After several strained, silent hours trudging deep into the woods, they reached a thinning in the trees and stepped out into a clearing marked by an old world, falling down house. The roof was dotted with gaping holes and sagging, paint peeling from the exterior and the garden overgrown with vines and foliage encroaching from the forest.

As they slowed to a stop, Dominika noticed the sun was beginning to dip behind the trees, orange rays cast through the forest in beams of light that illuminated their faces. Gerard’s eyes glowed almost eerily in the light as he looked at her with pity and concern.

“We’ll stop here for the night” he said softly “no one knows about this place, we’re safe here”

“They were all shot, weren’t they?” she asked suddenly. It was the first time she’d said a word all afternoon and the hollow, broken sound of her voice almost made him wince.

“I don’t think you want to know about tha-”

“Stop treating me like a kid and just tell me the truth” she said angrily “I can handle it. I’m not made of glass”

He took her hand and looked down at his boots for a moment before meeting her eyes again.

“Yes. That’s what it looked like anyway. There were militants all over the ground floor of your house, the place was totally ransacked”

She crumpled into tears again, almost knocking the breath out of him when she fell against his chest, wrapping her arms around his middle and holding him tight. His hands patted and rubbed her back soothingly.

“I’m sorry” he whispered into her hair “I loved them too, everyone did, the whole country will be in mourning for your family, Domi. They won’t be forgotten”

She pulled away for a moment, looking up at him under her watery lashes.

“Thank you for saving me” she said softly, wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her cardigan.

“Lets get you inside”

---

The last shreds of daylight disappeared slowly as they sat in the least damaged room of the small run down house. The windows were bare of glass and the wind had started to pick up now they were closer to the ocean, it brushed over their arms and made the hairs stand on end. The room was almost pitch black as they lacked any light source except for a small cigarette lighter Gerard carried. They sat a small distance apart, backs against the wall with their legs stretched out. He’d held her till her wracking sobs slowed to sniffles, and now they’d sat in silence till the darkness in the room outweighed the dark thoughts swirling through her head and she spoke quietly.

“It’s terribly ironic” she sighed “I’ve barely left my room since they told me about this whole marriage…proposal, whatever you’d call it. They tried to get me to come down this morning and I was still too stubborn. Turns out my stubbornness is what spared me, that’ll teach me”

“What do you mean?” he replied, confused at what she was trying to say.

“I’ve given it some thought. If I’d been killed along with the rest of them, the enemy would have gotten what they wanted, problem solved. Instead, my entire family is dead, we’re on the run in the middle of the woods and somehow I have to try and work out how to pick up the pieces of this country all by myself. I’m only sixteen, Gerard!”

The enormity of what lay ahead seemed to stare her straight in the face and the weight of it was crushing. From Russia’s little princess to what? Russia’s Queen? She felt dizzy at the thought.

“You can’t stay here, kid, you gotta go back to America”

She looked at him like he was crazy.

“What do you mean ‘go back to America’? I’ve never even been there, I’m in CHARGE of this country now, I can’t leave!”

“The Chinese are in charge of this country right now, Domi, and they’ll be looking for you to finish the job and take complete control, nowhere here is safe for you right now, not even the base”

“Why isn’t the base safe? No one can get in or out of that place, Gerard, I can at least stay there and be close to my people rather than abandoning them! That’s not right at all, I have responsibilities!”

“You’re no good to anyone dead, Dominika” he said darkly. She raked her hands through her hair in frustration.

“Nothing would happen to me if I stayed at the base, where else in Russia is safer?”

“Do you realize how many more of them than us there are? Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, kid, and as soon as I can get to a damn phone, I’m going to have to tell them to send every reinforcement we’ve got so we can get control again before shit goes crazy, that’s if they haven’t already worked it out. You need to be as far away as possible from this place, and they can protect you in the States”

“They?” she said quietly “You won’t even be coming with me?”

Her face fell even further as she looked at him, searching his face for an answer. He took her hand in his and stroked the back with his thumb. She looked down at their hands twined in her lap.

“I can’t, kid, not yet. I have responsibilities too, I need to be with my Battalion and take control of this thing. As soon as that’s done, I will be back for you, I promise”

“So you can fulfill your responsibilities, and mine are insignificant?

“Your responsibility is to stay alive so you can return and rule your country when it is safe to do so, my responsibility is to serve my country by protecting yours” he retorted.

“*Debil” she muttered. He raised an eyebrow.

“I know what that means” he replied. She ignored him and continued with the onslaught of questioning.

“Where will I go?”

“I don’t have all the answers yet, kid, we’ll know more when we reach the base in a couple days. By my calculations we should get there tomorrow afternoon or the next morning”

“What will I do there?”

He sighed “I don’t know, kid, eat hotdogs? The point is you won’t be hunted down by the Chinese Military. Enough questions now, time to sleep”

She rolled her eyes but shuffled down to lie on the floor, pulling her white cardigan from her lap over her shoulders.

“I thought you were trying to be my boyfriend, not my Dad” she said without facing him. A smile crossed his face in the darkness.

“I thought I wasn’t your boyfriend”

“You’re not. Stop talking now, I’m trying to sleep”

Notes

*moron in Russian ;) Just to clarify, Dominika is fluent in English and Russian. Gerard speaks English and speaks and understands some basic Russian.

The title of this chapter daleko means 'far away' and the previous chapter, sirota means 'orphan'.