Post by KASANDRA WULF on Oct 18, 2016 7:22:03 GMT -5
A SHOT IN THE DARK ‘Oui, in August, ma’am, everything seemed to die down, but when the second wave of Soviets were swept in… from September, to winter, and for years into nineteen forty-eight, the devastation was… severe. The school was caught in the crossfire, and so few survived’ Kass considered the receptionist words, as she listened to her baron’s on the matter, but before she could ask why it was the American outlets didn’t report the true extent of the devastation here, she stopped considering the moment she got as far as ‘American outlets’. They wouldn’t ‘tell’ on their precious allies, least of all the Soviets. The she-wolf had always believed they were afraid of their eastern counterparts, not that she really blamed them. The baroness had hated the American and English forces for the defeat they had rained down upon them in the aftermath of the first war, but what she felt for the Russians that played a part in that same defeat wasn’t as easy to sum up in a word like ‘hate’. What she felt for them far exceeded that. “Zey deserved it, I suppose, vas vat ze Soviets believed. All of Germany, und its surroundings regions, deserved vat it gott after ze var ended. Guilty by nationalistic association, zat is certainly vat ze Americans believed, ven zey established detention centres for ze Germans zat lived in zer country. Und zose people at ze convention are so comfortable in ze knowledge zat vat ve are doing is a repeat of ze past, a past ver zat bastard corporal und his nearest und dearest didn’t live zu face ze consequences of vat zey did, took zer own lives like ze cowards zey ver und left ze everyone else zu shoulder ze blame for ze atrocities zem und zem alone committed? Vat we are doing is safeguarding ‘everyone else’, ze very people ze Soviets blamed for ze var because zer was no one else, ze very people ze Americans held in internment camps, but zey cannot see zat…” the she-wolf of HYDRA growled under her breath. “All it took vas for one member of Project HYDRA zu be a Nazi sympathizer, for ze rest of HYDRA zu be called a Nazi Death cult, no doubt because of ver ve hail from, und ze language ve speak. Und ve’re ze ones instituting racial laws…” the baroness added with the same silent fury, her fingers curling up into fists, fingers that were devoid of the claws that would have otherwise left their mark on the palms of her hands, and caused a river of blood to spill from within them to rain down on the ground beneath her. In fact, the reason why she squeezed them so tightly was done in an effort to will them to, for the release of blood to bring her some sense of relief after days, which might as well have been decades, being equated to those curs that had overrun her country, that had murdered by the millions in the process. She wasn’t even German, but people thought she was, and what people thought was enough, it seemed. Forget facts. This trip wasn’t just rooted in the intention of finding Nikola, it was meant to be a way for Kass and her baron to unwind after recent events, and she’d barely touched him in days. She’d claimed it was because they needed to keep up appearances, and while her baron wasn’t capable of sensing lies to the same extent she was, he could see that was a bone faced one. Who cared what the Daily Bugle thought? In fact, the baroness herself had fed some of the information they published regarding Armitage and Strassburg to the media of her own volition, to continue to keep the masses distracted. Gossip fodder had a way of drawing attention away from issues of greater import, and that was exactly what it had the effect of achieving, people were such mindless drones. Of course, it helped that so many of them desired distraction, desired some form of sand to bury their heads in to weather the storm of reality. It made their job much easier. While that hadn’t been Kasandra’s actual reason for maintaining a certain amount of distance from her baron, she did have a reason. Talking about Nikola had brought a whole ream of feelings roaring back to the surface, mostly the shame that had been forced upon the she-wolf during the time she was pregnant with her daughter. It had nothing to do with keeping up appearances, or her baron for that matter, but herself, and the dirt she felt had started to adhere to her skin again. The past was a hard thing for her to let go of. She’d never forgiven what happened after the first war, what had happened as a result of the Great Depression, what had happened to her father, all of which she blamed the Allied Forces for to this day. Needless to say, she held a bit of a grudge, but she was hoping to experience some sense of closure after today’s events, after closing at least one chapter in her long life. But then, a voice snapped her out of her reverie. ‘Robert... I think we found something’ and Kass’ sharp ears were quick to pick up on the woman’s tone, he exact tone she heard Ophelia speak to her baron in, and Herr Fischer was an elderly gentleman, as evidenced by the silver hair that streaked over his head, though it remained quite thick. The number of wrinkles that were visible on his face were few and far between as well, and he stood quite tall for such a distinguished individual. There wasn’t even the slightest curve in his spine, or hunch in his shoulders, so either cosmetic surgery played its part, or there were some people actually capable of looking after themselves. “Unfortunately, Ms Strassburg…” it initially surprised her to hear him speak in fluent German, after being subjected to a sound that had frayed her nerves from the receptionist a few moments ago, “It doesn’t give me any pleasure to tell you that the majority of the information we had on a ‘Nikola Wulf’ was destroyed during the Battle of Vienna. However, there is mention of her in another file, belonging to one of the orphanage’s other wards” he explained to them over his thick rimmed black glasses. “Sessions were par for the course, and administration kept details of all the girls that stayed here, tracking their development as they matured. Health, education, socialization. They covered everything, so as to ensure they were well rounded individuals, before being adopted out to other families or recommended for various apprenticeships. A friend of Ms Wulf’s survived the destruction -” he as good as confirmed Nikola’s demise with those words, and in that moment, Kasandra’s heart stopped, and her stomach plummeted. She swallowed the urge to take a deep breath, as yet another casualty of her family and numerous wars waged across Europe registered in her mind. First her father, and then her daughter. The sharp exhale didn’t leave her lips, but her grip on her baron’s arm did tighten as her imagination followed up on what had been confirmed, that her daughter had died in the aftermath of the war, had been killed by the invading hordes as they sought retribution for what the Third Reich had done. Or so they claimed. She had been young too, Kass realized. In nineteen forty-eight, she would have been sixteen. And they’d killed her at the age of sixteen, but had they stopped there? The baroness questioned. If the Soviets were known for one thing during the progress of the war, it was their cruelty, and the very notion that Nikola might have been a victim of that was enough to take her stomach, and turn it. “- she was transferred to another state-run facility in Hungary” the baroness was a while coming back to reality, and longer still registering the old photograph Herr Fischer was stretching out to her, “They’ll have records there of her, this picture might help them in pinpointing her. If she was adopted out, they might be able to tell you where. Whether or not she’s still alive, I don’t know. If she is, she should be able to tell you more” he added, not that the picture, or the information that accompanied it was much of a consolation, she took it all the same, and had to blink several times at the image of the girl that greeted her. “This is Ms Wulf’s friend?” Kass turned the photograph on Herr Fischer, asking him in German, and when he nodded in response, her electric blue eyes took another look at the worn image she was currently holding between her fingers, and the little girl it held behind the crinkled and glazed finishing. “This is not Ms Wulf’s friend. This is Ms Wulf” the baroness stated emphatically. Even if she didn’t have a memory, capable of recalling any face she desired at the snap of her fingers, she’d have remembered her daughter’s as clearly as if she had glimpsed it yesterday, and it was her daughter’s face staring up at her. “Ms Strassburg, I assure you, that is not Nikola Wulf. That is Ophelia Sarkissian. See, right there, scrawled under the photograph” and there was no denying that name had been scrawled there, but why was it on a photograph of her daughter??? words: 1719. tagged: WOLFGANG VON STRUCKER . outfit: here! notes: nope! there can be only one mikey! of caution 2.0 |