Stitchwork

To a

• ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ "My life is a leaf fallen from the tree." ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ Tl;dr 1909 - Ivor Voenikov Kotkin born 1919 - Father dies. Powers discovered during influenza epidemic. Saves mother's life. 1939 - joins the Red Army 1941 - forced to participate in inhuman russian experiments as a healer to keep the young patients alive after torture 1944 - relocated to the Balkan peninsula along with two of the surviving patients - Arsenic and Eev 1948 - Aided Eev in her escape. Failed escape plan. They amputate his left arm and leg. 1950 - Arsenic kills all scientists and frees them all. Ivor loses contact with them all. I. Born in hardship He's a poor russian kid on the streets of Tsaritsyn in 1919, in the heart of the influenza epidemic when he discovers his powers. His father refuses medication in exchange for treating his son with the available resources and Ivor himself barely saves his mother from the virus, exhibiting a blessed power that contributes to so many recoveries in his small village in the area. Though it has the potential to help thousands, it is kept under wraps. His mother is afraid her son would be ripped away from her for the 'greater good' because even if they haven't burned witches in centuries, he is but the second coming of Christ personified and the country would use him as they will, surely. So he spends his life in the outskirts of Volgograd, makes a living as a young, uneducated but miraculous neighbourhood nurse tending to the injured, has friends and lovers and lives normal to the best of his ability during World War I. His mother dies during the take-over of he city. II. Bloodshed Soon Tsaritsyn is renamed Stalingrad and 14 years later becomes a heavy industry zone for the war and Ivor is upswept by the bloodlust, proudly stepping up to a military position at 30, when the second one begins. By that time he's a broken man. A widower, having buried a young wife, and her memory gives him resolve for revenge. He's a gem of the Red Army, forcing out the necessity of medical resources for his batallion. Although met with initial horror and discrimination, he soon makes a name for himself after saving numerous lives. He's kept in the background of fights, too valuable to send on the frontlines, With intensifying ferocity, his power grows as well. He soon discovers his ability to reattach limbs, regrow eyes, fix internal injuries and even restart hearts. Yet with that, the tale of him spreads far and wide until the wrong people become interested in him. He isn't in Stalingrad for the greatest battle in Russia's history. He's up north living horrors of his own. III. Beginning of the end He's young and stupid and a sob story about hurt kids awaiting his healer's touch suckers him into allowing himself to be transported into a Syberian region suspiciously cut off from civilization. Taken on a train, he's promised financial gain and even a return to war before his batallion have time to miss him. But he soon discovers he's been fooled. He's not there to stop the pain. No, he's there for a more sinister reason. One man against many, he can't bring himself to leave even though it's an offer on the table - walk out quietly and say nothing to the public - when young lives are at stake. They don't lie to him, but they do decieve him. He suspects they did the same to the orphaned or homeless teens gathered there. While they've been promised shelter and food, they aren't informed about what will become of them in the secluded russian fascility. They're patients in a medical experiment that soon proves inhumane. It's why Ivor, soon renamed 'стежок' (Stitch), is there for. Cells numbered for each experiment, codenames replacing real names. The young men and woman are reduced to guinea pigs and Ivor is reduced to his abilities. Whatever damage inflicted on the patients, he's expected to heal. And he has no other choice but to do so. As they go on to discover what the man can do, the doctors become bolder with pushing boundaries. Until a child dies. Antonina, codename 'юношеская' is only 14 when she loses her life to an experiment developing a youth-preserving serum. The failure of the project claims her and Ivor has to both bury her and be the pillar for the other patients. Twin brothers Gregory and Josif don't have enough time to mourn before Ivor has to dig graves for them too. One by one, the other children start dying out like flies, every single one taking its last breath in his arms. Matvey, Nikoela, Tatiana, Konstantin and Emila. Eight graves that he has to leave behind, buried beneath the Syberia snow, likely to never be discovered. IV. Second chance After the first batch of patients dies out and the war ends, they change locations and Ivor is transported to inconspicuous Balkan Peninsula, where he meets a new group, all of them supernaturally gifted like him. Eev - a young woman with a draconic nature, Arsenic - her young, serpent brother of the same species, Nuclear - a girl capable of absorbing excess energy and Vivisection - yet another girl, with control over bodily physiology. The project has changed. Instead of human kids that are more likely to sustain deadly injuries, they now employ magically enhanced patients. A new idea has struck the collective hivemind as well. Why manufacture their own special soldiers, when they can take children with already present abilities and simply make them complacent to any and all command? With Stitch still at their side, they conspire an effective method for mind manipulation - essential brainwashing. Via torture. The execution is not new, but the ferocity is. Their aim is not to physically alter the patients this time around, but to mentally traumatize them. They wait for disocciation, they wait for insanity and then they go in, words like scalpels, and try to mold whatever they can to their liking. It's brutal... Stitch has never seen anything like this before and is horrified. Talk of pioneering medicine and helping the human race don't resonate with him anymore enough not to rebel against the project. This isn't 'for the better good'. It's blatant intent to hurt and traumatize and damage until the mind breaks and succumbs to alteration. Whatever convincing had made him stay pliant and silently helpful before, now had lost its punch. So had the idea of Doctor Karl Anton's 'New brave world'. If this is what the new world looked like, by god, Ivor Kotkin wanted no part in it. V. Subject #1487 Her name is Mirela and he learns it after he's been referring to her as Eev for two weeks. She seems sad and defeated, one of the subjects are slipping toward dissociation the fastest. A little bit into the project her younger brother, Nikolai, starts pushing to take her place in being tortured. He provokes, he resists and then when they begin prioritizing Mirela, he acts more broken than her so they will focus on the one closest to being a successful little robot for the scientists. Stitch makes a pact with the boy. Together, they're going to protect her. Even when Nikolai catches the malevolent interest of Doctor Anton, he pushes Stitch's help away, making one thing clear: Mirela comes first. She is most vulnerable. I can survive this. Focus on her. So Ivor does. He spends time, effort and care on her, joining the fight against the doctors. He tries to fool them as much as he can before they see past his excuses and Nikolai's pretences and resume working at her psyche again. It seems like punishment for the two men... The pain they inflict on her is unbearable, if her screams are anything to go off of. She's close. So close to breaking... and her brother suddenly isn't enough to soothe away nightmares and traumatic hallucinations. Suddenly Stitch is the only one that can make her feel safe enough for her to sleep or chase her fears away. He's thankful. He might not know what brought all of this on, but he clings to the little bit of light he can bring to her life. Yet it becomes insufficient when they push further and her life is endangered on a regular basis. He almost loses her twice. Her brother is becoming more and more hostile. Try more. Do better. I fucking trusted you, protect her! It's true, Stitch cannot protect her while she's still in the fascility, under the control of monsters. He conspires to free her. So one day, he pronounces her dead. She's close enough to death, they all see the blood but not the healed wounds underneath it, they don't bother to check. He makes sure to be believable enough. She wakes up a day later, outside of the fascility for the first time in years. He can't help her further, so he simply makes sure to give her enough resources to survive in society again, then returns. So does she. He should have expected it, she can't leave her brother in there and have him think she's dead. But when she bursts through the doors in a fiery rage, she doesn't go far in her massacre before they subdue and capture her. There is hell to pay for both of them. The doctors know better than to give Stitchwork the benefit of the doubt about him not knowing better. He'd helped her escape and they punish him for it. Ingeniously, the penalty upon Ivor not only affects him and Eev, but the other patients as well. His left arm and leg are surgically amputated and the beacon of hope for the patients turns into a broken, sad man in a wheelchair and a depleted life-saving ability. beyond that, he is also a weapon to be used against Eev. For his sake, she agrees to stay away from her own brother and be a dedicated subject for the experiment. They wither together. VI. Beast unleashed It isn't until Nikolai's lid blows that they smell freedom again. The 13 year old, left to his own devices while Stitch and Eev were busy with each other, has been broken down to the point of psychotic episodes, made a fun side project to Doctor Anton and Doctor Dobrev. While patient and resilient, he has a boiling point to and it's brutal. He is a monstrous supernatural species in his core and when you taunt the snake, it strikes back. He manages to tear apart a majority of the scientist team, leaving viscera on his way out. The fascility staff, however, fights back. Stitch doesn't quite manage to stick to Eev or her brother, neither do the two siblings find each other after the incident again. When he escapes, none of the patients are anywhere to be found. He's lost them all. He can only hope they're okay. Years later, after paying with flesh of his own in that place, after the end of the horrors he witnessed therein, Stitch is still searching for whatever survivors from that place he can salvage.