comment for motivation!
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ONLY AFTER Y/N RECOVERED DID HE READ THE LETTER. THE LETTER SPOKE OF HIS MOTHER—wishing for his return. And yet Y/n knew already from his childhood that his mother wasn't someone who wanted him there—no, it was the opposite. Y/n's home had spat him out; though with his limbs intact, his heart had been shattered, broken. There had been those beatings and blackouts tossed to him like tongue to loose teeth.

Choke on your words, His mother had hissed once, only spit them out as blood. You do not deserve a right to speak when you have not yet learned how to do so properly.

So why would she want him to return to hell? Why would she want him now—?

His childhood was abysmal. Y/n wouldn't be exaggerating if he said that his early stages of life was maddeningly difficult, devoid of any laughter or grace. There was no Mother to soothe him with a sweet gentle voice when he cried to the Gods who never answered, there was no Father to teach him or to smile at him. The realisation had been stark and hollow: there was simply no one Y/n had.

Had. His grandmother had come to save him in the end: had made him his favourite Pelmeni when he was young, had sung lullabies to Y/n. She had been Y/n's light in his life—she had been a reprieve, but she had been temporary. And because nothing lasted forever, Y/n found her ripped away from him.

What was childhood like? It was a little like dying, a little like being born. Which was to say, it was nothing Y/n could remember—it had all happened in flashes and droves, after all, but he knew there was violence.

And today was a special day. It was no one's birthday, not Christmas, not anything worth to others—but it was Y/n's grandmother's deathday. And regretfully the (h/c)-haired man found he was never granted the knowledge of her birthday, and only the day she departed. Y/n, to his despair, remembered nothing about the poem she had read to him when young.

"Tell Andrei I'll only be out for a short while. To visit my grandmother's grave." Y/n spoke swiftly, in clipped tones. He found his stay in Russia was already starting to give him a thicker Russian accent. "The address has been written on a piece of paper. It is next to the vase."

"—you're leaving, Mr L/n?" The butler blinked his eyes. Y/n had not gotten his name this time round. "But the Sir said—"

"What did he say?" Y/n interrupted, "is his obsession so crazed that he would keep me locked up here? Is he mad?"

Y/n knew the answer to that. Oh, yes. Of course he did—the Pakhan, the Tsar—was head over heels, and he was mad. So mad he would risk his life playing a stupid game of Russian Roulette just to prove Y/n was his, so crazed he would put a bullet through his skull to show his loyalty, so fervent in his desires Andrei would skin and torture people alive who dared to lay their fingers on Y/n. It was flattering of sorts but also terribly alarming.

"He didn't say anything about you not going out," the butler said nervously. "I just thought perhaps it would be better for you to stay put. The Tsar is a very..."

"Unpredictable? Callous? Possessive?" Y/n added helpfully, rolling his eyes. "Just tell him I went for a short stroll."

The butler gave a resigned nod. "Then would you want to bring an umbrella? The forecast doesn't look promising."

Y/n glanced at the bouquet of flowers he held in his hand. God, he didn't even know her favourite flower: but roses would have to do. They were vibrant and bright, and it brought Y/n relief to see that it was the same shade of her lipstick. Grieving was a strange thing: at one point, the hole in his heart had been so strong that Y/n wondered when he would outgrow it, and other days he found that sadness didn't suit him. Layers were shed and tears were spilled, and Y/n had finally reached acceptance.

Today was strange, however. The smells in the air was more vivid, more memorable. Her presence seemed to be hanging in the air—or at least, haunting his mind. Y/n tried; he tried to desperately to forget and to remember the happiness she had imparted to him, yet he missed her. The truth was Y/n so dearly missed his grandmother he would have done anything to see her again.

"Come, little one. The fruits are ripe for picking. Won't you accompany me along?"

"What about mother and father?"

A pause.

"They will come."

And they never did, but his grandmother filled those empty spots with gentleness and sweetness. And now...

"It's alright," Y/n said softly at last, "it is quite all right. I'll manage."

"...The car will be waiting outside for you, then. Have safe travels, Mr L/n."

It took a minute for Y.n to register those words in his brain, before he nodded his head.

For some reasons, Y/n found today he felt extraordinarily tired: perhaps it was his body suffering the last bit of poison, trying to expel it—so his body movements were heavy, forceful, tiring. He blinked his eyes and when he opened them again, Y/n realized he had already neared the cemetery.

"Do you need me to accompany you?" The driver offered, scratching his head awkwardly. "If Lord Andrei knew that you went alone, he might have my head..."

"I think it would be better for no one to accompany me," Y/n corrected, fingering the petals on the rose. Luckily, it had not been squashed in the ride. "He gets..." then Y/n trailed off, gaze flickering towards the rows of graves planted into the ground. It had been a cheap spot to place the grave, yet it was the only one he had been able to afford. And yet amongst the rows of messy graves filled with weeds, his grandmother's one was untouched by time, pristine and immaculate. Everytime Y/n visited, he made an effort to clean it up well: but it was a mystery, really, to see just how truly clean everything was.

Y/n turned around before the driver could reply, and soon after a few seconds, he could hear the sound of the wheels against the road, fading into a distance. With a sigh, he rolled up his pants to wade into the muddy ground. Weather had not been kind lately and the grass in between the graves were wet with dirt due to that.

...Grandmother, Y/n thought, placing the roses gently to the side. He stared at the little picture on the stone, feeling misery wash over him. It had been years since she had left and his memories of her were now jagged and lost. Much like he had forgotten Andrei, Y/n had forgotten her. Memories came in dribs and drabs to him—he had remembered she loved him, at least; and had remembered what she had done.

And now Y/n needed someone—just someone more than ever. He didn't know why, just yet: but he ached for affection, he craved for love. And again, he was terrified of losing the affections of someone—once the affection is gone, Y/n always had a hard time recollecting it; it came to him in phantasmagoric slivers in the quicksilver small hours of the night. Once the affection is gone, it slipped from his memory like the face of a dead relative. And was that what happened with Andrei? Did he—forget about him? Was there something that triggered that change in memory? Was it a loss of affection, or loss in effort?

He bent down. Y/n found his fingers slowly tracing the smoothness of the metal—water droplets splashing onto her picture. His first thought was that he was crying; grieving the demise of a loved one. And then he realized that the sky was crying, weeping, pelting rain down onto the gravestones laid about. Cold air seeped into his skin and Y/n shivered. Yet he remained oblivious to it. He stared, then he lowered his head and his throat managed hoarse, rasp words.

"I miss you."

He did. He missed being loved—and yes, Y/n had the luxury and perhaps the terrifying privilege of being loved by someone powerful and untouchable, yet attachment was a horrifying, terrible thing. Getting close to someone—was it not a bad thing? Would it not be like the story of Icarus and the sun?

Of course, there was no reply. The rain got heavier still and Y/n remained slumped over her grave, cold and unmoving. Truly, he welcomed this with a strange fervor in a feeble attempt for retribution—against himself. Y/n deserved this, did he not? For letting himself forget. The poem from his childhood. Y/n owed it to her to remember.

He did not know how long he sat there for. But at one point the rain seemed to have stopped. And when Y/n glanced up he saw an umbrella—a fine, obviously branded one that didn't make sense to him since when could umbrellas be branded—and he recognised Andrei. The forest green eyes, the emerald, whatever shade it was—it was recognisable and brilliant.

"So you tracked me here," Y/n said softly. "What did I expect, anyways? You would have chased me to the ends of the earth if I ran away."

"It's cold. Go back in."

"I'm trying to remember. Like you always tell me to. And it's stifling." Y/n said honestly, "I was close to my grandmother. I know that as much. But don't I owe it to her—and to you—to remember? Especially since she's..."

Dead.

"She was sweet." Andrei said quietly. So quietly that Y/n couldn't hear him the first time he heard it, before he repeated it. "She was extremely sweet. I remember."

Y/n remained listless for one, two, three seconds—before he jolted up. His eyes widened and he found himself grabbing Andrei by the collar, his voice a sibilant hiss.

"Do you remember her? Nonsense," Y/n looked at him in disbelief, "you didn't even meet her."

Andrei stared back unflinchingly. He didn't remove Y/n's hands on the collar but instead grasped it with his own hand and kissed it softly. Y/n flinched and retracted his hand swiftly, holding it against his chest.

"I told you. We met when we were young. My first day out," Andrei smiled softly, as if recalling a fond memory. "My first day out was with you. You brought me to visit her, Moy Sladkiy. I was truly saddened by her death, and have been hiring people to clean her grave ever since."

Oh, of course. No wonder the grave always seemed much cleaner than Y/n had thought it to be.

"—so you knew her." Y/n said numbly, "how much do you know about me? You know things about me that even I don't know."

When Y/n met others like him, he would recognize the longing, the missing, the memory of ash on their faces. And on Andrei he saw that.

"It's raining," Andrei shook his head. "You'll catch a cold."

"See, Andrei. You are going to catch a cold. You better be careful of what you do. Your body is still weak."

The rain matted in his hair and slipped down his cheek. Andrei wiped it away and Y/n just stiffened.

"Why won't you answer the question?"

"Because I want you to know everything on your own accord. I want you to remember things because your mind, your heart wants it. I cannot force feed you information and expect you to believe me."

"Then the poem," Y/n said desperately, "you said you know her, don't you? That you met her—so what was it?"

"...She read it every night, didn't she?" Andrei offered a smile. "You remember that aspect."

Every night? How close were we?

"Your eyes used to sparkle everytime she said it. She would say it in a different tone—in a different cadence, of sorts. Like she was telling a different story yet the meaning was always the same. I remember my suspicion for her waning when she first told it to me. I am very sorry for your loss."

"What was it?"

"You should appear less often in my dreams, Since we meet so frequently; Yet only in night's sanctuary
Are you sad, troubled, and tender./And sweeter than seraphic praise/Is your lips' dear flattery.../Ah, in dreams you won't mistake my name, Or gently sigh, as you do here..." Andrei recited the poem smoothly as he gently tugged Y/n up to his feet, forcing the (h/c)-haired man to stand up and lean against him. "A beautiful poem, is it not? 'You should appear less often in my dreams,' by Anna Akhmatova. Very fitting, too—similar to how you haunt mine."

Nostalgia. Deja vu. Yes. Those words are very much correct—oh, they were correct! And they were like music to his ears. Andrei had been the answer to everything.

"It's...correct," Y/n marveled, "it's exactly what she used to say...how do you remember everything so vividly?"

"I remember everything that is important to me," Andrei softened, "only those. And you, Y/n..."

At first, when Andrei was a child, he flinched at violence, wherever he found it. Even when he was the seed, the sacrifice, the root of it all. But later he had embraced it; it was, after all, the only way he could get his whole life back—and by life, he meant Y/n.

You are very precious to me.

"So," Y/n said at last, "did you feel the same hollowness? The same emptiness that I felt when my grandmother died, after I disappeared?"

Oh, yes, he had. Andrei had, and always still loved Y/n. It flowed out of his chest. When Y/n disappeared, Andrei had despaired to think of where his love would go. Grief, to many, was the final act of love. A final translation. And to Andrei it meant it would never end: this act would continue forever, and forever, and...

"Of course. What do you think? I missed you very much. Very, very much..." Andrei trailed off, brushing the test droplets off his face. "Come, you are drenched. Let us go home, shall we?"

Home.

Ah, in dreams you won't mistake my name, Or gently sigh, as you do here

And Y/n did not refute.

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sorry for the terrible yapping I wanted to develop their relationship first... wrote this pretty late so I don't think brain cells are working

hopefully it was okay how was it