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After the wedding, Natasha does not see Pierre for months. He is not in attendance at any of their little celebratory soirée’s, he does not pay call, he does not even write.
The first time she sees him again, she is standing on the front steps, straining her eyes just to watch as his carriage pulls away from their house.
“Why won’t he come in?” she asks Andrei as he slips past her and back into the house.
“He’s a busy man, darling.”
Natasha frowns. Pierre has never been so busy he couldn’t visit her.
It isn’t long before Natasha realizes her husband's visits with her estranged friend are a regular occurance. Apparently Pierre’s coldness extends only to her.
“We must have Pierre for dinner,” Natasha says one afternoon.
Andrei smiles, “I’ll be sure to invite him.”
He’s busy again. Studying, traveling, balancing his checkbook. As if he’s ever known a thing about finance.
Sonya visits less and less. There’s far too much for her to do at home, now that Natasha’s father is sick and Nikolai has taken over as head of the house. When she does visit, she hates to hear Natasha complain about Pierre.
“You just wouldn’t understand,” she tells her, as if she knows something Natasha doesn’t.
Everyone seems to know something Natasha doesn’t.
One night, just as her husband leans in to kiss her, she says again, “We really must have Pierre over.”
Andrei sighs. “I’ll ask.”
—
When Andrei comes to forgive her, to propose again, Pierre is beside him. It is unusual, to say the least, but nothing about this is usual.
In fact, Pierre’s presence may be the most natural part of the whole ordeal. It was he who had brought them together in the first place, and who had now brought them together again.
Yes, Andrei is sure his friend should be there.
At the sight of Natasha’s face, even more beautiful in her joy than the first time he proposed, Andrei nearly forgets the trouble with Kuragin.
He looks to his friend to thank him, but he is jolted by the revelation painted on Pierre’s face. His smile so clearly of a man in love, and those glazed eyes, like a loyal dog, fixated on the woman he’d defended, the woman he’d begged to be forgiven.
Andrei isn’t sure how he wasn’t able to see it before.
“Let the happy couple have a minute alone,” her mother says, herding everyone out the door.
For a moment, Pierre does not move. He stands still, staring at her and grinning like a fool. And damn him, her shy eyes follow his, afraid to be caught.
Andrei cannot forget. He isn’t sure he can even forgive.
—
Marya seems to be Natasha’s only friend these days. She too wishes Pierre would visit more.
“You’re good company, dear Natasha, but I wish we had some fresh faces,” she admits.
“I just miss him,” Natasha agrees with her, and Marya’s sympathetic face looks nearly uncomfortable.
Natasha can’t admit it to anyone, but she finds herself quite jealous of her husband. Of the time he gets with Pierre, with anyone outside this damned house. But especially with Pierre.
One afternoon, Natasha approaches her husband in his study.
“Andrei, you must be sure to see that Pierre comes to dinner here,” she demands. Andrei looks up from his work, more irritated than she’s ever seen him before. It disturbs her, but she stands firm.
“Fine,” he says. She quickly leaves.
Her husband is nothing if not true to his word. Pierre arrives the next night, looking like a hunted deer in the doorway.
Natasha can tell he doesn’t want to look at her, but he still does.
“Natasha,” he says, so quietly she’s sure no one else hears. “Thank you for having me tonight.”
He squeezes her hand tightly, beforing moving on to hug Marya. Natasha bitterly thinks that she would’ve quite liked a hug as well.
Dinner is mostly quiet, with little conversation from anyone but Marya. Pierre stares at his lap the whole night, while Natasha stares at him. She’s sure that if she locks her eyes on him long enough, she’ll be able to communicate some message to him, like she used to with Nikolai when they were children.
That same night, after Pierre had left and Marya retired to her room, Natasha sat quietly on the edge of their bed, brushing her hair for far longer than she needed to.
“What is it?” Andrei asks.
“I just don’t understand why Pierre was so cold with me tonight,” she sighs, setting aside her brush and beginning to braid her hair.
Andrei leaves the room without a word. Natasha had once asked him not to pace as incessantly as he often liked to, so now he opts to simply leave her sight.
When he returns, he sits in a chair opposite of her, his head hung low.
“Natasha,” he says, slowly and carefully, “You speak of that man as if you are a spoiled child and he is a toy you can’t have. You must realize you’re a married woman now, and even if he had the time to tend to you as he may have before, it wouldn’t quite be appropriate.”
She is quite certain her cheeks have turned a dark shade of red, and hopes the dim lighting may hide her flush of embarrassment.
“How dare you speak to me like that,” her voice trembles. “Calling me a child, acting as if I don’t know a thing!”
The air in the room is suffocating. Natasha dismisses her husband's apologetic look and crawls into bed without a second glance towards him.
As much as she had bothered Andrei talking about Pierre, Natasha knows that is far from the only thing that provoking him. It seems everything she does manages to upset him. She had tried so hard to be inoffensive at the start of their marriage. If he should treat her badly as penance for the wrong she’d done him, so be it. He had promised that what had happened with Kuragin was long forgotten, but it seemed the issue still burned within him. Now, after months of her best attempts at proving herself, she began to give up. There was no use in trying to appease him.
It is a shameful thing, but Natasha can almost admit to herself now how she dreams of some company. She misses her family terribly, Sonya and Nikolai especially, but the way she misses Pierre is distinctly different. Whenever Andrei is particularly upset with her, she longs for her dear old friend. The one who believed she had nothing to forgive, even if she cannot believe it herself. She is sure if she could find any comfort now it would be with him, in his words… or in his arms.
But the idea of that makes Natasha so nervous her skin begins to crawl with guilt, so she clings to Andrei like he might anchor her, even in the moments where he seems ready to push her away.
There is no other solution, no better way to quell the awful feelings she has. Any hope of a resolution with Pierre had already been shot down by his attitude towards her. How can he help her when he can barely look at her?
Natasha can’t begin to understand what she could have possibly done to deserve all of this. But, at the same time, she knows she must have done something. There couldn’t be any other reason Pierre would turn his back on her.
Maybe, somehow, he knows what she thinks about at night.
But that is far too mortifying a thought to even entertain.