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The door creaks open as the candle flickers, and the light filtering in through the window falls on a pale, young face - she stops in the hall way, the door half open, and the shadow of a smile touches her lips briefly. FOUND HIM. Sonya steps deliberately slowly into the room, pausing for a moment in the middle of it.  “Hello, Nikolushka.” Voice soft in greeting as she crosses the room - Sonya sighs and reaches out to ruffle his hair slightly, and sits down beside him on the piano bench. She doesn’t tell him THEY LOVE HIM, or in fact, any of the things Natasha used to tell her when they overheard the count and countess discussing “the Problem of little Sonya” on the occasion  - only sits in silent understanding. As a child she had known they loved her AS WELL AS THEY COULD, and that was all she could ask for, wasn’t it? But children knew, children always know - whether or not you like them. Not that Nikolai had ever really BOTHERED to hide how he felt. It’s strange and not at the same time, she thinks, that he could take after his mother like that. Offers a slight smile as she uncovers the keys. “...Would you like to learn?” 

@personnages​   /   aunt sonya here to love on the baby

[sncwfated]

A STARLESS night - frost flowers crept, carefully, up the windowpane and yet she did not feel the chill standing so close to it.  There was a FRIGHTENING warmth in her - reddened cheek and carefully curled close hands, a warmth so vast and ever-expanding that she did not know what to do with it. If the snow touched her now, would it melt on her skin? 

“The...ball?” Echoed, voice soft. That profile appeared once more in her peripherals, that gaze again burning on her face. A pause. “I thought it was pleasant.” Not entirely a falsehood - at the ball she had spun from one end of the room to another, and spun her thoughts quite out of order, and no amount of reliving and studying the letters of a distant past under a flickering candle that she knew MUST GO OUT would put them back together again. But - there was that slow and unwinding warmth she felt, bursting through windows and doors as though it could fill the very world. But she couldn’t very well tell him that - couldn’t very well tell him that in spite of everything, it frightened her not to be so frightened of HIM after all.  

Instead she bites her lip. “I - I don’t think I’ve ever danced so much in my life. And how did you like the ball, Prince Bolkonsky? You seem...changed, since our last meeting in Otradnoe.”

ANDREI | starter for @sncwfated​, for Sonya

The day after the ball, Prince Andrei had called on the Rostovs and been invited both to stay for dinner and to visit once more. A few days later, he went to the house for dinner, as the Count had pressed his invitation, and spent almost the whole afternoon with them. He had wanted to talk more with Sonya, but the family – with a somewhat confused yet courteous air – had been introducing him to Natasha, even though they had met at Otradnoe.

Finally, as she was standing by a window, he excused himself from his conversation with the Count and went to go stand with her, though he did not look out the window. He looked at her instead, and found within him that same gentle feeling that had bloomed in him at the ball. Across the room, someone had started to play the clavichord. “How did you find the ball, Miss Rostova?” he asked, simply wanting a pretext to open conversation and hear her speak.

[sncwfated]

post 9 songs that remind you of your muse, then tag 9 people to do the same

SONYA ALEXANDROVNA ROSTOVA

The Tower - Vienna Teng 

Fidelity - Regina Spektor

Burned Out - Dodie Clark

Cynics vs Dreamers - Zella Day

Brightside - Nate Ruess

Green Light - Lorde

Hurt Me Once - Ben Platt

Let Me In - Rigoletto

Please Leave a Light on When You Go - Fun.

tagged by @personnages​

tagging : whoever wanna!!

[sncwfated]

“I am not what you BELIEVE of me, dear heart.” Sardonic twist at lip, tensed muscle jumping faintly in forearm. Red wine in glass swirls like a STORM - red blood, red hands, red sun risen. The irony is not lost on him, that the war is warmer than he is. Andrei does not look at Pierre, and instead into the DARKNESS - the starless night, still snow atop a frozen lake, the world hanging between seconds. The void which looks back at a man when he has looked into it enough. But he is not afraid of the void - for he knew in his soul, that he is made of the same thing that it is made of, that VAST, OPEN EMPTINESS that sits in the pit of his stomach even now, with company and firelight. Is it damning, that he found more peace lying bloodied and broken, between life and death, rage and serenity, than he ever did in the captive, deafening roar of Bald Hills’ silence? His world on fire was only ever QUIET when he was on fire. “ - I’m afraid there’s not an OUNCE of divinity in me, even if you should like to look.”

@personnages​ / I tried -shrug emoji-

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HOW can anyone sleep? There was never such a NIGHT before.

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personnages // ANDREI :

Sonya ducked her head against his hand, and Prince Andrei knew that she had started to cry by the cool wetness against his skin, still unnaturally warm. His gaze roamed briefly past her to the door. It stood closed and dark. He knew she usually tried to hide her tears and therefore felt as if he should pretend he hadn’t seen them, for her sake; yet his gaze soon returned to her almost as if against his will. His eyes seemed to glitter in the half-dark, and he looked at her with tenderness, meeting her gaze as she lifted it once more. 

The pain from his wound still stretched and pounded against his side, insistent and stabbing, and if Sonya were not here, Prince Andrei did not think he would be able to keep his eyes open for much longer. “Yes,” he said in response. “You have. My dear… what happiness.” He felt as if the shadows were lengthening in the room. The candle seemed to have gotten dimmer.

As she continued to speak, Prince Andrei kept his gaze as fixed on her face as he could, as if he might look away and find that she had gone. Her touch on the back of his hand seemed to make his eyelashes heavy. He blinked slowly, having the feeling that she had just told him something very important, but the thought was slipping away from him as the pain seemed to throb insistently. “The children. Kiss them for me,” he heard himself say, and there was something that seemed to hitch then, and there was a ringing in his ears, and he lost consciousness.

The door scraped open as the doctor came in, carrying a new candle, as he had just been roused from bed. “Your Excellency, you must let him rest, please.”

She started from her chair, Andrei’s hand slipping, limp but still warm, from her grasp. With lost eyes she looked to the man in the doorway - “Doctor.” Vaguely recognized that her voice shook, and against the dim light of two candles, one long and the other short, the shadows bent and melted together on the wall, and the tear tracks on her face glistened. She curled her hand into her skirt. Silent for a long moment, willing herself to still. “ - I’m sorry. I lost track of time.” Rises, more steady than before, voice composed, and in a haze as she makes her way to the door. “I’ll take my leave - but please, if I may, I’d like to speak to you in the morning.”

Natasha was waiting outside to take her down the hall, where Sonya mechanically removed her travel clothes, and slipped into a spare house gown, before going to see the children. Asleep already - but she kissed them both, for her own sake as well as that of their father - and watched Nikolushka mumble in his dream with a tired, fond smile, and stood over little Katusha for a while. She should sleep while she can she knows, before the infant would wake - but she finds that she couldn’t, anyway. In their quiet breathing she found some sort of solace, and so she sits at the vanity in the adjoining room, silent as not to wake the children.

Sonya didn’t sleep that night - fed Katusha at the necessary intervals and then soothed the baby back to sleep. In the mirror, stretching infinitely inward, she saw neither coffin nor man, as she once told Natasha one always saw, but only her own haggard face looking back at her, steel blue eyes and russet hair like dried blood. What did it mean, for the future? She couldn’t tell, fingers numb and cold. There was no warmth - not at night. She must wait for the morning. Just when she thought the night was going to last forever the light broke in through the window - the sun must come after all.

When it was possible to leave the children in the care of Natasha and the Countess once more, and it was deemed to be a reasonable hour, Sonya again crept down the hall and into the room she had only known by candlelight. Ready for the sun to wash it anew.

[sncwfated]

personnages· // ANDREI :

When Sonya spoke, Prince Andrei understood her to be real, and living, and beside him. A ghost of a laugh escaped from his dry lips at her words, though he winced slightly at the tremor it caused in his side. Sonya seemed to make everything real, the happiness and pain alike. “I love you,” Prince Andrei told her. Her touch on his face seemed to fill him with an innumerable relief.

He really looked at her now, as best as he was able, and saw that she was in travelling clothes, and looked very tired, as if she had not slept well for days. “Have you…” Prince Andrei had to stop and take a breath, for his mouth was so dry that the words seemed to choke in his throat. He realized how tired he was in that moment, and the pain he was in, and his hand went slightly limp in hers before he drew upon his limited strength again. “Have you been here long?” he said, realizing he was not sure where they were. He could hear muffled voices in the next room, and recognized them to be Count Rostov, Countess Rostova, and Natasha.

The candle flame barely illuminated Sonya’s face, casting shadows on the walls and in her hair. Her eyes were bright, and Prince Andrei realized they were caught with tears. He wanted, then, to reach and wipe them from her eyes, but could only manage the strength to tighten his grip on her hand slightly. That relief he felt, seeing she was here and real, seemed to wash over him again.

“ - I love you.” Voice cracked - and tears slipped from her eyes then, even though she told herself she wouldn’t cry - dashed her cheeks warm and wet, washed away the last of the cold clinging to her being. She loved him. It was not the first time she realized this but - she loved him so deeply it ACHED. Sonya hid her face in his hand momentarily, unable to look. Unable to examine the realities hidden within the folds of the stark shadows, the warm yellow of firelight.  His grip had tightened around hers and she pressed her lips to the knuckles, tried to smile. “Save your strength, sweet heart. I’m alright - I’ve got you, haven’t I?”

She would have to speak to the doctor in the morning. There were many people she had to speak to. But her heart was stuck here, stuck on him, stuck on the stillness of this room. There was no frenzy in her soul, only quiet trepidation, in this room with its thick air and starless ceiling and long shadows, always flickering between dawn and dusk. 

 “Not long.” Sniffed finally, dragging the back of her hand across her face, smile no longer trembling. Tracing gentle circles into the back of his hand. “An hour, maybe, two at most.” The trek to where the Rostovs had written from was long and hard to make. Even more so with the children. She could not think that she might be too late on the way - could not even consider the possibility. “I left Nikolushka and te baby with my aunt and came straight to you - ” Remembered suddenly. “ - You’ve a daughter now. Katusha - after your mother, like we talked about.”

[sncwfated]

Andrei was not awake, when she was finally shown to the room. For a moment, despite all she told herself, everything she tried to hold onto for everyone’s sake, her heart had STOPPED in her chest at the sight, blood roaring in her ears until she was at his side, until his hand was pressed into hers and she could feel the warmth of his palm and she could CRY from relief. Here was the man who promised, in a way she knew meant he MEANT IT - that he would come home. Here was a man who had pressed her hand before he left for war, the man who’s silhouette she traced with a soft gaze only a short while before it disappeared into the horizon, a man who had left when their daughter was barely formed, who could now hold the pink, squirming bundle in his arms.

Smiled, strained, at Natasha, who was kind enough to close the door on the way out.  The Rostovs had all tried to tell her many things and asked her many questions since she had been in the house - only meaning the best, of course, Natasha in her barely concealed anxiety, the Count his pacing worrying, and of course, the pity that seems to seep from Countess Natalya’s UNUSUALLY motherly voice. Sonya barely comprehended them, having only enough presence of mind to turn Nikolushka and little Katya over to the waiting arms, to kiss them both and to promise to join them again very soon.

She sits, waiting, for longer than she knows, shorter than she imagines, fingers curled tightly into the folds of her skirt lest she shakes apart at the seams. The endless night beside a flickering candle. For the longest time she had tried to convince herself that all was well, that one must carry on living - and she will, she had to - but it never managed to STOP the world from standing still. 

BREATHES AGAIN, finally at the sight of his eyes, blue like the sky of pale spring morning, frost flowers on windowpanes melting away. Blinking away HOT TEARS at the way his voice falls over the syllables, hoarse but warm - she reaches out to push matted hair away from his face, traces fingers lightly over his cheek, laugh choked with sorrow and happiness  - “Yes, it’s me.” Kisses the hand held between hers - “Your very irate wife, who’s too good to scold you when you’re ill.”

Perhaps in the end, HOME CAME TO HIM. But the distinction hardly mattered now.

ANDREI | @sncwfated​ that sonyandrei thread we plotted literally like fifteen minutes ago

For Prince Andrei, the past few days had gone by in a haze of motion and sound, as the Rostovs had transported the injured man with them out of Moscow. The Count and Countess, as well as Natasha, barely knew what to think of his chance of survival. They’d sent a letter to Sonya and one to his sister, Marya Nikolaevna, but they had no way of knowing whether either woman was on her way.

Today, his blue eyes had been blinking open and closed at the wall, and he’d spoken briefly to the doctor in a weak and quiet voice. He did not know who was with him, only that occasionally faces and voices came and went, and that they were all vaguely familiar. The faces and voices had stopped their peeking in because it was now evening, and Prince Andrei, laying on his back, looked at the ceiling of the mostly-dark room. There was a candle lit on a side table next to him. He turned his head slowly, and looked at it. The flame wavered and danced as the wind trickled trough the rough walls. He could vaguely hear people talking, but it sounded as if they were very far off. He heard a loud sound, but could not think of what it was. There was a thing in the doorway, stretched and unnatural, and as he looked at it, everything was painful, and he begged someone to let him be before losing consciousness again. When he came to, he realized that there was someone sitting next to the table by the candle, and then he realized it was his wife. 

Prince Andrei smiled, his lips cracked and dry, his voice quiet and rough as he stirred slightly. He met Sonya’s eyes. “You… My dear.”

[sncwfated]

“No, I remember, it’s just - that’s not exactly what I meant.” Brow creases SLIGHTLY - how to say what she wants to say, now that she’s begun? Fingers twist round and round the base of her champagne glass. Sonya regrets that she had opened her mouth at all, but - she’d known him the moment she saw him, the set of his shoulders, the look on his face -

Squeezes eyes shut. “What I mean is - um, the first time I met you, I was at the piano, and Natasha was singing. Then I tried to make myself invisible in one corner of the drawing room and it didn’t work.” Bites her lip, eyes fluttering open as she looks at him, hopes he doesn’t think she’s lost her mind - “Any of that ring a bell?”

@personnages​ / continued

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" So , since you & Anya are together , does this make you a romantic mush ball ? " Valerie asks as she crosses her arms with a small grin - Dima !

“I’m not a - ROMANTIC MUSH OF ANYTHING, thank you VERY much.” Lips curl up in a poor imitation of disgust which one is more likely to call a grin - eyes already soft in the comically fake hard set of the man’s face. A grimace, slightly more real, overtakes his face - ah, he’s really losing his touch.  “That’s Vlad you’re thinking of. He’s a bothersome old peacock now that he’s got his Countess to think of. But Anya and I, we’re - we’re happy. Really happy.” Well - he’d retired from the job since refusing the reward for the youngest Grand Duchess’s safe return anyway - and life has given him a far HAPPIER reward for his singular act of goodness.

@timidstrcngth / here’s a sappy dima for ya

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[ dunya💋 has changed the group name to Kirill, Dunya, Bory’enka, Kosten’ka]

dunya💋: because, my dear kosten’ka

dunya💋: bory’enka hasn’t stopped looking like he wants to bludgeon you to death since

BORIS: 😠😠😠

dunya💋: and while red is certainly a romantic color it’s a pain to clean off carpets

dunya💋:  ❤️ awww love you too bory’enka

dunya💋: happy valentine’s day! have we decided on the bouquet for mom???

dunya💋: give my best to Olya!!

KIRLL | valentine’s day text shenanigans with @sncwfated Dunya, featuring their younger siblings

[Kirill has changed the group name to Kirill, Dunya, Boris, Kostya]

Kirill: Happy Valentine’s Day! Don’t forget to call Mom.

kostya 🐻: why do you hate fun and emojis

kostya 🐻: why did you change bory’enka back to boris

kostya 🐻: there was nothing wrong with the old chat name

[kostya 🐻 has changed the group name to 🥕🍨🇷🇺]

[sncwfated]

please  leave  a  light  on  when  you  go  .  /  @personnages,  happy belated birthday,  lynna!

[sncwfated]

Smile barely contained by the corners of lips as if confessing to the other woman a great secret - Dunya does not sit on ceremony as befitting such a drawing room and its atmosphere, the permeating spell of silence and severe features of a grand old house. Instead she leans ever so slightly, curve of shoulder rounded forward, voice low and warm.  “ - No, not very long at all. In fact, I’ve barely stepped off the coach and whisked straight into your drawing room.” This house does not intimidate her so much as she had thought it might, marching past dark doors that seem to mute all sound and light. In fact, it merely made her DETERMINED - defiant and ready to burn, to smile within its constraints regardless.

It has been long years since she’s met with Marya Nikolaevna - who is, if possible, even more ELUSIVE in society than her brother. The Bolkonskies have never been particularly keen on being in the company of others - well, save dear Lise, perhaps, GOD REST HER SOUL. Dunya and her mother are capable of disagreeing rather violently with each other, but on this matter at least they are of similar opinion - Princess Marya is a LOVELY young lady and ought to enjoy such companionship and pursuits as a young lady ought at this time in her life, and not be hindered by her crotchety father.

“I’m afraid I’m quite LOST in Moscow, dear Princess - you shall have to be my guide, even if you’ve not been long here either.” Dark eyes glittering as she regards this woman she had known as a child - had led around down corridors and through drawing rooms in some CHILDISH adventure, once upon a time. “Ah, you may call me Dunya, of course - Eudocie is a bit of a STRETCH.” Winks. “I believe Maman did it that way on purpose, and now I call her Maman to spite her.”  

MARYA | starter for @sncwfated, for Dunya

Life in Moscow was not pleasant for Princess Marya. Though in the countryside, the solitude of Bald Hills was comforting and a solace, in Moscow it seemed oppressive. Princess Marya was acutely aware that there was an entire city full of people that were calling on each other and doing all the things that society does and that she was excluded from them, as she could not go without her father, who was too ill and old to leave the house on Vzdvizhenka Street. They received very little visitors, and if they did, they were usually the old kind of men that the old prince knew from his service as a young man.

However, today the house was receiving Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova and her daughter, Princess Tverskaya. Marya Dmitrievna and the old prince were old friends and knew each other and their respective children quite well from childhood. Apparently Princess Tverskaya, who usually lived in Petersburg, was visiting her mother, and so Marya Dmitrievna had brought her along so the two younger women could renew their acquaintance. Princess Marya had not thought about Avdotya Mikhailovna in some time, and had spent the morning alternating between happy remembrances and the sure feeling that she would be disappointed, as with Julie Karagina.

The two older people had left the two younger women in the drawing room. Princess Marya was grateful that Mlle Bourienne was at that moment absent; though it meant that she was all alone to receive Princess Avdotya, the princess felt freer to converse without her there. Princess Marya was quiet and timid as she turned to Princess Tverskaya, though somehow the other woman and her  mother had inspired a small smile on the princess’ face. She did not know what to say to Princess Tverskaya. “Have you been in Moscow for a long time?”

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instead of doing anything today I just went out and watched the new st.ar w.ars movie. i have..................................mixed feelings

[sncwfated]

you know, it’s still d u s t y as h e l l , but if anyone wants a mini starter…………….hit the heart <3 specify muse or I’ll cry on you <3

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"Wasn’t me. I didn’t touch ANYTHING - ” Both hands up, wearing his most innocent expression, even though he’s already guiltily toeing the shards under the carpet - Dmitry isn’t particularly keen to be flayed alive by the older grand duchess (or, even worse, Countess Lily) for the thorough DESTRUCTION of the vase that once stood upon the drawing room table. “ - That is entirely the work of your little sister.” Sniffs childishly. eyeing the mess of shards and flowers and dark patch of water soaking into the carpet. “And maybe Vlad. I’m just fixing the scene of the crime.” Blinks large eyes. “Cross my heart.”

@guvernantka​ hit the heart !

[sncwfated]

you know, it’s still d u s t y as h e l l , but if anyone wants a mini starter................hit the heart <3 specify muse or I’ll cry on you <3