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[ fic: you will bury them all in the ground ]
you will bury them all in the ground
4300 words. An AU retelling of Yuri's Massacre from Sonia's perspective with one less survivor.
Warnings: violence, child/infant death, a lot of other death, soul-crushing despair, the usual
The level of angst and tragedy in this borders on the pornographic and I'm sorry
Sonia hummed quietly to herself as she danced an idle waltz around the bedroom, gently patting Padma's back over her shoulder. Voices from the dining room drifted down the hall and around the corner, fading into indistinct murmurs by the bedroom door, strata of conversations spoken above or below or around each other. The baby burped one last time and sighed, and after a moment Sonia shifted him back into the crook of one arm so she could lay the burping cloth on the nightstand to be washed later.
"You," she said, gently tapping his nose, "are my very favorite dance partner. You've never once stepped on my foot." The baby cooed, grasping at one of her fingers. Sonia smiled, her eyes crinkling. "Just don't tell your da I said that."
Padma laughed and waved his little hands, and she let him take a surprising stranglehold on her index finger so he could stick it directly into his mouth. Sonia nodded at him gravely. "I can see your lips are sealed."
Where was his pacifier…? Ah, probably still on the dining room table with the ruins of lunch. Still humming, Sonia turned and began to slowly dance her way to the bedroom door.
"Now that everyone's finished eating, I think it's time for cake, hm? Let's see if Da will come help us carry it out. And maybe Grandda will make it just in time, because if he misses his baby grandson's first birthday, Mama's going to have some words with him."
Sonia leaned out through the door. "Vanya? Can you -- ow! Padma, darling, no, not Mama's earring -- "
Padma, apparently having lost interest in his mother's finger, was making a grab for one of her dangling earrings instead. Sonia gently prised his tiny, vice-like little fingers away from her earring with one hand -- and then he immediately went back for it with the other. Sonia hissed in exasperation. "Padma, no -- "
From the bedroom, she could hear a knock on the front door at the other end of the flat. Sonia finally freed her earring from her son's grip and took both his hands in her free one to kiss them, then gently bounced him until he laughed. "Let's go see who it is. Maybe it's Grandda, hm? Ooh, maybe he even pried Uncle Piotr away from his desk for a change. That'd get him off the hook for being late."
She could hear the door open by the slight squeak of its hinges -- the building was prewar, renovated postwar, not newly built -- but she heard no muffled greetings or the creak as it swung back closed. All she heard was a very brief, very abruptly truncated noise of surprise followed by a heavy thump, and then the sound of several pairs of thick soled boots on hardwood floor, a cacophony of thudding in a staccato rhythm that plucked at sense memory in her subconscious mind. Sonia stepped out into the hall, holding Padma close.
She was greeted by her reflection in the full-length mirror on the wall opposite the door, her brow creased in some nameless apprehension creeping up the back of her throat. Her reflection seemed to trap her gaze. She blinked and saw a girl ten years younger, embroiled in war with only soldier's marches for music. It was only a moment -- barely a second -- but it left her chilled.
Sonia broke away and stepped out around the blind corner, the clack of her shoes on the polished floor high and out of time with the bootfalls growing louder by the moment -- not to the kitchen with the cake, but back towards the dining room on feral, fearful instinct as a soft, shrill whine rose through the walls.
The sound alone nearly knocked her back, and the blast rocked the whole flat, sending her staggering several steps back on her heeled shoes until she could skitter to a halt. It left a ringing in her ears that left her chest tight, drowning out the anxious noises Padma was making against her shoulder. It took her back to rust-red battlefields, fluorescent-lit asphalt and weapons that sang symphonies of destruction. No matter how many years might pass since the war, Sonia would never forget the sound of a sonic grenade.
Her breath caught in her throat and she broke into a run, her footfalls puncturing sharp notes through the diminuendo of the blast. Hisses of crackling nerve disruptor fire overlapped one another, punctuated with short, sharp cries. The dining room door was flung open, obscuring her view. Padma, confused and afraid, began to cry in her arms. Sonia's voice quavered, then drew taut as a bowstring. "Vanya!"
"Sonia!" Ivan's voice, breaking out of the dining room urgent and desperate -- she hardly recognized it in those tones, had almost forgotten he was a soldier once. She ran blindly for the door. "Don't! Stay back -- "
A nerve disruptor blast crackled through the air as she swung into the dining room, just in time to see Ivan's alarmed face seize up, his body stiffen and arch and topple to the floor, arms still outstretched. Sonia choked to see that the man holding the nerve disruptor was dressed in the black and silver livery of House Vorbarra.
The scene before her overwhelmed her senses. Bodies slumped everywhere, over the table, against the wall, all across the floor -- limp marionettes painted like her loved ones, some bloody, others troublingly clean, all of them still. The splintered mess of wood and glass and porcelain where the sonic grenade had gone off against the china cabinet along the wall, her sister at the center of it -- her sister, her confidante, her heart -- crumpled like a lifeless doll in the debris, torn through the middle where the grenade had hit. Beside her lay a dead Vorbarra armsman, too late to shield her from the blast. Sonia barely heard herself scream. Padma erupted into bawling tears.
"Lady Sonia -- get back!"
Armsman Gavalas, her bodyguard of nearly thirty years, struggling against a fellow armsman in the same Vorbarra livery -- the room was a bewildering war where everyone wore the same uniform, where color lost all meaning. He had a nasty contusion blossoming purple on one cheek, his lip bleeding and set in an uncharacteristic snarl as he grappled with the other armsman, trying to wrest the nerve disruptor from his grip. But his voice failed to penetrate -- Sonia staggered, frozen, clutching Padma so tight her fingernails dug into his clothing. One of the fallen bodies stirred with a grunt, small but far from feeble. Her nephew Aral, still alive -- she could barely register it in her shock, but he lifted his head and bared his teeth at the murderous armsmen in terror and ferocity. The armsmen began to advance, splitting away to circle like sharks toward their two remaining targets. Sonia felt the hot sting of tears, nauseous with fright and shock, and stumbled backwards.
"Milady!" Gavalas's voice rang out desperate between strained grunts. "Milady, please -- get away!"
His voice registered too late, and his opportunity was fleeting -- the other armsman, a burly brute by the name of Rustig, was beginning to turn the struggle to his advantage, and Gavalas bashed his forehead against Rustig's with a snarl, sending him staggering back, the nerve disruptor dropping from his grip. Rustig crashed against Sonia, shoving her forward and onto the floor with a gasp, and to her horror, Padma was knocked from her cradling arms. The baby's cries rose sharply as he rolled away from her, hands and feet kicking uselessly in the air.
"Padma!" Sonia's voice came out strangled as she scrabbled onto her hands and knees, crawling frantically towards him. A shadow fell over him as a Vorbarra armsman stepped closer, nerve disruptor drawn. My baby -- not my baby…
"Lady Sonia!" Gavalas shouted again, swiping the dropped nerve disruptor from the floor. He felled Rustig with one unhesitating shot to the head and leapt over the crumpled body towards Sonia. She ignored him on her desperate crawl, arms outstretched to her baby -- close, she was so close --
The armsman stood over Padma now, his look cold and unresponsive to her raw cry of No! "Emperor's orders," he sneered, and fired.
Padma's frightened wails cut sickeningly short. His small body stiffened on the carpet, a mere arm's length from Sonia's grasp, his glassy eyes blank with terror. Sonia's stomach lurched, her whole body shaking, and all sound seemed to disappear from the room as she screamed.
She had to reach him. If she could just get to him -- if she could just hold him --
A broad hand closed over her shoulder, hauling her back just as a nerve disruptor blast sizzled the carpet where she'd been half a second ago. She thrashed against Gavalas's grip with desperate cries for her baby, but he pulled her grimly away, aiming his nerve disruptor at the armsman opposite him. Gavalas missed.
"Milady, please," Gavalas said fiercely, his own voice thick, but she barely heard him, and none of his other words penetrated -- only senseless shouts as he kicked over the dining room table with a crash of cutlery and dishes. He threw her behind it, and Sonia landed next to the body of another liveried man she recognized as her brother's bodyguard. Evgeny -- she hadn't seen his body, where was Evgeny --
Sonia's voice cut short on the sharp crack of her arm caught underneath her, sucking the wind from her lungs, and her vision exploded into senseless color. Her stomach lurched again and she lay there gasping, dizzy, her cries reduced to guttural sobs. She couldn't reach him where she was now, not her baby, not Ivan. Emperor's orders, he'd said…
She was still shaking on the blood-flecked carpet when Gavalas dove behind the table with his arm around little Aral's body, narrowly avoiding another nerve disruptor blast. Sonia couldn't see above the table, could barely seem to move at all, but there had to be several more Vorbarra armsmen in the room still -- and all of them aiming to kill save for Gavalas.
Emperor's orders. Emperor's orders.
Calloused hands lifted her upright, turned her face towards Gavalas's. Pain seared through her arm, but it was the wrenching in her chest that choked all else out. Gavalas's eyes were red-rimmed but dry. "Lady Sonia, listen to me, please. I need to get you and Lord Aral out of here."
Sonia tried to look beyond the overturned table, her good hand clawing weakly at the carpet. "My baby," she croaked weakly. Gavalas's hand was steady on her cheek.
"We need to go now, Lady Sonia." His voice was almost cajoling, an echo of the way he'd tried to coax the willful princess of her youth into reason. Aral huddled close by, looking angry and frightened, his body tensed. The shouts of the attacking armsmen blurred senselessly in Sonia's hearing, but they were closing in. She hissed when he pressed on her arm, shuddering. He grimaced.
"We're out of time, milady. We can make a break for the kitchen from here, I can cover you -- but you need to get Lord Aral through. He needs you."
That seemed to take hold of something in Sonia, and when she looked at her nephew he came into clear focus for the first time since she'd set foot in this room. Gavalas pulled her into a crouch, readying his nerve disruptor.
"Go! Now!"
There was no time to think -- Sonia took hold of Aral's hand and ran blindly for the servant's entrance to the kitchen, head ducked and broken arm swaying uselessly at her side. Nerve disruptor fire arced and crackled through the room, and Sonia swore she nearly felt it kiss her shoulder, but she didn't look, just barreled through the door to the kitchen with Aral. The heavy footfalls behind them were Gavalas's, she knew, and so she kept on running, pulling Aral past the untouched cake, out into the hallway that led to the master bedroom. She looked up in time to see Vorbarra armsmen approaching from the other end of the hall, blocking their way to escape, and she knew even before Gavalas shouted it to veer to the master bedroom instead. She knew her armsman was right at their heels, and she pulled Aral into the bedroom with a breathless sob, choked off into a gasp when the door slammed shut just behind her.
"Gavalas!"
"Barricade the door, milady!" came Gavalas's voice through the door, strained with effort. There was a loud scraping, wood groaning in protest on the other side of the door. "I'll hold them off as long as I can -- don't let them in!"
"Gavalas!" Sonia's voice went shrill, and his name seemed to lose meaning in her mouth the more she screamed it, pounding on the door with her good hand. Too many dead already. Not him too. She couldn't take it --
"Aunt Sonia," came an urgent voice at her shoulder -- Aral, her Livvy's little Aral was already dragging a nightstand toward the door, grunting with the effort. Padma's burping cloth from earlier was still laid out over it, starting to jostle and slip off the side with every shaky movement. Sonia stared helplessly at the door with tear-blurred eyes. She flinched when she heard a body hit the floor, and the door began to rattle as Gavalas's makeshift barricade started to come apart. Sour voices filtered in through the door.
"This'd be easier with plasma arcs."
"The Emperor said he wanted it clean. You can't do clean with plasma arcs."
"What, and that sonic grenade was your idea of clean?"
A small hand closed around her wrist, pulling her back. "Aunt Sonia, come on. Help me."
It was a plea she could not possibly ignore, and she turned and stared down at her nephew, still breathing by some miracle. No -- there were no miracles here. By Gavalas's sacrifice alone. She couldn't bear any more loss. She couldn't let this go to waste. She broke away from his grasp, holding her bad arm steady with her other hand, and sucked in a breath before hooking her foot around the leg of a nearby chair and sliding it over to him with a kick. Some small relief flickered in Aral's face and he moved swiftly to jam the back of the chair under the doorknob. Wood cracked and splintered on the other side of the door, followed by a large shatter of glass.
Sonia staggered on unsteady legs away from the door, leaning her shoulder against a heavy dresser of polished wood. "Help me with this," she said breathlessly, and Aral pulled the dresser with every muscle in his little body, and Sonia pushed from behind with her good shoulder, tears still dripping down her cheeks. She couldn't make them stop.
She was breathing hard by the time they wedged the dresser up against the nightstand and the chair, sweat prickling over her skin. She and Aral dove for the bed next by unspoken agreement, seized in a mutual frenzy of panic, but they didn't manage to push it far before Sonia's feet slipped out from under her and she fell against her broken arm with a sharp lance of pain. She couldn't make herself get up then, breaking down into sobs again as the Vorbarra armsmen began ramming against the door.
"Aunt Sonia." Aral clutched her sleeve and tugged, trying to shake her. "Aunt Sonia -- come on -- get up."
She was paralyzed with fear and grief. She knew she needed to get back on her feet, grit her teeth and bear it and protect the only child left, but it had taken hold of her. All she could do was draw Aral close to her as she wept, her good arm tight around him. He pried her arm away, shaking her by the shoulder this time. "Aunt Sonia, we have to move. You have to get up -- "
A fresh wave of shouts sounded from the other side of the door, more voices joining the fray -- and nerve disruptors, it seemed, because several men were abruptly cut off mid-yell, and Sonia heard bodies hit the floor, one after another. She reached for Aral again, clumsily wrapping her broken arm around him too, as though she could protect him with nothing but her own body, as though that would be enough. The door burst open, forcefully dislodging the chair with a spray of splinters.
"Sonia! Aral!"
It was Piotr's voice. The Vorbarra armsmen had to be dead. Sonia trembled violently, still unable to move. Sharp footsteps rounded the bed and then there was Piotr, dropped to one knee as Aral squirmed out from Sonia's grip. He stood up straight, trying to swallow his tears with a hiccup. Piotr's hands clasped tightly over his shoulders. He stared at Aral searchingly for a long moment, his face drawn but eyes blazing, and then finally, roughly, he asked, "You alright, boy?"
Aral nodded wordlessly, and Piotr tightened his hands over Aral's shoulders, but looked past him at Sonia's huddled form, the arm that was beginning to swell, and narrowed his eyes. "Sonia." His voice was as soft as he could make it, but Sonia had buried her face in her knees, laid down in surrender to grief.
"I think her arm is broken," Aral said, his voice creaking, and Piotr let go of his son, moving to crouch at Sonia's side to inspect her arm.
"Sonia!"
Her father's voice this time, and Sonia jolted, but she couldn't seem to stop the flood of tears. There was the heavy scrape of wood on wood, what sounded like the dresser finally moving completely clear of the doorway. Xav rounded the corner of the bed in seconds and dropped to his knees before Sonia, his face drained of color.
"Watch her arm," Piotr warned Xav in a mutter, watching them closely. Xav cupped Sonia's face in both hands and lifted her chin so he could see her face.
"You're safe now, Sonia." His words were hushed, but achingly fierce. "It's over."
A silence had settled over the flat that seemed to press in on her from all sides. She could not bear it. She tore herself away with a cry and lurched to her feet, running for the dining room on unsteady legs and shoes that slid over the polished wood floor.
The scene in the dining room was just as she'd left it, like some macabre diorama. She burst in through the door with a surge of nausea creeping hot up her throat. Her gaze found Padma's little body on the carpet in the middle of the room, uncannily still. She ran to him until she stumbled and fell to her knees, and then she crawled to him, desperately cradling him to her chest. His skin was cool to the touch, his face pale fading into gray. Sonia pleaded his name over and over again, rocking him back and forth, but he was cold and still in her arms. She swayed dizzily, feeling sick.
Ivan's body lay not far, and when Sonia's eyes fell upon him the ache in her chest seemed to cave it in entirely. The pain in her arm was nothing now. She crawled toward him, still clutching Padma's lifeless body, and wept so disconsolately that it seemed to lose all meaning, but had become imperative. Even after twenty years in war, she was helpless to loss. It was all too much. She thought she might drown in it.
Her father had caught up to her, had approached her slowly. His only remaining child -- and she seemed so fragile now. He could not afford to let her break apart.
"Sonia," he started, his voice soft, but his words held no meaning, no power at all. She was lost in her hysteria, cradling a corpse, unable to reconcile this dissonant nightmare. Aral and Piotr appeared at the door too, staring bleakly at the scene. Piotr's jaw was tight with fury.
"Where is Evgeny?" Sonia demanded suddenly, barely intelligible through the tears. "He isn't in here -- where is he?"
Xav seemed to have trouble swallowing, and he glanced involuntarily at Olivia's mangled body, but flinched away almost immediately. "He answered the door. He was the first to -- I'm sorry, Sonia."
The words were so deeply inadequate, not just for her but for him too, for Piotr, for Aral, that it made her angry. She followed her father's gaze and the sight only sparked more anger, hot in her throat.
"Yuri did this," she hissed, her voice hoarse. A fresh sob tore itself from her throat, and she tightened her arms around Padma's body. Piotr's eyes lidded; Xav merely looked grim. Neither looked surprised. Sonia shook with grief transformed into anger. "Yuri ordered this. He killed Livvy, my Ivan -- my baby…"
She broke down again, and Xav knelt beside her to put his arms gently around her, mindful of the broken arm she seemed to be ignoring despite the pain. "Sonia," he said quietly, his voice drawn. "Let go of him now."
She couldn't. She couldn't bear to. If she let him out of her arms, he would stay a corpse forever. But if she just held onto him like this -- if she just didn't let go --
Xav looked over at Piotr, who was staring hard at the bodies of his two dead children, his expression indecipherable.
"Take Aral away from here," Xav said tonelessly. His face had gone oddly blank, tired, heavy. "Find Ezar -- I don't care where he is -- find him and get him over here."
Piotr bristled, shoulders raised. His voice came out raw and edged. "You don't have sole claim to this, Xav. My wife and children are in here."
Beside him, Aral suppressed a flinch. Xav's expression only grew more tired.
"I claim nothing, Piotr. I won't deny you your right. But please -- " Xav drew Sonia's shaking body towards him, looking pleading now. "I need you to leave just now. Please just do this for me."
He could have made it an Imperial order. Piotr would have been honor-bound to obey. But Xav had chose to make it a plea instead, from one father to another. He stared hard at Xav for a long time, then at Sonia, and then nodded curtly, his hand going to Aral's shoulder.
"I'll be back with Ezar," he said shortly, and turned away from the door.
Xav pulled back from Sonia and tried to meet her gaze, smoothing tear-dampened hair from her face. "You need to let go of him now." His own voice ached. Evgeny and Olivia and nearly all of their children, taken from him so quickly -- Sonia might be alive still, but he feared it would destroy her entirely. She shook her head fiercely, rocking away from him. She had always been sensitive, sheltered from the horrors of the war as best they could, but no horrors of the occupation compared to this nightmare. None had been so devastatingly intimate.
"No," she croaked between sobs. "No -- my baby…"
But she was left drained and spent now that the adrenaline was fading and the grief was taking its toll. Her hold was getting weak, and Xav gently pried Padma's little body from her arms. His eyes were still open, glassy and afraid. Xav silently slid them closed. "I'm sorry, Sonia." The words still felt so useless, hanging emptily in the air.
Sonia let out a raw sound, nearly retching on the spot, and she cradled her broken arm against her chest. "He did this," she said fervently, rocking back and forth. Her head jerked up to look at her father, and her voice rose beyond her control, breaking into a cry. "He killed my baby!"
Xav had set Padma's body carefully beside Ivan's, and he leaned forward to tightly grip her shoulders, his own face bleak. He was reaching into an empty well for solace, scraping the dusty bottom. "We aren't going to let this lay, Sonia. Yuri will answer for what he's done."
"He took them all away." Sonia looked at him, heartbroken, her eyes burning. "He took away my only child. What could possibly make this right?"
Xav was silent for a long moment, reaching for words that simply weren't there. "I don't know," he said finally. Sonia clutched at her broken arm, tears still tracking down her cheeks.
"You'll kill him, won't you?" Sonia found herself nauseated by the fervor in her own voice, but she couldn't seem to swallow it down. "He's going to die for this, isn't he?"
Xav didn't answer, just drew her in against him, cradling the back of her head, like he'd done when she was small.
"Let's go, Sonia," he said quietly. She looked around the room helplessly, unmoving, but he pulled her to her feet, holding her up until her legs were steady under her. "You need to have your arm looked at now."
Her arm. Just a stupid, simple broken arm. It seemed trivial against the carnage Yuri had brought down on her family. On his own family. She tried to turn around, to look back at her sister and husband and son, but her father cradled her head tightly against his shoulder, and she fell into weeping again, silently cursing Yuri's name.
4300 words. An AU retelling of Yuri's Massacre from Sonia's perspective with one less survivor.
Warnings: violence, child/infant death, a lot of other death, soul-crushing despair, the usual
The level of angst and tragedy in this borders on the pornographic and I'm sorry
Sonia hummed quietly to herself as she danced an idle waltz around the bedroom, gently patting Padma's back over her shoulder. Voices from the dining room drifted down the hall and around the corner, fading into indistinct murmurs by the bedroom door, strata of conversations spoken above or below or around each other. The baby burped one last time and sighed, and after a moment Sonia shifted him back into the crook of one arm so she could lay the burping cloth on the nightstand to be washed later.
"You," she said, gently tapping his nose, "are my very favorite dance partner. You've never once stepped on my foot." The baby cooed, grasping at one of her fingers. Sonia smiled, her eyes crinkling. "Just don't tell your da I said that."
Padma laughed and waved his little hands, and she let him take a surprising stranglehold on her index finger so he could stick it directly into his mouth. Sonia nodded at him gravely. "I can see your lips are sealed."
Where was his pacifier…? Ah, probably still on the dining room table with the ruins of lunch. Still humming, Sonia turned and began to slowly dance her way to the bedroom door.
"Now that everyone's finished eating, I think it's time for cake, hm? Let's see if Da will come help us carry it out. And maybe Grandda will make it just in time, because if he misses his baby grandson's first birthday, Mama's going to have some words with him."
Sonia leaned out through the door. "Vanya? Can you -- ow! Padma, darling, no, not Mama's earring -- "
Padma, apparently having lost interest in his mother's finger, was making a grab for one of her dangling earrings instead. Sonia gently prised his tiny, vice-like little fingers away from her earring with one hand -- and then he immediately went back for it with the other. Sonia hissed in exasperation. "Padma, no -- "
From the bedroom, she could hear a knock on the front door at the other end of the flat. Sonia finally freed her earring from her son's grip and took both his hands in her free one to kiss them, then gently bounced him until he laughed. "Let's go see who it is. Maybe it's Grandda, hm? Ooh, maybe he even pried Uncle Piotr away from his desk for a change. That'd get him off the hook for being late."
She could hear the door open by the slight squeak of its hinges -- the building was prewar, renovated postwar, not newly built -- but she heard no muffled greetings or the creak as it swung back closed. All she heard was a very brief, very abruptly truncated noise of surprise followed by a heavy thump, and then the sound of several pairs of thick soled boots on hardwood floor, a cacophony of thudding in a staccato rhythm that plucked at sense memory in her subconscious mind. Sonia stepped out into the hall, holding Padma close.
She was greeted by her reflection in the full-length mirror on the wall opposite the door, her brow creased in some nameless apprehension creeping up the back of her throat. Her reflection seemed to trap her gaze. She blinked and saw a girl ten years younger, embroiled in war with only soldier's marches for music. It was only a moment -- barely a second -- but it left her chilled.
Sonia broke away and stepped out around the blind corner, the clack of her shoes on the polished floor high and out of time with the bootfalls growing louder by the moment -- not to the kitchen with the cake, but back towards the dining room on feral, fearful instinct as a soft, shrill whine rose through the walls.
The sound alone nearly knocked her back, and the blast rocked the whole flat, sending her staggering several steps back on her heeled shoes until she could skitter to a halt. It left a ringing in her ears that left her chest tight, drowning out the anxious noises Padma was making against her shoulder. It took her back to rust-red battlefields, fluorescent-lit asphalt and weapons that sang symphonies of destruction. No matter how many years might pass since the war, Sonia would never forget the sound of a sonic grenade.
Her breath caught in her throat and she broke into a run, her footfalls puncturing sharp notes through the diminuendo of the blast. Hisses of crackling nerve disruptor fire overlapped one another, punctuated with short, sharp cries. The dining room door was flung open, obscuring her view. Padma, confused and afraid, began to cry in her arms. Sonia's voice quavered, then drew taut as a bowstring. "Vanya!"
"Sonia!" Ivan's voice, breaking out of the dining room urgent and desperate -- she hardly recognized it in those tones, had almost forgotten he was a soldier once. She ran blindly for the door. "Don't! Stay back -- "
A nerve disruptor blast crackled through the air as she swung into the dining room, just in time to see Ivan's alarmed face seize up, his body stiffen and arch and topple to the floor, arms still outstretched. Sonia choked to see that the man holding the nerve disruptor was dressed in the black and silver livery of House Vorbarra.
The scene before her overwhelmed her senses. Bodies slumped everywhere, over the table, against the wall, all across the floor -- limp marionettes painted like her loved ones, some bloody, others troublingly clean, all of them still. The splintered mess of wood and glass and porcelain where the sonic grenade had gone off against the china cabinet along the wall, her sister at the center of it -- her sister, her confidante, her heart -- crumpled like a lifeless doll in the debris, torn through the middle where the grenade had hit. Beside her lay a dead Vorbarra armsman, too late to shield her from the blast. Sonia barely heard herself scream. Padma erupted into bawling tears.
"Lady Sonia -- get back!"
Armsman Gavalas, her bodyguard of nearly thirty years, struggling against a fellow armsman in the same Vorbarra livery -- the room was a bewildering war where everyone wore the same uniform, where color lost all meaning. He had a nasty contusion blossoming purple on one cheek, his lip bleeding and set in an uncharacteristic snarl as he grappled with the other armsman, trying to wrest the nerve disruptor from his grip. But his voice failed to penetrate -- Sonia staggered, frozen, clutching Padma so tight her fingernails dug into his clothing. One of the fallen bodies stirred with a grunt, small but far from feeble. Her nephew Aral, still alive -- she could barely register it in her shock, but he lifted his head and bared his teeth at the murderous armsmen in terror and ferocity. The armsmen began to advance, splitting away to circle like sharks toward their two remaining targets. Sonia felt the hot sting of tears, nauseous with fright and shock, and stumbled backwards.
"Milady!" Gavalas's voice rang out desperate between strained grunts. "Milady, please -- get away!"
His voice registered too late, and his opportunity was fleeting -- the other armsman, a burly brute by the name of Rustig, was beginning to turn the struggle to his advantage, and Gavalas bashed his forehead against Rustig's with a snarl, sending him staggering back, the nerve disruptor dropping from his grip. Rustig crashed against Sonia, shoving her forward and onto the floor with a gasp, and to her horror, Padma was knocked from her cradling arms. The baby's cries rose sharply as he rolled away from her, hands and feet kicking uselessly in the air.
"Padma!" Sonia's voice came out strangled as she scrabbled onto her hands and knees, crawling frantically towards him. A shadow fell over him as a Vorbarra armsman stepped closer, nerve disruptor drawn. My baby -- not my baby…
"Lady Sonia!" Gavalas shouted again, swiping the dropped nerve disruptor from the floor. He felled Rustig with one unhesitating shot to the head and leapt over the crumpled body towards Sonia. She ignored him on her desperate crawl, arms outstretched to her baby -- close, she was so close --
The armsman stood over Padma now, his look cold and unresponsive to her raw cry of No! "Emperor's orders," he sneered, and fired.
Padma's frightened wails cut sickeningly short. His small body stiffened on the carpet, a mere arm's length from Sonia's grasp, his glassy eyes blank with terror. Sonia's stomach lurched, her whole body shaking, and all sound seemed to disappear from the room as she screamed.
She had to reach him. If she could just get to him -- if she could just hold him --
A broad hand closed over her shoulder, hauling her back just as a nerve disruptor blast sizzled the carpet where she'd been half a second ago. She thrashed against Gavalas's grip with desperate cries for her baby, but he pulled her grimly away, aiming his nerve disruptor at the armsman opposite him. Gavalas missed.
"Milady, please," Gavalas said fiercely, his own voice thick, but she barely heard him, and none of his other words penetrated -- only senseless shouts as he kicked over the dining room table with a crash of cutlery and dishes. He threw her behind it, and Sonia landed next to the body of another liveried man she recognized as her brother's bodyguard. Evgeny -- she hadn't seen his body, where was Evgeny --
Sonia's voice cut short on the sharp crack of her arm caught underneath her, sucking the wind from her lungs, and her vision exploded into senseless color. Her stomach lurched again and she lay there gasping, dizzy, her cries reduced to guttural sobs. She couldn't reach him where she was now, not her baby, not Ivan. Emperor's orders, he'd said…
She was still shaking on the blood-flecked carpet when Gavalas dove behind the table with his arm around little Aral's body, narrowly avoiding another nerve disruptor blast. Sonia couldn't see above the table, could barely seem to move at all, but there had to be several more Vorbarra armsmen in the room still -- and all of them aiming to kill save for Gavalas.
Emperor's orders. Emperor's orders.
Calloused hands lifted her upright, turned her face towards Gavalas's. Pain seared through her arm, but it was the wrenching in her chest that choked all else out. Gavalas's eyes were red-rimmed but dry. "Lady Sonia, listen to me, please. I need to get you and Lord Aral out of here."
Sonia tried to look beyond the overturned table, her good hand clawing weakly at the carpet. "My baby," she croaked weakly. Gavalas's hand was steady on her cheek.
"We need to go now, Lady Sonia." His voice was almost cajoling, an echo of the way he'd tried to coax the willful princess of her youth into reason. Aral huddled close by, looking angry and frightened, his body tensed. The shouts of the attacking armsmen blurred senselessly in Sonia's hearing, but they were closing in. She hissed when he pressed on her arm, shuddering. He grimaced.
"We're out of time, milady. We can make a break for the kitchen from here, I can cover you -- but you need to get Lord Aral through. He needs you."
That seemed to take hold of something in Sonia, and when she looked at her nephew he came into clear focus for the first time since she'd set foot in this room. Gavalas pulled her into a crouch, readying his nerve disruptor.
"Go! Now!"
There was no time to think -- Sonia took hold of Aral's hand and ran blindly for the servant's entrance to the kitchen, head ducked and broken arm swaying uselessly at her side. Nerve disruptor fire arced and crackled through the room, and Sonia swore she nearly felt it kiss her shoulder, but she didn't look, just barreled through the door to the kitchen with Aral. The heavy footfalls behind them were Gavalas's, she knew, and so she kept on running, pulling Aral past the untouched cake, out into the hallway that led to the master bedroom. She looked up in time to see Vorbarra armsmen approaching from the other end of the hall, blocking their way to escape, and she knew even before Gavalas shouted it to veer to the master bedroom instead. She knew her armsman was right at their heels, and she pulled Aral into the bedroom with a breathless sob, choked off into a gasp when the door slammed shut just behind her.
"Gavalas!"
"Barricade the door, milady!" came Gavalas's voice through the door, strained with effort. There was a loud scraping, wood groaning in protest on the other side of the door. "I'll hold them off as long as I can -- don't let them in!"
"Gavalas!" Sonia's voice went shrill, and his name seemed to lose meaning in her mouth the more she screamed it, pounding on the door with her good hand. Too many dead already. Not him too. She couldn't take it --
"Aunt Sonia," came an urgent voice at her shoulder -- Aral, her Livvy's little Aral was already dragging a nightstand toward the door, grunting with the effort. Padma's burping cloth from earlier was still laid out over it, starting to jostle and slip off the side with every shaky movement. Sonia stared helplessly at the door with tear-blurred eyes. She flinched when she heard a body hit the floor, and the door began to rattle as Gavalas's makeshift barricade started to come apart. Sour voices filtered in through the door.
"This'd be easier with plasma arcs."
"The Emperor said he wanted it clean. You can't do clean with plasma arcs."
"What, and that sonic grenade was your idea of clean?"
A small hand closed around her wrist, pulling her back. "Aunt Sonia, come on. Help me."
It was a plea she could not possibly ignore, and she turned and stared down at her nephew, still breathing by some miracle. No -- there were no miracles here. By Gavalas's sacrifice alone. She couldn't bear any more loss. She couldn't let this go to waste. She broke away from his grasp, holding her bad arm steady with her other hand, and sucked in a breath before hooking her foot around the leg of a nearby chair and sliding it over to him with a kick. Some small relief flickered in Aral's face and he moved swiftly to jam the back of the chair under the doorknob. Wood cracked and splintered on the other side of the door, followed by a large shatter of glass.
Sonia staggered on unsteady legs away from the door, leaning her shoulder against a heavy dresser of polished wood. "Help me with this," she said breathlessly, and Aral pulled the dresser with every muscle in his little body, and Sonia pushed from behind with her good shoulder, tears still dripping down her cheeks. She couldn't make them stop.
She was breathing hard by the time they wedged the dresser up against the nightstand and the chair, sweat prickling over her skin. She and Aral dove for the bed next by unspoken agreement, seized in a mutual frenzy of panic, but they didn't manage to push it far before Sonia's feet slipped out from under her and she fell against her broken arm with a sharp lance of pain. She couldn't make herself get up then, breaking down into sobs again as the Vorbarra armsmen began ramming against the door.
"Aunt Sonia." Aral clutched her sleeve and tugged, trying to shake her. "Aunt Sonia -- come on -- get up."
She was paralyzed with fear and grief. She knew she needed to get back on her feet, grit her teeth and bear it and protect the only child left, but it had taken hold of her. All she could do was draw Aral close to her as she wept, her good arm tight around him. He pried her arm away, shaking her by the shoulder this time. "Aunt Sonia, we have to move. You have to get up -- "
A fresh wave of shouts sounded from the other side of the door, more voices joining the fray -- and nerve disruptors, it seemed, because several men were abruptly cut off mid-yell, and Sonia heard bodies hit the floor, one after another. She reached for Aral again, clumsily wrapping her broken arm around him too, as though she could protect him with nothing but her own body, as though that would be enough. The door burst open, forcefully dislodging the chair with a spray of splinters.
"Sonia! Aral!"
It was Piotr's voice. The Vorbarra armsmen had to be dead. Sonia trembled violently, still unable to move. Sharp footsteps rounded the bed and then there was Piotr, dropped to one knee as Aral squirmed out from Sonia's grip. He stood up straight, trying to swallow his tears with a hiccup. Piotr's hands clasped tightly over his shoulders. He stared at Aral searchingly for a long moment, his face drawn but eyes blazing, and then finally, roughly, he asked, "You alright, boy?"
Aral nodded wordlessly, and Piotr tightened his hands over Aral's shoulders, but looked past him at Sonia's huddled form, the arm that was beginning to swell, and narrowed his eyes. "Sonia." His voice was as soft as he could make it, but Sonia had buried her face in her knees, laid down in surrender to grief.
"I think her arm is broken," Aral said, his voice creaking, and Piotr let go of his son, moving to crouch at Sonia's side to inspect her arm.
"Sonia!"
Her father's voice this time, and Sonia jolted, but she couldn't seem to stop the flood of tears. There was the heavy scrape of wood on wood, what sounded like the dresser finally moving completely clear of the doorway. Xav rounded the corner of the bed in seconds and dropped to his knees before Sonia, his face drained of color.
"Watch her arm," Piotr warned Xav in a mutter, watching them closely. Xav cupped Sonia's face in both hands and lifted her chin so he could see her face.
"You're safe now, Sonia." His words were hushed, but achingly fierce. "It's over."
A silence had settled over the flat that seemed to press in on her from all sides. She could not bear it. She tore herself away with a cry and lurched to her feet, running for the dining room on unsteady legs and shoes that slid over the polished wood floor.
The scene in the dining room was just as she'd left it, like some macabre diorama. She burst in through the door with a surge of nausea creeping hot up her throat. Her gaze found Padma's little body on the carpet in the middle of the room, uncannily still. She ran to him until she stumbled and fell to her knees, and then she crawled to him, desperately cradling him to her chest. His skin was cool to the touch, his face pale fading into gray. Sonia pleaded his name over and over again, rocking him back and forth, but he was cold and still in her arms. She swayed dizzily, feeling sick.
Ivan's body lay not far, and when Sonia's eyes fell upon him the ache in her chest seemed to cave it in entirely. The pain in her arm was nothing now. She crawled toward him, still clutching Padma's lifeless body, and wept so disconsolately that it seemed to lose all meaning, but had become imperative. Even after twenty years in war, she was helpless to loss. It was all too much. She thought she might drown in it.
Her father had caught up to her, had approached her slowly. His only remaining child -- and she seemed so fragile now. He could not afford to let her break apart.
"Sonia," he started, his voice soft, but his words held no meaning, no power at all. She was lost in her hysteria, cradling a corpse, unable to reconcile this dissonant nightmare. Aral and Piotr appeared at the door too, staring bleakly at the scene. Piotr's jaw was tight with fury.
"Where is Evgeny?" Sonia demanded suddenly, barely intelligible through the tears. "He isn't in here -- where is he?"
Xav seemed to have trouble swallowing, and he glanced involuntarily at Olivia's mangled body, but flinched away almost immediately. "He answered the door. He was the first to -- I'm sorry, Sonia."
The words were so deeply inadequate, not just for her but for him too, for Piotr, for Aral, that it made her angry. She followed her father's gaze and the sight only sparked more anger, hot in her throat.
"Yuri did this," she hissed, her voice hoarse. A fresh sob tore itself from her throat, and she tightened her arms around Padma's body. Piotr's eyes lidded; Xav merely looked grim. Neither looked surprised. Sonia shook with grief transformed into anger. "Yuri ordered this. He killed Livvy, my Ivan -- my baby…"
She broke down again, and Xav knelt beside her to put his arms gently around her, mindful of the broken arm she seemed to be ignoring despite the pain. "Sonia," he said quietly, his voice drawn. "Let go of him now."
She couldn't. She couldn't bear to. If she let him out of her arms, he would stay a corpse forever. But if she just held onto him like this -- if she just didn't let go --
Xav looked over at Piotr, who was staring hard at the bodies of his two dead children, his expression indecipherable.
"Take Aral away from here," Xav said tonelessly. His face had gone oddly blank, tired, heavy. "Find Ezar -- I don't care where he is -- find him and get him over here."
Piotr bristled, shoulders raised. His voice came out raw and edged. "You don't have sole claim to this, Xav. My wife and children are in here."
Beside him, Aral suppressed a flinch. Xav's expression only grew more tired.
"I claim nothing, Piotr. I won't deny you your right. But please -- " Xav drew Sonia's shaking body towards him, looking pleading now. "I need you to leave just now. Please just do this for me."
He could have made it an Imperial order. Piotr would have been honor-bound to obey. But Xav had chose to make it a plea instead, from one father to another. He stared hard at Xav for a long time, then at Sonia, and then nodded curtly, his hand going to Aral's shoulder.
"I'll be back with Ezar," he said shortly, and turned away from the door.
Xav pulled back from Sonia and tried to meet her gaze, smoothing tear-dampened hair from her face. "You need to let go of him now." His own voice ached. Evgeny and Olivia and nearly all of their children, taken from him so quickly -- Sonia might be alive still, but he feared it would destroy her entirely. She shook her head fiercely, rocking away from him. She had always been sensitive, sheltered from the horrors of the war as best they could, but no horrors of the occupation compared to this nightmare. None had been so devastatingly intimate.
"No," she croaked between sobs. "No -- my baby…"
But she was left drained and spent now that the adrenaline was fading and the grief was taking its toll. Her hold was getting weak, and Xav gently pried Padma's little body from her arms. His eyes were still open, glassy and afraid. Xav silently slid them closed. "I'm sorry, Sonia." The words still felt so useless, hanging emptily in the air.
Sonia let out a raw sound, nearly retching on the spot, and she cradled her broken arm against her chest. "He did this," she said fervently, rocking back and forth. Her head jerked up to look at her father, and her voice rose beyond her control, breaking into a cry. "He killed my baby!"
Xav had set Padma's body carefully beside Ivan's, and he leaned forward to tightly grip her shoulders, his own face bleak. He was reaching into an empty well for solace, scraping the dusty bottom. "We aren't going to let this lay, Sonia. Yuri will answer for what he's done."
"He took them all away." Sonia looked at him, heartbroken, her eyes burning. "He took away my only child. What could possibly make this right?"
Xav was silent for a long moment, reaching for words that simply weren't there. "I don't know," he said finally. Sonia clutched at her broken arm, tears still tracking down her cheeks.
"You'll kill him, won't you?" Sonia found herself nauseated by the fervor in her own voice, but she couldn't seem to swallow it down. "He's going to die for this, isn't he?"
Xav didn't answer, just drew her in against him, cradling the back of her head, like he'd done when she was small.
"Let's go, Sonia," he said quietly. She looked around the room helplessly, unmoving, but he pulled her to her feet, holding her up until her legs were steady under her. "You need to have your arm looked at now."
Her arm. Just a stupid, simple broken arm. It seemed trivial against the carnage Yuri had brought down on her family. On his own family. She tried to turn around, to look back at her sister and husband and son, but her father cradled her head tightly against his shoulder, and she fell into weeping again, silently cursing Yuri's name.