Atonement

[Vogel]

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"Idealist: One who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup."

Drip.

The only sound to be heard in the bowels of that forsaken rock, that slow, dripping noise.

Water, surely. From a broken pipe.

Yes, a broken pipe. Pipes broke. Everything broke eventually, especially here.

"Especially here..."

"Eh? What?" the other guard grunted, his face hidden beneath a Ushanka, "Did you say something?"

"Me? Me?!" the man barked back, "Say something? Say something! Me!"

The man stumbled to his feet, obviously in a stupor. Due to vodka or fatigue it was nearly impossible to tell.

"Me, say something! What is that, a joke? A joke Tovarisch, surely, eh?!"

"Calm down, you crazy svoloch'," the other guard replied, tipping his Ushanka up with a scowl, "I don't need to hear it from you again."

"Again. Again! Again the man says!"

"Past' zakroi..."

At that the stumbling man's eyes went wide with fury, and his boot sent the folding chair he'd been slumped in flying down the darkened hallway.

"You! What have you ever done, eh? Eh, Tovarisch? Oh great Tovarisch Ivan! Hero of the Coalition! Defender of the Final Victory!"

"I'll piss in your grave in a minute!"

"You'd like that, wouldn't you, wouldn't you!" the man continued, spittle finding its way between his lips as he hollered.

"Maybe I would, Petrovin, if it would shut you up!"

At the sound of his name, the rage left him. All of the pent up anger, the disappointment, the indignation, was effaced with a wave of nausea. Resigned, the man stumbled backwards against the wall before roughly sliding to the floor, bereft of the chair which he'd kicked off into the void.

Petrovin. Yes, that was a name that meant something. Just a working boy, leaving a simple family of farmers behind to ply a trade with the wonderful arms producers in orbit, building Partisans with his bare hands. And then, oh then, to be graciously admitted into the vaunted fighter corps! Yes, the military, the defenders of that glorious dream that had been so potent, indeed the meaning of all the struggle, the conclusion of which would bring...

What would it bring? All it brought so far was this.

Security guard. On a Godforsaken deck of the great Zvezdny Gorodok that had a visitor every five years, if Lady Luck happened to smile upon it.

Too conventional, they said. A liability, they said. Behind closed doors, never within earshot, but they said it. What else could they have said? Perhaps they could have said, "Be grateful you still have your life." Yes, that would have been very fitting.

What life?

At least if he were dead he wouldn't have to eat the same damnable slop they served every day, drink the same slightly-tainted water which was a poor excuse for recycled urine, walk the same route, sit in the same spot, breathe the same stifling air which probably had a broken circulatory unit...

Life. He needed a life. His life. Did he ever have a life?

He looked at his hands. Hands which had worked from the day they came out of a womb, had provided food for others, provided weapons for the same, commanded those weapons in the defense of all that he saw as right and good in the universe. His hands.

Wasted. Ignored. Denied. Spurned.

He looked at his fists. Fists? When had he clenched them?

This was wrong.

This was all terribly wrong.

And it angered him. It angered him in the deepest pit of his heart, in the most fundamental parts of his brain, in his muscles, in his bones, in the blood coursing through his veins.

"Good," Ivan continued, pulling the Ushanka back over his eyes, "Now if only you'd stay that way, you little mudak..."

And he stood up. His legs felt as if they were cast of iron, working off the rust of time as they supported what was once, and still was, a soldier.

"Because I never hear the end of your nonsense... Piz'duk..."

And his hand reached for the pocket in his coat, clenching what was once, and still was, the sum of his existence.

"Just a walking pile of govno..."

And he wrenched it out, and pointed it at the sum of his opposition.

"And a..."

The distinctive clicking noise of a firing hammer was unmistakable.

"A..."

"A what?" Konstantin replied, his voice level, full of ice.

Ivan tipped the Ushanka back up and found his scowl leave him for a look of abject horror.

At least it was. Before the bullet caved in the front of his skull.

Konstantin Petrovin pocketed the Nagant revolver and turned on a grimy boot heel, staring down the empty corridor which led to a new beginning, and a new struggle. A crusade. To get his life back.

And it began with a dripping noise.

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