"Make Death Proud To Take Us" // Ride The Cyclone Fanfiction

"Aut Viam Inveniam Aut Faciam."

Mischa stared at his bedroom's wall, surrounded by shirts, shoes, belts, and jackets, and anything else that he'd forgotten to put in his bag.
Moving to a whole different country wasn't an easy task, apparently.
Putting your whole life into a small traveling bag was a little harder than one might think.
Everything was incredibly overwhelming, and all Mischa could do was breathe in and out slowly, while zoning out, as he stared at the wall.
How could he simply say goodbye to his life?
To everything in it?
To his own country, where he'd lived all his life?
All the memories and friends he'd made?
To his family...
Oh, how he'd miss his family...
All he had was his mother, Tamara, really.
She was everything to him. His rock, his idol, his role model, everything!
Her hard work and determination set an example for Mischa; one he was proud to follow every day of his life.
He couldn't even begin to imagine a life in which he didn't have his mother near him.

"Mischa, is everything packed yet?" Tamara spoke loudly in their native tongue.
From the kitchen came her voice, where she was preparing her son's lunch, so that he didn't have to waste any amount of money at the airport.
The teenager sighed, snapping out of the weird trance he'd been put in by external forces, standing up and picking up a few shirts off of the floor.
Mischa looked around one last time before closing his bag and getting it off the bed to put it on the floor so that he could take it to the entrance of the house.

After getting the luggage from his bedroom to the entrance, Mischa stopped by the kitchen one last time before leaving for good.
"Here, my love, I made you a sandwich so you can take it with you and eat while you wait for the plane" the mother smiled at her son, her pride and joy, and handed him a small paper bag that contained the sandwich, a water bottle, and an even smaller bag of chips.
Mischa smiled at his mom, thanking her for taking the time to prepare his lunch.
"Isn't it almost time? Shouldn't you already be at the airport?" She asked, worried about the time.
She wouldn't want Mischa being late and missing his opportunity to have a better life than hers.
The whole plan had been arranged a few months ago, while Tamara realized that she'd be gone soon, not wanting to leave her son by himself without any support from anyone.
They didn't have much contact from the rest of the family, and Mischa's grandparents had all passed away already.

She came up with the solution to forge a birth certificate and put Mischa up for adoption.
That way, someone could take him away from Ukraine, so that he could live a better life away from the misery their country was surrounded by.
Tamara didn't make enough money at the factory to be able to support both of them, no.
Unfortunately, she had to have Mischa get away so that he was protected from the pain of having to take care of his dying mother, and declining quality of life.
She did it for him, never once thinking of herself, or what she wanted.
Her son came first.
Always.

Mischa made his way to the entrance, where his mom had followed him closely behind, and where they now silently stood for a few seconds.
For the duration of those couple of seconds, they simply looked into each other's eyes, crying invisible tears that simply didn't come out.
They'd cried them all when Mischa was told about the plan.
Tamara held her son's face in her hands, and brushed her fingers on his cheeks, admiring the face of her child for the last time.
"You're so beautiful, my boy" she whispered in a soft tone, making sure that his image was permanently engraved on her mind.
She'd never forget her son's face.
Never.
In fact, Mischa's face was the last thing she saw when she inevitably passed away two months later.

Mischa blushed slightly at the compliment, never really getting used to his mother's comments on his beauty, and on how he'd easily get a girl that he'd marry and have many children with.
That had always been her biggest dream—to be a grandmother.
"I have to go, mama" Mischa held his mother's hand in his, remembering the hard calluses on her hands from working at the factory.
She nodded silently.
Words weren't enough to express the grief she already felt.
Her son was being taken away, but it was for the best, she had to remind herself.

"I love you, Mischa." she kept on whispering, not having the strength to speak any louder.
The back of her throat was dry and threatened to close each time she breathed in.
Her coughing fits became more frequent by the day, and the doctor had told Tamara to stop working all together.
She couldn't simply stop working, though. She had a son to feed.
She never really cared much about herself, always putting her son first.
Mischa would always be the center of her life.
Her son was her sun, her source of life, her everything.
She couldn't stop working as that meant that Mischa would eat less, have less clothes to wear, and have less pens to write with, for school.
She couldn't put him through all that, so she hid that doctor's appointment from him, never letting her boy know about the request to leave work.

Being taller than her, Mischa looked down at his mother with a small sympathetic smile.
"I love you too, mama", was all he was able to say to her.
Much like his caregiver, to the son, words felt stupid and empty when it came to a situation like the one they were in.
There weren't nearly enough words in any language that could translate the pain they were both in, at that moment.
It would be a wound that would never heal.
Like a paper cut in between the fingers, it would always be there, just hidden.
It would become mostly normal for them, with it occasionally hurting when rubbed, or when it got wet, in some way, but normal.
They'd get used to the pain, eventually.

Mischa got a hold of his bags and picked them up, ready to say farewell to everything he knew.
He'd already said goodbye to his friends the day before, at school.
The only goodbye that was left was the only one that wouldn't ever be said.
The words simply wouldn't leave their mouths and let themselves be vocalized by the mother and her son.
He gasped quietly as he looked up at the clock above their small fireplace, realizing that he didn't have much time left.
Tamara quickly understood what that gasp had meant.
Everything would be over soon, she thought.
All of Mischa's pain and suffering would be gone as soon as he boarded that plane, the one he dreaded the most.

They looked into each other's eyes one last time, their gazes meeting and speaking the million words their mouths couldn't.
Unable to verbalize it, Mischa just turned around and crossed the street to go wait for the next bus that made its way to the airport.
Tamara watched her son walk away, feeling her heart tighten inside her chest.
She softly closed the front door where they'd been standing, and so began the grieving process.