perilouser and perilouser, tag: Raina

[Adrian Silverman]

Abandoned ship; singularly, he sailed slowly through the night, no light to collide against the mist, no watchman on the lookout for flotsam or obstructions, hazardously carried forth, the creaking vessel. He knew these currents like the back of his hand.

It was evening.

Granted, it usually was evening in the world of Michael Miller, or Snake, the thug, the deviant, night terror in the flesh - he had the highest of low opinions of himself after the darkness had descended over the city, wrapping it in thickening fog that dimmed its beacons of lights to obscurity. It had settled, thick and heavy, atop the water tonight, weaving onto the docks in wispy coils that hovered directly above the ground at a distance, but seemed to dissipate when you stepped inside them.

He cut through them like a plough -

but you're not a plough, you're a ship, an abandoned ship, barely afloat in perilous waters, menacing waters, hostile waters, the waters that are home and are secure in their lack of security

- without pause and without consideration tossed in either direction, though his eyes were weaving through the mist with wary acuity, always watching for the would-be-threat that lurked, in these parts, around every corner. But these were the docks, and for now he was the threat, he was the glint of steel in the night, he was the clawed creature cruising, the night terror in the flesh. In two turns and a half, he entered those safer waters that held sharper dangers than these.

He made sure he wasn't followed as he crept along the walls where the shadows were at their heaviest, hood over his head and hands stuck firmly in his dark pockets, hunching until he resembled a junkie cruising for a fix. (The boys across the street announced that they could peddle him Hurricanes for a pretty price - he was sure it was pretty, in that treacherous, ugly way that pretty had about it - and were easily ignored.) Perilous waters, perilouser and perilouser, safe; he slithered through the quietly bustling evening-roads with grace and concealed poise, emerging into a lighter street that lead him to their doorstep.

Goncharov residence; the men that lingered around the entrance with the task-specific loitering of hired hands allowed him entrance with a shrug of their shoulders, and went back to pretending they didn't exist.

And how ornate it felt, this touch of culture and society in the wilderness, riches in the midst of poverty. It was a home like any other, he supposed; not so rich as the one he -

hadn't grown up in, that was a different time, different place, someone else's reality, someone else's heartbeat, an Other's blood staining hardwood floors

- but ostentatious by comparison; the streets outside were filthy and cracked. This place stood out from the background with its cleanliness and wholeness.

He searched for Nakia, but found no warrior-woman waiting, sword in hand, in her room. Pyotr was next, but the King was not seated upon his throne. The pretty prince he saved for last; if his absence was not a relief, it was still a welcome absence. In the end, he thought he'd linger in the hallways until such a time when they saw fit to return. Only five seconds had passed before he changed his mind, turned on his heel and made for the steps to take him downstairs again, but barely a step had been taken before he saw her emerging from a room, delicate feet taking delicate steps.

His lips formed a sneer in the bat of a lash. "Your palace is deserted, princess," he stated quietly, his voice a raspy growl, tainted by vodka and whiskey and whatever else he'd curled his calloused hands around over the years and poured down his gullet in steady streams, "Save for you and I."

[Raina Goncharov]

What he saw: The fall of red-brown hair in a thick tumble over her shoulder, the flush spreading on her cheeks, the finely arched auburn brows, and the uncertainty in the lovely deep-blue eyes. (And just maybe the things only intuition could see, the complex emotions that trembled like tiny stars under the shadowed surface of her face: Surprise, yes; disgust, that, too. And lastly fear.) When Raina woke up from her nap, dreaming of darkness, encountering Snake in her home was the last thing she thought she would be dealing with. Something about him put her on edge, the raspy growl he would greet her with making her wished he would just ignore her so she could return the gesture. She would have liked to show how he wasn’t welcomed there, but her up-bringing refused to yield to something as ridiculous as bad manners. He was, when all was said and done, her family's guest. So Raina stood framed by the doorway, clutching her coffee mug to her like a shield. It’s her house. Still, it took a bit of thinking to come up with an answer, one that would not seem out of context and sound like a little girl playing grown up. “I’m sure the servants would have something to say about that.”

No clever metaphors about the girl. She’s not a ship like him, abandoned in dark, dangerous seas. The night and her share nothing in common, for it was cold that night, with gusts of wind that refused to allow words like still and calm to work, words that defined Raina as she faced Snake. And as for being called a princess, well, that was just the truth, wasn’t it? Snake wouldn’t be the first nor the last to describe her as that. And the mansion was a palace, one of the more elegant homes in the whole of Bishop City. She’s not a mess of badly drawn lines. Her skin wasn’t a map of poorly sketched scars. No patience on her church steeple brow (though there was patience—interspersed with prayers—in the way she delivered the next words). She’s not perfection and poise packed in an elegant box and tied with silver bows and then decorated with interlocking Cs; she was all these earlier, but now that's not the case. Instead, she was just a girl dressed for sleep, scrubbed fresh from the day’s affairs. She woke up from her nap, the spring of her notebook marking her cheek where she slept on it, too bored of equations and trajectories to care where she lay down. Finding that somehow, time has passed her by, that it was now later than she assumed it should be, Raina had taken a quick shower that enabled her to trail the scent of lotus blossoms wherever she went. She made herself coffee. She had gone searching to see if Vassilij was around.

She should have kept right on sleeping.
She should have stayed in her room.

“Anyway, are you here for Nakia?” What she was doing now may not be particularly subtle, but it was still clever. Names have power, she knows. There was no harm in reminding him he had to play nice. “I don’t think Pyotr will be home tonight, but Nakia and Vassilij will be home soon. Do you mind waiting in the drawing room? I’ll send the maid with coffee - or tea, if you want.”

Ah, now the first tentative step. To get to her room, Raina must pass the pale man. These papery footsteps on hardwood sounded weird – she had never noticed before. She stopped when she was a few feet away. She hated she felt the need to offer an uncertain smile.

In a bitter epiphany Raina saw herself for what she was – an inexperienced, awkward teenager endowed with more imagination than poise. Someone clearly not capable of handling the task of dealing with someone like Snake, who had always in the past left her feeling something was off in her little world. No reasoning could explain why her brothers and sister would ever need to deal with someone like him. She wasn't built for this; to deal with the bad man, the sad man, behind blue eyes. Safer then to run. To lock the doors, hide underneath the blanket, and ignore the voice in her head that always compelled her to look at him from lowered eyes, trying to understand his mystery.

[Adrian Silverman]

He, the locomotive vessel, moving in positive phototaxis; it was a steep glow, the one that surrounded the youngest Goncharov, the one that drew him nearer with slowly dragging steps. She was too radiant for East Side; inevitably, he ventured, its darkened alleys and filthy streets would find a way to extinguish her light once and for all. He could only hope that it would happen at the hands of someone worthy of the accomplishment.

She was not just any princess.

It was the coffee mug that kept him still at a distance; it formed a wall between the two of them, an impenetrable circle that he for now saw it fit to respect. For now; the specifications of propriety were in eternal motion in the world of his creation. He set the rules as he saw fit; he was God of his Creation, and morality was only as arbitrary as he commanded it to be.

"Servants, is that what their employment is classified as?" he asked, almost cheeky, creeping ever-so-slightly nearer, but keeping his distance still. The invisible wall was still intact. The mug in her hand dutifully served its purpose. "Truly, I have ventured into the realm of the bourgeoisie."

A smirk touched his lips for a quickly passing moment; it vanished, as all his smirks would, in the blink of an eye, fading as soon as it had surfaced, retreating beneath the whipping waves to let his ship sail without glamour and ornamentation. The weathered hull were decoration enough, the imprints on the masts, the fraying edges of his sails; he bore his marks as she bore hers. Fading marks, an imprint on her cheek nearly vanished, he could only assume it was from a book, and his eyes latched onto it, blue and sharp and uncovered; he'd recovered from his fear of Blue Eyes Revealed. What was more, he had learned to live with his hatred.

Nakia.

It didn't stir fondness, but maybe the next best thing, or maybe something better yet: Respect. Loyalty. Devotion. (There was that, too, in the soldier's servitude.) His eyes snapped back to hers, meeting them curiously with an edge of observation. She took care in listing all their names, he thought; she was a clever princess, after all. Pretty Princess, clever princess, listing the names of her guardians one after another. When his smile surfaced this time, it didn't vanish so easily. It remained on his face as he breached the invisible wall, stepped into the guarding circle supplied by the mug, breaching its safe confines, causing its power to crackle and fade and vanish like the mist he'd stepped through. He cut off her path with surety of movement and landed directly in front of them, a mere footstep separating them.

"You intend to abandon me without entertainment? Hardly a regal course of action. Perhaps you've grown too comfortable on your throne?" The smirk remained, accompanied, maybe, by a glint of threat surfacing in his eyes, but withdrawing a moment later into the pool of emptiness usually contained within those sharply coloured eyes; acutely present as he was, he wasn't present at all. "Don't rest on your laurels on my account, princess." The smirk faded slightly, became almost mild, almost meek, almost gentle in the end, existing at sharp contrast with the gravel in his voice, dropping in tone as he spoke again. "I'll judge you fiercely for your failures to meet the standards of your sovereignty."

[Raina Goncharov]

She could feel the coming of a frown but forced herself to instead raise a brow in question. Talking to the man tended to make Raina fascinated and confused. The way Snake used words made them sound like weird code-talking and inferences, anagrams, random group of letters that needed to be puzzled together before making sense. They're talking across a gulf so wide that Raina can't do anything but worry if she should be following his lead, or act like how her brother expected her to act, or just something--like be the inexperienced teenager she was supposed to be. He's such a weirdo, was how she described him to Kathryn and Ruth in the past, hiding her morbid interest and fear and annoyance by making fun of the man. He talks like a psycho, you know? Like, Hannibal? Or Hamlet. Like it's his "thing".

She hated the quicksilver smiles. Seeing them makes her weak in the knees like a dime novel ingénue minus all the fluttery butterflies that prelude the promise of romance. If she was a cruder lass and her body not as rigidly controlled by the subconscious desire to always appear perfect and in control, she supposed the proper term for her reaction to them would be piss-in-her-pants scared. Then he smiled again, longer this time, and Raina decided she hated this smile more. Her own wavered as she eyed him warily, noting his reaction.

So focused was she on watching his face, it didn't register right away he was coming closer. Raina stopped herself from making frantic jazz hands, to not take a step back. The effort had her clutching her mug tighter.

Don't be gross, she told herself. Raina's world was composed entirely of appearances, what she wanted to portray, the woman she desperately wanted to be--Raina can't admit that she wanted to run to her room for anything; she changed her tack. She tried to give him a wider smile and ignored what she decided was a jab at her being a snob. She did not avert her face. She whispered, in a thrilling non-answer that managed to come off apologetic, confused, and horrified all at once, "What? I mean, sure? Did you say you'll judge me?" Her voice trembled, laced now with fumbling abruptness. "Y-you're too close."

And she could smell him. The night scent of Bishop City clung to the clothes he was wearing, heady and smokey, and invoking something that hinted of danger. Of things that were brittle and broken, and everything she was never supposed to know about. It mixed with some other vital scent that Raina figured to be wholly Snake. Add that with the look in his eyes and the way he said what he said, and the encounter took on an edge, knifelike anticipation, her body wanting to strain away from him. She was resting on pretty, on charm, on family, and seconds ago, those things had been enough. Not anymore.

Raina huffed a little laugh and this time gave in to her first instinct--she took a step away from him, then another. She blinked innocently. Quick and fluttery like there was something in her eyes. But the coffee scalded her hand where it spilled and the fact she ignored it gave her away. Distance was good. She held her arms tightly against her body, like an injured bird. "I... I should - I could wait with you? What about the parlor?"

[Adrian Silverman]

She was the very image of what she should be. His every expectation was so dutifully fulfilled by the feminine lilt of her voice as she delivered her apologetic fumbling for words. How accomplished she was, how precise in her imprecision; when she spoke, he could scarcely tell which parts were true and which parts were false. How much had she inherited of the Goncharov legacy? To what extent did her building blocks resemble those of Nakia - if he laid their imprints atop each other, would a pattern emerge? Would he be able to trace these separate entities back to the Origins of Goncharov?

He was too close.

It raised his eyebrows near quizzically, and he watched her intently with eyes that strayed from hers and took her in, inch by inch. Lashes, brows, cheekbones, nose, lips, jaw, neck, collar bones - his eyes lowered slowly without a hint of salaciousness, simply observing her as he might have observed a ship at the docks, or one of his own boys, searching for weaknesses, for strengths, for particularities beyond these immediate concerns. He was quite close. But he didn't agree that he was too close.

Rapidly, his eyes rose again, locking onto her with fixed determination, uttering 'no' where his lips would not. She was such a pretty picture, the precious princess of the East. She had such a delicate appearance, the likes of which these parts were too crude and crass to be graced with. If he took her in his hands and arms and held her like he held his knife, his gun, his pride, his reality, he would surely break her. Certainly, her flawless facade would crumble if he chipped away at it - but what would the layers beneath be? A reflection of that which came before? He didn't understand her, this elusive, radiant creature of light and porcelain perfection.

His mother had owned a porcelain doll, frail and delicate and flawless. A week after she died, he'd held that doll in his quivering hands, and he'd thrown her to the floor with all the might his weak frame could muster. Her pretty face had cracked and broken into countless pieces. His father had raised his hand and brought it down in stern display. Adrian's face had not cracked and broken.

"The parlour," he mirrored, near contemptuously, lips pulling into a sneer. She had withdrawn from him, the doe-eyed creature, the porcelain princess, and he reacted with instinct as she had pulled away in instinct: He followed her. A step closer, and then another, until he was too close again, looking down at her with a sneer manifesting and strengthening - until he saw her hands.

Those hands were stained with such ill-fitting shades, dark and splattered and inexact. His contempt gave way to curiosity, and his hands lifted, settled outside hers, cupped them gently and held them up a little higher. "Does it hurt, princess?" he asked and quirked a brow, but was hardly directing the question at her. He didn't wait for response, at least, but removed one hand from hers - as it happened, it was his right hand, her left - and reached into his back pocket for a handkerchief that was clean and crisp and meticulously embroidered with initials that were not his own, F.L.B. He'd found it somewhere and felt compelled to care for it. He no longer remembered why.

But he dabbed the piece of fabric gently against her skin, and his voice adopted a softness atop its usual thick gravel. "Did I startle you?" he asked, and his voice was a near-whisper. With barely a step, he drew ever nearer, no more than shuffling the space between them away, little by little. He was hardly aware that he was doing it. "You aren't used to impostors in your palace, I take it."