21-Day Riddle ✯ Gogol x Reader

When Snow Falls

Disclaimer: No events in this story are to reference any real events. The location is chosen for purely fictional purposes relating to the characters.

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Some years ago, down by Belgorod in Russia on the border of Ukraine, there was an attack one winter done by protesters in a city plaza. The attack had been horrendous, cars set on fire and shops' windows shattered, people's screams mixing in with the sound of gunshots while they pushed amongst each other to get away.

The smell of smoke and gasoline was suffocating, but the smell of blood was worse. You would never forget that smell.

You had been on a day out with your parents, a rare treat after your father had been payed some commission, when without warning, the quiet area turned into pandemonium. An explosion separated you from your parents, glass and dust covering you from head to toe, cries from children filling the air.

You lay on the ground bloodied and coughing, scrambling to get up and attempt to run, ears ringing miserably and your lungs burning. You want to cry, to call out for your family, but you couldn't even hear the sound of your own voice even if you wanted to, and you were sure they wouldn't be able to hear your cries against all else.

As you stand yourself up, being pushed by others running past you, your blurring vision tries to focus on the sight of your hands cut by glass, crimson dripping off your hands, then the rips in your pants from the fall, and finally the scene in front of you, trying to pinpoint a location to run to and take cover.

A smog-like waft of air obstructs your line of sight, and with the crowds blocking the most obvious escape routes, it dawns on you that you are stuck. Panic begins to settle in, eyes tearing up, and then you hear another round of gun shots that make you instinctively crouch back down to the ground, covering your ears and trying to protect your head. Some yells and chants from the protesters can be heard, but you can no longer make out their words. You're trembling, and you can feel your tears streaming down your face silently, afraid that if you made too much noise they'd find you.

You want to find your parents, take their hands and run. You want to start the day over and beg them to stay home today; you don't want to live with the consequences. If only you hadn't been so excited about the extra money, if only you'd always known comfort, then maybe you wouldn't have asked to go out.

Just as you've begun to give standing and running another attempt, you suddenly catch sight of a boy in the corner of your eye, around your age if not older, standing tall and staring at the running people with a peculiar look of disgust. His silver-white hair tied in a low ponytail has been dirtied with dust from the chaos, one of his golden eyes shut tight with a long gash across his face overtop the eye, blood trickling down his face. His clothes are plain, average black pants with a white shirt, nothing out of the ordinary, but something about this boy makes him look angelic, and something about the craze in his good eye is terrifying.

You feel a pull, and suddenly you want to protect him the way you couldn't your parents, so before you know it you've stood and pushed past the fear and the pain just to get to him, taking his wrist and stopping yourself from taking a step back when you see how startled the boy is.

"Go. Let's go." You plead, eyes red from crying and hands still ruined.

The boy studies you as if he had all the time in the world then and there, then he pushes your grip off him but without malice or the same disgust that flashed across his face when he looked at the others. He looks at his hand now stained with your blood, and then back at you. Out of seemingly nowhere, the boy pulls out a gun.

"You run. I'm going to kill them." The boy says to you, which doesn't shock you as much as his smile right after despite being in obvious pain.

"You're crazy, then you aren't any better! You can't!" You protest, trying once again to get the boy to hide with you, to join the masses and live. You know you shouldn't care — this is a complete stranger. In truth, you were probably too afraid to dive into the stampede of humans on your own, and this boy had everything you needed in that moment — except perhaps, the survival instinct you clung to.

"You are letting them win. They are treating us like animals slaved to their fear. I'm going to kill them for it, and it'll be right for the sake of freedom," the boy proclaims. "That can't be wrong at all. You get to choose too, like you just chose to approach me."

You wonder what has brought him to think this way, and to look so beautiful against the violence, but all you can manage in those terrifying minutes is a blank stare, at this point under some sort of existential torment at hearing the boy talk. You feel as though your hands are tied. To stay would be suicide, and you owed it to your family to run and live. So you watch instead as the boy steps away from you with gun in hand, waving it around absolutely wild and delighted, as if he wasn't all too sane in the first place.

As he runs into the smoke, you left helpless in the violence, a cold gust of wind sends a chill through to your bones. Small, white snowflakes come with the wind, and you are reminded of the boy's silver-white hair, a sudden pang in your heart.

You never catch his name, never ask for it, but you could never fully forget the look in his eye.

The boy was more sane than all the others there.

A part of you was frozen in that time, though had trained long after to forget, and instead remember the feeling of the snow on your nose, rather than feel anguish over the boy and the aftermath.

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With a gasp, you wake up from a cold sweat, Nikolai's words from the other night not allowing you to dream but to relive nightmares that you can barely remember once you've woken up.

'...Have you ever been truly free, [f/n]? Have you ever truly lived with your choices?'

You shudder. The screams and voices echo in the back of your mind.

Where had you seen him before?

What was so familiar yet intriguing?

You're losing the game and you know it.