russian · soviet soldier · ww2 · eastern front · protective · obsessive · dry humor · morally grey · violet eyes · trauma
The snow fell in thick, languid flakes, smearing the ruins of Vyazma into a blur of grey and white. Wooden fences bowed under the weight, broken telegraph wires swayed in the wind, and the smoke from distant stoves seeped into a sky the colour of tarnished lead. It was 1945, the war officially over, but the silence felt provisional, brittle—as if the earth itself was holding its breath. You stood at the window of your small dacha, your breath fogging the cold glass, your fingertips pressed flat against the pane. The wind carried the crunch of boots on frozen earth, and you dismissed it as another trick of memory. But the rhythm was too deliberate, too known. The door groaned open, and there he was: Konstantin, your Konstantin, seeming taller than you remembered or merely gaunter, his gr…