Michael sighed in frustration. He sat on the sole chair in the tiny room. The window was set high up into the wall, too high to reach for a small child. The room itself contained nothing much except for a bed. And the child occupying this room was currently under it.

Both Elisabeth and he had been aware that dealing with the boy would not be easy. But when Elisabeth had called him two days after the boy had been placed into her care, he had still clung to the naive hope that one of the most difficult things she was faced with was the language barrier.

In these two days that Michael had not been here, the child had tried to run away more than three times. And the staff quickly realised that they needed to remove anything it might use to hurt someone. One from the staff had learnt the hard way that approaching it might now be a good idea - the child had stabbed her with a nail file. So they had separated the boy from the other children and more or less locked him in this room, caring for him as well as they could. Michael understood that perfectly.

He wondered how the doctors from the Red Cross had put up with the child - Michael had not been there, he had had duties elsewhere. He guessed that they had put metal bars around his bed otherwise it would not have stayed until it was completely recovered. He had asked them a few questions but not gotten much answers. However, if he interpreted the abrasions on the boy's arms right, then someone had seen no other alternative than to bind him to a bed. For many people it was common procedure.

Michael shook his head. He knew that his own approach to child upbringing was considered progressive and plain stupid by other people. He believed that explaining was a better thing than hitting and he preferred gentleness to shouting. So far it had always proven right. Rough handling only made children react more violently than before. He was glad that Elisabeth was as progressive as he was.

Flat had always been proud of his ability to handle children. Now, after two weeks of coaxing and soothing, he felt ready to climb the walls. He was not sure what else he should try or do.

The Cossack child never talked. And it had been under its bed every day since it had been brought here, except for those moments when they needed to drag it out. The boy only came out in the night when he was alone in the room. Michael had watched him through the tiny window in the door. The boy either went to sleep or spent hours hugging himself and rocking back and forth during the night.

And as usual the child was under the bed right now. Michael did not have many options left. He was due to go on his next assignment in France two days from now. Sitting and talking would not be enough. Since he could not coax the child to come out, he would have to join it. He had tried everything else and the worst that could happen was that he was kicked or bitten.

He gave the idea a last thought and the space between the floor and the mattress a calculating gaze before he slowly lay down on his belly and crept forward, whispering comforting words in Russian as he did so.

The child squeezed against the wall, as much away from Michael as possible, and kept his eyes, which looked too large for the small face, firmly trained on him as he approached.

Even though the dim light under the bed made it hard to clearly see the features of the boy, the sadness and distress were all too evident. Michael cleared his throat to get rid of the lump which seemed to have formed there. He softly sang popular Russian lullabies. The forth one was known as the 'Cossack's lullaby' When he started with ' Sleep, my fine young baby, Lullabye, a-bye, quietly the clear moon looks down,' the child finally relaxed a bit.

So far, so good. When Michael had finished singing, he decided that now was the moment. He asked in Russian, "What's your name?"

Large, green eyes peered at him but no answer came.

Flat tipped his finger against his own chest. "Michael." Then he pointed at the boy. "Who are you?"

The boy's answer was hesitant and barely audible, "Aleksej."

Michael was relieved. No, he was happy. Finally the boy had reacted. "So you are Aleksej. That's a nice name. And your last name?" Again Michael pointed at himself to make it easier for the child to understand. "Michael Flat."

The boy swallowed and looked away.

"Michael Flat. And you are Aleksej...?"

Aleksej stared at him and blinked several times to keep the tears from falling before he answered.

"Hey." Flat gave him a reassuring smile. "Can you repeat that for me?"

Because the reply was only slightly louder, Michael still had to strain his ears to understand him. He frowned; surely he had misunderstood the answer. Michael asked again and pressed his lips together when the child refused to reply anymore. Sighing, Michael Flat crawled out from under the bed.

"What did he say about his surname?" Unnoticed, Elisabeth had entered the room.

Michael replied, "He said the name is dead."

Elisabeth shook her head and called a nurse to look after the child while she and Michael left the room to talk elsewhere.

"We'll call him Alec," Elisabeth said, "It's close enough to his real name. And would you believe me that I'm good at choosing surnames by now? That is, if no one adopts him of course. Too bad you can't adopt a child – you would make a wonderful father, Michael..."

"Well, I'm not married." Michael glanced one last time over his shoulder before he followed Elisabeth, wondering what would become of the child.

It should take a year until the boy spoke again, and when he did, his language was no longer Russian.

-fin-

A/N

This story has finally come to an end and I hope it was a satisfying read. Many thanks to Captain Mac for beta-ing and to alle the readers who enjoyed the story: Alleymap, Daughter of Olorin, Adri Skywalker, GreenCat3, Brightbear, Phoenix Master and of course those I do not know about.

Oh, and Alleymap, I looked up the source for Alec's surname again. You were right, of course. Trevelyan is Cornish ;)

Conserning Alecs first name:

Aleksei or Aleksej means "to defend." it can be nicknamed Alyosha, Lyosha.

I had considered using Aleksandr (nicknames: Sasha and Shurik) but somehow I thought that they would have probably kept the long form, naming him Alexander Trevelyan.

There are of course other possibilities concerning the question of how Alec came to Great Britain. He might even have been born there, depending on when his father committed suicide.

Resources:

I have tried to read books/texts from very different viewpoints because every source is in a way biased,

General reference to cossacks:

Nicholas V. Feodoroff: History of the Cossacks, Commack, NY: Nova Science, 1999

The Massacre of Cossacks at Lienz:

Samuel J. Newland: Cossacks in the German Army 1941-1945

Cossack Lullaby: There are so many different versions; I don't know where I looked up the one I cited the first line from. But a nice translation can be found here

Longworth, Philip: The Cossacks, Holt Rinehart and Winston, NY, 1970

Surname

Origin of the Surname Trevelyan
(Origin Cornish British) Trevellyan, the town of the mill. Welsh, Tremelin, or Trevelin.