Chapter Text
Illya trudged through the calf-deep snow and cursed everyone and everything that had led him to this moment. Including himself.
For three years he had worked in the fish factory where Comrade Oleg had secured him a job. Grateful, Oleg had said, as he had turned Illya out of the only home he could remember. Grateful, Illya had thought, grateful to get away.
And for three miserable, stinking years he had dutifully worked, killing, gutting, skinning. Lifting and reaching what his comrade coworkers could not. Ignoring the way their careless whispers of Illya the orphan grated on his threadbare temper. Sacrificing his soul for the life he had been dealt.
Until finally, finally, he had snapped.
“The father a drunk, and the mother a whore, no doubt,” one faceless, reeking cog-in-the-fish-machine had sworn.
“Most likely the father doesn’t even know he exists,” another agreed.
“Both the happier for it, I’m sure,” sneered a third, abandoning any pretence of discretion. In the interest of returning his frankness, Illya broke as many of the trio’s bones as he could manage before being hauled from their unconscious forms by a particularly intrepid (and surprisingly strong) warehouse clerk.
Illya correctly assumed that that would be the end of his career in fish processing, slipping through the main doors with surprising agility for a man of his considerable size. He slowed only to snatch his heavy coat from its hook, comforted by the watch lying safely in the inner chest pocket.
It was the only thing of any value that he owned, although he presumed the value was more in his rare sentimentality than monetary value. By the time he had been found as a child, the vultures of St Petersburg’s streets had picked him clean of anything else but the clothes on his back. Its place in his coat’s inner chest pocket had saved it then, and he had kept it there (by his heart, an annoyingly gentle voice supplied) ever since.
So now, a man of twenty-one years, with no money and no family to show for it, was stomping down a road made unrecognisable by the foot-or-so of snow, fuelled mostly by his still-simmering rage.
It was only when he reached the junction in the path that he recognised where he was. The fork in the road he had come to three years ago, freshly dismissed from the orphanage, from the other strays he had been raising while Oleg played tyrant. To his right, the road led right back to the drafty old house where his first memories were set. The children he had raised there, left there, were the only family he could remember.
To his left-
He looked at the sign and sighed, as he had done the last time. St Petersburg. A great and beautiful city, they said, full of opportunity and wonder. It was in Illya’s nature to be sceptical.
Behind him, the fishing village he would be run out of given the chance. To his right, the scraps of his childhood, but no future.
The watch lay heavy against his chest, though it had no real weight to it. Illya could always feel it though, warm against him, like a heart that beat beside his own. He pulled it from its sanctuary, just a worn leather strap and an old glass face, ticking resolutely as ever. He turned it gingerly, reverently, and ran his thumb over the inscription on the back. He did not need to read it to know what it said. He had read it a hundred thousand times. Together in Paris. It was the first thing he remembered reading. He knew it so well he fancied it must have been the first thing he had ever learned to read.
So you want to go to France to find your family, little prince? This was the first and last thing Illya had made the mistake of sharing with Oleg as his new guardian. It is time to take your place in life. In life and in line and be grateful too! There was much Oleg thought Illya and the other orphans ought to be grateful for, but few found it in themselves to comply.
Illya was shaken from his embittered nostalgia by a sharp tug as his scarf was wrenched from his neck, and he would have whirled around with a formidable fist if that damned watch hadn’t been knocked from his hand. He snatched it up quickly, gently brushing off the snow, and returned it to its pocket-home, cursing himself for the indulgence of removing it in the first place.
His scarf had been stolen by a dog.
Illya, who had been fed all manner of things, but never formally introduced to the idea of a pet, eyed the ratty little thing appraisingly. The dog eyed him back levelly, appearing to deliberately back away, dragging the scarf as it went.
“Great. A dog wants me to go to St Petersburg.” It would be a long (long) time before Illya admitted that he was a little relieved to share the burden of the decision. People always say life is full of choices, he thought, but no one ever mentions fear. Not that there was ever a real decision to be made. Not that Illya would ever admit to having experienced anything close to fear. “Fine. Let this road be mine.”
Who knows where this road may go, thought a gentle, naïve Illya. St Petersburg, answered the dominant, rational Illya, where there would be work and another damp, draughty room to stave off the bitter Russian winters. I am not thinking about Paris, he assured himself, just St Petersburg.
The dog dropped the scarf (idiot dog) and disappeared into the trees (good riddance). Illya wrapped the soggy scarf loosely round his shoulders and hoped it would dry before the blood froze in his neck.
He had been trudging on, St Petersburg-bound, for some time when the dog reappeared with a limp squirrel in its jaws. Shrewd little eyes (can dogs be shrewd?) peered over its skinny corpse prize, and Illya cursed himself for taking lead from a dog. One slim meal and a thousand tiny bones later, Illya resented the idiot dog, which was looking astutely smug.
“I’m going to St Petersburg,” he said, and gritted out “good idea with the squirrels.” He walked off. One step at a time. The dog followed. “Idiot dog.”