Yay Ivan's turn!~
Ily mah crazy Russian :D
Beautifully Horrible
He was freezing. The fresh blood had dried on his skin already and he was tempted to melt some snow and wash it off- it bothered him to no ends. But of course he couldn't. If he wasted even one breath melting snow into water, he could breathe in too much coldness and wind, and then he would die. And of that, the Russian man was certain he couldn't do. He had been saved by a stranger, a stranger who hated him and yet let him live at the same time, and he would not waste the second chance he had been blessed with.
Ivan shivered and wrapped his arms around his frail body. He was so, so hungry and tired. It would take another ten miles or so before he reached the closest town and who knew what would happen in that time period? The Russian sighed at his luck of stumbling through Finland and onto the lands of Siberia, a place he didn't know half as well as he did Moscow. Moscow, which was more of a city, which had people and civilization he could talk to, was somewhere he would have preferred being in. Now this frozen, barren place that stretched on and on with its vast emptiness? No, he did not like Siberia. The countryside, packed with mountains of snow and an almost echoing resonance, was so oddly chilling and foreboding. Even if he had been born and raised in this country, it wasn't home to him.
Heaving his rifle in his frozen hands, Ivan pushed himself on. Snow crunched beneath his feet and hunger clawed at his stomach, but he would keep walking. He had made it this far, after all.
And he thought of what he'd accomplished that day. He suddenly smiled at the memory, the smile sick and twisted. He had managed to single-handedly slaughter nineteen men. He didn't know which army they belonged to, didn't bother to care. They had looked like enemies and he had killed them.
But oh, that wasn't just it. Not even close.
(*dark, sadistic grin insert?*)
He hadn't even used his rifle; he saved that for the thick-boned ones. No, this was what he did:
He had gotten down to his hands and knees, with a short dagger, and sliced them all to pieces. He had carved them into pumpkin faces, had laughed when they realized that he had disarmed all their weapons, giggled when they tried to fight him back with their hand. Idiots. He was far superior to them in strength and even with eight attacking at once, he had managed to swirl and twirl his way through their blows, and landed his own blows a tenfold of theirs.
It had been beautiful… and horrible.
Beautifully horrible.
Ivan's eyes widened.
As he froze in his footsteps, rooted to the spot, he remembered the sweet smell of blood and decay, of standing there bathed in red, laughing and laughing at the faces of those fallen men…
He felt a lurch in his stomach. Before he could force it down, he leaned over and violently vomited into the dirt-red snow. The vomit was nothing, just water and bile, but it made him look away. Ivan stared at his hands with something close to horror, the twisted look in his eyes gone now, and was left only with a sick feeling in his chest.
The revelation of his actions burned a hole in his heart, in his conscience.
He couldn't believe he had laughed.
Laughed as he'd murdered those men, mocked them as they laid dying yet still trying to attack back. Laughed when he had ruthlessly killed innocent people.
He had never killed anyone until today. And he had savored it. He had enjoyed it.
"You must endure… for the beauty that comes after pain…"
That was what his savior, that Finnish sniper, had said before he left, and earlier, as he'd finished throwing the men's bodies into a ditch, Ivan used it as an excuse for his actions.
I must kill if I am to endure, to survive through this life, he reasoned. It is either me or them.
But he didn't have to laugh, didn't have to enjoy it…
He hadn't even need to kill them- they had not spotted him first, did not open fire first.
He was the one who chose to attack them.
Ivan shivered again, and closed his eyes from the biting wind and the burning cold. He could only feel the heavy thumping of his heart, a heart that told him the secret he'd been avoiding, the truth that he didn't want to admit to. But no matter what, thinking about it only made him realize the finality of his actions.
"I attacked first," Ivan murmured. He tried to hold it back, but couldn't control the dark smile that expanded across his face. He couldn't control the violet eyes that dilated to a dull black, or the hungry rumbling of his empty stomach. "I killed them first."
I killed them… and I enjoyed it.
//
Reviews are beloved~
:D