Konstantin Bashmet was nothing but extraordinarily ordinary.

His grades in school were average, as were his performances on the school's football team. His face was next to impossible to pick out in a crowd, and he was almost always found in a circle of friends that very clearly had a leader that was Not Him.

Not that it bothered Konstatin. He had no lofty expectations of ruling the school, or even a portion of it.

It invited trouble, and that was something he generally tried to avoid.

After careful inspection of himself and comparing himself against the general populace, Konstantin found himself to be of average height, stature, and appearance. He had a manner of speaking that was crude but not in an particularly alarming way, seeing as he was a young man from the middle class of Tyumen.

His hobbies were the ones he picked up from people around him, be it parental suggestion or his friends wanting a partner in crime. Sometimes, he would sit on his laptop and mix a little music, jamming in the dim of his apartment--

But it was always short-lived.

Konstantin often heard the word "inspired" being bandied about, but rarely understood the meaning of it, the emotions that surged behind the word.

So he was ordinary. Frightfully so, in fact, and that was a perfectly acceptable fate to him.

If there were shadows that dragged on a little too long, Konstantin would accidentally leave the lights on.

If there were voices that whispered sweet promises of his demise, then he would ignore them, and studiously so.

If there were any nightmares that plagued his sleep, then Konstantin would take up running before bed until he was exhausted enough to fall into dreamless sleep.

Emotions were finicky things, Konstantin preferred to carefully bundle them up, as though they were sticks for the kindling, and cordoned them off from the rest of his mind.

Really, it was a common theme for Konstantin. Pick apart the details, pull them from their context, and examine them with frightening detail. It led to him becoming a constant ear for those friends of his with relationship woes. Anyone in his social circle who was in need of a neutral party for mediation tended to seek him out.

Not that they ever really listened to his advice, which generally comprised of "Go and SPEAK with them, then."

He was fine with it, though, because he was used to people brushing him aside. "Live a little," they had laughed to him. "Lighten up!"

It was baffling to Konstantin, at first. It wasn't as though he was incapable of recongizing humour or that he was a complete killjoy.

It was just that working up the energy to laugh required more from him than a brief, tight-lipped smile.

Moreso, it was that he didn't care about the latest story of crazy hijinks, or who had ended up in the jail, or who was ******** who.

Or who had betrayed who, in the name of love.

Humans were petty, vicious and disgusting creatures at their core, a fact that the Russian had come to accept with some modicum of reluctance after his obligatory year in the army.

The stint had been agonizing, and altogether far too short in a single breath. It wasn't as though Konstantin had been happy to be there-- it was too uptight, too corrupt, and far too cold for his liking.

Nonetheless, Konstantin Bashmet, a lowly ryadovoy in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, had not quite wanted it to end.

After all, a wolf was not happy to be surrounded by lambs, for it was not capable of such a thing. Instead, it merely flourished, glutting itself thanks to the fortunate circumstances it found itself in.

It was a little like that.

When Julie came to get him, it was a little like that, too.

It had been Spring, which meant that Siberia was a little less frigid than its name might insinuate. The frost was thawing, the blizzards were gone, the sun bright in the grey-blue expanse above.

It was still cold.

She was dressed in cream and rainbows, a neon splotch against the horizon, a wide scarf wrapped around an alarmingly thin neck.

With a smile and a faraway look in her eyes, she had taken his hands in her small ones, and promised him a world outside of a regime.

Outside of limited news, and outside of his self imposed limitations of the mundane.

She called him Ivan. Then Victor. Then something else entirely, inviting him to walk with her to the cinema. And he had, her arm in his own, and she made him promises. Asked him to come with her, to become stronger, to fight. To triumph over evil. To accept her quest.

The requests were vastly illogical.

But, for once in his life, the apathetic and bored Konstantin deviated from the norm.

He said yes.