Logs:Not For Their Sake But Yours

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Content Warning

Being yelled at by someone in a position of authority, big miscommunication, d r a m a

Cast

Vasily Tometchko, Tanya

Setting

The Firebirds Sanctum

Log

Tanya, who used to be a regular fixture around the house, has been notably absent for a while. Granted, they were left to their own devices when everyone went on holiday, but even once Fox and Friends returned, the neophyte hasn't turned up. It's somewhat surprising then to see the door to their generously-provided room open all the way, colored light spilling from it out into the hallway.

Vasha, being an Acanthus, is pretty laissez-faire about most people in his life. Things are going to happen, and generally speaking he can help ensure those things turn out okay, but if you want a room mate who is going to stay out of your business unless the portents of fortune dictate otherwise? Room with an Acanthus. But since she's back, and has been gone for some time, Vasha decides to check in on her.

Dressed in a pair of track suit bottoms, white socks, and a white wife-beater, he raps on the frame of her door and adopts a lean against the jamb. "The prodigal returns."

Inside the room, with most of the furniture against the wall, Tanya sits directly in the center of a makeshift circle of random debris. Books, some from the home's common areas, crumpled pieces of printer paper, at least three different tablet and phone screens, and a pile of chaotic wires. The Mastigos is bathed dramatically in red light, looking like they're in the middle of a ritual, though it soon shifts to an alluring magenta, as the LED strips ringing the room cycle.

They...she? Looks up, and cuts a slightly more dramatic figure than before. The street-motley outfit with a checkerboard hoodie, pink shorts, and colorful shoes is still there, but her hair is longer, her face smoother, and her eyes less nervous than the last time she met Vasha. Now they bore into him as if picking for loose threads, curious what might be hiding inside him. "Did you think I'd been lost to exposure? Are there tally marks somewhere?" It's said slyly, with a smirk following.

"No," Vasha answers bluntly, his arms folding up across his stomach casually as he settles in to observe the technological light show underway. His interest is rather perfunctory, eyes scanning it all and filing it away for later consideration. His attention then settles on Tanya and his eyebrows tick once or twice in thoughtful perusal.

"You seem to have found your sea legs. Or acquired some, in any case. Good. You were a bit green 'round the gills first we met."

The blunt response makes her eyes sparkle. The room, despite the initial theatric look, is pretty much just messy, though a few titles jump out. Hermetic texts, at least two copies of the Lesser Key of Solomon, recent books on the history of western occult mysticism, and at least one text on Lurianic Kabbalah. "I was waiting around here, being a baby, waiting for people to tell me what to do. When that didn't happen I realized I had to go out there and teach myself. I was...careful, and it's still a bit of a messy and confusing process." But she looks very pleased with herself. "I've traveled a bit. Done a lot of thinking. Talking to myself in my head. I wasn't expecting so many answers. How have you been?" She lifts her hands overhead to stretch, arching her slim back, looking to have shed a few pounds as well.(edited)

"To some degree that's the truth. I can teach you all there is to know about how I perform magic, about the philosophies of my Path, my Order, my Legacy, but unless you've sorted yourself out enough to understand it, the lesson's pointless. So. Good going taking the initiative. Grabbing you by the ears and forcing you to find comfort in the way we see the world isn't going to help you see the world the way you need to see it. You're ready to learn now. Your way." Vasha straightens up in the doorway and fishes in his pockets for his tin of cigarettes, offering it out towards Tanya, open, with a raised eyebrow.

"Smoke? I've been well enough. Acanthus are always doing well enough, though, so that's not really saying anything, I suppose."

"I'll swap puffs if you want," she intones, moving to her feet and fishing a cone joint out of her hoodie. "Acanthus. I've been brushing up on the basics, the big words. Followers of the path of the...tower of the lunargent thorn, domain of fairies? Perpetually lucky. Magically privileged, I suppose, but... I can't call myself unprivileged either, now can I?"

She lights the joint with a large lighter that conspicuously says UFFIZI FIRENZE. There's a price tag sticker still on it, marked in euros.

Vasha gives another noncommittal shrug and plucks a smoke out of the tin, lighting it with the built in lighter.

He flops the tin closed and slides it back into his pocket, letting his cigarette dangle as the habitual prop and stim item it probably is at this point.

"Correct. That's us. Fate and Time, and all that. My Legacy requires a good deal of Mind, too, as it happens. Useful stuff." Vasha steps into the room, since they're sharing smokes, and settles down cross-legged outside of Tanya's circle of multi-hued technology.

"Never thought of myself as privileged. More burdened with glorious purpose." There's a slight grin at that, only half-amused.

"The difference is how much choice you actually have," she says, sliding back down to sit across from him, smoke spiraling out her nostrils as she puffs casually. "Could you leave? Is it within your power, within your choice, to decide you just want to live in a hut somewhere, and leave the cosmic struggle to everyone else? Do you have the chance to be cruel and selfish if you wish, taking what you want from those who can't stop you?" It all comes tumbling out, and Tanya's eyebrows raise a bit after it, lips pursing. "That...wasn't how I should have phrased that. Could have. My mouth seems to have a mind of its own. Even though I've just been talking to myself..."

"Now you're starting to sound like one of the Iron Pyramid. Could I leave? For where? What is here? What is there? You should know they're both the same, Witch. No?" Vasha turns her Ruling Arcana back on her. "What is now? What is then? Is any of this really real, or is it all just shadows on the cave wall, cast from the Realms Supernal? We can be written and rewritten. Written out. Erased utterly. Brought back again just as totally. All with a snap of the fingers up there beyond the Spire Perilous. And to answer your question: it's always the same people stopping you, no matter what you try to achieve for yourself. The Exarchs. Here's one that will really keep you up at night: If they control the Supernal realms, and if they can write and rewrite reality on a whim, are you even really making choices right now? Or is what we mistake for free will merely their fingers in the threads dictating how matters will play out? Is there a difference? If there isn't, what are we even doing down here?"

Vasha taps some ash into the tray and takes another drag from his cigarette, "What are we, really?"

She lifts a finger, drawing it straight up through the air as if symbolically cutting through all the existential talk. "I didn't mean to imply you couldn't. I meant we do have a choice. I spent plenty of nights, and days, having panic attacks over the idea that nothing I did mattered. I didn't need the Exarchs to prove it. Now, I've got my demons on a leash, and I can bend reality to my whim. We're all constrained by our relationships, and the systems we're born into...but I'd say I have far more choice, far more power, than I did before, right?"

Tanya takes another slow drag. "I've noticed something," she says, seemingly switching gears. "About good people. People who desire to help others, and who feel rewarded when they do, at least. They always say 'I had no choice' when they mean the exact opposite. They mean of course, that not doing what they felt obligated to, not following their thread, was unthinkable, but that's merely fear and denial. Safety. The fact is they did have a choice. A mother who cared for their child through years of illness could have easily abandoned them to live a wild and carefree life. A bystander who puts themselves in harm's way could have kept their head down and watched. Other people do it every single day. We don't want to admit we have a choice, because the idea we could very easily choose evil is frightening."

"Very often, it's the awareness of just how easily one can do evil that marks the character of the righteous." Vasha's use of that particular word, 'righteous', is probably not coincidental. "Take me for example." Vasha gestures at himself, leaving a trail of smoke through the air from his lit cancer stick.

"Son of a Soviet General. Red Army infantry captain. Then KGB. Then FSB. A Guardian of the Veil. One of the Красная гвардия. I'm noticed only when I want to be. I can walk anywhere, be anyone, speak any language, change any fortune. I can be instantly talented at whatever I wish to excel in. I can literally make friends if I get bored. If I applied myself, I could probably bring this country to its knees, and walk out of the white house with the launch codes." Vasha leans forward and taps some more ash into the tray lightly.

"I am not cognizant of being afraid of anything other than failure. I think if you peel that judgment back a bit, you will see that what you see as fear of being evil is really fear of no longer being oneself. Who I am would not bring this country to its knees. Who I am would not steal the launch codes. Who I am doesn't expediently end life. Who I am sees a human being at the end of the iron sights. Through the crosshairs of the scope. In truth, I fear those who value expediency more than those who value evil. Evil is predictable. The Abyss, for all of its horror, does just one thing. Expedient people do whatever the fuck they want to."

There's agreement there. "Oh, I wasn't talking about the righteous, though. I knew that about you. I'm talking about most people. Good, but cowed. Obedient. Subservient. Afraid to even consider the idea of radical freedom. But...they're not the people I'm worried about. You sound like you have yourself all figured out, Vasha. I'm still putting myself together, piece by piece, after thinking my entire life such a thing was impossible...and sinful." She betrays another smirk, and holds her joint out, offering to swap it with its carcinogenic cousin. "Finding out everything I was told was a lie meant to protect the powerful did a real number on me. And that," she says, waiting a beat for effect, "was just college. THEN I had my Awakening. Now... I am the powerful. I can do what I want. Be who I choose. So the question's become...what do I want?"

Vasha makes the trade without issue, handing over the cigarette and accepting the joint. He's no stranger to that, either, pinching off a rather large hit before pulling it away from his lips and hissing in some more clean air to help him keep the smoke down. Eventually he exhales up towards the ceiling, waiting to see how that first drag lands.

"Maybe I do. Maybe I'm just a good bullshitter." Vasha shrugs the matter away, as though the two are essentially the same in the end. Maybe they are.

"Is that the question, you think? Assuming it is, what's your answer?" He sets the joint down into a notch in the ash tray and leans back onto his hands lazily, watching Tanya.

Tanya is very relaxed, lazily drawing on the cigarette, with a bit of coughing. Her demeanor changes when Vasha asks for the answer. Sitting up straight, she fixes him with a wary look. If he's taught as many students as he claims, he can probably guess what it means. They're about to see if something they do or say is over the line, and what the grown-ups in charge might do in response. "It's my question, at least. I never had to think about what I wanted...beyond that I wanted to please others. I thought that was being good, but it was just being obedient...worse, even. Stunted. Reliant on those around me. I never had to define myself." She returns to the wary look, after a disgression...circling her way around the point. "I want...justice. Fairness. That's all I really wanted. That's what I thought would happen if I did what I was told. I want to make things better. I want to dismantle the systems keeping people afraid and miserable. But what I...if I'm being honest, what I really want is..."

Her timidness threatens to return, but she keeps her gaze on Vasha and steels herself to make her admission. "I want the wicked to suffer."

Vasha maintains his disposition of general ambivalence. If Tanya was hoping to provoke a response more dramatic than his dispassionate devil's advocate shtick, she's probably in for a disappointment. He just continues eyeballing her with that same look of vague slavic suspicion. The dubious look of a person who grew up with good times constantly just around the corner of the circle they all lived in.

"Why suffer? Why not just end? Skip the monologue, the spitting venom, the nonsense with the interfector. The show, the glamour, the glitz. Why not just put the scope on the base of the skull, hold your breath, and squeeze?" Vasha's head ticks to the side, indicating perhaps a genuine hint of curiosity. Not judgment. At least not yet. But definite curiosity.

"I have to tell you, cutting off the evil exposition with a bullet can be profoundly satisfying, especially depending on how the body crumples."

Tanya is relieved by Vasha's lack of reaction, and the talk of scopes and sniping gets a smile from her. "Oh yes, that's fine, it is. Very nice. Practical. Like eating oatmeal every day of your life." Her shoulders relax and she keeps her gaze on Vasha, seeing just how far his practiced indifference might go. "It's admirable. But it's not what I want. I wouldn't be satisfied with JUST that. Just sustenance, just maintenance, just doing what's necessary... I want justice. Punishment. Revenge. Call it what you like. I want them to feel the fear, the agony, the loathing...everything that comes with being used and abused by others. Just a portion of what they've visited on countless victims. Do you understand? An eye for an eye. Less, even, on the scales I'm talking about, it would be an eye for a million. I want the scales to swing. I want my pound of flesh."

She closes her eyes, finally, brow furrowing. "I don't know what I'm going to do. But that's the truth. I want it, and I'm not going to stop wanting it, short of messing with my own head."

"And then you'd be like them. Another user. Another abuser. Someone justifying their behavior through the conduct of others. 'I wouldn't have to do this if you'd just behave,' you can tell them. 'Why do you make me do this?' And when they're lying at your feet, bleeding, burning, broken, begging for their lives you can take comfort in the fact that it's what they deserve in the court of your personal opinion." Vasha remains leaning back on his hands, casual as you please, his tone of voice never shifting from calm and conversational, as though the mirror he's holding up for Tanya is of no great consequence.

"Justice, revenge, and punishment are three separate words with separate meanings whose venn diagram intersects in the narrowest of margins. And I honestly don't believe you have the foggiest notion of what any of them actually mean."

Tanya's smile remains as Vasha replies. Her gaze keeps on his, and there's not a hint of shame so far. "I did not say it was right, or even rational," she intones first, carefully. "I said it was true. It's what I want. I could deny it and say that I'd be content with cold, distant execution...certainly I support it...but that would be just that. Denial. The urge is there, the beast sleeps. Ignoring it just puts it out of my control."

Her shoulders relax, and she takes another puff of her joint. "You succeeded in disturbing me, if you were wondering. So that is still possible. I'm just...so tired of holding back. So tired of modesty, of politeness, of restraint." Her chin lifts. There's a fire in her now, alright, though it's hard to say if it's merely neophyte passion or the deeper beat of Mastigos rebellion.(edited)

"And if you went down that road, all I'd feel is recoil."

Vasha replies with the same dispassionate, relaxed air that he's had this whole.

"So you have a gut full of worms. You can throw them up, you can shit them out, or you can let them eat your from the inside. What's it going to be?" Vasha finally breaks with the still recline. He leans to the side to fish out another cigarette, plucks one out and flips the lid closed one handed, spins it up to his lips, and lights it with the built in lighter again. He leaves the cigarette to dangle between his lips, the orthodox cross around his neck glinting as he does so.

"You certainly have an aesthetic," Tanya offers with a playful smile once more. "I don't follow your colorful metaphor, though. What's the distinction between shitting and puking, in this context?" The joint is offered over, and her gaze falls onto that glinting eastern cross. It stays there a moment, and she smiles again after, though it's a bit tight. "But...obviously, I find a balance. An acceptable compromise. I'm not so powerful that I can do whatever I want, as you clearly remind me. But we're able to sit here and discuss fighting the Seers and the Exarchs without being struck dead, so they're not all-powerful either. Plenty of them need to die. Need to be stopped. I can follow fair rules. I can satisfy myself with fire and bloodshed if it's only what's necessary. I'm not a baby. Unless that's still too radical." The corner of her mouth quirks up impishly. "Are sniper rifles and freezing snow the only appropriate methods to promote...?"

"I know what I am," Vasha counters at the reference to him having an aesthetic. That seems to be the sum total of his response to that observation. He declines the joint, for whatever reason, but continues smoking his cigarette with the same seeming casual calm as before.

"It's been what. Two months? You found your balance in two months? I doubt that, too. You've not had your ethics tested, have you? Motive, weapon, opportunity? And you passed it up for whatever other course you might have taken? Because you sound more like a serial killer trying to reassure someone they thought was also a serial killer that you're not actually a serial killer, and were just being dramatic."

Vasha takes another lazy drag from his cigarette, letting the ash build up, and exhales once more around the dangling stick with slightly parted lips.

"The Seers aren't all powerful. But they're more powerful than we are. And Exarchs aren't all powerful, either. But they might as well be. And nowhere moreso than in the Fallen World. No time moreso than now. Fox is the one you need to speak to about getting assigned to that sort of mission. If you want, and she agrees, I can find you a task to weigh your moral clarity, though."

"And, no. I also use pistols and knives from time to time. The interfector uses a knife, too. But it's imbued. The cut is more ceremonial, really, after it plucks out your soul and destroys it. And, at that point, a mercy."

Vasha finally plucks the cigarette from his lips and leans forward to tap some ash at the tray, "But I have to say, the way you talk doesn't fill me with confidence."(edited)

The mask of smirking confidence cracks. Tanya's face slowly furrows into a frown. Gradually, teeth appear, and her shoulders tense. "That's because the way I talk fills ME with confidence," she shouts, voice cracking from its whispery practice to a deeper, dysphoric tone, raising to her feet. "I didn't say I already found my balance. I said that's what I need to do! You asked!" Her fists are balled up at her sides. "You... I.... they TORE HIS SOUL OUT. They made an ABOMINATION of SUFFERING out of someone JUST BECAUSE THEY COULD. I'm glad that you're so fucking holy and principled and wise that you can only feel sad when you kill them. What I'm trying to tell you is that all I've found out in the last two months is that I've spent my entire life repressing myself to the direct benefit of systemic evil, and I'm done doing that. I'm done lying to myself, I'm done holding back what I am to avoid making others uncomfortable. You don't like the way I talk?!"

She's taken up in the fury. There's no signs of violence or magic, no flaring nimbus, but she quakes in frustration and deep-seated resentment. "GOOD." And then despite what she just said, she stops, very clearly holding back before she spirals fully out of control. Staring at Vasha, chest heaving, with the wide-eyed look of every young person who has ever yelled at an authority figure for possibly the first time in their life.

Vasha watches all of that with that same dispassionate air, his expression calm. Still waters run deep, though. Once she's finished, he carefully reaches up to pluck the cigarette from his mouth and makes a big show of slowly leaning forward and very carefully and precisely snuffing the cigarette out in the tray, until not even the smoke coils up from the ruin he makes of it. Then he leans back onto his palms just as he had before.

"The world is filled to the brim with lost, abused, broken, sad people. Every sleeper swimming in those brackish waters? They all have their own personal crosses that they bear. They all turn the same cogs in the same machine, for the benefit of the same assholes at the top. All of them. Every. Single. One. If you think it's your pain and suffering that make you special, that it was the abuse you endured that made the world choose you for this unasked for gift? Then you are wrong. Those are the circumstances you surmounted. Those are the chains your soul escaped to be able to live free on this side of the Abyss."

"For twelve years I sat on the council of Saint Petersburg as the Acanthus Councilor. It was my job to adjudicate the Lex Magica, to sentence people to die, and to assign people to do the killing. I fought a silent war. For decades. Eating their food, wearing their clothes, thinking the way they think, so that I can hunt them down and eradicate them. And I did. A whole fucking Pylon. One by one. All gone." Vasha sweeps a gunfingered hand across the room, miming shots being taken. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. The third is aimed squarely at her forehead. "Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop."

"And then I came up for air. Hadn't seen my lover in seven years. Seven years. Not a fucking word from her or to her. For seven fucking years. So when I open my mouth and share with you the nature of service and sacrifice, you will fucking listen to me, or we are through speaking."

There's tears streaming down her cheeks, and her teeth are grit like she's taking a page from Fox, prepared to bite. But she doesn't move from the spot, doesn't flee or lurch or storm off. "I'm listening," she hisses. Her eyes close, finally, and she does listen, letting everything Vasha's said fall. The weight of it. The fury is still there, but smoldering down to long-stoked embers, put there far before she met Vasha. Her chin dips, and she nods. "I don't think my pain and suffering is special. I didn't even have the worst of it...for fuck's sake." She turns her head, wiping her face. "That's why I feel..." There's a frown. "...obligated. No. You're right, I said it myself, fucking. Ugh."

She holds her head and sits back down, as if admitting defeat. "I was lucky," she says, looking to Vasha again. "That's all. Like all privilege. I thought, shouldn't there be payback? For every one of those broken people? Shouldn't I do it for them? Wouldn't it...not be enough, no matter how much, no matter how cruel? How could it ever be?"

Shaking her head, she sighs. "I'm sorry. You're not my enemy. You're a good person, and you've done nothing but help me. I'm just...just..."

Vasha's eyebrows lift subtly when what she'd actually said and alluded to dawns on her. His lips purse up tightly in the White Person Smile, eyes shifting back and forth as though searching perhaps for witnesses, or perhaps for someone to pin the blame on. But then his eyes just settle on Tanya with a good deal of weight to them.

"You are going to be powerful in the Mind Arcana. Assuming you aren't already. As someone gifted in that Arcana, as someone who has forged his soul to Rule with it, as someone whose Attainments wrap around it like a code belt, I want you to listed to what I am about to tell you very, very carefully."

And here, Vasha rolls up to a seated position, dusts off his hands, and rolls up to his feet. "If you're serious about doing wet work, if you're genuine about your desire to root out evil and stamp it out? You will call on your ability to scour your mind, to reach into its recesses for every minute detail within it, to search for clues in your subconscious that your conscious mind missed."

"You will replay the very worst things you've seen over and over again in your mind, willingly and voluntarily, because that's how you get the best results. Everyone else is blessed with minds whose memories become more like lies the more they're remembered. But not you. Not us. Every minute detail, every drop of blood, every fleck of vomit, every streak of shit, every shrill, empty howl of agony, it's going to be right there ready for recall with a snap of the fingers." And he does snap.

"When a soul goes Left, we destroy it. When an enemy needs defeating, we kill it. And we do it quickly because they're fucking wizards just like us and they can do every little fancy trick you've learned without a shred of compassion or losing a wink of sleep. You drop them quick so they don't drop you. And you do it clean so that you can sleep at night."

Vasha holds up a single finger, wagging it, rather like a warning. As though he's on the edge of losing his temper.

"The purpose of the Interfector is to bear the stain of soul destruction and murder on the Interfector themself. It's to spare people like you the burden. On your soul, on your sanity, on your sleep. What you say you want, what you are telling me you want to do? Spits all over that. Shits on it. But let's be very, very clear with each other. We spit on the Interfector when the mask is on. But you spit on the practice, you spit on everything I live for, everything I have done for the Awakened Nation. For the ladder. And for you."

"So my advice, kid? Dial it back to like a seven, knock the chip off your shoulder, thank whatever God you know for the blessing of unlidded eyes and an as yet unburdened soul. And then start acting like both of those things are gifts you want to treasure for as long as you possibly can."

Tanya has fallen silent. She's cowed. Shamed, doubly so for putting herself...themselves, above being so. If there's any resentment, it's buried under a wall of simple tail-tucked surrender, which deepens as Vasha speaks. Both hands come up to tug the hoodie down over their head. Luminescent red strands slide into view around each wrist, fine scarlet threads that spread out into the air. They're visible for the briefest moment before they, and the new Mage, begin to fade from notice...

And then, the threads are gone, but Tanya is still very much sitting there, pulling that hood down tight as if trying to disappear into it. An awkward moment passes.(edited)

Vasha's hand makes one of the many Guardian Mudas for mind-- one of the more blatant ones, so she knows precisely who's responsible --and vaguely brushes his hand in the air before himself, wiping the Imago away before it can unleash its intended effect.

Whatever anger or outrage Vasha was contending with seems to retreat back behind that cold slavic mask of grumpy indifference common to men of his ilk.

Dispelling magic whose purpose you don't know? That's just being cautious. But when it seems clear Tanya just wants to disappear and be left alone, it's Vasha's turn to slowly lift a hand from his side and, as though to prove the point he alluded to prior, he snaps his fingers.

And then he is just ... gone. As she was trying to be gone. So very gone that Tanya may have cause to question if he was even there.