BLOODY BALLERINA ▹ barnes-romanoff ✓

nine.

I am the daughter of a king

Who forgot my name.

L.L. Tyrrell

Her ears were ringing and her heart was pounding as two pairs of black boots stalked outside of the mansion that Svetlana had not left for two years. She should have felt relieved. She should have jumped for joy. But she couldn't even process it as she passed through the tall wooden doors and into the pale white sunlight. Her father, her papa, was by her side and he didn't even know who she was to him. She was nothing to him. She had thought she knew misery. That little girl had been tormented her whole life, but this was something different. To have the only person that you care about look at you as if you're nothing; that's a feeling that a person can never heal from.

The soldier was a lone black figure and this was the way it used to be, the way it had been for more than a year since the girl had been taken from him. In the beginning, right after she was taken, he was erratic, insane, rebellious. When the guards dared to touch him, he snapped their bones just quick enough to break a few before he was forcibly stopped. When he was compelled to do missions, he would simply glare at them with his hateful ocean eyes. Then the superior was called in and all of the men trembled at the sight of him; all but one man: the soldier. His fear of the superior had crumbled, broken, and dissolved into something so much stronger than fear: rage. This rage was something that the superior was smart enough to know would never go away, unless they "prepped" the soldier.

And then the soldier's agony ensued.

He could feel each memory tearing away, ripping, clawing, biting, flaying, destroying. He fought them; he wanted so badly to remember the child known as Plan B by them but known as Svetlana to him. The one thing that was his. The one thing he had found that didn't make him feel dirty, feel guilt-ridden and despicable. Everyone believed him to be incapable of feeling anything close to what the world called "love", but, God, he loved that little girl, more than anyone had ever loved anything. And they took her away, just like they took everything else. He hadn't begged in so long, but he allowed himself to do so when they strapped him to the machine.

"Net! Pozhaluysta, net, net," No! Please no, no.

They shoved him back into the metal throne that belonged to him and him alone.

"Don't take her away from me," he ground out in English, finally meeting the eyes of the superior as he never did.

The superior simply nodded towards the guards and scientists so they jammed a mouth guard over his tongue.

"Prosto pozvol'te mne vspomnit'!" he screamed in a raspy, ragged panic. Just let me remember!

He could see the scientists working out of the corner of his eye.

"Net!" he gave last one enraged scream. No!

The machine began to whir to life, ready to take his.

Even as they slid the metal pieces of the machine down against his face, he couldn't stop the last plea from escaping, "Please."

But it didn't matter. It never did. Then he was gone. Slowly, as more blood was spilt until his ledger was nearly dripping in it, he would begin to remember her. The child that was resilient, stubborn, beautiful. He wouldn't know not to ask about the girl. He didn't know what they would do if they knew he remembered her.

He would peer up at them with this foggy distance in his eyes, "Devochka, rebenok, kto ona?" The girl, the child, who is she?

The scientists would worriedly glance at each other.