Something in me vibrates to a dusky, dreamy smell of dying moons and shadows.
Zelda Fitzgerald (via rabbitinthemoon)

oozey mess
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@clawedandgnawed
Something in me vibrates to a dusky, dreamy smell of dying moons and shadows.
Zelda Fitzgerald (via rabbitinthemoon)
연기와 비
Date: May 30th, 1945, 22:14 Location: Outside of The Three Broomsticks Availability: Open
The rain drops tingled his skin, as he rolled a cigarette, and stood amidst the shit around him. The filth of the dirty streets, the water drops attempting to cleanse them, unsuccessfully. It reminded him of the Wizarding World right now, but then again, he didn’t care. It was odd for him to use those muggle inventions, but they were soothing his complicated mind and untying all those little problems in his life, for the duration of the slowly burning paper. He didn’t have a lighter, so taking out his wand he chanted the spell ‘Incendio!‘ lighting the cigarette, feeling it burning slowly in his hands. The long piece of wood above The Tree Broomsticks provided protection from the rain, though it still found a way to him. Hyun wrapped his lips around the cigarette, and his brain instantly loosened up, only to be brought back to tension by a voice. “젠장,“ he cursed, remembering that most people did not understand his native language, especially wizards.
“What do you want?“ he asked, voice narrowed down, curious eyes inspecting the brave one that had approached. Twirling the cigarette between his index and middle finger, he waited his answer. “Speak fast, I don’t have time for nonsense.“
Naturally night owls, Vladimir had embraced the evening descended upon the vast city with Mikhail following in stride - scooping into the hovering establishments and crooks hustling through their battlegrounds. Vladimir and Mikhail were rare. Russian winds and its cold shards of dust and minute particles (what they were were lost on Mikhail, as he had grown to rely on miracles rather than the abstract subject of scientific concepts and theorems) that they dispelled from their soles that had caused a convection in the thick smog of London’s air. They felt rare, not part of the thousand people wandering the streets. The two of them were then forced to become conspiratorial in their secret life in between the webs of Knockturn Alley. And so because those rare were persecuted by the people who don’t tolerate the insulting offense of those who are different, Mikhail had no other choice but to hide and met clientele in places between silhouettes of smoke and a cloud of gasoline.
“You have not seen man vait in zis spot beforrre zey left? I zink I arrrived late frrrom meeting him herrre.”Mikhail answered in stride, keeping his tone mild and withdrawn, looking around him as a tack on addition to his anonymity beneath his wide-brimmed hat that prevented any trace of light from reflecting any of his features.
Cigarette smoke shrouds Rosalind’s face in a sheer veil, her eyes hazily tracking her surroundings. When the bombs originally hit the city, the girl knew a transformation was quickly coming, but was helpless to do anything but wait until the dust settled and hope she could isolate herself before it was too late. Fortunately, she was able to whisk herself away before causing too much damage.
Soon after it was complete, Rosalind half expected to come home to an eviction notice pinned to her door, with her rent being well past due for the damn near hundredth time. The landlady has a soft spot for the wild-eyed vagrant occupying her third floor, but Rosalind knows better than most that everyone’s generosity runs thin eventually. The next dawn when she rose, she tended to and bandaged the newly formed gashes running across her right cheek and arms, nabbed a pair of wide framed sunglasses, and attempted to school her expression back into its natural coquettish facade.
Now, Rosalind finds herself strolling through the newly formed rubble, sore feet protesting with every step. The corpse of the Crouch family manor looms in the distance, its presence once commandeering and grand, now a sad reminder of past events. The crowds swarmed around the wreckage remind Rosalind of vultures, picking their way through the remains, no doubt looking for something to make a quick buck or two off of. If she were feeling more desperate, she might even join them. But she has only been jobless for a few days now and cannot quite convince herself that things are bad enough to stoop that low, she does have a reputation to maintain, after all. Picking through rubbish would be sure to tank that in seconds. Neither does she have any real desire to help with the cleanup efforts. So she’s content to just watch, back supported by a lamppost cemented in the sidewalk, raising her cigarette up to her lips every so often.
It’s not until Rosalind makes eye contact with a man, a rather disheveled one at that, that she snaps back into focus with her surroundings. As she pushes up her sunglasses to rest atop her head, Rosalind knows her appearance must rival his in unkemptness, the dark circles under her eyes and bandages make for a rather garish look all together.
“Very fuckin’ true,” she replies, startling herself a bit with such uncouth choice of words, “Though I must admit, you don’t look any better than these vultures scavenging for treasure.”
One ragtag girl called over (who she was was lost on Mikhail, to whom all the coil-spined and loose-fingered people of his monetary-generation all blended together) in a fluid and then crass voice, as if the barbed Laconian delusion that she had said was a truth only just catching up to him. Her psychic liberation had affected his inner conflict, leaving a hollow feeling in his chest and a dryness in his mouth. Her throaty voice had felt like fast-traveling grains of sand in a windstorm, momentarily halting him in his place. He was aware of her reflected pose and movements in the shadowed impressions on the rubble, but did not permit himself to look up again. The curiosity of his gaze had become so unpossessive; it had no desire even for himself.
A minute, which had already passed, had disembodied and reattached her pointed accusation into something less barbed and null in the air. Words and faces had disappeared on him, as with all time, space, and death; all enchanted vectors of the soul. He lived and breathed in the world through a labyrinth made of one straight line. The inconceivable changes and infinities might have disbalanced him once, but not anymore. He lived in quiet, heavy moments where he would write vapid rumors and accusation in bright, neon color in the back of his mind until it remerged by unfolding itself like the smell of sulfur, tormenting him for his inescapable being to which he would eternally return. May these small acts prove that I tried my best he thought, placing newfound jewels on a soiled piece of handkerchief he would return to the Ministry. But why must they hound me, fast on me, and prod me so?
There he finds a large hole in the fallen stone and on the other side of the wall, a voice. The voice comes through darkness and has no face. This voice becomes his mirror. A broken mirror that made him sound the way he felt. “Maybe,” is what the voice (he) said with a lack of care, almost if he had thrown a rock over his shoulder and moved on.
The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.
Aurelius, Marcus. Meditations. (via thequotejournals)
I looked at everyone and wondered where they came from, and who they missed, and what they were sorry for.
Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (via wordsnquotes)
HEADCANON 001: A FAUSTIAN DEAL.
“Life is not as dangerous as mother said. It is more dangerous, More wide.” His tone was passive, self-defeated, lacking malice, though perhaps discussing life and the dangers it came with it casually was enough.
The Mad Hatter had emerged up from a place in the ground, blinking with rabbit-hole eyes. Mikhail had called to him and Vladimir lost (buried) the words to the liquor in his palate and the hum under his breath. “Wide or narrow, we all die, brother,” is all he says, tilting his hat further down his prodding gaze before they left to Diagon Alley.
When out together to scope out more clientele, Mikhail and Vladimir usually go and stay together the whole night unless they have business to attend. Mikhail usually deals with the quick hand-shake agreements/exchanges of the trade while Vladimir hones on the bigger eggs and more dangerous clientel (Mikhail’s preferred egg is the Swedish Short-Snout for its size and easy grip). Even though Mikhail is around the worst people from the moment he steps into Knockturn Alley, he is less privy to what Vladimir has seen and how it has begun to affect him. Mikhail is observant, yes, but he tries not to look or notice any further that is not a threat; he mostly just wants to leave the second he gets there. Also, Vladimir and Mikhail usually communicate through the protean charm in order to signal a threat or whether it is time to leave– Vladimir had insisted on using a kopek, but Mikhail persuaded him otherwise to be less predictable. Instead they use black bands around their wrists that tighten when signaled.
THE STARS SHINED IN THE LILT OF OUR DANCE
There was an undeniable sort of peace that stole over him. Mikhail had never been a boisterous man, so he could not attribute it to the celebratory dronings around him. Perhaps it was the unearthly quality of the sylph-like woman in front of him. Pride held her head high, tranquility seemed bred into her very bones. Tell me about you, what’s your story? She told asked in between their third dance. And he found the rather preposterous thought that maybe she truly and sincerely wanted to know about him, so he begins to tell it to her, the music trailing after them, a red and golden string tied to their ankles; enticing them to move lightly, to dance, to fall in love. He tells her as time or a fair degree of prudence allows, and she says Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, each time a little more faintly, until the oh is just an audible breath, and then of course there’s some interruption. Mikhail’s attention was drawn away, brows raised slightly, watching Vladimir’s drunken antics with nothing short of apprehension, yet it served to alert him of the lateness of the hour. Shifting to lean towards Natasha with an oddly calm smile before she spoke, her own quiet honeyed tones lent her voice an oddly intoxicating quality. “And that one?” She asks.
“Ah?”
“Where did you get that? That one.” The narrowing of her eyes implied to the scar on his face.
It was peaceful, but deep inside his mind behind aching of eye sockets there were big digital numbers counting down to how long it would take her to press further. Perhaps this was where he truly must reside, a translucent dream; only visited by what ifs and in another life. “It was a tiger.”
His friend of the night couldn’t help a smile at this answer. Her eyebrows, too, had narrowed, almost as if extending an invite to say more.
“A white tiger. From the mountains in Italy.”
“Last time it was with sabre, no?”
“A duel against a white tiger, da.”
“And who won?” She says the words like they are unfamiliar, happy things; like she has no idea there are bad things in the world, or that he has done some of them. She would probably think it was a tale reminiscent of Androcles and the Lion. This story had teeth.
I could flay you raw the embittering thought arose.
There is stillness in the air, hanging awkwardly like failed jokes at a funeral. A mixture of paranoia and relentless anxiety arose, like an apprehensive reflection in the rearview mirror as the vehicle begins to skid. The world had won, he wanted to say.
“For those kinds of secrets, I shall need more ale. But not wine. Wine makes me trustworthy.”
“Men and ale. One cannot exist without the other, in the least.” She made no sound of laughter, but her mouth had opened up in a way that made her seem she might have been.
It seems like a real insult, but he feels no puncture to the chest. “I hold true to a woman.” He smiles as the light she had ignited behind his eyes simmers for a moment before extinguishing entirely with a blink. She was a living candlestick: gold from head to toe, drowned in glittering, luxurious light, creeping in with without caution, a spotlight illuminating her in a hazy, flickering warm glow. Perhaps her own glow had begun to cloud her vision, too; Mikhail could feel many pairs of widened, prodding elevator eyes make him feel crude and full of inappropriate, unwanted color. He turns his head away. It’s commendable, that he curbs himself so suddenly when he feels her breath coming hot and fast as her pirouettes and his pace became faster. He imagines this must be why hell burned hot: the devil incites all the good people to breathe so hard in passion. And the Devil has many forms. As a child he had thought nothing of it. As a child, though, he had not known strife. “I try to be considerate.” There is something different now, in the way he holds her palm, which he does not remark upon. His fingers tighten around hers in the mirror of something sweet. She has such small hands, he realizes – dainty little things with minute wrists that look permanently ready to snap. Men like her hands. Mikhail is no different.
“Ah.” Natasha pretends to concede, stepping back from him and taking his hand in hers now. “I wish on it.”
You can throw my heart into the fountain instead of yours, if you like, he thought. I’m out of kopecks.
FUR THAT MERCY COULD NOT PENETRATE
Cracked, pitted dirt unfurled from beneath Mikhail’s feet almost as though he is the epicenter from which flaw and tumult persist; feverishly, he scanned his whereabouts, horizon and earth, scattered trees – it’s not home (nor will it be), the world having long ago become an unknown landscape with trap doors where he could lean on nothing, but he can breathe, here, at least (has room to breathe, and to run, untethered, the rootless state of a double-edged sword ; there’s no such thing as safety anywhere, he learned, but out here at least the only trap is one of his own making).
He stood naked in the pitiless night. There was nothing, except for the cold bitter taste in the air, and the moonlight that looked sad. Dimly, it burned as if regretting something. The hunters had hurried by, and previously, through their kills, had found out that there are moments, horrible defining moments in life, when one emerges from shelter and looks out, and it’s awful. One oughtn’t to give way to them. One ought to go home and have an extra-special slice of cake.
Mikhail’s widened eyes reduced to rigid slits; like clouds, they were both capable of reflecting light and heavy shadows on the face, and in them, were so many losses. The hunters could feel the whitening of the flowers, the fallen dark damsons, black flowers with waterlogged roots and something dark in the leaves conspiring together in order to rouse them in a feeling of anxiety.
They say the eyes are the window to the soul – It was a timeless phrase, recycled, reused, debated by pendants of the twentieth and twenty-first century – the least original of centuries, and often the least liked of men. Mikhail’s eyes were like the key to a piece of music; the key is set, and you hear the speech of the eyes, a vibrating chord letting out the ugliest note in the history of music, one that wouldn’t belong in a scintillating ballroom. Other times, they were wide like the gaping mouth of the sea, washed and battered tides that were also subject to red moons. It was impossible not to notice their hungry and agitated light within the thick canopy of trees and darkness. Muggles were right to warn to not follow the light at the end of the tunnel.
There was a demon in him, pitch-black and foaming at the mouth, awakening with a roar. It propelled itself against its chains, hungering for a bite of their exposed neck. He wailed and thrashed with it.
A gasp, and the noise of a cocked rifle became a bell of release.
He was a sudden flash of red and cold moonlight; unforgiving claws and sharp-stone teeth and fur that mercy could not penetrate. The men were flung back to him, and the first scream was unlike his upon transformation – already in pain and pleading, begging for it to stop by the might of their god and any other that would assist them.
He had torn through flesh as Gods and monsters did, without hesitance or resistance. Gods were not made of fulfilled prophecies or stitched together by ambrosia and nectar. They are dug up from the earth, clawed out by blanched hands and dirt-shod claws. Monsters were hoisted upon splintered wood and nailed down as a cautionary tale against those who would seek to follow in their waning footprints. Like Athena with Zeus, the beast had exalted from within Mikhail as if a hinge that swung to and fro allowed for the change of fate, disorienting and ruffling the natural order. Mikhail could taste his blood in his mouth and he bit harder, deeper, tearing limb from flesh in tandem with the sickening crack only worshipped by his lupine ears. In the mad darkness, he had leapt, not giving them the illusion that they would survive, even though the one that remained stood against him. In his ravaging of their bodies, he had managed to obtain the gun that had seemingly been thrashed leagues away. He was older, having been breathed upon by the haggard mouth of age, with blood smeared across his clothes and cheek.
He leapt as he pulled the trigger.
Vladimir had looked over the massacre before him, looking at Mikhail’s body clothed in only blood. It matted his hair, stained his lips with meat held itself between Mikhail’s molars. It was an horror; four bodies injured and splayed like sacrifices in some arcane ritual. This, when found, would not be called the work of an animal. Mikhail was self-taught in and the talk of devils and angels, of sainthood and superiority, and the curse of men and women: lust and war. And animals did not possess the malice necessary to harm men this way. Only monstersand gods did.
Myths, after all, are stories about mortals who outgrow their bodies and their surroundings.
Mikhail could not sleep because it wasn’t dark, or because his body wasn’t tired. It had not been the night. It had not been the dawn. It had not been the sunset marking the beginning of day. It had not been Tuesday followed by Wednesday or autumn leaves before the white cloak of snow. It was the night of regret, of maps leading to gaping mouths with large teeth and gums blackened with rot. It was disquieting. It was intrusive. It was doom. Mikhail had tried to rest within this no-daylight no-nightlight existence, eyes skirting behind his eyelids in a manner that assured he was not asleep, simply drifting in between decimation and decay. It was a perfectly convincing act to anyone that would not bother to look at him. Vladimir had been sitting in the corner of the room next to many dirty rags that would have made anyone think he had scrubbed the red varnish off a door like lichen.
They form a language from in between the four wind’s sinews, spinning a secret tongue built upon refrain and companionship. Mikhail, in this secret language, had sonorously called Vladimir through the shadowed impressions of the walls. Vladimir says nothing. Instead, he looks up.
“You will be fine.” Dmitri didn’t say for what, but it filled itself out. It didn’t have a proper name because it was too many things at once.
Natasha’s presence was known through her lingering scent of bergamot, cherries and vetiver and the way she pressed full, anxious kisses into the light of his hair. At the brush of hair on his cheek, his skin squirmed. He fears that his terrors will crawl from his heart into hers.
“I cannot end it. I’m tired, so very tired.” Mikhail didn’t say for what, but it filled itself out. It didn’t have a proper name – because it was too many things at once.
That night, Mikhail had a dream that his soul began to leave his body. He grappled with it, “come back!” he cried, but his voice seemed muffled. It escaped into the spirit realm. It came back three months later, changed, and wearing a Hawaiian lei with geodes around it’s neck. It handed him a key chain. The key chain said nothing. It was in the shape of what looked to be Britain and Russia, melded together. Mikhail was confused. Yet hopeful.
EPOCH OF THE ELD, AN EPOCH OF THE END.
“The old order, it is good for the old. A farmer wants his son to be afraid of beautiful women, so that he will not leave home too soon, so he tells a story about how one drowned his brother’s cousin’s friend in a lake, not because he was a pig who deserved to be drowned, but because beautiful women are bad, and also witches. And it doesn’t matter that she didn’t ask to be beautiful, or to be born in a lake, or to live forever, or to not know how men breathe until they stop doing it.”
The harshest of the old orders, situated where the sun rose reluctantly and hid in the arms of trees, watched as its frigid inhabitants burned gorgeous with gold and amber instead. If you asked any foreign man with a cigar and a lopsided smile which land and its people had stolen the sun’s golden glow and instead garbed on it, he’d say Russia. The old order in Russia had claim to titles too old and covetous to be irrelevant, with money too vast and influence to wide to ignore. It was the same order who claimed unmarried women were witches, whose people clung onto omens and potents and deja vu rather than logic, and who had weaned their people on their false promises and myths (anyone who had tried to question them was written off as insane; it was like convincing a bumblebee that his honey, glittering and viscous as it may be, was the sort of liquid sweetness that would kill him). And so Mikhail had acquiesced to this game of the old, watching as countless deliverers of the “truth” (victors write history; truth is chosen by the rich, the affluent, the powerful – the behind-the-scene- power players) twitched on their backs and spun rumors and gossamer out of the mad Dolohov man as their nights had been given new form (specifically, one in his shape) as they continued to besmirch him. The revolution of first assumptions and vilified myths always spun around his skull, splintering into fragments with the cracking and breaking of both wood and bone and pride. In there scattering came desperate and uncharacteristic instinct, setting Mikhail on his feet and out of his chair in the time between the end of the first crash and the beginning of the second. The previous night, Dmitri and Vladimir had urged him to leave his fears and look for employment in the next few days. And he did.
But even his determination did not quell the uneasiness that rose at the swelling and bustle of people poured forth in Whitewall. It was too much, too raw. Still, his face was impassive as people passed him by, noticing that they dare not touch him. Those same nuisances persisted as he sat and waited to meet with the head of the department of International Magical Cooperation. Although it was only in the early yawning days of autumn, he dressed as if in the middle of winter: a dark, fur lined scarf spilled off his shoulders and ended just above his lap. His vanity was not grand, but it had always welcomed the gifts his noble name had given him. His eyes had skirted over the articles in the Daily Prophet he had in hand, purposefully extending the thin paper so only his eyes were visible to the onlooker (which were many). He couldn’t understand what it said, instead opting to watch the moving, coruscating slideshows of images. It was a tack-on addition to his anonymity, a simple gesture to curate his nerves; he already knows each moving image by heart.
“Mr. Dolohov, you are welcome to come meet with him now.” Her tone lacked malice, but the secretary watched him pass by her with the narrowing of her eyes to imply she was not serious. Mikhail could hear the clicking of the typewriter from inside the office.
The man’s hands were raised in a way that suggested his elbows were cleaving through his arm rests. There came a greeting, stitched to his stiff mouth. Mikhail reciprocated a Hello. Hi. Good afternoon, like the textbooks. My name is Mikhail. “
Well. I am to assume you are here to seek employment under one of my sub-departments.”
“Yes, under Interrrnational Magikal Office of Law.”
His eyes looked at him without seeing him. Mikhail knew that thinking was going to be a problem for the man for the way he looked at him. Or the lack of thinking was what made him talk quickly.
“If you vill have me.” Mikhail quickly interjected.
“Oh?”
“Vell, sirrr, I forrreigner. I know this. So I feel like, ehm.. I can.. brrring new perrrspective to vorrrk and department’s agendas.” His index finger went on to rub along the edge of his lip quickly. “I am fast learrrner. I villing to underrrgo any apprrrenticeship orrr trrraining. As what you call it.”
“I do agree that a foreigner’s presence would make a good addition to the workplace. But with no recommendations, and with few to say a good word,” his arms relaxed eased on the armchair, “my hands are tied.” The irony.
“I know zis.” He eased closer to the desk in between them. “But I know I can give zis deparrrtment what it needs and more. So I ask you to rrrekonsider.”
This man looked down on him. It was the only way it could be described – as if he was looking at an insect he was not quite certain what to do with now. He relaxed into his seat, a hand reaching downward to smoothen out his tie. “Mr. Dolohov, I cannot bend on this matter any further.”
“If you cannot bend, zen I can. I can prrromise I’d vorrrk harrrd for you even if I vould have to brrreak my vack.”
“A foreigner familiar with metaphors?”
“I’m sorrry?”
“Image is everything? Have you heard of it?”
Mikhail tasted something similar to the bowl of clay Pandora had been mixed from – a mortal woman placed between Hephaestus’ astral palms and given bountiful gifts from many gods and goddesses alike, which was in vain, as Zeus had disposed of it with no greater concern than when you throw a rock over your shoulder. “I em avarrre of it.”
“This is no metaphor. This is real.” His tone was that of a calm parent scolding their child who had thrown food from a high table. However, this one felt too condescending. “We feed the homeless, clothe the poor, protect the vulnerable…you seem comprehensible enough to understand me, I think.” He had sighed, though it sounded more like the breathy noise before a gregarious laugh pushed out of someone’s mouth in one burst and set a whole crowd laughing afterwards. “The Ministry is an apologist, a provider, a promise to do better. It publicly calls for absolution, and we condemn just as easily. We are set apart from the rest because we have public support on our side. The Daily Prophet,” he motioned to the newspaper in Mikhail’s hand. “The Ministry keeps it that way.”
He had sworn to himself he’d make a change, for his brothers, for his wife, for them. He had sworn to this man that he would break his back and bones if necessary to try to fit into a one-size-fits-all commodity that he outgrew ever since he was seventeen. But he had sat black itching at his temples. More time wasted, eating away at his tired skin; there’s a hunch in his shoulders he didn’t have before, bent with a weight he could not put a finger on. (Grief? Shame? Ignominy?) “I.. don’t know vhat else to say. I apprrreciate yourrr honesty, sirrr. I zink I vill leave you zen.”
“Yes, yes.” He skipped over the words rather urgently. “You know where the door is. It is quite large.”
Mikhail took ahold of his belongings and set towards the door in a disillusioned gait until he heard a “wait!”
“Perhaps I could redirect you to Level 4? Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures? The Beast Division is always looking for new subjects to study.” Perhaps it was his self consciousness that he could not curb, but something in the sweet-intentioned proposition seemed… more of an insult? Mikhail had flinched. The flinch could be found in the tightening of his jaw and the minute picking up and pulling away from the doorway. His face had settled, without any lines and creases. His lips fell flat. “Nyet. Zank you.” Was all he said before he had walked out, feeling gut sink no higher than the ground, where he left a trail of chaffing Russian sand from the winding channels of his soles.
Mikhail tasted concrete and dead coffee in the English air that smelled of isolation and moss. Mikhail, with broad shoulders big enough for people to be lost in its plains (in the heart of it all, he too is lost within those plains, right in the center where the maze lies). As tall and forthright as his body seemed, he could not withstand the weight of even a corner of the world - and he had come to London in the name of love, the most foolish and admirable cause of all. He blinked, and open changes to closed. He blinked, and green changes to red. He blinked, and the world changed again. He blinked, and someone collides with him. He mumbled apologies as though he had burnt their skin where he had brushed it. They touched for no longer than the sharp breath they’d taken, no longer than the moment they took to flinch from him. They had imploded. But Mikhail had greater concerns than vulgarity.
He walks alone. Alone, on a street corner. Alone. Mikhail had once heard a proverb that read: “you are born alone, and so you will die alone.” I’m not sure I like feeling alone, he thought. I’m not sure I like feeling too much. Too much, too much, too much. The world has changed again. And again, and again, and again.
He stood on the a street corner, daring the rain to swallow him whole. But it doesn’t - it reminds him of just how empty and bottomless he is (like tectonic plates – rigged and unfathomable). There were small seedling raindrops pitter-pattering on the gall stones of his rib cage. He thinks of how lost he is as he realizes he doesn’t know the name of the street Dmitri’s house is on. He had never even known the name of home. There’s one copper kopek in his right pocket, but he knows it is not enough to buy himself a familiar face. Perhaps that is why his soul was blue – the world had beaten it to that shade.
The next few days had passed with a lack of success, arising in Mikhail no great excitement but a vast rising temperature of frustration.
He had took to the morning, to the afternoon, to the evening, to the weekend, wishing the time away like shredded newspaper between his fingers on a windy day. He took took to the stolen cup of coffee with sugar crystallized at the bottom, the five minutes alone, in the quiet, in the rain, away, away, away. Away from the now; from the overbearing of a present that crippled him. He was a faulty, makeshift hourglass, with sand chaffing the roughened container. He felt himself being shaken by the hands of a greedy child with a new toy, feeling himself turn from ice to water, slipping though fingers who had almost had a chance to grasp. Something that had almost been dropped.
Like a rare, glittering proposition with a lack of follow-through. (Read: a foreigners relocation to London).
There was something nefarious about the toll London had taken on Vladimir as well. Mikhail had watched him settle down on the opposite end of the table from him, a sudden arrival without explanation – strewn curses talking about the the unwelcoming place he had been kicked out of (willingly left, in a kinder light) raised most prominently like dark bruises along the center of Mikhail, proof that this city held no taste for them and had tried to chew them up before spitting them out.
But this evening, Vladimir’s lips split into a new kind of smile (their parents had always insisted they have three; one for the masses, one for family, and one for their enemies). The warmth of it was like Prometheus when he had stolen fire for the humans – a call for defrost and awakening. (Vladimir spoke, Mikhail thought. But together – they had always worked). He had pulled his brother aside with hanging seriousness that punctured the atmosphere, a placated stance taken in gesture of familiarity. His mouth held a promise to do better. Mikhail, you must listen and tell no one. Something out of nothing.
In life, the monsters win.
The words were given thought with an air of wisdom he thinks to possess; only the replication, the regurgitation– the memory of death-- none so gruesome as described in black ink until one stands at the heels of it, watching these god-machines throw Titans back into their pit beneath the sea– a blood-soaked diadem on march. There was blood and metal and rust sweeping past the settling dust and jutting concrete in Wizarding London that had once been held upright by one of its major cornerstones; the Crouch family. They had remained lifeless under these same cornerstones until the Ministry had removed the bodies. All that was left was the household surrounded by a large crowds of people oscillating in between for valuables and other important possessions (and for the other few who had pocketed these same items; Mikhail, in a few days time, would see these same heirlooms being auctioned off in the clandestine bars he worked in).
For the truth was that some people held neither kindness nor charity beyond what served to increase their own fortunes. Even wolves hunted in packs and scoured the plains and woodlands before vanishing. He knew this, because he had the scars to prove it. And it was as if the others had known this wolf-cult paranoia, as Mikhail may not have turned a stilled, grieving ambiance into a incandescent fire-bed of hot winds, but he rattled all the same. He seemed shaken and jolted, his attention shattered like glass shards -- barely half the man only his family knew he was. It was in his nature to ruin, curse, and break, and within these follies there came unacknowledged advantage -- the chance to insert poison (literal or otherwise) into the planned turns and straights of an average day was nonexistent.
His likeness was that of a jackdaw with wings made of wax that had melted, oozing onto the cold surface of the floorboards. For this reason there were no heights and distances for him to reach or aim for, leaving Mikhail no option but to teeter about silently among the congregation of purebloods helping with the unearthing of the fallen manor. They regarded him with deep suspicion. And indeed he was a dangerous jackdaw, a potential thief, a foreigner. But that is only an illusion. In fact, Mikhail lacked all feeling for shining objects, because he already had the best tomatoes and English tea roses that a large allotment of cormorants (specifically, both poor and rich) greedily flapped their wings for. For that reason he did even have black plumage. He was grey, like soot. A jackdaw who had would have liked to make a nest between the stones.
He thought nothing about it. Much less the noises around him. His mind was a blank tape, imprinted with snatches of things overheard until these voices and topics began to depersonalize themselves. However, it is not long after that he finally stops digging through rubble from his crouched position, watching a small tenure of people huddle around each other excitedly. Mikhail locked eyes with the person across from him quickly (a blink later and you would have missed it) before continuing on. “Zerrre is so much grrreed.” He hammers the sentence down with a single blow on the anvil, leaving no extra space for discussion.
i have a loneliness that is tangible, but it is not a loneliness. it is a rock, and it is me, and it is being too tired to shower. i say i am sad, because that word is short and my mouth is weary, because everything is weary, because i am sad (see). i am not sad. sad feels different, transmutable. this not a burning house, but a house already burnt. it is not the fire but standing in the ashes after, sifting through the soot for pictures of the people you thought loved you the most. i am tired, but it is not a tiredness. it is a pair of hands pulling me through the ground, always, and always, and always.
It had all happened so fast, too fast.
One moment she had heard his words ringing in her ear, telling her to not let go, her fingers clutching at the arm of his jacket as if she were a small child; as much as she believed she was strong, as much as she knew she could possibly fend off a feeble woman herself, she still clung on to Mikhail. He was her protector, and while that should have made her indignant at how powerless she felt in that moment, she did not say a word. All Natasha could do was move closer and inhale his scent, something of the earth, like wilderness. Reminding her of his true form. One moment, they were standing there, her husband standing tall and taking his wand from her quickly, and in the next, she could feel herself being ripped apart inch by inch.
Apparating had never been enjoyable for her; she had heard, growing up, that there were some witches who Apparated simply for fun, because they enjoyed the sensation of being taken apart and put back together again in a new place. Natasha, however, had always felt like a part of her was missing afterwards. The hair on the back of her neck would continue to stand even minutes after she had arrived at her destination, and she would even spend the time making sure she had all ten fingers and ten toes, just in case. When Mikhail had grabbed her and the world had vanished around her, she had scrunched her eyes closed and imagined h o m e.
( The trouble, of course, being that she had no idea what was home to her anymore. )
It hadn’t felt the same as it usually had, and Natasha knew there was something wrong even before she had opened her eyes to look up at Mikhail. She had felt woozy, as if the floor underneath her had slipped away, and she had immediately leaned on her husband only to find he himself was unstable, looking down at his leg with the strangest expression on his face. She had followed his eyeline, only to find red staining her vision. Red everywhere, gushing out and suddenly her hands were in it, trying to staunch the flow, painting her cheeks as she wiped her tears away, her bloodstained fingers only making her more hysterical. She had looked to speak to him, to try to ask what to do, but one look at his face made her turn away. She couldn’t see him like that.
Shaking hands immediately sought out the bag she had been carrying, moving quickly through the contents to find something, anything, that could help. She was sure she was smashing the delicate glass bottles, but found that she could not care in the slightest. What did it matter? They were falling out onto the ground, where she was sure people could see them, but she did not look up once as she found the bottle she needed, the Essence of Dittany she had paid a small for. She carefully applied the drops to the wound, muttering a “ Ш., мне очень жаль, мне очень жаль, ” as she heard his hisses of pain, so entirely unlike the howls that haunted her dreams.
It felt like a lifetime had passed when she eventually stopped, and moved to cradle his head, her fingers still stained with his blood, her eyes still overflowing with tears. Her voice was thick as she whispered, “ Медведь? Михаил? Пожалуйста, пожалуйста, ответьте мне … пожалуйста … ”
Mikhail had not shared counsel with emotions like these in humbling quantity. All had been forgotten and avoided; the varying extents of physical pain still hurt, but he was used to it. Now, there was a galaxy of feeling that centered in his broad chest– that blossomed and expanded in a way that he could feel her ache -- a bloody red tendon entwining their nervous system. He hurts and so she hurts, a serpent eating its own tail. He watched her fingers scramble where he was hurt (a practiced ritual, a rite of passage every full moon -- much like how wives and paramours had always suffered along with great gladiators of history. Mikhail was no Mark Antony, but he was haunted by the vastness of eternity all the same) trying to reduce blood flow and revert the skin to its original, scarred form. But they both know Natasha doesn’t have enough magic or fingers for that game.
"Это не больно слишком много. Я в порядке, я клянусь. обещаю." He lies quickly, his hand reaching for the one placed on him in order to placate her nerves. They are silver and crimson, and though he is without dragons in physicality, they still boil in his veins and tarnish the blood making its way down the curve of his leg. He was hot and sweating through his clothes, feeling the heat through his clothes and neck as a heavy deadly weight on his head. Mikhail was not bothered by the heat. It was the weight of the sun searing through his shoulders. These same bellowing flames had made his teeth grit darkly, stymied frustrations holding him hostage like a London fog. He felt ashamed. In his hastiness, Mikhail had made things worse. His family was always tending to him, and as much as he appreciated it, it became shameful to know he could not reciprocate them in the same way. He felt a knife nick inside him, like a bite to the soul.
"сапсан." he tries, using that name that makes her things light and red amber, unspooled like gold thread in his palms. "Посмотрите на меня ... посмотри на меня," he tells her in between his hisses of pain as the few last drops sealed the wound, approaching her like he would the flighty thing he coined her after, hands out flat and arms open -- ready to take her in. Slowly, he reaches in to keep her from shaking and crying even further. “Вернись ко мне,” he tells her rather dubiously and perhaps it sounded too forceful now, but from where it came was one of underlined concern. His face had softened for her, watching his streaks of blood blend in with her own tears. He couldn’t look at her like that. He could have hoped her tears hung in humid air, as ponds vent upward from the overheated earth, watching the droplets rise and crystallize, then drop into an aquifer. Instead, his thumb begins drying off her tears. The blood on her cheeks was thinly streaked, having tried to remove his stain on her to no avail.
He coaxes her back to the person she is supposed to be, giving kindness from his lips unto hers, until he is sure he feels herself lighten and the pounding in his head quiet. He tastes salt on his lips -- not the usual taste or smell that was so distinctive of his wife that he savored like chilled wine. It reminds him of where they are and where they are meant to be. He rose, expecting at every moment to be shaken, and instead was not. And so he stands as upright as his leg can let him, removing his coat so Natasha could have something to hold onto, something to clean herself off of with. He had reached down to collect the bottles strewn about with little less than a grunt. He had looked at them mindlessly until he had read the inscription of one of them. He looked up at her— and it seemed as if his eyes had met his own. He only stared, his face devoid of emotion save the hollowness with which he observed her.