Author's Notes: Okay, this fic started when I saw that there was a disappointing amount of Chessfic out there, and I wanted some. This is based off the 2003 AFABC performance 'verse with Julia Murney, Adam Pascal, Sutton Foster, and Josh Groban. Oh yeah. You know it. And if anyone knows some communities where I could pimp this, do link me up.
Disclaimer: Don't own it. Don't want to.

Svetlana was fun, that's all Freddie was thinking. After all, Anatoly had been having fun with Florence for a year, ever since Merano. (His Florence, damnit, she had always been his, no one else's.) The story was that Anatoly's wife (the fucker had a wife, how was that?) was in Bangkok – to play chess.

Chess my ass, Freddie chortled audibly, startling the woman next to him in the elevator. When he didn't apologize or excuse himself, she shot him a dirty look, but he hardly cared. He was busy scheming, calculating, measuring. The elevator dinged open and he stepped out. There weren't any security people in the hall, which Freddie found unusual – last year, one could hardly breathe in Sergievsky's general direction without his security giving you a dirty look. Maybe they just didn't think Svetlana was important enough to put detail on like that.

How unfortunate.

He walked down the hall to 619, the room number he'd sweet-talked out of the desk clerk, a light-boned pretty girl of probably twenty or so. It had been almost too easy. Straightening his jacket, he knocked smartly on the door and waited for an answer.

When Svetlana answered the door, he took a moment to examine her. She was a bit shorter than she'd seemed on the television – and then he noticed that she was barefoot. Her dark hair fell straight to her shoulders, and she regarded him coolly with brown eyes. It was the look he got when he was being recognized. Things were already going not as planned. It'll be okay, he reassured himself before speaking. "We haven't had a chance to meet, I'm-"

"I know who you are," she said tersely.

"My reputation precedes me, I see," he tried lightly, throwing in a smile. She didn't respond, for the better (that was bad) or the worse (that was good). Well, even he would admit that it wasn't a very good reputation. Bit like welcoming Billy the Kid into your boudoir, probably.

"Everyone knows about you," she said carefully, her tone softening. Freddie noticed that her English was precise, heavily accented. Not as good as Anatoly or Molokov's.

"Of course they do," he answered, playing it like a compliment, even though it clearly was not have been meant as such. "Anyway, you should come have a drink with me. Whatever you want. For… you know, a show of goodwill."

One of her dark eyebrows arched suspiciously, almost questioningly. "You are now in the habit of showing goodwill?"

Okay, so he'd deserved that. Damn, she was a sharp one. No wonder her husband had jumped ship for Florence. He very nearly said so, but jeering now was not going to get him what he wanted in the long run. It might give ten seconds of satisfaction, but tomorrow there would be nothing. He bit his tongue and continued. "So, how about that drink?" She looked like she could use it.

She also looked like she was about ready to give in. "It is late. I do not want to leave the hotel."

That had been part of Freddie's plan. Take her out, get a little press attention, and… well, he supposed a little horizontal chess wouldn't be refused, but he didn't want to get ahead of himself. This could be danced around, he had at least a week, at most two. Probably one, he wasn't going to let that fucking red beat him again. "We don't actually have to leave," he said. "There's a bar downstairs."

Svetlana licked her lips and said apprehensively, "I do not want to drink."

Freddie had never gotten anywhere worth being by being subtle. "Don't want to drink, or don't want to drink with me?" he asked.

She was silent. "I will meet you downstairs in twenty minutes," she said and closed the door in his face.

He couldn't help but smile at the closed door before sauntering back down the hall to the elevator, whistling. Not exactly what he'd planned, but that was the game he knew how to play: sacrifice a minor piece or two, and in the long run you can win the game and the tournament. "Check," he murmured to no one in particular as he stepped onto the elevator and the doors closed behind him.

Svetlana was down in twenty-two minutes. The entire way down with every elevator ding, her conscience was pricked.

Fifth floor. Ding. You're having a drink with a man who isn't your husband.

Fourth floor. Ding. This man is an over-dramatic, megalomaniacal American.

Third floor. Ding. Tolya would not approve.

Second floor. Ding. She wasn't sure she approved.

First floor. Ding. Tolya would be jealous.

She stepped off the elevator and straightened her skirt. Just because you loved someone didn't mean you didn't love to drive them mad with envy. Even ten years of marriage didn't seem to change that.

The bar was clean and well-kept as bars in Bangkok went. Svetlana didn't know that exactly, but she had to admit, by any standards it was pretty clean. Freddie was sitting at the bar like he was a permanent fixture, and Svetlana moved to take the open stool next to him. "There. I am here," she said as if to ask 'now what?'

"Order a drink," he instructed her. He had an open bottle of vodka next to his glass on the bar, and poured himself some. He seemed to have had a glass or two already.

"That will be fine," she said shortly, unsure of where to look, so she looked at the bar and tightened her hold on her handbag..

He motioned for another glass from the bartender, and poured her a drink when it was set in front of her. "Go on, have a drink, since we've got the bottle to ourselves."

Svetlana still didn't understand. 'Why?' would have been a good question, if slightly vague. A small part of her wondered if she was possibly being paranoid, but she didn't think that she was. She took a sip of the vodka – it was good vodka, at least, she noted. "I don't think I understand yet."

Good. "The other version of me wasn't working. I'm turning over a new leaf," he half-lied. He paused with the glass at his mouth. "Do you know what that means?" Alienation by idioms. Very brilliant, Trumper, no one's ever done that before.

"I know what you mean," Svetlana said, fidgeting with her glass, but not taking a drink. "You wish to change and be a new person."

"Yes. Exactly."

"Is such a thing really possible?" she blurted out, looking at him for the first time since arriving at the bar. Her brown eyes were not accusative or her tone sharp, but showed a definite curiosity. "You think… people can change?"

"Why not? People change things all the time," he countered. "Their socks, their appointments, their minds, why not themselves?"

"But people are not socks. Or appointments," she said. "They are people."

"And you have no faith in people anymore," he replied dryly, and paused with his hand on the glass. What the fuck did that mean?

"You do not, either," she answered primly.

"If there's one thing I know – and I'm a very smart man – it's that the only person you can ever really trust in your life is yourself," he imparted sagely, throwing back his shot.

"You never trusted… Florence?" The other woman's name sounded strange on Svetlana's tongue, like an exotic bird or reptile. She said it slowly, careful not to mangle the pronunciation, all attempts made to keep inflection of any kind out of her voice, but it's not totally successful. She knew that in that moment she sounded bitter, hurt, and angry. All stages that she'd visited and revisited in the last year as well as upon her arrival in Bangkok. The whirlwind emotion of a wronged woman.

Fuck him, he had. As much as he could trust any person ever, he trusted Florence, and look what had happened to him. A bitter laugh escaped before he could stop it, and he said, "I was trying to make her trust herself."

"You always looked like you were… bullying her," Svetlana settled on, cursing her limited vocabulary.

"Not everyone gets me and Florence at a first glance," Freddie waved a hand impatiently. "I met her in London, in 1974, she was playing second to this one guy – I don't even remember his name, Bell or something like that – and she would not stand up for herself at all. He'd dismiss everything she said, blame her when he lost – to me, by the way, I had those legs of hers distracting me the entire time and I still beat him."

"The way you talk of her, I am surprised she didn't leave you sooner," she cut in dryly.

"See? Don't get it."

"Do you ever actually listen to yourself?" Svetlana demanded in return.

"I pushed her," he argued. "She needed to depend on herself: not me, or her mother, or her dead father. It's worthless to depend on other people, but she didn't know how to not do it. I wanted her to be all herself-"

"So you pushed her. You pushed, and pushed, and pushed until she fell away from you at Tolya," she spat back out, taking the last of her drink in one swallow to lose the taste the idea of her Tolya with that woman left in her mouth.

"Why are you putting all of this on her? He left you, too," he said bitterly.

"I never gave him a reason, he was happy," she snapped, pushing down the lump that was forming in her throat. She could control herself. She wasn't going to let her emotions get the best of her, or let this American think that he'd goaded her into emotional weakness or whatever it was this would be seen as. Although to be truthful, at this point, she would hardly spit in his direction if he were to spontaneously combust.

"Oh yes. Wonderfully happy," Freddie said scornfully, mostly because he doesn't know what else to say but he has to have the last word.

Svetlana was equally determined not to let him have it. It wasn't even that she wanted it for herself at this point, it was pure principle. "I do not know why you bothered to ask me down here. I am not even sure why I said yes. Florence might have been able to sit here and listen to you… do this to her but I am not going to do it."

She picked up her bag and slid off the bar stool a bit unsteadily and his hand automatically reached out to keep her from falling, but she pushed it away, and rightly so, he had to admit. What he was not willing to admit, however, was defeat. He grabbed her wrist – why, he wasn't sure, but he held on. "Let go of me you… you… babnik!" she spat.

Freddie didn't know any Russian, but it was clear that whatever she'd said, she didn't mean it in a complimentary way. Of course, now that he had a hold on her, he wasn't sure what he wanted to say. "Look, would you just… sit down?"

"I do not have a very compelling reason to stay," she snapped, still struggling with him. "You bring me down here, insult me, my husband, throw his abandonment in my face and expect me to stay? No human in their right mind would stay!"

"Yes, I know!" He dropped her wrist like she had burned him. "I know, I'm completely worthless and why should anyone stay."

"You are not the only one who has been hurt here so do not act like it," she hissed, leaning on her barstool for support. "I am tired of talking to you, so if you will let me go I am going to try and call my children."

The weight of her words hit him across his face in a way that was worse than physical contact. "…Fuck."

While her words shocked him into contemplative silence, they seemed to weigh her down onto the barstool and her head resting in her hands. After a long period of stillness, he picked up the bottle and poured her another drink, and then one for himself. He needed it, even if she didn't, but it seemed only polite to offer. "Fuck," he repeated. "I'm sorry." It was a genuine apology, and he'd be the first to admit that was a rarity for him.

Svetlana mumbled something in Russian, and then switched to English. "… terrible," he managed to catch. "Sascha wants to know where his father is and I have to lie, and Petra is too young to know anything's wrong." She picked up a red cocktail napkin on the bar and self-consciously made hurried swipes at her cheeks with it. There didn't seem to be any sense in a strong front right now.

Of all the names Freddie had ever been called by anyone in the known universe, he had to say that this was the first time that he honestly felt he deserved the title "scum of the earth."

The Russian was worse. You couldn't respect a bastard who would abandon children. "How old are they?"

"Sascha is seven. Petra is two," she answered automatically, almost mechanically. "I do not even know what I am doing here. I want to hope that he will come home with me, but-"

"I think you all are better off without 'im," Freddie cut her off, taking a swallow of the vodka. He barely felt it burn its way down his throat now. "What kind of man runs off on his kids, honestly? I say even if he begs you to let him come back, you tell him to take a hike. No," he clarified for her when he realized the idiom might not translate.

"I wish it were to be that easy," she said sadly.

"The fuck? Of course it is, it's one word. 'No.' Or however you want to say it, Comrade Asshole could probably follow you in a couple different languages."

"So you could tell Florence no?" she challenged.

He fell silent and looked into his glass. So this was what it felt like to hit rock bottom. Just when he'd thought there was nowhere else to go, he'd taken a plunge.

Of course he couldn't tell Florence no. But he wasn't going to tell Svetlana Sergievskaya that. "This was a bad idea. 'm sorry. Go call your kids," he murmured, half to her and half only to himself. This had been a terrible idea, it really had.

Svetlana drank the last of the vodka he'd poured for her – it was there, that was reason enough at this point. She slid from the barstool awkwardly but carefully. She picked up her purse and then leaned over to him. "Defeat him, Frederick Trumper. For yourself and for me."

He didn't know if he could anymore. He didn't know if he had a chess-playing bone in his body left after sixteen years. "I didn't come here to lose," he told her.

"Neither did he," she said sharply, before standing. "Good night, my strange American."

Freddie threw her a half-hearted wave over his shoulder as she walked away, leaving him at the bar. He spaced out for a moment, and then focussed on the vodka bottle. Nearly empty, enough for about a shot left. He poured it out into his glass and then picked it up. Here's to my victory, he thought, and then downed it all quickly. He came to Bangkok to win something, and he was not going to lose.