#reverse chronology

The first thing that Dimitri notices was the quiet. 

Not the peaceful kind. Not the kind that settles gently over a room when everyone has gone to sleep. This quiet is sharp edged, hollowed out, like something that has been forcibly removed and left a vacuum behind. The kind that makes your ears ring, that presses in until breathing feels too loud. 

The building is still warm from violence. Smoke lingers in the corners of the ceiling, thin and acrid, clinging to the exposed beams like it’s afraid to leave. Somewhere down the corridor, something drips steadily- water, maybe blood, Dimitri didn’t look long enough to be sure. He stands in the center of it all with his hands hanging uselessly at his sides, knuckles raw, sleeves stained dark nearly to the elbow.

None of it matters.

Because you are not here.

That is the absence he can’t work around. The one thing his mind keeps circling, like a tongue worrying at a broken tooth. He turns slowly, scanning the room as if you might materialize if he just looks hard enough. As if this is all some elaborate misunderstanding, as if he’ll hear your voice any second now- sharp, breathless, furious- asking him what the hell he’s done this time. 

Nothing.

Dimitri swallows. His throat burns. He tastes iron.

A man clears his throat behind him. “It’s finished,” he says, tentative. Careful. Everyone is careful around Dimitri now. “Your father-”

Dimitri raises one hand without looking back. The man stops speaking immediately. 

Finished.

That word means something very different to Dimitri than it does to everyone else in the room.

He moves at last, boots crunching softly over shattered glass and debris. The lights overhead flicker, one by one, as emergency power hums uncertainly through the building. It had been a laboratory once- sterile, controlled, designed for miracles masquerading as science. Now it looks like a battlefield, stripped down to its bones. 

He passes a gurney overturned near the far wall. The sheets are soaked through, dark and stiffening. Dimitri does not stop. He already knows it isn’t yours. 

That knowledge offers no relief. 

His chest aches in a way that feels structural, like something essential has shifted out of place. He presses two fingers briefly to his sternum, grounding himself, then lets his hand fall again. Weakness is not tolerated here. It never has been.

A door hangs half open at the end of the corridor- the private office. The one with the reinforced walls, the soundproofing, the biometric locks. The place where decisions were made. Dimitri slows as he approaches, each step heavier than the last. 

He already knows what he will find.

The chair behind the desk is empty.

Your coat is still draped over the back of it.

It hits him then, all at once. Not like a wave- like collapse. Like the moment after a bone breaks and your body finally registered what’s happened. Dimitri’s breath stutters, sharp and shallow, before he can stop it. His hand comes up to grip the edge of the desk, fingers digging into the polished surface hard enough that the wood creaks faintly in protest. 

You left in a hurry. 

That’s what your coat tells him. You didn’t take it with you. You didn’t pause to grab it, didn’t think about the cold outside or the long drive or anything beyond the immediate need to be gone. Dimitri stares at it as if it might accuse him out loud.

You always hated this place.

He knew that. He had known it from the beginning. The way your shoulders tensed the moment you stepped inside, the way your gaze flicked constantly to the exits. The way your voice flattened whenever you spoke to his father or the doctors or anyone who wore authority like a second skin. 

You had never belonged here. 

And yet.

Dimitri had brought you anyway. 

He sinks slowly into the chair opposite the desk, the one you used to sit in when you were waiting for him. Waiting while men twice his age and ten times as cruel discussed bloodlines and legacy and the price of power like it was a ledger to be balanced. You used to sit there with your hands folded in your lap, spine straight, chin lifted, daring them to dismiss you outright. 

He had admired that. God help him, he had loved you for it. 

Outside the office, voices murmur again. Low. Urgent. Afraid. 

Someone knocks, tentative. “Dimitri?” 

He does not answer.

The silence stretched until the knock fades away. He is alone again, finally, and the truth settles into him with final clarity. 

This is what it costs.

Not power. Not blood. Not obedience. 

This. 

It had been so easy, once, to pretend you could exist outside his world. 

He’d told himself that lie early on, when you were still new enough that the future felt abstract. When the stakes hadn’t fully revealed themselves. You had come into his life like a quiet disruption- not explosive, not dramatic, just persistent. You took up space without apology. You asked questions no one else dared to ask. You laughed at things that were not meant to be funny. 

You didn’t know how to be afraid of him. 

That alone had set you apart. 

Dimitri remembers the first time his father saw you properly- not as a passing detail, not as a name attached to Dimitri’s schedule, but as a person who might matter. It had been at dinner, in the main house, under the chandeliers that had never once been cleaned by the hands that ate beneath them. 

You’d worn the nicest thing you owned. Dimitri had known it even then- known by the careful way you’d smoothed the fabric, by the way you’d stood a little straighter than usual. You’d met his father’s gaze without flinching, polite but unyielding. 

Nikolai Kravinoff had smiled thinly and asked where you were from. You told him.

He’d asked what your parents did. You told him that too.

Each answer had landed like a verdict. 

Dimitri had felt the shift immediately- the way his father’s interest cooled, the way his attention slid away from you as if you were already irrelevant. Disposable. Something temporary his son would grow out of. 

Later that night, Nikolai had pulled Dimitri aside and spoke quietly, efficiently, as if discussing a failed investment. 

“She is not built for this life,” he’d said. “And neither are you, if you insist on dragging her into it.” 

Dimitri had bristled, anger flaring sharp and instinctive. He’d argued. He always argued at first. 

“She doesn’t need to be,” he’d said. “She’s not part of-”

“She already is,” Nikolai had cut in. “Whether you acknowledge it or not.”

His father had been right about that, at least.

You’d known it too.

That was the cruelest part- that you had never been naive about what loving Dimitri meant. You’d seen the guards, the weapons, the blood on his knuckles when he came home too late at night. You’d noticed the way conversations stopped when you entered a room, the way people assessed you in quick, ruthless glances. 

You hadn’t asked him to choose.

You had simply asked him to be honest.

Dimitri closes his eyes now, head tipping back against the chair. The memory presses in unbidden, vivid and relentless. Your voice, steady but night, the night you’d finally said it out loud. 

“I don’t fit. And you know it.” 

He had told you it didn’t matter.

That had been his first mistake. 

There is blood on the floor of the office. 

Not much. Just a smear near the threshold, half cleaned by someone who didn’t know- or didn’t care- that Dimitri would want to see it. He stares at it until the shape blurs, until it might be anything at all. 

The door opens again, more firm this time. 

“Dimitri.”

This voice he recognizes immediately. 

He opens his eyes.

Nikolai stands in the doorway, immaculate as ever. Not a hair out of place. Not a speck of dust on his coat. He looks at the wreckage of the building with something like mild irritation, as if the mess is the greatest offence of the night. “Where is she?” Nikolai asks. 

Dimitri’s fingers curl slowly against the armrests. 

“You know where she is,” he says. 

Nikolai’s gaze flicks to the empty chair. To the abandoned coat. His mouth tightens, just slightly. 

“She ran,” he says. “That was always a possibility.” 

Dimitri laughs then- a short, broken sound that surprises even him. He pushes to his feet, turning to face his father fully. They stand a few feet apart, mirror images in posture if nothing else. 

“You think this is about running?” Dimitri asks quietly. “You think she left because she was afraid?”

Nikolai regards him coolly. “Fear is a powerful motivator.” 

“So is betrayal.” 

The word lands between them, heavy and irrevocable. 

For the first time that night, Nikolai hesitates. Just a fraction. It’s enough. 

“You approved this.” Dimitri says, voice low and dangerous. “You told me it would be safe. You told me it was the only way.” 

“I told you it would make her worthy,” Nikolai corrects. “If it succeeded.” 

“And if it didn’t?”

Nikolai does not answer. 

Dimitri feels something inside him fracture completely. 

“You knew,” he says. “You knew what could happen, and you let me bring her here anyway.”

“She was already in danger.” Nikolai replies. “Because of you.”

That, too, is true.

Truth has teeth. Dimitri bares his in response. 

“She trusted me,” he says. “That was my responsibility.” 

Nikolai studies him for a long moment, then sighs, as if weary. “If she survives, we can discuss next steps.” 

“If,” Dimitri echoes. 

He steps past his father without another word, brushing his shoulder hard enough that Sergei stumbles slightly. Guards move instinctively, then stop at Nikolai’s sharp gesture. 

Dimitri does not look back. 

Outside, night has fallen hard and fast. 

Cold air hits Dimitri like a slap as he exits the building, clearing the smoke from his lungs but doing nothing to ease the pressure in his chest. The sky is a deep, indifferent black, stars obscured by clouds and city glow. Somewhere beyond the perimeter, engines start up- cleanup crews, transport, damage control.

Life goes on. 

He walks without direction, boots carrying him along familiar paths on autopilot. His phone feels heavy in his pocket. He pulls it out, stares at the dark screen.

No messages. 

He knows there won’t be.

The last time you spoke, really spoke, had been hours before everything went wrong. You’d stood in front of him in the hallway outside the operating room, arms crossed tightly over your chest. The doctors had been waiting. His father had been watching from the observation deck above.

You had looked at Dimitri like you were trying to memorize him. 

“Promise me something,” you’d said. 

He had nodded immediately. Too quickly. 

“Tell me the truth,” you’d continued. “If this is about him. If this is about making him accept me.”

Dimitri had hesitated. 

Just a second too long. 

You’d seen it. You always did. 

“I love you,” he’d said instead, like it was an answer. 

It hadn’t been.

Now the memory claws at him, merciless. 

Dimitri stops walking. 

His hands shake suddenly, violently, as the adrenaline finally drains away. He leans forward, bracing himself against a low concrete wall, breath coming harsh and uneven. For a moment- just one- he lets himself feel it fully. 

The fear. 

The guilt. 

The understanding that love, unchecked, can be just as destructive as hate. 

He presses his forehead to the cold stone and closes his eyes. 

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he murmurs into the night, as if the darkness might listen. As if you might hear him, wherever you are. 

Somewhere far away, a siren wails. 

Dimitri straightens slowly, wiping his hands on his trousers as if that might cleanse them. He looks once more towards the looming shade of the building behind him- the place where he crossed a line he can never uncross. 

This is where the story ends. 

He knows that now

And somewhere, impossibly, painfully, he also knows:

This is only the beginning.