Sasha Lebedev

Sasha Mikhailovich Lebedev is the son of Mikhail and Feodora (née Morozov) Lebedev. He was born in St. Petersburg, but lived in Moscow for most of his life. He is also the younger brother of Nadia Lebedev.

Sasha enjoyed a comfortable upbringing. His father, a minister in the Soviet government, and successful businessman under the Russian government, was also a powerful vor in the Russian mob. Growing up, Sasha and his sister wanted for nothing, and his family owned a nice condo in Moscow, plus three vacation homes (in St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Vladivostok).

In addition to his abundant resources, Sasha was also gifted was a keen mind, and he excelled in his classes — as well as any extracurriculars his parents threw him in. He took French, and learned how to play the piano. However, the thing he enjoyed most was dance: at a young age, his mother enrolled him in ballet classes (despite his father’s protests), and it was quickly revealed that Sasha had not only the aptitude, but passion for it.

While he still speaks passable French, and can play a few songs on the piano, these took a secondary role to ballet as he aged, and it wasn’t until he graduated high school that he stopped performing.

However, regardless of how good things seemed on the surface, the family was unable to escape from the violence of their underground life. When Sasha was 10 years old, he found himself awake in the middle of the night. If it was a nightmare, it hadn’t been bad enough for him to remember it. With nothing seeming out of the ordinary, he tried shutting his eyes and going back to bed. Before he could fall asleep, though, he heard a strange noise from down the hall. Out of curiosity, he crawled out of bed and padded out of his room.

The door to his father’s bedroom was slightly ajar — not unusual, given that he had a young son that might need him. Still, concerned about the noise, he went into the room to tell his father about what he’d heard.

When his dad first didn’t answer, he thought he was still asleep. The second time, he considered that his dad was maybe playing a prank on him. Irritated, he crawled up on the bed to shake his dad awake.

His dad was laying in bed, throat cut, blood on the walls and sheets.

Young Sasha, struggling to process what was happening, immediately fled to his father’s closet, locking himself inside, sobbing quietly. The family maid found him the next day, after the discovery of Mikhail’s body and a frantic search. Sasha spent three catatonic days in a nearby hospital, as nurses tried to console him, and the police tried to question him.

Ultimately, Mikhail’s killer remained at large. Though the family had suspicions, there was nothing concrete. The police turned up even less.

At the time of her husband’s death, Feodora was in St. Petersburg, visiting her sister. Ultimately, Feodora is left in charge on a crime empire, with little option but to try to hold the pieces together. However, she considers a lot of her late husband’s associates to be unsavory, and would prefer to rinse her hands clean of them. This proves impossible: her husband had several people on his illicit payroll, and was indebted to even more. Not paying jeopardizes the safety of both her and her two children.

She does her best to wrest what control she can away from the remaining members of Mikhail's gang. It works -- at least, for a time.

After his father’s death, naturally, Sasha changes. At first, he just seems more withdrawn. Given what he’s witnessed, his family considers this a normal response. However, as time goes by, his hobbies grow into obsessions, particularly ballet. It becomes about perfection, and he spends unhealthy amounts of time practicing, both with his instructor and by himself in the studio.

His hard work pays off, and, by the time he’s finished with secondary school, he’s been the lead in two separate performances. He continues dancing while in gymnasium, but it’s around this time that Mikhail’s former gang decides he’s had enough time to be a kid.

Frustrated with Feodora, and finding little help in Nadia, the gang begins approaching Sasha. Showing up between Sasha’s classes, tracking him down after his ballet rehearsals. Slowly, he is taken back under the fold of the gang, where he begins to get more inklings about what happened to his father. In an attempt to find answers, he plays along, and begins to grow into the role left open by his father’s death.

Despite his scheming nature and willingness to resort to violence, Sasha has a pleasant (albeit somewhat aloof) and friendly demeanor. Thoughtful and well-read, he makes for interesting conversation once you get him talking. His presence is calm and restrained, despite his alarming fashion choices. He is fond of animals, particularly of cats, though he also loves dogs. He has two of each.

Despite this, the gang quickly finds out that Sasha struggles with paranoia and is willing to go to extreme measures to eliminate threats. Though he himself rarely dirties his hands, he has no qualms with ordering the hits. Though lacking in physical strength, Sasha is remarkably nimble, which is the result of his years of dancing.

Sasha stands at 5’9”, but his lithe build gives the illusion of him being much smaller. He has pale, blonde hair, which he lets grow out, usually just long enough to barely pull into a ponytail. His eyes are green (D37). In addition to his slim build, he has a young-looking face: ski slope nose, unblemished skin (with the exception of a beauty mark on the left corner of his mouth). This usually leads people to assume he’s in his mid-teens instead of his early twenties.

In middle school, he enters into a phase that he never quite leaves. He begins dressing in all black, and develops a strange fascination with the supernatural. Though his preoccupation with ghosts and spirits fades, the style endures: he dresses ostentatiously, but monochromatically. Black coats, black gloves, black boots — he adjusts his outfits to match the situation, but is almost always in black.

By the beginning of the story, he’s fully taken on the role of vor, and is on the trail of who he believes to be his father’s killer.