Author's Note: This is written in answer three of four challenges I've received, and will be a bit more epic, I think, than I'd originally intended! I'm afraid I shouldn't tell you what the challenges are, or I'll spoil what's in store :) I will write this the way I wrote "From The Ashes," posting chapters as I finish them, and hopefully not leaving you hanging for too long. I am very afraid of historical continuity errors and such, but I am doing it anyway, so please do tell me if you catch something I miss. I am, admittedly, not expert in the Lenin/Stalin regime.
Rated: PG, so far… Keep an eye on future chapters' ratings, I will rate them as I write and warn of any possible questionable content.
To The Motherland
"Never Fully Free"
"Maria!!! Yo, MARIA!!!" Kanna called up the stairs to the top floor of the Imperial Theatre which had been home to the two oldest members of the Hanagumi for just over six years now. Then she paused, her hands on both railings, and listened for a reply.
Nothing.
The extraordinarily tall redhead took the steps up two at a time, propelling herself by the railings, and reaching the top floor in a matter of seconds. Down the darkened and rarely-used hallways, she called again. No response.
Kanna knew how Maria could get lost in books, and she went straight to the library. Instead of continuing to call, though, she opened the door quietly. Startling Maria when she was sleeping or deep in concentration was often a terrible mistake – her Enfield revolver was never far from her hand. The door swung open to reveal the library – a huge room with a slanted ceiling and high windows. Hazy shafts of blue light filtered through from the gray and overcast sky outside, and motes of dust swam lazily in the air. Kanna crept inside as if she expected to find a ghost, and searched the aisles. Then she found her.
Maria sat with her back to Kanna on top of a tall rolling ladder in the back aisle of the library. If she had heard Kanna enter, she showed no sign. Kanna went to the foot of the ladder and stopped, looking up at her friend. Maria's head was lowered, her short, fair hair curtained her eyes. Her shoulders were slumped and the slate blue of the blouse she wore matched the weather outside. Her shoulder holster seemed to weigh down on her, as if it were a burden she was weary of carrying. In her hands was a letter and an envelope on formal-looking parchment. Kanna could tell from Maria's posture and stillness that it could not be good news.
Slowly, Kanna climbed the ladder and knelt on the step below Maria's feet. When she reached that proximity, Maria began to shiver, her arms stiffening and the paper trembling in her hands.
"Maria? Maria, hey…" Kanna put her hands on Maria's knees and softly hushed her, and with a quick huff of breath, the Russian had composed herself and lifted her head again, squaring her shoulders with a heavy sigh, and met Kanna's eyes with her own icy gaze. Kanna's violet eyes gleamed with sympathy, "Maria, what's wrong?"
In lieu of a verbal answer, which Maria did not seem capable of making at the moment, she handed the letter to Kanna. Kanna accepted it and looked at it, then squinted. "Um… it's… it's in Russian, I… I can't read it." But she looked at the letters of the red and gold embossed crest regardless. Those letters were English, but she knew a little English. "NKVD…. OGPU? What is that?"
Maria's voice was nothing more than a whisper. "Russian secret police…" she replied, raking her fingers into her hair to clear it from her eyes for a moment, then letting it fall back as she gazed over Kanna's shoulder at some indiscriminate point in the distance, as if seeing things which were not there.
Kanna picked the envelope up from Maria's lap and turned it over. The postmark was dated 18 November 1928, which was only two weeks ago. "What do they want? I mean… how did they even know you were here? Why are they writing to you?"
"Russia has spies all over, Kanna, particularly here in Japan after the war. My father used to be important, and he fell out of favour. They keep their eyes on people who could cause trouble one day."
"Like you?" Kanna asked, gently, laying the papers back in Maria's lap and climbing one step higher to kneel on either side of her feet to be eye-to-eye with the markswoman.
"Like my father, at least. Yes."
"So what do they want from you now? I mean… you were exiled, what… twenty years ago?"
"Twenty-four."
"Geez… what could they possibly want with someone who was an infant when they last were considered a citizen of Russia?"
"I was never really considered a citizen. I was the bastard daughter of a diplomat and his Japanese fling. But under Lenin, the mere fact that I was born in Russia was enough to make me a citizen. Unfortunately, he came into power as I was leaving for New York. I fought to put him in power, Kanna, and Russia crumbled under his rule…"
Kanna grew mildly impatient. Russia, as far as she knew, was a country continually at war with itself, its rulers idealists with pipe dreams about sharing and loving and no basis in reality at all, a land so covered with snow and ice and so barred from the sun that its people were sour and bitter and jaded and sad, ALL of the time. Of course it was crumbling. What Kanna wanted to know was why Russia was sending a letter to someone it banished when she was only a year old?
"Lenin is dead," Maria continued and Kanna blinked in surprise. "Stalin is in power now. Joseph Stalin, who used to be a revolutionary like us, the son of a poor man, just like one of us... He was in charge of the Cheka, and he has changed its name to the OGPU."
"Wait… Cheka?" Kanna was lost.
"Lenin's secret police. It was run by Stalin. Joseph Stalin…." Maria's gaze reluctantly refocused on Kanna's with a weight that seemed to carry with it the horror Maria's mind was witnessing, "…is not a good man. He betrayed his loyalty to the Bolsheviks to spare himself Lenin's wrath, and was made Commissar of Nationalities so quickly Lenin said he was dizzy."
"What in the world is a Commissar of Nationalities?"
"He was in charge of all the 'non-Russian' citizens, all the Ukranians, Georgians, etc. In years previous, he was in and out of Siberia due to exile very frequently. He mocked Lenin's ideals and rules with an iron fist. Trotsky was Stalin's opponent, and he was arrested, exiled and deported. Stalin even told Trotsky the wrong date for Lenin's funeral, so he would not be able to attend. He rules by terror, Kanna."
"Aren't you Ukranian?"
Maria nodded. "I was born in Kiev."
"So Stalin was in charge of you?"
Maria nodded again, "Except that I was already in New York, and then in Japan. I thought they believed me dead. But now Stalin is in charge of everything."
Kanna looked at the letter again as if it were suddenly bladed, as if the double-headed eagle were egraved into a knife instead of into parchment. "Do they know about you? I mean, about everything?"
Maria nodded once, very slowly. Everything. Her years in the Volga Third Regiment, her years in New York in the Mafia, her years here… as an actress… and they knew of her work for the Imperial Army and her time as captain of her division, all of it. They knew all of it.
Kanna repeated her question again, this time dreading the answer thoroughly. "So… what do they want with you?"
"To work as a spy in the Japanese division of the OGPU."
Kanna bristled. "You're being asked to go work for a tyrant with no regard for even his own people, to spy on OUR country?! Tell them no!"
"It isn't a request, Kanna... I've been drafted. They are coming for me."