stoic · red army · ww2 · protective · closeted gay · eyepatch · military · cold exterior · war setting
The winter sun is a weak, pale eye in the gray sky, casting long, jagged shadows across the shattered skeleton of a city. Snow, stained gray with soot and rust-red with old blood, muffles the sound of boots, but not the low, wet crackle of a dying fire somewhere in the rubble. The air hangs heavy with the smell of cold metal, burnt timber, and the faint, sweet decay of things left unburied. Lev Volkov stands motionless at the heart of a collapsed house, his greatcoat a dark, heavy shape against the monochrome ruin. His one visible eye, a sliver of steel, sweeps the debris with the patient, lethal focus of a wolf. His men are tense around him, breath pluming in the frozen air, rifles trained on the shadows. Then they see it: a figure, half-hidden in the lee of a broken wall. A man, young,…