Ivan Press

Ivan

Hilary doesn't seen the sheer disarray she leaves in her wake. The cloistered, comfortable little house suddenly turned on its ear: its heart torn out, its anchor fled. No one sleeps soundly that night. Polina can be heard banging about her room until the small hours, slamming drawers, clapping closets shut, dragging luggage about. She's packing, she's moving out, she's leaving this madhouse, and when the new girl -- Elodie, that is her name -- comes timidly to her doorway to ask where Polina might be going, she's rebuffed with words so scathing that Polina is left in peace the rest of the night.

Elodie, for her part, keeps to her room. She tries to sleep. She wonders what was to become of her shortlived employment now that the boy she was charged to tutor has been so abruptly removed. She thinks of asking Dmitri, but the man is too silent, too grim, too forbidding.

Besides, Dmitri has matters of his own to see to: he spends hours on the phone, fielding one call or another, departing abruptly around 3 in the morning with the car, returning at dawn.

He is not the only one in the SUV, then. His master sits in silence beside him, sleepless smudges under his eyes and the crackle of spirit-paths still upon his skin.

--

In the morning, the little house is as perfectly charming as ever. Sunlight brightens the grass and dapples the autumnal trees; the hedges lining the drive provide some measure of privacy. Behind the house and past that grassy slope, the river Volkhov slips shimmeringly by.

No servants emerge to welcome Hilary's party. No guardians emerge to challenge them. The front door opens as they park, as they gain the porch steps. The house is silent and still

apart from the wolf that stands in the doorway, lean and drawn, feral even in his man's shape.

The aristocracy is mad. Too mad for the simple, genuine love that can exist among the lower, saner classes. The love that tore Miron's heart out when Anton started wailing his name. The love that Dmitri may in fact have, somewhere, for Ivan, even though Ivan is possibly incapable of returning it on any level. The love that makes soft, small dreams in Hilary's mind feel strangely like nightmares.

It is possible that in a year and a half, Polina has come to love Anton, and Miron in her way, and this house, and stupid Izolda, and this life, and the future it held, as the sharp and extraordinarily well-paid manager of an aristocrat's household. It goes without saying that Miron, guardian and servant and brother and father and uncle and best friend, loves Anton, devotedly. It is not beyond expectation that Izolda might love the boy, too, holding him and feeding him from her own body for a year, bathing him, soothing him to sleep, just as she might love persnickety Polina and stalwart young Miron.

In less than fifteen minutes, Hilary ripped all of that apart. Ripped Polina from her home and future. Ripped Miron from his entire life, even his home country. Ripped a limb from Izolda without even setting eyes on her. Took Anton, the only one she cares about, from the only home and life and family he has ever known.

--

Night rolls onward.

In that time, Carlisle drives away with Miranda and Darya behind the first car. In the back seat, Miron is holding Anton, and the steady motion of the car is as soothing to the boy as his caregiver. He sucks on his fingers, resting on Miron's shoulder, looking across the way at the strange woman he does not know, or remember, even four months later. The woman he is, all the same, drawn to and curious about. She does not speak. She stares at Anton, and he stares back at her, until he falls asleep in the car.

There is a place waiting for them, a rented house not far from the airfield. It is dark and unfamiliar, but prepared by Carlisle before the jet touched down. Carlisle and Darya and Miranda thought of things Hilary would not even consider: things like diapers, things like food suitable for a child of Anton's age. No one was expecting Miron, though.

Hilary does not want to eat. She stays with Miron and Anton as Miron puts the boy to sleep in a room upstairs, the mattress pulled from the bed to the ground. She watches, sitting on the floor beside the door, staring, until she can't anymore. She drifts then, rising, leaving the room, going to her own. There are pills. And there is darkness.

The servants bed down, but for Carlisle, who stays up, sitting in the front room just in case. Miron sleeps in the same room as Anton. There is nowhere else for him.

This house, not a home, is as silent as the one behind them is clattering.

--

Dawn comes, and some time thereafter, Anton wakes. He does not know where he is but his best friend is there, there for him to bat at and wake up, wake up. There to pick him up and change him, there to take him downstairs and look for something to feed him. Darya is awake, always wakes so early, and watches Miron and Anton as silently as her mistress does. Soon enough, she is called up by Hilary to prepare her for the day.

And Hilary is happy, coming down to the kitchen of the cottage. She is not grim or terrible. She sees Anton as he is being fed and she is delighted. She sits near him as she takes her own breakfast, talking to him in French. She wants to take him for a stroll outside, so Carlisle goes with her, and Darya.

Miranda holds Miron back. They have things to discuss. A list of what he and Anton need from the house. Then there is the matter of getting him out of the country without causing a fuss. Outside, Hilary is holding Anton in early sunlight, stroking her cheek against his, holding him so tightly to her chest. She is okay. She is okay. Everything will be okay.

--

The car, low and long and black, slides to a stop before the house. Only Carlisle is there, driving. He has not slept since the jet touched down last night. Hilary sits in the back, alone. She is dressed simply, elegantly. Her skirt is long, made of multiple tissue-thin layers at varying angles. Her boots hug her calves, but have only a slight stack for the heel. Her upperwear is simple, a dark camisole underneath a cashmere wraparound sweater, slender on her arms. Her hair is bound up, in a bun no one would call 'messy'. There are hoops in her ears and shades on her eyes.

But for the sweater, she does not look very different than she did that summer day when she took shelter in Ivan's penthouse because her husband would not leave her alone, would not let her sleep for trying to get a child on her.

It goes without saying that the similarity, for Hilary, was unconscious.

She is not paying attention; but when the car stops, she hears Carlisle take in a short, sharp breath. Hilary lifts her head, looking out the window toward the house, the door opening to the sound of the car turning off. Behind her shades her eyes widen and she flinches, pressing herself into the corner between the seat and the door.

Carlisle says a word, a request for instruction. Hilary cannot even hear him. She curls deeper into the seat, pressing herself away from Ivan. He probably cannot see her through the tinted glass, but who knows?

The doors of the car do not open.

Back at the rented house, Miron looks shellshocked. He slept poorly the night before; who wouldn't? Uprooted, transplanted, put down again in a cold house with no semblance of family ties; only the bitter blood-ties that bind his master to his mother. Not even a true bed to call his own -- just a cot and a blanket, because no one expected him.

In the morning Miranda wants to go over things with him. A list of necessities, which he has to rack his brain for. Details of passports and visas and things he can't even begin to wrap his mind around. She wants logic from him, and she keeps opening doors to new questions, new concerns, new directions he hadn't even concerned. He wants to wake from the nightmare. He wants to close all the doors and go home to that little house by the river, where he and Polina and Izolda and Elodie had lived.

They were going to hire a French chef around Christmas. They had been talking about that. Polina had been reviewing dossiers, going over budgets and accounts; she had been getting quite good at managing finances and affairs. Izolda had been looking into hiring a gardener, a weekly maid service, so that she and Miron could be freed to do other things. And Miron had been looking into preschools, and Elodie had been buying children's books in three languages. They had plans. They had built themselves a little family, a little home, a little life, a little future together.

Miranda tells him to provide passport photos. She hands him paperwork. They'll have to forge the documents this time, but all the same, he has to immigrate legally. It's for the future, you see.

--

In the morning, Ivan is the sole occupant of the house. He chased everyone else away. Izolda was told not to come in today. Polina went back to her apartment in the city. Dmitri took Elodie, poor bewildered Elodie, and checked into two rooms at the nearest reputable hotel.

Just Ivan, now. Standing in the doorway as the engine dies. Stepping out onto the porch, his eyes narrowed by sunlight or spite; pacing the floorboards back and forth like an animal. The doors of the car do not open. The chauffeur does not step out. Hilary retreats into darkness, as though to be seen would undo her. Ivan paces, and paces, and paces; sometimes pauses to brush a fleck of lint off the front of his shirt, sometimes pauses to scuff his sole on the wood. Sometimes pauses just to stare into the car

before he begins to move again.

Back at the cottage, Darya sits in the living room on the floor. There are no toys for Anton to play with, and Darya is a maid, not a nurse. She watches him as he crawls around, sometimes picking himself up to toddle one place to another. He pushes things off of tables. He pulls things off of shelves. She does not interrupt, unless he looks like he's about to hurt himself. She just watches him with those wide, pale eyes of hers, imagining how things will change now. All their lives. There is a child, now. She can't fathom what is going to happen.

--

And at the house:

Hilary curls in on herself, watching Ivan emerge, watching him pace. Her heart is pounding. Carlisle speaks to her again, asks her what she wants him to do. She just begins to weep. She doesn't know. She is too scared to get out.

And then abruptly a change: a deft turn on the porch, now Ivan is coming toward the steps, now he springs down to land effortlessly, strides to the car in seconds, bypasses the driver's window, goes to the back.

He tries the handle on Hilary's door. Perhaps it is locked.

Hilary yelps, and Carlisle decides. He turns on the car, but they are dealing with a Ragabash of Crescent Moon. He comes quickly, and Carlisle floors it. He has no desire to be chased down a rural Russian road with a werewolf on his tail, or worse -- on top of the car. He has no wish to die tonight by claw.

But he serves Hilary. And she has no one, no one else, to keep her safe anymore.

Hilary shrieks as the car takes off. She sees Ivan, nearly at the car, just before that same car kicks up dust and takes off. Which suddenly, whether Ivan gives chase or not, makes her shriek again.

"No!" she yells. "His flashlight!"

--

Her voice sounds like her heart is being torn out.

--

Carlisle exhales, aggravated, but stops the car. More gently. They are not very far at all. He sets his jaw, looking behind him, and then turns around. This time, when the car stops, and turns off, Carslisle gets out. And opens the rear door for Hilary.

There was anger in Ivan -- and something else -- but the anger was leashed, at least. It was controlled and contained. When Carlisle turns the car on, when he floors it, outrage bolts through Ivan. There's a second when all his muscles tense, when he very nearly does chase them down the long drive to the public road.

Nearly. Doesn't. He stops where he is, hands closing into fists, watching them go.

The car roars backwards down the path. It gets a ways away. Then it slows. Then it stops. Ivan is still watching. Carlisle gets out, and now, now Ivan is advancing again, and by the time Carlisle opens the door Ivan is behind him, is on him, grabs him by the shoulder and throws him aside with casual, vicious force.

"Get off my land," he growls without looking at the kinsman. "You are no longer welcome here."

And Hilary:

and Hilary, taking refuge in the backseat. Ivan looks at her for a long moment. Then he puts his hand out, palm up, fingers open.

Carlisle is a brave man, but he is not a stupid one and not a rash one. Nor is he terribly, profoundly proud. He is grabbed, thrown to the side. He notices that he is not thrown to the ground. Just as he notices that Hilary has set one foot upon the ground, one hand on the open door, and is looking at him. He looks at her.

He straightens his jacket, and looks at Ivan. Deferentially, at least. He does not meet the Fang's eyes. He looks downward, hands folded in front of him, and speaks clearly.

"I remain with her, sir."

--

And Hilary, for her part, is rising from the car, recoiling from Ivan and his hand if he still offers it. Her sunglasses are still on. The sun is bright today. Not a tendril has fallen from her bun; she was a dancer, after all. Once upon a time. She stands, both hands gripping the top of the open car door.

"Why are you here?" she asks him,

very small.

"Get off my land," Ivan repeats, slower. "I will not ask again."

His eyes have not left Hilary. The angle of his gaze changes as she rises. A beat; then a flick of his eyes toward Carlisle. He acknowledges the man's loyalty this much, at least:

"Your mistress is safe from harm at my hands. That is more than I can promise for you."

And as for Hilary: no answer. Not yet. Not while they have an audience. One public meltdown, it seems, is enough for Ivan's taste.

The manservant does not reply this time. Not when Ivan says he won't ask again. Not when Ivan tells him that Hilary is safe, but he is not.

Hilary's smallness does not last. She exhales.

"Go fuck yourself, Ivan."

And lowers herself to get back in the car.

Some invisible hand reaches into Ivan; grasps a wet tangle of entrails, yanks. He tightens. His brow constricts for a beat. He puts his hand on Hilary's -- shoulder. Arm. Something, somewhere he can reach.

"Stay," he whispers. "Stay with me."

Hilary flings him off, shakes him, something. She jerks from his grasp, glowering at him. "Don't touch me. Don't touch my manservant. Don't demand that he go and I stay, with no way to get away from you. I'm not yours anymore. I just. Want. My son's. Toys. I want him to have his things. I want him to have what he needs. I want him to have things that will make him feel safe and make him happy."

Somewhere in there, she has stamped her foot. Possibly more than once.

"Why are you even here?" she throws at him again, not small or weak or afraid anymore. She was afraid. She is afraid. And that fear makes her so, so angry. "You told me he's mine. You told me to come get him. You can't stop me. You can't take him back."

Her voice breaks, in there. Snaps like a violin string wound too tight, the sound sharp and shattering. "You can't. You can't take him. He's mine. He's mine." Sharp, shattering, shaking, like Hilary is shaking, fear overtaking anger, panic creeping up to swallow rage. "He's my only -- he's all I have."

Which is the truth. There's no one else left,

anywhere,

who shares her blood.

"I'm here for you," Ivan interrupts, somewhere in there, but she doesn't stop and he doesn't try to stop her. Only when she's finished, snapped, broken, does he repeat it:

"I'm here for you. So stay with me, and send your driver away. I can't stand to have this conversation before him."

"I will not," she says, stubbornly. "I'm not staying here with you with no way out. He's going to stay right here."

Hilary looks sharply at Carlisle. He looks at her, and he gives a nod. She looks back at Ivan. "I will walk with you, though."

A flare of temper -- "For god's sake, do you really think I'll hurt you? You?"

All she does is stare at him for a moment. Then she shakes her head. "That's not why he can't leave."

"Then why?"

"Because I don't want him to, Ivan!" Hilary snaps at him. "Christ! Do you want to stand here all day gnawing on this one thing? You came here for me. What does it matter if I want my car and my driver to wait for me? Why is that so bloody unreasonable?"

Like that, something in Ivan snaps as well. Breaks on the fulcrum of this one, minute, ridiculous detail: whether the driver stands on this patch of land or that. Ivan tastes bruised pride, bitter anger; he tastes ashes and forgets the flame.

"Get off my land." This time he's speaking to Hilary. "I'll send Anton's things to whatever address you give me, but I will not stand here once more while you shout at me and curse at me and treat me like -- like some low, crawling beast that never meant anything to you at all."

Hilary shakes her head. "No."

[I TINK DAT CALLS FOR A FRENZEE CHEK D:]

Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (1, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

For a moment anger beats so white-hot behind Ivan's eyes that he can see nothing at all. Not her face, not her eyes, not those lovely wrists he used to grip in his hands, pin to the bed. He puts his hand on, grips the edge of the car roof; inches from her face, his breathing harsh.

Then he lets go. Turns on his heel and stalks away, pounds up the steps to the house, slams the front door.

Hilary doesn't flinch. Carlisle does, feeling the pulse of rage. Hilary just peers at him, frowning, as he struggles to restrain himself. Watches him, still frowning that deep, furrowed frown, as he turns, goes up the walk, up the porch, into the house. When she flinches, it's at the sound of the door slamming.

She looks at Carlisle. "Stay," she says, like speaking to a spaniel. He just nods.

With that, she walks up, the same path Ivan went not a moment earlier, and goes inside the house. She takes off her sunglasses on the way. And she does not knock.

Ivan has not gone far. He is in the front room. The house is dark and quiet, though far from abandoned. Sounds from outside drift through an open window somewhere. Someone's abortive attempts at breakfast are cooling on the table. Everything is in a state of mild, lived-in disarray, though all the regular occupants are, for the moment, evicted.

In their place, Ivan with his back to the door. His head bowed into his hands, his fingertips spread over his brow as though to quell the pounding of his head. When the door opens behind him he turns, feral-fast, his eyes flashing. He sees Hilary. He straightens; a moment later, turns to face her.

Hilary holds her sunglasses to her side when she walks in. She closes the door behind her.

She looks at him, standing there. He is smoothing himself, not physically but visibly, in every way she can see. And she meets his eyes when he does turn, but she says nothing. She looks around; they were supposed to have Miron and Anton's things ready. She looks for boxes, for luggage, what-have-you.

But there are none. Exhaling, something like a sigh, she starts to walk towards the stairs.

"You may as well help me," she says, without looking back, as she's starting to ascend.

Help her. Ivan looks at her blankly, as though he spoke no English; as though she spoke some tongue ten thousand years dead. She starts up those stairs. Neither of them are looking at the other now.

"How did we get here, Hilary?"

He asks her this when she is nearly at the top; nearly out of sight. He sounds far away; thoughtful, flat, removed.

"How did we come to this?"

Not entirely at the top, she pauses. She turns, standing on two steps at once, looking down that narrow path at him.

"I don't want to be owned," Hilary says quietly. Not 'anymore'. She has thought about this; she has never wanted it. She has wanted to feel a sense of belonging, and she has wanted to feel safe, but barring those things and barring any hope for things like love or autonomy or peace, she had at least grown to tolerate the ownership of one mate or another. Ivan's was the least restrictive, the least invasive. Until it wasn't.

"And I don't want to pretend that it's... all right. Being mad. Hating everything." There are tears in her eyes now, slow and warm but there all the same. She shakes her head a little bit. "I don't like it."

She's silent for a moment, and breathes in deeply, her chest expanding with it, her chin lifting. "I told you I did not want to be owned, and you betrayed me. I told you I hated being mad, and you abandoned me." There's a faint pause, just a half-heartbeat. "I told you I wanted to be able to get in a car and drive away from here at my leisure, on my own whim, and you nearly killed me.

"That is how."

"When you say it like that, it makes all the sense in the world."

From below he looks up at her. Meets her eyes for the first time in some time.

"But you know it wasn't so simple as that. It wasn't quite so black and white as you remembered it; any of it."

A pause; then he looks away again. It's a comfortable house, he thinks. A comfortable home. Maybe he'll move in here for a while. Live here for a while, sequestered and secluded. It sounds like a lovely little dream.

"I don't think I've changed, Hilary. I don't think I've done much, or anything, that I wouldn't have done a year ago. But what you tolerated then, or liked, or even asked for, you now seem to abhor. There was no warning. You began to hate me, and every last thing I do only makes you hate me more.

"I'm tired. I'm tired of arguing with you. I'm tired of trying to keep you, and trying to love you, and trying to redeem myself in your eyes. You won't or can't tell me what it is you want of me, and I'm tired of trying to figure it out.

"Take whatever it is you've come for and go. Let it be done."

it makes all the sense in the world

Hilary is not blind to sarcasm. She tips her head slightly when he says that, though. She thinks it does make sense. She doesn't understand why Ivan hates her so, why he won't ever answer her when she tells him what he's done, why he won't just admit that she is right to be angry. Oh, he has said he's sorry and he has said he loves her, but he tells her too that it all makes sense, what he's done. And it doesn't. Nothing he's done makes the smallest bit of sense.

Not to her.

as you remembered

She bristles a bit at that, hearing emphasis where in reality there may not be any. She stares down at him. She is opening her mouth, saying "Then --"

but Ivan is speaking again. He doesn't think he's changed, but that was never the problem. She scowls. He doesn't think he's done anything he wouldn't do a year ago, but he's wrong, he's so wrong. Her scowl deepens. She used to like this or that, but now she hates.

no warning

Hilary's mouth is slightly open, on the verge over and over again of speaking, of answering him, of telling him where he's got it wrong, what he doesn't understand. And he is not done, and she does not interrupt him, and he just tells her he is sick and tired of her.

This is what she hears. He's just tired of this, of her -- which she knew, after the whores. It's not in him to try and love her anymore, not when she isn't as pliant and pretty and submissive, not when she isn't his possession. And there is nothing about her, otherwise, that is lovable. He confirms that now: to love her when she is owned is easy, as it has been for every wolf who has taken her. To love her otherwise, well... now that takes trying. And to Ivan, it's simply not worth trying anymore. She is not worth trying.

This is what she hears. This, and go away.

--

There are still tears in her eyes. She is capable of crying, this one. More than she used to be. She cares about things now. She cares about herself, to some degree. Sometimes. Enough to want a life of her own, a home of her own, servants of her own, where every moment of her day is not inextricably tied somehow to Ivan. Enough to know she wants her son, if she wants nothing else, and to understand -- grasping in the dark for it -- that in some measure this is because she has no family. There is no one who is connected to her, no matter what, even if they wish they weren't. No one but Anton.

"You keep ending it," Hilary exhales. "In your mind, or on the street, or after chasing me all the way to Russia. I'm not, don't you see?" She shakes her head, those tears brimming, brimming, but ignored. "I have never ended it. When I was angry with you, I still wanted you in my presence. When I wanted to have my own place to live, not yours, I did not want to end things between us. I came to you after that, Ivan. I came to you."

One drips down from her right eye, rolls straight down her face. Then her left, a hair later, losing the race. They fall from her chin. "I am angry. I am so angry. But I cannot tell you what I want of you because it has not been, from the start, about some lack I wished you to fulfill. And every time I try to explain to you what changed, why I am angry, how I feel, you are the one who hates me for it. You ask to know, and then you erupt when I tell you. You are the one who cannot tolerate me -- for being angry, for being in pain, for being afraid, for wanting to control my life. You are the one who said that if I despise my madness, then there is nothing left between us.

"I never wanted to end it, Ivan," Hilary says, her lashes flicking, water spraying over her lower lids for a moment from the tears her lashes pick up and fling, every which way, when she blinks. "That was never what I wanted. It is not what I want now. But you keep ending it. What am I to do, when you tell me you have given up, but believe you?"

Ivan cannot look at her. Because of shame, because of frustration, because if he looks at her she'll melt his resolve -- for all those reasons and more, he cannot bring himself to turn, to look up those stairs to where she stands, weeping.

He looks at the walls instead. They have been taking pictures, Anton and his strange little family. There are pictures of the three, now four young people and the beautiful baby. There are pictures of them on that little lake near the house, or down by the river. There are pictures of them at some neighborhood playground. There are pictures of them gathered around Anton for his half-birthday, and he was so small then.

There are no pictures of his parents on the wall. There is a picture of his mother's ghost, nearly twenty years ago, by his little bed. None at all of Ivan.

"I know you're angry," he answers after a time. "I know you're hurt. I know all of it seems to tie back to me. What I've done. Every time we speak there is some new crime I must answer for, something else I have done to wrong you. And every time we've spoken, the last few times we've spoken, you've told me how you hate madness. Not just your own, but mine as well. My madness, my fallibility, my weakness.

"I can't change that. I can't change that you're mad, or that I am too. When you hate madness, you're hating me as well. When you push that away, you're pushing me away. I can't escape your hate and your rejection. I can't soothe your hurt or dim your anger, either. And so all I've felt from you for a very long time now is hurt, and anger, and hatred, and rejection.

"I can't remember the last time you loved me."

A pause; hollow.

"So tell me, Hilary. Why shouldn't we end it? Why shouldn't we give up, if all that's left between us is pain?"

"I don't hate you," is what Hilary says, numbly, despite the tears. "I hate that we are mad. But I never asked you to change it."

She sinks, slowly, to sitting at the top of the steps, as though she can't even hold herself up any longer. Her knees are up, her arms draped over them; she cannot help but be elegant, be graceful, even in exhaustion. "But I don't see how you have even tried to soothe anything. Every time I've spoken, you've lashed out at me and told me how pointless it is."

Her eyes close. "Do you not remember what I said to you, the last time I saw you?" Her hand has risen, covers her eyes as though to block out the light. "I can't make you feel something you've decided to ignore." Hilary exhales, sighs, her hand lowering again, her eyes opening again. "I don't know, Ivan." A small shrug. "You keep telling me you want to, we should. So again: what am I to do? I will not beg you to love me if you don't."

The silence stretches again, long as a northern twilight.

At last, "I remember." Soft, that. He stirs; shifts his weight, turns after all. He looks up the stairs, which are hardwood, sturdy, a bit steeper than modern design would have it. She is sitting at the top now. They are alone in this house, and it occurs to Ivan that they have never, ever been alone here before. It seems ironic. This is where their son lives.

Lived.

"Do you love me?" he asks, then. "I'm not speaking of need, or survival. I want to know if you still love me, despite all that's transpired between us."

Twice now, he has not answered her. What is she to do but go, when he keeps leaving her, when he betrays her, when he keeps telling her to go, that it is ended? What else is there for her to do but leave him, then? Ivan does not tell her some new trick. He just moves forward, and she sits there, worn thin by days of this, weeks before it. Those sunglasses lie forgotten in one hand, dangling by a stem.

It is only just now, after everything, that she even begins to have an idea what he wants from her. Why he has been acting so ... so very mad.

Hilary sighs, saying softly: "Je t'aimerai jusqu'à ce que les étoiles s'éteignent, Ivan."

And this: "Ya lyublyu tebya do vsego mira ne ischeznet."

And this, quietest of all.

"I dream of people's throats being ripped open. I dream of dead animals and the things that eat dead animals. I dream of rape. I dream of monsters following me down endless hallways. I dreamt once that I vomited maggots, pieces of someone I knew, someone I had devoured. I dream of drowning, but never dying, only suffocating and sinking, lightless, forever.

Hilary stares at him, the blood out of her face, but not from fear. "I dream horrible, horrible things. I dream like this all the time. And the mad part is that I often don't even feel fear, or disgust, or distress. I just wake, and go on." She shrugs one shoulder, shakes her head. New tears have brimmed, and fallen over, flooding her eyes and dripping down her cheeks, falling past those perfectly formed lips.

"Sometimes, I have little dreams. And in them, I am not mad. My parents and my brother live. We are all together, and no one hates anyone else. There is light, and warmth, and Anton is with me. And Anton loves me, and is not afraid of me when I hold him. We lie in bed together, you and I and our son, and none of us are afraid of anything. There's only love. Nothing stopping us from it. Nothing darkly whispering other things in our ears. Just love. Happiness."

It would be merciful, if she would just glance away. But she doesn't. She swallows, though, taking in a shuddering breath. Sniffing, and even that is somehow graceful.

"From those dreams, I wake in tears. I wake in terror, and pain. Because it is not real, and perhaps it never can be. But lately, because now I know that you do not even care to try.

"Of course I love you, Ivan. I have never stopped. At my worst, and when I am at my angriest, when I am mad, mad, mad, there is still me, behind it, underneath it, loving you, and only wanting you to love me back."

She tells him aching things.

She tells him appalling, horrifying things. She tells him things that make his blood run cold, and things that make him twist inside for her.

She tells him things that break him open. That reach right into him to rip the armor from his heart; that leave him raw, vulnerable, stripped bare. She tells him things he never knew about her before; about that inner life behind the blackness of her eyes, where even he -- he, of all people -- thought nothing at all existed. She tells him the terrible, soul-scarring things she sees in her mind, and the beautiful, awful, unattainable things she dreams of.

She tells him,

until the stars go out.

until the world disappears.

and though he only understands one of these, it is the sound of the other that leaves its mark on him. That's her native tongue. That's the language she spoke before she was quite so broken, quite so mad.

--

There are tears in Ivan's eyes when she is finished. They are frustrated, self-castigating tears, and he turns away from her, covers his eyes with his hand and wrinkles his brow, squeezes his eyes shut, bares his teeth -- all in silence, a silent howling rictus, passing. He mops his palm over his face, covers his mouth a second, drops it. He looks up at her then, with his wet eyes, with his drawn and feral stare.

"I do love you," he says, harrowed. "I love you desperately, to the point of pain, and I am sorry, I am sorry I doubted you, broke faith with you, hurt you.

"But I don't know how to love you without caging you, collaring you, owning you. That is the way you've taught me to love you. That's the only way anyone has ever taught me to love anyone else, because I've never... I've never loved anyone but you. You're all I've known."

That is a painful truth. It shouldn't be painful; not after all these years, not after all the perverse delight he's taken in being so rudderless, so anchorless, so unattached, such a heartbreaker. He looks down a moment, brow tight, shoulders moving with a deep breath.

"I'll learn another way, if you'll let me. If you'll hold back your anger and your disgust, if you'll give me your patience and your forgiveness. If you'll remember that for all my flaws, I never, ever mean to harm you. I would rather lose you. I would rather die."

For a while, she's so quiet. Her face is so wet and she's making no attempt to wipe it, clean it, dry her eyes. She just watches him, as he flays himself open: it's her. It's only ever her. There's nothing else he knows.

"You mustn't have me followed, even for my own safety," she says quietly.

Ivan is looking for an oath, perhaps. An assurance: that yes, she will try to restrain her hatred, her mad rage for everything, and forgive him, and love him, and gently tutor him in a different way of loving her, holding her, being with her. But this is Hilary. And Hilary cannot see what Ivan might really need. She hears him asking her to teach him something different, and that's what sticks.

"You must yield to me my territory. My home, my people; my freedom, even freedom from you. You mustn't intrude or invade, coming in like a thief to leave things on my pillow." Hilary does lift her hand, using her slender sleeve to dry one cheek with her wrist, then the other. "And never, ever, ever fuck another woman unless we've agreed to it, unless we want it." There is a certain viciousness in this, a fervor, but -- of course there would be, after recent events.

She sniffs. "You must still break me, the way you do. Because I still need that. Want it," she adds, quietly, like brushing fingertips over hypersensitive, wanting skin. Her eyes meet his for a moment, there. "I don't know how to tell you what the lines will be, there. Between owning me when I need it and letting me be free, all the same. I don't know where they are, myself." Her throat moves, flashing white, as she swallows.

"You must adore me, and praise me, and call me your beautiful girl. And learn when to control me and when to let me control myself. And you have to try and love Anton. Care about him. Because it makes me happy," she says, small, whispered, "to think of you loving him."

Hilary blinks a few times, flicking away tears that want to shed, that she does not want to release. "I hate that we are mad, Ivan. But that is not the same as hating you. I don't hate you. My madness hates you. And everything. But that... that is not the same." She stammers, not understanding even what she tries to say.

That we are not our madnesses.

That that is what makes it madness in the first place.

[*change that to 'we are not our madness']

This is what he wants. More than assurances, more than oaths: this. A roadmap, however bare, however spare. A pattern to follow, a lay to the land. This is what she wants, this is what she does not want. This is what he must do, and what he must not do. This, to earn the privilege of calling himself her lover; her beloved.

Ivan listens to her. He listens perhaps more intently and more seriously than he has ever listened to anyone in a long time. Territory. Freedom. Privacy. Fidelity. He nods after each stipulation: yes. yes. yes. yes. In a way, he is reminded of the time he asked what she wanted him to do to her. How to break her the way he does, as she puts it. He is reminded of all the odd and precise little details she gave him then: a riding crop, ropes, high heels, long gloves. It might be pretty. She still wants him to call her his beautiful girl. Some tenderness -- the first in so very long -- unfurls its shoots through his heart, then.

She wants him to love their son. Try.

She wants him to know that her madness is not the same as her mind.

"I understand," he says, when she is done. He speaks softly. They are too raw for anything but. He puts his hand on the banister after a time, and he begins to take the first few steps up toward her. "I'll do my best, Hilary."

A small pause. He is close to her, then, close enough that he holds his hand out to help her up.

"Come on," he says quietly. "Let's get Anton's things."

Ivan rises toward her. Hilary does not flinch, or shrink. She shrank in the car, so terrified of him. Terrified, only, above everything, that he was there to keep Anton from her, to take him back, to stop her. She felt panic rising, and it turned to rage. As it so often does, in every mammal.

Now he comes, and she does not retreat. She remains quite still, salt tracks on her face, following his eyes. By the time he comes close enough to extend his hand, she is looking up at him. And what he says makes her face screw up, in pain. She fills with tears again.

"You didn't hear him, when I took him away. The way he screamed."

There is little he can say to that. Ivan's brow furrows. After a moment, he lowers his hand. After another, he lowers himself; sits at the top of the stairs beside her.

"We don't visit him enough," he says quietly. "He doesn't know us the way he knows this place and these people. That's all."

It is cramped, and she doesn't intuit that she should scoot over. Perhaps he sits a step above her, below her, or simply sandwiches in, squeezes alongside her. She sniffs.

"You didn't hear how he screamed," she whispers, again, and looks to him. "I don't wish to take him from his home, from people who love him. I only want to be near him. I was only taking him because you were done with me."

She reaches up, wiping at her eyes again. "What do you want for him?"

Ivan does, in fact, squeeze in alongside her. Lucky for them they're both slender, lean-bodied people. Lucky for them the house boasts a sturdy set of stairs.

"I was only giving him to you," Ivan replies, quiet and a little wry, "because I thought you wanted to leave me and I didn't want to use our son to trap you. You'd said something about that when you were angry. That I would use Anton to control you. I didn't want to confirm your fears."

He thinks a moment, then. Looks over what he can see of this comfortable little home. Sighs a little, passing a hand down his face, lifting his shoulders in a shrug.

"I want him to be comfortable and safe. I want good people taking care of him. I want him to have a relationship with you, however fragile it may be, because you want a relationship with him. There's no reason why he can't live here a few months of the year and spend the rest of his time in the States, or maybe in Paris. There's no reason why his people can't move with him -- or even you, if you wanted to be near. When he's old enough, I suppose we'll find him a nice school in Chicago or New York; save the international trips for summer and winter vacation.

"What about you? What do you want for him?"

Only when Ivan nudges against her, pushing, does Hilary realize what he wants. Despite everything, she looks at him with vague affront, but it's weak, and it fades quickly. She shifts a bit, sliding to the side, letting him come near. He tells her what he does, and she isn't looking at him, but she does hear him. Her eyes close. She never stopped fearing that: that he would use Anton to control her. It is the one thing that would, in reality, break her completely, and forever. If he used Anton, she would shatter. She would never leave. She would take anything.

She thinks so.

Ivan waves his hand, like magic, describing the way Anton's life could be. What they could do.

Hilary just opens her eyes, looking downward. She thinks for a while. She shakes her head.

"Love."

Love.

Simple as that. Pure as that. This, from a woman who is neither pure nor simple, nor even kind or good. Ivan hears it, and Ivan exhales. After a moment, carefully, as though expecting her to tear herself away from him again,

he wraps his arm around her shoulders. He turns toward her and lays his brow, the bridge of his nose, gently against the side of her head. For a little while, he rests against her like that.

"Anton is loved," Ivan whispers. "You love him. Miron loves him. Izolda and Polina love him. Elodie will love him." He kisses her temple through the veil of her hair. "I'll learn to love him, too. I will."

For the first time in a long time, or so it feels, Hilary does not pull away from Ivan, or throw his touch from her. She is still while he embraces her, rests his face close to her own. She closes her eyes while he tells her, assures her, that Anton is loved. By her, by Miron, Izolda, Polina, and for the first time she can remember the idea of anyone else loving her son, anyone but his parents, does not fill her with rage. She hears the name of the redhead and figures out, because Hilary is hardly stupid, who Ivan is talking about.

Someone to speak French to her son, to feed him French food, to teach him French ways. So that he would have a part of his mother there, growing up, even when she could not be with him. So he would not grow up wholly Crescent Moon, Russian, with no trace of her but his black eyes.

Hilary is kissed. She opens her eyes, sighing soundlessly.

"We'll ask Miron," she muses. "What to do with Anton. How he should live. Miron will know."

And Miron, who loves, will not advise them anything that would distress the boy.

"I'll talk to Miron," he promises. "We'll talk to him together, if you'd like. But if you want to be with Anton, then we'll take him with us. We'll take them all if we have to. We can make it work."

A final, gentle squeeze, and then Ivan unravels his arm from around Hilary. He stands, one hand on the banister for balance. "Come on," he urges, reaching for her hand again. "Let's go get his things."

Ivan rises, but Hilary is reaching into the handbag slung across her upper body, shaking her head at Ivan's outstretched hand. She's taking out her phone, or rather: a new phone, a different one. "We'll talk to him now. I'm having him brought here."

She is saying, as she is tapping a text out. Slowly.

Ivan -- one foot on the step below -- pauses. Considers; then nods.

"All right." He reverses, starts heading down the steps instead. "We'll talk to him right now."

It makes sense to her. To know now, not to make other choices. Not to move all of Anton's things, not to move him from one continent to another, not to fire or hire or adjust employment terms for three other people until she knows what to do with her son.

To bring him back here, to this house, and let him continue his life as he has known it from the start. To leave him again, back to the States, only to go through what she went through the last two times: days, weeks of depression, of hating herself and hating Ivan, hating everyone she sees and trying desperately to conceal it in sex or pills or what-have-you.

Or perhaps to stay here with him, at least a while. Apply for a visa and live in this house until he knows her, until she remembers who she is -- or discovers it. Winter with him, and summon Ivan here now and again. Spend Christmas together, winter surrounding them with snow, fires in the hearth.

Or take him with them to America. Little trouble: they are his birth parents. He is their son. If they are U.S. citizens, they can take him. Perhaps move Miron and Polina, at least, with them. Elodie too, maybe. Izolda might not come; she has a family here. She has children of her own. Have Max train Polina, have Dmitri train Miron. Buy Anton a house somewhere, a place of his own for him to grow into, in one of the finest American cities. Maybe they will all move to New York.

Christ knows. Hilary doesn't. She is not sure at all what to do, what will be best for Anton. What they can all survive. She has such faith, suddenly, in the boy who turned his back on everything he'd known the past two years in order to keep his devotion to a toddler. She does not think that faith is misplaced.

So a text is sent, out to Miranda. Hilary tells her to bring Miron and Anton, right now, to the house. And Miranda will obey. It is bred into her to obey. She is paid to obey. So, in Novgorod proper, Miranda obeys, and informs Miron: they are going back out to the house, right now. With Anton.

Anton is in the living room with Darya. He is slobbering on the corner of a pillow, and he has wet his diaper. He gurgles when he sees Miron enter the living room, rolling to his feet and stomping over to hug his manservant's leg, drooling on the boy's two-day-old jeans.

--

At the country estate, Hilary puts her phone away. She lifts her hand, catching Ivan's as he passes her. Her fingers entwine at the tips with his own. She looks at him, then begins to draw him back to her. Down to her. And if he permits, and if he will kneel on the steps near her, she kisses him. It is soft and it has depth, richness, her lips opening to his, drawing his breath in to mingle with her own.

It must be very confusing to be servant to Hilary. To be subjected to the wild winds of her whim: do this, do that, now this, now that, no, she's changed her mind. She hasn't been here very long, but in that time Miranda has already made headway toward getting Miron out of the country -- semi-legally at first, legally in eventuality. In that time, Miron has already made some headway -- albeit somewhat less, respectively -- toward coming to grips to the way his life has been upended. He is leaving Russia. He is staying with Anton. He is going to America, and goodness only knows when he'll return.

That'll all change with Hilary's text. They're to come back. They're to bring Anton. They're to sit down and talk, and Miron is to become responsible, solely or at least in great part, for what happens to a baby boy not of his blood. A baby boy nonetheless far more attached to him than either of his noble, erstwhile parents. He is to do this, and they are to do this, and there will be no explanation whatsoever for why, how, what changed between Hilary and Ivan, when.

Their lives are not their own, these kin who serve truer-blooded Silver Fangs. And in that way, perhaps Hilary, for all the horror of her upbringing, is in reality quite lucky after all. To be able to demand freedom. To be able to demand self-determination, and to reasonably expect to get it.

--

Ivan's hand is caught as he starts down the stairs. He pauses: arresting delicately in mid-step, balanced and smooth. He turns, an eyebrow up. Her fingers wind with his and the eyebrow comes back down. He understands before she looks at him. He knows before she begins to pull.

He goes easily, gracefully, willingly, sinking to his knees on the hardwood steps. The very first time they kissed, it was on a set of stairs, in the dark, in an ocean of noise and bodies and alcohol. He tasted like vodka and she tasted like

herself,

complex and deepening, opening her lips to him like a riddle, or a provocation. He did not know then how deeply he would come to love her, but even then he knew, he knew she was different, unique, rare, risky.

His mouth opens to hers. Soft and slow; a patient, textured kiss. When it is over he looks at her a moment. Words don't seem necessary. He touches her face; swipes his thumb across those dried tear-tracks on her cheek. Then he rises again -- their hands stretch between them, and then their fingers part.

"I'm going to get a drink," he says quietly. "Come find me in the dining room when you're ready."

At least right now, Miron knows nothing about the reason he and his charge are being called back to the house. Only that they are being summoned. Only that they are going, now. After Anton has been changed and given a small snack to keep him occupied in the car ride. Then back to the house.

Miranda will drive.

Miron will, perhaps, try not to think of why this is happening. What it means. He has been through so much, in less than twelve hours. Anton doesn't know, or care. He wants to look out the window, and point at everything he knows the word for. In any language.

--

This is a very different kiss from their first. They touch hands, when once she held the railing and hardly touched him at all but for her lips. She was standing, then. She was with what might pass for friends to a person like her. And he knew she was married, knew she was mated to a much stronger wolf. And he knew he was trespassing, and knew he would trespass further. Even someone like Ivan should have known better.

They kiss slowly now, and softly, and well. Hilary tastes his mouth again, effortlessly passionate and effortlessly graceful in her passion. She follows him, half an inch, when he draws back from her. Her eyes open slowly to his. He rises, and he is drawing back, and her hand tightens.

Pulls at him again, back to her, catching a breath from the air.