Ivan Press

[Ivan] After everything he's seen of her, everything he's seen of how angry she gets, how quickly -- it still shocks Ivan on some level to see the hatred on her face. So fast, so utter: when a moment ago she was in tears because she couldn't love the thing that came out of her body. Grew, literally, from her flesh.

The only time he's ever seen anything like this was when he told her to tie him down instead. When he tried -- once and only once -- to let her take some control over what they did in the bedroom. That flash of darkness. That glimmer of the broken, senseless fury in her then: it's echoed, somehow, in her face right now.

Dmitri, she shouts, a whipcrack of sound that brings the butler-valet-left-hand-man out of the kitchen. He's wearing an apron over his customarily dark clothing. He's wiping his hands on it, and he looks startled, even alarmed, his eyes flicking over the pair on the couch as though expecting to see some disaster. When he finds nothing, and can read nothing from Ivan's face, his eyes come back to Hilary.

The last time they interacted, she actually thanked him. Thanked him for driving her, thanked him for delivering her to that lovely performance. Dmitri is too experienced, too jaded, to think that perhaps she was finally warming to him; perhaps now they'll have a beautiful relationship -- but even so, this turnabout is unexpected.

Still; he's deferential, bowing from the neck. "Yes, madam. What may I do for you?"

[Hilary] There's nothing there. A sharp, aimless gesture directed at the now-squalling infant who has not been removed from his carrier since he was placed in it, who has not been held, fed, caressed, loved,

changed,

since they tucked him away and buckled him it. She isn't looking at Anton now, isn't looking at Dmitri. The flick of her hand towards her son is dismissive at best; swatting away a mosquito. She doesn't even use words for it: get that out of here.

[Ivan] Even on Dmitri's placid, impassive face there's a trace of -- what? Shock? Disgust? His eyes flick again toward Ivan, and in the end it's the Ragabash who speaks to him. Unfolding from the couch, elegant and sure of motion, Ivan lifts the carrier from the coffee table and hands it to Dmitri. Like the baby were a thing. Like it's a small, expensive, but ultimately inanimate object.

"Take him to the spare bedroom," he says. "Get one of the girls here to keep him quiet. The one with all the siblings and cousins. And call Shepherd; tell him we'll be departing on schedule tonight."

And so the baby is carried away. Ivan remains on his feet a moment, tall and sleek and golden. That boy's going to grow up beautiful; there's that, at least. Beautiful and fine featured and all golden and fair, just like his parents. Broken in some irreparable way, just like his parents. There's a strange expression on Ivan's face, watching Dmitri bear him away. When the door of the spare bedroom closes, he looks at Hilary.

"I'll take him to Novgorod tonight," he says; still quiet, but not a question anymore. Not an inquiry: should we, do you want, should I, what. "He'll have a wet nurse and a nanny or two. Perhaps one of my cousins or aunts will be persuaded to serve as his guardian. He'll grow up knowing who his father is, and that a werewolf's lair is no place for a child." A very brief pause. "He'll be told his mother loved him very much, doted on him night and day, and died very tragically when he was an infant." A cynical, hard quirk of his mouth, hardly there before it's gone, "Just like an old novel.

"I'll visit him from time to time. I'll bring pictures back for you. Video recordings, if you'd like. If you'd like to meet him someday, we could tell him you're a friend of the family. An aunt. Something."

He thinks another moment; then a seemingly unrelated question:

"Where is Dion right now?"

[Hilary] One might think, given how much of a rollercoaster Hilary's emotions have been today -- for months, really, though Ivan's not been privy to most of those fluctuations -- that she might suddenly reach for her baby, refuse to let Dmitri take him away from her, cling to him and cradle his tiny skull in her fair hands,

but she doesn't even look as Ivan rises, lifting the carrier and handing it to his ever-faithful manservant. Christ only knows what Dmitri thinks of all this; of them, of his own master that he may very well have bottle-fed in infancy, once or twice. Maybe he doesn't find it all that surprising, particularly if he's known Ivan all this time.

For her part, Hilary doesn't watch. Her face is pale enough to be ashen, staring over the back of the couch, catching those last searing rays of light. The rage is gone. Now all that is left in her lack of expression is control. Withdrawal.

Retreat.


Soon enough one of the maids will be brought, someone who Ivan somehow knows has family, someone with some experience in feeding and changing and soothing. For now, Dmitri will have to be the one who carries the baby into the spare room and takes him from the carrier, laying him in the middle of the bed and discovering soon enough that the boy has soiled himself and needs someone to take care of him. Poor Dmitri.

They can hear him squalling faintly even after the door closes.

Ivan speaks. Wet nurse, nannies, guardian. Father is a Ragabash of House Crescent Moon, and he himself is a Kin of House Crescent Moon until the day he begins whispering in some caretaker's ear about his strange dreams, until the day his flares of temper overtake him, until the day they call in a favor and send along the happy news to his distant, American father: your son is trueborn.

And the already spoiled boy will, so very suddenly, elevate from childhood kingship to a sort of minor godhood.

But his mother loved him very much, doted on him night and day, adored him, and tragically died. Perhaps he'll have vague oedipal leanings, perhaps he'll never grow up, perhaps he'll hate women, perhaps he'll fixate his entire life on behaving the way he thinks this lost mother may have wanted him to, perhaps he'll be haunted by ghosts he makes up in his mind to fulfill the emptiness, perhaps he'll have such an overinflated sense of himself that he'll be more insufferable even than most of his tribesmates. There's no way to know which form his madness will take, or when it will find a foothold; the only certainty is that it will come.

Hilary hears him, but she doesn't show it. She stares at nothing, trying not to hear Anton, hating the sound of him as much as the way he finally quiets makes her disintegrate into dust. Ivan might or might not notice her arm across her stomach, holding a little more tightly than casual. He probably does; that's his job. He's a fucking scout.

She breathes in as he mentions pictures, videos, maybe meeting him one day. She just shakes her head a little, but the truth is, it's not enough to be a no. Maybe just an I can't.

A moment later, he knows for sure: she whispers it aloud. "I can't. I can't, right now. I can't even think about it."


Silence for a moment. Then: where is her husband.

"Brazil," she says. "I think. I haven't heard otherwise." She looks over at Ivan. "Your people contacted him? About the stillbirth?"

[Ivan] She can't. She can't.

All right, then. His face changes a little; a sort of acquiescence written on his features. They talk about her husband. She tells him where she thinks he is; asks if they've contacted him yet.

He shakes his head. "I'll contact him myself. Take responsibility. Apologize." He thinks a moment, brow furrowed, arms making some slight motion toward folding before he stops himself. "Does he have any ... triggers for those periods of attachment he goes through? Do you think he might come back?"

[Hilary] The lies mix up in her mind a little. The baby died. The baby will grow up thinking his mother loved him and is now dead. The man who thinks he's the father will think he's dead, maybe mourn him, maybe try to avenge him. Ivan, she knows intellectually, is trying to take as much of the focus off of Hilary as he can, Hilary who is rather at Dion's mercy, telling the Galliard himself of the stillbirth of the child who is in the other room staring at the ceiling and the window and the curtains while Dmitri calls a maid. Ivan will be going to Russia to lie to the baby's future, lie to Dion about where he is and what he's doing, lie for Hilary.

On some level she knows he's lying for his own sake, too, saving his own skin, and preserving his claim on blood of his blood, child of his line, etcetera. On another level she knows it's for her sake. All for her sake, so he can have her a little more, a little longer, so he can lie to himself to and say that because something of hers is his, something of her will always be his. She wonders if she's the only one he's not lying to.

Well. Maybe Dmitri and Max, too.

Hilary begins slowly to unfold, blinking her eyes as though waking up from a dream. The rage is passed, the baby is quiet and out of sight; there's no ache in her body to tell her something happened, just an awkward looseness and hormonal confusion and extra weight she will have to skim off in the coming weeks. Religiously, as though to erase the marks of the sins of adultery and abandonment as soon as she can more than to regain the body she's used to.

She shakes her head. "If there are triggers, I don't know what they are." She could make the excuse: they've only been married a couple of years now, he's around for a few days or weeks at a time, gone for months. The truth is, and in this strange moment of clarity she knows it: even if she spent seven or eight hundred days in Dion's constant company, she might begin to recognize patterns but she would not really understand them or their underlying motivations.

"He might. He might send servants. I suspect as soon as Estrella is informed she'll turn the nursery into something else so it won't remind me of my loss or him of his anger." She's flat; not quite sullen, not quite tired, but her affect is dull. She looks over at him.

"Would you hold me now, for awhile? Before you go to Russia, I would like you to hold me. You can come to my bed."

Where he's never been. Not here, not in her other apartment, not in one of her homes, never, never before invited like that.

[Ivan] None of that settles Ivan's nerves any. Might come back. His anger. The spectre of his previous wife and that oh-so-civilized annulment ... followed by her suicide: Ivan doesn't believe a word of it. Perhaps his house is different. His Clan Crescent Moon, so old it keeps to pre-civilization names; so old and proud and mad that they kill their mates before they let them go. Somehow Ivan has a hard time believing it. Dion's house is called Unbreakable Hearth. He can't imagine a Garou born under such a banner, with such wrath in his eyes, graciously annulling anything.

"I'll go to him in person," Ivan decides. He seems not to have heard Hilary's request at all -- as rare, as unprecedented as it is. Not yet, anyway. "If I fly to Novgorod tonight, I can be in Brazil by this time tomorrow. If I see him eye to eye I can gauge his reaction and ... react accordingly."

That's when he looks at her again. Meets her regard. She's flat; dull; whatever grief or rage or bereftness long since burnt out. Or perhaps buried. Or perhaps simply lost in the black vacuum where the fragments of her personality spin. He looks at her a moment, and then he goes to her, goes to her and stands before her and gathers her against his body, the top of her head level with his diaphragm. He holds her like that for a moment, cradling her head and her shoulders.

Then, softer now -- "Come on." He urges her gently to her feet. "Let's go to bed. If you want, I'll leave while you're asleep."

[Hilary] He doesn't get that far -- in his words or within reach of her. Says he'll go to him in person, and her eyes close, her brow wrinkling as though she has a faint headache or a memory of a nightmare. She shakes her head as he's saying he can be in Brazil tomorrow, and says quietly: "Please don't do that. Ivan, please don't."

[Ivan] That stops him short. "Why not?"

[Hilary] "Machismo," she sighs, opening her eyes and looking at him. "Whether he's to one extreme or the other, he's always calculated. If you run and hide, he might chalk you up to a cowardly fool. If you meet him in person -- in Brazil, in Chicago, in a dark alley somewhere -- he will react. Strongly. He has to, for the sake of his pride. If he hunts you down, you should hide. But I don't want you to go right to his face.

"He might take it as a challenge."

[Ivan] If Hilary had responded the way another woman might have -- he might kill you! or you mustn't do that for me! or but that's foolish! or dangerous! or even misguided, macho and ridiculous! -- he might have brushed her aside. Scoffed.

She doesn't, though. She gives him something rather like cold, bored logic. And Ivan pauses a moment to think. To consider. He's always calculated, she says. And, he might take it as a challenge.

"I don't want to come back," Ivan says quietly, though a little flatly, "to find your mateship annulled and you conveniently dead."

[Hilary] She doesn't want Dion to kill Ivan. And Dion might. That's not said out loud, written in bold black ink in the air, but it's beneath the surface. He might have scoffed if she said it aloud, but to some degree that is exactly what she's saying. Please don't go to him. Please don't go to him and never come back at all.

Even if she sounds tired, flat, detached, is looking at him without worry, without affection. Only entreaty, and not very much of that.

Her frown deepens a moment. She makes a sound like a quiet ugh. "Why do you insist he killed his last mate, Ivan?"

[Ivan] "I don't," he replies quietly. He hasn't sat again. She hasn't risen. There's a gap between them; it's not just physical, but right now it's visible. "I just wonder. I just suspect. You didn't see him that night when he came looking for you and found you at my place."

And then he moves to close that gap. He comes closer to her. He holds his hand out to hers, drawing her to her feet if she takes it.

"I won't go to him if you don't want me to," he says. "But I'll call him from Novgorod, where I can moonbridge back if need be. And if you feel threatened or endangered, I want you to contact Katherine Bellamonte. She doesn't like you," bluntly honest, that, "but I believe she'll protect you."

[Hilary] She makes no excuses or defenses for Dion. Hilary doesn't think much about him when he's not around. Even at his most obsessive he views her in a marianistic light, a pure and spiritual feminine counterpart who only engages in sex for the purposes of procreation, who will raise his children and so forth. He has no idea who she is, but that's not saying much; Hilary has no idea who she is, either. His intensity regarding Ivan is more because Ivan, too, is male. No amount of honor precludes lusting after a married woman, or any woman. No amount of honor, in Dion's mind, would stop a red-blooded male from wanting any woman he could make a whore. And he simply doesn't really believe in homosexuality, anyway. Ivan's just confused, and may just as easily confuse his wife for a whore and not a maternal saint.

Hilary does take Ivan's hand as he comes closer, but when he tugs on it to draw her upward she looks exhausted suddenly, her shoulders rounding with a hard sigh as though she's thinking he can't ask so much of her, he wants her to stand now? And what, embrace? Be equals? Hold each other standing up as though they care about one another?

She doesn't rise. She takes her hand way from his after that initial pull upward, that attempt to make her rise. It isn't defiance or control over her own body that makes her stay seated; it's as though there's a gravity in her that can't be overcome. Or that she can't bear to attempt to overcome, knowing only she'll get dragged back down again. She might very well be afraid of vomiting on him.

"All right," she says, to his plans. To what to do if she feels threatened. Her eyes are closed, and she turns away from him then, her chest towards the back cushion of the couch. A throw pillow is found, tugged, and wrapped up in her arms, held against her chest and stomach. She quite abruptly does this, turning her back to him and curling up on the couch, burying her face in the pillow she holds as though she's just going to sleep right there.

[Ivan] [EMPAFEE]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Hilary] Surfacewise, he gets a lot of what was in the post: tired and UGGGH you want me to GET UP? Seriously? She really is extraordinarily tired. In terms of how much emotion she can handle, faking complications/having a c-section/devolving into emotions she hasn't had in three decades is... a bit beyond the pale for her. She's not turning her back on him to reject him, she just does not want to talk anymore and it likely dawns on him that she's been Done Talking for a little while now and just finally hit her limit and shut down.
to Ivan

[Ivan] And she -- draws away. Curls up. Closes up on herself. He looks at her a moment. Then he bends to her. Goes to his knee, reaches out to touch her. His hand on her back is gentle, even soothing. He rubs her back for a moment, then the back of her neck, her shoulder. Her hair.

"Hilary," he says quietly, "I just wanted to take you to bed. That was all. Let's go to bed, okay?"

[Hilary] Even with her face hidden, there's something about the way she reacted to him trying to draw her up after him and something about the way her body curls in protectively on itself that tells Ivan why, that jars him into remembering everything. He's always known she's broken, had to have realized it that very first afternoon in the North Shore hotel room. She's such a far cry right now from the woman who sat in her armchair and asked him to strip for her, please. Show him that long, lean, lovely body, bring his cock closer for her to taste. She's a different person entirely, it seems, but no less fractured.

Without lifting her head or uncurling, Hilary tenses when he touches her, then relaxes into the circles his palm makes. They're quiet a moment. He rubs the back of her neck, her shoulder, like he would do after tying her up, fucking her, literally leaving bruises or friction burns on her. It reminds her of that feeling, being shattered and then being caressed like this, and her breathing shifts a bit, calms.

After he speaks, she just nods, as childlike as she was with the chocolate bunny, feral and unconscious and easily swayed. All the other parts of her are too worn out to come to the surface now, their roles too exhausted to be stepped into again. All that's left now is this ragged, flayed core,

which he only recognizes because he's seen it so many times now, brought her back to this so many times by hurting her. Funny. This time all it took was having a child she doesn't want, can't keep, and needs desperately to protect.


It takes a few moments for Ivan to ease her away from the pillow, to relax enough to roll over and put her feet back on the rug. She moves slowly at his urging, sitting up and then rising. She almost bursts into tears when she gets to her feet, as though the fact that she's not dizzy is as bad as a wave of nausea would be, as though the bottom not dropping out from under her and sending her into sudden darkness just makes everything that much harder. She almost doesn't want to be conscious, walk all the way across the living room to her bedroom door, doesn't want to be awake for being undressed and getting under the thick, soft white covers with him.

So she submerges, silent and far away, barely aware, it seems, of the sun setting. Of their feet walking. Of the door to her room opening and closing. She barely even seems aware of her own voice whispering, "Blue?"

like he's supposed to know, somehow, what that means. As it turns out, he does. And the light in the room changes with the turn of a silent dial, dark and aquatic and cold. She relaxes. And Ivan helps her undress.

[Ivan] It's not when she seems so sluggish, so unwilling to rise, that he simply picks her up. Not then, and not before -- when she simply curled in on herself instead of getting up when he urged her to.

It's when he draws her to her feet, finally, and she nearly bursts into tears ago. He's no master of emotion, no mindreader, but he is sharp-eyed. He can see those flickers on her face, the way her brow furrows and the corners of her mouth draw down. And that's when he wraps his arm around her, murmurs shh the way he did when she did, in fact, burst into tears. He draws her against himself, against that lean hard body that,

once upon a time, in some remote primordial age before he understood how broken she was, before she remembered what it was like to need someone -- once upon a time, she asked him to show her.

How coolly confident she was then. How distant, how untouched. Men and Garou speak of emotion -- a woman's emotion, anyway -- as though it were a terrible thing to be without. Perhaps right now, Hilary would like nothing more for it all to just go away.

After a moment of holding her, hushing her, Ivan simply picks her up. This mother-of-his-child. This immeasurably broken, fragmented woman, who sometimes seemed equal parts animal and child and monster. He lifts her, and he holds her against himself, and truth be told this isn't so effortless for him as it would be for a stronger Garou. He takes her down that hall into the bedroom, holding her the way one of them, surely, should hold the child they made together.

She asks for blue. The deep, dark hue of the light: like the ocean a hundred feet below the surface. He changes it, and she relaxes. He eases her out of her clothes. Some part of him intuits that she might want to wash. That later on she'll need to wash, because even a surgical birth doesn't come without aftereffects; that later there will be blood, and discharge, and all the messy sequelae of an oddly terminated pregnancy. All the messy reminders of what was, and what is not now.

Ivan doesn't care. He doesn't suggest that she wash now, or later, or -- any of that. He helps her out of the clothes she changed into not so long ago. He turns down the covers and helps her slide underneath, and everything's dim and blue and submerged, and the sheets are cool. When he gets in beside her, he's undressed, and he's warm.

He waits to see if she wants to be touched. If she wants to be held, or if she simply wants to turn away and close her eyes and pretend this day never happened at all.

[Hilary] Lifted off her feet, Hilary does not resist but curls against his chest, shuddering as she hides her face on his shoulder. She's not as slender as she used to be, and Ivan's not as strong as her husband. She seems used to being carried like this; Ivan doesn't know and doesn't need to know how ritualized Dion's 'seductions' of his wife are, how patterned and rote his attempts to sire a child on her are. They're very nice, all things told, the elegant dinner and the candlelight and the way he gives her gifts as though his offerings have to meet with her approval in order for the format to progress to the next stage.

No wonder she is exhausted by him. Having to pretend to be excited, having to hide her boredom, having to engage in witty conversation, having to pretend, every time, she has no idea that the sole purpose of this diamond bracelet or that pair of gold earrings is Dion sniffing at her, seeing if she'll let him mount her. Knowing that she can no more reject his gifts than she can refuse to have sex with him does not particularly upset her, though perhaps it should; it is simply the effort required on her part to feign interest in his rigidly scripted pantomime of romance, to smile and gasp at the gifts and look at him yearningly when he picks her up to take her to their bedroom, lay her down and make love, and he always fucking calls it that, and that's always what it is, and it's nauseating.

This is not what that is. She holds onto Ivan as he carries her, and she seems a little calmer when he sets her down again, begins to help her out of her loose pants, her sweater. It's the first time he's seen this much of her body in months. He's tugged her shirts and dresses away from her breasts, he's seen her under a blanket or sheet, he's seen flashes of her, but it's been a very long time since she's been this bared to him. He unclasps her bra, frees her breasts, larger than before, more tender. She's heavier. Her body seems uncertain, in-between. She doesn't seem to want to hide from him, but she puts her hands over his when his fingertips touch her panties,

seems about to cry again. Doesn't, because he understands, he doesn't push her, he doesn't urge those tears to the surface. She crumples faintly against his chest the next time he puts his arms around her. They both know what is coming, physically. It will be bad for her, agonizing in ways she can't cope with -- and not because of discomfort, because of pain. Her body is changed. In some ways it will never be exactly the same again, no matter how pristine she can make it look, no matter the lack of a scar. She is changed.

The evidence will be far, far away. Novgorod. She's never heard of it, never been there, never will go. She'll never forget it, either.


They go to bed, naked and nearly naked. Sliding into sheets and under comforter in the cool room. Dmitri will have to figure out what to do. Let the maid in when she arrives. They'll take care of the food he cooked, take care of the baby, keep it quiet. Feed him, change him through the night, confuse him because their smells aren't right, her voice doesn't match the one he knows from the womb, they aren't the right ones. But he'll adapt. He'll forget so quickly. He'll learn to love the lies they tell him. Honor his dishonorable father and love the memory of his mother, which is not a memory at all.

It's hard to tell if Hilary wants anything right now. She lies there on her side, eyes open and staring mutely, blankly at nothing. Ivan has to cover her up because she simply doesn't --

can't care any more. But she doesn't close her eyes until later, when he does shift closer and touch her shoulder, which she doesn't flinch away from, and wrap his arm around her, which she doesn't reject, and hold her back to his chest, which is when those eyes close. When she sighs, and falls almost instantly into sleep.


Ivan wakes partway through the night, but he's a little behind. There was a sound his unconscious mind woke to, noticed, had some reaction to. But the noise stopped and it was easy to let go of it. What he's aware of when his mind stirs a bit more, rises a bit from the depths, is that Hilary is back. He doesn't remember he going, but she's back now, holding something, crawling back into bed. And there's something small and mobile being placed between them, in the warm spot where Hilary used to be.

She gets back under the covers. Gaia only knows what Dmitri and the maid though, this almost-naked woman drifting through the glass-walled apartment to the second bedroom, opening the door in the middle of the night, reaching into the basinet of the baby who had cried, been quieted by the maid, put back to sleep. Gaia only knows what they thought, seeing her very slowly, very carefully, very gingerly and uncertainly but instinctively lifting him up to her, holding him against her chest and cupping his head to her shoulder, walking out of the room with him. Maybe they thought she was sleepwalking, silent as she was.

Ivan has a baby next to him suddenly, lying on its back and wriggling, moving its head, smacking its toothless mouth a couple of times. Yawning. Hilary pulls the covers up around herself again, lies on the mattress without a pillow, very close to the boy she's named after Ivan, and after her brother, and after the only name Ivan ever suggested he liked. Her eyes close. She doesn't hold him, wrap him close. She sighs, falling back asleep: "Don't let me hurt him, okay?"

And is gone again. Maybe she simply meant, mostly unconscious, that Ivan could not go back to sleep now, he had to stay up and make sure she didn't roll over onto the boy or smother him somehow, make sure he doesn't get the blankets over his face, make sure he gets through the night safely. She falls asleep less than an inch from the boy, her breath curling warm against his still bright-pink cheek. He turns his head towards the smell and warmth of her. Sleeps, too.


Something tells Ivan not to wake her after that. Not to ask her to say goodbye, not to ask her if she wants to hold him one last time, not to give her a kiss or promise her he'll be back or ask her any more questions, not to inform her of his plans. Something -- maybe those last words -- tells him to take the boy away in the middle of the night while she's still sleeping.

He's awake when they're boarding the jet, alert and curious and hungry. It isn't long before the change in air pressure begins the wailing that lasts most of the way between the United States and Novgorod.


Behind him, Hilary wakes in an empty bed. Stares at the empty whiteness hinted at with blue lightning. She gingerly reaches out and lays her palm flat on the space where Anton was. It starts to shake, and then she does. Her eyes close as though to stave it off, but the sound is coming up from inside her, quaking inside of her and coming with an onslaught of rich, hot tears. Ivan would, as deeply as he's seen into her, never believe a sound like this could come from this woman. She clenches her hand on the bed and opens her mouth and

she wails, too, like her son, wails like a woman in mourning, wails like a woman who has lost her child.