Work Text:
The clock strikes twelve.
Alla has no clue what it is that possesses her to wake at such a time, she never does, but there is an urgency and pressure to it that she cannot ignore.
She gets out of bed, throws on just about as much as she needs and races out of her room.
She’s paranoid, she knows this, has been told this many times, even Dimitriy doesn’t jump at shadows the way she does and he’s one of the wariest people she knows.
She simply hopes that no one else is awake to question what sort of mad thing she’s running to again; she doesn’t like living in a kommunalka, but she doesn’t have the money for much else.
She is afforded only a room to herself that she keeps locked at all hours, and an uneasy feeling at the inconspicuous surveillance of it all; it’s why the few times she answers a call on the house phone it’s in German; it’s why she’s considering becoming nocturnal to avoid her neighbours better; it’s why she’s so damn glad that no one is seemingly awake tonight.
It’s a mad dash through the winding, empty streets of Moscow, where she’s twisting through random streets and ducking through alleyways like she always does. It’ll take longer, she knows, but it calms the clawing yelling in her mind that irrationally tells her she’s being stalked: so she does it anyway.
Halfway to the laboratory and she knows what she’ll find, because it’s what she always finds: the building will continue to stand tall, when she combs through it everything will be exactly as it was when she left yesterday evening — expect for maybe an empty mug of coffee from her fellow colleagues —, dawn will come as will said co-workers and she’ll be sent home for the day to calm herself.
Misha had once asked her why she even bothered getting out of bed if she already knew what she would find; she’d hadn’t managed to explain the world-consuming dread in a way that made him understand, though that wasn’t new, simply a running theme for her life.
Except perhaps Dankovsky, but she’s not sure that counts — “sometimes your mind demands something of you and you ought to oblige lest you want to look insane” is what he’d told her, it wasn’t the same, no, Alla’s shadows didn’t make her scream and yell the way Daniil’s did, but he spoke to her in German and gave her a key to the building so she could check it, so maybe it was good enough.
She’s almost there, that gut-wrenching panic moving her forward around the last corner even as her legs feel close to giving out.
And she knows what to expect-
Flames.
Charring the rock, burning the door, through the window Alla can see the fire licking at whatever’s inside.
She stands there for what must be hours, crackling filling the air, smoke filling her lungs, the heat filling her eyes with tears.
She should’ve gotten up quicker, or maybe she should’ve run faster, or maybe she should’ve talked quieter in public, or maybe German is too common a language here and she should switch to French, or maybe- or maybe- or maybe-
It’s burning.
So coated in flames that going in would not be some noble fight to save all she could, just certain death — she’s not Daniil, so she can tell the difference, and instead of running in she simply stands in an empty street until she can’t, then she sits and watches the whole thing fall away into soot and dust.
When dawn finally comes, so do her colleagues, panicking and trying their best not to cry (some succeed: most fail), and still Alla sits on the ground, and still she is poorly dressed for the weather and now cold as the embers fade, and still her mind, like a broken record, goes maybe- maybe- maybe-