"Stupid creep!"
Knuckles connected with jaw. He tasted copper, but didn't feel himself hitting the floor. Stars splashed over his vision instead, and when they faded, the older boy was standing over him.
The smaller of the two, a young boy with messy black hair and a pair of thin, clouded glasses, felt the blood dribbling from his nose and down his lips to his chin. One of his glasses lenses had broken from the hit, a shard of it lying nearby.
He glared at the larger, older boy. The culprit of this violent exchange.
"You're a commie!" The kid yelled, and his foot connected with the young boy's stomach. He let out a grunt, but tried not to show any signs of pain. He wouldn't give this bully the satisfaction.
"Your kind shouln't be here!"
The boy took the abuse. Kicks and hits and stomps, but he still glared at the other kid. He was silent as the blows kept coming, before finally, his abuser spit on him and ran off. The beaten boy watched him go, before he sniffed, and wiped away the blood coagulating at his nostrils. He could feel the tears stinging at his eyes, but didn't allow them to flow as freely as his blood.
After several minutes, the boy slowly rose from the ground. His body hurt and ached. Something inside his chest hurt, too. The kid that had just beaten him to a pulp... he was supposed to be a friend. An hour ago they'd been laughing and playing all over the town, like it was their own oversized jungle gym. But then... one thing had been said, and his friend had turned on him as rapidly at the flip of a dime. He thought this friend could be trusted. He thought he'd understand.
Nobody ever did. Not after the war.
"Nikolai!"
The boy had returned to his home, and his mother shouted his name when she saw him. This wasn't the first time he'd returned in a state like this. It probably wouldn't be the last, but it made his poor mother's heart ache with worry.
She fussed over Nikolai as he sat on a wooden stool. His mother wiped wet rags at him, dabbing them over his wounds, applying ointment and bandages, all the while muttering things under her breath. Most of what she said was in Russian, but it translated into things like "Hateful German children" and "Not my sweet boy."
Nikolai was silent as his mother treated him, simply staring forward.
"Moy malen'kiy Nikolai..." Miss Vaspetin cooed, cupping the boy's cheek with a hand and turning his face to look up at her. "Who was it this time?"
Her English was broken, thick with their native Russian tongue. She would have spoken in their true language all the time if not for their situation. Before Nikolai had been born, when his mother was a young girl, she and her family had lived in the motherland. They had been important people then, working under the Soviet Union. Nikolai's grandfather had been a leading figure in the К.Г.Б., or as the Americans and their English-speaking subordinates put it: the 'K.G.B.'
Then the Polar War swept over the world. It was meant to be a third world war, but when the dust settled, they called it the Polar War. It had been what the Cold War heated into, but its consequences cast a cold climate over the globe. Summers were cool in the eastern world, and winters were lethal. Only time would warm things up, but Nikolai would be a much older man when that time came.
"Mal'chik. Dumal, chto—"
"English, Nikolai," his mother urged.
Nikolai cringed. He hated the language as much as his mother did, but if they wanted to live... they had to conform. It wasn't as though they were completely alone, there were other displaced Russians, and the German people themselves had to switch from their language to American English after the U.C.A. took over, but it was no secret that Russians and Germans hated one another. After the second world war, and what came after, then the Polar War... bad blood ran a dark, dark red.
