#oc:ivan

Three days. That’s how long it’s been since the sounds of battle had died down, and the first search parties were sent out to search for survivors, for answers. For anything.

It’s also how long it’s been since Violetta has slept.

People keep lying to her, telling her that everything is fine and that she just needs to go to bed, but she’s not stupid, she knows that everything’s wrong.

Her parents haven’t come back, and nor has Alexei. Everything is not fine.

She’s the queen now, she knows that much. With everyone else gone she’s the only one left.

And she’ll be really good at it, too, if they just let her try, but all the old people are telling her that she just needs to go to sleep, and she does not want to sleep.

They’re worried about her, she knows that much. People keep giving each other looks, like they don’t think she’ll see, but she does, she always sees.

She isn’t stupid, after all. She isn’t a baby.

She’s sure that if they just keep searching they’ll find her parents, and Alexei too, and she wants to be awake when they get back, so she can tell them what a good job she’s done being queen. Because she is doing a good job, or as good a job as she can.

Her mama’s crown doesn’t really fit on her head, but she’s trying her best. Really she is.

Another day, another night, and she’s starting to get sick of this, of all of this. It’s stupid, and she just wants her parents back. She’s getting bored of being queen, especially since no one seems to be listening to her anyway, and she’s reluctantly accepted that her mama was better at this than her.

Still, she tries. She’ll try as long as she can, until they come back.

She’s just so tired, though. She hasn’t slept at all, not for a single minute (well, maybe one or two minutes, but definitely no longer than that), and everyone keeps running back and forth and not talking to her at all.

“It’s not fair,” she tells Ivan, blinking away tears that shouldn’t be there, because queens don’t cry. Crying is for babies. “I’m the queen, and they should listen to me.”

Ivan just blinks at her. “You’re a bit young to be queen,” he says thoughtfully, and she rolls her eyes.

“Not a proper queen,” she says, because it should be obvious, really. “Just until mama comes back.”

Ivan bites his lip, looking down at the floor. “What if she doesn’t come back?”

“She will,” Vi insists, crossing her arms. “She’s way better than everyone else out there. She’s fine and she’ll come back as soon as she can. I bet she’s still fighting.”

Ivan shrugs. “Maybe she’s dead.”

“Shut up,” Vi tells him, and shoves him off the crate he’s sitting on in a fit of anger. Not very queenly, but she can’t bear to think that mama might not come back, and Vi knows she will. “She’s not dead at all.”

“I’m sorry,” Ivan says, brow furrowing, and Vi forgives him, of course.

“She’ll come back,” Vi says. “She will.”

Another day passes, and another, and another, until there have been so many days that Vi can’t even keep track anymore, and still her mother doesn’t return.

She’s slept a tiny bit, because mama will be cross if she comes back to find that she hasn’t, but she’s so tired all the time, sleep pulling at her, but she’s so scared to go to bed, in case something happens and she misses it.

She doesn’t want to think about the fact that mama may not be coming back at all, but one day everything hits her all at once, and she realises, her whole body going cold, that there is no way that mama wouldn’t have come back by now.

Vi tries very hard to think about it in the most logical way she possibly can. Mama would never abandon her, and so she would always come back. But she hasn’t come back, and so there must be some reason why not.

So she’s dead.

It’s an odd feeling. Knowing, with cold certainty, that mama is gone forever.