#athermal effects

They are wearing sunglasses on the cloudy November day, and her mouth twists; conspicuous, she thinks, America is ostentatious even about its secrets.

or, YEP THIS IS WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING WITH MYSELF LO THESE PAST TWO EVENINGS.

It is iron hearts within damasked breasts that will win this war. The princess has taught her that much.

Today calls for no weapons at all, and it is the peace incoming that makes Ivan uneasy, that makes them both uneasy. They have been six months incomplete.

HIIIIIIIIII GUESS WHAT I WAS THINKING ABOUT TODAY.

I mean, I was writing them, so yes, but specifically, I was thinking about the ways they respond to shit? Because, as ever, PERFECT BALANCED TRIANGLE, no one ever responds the same way. Specifically-specifically, I was thinking about them taking Sveta out to eat when she comes back (it'll be a thing, idk if I'll write it/attach it to this, but it is Something What Occurs) and her swanning in like she knows the place and being really charming to the (appallingly corrupt) owners and when they've eaten and it's time to pay, she, still charmingly, touches her collar lightly and shows off the KGB pin and is like, what. And doesn't pay. And I was thinking about their mechanisms viz. dealing with corrupt shit and being professional with stupid people and she is charming and all masks and masking whereas Vanya will just abide for as long as possible, quiet and head-down and good-citizen, but if you push him, he will just reach for his gun and that is when you cut that shit out, and Yuri is bluffs and blackmail because obviously, why are you even trying, he knows and/or will know everything about you and the fact that he isn't throwing it in your face first thing is a mark of courtesy. (And tactics, but.) And the way they close off—they're all so internal and so shut off to the world, but all in completely different ways; Sveta getting lost in falsity and the sheer masquerade of being her and Vanya getting lost in stoicism and blankness and utility and usefulness on the daily and Yura who is hard-wired different than nigh-on everyone else in the world (barring Viv) and has been taught to wield that, but Sveta is honest with them and Vanya is frank with them and Yura can function best around them because the two of them have spent their lives making their internality inaccessible. They are such a gift to each other, all three of them, and they're built around each other and would function so much less without each other. That's why it's funny writing this, right now, the day before/day of business, because—think about it, six months Yuri and Ivan have spent working side by side and being competent individuals who can work competently side by side, and who, throughout all this, because six months is a long damn time, have convinced themselves wordlessly and effortlessly that they are fine, and it takes this, the promise of her homecoming, to make them look at each other and look around themselves and see the blank space she left, at which point they can't think anything but fuck, come back to us.

AND SHE DOES.

AND THINGS.

;flgb

this is longer than anything else i've written and they're not even making out yet

i keep taking breaks between sentences to breathe into my hands

The instructions continue. She stops. Slowly, she sets down the paper.

Sveta had worn Elisabetta Carson not like the coat but like the veneer: clear and invisible and light.

Still: Elisabetta Carson had been a paper doll, and Svetlana Mikhailovna Lebedyevna would see that the papers went up in flames.

Especially with FABULOUS SPY LADIES WHO ARE TRAVELLING UNDER MORE THAN ONE NAME. (Whole thing.) And most especially when said travelogues are the collected introduction to a project that gets to start once it's done.

Also, trains.