e is about as far away from their ranks as he can be while still being within arm’s reach, this supposed tailor in an excellently fitted suit – presumable by his own hand with measurements taken by an assistant that no one sees – who owns a small shop in the city. It has appeared like magic, seemingly overnight, and yet somehow, there is no question about it. He is there, he is established and there is a steady stream of customers one can only assume has something to do with military orders, repairs on uniforms and adjustments for the unfitted in an attempt to present a strong, uniform and unified front; but stranger things, he knows, have been known to happen in Nazi-occupied territories.

They just didn’t typically involve someone appearing.

He is Andrei for now, a name with no meaning that is of no significant importance to him, but get him by through the struggles of day-to-day life as he is to live it in front of the public eye; through the trials of supply shortages that make it a lot harder for everyone to get by; and through the barely there leisure of an evening on the town that still, despite what merriment there might be found in being able to enjoy a round of pints or a film with friends, sets residents on edge.

(wip)

His name doesn’t matter. It changes with every job, with every passport, with every set of forged documents to get through one border to the next without trouble. It changes with every occupation he is said to carry in locations he has never been to, but very few people gather he isn’t all his counterfeit identity seems to be. Sometimes he is new in town, most the time he is simply someone they haven’t run into and he knows well enough to keep himself informed just in case questions of a dubious nature come around. What tailor doesn’t know how to hem the inseam of a pair of trousers? What barkeep gets by without knowing a thing or two about mixing drinks?

Not knowing is a quick way to blow cover.

He’s nothing of the sort as he sits in the confines of an almost frighteningly empty pub. He’s a man in a suit with a book waiting for another man, also in a suit, to join him. There is no definition to their relationship and there doesn’t need to be. They don’t need to be friends, but neither are they enemies, but nondescript parties with a deal to make – him, the handler, and the nameless, the asset.

He passes but a glance to the briefcase in tow, an inconspicuous prop piece or means of surveillance, but doubt doesn’t sing as loudly as surety that if the handler and the government he serves wants to secure the intelligence they so readily seek, they wouldn’t be so foolish with the information he is soon to give once there is a drink – whiskey, neat – set in front of him.

And it sounds ridiculous, the stories woven by the Allied governments about the activities of those within the Axis’ more clandestine operations. From notebooks with talk of undead remains found in crypts to suspicious laboratories in the northern edges of Europe and directives focused on the acclimation of artifacts – of supernatural beings – of a mystical standing, even with what they call ‘certifiable intelligence’, it sounds ridiculous; but curiosity knows no bounds and it takes very little to convince him to take the operation.

They don’t shake upon completion of the exchange. In fact, it is unlikely he’ll see the handler again until there is something more to report and they leave – the handler first, the asset second, but not after some time to himself to flip through the pages as if expecting something familiar.

There is nothing he enjoys about it – the silent courting to ensure the hook in such deeply in his target’s gills; the menial, but long glances from across the room to speak of taboo relations; the subtle attempts to manipulate someone into feeling a certain way about a dalliance that could get them both of them killed, if not imprisoned, but while there are many ways to get access to classified facilities to see what lies within, this is the one that seems to stick when it feeds into the forbidden.

That is, after all, what they’re dealing with.

Eventually, there comes a tipping point, one carefully constructed and pushed into the officer’s emotional spectrum, that unveils itself behind closed doors so carefully entered, clothes strew to the floor was care as to no echo the fall of belts, brass buttons and heavy buckles, with lips pressed tight together to muffle such pleasured sounds until failure to do so prompts long fingers to draw tight around his mouth.

And it would be so simple in that moment – a quick twist and a snap – but he lets their beastly dance continue until climax and the inevitable fade into afterglow over hand-rolled cigarettes.

The officer grows tired, confused, with one puff to another, and it becomes obvious that there is something within the mix of tobacco that is making it difficult to breathe. His face flushes red as he coughs, gulping for air, and vertigo sets in when he stands, pupils dilating as he dizzies; but even though he knows there is something wrong, he can’t find the sense of urgency he is supposed to feel. There is just an overwhelming sense of calm that keeps him in bed until all breathing, all struggling, comes to a stop.

The evidence that remains, a cigarette butt tampered out, is burned to ash in his hand, added to a tray nearby with less fatal components before he crosses to the uniform on the floor. It isn’t exactly his size, but what did that matter when even an inexperienced tailor could take out a hem? The uniform will suffice.

They aren’t friends and in any other circumstances, they’d be enemies, but for a moment and only this, they’re allies, a wolf leading a wolf in sheep’s clothing into a lion’s den inhabited by something far fiercer than the king of the jungle. It is what everything he has done has lead up to – everything he has stolen to complete a visage befitting of the rank and file able to access the keep and everyone he has turned to ash as an unwitting sacrifice for something much greater than themselves – and though he had expected far more of a militaristic presence in the halls of Wewelsburg, not to say there hadn’t been a consider about of Schutzstaffel hopefuls present, casing the grounds as ordered, it is quickly clear just what the keep is meant for.

He can feel it in the air, seeping in through the walls, magical power radiating through the corridors from stolen relics crossing countries, even continents, to create a grail of prophetic power that these so-called rulers of the world could use to their advantage. A lot of it had been built in propaganda early on, quelling other occult practices, other groups, to make themselves supreme, but what would happen if it was real? If they could provide undeniable proof of their superiority – be it in the Spear of Destiny, believed to have stabbed Jesus Christ while hanging on the cross, or even falsified lineage tracked down in the lost city of Atlantis?

There’s an energy here, one born of magical rituals unknown and daemonic pacts that speak only of power, and it almost makes him queasy among the stolen texts of fringe sciences and occult theories knowing just what they could be used for – what they had been used for – but his reasons for being here, for donning the uniform he is, for brandishing the ring he does has little to do with stopping it.

He is just here for information and the man at his side, the snake in the grass of the growing war machine, is nothing more than, to the eyes of the blind, shared cover. He is there to watch, to make sure he stays in line, to make sure he stays safe, at the behest of vested parties. He is there to make sure he doesn’t get in trouble, to make sure he doesn’t find anything that threatens their intents, but in this day, in this age, who knows what those really are when friend can be foe and foe can easily pretend to be friend.

No one was ever who they were supposed to be.

(wip)

The wound is still fresh, open and bleeding, gaping in the places where his teeth sunk into his flesh harder and tighter than he might have suspected he would be bitten by the time they – Andrei, not his given name, still fiery and still mad, and (name), also not his given name, who moves through the wooded surroundings with all the efficiency of a trained hunter – are far away enough from Wewelsburg, far away enough from the danger, to shed some of the façade. It will take the soldiers some time to check their immediate surroundings, to make sure that the intruders aren’t still lingering, but while (name) insists they keep moving to avoid capture, Andrei lingers.

He can’t help it.

“Андрэй!” He hears (name) hiss from somewhere in the trees, can hear him stomping after him, backtracking, as he looks back at what he can see of the keep in the distance, a high pillar against the surrounding landscape given its hill-built vantage point. There is a grab at his arm, a tug and then a pull, to get him to move again and despite his initial hesitation, he soon finds himself following a carefully laid trail after his accomplice.

“Who was that?” Curiosity can’t be helped. It burns much like the wound in his arm; but there is something else, something more to it that he can’t explain. There is a feeling, something that has been welling up in the depth of his chest since they left the premises, left him chained up and trapped there, left him to suffer in mad wiles until an undetermined fate was met; and it hurts. It hurts more than the imprint of teeth on his arm that he can’t stop looking at no matter how torn and disgusting it looks, a shot to the heart that holds no rhyme, no reason, but echoes like a bell in his head, creating a round with each swing.

You’re not him.


But he is real – he knows he is.

“It’s no one, Andrei. Now keep up.”

Still, (name) persists, insists, on Andrei keeping up with him; and still, he persists, insists, on lagging behind as if pulled by some unknown tether back to the keep, back into danger, to help though he knows well enough that he will be vastly outnumbered. He feels – knows – that he has to however unfounded a thought it might have been.

After all, he doesn’t know Koschei. He doesn’t know he has been both loved and killed by the man before. He doesn’t know that he had been stolen away, kidnapped, and imprisoned by the same man who has taught him all he knows. He doesn’t even know his name and even as he presses (name) for answers, even as he pushes at the huntsman’s buttons in hopes of finding a crack in such a stubborn exterior, no one is inclined to give it to him.

“They wouldn’t keep ‘no one’ locked up in Wewelsburg,” he points out, coming to a stop again once the landscape smoothed out, not quite an open clearing in the forest, but enough to take a break, to pause and consider, if not reconsider, what was at stake.

“You’re keeping something from me,” he accused, a finger pointing straight in his direction, “because you knew we were looking for someone – for a person – and I’d be one stupid son of a bitch to think this doesn’t have to do with the rumors – that there is a Russian immortal imprisoned in Wewelsburg. Even the Allies know that.”

“You should give it up right now, Andrei.” A breath of caution, a warning, though not in the ways he might have thought as the more threatening aspect of it falls out of his mouth. “This doesn’t work out good for you in the end.”

“What doesn’t?!”

He wakes up in stone for what seems to be the millionth lifetime in such a short span, each day continuous in its ebb and flow of consciousness that would have been comparable to sleep had it not been for the growing pile of ashes left behind, but today, for reasons he can’t possibly fathom, isn’t like the rest. Today, for intentions he can only theorize, the iron chains are taken off and he doesn’t have to navigate the walls with broken, cracking fingertips. Today, for purposes yet to be found, he is led out, he is given clothes, and he is provided food that isn’t stale bread.

Today is a complete turnaround.

Instead of isolated capture, there is friend, almost familiar, embrace. Instead of pain, instead of suffering, there is a sense of nurturing, of caring. Instead of bad water and stale bread, there is a menu fit for a king which he can’t help but gorge himself on despite the shrinking size of a stomach given only meager sustenance; but the face at the end of the table isn’t one he is familiar with – not in this lifetime – and it begs to question whether he is a friend looking to help or a foe looking to take advantage of a mind that has yet to put together the fringed ends of distorted memories he can’t yet read.

It is only as days, months and years, progress that he forms a more familiar opinion of the man who, seemingly not old enough to be his father, has still become a similar figure in his life. It is he who teaches, who trains, and who hones skills that seem readily inherent as he does those that could use work and plenty of it. It is he who provides, who feeds, and only asks for so much in return – honestly and loyalty and, in a sense, unwavering faith that what they are doing, wherever they are going, it is for the best.

He doesn’t know he is a pawn in a larger game being played and he doesn’t know how integral a part of it he is though there are still his suspicions that things aren’t all as they appear to be; that there is something more to waking up in a dungeon, young, weak and weary, only to be ushered out into the sun.

And oh, how he has missed the sun.

(wip)