This is my skin that I've never fit in - Dasha
If you knew the right places, it was nothing at all to get up onto the roofs of Izmaylov. The brickwork was old and strong and left enough spaces for fingers and the toes of boots for anyone brave enough to face the fall. It was possible to climb, but it was even easier to fall.
Dasha walked along the high covered walkway, wishing for warmer weather so that she could be barefoot to climb. It was easy from here though, just a matter of pulling yourself out through one of the many open arches and grabbing onto the bricks above. Arm strength was needed, but Dasha had that. Fingers finding holds in the cold brick, she climbed out onto the outside of the wall and then up onto the roof with a small grunt.
She liked it up here best when it was raining, when the roof was slippery and treacherous under her feet as she walked, rivulets trying to trip her. There were spots you could curl into in the belfries and be sheltered from all kinds of weather. A girl could fall asleep in there and no one would ever know. Dasha liked that sort of hiding.
But today the sky was clear of even a wisp of cloud, and it promised for the coming night an almost full moon and bright white stars that went on forever. (The closest town wasn't close enough to set the sky to glow at night, and so it was always a deep, comforting indigo when it was cloudless. There was something pure about a sky like that and it was the first place Dasha had lived where it seemed like you could see right out into space, into that black the surrounded the world. She imagined being an astronaut sometimes, but more than that she wanted to be out among it without some metal box around her. Floating, weightless, airless, in a dark void of nothing. She wanted to collapse her lungs breathing in stars. She wanted to scream and have every particle of sound swallowed up.)
She shivered, picking her way between the tiles she knew were weak.
Almost six months Dasha had been at Izmaylov and she wanted to one day be there long enough to know it like it was her own bones, brickwork a part of her own body. Not that Dasha's own body wasn't a thing that had betrayed her, a thing that she didn't understand. Her body was a thing that brought her anger and confusion and sometimes she hated it.
Dasha was angry about a lot of things though, and her body was just one thing on a lengthy list. There were days - so many days - where Dasha felt like everything was blinding, hot anger and there was no room in her for anything else. At seventeen she'd first said I'm angry, first put a name to what consumed her, and since then it seemed like she couldn't let it go.
She covered it with sarcasm, with eyerolls and crossed arms and long-suffering sighs, because she'd learned that people prefered it that way, that she passed better among others when they thought her a woman who couldn't outgrow teenage moodiness, instead of a woman who couldn't contain the volcano that ate away at her insides, that sometimes couldn't breathe properly because white fury had filled up her lungs instead.
Killing things was better. She'd killed a few people by now, but she had no art to it. She didn't care about making anyone suffer or drawing things out, she just had to destroy. Anything beyond that was too much thought. People never found the bodies because Dasha never left enough to find, just bits. Tearing someone apart felt good, tearing them apart and apart and apart until it was just pieces to be taken by the wolverines and the bears and the lynx and the buzzards. She cut her own hands up snapping bones, trying to crush them, trying to make it so that this time all the anger left her.
But the anger never really went away. It was always there, always making Dasha want to scream and curse. Dasha didn't know how to make it just sleep.
Sometimes she thought maybe God had gotten her even more wrong than just making her deathless, like he'd mixed up her bowl of ingredients and added rage where he should have put love, or fear, or amusement. It was harder to find those things in her and when she did they wouldn't stay long enough. They were bare acquaintances, sleeping on her couch a few nights and then never calling.
Dasha kicked one of the tiles and sent it skittering down the side of the building, smashing into the courtyard and echoing off the walls. From down there a ground of the little kids ran over to look at it and then up to her.
"You're gonna be in trouble!" Zuzela shouted up and Dasha made a rude gesture at her, but didn't kick off another tile even though she thought about it. Zuzela was a brat, a little mess of a thing, and Dasha didn't give a shit if Zuzela went running to mummy to tell on her. Dasha wasn't scared of Lucine.
(But maybe, somewhere, she sort of thought Lucine was okay, because Lucine had let her stay, and Lucine was bossy and controlling but Lucine had let her stay. It was important to remember and sometimes Dasha had to repeat it silently when it felt like the walls were too close and there were too many others around. But, Dasha knew, Lucine hadn't saved her. Dasha had saved herself long before Lucine found her, and she wouldn't let Lucine have that, even though that was what Lucine liked to have. Lucine thought she was some kind of saviour to them all, some sort of queen above them, but Dasha knew better. There were too many things in this place Dasha had to share, but she would bite and spit to keep this in the end: Dasha had saved herself.)
And so here Dasha was, sure of the cause but unsure of her comrades. Sure of what she would do when the day came, but unsure if she was capable.
If the war came soon it would be bad. There was still too much healing she had to do and were she asked to march in tomorrow, she would be the weak link among them. Maybe someone would even be able to get hold of her. Maybe she would be taken back again to the place where she had started out.
Dasha wrapped her fingers around one of the tall crosses she used to pull herself up onto the next roof, knuckles paling, brick scraping her palm, and felt that anger again.
There was only forward. There was no back. She'd throw herself off the tallest point of Izmaylov and break every bone in her immortal body before she even let herself look backward. She'd kill everything that even looked at her and pummel flesh into nothingness but she would never ever go back.
There was a birdnest on the top of this roof, hiding in a corner, with tiny winged things almost ready to take to the sky. Dasha resented them their soon-to-be freedom, just as she resented every other creature here with unbroken wings. She dreamed sometimes of cutting into the others, lying in bed and imagining tearing off Lucine's wings, burning off Julya's, cutting off Koshchiy's.
Koshchiy. Koshchiy like a half frozen river trying to break its banks. She didn't like him, didn't like the things he made her feel, didn't like how he got under her skin even when he wasn't there. Koshchiy, worthless Ko, cold eyes, cold hands, Dasha could put her hands inside him and tear something out because she wanted it. She could eat him alive and watch him cry.
(Would Ko cry? Dasha wanted to make him cry. He was attractive and made her stomach twist. She'd cut off his wings and make him mortal. She'd bring him down to earth like she'd been brought down to earth.)
Dasha kicked the nest from the roof with a hiss, stupid baby birds, stupid, ugly baby birds, of no use to anyone.
Fly away if you've got any sense. Fucking fly away from here if you're so good at it.