bakerstreet | Things We Lost in the Fire

Things We Lost in the Fire

Mutual Healing Shipping Meme

Healing doesn't come quickly, whether the need comes from physical or mental wounds. But you're trying regain your strength - and yourself.

People, as a general rule, are kind, or at least not outright inflammatory to you, it seems. Still, you just can't connect with them. No matter how nice, how caring, they don't understand. They've never experienced anything like what you've gone through, or they're not like you in a way that lets them see what you still go through; they have no frame of reference. Sure, they have sympathy, but it's not the same. So there's no real connection, despite any friendliness. It's so easy, then, to feel detached...

...until you meet them, in this place of both death and healing.

They may not have been through the exact same struggles, they may not be exactly the same as you, but they know what darkness is light. How they handle this fact may be better or worse than how you do, yet you can see yourself in their actions. And for once? There's connection; more than that, too. Slowly, you can feel yourself opening up towards them, and then, falling for them.

Is this something your used to? Will you fight your feelings, or will you jump at the opportunity to be with someone who can begin to get you? You may have little choice in the matter, as your instincts may just reach out to be with whatever compatible contact you can get. That's better, in the long run, though. Who else could have wounds like yours?

Essentially, it's what it says: a "romance," in the loose definition, or "shipping" meme for characters who have been through the wringer or have hangups.
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"I'm fine," Nina replies brusquely in the same tongue, not looking up. Her face is a porcelain mask, her body tight as a wire, but she can't afford to let herself crack again. She knows that. Not for a very, very long time.

Not Nina anymore, she realizes with a pang, tracing her fingers over her new name. Nina Sergeevna Krilova dies in this room; she stares down at the identical face of Yelena Aleksandrovna Maksimova and wills her hands not to tremble. "You will call me Lena," she decides, folding the papers once she's satisfied and slipping them into her purse. "Lenotchka when you are feeling affectionate towards your wife."

She takes a deep breath, then leans across the table, looks him in the eye, and makes herself love him. It helps that he's handsome; it helps that she already knows he's smart and capable and, thus far, that he's kept his word to her. She softens despite the fear still in her, her gaze going gentle and liquid, a hint of a smile pulling at the corner of her mouth. "My darling Mitya," she purrs.

It's a brush off that Dimitri is prepared to push back against, because he can see the differences, the strain, and that means other people can too and they need to be better than that. They have to be. If she can't. . .

But she's talking, then, and he automatically commits her instructions to memory, like studying for a mission, like learning a new language or a new skill. Studying to become Dimitri Nikovich Maksimov, to become a civilian, to become not just human but the kind of human that has been a member of this society from birth. That's the easy part: the facts. The do's and do not do's. The problem has always been, always will be, context but Dimitri is confident in his ability to adapt, to catch up.

He doesn't flinch when she shifts gears, and this is why he doesn't push, in the end: he believes her when she looks at him like that. It would be uncanny, except it's exactly what he's looking for, what he wants to see and not because he needs her to love him. He just needs other people to believe that she does.

"Alright," he agrees, unsmiling in return for several more moments as he searches her face for the telltale rigidity he'd seen when he first sat down. When he doesn't find it he nods, and his own expression cracks apart, bends to a smile that despite how he can't make himself love her in return - can't make himself love anyone - he knows well how to smooth anything he wants, needs, down over the rest of him until the seams are invisible, and this is no exception. He reaches across to tuck her hair back from her face, practice for them both as he repeats, "Lenotchka," makes his voice warm with it.

Despite raising an eyebrow a moment later: "How deep do you need to go? Can you be Lena in public and Nina in private? Or is it Lena all the time now?" He knows his own answer; he doesn't know if it's different for someone possibly abandoning their real name, who they possibly really are, for another person entirely.

Edited 2015-11-30 01:40 (UTC)

She doesn't so much as blink when he touches her; for this part, she definitely has the experience she needs. She's feigned feelings for older men, less attractive men, men who needed to believe it themselves. Compared to them, pretending to love her new husband is easy. She leans her head into the touch of his hand and gives him a soft, impish smile until the moment he drops character -- at which point she does, too, the smile vanishing from her face, the tense look returning almost instantly.

The question is much harder. For all the stories she's told, for all the tricks she's played, she's always done it as Nina, as herself. Her greatest strength has always been not in her ability to lie, but in her ability to present the truth in just the right way. Sometimes, it's a truth she has to make herself believe before she can pass it on, but still -- she works more in the real than in a complete fiction like this.

Maybe that actually makes the choice a fairly simple one, but it doesn't make it easy. She swallows, staring down at the table where the papers had been a moment ago, and says a silent, private goodbye. "Nina is gone," she says quietly -- and yes, there is a hint of a waver in her voice when she does. She takes a breath and glances away, not wanting to see the remonstrance in his expression. "I'm fine," she says again. "I have to get used to it."

He pulls his hand back immediately when she goes tense, when they drop character, because they - 494 and Nina - have no need for that between them. For touch, for actually living the ruse. Dimitri himself has been flicking personalities, behavior, on and off like this all of his life. It's her he watches, and indeed for a moment, it's her that he feels a flicker of impatience for when he hears the waver.

But she's not a soldier. She doesn't have a conditioned response to being snapped at, to being pushed harder, and he might be terrible at it but he's been cleared for field assignments long enough - been watching "real" people long enough - that most people will crack under the wrong kind of pressure. He would, if he was backed into the right kind of corner, kill her if he needed to. He's pretty sure he knows exactly how far he can trust her not to at least try the same with him, to turn on him if she's threatened herself. But in the meantime, in the vast majority of scenarios, this is it. This is their best chance.

"Yeah, you do," he agrees because there's no sense in denying that much, which is possibly why he's terrible at this. At least he's only firm, not harsh. "But it's still hard. We're not trained for this. We're not expected to survive this - just die. Which I, for one, intend to make it very difficult for them to accomplish. I need you to do that."

This is not entirely true; it is, however, true that his chances are by far the greatest if they manage somehow to stick together.

She listens without saying a word, though not without reaction: every muscle that was already tense goes even tighter, until even the movement of her throat when she swallows is visible. Her eyes fix on the wall, dark and shuttered in pain and fear. No, she's not a soldier, and she's under the kind of pressure that might just kill a lesser woman outright. What Dimitri doesn't know about her, though, is that she's felt this way -- wounded and terrified -- every day, almost every minute, since she first found out the FBI knew her name. He doesn't know that she knows how little her own feelings matter.

Maybe what he needs to learn, she thinks, is how she's survived this long.

She lets herself feel the fear, lets it creep over her and soften her until she looks not uptight but melancholy and vulnerable; a Byronic painting, somehow mysterious in her grief. She stands suddenly and moves around the table to him, crouching down beside him, reaching out to slip one small hand into his. "I'm not going to let them kill either of us," she says, soft but fierce. "Let me prove myself to you. I promise I won't let you down."

I know, he doesn't say, because he's not going to let her kill either one of them either - or at least, him. He's distracted by the abrupt movement towards him, watching the change as it spreads through her, watching the way she wields it into a pointed, sincere beseeching right at his side. He lets her take his hand, his fingers automatically crooking in hers, though he doesn't try to hold on.

He watches her, and finally he nods, turning towards her. If this is an act - he always assumes everything is an act, especially if someone is touching him the way she is now, is touching him with anything other than clinical efficiency - he could very easily believe it. If it's sincere, he can work with that too.

"Good," he replies quietly, gentler than he'd spoken previously. He turns his hand over in hers, lets their fingers lace together when he tips his head back towards where his papers are still sitting out on the table. "This is a good first step. This -" Raising their hands. "Is a good second step. You keep telling me what to do, trust me to do it, and I'll trust what you say."

Relief flashes across her face when he takes her hand in return. She shifts onto her knees, laying her other hand atop their joined ones, squeezing his hand tight. "You can trust me," she agrees, knowing it may well turn out to be a bald-faced lie, but telling it without so much as a flinch anyway -- telling it like she believes it. It's true for now, which is the important thing.

She looks up at the table again, where the papers lie, and then down at their hands again. "Do you think we will be safe staying here for now?" she asks quietly. "If they're not coming, we have time to work on our stories. To--" She glances up at him through her lashes. "Practice."

There can be no real trust, he knows, between two people who have been lying to each other since they met, who don't know what happened to them or why, and who are now building another lie together. But he also knows that she's smart enough to know that, too, so he takes the promise exactly as he can believe she means it: here, now, until something significant changes, he can trust her. After all, her life depends on his ability to hold up his end of the lie, and that he can believe. He knows genuine fear when he sees it. He knows he saw it in her.

So this is where they start. Not the swift conversations, the blatant suspicions, the emergency measures they've already taken; not the fake names, the cash drop for the apartment for the week, the forged papers. Here. He tilts his head to look at her, and nods.

"For a few days at least - they're looking, but not here. Not yet. Better to sit tight and make sure we know which way we're jumping when we move," he allows, but with the switch back into survival mode, his mind is working primarily on tactics. He raises his eyebrows and, mild, bids her: "Tell me."

She smiles a little, keeping her hands tight around his. Good. This is good. She feels a little better already. "Lena is from-- I'm from Kazan," she says. "My birthday is August 12th. Yours is February 6th. You're from St. Petersburg." She let the forgers choose all the dates at random, but his hometown was a deliberate choice on her part: a small enough city for him to learn it easily even from afar; big enough that no one would ever know he was never there.

"We've been married for three years. We eloped in Moscow. Our parents disapproved." Her smile turns flawlessly rueful. "We didn't know anybody -- we had to pull a stranger from the street to be our witness. Now we live here, but we want to go abroad. We're both graduate students: you in literature, me in history."

That covers, she believes, everything in their forged papers. Time to fill in the rest. She rests her chin atop their joined hands, almost puppyishly sweet when she looks up at him. "How did we meet?"

Dimitri is clever; he has always been clever, maybe a little too clever for his own good, but he figured that out early enough to save himself from it. He adapts, takes what little information he has and stretches it thin to cover the gaps in his knowledge. She asks him, though, how did we meet and for a moment he draws a complete blank, just looking at her looking at him.

How did we meet. He breathes in and, on the exhale, smiles back down to her and leans forward a little in his chair without pulling his hand back even a little.

"It was in the spring, you were visiting St. Petersburg, ostensibly to supplement your learning but you later admitted you just wanted a break. I wasn't paying attention, bumped your table where you were reading, spilled coffee on your book. I felt bad about the book but grateful none had spilled on you - offered to replace it," he starts, slowly, then gaining momentum. "You have beautiful eyes. I noticed at once."

She smiles a little, those very eyes brightening as he finally picks up the hook and flows into the story.

"I was too flustered by the coffee to notice anything else at all," she says, gently teasing this husband of hers. "I tried to be indignant -- I said it was a book for school just so I'd have something to be mad about -- but you caught me out easily. So when you came back with another cup and sat down across from me, how could I say no? I was embarrassed, and you were very, very charming."

"You made it easy," he teases right back, covering how hard he has to work to come up with something else in the context, some other embellishment. "It was a history of some kind or another about St. Petersburg. I told you it was much easier to just go and see the city instead of reading about it. Much more to learn that way. When you insisted on being indignant, I offered to show you. To prove it to you."

She shakes her head and chuckles. "I have a secret I never told you," she says, sounding for all the world like she really is confessing something. "It wasn't really a history book. I switched the covers so nobody would know I was reading a romance novel -- this is why I was so embarrassed."

She hesitates, her smile turning a little shy. "But... I let you go on thinking it was, so I had an excuse to take you up on your offer. And I'm glad I did." She squeezes his hand, brightening. "You were a very good tour guide."

It's easy, then, to feign expectant confusion when she admits to having a secret, a bit harder to execute fond disbelief when she says what it is; he manages both, anyway, even though he only understands what a romance novel is based on the assumption that it is exactly what both words state.

He laughs when she squeezes his hand though, smiles in easy forgiveness. After all. They are here together in the end, are they not?

"I have always told others that you are the brains of the relationship. I didn't know how far back that went, this entire time," he offers, less certainly than his previous contributions, and what he continues with: "I am glad as well. I was showing off, but I wanted to convince you to take a second tour. I wanted to know more about you, and to know if you wanted more to do with me."

She can see the way he's starting to waver just as he could see her lapses earlier. Part of her feels vindicated -- he's not so perfect, either! -- but part of her just feels frustrated. They both need to be on their best game. He knows that as well as she does.

She'll just have to step it up and hope he can follow accordingly. She's been kneeling next to him this whole time, but now she rises and moves into his lap instead, her smile widening. "Of course I did," she murmurs with faultless affection, leaning in close so that her lips very nearly brush his temple. "I'm here now, my darling. Aren't I?"

He knows how to follow a lead, knows when he's not holding up his end; he was doing it just fine before, filling in seamlessly opposite her when they both had superiors they were reporting their progress to only a few days ago. It's both easier and harder now that they're lying for their lives: on the one hand, his life is the only and most important thing he's ever had to work to keep. On the other, the part of him that was successfully conditioned to be only a soldier doesn't see how this will help that.

But he knows the same thing that she knows: flawless, or give up now. She stands and moves into his lap and he feels an echo of frustration, too, that he knows she's likely to feel through the core of him even though he straightens up and moves his arms to make room for her. If only he had one other X5, Rhys or Shila, he thinks. But he doesn't.

He has Nina, turned Lena. He breathes out and forces himself yet again in his life to let go of useless wishes, and hooks his arms loosely around her waist, then a little tighter, confident, more entitled. She's his wife. He's her husband. My darling.

"You are, Lenotchka," he replies, warm, and tucks his face in close to hers, breathing out along the side of her neck. "As am I."

"You are, Mitya," she says softly, but with a hint of something else in it. Not warning, not exactly, because she won't be the one to hurt him if this all goes wrong. Not herself, at least, not directly. She knows what she's suddenly not so sure he does, though: that this part is just as important if they want to really get anywhere, if they want to have a chance at doing absolutely anything other than fleeing like scared animals and hiding in a corner. Their story is also their only ticket to any kind of life beyond tomorrow. They have to sell it.

With that in mind, she stays close, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, closing her eyes as she breathes in the scent of him. It's not unpleasant. Nothing about him is unpleasant. Easier to sell herself on him than on Vasili, who had been an old man; than on Stan, who had killed her friend for nothing.

"And do you love me?" she asks quietly, pulling back enough to look at his face. Convince me, her eyes say.

Logically, in that emotionless part of his brain that can observe, deduce, and learn at astonishing rates, he knows how important the cover story is. It's harder to put into practice when he has to fabricate basically everything about his persona, including experiences that others will naturally assume everyone has had - such as being able to answer such a simple question as do you love me to a pretty woman who is meant to be his wife. Such as the assumption that he grew up knowing what marriage meant at all.

But he's quick, and he's flexible; it was why he was here to begin with, and so she asks him that and even though it sets him scrambling for something that at least appears honest to offer her - she is not like anyone he would say he loves, in the way that lets some people prefer dogs and some people prefer cats - his smile is steady to cover it.

And then he realizes with a start that that isn't true at all: she is like someone he loved. It hits like a wide open gut punch, soundly and deeply enough that he falters briefly, but he is nothing if not capable of using all the ways in which he's failed to help him succeed now. He grabs onto it, onto the memory of a different pretty girl, faint and half-formed but honest, and he paints Nina's face over hers - whoever she was.

"Of course," he says, and when it sounds hoarse even to him, he kisses her instead. He can convince her. He can push everything else away and learn this, too.

The kiss doesn't surprise her at all. She rolls with it, kisses him back easily, and with something that could even be mistaken for feeling. It is feeling, she tells herself: Yelena Aleksandrovna loves her husband very, very much. She loves him very, very much.

That said... if they need to keep seeing this through, she will without a second thought, but she breaks the kiss after a moment and looks down at his face, clasping it between her hands, searching his eyes. Do they need to? Do they need to commit their bodies to this -- to take advantage of all those pheromones and chemicals that can create an artificial bond where no real one exists?

He isn't quite ready for the kiss to end when she cuts it short, and his eyes flick up to hers with the concern that he overstepped, that his instincts were wrong. They weren't, he sees immediately, but that's about all he can read with any kind of certainty.

He wasn't done with the kiss, wasn't done learning how the silent conversation on her end is so much more varied than on his.

"Lena -" he starts, the muscles of his neck tensing to lift his face out of her hands, but he stops himself while still searching her face. He's seen soldiers that aren't aggressive learn how to fight anyway; he's seen soldiers that aren't careful learn how to strategize.

He's a soldier that isn't loving, but he understands the process. "Show me."

It's strategic as much as it is anything else, not only for them, but for her. They need to be a convincing couple to survive whatever scrutiny is about to fall on them; they need to be as real as the Illegals, the deepest of deep-cover KGB spies, in the KGB's own homeland. But there, too, is the thought that convincing him, having him convince her, is another layer of protection. The more he actually cares about her, the more likely he is to look out for her.

And if that's only because she's his ticket to getting laid as much as she is his ticket out of Moscow, she can live with that. At least, at first. For now.

So he says show me and she doesn't hesitate. She leans back in to kiss him again, sweetly, deeply, her arms wrapping tight around his shoulders.

It's only when Dimitri welcomes her back in to the kiss that he realizes something he'd overlooked before; he'd thought he'd committed as soon as he walked back in the door, as soon as she took his hand and invited him into a past that never existed for either of them, but he was wrong. Now he has accepted that this - that they - are the right move for the moment, because it's much easier to kiss her back this time. This time, he isn't so conscious of her arms around him, of his that slide around her and pull her in close.

And the fact of the matter is that he is new to much of this, but not to this kind of physical affection; this is not his first - second - kiss, although it is different. He pays attention to that, to the fragile balance that he doesn't know is labelled sweet, though he parts his lips to match her, though he kisses her back without shying away. He is matter of fact about it at first, textbook, but in only a few moments he's much better. Much sweeter.

He lets her guide them still, but he is confident enough that his hands do move over her back, mapping the pleasant, soft planes of her body even with her clothes still between them, attentive to how she reacts, to where, to how.

And she is very attentive in turn. It feels good, especially once that lingering stiffness in him starts to fade into something more natural, but she's not doing this to feel good. It's a bonus if it does, but that's not what brought this on.

She's doing this to make him feel good, and that means she stays conscious even when she lets her body melt against his. She takes note of what he seems to like from the way he reacts, tries to figure out if she should keep the lead or let him take over. Before long, she realizes that he's paying attention to her reactions, too, and so she lets him have them freely: she sighs against his lips, arching into him, moans softly when his hands graze her sides. "That's nice," she murmurs between kisses, letting her own hands fall from his shoulders to trace along his chest.

Transgenics didn't really have time to take their time when they were learning what it means to be social creatures with a sex drive; by the time 494 was cleared for deep cover ops where he had a bit more freedom to interact with the population unsupervised, he'd already learned the habit, but was also perceptive enough to know that it always surprised his partners a bit, that he had to consciously slow down.

So he doesn't try to take the lead from her now, although he knows for a fact he could make her feel good. He doesn't try to find the edge of her shirt and get his hands on bare skin, doesn't try to turn her so she's properly straddling his lap, either facing or away. He leans back in the chair instead, gives her the room she needs to explore the front of his body, and his lips twitch into a smile at the encouragement, and so he does it again: gently, his fingertips ghosting along the shape of her ribs, his thumbs closer to her stomach, her front, before settling at the peak of her hips for now.

He's focused very intently, but mostly silent in return, the exception being: "I want to be nice."

"You are," Lena purrs, a shiver going down her spine as he slides his hands down her sides, a smile curling at the corner of her mouth. "You're a very..." she kisses the corner of his mouth, "...nice..." his jaw, "...man." She kisses his neck softly, moving in a slow but steady line down.

Pressed against him like this, welcoming him with all of her senses, she's pleased to find that she likes the scent of him, likes the taste of his skin. She certainly likes the way the hard, strong planes of his body feel under her hands. She can sense that he's giving her the lead, and so she takes it readily, finding the edge of his shirt, getting her hands on bare skin. She traces her fingers over his abdomen, feeling along the ridges of muscle there.

Things We Lost in the Fire

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