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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.

Comments

[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?