Angel MontreThe Story Of Andrei
Unstable - Irritable - Stubborn - RebelliousNAME: Andrei Yakovich Svidrigailov
NICKNAMES: Andriusha
AGE: Twenty-Two
ETHNICITY: Russian
“Darling, I’m concerned about our little one..” Arina Feodorovna played with her hands nervously, bringing them up to her face and around her mouth.
“You mean Alyosha? What possible thing could there be to worry about? He is intelligent, polite, about to enter th—”
“No, not Alyosha!” She cut him off. Yakov Nikolaevich was playing ignorant, and she was in no mood. “I mean our other little one, come on Yakov..”
He sighed. “I don’t know what you mean, Arina. Drop it.”
Andrei Yakovich was a topic of discussion that was rather frequently brought up - and just as quickly hushed up - between his parents. The second child of Yakov Nikolaevich and Arina Feodorovna, he was a bright-eyed but always-rather-peculiar child; interested in things seemingly beyond his years.
Andrei was also interested in things in which he really should not have been.
Yakov Nikolaevich tried to ignore his other son’s.. curiosities, and did so with nominal success. His first son, Aleksei, had grown into an intelligent, well-mannered young man that possessed all the mannerisms and social graces that had been expected out of every young Soviet; Yakov had seen and heard of much blood shed and lives lost in the name of the USSR. It was now perfect, and it was the responsibility of men like himself, his dear wife, and all the other parents in their land to teach their children what was acceptable, and what was not.
Andrei Svidrigailov did not seem to comprehend these lessons, and if he did, chose to utterly ignore them.
Since all of his parents’ attention was being exhausted on Alyosha and his preparations to enter the “glorious Red Army”, to fight for freedom, the Soviet way of life, and all that other regurgitated bullcrap, Andriusha began to do some.. studying.
Religion. It was forbidden, churches were closed, patrolled, it was very much like the Great Reform of the year 1653... Except the fact that the Orthodox Church was not merely changed, split, it was condemned all together.
Andrei really liked the idea of a higher power. The more he read about it (illegally, of course. Connections to the underground world were very useful to him at this moment!), the more he liked it. He felt like a raskol, no, he definitely was one now. A young Old Believer in a modern world. Damn, he really liked that title!
It was his parents’ fault, anyway. “Andrei and Aleksei?” Honestly? Aleksei had been gone for weeks; nobody knew if he was even alive. Andrei was suffocating under a wall of his parents’ over-protectiveness, and it was making him angry. Very, very angry.
“He can’t go off, Yakov! He’s far too fragile!” Arina was panicking. “What are we going to do, darling?”
Yakov Nikolaevich gently took hold of his wife’s trembling hands and pulled her close to him.
“I agree, Andriusha is.. not fit.. not fit at all enough for service. He’s not like Alyosha, I have known this for a long time, Arinka.. Do not worry yourself so; I will figure it out.”
It was at that moment that Andrei Yakovich entered the room in a fit of fury.
“Well I’m sorry that I’m not perfect like your amazing, super, darrrrling” (he purposely exaggerated the R-sound) “Aleksei!! You think that I’m not good for anything, you’ll see; you’ll all see!”
He stomped out of the room, immune to and unhearing his mother’s desperate pleas. His mind raced; Andrei Yakovich Svidrigailov was not destined to live a life of monotony! Everyone had to enter the army for two years, everyone! They had the gall to assume he would be exempted!!
“They’re all jealous; nobody has a brain like me. Nobody has found a calling as noble as mine!”
Andrei got his wish, though he deeply regretted wanting it so. The army wasn’t a place for people like him. He was a scholar, intelligent, rebellious.. The army was a place where one had to be brutish, barbaric, and as obedient as a well-trained dog. He was slowly going crazy, and he didn’t think he could survive much longer.
His bag fell down the wall and landed with a quiet thump onto the dewy grass below. Heaving a sigh of relief, Andrei looked to the right, to the left, right, left... about ten more times before he also - rather gracefully - leapt down the graffiti-laden concrete wall, landing with a slightly louder thump. Pain snaked its way up his shins, and he cursed loudly.
He wasted no time in grabbing the meagre amount of possessions he had managed to compile, and ran. Ran as far as he could, away, away from the hellhole known as the Krasnaya Armiya..
But where to go now? Home? No, he wasn't an idiot! Perhaps he would borrow Alyosha's old apartment; it's not like he would need it any time soon.. He hadn't seen his brother in a year, perhaps he was lying in some bloody ditch in Odessa, just another anonymous body, another casualty of a never-ending war. Alyosha was smart, amazing, eeeverything his parents wanted, so Andrei doubted that he had been killed.
Sliding the serrated piece of metal into the lock, Andrei felt the tumblers click and give way, granting him access to the modest establishment. Adrenalin had rushed through his body the entire way, however he now felt himself crashing. Throwing himself onto his brother's sofa, the mind Andriusha had become infamous in his family for began to work.
"Well.. I am a criminal. Hmm. A Russian war-deserter? Oh. This doesn't bode well for me, does it? Well what now? I mean I have chosen a rather.. obvious 'hideout' haven't I? Does this even count as a hideout?"
He stayed in his elder brother's apartment for weeks, living a rather normal life, though the thought of his crime always stuck in the very back corners of his mind. No police, no secret service, no army officers broke into his temporary home, dragging him away to rot in jail, which was a relief, but also somewhat of a surprise. Only somewhat, because Andrei knew very well that his father never planned for him to be conscripted to begin with. He heard his parents' conversations, and while they enraged him at the time, he very painfully admitted to himself that they were ultimately correct...
---
“Oh no, oh no no no! Nono they’re coming for me oh God what do I do!?” Andrei’s blue eyes almost fell out of their sockets as he heard someone fumbling with the lock. The door swung open about thirty seconds later, and Andrei quite literally dove behind the sofa, until his ever-perceptive eyes caught who it was. “No.. way.. Alyosha? He’s alive.. !!”
After quite an awkward and slightly heated exchange, the two brothers sat on the sofa – Aleksei had made them both strong herbal tea – simply catching up. Tedious banter escaped his brother’s mouth and Andrei found himself growing insanely bored. No, he didn’t have a girlfriend, school was fine – he thought, anyway, he hadn’t attended classes in weeks – his friends were just as they always had been. He didn’t know exactly how he had managed to do it, but Lyosha managed to extract from Andriusha his most personal of secrets... His escape from the army.
Life took a dangerous turn for Andrei Yakovich after that day. His brother had fought in the war, he had lost everything, and he was not about to let his younger sibling get away with “such treasonous actions.” Something snapped in him. Andrei’s liberal bellowing of his (very illegal!) religion, along with his desertion was too much for Aleksei to bear.
His father objected, his mother was hysterical, but Aleksei pinned him down as Andrei screamed, struggled against him. “No, you can’t!! I’M YOUR BROTHER, what happened to you! ALYOSHA!!” He began to sob, the grip on his arms relaxed for a second, but it was quickly replaced with an even stronger one. They held his arms so roughly that they bruised, and the officers – clad in their official uniforms – threw him into the back of an old, hunter green van. Still sobbing, a burly man accompanying Andrei balled his fist and cracked it against the side of his head. Seeing stars, Andriusha fell unconscious.
He awoke in a dingy, small, dark concrete cell surrounding him on all sides. “Prison. Prison, oh my God no this is prison. For what? No, no, I can’t stay here no.. NO!”
Sobs once again wracked his body as he curled up into a corner and rocked himself back and forth, singing a song of eras long past. Before too long, he fell into a nightmare-riddled sleep.
Once he came to a second time around, the same burly man was sitting on the concrete bench, watching him intently, noticing the golden pendant. He smiled, missing his centrals, and pulled out a nearly identical pendant hanging loosely around his own neck.
“Having faith is a crime, my friend. At least we can rot here together.”
BEAUTIFULLLL overlay by: 
florence!
Cuutteesocuteomg human art by: Plipkat!!
