Ivan Press

Ivan

Let's go to Paris.

That is Ivan's whim of the day. These ideas always strike out of the clear blue, without warning, sometime first thing in the morning and sometimes last thing at night and sometimes anywhere in the middle. Today, it strikes over a late breakfast. Perched atop a barstool in white lounge pants and little else, he floats this idea to his lover while he peels an orange with his graceful strong fingers.

We'll take the train, he adds, which might strike Hilary as old-fashioned and distinguished; which might more likely make her mood foul and disgruntled. Nevermind: it is what he proposes. See the countryside. It'll be romantic.

So that is what they do, unless of course Hilary absolutely, utterly despises the idea. The truth is oftentimes they do things on Ivan's whims, even if she dislikes the thought. Her veto power is tied, it seems, to the vehemence of her hatred.

She has influence, though. That much cannot be denied. They go by train, through the bright countryside with its last grapes of summer, but there are no compartments. The route is too short for that -- five hours, give or take, from Gare de Nice to Gare de Lyon. But the thought of sharing with the plebes, even first class, is insufferable. And so Ivan books the entire goddamn first class car. Plenty of room for all of them: him, her, their retinue. Their child. Their retinue and their child, far far away from them, where he can barely hear it if Anton should cry.

They are just past Lyon now, through the city and back into the country. Rolling hills under a blue sky dappled with clouds; the terrain verdant with crop and vine, drenched in golden light. They are about halfway there, the heart of France, the Alps not so very far to their east. Ivan sips coffee. They were served lunch a half-hour ago, and he is redolent of satiety, quite pleased with his life as it is.

"We're close to Lausanne," he thinks to say. And then, gauche American at heart: "Seventy-five miles, give or take."

It is difficult to please Hilary. At times it seems impossible, at least to most people. Ivan takes the time. He works at it, though he likely does not consider it work. He is not the sort who works at anything. But he has tried, again and again, to learn how to please Hilary. He tries, over and over, to learn new ways of pleasing her.

But even he might be surprised with the ease with which Hilary agrees to Paris. He has a whim and he speaks it; she glances over at him from where she is reading a newspaper from the city, raises both eyebrows just a tick, then gives a simple nod and returns to whatever she's reading.

A little later, he says he wants to go by train. Rather: he declares that they shall go by train. And Hilary again lifts her eyes briefly, blinks once, then gives another small nod even as her eyes are going back to her paper. "All right," is all she says, as though she's barely paying attention. As though he's suggesting they go for a walk by the shore later today.

Even when they get to the train, the lack of compartments does not surprise or dismay her; she used to live overseas. She has taken trains before. But the fact that they have the entire car to themselves also does not startle her, much less impress her. It's possible Ivan has never done anything that actually impressed Hilary. Then again: it's possible she is incapable of that particular nuance of feeling.

The retinue and the boy occupy the back of the car. Cards are played, and books read, and so forth. Anton spends most of the first leg of the trip on his knees on a seat, palms splayed on the window, watching the countryside whoosh by and pointing to things he sees, talking to the adults around him about this or that. He gets up and explores the train car as well, crawling under seats and checking the windows on the other side. He visits Ivan and Hillary up closer to the front where they sit together, but as is often the case, he doesn't know quite what to say or do around them. They do not give him the same sort of attention as other adults. For a brief while he climbs up and sits on Hilary's lap, and she -- perhaps surprisingly -- goes along with this as though it is as normal as one of those strolls along the shore.

But it doesn't last. At least not, this time, because he cries or because Hilary ignores him. He stares out the window a bit, held in her arms. He sucks his thumb even though he is far too big, but Hilary never chides him for it the way Miron and Polina and Elodie and Dmitri and Darya and the maids do. Hilary watches what he watches. And then Anton gets bored, the way children his age do, and he slides off her lap and back to the floor of the car, running down the aisle back to the adults who ask him questions and read him books and talk to him.

Hilary doesn't look wounded to see him go. Things have changed, since they came to live in Nice. They have changed a great deal, indeed.

Lunch is served. Hilary has white wine and eats neatly, elegantly, yet with a focus on her food that is almost predatory. When lunch is cleared, her wine glass refilled, she glances back, hearing Anton being cleaned up, being reminded that soon he will have a nap. No, not at home. He gets to nap on the train! But they will still be on the train when he wakes up, so he won't miss anything. No, mama and papa are not going to nap. If he is good and quiet and does not try to talk, yes, Miron will rub his back.

Ivan is speaking. Hilary turns her attention back to her lover. She dressed today in tailored, very slim-fitting black trousers and a seemingly seamless white silk blouse beneath a long cashmere sweater, one that hits mid-thigh and is warm enough to wrap around herself almost like a blanket. A long chain ending in a circular gold pendant hangs from her neck, and taupe heels with just a hint of that same golden color adorn her feet.

She smirks at him. "Are you thinking of changing our itinerary, and going to Lausanne instead of Paris?"

They are facing each other across a table that can be folded down if they so wish. For the first hour or so, it was. Then they were served lunch, and now wine and coffee and a newspaper, and so it has stayed up. Hilary faces forward; sees the onrushing countryside. Ivan sees it receding, ever flying away from them.

There are distant white dots on the hills. Sheep. Somewhere in his bones, those idle nobleman's bones, he must still want to chase, to pursue, to hunt. Some part of him must lick its chops at the very thought.

His clear eyes refocus. His lover is smirking at him. He smiles back, faint, a turn of the corners of his lips. And then he stretches his legs out across the space between, his feet on the plushly padded seat beside her.

"No," he says. As though this were explanation enough: "Too many people."

He tips his head back against the seat, slouching a little now, lifting his coffee for a small sip. It was served in a ceramic teacup on a saucer. A tiny spoon rests beside the indentation of that saucer; a drop of pooled coffee beneath it. There is generous cream in his coffee but no sugar. When he lowers the cup he licks the trace of cream from his upper lip thoughtlessly.

"We should go somewhere primitive and wet someday," he muses, "where we sleep under mosquito netting and burn kerosene lamps. Where it rains hard enough to wake us from our sleep, and every time we fuck we're drenched in sweat."

He grins at her suddenly, showing teeth.

"You probably think all that sounds awful."

Her lips purse at his explanation for why they won't go to Lausanne over Paris: too many people. Hilary is hardly a civics expert, but even she knows the population difference between the two cities is staggering, and quite firmly in Paris's favor. She shakes her head at him; fool.

Then he describes something wet, with mosquito nets, with the stench of burning kerosene, with mud everywhere. He grins happily at how disgusting he assumes this must sound to her.

Hilary does not smile back, nor does she scoff. She merely says: "It does."

She takes a sip of her wine. "I wouldn't enjoy that at all."

The edges wear off the grin. It turns into something else; wry, a little rueful. He sets his coffee down and holds his hand out, but not for hers. He means for her to lift her feet into his lap, stretching her legs across the space between much as he does.

"Then we won't do it. Though sometimes I do wonder how you would have fared had you been born before industrialization."

The train tracks cut diagonally across the land here. Farm after farm, row after row: a strange and mesmerizing pattern of crops that seem to race up to greet the train, that follow them in a sweep of clarity through the blurring green, that recede against as suddenly as they came. Ivan watches a while.

"I meant we have too many people with us," he breaks the silence again, quietly. "Lausanne is just for us. The jungle would have just been for us too. Sometimes that's what I want. You and I, male and female, primitive."

"I suppose I wouldn't have known any better," she says simply, dismissively.

Hilary most certainly does not put her feet up in the train, even if they're alone in the car. She does reach across the distance between them. She doesn't do this often. But there it is: her forearm on the table between them, her wrist turned up, her palm turned up, her hand held out to him.

How can she do something like that, something earth-shattering, as though it's nothing at all? It isn't something she seems to fight against and conquer. It doesn't seem to be something she has to think about, an urge she doesn't trust. She simply offers him her hand, because he seems to want the contact, and...

...and she recognizes that. Sees it. And feels no reason, at least right now, not to.

She loves him. And often, she likes him. And sometimes, she does not mind holding hands.

"Ah," she says at his explanation, smiling a bit at the very first part. And then he goes on: Lausanne is just for the two of them. Her eyebrows tug together, ever so slightly, just once. It's a flicker across her features, a brief stirring of emotion, of memory, of knowledge that Lausanne means a great deal to him.

To them, perhaps. She's never considered it that way.

Hilary is quiet for a moment, then tips her head to one side. Her hair is down today, in thick curls, but not the waves it dries into on its own. More finished than that; more her style. The glossy dark curls weigh against her shoulder, brush over her cashmere.

"That is not the part I would not enjoy," she tells him softly. Then, the faintest smirk: "The bugs and mud and kerosene, however."

It is a gesture simultaneously profound and a pittance. It is barely anything at all. It is also more than she ever does, usually. Perhaps more than she has ever recognized or done.

He takes that offered hand, his palm to hers, his fingers closing around the base of her hand, her wrist. Now they are touching, and he swears he can feel charge moving from his nerve endings to hers. He always was more the romantic.

"I know," he replies, smiling. And he does. Whatever else, and however her inability to consistently connect may frustrate him, he does know that. He knows she enjoys being alone with him, sometimes. He knows she likes him often; loves him always.

That, too, is profound.

"It occurs to me," he adds, "I've never once asked you where you'd like to go."

"Of course you have," Hilary retorts, and this may or may not be true, but she seems to think it it is. Seems quite certain, in fact.

Her wrist is relaxed in his grasp, her pulse fluttering against his warm palm. He holds her like this and she doesn't tense, doesn't withdraw, doesn't look at him strangely. He's a savage thing; she saw that quite early on, though at first she believed as much as anyone the lie of the cavalier playboy. His savagery was the only thing that made her more than fleetingly interested in him. The ease with which he displays even the slightest hint of dominance -- and this grasp is, indeed, quite a slight hint -- is comforting to her. It means he is not lying. He is not wearing a mask. Not with her.

And he's real. He's here with her, flesh and blood. He's no nightmare.

"You seldom stop asking me what I'd like," she goes on, perhaps insistent that this is the way it is, this is how he approaches her, that he's just being silly.

Maybe that really is how she sees it.

"I'm not sure that's exactly true," he replies, amused, "but I'm glad to hear you say it all the same. I suppose it is true I try to please you."

He lifts her hand to his mouth. The kiss across her knuckles is passing, casual; as though he does this sort of thing frequently and by nature. Then, releasing her, he stands.

He wanders off for a while. He goes to the back of the car to talk to Dmitri, likely coming up with some list of near-impossibilities that poor Dmitri will somehow make happen. While he's there he does at least acknowledge his son's presence, running an absent hand through the boy's fair hair. Soon enough he's back, and this time he sits beside his mate, folding the table up so that it forms only a small ledge for their paraphernalia.

He reclines his seat into that newfound space, stretching out with a yawn. His hand reaches for hers again. This time their fingers lace, and he holds her hand loosely, familiarly. Past her profile, he can see the passing countryside.

"We should stop here on the way back. Buy a few casks of wine."

Hilary gives a little roll of her eyes. Hard to say what she's so dismissive of. Maybe his argument: not exactly true. Maybe his comfort to hear her say it anyway. Maybe these mentions of pleasing her, as though she won't give him the satisfaction. So she scoffs lightly.

Her hand is lifted, and her eyes settle on him, dark and birdlike. Hawklike, really. Piercing and unblinking, all too attentive. She watches him as he brushes his lips over her hand, which she accepts with the grace of someone who does, in fact, receive such favor regularly. Naturally.

She doesn't ask him where he's going. She looks out the window and sips her Chardonnay.

In the back of the car, his son is napping atop a blanket spread over two seats. He has a little pillow, and another blanket covering him, and a stuffed wolf that at some point replaced the dragon he used to carry around in his teeth. His hair is as golden as ever, his skin lightly touched with summer sun but not nearly so bronzed as Ivan lets himself get; he is, after all, just a child. He has this thumb surreptitiously in his mouth, but only loosely.

Hilary is not there to see it, so it isn't for her benefit that Ivan touches him. Anton is not awake to feel it, so it isn't for his benefit, either. There's no reality in which Ivan would reach down and stroke his son's hair for the sake of the servants present.

So that's interesting.

Anton doesn't wake. His nose wiggles, and he smacks his mouth a bit, but then is still again, having no more trouble sleeping on a train than he has had on planes or in automobiles.

Then Ivan comes back. Hilary's glass is empty. She glances up as Ivan returns, folds the table up again, and places her glass on the ledge. She watches him the way she did before: like she isn't even a mammal, like she's some other style of animal, some sharp-eyed and half-mindless hunter. There's no rage to it. There's not even hunger. It's as though watching things in this way is something of a habit,

when she's interested in them.

Which is rare, indeed.

He takes her hand; she lets him have it. He muses on the landscape, the latest idea he has for taking pleasure in what brief life he has been afforded by Gaia. But delightfully, Hilary smiles. Smirks, really, but it's less of a sneer and more of a smile in this instance.

"We have a cellar, you know," she tells him, as though somehow he might not know. As though this is something she only recently discovered, though it isn't; it's just the first time she's ever commented on it to him. "Beneath the house. There's quite a lot of wine there already."

As though it appeared there magically. As though Ivan didn't fill it with his money. As though their servants don't keep it stocked. As though the wine she drinks and cooks with and the spirits they sometimes enjoy together were delivered by underground pixies or squat little gnomes.

"No casks, though," she notes. "Not yet."

Sometimes, when those black eyes of hers fix on him, he is reminded that she too is the chosen of Falcon. Arresting, that stare. He can only imagine how intimidating she would be, how terrifying, if she had been born a wolf. Gaia is kind after all. Hilary is not a wolf. Hilary's soul has, in all its many incarnations, rarely ever been a wolf.

And so her stare is merely arresting. Even now, the way she looks at him sometimes brings him back to that very first sundrenched afternoon. The hotel on the north shore; the sunlight cascading through the open curtains to fall on his body as he stripped bare for her. Neither of them knew quite what they were getting into, nor how they would change one another.

For the better. For some time, he wasn't sure of that. These days -- well. He's still never quite certain, but he suspects. He thinks they have, against all odds, been good for each other.

He takes her hand and suggests buying casks of wine. She chides him, as though he might not know the contents of his own house, and to be truthful she is not altogether wrong to suspect so. He doesn't know everything. He doesn't care enough. The wine and spirits in the cellar, though: he does have some passing cognizance there.

"We'll by a few casks," he repeats, pleased with the idea. "A few varieties of red, maybe one or two of white.

"I do believe I'll take a nap," he adds. "You'll entertain yourself, won't you?"

Her head tips to one side. "I have a book," she says, which... is perhaps how she entertains herself now, when she is not drugging herself on travel. She cannot cook on a train or a plain. She cannot dance. She cannot do the things she has actually felt interest in when she is in transit.

But now she likes to read. She's discovered that it passes the time quite effortlessly.

There's amusement in those dark eyes, though none on her lips. "Anton is napping, too."

Ivan, stretched out in his plush reclining seat, smirks. "And what exactly is that supposed to imply?"

"That you are the same," Hilary says, quite simply.

He huffs; this time a laugh without the dark edgings. "Well. I suppose we are. He is my son."

Hilary smirks, this time. "He is like you," she says. She knows he doesn't know. She sees how little he interacts with the boy. She doesn't sound perturbed. Only... like she wants him to know. Thinks he should know this.

Their hands are still interlaced. Through that point of contact she can feel his awareness; a frisson that hangs in the balance between interest and tension.

"Oh? How so?"

"He just is," Hilary says, insistent, as though this should suffice. "It's... not something I can easily put into words."

Then, a brief darkening, a forestalling of a feared dismissal of her claim: "And it isn't just that he looks like you."

Another little huff of a laugh. It fades into thoughtful silence.

"He's like you too," he says softly. "He looks like you. His eyes. And he has your stillness. That watchful way you look at me -- that, too."

Hilary wrinkles her nose at him when he says that Anton is like her. She disagrees, quite clearly. The expression softens a moment later: yes, he does have her eyes. He does have skin that is slightly more fair than Ivan's. She cannot dispute that he has some of her features.

But then Ivan goes on. Speaks of stillness, and attention.

She does not react at first. Then, eventually, she gives a small nod. Yes. Anton is often like that.

"He asks many questions," she says, and perhaps this is what she means: this is one way he is like his father. Perhaps she doesn't know that asking nonstop questions is the hallmark of all young children. Perhaps Anton's questions are different, somehow.

"And he's very spoiled," she adds, maybe with a touch of humor, a jab at Ivan that at least isn't intended to hurt.

That's new, too. Like the reading. Like the little retreat she wanted, more of a fairy tale cottage than a crystal box. Like holding his hand without being disgusted by it. She says things like this, and they're less incisive, less meant to wound. Her attempts at humor aren't always like knives sliding up between one's ribs.

There is much that is new. Nothing huge, blazing, all-encompassing. Nothing so obvious as that. But many, so many little alterations that sum into a sort of subtle sea-change. Her hand in his. That she reached for him first, earlier. That she jabs at him without meaning to draw blood.

That she reads. That she has collected books in her little cottage. The cottage itself; the secrecy and, dare we say, the warmth there. That he has begun to lower some of those sky-high shields of luxury and privilege he used to keep around her. That he brings her to Paris not in a private jet but in a train, running through the countryside where all the unwashed plebes could see her.

That he intends to sleep, even, without seeing to it that she is sleeping first. That he lets his vigilance down at all -- for that is what it is.

"I am very spoiled," he agrees, quite unscathed. "And I am a curious creature."

He is quiet a while. Perhaps she thinks he is drifting off. But then:

"He never runs in for a hug. He never openly seeks affection like that. He comes at you sideways, so he doesn't have to show he wants your attention. And so if you were to reject him he would be able to pretend not to be wounded."

It's not meant to hurt. There's no way, really, for Ivan to know how much more affectionate Anton is with Miron, with Elodie, even Polina and Dmitri. He even tries to get Darya to play with him. He does run in for hugs. He does ask his caretakers not to leave until he's asleep.

But that is not how he is with Hilary. Much less Ivan.

There's something in her eyes distant now, folding slowly in on itself, as deliberate and perfect as origami. But there's sadness, too, and flickers of fear beneath that. This is what she folds herself around: vanishes these things, sinks them into a dark, endless space inside of her where such things come from and must always remain.

"He is only like that with us," she says, softly. With iron in the gesture, she swallows, and slips her hand away, reaching into her bag for her aforementioned book.

He could say things to that. He could feed her pretty lies, but he would never insult her so. Besides, she would see through them. Hilary is many things, but gullible is not amongst them.

He could offer empty platitudes too. He could sit up, try to comfort her. Yet there is a finality to her withdrawal. His hand feels suddenly cool and empty; he closes the fingers into the palm. She has produced a book, and he reads the title absently.

"Anton knows you love him." In the end, this is what he thinks to say. "Whatever else, he does know that. A blind man could see it. As for whether or not that is enough... well. I suppose it'll have to be."

To Hilary, the idea that Ivan could know what Anton knows and does not know is as empty as any other comforting platitude. And the suggestion of whether it is enough or not, something she had not quite thought of yet, stirs a panicked feeling that rises in her like a storm surging up from the ocean into devastating, all-consuming waves.

She takes a shallow breath, and does not look at him, and opens her book.

[Empathy: not so much WAT GOING ON as HOW I MAEK BETTAR? 4 10 5 6 8]

[Probably the best thing he can do for Hilary right now is leave her be; she's very on edge, though not with anger, and she's trying to calm down. For her right now that means checking out for a while until she's not quite so on-the-verge-of-meltdown. But he does sense that if she gets some time, they can come back to whatever it is.]

He raises his head, his shoulders. Rises halfway, looking at her with the very intensity he so often notes in her. Something else too, which she misses because she's so resolutely looking at her book: naked concern.

A few moments pass. Then, slowly, he sinks back down. Draws a breath and releases it.

In the end, Ivan closes his eyes. He naps, or at the least pretends to.

There is something in Hilary, for a moment, that is a raw wound, an oncoming storm, a scream bitten back. It comes on so quickly that it's barely comprehensible, even to Ivan. But he can see, at least, how she shrinks in on herself, and this time... he decides to let her. As unsettled as it might leave him, as unresolved as it leaves the air between them, he lets Hilary hides from him so that she doesn't do whatever it is she's afraid she'll do.

Melt down.

Lash out.

Scream at him.

Claw.

The movement and noise of the train is soothing, and the car is almost entirely quiet: the shuffle of cards, the turning of a page, a low murmur here and there. Maybe Ivan does eventually nap.

Maybe he is awake when Hilary closes her book some twenty minutes later, leaving it on her seat as she rises, walking to the back of the train.

Maybe he sees her go to the spot where Anton is sleeping.

The staff notices her; they always do. There's always a touch of wariness in the way they receive her, but... less, now. Miron is perhaps the most anxious, but he should be: he is the one who had to decide in the dead of night to go with Hilary and Anton, or lose the boy forever. One doesn't easily forget something like that.

But Hilary doesn't scoop Anton up, or demand he be woken. She sits in one of the seats facing the two that he is napping in, and watches him sleep. She folds her hands loosely over her midsection. She doesn't seem to get bored. She just watches him,

waits for him.

What begins as pretense becomes reality. Ivan does nap. Like any animal, given enough empty space and time, he sleeps. It is a survival tactic humans have more or less forgotten in the fact of modern distractions, but once upon a time it was necessity. You conserve your energy: sleeps when your can so when your must, you can run, hunt, fight, fuck. Survive.

His sleep is light, though, and the subtle shift when Hilary lifts herself from her seat wakes him. His eyes open. He watches her and he doesn't make a move. Doesn't follow, doesn't question.

When she disappears from his view, he lies where he is a moment, staring at the sleek roof of the train car. Then he sits up, turning to look past the edge of his seat to see where she goes, what she does.

It is little enough in the end. She goes to her son. Sits there. Watches him, and waits.

After a little while, Ivan turns forward and closes his eyes again.

--

This time he naps in truth. A little time goes by, a half hour or more. A brief nap but a deep one, his sleep undisturbed by dream or thought. When he wakes again they are a little farther north than they were. They are a little closer to Paris, and a service attendant has come to refresh their drinks.

He takes some bottled water, a slice of lemon, some ice. He waits until she has finished and departed their car before he rises, following Hilary to the back of the car where the others sit. If she is still watching her son sleep, he sinks down beside her, taking a sip of his water.

Ivan says nothing. He reaches over after a moment though, covering her hands with his.

Something happens while Ivan sleeps, the second time. Somewhere in that half hour, Anton wakes. He half-opens his eyes, and pulls his thumb from his mouth, and rolls over, and rubs at his face. He is bleary-eyed and red-cheeked, his hair a bit sweaty and he is not quite sure where he is. He sniffs a few times, and notices Hilary, who has been waiting for him to notice her.

So he looks at her. And his eyes focus.

She unlaces her hands, and slips from her seat onto the floor of the train. Kneels next to him and says quietly:

"Anton. Je t'aime beaucoup."

Hilary touches his cheek, feeling how warm he is from sleep, stroking her thumb over the shockingly soft skin. "Je ne suis pas bon à t'aimer. Mais je t'aime beaucoup."

Anton just blinks at her, still only half awake. He eventually reaches out to her, touching her face the way she touches his, only his hand is much smaller, his thumb not quite as agile. "Maman," is all he says in response, in his only slightly accented French.

There is no telling if it is enough for her. Or for him.

Near the front of the car, Ivan sleeps on. Wakes and gets water with lemon. Comes back to sit beside Hilary, who is holding Anton in her lap. Anton is holding a milk box with a straw. Hilary is reading to him. The French version of Where the Wild Things Are. She glances up at Ivan when he comes, and so Anton does too, straw still in his mouth. He gives a little wave, then turns back to his book, as though it is a film that will keep playing without any external effort.

And in a way, it is; Hilary notes Ivan, and gives him a faint smile, and then returns to reading for Anton. She doesn't have a hand to give him, but this time it isn't because she has withdrawn it.

[French:

"Anton. I love you very much.

I'm not good at loving you. But I love you so much."]

She is not watching their son sleep.

She is doing something else altogether, and if she has done it before he has never seen it. It is a small miracle, and for a moment he only watches, his water forgotten, his thoughts of sitting beside her and holding her hand forgotten.

She looks at him, though. Anton looks at him. And waves. And somewhere in Ivan's fickle heart he feels something, something true and deep and aching. He laughs to himself. He waves back; meets Hilary's faint little smile with one of his own.

No teeth this time. It's tender.

Mother and son return to reading. Ivan sits beside them, then, and it is okay that she has no hand for him to hold. He sips his water and crosses ankle over knee; looks out at the passing countryside. Listens, with half an ear, to what she is reading. It is in a language he still hardly comprehends. Even something so simple as a children's book is a challenge to him. He never even thought of it before. Like any overprivileged American, he has gone about France speaking his native tongue, expecting everyone to adapt to his needs. But he thinks of it now: perhaps he should make the effort. Perhaps he should speak the language of the country where his son will grow up.

The earth beneath the three of them shifts, and not one of them seems to notice. Anton goes back to drinking his post-nap milk, and Ivan just relaxes in his seat, and Hilary goes back to reading in quiet, fluid French.

But something seismic occurs, in the depths of Ivan's fathomless heart, and at the edges of Hilary's seemingly endless emptiness. Even Anton, who cannot understand, feels something when his father sits with them, waves at him, smiles.

They all feel it, though none of them really has the capacity to name it.

--

The book ends, and Anton immediately removes the straw from his mouth and scoots off Hilary's lap to the floor. He's so much more agile now, carrying his box of milk in one hand and toddling over to a suitcase filled with nothing but his books and toys. He picks another book and walks it back to Hilary, holding it out to her and sucking on his milk again.

Hilary looks at him. A few months ago, on one of these trips, she likely would have told him no, and dismissed him to Miron.

Now she hesitates. She looks at Ivan, as though to see if this is all right.

Anton is turning into a dexterous little thing, Ivan notes. Yet another way he resembles his father. Or his mother, he supposes, though the truth is Hilary's grace and agility has always been a more muted, controlled thing. They are quite different, really, in every way except the ways that truly matter.

The boy returns; another book. Hilary looks to Ivan; for permission, perhaps. Ivan's mouth quirks. He shifts, leaning his weight on the console between their seats.

"Do you want to read to him again?"

Something about that makes her ache. Almost with guilt. Her eyebrows tug together, wrinkling the space between them.

She nods.

Anton has finished his milk; there is a slurping sound. He holds the book out with more strain, like maybe they just can't reach it.

"Book!" he says, insistent.

He laughs, but the sound is soft. Like the smile before it, it is tender; it hides no edges, no teeth. He reaches over, unaware of how similar this touch is to the ones, strange and sweet, that passed between Hilary and Anton while he slept. He touches her face. He leans across and kisses her gently.

Then he takes the book from Anton, hands it to his lover. "You should read to him then," he says, as though this were the most obvious thing in the world. "You can read to both of us. I'll listen too."

Hilary takes a breath, as Ivan touches her face. She's so worried. And why shouldn't she be?

She doesn't want Ivan to think she loves Anton more than him. She doesn't want Ivan to grow jealous or angry. Nor does she want to lose her mate because she loves her children too much, ignores him, forsakes him.

Ivan touches her cheek, strokes her, kisses her gently. Tells her that if she wants to, she should do it. And she has to trust him. She knows very well that she cannot really trust herself.

Anton tightens his hold on the book when Ivan starts to take it. He grunts at his father, scowling briefly, but Hilary murmurs: "Anton. Tiens-toi bien!"

The toddler, still scowling, relents. It's not likely that he held onto the book for very long. But there's strength there, alongside the defiance. It's almost as though living in the countryside swimming and running and being fed by French and Russian chefs is good for the body.

And then there's his breeding. There's that, too.

Hilary takes the book from Ivan. This one is a bright blue sky, with a little red fox and flowers on the front. And... a flying green fish in a sailor's cap, for some reason. The cover says Am I small? with the same title below in Russian.

Anton, eyeing Ivan with something between suspicion and warning about taking his storybooks, puts down his milk box on the floor like the overprivileged tot he is and starts to climb back into Hilary's lap. She doesn't give him much help, but he doesn't need it. He plops down, and gets comfortable, and rests his head on her arm like it was before, while she opens the bilingual storybook.

Her Russian is far more halting, though that is the side she reads, rather than the English translation. Once or twice she pauses, and looks at Ivan for assistance with a word. She is getting better, though. And the story is cute: a little girl asking all the animals she meets if she is small. Hilary does not do voices for the different characters. She doesn't know to do so. Miron does it. Elodie, too. Sometimes even Polina. But Anton doesn't seem to mind.

After the second book, he's restless. He's woken up completely now, and wants to go play, so that is what he does. He rubs his head against Hilary's shoulder, and says Maman again, as though naming her, or thanking her, but then he slides off of her again. He goes back a few rows to Miron and the others to find something to play with, to check out the window, to do the things that a rapidly-becoming-bored child might do on a train.

Hilary has hardly moved. She's just staring at the seat across from her, where Anton's blankets still are, where the other book is. She's still holding the one with the little red fox on the cover.

Ivan is surprised when Anton resists. He is, in truth, a touch taken aback, and not terribly pleased. He'll have to tell Miron to teach the boy to share. They'll need to readdress the idea of getting Anton more exposure to other children, too. Can't have him growing up thinking the world revolved around him. Can't have him growing up a thoroughly spoiled wastrel like his father.

For now, though, he holds his tongue. He wouldn't want to upset Hilary, after all, with the intimation that their son might have minor faults that need correcting. And truth is by the time they get to Paris and he has a moment to speak to Miron alone, he'll likely have forgotten.

He likely forgets before Hilary is even done with the book. It's terribly cute, the book and its illustrations. It is also a book for children, and Ivan would be terribly bored if not for the distraction of listening to Hilary wade slowly through the Russian. He helps a few times, particularly with the sounds not found in English or French; the thickly rolled R's, the palatalized soft consonants, the diphthongs and vowels. Once or twice, when she surprises him with an accurate pronunciation he did not expect, he murmurs in agreement or praise.

When the book is done, Anton runs off to play. Hilary seems transfixed. Ivan watches her a while, then leans forward to pick up the first book.

"Was that the first time you've read to him?" he asks quietly.

Of course Hilary sees nothing wrong with Anton fighting back when his father tries to take his book out of his hands without even asking. She has an entirely different view of it than Ivan does; there is a part of her that is pleased to see the defiance, the scowl, all the rest of it. But then, she also was horrified when Ivan suggested sending Anton to school, taking him away. It was proof to her of everything: Ivan doesn't want her to love Anton. Ivan is going to hurt Anton, or get rid of him somehow, and her soul will go with it, and she'll be like she was before.

They haven't discussed it again. But they will have to. Somehow she will need to be convinced that it would be worse for Anton, far worse, to stay only in the company of his neglectful father and insane mother and doting servants for much longer. Somehow she will have to see that this will break him.

Someone will have to convince her. Because right now, it doesn't seem like that will be Ivan.

--

Afterward, she looks almost drained. She looks raw, but in a different way than when he tried to tell her that her son knows that she loves him when she had no reason to believe him. She looks fragile, but not on the verge of breaking. Just... lost, for a moment.

She blinks, when he speaks. She glances sidelong at Ivan, holding one book in French and one book in both Russian and English. They are both learning the other's language of heritage. Anton is learning all three; he is better at French than Ivan, and better at Russian than Hilary.

The question makes her think. She slowly nods. "Yes. Miron and the others read to him a great deal. I watch them, sometimes."

Hilary looks more fully at Ivan. "When he wakes up, they read to him. Miron... he asked if I wanted to read to him, this time. Anton picked out his book. Miron said my French is better than his."

Which it would be. Of course it would be. None of Anton's original caretakers needed to know French. He was never meant to know who his mother was.

She takes a deep breath. It shakes a little, but it seems to be steadying. "I told him I love him. Because I think you are wrong. I don't think he knows."

The seats across from them are empty now. Their boy is playing with his servants, who are also his caretakers, who are sometimes more parents to him than his true parents are. This is the heart of the realization Hilary is making right now. This, and that she wants to be more. She wants him to know she loves him. She understands, if imperfectly, that his knowledge of this ... matters, somehow.

Ivan has nothing to say to any of this. Nothing that doesn't seem trite and ineffectual. He listens. When her breath shakes, he reaches out to her again. He takes her hand, his grip firm; he pulls her gently toward him.

"Come here," he murmurs. "Let me hold you."

Hilary is resistant; this is perhaps unsurprising. Her reluctance has a petulant edge, though. She frowns, saying: "They're right there," as though she doesn't want any of them to see Ivan embracing her.

She does relent, though, at least this much: she leans against him, putting her head on his shoulder.

"They aren't looking," he reassures her, though he knows it won't change anything. She relents a little. Her head against his shoulder: that somehow comforting weight, the faint fragrance of her hair. He kisses the top of her head, closing his eyes on an inhale.

"I think he'll learn," he amends. "He'll learn that you love him."

To what Ivan says, amending his earlier thoughts, Hilary only nods. That is why she has to tell him. Until she knows that he knows it.

She breathes in deeply, lifting her head from his shoulder after a few moments, glancing around the train car, then back to Ivan. "How much longer, do you think?"

"Half an hour," he estimates. "Maybe forty-five minutes. Soon."

might have fiddled with; whatever finer snacks and beverages they might have enjoyed when the train's service was not of sufficient quality. They themselves, privileged creatures that they are, need only gather themselves and perhaps their son.