Today marks the 430th day of war in Ukraine.

Before reading this chapter, if you feel you are not up-to-date on your backstory knowledge for the Eastern Slavic Siblings in my fanfic universe, I recommend rereading chapters 25-27 of DITR. References will be made to the events described in those chapters, especially ch 27. (Also please be advised that ch's 25-27 cover events in 1930's USSR which include graphic details of genocide and mass executions.)

Another reason it's good to get a refresher, is because I have written this dialogue in the context of the time period and what people felt they could reasonably speak about in public. The characters talk "around" subjects, or use vague euphemisms or pronouns. They won't rehash exactly what happened in detail in the dialogue. Natalia summarizes it a bit in narration, but it may be helpful to get a reminder from the source chapters. I've also decided not to repeat any history notes that explain these events in the 30's. I am taking some creative license by allowing this conversation to occur in public at all, but I felt we needed a setting change. Chalk it up to nations being immortal and hard to control.

DISCLAIMER: This is also the chapter where Katya talks about Ivan and some of their personal history. I have isolated this subject into one chapter, so that anyone who feels uncomfortable reading hws Ukraine content can skip it. I will reiterate that I had planned this dialogue prior to the war, and everything that is spoken of here is completely within the context of my fanfic universe and the history discussed thus far in my stories. Katya will not play a large role or have many speaking parts beyond this chapter.

And with that, thank you for reading, and please enjoy!

To Natalia, talking with Katya felt like going home.

It was a warm cup of tea being placed in front of her at just the right temperature and with just the right amount of honey, even though she never asked.

It was the light yet firm pull of fingers in her hair as they brushed out the tangles and wove them into intricate braids.

It was the rise of oily bubbles in broth of a steaming bowl of borscht, and how the sour cream broke into pieces with the stir of a wooden spoon.

Katya's eyes were the unbroken blue of an afternoon summer sky, as high as childhood dreams stretched on tiptoes from the tallest tree could possibly reach.

Her hair was the color of wheat fields; the sound of golden grain breathing in the wind. The brush of stalks on fingertips, like coarse hair leaping from the earth.

Katya was dust, when it shimmered in a shaft of light breaking through a windowpane.

A jar of strawberry jam and toast, a vase with freshly-cut flowers.

The promise of comfort and conversation—the promise of a simple day, but a good day.

It didn't matter if it was during wartime, or peacetime, or good times, or heartbreak—Natalia always felt her heart slow, her body relax, and the strain of tension that seemed permanently taut like a bowstring in her neck loosen, if only for a moment, when she talked with Katya.

So often Natalia felt battered by the winds of nationhood—politics, war, choices—but when she talked with Katya, things seemed to slow. As if she was walking through life unbalanced on her toes, straining to stand, but Katya allowed her to fall back on her heels and center her weight again. To breathe. To stop and consider. Without judgement, without consequences. The world felt somehow less frightening when Katya fixed her with that age-old gaze which had seen far more than words could describe, but yet somehow still found the beauty and the joy in the smallest of things.

Maybe it was because Katya reminded her of Ira.

But Katya had survived what Ira had never lived to see. She was calmer, more calculated with her actions. She knew what mattered, and what didn't. She knew what was worth losing, and what was not.

Natalia felt that so many nations had lost their way, yet Katya somehow still held on to something real. And she still didn't understand what it was, but she could feel the slight tug pulling her towards it. That hope of a something—even if just out of reach—that was worth fighting for.

So of course, when Natalia realized all the things she had gotten wrong—wrong about Lithuania, wrong about Gilbert, the mistakes she had made in Berlin, and her confusion with how to move forward, when she felt that tilt of the world start to tip her balance—it was Katya she went to for answers.

Unlike with the Baltics, it didn't take much convincing for Ivan to allow his sisters to leave the mansion, and so at Natalia's request they had been driven by an escort to a local park. The leaves on the trees had turned a vibrant yellow, and their boots scuffed and crunched over freshly-fallen leaves like a multicolored quilt that layered over the sidewalk.

Natalia and Katya knew they were being followed, of course. And that their conversation was likely to be heard and reported.

But this bit of freedom, with the patchy sunlight shifting across their faces and leaves whirling to the ground, was all they could ask for at the moment. This is what Natalia wished the Baltics could see: Moscow in its beauty, Moscow when the light hit the golden domes and red bricks, Moscow like a fiery setting sun. Not Moscow as a prison, but all the things it could be, if only they were allowed to experience it.

Next to her, Katya inhaled and closed her eyes. She spread out her hands and a leaf pinwheeled into her cupped palms.

"Natasha, look!" Katya held up the small leaf like it was a rare discovered treasure. "It looks like a sunflower petal!"

Natalia tugged her lips into what she hoped was a convincing smile. "So it does."

How many autumns had Katya lived through? How many fallen leaves had she seen? Yet such a small thing still brought her joy.

Natalia wished she could see the good in things the way her sister could. Sometimes when the darkness felt like talons closing around her, she would take a breath and ask herself, What would Katya see? Then Natalia would look around the room and try to find something her sister might notice. Maybe it was a bird flitting by a window. Maybe it was something oddly out of place, like a politician's lopsided mustache.

"Natasha, look at that one! Did he not take a proper look in the mirror this morning?"

Even if just for a moment, the world was somehow brighter and less threatening through Katya's eyes.

Natalia needed her sister's eyes right now—her balance, her clarity, her experience. Sometimes she wished her oldest sister would just tell her what to do. But these days, Katya never gave orders. Only insights, observations, and suggestions.

They sat down on a bench which was fairly isolated—an elderly woman sat across from them, and the occasional passerby shuffled through the leaves. A stray dog lay curled at the foot of another bench, fast asleep.

A man took a seat further up the path and opened a book. He was dressed in civilian clothes, but Natalia knew he was an agent.

Watched, followed, listened to. Reported, and if need be, vanished. Such was life under Stalin.

Still, she thought, with a twinge of bitterness that soured the warmth of the fall colors around her.

"I wonder what Kyiv is looking like now," Katya sighed, leaning back on the bench. She took out an open sleeve of cookies from her bag and offered it to Natalia.

"There are no trees left in Minsk."

Natalia blinked. There, she had done it again: said something awful to ruin the mood. She didn't mind with anyone else, but she always felt guilty when she did it around Katya.

When her offer wasn't met, Katya reached into the sleeve and held out a cookie to Natalia. "Trees grow back."

"Sorry," Natalia muttered as she took the pastry.

"What are you apologizing for? You didn't destroy the trees."

Natalia didn't know how to answer, so instead she took a bite out of the cookie. Sweets were still a rarity after the war, but Ivan had managed to procure a stash. It was amazing what the Communist officials were able to get their hands on; items and goods which were scarce for their people. It wasn't like Katya to flaunt luxuries, but Natalia was glad for the distraction. Perhaps her sister had taken them from the pantry without Ivan's knowing.

Katya snapped a cookie in half and said, "Don't worry, sestra, I know you didn't ask to spend the day with me just to talk about trees."

Katya had now switched to Natalia's native tongue. She shot a furtive glance at the agent.

"Oh, don't worry about him," Katya said, popping the cleanly-broken half into her mouth. "I told him he looked like a stuffed pig on the way to the car. He didn't react. The poor boy doesn't speak a word of Belarusian."

Dark brows rose from the book to meet Natalia's gaze, and she quickly averted her eyes back to the uneven bricks of the sidewalk. "A skilled agent is trained not to rise to taunts."

"In that case, he may enjoy this lovely conversation I am having with my sister. I'm not letting him stop me."

Natalia didn't like the idea of being overheard, even if distorted through the kaleidoscope of her language. But it was better than risking the prying ears of the other nations, and what she had to say hardly involved anything of the secret police's interest. And with a budding career as an NKVD agent, their uninvited guest would either be dead or deported soon, anyway.

"So? What did you want to ask me about?"

Short and to the point. Katya knew Natalia did not easily offer up information.

Suddenly she found herself struggling to explain her dilemma. She had rehearsed ways to say this to her sister without completely humiliating herself; yet somehow words failed her now. She clasped her hands in her lap, fiddling with the fabric of her dress.

"I… think I owe Lithuania an apology."

Katya's breath stilled. And Natalia felt it—the world slow, her thoughts calming. As if the leaves drifting to the sidewalk hovered in midair, gravity holding its breath for her to continue.

It was safe. She could keep talking.

"Did you ever hear the rumors? That… that I suggested to Vanya that he torture him?"

Katya's face fell. "I'm sorry that got out at the Estate, Natasha. It wasn't right, what they said about you."

"But it was true." Natalia's posture was stock straight in discomfort, and she ripped a leaf in her lap.

Katya said gently, "I know."

Natalia looked over in surprise.

"I overheard your conversation with Vanya. And I… I was so distressed that I told Eduard. And maybe he told Latvia. And who knows who Latvia told."

Katya said the words evenly, without a hint of guilt or remorse. Natalia remembered Lithuania's words when she had confronted him about the rumors in Berlin:

It doesn't matter who it was. You made that decision yourself, Natalia. It can't be helped that it's public information, and you can't be angry if nations look at you differently because of it.

She clasped her hands tighter in her lap, and a pang of guilt corroded at her chest. If it was so hard to admit her wrongdoings to Katya, how was she going to approach the topic with Lithuania?

"So you wish to apologize for suggesting it to Vanya?" Katya prompted.

Natalia chewed on her lip, then nodded.

"I think that is a wonderful idea."

Natalia took a shaky breath and said, "But I don't… I don't know how."

Katya's smile was lit with amused endearment. "You don't know how to apologize?"

Natalia reddened. "I—I don't know how to apologize to Lithuania."

"What makes him different?"

"I think—" Natalia's voice broke. She looked down into her lap and whispered, "I think that I am responsible for his scars."

Katya's voice became stern, "Natasha, look at me. You are not responsible for anything Vanya does to him."

Natalia became intently preoccupied with a loose thread in her dress. "You heard our conversation—Vanya argued with me, he said he didn't want to hurt him."

"Have you known Vanya to ever do something he truly did not want to do?"

Natalia took a breath to answer the question, but then realized its implications. She slowly turned to face her sister.

Katya's expression had fallen into hard lines that revealed her age. And then Natalia saw it—a flare of anger in those blue eyes, like the throbbing heart of a burning coal.

She chose her next words carefully. "Vanya's choices in this world are limited."

"They are?" Katya feigned surprise. "Does he have more choices, than, say, you or me?"

"No. Because his leaders—"

"If Vanya were to walk up to our guest over there, could he snap his neck before the poor boy could raise a pistol?"

Such uncensored violence spoken in public chilled Natalia. She resisted the urge to glance at the agent. "He wouldn't. Because there would be consequences."

"But could he? If he really wanted to? And what would be done about it? Men are replaceable; he is not. Our brother knows that, and so do they."

Natalia started. Where was this coming from? This was not where she had expected this conversation to turn.

Katya leaned closer, her voice falling to a hush. "I am telling you this now, sestra, because I see the way you watch Lithuania. I know that you are helping him. But you will never be able to understand him unless you understand who our brother really is."

Natalia drew back. "But you love Vanya."

An awful, long silence followed.

"Sestra, you love him. He—" Her voice faltered. "He's our brother."

She emphasized the last word to indicate the real meaning behind it: not just one brother, but the living memory of their entire family. All of them had died, so that Ivan could live.

Volodya, Stasik, Sasha, Lyosha, Militsa, Lyuba, Oleg… and Ira.

What faint, perhaps, even fabricated memory remained of their faces flashed through Natalia's mind as she thought of each of them by name. The last remnant of what was once their family lived on, with Ivan. How could Katya not love him?

Katya leaned back on the bench, and her eyes searched the trees as if looking somewhere far beyond reach.

"Did I ever tell you what I said to Vanya, when the invaders came?"

She didn't specify which invaders, but Natalia knew she was talking about the Mongols. The horde had wreaked such complete and utter desolation upon the lands of Rus, that often Katya and Ivan avoided calling them by name—as if doing so might bring bad luck or disturb the Khan in his grave.

Katya's voice was even as she said, "I told him I wished he had never been born."

Natalia tensed. Ivan had recounted this to her long ago, but she had hoped it was an exaggeration brought on by his rage. It was an entirely different experience to hear those words leave Katya's lips.

At last Natalia summoned the courage to whisper, "You don't… still wish that."

It was more of a statement than a question. Because of course Katya wouldn't wish that. Because Ivan was their only remaining brother; the boy who didn't ask for this terrible burden which was flung upon him against his will. Natalia understood why Katya might have said it during the invasion—she herself had felt unspeakable rage towards her youngest brother for existing, for draining the life from her sister and destroying their family. It had taken her centuries to accept that it hadn't been his fault. Any blame directed towards Ivan was merely a distraction to cope with the harder truth: that their family had been needlessly murdered.

Surely Katya had come to the same conclusion?

Instead of answering, Katya tilted her head to the side, as if in consideration. She picked up a leaf which had fallen onto the bench and blew it out of her palm so that it drifted onto her lap, a splash of shock red on her cream-colored skirt.

"Vanya blames me for Volodya's death. And he's never forgiven me for it."

This Natalia also knew.

Novgorod had been to Ivan as Ira was to her. Only his loss had been even more cruel, as Ivan had been led to believe the responsibility of representing Rus would be shared between himself and a fearless brother who would guide and protect him through those hardships. Instead, Novgorod's life had been ripped away just like the others, and Ivan was left to carry that weight alone—no guide, no mentor, none of Novgorod's encouraging words, charming smiles, and inspiring strength.

After Novgorod died, something had permanently altered in Ivan. Natalia knew that whichever part of her was buried deep in the earth with Ira, had also been destroyed in Ivan when Novgorod breathed his last. Their absences had burned holes into both of their lives—holes which, no matter how hard they both tried, could never be refilled. It seemed to be the reason she and Ivan could always find comfort with one another.

"Do you know what scares me more than anything in this world?" Katya asked.

Natalia did not answer.

Katya held a dry leaf in her palm and crumpled it, opening her fingers to reveal broken brittle shards. "Dying," she whispered. "I am afraid of dying. I want to live, Natasha, I have always wanted to live. I love my people, I could never leave them. So when Volodya began talking about an heir—about passing on power to the next generation, and what that meant…" She took a shuddery breath. "I was furious with him. How dare he suggest that I was finished living, that either of us were finished. And so it was immediately decided in his mind that he would be the one to do it—that he would take Vanya as his heir."

Katya gripped the bench, her usual soft features now strained into sharp lines. "Sometimes when I look at Vanya—with those violet eyes, and that same blond hair—I think, maybe somewhere buried deep within him, is my brother and my best friend." She shook her head, her next words choked with bitterness: "But Vanya has only ever held hatred for me. Because I was the one who chose to live. And because of that choice, Volodya was the one who died."

The unspoken implication hung in the air: That Ivan wished Katya had been the one to die, and that Novgorod had lived. Natalia wanted to say something to contradict this; some fragment of a conversation with Ivan which could prove Katya wrong. But she could not remember him saying any such thing.

Katya acknowledged the silence with a sad smile. "But it's an impossible riddle, isn't it? Because if I had chosen to sacrifice myself, I would have been the one to mentor him. Then would Vanya have bonded to me, and been furious at Volodya for letting me die?" She shook her head. "There is no right answer. But he must always choose blame, he must always choose anger, no matter the offense. That is who our brother has chosen to be now."

"But he has also done good," Natalia countered. She understood to tread carefully in this area, but she wanted to offer some hope to her sister. "When we were hungry, it was Vanya who rescued us. When I was sent away, he was the one who came for me."

Natalia didn't know all the details of how Ivan had found Katya during the famines, supposedly starved to death in her own house in Kharkiv. She had never asked; she only knew the experience haunted both of her siblings in different ways. But she did know that Ivan had braved a weeks-long train ride and had even boarded a prison ship to find her in the impossibly vast depths of the Kolyma camp system. After years of slaving away at Poland's house, then the arrest and torture by the secret police, weeks in a cattle car packed in with other prisoners like cargo, the reeking stench of the bowels of the prison ship, being stripped of her name and being given a number… the first time Natalia stumbled out of the barracks in a line of prisoners carrying a pickaxe into the freezing winds of the tundra, she was certain that Winter had finally decided to kill her.

But it was not Winter who came for her—it had been Ivan. He didn't have to make the trip to save her. He didn't have to give her the scarf off his neck and buy her lipstick and a nice fur coat just to return some of her stolen dignity.

Just as he didn't have to fight to retrieve her knives in Stalingrad.

Ivan had never been obligated to do any of those things—yet he did, because there was still kindness in him, and he knew how to care for others. She wanted to help Katya see that side of him—the parts of him which were still their baby brother, before the horrors brought by the representation of Rus had scarred him.

Katya broke a cookie with a sharp snap. A flock of pigeons had gathered around the bench, and Katya began throwing crumbs to the birds' frantic flaps and coos. It was at the height of the noise when she said:

"Natasha. Please know I mean no harm in asking this, and I don't presume to know what happened to you during the war. But… Ludwig's men. What did they ask of you?"

Ludwig's men.

The warm image of Ivan vanished, and a cold chill crawled into Natalia's chest. She and Katya had been skirting around forbidden topics to avoid suspicion, but this was the most taboo subject of them all. Any explicit spoken connection to the Germans could land either of them, or even the Baltics, on a train to the labor camps. The NKVD were flushing "fascist collaborators" out of the Soviet Union like exterminators with a cloud of mustard gas, and based on Ivan's stories, they seemed to care little whether or not the charges were true.

But even more shocking than the risks of discussing the war, was the subject matter itself.

Ludwig's men.

If they could even be called men at all.

Natalia felt stricken back to the grey skies and blood-soaked earth of her occupied lands. The cruel laughter of soldiers, the helpless screams of her people, the methodical firing of bullets, the blazing of fires…

She jumped when the wings of a pigeon brushed her leg. She had already begun to feel uneasy with this conversation, but now she felt betrayed—as if the safety of talking with her sister had been breached. The only way Natalia knew to escape was to give an answer.

"They used me as a bloodhound to hunt down my own people," she whispered, looking away in shame as the words scalded her throat. "The rumors were that much true."

"Did they ever ask you to do it?"

The question was nearly drowned out by the cacophony of suffering in Natalia's own memory. She turned to look at Katya in confusion; her sister was still speaking in code and the meaning was lost on her.

Katya's face was grim, understanding the weight of what she was asking. "You saw what they did to your people. But did they ever ask you… to do it yourself?"

Natalia swallowed; now she understood. The Nazis may as well have asked her to take the lives of her own people; what was the difference?

But when she saw the intensity of Katya's expression, she realized her sister wasn't speaking in the abstract—she meant it in the most literal sense. Had Nebe ever placed a gun in Natalia's hand, or forced her to pull the trigger at the killing pits?

"No," she finally whispered, her voice hoarse. "They only wanted me to watch."

"They never asked you to," Katya said. "Because they knew you would not do it."

Natalia remembered grabbing the cold barrel of a pistol and pressing it to her own head in the stairwell in Minsk as she screamed past her sobs:

It would be better for me to die than betray them!

Shoot me, dammit, I can't do this anymore!

She looked away, shaking. "Why do you ask me these things now?"

"Because I only want you to see," Katya said gently. "You would never harm your own people; even men as vile as those understood that. But Natasha… you know that Vanya would. And he has."

Natalia turned back to her sister, startled by these words.

Katya continued to speak in a low, urgent whisper: "When Vanya returned with you from Khabarovsk, a group of men met you at the train station and took him away. And when he returned, what did he tell us?"

"He said that my team had been—" Natalia stopped herself from using the word, executed. She finished with a whisper, "Taken care of."

"Did he say how? Or who did it?"

Natalia stared blankly at her sister, again not understanding. "It was the men at the train station." And the part she couldn't say out loud: They are the secret police; they run operations like that all the time.

She couldn't speak about the journey she had taken with Ivan on the train from the icy clutches of the Gulag back to the civilized society of Moscow—this time in the warm confines of a passenger coach, with the comforts of tea, books, and conversation. She couldn't talk about the small private intelligence network she had created after the Civil War—the very network which had landed her a ticket to Siberia—nor how the head of secret police had been waiting for her and Ivan in Moscow when they arrived. She couldn't explain how the police had sent her back to the mansion, and the part Katya already knew: Late that evening, Ivan had returned with the news that at least a hundred Belarusians had been executed for treason.

Even the censored answer she had given Katya was a risk; by speaking of these things, Natalia would be admitting to her own crimes. She may as well have walked over to the agent, held out her wrists, and asked to be arrested on the spot.

Katya's next words were barely a whisper: "There was blood on his coat."

Dread crept over Natalia as she realized what her sister was implying. "What are you saying, sestra?"

Katya's silence again spoke volumes.

Natalia racked her memory, struggling to recall her brother's exact words when he had returned:

The sentence for their treason was death. I am so sorry, Natasha, there was nothing I could do...

He had looked pale and shaken, as though he had witnessed their deaths. If she had noticed blood on his coat at the time, she would have assumed it had been from another agent's gun, or baton. Certainly not Ivan's.

Vanya had a pistol with him on the train; I remember because it was missing one bullet. Was it loaded when he returned?

Then with a start Natalia realized she was searching for evidence to prove his innocence, and she was disgusted at her own faithlessness in him.

"No," she insisted with a sharp whisper, "If they had made him do it, he would have told me."

Katya's expression didn't change as she watched the bobbing heads of the pigeons peck at the cookie crumbs around her feet. "Do you really think they would have had to force him?"

"Of course they would," Natalia snapped. "Those were my people. Vanya would never—"

"But you are in agreement that they would at least make the attempt? To persuade him to murder your people in cold blood because there was already precedent?"

Now Katya was openly accusing the Russian nation representative of murder within earshot of an NKVD agent. Natalia said sharply, "You make false accusations, sestra. You don't have any proof."

Katya's next words sliced through the autumn air like the steel of a cossack saber: "You should ask him."

Natalia stilled.

"Ask him," Katya said again, and for the first time her voice shook. "You said one of your people contacted him? The one with the glasses?"

Natalia stared in horror.

"Did you see Vanya's reaction when you opened the package and that pair of glasses fell on the table? Why do you think they would have been sent, if not to torment him as much as you?"

The glasses. She had tried to forget. Days after the execution, an anonymous parcel addressed to Natalia had been delivered to the mansion, containing a single pair of cracked glasses encrusted with dried blood. She instantly recognized them as having belonged to her top agent, a woman she had trusted with her life. A woman who was now dead, shot in a forest for treason.

Shot by...

"No—"

"He flinched, Natasha." Katya pressed. Her voice had become hoarse, the echo of a nameless pain that stretched back through generations. "Only you know her name. Ask Vanya what that poor girl said to him before he took her life."

Natalia stood abruptly from the bench, and the sudden movement startled the pigeons who flapped away in a raucous. She wanted to storm out of the park, all the way back to the mansion. She wanted to scream.

Lithuania accusing Gilbert of using her for intelligence during the war was one thing. Her very own sister accusing their brother of murdering Natalia's people was quite another. She knew Katya and Ivan didn't get along, but this had gone too far. Katya knew how much Ivan meant to her. He would never do something like that, and if he had, he certainly wouldn't lie to her about it. Even the thought made her nauseous.

"I know what our brother looks like after he's killed," Katya said, her voice quiet but stern. "And he had that look in his eyes after he returned from the forest."

No. It's impossible. He wouldn't!

But even less likely than Ivan lying to her, was the possibility that Katya would lie to her.

Natalia had been wrong before…

Her fists closed around the skirts of her dress, trying to keep her reaction minimal so as not to draw attention. "That was more than ten years ago. If what you say is true, why wait until now to tell me?"

"I was fighting each day to stay alive, it would have solved nothing to start disagreements between the two of you. But now, since you are choosing this path, it's time that you knew. You are not at fault for Vanya's choices. He has hurt you and Lithuania both. And only when you admit that can you truly help Lithuania to endure it."

Katya's words confused her. Choosing a path? Was it really such a big decision to help Lithuania? Should that not have been what she should have done this entire time?

Katya's eyes softened with understanding. "I know what Vanya represents to you, Natasha, and your loyalty to him is to be admired. But supporting and defending him will never be the same as following—"

Natalia sent her sister such a scathing look that she broke off with a whisper,

"…her. He's more than our brother; he's a symbol, and he makes choices for Russia before he makes choices to do right or wrong. In many ways, Natasha, the closer you are to him, the more danger you will find yourself in. And now, you are also growing close to Lithuania. You saw our brother's reaction to the uprisings. You must be careful."

You're going to have to make a choice, Belarus.

The realization that Katya was giving the same advice as Poland irritated Natalia to the point of wanting to discard it altogether. The flock of pigeons had returned, and she now found their presence highly annoying. Natalia startled them with a sudden stomp of her feet and a barked, "HAH!" The flock scattered away in a whirlwind of flapping wings, and Katya yelped in surprise and covered her head.

"Why did you do that?" Katya suppressed her laughter as she dusted a feather off her skirt.

"I only asked how I should apologize," Natalia said, crossing her arms. A few pigeons cautiously returned, the relentless bastards, and she stomped the sidewalk, scattering them like marbles. "I am asking for help with Lithuania, not Vanya."

Katya combed her fingers through her tousled hair. "Yes. But you cannot separate caring for Lithuania from facing the cruelty of our brother. You must first understand one before you can fully understand the other."

Natalia sat back on the bench, arms still crossed. "I understand Vanya more than anyone."

Katya let out a short sigh. She gave Natalia a look that reminded her of the way a babushka might watch a group of children about to do something foolish. But Katya seemed to accept it wasn't worth pressing the point further. She adjusted the embroidered handkerchief around her head and said, "Alright—let's talk about Lithuania. If you want to apologize for advising Vanya to torture him, you should know our brother would have chosen that path with or without your input. Lithuania doesn't blame you because he understands that. But," Katya smiled. "I know he would appreciate it. He has a lot on his mind, Natasha. He can't afford to dwell on the past when he is struggling each day to survive."

"Like you?" Natalia asked.

Katya took a deep breath, then picked up another leaf from the bench. "Look at this one! It's the same color as Levan's oranges."

Natalia realized that if this is how her sister saw Ivan, it must be painful for her to live with him.

"Sestra… if ever there is something you need me to do to help you…"

"I already told you: the thing I most fear is dying. And look—" Katya spread her hands up to the sky where the sun broke through the leaves in golden shafts of light. "I am alive, today with you, and I get to experience the beautiful autumn leaves. And some days, that has to be enough. We will have hard days, and we will have good days, and as long as we keep living, someday our people can be free."

Natalia was struck with the image of Lithuania standing under the awning of the Cathedral with flecks of snowflakes collecting in his hair, the Lithuanian flag sewn onto his shoulder and the same hopeful light in his eyes.

Freedom, Natalia. I can taste it. It's so close.

She had a clear picture of what freedom might mean to Lithuania. But what did it mean to Katya and her people?

Instead Natalia opted for a much simpler question: "Is that what you tell Estonia?"

Katya had taken to reading in Estonia's office, and Natalia couldn't help but wonder if the two were romantically involved. She hoped not—the northern-most Baltic had all the affection and charm of a gravestone. She couldn't fathom what her sister saw in him, even if they were "just friends" as Katya insisted whenever asked.

Katya's face flushed and she rummaged to put the cookies back into her bag."Eduard is—he has trouble, seeing the positive side of things. They all do, after what they've been through. The best I can do is to help them see hope."

But your hope is outward facing to a future away from Moscow. I hope they can make a future here.

Natalia thought her own vision for the Baltics was more realistic than some grandiose dream of breaking away from the Soviet Union.

"So it seems we both worry for them," Katya added, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

Natalia's face grew hot. "I don't worry for—I am just looking out for him because Poland asked me to!"

Katya's smile was mischievous. "Ah, because you are always so quick to do Feliks's bidding?"

"He made a compelling argument," Natalia said, wishing for this part of the conversation to be over. "And I'm not just doing it for him. I'm doing it to repay Lithuania for his help at the Estate."

Katya smiled. "I'm glad you have found someone to care for, Natasha."

I care for Vanya, she thought, but decided against saying it.

Natalia noticed the agent turning a page in his book. She realized it was unwise to mention Lithuania and Poland in the same sentence—the NKVD were determined to keep the two completely isolated from each other, thanks to their reputation for escapes and uprisings. Even if the agent couldn't understand the entire conversation, he might report that Natalia was involved in some "Commonwealth Conspiracy." Natalia was grateful Ivan could vouch for her; she had as little interest in joining a revived Commonwealth as Lithuania did. Even so, she shouldn't mention Poland again. Between Warsaw, the Gulag, and Berlin, Natalia's long list of affiliations certainly didn't make her the most upstanding Soviet citizen.

Natalia decided her best course of action was to change the subject.

"You said that sometimes you try to see Volodya in our brother," she said, twisting the stems of a pair of leaves between her thumb and forefinger. "Do you think our siblings are still alive in that sense? That they are a part of him?"

Katya's eyes grew distant. "That would be a question to ask Vanya. If he can still hear them, he has never shared that with me." Her voice grew bitter, "I like to think that Winter stole them like a void swallowing souls. I don't think Vanya hears the voices or counsel of any of our siblings. All he hears is the shriek of winter wind and the cold stab of ice."

Natalia knew that Winter sometimes visited Ivan to give him "advice." The encounters left him shaken and weak—even after centuries of carrying the representation of Rus, Winter enjoyed tormenting him.

"So you understand that is why we must support him now?" Natalia pressed. "To help him carry that burden?"

Katya gave Natalia an understanding smile. "Perhaps that is your role to play. By the time I tried to reach him, it was too late—he had already pushed me away. Vanya doesn't want to hear any glib advice on how to lead his people from me. In his eyes, I will always be the selfish nation who let Volodya die, so that I might live."

"But he does love you," Natalia said softly. "He brought you back from Kharkiv. He called in the doctors. He feared for your life."

"He only brought me back from a hell of his own making."

Natalia could see no way to mend the injuries between her siblings, and it seemed neither of them were interested in putting in the effort. While she had escaped the terror of the Mongols to join Lithuania as part of the Duchy, Katya and Ivan had been left to suffer in the invasion. She didn't know all they had been through, or why it had torn them apart instead of bringing them together. Nor had she been privy to Ivan and Katya's communications leading up to Novgorod's death. Centuries had passed, and Natalia still didn't know all of the details.

All she knew is that Novgorod—Katya's best friend, Ivan's mentor and idol, a man they had both loved dearly—now tore an irreparable rift between them.

Sometimes Natalia wondered what their oldest brother would think of their family now—broken, war-torn, and bickering. But then, the image of the warm, happy family she once had was forever shattered that day in the chapel.

And although it was an impossible and foolish dream, she understood why Ivan fought so hard to win it back.

"A nation's natural path is curved. If he stops learning from the past, his future is doomed to repeat it. He runs in a circle he can never escape."

Katya had recited the old saying in the original nation tongue, drawing an imaginary circle in the air.

"Ivan blames me for Volodya's death, but whose arrow was it that actually killed him? It was Muscovy's own hunger for power that did it. But he can't bear the weight of that truth. So he blames me. Was it my choice, to stay alive that killed him? Was it Volodya's choice, for giving up his life? Or was it Vanya's choice, for conquering Novgorod, even if his intention had been to unite them into one kingdom?"

Katya picked up another leaf and held it to the golden sunlight to reveal its intricate veins. "Or was the choice never ours, and fate had already decided? That question goes back as far as to ask if the choices of nations shape history, or if history shapes the choices of nations."

Natalia thought of the scar on her torso where the icicle had punctured her skin, and wondered if that moment could have ever been altered.

"You don't seem to grieve," Natalia said quietly. She had always felt that somehow, out of the four of them, she had been the most impacted that day.

Katya lowered her hand. "Of course I grieve. Volodya was my other half. He was too good for this world. But… he was dangerous, too. Think of how much damage Vanya could do if he had our brother's effortless charm." Katya shook her head. "Volodya could have ruled the world, if he wanted. But he sacrificed himself for someone else. And Vanya could never do that."

Natalia recalled what Katya had said about understanding Ivan and Lithuania. She had seen the darkness in Ivan's eyes on the front as he spoke about what he would do to Germany. She had watched him walk Gilbert to his own death. She had bandaged the open, bloody lashes on Lithuania's back.

She had witnessed her brother's bloodlust, she knew the violence he was capable of inflicting on others. So what else did Katya want her to see?

"You said that... I need to understand Vanya's cruelty before I can help Lithuania. How do I know when I understand?"

Katya met her with those clear blue eyes. "When you meet true evil, you will be able to recognize it again, even when it appears in unexpected places—places you do not wish to see it. You know what is right, Natasha. You just have to listen to your instincts."

Maybe talking to Katya wasn't like going home.

Maybe it was locking on a set of armor, the snap of a banner in the wind, the gallop of hooves across the steppe. Natalia found her footing, but it wasn't the familiar footing of the role she knew to play in their family. It was a bracing guard; the anticipation of change.

Katya lifted her chin, and in a whirl of wind yellow leaves flitted past her face. The breeze tousled the golden strands of her hair, and her blue eyes hardened like steel fixed on a point Natalia could not see.

And she wondered at how her sister was one of the most ancient nations alive, and yet she still pressed forward, still looked towards things new, to a life better than this.

HISTORY NOTES

Novgorod and Muscovy
After the Mongol invasion, the principalities of Rus split into various territories. Much of what is now present-day Belarus joined the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 1230's, and the Novgorod Republic remained its own sovereign state. Unlike the territories of present-day Belarus and Ukraine in the south, which dealt with Khanate rule, Novgorod was caught in the political rivalry between Poland and Lithuania and the Grand Duchy of Moscow, or Muscovy. Muscovy originated in 1263, when the prince of Vladimir-Suzdal (Ivan's first representation), Alexander Nevsky, created the principality as an appanage for his son. Initially, Muscovy was a vassal state to the Golden Horde, paying the khans homage and tribute. The monarchs of Muscovy consolidated money and power, until Moscow absorbed other Russian principalities. Muscovy went to war against Novgorod and won a decisive victory in the Battle of Shelon River in 1471. In 1478, The Grand Prince of Moscow, Ivan III, sent his army to take the city and ended the independence of Novgorod.

Author's Note:

If there seems to be a lot of info still missing about Novgorod's death, that's because there is! But Ivan's relationship with Novgorod is not Natalia's Pieces of Our Time ch 6 for a new take on the Battle on Ice.

Thank you again for reading, comments are much loved!