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ageofwrathrpg · 7 years ago

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Name: Foma Alexandrovich Zharkov//Project M Age: 34 Affiliation: CITIZEN as an EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Ability: Ocular Death Inducement Faceclaim: Charlie Cox Availability: OPEN

THE STORY || CW: Emetophobia, Violence

White was his first memory. White floor, white walls, white noise. The pristine, blinding kind that stained your retinae. And before he knew the words for them, he felt disorientation and fear. He was confused at his nakedness. From the corners of his mind ebbed the traces of memory, rapidly receding. He tried to focus on them, to bring them back, but a voice snapped within him. A rubber band to the skull. Arrête. The voice was sharp and loud, a command. It belonged to Gaspard Morieau, a French telepath and the leader of Project Medusa. He knew this because Gaspard knew this, and Gaspard was in his head. It wasn’t long before he – Medusa – learned the rules of his 8x10 prison.

Each day, he would rouse to the feeling of Gaspard in his brain, flexing his fingers. If Gaspard was in a good mood, Medusa would eat rubbery ‘ham’ and cabbage soup. If he was angry, or indifferent, Medusa would eat a yellow gruel that tasted sweet and sticky and wrong. Medusa would feel Gaspard thinking as he vomited the mess onto the floor. After that, he would slip into a painful, violent fever that never lasted longer than five hours but always felt endless. Each night, after the lights had dimmed, a small hole would open and a rat would creep in and stare at him. For three hours, it would stare at him. At first, Medusa would withdraw to the corner in fear. Later, he would try to interact, desperate for any kind of friendship. The rat always retreated just out of reach, planted its haunches on the floor and stared. Eventually, Medusa only stared back. And after those three hours, the rat always, always exited the way it came in, and Medusa was alone again. And the lights would turn off completely. And he would sleep.

Months passed. A year? Eventually, Medusa spotted the small black camera that Gaspard was using to spy on him. It was no bigger than a pinhead, but Medusa was certain he saw its aperture move when he neared. Arrête, Gaspard growled. Medusa drew back a fist. ARRÊTE, he howled, but it was too late. Medusa slammed his fist into the wall and split his knuckle open on the lens. Medusa didn’t care. He brought his arm back and punched again, and again, until all the white in the room was splattered red, black in some places. A door opened and four people in shiny white coats came through. They grabbed Medusa by his arms, lifted him until he was kicking and screaming, and started to drag him out. Medusa was wild. His eyes were huge and whirling, and they found Lab Coat #2’s. Impossibly, #2 froze in place – it looked like all the air had left his body – and he hit the ground hard. Time stopped. The other Lab Coat’s realized what was happening. Medusa locked eyes, and they collapsed, too. He stepped out of his prison, through a concrete hallway, and up a staircase into the night. It killed him, how close he’d been to freedom this whole time. He wasn’t about to let it go. Medusa ran long and hard, until his feet were bleeding, until his naked legs caved and buckled at the edge of a power plant. Within the hour, an unintimidating man approached him with folded clothes for Medusa and a pair of black glasses shielding his eyes. He introduced himself as Sasha and because Medusa was understandably untrusting, he sat with him. He explained in startling honesty that he had precognition and that he’d had a vision of Medusa, that he wanted to help him. Possibly because he was too exhausted to care and possibly because Medusa was short-circuited by the moment of kindness, he trusted Sasha and let him take him home. There, he learned that Sasha was a journalist. Sasha fed him real food, taught him how to trust again, and helped Medusa disguise himself as his blind editor. Sasha named him Foma Alexandrovich Zharkov, after his favorite uncle. Sasha became family.

THE CHARACTER

By all accounts, Foma is only about 3 years old. Because of his psychological youth, Foma misunderstands many nuances of Russian culture, is a disaster in social settings, and frequently mixes up idioms and phrases. When he’s not asking Sasha questions, he’s quietly and patiently assessing his surroundings before making his next move. Foma is very careful. He doesn’t trust easily, and he does have a fair amount of self-hatred because of the nature of his ability. His idea of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are very two-dimensional. People who help you are good; people who lock you in a room and feed you fever-inducing garbage are bad. So where does that leave him? Foma, who can kill other people by looking at them? Although Sasha tries every chance he gets to convince him that he’s a good person, Foma is still convinced he needs redemption. Right now, he’s just trying to be functional and he’s trying to live with himself.

CONNECTIONS

Aleksandr ‘Sasha’ Ivanovich Alkaev – Sasha has been nothing short of incredible. He treats Foma with kindness and can always tell what he needs: patience, guidance, a distraction, etcetera. To say that Foma is grateful is an understatement. He loves Sasha. With everything he is and more, he loves Sasha. For Sasha’s unparalleled patience, for the nights spent shaking in Sasha’s reassuring arms, Aleksandr would do anything to show his gratitude. But Aleksandr doesn’t seem to want anything of him. Just existing, finding reasons to smile, and doing his best seems to be enough.

Karolyne 'Lynne' Aleksandrovna Pavlova – When Sasha first rescued him, he’d correctly guessed that Foma was in no place to go to a bustling hospital, so hired his doctor to come to his home and look at Foma’s arm. Karolyne came, who was patient and gentle and had hands that were certain and reassuring. She gave him stitches and prescribed him pain medication. Since then, Karolyne has been his doctor and though she doesn’t deserve it, he’s shy and aloof whenever she comes in for checkups. It’s nothing against her. He just doesn’t like needles. Or white coats.

Wonda Lazlovna Repina – In all of his short life, Foma has seldom seen anyone as intriguing as Wonda. She was engrossed in a book when he first saw her, her forehead stitched together in concentration. Because life is short, Foma ‘accidentally’ joined her at her table. She introduced herself, and they struck up a conversation. Despite them having little in common, the two became quick friends. He speaks plainly and she finds his naivety amusing.

Raisa Mikhailovna Nazarowicz – The first time they met, he’d bought her a coffee. Accidentally. One of his redemption things is paying for the next person in line’s coffee, and one day that happened to be Raisa. She thanked him and had a hint of expectation in her voice. Foma blinked and asked if he knew her. They hit it off, and it took months before he realized she was a world-famous author. He confronted her about it sheepishly, and she laughed and nodded. Nothing changed between them – they were still close friends, but she did supply him with braille copies of her novels. He hasn’t told her, but he finds her writing somewhat pretentious.

Josette Proulx – He has no idea who she is, but once she saw him reading a poster hanging from the wall. With his blind garb on, he could only assume what she was thinking. He hurriedly walked away, but the next week he saw her again – watching him. Her eyes were narrowed, his skin was crawling. He kept walking and forced himself to trip on a stone. His white stick went one way, Foma went the other. The skin on his knees grated against the concrete ground and he bit his lip to keep from crying. That was the last time he saw of her. He dreads seeing her again.

[[ More Connections ]]

ETC

When he makes mistakes – forgetting his way back home, misremembering a phrase, saluting a stranger with the improper greeting – sometimes he swears he can hear Gaspard in his head, loud and clear, barking his favorite word. When this happens, Foma becomes undone. He loses himself. Sasha is always there to bring him back.

Sasha guesses that the purpose of the rat was to check Project M’s progress. It was clearly trained to make eye-contact with Foma, and so if it came back after three hours, that was considered a failure. If it didn’t, Project M was a success. Foma hates rats, so Sasha bought a Siberian Cat for the house and named him Sparta.

He loves snow. His first snow, Foma ran to Sasha terrified that the sky was falling. Sasha comforted him as per usual and explained the intricate mechanism of gas to water to ice. Now snow just reminds him of Sasha, and that’s the best feeling in the world.

Disguised as a blind man, Foma had to learn braille; he realized that he greatly prefers it over sighted reading. There’s something freeing about being able to close your eyes and feel the words against your fingertips. His first braille novel, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Foma read in five nights.

Blind perks include being able to watch beautiful people in secret.

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