The summer of 1988 had hands of ice. Even in June, the weather required Leningrad's citizens to wear their great coats on either end of the long days. Everything, it seemed, would prefer to hibernate, but the quickening would come sure enough. She could feel it stirring under the earth.

She had lived the same small life in Lennigrad for seventeen months, the longest that she had ever stayed in a single place since she lived with her uncle. How many years ago was that now? The answer came slowly. At least ten. Balalaika remembered her uncle's great belly tucked under the polished edge of the long dining table at breakfast. When he laughed, the whole table shook. Her aunt made blinis and let her drink coffee paled by cream, and her uncle told great stories of Russia's glories while they ate. She had never been so happy. After ten months with them, the tidal politics of the Party shifted again. The elite whispered her father's name once again with a hiss of disgust. Traitor. Traitor's daughter. She was no longer allowed to take meals with the family. Food was left on a tray by her door. Even the house staff avoided her. Within a month, a man in a uniform came to pack little Sofiya and her one small trunk into a brute of a car. No one bothered to tell her goodbye. Watching her uncle's estate disappear in the back window, she had vowed to never let a place seem like her home again. The loss of it hurt too much.

It seemed like two lifetimes had passed since then. She had almost forgotten.

Balalaika had not realized how much she had fallen in love with her quiet little life in Leningrad until she arrived at work one morning to find another woman at her desk, fingers dancing over her typewriter. The insistent clattering of the type keys filled the room. No banal chatter from the office bitties, no pointless shifting of papers, or no scraping of chair legs on the hard floor as someone slipped out to run an errand during office hours. In the eerie quiet, Balalaika heard the manager clear his throat to speak. He was a pale, thin man, six inches shorter than she was, and forever scheming of a way to worm his way into the good graces of Party. Perhaps they were whispering her father's name again, and he saw another chance to show his allegiance by sacking a traitor's only child.

He opened his void of a mouth. Balalaika wanted to stop his words with her fist.

"You see," he began.

She turned and left before she could hear more. There was shame, which she has learned to stomach, and then there was disgrace.

Her angry footsteps carried her home in half the usual time, and when she rounded the corner, the roiling mass of black smoke pouring out from the soap factory that sat over her home greeted her with a sooty belch.

Her home was burning.

The soap factory was large, and it took the better part of the day to turn to ash, despite the efforts to extinguish the blaze. Balalaika watched the flames lick the brick through each blown-out window and door frame from across the street. She had nowhere else to go.

They told her that only four things survived the fire: a box of her mother's clothes, a chair, the television, and her pills.

The driver helped her carry them into the temporary housing allotted to her after a long evening of forms and questions down at the local station.

The hallway of her new building stank of urine, but her assigned room was clean, if barren.

"I hate to leave you here," the driver said as he set the box by the door. "This place isn't good for anyone. Too many drunks and dead-ends."

"Thank you for your help, Comrade," Balalaika said.

"Sure. Good luck, Miss."

The door closed.

There was nothing to do. No work. No one to visit. No errands to fulfill. She swallowed the pill whole instead of quartering it as usual and fell asleep on the bare mattress.

When she awoke, it was a greying twilight again. She drank water from the tap, cupped in her hands because she had no glass to drink. The move had busted the speakers on the television. She had to sit within six feet of it to hear anything, so she parked the chair in front of the screen, folded one of her mother's dresses like a invalid's blanket over her lap, and watched. The Olympics were on.

The second whole pill took a few hours to take effect.

Another day passed. And another. The scenes on the television flowed from one event to the next. She took another pill. She saw the faces of her men in the athlete's faces. Those solemn eyes stamped with worry lines. They begged without begging, Lead us.

Into what? She shook her head as if the answer would fall free from her hair and land on the lace of her mother's gown.

On television, an American won the gold medal for the 50 meter rifle event. Balalaika would have done better. That woman's form was too tight. It was luck. She took another pill.

Boris said something. Someone was dead. Shameful poverty.

Or were those her words?

"Go away," she said, and they did.

Or they just left.

She looked up, and they were gone.

Something flared and washed in her a sudden, brief jolt of light.

She looked down, and the television stared back at her with its one dead eye.

Maybe they had never been there.

A terrible thought began to form in Balalaika's mind. Something was not right. As that realization took a lazy spin around in her heavy brain, another part of her mind heard the door opened and then high heels punctuating someone's approach.

Balalaika wanted to speak, but the words took so long to form in her mouth.

The slap came fast, whipping her head to the side with a golden trail of unwashed hair following behind.

Balalaika blinked.

The second slap knocked her out of the chair.

The tiny part of her that never slept growled in rage. She looked up.

A familiar face looked down at her. A woman. Hands on her narrow hips and a steadfast frown. Balalaika tried to remember her name.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" said the not-a-stranger.

Balalaika tried to answer. The woman grunted in impatience. She hauled Balalaika to her feet and dragged her to the bathroom. The shower's water ran red with rust as the unused pipes were called into service after a long season of disuse. The woman shoved Balalaika under the icy spray.

"What the hell did they do to you?" the woman said. She surveyed the near empty bathroom as if looking for an answer. Balalaika wanted to tell her not to bother, but she couldn't match the other's speed. The spark of recognition snapped and grew.

The woman reached for the lone bottle of pills on the lip of the sink, snapped off the lid with a manicured thumb, and dumped the lot into her free hand. "Who gave these to you?"

The cold water stung, but more of Balalaika came back to life as it soaked her yards of hair and her clothes. She looked into the face of the intruder and a name came to her.

"Hummingbird?"

Mirela smiled wide. "Yes, it's me. We went to fucking hell together and back. How could you forget that?"

Balalaika shook her head. Everything felt faraway and grey.

"These pills. Have you been taking them?" Mirela asked.

"Yes."

"Who gave them to you?"

"Doctor. At the hospital," Balalaika managed.

"Do you remember his name?"

Balalaika shook her head.

"Doctor, my ass. This is black market stuff. Illegal here." Mirela flicked a pill off her palm with long acrylic nail. The pill bounced off Balalaika's forehead, tumbled into the tub and slipped down the drain.

"Christ, you are drugged out. The hell bitch I knew in the desert would have broken my hand for slapping her. And she wouldn't have let some horse tranquilizer of a sedative hit her in the face. What did you do to yourself?"

Balalaika tucked a bit of her cheek between her teeth and bit down. The pain was wonderful, bright and sharp. The sweet copper of her own blood filled her mouth. Her words came easier now.

"The men. They were here."

"Yes, yes," Mirela sighed. "Boris told me that you turned them down, but I had to see it for myself. Shit, you look pathetic. Want out of there?"

"No," Balalaika said. The water felt good. Cold. Real.

"Did they tell you?" Mirela asked.

A memory came back. Balalaika suddenly felt sick to her stomach.

"They told me that Lieutenant Chaikin is dead."

"Not just dead. Killed in his bed. What else did they tell you?"

Balalaika's memory turned up a blank. "Nothing."

Mirela leaned a hip into the sink and crossed her arms across her chest. "Those cowards."

"Do not say such things in presence," Balalaika snapped. It surprised Balalaika how much she had missed her voice at volume, her anger.

Mirela blinked, then laughed. "Sorry. I'm sorry. It's just that men are such babies about their pride. They probably thought that you would want revenge, no questions asked. The problem is that Chaikin was just the first. They will be next." She reached into her coat pocket and taped two cigarettes out of a crumpled case, using a wooden match to light both before flicking it into the shower. The match went out with a reluctant hiss.

"What happened?"

"That's the problem. No one knows anything except that it's bad," Mirela said with a sigh. "Probably worse than I know, and I know it's bad. Here."

Balalaika accepted the offered cigarette, set it between her damp lips and inhaled. The flavor of smoke mingled with the blood. That taste, again, bitter in her mouth. The awakening heart within her knocked against her chest once, twice. Her days of self-pity ended now.

"Tell me every thing you know," she said.

A/N: Heavily revised chapters 1-3 on April 15-16 2013. Prepping the story for resurrection.