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[katyafeline]

She thought about throwing herself on Olga's mercy. Truly she did. Planned on it, for at least the first half of the trek back to the bar. Maybe it was the ache in her head, or the desire to go un-lectured, but instead of dragging herself to the heavily warded flat she could find blindfolded and concussed, she found herself outside her own door.

Home. Her lip curls at the thought while she fumbles at the lock. She has to lean heavily on the door to keep her balance, and once she manages to open the door she has to waste more time removing the blood, old habits dying even harder than stubborn battle mages.

Finally she could flop on the anonymous hotel bed, curling in on herself protectively. She doesn't bother with the lights - who cares? She doesn't need light to drop herself into a trance and start trying to heal the damage she's taken. Doing so distracts her from how much of an idiot she feels.

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[olyabird.livejournal.com]

"Katya."

There's a quiet hiss as she takes a long drag on her cigarette, the coal flaring bright in the shadows. A moment later, she exhales a thin stream of smoke.

"What happened, hmm? You taken leave of your senses?"

[katyafeline.livejournal.com]

She flinches in the dark, feeling the lash of her superior's anger. Again, she misses Moscow - she misses having a partner to get into trouble with.

"He started it." It's true... sort of. Mostly. Neither side was very likely to give way in that place, in that time. It really didn't matter who started it, at a certain point.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

"Oh, well then. I suppose that makes it all right."

She stubs out her cigarette on the sole of her boot, grinds the coal into oblivion, and keeps twisting it, until it's virtually falling apart.

"Katya, tell me. What do you think happens if you die in this place, hmm?"

[katyafeline.livejournal.com]

Her initial reaction is the depression that's been haunting her for weeks despite her best efforts to shake it - what does happen... and does it matter?

Then the words strike something, deep in her core, and in her moment she's on her feet, every light in the place ablaze, and a snarl in her voice. Possibly not her best tactical choice, but not at her best at tactics when shoved into a corner.
"Am I supposed to be a good little mage, sit in a corner, fold my hands and wait, peaceful and calm? While such a creature as that talks about having a taste for hunting the humans I've been protecting so long? I am a fighter, Olga. You know that."

She catches her breath, hissing as the wounds along her jaw pull open again.

"You watched it happen."

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

Olga doesn't even look up. She's idly fishing in the pocket of her tattered jacket for her crumpled pack of cigarettes. Her fingernails tease open the foil and she gingerly extracts another cigarette, putting it between her lips.

Only then does her cool gaze level at the battle mage.

"So you don't care. Fine." She cups a hand around the tip and it flares to life. "Do you think you would go unavenged?"

[katyafeline.livejournal.com]

Olga's seen too many of Katya's tantrums - there's nothing quite so deflating to a good rant as the other person not reacting at all. A good deal of the fight leeches out of her posture, and she shrugs.

"What would you have me do, Olya?" She sighs, left hand held up, pleading.

It should be the right.

But she'd really rather not move that, if necessary.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

Another long drag, another crackling hiss.

"Don't die again."

Seems like a simple enough request.

[katyafeline.livejournal.com]

Her shoulders slump, and she retreats, curling carefully on the bed again, a defensive gesture. And just where does that leave her? She didn't expect congratulations for the fight... but condemnation is hard to swallow. What else was she supposed to do?

What else is there left for her to do?

"My arm hurts." She grumbles, because almost everything else she can think of saying is almost guaranteed to make the Grand Sorceress more irate.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

Olga sighs, and some of her ire diminishes. She forgets how young the woman is sometimes.

She heaves herself off the chair and moves to sit beside her, like they did when she was very small. Her hand brushes Katya's hair back from her eyes, her fingers gently lifting her chin so she can examine the bruises.

"I should let you bleed all over your sheets."

There's a warm ripple of electricity moving across Katya's skin, already stitching up the worst of the wounds.

[katyafeline.livejournal.com]

She leans against Olga, a little less hurt, a little more comforted by the familiar touch.

"They are this place's." She shrugs, eying the somewhat tacky pattern. She hasn't even attempted to make it seem more like her flat in Moscow - it's the standard room first given to newcomers, with precious little personality of its own.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

The older woman hums a flat response.

"You haven't decided you're staying yet, have you?"

[katyafeline.livejournal.com]

She flicks a glance to the side, her expression tightening.

"I need to get home." That's what lead to this in the first place - if she was happily adjusted to the idea of being here, she wouldn't have been prowling the woods, looking for a soft spot between worlds.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

Olga's cigarette dangles from her lips in a way that suggests it might fall at any moment. Her hand continues to move over the Katya's shoulder, her senses feeling the psychic wounds that run deep beneath the surface.

A tension forms around her eyes.

"Katya. If you are meant to go home, a way will -- present itself."

There's a small hand gesture that goes with that statement. Opening the way is something every Other learns in their first year. (Else they die.)

[katyafeline.livejournal.com]

She sighs, restraining the urge to roll her eyes, and dropping the guards she leaves in place so Olga doesn't have to work her way past them to get at the worst of the wounds. She's been injured and patched back together too many times to not to know the pattern of it.

"I miss Moscow. I miss the Watch. I miss my dogs. Am I supposed to wait calmly to get that back?" It's less angry and more sad. Lonely. She's been part of the Watch so long she doesn't know how to function outside of it. Outside of the role Gesar created for her.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

Yes, like Olga knows nothing about that. About the way time washes away the people you care about, leaving nothing but cold stone behind.

"You miss the person you were before."

There's a reason she left for Istanbul and really hasn't looked back since.

[katyafeline.livejournal.com]

"... I was good at it." She's a level two battle mage, with precious little chance of ever making a steady level one - she'll never be a grand sorceress, she'll probably never even be as talented as Seymon and Bear. But she's good at what she does, part of the shock troops sent in by Gesar.

Anything else she might have been was buried a long time ago under decades of hard training.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

Olga shrugs, the ash at the end of her cigarette wavering precariously but refusing to fall.

"Give it time, Katya. Give it time."

She presses deeper, soothing over old scars as well as the fresh wounds, her mental touch gentle but firm. It's a subtle but powerful way of saying things could be so much worse.

[katyafeline.livejournal.com]

She's used to getting dragged back to Gesar, who is considerably less gentle, and usually feels the need to do a debriefing at the same time. This, she can take.

"What should I do, Olya? Tell me what I should do?"

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

Olga looks at her young charge, the lines around her face softening. The battle mage, ready to take her orders and wade into the fray.

"I think, I just did," she says, her voice quiet. "You need to learn that not all battles are fought with tooth and claw. You need to learn that, sometimes..."

Her gaze falls to the backs of her hands, but it's clear, she's drifting somewhere far away.

"Sometimes, victory comes in the act of surrender."

[katyafeline.livejournal.com]

Katya immediately pulls a face more proper for someone who is seven years old, not several decades. Like she told Gesar once (treading that very thin line the privilege given to a favorite and overstepping her bounds grievously), she'd prefer a much different outcome to the situation.

But...

Well.

Her current course of action isn't exactly doing her (or most anyone else) any great favors. Stubborn as she is, even she can see that.

"Do I get to choose what I surrender to?"

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

"To a degree," she murmurs, looking at her with grey gold eyes.

"You get to choose whether you bend or you break."

[katyafeline.livejournal.com]

She sighs, because you can hardly complain about the difficulty of the situation in comparison. After all, she's not in a shoebox. No one's using her for office decoration. She still has her powers at her command (though for what purpose she isn't entirely sure).

She can't complain.

This explains the quiet grumble, somewhere between human and feline.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

"Not such a hard decision after all, is it?"

The corner of Olga's mouth lifts just a hair.

[katyafeline.livejournal.com]

"Isn't it tiresome being wise and right all the time?" Katya huffs, something she has most definitely said before. She slumps down further into the comforter (and if she gets blood and dirt on it... she was being honest when she noted that she had no personal stake in it).

"There is a boy, in the bar, another American." She shoots Olga a sidelong glance, teasing despite residual grumpiness and pain. "He has a brother, back where he is from."

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

"Mmm?"

Olga lights another cigarette from the last, quietly waiting for Katya to catch her up on the details.

[katyafeline.livejournal.com]

"He isn't well." She's blunt, the way she can't be around William. "In his time, with what it sounds like? His time would be better spent finding a coffin than a cure." Sure, even human medicine has dealt with tuberculosis in the when she came from. But in this case? It's a death sentence.


...


"William has been a friend." She eyes her fingers sadly. Once, a very long time ago, it was discovered she had a talent for healing. She was convinced to go another way. Up until she came here, she hadn't regretted it for a second.

[olyabird.livejournal.com]

The older woman takes a long quiet drag, savouring the bitter smoke, letting the sting on the tip of her tongue knit her to this reality.

"So, is it your friend who isn't well? Or his brother?"

[katyafeline.livejournal.com]

"His brother. Younger brother." She knows, she knows, she's not supposed to change the lives, fates of humans. But surely now it doesn't matter. How can the treaty only have hold of her, and not any of the other people who live in this place?