Chapter Text
I. (1923)
In the dorm room at the orphans' home where Azazel came to live when he was five years old, a picture hang over the doorway.
It was a picture of a slight man, almost as scrawny as Azazel had been when the soldiers brought him here. The picture only showed what was up past the man's elbows, but Azazel thought it looked like his dark gray jacket was too big on him. The man had a small upturned nose and a pointed beard, but the top of his head was almost completely bald.
The man in the picture didn't look strong – not physically – but Azazel thought he looked forceful, somehow, and there was a sly little half-smile on his face that made Azazel want to smile back in the same way.
That picture was a constant. It was the last thing he looked at before he fell asleep and the first thing he saw in morning. The man in the picture was named comrade Lenin, and he was spoken of so frequently and with such fond admiration by the teachers and the other children alike that before very long Azazel began to associate him with all the good things that had come into his life since the soldiers found him, with the soft bed and the good food, the toys and books and lessons and all the rest of it.
Even before Lenin came to visit him, Azazel felt as though he – he himself specifically – had somehow come under his protection and his care. This was a feeling that was of the utmost importance to the boy, though he kept it close to his heart and closely guarded, because before he'd come to the orphanage Azazel had never loved or been loved by anyone else.
II.
Before the soldiers came for Azazel, there had only been degradation. There had been kicks and curses and a chain wrapped around his ankle, binding him within the shadowy confines of a horse's stall. His world had been hunger and hate and cold so blistering that the chapped skin of his hands cracked and bled, the red blood running almost invisible against his skin.
The soldiers had come looking for him after Azazel had found that he didn't have to wear the chain anymore, nor sit still and let people hit him. The other people had always been afraid of him – he'd understood that for as long as he'd been old enough to understand anything – but when found that they couldn't keep him captive any longer they'd gone completely mad with fear.
Azazel was only five years old, but he'd sensed his advantaged and pressed it, using his new ability to torment the worst of the people who'd mistreated him for as long as he could remember. He learned very quickly that he could draw howls of fright simply by appearing without warning in front of someone else. And the reactions became even funnier if he made faces or swiped at the air with his fingers curved like bear's claws.
He haunted the village for almost a week, scaring people off the privy and making general mischief, all the while taking whatever he wanted to eat from whatever house he wanted to take it.
But then the soldiers came, and they weren't so easy to tease. He watched them from ceiling beams and shadowy places for hours after they arrived in the village, studying them while they hunted for him.
After a while, a few of the soldiers sat down to take a break, and Azazel watched one of them bring out a trench knife and begin to sharpen it against whetstone. As soon as Azazel saw that knife, which was twice the length of his own hand and shiny, he began to want to have it very badly, though he could not have said exactly why.
Acting on impulse, he appeared in front of the man with a cloud of smoke, his lips pulled up in a snarl. It was a tactic that he had used to get things he wanted – food or trinkets – from others many times, as people almost always dropped whatever they were holding and ran in the other direction upon his arrival.
But this time it didn't work out that way.
Instead of dropping the knife the man lunged forward, swiping at Azazel's face with the blade – making contact once, then again.
The pain was debilitating, and he staggered backwards, howling, hands clutched over his cut face while the blood welled between his fingers. In the fog of his agony, he'd forgotten completely how to do his new disappearing trick, and he could only stumble backwards while the soldier rushed toward him, still swinging the blade.
Azazel tripped over some unseen thing and fell into a second set of arms. It was another of the soldiers, and this one picked Azazel up and pinned him against his chest. He struggled to free himself, but the soldier was so much bigger than Azazel was, and he was stupid with pain and fear. He jabbed at the soldier's body with the sharp tip of his tail, but the man was wrapped securely in a heavy woolen greatcoat, so it made no difference.
The soldier who had captured him turned his back on the one with the knife. He squatted down to open a canvas bag with one hand, while he supported Azazel against himself with the other.
The man with the knife was shouting about devils and monsters, and Azazel knew that meant him – he had no illusions about what he was – but the second soldier just ignored him.
Azazel couldn't see what either of them were doing. He couldn't see anything. There was blood in his right eye, and the left was pressed against the soldier's chest.
He felt the prick of something sharp against his skin, trivial when compared with the agony in his face. Much later, he would understand that he'd been given a morphine injection, but at the time he'd no explanation for the fogginess that entered his brain, or for the creeping cold numbness that was spreading through his limbs. He clutched at the soldier's greatcoat and pressed the good side of his face against the man's chest, whimpering.
“It's a demon,” he could hear the man with the knife knife insisting, as though from a great distance.
Azazel's soldier straighten and whirl toward the other, setting Azazel's entire world spinning. “Backwards, superstitious fool,” he hissed between his teeth. “He's a toddler!”
And then the blackness swallowed Azazel whole.
III.
When he woke again, he was tucked inside the soldier's greatcoat, his own head sticking out below the soldier's chin. They were on horseback, moving with a rhythmic rocking motion that made him feel queasy. His tail twitched uneasily, sandwiched between the fabric of the soldier's uniform and the greatcoat.
His face hurt. There was something over it, covering one of his eyes, and when he reached up tentatively to touch it his fingers brushed against cloth bandages.
“Careful now,” the soldier said, and Azazel could feel the rumble of his chest when he spoke.
Azazel thought about fleeing, but he hadn't resources for it – neither the energy nor the drive. His head felt as though it was stuffed with sodden wool, and at the moment he didn't think he could have teleported to save his own life.
And anyway, it was warm and comfortable inside the soldier's greatcoat. He was still very scared, but he found that he didn't want to leave. He drew his hand back inside the coat, away from the nip of the autumn wind.
“You alright in there?” the soldier asked. Azazel wasn't sure how to answer that – he wasn't accustomed to being addressed directly – so he didn't reply.
For his part, the soldier wasn't used to being ignored. “You can speak, can't you?”
“I can talk,” Azazel said. And he could, only it hurt his face.
“Very good. What's your name?”
“Azazel,” he said.
The soldier paused, then he shook his head like a horse with a fly in his ear. Casting his good eye upward, Azazel could see his chin going back and forth. There was gray in the man's short, black beard. “That's not a proper name for a little boy.”
“I'm not a boy,” Azazel told him. “I'm a little red devil.” This was what everyone had always said about him, and he accepted it on faith.
The soldier snorted. “You're red anyway, but that's alright, my boy. So am I.”
This was an outrageous lie; even Azazel – who'd up until then had little experience in telling the truth from falsehoods and who would never be especially good at detecting liars – could tell that much. “You aren't even! You – you're white!”
“Now, be careful you don't insult me, comrade. Those are fighting words.”
Azazel lapsed into sullen silence, but the soldier didn't seem to mind. He went on. “All of Russia's red now, or will be soon enough. We fought and bled to see to that, the Red Army did, and we won out. And now – listen to this, my boy, it's important – now all the workers of the world are going to see how we fought and how we won, and they'll take us as an example, and take up arms to earn their own freedom.
“You picked a good time to be born red, child. The future is red, and it's bright, and we're bringing into existence a world without chains.”
“I had a chain on,” Azazel told him. He would have pointed to ankle if he could have moved within the confines of the greatcoat. “I took it off.”
“Simple as that, isn't it? Good for you, but you should try not to blame those peasants back there for it. They aren't the enemy, it's only that they're ignorant. They need to be educated.
“Now, tell me – Do you know where we are going?”
“... Somewhere else?” Azazel ventured.
“We are going to go ride on a train. How does that sound to you, my boy?” Azazel had only the vaguest concept of what a train was. He'd certainly never seen one, not even in a picture. In any case, this time the soldier did not seem to require an answer to his question. “I served on Comrade Trotsky's war train, back in 1918 and '19, back when the Revolution was fighting for its life. That damned old train went all over the countryside, delivering food and ammunition and whatever else was needed by the troops, and it carried a printing press to boot. What do you know that, Azazel?”
“Nothin',” Azazel said, wearily. Every word he spoke was making his face hurt worse than before.
“That's alright,” the soldier told him. “You'll learn all about history once we get you squared away into a school. That train got a decoration, did you know that? The Order of the Red Flag. They put the train in the civil war museum, in Moscow. Maybe you'll go and visit it someday.”
“Is that where we're going? Moscow?” He'd heard of Moscow, at least.
“Truth is, I'm not sure where we're bound. I need to send a telegram about you, my boy, so we can get that much worked out. All sorts of important people are going to take an interest in you, I can promise you that.”