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Vodyanitsa’s exhaustion is bone deep, and it has taken every last ounce of her willpower to fight sleep until this point. Though the days they've spent in the walls of the Korolevskiy Theater have been long, the nights have somehow been even longer. It wasn't so much the duration of time in itself, but the fear of what was to come. Though they had many questions left unanswered, they only knew one thing for certain. They died in their sleep, quiet yet eternal nonetheless.
She had sung lullabies to Tonia into the depths of the night in hopes of placating the young girl, hymns she'd never been able to grace the stage with, but her songs did little to quell her own worries. Vodyanitsa cannot help but yearn for a time when it had been her mother singing such songs to her in her youth, but her life has not been that simple in a very long time.
Anxiety flows through her, fears about what little she had to lose and everything she thought she’d have time to love. She's never felt closer to death than she has now. She'd been too young to really let the fear of what was to come set in all those centuries ago when the fae had been forced to flee, and the danger now felt ever closer the more that time passed on. Now, she has regret for how she's spent her borrowed time. Vodyanitsa had loved so much before her people had been forced to flee, and before she knew it, loneliness was more familiar to her than companionship.
It’s not so easy to be nonchalant in the face of your own death. Torgov and Soboleva had died peacefully, before they knew what awaited them. Rampana and Kulish had died with hope, believing in the ability of those around them to bring about a better outcome. Shram had accepted his fate allowing the snowstorm to swallow him whole, while Valeriy had died with honor above all else. With Mitya choosing to accept his fate as well, they had every reason to believe the threat had passed.
Yet nagging beneath her skin, Vodyanitsa could not to accept their supposed peace so quickly. It weighed on all of them in their own ways. Chugunov was holding it together through sheer spite, Tonia through sincere belief, but even they trembled.. Even the traveler, with more exploits than could fill any book, trembled in the face of what stood before them.
All of them have feared. All but Odette.
It grates at Vodyanitsa, wears her down, eats her alive in her worst moments that somehow Odette has kept every ounce of herself together even though they’ve both been running the same math in their head every night. It’s a confirmation of everything Vodyanitsa thought she knew about the other woman, and she cannot help but be furious.
It isn't that Odette feels nothing. Vodyanitsa is not foolish enough to believe that, not after all these years spent at the other woman's side. No, it's that after everything, Odette still does not trust all of them enough with her emotions to allow them to be on display. After everything Vodyanitsa and Odette have shared together, Odette still doesn't see it fit to show Vodyanitsa this side of herself. Selfishly, Vodyanitsa cannot help but be angry. She's bitter, frustrated, and has nowhere to displace this emotion except outwardly.
Odette is remarkably perceptive if you count perceptive as being able to notice a thousand yard glare while in the same sleeping quarters.
“What is it you want from me, Vodyanitsa?” Odette taunts, though to call it such would imply that Odette’s voice ever migrated from the monotonous intonation ingrained in her. No, it is more of an interrogation, military-classic and impersonal the way everything is with the Fatui.
It’s as if even now, Odette is indulging her. As though this edge to her voice is for Vodyanitsa’s benefit and not her own, as if Vodyanitsa needs this conflict to keep going. Odette never fails to be infuriating.
“The truth, for once,” Vodyanitsa insists, scowling. “You pretend you’re so cold, Odette, as if you’re beyond everything the world has to offer.”
“It is our job to protect everyone in the walls of our theatre,” Odette’s words are clipped. For once, Vodyanitsa wishes she could rip back the other woman’s facade and scavenge through the broken pieces of what’s left.
“We could die tonight,” Vodyanitsa’s heart pounds in her chest, wild and aflame in a way she tends to be far too often for a water imp. “And that’s all you want to say to me?”
“I don’t see what else there is to say.”
Silence is overtaken by the sound of blood rushing to Vodyanitsa’s ears, louder than the tides crashing against the shores.
“I know you felt something for our friends,” Vodyanitsa exhales, frustrated. “I know that we’ve spent our entire time working together lying to each other in the name of our respective allegiances, and I know that that feels incredibly stupid now that we’re counting the days until it’s one of us who turns up without a pulse.”
“What would you have me do about it?” Odette inquiries, jaw clenched. “Succumb to my anxieties like you have?”
“I know we’ve always just been coworkers to you. You’ve always drawn a line in the snow, and I’ve respected that. But has our friendship meant nothing?” Vodyanitsa’s words are fragile, as if they may shatter at the slightest rebuttal. “You won’t even trust me with your true thoughts? You’d lie to me, even now?”
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” Odette doesn’t even bother to present herself as taken aback, cool and collected as ever.
“Sure doesn’t feel like it.”
“So now it’s you who doesn’t trust me.”
Anyone else would mistake Odette’s blunt nature for distaste, but Vodyanitsa has been around Odette for long enough to hear the slight lilt in Odette’s voice that can only mean humor.
So she thinks she’s funny now. It does nothing but anger Vodyanitsa further.
“You have given me no reason to believe you place even an ounce of trust in me!” Vodyanitsa has finally wound herself up, irritated with this girl before her who never fails to push her to her own brink. “I’ve done everything I could to extend a hand for you from the moment I met you, don’t act as though you’re easy to read.”
Odette blinks, taken aback by Vodyanitsa’s frustration. A part of Vodyanitsa can’t help but be set on fire at the sight of the prima ballerina shaken, even just a fraction. Vodyanitsa had begun to think her incapable.
Slowly, Odette inches towards Vodyanitsa with a gracefulness that Vodyanitsa is honored to share a stage with every day. She lets Odette place a hand on her cheek, her fingers brushing against her cheekbone and eventually ticking against her eyelashes. It comes away damp, but Odette reprises the movement as if it were as natural as breathing.
“I would trust you with too much,” Odette admits.
She’s close enough to Vodyanitsa that they breathe the same air. Odette is like the tip of a glacier, or the pointed edge of her heel. She cuts deep, etching herself deep into Vodyanitsa’s skin until Vodyanitsa’s left wondering why she chases this very scent of bottled devastation every day.
“What?” Vodyanitsa is taken by the callouses on Odette’s fingers, the way they map out the rise and fall of her flesh as if it’s the first time Odette has ever truly seen her. Her heartbeat quickens — no doubt Odette can feel her pulse — and Odette only breathes deeper. It is so foreign that Vodyanitsa almost wonders if Odette has fallen ill.
Odette so rarely allows her body language to be plainly understood anywhere but the stage. It's a transformative experience to see this look of want finally carved into Odette’s features in the dim lighting of their bedroom. It’s softer, kinder somehow than it is under the spotlight, vulnerable and delicate in a way that Vodyanitsa wants to pick apart until the bitter end.
“If I told you of my thoughts, you would have my entire soul,” Odette admits, her cold eyes piercing through Vodyanitsa in a way that swallows her whole. “The Fatui taught me many lessons I’ve grown to resent, but they were right to teach me solitude.”
“Our craft isn’t born of isolation,” Vodyanitsa snipes back. “It’s born of a desire to honor.”
“Maybe to you,” Odette’s eyes slip shut but her hands continue to busy themselves. They curl a stray lock of hair behind Vodyanitsa’s ear, wind through her skin, and wring her out to dry. It’s as if Odette is trying to memorize her in their last moments.
“Yes, to me,” Vodyanitsa insists, furrowing her brows. “I sing so we won’t be erased, so people still have something good to think of when they think of my people other than a void where we should be.”
“You’re honorable,” Odette says simply, but Vodyanitsa wants to scream at how much Odette still doesn’t understand.
“I sing to hear my mother again,” Vodyanitsa breaks. “I sing because sometimes, I feel so alone that I forget what it sounds like to be surrounded by my own people. I sing my greatest sorrows, my hopes, my dreams, my wants, but no one in this barren land will ever understand them. Selfishly, I sing for myself, because I know no other way to survive.”
Odette swallows, and her eyes are of devastation, plain and simple. Her gaze shifts to Vodyanitsa’s neck. Vodyanitsa’s voice is her entire livelihood. She doesn’t know if she could live without it. Yet even still, she feels no need to hide herself from Odette’s attention.
“You would bear your neck to a killer?” Odette whispers, disbelieving.
“I would bear my neck to you,” Vodyanitsa completes, and it is truly as simple as that.
“You do not know what it is to be selfish,” Odette corrects. “You have limitations for yourself, boundaries on how far you will go.”
“You are not nearly as unfeeling as you think you are,” Vodyanitsa responds in turn. “You wouldn’t have confessed to being Lelek if you had, even knowing what consequences it would bring for you. In many ways, you’re braver than I dared to be. I could never risk what you have for the cause, and I’m sorry I judged you all this time for your role with the Fatui.”
“It isn’t bravery,” Odette corrects. “It’s that I see no difference. I was raised to kill — when I wage war, I do so knowing exactly which wounds will cut deepest.”
It should terrify Vodyanitsa, to see what darkness lies beneath. Yet Vodyanitsa had seen her darkness from the start. What had always shocked her was the tenderness at the other woman's core.
“I never let myself look at you. Not really. I regret it now,” Vodyanitsa admits. Every second she allows herself to truly watch never fails to feel sinful. They’d never had the time to think of anything as important as true connection prior to this. Not when every second they didn’t dedicate to their crafts was dedicated to their dying nation, or dedicated to remembering and honoring those who laid the groundwork for them to be here today.
“I should have touched you more,” Odette’s breath is shallow, slowly growing lethargic. “I’ve forgotten what it is to simply feel another.”
“You’re so kind, Odette,” Vodyanitsa says, finally, the words crawling out of her throat even as she feels drowsiness consume her. “You’re gentler than you think you are — I know you think you can’t be anymore, but I’ve seen you around your younger fans. When you dance, it’s like the world stops spinning. Sometimes I lose my cues backstage just watching you, it’s like I’m bewitched. You’ve bewitched me. You know that, right?”
“You’re tired,” Odette’s voice is low, exhaling as though she knows what Vodyanitsa had been scared to say out loud all along. “You should rest.”
“I’m-”, Vodyanitsa starts, but Odette cuts her off with a gentle kiss to her hairline. It’s warming in a way that Vodyanitsa hasn’t felt in a very long time, almost maternal in its simplicity even if undoubtedly deeper than any familial comparison could dare to venture. Vodyanitsa cannot help but wonder if it is Odette’s attempt to replicate one of the last few gentle touches she had received.
She’s scared. Deep down she knows this is the night where she won’t outrun her fate, but she won’t consume Odette with the knowledge that’s been haunting her in their last seconds together.
“I’ll be here when you wake up,” Odette reminds, and foolishly Vodyanitsa lets herself believe it.
Her eyes slide shut as Vodyanitsa ignores the sinking feeling in her gut telling her that there will be no tomorrow to wake up to.