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Lack of sleep is not an uncommon occurrence for Olya Orlova.
Yes, she works two jobs, essentially, but miraculously, her stamina allows her to barely survive the day, until she goes to bed no later than 10 pm.
Which, in all actuality, is a perfectly reasonable time to fall asleep, so that brings up the question of what keeps her from getting a full night’s rest, anyways.
The answer finds itself in the past, from a time before Dimitri or Anya were factors in her day-to-day life. When her, Sergei, and Kolya were on a mission.
They had ended up at The Grinder. A hallway, rumored to grant wishes at the end… though Olya had never believed that even The Zone could manipulate reality to its will in that manner. As they had stayed longer and longer within The Grinder, their flesh began to dissolve and give away- perhaps that was the reason they had named it “The Grinder”.
Sergei had to choose between her and Kolya. He had chosen her, and thus she escaped with only an eye lost, while Kolya was never to come back from that expedition. Nikita was mad at this, of course; anyone would be angry at losing their sibling. He had spat words at her, blaming her for the incident, but only when Sergei wasn’t around to see.
They never spoke of it around others, but there was always an invisible tension cutting between them whenever they were in the same room together. Olya, not even once, believed she was at fault- but she would be lying to herself if Nikita’s constant reminders never got under her skin.
She never lets it show, especially to Sergei, but at night, sleeping by herself on days when he is busy, she feels just a little more alone than she should be. On some nights, it bleeds into her dreams, nightmares that mean nothing and everything all at once.
Olya, not even if she woke up in a cold sweat and grasping at her fast and beating heart, would never let any insecurities show to Sergei. A barrier existed between them, and they naturally kept secrets from each other- Dimitri’s existence as a mutant didn’t need to be known by him, after all.
Even if Sergei found out about her insecurities and all of the personal things she kept secret; Nikita’s hatred of her, the way her eyes would spend a little too long on an old photo of herself, the days where she was far more tired than usual. Even if he confronted her about it, she felt a sigh bubble at her throat even thinking about it.
She didn’t like talking about those things if she could help it- there were more important issues in her life, such as the zone, or the mutant she was technically hiding, or just about anything that wasn’t related to her.
She was already past it- remembering the days when she constantly walked into things, her depth perception thrown off because of the loss of her eye. Even today, it felt off to not be able to see as well as she could before.
But it didn’t matter to Olya. It was all in the past and she had to focus on the present. And currently the present was watching over the street she lived on, at the dead of midnight. Even at this ungodly hour, there were cars driving, off in their own little lives.
She took a deep breath, watching how the cold air turned it into mist as it faded away. She ran her fingers through her hair, leaning back as the star filled sky stared back at her.
When she was a child, she used to be obsessed with astronomy- she would look up at the stars every day, pointing out the constellations to her parents. Often, in the night, they became her only source of comfort, and that was still the case today. A faint and pained smile came to her face, the sickening divide of her past and present self not eluding her.
Yawning, she resolved that now was the time to sleep, closing the door to the balcony, never looking back at the sky. Getting into her warm bed,- though maybe her perception of temperature was muddled by the fact she had worn a shirt without sleeves outside- she turned off the lamp she used to light her way, and fell into the void of slumber soon enough.
She wasn’t greeted by anything but darkness and an instant pass of time in her rest, and maybe that was the better outcome she could’ve gotten.