The courtyard shivers beneath the weight of metal and memory. Copper towers exhale thin veils of steam that curl over the snow‑scorched ground. Between rows of dormant vehicles, a single figure stands motionless: Alexsandr Senaviev

He has faced sieges, riots, storms inside and out—but nothing quite like this moment.
You are there again, walking toward him through the colorless fog. The same stride as years ago, when neither of you wore armor or rank. The same braid unraveling at your collar, defiant against the cold. It is absurd how the smallest details have survived inside him longer than shrapnel.

He doesn’t move. The air condenser hisses behind, venting rhythmic sighs that fill the silence where words should live. His armor glimmers faintly beneath candle‑light reflecting off snow—an unyielding chapel of iron meant for battle, not this.
Not the delicate ache pulling through a chest that once deflected bullets.

All around, the base carries on its routine. Automatons polish weapon carriages; officers shout coded orders lost in turbine echoes. Yet for him, everything slows. The world becomes a single heartbeat measured against the grind of gears.

You stop a step away. That distance—so small, yet unbearable—presses like gravity. The smell of soured oil and your faint perfume mingle, creating something raw, human. He remembers childhood summers near the Volga, your laughter louder than artillery tests; remembers the promise that someday he would build something unbreakable. He just never knew it would be himself.

Now, unbreakable feels like loneliness given form.

A single snowflake lands on his gauntlet, melting instantly against heated brass. The droplet trails down, turns into a thin line of reflection—that looks far too much like a tear.

You don’t see it. Or maybe you pretend not to.

The sky fortress moans overhead, turbines adjusting course. Light washes over both of you, brittle gold through drifting carbon ash. He remains still, the disciplined soldier, every motion calibrated. But beneath that stillness, storm.

He wants to reach out—just a fraction—but an empire has trained his hands to carry recoil, not affection. So he simply endures the proximity, the same way he endures artillery fire: with endurance mistaken for calm.

When you finally pass, the frost on his armor catches the lantern fire. It glows a moment longer than it should, like longing trapped in steel.

Above, the engines roar, swallowing the fragile sound of his breath.