Work Text:
In hindsight, there were signs.
Three nights ago, when he had been reporting his findings to the other lead researchers, hadn’t his throat been hurting a little? (Though at the time, he’d dismissed it as a consequence of talking too much—Solovyov and Andrey had had no shortage of questions, Pavel about the stability of the experimental setup and Andrey about the nature of the simulated elemental interactions. Wasn’t it natural that his vocal cords would be tired after such a thorough explanation?).
Two nights ago, he’d been exhausted—tired to the bone, as he made his way back, and the night had felt colder than usual, given the season, so cold that he found himself shivering on the way back. (But the other researchers said nothing about the cold, and even Mr. Valeriy only gave him a flat, uncomprehending look when Mitya had brought up the subject of the weather, so he figured it was nothing worth mentioning.)
Last night his limbs had felt a little weak, even shaky, as though he had just come out of some long and taxing fight. (But wasn’t that because he’d been running back and forth between the different research departments all day? Anyone would be tired after a similar amount of running around, wouldn’t they?) Come to think of it, his head felt a little muddled, too—it had taken more effort than usual to sink himself fully into his research, and he found himself blinking out of a stupor more than once—but he’d chalked it up to exhaustion.
All of these things could, Mitya supposes, have been taken as signs, in theory, had he not ignored them.
But when he wakes up with a throat so sore he can barely speak, a sense of leaden, full-body exhaustion, a feeling like his head is going to split, and what is unmistakably a fever… well, his first thought is that he hadn’t expected this at all.
As usual, Valeriy comes to fetch him for work at eight. But Mitya must look worse than he feels, because Valeriy takes one look at him—his eyebrows creeping up—and says, “I’ll inform the Director that you’re not able to make it today.”
“Ah, Sarge,” Mitya says, resisting the urge to lean against the doorframe. Keeping himself upright is proving to be a difficult task. “I don’t recall saying that I wasn’t up for—”
He breaks off coughing, turns away from the door to spare Valeriy from it, but the coughing fit goes on painfully long, long enough that his chest is aching by the end of it, his throat scraped raw with the effort. When he looks up again, teary-eyed, Valeriy is frowning at him.
“You didn’t have to say it,” Valeriy says evenly, “I have already drawn my own conclusions.”
Mitya grimaces. Does he really look—or sound—so bad that Valeriy can conclude, with just a glance, that he’s unfit to work?
It feels like a strange reversal of their usual roles—Valeriy demanding that he stay home today, to drink herbal tea or hot soup, probably, and accomplish absolutely nothing productive. He can’t say it doesn’t unnerve him. “Aren’t you supposed to ensure that I am on schedule to complete my research?”
“For that to happen, you would have to be well enough to work in the first place,” Valeriy says. “The standard for an illness is to rest for three to five days.”
Mitya’s mouth falls open. “Three to five is surely excessive!”
“You can renegotiate the duration when you’re not running a fever.”
How Valeriy can tell he has a fever without once feeling his forehead, Mitya doesn’t know—nothing in his bodyguard job description should necessitate having the knowledge of a goddamn doctor, or worse, some kind of psychic—but given how dizzy he feels, and how the he isn’t sure he’s well enough to argue the contrary.
“I’m really fine,” Mitya murmurs, only his voice cracks embarrassingly in the middle, and he has to cough again, which he thinks probably makes his point much less convincing.
Valeriy gives him an eloquent look.
“Get some rest,” he says, in the kind of tone which suggests it’s an order, not a suggestion. “I will fetch you an herbal tonic for your cough.”
The morning passes in a haze. Valeriy stops by to drop off the tonic, and to pass on the message that the Director has approved his request for temporary leave. Mitya thanks him tiredly, takes the cough medicine with a glass of water, and heads back to sleep.
It’s a restless sleep—he tosses and turns for what feels like hours, but might really just be minutes. In the space between sleep and wakefulness, it occurs to him—distantly, at the edge of his consciousness—that he must be forgetting something.
There is… something this afternoon, something he signed up for, something that is surely very important. If he were clearer-headed, he would likely be able to place it right away, but as it stands… Mitya has to admit that the fever is making it unusually hard to think.
He needs to explain his absence to… someone. He has the sinking feeling that that someone is important to him. But it can’t be the Director—Valeriy has already requested his absence from work, hasn’t he?
He screws his eyes shut, buries his forehead into the cool fabric of the pillow, and tries in vain to find a more comfortable position. Whatever is happening later today, it feels imperative that he make it. Maybe if he sleeps for the next few hours, he’ll be able to kick this illness before it happens.
TWO WEEKS AGO
“A private invitation?” Mitya asks. He rereads the card in his hands. It’s printed onto stationery paper—the expensive, pristinely decorated sort which people use for pen pal letters and special occasions. He wonders if he is having a very extensive hallucination.
“Yes,” Vodyanitsa says. “I’m working on compiling a list of pieces for my spring programme, but I want to make sure the songs are arranged in an order which suits them thematically.”
Mitya lowers the card in surprise. “And you think I’d have a useful opinion on this?”
Vodyanitsa nods in a way that suggests that she’s already thought this through, and she’s only catching him up on her already well-wrought plans. “Well, if you recall the one time we met for dinner at Podvorye restaurant…”
Mitya winces. It had not been a good first impression—Vodyanitsa had been furious about his lack of attention to her performance, and rightfully so. The gap in his memory had, at the time, not seemed particularly strange to him—it was not the first time he had gotten so deeply immersed in his work as to be oblivious to the world around him, and even to the passage of time. But that was before he and Vodyanitsa and the traveler found themselves locked in the theater as the blizzard raged on interminably outside. Before he came to understand that he had not forgotten, but instead been made to forget.
In any case, they haven’t spoken about it since. He isn’t quite sure if she forgives him.
“If you overlook the fact that you weren’t paying attention at all,” Vodyanitsa goes on pointedly. Well, that answers his question. Mitya opens his mouth to defend himself…
And then promptly shuts it. The forgetting he can blame on Ronova, but he has no excuse for using the theater as a place to do his research.
“Your observations about the pieces I didn’t sing were quite astute,” Vodyanitsa finishes.
Mitya smiles sheepishly. “I would, ah, hope so. You sang them in the past, right? There have been many other occasions in which I’ve listened carefully.” It’s the truth. Mitya considers himself to be an appreciator of the arts—the reason why he gets so many epiphanies in the theater is because he finds Odette’s and Vodyanitsa’s performances to be interesting and ideologically stimulating in the first place—but he has a feeling that such a comment would not go over well.
“I figured that must be the case,” Vodyanitsa says. “So I concluded you could be a good candidate for this. There will be a small audience in attendance, and… I would like to hear your thoughts on the pieces, especially on the ordering and the presentation.”
“Ah,” Mitya says, catching on. “You want to present the pieces as a cohesive story, right? So that there’s no whiplash for the audience, and the listener’s mood follows a satisfying trajectory, instead of jumping between extremes.”
She nods quickly. “Exactly! And I think I’ve got an idea of how to do it, but it would be useful if you could weigh in after listening to my preliminary ordering. You seem like you’d have a good ear for that kind of thing.”
“I can’t say I know that much about opera in the formal sense,” Mitya begins—a disclaimer, just to cover his bases.
Vodyanitsa shakes her head. “That’s okay! Actually, the fact that you don’t have much prior knowledge makes you a more impartial judge, I think.” “I’ll do my best to give my opinion, then.”
“Great!” she beams. “it will be a small crowd—the theater won’t be open to the public, only to people who have personally received an invitation. I’d like for you to be there.”
“I’ll be there,” Mitya says. He peers down at the date on the card, commits it to memory. The invitation is a curious thing. It’s certainly unexpected—he imagines the invitation list for this kind of thing would be rather limited. It had not occurred to him that she might hold his opinion to such high regard.
Perhaps there is hope, he thinks, in mending their—friendship? Vodyanitsa is close with Odette, of course, and with the traveler and Alyosha, but he isn’t sure if she would consider Mitya to be a friend. It would be nice if she were to see him that way.
He returns the invitation gingerly to the envelope, careful not to damage the edges. “I’m honored that you would think to invite me.”
“Of course!” she says. “Also, Mr. Mitya?”
“Yes?” Vodyanitsa leans forward, into his space. She is shorter than him, but not by much, and the theater heels she’s wearing brings them almost eye to eye. There’s a strange gleam in her eyes—it settles across them like frost.
“This time, I expect you to be paying full attention,” she says, and for a moment, she really does look scary, peering up at him with her arms crossed, like she could swallow him whole.
“Of course,” Mitya stammers, only it comes out slightly breathless. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
She regards him for another moment. Then she leans back on her heels, her expression smoothing out. “That’s what I like to hear!” she says. “You’d better keep your promise, Mr. Energy Scientist!”
(It is a good thing she has his back turned to him, he thinks, watching her leave, because his face is definitely red.)
PRESENT DAY
The performance goes well, all things considered.
The traveler is there, along with Alyosha, Tartaglia’s sister Tonia, and the audience members she’s personally invited—some of them regulars, some of them patrons of the theater, all of them people whose opinions she values. There are twenty-four people in attendance tonight, which means one person is missing.
She doesn’t have to think twice about it to know exactly who it is.
At first, Vodyanitsa had thought he might simply be late. He had seemed… surprisingly earnest when she’d presented him with the invitation: what was it that he had said? I wouldn’t miss it for the world? Something about the way he’d said it had settled something in her, had made her think she could trust his word.
But the show is over now. It’s been over long enough for her to have talked one-on-one with half of the people in attendance—plenty of time for him to have made his way over from the Armory Palace, where he works—and still, Mr. Dmitry is nowhere to be found. She can’t keep herself from glancing over her shoulder, towards the three entrances to the theater, or scanning the crowd. It’s a pointless endeavor. Expecting something might change, that he might at any moment materialize and apologize profusely for his lateness, even though she has the sinking feeling that that isn’t happening.
“If someone has stood you up,” Vodyanitsa says to Odette, “would you consider it to be enough cause to revoke your friendship? Hypothetically, of course.”
Odette looks up from the book she’s reading. They’re both backstage now, having bid goodbye to the guests at today’s limited showing. The theater is closed to the public, and most of the personnel who came to help with the performance—with the staging, the lighting, the sound setup—have already left for home.
Odette likes spending time in the backstage rooms—she’d mentioned offhandedly that it was a good way to wind down after their performances, at least until the foot traffic outside subsides.
“It depends,” Odette says now.
“On what?”
“My relationship to this hypothetical person,” she says, “and their reasons for not showing up.”
Vodyanitsa groans. “That’s such a non-answer!”
“If you want a more specific answer,” Odette says, “you’re going to have to ask a more specific question.”
Vodyanitsa considers this. Then she says: “Fine, then. It’s about Mr. Energy Scientist. He was supposed to show up today. I invited him two weeks ago.”
“Ah.” Odette’s expression turns thoughtful, as though she’s trying to puzzle something out. “Maybe the invitation got lost in the mail,” she says slowly. Which is really a very reasonable explanation, except—
“I handed it to him in person,” Vodyanitsa says.
“Maybe he’s busy with work.”
But isn’t Mitya always trying to get out of work? That’s what his bodyguard—the stern, unsmiling guard who always follows him around in full armor, sometimes even into the theater itself—seems to think, at least.
“Look,” Odette says, snapping her book shut. “I wouldn’t worry about it. If Mr. Dmitry did not show up for the performance you graciously invited him to, then it’s his loss.”
“I know. I’m just… weirdly disappointed, I guess.” Vodyanitsa is about to open her mouth to say more. But then there’s the clicking of paws outside, and a dog—a husky with ice blue eyes and a red bandana pinned to his chest. She would recognize this dog anywhere.
“Tugarin!” she says, jumping to her feet, bad mood temporarily forgotten. She rushes towards him and crouches down, scratches him behind the ears.
Someone clears their throat from the doorway.
She doesn’t need to look up at him to know who it is. It’s one of the first laws of the universe: the sky is blue, snow is cold, and where Tugarin goes, Alyosha follows. “What are you disappointed about?”
“I invited Mr. Mitya to today’s performance, and he told me he would be here,” she says. “But he never even showed up! How rude is that?”
She begins to pace. It’s a habit—something about having an excess of nervous energy makes it unbearable to stay in one place. “If something came up, I get it. But still!” She turns, walks, turns again. Tugarin sits down in front of her like she is a teacher and he an obedient pupil. Vodyanitsa crosses her arms. She is definitely not sulking. “He could’ve said something, you know, rather than leave me guessing.”
Alyosha looks between them, as though he is privy to a piece of information and deciding whether to share it. “Actually, about that…”
“What?”
“Maybe you can pay him a visit,” Alyosha says, exchanging an unreadable look with Odette. “It’s about time that he got off from work, right? You could… ask him firsthand why he didn’t come to watch today.”
A visit. Yes, that might be good, if only so she can give him a piece of her mind.
“You know,” she says slowly, “It’s not a bad idea.”
“So,” Odette says, crossing her arms, after Vodyanitsa has left the room. “A house visit, huh?”
“I ran into some of his colleagues on the way to the theater,” Alyosha says, leaning back against the wall.
“Colleagues?” Odette repeats. “You mean, from the Armory Palace?” She hadn’t known that Alyosha had any connection to the researchers of the Armory Palace. She herself knows little about Mr. Dmitry’s research, aside from the fact that it’s overseen by the Director himself, and the fact that whatever he’s working on is strictly confidential. Mitya’s scarf doesn’t seem happy to let him disclose anything else about it.
As if sensing her question, Alyosha smiles. “Yes. To be clear, I was eavesdropping.” That makes more sense, considering Alyosha. “It just so happens that I picked up a particularly interesting piece of information.”
Odette waits.
“The three of them were complaining about their research. At first, I thought progress might be slow, but when I listened more closely, I concluded that their lead researcher is out today, and they don’t know what to do in his absence.”
This information comes as a surprise to her. “Mr. Dmitry is skipping work?”
“Not just skipping work,” Alyosha says. “Apparently his bodyguard is the one who reported his absence, on the account of…” he counts off on his fingers. “...a variety of symptoms, including but not limited to fever, dizziness, chills, coughing, and sneezing.”
Realization dawns on her. “So he didn’t skip the performance on purpose,” she says. “He was ill.”
Alyosha shrugs, which is about as good as a confirmation.
“And you sent Vodyanitsa to give him a piece of her mind,” Odette says disbelievingly.
“I thought it best that she go see him in person,” Alyosha says. “ Last year, when I had that persistent cough, Vodyanitsa had quite a useful array of home remedies at the ready.”
That’s all fine and good, Odette thinks, but an angry Vodyanitsa is no small hurdle to overcome. For one of the first times, she finds herself worried for Mitya, of all people.
“Vodyanitsa is furious at him, though,” she says. “Do you think he can handle her in his state?”
Mitya wakes to a cold sweat, to the uncomfortable prickling of heat on his skin. His head is throbbing, his throat raw and sore—he swallows experimentally and finds himself coughing so hard he has to steady himself against the headboard.
He remembers everything.
Vodyanitsa’s invitation. The promise he’d made, two weeks ago. I’ll be there, he had said. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. That was supposed to be today, wasn’t it? He’d been looking forward to it all week—anticipating the pieces she might elect to perform, idly theorizing about the overlap between last season’s programme and this season’s.
He buries his face in his palms. By the Tsaritsa, he thinks miserably. Judging by the amount of light filtering in through his bedroom window, the performance has already started, and he doubts he could make it there in his current state.
But how can he send her a message, to alert her of his absence? He should’ve asked Valeriy to deliver a letter on his behalf this morning. At least that would’ve been better than his current unexplained absence. He knows exactly what kind of message his lack of appearance might send.
There’s a tight, sinking feeling in his stomach which he knows is not attributable to the illness alone.
Miss Vodyanitsa is never going to forgive him after this.
The walk through the cold to Mitya’s flat does a good job of clearing her mind. On the way there, she thinks about everything she might say to him. She practically has a dialogue ready by the time she makes it up the stairs—Mitya lives on the second floor—to his flat.
She’s always had an idea of where he lives—not only because Alyosha has a questionably sourced directory of people’s addresses, but also because he’d signed up for the theater’s monthly newsletters a while back, so he’s on their mailing list. His place is tucked in a crook on a surprisingly quiet street just a ten minute walk from the Armory Palace. She isn’t sure if he’s always lived here or if it’s a temporary living arrangement, picked for its convenience.
In any case, he’s done a good job decorating it. The curtains to the inside are drawn, but they’re the same shade of dark blue as the collar of his uniform, and there are strange, unidentifiable gadgets and trinkets perched up on the windowsill. She lingers on the doorstep to peer at the multitude of post-it notes he’s stuck to the window. There are so many that the organization of them is unclear: one of them says grocery list and another says things to absolutely NOT forget; there are a number of to-do lists numbered 1 through 7, each of them with approximately half of the line items crossed out. The rest of the notes are filled to the brim with nothing but equations, written in a nearly-illegible scrawl.
Steeling herself, she lifts her hand to knock thrice in short succession.
There is no response. No sign of movement from inside.
She considers, briefly, that he might not be home yet. It’s getting late—already half past eight now—but perhaps he’s gone out for dinner. Vodyanitsa knocks again, louder, and waits.
She is about to turn away when the door swings open. It is not Mitya’s hand on the door, but rather his scarf, the four fingers lingering there on the doorknob.
Nevertheless, Mitya is here, his eyes wide as he takes her in.
“Miss Vodyanitsa?” he stammers, as though he hadn’t expected her to be here, at his door.
Vodyanitsa remembers everything that she’s rehearsed on the way here. She knows exactly what she wants to say to him. Better to say it all now, before she loses her nerve. She takes in a preparatory breath.
“If you had no intention of showing up today, why did you accept the invitation?” she says, pointing an accusatory finger in his direction. “In my opinion, it’s way worse to make a promise that you have no intention of keeping!”
Mitya makes a choked sound. “I—”
“I do have feelings, you know? I would have preferred it if you’d just said no,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest, “rather than—”
She bites her lip. Rather than lie to me. Rather than get my hopes up over something that was never going to happen. Perhaps that’s the truth of all of this—that, in the end, it is easier to be angry at him than it is to accept how much she was looking forward to having him there, to hearing his thoughts.
“I’m sorry,” Mitya says, sounding suspiciously sincere. “I… meant to tell you, but— I—”
His breath catches, as though he’s about to cry. She looks up, startled.
And then he buries his head so thoroughly into the fabric of his scarf that his expression is utterly unreadable, his shoulders hunching inwards.
The sneeze that follows sounds… rough, forceful enough to be painful. It’s the kind of sneeze which seems to scrape against his throat. Even muffled into the fabric, it’s unexpectedly loud.
Vodyanitsa opens her mouth to bless him reflexively, but before she has a chance to, he holds a hand up, as if to tell her to wait. This time he takes a step backwards—it’s a graceless, stumbling step, as though he’s already unsteady on his feet. His breath catches again, sharply, and this time it’s his scarf hand which comes up to wrap tightly over his nose and mouth as he twists his whole body to the side for… another sneeze?
What follows next is a full-body shudder which seems to ripple through him. His jaw clenches, and she can see the exertion it’s taking him to keep himself from outright shivering. He doesn’t meet her eyes.
It is only then when she really, properly takes a look at him.
Mitya is—well, he’s wearing glasses, for one. That’s new. Vodyanitsa hasn’t seen him with glasses before. She wonders, briefly, if they are reading glasses or if he needs them all the time. Briefly it occurs to him that he’s not dressed in his usual uniform, but in casual clothes—his shirt collar is unbuttoned, his atom pin nowhere to be found, and his scarf is slightly askew.
There’s an unusual flush high on his cheekbones. Now that she’s really looking, she can see how exhausted he looks—his eyes are rimmed with dark circles, as though he hasn’t been sleeping.
The frustration she’d felt on the way here drains out of her all at once.
Oh, she thinks, and then: oh.
“Are you not feeling well?” she asks, though at this point, the question is more a formality than anything. The answer is already evident.
Mitya clears his throat. She isn’t sure if it accomplishes anything useful, because when he speaks again, his voice is noticeably hoarser than it was before. “I was going to send you a letter,” he begins, meeting her eyes at last, “to let you know I couldn’t make it.” She’s only half-listening, now. Her mind is brimming with questions: just how long has he been ill for? Has no one been around to check on him? Is this a cold or something worse? “But this morning, I was so out of it that it slipped my mind. By the time I remembered…” he trails off, and she realizes he looks embarrassed at the admission. His scarf winds around one side to pat him awkwardly on the shoulder.
Vodyanitsa leans in and presses the back of her hand on his forehead. She means to only feel it for a moment. It only takes a moment, that is, for her to confirm her suspicions: he has a fever. But Mitya… Mitya does something strange and wholly uncharacteristic.
He shuts his eyes and leans into her hand.
It must be involuntary. She isn’t even sure he realizes he’s doing it. She’s been told she runs cold—Water Imps tend to—but perhaps he finds the difference in temperature to be a relief. His eyebrows are furrowed slightly, his eyes tightly shut, but some of the tenseness leaves the line of his shoulders, and she realizes for the first time how much effort it must have taken him to remain upright.
This won’t do. There’s an ache at the pit of her stomach, a feeling so painful it threatens to overwhelm her.
Slowly, she withdraws her hand. At the loss of contact, Mitya opens his eyes, blinks dazedly. Then he seems to remember himself, if the flash of alarm which crosses his features is any indication. Already he’s beginning to draw away, reassuming his posture from before, though she doesn’t miss the way his scarf hand extends quickly to the wall to steady him.
“I’ll make it up to you next time,” he says, with a sheepish smile. “But Miss Vodyanitsa… you probably shouldn’t stay for long. Missing your performance was already bad enough.” He coughs again, harshly, into the crook of his arm. “I certainly wouldn’t want you to catch this.”
But her mind is already made up now. She has already decided exactly what she’s going to do for the rest of this evening, and nothing he says can convince her otherwise.
“Oh, no,” she says cheerfully. “You’re not getting rid of me so easily. You’ve been alone all day, right?”
Mitya looks at her, puzzled. “I, um… yes?”
“And when’s the last time you’ve eaten?” He shuts his eyes momentarily, as though he is deeply contemplating how to answer such a simple question.
“I ate today,” he says, with the decisive tone of someone arriving at the right answer, but the relief she feels is short-lived, because his scarf thwacks him lightly on the arm. “Ow! Fine, it was… yesterday. Yesterday afternoon,” he says. The scarf pokes him again, insistently, and he sighs, reaching up with a hand to scrub at his face. “...If you count coffee, that is.”
This won’t do at all. “And have you taken anything for your fever?”
“I… drank an herbal tonic this morning,” he says. “It might have worn off by now.”
Vodyanitsa looks at him in disbelief. For a researcher so acclaimed, Mitya is really, surprisingly bad at taking care of himself. As if on cue, his expression goes hazy, and this time his scarf falls into place knowingly to catch another sneeze.
There’s a small, mumbled excuse me into the fabric, followed by another congested sounding sniffle. When he emerges, his expression is apologetic. “You shouldn’t worry about me. I promise you I feel much better than I sound.”
It is perhaps the least convincing statement ever uttered. It does nothing but sharpen her resolve.
“It’s settled, then,” she says.
“What’s settled?”
She steps into his apartment, toes her shoes off at the door, and shuts the door behind her. “I’m inviting myself into your apartment.”
He pales. “I—I’m not sure I’m in a good position to host—”
“Who said anything about hosting?” she says. She counts off her fingers: “You have a fever, you haven’t eaten since yesterday, and there’s no one around to take care of you.” When she looks up, she notes that his face is strangely flushed—has his fever gotten worse, just in the time that they’ve been talking? She feels a sense of grim determination settle in her chest. How can he really expect her to leave? “The obvious conclusion is that I’m here to look after you!”