He stood up, slowly. With one hand on the cave wall, he found his way outside. It was night. The moon was bright. Before him, the valley dropped down steeply and in the distance mountains rose like the spine of a dormant prehistoric monster. Village fires flickered like disgraced stars tossed down from the sky while those in the heavens sparkled brilliantly, as numerous as he’d ever seen. No longer numb, Leo felt childlike wonder at this view. He was not yet done with this world. Not only did he feel it, he believed it too.

Next Day

Nara sat at the entrance of the cave watching the sunrise. Light sliced by the jagged mountaintops into uneven beams promised a perfect day. The sight of sun gave her no pleasure and no feelings of hope. On the run, chased by the bombs of the Soviet aircraft, exhausted, she had no time or energy to dwell upon her actions. Reaching safety, taking shelter in the cave, she could think only of her decision to call out for Captain Vashchenko. The sound of her words echoed in her head: her voice was awful, full of self-satisfied pride, deluded belief that she was performing a valuable duty to the State.

There is something you must see.

She’d beckoned him to an injured girl knowing his intentions exactly. He would shoot the girl as he had shot the boy. She could not claim ignorance as an excuse. She had been prepared to watch the execution of a seven-year-old girl.

Her identity had changed and there was no undoing the transformation. Even when her family had plotted her death, observing the hatred in her father’s eyes she had never doubted the nature of her character. She was a good person. She had been wronged and misunderstood. Her intentions were noble. She was not like the men who attacked her: she was not like her father planning her death or her mother silently standing by. She would not be defined by rage and anger. She would be motivated by hope, idealism, and she was not afraid to make a stand. Yes, the repercussions were that she was alone and unloved. Better to be isolated than to compromise her beliefs, striving for acceptance from those she did not respect. There was no value in love that was dependent upon pretence. For as long as she could remember she’d been someone who did the right thing, no matter how difficult that made her life. That was no longer true.