A Rest [Franzi

She hadn't had time for lunch. That was okay.

It was almost maddening sometimes, how she was supposedly at the top of the company but could not get any work done because of the shoddy work of the people below her. So much for efficiency. All they knew how to do was watch out for her and say hello in the hallways so she might consider them for a promotion. If only they'd worked more and sat around less.

So she had to run around the whole building and do their work for them. Franzi didn't want to brag, but she was doing it all in half the time they would have taken. Maybe she should have just had them all fired if she could do it herself. And better.

Too late she realized she might not have the energy to do it all. Suddenly struck by a dizzy feeling, she slowed down and made sure she didn't drop any papers. She needed a place to sit. A chair, where was a chair..... Not about to go into someone else's office to look lazy, for some reason she thought sitting and resting against the wall in the hallway was a more dignified option. She wanted to pass her work off onto someone else to take to another department, but as it stood, she could barely keep from passing out.

Now to just wait for someone to find her and wonder why his or her boss was slumped on the floor.

"Damn...."

Once upon a time, Piter was not pleased with how his situation in this company had turned out. Oh of course, there had always been rumors, people could see the tattoos. They had ideas. But it wasn't until he'd actually gotten arrested (again) that they knew for sure that he was involved in some shady business outside the business. His sentence had been thankfully short this time (with the help of a well-placed bribe), but it very nearly got him fired upon his return. And while he'd just managed to hold onto his job (with the help of a well-placed bribe), it cost him his office on the top floor. Nobody wanted a known criminal heading their company.

Normally, this would have been grounds for him to quit, on his own. Until he realized the great amount of power that lay in his new, unassuming position.

Human resources management. Goodness. It sounded so caring, so helpful, so...unlike him. But his particular task was anything but, when he was the one doing it: openly criticizing everyone in any department he liked, and firing them, if he so wished. ...At least, that was how he interpreted 'assessment'.
Unlike before, where he held a large amount of power over just one department, he now held a moderate amount of power over every department (just so long as he restrained himself enough to not trod on anyone's toes in the top floor). And he much preferred it this way. He had a talent for being awful, and everyone ought to have been equally subjected to it.

He was just taking a stroll through the communications department after lunch (it was always good to let people know they were being evaluated at any given moment), thinking of perhaps going up a few floors to pester his favorite person in the world, when said person suddenly appeared in the hallway as he turned the corner.

Stepping in front of her, he greeted in his customary lifeless monotone, "Franzi, my dear, you know it's rather ungracious to sit on the floor. Though I suppose it is lucky I ran into you, because I was about to go visit, and if I'd discovered your absence, it would have been so terribly distressing."

It was maddening when they had tried to fire Piter. Even more maddening when they rehired him somewhere where she couldn't keep an eye on him. He could be muddling in absolutely anything, and it could get him in trouble now, and there was nothing she could do about it. It was futile to worry, because it would happen anyway, but she couldn't help it. She was almost like his mother, the way she worried, and simply ignored that he was the one causing the trouble, and not the one falling into it.

So she was glad that he was the one that had found her there, because she could see that he was okay and at least he already had an opinion of her, and it wasn't of a woman who usually sat on the floor.

"Well I don't exactly feel gracious." She mumbled weakly, pulling herself up. She had to do something about this. "Would you like to go have coffee or something with me? I need a break." A sugar break. She would refrain from eating actual lunch if she could.

He offered her his right arm, as always--or at least, as always since the fifties. The right hand was the ink-free one, and thus the one she preferred seeing (or so he gathered). ...At least, it was the ink-free one. Now it sported its own symbol, across the back of his hand: a single bird, flying against the sunset over the ocean.

The sign of a thief-in-law.

It was one he'd picked up on his recent trip through the 'zone', and one he'd since put to good use. But Franzi didn't need to know that. She didn't need to know what any of the tattoos were, beyond something she disliked. As it stood, he only offered that arm now out of sheer force of habit.

"Yes, cake would be lovely," he mused, as if that was what the original offer was, "and tea, of course." Coffee wasn't his thing. Sugar certainly was, though. Unlike her, there was nothing wrong with his willingness to eat--yet he was nevertheless just as thin and frail as she, despite hiding it marginally better under several layers of clothing. "By the by, is the reason you seem so out of sorts, perhaps, because you're doing all of your employees' work? Again?" He phrased it as if out of concern, though his tone certainly did nothing to suggest that. It was more likely that he just wanted to fire someone in her department.

She took his arm like usual, but slowed down suddenly when she saw the new mark on his arm. Feeling somehow more dizzy, she demanded, "Where did that come from?" There had to be something to those tattoos-- one of them seemed to be just dots. She just assumed it was some sort of horrible punishment in prison. She didn't know who would agree to a tattoo by choice.

Cake was fine. Because she knew he wasn't going to share it with her. "I'll pay for whatever you want. You're too thin."

She stiffened at the accusation. "I'm only doing it because it's more efficient that way. I'm not about to sit around and watch this company fail because of everyone else's stupidity. Would you?"

"Hm? What, this?" He inspected the back of his hand with a raised eyebrow, as though he'd never seen it before in his life, "Prison, would be my guess." If he was going to beat around the bush, he might as well be a smartass about it.

He seemed pleased, "Awfully bold of you to call the kettle black. I won't complain, though." If there was any fringe benefit to having tuberculosis, it was having Franzi insist that he eat whatever he wanted. And what he usually wanted was sweets.

"Of course I would," the way he sighed, it was like he couldn't imagine what else she expected of him, "I could not care less about this company's wellbeing." (It wasn't like his financial security depended on this place--he made more than enough in his side business--so as it was, this was really little more than an amusement for him. And unlike his Austrian friend, he had no inclination to work harder just because everyone else's efficiency wasn't up to par.) "I would think the obvious solution would be to have someone in HR dock all of their payments, so that they will have to compete with each other at work if they want a proper salary again."

He was selfish and callous, yes, but he did not appreciate it when other people caused trouble for Franzi. It was very much like having another child rummage through his possessions and break his favorite toy. Naturally, they needed to be punished for it.

She grabbed his wrist to see it better, snapping at him, "I know that, but why is it there?" She thought he was done, with the other arm, and that was it. Oh, how little she knew.

Not saying anything about his kettle comment (nor would she ever), she simply commented, "You always look sick, you need to eat more." Nevermind that he nearly overate. She exited the building with him, and headed to where she always got coffee, and where they always went for his sweets.

That's why he didn't mind working in human resources. "No." She immediately rejected the idea, knowing what he wanted to do. "You're going to get yourself in trouble." In her eyes, he was too much like a boy-- he did whatever he wanted, and didn't know (instead of just not caring, or actively seeking) that he would cause trouble for other people, and get himself into it as well. "I'll figure something out. Really I don't even know who all works under me, they never even show their faces."

He allowed her to inspect it, without a trace of shame. "Why shouldn't it be? I think it's one of the nicer-looking ones." Well, of the ones on his hands, anyways. If she could have seen the domes of Smolny dominating the entirety of his back, the epaulettes across his shoulders, the rose snaking up his arm, the target over his heart...she might have fainted. "And I earned it," he added with a quiet but icy murmur, gently twisting his wrist out of her grasp.

"Do I?" He mused mildly. Here was another souvenir from prison she wasn't entirely aware of. The fact that he was always sick was something he was keeping in reserve until the time came when he really needed to play on her sympathies. (Of course, while he'd managed to hide it well up to that point, it only took one coughing fit and a flash of red in his handkerchief...)

Well, there went that plan. "Oh, you're such a bore sometimes..." He made a mental note to look up the employees in her department, anyways, and dock them all one penny. Just to spite them. And her.

She almost looked alarmed, almost, because she was lightheaded and couldn't judge correctly if what he was saying was just a horrifying hallucination. She let go of his arm altogether, mumbling something like, "I don't know what to think of you anymore", with a hint of fear and measurable disappointment. He used to be a sweet (she had lost a child before she had looked after him-- rose-colored glasses were on her all the time, then), portly little boy, and now he seemed like a skeleton, and almost reptilian in his behavior.

"You really should see a doctor." She noted. "You know I would hate for something bad to happen to you." On the same hand that she felt afraid of who he had become, she felt guilt for somehow being responsible-- leaving him alone when he shouldn't have, letting him go to prison... it should have been avoidable.

She didn't care if she was a bore, and frankly, with his mannerisms nowadays, she wasn't sure anything gave him excitement or happiness at all. Well, maybe the exception was food. So she walked into the cafe with him, and wished he was like he used to be.

It would be a lie to say he didn't derive some quiet thrill or delight from the audible uneasiness in her voice. There was nothing so satisfying as making people squirm--even the people who were most important to him. "Don't be ridiculous," he said softly, though with no more warmth than before, taking her arm back firmly, "People grow up, you realize--they change." Just as children grew to be adults and caterpillars grew to be butterflies and lambs grew to be sheep, the tyrant brat had grown up to be a psychopath. 

He might have laughed. "Something bad? I believe it's a little late for--" Breaking into a coughing fit, he turned his face away from her, thin frame trembling. Drawing it out so automatically that it seemed to materialize from thin air, he pressed a handkerchief to his mouth. The episode passed quickly, and he ran a shaky tongue over his lips--good, no blood. Silently, he folded the white square piece of cloth back into his jacket pocket. His mouth pressed into a thin line: he apparently didn't care to finish his sentence. He probably didn't need to.

His attention was occupied now by more important things, as it was. Without needing to look at the menu (they came here enough that he knew it by heart), he ordered coffee and a pavlova for himself, the second they were seated. 

"Not like that, they don't." She would have taken her arm back again, but in reality they were already in the cafe, and though she wouldn't admit it, she was a bit frightened. Even more so when he burst into a fit of wheezing that easily sounded like blood could come with it, even if she didn't know about the real reason for it.

It only hardened her resolve to change him back to the way he was, when he never got sick, and he wasn't.... like he was now.

She ordered her usual coffee loaded with creams and sugar cubes and added, "Of course I know people change." She eyed him warily and shook her head, as if she couldn't believe it. "But you look like you're dying-- and you are always around the worst people, and you can't possibly live with those tattoos anymore." Unless he wanted to go back to prison, and she was afraid she would never see him again, then.

They say to change someone on the wrong path there had to be an ultimatum, before they were cut off completely. Franzi didn't know if she could stomach that.

He merely offered her a small, incredibly wry smirk, when she denied that people could change like he had. He was well accustomed to his Austrian friend's reactionary nature. It was just a shame that, even if it was with the best intentions (for once), it could do little good here.

"On the contrary, I cannot possibly expect to live without these tattoos, anymore," he said calmly, fingers interlaced and resting upon the tabletop. "I can guess that it must be difficult for you to imagine why I would want these. Especially if you knew the price of some of them..." Unconsciously, he rubbed the finger that bore the mark of the crosses, capped with crowns. The Kresti ring had been an easy one to get. It was the crowns (and, unseen by her) the epaulettes that he'd paid dearly for. Fixing her gaze in his own deadened one, he murmured so quietly that it was barely even a whisper, "You don't know what I look like when I'm dying. This is nothing."

She hadn't been there. No one had been. No one knew, except for the rats and the roaches. The scars from their visits to him in the night still shone an eerie white in some places, nigh undetectable against his graying skin, except in the right light. They'd conditioned them--the rats, anyways--in the punishment cells to eat human flesh.

That, was complete and utter solitude. So alone that no one could even hear you scream as you were being eaten alive.

((I hope this isn't too dark--
"Hey, citra, do people wear underwear with batik?"
"...Nowadays, yes, but--"
"So they didn't back when everything was traditional?"
"...You're confusing me, just wear clothes how you want--" /SHOT

https://2img.net/h/i1238.photobucket.com/albums/ff481/baroquebaby/694be057.jpg ))

This was supposed to be a nice lunch break (well, it didn't seem to be much of a lunch...), but he was ruining it. That said, she was reactionary and defensive. So there was no really saving that half hour.

"Excuse me." She murmured just as quietly. "But I'm trying to help you. I've always tried to help you. And you go and do things like this, and claim I wasn't trying?" It was an insult to say the least. "You do these things to yourself. On purpose, I don't know. I'm not really sure any more if I care." Because she had been wrung dry of all of her pity-- whether he wanted her to feel any or not.

She nodded her head towards the waiter for the check, and rummaged around her purse for her wallet. "You know, I told them, 'don't fire him. He just doesn't do well in places he doesn't thrive.'" She slapped the credit card onto the check harshly. "They asked me, 'where does he thrive'? And I didn't know. Because now that I think about it, you haven't changed at all since you were a boy. I should have smacked that attitude out of you then, right?"

She didn't want to know any more about what had happened to him in prison. She didn't pity him any longer, but she still loved him. She waited in tense silence for her card to come back, and then said goodbye.

"Well then you can tell the waiter what that 'something' is. enjoy your lunch."

Sighing exaggeratedly, he got up to follow her, abandoning the food and coffee that hadn't so much as even been touched. "Really, now, Franzi, are you going to be upset at me for the direction this conversation has gone in?" He held up the back of his hand, indicating the sun displayed upon it, "You asked about this, and so I answered. If you suspected you wouldn't like what you'd hear--and I cannot see how you would--then perhaps you simply shouldn't have asked."

His outward expression didn't indicate much, but that familiar anger--hollow to the point of being nearly superficial, and yet nevertheless the only emotion he could conjure--flared up within him. "Since you've brought it up, though, there is a minor bone I have to pick with you..." Taking her by the arm, he forced her to spin around, gripping her shoulders just slightly more tightly than what was really necessary.

If tone had temperature, his very breath might have crystalized in the air, as he hissed at her, "Why did you never respond to my letters? I sent dozens, if not hundreds; I fail to see how not one of them merited even the shortest reply." Though admittedly towards the end, his writing had been reduced to little more than meaningless rambling, occasionally not even addressed to her. At some point he had probably realized that everything was being intercepted before it reached her, but his sanity had been pushed so close to the breaking point that cracks had begun to spiderweb across it. It was not easy even now to look back on those moments with purely level-headed hindsight.

"Where were you when I was starving? Freezing? What did you do when I begged you to save me?" He practically shook her--an act unsettlingly incongruent with the fact that he still spoke in the exact same way that he had been just minutes ago. Even in the moment when he ought have felt the most hurt, the most passion, there was nothing. Just emptiness and a sense of vindictiveness. 

Pushing her away lightly, he stared her down impassively, "Do enlighten me, Franzi, because I'm dying to know: was it satisfying for you to brush off every plea for help that I sent you? Did you imagine I put myself through political persecution three times, because that is simply what Piter does? He 'does these things' to himself, on purpose?" He sneered mockingly, "I know very well that I didn't turn out quite the way you wanted, and I suppose for that, I deserved to suffer. So please, don't insult me by saying you 'tried'. I very nearly died, waiting for you to try."

She intended to just keep walking. Maybe she could outrun him because of that frightening cough-- but then again her lunch capacity wasn't up to code either. There wasn't a chance to test that, though, because her breath caught in her throat and nearly stayed there when he took her shoulders.

Letters? Franzi had to scramble to put his words together into something that made sense. It still didn't. "Letters...?" She stammered breathlessly. For the first few weeks, at least, she had no idea he was even in prison, just that he had disappeared-- both of those thoughts worried her, but only the latter surprised her.

In a moment when she dared to face his cold eyes, she remembered when he was younger-- quite younger-- and she would come to spend time with him. His nurse (whichever one that happened to be at the time) would say unconvincingly, goaded by him, something akin to 'I'm sorry, madam, but the tsarevitch has gone to Siam (or any other far-off place) and has decided that he is not coming back." She could see one of the little boy's boots sticking out from the archway into the hall, and both that and the expression on the nurse told her to emote accordingly. So she did, with all the drama and near-real sorrow that she could muster, and Piter would magically appear and get all the glory of the returning prodigal son. It seemed his return from prison was not the same.

"I-I never got any letters." She asserted quietly, but gained steam, because she did remember sending him something. "I sent you cookies... in a tin..." the fear was replaced by horrified empathy. "If I knew you were all of those things, I would have gone there myself..." She supposed she should have seen the starving part, but freezing? Begging? "...What do you expect me to say?"

In the end, he was not in prison for nothing. Maybe it was all her fault that he had ended up there in the first place.

She hadn't received them. Not a single one. How...? It couldn't be true, she must have been lying. She was lying to him...

But no. For a moment, he was as still and silent as the stone from which his name was derived from. When he finally stirred, he said flatly, matter-of-factly, "I was given an empty tin. There was no note or card attached." In what was perhaps supposed to be a sardonic tone, but ended up as just listless, he added, "The guards did not care for me much." The understatement of the century. But even if they had liked him, imported cookies were a luxury; they would have stolen them, regardless.

He watched her emote, much more subtly than she had in all those times he'd 'returned', as a child. In the midst of it, he'd invariably demand, "Say you missed me!" In truth, it was the other way around: she was the one always doing the returning. To a child that was constantly being left to wait for the people who served as his parental figures. This was the first time that he was truly the one who'd left for a long journey, with the prospect of possibly never coming back. So what did he expect her to say?

"Say you missed me," he ordered quietly, with a straight face.

She wondered for a moment if he had just shut down completely, but finally exhaled when he spoke up again, relieved. "Oh... well what good would cookies have done you in jail, anyways..." What else could she say? If they never sent his letters, they might have even just stopped taking them from him. "If you have any... things you wrote to me left... I-I don't want to read them." Just hearing him talk about what he'd been through was enough.

When he was a child, she would embrace him as though he was a lost pet that was found, squeezing him to the point that he couldn't breathe and smother his face in kisses, saying she missed him 50 times over, just to see his reaction. He would push and shove her away and then pulled at his clothes like she'd given him fleas. She supposed nearly all of that cild-like petulant emotion was gone nowadays, so she just reached up and tapped his cheek. "You would not believe how much I missed you." Anyone else would have been shocked at how she could miss such a person, but she had just grown too attached to him.

"Of course I don't have any left," he replied crisply, "What would I write them for if I hadn't planned on sending them?" Honestly, he didn't really remember if he'd sent all of them. He was so far gone towards the end that he might have attempted to eat some of them; he wasn't even sure anymore.

He did seem pleased, however, in his own way, when she confirmed that his presence was missed. "As well you should have." Then, in a musing tone, "How terrible, though, it would seem we have wasted our lunch break on this little episode." Ho-humming, he pulled a smart phone from his pocket, eyeing it like a predator as he pulled up his contact list with the tap of a slender finger, "I suppose I could have Eudoxia cover for us... I rather fancy taking the day off, personally. I can't possibly go on without eating something..." Not to mention that there was nothing he loved more than torturing his secretary by putting her through overtime. And then castigating her the next day for inevitably doing something wrong.

"I don't know... I just figured that if they weren't going anywhere, they'd have stopped taking them from you..." Anyway, she didn't want to dwell on the subject. He didn't seem to want to do it, either, and was already on to something else... namely getting them both out of work, because he didn't want to.

"I have a job too, you know, you can't just pull me out of it whenever you feel like it." But he was already looking through his phone. "Besides, she can't possibly do both of our jobs." Although, she personally didn't care about the woman at all, just about her work. She wasn't going to stop him from ordering her around, so she just kept quiet about that.

"And you... have a plan for the rest of the day?"