"I so strongly despise the thought"
A Trotsky/Lenin fan fiction

Autumn of 1919

The air was starting to turn cold, but it barely went noticed by two men who stood on a train platform in the deep expanse of the Russian countryside. No, their attention was entirely directed towards Engineer Lomonosov, the operator in charge of the diseased Soviet transport system. Trotsky listened to their long Northern coats flutter in the strong wind as he turned his head to look upon a train on the tracks. Its very core looked like rust.

"Sixty percent have become virtually unusable," Lomonosov declared solemnly, taking a drag of a fat cigarette, "and," he looked up at Vladimir Lenin, his face without a trace of humour in it, "by next spring we expect this figure to rise to seventy-five. And as you may have noticed," he glanced in the direction that Trotsky was looking at, "we rely on bulky wood for fuel."

Lenin held in his hands the diagram that Lomonosov had given him earlier, containing in it predictions for the year nineteen-twenty. All of a sudden a grubby finger came over and forcefully pointed at an equally grubby graph.

"Here," Lomonosov paused darkly, "comes death."

"What is to be done then?" asked Lenin, his despair evident in his voice.

"There are no such things as miracles," Lomonosov replied. "Even the Bolsheviks cannot perform miracles."

At this Trotsky turned around to face his companion. Lenin was looking back at him, his expression as despairing as Trotsky imagined his own was. Neither one of them knew the technical workings of the transport system; a fact that only exacerbated their misery.

"Still," Lenin muttered dryly, "we'll try to perform the miracle."

"Well, this is no good," Trotsky was looking over at the predictions again later that evening. They were together in a carriage that was taking them back to Moscow, and Lenin was staring through the window as he watched the sky blacken.

"You shall spend the upcoming winter in the Urals," Lenin said, stating rather than asking, "I fear I am not capable of taking charge of transport myself. Emergency measures must be used to try and lift this situation."

"They are indeed necessary," Trotsky's hands shook as he folded up the documents and placed them in his leather-bound case. The two men stared at each other from across the carriage, their expressions grief-stricken yet oddly hopeful.

Of course there was hope in this. Miracles had been performed before. A shot to the neck had been survived.

At the memory of this, Trotsky winced. Lenin raised an eyebrow at this movement and by his comrade's expression knew what it was pertaining to.

"Must you worry so?" He spoke evenly.

"I fear that I am already being plotted against," Trotsky sighed; "you yourself have admitted that can only cause destruction of our central..." he stopped. He was so used to not speaking what he truly thought that it had turned into a natural instinct to disguise his words. "I so strongly despise the thought of you perishing." He whispered. Just the thought of that wound often haunted him.

There was a sudden jolt of the carriage as it rode over a rugged path and Trotsky lost his balance. He was flung out of his seat and he landed painfully on the floor.

"Are you sure that it is my condition that should be worried about?" Lenin made an ill-fitting joke that Trotsky wanted to laugh at but could not bring himself to do so.

"Please," Lenin held onto Trotsky's hand as he got up, "accept that was has happened is unchangeable."

"I wish to, but how do you-"

"I don't expect anything from you as I know well enough that you shall perform all tasks in life with the same mind that you have always possessed," Lenin informed him, "meaning that I expect nothing from you but that you approach things as you deem most fitting."

"Your faith in me is heartening," Trotsky looked up into Lenin's eyes, "I hope you aware that I reciprocate just as wholeheartedly."

"You seem to spend every other conversation somehow discussing how the party cannot do without me. I am fully aware of your faith in me," Lenin released Trotsky's hand and the latter placed himself carefully into his own seat.

"I...," Trotsky almost lost his nerve, "do not wish to do without you either, as-"

The carriage came to a halt as they had reached the first resting point in a village not quite on the outskirts of the city. Trotsky quickly regained his composure and both politicians gathered their belongings as they ventured out into the night. Their conversation had been for the moment lost, but certainly not forgotten.