Chapter Text
Artemy Burakh, the Haruspex, finds himself jealous. The feeling keeps eating him from the inside, and it hurts, but at the same time, he finds it humorous – hilarious, even. He’s never thought himself the jealous type. He spent years in the Capital, not once feeling jealous over who Trout might’ve been with at the time – even if, to be honest, he was still mistaking romantic love between them for platonic at the time, which later made their first weeks under the same roof incredibly awkward, as they both honestly tried to pretend she was only there to help with the kids. But with Trout, being jealous would’ve at least made some sense. Same as it would’ve made sense to be jealous of Stakh staying by his father’s side, while he was sent away to study. Yet, he never was. And now, here it is – invidia, as Dankovsky would call it, one of the Deadly Sins. And of whom? Saburov, that golem of a commandant. Worse than a golem, a governor taken right from Saltykov-Shchedrin’s pages, with a mechanical pipe organ for a brain, only ever playing the same melody!
Yet how easily did Clara call him and his morphinist wife her parents! Came to ask him to aid them, even, despite thinking him little better than a demon at the time, and despite them betraying her oh so easily just prior.
And yet with him and Lara – no, nothing. “Tyoma” is the best he is getting, and even that barely ever. Has he been somehow lacking? Has he been messing things up, yet again?
He finishes making the bed on the new mattress that he’s laid onto the frame in his Lair, pulls up a clean curtain to replace the one separating the sleeping area from the rest of the basement room. He loves his family dearly, but a den of his own can still come in handy when he needs time alone.
No, no, he must be fair to the Saburovs. They tried – in their own, stunted manner, but they tried – and they did their best for the Town as much as for Clara. He just needs to calm his nerves and stop badmouthing them, even mentally – they’re going through a hard spot without that as it is. Finish up stocking all the new closets and cabinets he’s got with supplies, maybe. Clara once called him a hand-thinker, and to be fair, that he is – tinkering always sets his mind in order.
He rarely has time alone to think these days – his menkhu duties, spiritual as much as medical, take up most of his time. He seeks no power over his Kin, yet with Taya so small and him an Elder by every right, he’s more involved in running the community day-to-day than he’d like. Aspity has moved out of Town in self-imposed exile that she calls a Long Mourning, and forms a power center opposed to his own: he suspects those of the Kin disappointed by his decisions flock to her hideout in the Steppe. Oyun had left even before she did.
Between this, serving as a middleman between the Kin and Vlad the Younger to press for worker rights and settle labour disputes, caring for three children, and helping Lara with running their household, he really has his hands full even without the tinkering.
He moves to install a stove in the corner of the room. Its chimney goes into an exhaust vent pipe above the alembic table, a crate of coal and a scoop find their place nearby.
Hmmm, but Clara certainly has been taking a lot of space in his head lately. His other kids aren’t without their own problems: Sticky needs to cram, hard, if ever he hopes to make it to an actual medical university to emerge a professional, rather than a self-taught orderly only keen in his father’s half-steppe ways; and teaching Murky to read has been an uphill battle – perhaps the first phrase of the alphabet primer with its mothers washing windowsills had poisoned the idea for her, forcing Sticky and him to draw her custom illustrations for each letter; then there’s Trout, too…
Still, it’s Clara he’s been thinking about the most, and that means something is off between them. Artemy finds himself wishing dearly for a simple way to know.
Such a way presents itself much sooner than anticipated, as the sound of the heavy doors of his Lair opened briefly then shut close carries down to him, followed by familiar patter of footsteps. The Haruspex can feel something’s off even before Clara comes into his view; a single glance up from the spare scalpel he’s sharpening is enough to confirm his inkling. The teen isn’t wearing her usual upbeat, all-knowing persona, looking instead gaunt and honestly anxious: even her greetings sound subdued. Artemy returns these and goes back to his work, waiting for her to confide in him – or perhaps simply to mock him for his hoarding, maybe ask when a Cub turned into a Squirrel… However, she remains silent and instead watches him work, pale eyes huge on her face, black bags underlining them, as if she hasn’t been sleeping well.
Finally, unable to stand the suspense any longer, Burakh speaks up first:
“Been a while since you moved in with us for good, dara eheni. Has everything been to your liking?”
“No… I mean, yes… I mean…” Clara stutters, “I mean, it’s been great, I’m not sure I even deserve all this.”
Artemy remembers how lost she was when Sticky threw together some clunky contraption for her pet rat to play in: she’s always been better at being worshipped than being liked.
“I’m honestly not sure if I’m good enough at my current role!” the Changeling continues.
“So that’s what this all is about, isn’t it, then?” Artemy thinks with a pang of relief. Like any teen, she just needs a bit of support, and she’ll adapt just fine.
“Is there a way to be good enough, other than putting in all the effort you can?” he questions. “Say, you were with me during the outbreak to see all my failures. Then, I once said I didn’t know how to love – and I don’t still. But the Town and my family expect me to be there for them, and I cannot fail their expectations – I am bound by my own Lines!”
He notices his tirade is starting to sound more like a confession, and a part of him wants to blame Clara with her uncanny ability to pull the guilt out of anyone she talks with – but he’s sure this one is on him. Still, he carries on:
“I know I am passable, since my efforts are accepted, but am I good? Was my own father good at being a father, for that matter? I was tiny when my brother Ersher died, so I never held it against him – but was he, rea…”
“What kind of man was your father?” Clara interrupts.
“The kind that’d slap you on the mouth for interrupting him,” Artemy blurts out before catching himself. “Which is why I’m never doing anything of the sort to any of mine… But don’t think he was cruel! He was larger than me, larger than life! He wasn’t a traditionalist, far from it, but he had to maintain a delicate balance between what the Town and the Kin expected of him, and that… That sometimes looked ugly.”
Artemy falls silent, confounded by his feelings about his father now that he’s spilled them.
“Still, I am broken I never got to properly mourn him,” he finishes in a somber tone.
The conversation dies at that, since Clara chooses to remain silent. The Haruspex puts his knives away and moves to a large bag of provisions he left near the Lair’s bed. He sits down and starts sorting his haul, packing rusk, qurt, and pemmican into small individual ration packages. There’s no shortage of food in the Town now, but who knows what’s coming? The shelf life on these is measured in years, surely better to have some in reserve.
His hands do quick, neat work, requiring almost no thinking from him, but the Changeling’s gaze makes him uncomfortable, so his mind wanders. He thinks back to the day he first embraced her, in the mutineers’ camp, for the first time seeing her for a scared, lost kid, and adding the prints of her tiny, blood-covered hands to the other blood and dirt staining his green smock at the time – long since washed off after the epidemic. Then, his mind moves on to Lara, to the days when she’s too depressed to get up from their bed, so consumed by her chondria he has to organize substitute lessons for her pupils: advanced math with Yulia Lyuricheva or anatomy with Daniil Dankovsky or drawing with Peter Stamatin (who’s been surprisingly helpful after Artemy’s help negotiating over Grace with the Saburovs).
Those days with Lara, when he tries to approach her, if even she deigns him with a response, she spits poison at him in a quiet, lifeless voice: accuses him of taking away her reason to keep living, of declawing and domesticating her, of taking her most important decisions for her. In time, Artemy has learned that any logical arguments are pointless then: whether pointing out that her trying to assassinate the Commander would’ve only resulted in her execution; or comparing the good killing him would’ve done to the good Lara is doing for her family and her pupils; or any others of the kind. The right course of action, he’s found, is just showing love and devotion: taking care of her, even if spoon-feeding is what it takes. And that is what she actually wants, not logical constructs or appeals to the common good.
Having arrived at a conclusion that in hindsight seems obvious to him, if perhaps it was by a circuitous path, Artemy stands up and opens his arms for a hug, facing where Clara is leaning against the wall, watching him still. A moment of hesitation from her, a beckoning gesture from him, and her nose pecks somewhere under his right collarbone. He presses his cheek over the top of her head as he pulls her in, then says in as soft a tone as he can manage:
“I can see something is eating you, Clara. Why don’t you confide in me?”
In return, she mumbles into his chest:
“I can feel my sister again. For the last few days, this feeling has only been getting stronger,” she shudders, “That means she’s here, somewhere close. I thought she disappeared, or maybe left with Block. I am scared, aba.”
The last word feels much less of a triumph to Artemy than he has expected, since she lowers her voice to a whisper and proceeds:
“I’m scared of what she could be like after so long,” and then adds barely audibly, “Scared of what I am, now that she is again real and here.”
The Haruspex holds her for a while longer, then offers:
“If meeting her is inevitable…” and he assumes it is, or else it wouldn’t be weighing so heavily on Clara, “Why don’t we go meet her, together? Head on?”
Clara looks up at his face; for the first time today, he’s seeing something resembling hope in her eyes.