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Mama liked to tell him that he had been born from gunpowder and snowfall. Guns had gone off at the time of his birth, recognizing the New Year that was taking place around them. The wind had howled alongside them, rattling the thin windows in their panes, drowning out his mama’s screams. The cold air had seeped in through poorly insulated walls; through the cracks and settling in their bones. Tiny particles of snow occasionally making their way inside and melting away as though knowing that they weren’t welcome.
He had been made for the winter, a large child who screamed in time with the tree branches falling and the snow swirling. A blizzard. There was no connection with the town or doctors for three days, the well traversed path packed in with snow. In the middle of the forest, snowed in, mama and babushka had done their best to accommodate the newest addition to the family.
On the first day, during a short break when the snow had decided that they were to be awarded a reprieve, babushka had gone out to collect wood. It had only meant to be a couple minutes, but as they dragged on his mama had gotten increasingly worried. What had been out there to stop her? Was she injured, waiting for death to knock her down with its scythe? Later, babushka would tell him about the wolf she found; injured and died from hypothermia. She brought it back with her, making a second trip for the wood, bearing the harsh cold and snow to skin the animal and harvest the meat.
Babushka said a prayer for the animal, as they were their guardians. Wandering through the forests, protecting. She was sure that the wolf had been placed there for them, a gift for the child that was now in their home. His mama didn’t believe in the superstitions that came from before The Union; but she humoured her mama and her old-world ways.
He was named Alexei, the defender.
All stories of Alexei as a baby cited that he had been a happy child. Cherub like with full, rosy cheeks – a true fairy tale character. While life in the woods could be lonely, he found solace running around in the woods and taking stock of nature around him. He loved sitting by and watching the foxes run, swift and sneaky through the underbrush. Watched birds float up, up, up, into the sky to blend with the brilliant blue above.
“We always thank the earth for our food.” Babushka would whisper to him went hunting, pulling the safety back on her gun, “because without food, we would not survive this world. Yet, without these animals and other living beings, neither would the world. It is the circle of life.” The acidic taste of gun powder would live in his mouth, sully the air. The three-year-old and elderly woman would be a sight to behold, dragging the dead fawn home.
Alexei would watch as her knife dug into the soft flesh, slowly and carefully removing the skin with the same precision the elderly woman did everything. “We use all of our gifts, Lyoshen’ka.” She taught him, brilliant blue eyes not moving from the fawn that laid under her hands, “it would be rude, a disservice to the animal. We much show our appreciation, always.” Everything they didn’t use, was under shadows and disguises in the dead of night.
Gerasim Shostakov was sent home soon after. On leave from duty, recovering from a wound brought on by the discontent of the satellite states. When he walked through the door, tall, large, imposing, stomping his way across the floor, the boy had his behind his mama in fright. Where his mama was dark, his papa was light. His mama small, his papa large. Everything about the man menacing and hard. This was not the home coming he had envisioned, without food on the table and a son who cowered.
From then on, the smell of homemade vodka would permeate through the air, matching the sounds of angry shouting and his mama’s bruised face. The house had gone through an immense change, once loving and warm and now falling into shambles, the cracks in the walls seeming to turn into gouges. His papa found fault in everything. They ate like animals, going out into the forest and foraging or hunting and not going into town to shop like the other families did. Did they think they were better than what the government could provide? Alexei was too soft, too childlike an innocent for his boy. He would never make it as a man in this hard world, never make it to adulthood in general if they kept this up.
So, it became that no story of Baba Yaga was scarier than his own home.
All the joy that he had grown up around was sucked away; his family going from laughing and smiling to the world weighing down their shoulders, looks of discontent a constant. Alexei would hide under tables and blankets as his mama’s body hit walls like a limp ragdoll, his babushka would come home from work tired and weary. Still, she held him close at night as roars came through the walls, the violent sounds of wet slapping, sobbing. The moon would be the only light that showed their faces, and her eyes told him that it would all be okay even though inside he knew it wouldn’t.
It was then, when his eyes held too much worry for his age, babushka would try and distract him. Yelling him stories of grandeur, soldiers who went out to fight the monsters of the world. They were trying to save them, she said, save them from the monsters who enslaved and killed people for no reason but their own hatred. Burning them alive because they thought that some were better than others. Under God, all men were equal, despite the belief of some to the contrary. His papa was one of those soldiers.
This never changed the fear he felt.
When papa was healed, he left the house and went back to his posting. Hungary, Yugoslavia, GDR. The joy was still gone, worry left in its place.
Nine months later, his sister was born in a fiery heat.
Nine months later, his papa was killed in a riot born of fiery resentment.
By all accounts, Olga was a quiet and pensive infant. At four years old, Alexei had the constant fear of hurting her the way papa hurt mama. He was so much bigger; so much stronger. Yet, he swore that he would only use his strength to protect her and his family. Mama had laughed in delight, the first time he’d heard the sound in over a year (it sounded strange, joy in the bleak), told him that he was still a boy and that it was her and babushka’s job to protect them both. Alexei didn’t agree with this but didn’t tell mama this. She was always exhausted, hungry, giving her rations to him and even after they said they didn’t need them.
When it was time to go outside, play in the wild, Alexei would scout out the window to make sure there were no predator about. He would report back to mama, “no bears or wolves, all safe for Olya.” She would explain to him that the animals avoided getting too close to civilization. That they wanted to live their lives in peace, as they wanted to live theirs. Babushka would whisper to him at night that humans were in fact encroaching on the habitats of the wolves and bears. The animals had been there first, would be there long after; therefore, it was their job to make sure they were safe.
With his first fawn hide, Alexei fashioned a blanket for his sister with babushka’s help. With later kills, he attempted to make soft padding for all the hard corners in the cabin. So that Olga wouldn’t hurt herself when she learnt to walk. When mama found out, she slapped him. There were more useful things to make, she had yelled, no need to waste the gifts they had been given. He was fine, the baby would be too.
Death first passed by Alexei when he was six. Morning light peaked through the window, and he turned around to face babushka, wish her good morning. Only to be startled, confused, scared, when face to face with her; blue lips, skin cold to the touch, body feeling heavier than her fragility made it seem. He couldn’t look away, no matter how hard he tried. The woman who had always seemed strong like no other was suddenly made from glass.
Tears streamed down his face as he stared, soaking the pillow under his head, only able to stare into the vacant blue that had been once so full of life. With a shaky hand, he reached out to close her eyes. Alexei was too young to understand the full implications that this death would bring.
Papa had died in combat, fighting for the way of life they all held dearly. Alexei had only met him once, been scared the entire time. He shed tears only because his mama had, sad because she was upset. No matter how much they tried to convince him that papa was a hero, to Alexei he had seemed to be a monster. Besides, it wasn’t as though his papa had died in vain. His death was a necessity, so the West did not gain another ally, using them to tear apart the fragile world.
Babushka’s death? Unnecessary.
She’d always spoken about some benevolent God that had created all the earth, all of the creatures that roamed it. A deity who knew everyone better than they knew themselves. Someone who looked out for all people in their time of need, who knew all actions before they were committed. He had made everything, she said, had created the world in six days and rested on the seventh.
Alexei didn’t know how any seemingly benevolent God, who was supposed to care for all creatures, could let his babushka die.
It seemed unfathomable.
During the Tsarist times, babushka’s funeral would have been grand. She was a popular figure in their area. She faced Krásnyj Úgol for three days; but there were no priests, churches, rites. The funeral was still large, people turning out and circling her body, taking turns to lay flowers down to rest with her and maybe say a couple words. During the service, Alexei wandered through the graves that littered the site. Looking at the different names of those who had died before them, some weathered away, and some freshly etched into cheap stone.
He stopped only when he heard his babushka’s voice carry in the wind: you are the guardian, Alexei. Keep your mama and sister safe.
The tradition of a gather after the funeral was kept, but there was no pominki. Dyadya Nikolay told stories of their youth, from the war. His papa’s brother, Alexei couldn’t see any trace of the violent ghost from his dreams when looking at him. He may have been loud like his papa, but he was jolly. Laughing despite the occasion. Stories of babushka being a force to reckon with during the Siege of Leningrad, trying to save the children from fates worse than death.
She was the strongest anyone had ever known.
Forty days passed in a whirlwind of sadness and longing. The towel of babushka’s spirit sat in the windowsill, was shaken out on the fortieth day in the cemetery. Grass had not yet taken over his babushka’s grave, the mound of dirt the only think marking her from the rest. Mama had told him it was his job to shake out the towel, to let babushka go. The towel was burnt over the river in the end; mama, Olya and him staring out as the last vestiges of babushka’s soul on earth flew into the wind.
The next day they packed up two bags and headed into the city. Alexei didn’t know where they were going until they were loaded up onto a train, waving goodbye at everything they’d ever known. If he had any questions about why they were leaving Nizhay Novgorod and their home in the forest, he didn’t ask them. Instead, he watched the crumbling buildings pass before his eyes as they broke through the trees and passed by fields and fields. The train ride went on forever, bringing him to an entirely new world.
Really, in a sense, it was an entire new world. At six and two years old, Alexei and Olga were travelling further than some people did in their entire lives. Mama, knowing she couldn’t afford food on the train, had packed provisions in her bag. Stale bread and butter, small cans of water. On the second day, the conductor had taken pity on them and brought a warm cup of milk for Alexei and his sister to share; watered down coffee for his mama.
He didn’t expect them to pay. Simply said that nobody would go hungry on his watch, even if he didn’t have much to five.
Alexei had been shocked by this piece of kindness that he had never seen before. He wasn’t used to people besides their neighbours; whenever they’d gone into town, the people would ignore them. The Shostakov’s were outliers, after all. Mama explained to him later, when most of the train was asleep and the sky was dark, that humans were inherently good and wanted to help their fellow man. That if he wanted others to be kind and help him, then he needed to be kind and help them in return.
Three and a half days they lived on the train, 4,673 kilometers. Three and a half days of mama finding games to distract her two children, ignoring the looks she got from others when they got too loud. Holding onto their hands when they switched trains three times. Finally, though, they got to their destination:
Cheremkhovo.
It was true, that the coal industry had been on the decline in this area. Most finding more lucrative coal mines in other parts of the country to work in. But, with women moving with their husbands to these new areas, secretaries were needed. Mama had these skills.
Their new home was small. An apartment block that looked like all other blocks in the country, cement with windows and cheaply made furniture. Mama was just thankful they didn’t have to share with another family. One bedroom, for him and his sister to share. Their beds mattresses on the floor, their closet a metal wire hung on the wall. Despite Alexei’s protests, his mama took refuge on the couch. It was lumpy, moth holes littering the back.
Despite his insistence that he was the man of the house, that he was smaller than her so it would be better for him, that she and Olga should sleep together in the room since they were both girls. Mama had stood her ground, she was older than him, his mama, she was completely fine on the couch. She punctuated this by hitting the cushions with a wooden stick to get the dirt out.
Her job at the mining offices had long hours. Often, she was gone before the sun had risen and back long after the sun had set. After the first week, their neighbour offered to care for Olga while Alexei was at the schoolhouse; in exchange, his mama would help gather their shopping. It was an easy agreement for mama. Alexei, on the other hand, had also protested this; it was his job to care for his sister.
Those dreams were quickly shattered, like his idea that they could go back to the cabin, and he was placed in school. Alexei had never been to a formal school before, getting home schooled by his mama and babushka instead. He’d learnt to read through stories; worked on maths through selling items in the dark with babushka; physical education running in the forests.
Now he was stuck for hours a day within grey stone walls with grey teachers and grey students. Not to mention that the uniforms were terribly itchy. A minor assessment had been done on Alexei to see what year he was to go with, the school officials deciding that he was up to par with his age group. This had cheered mama up some, knowing that she hadn’t completely failed her children. What they learnt though, was that while he could read it wasn’t the same as the others, he could write but he had to start anew when the teacher saw him using his left hand. Practical knowledge was now of no use, it was all theoretical.
Nobody wanted to work for themselves, everything they did and would do was for the collective partnership of their fellow man.
Mama had explained to him that school was a safe place; Alexei found out that just like other schools around the world, just because it was considered a safe place didn’t mean there wouldn’t be tormentors. Despite being slightly behind other students, nobody could say Alexei wasn’t intelligent. He soaked up information like a sponge. This may have helped him academically, helping him achieve average student status, but it didn’t help socially.
Living in the forest for so long had advantages, but his lack of social awareness was one of the disadvantages. Such as watching people like he would the animals. Or standing up for someone who was being pushed down. At the time, mama’s words had echoed in his brain: he should help others like he would want others to help him. Alexei had followed that advice, and when the school bullies picked on someone smaller, taking their allocated lunches when the matrons looked away to let this happen (Darwin’s theory of evolution and all that), Alexei had fought back for them.
He was tall for his age, stronger than the other six-year-olds. Mama had told him he was growing up tall like a bean stalk, like papa. He pushed the boys down, quoting the teacher when lecturing them about how they shouldn’t fight for themselves. If they were only thinking of themselves, fighting with others, they would be working against all of them trying to get to the same end goal.
That speech got a rock thrown at his head.
From that point, throughout his childhood Alexei had learnt not specifically to be invisible, but to be agreeable. He kept his own opinions to himself, and following what others said. A follower, not a leader, just like they should be. Doing this meant others didn’t oppose him, he was just an ignorant harmless boy born from the forest. A bear cub without a fierce mama bear behind him for protection.
Alexei looked away from fights in the school year, instead focusing on the words he was trying to read or the story he was telling one of the other pupils. Whenever the copper scent of blood filled the air, the image of his papa would appear before him: tall and angry. The child on the ground his mama, defenceless.
When Alexei wasn’t at school, he was taking care of his sister. As they grew older, the closer they became. Even though there was only four years between them, he became almost a surrogate papa. Getting home from school, Alexei would pick her up from the neighbours. They would play card games and eat potato soup while they waited for their mama to get home from work. Sometimes, Alexei would be the one reading Olga to sleep at night, trying to tell her the stories their babushka had told him.
Unlike Alexei who grew tall, Olga stayed small as they grew older. Her statue came from their mama who had always been over a foot smaller than their papa. He grew like a weed, his mama muttering under her breath about it as she mended his trousers by candlelight, wondering why he was always growing so fast that the hem of his trousers kept going above his ankles.
“What do they feed you in that school?” she would joke lightly despite the worried looks lurking in the shadows. She tried to hide them, but he still saw. He would pray to the God that killed babushka that night that he would stop growing, if only to help his mama. This didn’t happen. While he was able to grow with his limbs, Olga did not. She often was falling like a baby deer, eyes wide as she watched him
During the weekends, Alexei and Olga spent most of their time wandering the woods that surrounded their town and cut them off from the rest of the world. Maybe it was because they had been born to the forest, more comfortable in the wild than with people. Maybe it was because of who they were, still the outcast Shostakov’s from the West.
Alexei was the one who taught his sister how to tie her own shoes when she turned four, ready to head off to school in her own used uniform. He was the one who taught her how to do up the buttons on her coat, teaching her letters so, unlike him, she could be the smartest of her class. When Olga started to write with her left hand, he would tap it lightly with his as a reminder, unlike the rulers he had gotten whacked with.
“That is wrong.” He’d say, urgently, looking around as if someone else could see them. “You must use the other.” Olga had been confused but complied. Never complaining.
She was the best of them all.
When school started up, the tormentors who had once ignored him and now started once more. Laughing as they watched him walk his sister to her classroom door, hand in hand.
“Mama Shostakova!” they would yell at him, making kissy faces, “Alexeyevna!”
Alexei would ignore their taunts, even as his sister looked at him worriedly. He would just look at her calmly, telling her that he would see her after classes.
After school, he would bear them up in the alleyway.
This time, his papa did not come.
One of Alexei’s favourite days of the week was the milk run day. A time when he didn’t have to care for his sister, didn’t have to be at school surrounded by people who were able to do the things he couldn’t. Alexei may have been able to remember easily, but that didn’t mean he could always figure out the answers on his own. Simple equations? Fine. Adding in brackets and letters? Impossible.
This was his time. He could see what he wanted, walk where he wanted. He would walk though parts of town that mama banned him and Olga from going to for their safety. Generally, Alexei always followed mama’s rules, because why would he not? Rules were for safety, not to cage him in.
Yet, he couldn’t stop the feeling of being a caged animal in a circus. Pacing his cage until the day he would be released to run.
Alexei carried the bottle carefully in his arms, watching out for holes in the pavement and crumbling pieces of the buildings. It was cold in his arms, the glass sweating as it hit the warm spring air. It still wasn’t completely warm enough to be outside without a coat, but it was still nice that most of the snow had melted. The seasons were changing, and with it brought back the life to earth that Alexei missed most in the winter.
He sung under his breath; the work songs they had been taught in school. He wasn’t paying attention to his surroundings, didn’t think anyone else would be in this part of town. It was slowly decaying, and most didn’t want to chance injuring themselves without adequate medical care. Exactly why his mama told him not to go there.
The footsteps on the crumbling road went unnoticed.
Turning the corner, he walked past the old workhouse that was now an empty shell. A relic from times before. His singing was cut off abruptly, the birds that chirped above flying away suddenly, the thwomp of their wings beating the air covering the sounds of his struggle. Alexei was unceremoniously taken off his feet and shoved down to the ground inside the building shell.
He curled his body around the milk jug, knowing that he needed to save the precious drink for his mama and sister. It was becoming harder to get, and he wouldn’t get it go. Feet kicked him, the sharp deliveries of pain turning into an overwhelming ache. Hands grabbed at his coat yanking to get him to let go, ripping at his hair.
“Mama Shostakova, nobody to cry to now!” one of the boys from school jeered.
“Where’s your sister, Alexeyevna? Can’t hide behind the baby now!”
Alexei tried to push them away, kicked and kicked but his ankles onto rubbed raw on the cement, his feet swinging uselessly in the air. From this angle, head down, he couldn’t see where they were. Didn’t want to chance looking up. All around him, laughter sounded. He gulped, swallowed hard, and finally stood. One boy punched his arm, grabbed at it to restrain him, another swiped the bottle away, laughing as it shattered against the wall.
Rage boiled down deep inside him. A feeling Alexei had never felt before in full, with the way it simmered and swelled in his abdomen. The feeling was hot, his hairline sweating as his blood boiled. His eyes blurred, senses dimming. The cold, rough feeling of a rock in his hands, the screaming at him to stop. Feet pounding on pavement as the boys ran off.
One was still there. The sticky warm feeling was what registered to him first. The slick meat that his hands hit when his eyes focused. Alexei staggered backwards, falling, and pushing himself against the wall in horror. His hands shook as he looked down, the rock still gripped painfully in his hand. Pieces of pale pink meat ribboned in the cracks, blood coating the rest. Across the broken room, lying on the ground, was a mess of flesh, blood, bone, clothing; everything that made a boy, undone.
Blood rushed, without thinking he ran. Ran and ran away from the town so he wouldn’t be seen by anyone on his way. Alexei was surprised that he didn’t run into one of the elders or men on their way back from the mines. He ran into the forest on the edge of town, ignoring the way the branches cut into his skin. Running until he found a stream, sitting down by the waters edge and staring at his reflection, contemplating.
Covered in blood, Alexei couldn’t help but feel more like his papa than he ever had. Was this how his papa felt when he beat mama, a rage that couldn’t be contained, satisfaction that he had won? The guilt ran over the feelings, until he started throwing pebbles into the water to distort himself. When twilight hit, he pulled himself out of his bloodstained clothing. First, he bathed in the stream, scrubbing the blood off his skin as well as he could. Then, remembering the skills his babushka had taught him, he lit a small fire.
Clothes burnt to ashes.
It reminded him of all those years ago, burning the towel over the river to let babushka’s soul go free. She had finished her time on earth and wanted to be with her God. Alexei was sure by now that her God was not real, if he hadn’t been sure before – he was now. Her God would not have let him take a life so easily. Instead of setting his soul free, he had branded his sins into his skin.
When daylight was almost gone, he threw the rest of the smouldering ashes into the creek and made his way back into town. Unlike the bears he was constantly compared to, Alexei was not warm. His fur had been shed and burnt, leaving him bare to the elements. Like most other children his age, he may have been tall, but he was made of bone; there was not much food to go around.
Bone eventually broke.
By time he got home, Alexei was shivering violently. The days may have been pleasant, but the nights were still ferocious. His mama had started to yell at him as soon as the door opened, fear bleeding into anger; stopping though, as soon as she saw him. She placed him in front of the fire, covered in every blanket they owned. She demanded to know who had done this.
The first thing Alexei learnt that night was that he was a captivating storyteller. He spun a tale about a strange man who lurked in the forest and had lured him out with the promise of toys from America. He’d wanted a present for Olga, he claimed, so he followed the man only to be attacked and have everything taken from him.
Including his child sized clothing.
It was a weak lie at best, but sometimes it was easier to believe a lie than face the truth.
The second thing he learnt? That Alexei Shostakov, at the age of ten, was capable of killing.
Puberty became the source to blame for Alexei’s sudden change in personality. He had always been a happy child, but never overly vivacious. Suddenly, he was making friends. Surrounding himself with so many people that there was never a chance to be alone. Became part of the wrestling team, cared less about academics and more about the people he surrounded himself with.
Alexei hated the quiet. Hated when there was no sound around him to drown out his own brain.
Maybe this was the reason, that once he hit twelve and went into an upper school, that he wasn’t home as much. Olga was old enough to be on her own, as long as he was there to feed her dinner. Alexei spent his time at parties, playing games and running amuck in the forest with his friends. He got a job, working with a local grocer bringing groceries to the citizens that couldn’t get there themselves. The pay was dismal, but it was enough to bring home to his mama; for her to give him a weak smile.
They had their first argument the year he turned thirteen.
“You’re wasting your childhood!” she had yelled at him, watching as the money he had once brought home was turning into bottles of vodka he and his friends nicked from the store. “If they catch you doing this, you’re done for!”
“We all share, mama!” he’d yelled back, the first time in his life. “I’m not a child anymore. I’m an adult!”
“You are not an adult!” the look on her face was one he had never seen before. She grabbed his ear and yanked hard. “You are thirteen, a child! You don’t know what adults know, what we have seen getting this far in life! You have years to go. Being an adult is a miserable life.”
He shared less of his life with his family. Watching his sister grow up before his eyes; hair growing longer, pulled back in long braids of wrapped around the back of her head and covered in a scarf like mama. She grew out of her dolls, focused more on books – lost the babyish roundness her face once held.
Mama had shrunk. Becoming skinnier as she gave her children more and more of her rations. Hunched from the weight of the lives she supported. The pay as secretary was inadequate for raising two children – teenagers – and the money that Alexei brought in went towards food much more than it had used to, while hers went to the rent. When they were sick, she would send Alexei or his sister into the forest to look for the herbs and mushrooms to make the same remedies of her childhood and her mama’s before her, refusing to pay the chemists.
That was the reason, Alexei tried to convince himself, the reason he was never home. He couldn’t deal with watching mama shrink and wither away into nothing. Couldn’t watch his sister grow older, the innocence fading from her eyes as she understood the injustices in the world around them.
Recruitment posters hung around town. Hanging off poles and community boards, shaking as the wind tried to blow them free of the pins that captured them. Usually, people would just walk by and ignore them, not particularly caring about the words of the others. Some were looking for their lost pets despite knowing that they had probably been killed, holding out hope; others were asking for food, knowing they wouldn’t get it because there wasn’t enough to go around.
Alexei was sixteen when he saw this. Standing there and looking up at the men in uniform, ready to fight for their country. He didn’t know much about the Army; only what mama had told him on the rare occasion about his papa and the money that he sent home. While Alexei knew his papa was in the military, from what he understood was that he didn’t go out into battles, per say – instead enforcing the Soviet rules.
What he did know was that the army money had helped his family. His mama had been a cleaner, babushka working as well, plus the army money, meant they didn’t have to scrounge when something came up. If he could send home money? Then his mama wouldn’t have to work so hard, Olga could go to school.
It wasn’t hard to convince the recruiting officer that he was older than he was. Alexei had facial hair, was tall. Maybe he was skinner than the Average adult male, but there wasn’t a lot of food to be had so that could be explained away.
His mama had been livid.
“You’re wasting your life!” she yelled, “You need to go to university, get education, get a good job!”
“This is a good job!” Alexei argued back, shaking his head. Couldn’t she see this would solve all their problems?
“Your papa changed, Alyoshen’ka, after he came back. Seeing people die, it does something to a person that can’t be undone.” He’d held his tongue, wanting to snap back that he had already seen someone die. That he’d experienced what she was worried about, so there was no worry now.
Leaving on the train is harder than Alexei thought it would be. Ever since he was six, he had imagined getting back on that train and going home. Now? That small town had become his home without him realizing it. He had lived there for ten years, and now no more.
Olga cried when she hugged him. Strawberry blonde hair loose for once loose instead of tucket back in a braid, the strands tickling his nose as he bent awkwardly to hug her. “Be good for mama.” He whispered to her. “Help her around the house. I’ll be back when I can, okay?” Alexei hoped mama didn’t see, and as her back was turned, he figured there was a probability she didn’t. Olga wiped her nose on the sleave of her jacket as she pulled away.
Alexei turned to hugs his mama. He held her as tight as he could without fear of breaking her. “I will miss you.”
“Come back to me.” She pulled away, grabbing his face in both her hands. In that moment, it felt like she was taller than him. Bigger. Her life force gone from tiny to large in a matter of seconds. “Come back to me, Alyoshen’ka, or there will be hell to pay.”
“I will mama.” He said softly. “I promise.
Anticipating how something would go in the future wasn’t Alexei’s strong suit; so, he hadn’t expected training to be so difficult. Every day they woke up at five in the morning. Went for a run, always in formation, no matter where it was raining, snowy, or sunny. Breakfast was cold Kasha, then they had their main training. Weapons, sniper rifles, close range guns, close range fighting, and tactical training. Every day it was something new, equally has hard.
He found that learning to drive tanks was the hardest part. It didn’t help that he hadn’t learnt to drive beforehand, never having a car to learn in or the money. He learnt quickly though, soon rising in the ranks.
Alexei may have been taller than many of the others, skinner than them, and younger (though, they weren’t aware of this) than his contemporaries, but he worked just as hard. Really, he worked harder than them. Pushed himself to run faster to beat them. He shot better than them, would get the bullseye, between the eyes on the crude painting of their enemy flags and leaders on the dummies they’re to hit. He’s the first to get the target in the middle of the brain, first to get all his rounds in the middle of the target without one straying.
They’re taught to fight dirty. They can’t let an enemy have any opportunity to get a hit in, so they must take them down by any means necessary.
Night training is especially difficult. All the other soldiers huddle together to keep warm, but Alexei is aware this means they will be an easier hit. If they stayed together, they could be seen from far away. He goes a little way off, enough that he can still see their fire. Builds a quinzhee in the snow and curls up in his uniform and regimental assigned sleeping bag. Here was the thing about snow: it was insolating. Even as the snow fell outside, he was able to watch from his area what was going on.
As predicted, the was a training hit on their campsite. He was the only one who wasn’t found.
Soon, he was considered a bear among the ranks. Alexei may have been smaller than the others, but he had some skills only gained by years of practice. He could navigate his way-out of the forest quicker than the rest, it able to forage for food since he knows what’s edible and what isn’t. Living in such a rural place for his whole life had benefits.
Internally, Alexei believed it was babushka’s influence that helped him survive his training. Watching over him from whatever afterlife she believed in.
Each month they were given a small allowance. Most of his money he sent to mama and Olga, with a small letter telling them about his time in training. There was lots of he wasn’t allowed to say in case the mail was intercepted, but he always made sure to put that he missed them. Truthfully, he had no clue if they even got it.
The army was getting stronger.
He was getting stronger.
They would beat the west.
He ships out sooner than he would have thought, not even a year after he starts training. Under Generál-Mayór Dreykov, the troops were all squished together in a plane and sent to Vietnam. The man was peculiar, but he was sharp, smart. Well respected by the men in a way that Alexei wanted to be one day: his presence demanding respect without having to ask for it.
At first, Generál-Mayór Dreykov ignored Alexei. He was simply a kursant like the rest, so it made sense to him. Like him, everyone else was ignored as well unless they were being reprimanded. They stared straight ahead at the spaces between the other soldiers, faces black; or, at least, attempts at blank. It was hard, when you were travelling into the unknown, to be completely without fear. Their eyes held it, muscles in their jaws twitching as they strained.
No amount of training could prepare them for actual combat. The shatteringly loud sounds of gunfire mixed with the screaming horror of innocent civilians; the sweet taste of gas in your mouth but the grainy texture of dust as it entered. The food they were given made it feels as though the training mess-hall was the Metropol Moscow.
People cowered when they saw them.
Alexei had never had people scared of him before. It was an odd feeling. At one point, when trying to offer a child food only for it to start crying, he decided that he wasn’t a fan of others fearing him. Even if he wasn’t wearing his uniform, it was obvious he was a foreign combatant. People gave him a wide berth when walking through the village. Soldiers were considered to be brutal, bad. That wasn’t who he was.
Was it?
In all counts by his superiors, they believed him to be doing well. Alexei had one of the highest killing rates out of his battalion, was able to get in and out of different areas quite easily. He was flying up the ranks, and by nineteen he was watching over his own troops as they went into combat.
Alexei couldn’t pinpoint the time when it had become easier for him to ignore the way people tried to avoid him. There were women who came up to him to talk. Some children ran over to him, a hero in their eyes, babbling away at him in their own languages. Alexei would just smile and nod, not knowing what they were saying but loved the way their faces lit up when they spoke.
The perks of being Kapitán meant he acquired a slightly better accommodation. Was able to get fresh food and other foods that didn’t taste like shit. It also meant he got slightly more attention from those higher than him in the ranks. Most importantly: Generál Ármii Dreykov. Generál Ármii Dreykov, formerly Generál-Mayór Dreykov was the man with all the power. He had the ability to talk to the president, had people inside the KGB. Really, was able to get anything anyone ever wanted without any trouble.
It was the type of power that Alexei had never dreamed of having in his whole life. Yet, suddenly, it was at his disposal. Dreykov invited him into the inner circle with open arms, lavish food reminiscent of royalty, and Cuban cigars. Anyone in the circle could have all the girls they wanted – somehow speaking Russian.
Rituals were created. After combat the boys would tend to their wounds and go to bed, getting ready for the next day ahead. Those who were lucky got to go see Generál Ármii Dreykov. Got to wind down in the haze of smoke, booze, and pretty women that always lined his tents. When they had all fallen asleep, Alexei would still be too keyed up, and Generál Ármii Dreykov would take this as an opportunity to tell him all about his ideas for the new world order.
Ivan Dreykov didn’t know if Leonid Brezhnev was going to get everything done that he’d promised. Yes, he rightly introduced the Brezhnev Doctrine, and yes, there was a new economic reform in place to help with the stagnation of the country; but would this all go down well in the end? Ivan (because Alexei was now informed to call him Ivan) wasn’t sure if everything that was happening was in the best interest of the country. But, they were all to stay loyal to the leaders. In the end, he believed in the cause. Believed in the morals they were fighting for, for people’s freedom, so they wouldn’t have to live under the same systems that had destroyed so many civilizations.
Look at Russia before Vladimir Lenin had taken over.
Look at the Hapsburg Empire, and Germany after.
Look at the United States of America, begging for a revolution but without the backbone to achieve it.
Alexei held onto every one of the older man’s thoughts. He had seen people fighting for three years, watched people starve his entire life. They needed to save them, not just for the good of the people but for the good of the world.
Afterwards, every shot he took rattled in his mind with babushka’s words: one life gives way to another. Papa had died for Olga, so the West would die for the citizens who needed life.
At twenty-five, Alexei was shipped out to Afghanistan. At twenty-six, the troops and civilians under his watch started calling him Opekun. He watched over those who couldn’t fight for themselves. Made sure his men were ready before sending them out into the field. He almost exclusively listened to Ivan for his orders, knowing that Ivan knew more about the political nuances of this than the other Generals around them. He could converse with the president and KGB, they couldn’t.
Alexei had become cocky, something he would recognize later in life. Like others given the power to choose whether people were going to live or die, he believed himself to be invincible. The idea of invincibility in young adults was not something that only he held, or something that was just in those who joined the army without another thought. It was universal to all who were young around the world, something the East and West shared.
Cocky he may have been, but invincible he was not. Nobody was. Shot on a routine patrol. One shot turned into two, turned into three. Oozing blood mingling with dry dirt, soaking into the earth. A true sacrifice for everything it had given them.
Sudden consciousness, and he was no longer mingling in dirt and grime, surrounded by dozens of dust particles and gun powder. There was smoke, a particular smell he had come to associate with Ivan. The loud whirring of plane propellors, then darkness took hold again.
The dark melted away to the snow, bears in the distance blending in with the trees as they are the berries provided by nature. The rushing of the river nearby, the laughter of his sister and splashing of fish as they jumped. His babushkas voice, tell him the stories that were seared into his brain like the bullet was to his bone. The warmth of his mama when she hugged him goodbye. Their laughter, gutting the first deer and asking babushka what he should make. She told him whatever his heart desired.
Leaving gifts for the forest, thanking nature for providing them with food and shelter. For letting them live through yet another winter.
The comforts of home were ripped away all too soon, giving way to a shocking cold, the smell of antiseptic, the irritating beeping of a machine. Alexei’s eyelids were heavy, but he fought to open them. His head lolled to the side, so full of cotton it was hard to hear at first.
“Kapitán Shostakov.” Ivan spoke, voice slow and calm yet firm and urgent. “We do not have much time. You are going to die.”
Everything took a moment to sink in, the words slowly piercing his heart. Him, die?
Whose life would his bring to the world?
“Would you die for your country, Alexei?”
“I am.” He grunted out, voice raw, “I am dying for my country. I would always die for my country.” He would love Russia until his last breath.
“Would you like to keep fighting, Alexei?”
“God,” he groaned, “Yes.”
“Good.” He watched Ivan nod at a nurse, and slowly the pain started to drip in. It wasn’t a pain centralized from gun shots, no it was all encompassing. Only bits at a time, at first a fuzz, then a buzz, then a full out assault on all his senses. “I will see you on the other side, Opekun.”
He woke up multiple times, the pain more excruciating each time than the last. When he woke the last time, there was no more pain to be felt. He was stiff, like when laying in the same position for too long. Arms and legs full of pins and needles, no feeling in his hands or feet. Ivan was off to the side with a man in a white lab coat, not speaking but looking at a file.
Alexei glanced around the room. It was dim, but he could still see perfectly well. There were other men in it as well, he noticed. Some that he had fought with before on base, some who he recognized from basic training, and some he had never seen before. Had they all gone through this burning change? There were so many questions in his mind, and the voice inside was amplified like it never had been before. Everything was slightly… more. The buzzing of the lights, the cracks in the walls, Ivan’s footsteps as he made his way across the room.
His uniform was too clean to have just been in the desert, too pristine for this place; the cracked off-white subway tiles, the dirty floor that needed to be mopped. “Ivan – what?” his voice croaked, unused.
“You gave us quite a scare, Alexei.” Ivan’s tone was the same, easily calm and cheerful. The same as it had always been on the battlefield; in the tents with women; here. Yet, it was somehow almost accusatory, like Alexei getting shot was his own damn fault. “But, great news, you’ve lived. That is more than can be said for many.”
It crossed his mind, to ask how many had laid there before him; distracted by the doctors as they slowly took the leather straps away from his arms. Nervous. Afraid of something… him? He watched in fascination as the bruising seemed to disappear within seconds, leaving his skin as clear as it had been before he had signed up for battle.
“What did they give me?” Alexei was curious, glancing around once more. Other men were still asleep, some thrashing about and yelling in pain. It should have startled him, but after watching men being eaten alive by wild dogs… well – there was little that could scare him.
“We walk.” Ivan motioned ahead, not waiting for Alexei to agree or get his whit’s about him. It only took a stride or two for Alexei to catch up. It was strange – he now looked over the head of his contemporary. “You know of Captain America, yes? Silly question, everyone knows the legend of Captain America.”
“A little more than a legend.” He commented, “The West’s greatest creation.”
“Semantics.” A roll of Ivan’s eyes, “The West’s serum may have been good, for the time. But we have created something better. Our own version of Doctor Erskine’s serum. To create our own brand of super soldiers.”
“And I… am one of them?” Ivan nodded, “Those other men?”
“The same.” He confirmed, “their bodies are being used for a greater service, a sacrifice for staying alive instead of dying because of an American bullet. A better use, you agree?”
Alexei’s chest puffed out, like a peacock showing its feathers, full of pride. Instead of his body wasting away in the ground, he got to live and help his country become something great, something greater than it had been before. “Much better. I will fight for our country, Ivan. For our cause, beliefs.”
“I knew I could count on you, Shostakov!” Ivan gaffed, slapping him on the back. Discretely, the man tried to shake his hand out behind them. Finally, they got too large, metal doors. A keypad was beside it, and Ivan cleared his throat slightly.
“Oh, right.” Alexei turned so he couldn’t see the code being put in. Finally, the doors opened slowly with a groan. It was readily apparent that they were thick, reinforced. Inside was some sort of operating theatre, but without a drain in the middle of the floor and no metal table ready with medial instruments. Instead, it was empty. Glancing up, he could see the observation windows; behind them stood more men in white coats. While there had apparently been some attempt at sound proofing, he could still hear the murmurs of their voices. The padding made them smaller and the words indistinguishable, but they were still there.
Another slap on his back. “I’ll be back for you when they’re done.”
Orders were given to him from some sort of hidden sound system. Drop of clothes and let them inspect him from every angle, every inch of skin. They wrote information on their clipboards, some took photos, muttering to themselves. He had to wait as someone pushed in weight and cardio equipment. How much could he lift before breaking a sweat? How long could he run? At what angle? What was his endurance like, his strength, every sort of test that didn’t involve them to physically be in the room was done?
There was no clock to mark the passage of time, so Alexei wasn’t sure how long this took. Only knew that by the end of it, he was tired and hungry; and glad they finally decided to give him some clothes. When he’d asked for his old clothing, they’d simply laughed at him and shoved the new stuff into his hands.
Alexei ate dinner alone, being led to a large table full of succulent foods that he had never seen in his life. He ate and ate, more than he probably ever had before. All this food, it could have fed his family for a year, and yet he was able to eat it all at once, quickly as though it was nothing. He wondered, for the first time, if there was a way to send some of this to mama and Olga; so they could experience it as well.
“I’ve heard you had a good first day.” Ivan praised when Alexei walked into the room he was allocated. The room wasn’t far from where he had woken up, in fact he could still hear some of the heart monitors as they beeped rhythmically, their staccato beats slightly out of time. “Perfect scores, Opekun.”
More pride surged, the praise going to his head. Perfect scores, perfect protector of the motherland. “I want you to know, Ivan, I’ll do my best to make you proud.”
“I know you will do more than your best, Alexei. I have seen you do this for years.”
The passage of time wasn’t marked. There were no windows to look out of and see the days go by, so he let his internal clock so the work. Alexei was allowed to write mama and Olga, if he didn’t write about his location. Not that he knew his location. Instead, he wrote about the injury. What he had been doing before. Saying he was on a base in Russia (because that’s where he assumed they were) recovering from his wounds. Nobody would question him on that; with the way the West was progressing.
Otherwise, he got back up to par with his shooting, with combat. Having to contend with the fact that his physiology was different now and working out how to work with it, not against it. They paired Alexei up with others who had been given the same serum. Sitting in lines together every week to be injected. Slowly, their numbers started to deplete. Nobody told him what was going on or where the other men went. His only guesses were based on the screams that echoed through the metal and cement corridors at night. The men were not going silently.
Alexei wondered when it would be his turn.
This lasted until he was the only one left. No more fighting those who were as strong as him, no more competitions to see who could get the target dead centre first, who could get to the end of the track and back the fastest.
A competition wasn’t the same when he was the only player.
Finally, he is called to Ivan’s office. High up in the facility, with windows looking out towards the city. He had been underground for so long that the light almost hurt his eyes. He didn’t let that pain show, instead shaking hands with his friend, and accepting the cigar he held out, the whisky.
Only once he was sitting did Alexei realize he was not the only visitor in the room. Granted, person was a strong statement considering he couldn’t see their face or features. Instead, the person, a female he assumed by the physique, was shielded in armour made from some sort of thin metal material. He looked curiously at Ivan; this wasn’t the type of women he usually brought out when wanting to impress others.
“Alexei, meet the Iron Maiden.” Ivan introduced, though not giving away any more than that. “One of the finest Widows.” That made more sense. “She recently graduated from the program. You remember me telling you about the program?” The Widow program, run out of the red room. To help Russia, have the most unsuspecting of people (women) learn to spy, seduce, and if needed: assassinate.
“Yes.” He nodded, “to help us bring the world back to where it should be.” He paraphrases easily. Ian nods, a proud smile on his face as though he was a papa looking at his son. For once, Alexei was the smart one in the room.
“You’ll be teaming up with the Iron Maiden on missions from now on.” Alexei’s brows furrowed. Missions? He wasn’t going back to Afghanistan? “Right, you need a suit, too.” Ivan took Alexei’s look of one of annoyance of not having a suit of his own. He opens a drawer in his desk, handing over a plain box. Waving him towards a door, which is revealed to be a lavishly decorated bathroom, and telling him to go change.
Alexei changes quickly, looking at himself in the mirror when he places the helmet on his head. The outfit was made from some sort of leather that squeezes him uncomfortably. The helmet too tight, pushing his blonde hair down into his eyes. Bright red, a silver star in the middle of his chest. Suddenly, it dawns on him:
He’s a superhero.
A grin lights up his face, and when he leaves the washroom he poses, fists against his waist in a mockery of American comic books. Iron Maiden doesn’t turn around to look at him, but Ivan claps and looks him up and down with a look that Alexei would pin-point as excitement.
“A Red Guardian.” he states, arms opening widely. “The Red Guardian and Iron Maiden. A perfect duo.”
Morocco, Yugoslavia, Brazil, Columbia.
It doesn’t take long for Alexei and Iron Maiden to be sent out on missions. Recognisance and battle, they go anywhere and everywhere. Alexei doesn’t question why they’re lead suspiciously away from larger western countries, even when he does see the different political upheavals that they would be perfect interjecting in. Other widows get sent there, but never a soldier.
Alexei figures it’s just lesser missions for lesser people.
Generally, he goes in guns blazing, ready to use his fists to get his way. She’s lithe, incredibly quite despite the metal that encases her. He’d never seen her real face, never heard her real voice; only the distortion caused by the mask.
Hungary, Turkey, Thailand.
At night they sleep in separate beds, Ivan, and whatever organization he was working for not giving out the money for something nicer than shitty motel rooms. The beds are across the room from one another, and they never speak. While being curious, Alexei never asks why she doesn’t take off the mask when they’re alone. She doesn’t say anything to him at all.
Uganda, Japan, Spain.
Alexei wonders one night, while is mind is full of the sweet vodka induced haze – only moments before it clears his system and leaves him painfully sober – if she was sent to spy on him. She was always sitting quietly across the room, never moving, never speaking. As soon as he snaps back into focus, he throws those paranoid thoughts away. Ivan trusted him; they were partners in all this. He would never send someone to spy on his most loyal ally.
Beruit, Pakistan, The Philippians.
The weekly injections he had grown used to persisted. If they weren’t on base, which was likely considering they were being sent out often, Iron Maiden does the injections. She isn’t soft, Alexei doesn’t expect her to be, but she isn’t brutal like the nurses or scientists that usually do it.
Still, she doesn’t speak.
He wonders what she looks like under the mask, what she sounds like.
He doesn’t ask.
England.
They’re at the Royal Ballet, an event that Alexei wouldn’t have chosen for himself in a million years. Wearing a perfectly fitted suit, he sips wine and sits at the back of the box, waiting for the right time to put a gun to the head of the man they’re waiting for. An officer high up in the Queen’s Guard. Allegedly, he has information that Ivan requires about the MI5’s movements within the USSR.
Alexei isn’t cruel. He lets the man have his last moments with his children.
The man’s daughter is enamoured with the dancer up on stage, dark hair pulled back tightly, face painted yet Alexei could tell she was gorgeous without it. Her movements were elegant, arms and legs cutting the air with no sound. The swan, dying from a curse.
The Iron Maiden isn’t anywhere to be seen, as he scans the guests below. She was supposed to be a distraction, but Alexei wasn’t even sure who she was supposed to be distracting. It was one of those missions where there were two: his and hers. Together but separate, end goal the same but the way of achieving it completely different. In the end, Alexei is aware that he is always her main mission; she was to pick up the slack if Alexei failed.
The Red Guardian never failed.
There are only minutes left before the curtain falls and intermission starts. Despite his large stature, he can easily blend in with the crowd. Years of trying to be liked but also be invisible were now useful. Somehow, it was easy to be the only other man in the washroom with his target; all the others getting alcohol to make it through the rest of the show.
Laughably easy to hold a gun to the targets head.
Easiest of all to break the other agents who had been guarding the man.
What wasn’t easy was being stuck in a small room with Iron Maiden while they were trying to make their escape. He had drawn too much attention, and they were stuck there until the crowds calmed. While he couldn’t see her expression, he could tell by the way that she angled herself that she was incredibly annoyed.
“Look,” he started, voice quiet, “It isn’t my fault–”
“–sure–” her voice left no emotion,
“–not my fault he had guards–”
“–right–”
“–why would a Queens Guard–”
“–you couldn’t have even checked–”
“–have a guard–”
“–It iss a title–”
“–not like you were there.” They stopped for a moment, both breathing heavily. Footsteps sounded outside the door, and they stilled, making sure that nobody heard them before she retorted:
“I have my own objections.” Her voice was a hiss, sounding strange from behind the mask. Her head swivelled to look at him. Alexei couldn’t see her eyes, they were always hidden, but sometimes when she wasn’t there, he could imagine what they looked like. Would they be blue? Brown? No, he imagined that they’d be a gorgeous hazel that changed colours in the sun.
“What could be more important?” he snorted, exasperated that she didn’t seem to understand his point. “You’re mybackup, Widow. Don’t forget that.”
“There are more important things than you.” Her voice was hard, flat. Anyone with even a small ounce of self-preservation would have backed away. Those days had left him, and besides, there was nowhere to run to. Instead, he stepped forward, a feat in itself considering the confined space they found themselves in.
“Like what?” Alexei demanded.
“Classified.” Excuse me?
“I’m the General’s right hand!” his voice was louder than it should have been, but he didn’t care.
“Must hurt, to see you are not so special.” Iron Maiden’s voice was flat as she turned away, cracked the door to look out. “We can go.”
Afghanistan.
Alexei’s first mission in three years without Iron Maiden. Back where it all started. The air is hot, his suit wasn’t made for the dry desert heat and sweat forms uncomfortably under the leather. It’s better than being stagnant though, like during the last couple of weeks where he hadn’t been going out.
Ivan tries to ply him with women, distract him from the energy that collects inside. Gives him different ways to release energy without sending him off base. Sites a need to keep a low profile considering the Westerners have been questioning the Soviet’s use of the Red Guardian – if considerations of War Crimes needed to be handed out.
It’s boring though, sitting still. Alexei hadn’t sat still since he was a child, he had lived to fight. To break stuff. While he loved seeing the action figure versions of himself when he went to town, loved the way they sang the anthem and worker songs, it wasn’t enough. The Comics had started coming out, staring at him from windows: Red Guardian and Iron Maiden! Them along with other fictional characters. The USSR’s answer to Captain America.
It wasn’t enough. A comic book was seeing more action than him.
Hiding in a foxhole was the first time he saw it. Him. The red, white, and blue star-spangled man with a plan. A shining shield made of the strongest material known to man to match. Alexei blinked, hoping it wasn’t dust in his eyes, hoping it wasn’t one of those mythical mirages that he heard people talk about.
But then one of his people were knocked off their feet, and hundreds of bullets ricocheted of the stars and stripes shield. Alexei grabbed his own gun from beside him, itching to go out and fight but knowing if he left his spot, he’d be giving up his well thought out spot. This was a best place, to find out who the leader of the insurgents were. It was all for not, because as soon as he cocked the gun Captain America looked over at him, and they made eye contact.
Oh, this would be fun.
In a blink of an eye, Alexei was out of his hiding spot and barrelling towards him – shield first. There was a clash of metal on metal, loud and clanging and probably heard from miles away. It was obvious his shield wasn’t going to live up to the American’s, but that was okay. He was getting the fight he finally wished for.
The fight.
The fight is what ends up drawing him like a vampire to blood. The sound of fists on suits is loud, shields ending up being thrown. Alexei easily blocks the punches thrown at him.
“An old man!” he gawks, finally realizing that Captain America was not as young as everyone said he was. A lot older than the photos of him, that were admittedly from the forties. A beard that was dark but with silver on the edges, some lines around his eyes. Older meant weaker, and weaker meant Alexei would win.
“Who the hell are you?” his Russian wasn’t perfect, but the meaning and intentions entirely clear.
“You don’t know who I am?” Alexei was aghast, how dare he? “We are enemies, you and I!” his voice taunts the American before he lunges at his legs like he had seen Iron Maiden do, knocking the man straight down. "Two sides of one sword."
"I think it’s two sides of the same coin, and double-edged sword.” He gets corrected between punches.
“Do not correct me!” his rage causes him to swipe at the captain like an angry bear. The two fight, all fists and muscle filled limbs, until there is a whirring of helicopters and shouting. Gunfire rains out down onto them.
Americans.
Alexei ducks for cover, refusing to be killed by some measly bullet. The helicopter throws down a line, and Captain America grabs hold.
“This isn’t over!” he yells, sure his voice was going to get lost in the ear shattering sound.
“Looks like it is!” Captain America yells back, a moment before the helicopter speeds away.
“Damn it.”
It’s three days before they meet again. Alexei is searching for the files that Ivan requires, grumbling about how mundane this job is when he is meant for something bigger. Better. Usually, Iron Maiden would do this job; but she wasn’t there. Alexei figured he would give her flack for this later, leaving him high and dry to do the boring shit that was generally her job while she got to go rest somewhere.
Probably a spa. Girls liked spas.
He sighed as he threw yet another file onto the pile growing on the floor. He was hastily trying to find the correct one, annoyed that it wasn’t just at the front. That would make his life incredibly easier. Finally, he saw it. Grabbed it quickly and folded it in half uncaringly – shoving it into the small pocket in the lining of his suit and zipping it up. Patting it lightly, proud of himself, he turns around.
Oh.
Well.
“Hello again… I still don’t know who you are, sorry.” Captain America is annoyingly polite for an arch nemesis. It confused the hell out of Alexei considering he wasn’t kind to the man, but maybe it was simply an American way of getting into your head.
He doesn’t respond to this taunt, instead turning quickly and throwing the cabinet he was once looking through at the other man. When distracted, he runs at him, tossing him towards the shelf lined wall. Captain America is lighter than he appears, so Alexei can do this without any trouble. He runs out the door, swinging open the stairwell gate with a little more force than necessary and heading down.
Captain America is, of course, right behind him. Nothing can keep that man down. That is why the Americans made him, to be their weapon. But Alexei is better – knows he is better. He has better stamina, and he didn’t need super soldier serum for that; he had been in the army before, seen the reports, had fought for ten years. What had Captain America done besides be pumped full of chemicals?
Nothing.
The other man jumps down the stairwell, scaling it easily to land in front of him. Alexei pushes him into the wall but he’s attacking back with the same amount of force. There is a point where Alexei knows he isn’t going to get out until he does something. This is that point.
There’s a gun in his holster, and he grabs it to start shooting. Captain America holds up his shield and the bullets bounce off like puny marbles. He growls, then sees something he didn’t think the other man had seen. A window. They are nowhere near the ground floor, and this building was much higher than the others in the area.
Modern.
Such a disappointment when modern broke.
Oh well.
With a final fatal swoop, Alexei moves forward and pushes with all his strength, sending the captain out the window with a sprinkling of glass. He waits a moment, then looks down.
The captain is gone.
Oh well.
“Lyosha!” his mama’s voice is the palm to all pain. She and his sister still live in the same small apartment that they’d been in since he was six, even though he sent most of his money home every month.
Alexei couldn’t pinpoint when mama had changed. Was it before he did or after? He hadn’t been home for a long time, so long that he wasn’t sure when the last time was. His mama was smaller than in his memory. The bunch from hours spent sitting over a typewriter were more pronounced than when he was small.
“Mama.” He greeted her softly, bending down to hug her gently. Despite the vast height difference, it wasn’t as hard to do as he’d assumed it would be. He had been around so many people smaller than him in the past years, that maybe it had just become a second nature to him to shrink down to be their size. When he moves back to his full height, he realizes that no; it’s just because she is his mama.
Glancing out the window, everyone he sees on the street seem so small, so distant. A vast difference to when he was a child.
“I’m happy to see you.”
“You haven’t changed one bit.” She whispers, something a mama would say to her child in normal circumstances. It hit different, as they lowered themselves onto the sagging couch. Alexei was sure he had changed since she last saw him, since he hadn’t seen her since he had gotten then serum.
Looking around, he was hit be an on slaughter of memories. This place was full of them, good and bad. Stories of mama’s childhood, family dinners when the three of them finally got to be together, nights spent listening to broadcasts on the radio. Learning to braid so his sister could have pretty hair at school, playing make believe with her when mama was at work. All those memories attached to the old furniture and walls stained with years of protection.
Maybe it was a good thing she had never lost, so they were preserved.
Everything came crashing down when his eyes caught an empty milk jug sitting on the counter. Everything faded away until he was ten years old again with rage tensing his muscles, the sticky heat of blood coating his hands.
“Why did you stay?” he asks, barely able to tear his eyes away. He did though, found the strength, and went back to his mamas. The blue, once brilliant, and now faded over time. Her hair, once a fair shade of red that shone fire in the sun, was dulling to a grey.
Her answer was simple. “It’s home.” She says as though this should be known, as though this is the answer to everything he had ever asked. Alexei shook his head. Home, to him, conjured up the image of a wooden cabin. There may have been drafts that floated through the walls, but there were always warm blankets to be wrapped in; borscht to eat that babushka made in large batches; his mama’s voice reading stories out of a book that was falling apart, his sister wrapped up in her arms.
“Home.” He echoes her, voice faint and much less boisterous than it had become in the last decade. He glanced around the room again. The sparce furnishings were still there from his childhood. New items were well used, a small television nestled between two stacks of books. All on art or typing, some fiction that had made its way behind the curtain.
Suddenly, it hit him that it was like being stuck in a room full of strangers who know who he is, know everything about him, but he knows nothing of them. It might be normal, Alexei supposed, considering he knew he’d been shown on television. Since he’d been writing her letters about his life ever since he left; her letters were not filled with as much.
Were they?
When Olga comes through the door, he is grateful for the distraction against the knowledge that much had changed. He’s stopped in his spot though, as he realizes that like his mama, time had changed her in a way it hadn’t changed him. Fifteen years had passed. Olga was twenty-six now, working in the offices for the mines like mama.
Her smile never changed. Olga’s face lights up when she sees him, running over to hug him tightly, her head barely coming to his shoulders. Her hair had darkened significantly, but still glimmered gold in the artificial light – fine strands chopped short.
“You’re so big!” she exclaimed, looking up at him and pretending to not be able to see his face, hand up as though shading her eyes from the sun. “I saw on television, but – it was so hard to believe!” This made Alexei puff out his chest with pride; a peacock, showing off its brilliant feathers. He had always wanted to prove that he was the best of them all. Alexei thrived on the affirmations, the knowledge that he was doing well making him beam with pride. He had spent so long being average, that being extraordinary was a high.
Happiness never lasts.
Dinner is borscht. A happy reminder of his childhood, though never as good as babushka had made it. There wasn’t enough to go around for everyone to have seconds. The bread was stale, butter slathered on it to hide the fact.
“Why don’t you use the money I sent to get fresh items?” Alexei asked, brows furrowed as Olga poured watered down milk into the glasses mama had put out.
“We don’t keep it all.” Her tone made it seem like this fact should have been obvious, that he would know this. “Spread throughout the town.”
“It’s for you.” He insists, trying to catch her and Olga’s eyes. “So, you can live a better life. A life you and Olya need. Olya can go to school, be whatever she wants to be.”
“Oh, Lyoshen’ka.” Her voice made him feel as though he was a smile child again, getting reprimed for whatever he had said at school. “We don’t need a fancy life. We keep enough to live how we need.” Despite the reasonability of her words, they ignited something inside him. “Besides, others need it more than we do. The Uglov’s were almost put out onto the street! Igor Vilkov’s daughter is very sick and unable to get medical treatment here, with the money they were able to get her to Moscow.”
Alexei opened and closed his mouth a couple times, shocked. “It’s for you!” he reiterated, “Not to share. I wouldn’t send it if I knew you weren’t using it.” While not meaning to, he exploded. Voice too loud for the small area. Taking a deep breath, he pulls a cigar out of his pocket from the pack that Ivan had given him. Olga rolled her eyes at his attitude, mama’s eyes unreadable.
“I don’t want those vile things in my home.” She finally reached to bat at his hand before Alexei could pull out his lighter. He paused momentarily.
“Papa smoked.” He remembered the smell. Much worse than the ones that Ivan gave him, full of tar.
“You papa was a vile man.” Mama’s voice was calm, hands folded in front of her. The world stopped spinning for a moment, his mama turning away and getting up to carry the dishes to the sink. Olga’s eyes burning into him. Alexei stood up, ignoring how the table shook and the chair groaned in protest.
“I’m going to use the washroom.” He announced awkward before walking away.
The washroom was still in the same place, still as small as it had always been. He closed the door behind himself, making sure not to use too much force since it looked ready to fall off at any moment. The tiles that lined the room that had once been white were now yellowed with age, the grout crumbling away. The taps creaked when he turned them on. For a moment, Alexei worried that the water wouldn’t be clean – thankfully it was.
Everything he had now was a luxury, created in the world that Ivan inhabited. Even though that he had grown up with this, it was still a lot worse than he had expected. He gave mama and Olga the money for a reason. While he didn’t expect them to live in the lap of luxury, he would have hoped they would use it to make the apartment more habitable.
So many would have.
The water splashing into his face shocks him, much colder than he had intended by good for bringing him back into the present. He gripped the counter, staring at himself closely in the mirror. Who was the man who looked back? Not the scared boy who had lived here, who would look in place in this washroom, that was for sure. The soldier who was ready to die may have fit in here, but really, he had died when Red Guardian was born.
Alexei knew the change had been more than just making him strong. His hair may grow out, but his skin still stayed the same as it had been in 1980. The colour behind his eyes was the same, but they were sharper. He’d always been tall, but now he was taller. Perhaps the weekly injections had something to do with it, but he didn’t understand enough of the scientific jargon to ask.
Maybe they had done this to him.
Or maybe he was just better than everyone else.
That last thought was the one he settled on. The idea that some artificial part of him that had been injected was the reason why he wasn’t aging was too hard to swallow. Sometimes the impossible was better.
He steps out the door again once he was ready to face his family again and is almost immediately stopped by his sister. Olga stares up at him, her blue eyes accusatory.
“You’ve changed.” She states hands on her hips. “I don’t like it.”
“You’ve changed too.” Alexei points out, “and you don’t have to.”
“Apologize to mama.”
He had been planning on it, but Olga telling him to… it made something in him decide that that was the exact opposite of what he wanted to do. “No.”
“Stop being so childish, Alexei. Just apologize.”
“She doesn’t need one.” He argues, “if anyone deserves one, its me.”
Olga looks at him as though he had grown a second head. Or maybe even a third. It was unsettling, the look in her eyes. Finally, she scoffs. “You? What could she have possibly done to you?”
“She gives away my hard-earned money!”
“It’s in the spirit!” she raised her voice. Mama had turned away, gone to her own world while her children argued. “You, you are not!” Olga sputtered, trying to figure out what to say. “We are supposed to like collectively. Everyone as equal, yes? You, you act as though you are better than everyone else!”
“I am!” Alexei doesn’t understand why Olga doesn’t understand that; his arms move as he speaks, “I am the Red Guardian. Have you not seen the shows? The books? I am a hero!”
“You’re a fake!” she yelled at him, a foot stomping on the ground. This caused him to pause, if only for a moment. More in shock at her tone than her words. “You’re paraded around in this… this mockery of the American Captain; and for what? To go talk to some politicians? To go fight in battles we’re not even involved in? You left mama and me!”
“I fight for you!” his argument is weak, even to his own ears. He can’t let Olga know this, though.
“You don’t fight for anyone but yourself, Alexei Gerasimovich Shostakov! Not for me, not for mama, and sure as hell not for this country!”
Alexei’s fists tighten at his sides, but he keeps in control. Not moving forward towards her like he would in battle, not moving back to close the door and put a barrier between them like when he was younger. Even if he knows there is some truth to her words, he cannot acknowledge it. Doesn’t know what it would do to him if he did.
Dr. Erskine had once told Steve Rogers that the serum amplified what was inside a person. Therefore, the good would become great and the bad would become worse. Nobody had bothered to tell Alexei this. Really, none of the scientists or generals (or really any personnel involved in the Super Soldier venture) had considered this. What Dr. Erskine didn’t consider when he had created the original serum, was that nobody was innately good or bad. The idea of people having shades inside them, wasn’t a concept back then. It was what people did with those thoughts and feelings, those actions, was what made them who they were.
Alexei wasn’t a bad person; but he wasn’t a good one, either. His thoughts had been amplified, fed into by propaganda that he was willing to listen to because it made him feel big. Large truths like this? He wasn’t ready for it.
Instead of waiting to listen to any more of what his sister had to say, sitting down to talk about what had transpired like the adults they were, he pushed past her. Headed for the door, grabbing his coat on the way. When his hand hit the knob, he heard her voice again. He turned slightly, saw the sadness in mama’s eyes.
“If you leave now, you can never come back.” Olga’s voice was hard, final. “You aren’t our Alexei anymore. You’re a coward. A murderer.” His sisters’ feet were planted, strong.
Stronger than he ever would be.
Israel, Germany, Iran.
Reunited with Iron Maiden. She has a slight limp at first but works it out.
India, Turkmenistan.
Across the world they travel.
Hawaii, Chile, New Zealand.
Coward.
Canada, Portugal, Switzerland.
Murderer.
Looking back, Alexei should have realized that it was the beginning of the end.
The unfortunate part of being an optimist: never wanting to see the bad.
Stockholm, Sweden.
Alexei was the distraction for once. That much was painfully obvious from the moment the mission was given. Casual attire, jeans and a winter coat that made him sweat more than it did protect him from the cold Swedish winter. He hated being away from his uniform, felt like he couldn’t be a hero without it.
There was no indication of where Iron Maiden was. She was out completing her job, and when she needed to get would signal him. Somehow – he wasn’t exactly sure, but he’d know when it was time. For now, he just had to sit in a bar across from the cinema and wait. He didn’t recognize the name of the film playing, nor the actors listed on the poster. Alexei just drank the shitty beer that was placed in front of him. It did nothing for him. He wished for something stronger, but it had become apparent to him some time ago that nothing except mass amounts of vodka would do anything for him in the way of a buzz. Getting shitfaced wasn’t part of the mission remit, so that was off the table.
Though, Ivan did say once the job was done, he would get a reward later.
Alexei wasn’t sure if it was just because he was getting old (no), or if he was simply changing. He had concluded that he wasn’t a fan of the rewards that Ivan generally thought fit. Women were nice, yes. For a time. His dreams were becoming filled with dark hair, warm eyes. Sunny skies and children’s laughter. Maybe he was just going soft, or maybe mama and Olga had gotten into his head.
The bar erupted into cheers when Sweden got a goal against Canada in the juniors.
Outside, the Prime Minister and his wife exited the cinema.
He threw the right amount of change down onto the table, then slowly weaved through the crowds. He tried not to look like he was watching the man’s movements through the glass. Alexei was grateful for the blast of cold air that hit him as soon as he exited the building, taking a deep breath and grinning at the snowflakes. Surely there would be steam coming off him as he tailed the two, his body having to adjust to the temperatures outside.
It was stupid of them not to have security following them, but he supposed that Iron Maiden had been the cause of that. She had set up most of the plan after they’d been told their target. No ends would be left untied.
Enters the subway after them, a car away so he can still see them through the small window.
Exits at the same stop, just before the doors close so he is at the back of the crowd.
Just like Iron Maiden told him, Alexei makes sure to always be a block behind them. His stupid wool hat pulled down close to his eyes, scarf sporting the logo of some hockey team high on his face.
Thank God it was dark.
As they stop to look in a shop window, he feels antsy. Watching them discuss whatever trinket they were looking at in a language he didn’t understand Iron Maiden would have been better at this. The gun is hot against his side, his hand itching to grab it.
Beep beep.
The pager.
A sign.
It’s easy to get close to them before they can notify anyone, really before they notice him. When they do turn, the confusion on his face and the fear on hers is clear. The sound of the gun blasting is loud in the quiet street, the ashy smell of gunpowder and sticky warmth of blood hitting his face. Another shot as she screams.
Alexei runs, its laughably easy to get away. The streets are quiet except the commotion that starting to erupt. Thankfully, its dark enough that he can get away without anyone seeing the bloodstains that have soaked him. Nobody questions the man running away from the scene instead of towards it. A natural reaction.
It’s easy enough to ditch the clothing, putting on the clothes he and Iron Maiden stashed for him earlier in the day. He walked casually a couple more blocks, and finally entered a new bar and sat down at the counter.
“Vodka. The bottle.”
Ivan reassured Alexei that the fact that the woman survived wasn’t his fault. He had shot her; it was that fucking women’s prerogative to live. Yet, nobody before this had ever survived the Red Guardian. Apparently, she believed herself to be special.
It was a good think he didn’t have his suit on.
Maybe it was a good thing that this had happened. The appearance of youth had given Alexei the attitude that the youth had. Young, reckless. He hadn’t been careful enough and would not make that mistake again.
By time Iron Maiden found him, he was three bottles into oblivion. The bartender was confused and amazed that he wasn’t dead on the ground. Alexei was on the ground, surrounded by the other drunk men who were cheering him on as he bench pressed three of them. His hat was off, coat off, his face out there for all to see. It didn’t matter that the police were already trying to hunt down the Prime Ministers Killer, Alexei was going to have fun damn it.
Damn him.
“The other units, they need some influence.” Ivan assured him as they got ready backstage. His shield was gone, though he had been assured that it would be ready for him when he was going out on a mission again. He had been given a prop shield in its place. Thankfully he got to keep his red suit on, helmet squishing his skull to collapse, standing up on stage.
Alexei gave speeches to the troops. Originally, he was the one to prepare them, but soon others started to. He gave them dutifully, a puppet fulfilling his duty to the greater good. A mockery of the captain America shows, there was originally dancers behind him, women for the crowd of hungry soldiers. This shrunk down.
Shrunk and shrunk until it was Alexei on the dim stage again, the only bright thing he had was the suit.
The world was in disarray, social upheaval.
His injections were having more and more time between them. Alexei watched on the television as slowly the Soviet Union started to fall apart. Democracy was coming into play, those Western ideals that poisoned the mind were taking hold.
Alexei’s world was becoming smaller, limited to the vodka that was consumed within the four walls of his apartment. Ivan stopped coming by less and less, until one day when Alexei was invited to his new office in Belarus. The walls were lined with a deep pine wood, and the view out the small window was bleak. Images of other men in high power framed black and white silhouette.
“My new kingdom.” Ivan exclaimed to him, arms held back and open as though showing Alexei a new world. And it was a new world, to him. A world that Alexei didn’t understand. “I have been promoted. Leader of the Red Room. It is nice, yes?”
It was nice, the facility. Or at least, the small part of it that Alexei was shown. The training gyms were women stood in formation, ready to fight; scientist in their pristine labs. Only one of the scientists catches his eyes. She moves differently than the others, almost like the other women he had seen on the property. Stiff but smooth, silent. The marker of a widow. Alexei can only tear his eyes away when nudged by Ivan, a smirk playing under his mustache.
The injections stop at the end of 1991.
Boris Yeltsin had been elected. Democracy.
Georgia became independent.
Lithuania’s independence is recognized for the first time.
Estonia’s independence is recognized for the first time.
Ivan explains to Alexei that having the Red Guardian go out to talk to the leaders of nations is of no more use. The world they had lived in was dying, and it was best to adapt to the new world order. Or, as Ivan wanted to do, help build a new one. A better one. Where everyone was truly equal. Not like it had been, when oligarchs ruled; saying they were for the people but only for themselves.
In his world, there would not be discontent like there was now. Everything that was happening – well – it was all part of a plan. A great plan that Ivan wanted Alexei to be a part of. A plan that had been in progress for decades that was finally going to come into fruition.
It was becoming increasingly obvious that in desperate situations, people would find anything they could to hold onto. In this case, for Alexei, it was the idea that he was no longer going to be a hero. So, he held onto the idea that in Ivan’s new world order, the Red Guardian would be used again. Until then, nostalgia fueled by vodka was his only solace.
The first time he meets her, he can tell there’s something familiar about her.
His wife.
Fake, wife.
Alexei had wanted to do something, but this job wasn’t exactly what he was thinking. At least it would suffice for now until he could go back to fighting.
“You’ll be infiltrating the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division. The Northern Institute branch. This is incredibly important as they have information that is highly beneficial to our cause. Not to mention, if we can acquire this and burn what they have to the ground, we’ll be ahead of them scientifically.”
He only partially pays attention to Ivan, instead studying the woman beside him. She wasn’t introduced, at first. She stands tall, feet shoulder width apart, back straight, hands clasped together. Yet, her head was bent to look at the ground. Submissive.
Yet?
She’s strong, not as strong as him, but Alexei can still tell this even when he is looking ahead at Ivan at pretending to be paying attention. The way she holds herself, speaking only when spoken to but every word is highly intelligent. Everything about her screams deadly. He finds himself incredibly intrigued by her, by the scent of chemical soap and hints of antiseptic.
“Here are your files, memorize then destroy them. Anything from before is gone.”
This was completely different from anything he had ever done previously. Alexei barely had any undercover experience; he wasn’t one for costumes to make him fit in unless it was a quick hat change. A quick glance over the first page shows that everything he had lived for until that moment won’t be needed here anymore. This was a mission for Alexei of the past, the one who had never seen that red suit. The Alexei of now wanted to break something.
“You’re married now.” There is no chance to ask her name before Ivan dismisses the widow with a wave of his hand. She bows her head, file held in her hands like a lifeline as she turns the corner out of sight. Alexei shoots Ivan a questioning look, one that is only responded to by the offer of a Cuban. “The most beautiful of my girls.”
“She’s quiet.” Alexei observed, a large contrast to his mama who when away from his papa, could talk. Maybe she was more like his sister; but there had always been something inherently loud about Olga. A mouse who made a racket, running around the elephant town without a care; dodging the feet that tried to stomp her out. The loud soul of women he had grown up around wasn’t there.
Maybe it was.
Missing. Subdued.
“How all women should be.” Ivan laughed, Cuban between his fingers and smoke pouring out of his mouth. The smell, more fowl to Alexei as time went on, sat in the air. “I would love to have kept her. Regrettably, she’s the best out of all my girls. She will be more use to you.”
Ivan motions towards the file with his glass, the clear liquid sloshing up the sides, an obvious invitation to open it. Part of Alexei wasn’t ready yet, wasn’t ready to submit to his fate. Wasn’t ready to see the world he was now forced to inhibit. While his life may have currently been boring, at least it was his own. There was a look though, that crossed Ivan’s face – dark, forbidding – that let him know that getting out of this wasn’t an option.
Alexander “Alex” Rushman.
“Not very American.” Alexei commented dryly. He had been expecting something along the lines of John, George, David, a named that sounded wholly good-boy-American. A man who you would imagine setting off fireworks in his yard and eating too much greasy food with his family.
“American’s rip off everything.” His friend dismisses, barely glancing over at him from the files of his own he looked at. “Similar enough to your name. Alexei. Alexander. No room for confusion.” Ivan paused for a moment, seeming to turn over a thought in his mind. “How’s your English?”
Alexei stared at him for a moment. “My… English?”
Ivan made a noise, one that Alexei couldn’t fully distinguish. “Ha! You think you can go to America and speak no English? You must pass as one of them. We’ll find you a teacher.
Glancing back down, he read further down the page.
Married to Melanie Rushman, a housewife and recent graduated with a masters in Horticulture.
Children–
“I have children?” he demanded, and a small dark look caused him to look back down. Somehow the idea of having children seemed worse than having his current life ripped away. Children took over everything, and there would be no time for anything else. Besides the look, Ivan didn’t seem particularly bothered by this. Simply nodding at him, sitting back down behind his desk, expression morphing to boredom.
“Two girls. A real American family. Two parents, white picket fence, can’t exactly give you point three of a children but you can have two full ones. Congratulations, papa.” He smirked at a joke only he understood. “Now, I need to get back to work. Planning waits for no one. We’ll send a tutor to your apartment. Best to get studying.”
She’s a vision in white, a true angel if Alexei wasn’t aware of how deadly she was. Ever since their first meeting, the widow had been haunting his dreams. He may have been dreaming of a sort of domestic life for years, but now there was a face to the symbol. Her face wasn’t warm though; really, nothing about her was warm. This was something Alexei had noticed right away.
The way she walked was stiff, like a rod had been jammed up her spine. Her eyes were distant and cold when she looked at him, like she wasn’t fully there even when holding his hands.
“What’s your name?” he whispers to her when they’re close at the alter; camera’s flashing to get a supposedly private moment. At first, she doesn’t answer, eyes scanning his face. Searching. Alexei isn’t sure for what. Knicks, maybe, since he was shaved today for the first time in over a year? He felt too exposed, without the layer of hair.
“Melina.” Her voice is soft, different from the way she looks. Maybe it is simply for his benefit. He got the impression that she didn’t talk much, as she was silent through most of the photos. Attached physically, detached mentally. He couldn’t remember working with other widows, besides Iron Maiden; he could never see her face, see if she was there.
It’s easier for her to smile on command than him, even when Ivan gets there and is watching with a serious expression from behind the camera. Alexei notices that when she looks at him as his wife, she looked at him like he holds her whole world. There is still a small part of her though, that is being pushed away but he can still see, that is gone.
His first thought when meeting the girls is that they are small. Alexei was sure he could easily break them with his pinkie finger.
Alexei was surprised to learn that the red haired one was apparently already a Red Room student. Hair to her shoulders, bangs brushing her forehead, her front tooth was just starting to grow back in. The youngers hair was curly, fine, obviously her baby hairs that hadn’t been cut off yet. Where the younger child was soft, the older was hard. The younger was innocent, the older wise beyond her years.
Something in her reminded him of his babushka. Alexei wasn’t sure how he felt about that reminder, but they were now his children so he supposed that would be understandable. He laid on the floor with them at Christmas, marvelling at their gifts; handed them baskets full of chocolate on easter; laid in the grass with them, laughing as Natalia sprayed them with the hose in summer; stood in silly costumes from some American cartoon on Halloween; and took a nice family photo in a shirt and tie at Thanksgiving.
When it’s all said and done, everyone is loaded into an SUV and driven out to a safehouse with the girls. Its outside of the city, closer to the border with Ukraine than Russia. It was early March – they would be shipping out within the next week. There was still practice to be done, though, if they wanted to be ready for New York. Natalia still glared at him, Yelena had somehow decided Melina was safe and gotten on top of her and under the seatbelt, fast asleep. Melina looked out the window, blank face reflecting in the glass, not helping him talk to the older girl.
Silence and Alexei hadn’t been friends since he was ten years old, but during that drive the enemies became something resembling friends. Natalia refused to engage any of his attempts at conversation, though admittedly he wasn’t good at talking to children. He had held babies for photos, but never had to talk to them extensively. He’d given up, letting silence and the occasional hiccup take over. Only when they got to the small house did anyone speak once more.
“This is our home until we get a new one, girls.” Melina’s English was perfect, and Alexei found himself staring at her in awe. How was this all so much easier for her than it was for him? He wondered if she had gone through all the same lessons he did, finding it easier? Or did she learn as a child, maybe she was American and just amazing at Russian? “For dinner, we can have sandwiches tonight. It’s been a big day.”
Alexei analyzes her movements as they enter the house. He wonders how she knows how to do this, if they had trained her to be a mother in a way they hadn’t trained him to be a father. She was elegant as she glided dutifully from room to room. The youngest, Yelena, stayed always attached to her. Either balanced on her hip or holding onto the leg of her jeans. The older, Natalia, watched dutifully from the chair at the counter as their food was made.
After dinner, Yelena begged for cuddles, crying when she wasn’t given them right away. Natalia watched on, eyes full of apprehension as she watched – waiting for something, Alexei wasn’t sure what, to happen.
“I’m the Red Guardian.” Alexei tried to reassure her, though it seemed to have the opposite effect, “nothing bad will happen.”
“No.” Melina shook her head at him, shooting a dirty look. She stood up; the blonde nestled in her arms. “The Red Guardian isn’t real. Your dad is just teasing, Natasha. Nothing will ever happen to either of you, because dad and I will protect you.”
The first lie.
Everything goes fast. The first day of school, report cards, sports day, last day before summer vacation.
Alexei finds his job incredibly boring. After learning what he needed what to do, it comes to him easily. Plugging things into a computer didn’t require much brain power – imputing data sets, printing out files to go to other departments, Yelena could do it. Sometimes though, he got to be the one to deliver to those other departments rather than sending an assistant. On those days he just watches, trying to figure out the ins and outs.
Mostly, he just wonders who they go to. What the codes mean.
Melina, he had learnt, was not only a widow but a genius. She could understand everything he didn’t, cracking the codes he’d puzzled over all day within minutes. She gives the instructions, relayed from Ivan or another superior. If he doesn’t understand something happening at the Northern Institute that he should, she’ll spend as much time as needed teaching it to him so he can go to work the next day and not seem like an idiot.
Blending in gets easier the longer that they are there. He goes out drinking with his coworkers, with the dads of the girls’ friends – making sure to act drunk when the others start to. Goes to dinner parties with Melina and the girls, acting like a loving and doting father and a besotted husband. It’s not as hard as he thought.
The girls get used to him. Natasha no longer completely fearful of him, though she still preferred Melina most of the time. Yelena found him a joy, figuring out that if they were within their home, she could use him as a play structure. At night, she would insist he read her the fantasies about magical prince and princesses.
Melina he is still unsure of. Her eyes are still guarded, and generally doesn’t let the girls out of her sight when she knows they’re with him. It hurts, the way her eyes hold the fear that at any minute he would pull out a gun or crush their heads like grapes. Despite this, there is a happiness that wells inside of him; that grows as the weeks go by and he watches the girls grow. Watches them blossom in this society that he hated so much. Alexei doesn’t understand how Melina could think he would hurt them.
Then night falls.
Alexei had been away from Russia more than he could count. Had slept in strange places, in strange ways, strange situations, next to strangers. In the army, he had been notorious for being able to fall asleep in the middle of gunfire. Yet, it was only when sleeping next to his wife that they came out from the shadows for him.
The nightmares.
To Melina’s credit, she never comments on the loss of sleep in the morning. She continues like it’s a normal part of life. He could have sweat pouring off him, swearing and yelling. She would simply hand him a towel and glass of water, making sure the girls are still sleep before sitting next to him and staying awake until he’s asleep again.
The brutal deaths of foreign soldier’s bleed into a young boy pulverized. His hands are always covered in blood, dripping down, and mixing with desert sand. Sometimes he sees the girls, watching, looking at him like he’s a monster.
He learns that he’s not the only one.
Sometimes he’ll be woken up by a whining, Melina staring up at the ceiling in horror but limbs stiff, unable to move. Sometimes she would thrash around in the bed, almost punching him in the face. He never complained. Never tried to touch her until she was awake enough to consent to whether she wanted the comfort. He learnt that the first night, when he had tried to restrain her from hurting herself, only to have her go for the jugular. She’d only woken up when he’d thrown her in his haste to get the kitchen knife she’d somehow procured away from his throat.
The dresser had been cracked in the process; Melina bruised but promising nothing was broken. The girls had come in to see what was going on, fear spread across their faces. Yelena had cried from the disturbance, Natasha looking at them with suspicion.
Afterwards, Melina had slept in Yelena’s room, Alexei downstairs on the couch.
The next morning they’d gone furniture shopping and never talked about the incident again.
It’s late August the first time Natasha’s approaches him of her own volition. The early morning run was blazing high in the sky, and he sat on the back deck enjoying his coffee. Melina and Yelena laid on a blanket in the grass, learning her English alphabet with some block toys they had gotten. He’d been staring at the newspaper blankly, not taking in any of the non-news that was reported.
“Dad.” He was still getting used to being called that title, dad. “Can you teach me to ride a bike?” they had bikes in the garage already when they got there. Larger ones for him and Melina, one with a basket and ribbons for Natasha, a three wheeled one for Yelena that was covered in pictures of cartoon horses. He’d found that all American children had bikes, riding around the neighbourhood at all hours of the day together. It has never occurred to him that Natasha didn’t know how – he’d assumed she just didn’t like it.
“Of course, I can.” he agreed easily. He regretted it though, after he had finished his coffee and they were both standing in the back yard, away from where the bystanders could see, and staring at the bike. Why did he regret it? Because Alexei, unfortunately, also didn’t know how to ride.
His family had been too poor to buy a bike. He and his sister had watched the few children who had bikes ride them, but they were like much of their town: walking everywhere. In army training, riding a bike wasn’t exactly a priority behind artillery and close combat training. Who needed a bike when you were the Red Guardian? But that was the point. He was the Red Guardian, and there was nothing the Red Guardian couldn’t do. So, he instructed his daughter to get on the bike.
“Now… go.” He flung his arms back, dropping them at the unamused look on the red heads face.
“That’s now how it works.” Her voice was deadpan. If he didn’t know that this was how Natasha’s personality was before they had left, he would have thought she was simply copying Melina. She was a spitfire in her own right, no need for Melina’s genetics. Feeling eyes on them, Alexei glanced back at the house and saw Melina watching with a smirk. She didn’t think he would be able to do it.
He'd show her.
“Right, right, of course.” He shakes his head in amusement. “Just a little joke, y’know?” she didn’t know, unless she could read minds which Alexei hoped not. He wracked his brain for the times he had seen people riding a bike. It wasn’t that many, admittedly, except the kids that spent time on the streets here. “One foot on the petal.” He decided on, remembering the dad he had watched teaching his children the other week.
Placing one of his hands on the back of her seat and the other on her handlebars, he starts to walk her in slow circles around the yard. It may have been easier to do on the pavement in front of the house, but he figured if he suggested that to Natasha, she would protest. At first, she sat limp, not completely sure what she needed to do. Then, slowly, she got her bearings and the petals started to turn. “Good job, Nat.” he praised, grinning at the way she sat up happily at the praise. “Now… I’m going to let go.”
“No.” her voice was quick and sharp. She planted her feet on the ground, stopping their progress and placed her hand on his arm, grabbing on. Just as quickly as it happened, she let go and looked down. Hands folded together, shame across her face. “Sorry, sir.” She mumbled. “I didn’t mean to be rude and ungrateful. I accept punishment.”
Alexei was flabbergasted for a moment before snapping back into his acquired role of dad. “What? no, of course not.” He quickly tried to reassure her. “Nat, you’re not in trouble for not being ready to do something. It’s fine. Everyone learns at their own pace.” He can see the words behind her eyes, the questions she wants to ask. He can’t answer them though, don’t think he ever could. “We’ll keep going like this until you’re ready. Even if it takes the rest of our lives. Okay?”
She looked apprehensive but nodded. They continued their circles, the petals occasionally squeaking out of a need of oil. The sun was hot as it raised higher in the sky, but he ignored it; feeling a need to make sure Natasha was comfortable before he did anything else. Slowly, her hands stopped gripping the handlebars so tightly, her muscles relaxing as she got used to it.
“Let go.” He doesn’t hesitate when she speaks, letting her go and watching as Natasha petals on without his help. She’s a little wobbly at first but gets the hang of it quickly. Alexei grins, proud, clapping and cheering for her.
Vaguely, Alexei wondered if this was what he would have experienced with his own papa.
From the window, when he looks back, Melina gives him a proud smile and nod.
When they’d left for this mission, the idea of Christmas hadn’t even crossed Alexei’s mind. Now that it was December, he wanted to protest the whole idea. They weren’t Christians, to start with; didn’t go to any church despite the nagging of that annoying neighbour. The rest of the holiday was too commodified, made to only be about how many presents and how expensive they were, rather than a time to spend with family.
Natasha was the first to remind them about it over dinner. Attempting to make it sound like more than just presents and everything they saw in the stores.
“The schools putting on a Christmas play.” She dutifully announced to them, pushing a flyer across the table at her parents. Alexei shoved another piece of potato in his mouth (he’d requested they eat more potatoes than rice when Melina was asking what food they should get from the store, saying they reminded him of home. Melina had to remind him they didn’t talk about that but got the starch anyway). “I’m a candle.”
“I wanna too!” Yelena yelled through a mouthful of food, Melina shushing her gently and reminding her that when she had food in her mouth, she needed to keep her mouth closed.
“What is the play about? Is it religious? Because you’re not in a religious school. I bet it’s about capitalism and-” Alexei’s original questions held genuine confusion that Melina shrugged at, she didn’t know any more than him. Honestly, he probably knew more. As soon as he started ranting though?
“Alex. Calm down, it’s just a play.” Melina cut him off.
“It’s about a reindeer named Rudolph.” Natasha explained calmly, her answer already ready for her dad. “He’s getting bullied cause he’s different. It’s about being friends and kind or something.” Being kind and friendly Alexei could get behind. Especially the not bullying part, his old school days popping into his head. Mama Shostakova. “Working together to get the job done.” Working for the collective, teamwork. Definitely something Alexei could work with.
“We’ll be there.” He promised her, despite Melina’s confused look at his sudden change in attitude. “Front row.”
Alexei was still wary about this Santa fellow when the girls asked to write him letters about what presents they wanted. “He’s an old fat white man who watches them, Melina. Breaks into the house and brings them. Presents after watching them. That doesn’t sound like something that should be promoted.”
In turn, Melina rolled her eyes at him and put down the copy of The Christmas Carol she had been reading for book club. “It’s harmless, Alexei. The letters go to us, we know what to get them for Christmas and put his name on it ourselves.”
“That’s the other thing. Presents? Why do children here expect to get all this junk that they’ll play with for a week then never touch again?” she sighed, crossing her legs, and looking at him like a mother with a stubborn child.
Maybe she was.
“We’ll get them practical things. Clothes, shoes, books. Something fun from Santa, maybe something small from us. Not a big Christmas. We need to do this though, for the cover.” Melina reminded him. Unlike six months ago when her voice would have been harsh having to go over this again, now it was soft, kinder.
“What do we get?” he asks, reaching out to grab her hand. If anyone asked, it was for the cover. Completely.
“Something small for each other. Probably something for each other from the girls. Nothing big.”
Another Christmas custom, as he found out, was going ice skating. He had known it to be done all year around, but apparently it was better at Christmas (at least, that’s what the flyers said). As he finds out, Alexei isn’t very good at skating. Yelena giggling from her spot with Melina, holding onto the little red metal bars used for the small children to balance. He isn’t a child though, and a grown man would look strange holding onto those. So, he simply rolls his eyes and tried to keep going, even if he falls every once in a while.
It's worth it for her laughter. The joy that fills her eyes as “daddies being silly.”
After a while he decided to sit in the penalty box and watch the girls, thinking that maybe it would be safer for everyone if he was off the ice. Natasha and Melina are naturals, he realizes. Gliding and spinning with a born ease. Natasha makes sure to fall a few times to look like the rest of the children in her age group but is still noticeably better than them. Then there is Melina, who could spin and twirl, skate backwards, jump, with an ease that reminded him of the woman who competed in the Olympics. A memory pressed against his skull as he watched her, a smile gracing his face.
She was like the dancers in London. The way she moved gracefully across the stage she had made for herself.
Limbs slicing through the air with a practiced ease, elegant, not making a sound. There was something else though. Something deadly in the way she wore the bladed shoes. Like the Iron Maiden in her suit, fighting but footsteps silent. Invisible but seen.
She had to be her.
Melina reminded Alexei of a ballerina. The way she moved in battle, the way she moved on the ice, the way she moved through life. Olga had wanted to be a ballerina, once upon a time. She’d stare up at the posters that hung on the community board, talking about ballet schools and ballet academies in Moscow. She’d look at the books about Ballerina in the bookstores, with sparkling, sad eyes.
They couldn’t afford dance school. She knew that. His other had tried to break it to her gently; but Olga had always had her mind made up. She tried to run away, and instead of the circus she tried to run to the Moscow Ballet.
Memories of mama and Olga came more and more frequently, visiting his dreams often. When they found a Christmas tree, memories of teaching Olga about which plants were poisons came to mind. When Yelena pointed at the river which had frozen over, he remembered going hunting with mama, swimming in the river afterwards.
Despite his hatred of the American’s capitalist tendencies, Alexei doesn’t know if anything could beat the look on the girls face on Christmas day. Yelena’s excited yell that Santa came! I told you so Nat! The look of disbelief on Natasha’s face that they actually had presents. Melina brought him out coffee, and sat on the couch next to him, her legs thrown casually over his. She still looked around the house nervously, as though bugs had been planted overnight without either of them realizing.
Ridiculous.
By bedtime, both girls were exhausted. Yelena was basically limp against his shoulder, and Natasha dragging her feet behind them with Melina’s arm over her shoulder, guiding her to her bedroom. He tucked Yelena into bed, sweeping back her baby hairs that had escaped her braid. “Goodnight, sunshine.” He whispers to her.
He trades off with Melina, grasping her hand unconsciously and squeezing. If she’s startled, she doesn’t say it as she moves into Yelena’s room. He hears her small cry of story, mama as he enters Natasha’s room.
“Best night ever.” His eldest whispers to him as he fixes her blankets around her. “Thank you, dad.”
“Sleep well, firefly.” He whispers back to her, kissing her hair and wishing her goodnight. He leaves her bedroom door open a crack; the same Melina does with Yelena’s.
Downstairs they clean up everything that had been left out. Picking up tissue paper and wrapping paper, Melina trying to fold and salvage the paper that had been left mostly intact. He cleans the table from the traditional American Christmas dinner they ate, wiping it down after from where sticky fingers had left marks. Neither spoke, listening instead to the soft crooning of music playing over the radio.
“Mel,” Alexei finally broke their silence when he couldn’t take it anymore. She was putting away the last dish, not responding until it was away, and the door shut behind it. Melina turns to look at him, expectantly. “I need to as you… are you…” he hesitates for a moment, “the Iron Maiden.”
“Yes, I was.” She spoke without hesitation. “You didn’t know?”
“I was never told their– her– you– identity.”
“Oh.” Melina shrugged, grabbing the last bowl, and putting the leftovers in the fridge for dinner the next night. “Well, now you know.” It was as though it meant nothing to her, while he was trying to wrap his head around it. “I’m going to show. Remember to turn out the lights.” Without thinking, she went on her toes and pecked him on the lips, moving and walking away.
Alexei stands in the kitchen until the water turns off.
Time blurs.
February fourteenth.
Another one of the American scam holidays.
And he figures not so coincidently, the day that had been chosen to be their wedding anniversary.
Alexei wondered if this was all part of some sick joke, making them go out on one of the most expensive days, as he pays their tab from dinner. Grossly expensive, more so than a normal time of the year. The tab adding up to more than mama probably made in a year. This was the restaurant that had been recommended, though, when he had asked around at work for the best in town to take her to. Melina had given him a look of disbelief when they pulled up, and now he understood why.
“You couldn’t have warned me?” he asked quietly as they exited, his hand low on her back. She didn’t complain, simply giving him a coy smile as she fiddled with the buttons on her coat.
“You wouldn’t have taken me.” Melina pointed out to him.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.” She opened her door, getting in without a fuss. He closed it behind her, he hated that she had a point. “You hate expensive things.”
“As do you.” He didn’t actually know if she did, but by the way she winced at the price of some of the items he would go as far as to assume she did. Getting into the driver’s seat, he turns the heater on blast as soon as the vehicle is turned on. He could deal without it, but he could tell Melina was cold – even if she wouldn’t tell him.
“Melanie likes expensive things.” Melina explained to him. “Alex likes treating her.” Alexei feels the smile sliding off his face as the reality that was it wasn’t actually a date between them, but a date between their characters, came into focus. Of course, it wasn’t actually them. It couldn’t be. Melina and Alexei weren’t there, they weren’t supposed to exist. “You’re upset.”
“Perceptive.” His voice is dry as he backs out of the spot, starting them on the route home. She frowns, staring at him.
“Why?”
Alexei glances at her before looking back at the road, “Why what?”
“Why are you upset?”
“Mel–” he paused, clearing his throat. He turned left at the night light, despite their turn not being for a couple more. She raises a brow at him. “We need to talk somewhere private.” He says as a poor explanation as he drives down the road, away from the highway.
It takes them an indeterminant amount of time. There’s no destination in mind, Alexei just driving until they’re somewhere quiet and private. Away from everything else that surrounded them, just empty fields, and darkness. Melina looked at him expectantly, while he looked anywhere but her.
“I just thought– for a moment–”
“We can’t Alexei.” Her voice is quiet as she cuts him off. They checked the vehicle for bugs every morning, every night. That fear still lives in them, that someone from back home – or even from America – could hear them. Alexei had once tried to argue that Ivan wouldn’t care what they talked about, that they were in private, so it didn’t matter if they dropped the act. Melina had asked him to continue checking, for her. “It’s too dangerous.”
“It just makes everything more real.” He whispers, grasping her hand and tugging lightly, finally turning to look at her. Melina glanced up out the window, at the sky above. Her face reflected at them in the glass, pensive as she considers his words. “I know you’re worried. Nobody has to know. I can stay between us.”
“He’ll know, Alexei.” He reached over to smooth out the crease that formed between her eyes.
“Ivan won’t care.” Alexei stresses, “He’s been wanting me to settle down!” her eyes close painfully, “You can still be Iron Maiden and married to me.” He points out to her, figuring that was her reason, “We’ll be out in the world again, baby. Red Guardian and Iron Maiden against the world. Be greeted by our girls every time we come back. A super family.”
Melina sighed again, then let silence fall around him. She let her head fall back against the head rest – he wondered what she was thinking. Finally, she turned to face him. “They call us widows, Alexei. You know why.”
“I trust you.” He cups the side of her face in his hand, and she leans into it. Their eyes connect, and they just sit there for a moment. Staring, waiting with bated breath.
Neither are sure who moves first, but all Alexei knows is that he’s home.
Home. Dom.
It’s a funny word, home.
So many meanings for so little letters.
So many different words throughout so many languages.
Once it had meant a cabin in the woods, surrounded by wilderness and the earth. Then an apartment in a town where the air was full of coal and the people depression.
Once it was an army training camp. Tents scattered across the world. A luxury apartment in the heart of Moscow.
Never did Alexei, in his wildest dreams, think home would be the United States of America. The enemy. The west. With two little girls down the hall who trusted that he would keep them safe.
With a gorgeous wife that made him so happy, moving under him, face covered in ecstasy.
The years pass so fast, that Alexei doesn’t realize they’re gone. Three years is nothing compared to ten, sixteen, forty-one. They go on vacation to national parks, take the girls to see the ocean for the first time, the desert. Family bike rides, child friendly concerts, ballet recitals. Picnics in the park and in the yard, dinner parties with neighbours, work parties.
For the date they decide is Melina’s birthday, Alexei and Yelena make her German Chocolate cake. The kitchen ends up covered in the fine powder of flour and cocoa powder, eggshells crushed under their feet. Natasha had groaned when she walked in, Melina raising an eyebrow with an expression that said you made the mess, you’re cleaning it up.
The cake was still delicious.
Her thank you left them both sated, laying together on their bed in a sweaty mess of limbs in the early hours of the morning. Both breathing heavily, her head resting against his chest, their hands clasped together, his free hand carting through her sweaty hair.
“I love you, more than I’ve ever loved anything.” Alexei whispered into her hair, his hand stilling. He felt her tense, start to pull away.
“Don’t say that.” Her voice almost disappears in the darkness.
“Why not? I love you, Melina Vostakova.” He tried to sit up, but she pressed a hand against his chest to stop him. Really, he could have continued, but decided to stop for her.
“Alexei… please.” Her voice breaks, the first time he’d ever seen her lose her composure. “Don’t ruin this. Please.” Tears. He couldn’t help her, didn’t know how to. Tears didn’t need physical strength to fix, and Alexei only knew how to fix things that way. Instead, he pulled her into his arms, holding her close and letting her cry silently.
“Okay, I won’t.” he says finally. Melina’s head lists to look at him. Her eyes are soft, how he had seen them in his dreams for years. Alexei wondered how his subconscious had always known it was her. Knew that it would be her until his life ended.
They fused together for one last time.
Somehow, it didn’t surprise him that his apartment had been cleaned for his arrival. No dust that he would expect from his three years gone. No food gone mouldy in the fridge, no dirty clothes in the laundry hamper where he’d left them. After three years, his apartment no longer felt like home (if it ever had). It was empty. Cold.
The fridge had a single magnet on it with a picture of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, no pictures to liven it up. No memories of the family camping trip, prior school photos of Yelena (with her missing tooth) and Natasha. Drawings the girls had created of their family or of the dog they begged for, permission slips to take to school, report cards covered in A’s and stars.
Alexei half expected to turn around and see Melina standing by the door, asking Alexei what he was looking at. The girls kicking off their shoes and chattering about whatever kids concerned themselves with. What he does see, when he turns around, is the closed door with its locks latched. The lone pair of sneakers he’d worn back, that they’d gotten at Target the week before after Melina declared his unwearable (there was only one tiny hole in the sole, but she stated that if he could feel the ground through them, they were useless). He notices the specks of red dried into the white fabric, a red that’s turned more into a molting copper brown.
Melina.
His eyes squeeze shut as the memories hit him, knocking the air out of his chest, and causing him to stumble back. The last feeling of her in his arms, somehow warm despite her cold clammy skin; the perspiration on her forehead and the blood staining her clothes deeply. Ragged breathing, holding onto his neck tightly while she tried to stay conscious. He sees the girls, terrified and crying. They wanted their mother, wanted the women who had kissed every cut and cuddled them to sleep after a nightmare.
She had died though, on that tarmac. If she had ever existed.
If he had ever existed.
Logically, Alexei knew that they were all meant for more than an American life. Meant for more than a family friendly neighbourhood, camping trips, and movie nights. He and Melina had prepared the girls; they would be great. They would have the best schooling and perhaps even become heroes like their parents had been before them. Heroes of the new age.
His girls were the strongest girls in the world.
Eyes open, moving forward.
Shoes in the trash.
Ivan appears in his life less and less. And when he is there, Alexei can tell he’s incredibly board by the expression on the man’s face – or the fact that if they were in his office, he was going through files and paperwork. No more Cubans were offered, no more vodka.
“When can the Red Guardian go out again?” Alexei would ask, itching to put back on the suit and do something. Memories of his real fake family still plagued his dreams, and he hoped that by going out and seeing actions again, maybe they won’t.
“Soon.” Ivan replied without looking up, waving him off.
This wasn’t good enough for Alexei. “Soon, you always say soon. Soon this, soon that. When is soon, Ivan?” he demands, arm of the chair he holds cracking.
“Generál Ármii Dreykov. It’s Generál Ármii Dreykov to you.” The man’s voice is cold. It’s a tone that Alexei hadn’t heard directed at him since his days as a Kursant; its enough to shock the usually loud man to silence. “The Red Guardian isn’t going anytime soon, Shostakov. The time for heroes is over. The world isn’t ready.”
Alexei is shown out of the office after that, dejected and rejected. He wanders the halls of the institute, at a loss for purpose. Who was he if not the Red Guardian? He wasn’t anyone, not really. Just some man who was chosen at random from the army because he was dying at the right place and right time. Anyone could have become the Red Guardian, not just him.
Death had taken all the other candidates, Alexei tried to reason with himself. Death had come in and cut them all down but had left him. Was it some sort of punishment, or did it mean something?
He passed a window in the wall and stopped, glancing through. He expected to see outside, but instead it was a group of young girls. All standing in formation like the women he had seen working there years ago. They all wore miniature versions of the widow uniform, staring at an opponent across from them. A whistle was blown, and they started to attack one another. It was terribly morbid, but Alexei couldn’t pull his eyes away. He assumed that when Ivan – Generál Ármii Dreykov – had talked about the school, he meant an actual school. Not… whatever this was. His eyes met a small blonde girl who was being beat someone larger, older, and recognized her almost immediately.
Yelena.
“Papa!” he heard her screaming, wailing. The sound cut into him, and he didn’t think as he rushed the door. It broken down, and he was heading across the room when suddenly his body was seizing, crashing to the ground.
The world was gone.
The only thing he ever saw were the four walls of his apartment. They became Alexei’s friend, his only solace. At some point, he took down the photos that were scattered about the room.
Him and Andropov.
Him and Chernenko.
Him and Brezhnev.
Him and Gorbachev.
The leaders of the world he had fought so hard for. Was Alexei fighting for them though, or was someone else truly pulling their strings like they had pulled his? The more he was left alone to think, the more he realized that he hadn’t been fighting for the leaders of the country he held so close. He had been fighting for one man’s interest. What he didn’t know, was if this interest was the Presidents or a certain Generals.
Once he may have thought that the government was too powerful to let this happen, but now he didn’t know.
Thoughts swirling in his head lasted for a long time. Ivan, Generál Ármii Dreykov, Ivan Dreykov, Dreykov, the man of many names, had told him to wait until he was called for. When would this be? In a couple days? Months? Years? Alexei watched too much television, read, and reread the books that were sitting on the shelves of his apartment – once just for show. Sometimes he could convince the soldiers who got his groceries to find him more books, and they’d bring back beat up copies of books that were probably curated by whoever was holding him captive.
Books about collective farming, biographies, and memoirs of different political figures. What amazed Alexei was that they weren’t just Russian figures but German, Chinese, American, Latin American. While he had been gone, the world had changed more than he realized – he’d be inside the changes, not watching from afar. Russian citizens were now allowed to have media from outside the country; but his was still curated.
Alexei realized that something was completely wrong on the 200th day of solitude. All the books he had been given were about great leaders or whatever else fed into the ideology; but if he asked for books about other topics, they never came. He was plied with all the vodka his heart desired, but even if he wanted to stop, they kept bringing it. Pills were given to him, cited as being for depression but Alexei wouldn’t say he was depressed. He instead let them pile up on his counters, flushing them down the toilet when he knew they were coming for inspection.
It wasn’t as though there was a guarantee that this would have even worked. Maybe those who checked would have realized all the pills were gone; but his body burned faster than normal men, so he took no chances. Making sure nobody would know about his indiscretions.
He tried to write letters to his mama, sister, Melina, but his wastepaper basket was full of crumpled paper. Never knowing what to say, never knowing how to say it in a way that he or them wouldn’t get in trouble.
All Alexei wanted to do was go find his girls, Yelena, Natasha, and Melina, and get them away from that place. Bring them back to America where they might have a fighting chance. Even if he and Melina went to SHIELD, there was a chance they would be arrested, and the girls manipulated into the same thing Dreykov was doing. Besides, these thoughts were only fleeting; Alexei knew he could never work for the enemy, and doubted Melina could either.
I don’t want to go.
Don’t say that.
Couldn’t she?
Sometimes, he would open the door and try to walk right out. Go out into the world like a normal human being. Armed guards would block the doorway, guns, and tranquilisers visible; and Alexei knew that more were hidden where he couldn’t see.
“I want to see my daughters.” He stated to the man who drove the vehicle when he was taken to visit Dreykov. The man just rolled his eyes. “Now.”
Nobody spoke and he was marched back to his apartment.
“I want to see my girls.” There is a point of no return, and Alexei had passed it.
Dreykov stood in the window of his apartment, staring out at the dark city before. Some lights were twinkling, in a way that reminded Alexei of the cities he had visited once upon a time as the Red Guardian. Windows slowly dimmed in other apartments as the citizens of Moscow went to bed, but his stayed blazing and bright.
Puffs of smoke came from the area, his going through his cigar like a dehydrated man with water. The smoke sullied the air, causing a film to cling to the glass.
“They aren’t your girls, Shostakov.” Dreykov finally said. Alexei swallowed hard, trying to keep himself calm despite his hands being clenched into fists at his side. He knew he needed to appease Dreykov, logically, but those thoughts had gone out the window.
“I want to see my daughters, Ivan. Sorry, Generál Ármii Dreykov, please.” Alexei had always boasted, once upon a time, that the Red Guardian didn’t beg. Finally, he had accepted that the Red Guardian didn’t exist anymore. Alexei hardly existed anymore. That’s why he could beg because he had nothing else to lose.
“They aren’t your daughters, Shostakov.” Dreykov repeated. “Never were.” He laughed humourlessly, turning around finally to look at the once great man. Alexei’s face was covered in a growing out beard, scraggly and unkept, hair greasy and lanky – unable to wash it due to the alcohol or laziness, Dreykov wasn’t sure. He tutted, shaking his head. “You’ve let yourself go. No hope for the Red Guardian, it seems.” The words were mocking, taunting, but Alexei refused to let them have an effect.
Daddy! Come watch! I can do a summersault! In his mind, he could see Yelena, her hair glowing gold in the summer sun.
They were his girls, whether Dreykov accepted it or not.
“Get used to it, Shostakov. They’re gone.”
An undetermined amount of time passes. He keeps the curtains closed, unable to watch the world pass by move on while he is stuck in the past, thinking of the girls he left to the slaughter.
One day a letter. Coordinates written in Melina’s need cursive, a mixture of Russian, English, and Turkish. A code they had worked out long ago but had never used.
On one of Alexei’s runs downstairs to gather the food he was brought; he heard the guards laughing. Talking about how Generál Ármii Dreykov’s pet has been moved off campus, to avoid distraction.
Alexei knew what off campus meant. He’d heard the words many times. Had uttered the words many times.
Making a plan without Melina was one of the strangest experiences he had. Even before she was his wife, as the Iron Maiden she had always been the planner out of the two. Making sure their operations would run smoothly without too many hiccups (Red Guardian was notorious for going off the book, Alexei had tried to stay on but sometimes veered). She could see the big picture whereas he only saw the end goal.
It was different now. Alexei didn’t get help from Melina because she was his end goal. Was who he was trying to get to. She had always protected him, in a way, and now it was his turn.
He saved the pills. When he had a sufficient amount stashed, he made sure there was enough vodka, grabbed some glasses, and brought them out to the men downstairs. This wasn’t exactly an uncommon occurrence, Alexei regaling him with stories from when he was in the army, stories of being the Red Guardian and going out to fight the bad guys.
This time was different.
By time he had finished the story about climbing mount Everest, they were out cold. Part of Alexei felt bad for drugging them, honestly not knowing how much for them was too much and just hoping for the best. He tried to rationalize, knowing that was what Melina would do. They deserved it, following the orders of a deranged man. He was being trapped inside like he was some enemy when he was in fact a soviet hero. Just because the government had changed, didn’t mean the heroes changed.
The suit may have been taken, but Alexei was more than a suit. Right? He wasn’t one of the monsters, he was the one who fought the monsters.
Granted, he understood monsters hid in the shadows until it was the right time to strike. They hid inside people, not showing until it was too late. Like in the stories he had been told as a child, monsters hiding under bridges, in trees, in houses made of sweets. Monsters hiding inside like his papa. Modern monsters were the same, they just disguised themselves differently, behind masks and governments with large armies and treaties.
It was easy for Alexei to simply walk out the front doors. There was no one to stop him. The first breath of fresh air he’d had in weeks, but he couldn’t stop to savour it. Couldn’t savour the silence in the city as it slept. He had to keep walking. Once he had known Moscow like the back of his hand, but it had changed in his three years of exile, his almost year of internment. The roads twisted and turned in ways that seemed unnatural, a nightmare in themselves. The roads and buildings colliding until they were one giant wall in front of him, stopping him from moving forward.
He didn’t know how far he wandered, until apartment buildings turned into the theatre district. Alexei was perplexed, how could one place change so exponentially. He stumbled, leaning against a bench to keep himself upright. Then a pinch in his back, multiple really. Reminding him of the games the girls would play, poking him and making him guess what finger had done it. He reached back, yanking out whatever it was that had embedded itself in his skin.
Eyes wide in realization.
A dart.
Fuck.
More pinching. It took a lot to take him out, though not as much as it once may have. He looked up to the sky in betrayal, the stars hidden behind light pollution filled clouds. The glass buildings appeared to shatter than come back together in a grotesque dance. He fell to the pavement as the world spun. His head hitting with a resounding crash, warmth filling him before nothing at all. Super healing had it perks, but sometimes Alexei wished it would just stop.
What was the point of being alive if he had nothing to live for?
There is a moment, standing in the courthouse washroom and staring at his reflection in the mirror, that Alexei doesn’t recognize himself. They’d shaved his hair, his beard, making him feel like he did in the army. Like he did in Ohio that one time Yelena had gotten gum in his hair and Melina took the shears at it.
If he wanted to, Alexei was sure that he could easily break out of the shackles they had around his wrists, legs. He doesn’t, though. Let’s them keep him trapped as they walk down the hall, guards on either side of him, in front. Guns out, prepared.
Alexei wasn’t sure if it was the lighting or his eyes deceiving him, but he looked older than he had in years. Older but not his true age. An older version of that scared sixteen-year-old kid who entered the army for the sole purpose of feeding his family. Maybe back then he should have heeded his mama’s warnings, that the army changed a person.
It had been years since he had gotten his last injection. Years since he felt like the Red Guardian.
Maybe they had made him, and he’d bought into it. Taken it for granted.
That was how the world was though, not knowing what you had until it was gone. The Red Guardian. Melina. Natasha. Yelena.
The door opens. “Time to go, Shostakov.”
Maybe he deserved to be chained like an animal, tried, and sentenced to death.
The court room was bright, and he could tell by the lack of camera’s that it was a closed proceeding; the lack of jury showing it was a mock trial. He had been to enough of these, heard enough about them, to know how it would go. He would get to say something, then the judge would sentence him with whatever the government decided.
Alexei was an example, but of what? He didn’t know.
“Alexei Gerasimovich Shostakov, you are being tried for treason against the state. How do you plead?” the judge looked down at him from his stand high above the court. For a society that prided themselves on not one person being bigger than the other, the power to choose the fate of one person was held in the hands of so few. The judges’ eyes were hard, echoing the look he’d seen in so many throughout the years. The look he was sure even he’d had on his face at some point or another. It was strange though, having it directed at himself than someone else.
“Not guilty.” Alexei’s voice rang out strong throughout the courtroom. Behind him, he heard a couple whispers but only to show there was enough people to spread the word but not enough for people to see what this trial truly was. A scam. He didn’t turn around to grace them with an acknowledgement. The whole world was against him, and Alexei decided in that moment he wasn’t going to go quietly. “Whatever it is, I didn’t do it.”
The judge raised a brow, disbelief on his face. “You didn’t drug government workers and steal their weapons? Youdidn’t steal medication from the Russian Federation? You didn’t steal government intelligence and weapons with the intent to turn them over to the Americans?”
“No! I didn’t!” his voice raised, a banging of the gavel on the bench. Okay, maybe he had drugged those guards and taken away their weapons, but Alexei knew for a fact he didn’t steal the weapons of the secrets.
A file was thrown down on the table in front of him. Showing him photographs of the damages done to the prop place, images of Natasha, Yelena, Melina, in Cuba. Photos of himself, some the grainy images from his first day alive after being shot; some later. Schematics, science terminology he didn’t understand. Photographs of him breaking into the training studio, the note in his apartment that said gibberish to them, but everything to him.
Only one person could have made this file.
Twisting, Alexei looked behind himself and felt shock run through his system. It was cold, like jumping into a Siberian Lake in the winter. There sat Dreykov, looking at him smug. And, beside him– Melina. She stared straight ahead, not at him. Anywhere but him. Alexei could tell how tense she was despite the distance between them. The way she held herself, sitting up straight as to be careful not to touch Dreykov. How awkwardly she held her shoulder, probably still needing to be in a sling but instead free.
“Melina!” he yelled before he could stop himself. Her eyes tightened, but there was something in there. The gavel behind him clanged against the wooden block. There was no lawyer to speak for him, to save him from this fate. To save Melina from having to witness it. Horror spreading as Dreykov gave a single nod that would seal his fate.
“Alexei Gerasiovich Shostakov, you have been found guilty of treason against the Kremlin. For your crimes, I sentence you to three life sentences in Seventh Circle Prison, to start immediately.”
“Pigs!” he shouts out, “Pigs! This isn’t the country I fought for!” he twists as the men try to lead him out of the courtroom. He brushes them off like crumbs, breaking his shackles and ignoring the clicking of tasers being charged. “Melochka!” he yelled, trying to get to her. Hopping over the wall, pushing chairs out of his way. While she doesn’t look at him, he can see the way her face twitches; the anguish that fills her eyes. “I’ll wait for you, Melochka! I love you!”
He slams hard into the chairs. His body filling with the tell-tale electrical pulses. Alexei’s eyes stay trained on Melina as Dreykov stands up, guiding her with him away from the scene. When Dreykov looks away to talk to a guard, Melina’s eyes meet his.
I love you, too.
Prison isn’t a place that offers a lot in terms of comfort. It smells, like piss and stale men, watery coffee in the mess hall and whatever alcohol they had brewed in the toilet tanks. He wears a stupid uniform all day, though most of them strip down to their undershirts during the hotter times of the year. After the first shave, his hair goes uncut and his face unshaved. Sometimes, he wonders what Melina would think of this new version of him. Staring at the wall, letting the questions overwhelm him
Life follows the same patterns. A year passes, and he finally asks Leonid Morozov to tattoo him.
“What’s in it for me?”
Becoming friends with some of the guards is useful, especially when they still consider you the Red Guardian and not some man fallen from grace. Alexei can ply him with contraband vodka from the outside.
He thinks of his girls. If they’re still alive and fighting, of if they’d died trying.
Part of him wished dead, because then they didn’t have to live as weapons.
Roses, two of them with a scroll.
Natalia.
Yelena.
The first time they attempt this, it disappears. Morozov takes this as a challenge, deciding that he would beat the serums healing powers. Anything to get entertainment in the prison. He changes his formula, getting longer and larger needles that go deeper into his skin. Alexei lets him, he’d been used as an experiment by the government; at least this time he knew what the purpose was for. It takes four tries to get the ink to settle properly into his arm. Both shocked that it doesn’t look worse than it does.
It doesn’t take Alexei long to go back.
Karl Marx.
Again.
Vladimir Lenin.
And again.
Eyes.
And again.
Two headed eagles.
Alexei covers his skin in images of history. Stories he can tell and stories too painful to; burnished across his skin crudely in exchange for vodka. Sometimes they take multiple tries to sink into his skin, until it is red and irritated and scabbing over for only moments. He’s glad to feel something other than the numb monotony that had taken over.
The serum caused him to have excess energy, and yard time wasn’t enough to get out all the energy he holds. Alexei would lift tables full of men, trying anything to exhaust himself into a dreamless sleep.
At night, when he had good dreams, he dreamt of the life he had only for a short period of time. Of the wife that laid next to him at night, feeling secure in his arms and not needing to shackle herself to the post. The little girls who looked up to him, look at him for direction, guidance, safety. Safety he was unable to provide them in the end; because he was the one they should have been looking for safety from.
The cathedral towers get more domes as the years drag by.
Finally, he works up the nerve to get Melina. He hadn’t wanted to, worried he would sully her image. But now, he was scared that he would one day forget her face. Already, she was one of the solid images in his brain; but blurring at the edges. He remembered her laugh the most.
Alexei gets Morozov to place her right where she had laid her head at night.
The night after, he prays to babushka’s God for the first time in years.
He prays for death.
When he closes his eyes, he sees her. Laughing from the little boat she sat on with Yelena. Natasha splashing in the water closer.
When the boat gets to shore Yelena is gone.
Natasha, gone.
Melina: bled to death.
Alexei learns he can last a week without sleep before the hallucinations start. Two weeks before he gives in.
Dreykov visits him occasionally. Visits few and far between. Usually just to gloat about he had access to Natasha, Yelena, Melina. Holds their fate in his hands.
Natasha is unparallel.
Yelena is the best child assassin the Red Room had ever produced.
Melina figured out the key to free will.
These facts shouldn’t fill him with pride. But he’d only ever wanted the best for his children, and they were the best. Knew that Melina was a genius and was glad someone else knew this too.
He doesn’t know when Natasha escapes, doesn’t hear the stories about Dreykov’s daughter of the fortress hidden in the clouds. He only knows that suddenly there are years between when Dreykov had last visited him. Years where more tattoos are acquired to fill the space, more people beaten in arm wrestling competitions. More hours of solitary. More nightmares that plague the daytime hours.
Rarely, he gets fan letters. The majority censored.
Those that once brought him vodka now ignored his existence or prodded him like cattle. Beat him with their batons for sport while he laid in agony, body lowly mending itself. Sometimes he felt himself going slower than before. The serum was still running through his veins; as strong as before but now aging.
Alexei let himself gain weight, gut hanging out and hair greying until he had two white streaks in his beard. Sometimes, when he had access to a mirror, he wondered what Melina would think of him now. At some point, he’d given up on his dreams of seeing her again. The longer he was caged, the more he heard about the Red Room from others who, like him, were contained to keep from getting the information out. The more he understood that it was not a school but a prison. Taking children away, trafficking them, killing them when they had no more use.
His biggest regret was letting his girls go.
Memories so read he could taste them.
Once, he attempted to write his mama and sister another apology. He’d never sent those ones back in Moscow. Writing apologies for how he had acted before, for leaving them. Asking after them, how they were doing, if Olga was married, had his mama retired, how was Cheremkhovo.
Returned to sender stamp in bright red.
He wished he was that child again, getting red marks on assignments. Going home to help his mama mend clothing, weaving red thread through the layers of cloth to mark where she needed to fix.
The stamp cut him more.
2012.
The world reels as New York City is invaded by aliens.
The entire prison watched, captivated, by the news as it played out. Past curfew, past midnight, but the guards let them stay in the common area. Let’s the broadcast play on the television, over the loudspeakers. The guards stayed with them, not to keep them in line but to watch along with them. Even those who were the most brutal, in that moment, were with the prisoners.
Aliens being real brought more questions than answers. If they were real, what else could be? Murmurs spread among the group as Stark flies into the sky and through a wormhole. As Captain America runs, alive (I told you so! Alexei shouts at Ursa), across the screen to help civilians. Alexei itches to be out there, helping. Instead, he is stuck. The news casters can’t catch everything, but they catch enough to show the chaos outside the walls of the prison.
Ursa comments that they all should be glad they’re inside the prison, in that moment. Safe from outside, who knows where else the aliens could come from?
Morozov points out that if anything had decided to attack them, they’d all be sitting ducks, anyway. Either way, nobody knew where they were in the world. Seventh Circle of hell. So close to the North Pole that Alexei could taste the sugar plums from the stories the girls used to chatter about at Christmas.
A flash of red across the screen, and Alexei sits up taller, larger, watching with rapid attention as a woman with fiery red hair shoots at the aliens from beside a man with a bow and arrow. Older, but still the same.
“Natka.” He breaths out. His eyes never leave the television as he watches her fight alongside his sworn enemy.
“Black Widow. She’s hot.” Another inmate mentions off hand. Alexei reaches over and slams his head into the metal table, groups of guards surrounding them in an instant. Grabbing Alexei, wrestling him to the ground, tasing him as the blood of the man who dared comment on his daughter dripped off the table.
Murderer the ghosts in his mind whisper.
Red Guardian forward. He pressed the star, imagining the way Melina would place her hand on his chest softly. Trump fanfare, glowing. He didn’t know they made them anymore. Looking up, slightly embarrassed as it goes off, but nobody is watching except the guards eating his biscuits. Pulling the string. His voice, distorted in the old voice box.
He was a relic of the past, more suited to a museum than a child’s bedroom.
Head popping off.
Or not.
“You’ve both killed so many!” maybe he had forgotten to talk to those outside of jail house walls.
Alexei thought he lost her. The way she sat there, strapped to the seat but her head hanging. Then she’s awake and they’re kissing. Not as hungry as before like when they were in America. Desperate for each other because any moment could be their last. No, that would be for later. This was reassurance. Comfort. A warm hug on a cold day. To show her that he was no longer gone; to show her that she was no longer a chained dog waiting for death.
He's home.
They’re quick setting up an encampment on the edge of Melina’s property for the freed women. The ones who aren’t hurt help with the labour, though most of the heavy lifting is done by Alexei. They’re weary of him, he’s aware of that, so he makes sure to do it quick. By the end they have a city of tents and tarps, keys to the washroom in the garden that’s closer to than them the house.
Yelena stays with Melina inside, watching from the window. Alexei wonders if she truly wanted to make sure Melina didn’t move much on her leg, or if she is scared that he’d hurt them. That made sense to him, consider what they had gone through at the hands of men. He wouldn’t trust men either.
Didn’t.
If Alexei had to give one thing to the Red Room, it was that they were quick with damage control. He remembered back in the day, officers and widows swooping in to fix whatever had broken before people could realize it. It was the same with Melina’s house. It no longer looked as destroyed as he assumed it would when they left. No window shattered like when he was shot in the back, no doors broken in.
“I’m staying with the others for the night.” Yelena says once he’s inside. Standing up quickly, perhaps too quickly but they all had wounds that needed to heal. They’d betrayed her, forgiveness would take time; or it would never come. She pointed at Melina. “She’s stubborn, keep her off the leg. We set it already.”
“Aye aye, captain.” Alexei mock solutes. She doesn’t smile.
He deserves that.
Melina watched them from her table as Yelena left, closing the door behind her. As soon as Yelena was gone, her eyes were on him again. Her leg was propped up on a chair, pack of ice against it. Neither knew where their eldest was, if she had been arrested or had gotten away before the American’s could catch her. Alexei trusted her, remembered the images of her fighting aliens; she would be okay.
Knows she will.
“How are you feeling?” he doesn’t know how to start the conversation. Before in the cells it had been easier. She hadn’t been watching him with an indiscernible expression then. In the plane the kiss was heat fueled, charged, needing to know the other was still there. Now?
“My leg is broken.” She stated to him, head tilting. “But I will live.” He nods and sits down at the table opposite her, pouring himself some tea from the pot Yelena must have had. He watches as Melina hesitates a moment, hears the creaking of the chair under him. “Alexei– I–”
“I know.” His voice is soft, reaches his hand out and lets it rest on the table. It was her choice; she had a choice now. Would never be forced to do something again. She places her hand in his. “We’ll talk about it. But not tonight.”
Melina nodded, looking down at the grains of the table for a moment before back across at him. Slowly, she stands; Alexei getting up instantly to be at her side in case he was needed. She doesn’t, though, never truly did. When she is upright, one of his hands under her elbow for support, she places a hand on his chest and looks up at him.
“Take me to bed, Lyosha. Red Guardian, forward.”
Even in rural Russia, the world had changed from his childhood. The roads that Alexei had walked down so many times before were now paved, no more rocks and dirt that he had run down. The abandoned buildings that the kids hid in had been demolished, a newer set of apartment buildings standing in its place.
One hand was on the wheel of the SUV they’d rented, the other sitting lightly on top of the gearshift. He revelled in the feeling of Melina’s on top of his as she looked out the window, occasionally tapping her finger along with the music that played along on the radio.
Nobody looked at their vehicle as they drove into town. Most were enjoying the rest of the sun September granted them before Autumn and harsh winter drove in and stole it. Stores had their doors open for air, taking advantage of the warm day. Friends chatted in the streets, holding take away cups of coffee from chain restaurants. A group of teenagers walked past, their laughter heard through the windows, filming something or other on their phones as they went by.
Alexei glanced at his wife for a moment before focusing on the road again, maneuvering the occasionally different turns. She looked out the windows at everything curiously, analytically, processing as they went by. Melina may have seen the wonders of the world, but she never truly experienced any of it. He’d suggested coming alone, not wanting her to feel uncomfortable seeing the place where he’d had a childhood while hers was ripped away before it could even start. Melina had insisted on coming, saying that she wanted to understand what made him… him. He’d tried to argue it had all left him; Melina had argued back that it hadn’t. It didn’t matter if she missed her childhood, she wanted to see his.
The building he had lived in had been painted. Some of the façade changed, with planter boxes under some windows, but ultimately still the same. Still a soviet era apartment block, utilitarian and cement – even if it had been painted over. Alexei parked between two smaller cars, and they sit there for a moment. The radio off, plunging them into silence besides the birds they could hear through the windows and the cars that passed on the road.
Finally, Melina opens her mouth to speak: “If you are not ready–”
“I am.” Alexei cut her off, turning his hand over to lace their fingers together and squeeze. Across the street he sees the forest. Remembers going on walks there with Olga, hiding out when he needed quiet for his brain. “It’s just… a lot.”
“I will be here the entire time.” She tried to sooth. It wasn’t her strong suit, especially after so many years isolated, but Alexei knew she was trying her best. He looked over at Melina, lifting her hand up and kissing her knuckles lightly before smiling and unlocking the doors.
He tried to put himself into the same shoes he had been when he was six, pulling into Cheremkhovo on the train. He had thought everything looked strange, not a city but not the forest, either. Wondering why they had to move there, and his mama couldn’t find a job back home. Really, wondering everything under the sun.
Alexei still wondered these things, though his questions had changed as the decade’s past. He wondered if they had stayed in Nizhay Novgorod, would everything still have worked out the same? Would he have been the Red Guardian, would he even have gone in the army, or instead become a contractor of some sort. Gone to university to be an academic. Glancing at the woman getting out of the car, Alexei knew he wouldn’t give this life up for the world.
“Is this how you remember it?” Melina asks, a way of filling the space. More for his benefit than hers. Alexei throws an arm over her shoulders to bring her in for a brief hug, one last comfort.
“No. Things like this, they never are.” His voice is almost mournful, as if there was a part of him that had hoped this town would be frozen in time. She nods, reaching her hands up to place on either side of his face and pull him down for a short, lingering kiss. “Let’s go, Melochka.”
The arm stays over her shoulder, her hand reaching up to intertwine their fingers as they walked. They may have looked sickly in love, but they had twenty years to make up for. Her gate was slower, an almost indistinguishable limp left over from the destruction of the Red Room. Alexei had learnt not to rush her, nor to coddle her. Melina would let him know if something was wrong, if she needed to speed up or slow down, stop walking entirely.
Alexei felt himself swallow, hard for a moment when they got to the front doors of the building. He reached out with his free hand, Melina squeezing the one she still held, comfortingly, and pressed the buzzer for his old apartment. They waited. At first, he started to figure that they weren’t home. Maybe they had seen him out the window and didn’t want to talk. Which would be fair enough, he supposed. Melina reached up from beside him and pressed it again, leaning back against him. He had learnt, first in Ohio and next in their months reunited, that Melina generally didn’t seek touch or comfort unless there was a reason. Before he could ask her, he heard a voice.
“Alexei?” He turned quickly, hands resting on his wife’s arms to make sure she was steady when he moved. Behind him, standing on the pathway up to the building, was a woman with greying hair – some strands still shining fire in the light. She looked so much like his mama, that pain erupted almost instantaneously in his chest at the years he’d missed.
“Hi, Olya.” He waved slightly at her, not moving from the entryway. A child ran up from behind his sister, tall, probably almost a teenager, stopping to look at them curiously then back at Olga. She stared at them in shock, as though he was a ghost. Which he probably was. Finally, she looked to the ground, lost in thought. “Bad time?”
“No, no.” she spoke quickly, shaking her head, moving up towards them with determination. The boy trailing behind her. “You’re late. Come inside. Supposed to rain.” Alexei glances at the sky overhead before following his sister. The sky was still blue, only a small smattering of clouds. Melina gave him a look, obviously not understanding what was happening and not appreciating being left out of it. He simply shrugged in turn, placing a hand on her back to guide her inside. The child looked back at them continuously; but followed Olga upstairs.
He'd forgotten what floor they had lived on, how high up it was with no elevator; but Melina didn’t complain even if he could tell she was strained by the end. Her expression stayed neutral, assessing all escape routes as they went down the hall. Even if Alexei had assured her that they were safe, he knew she’d continue; decades of conditioning didn’t disappear just because your captor dissolved in a fiery mass.
“It’s been decades.” Olga finally said once they were inside, the door closing behind Melina quietly. Alexei noticed new walls; the apartment bigger than it had been when he was growing up. His sister saw his expression, explaining, “Sergi, my husband, bought the flat next door. Turned it into one.”
The boy didn’t seem to have the patience for these new visitors. “I want to play a game.” He said, looking up at her as though she would magically produce something.
“Do you know chess?” Melina asked him. Olga and Alexei looked at her, suspicious on Olga’s face and confusion on Alexei’s.
“I’m on the chess team. Can you play chess?”
“I can.” she nodded over to the table. “Show me your skills. I will give you pointers.”
Alexei is grateful and fearful without Melina by his side. He watches her walk away and to the table, making sure she was sitting before following Olga into the kitchen. He stands off to the side as she starts to put away her groceries.
“So, where have you been, Red Guardian?” she asked almost mockingly.
“Jail.” There isn’t a way to sugar coat that. So, he says it nonchalantly, the way Melina would. Olga stops, turns to stare at him, and he shifts uncomfortably. “I tried to escape what I had become. Needed to reap the consequences of it, to not become it again.”
“So, you figured it out then.” she folds the paper bag, worn tears taped over. “That you changed?” the final cans she had left on the counter she puts in the cupboard, closing the door behind them. It reminded Alexei of Melina’s at home, completely organized.
“Not… exactly.” Alexei pauses for a moment, thinking. “It took time. A long time.” The two of them stood in silence, listening as the boy chattered away to Melina. Occasionally her voice would interject in his monologue, offering tips. “Look, Olya, I’m sorry. I became…”
“Who they wanted you to be.” Olga looked up at him. “I know that now. Then… not so much. I heard more when things started to open, when people started releasing files for public consumption even though they were classified. You were stuck in a whirlpool, we all were, of people saying what they thought we all wanted to hear. We hadn’t learnt how to be critical, to know something else.”
Her words, I not we caused him to pause. Realize he hadn’t seen mama once since entering. “Where’s mama?” Olga turned away.
“February 1992. She got ill from the cold.” He nods, at a loss for what to say, even though Olga couldn’t see him. He had figured she would have died; it had been over twenty years and she wasn’t well. Her being dead… it was inevitable. Yet, that didn’t mean it hurt any less. “She asked for you, you know. In the end.”
That didn’t make it better. “I’m sorry.” His voice breaks, the emotions welling inside of him. He could feel Melina glancing back at him, but she didn’t intrude.
“I know.” Olga’s voice is a whisper, lost as he is. “I can’t do this again, Alyosha. Either you’re in my life, or you aren’t. No in and out when it is convenient.”
“I want to be in your life. I’ve missed you.” he had missed having a little sister, missed the memories of her with his daughters or him with his nephew. “I want to be a part of your family, Olya. My girls, my wife…” he glanced back at Melina. The boy is smiling at her, explaining something with his arms outstretched. There was a ghost of a smile on her face as well as she explains the knights. “We live a complicated life. Lots of baggage. We won’t be able to visit often.”
“There’s social media, you know.” She teases. “Email. Hell, I’ll take a letter. Haven’t gotten one of those in years.”
Alexei knew Melina was cautious, probably wouldn’t take well to social media or email. “I can write some letters.” He promises. “I’ll write to you until the end, Olya. I promise.”
There was one more trip for them to make. Alexei hadn’t thought it would happen, but Natasha had pulled some strings.
He hadn’t been there for so long. Nizhay Novgorod. They stayed in the city overnight, Yelena in the room adjoining his and Melina’s, ending up in their bed overnight like when she was little. “It’s like a sleepover. Bigger than your bed.” She stated to Melina.
She’d heard him yelling.
The old cabin had fallen into disrepair. Alexei had never been sure if mama had sold it, or they’d simply left it as is. The elements had gotten inside through the collapsing roof, the holes in the walls bigger and the windows filled with cracks. There was some graffiti on the outside, but otherwise it had been left preserved.
Yelena looked over everything with a raised brow, stepping carefully around fallen beams and furniture. She didn’t say anything though, like Alexei had been preparing himself for. Probably, that had to do with the look Melina had given her; but he hope it was to do with her own thoughtfulness.
Probably the former.
An old photograph was turned over on the table, and Alexei picked it up. It had long since fallen, leaving a deep mark where no dust had hit for years. It was a photograph of papa, staring at the camera solemnly. It caused him to pause, looking into his papa’s eyes. What had he been thinking when he signed up for the army? Had he been proud, or had he been like Alexei, trying to provide for the family? And would he have been proud, Alexei wondered, for what he turned into.
Across the room, Melina picked up some books. She flipped through them, eyes scanning the pages. They were well worn, but the cover covered in dirt.
“Mouldy. Nothing I cannot fix.” She states, placing them in the bag she had brought. He moved across the room to put the picture in as well. Taking the bag from her so he could collect what he wanted from the site.
After a couple hours, Melina and Yelena went outside. Under the guise of needing fresh air, but Alexei knew it was to give him some space.
This place, this world, was a piece of himself that Alexei had never properly been allowed to mourn. He had mourned for the boy who killed another to probably save his life. He had mourned for the soldier who died in battle, mourned for the Red Guardian who believed in all the wrong things. But he had never gotten to mourn his younger self, the one he could barely remember but knew loved everything with his whole heart.
Neither he nor Olga had gotten to say a proper goodbye. He was sure mama didn’t either, as she rushed him to the train. The cabin had been where she’d grown up. She’d birthed both her children and laid her mama to rest.
In the corner he still saw the pictures of saints, placed there after babushka had died. He glanced the other way, seeing the bedroom that used to be theirs. The bed had caved in the middle, falling in a heap of decaying blankets and springs. Alexei could almost imagine her body lying there like it had that first time, eyes closed. She looked asleep, and maybe she was.
He took a deep breath and grabbed a couple more trinkets for himself and Olga. Some of mama’s jewelry, books, the prayer candles, bibles. Everything here felt like it had so much value to Alexei, but he knew, logically, that none of it was worth stealing in the time of communism. In the time of a failing fake democracy they lived in now.
By time he headed outside, he could see Melina and Yelena talking quietly on a bench by the trees. Yelena was grinning at something her mother said, while Melina was shaking her head bemused at her daughter’s response. She looked up.
Warm, loving, brown eyes caught his and she held out her hand.
Home.