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Myrne's newest farming family are an odd pair. An apparent local boy returned home, and a foreign woman seemingly twenty years his younger. But their acreage is coming back from fallow, and is just starting to properly show stalks. Most people think of wheat fields as flowing fields of browns, but that's only later in the season. At first, it's a vibrant green with stalks so shiny they catch the sunlight and sparkle in the morning and in the evening. Each bud has the propensity to catch dew and shine like a jewel. This is the sort of thing you only know if you know a crop from seed to seed again. The sort of thing that you have to want to learn in the age of factory farming.
Vasya knew about that before he started all of this. It's part of why he wanted to start doing it in the first place. What he's learning about now is the way the spiders make use of the chutes in the morning to lay their webs between the rows. He's sitting about a meter off, watching the lady work her magic, scratching at his beard and sipping coffee from his thermos.
His coveralls are already work dirty, so the mud doesn't bother him much. At least nothing is exploding around him this time.
There's a soft shimmer in the air about twenty yards off, and a portal opens on one of the paths leading through the corn fields. Through it steps a young adult with smooth, tawny skin, wearing a loose hoodie, a knit green beanie, jeans, and heavy work boots.
They gently brush their long-fingered hands down their sides, and a small gesture closes the portal. Baldur takes a moment to orient themself, and then begins to cross toward Vasya. They say nothing -- he's clearly observing something, and they're a patient creature.
When you yourself are co-located, there's less risk of being caught by an incoming portal. So Vasya doesn't react the way he might otherwise if he were only here. As it is, he simply peaks into the future to surmise what will happen if he doesn't get up out of the mud. Nothing awful. And so he doesn't. He just remarks to Oontz Oontz that the incoming portal is a friendly, and not to be too alarmed.
That, he can do with a thought. So after doing that, he fishes about in his coveralls for his now highly incongruous silver cigarillo tin. He takes out one, then takes out a second and holds it up into the air over his shoulder in invitation to the newcomer. (edited)
They're not co-located, because she's good these days but not that good. It's just never been a priority for them. Now, they cross the field and stand just behind him. "Mmm," they answer, a ponderous sort of sound, actually considering it. And then? They reach to take the cigarillo, adding "Thank you," in their soft tenor, a gentle sound, the audio equivalent of warm honey pouring straight from the hive.
"Studying spiders, now?" It's a perfectly logical thing to just about any Thyrsus, but there's an amused little turn underneath it, a little tilt of their tone. (edited)
"Her web. This morning. The dew on the web, actually. And how it is different from the dew on the wheat, for all that it's-- for all intents and purposes --the same dew." Vasya tucks the tin away and pulls out his little box of matches. One is struck, and used to light his cigarillo before he holds it up to them in offer. If they don't make it in time, he'll just offer up the box of matches.
"If this is about Squid, I'd prefer not to mix my home here in Myrne with my work in Philadelphia. Maybe we can schedule office time?" Under the citcumstances, this is a pretty generous ovation to a member of the Assembly and the Consilium from a man in his present social circumstances.
They crouch next to him, tilting their head to the side and watching the dew, the spider at work, the gentle waving of new-sprouted wheat. When the match strikes, they lean over to light their cigarillo on it, puffing once, twice. They blow the smoke out of the corner of their mouth, away from the web.
"All of that work for one day," they murmur, adding, "every morning, a new web, most spiders. It's very rare that orb webs like this last more than ... oh, twenty, twenty-five hours." It's a sort of idle observation as their mind rambles from one place to the other. A beat's pause, and they shake their head. "Not directly," they answer. "I came to check on you." The shift of their gaze toward his face is brief but keen.
"The best traps are only new once," Vasya explains up to Baldur once they've lit up and made their obsevation on the zen of the spiderweb. "My job is much like the spider. Every day I build a new web-- mine more metaphorical than hers, admittedly --but our object is the same. To catch prey. Mine may be more canny than hers, on average. But it's the same transience of purpose. I can spend weeks, months, at one point years pursuing my prey. And when the trap is spung, all that work is spent. Success or failure. And it's time to begin spinning again."
He takes a few puffs and remarks with surly slavic crypricality, "I think I would have been a good spider."
"Have you tried?" asks Baldur, thoughtfully. They shift their weight, resettling their booted feet in the late-spring mud of Vasya's field. "Being a spider, I mean. Then you could compare the experiences." They don't gainsay any of Vasya's thoughtful little monologue, just sort of ... waiting him out.
"I don't think we got to that one yet," Vasya muses, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "If I'm being honest, every time we do changing forms I know she really wants me to say foxes, so. Mostly I say foxes. I've done a lot of aquatic things. Lots of birds, also. Because, you know. That's fun. But. Not as an avocation or point of interest. No."
Vasya has done and knows how to do a little bit of everything. So he finds it necessary at times to specify what he means be 'I have done something'. While running through a Paris mall evading INTERPOL and borrowing a talent from someone's brain really shouldn't count when discussing things like this, should they?
Their dark eyes glitter amusement at that. "And you let her stay in such a rut?" This is probably just Baldur teasing. The Thyrsus sense of humor. They puff on their cigarillo, sending curls of smoke up into the sky as they listen. "Being a spider is interesting. It is everything that you say, every reason that you think you would have been a good spider, but also... "
There's a long silence during which they merely smoke, watch the spider, and consider. "You have to produce something from... inside of yourself... in a way that is very primal. It's a unique experience. Very centering, in its way."
Now it's Vasya's time to smile a secret smile of his own. But for once it's not a completely sarcastic one. "I think people must have a much different relationship to the tapestry than I do. Because people never seem to wonder where it all comes from. How I am where I am supposed to be time and time again. Like everyone's bad penny. How I know where the attacks will be, and where to set up my blinds, and what preparations to make. I make it appear simple, and so I suppose everyone believes what I do to be simplicity. Any fucking idiot can do what I do, because I am obviously a fucking idiot." Vasya taps some ash into the mud and water he's sitting in, then pokes the cigarillo back into his mouth.
"They do not see the web I spin, and so they assume nothing is coming out of me. I give them prisoners to interrogate and it is taken for granted. I go into debt with them to make them safer. This new fraternity of the enligtened I've been roped into."
"I know how Time works, a little bit, and Fate, a little bit," reminds the Thyrsus Councilor. "I am not unaware of how to arrange a tapestry. It is -- in my opinion -- different than physically producing a substance from inside your body. You don't need to do that, I just think it might be something you would find centering."
Their eyes narrow thoughtfully, following the thread. "Ah. So you feel unappreciated by Ethos," Baldur answers. "And you feel 'roped into' it, rather than that doors were tentatively opened to let you... what is the phrase? In from the cold?"
"Whatever else can be said of Yaroslav the Wise, of Pavlichenko, of Vasily, Vasya, or whatever other name they may have called me. Grigoriy? Ivan? Fyodr? Whoever I have been, all the times I have been anyone? That person has hunted and subdued Seers. When necessary, killed them. One by one. One at a time. Pylon by pylon. Because that's how they're weakest. Because they always, always, always believe it won't be them. Just like a kid a second before the mortar hits." Vasya looks away from the web to Baldur, however his expression is somewhat annoyed.
"I thought that much would carry. That much, at least, would be believed. Because you had all seen it. You had all witnessed it yourselves. The lives I saved, and the way I saved them. I wasn't asking for the keys to a sanctum, I wasn't asking for access to the archives, I wasn't asking to view someone's soul. I was asking for a nullification grenade to capture a Seer operative from the Future who was about to murder a member of your not my consilium. I didn't do it for you, or for Ethos, or for my conscience, or even for either of them if I'm being honest. I did it for the children involved. I didn't even kill my enemy."
"I thought a people that claim to see people would see that. But every clique is just another clique. And every catchy slogan is another catchy slogan. We all rally around our flags and think our own ways, and live and die by our little tribes. I'm no exception. But they need to stop pretending that they're special, and that I am somehow the problem in all of this. Unappreciated does not begin to express how I feel. It's not even in the right realm of what I feel. I perform one public function for our community. Everyone knows it. Putting me into hoc as I undertake it is selfish. And I will make them know it."
They wait all of that out. Thyrsus can be incredibly patient when they need to be. Maybe it's because they can literally slow their own metabolisms and control the flow of hormones in their bodies, or maybe it's because sometimes you have to wait for something to grow on its own if you don't want to ruin it. Not every process can be forced by magic for the best results.
"Sure. But because you are saying that's what you want something for doesn't necessarily mean that's what you want it for, or that it was actually you on the phone as opposed to someone pretending to be you. And Ethos is a lot of things, but he's not on your level with ... investigations, hm? Or making snap judgments in the kind of situations that you make snap judgments in." Little white squares of ash dribble down to the ground. "I don't know you that well yet. I know your wife much better. When she first joined the Children, she faced the same suspicion, because the Mysterium has been as unkind in some ways to us as anyone else. You of all people should know what's been done to us, what's been done to our allies, and then you wonder why people extend cautious hands?"
"You see things from your perspective, and I understand and honor that. I also see that you see the reasons why people are cautious, but you reject them, and maybe you don't see all of the reasons. Right? You expect that everyone is able to judge the safety of a decision, or to see the outcomes, the same way you do. You just said that it was invisible to others, all the work you do, and then you are surprised that others don't have the ability to do that work? It seems in conflict."
A little shrug, there. "But what can I do for you, for this?"
"Do you know why I left the Guardians of the Veil, Baldur? You probably won't believe me, but here's the truth. It's because I continued to execute the directives of my role faithfully and with clarity of conscience and purpose, and I found myself with every greater frequency coming into conflict not with Seers of the Throne, not with overly zealous Libertines, or Scelesti. I found myself staring across a desk at a Sentinel of my former order." Vasya then states that classic line of all great spy stories. "I didn't change. The job did. And I refuse to be the kind of man that does what that role required of me any longer."
"So I came here. And I learned your way of doing things. I applied my morality to it. But I executed it faithfully in accordance with my directives. I used my independent resources to uncover a threat to the Assembly. I verified the risk, I formulated a plan, I made my personal liability a community opportunity, I reached out to the guy who taught me how to use Techne expecting them to demand to come along instead of handing over an effect. What I received was not a lesson in community defense, but in libertarian capitalism.
"I want out of this game. Being an assassin has a lot going for it. But I've had enough. No one will ever believe I've truly turned coat until I shed their propaganda from my soul. And, you know what? That's probably fair." (edited)
They consider this for a moment, and then reply, "You expected him to demand to come along, rather than offer a trade for the nebulous 'some future favor', when your history is well-known with regards to this sort of operation? You say you want to be known, but -- here, you are known, and you reject it. You left your entire cadre behind for the better part of a decade to hunt Seers, and you expected that Ethos thought you would agree to him coming along? Someone you don't know, and can't possibly trust the way that you trust Pheme or Revontulet?" Now Baldur raises an eyebrow. "I know your feelings are hurt, and you will shift perspective to protect your wound until it heals, but." A little shrug, there, as fluid as essence bleeding into the Shadow from a dying spirit.
They finish their cigarillo -- one last puff, and then with a whorl of magic the butt disintegrates. It's easy to leave no trace when you're an Adept of Matter, after all. Their gaze shifts from Vasya to Oontz Oontz. "Ah," they agree. "I can see why this is the next step for you, yes. Are you running from, Vasyl Andriyovich Tometchko, or to?"
"Yes, Baldur. I believed what the order told me was how they operated. I didn't come here expecting to be a Guardian among Free Councilors. I came here expecting to gift what I learned from the Guardians of the Veil to you all while operating entirely within your modality. If any other Citizen Agent had come to Ethos reporting a Seer team operating in the area and asking for a single effect which just might not work, would they have sat it out? I understand what you are saying. But, forgive me. When I joined up, I agreed--" Here he stops, and just looks crestfallen. "Nobody believes my discipline is sincere, do they. Fuck, this conversation isn't really helping."
So he just stops having that conversation and has another one instead. "I am Vasyl Andriyovich Tometchko, and I am presently wallowing in the mud in my wheat field, as you can plainly see." His frown deepens around his cigarillo and his arms cross stubbornly. What is this running you speak of. (edited)
There's a moment where Baldur just ... stares at him, and then they bring up both of their hands, rubbing the heels of them firmly into their eye sockets as if a headache has just started brewing behind one of said eyeballs. "Okay. Well, if you are upset with how Ethos imperfectly lived his values, then, yes, talk to him about that."
Their tongue ticks against the roof of their mouth, and they let out a big, gusty sigh. "Yes, I can plainly see you wallowing," Baldur answers. "You don't need me for that." They rise to their feet, one of their knees popping loudly as they do. "I came to check on you, not to impose my presence on your wallowing." Arms stretched up above their head, then.
"What does that question even mean," Vasyl fires back with the first real actual genuine emotion in all of this exchange, and of course it's pain. "Running from or to? That's just the name I was born with. And there was a time when I was that boy. And then a lot of men made a lot of decisions about my life, and when that finally stopped you find him wallowing in the mud. I wouldn't know what running is, because it's all been fighting. Just. FIghting. Constant fighting my whole life. Literal or figurative. What you would probably view as fleeing to me has felt like a proper campaign. I don't. I don't make decisions rashly or lightly, and I certainly don't alter the course of my life on a whim. If it appears as though I have, you should wonder what new factor I was taking into account in how I am living my life, not marveling at my inconstancy. Mercury only seems wild in the sky because of where you're standing. From where he is, that's just moving. That's just getting by."
And so Vasya shrugs his shoulders at Baldur. "What do you want from me? I don't know how to ask for help in any way people don't question. Do you want me to beg? What?"
"Since I stepped from one hemisphere to another," answers Baldur with that same possibly annoying level of patience, "I have been telling you over and over that I am here to help and asking how you are. You answered me by telling me that you are upset with Ethos and why. Fair. You say you need to shed the propaganda from your soul, fair. But while you complain about people not accepting you and not living their values with reference to you, you are doing so to someone who came to find your of their own volition and has been listening to you vent your spleen about how everyone has wronged you and how can they not trust you when you are bringing the best of yourself despite your wounds without taking into consideration the wounds and pain that others live with." They spread their hands and then drop them against their jean-clad legs with a weary expression.
"If what you want is someone to hear how you have been unjustly treated so you can get it out of your system, fine. I can be that. If what you need is someone to witness your pain, fine. I can be that. I have been more and less and better and worse to others. No one is accusing you of making changes to your life on a whim, and that's part of the point. If people thought you were making changes to your life on a whim, rather than according to a plan, they'd probably have less to worry about." They push their long hair back over their shoulders with one hand, an unconscious gesture.
"What I mean by 'running from or to' is exactly that: are you leaving your past without a clear destination in mind, not knowing where you intend to end up but knowing you have to leave, or do you have an idea of where you intend to go? Whether the verb is running or moving or any other, the question remains the same."
"It's more than that. I know just how improabable the woman I met truly is, Baldur. And I will know the moment she stops being possible. That's not a burden you share with your spouse. Not if you love them." Vasya shakes his head slowly then grips at his chest tightly, as though trying to communicate something to Baldur that his lived experience has not prepared him for. Because it hasn't.
"My entire adult life I have labored under the supposition that my actions made me beyond any form of redemption the average person would recognise. I told myself this was an acceptable, perhaps even desireable trade if it meant that others like Revontulet found their way safely through this world. And then the future came back and showed me that was not only a lie, but they provided me an end point to look to. Of a sort. They provided me the questions to ask, the impulses to follow. And all it took was my daughter's face. All it took was the word daughter being spoken to me as a factual occurrence that had transpired not to some other man, but to me."
Vasya, having decided he's had about enough of the wallowing in the mud for the time being looks back up to Baldur and states flatly, "I will ask him for an apology. If he doesn't apologize, that will be all the excuse I need to walk. You aren't concerned that this will cause ripples in the Assembly? I realize the Children hold the upper hand in there, but now is not a time for a schism over my loyalties on paper. We both know the truth, and if it's convenient to continue to lie about it, then fine." Some habits die hard, it seems.
They listen, and listen, and listen. And at the end of it, they shrug their shoulders. "If the Assembly cannot stand through the insult of one of its members to another, then it's a piece of shit that deserves to fall apart. The Free Council makes a great deal of noise about 'fostering robust debate' and being able to hold up to much more than the Mysterium, toward which they often act like upstart younger siblings with something to prove. If they're liars, then they're liars. My concern will mean nothing in that case, and my concern means nothing if you cannot ask for an apology for offense given. Something that fragile, I cannot defend. Let's hope that's not the case, hunh?"
Baldur slowly blinks their dark brown eyes like a cat thinking about something, and then crouches next to Vasya, bumping their shoulder against his. "It's hard to hold that kind of knowledge on your own, and do that kind of work all by yourself." They turn their head toward him, letting long dark hair fall forward. "Fortunately, you aren't alone. At least, not if you don't want to be."
An absent scratch of their fingertips over their cheek. "Your soul isn't in what you were doing before. So why stay there?"
"For all that the condition of my soul is in question, the alterations I've made to it have..." Vasya trails off, his mouth working to form all the usual explanations and justifications which have long since become incredibly hollow and empty in his own ears. He can only imagine how they'd sound to Baldur. So he stammers to a halt, falls silent for a moment, and takes that time to compose an actual reply.
"I am afraid. These things have kept me alive through countless impossible situations. They will not come as quickly to me once they're gone. I'll be slower. I'll be easier to track, easier to find. Easier to kill." The factual certainty and lack of shame that comes from decades upon decades of what the Guards referred to as "debriefing". Self-criticism has become something of a vice to him as a result.
"If you have a better idea, I'm listening."
"They've kept you alive, and they've kept you safe, and they've gotten you to this point," agrees Baldur. "But now you need to go on from this point, and you're going to need to be different from how you were, only you're not sure how to do that without those things."
"The question then becomes 'how do you become the person who raises your daughter,' I guess." They puff out a breath, resting their forearms on their knees and looking off toward the stubby, growing wheat.
"I do. It's not an easy road, but you've never walked those, anyway. It is, I think, something that will... help you get to where you say you need to be. And I can't speak for any of the other Tears, because currently there aren't very many of us, but spirit forms are terribly difficult to kill." Their dark eyes glitter.
"I admit, I know very little about your Legacy path, Baldur. And it isn't for an absence of curiosity," says the former Guardian of the Veil in a confessional tone. "I have a good grasp of the Cortical Precepts, and I've learned a good deal of the history that's available to be learned by outsiders. I have tried to be a good Cadre mate to my friends and partner, and I have tried to be a good ally. Even when I wasn't one you would have looked to for assistance. All this to say, I genuinely have no idea what Tears even do. Or can do, for that matter."
Vasya then glances up and away into the air and calls, "It's fine, you can come out. Don't be shy." There's a small pause as Oontz Oontz worms his way through the gauntlet, but eventually the little ball of energy appears sparkling in the air where Vasya had been looking a moment ago. "Baldur, meet someone who has a name I can't pronounce with a human tongue, but whom we've mutually agreed to call Oontz Oontz. Oontz Oontz, this is Baldur. Someone in a more precarious political position than even I've ever been in."
Oontz Oontz crackles. There's no tech to speak through, but that's no barrier to Baldur's ears who hear the greeting just fine.
Well, look what we have here, says some TV smooth talker. It's a voice you should know from that one show. The spirit then projects a sick electronic beat. That Vasya just hears as more crackle-buzzing.
Baldur is charmed by Oontz Oontz immediately. Or rather, as it occurs to Vasya, Baldur has been charmed by the existence of Oontz Oontz prior to now, and is now allowing Vasya to see that they see Oontz Oontz.
They get distracted for a moment by greeting Oontz Oontz: their mouth opens, and the Tear crackles back at the manifested spirit, a delighted little thing which turns into a trumpeting fanfare as one would hear in a children's show. The greeting aspect is clear: they herald his arrival. The fanfare plays over the beat, and they wrinkle up their nose in amusement at the spirit before turning back to Vasya.
"Very often, the abused become abusers. A damaged people damages people. A wounded land gains a Wound, and the spirits summoned by such pain perpetuate the cycle, over and over again." They watch him with those dark eyes of theirs going solemn again. "But if we can reach in and ... heal that hurt, interrupt the cycle of trauma. Fix the things the Exarchs and their minions do, rather than just stopping them... maybe we can actually... move forward. Heal. Grow. Raise a new generation without putting our hurt on them."
"You can't murder your way out of desperate people," Vasya states succinctly, a statement that did not go over well in Saint Petersburg any of the times he said it. "I have tried killing. I will always know how to kill. It's simple. It's so simple in fact, that it can get to be a little too tempting to reach for as a solution to problems." That one wasn't popular either, for the record.
And then the Master of Fate and Time, the plumber of the depths of the human psyche, the psychonaut and sociopath all rolled into one tilts his head with its scraggly neckbeard and sunken, dark eyes and wonders aloud, "How do you decide who to help first?"
Baldur simply nods in response to the things which Vasya says. There's no need to elaborate on that point. It simply is.
"Triage. Fate. Watching, listening, paying attention." A beat. "Sometimes, opening a portal to Ukraine."
Baldur will probably appreciate the deep, sarcastic, bitter slavic belly laugh that follows Baldur's answer. It's the kind of laugh you give when the axe head falls off at your own execution while they work on finding a spare to get on with killing you. They'll be familiar with it, because it probably won't be the first time they've heard it at a time like this.
Vasya's head finally falls forward and shakes slowly, back to momentarily wallowing.
"In the end it always comes back to some version of 'you live with the choices you make, or you don't'." And then, rather than get up on his own weight, he offers his hand up to Baldur.
"Help me up?"
Vasya laughs, and Baldur's smile splits their face, broad and bright. They watch him, one corner of their mouth pulling up into a more wry smile, until he drops his head forward.
They stand up, then, knees popping and cracking, and reach their hand down to his. "Really, those are the only two choices," they agree.
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