#bonefoundation

Perhaps that’s why he had neglected to move any of it out, and instead let his things become more and more scattered. A crate of books, a collection of diagrams, some odds, ends, and hardly any valuables. Anatoly had grabbed the miniature globe from his academic possessions,  and it didn’t spin anymore. 

He also grabbed the wonderful steel teapot he was fond of. 

Daniil poured a second cup of tea, and set it beside his. Andrey was asleep in his bed, and had slept through the smell of draniki, quail egg, and beef. 

There were butterflies fluttering through his house and gravitating in the stove room. He’d set up a sugar water tray and perch for them out of an old bird cage, the remains of one of Andrey’s dead lizards being quickly picked at as the day went on. It hadn’t been one of the strange creatures creeping from his pockets.

Daniil leans in the chair the entire way back, and it rests on his bedside.

“You should wake up before you rot into the bed.”

Enough to pull the claw out and judge whether or not the other most restless person in the town was up. Probably. Never kept to a proper schedule. Grief scoped to the back of Andrey’s place and spun the claw in a circle in his palm before he took a running climb up the side of it. Hooked one sill, leapt to the next one, to the third and perched on the roof slant.

He rapped his knuckles on the windowsill and whistled like a bird. He ran a single finger through the slat of the window and unlocked it himself with a flick of his wrist.

Gasping breaths, and hiss rattles...

“Traitor child of mine.“

Khan bolts up, kicking blankets off of him and scrambling to frantically turn on a light. Finding the switch hiding on the wall, he flips it upward. An electrical hum accompanies the light that shines through.

The room he was lent in Andrey’s Loft is sparse, and hardly lived in. The only evidence of Khan’s existence in this space were just... the rough drawn town maps for hunting the Caravan, and the blankets that were now abandoned on the floor.

Groaning at the sudden start, he falls back onto the pillows a moment to allow his heart to lower itself back to it’s proper place in his chest. When it settles, he blinks and turns his head to the window.

It’s very dark out- he must have been out for quite a few hours. He wondered if Notkin was still around. But that wasn’t what took priority to him at the moment.

Swinging his legs over the bed, he rises and grabs his eyepatch from the side table, disguising the gaping hole in his head as a courtesy to those he was around. He washes his hands and draws fingers through his hair, forcing it to be even and neat.

He steps out of his room and sweeps his head to scan the hallway. Listening around, he hears Gray, most assuredly- some other Dogheads, some Souls that managed to get in... Notkin must be here too-

Focus. You wanted to talk to Stamatin.

He marches down the hall to Andrey’s room, and raps his fingers against the door.

“Mr. Stamatin- Andrey,” he corrects himself, “Are you here? Can I talk to you?“

Khan shoves his hands in his pockets and waits for a response. 

Unfortunately, it didn’t kill her after a few boxes and the cigarette butts were starting to flow over her burnt ash tray. It was cold enough to hurt already, and it was only October.

Stamatin showed up- for a second she didn’t know which one it was due to the hair- but the eyes gave him away. She takes a box and leaves the carton for tomorrow. Unfortunately, when she steps into the loft apartment and takes stock of the paper town straddling every inch of it, it also begins hailing.

Which makes her jump and Peter jump because she jumped at the dozen or so loud thumps on the roofing. It’s loud and she puts yet another cigarette in her mouth and lights it on Peter’s gas stove while he fills his shelves with food. She’d ask where he got all of it, but he’s a Stamatin and everyone loves the bartender. 

The promise of tea and possibly more potent things is how Yulia ends up lying on the floor out of her coat with a burning cigarette. She sprawled along the town to mark the roads, a particularly small woman dressed in workpants. 

Her leg positively ached. She doesn’t want to get up. Peter, apparently, is making the tea. 

This hail sounds like gunshots. She picks up an origami cow and places it on her chest.

Daniil bleeds from his mouth. It drops into the water and Peter can see his body physically failing in front of them.

He doesn’t know what to say, grasping the lantern and looking at the sky and into that awful point of no return.

Daniil breathes like a gasping machine, slowly lowering the rifle, his snakeskin coat dragging in the water behind him as he turns. He looks up to the sky too.

“You should go,” he says. And Peter slowly creeps around the edge of the circle to scoop Andrey by the arms and pull him away to the door. The ceiling is slowly starting to move. It’s getting warmer.

Daniil gives them both a small, exhausted smile. And he falls, finally, collapsing against the wall and sitting in the center of the Stillwater like he was stargazing.

“ But that the dread of something after death...” he mumbles. 

Peter, shaking, reaches out with the key, and turns it.

They stand in the Stillwater, whole again. Him, half dead with burns. 

“Andrey. Andrey... Andrey- Brother, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

Andrey had come home from the doctor fucked up. He’d shaken it off, made her and Khan food that he did not have to, and then passed out. 

There had been a battle of some kind, and he’d taken serious damage. She’s no stranger to injuries like that. She patched up the little ones and tended what could be solved with at least a needle, thread, and some bandages. Her feet could coax up small herbs when she let them out of the boots and it was easy to make quick healing mushes from it. 

And of course, it’s frustrating to see something she couldn’t help with. So she’s being rough and she knows it, pushing on his shoulder and shaking it. Andrey has a window near his bed, and she listens out it. The doghead mask listens out it.

“You hear that?”

And then she cracks the window open just the smallest bit to really wake him.

“Shh!”

And from outside, there’s a soft, soft howl.

It never particularly bothered Saburov until one morning, the body of another architect, the builder of the Stillwater and the Cathedral, nicknamed “Farkhad“, was found under one of the Stairways to Heaven.

At first glance, it appeared to be accidental. The smell of twyrine and a bottle seemed to confirm it...

Until persistent rumors that Peter Stamatin was the last man seen alive with Farkhad that night.

Saburov had tried to get permission from the Kains to investigate the matter himself, but as far as that family was concerned, it was little more than a tragic accident, and besides?

“Don’t you have anything better to do than chase rumors, Alexander? It was an accident, the Stamatins are beside themselves, and are soon about to start on the most profound architectural advancement of this century. Go home to your wife and leave the affairs of the Kains to the Kains.”

Nina’s words. Simon and Georgiy agreed. He could not argue with the twins protecting their own set of twins.

But it gnawed at him that he was certain that Peter had gotten away with murder. “Inconsolable Architects“ and that horrific mural seemed to be more of a sneer than any real grief.

It was a case that ate at him for the last six years, and admittedly, while he initially favored Peter out of all the architects and artists brought in (because Peter was the more softspoken and earnest seeming one, and because of the artworks the Saburovs had commissioned), murder was still murder.

Or was it?

Dankovsky had recently given him reason to doubt that assumption, that Andrey was actually on the Staircase with Farkhad. The records from Burakh seemed to support the claim that Peter was a victim in the situation.

Burakh was right about the records being ghastly. God’s grace, he could see why Peter did not want to reach out for administrative help.

It would be a delicate situation to tread with both of them here.

He sits across from the twins at his home in the Rod. They had drifted so much from looking like reflections of each other. It had been some time since he had seen them in person- he could have sworn their eyes were brown then.

“Thank you for answering my summons voluntarily,“ he begins, “There are issues I would like to discuss with you involving an  unsolved case regarding the death of the Architect ‘Farkhad’ -“ he’d be damned if he could remember the man’s real name, “- your cooperation would be most appreciated in the matter.“

His own sense of justice wouldn’t let him rest otherwise.

The Judge is catatonic. He has been lucidly dreaming for the day after the Cathedral fell, mute with horror. Her father speaks in her mother’s voice, but it’s not exactly either of them. The Cruicible becomes more an amphitheater of the lame and mute- she hasn’t the heart to attend either one of them with meals, assistance, or otherwise. No one has seen Kasper in days, and that is understandable. If she were him, she would be just as pleased as the rest dying.

For all of these small victories, though, the town in all of its magical, ant-farm like glory, was so much uglier and weaker than it had been. 

Time aggresses. She grows an entire grey streak of hair in a single day that she tucks back into her black hair to hide it. 

She is still a Kain with constitution, though, and with the rest gone... 

The list of issues to deal with had grown smaller. One major one had to be dealt with.

It took an hour to convince some of the rouge soldiers that had been coming to her for guidance, to join her on a personal expedition to eliminate, “The man that killed many of your fine comrades”. It landed them with two bayonetted rifles escorting her straight through the door of the Broken Heart. 

Maria didn’t touch the ground when she walked any longer, so she did not wear shoes. Her dress dragged along the balcony flooring and never picked up dirt.

“Stamatin-” she sang from the balcony, “I think it’s time we have a firm and understanding discussion. I’ve seen many facets of this conversation. Many of which end your life-”

And she gasps- the voice of someone much too young to be making death threats. She wrings both hands over the balcony, her red shawl dripping off it.