danya ft. anitchka @extorrcs
governor's ball, after the power goes out.
MERCY AGENTS KNOW BETTER THAN TO PANIC. most of them have been through much worse than the dark, though you'd certainly think that an institution called sentinel electric would be less susceptible to such incidents. for a brief moment, there are only phone screens twinkling in the dark until the emergency lights flood the hall, earning a collective sigh of relief from the night's attendants. danya feels his heart in his throat. not now, not after ilya— the thought fills his head as he frantically weaves through the crowd of agents in their slick black suits and sparkly dresses, eyes scanning the entire room for his sisters.
as a mercy agent, anitchka knew not to panic. after all, sabine hadn't been panicked. she had seemed more annoyed then- no no, not time to think about her. because as a sisters, as a mother, she was panicked. sometimes, she wished she could go back in time to her thirty year old self and tell her turn his offer down because was any of this worth that? she knew danya would be panicking. her littlest one, no matter how big he got. for a second, she contemplated doing something to get everyone out of her way (what was the point of her powers if not for moments like this?) when she finally spotted him. "danya!" decorum went out the window, the need for a facade didn't matter when her little brother looked as scared as he did.
finally she made it to him and finally she had her arms around him.
nix despises wearing tuxedos. they always seem to be either a size too small or a size too big. never fitting just right. feels like an image of a boy wearing his father's clothes, the sleeves too long on his arms, a gap at the back of his shoes. never fitting. never his own. that is, of course, an exaggeration. agent neo, as he stands there, in between many people he knows, and a few he doesn't, wears a tailored tuxedo, most likely something designer. his silver cufflinks glint from the lights reflecting on them, a pair of black cartier browline glasses up his nose. this is his entry back into this world after all, the jubilé of sentinel and mercy's partnership. and ironically enough, the start of him picking up the mantle of agent neo again.
there is a sense of excitement, a sort of nervousness clinging to his frame ( despite knowing this organization for almost twenty years now ) as he makes his way through the crowds. there's a flute of champagne grasped in one hand, still full, an accessory to keep his hands full more than anything else. while he expects to see familiar faces, this one still makes him freeze in surprise. eyes widening, his expression softens almost immediately. "ani —-" the nickname falls from his lips with ease, and he takes a step closer to her. "i would say small world but..." the words linger off, and a part of him wishes there weren't so many people around. "how have you been?"
ani. there were only four three people in the entire world who called her that. she would know that voice anywhere. that voice would always remind of her first mission alone, the sense that maybe, just maybe there was someone in the world who she could love without feeling the responsability of her entire existence. that maybe she could be someone other than 'older sister mother' and still matter. of nights spent over books, the closest she could get to the life she once dreamed of.
she turned around and there he was. of all the people in the world, he found her. "nix" their name slips from her mouth almost like a prayer. her joy at seeing him slips at his next question and the reality of why she was here, hitting her like a sledgehammer. "iyla is dead." the whispered statement falls from her mouth almost without thought as if waiting for someone to tell. someone who understood. someone who she didn't have to hold together while crumbling herself.
the message that made her phone vibrate had been a bucket of iced water , and she still felt the cold rippling down her spine as searing drops of dread . a simple look around allowed her to locate most of her trusted agents , settling on them for a second with charged eyes , yet she didn’t make any attempts to reach out to them ( “ do not cause any attention . stay on alert . ” ) , only huffed her annoyance and kept her spine tense and straight as a bowstring while waiting for further commands . this is what she hated about mercy , being a soldier , the lack of freedom , the abundance of orders — this was supposed to be a boring night taking her away from what she yearned to do the most , but why was she surprised , even ? this is what mercy was about , too: shady affairs , endless pretending , failure to be greater .
as she drowned in her irritation , the voice coming from her side , only a few steps away , took her out of her reverie . grateful to be ripped away from her fuming thoughts , sabine offered the woman a slight , almost unnoticeable smile . " i’m not sure , i haven’t heard of anything like it before , but i’ve been here only seven years , " it felt like a lifetime , but considering mercy has been around for over thirty years , the only in her answer seemed appropriate . " we haven’t met yet , haven’t we ? " she inquired then , brows slightly furrowed , mind navigating its memories to locate the foreign face , yet nothing came out of it . " i think i haven’t seen you around before . i’m sabine , sabine bogelot . agent verbena , if you please . " hand extended with her introduction she bore her eyes into the gorgeous woman’s own , orbs glinting with an unlikely interest .
i haven't heard of anything like it. fucking great. anitchka nodded in a wordless acknowledgement and prepared to turn away (she really should go find danya) when the other woman spoke again. there was a very large part of her that desired to still turn away. the last thing she wanted was conversation. to pretend like she didn't want to crawl out of her skin and hide in the dark until one day she didn't see iyla going down every time she closed her eyes.
unfortunately, doing so in a place she knew no one was not the best idea. even in her current state, she knew this. so, she swallowed and took the woman's hand. "pleased to meet you. anitchka kedrova. agent likho." she could have said she hailed from russia but let's be quite honest, her accent made that clear enough. out of her and her siblings, her accent had remained the strongest throughout the years, having been so much older then they had left the first time.
for the millionth time that night, anitchka wished she was somewhere else. another room. another city. another fucking country. anywhere else but at the governor's ball, dressed to the nines (there had been a mediocre attempt to cover the split lip, the bruised cheekbone), surrounded by strangers in a country she had never spent more then a few days in. none of her carefully laid plans involved living in america of all places. well, none of them involved loosing her brother either.
fucking poxy agents here. how do fucking headquaters get broken into? jesus ani, you're fucked. her brother's voice filled her mind as if he was right there next to her, spilling expletives that would get him very pointed looks if anyone had heard him. she turned her head, response ready on her lips. then stopped, oh. he wasn't there. she almost forgot.
instead she found herself looking at a young auburn haired woman instead. in her attempt to locate danya before the speech, she hadn't clocked who she had ended up standing next too. (a failure. fuck anitchka, you know better then this). "has such a thing occured here before?" the question left her lips before she could convince herself otherwise. she'd been in the country for two days. she knew no one. it was safer to sound stupid once then end up dead later because she hadn't asked a question.
⊠ ɪᴅ . . . ʟᴏᴀᴅɪɴɢ ›› [ stana katic / forty-five / female / she/her ] mercy headquarters is pleased to officially introduce ANITCHKA KEDROVA. they have been apart of the organization for eleven years, serving as A FIELD agent and has been assigned the codename AGENT LIKHO. it's worth noting that their file indicates they have undergone the solaris treatment and host THERMOKINESIS. according to our dossier, the agent exhibits a combination of DILIGENT and EVASIVE traits, fitting for someone reminiscent of delicate gold hidden beneath a crisp black shirt, smoke following their footsteps and death at their fingertips. family before anything. family before self. prior to embarking on any mission, they find solace in listening to the song “francesa“ by HOZIER.
tw: death, kidnapping, prostitution, murder
mercy has been part of anitchka kedrova’s life from before she was born, not that she knew this.. her parents, an archaeologist and a scientist in russia, were no part of mercy per se but were informants of sorts, giving them information that only they could give. a lifestyle like that, no matter how well-intentioned always goes awry and awry did it go. anitchka was barely twenty years old when her father was kidnapped and tortured to death and her mother went missing. suddenly, she was dropping out of her literature degree and taking care of her fifteen year old brother and eight year old twin brother and sister. and she didn’t even know why. as far as the family knew, their parents were just regular people.
there was no good way for this to go. not with anitchka desperate for enough money to keep her and her siblings afloat.
anitchka hadn’t meant to become a sex worker. what other way was a twenty year old girl with part of a literature degree going to get enough money while still being home enough to actually raise the children? so, she figured it out, joined an agency and that was that. she had enough money, there was good on the table and a roof over their heads and she wanted to crawl out of her skin.
so for the next ten or so years, anitchka raised her siblings and spent her nights in the bed of some of the worst and richest men in st petersburg, collecting secrets. turns out, men a looselipped within the sheets, especially with a girl in her position. she wasn’t real to these men, she was a fantasy and fantasies held no threat.
then there was an offer. a client who knew this, who knew the power she held and the secrets she would have kept. fifty thousand dollars and a way out of the city for the whole family with promise of future work. all she had to do was kill a man. it was an out. she was desperate to take out, to get out of the life she had found herself in. but this wasn’t just about her. the twins had just hit eighteen and graduated highschool. it really said something about the family that it didn’t take very long at all for them to agree. st petersburg wasn’t kind to any of them. anything was better then this.
(not that they knew how she got the offer)
so she did was she was asked, killed the son of oligarch, took the money and the family disappeared. this was the beginning of the family career of murder. mercenaries to hire, the kedrov family became ghosts, abandoning the benefactor as soon as they no longer needed him (not that he didn’t deserve it). they were loyal to no one but each other.
in 2038, after a few years of doing it on their own and going from place to place, the kedrov family were found and intercepted by mercy. the family’s target was a man of interest in an ongoing mercy mission. the agent in particular had been their parent’s contact and it was in egypt they found out the truth of their parents. after that, it seemed almost like a no brainer. either spend their lives running of an agency that could crush them to dust or join and possibly find out what happened to their parents.
now they belonged to mercy.
three years later, she became a field agent. the moment she could, she became a radiant. knowing her family and knowing their desire to take solaris, she was determined to do it first because she’d be damned if she would let them take some bloody superpower drug without testing herself first. if it killed her then at least it would scare off her siblings. however, it didn’t and instead she now became even more reliant on mercy just now with the skill of thermokinesis.
up until two days before the governor’s ball, the family were based back in russia but after a mission went wrong, the family were moved to apex city. the family that was left that is. her little brother, the middle child of all middle child, went missing on their mission and was now assumed dead. they didn’t know how, anitchka just knew that she had failed and so had mercy.
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