Like a Bolt from the Blue...

[das_vedanya]

WHO: The Older Siblings - Ivan and Yekaterina (Natalia can pop in~)
WHEN: Late Evening, July 7th
WHERE: Ivan, Natalia, and Yekaterina's Apartment
WHAT: Yekaterina returns home expecting the worst. She's only half right.

Comments

[slavic_chest]

"Damn it," she muttered, groping in her purse, "where are my keys

[das_vedanya]

He stirred, but dare not wake from his disturbed slumber while there was still an ounce of slipping back into sweet unconsciousness. It was warm where his dreamed, not like the apartment with the draft coming from open doo- open door? There was a probability that Natalia was home, though there were some inconsistencies with the matters at hand - namely, she never left the door opened, and the touch on his forehead was too delicate, like a porcelain so fine that his hair could shatter it. Through the haze of a sweet limbo of darkness, he tried to find a correlation between 'Vanya' and 'Natalia' with no avail

[slavic_chest]

She stroked his forehead methodically, trying to retrain the panic that threatened to well up out of her. There could be a perfectly good explanation, right? Ivan was a good kid, mostly, nothing too terrible could have happened. Right? The self-reassurance wasn't helping. She kept running her fingertips over his smooth brow, over and over again. His eyes opened, slowly, drowsily, and she smiled through her misty eyes. Then he bolted upright, and her heart skipped a beat. "V-vanya!" Before she had realized it, her arms were wrapped around her little brother, clutching him close. "You worried me," she murmured, eyes wet.

She got a grip, finally, and pushed herself away. "Tell syestra what's been going on, Vanya," she tried to state firmly, but her voice cracked, wavered. "More importantly, are you alright?"

[das_vedanya]

Her fingers always had the most calming methods of luring things out of him, but the initial shock of witnessing what Banquo was to Macbeth in the embodiment of his sister locked every explanation under the lump in his throat - replaced itself with questions.

"I-it is not important, Katushka..." he muttered between the eclipses of his hand shielding his eyes from the light in the door. "Just a long day at work... I have not recovered from the time differences between Liberty and Mosc-- wh-where have you been?!"

[slavic_chest]

Time differences? That uncompleted word, was it Moscow? Alarm bells were going off in her head already. But this was set aside as Ivan continued, and his question dropped a nervous ball into her stomach.

"Um, Washington..." she muttered, avoiding her brother's eyes. "It was, um, technical issues."

[das_vedanya]

"Washington..." the word fell from his lips as if he'd tasted something bitter. He was now sitting properly on the couch, spare for his knees being tucked under his chin. The Samoyed at his former heels placement leaped up onto the couch beside him to rest her furry head against his thigh. "But... why Washington? You... didn't get deported like Natalia was, right?"

[slavic_chest]

"No!" she cried out, then felt sheepish. "Not that. Just some issue with my visa, that's all." It's been expired for four years, she added silently. She didn't want to talk about this, not until she had found some way to get that elusive green card, or another visa. She couldn't go back to the old country, not yet, not now.

"And what is this about time differences?" she asks, changing the subject. "Where have you been?"

[das_vedanya]

"A-ah," his hand fell from the lock of hair near his ear to the tail end of his scarf blanketing his lap. "I... went to visit Uncle last week." His throat closed around the phrase 'but he is dead now' unsure of how his sister would react to something to (tastefully) drastic.

[slavic_chest]

"...Uncle." The word tasted like lead in her mouth. There are a hundred questions dancing on the tip of her tongue now, not the least of which was 'Why the hell isn't that bastard dead yet?" But she knew that she could never say something like that- she didn't have it in her.

She settles for another statement that will give her a satisfactory answer. "And how is Uncle?" She tries not the sound upset that Ivan would see him, but she's sure thath her voice cracked. Again.

[das_vedanya]

"He is... fine... I suppose," he brushed his fingertips over the tip of Laika's ear as he mulled over the idea of explaining the recent passing of their uncle to his sister. "Actually..."

The younger sibling resettled himself, shuffled his legs, and gathered the tails of his scarf in his lap. "...uncle has... passed."

[slavic_chest]

She choked up for a moment - out of grief, or relief? Or both? She couldn't tell. "...Passed?" she manages at last. She searched for some statement, some phrase that could properly sum up her emotions, and found nothing. "Oh."

She glanced down at Laika, running her hand over her soft tail. "Has his funeral happened yet?"

[das_vedanya]

"I don't know when it is..." he knit his brows in suspended frustration, knowing better than to lose his temper in the presence of his older sister. His lavender irises focused on his trembling fingers in the darkness.

"But I don't plan on attending... and I declined the same in regards to you and Natalia."

[slavic_chest]

"...Good." She's shivering, trembling, and she can't see why. She can't break down again in front of her younger brother, not after putting him through that so often before, and after having to deal with that.... that man's death, too.

Her hands move, now resting on top of Ivan's. He's shaking, too, and somehow that's reassuring.

"Does Natalia know yet?"

[das_vedanya]

Little did his sister know, a different emotion than her's coursed his veins, caused the tremors, and losing his temper now would only result in something far more upsetting than it would be if tears pricked at the corners of his sister's eyes. He'd seen her cry before, but seldom has she seen him lose his temper.

And he'd forgotten how warm her hands were; so very unlike the petrified wood of Natalia's felt in places Katerina would never think. Her touch was always on his hand, his forehead - motherly and affectionate. He smiled at the far corner of his mouth.

"She does... I told her after I returned."

[slavic_chest]

She always feels so weak, so helpless. She wants to be strong, wants to be able to explode with rage like Vanya has done, strong anger to fuel her through. Or be cold, like Natasha, letting her feeling build up into a steel pillar. But she can't, any negative feeling translates itself in tears, be it sorrow or anger. Ivan wouldn't be shaking with sorrow- he'd be shaking with rage, but at what, exactly, Yekaterina couldn't know.

He's smiling, just a bit, and now she's smiling, too, despite the water in the corners of her eyes.

"Okay." So. She was the last to be told. Is she really so fragile? Or was it simply because she was gone that she was uninformed? "How did she take it?" And, before she could stop herself, her mouth was asking, "How are you taking it?"

[das_vedanya]

"Natalia?" He swallowed - did she even need to ask? - and felt his fingers tighten just enough to feel the tremors deep in his sister's bones. The specific little twitches between his sister's fingers meant she was repressing tears. "She was... happy, to say the least... and I have no shame in admitting that the feeling is... mutual."

The smile in the corner of his lips twisted into something demonic and unseen in the darkness.