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The thing about Fox is that she's very good in crises. She can cram all of her Big Feelings into a separate train of thought through One Mind, Two Thoughts and just keep all of her Big Complicated Feelings over there for a while.
But eventually, those things have to come out. You can't keep them locked up forever. (No, Vasha, you can't.) So once the first twenty-four hours after her reunion with her sister, and said sister's Awakening, have passed, she spends a lot of time being a bird. Birds can't really have very complicated feelings. They like to fly, and flying keeps Fox ... calm. The freedom, the clarity of being up there in the sky, especially at night? He loves, loves, loves to fly when he's feeling worried, sad, terrified... any of those things. Even 'too much happy.'
She can't be a bird forever, and she can't keep her emotions shut up forever, so at some point, a night mockingbird flutters down the hallway to the room she shares with Vasha. While Vasha might normally insist on keeping the door closed, for some reason it's open just a crack. You know, so the scene can happen. She lands on the handle, allowing the force of her small body to push it open, and then flutters inside; she reverses the exercise with a nudge from Forces to close it up again. Once more she alights and flutters to the bed, whereupon she lands on Vasha, nuzzles under the blankets, and turns from tiny pointy feet and feathers to the weight of her human body, draped upon him and curling her arms around his neck.
The stereo is playing Vasha's eurotrash music, as per the usual. A breathy torchsinger assures the air, "Il aime ces temps sauvages. C'est son mystère à lui: Être le héros de son histoire..." A fitting little ditty to wake up to, under the circumstances. And given Vasha is a notoriously light sleeper for very obvious reasons, he's pretty immediately awake after all of that ado. He rubs at his eyes briefly and scrunches up his face to try and put Fox's face into focus. Because it might be someone else, you know. It could happen, right? No. But you never know.
"Something on fire? Something need dead? I was taking nap, you insufferable creature." His complaints have all the venom and sincerity of golden retriever playing tuggy. "Fucking time is it." He checks his watch, mutters a loud, whiny, desultory groaning complaint in Ukrainian, and then flops his hands around for his cigarettes and a lighter. He plucks out a cigarette and pokes it into Fox's mouth, "Hold that." He then fishes his lighter from the pack, lights the cigarette, and steals it from Fox to puff it alive himself. There. "Next time you wake me like this bring vodka. I am old man. Basically dead. Wake me like this robs years from my life. I die young now because of this. Before my time. So much potential wasted. Tragic tragedy. Is. Very. Bad." He clears his throat and flicks some ash into the ash tray.
His complaining out of the way, he can face his day.
She's curled up, naked, on his chest, with her arms wrapped around his neck; the very top edges of her massive back piece are visible, the twisting and curling branches of her Tree of Life. Fox listens to him go through his Ritual Complaints, her face buried into his chest, the side of his neck. He knows this particular gesture. Fox is small, and probably fragile. Her arms tighten a little bit, holding on to him all the tighter.
The cigarette is taken somewhat non-plussedly; she turns her face to be able to take it, and the corners of her mouth are tight; when he takes back the cigarette, she rolls her lips in tightly.
And once he finishes grumbling, at first, there's only silence. And then a little hitch in her breath, a shudder that runs down her spine. She loves his grumbling, right? It's part of Vasha, right?
Perhaps that is irrelevant, as Fox winds up to really, really cry.
Normally he grumbles and she jokes and capers and japes, and then they have breakfast or fuck or something. That tends to be how this usually goes. But the fact that she goes off in an unexpected direction has him reassessing the situation. He still smokes his cigarette, because alleviating that particular itch is going to make it easier for him to deal with the present issue. But the grousing and the ribbing stops, and he wraps his arms about the now very smol Fox and commences to per her hair a bit between soothing strokes down her back. No shushing occurs, no asking what's wrong. He just lets her cry it out on his shoulder with the patience of the Acanthus.
There are people that Fox trusts enough to cry in front of. She doesn't usually wrap herself tight and refuse to have emotions in front of people. But when it's all just Too Much, that circle shrinks and shrinks until there's really only one person she asks to carry All The Feelings when they just get to be too big for her to carry them behind her breastbone anymore.
She winds up pretty fast: it's like a dam finally cracking. There's one slow creak, maybe two, and then the water breaks through the concrete. It happens like that. One shudder, one small gasp of breath, and then she's crying so so hard, like her heart has been broken and will never, ever mend. Fox never does anything by half-measures, this included. Wound up in all of those tears is the release of finally letting go of her Last Big Secret, and the horrible truth of being known in what she considers her greatest shame, the smallest and most unworthy part of her heart, the fear that kept her apart from her sister for so long. Wound up in all of those tears is the bone-shaking fear and anger that came along with noises over the phone and the screaming within her breast of I can't lose you, I just got you back. The abject fury and cold terror of killing an Abyssal standing over her sister while she, heedless, drew pictures on the floor like a contented child. The upswing of ecstatic joy immediately following that meant a miracle has occurred today and I can talk to you about everything, and then the sudden realization that now she's as vulnerable to This World as I am, more so and so, so much more besides.
Fox cries it all out on Vasha's chest until it's all over but the shuddering and shaking and realizing that crying that hard means you drooled on your fiance. She doesn't say sorry, though. She just murmurs, "Hi."
He's finished his smoke by the time the sturm und drang has quieted down somewhat. Still no emotional reaction from him one way or another, just the calm certainty of someone that knows what to do in this particular situation. Once the storm has passed, he deposits a single kiss on her forehead and offers a quiet, "Hello," in return. "Let's get you washed up." And then, without further ado, he just sits up on the bed and turns about to sit upright, cradling her in his arms. She is a limpet, most of the time, so hoisting her around in human form is only marginally more difficult than doing so when she's a fox. He rises, keeping her locked in his arms like a toddler, and heads to their bathroom; one of those open air stone and water affairs that's more like walking into a secret headwater spring than it is a modern bathroom. The cycling tub water is a nice touch.
He plops her down into it carefully then heads to their linen closet to get out some towels and a wash cloth which he carries over bath side and sets down, as much for his aging knees as for her when she's finished. He kneels down on the stone beside the bath and reaches for the castille soap. No detergents on his Fox, of course. He warms his hands in the water, gets the wash cloth nice and frothy, and begins scrubbing at her back and shoulders gently. Yeah, it's technically a bath, but it's also warm wet cuddle times with Vasha. It's been yyyyyears since he's had occasion to just dote on another living person like this, and it all seems a bit jilted and unpracticed, the way he nurses. He is not a particularly gentle man, and he is not prone to overt displays of physical kindness. Nevermind tenderness.
But he's trying. "Do you want to hear a story?"
She is, in fact, a limpet. This is prime limpet form here. The only way she could literally be more of a limpet is if she was hanging on the side of a rock or a boat. "Okay," Fox sniffles, and allows herself to be carried, babied, and generally doted upon. She doesn't seem to notice, or care about, the fact that he's out of practice. Let's be honest: this sort of care from Vasha is one of those things she kept tucked into the center of her heart during those very, very long seven years. The sort of thing she tried to convince herself, for her own sake, that she'd never have again, while part of herself refused to let go of wild and untrammeled hope.
Fox curls up in the tub's warm water. She is rather gross, honestly, which happens when you fly around as a bird while naked. He scrubs her and all of that dirt comes off. She doesn't wash herself; he's doing it, so she lets him. That's part of the contract.
"Yes, My Heart. Please."
"This is a story," Begins Vasha in his much more fluent Ukrainian, "about a Fox, a Lobster, and a Cat." Because even if Vasha's Ukrainian folk tales do not necessarily originally contain a Fox, they always end up containing Foxes. Even if this one actually does contain a Fox, in point of fact. He lifts one of her arms and gets to scrubbing away the dirt on it, squeezing the washcloth in the water, and then rinsing off more of the dirt when the scrubbing is done. He works from shoulder to elbow and down to her fingers and fingertips, even pulling out one of his boot knives to carefully clean under her fingernails.
"You see, Cats are clever. Shrewd. Cats live in the city, and this Cat lives in a big city. He lives in Odessa. The beautiful city on the sea." Vasha leans a little closer to her and gestures with his hand, conjuring in her mind a literal image of the city as he remembered it in his youth. Taller than it would seem now. Brighter. More beautiful. Cleaner than it is in truth. Idealized. "Cat belongs to a rich man, because rich men love animals who are like them. Ruthless. Shrewd. Hungry. Fat. This Cat was like that. And outside of the city of Odessa, in the pregnant plains of Ukraine, near a forest, there lived a Fox. Foxes are cunning. They may not be smart about things, but they are cunning. And they learn quickly. So when they are not smart, exposure will let them get smart. And cats and foxes, well. They do not get on, do they Red." By the end of the preamble, her arm, hand, and fingers are all clean. Nails no longer black and grimy. He then creeps around the tub to settle back down and start in on the other arm.
She cannot stay sad when Vasha is telling a story -- with vivid mental images better than any movie -- about a Fox (and I guess a Lobster and a Cat). Fox bites her lower lip with her sharp little teeth, tipping her head forward so that her hair mostly hides her face. The delighted way she hides behind her hair and blushes when she knows he's doing a thing Just For Her, things he doesn't do for anyone else. Does he tell other people fairy tales while giving them a bath? No! This is Just For Fox.
And so she blushes brilliantly at first, and then looks aside at him through her hair, watching him with those big green-gold eyes which are slowly becoming more gold-green over time. "Oh!" she gasps at the mental image of Odessa, charmed and delighted. Accepting it as it is, because this is Vasha's Odessa. And well she knows it.
She frowns a little at the description of the rich man and his cat, as if she's about to boo Haman. The description of the Fox, though? Her lips curl up until her teeth show in a rather inhuman sort of grin, and she starts to blush again. "No. We do not. I maybe liked a cat once, maybe. But... no."
"One day the rich man comes to the farmer in the countryside wishing to buy a goose for Christmas, and his cat joins him for the trip. The Fox, seeing all of this commotion, she comes to the edge of her forest and skulks about in the bushes and the tall grasses, edging closer and closer to all this talk of geese and feasts and the birth of the Child who would be Christ." Vasha continues gently wiping away the grime and dirt, rinsing out the cloth over and over amid the scrubbing until its water runs clear and she is well and truly clean.
"Naturally the Fox decides, 'I will have that goose for my dinner. For I have many kits, and many friends in the forest who hunger in the winter. The farmer has enough. This rich man has more than enough. But what of me and my children and the other animals? Why should we be forgotten this feast day?'" Vasha adopts a voice for the Fox that is his best impression of Naika without being Naika. He nails her smile, though.
For the cat, his posture changes. He musses up his receding hair, pouches out his tummy, and puffs up his cheeks, lowering his voice deeply until he sounds vaguely like Molokov from Chess. "And the cat, well. He spots the Fox skulking in the grasses and he calls to her, 'I see you, cunning Fox, in the tall grasses. I see you plotting for the goose that will rest fat and roasted on my master's table, and whose scraps I will have on Christmas night, before the warm fire of my Odessa villa. Go back into the forest, Fox, and root for voles. You have no thumbs. No master. You are nothing." He rocks his head back and forth, all bloated and burbly for that last series of insults.
"'I am my own master,' rejoined the Fox, 'and moreover I need no city, no tractor, no hoe, no horse to gather my food. Why, I could bring a lobster down from the mountains if I wanted to, Cat! Go back to the city. Go back to the smoke and the toil and the misery of man. For this is the countryside, the pregnant fields of Ukraine, and you do not belong here."
She tips his face up toward him for the cleaning of her face, turns her hands and arms at his direction, and just sort of gently consents and concedes to the wonderful reality of being doted upon. And she listens to the story with great delight.
Fox laughs brightly, her real laugh rather than her 'aren't I just delightful?' laugh -- Vasha knows the subtle difference -- and her teeth flash in a mirror of that smile when the Fox has her voice, her smile. Of course it should, for this is right and good.
That flash of a smile becomes a bared-teeth expression when The Cat starts talking. She's truly bought in to this story now, and makes a long, slow fart noise starting when the Cat tells Fox to go back to the forest, which only grows more flatulent as the Cat places value on having thumbs and a master.
And then one sharp little fart sound thereafter, for the humor of it. That's what she thinks of The Cat.
She straightens up proudly in the bath and wiggles in place a little when the Fox rejoinders so cunningly, and her smile gets big, as perhaps she can see where the story might go from here. Her eyes glitter, and she waits to find out.
Vasha musses his hair up again, rebloats himself. "And how will you bring a lobster down from the mountains, Fox, when all know Lobsters live at the bottom of the sea."
Straightens his hair quickly, unbloats. "I am friends with a fish."
Mussy. "Fish are not lobsters."
Straight. "I am friends with a great hawk who circles the plains and who helps me spot voles."
Mussy, bloated. "Hawks are not lobsters. Fish are not lobsters."
Smoothed down again, though at this point 'smoothed' is just a measure of degrees. He's very into it now, and the characters have their own postures such that the hair is probably unnecessary at this point. "I have a friend who is a goat. He climbs the mountains with ease and knows where all the secret places are."
"None of which contain a lobster, however, do they?" Here bloaty mussy Vasha adopts an air of victory.
"Then you should have no difficulty wagering me the leavings of the goose that I can bring a lobster down from the mountain," Vasha chirps in his Foxy voice, and then he continues in a voice that is just Vasha, his hand gesturing to paint the image of a farm in the countryside, near a forest. Probably plucked from his childhood again. The sky is impossibly blue, bright and clear. The snow gleaming from the fields. He plants a rather pasted on cartoonish cat in a top hat and monocle along with a Fox in an Ushanka, creeping low to the ground, jaws open in challenge.
"'And if you do not? You bring me your wretched little voles for me to play with,' countered the cat," Vasha continues. "'Not to eat?' asked the horrified Fox. 'Perhaps. Eating is secondary to having to me. I must have what I want, and I want to be entertained.'"
"And so," Vasha continues in his voice, "It was agreed." And here Vasha slaps the cloth over his shoulder and steeples his fingers together, waggling his overly bushy eyebrows at her.
"And do you know how Fox did this thing? How Fox won?"
All of this is watched with wide eyes and untrammeled fascination. She leans in toward Vasha, turning to prop her arms on the side of the tub with its lovely, whorling water. Her fingers move briefly, almost as an afterthought, and the water is purged of impurities which the filter didn't get, leaving it sparkling clean. She closes her eyes to better enjoy the mental image, and her smile becomes gentle, adoring, for a moment.
Her eyes snap open at the thought of the cat's unnecessary brutality, and she snarls a little bit.
And then she frowns a bit, scratching her cheek with her very clean fingernails, and asks, "Did the fish find the lobster and then the hawk caught it from the sea and then the goat carried it up the mountain and then the lobster had to climb down from the mountain where that horrible Cat could see it?"
Vasha beams his approval when Fox pieces together, more or less, the whole of the riddle and spoils-- again, more or less --the conclusion of the story. But he continues in any case.
"Yes. The Fox went to the Fish and said, 'Comrade Fish, I need to find a Lobster willing to go the mountains for me.'"
"'Well,' said the fish, 'I know a fellow traveler beneath the ocean who might be willing. Let me ask.' And he returns a short time later saying, 'My friend the Lobster will help.'"
"The Fox went to the Hawk and said, 'Comrade Hawk, I need to get a Lobster from the edge of the sea to the mountains. Will you fly him for me?'"
"'I will, Comrade Fox, but I do not know the way.'"
"'That is well. For I know just the Goat."
"And the Fox went to the Goat, 'Comrade Goat, I need you to take me to a lake on the mountain in which my friend the Hawk can fly a Lobster.'"
"'Comrade Fox, this I will do. Come. Hop upon my back and let us be off.'"
"And so the Fish brought the Lobster to the shore, and the Hawk flew the Lobster to the Mountain, and the Goat led the Fox to the Lake. And the Fox took the Lobster down to the Mountain, and brought it to the City on the Sea. She carried it to the quay, in full view of the Cat and his great house and set it free again."
"And that Christmas, while the fat cat fumed in his impotence upon the hearth of his master, confident that what everyone knew to be true could never be anything otherwise, the Fox and her comrades feasted on goose beneath the harbor lights and sang songs to honor the land, and the people, and the struggle they share."
Vasha concludes the story with a smile, though it is quick to recede. They always are.
"They know our victory is impossible. Which is why it is certain. Trust, Tovarische. Believe in yourself. Believe in us. Believe in me."
Her eyes light up when it turns out that -- rightly -- the lobster is a co-conspirator to this whole bit of True Shenanigans. She stares up at him adoringly, biting her lower lip, as he finishes the story, and then lets out a long, contented sigh.
"That is the best way of being a Fox," she agrees. "There aren't many of us here." He knows, of course, that she means Orphans. There just aren't many of them period. "Someday I will ... change that. Somehow." Her thoughts spin out of her mind unbidden. Some people would be surprised to find that Fox has a guard to even let down.
Vasha knows better.
She sighs at the last thing he says, and pushes herself up out of the water a little; the sudden rush of the water rearranging itself sounds a little like they're in that City on the Sea. Both damp hands fold around his cheeks and she presses the gentlest kiss to his lips. "I do. I always do. I always have. I always knew." That he was coming home, someday. Hope against hope. "I just... "
"I have had too many feelings, and I had to put them away so that I could take care of what needed taking care of, and then I needed to come to where I was safe so I could let them go. Which you allowed me, and you took care of me, and you reassured me. Which is exactly what I needed, and one of the million reasons I love you all the way down to the center of my heart."
"I checked," she offers with a tiny chuckle. "It's right in there." She pokes at the middle of the Pavlichenko tattoo over her heart.
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