────────────────────
Tuesday, 14 November 1923
~ 2:50 am ~
Harewood House, Liliya's Bedroom
───────────────⋅☾ ☽⋅───────────────
Something soft welcomed her as she felt herself being lowered, disorienting and terrifying. Her hand was still clawed into the only anchor she had found, refusing to let go, white-knuckle-gripped. The only thing tethering her to reality, the only connection. Without it, she feared she was lost.
But she was pried away, finger by finger, tossed back into eternity, alone. Weak sobs grew more frantic, almost panicked, but the last of her energy finally dwindled and died after mere moments of fighting to hold on, and slowly, Liliya grew quiet.
Blackness and silence.
It was dark when her eyes opened. Quiet and still, wrapped in the kind of peacefulness only the dead of night could offer. Soothing.
Slow, lethargic. Something was pulling at the back of her mind, trying to drag her back under the surface, every limb heavy as stone. Liliya stayed conscious only long enough to trace the room’s outlines. The chair to her right turned to face her. Moonlight that fell through the tall window beyond, softening the darkness. Voices. Drifting over from somewhere farther, too soft to rise above a murmur and too low to distinguish.
She floated, unaware of anything. Things existed, and she did too, and everything just was. Only for a fleeting moment did something brush against the remnants of her conscious mind.
Hollowness, blue as the ocean.
Before she could understand, oblivion had already reclaimed her. Gentle nothingness engulfed her as she sank away.
"You should have known."
"It's not the time, Danika."
"Maybe not, but you should have."
"Just...tell me what she needs."
His sister sighed, nodding as she moved back into Liliya's bathroom, fetching a fresh cloth and running it under the sink. "There isn't much you can do, Lev. Cold cloths help, but her mind has to heal itself. You know that too." Back into the room, pausing at the side of Liliya's bed as she pressed the damp rag to their cousin's head. Lev watched quietly.
He knew. She knew. Everyone in the family knew it was a matter of time and wills, if Liliya would recover from the torture her aunt had put her under. Having not moved from the chair beside her bed, Lev dropped his head into his hands, gripping at his short hair. He could feel his sister's eyes on him as he grappled with himself and the thoughts that rushed through his mind, none of them making any sense.
For a moment, her eyes fluttered a soft movement as Danika murmured something, and Lev lifted his head again, watching as Liliya slipped in and right back out of consciousness in the same moment. She'd do this all night and into the next day. Having witnessed it enough times, it was never an easy recovery, much less swift.
"You could try talking to her. It might help to pull her out of the pain at least."
Lev's eyes drifted back to his sister, but he remained stoic, choosing to say nothing.
~ 11:33 am ~
───────────────⋅☾ ☽⋅───────────────
Pupils shifting beneath fluttering lids, Liliya’s eyes opened.
Sunlight bathed the room in colour, too bright and glaring. A daze made everything seem hazy, too soft and strangely distant, like she was viewing the world through dirty glass, muffling sound and blurring movement. Pain flared inside her head, pulsing faintly with the beat of her heart. A soft moan hummed up her throat, delirium clouding her mind.
Something cool was pressed against her forehead, and without conscious thought, her hand lifted. Heavy and uncoordinated, her fingers fumbled for the source, grappling until they found purchase and pushed the sensation away. Shifting, Liliya tried to sit up.
Only then did she register him.
Halfway pushed onto her elbows, Liliya froze.
Her eyes fixed on the man’s face, wide and alarmed, the breath stuck in her lungs—stock-still, like a rabbit before a gun. Something about him seemed familiar, distant though, like a memory from a different life. Something she felt like she should recognise, but it was too far out of her reach, too flimsy and fickle.
Mist between her hands.
And yet, low panic began to thump inside her chest, growing more insistent with every passing second. An instinct that rose in shapes of fear she couldn’t explain.
Petrified, Liliya couldn't do anything but stare.
Danika had left for lunch.
While Lev should have been at the office, working through his schedule and figuring out which families took priority in approaching, he'd stayed home, not caring one way or another how his father would react if and when he figured it out. One day away from the business wouldn't be detrimental, and for reasons he couldn't quite sort out, he was having trouble pulling himself away.
It had been a long night and an even longer morning. Despite Danika's insistence he sit there and talk to the girl who obviously couldn't hear a thing, he'd sat silently, unable to set aside his pride in front of his sister. It was one of those things he'd never...exactly struggled with, but displays of outward emotion, especially softer ones had been beaten out of him long ago. Their father didn't suffer anything that he saw as weakness, and Lev knew well that he'd disappointed his father enough in the past several months.
Even if he wanted to, Lev didn't think he could do it. He'd suffer an embarrassment that he didn't know how to navigate if his younger sister watched him soften into something unrecognizable in front of her.
With her gone, he supposed he didn't need to concern himself with such things. Dabbing gently at Liliya's forehead with the washcloth, he froze momentarily as her hand suddenly raised. He followed it as it landed at his wrist and with what strength she had, pushed it away. He relented immediately, sitting up straight in his chair and pulling back a bit as her eyes opened, taking a moment before fixing their gaze on him.
His heart thumped.
Once.
Twice.
She didn't move, and neither did he. Both staring at one another in a moment of imposed stillness, the man's breath caught in his throat as time passed but he felt none of it. He could see what he thought was fear - something he'd watched haze over many men's eyes in dealings with their family - and he almost laughed with bitterness at it.
Now she was scared. Now she feared him. When he sat beside her bed with a fucking cold damp cloth, willing her mind to not be broken beyond comprehension.
It would have been comical if Lev hadn't lost all his sense of humor down in that basement.
"You're safe." It was all he could manage, as his back stiffened and he rose from the chair, moving quickly to the bathroom to hang the washcloth over the sink. Distractions. He needed distractions. "Danika will be back soon."
Safe.
Something about that felt off. Not quite right, but she had no way of figuring out what that meant. Her head felt too cloudy and heavy, unable to draw connections, motionless like pond water. Nothing seemed to stir a thing. Before she knew it, the man was on the other side of the room.
"Danika will be back soon.”
Danika.
Liliya’s eyes found their way to his face again, searching but lost. Her muscles were still tense with apprehension and uncertainty, but the initial panic slowly receded into something less urgent, settling as a careful simmer beneath her skin instead. For a moment, her eyes swept the room.
Her room.
Her vanity, her closet, her window, her bed.
Her fiancé.
Liliya’s brow creased, suspicion flickering behind her eyes as they settled on the man once more. There was something there, something ugly, twisted with bone-deep aversion and anger. And yet, she couldn’t put her finger on it. Her gaze swept the room another time before settling back on Lev.
Lev.
…Lev.
Sitting up against the headboard, Liliya dropped her gaze. She couldn’t think. Why couldn’t she think? No matter how hard she tried, it was as though a wall of stone blocked her from entering her own head, leaving her stranded in the physical world with nothing to reach back to. Confusion slowly gave way to helplessness. The longer her mind refused to stir, the more panic reemerged.
What was happening to her?
Heart thumping, Liliya’s eyes snapped back up to Lev, lips parting, but pain slashed through her throat before she managed a single word, cutting her off with a hoarse croak. Wincing, her hand flew to her throat.
Without truly understanding why, tears shot into her eyes, immediate and overwhelming, clenching around her chest. Before her consciousness could remember, her body did, and it drowned her in despair as she’d never felt before, mourning something she couldn’t grasp and dragging with it a loneliness too broad to comprehend. Swallowing felt impossible, but Liliya did anyway, cringing with the pain, grappling for meaning, trying to understand. Her eyes still searched Lev's as though she could find the answers there if only she looked long enough, but an involuntary jerk of her head pulled her gaze away.
The throb inside her head exploded with sudden ferocity.
Liliya grunted, bending over herself as her hands buried into her hair, palms pressing against her skull.
The crack in her voice had him ducking his head back through the doorway.
Their eyes met, Lev waiting for whatever it was she was going to say. Did she need something? Water? Tea? Did she want her washcloth back? Her lips parted, and he waited what he thought was patiently, but the change in her expression unnerved him. Tears. His own expression softened without permission, and he swallowed hard, not sure what to do about the crying girl. When it was his sisters, it was easy. He held them, comforted and reassured them that everything would be fine.
But those were his sisters. Not his cousin who he had a tumultuous relationship with. Lev had never been a girl's peace, really. Even in school, when he'd had girlfriends here or there, he'd never been the sort of boyfriend that they'd wanted. He wasn't romantic or emotional. He could flirt, he could seduce. But anything that required some sort of deeper connection was lost on him.
He certainly didn't know how to be for his fiancée who no doubt hated him as much as she had the day before.
The figure of Liliya curled into herself caught him off guard, and his eyes immediately swept to her bedroom door, willing Danika to return. Lev was out of his element. He wasn't a caretaker, a healer, or any sort of soft escape that Liliya might need right now, but he was the only one here.
He could call for Nibby; the house elf was certainly more equipped than he was, but...
"It will pass, the pain." His words were much gentler than the stiff, dismissive few he'd given her moments before, and he pulled for his resolve, crossing the room to sit at the chair alongside her bed again. He'd been here, in her place before. The first few moments of cognizance were always the worst. Painful, confusing, terrifying. What her aunt had done was nothing short of ripping her mind apart, bit by bit from the inside out.
It wouldn't be an easy recovery.
His eyes fell to his lap, unsure if he should reach out a hand to comfort her, or just remain where he was. He opted for the latter, searching for words to say that might offer her some reprieve. "It helps if you remain laying down." He was struggling, but he didn't know what else to say. "Do you want anything? I can have Nibby bring you tea with lemon."
|
