steelartisan: (sketching under the sky (with Logan))
[personal profile] steelartisan
Piotr is ensconced on a rock outside Milliways, with a large sketchpad in his lap and a pencil case sitting on his empty bag.

He's working with charcoal at the moment, and from memory. The image slowly taking shape is that of a woman, with long pale hair in a braid and a lopsided half-sad smile.

Date: 2008-07-27 09:03 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] joiningyousoon.livejournal.com
Maya is graceful and quick; two smooth movements and she's up beside him and settling in, sitting cross-legged.

(She's far enough that they both have personal space, but close enough that a lean would put her on his shoulder.)

She leans over (but not far enough), peering inquisitively at the sketchpad in his lap. "What are--



"Oh."

Her thumb brushes the edge of the page; she drinks in the figure's sad eyes, its half-smile.

Date: 2008-07-27 09:17 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] joiningyousoon.livejournal.com
It is the expression more than the physical changes, that gets Maya. She forgets that she looked like that. She never realizes that she looked like that, despite the strength and the humor that she can see in the figure's expression, too. Photographs are one thing; seeing herself filtered through someone else's gaze is something else entirely.

(She never thinks of herself as that beautiful, either, but Piotr apparently does.

The traitorous stray thought causes a dull flush to creep up the back of her neck, though it is swiftly stamped out by the second traitorous stray thought that she doesn't look like that any more.)

"It's beautiful, Piotr." Her voice is quiet, but firm in its surety. Her eyes flick up.

Date: 2008-07-27 09:52 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] joiningyousoon.livejournal.com
(A funny discovery Maya's been making, the past few months: she can still blush. It may not be as strongly as it was when she was a gawky teenager first dating a certain tall boy who loved poetry and her eyes, but with her skin tone, there's no hiding it when she colors.

She'd thought she grew out of it years ago.)

Maya colors nicely.

"It looks pretty damn right to me," she says, her only concession to the subtle compliment (besides the blush lingering high in her cheeks) a slight duck of her head.

"--The likeness, I mean." Not the 'beautiful' part; she is not anywhere near egocentric or vain enough to make that comment.

Date: 2008-07-27 10:08 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] joiningyousoon.livejournal.com
Maya would really rather have a portrait of him -- or someone else she cares about -- than one of herself. But Piotr drew it and it's very beautiful, and she says, "Only if you sign it," a smile teasing at her lips.

Date: 2008-07-27 10:28 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] joiningyousoon.livejournal.com
Her only response to the amused glance is a sideways look, and a quirk of one side of her mouth.

She leans over, watching him sign the corner; she touches the edge of the paper just below it, her fingers careful. "What does it say?"

(She has a pretty good start of an idea, but he has multiple names. It is a valid question.)

Date: 2008-07-27 08:33 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] joiningyousoon.livejournal.com
She pulls her hand back and shakes her head, slowly.

"It's so strange; the lettering style looks so much like ours, but I can't read it."

Her voice is absent; she's watching his finger.

Date: 2008-07-28 03:17 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] joiningyousoon.livejournal.com
Maya follows his slight gesture, and she slides down to pick up the smaller sketchpad, and a pencil from the case. Setting the art supplies on the flat top of the rock, she clambers back up beside him.

She flips up the pad's cover; it opens to a blank page. She prints 'Piotr Rasputin' in neat, economical letters; no flowing script or loopy cursive here. Maya was an officer far too long for that.

(The lettering looks loosely Cyrillic-inspired; the 'N' is backward.)

"Like this," she says, and she holds the pad up. "Piotr Rasputin."

Date: 2008-07-28 03:56 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] joiningyousoon.livejournal.com
"--It's a cross," says Maya, studying the two (after readily handing over the paper and pencil). She shakes her head. "The similarities just keep piling up. I think our worlds were secretly separated at birth."

Her mouth turns upward; her eyes flick from the paper to Piotr. "Can you write my name like that?"

Date: 2008-07-28 04:25 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] joiningyousoon.livejournal.com
She squints at it, blonde hair tumbling out from behind her ear and fanning across her cheek.

"It's so close," she says, wonderingly, and then she takes the pencil back, but doesn't bother moving the sketchpad from where it is balanced on Piotr's thigh. She leans over and writes, just below his version of her name: MAYA AИTAЯES.

She studies the two for an appraising moment, her hand resting on the warm rock beside his leg, and then she says, "I like yours." There's a strength to it -- and the mystery of being unable to read it -- that draws her attention.

Date: 2008-07-28 05:08 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] joiningyousoon.livejournal.com
"You just flipped--" She looks at her name; looks at Piotr. "Is that another language?"

Date: 2008-07-28 05:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] joiningyousoon.livejournal.com
"So--" She leans over again, and she circles the Cyrillic-lettered names, and points with the pencil. "Russian." She circles the English names, with another pencil point. "English." Finally, she circles and indicates the names written in her hand. "And me."

She regards the page full of names and loopy circles for a moment, tapping the pencil thoughtfully.

"I wonder how much of it is due to the translating magic of the bar, and how much is actual similarity."

Date: 2008-07-28 06:04 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] joiningyousoon.livejournal.com
"I've had a couple of people try to talk to me in Russian, and I can never understand a word of it," she says, and she reaches out to snag the sketchpad between thumb and forefinger, and pull it back into her lap. She shoots him a smile. "Besides what you've taught me, of course."

The page is becoming pretty crowded; Maya flips to the next, her pencil already lowering. "I always th--"

There are doodles in the corners and along the right side of the page: a small, sketchy head-and-shoulders drawing of a woman without real features; a quick figure of a man bending over to talk to a boy perched on a barstool; a cluster of daffodils.

It has all been drawn with the sort of skill that Maya has come to expect from Piotr, but what she sees is the pen-and-ink headshot taking up most of the page. It is a large-scale version of the little sketch of the woman, and it is unmistakably her. She's tossing a grin over her shoulder, joyful, looking on the edge of a laugh. Her eyes lack pupils and her hair -- wind-tousled and a little tangled -- falls to mid-cheek.

Her pencil hovers, momentarily frozen.

Date: 2008-07-28 06:46 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] joiningyousoon.livejournal.com
It looks like this was rendered with the same care and attention to detail as the first. Weird white eyes and shorn hair; an impossibly bright smile. Maya's heart twists queerly.

"Am I going to keep stumbling across these, Piotr?" she finally asks, lifting her face to look him in the eye, and from the upturned corners of her mouth and the faint flush in her cheeks -- she likes it.

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Piotr Nikolaievitch Rasputin

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