[TW: mentions of death, not for the faint of heart] Outside, the wind swept through the starlit streets with a cold ferocity, ripping through the air with loud howls. Dmitry Matteovich struggled to keep his footing at times, wrapping his jacket tighter around himself as he went. His mind spun with memories not his own. They were visions it seemed; visions of a beautiful young lady with dark brown hair and eyes like stormclouds and pale skin like porcelain stretched over delicate bones. He had never seen her before, but he knew at once that she was Asiya Mikhailovna, the late wife of the blessed man Leonid. Why her image was suddenly revealed to him Dmitry could not fathom. His eyes began to well with stinging tears, though for a long time the serpent had forgotten his body had the means of producing tears, let alone the depth to cry them. It was not long after this that the sky began to weep, as well, first in gentle rain before the weather exacerbated into a brutal storm. His shoes shattered the puddles’ reflection of the night sky above as Dmitry swiftly mounted the steps to the manor. As the deity had instructed him, Dmitry didn’t knock before pushing open the door, which was left unlocked. The manor no longer struck him as gorgeous, instead he regarded it as nothing at all, a mere flash of reflected light as he ran to the basement stairs and swept down them. “Kuznetsov! Leon!” He shouted, soaked through to the skin with rain and leaving wet footprints in his wake. As his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting of the basement, the prince came into view. Leonid Romanovich was on his knees, his coat sprawled around his folded legs, grasping with one hand a beautiful mahogany rosary and in the other a vial of dark liquid, the cork of which was forgotten somewhere beside him on the floor. His eyes had been tightly shut, but upon the arrival of Dmitry, he turned to look. His pallid face was torn from its beauty by the dark hollows under his eyes and his rumpled, unwashed hair sticking up in odd locations, giving him the distinct impression of a wild animal. “It is I, I alone,” Dmitry said, staring towards him but stopping as Leonid lifted a shaking hand. “Don’t come any closer, Matteovich,” he said, his voice like the creak of a rusted doorhinge. “No closer. Some words… There is some explaining, perhaps, that I must do…” Leonid likely said that in reference to the corpse laying on the table beside him, though Adoratsky had already learned of the man’s strange history and upon seeing the body of the woman he was unfazed. “I have already been informed of most of it… Lest, of course, there remains something deliberately hidden from me by the deity of some kind who had informed me.” Leonid sank closer to the floor, closing his dark eyes for a moment in melancholy with a touch of resignation before lifting his chin enough to face his friend once more. “I am not surprised. Perhaps disappointed, but not surprised. Well, I will tell you the story from my own lips, and you can see then if you can better understand why I have chosen this course of action— or rather, why this course of action was forced upon me by the cruel hand of fate, who wishes to see all wallow in their suffering… Oh, yes! I was an optimist, Mitya— may I call you Mitya, here in my dying moment?--- but now I am a changed man, changed forever; there is no being of the realm above that wishes to see my eyes light up with joy, not since the death of my darling Asiya… All that remains for me is to suffer, and at last to die.”
With this, he dipped his head once more in deep despair. A moment of silence passed, interrupted only when the serpent informed him quietly that he did not mind the nickname. In a minute, Leonid lifted his eyes and began to speak, “doubtless, by the word of the deity, you have learnt of dear Asiya, and of her early passing. She suffered long from an illness no man in Russia could cure, not even myself, though I tried, and at times it seemed that she was becoming well again. Nonetheless… Oh! And what despair, what agony! No man knows suffering as deep as mine, I tell you. I took her from her dying-bed— I have left her room untouched, a museum of her final sights, it is on the second floor— and I laid her here so that I might gaze upon her, keep her from the tendrils of the soil and the greed of the insects… But I am the greedy one myself, I must be, for what else but greed could have blinded me to the only way to bring my darling back, now that I know it would require such a selfless sacrifice?” He fell into another dreary, pensive silence. “You believe that if you die, you might resurrect her? Don’t be so foolish.” The young man Adoratsky said, his voice betraying a slight quiver of emotion. “It has been years, Kuznetsov. Take my hand now, get up from the ground, we will carry her out to the yard and bury her body by the ocean. There is nothing better you can do for her now than to say goodbye.” Leonid lifted his eyes to the corpse on the table and a sad smile crossed his lips. “Oh, I see it… I see it clearly now… And such a pitiless trick it is…” “You’re speaking like a man insane. Don’t mumble, Leonid. Speak clearly, please, for my sake.” “Perhaps it is only a trick of the light, but I’m quite certain it’s more the work of deliberate illusion. Your voice, Mitya, your eyes… If I do not see her in them… Her grace, her softness… Such a pitiless trick, indeed! Tell me, Fate, have you cursed me to lose this man, too?” Dmitry took a step closer to him, ignoring his earlier request, and when the prince made no protest he covered the rest of the distance with swift strides to kneel beside him. “You will not lose me anytime soon, Leonid. And I will not lose you tonight. Give me that vial, now. It is not a trick of the light, in fact, I believe at sight the woman on the table could be my sister— at least my cousin. The vial, please. Would she have wanted this, anyway? She is at peace now, Leonid, you must let her go.” Dmitry Adoratsky was never good at comforting people. Not genuinely, at least— the young man had always been far too cold-hearted for that. Granted, he had a talent for getting his way with verbal tricks and emotional chess-playing, but he knew deep down that this moment was not the same as those past. As he knelt beside his distraught friend, with the risk of his loss imminent, he thought for a moment he might cry. It was at that second he realized that Leonid was crying himself as he extended the vial to Dmitry. “Take it,” he rasped, not bearing to meet his eyes, his white knuckles tightening around the rosary he still held. “You are right, anyway. She was always a selfless woman. A sensible one.” Dmitry closed his fingers around the cool glass and breathed a sigh of relief, slipping it into his pocket. “We will bury her, then?” “Upon the morrow, I cannot bear it today.” Leonid met Dmitry’s eyes. “Will you accompany me?” “Naturally.” “Very well.” “I will see you at sunrise, then. It shouldn’t be long from now.” Dmitry said. He put a comforting hand on the prince’s sturdy shoulder for a moment before standing up and brushing off his pant legs, casting a glance at the body on the table. “Mitya?” Leonid rose from the floor himself, his long black overcoat making the movement strangely graceful. “Yes?” “I believe a man has been resurrected tonight. Though it was not the one I intended.” A moment of silence passed while Dmitry Adoratsky attempted to read the strange look in the cryptic eyes of his friend before he dipped his head in farewell and climbed the stairs out of the cold basement. ---- > Chapter 6/8 > Next: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1258518777 > Notes - I swearrr it gets happier from here ;-;
