"No." A small smile touched her lips. "With her, I could just be. Too much, not enough—she didn't care about any of that. She just handed me paints and let me make the mess I needed to make."
I understood something then. Why art was so private for her. It wasn't just skill or hobby—it was the one space where she'd been allowed to exist without performance.
"What happened to her?"
"Cancer. I was nineteen." The smile faded. "She left me her brushes. Her easel. I haven't used them since."
The burrata arrived. We both ignored it.
"What about you?" she asked quietly. "You said painting was an escape. Escape from what?"
I'd known this question was coming. Had prepared for it, in my way—rehearsed the careful version of my history that omitted the worst details.
But sitting here with her, in this dim booth with candles flickering and wine warming my blood, I didn't want the careful version.
I wanted the truth.
"My father was a good man," I said slowly. "By Besharov standards, at least. But he died when I was twelve, and after that—" I paused. Chose my words. "My grandfather raised us. Nikolai, Konstantin, me. He loved us, in his way. But love in our family came with expectations. Duties. Violence we had to witness and eventually participate in."
She didn't flinch. Just listened, grey-green eyes steady on my face.
"I was the youngest," I continued. "The least physical. Konstantin was born for enforcement—he has the size, the temperament. Nikolai was always going to lead. But me—" I shook my head. "I was soft. That's what my uncles called me. Too soft for this life."
"They were wrong."
"Were they?" I picked up my wine. Drank. "I survived by finding a different path. Intelligence instead of muscle. Strategy instead of force. But the softness—that never went away. I just learned to hide it."
"Like I learned to mask."
The connection landed between us. Obvious, now that she'd named it. Both of us, performing versions of ourselves for families that didn't know what to do with who we actually were.
"Art was the only place I didn't have to pretend," I said quietly. "I'd go to the compound attic, find old canvases, paint thingsno one would ever see. My brothers thought I was strange. My grandfather worried I wasn't hard enough."
"But you kept doing it."
"It was the only thing that made me feel real."
The pasta arrived. Neither of us touched it.
She reached across the table. Her fingers found mine—small and elegant, scarred from her particular kind of work. The touch grounded me in ways I couldn't fully explain.
"I never thought I'd have this," she whispered. "Someone who knows all of me. The masked version and the real one. Someone who—" Her voice cracked. "Who sees the mess and stays anyway."
My grip tightened on her hand.
I’d known her for so long. But it was here, now, in this moment, in this candlelit booth with cooling pasta and warming wine, that I felt something lock into place.
"Neither did I, Ptichka." My voice came out rough. Honest. "Neither did I."
Her eyes shone in the dim light. Not quite tears, not quite joy. Something more complicated. Something that looked like recognition.
The restaurant hummed around us—quiet conversations, the clink of glasses, the particular music of strangers living their separate lives. None of it touched us. We were in our own world, holding hands across white tablecloth, finally speaking the truths we'd been too afraid to type.
I raised her hand to my lips.
Kissed her knuckles. Each one, separately, deliberately.
"Whatever happens next," I murmured against her skin, "you're not alone anymore. Neither of us is."
