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|ROLL| Rogue +rolls 1d100 for: 89
With the coming of the full moon, an extraordinary event unfolds. They happen to be awake. One rises from sleep in that deep night hour, quickly followed by another. Kyr is not the quietest of the wolves — that goes squarely to Volya as a dubious honour, for the man might outfox a black-tip reef shark on the hunt. He is, however, durable and outstanding at locating any sort of meal. Chased up from the kitchens, he carries a loaf of bread, a jar of pickles, and some kind of plastic container probably full of jam or flour or plankton soup for all he knows. They shall all depend on his whims at the cabinets and fridge, theft no small matter for those who may otherwise not be noted living within the mansion.
Adam waits by the door. Matvei slumbers; Volya predictably grooms his hair with his fingers and looks sprawled. Genya has some kind of effort at exercise going on, but not very much. Orel's hair sticks out in all directions while he lies on his stomach, still keeping off his otherwise perfectly healed back. Probably by demand of the others.
Buck's up, himself. Perhaps tugged along by the bond. Perhaps only dealing with his own restlessness. He comesdown the hall from the suite he shares with Scarlett - he insists on sleeping just with his girl, a good portion of the time. No totally surrendering privacy.
No questions as he comes to the sleeping den, or so he thinks of it. It's a pack mind, after all.
Matvei asleep might bedim their connection some. Such things remain the province of wiser minds, astute about fractured oddities experienced by descendants of a spear line, rather than the distaff. Nikita is folded up not far away; whatever newspaper he somehow acquired is beside the red-framed Time magazine, another of Life, and another surrounding collection of poor Village rags. They aren't particularly organized. None of the others read; the real scholar is napping.
"Food," says Kyr. They speak in Russian behind these doors, shameless about it. Food might as well be the dinner bell rung, the clanging triangle struck. At once Adam assists in tearing up the loaf. Volya bothers to open the jar of pickles some, and places the jar on Genya's back, much to the tattooed man's lack of amusement. Upon that scene will Bucky come, several sets of eyes turned his way before he even steps through the door. A chunk of bread goes his way.
"We can go down and get something to eat. I can cook you guys a proper meal, if you're hungry. There's pasta and bread to start with," Buck offers, softly, even as he snatches the bit of bread out of the air, takes a bite. "Soup, too."
Several curious and incurious looks turned upon him surely give no sense of comprehension. The humble lift of those defined brows, the hidden tilt of a head; Orel looks up. Nikita stops mid-flip of a page, and if he does anything more than skim the pictures, one would be hard-pressed to know. Kyr holds the unknown jar, and looks mildly taken aback.
"People are out," Genya mutters, pickle jar still in place on the flat of his back. Down, dip, and up, he has to make do. "Not good to go out."
"What's pasta?" That, Orel.
«Noodles. With sauce made of tomatoes, meatballs. IT's good,» Buck says, dropping into Russian. "It's late. You won't bother anyone. I mean, Steve knows you're here and it's okay. We're not going out of the house, just down to the kitchen." Almost coaxing. It'll be good for them, right?
All they speak is Russian, relying on Adam or Kyr to translate out of bad English into comprehensible language. If they understand more, they aren't showing it. Volya pulls a blanket up over himself and promptly goes onto his side, prized chunk of bread to satisfy him. He takes a bite and swallows, poor for avoiding heartburn, and cares naught. His body burns hot but deals with deprivation as there is.
Orel rumbles some uncertain noise of that. "Supposed to stay here." That much decided, he nods to Genya. The tattooed super-soldier cracks a bit of a yawn. Convincing, no doubt, that he's wide awake and a guardian. All leaves the brothers vaguely capable of following Bucky. Though Adam watches it all with a degree of suspicion, Kyr with his jar.
«C'mon. You don't have to scavenge like alley-cats,» Buck coaxes, looking wry. «TRust me. It'll be okay.» Motioning them up, but giving no orders. They'll come because they can be convinced, or want to.
«Not scavenging. It's better up here,» mutters Kyr. He holds close to Adam, and clutches the jar rather defiantly. The burning curiosity in the awake ones counts for something.
«I think you go. But I stay,» Orel adds. Genya is still somewhat awake, and that leaves Kyr and Adam to maybe have their way tracing doubtfully after Bucky.
He lifts his hands - reluctant to resort to any kind of overt dominance. They make their own choices, but they can't lurk in Steve Rogers's attic forever. Buck just regards them patiently from the doorway.
Dominance is a thing determined in subtle ways — posture, tone, the dozens of cues no one consciously thinks about. Matvei is something of the glue linking them together, and absent Lazar or Volya tend to be the most independently minded anyhow. With Genya on babysitting duty for their nearly fatally wounded brother, that leaves Kyr and Adam to trail like ducklings in the goose's wake. Trudging along is easily enough done. The attic may not be entirely acceptable, but the hour is late and they are all convinced of their own activities.
Something about the city that the children of the Volga never truly understand, the night sky remains a myth to them. Under the sanguine halo thrown across the densely populated island of Manhattan, few stars other than the corners of Orion and distant Venus peek through the shroud. They orient by stars and know at least a little of the constellations, and a trip down to a certain Hayden Planetarium on the fringes of Central Park constitutes an unlikely outcome. So they squabble as brothers will in their restless endeavours, poring over charts drawn from memory and occasional questioning, pitching paper over the floor. Forget a table, they don't need them.
Matvei takes the notes and Orel, their eaglet, gives occasional corrections. The last fight apparently lies over somewhere on the ecliptic and, through that, determining the fastest way out of the city to somewhere green, mountainous, Greenland or evidently related to smoked beef.
Do not ask where they learned about smoked beef; probably someone's Mordecai Richler novel stuffed in a back room. Evgeniy kneels on the bed, pulling on his boots. «I am leaving. You are all full of noise. I get better sleep in the dump.»
«Oh, stuff it. Like you've got any reason to go. I hear you snore.» Kyr rolls his eyes. Volya is nowhere to be seen, nor Nikita.
*
There's the prototype in the door. «There're steaks downstairs to be eaten, before you go,» he notes, wryly. «Courtesy of someone I know who likes to cook,» Blame Lambert, who is at least wise enough not to insists on meeting them, as yet. «What are you arguing about?» he asks, belatedly.
*
Adam combs through his hair and his wet bangs stick to his damp brow. The last shreds of credibility lie in the towel wrapped around his waist, knees pressed together and a bowl of water resting there. The occasional application of scissors leave small brown tufts and chestnut shavings nearby, swept up by hand. Kyr occasionally kicks over the garbage can closer so that the bits may be disposed of safely, burnt somewhere.
«Steak?» The youngest of them lifts his head, still fighting to pull a sock over his foot. «We should bring them up.»
Evgeniy twists the knotted strands on his boots, and grunts. «I'll eat one.» Bucky receives a narrow-eyed look and his children flick their gazes almost in synchronized grace. Not so much angry as scrutinizing, their overall natures imply.
Matvei and Orel look over the papers and sit up. The pen hangs pinched in Matvei's fingers. "Stars," he says in English. "We do not see the sky."
*
«You should come eat them in the kitchen,» His tone is gentle, but insistent. «No one is there now. Not even Steven.» At that, Bucky nods, expression a little mournful. "The light of the city is too strong," he agrees. "Even at night. But….there are places upstate not so bad. We're going to have a place of our own there. In the woods, near gentle mountains. Somewhere we can go to run and hunt and see the stars." Then he translates it, for the benefit of those still fighting with mastery of English. James finds himself thinking in Russian more than he did, what with the pressure of the link. It feels strange to think in that tongue as himself, rather than as Winter.
*
Russian comes naturally to all his likenesses, their skills in English only established with Adam and Kyr to any fluency. Matvei's comes along, the rest being variable to the point of disuse entirely on Genya's part except to navigate a diner menu. As needs must.
«Food,» Genya says with a shrug of his broad shoulders. He pulls up his beaten coat around himself, anchoring buttons and the zipper. Brushing Bucky out of the way is unlikely, but he will blow through, rather than squeezing right on past. One moves or does not move. He views obstacles as an inevitable challenge passed.
The translation given by Matvei quietly to Orel and Kyr gives some detail, layers provided in hushed murmurs. 'Woods' specifically attracts their curiosity, perked and underlined in sharp detail. «The air isn't clean enough here. How do you bear it?»
*
That's funny to think of, the one advantage they had in their terrible upbringings. «I'm from this city,» he says, gently. «I didn't see anything but the park until I was almost ten, when it comes to trees, things like that. Only in movies. We took a holiday once or twice, when I was a child - once before my mother died.» Their mother, in a way. He steps out of Genya's way - there's never any force, save when it's a matter of life and death. «I never saw real wilderness until I went to Africa.»
*
«It always smells so odd.» Orel adds the one thought, pointing two spots on the paper for Matvei to subject to considerable attention. He draws the rounded nub of the pencil off two pointer starts to converge in an asterism, and he thumbs his finger over the white, unmarked signs. Explosive little specks radiate from the charcoal scribble placed there, and the two of them peer at their work. A nod satisfies the question, the consultation made where they fit in the constellation Lyra.
Evgeniy stalks downstairs if he can to find the steak, concealing himself with considerable ease. Nikita or Volya would be the lightest-footed, in all fairness, but they can collectively manage. Adam's eyebrows lift at mention of Africa. «Not many trees in the north. It's desert. Did you go far south?»
*
«No. Not beyond the desert. We fought the Germans from west to east, Morocco to Tunisia,» Buck says, still quiet. He's never told them about his own war, before Steve, before Winter. «And yes, it does. My nose…..it got retuned when I was in Siberia, I guess you could say. Not a lot of trees in the desert, no. But wild, wild lands where no man goes but the veiled nomads.»
*
Names counted on a map in a series of continental divides so far away from home, but not as far as they are right now. The remaining quartet close ranks in their own way, Orel and Matvei on one side of the room, Kyr and Adam as usual never more than arm's reach away when they can avoid such trouble.
«Smells better then,» Orel easily says. He thumbs his sleeve, and pulls it lower, the smooth scar tissue evidence of his damage taken in Russia at its current state. This conclusion drawn satisfies the younger man. Adam keeps combing and looking at his bangs, and then applying the shears to even out a line already microscopically detailed. As he concerns himself with minutiae, his younger counterpart cracks a yawn and blinks owlishly at Bucky, as though any of that makes any sort of reasonable sense.
*
Bucky motions at them. «C'mon. Hot dinner, cooked by one of the best cooks I know. I'll keep anyone away from you guys.» Perfectly willing to cajole them as needed. Buck surveys the pack, ruefully. What a strange little family he's acquired.