Chapter Text
Royale palace 18XX March 13
Ivan was around 14 at the time of his family's murder and he was never the same after. It begins on this fateful day he went outside to play with his sisters in the garden. He set out with a smile on his face unaware of what the evening had lay in store for him and his family.
“Brother! Would you not like to play a game of hide and seek?” Asked Ekaterina expectantly while Natalia sheepishly nodded to their older sister's words.
“If you would have me, I wouldn’t like to impose,” Ivan replied.
“Not at all!” Ekaterina, known to their family as Katyusha said with an approving look.
They began to play a game of tag with Ivan as the seeker and he began to look for his two sisters in the garden and Gazebo. Ivan ran around looking endlessly only to find them hiding in the rose bushes.
“You’ve ruined your dresses.” He said blankly
“I know, I know but it was an amazing hiding spot!” Katyusha and Natalia said in unison with Natalia being the quieter of the two.
“Mother will throw a fit if she finds out what you two did to the brand new dresses she had made for you.”
The trio conversed on their way in from the garden courtyard and into the main quarter of the royal palace. “You ought to go into your rooms to change, Mother will be back from her outing with Duke Edelstein's wife any moment now,” Ivan said with a scolding tone.
Katyusha and Natalia scurried back to their rooms to change, not wanting to face their mothers' wrath, the clicks of the duo's heels could be heard as they ran up the marble stairs.
Royale palace 18XX March 13
“Welcome back mother, did your short trip from outside the capital fair you well?” Ivan asked with a childlike curiosity of life outside the capital city of Vekoshinv.
“Thank you for the pleasantries dear, I did quite well I would say. I would love to have brought you but your father doesn’t think it's very safe.”
“Is it because of the revolutionaries?”
“Sadly yes.” His mother continued “Have you seen your father anywhere? I need to talk to him about something important and then we can all sit down and have dinner.”
“He’s in his workshop.”
“Peter never knows when to give himself a break does he.” His mother began to mutter as she walked off to his father's workshop. This left Ivan all alone to do whatever he pleases. Ivan’s love for sweets was practically unparalleled in the royal palace and doing what every normal 11 year old would do without supervision, he went into the kitchen to grab a few extra slices of cake.
He messed up the kitchen pulling flour off the shelves despite knowing he would get in trouble later but he didn’t care, He was just a child and it might the last moment like this he'll ever have. He ate cake, cookies, macaroons, and other pastries. Ivan felt free just to be able to enjoy himself and indulge in one of his greatest series without being scolded by his mother about getting fat.
Ivan noticed through the kitchen window that it was getting dark outside and realized it must evening and he should go get ready for dinner when he heard the very distinct sound of a window breaking.
Remembering what his Father taught him to do in case there was a break in her immediately went to hide in a cabinet and began to hold his breath.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
The shots were irregular but they came in groups in two and Ivan could only think the worst as he heard footsteps scouring the house for him. The door of the kitchen opened and he could hear people walking speaking in a language he believes to be from their central European states.
A man with blonde long hair and blues eyes accompanied by a man with brown hair and a beard looking who seemed to be from the Italian sovereignty opened the cabinet.
Ivan was terrified
He wanted to scream
Yell
He wanted to know where his sisters were, where his mother and father were.
HE WAS NOT SAFE
Ivan was shaking holding his hand and biting his collar hoping to not make any noise.
“The prince isn’t here?” Said the Blonde one.
“I don’t get it we’ve got men looking up and down to stubby old palace for him, He’s just 11 he’s got to be in here somewhere.” Replied the Italian?
Realization dawned on Ivan when he realized he had the Potential to do magic, Recalling the words his father told about it activating under extreme stress and only happens to those worthy to be great.
He was currently channeling Invisibility, Ivan didn’t know how much longer he’d be able to hold it though. He was so so scared.
He just wanted to be in his Mother’s warm embrace and listen to his father's voice.
Royale palace 18XX March 14
Like all things in life, it comes to an end, and when Ivan was finally able to confirm the rebel forces have evacuated the premises of the royal palace he slowly got out of the cabinet. Legs tired from sitting he trudged up the mangled stairs of his house and made his way to his two sisters' shared room.
He was shocked at the sight he saw.
It left him broken and hurt.
He saw his two sisters who had shone so brightly with life dead on the floor with a bullet in their heads and blood pooling around them dried up so slightly around the edges.
Ivan was Disgusted
Natalia was only 7. He doesn’t get how they could do this to her.
After seeing the lifeless blue-tinted corpse of his sisters he only thought the worse.
Ivan’s legs were extremely tired and he was sure they would give out before they got to his father’s workshop.
His Father’s alchemy was extremely well respected so they couldn’t be dead right? He thought trying to grasp on the innocence he had left.
As he opened the doors to his father’s study he was petrified at the sight of his mother’s face, Burned off and hair pulled, with some of her clothes missing with distinct bruises around her waist and lines of a frayed rope on her neck and lastly a bullet in her head.
His father’s body was unrecognizable, Body parts pulled apart. Skinned peeled off and burned off. His fingernails were missing and bullet holes were in almost every part of his body. The scariest thing to Ivan was the fact that his father who had always seemed unbreakable looked scared, terrified in the face before his death.
Ivan knew why they came to kill him and his father, the war that they had been in with the nation of Gerbarter for almost 21 years, and he knew of the crimes his father has committed to acquire more soldiers and the experimentations for super soldiers he had done on young children. He knew that his mother had seen all of this and turned a blind eye to it and yet Ivan finally broke letting the dam of tears in his eyes fall as he fell to his knees and he thought one thing.
“I will have revenge.”