steelartisan | (no subject)

There are only a few men around as big as Piotr is.

One of them is there, snow crunching suddenly (and violently) under his boots.

Destruction's arms are folded. He's staring out at the lake.

He has never actually met Destruction.

But Piotr has the overwhelming feeling that this just might be him.

"Hello--" Destruction, Kitty's father, Dad, Destruction with a question mark, pretend to not know exactly who this is? "--sir."

"Hi."

Piotr gets a sidelong look.

"Tell me you sitting out here in the cold isn't a symbolic move on your part."

He doesn't say 'huh', but he does turn his head to give Destruction a quizzical look.

"I like the snow."

Destruction snorts. "Just as long as it isn't an expression of your -- oh, let's see. How about -- inner frozen wasteland? That's nice and trochaic." Beat. "There's a reason I stopped writing poetry."

"But it is not." He points to the far bank where deer are grazing, and then closer where ducks are swimming where the ice is broken in the shallows. "It is seeming with life. If I were to paint a wasteland, it would be a dying field. A dust bowl. There is nothing so tragic as a field that can't be plowed."

Beat.

Then he scratches his nose and looks abashed. "Ah. Sorry. You were a poet?"

"Yeah. A pretty mediocre one." Beat. "That's the most tragic thing you can think of? Are you sure?"

"That I would paint."

"Oh." Destruction takes a moment to consider this.

...and doesn't say anything else.

"Da."

"Do you..." He stops and thinks about it again. "Do you think I am doing the right thing?"

"Do I think you're -- " He sounds exasperated for a moment. "Wrong question. Are you doing what she wants you to do? Because that's the 'right thing'."

The airquotes are audible; he doesn't go so far as to actually make them with his hands.

"The right thing is freeing her and ignoring her when she tries to be a martyr. Slow deaths don't suit us."

"I should tear that prison down myself and take her away. She could be happy on Serenity. In a decade, the government would have stopped calling us traitors. She could be a politician like she wants."

He picks up a stone and tosses it. It only skips twice across the water.

"This was much simpler when I was younger. Punch an alien or a human in a costume, and everything was done."

Destruction's eyebrows rise. "Does complaining help?"

Deadpan. "Kitty is very much your daughter."

"Good to know," he says. Rumbles. Dryly.

"After all this, I'm going to marry her. If she'll still have me."

And he thinks, while he all ready has Kitty's anthropomorphic personification father annoyed with him, why not go all the way?

...that is a question that Destruction would dearly like to answer.

As it is, he just stares at Piotr. "And you're finding it necessary to tell me this?"

"I'm old fashioned."

He smiles, just a bit.

"If I tell her -- do you have any idea how she's going to react?"

Destruction seems almost amused.

"She'll be angrier at you, first."

Destruction shakes his head. "No. Well -- maybe. Only because I'll be the one who's there." He sounds remarkably cheerful about this. "But eventually -- it'll all be on you. You know why? Because you're thinking I've got any say at all over what she does with her life."

He snorts.

"I love her. I know her temper. If you tell her I'm planning to ask her, she'll have one more thing to bicker with me about when we're old and gray. No matter what we are to each other."

Then, he pauses and mulls over how to say this.

"You do."

"She does not talk about you. Like she does not talk about Doug. Or how it was with my sister and Rachel."

"That isn't why I told you."

He's not cheerful any more.

"You don't get it." And he won't explain the entirety, but -- "I could have some say. Maybe. But I don't want it."

The last child of an Endless that Destruction -- Olethros -- saw whose father had too much importance placed on his shoulders --

Kitty isn't Orpheus.

Kitty isn't going to turn out like Orpheus.

And Kitty sure as hell isn't going to pull an Orpheus for the sake of this lump.

"No, I don't."

"But, I know I would want to know. If I was a father. That's why I told you. You are her father."

"Even though she does not like it, you do matter."

"...let me guess." Destruction is looking at Piotr like he's a particularly interesting orangutan in the monkey house at the zoo. "She likes you because you're persistent?"

"No, she always had to chase me. I tried for years to get away." He smiles to himself at the memory then shakes his head.

"I've left her. I've broken her heart. I've died. We've known each other ten years."

"She is home."

Then, he shrugs.

"I don't know why she likes me, myself. I don't care."

The monkey house expression isn't going away. If anything, it's intensifying. "Can I suggest that you find somebody else to confess to?" Beat. "In that way where it's not really a suggestion?"

Piotr gives him a look. It's...amused.

In that moment, he can picture a much smaller man in a cowboy hat in Destruction's place.

"Vodka would make a much better companion, yes." He slides off the rock.

"Consider yourself lucky that I'm taking that as a compliment." Destruction says this with a reasonable amount of cheer.

He has that small smile again and waves as he heads back up the path toward the bar.

"It is, tovarisch! Good evening!"

"...yeah." Destruction is bemused -- and then amused.

'Comrade'.

They are not comrades. They will never be comrade. It doesn't matter who you ask (hello, Joe McCarthy) -- Destruction is not now and has never been a Communist.

"See you around."