SET HONOR IN ONE EYE

I will look on both indifferently. BORIS KOVRVOV / MONTAGUE / EMISSARY

[brutuskovrov]

gertrudezhang​:

It takes a great deal of effort to muster up any semblance of enthusiasm to greet her unannounced guest, stripped bare like a tree in autumn, her reserves depleted, a shell of her former self remaining. She manages to raise her gaze long enough to meet Boris’, though failing to supplant a methodical smile onto her expression, a tiredness lingers in her look in place of it. “You don’t need permission to speak your mind here.” It is a welcome, a warning, and perhaps a big ask, to shed himself of the preconception that his words would become the noose slipped around his neck. Genevieve was not her superior, using someone else’s words against them was not her prerogative. “You might be surprised by the result.” A small smile emerges then, genuine, disappearing before she can capture its essence.

Shuffling papers briefly distracts her from his question, only when deposited safely in the appropriate drawer does her attention return to him. “The missions that I assigned were at the behest of Don Montague, I am - simply put - the messenger.” Hands cast toward heaven, as though seeking the divine intervention they desperately needed, the phrase don’t shoot the messenger echoed in her mind before the tinge in her shoulder reminded her too late. The single indication of her disagreement, the pursing of the mouth that segued into a downturn of a corner, was fleeting. Her ephemeral dissent was just the tip of an iceberg, of the great hulking mass lurking beneath the water of a calm, tired, exterior. It was not the time to show it. Not yet. 

Genevieve had already been baptised into the waters of sacrilege, baptism though fire, unsurprised now that she had been tasked with handing out the missions designed to break spirits, allowing people to then use the Montague name as a crutch. A crutch they could beat the Don with. Toe skirts the surface of the unholy water, sending ripples throughout the mafia hierarchy, with a careful precision that does not necessarily out her. “Roman does not share his father’s particular brand of leadership. I cannot admit that I would follow his blueprint either were I in his position.” On the surface it wasn’t an outright disagreement, merely a divergence of belief, an admittance that anyone would be different in that role. But Genevieve could not agree with what the Don bid her to do.

“Why,” he starts, the beginning of an awful question, one he doesn’t want to hear the answer to, one she might not even possess the knowledge of, “bring me back?” His voice gets a little reedy. Maybe a little whiny. Demanding. He needs to know. This, at its crux, is the question that has hounded him since he stepped off that fucking plane from New York. “If the only aim is to punish me, to show me the “error of my ways” -- something I’ve “repented” for a thousand times over -- why keep me here at all? To babysit a newly turned Initiate while she tests her mettle? Once she’s done with her practice, what will he do with me? Move me on to the next one? I don’t understand it, Genevieve. It doesn’t make sense.”

His tone is sharp, sardonic, and a little insulted -- couple it with the blatant air quotes he’s putting around certain words, an unfortunate habit he picked up in New York, and it’s blatant. Boris is not at rock bottom, but he’s skirting around the edge of the pitfall regardless. She speaks, and it doesn’t take him off guard, but it’s a close sort of thing. Something that dances around the edge of the cliff, preposterous, like his shock is just this close to giving way beneath his feet before he plummets all the way down. It takes a second -- he looks away to steel himself, regain his composure, set his eyes straight. The shock does not even put a dent in his rage. Doesn’t even scuff it. Instead, the two feelings intermingle without actually blending, and so he is left with an uncomfortable feeling sitting in the pit of his stomach.

Genevieve shuffles papers. He notes, dimly, that he would do exactly the same sort of thing if he were in her situation. Would mimic her movements down to putting the papers away in a drawer. He’s done it so many times with angry Montague clients that he doesn’t even want to think about counting them. She once again hints that they are of a similar mind, similar thoughts, similar feelings -- how long has he operated under the guise of don’t shoot the messenger? It’s a good habit to fall back upon.

With a dawning horror, Boris realizes that they may be more similar than he ever thought. He stares at her. It’s unabashed, a little embarrassing, how obvious it is that he’s trying to pick her apart as she looks right back at him, her gaze serious as death. “Is it… Are you--” that’s not what he came here for, he has to remember. But it’s fascinating, and so he wants to poke at this open wound she has suddenly exposed for him to look at, a tearing of the flesh right in front of him. (He thinks of her finger, of her ambiguousness, of what was now obviously a fucking lie.)

He’s underestimated her.

She’s better at this than he thought.

Then: he feels like kicking himself.

[brutuskovrov]

reginadalys​:

Regina is not quite familiar with Boris. Perhaps that will be her mistake, the reason he may walk out of here alive, but his presence had never made its way to her radar, especially not when her responsibilities in Verona had taken a pretty drastic increase recently. If she were to miss anything as a captain, though she much prefers being a spettro, it would be the ability to slough off jobs onto soldiers, giving her more time to haunt Verona as she thrived in doing. Now, much of her job still included haunting, but it mainly focused on a singular target, and thus she’d gathered more about Renata’s mannerisms and habits and had observed less of those like Boris who sought to intercept her.

She wonders how genuine his desire to shove things under the rug is, but she probably shouldn’t. He understands. She doesn’t know him; how could she, when this is their first time meeting face-to-face? She cuts the terrifying image everyone says that she does and Boris, for a few mere moments, is quelled by the sight of her. Small, sharp, wraith-like, moving as fluidly with the shadows as her legs will allow, even lit up in hanging overhead lights. Meeting his end here would probably be easier for everyone involved, himself included. And then she draws back for the punch: I know the implications.

Of course she does. She’s smart. She would.

He nods. It’s a small, resigned sort of movement, the kind that indicates he’s accepted he’s being outplayed as they speak. She has the advantage, and she’s going to use it, and he couldn’t blame her any less for it. The squirming feeling of anxiety in his chest protests, tells him to do something, but Boris couldn’t even contemplate on where to begin. What to say. What to do. He played his one, singular good card, and now he’s fucked. “I understand,” a pause, “however…”

The time has come to scramble. Would it be easier simply to beg for his life, or try and offer something in return, even when he has no clue as to what could possibly interest a woman like her? He grits his teeth. His palms are beginning to feel damp, so he puts his hands in his pockets in an effort to hide his nervousness. Not nervousness. Fear. A little like an animal being sent to the slaughterhouse. He peers at her a little longer, searching her face for something. Anything. Nothing. It’s like she’s made from marble, carved from stone. She’s either incredibly good at hiding her feelings or she doesn’t have them in the first place. What he’d give to pick that apart. “I don’t know. My life, then. You were here to kill them,” he nods at the body on the floor, unmoving, no longer a person, just a corpse. “And now they’re dead. I’m better at keeping my mouth shut than you might think.”

It’s true, at least, a lie Boris doesn’t have to tell. He has several secrets belonging to others and to himself that he will take to his grave. He doesn’t like to chatter, usually, unless it benefits him. “What would it take for you to let me walk out of here?” He has a pistol, sure, something of simple make and size, but he’s almost certain that she’d get him in the head before he ever had the chance.

[brutuskovrov]

when: tbd. where: tbd. status: closed for @ofcastora

At the exact moment he does it, Boris decides that jabbing a knife into this poor young Capulet’s neck is, for lack of a better word, unfortunate. It’s messy, definitely ugly, and he’s no trained killer, which means that he’s just a little too far off to the left, so this boy (not even a man, not yet) is left to gurgle and choke on his own spittle on the floor while Boris is left to watch and stare at the microphone wire peeking out from between the buttons on his violet-hued silk shirt. No accounting for taste, he thinks.

Even as he crouches to tuck the wire away before Castora Aguilar comes any closer, he notes that this feels a little more familiar than he’s comfortable with. It’s not the first time he’s been caught in a strange situation, not even the first time with her, and this is, what, the fourth Capulet contact he’s run through? He’s beginning to wonder if he’s not very good at his job.

Or maybe that’s the issue. This, technically, is not his job. Maybe he’s just not as good as negotiation in general. Still, he kneels, tucks the wire away, and stands again -- with blood on his hands, across his palms. He tries not to feel too badly about how disastrously this meeting went, supposed to last only five minutes and nothing more, and feels worse when he feels bad anyway. He’ll make a note of trying not to kick himself while he’s down, later, and pulls it together as Castora draws closer with each step. There is no time to compose himself, tidy up, look like the emissary he’s supposed to be.

She has a habit of doing that, always has, catching him in the moments where Brutus is just a man. Funny.

He supposes the body in front of him now could very well be a metaphor for their distancing, over the years. He might’ve called her something like a little sister once, but their estranged version of communication (a text sent back and forth every two months or so) and no answers to give, much less a goodbye said -- well. They make things a little uglier than that. He knows she’s been climbing the ranks like no one else, knows that her skill, it seems, is unparalleled.

He didn’t really help, but he still can’t stop himself from feeling proud. He looks at Castora, after over a year of not seeing her and saying nothing to her, without ever bothering to tie off loose ends (they were supposed to get coffee together the week he’d been put on a plane, no apologies or farewells spoken in the meantime), and feels, uncomfortably, regret. Can’t have that. So he gives her a small nod, ignoring the blood on his hands, and a half-smile, pretending the pang in his chest at the sight of her (all grown up now, not quite the girl she’d been, curious and terrified and a little weepy) after all this time has done nothing at all.

He doesn’t quite get it. She was well ahead of herself before he’d even left. So what’s changed? Why, now, are things -- like this? “You caught me at a bad time, Aguilar.”

[derangedrhythms]

Margaret Atwood, Interlunar; from “Lies About Snakes’

[brutuskovrov]

LET US BE SACRIFICERS, BUT NOT BUTCHERS. And, gentle friends, let's kill him boldly, but not wrathfully. Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods, not hew him as a carcass fit for hounds. And for Mark Antony, think not of him --

[brutuskovrov]

when: june 4th where: a cemetery who: closed for @heloisem

The funeral is a small affair. It is Giovanni’s family -- his mother, his father, his two sisters, what might be an eclectic collection of cousins, the priest. And then, from afar, standing at another grave with the name newly polished (a young Swedish woman, he thinks), flowers bought a handful of days ago laid out across the slab, Boris and Heloise.

He’d been hesitant to tell her about the funeral, at first. It hadn’t taken much to make some calls at the morgue, make arrangements, contact the family. Right now, Giovanni -- or Gio, as his nickname had apparently been -- is in a casket in the ground, and his mother is bawling her eyes out. He doesn’t want to look at Heloise for fear she might be in a similar state, all shaken to pieces. He’s dealt with that already, doesn’t know if he has the will or the way to do it again.

But he’d set it up. He’d made the call. He’d told her. The words she’d said to him that night, it can’t all be for nothing, well, he hates to admit it, but they might have cut deeper than he’d expected. They’d dogged after him in the following days, leaving the faintest trace of metal in his mouth, grinding his teeth before he’d went to bed. She hadn’t texted him an overzealous amount like she usually did, which meant it all must have impacted her.

Watching the gathering as they pick up the pieces of themselves and work their way out of the cemetery, Boris sort of wishes he’d just put Gio’s body in the trunk of the car, buried the body, and then lied about it. That would’ve been the smart thing to do. It takes an hour of watching, smoking his way through an entire fucking pack of cigarettes, Jesus Christ, he needs to quit for the third time in as many years, and then it is just them.

Just Boris and Heloise. Attending a funeral for a man they didn’t even know, whose death hadn’t been their fault, certainly not Boris’, and feeling bad about it.

Well. She might feel bad. He’s not so sure about himself, yet. That’s still up in the air. He clears his throat. “Did you want to go look?”

[brutuskovrov]

💬 UNKNOWN # ⇆ EDGAR

[Unknown Number] Is this Craven?

[Unknown Number] )))))

[brutuskovrov]

when: some time on june 20th where: a tea house in neutral territory who: closed for @lavolumnia

This time of day, the tea house is quiet. Almost peaceful. It happens to sit right atop the border line of neutral territory, and it is in part due to this that he asks Vivianne Sloane to meet him here, in the same way he had done several years ago. There is something to be said about tradition, even if it’s a tradition established only once. The other part is that the owner had been easy to pay off. The sign on the door reads that the place is closed. All the lights are off save one, and the man preparing their drinks today has been in several pockets over several decades. He doesn’t seem to mind.

It’s a wonder they still allow him to exist at all. Neutrality, by now, is both a necessary evil and clear threat to their presence in Verona.

Here, seated across from each other, Boris -- Boris doesn’t really know what he’s doing. It’s a haphazard way of living, but he finds that the end results usually work themselves out. He usually doesn’t have an entirely constructed plan put together with careful hands and picked through with a fine-tooth comb unless he has months and months to prepare. Boris, being Boris, does not have that kind of time, and even if he did, probably wouldn’t use it effectively. Looking at Sloane, he can’t really tell if she has that sort of time, either. But she’s efficient. She’d make do.

It’d been a long time ago when he had come to her with the proposition of resources for safety, and she had come down with a quick and decisive no. Smart woman, he thinks, smarter than most. He’s a poor planner, but he’s persistent, and there’s been a change to the winds in the time he’s returned to Verona. More than that, even, since all that time has passed. She’s smart: she can guess at what he’s here for, same as the offer he’d put on the table so long ago -- and Boris, if he can hazard a guess, might assume she’s more willing to hear him out this time around.

He’s unsure of whether or not to start with niceties, and takes the leap anyways. Doesn’t smile when he greets her, just gives a little nod: “How have you been?”

[brutuskovrov]

where: genevieve’s office when: june 10th, evening who: closed for @gertrudezhang

In all chaos, there is calculation. Orders are sent down from up on high. They are chaotic. The instructions are simple: accompany Perdita and aid her only if necessary. Boris isn’t a complete idiot. He knows how to read between the lines. Demonstrate to us, after a year of labor and outright servitude, that you will not shoot yourself in the foot once again. Prove it.

Boris is tired of this dance. No, more than tired: he’s exhausted. He knows the steps by now, and is starting to feel the itch to break out of the usual pattern. But this is how the Montagues get you, and this is how they keep you, he thinks. If they cannot push you into complete loyalty by hanging oaths and promises and the concept of family over your head, then they will break you down and make you watch as they start the fire that burns down your house. Those are several metaphors for one train of thought. He’ll come back and parse them all out later. For now: Genevieve.

The job is done. He’s proven it. It all went off without a hitch. He’s here to report their success -- and ask some questions.

This time, the door to her office is closed. She looks tired. He feels tired. It is just the two of them. Her office remains the same as it ever was, and he cannot help but feel as though he is stuck in a strange, never-ending loop. Office to office, on his hands and knees, pleading for forgiveness, and then it starts again. “Can I at least ask whose idea it was?” It is as close as he’ll get to asking why. “Yours? Don Montague’s? Roman’s?” His tone is this close to sacrilegious. He doesn’t think he can bring himself to edge any closer to it than that.

He has to wonder how many Montagues have done the same as he is right now, dragging their feet to Genevieve, asking her questions that she may or may not have the answers to. She has no real reason to give them away, and he doesn’t have much of an excuse for asking. This tantrum is momentary, and then it will pass, and he will go on this mission with Paola and aid her if she requires it and that will be that. He just has to know who, first. What else he can do beyond what he has already done to prove he is trustworthy.

Most people know he isn’t. Boris is certainly aware. He’d just like to know what he’s dealing with, at least until Damiano is inevitably disposed of.

[brutuskovrov]

cleosokolova​:

“You didn’t what?” the emissary presses, patience for the Kovrov man already thinning. Were he a smart man, Calina presumes, he would swallow his pride and acquiesce to the Queen of St. Petersburg now, lest he run the risk of ending up on the wrong side of her whip-quick tongue and steely mind. But here, he continues to linger in uncomfortable silence even after she, in very few and blade sharp words, has already expressed that she wants nothing to do with him. 

His praise rolls down her back like water, like huskily-breathed promises against the shell of her ear. In moments like this, it’s easy to see why she so instantly cuts him to the quick: he’s no different from the men she used to service in Madame Kamenev’s salon. He’s deception and charm and entitlement personified; he’s a man who holds himself above all else, and he will do what it takes to survive–even at the expense of those of whom he once deigned to call associates or friends or loved ones. She’s just about to offer a chilly and polite acknowledgement of his approval, when his countenance changes. Discomfort melts into nervousness into shame and Calina warily watches, the hairs on the back of her neck shooting upwards.

We never - spoke about Faron. And what happened.

Her expression remains the same, save for the near-imperceptible arch of a well-manicured brow. She can’t trust Boris as far as she can throw him, and a nagging voice in the back of her mind tells her that he inquires only to see if her wounds are still raw enough to poke and prod and draw blood; he can’t possibly want to talk about Faron, but rather how Calina feels in reaction to the loss of him. She’s quick to hold her cars against her chest, a loose curl brushing gently against her cheek as she cants her head, mulling over his choice of words. Faron’s old signet ring grows heavy around her right ring finger as she clears her throat. 

“No, we didn’t,” Calina agrees in response, chaining memories of Faron before they’ve a chance to loose themselves. She won’t think of that damned November night, of how she went to Alexander because she knew something was wrong, of how he had nothing in the moment to give but the promise that he’d let her know if he learned the truth… She refuses to think of the following through of the said promise, refuses to think of how her world seemed to crack and crumble. Instead, she focuses on Boris, deciding to force his hand and make him begin the conversation himself.  

“And it seems there’s no time like the present.” After all, subsequent days are never promised. Boris, Calina is sure, knows about that more than most, what with his viper-like and sneaky disposition. “Very well, then. расскажи мне, что случилось.” 

Grief, more than anything else, is uncomfortable.

Boris is acutely aware of the fact. He thought, in the beginning, even though he should have seen it coming, that he would take at most a few days to grieve for his father. Then it moved to weeks. Then months. He’d been impatient with himself during that time -- hurried, to get the seven stages done by the end of the year, as if there were some kind of deadline that could be imposed on woe, with a dash of rage sprinkled in to lighten things up. To skip along all the ugly parts in hopes of landing somewhere at peace with what had been done. The plane had crashed. It’d been that simple. (It wasn’t.) He’d been impatient, and so the grieving process had been left unfinished, and now it will sometimes appear when he least expects it. When the smell of cigarillos is in the air. Driving anywhere that is heavily wooded. Sometimes, sitting in the corner of a room, making him look at it. It’s uncomfortable. He rushed through it and now he cannot get away from it.

He looks at Calina, with her expression carefully folded into neutrality, cards placed right up against her chest, the nigh imperceptible lift of the eyebrow, and wonders if she told herself to hurry up. That there were things to do. Goals to achieve. Projects needing finishing. He wonders if she lets herself think of it at all. Faron had been, what, a savior to her? A friend? He’d been the impetus to come to Verona, and Calina had gone right along with him -- something Boris cannot quite equate with the image of the Calina sitting in front of him now. Perfectly poised. Cold as steel on a winter day. Looking to cut his throat if he so much as takes one step closer. 

Subsequent days are never promised. Calina cuts him to the core and asks him to bark, like a trained hound. Tell me what happened.

“I was away.” Yes, that much is obvious. The details are not fuzzy. Quite the opposite: they’re sharp enough to slice into the skin. He’d been eating his breakfast. “And they told me he’d been shot.” They being who? Damiano had delivered the news, curt and quick, before immediately barreling onwards to discuss business. As simple as talking about the weather. Cloudy, overcast skies in New York that morning, tip-toeing along the edge of too cold, with people moving along outside as if nothing had changed. Nothing did change, technically, in spite of Faron’s several efforts, in spite of Boris’ lackluster attempts to aid him from across an entire ocean. His eyes slide across the space of her office. It doesn’t look too different from the last time he was here. Not a fleck of dust. Nothing out of place.

He looks back to Calina, rubs the palm of his hand with the thumb of his opposite. A purposeful nervous tic, meant to display humanity, meant to soften the blow. “And that he was dead, and things would be changing. To keep my ear to the ground.” He knows hilariously little. He’d be bluffing if he could claim to know more. Even the knowledge of who fired the fucking gun is lost to him. He tries not to appear scrutinizing. Realistically, it probably doesn’t work. “Что они тебе сказали?”

[brutuskovrov]

paoladamasco​:

JUNE 10 IN THE AFTERNOON. IN SOME BAR ON MONTAGUE TERRITORY. closed to @brutuskovrov

“PERDITA is proving to be quite a valuable addition to our ranks, but there is more to a soldier than wiles and trickery. I need to know that force is not beyond her; that she can be both weapon and reaper under my command, malleable enough to shape herself into whatever I need her to be. Send her to one of the bars that solicit our protection, with orders to demand our payment and strike enough fear in the owner’s heart that they would never think to keep us waiting ever again. Have BRUTUS accompany her, though he is not to interfere unless PERDITA needs his help; his role in this mission is to offer support, and nothing more. After all, loyalty to one’s comrades is just as crucial as loyalty to one’s cause, and if anyone must learn that lesson, it’s BRUTUS.”

She’s not sure which is worse: the mission or the partner. Tonight, he poses as the lamb and she the wolf, but Paola does not forget that Boris is more dangerous than he appears. He pulls out a knife from where you thought beat a heart and slashes you to pieces without hesitation. He will appear to you as everything you want him to be, and only at the moment you need him most will he let you slip through the cracks. He will not look back to mourn you as he climbs up and onwards.

The two are more similar than she cares to admit. They walk through Verona side by side, the silence trailing behind them like an intruder or a thief: a necessary, if unwelcome, evil. In every city of the world, thieves and intruders creep and crawl along the edge of the light. Paola and Boris take confident strides beneath the sun, but at heart — at heart, they are the thief and intruder.

They understand each other more than they know. Paola casts Boris a skeptical look, full of caution and foreboding, as she puts one hand on the doorknob. “Not like before,” she says, alluding to the emissary mission the two went on together. “This time, I lead and you follow.”

It’s what Damiano wants. It’s what Paola fears, but she doesn’t trust that there are not a thousand eyes watching the mission unfold. She will not trust the lie she wants to hear most: she belongs, without question — without challenges and veiled threats. Become the face of terror, or you are not one of us.

It takes some fumbling of words, a few harried glances towards Boris to step in and give her a moment to gather her composure, but eventually, the owner of the bar is tied to a chair staring up at the two with hatred, pure and rancid. She taps her foot against the floor, arms crossed and brows slanted with exasperation. “We’ve told you multiple times,” she motions to Boris, “you can’t make us wait a minute longer for payment. We’re protecting you for now, but what will you do when you need protecting from us?”

The owner laughs. “The Montagues are sending the rookies for this now, hm?” He dips his head forward like he’s inviting them to draw close, hear his best-kept secret. “How can I pay you if I’m tied up, rookie?”

Paola looks again to Boris, this time with a plea in her eyes: help.

This time, I lead, and you follow.

It’s a command. Alright, Boris replies, because that is what he is supposed to do here. Play along, play a part, and then kneel to his betters and say look! I did it!

It doesn’t sit right with him. He wonders if it sits right with Paola, either.

Boris is still, frankly, seething. He knows exactly what this mission is and exactly what purpose it serves. Ensuring payment in return for protection is not such a bold and outlandish task to ask for an emissary, and he’s sure Damiano and Genevieve know that. No, this is as much a test as it is a choice: declare your loyalties, here, and now.

Boris, to no one’s surprise, is dragging his feet. He drags them further still as he drags the owner of the little bar up the stairs and into his little attic, tied to a chair, and set firmly in front of them. He’s sure he and Paola cut quite the image: she is swathed in irritation, impatience, and he can only stand there and act a bit too casual, a little like a limp noodle. (Haha. The thought makes him chuckle.) It doesn’t seem to be very impressive, because the owner laughs and drools like a maniac.

But he knows fear in his own face well enough to recognize it in the eyes of others.

He puts up a good front, but the bar owner’s pupils are blown wide. He is still wriggling against his restraints, even as Boris had made them extra tight. The circulation to his arms and legs must be slowing by now, he’s certain of it. He spits out a taunt: how?

Paola, presented with her first test, looks to him for help. He thinks of the shotgun tucked away beneath his long coat, concealed by shadow. That’s a drastic measure. Better to exhaust their other options, first. He opts for a knife instead: singular, sharp, not often used, because he, frankly, abhors this sort of behavior. Hopefully the sight of it will do something. He holds it, handle first, out to Paola, but looks at the owner when he speaks. “You can tell us where the money is, or my associate will cut off --” he squints. Looks over the man, as it debating. “What do you think, Perdita? Tongue? Fingers? An ear? I’m thinking an ear. No one ever seems to think of ears until they aren’t there.”

The man visibly pales a shade or two. Boris does not grin, but it’s close. “You can tell her where the money is, or she’ll cut off whatever piece of you she likes. No games, Клоун.”

[xshayarsha]

[brutuskovrov]

tomassabello​:

For the tenth, eleventh, twelfth time in half an hour he asks himself what he’s doing here, breaking bread with Boris Kovrov of all people. And it’s not even the metaphorical kind; no sort of common unity or hope of kinship to be found here — merely the very, very literal kind that involves a bread basket he’s currently all but diving into, so as to distract himself from his own annoyance.

It’s only half working. He almost snorts when Boris suggests someone else could’ve saved Juliana that night, except the chunk of bread obstructing the inside of cheek prevents him from doing so, likely for the best. “Like who?” He jabs the question out anyway, as soon as the morsel of food has passed down his throat. “You?” There’ a veneer of sarcasm sitting on the surface of that word; masquerading more politely as doubt. “Would you step in to save anyone who wasn’t a Montague?” This time, Tomas really does wonder as he watches the man sitting across from him. 

“… Better yet, would you help a Montague only because of what rewards you might hope to reap from la famiglia?”

If not, it shouldn’t be so difficult for Boris to understand the kind of human instinct that drove him to act as he had that night. Unthinkingly, unselfishly — unintelligently, as most mafiosi had put it. “If everyone thought that way; ‘oh, the next guy’ll do it’, then no one would’ve acted that night. That wasn’t a risk I could take. And yes,” He replies, though it’s softer now, devoid of that edge he’s carried for most of the conversation. “I’d do it again.” It might be a moronic confession to make to a man who might just take it back to his wife — the same wife to whom he’d promised that he’d consider his actions more carefully next time.

… More carefully, he’d said, choosing his words deftly so as to soothe away the storm of her displeasure. Not not at all, not never again. He can’t bring himself to promise the latter, even if it means she hears of his confession tonight and they have another row about it tomorrow. “ — What would you have done if you were there?”

Tomas, to his credit, asks a very good question. Who? You? Would you? Why not? Who else? He’s right: who else? What else? For what purpose? Boris can’t think of any good reasons but Sabello had gone and done the damn thing anyway and it gives Boris no small thrill to see this realization play out across his face, slowly pinching together in irritation. This is, in no small way, his favorite part. Causing a scene, then making the exit. Tomas did just provide Boris with information pertinent not only to the Montagues but especially to his wife.

Not that Celeste would care, he thinks. She might. Maybe a little. Enough to get a divorce? Possibly.

Still, he just… handed it over. Easily as that. Didn’t think to conjure up a lie or some kind of alternative truth to a man like Boris who will certainly try and use it against him somehow, some day. He’d do it again. In spite of everything, he’d do it again. Isn’t that interesting?

Tomas breaks bread and eats it as sarcastically as any one man can, and it is when he sees the waitress once again making the rounds to ask for their entree orders that he decides now is a better time than any to depart. He fixes Tomas with a steely sort of look, flint-eyed. No real warmth, no real need for a neat-and-tidy resolution. He hopes Tomas looks back on this night with anger. Dread. Annoyance. Any of the three. Maybe all of them. “What do you think, Tomas? I expect you already know the answer.”

He reaches into his coat and tosses a few bills on the tabletop. Not nearly enough to cover their drinks, much less the entire meal. He grins. It’s wide, toothy, now, wolf-like. “I’ll be seeing you, Sabello. Thanks for covering dinner. I’ll call you!” Boris stands, eyes the bread basket, and grabs it. Better, still, he takes it with him, and promises to the woman standing out front that he’ll bring it back in a few days before anyone can stop him.

Here’s a hint: he won’t. He wouldn’t. Chances are, he never will.

-- EXEUNT BRUTUS.

[brutuskovrov]

morecruelkings​:

—

There are others, perhaps, who would have flinched beneath the eyes of Boris Kovrov–but Ronan has perfected the art of the visual flaying, the subtle strip-tease of separating skin from bone with nothing more than a calculated flick of the iris from one point of the face to another. He doesn’t fault Kovrov for his clumsiness, the way his focus turns a little to sharp to be casual as Ronan’s words trail off–the world has taught him to bare the sting of the blade, to find comfort in the knowledge that at the last second it will turn away from him, slide back into someone’s pocket as they turn their attention elsewhere. Ronan has never had such a luxury. He has been cut open from the day he was born, by the eyes of others. Had his spine pulled out and re-adjusted, examined, gawked at–he simply learned which tendon in the wrist is responsible for the release, learned to turn the blade back.

Ronan does not flinch, as Boris Kovrov blinks steadily at him. He sips from the glass of cheap wine in is hand and blinks back, clenches his jaw in an effort to pretend that he isn’t bored to tears by the dithering, the tapping of fingers against the wood of the table as the cogs turn slowly. He had thought the man would be at least somewhat worthy of his name, that the image of Brutus with hands bathed in the blood of a tyrant would not be difficult to call to mind–but it would appear that action, the hand that wraps its fingers around the blade and agrees to the changing of history, has given way to nothing more than endless calculation. 

Finally he speaks again, and Ronan can relax his assumed posture and raise an eyebrow. 

You seem comfortable in your place. Unless you are not comfortable. 

Comfort is not what he seeks. Immortality, the divine–these things are borne in pain, these things re-arrange the elements of the body to become something else, something bigger, in order to contain their magnificence. They make the body into something holy and beautiful and terrible for the uninitiated to look at–and only one such as he, born frozen in the midst of a metamorphosis, forever doomed to look at himself in the process of that changing, could ever endure it. 

“Anyone who tells you they’re comfortable is lying, Boris. Men are ambitious before they are anything else–the only thing that differentiates us is courage.” He punctuates the words with a swig from the glass in his hand, before placing it carefully on the table, before folding his arms across his chest. “Are you telling me you, of all people, have never felt the divine whisper in your ear? Have you never heard the siren sing about how you could be something greater than you are?” He smirks. “Or are you one of those who is forever contented with eating the food that falls from the table onto the floor?” 

He meets the other man’s gaze across the table, narrows his eyes. “I can pay you for it, Kovrov. Does that answer your question adequately? Or are you always in the habit of biting the hand that so eagerly wants to feed you?”

Ronan’s a snake.

There’s no small number of snakes in the Montagues. Boris can’t think of one who might not have other intentions, ulterior motives. It’s a wonder the family’s lasted as long as it has with all the power-grabbing they do. A poem is brought to mind, in bits and pieces: traveling in pairs, they won’t cross ropes, they cause thunder. Countless lies, countless liars. He’s well aware of the fact he, too, could be considered a snake. Should be considered, in fact, and if anyone else is smart enough to know that, it’s Ronan. Like recognizes like, and all that. He grits his teeth.

He presents a perfectly reasonable argument. The wine is forgotten, and for a moment, so too is the bitterness which rises up out of Boris so often like water from a well, bucket included. He lets them sit in silence after Ronan speaks because he does not think he has the words he wants to say in his possession. Not yet, at least. He figures if he waits for them they will eventually appear.

This drags out into a few uncomfortable, awkward minutes, as Boris brews and Ronan waits for him to come up with an answer. The simplest response would be yes. More complicated would be a question that, true to Ronan’s word, Boris is too much of a coward to ask. Several questions, in fact. Boris is not a coward. The distinction is important, at least to him. If he were a coward he would not have clawed, tooth and nail, to stand in Damiano’s shadow with the rest of them. If he were a coward he wouldn’t have boarded the plane to take him to New York. If he were a coward he would not be considering saying yes, having already burned his only family and refusing to grimace at the sight of the burn mark.

Ronan’s a snake. A deadly one. All poison, in several ways, but he’s not subtle. You know what you get when you deal with Ronan Ivarsson, don’t you? In politics or life, you know what you get, plainly labeled: DO NOT DRINK. Maybe it’s a little preposterous of him to say, a little pomp, but Boris is the sort of snake that disguises itself. Fits the shape others want to make him fit if it means getting ahead, even a little. If it means getting out alive, without being strangled to death by gloved hands under the heat of the midday sun. Ronan flashes his fangs, it seems, at most opportunities. He doesn’t seem to have changed much in the year since Boris’ departure.

Boris knows better to hide his teeth.

So: the answer. He fixes Ronan with a look of some kind, runs his hand over his eyes in a world-weary sort of way. He’s tired. He wants to go home. He cannot go home. There is no plane back. “I’ve never heard the divine, no. You sound -- insane.” He snorts. “If you’ll pay me… what, exactly, are you asking me to do? Plainly stated.” The chances of Ronan stating it plainly are close to nil, he thinks, but he figures he might as well see if his lure catches anything, anyways. “Otherwise you’ll have to write me a letter and send it to my office during business hours.”

[brutuskovrov]

evcravens​:

Kovrov lights up when Everett snaps at him. He’s uncomfortably reminded of Vasiliev’s eager grin and the other student’s tight grip on his jaw when he’d preened after Everett socked him in the jaw. Really, he thinks unpleasantly. What is it with Russians? It’s this, precisely, why Everett keeps his irritation so closely under lock and key, and, immediately regretting his short slip of temper in light of Kovrov’s reaction, decides he’s going to be as boring as humanly possible to see if he’ll go away. It works often enough with Lucrezia, sometimes. Ivan, too.

Toys aren’t fun if they aren’t willing to play.

“I’m busy tonight. Perhaps YouTube would be a better resource if you’re so inclined,” Everett says mildly, watching the crowd scream as someone seems to have gotten their team a point. Home runs, was it? The scoreboard blinks across the field. He attempts to make sense of the grid of innings and runs and something else that’s slightly obscured from his point of view, and after a few seconds of looking, decides it’s a lost cause. He’ll ask Priyanka if he really must later; all this half-interest in the game is purely a device he’s currently using to waste time doing anything but talk to the man in the seat next to him. 

His eyes slip from the field to Kovrov’s features, deliberately measured, as if in parsing apart the blunt edge of his nose or the childishly dangerous gleam in his smile he’ll discover what, exactly, makes a man so utterly committed to the pursuit of self without any regard for those around him. Does he love his family? Or has he crushed them under his heel, too?

Everett arches a brow. “Lovely,” he says, as if remarking on a particularly mediocre grocery store cake. “And now you’re here.” The obvious, but a question as much as it is a statement. Everett isn’t foolish enough to leave it open-ended enough to allow Kovrov to wiggle it into something it’s not, and so he asks, again. Once he gets his answer, he’ll reevaluate whether it’s worth it to keep Kovrov for more questioning or if he’ll simply kick the man out. “So, Mr. Kovrov. What is it you want?”

Boris, apparently, plays his hand too soon. Everett catches on to his less-than-meager delight at the man expressing any sort of human emotion and shuts down. There’s no better word for it. It’s all light there, for a second, some kind of humanity, and then -- whoosh. Gone. Boris finds this fascinating. Wonders if Faron played on these same weaknesses when he was still alive, if he took advantage of the opening Craven left on display without so much as a second thought. Faron would’ve, he decides. Faron would’ve eaten Craven alive and then cut the remaining bits and pieces up to save for later.

He squints, now. All pretenses are gone. He has no interest in American baseball, home runs, quarters, innings, strikes. “Do all things need to have purpose? Do I need a reason to be here? Doesn’t sound like you have one worth justifying, business or not.”

Had there been a reason to necessitate his betrayal of the Montagues? Was there a reason for Boris’ continued existence on the planet, at all? He doubts it. Maybe that’s ugly, but he doubts it. He’s just here to make everyone else miserable and get what he can out of it, for now, until he is dragged back home by the collar of his coat. He could ask Everett the same questions in turn: Does Everett Craven love his family? Or does he lovingly take their hands in his before crushing them under his heel, unwilling to listen, unwilling to learn?

He wants to ask a thousand questions. His time is running out. “Would you believe me if I said no?” But Boris is standing, stretching his arms over his head, rolling his neck so it lets out a series of disjointed pops. He’d hardly been sitting for five minutes: the conversation had been short. He feels he’s learned enough to excuse himself without feeling too bad. In hopes that Craven will recoil, he puts his hand on his shoulder, gives a small smile. “I’ll see you soon.”

There is another thunderous crack of ball against bat, the roar of the crowd now akin to those cries in gladiator rings long ago, the stadium trembling with rage and joy wrapped up into one. Boris takes his leave before he is escorted out. In the same way he entered, he exits, and no one pays Brutus any mind. It is a simultaneous dream and a nightmare, to be so easily forgotten, but one that haunts him anyway. Soon is not definitive. It could be tomorrow. A month. A year. It doesn’t matter. Boris feels he’s won this round, at least.

He tips the security guard on the way out.

-- EXEUNT BRUTUS.

[ofcastora]

brutuskovrov​:

Boris waits until Edo is dead on the floor, blood spilling from his cranium, bits of skull and fleshy matter and hair spread across the checkered tile of the cafe, before he answers her question. “I prefer tea.”

He does. Chamomile, for the evenings. Something with ginger for during the day, to keep him going, because it’s like an unpleasant kick to the stomach. She does wonderfully. Pulls the trigger without any sort of hitch or hesitation. It’s like when all the colors in a painting swirl together from separate pieces into one whole image. It’s beautiful. He doesn’t usually care much for violence except in cases like this. “That was wonderful,” he says to Castora, while putting his hand on her shoulder and pulling her away from the chair, the gun, the window.

It’s not always like this. It certainly isn’t always this easy. He doesn’t often babysit initiates, or take care of the initiating process itself. He can only assume that this will continue if Castora proves herself and is capable of stepping out of the shadow of her father. He knows more than most just how difficult that can be – especially if one’s father is no longer present to even cast a shadow. He doesn’t quite want to admit it, but he feels a pang of fondness for her in his chest in the same way he did for his sisters before he put them on a plane back to Russia without so much as a goodbye. He stops that particular train of thought in its tracks. No need for that sort of thing. Not here. Not now.

He can see the telltale sign of tears – the cloudiness, sudden onset of blinking, efforts to wipe it all away before anything actually comes of it, and gives her a frown. “You can cry, if you need to. I imagine it’s upsetting.” He’d been as equally taken aback by the simplicity of ending another person’s life. The movies made it more dramatic, didn’t they? Simpler and complicated all at once. It’s a wonder how they do that.

“I’m going to start tidying up and setting things aside. The police will be along soon. We’ll want to be gone before that. Make sure you won’t look too upset when we exit through the lobby. You should always try and exit the same way you went in, if you can.” That’s his own, personal principle. It tends to lead to less suspicion, and while he’s always wriggled his way out of it in time, he’s not sure that’s always the case for other people.

He’d seen the case for the rifle set aside, and he goes for that instead – turns away, gives her a moment to get her thoughts and feelings together before they have to depart. He closes the window, too, and it snaps shut with just a little whistle of air. The gun is put into its case, the chair returns to its original spot, and he smooths down his shirt with a soft ahem when he thinks they’re done here. Someone else will be along to take care of the rest, he assumes. They usually do. Boris gives Castora a nod. “Ready to go?”

I prefer tea. Castora makes a mental note to make herself a cup of tea when she gets back to her uncle’s house, if he had any. She’d didn’t really know where her uncle kept everything, s she only recently moved onto his couch, all of her belongings still in boxes or bags, promising that it would only be for a little while until she got herself sorted and ignoring his half-hearted attempts to get her to talk to her mother.

She didn’t like her uncle’s house very much. She felt like a ghost walking through the halls she used to play in as a child before….before everything happened. Her uncle wasn’t the same man he used to be. She was haunting her own childhood, and haunting him, a reminder equal parts welcome and unwelcome of his brother. And still when she came to his doorstep, asking him to help her join the Montagues because that was the only way she saw out, he helped her. 

And this is the result. She wonders if she’ll come back this evening and be more like her father than she was when she left. She wonders what he was like before he took a life, what he was like after. She wonders what he would think of her now, and then she wonders if any of it even matters. Castora Aguilar is tired of every manner of ghosts.

She almost wants to ask Boris what she should do for the rest of the day if she doesn’t want to go back right now, but that’s silly and childish. He’s just her sponsor. There’s no need to concern himself with her. Be brave and go back, Castora, she tells herself. Take a shower, make a cup of tea, or go to the store to buy tea, study, and go to bed. 

When Boris tells her she did a good job, her heart soars. She’s good at this. She can do this. It’s the strangest kind of poison that makes you happy when you are told you are a good killer. It almost makes the nausea, the fear, the disgust bubbling up inside of her go away. Castora tries to focus on his approval and shove away the fact that she’s just 18 years old and has blood on her hands. She supposes she’ll get used to it soon enough. 

“I don’t need to cry,” Castora says, stubbornly blinking back tears. The embarrassment of Boris pointing out that she looked like she was about to cry makes it harder to push them aside. “I’ll be fine. Nothing you should worry about.” 

Right, the police. Castora almost forgot about them. She wants to ask questions about the best ways to handle them, but she can do that tomorrow. She’s tired, and maybe Boris is too; she’ll get better answers out of him come the next morning. 

Castora watches him clean up the room, making mental notes of how he does things for future reference. She almost flinches when he closest the window. Almost. She counts it as a victory. Castora exhales, twisting the ring around her finger, taking one last look at this room. The place where she became a killer – how plain and insignificant, how dreary it was. Maybe she’ll remember it. Maybe she won’t. Only time will tell. 

She nods, “I’m ready.”

EXEUNT CELIA. 

[brutuskovrov]

reginadalys​:

The silencer is a satisfying presence in her hand when she first attaches it to her gun. It as if the width of the barrel is made for her grip, another extension of her gun which is, perhaps, another extension of her body. There’s something romantic about the way she holds her gun, a lover’s touch warmer than any skin had ever felt beneath her. And there’s something borderline intimate about the way her finger squeezes down upon the trigger, a silent form of vow to match the silent sound of the bullet leaving the chamber. 

Regina Daly emerges from the shadowy abyss, cloaked in blue-black darkness, only the swinging warehouse lights to illuminate her. Her gun, equipped with a silencer, is still smoking.

Boris, very faintly, somewhere in the back of his head, thinks oh shit and then, for a moment after that, his mind blanks.

He’s usually good at talking his way out of things. Usually, of course, is the key word here. Every once in a while things come to a head, and a situation devolves into arguing, physical blows, gunfire. For some reason he’s not convinced he could move fast enough to get out of Regina Daly’s way. Looking at her face, for some reason, he immediately thinks of her sister, dark-haired and fury-eyed. In Regina Daly there is nothing: all void.

Renata’s body makes another soft little gurgling sound. In spite of his immediate surety, he’s not actually certain she’s dead. What an unfortunate way to die. Not from the aftermath, or the bullet, but the slow end, painful, dragged out. Like someone hitched you to the back of their car and drove, but at a snail’s pace. A long death. He looks up again. Regina is approaching. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Alright.

“I was going to do the same thing. Mutual goal achieved,” it’s not his smoothest lie, but Boris thinks he sounds convincing, and frankly, that’s usually enough to convince others. If he believes it, the chances of his enemies doing the same are much higher than if he were to bluff his ass out of things without a penny invested in his pound. He’s done that before, too. Now that Boris is thinking about it, he has to question just how much his survival skills are based off of luck, being handsome, being too much of an asshole to want to be around -- the list goes on. His brows arch, he tries to look emphatic but not too emphatic. Oh shit. “I’ll even do you the kindness of cleaning up your mess, if you let me go.” He’s an Emissary. Not a killer. He has killed, but not with guns, or at least, not most often -- it’s really not his forte. Why make a show when a blade or a twenty kilogram container of rat poison will do the trick? “I could pretend I never saw you, even.”