My Name Is Anya

She was running, and she was terrified. Why she was running, she couldn’t explain, nor could she specify why her heart was hammering so hard in her chest it felt as if it would rip itself from her body at any moment, why sweat streamed from every pore, and why her lungs heaved in great gulps of air despite her lack of fatigue. All she knew was that to stop–to hesitate–for even a split-second, would doom her.

“Anya,” a sly, cruel voice whispered. For a moment, she almost froze as panic seized her.

She knew that voice.

She pumped her legs harder, willing herself to go faster, to get as far away as she could from that voice and the man behind it. She was in the middle of a dark field that seemed to stretch on as far as she could see, with nowhere to hide in sight.

“I’m disappointed Anya.”

Suddenly she was blown off her feet. She rolled gracelessly, feeling her knees and shoulders scrape against the grass. The young witch yelped as she tumbled head over heels until finally she stopped, collapsed in a heap.

Anya picked herself up, shivering as the temperature seemed to abruptly drop.

Then a hand clamped around her throat.

With a strangulated squeak, she was lifted into the air. A long, thin, cloudy limb was wrapped around her neck, exerting not enough pressure to starve her of air completely, but enough to make breathing a distinctly uncomfortable affair.

At the other end of the limb, was his face. She knew it would be. Even now, he appeared as if his visage had been hewn from the earth by a carver with a singularly black heart; a scarred, craggy face leered at her with a sadistic sneer. His blond hair was cropped short and starting to grey, but far from softening, it served more to harden his thickset build, and highlighted his greenish-grey eyes. Below the neck, his body was a humanoid mass of roiling, thick smog that rippled and writhed like it had a mind of its own.

“C-c-Colonel,” Anya choked; her eyes wide as dinner plates. She clawed at the limb that held her but her scratches were rushed and panicked, and the thing wearing Colonel Yevgony Borisovitch Volgin’s face held her fast.

“Anya, my favourite witch,” the Colonel said, his voice soft and light in tone, as if he were greeting an old friend. “It has been far, far too long. Have you enjoyed your vacation?”

‘I…’ Anya croaked, unable to speak. She hadn’t seen Colonel Volgin in her dreams for so long she had almost managed to convince herself she was finally free of him and his vile influence.

“Oh no, my poor, misguided little tool,” Volgin cooed mockingly, “you are never going to be free of me. I made you. You and your dear little sisters. How are Stasya and Lilya, by the way? I do miss them so.”

The thought of Volgin’s reach extending back to the two younger girls sparked a flare of fierce resistance in her.

“Don’t you *touch* them, *monster*!” she spat.

The thing wearing Volgin’s face feigned shock, raising a hazy limb to its mouth like a gossiping mother who has just been told a particularly juicy nugget of information. The expression faded in an instant, replaced once more by the mocking grin.

“That’s not a decision you get to make, Anya. You, Stasya, Lilya; all three of you are mine. Your thoughts are mine, your bodies are mine, your very *souls*. Are. *Mine*. For as long as you live, and wherever you think to hide, you cannot escape me. None of you can, and none of you will. It may take a year, it may take a decade, but I will find you once more, and when I do my dear sweet…” he trailed off, injecting a note of menace into his stony voice, “there will be a reckoning. Oh yes, indeed there will. For you see Anya, we in the GRU are not in the business of either forgetting, or forgiving, and those fools you selfishly decided to suckle up to will be the first to suffer.”

“No,” Anya whispered in horror. “No!” she gargled, tears starting to spill from her eyes. “Please don’t take my family from me again! I’ll do whatever you want!”

Volgin tutted and shook his head, “Oh, little Anya, if it were as simple as that then this world would be a very different place indeed. Don’t worry though; I won’t be so cruel as to make you watch…”

Then, all of a sudden, the pressure on her throat was gone and Anya dropped to the ground, clutching at her throat and drawing great lungfuls of air. Before her fallen figure, the nightmare took a step back away.

“Wha–” Anya gasped, propping herself up on an elbow and pushing herself up.

“This is the future you chose for them, little girl,” the Colonel said. Before him stood all the members of her new family; Tabitha, Rachel, Katya… Frank…

And then they started to die.

The Colonel kept his promise. As soon as the bloodbath began, her vision went dark and all she was left with was the crunching of bones, the pulping of flesh, the splashing of blood, creating the macabre orchestra of savage, violent, brutal death.

“Stop it!” Anya pleaded, straining herself to be heard over the carnage. “Please. This is just…”

“I will not stop, Anya, until you learn that *this* is the price of treachery,” the Colonel whispered into her ear as her vision returned. Mercifully the field was devoid of whatever horror the nightmare had conjured. “You will cause this, but you can stop it if you just. Let. Me. Back. In.”

For the longest moment, Anya considered it. It would be just like old times, a bitter, cynical little voice mused in the back of her mind. Maybe if she relented, her sisters would be spared the worst of the punishment. Why not? If it would spare the others this carnage…

Only then, another thought cropped up, unbidden. She recognised it as a memory–Berlin, to be specific–shortly after she was shot down. She had been visited by her sisters and Katya. When their guard had been dropped, she had lashed out, dropping Katya before taking her sisters and dragging them all the way through the city in order to find some sort of escape before the Butcher had descended. Stasya and Lilya–her sisters, whom she cared about as much as if they were her own flesh and blood–ran to him, and when she had railed against him, Stasya–timid young Stasya–had *shouted* at her to stop.

It had been, by far, the biggest shock she had ever received in her life.

What she hadn’t realised at the time, though, was that her sisters had bonded with him. *Truly* bonded. They had been given a chance, an opportunity, for a better life and had taken it. Anya, damaged as she had been at that time, could scarcely have conceived it. Stasya was her family, and family was to be protected by any means. But her sister defended the man she had been tasked to kill, the man so many Russian steelwings feared and loathed in equal measure. The man they called ‘The Butcher’.

Her sisters had come to love such a man as if he were their own father.

And, in time, so had she. He had taken the headaches away, treated her to all manner of delightful foods, and given her space and time to process her tumultuous, rapidly changing thoughts and feelings. He was nothing at all like the rumours the GRU and Spetsnaz operators suggested. He was courteous, funny at times, and kind.

And, like her younger siblings, he had given her an opportunity for something better–something beyond death for a country that didn’t care, for a man who saw her, and raised her, as a tool.

After all that had been done for her, was this new life that Frank and the others had given her really so cheap?

“No,” Anya whispered, answering her own question.

The Colonel made a confused grunt. She was taken by the throat and hoisted up, once more level with Volgin’s face. This time though, his expression was clouded. Uncertain even.

“No…” she breathed, fixing the Colonel with all the hate and defiance she could muster. She heard a muted *pop* as her familiar manifested, and with it came strength.

The apparition with the Colonel’s head paused and, for the briefest instant, shock registered across its face before he began to squeeze, to crush the life out of the teenaged girl.

It was that sight–that momentary lack of control the unflappable, unstoppable Colonel displayed–that spurred the young girl onwards.

“No.” She repeated, this time with more strength. With one arm, she reached up and took hold of the hand that sought to crush the life from her. The Colonel hissed and recoiled and Anya felt a surge rush through her.

“No. No. No. No, no, no. No!” she chanted, raising her voice an octave with each repeated until eventually she was screaming full volume, her voice booming. The cloudy monster with the Colonel’s face fell back, each bellow of defiance slamming into it like a rain of blows.

“*NO!*” she roared. All the years of repressed memories bubbling up to the surface and exploding like a tidal wave; all the pain, the torment, the anguish, all of it at the behest of this… *thing* before her. She had let her fear of this man rule her for far too long.

No longer.

“*No more!*” she screamed. The Colonel was picked up off his feet and thrown back like he had been yanked with a wire, tumbling head over heels backwards until finally coming to a stop, its face bloodied and bruised. Anya approached it, feeling more powerful than she ever had in her entire life. She came to a stop before the fallen creature and reached down, lifting it up so its face was level with her own. For the first time, she saw fear in the Colonel’s eyes.

She liked it more than she would ever admit.

“My name,” she seethed through clenched teeth, “is Anya Bishop. This is *my* mind and I have let you reign over my fears–let you torment me and my sisters–long enough.”

The Colonel shrank back, tried to shake himself free from her grip, but Anya was determined and kept him held in place. Foiled, the demon tried a different trick.

“You’ll never really be one of them Anya,” it whispered with a sneer. “You’ve done far, far too much harm.”

Anya took a breath.

“Maybe you’re right,” she acknowledged with a sad nod. “I’ve done unspeakable things in your name–in the name of a country I believed was my home. There’s so much that I don’t even know if a whole lifetime would be able to make up for it all.”

She took a breath, steadying herself, and as she was about to speak, realised that there were tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. Anya was surprised to discover, though, that these were not tears of grief, or sorrow.

They were tears of hope.

“But… as these Americans are so fond of saying,” she told the Colonel with a smile, a real, genuine smile, “that doesn’t mean I can’t try.”

There was a moment of silence between the two before, finally, the Colonel donned a solemn expression and nodded, as if in understanding. Then it dissipated, like smoke on the wind, leaving Anya standing alone in the dark field.

As the last wisps of the thing that had been the Colonel vanished, she realised that throughout the whole encounter, she was being observed. Turning her head, she found two shadowy figures–a man and a woman–standing away from her. The man had one arm wrapped around the woman’s shoulders. Their body language was familiar and intimate, and Anya knew immediately that these must be her parents.
There was a stab of pain, followed by a muted sense of longing.

“I’m sorry,” she told them, after a pregnant pause, “but I can’t go back with you.”

She had dug up much, but her former identity–as well as that of her family–remained shrouded, buried somewhere in the depths of her mind. Maybe someday it would come back to her, maybe not. In the end though, it didn’t really matter. She was not the little girl who had once lived happily with these people before her, nor was she the deceptively fragile tool Volgin had crudely beaten into shape over months of psychological and physical torture.

Nor, she mused, was she the same young woman who had warily accepted Frank's new role in her life all that time ago.

Suddenly a light flared into existence a short distance away from the trio and Anya raised a hand to shield her eyes from the glare. She felt her body pull towards it instinctively, and felt a tingle in her eyes she usually equated with waking up. She turned back to the silhouettes.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I hope you’re safe, and that you’re happy… but I have another family waiting for me now.”

She gave them a soft, timid wave of her hand and gave them a brave smile.

“Goodbye,” she said with a sniffle. Then she turned, took a deep breath, and began to walk towards the light.

As she stepped towards it, and felt the tug of consciousness peel her dreamscape away, she wondered briefly if her parents would be proud of who she was now. She hoped so. The thought lifted her spirits, and she smiled warmly as she contemplated her life. It had been dark, and while her future now was a great big question compared to the bleak, grey certainty of her life in Soviet Russia, she found the knowledge did not frighten her. She had her sisters, Katya, her other two adoptive mothers, and her papa.

And that–she reasoned–was more than enough for the time being.

***
“Anya,” a voice cooed softly, “are you really going to be one of those kids who sleeps in on their own birthday?”

Anya stirred, rolling over in her bed towards the source of the sound. Slowly, groggily, she opened an eye.

Standing over her was Katya, her hair falling just above her waistline, a tender, maternal smile on her soft features. Next to her were Stasya and Lilya, appearing to the unfamiliar as expressionless as they ever seemed. Even through her fatigue, however, Anya could detect a glimmer of excitement in their eyes, and she noticed that both of her adoptive sisters had their hands behind their backs as if to conceal something from her sight. Rachel and Tabitha stood behind the trio, their own expressions warm and welcoming.

At the front stood the man to which Anya owed almost everything, with a wry grin on his face, one arm around Katya’s waist, the other resting gently on her bedpost.

Frank Bishop.

Anya felt her lips curl into a tired, but wide and contented smile.

“Morning Papa.”