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Of Dust & Dæmons

Summary:

“You and your Dust,” Hélène said, laughing now, and laid a reciprocal hand on his knee. “Pierre, dearest, you know my mind isn’t built for theology.”
“Aren’t you curious? It makes up so much of who we are.”
There’s a war going on out there somewhere, but a different kind of battle is brewing in Moscow.

Notes:

Hi, friends!
This right here (as you probably have guessed) is a His Dark Materials-inspired take on Great Comet. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the series, we'll explain a few things so you can hit the ground running, but rest assured that all you need to know will be revealed in due time! In this universe, people's souls take on animal forms called dæmons that walk (or fly, or crawl, etc.) alongside them. When they are young, dæmons can shift into just about any form, but once you 'come of age' (however loosely defined that may be), your dæmon 'settles' into a permanent form.
Dust (capital 'd') is like the Force—it's everywhere, in everything, and really difficult to explain. We'll let the characters speak for themselves. :)
If you're reading this, thanks for coming along for the ride, and we hope you enjoy what you see!

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: Moscow

Chapter Text

It had been five years since Natasha had last seen Marya Dmitrievna. So long ago, it seemed, but the time had passed quickly. Natasha had been fifteen then, barely coming up to Marya’s shoulder. Now, just shy of twenty-one and significantly taller, she wondered if Marya would be as she remembered: brusque and loud, but with an undercurrent of maternal kindness.

Adrastos hadn’t yet settled then. Now he had—a dove, small and perfect and the color of freshly fallen snow, with clever black eyes and a tail tipped with cream. Sometimes, Natasha privately thought that Marya’s Salman, a terrifying golden eagle with a wingspan wider than she was tall, seemed rather drab in comparison, but certainly not so much as Sonya’s Tobery (irony of all ironies, she mused, that between the two of them it was Sonya who wound up with a predator for a dæmon).

Presently he lay curled in the crook of her elbow, not so much asleep as wishing to be asleep while the carriage bucked and jostled around them. Natasha couldn’t fault him for being tired. It had been a long ride, longer than she ought to have stayed awake for, but the excitement buzzing in her veins was as warm and thrilling as the vodka she and Sonya had once snuck at a ball several years back, and no matter how hard she tried, she hadn’t been able to sleep.

This was more than one of their day-trips to the lake or a hunting party in the surrounding forests. This was Moscow.

“I’m excited,” Natasha announced, curling her hands in the folds of her coat. “Aren’t you excited, Sonyushka?”

Sonya did not look excited. She looked bored out of her mind, the poor thing, on the verge of falling asleep, and had looked that way ever since they had taken off that morning. Perhaps the long ride was beginning to wear on her. It was difficult to be cheerful when you had spent the better part of the past few days folded into a cold, hard seat.

“I’ll be excited once we finally arrive,” she said.

In her lap, Tobery purred softly and closed his eyes.

“Well, it can’t be much farther now.”

Sonya groaned. “God, I hope not.”

Several minutes later, Natasha turned to press her face to the window. Now perched on her shoulder, Adrastos followed suit. “Oh, Sonya, look!” she cried.

Moscow, veiled in snow and a midwinter-grey sky, was truly a remarkable sight. Not far in the distance, they could see the spires of the Kremlin Wall and the onion-domes of Saint Basil’s Cathedral. A skyline crowded with rising towers and plumes of chimney smoke, like something plucked straight from a fairytale. Even Sonya’s eyes widened in awe.

“Isn’t it incredible?” said Natasha.

Sonya nodded wordlessly, and her cheeks flushed a light pink.

On and on they rode. The streets were lined with rows of beautiful brick houses, their windows glittering behind wrought-iron fences. Here and there they could see gas-lamps, already lit despite the early evening, and narrow alleys veering off to nowhere, crammed between buildings as if an afterthought, somehow shabby and elegant all at once.

At last, they rounded the corner onto Nikitsky Boulevard. Marya Dmitrievna’s house was further down the street—a charming little redbrick with pale green shutters and a front door painted black. Natasha had never seen the house before, only heard it described in painstaking detail by Nikolai, but even so, she recognized it the moment she laid eyes on it.

Even easier to recognize was Marya Dmitrievna herself. She stood on the porch with her arms folded across her chest, a tall and imposing figure, her magnificent shock of red hair swept into an updo that only added to her height. Salman, as always, sat perched on her shoulder like a frightful guardian angel with yellow eyes and a cruelly-pointed beak.

“Natalya,” Marya called as they stepped out of the carriage. There was no need to shout. Her voice easily carried to the end of the street with enough volume to startle the horses. “Come here, my darling. Let me have a look at you!”

With the chill of the air reddening her face, Natasha skipped forwards to kiss Marya’s cheek and allowed herself to be swept into a tight hug. Adrastos fluttered excitedly above their heads. Salman eyed him with amusement.

“My God, how you’ve grown,” Marya breathed. Natasha burrowed into the firm warmth of her embrace. “Even more beautiful than I remembered. You’ll be the talk of the town before you know it.”

“I’ve missed you,” said Natasha.

Marya pinched her cheek fondly. “We’ll have to make up for lost time, then, won’t we, my dear?” Her gaze darted upwards. “And this must be Adrastos!”

Adrastos alighted on Natasha’s shoulder with a soft coo. Her hand drifted upwards to stroke at his feathers.

“Finally settled?” she asked.

“Two years ago. It took him long enough.”

“I always knew it would be a bird,” Marya said proudly. “That’s the mark of a true Rostov. Just look at him—oh, Natalya, he’s as lovely as Seren.”

Natasha swelled with pride. How jealous Vera would have been to hear that! Even now, and with great resentment, she could still remember the day her sister’s dæmon had settled. Only fourteen years old, and, as if to further add insult to injury, a beautiful trumpeter swan. Natasha had been a late bloomer and an envious one at that as she watched each of her siblings seemingly grow into adults overnight.

But now that Adrastos had settled too, all was well.

A moment later, Sonya, who always seemed to run a few minutes behind the rest of the world, came trudging up the porch, Tobery at her heels.

Marya regarded her with slightly less affection and said, “Hello, Sonyushka.”

Sonya’s smile dimmed just a tad. “Marya,” she said quietly.

“Oh, and Tobery too!” Marya said, injecting her voice with an enthusiasm that was far too saccharine to be genuine as he came tiptoeing around the hem of Sonya’s coat. “Finally settled, hm? Ah, a cat. How very…unique.”  

“A wildcat,” Sonya amended. “Like my mother.”

“Yes, just like your dear mother, may God rest her soul,” Marya said, and quickly crossed herself.

Had Natasha blinked or looked away even for a moment, she wouldn’t have seen the way Sonya rolled her eyes and crossed herself in an exaggerated and rather unflattering imitation of Marya while her back was turned. But she didn’t, and consequently had to cover her mouth with her sleeve to keep from laughing out loud.

“I trust you girls had an easy journey?”

Natasha and Sonya shared a knowing look. “Easy enough,” said Natasha. “Though I wouldn’t mind stretching my legs.”

“Of course, of course. Out of the way, now. Here they come with your suitcases.”

Tobery mewled indignantly as the porters marched by with the luggage and made a mad scramble for the carriage door. He would have made it, too, had Sonya not caught him by the belly and lifted him into her arms.

“I’m sorry,” she said, cocooning him in the fur of her muff. “He’s flustered. It’s been a long day.”

Marya waved her down with a sweep of her shawl. “No matter, darling,” she said, and began to usher them up the stairs and into the house behind the bustling porters. “We all could do with a rest and a cup of tea. Now, come in, you two. I’ll put the kettle on and then we’ll talk. But we’d best hurry—we have a busy evening ahead of us.”

Sonya’s head perked up at that. “We do?”

“You haven’t heard?” said Marya. “We’re off to the opera tonight. No better way to get you acclimated to high society.”

“The opera,” Natasha sighed, listing against the railing. “Oh, this is all so exciting.” She leaned over to tug at Sonya’s sleeve. “Isn’t it, Sonyushka? I love Moscow already.”


 

Pierre Bezukhov’s wallet was missing and Anatole Kuragin was nowhere to be seen.

Most people would not have immediately drawn a connection between these two facts, but then again, most people were not Pierre Bezukhov, nor did they subsequently have the misfortune of having Anatole Kuragin as a brother-in-law. It wouldn’t have been the first time his wallet had gone missing or that Anatole had disappeared without so much as a note. But these two instances had never overlapped before, and it set him on edge.

Only after scouring the study and then every one of his pockets and then the study again did Pierre finally relent and collapse into the armchair by his desk with a defeated huff. The wallet was gone—that much was evident—but it wasn’t the money that irked him so much as the principle of it. For starters, Anatole typically had the decency to at least ask before borrowing.

“You’ve probably just misplaced it,” said Khione.

She was his dæmon, a scruffy brown bear whose head almost scraped against the ceiling even sitting down. Pierre privately thought she looked a little ridiculous hunched over in the corner of the room, but she was too large for the armchair, and with her weight, she would’ve crushed any furniture had she tried to sit on it.

“Well, I don’t suppose it grew a pair of legs and wandered off of my desk,” he snapped.

Khione sighed. “You could always ask Hélène if she’s seen it.”

It was a perfectly valid suggestion, and probably would have worked, too, but Pierre was in no mood to have Hélène think he was any more absent-minded than she already thought he was. And so he sat back in silence, wondering if he had agreed to marry the whole damn Kuragin family when he had proposed to her.

Three years ago it had seemed a much less daunting prospect, but even then he couldn’t say that he had been particularly thrilled with the whole arrangement. He had been even less thrilled, a year later, when her little brother had arrived at their front door with nothing but a carpetbag, a crumpled-up ticket for the latest train from Saint Petersburg to Moscow, and a few dozen rubles lining his pockets.

“Papa has cut him off,” Hélène had said, seemingly torn between laughing and rolling her eyes. “Burnt through his allowance, the poor fool.”

Pierre hadn’t worried initially. Surely this would only be a temporary fix, he had told himself, until Anatole found his way back to his feet, and then he would be off on his merry way and life could resume as normal. But Anatole, he had slowly come to realize, had no intention of ever living on his own, and now it was Pierre’s money that he wasted instead of Vasily’s.

Ah, well, he thought with resignation. Fifty rubles here and there hardly made a difference in the grand scheme of things, and he had more pressing matters to worry about anyhow.

Namely, his marriage.

Pierre had realized, almost as soon as he and Hélène had wed, that he knew very little about her—about her hopes, dreams, fears, or even how to make her happy. She wasn’t overly fond of jewelry, aside from her pearls, and she was so particular with her dresses and shoes that the thought of picking something out for her made his head spin.

He did know, at least, that she was upset about the move. Her star, already on the rise back home in Petersburg, was dimming in the comparative quiet of Moscow. Clearly, it was time to change strategy.

Hence the shawl. It was a lovely thing, really, more a work of art than a piece of clothing. A tangle of embroidered wildflowers ran riot along the hem in blues and purples and yellows that stood out brilliantly against the deep red of the fabric, tasseled with gold and black. He had bought it for Hélène the week before, hidden it in his dresser since then, half out of embarrassment and half in the hopes of surprising her with a nice gift. Now he held it in his hands, wondering how best to offer it to her.

The opportunity presented itself not even a minute later when Hélène’s dæmon, Dahanian, arrived in the sitting room before he heard the click of her heels coming down the hall. A lithe, well-muscled snow leopard, he was every bit as intimidatingly beautiful as Hélène herself. And just like Hélène, he always eyed Pierre with an odd combination of pity and reproach.

“Oh, hello, Pierre,” Hélène said as she followed him into the room. Dahanian didn’t bother to acknowledge Pierre's existence—no surprise there; he never did—and made a beeline for the rug in front of the fireplace. “I didn’t expect to see you up and out so early.”

It was hardly early—almost three o’clock in the afternoon, going by the clock on the mantel. Hélène would have known this, of course, and though it was true that he had been spending more time in his study than usual, the whole thing smacked of an underhanded insult.

Pierre shrugged with as much indifference as he could muster. “I thought we should have a drink together before we go out tonight. I have something that I wanted to talk to you about.”

She raised an eyebrow. Dahanian’s head perked up. “Oh?”

Pierre drew out the shawl and held it out to her. “A gift,” he murmured. “I only hope it does you justice.”

Hélène ran her fingertips over the stitching in wonder. For once, she seemed genuinely surprised, but it quickly gave way to amusement.

“And what might the occasion be?” she asked.

Pierre draped the shawl across her shoulders with a shrug. “You deserve something nice to wear to the opera tonight. Something you won’t freeze in.”

“You didn’t have to do this, you know.”

“I wanted to,” he said bashfully. “I want tonight to be special for you. I know it’s been a while since you’ve gone out, and—”

Before he could finish, Hélène leaned up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek, one hand resting against his chest, the other curled in the shawl. Pierre flushed a startling shade of red.

“It’s lovely,” she said. Her hand drifted further upwards until it tangled in the back of his collar. Pierre’s stomach fluttered uneasily and he saw Khione shuffle in the corner of the room. Hélène’s mouth curled into a grin. “Come now, darling. Let’s have ourselves a drink.”


 

Even with a fire roaring in the hearth, the sitting room lay heavy with a stale midwinter chill that seemed to bore its way between the curtains and through the crack of the door-hinge. Hélène drew the shawl tightly across her shoulders and settled onto one of the settees by the windowsill while Pierre made his way to the wine rack.

“Tokay?” he suggested.

“I don’t see why not.”

Pierre weighed the half-full decanter in one hand. “Our last bottle of the Aszú ’98."

“Sad to see it go.”

“Well, I suppose all good things must come to an end,” he said, and un-stoppered the decanter. The tokay was cool and sweet-smelling. He inhaled deeply, savoring it. There followed a brief pause, and then, remembering the wallet, he asked, “Where has your brother gone off to?”

“God only knows.”

Pierre furrowed his brow but didn't press the matter any further. He had learned by now not to go inquiring after the day-to-day business of a Kuragin. Nothing good would come of that. Nothing he wanted to hear, at any rate.

“Will he be joining us this evening?” he offered instead, and started back into the room with the tray.

Hélène shrugged. “If he shows up, I suppose. No worry about that, now. It’s just us two, isn’t it?”

Pierre blushed. He was spared from having to reply when Dahanian attempted to climb up onto the settee with Hélène and almost dislodged her.

“No, Danochka,” she chided. “Not on the furniture.”

Dahanian swept his tail against the carpet indignantly and seated himself at the foot of the settee without further protest. He would complain later, Pierre knew, once he and Hélène were alone and sufficiently out of earshot. Such was the Kuragin way. He was only thankful they were polite enough not to attempt a private conversation with another person and their dæmon still in the room.

Pierre balanced the tray across his lap as he poured out two tumblers. He handed the smaller to Hélène.

“Dahanian still seems to think himself a lap-cat,” he said.

“Yes,” she said with a distant smile as she ran her fingers along the gleaming crystal. “I’m afraid that that time is long gone. He used to love becoming something small to curl up on the chair with me when I was little. Always something feline, though. I think he knew I’d take after Papa all along.”

Pierre laughed. “Khione too. She wasn’t all that happy to settle.”

From across the tea table, on the settee directly opposite where they were sitting, Khione shifted in discomfort. One of its legs creaked. The spring cushions groaned in protest.

“She’ll break all the furniture if she's not careful," Hélène snapped.

“It’s not intentional,” Pierre said, bristling a little more defensively than he knew he really ought to have.

“Perhaps she would be more comfortable in the back of the room. Off the carpet, of course. I don’t want her shedding all over it again.”

Pierre gave Khione an apologetic glance and tipped his head towards the far corner of the room. Khione growled in the back of her throat, but crossed the room and curled up by the bookshelf regardless.

Now Hélène turned back to him with a beatific smile and lifted her glass. Her eyes seemed to glow in the firelight, set alight with the same amber as the tokay. “Shall we drink?” she said.

Pierre raised his glass as well and tried to ignore the sight of Khione in his peripheral vision. “We shall.”

The tokay went down like a burst of sweet, honeyed fire. Pierre’s eyes watered despite himself. He had been drinking alone in his study for a good part of the morning, but only now was his head beginning to swim. Once they had half-emptied their glasses, he chuckled.

Hélène shot him a vaguely bemused glance. “What?”

“You don’t even flinch,” he said. “When you drink, I mean.”

She shrugged with a proud smile. The end of Dahanian’s tail came to rest at her wrist, curling around it like a bracelet.  

“Your mother would be horrified.”

“My mother has always been much more easily shaken than I am,” she said, and tossed back another mouthful of tokay without so much as a second thought.

“Unflappable as always,” said Pierre.

It was true—perhaps save for Marya Dmitrievna, there was not a more cool-tempered woman in all of Moscow. All of Russia, even. He wondered, with more than a little amusement, if she could have faced down Napoleon right there in the sitting room and not so much as batted an eyelid.

Hélène’s smile shifted from pride to something more mischievous. Dahanian’s expression almost eerily mirrored hers. “Let’s drink to that.”

“Of course," Pierre said.

She reached across the table for the decanter and poured out another round. When she pulled away, her fingers lingered at his wrist. “What should we drink to next?”

Pierre’s mouth went dry. “To your unflappable beauty,” he said thickly, around the awkward lump in his throat.

Hélène giggled into her hand. For a moment, she looked just as she had three years ago, during their too-brief courtship. Younger, but just as impeccably put-together, with that same air of practiced confidence that both enthralled him and set him on edge.

“My husband is such a flatterer,” she purred, stroking between Dahanian’s ears as he rested his head in her lap.

“Your husband is a lucky man,” Pierre said quietly. In an uncharacteristic burst of confidence, he placed a hand on her knee. “Very lucky.”

Hélène’s grin showed all her teeth. Catlike, almost predatory. “And I must be a lucky wife, then.”

Pierre laughed. Already, the tokay’s warm burn had begun to flood through his veins, loosening his tongue, unraveling the knot of tension between his shoulders. Why had he been so stiff and worried all morning? There was nothing to worry about here. Not now, not when he had Hélène with him. Hélène and the tokay.

“I should hope so,” he said.

“It’s been too long since we’ve sat together. I do hope your studies are worth it.”

Pierre nodded vigorously. “The things I’ve read, the things I’ve learned…there’s so much more I want to know about. I ought to tell you all about it.”

“You and your Dust,” she said, laughing now, and laid a reciprocal hand on his knee. “Petrushka, dearest, you know my mind isn’t built for theology.”

“Aren’t you curious? It makes up so much of who we are.”

"Wouldn’t you rather have another drink? Here, let me—”

“No one ever talks about it,” he said. “Don’t you wonder why?”

“You know what the Church says,” she said, but with significantly less confidence, and poured out another round anyway. “It’s heresy. It’s sinful.”

And because he was already more drunk than he either realized or cared to admit, Pierre shook his head with a stilted, “Absolute nonsense. It’s science. It’s in all of us—how could that possibly be a sin?”

Hélène shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

“Dæmons are Dust, you know,” he continued.

Now Hélène’s smile dimmed. Of course she knew, he chided himself. Every man, woman, and child knew that, at least, but if she had taken offense to his patronizing tone, she hid it well.

“Not until they settle,” she said, and pushed another glass into his hands.

“How can it be heresy, then? Is your Dahanian a heretic? Is Khione?”

Dahanian’s head shot upright at the mention of his name. Across the room, Khione redirected her gaze towards the fireplace.

“Pierre,” Hélène said sharply. “I don’t think we should be discussing this.”

“We’re all heretics then,” he grumbled, downing the glass. “With the way they carry on about it, it’s a wonder they don’t try tearing us all away from our dæmons at birth.”

“Now you're talking nonsense.”

“Those brutes in Siberia do it, in the gulags. Surely even you’ve heard of it.”

“I have heard of it,” she said tersely. “I have also heard of the horrific pain those poor souls die in. It makes me sick just thinking about it.” Her face twisted, for the briefest of moments, into something horrified. “Could you even imagine?”

“It doesn’t always have to kill, though. I’ve heard whisperings of men in Lapland who can train themselves to separate entirely from their dæmons. They can walk away, for miles, even, and they don’t feel so much as a twinge of pain.”

Hélène’s hand tightened around her glass. “That’s ridiculous.”

But Pierre would not be dissuaded now that he had started off down this particular rabbit hole. “It’s not,” he insisted. “They say Napoleon was separated from his dæmon as a child. That’s why he doesn’t feel any fear on the battlefield. He doesn’t feel anything at all—there’s no emotion left in him.”

Hélène laughed dismissively as she topped off his glass. “I’m sure it was only gossip.”

“But it’s possible—plausible, even,” he said, and leaned forwards in his seat until the tray nearly toppled from his lap. Hélène reached out to take the decanter before it could spill onto the carpet. “There are metaphysicists in England and Germany who believe Dust can be severed—safely severed—with an anbaric current. You’d need a highly-conductive metal as a blade, of course, but in theory it’s not all that far-fetched.”

“They're only rumors,” she snapped.

Pierre shook his head, and though he knew he would later regret it, took another gulp of tokay. “But it’s not. It would be simple enough process. I’ve researched it enough to know.”

Hélène’s lips parted in disgust.

“I suppose they'd have to set up different rooms. So, say, for example, they would put you in one and Dahanian in the other. They’d need some sort of containment field. Then they'd take a titanium-manganese blade and make a cut right down the middle. Like a guillotine. One on either end. It’s a clean cut. I don’t even think it would hurt.”

“Pierre, really, this is hardly—”

“It’s irreversible, though,” he added pensively. “You’d survive, but you’d never have your dæmon again.”

Hélène slammed her glass down onto the table and shot upright, Dahanian with her, their eyes burning furiously. Khione startled in the corner of the room.

“I do not wish to continue this conversation,” she said.

Pierre frowned. The warm sensation in his chest deadened and went cold, and the room seemed to go quiet. “I thought you’d be interested," he said dumbly.

“I am not,” she said, running her fingers down Dahanian’s back. “It’s upsetting and it doesn’t matter, anyhow.”

"I'm sorry."

“I should get my coat. I have to prepare for tonight”

“Lena, please—”

But it was too late. She had already left, slamming the door shut behind her. Pierre heard her footsteps marching all the way upstairs to their room. A dull, drunken pounding settled between his temples. Khione padded over to the back of the settee and dropped her head onto his shoulder with a heavy huff.

“What did I do?” he asked, and almost trod on his half-empty glass as he stood. “What did I say wrong?”

“Did you see the way she was holding onto Dahanian? You frightened her.”

“How?”

“With what you said.”

Pierre almost laughed at that. Frightened? Impossible. The Hélène he knew was stoic at best, heartless at worst. In all their time together, he had never seen her so much as shed a single tear.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Hélène isn’t frightened of a damn thing in this world.”

Khione snorted. “Of course she is. You just don’t see it. Or you choose not to.”

He sighed and pressed a hand to his forehead. “I didn’t want to upset her,” he said.

“You’ll just have to do better, then.”

Pierre thought of the shawl and the tokay, and then frowned. “I was trying to do better.”

“I don't think that's what she wants."

By now, the pounding in his head had intensified into something more dogged and painful that wasn’t entirely to do with the tokay. Pierre seized the decanter by its neck and poured out another glass. “Well, fuck it,” he growled. “I suppose I’ll never know what she wants.”

“Oh, Pierre,” said Khione, but she must have realized how pointless it was to argue, because she left him alone with his drink and curled up in the corner again without another word.

About an hour later, Hélène swept back down the stairwell in a flourish of green and gold, now dressed for the evening. Dahanian followed at her heels.

Pierre stumbled to his feet, leaning against the backrest of the settee for support. “Lena, I wanted to apologize—”

Hélène turned to the polished surface of the mantel to admire her reflection. She had thrown the shawl around her shoulders and tied it into an elegant knot at her sternum. “Let’s not speak of it anymore,” she said. “It’s in the past.”

Pierre bit his lip. “You’re ready awfully early. I didn’t think the opera started until late.”

“I like to arrive to these events at a reasonable time,” she said curtly.

With hesitation, he smoothed his hands over the wrinkles in his waistcoat. At least the mustard-yellow brocade hid the tokay stains well. He only hoped she wouldn’t be able to smell it on him.

“Shall I grab my coat then, darling?” he asked.

Hélène tutted in disapproval and clipped a string of pearls around her throat. “Look at yourself, Pierre. Do you honestly think you’re in any condition to be seen out in public?”

Pierre’s mouth opened and closed, but no words came out.

“Just as I thought,” she said. “No matter. Captain Dolokhov will escort me instead.”

He blinked. “Dolokhov? But why him?”

Hélène sighed. There was something cold and condescending in it, and her face shifted from disdain to pity. Of the two, Pierre wasn’t sure which stung more. “Because, Petrushka," she said, "I can at least depend on him to maintain a reasonable level of sobriety.”

“Hélène,” he began, but she had already turned on her heel and started down the hallway. Pierre clambered to his feet and stumbled after her. “Lena, darling, please just listen—”

“Countess Bezukhova,” called a maidservant from the front door. “Captain Dolokhov has arrived.”

Pierre furrowed his brow and caught himself against the wall as his legs began to fold traitorously. “But so soon? You asked him already?”

Hélène pulled the shawl a little tighter around her shoulders. Now she did not bother to face him. “Of course,” she said.

It was clear to Pierre that a sympathetic appeal would be a waste of time. Propriety, then, perhaps.

“What will the others think when they see that your escort is an unmarried man?” he asked.

“Don’t worry,” she said flatly. “I’ll invent some excuse. I have no desire for all of Moscow to know what a miserable drunkard my husband is.”

And with that, she took off down the corridor, Dahanian a silver shadow and her shawl fluttering out behind her.


 

Fedya Dolokhov had never been fond of waiting. You didn’t wait in the military—things ran on a tight schedule, smooth and efficient as clockwork. Every second of the day was mapped out, planned, sealed in ink, until the bullets went flying and all hell broke loose. That Hélène saw fit to throw a proverbial wrench in his schedule grated on his nerves to no end. For a woman who so often complained of her brother’s lateness, she seemed to have, at best, a very tenuous grasp on time.

Samira, a large grey wolf, bristled restlessly at his feet. She wanted to pace, to run off, he knew—he could feel the urge prickling under his skin just as intensely as she must have. But they were in the company of high society, and as insufferable as she could be, the last thing he wanted to do was embarrass Hélène.

“How much longer can she take?” asked Samira.

Fedya shushed her quietly. “Patience, Sami.”

At last, the door swung open and Hélène stepped out onto the porch. “Captain Dolokhov,” she said.  

“Countess Bezukhova,” he replied, offering his arm, “radiant as always.”

Hélène smiled and fluttered her fan. Already a stunning woman under normal circumstances, now, with her curls pinned back at the crown of her head and a long string of pearls glittering at her throat, she looked every inch the perfect, high-society lady Fedya knew all too well she wasn’t.

“You flatter me,” she said.

Pierre appeared in the hallway behind Hélène with a confused look on his face. Fedya and Hélène turned to him on instinct.

“Captain Dolokhov,” he said. More an observation than a greeting.

“Pierre, old man,” Fedya said coolly. “I’m sorry to hear that you won’t be joining us tonight.”

Before Pierre could even open his mouth to protest, Hélène cut in with a sharp, “Dear Pierre has come down with a bout of the flu. We’ve agreed that a night of rest and recuperation is in order.”

Fedya cocked an eyebrow. He could see it instantly—the man was smashed drunk, and it showed, from the ungainly tilt of his posture to the rosy flush that had risen to his cheeks to the bunched wrinkles of his waistcoat, as if he had gone about a full week without bothering to change his clothes. Even Khione, lurking in the hall like a great looming shadow, swayed unsteadily on her feet.  

“You don’t need to escort my wife,” said Pierre. “I would hate to have to inconvenience you.”

It was truly incredible how a man so clearly intoxicated managed not to slur his words together into an indecipherable mess. Incredible, and just about the only thing he could respect in him.

Fedya shook his head. “It’s no trouble at all. She’s a charming woman.”

“See, Petrushka? What did I tell you? It’s fine," said Hélène.

“It’s not fine,” Pierre said, and despite the late-evening chill and the light dusting of snow that had begun to fall over the street, he stumbled out to the porch without so much as a jacket. “I’m her husband. This sort of thing is my duty.”

Hélène snapped her fan shut. “Pierre, darling, you really ought to go back inside. You’ll catch your death out here.”

“Ivan!” Pierre called into the doorway. “Fetch me my coat, would you?”

The young servant who had greeted Fedya at the gate appeared around the bend of the hallway. “You called, sir?”

“Absolutely not,” Hélène hissed. “I care about our reputation, even if you don’t.”

“My winter coat, Ivan. And my pocket-watch, if you can find it.”

Hélène slapped her folded-up fan against her hip and turned back to face Ivan as he strode towards the coat rack. “Make sure my husband stays at home to rest.”

“Hélène, really—”

“Madame?”

“And have the maid bring him some chicken soup for dinner.” Hélène turned back to Pierre with a sickly-sweet smile. “I do hope you feel better soon, husband.”

Fedya touched Hélène’s shoulder. “We should be off soon. The carriage is waiting.”

Pierre was clearly unsatisfied with this arrangement, but he seemed to have neither the energy nor the resolve to argue. “Very well,” he sighed, and hung his head as he stepped back into the doorway. “Enjoy the opera.”

Hélène smiled and kissed his cheek. “Of course. Try to get some rest.”

The door closed behind him with a quiet click.

Fedya sighed. At long last, he thought, and they turned back down the pathway. It was only a short walk to the carriage, but even so, Hélène slid her arm through the crook of Fedya’s elbow before they had even made it to the street. He turned to her and squeezed her arm a little tighter.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Thank God you came when you did.”

Fedya rested his hand on the small of her back and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “We don’t have to go tonight, you know. My flat is near the theatre.”

Hélène unfurled her fan. “Tempting,” she said. “Unfortunately, I’m expected at tonight’s performance.”

“What a shame.”

“No matter.”

She waited until they had both seated themselves in the carriage, fully out of earshot, before saying, “I’m out of the house, all the same, and that’s what matters.”

There was no need for Fedya to lower his voice, but he did so anyway. Sheer force of habit, perhaps. “What was it this time?”

“Oh, just Pierre being his usual horrid self,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It’s remarkable how he manages to be so unpleasant even when he’s in a good mood.”

Though he tried to hide it, Fedya tensed. “Unpleasant, how?”

Hélène shook her head. “I know what you’re thinking. It wasn’t like that, I promise.”

Fedya relaxed, but only marginally.

She continued, “He was talking about experiments—for the war, I suppose, but God knows what he’s been reading. Do you know anything about them?”

“Experiments?”

“Separating people from their dæmons.” She shuddered and looked down at Dahanian, who had curled himself around her leg like a housecat. “It was absolutely vile.”

Fedya couldn’t help the tremor of disgust that shivered through him, and he felt Samira bristle nervously at his feet, though she tried to hide it. Some things were too revolting, too unnatural and grotesque to react with indifference. He had known that Pierre had some unusual interests, but they had never strayed too far from his odd fascinations with Kabbalah and numerology and the like.

But now this.

Hélène laughed dismissively as she ran her fingers through the tassels of her shawl. “Ridiculous, isn’t it?”

Fedya did not laugh.

“I mean, the very idea that you could do something like that…I tried to tell him what a fool he was being, but he wouldn’t listen.”

Fedya stroked Samira’s fur and avoided Hélène's eyes.

She touched his arm. “You have a look on your face like you have something to hide. What is it, Fedya?”

He sighed. May as well get it over with, he reasoned, and bite the bullet before she weaseled it out of him anyway.

“There might be some truth to the rumors,” he said quietly.

Hélène went stiff in her seat. Had it not been for the rouge she had no doubt powdered her cheeks and lips with, her face would have been white. “So it’s true, then?”

Fedya found himself struggling for words. “In part,” he said, “though I don’t know how much of it was exaggeration. I heard talk of it in Persia, in the Shah’s army. And now they say the French are experimenting on prisoners of war.”

“Who did you hear these things from? Anna Pavlovna?”

“General Kutuzov,” he said. “He told us to make sure we weren’t captured.”

Hélène let out a nervous laugh, and her fan fluttered over her mouth. “You’re only joking,” she said, swatting his arm. “Tell me you’re joking, Fedya.”

Fedya’s eyes dipped to the floor, then veered to the window. “I wish I was,” he said after a long while.

Hélène sucked in a deep breath. Beside her, Dahanian went still. “I’m sure they’re still just rumors. If Pierre believes them, how credible could they be?”

Fedya allowed himself a smile at that. Of course she would find a way to rationalize things. It was in her nature. Nothing was ever too horrid or unnerving, not once you gave Hélène Bezukhova enough time to work out an explanation.

“That’s a fair enough point,” he said, nodding.

“It’s been a long time since you were at the front, anyhow.”

“It has.”

Hélène was quiet for a moment. Dahanian crawled into her lap, draping himself across the seat, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. “If Napoleon does come to Russia, do you think you and Anatole may be called out to service?”

Fedya furrowed his brow. Now there was something she couldn’t explain away. He had seen it bubbling beneath the surface of her mind for the past few weeks, lurking, always lurking. He couldn’t blame her—the prospect was driving him mad too.

“Let’s not talk of this anymore,” he said sternly. “We’re going to have a nice evening out at the opera, alright?” Hélène looked away and his frown deepened. He took her hand in his own, squeezing it, and tilted her chin up with his pointer finger. “Where’s my radiant Lenka?”

Hélène frowned. “But it could happen, couldn't it?”

It won’t, he wanted to say, I know it won’t, but that would have been a lie, and Hélène could spot a lie from leagues away. Instead he sighed, running a hand through his hair, and said, “I would keep him safe. No matter what.”

Hélène nodded uncertainly. He could tell that she wasn’t convinced, but the carriage had already stopped at the steps of the Imperskiy Theatre and there was no time for further protest. She shot him a brilliant smile that was all pearly-white teeth and elegance and no sincerity whatsoever, and unfolded her fan as he helped her step out of the carriage and onto the street.

The front steps of the theatre bustled with the swell and din of the crowd, Muscovites milling about in their evening finery like a flock of colorful birds, their dæmons just as exotic and overwhelming. An assault on the eyes and ears in equal measure. Fedya almost balked at the sight of it, until Hélène looped her arm through the crook of his elbow, pressing against him more tightly than was proper, and said, “Come along, Fedyushka. We mustn’t be late. They’re waiting for us.”