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toooldforfandom-liveblogs · 5 years ago

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Gravity Falls S02E18 - Weirdmageddon Part I

I really like that name for the end of the world. I'm not sure what to expect from this one since this is literally new territory for everyone. My one hope is that Mabel gets forgiven easily but there has to be some drama, either for the twins or the Stans (since that relationship really needs some mending, and the end of the world seems to be a good place for that kind of thing.) I think that's all so let's do this!

If this is the first shot of the episode, things are going to get _weird_.

Wait. Wait. What.

Okay, had to go back and check Bill's summoning circle.

I completely forgot about this but I guess he needs all the symbols for something beyond summoning everything weird into this dimension? But why? Uhm.

Anyway, back in Dreamscaperers I wrote:

Glasses = The ones Stan found in the room with the magic carpet? Question Mark = Soos Ice - Fish with food? > Pine = Dipper Star with an eye Hand = Whoever wrote the journals considering the symbol on their covers? Llama/Alpaca? Shooting star = Mabel Heart with stitches

Fish with food ended up being Stan's fez. I _think_ Heart with Stitches could be Robbie. Hand is obviously Ford. I'm still not sure about Glasses (they really look like Stan's glasses but... how would that work?) and Star (maaaaybe Gideon? The star appears in the ending cypher in S02E14.) The alpaca/llama and the ice are a complete mystery. Considering everyone of importance is in there already, maybe Wendy is one of those two?

Symbols aside, does this mean that Mabel is going to be missing until who knows when? That's a bit disappointing.

Imagine being able to choose any physical form at all and choosing to keep being a dorito.

Before I paused I was convinced this guy was some weird Nigel Thornberry cameo.

So, Bill has 10 friends, which is exactly the number of symbols in the summoning circle. Huh. Interesting.

Maybe it means nothing but their appearance feels so sudden that I feel they have to be important somehow.

Immersion ruined, the Northwests would never lower themselves and go "downtown"

What a trianglist, she had no problems with Mabel.

I imagine Wendy can't wait to go to college a thousand miles away from her family.

Death, Famine, War, Conquest and Capitalism.

That's horrifying. But he's a dick. What a moral dilemma. Nah, he really deserves it.

Why steal Durland? Huh. Maybe he's also one of the symbols? Or Bill is just being Bill.

Oh, oh, I know what they do!

What an intro, I'm 100% sold.

What can our protagonists do? I guess Ford has a plan, maybe the symbols are for unsummoning Bill and that's why he's collecting them so they can't do whatever ritual they need to do. Maybe Ford and Stan will be in a similar situation that made them fight 30 years ago, but this time they actually communicate and win? Mabel is out so I hope they rescue her (or she rescues herself) before too much plot happens.

I _love_ how much of an effect the changed OP had on me.

After watching 37 episodes with the same opening song any changes are immediately noticeable and it feels _wrong_. What a great way to show how everything is changing for the worse thanks to Bill.

It does make me wonder how Gravity Falls is going to recover though. It looks _bad_, bad enough that in any other show I wouldn't be surprised by a time-machine or a literal genie undoing everything bad that happened. I doubt that'll happen here, since the town itself is so used to the "weird" but if someone dies all bets are off.

YESSSS, Dipper doesn't blame her! I'm sure there'll be some self-blame later on but I'm so glad his first reaction was to be worried.

Why is Soos unaffected? Is it related to his presence in the summoning circle? Looking for unaltered people may be a good way to find who are the missing symbols.

Soos deserved more episodes, what a hero

Has there been any positive romantic relationship in Gravity Falls?

Wendy and Dipper was an unrequited mess, Mabel and all her crushes were all disasters of some kind or another, the less said about Wendy and Robbie the better, and Tambry and Robbie is the result of the twins messing with their minds without their consent. Oh, and Gideon and his murderous crush on Mabel.

I love that tiny shiny dodrio.

I didn't need to know that Bill's hat was meat and bones.

What? No! Warnings later, explanations how to defeat a demon now!

This is the first time he calls Dipper by his symbol, right? He also called Ford "six fingers." The writers really wanted everyone on the same page here about making the relation between the symbols and the characters.

...I refuse to believe that the eye piece meant nothing with how much it has been shown!

Weirdmageddon sounds much better.

Wow. He has been wandering around for three days, probably having to scavenge for food and water. These kids are really going to need a therapist after summer break is over.

For some reason I find that guy more disturbing that most of the weirdness in this episode so far. He just sounds very predator-y.

...oh Dipper, those nachos are three days old at best. So young, so ignorant of the consequences of gastroenteritis.

...of course. I'm glad she's okay. She's been shown as a very badass so it would have been a shame if she was down without a fight.

But, but, rabies.

Can't wait for the weirdmaggeddon to be over and then immediately after everyone dying of infectious diseases.

So, how many post-weirdmageddon dipper/wendy fics did this scene inspire?

Robbie is conspicuously missing from that list

nevermind. Would have been an amazing selfie though, can't fault him for that

Aw. This got me a bit teary-eyed. They really can do anything if they are together.

Shame about Mabel being inside Bill's floating lair completely out of their reach.

What a raw deal, last game I played with twins on it they l– actually, never mind, spoilers. But it was really cool, believe me.

It looks like the mission briefing for a stealth game so, in my case, I'd try to avoid the lights, fail miserably a thousand times and then rage quit. Hopefully Dipper is better at stealth.

Making the world weird?

Wouldn't they know what's going to happen? Since there seems to be only one timeline? Actually, nevermind, I'm too sober to analyze the time travel mechanics of gravity falls.

Time Baby was the most powerful entity in the show so far! Stakes have been raised.

RIP Bodacious T, we never go to know you.

Mad Max: Fury Road, 2015

Two months being a villain and he still hasn't learned to avoid monologuing.

Don't worry, Gideon. It took Steven Universe 6 years to grow a neck, you'll get one someday.

Huh. So Bill manipulated him by using his obsession for Mabel. That's a nice way to explain why it came back after so many episodes without mentioning it too much.

Ugh.

She's a genuine action movie heroine trapped in a cartoon

I have no idea how Wendy manages to get more and more badass this season.

Right!? Right!? Wow.

Holy shit, this really is Fury Road.

that's deep, man

Ah, that explains it. Nothing more dangerous than a philosophy major.

Hatoful Boyfriend, 2014

My mind is exploding right now. I wasn't ready for anime Dipper and Wendy. What are the monkey and kid in the backseat referencing?

Lady Gag– nah, I refuse to use the same joke three times in the same liveblog.

* screams in terror too *

What a shame that we couldn't see the birth of the legend of Soos.

I can't believe Dipper is using the "Power of Understanding" to talk Gideon down.

This is really good. I almost want to joke and say "but it wasn't worth the Wendy/Dipper episodes" but it actually does make them work in retrospect. It's probably the largest source of character growth for Dipper during the show and here's the payoff.

I mean, yes.

WHAT

HOW DARE YOU

GAME IS OVER, AND I WON

NOW IT'S TIME TO START THE FUN

I ALWAYS LOVE CORRUPTING LIVES

NOW LET'S SEE WHICH PINES SURVIVES

well, that's nice.

---

I wasn't sure what to expect from this "Part 1", I thought it was going to be mostly setup. And it had a bit of that, just to show how screwed Gravity Falls (the town) is, but after that it was all action and it was all good.

I think getting Ford out of the way early was a good idea, it removes the possibility of a quick solution. Now Dipper has to figure things on his own. He still needed Wendy to remind him of what he and Mabel are capable of but that's a friend offering help, not "the mentor" giving him the answer to the problem. On the other hand, while Stan hasn't appeared after the goat, he hasn't been captured yet (he's important enough to deserve an on-screen capture, unless it's going to be revealed as a demoralizing surprise?) so I think he'll appear soon since he's just a guy, without any special knowledge about Bill.

Soos really deserves his own show. "The Legend of Soos" Or give Wendy her own show with Soos as the mysterious stranger that appears from time to time to help. Because wow, Wendy is lost in this show, she should be the protagonist of something.

But the star of the show was Dipper talking Gideon down. I _really_ didn't expect that. This is not a show where the protagonists defeat their villains by talking to them (with some exceptions) so I thought they'd defeat him in some other, more violent, way. And the way he uses the "Power of Understanding" to do it (go read Scott Pilgrim)! While Dipper never got to that extreme, he "gets" it and that's just * chef kiss *

I can't wait for the next episode, especially because this one ended in a cliffhanger, so until next time!

#gravity falls #gravity falls liveblog #gf s02e18

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apparitionism · 6 years ago

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Sound 7

I haven’t done any public-facing work on this in some time, but I’m still very much in the middle of writing a sequel to Soon. Here’s a piece of it. When last we checked in on our intrepid Russian translator and her beloved violinist (and child), it was 1963, and they were finding their shared life in New York rewarding in many ways, while difficult to negotiate in others—which, I must say, describes my own feelings about this project. Writing is sometimes like pushing an overloaded sled in the weight room: if you can budge it a yard, that’s a victory. This maybe moves Sound along less than a foot, but even so. (No links to the other parts of Sound, or to Soon, but the former are findable here on Tumblr and the latter is both here and, in improved version, on AO3.)

Sound 7

1964

The device is crafted to appear innocuous.

It hides inside a dictating machine, a Philips, the newest model. The machine works just fine, both while concealing the device and not, and Myka has to learn to use it; she has to commit to it, so that its presence in her possession will appear natural. She finds that she likes recording her thoughts this way, though she’s embarrassed by how awful she sounds when she plays it back; even at normal speed, her voice is pitched higher than she ever imagined. Has she heard herself like this before? She’s listened to so many people’s speaking voices on tape—Russian-speaking voices, back in those days—but never her own.

Christina is fascinated by the Philips and begs to dismantle it. Helena wrinkles her nose at its sound quality: she complains of a high hiss and tells Myka she can find her a far better piece of equipment if she is committed to making notes in this way.

Myka has kept from Helena the real reason she has taken up dictation.

She tries a fast translation of a page of the text she’s working on now, Bryusov’s “V zerkale”—“In the Mirror”—by reading Cyrillic on the page, then speaking it in English into the machine. It’s difficult to keep from simply reading the Russian aloud, so she imagines it spoken in someone else’s voice, leaving her to translate simultaneously, UN-style. She tries Helena’s voice... too distracting. Her grandfather’s and grandmother’s are too familiar, and thus untranslatable. Lullabies. Max? He has a lovely voice, but the problem with imagining him speaking is that she senses him also whispering his own translation right along with himself, and that’s no help. She settles on a departmental colleague, a native Russian speaker whom she knows not well but well enough; his quiet, measured tones turn out to be Goldilocks-correct. “He” reads her the Bryusov story, and she tells it to the machine: “I have loved mirrors from my very earliest years...”

She’d been baffled when Abigail first handed her the machine and explained what it contained, for she couldn’t imagine she knew anyone Abigail would possibly have an interest in bugging. Myka doesn’t have that kind of access, and she certainly doesn’t have the expertise needed to secure this thing in place and make sure it works. Or the nerve, she tells herself, but while that might have been true in the past, she isn’t sure it’s true now. She feels a certainty in herself when she goes to Russia now. This reason, this deal she’s made, it defines her. It’s a mission, a discipline. Like Helena practicing her violin, though Myka doesn’t know what the honing of her nerve is preparing her for. What her performance will be.

“You aren’t planting it,” Abigail had told her. “And anyway it’s just a piece. You’re passing it along.”

Myka’s flicker of disappointment at this news frightened her.

She practices taking the Philips apart, removing the device, hiding it on her person, and putting the recorder back together again: quickly, silently. It’s useful to need to keep this activity from Christina, though equating Christina with KGB, even in this little way, makes Myka morally queasy.

Myka knows KGB officers listen to the hotel rooms that she and other foreigners stay in; she knows her movements are tracked; she knows that everyone to whom she speaks might be an informer. She doesn’t know how much time she’ll have when the moment comes to hand over the equipment, and she doesn’t know where it will happen.

“Why can’t I just carry it on me?” she asks Abigail. “The thing itself?”

“This is safer. Trust me.” The don’t ask why wall in Abigail’s voice: whatever she knows about what might happen to Myka—arrest, search, worse?—Myka will need not to know it’s coming. Abigail has told her in the past that an expression of genuine surprise is difficult to fake, and similarly hard for other humans to dismiss.

“Oh,” Abigail also says, offhand but not, “you may run into someone you know. Don’t react.”

Be surprised; don’t be surprised.

****

The session is intended to produce a simple demo.

Helena is in the hallway just outside the booth when she hears the sound engineer take a call. She is about to leave for the day; she has just checked in, on that very telephone, with her booking service, but nothing other than the brief rehearsal she just attended is scheduled—not a surprise, here on this relatively quiet Saturday morning.

“Hey, H.G.!” the engineer calls to her. “Want some more practice?”

She takes the phone from him. The bleary voice of Ben Cone, in whose booth she had lately sat while he produced a song that swiftly hit number three in the nation, tells her that he is supposed to be putting together a demo, but his hangover is too fierce; can she fill in? He knows she knows what to do, he says, and anyway, it’s just a demo. Everybody should be there in a half hour or so, bye. Oh, but she’ll have to find her own singer; his passed out only a couple hours ago, still sleeping it off. In no shape, you know?

She thinks of Rudy Lewis: “I’m your man for demo vocals,” he’d told her, years ago. “Don’t you call nobody else.” His sugar voice. She would have called him; he would have done it. Cruel of fate to hand her this chance, so short a time after... well. She should not dwell on that, not now.

But then she does think about it, when the song’s writer, who shows up to play piano on the track—where’s Ben; hung over; no surprise—hands her the music.

The song is titled “I’ll Pass.” “It’s simple,” he says. “Just a ‘thanks a lot but no thanks’ lyric.”

Helena can’t discern his real intent here, for the lyric strikes her as... multilayered. The verses suggest that the singer’s beloved finds the singer inadequate, inappropriate, in response to which, the singer says in the refrain, “I’ll pass, baby; I’ll pass.” A rejection? Or a sincere, bleak promise to show a different self to the world? Rudy would have sung it with the full range of meanings right there to be heard. But it isn’t Helena’s job to care about the meanings. It’s her job to produce a demo.

She is to do it with this songwriter-pianist, plus a guitarist, a drummer, a bassist... and a young saxophonist. Helena tries to send the latter home, but he says he needs the money. He says also that he would be happy to play anything she wants, if saxophones aren’t her bag, so she hands him a triangle from a box of orphan percussion and regrets to inform that the middle eight will not belong to him after all. He looks at the triangle, looks at her, pronounces this the screwiest session he’s ever seen—how many can he possibly have seen?—and then starts asking about when to ring, when to muffle, how much shimmer, and is there a brass beater anywhere in this studio because everybody knows the sound from stainless is too cold. (Helena takes his name and his number and files them away for the future.)

The musicians run through loose takes, tight takes; Helena likes the loose takes, despite the songwriter hitting an off note or several. It’s just a demo, and the looser renditions give a better sense of the song’s potential. She considers sitting down with them in the studio to add her violin, but there’s no string arrangement, and inventing one, even something simple, would begin to define the song. The demo should suggest no strictures, just a loose sense of what this melody and lyric could become.

She tries calling a few vocalists, but—again no surprise for a Saturday—she can’t find anyone, and no singer she knows well is in the building, so she asks each of the musicians to try a few bars. The guitarist wins the brief talent competition, with a soar of a tenor that Helena can’t believe hasn’t been put on record before. (She is filing him away too.) He says nobody ever asked, that he only ever sang in church—but he never goes to church anymore, which vexes his mama. Further, he notes, “I can’t sing and play at the same time,” and while Helena is outwardly expressing sympathy for his mother, she is also worrying about her ability, even with experienced engineering help, to lay in a vocal right on such a spare arrangement.

Can the now-trianglist take over the guitar part? “No strings, sorry,” he says, and doesn’t that just fit the day.

And indeed it isn’t quite right, in the end, the way the vocal lies against the music. But Helena rationalizes it, intellectualizes it—it’s trying to pass as a right part of the track. “I’ll pass, baby”? Some can. But: for only so long. The length of a pop song, perhaps.

“I was thinking about Rudy today,” she tells Christina when she finally arrives home, far later than she’d imagined, after the lengthy mixdown. “It’s just a demo,” the engineer had complained. “How rough would you be on me if it was a real track?” Which had made Helena think of Phil, but that association, and its implications, were too much for an already overloaded day.

Christina’s reaction to Rudy’s name is a quiet “oh.”

****

It had been an unremarkable day in late May, and Helena and the rest of the musicians who had assembled for a Drifters session were waiting, smoking, and growing a little irritated, for they all had additional bookings, and the more sweet time the singers and production took to arrive, the more likely the musicians were to be late for those other sessions.

Irritation turned to blank incredulity when Bert Berns, who was to produce, and the other men walked in, for Bert said, with no preliminaries, “Rudy died last night.” He added, “Overdose.”

They recorded four tracks that session. Helena could not have said, afterward, what any of them were, save the final one, a song that had been intended for Rudy to sing: a ballad called “I Don’t Want to Go On Without You.” Charlie sang it instead... that he could do so said something about professionalism, or shock, or both of them together.

Who, hearing any of those tracks on the radio, would discern that they were documents of grief? They would seem like the simple pop songs they were, and was that an obscenity, or was it just an extreme version of the work that pop music was designed to do?

“How do I tell Christina?” Helena asked Myka. “What do I tell her?”

“I don’t know—I don’t know anything. My only thought is ‘the truth.’” Myka said this as if it really was the only thought she had right then, the only thought she knew how to think about anything.

But Myka was right, so the truth was what Helena told Christina: Rudy took too many drugs, and he died. Christina asked why, and Helena thought she was asking a medical question, about what the body could and couldn’t tolerate. “No,” Christina clarified. “Why did he want to?”

Helena did try not to lie to Christina. Shield her, but not lie to her. So she said, “I think”—because she did not, in fact, know—“I think it was because he thought the world had no good place for him. He wanted a place, yet there was no place. I think that at times he wanted to let himself forget all of that. All of what surrounded him.”

Christina said a weary, “Misinformed beliefs,” and Helena could answer only with “That’s right.”

Helena had assumed she would attend the funeral alone, but Christina asked to go, then asked if Myka would go too. But Myka said, “That’s not a picture we should make.” At this, Christina nodded, and Helena could not hold back a small internal push of pride at that knowing assent. While Christina took great satisfaction in being far more American than Helena herself was, she was persistently British in her understanding of appearances.

They went out to buy her a black dress.

“Is it for a very special occasion?” the saleslady asked, because Christina was unsatisfied with the first three she tried.

“Yes and no,” Christina told her. Helena felt the push of pride again. She looked at Myka, who wore a “what is she becoming?” face, and Helena wanted to take her hand and echo “I don’t know—I don’t know anything,” then follow that with “But isn’t it miraculous that we’ll both find out?”

That miracle meant Helena would not need to find her consolation in a needle.

The night after the service, she would have been desperate to hold any woman in the dark, but instead she was lucky enough to hold the woman she loved. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Myka said in that dark, the same words she’d said to Christina in her new black dress, afterward. She’d also said, to Christina, “How was it?”

Christina hadn’t cried at the service, but rather sat, eyes wide, holding Helena’s hand. She hadn’t even spoken until just now, and Helena was certain that only to Myka would she have broken her silence: “They said nice things about him,” Christina responded. Then she’d leaned against Myka, as if to reassure, as if Myka were the one in need of comfort, and said, “Not the right nice things.”

****

Tonight, late at night, Myka clearly expects Helena to be pleased, both about having been asked to produce the track, and about having done it. Instead, Helena says a bitter, “It’s just a demo,” and she doesn’t quite cry about Rudy, how he was not there but should have been, why he was not there to sing a song he should have sung.

“Nothing you do is just anything,” Myka says, kissing the corners of Helena’s almost-wet eyes.

“It was the work of just one afternoon,” Helena says, trying to shake off the sadness, yet also irrationally resentful of how Myka makes her want to shake off the sadness. “I’ll be surprised if I or anyone hears of it again.”

****

Myka’s handoff is easy. Like this: A week into her two-week stay, her two weeks of lecturing and researching, she is reading in Moscow University’s library. She is heavily supervised, of course, and she has already been told that she will be gaining no access to certain authors’ work: “Sorry, not available.” (The “to you” is implied.) The librarians are happy to hand her as many issues of Novy Mir as she wants, however, particularly since she is able to show them that she herself, Myka Bering, translator of many Russian works, was mentioned in a commentary written by its editor, Alexander Tvardovsky, in 1960. She does not point out to them that Novy Mir publishes several of those authors who are considered forbidden.

It is so easy: they do not want her to take notes, so she says, “May I use my dictating machine?” It is such a novelty that all the librarians must come and look at it, speak into it, hear snippets of their own voices. After all that, how can they say no? Myka promises to be quiet with it, but there is really no need. The library is libraryesque only in that books are on offer.

So easy: when a man approaches the table and points at the machine, her first thought is that he, like the librarians, wants to acquaint himself with the dictating technology. Instead he says the correct code word, and Myka answers him in kind. She demonstrates the Philips for him, and he thanks her. He then sits at a table of his own, not far from hers, and proceeds to ignore her completely.

She asks to visit the ladies room, which is of course in an isolated location, and she is given one of “the girls”—women who fetch books from the stacks for the mostly male scholars—as an ostensible guide. Ostensible because no American can be left to roam unattended, yet this particular girl wants only to go outdoors and smoke cigarettes. She doesn’t care in the slightest about Myka, who may be American but is just a woman, and old besides. So Myka goes into the washroom, calmly disassembles the Philips, removes the device, and puts it in the pocket of her suit jacket. She then just as calmly reassembles the machine, collects her watcher (who exhibits far more care in putting out her half-smoked cigarette, to save for later, than for her Myka-watching task), goes back to the reading room, reads and dictates for another hour, then goes to the man at his table. “I forgot to show you,” she says, “that the machine plays back at two speeds.” She hands him the machine and the device at the same time, listens to her own voice weirdly manipulated, and then it is done.

An hour more she reads and dictates, then she prepares to depart. The librarians, and Myka’s heedless escort who likes to smoke outdoors, wave her goodbye. She feels no need to look over her shoulder.

The summertime sidewalks of 1964 Moscow are full and bright. The weather is fine, just right for the young women to wear sundresses, for the young men to sport shirtsleeves. Their conversations are animated. They direct their eyes high, up at billboards, particularly film advertisements, and Myka tries not to read too much into the title of one: Den’ schast’ya, Day of Happiness. A girl in a lime-green shift pulls at the hand of her male companion and directs his attention to an elaborate wooden model train in a shop window; they both laugh. The train cars’ colors are washed out, too long exposed to light in that window, no buyers. While such a sight would have been sad in New York, here, for the young and sundressed and laughing, Myka infers that it’s a mark of all they believe they are leaving behind. The faded past; who needs it?

On these same sidewalks, though, as if they have been imported from that faded past, an older generation walks heavier. Silent. They dress as if they must wear all they own or lose it, no matter the weather. They find no distraction in advertisements, and they don’t bother with window displays. The past is always there; why be reminded?

Myka tries to remind herself, and keep in the front of her mind, that she has more in common with those who walk with weight. She is doing dangerous work. She will become careless if she forgets about risk and consequences. But a sharp lightness has come to attend her time in Russia... she keeps secrets all the time, no matter where she is, but the secret she keeps here, while she is here, is distinct: the threat of its revelation accrues to her and no one else.

The most salient secret she keeps at home is vastly different, in that its discovery would damage Myka, but reverberations from that discovery would very likely destroy Helena and Christina.

Walking down a summertime sidewalk of Moscow, responsible only for her own safety, affords Myka a guilty freedom. That such freedom should be one through which she is constantly followed and watched and listened to should be ironic, but instead it seems like part of a mistaken-identity comedy, one in which Russians have been told to follow and watch and listen to Myka Bering, but they are following and watching and listening to a person who feels free, and that cannot possibly be Myka Bering, so they are following and watching and listening to the wrong person after all. Who do they think she is?

Who does she think she is?

Her final event in Russia, a week later, is a reception for all the university’s visiting American scholars. Myka is one of only three lecturers who have come for these two-weeks; several more have spent the entire now-concluding summer term here in exchange for some Soviets who are probably at similar receptions on U.S. campuses. Different hors d’oeuvres, same receptions. More than a few are scientists, which helps to explain the heavy presence of people at this party who are clearly not academics. Myka meets several American diplomats, most of whom are probably straightforwardly State; some, though, must be CIA under official cover. Similarly, there are some actual Soviet diplomatic eminences, but also, plenty of KGB making their power known.

Myka finds herself chatting with two junior diplomats—or “diplomats”—one American whose name she did not quite catch, and one Russian, his name Nikolai. Nikolai will no doubt be reporting back to his superiors everything about his American interlocutors, regardless, but in this conversation he is just a young man, dark with a softness about his mouth. “What is happening in New York?” he asks her, and his English is all right, nearly full-speed, but she tells him he should feel free to speak Russian with her.

“Want practice,” he demurs. But he flashes her a small smile as he does so. In that soft mouth, his teeth are wolf-white. Nikolai has never skipped out to smoke, outdoors or anywhere else. He is clean.

The American glimpses someone across the room and makes a “come here” motion. Myka looks over to see who is approaching... and she understands why Abigail told her not to react. “Professor Bering,” the American says, “and Nikolai, I’d like to introduce you to Joseph Holden, the famous Olympic wrestler.”

Joseph has received the same instructions Myka has; he shakes her hand and says “A pleasure, professor.” Then he shakes hands with Nikolai. The clean Russian shows his wolf teeth again, more widely.

Myka does not know anything about this, whatever “this” might be. Her fizz of ire at Abigail for not being forthcoming is probably inappropriate and definitely fruitless in this moment, but she feels it. She looks at Joseph, who always seems to make easy situations less so, and she directs that fizz at him, too.

Myka and Joseph have one moment together during which they are unobserved, or at least less closely attended to. “Why are you here?” she asks him, because she can’t stop herself.

He laughs. “Oh, I’m finding Moscow really something,” he says, his voice fully corn-fed, but that is not the end of it. Quick, quiet, he adds, “I’m bait.”

Myka has no time or space to get more from him. Nikolai reappears, and Joseph turns back to him, his charm wide, open.

The burden of risk.

****

Myka returns home from her two weeks in Russia to find... difference. Her own blood is colder, because it always is after Russia, but also because she doesn’t know the contours of the operation she brushed past. She’ll find out soon enough—she won’t let Abigail fail to read her in, not on this—but she is still shivering.

Helena, meanwhile, is hot: her demo version of “I’ll Pass” is charting.

She’d had no idea, she tells Myka, that the demo was being cut for Lester Sill—he’d been Phil’s partner at Philles Records, but their relationship had soured. “As it would,” Helena said, and Myka recognized that little curl of lip. Sill was now at Colpix, hungry for talent... Helena had been told that when the demo was played for him, he’d listened through, then stood up and walked out of his office. “We’re done,” he’d said as he left. “Release it. It’s a hit.” Helena admits to Myka that she imagines—worries?—that all he had heard was some vestige of Phil’s style, some oddity that Helena had unknowingly reproduced. That that was what caught his ear.

“It’s just one hit,” Helena says, as if in apology, and Myka can’t understand why she isn’t thrilled to have done—on her first try!—exactly what she has always intended to do. Then Helena says, “It was an accident.” This gives Myka clarity: Helena doesn’t know how to make it happen again.

After any time in Russia, Myka is always a bit more Russian than she was before. Which is not to say that she will ever understand or feel with fullness what it is to be Russian... but some not-quite-Russian lives inside her, some unschooled child of all these: her grandfather, her grandmother, all the voices she has heard on tapes, all the words on the pages she has translated, KGB, dissidents, victims, perpetrators, even young girls in sundresses. They all wrestle for pride of place within her. Those real Russians never explain themselves, never step up and tell her, never sit her down and bleed into her bones. But those Russians, and even the not-quite-one who doesn’t fill her skin, they all know: there are no accidents.

TBC

#bering and wells #Warehouse 13 #fanfic #Sound #part 7 #Soon sequel #I know it isn't much #and I know it's been forever #plus some passages are still rough #but I do keep trying to make it real #in ways that complicate but also make motivational sense #and I'll keep doing that #because I owe it to these characters #who have moved so far beyond where they began #(anyway JH's significant line has been lying in wait since I started thinking about Sound)#(and so has that song title)#(which I may decide in the end is too heavy-handed)#(but it can deliver its thematic hammer for the time being)

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