out of the woods

by candlelightfool

Summary:

Reincarnation rewrite. It’s Anna, not Yegor, that gets possessed.

Chapter 1: Prologue

If Anna Viktorovna hadn’t fallen into his arms to the gunshot sound of thunder, if Yakov Platonovich hadn’t allowed himself that moment to believe, a singular spark in the darkness, and if Pyotr Ivanovich hadn’t made his off-hand remark the next day; their fight would have been a mere squabble, another amiable stale-mate.

Yet Rook was dead, once and for all—the mirror having trapped more than a ghost.

In the weeks that followed, the weather grew milder, but their stand-off remained; their sentiments differing at the root. Yet the both of them so alike in their own stubbornness that nothing could sprout and nothing could grow.

Yakov Platonovich might have started to give more consideration to the shades of gray, since settling in Zadonsk, but the shadow of Anna’s betrayel had killed that inclination stone-dead. Whatever his feeble protestations had been whenever she meddled in his cases, it was he who had indulged her; he, who had so prided himself in his steadfast skepticism.

Anna Viktorovna, who was nothing if not sincere, and now smarting were it most hurt, would not betray herself by reaching out her hand for it to be bitten again.

So trust hung on tenderhooks, on the if and the could, and had the circumstances been different, she would have barely hesitated, of course, after that first blackout. Or the next, or the one that followed. Instead, she came back to her senses in the marketplace and circumvented the police station entirely.

Anna was, therefore, unaware of the body in the woods, and the witness who led Yakov Platonovich to him, the worst of the winter snow already melted. She didn’t have to feign surprise of any sort, when soon after, the Detective, accompanied by Anton Andreyevich, was announced at the Mironov house.

Dusk had already started to fall, and there was something desolate about the early darkness outside. As Anna left her room, she only briefly contemplated hope on her way downstairs, and shivered despite her heavy, dark-green shawl.

It was the work of a moment, as Anna looked down at the guests, and noticed the steely eyes, the clenched jaw and the way Yakov Platonovich carried winter over the threshold, and she remained silent and became cold in return.

“You have heard about the murder of Merchant Yepifanov,” Yakov started, after the barest of pleasantries, stood at the foot of the staircase.

Anna was quick and firm in her denial, strands of dark blonde hair curling at her ears, a thick braid over her left shoulder, a pinch of tiredness at her eyes. She had to crane her face up, once downstairs, when she turned to him with arms crossed, the green wool of her shawl snaking tightly around her forearms.

“Was Irena Mikhaylovna mistaken?” he prodded, and looked at her intently.

“I’m not familiar with the name.”

“She could not provide me with yours either, but her description was unmistakable.”

Anna glanced at Anton, who was holding his hat in his hands, worrying the felt edges with gloved hands. “Neither name means anything to me, Yakov Platonovich. Be frank with me, you always have been.”

“Then you deny the lady’s accusation?”

“I must,” Anne replied, mildly, “since you are holding its content hostage.”

”Very well, then,” Yakov replied, his tone clipped,  compressing four weeks of tension. “Did you or did you not provide the location of the victim?”

“I did not,” Anna said, for she had no recollection of the encounter, and in the here and now of the foyer, she didn’t trust him with even a hint of doubt.

The bite of the wind, the sharp smell of spices as the merchants tried to outcry one another, but Anna couldn’t picture a face. To speculate would be to invite ridicule. Yet it took an effort to remain distant, to quell her curiousity.

The men exchanged a look, and finally it was Anton Andreyevich, who spoke up, his hazel eyes much kinder: “Will you repeat that at the station, Anna Viktorovna? We have the witness coming in tomorrow morning.”

Chapter 2: Uncle Knows Best

By dinner time, Anna had regained some composure back, yet had her patience tried. Not even Pyotr Ivanovich’ amused smile made much of a difference. Maria Viktorovna easily found fault with the both of them. After a small squabble over Sophie Vesnina’s upcoming birthday, Anna was done with bidding her time.

“Father, do you know anything about the killed Merchant?”

“Wonderful,” her mother bursted out, already prickly by Anna’s refusal to join them at Filimonovas this week. “What a fabulous turn of the conversation.”

Viktor Ivanovich shook his head, smiling. “Anna, they found Yepifanov’s body only yesterday, and you’re already investigating?”

“I’m not investigating,” Anna replied, dealing in another half-truth. “I heard about it from Praskovya.”

“Not from the policemen?” Maria inquired, sourly. She hadn’t spied on the conversation, and regret now stung, folded back tightly behind her breastbone.

“No, there was some other business.”

“Business! My word. My daughter has business with the police.”

“The merchant,” Anna pressed on, trying to keep her tone light and otherwise unaffected.

Viktor clasped his hands together, the gold of his ring glinting in the candle light, not bothered by Anna’s interest in the least. “Well, Merchant Yepifanov had been missing for a year. His body was found in a ravine near Slobodka and has been identified already.”

“This is impossible,” Maria said, dropping her cutlery on her plate, effectively closing the subject.

From across the table, Pyotr Ivanovich quirked his lips.

---

“It would make a fine casino,” Pyotr remarked, an hour later, glancing at Anna with a wicked glimmer in his eyes.

Anna shook her head, half-heartedly.

“A spiritual saloon,” he conceded, putting his whiskey glass on the table. “Now, Annette, did your mother upset you after all? We won’t disturb the house.”

“She didn’t exactly,” Anna hedged, then sighed. She hadn’t taken a seat, and held on to the back of the chair as support. A protective stance. “The truth is that the police did come for this case.”

“Ah.”

They both were silent, the last case was still a point of tension between them. Not because Anna blamed him, but because Yakov Platonovich had hurt her enough to retreat into herself, and Pyotr didn’t dare ask.

As Anna drummed on the oak wood of the chair, she sifted this new information in with what Yakov Platonovich had told her today. The body of a man found in the woods. One witness. Somehow it connected to Anna herself. The distant look in Yakov’s eyes. The Slobodka ravine. The teeth of winter. She tried to focus, but she could only feel a head-ache build for all her trouble.

“He called me a monster,” Anna wanted to confess, but held her tongue. For her uncle might fuss over it, like it was a skinned knee, but nothing could treat the splinter in her heart. “I’m to come in tomorrow,” Anna offered up instead. “A woman accused me of providing her the location of Merchant Yepifanov.”

It was pitch dark outside the windows, the curtains not yet drawn. Shadows danced across the room, Pyotr’s eyes looked black and grim, but his tone was kind as he leaned foward: “Did you?”

Anna’s shoulders slumped, the skin below her eyes bruised by tiredness. The chair felt solid underneath her hands. “I denied it,” she said. “I have had no visions, no dreams, nothing to signify that I did.”

“You’ve been walking at night again.”

“Since the Bloody Baroness,” she acknowledged, remembering the blood on her hands. “It didn’t bother me till now. Maybe it should have, but it happend so rarely at first.”

Pyotr Ivanovich finished his drink, thinking it over. “No reason to worry your parents yet.”

Chapter 3: The Witness

Summary:

The introduction is made.

Arina Mikhaylovna, at first glance, did not look like a liar. She was a well-dressed, young woman, with dark eyes and darker hair. An ornate clasp held together tightly coiled curls, and while her features were sharp, it gave her face character without being too severe.

The introduction was quickly made, a beat of silence followed. The morning sun cast her rays as far as the desk, a cup of tea was still steaming next to a stack of files, while Anton Andreyevich was sipping from his own.

“The medium?” Arina Mikhaylovna inquired, at last.

At this, Anna coloured, and she could feel Yakov’s gray eyes on her, as surely as if he had touched her. She felt put on display, where honesty was a poor defense. Still, Anna was thankful for her uncle, who stood at her elbow, and she didn’t mind Anton Andreyevich, who had smiled at her when she had first entered the office today.

”So you recognize her,” Yakov Platonovich demanded, and at Arina’s quiet confirmation, he stepped forward, a frown marring his forehead. “Would you say Anna Viktorovna’s reputation proceeds her?”

Arina Mikhaylovna hesitated, fully catching on to the tension in the room now, another beast entirely. “Yes, perhaps.”

“So you were already familiar with her name?”

“Isn’t anyone?”

“It’s a small town,” Yakov Platonovich conceded, and as easily as that, the storm left his expression, the blue flecks in his eyes glinting in the window-filtered sunlight. “It’s not the first time you noticed her though, was it?”

“I’ve told you, she has followed me before.”

“Yet you went into the woods on your own,” he concluded, the statement growing more suspect with every repetition.

The crux of the matter was a simple one, while yesterday had been scratching at the scab of a fresh wound, the facts didn’t lie. Yet when Arina Mikhaylovna left the police station, the puzzle remained, without a concrete idea to where the wind had scattered the missing pieces.

---

Inside the office, the players were on edge, unsure of where the new battle lines had been drawn, until finally Anna couldn’t take it any longer.

“Yakov Platonovich, you don’t want to ask me again?”

”I don’t believe you killed a man out in the woods,” he replied impatiently.

”Detective Shtolman,” Pyotr Ivanovich warned.

Yakov turned to her fully, his eyes sweeping over her pale cheeks and her pink mouth, pursed in disappointment. If Anna Viktorovna had anything to say, she had been uncharacteristically silent. For a moment he stilled, as likely to be toying with the question in his mind, as to simply be waiting her out.

“How could I have known otherwise?” Anna dared, fiercely meeting the challenge.

”Anna Viktorovna,” Yakov said, unamused.

“You don’t trust Arina Mikhaylovna. Why?”

”Anna Viktorovna,” he repeated, his eyes lingering on her face, as if he would suddenly glean sincerity of it now, to put a finger to the pulse of his resentment. “Do you wish to revise yesterday’s statement? Do you confess to being acquainted with Irina Mikhaylovna after all? ”

She turned away from him, shaking her head.

“Do you have another source? Anything to substantiate? … No? Nothing at all? Well then, we thank you for your time.”

---

After Anna and her uncle had been thus dismissed, they exchanged a weary look, outside the police precinct. The muddy slush crunched beneath their feet, both of them lost in thoughts. So much lost in their thoughts, they failed to realize another nearby presence.

”Please,” Arina Mikhaylovna said, stepping out of the shadows. “I need your help.”

Chapter 4: A Heart-to-Heart

“I fear you overestimate my influence,” Anna told her, decidedly.

In the last five minutes, they had meandered from the main road to the alleys, with her uncle trailing behind two steps. The feeling that something illicit was going on crept up sharply between Anna’s shoulder blades, and she was able to field Irina’s demands with a certain distrust.

“You may forgive me, Anna Viktorovna, for doubting this claim.”

Anna didn’t flinch. “I hold no sway over the Zadonsk Police force.”

“I need your sway over spirits,” she countered, before she fully turned to Anna, raw distress on her face, and up close her red-rimmed eyes couldn’t be denied. “Heavens, you are so altered! You don’t know me at all.”

Anna allowed her hand to be taken, and would have demurred with a sympathetic word, if the world hadn’t spun on its axes, if her consciousness hadn’t been brutally torn away at the imprint of a hand, scalding all the way through satin and flesh.

Pyotr Ivanovich caught her, having dropped his silver topped cane at the first sign of discord. As he cradled Anna’s lifeless body to him, a curse escaped him.

“Is she alright?” Irina wondered, taking in Anna’s slumped frame and closed eyes with an almost hungry gaze.

It took a moment, but then Anna blinked up at them with a glassy recognition, and still longer, it took before she was able to stand, unassisted.

“I can’t help you,” she protested weakly.

“But have you seen him?” Irina asked, sounding soft and miserable, tugging on every heartstring. “Have you seen Kyrill? Isn’t that what you do?”

Anna took pity again. “He doesn’t want to be seen. That is all I can say for now.”

“Anna,” Pyotr said, much more uncharitable, “Let this be enough.”

---

Had her parents seen the state of her, they would never have left for the country. Small mercies would have it, Anna had already waved them goodbye this morning. It had been a relief. To keep up a brave face was tiring all on its own, and she had been bottling everything up with relentless good-humour.

Once at home, Pyotr Ivanovich called for broth and bread, and they shared a light lunch, where the subject of Kirill Artemyevich Yepifanov was kept off the table.

All the while, Anna’s own thoughts lingered still at the Police Precinct, and she knew Yakov Platonovich was entirely mistaken in his suspicion. To tell him, seemed as impossible as conjuring the Merchant himself.

It was a far cry from their earliest case, and the way he had been impressed with her clever game, as if her possession had simply been a ploy. Anna supposed he had always thought of it as trickery, had always misunderstood her on an elementary level. So much so, that he had forgotten she had a heart.

“It seems I cannot stop myself from meddling,” Anna remarked, once they had relocated to the pavilion. “Even if it’s entirely unwanted.”

“Dear niece, I don’t feel we quite witnessed the same scene.”

“I have been barred from the precinct,” Anna replied, showing her cards a little. She touched her plate, then crumbled down the rest of the honey cake her uncle had insisted on, and felt her stomach turn. “I don’t understand why the spirit won’t show himself. Why this way? No sightings, no dreams. All of this would have been easier to bear otherwise.”

”You truly believe that? Have you been opening your mind?”

Anna almost laughed at that. For she had been careful to hold tight to her control, not to make her body a vessel, but more often than not, a spirit didn’t need any sort of invitation.

“I didn’t want to,” Anna said, thinking it over with a touch of shame. What she had wanted was to ignore it this past month, play at being normal again, and she had kept herself far away from the spirit board. "All of this is my own fault.”

She could only hope it would effortlessly fall into place, because Arina Mikhaylovna was the key.

”Fault, fault,” Pyotr said, waving it off, “it only explains why this spirit has started taking over.”

“That is inconvenient,” Anna remarked with a flash of teeth, only half-serious, “for I decided to give it all up. No, don’t look at me like that, uncle. I’m not a child. I have gone years between seeing spirits, it isn’t an impossibility.”

”Merely a waste.”

”You are the only one to think so.”

”Then Shtolman is a fool,” Pyotr said, making the teacup clatter when he brought his hand down on the table. He might have teased her once about breaking hearts, but now he realized he hadn't accounted for her own. Whatever guilt he felt grew, when a moment later, Anna turned to him with pained eyes:

“Yes, well, perhaps,” here Anna shrugged, as if the memory had lost its power to hurt her, “Do you also think I want to be at the centre of it all?”

“Dear niece, you care! You open your heart to suffering and you wouldn’t have half the talent otherwise. Where else should you be?” Pyotr could have easily left it at that, but the door had opened an inch, and curiousity ran through the Mironov line like a vice. "I suppose, Shtolman was very unkind that afternoon?”

Anna kept her eyes down. “It’s just as well,” she replied evenly. “Now we can continue on as indifferent people. We might at best nod at each other in the street. Perhaps I will read about his work in the Zadonsk Gazette.”

Pyotr didn’t let himself be fooled. “Don’t be too hard on the man. He was a convert.”

Anna laughed, a sharp, disbelieving sound. “The Great Detective Shtolman swayed by the stirrings of belief, what a blasphemous thought.”

”Honey, Annette, not vinegar.”

It was never that simple, the sum of the whole. Anna had learned to carry on despite the parts. The result far justifying the means.

It wasn’t only Yakov Platonovich, who had taken a hammer to her walls. Everyday life had a way of sanding them down. Her mother, hysterical at turns; her father caught between sides. Local boys brazenly calling her a witch. An old woman crossing herself as they passed each other on the sidewalk, thin lips pinched in disapproval. A coldness in Anna’s bones as persistent as a cough, while the spirits simply disappeared into the light.

A few days ago, Anna had visited Alice again, all the while the screaming of a patient could be heard through the walls.

“Hallucinations,” the doctor had quietly shared; he might as well have said visions.

Chapter 5: Three Wishes

Anna dreamt. She knew she dreamt, because she had had this dream before. A memory twisting like the rose arch in the garden; at present, all that was left were the thorns.

For tonight, she was a child again, dutifully tip-toeing after the specter of grandmother Angelina. When the spirit pointed at the entryway table, Anna already knew the emerald necklace was there. Yet no matter how hard she searched, it was now lost to her small hands, nails scratching uselessly on wood.

All through the morning Anna couldn’t shake that feeling of loss, and when after breakfast, Praskovya pressed a letter in her hands, she didn’t quite know what to make of the stab of relief once she read it.

---

But first, the market place again. A mid-December afternoon, the sky stretching relentlessly blue, a dry cold in the air.

“You think your quality is equal to that of the Nizhny Fair,” Anna Viktrovna was exclaiming, commanding space with a wide-legged stance, voice almost cracking in its unnatural low register.

She might have bargained down the price of sugar, had not Prince Razumovsky, cutting through the square on his way to the haberdashery, found himself turning around when Anna’s volume rose.

“Anna Viktorovna,” he said, then at her complete lack of acknowledgment, repeated her name twice more. The Prince found himself obligated to grab her arm, and subsequently, give it a deliberate squeeze. This time he could appreciate the way Anna travelled between the realm of the dead and the living, and held on when she stepped back, her posture all but collapsing like a cord had been pulled.

“We must stop meeting this way,” he said, in an affable tone, as soon as he released her.

“Prince Razumovsky,” she said, blinking at him, “Yes, I suppose we must.”

“I didn’t realize you had such an interest in spices.”

“Nor did I.”

Before Prince Razumovsky could delve into this cryptic reply, Anna visibly started at the clear sight of Detective Shtolman, as the man stepped onto the square from the south. This development trumped whatever he had just witnessed. The Prince let himself be gently steered away from the detective’s determined stride, stepping into an alcove where a wooden stall, laden with jewelry, colourful perfume bottles and an assortment of gilded mirrors, did much for their invisibility.

“Do tell me, please, have you quarreled?”

“No more than usual,” Anna replied charmingly, all the more for the return of colour to her cheeks. Yet she was still unmoored and at a disadvantage.

He let the fib slide, with only the slightest upturning of his brow. “Well, be as it may, it’s fortunate that we meet.” Confidence and sincerity suddenly mingled in his look. “You probably have the wrong idea about who I am, after the history with the notebook.”

By then, Yakov Platonovich had passed, his face a shadow below his bowler hat, the back of it still visible in a mirror, and Anna could breathe once more, and could think again with some clarity. Think back, reflect. For it had been Yakov Platonovich who had had his own opinion ready about the notebook, but she had tasted firsthand how unyielding and violent his opinions could be.

“Not at all,” Anna replied, letting go off Razumovsky’s arm. She stepped back into the street again, and despite her words, wished this could be the end of it.

“I assure you it was a chain of most unfortunate events. I’m still the biggest admirer of your talen.”  It was unclear where the flattery began and the plea stopped, as he stepped closer to her. “ And I’d like to know more about it. Could you give a few seances for me personally?”

“I’m sorry,” Anna replied, “but recently, I’ve been thinking about retiring.”

“No, indeed,” Razumovsky said, a playful twist to his mouth, but his hazel eyes were sharp and he touched his short, salt-and-pepper beard in an agitated gesture. “I’m sure it will be an unique experience for you, too. Please.”

Anna returned the smile, but discomfort tickled along her spine. “I thank you for your assistance,” she replied, before he had to chance to express a third wish, “but I would hate to keep you longer. I have some business of my own.”

Prince Razumovsky inclined his head, “I don’t doubt that you do.”

---

She found herself to be late anyway.

Notes:

I pushed up the meeting with the Prince, while Shtolman is on his merry way to the hotel. The mirror scene is a reference to that first failed pilot, only Shtolman didn’t catch her this time.