sigmoon - Tumblr blog

sigmoon · 5 days

Text

Wildflowers under the summer rain - Chapter Five: Bittersweet Nightshade

"Healing holy man, once upon a time / hunting high and low to seek revenge / brand new moral code / got made reluctant renegade / evil spirits flowed / he drank the blood like lemonade." (Morcheeba, Blood Like Lemonade)

"And how I tried so hard to hide the pain / what bad temper we're keeping / and so I followed a light into the night / and you kept me waiting in the dark with no place to hide / cause we are more than our disguises." (Weyes Blood, Twin Flame)

Pairing: Fyodor Dostoyevsky x reader

wc: 4.2k

cw: Dark content! Implied self harm (cuts). Implied sexual abuse. Implied depression and suicidal ideation. Implied murder. Religious themes. Implied manipulation/brainwashing. Vague hints about Fyodor’s past. Subtle flirting. Fyodor’s POV.

Author's note: It's been so long since the last chapter, and rereading the first four chapters made me cringe a lot. My writing has changed, and so have my original plans for this story, and the most recent revelations about Fyodor from the manga have interfered with them a bit… I don't want to make promises I might not keep, but I'm sure I won't take 4+ months again until the next update. That being said, enjoy reading part five!

“Man, there are many ability users out there.”

She knelt on the floor, surrounded by a sea of files she’d taken out of the shelf in the corner of Fyodor’s office, and browsed through them one after another.

Fyodor, who sat a few feet away from her at his desk, and was just as busy, had told her to read through the many files he had assembled about various ability users from all around the world. They included detailed descriptions of their supernatural abilities, and Fyodor hoped that at least one of them might be useful for the next missions he’d planned, and replace one of his current subordinates if necessary.

However, he felt no need to entertain her need for conversation, unbothered by the silence between them, unlike her, who tried to fill it by at any given chance.

Though inevitably, Fyodor had learned over time that she was sharper than he’d initially thought.

But he simply had very little interest in wasting his time with a sinner like her, let alone bond with one. She was a useful tool, but it was best to keep her an arm's length away from himself, emotionally.

“Oh hey, look!”

She held up a thin file, no more than a few pages with a small photo stapled on.

It was a bit blurry, but one could still recognize the face of a boy, presumably in his teenage years, with brown, messy hair. One of his dark eyes was covered by white bandages.

“What about him? His gift is… ’ability neutralization.’ That sounds pretty useful, right? I mean, sure, he’s a little young, but–”

“No, not him,” Fyodor said, clipped. He’d looked over his shoulder and recognized the file, or rather the person in the photo.

“Why not?”

“He already works for another organization. He can’t be trusted.”

“Are you sure?” she asked and skimmed through the file again. “Judging by what it says here, he'd make a pretty good hitman, at least."

“Not him,” Fyodor repeated. “Check the other files; and no members of other organizations.”

“So we’re only looking for people in vulnerable and unstable life situations?”

“Correct.”

“Exclusively employing easily manipulated people and desperate losers...good business model you got there. Religions take a similar approach,” she said, putting the file back. Her tone was provocative and her words were meant to be a jab at Fyodor.

“Shut your mouth and get back to work,” Fyodor said sternly. Who did this girl think she was…

“Sorry, I forgot that being reminded of what a terrible person you are is a sensitive topic…” she said and met Fyodor’s cold gaze with a contemptful glare of her own.

“You’ve got quite the nerve calling me a bad person. You’re no better than me,” replied Fyodor.

„Are you serious? I might not be a saint, but you’re a lot worse than I am. Yes, I’ve hurt people, but I didn’t kill any of them, and you’ve built an entire organization that does nothing but spill blood because their leader is some delusional fanatic who believes it’s for the greater good.“

Much as she was pushing her luck with him, and despite his anger, Fyodor grinned mockingly as she spat insults at him.

„You clearly do not understand my lifework one bit, but that was to be expected of someone like you. Impulsively going on a purging spree because someone took your dignity, only to get locked up and not change a single thing, not even for yourself. Pathetic,“ he hissed right back.

„Did it feel good, at least? Because I can assure you that your adorable little plan to rid the world of evil was entirely self-indulgent and did not help anyone in need, not even yourself. Why else would you see so little meaning in your life if not because getting revenge did not free you of the shackles that person apparently still has you in? You’re still as miserable as you were before, aren’t you?“

“You don’t know anything about me, you sick fuck!” she growled and trembled with fury. The way she eyed Fyodor betrayed her apparent desire to pounce him and tear him apart.

“I don’t have to; that deranged look on your face speaks volumes," Fyodor said coldly, but as soon as the words had gone past his lips, he realized that he’d gone too far. Her face was no longer twisted in outrage but in genuine hurt and humiliation.

Her efforts to hide it were unsuccessful– Fyodor saw her lower lip quivering, like that of a child about to burst into tears.

He wondered how she'd managed to agitate him like that once again. Insults were not usually his style, and neither was lashing out at people.

He cleared his throat and calmly, he added: "What I know for sure is that vengeance is never worth it. Not the effort, nor the blood that's being spilled...and especially not the remorse that comes after, either."

"It’s better than doing nothing about the things others have done to you," she whispered.

“And it’s ironic how you’re judging me for how strongly my past affects me when your entire life’s purpose depends on the words that someone else has put inside your head.”

“I never expected you to share my beliefs, or to understand them.”

“I wasn’t talking about your god, and I think you know it,” she said with the same penetrating expression that had made Fyodor so uneasy since the day they’d met.

“Sucks to hear it, huh?” She said, amused by the aghast look on Fyodor’s face. “You’re just as controlled by your past as I am, but I’m trying to escape that grip, while you succumb to it. You’re someone’s little puppet, and yet you believe that you’re acting on your own accord."

Fyodor swallowed hard and tried to make sense of his racing thoughts.

There was no way she could know...Fyodor had never spoken about his past in her presence. Not like he did around anyone else, ever. And how on earth could she possibly know about him?

No, she only enjoyed taunting him by making provocative assumptions. She was only playing a mind game, in hopes to rile him up.

Or was it her ability’s doing? Fyodor’s information about her ability was vague, but he knew that she could make people suffer a great deal by using it, so it wasn’t far-fetched that she was trying to do this to him as well.

After all, she was vicious, unstable, and, despite their teamwork, a dangerous individual.

“You’re being ridiculous…I’m ending this conversation now,” Fyodor murmured and turned away in his office chair, shaken up, and attempting to keep his composure.

His underling seemed just as fed up with their argument as he was. She pulled out another file from the shelf and browsed through it.

“What about him?” she sniffed. Her voice was shaky, her eyes glistening with tears that threatened to fall. “He can create portals.”

The file she was showing Fyodor now was significantly thicker than the previous one. Fyodor recognized it immediately; he’d been working on it for a fair amount of time now, as the ability user it was about had already piqued his interest a while ago.

He hadn’t been quite sure how to utilize him so far, but Fyodor was convinced that when the time was right, he would make for a valuable accomplice.

“We’ll keep an eye on him.”

━━━━━

Fyodor let his head fall back against the headrest of his office chair.

It was late, he’d been ignoring his body’s cries for rest for hours and was now nearing his mental and physical limits.

Working himself to the bone wasn’t rare, and though the price he paid was high, Fyodor deemed it necessary, willing to do everything in his might to get the job done.

His head was pounding, and he closed his eyes with a sigh of resignation, thinking about today’s incident.

His underling was not an easy person to have a conversation with, and maybe, under different circumstances, Fyodor would have appreciated someone to talk to who wasn’t as dull as the rest of the people he was surrounded by.

However, while he appreciated her desire for autonomy - a trait that his other subordinates lacked - broadening his horizon by constantly questioning his every sentence wasn’t what he’d hired her for.

She didn’t seem to have a shred of respect for him or what he stood for, and Fyodor was fed up with defending what was holy to him against a lowly sinner like her.

He stared at the ceiling above him and gnawed on his thumb as he reveled in his thoughts. While she wasn’t as degenerate as others he considered a pest in this world, her mind and hands were tainted with sin. And just like everyone else, she refused to see it.

She was not at fault for what had been done to her, Fyodor knew that, but he firmly believed that she was to blame for how she’d dealt with it.

Fyodor could even see why she’d decided to walk down the path of bloodthirsty revenge, an understandable desire, after being violated by another person, but still, it was not her rightful place to deliver punishment on those who deserve it, but his.

And always that damned expression on her face. Fyodor was unfazed by all kinds of horrors, having seen and done a lot, but the way her stare pierced through him as if she could see his soul creeped him out.

She knew things that she couldn’t possibly know, because Fyodor had never spoken about them with anyone, ever. But he had a feeling that she still knew, and he didn’t like it one bit.

Other than that, he had yet to figure out what exactly her ability enabled her to do. She hadn’t told him anything, and Fyodor wasn’t as almighty as people thought he was. Skilled at seeing through people by analyzing their speech and behavior, yes, or getting someone to reveal information about themselves without even realizing they’d been interrogated, but even Fyodor’s intelligence had its limits.

He assumed that her ability went beyond enabling her to inflict severe white torture upon people, which was the only proven knowledge he had about it. It would have been naive to believe that there wasn’t more to it than that.

Sometimes, when Fyodor felt his patience run out, he stooped to taking his irritation out on her by voicing how little value she had to him as a person and pointing out his superiority over her.

He wasn’t proud of participating in this infantile tug-on war between them, and it upset him that she had the power over him to get such petty reactions out of him.

Their discussions, no, her entire being only proved Fyodor’s point; most people failed to comprehend his mission– that they had to be saved from the misery that they were either put through by someone else or managed to maneuver themselves into.

Both were the case for her and - while it was uncomfortable to admit - it was for Fyodor, too.

In this world, nobody was free of sin forever. No matter how hard one tried, it would get to them at some point, and someone needed to put an end to this vicious cycle. Even if it required sacrifices.

Fyodor was more than willing to die on a cross and take those who stood in his way with him if it was for the sake of a better world.

A metallic taste spread on his tongue, and he retracted his hand to inspect it. A drop of blood oozed from his bitten nail bed, and Fyodor watched it trickle down the length of his thumb before bringing it back to his lips and licking it clean.

The sound of distant footsteps, slowly approaching, followed by the creaking of his door, pulled Fyodor out of his thoughts.

He knew that this late visitor could only be her, but her presence was not reason enough for him to drop everything and turn around.

„Aren’t you a bit too old to be suckling on your thumb?“

Fyodor didn’t reply to the voice coming from a few feet behind him. Even if he had felt like entertaining another argument, he would’ve been far too exhausted for that.

He felt miserable; his eyeballs were dry and stung, and his head still ached; telltale signs that he ought to abandon his screens and make up for the lack of sleep these days. Fyodor knew that he wasn’t doing his already strained body any favor, but there was work to do, too important to be postponed.

„No witty comeback?“ she asked when Fyodor stayed silent. „I’m just saying that you’ve got quite a bad habit with your nail biting.“

„That makes two of us,“ Fyodor said, looking at her over his shoulder, and he briefly nodded at her forearms.

Usually covered by her daytime attire, they were now exposed, the sleeves of her t-shirt barely reaching her elbows. The tender skin revealed was uneven, with multiple streaks of scar tissue betraying that she was no stranger to unhealthy coping, either.

Fyodor could tell that the cuts were not inflicted recently, but rather several months, if not years ago, as they looked mostly healed, as far as injuries like such could.

Still, he murmured: „You might want to give me that gun back I gave you some time ago.“

„Are you worried about me?“ she smirked, her tone surprisingly sober, considering the topic that hung in the air.

„No, but I don’t want to be the one scrubbing your brain off of the floor one day.“

„I‘m sure you wouldn’t have to,“ she replied and approached his desk. She took a seat on a chair next to Fyodor’s. „You’ve got plenty of lackeys who’d do anything for you, even that.“

„Still, I have no interest in losing my most valuable subordinate.“

“So you do care about me.” she grinned, but Fyodor wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of believing he liked her, which he didn’t. If he did, and he’d told her, she’d only be going to exploit it.

„I do not,“ Fyodor repeated. „But the others lack the competence that you have.“

„Is that a compliment? Are you promoting me?“

“It’s a matter of fact, not flattery. But I might think about assigning you with other tasks,“ Fyodor said, tilting his head and resting it in his palm. A small smile tugged on the corners of his mouth. „If I don’t keep you busy, you will just keep pestering me.”

„That’s great,“ she smiled back. „But if you make me babysit Ivan and Pushkin, I will use my gun.“

„To kill them or yourself?“

„All three of us, in that order,“ she said, and Fyodor finally chuckled, though he blamed the slip-up on his tiredness.

He was certain that his exhaustion was to blame for this conversation even happening, as he rarely had any interest in speaking with her, or so he thought, as he’d never given her a proper chance to prove herself worthy of sharing his few moments of spare time.

Neither of them said anything for a minute or two, the dim light coming from Fyodor’s computer screens painting the room, as well as their faces, in a soft purple, enhancing both of their weary expressions, and Fyodor could see that just like him, she had dark shadows beneath her eyes as she looked past him.

“Why are you awake at this hour?” Fyodor was the first to break the silence.

“I could ask you the same thing,” she said firmly, no trace of the lightness from just a moment ago left.

“I asked first,” Fyodor replied, but he didn’t expect her to open up. She’d never been eager to do so, and he doubted she would be now.

She scowled at him but sighed, and leaned back into her seat. “I had a bad dream.”

“About…?”

“Yes,” she said quickly, cutting him off.

Fyodor was on thin ice. He had to be careful, otherwise, this opportunity of taking advantage of her vulnerable state would pass, without having gotten any new information about her.

Fyodor was aware of this risk, and yet he asked: „Has hurting others made your suffering more bearable?“

She didn’t respond at first, and Fyodor already feared he’d lost his chance. But after pausing for a moment, she said: „Momentarily, yes. But the satisfaction, the relief– it didn’t last. What did last, was this rotten stuff inside of me. I’ve hoped that if I just kept doing it…then it might finally go away.“

„But it didn’t,” Fyodor said confidently, though he could only guess what she meant by the ‘rotten stuff’.

„No. The damage done stuck around, I guess.”

“I see. You never told me what your ability does, by the way.”

“Don’t you know?" she asked. “You’ve seen me use it.”

“But that is not all it does, am I right?” Fyodor insisted. As talkative as she was on occasion, she wasn’t easy to read.

“Why would you think that?”

“Because you know things you can’t possibly know,” said Fyodor.

“So I was right?”

“About what?”

“About you being someone’s puppet. Your actions are influenced, your entire plan is.”

Fyodor felt disrespected, even more than whenever she dragged his lifework through dirt, the very thing he’d gone through hell and back for.

What fueled the humiliation was that she wasn’t entirely wrong, but Fyodor didn’t want her to have the upper hand in this. However, the time spent trying to come up with a response only confirmed her accusation.

“I was only taking a guess, actually, I’m not a mindreader. But thanks for confirming my theory. I had a feeling that there’s more to this all than just your faith.”

Fyodor’s expression must've looked hilarious to her, as she giggled. “Don’t look so grim. It doesn’t take an ability to figure out that you have issues.”

There was a deep line between Fyodor’s furrowed brows, and he clenched his jaw.

Was she, perhaps, able to deduce someone’s feelings simply due to a high level of empathy and emotional intelligence, even without the help of a supernatural ability?

“Wanna tell me about it?” She asked, disturbing the silence, as well as Fyodor’s train of thought.

“Absolutely not.”

„Come on,“ she pleaded. „I don’t mean to make fun of you, I promise. I just think it would be helpful for us to understand each other better. I’m sure I wouldn’t despise you as much if I fully understood what all of this is really about.”

„And why do you care?”

Tight-lipped, she fidgeted with her hands as she struggled for words. “Well…Because you’re not boring, as much as I don't like you.“

"Oh?"

“Now, don’t mistake this as flattery, but you're really smart. You could be anything you wanted, and why would you make use of your potential the way you are right now,” she asked, “if not because someone convinced you that this is your sole purpose?”

“You’re both right and wrong,” Fyodor said solemnly. “It was someone else’s words, but the power of many that made me realize what my purpose is.”

“What, becoming a terrorist?”

He scowled. “No. That I must change the world, no matter the price. Sacrifices are inevitable, and no, I am not indifferent about that. I know that the measures I’m taking are drastic at times, but it all happens for a reason.”

“Ugh…” She grimaced and pretended to retch.

“I don’t care if you understand my reasoning here, but I know that those who end up being sacrificed for my plan will be rewarded when my work is done. Because then, all the lost souls will be granted salvation. God has mercy on those who deserve it, and I am creating a world with no room for those who don’t, which is why I assumed that you would gladly assist me when I had you brought here,” Fyodor said. "After all, what you did was similar to my plan. Bungling, lacking skill and precision, but of the same essence. That’s the whole reason I wanted you as my right hand.”

“First of all, rude, and secondly, I lost interest in cooperating with you when you started preaching about god and salivating as you did so.”

“Cut the blasphemy if you want this conversation to continue,” Fyodor hissed.

“Fine, fine. But a world devoid of evil and ability users? That goal is quite hypocritical, considering that you are an ability user yourself.”

“Abilities are part of the problem, which is the sin, infiltrating and corrupting people. They do more harm than good. I seek to free the world of this burden. Mankind is foolish and people need to be saved from themselves. Even you must agree, no?”

“Yes, though I wouldn’t have assigned you, of all people, with that task. You’re a menace.”

“Well, some people have thought differently in the past.”

“In other words, you’ve been manipulated. A person of your intellect would never come up with this crap all by themselves and let it dictate their life.”

“Call it what you want– I have lived a long life, long enough to know that I am the one destined to fulfill God's plan.”

“You can’t be that old,” she said, tilting her head and inspecting Fyodor’s face.

“Clearly, you don’t know as much as you think you do. Not about the world, and certainly not about me,” he said.

“Then enlighten me. Tell me about yourself.”

All of Fyodor’s resistance was futile. He felt weak and disgustingly vulnerable. The way she spoke, the way she looked at him; it all made him want to open up his heart, and spill everything he’d safely locked inside it over the years, just to get more of this new feeling– the sweet relief that he’d felt when she first made it clear that she wasn’t so easily fooled by his facade. The relief of having some weight lifted off of his shoulders.

“I feel with every person who's died at my hands, directly and indirectly. And I wish there was another way to change the world than wiping out the sinful parts of the population like they’re parasites and doing so at the cost of innocents. But I’ve been assigned this task, by God himself, and I must complete it, so no one else has to taint themself like I do. This means everything to me…all the lost souls, even the evil ones, will be forgiven for their sins and granted a second chance, but I…I’ve got blood on my hands that I cannot wash off, and I know that I won’t be granted a place in the new world I intend to create."

“That’s really fucking sad,” she said once Fyodor had finished.

“Hm.” He shrugged. “Anyway, there is a specific tool that will enable me to achieve all of this, a very powerful one. And I need to get it, at all costs.”

“What kind of tool?”

“A book. A novel, to be precise, with all blank pages, and whatever is written inside becomes reality. Getting my hands on it is difficult, and requires resorting to drastic measures, but once it’s in my possession, nobody will have to suffer anymore.”

“I understand,” she replied. “And do you think you’ll be able to find peace if your plan works out?”

“What? I’m not the one with issues, and I don't need your pity!” Fyodor said with a dark glare. He was angry, especially at himself, for blabbering with no restraint.

“Sure you don’t,” she said mockingly. “You might be fooling yourself, but not me. Look, I have no idea who made you carry the weight of the whole world all by yourself, but I can’t sit here, watching you approach this problem the way that you are. Surely, there must be a way to get that book with less mass destruction along the way.”

“Don't you think I'm already trying to avoid unnecessary suffering?”

“Yeah, no, I don’t believe you are. We might have a similar goal, but our approaches are worlds apart. And to be honest, I have little respect and understanding for your strategy.”

Fyodor rolled his eyes. “Yes, you’ve told me already. I lost count of how often.”

She smiled. “And you will hear it again. Just please, let me do more than interrogation, let me actually partake in this plan. I don’t care about hurting evil people if it’s necessary, but unlike you, I don’t believe in the afterlife, so I don’t want innocents to die because of us.” She then held out her hand, waiting for Fyodor to shake it. “Deal?”

“Fine, I can live with that. Yes, we have a deal,” Fyodor said, after a last moment of hesitation, and shook her hand; smaller, softer, but just as cold as his, causing chills to run down his spine. His gaze flicked down to look at the streaks on her forearms, and then up to her face, where a pair of eyes stared back at him, with an indefinable expression.

Fyodor had yet to realize that he knew far less about this sinner, as well as about himself, than he’d initially thought, and about how deeply her fate was to affect his own.

This handshake, their first touch, was only the beginning of a series of events that was going to turn Fyodor’s world upside down.

#self rb

25 notes · View notes

sigmoon · 8 days