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I
Nikolai meets him on a day like any other. Because it’s always a day like any other. He doesn’t wake up and decides today will be different, and he doesn’t decide this is the day it ends. He hasn’t quite decided what it is yet, anyway. But he wakes up, and he goes out, and he sees the same things and people, as he does every day.
Until he meets him and, suddenly, today is different, today is the day it ends, even though he still doesn’t know what it is. But it is over, it is gone, and it’s because he meets him.
It's at the top of the bell tower where he first lays eyes on him. Nikolai notices his footsteps just as his head appears over the stairs, his white and fluffy ushanka coming into view before his pale face does.
"This area is off-limits," he says, unnecessarily. There are enough signs on the way up.
The stranger's steps don't falter. The hint of a smile pulls at the corner of his mouth and he lifts a finger to his lips. Nikolai blinks at him.
Something pushes harshly against his ribs from the inside. It takes him a moment to recognize it as intrigue. He kills it.
But there isn't much else up here.
And the man is wearing a rather fluffy looking ushanka, a fur-lined coat, and heavy boots during the height of July.
Nikolai is aware his own attire isn't much better in terms of dealing with the heat, but he is required to wear these robes. What's this guy's excuse?
He's tempted to call him Fluffle on account of all the puffed up fluffiness in his outfit. It certainly looks like a bunch of rabbits stuck together.
"I've seen you up here from the ground yesterday as well," the man says, not answering Nikolai's internal question in the slightest. He speaks with a foreign lilt to his words, noticeably not a native speaker, but not quite an accent he recognizes, either. There is something archaic in the way the sounds fall from his lips. His voice is smooth, "Do you often shirk your duties in high places?"
It doesn't sound like an accusation, despite coming from what is likely to be a visitor strongly following the Faith.
Still, Nikolai deflects, "My duties might be the cleaning of the bell."
"That needs to be done every day?"
"The wind carries a lot of dirt," he says, and makes no mention of the nest on one of the support beams. He is supposed to have gotten rid of that two months ago. He shrugs, "Father Mikhail prefers it spotless."
"Pure and holy," the man nods to himself, "free of filth."
Something slithers along Nikolai's arm under his skin. He wants to carve it open and take the thing out.
"I have talked to Father Mikhail, of course. In fact, he invited me here to see his work," the man—he'll call him Fluffle, after all—goes on, oblivious. "He seems to want to take God's mission rather seriously. A necessary trait for one in his position. It's quite admirable."
Nikolai makes a noise that doesn't mean much of anything. Fluffle is standing quite close to the banister.
"I need to ask you to leave, sir," Nikolai says. "This area really isn't for visitors."
Fluffle simply tilts his head. The edges of his smile seem to stretch, and the slithering thing under Nikolai's skin begins to writhe, squirm, gnaw at the nerve ends of his limbs. Maybe he's the one who is only a step away from falling off the bell tower.
"How long have they held you here?"
There's a stutter in his breath. "I'm sorry?"
"I'm sure you know what I'm referring to." Fluffle's smile doesn't affect the rest of his face at all. "This place houses some rather unique individuals, does it not?"
"Huh?"
"It's what I'm here for," he says, like it's perfectly normal for a visitor of the monastery to be aware of that specific branch of it. "It's hardly the only institution in the world to act as a shelter for the lost little lambs that happen to be too much of a danger to themselves and others," his stare bores straight through Nikolai as he pauses, "if 'shelter' is the correct term."
He isn't sure whether Fluffle is fishing for some kind of response from him or just likes the sound of his own voice. This isn't a road he should be going down, anyway. He never actually went there before. Even when it crosses his mind, occasionally.
Nikolai licks his lips, tasting sin, and jumps, "Are you implying Father Mikhail is doing something wrong? With how he runs this place?"
"Oh, absolutely," Fluffle chuckles. "You see it, too, don't you?"
He stays quiet.
But silence often speaks for itself.
And then, this strange man does it for him.
"The people kept here are supposed to achieve harmony within themselves, yet are also taught to deny themselves," he says. "I can't quite agree with that."
Nikolai's lungs feel empty and full at the same time. "Why is that?"
"Tell me," Fluffle says, acting as if Nikolai never made a sound, "why do you come up here every day?"
"I—"
"It isn't to clean," he interrupts. "This place is rather high up. Far from the ground. Close to the heavens. That's more where you belong, isn't it?"
A swoop in his stomach is all the warning Nikolai gets before the imminent drop.
"They say you're confined here for your own good. But have your abilities ever hurt you? What good does this do for you? God has bigger plans for you. You should know what they are."
Nikolai opens his mouth, but doesn't speak.
"Don't hold back." Fluffle raises his hand, slowly, higher and higher, until he places a finger against his own temple. There's life in his eyes and his smile. "You should know what He wants you to do."
It takes years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds—Nikolai understands at once. There's only one thing that has been on his mind for as long as he's been here, since he's been brought here, put here, held here. One thing he has felt he needed to do, and misinterpreted to mean he is somehow wrong, was led to believe isn't a thought to be pursued.
Seeing his understanding, Fluffle steps back.
"Wait," he calls out, "What's your name?"
But the stranger only smiles, walks towards the stairs, and says, "Perhaps we'll meet again some time. Won't we?"
He's gone and Nikolai's world will never be the same.
II
Nikolai meets him again when he finally goes through with what he is supposed to do.
His hands shake throughout the entire act; while putting on the coat, when grabbing the knife. His breathing, however, is oddly steady and controlled without him meaning for it to be.
Distantly, he does wonder, in the back of his mind, if he's really making the right choice. If he isn't simply playing into someone else's hands by following this impulse, that stranger's words—but, he tells himself, if he doesn't, then he would only chain himself to this place further. He doesn't belong here, doesn't deserve to be held here, and Father Mikhail doesn't deserve to keep him locked up and controlled.
Nikolai's detainment ends swiftly with the plunge of a knife into a human spine. Standing in front of him, hands behind his back and under his coat, Nikolai's face is the last thing the priest lays eyes on before closing them for good. Nikolai thinks he might have been smiling, but his entire body feels numb and oddly devoid of anything. There's bile in his throat. His hands have lost their tremble.
A sharp noise—a clap—echoes between the tall walls.
He doesn't flinch, nor is he surprised, to see the man from the bell tower step out of the shadows, the palms of his hands meeting in a rhythmic clap again and again.
"I'm impressed," he says, with the same old and foreign lilt as last time, "you didn't hesitate."
Nikolai looks at him slowly, taking him in one second at a time.
"I will admit," Fluffle says, "I wasn't quite sure this was what you needed to do. I'm glad I trusted my instincts."
And there are a number of things Nikolai could say to that, could ask about, beginning with their first conversation a couple of weeks ago—but instead, what comes out of his mouth, is this:
"You wanted him dead."
Fluffle tilts his head, waiting.
"Why?"
"I told you, didn't I? I didn't agree with his methods. And, evidently, neither did you." He approaches the body with cold detachment, but not once lets Nikolai out of his sight. "Locking people with your abilities away like this… A waste, really. There's so much more you could do in this world. Things no one else ever could."
Nikolai isn't stupid. Everything in him screams out warnings, alarms, danger. "I won't be dragged from one cage to the other," he bites out as he feels the numbness in his face recede somewhat.
Fluffle's eyebrows rise up and hide behind his fringe. "Pardon?"
"Whatever you think I should be doing with my…powers, or whatever they may be, I won't." He'd rather plunge the knife he is still holding in the middle of thin air into his own back than getting wrapped up in whatever dear Fluffle here is planning. "I'm not going with you."
A sound makes it out of Fluffle's throat that looks entirely involuntary thanks to his wide eyes and confused smile—which is brittle and strained at the corners, Nikolai notes. What a fun reaction that is.
"Maybe you'll see me again, maybe you won't," Nikolai drops the knife and takes his hand back to his side, "I suppose, we'll see. Thank you for visiting our humble monastery, good sir. We hope to see you again some time."
He takes a bow and, with a swift flair of his coat, literally disappears from view for the man who changed his life.
III
He sees Father Mikhail again in a man he tries to get hired by.
And then another.
And another.
He runs to the city and sees him there, too. Holds a second knife in a bout of panic, and then has to run from a puddle of red and a nameless body.
It happens twice.
He travels out into the countryside and still can't escape.
There's blood on his hands, so he wears gloves.
He thinks this might be his punishment for taking a life—and then doing it again, and again, unsure of why he even resorts to the act in the first place.
There must be something wrong with him.
Getting rid of that man was all he had thought about while trapped in that monastery, so that's what he was supposed to do.
Now, his mind is full of guilt, his conscience heavy, and he can't escape this unbearable sickness settled deep into his stomach.
There must be something wrong with him.
He repeats that phrase in his head for days on end.
He breaks into a farmer's barn for shelter from the rain and a place to sleep. He holds his breath when the doors creak open in the middle of the night.
He shouldn't have bothered. The person entering finds him immediately, looking down at him from below the fluffy rim of an ushanka.
"You're wasting away," says the man who started all this.
Nikolai isn't surprised to be found by him if he's being honest with himself. He's been feeling watched for a couple of days now.
"Aimless now, even when repeating what you were meant to do before."
Nikolai doesn't give him the satisfaction of getting a response. He only stares at him—waiting, perhaps. He isn't too sure himself what he wants this interaction to be.
When it clicks that Nikolai isn't going to entertain him, he asks, "you wanted my name, correct?" like he's dangling a carrot on a stick.
"Why are you here?" Nikolai can't help but ask, not quite reaching for the carrot, but definitely eyeing the stick.
"You should know, I deal in information. I know the power and the value of it." He makes a step towards Nikolai, and then turns to the side, glancing at him from his profile. "Having said that, I want you to know how much value I can see in the things I know about you. And I'm very interested to see how far we could go together."
It doesn't really tell Nikolai much of anything.
"Consider this a standing offer," the man says, that weird smile from their first encounter on his face again, "and I'll be expecting you at the little bar in town tomorrow night. Order vodka." The man turns his back on hims, begins walking out of the barn as he leaves Nikolai with his last words.
"Say, 'Dostoevsky recommended it'."
Tomorrow night, Nikolai joins a traveling circus.
IV
It isn't a metaphor. It's a literal traveling circus.
They hire him for his card tricks, for his bright smile and whimsy. They make him a clown, who is really a magician, and give him a hat, and a coat, and a perfect pair of boots. He uses the gifts he was given in broad daylight—or at least the lights of the circus tent—and feels like he's getting away with something.
He doesn't care for the people he's performing with, but that's for the best, he figures. They're alright, if all a bit boring, but none of them remind him of the one he should have managed to ban from influencing his life the moment he put a knife in him. And they aren't trying to influence him now.
Nikolai is the one who came to them.
For a few months, it's a life he lives. He doesn't hate it, he doesn't love it—maybe he doesn't even really like it. But he lives it.
And then, he sees him during a show, sitting in the audience.
And another.
And another.
They leave for the next town.
And he sees him again.
And Nikolai is thinking. About their first conversation, the one that started all this. He's using these gifts he's been given for parlor tricks. There must be something more he can do. Something bigger. It makes him think, is all.
Was he always supposed to end up here? It's a fitting ending for a man so desperate for freedom, he killed the one who's been offering protection for most of his life, thus chaining himself to his ghost for all eternity. Was this His plan all along?
It's a stupid fucking plan.
One night, Dostoevsky comes to him after the show. He says, "It's a standing offer," and disappears back into the night.
V
The thing is, Nikolai has never thought much of God's plan or graces.
The thing is, he doesn't really want to follow a chosen path for him.
The thing is, he doesn't particularly care what life he lives.
The thing is, all he wants is to be free.
The thing is, maybe that means he has to lose everything else.
He wouldn't mind—would embrace it, even.
"I'm heading to Japan," Dostoevsky says from the audience seats.
Nikolai stands in the middle of the circus arena, the ground a deep red, a knife in the air, and knows the man that changed his life enjoyed the show.
"You should join me," he says, and holds out a hand.
Nikolai doesn't take it, yet he follows anyway.
VI
It's a choice to join, and it's a choice to die.
It's a choice not to, and it's a choice to survive.
It's a choice to betray him, and it's a choice to let him get away.
It's a choice to free himself, and it's a choice to lose everything else.
It's a choice to stand there, and it's a choice to watch.
It's a choice to think he could ever have any choice at all.
Cradling an arm to his chest, he wouldn't know what to choose, anyway.