The Last Romanov (Under Editing)

Brutus Revealed

Nadya, the girl that had cared for him back at the hospital, looked at him like she'd just gotten punched in the gut. Oh, she's the one that felt betrayed? The nerve! "Sasha?"

It took him a minute to really let what was in front of him sink in. He'd kind of just assumed that Nadya was just another pretty face, one that had shot him down faster than an airship could shoot down a crippled bird. Obviously, he was wrong. So, so damned wrong.

In fact, he couldn't think of a time he'd been more wrong about a person than he was about Nadya.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Sasha snapped, holding the gun up, again. He could feel white hot anger surging through him. Why? What had taken her from being a nurse in the White Army's employ to being a sniper for the rebels?

"What the hell do you think I'm doing?" Nadya snapped. "I'm trying to stop those psychopaths down there. Sorry for not rolling over and letting my principles die like you."

"Sorry for trying to survive this shit show," Sasha said. "You know what I'm going to have to do, now? I'm going to have to arrest you. They're going to execute you, Nadya. All because of your stupid principles. Don't let yourself become one of those poor bastards back in that square."

Nadya's face darkened. "You're not going to take me in. I'm not going to let you."

Sasha took aim at Nadya. At the girl that had helped him recover from the siege. It had been awhile since he last felt like he couldn't take a shot. Not since training, in fact.

"Don't try me, Nadya," Sasha said. "I don't want to shoot you: just surrender, and I'll-"

The next thing he knew, Nadya had run forward, knocked his gun out of his head, and punched him in the face, hard.

He stumbled back, shocked. He heard a crack with that punch; his nose was probably broken.

Nadya pounced on that little shock. She grabbed the gun and kicked him in the stomach, hard enough to knock him down to the ground.

Then, she turned his own gun on him, holding it much more steady than Sasha had. She looked perfectly capable of taking that shot: in fact, he had no doubt that she would, and that she wouldn't feel at all sorry about it.

"That's not what's going to happen," Nadya said. "You're going to stay right there and I'm going to leave. If you try to follow me or try to keep me from going, I'm going to shoot you. Got it?"

Sasha pulled the gun out from his holster and pointed it at her. He still found that he couldn't bring himself to pull that trigger, not yet. It was going to take a lot more to push him to that point.

Sadly, he was pretty sure that Nadya was going to push him to that point.

Nadya sighed. "So, this is how it's going to end?"

She pulled the bolt back, then pushed it back forward. Ready to kill him.

Sasha cocked the hammer of his own pistol. Ready to kill.

"I guess it is," he said. Dejected. Killing had never made him happy, thank heavens, but he didn't normally feel that guilty: normally, he just felt numb. That time, though, he could genuinely say that he felt some remorse for this. This wasn't a soldier he was killing: this was a girl that just got herself wrapped up in the wrong cause. Was killing her really the only thing he could do about this whole situation?

Yep. Because this world was one big shit show-

Nadya fired her – his – rifle.

The bullet went right into his stomach, a little to the left of going right through his belly button.