Unexpected Box

@"Thoth"

What about the cold in particular? Pasha gave a small flick of his wrist, gesturing to their general vicinity.

"The presence of cold. Do you notice it very much?" The bar was usually freezing for the average person, but Anastasia had lasted the night in nothing but his oversized shirt. There had been other clues, like how she never seemed to shiver and how she was able to put her bare hand down on the counter for lengths of time.

Before, he'd chalked it up to just growing up in Russia.

@"Thoth"

The cold in here was enough to send some people scurrying off for a coat, but Anastasia seemed all but fine. He was surprised that he hadn't taken immediate notice to it, but he supposed she was dripping blood absolutely everywhere the first time she'd been in the bar.

He turned the small, yellowed envelope in his fingers again as if considering the question. "There are other seasons. I am not acquainted with any of them." It was rather unfortunate that he was aware of their existence, and yet they'd never met. They were, in a sense, his colleagues. But the world was large, seasons died and passed on their powers and he could have brushed past one on the street without so much as raising a brow.

"But as far as I am concerned... Yes, you are the first." As much as he knew anyways, and considering the letter and Anastasia, apparently he didn't know very much at all.

@"Thoth"

There was a broader story and unfortunately, it involved more than him. In fact, it involved two people who had been mowed down by gunfire a few months prior. Pasha was wise, but he'd never claim to read minds. That meant Anastasia would likely only receive his side of the story, and whatever was said in the letter.

And there was a whole lot that was said in the letter.

When Anastasia asked how he knew Yekaterina, Pasha couldn't help but sigh, letting his eyes fall closed for a moment as he composed the story in his head. It had been... convoluted. A long, marvelously rash and rather terribly illegal set of circumstances. How much did he want to tell Anastasia? How much did she deduce from the letter?

"I met your mother through your father first. All three of us were coworkers, in a sense." He met Mikhail first, but he supposed that he'd always been the braver of the two. Would he explain that part to her? "I left Russia in 1993, two years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. I came back in 1996, hoping the situation got somewhat better."

And it never did, go figure. He even promised that he'd be back as soon as things calmed down.

He opened the letter again, his cold eyes skimming over a few particular lines. There were a lot of subtleties that he wasn't used to from Yekaterina. He just hoped that he could explain what she wanted to well enough.

@"Thoth"

Pasha took another slow breath; so she hadn't picked up on it. He shouldn't have really expected her to. The shock of finding out her father had never been her biological one must've been quite jarring, and it wasn't the best time to be combing through words of a woman who was well known to be blunt.

Mikhail had known, alright.

But how much should he tell her? How much honesty could she take before everything broke down in her mind? What would be in his best interest, and would that even be advantageous in any way?

He was still trying to wrap his head around the fact that she was his daughter.

"He knew." He replaced the letter inside the envelope, choosing his own words very carefully. It had been one of Mikhail's fears that his wife would find out.

@"Thoth"

She didn't ask anything else of her father. Pasha definitely felt relieved by that, because then he wouldn't quite feel that obligation to explain to her what the relationship had been. It had been terribly convoluted and highly illegal in quite a few aspects, doubly so because he'd been a sort of national hero at the time.

"I was unaware that my powers were genetic." He had, in a sense, signed a "contract" and they had been passed to him when he had no powers in the first place. He'd been changed on a genetic level, which was news to him.

"I doubt you are actually half Winter itself. I think it's more likely that you've been passed some cold-based powers. As far as I'm concerned, the actual title of Winter must be handed down." And he hadn't done that. He was supposed to lose his powers if she was suddenly the new Winter.