all i know is smoke and mirrors - - -

[Ksenia Sakahrov]

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DECEMBER, 2007. MID-EVENING. BAD SEEDS.

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- - - SHE HAD BEEN

[/b][/font] taught at a young age not to ask questions. that was the first rule it came to living under any sakahrov roof. no jokes, comrad. her father told her, time and time again, that every parent with the surname of 'sakahrov' parented the exact same way - don't ask questions. family dinners were a very silent affair. despite loving her parents dearly, this no-nonsense lesson was quickly growing tried. if she wanted to know something, she'd have to go and find out for herself. all the way from the time she was a toddler in moscow, before she even knew what a question was, it had been seared into her brain. "don't ask questions!" it was the catch phrase most often heard in their moderately sized home. it had seemed like a perfectly acceptable back when she had wool, following along the crowd like some common sheep. hello, they don't raise sheep in serbia. she should have sheared her wool long ago - maybe sewn a nice sweater as an apology for asking a question. it had never really made any sense. but, as a child, what does? even more - when you are raised constantly hearing something, how often do you assume that there is anything different? it was what she had long become accustomed to. she thought every parent told their darling little offspring not to ask questions. even as she began to question it - silently, of course - she never made anything of it. her parents were nice enough about it; they never really yelled it. they only ever yelled at her when she offered the nice-at-the-time piece of ceramic junk she'd made that day in pottery class as an apology. it was packed away in a box. because "you should never apologize. just don't ask them." i never think they were actually sincere, though.

seem drastic? well, remember what i said - there is no joke. comrad. it didn't even matter what the question was about - her early inquiries of her father's mysterious behavior were the serious of the bunch. don't even ask what the weather is supposed to be like the next day. if they're in a good mood, they'll tell you to look online. ask one too many times? ( like twice). and you'll get the same pursed lips and a "don't ask questions!" or, in her father's case, the same "don't ask questions, darling" in same haggard tone of voice, and that smile that is plesant enough, but doesn't quite reach the eyes. even if you think it's a stupid rule, there is much less of a headache than inquiring anything. she taught herself a long time ago just to go and find out for herself.

i guess that's why she didn't ask questions when the mysterious company showed up at their door, much to her father's surprise. the two tall individuals looked average enough to her, but the closed expression that enveloped over victor sakahrov's face was startling. a sophisticated, borderline emotionless, front was the way he did things. seeing a sweaty brow on the towheaded stock broker was always cause for investigation. even as he coldly led the way for the strangers toward the kitchen, ksenia didn't ask any questions. the aura given off by them, especially the brunette female, told her to stay the fuck away. while victor managed to send his wife off with a simple look, ksenia herself decided to hover somewhere in the next room. she quietly seated herself in the corner of the new leather couch ( this need to buy furniture was continuing, as serious as ever ), her eyes trained on the pages of a book. she pretended to read while they talked in hushed voices. you have to thank the archetecture who designed the homes in valkyrie, california. here, any sound echoed powerfully throughtout the entire open floorplan. ten bucks says stana was upstairs, listening to every soundwave of speech. only when there were turned backs and eyes trained forward did ksenia look up.

she tilted her head to the side, not quite understanding the mixture of english in severe accents and broken russian. these two strangers, they were interesting. both tall, alarmingly so, with silhouettes that could disappear by turning sideways. he, she could tell he was reserved, almost like he wasn't listening. it was her ksenia knew was in charge. with a figure smaller than even her own, dressed in sleek, dark clothing, there was immediate purpose with each step, each word spoken. she motioned toward victor with a long finger, speaking her broken russian, in an accent that was a rival to her own. western europe, the united kingdom, maybe. "it's in your blood, victor." ksenia's light eyes stared directly into the kitchen now. it was him - a definite relation to the female - who spoke this time, a harsh american accent cutting through the otherwise lyrical side to his voice. "it's in her blood." who's blood? why are we talking about blood? you see, this is exactly why she had to go asking all of these ridiculous questions. it's not like her father did nothing to force her to. even in english she actually understood, ksenia was left with no facts. in all of the mess her father had made back in serbia, the very reason why they migrated to north america in the first place, there were no answers. so why did she get that familiar feeling, somewhere in the back of her throat, like she was going to be sick? she was sharp of nature, ksenia was. carefully looking back down at her upside-down book, she was genuinely surprised when she heard her name being called. when did victor ever pretend he had a family when he as dealing with his secret bullshit?

unfolding her legs, pausing to pull up her long boots, ksenia placed her book on the coffee table. slowly making her way into the kitchen, eyeing the dark-haired strangers warily, she trained her gaze on her father when he placed his hands on her shoulders. her father was looking at them darkly, a definite trace of disdain in the gleam of his blue eyes. feigning that same bubbly innocence she knew always worked, ksenia smiled lightly - the same smile that didn't quite reach her own eyes. "i was just telling our friends here how well you're adjusting to valkyrie. how normal everything has been." he was? what was normal about how she wasn't fitting in? raising her eyebrows, playing along for the sake of it, she smiled again, merely nodding. "definitely the american dream here, daddy. isn't that how it's always been?" it's not like she was stupid. she knew he was up to something. but a good sakahrov always knows - or should know - that you play your part until you have the evidence to change that. she can no fucking clue what was going on, just that she needed to do some work. "normal." the female spoke now, an unsurprising cold spark in her voice. "you heard her, november. she was just going to socialize with her all-american peers, wasn't she?" he squeezed her shoulder. "yes...yes i was." raising her eyebrows again, the russian female ducked her head once, looking once at the silent male in the background. he was looking at the floor, a blush coloring his otherwise pale face. right.

a bewildered expression plastering its way onto her face, ksenia didn't have time other than to grab her purse before disappearing from the echo-filled household. what in hell had that been all about? despite her father's not-so-subtle approach in kicking her out to avoid anymore eavsdropping, she'd never known him to directly interact with people who gave her such a bad feeling. and what was with emphasizing all things normal? as far as she was concerned, there was nothing remotely 'normal' about her family. impulsive furniture buying aside, there was too much meek history to call them average american citizens. they couldn't even pretend to have the boring accents. quit your job to be an accountant, and make her mother bake pies all day, and maybe they could be considered all-american happy. these thoughts plagued her as she walked through the streets of valkyrie, california. she couldn't take it. not anymore. asking her father was out of the question. and we all know what it's like to ask her mother. she'd just have to do what she always did - play her role and keep secretive about it all. it's not like theres a google for her father's stupid dealings. well, let's play the role and socialize. with the three people she knew. three of whom she assumed didn't consider her a real friend, not anymore.

and then there's that whole meek history. ksenia couldn't consider herself normal, all things serbia aside. living in keizer, too much had happened. her relationship with carly wasn't like it was. not even close. things were still awkward, difficult to know where to cross the line. and if she could cross it at all. her expression softening into a mere frown, the russian female crossed the street that directly led into the shaks. deep into the more dangerous neighbourhood. what she wanted to ask carly, that didn't pertain to their history. not really. glancing her the screen of her cell phone, she saw the 'open' sign not glowing in window of bad seeds, the bar she knew she worked at. it was the best bet, rather than knocking on her front door. last she knew, the sutton family wasn't her biggest fan. best to go slow, she decided. rounding the large building, where the staff parking was located, she walked right up to the willowy silhouette she knew to be caroline sutton. "after everything i did to you, would you consider my named dragged through mud if i confessed something else?"[/size][/blockquote]

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STATUS, complete.
TAGGED, carly !
LENGTH, 1702 words.
ATTIRE, clicketh.
NOTES, i didn't know how to word it. i was thinking everything could start from bad wording, and misinterpretations? -shrug-
CREDITS, format and graphics to me.
lyrics to poets of the fall - "smoke and mirrors"

[Caroline Sutton]

VALKYRIE, CALIFORNIA, BAD SEEDS, EVENING, DECEMBER 2007

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-----it was surprising how the return of two siblings made the world feel whole again. carly liked to think that she wasn't clingy, that if she was alone in the world she could handle it on her own. but the truth of the matter was that she needed her family. she'd been around a mass of biologically linked people all of her life and without them her world just didn't seem to feel right. things didn't spin the right way or the right direction, up was down, you know. something just wouldn't sit right with her and she simply couldn't imagine going without. i mean just look at her. carly shared a room with her sister. she had to be the only teenager not to mind sharing a room with an older sister. sure it made things inconvenient at times, sure it was harder to keep her "bad seeds" secret with her sister breathing down her throat, but in the end she wouldn't sacrifice anything to make penny go. she wouldn't give up her sister for more space because the company was worth a whole hell of a lot more than having an entire closet to herself. her sister and her family were everything and it wasn't as if here in this new town that their circumstances had really changed. they were still a big family living in a small house. that kind of situation made things cramped and got people all in your business, but at the same time this was how carly was raised. she hadn't started life in big mansions like the rest of her family. by the time carly had come into the world the suttons had downgraded dramatically and had in a sense been happier for doing so. she'd never been in the kind of cold, marble environment where you hardly ever saw a family member even though they were under the same roof as you. that didn't sound like family. that sounded like a tragedy.

-----most kids her age wouldn't dream of spending one second more than they had to around family. all the poking and prodding to the teenage mind was like nails on a chalkboard but for carly that tended to be very different. they would turn away in the hopes that they would find some kind of individuality, but carly didn't have that problem. in the sutton family it was easy to find a voice. nate was the aggressively responsible mechanic who just liked to make sure the family's ducks were in a row even if that family member wasn't all too concerned with it. wes was the jokester and the money maker who didn't let things get to him. he brought the lighter side of family to the table. penny was the caring and compassionate one who would never leave you out in the cold, and especially not without some designer jacket that should have been found in a major store as opposed to on just some random stranger. carly was the outspoken, artistic one who wasn't afraid to go out and be bold but had the maturity to keep herself in check. honestly when you packed them all together you got a mixture of the perfect family. neither one overpowered the other. it was like the perfect mesh of people. almost too perfect. it seemed like in a sense no one else could fit in with the fantastic foursome. anyone else brought in would just set off the balance made and something would get lost there. well that was a matter for another day. they were all growing, all making the decisions that would ultimately effect their futures and there would come a time when the family kind of lessened in momentum to give way to the future. it was just inevitable. after all they couldn't stay together forever right? at some point they would have to start their own lives. it was a sad reality to a child who had grown attached to always being surrounded by people she loved but then again there were certain new people in her life that she couldn't imagine letting go of.

-----if it wasn't obvious by now, family meant everything to carly. the family was a unit and a tough egg to crack. it was hard to pull away from that and even harder when it seemed like it was the family that was pulling away from carly. the family was getting older. her siblings had always been light years ahead of her. they were six years older meaning when she started kindergarten her brothers and sister were already halfway through middle school and when she was starting middle school her other siblings had already graduated and were looking to start their lives. in a sense in was good to have siblings there who could double as parents when she needed them too but at the same time it was hard at times to relate to them. her family didn't want to color with her on construction paper when they had to worry about their first research projects. they didn't want to go to a bonfire with her and some people from school when they had to work for nine hours or look for college scholarships. in a sense it was hard. she had difficulty at times finding things to relate well with. they were all bonded by her mistakes and that had brought them all together there wasn't a time when she an someone else could just sit down together and work something out. it hadn't worked out well for them so far. and it was frustrating. at the point in time when carly had started straying from her family and had needed friends she couldn't have that relationship because she'd been pregnant an a blight on the small community of keizer. moving to valkyrie had given carly the kind of fresh start she needed but she wondered if underneath it all she'd really just done more damage to her family than she'd helped. her parents had benefited but now they were away from the familiar. nate, wes, and penny seemed to alright with it all but she knew deep down she'd pulled them away from the lives they'd been starting to help her settle her own.

-----when she thought about it that way it all sounded so selfish. actually the more she thought about it the more selfish she seemed to be. she'd moved her family here for her own sake, gotten a job no one would have approved of and was keeping it from them. what else would she be adding to that list later on? eh whatever. she had better things to worry about at the moment. the one thing carly could look forward to was work. she was grateful that she could say that. not everyone could. many people today took jobs they hated simply because they needed the money. carly took the job because she wanted it. had she even mentioned the idea of getting a job her parents would have told her not to. they didn't want her to live the way the rest of them did. they didn't want her to have to get a back breaking job early on in life just to make things easier for the rest of the family. not the way everyone else had sacrificed. what they wouldn't know was that working at bad seeds was as little a sacrifice as she could possibly get. it was everything she needed to be involved in in this new town. she pulled into bad seeds with her brother's new piece of crap car. wes had bought the green little box the moment he'd come home as a "helper car" for the family to use while he was away on his fishing trips. so what if he was still in town? she was going to use it anyways so why not get in some mileage now? hopping out, carly gave the bottom of her vest a little tug, securing it back in place over her jean shorts. she walked around the back of the car for something from the truck when she heard a familiar voice behind her. "well i'm not so sure. but i may be quick to drag you through the mud myself if you don't stop bringing up the past."

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status • finished
words • 1593
tagged • ksenly ?
clothes • clicketh !
notes • sorry this took so long. i got overwhelmed with illness, school, and 5 replies at once xD.

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