This interlude is generously sprinkled with bits and pieces of Ukrainian. I do not speak Ukrainian. I speak English, bad English, and when I'm really really drunk the Queen's English, so if I've gotten anything wrong, please let me know so I can fix it.

Seriously, I have it on good authority that drunk me sounds like he just stepped off an eleven hour flight from the UK. Fuck if I know how or why, but I blame watching a lot of Red Dwarf on PBS as a kid.

Also, I tried my hardest not to make this too much of a gut punch, but once I crawled into Nataliya's head, I swiftly realized that she is not what you'd call well-adjusted underneath the surface. This wasn't the interlude that I wanted to write, but it literally wrote itself in about an hour.

Wrote and posted this chapter on Sufficient Velocity originally back on April 19, 2021, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Obviously in this fic the Donbas War hasn't happened yet (and in fact Worm ends well before that could have happened on Earth-Bet).

Yes, I'm well aware that as things are in the real world right now, there are those that do not consider Luhansk to be part of Ukraine.

I hate the Hebert girl, Papa. I should not, because she is tovarysh, a comrade now, and a classmate. She chooses the path to protecting her homeland the honest, good and proper way, which is the only way that matters. She is tall and pretty in a way that reminds me of home and the friends I once had who are now probably dead. Maybe we could have been druzi, she and I.

But she is one of them and when I see her the terror bubbles up and I am eleven years old again, clinging desperately to Papa's hand and running as fast as I can through the streets of Luhansk. Mama runs behind us carrying little Pylyp, who's too young to understand that we are about to die because the Elitnaya have decided to kill us, but he cries and he cries because he feels the danger. Not all of the city burns, but enough does to fill the air with smoke as w-

And then I am back in the now and trembling only a little. But this time I did not piss myself, so I call it a small blessing.

I hate the Hebert girl, because it is the only way to keep down the terror that claws at the back of my throat and makes my legs weak and my heart ready to burst in my chest.

People like her belong in the American's Protektorat, where they aren't a danger to everyone else. To see her walking the halls of the Doolittle Academy, laughing and smiling as if she wasn't a demon, a chudovysʹko out of Nana's most frightening tales that would slaughter everyone if someone even so much as looked at her wrong…

I cannot understand why everyone else is not as terrified of her as I am. Have they no sense of how dangerous she is?! Of what she could do?! How many she could kill?!

So I bury the fear under fury, because how dare she pretend to be like us? Like me? What does a chudovysʹko know of pain and fear and suffering, when creatures such as her live only to cause it?!

But I dare not say that to my classmates, because they are too young, too innocent to understand. I see it clearly, especially in how she so easily surpasses all of us in so many things, yet feigns as if it is an effort to do so. I am not fooled, and this stokes my fury even greater.

Great enough, that I forget myself and show my defiance in the only way that I can think to do so, because it is as Papa used to say, it is when you give into fear that you have lost. So I swallow my fear and make blatant my hate.

And then the Hebert girl looks at me with demon eyes that make it clear that she would kill me the first moment she could, and my insides turn to ice water.

I remember the soldaty hunting us through the streets and killing everyone in their way, because Papa was loyal to the wrong people. I remember the chudovysʹko that led them, and what she did to Mama and little Pylyp with the not-light that shined from her hand, and how it erased everything of mama from the breasts down. Pylyp was gone instantly, he felt nothing. It took Mama time.

And then I am standing on the PT field again long after everyone else is gone, with piss streaming down my shaking legs.

...

I… am not well, Papa. But I know enough to hide it, to bury it deep down, under Hate and Duty, because you need me to take care of you now, and I cannot do so if I am a mewling, pathetic whelp too afraid of her own shadow. The Hebert girl terrifies me, but I hate her more because I must, and after the Hell that we had lived through that day in Luhansk I know that nothing here in America can be even half as bad.

I do my best to convince myself of that, but that first tutoring 'session' tests me to my limits because English is a wretchedly horrible language to learn to read and write in and my dyslexia does not make it any easier for me, but I refuse to be so weak to say the things that would make things easier. I am a strong girl of Ukraine, and I refuse to be that weak.

So I hold it in during that first horrible hour of being alone with Hebert and fumble as best as I can through Hemingway, and when we part ways I flee into a bathroom and vomit until my stomach all but turns itself inside out. Hebert has the same long dark hair as the chudovysʹko that killed Mama and Pylyp, and now I cannot unsee it. I do not let the tears come, because that would be weakness, it would be giving into fear, and my hate must be stronger.

It must.

I learn to play at civility with Hebert when she tutors me and when I help her train in turn, to let my hate balance my fear just enough to work with her, because I am a good, dutiful girl that follows orders, because that's what Papa needs me to be. But being alone with her is a special flavor of Hell that I hadn't known existed until now, and it makes March pass at a snail's crawl.

There are moments when I almost, almost forget that she is chudovysʹko, in the way her wide mouth curls into a smile when I get some difficult piece of English correct, or the strange tunes that she hums when she is distracted, or the way she has begun to marvel at finally developing a strong, proper body.

But then her eyes will flash that demon light or she'll forget herself and her back will crawl underneath her clothes, and the terrible reminder steals the breath from my lungs. Once, she was startled by a rodent on the PT field, and it was all I could do to choke down the scream that wanted to leave my mouth.

Hebert happened to notice, and her face went funny and she tried to touch me.

… I ran, like a coward. I had to. Papa forgive me, but the terror was too strong. I was too weak, and now she knows.

That's why I've come to visit you now Papa, in your room at the base hospital, in the bed that you have not left for five years, now. It does not matter that you can no longer speak, or walk with me, or hold me. Just the fact that you still live and breathe is a solace, and the fact that you have enough left of a hand for me to hold with both of mine is a balm for my soul. Forgive me Papa for not visiting you more often, I've not been dutiful in this. The Americans, they say that they will take care of us now, take care of you, but how can I trust them? They have taken us in, but how can they know what proper, decent folk like us need when they allow chudovysʹko to walk amongst them, playing at being heroyi and lykhodiyi as if their lives were simply more of Nana's stories?

Papa, you no longer have feet to wash for you, so I make do with brushing your hair and trimming the nails of the three fingers you have left on your remaining hand, and I check your feeding tubes the way the nurses have taught me, because if I leave it to them, you would get terribly fat Papa, and Mama would rise from her grave to chastise us both!

And that man who visits you Papa, the man who helped us escape Luhansk. I know that I am only supposed to call him Hatheway now, but I still sometimes think of him as Uncle Eli, even though you've told me repeatedly that that wasn't and never was his real name. He looks in on me from time to time in the little house that they've given us and makes sure that I have what I need, which is foolish of him, but then he is American with foolish American sensibilities. And don't think I haven't noticed him reading to you from that filthy book of his! Shame on you Papa, what would Mama think?! Don't you roll your eye at me! Just because Kapitan Hatheway still bribes me with toffee, doesn't mean that I won't tell Mama! See if I don't!

It's good to hear you laugh a little Papa. It makes me treasure these moments, when I can be a girl again. It gives me strength to keep going. I can manage Papa, I can. You and Mama taught me well to be a good, strong and dutiful daughter, and when I've secured our place here at last, I promise you the best care the world has ever known.

But I beg you Papa, give me strength. We go off base tomorrow, into Westfield, the city nearby. For leisure and fun, they tell us, but I am told that we must be in pairs, and that mine has already been decided.

They put me with the Hebert girl Papa.

I am to be with her for much of the day, just us, and I am so sick with terror that I cannot eat Papa, I cannot even breathe I am so afraid. I beg of you Papa, lend me your strength so I do not break into so many pieces that I can never be whole again.

Help me, Papa. Please. Help me so that I do not break.