Sosostris
Aleksy leaned on the rolling pin, face crumpled up in an irritated frown. If Iouri hadn’t been busy with… whatever he was doing for pelmeni filling, he might have asked for help, but Iouri was, and Aleksy wasn’t going to ask, because he was a grown man who could certainly roll the dough thin enough to be translucent. Nor was he going to complain. Or at least, he wasn’t going to complain loud enough that Iouri could hear him: grumbling under his breath was completely fair game. “If I can’t see the table it isn’t thin enough,” Aleksy parroted, reading off the cookbook he’d gotten from the library. “The ******** table is oak. They are the same ******** color.”

He kept his voice low, though. Iouri did not go in much for swearing, and Iouri was one of the only people Aleksy unironically liked, and also he didn’t really want to indicate he wasn’t paying attention to Iouri’s story. It was a good one--about St. Petersburg, and the Hermitage museum--and it was important. Aleksy was too FOB (fresh off the boat, an acronym he’d learned from Finn’s friend Anabel) to pass as someone who had lived in Destiny City all his life. But he was also too amnesiatic to pass as a Russian without some real help.

At least at home he could speak Russian. He was picking up his English again, slowly, and words from other languages filtered in as he encountered them, but Russian was still his best language.

He picked up the dough, careful not to lift it high enough that it would tear as he scattered more flour beneath it. The dough tore anyway, and he swore under his breath before abandoning the enterprise completely. “This is thin enough, yes,” he said, interrupting Iouri without much fanfare. Probably it was. It felt about right, but Aleksy didn’t think he’d spent much time cooking when he was Irinei. (And he was right.)


Iouri, his hands wrist-deep in ground beef and garlic, stopped mid-sentence and looked over to where Aleksy was working the dough. He’d thought that he’d given his new brother the easier task - it was the one he’d usually done himself, cooking with his (well, now their mother as a child), but perhaps he’d misjudged Aleksy’s capability for finesse. Just because one was good with a paintbrush did not mean the skills transferred to a rolling pin.

The dough was torn, yes, but he was confident that they could piece it back together well enough for their needs. These were not fancy pelmeni or pelmeni meant to be served at Russian heritage day - they were just meant for a hearty meal between brothers. “Yes,” he said, giving the filling a final squeeze before withdrawing his hands from the bowl. “That is thin enough.”

He turned on the sink using some very careful maneuvering of his elbow, and set about washing his hands. “I don’t suppose you remember if your original mother cooked with you very often?” he asked. Violetta was a wonderful cook, even when times were lean, and he would have expected, given the way that he understood Aleksy to have been raised, that he would have at least some domestic skills that might have carried over. (That was a conversation that still needed to be had, and soon, and Iouri was not pleased that the responsibility of discussing his amnesiac adoptive brother’s situation had fallen on his shoulders. He wasn’t versed in the terminology! He knew nothing about that world! And besides, how awkward!)

Picking up the bowl of filling, as well as a clean glass, he joined Aleksy at the table. “We are going to cut circles out of the dough and fill them,” he explained, demonstrating. “We will put the circles as close together as we can, and then we will roll what dough is left out again.”

On second thought. “I will do that. Would you like to cut,” he asked, offering Aleksy the glass, “Or to fill?”

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“According to my journal, no,” he said, sniffing as if offended. But it was true that any skill he might have with other things didn’t transfer between brush or knitting needles and rolling pins; he tried, of course. The dough still came out uneven and torn. It was irritating, but that was also just how it was. He was better with knives. “She wasn’t much of one for cooking. I said that she only cooked when my cousin was visiting, and Tatiana had more interest in that than I.”

By the time she’d started visiting, he’d already had his first gallery showing, and such things were not for him anymore… according to the book, anyway. Who knew what the truth of the matter was. “I will cut,” he said, because Iouri was already offering the glass, and also because Aleksy had no preference, really. This proved to be much more up his alley than rolling the dough had been. The circles were closely spaced, most of the edges carefully touching, and quickly cut. He finished with the glass, and started carefully folding over the tops of the pelmeni.

“I suppose what is in my journal doesn’t matter so much.” He wasn’t pretending to be Irinei Lazarev, who had puzzling mentions of doctor’s appointments that could only be conducted away from home, whose calendar was marked with little red dots. That man was dead, really, with just the body and the muscle memory left behind, and whatever relationships he had had meant nothing anymore--except this one, here. Aleksy smiled at Iouri, and said, “I appreciate your stories,” because it was true and because the attention on who he had been made his hands feel strange and prickly, and his head spin.

Besides--he felt like an original person. Like a real person. He wasn’t trying to take someone else’s skin, only to figure out his own. “Now we roll the dough out again?”


Iouri hadn’t read the journal, but from what he knew of Irinei Lazarev, he expected the same sort of tight-lipped attitude that the man had had in person. There was likely very little self-reflection, merely a recording of events for posterity, and that was fine, but he did not know how much it was actually telling Aleksy about his former self… not that Aleksy seemed particularly inclined to know. Alas. The conversation he needed to have and did not want to hung in the air like a suspended sword. Finn and his friend Anabel had stressed that time was of the essence…

But how awkward, worried Iouri again, and scraped the remaining dough back into a ball. “Yes,” he said, taking the rolling pin and leaning into the motion. He was much quicker at this than Aleksy, and had the dough ready to cut again in moments. “Alright,” he said, stepping back. “I’ll let you cut, since you did so well the first time.”

At least he’d found some part of this recipe that Aleksy was good at!

“Our mother,” said Iouri, for the record, “Is a wonderful cook. I learned this recipe from her. She makes it better.” Violetta Spektor was a force to be reckoned with in the kitchen, and Iouri would always defer to her.

Alas, he’d better just bite the bullet on this - or try to, anyway. “So you are settling in well?” Iouri asked, and tried to lay down subtext but he had never been good at subtext. “Is there anything you need?”

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“She is likely not crippled by an incompetent,” said Aleksy, a little sour about his ineptitude with the rolling pin after seeing how quickly Iouri could spread the dough to the appropriate thinness. “Or, not often.” It depended on how they were going to play this, but it didn’t matter--they wouldn’t have to explain unless it came up. Which it wouldn’t. Right.

He cut out the dough circles. “Yes,” he confirmed, “I have another job, painting one of the homes in the historical district. It’ll be interesting. The house is hideously colored.” Aleksy made a face. “I am fine. Is there something you want to talk about?”


“You’re not incompetent,” Iouri said gently, giving the bowl of filling a stir. Rolling dough took a lot of time to get exactly right - it was an exacting science, and he wished Aleksy wouldn’t be so hard on himself over it. After all, he was doing just fine with cutting the circles and folding them over. “This sort of work takes practice, which is why we’re doing it.”

Frowning down at the bowl of filling, Iouri said, awkwardly, “At some point, it might be fitting for you to… go for a check-up? You have no medical records and it would be good to get some started. Finn has connections who would not find… your situation… odd.”

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Practice and patience weren’t Aleksy’s strong suits, but probably Iouri had noticed that by now. There were enough abandoned books lying around, all of which shared the Roman alphabet in common. His discard pile wasn’t meant to be disrespectful. The only ones that made it through a reading were the ones written in Cyrillic. “The amnesia,” said Aleksy, nodding. “It wouldn’t make a lot of sense to a doctor looking at me, would it?”

He had the scarring to explain any number of things, but not the amnesia. The second night of his new life had been dedicated to familiarizing himself with his body: the silken texture of his auburn hair, the myriad tiny scars on his arms with their variety of shapes, places where flesh gave way to bristly hair. Aleksy ran a hand along his jaw, which--despite having not seen a razor that he could remember--continued to develop very little stubble.

“Thank you for telling me,” he said. “We should write a letter to Finn.” Aleksy hadn’t yet gotten a phone, and he resisted all efforts to give him one--he could provide it himself, he was sure, once he had the documentation to prove he lived in a home and had accounts which could be billed--so a letter, sent by the knight rings, was the best option. Only he couldn’t yet reliably write in English, so he would have to borrow Iouri as an intermediary… again. “I’m sorry to ask you for this favor.”


Iouri nodded. “Yes,” he said, “Most doctors would want you to enter treatment for your memory loss.” The amnesia hadn’t been what he’d meant, but he was willing to take any excuse to drop the subject and toss this back towards being Finn’s responsibility. (Which it honestly should have been in the first place - he imagined that Finn, being at least ten years younger than himself and a fair bit more worldly, was more versed in the proper way to discuss this… just not in Russian.)

(Whatever. At least it wasn’t his problem anymore.)

“Of course,” said Iouri. “I would be happy to write the letter for you.”

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Aleksy nodded, as if something more momentous had been decided than hey we’re going to send Finn Derouen the magical equivalent of an email. Maybe something had? Iouri seemed inordinately relieved. He frowned at the finished collection of pelmeni, and said, “Perhaps we can do that while these cook.” It would be the most effective use of their time. Trying to struggle his way through another English-language book was not high on Aleksy’s list of priorities at the moment, and Iouri was right that they didn’t know anything about Aleksy’s overall health. Talking to Finn would expedite that.

“What do we do next with these?” He gestured to the pelmeni.