Mess, cont

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

Rakitin stared at Liadov, his stomach clenched into a ball of ice.

Slowly, as he studied Nika's expression, he realized something.

Someone was striking derision and a wall of cold rejection, someone was where they weren't wanted, and it wasn't Polya.

How strange.

In the wash of relief and something else (acceptance? No, that was absurd), he felt an undercurrent of sympathy for the supply captain.

For the first time, it occured to him that he could play along.

Polya looked met Utrov's eyes and smiled a little, shyly.

The secret was shared, after all.

"You know, I think he does."

Comments

[utrov.livejournal.com]

"You can speak!" Utrov marveled. "I was thinking a witch had sewn your lips shut."

Looked like Rakitin had finally woken up.

"But your friend forgot one possibility."

He turned back to the prim-faced MVD.

"Maybe he's a decoy, and it's you I'm gunning for."

He smiled.

"Could be I spotted you from across the hall and fell in love, and I'd risk getting sent to the Zone just to pull on your pigtails a little."

In the part of him where he was honest, Utrov couldn't have said what compelled him to keep goading the most obviously dangerous man in sight. For some reason he felt like he was glad for that.

"Aren't policemen supposed to consider every angle?"

[eyes-adrift.livejournal.com]

Aryol stared at Utrov for a moment.

Then he laughed, once.

He couldn't quite believe the man's audacity, but then again, there were all kinds.

Aryol turned to the MVD major, shaking his head.

"It sounds to me like he just propositioned you, comrade major."

Though he enjoyed the irony, Aryol kept it from his tone.

"Muzhelostvo's still a crime," he said, voice downy and dark.

"...isn't it?"

[nikanor-liadov.livejournal.com]

"Oh yes," said Nika, softly. "Absolutely."

His fingertips tattooed a slow rhythm on the tabletop.

"Very much illegal, and as such, foolish to throw around lightly."

He was actually quietly unsettled by Utrov's cavalier overture, jest or not. It was disquieting, to hear a countryman speak such dangerous words, in front of unknown men, after having been on base for less than an afternoon.

"But stupidity isn't a crime. Sodomy is."

Discretion in matters like that was indigenous to every Russian's bones- and especially to the bones of those that indulged.

There was no way Utrov could know of the strangely tolerant place he'd only just landed- for all intents and purposes, a remote outpost offered even less assurance than Moscow, with its parks and underground anonymous pleasures.

Utrov also could not possibly know that Liadov was inclined that way- in fact, the ring on his finger suggested well otherwise.

So why would a stranger even dare to speak of sodomy and unnatural acts to an officer of the Interior Ministry?

More so, what could possibly lead him to do so in the presence of more than one person? Such assignations resolved themselves in intimate dual discourses, not dinner parties.

Liadov frowned, the expression etching deeper between his sullen lips.

"You are slandering the MVD, Captain, in implying that I am a sodomite."

[utrov.livejournal.com]

"Relax," Utrov said carelessly. "I was no more serious than you were, when you suggested I wanted to fuck your funny little friend there."

He motioned with one hand, casting something invisible away.

"What fool would have enough of a death wish to propostition someone holding a stack of invitations North? Probably with very pretty calligraphy, too."

It wasn't guaranteed, even there. Just likely. Never so easy.

He regarded the sour-faced blond, insousience in his eyes.

"You look like handing those out is the most fun you ever get."

[nikanor-liadov.livejournal.com]

"Possibly the same kind of fool who would broach that manner of joke," Nika replied.

A sardonic comment of that kind might be made by a policeman to a citizen, because the standards of the State were understood- there was no misconstruing his intentions as anything but cynical. But a citizen speaking the same to a secret policeman was frankly beyond the boundaries of sanity.

And that was the fundamental disconnect, he thought, with this man. He apparently had no concept of the world he was living in. Every sentence out of his mouth was enough to get him hung up by his thumbs- but he seemed oblivious to that, as if he believed this were an open society, with free speech.

As if words were protected, and the government needed an actual reason to lock him up and throw away the key.

Gradually, Liadov's irritation was commuted to vague pity.

He wondered how many people had suffered the price for this man's lack of awareness.

It wasn't worth his time to engage this man, on any level. Liadov wasn't here to arrest administrative officers, or take vindictive actions on insignificant citizens simply because he could. He was here to solve a nasty problem.

Nika's eyes took a final glance over the Captain's face. Soft, too-long mouth with undefined edges. Odd. His eyes were so flat and brown, it looked like he had no pupils.

"I rather doubt we have the same idea of fun," he remarked, succinctly.

[eyes-adrift.livejournal.com]

Politely, Aryol wiped his mouth with a napkin.

"On that note," he said, and gathered the remains of his meal on his tray, "I think I should be going."

Aryol stood up.

"Major, Lieutenant."

He paused.

"Captain."

He glanced to each man in turn, not letting his gaze linger any longer on the major than the other two, even though he wanted to catch the MVD man's eye, share a moment of irony.

But there was no need to be obvious, especially given the slant of the conversation they'd just had.

Aryol had the feeling that the major would pick up on his meaning, regardless.

Instead, he offered a fleeting smile to those still seated.

"I'll see you later, I'm sure, comrades."

One of those comrades, he'd see quite soon, he was certain.

[utrov.livejournal.com]

Utrov couldn't have said what it was about this prick that got under his skin. Usually he could smooth over anybody, no matter how prickly.

Used to be. Before he'd started getting in fights that he could never remember the cause for. Before he'd started getting in the face of anybody who looked like they'd give back.

Cause and effect, Borya would have called that.

Maybe it was just that cold-eyed look, like Utrov was something stuck to the bottom of his boot that he could reach down and flick away.

And he didn't do it.

Utrov had handed the bastard enough ammunition to off him a dozen times over. Practically primed the fucking pistol.

Why was he holding back now?

Blue blood and fucking blue balls.

"Now that I think of it," Utrov said, voice gone cold at the core, "I do know men like you."

There was a kind of truth that was so simple you never believed it until you found it out for yourself. Like how anger could make anything easy.

When the blast radius was clear, you kept lighting the fuse.

"They wave around their reputation and like threats better than action. They parcel out the dirty work and keep their own hands soft and clean."

[nikanor-liadov.livejournal.com]

Nika sighed, pausing briefly to shake his head.

Laughing softly.

"You say that as if it's a bad thing."

His finger caressed the cap of his fountain pen fetishistically as he tilted his gaze toward the door.

"But you're right. In this case, its definitely not worth ruining my manicure."

[utrov.livejournal.com]

Utrov stared at the MVD, wanting to want to grab him by the back of the neck and smash his too-pretty face against the table, let him snigger through a mouth full of broken teeth.

Better with a bang, than...

But all he felt was hollow.

Vasily threw his head back and laughed.

"Looks like we've found something to agree on! Never thought I'd see the day."

[nikanor-liadov.livejournal.com]

"For that declaration to make even a remote amount of sense, we'd need to have known each other longer than fifteen minutes," Liadov remarked, absently, touching his napkin to his lips.

His eyes traveled upward, seeking the clock on the wall.

Rakitin seemed to have turned into a pumpkin, and it wasn't even midnight.

"So, Polya, what are your plans for the evening?"

He paused and glanced at Utrov skeptically, struck by a thought.

"You aren't quartered in the visiting officers' wing, are you?"

It was more likely that he had a temporary quarters assigned; Molokov had, after all- but Nika allowed that they might not have reassigned his rooms. Or they might have. Groznyj Grad Administration was not known for their lingering empathy.

Molokov probably rarely used his assigned quarters anyway, thought Nika, wryly. Krauss seemed to have had a monopoly on the Captain's down time, and his night time.

On the other hand, if Utrov was quartered near them, Liadov would have to watch Polya fret like a schoolgirl every time the beady-eyed Captain crossed his path.

Something was definitely amiss in this situation. Something concerning Rakitin and this random administrative officer.

Whatever it was, it certainly didn't involve or interest him- unless the guy was threatening Rakitin's life or compromising the impartiality of the investigation.

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

After briefly opening his mouth, Polya had gone back to playing dead, more from habit than anything.

He was no longer afraid of this man.

Perhaps having stood in the shadow of Isaev so recently had burned out the conduits in him that carried fear. Perhaps, by that contrast, Utrov's pretensions at power of presence were revealed for the flimsy sham they were.

What was there to fear?

If the captain's words were an odd sort of threat - Look, I'm stupid, mad, or suicidal enough to condemn the both of us - it would have been potentially much more effective if it weren't directed at a man Polya had personally offered to service not three days previous.

That didn't make him any happier when Utrov said, "The German said I was thrown in the guest quarters. Something like that. There was an 'ach' in there somewhere."

Krauss probably wanted Molokov's former quarters left undisturbed for as long as he could manage it. He had seemed understandably sentimental. Also, they were probably haunted.

Utrov grinned, a little more maniacally than was, in Polya's opinion, strictly neccesary.

"Does that make us neighbors?" he said.

Well, it wasn't as though Rakitin didn't already have reasons to avoid that hallway as much as possible.

Nika had the best notion, he thought, in simply ignoring the man. No time like the present to start.

"I thought I'd go out to the firing range for a while," Polya said. "I'm not very good, but I think I can get better with practice."

As it often turned out, his brain was slower than his mouth.

"What about you?"

He heard it slip out and managed not to wince.

[nikanor-liadov.livejournal.com]

Nika frowned.

"I don't know," he said slowly, toying with his cup, spinning it slightly in the cage of his fingers. "Perhaps I'll turn in early."

It was certainly a tempting thought. His soul was exhausted.

His eyes sought Polya's with mild curiosity.

"The firing range?" he said, tilting his head. "I had no idea you were so interested in firearms."

He nodded.

"That's good, Rakitin. A man in our neighborhood of work should be adept with a piece, even if he primarily does benchwork."

That the Lieutenant should want to go to the range- at this late hour, after a rigorous interrogation- was unusual, but no more so than the habits of some of his colleagues.

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

"I've just begun to realize that," Polya said ironically.

He sipped tea, and deadpanned,

"You never know what's going to jump out of the shadows."

[nikanor-liadov.livejournal.com]

Nika averted his gaze significantly.

"Indeed," he murmured. "One never knows."

[parabellum-p08.livejournal.com]

Krauss recoiled like he was expecting the salt shaker to bite off two more of his fingers. The mere mention of the Colonel’s name sent a cold chill racing down his spine and spreading along his extremities.

“V…Volgin?”

There was nothing threatening about Major Lynx’s tone, nothing to suggest what awful things awaited him in the torture room.

He had seen the end result, time and time again. He was the one who made the charred cadavers disappear, effortless as brushing dust from a Ming dynasty vase. He had waited there time and time again, just on the other side of the great steel door, morbidly fixated by pleas for mercy and the hair raising crackle of ten million volts.

The German’s gaze dropped and he stared into his plate. Borscht. Twenty years a Russian citizen, and he still hated borscht. How ironic if it was his last meal?

Thoughtfully, he pursed his lips.

There was a whole desk drawer filled with forged passports safe under lock and key in his office, and if he could catch a flight to Moscow, he could be having tea and Spätzle with Molokova on the Elbe within the week.

“Has…has the Colonel expressed to you just when he would like to have…words with me?”

Krauss smiled and lifted a spoonful of the stew. “Nevermind. It’s nothing. You’re right, comrade. The borscht is quite delicious tonight.”

[snow-death.livejournal.com]

"You hate borscht," deadpanned Alexei, snorting softly.

He dipped his spoon into the jewel-toned broth, raising it to his lips.

"Unless you've changed your ways since I knew you."

It was good. Ukrainian style, full of meat as well as beets.

He'd missed the camaraderie of mess to some extent.

Even eating with hyenas and jackals had its charms.

"As for Volgin, I think he has bigger fish to fry right now."

Lynx paused, raising a dark eyebrow.

"So to speak."

[parabellum-p08.livejournal.com]

“Ach, yes.” Johann found himself smiling now, nodding as his plan took tangible form, and he dropped the soaked napkin into his tea cup with a wet plop.

Motte traveled well. Slept most of the time, cozy in her crate.

Documents were easy enough to forge. Passports and papers and photos.

Germany was beautiful in the spring.

Pilots were in short supply though, and difficult to convince.

“Some things never change.” He drawled with a grin, and his firmament blue eyes flickered briefly to the table where flamethrower wielding lunatics sat gathered in a neat row.

Krauss was one of the things that remained a constant. A friendly parasite: a smiling, laughing remora, a leach with an impeccable taste for the finest, rarest types of blood, a vulture groomed smooth and sleek, with scantly a feather out of place.

The smile drained from his face at once, as Lynx’s brow arched like a curious caterpillar, and the meaning of his words became abundantly clear.

“Ahh. Well. How lovely. I shall surely look forward to the visit then.”

[snow-death.livejournal.com]

Alexei snorted brusquely.

"He may think he's going to punish you, and no one knows better than me how much you deserve it."

Lynx's eyes locked onto the German's, neutral and intractable.

"But when it comes down to it, everybody needs a scoundrel."

He swallowed the last of his tea.

"Don't they?" he finished, rheotorically, narrowing his eyes.

[raidenovitch.livejournal.com]

Raikov ignored the exchange going on around him, as much as one could when it buzzed in-and-out of his hearing, concentrating intently on his soup.

It wasn't out of his usual disdainful disregard for anything - more than he was silently brooding.

Misery, as it turned out, didn't love company. The Grad's paperwork had never been so efficient, with Raikov holed up in his office actually working.

Ocelot had been a good comrade and had helped drink away some of his mood, but it was beginning to hit Ivan hard that he fucking missed Volgin, instead of missing fucking him.

He was too proud to admit that aloud - hell, he struggled with admitting it to himself - but the half-rumours and whispers and the stranger suddenly propelled to Major class, in the same way he was, hammered down his doubts too much for him to ignore.

He chanced a glance across at Ocelot, trying to catch his eye.

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

Polya slipped away alone, giving Aryol and Nika privacy to go off together. As much privacy as they were likely to get on a crowded base.

He had the feeling he was going to be spending a lot of time on the firing range for a while.

All for the good. His shooting skill could use the improvement, and it was soothing, in an irrational, very loud way. It might also afford the chance to run into Leshovik again. Polya had taken an immediate liking to the gruffly gregarious soldier. It would be hard not to feel a fondness for someone hunting whoever was trying to hurt the Colonel. Not to mention he'd had the grace not to show disgust at Polya's unwanted advances. That was nice.

The range was also where the Ocelots practiced.

But not this late. Not usually. And, were luck to run sour, it wasn't as though Isaev would notice him.

That's just it, isn't it? something acerbic in him whispered.

That quality. Whatever it was that drew him as much as it terrified him, or maybe because. He had seen it before, in those rare men, those rare moments.

It was good that they had little reason to encounter each other. The base could be oddly isolating that way. Everyone staying in his repsective territory. Good, also, that the situation was what it was, as Nika had casually spilled over dinner. Otherwise, there was no telling what Rakitin might have done.

That was a lie. He knew exactly.

If a man like that could look at him, see him, acknowledge for the least moment in the basest way that Ippolit existed, then, for that moment, Ippolit could believe it.

He had believed that, once.

Look how well that turned out, Polya thought sardonically.

The living evidence of that should be along any minute now.

Better to face it head on, on ground of his choosing, than to wait until he lost the illusion of courage anger provided.

Polya slipped behind one of the huge, rectangular steel crates that seemed to be all over the base. He had no idea what they were for. It was like the place was specifically designed for people to sneak around.

Soon enough, he heard footsteps approaching, and their owner passed by into view.

He really was following him. Absolutely shameless.

From behind, before he could lose the chance, Polya moved quickly out from the shadow and grabbed Utrov by the arm.

Rakitin wasn't the kind given to casual pats on the back, arms around the shoulders, or grabs of any sort. He didn't often touch people at all, really.

Still he thought it unusual how quickly Utrov faced him, and the moment before recognition dimmed his eyes made Ippolit pull his hand back before thought could form.

No way now but forward.

"What in the hell did you think you were doing?" Rakitin demanded.

Utrov stared at him, mind shifting gears visibly in his dark, flat eyes.

“I don't see how that's any of your business.”

Polya gritted his teeth. “You're following me, and you're not going to let it drop. That makes it my business.”

Utrov moved forward. Rakitin stood his ground, though the proximity was quickly uncomfortable.

His voice lowered. “Not going to let what drop?”

Exasperation gripped Polya firmly by the brainstem. “Is that what you want? I'll acknowledge it. Yes, I know you, yes, I've fucked you, and yes, if I'd realized you were going to insist on suicidally provoking my partner over it, I would have known better.”

Utrov crossed his arms and gave him a long, level stare.

He was shorter than Polya. Rakitin hadn't noticed that before.

“The pompous bastard got on my nerves,” he said. “That's all.”

(cont.)

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

“He's not-” Polya began hotly.

Like most easy, obvious answers, it made no sense at all.

No one sane would be willing to blatantly invite such a risk for the sake of mere dislike. No one with that kind of habit could survive. Even a fool like Ippolit, who had always found it difficult to care much about matters of his own life and death, knew that.

“No,” Rakitin realized, anger dropping away beneath puzzlement as he studied Utrov's face, “it's not.”

For a moment, the supply captain's aggressive affability dropped. He was disquieted.

“I get it,” he said, in tones of facetious discovery, the smirk returning to his face like moss to a wall unexpectedly scraped clean. “You're screwing that cat-faced MVD.”

Polya sighed.

“Is there a prize for being the tenth person to assume that?”
Utrov cocked his head. “Is that a yes?”

“No,” Polya said, before it occurred to him that this was precisely the kind of moment It's none of your business was made for.

“Then what are you so pissed off about?”

“You,” Polya answered succinctly, “being an asshole.”

Utrov shrugged. “That's fair.”

Silence fell awkwardly and sprained its ankle. It was getting increasingly difficult to meet Utrov's frank gaze without thinking of the warm texture of his hands, rough sheets and caresses. Polya would not allow his eyes to wander, in case they never came back.

“There's something I need to say to you,” Polya confessed.

Utrov raised his eyebrows, politely attentive. “Yeah?”

“I thought by the time I said that I'd figure out what.”

“Yeah, well, don't think too much about things.” He grinned wanly. “I never do.”

“I noticed,” Polya muttered.

To his surprise, Utrov was the first to look away. He looked over across the tarmac, as if tracking obscure movement through the distant shadows. Polya almost thought it was to someone else that he said, quietly,

“You could have stayed, you know.”

Polya's eyes dropped. He leaned against the crate, fingers sliding absently along the cold metal. “I know.”

He felt like he owed him some sort of explanation. Something to reach across the gulf between what they had acted as to each other on that night and who they were.

“I was...I don't know.” He admitted it. “Afraid.”

Incredulity curved across Utrov's brows. “Of what? A naked guy with a mermaid tattooed on his back can't be that intimidating.”

Polya blinked. “You have a...” He shook his head. He hadn't seen anything but his own fears, that night. “I wasn't even looking at you.”

Utrov gave a shabby grin. “Your loss.”

“Yeah,” Polya agreed softly. “It was.”

The captain's dark eyes lifted. He took a step forward. “I believe in second chances.”

Polya looked at him carefully from the corner of his eye. “Yeah...?”

Utrov smiled. “Yeah.”

He was close enough to catch his scent. Earthy, with a hint of horse. Close enough to kiss. The logic was completed before Polya realized he was kissing him. He could feel amusement bend Utrov's lips, warm and startlingly soft amid rough stubble.

The stranglehold Rakitin kept over his passions broke like a fever at the touch. He grabbed Utrov around the waist and pulled him closer, control shattered by the force of how he wanted him. He wanted...he wanted...

...someone.

[utrov.livejournal.com]

So the weird little guy still had some guts after all.

Consistency, no, but Utrov didn't consider that much of a virtue, anyway.

Rakitin disengaged and took a small step back, seeming not to notice when his back struck the metal container.

“This isn't right,” he said.

Utrov opined, “That's half the fun.”

Muzhelostvo's less-than-legal status hadn't bothered Rakitin before....

Shit.

Utrov hadn't been the one the MVD's threats were aimed at.

But the look on Rakitin's face was remorse, not recrimination, like he'd remembered that something forgotten had been left far away.

“It's not you I want,” he said, with bluntness that might've irked another man. “It's anyone. That's not right. I- don't even know you, yeah?”

“That can change,” Vasya suggested, more for the sake of argument than anything.

Just as well. Rakitin was already shaking his head. That weird almost-white hair. He looked like a snow sculpture someone'd put in uniform.

Didn't feel like one, though.

“But me, I know too well. I know what I'd do to you. No one should have to bear a dog's devotion.”

He smiled weakly.

“Even if he's a crazy, stupid bastard.”

Vasya laughed quietly.

“Well, I can't pretend to know what you're talking about. But if you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

“Yeah.” Some relief was evident on Rakitin's face. “Just- don't go trying to make trouble, all right? We don't need any more bodies around here, or more paperwork.”

“I'm not making any promises.”

Rakitin rolled his eyes. “I had a feeling you wouldn't.”

“Hell, they could've sent me out here to get rid of me,” Vasya joked. “I've heard the commander here is some big, dumb son of a bitch who gets it up slaughtering bystanders.”

As his voice faded away, he noticed that Rakitin's eyes suddenly looked a lot harder.

The temperature seemed to have dropped suddenly.

“It would be a good idea,” Rakitin said, pitched low, “if you didn't speak to me again.”

“Eh?” Confusion turned Utrov's mouth. “What's wrong with you?”

“Was that too complex?” His voice had risen, with a distinct edge. He stepped forward, looking taller than he had a minute before, semi-permanent slouch vanished. “Then let me simplify; Shut the fuck up and Get out.”

Utrov blinked. He glanced around at the empty courtyard. “Out of where?”

“Try my sight. Work from there.”

The sudden change in mood didn't make any sense. Utrov tried again. “What-”

Rakitin's lips were white with rage. “Now.”

It occurred to Utrov, as he turned to walk away, that he'd never really seen this man angry before.

[krasnogorje.livejournal.com]

Dmitry left the warm glow of the mess hall behind and lingered outside the doorway, watching the first twinkling stars of dusk and trying not to think.

Iapetus never looked him in the eye.

He never noticed it before, but it made him feel grotesquely uncomfortable sitting there at the table with Io and Iapetus chatting idly about nothing.

It was easier to excuse himself, and he hadn’t had much of an appetite lately anyway. Not since the night with Liadov, and soft-spoken words that left him in ruin.

Something moved, just beyond the golden halo cast by sodium lamps.

He pushed away from the wall and started forward, even before he was consciously aware that the silhouette was human. Instinct alone drove him, kept him in the shadows, kept him silent as death itself.

The stranger didn’t move right to qualify as female; he lacked grace, carried himself with purpose and urgency, never looked back over his shoulder.

Dmitry hesitated at the corner of the building as the stranger was dragged into the privacy offered by a long shadow. It was dark, but not too dark to see the other man there with his back to the metal crate and his eager hands roaming the stranger’s body.

His black eyes narrowed, and a smile turned up the corners of his mouth.

Deimos doubled back around and emerged from the darkness on the other side of the crate, inching along the end with his back pressed to the door until he was close enough to hear the rustle of clothing, wool against wool, a gasp, a moan.

Casual conversation erupted into an argument at a fever pitch and turned vicious.

A lover’s quarrel. Fucking verbally with curses and threats.

The flame soldier leered closer, gripping at the edge of the steel for support.

His boot struck something, and he cursed under his breath.

It fell onto its side, rolled lazily into the light.

An oil can! A fucking oil can!!

If the quarreling lovers had not heard the noise, they would have surely seen the gleaming metal can roll out from the shadow, spiral, and stop with its red label belly-up towards the starry sky.

Deimos held his ground as a figure rounded the corner, eyes narrowed, hand already at the handle of his flamethrower.

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

Rakitin averted his face as Utrov strode off. Fury blistered his vision. He'd never killed a man with his bare hands, but one more word and he might have tried.

That filthy, ignorant son of a bitch. To think that he'd almost...

Polya sagged against the crate.

The familiar, frustrated emptiness inside of him keened, threatening to break him to pieces like a failed plaster cast.

He could feel the residual warmth of Utrov's body laying along his skin, the taste of his avidity tinting his lips. The shape of his hand could have been scribed on his back in foxfire.

Rakitin had chosen correctly. He would have been Tantalus, a sip of water from Persephone only deepening the burn of his thirst.

False fulfillment was worse than none.

Polya was repeating this to himself when he noticed motion out of the edge of his vision. It came from the far end of the crate.

"Kto eta?" Ippolit called in an undertone, moving toward the source.

He came around the corner and face-to-face with Deimos of the Flame Patrol.

He almost wanted to laugh.

Of course. Who else would it be?

"Oh," Polya said. "It's only you."

Surprise on his suspicious features, clutching a flamethrower like a child's favorite blanket.

In place of the rage he had once held toward the murderer, Polya found vaguely repulsed pity.

"What are you doing there? Nothing better to do than listen in on other people's conversations?"

The jibe was half-hearted, and fell flat as a cat in a roadway.

[krasnogorje.livejournal.com]

The flame soldier relaxed his grip on his weapon, chuckled and shook his head.

Only a rat. A lab rat. Lieutenant Rakitin, complete with beady black rodent eyes and tousled white hair.

“Just passing through.” Deimos answered with a pleasant smile. “Looked like there was more than conversation going on around the corner. Must be hard to talk with your tongue down another man’s throat.”

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

The ashes of anger stirred and gave forth nothing.

A few days ago, Rakitin would have given a bloody chunk of his heart to have the murderer alone in the night at point blank range.

As he looked at the man who had once been called Dmitri, Ippolit could only see a twisted child.

Revenge against such a stunted soul was worse than empty.

"Report me if you want," Rakitin said tiredly. "I won't stop you."

He released a listless laugh.

"Wouldn't it be funny, if we switched places. Me at Magadan, and you here."

[krasnogorje.livejournal.com]

Rakitin’s laughter caught him by surprise, left him off-balance, unguarded, and a bit unhinged.

He was laughing, not condemning Dima's life as useless.

“Whatever you want. I’ll have a five-page formal report on Colonel Volgin’s desk tomorrow morning, then.”

Deimos smirked at the sheer irrationality of his promise. There was no reason he shouldn’t spare the usual insults and cursing, and Polya’s brief fish-eyed look of horror more than made up for the inconvenience.

“Shit. You wouldn’t last ten minutes at Magadan. Maybe a half hour, tops, if you were someone else’s bitch.” Dmitry shrugged a bit, looked Rakitin up and down. “Well. Maybe an hour. You’re kind of pretty.”

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

"Why, I think that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me."

It was as if the world was flat, and had turned to be viewed edge-on. Polya couldn't see any reason why he shouldn't be having a friendly conversation with the scum of the earth.

The threat to reveal him to the very man he longed for deepened the surreality.

Polya found himself wondering about this wretched being. Like a compound that had, through some fatal flaw or grand mistake, devolved into less than its components.

"Is that how you survived?" he asked, curiosity floating across his features.

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“No.”

His tone turned bitter again, his dark eyes narrowed enough to drill holes in Ippolit soul. Dmitry hesitated, unsure if it was genuine foolish curiosity, or an insult disguised as the former.

He recalled the tall, graceful blonde on that very first day. Too pretty, too frightened. His fear was palpable and delicious.

There were few words in the beginning, only brief impersonal exchanges, fumbling, mumbled orders and secrecy.

And then one day, he thought to ask the man for his name. Iosef Obruchnikov. Also born in Moscow, but from a very different world than Dmitry.

He looked down for a moment, then back up at Polya, pushing away from the metal crate. “No, it’s not. If you --”

The flame soldier stopped suddenly, and became aware of something he had forgotten entirely, up until that moment. Thoughtfully, he pulled something from the pocket of his jumpsuit and turned it over in his hands. He held his breath as he opened the lid of the brass compass.

The black needle wobbled, and settled across the middle of the N. It was pointing due north.

“Listen. You’ll probably take this the wrong way, but I’ve got to say it now. If I were the murderer you’re hunting, you’d be my next victim. You fit the profile. You’re vulnerable. And you fucking wander off from your bodyguards and meet strange men in strange places.”

Deimos traced his fingers over the engraved phoenix on the top of the compass, but did not look up.

“And if I were the murderer… eliminating you would eliminate any risk of getting caught. But I’m not the murderer. Just a murderer.”

Finally, his gaze flickered back to Polya. "You should be more careful."

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Polya furrowed his brow, confused.

"You sound like you want him to get caught. I would have thought you'd be kindred spirits."

It was blunt, but without malice, like a bat swung idly from hand to hand.

"I'd think you wouldn't mind seeing me dead, either."

The villain's sudden concern surprised him almost as much as getting an answer. Unease laid its hand at the small of Polya's back.

Rakitin looked up at the stars, watching them watch him.

"You know," he mentioned, "for a while, I would have killed you, if I got the chance. I wouldn't have given it an instant's hesitation."

As he returned his eyes to Deimos, something caught the light. Metallic, circular. A shape like a bird in bas-relief. An eagle, maybe.

"What's that?" Polya said, forgetting himself. "It's pretty."

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“Maybe you thought wrong.” Dmitry shrugged, turning the compass over and over in his hands as though it were a worry stone. “Or maybe you thought right, and I’m the one who was wrong. I don’t know.”

He was startled to think that such a delicate flower as Ippolit Rakitin could harbor such malicious thoughts. It was macabre and wrong.

“Strange, isn’t it? I never took the time to look at the stars until I came here.”

Maybe Rakitin wasn’t quite as delicate or innocent as he looked.

An awful thought skittered across the surface of his consciousness, like a rock across a still pond.

He pressed the compass into Ippolit’s palm, and his hands lingered.

The pathologist’s skin felt warm and soft, and slightly clammy.

“What was her name? You want to kill me… because I killed someone very close to you. Don’t you? Was she a lover? A sister?”

Where maliciousness typically lay coiled like a venomous snake, there was only curiosity, and a frantic desire to know.

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Rakitin would have expected the murderer's hands to feel lifeless as stone, as if the blood staining it were an agent to corrode the flesh into a physical reflection of inner inhumanity. Instead, it felt perfectly ordinary. His skin was too numb to crawl.

"Not you," Polya said softly to the bronze object in his hand, "except for the sense that every strain is the same sickness."

A compass. Rather beautiful. What he had taken for part of the bird design was in fact stylized flames. A firebird. One of the four beasts in the stars. Polya had always liked the turtle best.

"Her name was Kira." He turned the compass in his hands. "She was young, and she was lost. My sister. Someone like you found her."

The metal gleamed.

"I found the evidence that convicted him. I never saw his face. It was over quickly."

The light made its edges glow as if there were fire hidden behind them.

"He's probably dead. I don't know."

Rakitin clicked the lid shut with a sound like a cricket's cry.

He set it back in Deimos's hand, the unneccesary gun at his side like a friend. The bird nested amid the thematically appropriate scars.

"It doesn't really matter, does it?"

Polya met Deimos's eyes without anger.

"It is an insult to suggest that simple death could atone for your crimes."

Less than an empty gesture.

"Tell me," Rakitin said suddenly. "I always wondered. While they're bleeding, do you imagine that someone is going to measure the wounds to find the width of the knife? Or that someone's going to bag and label the bits you scatter?"

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Dmitry made a small noise of understanding. Sympathy and compassion were still beyond him and his fractured psyche, but he understood in his own way, and nodded.

“Kira. That’s a very pretty name.” A very unusual name too, and he wanted to ask just how young she was, what she looked like, how she wore her hair, but something about it struck him as wrong, in some way.

He shook his head. “No, you should care.”

Dmitry met the pathologist’s gaze, and the man’s curiosity gave him chills, quickened his pulse, set his nerves on edge.

“You ask so many questions.” Deimos smiled, reached out and brushed his fingers over Polya’s cheek, gently, almost lovingly. “Do you really want me to tell you what I imagined as they lay bleeding?”

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How strange, this smiling murderer.

His fingers were dry and coarse. Polya wondered distantly if he might glance into a mirror later and see his face flayed open to the bone, or some other mark.

Wounds surrounded by stippled powder burns were characteristic of shots from this distance.

It was part of his job to recreate the moment of death from what was left behind. To make from scavenged parts a working model of a murderer's mind.

"Tell me," Rakitin said.

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Deimos pocketed the compass and his vicious smile lingered.

“Come a little closer, and I’ll tell you everything.”

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Rakitin stepped forward. He drew his gun from the holster and rested the muzzle at the murderer's heart.

Contact shots left stars of powder congruent with the weapon's rifling.

"Tell me," Polya said softly. "What do you think of while a girl, defenseless, unarmed, is losing her life for the crime of letting you within a meter?"

Sorrow flowed in him like a river.

"Do you even understand what you've done?"

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The rigid steel pressed to his heart drew a ragged gasp from his lips, and he shivered as fire raced along his skin in pinpricks and blossomed at his groin.

“You’ll kill me lovingly, just like this?” His fervid gaze flickered to the gleaming metal against his chest, then back to Polya’s dark eyes. “With a gentle squeeze of the trigger?”

Dmitry pressed closer, his hands seeking out the buttons of Rakitin’s coat.

“Something beautiful is exchanged between murderer and victim. Something spiritual. A dance. Like sex. Better, still. Words do not exist, because words cannot describe the feeling of taking another life…”

He was whispering, low and soft into the pathologist’s ear like the sweet nothings of a dear lover.

“Words like carnal, and erotic… but there are no words for it! The struggling, the screaming, the red blood that flows so easily…and my own rage. The is nothing that could ever extinguish it, and when they are silent, finally, and cold and pale… oh, they’re so beautiful in death.”

Dmitry trembled, rested his head on Polya’s shoulder, pulled the lithe, pale man against him by the coarse wool of his coat. Wool, yes, he smelled sweet like old wool and soap, and the murder shivered again. “You have no idea what you do to me. How you destroy me, only with questions.”

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Rakitin looked down at where Deimos clung to him like a blind leech seeking unprotected flesh. It was something like the cool dispassion of lifting the liver from a corpse.

"So that's what it is to you," he said, through dawning understanding. "A...fetish?"

The gun was pressed between them, steady against Deimos's chest.

"You're like the men who sniff women's shoes."

He looked down at Deimos with pity.

"You don't understand at all," he said, "that someone is anything but your doll to break in a fit of pique."

Sorrow weighed his shoulders.

"You're nothing but a spoiled child."

Rakitin's eyes closed in sadness, and he said, "You truly are pathetic."

Eveything had a reason.

"There would be no pleasure in killing you, Deimos."

How tawdry, sad, and stained those reasons often were.

"I would put you down like a rabid dog, because that is what you've chosen to be."

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“Why do you insult me, when I give nothing but kindness to you?” The charged smile evaporated from his features, and he relaxed his grip on Rakitin’s coat. “To compare what I do to a fetish… you disgust me.”

Dmitry shook his head, and laughter caught in his throat.

“You’re the one who doesn’t understand, and you never will. You, with your fancy words and lifeless insults. You go around picking up broken pieces but you’ll never understand what pleasure there is in destruction. Not even if I showed you…”

At that moment, he wanted to strangle the life from the pathologist, but his hands remained still, one limp at his side, one resting against Rakitin’s raised arm.

“And you’ll never understand what I am, what I do, or what I am becoming. You never should have asked.” Dmitry's tone was even and calm, and it surprised him.

He looked down at the gun between them, but lingered close through an uneasy silence.

Somewhere, a dog barked. An engine rumbled to life in the distance.

He was aware that a peculiar sadness was leaching into him, like the blue shadows that remained in the wake of an extinguished fire. Only little embers remained, dancing just beyond his periphery vision.

Finally, his attention flicked back to Polya and he smiled, very slightly. “You know… you’re warm, and you smell nice.”

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"You're not the first person here to say that," Polya muttered.

He raised his eyes.

"Of course. You imagine yourself some kind of artist. Never imagining that someone could be more than your canvas."

Pale faces beneath the sheet.

"I understand too well. I've been shown. I've seen the aftermath of the work of your kind."

A listless smile cracked his lips.

"Maybe you yourself. Moscow is large but the world is small."

His arm was entangled with the murderer's as if they had paused in the middle of a mad dance.

"Tell me that, then. What are you becoming?"

He jerked the gun at the killer's heart, just enough to admonish.

"Is there any reason not to end your life here and now, besides not giving you the satisfaction?"

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The world itself was a great, blank canvas though, at least according to Iosef.

And Red Square had seemed both perfect canvas to one, and perfect hunting grounds to the other, and ruination to both.

Dmitry shrugged because it was reflexive, and seemed like the logical thing to do. “I don’t know,” he murmured, averting his eyes. “I don’t know anything any more, and I don’t have any answers for you. I don’t know why I want to make you understand me, or why I want to understand you.”

He flinched away when Polya moved suddenly, wincing, thinking his life was over at last. The was only silence and the pounding of his own heart. No gunshots, no searing pain.

“You don’t want to kill me.” He breathed in the cold night air and held it, letting the rush of adrenaline go with it. “And I don’t want to kill you, really. I don’t think I want to hurt anyone anymore, and I don’t know why. Maybe you can tell me, if you understand men like me so well.”

There was no malice in his tone, only a suggestion, an offer that came out half-hearted at best.

Finally he smirked, in spite of himself. “Maybe there’s really somethin' to the Fury’s theory of purification by fire.”

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It surprised Rakitin that Deimos winced. The touch of the gun had seemed to excite him before.

"It's the result I know, not the cause," he said. "That's why I asked you."

Wanting to understand was the state of the universe at rest. It didn't need a why.

"And...no. I don't want to kill you."

His eyes, customarily warm and curious, hardened.

"But if you hurt anyone here, I will."

He said it in the voice of fact that he used for reporting findings.

"I promise you that."

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“Maybe if we go around in circles for long enough, we’ll start making sense to one another.” He laughed dryly and shook his head.

Ippolit Rakitin would have to wait in a very long line for his chance, should Dmitry ever slip. There wouldn’t be a lot left to kill by the time Polya’s number came up.

Dmitry finally let go of Rakitin’s coat, but didn’t drift too far. “It’s cold.” He offered, both of the dark night and the pathologist’s unusual disposition. “Where will you go?”

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Rakitin released a husk of a laugh, holstering his gun.

"I would have to be a fool to tell you that."

He shrugged, resettling his coat on his shoulders.

"There's no reason you shouldn't change your mind about wanting to kill me, and no reason I should make it easy for you."

Rakitin cocked an eyebrow.

"Will you return to your brothers?"

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“There’s no reason I should tell you that either. What if you change your mind?”

It was still possible that he could catch Io and Phobos before they went out on night patrol. If he hurried, he could join them on the mountain with a cup of bitter coffee, huddled around a bonfire. Pulling a double was better than laying in an empty bed tossing and turning all night long, alone with his thoughts.

“Just… be careful. Out there.” Deimos gestured, vaguely. “In the dark. All alone.” He picked up the handle of his flamethrower where it dangled at his side by a fuel line, frowned at it, and waved to the lieutenant.

Something made him want to ask if Rakitin wanted an escort to wherever it was he wasn't going, even though it would be pointless to even offer.

“Oh, one other thing. Could you please tell Nika I said hello?”

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"Da," Polya said. "I'm sure he'll be overjoyed to hear from you."

He paused, brows lifting in mild affront.

"There's no need to fear me shooting you in the back. I would shoot you in the front, like a gentleman."

Rakitin turned to the route that would take him through the shadows to the shooting range. Creatures that lurked in the darkness were nothing to those that emerged smiling into the light. By day, the murderer they hunted walked among them, the same as any other but for the sickness beneath the skin. That frightened Polya more than the stalker in the night.

Probably he should take more precautions. If he was killed by the person he was sent here to help look for, he would feel very silly, and probably anything he found out in the process would go to waste. Hardly anyone listened to dead people these days.

"I should say the same thing," he said, giving Deimos a long, not entirely antagonistic stare. "Be careful."