Shhhhh no one saw me break anonymity . . . *shifty eyes* -----
Every month, they are tested to evaluate their training progress, and that is the only time Darya sees the man in the mask anymore. She thinks that she has known him her whole life. Her whole life, she is aware, is not a very long time at all, because she is very small. She has been told that she is the smallest and the youngest of all the girls at the big house; even Sophia and little Mariya are bigger than she is. But Mariya no longer trains with them because she has graduated, and Darya's class is very small. It is the smallest the Red Room has ever seen. New girls are supposed to come, but they do not. The guards and the Matron whisper about the fall of a great nation and mourn the loss of their comrades where they think the girls cannot hear them.
But Darya hears a lot of things, and they don't always make sense. She is scared and she doesn't like it. Sophia hushes her when she says this and tells her that she mustn't ever cry. If she cries, she will be in trouble. When they get in trouble, they are taken to the basement and punished. Darya can't remember if she has ever been taken to the basement before, but whenever she sees the stairs leading down there, she gets cold and starts to tremble and can't make it stop until someone leads her away from it.
Sometimes she can hear the older girls screaming when they are taken. Sometimes the only thing she can hear is the piano echoing down empty hallways and along the vaulted ceilings throughout the big house. Both keep her up at night. She is not sure which is worse.
---
“Don't take Sophia,” Darya whispers to the man in the mask during the next test, her voice quiet so the guards by the door will not hear. She knows that one day soon, Sophia will graduate from her class and have to join the other girls. When that happens, Darya will be left all alone with the guards and the Matron until the man in the mask has time for her lessons and tests.
She is scared of this. They are very scary.
The man in the mask crouches in the aisle next to Darya's little chair and watches her pick the rifle up off the desk. It is too big a rifle for her to actually use, but they don't get bullets during testing so she tries not to worry. She struggles with the cam pins and unlocking the hand guards, because they are tricky and her fingers are short and often uncoordinated. Sophia does not look up from where she is disassembling her own weapon at the desk on the other side of the aisle.
“It's part of your training,” he reminds her, his voice muffled by the black mask the Matron makes him wear. She has never seen his face. She isn't sure if he has one underneath it. Darya sets each piece of her weapon aside with ponderous deliberation. She frowns at the layout before sneaking a glance at Sophia's desk, and then quickly rearranges the placement of her rifle spring and the lower receiver so that they match.
“. . . The training,” she says after a moment, the words falling clumsily out of her mouth as she tries to remember how she is supposed to respond, “is hard?”
“Yes, Dasha,” he murmurs. It takes her a few seconds to realize that he is referring to her, because no one else calls her that. She knows that she is sometimes supposed to respond to names that are not her own, though, as part of her training. “The training is hard and you have to focus.”
Darya pauses, turning in her seat to meet his pale eyes above the mask. Sometimes, his gaze will clear as though he is waking from a long dream, and when this happens, she knows that she is supposed to alert the guards or the Matron.
But he is not awake. His eyes are grey-blue and distant, like the sky outside that she has never stood under.
“I don't want to be alone,” she whispers, before returning to her task on the desk. He hums thoughtfully and brushes her hair out of her face where it falls across her forehead and into her eyes. Darya wrestles the rifle's bolt-assembly carrier from the upper receiver and begins clicking the pieces apart. She is glad that he is not awake, because she does not like alerting the guards or the Matron. They scare her, and hurt her, and the man in the mask never does. He is very gentle with her, very careful, even when he is not awake.
Someone told her once that he was a brother – her brother, maybe – but she has no memories of a time before she joined Sophia's class in the Red Room. If he was her brother, she thinks it would explain why she isn't afraid of him the way she is afraid of all the other men here. Families are supposed to be safe. Darya knows this. But it is hard, sometimes, to remember what she knows and what she does not. There are some things that she knows but isn't supposed to know, and Darya tries very hard to be good and forget them. There are other things that she is supposed to remember, but keeps struggling to recall.
Their training is hard. This she never forgets. She doesn't remember the individual lessons, but the training as a whole is very, very hard.
“Soldat,” Sophia says, because that is what they are supposed to call him. He was a soldier in the Red Army a long time ago and he doesn't have a name. He has no need for names like they do. Sophia is much better at remembering this than Darya is. It is hard for Darya to remember that the man in the mask is a soldier at all. She likes to think of him as her brother, though, when she can remember that that is what he is. “I'm done.”
“Good. That's very good, Sonya, you are doing so well,” he tells her, twisting around to check her work. Blood drips down his chin behind the mask, a few stray drops falling onto the desk. Sophia smiles, wiggling in her seat at the praise and her own special name. Darya makes a face at her behind her brother's head. “Now, can you show me how you put it back together?”
“Yes, Soldat,” Sophia answers, and does as she is told. Her rifle is reassembled by the time that Darya finishes taking hers apart, which worries her, but her brother assures her that this is fine. She is very small, after all, and cannot be expected to work as quickly as Sophia. He has Sophia disassemble the rifle again, and then gives her one of his pistols from a holster at his thigh. When she has broken that weapon down as far as she can, he tells her to mix up all the little pieces on her desk before putting the weapons back together.
Sophia is chewing her lip and trying to determine which firing pin goes where when Darya is finally done with her task. Her brother watches her go through her functions check to make sure she does each step in order. She lifts the rifle, leaning back in her seat to allow gravity to press the rifle's weight into her tiny shoulder because she cannot hold it one-handed yet and needs a free hand to pull the charging handle back. She lets that go so it can snap into place once more, fumbling as the bolt slides smoothly forward. Darya hits the assist with the heel of her palm to make sure it has fully closed, and almost drops the rifle as she readjusts her hold. She has to use both her thumb and forefinger to click the selector switch off 'safe.' Finally, she can hold the weapon again in both hands as she listens for the hollow, empty thunk the weapon makes when she squeezes the trigger.
Darya used to need her brother's help to lift this rifle, but she has gotten bigger, gotten stronger, since she came to the Red Room. Now, she can do it all on her own. Darya is very proud of this.
Her brother's gloved hands slide along her arms to correct her form, tucking her elbows close to her torso and adjusting her grip so that the barrel rises properly. His fingers are silver metal and black leather on the blued steel of the weapon. Her own look pale and stubby where they are caught between the two.
Darya finally sets the rifle down on the desk. She beams at her brother. “Soldat,” she says, maybe a little too loud in her excitement, “I am done, too.”
He does not hand her a pistol.
“Dasha, you are doing so well. Here. Come here,” he whispers, before she can start to tremble and shake. He pulls her from her seat and makes her stand in the aisle between the desks, positioning her so that she is facing the front of the room. His knees are on either side of her legs, his body solid and warm through the leather of his jacket where she can feel him against her back. He puts her right hand on her chest over her heart, which is beating very fast. She digs her fingertips into her collarbone and tries to remember what she is supposed to do next.
Words. There are words to be said now. She is supposed to say something, but can't remember what. They have told her to remember so many things, in so many languages, and it isn't fair. Darya is very small, after all, and she has not been in training for as long as the other girls. She does not want to fail. She wants to pass the test and go with Sophia and her brother up to the next class. She doesn't want to be all alone with the guards and the Matron.
“I pledge allegiance. . .” her brother begins for her, in English, leading her through the next part of the test. She's not sure that he is supposed to do that. “To the flag.”
There is a flag up there, pinned above the empty blackboard, but it is not their flag. There is no blue on their flag, and Darya doesn't like it. The stripes make her think of broken bones, glistening white through ruptured red flesh. Her lower lip starts to quiver. She is so very scared of failing the test and being alone.
“Dasha.” Darya has never felt her brother's breath on her cheek, because his mask stops that particular sensation from ever reaching her. When he presses his face against hers, though, his blood smears off the mask's rough texture and onto her pale, smooth skin. It is a hot, sticky, familiar feeling that comforts her. Grounds her. She realizes she has been holding her breath and inhales deeply on a gasp. “Say it, Dasha.”
“I pledge allegiance,” she repeats dutifully, blinking back tears as her vision starts to blur. It won't count as crying if they never leave her eyes. They won't punish her for tears that don't fall. Not yet, anyway. “To the flag.”
“Of?” he prompts, tone lilting up at the end helpfully.
“Of the United Amerika.”
“United States of America. And?” Darya furrows her brow and scrunches up her nose, trying to remember how it is supposed to go. She wonders if he will stay with her after testing, if he will hold her close and speak to her in that soft, sweet way he sometimes gets before waking, or if he will have to take Sophia away as soon as it ends.
“And to the. . .” she hesitates on the word, then forges ahead as best she can, “The Respublik –”
“Republic,” Sophia mutters the correction under her breath, her head bent over the pistol as she fusses with the uncooperative slide stop. Darya hiccups, her diaphragm spasming with anxiety.
“– f-for which it stands. . . under. . . under the nation. . . with. . . with the liberty, and. . . and the. . .?”
“That's not how it goes,” Sophia whispers urgently. Darya knows that's not how it goes, but the guards are watching them now, heads tilted as they listen in with their hands on their guns. One of them breaks away from the door. She is trembling and cannot stop. Her chin drops to her collarbone in an attempt to hide the tears she can't keep from spilling out.
She can't remember any of the other words.
“For which it stands,” her brother says, soft and warm and gentle. He ignores the approaching guard. “One Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Start over, kukolkla. Say it again.”
But she can't. She will not graduate now. She knows she has failed the test. Darya sniffles and tries to follow her brother's instructions, but the guard stops in front of her. He is very tall, and the breadth of his uniformed shoulders block the view of the flag. She knows she is only supposed to pledge allegiance to a flag she can see.
“Poydem sa mnoy,” the guard orders. Darya stares at his scowl and knows that she doesn't want to go anywhere with him. “N'e nadә tak bajӕt'sa,” he lies, and she knows that he lies because she has spent her whole life knowing there is a reason to fear him. The guard reaches for her, his big hand closing high on her small arm, intending to pull her away for punishment.
Her brother does not let go.
“She is too young. Too small,” her brother explains. His mask has not moved away from her face. “You will break her,” he warns, “like Tatyana.”
“Soldat,” the guard says, suddenly cautious. “Focus on the sound of my voice. Release her. Now.”
“No,” her brother replies.
Darya closes her eyes, and tries very hard to forget what happens next.
---
Sophia is kneeling with her behind an overturned desk when she opens her eyes. The man in the mask has them both wrapped up in his arms, rocking them back and forth. He is singing very quietly, so the guards don't hear, because he is not supposed to sing anymore. She likes very much when he sings to them. His vowels sound strange and foreign, the consonants not rolling or rumbling like they should. It makes Darya giggle a little, breathy and almost hysteric, the way it always does, like when he cuffs her and Sophia into bed at night.
His hands are red and silver and black. There is red in her hair and on her face and spattered on her clothes. It is familiar. When did she get used to that?
“You are both doing so well, Sonya, Dasha,” he whispers, petting a hand over Sophia's blonde hair and leaving dark streaks of blood in the wake of his fingers. “You mustn't worry. I will train you to be strong. To survive. And I will keep you safe. I will protect you, always. You are my littlest sisters, and I would never leave you all alone with the guards and my mother.”
Darya nods as though he has imparted instruction. Sophia bites her lip, obviously still worrying despite his orders not to. But Darya knows that she is supposed to do as she is told, and so she does not worry. She simply leans further into his warm embrace, and listens to him sing. For the first time she can remember in a very, very long time, she doesn't feel scared at all.
Fill: Blades, Braids, & Ballet [2/?]
-----
Every month, they are tested to evaluate their training progress, and that is the only time Darya sees the man in the mask anymore. She thinks that she has known him her whole life. Her whole life, she is aware, is not a very long time at all, because she is very small. She has been told that she is the smallest and the youngest of all the girls at the big house; even Sophia and little Mariya are bigger than she is. But Mariya no longer trains with them because she has graduated, and Darya's class is very small. It is the smallest the Red Room has ever seen. New girls are supposed to come, but they do not. The guards and the Matron whisper about the fall of a great nation and mourn the loss of their comrades where they think the girls cannot hear them.
But Darya hears a lot of things, and they don't always make sense. She is scared and she doesn't like it. Sophia hushes her when she says this and tells her that she mustn't ever cry. If she cries, she will be in trouble. When they get in trouble, they are taken to the basement and punished. Darya can't remember if she has ever been taken to the basement before, but whenever she sees the stairs leading down there, she gets cold and starts to tremble and can't make it stop until someone leads her away from it.
Sometimes she can hear the older girls screaming when they are taken. Sometimes the only thing she can hear is the piano echoing down empty hallways and along the vaulted ceilings throughout the big house. Both keep her up at night. She is not sure which is worse.
---
“Don't take Sophia,” Darya whispers to the man in the mask during the next test, her voice quiet so the guards by the door will not hear. She knows that one day soon, Sophia will graduate from her class and have to join the other girls. When that happens, Darya will be left all alone with the guards and the Matron until the man in the mask has time for her lessons and tests.
She is scared of this. They are very scary.
The man in the mask crouches in the aisle next to Darya's little chair and watches her pick the rifle up off the desk. It is too big a rifle for her to actually use, but they don't get bullets during testing so she tries not to worry. She struggles with the cam pins and unlocking the hand guards, because they are tricky and her fingers are short and often uncoordinated. Sophia does not look up from where she is disassembling her own weapon at the desk on the other side of the aisle.
“It's part of your training,” he reminds her, his voice muffled by the black mask the Matron makes him wear. She has never seen his face. She isn't sure if he has one underneath it. Darya sets each piece of her weapon aside with ponderous deliberation. She frowns at the layout before sneaking a glance at Sophia's desk, and then quickly rearranges the placement of her rifle spring and the lower receiver so that they match.
“. . . The training,” she says after a moment, the words falling clumsily out of her mouth as she tries to remember how she is supposed to respond, “is hard?”
“Yes, Dasha,” he murmurs. It takes her a few seconds to realize that he is referring to her, because no one else calls her that. She knows that she is sometimes supposed to respond to names that are not her own, though, as part of her training. “The training is hard and you have to focus.”
Darya pauses, turning in her seat to meet his pale eyes above the mask. Sometimes, his gaze will clear as though he is waking from a long dream, and when this happens, she knows that she is supposed to alert the guards or the Matron.
But he is not awake. His eyes are grey-blue and distant, like the sky outside that she has never stood under.
“I don't want to be alone,” she whispers, before returning to her task on the desk. He hums thoughtfully and brushes her hair out of her face where it falls across her forehead and into her eyes. Darya wrestles the rifle's bolt-assembly carrier from the upper receiver and begins clicking the pieces apart. She is glad that he is not awake, because she does not like alerting the guards or the Matron. They scare her, and hurt her, and the man in the mask never does. He is very gentle with her, very careful, even when he is not awake.
Someone told her once that he was a brother – her brother, maybe – but she has no memories of a time before she joined Sophia's class in the Red Room. If he was her brother, she thinks it would explain why she isn't afraid of him the way she is afraid of all the other men here. Families are supposed to be safe. Darya knows this. But it is hard, sometimes, to remember what she knows and what she does not. There are some things that she knows but isn't supposed to know, and Darya tries very hard to be good and forget them. There are other things that she is supposed to remember, but keeps struggling to recall.
Their training is hard. This she never forgets. She doesn't remember the individual lessons, but the training as a whole is very, very hard.
“Soldat,” Sophia says, because that is what they are supposed to call him. He was a soldier in the Red Army a long time ago and he doesn't have a name. He has no need for names like they do. Sophia is much better at remembering this than Darya is. It is hard for Darya to remember that the man in the mask is a soldier at all. She likes to think of him as her brother, though, when she can remember that that is what he is. “I'm done.”
“Good. That's very good, Sonya, you are doing so well,” he tells her, twisting around to check her work. Blood drips down his chin behind the mask, a few stray drops falling onto the desk. Sophia smiles, wiggling in her seat at the praise and her own special name. Darya makes a face at her behind her brother's head. “Now, can you show me how you put it back together?”
“Yes, Soldat,” Sophia answers, and does as she is told. Her rifle is reassembled by the time that Darya finishes taking hers apart, which worries her, but her brother assures her that this is fine. She is very small, after all, and cannot be expected to work as quickly as Sophia. He has Sophia disassemble the rifle again, and then gives her one of his pistols from a holster at his thigh. When she has broken that weapon down as far as she can, he tells her to mix up all the little pieces on her desk before putting the weapons back together.
Sophia is chewing her lip and trying to determine which firing pin goes where when Darya is finally done with her task. Her brother watches her go through her functions check to make sure she does each step in order. She lifts the rifle, leaning back in her seat to allow gravity to press the rifle's weight into her tiny shoulder because she cannot hold it one-handed yet and needs a free hand to pull the charging handle back. She lets that go so it can snap into place once more, fumbling as the bolt slides smoothly forward. Darya hits the assist with the heel of her palm to make sure it has fully closed, and almost drops the rifle as she readjusts her hold. She has to use both her thumb and forefinger to click the selector switch off 'safe.' Finally, she can hold the weapon again in both hands as she listens for the hollow, empty thunk the weapon makes when she squeezes the trigger.
Darya used to need her brother's help to lift this rifle, but she has gotten bigger, gotten stronger, since she came to the Red Room. Now, she can do it all on her own. Darya is very proud of this.
Her brother's gloved hands slide along her arms to correct her form, tucking her elbows close to her torso and adjusting her grip so that the barrel rises properly. His fingers are silver metal and black leather on the blued steel of the weapon. Her own look pale and stubby where they are caught between the two.
Darya finally sets the rifle down on the desk. She beams at her brother. “Soldat,” she says, maybe a little too loud in her excitement, “I am done, too.”
He does not hand her a pistol.
“Dasha, you are doing so well. Here. Come here,” he whispers, before she can start to tremble and shake. He pulls her from her seat and makes her stand in the aisle between the desks, positioning her so that she is facing the front of the room. His knees are on either side of her legs, his body solid and warm through the leather of his jacket where she can feel him against her back. He puts her right hand on her chest over her heart, which is beating very fast. She digs her fingertips into her collarbone and tries to remember what she is supposed to do next.
Words. There are words to be said now. She is supposed to say something, but can't remember what. They have told her to remember so many things, in so many languages, and it isn't fair. Darya is very small, after all, and she has not been in training for as long as the other girls. She does not want to fail. She wants to pass the test and go with Sophia and her brother up to the next class. She doesn't want to be all alone with the guards and the Matron.
“I pledge allegiance. . .” her brother begins for her, in English, leading her through the next part of the test. She's not sure that he is supposed to do that. “To the flag.”
There is a flag up there, pinned above the empty blackboard, but it is not their flag. There is no blue on their flag, and Darya doesn't like it. The stripes make her think of broken bones, glistening white through ruptured red flesh. Her lower lip starts to quiver. She is so very scared of failing the test and being alone.
“Dasha.” Darya has never felt her brother's breath on her cheek, because his mask stops that particular sensation from ever reaching her. When he presses his face against hers, though, his blood smears off the mask's rough texture and onto her pale, smooth skin. It is a hot, sticky, familiar feeling that comforts her. Grounds her. She realizes she has been holding her breath and inhales deeply on a gasp. “Say it, Dasha.”
“I pledge allegiance,” she repeats dutifully, blinking back tears as her vision starts to blur. It won't count as crying if they never leave her eyes. They won't punish her for tears that don't fall. Not yet, anyway. “To the flag.”
“Of?” he prompts, tone lilting up at the end helpfully.
“Of the United Amerika.”
“United States of America. And?” Darya furrows her brow and scrunches up her nose, trying to remember how it is supposed to go. She wonders if he will stay with her after testing, if he will hold her close and speak to her in that soft, sweet way he sometimes gets before waking, or if he will have to take Sophia away as soon as it ends.
“And to the. . .” she hesitates on the word, then forges ahead as best she can, “The Respublik –”
“Republic,” Sophia mutters the correction under her breath, her head bent over the pistol as she fusses with the uncooperative slide stop. Darya hiccups, her diaphragm spasming with anxiety.
“– f-for which it stands. . . under. . . under the nation. . . with. . . with the liberty, and. . . and the. . .?”
“That's not how it goes,” Sophia whispers urgently. Darya knows that's not how it goes, but the guards are watching them now, heads tilted as they listen in with their hands on their guns. One of them breaks away from the door. She is trembling and cannot stop. Her chin drops to her collarbone in an attempt to hide the tears she can't keep from spilling out.
She can't remember any of the other words.
“For which it stands,” her brother says, soft and warm and gentle. He ignores the approaching guard. “One Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Start over, kukolkla. Say it again.”
But she can't. She will not graduate now. She knows she has failed the test. Darya sniffles and tries to follow her brother's instructions, but the guard stops in front of her. He is very tall, and the breadth of his uniformed shoulders block the view of the flag. She knows she is only supposed to pledge allegiance to a flag she can see.
“Poydem sa mnoy,” the guard orders. Darya stares at his scowl and knows that she doesn't want to go anywhere with him. “N'e nadә tak bajӕt'sa,” he lies, and she knows that he lies because she has spent her whole life knowing there is a reason to fear him. The guard reaches for her, his big hand closing high on her small arm, intending to pull her away for punishment.
Her brother does not let go.
“She is too young. Too small,” her brother explains. His mask has not moved away from her face. “You will break her,” he warns, “like Tatyana.”
“Soldat,” the guard says, suddenly cautious. “Focus on the sound of my voice. Release her. Now.”
“No,” her brother replies.
Darya closes her eyes, and tries very hard to forget what happens next.
---
Sophia is kneeling with her behind an overturned desk when she opens her eyes. The man in the mask has them both wrapped up in his arms, rocking them back and forth. He is singing very quietly, so the guards don't hear, because he is not supposed to sing anymore. She likes very much when he sings to them. His vowels sound strange and foreign, the consonants not rolling or rumbling like they should. It makes Darya giggle a little, breathy and almost hysteric, the way it always does, like when he cuffs her and Sophia into bed at night.
His hands are red and silver and black. There is red in her hair and on her face and spattered on her clothes. It is familiar. When did she get used to that?
“You are both doing so well, Sonya, Dasha,” he whispers, petting a hand over Sophia's blonde hair and leaving dark streaks of blood in the wake of his fingers. “You mustn't worry. I will train you to be strong. To survive. And I will keep you safe. I will protect you, always. You are my littlest sisters, and I would never leave you all alone with the guards and my mother.”
Darya nods as though he has imparted instruction. Sophia bites her lip, obviously still worrying despite his orders not to. But Darya knows that she is supposed to do as she is told, and so she does not worry. She simply leans further into his warm embrace, and listens to him sing. For the first time she can remember in a very, very long time, she doesn't feel scared at all.