BLOODY BALLERINA ▹ barnes-romanoff ✓

два.

The little girl's heart was beating rapidly inside of her chest, and she thought maybe it would tear through her skin and plop down onto the floor in front of them. Her body still ached from the beating she had received a while ago; she couldn't remember exactly when. Her eyes felt heavy and sore from all of the crying. Questions kept raging through her mind.

Where was she?

Who was the scary man?

What was going on?

She wanted to go back to her corner. She liked her corner. Her heart longed for it.

She kept waiting for something. She wasn't quite sure what exactly, all she knew was that she was waiting. The man was about to do something, something that hurt. She was sure of it. She bit her bottom lip and pulled her knees to her chest. The shirt she was wearing felt scratchy and it was weird to have something covering her. She had never worn clothes before, but it somehow felt safe.

The man still didn't move.

It was about an hour before the little girl with red hair grew tired of them just staring at each other. She carefully got up and wandered around the room while always keeping one eye on the man in the chair. There was the chair the man was sitting in, a box to be used as a table, and a cot with a small bathroom that had a small showerhead, a bucket with water in it, and a toilet. She kept her arms wrapped around her small chest as she tiptoed around. She didn't touch anything because they all looked odd and unfamiliar to her. She had never seen any of these objects.

What puzzled her the most was, surprisingly, the cot. She stopped about a foot from it and her head cocked to the side a little. Her fingers poked at the palms of each of her hands. Her eyes completely looked away from him as she continued to study the cot while the Soldier studied her. He supposed he shouldn't have been surprised that she had never seen one before and he immediately knew that she would be the one sleeping on it from then on.

He stood then, scraping his chair so she knew that he coming and wouldn't get startled. His boots carried him over to her and then he stood right by the little girl's side. She suddenly caught sight of him out of the corner of her eye and let out a panicked, surprised shriek as she jumped back. He stared at her oddly. He made sure that his chair and feet had made sound so that this wouldn't happen. She gazed up at him with wide, terrified eyes for a long few moments where neither of them did anything. Eventually she just rubbed her running nose and then pointed at the cot, babbling.

That was certainly not any language he had heard of before.

Quite frankly, it was not any language at all.

She stared up at him expectantly before her pale face turned a shade of pink as if she was ashamed of having spoken. She had never spoken before this moment except for the shrieking she did a lot. She imagined she was about to be punished for having tried it. Instead, the man just stared at her before pointing at the cot.

"Dlya sna," the Soldier spoke in Russian. For sleeping.

She stared blankly up at him.

"Za spavanje," he repeated his meaning this time in Serbian, hoping maybe one of these would make the girl understand.

She rubbed her nose again, still watching him.

"For sleeping?" it came out more like a question than the statement he had meant it to be.

English was his last hope and it clearly failed. She still just stared up at him. He took a deep breath and then he carefully told hold of her. Her little shrieks threatened to burst his eardrums as she fought against him picking her up. Ignoring her struggle, he gently laid her down the cot and then she just froze, staring at him with wide eyes. Her entire body was as straight a board. He then sat down beside her on the ground and looked around, tiredly.