Chapter 16: CLI-CLX 1/2

Author's Note : So… I did mess up Sonya's birthday count, she's actually supposed to be then fifteen/now sixteen last chapter instead of then sixteen/now seventeen. However… it's either give her a time-keeping skill on par with Natsumi's from Déjà vu or correcting the date of her birth. So… yeah. Renato's twenty, Tatiana's eighteen, Cherep's seventeen, Bjǫrn's thirteen this year, so on and so forth.

Scrumptious Egoi : Since you have PMs disabled for whatever reason, I kinda do have to do this here. But… 'it's convenient'? Tells me nothing of whatever problem/confusion you may have with it. More detail, please. I can't address whatever it is you find so doubtful unless you give that detail over why.

Additionally, not to be rude or anything, but… this is fiction. Worse, it's fanfiction. In literary terms, 'it's convenient' pretty much translates to 'this is plot'. Which… absolutely no help, that.

Edited (4/26/2017) - Minor story and grammar corrections.

Edit (3/21/2018) - Final formatting and minor corrections.

Edited (9/7/2018) - Minor corrections.

Russian Roulette : Reloaded

CLI – CLX

CLI (Friday the 3rd of March, 1967. Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

Since she knew full well there would be a scarcity of hot water and full bathing facilities in her very near future, Sonya took shameless advantage of the rather rickety but fully functional ones in the woman's barracks their circus was wintering within before they formally got underway out of Moscow.

Rather, that half of their circus was lodged within. The men had their own section of buildings they were sharing with a few other operations, same with the girls of the Großes Volksfest. The woman's version was basically a scaled-down carbon copy, merely with the bonus of a scarcity of males within.

With… actual full-length mirrors in a dance studio in the ground floor as well as the showering gym-locker like shower room.

It hadn't been that long since she saw herself through a reflective surface, but she hadn't really had the time to really compare herself now to what she blearily recalled Rachel looking like in a dream-life that seemed strangely removed from this one.

As someone now sixteen-years-of-age, rather than say a ten or twelve-year-old, Sonya looked even more like her thrice-cursed mother than she had as a child. Her nose wasn't quite as prominent as it had been in a life before this one, it was more aptly described as thin-bladed, but it also wasn't small enough to be called 'pert'. Her lips had been thinner in her last life, and she at least had more defined cheekbones than the norm for Russian bone structure.

She had her father's more rounded stubborn chin at least, not her mother's pointed one even if she inherited her jawline.

Sonya didn't fully inherit her mother's frame, either. Depending on how one looked at it, it was either down to her father's genetic contribution or a very robust lifestyle, her body type was still too thick to be considered a classical ballerina's.

Which… given how thin and sickly some ballerinas looked, was likely a good thing. Her bust line was perceivable, if smaller than she had once had.

She at least, even with the out-of-season tan, didn't have freckles anymore. Her ash blonde, shoulder-length hair did have a bit of sun-damage right now. It looked a bit streaky and a little like old straw now, but she knew it would soften to a more natural gold-blonde given enough time out of the sun.

While trying to decide if she liked how she looked or not, Jiayi cornered her with a curiously anxious expression.

The thief regarded the tiny Chinese woman levelly through the mirror as the other seemed to struggle with some internal decision to speak or not.

"You… were in my home country." The lioness of a woman started needlessly in her native language, coming to a decision and returning her attention to the blonde woman she had sought out first.

"I was." Sonya admitted frankly, as there wasn't really a reason to deny that given what she had Cherep bring to everyone's attention for her.

Nodding shortly at the confirmation, Jiayi's flat Asian features tightened as she braced herself. "How bad is it, girl? Really?"

"Murder in the streets while the police look the other way, condoned torture in the open getting applauded, your cultural history is getting gutted while politicians and even the public looks the other way." She wasn't going to sugar-coat it, as that wasn't something she was any good at and might harm what friendly relationship the two of them had.

Finally turning from the mirror, she could see that their mistress of the trapeze had expected some of it and appreciated the frank reply of the full extent of what she saw.

"It is not all their fault, we are… too used to such things. My people have not had a peaceful century before the Great War. Events afterwards did not improve anything." The older Chinese woman wasn't trying to make excuses but explain why they might have done what they did. At least, that was what she got from the slightly bitter expression and from her tart tone. "We have known nothing but war, famine, and atrocities for an age now. From all appearances, things will not become better any time soon either."

"I… am not as sure of that as you may be, Jiayi." She admitted slowly, thinking of exactly what had drawn her to China in the first place. The Triads, while more than just a little overcommitted and in need of a touch of help, was up to something massive.

The Chinese version of the criminal underworld was a very large organization. Even if you discounted the various fewer illegal branches and home-grown groups, that was a lot of people in every fully criminal branch of the Triads.

Despite that, they had needed a Mafia Land thief?

The excuse of needing someone the local police didn't have a file on was solid at first glance, but a little flimsy on a second look. It was more likely their people were committed to something else, then a small emergency that couldn't wait forced their hands.

"You would be able to see more in that than just anyone, wouldn't you?"

It was the closest anyone in the circus had gotten to admitting they knew exactly what type of individual Sonya was, or if they might or might not have a problem with that. At the sharp look the thief tossed her, the Chinese woman scoffed and glared back fiercely.

"Pretend all you want. I am not as air-headed as most of my flighty green-girls, and neither are some of the other 'old-hands'. You were never just a dancing girl following her brother out of any useless emotion as worry or panic." Jiayi turned sharply on her heel with a short nod of farewell, then briskly strode out of the showering room.

The thief narrowed her eyes on the tiny woman's back until the door swung shut behind her.

That had been… interesting. She wasn't sure if it was a good interesting or a bad one, but it might not matter.

The Russian had maybe nine or ten more months with the Großes Volksfest before she would be forced to go back to the Zolotov clan as a full-time thief. The best she could do was be a tiny bit more careful, but if that little secret was out already there might not be a point to that.

CLII (Tuesday the 7th of March, 1967. Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

They were still going to be traveling through the People's Republic of China.

Eventually.

There was the other southern half of the USSR to work through, then China.

Sonya had, before this, very pointedly not taken a very hard look at the government or policies in place in her birth country for a very specific reason. Mainly because Rachel had no fond memories of the word 'communist' or the Soviet Union, nor very good thoughts about it like any other American girl.

That had left an impression on the thief left alive in the aftermath of her death.

Foremost of those reasons was Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich, the Premier of the Soviet Union. Rather, to be more truthful, the not very mourned former Premier who died last year.

Thinking about it, the fact the man had been a healthy-looking seventy-three when he was… pronounced dead in office, probably meant he wasn't dead of entirely natural causes.

'Entirely' because she was pretty sure it was perfectly natural to die once you lost a certain volume of blood, or once shot through the head, or even after someone shanked you in the lung. Those may not be a perfectly natural causes of death, but natural enough to die from.

Mafia logic didn't always have to make sense if it was widely accepted enough.

She had refrained from taking a very long look at the United States' history for similar reasons.

Beyond the fact she knew of one very major incident that was entirely against what Rachel had once known, Hitler's assassination and how that had caused certain events in Europe to spiral out of control, the thief hadn't been in any great tearing rush to see how that would've resolved itself in her former birth country.

Besides which, the background information about Rachel's lifetime had faded quite a bit. She couldn't really recall much solid information from her previous life that hadn't directly impacted that life, now that it was comfortably fuzzy she wouldn't have jolts of sickening realization of how it should've gone when looking at how it had.

There would be an increase of uncertain knowing that something was off but being unable to recall why, and the thief was alright with that thought.

Sonya had a few more pressing things to deal with as the circus she and Cherep had joined got underway for the spring.

More specifically, her fellow Cloud's now developed stunt work.

Part of the reason why Moscow was a popular wintering destination for traveling circus was the Moscow State University of Circus and Variety Arts, and the pool of freshly trained performers looking for their first gig. Another part of it was the free trade of information about various routes and the ability to pass on or get warnings of worldwide events, before a traveling circus risked themselves going through the countries involved.

Yet another part of it was pure showing off.

A very tiny bit was left for collaboration efforts, two or more circuses getting together and pooling resources and sharing costs for renting out one of the larger indoor stages for a night or week to generate a bit more cash to wait the icy winter out.

Occasionally there was even a bit of tip and trick swapping, when there was the time available in-between developing new acts for the coming year and fixing anything major that needed intensive repairs that couldn't be done on the road.

Cherep had found other stuntmen during his time on his own over the winter. While Sonya was off in Mafia Land dealing with Renato and Shamal or in China working for the Triads, he had been comparing notes about how their acts were received and what worked the best as far as they knew.

Even well after the short Christmas break, he had been incorporating some of that advice into his long-dreamed of circus act.

She was well acquainted with the possibility of injuring herself and only recently resigned to the possibility of death personally. In her line of work and lifestyle, becoming injured was almost guaranteed and death wasn't much of a stranger to her as she would like.

However, that also meant she was well trained enough to try to minimize the risk of injury when possible. If that wasn't possible, then how to fake not being injured until she had the time and space to deal with it.

Watching Cherep risk his neck, which had been broken once before, on his USSR built motorcycle for the spring opening show... made her almost physically ill.

With fright or worry was entirely questionable. It may even just because it was a reminder of the only stunt she had helped him with. What she did know was that she heartily disliked watching him launch himself in the air and flip around on that deathtrap machine.

He was very good at it, irrespective of her feelings on the matter. From what she could overhear when he had a spot of time to practice on the ramps set up for his and other stuntmen's acts, he was actually greatly impressive for a rookie stuntman with how high he was willing to go or what kind of tricks he was willing to try.

Sonya's feelings on the matter didn't care how impressive he was, she just wanted to rip him off the damn bike and plant him firmly on the ground.

Since her foster brother/best friend wouldn't thank her for that, the thief instead tried to figure out how the hell she would learn to adapt to seeing him risking himself like that. Additionally, if worse came to worse, how to buy his innate Cloud Propagation ability of un-death enough time so any crashes didn't tip of the entire circus or anyone in the audience that the stuntman wasn't killable.

Alarmingly, Sonya was drawing a blank on both options.

CLIII (Wednesday the 22nd of March, 1967. A cargo boxcar, a freight train, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

"Have you thought of a stage name?" Sonya asked in English, sounding painfully nonchalant about the whole thing even if he knew better.

Cherep was entirely aware she didn't like his profession very much. That was obvious when she came back to the circus a little before the opening spring season and he showed her what he had. Even with a tan entirely out of place for her wintery homeland, she had gotten alarmingly ashen watching him do a couple easy trick flips.

It was rather pathetic for them both, this little no-comment on his profession. He had complained about hers for years, but she seemed unwilling to complain about his.

Admittedly, he may have annoyed her a little with his complaints. Purposely. Several times. In a row.

Maybe.

"Cherep?"

Right, she'd asked him a question. "Uh… actually… I was thinking about that all winter."

Sonya peered over at him curiously, letting the pile of cloth she had been messing with fall to her lap but keeping hold of the sharp needle. "Really?"

"You don't have to sound so surprised, you know." He quipped at her sourly, just to hear her snort at him. "I know you rather like the English language… or at least you tend to talk in it when you can."

"Practice makes perfect, and this is a very widespread language for business."

"Yeah, yeah." The mechanic yanked a little too hard on his wrench when the train went over a bump, meaning while surprised it slipped off the bolt he had been tightening he wasn't too irritated at his hand slamming into the part he was currently servicing. The train's rocking motion wasn't helping him at all keeping things unbroken while on the way from point A to point B. "Damn it… anyways. You know how my name translates to skull?"

"Really?" His sister's tone of voice was entirely flat and dryer than a desert. "I knew that years ago. Matter of fact, I am pretty sure I was the one that told you."

"I like it, and that's all that matters." He sniffed at her in mock disdain, finishing off tightening the bolt he had been messing with and tossing the wrench back into a toolbox. "Especially since…"

"Since what?"

Hauling himself up on a nearby crate, Cherep gave his semi-concerned looking best friend perched prettily on it a wry grin. "Since I know you're a little worried about this show business stuff I wanted to do with my life."

"…I do not follow."

"You're worried that my… abilities of a Cloud sort will draw unwanted attention to me." He started delicately, because this was a worry he did share with her. At least a little, anyways. "I figured why not hide in plain sight, then? Draw attention, boast of an immunity to death, that sort of thing."

Sonya didn't immediately protest… but she also didn't look remotely enthused with that suggestion.

"I figure this way most would discount anything too… wild, when it comes to me. Rumors of any un-survivable crashes would then seem more like propaganda rather than a… Flame thing."

Fidgeting with her cloth didn't seem like a good sign. In the end though, the thief merely sighed heavily.

"I cannot actually argue with that. You are right, anything you would boast of would be immediately discounted at first. After a while that would not exactly aid your efforts to evade the underworld, but as long as you become widely-known as a stuntman no one would be able to risk approaching you or your abduction."

Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but Cherep could work with that. "Going with the 'immortal' propaganda angle, and that I might not want to actually use my real name for performances, changing my name into another language seems the best way to get used to it fast."

"Alright… but why Skull? Why not the French translation of you name, Crâne? It sounds more alike to your real one. Or even Tóugǔ, from Mandarin Chinese?" Sonya huffed at him, but it was more confusion based than actual irritation.

He'd irritated her more than enough times to tell. "First off, I can't twist my tongue around Chinese. Yet anyways. Secondly, too similar and I'll never be able to ignore it if I need to. And Skull because I like my name, what it means, too much to really want to give it up entirely."

"This is not going to end up like that childish attachment to a skull and crossbones motif you are all but addicted to, is it?"

"I am not addicted."

His fellow Cloud user wordlessly held up the cotton in her lap, the hellishly expensive and imported patterned cotton she traded two bales of Chinese silk for on his request. Which had a print of purple skull and crossbones on a blue background, being painstakingly stitched into a few pairs of lounge pants because he asked for that in lieu of a Christmas present.

Cherep coughed awkwardly, pressing her hands down to lower the cloth back to her lap. "Current evidence aside."

The look she gave him spoke massive volumes of 'not-impressed'.

"Look, with the scant handful of languages I can speak, my name translates mostly to just Cherep or a similar variation. Skull is the most different yet the same word, so it's what I'm going to go with."

"Fine, whatever." The thief muttered, mostly to herself, as she picked up her sewing once again. "Go with Skull, then. I am not calling you that."

"I'm not asking you to." Mostly because he was sure she wouldn't ever listen to him when he did. He grinned at her, nearly bouncing in place. "Speaking of, though? Are those done yet?"

"Obviously, the pair in my hands are not." Sonya spoke mostly evenly, the exasperation sounding more like an afterthought than anything she really felt. "There may, may I remind you, be one done already."

He did not jostle her, especially not when she had needles in her hands. "Where?"

"I do not know, Cherep. What does one do with Christmas presents before they are gifted?"

"Wrap them?" He replied to her bland question, grinning widely at the dry look she gave him for that.

"Very likely. One would assume such wrapped gifts would be places where another may find them, as well."

CLIV (Sunday the 26th of March, 1967. Chita, Zabaykalsky Krai, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.)

With nearly a full year spent outside of it under her belt, Sonya could now appreciate exactly how… bland the Soviet Union was outside the larger cities.

It might have been a greater maturity that allowed her to appreciate the severe beauty of her Motherland's harsh winters whitewashing most everything and gilding everything else in silvery ice; the fact Rachel grew up in a heavy industrial society and she was still somewhat used to seeing factories and their resulting pollution; or maybe just nearly fifteen years of living here that blinded her to exactly how drab some of it could be in summer.

It might have even been the fact the underworld did a roaring business in smuggling black market items and luxuries even in the middle of Soviet Russia, and the underworld and the places connected to it was where she spent the bulk of her time.

However, in the more civilian side where the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic's reach started to strain it was almost… depressive.

Just the civilian side, when compared to such places as a faintly lingering impression of a war-torn France or even the less controlled borders of the Soviet Union.

The Mafiya side had a lot more color to it most everything, unless they were trying to hide it.

Now that she had some experiences in different countries to compare it all to, the underworld here was closer to the surface than in most other places. A lot more, even when set next to places like a pocked-marked France, the northern tip of Italy, and the greater north-west region of Europe.

Admittedly Sonya really did need to take a long look at the southern parts of Italy, the heavily immigrated parts of the US, and maybe some more of China's underworld before deciding on how unusually civilian-friendly her homeland's Mafiya was.

There were two ways to get any kind of aid in Soviet Russia, one was to find the correct government division of their oblast or to search out and locate the local group of vory closest to you. There were risks involved in approaching either, beyond the fact one was legal and the other not so much, but generally the difference boiled down to how much one wanted to pay for aid and if they wished to risk their neck or not and in what way.

Notably, it was equally risky either way you wanted to handle it.

However, that showed a marked difference between Soviet Russia and another mafia heavy place like China's Hong Kong, or even what little she had seen of France's Paris. If only because France was still in the middle of rebuilding some parts of its infrastructure, meaning a lot more could be slipped past those in charge, and Hong Kong was… in the middle of something else. It meant the underworld of Soviet Russia could spare that kind of attention for their civilians.

While the rural divisions of the Soviet government might help, they also might just report it to someone else and the wait for that someone to come help you. Which could take months if not weeks. That ran the risk of having your issue reported wrong, having it not reported at all, or having your problem blown out of proportion for whatever reasons and having to explain that to whoever responded.

Conversely, while the vor would help if they didn't react badly to being asked in the first place… you would end up owing them a favor or two no matter how short or how inexpensive whatever fix was.

It was a choice between overworked public servants and possibly violent but more networked criminals, and the balance was leaning more towards the criminals if only because they were more reliable.

Being that helpful wasn't just the vor being good neighbors, it was also motivated by self-interest. If everyone respectable in any section of a city were all indebted to a certain syndicate, then those civilians could be encouraged to look the other way when… less than legal things went down. Beyond whatever skills or aid the civilians could pony up in thanks or to repay any help, that accepted blindness was allowing several syndicates like the Zolotovs to operate more openly than ever before.

The Soviet Union wasn't quite on its deathbed just yet, but the signs were starting to appear.

The breakdown of public services here and there, the occasional uncovered corruption of some uchastoks that may or may not be part of your quarter. In contrast, the public and most of the minor government officials were trying hard to pretend it was all business as usual… even when it wasn't.

There was actually a bit more cheerful air around some of the places affected by corruption, the assumption of 'it was hard, but now it has to get better'.

In the month and a half it took the Großes Volksfest to make it through some of western Soviet Russia, Sonya got a very good look at the more distant rural parts of her home country and the general feel of the places.

The parts that didn't have a strong underworld presence to offset the more strident and harsh government policies that may or may not be hastening the Soviet Union's fall.

The 'Khrushchev Thaw' had started breaking down the isolationist world-view that had been more prevalent before Sonya became an officially working thief, but that ended with the death of the Primer who engineered it. Brezhnev Leonid Ilyich was in the middle of taking office and working through his predecessor's economic and likely foreign relations plans to get a feel of where everything was.

She expected to get some word of how the man would handle his time in office in the latter half of the year, especially given they were almost ready to leave Soviet Russia itself and it might take coming back to Russia to figure it out.

CLIV (Thursday the 30th of March, 1967. Urumchi, People's Republic of China.)

They crossed the border between Soviet Russia and the People's Republic of China in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, just south of the Altai Mountain Range and southwest of Mongolia's southern border. They stopped first in the tiny village of Chi-mu-nai for a night.

Which was a literal frozen hole in the mountains, as far as a village went.

It was only a brief stopover. The circus was headed for the equally tiny city of Urumchi in the southern part of the Dzungarian Basin and the train station there.

Problem was, there weren't very many ways to cross the northern border of Soviet Russia and Communist China except through the tiny stretch of land bordered by two different mountain ranges and a few stones' throw from the Gobi Desert.

That also meant it would be cold at first, then hot as hell, then freezing cold again.

The border patrols at Chi-mu-nai were not quite unnerving, but stringently through and almost non-compromising. Had anyone been smuggling things into China though that border, Sonya doubted the guards would've missed it by anything other than pure luck.

It was also the point of which her absentminded understudying of Faris' performances became more of a thing than just something to do when really bored. The fire-juggler had a selection of swords and other pointy things he could swallow and incorporate into his juggling/fire breathing act, playing up his native region's reputation for performing exotic feats that seemed hazardous or painful.

The native Egyptian's luggage easily outweighed most everyone else's, just simply because of the amount of steel to it and that it couldn't be used as something else in a pinch.

Master Liam had one silver tongue, but that wasn't really buying the circus more leeway when it came to how much sharpened steel they could bring into the country with them.

Madame Crina looked highly amused at the fact she was suddenly sharing her apprentice with Faris when Liam finally hit on a way that wouldn't make them leave the man's expensive weaponry behind.

The thief herself just really wished she didn't rid her own baggage of any liquor, and that she could've kept a bottle or two of vodka on her.

As the juggler's semi-formal apprentice, at least for the duration of the time they were in China, she was allotted the other half of Faris' allotted steel baggage. Which solved the situation nicely, even if it made things a bit awkward between two of the strongman Jaq's friends for a week.

Jaq mourned Sonya's lack of alcohol too, during those few days on a train when there was very limited privacy.

It could've been said she had gotten herself apprenticed to Faris without even asking or consideration of how hard his act could be, which was where the awkward came from. It wasn't really that way, and a week was exactly how long it took to fully convince the man of that, so by the time the circus reached their first official stop of Ha-mi and set up for a week-end show she could go back to being his assistant with little issue.

By that point Sonya was rather fed up with performers and their moments of dramatics, mostly due to the fact that last upset wasn't even her fault and she had to be the one to smooth it over, so she wasn't particularly understanding of Cherep's bout of it.

Her foster brother had known full well that he was only going to have a stuntman show a month, as that was what Master Liam had granted when allowing him to branch out and add that to their circus, so why he was complaining about the fact to her was beyond her.