Gin and Bitterness

Fandom: Doctor Zhivago
Rating: G
Characters: Lara Antipova, Pasha Antipov, various original background characters
Primary Pairings: Lara Antipova/Pasha Antipov
Word Count: 539

General Summary: One morning, Lara comes to Pasha with an usual request.

Author’s Note: A prompt from June 2019 - "Teach me to fight."

            Pasha doesn’t ask questions when Lara comes to him one morning, early even by his standards, her face drawn and pale, and insists that he teach her how to fight. Instead, he finishes dressing and takes her down the road to another house, knocking on the door until the shutters opened on one of the upper windows, a figure leaning out of it. “Who is it? Don’t you know what time it is?”
            “It’s me!” Pasha called up to the figure in the window. “I need to talk to Anya!”
            There was a groan from above them, and the shutters closed. A few minutes later, the door opened and a young man that Lara recognised as one of Pasha’s friends – she couldn’t remember his name – ushered them in. “Pasha, I know we’re friends, but you can’t just pound on my door at all hours!”
            “Tolya, listen.” Pasha let go of Lara’s hand for the first time since she’d come to his rooms in order to put both hands on the other’s shoulders. “Would you have preferred I climbed in through the window?”
            Tolya pulled a face that said that he didn’t doubt the implied threat, and didn’t particularly relish the idea of waking up in the middle of the night to Pasha scaling the building and crawling through his window like some kind of creature of the night. “Sit down. Anya’s still getting up.” As they both sat down and he began distributing cups of a dark, strong coffee that threatened to make Lara’s eyes water, he glanced over at Lara and then back to Pasha. “What do you need to see Anya for at this hour anyway?”
            Almost as if on cue, Anya emerged from another room. She was a stocky woman who was – to Lara’s surprise – several years older than the rest of them, but around Lara’s height, her dark hair tied back with a scarf. She looked from Tolya, to Pasha, then, cocking her head, shifted her gaze to Lara, taking her in with a coolness that was slightly unnerving, but Lara met her eyes with her own, holding eye contact as steadily as she could manage.
            “You want to learn to fight?” Her voice was higher than Lara had expected, with all the authority of a particularly strict schoolteacher, and it was all she could do to nod silently in affirmation.
            “How did you figure that?” Tolya looked from one woman to the other, then at Pasha.
            Anya snorted. “There’s only so many reasons he brings anyone under a certain height around, and it’s because he’s too tall to do it effectively himself.” She broke eye contact with Lara, turning instead to Pasha. “A word, Pasha.”
            As soon as they were out of earshot of their companions, Anya gripped Pasha’s arm tightly. “Who’s hurting her? Her father?”
            Pasha shook his head, unsurprised that Anya was able to read the situation so easily. “Her father’s dead.”
            “Then who?”
            He shook his head again, his mouth twisting into a grimace. “I don’t know. She doesn’t want to tell me.” When she raised an eyebrow, he looked into his cup instead. “I won’t force her to tell me, Anya. I don’t ask questions she doesn’t want to answer.”