things go very unexpectedly.
The 1800s, the dust that carried across the wind, the grime beneath his fingernails, the small pockets of civilization bedded deep in the wilderness, were something that Ash was far more accustom to than the pomp and circumstance of colonial New England, but that wasn’t to say it was without concerns - particularly those that lied in revisiting a period which, for all intent and purposes of his most recent reincarnation, had been formative to him. He wasn’t a pampered royal, locked away in a tower. He wasn’t a heretic, burnt to atonement by the very flames he created. He wasn’t even a man of God as he had once been in his prior life, subjected to that which called for him to change.
He was just Ash and in this frame of time, if he had done his math correctly, Ash was a ten year old boy in the care of Iva Tsarevich, roaming the open lands of the United States to pull long cons - an attempt at wealth in such a day and age - and, provided Tsarevich’s wishes ever be met, be an everlasting foil to the man currently laying beside him, a much older and yet still much younger version of Koschei the Deathless than Ash could recall at such a time; and very much asleep.
It was his own treachery that had made that attainable, his own merriment of celebrating a time where their paths had crossed again with the intention of making sure Ash had time to spare - not to do anything necessarily out of the ordinary, but to avoid crossing paths that didn’t need to be; and with little more than a warm kiss to his temple and silent promise that he would be back, Ash had taken off, leaving the warm confines of the inn they had plenty enough cash to pay for (and in due theory, could have probably bought outright for the potential of further wealth to their coffers) for the far more rugged wilderness where, under the light of a single fire, Ash knew he’d find who he was looking for.
All it took was a wish - a thought, an inkling, a desire to get away from something, to be stolen away in the middle of the night upon simple permission to find a better life in wedded matrimony, and like an unavoidable draw, Ash was sure he would be there.
And while he waited, he hummed a song from long ago, from Buyan, while he flipped through the pages of a well-worn book picked up somewhere along the way, illuminated only by firelight and so little of it that one could only question whether or not Ash could actually see the words printed upon the pages; but he wasn’t so unaware, wasn’t deeply immersed, as to not hear the approach of hooves or encroaching footsteps, wasn’t without training by Tsarevich - as little of it there was in matters of survival - or what he had picked up from Koschei in their years together, so when they reached his ears in earnest, Ash simply took the opportunity to speak ahead of what might’ve been turn.
“My, oh my,” Ash commented, uncertain whether or not it would bring about Koschei as he knew him now or Koschei as he had existed in this timeframe, pleased enough that his efforts to keep his husband contently quelled worked. “I was almost sure it wouldn’t work.”
Unwilling to, really.
And right now, in this time, he stares out of the windows of the great palace, his eyebrows running together, dressed only in an old pet of a great wolf he had slaughtered. His hair is river of silver running down his back, and the cold doesn't affect his almost emaciated form.
When was the last time he'd taken a bride? When was the last time he had sought company?
His memory turns and turns. The last few times, he had rejected the people summoning him for one reason or another — more and more, he knew that he no longer had the heart to try to keep replacing what was lost, who was lost. He could go on in his life, he could keep having a thirst for the future, for more.
But to replace Ash, to finally have love again, he couldn't go on with that anymore. It just wasn't an option anymore. No one had come close and if truth be told, he was starting to get tired of it. Tired of trying, tired of the charade, tired of —
A shiver runs through his spine. He's being summoned by someone who wanted to be taken, someone who wanted him.
For a moment, Koschei frowns at his reflection in the mirror, in the snow landscape of Buyan. He thinks about digging his heels in, but whoever this is, they have a strong pull. And so Koschei finds himself being pulled from Buyan, his form shifting. The land he's being summoned to isn't one he's been to before, yet Koschei looked like a Tsar, from his uniform to the black boots that crunch on the ground without warning, the flames flickering with his arrival. The wildlife goes silent with his arrival, and in this foreign land, Koschei knows that even here, he is powerful. He looks down at the person in front of him, at this tall form, at his assured tone. Koschei hums, his eyes burning in his face.
And slowly, as is tradition, he kneels before the one who summoned him, his hand going over his heart. "I am Императоръ Всероссійскій Бессмертный, and I have come as the groom you have summoned." It is part of the ritual, unignorable. "I never ignore a plea from a bride; but I confess, you will have to convince me that you are one for me to keep."
It is a far shine away from what Ash had been expecting, his head nearly tilting, hat going with it, while he sized up just which Koschei he might have actually summoned, which point in what was a hazy timeline this referenced. He was old - not just something numbers could decide, but in the way his body wore across his bones, hair long, seemingly malnourished though Ash knew well enough to know it wouldn’t have been the end of him all the same; and then there is the ritual, the one that he couldn’t recall seeing, but knew of all the same through myth and spoken lore, and how bittersweet it was to see him like this.
“Don’t do that, любимый. я знаю, кто ты,” Ash replied, crouching down in front of Koschei, certainly not the captured bird of centuries prior or the pampered bride, ill-fit for the ruggedness of the west, or the weird doppelgänger of a long dead love, but at the same time, all the same. In so many ways, he expects this to be believed to be a trick, a work of the temperature or the dust, a mirage in the midst of an arid landscape, or - worse yet - an illusion created by those wishing to claw at him.
“Because you’ve already done it,” he points out, standing himself back up to full stance and ushering Koschei up with him the very same, “which I don’t expect you to take my word for, and for good reason, but trust me when I say you’ll be far better off knowing it.” At the very least, perhaps he got him to listen and, knowing Koschei, there would come a time where he would listen, perhaps to his words or perhaps to the draw again. He stepped about the fire for a moment while mulling over just what to say inwhat was a very strange situation to truly think about. “And the outcome is something I think you’d be considerably interested in.”
Then he crouches down in front of him. Calls him любимый. It makes Koschei tenser, not relaxed as his hands are grasped, to help him stand. The man has fine fingers, hands that have not seen heavy work and Koschei allows him to left him to his feet, even though his words are more confusing, suspicious by the moment.
"I do not have time for such a deal to be meddled by a con man," his voice takes on a warning tone, a tired one. "This is for those who truly wish to be taken away, to be cared. I do not know your face, and an outcome around greed is not something that interests me." He looks at Ash, seeing only a potential trick, not trusting him. "Marriage is not light to me; and you are a stranger to me. If the deal you have is good, why not lay it out to me now?"
“I’m not a con man,” Ash points out and doesn’t give it a humorous beat of time for him to reconsider that knowing just what the last hundred or so years saw him amongst. It is just even more suspicious than showing up in this place at this time for the purposes he had even considered such a daft plan to begin with, but one who, if he played his cards right, would give him the upper hand in events to come; that would bring an ending to one of many circular patterns he knows has existed in their crossed lives by taking out the common denominator at the right time. Still, he gives Koschei a nod, arms crossing in front of his chest, hip jutting as he stared to the ground for a moment.
“I’ll tell you a story, since you’ve done it so many times for me: My name is Ash Seong-Bessmertny.” It is hard and punctuated, given with conviction knowing playing games, beating around the bush, wasn’t going to make for trusted affiliations. It had never worked in war. It didn’t work in politics. In social settings, it might have played a part, but doing so just glossed around intention. “I was born, as I recall it, in a small village in ‘Rus where I embroidered the finest fabrics ever seen until entrapment by баба яга.”
“And I know where you can find your bride,” he adds, brow piquing up as he looks over to the old man, “and I have a feeling you know just which one that is or else we wouldn’t be speaking anymore and I’d be burning down the plains.”
“I have nothing more for you than information - on where to find him in the future, on who he is with, on what they are doing,” he continues, pacing for a moment as he feels the deep sink of other memories drop in, none to do with the west, but years to come when making deals like this was more a means of espionage than it was an insurance to survival. Make the right deal and hopefully it wouldn’t bite one in the rear end in days, weeks, months to come, and years if one was lucky. Many, many more if Ash was.
Or, he believes so until the man starts talking in earnest now. That he is surnamed Bessmertny. Said the way a Russian would say it, close to how Koschei would say it. It makes him draw himself up even taller, his eyes narrowing. The way he says your bride however....
His skin pricks. The hair at the back of his neck stands up on edge.
That can't be right. The one bride that he wants, has desired for years now... it can't be Asa. Even if this man looks like he is from Asa's country, it can't be him, it would never, could never be him.
His hand moves towards his waist, clenching and unclenching. "No con man who isn't a conman would open with that. And if you know what is good for you, you would either produce proof of your claims or be very, very well armed. If you cannot give me proof of what you're promising me, if you're lying, then I will make damned sure that your guts are torn open before tomorrow morning."
"So I am,"' he gives way with a shrug of his shoulders, "but I assure you that this has nothing to do with conning nor is it desirous of anything more than action on your part," Ash commented, slightly aloof, unbothered, by what Koschei threatens. He knows well enough that it is the true - that if he doesn't play his cards right, he could end up disemboweled for the vultures - but he also knows who he is and just why it would be problematic for Koschei to do such a thing.
"Come now," he coos, sitting himself back down by the fire in a show of nothing ado with threats or worry, "don't make me calm you down or shall I light myself on fire?" And to make sure Koschei knew he wasn't bluffing, he held his hands up, skin cracking, peeling away from itself until it erupted into open flames as if eating the very flesh holding it in. He lets it dance around for a while, lets Koschei see it as it continues to trace about and curl up about his arms, dancing around his fingers until he clenched his fists again to quell it. The lines, they remain, deeply inlayed in his skin without the gold they once contained.
"I told you may name and I can show you my grivna, but I'd rather not risk that. Sit down," he commented as if weary of Koschei standing there in full regalia, but if he chose to stand, he knew he very well would. He grabbed a stick to poke at the fire, humming a war melody Koschei would know as he tended to the flames as if there was any more reason to it than the light it provided and even then, Ash knew he could do that just as well.