clandestinement | Apocalypse children

Apocalypse children - for worthallthis

There's an alarm sounding somewhere in the compound, harsh and urgent and ignored, and somehow still less jarring than the occasional creak of metal. Beneath that, voices sound, quick and quiet and tense, the pitch entirely wrong for any technicians, any handlers, anyone who belongs in this room.

"...sure you did it right?"

"I entered the sequence exactly like I was supposed to!"

"Then why isn't it--"

The first voice cuts off at the hydraulic hiss of the cryo tube opening. The inrush of air brings with it the smell of smoke, and the acrid taste of heated metal, and the sound of nervous gasps and small feet on grated metal flooring.

Outside the cryo tube stands a group of girls, the oldest somewhere around twelve or thirteen, the youngest perhaps four, clinging tight to the leg of one of the older girls and peering at the tube with wide-eyed fascination.

The girl who positions herself at the front of the pack - and they are a pack, all but the smallest fierce-eyed and wary - doesn't look like the oldest, round-faced, blonde hair straggling loose from her braids, clothing and skin streaked with blood and a bruise darkening beneath one eye. She lifts her chin, and looks with bright defiance at the man she and her sisters have just pulled from the dreamless grip of cryo-stasis.

"Winter Soldier," she says in clear Russian, and despite her fierce air, there's something like hope in her voice. "Can you understand me?"

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"Dust and ash," Brother guesses, feeling-- resigned. Like he expected it, though he doesn't know why. He thinks it's going to start getting cold outside in the next few days, if it isn't already. They will definitely need the cold weather fear.

He turns off the system. "This is all I needed to see. Thank you."

She nods acceptance of the guess - it makes sense, if a little distantly, and it's not like she's been outside since the facility locked down.

After a moment, she swallows hard and says, "We will show you the supplies we've gathered. And you can tell us what we will need when the doors open again. Yes?"

It's a goal, if a short-term one. Better than dwelling on the woman who might or might not be her mother, lying under a heap of dirty snow, or on the girls lost or dead. Maybe she'll have time to mourn, once they've found somewhere better, somewhere safer to hole up, where none of their masters will know to look.

Short-term goals are the best kind of goals. Brother nods, still looking at her side-long more than full-on, still warring with the entirely unfamiliar urge to take her up against his side like he had with Alyssa. That had been alien but natural at the same time. But Alyssa had asked for it-- wordless but obvious. Yelena has not.

So he doesn't. He just steps away from the records and towards the hall, again. "The more supplies we have, the better. Especially food and clean water. And weapons." The last is more of an automatic afterthought than the main gist of his expectation. And that is mostly for him, more than the girls.

"We should have food and water for a couple of weeks," Yelena says. The facility had been well-stocked, and meant to cater to inhabitants both larger and more demanding than a pack of traumatized children. "If we can carry it. I don't know how many of the transports are working, or if we have the right parts to fix them."

A pause, and then more quietly, she adds, "There are plenty of weapons. The ones we collected are mostly what we are best with, the girls who are fully trained, but there are more."

"We can carry it," he assures her, and hearing that there are transports actually on site is a weight off his mind. Enough that he can say: "And I think I can fix anything that's broken even if there aren't parts, depending on how it's broken. Put most of the supplies in a truck, drive slow, take turns riding in it when someone gets too tired to walk. Just need to bring fuel."

It's a plan. It's a plan he likes. He'll check for the trucks later. First, "When did you eat last." He knows, even if he doesn't remember, that coming out of the ice means he needs nutrients. His nutritional drinks ought to be on site. He... doesn't know how to make them, so he hopes they come pre-mixed.

She listens with keen attention, shoulders dropping just a fraction, as though with relief that there's someone else to make plans, to help handle the logistics of keeping their sisters safe. "We should be able to scavenge things from the transports we aren't taking," she says after a moment.

They can't take them all. Not enough of them can drive to take them all.

As to when she'd last eaten... "A few hours ago. We had breakfast. But it must have been much longer for you."

"Since before I was put back in cold storage," he agrees. He isn't sure what his fueling requirements are. ... probably more than a child that weighs less than half what he does.

"Standard procedure post-thaw includes taking nutrients." He has to admit, "I don't know where my supply is. They never showed me that."

Yelena's quiet for a moment, turning that over in her head. "Probably in the medical bay," she decides. "They don't wake you up enough for the mess hall to make sense, and there wasn't anything in the room where we found you that had any food or medicine."

She pauses, studying him with the sort of gravity only a child can muster. "Are you able to eat normal food? Or do you need specialized things because of your enhancements?"

The medical bay. With, one, a bunch of things he doesn't want to think about let alone see, and two, probably the bodies of the lost girls. Unpleasant.

But he needs to answer her question. It's something they'll need to account for, going forward. "I don't know. They always gave me a big cup with a straw and this thick liquid to drink." It was gross but it did the job, and that's what counted, he supposes. "Is that normal food?" He doesn't think it is, but it doesn't hurt to make sure.

If he can eat something else, that would probably be better than carting around a bunch of the nutritional goop. He's pretty sure there were drugs in the drink, too but he'll have to do without those.

Her nose wrinkles slightly, and she shakes her head, swift and sharp. "No, that's not normal food."

She pauses for a moment, teeth worrying at a patch of dry skin on her lower lip. "We'll look for it. But you should try normal rations too, before we leave. It will be easier to resupply, if it will not make you sick. Or if you're able to tolerate a mix."

"I'll try some things from the mess hall before we go," he promises. He pauses. "I'm pretty sure there's a mess hall here." That is, in fact, not somewhere he has ever been allowed. The girls probably know where it is.

He shakes himself a little. "I'll find it. And check the transports. Where have you all been sleeping?"

"There is," she says. And then adds after a moment's pause, "There is a mess in the cafeteria, but the actual kitchen is fine."

It had been luck, that, and not a deliberate effort to keep food and corpses separate. Obvious as the necessity might be in retrospect, there isn't a one of the young Widows who would have considered it while fighting for their lives.

"One of the rooms in the barracks is intact. We used that. It's a little crowded, but we've all slept in worse quarters."

"I will deal with the mess." He looks her up and down. "You and the other girls should find the hose." A pause. No, wait, the hose was for him. It would probably hurt someone that small. (It hadn't exactly been comfortable, for him, but he needs to get chemicals out of his hair, too.)

"They didn't hose you girls down," he corrects himself. "You should get baths. I will clean up the base while you clean up each other. Okay? Then we will all try the food."

It will give them some time to settle, and give him some time to think. And maybe freak out a little bit.

Her eyes widen a little in alarm when he mentions finding a hose, slim shoulders hunching before she forces them straight. It does hurt, especially in the dead of winter, but shying from punishment has never once lessened it.

But...apparently, he doesn't mean it as punishment. She frowns up at him for a moment, before nodding. "We will get cleaned up. But you need a bath too, once we have all had food."

"Yes. I'll get clean before we go, too." Chemicals. In hair. Ugh. A bath probably isn't for him-- except, of course, there are no techs or handlers to turn on the hose. ... maybe a bath is all he can have. He doubts the girls could really manage it.

Huh. He shakes his head, shaking the thought away. "Go on. I'll handle this. Tell the girls I'll be back soon."

"Yes, Brother," she says, and after a moment spent weighing things, she darts in to give him a quick, fierce hug, small body held stiff, as though she's prepared to bolt. Unlike Alisa, she's old enough to know just how dangerous a combat-trained adult can be, and while he's not one of the men who'd tried to kill them, it will still be some time before she's entirely comfortable with physical contact.

He's frozen for a beat, torn between conflicting urges: to fling her away too close too close, and to gather her close. She's not the only one who has trouble with physical contact. Alisa had been entirely unthreatening, not hitting any danger signals or trauma buttons, but somehow Yelena isn't quite as safe and easy. She's got blood in her hair. He can smell it.

But she's his sister now. He wants that. You can't be afraid of your little sisters, can you? He doesn't want to. He wants to make her feel better, feel safe.

His hands fall on her shoulder and the top of her head, gingerly. He doesn't hug her, but he carefully pets her, like a wild thing he wants to soothe.

It works, at least a little - she doesn't completely relax, but her posture loses some of its rigidity after a few seconds. His hand petting her hair feels nice, and doesn't make her feel trapped.

It's a moment or two before she pulls away, and scrubs at her face with one hand to wipe away any evidence of damp eyes. "I'll organize the girls," she says, and turns to slip away down the hall, back toward the room where they'd so recently found him.

Brother takes a minute to stand in the entry to the records room and process. Scrub his face with both hands, breathe, and put his actual action plan in order in his head.

He starts with the mess hall. Cafeteria, she'd called it. There is indeed a mess there, which makes his original name for it pertinent. He removes the bodies, throwing them into the records room with the other bodies. They won't need anything else in there, and he can close it off. He doesn't bother with more than a cursory wiping up of blood before moving on. The kitchen is clean, that's the important part.

He spends the next two hours or so hauling bodies until all the dead handlers and techs are out of sight behind a closed door. The occasional body of a little girl he moves to another room entirely, much more gently. The only room he doesn't go in is the medical one, because he stops outside the door and can't make himself go in.

Well, fine. They probably won't need to go in there, either, or if they do he can send Yelena. He considers his task done and heads to investigate the showers. The girls will be done by then, probably, so this way he can figure out how someone gets clean without a hose without them staring at him. It takes him a little while, but he finally emerges and seeks out the barracks much cleaner, and much warmer, and with his hair still dripping a little bit. He feels tired and a little shaky, which he doesn't entirely understand, but he has girls to see. Sisters. Little sisters. That will make things better.

The first thing he might notice about the barracks is that several of the beds have been dragged together to make a large, communal sleeping space. The younger girls are huddled in the middle of it, scrubbed clean, hair neatly braided, watched over by one of the older children, who's halfway through reading a fairy tale.

The rest of the older girls are busy inventorying the gear they've collected so far, having shifted it in the intervening time from the cryo chamber to the barracks, where they're sorting it into neat piles, one for each girl. They look up almost as one when Brother enters, a sea of wide, solemn eyes, which is broken when Alisa wriggles free from the puppy pile on the bed and beelines to attach herself to his leg.

The sudden flood of stares makes him stop short and shrink a little in on himself, uncomfortable and uncertain-- a reaction which is thankfully forestalled by the small child grabs him around the knee. It's hard to focus on being stared at by a dozen murder-children when you're gently detaching someone from your chin and hefting her up onto your hip, instead.

Which is what he does, on the right side with the proper flesh arm. It feels comfortable, natural even, like it's something he's done hundreds of times before. Weird.

It makes it easier to look back at the other girls, though he doesn't actually make eye contact with anyone. "Everyone clean?" he asks, though he can see-- and smell-- for himself that they are.

Alisa snuggles against him, one small hand latching onto his shirt, as though afraid he'll vanish if she doesn't hold on. The rest of the younger girls seem to lose interest at this confirmation that he's still a friend, chattering over each other in a bid to convince their minder to resume the story.

Yelena waves the rest of her cohort back to their task, and trots over to report. "We've all had baths," she assures. "And we have winter equipment for most of us, just not the littlest girls. We will have to use blankets and oversized coats, and maybe they can ride in the transport, where it will be warmer?"

The chatter is better. He tentatively can even say-- privately, to himself-- that he likes the chatter. It's a pleasant noise to fill the space with.

He nods to Yelena's report. "Yes, the smallest ones do not have to walk, but I may be able to alter some of the winter gear to fit them better."

In the meantime: "Has anyone eaten."

"Not yet," Yelena admits. "We were waiting for you to get back."

He won't hurt them. She's certain of it, and the rest of the older girl agree. But it's still ingrained in them to be where they're expected to be, when they're not acting in direct defiance.

Even then, they'd lost more than a few of their sisters to that well-trained obedience, moments of hesitation born of brutal conditioning.

For now, that will serve them well. If Brother knows where they are, it will be easier if there's trouble, and he won't have to worry about corralling them. For now, he just nods. "And I am back. Let's go eat." He'll figure out something. His nutritional sludge wasn't in the kitchen, when he poked around a little there.

Apocalypse children - for worthallthis

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