The Sail

@arianna

Even after over a month, it still seemed all like a crazy dream. Twenty-seven years. He had spent twenty-seven years, desperately trying to find his niece and than — all of a sudden — completely out of the blue — she was here. He had written to Olya on the same day of course, but he couldn’t remember a word of it. In fact, he had woken up the next morning a hundred percent convinced that this must have been a dream. It wasn’t like he hadn’t dreamt about finding Elizaveta before. But no, it had been real. He had found her. And not only that, she was also herself. It was weird of him, who had never seen or heard her before, to think that he was in any place to claim so much. Yet, he did not doubt that he was right. He had spent the majority of his life, trying to hunt down Katarzyna because he had always thought that if he found her, he’d also find his niece. He had even thought of this search as the lesser problem, or only a first step at least. Katarzyna might hide better than anyone else and she had time on her side, but he was also gaining in experience and getting more and more skilled at achieving what was generally considered impossible.s

He had prepared himself for finding Katarzyna, for fighting her. Even for winning. But then a harder task would be before him, namely taking care of a Liza that was either deeply traumatized or brain-washed, maybe both. He would have to deal with a girl that would be terrified of him — hate him. He had thought he was ready for finding a most miserable creature who didn’t know who she truly was.

Being wrong had never been more gratifying than in this case. His niece, his beloved sister’s only daughter, Elizaveta Aleksandrovna was a healthy, strong, independent woman. She might call herself differently, and he was himself slightly unsure what name he should call her, but other than that she was herself and not a string puppet. She certainly was scarred, and she had already told him enough about her life to make him wish he could kill Katarzyna a couple of times again. But as horrible as her experiences had been, she had survived them unbroken. He was not a religious man, but Carolina had to be holding her hands protectively over her daughter from wherever she was.

He had missed twenty-seven years of her life, and he hadn’t been able to spend as much time with her as he should have. It was partly also due to this flu that had been sweeping over the whole country during the past months, and that she had caught too. He had been so scared (and he was almost never scared, so it had been an even worse feeling) at first to lose her just after finding her. But nobody was dying of this flu, and she had recovered. Without magic, but recovered. And they’d find a way to get her magic back. In the mean time he could look out for her.

Just… if she needed help cooking… was cooking requiring magic? He made fire with magic, but there were Muggle-ways to do so. He more or less just did what Olya told him to when he was cooking — poorly following his daughter’s orders. He had cooked so often now under Olya’s guidance, and he still had no idea how to even make pasta, and that was apparently supposed to be simples. Muggles somehow made food too, but it had to be much harder for her to prepare everything. He did feel a little guilty for letting her invite him. He was the one who was supposed to take care of her, not the other way around. But he could just as well try to poison someone as to cook for them — there really was no difference. He’d just do his best to be helpful. And once he had come to this conclusion, he had finally reached the door to her flat and knocked.

The sail
_{the start of it all}

With as long as she had been held captive she had never once thought about all of the family that she could one day find herself with. Hell, she had believed them when they told her that her family was dead. She knew that she was an orphan, because Katarzyna had delighted in making her watch the pensive of her murdering them, crucioing her if she refused to watch or tried to wrench free from the grip that the elder woman had on her. She had tried any time to get information, had gone through Katarzyna’s office so many times trying to find something, anything about her family, and had taken the punishment that had been given to her. Floggings were one of the least intense of the beatings that she took, and honestly she didn’t care for them but when it came to that or the fucking spell, she would pick the flogger every time.

Her uncle did not know half of the things that she had been through at the hands of that woman and she did not intend to tell him any of it, not out of any sort of disrespect but to save him from knowing the horror that she had faced for so long, alone. She wanted him to know that she was okay, and there were some things that he could know, but others she knew would only enrage him. He was much like other men that she had come to know. Men of honor, men of valor. She had gone to the ministry and changed her name, they had been more than happy to do it for her and to change things for her in the paperwork that she had. Quick waves of the wands of certain people and it was done. She could not be happier. Mainly because she had a place now that she belonged, a place that was hers. A family.

He was coming for dinner and she had cleaned her little flat. She had moved Bellie’s tower out of the way and to the corner, much to his displeasure and then had cleaned the kitchen and gotten food started. A simple dinner that she had loved to make for herself that yielded a rather nice amount of leftovers for her to eat through the week. She had been working on the separate pan of roasted vegetables and starting the cake batter for the upside down cake for dessert when the knock had come.

She pushed her hair behind her ear and smiled at the man as she opened the door. Dyadya! Zdravstvuyte!” She said before kissing his cheek and motioning for him to come inside. ”My cat is around here somewhere, so don’t mind him if he comes and sniffs at you. “ She said as she showed him into the flat. ”I have some beer, wine and water. There’s also tea.”

Anton Karkarov | OUTFIT | 488

Family had for so long meant being incomplete. The first seventeen years of his life had been just fine — normal as he had later on understood. There had been his uncle who he could really have done without, but that had been a minor annoyance. It hadn’t changed anything about the fact that he had wonderful parents and an older sister who had been both his best friend and tutor when he was a child. And out of all people, this sister had been taken from him with inhuman brutality. Not even his marriage had been able to mend anything. It had given one other meaning to his life, one other constant in his life to which he could return, but she had not been enough to make him forget. Maybe he should never have married her, not have made her live with and devote her life to someone who couldn’t put her first. But it was all too late and in vain to have regrets now. He didn’t have Nadya anymore, one more loss that he hadn’t seen coming. Olya was still there, Olya, who, like her mother, had never had the father in him that a child should have, because he had been away, risking his life for money and travelling all over the land to search for what everybody but him considered a lost cause. Nadya had never said so, but as hard as she tried to hide it, it had been obvious what she was thinking — that a girl he had never even seen and was most likely dead meant more to him than his own daughter.

She had been wrong, but he had only once tried to explain himself and then given up. It had nothing to do with loving Liza more and Olya less. He had never made a decision for one and against the other. It was just that finding Liza was his duty that nobody else could take from him. His sister had died when her life should have begun. She had started a family. She had had a child, and then — the end. Carolina had been there for him while she was living, the least he could do was to make sure that her daughter could live the life that she would have wanted for her. But instead of bringing up the child as his own (which he might have spectacularly failed at, considering he had been seventeen), little Liza was in the power of a maniac who could do to her what he didn’t even want to think about. And while Olya was his daughter and he should spend time with her, she was also growing up with a loving mother (or later on grandparents). Olya was safe. Olya was loved. Olya didn’t need him like the girl who was forced to live with her parents’ murderess.

But it was all over now. Liza was safe and free, and from now on he’d be able to protect her if she should ever need protection again. He’d be able to show to Olya for who he had left time and time again, and Liza would become to her what Carolina had been to him. Liza… or Arianna… Ari as she called herself. That she didn’t know her true name had always seemed likely to him, but it was still strange. But what wasn’t strange about finding by accident what years of research had failed to find. “Добрый вечер, душенка,”¹ he greeted back, stepping in her flat as she talked about her cat. A cat. There was so much he didn’t know about her. “I’ll have whatever you have,” he said. Not that he could expect of her that she’d know what was commonly considered as закуски² in Russia. One day, when the borders were open again, he’d have to take her to meet her grandparents and look at all the old pictures and hear their stories and see all the old places that her mother had loved. “How have you been? Are you getting along without magic?”

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¹ Dobryi vecher, dushenka — Good evening, sweetheart

² zakuski - appetizer

The sail
_{the start of it all}

Losing her magic was never something that she thought that she would feel happen. She had not expected to be so miserable, but she had been sick before in her life and somehow she had survived. She had gotten better, but there was a cost. Over time she would not feel it come back there would be return, her wand was nothing more than a useless piece of wood in her hand and there was nothing that could be done about it. At least not by her. She wished that there was, but for the time being, she would have to accept that there was nothing more that could be done and her life was just going to have to be different. She felt a little bit of release really now that it was gone, there was no pressure to be something more, to do something more than what she was. Of course, there was no one to make her feel that way, but who was she to assume what people wanted.

She did wonder if people were going to want to be her clients now that she had no magic. She could not fly she could not even summon a mug when she was sick. How was she supposed to do great things for these people, how was she supposed to be the person who helped their careers if she could not make amazing dramatic entrances any more or burn magazines before the press like it was nothing? She was nothing now, she had nothing. She was nothing more than a mark on her family tree and it fucking killed her. She hated everything about it, but there were benefits. She was alive. She had her health still for the most part and unlike some of the women that she had heard were at the hospital, she had not lost a baby.

Though that would require her to have a partner who wanted her like that, but hey, that was the variety of life was it not? To go and experience new things? Smiling she went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of wine and then one for her uncle and took them out to the living room before returning for the aperitif and setting them on the table. "I've been doing okay, I guess. It could have been much worse, but I feel a lot better. It's just getting used to doing everything by hand that is the hard part. " She said before lifting the glass to her lips.

Anton Karkarov | OUTFIT | 428

Life had taught him many things that he had needed to survive. What it had failed to convey to him was how to interact with the people he loved. He had once known, at least that was what it felt like. When he had been young, it hadn’t been a problem running towards his sister upon her return from school and hugging her. An action that felt like it had been done by a completely different man — boy. He had been a boy back then, a boy that had died the same moment Carolina had died, only leaving him behind as a searching man. Nadya had suffered from it, from him never being really there. Even at home, his thoughts would stray to other places, other possibilities that he hadn’t tried yet. And she had been left to wait constantly without him realising how little he let her live — not because he had ever forbidden her to do whatever she wanted, but because she had accepted her situation quietly and he had been too blind to see what he wasn’t explicitly shown. Or maybe not blind but just inattentive, as he knew how she had been feeling, was sorry for it. Yet, it had never been an option to change anything. Even afterwards, with Olya living at her grandparents, he hadn’t changed, persuading himself that she was perfectly happy to be cared for by others. She was with functioning families, which was something he couldn’t call himself. So, she had to be happier that way. It made sense. If he didn’t think about Olya herself, the silent protest. He was a bad father, he probably should come to terms with that if he wanted to change anything about it. Because he had to change. For Olya.

With all that history, it would only make sense if he also ended up being a bad uncle. He had spent all time trying to find the girl and nearly none thinking how everything would play out once he would. So, here he was now, looking at the woman before him and trying to act as Carolina would have wanted him to. It was really enough of a task without outer circumstances complicating things, like the closed borders. Then again, maybe that was a good thing, for one of his first instincts upon meeting her had been to make her go back to the continent with him. It would have been too precipitated. She had a life here. This was what she knew. He couldn’t expect of her to just welcome everything he was used to because it was where she was from. She had been a baby. She remembered nothing. In addition, leaving would have meant being far away from Olya, which shouldn’t be an option. The epidemic had forced him to ponder the matter, which was hardly a bad thing — though he dearly wished his niece wouldn’t have lost her magic. She deserved better. “I used to wonder how Muggles manage to survive. It must be hard.” She had been through a lot, a lot worse actually. So while what she said sounded like an understatement, with her history it was easy to believe. “You know that you can always call me. Not that I know much about household spells.” Nothing might be a better word. “And apart from that, how have you been lately?”

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Words: 566

The sail
_{the start of it all}

A life of doing things the hard way was something that she was used to. Something that she could honestly live through, and though she knew that not everyone could do it when they had been used to magic for so long, she had lived without her wand before. She had lived doing things by hand. After all, Katarzyna thought that she had to learn to do things both ways and maybe that ones one of the few good things about the woman, but Ari hated it still. She had the money if she wanted to, to hire someone to clean for her, but she liked the way that she felt accomplished after giving her apartment a good clean. It helped clean her mind as well, especially when times were rather hard. Her life had changed and she had grown, changing for the better slowly but surely and now, the best thing had happened. She was with family. She had found them. It made her so very happy.

She often wondered what her uncle had gone through when she was younger, what his life was like but she didn't pry. Years of being struck for that had taught her not to. She tucked some of her long hair behind her ear and sat down, crossing her ankles easily. "They live their lives just like we do, uncle. They just don't have magic, so they do everything by hand or use electronics to help them do things. They even have these little robots that sweep the floor based on a timed schedule." She said before giving him a large smile. The timer in the kitchen went off and she went into the kitchen and pulled things out of the oven and checked them.

She returned a few minutes later. "I've been doing well, working a lot, thinking about buying or renting an office space since I am working so much. "

tag: Anton Karkarov // words: 321 // OUTFIT

template by eliza @ TB THQ

Watching her flitting around, arranging things, was a little strange. After all, he should be the on taking care of her — though, that was also the case with Olya. It was probably a bit late now to try and be a good father-substitute, for both of them. All he could do was offer and then try his best to make their lives easier.

“Ah, да, ya, yes, of course,” he said, too confused to even consider admitting that he had no idea what these things she had mentioned were. Small work-somethings that swept the floor? That sounded like Muggle magic, paradox as it sounded. The witches and wizards here seemed to be so much closer to the non-magical world than usual. It made him wonder why Katarzyna had decided to come to a place that was so open for Muggle influences. Not that he was going to complain, considering how everything had worked out. And it was endearing to see that his niece knew so much about them. Every sign that showed how none of the vile teachings of her childhood had managed to corrupt her was something to be treasured.

“You have to… receive-” Hopefully that was the right word. He’d have thought after a few months here, he’d get better at English, but it only got more complicated. At least Olya would be faring better, he couldn’t imagine anything else. “-a lot of people, I guess? K- As manager? An office sounds like the - a? - a good choice. Will you have to move town? The rents in London are high, I think?” England wasn’t that big. If she’d relocate somewhere else, it would be easy to keep in contact. And there was always the Floo. He felt like he was doing a great job not-hovering anyway. He wanted to — how could he not after having finding her as his sole goal for so many years? —, but it was obvious that she stood on her own feet. There was some sadness in the fact that he had never known her but as a baby and an adult woman, the whole process of growing up lost, but pride and joy at seeing her so strong by far outweighed anything else.