Archive of Our Own ^beta

Clang. Something broke very loudly at the same moment when a blood vessel burst in my eye. Everything around me seemed to have some kind of crimson color mixed with vomit blue. The wind was coming in through the window, while the heat was escaping from it. And I stood on my knees and breathed into fingertips – I don’t know if they were mine or his.

Something slimy is running down my spine, but I don’t understand where it goes. Is it hiding under my skin? What is this? Fear? Excitement? Delight?

He opened his eye, and I saw my face in it. My face melts from his flame, but I have always seen my skull in the mirror anyway. My swollen, sore eyes, dry mouth, and red stubble were pulled to the floor. Or they were mixed into a delicious gruel.

All this time as it was happening, he was talking. I don’t know this language, but its sounds were piercing my chest and flowing into it, drowning in the bile of my stomach, as everything is drowning now, flowing and melting. I'm tired. I would like to take a nap.

How hot his hands, covered with sky-blue flames, are. And his eye is red. And he looks at me from the depths of the northern sea, grabs me, strangles me, and says a lot, but now I understand everything.

“She is dear to you, and you are dear to me. Why do you reject me? Is my love really enough for you that you can so easily rebel against me?”

There is dryness in my mouth, the Adam’s apple is pressing on my throat.

“Yes, I want you, give yourself unto me... I cannot measure so as to know how much of perfect love I lack... then I would throw myself into your arms and would not tear myself away from you until I disappear under the cover of your face.”

I don't know why I said that. These are not my words. 

He either grinned or spat.

The door creaked. As soon as I turned my head to look at it, everything ran out over the threshold. There are only pieces of window glass with the drops of my sweat on the floor.

And Stakh’s face is glowing.

“Then I would throw myself into your arms and would not tear myself away from you until I disappear under the cover of your face.”

If I tell him, he will understand. Even if I don't tell him, he will understand. I need someone to understand me.

So I told him:

                “I saw God.”

The golden dome looked a lot like the Sun. Nothing else was lighting up the sky. 

As soon as I opened the door, I was met with a chilling breeze. The church was empty, it only had colored walls, wooden iconostasis and one scrawny priest. 

His face was as dark as the faces on those icons. He had round yellow eyes, reddish circles on his cheeks, and really thin lips, almost if there were none.

I approached him and asked: “Are you father Anastasiy?"

He smiled calmly, barely showing his crooked teeth: “No, it was never there.”

Before I could ask him again, he raised his hand and pointed at something behind my back. I turned around to look.

I saw a cheap coffin, with a white blanket in it. A pair of dog ears was popping out of it.

“What's this?... I was told you are holding a memorial service for killed soldiers in my unit.”

They were killed so brutally, he saw their breathing hearts on a muddy road. They wanted to tell him something, but the edges of their mouths didn’t raise in the slightest.

That priest smiled wider. I didn’t like that shine in his eyes.

“No, they had died. It's only for that one person.”

And then something struck my chest. Something was yelling between my temples, I almost fell down because of it. I wanted to look at my body, to check if I was shot, and then I saw the coffin right before me. 

A rotting corpse. Deep cuts on the stomach, something slimy and black was coming out of it. Blood remained, like an honorable wife, that hasn’t betrayed her husband for leaving for war, but slept in organs, in vessels. Only something black and slimy rushed out to attract flies, to let them feast on an abomination and destroy what was to this point still beautiful; and the smell was horrible, he can swear, it wasn’t like this in the battle of the Fords. 

It’s all his fault.

I found myself lying on the floor, tasting my own sweat. I probably shouted something like “What the hell!”, and then

        I looked up.

                   I looked up and this thing was looking down at me.

It wasn’t that priest anymore. It had a face of a young boy, wings, and multiple hands. Blood was coming from under his robes, covering the church’s floor. Its eyes made it blissful.

It spoke loudly. “You are going to die like a dog , my child.”

…

I woke up tasting blood in my mouth.