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Vasha rode the Amtrak out of New York, wrapped in his threadbare Ukrainian army coat, its patches torn away to lend him some anonymity. He hugs his massive travel bag to himself protectively, rests his head against the window, and rests without sleep. One eye opens whenever someone shifts in the car, or drifts past his seat. Vigilant without giving off a sense of unease.
On arriving in Philadelphia, he took the last of his American money, booked himself a motel, showered, and shaved. The long scraggly beard drops into the dingy sink, the hair on his head is buzz cut down again. Short, professional, harder to grab. He brushes his teeth, checks his work, and leans back away from the mirror, pulling at the skin on his face and examining the lines there. The ever decreasing coverage of hair atop his head.
"You are getting old, Vasha," he admonishes himself, "Time is not your friend, is it."
He then heads to his travel bag, zips it open, and pulls out his dress uniform. Not his old one. His new one. Which is now an old one again. Ukrainian Army. He spends a few moments brushing it with his lint brush, adjusting his medal rack, and checking the stitches on the patches at his shoulder. It will have to do. He slips it on, adjusts his tie, and settles his cover atop his head before pulling on his gloves. He spends a moment looking at himself in the mirror, scowling broodily at himself, then turns to head out the door, pausing only to flip his favored silver coin in the air once as he pulls the veil of the mind over himself.
It's a risk, carrying an effect out into the world. Even one that keeps eyes away from you while you're wearing the dress uniform of a foreign military. But, being an adept of fate and time means he gets to be a bit cavalier about such risks. And honestly, if he's going to be shot? Now would be fitting.
He approaches the door to the Lodge, adjusts his jacket and tie, and then knocks three times.
She's not the best singer in the world, but she sings with passion, which makes up for it a lot of the time. And if in fact this is His Fox, and not a clever facsimile thereof -- Vasha has reason to doubt everything, by now -- she's inside the Lodge, by voice alone.
"I hang my coat up in the first bar
There is no peace that I've found so far
The laughter penetrates my silence
As drunken men find flaws in science"
What, like she'd be listening to just anything at this moment?
The Lodge is uncharacteristically quiet save for the singing Fox, sitting on the floor of the main room. Her ratty backpack sits open, and she's sitting cross-legged on the floor in a pair of worn-out jeans and an oversized tank top, needle and thread in hand. Mending is a matter of a snap of fingers for a Matter Adept, but sometimes it's better for one's Wisdom and practice to mend something the mundane way, and so Fox has a length of heavy-duty thread, a needle, and is taking that pair to a hole in her backpack.
Her hair hangs around her face, the oversized tank top loose and draping around her thin, wiry-muscled frame. She hasn't aged quite like he has, but what Life Mage does? The upper branches of the massive Tree of Life back piece are visible around the tank top, and the upper edge of the coin tattooed on her chest.
Lay me as a seal upon your heart, indeed. And so, she sits. She sings. She works her way through whatever she's feeling right at this moment.
"Their words mostly noises
Ghosts with just voices"
The fact that she ignored the knock draws a quirk of a grin. Of course, it would help if he'd drop the effect that's keeping the prying eyes from noticing him and what he's up to. He glances about himself to see who else might be around and, finding no one, reaches behind his back to draw his pistol. He checks the chamber briefly, flicks the safety, and then quietly turns the knob of the door, waiting for it to fully disengage before drawing it open.
Because he can't trust anything anymore. Yes.
He steps into the lodge and eases the door mostly closed behind himself. Just a sliver left open so he doesn't have to contend with clicking latches. He brings his pistol up, balancing the grip on his opposite hand's palm, stares down the iron sights for several seconds at the back of Naika's head, and then wills the effect to drop.
In Russian, rather than Ukrainian, as it's their most commonly spoken tongue, he asks of her gently, "My Little Fox. Tell me where we met."
She just freezes. The song continues to play quietly from her phone, just loud enough to provide a convenient underscore of Snow Patrol to the moment. Her body goes entirely still, and it's possible to see the rapid rise and fall of her shoulders as her heart races, her breath catches in her throat.
It's been years. Years of not knowing if he's alive or dead. No contact, of necessity, because it would break his cover, would make her a target, would... There are sacrifices you make when you wind your life up with one of the Guardians, especially one who meddles with Fate. Destiny calls its due, and frequently bloodily.
She doesn't know she has the gun trained on her yet. She's just trying to get her breathing to behave while she wills her eyes to do what they do best. And when she looks up at him, those bright green-gold eyes through the black waterfall of her hair, the first thing she sees is not his face, exactly, or even the gun itself, but the inner workings of his body. DNA, bones, vessels, skin. Is it possible to duplicate those things? Yes. Is it probable? I mean, yeah. But it's the first thing she thinks to check.
"On the street in Saint Petersburg. I was hungry. I wheedled you into buying me two bags of pelmeni."
It was one bag. He was more broke back then. She puts no especial weight upon the number. "Where did you meet my Master, Medved, when I introduced them to you, Vasha My Heart?"
Her nimbus flares with the working, of course: it's the same as it ever was, if stronger. Petrichor, the smell of clean, bright greenery, and that feeling like staring into the eyes of a faithful canine.
He seems, as he usually seems, fully in command of his faculties, though his heart is racing. Adrenaline and cortisol race through his system. It's a miracle he can even make out what she's saying over the pounding in his head. When she turns to look at him though, his expression crumbles. He's hung every hope on this moment. For years. And now it's here. Or is it?
The aim of his pistol begins to waver as his nerves get the better of him and he advances a half-step, hurling his answer as an accusation. "Her Mentor was Mishka. And we never met." The wavering of his aim ceases and it centers once more on her forehead.
"What have you done with her. If she is dead?" His eyebrows crawl up his forehead. "You will carry her my regards."
Where he takes it as a confirmation that it isn't her? His corrections of the questions, the trick question yielding the result that she hoped? Fox's face wobbles and her resolve snaps. Her lips draw back briefly, baring her fox-sharp teeth, and she drops the needle, the thread, the backpack, as if none of them matter.
Because they don't. The gun doesn't matter, the Lodge doesn't matter. None of it matters. The sound that she makes in return is nothing like speech: it's a fox's scream, a thing almost exactly like a woman's scream but somehow more eerie, more wild. An expression of years of primal anguish and years of untrammeled worry and the twisted-up pain of her grief belayed, held in suspension over her heart like an eternal Sword of Damocles, and now suddenly withdrawn. He's here. He's alive.
Her hands clutch to her stomach, and she repeats that high, sharp sound again, resolving at the end into a twisted sort of version of his name, barely comprehensible. "Vasha!" She scrambles up from the floor and flings herself at him. He might shoot her. That's a risk she'll take.
He should, by rights. She changed the call and answer on him. It makes sense from where she is, to try and add another obstacle to the correct response. But in his world, that's a tell. It's a tell that should end with her very dead on the floor. But with his silver plated pistol in hand, he's already holding a Tool. And when you're an Acanthus, you have all the time in the world to make up your mind, even in the span of moments. There's a flare of his nimbus and time around him, to her at least, seems to shift and slow. Stretch and expand.
His mind travels down the avenues of various threads. This one, a trigger pull. This one a raised weapon. That one grief, that one joy. Good Acanthus only seem brazen and impetuous. The best ones test all their options in the heat of a moment, and their coins always come up heads.
Time resumes its usual course, and he raises the pistol away from her line of approach, along with his other hand, too. He's defenseless when she slams bodily into him. His thumb carefully returns the safety into place, and he gingerly returns the pistol to its place at his waist before finally wrapping his arms around her in response and burying his nose into her mussy hair. His eyes squint shut tightly as he draws in a single, long, shaking breath.
He is all consideration, she all instinct. He watches down the line, tests possibilities, and she runs headlong into -- well. Him. Making a strange, strangled sound in the back of her throat that's not quite fox nor quite human but entirely Naika, she leaps at him, her arms closing around his head, sending his cover toppling to the floor with a soft clatter. He buries his nose in her hair, she presses her face into his neck, taking deep, slow breaths in through her nose. Pulling in long draughts of scent, making those small, high-pitched sounds that are grief and relief wound one around the other.
Arms wrapped around him, stretched up over the distance between their heights, Fox takes in deep, gulping breaths and kisses his throat. "Oh, Vasha. Vasha My Heart." There's nothing else to say except for the tiny wobbling: "You're alive." And also: "You're here."
"I ran." Vasily would love nothing more than to let himself be carried away with joy and fall into the moment. Hell, it's what his path wants him to do. But there are matters more pressing than their reunion: what may cut it short at any moment, for example. "I don't think this is a secret any longer. There was a Pylon in Donetsk. I asked Asov to be assigned there. I spoke the language, I knew the area. I had the skillset. I think he knew."
"I did my duty in Donetsk. And when it was done I did my duty to Donetsk." Vasha draws back a bit from the embrace so that she can fully understand the change of colors on the flag at his shoulders, the tone of the uniform jacket. The spelling of the words on his unit patch. Ukrainian. Not Russian Federation. "Azov called me back. Forced the decision."
"I could not go back to Central. I could-- the codes of the day. For the Black Sea Fleet? Passed through my office, Naika. I would be asked, as cover for my caucus, to return to work in Central and sign documents that mean more of us died in Donbas. No. I would not. I could not. Not after bleeding with those men. No. Not to my country."
"The caucus understands, I'm sure. I left a dead drop for Azov in Vienna. To explain myself. To him, if to no one else. And that's the last contact I had with them. I do not know what to tell Zoya. How to explain myself to the Firebirds. Everything is-- my home is--" Vasha looks deeply and profoundly lost, and can't make himself look her in the eyes. "I am Pavlichenko now. Every bullet is for Odessa."
"Oh, my love." It's a single sigh, that trio of words, her arms still wrapped tightly around him. He draws back, but she doesn't let go, just hanging on him like a limpet. "Oh, my love." She repeats the words, and stares up at him, taking in for the first time the age that's settled on him like so much drifting snow, the wear and tear of years. Her fingers slide over the patch on his shoulder, its changed colors, the letters.
She listens, and she looks up at him with her wide green-gold eyes, fixated on him and the story he tells. And when he gets to the end, she simply nods. To shed one's skin when it no longer serves you? This is a thing that an Orphan of Proteus understands better than anyone. "We are who we choose to be. No one knows that better than me, my love. We are the sum of all our choices." It isn't telling him anything he doesn't know. "If you want me to contact the Firebirds, I can. If you are here seeking asylum, we will find it here."
And then she slides a hand down his cheek and turns his face, turns his eyes to her. Forcing the matter, if gently so. "Pavlichenko. Vasha. My Heart. My home is where you are. Where you are is my home. Whatever you tell me you need, we will make it happen. If you are an exile in the country of my birth as once I was a misfit in Russia, then it is only as it has been before." Her lips lift and press against his. Tiny, that gesture. Feather-light. "You are alive. All else, we can solve."
"My notoriety may make things difficult for them if they remain in St. Petersburg. I do not know if word of my defection has reached the Consilium as a whole, but if Azov knows, then my colleagues do, too. And likely the Hierarch at the least. The rumor will spread. If they wish to disavow me, they may. If they wish to flee, too. They may. They must make up their own minds and act selfishly. I am so far out on the branch one more inch is just walking on more air, anyway."
"I did my best with the choices I was left. There were simply no good options. I am sorry." Vasha rests his forehead against her own and lets out a bone weary sigh. He is so, so, so impossibly tired. "I feel like I have been awake for a thousand years. I haven't been myself for months." Literally.
"Is there a place we can sleep and pretend? That the river is our river, and the bridge our bridge? And that I am still young and in possession of my hair?" His head draws back with a small smile, his humor as dark as ever. "And not fat. I have grown fat! Look at me." He slaps his own cheeks a few times. "Like a bear before winter!"
"If you are so far out on the branch, then I will contact them." Her face stays turned up to his, green-gold eyes fixed on his face as if he's the only thing that matters in the world. (Hint: right now, that's true.) "I will contact them before it has a chance to go too far. Give them the chance to slip away. And if they want to come and join us here in Philadelphia, then my home will have come to me in total."
She laughs softly, shakes her head where it's leaned against his. "Vasha My Heart." Like a benediction, that response. "You are alive. You are here. I would give -- anything. I would fix any mistake. I would ... any choice you made which brought you here, alive, as whole as you can manage? If you're here and you're alive, then anything else, we can fix. We can deal with." Fox pushes herself up to her very tip-toes, kisses the wrinkles that have gathered at the corners of his eyes, one after the other. "And now you are here. And you are yourself. And I am myself. How silly it would have been if you had gotten here and I was spending a week as a field of grass or a stand of birch trees! But I was not."
She twists her face in a wry little smile then. "There is a river. It runs slow and wide, because it is old and lazy. We can go to the Susquehanna. I don't have a car. I never bother. But we can go. I would like to be in a wild place with you." Her green-gold eyes glitter at him once more. "But I like bears. Maybe I don't want you to be not-fat."
"I do not think you get a say in the matter, Krasnaya." Vasha gives her his slyest of grins at this response. "Neither do I, clearly, since it is my body that has grown thick and slow." Having just come in from the cold, literally, and hitchhiked, hiked, and otherwise traveled through off grid methods from one end of Europe to the other, he is no stranger to making a go of it in the wild places. Even if he did just shower, shave, trim his hair, and put on his last set of clean clothes.
He checks the pistol at his back to make certain it is in relatively easy reach, and then adjusts his jacket again. "I have a motel room not far from here. I can grab my things and we can go. It is probably best if I live off the grid for a while, regardless. If agents are about, they will be looking for you, and looking for me at places like consulates and embassies. The FBI building, and so on. We can screen those places for comings and goings. They will not look for me on the banks of a river."
And just like that, he's dragging her off again into his life of dead drops and stolen lives. A familiar dance, at least, even if its tune is seldom played these days.
The word means 'red' but also 'beautiful', depending on which language and how it's used, and it certainly makes Fox turn red; she blushes from her throat to her hairline, unrestrained in her responses. "I think I could, because that's Master Krasnaya to you," Fox huffs, and unloops her arms from his neck with no small amount of reluctance. "But I like bears. And I like you best of all." A simple statement but with all the truth in the world in it. Of everything on this planet, Naika likes Vasha best of all.
She pads soft-footed over to her backpack, pulls out a t-shirt -- more coverage than the tank top, at least for the walk out -- and swaps one for the other without a thought for modesty, on account of Child, on account of Orphan, on account of it's him and goodness knows there's nothing on her he hasn't seen. A pause, and she brushes her fingers over the coin she had someone tattoo on her over a decade ago. "Well," she offers wryly, "It was due for a refresh anyway. You shall have to help me think of something new." And then she pulls her t-shirt over her wiry form, tucks the tank top away, and zips her backpack shut.
"You will find no complaints in this for me, my heart," Fox laughs brilliantly. "I have had no paperwork since I got here. It was much easier to swim than deal with customs." Seriously? Did she really?
Is that really even a question? "And it was so much fun to be a dolphin, anyway." She knits her fingers into his, never regretful. She knows the dance, and all the steps; there's no tune she would rather sing than his.
"When you leave me, you must find someone to sever your sympathies with me. If they do find me, they will follow them right back to you. And I don't imagine they'll be keen for the loose ends, or at least ambivalent about ending your life to tie one up." Vasha doesn't make it clear if he means the Guardians or the Russians, but it's all fairly academic at the moment since in many respect it would be both at the same time.
"The Americans won't make my stay here pleasant. Even in Ukraine, matters are tense with the US now. I can't go to their intelligence services. And I won't appeal for their 'assistance' in dealing with the FSB and Putin's goons. So we must be delicate. I will need practice in my English. And help with removing my accent. I assume the local caucus will be willing to help me establish a new identity. Assuming Azov sends word to me that all is well from the Order's perspective. I did my mission, then I fled, for reasons of conscience. To another consilium in another country with another caucus of Guardians and another local guide to work for." He does not use the word Epopt, obviously. "I haven't abandoned the mission, just St. Petersburg." He's probably rationalizing to avoid catastrophizing. But talking through his experiences is usually how he processes them best, history has shown.
He makes sure it's his left hand she's claiming so that he can still reach his pistol as needed, then reaches into his pocket and fishes out his favorite silver coin, spinning it up into the air. "Oh, it's still rather fitting." He snatches it out of the air and adds, "Just have them add a bullet hole in his head."
He shoves the coin away as, once more, the shroud of secrecy falls over him. And now, her. It will make their trip much easier.
She pauses, there, and frowns slightly. "I -- I don't know if I know anyone who can, right now, here. I haven't been here that long yet," comes Fox's confession, and she twines her fingers into his tightly once she's got her backpack on, as if she's afraid he's going to disappear into mist or flutter away.
A reasonable concern, all things considered. "I mean, I swam here. It took a while. And then I turned into an albatross until it was unreasonable for me to be an albatross because I was too far inland, and then I turned into a Canadian goose so I could fly with them but geese are mean. They bite. I don't want to be a goose again." A little sigh.
She listens calmly to everything that he lays out. "Well, my accent is going to get stronger talking to you. But we can work on it together, and ... I have friends that can help you with the local accent. I've made contacts within a number of local supernatural communities." A number at this point is 'one' but let's not quibble, okay? She'll meet some vampires next. "If I don't yammer on in texts with Lux basically daily they'll wonder why I'm not sending them pictures of cool rocks. So I'll have to do that. Ugh, I want to tell them. They'll be very happy." The smallest frown.
And then he comments about the bullet hole, and Fox wrinkles up their nose. "I don't like that. We'll find something else. It isn't a thing I want to wear on my skin."
The shroud draws around them, and they leave the Lodge together. It's a long walk, but they're both used to that. It's much easier when you're walking together.
"I thought it was humorous," he remarks with his usual penchant for dark humor. Slavs. Once out the door, he shuts it gently behind them and commences the long walk. Once they reach his shitty motel, he keeps the presence up, leaves some cash on the mattress, collects his things, and departs, tossing the key in the night drop box. Paid up front and in cash. At least Americans are predictable.
The walk to the river, on the other hand, takes for fucking ever. Relatively speaking. But it gives them time to reacquaint themselves with one another. It's not the Neva. Nothing will ever be the Neva. But it will do. Once they reach the fence line keeping people away from the bluffs leading down to the water, Vasily just tosses his bag over and hops up and over, dropping down to the other side in a crouch and dusting off his knees. He slings his bag back onto his shoulder and waits there for Naika to make it over, in case he needs to catch her. Or, you know, so she can turn into a cat and walk right through it, because that'd be like her.
A cat? Come on. Why risk paradox when you can just become An Fox? She chatters on at him the whole walk, telling him what it was like to swim the ocean as a dolphin (it was amazing) and how much fun it is to fly, and some of her favorite places in the city. She's even, she makes clear, found a food truck by Temple that sells pelmeni.
"I actually took my friend Lux there, that I was telling you about? And then we went up to sit on a building and ate them. And we talked about art. I'm supposed to meet their partners, who are apparently very capable and nice. I'll show you their pictures so you can know them also. Apparently they're all, uh, Changelings. I like that word, because it sounds like bells. But it's not a great thing to be. I mean it's not bad to be it but the process is terrible. Not at all like Awakening, which is sometimes okay."
She keeps talking right up to the point where her body twists and shifts into a fox, and then she wriggles her skinny little self right through the fence, twining around his ankles before she shifts back up. "Oh, and I have apprentices, but I don't know if they'll be my apprentices very long because they're both smart, and um. Do you remember Harmony? She hit on me, but it was very awkward, because she brought up the fact that she used to be my apprentice in the context of that and it just... " Fox makes a sort of drooping gesture with one hand. "Like, she can learn from me more without fucking me, and gosh I don't like to feel like my vagina is a gate to the Supernal."
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