It was not so easy to consider your own future in the midst of all of that nor in the aftermath of everything that had come before. With faces haunting your dreams what hope was there for you here. You have not yet stepped outside and yet you know that returning to your old duties, returning to your office and the streets which you saw run red with blood, it would bring fresh terrors to the forefront and wrench fresh screams from your lips.
You don't even need to experience it to know. You can feel it in your bones. Though there's less of them now than there were before, you think with grim humour.
"I… I am uncertain of what a return to the port will mean for me. I do not fear it and I will follow my orders to the letter, of course." you say, already feeling the tremors spreading from your hands up your arms. "But I think I may have to leave the service if I'm going to have any sort of life at all."
"You think you should resign?" He asks, not quite managing to keep the surprise out of his voice. You know he has been trying to get you to open up so that you can return to service. But what good will you be if you cannot see your desk for the tears.
"I dreamed of being in the Navy since my Mother told me stories of her time. A month ago I would have bitten your hand off just to get aboard a battleship, let alone to serve aboard one. But now…" Now, after the deaths by your hand and the deaths by your side and the deaths by your orders. Now there is a different feeling entirely. "I'm not so sure I can trust myself to take the risks my country requires of me."
"Do you believe you did the right thing?"
The shakes are in your chest now, shoulders quivering. Breathing is difficult, talking even more so.
"I a-am-am not…" you take a breath, controlling the onset of a stutter, "I don't know. I lead my m-m-m… my sailors." your hands go to your head. You want to pull your knees up to your chest but the pain would be too much. You want to cry but you can't find that dull sting of tears forming.
Nothing is more vivid than the memories of something you simply wish to forget.
"Valentina, Valentina, it's okay." The doctor says, though his voice seems very distant. You rock in your bed, holding yourself, "I'm going to get the nurse and we'll give you something that will help. I'll come back tomorrow okay?"
It feels like an hour before the door opens again and the needle prick finds some small crack in the darkness and the tremors. The shadows retreat and are replaced by blinding white light. Everything goes missing and the day slides away.
Sitting outside the hospital the next day, you take a long drag on a cigarette. The air is biting, cold, and the thing civilian clothes you've been give as a replacement for your ruined uniform are not as thick as you are used to. The bench is hard against your back but at least it's not the scratch of the hospital bed.
After a minute the doctor appears, coming to sit next to you. You finish your cigarette and flick the butt away, fishing another from your pocket and lighting a match off of the bench's armrest before he's even gotten settled.
"Are you looking forward to going home?" He asks, gazing out across the city that has clear skies above it for the first time in weeks.
"Are you ever going to stop asking me questions?" You ask back, sniping. He laughs good naturedly.
"No, but then asking questions is my job."
"Isn't that usually the Zaschita's line?"
"Yes, well, sometimes doctors and the secret police have thing in common." he pauses, breathing slowly, quietly, "I'd like you to come and see me, once a week if you will. I believe that with a properly provided course of therapy and psychoanalysis we can work through some of your problems together."
"Think you can stop the nightmares?" You ask. You will never forget the look on Sasha's face when you asked her a very similar question.
"In time, perhaps. But first, the shaking and the screaming. After that we work on the lesser things."
"There's not much less about it." You say, stubbing out your second cigarette and flicking it away into the gras. For a moment you consider starting another, but it's quite enough. You have been allowed to leave the hospital. It is time for home.
"Then you'll come?"
"I'll come, Doctor." You stand with only a little difficulty, the doctor helping you with your crutches. You've gotten awfully good at managing with just one leg. "I'll see you soon."
"Goodbye, Valentina, and be well." He says with a wave as you set off down the path to the street. Trucks, cars, even carriages are rolling around the city at all hours. It will not take long to flag down a Navy vehicle and get them to give you a lift.
The journey through the city is short but brutally eye-opening. Everywhere you look there are shattered homes, burned out shops, even craters in the street. A few hastily constructed barricades are still in place where nobody has bothered to take them down yet. You pass the Zashchita's headquarters and find it a burned out husk. Perhaps it should be less surprising that the building was the focus of some poor citizens wrath, but nonetheless it's a reminder of how badly things have gone wrong.
You are lucky in some ways though. The building you live in has been scarcely touched by the fighting with only a few small craters in one wall where a line of bullets has stitched across it.
The stairs are difficult, to say the least. More than once you almost trip and have to drop to your knees to avoid falling. The pain is indescribable. You can only count yourself fortunate that no stitches split and you manage to reach your apartments front door without fainting dead away. You stand in front of it, hesitating and, without really thinking, your hobble the extra few steps to the door of Sasha's instead. It only takes a moment to bang on it with a crutch. Your heart hammers away in your chest and you can feel perspiration on your forehead. For the first time in days, you feel scared in the way that she made you feel before all of this started. Scare not of her, but of the way she makes you feel. Scared of what it means. Fearful of what the future might hold, especially now. But there's also hope in there as well. Hope for the possibilities especially.
After a minute or two of standing silently at her door you known again, louder this time. If you've managed to return home in some brief span of time where she's out. Or if something has happened to her. Or worse, if she's left and run, fearing the same things you do.
You'd understand. But you wish she would have said something.
The opening of a door knocks you out of your catastrophizing, but it isn't the one you're standing in front of. A head, a very familiar face, leans out.
"Koshka!" She might as well shout, bursting out and taking hold of you, wrapping her arms around and lifting you six inches clear off of the floor. "Valentina, dear heart, why didn't you say you were getting out today?"
You kiss her cheek, holding her face close to yours. She smells so good it's unbelievable, like pine wood and fresh bread. It takes a moment to realise that there are tears on her face and suddenly there are on yours as well. You haven't seen her since that first day in the hospital, she's been too busy trying to help out with rebuilding wherever she can. But they're not sad tears, not angry tears, but toys of joy and the first that have yet your face in longer than you can remember.
"I missed you, Koshka." She manages to say before your lips are on hers and she's kissing you back and it's a long minute before you break to breath.
"We should probably go inside." you say under heavy breaths. She nods and takes you by the hand before realising that that is going to make things much more difficult. She frowns, takes your crutches and leans them against the wall. One moment you're on your feet, the next, somehow, she has swept you up into her arms and is carrying you into your apartment. You laugh, wrapping your arms around her neck. Oh how good it feels to laugh.
You land on the sofa but a moment later, your crutches retrieved and leant against the wall, and she lowers herself in behind you, an arm around your waist and your back against her side.
"It is good to be home, Sasha." you whisper, then squeak as a cat leaps into your lap. "And yes, you too, Moskya."
"You should have said you were coming. I'd have come to get you." her voice wavers a little.
"And miss the chance to surprise you? No, I wouldn't have missed that for the world." You pauses, pressing against her, "I needed to see the city at peace anyhow."
"I understand that." She kisses just behind your ear, making you shiver gently. "How long do I have you for."
"At least a week. After that… well, I'm not sure I'll be gone for that long."
Her lips stop their featherlight touches.
"What do you mean?"
"I can't face that again. I'm going to resign."
There is silence from behind you. Her arm squeezes you tighter and her head presses against the back of yours. She sighs, long and low.
"I told you, sweet one, that I knew war was no place for you. If you make that decision, I stand with you. We all make our own paths eventually. What will you do instead?"
I will
[ ] Travel for a while. I could see Europa on my savings.
[ ] Join the civil service. I still owe this nation my service.
[ ] Join the foreign service. I can do good work overseas.
[ ] Campaign against war. Killing must never come to Europa again.
[ ] Go into business. Something inventive and exciting.
[ ] Write in (gm veto applies)
Please rank these options from best to worst with 1 being best and the highest number being worst.