Chapter Text
Hélène stood in the 7-Eleven, wearing sunglasses and yoga pants, and trying her best to make the shelf of newspapers in front of her spontaneously combust with her mind. How had they gotten this all so wrong? It just wasn’t fair.
Her own face stared back at her from the front page of ten different tabloids, rows of the same picture mocking her over and over again. Her expression in said photograph screamed “you really fucked this one up, idiot.”
All she had wanted were some painkillers to fight off the awful headache she had after last night— a night that, to be honest, she hardly remembered. There had been too much vodka, that was for sure. She vaguely recalled Anatole and Fedya annoying her and something about… a bear?
Shit.
The headlines all involved such invariably awful bear puns that she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. ‘Elena’s beary bad night’, ‘Unbearable cruelty: Kuragina’s wild bash EXPOSED’.
She was going to kill Anatole.
Her phone buzzed aggressively in her pocket. She knew without looking that it would be Vasily. She was tempted to let it go to voicemail, but knew it wouldn’t be worth the consequences. Swallowing her anxiety, she answered the call.
“Papa, I—”
“Elena, I trust you’ve seen the papers.” His voice was cold. She didn’t need to see his face to know he was very, very angry.
“I didn’t do anything, I swear! It wasn’t my idea.” This came out sounding far less assertive than she’d hoped, and more like a plea for mercy.
“I don’t care. Get over here, now.” He hung up the call.
Shit.
Her father had, predictably, sent a driver to pick her up. Hélène wasn’t going to ask how he knew where she was but she was grateful to have someone waiting outside the shop for her. She was not in the mood to deal with the crowds of paparazzi that had no doubt already gathered outside her apartment.
After a short, silent drive, they reached the offices of Moscow Records. A couple of cameramen were standing, looking rather cold, outside the entrance. She gave them a quick smile as she passed and was ushered inside by a man she didn’t recognise in an expensive suit.
Anatole was lounging against the front desk, trying to chat up a clearly uninterested secretary. His hair was perfectly styled, as always, and looking at his bright eyes no one could have guessed he had consumed his own body weight in vodka only the night before. By his feet, curled up against the desk, was Fedya, with his head in his hands. At least one of them was feeling the hangover.
When her brother noticed her, his face lit up. “Lena! We missed you last night!”
“What did you do?” she hissed.
He smiled, without a hint of irony. “Just a little prank, dear sister. It’s not like anyone was hurt.”
From under the desk, Fedya gave a sort of half grunt, half moan. Anatole seemed to consider this, then shrugged in agreement.
“Well, no one was seriously hurt.”
It was taking every inch of self-control in her not to slap him. She took a deep breath, and reminded herself that the last thing she needed was to look like a hysterical diva who couldn’t handle her own brother.
“We’ll all be seriously hurt by the time Vasily is done with us. I told you not to do anything stupid.”
The breezy smile on his face told her that he had no idea how serious this was. She tried to fix him with her best hard stare, channelling her father. From the way his chest deflated slightly, it was probably working.
“Better fix your face before you go in to see him, eh?” Ugh, he was right.
Hélène strode into the bathroom and gripped her hands on the side of a sink to steady herself. Deep breaths, she thought. Looking in the mirror, she sighed. Her hair was all over the place and her face still bore the remnants of last night’s makeup.
She splashed some water over her cheeks and pulled a lipstick out of her bag, hoping to do some damage control. It was an awful shade of pink (labelled peachy kiss in an aggressively curly font) but it would have to do. She smudged some kohl pencil around her eyes, in an attempt to look put together and mysterious, which she suspected ended with her looking a racoon. A mysterious racoon perhaps, but a racoon none the less. Great.
There was no point trying to quickly comb her hair— she knew it would just result in a frizzy mess— but she could at least try and get it partially under control. She pulled it back into a bun, leaving a few curls to frame her face at the front. As she reached into her handbag to grab a bobby-pin, it slipped over, sending all of its contents crashing into the sink.
She swore, loudly. Of all the days! And any minute she was going to have to put on her calm, ‘everything is fine and I’m definitely not on the edge of a nervous breakdown’ face and look her father in the eye while he yelled at her for whatever bullshit Anatole had pulled this time.
It wasn’t fair. She let out an exasperated cry and slammed her fists down on the table. Banging her head against the wall suddenly seemed tempting, as she tried to gather her belongings, now wet, from the sink, muttering expletives under her breath. Stupid Anatole just had to go and hire a stupid bear from the stupid zoo even though she told him it was a bad idea and now her stupid—
“Everything ok?”
She spun around to see a woman, taller than her with beautiful red hair and a stern, judgemental expression on her face. Who was she?
It didn’t matter, she decided after a split second. She had already had enough judgement for a lifetime. She just laughed flatly, grabbed her handbag and walked out.
She realised on her way to the door that she had left her lipstick by the tap, but didn’t go back for it. She wasn’t going to ruin her dramatic exit for peachy fucking kiss.
“Nice of you to join us, Elena.” There was that trademark Kuragin family affection. Vasily sat in his office, face unreadable as always.
Hélène had loved the office when she was younger. She and Anatole would play hide and seek underneath the table and behind the bookshelves. With the large glass walls and the best view in the whole city, it had seemed like something out of a fairy-tale. Now, she dreading being called in to see her father.
Still, she kept her face neutral and forced herself to relax her shoulders. She didn’t want to look nervous. She couldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“You wanted to see me?”
“Do you remember Rebecca Dauphine?” he asked, pale eyes watching her face for any signs of guilt.
She shrugged, noncommittally. Rebecca… that was the actress that Anatole had dated for about five minutes the year before. Hélène couldn’t remember much about her, except that she had lovely hair and about as much personality as a slab of concrete.
“Last night, your brother sent a rather unpleasant surprise to her house in a taxi. Needless to say, she was unimpressed.”
The bear. Oh Anatole, you moron.
Her realisation must have shown on her face, and Vasily pounced.
“You knew about this. I don’t ask you for much Elena, but you know I have certain expectations. And frankly, I can’t believe you would be so irresponsible.”
“Papa, I told him it was a bad idea. He said he would leave it and I had a terrible headache, so I went home. I didn’t think he would actually do it.” She smiled, equal parts apologetic and angelic.
“You should have known better. It’s not his reputation which is being smeared all over the tabloids, is it? I have spent too much time and money building your career to watch it slip away just because you can’t control yourself!”
“I didn’t do anything!” she shouted, overwhelmed by the injustice of it all. She regretted it instantly, as the anger fell from her father’s face and was replaced by an expression of unreadable coldness.
“Not this time, perhaps. But I haven’t forgotten that incident with Boris, or that little joke you played on those reporters. Not to mention the fact that you still haven’t finished the damn album and it’s been nearly a year now.” His lips curled up at the edges, in what she guessed was meant to be a smile.
“But, I am nothing if not forgiving, so I have decided to give you another chance. This time, however, it will be on my terms.”
He turned on the intercom and barked an order at his secretary. After a second, a woman entered the office. A tall woman, with red hair. The woman from the bathroom.
Looking at her more closely, Hélène saw she was young, probably around the same age as her, and wearing an austere dark grey suit. She was about the furthest thing possible from the friends she chose to keep.
“Elena, this is Marya Dmitryevna Akhrosimova. She did wonderful things for Bezukhov’s image, and I have instructed her to keep an eye on you until I am satisfied that you have learnt how to behave. You will treat her kindly, or I will have to take more serious measures. Do you understand?”
That bastard. The last thing she needed was a babysitter, and anyone who was a friend of Pierre’s was an enemy of hers. Still, she smiled sweetly.
“Of course, Papa.”
This was a terrible idea. Of course, Marya had known that from the minute she heard it, but Vasily Kuragin was a very persuasive man with more than enough influence to make her life miserable if she said no.
After all, he had said, it was simple enough. Keep an eye on his daughter for a few months, just until she gets her act together, and then get the biggest payday of her life. What could go wrong?
Except his daughter was Elena Kuragina, whose last album sold over a million copies, the darling of the indie scene, adored and revered by fans all over the world. She had quite the reputation, and Marya had heard an endless stream of gossip about her; one day she was a manipulative slut, the next a princess with a heart of gold.
Still, she reminded herself, she was the best in the business. If she could somehow convince teenaged girls that Pierre Bezukhov was a heartthrob (she still didn’t quite know how she had managed that), then she could make Elena look like a good person until her next album came out.
Marya had been surprised when she bumped into her in the bathroom, but she had felt oddly reassured, seeing the woman who was so admired for her elegance and grace looking exhausted and upset. It was somehow nice to know that she was just another person, underneath all of the glamour and fame.
So, when she walked into Mr Kuragin’s office, she almost did a double take. The Elena standing there was unrecognisable as the flustered, cursing girl she had seen earlier. She was standing tall, with an easy smile even as her father reprimanded her. Every inch of her screamed in-control. She seemed almost bored by the whole situation.
She was certainly attractive, but Marya knew that already; it was like no one could talk about her without using the word beautiful at least a couple of times. Still, seeing her in person she was struck by her commanding presence. There was an almost magnetic force around her that made Marya want to get a little bit closer. Suddenly she understood how the woman could sell out stadiums, why fans lined up just to get her picture.
But she had sent a bear in a taxi to the house of an actress. If that didn’t scream entitled rich kid behaviour, she wasn’t sure what did. Granted, she had seen the last film said actress had been in (an action movie in which she played a sexy alien), and decided she deserved whatever was coming to her. The bear, however, definitely did not.
“I’m Hélène. Pleasure to meet you.” She was surprisingly soft-spoken, compared to the power of her singing voice. She extended a well-manicured hand, which Marya dutifully shook. Her fingers were cold as stone.
Hélène looked her up and down, then smiled. Something in her expression sent a shiver down Marya’s spine.
“Looks like you’re stuck with me, Marya.”