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Texting Zac had been easy, but the fight that had come before it...not so much. Lucas had been in a mood, and he'd waited until after the full moon had set to try and get in contact with his friend. It had been too long, but...there'd been so much that had happened. So much he wanted to share. With the topics being of a sensitive nature, he invited Zac to his place - the house he was renting - and promised lunch and a drive home if need be.

The door was left open so Zac could simply let himself in, the house clean and well kept, four different types of pizza on the dining room table. Lucas himself was in the living room, cleaning out an enormous bird house-slash-play area, humming along with a song that blared from his computer. His hair was significantly shorter, cut to the nape of his neck and curling in protest near his shoulders, his face clean of facial hair; the absence of his longer locks and stubble better showed off the scar that traced the line of his jaw and the few on his neck by his ear -- likely what the hair had been grown out to hide to begin with.

He was, for all intents and purposes, in good spirits. Being able to meet with Zac made it hard for him to be dour, even if their discussions weren't going to be the happiest. At least he had someone who would listen.

He didn't hear the tapping (or at least, it got lost in the music), but he heard the comment, straightening and turning to look at Zac. A wide, easy grin formed, crossing the living room towards him with arms open, as if he would scoop up the teen in a hug. "Hey! Long time no see -- !"

And that's when he saw Zac's eyes. His grin faltered a little, but he let his arms lower and stopped within reach of the young man. "I did shave. And I can guarantee that was entirely my decision and under my control, but you..." His brows furrowed a little, tiling his head to the side -- and then his grey eyes widened, catching sight of something entirely surprising in the youth's black gaze.

"I grow hair like Sasquatch every month and you get galaxies in your eyes? ******** that place, man." And the grin came back in full force, extending his good hand to gently squeeze Zac's shoulder. The man was tactile in ways he could not repress. "Should I sing Sky Full of Stars to you now or later?" he teased, tilting his head to the side to admire how Zac's eyes and hair painted him as some otherworldly oracle.

Lucas laughed delightedly at the blush and the words that followed, not going so far as to point it out but enjoying that Zac was still Zac -- despite the upheaval in his life, it was nice to have a grounding point. "Well, if you want to tell that story, I don't have my long ears but you still have all my ears to listen."

The next part gave him pause, and two and two were quickly fit together. "...I did. But first." He pointed with his metal finger. "Half supreme, half pizza lovers -- half canadian bacon and pineapple, half pepperoni and jalapeno, that's my jam -- and a full pepperoni and a full cheese. If you're hungry. If not, or if you wanna eat later..." He motioned to the plates he had out on the table, and otherwise made his way to the living room, flopping onto one of the couches comfortably.

Once there, he threw one foot up on the coffee table, his good arm tucked behind his head, and only then did he answer. "I got the invite. After what happened to you and Thorne and Autumn with one fae, there was no <********> way I was going to a ball surrounded by those two-faced ********. I'm appalled that people went at all." He sighed, grey eyes flitting over Zac. "But you're here, and not in a hospital bed, so that's an improvement from the last time we chatted."

His eyes were near silver as they fixed on Zac, watching him as much as listening: the way the teen deflated a little, the tightness around his eyes when he spoke of Adoelle.

"She wants to die because she's one of the three seals -- two are gone now." Lucas paused, his smile diminished, his jaw flexing with words he was having a hard time putting forward. "They're acting like this is something new, but it's not." Slowly, the werewolf pulled his limbs back into a normal position of sitting, elbows on his knees. "Ry and I went to the Otherplace, a library, there. And I talked to Michael. The dead one."

He shook his head, running a hand through his shorter hair and tugging at the tips. "There was talk of killing Heliodora, Adoelle. He said it had to be done to stop things, and that -- at one point, he'd been the one to kill them. But if we've been doing this so long and we've been failing...who is to say this is the right path? I'm not sure anymore, Zac."

Glancing over, he motioned for Zac to come sit by him. "How do you feel about this? About -- about turning normal people into murderers, savants for a cause none of us really knows the entire story of?"

"Michael died because supposedly, Spinel and Red forced him into Ashdown. He wasn't supposed to be here. He was supposed to be our -- the Pack's -- guide. The timeline has changed." Lucas shrugged; there was nothing they could do about it now, but knowing there was some sort of weird time warp going on was really ******** things up royally. "How, I -- I don't know. In the library, he told us the keeper of the place let us there, it's kinda...a vault of memories, I guess. He wasn't exactly helpful, but ********, Zac, who has really been black and white with any of this?"

The wolf tried to smile, but it was hard, his expression vaguely tired. "We're only cornered because we're letting them call the shots. I don't like it. I think I..." He hesitated, eyes distant for a moment. "...I have to find some way to protect people. Even if it goes against what they think is right. I can't let everyone become blood thirsty murderers, that's not -- that's not an existence worth saving."

The wolf shook his head slowly. "I don't know. It makes me think, maybe we got close, in the future, and they're knocking out the timeline that would have helped us succeed. I can only theorize, because the people we're supposed to help wont ********' tell us." Lucas growled the last words, though he fell silent as Zac continued.

"Heh, I'm not surprised it let you in. You probably owned it, in another life." Despite his annoyance, a smile flickered at the comment. "I saw Sunny, there, in three forms - and a guy named Renard. It all goes over my head, though. I find that the more I learn and the more time that goes on...the more the story unravels and the less it makes sense. I feel like I'm standing still in a flood and no one else sees it."

His metal hand ran over the back of his neck, eyes sliding away. "I don't know. I only see them to let them into the Otherside, and we part ways. I haven't spoken with any of you but Ry and Cas since..." Since Thorne left. Since Sunny was afraid. Since Aleksy was angry. It seemed so long ago.

His gaze returned to Zac, eyebrows lofted. "No, I don't think you've mentioned it. I've only seen Ry in his past life, the a** has the nerve to be attractive in two lives." Lucas cracked another smile, trying not to have the entire reunion be gravity and stumbling weights.

Accepting the phone, he looked at the photos, answering as he did. "Eras. One, she was blonde and blue eyed, very olden. A second, she was feral and suspended in time. The third...she was a child, in a place that looked like it could have been my house." The phone lowered to his lap. "She called Rylan 'papa.'"

His heart ached. Lucas couldn't just let her suffer in all this. She had to have a choice.

"You were beautiful then, not surprised you're following that trend." He handed the phone back with a smaller smile at the teen's seemingly fractured thoughts. "One thing at a time, Zac. I'm not going anywhere and we have as much time as you need." Heliodora. He had to find her and talk to her too, he supposed. "What of? Exchanging recipes, commenting on the rain index?"

He had no way of knowing what Zac wanted to impart, and he wasn't going to bully the teen into sharing. All he could do was make sure the young man knew he had a safe place to go and open up, if he so chose to do so. "Out?" he echoed, but let it pass. "So did I. She told me she was the unchanging thing in all this, so I just assumed she'd lived through it all, knew all our incarnations."

Grey eyes sharpened. "Renard's husband calls her daughter? Michael said she's the daughter of the Bad Guy." He let that thought hang between them: was Renard married to the Enemy? "He was scaring her. That alone is enough to scare me." Exhaling slowly through his nose, he watched Zac quietly as he continued his tale.

"When she was a child, she had a plush toy with her." It occurred to him that if he ever saw her again, maybe he could bring her a toy like it. "I don't know what it means, and no one seems inclined to tell us." It makes no sense. He was getting tired of saying it.

Lucas looked away again. "As am I," he said softly. "But it's not my place to try and be there. You were, you know what happened. All you can do is be a friend, let them talk if they need to, or distract them if they don't want to think about it."