Summer Cowrite Dorian had, at Tatya’s request, gone upstairs to raid their bookshelves of suitably simple Chinese picture books with both hànzì and pīnyīn, and thought he might also get some of Émilie’s school stories to be sent back for Katerina. He had left Émilie happily steering his friend towards the mantlepiece full of pictures.
“Voilà, petit Dorian!” Émilie grinned, pulling forward a picture. It showed a baby with the large dark eyes shared by both Dorian and Émilie. A lot of their baby pictures might have been indistinguishable had their mother not had a tendency to stick bows and other markers of femininity on Émilie, and anything covered in rabbits on Dorian. Case in point, he was wearing an ornate red silk waistcoat and clutching a red and gold stuffed bunny. “This is… I don’t know. His first time to China? Or when our grandparents come here to meet him. I don’t know. I did not exist. Dorian and Mama are better at the stories. The main idea, this is very small Dorian and he is cute,” she summarised, “Medium size Dorian is not so bad either, no?” she added as casually as she could, her eyes sliding away from the photograph to observe Tatiana for a reaction.
“No,” said Tatiana, oblivious as ever to subtext, more occupied with hoping that she was correctly understanding ‘medium’ to mean ‘Dorya now’. “Dorya is always - good to see.” Her attention was principally on the red silk waistcoat and bunny. “This is match,” she said, pointing to them. “Very good. Your mama is like my mama - all must match. I am not so cute as very small Dorian, though.” She smiled broadly and affectionately at the picture, rather wishing to reach through time and squeeze malen’kyi Dorya. He was even cuter than her small brother Alyosha at that size.
A little smile flickered over Émilie’s mouth as Tatya declared that Dorian was always good to see, and found small Dorian to be very cute.
“Eh, this is match because it is China. Everything is red. Hóngsè shì fēicháng jíxiáng de,” she intoned, not considering whether the phrase ‘very lucky’ would be in Tatiana’s vocabulary. Émilie just tended to chatter away about whatever was on her mind. The fact that Dorian had taught his friends French and Chinese simply made it easier, as she didn’t have to filter out any of her languages when talking to them. “You go there and try to find bùshì hóngsè de dōngxī - it is more difficult. But yes, Mama does also like to match us,” she added gesturing down the row of photographs. She could often tell who had last used the room by the positions of the pictures. Matthieu met his friends in the park more often than at home, but if he was expecting them, the Quidditch team shots were usually more prominently displayed, with the embarrassing family or baby pictures shuffled to the back or tipped face down. If she and Dorian had been here last, the family shots were usually more visible, though some of the full sibling group shots remained out of sight. She reached for one of these now, pulling it from behind one of her and Dorian in China. In this one, her brothers wore black, with green trim and matching bow ties, whilst she donned a dress with the same accents and a matching bow in her hair. The boys sat on either side with Émilie in the middle. The theory was that this gave symmetry but beyond their identical dress robes there was little to mark them out as a matching pair. Matthieu was broad shouldered and square jawed, his hair short and gelled back, a stark contrast to Dorian, small and slight, with his hair falling into his eyes. They both seemed a little awkward in front of the camera, and it might have not been immediately noticeable that it was a magical photograph had it not been for Émilie in the middle, smiling and flicking her hair, evidently enjoying being dressed up and photographed. But even in their minimally moving, fixed expressions they differed - Matthieu’s smile was forced and bored looking, whilst Dorian’s was shy and anxious, eager to please (although as Émilie completed each hair flick, his eyes did move to her and his expression softened a little).
“The match set,” she held it out, “You can tell the boys apart?” she joked.
“Maybe, if look much,” joked Tatiana in return, looking at the three siblings.
She knew this was the Other Brother, but Tatiana would have believed her if Émilie had said that actually the other boy was a cousin instead. Dorian and Émilie looked so alike, and this boy - well, he was more like Grisha or her papa, in shape anyway. Papa and Grisha would not smile in a formal photograph, of course, and Papa had fair hair, but they were also big, square wizards - Tatiana wouldn’t be surprised if Papa could not pick her up off the floor even now that she was almost fourteen, if he wanted to.
“You look pretty, Mila,” she added, as this was both true and polite and it was obvious even to her from the photograph that Émilie wanted to be admired. Tatiana understood this. She did not like the act of dressing up, but she did like to be admired when she was forced to do so, and she always liked it if someone noticed she had put her pretties together in a way she thought was particularly appealing.
“Merci,” Émilie smiled brightly, with absolutely none of the self-consciousness one received when trying to compliment Dorian. She looked like she was about to say something further but was cut off by the sound of the front door opening and being slammed, and a deep gruff voice calling out the name of the Montoirs’ house elf. It was not the elf that answered though. Dorian’s footsteps were light enough that she had not noticed them coming down the stairs but he was clearly on them now, judging by where his voice came from.
“Tu es rentré tôt,” Dorian commented, sounding wary. You’re back early. He had not exactly orchestrated Tatya’s visit to coincide with Matthieu being out of the house but had played the odds that her being there during the day would most likely mean the two of them didn’t cross paths.
“Luc a fait une mauvaise chute. C'est quoi ce bordel? Des livres pour bébés et pour filles?”
Great, thought Dorian. Why had stupid Luc had to have some stupid fall off his stupid broom? He was pretty sure Tatya would not know the phrase ‘What the heck is this?’ but she could probably hear and recognise that he was being spoken to in an unfriendly way, and perhaps even that he was being told off for reading books for babies and girls.
There was a sound of hasty footsteps scuffling, accompanied by protests of “Arrête!” and “laisse-moi,” followed by a series of approximately book-sized thuds.
“Et c'est nous en Chine,” Émilie declared, falsely bright and reaching for the nearest photograph which she thrust at Tatiana.
“Chto eto?” asked Tatiana, frowning, then remembered that Émilie spoke essentially no Russian and so might not understand her. “What’s that?” she tried again, starting to turn toward the door.
Though of course, as they could hear those on the stairs, that meant that those on the stairs could hear them. The scuffling stopped abruptly, and there was a low mumble of Matthieu speaking too quietly to hear. Dorian replied audibly enough for the question to become apparent.
“Mon amie Tatiana C'est elle que les livres sont pour.” My friend Tatiana. It’s her the books are for.
There was some further mumbling and the sound of a heavier set of footsteps retreating up the stairs.
Dorian reappeared, looking like a personal rain cloud had set itself up above his head.
“Matthieu is home,” he said, as if they had not already heard this for themselves. “He is messy from Quidditch but once he has cleaned up, he will come to say hello,” he reported, the effort of keeping his tone neutral evident in his voice. “These are for you, and for Katerina,” he added, holding out the books to Tatya and hoping she was going to be too polite to comment on the fact they were shaking slightly.
“Merci,” said Tatiana slowly, taking the books, frowning. Everything had just - shifted, suddenly. Everything had been perfectly lovely, and now, it was suddenly all...tense, wrong...She glanced sideways at Émilie. “Dorya, ty khorosho? Chto eto bylo?” she asked in Russian, assuming Émilie would understand no more than the diminutive Tatiana had made up for Dorian’s name. Dorya, you okay? What was that?
Right. So they weren’t just glossing over that then. Dorian supposed he should not have been surprised but he found himself unprepared, unsure what to say.
“I’m fine,” he replied steadily and flatly, starting with the familiar lie because it was the easiest thing to say. He had seen a frown cross Émilie’s face when Tatya switched to Russian. He was not sure whether it was confusion or annoyance but he did not want to test his sister’s patience. And she was the person here that he did not need to hide this from. “That was Matthieu come home.” He had said that. he had said that already and it had not been enough. “I-” he was about to say ‘I told you he is a jerk,’ but realised that was unfair. It sounded like he was blaming Tatya for not understanding when all his remarks, and his lack of them, had been designed to keep her in the dark. “That is how we talk with each other. I am sorry that you hear that.”
Tatiana stared at her friend. He barely sounded like himself, and she had not heard talking - well, she had heard that, but also pushing. Of course, these things were not unknown in her family, but - those were things for smalls, usually when they both wanted to play with the same toy at once. She and her sisters didn’t do that anymore, and even when they had - afterward everyone was sulky and sure the other girl was more wrong, not just...flat like this, and….
However, they were all girls, and also Russian. They were not Chinese and French and Canadian. But - never mind nationality or girls or boys or anything. Dorian sounded wrong. Not himself.
“You do nothing wrong,” said Tatiana, meaning both that he didn’t have to apologize to her and that - well - he hadn’t done anything to start a scuffle, that she could tell. There had been some words she hadn’t understood, but she had understood most of it - that the Other Boy had asked, angrily, about the books - ‘for babies and girls’ - and then tried to grab them. He had also tried to grab Dorian, if she had understood ‘laisse-moi’ correctly.
She couldn’t think of what to say, at least in a common language and in front of someone. Everything was wrong all of a sudden. She glanced at Dorian’s sister again, really wishing Mila would just...go away for a while, so she could stumble backward through a muddle of languages freely. Or at least give him a hug, as it was not uncommon for them to express affection or support by touch because of the language gaps.
“Allons-y marcher, lire dans jardin,” suggested Tatiana, focusing on speaking French because the Russian word for garden was the same as the English word sad and Dorya was sad already and she didn’t want him to think he heard the English word, or to speak English and risk getting mixed up at the end of the sentence. Everything had been so nice outside. Better to go there again.
The garden was not a good idea. The garden was a Matthieu place, when he was home. It was only nice when he was away from it. It was where he would go once he’d said hello to them. Dorian gave a jerky shake of his head, unsure how to explain any of that, not wanting to have to explain anything.
“Matthieu likes to be in the garden. And Matthieu is horrid,” Émilie supplied. She had watched Tatiana’s gaze flicker between them and taken it as a cry for help rather than a concern as to what she could or could not say in front of her. And Émilie was not surprised, because Dorian annoyed and confused her when he behaved like this, and he had said Tatiana was just like her. “Dorian pretends it doesn’t happen because… hm. He does not want you to know? Or to be worried? She knows. She just heard,” she addressed her brother, “And she is worried. So you can stop pretending you are fine because everyone knows you are not, and you are the only one who cares that anyone knows this. What?” she challenged, seeing the wounded and betrayed look Dorian was giving her. “I’m not telling things that she does not know.”
“Right. So… you know now, how it is with me and him,” he addressed Tatya, fighting to keep his voice even. Interactions with Matthieu made him feel like something was squirming in his chest, his skin prickling with all the anger of how unfair it was, how weak he felt. Even when he knew Matthieu was the problem, it still got to him sometimes, and he needed to be quiet and pretend none of it was happening because he didn’t want to snap at Émilie and Tatya who had done nothing wrong. He didn’t want to be a nasty or an angry person, and the worst part of it all was that Matthieu kept threatening to turn him into one. “Now… can we just not talk about him any more?”
“Ne khorosho!” said Tatiana, outraged to realize that something she had thought had been attributable to her misunderstanding languages - the implication that this happened all the time for no reason - was in fact the case and that she had understood after all. “Nikto ne razgovorivaet c moim Dorey takim obrazom! Ya pnu yego v -” she bit her tongue before she said something really out of order, hoping Dorian didn’t understand that she had at least just threatened to kick his brother somewhere after announcing that no-one talked to her Dorya like that. Instead, she hugged him, Mila having just proven herself in Tatiana’s eyes and consequently posing no further obstacle from the same perspective. Dorian returned Tatiana’s hug, feeling conflicted. Hugs were supposed to be nice but this one just reminded him that something was wrong, when all he wanted to do was forget about it. Her niceness, her reassurance made him feel like bursting into grateful tears and letting himself be comforted but he wanted to do that about as much as he wanted to be angry or shouting. And she was annoyed, not with him, but with Matthieu. He had got the part about no one speaking to him like that. Except, of course, someone did. He was not familiar enough with the word ‘kick,’ it not being a frequent occurrence in their conversations, to have known what she had threatened, only that she was displeased with his brother. She wanted explanations, and then she would want to start fixing things. Things she had no way of fixing, and that stuck him with the job of explaining and, once he was done explaining that she couldn’t make it better, with reassuring and comforting her, making her believe that he was okay, that she didn’t have to worry. And he didn’t want to do any of that. He just wanted to pretend it wasn’t happening.
“Why this in the rules?” she demanded of Mila, figuring she would tell it straight. “Your mama nice - she does not gives permit to - “ she called Matthieu a word a nice Russian girl shouldn’t have known, but assumed her tone would indicate who she meant - “to be so?”
“He is not like this with Mama and Papa there. If he knows you are here, he would not do. Only when he thinks others do not see or hear. Except for me,” Émilie explained.
This was all so alien to her. Of course she and her siblings did things and said things together they wouldn’t do in front of Mama or Papa or Anton Petrovich or Nadezhda - But it was just all wrong here. They didn’t hurt each other now that they were old enough to know better, and in any case they were rarely unsupervised enough to get away with it - and if Mila knew this was so, then why did she not go get her mama or papa so Matthieu would be punished and learn not to do that again? Tatiana had pulled Sonia’s hair once over a music box, and as a result Nadezhda had made her confess her transgression to Mama and Papa and she had been forbidden variously privileges for the rest of the evening and told to go to bed early. When she had had a tantrum over it, the suspension had been extended to another full day. The next time she had wanted something one of her sisters was playing with, she had thought about it and not pulled hair again - for a while, anyway, and when she had forgotten, she’d been corrected again until the lesson stuck with her properly. Simple.
Her jaw set angrily. “But I do hear this,” she said. “And he tell me hello, I tell him idi k chertu!” She grimaced. “Ili chto-to,” she added, in a more subdued tone. “I not know that in French language.”
Something, however, had to be done. This was obvious. Dorian always stood up for her when someone was rotten to her, or at least they thought something was unfair, even with older boys and teachers. How could she not do as much for him, especially when she was apparently someone Matthieu did not want to show what swine he was to and so would restrain himself in front of?
“Tatya, no,” Dorian pleaded, stepping back enough to look at her. He was not sure what she had just threatened to say to his brother but her tone carried enough to know it wasn’t friendly, and that she wanted to sort this out. “You cannot fix. If it was just so simple as telling him… whatever, it would be done. You think Émilie does not do that all the time? You think I have never got angry with him? He is a jerk. He is annoying. But there is nothing to say that will change that. And if he thinks I have talked with you about this, he will be more angry with me later when you go. Just smile, wait for him to go away. It works best.”
Tatiana started to reply that Matthieu would not dare hit her and would be in for a right beating of his own if he did by some chance dare (her papa and Grishka would be Unamused in the extreme by anyone who presumed to do so, she was sure), which made her different from Dorian and Émilie, but was stopped cold by the comment about what would happen when she was gone. She thought furiously….
She could tell Grisha that Matthieu had offended her, which was true - but then Matthieu would not learn not to offend Dorian.
She could tell Grisha the full truth - but Grisha would be puzzled by the thought of a boy who just endured such treatment, she was sure of that, and he would remind her that they ought not meddle in western families too much.
She could throw her shoe at Matthieu the moment he entered the room, then take advantage of the distraction to kick him in a delicate area and then just punch everything she could reach from there - but then there was still the problem of what happened after she left, plus the problem of Madame and Monsieur Montoir thinking she was a madwoman and not ladylike and not allowing her to continue being friends with Dorian - which would also probably happen if she sent her brother to meddle in their affairs.
Defeat was a nearly novel sensation. She didn’t like it.
“You say he does not do before your mama and papa - we all say ‘this happens, he must be - like get detention?’” she suggested desperately, unable to think of the word for punishment in English or French. “He has no - “ she searched for a word - “fear for own father, own mama?”
“I- I don’t know. It isn’t simple,” Dorian sighed. “If you really want to talk about this, I… I guess we can. But another time. Some time when he’s not about to come in. Can we just… sit down? Read?” he requested.
Tatiana did not really want to sit down. She wanted to go set this all right at once. However, Dorya had a point about the timing, if it would really only make it worse for her to go straight for the source of the problem… “Oui,” she said. “If you want.”
Yes, that was what he wanted. Or what he had wanted. He had wanted to do that as soon as he had come in, and if everyone else had just done it, it would have been fine. Except now, as they took their seats, it felt all fake. He knew they didn’t want to be doing this, that everyone was pretending for his sake when they wanted to be doing something else. And it made it all wrong. It meant that Matthieu still hung over everything, still infected it all, because this wasn’t what they had all agreed to do, this was everyone else putting on a performance and then they would want to come back to it. Back to chewing over problems they couldn’t solve. He just wanted to forget it was happening, and they wouldn’t let him.
But at least they could pretend until Matthieu was safely out of the way.
They were looking over one of the books, Tatya reading haltingly and Dorian almost being amused enough to have to pretend he wasn’t laughing when there were footsteps on the stairs. He kept looking at the book but his shoulders stiffened slightly, although he pretended that his attention had only been caught when there was a polite ‘good afternoon’ from the doorway, at which point he stood to affect the introductions.
“Tatiana, this is my brother Matthieu. Matthieu, this is my friend, Tatiana Vorontsova,” Dorian recited politely, no trace of his previous animosity or anger towards his brother visible. But not much of anything else either. No smiles, none of his usual animation. Just calm, neutral politeness.
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Vorontsova,” Matthieu smiled, giving a slight bow. “I will not interrupt your reading too long, but Dorian mentions that we have a guest. So, I think it is polite to come and say hello.” His smile could not be said to be particularly warm or genuine, but then enough people’s weren’t on making a new acquaintance that this, in itself, would not have been sinister. In fact, little about him was. He did not cut a warm and welcoming figure - words like ‘strong’ or perhaps even ‘imposing’ sprang far more easily to mind - but he smiled, he bowed, he did all the things he was supposed to do without any air of anything horrible lurking beneath. All in all, he seemed perfectly normal.
Tatiana had always, as her mama often worried, smiled too much, been too easily amused - it made her seem flighty, and now that she was older, Mama had explained, young men might get very angry if they thought she was flirting with them when she was in fact simply acting like an over-emotional child. She still felt like the same Tatiana she had always been, but in two years she would be allowed to put her hair up and go to balls and young men would be allowed to start proposing to her if she made a good impression. She had to start working on those good impressions now, so she would have her choice of good young men to pick from, like Anya had.
Normally Tatiana found this all a bit beyond her, but now her mouth was as straight a line as her mama could have ever wished. Her eyes were, however, still more animated than Mama might have liked. “Thank you,” she said evenly, making no effort to suppress her accent. Hopefully he would think ‘stupid foreigner’ and go away quicker. “It is good to know Dorian family better.”
“And his friends also. I start to think he is hiding you. Or perhaps imagining,” Matthieu joked. You could tell it was a ‘joke’ because he said it in that light sort of tone that people used when they joked. And Dorian gave what passed for an amused smile, if you didn’t know him better. And, even knowing Dorian as she did, Tatya wasn’t as tuned into the subtleties of his different smiles as Jehan was. If she hadn’t overheard what had passed on the stairs, it might have passed for brotherly teasing. But it was clear that it was a jibe, designed to hurt, and that it did.
Tatiana forced a brief excuse for a smile. “He does not need to do this,” she said matter-of-factly. “He has to him many of us.”
“Indeed,” Matthieu replied, surveying this actual human girl who appeared to like his brother. This fact still came as a surprise to him but he was not about to point this out, much as he wanted to to Dorian. He could always do that later. If there were people out there willing to befriend the oddball in spite of his myriad defects, far be it from him to point out anything that ought to put them off. “Well… I would not want to disrupt the lesson,” he gestured to their books. “And I have some studying myself that I must do in father’s office. It was nice to meet you,” he nodded curtly and turned away.
Tatiana allowed herself an exhale of relief when Matthieu left them.
“This is what you mean,” she said, “about not so good to be boy, yes?”
Dorian was slightly surprised by this question. He had expected Tatya’s first line to be going back to trying to fix things. And, of course, had he ever been asked exactly who was forcing this notion of what it meant to be a boy down his throat, Matthieu would have been the first one to spring to mind. But… it had always felt like a more general thing. It was what Society expected, and Matthieu was the embodiment of that.
“Yes,” he replied, a little tense, not quite sure how much he wanted to get deep into this right now, or with his sister, “Matthieu…” his voice dropped to a whisper as he said it, even though they had heard the footsteps retreat to nothingness, “he has particular ideas about how I should be. And they are not like I am.”
Tatiana sighed. “I try think - to do, what, how I help - all ideas, if I use them, maybe then your mama say, ‘Tatiana is not - la belle dame, elle ne pas bonne fille , you must no more be friend to her.’ Or I must tell other people to do, and then they maybe listen, maybe not.” She wrapped her arms around herself and looked sadly at Dorian. “Always you help me,” she said in a small voice. “And I have no good ideas for help you.”
“This is not true,” Dorian assured her, holding out his arms in offer so that she could be wrapped in those instead of her own, an offer she promptly accepted, “You decided to be my friend. You and Jehan and Vlad. And you all tell me nice things about me. And it makes it… it makes it easy to be happy. When I am at school, I am happy. And it makes it easier, when I have to listen to Matthieu, I can just… ignore. I know he is wrong. Just keep doing that.”
He held onto Tatya, feeling better already. Feeling that he didn’t need to be any braver, any stronger, any more of any of the things he had always been told he needed to be. Because here was someone who… Who he could not quite say loved him just as he was. Because there was still something she did not know. If he wanted to say it, he wondered how he should do it. What words he should use.
“Oh. This is nice,” Émilie cut across his thoughts. “I tell you this for years. And now you are happy at school but not here with me, hm?” she crossed her arms petulantly across her chest, although she sounded somewhat amused.
Tatiana couldn’t quite suppress a chuckle at Émilie’s commentary, despite the overall gravity of the conversation and her lingering thought that just being nice to one of the loveliest people on Earth was not doing enough. “You should be on school with us, Mila,” she said. “This would be better.” She wondered if Mama could be convinced to invite these two and exclude their brother. That would be better too, but she was not sure Mama would agree, especially not without elaboration.
“I am happy here with you too,” Dorian assured his sister, freeing up one of his arms so he could pull her into the hug too, grateful to have two people who had never cared that he wasn’t like other boys. Even if, for now, they didn’t know the full extent to which that was true…