Yelena Petrovna is dying. She knows this even as the blows keep raining down on her, even as she fights back with everything she is. It does not escape her that her internal organs have been seriously damaged and she is bleeding profusely from a number of wounds. She reaches for the shadow and it does not respond. Bereft of any hope of survival, she dies.
Yelena has been dead several times since she was born. The first was when she was five years old and had been a resident of Camp 14 for just over two years. One too many smart remarks got her noticed by the wrong watch officer and he ordered an example to be made of her. Four guards went to her barracks and began beating her there in front of the rest of the kids. At five years old, she was completely unable to defend herself, but she tried like hell, striking out as well as she could. Perhaps that was not the wisest course of action, but Yelena had never really been accused of that trait. Crippled and battered, the guards then drug her out into the snow and finished the job by raining brutal kicks and punches to the small girl. And she died. By order of the watch officer, her body was left in the snow outside the barracks and all the other kids were told this was the price of disobedience.
The shadows of death that were so plentiful in that camp began wrapping themselves around her essence. And her indomitable will to live grabbed at them, and wrung enough strength from them to live. She had been strong and had struggled against tremendous odds, not giving up and the shadow kept a kernel of life going and gave her a small bit of healing and enough warmth to keep from freezing. The demands of the shadow were few, but they were absolute. The shadow is not a friend, a lover, or a compatriot. But to those who can grab hold and take it, it can give a dark strength. She had proven herself to the shadow and was accepted and her life was given back. After three days in the snow, she received company. The body of a small boy, whose transgression she later found out was vomiting when a guard had punched him in the stomach, was tossed out next to her. She had recovered enough to be able to crawl to him. The body was still warm. And the thin soft skin was easy to bite through so that she could drink the blood. It was her first meal in days. And it had filled her stomach and given her much needed sustenance. She'd passed out again, but when she woke she was stronger. She'd begun eating him. And in the dark others crawled out to help her finish the process. That was the first time she'd ever eaten one of their own, but in the conditions of that camp it would not be the last.
But you cannot wring sustenance from the shadows without them marking you. And Yelena's soul was tainted for the first time in her young life. It made the next life she took that much easier. And the next after that. Each life, each dark transgression further tainted her soul. And in the dark world she lived in, oddly kept her safe. For the soul of man recognizes evil even when his eye cannot, and those unwilling to kill left her alone. And those very willing to kill accepted her as one of their own. And she'd been safe, until she'd died again at Tsina's hands. Died, and been dumped. And once again she'd fought and the shadows that wrapped around her soul, her very essence. And once again she wrung strength and life from them. Fighting. Fighting with every bit of her iron will. Using the memory of Tsina and the others torturing and burning her family to give her strength to live until she took her revenge. And she'd won. Won and come crawling up out of the freezing river and had been found by accident and saved.
And this time she was older and recognized the strength the shadows could give to her if she would take it. For a Vory, prison is not the only place of evil where darkness dwells thick enough for its acolytes to use. And always her faith in the shadow had been unshaken. She knew the price and accepted it. Knew that one day the dark embrace would not loose it's hold. That it's kiss was only for the strong. And tonight she had not been strong. She had allowed the insecurities she felt about tainting Marco and Firefly to confuse her, to make her feel unworthy of their love and friendship, to wonder if they would not be truly better off without her. And not for the first time had wondered if they would not be better off without her to help place the dark taint on their souls. And this night she had partied to forget all of that. She had engaged in every single vice with every bit the hedonistic abandon she'd had in prison. And for the same reason; to forget. But there she had been useful, she had been one of them, and she had been relatively safe. Here, she'd been the loose end of a man who hadn't the courage to kill her himself. And so she lies in a bloody heap in the snow behind some cans of garbage on a narrow street in the Redmond Barrens.
But in the final minutes of her life, Yelena Petrovna had fought as before. There had been no thought of just taking the beating and no thought of just letting them get it over with. She had kicked and clawed and bit, never giving up. She had fought because she did not wish to die and was determined to do as much damage as she could. If she was going to die, she wanted the gangers to know that she had resisted and fought to the very last. The three gangers would carry deep scratches and bite marks as scars to remind them of the she devil they had beaten. Her will was indomitable. And when the shadow noticed, the collective spirit of whatever the shadow consists of allowed a small bit of itself to wrap around the last spark of life before it flickered out. Preserved it and protected it. The spark swore everlasting faith to the shadow, swearing to never again show weakness as it had this night. The spark was allowed to exist and the body was allowed to live, for now. But, her body still did not have the strength to crawl for help. And the numerous broken bones and punctured lung would not have allowed it if she had. And she lay there.
Yelena has been given a gift from the shadow; a peek at the darkness beyond the shadow. Yelena has lived for decades believing she knows the shadow, firm in her life and sure of her way. She has been wrong. She had always known that there was a darkness in some people. Nikolai Fyodorovich was such a person. His is a soul filled with a darkness that Yelena had never understood and has mistakenly put down to something different from the shadow. Now she knows that the darkness is simply the next step into the true shadow. Her next step. The glimpse she has just been given shows her the way if she is strong enough to grab and take it. Everything in her past has led to this decision, even the horrible beating earlier. It is true that the shadow is no friend and no lover, but the darkness can be both if one is strong enough. The whisper in her mind reminds her of the danger of such a choice, and she realizes that she is at the point of no return. And she takes the step to cross. Her way will be filled with new dangers but also new possibilities. It will take time to understand the dark and she may fail, but if she does it will not be because she does not fight her way closer to the answer. She is ready to begin the next phase of her slide into darkness.
She does not hear the voice of the man when he discovers her. "Damn. I'm getting to old for this shit. Grazzt, we got a dumper. Call the cops." An hour or more goes by. She doesn't hear the explanation given by the man. Barely feels when he takes her hand for fingerprints. "Well at least she's in the system. The HELL! Jones!" In the shock of the information he's holding the officer stands up with Yelena's hand still on the ID'er and her body is jerked. She moans with the pain. It's a small sound. But it's enough. "The HELL! SHE'S ALIVE! Get a DocWagon! NOW! NOW DAMNIT! And get the medkit outta the car! The GOOD one!" "Didn't you fraggers even check and see if she was alive?!?!?!?" and another voice says, "Hell no. I didn't touch 'er. You think I want some damn hair or fingerprint getting on her and getting me fingered fer this! And besides, look at 'er! You know they don't leave 'em alive. You didn't check 'er neither!" There is pain again, and she passes out. When Yelena wakes up again she knows she is warmer and she is strapped down and a voice is giving strange instructions about drugs to get her heartrate and blood pressure up and saying something about blood. Her eyes are forced open and a light shown in them and something about a reversal agent is said. And then suddenly her entire body is alight with the pain. It is like fire burning her entire body in an inferno. And she gladly passes out to escape it. The next few hours are a jumbled mish-mash of pain and lights and people speaking over her. She doesn't know it but she's wheeled to emergency surgery and worked on for nine hours. And when she wakes up it's to an oddly familiar ceiling and there's something down her throat and for a moment she's back to the night before, but, it's odd, no one is punching her or slamming at her head. Her arms are tied down, but they're beside her. She moves to test her bonds.
"Oh thank all the powers that be! You're awake. Damn you srui! You gonna shorten my life scaring me like this! Frag girl ain’t NOTHIN' worth this!" Yelena sees her srui's scared, worried, dear face come into view above her. A minute behind her Marco's relieved face pops into her field of vision. "Finally, she is awake!" He's pale. He's never been ill. Never been in a hospital. And seeing Yelena like this has shaken him to his core. Arc starts speaking again. "Marco. You spill the caf an you walkin' back down 'fer some more." He looks down then and twists to place something down. And Arc starts speaking to her again. "Some hoop by the name of ShadowDancer comms me this morning. Says you been found at a crime scene an he's authorized all measures magical and mundane to be taken to assist in your healing. Says Sam put a flag on all of us ta get us coded as top priority, classified assets. An since you were still officially on Sam's Op he's puttin it that you were injured in the line of duty. But hell Srui! He said nothing 'bout found near dead with massive internal injuries! An you weren't found anywhere near the 'Dust! What the hell happened?!?!?!" The tube down Yelena's throat keeps her from answering. And a calm voice comes from somewhere past Arc. "She won't be able to answer until the tube is out of her throat. But, she's responding well. And the fact that she's awake already is a good sign. With any luck we'll be able to wean her off the vent tomorrow and continue her recovery. She's a fighter this one. I'm sure she'll do well." The uniformed figure of the nurse comes into view. "I need to do an assessment again. But, I'll be done in just a few minutes if you want to take a quick break." Yelena has no intention of being here for weeks again. And now, now she grabs the shadows once again and forces them to give her strength. Something has changed. Everything has changed. Yelena had let herself slide, allowing herself to forget what the shadow is, what it means to be an acolyte of the darkness. That would not happen again and the shadow knows and responds as she summons it.
