UNDEAD ♦ TWENTY-EIGHT ♦ HOUSE OF EDENSASHA WOJCZIKOWA is an Undead Yellow Jack
UNDEAD ♦ TWENTY-EIGHT ♦ HOUSE OF EDENSASHA WOJCZIKOWA is an Undead Yellow Jacket affiliated with the House of Eden. Resurrected by Julian in the Carpathian Mountains of Ukraine, Sasha remains one of the Yellow Jackets’ most competent soldiers, whose exceptional physical prowess and faithfulness to the House renders her a model member and valuable addition to the Undead army. Her nickname, the Doctor’s Bride, is a testament to the great favoritism she enjoys from not only Kazimir, from whom she received her surname, but also her Resurrector, Julian.BIOGRAPHYHe called the place by the riverbank Sołokija. She called it Солокія. In the spring, the water which divided them was cold and clear, and slow-moving enough that she could wade across it safely to meet him. There was not much to do, truthfully, and even less to say. They would tussle in the meadow until their bodies ached, then simply lay on their backs, waiting for the pale sun to crest over the pines. He was, from the books full of morbid diagrams he sometimes brought to show her, a scholar and apprentice of могильник. Not a very good hunter, she thought with some disappointment. That was fine. She would bring the game—a trapped rabbit or squirrel, sometimes a net of fish freshly caught—and he the bread and berries, the copies of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky to read aloud to her. Those were simpler times, when the sound of Kazimir’s voice felt like a thumb he was too shy to run across her cheek. The two most powerful warriors, he said, stumbling slightly on the Russian, are patience and time. - ❀ -They told her much of the circumstances surrounding her death and undeath: Julian had found her a hundred miles south of Przemyśl, a vicious rotbeest drowning beneath icy waters—and, as if in possession of a death wish, pulled her from the frozen river to best her properly. After, he would carry her to Agostina and Nikolaas, to Thalia and Kazimir: and from that moment on, she was a soldier who belonged not to herself, but to the hands which revived her. She was their first and best soldier, cutting a ruthless path into Amsterdam, carving out a place for these lofty false-gods to build their pantheon. But these were not the stories she longed to hear, so violent and foreign; rather, it was a meadow she returned to over and over in the woods of her memory, by a river she’d forgotten the name of. She could recall nothing if this: her exquisite, hardy youth, her hunger-thin body sprinting through the underbrush, the shape of her mouth as it split into laughter, a motion that came so easy to the girl she once was. She was happy, she was whole. Still, they would push pill after pill upon Sasha, numbing her out and smothering every nagging uncertainty, until all that remained was a hollow-eyed weapon. She was as lovely as a dream in stone. They would tell her story to the Undead over and over, like ritual, like religion: the Doctor’s Bride, once but a feral, pitiable beast of the mountains, rescued from the jaws of lunacy by the Resurrector Julian and the Doctor himself in the later years of the Scarlet Death. Now, she was beheld in wonder, in approval: the strongest among them all, the most loyal and competent by far, given any privilege she desired and beloved by the living for her service. It was all one tall, aggrandizing tale, Sasha knew. She made for a fine poster-girl for Agostina’s army of corpses, after all: a swift-footed Achilles, graceful and taciturn, bearing just the right amount of sharpness to the set of her elegant mouth so as to convey strength, and the right amount of cold, flat blue in her eyes so as to convey some strain of mechanized, inhuman obedience. It was easy for the living to adore her, because she was perfectly unlike them: bright as a divine god and dead as a lamb on his altar.Could someone so suited to death secretly loathe it? Sasha did. She was not a barbarian, not a monster, not a killer—but she was, she was, she was. The House made her into something fearsome, and set her upon its enemies like a well-trained dog. And God, the pills: bottles of them filling her sink, filling her bedside drawer, sewed into the leather lining of her Yellow Jacket, each one a giver-sustainer-stabilizer of life, and each one as nauseatingly inevitable as death. Elixir-poison. The truth of it was so simple: she was tired. She had walked the Earth once already, in goodness and joy; to walk it again, but this time dressed in suits of blood, sent to stalk the streets like an unholy phantom, compelled to abide the wills of worser men and women—it was not what she wanted. It didn’t matter how well she wielded devastation—Sasha had no love for it in the end. She longed for sun, for warm skin, for books, for peace. If not for this wretched city of sin, then at the very least, for herself. CONNECTIONS KAZIMIR – ONCE UPON A DREAM. She remembers him. She knows him. And she doesn’t at all. Like most Undead, she awakened without memories and without a name—and of the latter, the caustic Kazimir had supplied his own surname for her in an uncharacteristic show of…possession? No, not quite that. The House loves to sink its claws into her, marking her one of theirs, but he has never displayed such a territorial attitude. Rather, the Doctor’s care for her approaches something much…softer. Sasha is drawn to him, not only because he is kind to her without expectation for reciprocity, but because his is a face she hasn’t forgotten. The only face. He wanders in the nightscapes of her dreams and lingers in the shadow of her mind like a mirage just out of reach. Sasha thinks they were friends in another life. Maybe more than. In this one, he is the intimate stranger who watches her, helps her, and evades her. Who was I? Who were we? She asks this with her hands, folded over his; with her eyes, bottomless wells of faded blue, searching for truth in an eternal night. But Kazimir refuses to speak, only watches her sadly, the ghost of a word lingering beneath his tongue.GABRIËL, OKSANA & PETER – YELLOW JACKETS. They are the best of the best: soldiers and spies of the House who don the coveted Yellow Jacket, which label them elite members of the Undead army under Thalia’s direct supervision. When all is said and done, it’s not an unlikely place to find friends, given the extensive hours they spend together. Sasha gets along well enough with all three—Gabriël is her assignment partner, Oksana feels like a sister, and Peter had been someone she admired, if not at the very least, envied. Nonetheless, there is still quite a bit of squabbling that errupts within their group: Gabriël stalks about the Peace Palace like an ill-tempered criminal when he’s not on assignment with Sasha, while Oksana’s catastrophic appetite for merriment gets them all into trouble after trouble. In the beginning, fights broke out daily, and it took both Sasha and Peter’s long-suffering pragmatism to establish some semblance of peace—at least, until his betrayal sent them right back at each other’s throats. Gabriël and Oksana continue to be prickly with one another, bickering and jabbing, but Sasha has since learned to disregard it. Their animosity is all bark and no bite—when it comes down to it, they would all defend one another like dogs.JULIAN – HER CROWN. Julian cuts a striking image: tall and ruefully handsome, silver-tongued when he wishes to flatter, the sort of man to feast with tigers, himself a dominating and predatory force. Sasha has him to thank for her extraordinary athleticism and strength, she knows, at least partially—his gift for resurrecting perfect soldiers is no unfounded myth. On the other hand, she knows he is the reason for her sorrow, too; had a gentler hand resurrected her, say that of Neeve’s, Sasha might not be so predisposed to listening to his every command like a soldier eager to deliver. She might have memory of her past life, as Oksana and Peter do—and what wouldn’t she give for that? Certainly, she’d sacrifice this terrible strength for it. Nevertheless, Sasha feels no resentment for Julian, particular given how he treats her with such attentiveness, such brotherly possession. She doesn’t need someone to protect her—but she senses to deprave Julian of this strange role he’s taken to…would hurt him, for some reason. He’s a complicated, dark man—but there is real tenderness to his care for her, however subtle. She’s not a monster. She’ll follow his order like a soldier and accept his peculiar, quiet love like a sister.OPEN ♦ FC: VALENTINA SAMPAIO -- source link
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