The light played off the face of the guitar in the corner of the room, a dull sheen that kept catching the corner of Volk's eye. It drew her to it like a magpie, her head constantly turning against her will to locate the source of it, even though she already knew what it was every time.

She'd lost count of how many times her head had turned toward it, eventually setting aside Jaeger's collar from its bi-annual cleaning. It's not like he needed it right now, anyway, the mutt in question having absconded across one side of the bed to snooze the rest of his day away. His legs and nose were twitching, deep in sleep, and he didn't even move when she stood carefully to slip toward the instrument with barely a rustle against the floor.

It wasn't a particularly special guitar in build, fairly standard with its darkened wooden body sporting pocks and patches in the finish once polished to a mirror shine. The strings were various materials that weren't uniform, a set of nylon both discolored clear and metallic. The neck looked like it had been reset at least once, the adhesive that kept it in place against the chamber body having turned a garish yellow and starting to flake on the edges. No, it wasn't special on first glances to anyone else, but clearly it was to Artyom, who was silently rearranging his collection of postcards against the back wall.

Slowly, she reached forward to run her fingers along the strings, noticing that there were a few worrying lines through a couple of them, like cracks. She noted to herself that she would have to pick up more next time she went into Moscow, assuming she couldn't find a merchant somewhere below that had a few left over. She ticked one of the strings with a fingernail, listening to the resounding note that followed and hung in the air. It piqued a wild childlike motivation in her that if she had to pluck one string, then the others needed love too, clicking her fingernails carefully across the delicate strings one after the other to listen raptly to the scale produced.

"Do you play?"

She started at the sound of Artyom's voice, pulling her hand back suddenly to look over her shoulder at him. He had stopped what he was doing and was looking over curiously, searching the answer to his question. She shook her head sheepishly at that and pushed herself to stand.

"Nein. I don't." she admitted, wringing her hands together for a moment while diverting her eyes away. "I'm more of a singer. Less of a player."

He set aside the small stack of cards he was holding and started forward, winding his way around the furniture to pick up the guitar. He held it with a gentleness she wouldn't have expected if it hadn't been him and once he had it, started carefully beginning to tune the strings.

"Give me a song? I'll play, you can sing."

There was that excited tone, the barely contained giddiness that drew her into all of his wild ideas and crazy shenanigans all in one. And that soft smile of his when he was falling into something he really wanted to do as he sat on the bed to finish the warm-up. It was contagious. She moved to stand near him, thinking on a tune.

"Do you … know Moscow Nights?" she asked after considering the list of what she knew. It was the only one she could really assume he knew.

Unfortunately, he made a confused face at the name, his brow furrowing. "I don't think so, no. At least, I don't recognize the name. Can you sing the melody for me? So I can try it?"

She sat next to him on the edge of the mattress, found the octave of the first note, and hummed the melody at a slower tempo, listening to him pluck along as she went, concentrating on the notes as she went. When she had related the tune to him in full, he replayed it, a little bit faster as though trying to train his fingers to it.

"It's fairly old?" he asked.

"It's from the Soviet Era." she told him, scoffing as he gave her a playfully discerning look. "The lyrics aren't Communist, it's just from the time. It's regaling the beauty of the city in a lovesong, and is Papa's favorite. He used to sing it to me when I was little and he couldn't figure out new lyrics for Dresden Is Warmer Than Moscow."

The sound of a full stop on a guitar was a melodically dissonant thing. As soon as she heard it, she looked first at it as though the instrument was responsible, then at Artyom. He looked at a loss trying to figure out if he'd heard it before. "Is that a song from Germany?" he asked, a little apprehensively like he was afraid of hitting a nerve.

He calmed a bit when she offered him a laugh for it. "Nein, nein. It was a lullaby he made up to help me sleep after we retreated to Metro. I was scared and he started singing this ridiculous nonsense song, but he could only remember the melody and the first line the following night, so it became a sort of game for us." She smiled as she recounted the memory, it felt almost warm to remember it. "He would sing the first line, which was always 'Dresden is warmer than Moscow', and then the lyrics following would be whatever he pulled out of thin air. Sometimes, I would help and it was like an interactive lullaby and bedtime story in one. I didn't feel so frightened of our predicament because of it."

The silence that followed lasted longer than it should have, broken only by a few tentative notes from the guitar. "Would you … want to share it?" he asked finally, looking up at her briefly. Imploringly.

He wanted to be a part of that, she recognized it and nodded her head a bit, watched him ready his fingers on the strings. Waiting. She hummed the first note, waited for him to echo it back before starting a verse. At a slower tempo than the usual, so he could follow.

"Dresden is warmer than Moscow
Yes, that sounds about right
Don't be afraid of the silence
That brings on us endless night
There won't be good sunny days
Nothing, not even birds to take flight
But remember that Dresden is warmer than Moscow
That will always be right..
."

She stopped, the verse concluding with the guitar finally catching up on the last note. Although her accompaniment was steady, it seemed the player was not. He was looking at her as though she'd just turned purple out of the blue.

"That was a lullaby to make you not afraid?" he asked, though it came out a bit more doubtful than originally intended.

She shrugged. "I was four. When you're really young in a crisis, you attach to the calmest thing in the room. He could have been singing about monsters in the closet for all I knew and I would have still settled because he sang steadily and calmly."

He rested on the side of the guitar as he considered her response before shrugging. "I guess, if it works." He thought a moment to himself before adding on, "Would it help you with your terrors if I sang it?"

Her first response was to laugh, a little nervously. "I can't believe you remember that's a thing."

He shot her a look of genuine concern. "Kind of hard to forget when someone wakes up screaming in VDNKh, you know. Small station, people thought you were being murdered." He noticed the embarrassed flush of her cheeks as she turned from him, reaching out to hold her nearest hand. "Would it help? I mean, I'm not much of a singer, I play guitar. But would it help anyway?"

She looked back toward him to see the sincere worry, the way his eyes sought hers to make sure she was alright. She offered him a small smile as she squeezed his hand back, turning all the way around to rest her forehead on his reassuringly.

"I think my guitarist will have the perfect singing voice to help." she told him before closing the final distance in a kiss, feeling his relaxed sigh into it causing her to lose any tension that remained. They parted with a release of pent breath, remaining close to revel in the moment's silence.

Until Artyom's free hand moved and accidentally plucked a string on the guitar, to which Jaeger finally snapped awake with a startled yip and howl and shattered the peace like dropped glass.


A/N: Just a note, but Bookwyrms [the name of the ship for VolkxArtyom] is actually going to be 11 years old this month! It's the oldest ship I have for Volky, actually, even though Saurkrauts is the ship she follows for the full-canon storyline.

With the return of my Artyom in the Tumblr RPC, I felt confident enough to start sharing their content here too. So enjoy a short little dribble to celebrate their anniversary with me!