Wunderhein Academy: Book 1- Awakening

“I was going to the bathroom?” Kitten gulped.

“Is that meant to be a question or a statement?” Aleksei ’s one eye lifted as her explanation.

“Does it matter? I’m back.” She frowned. “Why are you up so late? You were in the hospital. You should be in bed.”

“Dmitri woke me up to check on my concussion and I couldn’t get back to sleep. I figured I’d get some work done.”

“Good luck with that.” She let out a yawn, her arms lifting up as she stretched, the end of her jersey lifting high enough that it reached her belt buckle instead of flopping over it.

“Cover your mouth.”

“Huh?”

“You should cover your mouth when you yawn.” Aleksei shook his head. “It’s called manners.”

She glared at him before deliberately yawning again, opening her mouth as wide as possible. Aleksei rolled his eyes. “How can you expect people to take you seriously when you don’t respect yourself at all?”

“I respect myself. I keep myself neat. Sorta.” She added the last word quickly, fixing up her oversized clothing in hurried almost embarrassed movements that made Aleksei wish she would just go to bed.

“No, you don’t. You haven’t even tried to stop biting your nails.” He noted as she rubbed at her wrist. He reached out and tugged at the sleeve of her jersey. For a moment, anger hit him as the bracelet appeared. “Is that a gift from Tom?”

“How did you …” She pulled her arm back and covered the bracelet. “That’s none of your business.”

Aleksei just shook his head.

“You idiot.” He muttered. “It’s fine if you want to be with him. Just don’t sneak around so late. It’s going to start rumours.”

“I wasn’t sneaking.”

“Oh really?” Aleksei looked sceptical. “Your uniform is a mess and you smell like him.”

Kitten opened her mouth before shutting it again.

“Just go to bed.” Aleksei waved off any protests. He wasn’t in the mood for another one of her mood swings. “You have to be in some form of being awake for tomorrow.”

“Why? What’s happening tomorrow?” She blinked before stepping after him as he went towards the courtyard. “Is it special training again?”

“No.” He looked at her in disbelief. “It’s your birthday.”

Kitten halted. “You know about that?”

“I’m your captain. Of course I know.” He dropped to the ground and made himself comfortable by the tree before opening up one of the files. “And of course the whole team knows since nothing is secret for more than five minutes when you’re concerned. Ivan is planning on making a cake and Boris has already made you a card. Dmitri picked up a gift for you. Just so you know, I’m confiscating it if its vodka. Birthday or not, you are still too young for that stuff. I won’t even let Boris drink it.”

“It’s not my birthday.” Kitten blurted out, her words cutting into the silent night.

Aleksei looked up from the file in his hand. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s not my birthday.”

“This was the date written in your file.” Aleksei began hunting amongst the folders and withdrew one that looked like the others, only less slightly mishandled. He opened it up and withdrew the first page and glanced at it before holding it out towards her.

Kitten didn’t take it. She kept staring down at him. It began annoying him.

“So when is your birthday?” He sighed, pulling back the page and grabbing his pencil, pressing the point to the page.

“I don’t have one.”

“Excuse me?” Aleksei looked up at her again.

“I said I don’t have a birthday.” Her fists clenched at her side.

Aleksei glanced back at her arm that was covered in Tom’s gift. She was rubbing it again. The way you did when you needed comfort or if something felt strange so you kept touching it because it was bothering you.

“Did he hurt you?” Aleksei couldn’t help the growl sneaking into his voice.

“I didn’t want Tom to know either.” He didn’t miss how small her voice sounded. For a moment she stood staring at her feet before dropping to the ground next to him, hiding her face in her knees. He could smell salt in the air. A few seconds later he heard the slight sniffs.

Aleksei took a deep breath, trying to force himself against warning her about using her jersey to blow her nose on.

If Tom had hurt her, the Med was going to be dead, Aleksei decided.

“My mom died today.” The whisper was so silent he nearly missed it, even with his excellent hearing.

“I thought she died months ago.” He blinked in surprise. “Before you came here.”

“No.” Kitten shook her head miserably without looking up. “She died a year ago. Dad didn’t want me until a few months back.”

“What were you doing all that time? Where did you live?”

“I stayed a bit with the doctor that we had been living with. He was nice and didn’t mind having me around. I think he liked the company.” Kitten sniffed. “Only the others in the village didn’t like it. They said it was bad for a girl to live on her own with a man she wasn’t related to, so I was sent to live with the Pastor and his wife. I kinda liked them. They weren’t too strict and although they kept talking about finding my family I think they liked having me around. I mean they didn’t have any kids of their own and it seemed like they enjoyed teaching me and having me helping out. Only then the social worker came and said I had a dad that wanted me so I had to leave. Only she brought me here.”

Aleksei stared at her for a moment longer, watching as her shoulders vibrating silently.

“The pains not going to go away.” He began when he managed to find his words again. “You know that right?”

Kitten’s head snapped towards him. He had been right. She had been crying. He could see her lashes sparkling in the moonlight from her tears.

“Never?” She gulped on the word.

“No.” Aleksei fiddled with the papers in his hands, slipping them away into the folders before piling the folders next to him neatly. “You just have to force yourself to be brave and keep taking steps forward until it hurts a little less. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.”

“How do you know?” She sniffed once more. This time it sounded disgusting, like a huge mud squishing between your toes when you played outside after it rained. He pulled out the ragged piece of material from his pocket when he noticed her raising her arm to wipe her face with the sleeve of her jersey.

“Stop doing that.” He handed her the crudely cut material. “Use this. Your clothes aren’t for blowing your nose.”

“Huh.” She took it and looked at it with a lost expression. “What’s this?”

“I saw it in a movie once.” He muttered. “One of the characters had something like this. I find it handy.”

Kitten hesitated before blowing her nose on the material. She held back to him but he frowned. “Forget it. You keep it.”

He continued shuffling the folders into a neat pile as she fiddled with the cloth.

“How do you know it still hurts?” She asked him again, making him curse himself for even saying anything.

“Because,” His voice lowered, not looking at her. “I lost my mom too.”

“Really?”

He took a deep breath, wishing he didn’t feel Kitten watching him. He closed his eyes but it made things worse. He could almost see his mom now. Her face smiling as she bent over to kiss his forehead. The smell of stale clothing clinging to her like a perfume some of the rich people wore. A comforting smell that was hers only.

“Did she get sick too?” The question came out as a small whisper, as if Kitten was afraid to tread on his memory, knowing how painful it was, but needed grab hold of someone who knew what she was going through.

He shook his head as laughter filled his mind. Sweet, innocent laughter of a woman long dead.

“She was amazing.” He slowly let out. “She used to do things like this, take me outside when I couldn’t sleep so I could look at the stars. She told me stories, about all sorts of strange things. My favourite was about Baba Yaga and her chicken hut. I wanted to find it so I could travel in it and explore the world. She had this long hair that she always kept tied up. Sometimes she let me play with it.” He smiled briefly. “She taught me to read. We were too broke for me to go to school so she taught me herself. Her dad was a teacher and she learnt from him. We read the same book over and over. We could only afford one. She saved up forever to buy it for me.“

“Is that why you like reading so much?”

“Who knows?” Aleksei shrugged. “I just remember how fun it was until clock chime. Clock chime there was that urgency, you know? I had to rush to bed and we had to hide the book because it was our secret. Then my dad would come in.” Aleksei’s eyes narrowed. “Sometimes he would just go to bed but sometimes I could hear him fighting with my mom. Really bad fights. I would close my eyes tight and try and wish him away but it never worked.”

“Why did they fight?”

“Because he was an idiot.” Aleksei growled, his fists clenching. “He got drunk then came home a mess.”

He heard Kitten gasp a little. Aleksei ignored it. He could almost smell the alcohol now. His stomach felt like turning in disgust.

“He didn’t care about anything except drinking and making us miserable. I found a kitten that we had to hide so he wouldn’t find it. When he did, he made me watch as he drowned it. He called it setting an example and helping me become a man. Then later he would turn around and say I wasn’t even his son even though I looked like him. I hated him so much.”

“That’s awful.” The words slipped from Kitten’s mouth. “That must have hurt so much.”

Aleksei felt like snorting. “I was used to it.”

“Did he send you here?”

Aleksei shook his head. “No, I came here because I wanted to.”

“You wanted to?” Aleksei heard the surprise in Kitten’s voice.

“I wanted something better for my life. Is that hard to believe?”

“Was it after your mother died?”

“Yeah. She found out she was having a baby. We were both happy about it.” He smiled softly as he recalled resting his head on his mother’s stomach, her hand brushing his head as he spoke to his unborn sibling. He had given it twisted bits of songs and fairytales mixed with promises that he would take care of it. “Then came the big fight. I was meant to be sleeping but I wasn’t. I had to run for the doctor two houses down. My mom died giving birth to the baby. My sister was born too early and already dead according to the doctor.” Aleksei didn’t even try to keep the bitterness from his voice. He had held her. She had been bloody, wrinkled and the tiniest thing he had ever seen. He had almost forgotten crying over her, making steaks in the mess she was covered in. He remembered thinking she was cold, and maybe that was why she wasn’t moving and had taken his shirt off to cover her with. He had nearly bitten the doctor when the man tried taking her from him. It had earned him a smack from his father across the face.

“Lexie?” Kitten broke into his thoughts. Aleksei mentally shook his head.

“Nothing.” He replied coldly. “I snuck out some stuff that I thought I would need and left.”

“You ran away.”

“Basically.” Aleksei picked up a small stone and half-heartedly threw it. “I stayed on the street for a while. That’s how Dimi and I met. Some older boys were picking on me and he stepped in. He had more practice running the streets. I thought he was just after my food but we ended up becoming friends. When we learnt about this place we decided to come.”

“Boris never told me that.”

“Boris doesn’t’ know everything. If you don’t mind I prefer to keep it that way.” Aleksei replied moodily. “Some things I prefer keeping private.”

“But...”

“Look I’ll trade you, shut up about you know and I’ll change the date on your form.” He glared at her. “I’ll make up an excuse for the team so you don’t have a birthday.”

She went silent before nodding. “I promise.”

“Good. Now go to bed.” He tried to turn back to the folders next to him.

She stood up and dusted herself off. “You should go to bed too, you know.”

“Last I checked, you weren’t my captain.” He snorted, keeping his eyes on his papers.

“Fine. Die. I don’t care.”

He looked up in time to watch her storm off. A few moments later, the light switched on in her room.

“Locking the door.” He whispered, counting off the items she could be doing. “Taking off her shoes. Pulling off her jersey, pants, shirt. Putting on that stupid sleep shirt. Maybe yawning. Take off the bracelet and the light should go off right about-“ He halted. A few seconds later her light went off.

“Blayd.” He whispered rubbing his nose. “What just happened? I behaved like a dumb love-sick teen.”

He bent down and began gathering his things, halting at her file before jamming it amongst the others.

“Dmitri’s probably right.” He decided reluctantly. “I should start visiting the nurses.”