The State had done well in its teaching of young Illya. Still too young to understand the ramifications of the truce just signed with Germany, the friendship that would turn out to be fleeting and almost immediately bitter with Hitler and his government, he had learned much at the State's knee.
His father was a traitor. The worst of the worst, for having been so close to Stalin and betrayed him for...what? Money? He did not yet know how unlikely it was his father would survive more than a winter in the gulag, although they reminded him often enough of the fact that he had been, and the shame he felt with every reminder overwhelmed nearly all else. So too did he not know how unlikely it was the elder Kuryakin had survived his interrogation room at all, as intimate a betrayal as his actions were deemed.
He had no secrets from those around him, had not from the moment his father had been taken away and his mother had become the delicate, infinitely fragile thing she was. "It is expected," he tells the other boy, not with derision but with the resigned acceptance that shouldn't have belonged to such a small thing.
There is little he has learned of trust, already, but within the sweltering confines of his coat, Illya is worried he might faint and make himself more of a target. "Please," he says, once he has made up his mind to take the offer, no matter how likely to come with future threat or demand. "I do not want to stay out here."
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2017-09-25 02:20 am (UTC)His father was a traitor. The worst of the worst, for having been so close to Stalin and betrayed him for...what? Money? He did not yet know how unlikely it was his father would survive more than a winter in the gulag, although they reminded him often enough of the fact that he had been, and the shame he felt with every reminder overwhelmed nearly all else. So too did he not know how unlikely it was the elder Kuryakin had survived his interrogation room at all, as intimate a betrayal as his actions were deemed.
He had no secrets from those around him, had not from the moment his father had been taken away and his mother had become the delicate, infinitely fragile thing she was. "It is expected," he tells the other boy, not with derision but with the resigned acceptance that shouldn't have belonged to such a small thing.
There is little he has learned of trust, already, but within the sweltering confines of his coat, Illya is worried he might faint and make himself more of a target. "Please," he says, once he has made up his mind to take the offer, no matter how likely to come with future threat or demand. "I do not want to stay out here."