Just a Dream ♙ Fyodor x Reader

6: Paper Castle

'God must hate me.'

You stare at the snow painted red with blood. In the corner of your eye you see the body of a small child laying motionless, head buried in snow and hair crystallized from the wetness of the dark liquid. This image conjured up by your mind, you can't tell if it's a memory from your past or only a dream.

Your body is both yours and not your own. When you look at your hands, purple and blue from the cold, they are hands of a child — and yet it's still you. You feel the fear, you feel the guilt.

A crime has been committed; punishment has to be handed out.

"What have you done?!" A woman screams, wearing a veil over her head, body covered in a long black gown. She looked like she had known death was paying them a visit, like she has been waiting for his council all these years. Against the pure white of the snow, only a small church in the back ground, she looks sinister. She looks like punishment.

Panicked, you begin to shake your head and stand up desperately.

"Nothing!" You yell back, but it's as if this dream or memory has taken your voice. The woman hears silence.

"You monstrous child." The woman weeps now, kneeling beside the child and pulling out a beaded thread shaped like a necklace but wrapped around her hands. The scenery is hazy now as you try to concentrate, but you are sure you catch a glimpse of a wooden cross.

She was praying.

You're trembling, reaching out to her, wanting to be saved, but she only gets further and further away. Before you know it you're in darkness, falling until you've crashed on top a wooden floor, clothes being thrown on you and an incomprehensible yelling overwhelming your ears. They hurt. It hurt.

"Get out! Get out!!" The same woman is threatening you here.

You can't get up. You can't get away.

You feel a wetness on your cheeks, and at first you think you're crying, but when your hands reach up and wipe at your face, you find your hands are covered in blood.

Then you're screaming, screaming hysterically and you're burning. Your body is on fire and so is the whole room. The woman's body has turned to ash in front of you, bones white and clean of all human remains.

You should feel guilt, but you only feel relief.

———

"Our kisa has a fever, aw. Look at the way she squirms.." Nikolai Gogol laughs, an echo in your half asleep mind. You feel groggy, drugged. You try to reach out to him — to anyone, but your body doesn't respond.

"You heightened her dosage."

Fyodor.

"I'm setting her free, dear Dos." Nikolai says as-a-matter-of-factly, voice suddenly serious, lowered. He was a totally different person then.

"I'm saving her." Fyodor counters, emotionless. It's unclear whether he's actually arguing with Nikolai or stating a careless truth. You can't tell, your body still doesn't feel yours.

"You caged her. You created that job at the library for her, you calculated everything. You've played her that song for years, faintly, so she thinks it only a memory in her head. You've captured her, trained a good little bird to be yours to save because you didn't save her before. Let me set her free and she'll fly only to you the way you deserve , dear Dos." The clown whispers like he's talking to his king and you can imagine the way Nikolai leans in, taunting Fyodor. You can imagine the king glaring down at his amused subject, studying the other, intrigued but never afraid. He was the one in control and he relished in it.