Amends

[Oriena]

[[Continued from Blind Eye]]

She’d lied about the cab. Crisp autumn wind bit her skin the moment she stepped out onto the pavement, like the tips of a thousand knives. Looking out at the skyline this morning, she’d lamented the sunrise, like every bloody streak of it was her own blood draining out into the horizon. From the ashes of yesterday’s masochistic anger bloomed today’s guilt; not an emotion she dealt particularly well with, so she was almost glad for the sharp torment of weather urging her thoughts to focus on the physical. Not that it stopped her bracing with folded arms against the wind, sleek coils of dark hair rippling about her shoulders. She was the only moron out here without a coat.

The nearest metro station was her destination. No cash on her, of course, but a life lived on the streets had taught her everything she needed about getting what she wanted. It was warmer on the train, and mostly empty; she was not sure of the time, but she’d probably just missed the squall of rush-hour traffic. This hour belonged to the old, the jobless, and those burdened with motherhood – though this close to Moscow’s elitist centre, there was little sign of the usual hopelessness. The wail of a baby further down the carriage, the listless shuffling of the elderly too afraid of death and solitude to stay at home; these were the markers that graduated her journey home. When a guy staggered in and passed out on a seat opposite, suffused in the metallic stink of stale booze, she knew she was almost there.

Home was on the outskirts of Zamoskovreche, a residential area not quite suburbia but at least grasping at the prospect. The realtor had suggested it a potential investment, and Oriena had agreed. She’d bought it for her mother originally, but the woman had dug in her heels against leaving her own apartment. If Ori didn’t understand her need to stay in the heart of Moscow’s poorest streets, she didn’t argue either. So, despite potential, the house remained a shell. A place of practicality rather than comfort. No photos hung on the walls, and there was little in the way of decoration to distinguish a touch of personality. She had money now, but little incentive to spend it on things she deemed immaterial.

Echo slunk around her feet the moment she passed the threshold, and she picked him up without pausing to think about it. He rumbled a pleasant purr, nudging his face into her neck, trying to coerce the devotion that was his due. Little fucker was always insanely pleased to see her, which she secretly found rather gratifying. She’d never had pets as a kid – you just didn’t keep pets where she’d grown up – and this one had chosen her rather than the other way around. He stuck around whether she paid him attention or not, whether she fed him or not, until he’d chinked a little crack of fondness in her apathy. She knew she’d finally caved when she gave him a name.

After a little fuss, she plonked him down on the sofa. She was hungry, but too agitated to eat. A shower, another shower, a glass of water to battle the faint headache. Trying hard not to think. Yesterday, avoidance had burned aggressively in her chest, indignant and furious. The guilt had gnawed even then, if only a little, a nuisance diluting the force of her hatred. But it had been easy to ignore. Easy to drown under strong liquor, and then Jaxen had made forgetting even easier. But though she might brood protectively around her stubborn pride, her spine would not curl to the indignity of actually hiding. She tied her hair in a knot, changed into running clothes. Stuffed in earbuds. Zipped up a hoodie. The mechanical set of her movements flowed one set to another, culminating in the slam of her front door. Still fucking cold, and gloriously bright. She tugged up her hood.

Ori knew where she was going. Knew too the only way to actually get there was to trick herself into it.

When she was a kid, she’d had found a damp, muddy flyer stamped a thousand times underfoot in one of the mostly derelict neighbourhoods around her house. Nine years old, an age when most girls were playing with dolls, and she was sifting through trash to find little pieces of precious. She’d laid the leaflet out on a chunk of broken wall to dry, then folded it in her pocket like a prized piece of muslin. It was for a boxing club, new back then – or as new as things got in Zamoskvoreche, which meant that it was tired and worn and scabby. An endeavour in local charity: so kids could fuck each other up in a ring instead of the streets, and with fists instead of knives.

It accounted for the leanness of her limbs – that and the running, though the benefit of the latter had been a lesson learned much later. For a while, before she’d understood the talents she’d been born with, it had been a sanctuary. A place to vent frustrations, to feel that the dissatisfaction she sensed at life – and it was already burning a hole in her chest, even then – could serve some brief purpose. It was as close as she ever remembered to a little slice of acceptance. When clocking someone right in the face because they’d pissed you off was not met with shocked abjuration, but applause.

Of course, fate had fucked that up, years later, when she’d met Luka.