You know, I wasn’t always like this.

Nowadays, I command this place almost as fiercely as my commanding officer does. When I walk by, I’m granted looks of fear mixed with some strange respect. If anyone is disgusted by me or dislikes me, they make sure I never hear of it or see it in their eyes. It isn’t just my association with the Colonel that scares them. I can scare them enough myself.

I refuse to hide behind him just because he’s big and scary. Contrary to what I’m sure is popular belief, I’m my own person.

To get off my tangent, I wasn’t always this way. There was a time, believe it or not, when I wasn’t able to stand on my own two feet. Having been born into a fairly well-to-do family (by the Soviet Union’s standards, anyway), I had things easy. I was the youngest, true, having three older brothers, which is what earned me the routine name of Ivan. However, I fulfilled the silly legend by proving to advance the farthest when it came down to it.

I don’t even know where any of my brothers are at the moment, and I can’t say I care too much. All I know is that I have power and I’m betting they most certainly do not.

I didn’t become this way because I wanted to. When I was a child, I didn’t dream of being a hard-ass that commanded a regiment of soldiers with cold gray eyes. That wasn’t my intention at all. I personally wanted to do something a little more creative rather than following the contrived path of joining some sort of armed forces.

But, as anyone that’s seen enough of this world knows all too well, life likes to wrench you by the wrist in whatever direction it pleases. Sometimes, things happen that block off desirable paths and you’re forced to turn in another direction.

It’s easy enough to guess what happened. I was the one son that had to be “cursed” with not being “normal.” I had grown up being told how pretty I was, so maybe it was sort of predictable that I’d end up preferring males. At first, I had been so scared of myself that I hadn’t wanted to tell anyone, but around the time when I turned seventeen, I reevaluated and knew that I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I kept telling my family about made-up lady friends and never being able to bring anyone home to show for it.

So I prepared myself to tell them. I knew it probably wouldn’t end well, but I also knew that it had to be done. I decided to exclude my brothers for the time being, not wanting to have to speak to a room of five people and deal with five hysterical reactions.

It was difficult, watching them sitting across from me with expectant stares.

I said it somehow. I can’t even remember the words I used. All I know is that my mother fainted and my father started bellowing words at me that were so loud and angry that they sounded like another language. And before I knew it, I had been thrown face-first onto a street layered with ice.

I assume they informed my brothers of where their younger sibling had gone after that. I wonder what they might have said. “We disowned him for being one of those—what are they called?—homosexuals.”

I had nowhere to go, but hell, I needed shelter and a steady paycheck, so it was pretty obvious what I had to do. After some shady hitchhiking and a few nights spent in very cold alleyways, I eventually found somewhere to “make something of myself.” It was just a simple combat training camp, but its intention was to prepare those there for the bigger and better places: to be a soldier, whether under GRU, the KGB, or whatever else.

I went through all of it without complaining. It was tough, sure, but it was supposed to be. By the time I was finished I was different. I, along with everyone else there, had been abandoned in one way or another. Years of strict combat training with none of those nurturing things we had been yanked away from was enough to harden any person. That was the point, though.

I was a little stronger and slightly more capable, but apparently my efforts had been enough to get me enrolled in Groznyj Grad. I finally had a real uniform and that defined me in a way I didn’t entirely understand. It let me fit in somewhere and no one asked me questions (they weren’t supposed to, really) so I didn’t have to lie. All I had to do was stand in line with the rest and follow orders.

It wasn’t what I had wanted, but at least I belonged in some way.

For a while, at least. But being a soldier isn’t fun and games. You are supposed to be surrounded by comrades, but just like the rest of the world, people are cruel.

They weren’t supposed to ask, but they could sure as hell speculate.

Names were thrown around and I just ignored them to the best of my ability. I couldn’t help myself at times, though, and that was when one of my fellow soldiers ended up in the infirmary with a gash slicing across their cheek.

It was this sort of thing that drew his attention to me. I tried to be soft-spoken and remain introverted so as to not attract any sort of attention to myself, but it didn’t work out that way. After hearing story after story about how I was lashing out, he decided to look into it, more out of curiosity than a need to scold me for injuring my peers.

I had spunk, he told me. I like you, boy, he told me.

I knew power and privilege when I saw it. I knew that if I had him on my side, I wouldn’t be tormented. No, I would get to torment myself, and that seemed a lot more advantageous to me.

So I ran with it.

Here I am, on equal footing with Colonel Volgin. (I actually demanded I be considered his equal. I didn’t need to be branded with names like “the Colonel’s bitch,” after all. He was amused by my request and impressed enough by the bold demand that he gave me what I wanted.)

Here I am, smirking back at their horrified side-glances.

Here I am, ramming a fist into the torso of anyone that whispers something under their breath.

Is this how I should have been? Maybe not. Have I strayed the wrong way? Perhaps. Has life molded me into a bad person? Maybe so.

But is there really such a thing as a bad person, when your own parents can throw you out of their house for telling the truth?

And none of that even matters when I’m tangled up with him, so who cares either way.

Just think twice before believing that I was born this way. No, people made me this way.

Sweat, hard words, rough hands, and no direction.

That’s why I’m here now.

Live with it.