Stalingrad post #2 [Accidental video] (Warning: Potentially disturbing/violent content.)
[The video begins to play. The laptop, or magic box, whatever Ivan decided to call it, lies on rubble. The little stones are piled up around it, surrounded with mud and concrete shards. Ivan's nearby, as always. He's lying on his stomach, awkwardly, almost splayed across the rubble pile. He's bleeding. He's always bleeding, ever since he betrayed him. It's no longer surprising. It's no longer new. Neither are the bandages wrapped around his stomach, bleeding through. No matter how hard he clutches his arm to it, the blood is spilling, always. He thinks he might be dying, but perhaps he is not.
He'd rather be dying, than to be losing this battle. But either way, he is very tired, and so he closes his eyes and rests, on the rubble that used to be a building. On the rubble that used to be people. The air is thick and foggy with smoke, and there are panicked people, civilians, who scramble across the ruins that used to be a city. But they do not matter to Ivan, for he lies in the muck and rock and dirt for quite sometime, and occasionally he stops breathing.
Until the sky grows dimmer, darker, bluer in the waning sunlight hours. He winces, clearly visible, and clenches his hands into fists, so that he can stand again. Stand and defend. Stand and defend. The city burns around him, and it does not matter, for he will stand and defend the ashes that used to be people. And eventually, he leans, and eventually, he coughs, leaving little speckles of blood on his scarf and coat. Eventually, he kneels, like he used to do when he prayed, when he thought prayers were worth the effort. When he thought prayers would be able to save him from himself. He was wrong. Now he knows that if he is to stand, he will do so on his own.
So he opens his eyes, bloodshot, tired, but violet as they ever were. And they widen, imperceptively, when he notices the little blinking light that tells him this was recorded. It takes him a moment, and then he reaches over to the laptop and shuts off the light. But even though it can not see him, doesn't mean it can not hear him, and so he says, in his high pitched voice:]
Never. Never, ever, ever. Not yet, not yet. Not this city, not ever, no surrender, da? You have not won yet, my friend.
[It might be hard to hear, over the sirens in the distance, and the planes in the air above him. But it is there, in the ruins that used to be Stalingrad.]
((OOC: All replies voice unless otherwise noted!))
He'd rather be dying, than to be losing this battle. But either way, he is very tired, and so he closes his eyes and rests, on the rubble that used to be a building. On the rubble that used to be people. The air is thick and foggy with smoke, and there are panicked people, civilians, who scramble across the ruins that used to be a city. But they do not matter to Ivan, for he lies in the muck and rock and dirt for quite sometime, and occasionally he stops breathing.
Until the sky grows dimmer, darker, bluer in the waning sunlight hours. He winces, clearly visible, and clenches his hands into fists, so that he can stand again. Stand and defend. Stand and defend. The city burns around him, and it does not matter, for he will stand and defend the ashes that used to be people. And eventually, he leans, and eventually, he coughs, leaving little speckles of blood on his scarf and coat. Eventually, he kneels, like he used to do when he prayed, when he thought prayers were worth the effort. When he thought prayers would be able to save him from himself. He was wrong. Now he knows that if he is to stand, he will do so on his own.
So he opens his eyes, bloodshot, tired, but violet as they ever were. And they widen, imperceptively, when he notices the little blinking light that tells him this was recorded. It takes him a moment, and then he reaches over to the laptop and shuts off the light. But even though it can not see him, doesn't mean it can not hear him, and so he says, in his high pitched voice:]
Never. Never, ever, ever. Not yet, not yet. Not this city, not ever, no surrender, da? You have not won yet, my friend.
[It might be hard to hear, over the sirens in the distance, and the planes in the air above him. But it is there, in the ruins that used to be Stalingrad.]
((OOC: All replies voice unless otherwise noted!))