When he'd told me Karpov was dead, I felt a victorious pulse of satisfaction. But my celebration was silent. We were all congregated to mourn his passing. So many of the proselytized youth bawled: gargling with sobs and sniffing back buckets of mucus. Snake tears, that's what I put on. It was a quiet cry, not desolated howls like those around me. The temptation to spit on his coffin was overwhelming as they carried it past. As we were requested to place a kiss on him as a mark of respect, I refrained. I leant in, my nostrils flaring at his rancid blanched complexion and falsified my respects. I wanted to parade on his body, tap dance on his casket, mutilate his shabby decaying body. He deserved nothing more than to be disembowelled, dismembered and decapitated.

We each took it in turns to plant a rose on his grave, I vandalised the petals. I ripped the edges of them, puncturing the velvety redness, plucking some off the stalk and laid it down. As his casket was lowered, I didn't shed a tear. He didn't deserve the moisture of my eyes, or even the strain of my muscles to frown. He didn't hold my attention; I lowered my head and picked at my cuticles.

But what really got my heckles up was the prayer. Delusional, that some of the people gathered really think there's a god. They can give me the omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent bullshit all they like. My parents were snatched from me when I was born, my adoptive-dad? Slaughtered. Me? Abused, demoralised, hypnotised. A god doesn't love me, he would've stopped this. He hasn't even looked in my direction, he doesn't know me. He isn't with me, he would've stepped in front of the flog of the cat of nine tales. They prayed for his soul, for safe deliverance to the other side; worshiping him for his "kindness" to us, for his "education" of us and his "love" of us. In the back of my mind I pictured him sipping a glass of vodka with Satan, not greeting Jesus at the pearly white gates.

The demon had been vanquished from the face of the earth, sharing the fate of so many he had sentenced before him. What I hadn't initially accounted for was what he was the predecessor to. They told us Karpov raised him like a son; saving him from the frontlines during the War I was sheltered from. He was for certain the only child in the world Karpov had saved. Out of the womb of his rage, his depravity and his poison was concocted a new scourge of the Earth. Someone raised to be foul, stripped bare of empathy, drained of humanity. Aleksander Lukin.

Younger. Stronger. Crueller.

A full head of hair, darker brown eyes, a slanting nose. Sharply dressed, like an overseer at a plantation, posture like a king, ready to command and a sharper tongue than a harpy.

"Natalia..." He'd crooned so sweetly the first time we'd met.

My step picked up, I pretended his siren song had fallen deaf on my ears.

"Natalia." He alternated to a new personality in an instant, his voice like the crack of the whip. He crushed his hand around my perforated wrist, but I didn't face him. So he crushed my jaw too with his hand, an echo of his forefather in his action. He wrenched my head towards him and stared me down. My eyelashes fluttered with panic, my breathing rustled and my pulse was flickering. "I was wondering when our fates would intertwine... Vasily, god rest his soul, told me you were very special..."

I felt my intestines knot at the notion. "Did he now?" I retorted, trying to twist my head away from him.

Aleksander leant in closer, his alcohol reeking breath sloshing across my face. "Yes, Tsarina... Do you know I've never seen a relic quite as valuable as you before?" Like an object, he spoke about me.

"That's not my name..." I hissed back, my fingers curling around his wrist to try and shake him off.

His eyes lit up with rage like a panther, and as his hand was wrenched from my squeezed jaw, it slipped to my neck. He pinned me back against the nearest wall, chest flush to mine.

"You'll go by whatever fucking name I want you to go by, you whore. And you'll answer to it like the obedient harlot you are. Because if you don't, I will have you flayed until you're accepting whatever name I feed you." His eyes pinned me to the spot as I writhed under him, struggling to steal the air under the press of his leather gloved hand. "He told me you'd be trouble Tsarina. Told me you don't like obeying orders. But he also told me, "beat you around enough and you make a diligent worker"." He looked me up and down, eyes invasively tracing the contours of my body. "He said you were a real special worker. But do you know what my old man never told me?" A grin cracked out across his face. "How else you were special... About your... Other charms..."

It still makes me gag to think about what he did next. He planted his lips against mine, a hand still clinging to my throat. As I raised a fist to slam into his gut, he clamped down on it and pinned it across my body, keeping my other arm sealed against me.

It was a dark corridor, abandoned. Even if someone was to stroll by, no one would dispute the exploits of Officer Lukin.

I struggled, and he trampled on either foot, making me spew curses against his mush and squirm even more violently.

It was an untidy and wet mingle of lips, and he chomped on my bottom lip, making me scream and he stuck his soggy appendage into my mouth. He applied as much pressure to my body as possible, trapping me against the wall. Tears sprung from my eyes and pitifully rolled down my cheeks, making the kiss even more sodden. I couldn't breathe; nose or mouth.

Distraction crept into his mind, and the hand that was around my throat slithered down my body, groping one of the mounds of my chest. I bit down on his tongue in altercation. A growl erupted from his throat and he retreated abruptly.

As he receded, hand nursing his minced tongue, I dashed away down the corridor.

"Agh!" He called, his despicable eyes on me. "You should be thanking me Tsarina! I'm only preparing you for what's to come!"

The sane question for me on anyone's lips is, how can this possibly get any worse?

The answer is with the familiar stabbing pain of a needle to the neck and being stolen to be taken to theatre from my tenebrous quarters, No one was there to see me stolen, no one to prove my innocence. 

I don't know what it was they pumped by veins with, but it countered the blockages in my mind; like bleach in a drain.

Walls of flames rained around me, sky high. It was eating away at the high roofed chamber, every tapestry dissolving and fixture disintegrating. Black smoke formed a screen, and through the swathes of choking blackness came a young woman. She swooped in like an angel. A hand, cupped the back of my head.

"I'm sorry Natalya..." Green eyes that burned with the reflection of the fire and the regret of a thousand exploded suns. Her eyes were sodden with the struggle of a soldier, weeping for the fate that was coming to her like a sunset. "I love you so much, and for as long as I live-"

The flames roared and as the flaming beams crashed down she shielded me against her bosom.

A man joined her, sweeping to her side, dark hair, hazel eyes. Full lips and a swelling smile. He placed his hand over my heart.

"Nikolai, It's not fair..." The woman sobbed, "She's just a child!"

"She could be sharing our fate. This is for her own good. And you trust Ivan, as do I!" He scooped he up into his arms and placed me into a basket, from which a length of fabric was tied. "I love her too, I know... She's so beautiful. She has your eyes." His eyes beaded too and one of his tears plopped onto my cheek.

There was a pounding at the door and the clouds of smoke was only getting swarming the room. They bayed, they banged, they busted at the wood. They were going to breach it.

The man strode over me and threw open the window and the shutters; ventilating some of the noxious gases out, but letting the Russian winter in. Specks of white ash and specks of white snow landed on my cheeks; one sizzling hot, the other burning cold.

"Come... Fast, before they see the light from the window."

It was with a wobble I was scooped up and placed in my makeshift crib at the windowsill.

"I'd say a prayer for you Natalya, but I don't have the time." The man joined her, both crestfallen and saying goodbyes. "Me, nor your father... Make something of your life, start afresh, and please; don't worry about us..." She kissed my forehead.

"We'll always be with you Natalya, watching over you from up there..." His eyes flicked to the sky. "And in heart. Goodbye and good luck..." He pressed his lips to by forehead with equal veneration.

The basket was nudged off the edge and quickly it made its bumpy descent into the outside of the castellated building. It was a rough stop as I was caught.

"Time to run, Natalya..." A young soldier grinned down at me, tracing the outline of my cheek.

"Take care of her!" The red haired woman cried from the battlements, strands of her tresses flailing on the wind. "And one more thing!" She cast out a scrap of fabric, it fluttered down, crashing into the wall as if went, but the young Royal Guard pinched it out of the air. "Keep that safe. Give it to her, when she's ready..."

He tucked the gold leaf embroidered handkerchief under my head, the AR initials just peeking out, and my family crest embellished above it.

I woke up in a green robe, the metronome perfect bleep of the heart rate monitor lulling me from my comatose state. The dream drifted, but the memories were stashed away like books into a library; I'd make sense of it when I became less groggy. I couldn't feel much beyond my stomach; everything felt jittery and tingly. I was plugged into various machines; a drip bleeding sedatives into my bloodstream and a peg on my finger. Instinctively, I tore out the intravenous treatments I was being fed on; unsure of their affect.

But the moment the painkillers stopped whiting out the pain, the second it resumed. It was a sharp stabbing, just above the waistband. A hand slithered to my stomach, clutching the cramps. Mauled flesh. I felt stitches, savagely binding the slit halves of flesh together, and skin mangled from recent opening. My breathing hitched. Not wanting to see the horrors, but overwhelmed with anxiety, I lifted the duvet. In the dark cavern, I saw it. I'd been opened up and stitched back together; minus something. A gap was in my gut.

I looked around the room, all sleeping girls, unaware of what had been done to them. I had to investigate; I twizzled from the bed, throwing my legs off and wobbling to my feet. My stitches stretched and my insides reeked with pain. I hurled myself onto my shaking knees, knocking them on the laminate infirmary floor, my temples throbbing in time. My legs were unfit for walking and pain washed over me like a tsunami. My gag reflex flexing with pain, I scraped myself along the floor, crawling towards the clipboard at the end of my bed. With every tuck and curl I could feel my insides tear and my stitches chafe.

I flapped at arm as I neared it, catching my fingers on the top of the clipboard. With the stretch of my arm, the skin on my stomach stretched and another shot of pain blasted through me. My throat closed and opened again and I dragged myself forwards, debilitated with pain.

I scrabbled against the wooden clipboard and with a catch of my fingernails clawed it within reach, onto the floor with a clatter. I curled tight, hugging my middle as I picked up the board. It only took a flip of the papers to see the diagram of a human body and a name of the procedure, along with a list of treatments.

Womb removal.

Then I really did retch; but retained the vomit; collapsing into a tearful pile. As if stripping me of everything I am wasn't enough! As if beating me, renaming me and making me murder people wasn't enough! They'd stripped me of my womanhood. They'd killed my last hope of moving on, of a life beyond the facility. I was never going to conceive. I was never going to have a family. Have a life.

The shock of adrenaline was enough to propel me to my feet, to defy the numbness of the drugs. My legs carried me to the end of the ward and crashing out of the doors, back into the dingy empty halls of the facility. I ran, mindlessly sprinting, curled down in agony as I dashed. Tears cascaded down my cheeks as I ran, blurring my sight, drowning my face until it was slick. I bounced off walls, tugging myself along on the sharp corners, pushing off them as a crutch. Every beat of my feet was oddly angled, damaging my ankles.

I came to a door and pelted it with my fists, furiously battering the wood, denting it. I dropped to my knees, striking out at the door. Still I cried, I bawled profusely, slamming my hands into it.

Then my hands went through the door as it was opened and my head landed in the gut of a man.

"Jesus fucking Christ, what did they do to you?" He asked, cuddling me close, hearing my wretched agonised yelps. I planted my face in his stomach, muting some of my expletives.

"They-they..." I couldn't get a grip on my words, sobs ripped from my throat. "They took it away!" I screamed, my howl reverberating down the corridor.

I supposed the neighbours had adjusted to the shrieks of so many occupants that no one cared to look. It wasn't unusual. They'd become desensitised to the cries of a teenage girl. They probably passed it off as someone misbehaving, being dragged to 'correction'.

"They stole it from me!" I gritted, my hands fisted in his standard issue black t-shirt. "He stole it from me!"

"Stole what? Stole what?" He soothed, his voice starkly harmonious with contrast.

I let go of his shirt and sat back on my ankles. I pointed to my stomach with a trembling hand, where red had soaked through the green hospital robe; where I had irritated the newly implanted stitches.

"Fuck..." He hissed, eyes dewed with tears. He welcomed me into a hug as I fell apart again. "Come in, come in..." He tried to get me to shuffle towards him, teasing me in. "Come on in..." He guided me, a hand cupping the back of my head. "You don't want to make a scene."

He guided me in, when I barely had the capacity to walk, nursing me like a wounded animal.

"C'mere," he had said, and that was all that needed to be said. I crawled towards him and he scooped me up bridal style, laying me down on his bed, draping the light duvet covers over me.

No cuffs restricted the bedposts, the mattress was like feathers instead of rock, and the pillows like a mountain of air. My tears continued to roll, even as I tucked in, trying to conceal my ruined stomach. My hair became damp as they pooled on one side of my face.

He didn't say a word, but slipped under the covers next to me, spooning against me, one arm thrown above my midsection, cuddling me close. Just the warmth was enough to tranquilise me into a more peaceful state, and the feeling of his body protecting mine, curled against me gave the illusion of safety. I could hear him making tiny 'hushing' sounds as parents do with children, and my cries quietened to sniffles. One of his hands traced circles on my back, and though my breathing stuttered and I hiccupped over the dying whines in my throat, that movement was constant, like the rock of a boat. Just for a short while, he was my silence, he was my shield and he was my fire. And I didn't say a word.

A/N - Should probably call this chapter "I should be writing an essay on Keats" - whom we haven't studied in class, but I'm pretty sure he's the 'martyred for religion' guy. I know he's a romantic poet. I am doing anything and everything to procrastinate writing this damn presentation. I cannot to public speaking; it makes me so fucking anxious. But as it goes; I think this was quite productive.

The sensible part of my brain was like: "save this chapter for a rainy day, space out your updates", but another part was like "holy shit, you wrote a thing, upload it!" I can resist everything except temptation.

Dedication goes to bluephoenix2002! x