✔ A Minute in Heaven || Wattys 2017

Chapter Eleven - Being the Hero

You are all mine.

...

One of the hardest things to do in life is to face one's fears.

I know that well enough. One of my biggest fears when I was younger wasn't the loss of my parents. I knew early on that people died. It wasn't my own death, or the death of my sisters.

It was that the man who gave me my scars would come back.

Even when he and I were on good terms, Mr. Winter wasn't entirely right in his head. After my father's death at Petrograd, something within him snapped. He never was the same man I had once admired.

Ever since the incident which left me with my scars, I'd feared him more than anything. But when Alfred came into my life, I began to fear Mr. Winter for a different reason. Now, I feared what he might do to Alfred, an American far from home.

I tried to think that no such harm would ever befall Alfred at Mr. Winter's hands.

That was before Alfred went missing.

+ + + + +

It was on a Saturday in October that Mr. Winter returned.

Alfred decided to take the detour to Liberty Belle to make sure that none of her inner workings needed more repairs, especially since it was getting much colder now. I thought that nothing would happen. He'd done this many times before.

When Alfred didn't come home for dinner, I started to get worried. With his metabolism, Alfred was almost always hungry. My worries increased when he didn't return when it was time to sleep.

I decided that enough was enough. After Natalia and Katyushka fell asleep, I crept out of our house and ran towards where Liberty Belle had landed.

When I rounded the corner that led to the building, I was greeted with the sounds of fighting and cries for help. I quickly recognized Alfred, but the other voice was evading my memory.

But it didn't take me long to recognize the manic eyes of Mr. Winter.

"Ivan!" Alfred yelled, trying to look like he wasn't about to get killed. "Great timing, am I- mmph!"

Mr. Winter clapped his hand down on Alfred's mouth. Alfred bit down on Mr. Winter's fingers, but the man wasn't moving.

"Mr. Winter," I said with disbelief.

"Ah, Braginsky!" Mr. Winter sneered in Russian. "We meet again. Been a long time, hasn't it?"

"What business do you have with Alfred?" I asked.

"I know what you've been doing with him, Braginsky," Mr. Winter hissed. "It's disgusting."

"What Alfred and I do is no concern of yours," I said, smiling.

"Don't give me that damned smile," Mr. Winter snarled. "You know he's not from around here, yet you're giving him a safe place in your dad's old home. That's already bad enough, but this kid? Not just an American, but an American faggot as well. And don't try to deny it. You two practically reek of sex." Mr. Winter shook his head, then snorted, "Shouldn't have expected much from a Braginsky."

"What's he saying?" Alfred asked, twisting himself away from Mr. Winter's grip.

"Shut up!" Mr. Winter snapped.

I kept my face as calm as possible, but this man was getting on one too many nerves.

"I may be gay, that is true," I said, "and I may be housing a gay American, but neither of us are the kind of coward that would do this to a child."