Tycoon Actor C549 (Patreon)

From the Danube Bank, the group walked to the Parliament Building — just minutes on foot, though the facade had a way of slowing people down. The neo-Gothic towers cut clean against the late afternoon sky, and even Lucas went quiet looking at it.

It was approaching four. Tourists still clustered along the main approach, phones up, hunting angles against the stonework. The group did the same — rotating positions, trading phones, taking turns in front of the building like everyone else.

For the group shot, Felicity flagged down a local near the iron railing and asked in Hungarian — halting, careful, but unmistakably Hungarian — if he'd mind taking one of them. The man's face shifted the moment he heard the Hungarian — surprise, then something warmer. He took the phone, waved them together, and snapped a few before handing it back with a small nod.

By five, they found a restaurant a few streets back from the river — low-ceilinged, amber-lit, the kind of place that didn't advertise. They settled into a corner table.

When the server came around, Felicity set her menu down and straightened slightly.

"Kérek szépen... egy gulyáslevest." (I'd like... a goulash soup, please.)

"És... lángost kérek." (And... I'd like a lángos.) She tapped the menu once. "Ezt is, legyen szíves." (This too, please.)

The server chuckled, wrote it down without a word of correction, and headed back toward the kitchen.

Raffey and Emma had been watching the whole thing.

"You really are so good," Raffey said. "It honestly felt like you could be a local."

"I agree." Emma was still smiling. "That just came out so naturally. It must've taken forever to get there."

Felicity and Lucas exchanged a brief look.

"Compared to Lucas," Felicity said, the corner of her mouth lifting, "I'm still back at the starting line."

"Your intonation on gulyáslevest was cleaner than anything I heard from the dialect coaches in week two," Lucas said. "Don't do that."

Raffey laughed. Then, after a beat: "How long did you actually practice? Before coming here?"

"About three months, I think." Felicity considered it. "I started in New York — Lucas and I were working on it together. By the time I was still sounding out the alphabet, he'd already moved on to full sentences."

Emma's eyes widened. "He was that far ahead?"

"I just started earlier," Lucas said. Which was true, technically. He wasn't about to explain the rest — that the «Mind Workshop» didn't function the way language study did; that it wasn't practice so much as the role absorbing everything it required, until the knowledge simply existed in him.

A short silence settled over the table.

Then Raffey asked the question she'd clearly been sitting on since the Danube Bank.

"Back at the shoes — you said you just switched to László for a bit." She looked at him. "And Felicity had already told us what was happening, so we knew. But even knowing — watching it actually happen in front of us was something else entirely."

She paused. "So when you say you switched... what does that actually mean? What does that feel like from the inside?"

Emma had gone still in her seat, watching him the way she did when she was actually paying attention — not politely, but properly. Raffey's question had pulled the same thing out of her that it had pulled out of Raffey.

Even Felicity, who had known him long enough to stop being surprised by most things, had her eyes on him. She knew the broad strokes. But what actually happened inside his head when he did that — she'd never quite gotten a straight answer on it either.

Lucas was quiet for a moment.

The honest answer was that László wasn't something he stepped into from the outside. After enough time in the «Mind Workshop» — enough hours running the simulation, inhabiting the life, building the architecture of a person from the inside — the character stopped living on the surface.

He went somewhere deeper. Below rehearsal, below conscious choice. A separate presence that Lucas could step into or back from, but that existed in him now the way a language eventually stops feeling like translation and starts feeling like thought.

He couldn't say any of that.

"It's kind of hard to explain, honestly." Lucas laughed quietly — at himself, at the question, at the fact that the true answer would make him sound insane.

"No, it's fine." Raffey shook her head, waving a hand. The embarrassment was right there on her face. "Forget I asked. You don't have to find words for something like that."

"She's right," Emma added quickly, even though her eyes said the complete opposite. "Every actor has their own process. It's not really a fair question."

They'd both landed in the same place — whatever that state was, whatever had happened to him at the shoes, it probably didn't translate.

Lucas looked at them both. "No, it's alright. I'll give you a little."

That got their attention back immediately.

"Fair warning — it's probably not going to be a complete explanation," he said. "I'm going to describe it as best I can, but there are parts of it I genuinely don't have words for. So don't hold me to it."

"That's completely fine," Raffey said. Emma was already leaning forward slightly.

Lucas cleared his throat. "Okay. Think about how a writer talks about their characters. A novelist, a screenwriter — someone who's been living with a character for a long time." He set his fork down. "You've probably heard them say things like, the character surprised me, or he made a decision I didn't plan, or she told me how the scene ended. And from the outside that sounds like a cute thing writers say. But what they actually mean is that they've built this person so thoroughly — their history, their fears, the specific way they think, what they'd never do, what they'd always do — that the character stops feeling like an invention."

"They start feeling like someone real who exists somewhere, and the writer is just recording what they do."

He paused, checking that they were with him.

They were.

"At that point the writer isn't creating anymore. They're narrating. The character is moving and the writer is just following, putting it into words."

He looked at the table for a second. "That's where I am with László. I've been building him for months — not just his backstory, but how he carries grief, how he reads a room, what a place like those shoes does to a man who actually lived through what he lived through. I've gone deep enough that he doesn't feel like a role I'm preparing. He feels like a real person that lives in my head."

Felicity, Raffey and Emma had gone completely still.

"So when you saw me at the shoes — I wasn't performing. I wasn't switching on some technique. I just let him look at what was in front of him, and I narrated his interior. His grief, his memory, the specific weight of being a Hungarian Jew standing at that river. I was still myself — I knew where I was, I knew you were all standing behind me — but I was running his experience through myself."

"I was the narrator and he was the one actually feeling it."

He finished and looked at them.

Their faces were completely unreadable.

'Oh, for fuck's sake,' he thought, jaw tightening slightly. 'My bullshit isn't landing, is it?'

He held it together.

Then all three of them broke at once.

"Okay that is actually so enlightening." Raffey laughed, and it came out a little disbelieving. "That just answered things I didn't even know how to ask properly. And you're just — sitting here giving this away." She pointed at him. "That is going to genuinely help me."

"Yeah, same." Emma nodded, then added, "And honestly your perspective is so out of the box. I haven't thought about it that way at all — building the character like a writer and then narrating them. I'm trying that with Audrey."

"I've heard similar things before," Felicity said, "but never quite put like that."

"The narrator..." She repeated it like she was testing the weight of it. "That's actually a really good way to put it. Don't be surprised if that ends up in my vocabulary from now on."

Lucas looked at the three of them and had absolutely nothing to say.

Relieved, mostly. He'd handed them something true enough that it landed, and vague enough that it covered everything he couldn't say.

And underneath all of it — the relief was something he felt in his shoulders.

He'd taken the one true thing about how the «Mind Workshop» actually worked, stripped out the impossible part, dressed the rest in something that sounded like craft, and they'd walked away not just satisfied but lit up by it.

Not bad at all.

---

They were back at the hotel by six, tired in the good way — the kind that comes from walking a city properly. The touring continued the next morning.

Since filming wasn't scheduled to start for a while and the cast had been encouraged to get familiar with the environment, they made use of the time. Joe, Stacy, and Guy joined the group now, which changed the dynamic in a comfortable way — more voices, more range, easier to move through the city without drawing a pattern.

They started the morning at the Dohány Street Synagogue and the Jewish Quarter, moving slowly, taking it in. By midday they were inside the Great Market Hall, the high iron-vaulted ceiling overhead and the stalls stretching out in long rows beneath it. Felicity worked the language where she could — vendors, signage, small exchanges at the counters — adding to what she'd been building.

Nobody approached them. Nobody looked twice. Which made sense — most of the group were recognizable in certain rooms, in certain countries, but not necessarily here, not on the street, not like this. And Lucas was in the full kit: restyled hair under the NYC cap, the subtle prosthetic work shifting his face just enough, sunglasses up. He read as nobody in particular.

By the afternoon they were at Fisherman's Bastion, the pale stone towers rising around them and the city spreading out below — the Parliament visible across the river, the Danube cutting through it all. The group spread along the terrace and took pictures. Joe held up Lucas's phone, framed the shot, and got Lucas with the full city behind him.

Then he lowered the phone and looked at him.

"Mate, I have to say." Joe shook his head slowly. "You look genuinely insane."

Lucas adjusted the nose piece slightly with one finger. The wig sat under the cap at a specific angle, and the overall effect landed somewhere between unremarkable tourist and something slightly uncanny — like a person assembled from parts that were individually fine but collectively off.

"This is the price," Guy said from the side, taking in the view with his arms folded. "You get to a certain level of fame and you end up having to dress like a bum just to buy groceries. MJ used to go into record stores dressed like a homeless man — dirty clothes, fake teeth — just to stand next to his own albums without getting mobbed."

Lucas considered that for a second. "MJ was on a completely different planet. That's not even the same conversation."

The others exchanged a look and said nothing. Which was its own kind of answer — because in terms of pure wealth he'd already lapped MJ by a considerable distance, and the fame gap was narrowing faster than anyone wanted to admit out loud.

They were still in the middle of that when a voice cut through from a few feet away.

"Oh my god — are you Felicity Jones?"

An American girl, early twenties, was staring at Felicity with both hands pressed to her face. Two friends flanked her, immediately craning their necks to look.

"It's her! That's Felicity!"

Felicity turned toward them with an easy smile and raised a hand. "Hello."

The group registered the interaction without much reaction. It would've been stranger if nobody had recognised anyone this entire time — they were all famous to varying degrees, just not at the level where a Budapest street became a problem.

"Can we get a photo? Oh my god, I love Like Crazy so much." The first girl was already moving closer. "You and Lucas were so — the performance was just phenomenal. I kind of always wished you two ended up together."

"Well," Felicity said, with practiced ease, "he's married. And so am I."

"I meant in the movie." The girl grinned. "Though honestly the internet wanted it in real life too. Just saying. It's a pity."

Felicity laughed at that and stepped in for the photos.

The girl was Ashley — blonde, animated, clearly the one who'd spotted her first. The dark-haired one introduced herself as Anabelle. The third, ginger-haired, was Layla, and her accent placed her immediately. English. Yorkshire, maybe.

They were over for a college trip, it turned out — a few weeks, seeing a handful of cities.

After Felicity, their eyes moved to the rest of the group — and once they started placing faces, it snowballed. Ashley got there first, recognizing Guy, Joe, and Stacy in quick succession, pulling her friends in.

It turned out all three of them were studying dramatic arts, which meant the group standing in front of them wasn't just a collection of recognizable faces — it was practically a masterclass standing on a terrace.

They went through everyone, pictures with each, the kind of excitement from people who understood exactly who they were looking at and what they'd done.

Layla in particular knew Raffey and Emma's work specifically — she'd watched Mayor of Kingstown, knew Raffey from Tomorrowland — and that came through in how she talked to them, less starstruck and more genuinely curious about the work itself.

And then Ashley's eyes drifted to the figure standing slightly apart from the group — NYC cap pulled low, sunglasses on, doing absolutely nothing to contribute to any conversation.

"Who's that?" she asked.

Felicity opened her mouth but Joe got there first. "He's our tourist guide," he said, completely straight-faced. "Very professional. Highly recommended."

Felicity, Raffey, Stacy and the others held back their laughter with varying degrees of success.

The answer was so obviously wrong that it did the opposite of what it was meant to do. Ashley looked at the figure again. So did Anabelle. Layla followed their gaze.

Up close, something was off about him — the skin around the nose sat slightly strange, the hairline under the cap didn't quite behave the way hair behaved. You could almost dismiss it until you stopped dismissing it and actually looked.

Ashley's eyes went wide.

"Are you--" She stopped. "Are you Lucas?"

Anabelle and Layla looked at him properly now too.

Lucas tilted his head. "What are you talking about? My name is Miguel." A slight shift in the vowels, the accent pulled just enough. "Who is Lucas?"

"No, no." Ashley was already shaking her head. "I've seen this before. There were photos going around years ago, the disguise was a bit different but it's the same idea. The cap, the sunglasses," she gestured at his face, "all of it."

"The prosthetics don't change the bone structure though," Anabelle said, studying him with the calm focus of a person who had decided to just work it out. "Even with whatever that is on your nose, the face underneath is the same. That's Lucas Knight." She paused. "We study dramatic arts. We know what a prosthetic looks like up close."

"Please," Layla said, looking at him. "Please just say it's you."

Lucas glanced at the phone Ashley was already pulling out, old photos and side by side comparisons that had apparently never fully stopped circulating, and accepted the situation for what it was.

He stepped closer and put a finger to his lips.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "But let's keep it between us, yeah?"

Hearing the confirmation, the three of them erupted.

"I can't believe we actually met you here!"

"Can I get an autograph?"

"My whole family loves you!"

Lucas handled it alone while the rest of his group stood back and enjoyed every second of it. Felicity especially, watching the whole thing unfold with the quiet amusement of someone who had been waiting for exactly this.

He had no choice but to handle it. He signed autographs — on whatever they shoved at him, a notebook, a jacket sleeve, the inside cover of a passport — and when the photos came up, he shook his head.

"Sorry -- I can't do photos right now. We're here for something important and I'd rather not have it get out that I'm in the city. You understand."

Ashley nodded quickly. "Of course. Don't worry, we won't say anything."

"Not even to your friend groups, yeah?" Lucas looked at her. "Your friends have friends."

"Not a word," Anabelle said. "Promise."

They weren't offended. They understood, and it showed. After a bit more talking the group said their goodbyes and moved on.

Lucas and the others made their way back down from the Bastion toward the hotel.

"He-he." Felicity glanced at him. "What did I say back at the hotel? There are people who've seen those comparison posts."

"It was going fine," Lucas said. "Joe introducing me as the tourist guide is what gave it away."

"Oi." Joe pointed at him. "Those girls were completely reasonable about it. Be grateful it wasn't someone who'd have your face plastered all over Twitter before we even got back down the hill."

Lucas had nothing to say to that.

---

Two more days of touring, then the mood shifted and the work took over. Rehearsals ran through the week. A week after that, filming was ready to begin.

Brady's plan was simple — use the city. Budapest's outer industrial districts looked like they hadn't moved since the mid-twentieth century, which was exactly the point. Philadelphia in the late forties was right outside the hotel window if you knew where to look.

Origo Studios handled what the city couldn't — controlled interiors, isolated soundstages, and the backlot where the Van Buren Institute's construction site was already going up in sections. Practical concrete forms, brutalist geometry, built out by production designer Judy Becker and her team from the rough architectural sketches Lucas had passed over during pre-production.

On top of that, the extras situation was another thing entirely compared to Hollywood. Budapest had been hosting major international productions long enough that the local casting pool ran deep, and at rates that wouldn't survive five minutes of negotiation in Los Angeles.

The open call brought in far more than they needed — period-appropriate faces, people who knew how to hold a crowd scene without breaking it. Brady had filled every background role twice over and still had a waiting list.

For Lucas, none of it required adjustment. László had never really gone anywhere — just sitting below the surface the whole time, waiting.

Today was the opening sequence.

The scene called for László arriving at the Port of New York, 1947. A man stepping off a boat onto American soil for the first time, carrying nothing but what the war had left him.

The camera would find him in the crowd and stay on his face, and that face had to carry everything that came before the film even began.

Brady had scheduled it as a day shoot. The production had found a boat moored on the Danube just north of the city — mid-renovation, being converted into a floating nightclub — and had it for two days. The interior would stay mostly raw: bunk beds installed, a repaint, and then an almost total denial of light, small tungsten spotlights standing in for portholes, the rest kept in darkness.

Lucas stood at the edge of the set in full costume and let László come fully forward. Around him the crew moved through their final checks. Brady stood at the monitor without a word.

The fun was done. This was what they had come for.