Work Text:
2:36 am
Silence hung in the loft. Only the faint sounds of wood creaking under bare feet betrayed the stillness of the apartment.
With the little flame of the candle she held as her only source of light, Anastasia made her way through her home, her shaky legs threatening to give up at any moment. The apartment was scary at night. Every time she had to walk through its darkness to go to the bathroom or to get a glass of water, she feared that something (or someone) would come out of the shadows and jump at her. That thought alone was enough to make her shudder.
Something had woken her. A noise, loud enough for her to hear even with her bedroom door closed. At first, she thought that it might have been Nikolai; her dad wasn’t always careful about noise when she was sleeping. She lost count of the times she had heard Fyodor telling Nikolai to be quieter so as not to wake her up.
But Nikolai was nowhere to be found. Nor was Fyodor. Her heart beat faster, her throat got tighter. Something wasn’t right…
The floor creaked behind her. Anastasia froze. She could feel a presence right behind her. Something tall and menacing. Her heart pounded loudly in her ears and her body shook like a leaf. Slowly, she dared to turn around, but before she could see what it was, a large hand grabbed her neck, squeezing it tightly and trapping her scream in her throat.
Everything went black. The last thing her mind registered before losing consciousness was the ache in her lungs as the oxygen slowly slipped away…
Anastasia woke up with a scream. Sitting upright on the bed, her chest heaved as she tried to catch her breath, her pastel blue eyes darting around the room, expecting to see the intruder. When her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw that she was in her bedroom, and her breath and heart rate steadied when she understood that she was safe.
She put a hand on her neck. That dream was so vivid; she could still feel the pain around her throat. She then checked the time on her alarm clock. 2:36 am. Wasn’t that the same hour as in her dream?
Everything clicked into place in her mind, and panic took over again. What she saw wasn’t a dream. It was a vision.
The door opened. Anastasia tensed, and turned her head toward the door, a shuddering gasp escaping her lips. Her father, Fyodor, entered in, his face illuminated by the orange flame of a candle. Anastasia’s shoulders slumped, a sense of relief washing over her.
“Nightmare?” he said softly, his usual reassuring smile on his face.
Anastasia dropped her gaze. “No… it was my ability again…”
Her dads had told her about special abilities. Anastasia’s ability, White Nights, allowed her to see events that hadn’t happened yet. She began having those visions in January, just a few days after her 10th birthday. At first, she thought that these visions were just vivid dreams that she could remember well, but when she noticed that several of them had come true, she began to believe these weren’t just simple déjà vus.
Ever since, those visions have continued to occur in her daily life. She had no control over that gift, and some visions were more terrifying than others. When her parents discovered she was an ability user just like them, Nikolai had tried to comfort her by telling her that her ability made her special and that she shouldn’t feel like an outsider because of it. Fyodor had barely said a word that day. He had kept a blank look on his face, but Anastasia swore she had seen regret in his violet eyes. Perhaps, he was silently cursing the fact that Anastasia had inherited an ability because of them. She knew Fyodor had a dislike for ability users; she overheard him talking about that with Nikolai one night, when they thought she was asleep, and what he said wasn’t positive.
Fyodor set the candleholder on the nightstand, and sat on the bed next to his daughter.
“What did you see?”
Anastasia gripped her bedsheets tighter. “There was someone in the house… I don’t know why they came here for, but… when I turned around, that’s…” Tears came to her eyes, her voice quavering. “That’s when they strangled me…”
Tears rolled down her cheeks. She quickly wiped them away, and her throat tightened again, making it hard for her to breathe. Fyodor’s eyes softened, and he pulled his daughter in his arms, wrapping one arm around her shoulders and placing the other on the back of her head.
“Shh… it’s okay,” he murmured as he drew circles on her back, soothing her anxiety as much as he could.
“Wait…” Anastasia spoke through her tears, and looked at her father. “It was a vision… so that means they’re in the house, right…?”
“No,” Fyodor responded. “I was in the kitchen when I heard you scream and no one was there.”
“But… maybe they’re hiding! All my visions have come true, there’s no reason for it to not…”
“Natsya.” Fyodor cupped his daughter’s cheeks, the golden jewel on his ring finger cold against her warm skin. “I’m telling you: no one was there. We don’t know the extent of your gift yet, so this vision may have just been a bad dream.”
He smiled.
“So please, don’t worry too much about it. If you start giving your gift too much importance, you will become its prisoner.”
Anastasia could only stare into her father’s eyes, pondering his words. She wanted to believe what he said was true, but it was hard to do so when she had lived through all the visions she had seen in her sleep. Even before her ability first manifested, she never had real dreams. It was almost as if that gift prevented her from experiencing dreams like a normal person…
Fyodor pressed a kiss on his daughter’s forehead, interrupting her thoughts. “Now. You should get back to sleep.”
He leaned back, and felt Anastasia’s fingers clutching his shirt.
“It’s okay, I’ll stay with you until you fall back asleep. Come on…”
With a hand gesture, he encouraged her to lie down. Anastasia nodded, and lay back down, curling up slightly. Fyodor pulled the blanket up to her shoulders, and rubbed her arm.
“It’s just the three of us here. Nikolai, you, and I.” He gently ran his fingers through his daughter’s jet-black hair. “You don’t have to worry,” he repeated.
Anastasia didn’t close her eyes right away. She was still scared, convinced that the intruder was hiding in the house. But eventually, her eyelids felt heavy. Her father’s soothing voice and the steady movement of his hand running through her hair formed a shield against fear, and she allowed herself to close her eyes.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Fyodor reminded her in a whisper.
And on these words, Anastasia’s mind slowly drifted into unconsciousness.
Fyodor stepped out of his daughter’s room, closing the door behind him. Standing still in front of the door, he paid close attention to the sounds around him. The apartment was completely silent. Heading to the living room, Fyodor wasn’t surprised by the sight of a bloody white sheet spread across the vinyl floor, preventing the blood from staining the floor permanently, but he was surprised by the lack of a body on that sheet. His eyes squinted a little.
“Kolya,” he called calmly.
Soon afterwards, arms snaked their way around Fyodor’s neck. Fyodor didn’t protest, not alarmed at being embraced from behind.
“Mission accomplished, love.” Nikolai murmured.
A smile stretched Fyodor’s lips, and he rested his left hand on Nikolai’s wrist.
“Did you put the body somewhere safe?” He asked, as if that question wasn’t strange at all.
“I dumped it in the river! You were very clear earlier: ‘Make sure nobody finds the body. We mustn’t attract attention to us.’” He uttered the last words, mimicking Fyodor’s voice.
Fyodor emitted a little laugh upon hearing his husband imitating him. “Good, then.”
He freed himself from Nikolai’s embrace, and stared back at the stained sheet.
“Natsya doesn’t believe that what she saw wasn’t a vision. Expect her to ask you questions in the morning.”
Nikolai giggled. “Our birdie’s ability can be pretty handy, don’t you think? We can know when someone is coming for us and have one step ahead.”
Fyodor cast a glance at Nikolai.
“Natsya is not a pawn. She suffers a lot from her ability.”
“I know, I know. But you’re always worried that someone from your past might resurface. So, it must reassure you to have such power so close to you.”
Fyodor frowned. “You know that I swore not to use Natsya’s gift in any way. Why would you say such things?”
“Don’t be mad, Fedya!” Nikolai cupped his husband’s cheeks, grinning. “I was just messing with you!”
He pressed a quick peck on Fyodor’s nose, and giggled again at his deadpan stare.
“Get rid of the sheet,” Fyodor ordered. “I don’t want Natsya to see it.”
“As you wish!”
Nikolai was quick to perform Fyodor’s order. He grabbed the bloody sheet, and brought it to the fireplace. Placing it on top of the logs, he lit a match and burned a newspaper page, setting the blanket on fire with it.
Fyodor watched as the fire ignited, and something sparked in him. Flames enveloped the sheet, but not Nikolai’s words. They resonated in the back of his mind, refusing to quiet down.
He hated how right Nikolai was. He hated being forced to realize that having a clairvoyant ability such as his daughter’s so close to him really reassured him. When Anastasia was born, he had promised himself to protect her at all costs, and then, her visions began. Anastasia was suffering unnecessarily because of her gift. He couldn’t bear seeing her cry every time she had a stressful vision.
That was why he had to continue with his plan and erase the abilities from this world with the help of the Book.
For Anastasia’s sake.