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Death hasn’t been something to be feared since she was a child, naive and innocent, burying her pet goldfish in the backyard with tears in her eyes. It had been incomprehensible then, the idea that he wouldn’t be waking up nearly impossible to grasp. She’d been inconsolable until Alexei had sat her down and explained that it was the natural order, that she would one day too be buried in the ground, slowly rotting.
That had not helped.
It took Natalia’s warm embrace and carefully chosen words to really understand that he was gone, that it was irreversible. She had cried, and mourned, but moved on.
It was okay, after that. Death became something that she had to accept existed, even if she hid at every mention. Even if it terrified her, made her lay awake at night, thoughts swirling. It was something that her family was all too familiar with, even if she did not know at the moment.
And then, her older sister had aimed a gun at their father and threatened to shoot, and Yelena had her world ripped out from under her feet.
It has been a long time since she accepted the fact that she was going to die. She had known it in that shipping container, felt it whisper along the walls as the girls huddled close, the stench of fear thick in the air. She had known it as Madame slapped her across the face for daring to cry, handprint stinging and red on her face for hours after. She had known it as she was dragged away by the guards, kicking and screaming, Natalia frozen on the other side of the dining room with wide eyes.
She has watched her sisters die before her, waste away into corpses with gaunt cheeks and hollow throats and sunken eyes, bleed out until their skin goes dull and face goes slack, go to sleep with broken bones and bruises painting their sides and never wake up. It was always calm, just before the end. Eerie almost, the way they went blank.
Death is not what she fears. It is pain, which poses the real threat.
Pain is familiar, is something that ghosts along her spine, hovering in the back of her mind and following her like a stormcloud. She knows it intimately, and yet it has never become a friend. It is why she has not succumbed, why they are all still alive in this hell of a place. Why they obey.
Because when she is thrown across a room, shoulder slamming into the wall with a sickening crack, when she is desperately clawing at the arm around her throat, when she is biting and writhing as she is pinned to the ground, she cannot die. Yelena cannot let herself fall, let the agony continue.
They all wish to be dead, but none of them want to die, want to feel their body give up and collapse underneath their own weight.
It will hurt.
That, she dreads.
It has been nearly two years since they left Ohio when it happens, a murmur making its way to her in the dead of night. The girl who tells her has a guilty look on her face, but says it because she feels she needs to.
Natalia is dead. Has been buried in the yard, next to Irina.
It was not a peaceful death, nor a painless one. Ludmila had described in excruciating detail how she had fought, how she had screamed, how her body had gone limp, hanging in her sister’s arms as her neck was snapped.
When Yelena tries to make eye contact with Svetlana across the room during breakfast, the girl is wan, unfocused and swaying slightly in her seat. Halfway through the meal, she stands up and bolts, guards giving chase as she darts out the door, a collective wince rippling through the room.
Yelena has not so much as spoken to Natalia since they were torn apart, time and time again as Madame refuses to let them be in the same room. Natalia does not fight it, just watches, feet rooted to the ground, as Yelena is pulled away.
But still, it hurts.
She stares at the strip of photos that night, and hugs it close to her chest.
Death should not affect her as much as it does. Natalia is only a memory now, a girl she barely knew. Playing make-believe with her, pretending they were sisters. Smiling, laughing, like she had not watched girls like Yelena die and done nothing. Like she had not killed girls like Yelena.
Fiercely protective, hugging her close, whispering stories to her at night. Fighting the monsters that lurk in the dark, braiding her hair in the mornings, looking at her with enough fondness to rival Melina and Alexei combined.
The closest thing that she had to family.
Yelena has had to grow up all too fast, abandon her self and lock those little bits of hope inside a box so that she would survive. But right now, she feels like she did all those years ago: a scared child, too young to fathom the loss of life. She doesn’t know what is supposed to happen, now that Natalia is gone and she is truly alone. Thrust into this world of knives and punches and pliés, forced to find out how to survive on her own.
It hurts.
It’s over half a decade since Natalia died when something shifts. She doesn’t know what it is. It happens slowly, gradually, going unnoticed until something is clearly different. It slides into place with a click, like it had always been meant to be that way.
Perhaps that is why Yelena finally attempts escape.
She had never before, red blood on white snow still fresh in her mind, but something tips over the edge. Suddenly, she is running, backpack slung over her shoulder and knife in her hand, alarms blaring into the quiet night behind her. Her feet slam against the dirt, synchronized with the sirens as she weaves through trees.
Death is still nothing to fear, but now, pain is not either. Perhaps it is tolerance, perhaps it is audacity. It is not enough to dissuade her anymore, not enough to keep her from disappearing into the thick forest surrounding the Red Room. It’s become something of an empty threat, something she can ignore after so much, a weak attempt at striking fear in her soul.
She is always in pain. What more can they do? There is nothing left that keeps her there, and so she leaves.
It almost sounds simple.
There is yelling as they pursue, and Yelena feels her heart thump in her ears as she hides, scrambling up into the nearest tree and crouching where the branches meet the trunk. It is uncomfortable. Her knee presses into her chin, and the bark scrapes at her elbow, and her lungs feel like they are paralyzed. Their flashlights bob past and she does not breathe, but she is not found.
This is the stupidest thing that she has ever done, but in the morning, when she runs, nearly flying across the forest floor, she cannot help but smile.
It takes a long time. Hours, days, weeks. Months, for the fear of the chase to truly ebb away. She sleeps with an eye open, a glance over her shoulder. She flinches without even registering the cause. It fades though, in time.
She thinks that perhaps she was meant to die, that she had not intended to succeed. Nobody else had. It was reckless, and dumb, and completely unplanned. On a whim, a frantic bid for freedom. Maybe it was just the easiest way to end the suffering. But, regardless, she does, and makes it out alive.
And live she does.
Yelena returns to the ruins only once after she causes them. She stares at the monument, tracing the names upon it. There are hundreds, if not thousands, that were lost to time, that are not here. Forgotten, left to be only numbers in a statistic, sisters avenged but not known. She hopes that they are proud, though.
They are.