AN: I wanted to write this story for a while now :D and I hope I was able to convey the imagery in my head into words.

There should be a warning for this...but I don't know what to warn lol. This is omegaverse, so Yao is an omega while Ivan is an alpha (well he is a baby here). But there's no sexual content in this chapter, just a bit of mature themes (only a little bit).

There is a summary/explanation at the end. For now, enjoy!

White ashes and dust fell down reminiscent of snow.

In the fog, the town was blurred like an old painting. Consisting of only shades of grey, the streets extended in highs and lows. The buildings were frozen in the moment right before their fall, surrounded by crumbling stones. The ruins, blackened and charred from where the flames had licked at them, stood solemnly in memory of the days where gunfire and death hadn't touched their flesh.

Heavy dust hung in the air and invaded his lungs as he dragged his feet on the desolated road. He left a trail of blood behind. Glass shards dug up deeply in his soles, yet he continued to walk. There were limps in his steps, and fragility in his form that suggested perhaps the smallest breeze would knock him down.

His lightless eyes whispered his indifference.

Dead bodies lined up on each side of the road. They were stacked up in messy piles; their eyes stared at a sky they would never see. From bullet holes crawled maggots and their ankles showed signs of gnawing from rodents. These bodies, once the repositories of people who lived and breathed, were now abandoned shells left to rot in the open.

How he wished he was one of them. The lone figure thought. His legs moved robotically on their own, taking him further and further down his desired demise. Soon he could be just another corpse in another war torn town, free of all pain and suffering.

Pain.

Which one was it? Of all the emptiness he felt, which one was pain?

The boy's question was left unanswered. Pieces of ash drizzled onto his skin, whereas snow would have melted, they smeared his complexion.

Every step he took was straining. He could hear his bones crying out in despair, and his thin sheet of skin clung loosely to his frame. A ghost in the process of dying, Yao wondered how long it would take for his light to go out.

There was nothing left in this world for him.

The parents that raised him and his siblings were but a distant memory. The man he was mated to… his alpha, had died. Even his child… his poor baby, never had a chance.

A stillborn.

Fate was cruel to him. The baby he had carried for nine months was born dead. The only thing that kept him going through his long journey, the only hope in his nightmare filled dreams turned out to be a foolish illusion. In his labor, through torment and screams, he craved to see his baby's face, prayed to hear the cries of a healthy newborn. But it never came. What came out of him was a carcass of all of his hopes and dreams.

When the world had gone to hell, millions had migrated and escaped. Like scurrying ants, they travelled across countries, desperate to find new beginnings in promised lands. Yao remembered his words. He told him to go east back to where he had come from for safety. He told him to take care of their child while he had to stay behind. And he told him he would find him.

If they were all going to die in the end, Yao wished he never left.

In the fourteen years he lived, his life was not his own. Born as an omega in a wealthy family, he was raised from birth to be fought over as a desirable prize for the day when he would come of age. At twelve years old, his family had chosen a Slavic lord from a line of suitors and Yao could only obey. Sold as if he was cattle, never seeing the alpha he was being mated to until the wedding night, Yao accepted his fate.

Responsibility. Obligation. Discipline. Those three things were drilled into him from a young age, and he knew his only purpose was to bear children for his alpha.

After the war arrived, he was finally conceived with a child. Nine months later, it became a lie.

The sigh that escaped his dry lips was slow and melancholy. Yao was tired. Too tired to walk, too tired to stand, too tired to breathe, and too tired to live.

He didn't wish to join his pitiful child in heaven or to be reunited with his alpha for he knew that death may not promise either one of those things. He simply wanted to cease to exist.

Since his life was as significant as the floating specks of dust, there was no point to live. Might as well disappear into nothing at all.

Yao closed his eyes and waited for his legs to give in to the force of gravity. Silence was comforting and pulled on the strings towards his end. But almost like a murmur he heard something.

Faint and soft, there was a wailing in the distance. It sounded like a baby's cry.

Impossible.

He was the only one in this ghost town. But maybe it was his child calling out to him…perhaps he was already dead.

Yao opened his eyes and willed his legs to start moving again. The sharp pain in his muscles proved that he was indeed alive.

Following the sound like a moth attracted to flame, Yao trudged forward, desperately searching for the source of the noise. Where was it coming from? His eyes darting through the dead bodies flickered restlessly.

He didn't know why he cared, didn't know what he hoped to accomplish from this aimless search. But all of his energy was spend on his legs, so he stopped thinking.

The path he had taken led him to the sound. He had wandered further than he thought he was capable of, and among the heaps of dead bodies the cry echoed sorrowfully.

Yao stopped in his tracks. He was right, it was the cry of a baby. Images of his mummified child flashed through his mind, but he blinked them away. The dead had no voice.

Slowly, his feet stepped one after the other towards his destination. Standing above the corpse of a woman, Yao stared at the nest of flies feasting on her decomposing flesh and the bundle which she held tightly in her stick-like arms.

Her milky eyes looked back at Yao blankly. Flaxen hair frozen around her face resembled dried grass, and her bones were poking out of her ebony skin. Once she might have been beautiful, but now all that remained behind was a skeleton, a home for the flies. But despite of her lifelessness, her hands rigidly clung to the wrapped blanket, forever protecting whatever that was in her arms.

Kneeling down until his kneecap touched the ground, with fingers trembling Yao reached out to the bundle and lifted off the fabric.

He inhaled sharply. No breath came out.

There wrapped in the blanket was a tiny baby crying. He looked malnourished and sickly, yet something about this glimmer of persisting life made Yao's heart stop. Without thinking, he wrestled the bundle out of the dead woman's frozen arms.

Softly rocking the child, Yao attempted to calm him down. "Shh it's okay now little one," he whispered gently. "You're safe here with me."

The child looked like he would be a few months older than his own baby…No, he looked like he could be his own child. Yao looked at him lovingly, wanting nothing more than to stop his soul-piercing bawls.

Almost desperately he cooed, "No p-please don't cry anymore." But the baby kept on wailing.

Panic surged through him. Why was he this bad at this? Did the baby dislike him that much?

Then suddenly he laughed at his own cluelessness. "Silly me, you must be hungry right?"

Yao hoisted up his shirt and brought the baby to his bare breast. Even though his chest was flat, he was an omega who just went into labor a week ago, so he knew he had enough milk in him to feed the child. He squirmed closer and pulled the child's head close. "There…" he said."There." His hand moved behind his head and supported it. His fingers moved gently in his soft beige hair. He could feel his tiny lips puckering on his skin, clamping around his nipple, and the child started suckling. Yao hummed faintly.

After the child was full and one side of Yao's chest became drained, the little one looked at Yao curiously. Tilting his head to the side, he giggled. The smile was contagious and Yao soon found himself to be smiling too. Yao slid his pinky into his open hands and watched as they curled around it. Never in his life had he felt such love for anything.

"What should I call you?" he murmured. The little boy squeezed his pinky.

He will be called Ivan. Yao, the name of our baby is going to be Ivan. Ivan Braginsky.

"What about Ivan?" he asked, nose nuzzling against the boy. "Do you like that?"

The child, now named Ivan, beamed in response.

"What a good boy you are," Yao cooed. "Ivan… Vanya…"

Here they were. Two people on the verge of death. An omega who had nothing left, and a little boy who was born to nothing. This world had no place for them and Yao couldn't see how they would ever survive with just the two of them. Nevertheless he was grateful for this precious moment before his end.

He saw rain-like droplets fell on Ivan's face. One after another. It took him a while to realize it was his own tears. His body quivered and he felt himself breaking down after months of concealed emotions.

The death of his child. The death of his alpha. The months where he endured through pain just for his hope to be shattered.

He didn't want to die. No, he didn't want to die.

He chocked down his cries because he didn't want to frighten the child. But he let out whimpers that paled in comparison to the internal screams resonating within his heart and soul.

It was his dark blue eyes that embraced him. Eyes that looked like they could almost be amethyst. They seemed to say…

It's okay. We'll be okay.

Yao smiled through his tears and held the boy close to him. "Let's live okay? Little Ivan, I promise you we will survive."

He placed a kiss on his small forehead and began humming a melancholic lullaby that the maids used to sing to him when he was a child.

It was December. But instead of snow, ashes danced in the windless sky.

TBC (?)

AN: Omg I love omegaverse rochu, but that is literally non-existent in the English speaking community. So hence this is born.

Although I have this whole AU planned out, I don't have the time, dedication, and most importantly, the talent, to write this properly. So I'm afraid there is a very high possibility that this story won't get continued. And it's sad cause I feel I'm the most depressed person over this LOL. That said, I do very much want to develop Yao's relationship with his first alpha through flashbacks. And yes... his alpha that died was Soviet. (Here, Soviet and Russia are two different people, completely unrelated)

So if I don't update this here's the basic summary. The story will focus on Yao's development as a person in a cruel world. Despite he, himself being a child at 14 years old, he had to raise Ivan. His own stillborn child (Ivan was named after it :x) propelled his actions and he devoted his entire life making sure Ivan can grow up to be happy. Yao had to become strong and he had to fight for their survivals. An omega raising a child in poverty on his own is impossible, but Yao did everything within his power (and even those that were not) just so Ivan could have a chance to live. Even though Yao is the only parent/guardian Ivan has ever known, because they were not biologically related, because one was an omega and another an alpha, and because Yao was the single constant thing giving him love, the older Ivan got the more intense his feelings became. And once he neared the age of maturity, he wouldn't be able to control his 'urges'. And that is where angst and smut come in. If I do continue this story, the rating will definitely go up. Overall this is a very tragic story about growth, sacrifice, the bonds of family, and the lines that they crossed :x, but it does have a happy ending. Well I guess it makes no difference if I don't write it lol.

Also the sentences italicized were Yao's memories of Soviet.

Thank you for reading!