Though well-read, at least as far as anything Ash could get his hands on in a language he wholly understood, and adjacently well-researched about kingdoms of the past, at least as far as comparable eras, there was little that could have prepared Ash for just how expansive Buyan had been. From the palisade arching over the city gate to the smaller abodes and shops that served as a sea surrounding the palace proper, its cathedrals and citadels and anterooms, to the interiors of black towers, red doors and drenched in garnets that needed a little bit of love and care to return their former luster, there were rooms upon rooms, fireplaces by the plenty, and spacious kitchens that were readily the size of his apartment in Seattle; but even after a few days, nearing the better part of a week, he knew there was still more than that within to explore.
There had once been gardens – he knew that from memory – and though they weren’t as luxurious, as vibrant or lively, as they had once been, there had been an ever-pressing desire to step out into them again. Each window passed in the ebb and flow of their efforts to both clean up what few rooms of they could and enjoy some time together that wasn’t mired in whatever may or may not have been going on in Seattle, together and without interruption, was another glance to the exterior, picking out bits and pieces and details that layered themselves in his mind as replicable areas. The flowers that had been, the trees that still stood against those that didn’t, fixtures that had been manmade, but accommodating to afternoon tea in the warmer months.
And something he knew wasn’t there over the one hundred or so years he had called Buyan home. It brought him to a stop more times than he could count, curious about the smoothed stone and considerable façade among smaller sites he recognized easily enough as graves, and as it pressed against his curiosity, Ash knew he couldn’t let it sit much longer, his approach far more sure than it could have – perhaps should have – been though not without consideration of the emotional tone he expected to receive.
“I want to see it.”
A pause, a question of “what” – there was plenty to see, it could have been anything and just as well, Koschei could have been avoidant knowing what lay inside, but there was no press of calming and there was no attempts to sway beyond earnest desire to see it.
“My grave.”
There's an expression out there that doesn't quite fit Koschei: the term of feeling like someone's walked over your grave. He's been in a grave before, gotten his way out in the dark, coughing up formaldehyde or still so drunk he'd mindlessly wandered until he came back home. He knows the expression meant the feeling of gooseflesh, like someone's disturbed your eternal rest and he has never really felt that wave of sick terror that people get whenever they've expressed this. It's been curious to see it other's faces, to not quite understand that level of terror.
Until now. Until Ash tells him: my grave, and a swooping wave of terror, of gooseflesh breaking out on his skin, of a suddenly feeling of illness washes over him.
This is supposed to be the honeymoon. A good time. A place for them to just re-discover marriage to each other, to be happy and good and no true unearthing of the past. To clean out Buyan, to try and restore it, make it a place just for them again. It had been; cleaning together, stoking fires back up, having a romp wherever they could, helping the domovoi along with things. They'd even settled on how handle the coffers. Until now, as he looks at Ash, standing in Buyan, wanting to see the mausoleum, expression resolute.
He should have known that he would've wanted to see it. It's the youngest part of Buyan's main structures, and he built it to be easily seen from the windows of the castle. He flexes his hand, glancing out the window, and back at Ash. Sweat breaks out on his palms, and his throat goes dry.
There's an urge to say, No. Please don't make me go there. I don't want you to see. To see what he'd erected in his grief, to see what he had labored for weeks on, putting it together brick by brick like a madman. To know that he had done it and had missed the egg.
Ash is his wife. His beloved. He can't deny him, even when he wants to. Koschei rubs his sweaty palms on his jeans, and nod. "Okay. We can go." His voice is quiet, with shame, with fear, and he still can't shake it as he leads Ash out of the castle and into the gardens. The air itself feels thinner for a moment as he makes himself move one step at a time, stiff and unsure of what to do or say.
It isn't as if what he created is ugly; on the contrary, the marble outside is still beautiful, as is the gate with the gold sun placed in the top center. The closer he gets, the more Koschei has to hold onto the more youthful form he has, not aware of the growing white streak on the left side as they go. "You... I made this," he speaks hesitantly, looking at the steps, at the way it looms. "After you died. Just me."
Is it important to say? He doesn't know. Only that he must say it.
He notices it – them, all those small nuances of discomfort that aren’t so readily hidden under a fixed gaze and, had he been so blind to miss them, he feels them though he wonders if that is through any intention of his own to do so or simply the strength of it all. Ash has put Koschei in an uncomfortable position, one he can’t readily back up from or deny, and powerful as it might seem for some to hold such sway, there is little joy felt in how easily his husband obliges nor the own sway of his imagination, no memories to speak of, to suggest others – wives that came after him – might have felt differently.
Those, however, aren’t the thoughts he feels compelled to sift into the atmosphere – not in their home, not in the halls and not through tall vestibules, not out into the garden and across the expanse between the palace and the mausoleum – nor does he want to feel like this is just another opportunity to mourn despite knowing well enough that while Asa he may be, Asa he is not nor is he the nameless nor is he Andreas nor any identity that had been until Ash Seong.
Still, he spies those shifts not in the air, but in aura, and while there is still intent to face his death of so many years ago, it isn’t a march so much as it is a leisurely stroll, a gentle pace, perhaps so much so, the crunch of the ground underneath feet for once not bare is all too audible until cut by Koschei’s voice.
“You made it?” It isn’t ugly. Even if time had eroded parts of it, even if it had lost some of its shine, even if the marble might have been tarnished in some way, Ash still wouldn’t have seen it as ugly, this labor of love so mournfully undertaken as a standing monument to a wife lost needlessly; and indeed it does feel monumental from the base of the stairs and it does loom like much to do about his former life in this place does, Ash stopping at the steps all the same.
He wants to make a joke to cut the tension, to kill off the feeling he might have just made a dire mistake, but he refrains with a cross of his arms and a deep sigh. It just makes the tightness of unease sit in his chest, but at least it stays while he reaches up to light comb through the hints of graying – whitening – hair on his head. “What are you worried about?”
Koschei doesn't know that Ash has realized something he's known for a very, very long time even if he has never said it outloud to anyone. He doesn't know that the vulnerability he has around him has been broadcast loud and clear, or that the telltale signs of his nervousness, of the fact that he could never refuse Ash are showing more and more.
All he knows is that as he looks at the mausoleum he can feel the passage of years hit him in a way he rarely ever has before. This spot used to hold something else: a pond that he and Asa used to come to play with the rusalka that passed through, that used to hold fish in it that Koschei had gone any and everywhere to fill it with. He'd emptied it, relocated it all into a river that was probably teeming with all kinds of overgrown fish, outside of the castle. He looks at the monument with a thick feeling in his throat, with all those years of mourning hitting him all at once and he has to take a shaky breath, remember that Ivan isn't here, that he isn't on his knees, watching helplessly anymore.
Still, the streak in his hair grows as Ash touches his hair, not minding the feeling, eyes swinging back to him. "I did. It was. All I could do." The clipped words aren't exactly delivered harshly; just quietly. Slowly, in Russian rather than English. "Couldn't leave you here." You being the ashes left, Koschei staring at them helplessly, angrily.
It's the second question that has him walking further up the steps, trying to keep himself together as he goes. "I... I don't know." Or rather, he can't articulate it: how can he show him this monument to someone who wasn't dead anymore? It was a sacred piece of him that he'd been keeping close to his chest, that he'd been trying not to acknowledge anymore. He'd left here years ago, kissing the doors before he'd left and had come less and less not because it had become easier to mourn Asa but because every time he comes back, the mourning is more acute, worse.
And now his wife was here again, and it could have been avoided and Koschei reaches up, wipes at his eyes, trying not to cry. "It's more than..." He gestures, and pushes the door open, to let Ash really see inside. To see the high walls, the statues, the intricate work he'd done all on his own.
And with it? Came another, worse rush of memories: of her.
There’s a pang in his chest that burns as much as it aches, burning along invisible lines of old injuries that had once been his undoing – the very same that had scattered those ashes to the ground only to be gathered up hastily, the important piece of the puzzle stolen to be sold into a life anew – but Ash knows there is more to it when Buyan, almost like Koschei himself, was a skeleton of what had once been, changed with time. There are pieces missing, landscapes changed, but as heartbreaking as it seems, Ash keeps in mind the silver lining found: They can make Buyan something brilliant again even if it isn’t exactly the same.
It just takes time.
“I’m glad you didn’t,” he says, ekes out in strained quiet before following Koschei up the steps, curious to his answer – perhaps even more so than he is curious to see the inside of the mausoleum, some sort of barrier sure to be broken in not only crossing the threshold of sun-embellished gates, but the more concrete stone and marble meant to keep the mausoleum’s contents safe – contents that Ash takes a moment, perhaps an obvious one, to take in, be it the high walls, the statues, and all built with such intricacy and Koschei’s own hands.
“You can cry,” Ash assures him, stepping inside in what has become an ever-slowing progression into curiosity, stopping and looking back with a small smile. He doesn’t mean to tease or make fun, simply try to alleviate whatever hard blockade there might be holding it back. “I might cry, but that isn’t the worst thing that could happen out of vulnerability like this.”
“You really did a wonderful job,” he adds with his eyes back on the interior – to the décor that he sweeps his eyes over and the urn in the midst of it all, something so small in such grandeur, “which might not be the thing to say, but perhaps it just needs to be said.”
The memories of her come on sharply: the way she had knocked the urn over, the anger in her face. The fact that she had been puncturing the egg, making him feel real, true pain and all he had been upset about were the scattered ashes. The fear of what would happen with all those ashes on the marble.
Koschei tries to wrestle it down, the memory. The distraught feeling in his chest.
There is something there, in being permission to cry. In being told by Ash who wasn't Asa but was at the same time, that he could cry over him. That it was safe to mourn inside this place built from mourning, crafted to hold the sadness, the anger, the loss all at once. Having it spill out like this, to have the person it was built for, inside of it, breathing?
It's so much. It's so, so much that Koschei has to keep a handle on, to keep from spilling out, wanting this to be for Ash more than himself here. He rubs his palm against his eye, trying to keep it in, to not go to pieces here. Ash crying is one thing; it's understandable, the reaction. Koschei... hasn't he cried enough?
He holds it in.
Or at least, he thought he was holding it in. Until Ash says, You did a really wonderful job. The rest of his words don't matter then. As much as Koschei wants to just let Ash have this moment to himself, the permission undoes a knot in his chest, allows for him to shove the bit of his hand between his thumb and forefinger, into his mouth. He bites down viciously on his hand, to muffle the sound coming from his throat but not the stem of tears.
That was the point of this place: To remember, to mourn, to embrace memories that might have been sad to think about, but were welcome all the same. It would have been wrong of Ash not to allow Koschei that time even if he was there, he was alive, he was well and, as far as he knew, there was no tsar hopeful are any arduous quest or seeking to fulfill Leraje’s endgame; but it had been those moments with her feeding the sadness now – perhaps not the only ones, but the angry and bitterness-inducing ones that, had Ash known what was going on in Koschei’s mind, would have made him angry. She might’ve been dead and gone, eaten, but that didn’t mean the hurt died with her.
“Stop it,” he says, not sure if Koschei has even realized that he’s set aside the exploration of his own tomb for the soft sobs that easily pierce the relative silence of the mausoleum. It would’ve been hard to hide, even with the great effort made, but Ash doesn’t point that out. Instead, there is a gentle touch to his hand, to his wrist, to try to pull it away from Koschei’s teeth.
“перестань,” he ushers gently, attempting to console Koschei as best he can. It may not be enough, but it doesn’t mean not to try. “It’s okay,” he assures again, resting his hands softly where he can on his face, “it’s cathartic – whatever might be upsetting about this.”
“I promise I won’t make you stay long,” he said, glancing back to what remained of a version of him from long ago – not the heart, not the soul, but the ashes all the same that he refuses to disturb knowing they are just that: Remnants of what was standing in front of Koschei now. “I just wanted to – I wanted to see that some part of me was still safe.”
For all that Koschei has tried, for all that he has gone through the years alone, he can't help it. He can't help but to cry to have Ash here, to be told that he had done a good job honoring his dead wife. Honoring the man he loved, honoring the man that he had done any and everything for. Honoring a man who should have never been lost, at all.
To be reassured is both a balm and a pain. To be told that it was okay, didn't heal things entirely. He still feels distraught, still feeling horrible as the tears come down, as Ash pulls his hand from his teeth — already embedded so deeply that he was bleeding.
"I'm sorry," he blurts it out, ignoring the stain of blood on his teeth, in his mouth. "I shouldn't —"
Koschei doesn't know how to finish that sentence. He can only follow Ash's lead, nodding. "I did. I did everything to keep you safe here. I did." He doesn't want to bring up the fact that the urn had been overturned once. That there might have been ashes lost to the wind, that some of that horrible bride might be there. "You can touch it, any of it. All of it."
“Shhhh, and now you’re apologizing for something you don’t have to apologize for,” he says lightly, shaking his head. He knows the details as much as his mind allows – that in a perhaps expected fate, he had met his ends at the hands of someone who would have readily whisked him away to a crueler fate than even death – and what he doesn’t know, he simply doesn’t need to when it wasn’t even his to know in the first place. Fatalistic as it seems, Asa had already been dead and born again in another life, however near or far as it could have been from where he belonged.
And the ashes? Perhaps it was of no mind with ashes left scattered in one location or another, remnants of lives left behind gone with the wind or the churning of the Earth or the depths of the sea, no acropolis to be found in the depths of the desert to return to like he once had.
Carefully, he turns over Koschei’s hand, the tears on his own face – far more for the woes of his beloved more than his own perilous fate so many years ago – a small drop against the teeth marks that, despite knowing how readily Koschei would heal, sees the marks seared away, the blood cleared with a swipe or two of his thumb. A part of him knows he doesn’t like
it, the tears, but there is another life readily pushing the notion there is no reason to waste it even if it doesn’t heal what may truly need to be.
“We don’t need to do that right now,” he says gently, shaking his head, “apologizing or otherwise.”
There have been very, very few times where Ash's tears have fallen on him. Mostly because of the fact that he hates it, that it's a waste for him when he would heal up anyway. It feels all the worse now, in a way, that he's allowing it now, allowing his tears to fall on the teeth marks. It feels so wretched in that moment, to be healed here, and to remember when he left teethmarks in a thing that had seemed like Ash, decades ago.
Koschei breathes, tries to steady himself as the teeth marks fade, as his fingers curl up. He wants to apologize again. He wants to take Ash away from here, away from this mausoleum, but Ash insists. So he doesn't, just waits, trying to get himself together.
"We can go further in," his voice echoes, and Buyan outside — still in need of repair, still in need of living in again — gets chillier. "There's more here, besides the urn if you wish to see it." The tears on his face still track, and he swallows thickly, not trusting himself to say more, do more. "I think I'll be okay."
He is happy with the outcome all the same: The teeth marks are gone, perhaps not in memory or phantom feeling, but aside from what blood might have remained gentle efforts to swipe it off, they’re physically gone; and where it might have been thought a waste – not just by Koschei, but anyone else who might have thought or uttered such a notion throughout time – hasn’t been to Ash. What good was being capable of such a thing when he couldn’t help someone else, even in the slightest and especially someone as dear to him?
Past lives be damned.
“We don’t have to,” Ash argues instead about something other than the right and proper uses for such a rare thing as tears, knowing that he had insisted, that Koschei wasn’t arguing with him and rather ushering him along now that they had crossed such a threshold, but he doesn’t care to push – not too quickly as the temperature fluxes and Ash returns the chill across the wind with a shift in his own ambient temperature, just a little push of warmth like the sun to keep comfortable. He knows there are reasons to – that maybe there wouldn’t be five hundred years to see it all – but it is either optimism or naivety that suggests there is time for it. There is no Ivan – not hide nor hair nor hint of – and there is no cult to shield him away and no cage to keep him in.
“What do you say we go back inside?” He points out, motioning not to the mausoleum, but the citadel proper where, still in need of some care, there is at least some comfort and life, domovoi in the walls and fireplaces to be lit, and maybe something to edge off. It isn’t that he thinks Koschei hates this place – no man who built such a thing by hand would – but the sorrow that comes with it is none Ash can shield no matter how many times he thinks to. The most he does is joke, tenderly. “And if you need an excuse, I get cranky when I’m cold.”
