Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Alexei Rozanov | Andrei Rozanov, Svetlana Vetrova, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau

Additional Tags:

red dead redemption 2 au, with Alexei as dutch, the metros are basically pinkertons, bandit ilya rozanov, (not to spoil anything but don't worry shane will be acab), 'detective' shane hollander, two Svetlana Vetrovas? in MY fic? more likely than you'd think!, some svetlana/cliff, also some svetlana/oc, but different svetlanas, POV Outsider, POV Alternating, Unreliable Narrator, Implied/Referenced Torture, Shane Hollander Whump, sorry to my favorite character shane hollander for putting him through the wringer again but here we are, Angst with a Happy Ending, Alternate Universe - Western, canon typical rozanov behavior (all of them except ilya suck), BAMF Shane Hollander, BAMF Ilya Rozanov, they both start out a bit wet kitten especially shane but it's important you know they'll eventually get more fun, listen: you don't need to know ANYTHING about red dead redemption 2 to read this, i have borrowed liberally from the game's geography and vibes, but have not really stolen much beyond that, think of this as a generic western, unless you're like me and have spent 700 hours in this game, and then give a hearty yeehaw every time you see a place name you recognize, 'flatneck station??? hell yeah i have vivid memories of every location in that massive map! she's just like me!', like THAT'S the vibe

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-10-16 Updated: 2026-10-21 Words: 29,630 Chapters: 6/?

an enemy bigger than my apathy

Summary

Everyone who knows Ilya Rozanov knows how important his family and his gang are to him.

It would surely take something huge to get him to turn his back on them.

or: a Red Dead Redemption 2/Western AU where Alexei takes Metro detective Shane Hollander hostage and damns himself and his gang unknowingly.

Notes

Red Dead Redemption 2 is my favorite game of all time, so of course I had to set yet another fic within it! I've kept some of the vibes/structure from the game, but most importantly I've taken all the geography and locations from the game, and in fact spent way too much time scrutinizing the Collector Map online and also riding around in the game to scout locations. I literally changed the location of the climax of Act I because my imagination didn't match up with the reality of that area of the map lmao. As always, I've been making things more difficult for myself, but that doesn't mean I haven't enjoyed it!

I'm planning in posting screenshots from the game on my tumblr of various locations that have inspired particular locations in the fic, chapter by chapter, if that's something that interests you!

This fic will have 3 acts:
Act I: The Raider Gang
Act II: Shane
Act III: Ilya

and each act will have multiple chapters. I have no idea how many chapters each act will have yet, because I am still working hard on the edit lmao, and so far the fic has been ballooning in wordcount, and I've already added an entire chapter into Act I. Hopefully I will have the entire fic edited and posted within the next week or so, because WIPs make me nervous! I will at least be posting Chapter 2 either later today or tomorrow morning!

The title is from "gave you all" by Mumford and Sons.

Chapter 1: Act I - The Raider Gang: Alexei I

Alexei Rozanov, leader of the infamous Raider Gang by right after his father’s recent passing, is well known across several states as a blustering idiot who will likely soon drive the gang to ruin, but this is not something that the man himself understands. That, of course, is part of what makes him such an undisputed moron: his confidence remains unshaken, despite all the recent blows that should have shattered it, and so he keeps making boneheaded decisions that will ruin his life. 

These last few months of recent fuckups have done a number on him, even if just inwardly. Alexei is his father’s son, as no one ever gets tired of fucking reminding him, which means that even at his most insecure and desperate, he must present the facade of a man who has a thousand different plans, and will not care very much if a few of those plans go to shit. Grigori ran the gang like a bluff in a bad poker hand for more than a decade before they were powerful enough that they weren’t constantly on the edge of ruin, and Alexei has been trying to mimic Grigori’s style, since it worked so well the first time, and since there is so much damage to undo. 

As Alexei would be the first to point out: most of the damage is not even his fault. Long before his death, Grigori’s mind had begun to fail him, and the gang weakened apace with it. Alexei and his wife both worked to conceal how bad Grigori was getting, but Grigori had been an ornery bastard even before the illness that took his mind, and the fear that came with his illness certainly hadn’t made him any nicer, and so of course people noticed.

They lost some of their oldest members when Alexei could no longer hide the truth from them, and then lost a few more once Grigori finally wandered out of his tent in a confusion in the middle of the night and fell into a river and drowned.

So Alexei’s reign over his father’s gang began with him already on the back foot, which has naturally contributed to his unacknowledged reputation as a moron. He has spent the last few months scrambling, always running from one crisis straight into the arms of another, chased by the sins of his past, and unable to see a future in which he isn’t paying for them. More and more bad has piled up around the gang as they’ve fled south and west, and the last thing they need is Alexei adding more shit to their pile, but it’s too late to take it back, anyway. The only thing they can do is move forward.

Hopefully, Ilya will agree. 

Not that Alexei needs or even really wants the approval of his little brother, but Ilya is unfortunately his most loyal member, and the gang’s most strident defender, and Alexei will surely need Ilya to at least partially approve if he’s going to get anywhere with this. 

He has been pacing into and out of his tent and around camp and up and back the little path through the woods that leads to the main road, over and over, waiting for Ilya’s return. He can’t logically be angry with Ilya for going out hunting this morning when Alexei was the one who told him that they need the food, but Alexei is rarely a rational creature, and so his inner emotional pendulum swings between chagrin with himself and fury with Ilya for not being around to talk him out of making this mistake.

When it gets dark, and when he finally takes a seat at the fire that one of the girls got going for him, he hears two sets of hoofbeats coming up the path, the crisp crunching of leaves underfoot, and the loud thwack of sapling branches slapping back into place after being shunted aside by the presence of riders. He jolts to his feet immediately, and is standing almost to the treeline by the time Ilya and Cliff Marleau appear out of the darkness, riding two abreast, each of them with a full deer thrown over the rump of their horses. Ilya’s saddle also has two turkeys dangling on either side of it, fat bodies lurching with the movement of the horse. It would be especially stupid to be angry with Ilya now that he has brought home enough food to keep everyone’s bellies full for a few days. Alexei is angry anyway.

He swallows that anger back, reminds himself that he needs Ilya far more than Ilya needs him, and that he cannot fly off the handle the way he would have done when they were boys, when Grigori was still in charge. He knows from experience that he can shame and cajole and mock Ilya into helping him, because Ilya is too loyal to the family to fight back, but he needs Ilya to be on his side completely for this thing, and that means treating him like an equal, at least for now.

So he helps Ilya and Marleau carry their spoils over to the butchering table near the cliff, where the meat will be prepared and the hide treated so that they can sell it later. The Raider Gang is always looking for ways to make money, and Ilya especially is always careful to do as little damage to hides and pelts as possible, especially after the long winter they just spent in the mountains, hiding from the law. Ilya’s hunting probably saved their lives a dozen times over, between the meat and the fur pelts from all the creatures he killed. Blankets and jackets and boots and all manner of things were fashioned by Galina and the other women and a few men who took it upon themselves to help the women do their work.

“You’ve done well,” he forces himself to say to Ilya, when they have both washed off their bloody hands and arms in a bucket of water next to the butchering table. Ilya regards him with that clenched-jaw look that always makes Alexei so fucking angry. There’s this insolence to Ilya, this stubborn, silent pride that their father could never beat out of him. Alexei hasn’t had the courage to even try, knowing that his days of being able to win those fights are long behind him. The only people Ilya even deigns to talk to lately are the women and maybe Marleau. Every time Alexei tries to start a conversation, he gets this look in response, like Ilya is waiting to hear what Alexei will say to disappoint him. 

He will surely disappoint Ilya this time, but that can’t be helped. What’s done is done, and Ilya will know better than anyone what they have to do now. Ilya has been hunting more, spending more time away from the gang, spending nights camping under the stars with no one for company but his horse. And he always comes back in like this, laden down with game, as if to offer up a silent excuse for why he hasn’t been around.

As if Alexei can’t tell that Ilya is just chafing under his older brother’s leadership, like the sore loser he is. 

“Come with me,” Alexei says. Maybe it’s good that Ilya stayed away for so long; Alexei is more sober now, and he has had more time to justify his actions to himself. 

It isn’t very often that Alexei feels shame when he looks at his brother.   

Well, no, actually: he feels shame when he looks at his brother a lot of the time, but typically in the sense that he is ashamed of Ilya. This, this feeling of desperate desire for his brother's approval, is new. Alexei doesn't like it.

“What the fuck did you do, Andrei?” Ilya hisses in Russian from the doorway of this dark little tent, and Alexei winces. Ilya only ever calls him by his old name, his birth name, when he's especially angry. Like he wants to remind Alexei that it’s his fault they had to leave Moscow and his old name behind, and that anything bad that is happening to them is only happening because of Alexei’s lack of impulse control. As if Alexei has ever been allowed to forget it.

When their father was alive and in charge, he never would have bothered to explain himself to either of his sons, especially not if one of his sons had used that tone. Alexei considers not explaining himself now, but Ilya looks so openly horrified and confused that Alexei decides to take pity on him. He tells himself that it has nothing to do with wanting Ilya to stop looking at him like he’s a fuckup, and it certainly has nothing to do with his deep-down desire for Ilya to eventually believe that their father passed the gang to the right son. That one day Ilya will wake up and be the soldier for Alexei that he was for their father. That he will finally understand and see and appreciate that Alexei has tried his whole life to become Grigori, while Ilya has continued to take after their shamefully weak mother, which is why Alexei has to be in charge.

“I did what I had to do to keep us alive,” Alexei says. “We can keep trying to outrun the fucking police, or we can take the fight to the fucking police. That’s what I’ve done!”

It sounds good in his head, all puffed up with bravado he is only pretending to feel, but his voice sounds weak and wavering when he speaks the words aloud, and then he just feels like a fool, especially when he notices the way Ilya is looking at him.

It's this aghast expression that makes him look like their long-dead mother; the way he looks and acts has always made it difficult to look at him, because he takes after her so much. His curly, golden-brown hair. His sharp jaw. His guileless eyes, always showing their hurt too easily. Alexei knows that his brother isn’t near as soft as their father often accused him of being; he has seen Ilya kill too many times to ever fall into that trap. And Grigori was the sort who only ever killed from a distance—with a gun or by sending one of his men to do the job—so even Alexei has always thought it a bit ridiculous that his father could call Ilya weak with a straight face, when Ilya has no qualms about killing up close. Alexei has seen Ilya more than once kill men with a knife, just for the crime of disrespecting one of the gang’s women. He has seen Ilya shoot down members of rival gangs and pursuing lawmen without pausing or hesitating or worrying about the consequences. 

Grigori wasn’t stupid enough to really believe Ilya was weak, anyway. Alexei is sure of that. He thinks, probably, that Grigori just suffered from the same issue that Alexei does: looking at Ilya reminded him of Irina, and it’s always easier to get angry than it is to sit in your sadness. 

So Alexei looks away from Ilya, and he shores up his defenses by being annoyed that Ilya isn’t immediately enthusiastic about this plan, though he’d expected this from the outset. He looks instead down at his dubious prize. For all his self-serving delusion, Alexei does think he may have made a mistake with this one. 

The Montreal Metropolitan Detectives have been chasing the Raider gang on and off for going on about five years now, thanks to a boneheaded move by Grigori when they tried to strike up into Canada and got on the wrong side of a landowner wealthy enough to pay the private police force to carry out his grudges. Captain Theriault of the Metros is a hard man, and he’s a man who hates to lose, and so even when the Raiders threw in the towel and got out of dodge, the Metros pursued them across the border and chased them down into the southern part of America, and they’re never going to give up until gangs like the Raiders have been brought to heel or eliminated entirely. Alexei wants to spend the fucking money they stole down in Blackwater without having to worry about the Metros breathing down his back for all eternity, and so when he saw the opportunity to act, he took it. 

  Was he drunk and high at the time? Yes, of course he was. He’d been at the saloon in Valentine, watching over Lana and a few of the other girls as they charmed a couple of naive new customers at the poker table, lining them up for Conners and Carmichael to come in and swindle them out of their money. He’d also been hoping to meet up with a moonshine supplier who worked at the General Store, so he’d been watching the street and happened to look up just as fucking Shane Hollander pulled up on his stupid fucking white horse. Hollander had looked happy and unbothered as he’d hitched his horse to the post outside the classy Saints Hotel, so clearly he hadn’t realized the Raiders were in the area, which was a mistake that Alexei knew he had to capitalize on. He’d followed Hollander around the back of the building after Hollander had gotten a key from the proprietor, and then he’d whacked Hollander over the head, hogtied him, and brought him back to camp. Ilya would have done the same in his position, probably, if he wasn’t so fucking cautious when it came to the Metros. 

Grigori, at least, would have surely been pleased. 

Shane Hollander, eagle eye of the Metros, feared sharpshooter and massive pain in the ass of anyone who isn’t willing to follow his damned code of ethics, has been a thorn in the side of the Raider gang ever since he was assigned to their case. Grigori was still alive at the time, and things were a lot less tense then, and a lot more spread out, so all of the gang’s members had a little more freedom. They’d had a semi-permanent settlement in the woods just south of Montreal, and they were more a collective of bandit interests who dipped in and out as they needed. There were factions and subgroups and lone wolf specialists, all lorded over by Grigori Rozanov, The Moscow Menace. 

The Raiders gained a reputation easily this way, because their scattered nature meant they could be everywhere at once. Ilya did his own thing back then, mostly, pulling in money from robbed stagecoaches and banks, sometimes partnering with Sveta or Marleau for long stretches, but largely he was a lone wolf type, never around when you needed him. Of course he was probably mainly trying to avoid Grigori and Alexei both, but it was an arrangement that worked for all of them; they had not gotten along very well, since coming to America. They probably stopped getting along just as soon as Irina was dead. 

It had been the best choice for everyone, for Ilya to stay away, especially when their father started to really show signs of confusion. Ilya would have only been upset if he had been around enough to notice. 

Shane Hollander’s arrival to the Metros and the subsequent massacre of whole arms of the gang happened largely at the same time, and Alexei has long assumed that was not a coincidence, even though Hollander was just some kid, Ilya’s age, just some cocky sharpshooter with a penchant for moralizing, according to Marleau, who’d been captured by him before. Hollander was said to be lenient on people who weren’t causing real harm to anyone, but he was vicious to people who hurt others, which means Alexei has typically chosen to give him a wide berth, rather than trying to challenge him. Grigori, when he was alive, would have given the same advice, or more probably would have sent someone to kill Hollander, if Hollander had been more than just a pest back when Grigori was still in full possession of his faculties. 

Or maybe Alexei just wants to think that because he fucking hates people like Hollander. All of the Metros wear the outward skins of sanctimonious assholes, but most of them can be bribed, like normal people. There’s a way these things work. The Metros take protection money from the wealthy who don’t want to be robbed, and then the smart ones who know how the ecosystem works turn around and take money from people like the Raider gang, who want to get to robbing without being shot or run out of town. Then the Metros will take more money from those wealthy assholes in order to track the gangs down and try to get the money back. It all balances out eventually. Grigori understood that, and Alexei understands it, and Captain Theriault has always been fully on board. Out of all of the relationships Alexei had to reinvigorate after his father’s death, the one with Theriault was the easiest, and actually, he thinks he gets along with Theriault better than his father ever did. 

(This is, of course, because of him being a weak-willed blowhard who is easy to trick into thinking he’s winning when he’s really bent over a barrel, but he is not aware of this.)

Hollander, though? Hollander thinks he’s above it all, and he thinks everyone else should be above it all, too. If he was the religious sort, maybe he’d be less insufferable, because Alexei knows how to talk his way around those folks, but Hollander isn’t even that. And he’s not the sort of man who worships the law, either, because there are all those stories about how he lets people go when he should, technically, take them in. Hollander follows his own code, and it seems like at the core of that code is ‘fuck Alexei Rozanov specifically’. 

The glory days of bandit gangs roaming the Wild West and making stagecoach robbing into a career lucrative enough to retire to somewhere warm like Tahiti is a thing of the past already, and no small part of that is because of honorable fuckwits like Hollander. Every year that passes, there's some new innovation that makes it harder to hide. The city of Saint Denis has electric lighting now, and they have police on every corner all through the night. There are freight trains that go all the way down to Tumbleweed, which means the Metros and any of the dozens of private police gangs like them can be anywhere fast, if they have to be. Alexei can feel the noose tightening around his neck already. They’re running out of land, running out of places to hide, and he’s fucking sick of it. 

So sure, fuck it. He took Hollander, because Hollander was there to be taken, and because Alexei is tired of losing. His plan—half-cocked as it is, and formed from the mind of a drunk who made an impulsive choice and then came up with the plan to try and justify that impulse later—is to keep Hollander until Theriault works out a deal that involves the Metros abandoning their pursuit for at least the next few weeks, because a couple of weeks is all the head start that Alexei is going to need. 

He's so close to having enough money to leave this fucking country, to get on a boat and skip out to somewhere less determined to wrangle itself into respectability. With all the gold buried by Grigori in their old spot, and with this latest haul from the bank job in Blackwater, he has almost enough to ensure he doesn't have to work another day in his life. 

He just needs to make sure that Ilya understands this, and doesn’t try to stop him, because an extra lump of gold from Theriault for the safe return of his best marksman will push Alexei over the edge and set him free. 

“He’s fine, and breathing, little idiot. And he will stay that way as long as Theriault does what he’s told.” Ilya's expression is openly doubtful, but Alexei ignores him. For all he has worried about Ilya's reaction to this, he finds that Ilya's open disdain has only made him more confident. What does Ilya know, anyway? He has barely ever dealt with the Metros. He has barely ever done anything that isn't hunting or killing. He has never had to negotiate anything. Alexei is the one who always accompanied Grigori to those things. “I’ve already sent Conners and Hammersmith with the message. Theriault will want the boy back badly enough that he'll agree to a meeting and an exchange, hopefully soon. It was lucky that Hollander was so far from the others. We will pack up once we have an answer and head to the cave to get extra money, in case we need to move out of here quick.” 

In case I fucked up worse than I think I did is really the subtext there, which is, Alexei thinks, his smartest move so far. Pretending at being humble enough to think this might have been a mistake and using that false humility as an excuse for why he wants to clear out the cave. By the time Ilya realizes he's been had, Alexei will be on a steamship headed down the San Luis with all the gold the gang has left. 

The cave was a favorite haunt of their father’s, when he was alive. It used to be the hideout of some other gang before them, but Grigori wiped them out and took it over, back in the early days, when they couldn't afford to be picky. Alexei hates the fucking place, and he knows Ilya feels the same. They spent too much of their childhood camping in that damp warren of dark passages, huddled around campfires that always made the place too smoky to see far. It was the sort of place that was fun for boys for all of two weeks until everyone developed the same lingering cough and the same full-body shivers because it was impossible to stay warm and dry in there, and only seemed to get worse as the year wore on. 

Alexei and Ilya both respected their father, and they both must miss him now that he's gone, but he was a hard man, and hard to like, and they both now have the same aversion to anything that Grigori favored. It's probably one of the only things they still have in common. But the cave is important, because the cave is where Grigori buried all of the gang's extra gold, whenever they had enough to make deposits, and only Alexei and Ilya know this. 

Ilya tears his eyes away from Hollander’s prone form, huddled into itself on the floor of this tent. He meets Alexei's eyes long enough to give a performative grimace about the cave, which helps a bit, in terms of improving Alexei's outlook. Yes, Ilya clearly thinks he fucked up, but he isn't that angry. He hasn't stormed out yet or declared he will have nothing to do with this. He hasn't threatened to leave the gang. Alexei can handle a little disdain as long as he still has his brother's loyalty. He smiles a little despite his foul mood and worsening headache, and he claps Ilya on the shoulder. 

“Nothing stupid, okay, little brother?” he teases in English, mostly for the benefit of Marleau, who is waiting just outside the tent. “Hollander is valuable to us. We keep him alive, and unhurt.” 

“Too late, I think,” Ilya points out. He crouches down and brushes aside a lank of dark hair that hangs over Hollander’s forehead. Blood drips down from a gash somewhere out of sight. Alexei sighs and waves away Ilya's concern. 

“Galina was always telling us that head injuries bleed a lot, right? Don’t be such a woman about it. He's still breathing.” 

For a second, Ilya looks at him like he hates him, but then he nods, and he stands up, and the Rozanov brothers leave the tent together.

Chapter 2: Act I - The Raider Gang: Sveta I

Chapter Notes

I deluded myself into thinking I was going to be smart and spread these chapters out, but instead I am being typically myself and am posting them the second I have edited them 4 times each. Meanwhile, everything past Chapter 4 is still First Draft Nonsense, so I have guaranteed that next week I am going to be speed-editing and very stressed, but that's okay. I live for this shit, I think.

The Raider Gang has a lot of women in it. Younger women especially. They used to be looked after and kept in line by Grigori’s woman, Polina, but she took off years ago, as soon as Grigori started losing his grip and calling her by his dead wife’s name. Now the women are a scattered lot who drift in and out of the camp whenever it suits them. As much as Sveta likes to complain about the Raiders, it’s true that there are no similar gangs in which women are treated with half as much respect, and so it’s no surprise that they keep coming back. In a life like theirs, you really are only looking for the least bad option.

There are two women who have been absolutely loyal to the gang from the beginning, though, and they are both named Svetlana Vetrova.

Everyone calls them The Twins, though they look nothing alike, and are not related by blood. They go by Sveta and Lana, and most people forget that they are technically sisters, possibly because they actually like each other, and the gang’s main experience with sibling relationships is the cold disdain between the Rozanov brothers. 

Sveta is a gambler, a thief, and a master manipulator. Lana functions as a killer, a seductress, and the best undercover operative the gang has ever had—even Grigori called her their best, which means it must be true, because that old goat hated to compliment any woman for anything other than prettiness or bust size. Combined, The Twins run more operations for the gang than anyone other than Alexei.

Sveta has known the Rozanov boys since they were all in diapers together. According to their fathers, their mothers became great friends in Moscow when Sergei Vetrov moved his small family back to Russia from America, after a youth spent making money via various illegal means in the New World. But then both women died only a few months apart—one of tuberculosis and the other by her own hand—and then Alexei got into a bit of legal trouble, so Sergei and Grigori decided to leave Moscow together and drown their sorrows across the ocean. On the boat to America, they met Lana, who was traveling to meet relatives in Boston who had sent for her to serve as their housemaid. By the time the ship reached Massachusetts, those relatives had died of a fever, and Sergei Vetrov adopted himself a second daughter who happened to share a name with his first.

Sveta inherited a lot from her mother. She has her mother's warm brown skin and curly brown hair, and she has her mother’s ethereal beauty, as well. She can’t pinpoint any physical features that she shares with her father, but when it comes to personality, they are very alike. Her father has always been gregarious, his friendliness used as a shield and a weapon. From him, she learned how to charm men and women alike so that it looks effortless. With all of those elements combined, Sveta is a perfect distraction. If the gang ever needs someone to draw the eye, Sveta is the one. She sticks out in a crowd. 

She sticks out especially around these parts, in the Heartlands, where most of the settlers are the rough-edged white sort who fled the north and the east because it was getting too “crowded” with a “certain kind of person”, though they’ll talk around that and clutch their little rosary beads to their chests if anyone deigns to ask for clarification, Sveta has found. Sticking out isn’t always desirable in a place like this, surrounded by people so stupid and so dangerous. That’s typically where Lana comes in: Lana is also beautiful, also charming, but her wheat-blonde hair and her pale skin blend in better in the Heartlands, and she's good at fading into the background when she wants to, which is why she’s so good at working undercover, and why she’s so good at killing, if it comes to it. 

So when they need someone to hustle in Valentine or Strawberry or one of those smaller towns where Sveta will be too conspicuous and too easily remembered, Alexei will take Lana and some of the other girls, and Sveta will stay behind at camp and be in charge of things there. 

Sveta loves the chance to show off her skills in bigger cities like New York and Boston, but she never minds staying back, either. Ilya usually makes it a point to stick around camp when he knows she’s going to be there unattended, and it’s a good chance to catch up on things like mending her best outfits and training some of the newer horses, which has always been her favorite job. Plus, she can’t stand Alexei these days, and Lana is always so funnily bitchy when she comes back from working with him. Sveta would much rather experience the elder Rozanov through her sister’s recollection. 

Ilya and Alexei don’t agree on much, but they at least agree when it comes to watching out for the women in the camp. And, sure, Alexei is a drunk and a scumbag who abandoned his wife and infant daughter in Blackwater with no guarantee the gang will ever be able to head back that way to collect them, but he has never raised a hand in anger to any woman in camp, unlike his father, and Sveta has never felt unsafe with either of the brothers. They keep a short leash on their male members, because unless they’ve been around for a long time like Cliff or Conners, there’s just no telling when a man will go bad and try to take what he wasn’t offered. Alexei has always been very vocal that those sorts of men have no place in the Raiders, and Ilya has made it clear that he will always enforce his brother’s edict, at least when it comes to this. Maybe those are low standards, but Sveta has heard stories from the other girls about how bad things can be out there, and she’s willing to give Alexei a crumb of credit for not being the worst monster in the business.  

This particular time she’s left behind with Ilya while the others ride off to Valentine, Ilya is a stormcloud around camp, hovering outside the tent in which they’re keeping Hollander, looking murderously at anyone who dares approach. He reminds Sveta of the cougar they narrowly avoided, down near Flatneck Station, when they were on the way to claim Horseshoe Overlook for their new camp. The big cat had paced high up on the rocks, yowling at them from its safety on the cliffside, spooking all the horses something fierce, as Ilya and Cliff and a few of the other men trained their rifles on it. They’d spent the better part of the previous year down south, in the desert, so they all knew the danger that those beasts presented, all knew that if it decided to attack, odds were good that at least one of them would fall to its claws before it could be stopped.

Ilya looks like that: like he’s being hunted and sighted by a dozen guns and yet is still considering making the leap. 

 “Ilyusha, it’s done,” she warns him when she’s sure that no one else in camp is close enough to hear her. Fewer Raiders than ever speak Russian, because most of Grigori’s favorite lieutenants took off when Grigori died—they can’t stand Alexei, like any right-thinking person. The remaining ones who do speak Russian are invariably Alexei’s men, around whom she knows she has to be careful. “We can talk about how it was a stupid choice for Alexei to make, especially without consulting any of us, but he has made it, and there’s nothing to be done about it. All right? You don’t have to stand guard over the boy like that. He has no weapons, and he’s bound quite tightly in there, and has had no medical attention. We are safe from him, no matter his reputation. I actually think we should loosen the ropes, now that Alexei is gone. I feel sorry for him.” 

“And you don’t think that’s exactly what a man like Hollander wants you to think?” Ilya asks, grinning a little at her, a bit incredulous. 

“But you will be in there with me, won’t you? In case he gets any ideas. And you know men think I’m such a sweet little thing. They can’t resist me.” 

Ilya barks a laugh, like he can’t help himself. She would be more offended by it if she didn’t have intimate knowledge that he was one of those men, and that he knows very well how irresistible she can be. They decided about five years ago that it made things too strange and complicated between them, and so they made the choice to stop, but that doesn’t erase the past. 

(She still pretends to be Ilya’s Girl in camp, because there’s a certain amount of safety in being claimed by one of the Rozanovs, though that is probably a sickening indictment of the sorts of men they usually travel with. Ilya plays along with it for her sake, glaring at anyone who gets too close to her, and she repays him by bringing him the flashiest pieces of clothing or accessories she steals from her marks. It’s the best relationship she’s ever had with a man.) 

“Fine, yes, we will loosen his ropes. I want to get a look at that head wound before Alexei comes back, anyway. If we’re going to do this, we might as well do it right, with Hollander still alive at the end of it.” 

Sveta nods, relieved that she and Ilya are thinking along the same lines. 

She retreats to the other side of camp to fetch the medical supplies from the wagon where Galina until-recently set up shop. Galina finally gave up on Alexei a few weeks back and snuck away in the middle of the night, carrying only her personal effects, making for the city of Saint Denis, down in Lemoyne, where Sergei has been living ever since he “retired” and parted ways with the gang. Galina was the closest thing to a real doctor that they’d ever had, and no one has stepped in to fill that role, like they all think she will change her mind and come crawling back. Sveta knows better, though. She’s had letters from both Galina and her father, talking about how Galina is getting set up in a shop of her own in Saint Denis, no longer having to worry about soothing the ego of the spoiled little prince in order to be allowed to treat the people under her care. Galina put up with Alexei far longer than she probably should have, for the love she had for everyone in the gang aside from Alexei, but those months in the mountains had sapped even her iron will. Sveta is still sad that she’s gone, but is in some ways glad that she left. Like she proved that it’s possible to leave, and to stay away. Just in case things go as bad as they seem like they’re going to go. 

Because they have no medic now, Galina’s wagon has become storage. Her supplies, the medical books she chose to leave behind, extra food that doesn’t fit in the butcher wagon, extra blankets and pillows and the saddlebags and trinkets that various members of the gang have stolen off their marks. Sveta offered, when Galina left, to take over her job, but Alexei had scoffed at the idea that they would be okay with her remaining at camp all day when she’s the prettiest woman they have and also the best thief. 

(Sveta would like to say that she was insulted by being reduced to her beauty, but unfortunately she does enjoy being told that she’s the best at things).

She goes back across the camp to Ilya, one of Galina’s old satchels, full to the brim with medical supplies, pulled over her shoulder. Rather than opening the flap for her like a gentleman, Ilya gestures at the tent with his head, impatient. Sveta rolls her eyes, but she understands what he’s going for: he thinks it will be better if she’s the first person Hollander sees. A softer, smiling face. Someone gentle, so he will hopefully know that he doesn’t have to be afraid, after his rather negative first impression of the gang’s members. 

She pushes past the flap, ducking her head a little to get inside. 

Alexei has been keeping Hollander in their highest quality tent, which isn’t saying much. It's the tent that Ilya usually sleeps in, which might be part of why he has been in such a terrible mood since Hollander was captured; he has been sleeping on a cot, just outside. She suspects Alexei chose this tent not just to annoy Ilya but also because the canvas is thick, and almost no light makes its way in. He must think that there’s some benefit to keeping Hollander in the dark, maybe to keep him confused and disoriented, so he can hardly tell what time of day it is, every time he wakes. 

Then again, Sveta has heard all sorts of probably exaggerated tales about Hollander’s sharpshooting skills. Maybe Alexei has the right idea. 

When a few seconds have passed, and she has gotten more used to the dark, she sees that Hollander is sitting up against one of the walls of the tent, muscles straining against the ropes, which are, indeed, tied far too tightly. Alexei has let Hollander out to relieve himself and stretch his sore muscles only infrequently, and only under guard of some of his most trusted men, and he has always tied Hollander back up himself afterwards, probably deriving some sort of petty satisfaction in reminding both of them that it was Alexei, of all people, who managed to bring him down. The sleeves of Hollander’s navy blue shirt are rolled up to his elbows, and even in the dark, Sveta can see the raw skin of his wrists, and the dark, painful-looking swell of his fingers. Alexei has tied him at the ankles too, and the knees, and both sets of rope dig into his once-light-gray pants, now stained with mud and blood. He has been gagged with his own bright red Metros bandana, and it looks horridly uncomfortable. He’s breathing, though, and conscious; she can see that his eyes are open just slightly, glittering wetly, watching her. 

“A light, maybe, Ilyushka,” she says sweetly in English, without taking her eyes off Hollander. Hollander doesn’t afford her the same courtesy; his gaze goes immediately to Ilya, who shoulders his way into the tent, filling up the space. 

Ilya has brought a lantern with him, and he lights it with steady hands, and Sveta gets her first real look at the infamous Shane Hollander, their prize. 

He’s handsome, of course. She had already heard as much from almost everyone who has run into him. Lana gushed over him when she met him, and the boys mocked Cliff soundly when he did the same, after being caught and then released by Hollander, like an undersized fish. It’s always one of the first things that people say when they get back from having narrowly escaped his notice. 

Like Sveta, his father was white—Dutch-Canadian, in Hollander’s case—and his mother was not. She has heard various rumors about Hollander’s mother (including some interesting stories about her being a Japanese bandit queen, which is probably bullshit, but Sveta hopes it’s true), but no one seems to know much about them, probably by design. Half of Hollander’s charm is that he’s a mystery.

Sveta only knows what she does because Lana spied on him and a few other Metros one time when they were at a hotel in Strawberry and luckily didn’t recognize her as the girl serving their food. For all his fame across the region, people know little about Hollander’s personal life, about his family. Sveta has heard from her father that Hollander is often seen in Saint Denis in the company of Rose Landry, the daughter of the city’s mayor, but that no engagement has been announced, and seems unlikely to ever be. She knows from tavern gossip that Hollander’s parents are either back in Montreal or they are dead, and either way, he followed the Metros to America, chasing gangs like the Raiders, and hasn’t returned to home in almost five years. She wonders if he’s lonely, and if he would be able to be persuaded to join a gang like theirs. Maybe with the right motivation, he could be turned away from the Metros, but she’s not sure Alexei will give her the leeway to work her magic. 

“Sveta,” Ilya prods, amused. “I know he's very pretty, but we are here for a reason.” 

Embarrassed, Sveta hisses at Ilya to shut up, and he laughs and hangs the lantern from one of the tent poles. He crouches down in front of Hollander, leaving Sveta room to work. 

“Rozanov,” Hollander says, his voice hoarse and scratchy, once Ilya has untied the gag and removed it from his mouth. Hollander makes a face like the bandana tasted unpleasant, and he works his jaw a little, clearly sore. Sveta feels sorry for this poor lost little lamb, but she knows she can’t show it, because she will not hear the end of it from Ilya if she does. You have fallen for his tricks, he would laugh at her, because everyone knows Hollander is a lion, and only pretends at lambishness to get people to let down their guard before he strikes. That’s exactly how he caught Cliff, and is probably how he has caught plenty of his other marks, too.

“Hollander,” Ilya replies. He reaches for his belt and unclips his canteen. He jiggles it in Hollander’s direction. Hollander sighs, and nods, and leans in gratefully, allowing Ilya to pour some water into his mouth. Hollander licks his full bottom lip after the first swallows, and Ilya makes him drink a few more mouthfuls before he’s satisfied. Sveta really does try not to be lecherous about it, but she’s only human, and Hollander is beautiful even when wrecked. A drop of water falls to Hollander’s chin, carves a line down it, and Ilya uses his own sleeve to wipe it up. 

Sveta looks at Ilya then, carefully, but Ilya doesn’t look back at her. She knows about Ilya that he shares her weakness for pretty boys, though he’s better at hiding it. Has to be better at hiding it, obviously, because even among bandits who flout the law and who have little interest in following the words of any god, there are lots of opinions about where a man should or should not stick his cock. But she and Ilya have been close enough for all their lives that he has been honest with her a few times about it, when they were both drunk and depressed about where their lives were going. She offered to marry him, once, afraid that he would be reckless enough to get caught by his father or Alexei, but Ilya put her off with a smile, said she should save herself for someone she might actually love, as if that’s going to ever be possible for her, running around with a gang of fools.

It’s been a long time since she’s seen him looking with any interest at anybody, but she hasn’t forgotten the way wanting looks on his face, and she supposes she’s unsurprised to see it on him now. Ilya has always been attracted to dangerous things. 

Sveta turns her gaze back on Hollander to find that Hollander is already watching her. He’s impassive, expression blank, waiting for her to explain what she wants of him. She clears her throat, and suddenly she wishes that Ilya would offer her a sip from his canteen. “Hello, Hollander,” she says brightly, turning on her charm. “We are here to check your wrists and your ankles, make sure your ropes are not too tight, and to clean your head wound. Okay? Is there anywhere else you are hurt?” 

Hollander looks amused by the question, but he shakes his head, then turns it into a shrug that’s almost indolent, as if to say everything hurts, but isn’t that to be expected? Sveta gestures to Ilya, who helps move Hollander into a better position, stretching out his legs. Hollander sighs and rolls his shoulders a little. 

“Tingles? In your hands and feet?” Ilya asks. Hollander nods, which makes Sveta frown. 

“You should not have been left like this for so long,” she says apologetically. “We will keep a better eye on you, going forward.” 

“Much obliged,” Hollander says dryly. Clearly a bit sarcastic, but not in as mean a way as he might deserve to be. Kind of amused, maybe, as if he’s thinking that Alexei will get his way, and that the rough treatment will continue no matter how sweetly Sveta might promise otherwise.  

“We want to make sure you enjoy your stay with us,” she says. “Maybe persuade you to join us?” 

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s gonna happen, sorry,” Hollander laughs, exhaustion dimming the sound. Sveta shrugs. 

“Maybe we can do something to change your mind,” she teases. Ilya rolls his eyes and mutters something under his breath. “Ignore my impolite friend.” 

“Your friend is a little difficult to ignore,” Hollander says. Ilya scoffs again. 

“And you are not nearly as good as you think you are,” he retorts. Hollander laughs hoarsely. 

“Oh, come on. Fuck off. The one time I miss my shot…” 

“Yes, lucky you,” Ilya fires back. “You could have killed me, and then where would you be? Back at home, safe, with your precious Metros.” 

“He took a shot at you?” Sveta asks, surprised. 

“Years ago,” Ilya replies, dismissive, in a tone that means it was a fairly close call, which is probably why he never mentioned it. “Obviously, he missed.” 

“I’m allowed one missed shot in my entire career,” Hollander insists. 

“Career,” Ilya sneers. 

Hollander makes another annoyed huffing sound and shifts his weight, trying to get comfortable.

“Can I get a pillow or something?” he asks Sveta. “I’ve been lying on the ground for the last two days.” 

For some reason, Ilya looks at Sveta when the question is asked. It’s this furtive little look, like he's waiting for her to react before he does anything, and she suddenly understands what's going on. She almost laughs and calls it out, but Hollander isn’t the only one who reminds her of a lost little lamb right now, and so she plays into it instead. Ilya has done a lot for her over the years. If he wants to use her as a buffer so he can make sure Hollander is being treated better than Alexei would allow without having to get into it with Alexei himself, then she'll do it. Alexei has always listened to her far more willingly than he has ever listened to Ilya.

“Two days on the ground?” she asks with feigned outrage—she may not be their first choice for undercover work, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t skilled at acting a part. “Ilyushka, what kind of operation is your fucking brother running?” She scoffs and storms out of the tent with an offended swish of her full skirts, for extra flavor, though she suspects it might push her over the line into ‘obvious’ territory. 

She takes the pillow from Ilya's cot, because it's closest, and because she supposes she may as well punish him a little bit for his audacity, even if she also supports it. She also takes one of Ilya’s blankets, and one of the thick winter coats she hasn’t seen him wear in a while, because it has been sort of chilly at night, and it seems cruel to leave Hollander only in that thin shirt, with his sleeves rolled up and everything. Everyone knows Alexei is an idiot, but this has been stupid even for him. What will they do if their hostage gets sick and dies of exposure before they can make the exchange? Taking Hollander hostage at all was a risky enough move without then killing him by accident after telling the Metros that they have him. 

She storms back into the tent, as much as one can storm into the tent. She’s really leaning into the outrage now, her hands even shaking with performative empathy. Ilya is still crouched by Hollander's head, his expression a study of guilt and reluctance. It’s hard to tell what Hollander feels except exhausted, his face swollen with bruises, his eyes tracking her every move. 

“Your brother is a monster,” Sveta spits at Ilya, though surely he will notice that she is using English for Hollander’s benefit, and that her outrage is largely exaggerated. “I am reaching my limits with him.”

Ilya doesn't argue, for once. He sits back on his heels, and he looks at Sveta blankly, waiting for more condemnation, like he knows that Alexei deserves it, and believes that he deserves it, for continuing to follow his big brother. Sveta has indulged that sort of attitude enough, over the years, but it actually makes her a bit sick to think of now, and so she looks away from it rather than soothing him, as she might have in the past. 

She drops her haul from Ilya’s cot on the ground, but is not satisfied with that. She goes back out into Galina’s old wagon and digs around in the spare items until she finds the awful canvas bedroll that no one else likes using, which is why it only exists in spare storage. Alexei would surely object to giving Hollander a cot, but maybe he will let a bedroll slide, if she makes the right argument. 

She carries it back to the tent, and this time, Ilya gets up to help her roll out the canvas and construct a paltry bed for Hollander. Then they work together to lift Hollander to his knees and maneuver him onto it. He lets out a grateful sigh when Ilya helps him rest his head on the pillow, and he nods at some silent question Ilya must have asked with his eyes. 

She notices that Ilya is careful with Hollander's head, that he's not rough with his touch, and it confirms even more for her what she has already guessed. Yes, Sveta is here as a proxy for Ilya. He wanted to make sure that Hollander isn’t too badly off, and he wanted to improve Hollander’s situation as much as Alexei would allow, but he must have been nervous to be seen being the one doing the care. Whether it's fear of Alexei's censure or embarrassment that Hollander himself will notice, she's not sure, but it probably doesn't matter. Ilya has always been like this: hesitant to be seen as too soft. 

Sveta doesn't mind being used in this way. She has done worse things than show a Metro a little bit of kindness at the behest of her soft-hearted friend. She cleans Hollander's head wound, and is satisfied that it doesn't seem to be very deep, despite how much it has bled. He has to close his eyes when she holds the lantern too close, and he admits to feeling a little dizzy and having a headache, so she gives him some willow bark to chew for the pain, and tells him that he should rest while he can. Galina would know better how to treat him, but Galina is gone, so they must make do with what paltry knowledge Sveta managed to pick up from her.

Hollander admits that Alexei kicked him a few times in the ribs in a fit of fury the previous day, and he expresses, in his strange, mild tone, that he thinks some might be broken. Ilya heaves out a breath at that and stands up and leaves the tent.

“Alexei is a fucking bully,” Sveta says to Hollander gently as she unbuttons his shirt. Hollander looks briefly alarmed that she’s doing it, but he still lifts his bound hands out of the way when she gestures for him to do so. The white undershirt he's wearing under his Metros Blue button-up is stained with blood, and Sveta frowns down at Hollander's face. “Can I…?”

“Oh, I don't know if that's proper,” Hollander says, with such pathetically polite earnestness that Sveta can't stop a harsh laugh, just as Ilya finally comes back into the tent. His jaw is still clenched tight, and he still looks like he has been sucking on lemons, but he doesn’t look overcome anymore, which is an improvement. 

“Ilyushka, lift his shirt up for me, please. He’s bleeding.” 

“For fuck’s sake,” Ilya hisses in Russian, but he does as Sveta has ordered, sulking and crouching by Hollander’s head when he’s finished. Sveta moves the lantern so they can look at Hollander’s impressive stomach and chest, now bruised an uncomfortably deep purple, with several bleeding scrapes. If Galina were here, maybe she would suggest something as frightening as internal bleeding, but she isn’t here, and Sveta doesn’t know enough about the body to guess. She does know about bruises, though, and she supposes that it could be just that, just a normal bruise—a bad one, certainly, but not one that will kill Hollander eventually—and so she pretends to think it’s just a normal bruise, for all of their sakes. Hollander can die all he wants once he’s back with the Metros, but until then, he has to stay alive, and Alexei has to stop using him as a punching bag so he doesn’t send him to an earlier grave. 

“It looks bad,” she says, ostensibly to Hollander, though she’s really talking to Ilya. “But I think it should be okay, as long as Alexei knows better than to come at you any more. Ilyushka, maybe you should stay in the tent to watch over him tonight. Make sure that Alexei doesn’t try anything?”

 Ilya glances at Hollander, who has his eyes closed and is biting his lip in what looks like poorly hidden pain, or maybe concentration. His breathing is shallow, like the skin of his (very nice to look at) stomach is trying not to intrude too much into the space that Ilya’s fingers have taken up, where they are gathering his disgusting undershirt up to his chest. 

“I don’t think Alexei will go for that, Sveta. He won’t take my advice,” Ilya replies slowly, regretfully. Sveta scoffs. 

“I will tell him. Not you. He would never listen to you about this, because you have already made him feel like an idiot for taking Hollander in the first place. Don’t worry. Move your cot back in here before he gets back. I will convince him.”

Ilya acts briefly affronted by her tone, but he doesn’t take very long to think it over before he shrugs and nods in agreement. 

“She is looking out for you,” he says to Hollander. “I would just let Alexei kick you to death, probably.” 

“No you wouldn’t,” Hollander replies, not bothering to open his eyes. 

“Even he knows how soft you are,” Sveta teases, and then she digs through her little satchel and finds more willow bark, which she tucks underneath Hollander’s pillow for later. Hollander thanks her very earnestly and very politely, of course, and then Sveta packs the satchel back up, and she slips it into Ilya’s hands, and she heads for the tent flap. 

Later, after she has laid into Alexei, with Lana jumping in unquestioningly for backup despite not knowing what the argument is even about until several barbs have already been exchanged, Sveta returns to Ilya’s tent and finds Hollander sitting up on Ilya’s cot while Ilya sets up a bedroll on the ground. Hollander is holding his bound hands up to his side in a way that makes Sveta concerned about his broken ribs, but she forces herself to look away, because there’s nothing more she can do for him, and she’s only going to make herself sick with worry if she tries.

“You are all set,” she tells Ilya in English, so Hollander can understand. “Alexei will probably take a few swipes at you because he’s embarrassed, but he would have done that anyway.” 

“Nice guy, your brother,” Hollander drawls. Ilya mutters something unfriendly under his breath and doesn’t otherwise respond. “Thank you, Miss Vetrova,” Hollander continues, polite as ever. “I can’t say I have much faith in surviving this ordeal, considering how it’s gone so far, but this will at least be a little more comfortable than lying on the dirt in the cold.” 

Ilya glances back at Sveta, expression a bit dire. Sveta shrugs. 

“We will see, Shane Hollander,” she says, trying to sound optimistic. 

“Thank you,” Ilya says, when he has followed her out of the tent.

“The world will not end if you allow yourself to be gentle with people, Ilyushka. Why do you care if your brother respects you? You don't respect him. And you're right not to. None of us do.”

Ilya nods vacantly, and Sveta sighs, but knows better than to keep pushing. Ilya has always been this way. He was like this with Grigori, too. Always wanting his approval even though he hated the things Grigori did. She touches under his jaw, lifts his face so that he's forced to raise his eyes from the ground. 

“I think it would be smart for you and Lana to take Galina up on her invitation, at least for a little while,” Ilya says finally, his voice so low that she almost can't make out the words. Her instinct is to laugh and deny him immediately, but something in his tone is more serious than she expects to hear, and she hesitates instead of giving her immediate refusal. She thinks about Alexei's increased erratic decisions. If it was just taking Hollander, that would be bad enough, but there have been months before that. Hitting Blackwater bank without properly scouting it first, losing two of their members in the robbery and then another to his injuries as they were forced to camp for months in the mountains to escape the law, which also led to them losing Galina. Galina had been trying to train some of the girls in medicine, to give them a skill to fall back on that wasn't thieving or whoring, though Sveta and Lana were the only two who took her up on it. Neither considered leaving the Raiders when Galina left, not even when she wrote to them to invite them to Saint Denis, because the Rozanovs have been their whole lives, and because they both love Ilya, and even Alexei, in a way. But it does feel different now. Alexei feels different. If even Ilya can see it…

Sveta sighs, and she tucks her arm through Ilya's, and she leads him behind the tent, through the long grass that leads to the edge of the cliff. They will be moving on from this camp soon, which is too bad, because it's a very pretty one. There's a large rock out near the edge of the cliff that Sveta likes to sit on so she can watch the sunset in the evenings, and she leads Ilya there now. He casts a look back at his tent to make sure Alexei is nowhere near it, and then he consents to be led. He's very tense today, his arm tight even under Sveta's gentle touch.

“Ilyushka, you think the Raiders are done, don't you?” she asks. Ilya shrugs and lights a cigarette with shaking fingers to give himself some time to answer. 

“Don't you?” he says finally. Which is a non-answer, really, but she understands why he needs her to be the one to say it. Sveta has allowed the Raider gang to consume her life, but it's not her life, not the way it is Ilya's. Sergei left the gang long ago and has set himself up a nice operation in Saint Denis. He has a mansion there, living among the wealthiest citizens as if he’s a respectable businessman and not just a skilled con artist who got lucky. Sveta could go there at any time. Ilya has no one but his brother and his stupid, foolish pride, all tied up in this gang. 

“Yes,” she admits quietly. “Alexei has dug himself too deep, and he is running out of goodwill from your father's days to dig himself out. I think it can't last much longer, unless he can make some new connections with some of the bigger gangs, and you know he won't do that. Some of the girls are talking about leaving and sticking around in Valentine until they can catch a train to Saint Denis, or maybe Blackwater, since they know Alexei can't follow them there for a while. Me and Lana have talked about it. She wants to go back to Blackwater to court that photographer she was flirting with. If I was going to leave, though, I would live with father and continue my training under Galina.” 

Ilya nods, and he looks out at the valley, spread below them. The Dakota River moves sluggishly in the distance, sunlight glittering on the current, and Sveta can see a wagon train of weary travelers starting across it. Exhaustion settles into her; if Alexei sees them, he will want to go scout it out to see if they have anything worth stealing, because it's all about quick cash with him, lately. Money to spend on booze and girls and cards. Grigori was a fucking asshole, but he always had longer term plans. Alexei is too fucking stupid for that, and it's getting more obvious. 

“You should go to Saint Denis. I will pay for travel, for anyone who wants to go. Marleau, I think, would be a good protector.”

“You should come too,” Sveta says, even though she knows he won't. She just has to say it anyway. Ilya nods, like he understands. 

“I have to see this through, but maybe. Maybe after.”

Sveta swallows back the lump in her throat, and she plucks the cigarette from Ilya's hand and brings it to her own mouth. 

“Of course,” she says. “After.”

Chapter 3: Act I - The Raider Gang: Lana I

Chapter Notes

It's funny, sometimes, the way Alexei and Sveta and Ilya and all the others like to brag about how good Lana is at sneaking around and remaining unnoticed when it comes to using her against their enemies, or their targets, or whatever. It's funny because they don't seem to realize that she uses the same tactics against them. 

She thought it was a bit of a curse, at one point. As a child, she’d thought it was a curse in the literal sense, but as a grown woman, it feels more like one of those unfortunate curses of birth, the things that tether you to your circumstances, like whether you’re born with a cock or not, or whether you’re born with white skin or not. 

Lana has been fortunate in many respects in her life, but her curse is that she’s forgettable.

As a younger woman especially, she wanted to be the sort of beautiful girl who turns heads and can't ever escape the eyes of others. Because maybe a more beautiful girl wouldn't have been sold by her parents, shipped off to America to serve as a fucking maid for relatives she'd never met. Maybe a more beautiful girl would have met a handsome rich husband like the beautiful girls in novels always do. Maybe a more beautiful girl would have spent the rest of her life pampered, without a single real problem. 

Grown now, Lana knows that it isn’t so simple, and that even the most beautiful girls suffer, and even the most pampered wealthy women feel pain, but the nuance isn’t always important. Sometimes she still wants to be angry about it.

The annoying thing is that Lana knows she's beautiful. She has eyes, and she can see herself. She dresses well, grooms herself well, stays as clean as possible. Her hair is pretty, and her face is symmetrical, and she has an attractive look. She's a fucking seductress, and she’s good at it; of course she's beautiful. 

It's just very easy, apparently, for people to forget her. When she leaves their sight, she leaves their mind. 

So she's a beautiful tavern wench and a beautiful saloon girl and a beautiful hotel bath maid, and a beautiful street sweeper. Anything to get her in place, where she can overhear the people who don't notice her. There is gratification in that, sure, of course. They ignore her at their very literal peril! They forget she was tidying their room, and then they go to drink out of the canteen they left unattended, and oh no! They’ve gone and died of poison! Who could have done this? Certainly not the pretty young woman who kept her eyes to the floor the entire time she was in their presence and then slipped out of the minds of all of their friends the moment she was done fluffing the pillows, even though two of them had thought it would be the height of comedy to goose her behind as she bent over. And then she can stitch another little X along the hem of her favorite shawl, which is soon going to be ringed in those proud little symbols, so she will be able to wear the proof of her usefulness to the gang. 

It's just that it's lonely, sometimes. 

Artem, or Artie (his insufferable American name) or Tyoma (the name he allowed her to call him when she said she hated Artie) saw her. Wanted her. Wanted to keep her, which was much more exciting than the wanting part. She’s sick to death of temporary wanting, and temporary fun. She’s had enough of it for two lifetimes. It’s the steady want that she’s looking for now, and in Tyoma, she finally tasted a hint of it, and she wants more and more. 

He remembered her. He always wanted her to come back, and then he was visibly glad when she did.

His parents had been the ones to flee Russia before he was even born, so there was only a slight accent in the way he said certain words, picked up from his parents and not unlearned after years of whatever passes for schooling down in Blackwater. He had been delighted when she first entered his shop and asked where his parents were from after only a brief conversation. That was when he told her that Artie was not, as most people assumed, short for Arthur. She'd been gleeful, even though his Russian was shit, and she had to speak slowly to get him to understand. That was all right. She spoke English well enough by now for both of them, but it was still nice to speak her language to someone who clearly wanted to listen to her. 

She'd never had a problem like Tyoma, before. She's a seductress, a killer, a swindler. She knows her worth in those areas, and even when she was lonely, she thought it was better to be lonely than to be the sort of woman she saw all the time: trapped by her circumstances, by a bad marriage, by bad parents, by this terrible fucking country. She would see those other women—often being doted on temporarily by men Lana was surveilling specifically because they were doing bad business with the Raiders, or they had hurt one of the gang’s other women, and needed to be made to pay for that—and she would feel sorry for them, for the fact that they were falling for it. 

Can’t you see they are all the same? she would ask them in her mind, feeling secure and superior in the fact that she knew better. 

And then Tyoma happened, and now she has sunk in the muck with those other women. 

He meant it. He wanted me to stay. 

She had chosen to leave with the Raiders, but framing it like a choice feels wrong. It wasn’t like she gave it any thought; the men went and robbed the bank in Blackwater, and they went and fucked it up, because they didn’t give her and the other undercover operatives enough time to scout the town and figure out just how carefully the bank was being watched. She’s still convinced, all these months later, that someone gave the authorities in Blackwater a heads up, because they were on the bank immediately, killing Dima and Franco and injuring Pavel badly enough that he died of his injuries in the mountains. Ilya went and rounded up the women where they’d been staying just outside town limits and told them that the robbery had gone to shit, and so Lana had packed up her things and fled with the rest of them, and it was only later that she realized that she never got to tell Tyoma goodbye, and that he might be wondering what happened to her. 

She wrote him a letter, just as soon as they could, as they passed near enough to Valentine on their way to the mountains that she could slip away in the night and leave her message with the postman. She didn’t see Tyoma’s response until months later, after losing Pavel and then Galina and coming down out of the mountains when interest in finding the Raider Gang had diminished enough that they were safer to go down and set up camp at Horseshoe Overlook, where there was no risk of freezing or starving to death. The postman still had Tyoma’s letter waiting for her after all that time, and she read it standing right outside the doors, in the street, eager for his words. 

She could hardly remember what she’d written in her first letter; she had written it in a fit of guilt, not wanting him to think that she had been injured or killed by the robbers, and not wanting him to know that she was part of the Raider Gang, either. So she must have written about an urgent family matter taking her away from Blackwater, because his writing was so full of gentle sympathy. He begged her to keep writing him, and to come back whenever she wanted. 

I had something I was hoping to ask you. Perhaps I should have asked you sooner, but I was unfortunately too much a coward. 

Lana has never been in love before, and she has never been courted for real before, but she isn’t stupid. She’s read some books on the subject, and she’s heard plenty of stories from the girls in the gang, and from women she’s met all over the country. She knows what sort of question a man hints at in a letter.

She loves her place in the gang, and she loves her sister, and she loves the Rozanovs, most of the time. She loves being useful, and being fierce, and being strong. She knows that if she was to ever ‘settle down’ as the paramour or maybe the eventual wife of the man who operates the photo studio in Blackwater, she would have to give up those things, and be a ‘normal’ woman, and she doesn’t know how to do that. She has never given it any thought before. Why would she ever want it when she could instead be a useful weapon for her family? 

She should have dismissed it immediately as impossible, but instead she has kept the letter folded close to her heart, and she has written him many more letters and has received many more responses in the meantime, which she keeps secured in the lockbox that she keeps hidden in her bedroll, like a shameful thing. Because maybe it is shameful. It always feels shameful to want things that feel too far outside our experiences. It feels shameful to be caught wanting anything better at all. 

It’s a precursor to failure, wanting, because just by wanting something, you have admitted that you would be unhappy not to get it, and most of Lana’s whole life has been about not getting things. It feels foolish to open herself up to more.

She started off telling herself that it was just nice to be remembered, and nice to know that someone was thinking of her fondly and wishing that she would come back once she had left. But of course that wasn’t the whole of it, and she understands that now better than she did. Maybe it’s only the circumstances making her see the Raiders in a new light, but Alexei has been getting worse lately, and now, with this capture of Shane Hollander, the cracks in his sanity seem to be showing more. 

Lana has never, in all her years, considered leaving the gang for good. Why would she? They have respected her, trusted her, put her into a position of usefulness, if not quite power. Maybe it would be power, if the men in the gang were able to conceive of a woman having such a thing, and even though they clearly can’t, it’s sometimes nice to pretend at it, anyway. Sometimes they listen to her. Sometimes they respect her opinions. Sometimes, they even rely on her, though they will of course pretend that they don’t, to save their own very fragile egos, which they are convinced are ironclad. Sergei adopted her, and then Grigori was like a second father, especially once Sergei retired to Saint Denis and left her and Sveta alone on the road. Alexei and Ilya were like the brothers she left behind in Moscow, when her parents kept having so many children that they had to send some away to make room for the new ones. They teased each other and hated each other, as children, but they grew into a healthy respect over time. 

And now they’re growing out of it. 

Maybe it’s just that Lana is waking up. She left behind a real chance at something lasting in Blackwater, and she did it with the same unthinking ease with which she has done everything in her life for the gang, but why? Why is she so loyal to them? Sergei is gone, and Grigori is dead, and Ilya has been spending more and more time away from camp, and so it is only Alexei, and Alexei is a fucking asshole. 

She brings this up often to Sveta, asking her why do we stay? Sveta has told her to leave multiple times, annoyed by the conversation, but she’s still too loyal to Ilya, at least, to do it, and she doesn’t understand why Lana is even asking. 

It might be, maybe, a little bit, the fact that Shane Hollander looks somewhat like Tyoma. Not entirely; Hollander has a desperate, yearning melancholy to his beauty, and Tyoma was lighthearted in a way that seemed like it came from being someone who had never truly struggled. But Hollander has Tyoma’s big brown eyes, sort of puppyish, and he has the same romantically swoopy black hair, like he and Tyoma maybe have visited the same barber—the one right next to Tyoma’s studio in Blackwater, probably. Tyoma is slender where Hollander is muscular, and Tyoma would probably drop any gun and accidentally shoot himself if he picked it up, okay, but Lana is a woman in love who is missing her man, so of course she’s going to see Tyoma everywhere. 

“What did Hollander ever do to you, Lyosha?” she asks Alexei one morning, as Alexei is anxiously pacing around camp, waiting for Marleau to come back with word from the post office. He’s been waiting for Theriault’s response for four days now, and no one has talked about it openly, but Lana knows she isn’t the only person who’s beginning to think that Theriault is willing to let his best marksman go rather than make the kind of deal that Alexei is looking for. 

“Don’t ask me such stupid fucking questions.” 

Alexei is in that sort of mood, then. She waves him off, and returns to poking at the fire to make sure it doesn’t die out. 

Sometimes, it’s good that she blends into the background with even her friends and family, because Alexei will ignore her until he needs her for something specific. It hurts sometimes, sure. Sveta will startle to see her, as if she had forgotten Lana was there. Alexei, too, but often that’s because Alexei is under the influence of something, and probably would forget anyone. She has lost count of the amount of times she has startled Ilya as he rides back into camp late and finds her leaning up against a tree and smoking. He probably doesn’t find the game as fun as she does, but she does have fun with it, always laughing at his sputtering shock and annoyance and the way he flushes when she tries to tease out the answer of why he was coming back so late.

Being invisible even to the other Raiders is a good way to figure things out around camp, and she probably knows more secrets than anyone else. This would be handy if she ever decided that she needed to use them, though of course she hasn’t, and probably won’t, because of her stupid loyalty. She knows that Cliff has a crush on Sveta but suspects Sveta might still be at least a little bit Ilya’s girl, and suspects that she would never deign to like him back anyway, and so stays away. She knows that Alexei has blown more of the gang’s money than they even expect on gambling, and that the reason they can’t go back to Armadillo is because of some bad debts he has there. She knows that Sveta has been skimming a little off the top from her own jobs, which is only fair; Lana has been doing the same. Ilya…she suspects some things about Ilya, but she’s too loyal to think them even to herself.

She has been using this chronic inconspicuousness the last few days to visit with Hollander without anyone noticing, because she could probably walk in and untie him, and Alexei would blame it on a ghost. 

She sneaks into Hollander’s tent now, pleased to see that someone left a lantern burning in it, hanging from the entrance, so that Hollander isn’t in the complete dark anymore. He smiles a little at her when he sees who it is. He has regarded her with bemused gratitude since she snuck in the first night and gave him some water, though he hasn’t tried to talk to her at all, and hasn’t tried to seduce her into untying him, or anything, which makes her like him more. 

Hollander’s tent has been vastly improved; Ilya’s cot is on one wall, and a bedroll lain on the floor on the other side. Hollander is sitting on the bedroll, still tied hand and foot, but he looks less constrained and less sick than he did even yesterday morning, and Lana is relieved that someone else—probably Ilya, considering—gave enough of a shit to defy Alexei’s orders. 

“You have found yourself another benefactor,” she teases, faux-mournfully. “I will guess it wasn’t Alexei?” 

“Easy win,” Hollander says with a small smile. “I do appreciate everything you’ve done for me, Miss Lana.” 

“Ah, so you do know my name! Who told you?” 

“My benefactor,” Hollander replies, smile growing even wider, and softer. That means Sveta, probably. There was a time when Lana would have felt bitter about that, but ever since leaving Tyoma, she hates the feel of another man’s eyes on her, so she’s grateful. 

“That’s good,” Lana says. “You look better.” 

“I feel less terrible,” Hollander admits. He gestures for her to take a seat on Ilya’s cot, like a respectful host in a grand house, and Lana smiles and indulges him, settling her skirts and her shawl around herself as she does. It has been cold, the last few mornings, and she’s happy to see that Hollander is wearing a coat of his own, over his shoulders. Looks like Sveta stole one of Ilya’s winter jackets. That was nice of her, and Lana is glad that at least the two of them understand how terrible Alexei has been. 

“I don’t know if you remember me,” she starts. Laughs a little. “Well, I know you wouldn’t remember me, because I was trying very hard not to be noticed. But I was working one time at the hotel in Strawberry, and I saw you there.” 

Hollander looks taken aback, a little wary. 

“Which time?” he asks. “I’ve been there a lot; it’s my favorite hotel in the area.” 

“You were with your little gang of fools,” Lana replies, and some of the tension goes out of Hollander’s shoulders, which is interesting. He must have done something embarrassing or unsavory one of the times he was there without the Metros. Lana considers for a second if she’s interested enough in knowing that it might be worth writing to her contact at the hotel, but decides against it. “You were the most polite among them, but I’m sure you know that.” 

“They’re monsters, yes,” Hollander says easily. 

“No loyalty?” 

“Not especially. They’ve let me linger here an awful long time without trying to get me back, and that’s the least of my problems with them.”  

Lana isn’t often surprised by the things people say to her, but this gives her pause. She sort of had a script planned out in her head, figuring that she knew where this was going to go. Hollander would be defensive, and then she would get to call him a hypocrite and monologue about all the horrible things she has seen the Metros do when they think no one is watching. The bribery and the assault and the murder of innocents who just happen to be in the way, or happen to see the Metros doing something they don’t want reported to the press. The way they will gleefully burn the houses of innocent people who were just trying to help wounded men who showed up on their doorstep, who had no idea that those men were wanted. They’ve left trails of destruction all through West Elizabeth and Ambarino. They’ve clashed with leadership in all the big cities, and with the Wapiti on the Reservation. Lana has names and dates and sins all catalogued in her mind, and was almost looking forward to the argument. There’s nothing she likes better than knowing more about things than a man, and shouting down that man’s arguments with cold hard facts. 

“This ruins my fun, Shane Hollander,” she tells him seriously, and he laughs. 

“Sorry,” he replies, not sounding sorry at all. 

“Why are you still with them, if you don’t agree with them?” she asks.

“I expect I’m with them for the same reasons you stay with the Raiders even though you’re unhappy,” he replies, which is unfortunately a good response, because the question had felt hypocritical from the moment it left her mouth.

“I have trouble thinking you’re with them because you have nowhere else to go. I think any group would be happy to take on the great Shane Hollander.” 

Hollander shrugs, looks briefly lost. Like Tyoma, his eyes get bigger and wetter the more lost he looks. Lana was never able to resist that look from her sweet photographer, and she is weak to it from Hollander too, it turns out. 

“Not really,” he says. “I got lucky with the Metros, agreeing to take me on even though my parents are nobodies, and my mother foreign, besides. It would be harder to get a footing anywhere else. I could do it, if I really wanted, but…maybe the law doesn’t hold the appeal for me it used to.” 

“The gang could use a good man like you,” Lana says quietly, and Hollander laughs. 

“Maybe. But does it deserve it? I hardly think it deserves a good woman like you.” 

“Oh ho! Flattery? From you? Don’t try anything, Hollander. I know the stories about you.” 

“There are stories about me?” 

“Don’t be falsely modest now. You know there are stories about you.” 

“Well, yes, about my shooting. Not about whatever you were saying. And I wasn’t trying to flatter you, anyhow. I was telling the truth.” 

“I meant the stories about you and Miss Rose Landry, down in Saint Denis.” 

Hollander gives a mighty roll of his eyes at that, and he even groans, as if the mention pains him. 

“Rumors,” he says. “I’m friendly with the family, and I have served as her escort a few times. Believe me, it’s nothing more than that.” 

“She’s supposed to be very beautiful.” 

“Well, sure, I guess she is. Not sure why that has to have anything to do with me.” 

The mulish set of his shoulders and his jaw make her laugh incredulously. 

“You’d be a strange man if it didn’t. In my experience, men can’t get close enough to beauty. They’re forever reaching for it and taking it and ruining it with years of hard work and complaining and refusing to lift a finger for the beautiful bride they so eagerly pursued, and then suddenly they’re rutting around behind the hen house with the beautiful new milkmaid while the old wife cries herself to sleep inside.” 

“That certainly paints a picture.” 

“I’ve seen it enough times.” 

“Is that why you didn’t stay in Blackwater with Artie Koval?” 

Lana goes still for too long to play it off. She should laugh and roll her eyes and tell Hollander he has been listening to too much gossip, but she’s too startled to do that, and then she can tell from the look of polite satisfaction on Hollander’s face that he knows he has landed a blow. 

“Is he all right?” she asks. “Your Metros have not…” 

“He’s fine,” Hollander says. Lana feels shameful for having shown the weakness of needing an answer, but at least Hollander has given it to her without mocking her or making things worse. “We questioned him, after the bank robbery, the same way we question anyone. He mentioned a woman named Lana, fearing that you’d met a nasty fate at the hands of the robbers. I knew there were two Svetlanas traveling with the Raiders, so I made some assumptions.” 

“I wrote to him eventually,” Lana says. “Made some excuse.” 

“That’s good. He did seem awfully worried.” 

“Well, that’s because he’s a good man, and a naive one. Clearly you did not tell him about me.” 

“No,” Hollander says, as if surprised. “I suppose I should have, but I knew the gang had split, and wouldn’t be heading back to Blackwater in a hurry. You made off with so much gold, I figured you’d have no need of Koval anymore.” 

“I have never needed any man. Tyoma was a distraction I should not have indulged in.” 

She’s surprised to have admitted it, and she can tell that Hollander is surprised to hear it. 

“Much more exciting than my non-existent romance with Miss Landry,” he says. Lana laughs despite herself. 

“It was hardly a romance. He is a sweet and nervous man. The two of you probably got along quite well.” 

“Yes, he offered me a free sitting.” 

Lana laughs brightly. 

“Did you take it?” 

“Well, pictures aren’t cheap, and I could think of a few people who would like a copy, so yes,” Hollander admits, sheepish. “I took some. He’s a very nice man.” 

“Mm. You are digging.” 

“Not really. I just think…” Hollander sighs, shakes his head. Possibly he is trying to bait her into more interaction, but being aware of it doesn’t mean she isn’t susceptible to it. 

“What is it that you think, Hollander?” 

“I think I have seen enough in the last couple of days to know that the Raiders are in trouble. And not just because of me, either. Not even just because of Blackwater.” 

His eyes are doing the Tyoma thing in full force. Wide, concerned. It’s easy to believe that he actually is worried about the Raiders, even though they have captured him, beaten him, starved him, let him suffer in the cold, and only in the last day have given him the sorts of comforts that are necessary to keep him alive. Or maybe she can be a bit self-centered and think that he’s concerned about her, and of course Sveta, because they are the ones trying to help him. 

“No, not just because of Blackwater,” she admits quietly. “There have been…I don’t need to tell you what problems there are. I know you can see them.” 

“I can see them,” Hollander agrees. “I think you and I both see more than most people.” 

Lana has always believed this is true about herself, so she shrugs one shoulder in agreement, and she doesn’t look away from his face. Tries to take in his expression, tries to figure out what he’s really feeling behind those lethally expressive eyes. 

“Why don’t you tell me what you’re angling for, and I’ll see what I can find out from Alexei about the deal he’s trying to make with Theriault? No more pretending.” 

“I’m not pretending,” Hollander says, affronted, but says, anyway, “I think you should go back to Blackwater. I think Artie would be glad to have you. He showed me a ring he’d picked out. He told me he wanted you to come back.” 

“Why would he show you the ring? It’s a nice try, though, Hollander.” 

“You know as well as I do that he probably flashes that ring to anyone who walks in. He’s not like you and I. He wears his heart openly, doesn’t hide it.” Hollander sighs and closes his eyes a little bit, grimacing in pain as he tries to get comfortable. “Maybe we should all be more like him. I don’t know. I would do an awful lot for the people I love. I would suffer any hurt, if I thought it would help them in the end. But it’s hard to accept that love in return, sometimes. I don’t always think I deserve it. I think you have another option, and maybe you should take it, because I don’t think the Raiders are getting out of here untouched, and I think you’ve a kind enough heart that I don’t want to see you hurt in the process.” 

It’s strange that it’s his deadpan delivery of this information that actually convinces Lana that he’s telling the truth. He doesn’t sound like someone who’s trying to sway her. He could have put on an emotional tone, and that would have probably been the more rational choice, but she doesn’t think she would have believed him, if he did. 

He just sounds, instead, like he’s giving her the information he has gathered, and that it doesn’t particularly matter to him what she chooses to do with it. 

Later, asleep in her tent, she’s woken up by Sveta returning from somewhere, bringing in the cold air when she opens the flap and sinks to her cot. 

“Are you awake?” she hisses to Lana, and Lana sits up, gathers her shawl around her shoulders, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

“What happened? Are you okay?”

“Nothing. Just Alexei wandering back in again, high out of his mind. He says he got an answer from Theriault, so we will be heading to the cave to get some of the buried gold.” 

“Ugh, I hate that fucking place,” Lana hisses. At least Alexei doesn’t make them stay in it for weeks at a time, the way Grigori used to, but the whole of Roanoke Ridge is such an unpleasant place. The warm climate, the creepy locals who live in little hidden cabins in the woods so you can be upon one of them before you know it. Every time they have resorted to hiding in the area, someone ends up with a horrible lingering cough for weeks, and everyone’s feet are always wet and disgusting in their shoes, with sores and rot and whatever other filth. 

“I asked if most of us should not head up to the falls to prepare for the meeting, but apparently Theriault can’t make the meet for more than a week, so Alexei wants us to stick together.”

Lana thinks of the earnest look in Hollander’s eyes as he asked her to consider leaving. She thinks of the ring that Tyoma apparently has. She thinks of all the letters they have written, and all the sweet words exchanged when she was back in Blackwater. She thinks, too, about the fact that Blackwater is warm and dry and nothing like Roanoke Ridge. 

She almost opens her mouth to tell Sveta what she’s thinking, but she is too much a coward to do it. Sveta is more loyal to the Rozanovs than anyone else, and she would probably think so little of Lana for considering leaving. She would, at least, try to argue with Lana, and Lana is too tired for that now. 

Maybe in the morning she will find the courage.

Chapter End Notes

Lana: I am so smart and am able to observe EVERYTHING
Shane: "my benefactor" *blushes and giggles*
Lana: oh my god he's SO into sveta....

Chapter 4: Act I - The Raider Gang: Cliff I

Chapter Notes

Cliff Marleau is the sort of man who can roll with anything, which is why he’s a great value add to any outfit he travels with. Need him to rob a bank? Sure! He hates banks and loves money. He’s so fucking there. Need him to ride out into the wilderness alone to track a herd of horses and wrangle two or three of them for new members of the gang? He loves that shit. Horses are awesome! Need him to supply food? He’s a phenomenal shot with a bow and arrow, and he’s a fucking pro at preparing game. He can do it all. 

He’s been with the Raiders for a few years now, which is longer than he’s ever been with a gang before. Cliff has a habit of outliving his gangs. Like, he’ll stay back at camp for one job, and suddenly everyone else is dead in a turf battle with another gang in town. Most people would probably start to wonder if they were a jinx, or would be concerned that gangs would start to wonder if he was feeding information to someone, and that was how all those little accidents kept happening, but Cliff doesn’t think about things like that, which must be obvious to everyone, because no one has ever accused him of anything.

It isn’t that he’s pretending to be stupid; he is stupid, and proud of it. He’s incurious, and loyal, and easily entertained, and he doesn’t have illusions of grandeur or ambitions for anything beyond the pleasantly exciting existence he has already managed to carve out for himself. This makes it difficult for people to believe he’s capable of even the slightest sabotage, and they’re right. He barely thinks past dinner today. Fucking forget about tomorrow. 

This is part of why he’s worried about the Raiders; frankly, if he notices that something is rotten within them, that means it’s pretty fucking bad. 

One reason he figures it’s definitely going to shit is that one day he looks around and realizes that, other than the Rozanov brothers and The Twins, he's the one who has been with the gang the longest. That’s about when he starts thinking about planning his exit. Then Alexei captures Shane Hollander, inviting the wrath of the entire Metros organization on them after they just got out of hot water for the Blackwater job, and it’s like a jolt to the system: I gotta get the fuck outta here. By the time Sveta floats the idea of heading to Saint Denis, looking for an escort to bring her to her father’s house and maybe stick around as a guard, after, that departure starts is all but certain.

He hasn’t given her an answer yet, though. Mostly because of Ilya. Cliff likes the younger Rozanov a lot. If he were a more sentimental man, he would say that Ilya is probably the best friend he’s ever had. Nearly a brother. Ilya can be prickly and weird, and he's defensive about his “alone time” even with Cliff, sneaking away for days or weeks at a time before turning back up looking bedraggled and irritated. Like a stray cat you assume has died because it’s been more than a month since it darkened your door, and then suddenly it’s back like it never left, pretending like it didn’t miss you. 

Cliff has a lot of theories about what Ilya gets up to in his long times away, but he’s never been stupid enough to speak those theories aloud. Mostly he figures Ilya probably runs off to fool around with one of those pretty saloon girls in Valentine. Cliff has seen some of the bath attendants at that hotel, and he figures Ilya could go for any of them, and any of them would surely go for Ilya, because Ilya draws female attention like no one Cliff has ever met. But Ilya is so squirrelly about it, and so Cliff lets it go. Ilya has enough issues without adding Cliff’s curiosity to the mix.

Like fucking Alexei: Alexei is always barking at Ilya, demanding to know where he's been. Ilya won’t tell him, and maybe some of that is just little brother stubbornness, but it’s got to be because Ilya is protecting someone, or at least keeping them close to his chest. Cliff wouldn't put it past Alexei to go out and fuck Ilya’s girl as a power play, because Alexei has some serious shit to work out regarding his inferiority complex, but what does Cliff know or care about all that? He's a low level enforcer in a gang that's rapidly reaching its end state. 

And nowhere is that more obvious than in Alexei's truly boneheaded decision to nab Shane Hollander in broad fucking daylight in the streets of Valentine, the town barely a few miles from where they've been hiding out. Then he has the fucking temerity to sit around whistling and shit for half a week before finally ordering the camp packed up, because he wants the whole gang to head all the way to fucking Annesburg to go to that creepy fucking cave that used to be the gang’s hideout. He won’t tell any of them what business they have in that area, of course, because he hates when people ask questions, and he hates answering those questions even more. A couple of the Russian guys they picked up a year ago in Van Horn dare to speak up and ask, and Cliff can’t understand what they say, but it doesn’t really matter, because Alexei just snaps at them in English to remember who’s in charge and refuses to elaborate, and he has been a tumbleweed around camp ever since, flitting from pointless chore to pointless chore, movements jerky and uncoordinated. A man who needs a fix of something he hasn’t gotten in a while.

Ilya watches Alexei with his dead-eyed, disappointed stare, which only makes Alexei more flustered, as always. The Twins are muttering to each other, too, and Alexei can probably safely assume that the muttering is about him and isn’t particularly flattering. Alexei, because he's a little man who always wants to feel bigger, decides to take this out on Hollander, and he drags their hostage out of his tent and out to the edge of camp. He ties him to a tree there, on his feet, though he looks like he’s wavering already, wrists bound above his head to a branch of a half-dead tree that offers no shade. When everyone stops to watch, surprised by this uncharacteristic display, Alexei snarls at them to go about packing. 

Cliff looms nearby, which is generally his strongest skill in the gang anyway. Alexei speaks in a low voice to Hollander, clearly not wanting to be heard, but Cliff picks up on it, because Cliff has phenomenal hearing, and because Alexei isn’t nearly as quiet as he thinks he is.

“...think he can fuck me over, he doesn’t know who he’s dealing with. I don’t know what you’re fucking planning, but fucking think again. Maybe he will take me seriously if he sees I’m not fucking around.” 

Hollander doesn’t respond, which only makes Alexei angrier, and he tries slapping Hollander around a little bit, but stops when Sveta and Lana both start in on him in Russian, berating him soundly until he retreats, snarling back at them and trying to make his retreat look incidental. 

Back in Grigori’s day, this form of torture—really, all forms of torture—was more common, but Grigori tended to reserve his public showings of it for people who’d ticked off the entire gang, so no one would be too troubled. Someone who tried to get handsy with one of the girls or who killed an innocent family just trying to make their way west and had the stones to brag about it while trying to rob the gang? Most people had the stomach to watch that sort of person get what they deserved, even if they didn’t like it. A guy like Hollander, though? No one seems as off-put by Hollander as Alexei, and they certainly don’t want to watch him suffer. Alexei probably knows that, which might be why he ran off with his tail between his legs.

That and the fact that he’s a coward, of course. 

Sveta stays close to Hollander after Alexei wriggles away to hide under a rock or something, which means Cliff sticks around too. He doesn’t think Hollander is up to try anything, and he has a hard time imagining even Hollander at his full strength using Sveta to get out of a mess like this. And Alexei knows better than to ever lay a hand on Sveta even if she does try and help Hollander more directly, but still. It’s probably stupid of him, and is presumptuous as hell, but he always worries about Sveta the most, out of anyone. He doesn’t like to see her hurt, or in trouble, or unhappy. 

Cliff packs up some of his shit, does his usual chores around camp, and watches Sveta and Hollander and tries not to look like he’s doing so. Ilya is doing the same across camp, far as Cliff can tell, which is only obvious because he doesn’t look at Sveta or Hollander once, which is objectively crazy, when everyone knows that Sveta is at least a little bit Ilya’s girl, and that he’s wildly protective of her. Like, no one is going to believe that you’re not watching her, partner.

As the morning wears on, and the sun beats down on Hollander harder and hotter, Hollander starts to list tiredly to one side, mouth set in a grimace, eyes fluttering shut. It starts to look like the rope on his wrists is the only thing keeping him up, which is probably the point. If he falls, his arms will come out of their sockets or something. Fucking gross. Fucking Alexei, and Grigori before him. These Russian guys come up with the most fucked up shit.

Hollander tries to hide his face away from the sun as much as he can by resting his head against his bicep, like a turtle trying to retreat into a broken shell. Cliff knows that Ilya has been keeping watch over Hollander for the last few days to make sure his brother doesn't hurt the poor kid any more than he already has, but it looks like some damage was done anyway from the bruises on his face and from the grimace when he moves a certain way, and being tied like this can't be helping. Alexei snarls something in Russian when Lana tries to give Hollander a hat, and Lana fires back as hard as she always does, but she throws the hat at Alexei’s feet and doesn’t try to approach again. 

It's not a surprise to Cliff that Ilya stays away. He paces like a caged lion in a traveling circus for a little bit, but Hollander glares at him for a while, and Ilya finally moves off to do his pacing where Hollander can’t see him. Cliff knows better than anyone that Ilya is softer than he pretends to be. He has always treated the girls gently, and he's kind to people who are less fortunate, though only in his quiet way, when he thinks no one is watching. He’s ashamed of his softness the way people should be ashamed of their cruelty, so he keeps it beneath layers of indifference. Cliff is almost always watching, though, is the thing, and he's seen Ilya tossing coins to beggars and patting every dog he passes in town and comforting the saloon waitresses after his brother makes an ass of himself. Tipping his hat afterwards like a gentleman, and maybe on anyone else it would look like he was trying to make them swoon, but Ilya never goes back to find them again to cash in, as far as Cliff can tell. It's just how he is. 

One of Cliff’s recent theories is that Ilya might have had a dalliance with a girl who died. He's brought up the possibility with a few of the other guys the Raiders picked up in Boston, because Conners and Carmichael tend to be a gossipy bunch in the exact same way Cliff can be a gossipy man. They both told him that he was reading too much into it, which is probably right. One time, drunk in that shitty Van Horn saloon, he’d been feeling friendly enough with an equally drunk Alexei that he floated the same idea. Alexei had scoffed and said something about how Ilya doesn’t have it in him to love anyone, which was the stupidest thing Cliff had ever heard him say—and Cliff has heard Alexei say some profoundly stupid shit. 

Whatever it is in people that makes them love, that’s Ilya at his core, and that’s probably why he looks so fucking sad all the time: too much love with nowhere to put it. Cliff knows he has something with Sveta, the lucky bastard, but neither of them seem to want anything more than just the occasional fuck and probably some protection for her, and for almost five years now, Cliff hasn’t seen Ilya so much as flirt with another woman. So: dead girl and a quietly broken heart is Cliff’s best theory. 

Or maybe a girl who went and got married to someone else because her parents couldn’t stomach the idea of her ending up with an outlaw. Maybe Cliff is just kind of a romantic, but he can’t really think of any other reason why Ilya was breaking hearts all down the eastern seaboard for years, only to turn into a monk seemingly overnight.

It’s hard to get a read on the kid, and Cliff knows that a good portion of that is because of his brother. Probably most of it is because of the brother, honestly. Alexei runs a tight ship for Ilya and only Ilya, and Ilya for some reason lets him. Ilya could beat the shit out of Alexei if he wanted to, and he could outdrink him, and outplay him at cards. He could humiliate Alexei any time Alexei challenged him at anything. Everyone knows it. Alexei probably knows it too, which might be why he’s so fucking angry all the time. But Ilya doesn’t challenge him. He doesn’t rise to any of the challenges that Alexei lays at his feet, either. Alexei gets angrier and angrier about it, pushes more and more, and still Ilya just watches him with that devastating disdain, like he’s doing right now, pretending to ignore the way Hollander’s gasping for breath and wincing in pain under the sun, with his arms twisted above his head. It’s got to be some kind of sick competition between the two of them: Alexei seeing if Ilya will dare show compassion for a Metro in front of him, or if he’ll let the kid suffer needlessly just so that Alexei doesn’t mock him for it. 

Cliff’s the one who has enough, eventually. He hasn’t forgotten the debt he owes Hollander for letting him go the last time they ran into each other. Hollander could have killed him, or at least dragged him in to face the law. He’d captured Cliff politely instead, like a good little choir boy, and then, when he realized that his guys weren’t coming to back him up because they were chasing bigger fish at the moment, he’d agreed to let Cliff go, since Cliff had only been in the process of doing a little light robbing, rather than killing. 

“Way I see it, you were only thieving, and I don’t think I care very much about that,” Hollander had admitted with a crooked smile. “Just don’t try to stab me in the back when I leave, or you’ll really get a taste of what I can do.” 

Which was just about the coolest thing Cliff had ever heard. Alexei was irritated by it, when Cliff told him. Ilya had grinned gleefully and clapped Cliff on the back and said, “I told you. Annoying fucker. What’s that word, again, Sveta?” 

“Sanctimonious,” Sveta had replied, laughing. Ilya snapped his fingers in her direction. 

“Yes! That one.” 

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Cliff had replied, not having any idea what the word meant and not particularly caring. Sounded right, anyway. Hollander’s smug little smile, his confident grin. Cliff hadn’t stabbed him in the back, taking the warning for the promise it was, and came away from the whole experience liking Hollander an awful lot. 

That was ages ago, though, back when the idea of ever wanting to leave the Raider gang was laughable. Now, the thought of staying to watch Alexei circle the drain and get all of them killed makes him want to do something risky like cut Hollander’s ropes and hand him a pistol. 

Watching the way Hollander is struggling to stay standing, he can feel the last of his desire to preserve his place in this gang leaving him. Ilya is refusing to watch, his jaw clenched so tight that Cliff imagines he can hear the kid’s teeth grinding together from all the way across camp. Sveta and Lana are glaring down Alexei, waiting for him to relent. Everyone’s acting like they have to let Hollander keep suffering for the sake of, what, keeping Alexei happy? Alexei isn’t happy. He’s sulking his way around his tent and half-assed packing it up while a bunch of the camp girls do all the real work. Why are they acting like Alexei Rozanov is anything other than a fucking loser who ruined his father’s gang in record fucking time, and will get them all killed if they stick around for much longer. 

“All right, that’s enough,” he says, rolling up his sleeves. He stalks over to Alexei, who looks up at him, hollow-eyed and hunted, too surprised by Cliff’s aggressive approach to do his usual attempt at peacocking. “You heard back from Theriault, right? Where we meeting him?”

“He won’t do it sooner than one week,” Alexei grumbles, as if Cliff will care about this, or recognize it as a grave affront. Cliff doesn’t. “We will meet him at Bacchus Bridge.” 

“Right. So we gotta keep Hollander fucking alive for at least a week, and then we gotta make sure he doesn’t tell Theriault to light our asses up after the exchange because our gang leader decided to treat him like a fuckin’ scarecrow, right?” 

Alexei’s expression is confused, and then aghast, and then minorly outraged, but none of it really touches Cliff. Something in him has snapped irreparably, he thinks. Or maybe it has knitted itself back together after being broken from long years of following the orders of these fucking douchebags. He’s done with Alexei, no matter what happens next. He’s fucking done. He’ll stick with them for a little while longer, for Ilya’s sake, and for Sveta’s, and for Hollander’s, but he’s not going to fucking Bacchus Bridge, and he’s not going to stick around and help Alexei get rich off his stupid fucking schemes just to blow all their money on shit for himself anyway. 

“Cliff,” Sveta says quietly, from somewhere behind him. 

“No, let him say what he wants,” Alexei replies. Then he says something in Russian, probably rude. Cliff smirks down at him a little, and doesn’t look away, or back down. He towers over Alexei even on a good day, and Alexei is half hunched into himself today, apparently irritated by whatever Theriault’s return message was, and making himself unconsciously smaller as a result. But it isn’t just physical; Cliff has the other enforcers on his side. Alexei’s stooges are all scrawny Russians who stick around because Alexei plies them with moonshine and drugs. The Boston boys all belong to Cliff, and to Ilya by extension, and they have only been on Alexei’s side because Ilya and Cliff have been on his side. That could change in a fucking heartbeat. It might change in the next one, if Alexei plays this wrong. Alexei knows it, too. He heaves a sigh and then waves his hand dismissively, as if he can’t be bothered to argue with Cliff, and that’s the only reason he’s agreeing. “Fine,” he spits out. “Cut him down, but he stays tied up, or I hobble him myself. If he gets loose, it’s on your head.” 

“Great,” Cliff replies, and then he turns and heads to Hollander, who’s watching the exchange with a rueful half-grin. Cliff steadies him with an arm around his waist, then uses his knife to cut through the rope thrown over the tree branch above him. Hollander hisses as his arms drop for the first time in hours. “You’re okay, kid,” Cliff says. “You’re good.” 

“I knew you weren’t a complete asshole, Marleau,” Hollander replies, pretending to be cool and calm despite his gritted teeth. Marleau ruffles his hair a little, then plucks his own hat off his head and drops it onto Hollander’s to protect him from the sun. Hollander’s skin is already woefully red, speckled even more than usual with dark freckles, his skin peeling in places, especially on his hands and forearms, so it probably is too late for that, but whatever. 

“Not a complete one, no,” Cliff says, and he keeps his arm around Hollander as he leads the kid on his stumbling way across camp. 

Ilya sidles up not long after, as Cliff figured he would, looking angry about the whole thing. Probably angry that he didn’t intervene sooner, knowing him. He casts a look back to make sure that Alexei isn’t watching them. Maybe he thinks Alexei will treat Hollander even worse if he figures that Ilya has a soft spot for the kid? He’s probably right. These fucking Rozanovs and their mind games. Cliff is sick of it. 

Alexei is busy arguing with Lana about something, so Ilya falls into stuttering step with them and helps keep Hollander standing by grabbing onto his belt. 

“I’m fine,” Hollander says. Ilya doesn’t reply, and he doesn’t let go of him, either. 

They finish packing like that, like a three-headed animal. One of them will stand with Hollander while the other scurries off to do an errand, and then they’ll swap places. If Alexei notices any of this, he doesn’t let on. Cliff figures he probably doesn’t notice, because he will be too embarrassed by his showdown with Cliff, and will pretend Cliff doesn’t exist for at least the next few hours. It makes for a handy blind spot. 

Hollander is amused by the honor guard, but he doesn’t object, and he leans heavily into Cliff’s side every time Ilya passes him over, unselfconscious about the closeness.

When they’re finally ready to set off and leave camp for good, near sunset, Cliff and Ilya maneuver their prisoner over to the hitch where the horses are tied. They exchange a single look, which is enough for Cliff to understand that Ilya intends to be the one riding with Hollander. This is just fine by Cliff; his horse is a big, slow old girl who is Sveta’s favorite. Since Sveta’s horse almost always pulls one of the big wagons, Cliff often gets lucky, and Sveta asks to ride with him.  

“Help me lift him up,” Ilya says to Cliff, like Hollander isn’t there at all, and Cliff expects Hollander to rankle at that, and is surprised when he doesn’t. Just sighs, put-upon. Cliff and Ilya untie his bound ankles and lift him together into the saddle. Hollander is more solid than Cliff expected, muscular and heavy with it. He has looked so pathetic the last few days, languishing around their camp, Cliff figured he would be less substantial. 

“Your brother isn’t going to like it,” Cliff warns Ilya, because he may be on his fucking way out, but he knows Ilya well enough to know that Ilya won’t be. Cliff and Sveta and Lana have all, at various points, tried to get Ilya to acknowedge that his brother is a fucking asshole, and though Ilya always agrees verbally, he still doesn't ever respond to the more subtle hints that they could set out and start their own gang, and most of the Raiders would follow. Cliff figures maybe Russians have stronger family ties, because if Cliff's father and brothers treated him the way Ilya's family treats him, Cliff would deck them, rob them, and then never see them again. 

Ilya nods, though, eyes flicking over to Alexei, frown deepening on his face. 

“He is losing his grip,” he says quietly. “We need to be careful. I think you should plan on...”

“Sveta asked me and Conners to escort her and Lana to Saint Denis, next time we reach a station. Probably Rhodes, because…” 

“Because Alexei owes the fence at Emerald Ranch too much money, and would rather go all the way down to the fence in Rhodes to offload all our stolen goods before heading to the cave. Yes. I think so too.” 

“Yeah, exactly,” Cliff laughs, relieved that Ilya doesn’t seem hurt. “Sveta said her father would probably take me on as a guard, or something.” He flushes a little bit when Ilya arches one amused eyebrow. The guys all give Cliff shit for his obvious infatuation with Sveta, because she's never shown any inclination towards him, but he doesn't care if she ever does. He'd do whatever she asked of him anyway. “Fuck you. I just want her safe. Both of them.”

“I think that's very nice of you, Marleau,” Hollander says, from up on his perch, leaning heavily forward in the saddle, face pale and sweaty, with the politely interested voice of a friendly acquaintance. Ilya scowls up at him. 

“Sit up straight. Your ribs,” he says, and Hollander visibly bites back a response and then forces himself upright, wincing. Ilya sighs, as if this is a chore, but he’s terrible at hiding his worry. He gets up on the horse behind Hollander.

It's not like they've never ridden two to a horse before; needs must, in a gang like theirs, where horses are always getting lost or running off when there's unexpected gunfire. But Ilya pulls Hollander back against him, hips flush together, and Cliff looks away before he can think it's weird that he's looking away.

Chapter End Notes

I sat down at my kitchen table this morning to edit this chapter, sipping my coffee, petting the dog, and stared out into the backyard at the beautiful fall leaves as I thought to myself "what would be the olde west version of bro?" because it felt so wrong to write a whole chapter from Marleau's perspective without a single bro

(I decided on 'partner' lmao)

also, anyone familiar with the game map will likely be like "why tf would they go to RHODES and then up to Roanoke Ridge? That makes no sense?" I have written in an in-story reason for this foolishness, but please know that the real reason is because I think that part of the map is very pretty.

Chapter 5: Act I - The Raider Gang: Sveta II

Chapter Notes

I am absolutely LOVING every guess everyone has about what's happening lmao

They take off from Horseshoe Overlook as the sun is setting, aiming to ride through the night, down towards Rhodes, where she and Lana and Marleau and Conners will finally be able to make their escape. Sveta has been giddy about it ever since Marleau approached her and said he meant to take her up on her offer. 

That Marleau told her directly means that Ilya must also know, because she suspects that Marleau was only hesitating because he wanted to get Ilya’s blessing before he committed. She doesn’t mind that. She has been trying to figure out how to word another request for Ilya to come with them and forget his stupidly noble intentions to “follow this through”, but she has little hope of any of it working; Ilya has her beat for stubbornness, no question.

She’s beginning to think that Ilya intends to follow Alexei wherever Alexei leads, just because Alexei is his only family left. That he has committed himself to a bad end just because he was not able to stop Alexei from meeting one. The stupid, stubborn asshole.

If there is anything that will get Ilya to give up on his martyrdom, it’s probably beyond her. If it wasn’t, she would have found it already. She has asked, and will probably ask again at least one more time before she goes, but there is only so much she can do. If Ilya will not leave, then Ilya will not leave, and she will have to just sit back and watch the ruin of him, because she cannot actually stuff him into her luggage and carry him to Saint Denis, as much as she wishes it was possible. 

She watches him as they ride out and leave Horseshoe Overlook behind. Hollander looks good in the saddle in front of him, less tired and listless than he did earlier, though his skin is red and burned from standing for hours unprotected in the sun. Sveta has some aloe cream from Galina’s stores that might help him, but she’s nervous about drawing Alexei’s attention by offering it now, as they ride. Alexei is in the sort of mood where he will probably see anyone talking too closely without him as proof of a plot against him. 

Now that she is so close to leaving, it feels especially grating, the way they must all tiptoe around Alexei’s feelings all the time. When Grigori was alive, it was bad enough, because his temper was brutal, and he didn’t much care to hide it. But Grigori was predictable, at least until near the end. If you performed well, you didn’t have to worry about his anger. If you messed up, he would correct you, but he would never go overboard. He had a tight rein on his own anger, and would only allow the occasional expression of it. None of it made him very fun to be around, of course, but Sveta was skilled at avoiding his ire. When you learned his rules, you could avoid the worst of it. It was like learning the steps of a complicated dance.

Alexei will get angry for the stupidest, pettiest reasons, and he will take it out on people at random. It’s frustrating and confusing and befuddling. You never know what version of Alexei you will get, on any given day. He will become incensed if you do something that he praised only two days earlier, and then will further rage if you try to point that out. There is no permanently winning, with Alexei. He used to be especially close with Lana, always laughing with her even when he hated everyone else, but even Lana has given up on trying to appease him, and says he no longer makes sense to her. 

And Sveta remembers good things about Alexei. She has fond memories of him taking hits from Grigori to protect her and her sister. She remembers him laughing and playing with her and Ilya, back in Moscow, when his mother was still alive. Sometimes it feels as if the Alexei from those memories was a different boy altogether, a boy who was buried with Irina and replaced with a serious, unsmiling stranger. 

It has gotten worse and worse since Grigori died. Not everyone is meant for leadership. Alexei should never have been put in charge.

Could she have helped more? Could she have tried to keep him in line better? Could she have encouraged Ilya to support his brother more instead of going off and doing his own thing? Probably not, to any of those questions, but these are the things that trouble her, now that she’s going to be abandoning them. It just feels like there was something she could have done. Lana is always telling her that she gets involved too much, and that she carries all this unnecessary weight that no one has asked her to carry. They are grown men, and you are not their mother. You cannot force them to do anything. She’s probably right about that. 

There's a pretty clearing in a circle of trees, along a mostly-dry creekbed. Alexei decides they should camp there for the day. They could have probably made more progress, but this spot has a good view of the hills coming down from the Heartlands, which means they will be able to see if they are being pursued, and it’s enough off the commonly traveled route to Rhodes that any pursuers will probably miss seeing them, as long as they don’t let the cookfires produce too much smoke. As far as Alexei's ideas go, it's not a terrible one. 

Sveta has been riding with Marleau, like she usually does. He and his horse are both sturdy and reliable. A bit simpler than most of the others in the gang, maybe, but not in any bad way. Marleau is a curious man with a sweet heart who always tells her how smart she is, usually with a marveling tone that borders on adulation. Of course Sveta likes him. 

She likes him even better after he intervened with Hollander, though it makes her like herself a little less that she didn’t do what he did. Yes, of course there is the argument that it’s easier for him to make those kinds of moves, because he’s bigger than Alexei, and Alexei has always been a little bit afraid of him, but still it leaves this sour taste in Sveta’s mouth. She has known Alexei since they were both children, and she would not say that she’s afraid of him, but surely she must be afraid of him, on some level, to have been so frozen into inaction even when her chest was boiling over with anger and devastation to see him treat someone the way he was treating Hollander.

When did that happen? When did he go from being a friend to an annoyance to a tight, angry ball of misery that has drawn down the mood of the gang until they’re all unhappy mirrors of him? And when did she allow herself to shrink so much that she would avoid upsetting any man out of fear of him, even if he was doing something that should be stopped? 

If Marleau notices that she’s more quiet than usual, he just uses the opportunity to fill the silence with his chatter, and she doesn’t mind it. He talks to the other Raiders, and to her, and to his horse, all while they trod along behind the wagons, and she lets the sound of him wash over her, and she likes the warmth of him behind her, and the careful way he tries not to touch her more than necessary, even though she thinks she might want him to touch her more than that. When Alexei and his goons are far enough ahead that there’s no risk of being overheard, she allows herself to relax a bit, and she can tell from Marleau’s happy voice, tinged with pride, that he thinks he has cheered her up enough to overcome her discomfort. It’s sweet that he thinks that, and so she allows him to. 

Ilya, no surprise, keeps his horse to the back of the pack, and Sveta keeps an eye on him as much as she can without being too obvious. Hollander begins the ride alert, watching everything, looking every bit the man all the stories paint him to be. Put a rifle in his hand, and she has no doubt he could sight and take down a vulture circling all the way over Emerald Ranch. As the day wears on, he slumps a little in the saddle, and Ilya has to keep prodding him awake. 

Ilya keeps Hollander from falling completely off his horse, but it's close a couple of times. He starts riding even slower, whispering urgently to Hollander to keep him awake. The few times she’s near enough to pick any of it up, she hears that Ilya’s words are mostly mocking filth designed to make Hollander either laugh or spit with anger. Hollander does respond to them, but his responses seem wan, indulgent. Like he's trying to give Ilya what he's looking for, but his heart isn't in it. 

And Ilya is worried. He’s doing a fine job of hiding it behind an indifferent mask, but Sveta has always been able to see through that, and his facade has more cracks in it than usual. A desperation leaks through. 

He’s got a white-knuckled grip on the reins with one hand and a white-knuckled grip on Hollander's hip with the other. The brim of his black hat, he keeps tipped low enough to hide his eyes from anyone who might be watching. He always keeps his horse positioned behind some of the wagons, creating as much of a buffer between himself and Alexei as possible. 

And when Sveta can hear his voice, it’s hoarse, wrecked with concern.

Marleau notices all of it too. She can tell because he tenses up behind her whenever they drift close enough that they can pick up Ilya’s words, and then he’ll start talking loudly to someone nearby, offering Ilya the protection of his enormous personality. He’s a good friend, and a good man, for the most part. Watching him care for Ilya always makes Sveta feel more tender towards him, because it’s nice that someone else can see behind Ilya’s stoic irritation and his loud bluster and see through to the boy who does still need to be cared for softly.

More and more, Sveta finds that she likes Marleau’s qualities in a man. There was a time when her feelings for Ilya were more than just friendly, and certainly more than sisterly. Oddly, when they were fooling around, she felt not much more than friendly affection. It was just that he was safe, and that he didn’t judge her for wanting, the way a lot of men would have. He made her laugh, and he was friendly to her always, and they had fun, and so she’d share his tent at night, and it wasn’t ever anything more complicated than that. It was only after they’d stopped that she started to miss him, and her nostalgia shaped her feelings into love, like her heart wanted to remember their time together differently. Tried to convince her that it had been love all along. 

Those feelings are gone now, and she can look back and understand that she and Ilya would have made themselves miserable if they ever gave it a real shot. Ilya needs his feelings to be pulled out of him, like porcupine quills out of a curious dog’s snout, and he will stare at you all the while with that betrayed look dogs get, too, as if it doesn’t understand that it was the one that stuck its face where it didn’t belong. As a younger woman, Sveta probably found that reticence romantic, or thought that it would be something powerful, being able to be the one to pry that hard outer shell off of him. To see to the soft heart at his core, and to be the one to worm past those defenses. 

As she has gotten older, though, it seems like an awful lot of work, and Sveta knows that she doesn’t have the patience. She would always be worried that he was hiding something from her, she thinks. She would always be watching him and wondering if she was enough. 

Marleau? Marleau is uncomplicated, in the sense that he is an open book to her. He’s gentle, soft when he wants to be, always calling her ma’am in this respectful tone. He does ridiculous things that she would never ask of any man, like always offering her a leg up when he sees her approaching a horse to ride, and taking off his hat and holding it to his chest whenever he speaks to her. He speaks about his mother often, in this fondly exasperated tone, the sort of tone that tells Sveta that she raised him right, in a house full of love and respect. He is nothing like Ilya, and sometimes it amazes her that they have become such close friends, but then she thinks maybe it’s not surprising at all. Ilya must be as fascinated as Sveta is by Marleau’s willingness to be open. It’s so outside their shared experience.

The more she has grown disillusioned with the gang, with Alexei, with the whole life she once thought would be hers until she died, the more she appreciates a man like Marleau. 

“I think Hollander must be dying,” she says lowly to him, once they have ridden a little ahead of Ilya’s horse, and she is sure that he won’t hear her over the creaking of the supply wagon they’re riding beside. Alexei is riding at the head of the wagon, but he’s busy laughing too hard at something not very funny said by his recent favorite camp woman, so he's probably on some sort of drug again, and he rarely listens to Sveta when she speaks anymore, anyway.

“He's in a bad way, sure,” Marleau agrees, visibly uncomfortable as he always is with negative or serious emotions. 

“Even Ilyushka is worried enough that he’s actually acting like it, and he usually tries so hard not to show those things.”

“Well, sure. Don't we all?”

Sveta smiles a little over her shoulder at him, mostly because that has never been her impression of him. Does Marleau really think he has been hiding any of his emotions, ever? That's sweet.

“I wish Galina were still here,” Sveta says. 

“We could try and fetch her, maybe, from Saint Denis,” Cliff suggests. It’s a polite suggestion, but not a particularly realistic one. Even if they sent Ilya on his horse—the fastest in the gang—it would take a few days for Galina to get back to them, assuming she’d come at all. It would feel like wasted energy, especially if all she had to tell them was that Hollander has been slowly internally bleeding to death for the last few days, as Sveta has been fearing. 

Sveta did write to Galina a few days back, when she first got a look at Hollander in his tent, asking questions about Hollander's symptoms and specific treatments she could try, and things about how to assess his injured ribs and make sure that they aren’t impacting his vital organs. She suspects that she probably came off a bit hysterical, but it’s almost nice to imagine Galina chuckling to herself a little bit while reading, the way she used to chuckle when Sveta would ask too many questions in a row, saying settle, little girl, my goodness. There are only so many questions I can remember at once. But she would answer the letter faithfully, no matter how hysterical it had seemed, and would probably enclose some terrible drawings, because Sveta always liked to giggle over and make fun of Galina’s complete lack of artistic skill. 

She’d hoped that Galina’s return message would make it to Valentine Station before their departure from Horseshoe Overlook, but she was unlucky. Based on how long the messages from her father usually take to reach her in Valentine, Galina’s response could have even arrived earlier in the day, or maybe will arrive tomorrow morning by train; they will have just missed it. She tells this to Marleau, who brightens considerably. 

“I can fetch your letter, if you'd like,” he says. “Ride back once we get the camp set up for the day. I can make good time on my own, probably get back before it’s time for us to leave for Rhodes.”

“That would be awfully kind of you,” Sveta says, meaning it, surprising herself with the open affection in her tone. Ilya isn't the only one who has gotten soft, apparently. 

“Well, sure; I’m worried about him,” Cliff admits quietly, and Sveta doesn't bother to ask which him, because she knows he means both. 

They reach a good, flat place to camp on the edge of a dry creekbed before the night is over, when the sun has started to peek its way over the horizon, but has not yet made much progress.

It looks like it will probably be a rainy day; large, roiling storm clouds are gathering on the horizon, and out here in the Heartlands, the weather can change in an instant. So Ilya rides out with Conners once he's got Hollander set up in his tent, looking for game before anything worth eating takes cover from the storm. Marleau goes with them, riding back towards Valentine to grab the letter from Galina that is hopefully waiting at the post office, and then he plans on joining with the hunt, so Alexei doesn't suspect. Deer are plentiful in the area, and turkeys even more so, and so it’s looking like a long, indulgent day of not very much activity. Before Ilya leaves, Sveta promises him that she’ll watch over Hollander, so Alexei doesn’t let the boredom give him any ideas, and she can tell that it’s a comfort to him, though of course he looks at her quizzically, as if he can’t figure out why she’s even offering. 

She waits until Alexei is distracted by Lana’s suddenly pointed interest in their plans (thank you, dear sister) and ducks into Ilya's darkened tent. 

“Ilya?” comes the soft voice out of the darkness. It surprises Sveta, the name, since she didn’t think he and Ilya were on a first name basis. She wonders if maybe Ilya doesn't want Hollander calling him and Alexei the same thing. 

“He's out hunting,” Sveta answers, keeping her voice low and gentle, so as to not startle him too badly. She lets her eyes adjust to the dark, and decides not to light a lantern, because she can see that Hollander has a wet cloth over his eyes, and that he’s lying flat in the cot in the corner, and that there are blankets pulled up to his throat. A chill? A headache? Ilya has apparently secured himself another cot, because the frame of it is set up already, on the other side of the tent, but there are no sheets on it yet. Just a pile of Ilya’s things. Ilya was really in a hurry to leave, apparently. “Are you all right?” 

“Just a headache, Miss Sveta,” Hollander answers politely. He tries to sit up, but Sveta shushes him quickly, using the same tone she heard Galina use a thousand times when one of the boys was wounded and trying to wriggle their way out of her care, not wanting to look soft in front of the others. Sveta suddenly misses Galina so much it aches. 

“Your ribs?” she points out. Hollander subsides, shrugs uncomfortably, and pulls the wet cloth off his eyes with his bound hands. His eyes are bleary with what is definitely fever. One ankle is cuffed to the cot, she notices, which probably wouldn't keep Hollander in place for very long if he wasn't so injured. It’s a loose cuff, with a lot of slack, and there’s an old bandana stuffed around it to make it more comfortable. All signs of Ilya doing the most, while technically following his brother’s orders to keep Hollander from going anywhere. She supposes she isn’t surprised.

“The ribs do hurt,” Hollander admits quietly. 

“Would you let me give you something for the pain?” 

Hollander hesitates, but finally sets his jaw and nods.

“Keep it quiet, though, would you?” he asks. If he was not so feverish, she expects he wouldn't consent to the medication at all. Men do like to seem stronger than they are. Ilya avoids anything like pills, pain medication. Galina used to be able to get him to take something sometimes, but only if he was really badly hurt, and only if it was raw willow bark, or some kind of liquid. 

Sveta has taken to carrying most of their medication in her personal satchel, because she's afraid Alexei will use their pain pills for his own comfort if she doesn't, so she ducks out quickly to grab it from her tent. When she comes back, Hollander is sitting up, listing to the side, bound hands pressed against the left side of his body, wincing. 

“Stubborn,” she tells him. “Lie back down.”

“I'm all right,” Hollander lies. At least if he's sitting, he can eat a little. Sveta gives him some water from the skin at her hip, and she gives him a little jerky from her satchel, and she gives him less pain medication than she would prefer to give him, but she knows she has to be stingy with her stash until they can reach Rhodes. She will refill all the medications and give the satchel to Ilya personally before she leaves. It’s the least she can do. 

“We used to have a doctor,” she says. Stops herself, surprised. “I don't know why I'm telling you this.”

“I'm told I'm a good listener,” Hollander says, still working at the strip of jerky with shockingly bright, clean teeth, flashing a smile that almost looks shy. “People say I have a very intense listening look.”

“That’s true. Probably makes you a good sharpshooter. You see everything.”

“I do,” Hollander agrees. It sounds loaded with meaning, but she ignores it. She supposes he's probably trying to get her to talk about Alexei clearly losing his shit, but she doesn’t want to talk about that. If they start talking about that, she will probably feel compelled to tell him that she and the others are leaving, and she still has enough loyalty to the gang that she doesn’t want to give away the fact that the gang will be weaker tomorrow than it already is today. She switches subjects back to Galina, instead, which feels safer.

“Our doctor, Galina. She wasn't a real, proper doctor, you understand. No schooling. But she learned from her father, in Russia, and then she came here, and she learned from other people in all different cities. She traveled a lot, even before she joined the gang. She seemed to know everything. Every question I had, she would have an answer. Ilya’s father gave her a chance, because his first doctor died of a rattlesnake bite, of all things, and then she was with us ever since. Like a camp mother, almost. She taught me a little, but I wish I had learned more. I didn't think I was very interested in doctoring, when she was here. Easier to scam men out of money than heal them, I suppose.”

“Much easier,” Hollander agrees. She maneuvers him to lie back against the pillow after fluffing it, which makes him smile. The medicine is already working. His pretty eyes go heavily lidded as he blinks at her. He reminds her of the family cat from back home, when she was a child. Those slow, trusting blinks. 

“I think maybe you are in worse shape than Alexei thinks,” she says. “And I think maybe we need to get you away before we reach Bacchus Bridge, because I don't know if you’re going to make it that far. And even if you do, I don’t know that Alexei is planning on honoring any deal. I should not say that. I really shouldn’t. But surely you think the same.” 

“I can’t ask you to do that,” Hollander says quietly. He shakes his head. “I know he's dangerous. Unpredictable. I think, if anything, you're the ones who should be worried. You should go after your doctor. Maybe she can teach you some more, now.” Sveta smiles a little, nods. 

“Yes, she could,” she agrees. “I would be more willing to listen now, I think.” 

“You should be somewhere safe,” Hollander says, voice getting thinner as sleep calls to him. “I don't think this is going to end well for anyone, and you have been very kind to me. I would hate to see you caught up in this mess.”

“And what about you?” Sveta asks. She tries not to sound as upset as she is, but she thinks she probably fails. 

“I’m right where I’m supposed to be,” Hollander answers, his tone a promise, before he finally drifts off to sleep.

Chapter End Notes

deciding to start posting this when I had so little edited and when I have a full time job and an hour commute each way and can only really effectively edit on my laptop at home (and when I have after work obligations until about 7 pm) certainly WAS a choice! but unfortunately for me, I THRIVE under pressure!

Chapter 6: Act I - The Raider Gang: Alexei II

Chapter Notes

The benefit of traveling all night and sleeping during the day is that Alexei is able to start drinking around noon, after too few hours spent trying to sleep through the storm that rocks the camp almost as soon as they have set it up. 

His sleep has been shit since they took Hollander, though it hasn’t been very good, in general, since his father died. All the pressure makes for constant nightmares, dreams in which his father comes back to life to berate him for making a fucking mess of things, at which point he will wake and seethe quietly to himself until he has a compelling reason to get out of bed. 

He feels better, being on the road. Staying at Horseshoe Overlook for so long was probably a mistake, because the longer you stick around in a place, the more rumors start to spread, and the more people start to figure out where you’re hiding. Back in the day, that wouldn’t have been such a concern, but the world is smaller than it used to be, and there are so many people looking for him. 

He does miss some things about Horseshoe Overlook already, and he knows he will miss them for a long while. He loved the view, looking out over the valley. The river, the trees, the way you could see for miles on a good day. There were cougars in the cliffs, and there were deer everywhere, and giant hawks swinging through the sky, and Alexei has always had a soft spot for animals. He likes to watch them more than he has ever liked to hunt them. 

Horseshoe Overlook was also blocked from the main road by an abundance of trees, and after months in the unbroken snow in the mountains, it was nice to feel hidden. They always had people watching the ways in and out, guards with guns, and it was the first time since Blackwater that Alexei’s sleep problems hadn’t been at least a little because he was terrified that they were being surrounded by Metros.

You just have to make it a little longer, he reminds himself, going to take another sizeable swig of whiskey, and realizing that he has reached the bottom of the jug. He curses and throws it, listens to the satisfying shattering of glass. Lana glares at him across the fire, but he ignores her. You will be leaving all of them behind, and you will be free, and none of it will matter anymore. 

Maybe if he tells himself these things enough, he will start to believe them. As it is, he can’t quite imagine it. He keeps trying to visualize it inside his mind. Warmth, and sand, and beautiful women who don’t speak his language but don’t have to. All the booze and all the drugs he needs to keep his head from splitting open. He will never have to think about his father again, or his brother, or his wife and daughter. He will change his name. No one will ever know that he was a Rozanov, once. 

He can’t picture it for long. Life has not been so kind as all that to him. He doesn’t think it will let him get away with it. 

What would mama think? he sometimes asks himself, but that is a stupid question, and so he shies away from it. Mama would have him holding Ilya’s hand and dragging him through every storm, protecting him from all of life’s cruelties, and Alexei has done that for so long already, and he does not want to do it anymore.

Sometimes he wishes that Ilya could have been the one to leave. He could have blamed Ilya then, and called him weak. Of course Ilya couldn’t even give him that. Ilya will remain the dutiful son, killing himself for their father’s gang, while Alexei grows fat and happy in Tahiti.

When Ilya returns from hunting, later that day, he continues to be in rare form, his mood stormy and uncertain around camp. He hovers around his tent like a fucking gargoyle, like he would refuse to let Alexei anywhere near it, or Hollander within it, if Alexei made an attempt. Again there is that unfamiliar sense of shame; Alexei knows he has been slipping more and more lately, and it irks him something fierce that Ilya won't fight about it. He only watches. He is always watching.

As boys, Ilya used to fight him all the time. He would fight Alexei and he would fight their father. Always arrogant, always raising his voice to them. Their father was quick with a fist and even quicker with an open handed slap, which he seemed to find more insulting, seemed to think his sons would feel more unmanned by, like there was something more inherently manly about taking the punch. One of the many stupid fucking things their father seemed to believe. 

Ilya always wore those hits, rolling his eyes for good measure. The last time their father hit him, Ilya stared down into his eyes so fiercely that their father had been afraid to do it again, though he pretended not to be. Alexei hated Ilya for that, too. Alexei had never been as strong as that. He maneuvered around his father carefully, respectfully, to avoid the hits that Ilya accepted too easily, and still father looked at him like he was a waste, and seemed to lay all the gang’s hopes on Ilya.

And so Alexei would take out his anger on Ilya, and Ilya would fight back, the two of them yelling and snarling at each other until they’d run out of energy, coming back together later to hold a gruff conversation that would function as a kind of apology from both of them (though of course without ever saying the words). But Ilya doesn't do that anymore. Doesn’t indulge Alexei’s anger. Never rises to it. 

More than a year now, he just glares at Alexei balefully when Alexei gets angry, and then he walks away, leaving Alexei's fury to flail and burn out impotently in his wake, and it's fucking maddening. 

If Alexei was a more introspective man, maybe he would understand that, more than anything else, he is looking for Ilya’s attention, but he is not an introspective man, and he does not connect his impotent anger and Ilya’s refusal to look at him and the rash actions that often follow.  

He drags Hollander out of Ilya's tent in the late afternoon, when the sun is casting the sharpest shadows in the little clearing where they have set up camp. He does not acknowledge or admit things like that he only feels brave enough to do this because Ilya has left camp again with Conners to try and grab a few more of the wild turkeys who roam in the area. He just acts, his frustrated anger boiling over until he can no longer stand to do nothing. Like his emotions are piloting his body, making a stranger out of him. 

(He wonders, briefly, with the feather-light touch of a dragonfly skimming over the top of a pond, if this is how his father felt, near the end. Like he could not control himself. Like he was not himself anymore at all.)

Hollander staggers as Alexei pulls him, but he’s walking, and he still has that fucking smirk on his face, and he still dares to meet Alexei’s eyes. Hollander has looked pathetic and weak every time Alexei has seen him in the last few days, but that weakness bleeds away whenever he notices that Alexei is watching. Then it is all breathtakingly smug dislike, and open bemusement, as if Hollander is cataloging all of Alexei’s faults and wondering how such a fucking moron is even still alive. Maybe, if Alexei was in a more normal state, he would consider that Hollander is just trying to look tough in the face of his captor. Just trying to do the thing that men do where they posture and peacock and refuse to back down in the face of a stronger predator. 

But Alexei is not in a normal state, and he is so fucking angry, he can hardly breathe. Hollander is fucking with him, somehow. He is doing this on purpose. He is only pretending to be hurt, and he is turning everyone in the gang against him, somehow. His own brother, and Sveta and Lana and Cliff and everyone. They are all falling for it, and Alexei is the only one who notices that scheming, hating gleam in Hollander’s eyes, as if all of this has been a trap, and everyone is falling into it around him. How can they not see Hollander for the demon he is?

His anger puffs up inside him, turning righteous, and then he clings to it, because he so seldom gets to feel righteous about anything. He is tired of feeling like a fucking failure, tired of everyone reminding himself of all his fucking mistakes, all the time. Well, he’s not wrong about this. He’s right about Hollander. Hollander knows something that he isn’t saying. 

A few of their wagons are circled up, with the fire in the center. It’s smoldering now, near-dead, because they have to move out soon, and because they don’t want to draw any attention with the brightness of the flames. A few of the Russians are seated around the fire, grumpy and half-drunk on the subpar booze Alexei allowed them while sneaking off to his own tent for sips of the better stuff. Both kinds of moonshine are gone now, though, and so they are all going to be bored and miserable, and they will like this, even if they don’t share Alexei’s hatred of Hollander. They are a vicious group, and they like him best when he is vicious like them.

He binds Hollander upright to the side of one of the wagons with the help of two of the men. Alexei can never tell them apart. Their faces are sweat-slick and dirty from too few washes, and they both wear the same drab brown, because they find any “fripperies” affronting, by which they mean any colors or patterns or comfortable fabrics. They would have gotten along well with Grigori, who loved people who choose to suffer for nothing more than pride. 

Alexei hates them for that, and he hates them for their willingness to listen to only the cruelest things he says, and to get all surly and withdrawing when he tries to temper himself and play to the desires of the other gang members. Hates Ilya and Sveta and Lana and all the rest for making him care at all about the way they look at him with horror when they think he has gone too far. Hates his mother for trying to instill within him a conscience that could survive years of living under Grigori and all of his fucking orders. 

He takes it out on Hollander, because Hollander is here, and because Hollander is his prize, the prize he took in Valentine, and he will not let his brother ruin it with his fucking softness. 

Some of the other men stand awkwardly around the fire, discomfited. Some of the Russians who came from Boston, and the other Boston enforcers who all belong to Ilya now. None of them look happy, but he can ignore them, because the ones around the fire are laughing and hooting with pleasure, waiting to see what Alexei will do to his prisoner. 

(Is he becoming his father? Or is he becoming something worse? Grigori withdrew into himself at the end of his illness. He only lashed out when frightened or threatened. The rest of the time, he was almost like a child. Softer and more kind than he had ever been before. When he recognized Alexei, he smiled at him. My son, he would say, with pride in his voice. My dear Lyosha. That’s not what’s happening to Alexei now. He doesn’t even remember what name his wife gave their daughter.)

He has to stop comparing himself to his father, to Ilya, to everyone. He has to remember that he is in charge of these men and women, and that he has to show them the kind of strength that it takes to survive out here, in the west. 

Hollander's head lolls forward to his chest the first time he passes out, but he shouts himself awake when Alexei prods at his side with a poker that has been resting in the fire. Not hard enough to break the skin; just enough to wake him up. Hollander looks around wildly, eyes huge and glassy with pain and undeniable fever. Alexei bites back a curse. How had he not noticed that Hollander was sick?

Why did Ilya and the others not tell him? 

Always keeping Hollander from him, trying to protect their enemy from their leader, and for what? To let Hollander languish in illness anyway? Those fucking idiots. 

But it’s fine. It’s fine. They can pick up some medicine in Rhodes. The fence will probably have some, and he usually works out a good deal with Alexei, so not too much money will be lost. Then it’s a short ride north to Roanoke Ridge, and then a quick cut back across to Bacchus Bridge, and they will be done. Hollander only has to survive until then. Maybe it’s even better if he’s this weak. Less chance of him getting loose this way. 

Alexei is so close to freedom that it feels like he only has to make one more big leap before he is finally there. He just needs the money from the cave, and then the money from the swap, and then he can go. Let Ilya have the men, then. Let him do whatever he wants with the gang, then.

Not yet, though. He has to be sure. 

“Why were you in Valentine, little detective?” he asks, for the second time now, waving the poker around so Hollander will take him seriously. Hollander coughs a little, but does not otherwise respond. He looks bewildered more than frightened, as if he doesn’t understand the question. “Who were you supposed to meet there? One of my men?” 

“Who?” Hollander asks. 

“That’s what I am asking you, you fucking idiot,” Alexei snarls, and he raises the poker again, feeling impotent even as he does it, like it’s a performance. So he has to sear it into Hollander’s side a little, has to let the heat penetrate Hollander’s shirt, has to worry the point so that it will sting. Hollander lets out a surprised, pained breath, but he doesn’t scream. Of course he doesn’t. He is so fucking annoying.

“If you torture this man, I am leaving,” Lana snaps coldly from the other side of the fire. Her eyes blaze with the red light from the still-smoldering embers, and Alexei is too drunk to look at her; she looks like Irina, for a second, in the shadows. Like Irina’s shade. He waves her off. 

“Go, then. Actually, this is an open invitation for all the women! Leave now, or stay in Rhodes, do whatever the fuck you want! This path is too dangerous for you anyway.” 

He immediately feels a weight off his chest at that. It’s two-fold: he will not have to listen to any of their harping on him, and he will not have to worry about their safety as they meet with the Metros. 

Hollander mumbles something under his breath. Alexei steps closer to listen, but the words are slurred, uncertain, sounding almost Russian for a second in their mushy confusion, and then blurring back into English. Nonsense. 

“Lyosha,” Sveta tries, emerging from the shadows beside her sister. “What does this accomplish?”

“Accomplish?” Alexei snarls. “We are fucking outlaws! We are fucking bandits! Fuck, you women! Never happy with anything! Did any of you threaten to leave when my father tortured our pursuers? No. Did any of you cry and whine when we killed people for money back when he was alive? No! If you are too soft for this life, fucking leave it! The Raiders don't need you.”

“The Raiders don't need us?” Lana asks. Her voice is high-pitched with outrage. A little girl’s voice, offended at being left out. Lana as she was on the boat to America. The sound of it and the memory of sweeter times grate against the fucking headache that’s been building behind Alexei’s eyes. He needs more to drink. He needs something to take the edge off. He needs to be done with this. He needs to be at that fence in Rhodes, because he always has ample supplies of alcohol and drugs and things that will make Alexei feel all right again. But that's too far away, and everyone is talking, and Hollander won't fucking break, and Ilya isn't even here to receive the tongue lashing Alexei wants to give him. “We are the Raiders!” Lana cries, and Alexei snarls at her, whirls on her, blindly grabs the horse whip off his belt. 

Ilya grabs him by the forearm before he can try to use it, and all of Alexei’s hot temper dissolves into cold discomfort. His headache is still pounding, and his blood is still itchy, and his hands are still trembling, but the heat has left him. Everyone is staring at him. Lana has taken several sharp steps back, the look on her face incredulous with horror and offense. 

“Sveta,” Ilya says calmly, not looking away from Alexei's eyes. “See if anyone wants to take my brother’s advice and leave now? It isn’t far to Emerald Station, and I’m sure there will be ample escorts from among the Boston boys.”

“I can do that,” Sveta replies. Her voice is low and hating, not afraid, and it makes Alexei feel worse. Worse, still, when he sees that Lana is afraid of him, blinking like a struck dog who had foolishly cared for its horrible master and never wanted to believe the blow would come. Alexei lets the whip fall from his hand, and he drops his poker, too. Ilya lets go of his forearm finally, releasing his bruising grip, and bends down and picks up the whip only to toss it into the fire. Alexei turns away, massaging his temples, trying not to look affected.

He thinks of how his father would look at him, if he saw this display, and he wants to crawl into a hole. 

He thinks of how his mother would look at him, and he wants to die. 

His men, the ones who actually still belong to him, do him the courtesy of slinking away and pretending to be suddenly occupied with something important on the other side of camp, so they can look him in the eyes later with at least an inkling of respect. Ilya stands and watches Alexei, because he can never afford him that kindness. He never looks away and gives Alexei the space to gather himself again, after one of his outbursts. He used to do the same thing when their father was angry, when he used to go after their mother. He would stand and watch, and would shame Grigori just by watching Grigori do a shameful thing. 

“Did you catch anything, at least?” Alexei finally asks, turning back, meeting Ilya's eyes. Not that it isn't difficult, with the way Ilya is looking at him, but he won't let it be said that he's the sort who can be bested by a disappointed stare. 

“Three deer between us, and some turkeys,” Ilya replies. “As always, Alexei. What the fuck are you doing? You wait until I leave and then suddenly you are a torturer?”

“Fuck you. You don't know what it's like. He just stares and stares at me all fucking day, and my head is pounding, and I'm fucking thirsty! Ilyushka…”

Ilya reaches his hand into the bag at his hip and pulls out a few coins, which he holds out between them with a steady hand. His gaze dares Alexei to take his money, and Alexei cannot help himself. He does. 

“There's a stable, up that road,” Ilya says, pointing. “Two of the hands will have something you need. Tall man with blonde hair, shorter man with dark hair. Tell them Ilya sent you.”

Alexei rubs the coins between his fingers suspiciously, looks up to meet Ilya's eyes. 

“What, no lecture?” he asks, unable to help pressing his luck. He and Ilya have always been alike in that way. Ilya shrugs and looks away. 

“I would lecture if I thought it would do any good, but it never has. You are spiraling. You're torturing prisoners and scaring away our girls. If we're going to make it to Bacchus Bridge, clearly you need help.”

Alexei should throw the coins back in his face for his condescension. He would, maybe, if his headache wasn't so bad, and if his hands weren't trembling. He pockets the coins instead, and then mounts his horse, and he goes up the road.

When he returns, later, he’s told that all of the girls except Sveta and Lana decided to ride to Emerald Ranch, and enough men were sent to escort them that they will not be able to pack up and keep traveling tonight. This is just fine with Alexei, who is in a better mood than he has been in weeks. 

In the morning, he sleeps late, and wakes only when one of his men kicks him in the ribs. The man is laughing when he does it, still drunk off the booze Alexei brought back last night, so the worst has not come to pass. They still, for whatever reason, want to follow him. When Alexei steps out, blinking into the light, he sees there are fewer tents than there were last night, and fewer horses. Good. Good riddance to all of them. It’s not going to be safe for them, anyway. 

Someone has apparently decided that they’re going to travel during the day, because they’re packing up camp. Alexei still feels too stung and awkward to argue, and he thinks it’s clear they’re not being pursued by the Metros anyway, so he decides to pretend that he gave the order in a drunken haze last night and just forgot. Hell, maybe it’s true. He really does barely remember any of it. 

He spots Ilya packing up his own tent. Hollander sits in the shade of one of the few working wagons left, head tilted forward, asleep. He's wearing a hat that Alexei doesn't recognize; Ilya must have stolen it off someone for him. The soft idiot. Hollander's hands are at least bound, though in front of his body, which is lazy work. Alexei remembers, in a flash, stabbing his side with the poker. His morning memory makes it seem a lot more brutal than it felt at the time. He turns away, deciding not to antagonize either of them now. He still feels vaguely sick about it all, though of course that's foolish of him, because he is still certain that Hollander is up to something. So he banishes his pity and his shame. They are useless things.  

He says nothing of their missing members, and is relieved when Sveta tells him, in her cold, calm voice, that she and Lana are leaving when they get to Rhodes. It will be fewer mouths to feed, and fewer people to betray when it comes time to leave with the money. And Roanoke Ridge really can be a dangerous place. It’s best if they get out now. Alexei promises to give them some money for the passage, and he even means it, feeling buoyed by the hit he got last night, and the new jugs of moonshine he now has stashed in his wagon. Those guys at the stable sure did like Ilya. When they heard he was Ilya’s brother, they rolled out all the goods, and they undercharged him for sure. He’ll feel sore about it later, probably. Annoyed that his little brother is the one keeping him doped up because he can’t handle any of this without something in his system. He will then probably take his self-hatred out on Ilya, because that’s his style, but for now, he’s feeling good. 

When they move out, Lana rides as far from him as she can get. Ilya does the same, riding near the back with Hollander in front of him. Alexei bites back the desire to make a comment about Ilya getting too attached to their prisoner, not wanting to push Ilya any further. It’s not like he doesn’t understand it, anyway. There’s a code to these things, or at least there used to be. He still thinks that Hollander being in Valentine was suspicious, especially given the lack of urgency to Theriault’s response. Every time he thinks about it, he starts to feel pinpricks on the back of his neck, the way he feels when he’s riding at night in the desert and he knows there’s a cougar hidden somewhere just out of sight, watching him. That supernatural awareness of eyes on him. 

But that doesn’t mean he should turn to torture. That doesn’t mean he should be so eager to be worse than their father. If this is to be a trap, the best thing he can do is be prepared to avoid it, the way he has been doing for his whole life. Prove everyone wrong, and catch Hollander in the act. That’s the only way to win against an enemy when everyone refuses to see that they are one.

Riding through the day is easier and more pleasant in all ways than riding through the night, unless you happen to be murderously hungover and ashamed of the way you acted, to the point where you don’t want to look at anyone. Then, it is considerably harder, because of the sun, and the squinting, and the fact that everyone can see your face, and so you must keep it lowered to the ground to avoid their eyes, and then everyone knows you’re ashamed. 

Aside from that, it goes well; no one has followed them. Theriault and the Metros might really be intending to stick to the deal, and might be content with meeting them at Bacchus Bridge for a fair exchange. Theriault’s letter was condescending, irritated, and had all the hallmarks of a letter written to someone he thought was a total fucking idiot, though, so Alexei is not optimistic. He is still convinced that something is going to go wrong.

There’s a short scare when a couple of coyotes charge out of the brush on their way to chase down a rabbit, and the horses are briefly dumb enough to think they’re wolves, but they make it to the fence outside Rhodes in one piece, and there they’re able to sell some of the stolen jewelry they’ve been sitting on for a while. Ilya has to stop Alexei from pulling the trigger when the fence wants to give them an insultingly low amount of cash for the haul, but they get out with more money than the son of a bitch wanted to give them, so it’s overall a successful exchange.

Once in Rhodes, Alexei posts a letter at the station to his wife in Blackwater. He promises that he will be home soon. He has no intention of keeping that promise, but it’s nice to offer a little something to look forward to, he thinks. And it keeps his options open for if he can’t make it out of the country. 

When he’s done with that, one of his men tells him that they’ve set up camp just outside town, but most of the gang is taking advantage of being in a town, and they’re hitting up the general store, or the gunsmith, and restocking everything they think they’ll need for the trade on Bacchus Bridge. Apparently Alexei isn’t the only one who doesn’t think it’s going to be a friendly conversation. 

“And where is my brother and my hostage?” he asks, keeping his voice light and teasing, so no one will be able to say, later, that he looked angry. The hostage should be his responsibility; that’s the way these things work. That’s the way things have always worked in the gang. The one who makes the capture sets the tone for the treatment of the hostage. The hostage is their responsibility. 

Fucking Ilya. Fucking Ilya, looking too much like their mother, making him feel guilty with his fucking disdain. Why should Alexei care what he thinks anyway? 

“I saw Ilya riding up to the Parlour House,” replies his man, gesturing up the road to where the only saloon in town sits. Lucky for Alexei, that’s exactly where he’d like to be right now anyway. 

“What the fuck are you doing?” he hisses at Ilya when he has burst through the swinging doors of the saloon and has found Ilya leaning up against the bar, chatting with the man behind the counter. “The last time you were here, you refused to step foot in this place. Suddenly you’re not too good for the Lemoyne Raiders?” 

Ilya looks Alexei over like he’s trying to gauge how drunk he is, which fucking rankles, because Alexei is not nearly as drunk as he would like. 

“We are all too good for the Lemoyne Raiders,” Ilya replies. “But they are mostly dead now, which I like, and I would welcome the opportunity to kill more of them. Unfortunately, the bartender tells me that no one here is in the gang. Just the usual…crowd.” 

Ilya casts a look around the room, lip curling with disgust. At least that look isn’t reserved entirely for Alexei, then, though he has seen it often enough. 

“Too bad. I think I would like to see you take them down,” Alexei offers, which is as much of an olive branch as he’s willing to extend. Ilya smiles a little, just a quirk of the lips.

“Galina sent medication, and instructions on how to make sure Hollander doesn’t fucking die of infection on us,” he explains, all calm and cool, as he always is, lately. Alexei bites back several infuriated, injured responses, all of which would be too obvious. But…Galina? He wrote to Galina, and she responded? Shame and rage boil in him for a second, red hot. It’s the same sort of rage that made him take that poker to Hollander down by the dry creekbed. He has to dig his fingernails into the palms of his hands to force himself not to overreact now, in public. Ilya doesn’t seem to notice. He takes a bottle of alcohol that a woman brings to him from a back hallway, apparently something Ilya has asked for. He reads the label and then flashes her a charming smile. Tips his hat, the way he always does. The woman, predictably, nearly swoons, and Alexei grits his teeth. 

“Fucking relax. He’s not going to die. He’s barely injured.” 

There, that sounds normal enough. That sounds like he’s not annoyed about Galina at all.

Ilya gives Alexei an unimpressed look and opens the bottle. He pours a glass, maintaining eye contact, and then slides it down the bar, into Alexei’s waiting hand. When Alexei throws his head back to drink it, Ilya melts away towards the back hallway, where he must have rented a room for the purpose of doctoring whatever imaginary wounds Hollander is pretending to have. From, what, a little burn from the poker? A few kicked ribs? Some bruises? A fucking sunburn? 

Alexei doesn’t bother following to try and continue the conversation. If Ilya wants to play nursemaid or chivalrous jailer, fucking let him. Let him be tricked by Hollander’s helpless kitten act. Hollander and Theriault can have him. 

Alexei is finished trying to make sure that his baby brother is tough enough to survive this life. He has to start looking out for himself, instead.

Chapter End Notes

I wrote this chapter before I wrote Brat(va) Summer, so going back and editing it after I wrote a (in my opinion) very likeable Alexei was rough stuff lmao.

Also, writing Alexei chapters in this has given me massive flashbacks to writing Cersei chapters in my game of throne days lmao. I just love mess (writing someone on the edge of totally fucking losing it)!