see the end for notes on dæmons if you are unfamiliar with hdm and for a list of each character and their dæmon, but knowledge (other than that in the endnotes) from the hdm universe is not required (knowledge of spooks is)
s9 never happened forget that
tws: torture (specifically waterboarding), guns
(fog)
Resa settles too young and no one knows why. They take Lucas to psychiatrists, specialists, but no one can justify why a seven year old suddenly has a dæmon the same height as him. He hears whispers: Resa is too large, a dog would be normal but a wolf means trouble, and from then on everyone who sets eyes upon his soul trotting at his feet expects savagery from both of them.
He gets moved up a few years in school (not from ability, although he does have plenty of that if anyone ever cared to notice) because Resa scares the children. Their dæmons flutter as butterflies and run as mice and Resa snarls because she, well they, feel threatened. His classmates' dæmons turn into sparrows and fly up on the roof to hide.
In the evenings the pair of them go hiking on the bleak open moors. Resa wants to run, but he can't keep up with her and distance hurts them both. They walk until they're tired and then go home, Resa's lurking mass intimidating his father's stoat dæmon and mother's ginger tomcat into uncomplaining complacence with their unusually quiet son's independence. They give up on taming him and he quietly passes through school.
(water)
Здравствуйте. Echoing in his ears. The здр – the zhdr – there's no trace of his homeland in that. It is not a nation we inhabit, but a language. He's heard that once. He's wandered so far.
The first thing they do after they've dragged him from the cell (no mattress; just a bucket; too small to uncurl in) is give him a muzzle and lead to put on Resa. He knows that if he doesn't they'll do it – and he's not sure either could take the violation – so he complies. It's intended for a large do; it presses her flesh against the bone under her jaw but she can still talk. They will want her to speak for both of them. Even here, where they say they're taking him apart, they do not lay hands on her once. They take the chain and drag her.
She pretends to walk alongside their feet to preserve the cover, but the farce quickly falls. It seems to have so little purpose now. Maybe it's his pride. Resa's not a dog, not one of those placid individuals, and it matters to him that people acknowledge it even though it would only do him harm in this situation.
At first they keep Resa in the adjacent room whilst they're waterboarding him, and it's almost the worst part. He can feel a burning in his chest at the stretching, like someone's ripping the skin away from his sternum to expose the white glistening unprotected marrow underneath. She whines and scratches at the wall, throwing herself against the concrete as though trying to physically break it down. His fingertips begin to bleed from the desperate friction. The interrogators discuss it in foreign tones too hushed to hear above the roaring pain.
Then they let her in as long as she remains in the corner, quiet, unprotesting. She lies on the floor with her eyes closed, body taut and trembling with tension and mutual pain. They can't talk through it; the only thoughts Lucas has are ones he futilely tries to prevent himself from projecting (and those are just screams).
Resa stays quiet until the exact moment he breaks in the first and smallest way, she can feel it, and they ask like they always have this question in the form of a statement: You are Lucas North. They indicate towards him, and to each other they mumble: Это Лукас Норф.
She knows he's going to tell them да and she knows what this will entail. She doesn't say it for him to spare him a few seconds, she unleashes whatever she has restrained within her, this frustration and anger, and charges. Collides with the interrogator's centipede dæmon, tries to crush her by mattering the muzzle against her.
They take out a gun and shoot Lucas in the leg. She overbalances, limb folding uselessly. They drag them off separately for that. The separation pain remains for a long while, bodies pathetically pressed against the walls so they're as close as possible.
It's difficult for them to deal with her, he can tell. The interrogators have insect dæmons, incapable of restraining her, and inhibited human-dæmon touch hurts them almost as much as it hurts her. The lead works to a point. The muzzle is a constant detriment. But she's not a dog and she's never met a dæmon she wouldn't be able to defeat in a fight.
Sometimes, in the agonizing and isolated years to come, Lucas would look back and wonder if that was why they called in Darshavin. It's not why, of course – his status and job bought him Oleg's infamous company – he knows that.
The hulking man with a bear dæmon filling the doorway had his own custom wing to accommodate his badge of imbalance. The interrogation room doors are huge and the spaces are so much more open than anything he's seen since his incarceration. They make him feel small. Atropos (Атропос) is intimidatingly modelled after the emblem of this country that now owns him. He overhears guards talking about her nickname: Родина; Rodina; Motherland.
One day he'll be looking up bear subspecies after another sleepless night remembering and he'll discover that her species wasn't even native to Russia. Kodiak bears, technically found in South-West Alaska, the second largest species of bear after the polar bear. This will make him laugh one day.
At their first meeting Atropos holds Resa in her grasp gently, benevolently, like a mother. The contact bares everything he has ever felt and gives him Oleg's calm determination in the most disconcerting way. He's told them his name (Lookas Norf) and hers (Ryesa) and he knows that this is just the beginning of a terrible downwards slide. This forced gentleness, this absence of violence, this exposure – it's nothing he's been trained for. His whole life he's been told that Resa's wolf form means he's dangerous by people's subtle flinches, and if that's what a wolf's worth then the world's second largest bear is a level of casual sadism he's never encountered before.
The whole time he's scared because this monster can feel that he's terrified, curling in on himself, and because he's sure this interrogator is projecting satisfaction at this response like a threat. It's uncomfortable for Resa to be held up like that, one arm under her forepaws, like one of those cat pictures people laugh at (later that night he dreams about people screaming their mirth at him; he shoots them all).
He hears about it that night, parsing the guards' thick accents and local slang into something he can understand. Atropos attack's people's dæmons, that's her role here. Batters them against the wall with her claws; crushes the smaller ones beneath her bulk. It's cheaper than equipment for the heavier techniques and the wounds show up on the human's body, they feel the same pain. They also mention him: Darshavin's new focus.
«Я рад, что это не я,» one says to the other with a laugh.
(ice - лед)
When they tell him he's a lost cause (they've extracted enough; he's heard sugarhorse the acceptable minimum of one thousand times; Oleg's had enough fun to let him go; he's spent the official recommended hundreds of hours in solitary split from Resa) and are shipping him off to Siberia he's almost relieved. It's a new kind of hopelessness but perhaps it's better that way. He wants to put as many miles as he can between himself and Atropos.
His thoughts start running into Russian once they leave him in Сибирь. Before it was a conscious decision to practice or integrate himself but now he finds himself forgetting English words and turning to the language that only means pain to him to frame his thoughts of home.
He's a shivering and emaciated wreck, but he remembers training. Not the anti-interrogation sessions, those were conditioned out of him long ago, the integration for spying. They're suspicious, but he's had years to perfect his accent and Resa looks stereotypically Russian. She's built for the cold– слава Богу – in his first week he saw a man's impractical stork dæmon freeze. The ground is too solid to dig; they covered his corpse with snow. He knows that when summer comes they will see his frostbitten mummy and, worse than that, smell it.
He gathers respect and gets the necessary tattoos to fit in. He looks at them on his back sometimes and wonders what he would feel about them if he ever got out. Back. To Harry and Enyo, the adder he always had curled around his arm like a bracelet, to fish and chips and Elizabeta and Eiar. Resa tells him that Elizabeta's gone, and that even if she wasn't they wouldn't fit together anymore, and he ignores it because he can. There's no evidence here in the wasteland and every possibility that he will never have to face what the cold has done to his marriage.
He adapts, slowly. That they've given up on him – he's no one's concern, abandoned by his captors and employers – and this should scare him but the only thing he truly fears is Atropos's looming shadow. Every now and then he spares the energy to feel weary anger towards Harry (or Enya, she never spoke but everyone knew how she was) before he falls asleep.
(расплавлять)
They gather up what's left of him from Siberia and take him back for intensive interrogation. Atropos holds Resa and then holds her still whilst Darshavin-
Well, there may be a word for that but he's not going to think it.
The feeling of scratchy material soaked with water over his mouth had been forgotten. Tell me about Project Sugarhorse, or, if they're angry enough, скажи мне, о проекте Сугаржорсе. They barely let him breathe to answer. Resa has it on repeat: we don't know anything; мы ничего не знаем; стоп; пожалуйста остановись.
The last thing Darshavin does is get a small bear tattooed on the corner of his ankle. He knows what it represents. Lies there eyes closed, teeth gritted, whilst Resa futilely tries to work out a strategy for defeating Atropos for the thousandth time. But she's too small and Atropos is too large. The bear's claws gore holes in their sides and bruises spawn where Resa has been thrown against the wall.
When they bundle him into a van he knows that it's either for execution or Siberia and that they amount to the same thing. He had to struggle, to actively work to survive in Siberia and even then the staff were under orders to not let him die. He's certain that he won't survive now.
So when he sees Harry, Resa barks with her tail between her legs and ears flat, face forming a snarl.
She's never done it before (doglike; undignified). But, oh, they're angry even if they're happy. Enyo is around Harry's neck like a noose and he's been out in this hinterland for eight fucking years. The faceless guards shove him, hands bound, and he falls into the other car teeth gritted.
He wants to thank his ex(?)-boss and curse him and spit on his grave. But if there's one thing he's learned it's that his position isn't stable, and somehow he wouldn't be that surprised if Harry turned the car around and delivered them straight back to Atropos. So instead he gives him a gruff thanks and asks for some chips, sitting on his hands to hide the tremors.
(жидкость)
It takes him weeks to find a zoo with a Kodiak bear and it's far up north. They've offered him compassionate leave, he's refused it. They forced compassionate leave and he selfishly dug into Harry's fossilized guilt to get his way. That is why no one questions him when he asks for a few days off. He takes the car they gave him, something sleek, professional, and so impersonal that it brings back violent recollections of Russia, and drives.
He passes valleys, sheep, roads filled with people. He can't see them in the cars. It's better that way. Every now and then Resa pokes her head out and searches for something. Neither of them knows what it is. She never finds it. At petrol stations people look at Resa with curiosity or fear or both and take this money he can't consider his. He thinks about his old history lessons, about the USSR 1946 – reeling from an invasion repelled within a few years – longing for some kind of lasting peace – distrusting of and distrusted by all.
People look at him for not wearing a coat in November and he wants to laugh. Siberia – no, it's not worth thinking about. Resa shudders for both of them.
They collect their booking from a Premier Inn (if there's anything anyone British can tell you, it's that the Premier Inn is not premier). Something bothers him about using the money they gave him, reimbursement, reparations, because it's like he's acknowledging that what happened to him is quantifiable. Resa doesn't want him to accept the money. He has to live.
That night he buries his hands in Resa's ruff, self-comforting weak behaviour, and falls unconscious lying against her. He oversleeps.
The queue for tickets is longer than he expected. There's a school trip, a teacher's овчарка (appropriate, he thinks) dæmon shuffling around all the children's overexcited unsettled dæmons. When he was their age Resa was as she is now. They point at her. One of them whispers that she's an escaped wolf from the zoo.
Dæmons aren't known for their restraint. She snarls at them for that and they fall silent.
It's very strange for him to wear a hoodie and jeans and pretend to be like these civilians. All he can think about is the core of ice in all of these people – their strength – and how most of them wouldn't last a few weeks. He looks at their food and his mind is already running through how hungry he is (he's not hungry – he ate a sandwich on the way here and licked the wrapper because he can't stand waste – this hunger is a phantom pain) and how he should be taking it from them. Someone throws their bread crusts in the bin and Resa's hair stands on end.
He buys one ticket and a brightly coloured map. The enclosure for the bear is large, far larger than his cell even in relation to body size. It also has all these trees and other greenery, even a cave and small swimming pool. He watched the nose poking out of the cave standing up with his fists clenching and unclenching. Hours pass. Tour guides pass him, someone asks if he's okay and Resa tells them that he's fine in a breach of etiquette significant enough to startle them away.
Eventually the медведя, Атропос – no, wait, it's not her nothernothernot – climbs from the cave. He cringes backwards. It looks at him, same eyes, maybe smaller, and he turns, walking rapidly away and breathing hard.
He walks into the centre of the aviary section and crumples as soon as Resa's sure no one's around (he's been here so long, it's dark and probably closed) and tries to cry with the birds looking on disinterestedly. He can't, his face screws up but there aren't any sobs and his eyes are dry. Stumbling, he finds his way out and walks back to the Premier Inn, hands in pockets.
It's been a long time, Resa tells him privately, you couldn't back then in Siberia, remember? They'd have devoured you. Maybe you've forgotten how. It's not the worst thing we've forgotten.
He snorts. Forgetting how to sleep in a bed is high on that list.
He thinks about grasping for English words when the Russian ones come so easily now. Closing his eyes, he leans back on the floor for a few minutes. Scratches at his ankle until it bleeds but the blood isn't thick enough to cover the small bear. The other tattoos are too prominent to hide. There's no use. He gets the car and drives back to Section D, turns up for work with no sleep and acts like he hasn't been away at all. The light in the office is bright and the shadows cast are long.
Эти тени выглядят как медведи, Resa tells him.
(дождь)
Resa's the one who tells him that he misses Siberia.
Nyet. He replies, final.
It's more honest there. You knew where you stood. You knew that as long as you stayed Darshavin would never—and you had friends, we had friends. You don't have that anymore.
He thinks about Elizabeta's child. He thinks about Ros and Demios, her fossa dæmon. Remembers Connie, her betrayal. Thinks about the Cold War. Remembers picturing Enyo in Harry's office on her sunbed, basking, when he thought he had lost everything. The thoughts and memories swell up until he can't move anymore.
He sits on the floor in the bathroom, flinchingly washing himself with a flannel, and thinks: this is what my life has become. He can't handle the shower, the bath, just like he recoils every time he sees a bear (the one on his ankle isn't there if he tells himself it isn't).
It's cold outside, but it's not cold enough. When summer comes he won't know what to do. All he has is his job, working with people who forgot him for eight years and would again in a heartbeat. Resa whines.
The next time he greets someone здравствуйте crawls out of his windpipe in place of hello like a snake.
some important information on dæmons for those unfamiliar with hdm:
• dæmons are an animal manifestation of a human's "soul" they can't touch other humans and they can communicate internally with their human or externally with any human
• dæmons show the "true state" of an individual and are much less adept at hiding things
• dæmons can't lie
• dæmon is pronounced "demon"
• it's painful for humans to be separated from their dæmons
• it's extremely uncomfortable and violating to have another human touch your dæmon - in the book it's implied that it's only done in a sexual context normally and described as the ultimate taboo
• dæmons are usually small animals (normally domesticated ones), larger animals indicate an unbalanced personality
• dæmons are usually the "opposite sex" of their humans boo gender binary cissexism BOO
Lucas - Timber Wolf – Resa
Elizabeta – Cat - Eiar (goddess of spring)
Harry - Adder - Enyo (goddess of destructive war)
Darshavin - Bear - Atropos ("severer of the thread [of life]" one of the fates)
Ros - Fossa - Deimos (spirit of fear, dread, and terror)
ähm ok so basically i. uh. hate this. it's terrible. i'm studying russian next year and i know the alphabet but mostly im a fool im not translating any of it because its wrong and terrible and should be destroyed. feel absolutely free to rip into this in the comments because im so ashamed i authored this. hopefully i will delete it soon.
can i just say this though – my goal with writing this was to write dialogue, one continuous scene because this style is terrible. look what happened. goodbye.
anyway im /so/ disappointed with this that im rewriting it! im going to go full hdm au with the magisterium and everything - potentially lucas realising that the magisterium is a piece of misogynistic shit and working with ros to destroy it that woul d be top