Chapter Text
Leaning against the alley wall of Sadovaya Street was a boy, maybe twelve, of a terrifyingly pale complexion and red-hued, red-rimmed eyes. They were frightening, not simply because of their odd color, but for the feverish wash of intelligence and fervor inside them. On his head was a white fur hat, a little too big and a little too warm, especially for his florid condition. But the boy did not take it off. That hat, it seemed, was all he had.
People walked across the prospekt, oblivious to this young boy who was clearly sick, who would clearly—without help—soon die. Technically, this was no fault of their own: the boy had been avoiding the public for days now, and had already perfected the art of blending in.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky did not need their pity.
He had been ill before. His destination, as long as he held the strength to get there, would heal him. It always had. It always would. He needed it to.
Because Fyodor Dostoyevsky could not die like… this.
He glanced at his hand. Palmed the wall. Took a breath, and took off again.
It was cold today in the city. That was okay. It would be warm inside the church.
Above Fyodor, the sky shone clear. Sunlight beat on the town in a harsh, bright, heatless beam; to admire the stone buildings lining the street, one had to squint while simultaneously shrugging deeper into their coat. The boy was not wearing a coat. He’d left it behind, opting to swipe his black cloak instead—better to hide with at night. Soon, he'd have to find a replacement, but that could wait—it wasn't quite winter, and carrying more fabric at this point would only be dead weight. Fyodor continued to stumble along the cobbled road. His feverish gaze flickered this way and that as he snaked through alleys he’d memorized from a stolen map. Fyodor walked until he couldn’t. Strength gone from his legs once again, he leaned on the railing of a nearby bridge. The river rushed beneath his shoes, singing its cold song. A great gust of wind blew.
“Hey,” said a voice, suddenly, in its breeze.
Fyodor turned. Before him was a blond boy with strange, split-colored eyes. His braid was ragged; white wisps and wild strands were all over, like it had not been re-styled in months. The wind had beaten his cheeks a forever-pink, as it typically did to the children with no parents, who lived along the docks of the Neva.
“Are you okay there?” he asked, accent Ukrainian.
Fyodor nodded.
The boy came a little closer. “...Are you sure?”
Fyodor nodded once more.
“Well alright. I’m Nikolai Vasilyevich.”
Oh, this would not do…! Clearly this Nikolai was eager to hold a conversation with Fyodor, who, in neither the mood for walking or talking, had already fallen behind schedule. “I am sorry,” he tried, steadying himself from the rail. He made to step around the other. “ I am going to be late.”
“Oh. Where ya going?”
Fyodor forced his body past him. “Mass.”
“Mass?” The blond boy peered toward the dome of Saint Isaac’s Cathedral. It was a distance of three miles or so. Fyodor would have lived closer to it, but he did not want to taint the church with the sin of his… affliction. “Listen.” Nikolai stepped in front of him, hands aflurry. “I don’t mean to be rude… but um. You look like you’re about to die.”
Fyodor shook his head. “This is how I always look.”
Still unbothered and still undeterred, Nikolai went on. “I saw you trip like four times coming up the road. Where are you even from?”
“Petersburg,” he said while staring at his boots.
This unhelpful answer earned him a satisfying huff, but Fyodor scarcely heard it; because, at once, the boy was darting for his shoulder, and only by the mercy of God alone did he step back in time.
“What are you doing?” Fyodor hissed, jerking to the side before Nikolai could try again. “Don’t touch me. Do not touch people on the street, are you stupid?”
Nikolai crossed his arms with a flourish. “So you admit you’re sick!”
“I am not sick,” he said through clenched teeth. Dodging the other’s hand had sent his body reeling. His whole insides had been jostled, and his head spun with an ache that made everything hard to see. And now he was too hot. Ugh! he thought. How terrible! He would be late, it would be this Nikolai’s fault, God would not forgive him and he would never be healed, and his mother would weep from Heaven in vain. “I am something worse. I am—”
“Alright,” sighed Nikolai, sounding softer. “I won’t touch you then.”
Fyodor staggered forward a few more paces.
“...But I might as well follow you,” he heard behind him. “I’ve got nothing better to do today.”
He waved a hand dismissively. It took more energy than expected. “I have no money, if that’s what you’re after.”
Nikolai shook his head and skipped to make up the distance between them. A little smile was on his face as he bobbed up and down. “Mm-mm, no thanks. I’ve got better ways to get it.”
Fyodor watched him bounce, vision blurring with the motion. “Alright,” he conceded. Why argue? It would only slow him down, and there was no stopping this Nikolai boy whether Fyodor had been sick or not. “But I cannot afford to be late, Nikolai Vasilyevich.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it…!” he trailed off as Fyodor took in a harsh breath. “Hey. You know, you never told me your name.”
Oh.
Well, that was rude, now, wasn’t it? His mother’s voice. Mm. The boy blinked through another hailstorm of throbbing pain.
“Apologies. I’m Fyodor—”
He did not give him the patronym, due mainly in part because the world around him had suddenly turned a startling pitch black.
“Hey!”
*
“Want a drink?”
“S–ih…?”
“A sip?”
A cold sensation soaked Fyodor’s mouth, then dribbled down his chin. He jerked, choking on the ice water, teeth knocking on the cup held to his lips.
“...need your fluids,” he heard in echoey form. “I know it’s cold, but блин, you’re on fire...”
Fyodor strained to listen better, but it was hard, and whoever was talking was also talking too loud. He shut his eyes tight until it stopped. When it did, he laid like that a minute longer, before finally, the world began to make better sense. A concrete ceiling came into view. His fingers felt a woolen blanket. He recognized the wetness on his chest as spilt water. Next his hand came up to his head, feeling for the ushanka, and feeling nothing but soft dark hair.
Panic shot up through his spine. Fyodor fought to right himself, and when that failed, he scrambled in vain around the cool cement floor. He couldn’t have lost it. His mother had given it to him, and she would never give him another.
Someone whistled next to him. “It’s right here,” they said. “The hat. See?”
And there it was at last—furry, white, and warm, flapping about before his face. The sick boy calmed at the sight of it, and reached up to take it back.
“Hold it, fine.” Whoever was holding the hat let go, guiding it to his chest as Fyodor lifted it to his head. “But don’t put it back on. You’ll kill yourself. You have a fever. Hey. Can you hear me?”
Fyodor peered up lazily, petting his ushanka. Oh. So it was a boy above him. A boy, he realized, with one gold and one blue eye. Blond and wearing a braid. The sight was strangely familiar. Now where…?
“It’s Kolya. Remember? I walked with you down the road.”
He blinked a few more times. Slowly, he was feeling less stupid. “Vasilyevich?”
Nikolai nodded.
Fyodor sat up further, ignoring the creaky twinge in his joints. Consciousness had now come back to him, and he left the hat in his lap, not wanting to look childish. Violet eyes darted about in the darkness of an empty highrise, and he tasted dust on his tongue. “How am I here?”
He touched his throat. It hurt.
“I carried you.”
Dark eyebrows fell down. “I told you not to touch me.”
“It doesn’t work when you’re unconscious,” he said, sliding the half-spilled water glass toward him.
“What does not work?”
Nikolai tilted his head, an odd look of sympathy crossing his features. His braid fell sideways. “Your ability, Fedya.”
“Ability,” he repeated. An ability? A name so benign for…“What if I had woken?”
“Then there’d be two dead bodies on that street. Eh? Listen, friend. The press is all over you and what happened in Petrograd. Surely you’ve seen the papers. Everyone in this city thinks you ought to be in a prison cell. Put to death.” Nikolai licked his lips. “I thought… when I first saw you. I was gonna turn you in. Me and my friends, you see, we don’t have much power here, we’re just a bunch of runaways and stragglers and outcasts. I thought if I handed you over, maybe they’d take us seriously. Appreciate us for once. You understand?
“I could have done it. I thought you were dangerous, but that I could handle you, me and my friends, with our… skills.
“But when you said not to touch you, I understood. I understood, Fedya, because,” he whispered, “I have an ability too. And clearly you were sick! You were sick, from the horror of it all, you were suffering for something you didn’t mean to do. I know that look, I know that sickness. Because this was true for the others too—my friends, when I first found them.”
Fyodor locked his own gaze with gold and blue. “There are others here, with abilities like mine?”
“Abilities, yes.” Nikolai wiggled the water glass back and forth. It caught in the light, casting wispy shadows on cement. “But not like yours. I’ve never known of one like yours. You kill, yes? And it doesn’t turn off?”
Apparently.
He nodded, a little numb.
It then occurred to Fyodor how lucky he was to have landed in this predicament—for this boy to have found him, brought him here, and blessed him with a wealth of knowledge. If Nikolai was something of an expert on these abilities, Fyodor should learn all he can from his experience. Perhaps he even knew…
“Can you get rid of them?” he asked suddenly, unable to contain himself.
Nikolai’s brows folded up. He opened his mouth, closed it, and fiddled with his gloves. The fingertips were torn off, like he did that a lot. “No. You can’t.”
Fyodor sat back.
So Nikolai didn’t know a way, then. That didn’t mean there wasn’t one.
Now half-sobered, he decided to scan his surroundings. The building was a skeleton; they were surrounded by concrete and not much else. Even the windows were only boxes. Some had glass, but most were simply gaping holes carved out from the gray. They must be in Kupchino. The west side, on the edge.
Beneath him was a stiff mat, bits of hay stuck inside to make a better pillow. There were more mats—empty ones—beside him. They must belong to the others Nikolai spoke of.
“You say your friends have suffered like me, for what they can’t control?”
He nodded. Sunlight cut through the window, making his white-blond hair even brighter. “All the time. They don’t know what to do. They think they’ve been cursed. Society treats us like science experiments, or else untouchables. We end up on the street. We end up afraid, because everyone else is afraid of us.”
“You mean yourself, too,” he said.
“Ay.”
They were quiet for a moment, understanding one another implicitly, in the way children can when they know not each other’s faces, but their fears. They stared until Fyodor had no energy left to see. His head was feeling foggy again. “I am going to fall back asleep, I think.”
“I’ve never known someone as sick as you either,” Nikolai laughed.
“Abilities don’t work when the user is unconscious?” he asked to be certain, already drifting back down to the mat.
The other shrugged. He stood up and stretched, wringing out his long legs. “As far as I know.”
“Then… when I am sleeping, can you move me so I can see the church?”
Nikolai Vasilyevich smiled.
He hoped that meant yes, because it was the last thing he saw.
*
For two more days, Fyodor drowned in a slurry of sweat and delirium.
Mumbled nonsense tumbled from his mouth. He spoke words that were not Russian—that weren’t even words at all. He saw his mother. Walked and talked with her. Saw and smelled the blood that had surrounded her, when he, when he, when he…
During his short spurts of consciousness, he could scarcely breathe through the barrage of pain. The ushanka, soaked with sweat from his hands, lay next to his head, although the boy himself felt freezing cold.
Indeed, Fyodor had been sick before, as he’d insisted—but not like this. Not a fever so hot it could scorch his mind, not a condition so horrible he began to hallucinate, and then believe those hallucinations.
For you see, Fyodor was a very intelligent child, but the traumatic revealing of his ability (the death of his dear mother—he could not yet say ‘murder’) had created a religious schism within his mind.
A true matriarch from good stock, the woman had raised her child under strict and rigid standards: the Dostoyevskys lived in the Admiralteysky District—a very affluent side of town—and it was important that Fyodor understood the weight of his own worth. She’d made certain her son was well-educated. Fyodor spent much of his time studying. He was home-schooled, partly because of his ill physiology, and partly because he was too bright in comparison to the other children. At his desk he spent hours reading, writing, and researching whatever subject caught his fancy. Books were by no means a stranger to him; Fyodor’s home was as much a library as it was a handsome manor.
One book however, was more important than the rest. It sat atop the fireplace, always face-up. Bound by red leather, title in gold, and soft, silvery pages painted with scripture, this Bible was the foundation of their home.
Fyodor’s mother, like many others in her town, was a firm believer in the Eastern Orthodox faith. She and her son read through Old Testament and New each night, repeating verses to one another. They knelt, heads bent, on the rocky edge of the hearth, whispering words into their folded hands. Their rosary beads lay next to one another. Hers were blue. His own, black. She taught him the script, as she’d taught him all the Synekdemos: Our Father, the Creed, the Service of the Six Palms, the prayers to Saint Michael, Saint Basil, Saint Eustratios. For her, with the cello in the corner, he played hymns.
They went to mass daily. In the mornings and evenings, where they would not be hurt if her husband arrived back without warning. Fyodor’s father was of a rather high military rank—he was rich but not often home. It was better when he wasn’t. And it was better when they weren’t there, either—the church could protect them from his sharp words, sharper hands. His father on Earth provided his house—and what a splendid, sturdy house it was—but it hid from others the horror inside it. The Kingdom of Heaven held no such things; it was secure, it would shield his mother from her husband’s pain. It belonged to his Father above, and only He could unshackle her family from the bonds of a hateful marriage. To Fyodor the church was shelter. Under a spire, between stained glass, and with his mother, his world was safe.
Fyodor’s days were thus steeped with prayers, homilies, sacraments, and words of the Savior. He was faithful, because what else would be? Who else might he believe in, besides the woman who raised him and the One who would save him? And who else would he dream of, as he lay there, the living victim of a horror he himself had committed?
*
On his stiff mat, Fyodor began to squint and shrink back, set ablaze by a brilliant warmth. It burned hotter, more brazen, a dazzling, debilitating white, until he could see it even with eyes shut. To be sure, his eyes were shut to any outside observer, such as Nikolai—the boy who’d dragged him in from the street, who sat diligently by his side. But just as the blond hero could not see what Fyodor was dreaming, neither could Fyodor tell he was there. Fyodor’s world now was all beautiful colors and angelic choirs; he was atop a mountain, not sleeping on a mat, but standing upright. He was looking to heaven, and heaven was looking back on him: a bright, golden beam of light shone through the clouds above.
You call my Gift to you an affliction? spoke a voice from the sky.
“…Father?” he mumbled.
Unbeknownst to him, Nikolai laid a cool wet towel atop his forehead. He squirmed against the sensation, turning into his hay-stuffed pillow. Nikolai pushed it back to center. Fyodor recognized the touch, but in his delusion, the hand was not Nikolai’s—it was God’s.
You will not turn your face from me, said the deep, disembodied voice. Others before you have run when but a glimpse of my reign was revealed to them. But you are strong. You are different. You will not run, nor disobey, for I have Chosen you.
The boy’s lips parted. He swallowed, unsure, still sweltering in the heat of the burning sun. He would go blind, surely. Strangely, he knew—in the way that our dreams work—that he indeed had a fever; he had heard stories of men losing their sight from sickness, and was afraid his own was in danger. Perhaps, like Saul, he was being punished for his faithlessness and crimes.
But then the light dimmed, as if hearing his thoughts, and the voice spoke again: Your hand has been Blessed by my own. Look, it said. The blood on yours is mine.
Slowly, shakily, the boy obeyed. He raised his right hand with wide eyes. It was miraculously still slathered in gore, though he’d washed his palms furiously in the Neva just minutes after his mother had… fallen.
Your mother’s soul is at rest. She performed her duty as your caretaker, and for her dedication to you she will be richly rewarded. Your touch, my touch, has freed her; had you not been born, she would have suffered at the hand of your father for many more years. He would have at last beaten her to death, as you have so often seen him attempt. But your hand brought her no pain. And she will hurt no longer.
Fyodor crushed his red hand to a fist and cradled it to his chest.
Abilities are not My work.
They are Satan’s, who created them to tarnish and defile the humans he so despises. For so long I have watched as they have torn My people apart; turned them to evil; destroyed their inherent goodness.
But I can no longer be idle.
I too have the power to destroy, and so I have wielded the Devil’s own weapon against him. You, child, are this warrior, the One who will cleanse the dirt from a world that must be made pure. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, I have begun for you a journey of great hardship. In My name you will be persecuted and punished. In My name you will commit atrocities. In My name you will suffer, but you will be stronger than all these things.
I will guide you, as I have always guided you.
I will protect you, as I have protected the Saints of your past.
I have given you a duty that only you can perform: use your Holy Gift to dismantle what terrors Satan has made. Eliminate his abilities. Root out the evil from this world. Remove the cancer, destroy the rot, rid My creatures of his tainted ways.
Fyodor fell to his knees, hands clasped in prayer. Rivulets of blood dribbled from his palms to his arms. Head bent and face a deathly pallor, he whispered, “There is a way?”
Nothing, my child, is impossible with God.
*
On the third day, his fever had broken. But by then it was too late: the nature of Fyodor’s sickness had melded his mind. A bridge of neurons had been forged by his body’s untamable fire. He could not disbelieve what he’d seen, nor untangle it from truth. And he did not want to, or try: for one, his addled braid had created the tale to reconcile with his murder. To know his mother had been saved rather than slain soothed him. And for another, Fyodor was afraid. How could any child come to terms with a savage, inborn ability to slaughter another with one touch? And how could he disobey his God Almighty, the keeper of the gate to eternal life?
Was he wrong for this?
Was it right of him to accept this overwhelming and atrocious burden he believed he had been told to bear? Admirable, even, to take on the weight of so much sin; to purify the world, to restore it, because no else possibly could?
In this world, we cannot know.
There are so many murderers. There are so many children: mistaken, mistreated, misunderstood.