In Petersburg it was below freezing with a chance for snow when I arrived. We already had snow in Moscow.

The airport is at the southern end of St. Petersburg. My destination was just a short drive away from it, a small town named Pushkin - in pre-revolution times it was known as The Tsar's Village. A few fields later I arrived in the limits of the town. As with most of Russia, the population is dwindling but it is a nice little town.

I arrived at her apartment house. It was already dark. I walked up to the main door. I called her mobile phone. Nothing. She had stopped writing a while back, so she probably stopped taking my calls, too. If she was not home I knew a few places to check for her. I pressed the intercom button to buzz her flat. And then I heard a voice that I recognised, "Allo?"

"It's Kolya," I said, preparing myself mentally for the negotiation that almost inevitably would ensue.

"Go away," the voice returned coldly. So it began.

"We have to talk," I said. I had no idea if she was still at the intercom or not.

"You're wasting your time," she said, "you should not have come here."

"I had no choice. You know that I would not come here otherwise." Which is true; no way I would make this trip unless it was absolutely necessary.

"I'm coming down; I'm giving you as much time as it takes to smoke a cigarette," she said. She unlocked the door and I walked inside the elevator room. It was freezing cold but there was no wind. One of the mailbox doors hung open, the lock broken. One mailbox had paper jutting out the side as if it had not been emptied for some time. The three windows were painted shut, so dirty as to not see out and only to allow a miniscule amount of light in. There was a strange smell, too, but I have no idea what precisely. I heard the elevator going up and down and stopping randomly - this elevator has not operated properly for years.

"Thanks," I muttered to myself.

It took her five minutes. Between getting dressed and the odd elevator mechanics she finally popped out of the elevator. For a brief moment I did not recognise her. Her hair was cut very short and blonde. She had also lost weight. The last time I saw her she was long haired, coloured it reddish orange, and didn't look like a rail.

"Thanks for this opportunity," I said.

"Uh huh," she replied curtly. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. "You want to start talking?" she asked as she lit the cigarette. She shivered a bit from the cold.

"I need your help," I said.

"Since when? Since what time do you need help from anybody?" she asked with stinging venom.

I rolled my eyes. "That's not fair."

"To hell with that. To hell with you. Idiot!"

I rubbed my eyes and sniffed the cold air. I looked at her, trying to figure out what to say. She took a deep drag from her cigarette, shifted weight from one foot to the other, looked over at the windows, and exhaled the smoke. "I need your knowledge and experience. You know that I would not come here if it were not absolutely necessary to do so. You know that. Don't you?"

She did know; it was just a matter of time before she decided to admit it.

"Why me? You know people, lots of people. You don't need me at all," she protested. She took a final drag from her cigarette, dropped it, and crushed it under her foot. She was shivering all over at this point. "I hate this fucking place," she said.

"It's cold here. You're shivering. Can we go upstairs?"

"No. I am going upstairs though."

I inhaled slowly and deeply through my nose. The cold air was a little painful. "That's all I got. You know it." I exhaled slowly. She was looking at her shoes, kicking an old cigarette butt, and then looking back up at me. She shoved her hands deep into her pockets and shivered violently once.

"You got my mobile number still?"

"Yes."

"Will you please call me one way or another? How much time do you want?" I asked as softly as I can ask softly, which always come out at least rough around the edges.

She lit another cigarette and took several drags before making eye contact with me. She looked away again, looked back. "It's not necessary," she said. She walked over to the elevator and pressed the button. The elevator door opened. As she stepped into the elevator she said, "come on." I entered the tiny elevator and she flicked her cigarette out just as the door was closing. The elevator took its time as always. We looked at each other. She smiled nervously. I smiled because I think her elevator is funny. Tears welled up in her eyes.

"I'm sorry, forgive me," she sniffed as she wiped the tears out of her eyes.

I tried to reassure her. "That's not necessary." I then added quickly, "neither crying nor apologising."

"It's not necessary for you," she said, sniffing. "Why don't even try to feel emotions that normal people feel? Why do just hide behind that lame I'm a soldier bullshit?" She went from meek and humble to taking the offensive literally in the blink of the eye.

"What?! I never said anything like that, and I don't hide from anything." I sighed. "You've lost your fucking mind."

"Where's your heart!" she screamed and started pounding her fists on my chest. I thought she would get tired of it before it actually started hurting. She was enraged; no telling how long she could keep it up.

"Alright, stop. Just stop." I grabbed her wrists and she struggled helplessly against me. We made eye contact. "Stop, please."

"Release me! Fuck you! I hate you! Release me now! I said release me!" she was screaming. The elevator door opened on the wrong floor. I could not hold back the chuckle as I pressed the button for her floor.

"This is insane," I said. "I did what I had to do."

"Youd did the wrong thing!"

"Maybe but that's not the point."

"It's precisely the point, you worthless pile of pig shit!"

She only gets to cursing like that when she's really pissed, and when she gets pissed there's no telling what might happen. The door of the elevator opened on her floor. I stepped out. She did not move.

"Oh my god, would you please come out from there?"

No reply.

I reached in, grabbed her by the upper arm, and pulled her out. "Alright, I'm done playing this game. Calm down, please. Let's go inside. I want to get this over with as well. It's not like I'm strolling through the fucking garden, you know."

She turned away slowly and without a word. Slowly she walked towards her flat and pushed open the door. She motioned with her head for me to enter.

After thirty minutes of sitting at the kitchen table in utter silence I asked her, "can I make you some tea?" She shook her head. Another half of an hour passed. "I'm going to make some tea for myself. Are you sure you don't want some tea?" She looked at me. The pain in her eyes shot down and back up my spine in a nanosecond. I had no idea what to say. She was hurting, and hurting badly, and I was helpless. Nothing to shoot, nothing to tear into pieces, nothing to wrestle to the ground, and nothing to leave for others with specialisation to manage. There was just me and there was just her, and she was fragile, more fragile than anything in the world. But she was tough. She survived an ordeal that has left others drooling all over straightjackets.

"Do you need me to go to Moscow?" she asked.

"Unfortunately."

"Why?" she asked, although she knew the answer. She knew exactly why I had come.

"It happened again."

"Ever think you've lost your mind?"

"Yes. The problem is that I won't know for sure without your help."

She looked down at the table. She inhaled slowly. "Alright, bearcub [her pet name for me], I'll go." She sighed again. "I'm sor..."

"Tss. You never have to apologise to me about anything."

She smiled weakly and meekly. "When do we leave?"

"As soon as possible."

"Alright."

Hi Hannah, how's school?

And your Pa is correct.

More will be revealed soon.

Or maybe not so soon.

We arrived in Moscow late. She had softened up somewhat and allowed me to drive her to the hotel and to pay for the room. "See you in the morning," I said to her as I put her bag down and walked out the door. As the door was closing, I heard her mumble, "Whatever". I walked out to my Explorer. I needed to get some rest because the next day was going to be a long day, one way or another.

I went to pick Tanya up from the hotel. I called her from the road. "Want me to bring you some breakfast?" I asked her.

"No. I don't want anything from you," she snapped, then paused, "you've done quite enough already, asshole."

"Fine. Be in the lobby in 30 minutes, please, ok?"

She hung up the phone without answering me.

After plowing through Moscow traffic, I arrived at the hotel. I waited a minute. Tanya did not appear. I called her room. No answer. I called her mobile phone. No answer. I got out and went inside the hotel lobby. She was sitting in a chair, her back to the door. Slowly I walked around in front of her; she was staring at the small coffee table in front of her. "Tan," I said, quietly. After exactly two seconds she looked up at me. If looks could kill, I would not be telling you this story.

"I'm hungry," she snarled. "Of course, you didn't bring me anything."

"You just said that you weren't hungry," I responded, although I do not know why; we already abandoned any semblence of a rational conversation, and it was not even 8AM yet. "This might be a record," I said without hiding my frustration with her behaviour.

She unraveled a ball of such elegant explicatives that I was at once awed and pissed off. "That's Sasha-quality filth spewing out that fucking sewer in your face," I growled, "so let's just drop the bullshit and tell me what you want for breakfast. Please."

"I don't want anything. Fuck you."

I looked at her, blinking. All I could do was blink.

"McDonald's," she said quietly.

"McDo... since when..." I started but she interupted me.

"I don't know. Fuck you!"

I found my center and reminded myself to just stay the course. Her mood will pass. It always does. Of course, with my luck, it'd get stuck in supermoodybitch mode. "Alright, take a deep breathe or two and calm down, ok?"

She called me a word that doesn't translate into English, but it's worse than anything you can imagine. Imagine the worst thing you can, it's more vulgar than that. She hissed the word through her teeth. She stood up and walked out the door. She headed for my Explorer and stood next to the door until she saw me come out of the hotel. She tried to open the door. It was locked. She sighed dramatically and walked off towards the road. I opened the door and called out ot her. She ignored me. So now I knew that I would be chasing her half way across Moscow before getting her to return to the parking lot and into the car.

Hannah, She's confused, and has mental health issues, which she is getting help for currently.

Such is the life of a manic-depressive and those who have to deal with them. If she did not agree to therapy, I would drag her there kicking and screaming if necessary. I do not know exactly what she is going through, but I know how mental misalignment can really screw things up for a person. It is easy to angry at them or wonder why they can't get a grip on their emotions and moods. It's easy to blame them for their condition. But that's not how it should work. The trick is keep patience, and that's quite a trick.

After losing only 1.5 hours, we were finally on our way to that apartment. Something was going on there and Tanya was the only person who could figure it out; she's the only other person to have been to that apartment I saw. I knew that she was the key, as painful as it was going to be, I had to bring her; otherwise, some of the weird stuff going on would never stop, and probably just get worse. And I already had enough freaky evenings to know that I don't want any more.

As we passed through the yard she slowed down. "Medvedzhonok!" she shrieked, "don't abandon me!" She was shuttering, shaking, and stuttering. I had my hand on her shoulder. "I'm with you. Nothing in here can hurt you," I reminded her. Of course, that's not entirely true. Nothing can physically hurt her, but who knows what kind of psycho trauma awaited her. I tried to be encouraging. "I promise you, I'm right behind you, step for step," I squeezed her shoulder trying to reassure her. However, she had already entered into a state of mind not too unlike a Medium's auditory reading trance. The big difference is that she can move slowly about, but she has to maintain concentration. I clicked the 'record' button on my video camera to capture everything just in case something really important occurred; I did not want to miss it as I really wanted this whole mess to be over as soon as possible.

She stepped forward but slowly. There was a drunkard passed out and freezing to death but she did not see him; what she was seeing happened years ago. She was seeing it being replayed, just like I have been for years in my nightmares. But I get to wake up and realise that I'm just dreaming. She was not so fortunate; for Tanya, things were never more real.

We looked up at the window sill at the same time. The bullet holes have never been patched over. The window glass had since been replaced, however. My eyes started to fog over, just like on some of those strange evenings I have been experiencing. I imagined how I raised my weapon to shoot at the asshole in the window, but Tanya tried to escape my grasp. I let her go so as not to interrupt her doing her thing. At this point she was not any longer Tanya. She was that little boy, her son.

I tried to protect him; I shouted to him to stay exactly where he was. He ran anyway and he was struck by several rounds raining down indiscriminately from the kitchen window. I tried to run out and grab him but I could not make it. The yard was peppered and he got hit.

I felt my hand on my head, I was trying to keep the camera on Tanya but instead had aimed it at the window, pressing the record button as if the trigger on my gun. I shook my head to clear it. I couldn't see Tanya, to where had she run off?

After calming myself down, I could hear her whimpering. She was whimpering and trying to say something. She had found a small nook between the apartment buildings. I kneeled next to her. I reached for her shoulder, "Tanya? Dear?" Are you here?" I put my hand close to her shoulder. But before I could touch her, she swatted my hand away, and screamed, "Stay away from me you fucking monster!" I took a few steps back. We had not even made it inside the apartment yet. This was not good. I kept the camera recording. "Tanya?" I asked softly, as I reached out to take her hand.

She looked up at me, her eyes buried under huge tears. "I heard your call over the radio," she said as her voice cracked. "I felt how Sasha scooped him up," and she became impossible to understand through her crying and transition into hysteria. "No!" she screamed. She stood up quickly and tried to swat the video camera from my hand. "You're tricking me somehow! You brought me here to trick me! I cannot believe how evil and manipulative you are!"

That day, as always, our radio traffic was recorded. But it remains classified, every last byte of it. I won't say what really happened, but I will say that she knows the truth now and everything she heard in that moment was true. Sasha was shot in the arm trying to protect the boy but she refuses to talk to him. She's read all the AARs but she thinks they're just all made up to relieve me of the responsibility. And years of mental illness and nightmares have reinforced that reality in her. It would take a lot more than a vision to change her mind. That's why we needed to go inside the apartment.

"We have to go inside that apartment," I said to her.

"Why?" she cried like a little girl.

"Because something drew me there in order to show to me that I need to bring you here. I don't know why, or even how, but that's just the way things are."

She had look on her face as if she understood. She nodded. "Give me a minute, ok?"

"Absolutely," I responded. I did not say anything else.

She pulled out a cigarette and fumbled for her lighter. Silently, I looked on, as she started smoking her cigarette. She never looked at me. She never said a word whatsoever to me. I looked around. The building had been abandoned for several years already and it was not coping with the neglect very well at all. She flicked the cigarette away. "I'm ready," she said with hesitation in her voice.

I reached out my hand, but she ignored it. The strangest thing, her behaviour. I followed her towards the door itself that lead to the stairs. It buckled under my shoulder and a third attempt tore through the lock. The light from the outside filled the hallway with soft but eerie light, which reminded me of the first time I was in this building.

We entered from the roof. We descended the stairs slowly, Lyosha and Oleg, and me heard over the radio that the boy was critical, while Sasha was stable. The healers were doing everything possible for both. Psychics were able to determine the boy lived with his mother and an older sister, but were unable to verify if either were in the flat at the time. They rang the phone several times but there was never any answer. We knew there were four people in the flat with at least one shooter included in those four.

We gathered around the door. Oleg slammed the battering ram against the door twice before it gave way. He grabbed the handle and ripped the door out back outwards. I went in before Lyosha and found myself in the kitchen. Some rounds ripped through the wall as I ducked down. Lyosh charged the hallway and I heard some gunfire as well as saw some muzzle flashes. At the moment I made it into the hallway to back up Lyosha one of the assholes brought Tanya out with a knife to her throat.

"This is the end of the road, shitbag," Lyosha explained, quite truthfully.

"You're not taking either of us alive!" the shitbag shouted.

I remember seeing the shell casing eject from Lyosha's weapon in super slow motion. It arced perfectly and bounced against the wall, tumbling back towards him. It hit his sleeve and the casing then fell straight to the floor, just like the assbag Lyosh had just shot. It all happened so fast but it seems to have been much, much longer. I reached out and grabbed Tanya and pulled her back into the kitchen where it was safe.

Tanya was looking out the kitchen window from where the shooter had shot her son and Sasha. I flipped the record switch again. She had obviously zoned out. I stepped to the window and saw the empty yard below. On that day, the yard was filled with soldiers and cops. We were watching and remembering. The difference, of course, she was experiencing that day all over again, as real now as it was that day.

She turned to me. She was crying slightly. She looked at me and I never seen a look like that in a human's face. I really had no idea what was going through her mind. "Tanya?" I asked as softly as I could.

She ran into me and threw her arms around me. "Kolenka! My medvedzhonok! I'm so sorry!" she was getting hysterical as she wailed in my arms.

"What did you see?" I asked, stroking her head softly. "What did you see out the window?" I asked.

"I saw everything, medvedzhonok, oh my god, I'm so sorry!" She wiped her nose with her hand, "He told me everything, too! I cannot believe how miserable I have been with you!"

"You saw him?" I asked. I nuked the contents of the video recorder and set it down and she pushed her way in even closer to me.

"Yes. He," she stuttered, "he, he, he apologised for how it all happened. He was all broken and destroyed and damaged but it was the only way I could see him and I told him he's my son and I love him nevermind what he looks like and that I told him he's" and she went on and on and became not understandable again, "and I told him that I loved him and he told me that he loved me too, and he told me to forgive you because nothing is your fault. He asked me to forgive you!"

"Calm down," I said. I held her head to my chest. "Let's just focus on breathing right now."

We arrived in St. Petersburg. Sasha was waiting for us at the airport; he was there upon her request. She wanted to apologise to him for the things she had said all about him even without meeting him or ever seeing him before. He drove us to her flat and she promised to get counseling. She was ready for it. Her son had talked to her and she finally had the closure she was missing.

That was a touching story.



But Hannah, the thought of little versions of Kolya running around, it scares the hell out of me

Hannah wrote:Hi Kolya,

I'm so glad you was able ta help that woman out. Sometimes people are afraid ta get help when they need it most. It takes a lot of paitientce ta wait fer 'em ta be ready.

Hannah

PS: You're a great feller Kolya, y'all really should take some time ta find a great woman and raise a few other great fellers fer tha future. So we don't run out and all.

I am glad that I was able to help Tanya, too.
Now both of us can get on with life.

And thanks for the compliment, too. You're very kind.

Hi Bert,

I'd say the same ta you . . . we need more lil' turtle's runnin' 'round.

Hannah

PS: Well, waht are y'all waiting for? Ask her.

Score one for Hannah!!

It's a private matter actually.

I don't know what was said, but I know it's come up.