Disclamer: I. OWN. NOTHING. except the idea...thing...yeah...whatever
Time Shows What Falters Not
"The seed of revolution is repression." Woodrow Wilson
They were coming.
Warning shots were fired.
They still came.
Another volley
They did not falter.
Then the order.
Ivan lifted his gun and took aim. He hesitated. It didn't feel right. They were his children, he was supposed to care for them. To provide any and everything they wanted no mater the cost, even if it meant his destruction. But they asked too much too soon. The war with Japan took more out of him than his Tsar anticipated. He could feel his children's deaths by the battalions and their weariness by the millions as they slaved through eighteen hour days to put food on the table and supplies to the front. He understood, he really did…but…. they never seemed satisfied. Russia was growing tired of fighting his people.
Bullets whizzed past cutting into the masses, felling them like corn before scythe. And yet….they continued. A gold cross glinted in the sunlight, half buried in the snow. A woman bent and picked it up, clutching the icon to her chest. She walked through the bullets and the haze of gun smoke, snow kicking up in little flurries around her feet. She was beautiful. Her face determined. Her eyes glistening with unshed tears. He called out to her and she answered with a smile and a wave. He found himself waving back, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He forgot at that moment where he was and when reality came rushing back, he realized…he would have to shoot her, or he would be forced to watch her fall by another hand. He found himself wishing that he had gone with his Tsar thirteen days ago. He begged her to stay, to turn back. But she pressed on. So he lifted his gun and fired. The sound was muffled, as though he was hearing from underwater. The shells jumped through the smoke, and into the blood soaked snow. She collapsed, The cross glinted in the sunlight-its brilliant shine muted by blood.
Crisp snow crunched under his boots as he made his way to the woman. The area was devoid of all but the bodies of the fallen. Some shot, other trampled in the surge to get away. The blinding white faded to pink, deepening to a vibrant red. He nudged her with the toe of his boot. Nothing. He turned her over. Cloudy gray eyes stared into his, her mouth opened in a silent question.
"Because…..because you were disobedient……..I asked you…… I know you heard me…. I asked you to stop……… But…..you didn't. And you were punished…." A choked sob tore through his chest as he knelt over the carcass, blood freezing around a ragged hole directly over her heart. "Why didn't you stop?…."
The wind whistled, the snow dancing to a silent tune as the blood crept forward, staining the blanket of white. The cross sat on Ivan dresser and there it stayed. Through out the revolution, when it was all he had to turn to and even through the purges and terror, the Man of Steel dared not to throw it away. When everything he worked for came crashing down around him like the tumbling of a carefully and proudly erected house of cards, it still glinted brightly untouched by the decay of time.