* * *
Stunned silence reigned for a long time after that. No one knew what to say. Before she knew what she was doing, Sally was running full steam towards the one place she knew she would find Mikhail. The library.
Sally paused before she opened the door. She took a deep breath and then, slowly entered. She headed down the dim library to the same dimly lit back room she found Mikhail last time. Sure enough, there he was, pouring over old books.
His ear twitched as she came over and sat down opposite him. "Privet." He said in an off-hand manner, not taking his attention away from his reading. Sally decided to talk to him first, before she dropped the bombshell.
"What are you reading?" Trying to sound as interested as she could.
"An old human book."
"Human?"
"Oh, it's an old term for Overlander. I've began to theorize that the history of the people we call Overlanders stretch back farther than Mobian historians think. It's an interesting history these humans have. I don't think they've been given enough credit."
"Oh?" Sally asked. "What's so interesting about them?"
"Their history is full of contradictions. Horrible tyrants and selfless patriots. Disgrace and honor, despair and hope, ruthless cynicism and lofty ideals...It's just astounding. I've learned so much about them since I started coming here. Here, let me read a sample." He cleared his throat.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government....
"I see." Sally said evenly, not missing his less than subtle critique of the Mobian government.
"There's more, a whole lot more." He lifted up the book he was reading from. It was a book of quotes and speeches. "I have a dream....Fourscore and seven years ago...An Iron Curtain has descended...History will absolve me...the history of all hitherto existing society...Live free or die...These people are geniuses, orators, inventors, leaders, and heroes. An entire history full of people like these."
"I take it you're a history buff." Sally said, her interest piqued.
"Da. Funny, I always dreamt of being a teacher or a professor, but I always thought of being an archeologist. Looking at the past to create the future. But as you can see, things didn't quite pan out that way." He cocked his head. "I take it you didn't come here to talk about history, did you?"
"As a matter of fact, I DID come to talk about history. Namely yours." Sally left Nicole right in front of him, the police file still open. With a raised eyebrow, Mikhail took a look. After several minutes of anxious silence he tossed Nicole back to Sally.
"It's the same typical sloppy work I've come to expect of the Oprichniki." He said, his voice tight but not full of the righteous denial Sally expected.
"Are you saying you deny what this report says about you and your brother?" She asked. Mikhail snorted.
"Of course, as I said, it's the same kind of lies and falsifications that I've come to expect from the monarchy." He said with a slight sneer. Sally near-legendary patience was come to a breaking point.
"If this report is wrong, then what is your problem?" She all but snapped. "I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt but you're really pushing my limits." Mikhail climbed out of his seat and walked around the table to face Sally directly.
"You really want to know? Fine, I'll tell you my little sob story, I just hope you'll manage not to have me arrested before I finish!"
Sally didn't interrupt. She got the feeling he'd been wanting to say this for over a decade. She wasn't going to begrudge him that. Mikhail took a deep breath and started again.
"I guess it began when Sasha, my older brother, went to the Imperial Academy. We weren't very rich, not poor by any means, but not rich either. He was accepted on scholarship for some of his more brilliant literary work. Sasha always was the author of the family." He shook his head. "At any rate, Sasha never took to the Academy. It was full of snotty rich kids, the children of boyars, nobility. It was too restrictive for someone like him. He eventually ended up joining an illicit study group that began questioning the current order, why a Tsar ruled all of Russiya and why a King ruled all of Mobius when they obviously didn't speak for the people as a whole."
Sally was curious, but said nothing.
"Then, he did what the Tsarist police deemed unthinkable. He made contact with an Overlander kid in a settlement a couple of kilometers away. They exchanged letters, books, ideas and eventually became friends."
"Then came the Great War." Sally said, guessing the next part.
"War is anything but great." Mikhail said bitterly. "War is hell. The war had already been going on for sometime but it was proving to be anything but the swift, decisive conflict that both sides predicted it would be. Eventually, the Tsar decided that this Overlander settlement posed a potential threat, despite the fact that is was unarmed, and planned to send his troops in to stamp it out. Naturally, Sasha had a problem with that and sent a letter of protest. The next thing he knew, his Academy roomed was being searched and he was declared a traitor. Sasha got out just ahead of the secret police."
Sally wanted to ask, but kept her peace. She needed to here it from him.
"Sasha met with his Overlander friend and told him about the planned invasion, he managed to help get most of the women and children out before the Royal troops struck. Then Sasha went back to our home town and started protesting the war, publicly. He even staged a couple of protests and sit-ins over the next few years. During his last protest he was criticizing the racist stereotype of the Overlanders when the Oprichniki showed up." Mikhail paused, his eyes staring straight into Sally's.
"Those bastards came in firing, not caring who was in the way. In five minutes, seventeen people were dead and my brother was shot in the leg. And then they killed him." Sally's chest collapsed as if Robotnik had sat on her.
"Oh my god." She thought to herself as she stared into his eyes. His eyes started welling up with tears.
"They killed him." He repeated. "I-I watched them hang him right outside my house as a warning. And there was nothing I could do, I was only five years old."
"Impossible." Sally said, not even thinking about what she was saying. "There's no way something like that could happen..." If Sally was distressed, then Mikhail was livid. His voice rose and his face all but burst into flame.
"Believe it Princess, I was there! I SAW my brother get led up the gallows, I FELT my parent's tears, I SMELLED the executioner's disdain for life, and I HEARD the cracking of my brother's neck! It haunts me, every night I hear that 'CRACK'! Have you ever heard the sound of a neck snapping? I'd be more than happy to show you...
Then, all of a sudden his voice changed. It went from one of immense anger to one that was impossibly small and frightened. "Nothing was the same after Sasha died." He whimpered. "My father was a great man, most respected person in town. A leader of the dissident movement. Trying to push for reforms. Then after Sasha...he just crawled into the bottle and never came out. When he came home, he would never met our eyes." He shook his head.
"Then after months and months of recovery and sobering up, my father was almost back to his old self again..." His face hardened. "Then they called him up to fight in the war his eldest son died trying to stop."
At every new turn in the story, Sally felt her stomach wrench as if she had swallowed something that strongly disagreed with her. Mikhail never stopped, he continued his story as if he took no notice of her discomfort.
"One day, after many indecisive and bloody battles with the Overlanders over here in the West, he was heard to say 'Why fight in this war? I don't hate the John Overlander and I'm sure he doesn't hate me, It would make more sense to me if we turned our guns on our officers instead!' As you can imagine, the comment did not go over well. They sent him to the front, where coincidentally, a lot of foreigners and dissidents served. He died there, for King and Country." He spat in scorn.
"Mikhail, I-I'm so sorry." Sally started.
"You think the story ends there, Princess? Oh no, there's MUCH more! After my father's death I had to drop out of school to find work. Then after a dispute some little rich dandy started with me, I struck him. Chipped two of his teeth too." He said with no little pride. "In response, my entire family was deported as 'undesirables.' The last image I have of my home is of it being ransacked and then burned to the ground by the Oprichniki."
He laughed and turned to Sally. "You'd think that things would've gotten better when my family--what was left of it--and I arrived in Mobotropolis harbor, but no! As soon as we get off the boat, I was pulled aside and placed in a 'Reform School' for bad little children who didn't worship their monarchs enough. They never let me see my mother or my little sister! Never! I couldn't even contact them! For eight months it was the same thing, me and all the other bad children were told how lucky we were to be ruled by a foreign king and how grateful we should be that we lived under his heel. They insisted that we learn English, shoved it down our throats! Any time anyone was caught speaking anything but 'Proper English,' we received a slap in the face and were told to 'Speak White!' "
"Mikhail, I..."
"When ever I was disobedient or tried to find my mother they made me kneel on sharp rocks and even glass, for hours on end! I was denied food, sleep, everything! But they never broke me, no. I learned this damn language and I waited and waited until the chance came. And it did, the day the war ended. Everyone was celebrating, so no one noticed when I sneaked out and found my family living in a wretched little dive near the docks. Everything was finally starting to look up." He added wistfully, "After the worst year of our lives, losing Sasha and father, being deported, separated, it was finally over. We thought everything was going to be okay."
He sighed. "Then, a week later..."
"Robotnik." Sally said, adding just one more reason to hate that obese ball of megalomania.
"Robotnik." Mikhail agreed through clenched teeth. "Mother and Katya, my little sister were taken and-and..."
"Roboticized." Sally put in quietly. "I-I don't know what to say except, that I'm sorry for your loss." Even to her, the words sounded frail and hollow. To Mikhail, they sounded like an insult. He erupted, went mad with grief and rage.
"You're sorry? You're sorry?!" He shrieked. "For what? The fact that the Tsar who hounded and destroyed my family was YOUR father's vassal in my homeland? The fact that YOUR father started the war that ruined my family, and so many others? That YOUR father's kingdom lords over all of Mobius, yet is so provincial that it doesn't give a damn what happens outside of Mobotropolis? That YOUR family's kingdom has stepped on Slavs like me as if they were nothing more than bugs? That they think of us only as drunk, illiterate peasants? That YOUR so called 'Greater Kingdom of Acorn' isn't all that great for Slavs, Arabs, Jews, and the other peoples who live in the Eastern Hemisphere? That YOUR father's man in Russiya killed my brother and drove my father to alcoholism? That YOUR father's officers sent my father to die at the Front? That YOUR father trusted Robotnik and let him take over? That YOUR father beat his language into me, that I have to speak every language here, but my own? That I haven't had a conversation in Russian for eleven years? That I have nothing to remind me of my home or my native culture, not even so much as a god damn samovar?! That YOUR father sent me to be beaten, starved, and tried to brainwash me into being GRATEFUL to him for destroying my family and my people?! For what do you have to be sorry about?!" Sally's first impulse was to run away from this spectacle, but she reminded herself that the tortured being in front of her was entitled to his anger. Still, she had never seen such an explosion of fury before and had no wish to see it ever again. Unfortunately, it wasn't over yet.
"I HATE YOU! YOU ROYAL SCUM RUINED MY LIFE!!!" He roared as he lunged for Sally.
* * *
Stunned silence reigned for a long time after that. No one knew what to say. Before she knew what she was doing, Sally was running full steam towards the one place she knew she would find Mikhail. The library.
Sally paused before she opened the door. She took a deep breath and then, slowly entered. She headed down the dim library to the same dimly lit back room she found Mikhail last time. Sure enough, there he was, pouring over old books.
His ear twitched as she came over and sat down opposite him. "Privet." He said in an off-hand manner, not taking his attention away from his reading. Sally decided to talk to him first, before she dropped the bombshell.
"What are you reading?" Trying to sound as interested as she could.
"An old human book."
"Human?"
"Oh, it's an old term for Overlander. I've began to theorize that the history of the people we call Overlanders stretch back farther than Mobian historians think. It's an interesting history these humans have. I don't think they've been given enough credit."
"Oh?" Sally asked. "What's so interesting about them?"
"Their history is full of contradictions. Horrible tyrants and selfless patriots. Disgrace and honor, despair and hope, ruthless cynicism and lofty ideals...It's just astounding. I've learned so much about them since I started coming here. Here, let me read a sample." He cleared his throat.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government....
"I see." Sally said evenly, not missing his less than subtle critique of the Mobian government.
"There's more, a whole lot more." He lifted up the book he was reading from. It was a book of quotes and speeches. "I have a dream....Fourscore and seven years ago...An Iron Curtain has descended...History will absolve me...the history of all hitherto existing society...Live free or die...These people are geniuses, orators, inventors, leaders, and heroes. An entire history full of people like these."
"I take it you're a history buff." Sally said, her interest piqued.
"Da. Funny, I always dreamt of being a teacher or a professor, but I always thought of being an archeologist. Looking at the past to create the future. But as you can see, things didn't quite pan out that way." He cocked his head. "I take it you didn't come here to talk about history, did you?"
"As a matter of fact, I DID come to talk about history. Namely yours." Sally left Nicole right in front of him, the police file still open. With a raised eyebrow, Mikhail took a look. After several minutes of anxious silence he tossed Nicole back to Sally.
"It's the same typical sloppy work I've come to expect of the Oprichniki." He said, his voice tight but not full of the righteous denial Sally expected.
"Are you saying you deny what this report says about you and your brother?" She asked. Mikhail snorted.
"Of course, as I said, it's the same kind of lies and falsifications that I've come to expect from the monarchy." He said with a slight sneer. Sally near-legendary patience was come to a breaking point.
"If this report is wrong, then what is your problem?" She all but snapped. "I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt but you're really pushing my limits." Mikhail climbed out of his seat and walked around the table to face Sally directly.
"You really want to know? Fine, I'll tell you my little sob story, I just hope you'll manage not to have me arrested before I finish!"
Sally didn't interrupt. She got the feeling he'd been wanting to say this for over a decade. She wasn't going to begrudge him that. Mikhail took a deep breath and started again.
"I guess it began when Sasha, my older brother, went to the Imperial Academy. We weren't very rich, not poor by any means, but not rich either. He was accepted on scholarship for some of his more brilliant literary work. Sasha always was the author of the family." He shook his head. "At any rate, Sasha never took to the Academy. It was full of snotty rich kids, the children of boyars, nobility. It was too restrictive for someone like him. He eventually ended up joining an illicit study group that began questioning the current order, why a Tsar ruled all of Russiya and why a King ruled all of Mobius when they obviously didn't speak for the people as a whole."
Sally was curious, but said nothing.
"Then, he did what the Tsarist police deemed unthinkable. He made contact with an Overlander kid in a settlement a couple of kilometers away. They exchanged letters, books, ideas and eventually became friends."
"Then came the Great War." Sally said, guessing the next part.
"War is anything but great." Mikhail said bitterly. "War is hell. The war had already been going on for sometime but it was proving to be anything but the swift, decisive conflict that both sides predicted it would be. Eventually, the Tsar decided that this Overlander settlement posed a potential threat, despite the fact that is was unarmed, and planned to send his troops in to stamp it out. Naturally, Sasha had a problem with that and sent a letter of protest. The next thing he knew, his Academy roomed was being searched and he was declared a traitor. Sasha got out just ahead of the secret police."
Sally wanted to ask, but kept her peace. She needed to here it from him.
"Sasha met with his Overlander friend and told him about the planned invasion, he managed to help get most of the women and children out before the Royal troops struck. Then Sasha went back to our home town and started protesting the war, publicly. He even staged a couple of protests and sit-ins over the next few years. During his last protest he was criticizing the racist stereotype of the Overlanders when the Oprichniki showed up." Mikhail paused, his eyes staring straight into Sally's.
"Those bastards came in firing, not caring who was in the way. In five minutes, seventeen people were dead and my brother was shot in the leg. And then they killed him." Sally's chest collapsed as if Robotnik had sat on her.
"Oh my god." She thought to herself as she stared into his eyes. His eyes started welling up with tears.
"They killed him." He repeated. "I-I watched them hang him right outside my house as a warning. And there was nothing I could do, I was only five years old."
"Impossible." Sally said, not even thinking about what she was saying. "There's no way something like that could happen..." If Sally was distressed, then Mikhail was livid. His voice rose and his face all but burst into flame.
"Believe it Princess, I was there! I SAW my brother get led up the gallows, I FELT my parent's tears, I SMELLED the executioner's disdain for life, and I HEARD the cracking of my brother's neck! It haunts me, every night I hear that 'CRACK'! Have you ever heard the sound of a neck snapping? I'd be more than happy to show you...
Then, all of a sudden his voice changed. It went from one of immense anger to one that was impossibly small and frightened. "Nothing was the same after Sasha died." He whimpered. "My father was a great man, most respected person in town. A leader of the dissident movement. Trying to push for reforms. Then after Sasha...he just crawled into the bottle and never came out. When he came home, he would never met our eyes." He shook his head.
"Then after months and months of recovery and sobering up, my father was almost back to his old self again..." His face hardened. "Then they called him up to fight in the war his eldest son died trying to stop."
At every new turn in the story, Sally felt her stomach wrench as if she had swallowed something that strongly disagreed with her. Mikhail never stopped, he continued his story as if he took no notice of her discomfort.
"One day, after many indecisive and bloody battles with the Overlanders over here in the West, he was heard to say 'Why fight in this war? I don't hate the John Overlander and I'm sure he doesn't hate me, It would make more sense to me if we turned our guns on our officers instead!' As you can imagine, the comment did not go over well. They sent him to the front, where coincidentally, a lot of foreigners and dissidents served. He died there, for King and Country." He spat in scorn.
"Mikhail, I-I'm so sorry." Sally started.
"You think the story ends there, Princess? Oh no, there's MUCH more! After my father's death I had to drop out of school to find work. Then after a dispute some little rich dandy started with me, I struck him. Chipped two of his teeth too." He said with no little pride. "In response, my entire family was deported as 'undesirables.' The last image I have of my home is of it being ransacked and then burned to the ground by the Oprichniki."
He laughed and turned to Sally. "You'd think that things would've gotten better when my family--what was left of it--and I arrived in Mobotropolis harbor, but no! As soon as we get off the boat, I was pulled aside and placed in a 'Reform School' for bad little children who didn't worship their monarchs enough. They never let me see my mother or my little sister! Never! I couldn't even contact them! For eight months it was the same thing, me and all the other bad children were told how lucky we were to be ruled by a foreign king and how grateful we should be that we lived under his heel. They insisted that we learn English, shoved it down our throats! Any time anyone was caught speaking anything but 'Proper English,' we received a slap in the face and were told to 'Speak White!' "
"Mikhail, I..."
"When ever I was disobedient or tried to find my mother they made me kneel on sharp rocks and even glass, for hours on end! I was denied food, sleep, everything! But they never broke me, no. I learned this damn language and I waited and waited until the chance came. And it did, the day the war ended. Everyone was celebrating, so no one noticed when I sneaked out and found my family living in a wretched little dive near the docks. Everything was finally starting to look up." He added wistfully, "After the worst year of our lives, losing Sasha and father, being deported, separated, it was finally over. We thought everything was going to be okay."
He sighed. "Then, a week later..."
"Robotnik." Sally said, adding just one more reason to hate that obese ball of megalomania.
"Robotnik." Mikhail agreed through clenched teeth. "Mother and Katya, my little sister were taken and-and..."
"Roboticized." Sally put in quietly. "I-I don't know what to say except, that I'm sorry for your loss." Even to her, the words sounded frail and hollow. To Mikhail, they sounded like an insult. He erupted, went mad with grief and rage.
"You're sorry? You're sorry?!" He shrieked. "For what? The fact that the Tsar who hounded and destroyed my family was YOUR father's vassal in my homeland? The fact that YOUR father started the war that ruined my family, and so many others? That YOUR father's kingdom lords over all of Mobius, yet is so provincial that it doesn't give a damn what happens outside of Mobotropolis? That YOUR family's kingdom has stepped on Slavs like me as if they were nothing more than bugs? That they think of us only as drunk, illiterate peasants? That YOUR so called 'Greater Kingdom of Acorn' isn't all that great for Slavs, Arabs, Jews, and the other peoples who live in the Eastern Hemisphere? That YOUR father's man in Russiya killed my brother and drove my father to alcoholism? That YOUR father's officers sent my father to die at the Front? That YOUR father trusted Robotnik and let him take over? That YOUR father beat his language into me, that I have to speak every language here, but my own? That I haven't had a conversation in Russian for eleven years? That I have nothing to remind me of my home or my native culture, not even so much as a god damn samovar?! That YOUR father sent me to be beaten, starved, and tried to brainwash me into being GRATEFUL to him for destroying my family and my people?! For what do you have to be sorry about?!" Sally's first impulse was to run away from this spectacle, but she reminded herself that the tortured being in front of her was entitled to his anger. Still, she had never seen such an explosion of fury before and had no wish to see it ever again. Unfortunately, it wasn't over yet.
"I HATE YOU! YOU ROYAL SCUM RUINED MY LIFE!!!" He roared as he lunged for Sally.
* * *