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Spring
The day I first met you was a sunny spring day in the countryside. My father grunted, as fathers did, and pushed me forwards to your father- a very tall, thin man with a head full of grey hair that I had to strain my neck to see. I was only 7 then, the perfect height to ignore your father’s legs at my eye level and spot you in the rolling grass and wildflowers.
I… well.
I honestly thought you were a girl at first, what with your light blonde hair halfway down your back and the bundles of flowers in your hands. You perked up, turned around, and somehow, even at that far of a distance- me still in front of your house, you a little golden figure in blooming colours, you looked me right in the eyes.
I turned away just a little too fast, and that drew the attention of your father.
“Ah…” he said, and since I was actually paying attention, I had the pleasure of feeling like somebody rubbed static and coarse sand over my brain. Later, I would dread hearing you speak, just in case your voice was equally dry and tired and unpleasant, but that turned out to not be the case. That would be later, though. First, your father would speak. “That would be my son. Perhaps you’d like to go say hello while we adults talk?” Desperate to get away from Mr. Sandpaper, I enthusiastically nodded, and ran off without sparing a glance at my father. Surprisingly, he would not beat me for that in the evening.
You introduced yourself with one name.
I called you by another.
In the summer, you had woven those wildflowers into crowns.
Summer
Deep in those lush hills and wide fields of your father’s backyard, you took me to the bundles of flowers you held, and amazingly, wove them together into delicate crowns of blossoms.
“How did you do that?” I asked- half wanting to figure it out, but I’m pretty sure it was just to see you wearing a second crown of flowers.
You were... an awful teacher, because I could never get it. Or maybe it was because my hands weren’t as delicate or precise as yours, and I’d always rip apart the fragile stems, and feel terrible each time. As time went on, soon I became the flower picker, and you the flower weaver.
We made a good team.
I was blinded by you then, smile shining brighter than anything.
Alas, smiles couldn't feed, and every winter I would go back to my father's home to work, but dream of spring flowers and you.
It would be a quiet summer evening when we were older, on the verge of puberty, where you would ask me the most bizarre and- though unknown to me at the time- the most impactful question I would ever answer.
"Hey… wouldn't it be nice, if we could live forever?" You turned to me, rolling away from the stars in the sky. I shuffled, trying to pretend that I was indeed looking at the stars and not you the entire time.
"What do you mean?"
"Like... cheating death."
"Pfft. Death comes for everyone. You can't just avoid it."
"Then I'll run from it as fast as I can."
"With those skinny legs of yours? Keep dreaming!"
I did not see how pained you looked.
I did not know how much you feared death.
That was the last day I would see you for a very long time. Your father died in the days after that conversation, and my father came to take me back to Russia.
“You can’t leave him all alone here-!” I fought back against him for the first time in years, and earned a backhand that sent me into the wall. My father stood in all his terrifying stature, displeasure clear on his face.
“He’s dead. I owe that family no more favours, Aleksandr.”
Fall
I came back for you in the fall of many years later, a time past puberty, with my father's life still on my hands after I had beat him to death and fed his remains back to the Earth, to the dying leaves and browning grass preparing itself for the ice of winter.
I did not recognize you at first, and I expect you didn't recognize me either.
I found you in the wilting flowers, hollow like the plants themselves, but too alive to really be dead, too much my friend to be a stranger, and too much of a stranger to be a friend.
How much we had changed from the children we once were, Third Reich.
How much we were still painfully the same, Vasili.
Crimson splattered the back porch of the cottage we grew up in, soaking into your meter long locks, dying blond into rusted red as you held your brother's son and a still smoking gun.
You laughed, as clear tears dripped from your face, smudging your brother's already flaking blood on your cheeks, and said to me,
"Get the fuck out of my sight."
I saw my own blood before I felt the pain.
I would forever only see out of my left eye from then on, but at least I was better off than your brother, a bullet hole right in between the empty eyes of his peaceful face.
(It would not be your first betrayal anyhow.)
Winter
Я тебя люблю.
I remember.
I remember it was almost like slow motion, your hand shaking terribly as you held the gun under your chin. Your breaths hiccupped, your eyes were red-rimmed and your tears sparkled in the cold moonlight.
I regret.
I regret because I froze. I stood there, watching you because I didn’t know what to do. You stood there, and for a reason I still can’t comprehend no matter how many times I remember you, no matter how many times I live this memory through and through and through yet again I still don’t know why-
Why did you smile, my friend?
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," you choked, and I stood horrified, "Aleks, you were right, I can't keep running forever after all." Your shaking hands finally steadied, fingers shifting and I heard that fateful click of the gun.
“No- Vasya, DON’T-!”
Every detail, I remember as clear as the purest glass. Burned into my memory, I can count your mussed strands of black hair, can see your tears, the moonlight carved into your skin, your bitten nails, the tiredness under your eyes,
The one thing I just can’t quite remember is your voice.
I know what you sound like.
But at the same time, I’ve forgotten how you used to speak.
Maybe I never knew.
“My real name is B̵̢̙̮̭̦̫̝̹͒̃̑ą̵̙̺̦̘͋́͝͠s̷̟̜̦͔̯̹̳̲͌͋̏̄̅͘̕͝ï̸̪̥͈̤̗̫̘͇̮͇͈̄͋̏͜ḽ̴͚͓͍̰̄̂͛̈́̐̿͑͗͘, what's yours?”
“Aleksandr, over here!”
“Wouldn't it be nice, if we could live forever?”
“Get the fuck out of my sight.”
“I’m so sorry.”
And they laid you in a glass coffin, burying your body in sweet smelling flowers to hide the wounds scattered over you. Over your head, laid the nameless wildflowers in the most beautiful halo you had ever made.
It was winter, and yet, you would live in eternal springtime.