All By Design: A Nikolai Lantsov Series

Chapter Nine: all of me changed

this chapter's song: midnight rain

Nikolai Lantsov is wandering blind, and he really doesn't know what he's supposed to do about it. The flashes of cameras go off haphazardly, making Nikolai even more unsure that he isn't in a dream. Maybe he is in a dream after all, it certainly would make more sense. Maybe all of this is a hallucination. As if anything has ever been truly real about the life he leads.

He's outside, lingering somewhere on the outskirts of a crowded building. If Nikolai poses for just one more photo, maybe even two, he won't have to go in, won't have to face the wolves. He paces and smiles and does his best not to hem himself in. Just like every other thing in his life, the meager freedom doesn't last.

Nikolai Lantsov, heir to his family's fame and fortune, is wrapped in a shiny new tux, wandering the fringes of a charity gala. Nik himself is stuck somewhere in the past, driving down the streets of a ghost town. There's an address he'd like to reach, an apartment with the lights on and waiting for him. He thinks that someone would be inside if he could just find his way back home.

Home is not killing time in Nikolai's absence, however. It is long gone, if it was ever truly his at all. The roads Nikolai passes are in ruins, his one time paradise now a wasteland. It is shocking how much the vanished months can kill your memories, dull any pain and make it something you'll never have again. Nikolai could keep driving until his car breaks down and still be unable to find his way back to that golden period in his life in which, for far too short a time, everything made sense.

For once, Nikolai has forced himself to confront it. He has no girl at his side, no one in a shinier dress who'll draw eyes away from the shadows in his frame. Nikolai must rely on himself to keep up the act that all is fine, all is well. Usually it doesn't bother him. Today, now, has become the exception.

He is the same as he has always been, yet somehow unavoidably different. His hands are just as capable of breaking pretty things as ever, his hair still shines like gold wire, his body can still move and run like always, but Nikolai is not the Nikolai that attended this same gala one year ago. He doesn't know that he ever could be that man again.

Unable to hide no longer, Nikolai waves one last time at the rows of photographers and slips inside. The gala takes place in a massive yacht club resort on some stretch of the beach where no one pays their taxes, host to plenty of space for Nikolai to get lost and never be found. He opens the door, walks down a central hallway, and already begins to plot how quickly he can leave. Irish goodbyes were always his favorite, anyway.

Nikolai isn't late, not more than fashionably, at any rate, but the complex is already filled with people. He can see scores of old money dynasties wining and dining, all trying to outdo each other with stories of mansions bought and sold, girls traded like playing cards for the best night, the best rumors.

Nikolai is used to these sorts of ventures. He's a Lantsov, Saints damn it, and that means he's been to every gilded reception and outing this side of Ravka has to offer in the years since he took over the job of upholding the family legacy. He's used to floating through the packs of people, smiling at some, withholding biting comments about others.

This gala is no exception. Nikolai wouldn't be here if he didn't have to be, but he says that about every event he goes to. Nikolai's life isn't just fuelled by scripts and acting jobs, after all. Half of acting is what you do behind the camera. That includes showing up to the fetes and jubilees when the perfectly manicured invitations come his way, bound in silk ribbons and printed on thick, cream-colored cardstock.

This is a big gala, too, known for hosting every celebrity worth their overpriced salt. Actors and actresses line the walls, singers and songwriters whisper behind closed doors, fashion designers and models strut towards open bars. The prestige of the gala means Nikolai is here, but it also means– it also means–