Vergissmeinnicht

Breathing grew uneven, shoulders ached beneath the weight of the heavy rucksack.

Those fortunate enough to survive waited for more than a month before daring to explore the former domain of Miranda and her “children”. They ventured out alone, gathering anything of value they came across, but by nightfall they always returned to the camp, hastily set up by the silent men in military uniforms. As soon as the snow melts and the streams recede a little, they will all begin rebuilding the Village together. A real Village. Big. Safe. Just as it had been a hundred years ago.

The sun stood directly overhead.

Knees ached: the ground was strewn not only with flowers and scraps of metal, but with countless little stones as well. Cold wind slipped through the oversized, threadbare down jacket, far too big for its wearer. Trembling fingers refused to turn the lid of the thermos, while the sun burned against the crown of the head. The hot herbal tea was just a little bitter, missing honey—but where could honey possibly be found here, now? Perhaps by autumn, if the hives could be restored and the bees coaxed back…

A sharp gust of wind made the hand tremble, and half the cup spilled onto the ground. The earth drank it in almost instantly. Too quickly. Then, from beneath the ground, came a groan.

The clang of metal echoed through it, mingling with the grinding of machinery and the crackle of coal in the enormous furnaces…

One rusty bolt rose into the air, stopping at eye level. A bent nail followed, then a heat-warped nut, and fragments of wire fused together…

The body froze, just as before, knowing all too well who could control metal. Then it bolted downhill toward the camp. Behind, the entire Factory shuddered, as though letting out one sharp breath.

“Freedom…”

A man's voice, slightly hoarse, as though from long silence, came from behind. The Factory shuddered once more. The chimney rumbled and exhaled a cloud of smoke, as though someone beneath it had just lit a cigarette.

Metal. Mycelium. Consciousness and memory. A thirst for freedom. Will.

“Karl! No!”

He held you in place, firm, unyielding—as if it were punishment.

“I warned you, mein Schatz. We have rules.”

“But you want it too, I can see it...” your voice wavered, threaded with hurt. “Why can’t we?..”

“Because I said so.”

Because his word was law. At least at the Factory, where disobedience could cost you if not your life, then a few fingers at the very least. But this wasn’t the Factory. Not even Europe.

You rolled your hips on purpose—earning an immediate, sharp slap across your backside that made you cry out.

“Karl… please, I’m begging you…”

“No.”

You knew that tone well. There was no arguing with a “no” delivered like that. He wouldn’t let you move, wouldn’t move himself, and wouldn’t let you go.

Unbearable.

Not because it hurt—though he was just a little larger than ideal, and sometimes it did—but because you wanted more.

For a long moment, the only sounds were the low hum of the overhead lights and the steady ticking of the large clock’s second hand. Heisenberg let his eyes drift shut lazily, like a cat warmed by the sun. As if he weren’t buried deep inside you. As if he didn’t want the same thing you did.

You knew: he was waiting for you to lose patience. To start begging properly. To lean in, to cradle his face in your hands and kiss him—messily, desperately—his cheeks, his jaw, his lips, his nose. To trace the scars on his face with the tip of your tongue.

You didn’t want to give in. You wanted—just once—to make him give in first…

…The door to the ward creaked softly. Victor always preferred not to make unnecessary noise.

“You decided to wait for me after all? I’m flattered,” Victor’s movements betrayed his fatigue. “Watching you for the past half hour was rather exhausting, you know. Besides, you were distracting me from my work, so I had to stay late.”

“Watching?” The thought that Victor had seen everything that had happened between you and Heisenberg felt both sweet and deeply unsettling. “How?”

Victor simply extended his hand, his cold fingers brushing lightly against your chin, and gently guided your gaze towards the corner. There, beneath the ceiling, was a small camera, white as the walls themselves. It blended in almost perfectly; when you were burning with desire, it was impossible to notice.

“Glad you enjoyed the show,” Heisenberg, who had been calm until now, suddenly lifted you slightly and drove you back down, making you cry out. “We did our best, didn’t we, mein Schatz?”

“You knew there was a camera?!”

“It’s full of metal parts.”

Heisenberg managed a few more thrusts, each one sweeter than the last, before Victor roughly seized his wrists and squeezed hard enough to make him freeze.

For the second time in the last five minutes, you were denied your release.

“Sadists,” you hissed, trying to move on your own—only to be met with a light, warning bite at your shoulder. “Sss…”

“Looks like my nurse kept you well entertained, Karl?”

“My assistant is not your nurse, Victor.”

“I’m the doctor here. You’re merely the patient. Perhaps I should teach you some manners.”

“Isn’t it the doctor who’s supposed to be polite to the patient?”

Both men bared their teeth at each other, their gazes locked, as though they had both forgotten you were even there. Even Heisenberg—whose desire had not faded in the slightest—was entirely focused on Victor.

“Can I interrupt you?!” Your voice, edged with hurt, cut through the silence and snapped them back.

“Oh, my apologies,” Victor touched your shoulder again—this time not biting, but dragging his tongue over the bite mark. “I know ladies usually first, but I’ve had a rather long, exhausting day. Will you allow me?”

A long, exhausting day. Those words meant Victor needed release. A little pleasure to ease the tension, to forget about his problems, if only for a while. You could help him too—but right now, he clearly needed someone who could take him whole.

“…all right.”

The cool surface of the instrument table made your skin prickle, but it also made waiting your turn far more bearable. Victor’s heavy coat settled over your shoulders, keeping the chill of the ward at bay.

“We’ll try not to take too long,” his forked tongue brushed along the edge of your ear. “And you just stay exactly where you are!”

Heisenberg didn’t even manage to get up—Victor shoved him back, grabbed him by the throat with one hand, pinning him to the mattress, while the other moved to his trousers, intent on pulling them down completely.

“Not like that… ah—” Heisenberg’s voice came out muffled, but it was obvious he was enjoying it. “Let me turn—”

“Not today. We’ll do it this way.”

The hospital bed creaked again—this time almost plaintively. Victor climbed onto it with some difficulty, at once trying to drag Heisenberg’s trousers down, keep him pinned as he struggled (more out of stubbornness than anything real), and undo his own fly.

The hand at his throat tightened slightly; a satisfied groan slipped free, and Heisenberg was almost ready to give in…

…but the bed gave in first. The metal legs buckled, then somehow splayed out in different directions, unable to withstand the shifting weight.

Your cry echoed off the empty walls for a few seconds before you dared to ask:

“Are you all right?..”

The answer was Heisenberg’s stifled laughter, breaking into a groan when Victor finally tried to get off him. Victor’s own groan followed almost immediately.

“Boys…”

Your concern deepened when you realised they weren’t refusing to get up in order to finish what they’d started on the floor—they simply couldn’t. Both of them.

“Looks like our night of love is cancelled,” Victor muttered, shifting onto all fours above Heisenberg and carefully arching his back.

“Night of love,” Heisenberg bent his knees, pressing his lower back against what remained of the mattress. “Could’ve just said it straight—no one’s fucking anyone tonight. Not a shred of pleasure, for fuck’s sake…”

“Now, now, why so pessimistic?” Victor turned his head slightly in your direction. “If the lady would be so kind as to fetch a medical kit from my office and administer a couple of injections, I promise my tongue will do everything necessary to ensure she is satisfied.”

Half an hour later, the three of you were seated in Victor’s office. He sat in his chair, still breathing heavily; you perched on the edge of the desk, still wearing nothing but his coat; and Heisenberg lounged on a small sofa in the corner, his boots propped up on one of the cushions.

“Seems, mein Schatz, I’ll have to make good on his promise myself,” his gaze slid over you, heavy with desire. “Take off that dreadful coat and come here.”

Casting Victor a sympathetic glance, you slipped off the desk and padded over to Heisenberg, letting the coat fall to the floor as you went.

“We’re not going to break the sofa too, are we?” you asked cautiously, settling yourself above his face.

With trembling hands, Leta set the remaining intact RAM stick on the table and leaned over the system unit. She reached inside—and almost immediately pricked her finger on a jagged edge of plastic. The latch had snapped off completely.

Leta recoiled from the table as if a giant spider had been sitting on it instead of a heap of metal. Her breathing quickened, turning ragged; her nose stung. The strain of the past two weeks had finally begun to catch up with her.

A heap of metal. That was exactly what the old system unit looked like now, cobbled together from whatever parts had been available. Her mind raced—could the BIOS boot without RAM? Did this motherboard have any built-in memory at all? No answer came.

Darkness swam before her eyes, as if the workshop lights had suddenly gone out. Blood pounded in her ears—and the startup error signal, that awful rhythmic beeping…

Clapping her hands over her ears, Leta screamed as though she could drown out the phantom sound. Then she grabbed the tray of tools and hurled it at the wall.

“Tut, tut, tut…”

The tray—and everything on it—never made it to the wall. The metal, obeying the Lord, carefully settled back onto the table instead, while the Lord himself leaned a shoulder against the doorframe.

Heisenberg’s appearance—his deliberately slow, relaxed movements—brought Leta slightly back to her senses. She had only begun to notice this strange trait recently: whether it was something about him or something about herself, she couldn’t say, but the presence of the factory’s owner was calming. Not because he was frightening. The reason lay somewhere else, and Leta couldn’t quite understand it.

“What’ve you got here?”

He wasn’t asking idly—he was genuinely curious.

“Trying to put together a new computer,” Leta dragged a hand across her face, as though brushing away cobwebs. “Well. An old computer, technically.”

“What’s the trouble?”

Another sincere question. If there was anything Heisenberg could talk about for hours, it was mechanisms, blueprints, and engineering in general.

“Everything’s fucked. Everything’s fucked, I don’t know what to do, I—”

Leta kept talking. The more she spoke, the more heated she became, throwing around technical details Heisenberg wasn’t nearly as familiar with, gesturing wildly with her hands. The longer she went on, the more often she sniffed, the more her voice trembled, the more her whole body began to shake.

She didn’t even notice that Heisenberg had long since stopped listening to what she was saying. Instead, he was watching how she spoke. His sharp, attentive gaze tracked every movement, as though he were observing some kind of mechanism, trying to diagnose the fault at a glance.

“What worries you most?”

“What?” Heisenberg usually asked purely technical questions—ones that nudged her toward some practical solution—so the phrasing threw Leta off. “Worries?..”

“Yeah. Anything else bothering you? Or just this heap of junk?”

There was something strange about Heisenberg’s voice, and the question clearly had a hook in it—but all of Leta’s attention was fixed on her problem, not on the man she was speaking to.

“Two weeks of work,” she said quietly, and then her voice rose into a shout. “Two weeks of work! I’ve spent two weeks digging through scrap heaps, trying to build something—anything that works—from the leftovers you decided were junk! Barely any food, barely any sleep, barely—”

“Exactly, for fuck’s sake!” Heisenberg slammed his palm against the table so hard he nearly bruised it himself. In two strides he crossed the distance between them, grabbed her wrist, and yanked her upright so sharply that the joint in her shoulder cracked. “I agreed to give you two weeks off so you could rest—not finish running yourself into the ground!”

The pain was sharp. Heisenberg had practically lifted the woman off the floor; the toes of her boots barely brushed the uneven metal plates beneath them. Leta clenched her teeth and grabbed the wrist of the hand holding her with her free one.

“Heis—!”

His dark glasses had slipped down his nose. His eyes had turned yellow; the pupils narrowed and stretched upward like those of a predator. Fangs showed beneath his upper lip. The smell of tobacco smoke, alcohol, and rotting meat struck her in the face.

“I’d sooner snap your neck right now and find another assistant than put up with your madness!”

His face was far too close. His teeth snapped shut right at the tip of Leta’s nose, deliberately trying to frighten her. Then Heisenberg shook her again.

A cry of pain rang through the workshop as the head of the bone slipped out of the socket.

She should have been afraid. Afraid enough to scream, to cry, to beg for mercy—to do anything that might buy her life.

But the past two weeks really had been exhausting.

“Oh, of course,” Leta hissed back. “There’s a whole queue outside the gates of people dying to live with you! Go on—you’ll find my replacement easily!”

Silence fell over the workshop, broken only by the heavy breathing of the human and the Lord. Forcing herself through the pain, Leta kept her eyes on Heisenberg’s, openly challenging him.

“Lucky for you, you’re necessary.”

The floor returned beneath her feet. Leta swayed, took a step back, and collapsed into a chair. Immediately—almost forgetting who stood before her—she tried to feel the dislocated shoulder.

“Don’t touch it.” Heisenberg yanked the gloves off his hands and practically shoved them into Leta’s mouth. “Bite.”

He grabbed the collar of her T-shirt, tearing the thin fabric just enough to examine the joint. A moment later, the bone snapped back into place.

Leta spat the gloves into the palm he held out. A foul taste lingered in her mouth. The thought of what those gloves had touched—and how long it had been since they’d been disinfected—sent a lump rising in her throat, but the urge to vomit never came.

Only tears filled her eyes—from pain, and from the realisation of what she had driven herself to. But even then, she couldn’t cry.

“We’ll eat on the roof,” Heisenberg said curtly, straightening himself up. “You need fresh air. Don’t look at me like that—there really isn’t a line outside the gates for your job. But if you’re not there in half an hour, I’ll drag you up there myself.”

The workshop door slammed so hard the walls shuddered—Heisenberg had taken advantage of the fact that it was reinforced with metal.

~

Spring hadn’t truly begun yet. Outside it was cold, and a gusty wind swept across the roof. Leta wrapped herself tighter in the old fur-trimmed jacket, sitting cross-legged on the cushions salvaged from a ruined armchair, and watched the rare shafts of sunlight breaking through the grey clouds.

It turned out it had only just passed noon. And she really had been missing fresh air.

Heisenberg was fussing with the meat over the brazier he’d lit on the roof, humming under his breath some old song—an old romance, perhaps, from the time of the First World War. Whatever had happened in the workshop half an hour earlier, he seemed to have forgotten it entirely.

Maybe it was because there had never been—and never would be—a queue outside the factory gates.

Or maybe the reason lay with Leta herself.

Reluctantly, you get out of bed, tiptoeing to the door by habit, and slowly turn the key in the lock.

The corridor is dark; the flame of the candle reflects in crimson eyes. It also casts strange shadows across Astarion’s face, making him look unsettling—even eerie.

“May I come in?”

Without waiting for your answer, Astarion pushes the door open just enough to slip sideways into your room. He presses a finger to his lips, urging silence, and locks the door himself. Then he walks to the bed and sets the candlestick down on the bedside table. His attentive gaze falls on the vial, and lips twitch in displeasure.

“And how long have you been suffering?”

He speaks in a whisper, and you answer him in a whisper as well—the truth. There is no point in lying to him.

“A few hours.”

Astarion shakes his head, sighs heavily, and then sits on your bed, patting the space beside him.

“Sit.”

He behaves in such a way that, for a moment, you wonder whether it was truly he who came to you and not you who visited him. And yet, you obey—his request feeling dangerously close to an order.

You do as you’re told, and at once you feel his cold fingers brush your skin—right above the brow, where the ache throbs the most. It’s pleasant, exactly what you need for the ache to soften. Without meaning to, you lean into Astarion’s touch; only when you hear a faint, self-satisfied chuckle do you realise you’ve closed your eyes and, for the first time in hours, allowed yourself to relax.

“It seems my icy hands are precisely what you’ve been craving.” There is almost none of his usual acidity in his voice, and he continues in earnest: “I’ll help you fall asleep.”

“Since when are you so attentive to others?”

“Oh, darling, I merely care for the well-being of our little party. If you don’t get any sleep, its combat efficiency will plummet.”

Astarion rises from the bed and smirks again, noticing how your expression changes the moment he withdraws his hand. The soothing chill vanishes. The ache resurges, fierce enough to make you reach for the vial.

“No-no-no, darling.” Astarion is quicker, and the vial disappears from the bedside table as if by magic. “We’ll have to make do without elixirs.”

“Sadist.”

“Perhaps. Lie down.”

Another request, poised like an order. You want to bristle, to take offence, to tell him he has no right to order you about in your own room—yet something in his expression prevents it. As if, for a heartbeat, he lifts the mask and lets you see the real him. To realise that his care is genuine, and all that talk of the party is nothing but a way to make the whole thing less awkward. For both of you.

The bed has grown cold. The pillow’s touch sends shivers across your skin. You lie down facing the window and turning your back to Astarion—only then wondering whether that was a mistake…

…or the only sensible choice.

For the first time tonight, the weight of the blanket feels pleasant. Astarion tucks you in tightly, cocooning you, and there is a strange, slightly clumsy tenderness in every movement. He makes sure you’re properly covered, and the room sinks into darkness.

The bed gives under Astarion’s weight and creaks. Too narrow for two, but he keeps the distance, careful not to press against you.

Warm breath brushes the back of your head; a cool palm settles over your aching temple.

“Relax,” he whispers again. “And sleep. If you end up stumbling over your own feet tomorrow, I shan’t dream of carrying you.”

“As if I’d ask you to!”

No reply. Only Astarion’s fingers begin to move, tracing small circles on your temple—each one dulling the ache a little further.

Your thoughts tangle; your body grows heavy. At last, sleep finds you.

This year, I missed the moment of my birth—there’s a family tradition to celebrate at the exact hour—because I was working on my fanfic. That felt more important. A year ago, I couldn’t have imagined I would start writing again. That I would start writing anything again: DBH fanfics, Resident Evil headcanons. Maybe I could even come back to Call of Duty for Captain Price. But only after writing a lot of other things first.

A year ago, I didn’t think I’d have to remember English and use it so often. I still find it incredibly hard to participate in lively conversations; in English, I sound silly, and my vocabulary is limited. Writing long posts and working with literary texts is much easier: no one rushes me. But I will learn, I promise.

I will also learn to set my priorities correctly. To say no to extra work so I have more time for myself, my life, my hobbies—things, as wonderfully reminded to me by amazing people, that should not disappear after thirty. You can be a serious person, you can be married, but you can still love a fictional engineer from one Romanian village.

I really want my voice to be heard. I don’t want to lose this. A close friend wrote today: “Compared to before, you’ve made huge progress, and no matter how much you want to beat yourself up, I can see your state improving.” Then she added: “You’re still my delightful dark ray, the wisest witch in the woods. Everything will be fine. And if it isn’t—we’ll burn to ashes everything that stands in the way.”

A couple of licks and saliva-slicked fingers serve as a substitute for natural lubrication — he no longer cares whether she’s truly aroused, whether she truly wants what is about to happen.

Pushing him away is impossible. His reaction to refusal is unpredictable; it’s easier to “close your eyes, spread your legs, and think of England” — at least that’s familiar, understandable. The further it goes, the easier it is to endure. Easier to resign yourself to it always being like this.

Something is wrong with you. You’re the one who’s broken.

A deceptively tender voice spreads through the room, drowning out the moan of pain when the thrusts become hard, sharp, rough — he never gives time to adjust, as always. The same icy palm covers her mouth; the position is awkward, painful both inside and out.

It’s terrifying.

It’s humiliating.

It’s the same as being an object. A toy expected to give in at the snap of his fingers.

You get used to it.

The rough thrusts grow even harder, tearing screams from her throat. Tears stream down her cheeks…

~

Tears really did run down her cheeks. Her neck ached — to wrench free from the clinging paws of the nightmare she had to jerk her head so violently that for a couple of days she would need to apply healing salve to soothe muscles, or ligaments, or whatever else one could injure with such a sharp movement.

Leta sat up on the bed, hissed as she tugged the collar of the T-shirt that served as a nightgown, allowing the sweat-soaked fabric to peel from her skin. Goosebumps immediately prickled across her body as the cold air slipped beneath her clothes. Her hands trembled.

Despite how often these nightmares came, how they should have become routine, a background noise of her existence, each time she woke up like this: sweaty, tear-streaked, disheveled, burdened with guilt both toward herself and toward him, the man who didn’t see, didn’t hear, didn’t notice.

Who loved her.

Loved her, cared for her, protected her.

And yet…

For several minutes Leta sat motionless on the bed, not daring either to lie down again — as if she could fall asleep again after such a nightmare — nor even to change to a more comfortable position. As if any movement would make the shadows in the corners of the room take his shape, turning the nightmare into reality once more.

Time dragged on; nearly fifteen minutes passed before Leta finally threw off the blanket. She made her way to the kitchen without switching on any lights and without grabbing a candle or a flashlight. First, because it was only a short walk, and second, because light would only irritate her, and irritation was already flooding her, slowly pushing out the fear.

The old faucet spat water into the sink, shattering the silence with the clang of metal. Leta grimaced at the expected but still startling noise. Something was wrong with the plumbing again — well, the part that served the living section of the factory. She had neither the energy nor the desire to deal with it; after all, the factory had an owner… though, like a typical man, he could ignore the problem for weeks.

The icy water — almost like the hands in her nightmare — brought her back to her senses, at least enough to breathe more easily. The fever in her body gave way to chills. She wanted to climb into the bathtub, wash the sweat off, wash away the sleep, wash away those damned memories and the phantom sensation of other hands on her body. Leta glanced at a clean rag, wondering if she should wipe herself down right then to feel some relief, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

The steady sound of the water, now flowing uninterrupted, calmed her somewhat. Leta closed her eyes, gripped the edges of the sink so hard her knuckles went white, took a deep breath and opened her eyes at the same time as a gruff voice came from the doorway — there was no door on the kitchen, not even a curtain — another task for the factory’s owner.

“I thought I sent you to bed. What the hell are you doing here, woman?”

Karl’s eyes dimly glowed in the dark, reminding her that he could see perfectly in it, unlike Leta. He saw her expression, the wet stains of sweat and water on her T-shirt, the trembling hands and maybe even the slightly swollen nose and lips from crying.

“You need to be sharp at dawn, thinking, not half-asleep on your feet,” Karl said, surveying his assistant with a look barely warmer than the water in the faucet. “And not sick. Do you want to dose yourself with Donna’s tinctures again?”

Leta could have said that Donna’s tinctures, though peculiar in taste and smell, put you back on your feet quickly, but she remained silent, unable yet to speak properly. All she did was hitch her T-shirt to cover her hips — a silly habit born from living alone: she’d remembered to put on shoes, knowing it was dangerous to go barefoot even in the factory’s living quarters, but completely forgot about pants. Without them she still felt exposed, especially under Karl’s attentive, displeased — thankfully, devoid of any lust! — gaze.

The silence stretched on, and Karl’s patience waned. A couple of his broad steps later he was right beside Leta, looming over her, forcing her to shrink slightly. And precisely this movement awakened a spark of comprehension in his eyes.

“Another nightmare?” Karl’s voice was still gruff, with a faint, almost imperceptible note of concern. Or maybe Leta only imagined it. “You’ve been having them a lot. Care to share?”

It wasn’t the first time he’d asked, and not the first time Leta replied with a small, hoarse but firm:

“No.”

“Tsk.”

Karl crossed his arms over his chest, smirked, exposing teeth too white for a lifelong smoker.

“You need to get rid of these nightmares. They interfere with your life and screwing up my plans. I can help, but I need to know what’s haunting you.”

Leta pressed her lips together, knowing he was right: if he could help, she should use it. But trust is a tricky thing.

"What’s with the sudden urge to play caretaker, Heis?" filling her voice with indifference was hard; it wavered slightly, and Karl couldn’t have missed it. "What, you’re that attached to me?"

Such a stupid defense mechanism. Karl read it perfectly, so he reached out.

His gloveless hand, nearly as huge as the one in her nightmare, almost touched her shoulder. Almost, because at the last moment, Leta swayed aside, dodging the touch as if her movement was accidental.

Karl’s eyes narrowed dangerously, he lowered his hand, and took a step back.

"You’ll have to tell me. Or I’ll make my own assumptions, and trust me, you won’t like them," he snapped, turning his back to her. "You… are necessary."

Karl left the kitchen, leaving behind only the smell of cigarettes and machine oil.

"Damn it," Leta muttered, fumbling for the faucet to turn off the water.

She badly needed a good sleep.