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Collapse | Levilia - Liliya Zdravkova - 08-27-2026
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Tuesday, 14 November 1922
~ 2:50 am ~
Harewood House, Liliya's Bedroom
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Tuesday, 14 November 1922
~ 2:50 am ~
Harewood House, Liliya's Bedroom
───────────────⋅☾ ☽⋅───────────────
Something soft welcomed her as she felt herself being lowered, disorienting and terrifying. Her hand was still clawed into the only anchor she had found, refusing to let go, white-knuckle-gripped. The only thing tethering her to reality, the only connection. Without it, she feared she was lost.
But she was pried away, finger by finger, tossed back into eternity, alone. Weak sobs grew more frantic, almost panicked, but the last of her energy finally dwindled and died after mere moments of fighting to hold on, and slowly, Liliya grew quiet.
Blackness and silence.
It was dark when her eyes opened. Quiet and still, wrapped in the kind of peacefulness only the dead of night could offer. Soothing.
Slow, lethargic. Something was pulling at the back of her mind, trying to drag her back under the surface, every limb heavy as stone. Liliya stayed conscious only long enough to trace the room’s outlines. The chair to her right turned to face her. Moonlight that fell through the tall window beyond, softening the darkness. Voices. Drifting over from somewhere farther, too soft to rise above a murmur and too low to distinguish.
She floated, unaware of anything. Things existed, and she did too, and everything just was. Only for a fleeting moment did something brush against the remnants of her conscious mind.
Hollowness, blue as the ocean.
Before she could understand, oblivion had already reclaimed her. Gentle nothingness engulfed her as she sank away.
RE: Collapse | Levilia - Lev Zdravkova - 08-27-2026
"You should have known."
"It's not the time, Danika."
"Maybe not, but you should have."
"Just...tell me what she needs."
His sister sighed, nodding as she moved back into Liliya's bathroom, fetching a fresh cloth and running it under the sink. "There isn't much you can do, Lev. Cold cloths help, but her mind has to heal itself. You know that too." Back into the room, pausing at the side of Liliya's bed as she pressed the damp rag to their cousin's head. Lev watched quietly.
He knew. She knew. Everyone in the family knew it was a matter of time and wills, if Liliya would recover from the torture her aunt had put her under. Having not moved from the chair beside her bed, Lev dropped his head into his hands, gripping at his short hair. He could feel his sister's eyes on him as he grappled with himself and the thoughts that rushed through his mind, none of them making any sense.
For a moment, her eyes fluttered a soft movement as Danika murmured something, and Lev lifted his head again, watching as Liliya slipped in and right back out of consciousness in the same moment. She'd do this all night and into the next day. Having witnessed it enough times, it was never an easy recovery, much less swift.
"You could try talking to her. It might help to pull her out of the pain at least."
Lev's eyes drifted back to his sister, but he remained stoic, choosing to say nothing.
RE: Collapse | Levilia - Liliya Zdravkova - 08-28-2026
~ 11:33 am ~
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Pupils shifting beneath fluttering lids, Liliya’s eyes opened.
Sunlight bathed the room in colour, too bright and glaring. A daze made everything seem hazy, too soft and strangely distant, like she was viewing the world through dirty glass, muffling sound and blurring movement. Pain flared inside her head, pulsing faintly with the beat of her heart. A soft moan hummed up her throat, delirium clouding her mind.
Something cool was pressed against her forehead, and without conscious thought, her hand lifted. Heavy and uncoordinated, her fingers fumbled for the source, grappling until they found purchase and pushed the sensation away. Shifting, Liliya tried to sit up.
Only then did she register him.
Halfway pushed onto her elbows, Liliya froze.
Her eyes fixed on the man’s face, wide and alarmed, the breath stuck in her lungs—stock-still, like a rabbit before a gun. Something about him seemed familiar, distant though, like a memory from a different life. Something she felt like she should recognise, but it was too far out of her reach, too flimsy and fickle.
Mist between her hands.
And yet, low panic began to thump inside her chest, growing more insistent with every passing second. An instinct that rose in shapes of fear she couldn’t explain.
Petrified, Liliya couldn't do anything but stare.
RE: Collapse | Levilia - Lev Zdravkova - 08-30-2026
Danika had left for lunch.
While Lev should have been at the office, working through his schedule and figuring out which families took priority in approaching, he'd stayed home, not caring one way or another how his father would react if and when he figured it out. One day away from the business wouldn't be detrimental, and for reasons he couldn't quite sort out, he was having trouble pulling himself away.
It had been a long night and an even longer morning. Despite Danika's insistence he sit there and talk to the girl who obviously couldn't hear a thing, he'd sat silently, unable to set aside his pride in front of his sister. It was one of those things he'd never...exactly struggled with, but displays of outward emotion, especially softer ones had been beaten out of him long ago. Their father didn't suffer anything that he saw as weakness, and Lev knew well that he'd disappointed his father enough in the past several months.
Even if he wanted to, Lev didn't think he could do it. He'd suffer an embarrassment that he didn't know how to navigate if his younger sister watched him soften into something unrecognizable in front of her.
With her gone, he supposed he didn't need to concern himself with such things. Dabbing gently at Liliya's forehead with the washcloth, he froze momentarily as her hand suddenly raised. He followed it as it landed at his wrist and with what strength she had, pushed it away. He relented immediately, sitting up straight in his chair and pulling back a bit as her eyes opened, taking a moment before fixing their gaze on him.
His heart thumped.
Once.
Twice.
She didn't move, and neither did he. Both staring at one another in a moment of imposed stillness, the man's breath caught in his throat as time passed but he felt none of it. He could see what he thought was fear - something he'd watched haze over many men's eyes in dealings with their family - and he almost laughed with bitterness at it.
Now she was scared. Now she feared him. When he sat beside her bed with a fucking cold damp cloth, willing her mind to not be broken beyond comprehension.
It would have been comical if Lev hadn't lost all his sense of humor down in that basement.
"You're safe." It was all he could manage, as his back stiffened and he rose from the chair, moving quickly to the bathroom to hang the washcloth over the sink. Distractions. He needed distractions. "Danika will be back soon."
RE: Collapse | Levilia - Liliya Zdravkova - 08-31-2026
Safe.
Something about that felt off. Not quite right, but she had no way of figuring out what that meant. Her head felt too cloudy and heavy, unable to draw connections, motionless like pond water. Nothing seemed to stir a thing. Before she knew it, the man was on the other side of the room.
"Danika will be back soon.”
Danika.
Liliya’s eyes found their way to his face again, searching but lost. Her muscles were still tense with apprehension and uncertainty, but the initial panic slowly receded into something less urgent, settling as a careful simmer beneath her skin instead. For a moment, her eyes swept the room.
Her room.
Her vanity, her closet, her window, her bed.
Her fiancé.
Liliya’s brow creased, suspicion flickering behind her eyes as they settled on the man once more. There was something there, something ugly, twisted with bone-deep aversion and anger. And yet, she couldn’t put her finger on it. Her gaze swept the room another time before settling back on Lev.
Lev.
…Lev.
Sitting up against the headboard, Liliya dropped her gaze. She couldn’t think. Why couldn’t she think? No matter how hard she tried, it was as though a wall of stone blocked her from entering her own head, leaving her stranded in the physical world with nothing to reach back to. Confusion slowly gave way to helplessness. The longer her mind refused to stir, the more panic reemerged.
What was happening to her?
Heart thumping, Liliya’s eyes snapped back up to Lev, lips parting, but pain slashed through her throat before she managed a single word, cutting her off with a hoarse croak. Wincing, her hand flew to her throat.
Without truly understanding why, tears shot into her eyes, immediate and overwhelming, clenching around her chest. Before her consciousness could remember, her body did, and it drowned her in despair as she’d never felt before, mourning something she couldn’t grasp and dragging with it a loneliness too broad to comprehend. Swallowing felt impossible, but Liliya did anyway, cringing with the pain, grappling for meaning, trying to understand. Her eyes still searched Lev's as though she could find the answers there if only she looked long enough, but an involuntary jerk of her head pulled her gaze away.
The throb inside her head exploded with sudden ferocity.
Liliya grunted, bending over herself as her hands buried into her hair, palms pressing against her skull.
RE: Collapse | Levilia - Lev Zdravkova - 09-01-2026
The crack in her voice had him ducking his head back through the doorway.
Their eyes met, Lev waiting for whatever it was she was going to say. Did she need something? Water? Tea? Did she want her washcloth back? Her lips parted, and he waited what he thought was patiently, but the change in her expression unnerved him. Tears. His own expression softened without permission, and he swallowed hard, not sure what to do about the crying girl. When it was his sisters, it was easy. He held them, comforted and reassured them that everything would be fine.
But those were his sisters. Not his cousin who he had a tumultuous relationship with. Lev had never been a girl's peace, really. Even in school, when he'd had girlfriends here or there, he'd never been the sort of boyfriend that they'd wanted. He wasn't romantic or emotional. He could flirt, he could seduce. But anything that required some sort of deeper connection was lost on him.
He certainly didn't know how to be for his fiancée who no doubt hated him as much as she had the day before.
The figure of Liliya curled into herself caught him off guard, and his eyes immediately swept to her bedroom door, willing Danika to return. Lev was out of his element. He wasn't a caretaker, a healer, or any sort of soft escape that Liliya might need right now, but he was the only one here.
He could call for Nibby; the house elf was certainly more equipped than he was, but...
"It will pass, the pain." His words were much gentler than the stiff, dismissive few he'd given her moments before, and he pulled for his resolve, crossing the room to sit at the chair alongside her bed again. He'd been here, in her place before. The first few moments of cognizance were always the worst. Painful, confusing, terrifying. What her aunt had done was nothing short of ripping her mind apart, bit by bit from the inside out.
It wouldn't be an easy recovery.
His eyes fell to his lap, unsure if he should reach out a hand to comfort her, or just remain where he was. He opted for the latter, searching for words to say that might offer her some reprieve. "It helps if you remain laying down." He was struggling, but he didn't know what else to say. "Do you want anything? I can have Nibby bring you tea with lemon."
RE: Collapse | Levilia - Liliya Zdravkova - 09-02-2026
She felt him settle beside her rather than heard or saw him.
Her head still buried into the softness of her blanket, Liliya squeezed her eyes shut. The pain pulsed through her head like waves tearing across an ocean in a storm, and she tried to breathe against them, breathe with them, willing herself to ride out the worst of it. Everything else was blocked from her awareness.
After a moment, the pain eased.
Still there, but no longer slashing against the walls of her skull, it receded into the dull throb of before. Liliya released a shaky breath, her shoulder sagging as the hands buried in her hair went slack. For a moment, all she could do was breathe.
Frustration seeped into her misery. The clump of tears remained lodged in her throat like a stone.
"It helps if you remain laying down.”
Lev’s voice drifted in from beside her.
It sounded strangely unfamiliar. Too gentle and far removed from what her instincts insisted it ought to be. But she had no strength left to wonder. Exhaustion tugged at her again, and slowly she shifted, sinking back against the cushions with a quiet sigh.
The room’s earlier brightness seemed to have faded, leaving everything bleaker. Duller somehow. Her eyelids felt heavy, but she refused to let them close, staring instead past Lev and towards the window. Something about the leafless branches swaying beyond the glass made her feel numb.
"Do you want anything? I can have Nibby bring you tea with lemon.”
Liliya’s gaze flicked towards Lev. For a moment, she simply looked at his face. Then her eyes dropped, and she gave a small shake of her head.
She didn’t know what she wanted. Nothing, perhaps.
A moment passed before her lips moved. “Danika,” they formed, almost soundlessly, barely a whisper.
Anything but Lev.
RE: Collapse | Levilia - Lev Zdravkova - 09-03-2026
“Danika."
Lev swallowed, his eyes searching the room briefly for nothing, understanding immediately that he wasn't the one equipped for this. They'd both prefer if his sister was here, doing all the fussing. He didn't know what to say to her that would be helpful or mean anything anyway. Truthfully, Lev didn't even know if he had it in him to try. She hadn't deserved this but...he didn't know how to reconcile the violence that had taken place against his own sense of what she did deserve. It tore at him, thrashing and screaming as he fought to restrain and rationalize it.
It wasn't working.
"She'll be coming back soon -"
The door opened just in time, his sister wandering back through the door with a tray of fresh potions and soup.
"Oh good. I had hoped you'd be awake."
Danika looked to Lev. "How long?"
"Just a few moments."
"Has she said anything?"
Lev turned his gaze back to Liliya, sitting upright and watching the two of them as Danika spoke as if she weren't there, or perhaps deaf. He shook his head slightly, "Just asked for you." To Danika, she may have sensed the slightest hint of resignation in Lev's voice, but it was quickly pushed away in favor of a brisk manner again as he rose to take the tray from her. Danika hurried to Liliya's side, her hand coming to rest gently on the girl's cheek as she whispered soft words that Lev didn't try to hear.
Instead, he busied himself arranging the tray on a nearby table. He'd be useful where he knew how.
RE: Collapse | Levilia - Liliya Zdravkova - 09-04-2026
Danika arrived as though speaking her name had summoned her through the door, momentarily startling Liliya from her melancholy. Something hopeful flickered behind the barrier around her mind, despite the caution her instincts still insisted upon, but the sudden urgency to understand pressed harder than fear.
Danika almost looked jolly. She sounded like it too. Something about that felt strangely unnerving. Still, Liliya pushed herself upright, bones aching.
"Has she said anything?"
Liliya opened her mouth, but no words came. Only raw pain.
"Just asked for you.”
Her eyes flicked briefly toward Lev as he rose, took the tray from Danika, and busied himself in the corner of the room. Why was he here anyway? Why wasn’t he leaving? And why had Danika arrived as though she had been expecting this? Waiting for Liliya to wake.
The oddness of it all finally stirred something in her mind. Thick as tar, sluggish and reluctant to move, her thoughts barely managed to surface, but it was enough to let unease seep into the pitless hollow of her sadness.
Nothing made sense. Anxiety sparked inside her chest once more.
Danika’s hand on her cheek drew her attention to the young woman as she murmured soft words that did nothing to soothe. Liliya flinched away from the touch, confusion flickering across her face as her brow creased.
“You’re okay,” Danika said, smiling gently. Liliya’s frown deepened.
Another lie.
“Do you feel any pain? How does your head feel? I had the house-elves prepare some soup, in case you’re hungry. Chicken-and-leek broth. You like that, don’t you?”
Now, when the fuck had any of them ever cared for what she liked? Liliya couldn’t remember a single thing beyond the last ten minutes, but she knew that much. And it was weird.
Danika’s hand reached out for her forehead. “I had them make the British version—”
Liliya batted her cousin’s hand away, heart thumping. She didn’t care about chicken broth, Russian or British. She couldn’t care less. She wanted to know—
“What happened?”
The scrape of her voice was rough, painful, but Liliya couldn’t bear it anymore. Something was wrong. Something was off. Her eyes darted between Danika and Lev. She racked her mind for answers, but found only fog.
“What happened?”
RE: Collapse | Levilia - Lev Zdravkova - 09-08-2026
“What happened?”
Lev didn't turn back towards Liliya and Danika, letting the question fall unanswered into the space of the room. With time, her memories would return, and with it, her hatred of him. Was it rightfully deserved? Whether it was or wasn't, Lev had it anyway. He supposed she had some right, after what her aunt had done to her. He'd delivered her to Nadežda. What more was there to say?
Lev had never been the type to downplay his role, even when it was uncomfortable or possibly put him in a bad light. He owned the things he did, having been taught from an early age that men were accountable to their actions and they stood behind them. Did he stand behind this?
Not in the slightest, but he would still own his role in it, without trying to shrink away from it. If she despised him even more once she realized, then that was the consequence to his action.
It made him stop for a moment. Did he care...what Liliya thought of him? Prior to the night before, he supposed he could earnestly say no. He couldn't imagine that had changed in a few short hours, but there was definitely something brewing in his chest that felt different. Shame? Lev had to admit, he didn't know. Emotions and feelings were never anything he had paid much attention to, much less given real room to breathe. Now that he lingered a bit, he found everything felt so much more confusing than it previously had.
“What happened?”
She asked again, her voice hoarse and raspy from all the screaming the night before.
"Nadežda."
Danika answered for them as Lev fussed with the bottles, uncorking the pain potion and turning to cross the room again, handing it off to his sister. The look Danika gave him was cold, pointed, urging him not to be a coward about things and say the harder things out loud. He frowned for a moment, not believing it was the best time to overwhelm Liliya, but when had their family ever cared about compassionate timing?
"You were caught having your affair with the stable boy," Lev said quietly, turning his gaze to his cousin. "I took you down to Nadežda. She was only meant to...." he stopped himself and straightened a bit, trying to rid himself of the uncomfortableness that suddenly took him. "She went further than she was supposed to."
He turned his attention back to his sister. "Let me know if anything changes." Danika nodded silently, sitting on the edge of the bed to offer Liliya the pain potion. Without another word, Lev avoided his cousin's gaze and left the room as stiffly as he had entered.
RE: Collapse | Levilia - Liliya Zdravkova - 09-08-2026
Like an arrow, her aunt’s name pierced through the fog engulfing her brain, and for a moment, everything seemed to still. Nadežda’s face flashed behind her eyes. Her smile—small and cruel. The tip of her wand, raised and pointing straight at her. A snapshot. Blurry and dull, motionless.
Liliya’s brows drew together as her gaze drifted towards the window. She tried and tried to push through the haze, to claw her way deeper into the poisoned recesses of her mind, but there was nothing else. Only that one image. A high-pitched ringing had drowned out what little noise filled the room. Her heartbeat slowly thudded against her ribs. The sound reverberated inside her skull like the beat of a drum.
"You were caught having your affair with the stable boy."
Lev’s voice slowly pulled her back. Quiet. Distant. As though her ears were stuffed with cotton, head swimming below the surface. Her eyes found his, face blank, lips parting.
Stable boy.
Brown hair. Dark eyes.
"I took you down to Nadežda. She was only meant to....”
Her thoughts seemed to move in slow motion, trudging through waist-deep mud, endlessly slow.
"She went further than she was supposed to.”
Somehow, his words passed through her without settling. Her eyes followed him as he left the room, but she didn’t really see him go. Her consciousness was trapped inside her head, suspended in a drunken haze. The world seemed to move in blurry afterimages, like a film playing all around her that Liliya wasn’t taking part in.
She didn’t fully register Danika and the pain potion she was offering, still staring into space, into her own head, into fog.
“Liliya.”
Her eyes flicked towards Danika.
“Your pain potion.”
Her gaze dropped to the flask in her cousin’s hand. For several seconds, she simply stared at it before her brain finally caught up.
Liliya shook her head. Slowly, she sank back into the cushions of her bed and turned away from Danika, tugging her blanket up beneath her chin. Her eyes absentmindedly traced the tiny flowers patterned across the sheets as she lost herself in her head. After a while, the mattress shifted beneath Danika’s weight as she rose.
Liliya thought she heard her bedroom door close.
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Wednesday, 15 November 1922
~ 8:58 pm ~
Harewood House, Lev and Liliya's Shared Sitting Room
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Wednesday, 15 November 1922
~ 8:58 pm ~
Harewood House, Lev and Liliya's Shared Sitting Room
───────────────⋅☾ ☽⋅───────────────
Liliya had been in and out of sleep. All of yesterday, throughout the night, and most of today. Piece by piece, her mind had managed to find another tiny fragment of what had happened, attached it to Lev’s words, and begun to rebuild her memory.
It still felt jagged. Blotchy. The edges not connecting quite properly, but it was enough to understand.
She had been at Arundel. She had returned home. Rain. Nibby. Lev. The basement. Nadežda.
The ball of stone still hovering deep within the depths of her mind.
She didn’t dare touch it.
Danika came and went at regular intervals. Liliya refused every potion and most of the food. She didn’t feel hungry. She didn’t feel anything at all.
A part of her demanded anger. Fury and fire, a heart-wilting hatred reserved mostly for Lev, but generally for all of them. But she couldn’t find the strength. Couldn’t find the purpose. Another part of her felt like it had died. And the rest couldn’t bring itself to fight. It couldn’t care.
Liliya hadn’t left her rooms beyond the threshold of her bedroom since she’d woken. How she had ended up by the window in her shared sitting room was lost to the fog of her mind. The haze still clouded most of her brain, drifting in lazy swirls of sadness. The grounds were cast in darkness, and really, Liliya was staring at her own reflection more than anything beyond the glass. Somehow, she hadn’t moved in what felt like hours.
Thinking.
Trying to remember.
The door suddenly opened.
Liliya flinched. A gasp caught in her throat as she spun around, one hand flying to her chest while the other clung to the windowsill at her back. But nothing could have prepared her for the sight waiting across the room.
Staring at Lev’s beaten face, Liliya forgot to breathe for a moment. Eyes wide, her gaze darted from the bruises to the blood, to the rumpled state of his shirt and back to his face. Emotion flickered behind her eyes, vacillating from confusion to concern to hesitance and apprehension, each warring with the others.
“What—” Her voice was little more than a breath. “You—”
Hesitantly, Liliy took a small step forward, her hands curling into the fabric of her skirts.
“Who—”
RE: Collapse | Levilia - Lev Zdravkova - 09-11-2026
One step in front of another.
A soldier never stopped. It didn't matter if his very limbs were hanging broken and nearly severed from his body. He kept moving. He kept fighting. A man, a real man, didn't lie down and accept defeat when it came for him. He stood and stared defeat in the face, willing to push on until there wasn't an ounce of life left in him.
His feet shuffled against the cold marble, blood dripping from his nose and mouth, leaving a bright crimson trail in his wake. With every step, his ribs screamed out in agony, his lungs pressing against them like an anchor. The only noise he exuded was the harsh inhale and exhale through his lips, forcing air in where his body struggled to resist.
The stairs were the worst, but Lev wouldn't allow anyone to help, even if they offered. Despite how injured he knew he was, it wasn't the worst his father had ever done to him. It was close, but Lev knew Oleg could have truly broken him if he'd wanted to. There was no use fussing over the pain or asking for help, with the knowledge that he could have been unconscious, dragged back up to his room by the house elves.
His vision blurred, throbbing with black that edged in to the corners of his eyes. He grimaced, and immediately chastised himself for doing so as he held onto the railing, his legs shaking violently with each climb. He could make it, if he endured. If he kept pressing. If he didn't let himself succumb.
What kind of man would he be, if he fell dramatically onto the stairs, body bruised and bloody for Danika or Liliya to find?
As he ascended the final step, he stopped for a moment, swaying on his feet, before he knelt forward and vomited his stomach contents onto the floor. Red seeped in with the sick. Lev didn't know if it was the blood from his mouth or if there was another source of bleeding within, but he could hardly give it a moment's consideration when the world was caving in on him.
He stumbled through the door of his and Liliya's shared sitting room, barely registering the shape of his cousin at the window.
“What—You—”
He couldn't make sense of it. Were their words he was missing? The blows to his head must have wiped out all sense of cognizance or reasoning, missing entire sentences where there should obviously be some. He barely managed to get the door shut behind him, before collapsing onto the nearest sofa.
“Who—”
Her voice hummed and buzzed as Lev fought to retain lucidity, but it was all catching up to him now. His head throbbed and tightened, the swelling in his eyes finally forced them shut as pain coursed through every inch of his abdomen like a wildfire. He tried to speak, but it came as a rasp, sputtering on his tongue as blood filled his mouth again.
"Father."
And then he was gone.
RE: Collapse | Levilia - Liliya Zdravkova - 09-13-2026
Liliya stared in quiet, breathless horror as Lev stumbled towards the nearest sofa and dropped into the cushions like dead weight. Every part of her body felt as though it had forgotten how to move.
She had never seen him like this before.
Always proud, always tall, always composed. A walking, breathing statue, exuding reserved authority and cool distance, striding down the halls of Harewood House as though he commanded the world, and nothing in it could impress him enough to shift the ever-rigid expression he wore like armour.
Never broken like this.
His face was so bloody and swollen she had trouble recognising it. His feet dragged against the floor. His body bent in on itself, eyes unfocused, movements sluggish. His voice—hoarse and weak—raspy on the one thing he managed to say.
“Father.”
Liliya didn’t move, frozen and shocked. Her eyes remained fixed on the shape of his battered face.
The word took an unbearably long time to process. It floated through her brain like vapour before finally finding somewhere to settle, solidifying into conscious thought.
Oleg had done this? But why? What could have possibly moved him to do this? His favourite son, his perfect heir, the spitting image of himself. His right hand.
To Liliya, Lev had never been anything more than an extension of his father. A copy. An admirer and follower. Not yet as cold, perhaps, but advancing steadily toward it. It was only a matter of time before the little humanity Liliya had thought she saw in him died, as it must have in Oleg long ago, leaving her with the shell of a future husband made of nothing more than iron and ice and stone.
He didn’t look anything like that now.
It was as though a worldview set in stone shattered right before her eyes. And there was something there, buried deep in the fog of her mind, insistent. Something that understood exactly what this meant. Liliya couldn’t reach it.
After endless seconds of perplexity, Liliya finally broke from her stupor. Carefully, slowly, her feet carried her across the room, as if she feared startling some wounded, wild creature. Her hands still curled into the fabric of her skirt like a child clinging to its mother’s hand.
But Lev didn’t stir. For one heart-stopping moment, she thought he didn’t breathe. He was, though. Shallow. Uneven. He looked pained, even unconscious.
For a prolonged moment, Liliya simply stood and stared.
Fear of the man before her warred with anger over what he had done, clashed with the confusion of how he had ended up like this, fought against the almost instinctual knowledge that there was something here she couldn’t quite grasp—something monumental, even in its shrouded state.
Time seemed to stretch into infinity, silent and thick, before she finally pushed herself to think. Blinking, Liliya forcefully shook herself from her stupor.
“Nibby.”
The house-elf appeared by the door. His face fell the moment his eyes landed on Lev’s mangled form. Liliya didn’t give him the chance to ask.
“Nibby, I need—” She stopped, racking her brain through the endless sludge of barely graspable information, eyes squeezing shut against the low sting that now came whenever she tried to concentrate. “My wand.” She hadn’t seen it since she’d woken. Her brow furrowed, impatience with herself threatening to take hold of her. “Cold water,” she finally managed. “Clean linen. Bruise paste. Healing salve. Pain potion. Blood-replenishing potion.” A beat. “Danika.”
Her eyes fluttered open to look at Nibby. He nodded once and was gone in the same breath. Liliya’s gaze returned to Lev.
Ignoring the unrelenting war inside her chest, she swallowed—and then knelt.
Nibby returned faster than seemed possible.
“Here, miss.” The potions and salves appeared beside her on the floor at the snap of his fingers, neatly arranged on a tray. A bowl of water materialised beside it, along with a pile of linen and, last, her wand. Liliya nodded.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice thinner than she expected, the smile barely there.
Nibby twisted his hands anxiously. “Miss Danika is not in her room, Miss Liliya. I do not know where she is. I will look.”
Liliya swallowed another time, nodding once more. “Okay. Thanks, Nibby.”
He vanished into thin air, leaving behind only silence.
Liliya took a breath and rose to her knees. Carefully, her hands found the wrinkled collar of Lev’s shirt, fingers trembling as they fumbled with the first button at his throat.
RE: Collapse | Levilia - Lev Zdravkova - 09-14-2026
Thursday, November 16, 1922
1:00 AM
Lev stirred slightly as the potions finally settled within his bloodstream, coursing and dragging him towards his consciousness.
It had only been a few hours, but the darkness had felt like a lifetime for the man that was used to fighting through whatever challenge presented itself to him. It wasn't the first time he'd passed out after one of his father's beatings, but it was the first in years and the shock to his system had taken its toll.
His eyes fluttered momentarily, as he tried to make sense of where he was. Had he made it to his bed? The last he remembered was the top of the stairs, sick splashing onto the marble floor as he keeled over on himself. Velvet cushions, the soft combination of vanilla, bergamot and jasmine filling his nose, and the sense of cold air along his exposed skin.
The house elves must have found him. Carted him back to the room and tore open his shirt to try and heal the -
His eyes fluttered momentarily, less swollen now thanks to whatever magical healing had been used, only to fall on the icy blues of Liliya's. He froze, breath catching in his throat at the feel of her fingertips on the bare skin of his chest, applying something cooling and thick along his ribs. For a moment, they stared at one another, neither attempting the slightest movement, as though they were prey trying to outwit the predator who'd cornered them.
What was she doing? Danika...or the house elves...they always cared for him in the rare case he had injured himself, but Liliya had never so much as offered him a kind word over a headache. His head spun, dizzying his vision once more and his head fell back against the throw pillow. He closed his eyes, willing the nausea that took hold to dissipate, lest he humiliate himself all over again in front of her.
As though lying there, half-dead with his shirt open wasn't humiliating enough.
"You don't have to." His words came soft, quiet and raspy, the taste of blood having been washed from his mouth, but his throat still on fire from all that had pooled there. She didn't. Lev would never assume that Liliya owed him this type of care, just like he didn't assume she owed him herself in carnal matters. He'd tried to assert control over her in different ways, but he was now faced with the realization that his methods hadn't worked and had only served to worsen things between them.
Without thinking his hand reached out, clasping around Liliya’s as he stilled her movements. His eyes opened again, training themselves on the image of the girl he was meant to accept as his wife one day. A girl that had never shown any interest or gentleness towards him, or him to her.
What was happening?
RE: Collapse | Levilia - Liliya Zdravkova - 09-15-2026
That first moment Liliya had seen the full scope of Lev’s injuries—face bloody, swollen and beaten, shirt undone, ribcage exposed—her stomach had nearly turned over in quiet horror and repulsion. Bruises had already begun to spread along his sides and abdomen, darkening beneath his skin in gruesome blooms. Sickening. Harrowing to look at. Even on Lev.
She had never seen a man injured like this before. Had never stood in the aftermath of another’s assault, so brutish and starkly real, incomprehensible. Oddly captivating in the most startling of ways. Rattled to the bone by the sheer brutality of it all. Why had Oleg done this? Was this…the first time?
Liliya had certainly never witnessed anything like it in the three years since she had reunited with her family, nor had she ever questioned or suspected. Neither man had ever let anything show. Had she just not noticed? What had Lev done to earn this? What justified this?
Was there even anything?
Shaking the looping thoughts from her head, Liliya dipped her fingers into the bruise paste again.
Carefully, she spread it along his ribcage, following the darkened skin with light strokes. A little hesitant, a little tentative. The discolouration across his torso was bad, but not as bad as it could have been. Without treatment, she suspected most of him would be blue and black by now, swollen far worse than this. But not dead. Whatever had driven Oleg to rage against his son, Liliya couldn’t imagine he’d risk killing his own heir. Close enough, though. The thought made something twist inside her stomach.
Even though on some days—the bad ones—Liliya hadn’t shied away from secretly wishing Lev were dead, coming face to face with the very real possibility of it suddenly felt shameful. She still couldn’t say why. And she still didn’t know why the fuck she was doing any of this at all. He had treated her like shit from day one, had handed her to Nadežda, and yet here she knelt. Taking real good care of him, like a real good—
When Lev stirred, Liliya froze.
His eyes fluttered and then found hers, and for a moment they simply stared at each other. Liliya felt strangely caught, as though she had been discovered doing something she shouldn’t. Her heartbeat quickened, hard and erratic inside her chest. Apprehensive. Again.
Lev’s head fell back against the cushion, releasing her from his gaze, and Liliya swallowed. Her eyes dropped to his chest once more, her fingers continuing their light strokes, slower now.
"You don't have to.”
Liliya ignored him.
But Lev’s hand wrapped around hers, and Liliya startled before she grew impossibly still. Her gaze snapped to his, breath caught in her lungs. Expecting pain, her body tensed, fear flickering behind her eyes, but his grip never tightened. He never spoke. He never moved. He just stared at her.
Liliya stared right back.
“Danika isn’t home,” she said, sounding only half as confident as she would have liked, willing the slight tremble from her hands. “She went out.”
Silence stretched. She didn’t know what else to say, or what he wanted to hear. Was he mad? Annoyed? She couldn’t tell. She didn’t know anything anymore. Her brow creased faintly. The thought was enough to stir something less frightened into motion, something angrier. Not quite enough to pierce the heavy veil still draped around her shoulders like a cloak, but still—carefully, slowly, she tried to ease her hand from his.
“Someone had to take care of that,” she murmured, indicating his injuries with a flick of her eyes. Despite everything that screamed inside her to leave, Liliya reached for the bruise paste again.
RE: Collapse | Levilia - Lev Zdravkova - 09-15-2026
Danika had gone out. Of course she had.
His sister always had impeccable timing. Whether she was out with her vapid girlfriends or just running an errand mattered not, only that she wasn't available when needed. Was Danika meant to be at his beck and call? She would argue of course, that she was not, but she knew better. When any of the family needed her, she was meant to be ready.
Instead, she had left her responsibilities behind, forcing this uncomfortable situation. He'd have words with her later, perhaps when his skull didn't feel like it was cracking at the sutures.
He said nothing, letting Liliya pull her hand from his. A strange absence that he didn't care to try and psychoanalyze at the moment took its place, but he merely looked away. Focusing on the ceiling, Lev exhaled deeply, grimacing at the ache that consumed his lungs. He'd thought, for a split second when their eyes caught, that he'd seen fear within hers. It was still fucking ironic to him, causing a wave of frustration to boil beneath his skin. It prickled his nerve endings, catching his breath in his chest as his jaw tensed and released again with the sharp pain it caused.
Why did it have to come to all of this? If his father had just secured him a fucking bride outside of the family, he likely would have enjoyed a more peaceful relationship. He could have been softer with a girl raised in the same sort of world as him. A girl raised to understand her place and duty as the wife of an heir. A girl who wanted to adapt and please; someone he wouldn't have had to fight at every turn until things had become so fucking volatile it left one bleeding and another twitching on the floor.
“Someone had to take care of that."
Someone. Someone had to. A joke if he'd ever heard one. There had never been someone, even when he'd needed one. Never a mother. Never a father. Never a warm uncle or aunt or grandparent he could find refuge in.
Lev took care of himself. It was what was expected, what he'd learned to do.
"I'm fine," he answered gruffly, brushing her hand away as he forced himself upwards, his hands clenching to the back and edge of the sofa. He grunted, his face scrunching as he settled upright, breathing heavily for a moment to try and expand his lungs wider. His gaze settled on her again for a moment, his lips parting slightly, before he swallowed hard. "But thank you." He didn't move from the sofa, realizing he wasn't ready to stand yet. He held his hand out for the paste.
"I can do it."
RE: Collapse | Levilia - Liliya Zdravkova - 09-15-2026
Lev brushed her hand away before she could continue applying the paste.
Liliya watched him push himself upright, grunting and breathing heavily, her own expression unmoved. ‘Fine’ looked different to her, but when had Lev ever been anything but stubborn and stoic? He had always swatted away her attempts at gentleness right from the very start, the small ways in which she had tried to extend a hand and draw something other than a correcting word or reprimand from him, something human. Something warm.
But he hadn’t seemed capable of it. Still didn’t. Eventually, she had stopped trying.
And then everything had led to this. A subtle air of dismay that always hovered just beneath the surface, born from irritation and aversion that never seemed to ease. They both breathed it as freely as oxygen, feeding into it with every sharp word, every slight, every act of defiance. They had fuelled what had once been embers, fanned into fire until neither of them seemed able to remember what had existed before.
It was there. Always there.
Her hands loosely cradled the little jar against her chest as she looked up at him from where she still knelt on the floor, strangely unwilling to go.
His eyes settled on her once more.
"But thank you."
Surprise flickered across her face before she could catch it, drawing her brows together into an expression that almost looked concerned. Had she misheard him? Maybe her brain didn’t quite catch up. Everything still seemed to require an eternity to process, so the possibility wasn’t far-fetched. Either way, Liliya didn’t move when Lev extended his hand, asking for the paste. Her gaze dropped, lingering on his palm for a beat before flicking back to his face.
“No.”
She didn’t know why she said it. She didn’t know why she suddenly felt defiant or why some unexpected spark inside her seemed ready to smack him across the head with the jar if he tried to argue. Maybe it was muscle memory. A subconscious reaction ingrained into her system, an instinctive tendency to oppose anything Lev demanded of her.
Maybe it was something else, but Liliya lacked the brainpower to interpret it.
It was her time to brush his hand away. “I’ll do it,” she said, fixing him with a determined look as she caught his hand in hers and gently, but no less firmly, pushed it aside. Scooping up some paste with one finger, Liliya spread it carefully over another bruise.
Her eyes remained trained on his injuries. Silence stretched between them until finally, she couldn’t help herself any longer.
“Why did he…” Her voice had lost the firmness of before, quieter and threaded with a genuine desire to understand. Liliya forced herself past her hesitation. Her gaze briefly lifted to Lev’s face. “Why did he do this?”
RE: Collapse | Levilia - Lev Zdravkova - 09-16-2026
“No.”
She brushed his hand away and Lev could do nothing but stare. In the fog that still gripped his nervous system, he short-circuited, not quite understanding what she had said. It sounded like 'no'. She still wasn't handing over the paste. It wasn't new. She'd been defiant with him nearly since the beginning, but...why was she being defiant about this?
He stared at her, mouth slightly agape and brows furrowed. He didn't move, and if she looked close enough, surely she'd be able to see the confusion behind his eyes.
It was gentle. Care. It was intimate. Perhaps not in the sense one often thought to correlate with the word 'intimate', but it was. They'd never broken such a boundary. Never shared so much as a hug or a gentle hand-hold. He'd never brushed the hair out of her face, and she'd never even looked at him with a sense of affection.
Caring for his injuries, refusing to let him do it himself? That was reserved for someone he was close to, and in the absence of that, himself. He didn't know what to make of it all and it caused his head to split further, even while a warmth he'd never felt before began to seep through his chest.
“I’ll do it."
She would do it. For a moment, Lev just looked at her, even as she dipped her fingers into the paste and returned to his bruises. The gentleness of her touch lit tiny fires along skin, following the soft movements of her fingertips. It was a stark contrast to the harshness of his father's; the hatred that Oleg's physicality had brutalized across his body. Now, he felt his body relax, slowly, muscle by muscle, tendon by tendon. Each one uncurled from the tension he'd harbored from the moment he'd realized it was her.
It was comforting. Unexpected. He didn't deserve it, he knew that, but he appreciated it all the same, and the way it made the anger he'd let boil begin to dissipate a bit.
“Why did he…Why did he do this?”
Why.
Lev had never questioned why. Now or any of the other times it had happened. It just did, and then he moved on. What did lingering on the whys matter? All it would do was anger him, and the answer would never come anyway. He knew on some level, his father's justification, but the deeper why? Why did he beat his children? Why couldn't he care for them the way other fathers might have? They weren't things Lev ever questioned, or even wanted to.
Should he?
It wouldn't stop it from happening again.
It took him a moment as his gaze broke from her and moved across the room. Did he tell her the truth? Or did he brush it off like he would for anyone else? For a beat, he considered not answering, but she was doing something kind for him, for whatever reason he couldn't decipher, and he supposed he could open a little in return.
"He said I disobeyed him," his quiet answer came, "When I tried to intervene with Nadezda and stop her from doing what she did to you." He swallowed hard but continued, "And for not going to work to ensure you were alright. But it doesn't matter, Liliya. He does what he wants."
It was as simple as that.
RE: Collapse | Levilia - Liliya Zdravkova - 09-18-2026
Contrary to her worry, Lev didn’t push her away. He didn’t say a word. As confused as his lingering gaze was, he let her continue applying the bruise paste, and a tiny part of her felt almost relieved. A little less cold. As with so many things since waking up the day before, Liliya couldn’t explain the feeling, and she didn’t try. Perhaps she simply wanted to know. Understand. Make sense of what her brain couldn’t catch up with on its own—a sensation so harrowingly unfamiliar, so frightening, that she didn’t dare ponder it for too long.
Eventually, her mind would recover. Eventually, her head would go back to normal. She had to believe that.
Until then, Lev was the only one to turn to. However much the thought sat askew inside her chest, a sharp little thing pressing right against her sternum, the need to find the missing puzzle pieces overrode even her instinct to stay away, flaring to life every time she looked at him.
He didn’t answer right away, and for a moment, disappointment trickled through her, heavier than she had expected. But he did speak. And his words did nothing to answer her questions. It only confused her further.
Liliya’s fingers stilled as her head snapped up, bewilderment etched across her face, and the hand spreading the paste dropped into her lap.
“What—”
Her eyes closed for a second.
The chaos in her mind was too wild to form coherent thoughts, let alone words. A dull throb began pulsing at the back of her skull. A hundred things surfaced from the fog of her mind, in and out of sight, faster than she could grasp any one of them. Everything felt equally urgent, equally demanding.
She forced her eyes open.
“Why would you stop her?” The question came almost incredulously, as though suggesting it were the most absurd thing in the world, and maybe it was. Her brow furrowed deeper. “You took me to her. You dragged me into the basement. You waited for me to come home so you could—”
She stopped. A spark of anger reignited then, flashing briefly behind her eyes.
For one minuscule, fleeting fraction of a second, Liliya wondered how loud she could make him grunt if she punched him square in those bruised ribs. Whether he would bend over and groan in pain, look at her with hatred burning in his eyes. Whether it would hurt as much as losing the one thing she had always been proudest of—her ability to think.
The thought vanished before it could settle, chased away by another.
“Why would you stay home?” she added. There was no accusation on her voice, no resentment. Only genuine bafflement. At the back of her head, a clawing ache began to crawl along the ridges of her skull, digging deeper with every second, but Liliya ignored it. “Why would you care? Danika was there. You didn’t have to be.”
A beat. Her voice cracked almost inaudibly.
“You’ve never cared about me.”
The pressure crushing her head from all sides tightened unbearably. Liliya squeezed her eyes shut, her face scrunching as she dropped her chin to her chest with a low grunt. Frustration seeped back in, colouring her voice nearly desperate.
Her hands opened and dropped in a helpless gesture, a sigh of defeat deflating her chest, rounding her shoulders.
“I thought you liked your father.”
Absolutely nothing made sense.
RE: Collapse | Levilia - Lev Zdravkova - 09-18-2026
“Why would you stop her?”
He thought he understood her confusion, even as she continued asking. She'd already been far from her mind by the time Lev realized what was happening and had tried to stop Nadežda from continuing. She'd have no memory of it, therefore, no real understanding of what had taken place. It had confused him, even in the moment, feeling his anger so visceral with Liliya, and yet still unwilling to see his cousin tortured to the edges of her mind for it.
“You took me to her. You dragged me into the basement. You waited for me to come home so you could—”
He sighed through his nose, but didn't answer right away. This was a conversation that needed to happen when she wasn't so emotional and he wasn't so exhausted and wracked by pain. Lev knew she wanted to understand, but he hardly thought himself in a place to have such a complicated conversation. He didn't expect it to soothe the jagged edges between them. There wasn't some expectation he held that as soon as he told her everything, she'd smile and jump into his arms and declare him her hero.
Simply put, people were complicated, made more so by emotions. Precisely why he always fought so hard to suppress his own.
“Why would you stay home? Why would you care? Danika was there. You didn’t have to be.”
She was right. He didn't have to stay home. Danika handled everything fine, while he had sat rigid and awkward, not knowing what to do to help. He supposed he hadn't exactly been trying to help, only to ensure that....Liliya was alright. Because there was something inside of him, despite everything, that couldn't settle if he didn't know.
“You’ve never cared about me.”
Was that true? A few days ago, Lev would have agreed. That he didn't care; that he was fine if she ruined herself as long as she didn't take the family down with her. His father could have sold her off to the highest bidder and Lev would have helped the house elves pack her belongings with a smile on his face. Now...he still didn't think they were a good match. He still didn't think a marriage was feasible between them. He still thought it were better should she leave and marry into another family.
But in his own way, Lev had cared. He had cared enough to protect her in the beginning. To cover for her lies and try to guide her in the only way he knew how. It was his version of care, even if it didn't look the way she had wanted it to.
“I thought you liked your father.”
Lev stilled at the words, a cold chill running over her exposed skin. His head crushed in on itself, but he didn't grimace or even close his eyes. He pushed through, allowing the pain to course its way through, a reminder in the future, the next time he thought about 'disobeying' Oleg Zdravkova.
"I respect my father." Like had nothing to do with anything. There were few people Lev had genuinely liked in his young life, fewer that he loved. His siblings were at the top of the short list, all of them. People he would go to the ends of the earth for if they needed him to. A few friends here and there who he managed to find things in common with. Humor, hobbies, outlooks on life.
Oleg had never been one of them.
"Liliya, for fucks sake, you were fucking a stable hand at the Laurences' castle! Do you understand what that sort of thing could do to the family? To the reputation we have worked to build in England? Thank Dazhbog that your friend's cousin was willing to handle this discreetly." He sighed, letting his head fall to the back of the sofa. She had a lot of nerve acting so put out, when she had made her entire bed. He'd only laid her in it.
Lev waited a moment, letting the anger calm before he continued. "I stopped her because she didn't do what we agreed upon. She was only meant to go surface level. To make you understand that you can't keep doing shit like this." His fists clenched, but he released them immediately, forcing himself to stay present. "I never wanted her to torture you or break you." It was overkill.
"And...I don't know why I stayed." It was something he went back and forth with himself. "I just did."
He was quiet a moment, before he spoke again, this time his voice laced with something he'd never heard before. "I don't want to keep doing all of this."