A Russian, a German, and a Grecian Demi-Goddess walk into a room

[fight_them_all]

There was an idleness he was unused to in this place. Without lessons, without the barking commands and razor-sharp insinuations of his teachers...Illya felt as lost as he had on that street corner. Even with a belly full of simple, but filling food, warm and able to sleep without fear of interruption, this world was too strange to let him settle. However awful the things said and done to him in the cold walls of his school, it had become familiar. Discomfort and unhappiness the new normal.

He was less nervous in approaching Martin, less afraid the older boy would rebuff his company or turn on him for a foot placed wrong. For every time he had flinched in the expectation of the back of the boy's hand, there had been nothing but a sad twist of a smile. For every discovery of some need Illya had tried to hide until his stomach had growled audibly or his teeth clacked with cold, a hot meal or a push toward bed or an invitation to go put on his coat.

"Could we go out?" he asks, still choosing his words carefully although he hides his hopefulness less well than before.

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[codenamekolibri]

At the question, Martin barely looks up, brow furrowed, not with irritation, but residual concentration. He’s been perched at the kitchen table for a while now, trying to draw up a decent shopping list as well as figure out just how much money he has to spend. If they stick to the essentials everything should be fine, maybe even with enough left over for some more fruit.

“Sure. I have to go to the market, I think. We need more food.” He pauses after he says it, glancing over into the next room at Illya to be certain he didn’t take it the wrong way. Martin has learned to talk carefully around the younger boy, to be certain his words don’t sound as if he is in anyway blaming him for anything. “I think it is because I am eating too much. Like a fat capitalist boss in a movie. Is there anywhere you want to go?”

[fight_them_all]

Only the memory of a hundred, a thousand reprimands keeps Illya's fingers from twining together as he waits for the reply. As he watches the teenager's expression to parse out the reaction to his question (a question he would not have been brave enough to ask when he had first arrived). However careful he schools his expression, his eyes, as always, betray him.

The world outside the small apartment is still too foreign and strange. Without Martin's capability with languages, he would have been lost once already and would again if he attempted to leave without the older boy to see it on his own.

"The park?" he asked, after trying and failing to imagine the teenager as the bulbous image he described. "We used to go to Gorky Park before-". Illya stopped abruptly, then said "I would like to go."

[codenamekolibri]

“The park. Yes, we can do that.” The list is about as done as it will ever be and he tucks it into his pocket as he pushes back from the table. Part of him still feels like he’s walking on eggshells around Illya, guessing when to press and when to let things go, but it’s nice in a strange way too. Like he always imagined having a younger brother might be maybe.

“We can go to the market on the way back.”

The idea of Illya going to the park by himself while Martin takes care of his own business is never even entertained. If he was at home it might be different, but here, in enemy territory... The younger boy is wholly Martin’s responsibility now and he will do everything he can to keep what trust he has earned.

[fight_them_all]

With his shoes neatly tied, hair carefully combed into something like order (and having used water to carefully arrange the part), Illya was ready. A ruler could have been used to check the seams of his clothes and found no fault. And still, he feels lighter than he has in longer than he could remember.

Had Martin checked the bed he had lent the younger boy he would've found it pin straight, with every corner exact and the pillow perfectly placed.

The prospect of the part and then the market is almost too much to hope for. Is, really. The lightness of it feels as if a balloon had been tied to his back collar, and where he is not free enough to bounce about as other children his age might in this new world, he walks less stiffly beside the older boy as they make their way out into the world. Where the world is too large and still borders on overwhelming, he shies away from the worst of it and moves nearer to Martin.

Only in the park does the world seem to settle, and he risks a smile up at his friend. "Are there parks like this where you live?"

[codenamekolibri]

Martin scoffs as he takes in the landscape with a critical eye. “Better. Berlin is much better. Cleaner and bigger too. Where do they put parades here?”

Still, the place does have its benefits and it’s nice to get out of the apartment, away from a life and a future that is a mystery to him, and back to something that he can understand. After all, even a capitalist park is still a park in the end. In fact, they’re really more similar than anything else.

“Maybe I can show you it. If we get out of this place.”

[fight_them_all]

Illya gives a little nod of agreement. Although it is sharp and decisive (or would be, if not for his rounded face and large eyes), it is as much for thinking of the need for parade routes as wanting to agree with the older boy.

The wide paved avenues of Gorky Park are not in this place. No massive fountain stands as a backdrop to the marching men in uniform, although he has the small, almost traitorous thought that such marches would not fit this other city. This other world. He does not leap to answer Martin's invitation as one his age might otherwise have, for all that he felt his heart lodge a second in his throat at the prospect.

"I would like to see your Berlin," he says, carefully, before finding himself distracted by a woman who seems to move like one of the Valkyries of his mother's stories. He stops. Watches with wide eyes. To a child raised among the military-aligned and the careful frailty of the upper classes, she stands out from among those civilians he has seen thus far.

He reaches out to tug the sleeve of the older boy. "Martin," he whispers hurriedly, louder than he means to. "Look!"

[strengthinlove]

Diana can only imagine what Etta would say if she saw today's outfits. Certainly, it's not Amazonian armor, which she would honestly find practical and preferable, but the fitted gray slacks and deep blue cowl sweater she wears are far easier to maneuver in than many of Etta's original options. The man at the department store had assured her, at least, that they were both understated and fashionable.

She's used to turning heads for her height and her posture, which she knows to be far more confident than modern society seems to expect of a woman, but she's not used to children staring at her so.

Immediately, her heart melts at the sight of the angelic little boy and his older companion (brothers?) and she walks over, smiling.