Work Text:
The years pass with the ease of a tidal wave.
You start off in Paris, where a friend offers you a flat, then gradually make your way across Europe. Keeping a low profile, you sightsee, paint, learn a little of the respective local language, and soon are off for an opening in Switzerland—where, after years on the road, you end up for good.
Your friend in this corner of the world is Count Sacha Vischer—a man who, despite humble (and thus highly confidential) origins, nonetheless managed to establish himself quite cosily amongst the upper classes. His knowledge of Western Europe’s elites came in handy once or twice over the years; you always held a certain wry fondness for the man who persisted in proclaiming that—one of these days—you’d leave the force to become his mistress.
Vischer jumps to invite you to Basel, albeit with a little disappointment upon hearing you won’t be taking him up on the full extent of his offer. In the time since you last saw him, he’s acquired not one but two daughters as a result of his philandering. The sight of someone so self-absorbed using all his power and connections to indulge the whims of a three-year-old is endearing, especially since said three-year-old has inherited her father’s roguish charm. Her sister is barely out of diapers and thus has not realised the lengths to which her father would go to please her. Still, you imagine she’ll be a quick learner: The eldest, Fabienne, orders Sacha around with the ease of a natural-born ruler.
You spend a month with the Vischers. Those four weeks are certainly a change of pace: You spend them happily serving as ‘Auntie’ and constant playmate to the children you also find hard to refuse.
Still, you can’t stay forever—if only because Sacha’s habits will eventually drive you mad. With much protest and after many attempts to change your mind, he caves and procures you a modest apartment in the Altstadt. With exception of the occasional event to which Sacha invites you, that is where you spend most of your time. Thus far you’ve focused on creating rather than selling your work, but this changes in Basel.
Unsurprisingly, Sacha is a deciding factor. A birthday gift for Fabienne ‘happens’ to be hung up in the main portion of the house, where it ‘happens’ to be noticed by some of Vischer's guests. After a month of near-constant badgering (and if Sacha Vischer is a master at anything, it’s at getting his own way), you concede and agree to a modest (key word—small) exhibit of your work.
By the time the actual event rolls around, the venue is one of the largest galleries in the city. Somehow your friend manages to take the entire matter out of your hands, you being none the wiser until the moment you step out of the car and realise that, shit, you’ve been outmanoeuvred.
You skillfully dodge the photographers milling around the gallery. One lucky bastard manages to get a photo of you: It’s not much—a shot from the side, barely hinting at your profile—but it ends up circulating with every mention of the exhibit. Sacha says the anonymity lends you a certain mystique; you say that he’s damned fortunate that it doesn’t reveal your face. You make him swear that—if you ever agree to something like this again—all future exhibits will be private affairs. With more than a bit of groaning about missed publicity (“My dear, the press!”), he agrees.
Unfortunately, you can’t complain too much about his interference, because it turns out to be a massive success. You attribute some of that to Sacha’s propensity for giving parties, but it’s undeniable that your art has caused a stir. It helps to have a ‘patron’ who is incapable of shutting up: At every opportunity, Vischer pushes your work with all the skill of a practised salesman. You think he might be doing it partially out of spite. Certainly, it has forced you more out into society, if only to the extent that Sacha’s circle of acquaintances reaches. It is surreal, at times, to be faced with so much privilege—to watch him rub elbows with blue-bloods and multi-millionaires knowing how little of the real world they have seen. How far-fetched the idea of terrorism or large-scale counterintelligence must seem. You’ve bled for these people. You’ve killed for them. They never seem to be aware of either fact.
If not spite, then self-interest: For every sale he facilitates, you give him a cut of the money.
Whether by spite or not, it helps. The change isn’t overnight, but after years of exhibits, sales, mentions in art journals and the occasional well-placed comment from Sacha and his friends, you find yourself in the privileged position of a non-starving artist. One article in particular makes quite the impact when it heralds your latest exhibit as ‘the second coming of Raphael’—a title you find flattering but ultimately inaccurate. Your composition may be precise, but God remains significantly absent.
Still, the attention it brings to your work is anything but unwelcome—the attention which is fixed upon your personal life less so. It’s near-impossible to remain anonymous; over the years, more photos do emerge. You try not to worry too much about it. If anyone from your past thinks ‘Irena Abendroth’ looks anything like former agent 005, you hope they don’t put too much stock in the resemblance.
All in all, things work out quite nicely: Your work is steady, inspiration flowing, and whenever you need a break from creation you can always visit your favourite ‘nieces’. More often than not, the Vischers end up in your week one way or another: Sacha has a nasty habit of dropping into your flat uninvited.
On one such occasion, he hits you mid-brushstroke. Used to it by now, you pause your work only for the time it takes to buzz him in. The current piece is proving to be somewhat of a challenge, so you ignore Sacha in order to focus.
This suits him just fine. Hands in his pockets, your friend pokes around the paintings scattered across your studio. Every once in a while he’ll offer some droll remark, but mostly he contents himself with exploring. You’ve dragged a good number of paintings out of storage in search of something fitting for an upcoming exhibit; you imagine his curiosity about said works of art is mostly responsible for his silence.
As nice as said silence might have been, you should not have let him roam unattended.
His sharp exhale is your first warning—when Sacha becomes excited, it rarely bodes well for your peace of mind.
“My dear!”
He stares, completely transfixed, at the canvas in his hands. Meeting your gaze, he beams at you. “What’s this?”
As soon as he flips the drawing around, you know you’re in deep shit.
“Nothing. What do you want with it?”
“What do I want with it? I want to make you fabulously rich, of course!”
“It’s not for sale, Sacha.”
He waves his hand dismissively. “You always say that. Remember that piece you sold last summer to Baron what’s-his-name?”
“This one’s just a sketch, it’s not fit for sale.”
"Irena." The pseudonym drips with anguish. “You can’t be serious.”
“Why?”
“Because this is quite possibly the most expressive bit of charcoal I’ve ever seen.” You watch the cogs turning behind his eyes. “It won’t fit with your current exhibit—how about that gala next June?”
“Not. For. Sale.”
A deep sigh leaves him. “Why do you have to be so contrary? It’s not doing you any good rotting away in storage.”
“That may well be, but it’s my work, and I say that I’m not putting it up for auction.”
The terseness of your tone gives him pause. For a long second, Sacha stares at you, eyes flickering over your agitated expression as though to gauge what triggered you. He blinks.
“Oh, alright.” He painstakingly sets the canvas on the floor. “I didn’t know you felt so strongly about it.”
“Spare me the dramatics, Sacha, I just don’t want to sell it.”
“That’s perfectly fine,” he insists, “as you say, it’s your work.”
“Right.”
“Right.”
Your eyes narrow. A second passes.
“However-”
“For Christ’s sake.” You let your paintbrush clatter onto the easel.
“-I really don’t understand why that would be the case if it didn’t have some great emotional significance. You’re a lovely woman, my dear, but you’re not exactly sentimental.”
“Why can’t you just leave it bloody well alone?”
He pouts. “I’m only looking out for your interests. If you aren’t attached to the drawing, you lose nothing by selling it.”
“More like looking out for your pocketbook.” You rub a hand against your temple. “Look, I drew it at a very tumultuous time in my life—I don’t want to parade it around for the snobs of Basel.”
“The date—that was shortly before you retired, no?”
“Sacha.”
“Oh, come on,” he whines. “You Englishwomen are so incredibly tight-lipped; not once in all these years have you revealed anything even remotely personal. You know the intimate details of all my significant affairs–”
“Against my will, might I add.”
“-I feel I am somewhat at a disadvantage.”
You are fully prepared to tell him exactly where he can shove his disadvantage, but a glimpse of his fraught expression makes you falter. You punch out a breath.
“Fine.”
You ignore the way he stands to attention. Turning to where the canvas lies, you allow yourself a moment to properly take in the old sketch. Years have passed since you’ve seen it, longer still since you’ve spoken about its subject. The words he wants to hear stick somewhere in your throat, just beyond where you can reach them. You try to pry something suitable out anyway.
“I drew it when I was on leave, before my official retirement.”
“And the man?”
You shoot Sacha a look, but all he does is raise his hands. “Anyone can see that they’re a man’s eyes, it’s hardly a difficult guess.”
Your gaze returns to the eyes in question. They’re monochromatic in charcoal, and yet you almost fancy you can perceive shades of blue in the irises. A faint shift of the light. Something extant.
“I knew him. He died.”
Out of the corner of your eye, you watch Sacha freeze like a guilty child. “Oh.”
You have it in you to find the response faintly amusing. "Oh."
“Friend or foe?”
“A bit of both, I suppose. Are you satisfied?”
He squirms, and the answer becomes immediately apparent. “What was his name?”
Your lips draw into a frown, but your friend’s expression remains expectant. You haven’t spoken his name in years, have done your best not to think it either, and yet Sacha expects you to speak it now. When you speak, it is as through a closed fist.
"Alec."
The name resounds throughout the silent studio. Sacha’s expression turns contemplative. “Alec,” he repeats, as though testing it out on his tongue. “That’s Greek, isn’t it? After ‘Alexander’?”
“Damned if I know.”
“Must have been quite the fellow.”
Sandy blonde flashes through your mind’s eye—a pair of hands assembling a rifle, the satisfied crinkle at the corner of an eye. Fingers clenching in on themselves, you feel phantom skin beneath them, the warmth of blood in your mouth and ash on your face as you drag a body out of the line of fire; the smell, too, copper tainting every sense as you grasp the wound and stitch, stitch, stitch-
“Still, it’s a shame.”
You grunt. “It’s a sketch.”
“You know how much one of these asses would pay to own a piece of your work unlike any other?”
“I won’t auction off my past for a check.”
“This would be a very large check we’re discussing.” You scoff, but he continues before you can get a word in. “At least consider it, would you?”
A noncommittal answer is all you’ll give, but the seed has been planted. It feels wrong, somehow, to place the drawing back in storage. To shut it in the cold and dark. It can’t be hung for display—even just looking at it brings up too much of the past you’ve tried to leave behind you. For a good month, you keep it in a corner of your studio, turned against the wall. Every time you sit down to work, its corners dig into your peripheral vision. You still don’t move it. For the full four weeks, you don’t touch it at all.
“I’m going to get rid of the sketch.”
Sacha peers up at you through his reading glasses, taking in the stiff way you stand in front of the armchair. His gaze rakes from your tense shoulders all the way down to the hands which tell him you really don’t want to be having this conversation. He sweeps the glasses off of his nose. “Which sketch, darling?”
“The eyes. The sketch.”
As soon as the words leave your mouth, a gleam enters his eyes. Tossing his book to the side, he faces you head-on. “Wonderful!” he exclaims. “I knew you’d come around. What shall it be—next summer’s exhibit? Or sooner? I could arrange for a private auction, something more intimate-”
“Art Basel is holding a charity auction. I’ve decided to include it.”
Sacha’s expression becomes nothing short of aghast. Words fail him at first, but this quickly resolves itself.
“Have you lost your mind?”
“No,” you reply. “Thank you for your concern.”
“My dear, when I advised you of its worth, I never imagined you would throw it away!”
“The money will be appreciated by the orphans of Eastern Europe, I’m sure.”
“Ach!”
The exclamation accompanies an irritated gesture. You watch with faint amusement as your friend stalks around the room, his annoyance radiating off of each step. After several seconds, he stops and sinks back into his chair with a weary expression.
“Fine, then. I will make the arrangements, but don’t think for a moment that I will ever forget this.”
You pat his shoulder. “Thank you, Sacha.”
“Yes, yes, always the gratitude. What of my suffering?”
Already halfway to the door, you call over your shoulder, “If you’re seeking sympathy, I can recommend an excellent psychologist.”
Less than a month later, you stand side-by-side, waiting for the piece to be announced. It’s a large event—you recognise many faces amongst the crowd that has gathered in Basel to bid, drink and socialise in benefit of the disadvantaged youths of post-Soviet Europe. Champagne glass in hand, you prefer to watch from the shadows.
Sacha releases a pained noise when they announce the drawing. “‘Eyes of a Friend’,” he mutters, just loud enough for you to catch. “Some friend you are.”
“It’s for a good cause.”
“Hm. If it sells for more than half a million, I’ll never speak to you again.”
“Is that all our friendship is worth?”
Sacha shoots you a withering look, but doesn’t respond. Quite a few of the participants are willing to take a shot at obtaining your work; despite this, the bidding carries an unhurried air. Leaning back, you take a sip of your drink.
For the record, you’re perfectly fine with the five-hundred-thousand at which the piece currently lays. It’s more than you feel felt a rough charcoal sketch was worth, no matter how ‘expressive’ it might be. You spotted the bidder in question after the first few rounds and subsequently recognized him as a prominent art collector from Paris. Expecting the auction to close, you tune out of the bidding.
“...going once, going twice-”
“Five-fifty.”
A murmur of surprise ripples through the crowd. Your eyes return to the auction, but are unable to find the interjection’s source.
“Thank you, Ma’am, I have Five-hundred-and-fifty, do I hear seventy five?”
Visibly annoyed, the collector raises his paddle. “Seventy-five from Monsieur Lambert, do I hear six-hundred?”
You locate the voice’s owner as soon as she casts her second bid. You don’t recognise the latecomer; dark hair coils immaculately at the back of her head, skin pale against her black dress. Even at a distance, she strikes a dramatic figure.
Sacha tunes in with the precision of a hawk. Though she seems to thrill in the ever-rising sums, the man at her side does not. Him, you recognize as a member of the Swiss Bankers Association. You’ve met him once or twice at events like these, though you’re surprised to see him bidding so extravagantly.
Still, he doesn’t make any move to stop her, not as the numbers rise and rise beyond belief, not even when his companion’s lips part and utter the damning exclamation.
“One million dollars!”
The crowd gasps at the same time that Sacha turns a funny shade of green. Stunned by the sudden increase, the auctioneer falters.
“I have one million.” His voice shakes, whether from shock or thrill. “Do I hear one-and-one-hundred?”
With a telling grimace, Lambert shakes his head.
“One million dollars, going once-”
“Going twice-”
At this point, you imagine an interruption would give Sacha a heart attack. He watches the auction with laser focus, gaze not shifting for even a second from the mystery woman.
“Sold! Thank you, Madame.”
Your friend releases a shaky exhale. Slow, ever-so slowly, his eyes slide to yours.
“My dear”–his voice is soft–“I am going to have you assassinated.”
You hum, eyes fixed on the bidder. “I won’t wear a rental.”
Though his sulking has only just begun, he eventually allows himself to be led towards the refreshments. Once pulled into the throng of people, he slides back into his usual chatty self—albeit with one more grudge to hold against you. At some point, he disappears from your side. Not an unusual occurrence, you exchange pleasantries with other attendees and make peace with the fact that your friend is bound to return with some unfortunate woman in tow.
“My dear, you must allow me to introduce you.”
Half-wary of whoever it is he’s dragged your way, you turn, only to meet with a pair of smouldering brown eyes.
The brunette bares white teeth from behind blood-red lips. Her hand easily grasps your own.
“Pleased to meet you, Ms…?”
“Onatopp.” Her voice is smooth, accented. “Call me Xenia. I have become a great admirer of your work.”
Strong hands, you note, beneath those opera gloves. Grip not unpleasant, but decidedly firm. “I’m honoured to hear it.”
“Xenia here,” Sacha proclaims, “is the one who bought your painting, aren’t you my dear?”
Your lips thin into a smile. “Then I am honoured again.”
“The honour was all mine.” You incline your head, then she continues. “It is a…striking piece. One of a kind.”
“Thank you.”
This succinct response leaves something to be desired. Sacha suppresses a grimace, but you watch the other woman’s gaze light up at the challenge. Onatopp charmingly tilts her head. You’re not sure why it reminds you of a bird of prey.
“I should be interested to know a little of its background.”
“There’s little to be said.” Sacha twitches again, and you relent. “It is one of my early works. Not what one would call refined, but I’m told it has a certain charm.”
“Simplicity is often more alluring than its counterpart.”
“To some.”
Her brows arch. A twitch at the corner of that exquisite mouth. “For a million dollars, I would have thought you’d have some sense of pride.”
“That’s Irena, my dear,” Sacha interjects, broad smile firmly in place, “humility itself. You couldn’t imagine the trouble I had in convincing her to put it for auction in the first place.”
You shoot your friend a wry glance. For her part, Onatopp hardly seems to register his words; her eyes remain fixed upon you.
“This friend of yours, does he know how much his likeness is worth?”
“I imagine not.”
“Then he isn’t here tonight? A pity, I would have liked to meet the muse.”
Looking at the stunning woman in front of you, you spare a thought that Trevelyan would have liked that as well. “Perhaps you have.”
Sacha shoots you a quizzical glance. For her part, Onatopp smiles, Mona Lisa in the flesh. “It’s a small world. Have you been to St. Petersburg?”
“Only in passing.”
Passing illegally through the Soviet Union, that is. Christ, 1981 seems a century ago.
“You must visit one of these days. Your drawing reminds me very much of a friend of mine.”
She speaks the words as though the two of you are privy to some hidden meaning, but you fail to understand their implication. Without meaning to, your eyes narrow.
“How romantic, to recognise one’s friends in works of art. My dear, when will you paint me in one of your masterpieces?”
The question coaxes a genuine smile from you. “Any portrait of you, Sacha, is bound to be a masterpiece, however I’m not ready to reach my magnum opus just yet.”
He loops his arm with Onatopp’s. “See how she flatters me? Such pretty words, even for an excuse.”
“Wherever did you learn such diplomacy?”
“At the foot of the master, of course.” You pat Vischer on the shoulder. “If there’s one charmer in Europe to be wary of, it’s this rascal here. He could convince a company of minks to donate their coats.”
“Pure exaggeration. I would never attempt to part a lady from her fur.”
“A wise decision on your part, I’m sure.” Opening her handbag, Onatopp draws out a silver case. “Do you smoke?”
You shake your head. She hums. “A shame.”
“We all have our vices, but Irena can’t stand the smoke. Absolutely no empathy, this woman: She once made me stand out on the balcony during a snowstorm.”
“I prefer my wallpaper sans stains.”
“There I am, moments from hypothermia, and she’s preoccupied with her wallpaper.”
Onatopp smiles around her cigar. Inevitably, her eyes return to you.
“That was quite the show you put on in there.” Your chin inclines towards the auction room. “You’re a daring woman.”
“Thank you. I enjoy the chase.”
“And winning.”
“And winning,” she concurs. The smoke curls between her lips. “But then, who doesn’t?”
Something tells you the woman in front of you might enjoy it more than most. Someone clears their throat behind you—you turn to find yourself facing Onatopp’s date. The man looks ill-at-ease, shifting from one foot to the other even as he seeks eye contact with the other woman.
“Excuse me,” he mumbles, “the car is here.”
You gather he’s eager to leave. His companion appears less hurried. Leisurely drawing another inhale from her cigar, her brown eyes watch you, half-lidded. “It seems I must say adieu.”
“Send my regards to your friend.”
Something like amusement sparks in her eyes, but all she does is nod at you and Sacha in turn. “Ms. Abendroth, Mr. Vischer.”
Somehow, Sacha manages to kiss her hand. She regards him as one would an amusing little animal, something with which to toy. The two of you watch them go.
After a moment, Sacha turns to you with a whistle. “What a woman!”
“Sacha,” you dryly remark, “that woman would eat you for breakfast.”
“I’m not sure I’d mind.” He casts her retreating figure another longing look. “if you’re jealous, just say so.”
“She can have you.”
His noise of affront follows you into the other room, where you take your places and wait for the auction to resume. Xenia Onatopp, for all her dangerous beauty, does not cross your mind for a long, long time.