#closing words

Ad Astra Per Aspera | Chapters 67 + 68 | My Love for You + Smiling Stars | Including: Epilogue + Closing Words | Band of Brothers

" Knock, knock." a voice at the door echoed. Lizzie had rushed in to help Hazel finish applying a bit of blush to her cheeks, as the guests were settling into their seats, when the knocking had come at the door.

" Shit, who is it?" Catherine hissed as she gently attached the veil to Hazel's caramel curled haired head. Lizzie glanced at the door and sighed to herself. Hazel giggled.

" I swear if it's one of the boys...." Lizzie grumbled as Mrs. Liebgott and Ms. Parker came from the bathroom after wiping the mascara from their cheeks - ok they'd all been crying, but who wouldn't seeing Hazel dressed like a Greek Goddess? Lizzie approached the door and put her hand on the handle.

" George, Floyd - either of you two out there - out." she called through the door. She heard a low chuckle from the other side and immediately mentally face-palmed.

" I don't think either two of them are out here there, Elliot." the voice came back and Lizzie put a finger on the bridge of her nose - it was Captain Ronald Speirs and her she was acting like it was the two idiots with far too loose ties. Lizzie immediately opened the door and found Speirs on the opposite side. Forcing a hopefully not embarrassing smile on her face, she looked up at Speirs with a smile.

[read the rest on archiveofourown and wattpad] <3

“In my hyphenated Ukrainian-American existence, ‘America’ was the streets and schools, bookshelves and television. But ‘Ukraine’ was family, and the family gathered mostly in the kitchen. In dream logic, Chernobyl was in Ukraine, Ukraine was in my parents’ kitchen, and therefore Chernobyl was in my parents’ kitchen.

“The worst-case scenarios depicted a dead land, a black hole that had moved me in an immediate way, as though I had lost a part of myself. In the years that followed, the disaster became a kind of hobby for me. I studied all Chernobyl matters closely and was convinced that the Soviets were lying about it even after Gorbachev ushered in glasnost. In fact, they did lie about a great deal. But by the time such details emerged in the early 1990s, I was living in Kiev where, oddly enough, my Chernobyl fascination suddenly dissolved.

“I never understood why until I stood atop that Pripyat high-rise, surrounded by the wormwood forests, swamps, and fields blooming in the pastel palette of early spring. If a nuclear disaster really is in your kitchen—or in your metaphoric backyard—and there is nowhere else you can put it, it seems best not to think about it too much. Not, at least, until many years have passed, and the bountiful evidence of nature’s nearly miraculous resilience and recovery makes the thinking more bearable.”