He is my liberty. Only him? (Fyodor x reader x Nikolai)

A heart of glas

The sun shone through the windows into your kitchen bathing it into a soft golden light. It had snowed last night, so your whole garden was covered in the cold, white blanket. Still untouched. A breathtaking landscape veiled by thick, frosty mist. Truly a beautiful day.

Most people in the village now would enjoy this day in peace since it was a sunday and on sundays no one had to work. They would go outside, maybe taking a walk. The orphans would probably have a snowball fight. Christa would help the younger children to build a snowman. Julius would have to watch over them with the help of the other older orphans. Erik would put snow into any collar he could reach, making his victims squirm as something cold and wet fell down along their back. His target would probably be Charlotte who didn't want to go out in the first place.

Milena would play with her rats, letting them play in the snow. Fyodor seems to have taken a liking to Milena, especially her rats. He seemed to like this specific animal in general. Should you three visit the orphanage today? Maybe it would relief your stress as well. And Nikolai would have fun playing in the snow for sure. He grew up in an orphanage too and that in a rather cold one. Back in the ukraine the orphanage he went to was extremely different than the one in your village.

Here everyone was treated equally, went to school like any other child and were allowed to play outside whenever they wanted. The caretakers, the old couple, handled every child with love and patience, constantly striving to keep the orphans happy. They got to experience the hard work of the farm, but everyone helped each other. The older children looked after the younger ones and everyone treated each other like siblings. Almost all orphans that grew up there had a good life afterwards.

The place were Nikolai grew up however was a strictly religious facility. Everthing in the children's everyday life was scheduled. They had to follow many rules and if they broke them, they got punished. The orphans didn't go to school either. The education was done by teachers that worked for the orphanage. How Nikolai didn't go crazy in there was a riddle to you, considering he always were a troublemaker.

Sometimes when he had visit you at your place, you could see the bruises on his arms. Yet he always seemed cheerful and happy. None the less you knew that he suffered from the harsh treatment and the strict rules of the orphanage. You suspected that his craving for absolute freedom originated from his childhood.

All these thoughts went through your mind as you looked out of the window of your kitchen into your snow covered garden. You had a hot cup of coffee in your cold hands. They were almost as cold as Fyodor's now. Him and Nikolai were helping you to prepare breakfast. Fyodor was setting the table while Nikolai was getting something out of the fridge. As you looked at the table you noticed that the cups were missing.

Fyodor was usually the one laying the table and, til now, never forgot something. He always placed the cups and plates in a perfect distance to each other, setting up everything nicely almost like a butler would do it for a royal family, even though this was just breakfast of three common people. Today however he must have forgotten to put the cups on the table.

You shrugged it off. Everyone forgets things sometimes. You turned into the kitchen again and walked up to a shelf on the wall, deciding you'd just get the cups yourself rather than to point it out. You opened the shelf and reached into it, aiming for a white porcelain cup. As you pulled it out, you accidently brushed against a glas with your hand, that already stood close to the edge. Before you could react, it fell down from the shelf and landed on the counter beneath, shattering with a loud crash.

For most people something like this wouldn't be an issue. It was just a regular glas. A replaceable object, which you had many of. It didn't matter if it broke. Just carefully clean up the shards and go on with your life.

However you stood there, your body frozen, your eyes staring onto the scattered glas shards like you were in trance. You fingers began to tremble as the world seem to change around you. Your heart was beating faster and faster like it would shatter any moment, just like the it was made of glas as well.

You weren't in your own home anymore. You stood in the kitchen of your childhood home, your step mother towering in front of you. You were so small in comparison to her, even as a younger child she haven't felt that tall and intimidating. She stared down at you with an intense stare, anger and frustration flashing in her eyes. Your cheek was stinging like it had been slapped and that rather harshly. In addition to that you felt a burning sensation in the palm of your hand as well, a thick, warm liquid dripping down from it.

This was a memorie that was burned in into your mind. It was the first time you let something break in the presence of your step mother. And the last time you did. Even though your step mother wasn't a violent person and was acting rather nicely towards you, she couldn't stand when something broke. Especially when it was something fragile as glas. It made her expression cold as ice and her hand hard as a rock. She didn't even care that you had hurt yourself too and that blood was spilling from the multiple little cuts in your hand with some tiny shards still sticking into your flesh. Her only concern was that the glas, that you held too tightly, break.

After that incident you never, ever, had let something break again. You already had enough problems with your father, you didn't need to get on the bad side of the only person who at least pretended to care for you as well. You were scared of it. Scared of the people who were supposed to love you. And as much as you tried to not let anything break or shatter or get destroyed again, there was something that couldn't prevent from breaking.

The heart of your sad, little child self.

Now you stood there, in the kitchen of your own home. Not ever have you let something break after that, not even after you moved out, and then this happened. You couldn't move anymore, you couldn't breath anymore. You were scared. Scared of what might happen now. Now that you broke something, now that you finally had lacked of carefullness, you would be punished. You were sure of that.

But instead of a hand coming down on your cheek, you felt a pair of arms wrapping around you from behind, pulling you close to someone's chest. You instantly relaxed slightly as the person comforted you, by hugging you tightly and whispering soft words of consolation into your ear.

"Shhh, it's okay, it's alright. Everything is fine, you hear me? You did nothing wrong, it's fine. Nothing is gonna happen to you trust me."

That voice could only belong to one person. The person you would trust your life with, the person that had always known you the best.

Nikolai was the only one that knew of that incident between your step mother and you. You had told him the same evening it happened while tears had streamed down your face. Holding you in his arms, he had whispered similar things to you that he said now, comforting you like no one else had ever could and ever will can.

Slowly you came back into the real world, realising what just had happened. Your body went limp in Nikolai's arms as you tried to hold back your tears. Fyodor looked at you with a soft gaze that held empathy and even pity.

"It's just a glas", you heard Nikolai mumble. "It doesn't matter, okay? It's alright, it's fine, really."

With that you let hot tears run down your face. You closed you eyes as you stood there silently, crying without a sound. After you had calmed down, you carefully freed yourself from Nikolai's arms and went to get a broom. You know you could ask one of them two to do it. They would gladly do it for sure. But you felt the need to do it yourself. You were a grown up adult. Such memories from your childhood shouldn't hold you back from living a proper life.

As you came back with the broom, Fyodor and Nikolai were already sitting at the table, waiting for you like nothing just happened. Like the shards on the floor didn't even exsist. Honestly you were glad about it. You needed to do that for your own sake. For your own sanity, which you felt that you slowly began lose.

If you haven't lost it already, that is.

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