what I've envisioned for him of all the young men I've seen in Germania. I'd hope he would be a boy like you."
"Mia," he says, and to his surprise, a tear rolls down his cheek. The Lowe of a year ago would have been embarrassed, but the man he's become welcomes it. He's never had an adult really say that he was wanted, that he was a son and he belonged to a proud parent. Not even by proxy, not even outside the confines of blood. "Thank you." With a wave of her hand and some muttering, she leaves and returns with a leather jacket, black as pitch and twice as smooth. It looks barely worn.
"It was a present for Alix before he left for the front," she explains, those same loving fingers curled around the sleeves. "He only got to wear it a few times, but he adored it. It's a reliable coat and I think it would fit."
"I don't know if I can," he protests, but she cuts him off with a frown. Luka tugs it on, admiring how it falls at his waist so well, how the frame suits his shoulder blades perfectly. His father's jacket never seemed to fit quite right; this one is a thing of beauty, smooth leather comfortable and light.
"Keep it, Luka," Aunt Mia smiles again - twice in the span of ten minutes, a true record - and nods to herself. "Sometimes the timing is just right."
Three months. Three months Luka remained with Aunt Mia and Bernice. They were kind, and selfless, and all too welcoming, but he was finally well enough to travel on his own, and he had family he needed to visit. He missed his motorcycle and the thrill of racing. He missed looking at the sky on cloudless nights, watching the stars. He missed the way he used to argue with Felix, even if the twin was a saukerl. He missed Yael.
He missed Yael a lot.
"Are you sure you need to leave?" Mia asked, fumbling with the sleeves of his new and improved black leather jacket. She was displaying more parental concern than his actual parents ever did, he had to think, as she fussed over him. Perhaps this was just part of being a nurse - you come to care for every lost soul that walks in the door. You start to love them as they love themselves.
If that was true, he wondered why people ever set out to be nurses. Your heart is broken ever time that door slams shut.
"You know that I'm fine now," he reminded, gently shoving her away. "I'll be alright. I survived a bullet, right?" Bernice snorted from behind him, watching her stern yet fond aunt fret him.
"With a lot of help, Luka. You know that we're worried." Biting her lip, the younger blonde went up and hugged him. "Just . . . promise you'll write. We'll miss you." The victor laughed at that, fingering his coat collar.
"I'm sure you won't miss feeding and bandaging me, but I'll write." Casual goodbyes make leaving easier. He started for the door.
"You're always welcome here," called the older woman, and for a moment, he pondered this. With one last wave, he realized that he could stay there, unconcerned about the world, and be perfectly content. He could live life in their little apartment and just be Luka Lowe, the boy made of cigarette smoke and twisted smirks and a face to make a thousand German waifs swoon. He could be Luka Lowe, the person, and nobody would ever know any better.
Then he was reminded of indigo twilights and deep green-almost-brown eyes and howling inky wolves, and there really wasn't a choice to be made at all.
"Goodbye," he remarked with finality, and out he went, leaving nothing but the scuffs of his boots on the carpet.
A bike was stolen after two days of walking. It wasn't exactly ethical, and he wasn't exactly proud of his actions, but it allowed him to travel faster.
Now there Luka was, heading nowhere in particular - he still had no idea where Yael was, or where the resistance was, or even where he was. But mileage = progress, and that was all that seemed to matter at the present.
And so the road went by, cobblestone by cobblestone, turn by turn, wolf by wolf.
Luka realized he was about a day's ride from his parent's house with a start. After sleeping by the side of the street for about a week, perhaps more, perhaps less, the signs seemed to blur together. But no - if they were still living in the same place, like they probably were, they were only a few hours away.
So he rode.
The desire to have something permanent, to please people, and to find home had always been prominent features in Luka Lowe. He had thrived off simply being liked, being respected, being noticed for his talents, and perhaps this explained his dreams of racing. There is nothing like becoming a double victor of the Axis race to boost your attention, your admiration.
Finally, he arrived, pulling at the sleeves of his leather jacket with a frown. As he stood at the door, he wondered if this reunion would be anything like what he briefly imagined. Would they be relieved? Glad? Excited, even? His parents were never exactly the emotional sort, if his years of experience were any indication. They were why he was Luka, lion-hearted, arrogant, devil-may-care boy of steel anyhow.
With a sharp intake of breath, he knocked on the wood, rapping it lightly with the flat of his wrist. It flung open, his mother frowning, before she looked at his face.
"Son?" she whispered, tears streaking down her face. For all the life of him, he wished he knew what she was thinking. Her eyes, though soft, revealed next to nothing.
"Who is it, Nina?" mumbled his father before turning around. When he caught sight of the victor, his jaw dropped. "Luka?" Only surprise was located in his gaze. This was the shock of a man who saw a dead boy return from the damning television screen to the grayscale of his porch, utterly alive. Not the relieved airs of a parent being given back the life of his only child.
No remorse, no terror, no glee. Nothing but a husk of a man, the one who molded his son into an unwavering soldier. The one who made a little boy hard and numb to the world.
Briefly, Luka wondered why he was ever afraid of this stranger, why he ever respected him, or why he wanted so badly to make him proud. Looking at the man who gave him dog tags and a brown jacket, the victor's most loyal companions, all he saw was knobby joints and a skinny, hunched frame. Regret seeped through him, but no true sadness.
This was a hollow visit, a useless pursuit. They were not worth his time.
"I am alive," Luka finally stated, staring both of them down. "I am alive, and I'm going back to my real family. Don't follow me." Not that they would, but it never hurt to say. To finally have the last word.
Just like that, he spat defiantly in his father's direction, nodded at his mother, and left without another utterance of explanation.
Later, all he could really say was that he felt free, as if this was something he needed to do. Then back to the pavement he went, swinging onto the motorcycle with a practiced ease.
Adele and Felix Wolfe had been involved with the resistance, yes? Perhaps they would know how to contact them.
The Wolfe family was decidedly hard to find. Almost unfairly so.
It takes a month of asking around, riding hard through the days and into bleeding afternoons, and a stiff back from all of the sleeping on the side of the road. And yet, there he was, at their new yard, and he felt the same unsettling urges he had experienced when meeting his own parents again. Frankly, Luka would be more than happy if he never saw Adele or Felix again. She was a vixen, and he a devoted idiot. And yet they were his only connections to Yael, so this must be done.
Felix sees him first.
The victor knows this by the way the doors fling open, the way that he runs outside and flings his arms around Luka and sobs like he has just recovered a crucial part of himself.
Luka doesn't quite know what to think about that. About the way the traitor hugged him, cried at his return. He doesn't think he'll ever have an opinion on it.
"I thought I - Adele, me, we - you were - " The words coming out of the mechanic's mouth are jumbled at best, and his eyes are brimming with a released weight of guilt. "You aren't dead."
"No, I'm not," rumbles the fierce voice inside Luka's chest, the sentence vibrating lowly in his throat as he firmly shoved Felix's hands away. "Though you did a pretty great job trying to get me killed." He's still angry, he realizes. He's always been angry at the world, but this is a new type of anger. A vendetta paid in blood.
It's not a simmering boil, a rage that is cooked and perfected. It is a mar that is simply there, smoothed over and glossed up like a pearl, and it will take years for the lingering, mellow anger to dissipate. It will take a long life, he thinks, because looking at the Wolfe twin he fully knows the extent of their corruption.
Layers within layers, promise within promise. They are such pretty lies, the ones this family spins, and its children worst of all. Perhaps it is not their fault, but there was a choice to be better. A choice to be selfless, to fight for something outside themselves, but self preservation was always their motivating force - Adele was a prime example of that.
He did not trust them. He did not want to trust them.
But Yael was out there, not knowing that he was alive, not knowing that he loved her. And that simply would not do.
"I'm alive," he says simply, the words snipped but not as cruel at they could have been. Felix flinches slightly all the same. "I suppose that guilt lingering on your chest can finally dissipate, then, you arschloch."
" . . . I never meant to - "
"No, you might not have. I don't forgive you." Luka breathes deeply, letting the fresh air carry away the urge to slap the Wolfe. "But you can make it up to me. You can get me home." Slowly, the teenager nods.
"Yeah, we can get you back to your family. It's a long trip, but with some bikes, I can - "
"Not my parents, Felix." Luka kicks at the dirt and tries not to conjure up his mother and father's faces, their looks of befuddlement upon his arrival. "I want to get in contact with the resistance."
"You mean . . . Yael?" his companion finishes, finally meeting his eyes. The words, the questions, lay in the space between them, unspoken but prominent.
"Yes. Yael."
Silence, long and melancholy, envelops the boys, and Luka realized that he is no longer anything like Felix, anything like the double win racer he used to be.
It's almost freeing, that thought, and it slices the quiet with a knife.
"We'll arrange a meeting, somehow," Felix finally says, looking off into the distance with a small frown. He's reminiscing, Luka assumes, and he wonders what about.
Who about, more like, if their conversation was anything to go on. Whatever Yael had last said to the Wolfe, it had rattled him to his core.
The blonde had never been prouder of her.
"Thank you, then," he responds, sincere for once. It doesn't matter how much of an arse his companion is; if he's getting Luka back to normalcy, then it helps. Then it is worth it.
"Stay with us, for a few days." The words escape the mechanic's mouth in a blur, and though his relief is palpable and his regrets even more so, he has the look of someone who would rather be anywhere else in the world. "You don't need to, of course, but you don't have anyplace else to go, I'm assuming."
"No, I don't."
"We'd be happy to have you, while you wait for her. You look like you've been sleeping in the wild, Lowe."
"I have been, actually. Not that you'd care." Another wince, another awkward flinch. "Happy to have me, though? Under the same roof as your lovely sister?" Felix opened his mouth, preparing to come to her defense - snakes, the lot of them, but one couldn't say that the Wolfe family wasn't loyal - before faltering, pursing his lips. This one was an argument he couldn't hope to win.
Once, Felix may have tried, though. He would have fought tooth and nail for his sister's honor, regardless of whether or not she was right.
Once. But that was then, this was now, and inked wolves and changeling smiles had made many adjustments.
"Adele is sorry."
"Of course she is. Even when she hadn't convinced you to sell out an entire group of innocent people risking their lives for reform, she was an arschloch, icy and terrible. She'd just as soon rip out your throat as she would kiss you. I'm living proof."
"She's better, without the competitions."
"You cannot breed out ruthlessness, Felix. You can only hope your Adele has suppressed it." He readjusted him jacket, sighing at the Wolfe. "Get me a clean bed and a change of clothes and maybe I'll reconsider murdering you."
Felix nods, and moves to pat his shoulder as if to remind himself Luka Lowe is still alive.
Luka slaps him, hard, striking him across the jaw firmly. A red welt in the shape of a hand is visible on the side of his face.
"I guess I deserve that," Felix murmured, looking at the ground. The Axis tour victor stared at his handiwork for another several moments, feeling unexpectedly smug to see that it was changing between blues and purples already.
"That and more."
He finds that sleeping down the hall from Adele Wolfe is infuriating.
Just, Adele. He wants to slaughter Adele.
When Felix first invited in Victor Lowe - Luka, back from the dead, yellow-haired head shining like a candle, road rash speckled on his pink dusted-cheeks - Adele's eyes had widened. She held a hand over her mouth, shaking her head, taking a step back. They all had their ghosts, of course - behind his eyelids Luka now sees a vivid array of files, other names he never got to tell the world, and he remembers that vital shot by Aaron-Klaus, the one that shook the world to its foundations - but having ghosts didn't mean that the departed haunted you, only that they were there, present and whole, for the rest of your days. Yael took her specters and made them into her wolves, her fiercest companions; Adele kept them under tight lock and key, refusing to feel guilt or sundering for the people that would forever belong to her memory. Luka realized, in the moments when she shrunk into herself, hands drawn into slightly shaking fists, that he had become one of her many secrets to be forgotten, another regret in her history of tragedy and missteps. And here she was, ready to fight some hollowed-out version of Double Cross Victor Lowe, the one she expected was ready to take revenge for the many opportunities she'd robbed him of (one clean victory + a year without a bleeding heart + months of his life with Yael, the way things could have been = quite a lot of missed moments).
Luka was not interested in Adele Wolfe. Where he once spent days agonizing over the feel of her lips on his, the horrible sinking feeling that arose when he woke up without her, surrounded by blossoms, the blonde boy finds he can't bring himself to feel anything but murder when he sees her. He knew she wasn't a good person, he knew she was selfish and untrustworthy and downright cruel when she didn't get her way, but knowing what he does now about Adele - she is despicable in every possible way. He is surprised by how completely disinterested he is in everything she does.
However, it's hard to say that when you live with her. You wouldn't guess that behind her snowy-white skin and pale buttercup hair lies a cold worse than all the nights his father had driven through in Russia when she's laughing with her parents over breakfast, watching her mother prepare pancakes. You would not know she has blood on her hands when you witness her patiently giving Felix wrenches in the garage as they're bent over a new engine, a spark of pride running through her veins whenever she sees all the progress he's made in re-learning how to grip. Theirs is a home that is sickeningly happy, the kind of belonging Luka's never seen in his own house growing up. He can understand, almost, why Felix put in so much work to salvage this feeling, even if it meant damning the world.
Almost. But some prices cannot be paid, and there has to be a line: the love of three or the lives of thousands is too steep a bill.
Their mother and father are strong, impossibly warm people, but he knows they would do anything for their family - too much, even, for the name of the Wolfe legacy. They, despite being kind, are something he's seen too much of, and Luka cannot relax around anyone who reminds him of the Wolfe twins. Adele sometimes pretends he isn't in the room whenever she embraces her parents. It feels like salt in the wound; she's rubbing her fairytale ending in his face, letting him watch her as the most full, unguarded version of herself, the kind of innocent girl that would never dream of straying from home. This, more than anything else, makes the boy want to kill Adele. It takes everything in him not to. But her life, as much as she has hurt him, isn't his to take. It is someone else's, and that someone else apparently chose to let her live. Luka has to respect that decision; Adele may be a monster, but he is not. He won't become Adele in his campaign for vengeance.
Sometimes, she just stares at him. Drinking him in, wondering how exactly he lived when so many others died. When he catches the tail-ends of such looks, he stares back fiercely, scowling, until she becomes visibly ashen and turns away. It's nice, in a way, that he can still make her unsettled. She unsettles him near constantly.
One day, she has to ask, though. "Why her?" She says the words curiously, fighting to keep her voice flat and disinterested, like they were talking about the weather. "Why her, out of everyone?"
"Because she's unlike everyone else I've ever met." He pauses for a second, trying to picture thick dark curls sliding between his fingertips, a familiar voice at the end of the hall. "Because she's so much better, and so much brighter, than the world should allow."
"She's an experiment, Luka, and at least a spy, probably an assassin," Adele huffs softly, and it's hard not to punch her, distort her finer features.
"And what's left of you, Adele, after we take away your family and your home and your bikes?" he questions, and she flushes with full indignation. "Nothing, dearest. She has a heart worth ten thousand of yours."
At this, the Wolfe girl sputters and sneers, for once caught off guard. "For however short a time, this heartless girl had you, Luka, and don't forget it."
"I won't, frauelien, and that's exactly why I'm so very glad she's got absolutely nothing in common with you." With that, he stands up, brushes past her with little fanfare, and does not look back. "Be grateful you're still alive, Adele, and be especially grateful to the girl who made that happy reunion of yours possible." He slinks off into the shadows, and for once, she is the one agonizing over the memory of Luka. That in and of itself is more evidence of justice than any other punishment he could hope to inflict upon her.
Luka lives with the Wolfe clan for nearly two weeks before he sees a girl outside the house's wooden windowpanes. Every day, he watches the horizon, waits to hear the howling of wolves coming up the bend, and every day he has been disappointed.
But not today. Today, there is dark hair like a shadow flying in the wind beneath a motorcycle helmet, curling in a dancing breeze. Her jacket is zipped to her neck, her boots high on her legs, her lips drawn into a thin line of determination he can barely make out from where she rides, a Valkyrie on a bike. At her side is a familiar pain in the ass, one resembling Miriam.
It hurts so damn much to hope, but he hopes all the same. His heart throbs with the weight of it all, with all the wild and frantic things he's been holding inside.
Luka races downstairs at breakneck speed.
"What's going on?" questions the surly Mr. Wolfe, confused, and then the family glances out at the road and comprehension dawns quickly.
"It's her," Mrs. Wolfe murmurs, and she takes her husband's hand.
The previous racing legend moves faster than he believed himself capable of, slamming open the front door and running up the gravel, desperately hoping it was true and not just an elaborate fantasy. (Of course, it had to be real, for Luka's dreams were never this detailed, this long and painful, nor did they ever include the Wolfe brethren sneaking unsubtle looks from their kitchen windows.)
She dismounts in the middle of the winding road, throwing off her helmet in a single fluid motion, a smile slowly overtaking her features. She runs, too, boots crackling over the pavement, paying no attention to Miriam's complaints about parking.
Luka soaks her in, but his eyes can't seem to process her properly, not when his mind is racing this fast, jumping from feature to feature. He takes diligent note of the way her limbs are fuller, less bony and wiry, and how her eyes are so impossibly brighter, completely and irrefutably alive. They have never seemed so wide, so relieved, so green. Her skin is her own, with her own distinct freckles, and she looks like her mother. She is sweaty and her chest is heaving and she looks as though she hasn't slept in days, riding hard atop the bike, but he can't see any of it. She's there, and she came for him, and it is more than enough.
"Yael," he breathes like it's a prayer, and they collide to her frenzied laughter, fat tears now rolling down both of their faces, and Luka squeezes her like she's the only thing keeping him anchored to the earth. They sink to the ground, falling further into eachother ever so imperceptibly, and she traces his cheekbone with the pads of her thumbs, relearning every inch.
"Luka Lowe," she says softly, marveling in the simple fact that his heart is beating. She exclaims his name, rolls it across her tongue like it's the first time it's ever been said. He loves the sound of his name spoken with her voice, the way it carries more feeling than he thought was possible.
Yael folds up her sleeve, exposing her bare arm. Leading her pack of wolves is a lion, large and majestic, with a full mane.
"Is that -" he chokes, vision suddenly all the more blurry, and she laughs helplessly again.
"You, Luka Lowe, have a lion heart," his impossible girl states, so sure of herself, so damn caring in her touch. He's reminded so suddenly of Aunt Mia, how her fingers were made of nothing but love as she fingered her niece's curls, and he thinks that this is what it feels like. Love, when it's right.
"I love you, Yael," he tells her, because for so long he thought he would never get the chance to say it, and life is too short. Luka intends to make the most of whatever borrowed time they have together, even if this is the only snatched moment he'll get to steal away.
Being who she is, Yael only says, "I love you too, you complete saukrel," before pressing her lips messily to his, wrapping shaky arms around his neck. Her body melts into his, not a scrap of skin not flush, and Luka's scar sings, everything ablaze, stomach contorting into dizzying shapes as his toes curl.
This. This was well worth the wait.
They spend the entire night trading true war stories, bridging the gap the past few months (just a few shy of a year, now, since he'd last seen Yael, and he runs his fingertips gently through her hair, remembering the way it could shift through a million different hues, and is all the more grateful that she is real, and that she has a face that can be owned solely and entirely by herself). He listens to her talk about the apartment she and Miriam have bought, about the way the Jewish community has slowly begun to form around her and how with the people come the hallmarks of her culture: the hymns, the challah, the prayers, the tales, and even a Torah. She and Miriam now have so much more of it, cobbled together through eachother and through unlikely neighbors, than they'd ever dreamed possible. The victor feels her exuberance as if it's his own, the strings between them trading emotions like an extension of their own bodies and minds.
"I missed you every day," Yael tells him, and he hears the truth of it in her voice, feels it beneath his skin. "But there was good too. I've started working on a project with Vlad, trying to mark the militarized shapeshifters. Miriam and I painted the walls blue, and our wooden dolls are finally reunited. I think I realized after all that happened that I still wanted to live, and that the chance to do so hasn't passed me by yet." He nods, kisses her temple, and sits on the floor, tucking her into his side.
"You are going to," he responds solemnly, "I promise you."
"I know," she says, and though a tear slips free, she starts to smile. "For the first time in a while, I know."
For all that there is to look forward to, there are still kinks in the world that threaten the new plans she's carved out for herself. Luka dutifully holds her hand as her eyes darken, her voice sadder as she admits she still sleeps with a P38. She will still need to help with rebuilding, with Vlad's campaigns, with making the cities safe for her brethren again. But she has Miriam, and Vlad, and now Luka, who is very determined not to go anywhere.
When all of her tales are said and done, the sun is creeping up in the sky, intruding on their silent night. Though she should rest, she insists on hearing all of Luka's adventures, knowing each and every detail of his miraculous survival and return. He divulges everything, even the unimportant details, talking about Aunt Mia's loving, calloused hands and her steady, firm speech, or the new folds and pockets of his leather jacket, or the way the road would stretch and compound, seeming so much longer than the length of a single country. He mentions Bernice fondly, recounts her bumbling attempts at hospitality and her bright spirit, the way she so obviously cared for her only family member.
"She once told me about an entire cake of chocolate for her birthday," Luka smiles, attempting to even picture the ration cards it would take. "Can you imagine something like that?" Yael unexpectedly turns white. She closes her eyelids, lets a shift play out over the face so ingrained in his memories. Within seconds she crafts a startling rendition of Bernice, down to the blue of her irises.
"Is this what she looked like?" she asks, painfully curious.
"Lose some of the baby fat around the cheeks and make the forehead wider, but yes. How did you -" He is cut off by Yael's strangled laughter, both amused and helpless in the face of her recent revelation. "What is it? Is everything alright?"
"Bernice was my first face," she says, so many emotions warring in her own features. "Strange as it seems, I guess she's saved both our lives now." Luka is unspeakably grateful. He lets her know by kissing her breathless when her familiar freckles return.
They fall asleep in Luka's borrowed bed, whispering secrets into eachother's ears, his limbs inextricably tangled in hers.
"If our relationship was representative of, to take a random example, a motorcycle," Miriam says nonchalantly, twirling a butter knife between her fingers, "then I'd be the extraneous third wheel."
"Miriam," Yael teasingly scolds, rolling her eyes. Luka's hand holds hers across the Wolfe's breakfast table, his grip firm. He has few intentions of ever letting go, because taking her hand is like going home, but not to any home he'd ever known before. A better one, one filled with trust and stability and care and unshakable loyalty, the kind that inspires last minute cross-country drives to the Wolfe residence and a return from the grave. The kind of home that is built upon strong foundations and is worth going back to, raising a family and growing old inside.
From the first moment he'd seen the impostor Adele, he'd been a goner. Her heart was too big, her capabilities too great, her resourcefulness too intimidating. Mostly what did it was her compassion, since Luka had been starved of it since childhood. His fraulein was a mystery, sure, but he doesn't need to divine every hidden facet of Yael in order to know her the way she knows him. That sort of bond is rare, a once in a lifetime connection with a once in a century girl.
Miriam gags at them, all the same. She's a grown woman, yes, but Yael is the sister she never had. The woman is overjoyed to see Yael happy, naturally, and glad to know that Luka wasn't dead, but watching the two of them, as she put it, 'canoodle' was clearly not a part of her detailing she was thrilled about.
Too bad. The blonde no longer cares if he looks like a lovesick fool anymore. All of Europe can see that he's smitten as long as he can keep squeezing her hand in is, pressing gentle circles into her palm to remind himself that it's all real.
When Luka agrees to come back with Yael, he doesn't realize how little they actually end up discussing the whole affair. They've spent so long going over the details of their months apart but hardly spared a moment to consider how living together might work in practicality.
As it turns out, there isn't much to debate. Neither of them are exceptional cooks, so they learn as a team in the blue apartment Miriam and Yael share, eventually coming to make soups and salt meat and bake challah, albeit not as well as the woman down the way. Luka's meager belongings migrate into their space and slowly grow the longer he lives there, the more objects they buy. They sleep in the same bed without much thought, because although a pistol provides calming steel, both feel safer in familiar arms than on their own. He gets to wake up to her lithe form, usually so battle ready, furnace hot and butter smooth as it conforms against his, so peaceful and still in a way that screams alive. He helps clean and makes her laugh and joins her Sabbath traditions, and it's an entirely different feeling from racing and running, but it's just as potent. Luka's father would have called him soft and weak for enjoying this domesticity, and would have called him many harsher names for consorting with Yael and Miriam in the first place. Luka didn't particularly care what anyone thought anymore; he was slowly coming to learn that family is divined through more than just blood, and some people weren't worth keeping. Others were worth madcap driving all over Germany for, were worth being shot and coming back to life for. Others were worth their weight in gold, and once they were found, they should be latched onto and never allowed to leave. Family, when it counts, deserves to be fought for.
"I think," Yael says quietly one night, lips against his collar bone, "that these people need a voice. Someone needs to speak out for them for this never happens again. And I'd hate it at first, entering the political circus of Neuberlin, but I can't think of anyone else. Who else who do it, if not me?" Luka wraps his mind around the concept, weighs it thoroughly.
"I can't think of anyone better, either," the blonde boy replies with, for he can't. And it's painful, the thought of her as a target again, but it should be done. It has to be. And if she must, then he will do his damnedest to support her, to use his voice as a whetstone to sharpen hers upon. "If you want me to, I'll go too."
Yael looks at him, eyes lanterns in the dark, and she pulls him all the closer.
"Luka Lowe, you are -" she starts, but then she loses the words. There's too much there, no right words to convey it all in. Instead she settles on, "I love you, and that's for the rest of our lives. I can't imagine anyone else. Not anyone that I've ever given this much of myself to, not anyone that I've ever been able to just love quietly like this. I don't want it to change."
"Fraulein, there's never going to be anyone else remotely like you. Not to me. When things change, the fact that I'm madly in love with you never will." Luka drops a kiss, soft and lingering, to her mouth, reveling in the novelty of such simple allowances.
"That's easy to say now," she mumbles, but a smile is struggling to emerge now, tugging at the tips of her lips.
"I came back from the dead," he scoffs. "This is an easy promise to make. We trade in impossible things."
"Reiniger also wants us to track down the remaining doubles from Experiment 85," she sighs, collapsing further into his side. "They've fled to all corners of the continent, a rat trail needing to be snuffed out. And the ones who've run fast and far enough . . . South America is nice this time of year. They can slip into the masses. It might take years."
"Sounds like another riveting adventure," he all but snorts, resting his chin atop her head once more. "Do you think we'll get medals?"
"Luka," his drowsy companion says, both warning and warm, fed up and fond.
"They better. I'm still waiting on a reward from the last wartime effort."
"Isn't this reward enough?"
"Absolutely, but you and this apartment weren't a hand-picked prize from the Allies. If I'm going to be chasing down mysterious figures overseas, I'm demanding a bike this time. At the very least, a celebratory cake."
"Insatiable," the brown haired girl breathes against his neck. He can hear her grin, clear as day. "Incorrigible."
"Irresistible?"
"Perhaps," Yael hums, voice dissolving like shadows into the night. "But you'd come with? Last time you traversed a country with me, I thought I'd never see you again."
"Please," Luka reassures, clutching her all the tighter, "like you could stop me."
She could. She really could, this angel of destruction, man-made miracle. But she won't, because they are partners, and wherever Yael Reider goes, Luka Wotan Lowe is sure to follow. This is the way of it, written in the history books and scrawled across the graffitied walls of the broadcasting station. Here died Luka, they read, in service of the truth. He remains in service, although truth looks different personified. It bares taiga eyes and hidden numbers, in varying forms but never changeable.
Even in office or vigilante recruitment, she remains his constant.
They swim, once. Germany proper does not boast the finest or cleanest collection of lakes, but what is has can be made do with.
She strips down into a suit, a cream-colored one piece so very popular with the women of the fifties and early sixties. Her arms are bare, as they always are now; short sleeves, ink forwards. Water glints over her ink, making her wolves and lion dance in the sun. They race towards an invisible enemy, wild and reckless. He cannot help but bask in the sight of her, another girl carefree and happy on the makeshift surf. Likewise, she runs fingertips across his scarred chest, shirtless and exposed to the world as he wades in after her.
"Last time you swam was at the Victor's Ball," she muses, grinning. "You were much less impressive."
"There's a reason I can make ten thousand waifs swoon," he grins back, waggling his eyebrows.
"I don't know about ten thousand," Yael says, toying with her lip, and as he lunges for her she runs, letting him chase her down the lakeside and tackle her into the still blue.
In hours, they will dry themselves off and he will tease her relentlessly, waiting for the ever-so-pertinent declaration of love ("Luka Wotan Lowe, I swear on my mother's grave that I love you and I still find you attractive. You can stop moping.") and for the exploratory kisses that follow, mapped out in subdued, wandering hands and wayside touches, performed as if they have time to spare - and they do, now. But in this moment, there is just a boy and a girl, illuminated under a cloudless sky.
"Just hurry up and marry her," Miriam grumbles after walking in on the couple as they engaged in certain activities on the couch. "It's painful to watch."
"Will do, Captain," he bites back, and as she leaves, both collapse in a fit of laughter.
He wonders, sometimes, if his parents were like this at the beginning. With what he's seen of Kurt, he can't picture his father as the doting husband sort. Frankly, he can't picture his father loving his mother at all, much less kissing her, holding her hand, and taking her out on dates. His potentiality for romance, based solely on his parent's marriage, is close to zip. Lowes are not soft, do not go bleeding-hearts. Lowes are strong and sturdy, unflinching. They do not waste time with frivolities.
It's a good thing Luka has never been much for rules. Much as he cannot picture his parents in love, he cannot picture himself now without this girl, the one so diligently listening to the Guatemalan grandmother giving her directions. Yes, they are here on business, but in this small town bordering the sea, she goes sleeveless, wearing a dress for once that brushes her calves and flounces in the humid heat. Her hair is pulled to the nape of her neck, a fresh coffee-brown, freckles and ink worn proudly. Mesmerizing in every possible way.
"There's an inn three blocks from here," Yael tells him dutifully, "and there's a restaurant down the street we've been encouraged to try."
"I see," he says, smiling, because his grasp of Spanish is clumsy at best but based on the way the woman kept gesturing his direction, he's not convinced that's all that was discussed. "Did she say anything else?" She colors, slightly, and he laughs helplessly, not often accustomed to seeing his better half embarrassed.
"She asked if we were married, since I mentioned we were traveling together," his lovely companion delivers, almost impassively. If not for the red on her ears, he might believe she was as unaffected as she intoned. All of her careful training so easily waylaid.
"And you said?"
"Something like that," she admits, shoving his chest lightly when all he does is smirk. "You're lost without me, anyways. It's not the biggest lie I've ever told."
No, no it really isn't. Luka's sure she's seen the way he brightens when she enters rooms: devoted in every sense of the word. Schiesse, he's hopeless. Absolutely and positively stupid over this volatile girl with guns.
"You make me sound like a well-trained dog," he jokes instead, because if he doesn't say that, he'll say something far more damning. Even in a foreign language, he doesn't feel like spontaneously waxing poetic in the streets.
"A golden retriever," she smiles back, placing his hands on her hips and drawing up to her full height, looking him dead in the eyes. Blue on raw on brown. "She said we make a beautiful couple." As she kisses him on the corner, far from Germany's leering stares or any sort of familiarity, his cardiac muscle beats and beats and beats.
A beautiful couple; Luka quite agrees.
Returning to Germany means many things - seeing old friends, the growth of the thriving Jewish district, and the orderly progression of the country under more capable rule - but it namely means buying a new apartment.
"I am not going to watch you . . . coalesce, in my house," Miriam announces. "You're both grown. Find someplace around the block." They do, and when the walls are painted blue once more and all the pots and pans, furniture, clothing, and trinkets are moved in, it feels like home. One just for the two of them, a more permanent sort of family. "Please don't put the second bedroom to good use yet," the commander warns as she visits, and Yael sputters at the suggestion, almost indignant.
"I'm not that stupid," she frowns, and the woman who might as well be her older sister ruffles her hair, buries her hand in strands of brown.
"It's my job to worry," Miriam snorts. "Assassins, you can handle. Children are harder." Her orange-gold eyes rake Luka up and down, assessing and re-assessing. "The world does not need another Luka right now. His spawn would be hellions."
"I'm delightful," he tells her, batting his eyes. "Are you telling me I'm not a portrait of civility?"
"Surprising, I know." As she leaves, Miriam provides a weary smile. "I'm very proud of both of you."
When Luka comes behind her, capturing her in a cage of arms, Yael leans back and sighs. "Family." One word says it all.
However, a very important question had been begged. "Do we want children?" he asks, genuinely curious. He hadn't thought about it, not really, but the concept wasn't a horrible one. Brown eyed and golden haired menaces, blue eyed brunettes. If nothing else, the apartment was big enough now.
"I have no idea," Yael Reider admits, which seems as good an answer as any. "Someday, it might be nice."
"Yeah," he says softly, closing his eyes. "It might be."
The ring comes later, but it does come. Thin, braided silver, like challah made just right or a never-ending cord, infinite in its potentials and promises.
No one is surprised that Luka asks. No one is surprised when Yael, tears stinging her eyes, says yes.
"You deserve happiness," Miriam tells them, as does Vlad, Reiniger, and so many others upon hearing about upcoming nuptials. Even the Wolfes, despite being who they are, find it within themselves to extend congratulations.
The wedding is nothing of note; a small ceremony performed in the street, a local holy man officiating. The cobbles were newly pressed beneath their feet, roads repaved and repaired after years of neglect and bloodshed. Baked bread scented the square, combined with fresh kugel and bialy. She did not wear a dress, nor he a suit. Despite this, the ring glints on her finger, a scrap of shining silver that does not take like the needles but swears to give, give, give. It is all they need.
This is not the end of their story, because the end is never the end. It is the opening of a new, more vibrant chapter.
In years to follow, Luka will follow Yael through hell and back, through arid jungles and bustling cities, aiding in her many missions. He watches with pride as she navigates politics to the very best of her ability, and he praises her as brilliant when she corroborates strategy with the new governmental system. He helps her hunt down traitor after traitor, doppelgänger after doppelgänger, with adrenaline coursing through his veins. He raises local buildings with her, visits the camp she escaped from and marvels at the sight of it, a place of so much death and disaster reduced to a hollow shell. They bake, because they can and because they've finally become better, and they dance when festival music grows too enticing to resist.
He watches her when she is not paying attention to anything, not making tactical plans or cleaning her gun or thinking a million miles a second. When she reads cross-legged on the floor of their apartment, tongue tip caught between the side of her mouth and hair loose and curly, Yael is impossible to look away from. When she paints - at first small scraps of paper, then their bedroom wall, and then herself after an older women introduces her to henna - she gets flecks of color on her forearms and bare feet, droplets of yellow and red and green that are the very picture of life. When it rains outside, sheets hot and dark, she sometimes puts her head out the window for a second or so, the water bracing in its suddenness, and her following smile is stunning. Luka watches her and is in continuous awe; she is never not surprising, never the very opposite of his imagined future: dull as bovine, combined with a dull as bovine blonde baby-breeder.
They rest, they cuddle, they travel the world. They make friends and family wherever they go, and they watch films and read new books and make new stories. They make out and make love and eventually yes, they make a new homestead for their children, of which there are two. Luka is determined to be a father nothing like his own, and Yael is determined to emulate hers. They are not perfect at it - no one is - but they try, and their son and daughter grow up in a house that knows love (and not train cars with unsavory destinations or frigid nights spent in brown leather jackets). Miriam lets them ride atop her shoulders, a reminder that good can flourish and grow even in a world this broken. Little Aaron and Rachel might never know their grandparents, but they will learn the hymns and hear the tales, and through them something more can be passed on. Their people, their faith. A new generation to bridge the divide.
Happily, sadly, humanly ever after, Yael and Luka Lowe lived.
I truly haven't looked or thought about this piece in forever. When looking through my documents, I found it, and as I went to open it again, I told myself that I couldn't just read it. In order to appreciate whatever my younger self had written, I needed to reread the source material, and so in the span of an afternoon I tore through Wolf by Wolf. I read it in a dentist waiting room, in my car, and straddled upon the couch and bed, cranking out page after page. I stayed up late into the night reading Blood for Blood, smiling as I remembered the first time I read it, tearing up as I recalled the words 'Yael Reider lived'. Only after I poured over the final page once, twice, three times did I put the books down and look at what I'd wrote.
In her text An Appreciation by Anna Quindlen, written so lovingly about A Wrinkle in Time, Quindlen says, "The most memorable books from our childhoods are those that make us feel less alone, convince us that our own foibles and quirks are both as individual as a fingerprint and as universal as an open hand. That's why I stall have the copy of A Wrinkle in Time that was given to me when I was twelve years old . . . The girl who first owned it has grown up and changed, but the book she loved, though battered, is still magical." I cannot agree more. This is why I am so deeply in love with A Wrinkle in Time, and why Wolf by Wolf and its successor speak to me still. It is one thing to be good with words and another thing entirely to make them feel, push and pull them in such a way that they tug on the heartstrings and keep a part of you hostage, forever stuck within the pages. A part of me is always in this book series, as it is with all the ones I hold closest to my heart, and that's why I continue to return. I am still running with Luka Lowe, reveling in the danger and glory of Yael Reider's final push for freedom.
Someone once asked me why I continue to reread books, why I can't part with any of the novels in my collection. I have not had many stable friendships growing up, but the words I've read have continued to mold and shape me. I am a better person for reading what I do, and for my exposure to brilliant books such as these two. I read to remind myself of all that I can be; all of the bravery, goodness, and cleverness I can muster, all of the kindness and courage and compassion I have to spare. I want, so very desperately, to become an author. I want to give the world another story to share.
This was written by a younger girl who was trying her best to sound poetic. The words did not come so effortlessly, did not roll off the tongue. For years I thought that if the first words weren't perfect, they were not good enough to show. I started fanfiction for practice and for fun, but most of all to see if I had what it took to connect to people. If I wrote, would anyone read it and see something worth their time and admiration? She's a more fragile thing, this younger me, but seeing the support she was given helped her to become more confident, stronger. I see her in this, and I am invariably proud of myself. For all her faults, she becomes better, and she did not give up or give in. She continued to write. She continued to believe in alternative, happier endings for the people she spent so long loving. Her writing is not nearly as good as mine has the potential to become, but it doesn't have to be. It is enough, and so is she.
I know this is an incredibly dense author's note. Usually I just say that I loved the series, and that I hope my few readers have a good day. This is still the case, but for once, I wanted to express the depths of which I care about this website and its community. Your comments and favoritism may not mean much to you, but for a smaller, more vulnerable me and for the person I am today, your praise was invaluable. You have supported my writing - and my hopes and dreams of writing a novel, which is currently at 240 pages - in a way no one else has. Thank you does not describe it.
Have a fantastic day. I truly mean it.
From, another fan.