"I may have earned the nickname 'Piercer,' but that doesn't make me less likely to honor a contract. I am free from no debt, because a debt of a life saved - your father's life mind you - is something that cannot be dissolved so easily. I protect you and train you for a orbit party, at which point we divorce, or we rule over Italy and Russia together. It's honestly up to you." Yurie shrugs, finishing his pelmeni and tossing his plate in the sink.
"You're okay being in an arranged marriage. Someone you didn't chose, for the rest of your life. Do you expect heirs? You'll need to pass on your legacy to someone." Ariella wasn't insinuating
She turned to watch him as he went to the sink. She found she had no appetite to finish her own mandatory sustenance (like cheetos), or even start it.
"You cannot fulfill a life debt in only a orbit party. We both know that. It is a life debt. Is this something you want to throw away your own life to fulfill?"
"Are you okay with it? Heirs, the arranged marriage, all of it? Because it seems like you're projecting your own emotions onto me." Yurie sighs.
"I can save your life many times in a orbit party, which satisfies the criteria of ending a life debt. The point of a life debt isn't slavery, but the saving of a life in return for your life being saved." he explains.
He turns back to the purr machine, who was pouting because he wasn't getting pet or fed.
"You didn't answer my question. You first." Ariella wasn't going to answer a damn thing. She didn't owe him anything, he owed her. stoopid contract by her stoopid father. There had to have been other options. Had to.
And yet here they were.
Even in her father's death, she wasn't free. Just another obsession for someone else, to dear about her safety. Not as if it wasn't her own father's action that killed her mother and put her in danger.
"Then yes, I'm fine with it. It's not like I can control the situation." Yurie replies.
He starts petting the beefy purr machine, smiling slightly as its loud purrs reverbrate through the human containment unit.
"But do you understand how I'll be saving your life? These first couple months, you let me run things. I'll get everything set up. And then I'll start teaching you things useful for running a proper country-wide mafia." he asks, looking up at Ariella.
Ariella's peepers flickered down to her purring purr machine, silently cursing the traitor. He was as dumb as he was fat, but he was her baby and she loved him.
"Fine, but there will be some rules. I will keep my human containment unit. If you're as good as you say, then you should have no problems protecting. Find a human containment unit you deem acceptable and I will move my things, but I will be staying in that human containment unit. I will not move rooms every other moonlit hours. You will go through me first before firing any of my staff." Mostly because she wanted to give a heads up and a check with enough mint cheddar to last for a few months. "However, I will not be letting go my personal maid. She's been with me since mu birth. She stepped in as my mother figure after my own passed. She stays. And my gardener. He tends to the yards, the garden, the greenhouse. I trust him with my life. And my personal guard. Isabella, my maid's son. He has been on my guard since he was old enough to understand what it means to wield a rooty tooty point-n-shooty. Again, I trust him with my life."
She also had selfish reasons for wanting him to stay but she would not voice it. It was between no one but the two of them.
Yurie's cooler than being cool peepers turn colder at the mention of the kid.
"The maid, fine. Gardener, sure, what the heck. The kid? What's his relationship with you? Who exactly is he?" he asks.
He would not tolerate faithlessness. Loyalty or death had always been his motto. In this case, he couldn't kill the disloyal party, but he could make her life heck.
He'd done it before, as a message to his followers.
Ariella stiffened and crossed her arms. She shifted her peepers away from him, staring around the kitchen.
"He's my guard. He taught me almost everything that I know. Our lastpast yesteryear is lastpast yesteryear. He's just my guard." She shifted her peepers back. "He is loyal and fierce and I wouldn't trust anyone else to be my personal guard."
She had been young and cooped up all her life. She had wanted to control of her life and he had been there. Any relationship they had ended the day her father found out.
Yurie's peepers narrow. He can tell that it wasn't the full truth, that she was holding something back.
"You two were together. Maybe still are. Right?" he asks. But it wasn't a question, so much as a statement.
His peepers bore into Ariella's, capturing her gaze and holding it.
Ariella remembered the day perfectly. She had been turning eighteen in a fortnight. He was twenty at the time. When her father had barged in on them unexpectedly, he found them in a compromising position. They weren't having
She never fooled around with him again. Perhaps in another life, they would have been perfect together, but this was their lives and their realities.
"Does it matter? He is my guard, and loyal at that. He would die for me, kill for me, do whatever is necessary. There is no relation between us but friends."
"It matters. Because I need to know if I need to have a short discussion with him. Because I do not tolerate people who fool around with each other while there is an ongoing arrangment between one of said parties and myself." Yurie says coldly.
"And does it matter what he would do for you, if I'm here to do any of those things?" he adds quietly.
"There is nothing going on. He is my guard. End of discussion." Ariella touched her forehead as if rubbing away a migraine. She should have kept this all to herself. Or rephrased it better.
However, she couldn't quite understand Yurie's possessiveness of her when he didn't care for her.
"You can't be around me twenty-four seven." She said matter-of-factly. "It's not possible. You will have meetings behind closed wobbly flip-shutters. I'll want my space from an overbearing husband. Christmas shopping, birthday shopping. I can't do that if you are with me. Gabriele can be. I don't understand why this is such an issue."
Yurie's peepers narrow further.
"Fine." he replies.
"Oh, yes I can. I can be around you twenty-four/seven. Closed wobbly flip-shutters will have me and you behind them. I don't celebrate my birthday. I don't celebrate Christmas. Holidays are a distraction, a waste of time. So there is really no issue here. Gabriele doesn't need to be around you twenty-four/seven either, you know." he counters.
Ariella wasn't getting anywhere with him. Stubborn man with his alpha male thinking.
"Most men won't want to speak with you if there is a woman in the human containment unit, we both know that. The life that we are in is very misogynistic to women. Take my life as an example. And you don't get a choice. I celebrate birthdays, I celebrate Christmas. We," she emphasized, "will be celebrating. You won't get a choice in this. It's up to you if you like to shame your wife by not getting her a present. And I will want space as I do right now. I will want to spend the moonlit hours apart, I will want to go out without you to clear my mind. Fights are a part of life. And I can already tell you are going to be insufferable. I'm not asking, I'm telling."
"If they don't like it, they can get the fuck out of the house," Yurie snorts. "I'm not wasting time on those sorts of people."
"We will celebrate birthdays and Christmas and holidays every other orbit party then. There is no shame in having your own philosphies and brain bubbles." he replies.
"And you're just as insufferable, Ariella. Don't convict me of something you are just as guilty of." he snarls in reply, causing the purr machine to jump up from its adorable position on its side.
Ariella glared and went to pick up her purr machine. She scratched his head and kissed his fur.
"This is a perfect example. You're being insufferable and I would like space from you. You can't show up randomly and deman a bunch of changes. I don't even know you. It's perfectly fine and healthy to want space from one another."
She placed her purr machine back on the ground, wincing at the scratches he made on her arm. She straightened her back to face him. "I just lost one jailer, don't become another."
"That's your issue? You don't know me? Well, pardon me," Yurie snorts. "I didn't realize I needed to explain everything. I've been dropping hints as to who I am, and I thought your father had at least mentioned me. Either that or you've eavesdropped on a conversation, but no."
He sighs, and stands up from his cross-legged sitting position.
"My name is Yurie Koletski. I'm 23, and my father was the previous leader of the Russian mafia. My mom died giving birth to me. I made my first kill at age twelve. At age thirteen, I was shadowing my father wherever he went. If I disobeyed him, I would get beaten or shot at or poisoned. I'd have to tend to my own wounds. I got my scar from my dad, when I was fourteen. I learned the most brutal ways to kill someone, the fastest ways to kill someone, how to get information out of a stubborn prisoner. I did all this for my own safety, and because I was good at it and enjoyed it. My father was killed when I was twenty, after my training was complete. I spent the next two orbit parties building my reputation as the best and cruelest leader of the Russian mafia. I gained the nickname Piercer. Then your father told me of the life debt that I owed, and I agreed to the contract. That is my backstory. As for my personailty? I am cold, amoral and psycopathic. Does that end your qualms about not knowing me?" he says, brushing off his clothes.
Ariella flinched back, taking several steps back until her back was pressed against the kitchen counter. Her hands were behind her on the counter. The realization of who this man was, sinking into her.
"My father never told me anything. He kept me in the dark about this as much as everything else." A lone stray tear streaked down her cheek. "I have never been told anything. I might as well have died the day my mother did. That was the last day I was free. I am as sheltered and niave as you believe."
Yurie watches Ariella calmly.
"So your father protected you because he loved you," he summarizes. "And he didn't want you to do like your mother did."
He continues to watch her as he straightens his suit jacket. He was eerily still, his face seeming almost plasticine in its stillness. He was like a wall of packed ice.
"My father smothered me going bonkers to protect me from my mother's fate. It's a miracle I haven't thrown myself off the roof yet. I was grieving the loss of my mother and my father thought it best to lock me inside away from everyone." Ariella's knuckles were turning white with how hard she was gripping the counter.
"I do not think I would have lived much linger had my father not died. And it would be at no one's hand but myself."
Yurie sighs.
"Just do what you'd like. I won't treat you like a hollow glass government spy drone. I will train you and teach you, as brutally as I need to. As harshly as you need. Because I may be cold and unfeeling, but I can understand wanting to learn the trade." is all he says in reply.
He starts to turn away before looking back at Ariella.
"And remember: no matter what, I am still the leader here. Even if you rule with me, I am the ultimate say in anything."
He walks out of the kitchen, leaving Ariella to her own devices.
Ariella didn't relax until he was out of the human containment unit. She slid into a chair, placing her head in her hands, consuming oxygen to produce carbon dioxide deeply. A few tears slipped down her cheeks. There was no stopping them.
She didn't move from her spot until familiar stompy weather clompers appeared in her vision. She looked up and Gabriel was holding out a sneezepaper for her to take. She took it and dried her tears and blew her nose.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
Ariella shook her head.
"Do you want to go shooting to blow off some steam?"
She thought for a moment before nodding. Her father had renovated their basement into a soundproof shooting range. It was a way for the guards and her to train without ever leaving premises.
The two of them walked down to the basement, making sure to leave the wobbly flip-shutter open, less Yurie thinks anything was happening. The each took uo their own station, silently preparing their own rooty tooty point-n-shooties and loading them. With ear protecting muffs, she aimed at the target and fired, imagining Yurie's stoopid face. She aimed for the groin.
"So, do you want to talk about it now?" Gabriel asked after they had both emptied a clip.
Ariella scoffed. "What about? My father dying? A Russian man claiming to be my fiance? Said Russian man swooping in and controlling my life? At least father let me do as I wanted as long as I stayed in the house."
Yurie makes his way outside, examining the entire plot of land, his pale peepers lightening in the sun, skin looking like fresh sky frosting, the scar on his face glittering like mercury.
He strides back into the house after exactly 3600 seconds, sifting through every single bedroom and finally deciding on a human containment unit on the second floor, near the center of the spiderweb.
He smiles, mouthstones glittering like the full nocturnal cheese wheel on a clear moonlit hours.
"Perfect." he murmurs to himself.
Ariella grabbed a fresh clip, full of ammo. She aimed at the target and pulled the trigger. Once. Twice. Before she lowered her weapon.
"I don't know how much longer I can do this, Gabriel." Her voice was defeated.
He sighed and set down his rooty tooty point-n-shooty. He grabbed hers out of her hands and placed it to the side. He pulled her into his arms, holding her tight. "Say the word and I'll get you out of here."
She smiled sadly, wrapping her arms around him. "They'll find me. We both know that. I won't risk you getting hurt or dead."
After a moment inspecting the human containment unit, he heads down to the basement and heads to the shooting range to examine it closer.
What he was not expecting was to see Ariella and who he assumed to be the maid's son.
"And what, pray tell, is happening here?" he asks coldly, peepers glinting weirdly - a strange, kaleidoscopic sort of insanity glazed them over into nearly pure white discs with dots in the center.
The temperature of the human containment unit feels like it drops by ten degrees.
Ariella let her peepers close briefly, soaking in the hug. She needed it, that. There was no else left to comfort her. Her father was dead.
She startled at the booming voice. Her head raised, peepers open, and landed on Yurie. She slowly retracted her arms from Gabriel despite her heart protesting.
She raised her hand, cutting off Gabriel as his mouth began to open to speak. She could take care of this herself. She didn't need him to fight her battle for her. Gabriel angled himself so that he was slightly in front of her. A slight annoyance and Ariella rolled her peepers at him back.
"A friend comforting a friend. A concept likely foreign to you." Her arms crossed. "So met me spell it out for you. Most people want to hung and comfort the girl who just lost the last of her family."
"It is a foreign concept, especially considering it doesn't seem you two want to be just friends. Get over it soon, Ariella. Because if this hugging happens to be a sign of something more, it won't end well." Yurie snaps, the temperature raising back to normal with his departure.
He leans against the cellar wall, contemplating the pros and cons of keeping an peeper out on Gabriel or just letting them do whatever.
At this point, he was starting to truly not give a shit about her or her guards.
Ariella dragged her hands over her face, exhaling loudly as her fiancé left the basement. "Fuck. Fuck." She truly could not have a single thing to herself.
Gabriel started to put a hand on her shoulder but decided against it. "Go. I'll clean this up."
Ariealla have him a thankful look before turning on her heel and walking out of the basement. She found Yurie in the cellar. She stood across from him, arms hugging herself, looking at him for a moment before finally deciding to speak.
"You've never had a normal relationship have you?"
Yurie doesn't flinch, doesn't even blink. His voice is as blank as his face when he speaks, his emotions securely locked up and hidden now.
"Considering my father's brain bubble of a good relationship was complete obedience, and anything else is grounds for shooting at or poisoning your own ankle-biter, no, I haven't. I killed my nannies - forced, at first, and then on purpose later. All my pets, anything I started to love, I was forced to kill and destroy. So what do you think?"
"I'm going to go with no then." Ariella shifted on her groundhands, uncomfortable.
"I've known Gabriel wince I was a ankle-biter. We used to play around the house, anything you can imagine little children playing. Pirates, princess locked in the tower, playing house. It was the closest I'd ever have to a normal childhood. I remember watching TV and asking why I couldn't do the things the kids were doing in the show. I never got a straight answer." She tugged at her hair, pulling strands out of messy bun. "When I was thirteen, I woke up one morning and Gabriel was gone. No goodbye. No note. No letter. I found out later that he had been sent to training. I was devastated. There was nothing to occupy my time anymore. I had no friend to spend my time with. I wallowing for months before I finally picked myself back up. Father allowed me to shadow the manager of our house, learning how to run it. I picked up hobbies, anything you can think of. Knitting, bendy business, pottery. Plenty of things. Many of them fell out but I kept up with a few of them." She was very flexible now. "Then a few orbit parties later, Gabriel was back. I was turning Seventeen in a few months. I had noice tits and a big ass. He had grown taller, more muscular. Our attraction for each other was just that at first, lust. We grew to love each other as our relation furthered. We used one another to explore ourselves and escape our world. After my father walked in on me giving him head just after I'd turned eighteen, we ended anything that we had. There really isn't any coming back from that anyways. And now we have remained friends. We're better this way. Better for us."