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Tatiana Blog Entry |
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October 18, 2024, 12:02:23 AM October 18, 2024, 12:03:11 AM 10/18/24: r/SketchDaily theme, "Free Draw Friday." This week's character from my anthro WWII storyline is Tatiana (last name never given), sans cap (top drawing) and with cap (bottom drawing). She's the sister of Boris; both are in the Red Army, though she dies before the main story. Didrika and Ratdog/Adel name their daughter after her much later on. There'll be more about her later in my art Tumblr and Toyhou.se. Regarding her design, she resembles her brother. TUMBLR EDIT: Tatiana is a character who obviously casts a long shadow over the main story; her death is largely what inspires Boris's vendetta against the Germans, and later, his lover Didrika's and her new partner Ratdog's/Adel's (a former enemy/rival of Boris's) decision to name their daughter after her. I've never much explored her as a character, as she's dead before the plot begins, presumably killed in combat (like Boris, she's a Red Army soldier); a general idea of how her story goes has presented itself, though it's quite new, and subject to LOTS of change, so take this entry with a big grain of salt. Boris and Tatiana are quite close; he considers her his "baby sister" even though there's not much age difference between them. When war breaks out, and Nazi Germany abruptly turns on its former ally the Soviet Union (this takes place a lot earlier in my story), Boris is initially not interested in getting involved--he even makes plans to flee to avoid conscription. It's Tatiana's decision to join the army that makes him hesitate. He tries to talk her out of it--even though women are allowed in the army, he knows full well just how many of them are likely to be treated by their male comrades--yet Tatiana refuses to listen, and rebukes him for being a coward: "Take a look, even I, a girl, can go and serve the Motherland, what's stopping you?" She really doesn't mean harm by it--like I said, the two have always been close--yet her brother's reluctance bothers her, and her words sting him badly. He decides to follow her lead, and the two enlist and after minimal training are sent off to fight. Boris is an average soldier, not particularly talented at any one thing, but strong and resilient. Tatiana becomes skilled with a rifle; female sharpshooters are in high demand, and although she never becomes a well-known one, still, she doesn't disappoint. She and Boris don't serve in the same unit and are often separated from each other for a while, yet manage to meet now and then. Tatiana gets so wrapped up in her own duties that she doesn't really notice Boris's increasingly flagging spirits every time they meet; Red Army life is certainly not easy for any common soldier, yet Boris is far more common than she is. Since her skill set is more specialized, she receives moderately better treatment, rations, everything; Boris, meanwhile, is pretty much just cannon fodder. While he does finally get promoted to leader of his own small unit, something Tatiana never achieves, still, he grows more jaded and weary and bitter every day, and even feels a bit resentful and envious of his sister's praise and success. He also feels terribly guilty about this, however, and is careful to keep these thoughts to himself. Indeed, despite his jealousy, his meetings with Tatiana--she always beams and gives him the biggest, hardest hugs--are the lone bright point in his rather dreary, miserable military existence. Tatiana keeps her own secret from Boris, and it ends up being her downfall. This is the part of the story so far that's vaguest to me. The rough idea is, while out on a solo mission, Tatiana either wounds or finds a wounded German soldier; she raises her gun to finish him off, but something about the look on his face--he's all alone, obviously terrified, and looks so young--makes her hesitate. Although she keeps mentally berating herself for her weakness, she doesn't take the shot, and instead tends to the soldier's injury (after taking away his pistol, of course). She thoroughly scopes out her surroundings, finds no one, so settles in, builds a small shelter, drags the soldier into it (he bites off his yell of pain), and breaks out some rations. She offers the soldier a bit, he reluctantly accepts, they eat in silence. After the food is gone and she gives him a drink of water he asks her something, but it's in German, so all she does is shake her head and shrug. "You speak Russian?" she asks; in response he furrows his brow, then shakes his head. So, there's that out of the way; they have no real way to communicate. Everything will have to be a guess. She decides they should sit tight until he's able to put weight on his leg and walk on his own. When noises come through the trees--Tatiana recognizes snippets of Russian speech, knows it's her own side--her reaction isn't to hail them, but to hurry to conceal the shelter better, and wait for them to pass. After the sounds cease, when she parts the leafy branches to peer out, the soldier tugs her sleeve--he says something, an obvious question, yet she can't understand. He looks confused, however, so she's pretty sure she can guess what he's asking: Why didn't you get their attention? Tatiana mutters, "Because they'll string me up the moment they find out I was the idiot who helped you!" She knows she did a very stupid thing in not just refusing to shoot the soldier, but in tending to his injury, and is likely to be severely punished for it--if not outright executed. So she may have started out feeling sorry for him, but by now her actions aren't ENTIRELY altruistic; she wants to stay alive, too. The two spend at least a few days together as they wait for the soldier's leg to get stronger; she helps him to his feet a few times, but when he tries to take a step he cries out and she has to help him sit again before he can fall. All this close proximity likely leads to feelings. I don't think they act on them except maybe to share a kiss, after which Tatiana has to go sit by herself for a bit to sort her muddled thoughts. She KNOWS this is stupid, this is dangerous, she rails against herself for feeling such things, yet how often is someone successful at reasoning themselves out of a feeling? The awkward look the German soldier gives her when she returns makes it clear he's just as conflicted...at least, that's what she tells herself, so she isn't alone in her confusion. One day, more noises in the woods--German voices this time. The German soldier nervously pulls himself back, whispering something; when Tatiana looks at him, he waves in the direction of the noises, then makes a throat-slitting gesture. He knows that he, too, is likely to be executed if he's found in her company. Tatiana again hurries to conceal the shelter, and withdraws into it. The two of them hold their breath and peer out through the leaves together. After several moments, the members of the German unit appear, stepping cautiously through the little clearing and looking around. Tatiana is skilled at picking up after herself, removing all signs that she's ever been in a place, and this time is no exception; after a few moments of searching and finding nothing but a little trampled grass, the unit leader gestures, and the soldiers all turn to leave. Tatiana, still watching, dares to let out a tiny breath. Then sucks it in again and stiffens--there's no mistaking the feeling of a gun barrel pressing against the back of her head. The German soldier yells something; the other soldiers all halt, turn back with surprised looks. The unit leader follows the sound of the wounded soldier's voice and rips aside several branches, revealing the makeshift shelter and its occupants. He says something, looking rather surprised himself; the wounded soldier replies, then, still keeping the pistol--he must have stolen it back at some point when Tatiana let down her guard--trained on her head, he pushes himself up, and stands on his own. He grabs Tatiana's rifle and tosses it to the unit commander and Tatiana just feels so, so stupid and gullible...and infuriated. At a nudge and a barked order, she gets to her feet, hands on her head, and exits the shelter, finding herself promptly surrounded. The wounded soldier joins the others and she gets a good look at his face--gone is the fear and uncertainty, the gratitude and the budding feelings. He looks at her like she's an insect under his boot. Tatiana makes her decision right there and then. The unit commander hands her rifle--she mentally curses, she wishes she still had it, could take out a few of them--to another soldier, gestures at the wounded one to search her in case she too has a pistol concealed. He pats her over--finds no pistol--turns to say as much to the commander--when Tatiana drops her hand and shoves it down her trousers. The commander blinks and exclaims--Tatiana unsnaps something clasped around her thigh and pulls her hand back out. The wounded soldier has enough time to turn back before Tatiana buries the knife in his throat, yanks it out--ignoring the spout of blood that hits her--and then swings it down and jams it into her own thigh, just beside the concealed knife sheath. The wounded soldier gurgles and hits the ground--Tatiana gasps and totters before dropping to her knees and slumping over. She notices that everyone drew their guns, probably expecting her to come swinging at them after stabbing their comrade, though now they're just standing around staring, eyes wide and mouths agape. They obviously hadn't expected that. The unit commander clenches his fists, lips curling back--"Verdammt noch mal!" he hisses, storms forward, and lands a vicious kick in Tatiana's ribs--she wheezes and curls in on herself but otherwise barely reacts, it's more stunning than painful, as by now everything is going dim and hazy and all she feels is cold; the wound to her leg is just a dull throb, and the slick, sticky feeling pooling around her, she hardly notices. The commander's furious railing is the last thing she hears as she slips away into the black, taking their chance at revenge with her. A Soviet unit comes across her body some time later. Boris is among them; a few of the others try to hold him back, but he nudges his way forward and stares at her. He doesn't get mad, doesn't rage, doesn't break down, just kneels at her side and brushes her hair from her face and murmurs, "Tania." The others examine the scene, and guess by the second pool of blood that Tatiana must have killed someone else before she killed herself. The great amount of crushed grass hints that she was surrounded by a large group of enemies; the Soviets conclude that she was very brave, and collect her body to take back for a proper burial (she's Eastern Orthodox--her comrades reason that given the circumstances, her suicide is justified and the sin will be forgiven), though Boris takes a moment to shut her eyes first. He looks on, numbly, as she's carried away. He shouldn't have outlived his baby sister. In the weeks following, he gets in trouble numerous times with his superiors--getting caught drinking, shirking his duties, small passive-aggressive things, though officials start getting impatient with him, and threaten him with demotion. That doesn't happen--his unit gets reassigned to a different area, instead. The moment they come across a German unit, who immediately charge them, it's as if Boris's brain just freezes--all he sees is his dead sister, lying bled out in the grass--and without thinking, he turns and flees. He races through the woods for what feels like forever...it takes him a few moments to realize that the others in his unit have followed right after him. He hadn't meant for them to get in trouble, too. It's a little too late now to do anything about it, though, and as they run they end up getting separated along the way. He at last hears no one else's footfalls, realizes he's alone, and gradually staggers to an unsteady halt. He doubles over, wheezing to catch his breath, when a stick snaps--his skin prickles--he stops breathing, lifts his head, peers into the trees ahead. Sees a group of Wehrmacht soldiers staring back at him. He ran away from one German unit and straight into another. The leader of the German unit--wearing the collar tabs of an Unteroffizier, or sergeant--blinks as if caught by surprise. Then--an unsettling grin spreads across his face--and Boris gets a very bad feeling. Boris's entry. The loss of Tatiana is something that wears heavily on Boris the rest of his life (several years, as it turns out), and that echoes in his own life in some strange ways. When he's rescued from his tormentors by Didrika--a German female sharpshooter--he at first refuses to believe she's his sole savior, it's not possible that she alone killed all but one of the men who stayed behind after Lange and a few others departed, until Didrika outright asks, "You don't believe a woman can do such a thing on her own?"--he starts to reply that no, it's not possible...and then remembers Tatiana, and shuts up cold. He still can't quite believe Didrika acted alone...but honestly, if Tatiana were the one asking him this right now, could he so easily brush her off? Even with this knowledge, he initially treats Didrika like garbage (he gets drunk his first night alone with her following his rescue, and gets angrier as he gets drunk, and ends up taking that out on her--she doesn't fight back, and insists later on that he didn't force her to do anything, but either way it's a pretty unpleasant experience); yet by the time they locate the rest of his scattered unit, he's accepted that Didrika's claim is true, and defends her to the others when they're hostile toward her. Boris goes so far as giving Didrika his own rifle, recognizing her superior skills; if not for having seen how talented and brave Tatiana was, he likely would never do so. He becomes Didrika's second in command and despite her own dalliances, is loyal to her till the end. Tatiana echoes in Boris's life in other ways as well. When Mirela appeals to Didrika for training, and Didrika refuses because she doesn't need another woman among her partisans, Boris steps up to the task. Mirela's not very good at marksmanship, or at hand-to-hand fighting...turns out she's most skilled with a knife. (She nearly kills Wehrmacht sniper Ratdog--Didrika's primary rival/enemy--with one.) Boris, obviously seeing parallels with his late sister, takes pride in Mirela's talent, and is her biggest supporter, even defending her to the disgruntled Didrika. Another echo comes in the death of Sgt. Lange; he gets away with numerous crimes during his time in the Wehrmacht, assaulting combatants on both sides of the conflict--including not just Boris, but Trench Rats Teal and Silver, and Ratdog himself (the only one to successfully fend him off--albeit after getting a beating--is Ratdog's bodyguard PFC Klemper, and that likely only because Klemper is high on meth)--yet it's Boris who happens across the perfect opportunity to kill him, stabbing him in the gut with a knife when he's separated from his unit, and leaving him to bleed out much as Tatiana did. He's never discovered as Lange's killer, Lange just has so many victims, and is so widely reviled even by his own people, that frankly, everyone is a suspect. Then there's Boris's own death at the war's end. Alone, shot in the gut, he drags himself into a ditch, knowing he's unlikely to make it. When Ratdog finds him, he's sure the sniper will kill him, yet Ratdog refrains--he has a personal policy against targeting the wounded, and just lost Klemper, so he's deep in grief and tired of killing. He instead empties his revolver of all but one bullet and gives the gun to Boris to "use wisely." A bit of the old spite flares up in Boris, and he aims at Ratdog--"At least I can take out one dirty Kraut before I die"--but Ratdog's indifference to the threat makes him hesitate, and he realizes the shot won't be worth it, will mean absolutely nothing. He and Ratdog might be enemies but Ratdog isn't the one who's harmed him. Ratdog leaves, and after some time spent steeling himself--he thinks of Tatiana, and what she summoned the courage to do--Boris readies Ratdog's gun, puts it to his head, and closes his eyes. Ratdog's step falters briefly when he hears the gunshot behind him, but he keeps on walking. Didrika is the one to find Boris's body. She shoots Ratdog in retaliation--recognizing his revolver in Boris's hand--yet is rattled when the wounded sniper merely yells at her to finish the job, he has nothing left to live for. She belatedly realizes that he's mourning a painful loss, just like she is. When he passes out from blood loss (the same manner in which Klemper died, BTW), she drags him back to his home, tends to his wound, and saves his life; also like him, she's tired of all the killing. Although they never fall in love with each other--those feelings are reserved for Boris, and Klemper--they remain with each other, understanding each other's grief, and name their children accordingly: Their son is named Godfrey, after Klemper, and then comes a daughter--Didrika is dismayed at first, she'd hoped for another boy she could name Boris, so Ratdog--now going by his name Adel--asks if there was any woman important to Boris. Didrika doesn't have to think long before remembering the "baby sister" Boris always spoke of so fondly. "Tatiana," she says, and thus their daughter is named. As she cradles the whimpering girl, Didrika admits to Adel, "Boris would've hated me naming a baby after him, anyway." Tatiana, as an adult, names her own son Hans, after Adel's first son, her deceased half-brother, the reason Adel took up a rifle in the first place, which later brought him in contact with Boris and Didrika...so things come full circle, in an odd way. [Tatiana 2024 [Friday, October 18, 2024, 12:02:23 AM]] [Tatiana 2024 2 [Friday, October 18, 2024, 12:03:11 AM]] |