AN: Here's a glimpse into the Masked Mind for y'all. My movie/show-selecting ethos is generally as follows: watch something (usually because it's an adaption of a book or play I like, or sometimes because I'm assigned to watch it for a class), latch onto the performance or look of a particular actor in the piece, and proceed to bust through either all or choice parts of that actor's CV. This tried and true method led me to the Russian-language, Ukrainian-made arthouse-esque film Приятель Покойника (Friend of the Deceased in English), which I found a couple of weeks ago and watched three times in the span of two days. I absolutely LOVED it. It was somewhat reminiscent of Shallow Grave for me, with the juxtaposition of apartmental domesticity, dysfunctional relationships, and some murder for spice, but much more quietly paced. Very character-driven. In short, exactly the sort of film I both aspire to write and love to watch.

A quick plot summary: after the fall of the Soviet Union, Ukraine's economy is in shambles, leaving translator Anatoliy (main character) struggling to find work. His much more successful wife, Katya, has been hedging around leaving him for over a year, and has started an affair with a coworker. Tolya is very depressed. So when he reconnects with an old school friend, Dima, who, upon hearing of this affair business, recommends Tolya contact an acquaintance of his who's a hitman, Tolya decides to take out the hit on himself, and gives himself just a couple more days to live after watching Katya move out with the other dude. But fate intervenes, and the cafe where he's supposed to meet the hitman closes early. Tolya decides to live it up for a night and goes home with a prostitute named Lena (her "stripper name" is Vika), who convinces him that life is worth living after all. There's just the problem with this hitman, who's still hunting him down-so he contacts a separate hitman to kill the first one. Then finds out that the dead hitman is survived by a young wife and newborn child. Conscience smacks him in the face, so he decides to make amends by helping the family out. Etc. Fun stuff.

I was struck by the urge to write fanfic for this film, and couldn't wait until I'd finished more chapters of my ongoing prompt fic to do so. So here's my brain's reflective ramblings. Enjoy!

Katya

Sometimes she couldn't bear how lonely she felt in bed alone.

It was ridiculous. To feel cold was sensible, worthy of sympathy; even with her salary they rarely had enough money for heat now. But to feel lonely, to crave not only the physical warmth but the hapless affection seared into another's embrace, almost hurt. Just ridiculous, and useless, even hypocritical, given that the decision to sleep apart had been hers to begin with.

And it wasn't as though they'd ever been particularly affectionate, before. A marriage of minds, her parents had always groused: Dad jokingly, Mom warbling notes of despair that she'd never been quite able to bring herself to hide, not even to Tolik's face. Wishful thinking though it might have been, Katya had always suspected that if his parents had lived to see them meet and marry, they would have been rather more appreciative of the match.

Besides, a marriage of minds was still a marriage, and a marriage was, above all else, a partnership. In an ideal world, one based in principles of equity and reciprocity that rarely played out in practice. All her life she'd been resigned to carving away bits of herself, with varying degrees of finesse, in varyingly vain attempts to please men who seemed to flock to her only for her looks, who needed to be cajoled or sometimes strong-armed into staying for more. Tolik was different. Still was, no matter how much of a stranger he seemed to her now. Tolik asked for nothing: not her body, not her help, not even her time. He asked for nothing, but, like some starving stray animal, eagerly lapped up even the smallest bone of affection she deigned to throw his way.

Gold, he called her. Beautifully inhuman. Fool's gold, more like.

In the beginning it had been thrilling, almost frighteningly so, to feel so cherished despite giving so little. Oh, it is well to have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant...and in the darker depths of self-reflection she could admit that the power had gone to her head. That she had grown carelessly accustomed to taking from someone who expected unsentimental, unapologetic abandonment with almost blasé indifference, who would tear himself to pieces if she asked him to, if only to try and secure for himself just a scrap of her company.

But part of her yearned to give. And that part of her resented him, for not letting her. For not challenging her. I'm going out with some work friends, don't wait up if you don't want to come. He never came (but nearly always waited up). We're seeing my parents next weekend, where's that nice shirt I bought last month? In the closet somewhere, don't worry, it's clean. Not tonight, dear, I've got a headache/I'm tired/I'm not in the mood/etc. To the divan he would skulk, without another word. Like a stray goddamned animal.

She didn't know, really, when the odd night on the divan had become most nights. Every night. She wasn't sure she wanted to know. Tolik probably did; hell, he'd probably written it down, date and time to the second. And then burned the note over the eternally-leaky sink, like she'd caught him doing once to a stack of jobs offers from the classifieds that had rejected him. She hadn't had the heart to tell him to clean up the ashes after she'd seen the way his eyes pressed closed and his shoulders slumped, exhausted beyond reason by the same day-in-day-out cage match for existence that so invigorated her. Because that was the sort of person he was; the sort of person who, once upon a bygone time, she'd loved.

Loved no longer. Cared for, felt for, sure. But not loved. Of that, as of nearly nothing else in this sadsack, uprooted world, she could be nearly certain.

Except she was still so damned lonely. And the worst of it was, she couldn't very well ask him to come back to their bed when she'd been the one to drive him out of it. It wasn't as thought she could ever expect him to take some fucking initiative and demand his place back. He had too much pride for that, anyway: too much pride and nowhere near enough brass. She wouldn't ever return late from a night out with the girls in her department, or, God forbid, with Alyosha, to find Tolik sprawled on the long-empty right side of the bed, reaching across to her pillow the way he used to. She would never be around to see the day he forced himself to acknowledge that he belonged there, on the right side of that bed. Not across the fucking room, huddled face-down and shivering on that fucking divan that was too small even for her to lie comfortably on, like a barely-welcome guest in his own fucking house. His own fucking life.

Lena

She's gone now. Three simple words. Simple, but oh so damning; three words, and

she could see the whole tragicomedy of this Tolik's life play out behind her eyes. Boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl fall out of love. He was far from the first john from whom she'd heard the same, and she doubted he'd be the last. But something about the way he said it dug sharp claws into her heart and refused to let go.

She's gone now. So matter-of-fact, almost flippant; he might just as easily have been talking about the damn weather for all it seemed to matter to him. No tight anger, no hoarse sorrow. But Lena could see them both: in the way his shoulders stiffened, just slightly, as he clutched the threadbare blanket to his chest and turned away from her; in the glassy, unblinking stare he levelled at the dark room and empty bed opposite. Like he'd never shed tears before before and his eyes, begging for release, had no idea how to go about starting.

She'd met a man, once, who had fucked her in the flagstone courtyard of the Gertsen library; he'd pressed himself down onto her at such an angle that he'd ground the face of his watch into the dirty stone and shattered it. When they'd finished, when she'd flung his used condom into the nearby grass and pulled him back into the pool of grainy light beneath the security camera for a quick cuddle, she had pointed it out to him, laughing. In just that same detached tone he'd shrugged and muttered "I suppose I'll buy a new one." The police had found him dead in his apartment the next morning, hanging from the belt she'd ripped off of him. In his left breast pocket, right over his stopped heart, they'd found the broken watch.

It was the memory of that man that had pushed her to leave the bar with Tolik that first night, to give him her real name; that memory, which made her cling to him now. Some shadow of that nameless suicide skulked about him like smoke. The same ill-fitting suit and washed-out look, the same unhurried stride and nervous hands and almost tangible aura of loneliness that had long ceased to be a habit and now verged on an addiction. The same wretched ignorance of just how far over the proverbial cliff's edge they'd already flung themselves, how little way towards their ruin they had left to fall.

Lena knew that cliff, that edge. Knew them better than she'd ever known any lover. Nine years ago she'd flung herself over it; had hit the bottom laughing and hadn't stopped since. There were too many she'd seen follow, too many who hadn't been able to pick themselves up afterwards as she had, but had lain there, battered and bleeding, wearily resigned to death. Tolik, she was sure, for all that she'd only known him less than a week in the dark, would be only too content to join their ranks if left to his own devices. And if she died trying, goddammit, she wouldn't let it happen. She couldn't. Not again.

Marina

Probably she should've been more put out by the fact that Kostya had never introduced her to his associates. Probably any other woman would've been, in her place. But she knew Kostya too well to expect anything else from him. He had always been meticulous to a fault, compartmentalising even the most insignificant trivialities of life. Just looking inside his underwear drawers made her sweat. So of course it went without saying that home was home, work was work, and that home and work should, could, never mix.

She had only ever met Dima, and that only once, because when Mishka was born he'd given Kostya the name and number of his own kids' babysitter and offered to bring the baby round to his place if Kostya and Marina ever wanted a day to themselves.

They'd had yet to take him up on the offer. Now, Marina wasn't sure if she ever would.

It didn't take a genius to guess that Kostya's business hadn't exactly been the savoury sort. Why else would such an easygoing, gentle man, sometimes having been gone days at a time, return home so changed: so silent and hard, empty eyes dark with tears he fought tooth and nail to leave unshed? He would snap at her, shrug away her yearning hands; sit in the dark and stare at sleeping Mishka like he was a stranger...then hide himself away in the shower, sometimes for an hour or more, and emerge laughing as though he'd never forgotten how. Why else would so many many men have called her in the hours and days following his death, all pitifully hearty condolences and rising voices and barely-suppressed tension crackling worse than the shitty reception? Why else would he have died at all?

Only one of those associates had scrounged up the guts to come to her. Not the faceless multitude of callers; not Dima, who had held their child; but Tolik, whose name Kostya had only mentioned once in passing. Shit, Marus, I had to call Dima's guy back and the fuck goes "give me a minute, I'm in the bathroom," what kind of moron answers their phone when they're in the bathroom? Tolik, whose voice was a little too rough, long nose and bruised eyes a little too red; either he was getting over a cold or had just left off crying. It wasn't her business to ask, and frankly, in the throes of a maddening autumn it was impossible to tell. (Besides, Marina herself had cried so much in the past few days that the skin on her cheeks had begun to chap, it wasn't as though she was in any position to judge.) Tolik, who'd apparently had gotten lost on his way to their apartment and had only made his way there in the first place to apologise; had stood slumped at the threshold as he introduced himself, haltingly, as an acquaintance of her husband's, as though he wasn't entirely sure he deserved to be called even that.

Tolik, who had run from her like a thief, not realising he'd taken a piece of her shattered heart with him.

On the surface he was nothing like Kostya. Dark where Kostya was fair; harried and awkward, almost aggressively so, never quite seeming to know what to do with his hands and constantly travailing to make himself smaller than he was, whereas Kostya had always carried himself with the ease of a man with all the time in the world to spare, almost too comfortable in his own skin. It was the only thing about her late husband she'd ever been able to hate.

Tolik, who had come back when she'd called, when she'd lost hope of ever seeing him and his unwitting prize again.

On the surface he was nothing like Kostya. But there was something about him, some perceived kinship between them that made her ache, not only with grief, but with longing.

Tolik, who kept coming back.

Heavy eyes and quiet secrets, flat voices straining to keep back a scream, an indelible stain on their souls that no earthly love could wash out. Not that that knowledge would stop fools like her from offering that love up to the desecrated altar. Hell, she sure knew how to pick them.

Valya

It occurred to her, on one of those grey, heavy mornings that made opening seem a waste of time, that she'd never asked his name. He'd been coming into her cafe for over a year, almost every weekday if not oftener, ordering the same double-black-one-sugar, and she'd never asked his name.

The first few times he'd stopped in it had been slow enough that she hadn't needed to, and after that it just...hadn't occurred to her. That's what came of a presence too unassuming to be anything but familiar. Look, there's old double black, who stood at least half a head taller than any given crowd on any given day; who always looked a little tired and a little guilty, dressed neither shabbily nor well, and wore his slightly tarnished wedding ring on his middle finger because it didn't fit him right. Good old double black, who would take his cup from her with clumsy fingers and mumbled thanks, and sequester himself in the closest empty seat; who, depending on the day, would either sit there for a good hour or more or else hurry himself in and out in five minutes flat like his life depended on the haste.

He never talked about himself, not like some of her other regulars. Never talked much at all, really. But he listened when she talked: about her latest boyfriend, her son, her day, her plans for the evening or her thoughts on the news. And he remembered what she spouted off, even asked after the details sometimes, which was more than she could say for any of those boyfriends. On good days he would smile, even when she or that rag Vitya teased him. Once, he'd joked that she ought to call those boyfriends conquests or paramours, that boyfriend was too cheap a term for someone as venerable as her, to which tomfoolery she'd retorted that she got 'em cheap and called 'em like she saw 'em; another time, when he'd asked her if she saw any merit in debating philosophy (she figured, then, that he must've been a professor or something similarly highfalutin, though he was a little young for it, he seemed the type), she'd told him the only philosophy she valued higher than a damn was to learn how to know a good thing when it bit you in the ass and it let it go if it kept on biting. He'd laughed so hard he somehow snapped the handle off his coffee cup: promptly flushed, stuck the offending shard into his jacket pocket, slammed back the rest of the scalding coffee, and shuffled out of the shop without another word like a kicked dog.

But all that had been a year ago. As the year wore on she'd watched the good days grow fewer, farther between, until she could scarcely call to mind the last time she'd seen him smile. When she'd closed early the day of her son's eighteenth birthday she thought she might instead see him cry, or else fly at her in mindless rage; the look he'd given her as she told him to leave, disappointment and disbelief and despair falling to the axe of a horrid blankness, still haunted some of her dreams. Scarcely a week later he'd blown in with that crop-haired, pixie-looking girl; Valya thought she'd seen her before, hanging around street corners and some of the seedier bars on the other side of the city, but she couldn't muster the slightest reproach when they seemed so genuinely happy together.

Until she'd mentioned the blond fellow who'd flashed around his photograph, the one who'd died later that week. More fool her. Back rushed that blank look, and out rushed her double black. He'd been back the next few nights, sure, but she hadn't seen him since. Even Vitya had asked, genuine for once in his feckless life, whether the old fella had gone and died. Of course she had no idea. It didn't sit right, not knowing: felt almost worse than finding an obituary in the paper after the funeral had already come and gone.

She sometimes wondered, on those heavy mornings, who had come to blondie's funeral. Whether anyone would come to double black's, when the time came. She thought she'd feel a bit of an asshole if she didn't; felt even more of an asshole for presuming she of greater age would outlive him, though the same sixth sense that bid her offer him vodka he couldn't pay for insisted that she would. But more often than that she wondered how on earth it was possible to mourn the absence of someone without a name as though they were an old friend.

I do love me some angst.

After writing this, I attempted to hunt down Andrei Kurkov's script for the film, to no avail. I did, however, find his original novel upon which the film was based, so certain small details are pulled from that. For example, the names of baby Misha and barista Valya are pulled from the book; to other unnamed minor characters I gave the names of the actors who played them (interestingly, Valya was played by an actress named Valentina). I will say I did prefer the film to the novel; the ending was tied up more neatly with details the film script added, although the novel developed Lena and Tolik's relationship a lot more deeply than the film did. You win some, you lose some.