#dmitriy volkov

Name ➔ "Dmitriy Volkov.”

Are you single? ➔ “Yes.”

Are you happy? ➔ “...”

Are you angry? ➔ “I don’t get angry.” a blatant lie, but one they tell themselves all the time.

Are your parents still married? ➔ They almost smile, but say nothing.

NINE FACTS

Birthplace ➔ “Nowhere you’d know.”

Hair Color ➔ “...”

Eye Color ➔ “Step a little closer and see for yourself.”

Birthday ➔ “I don’t have one - and no, I don’t want one either.”

Mood ➔ They ignore the question, but it’s a crack in the ice of their cold demeanour.

Gender ➔ “I don’t need one.”

Summer or Winter? ➔ They humour you, “Winter. It’s easier to do things in the dark, and Summer is too hot.”

Morning or Afternoon? ➔ “Morning. Early, while everyone else is still asleep.”

EIGHT THINGS ABOUT YOUR LOVE LIFE

Are you in love? ➔ “... No.”

Do you believe in love at first sight? ➔ “Not at all.”

Who ended your last relationship? ➔ The corner of their mouth twitches, “Me.”

Have you ever broken someone’s heart? ➔ “Probably.” they chuckle, but it’s hollow.

Are you afraid of commitments? ➔ “No.”

Have you hugged someone within the last week? ➔ Another smile, this time amused, “Definitely not within the last week, no.”

Have you ever had a secret admirer? ➔ “Does it still count if he isn’t secret about it at all?”

Have you ever broken your own heart? ➔ “There’s nothing in there to break.”

SIX CHOICES

Love or lust? ➔ “I need neither of them.”

Lemonade or iced tea? ➔ They shrug, indifferent. “Coffee.”

Cats or dogs? ➔ “The rat king - useful, for a change.”

A few best friends or many regular friends? ➔ "I have need for neither.”

Wild night out or romantic night in? ➔ “A productive night in, always ten steps ahead. What more could you ask for?”

Day or night? ➔ "Night.”

FIVE HAVE YOU EVERS

Been caught sneaking out? ➔ "By whom?”

Fallen down/up the stairs ➔ They shrug, “Why does it matter?”

Wanted something/someone so badly it hurt? ➔ “... No.”

Wanted to disappear? ➔ “Not before I’m finished, no.”

FOUR PREFERENCES

Smile or eyes? ➔ "Whichever lies less.” a shrug, “Eyes, perhaps.”

Shorter or taller? ➔ “Shorter - easier to intimidate.”

Intelligence or attraction? ➔ “The smarter they are, the more annoying they are to deal with.”

Hook-up or relationship? ➔ “I need neither.”

FAMILY

Do you and your family get along? ➔ “There’s nobody there to get along with.”

Would you say you have a “messed up life” ➔ “I would call it neither messed up nor a life.”

Have you ever ran away from home? ➔ "I don’t run away.”

Have you ever gotten kicked out? ➔ "From where.” but they aren’t asking.

FRIENDS

Do you secretly hate one of your friends? ➔ They smile, and it’s almost warm, "All of them. And it isn’t a secret.”

Do you consider all of your friends good friends? ➔ “No.”

Who is your best friend? ➔ They hesitate for a long moment before trying to smile, “Me.”

You scream. It's a horrid thing - a gurgling overlay that mutilates your voice as your throat tears up inside. You're choking. But your face doesn't heat up, nor do your hands shake. Your humanity is screaming, but your face is a stone - your scream is carving a gaping oval for your mouth, but your lips manage nary a twitch.

"What do you think?" Steel shows you the code - the patchwork that composes his armour, hating himself enough to trust you. You scream. You mutter, "I think the problem is in this line," and your hands move, you explain, and nothing shakes. He is none the wiser as you scream your mind raw.

"Would you like some coffee?" Ortega acts like he knows you - you're not silly enough to call him naive, so instead you scream. "No thank you," you can make your own, and you can do it better. Everything you do you can execute better in solitude. Alone, where you can scream and cry until your heart is content once more. It won't be - it can't - so you let your faith drain away as you scream and scream and scream.

Bleeding heart, they’d said, and you hadn’t taken them seriously. “Sure, just sputtering,” you’d dismissed; waved away, and gotten on. Bleeding heart, they’d admitted in your arms, challenging you to drop them. You didn’t, but in retrospect, you wish you had. But you’d stuffed that heart back inside their chest, back into yours, and you’d scrambled off into infinity, letting them chase the trail of blood.

Because caring is like exposing your ribs, wrenching them apart, and asking someone to rummage around inside. And you’re too smart to care. It took you embarrassingly long to realise, but there’s liberation in enlightenment. You’re liberated, cold, besieged no longer by the poison of care.

So when they asked for your help, pulled apart their ribs for you, you’d chastised them for their mistake before reaching inside. This time, the heart comes out, you’d thought. Out into the sun to shrivel and die. But yours would stay safe behind your chest, ribs, flesh. Behind a wall of ice so thick it would do no difference to have it wrought in stone or steel. No blood passes in the cold, because you deny that it’s still there, congealed in your aorta, vena cava, arteries, veins. Congealed, because you do not permit it to flow. To bleed.

“It’s for a friend,” and you’d believed them, believed that their heart bled for their friend. You wouldn’t care, but you’d believe. Because you’d understood once, even if now you are but a shell performing actions. A tool. Indestructible.

It blinds them for a few blissful seconds - the sun, wavering over their battlefield - scraping at their retinas as a masochistic kind of relief. It is low now, having sunk as their fight wore on, painting their armour with warmth, their blood hotter. So for that precious moment, Dmitriy allows themselves to forget in the whiteness. Forget the ruin around them, forget their breath through the mask, forget the sound of Steel getting back up despite the pain.

They remember again, opening their eyes; their blue maw, like a hungry beast. They are hungry now, no more bliss. No more whiteness. They have a winning hand now.

Steel has the set of a bull, armour and all, Dmitriy notes before scanning the joints. For new weaknesses. What are they thinking. They circle the bull - or maybe it’s a dying calf, blood seeping from his side. It plays like a showdown, but the guns are all on them - Steel would be lucky to hold a knife to their arsenal. But there are guns in his hands and arms and legs and Dmitriy cannot afford to forget that just yet. Not when that distant gatling orchestra is still so clear in their mind.

A plate clatters from Steel’s forearm, revealing armoured skin and long, deep scratches decorating old scars and flesh. They know some of these marks, but the rest have all fallen away into obscurity beneath the new ones. Gifts, some from them, others long before. In between. They had never bothered to memorise the paler rivulets of skin. Not even in those quiet moments they had dared share in the past, each utterly absorbed in their own technological task, a hanging silence between them.

He worked on the guns in his body, they had reserved their efforts for external affairs - weapons, suits, cameras. Internally, they sharpened their knives. A fortress - impenetrable - Dmitriy dared him to look beyond the mask, glasses, the hollow eyes beneath, into the coldness. They play a shark, they swim in Dmitriy’s mind, but they aren’t silver nor steel. They’re hell when it’s frozen over.

“I was right not to trust you,” he was. He spoke sense, but he spoke it too late. “Interesting to know you once did.” Don’t dignify that with a response, exchange blows, put your poetry in the punches. You write verses to them, up and down their arms, wondering if they bruise. “Heartbreak should’ve been the end.” Who said it? Did they care? Did it bruise? “There was never a beginning - don’t you understand? I was never anything. Your fatal mistake - one of them - was believing me for even one moment.” watch him cling to his humanity, watch from behind the window seeing the comfort he may glean from it. But Dmitriy kept their own humanity behind a wall of ice - look how far they’d come without it. Look at how strong they were without its help. Look.

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