#soviet school uniform

[sovietpostcards]

Winter in Moscow. Photos by Marc Riboud (1960).

#moscow #1960s #winter #snow #soviet school uniform #working women #children #metro #reading

[fre3y]

#art #my art #fre3y #illustration #school #school life #school doodles #children #soviet union #uniform

[ineffablecrisp]

Soviet!Ice Headcanon 3/?

(also in this kinda maybe AU Sarah is his sister)

An idea I've been playing around with that I kinda briefly mentioned in the last post about this was Ice's family becoming religious after immigrating to the United States.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, there were many Jews who became religious through the Chabad movement, now that they were able to be more open about religion. Most, if not all, religious Jews in my community became religious this way.

And bringing this back to Ice, I've kinda been exploring some scenarios in which his family decides to take on more religious observances.

It starts off small, like being invited to the local Modern Orthodox shul by someone helping them assimilate into their new lives in America. They do have a hard time following along with the liturgy since they barely speak English yet, but the Rabbi is kind and invites the Kazansky family to learn more about Judaism.

This leads to Ice and Sarah attending Hebrew School with all the other kids in the shul. At first they feel like outsiders since they haven't had as much exposure to Torah as the other kids, but they quickly warm up to it and even improve their English when interacting with everyone.

Ice ends up having a Bar Mitzvah, even if it's a bit later than the other boys. He doesn't mind- he finally feels connected and like he found a missing part of himself.

(quick little note that around Ice's time, Jewish males didn't get circumcised as many traditions were pretty much abandoned in order to fit in)

Over time, his family as a whole takes on more religious observances. Ice and his father start wearing a kippah and tzitzit, and his mom experiments with covering her hair. They begin to keep kosher and keep Shabbat.

Unfortunately, becoming more visibly Jewish made Ice even more of target at school. Aside from being called a communist, his peers have taken to calling him a wide variety of Jewish slurs, and have even removed his kippah from his head numerous times.

By the time Ice gets to the academy, he becomes so fed up with the taunting that he starts to hide his observances. He doesn't wear a kippah, and tucks his tzitzit into his pocket (I imagine he got some kind of exemption for religious purposes for him to even be wearing a kippah and tzitzit in the first place). He davens in secret, hoping nobody finds out.

Eventually Slider starts noticing there's something off about Ice. Mainly, why he never consumes meat and cheese at the same time, and why he always disappears at certain times of the day. He confronts Ice who's initially panicking because he thinks Slider is about to say something nasty. But he doesn't. And for the first time, Ice finds himself opening up about his experiences and tells Slider everything. From that moment on, Slider vowed to always look after Ice, no matter what.

When they get to Top Gun, Ice still isn't comfortable enough to wear a kippah in front of everyone, but has started to wear baseball caps as a head covering when he's out of uniform (this also gave me an idea of Ice wearing a baseball cap during the volleyball scene which probably isn't very practical, but at least the sun isn't in his eyes). The tzitzit stay tucked in his pockets.

When he admits to himself and later Slider that he wants something more with Maverick, he's hesitant to pursue a relationship with him because of his observances. He's terrified but as he starts getting closer with Maverick, he finds himself opening up more and more about his struggles of being visibly Jewish.

It is a few years into their relationship when Ice feels ready to once again wear a kippah in public. He figures that if it wasn't for his boyfriend's support and encouragement, he never would have done it. From the very beginning of their relationship Ice has been firm in his wants to keep his observances. He teaches Maverick about the laws of kashrut so they can keep a kosher kitchen. Maverick doesn't mind, even if he was initially confused. They also find a synagogue nearby for Ice to attend.

By the time they're getting ready to be married Ice doesn't strictly consider himself to be Orthodox due to the fact that his marriage to a man wouldn't be seen as legit. He finds a more egalitarian synagogue that does accept queer Jews (also since the mechitzah doesn't do anything for him as he pays more attention to boys instead of girls) and for the first time, he is able to bring Maverick as his boyfriend, instead of his "friend." He fulfills his dream of standing underneath a chuppah as he gets lost in his now-husband's eyes and thinks back at how everything came to be.

#top gun 1986 #jewish tom kazansky #pete maverick mitchell #ron slider kerner #icemav #yeahhhhhhhh so this took me a hot sec to write and is way longer than i planned but i'm never capable of writing anything short

[girlactionfigure]

The Night Witches

They didn’t even have parachutes.

The “Night Witches” were a regiment of daring female fighter pilots in the Soviet military who played a crucial role in the Allied victory against Nazi Germany.

The unit was formed by Marina Raskova, aka the “Soviet Amelia Earhart.” Maria was the first female navigator in the Soviet Air Force and held many long-distance flight records. She traveled all over the USSR and everywhere she went, she was approached by women who wanted to fight Nazis. Watching the German aggressors kill their brothers and husbands and destroy their homes and villages made these brave Russian women want to do more for their country than knit sweaters. They were determined to fight.

Marina used her personal contacts to get a message to dictator Joseph Stalin, asking for permission to form a women’s fighting battalion. Stalin immediately issued orders to deploy three all-female air force units and create the all-female 588th Night Bomber Regiment. The women’s mission would not be to drop bombs, but only to return fire. The Soviet Union was the first country to allow women on the front lines of battle.

As soon as the new plan was announced, thousands of women submitted applications for 1200 positions – four hundred for each of the three units. The women ranged in age from 17 to 26, and were mostly students. Those selected for this dangerous job moved to Engels, a small town near Stalingrad, to train at the Engels School of Aviation. There was no time to spare and the women learned in a few months what most airmen take several years to understand. Each woman had to be trained and fully prepared to fill four roles: pilot, navigator, maintenance, and ground crew. They faced mockery and harassment from male soldiers and officers.

The women of the 588th received bargain bin equipment. The military had to outfit them on the sly, giving them hand-me-down male uniforms to wear, including boots that were so large they had to stuff them with rags. Their planes were primitive 20 year old crop dusters made of wood and canvas, providing no shelter from the harsh elements. Flying at night in the Soviet winter, the female aviators endured sub-zero temperatures, fierce winds, and even frostbite. The planes were too light to carry parachutes, radar detectors, radios, or guns. Instead they navigated with low-tech items such as maps, compasses, flashlights, watches, rulers, and pencils – which doubled as eyeliners. They were fierce fighters, but they found ways to add a feminine touch, wearing makeup and putting flowers in their planes.

Each plane could only carry two bombs at a time, one under each wing. Every night, the regiment sent out 40 two-person crews. They flew 8-18 missions each night. The flimsy planes struggled under the heavy load of bombs, and they had to fly at very low altitudes, making them easy to shoot down. This danger is why the 588th Regiment flew only at night.

Each unit had a nightly routine – the first plane would go in as bait to attract German spotlights, which illuminated the path for the other planes. The next plane would release a flare to light up the target. Then the last plane came in, idled its engine and swooped in silently for the kill. Germans called them Nachthexen (night witches) because the whooshing sound their primitive wooden planes made sounded like a sweeping broom. This eerie sound was the only warning Germans had that the fearless women of the 588th were about to attack; the planes were too small to show up on radar.

The Nazis were so threatened by the Night Witches that any German soldier who killed one was automatically awarded the prestigious Iron Cross.

The fearless Night Witches flew over 30,000 missions over the next four years, dropping 23,000 tons of bombs on advancing German armies. They lost 32 pilots including sadly Marina Raskova. She died on January 4, 1943 when her plane was shot down heading to the front line. She received the first state funeral of World War II and her ashes are buried in the Kremlin. Twenty-four of the fliers were honored as “Hero of the Soviet Union.”

For flying into battle with primitive equipment to defeat the Germans, we honor the 1200 brave women of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, led by  as this week’s Thursday Heroes.

#Thursday Hero

[sometimesrendog]

[day 51] soviet school uniforms are underrated

#no im not ready #dailyrd #rendog #rendog fanart #hermitcraft #hermitcraft fanart

[unhonestlymirror]

Why I hate hetalia Belarus design:

a confession of a person with a partially Belarus family.

***

Because it's a literall tracing from the soviet school uniform.

The soviet school uniform had started as, in fact, an analogue of the gymnasium uniform of tsarist russia. Even small experiments with the style or length of the dress were strictly punished by the school administration. In addition, it was obligatory for girls to wear braids with bows. No haircuts were allowed.

It was troublesome for the girls to wear those uniforms. Snow-white cuffs and collars had to be removed every week, washed, steamed, and sewn back into place. The apron was worn black with a brown dress. It did not look very spectacular, but it protected the clothes from ink stains. On holidays, they wore a white lace apron, so it was necessary, for example, to go to the line on September 1.

My mom, who was born in the 80s, said, "There was a terrible poverty back then. Now you have the opportunity to wear different clothes, but we had one brown dress, which we took care of as best as we could. My mom hated it because it quickly got "bubbles" on the bottom that couldn't be ironed, so she made steaches on the fabric to make a pleating, washed, dried, ironed, and then ripped the steaches off. Every time. Like a good mom, she wanted me to look fashionable, so she bought different guipure collars and cuffs and also sewed them on and ripped them off, sewed and ripped. Teachers were surprised by how clean I looked, but it was just hours of hard work. The dress was from a pretty warm fabric, a wool, so it was quite hard to study during spring or early autumn - it just was very hot, and girls got sweaty fast.

We also had pins: the average ones and cool ones. The average one was a metal star with old ugly Lenin on it. The cool one was from transparent plastic - and it had a baby Lenin on it. It looked like a little angel surrounded by flowers, so it wasn't that ugly. My mom once, miraculously, changed my average pin to a cool one somehow."

Soviet school uniform is just another symbol of the russian regime.

Мне балюча глядзець на гэты гвалт і скрыўленне

#hetalia #stop russian aggression #hws belarus #aph belarus

[jojotichakorn]

ARCHER!! what do you think about thua outing akk and ayan? i have mixed feelings about him rn because im obsessed with him getting shit done and being a bad bitch but like…. wtf dude why would you out them.. it feels. not ooc but just confusing. IDK IM JUST CONFLICTED

JACE!!

so i think this particular instance is incredibly complex. i will try to articulate myself as best i can, in hopes that this will somehow make sense. yes, this is an essay.

to begin with, i'd like to point out that i definitely view the eclipse as a small-scale model. what i mean by that is percieving it as being a literal story about a very strict school is not only a disservice to what i think they were trying to do with the script, but also just makes the whole thing incredibly silly. if you think "oh, these students are fiercly protesting not wanting to wear a uniform and these teachers are evil for not letting the kids use their phones, while the prefects are evil for reinforcing this rule", it all gets a bit ridiculous. but if you think "oh, this is all a metaphor for how a totalitarian regime seizes total control of all areas of life, with examples of how it affects the marginalized, how it affects more privileged people, how it is done by those in power and how it is reinforced by those who serve those in power", then it becomes this really profound, smart thing.

so, before we try to transform our small-scale model of thua and the situation he found himself in to a bigger scale, allow me to start with an example from another piece of media. it is most certainly an extreme example, but one i want to make nonetheless. if you have seen jojo rabbit, you will have a bit of an easier time understanding what i have to say, but i will try to explain it in general terms for everyone who hasn't. (but please do watch jojo rabbit at some point).

so, jojo rabbit is a movie about nazi germany, and there is a character there called captain klenzendorf. klenzendorf is a retired officer from the nazi army, and he is also most often cited by people with zero critical thinking skills when they try to prove that a movie written and directed by a jewish brown man is excusing nazis. you see, klenzendorf is gay, which is particularly dangerous, of course, as that is a direct road to a concentration camp with a pink triangle sewn onto your striped shirt. he is also altogether not inherently evil, and helps the main characters of the movie twice (including helping to hide a jewish girl from the gestapo). at the end of the movie, when the war ends and the soviets arrive, klenzendorf is executed, as a nazi undeniably deserves to be.

so what taika waititi teaches us here with klenzendorf's arc is that there have been many different types of people in nazi germany at the time (people like klenzendorf, who were certainly pretty decent before the war) and that those different types of people had different circumstances which lead them to the choices they eventually made (like the choice of "proving himself" to the nazis that he made not to end up at a concentration camp). overall, taika shows us that any person - if they aren't careful enough and are selfish enough - can go down that slippery slope. and at the end of the war, that person is just like any other nazi - an awful human being, whose execution is a natural and just part of the end of the war. (the main point of jojo rabbit is that anyone can become a nazi and we must continuously step back and assess our worldview and our actions in order not to end up a despicable human being).

now that i have given this extreme example, which no doubt the quickest of readers have already desiphered, let's make the scale a bit smaller, though without returning to the silly bounds of a school.

thua is a marginalized character. he has also not made an active choice there - he is visibly marginalized and so he experiences daily oppression due to others "clocking" him. though he does hold a position that gives him some protection, it is not a position of power, such as the prefects, for instance, have. he also sees that there are people who are marginalized in a similar way to him experiencing the same oppression he does, but even more severely, as they do not have the same protection he does. he sees that they are so unprotected that they have no other choice but to fight.

at the start, the system seems quite clear to him. there is some overarching threat behind everything (the curse) that requires protection from, which is "provided" via implemented rules by the first line of power (the teachers) and reinforced by the second line of power (the prefects), which is semi-comfortable to most people out of power (the majority of the students) and actively harmful to people put down by power (our trio). i'd say thua is placed somewhere between the last two groups, which allows him to be in the necessary position for everything else to fall into place.

now, the moment things change is when thua realizes that the very foundation upon which the entire system is built simply... does not exist. it was invented by someone in the first line of power, and is now being knowingly reinforced by someone in the second line of power. the former is, of course, at fault, but all the suffering that the trio first and foremost and thua in part have experienced is actively due to the latter. you know how it goes - if a dictator has no one to dictate, the dictatorship fails.

and the moment thua's world finally turns upside down is when he realizes: the person actively causing the suffering of his marginalized group is a part of that group, and he is choosing to cause that suffering because he chooses his own safety not just in favor of himself, but at the expense of people like him. like both of them. and it could even be argued that thua understands akk is harming himself too, along with them, just because he found a place where he kind of fits in and sees no other choice but to follow the arbitrary rules of the people who have allowed him to take up that place (as long as he is doing what they want, that is).

and so thua understands: the only way he can make the entire harmful system tumble down is to make akk not only confess to what he has specifically done, but finally sit in the same boat as his fellow marginalized, instead of having an honorary spot on the ship that's shooting cannons at it. because for change to truly occur, the second line of power must seize to exist, which will only happen if akk steps out of his position of power forever and with no chance of return, as he is the only one holding up the second line of power at this point (khan was at a protest, wat is in doubt, namo admires akk and does everything to support him, everyone else is inconsequential).

at first, thua relies on ayan to do the job - the guy did come here for a reason, after all, and he's been quite proudly sitting in the boat with them. but nothing happens with ayan. and so thua takes matters into his own hands. at first he tries to nudge akk, but when that doesn't work either? he simply points at the empty spot next to him in the boat and shows that the empty spot has "akk" written on it.

thua outing akk is not some stupid personal revenge plot - his name is not wai and we are not watching bad buddy. thua outing akk is a deliberate push at the only brick in the wall that he can reach, but also crucially, a brick that does a lot to hold the wall in place.

and this is not me saying that akk is an awful character or a terrible person. i gave klenzendorf as an example not to literally draw a parallel between them but to show very vividly why what akk has been doing is bad and what the normalisation of such behavior can lead to in extreme circumstances. akk is a complex boy and he is also someone who's been through a lot. and i like him. and i like the way ayan has been consistently giving him a chance to become a better person, because thankfully he is not in extreme circumstances and he has the opportunity to change. but none of that makes what he has been doing fair, especially if we perceive the narrative as a metaphor, which i think we must do.

with klenzendorf being an extreme example, i can flip the script and go for something even more mild than what we have in the eclipse, like adam groff or dave karofsky. and i have intentionally chosen such drastically different representations of the "homophobic bully turned gay" trope, because i am not saying that it is a trope that should not be executed - i am saying that it is a trope that comes with baggage and responsibility. especially when we once more up its scale away from one single high school, leaving us somewhere between the homophobic bully and klenzendorf, but with a pretty similar conclusion:

akk's incredibly complex and frankly heartbreaking reasons for doing what he has been doing are not a big enough excuse for the suffering that he has caused, and - at this point - thua was justified in trying to end the suffering, even if it hurt akk in the process, especially because his personal pain is still incomparable with the pain that he helped cause to everyone by upholding an unjust system.

#the eclipse series #archer responds #archer's meta #minhhyung

[reddancer1]

Russian anti-war activist dies after ‘fall from height’

Olga Nazarenko was well-known for her stubborn protests against the Kremlin

By James Kilner 22 October 2023 • 2:59pm

A Russian anti-war protester who became a symbol of resistance to the Kremlin has died in a mysterious fall.

Local media said that Olga Nazarenko had now died in hospital after a “fall from a height” two weeks ago that was described as an accident.

Several Kremlin opponents have been killed in falls and an anti-war activist in Rostov, southern Russia, also died this year in police custody from alleged torture.

On Facebook, tributes blamed Nazarenko’s enemies for her death.

“Cursed are the cannibals who devour our finest,” one person wrote. Another said: “Our unbending Olga. Did they kill you?”

Friends also speculated that she had fallen from a tree.

Nazarenko was well-known for her stubborn anti-war protests and had featured in several opposition media reports and videos.

Attacked in the street

She had staged weekly one-person protests, despite being regularly detained by the police. She had also been attacked in the street and had lost her job as an associate professor at a local medical university because of her protests.

Hundreds of thousands of Russians have fled since the Kremlin banned anti-war protests but Nazarenko, who was married with an adult daughter and a young son, told the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that she felt that it was her duty to stay.

“Russia is my country, not just those in power and their supporters. I won’t let anyone drive me out of my country,” she said last year.

The Kremlin has shifted Russian society and its economy onto a war footing since it launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, indoctrinating people through a wall of propaganda.

This includes promoting former fighters from the Kremlin’s Wagner mercenary unit, which recruited heavily from Russian prisons. Wagner veterans now flaunt their war medals in communities they previously terrorised as murderers and thieves.

This week, a school in the Nizhny Novgorod region of Russia said that it had hosted a Wagner veteran to talk about his experiences of fighting on the front lines.

A photo on the school’s social media channel showed the Wagner mercenary veteran wearing a full combat uniform, a balaclava and three medals standing in the classroom. In front of him was a table with a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher and then rows of children.

The school described the Wagner veteran as a war hero but failed to highlight, unlike opposition reporters, that he had also been convicted of at least two murders before he joined Wagner.

“The class meeting was very popular with seventh-grade students,” the school said.

‘Attritional grind’

In Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region, a Russian missile hit a post office sorting centre, killing at least six people and injuring 16. On Ukraine’s front lines, the British Ministry of Defence said that a Russian attack at Advika, a town near Bakhmut, had descended into an attritional grind.

It also said that the Russian army had now sustained up to 290,000 casualties, dwarfing the Kremlin’s war in Afghanistan, which lasted a decade through the 1980s and killed around 20,000 Soviet soldiers.

The Russian army has copied Wagner and has also been signing up convicts from Russian prisons since the start of the year to plug gaps in front-line units but now recruiters are targeting migrants, often from Central Asia.

On Friday, Russian riot police raided a mosque in a Moscow commuter town and forced the men to join the army.

[sissytobitch10seconds]

The Midwife Called Vik

Fandom: The Umbrella Academy Summary: Among the streets of Poplar are all kinds of people. The most generally respected are the nurses and nuns, even if some of them are a stranger than most. Warnings: Mentions of miscarriage, a pregnant trans man, and 1950s-typical bigotry Word Count: 8,605 Ship(s): Viktor Hargreeves/Five Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves/Ben Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves/Lila Pitts, Jayme Hargreeves/Alphonso Hargreeves, and Sloane Hargreeves/Luther Hragreeves

Archive link!

A/N: So I recently started watching this show and it was all I could to do watch a the first four seasons before I started combining my obsessions. I really liked the way that this turned out and I have a small headcanon for how everyone got set into the world in this AU. I hope that you all enjoy! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

No one paid much attention to the fact that Vik's hair was too short and that pants were where a skirt should have been. In public, the name was Viktoria Hargreeves. A good English name with a Russian twinge to honor parents and a homeland long lost. At home, around the husband and trusted family, he was Viktor. When it was just him and his husband, he was Beloved. 

It was a dangerous world to be the person that he was, so they did it in a way where nothing would reach the public ears and he could be safe. Fashion trends were already beginning to change and if anyone asked why he had done away with his skirts while he had gone away for his nurse’s training then he fed them the same lie about it being easier to bike around when not wearing a skirt. The truth was that the idea of having to wear a skirt every day for the rest of his life was enough to send him into a panic attack. The same was given for the reason that his hair was cut so short, he just told people that it got in the way when he was trying to work.

All in all, he had done a good job of hiding his transgender identity while still being able to live in a way that made him more comfortable. People had a larger problem with his homeland than how he presented himself to the public, especially after he got married. It was very disconcerting for a lot of the less traveled folk to hear that he was still Russian Orthodox, as his parents had raised him to be before they had to hurriedly send him from the Soviet Union, instead of being Church of England or even Catholic like his husband was.

He loved his job and the people that he worked with, enough that a couple of comments about his odd appearance or his choice of worship wouldn’t drive him away. 

When he woke up that morning, it seemed like the sea had lurched out of the harbor where it belonged to berate their windows with steady, heavy droplets. He could hear the crackling of thunder and see small flashes of light far off in the distance, where the majority of the storm was. He had seen far worse even when he was living in England and going to school in the bit that was further inland, but this was nothing compared to some of the winter storms he had gotten while living in the Soviet Union.

Viktor rose slowly from the bed so that he didn’t disturb his sleeping husband and then got on with his day. He had just finished changing into the midwifery uniform that he would wearing throughout his time of being on call and helping the citizens of Poplar when the very man that he had been trying not to disturb joined him.

“The storm is quite bad,” Five informed him as he leaned down and kissed at Viktor’s neck.

The other man let out a small hum as he held onto his lover’s forearms and leaned back against him for warmth and comfort. Viktor was short with a boyish figure, most likely because of the absence of meals and rest in his youth after the war. He had mousy brown hair that clung to his forehead and around his ears with hazel eyes set behind full lashes. His cheekbones and jawline were easy enough to mistake for that of a man’s from the people that didn’t know him. Five, on the other hand, was tall and thin. He had grown into them now, but when he was a teenager his limbs had been so long that they looked like they belonged to another man entirely. He had dark brown hair that he had cut in such a way that it hung almost all the way down to his cheek on one side while being cropped close to his head on the other. He had the most mesmerizingly sharp face and the deepest green eyes that Viktor had ever seen.

“The storm isn’t that bad,” the pregnant man replied softly. He let out a small sigh as he felt his husband’s hand drift down so that it was resting over the top of his stomach. He had just begun to show, so the bump was easily hidden beneath the rain coat and cardigan that he wore when he was working to keep warm. It was enough that the people that knew him well would be able to tell without it, which was why Five was holding onto it now as he tried to make his point. “мой милый,” Viktor laughed.

“It really is howling. Perhaps you should extend your rest at least one more day. I’m not sure that I want you venturing out in those winds,” Five replied. His accent was growing thicker with every word that he said, just as it often did when he was upset. Five had grown up deep in the rural-most parts of Ireland with his mother and grandparents, so he had a very distinct accent that he had tried to stamp out in favor of speaking like his old college professors, but when he was worrying it came out stronger than ever.

“It’s nothing as bad as I faced when I was living back home. There was a reason that my parents sent me over here and it wasn’t just because I was non-conforming,” Viktor said softly. He missed both of his parents dearly, as well as his homeland, but he knew that he would never be able to return to either of them. Something about pregnancy made him rather melancholic with homesickness, though. “I think that if I stay here any longer then I am going to go insane. I want to go out and see my patients and my friends again.”

Five considered it, his lips pursing into a fine line. He glanced back at the crib that they had already prepared at the foot of their bed, anxiously anticipating the newest arrival to their little family. “Alright, fine. But the moment that you start to feel poorly, you are to call me and come home or to the nunnery to rest.”

Viktor squirmed so that he was able to turn around in his husband’s arms. He threw his hands up so that they were threaded behind Five’s neck and dragging him down just far enough that he could press their lips together in an adoring kiss. “I am going to be fine, Five. I know that you’re just worried about us, but I’m already further along than I was last time and I’ve been resting for the last week. If something bad happens, then you will be the first to know so that you can help stop it. Alright?”

The taller of the two adorned a soft expression on his face as he leaned down and pressed a kiss first to his husband’s forehead, and then one to his lips. Finally, he got down onto his knees and placed his hands on either side of Viktor’s hidden bump before he leaned forward and kissed the roundest spot. “You be good for us, we’re expecting to meet you this winter.”

“And we will,” Viktor reassured him. “My mother said that she knew with me. And she had lost three before I was born.”

They stayed there for a moment longer, Viktor’s hands threading through the long locks hanging down onto the right side of Five’s face while his husband rested his forehead over where their baby was safely tucked away, awaiting their debut to the world. But they both had patients to attend to that wouldn’t be able to wait, so they went their separate ways. They were able to eat together and share another comforting moment by the front door of their home, but after that they both knew that they would be unable to see each other at least until late that night depending on how Viktor’s day went.

He had left his bicycle at Nonnatus House, so he was walking to work with his favorite black umbrella perched over his head to keep him dry from the pouring rain. The way that the wind nipped at his nose reminded of being back home in the Soviet Union. When he had first moved to Poplar, he had trouble acclimating to the rain and lack of snow. Some days it still troubled him, even though he had been living there for well over five years.

Several people greeted him when they recognized him on his way to work, waving to him from their safety under their own umbrellas or underneath the awnings of shops and homes. Several children were dressed in thick wool coats with hats stuffed onto their heads as they ran around, catching raindrops on their tongues and splashing in all the puddles that they could find.

The East End was about as poor as the town that he had grown up in, so it was comforting to see that even though the people in England worshiped differently than he did and didn’t speak his mother tongue, they were still the same. People living in poverty or destitution, people that were unable to work and that hadn’t yet been rehomed, were the same all over the world.

Nonnatus house stood tall amongst the rest of the buildings surrounding it. The red brick and Gothic architecture was one of the first things that Viktor remembered about moving to Poplar, so it was a welcome sight once he finally arrived. He walked up the front steps very carefully so that he didn’t slip on the slick wet gravel or uncleaned steps. Marcus had been rather overworked with a burst pipe in the basement so it made sense that they hadn’t been cleaned in a while.

He opened the grand doors and then quietly shut it behind him. He shook off his umbrella before doing so, casting the droplets down onto the cement instead of on the clean floor of the nunnery. He placed his umbrella on the hook and then removed his woolen coat before setting it on the hook over the top of that.

“Vik? Is that you?” a sweet voice called out from down the hall, near the sitting room where the nuns and nurses gathered when they weren’t running the clinic or attending to housecalls.

“Yes it is! I’m finally being allowed back to work,” he beamed as he turned to face his dear friend.

Sloane was the tallest woman that Viktor had ever seen, especially when it came to the underfed and malnourished that seemed to litter the streets of Poplar. She had long blond hair that she kept back in braids or a ponytail, away from her face. Her skin was tanned caramel from her years working a farm in Wales when she was younger during the war. She had the sweet features that every woman longed for, even if they came with a rather undesirable height.

“I’m glad that you’re back! It’s been so dreary around here without you,” Sloane informed him sweetly as she wrapped her arm around his. The two of them had grown very close when Viktor had first moved to Nonnatus house as Sloane was only six months his senior, so had very weak bonds with the rest of the midwives at the time. Everyone, other than the nuns, serving now had come after the duo had started their work a half decade prior.

Viktor pressed a hand to the lower part of his stomach since they were in the relative safety of the hallway. Sloane was one of his closest friends so she had been told both about his gender and the baby despite the married couple deciding that they were going to keep the pregnancy a secret until they were more sure that it was going to stick this time. They had picked her out of all their friends because of her medical expertise and talent at keeping secrets. “You know how Five can get when he’s worried about something.”

“You do feel better, don’t you?” she asked, pausing so that she could turn and look properly at her friend.

He nodded and the stress sloped off of her shoulders. “Don’t worry, I do. Five wouldn’t have let me out of the house with all this rain unless I was in tip-top shape,” Viktor explained with a small laugh. He loved his husband more than he thought he would have been able to love anything in the entire world, so the fretting and worrying was comforting instead of annoying.

They walked the rest of the way into the nunnery so that they could join the others where they were getting their morning rounds. The head nun of the convent that they were working with rose and walked over to the duo. “Oh, Nurse Hargreeves, it’s so wonderful to see you again! I was worried that you wouldn’t be able to return to us before the baby boom. We’ve got fifty scheduled this week alone,” Sister Grace tutted with a small shake of her head. She was one of the kindest people that lived on the East End, which was why she was in charge of the convent and all of the nurses that served it.

“My husband has instructed me not to let you work me too hard just in case something like that takes me out of commission again, but I am back to be of help in any way that I can!” he beamed.

“I would suggest that Nurse Sparrow finish her tea as quickly as she can and then the two of you can leave on your normal rounds. You’re to visit Mr. Herschberger, Mrs. Patch, and Mrs. Velonos at the start of your day and then we’ll let you know if there are any deliveries that you need to attend to when you get back. Be safe, alright?” Grace said.

Viktor gave her a nod. He waved to the other nuns and nurses that were gathered around the living room table. Two of them had been on call last night so were absolutely exhausted and having a soothing cup of tea with their breakfast before they went to bed. Another was going to be waiting for the phone while Sloane and Viktor were out about town. Sloane quickly pushed past her friend and into the living room so that she could attend to the muffin that was half eaten on the table.

He was glad that he was going to be able to go out again, because he didn’t want to deal with some of the prying that the older nuns just couldn’t help themselves with. Viktor gave them all a polite nod and then explained that he was going to be on his way before he turned and left to get his coat again. He left his umbrella on the hook where he had put it after coming in so that he could ride his bicycle without being overly hindered by it. The bag full of sterile tools that he would need for the rounds he was to do was right where he had left it, securely in the back compartment of his bike.

---

He rode through the town as quickly as he could to avoid the rain, though he didn’t really notice it dampening his hat and coat since they were both fairly waterproof. When he got to the apartment where his first appointment of the day was being held, he parked his bike against their wall and then got his tools out of the back where they had been safely tucked away. Viktor made his way through the front door of the apartment and then up the rather perilous steps so that he could get to the specific room that he was looking for. Once he found it, he paused and then wrapped his knuckles against the wood. “Nurse calling! Mr. Herschberger?”

The walls of the apartment had paint underneath wallpaper, both of which were beginning to peel. The floors were warped from years of wear as people walked through them and the general dampness caused by the lack of proper glass in the hallway facing windows. It was clean enough and the younger, able-bodied tenants took care of the rats and mice with a cat that they kept. It made the apartment complex a bit more inviting than some of the others, as well as the company inside being absolutely lovely.

The door opened and revealed another one of Viktor’s good friends, though he didn’t happen to be Viktor’s patient for that day. Ben was a tall asian man with a shock of black hair that he kept carefully combed back. He had dark eyes full of hurt and angst for the world, which was well earned at this point. Despite the run down apartment that he lived in, he kept himself looking well manicured in the hopes that someone would finally give him the job that he deserved. He had been doing well until the anti-asian sentiment that settled across the people’s mind due to the Japanese involvement in World War II, regardless of the fact that Ben was Korean and his family had been living in England for two generations prior.

“I’m glad that you’re back. He was being a right pain to the other nurse that they were sending to tend to him while you were off duty,” Ben said as he stepped to the side.

He closed the door securely behind Viktor and then walked quickly through the apartment to where the aforementioned man was laying back on a sofa. The windows were opened just enough to let in some of the breeze, though Ben had the foresight to place a towel on the spot on the floor that would be getting damp because of the rain. The apartment was about as run down as the rest of the building had been, but it was kept clean by Ben in his free time.

“Klaus, were you giving my replacement a hard time?” Viktor chided.

The aforementioned man let out a dramatic sigh and tossed his head backwards. He was lanky and thin despite not being able to get up and do much because of the injury he had sustained when he had been fighting during the war. His dark brown hair fell into perfect ringlets around his face and neck, and his eyes were green in the same way that Five’s were.

“How could I let them tend to me when I knew that you were the only one suited for the job?” he asked, throwing his hands out to the side. His ‘HELLO’ and ‘GOODBYE’ tattoos were prominent on his hands when he did so, and Viktor knew that was the reason he was so fond of that gesture.

“Uh huh, I’m sure. You weren’t just hazing her like you were with me?” Viktor asked. He set his bag down on the edge of the couch and the knelt down on the floor next to his friend. Viktor had originally met Ben and the two of them had immediately bonded because they both found out that they were queers in a part of the world where that kind of thing still had to be kept very hush-hush. Later, Viktor had been introduced to Klaus as one of the wards that he was going to be taking care of as a district nurse and found that he already knew Ben. They were another of the few people that knew about Viktor being who he was and not just Nurse Hargreeves or Vik.

Klaus turned his head to the side and smiled that wide, toothy smile that meant he knew he was doing something wrong. Viktor rolled his eyes and unbuttoned the first few inches of his top so that the wound he had come to inspect was visible. “Mind moving Dave so that I can get my work done?” he asked, gesturing his head down to where two sets of silver dog tags were hanging low on Klaus’ chest.

There were very few people that Viktor ever felt truly sorry for. Most had let their sour hand in life turn them into bad people that shouted at each other or abused their children. Klaus, on the other hand, had been drafted into the second world war when he was only eighteen and then lost the love of his life in the very battle that had given him the festering wound on his chest. Klaus carried Dave with him everywhere, even though they had only been involved for nine months and he was married to Ben now (in the eyes of each other and their friends, the law and the public certainly wouldn’t allow it). Viktor couldn’t imagine how he would feel if he had lost Five and he remembered the pain of his first ever girlfriend choosing a man and a marriage over him.

“I suppose I will, if you have to get on with your duties and can’t just drink with us,” Klaus sighed. He reached down and carefully removed the dog tags from around his neck. He wound the silver chain around his hand so that he could make sure he wouldn’t lose them while he couldn’t wear them.

Viktor was used to this by now since he had been helping Klaus for at least three years. He let out a little laugh and shook his head as he replied, “You know that I can’t drink. I’m working.”

He brushed his fingers over the edge of the wound and then winced when he saw that green puss was beginning to form in the dead center where it was at its worst. “Have you been taking care of this since you’ve chased the other nurses out?”

Ben, from the other room where he was preparing Viktor some tea as he always did, said, “You know that he hasn’t! I’ve barely managed to corral him into the bath most days so making him clean the wound that’s causing him all his pain is absolutely out of the question.”

The nurse let out a small sigh, though he knew that was going to be the answer. According to Klaus’ mother, a kind yet strict woman that Viktor had only met once when Klaus was first moving in, he had always been a very self destructive person. He seemed to have no care for his body or understanding that it would be around forever if he didn’t take care of himself. He drank too much, smoked too much, was frivolous with sex, all to fill the void that chronic night terrors and a war he was too young to fight in had left him with.

“Well, we’re going to have to clean that out. I know that’s your favorite part,” Viktor chuckled. That was his one way at getting back at his friend for not doing as he was always instructed to. Whenever Klaus let the wounds get as bad as they were currently, he had to clean them out with antiseptic that stung like nothing else.

He got out the tools that he needed while ignoring the complaints coming from his friend. He immediately got to work, which he was only allowed to do after shooting Klaus a sharp look that let the veteran know today was not the day to mess with him. Pretty soon the wound had been cleaned and dressed, and the dog tags replaced right over his heart where they belonged. 

“I want you to try and keep it clean and dry this time, alright? I’m not going to be able to come and change it as often as I usually do so it’s going to fall to you and Ben to do it,” Viktor instructed them firmly.

Ben handed Viktor the cup of tea that he had made, sweetened with condensed milk just how he liked it. He leaned down and kissed Klaus sweetly on the mouth, a gesture so intimate that Viktor felt lucky he got to see it.

“Are you sure that you don’t want a drink?” Klaus asked once Ben had moved so that he was sitting in an armchair next to the couch that his husband was on. The veteran reached behind the sofa and then pulled up a bottle of alcohol with ease despite the wound pulling painfully at both sides of his chest. 

“I told you this before and I’ll tell you as many times as you have to hear it, I’m not allowed to drink when I’m on call and working,” he reprimanded playfully. He adored his friends and he would have gladly had a small drink with them if they had been his last patients to visit before he was going home and he had not been pregnant. 

As if he was able to read Viktor’s mind, Klaus tilted his head to the side and smiled wide. “When’s the baby due then, Vik?”

The midwife flushed and laughed as his hand cupped the small bump hidden beneath his uniform and sweater. “Is it that obvious?” he asked as he looked down. No one else had commented on it, which was unusual because a pregnancy from one of the nurses was a big deal to the patients that they came to see. It meant change in their already chaotic lives, something not a lot of them wanted to deal with.

“It’s not, I’m just good at spotting this kind of thing,” Klaus beamed, obviously very proud of himself.

Viktor let out a nervous laugh of relief. He and his husband had been anxious since they had realized that his period hadn’t come for at least two months. It had been a scramble to make sure that he could still fulfill the work that he did around the community while also keeping the pregnancy a secret until they could be sure that it was safe to tell people. They were trepidatiously excited for the months that were to come and the lifetime that they would have after that.

“The baby’s due in about six months, should everything go according to plan,” he then explained when he realized that neither of the men in the apartment were going to let him leave without giving them some kind of answer.

“If you have a baby shower promise that you’ll invite us,” Ben said as he rose to let Viktor out of the apartment.

“I will. And knowing Five the baby will be baptized Catholic, lest Efa Hargreeves have our heads. You’ll both be invited to that as well,” he chuckled. He bade them both goodbye before he turned and went about his way.

---

By the time that he got to the front door the complex, he found that the mister for his next appointment was already standing there. “Officer Patch? Has something happened with the baby and your missus?” he asked, worry shooting through his spine so that he was standing ramrod straight.

Diego quickly shook his head, eyes filled with guilt. “Lila chased me out of the house this morning because Stan and I were being too loud. I just dropped him off at school and figured that I would give my favorite nurse some company on the way to the next appointment. If that’s alright with you, of course,” he added the last bit nervously.

Viktor’s features softened and he gave a nod. “I was actually going over to the flower shop for my next appointment, so maybe by the time that we get there she’ll have forgiven you,” he chuckled.

Diego let out a small groan at the thought of returning so soon after Lila’s outburst, but he began to walk beside his friend anyway. Diego’s family had moved from Mexico when he was no older than three, so he didn’t remember it much. He still spoke Spanish fluently because his parents had thought that it was very important to teach him. He now served as an officer for Poplar’s police department, so he and Viktor saw a lot of each other. Diego was relatively tall with a scar that stretched from one cheek to the ear on the same side of his head. He had skin that was tanned from birth and world-worn because of all the time he spent outside. He kept his hair cut short to his head and his body as fit as possible. He was one of the most trusted officers in the entire East End.

The two of them walked quietly before Diego asked, “How has Klaus been doing? I haven’t seen as much of him as I usually do.”

“I think that Ben has been keeping him out of trouble while I was on my leave. It’s harder for the other nurses to know the ins and outs of his language so it’s better for him to rest when I’m not there to help,” Viktor explained. “But I think that he’s doing well enough to be out and about again soon. Especially if Ben decides to take him on more walks to get their groceries.”

“Good, good,” Diego nodded. Just like Viktor was, he was also very familiar with the needy and underprivileged individuals in the neighborhood. Diego took care of Klaus just as much as Viktor did, though in a very different way. The two of them were good friends as well.

The rest of the short walk to the flower shop that Diego’s wife Lila ran was spent with them chatting about their lives. Viktor questioned how their eldest, Stan, was doing. Stan had been adopted from Germany when Lila was overseas as a spy and codebreaker during the second world war. It wasn’t necessarily abnormal for people to come back from their service with children, but it had been a little shocking for her to return with a three-year-old grasped in her arms.

Viktor gave a goodbye to his friend before he let himself in the front door of the flower shop. He admired some of the newly arrived peonies next to his favorite flower, purple tulips, while he waited for his patient to finish up with some of the customers that had been there when he arrived. They cleared out of the store once they had gotten their orders and bouquets, leaving him alone with his friend, “I’ve come to check your quarters for when baby comes,” he explained. “And I need to give you a check over since you haven’t been showing up to the antenatal clinics like you’re supposed to.”

The woman in question gave a playful sigh and a roll of her eyes. Lila was just a couple inches taller than Viktor, though she wore platform shoes when she wasn’t carrying about seven pounds of baby on her front, which usually made her taller. She was wearing a long cream colored sweater with a checkered dress that sinched under her chest and above her round stomach. “I know I’m supposed to go to those things but Stan doesn’t have school on the weekends so it’s hard to get away from the shop, especially now that it’s spring.” 

He let out a little sigh as he moved to the side of the counter door. Lila walked over to the door and flipped the sign so that it said she would be open in a bit before she walked the nurse through the shop up to the apartment above it. Viktor had been up there before when he was visiting her earlier in her pregnancy and when he and Diego were catching up, so he knew that it was already going to be mostly passing the inspection. 

He was glad that he was back at work, having to take a break after half a decade of being on his feet every day while working had been absolutely Hell for him, but at the same time he was beginning to remember all the little things he didn’t really care for when it came to this job. He walked up the stairs to the apartment where the Patches lived, including Diego’s sister who was staying with him while they tried to save up enough money for a home so that they could rent out the flat above the flower shoppe and all live together. Diego’s parents had been very adamant about that when he got married, Viktor distinctly remembered several of the complaints that he had to listen to Diego gripe about around the time of his wedding.

“You know where the bathroom is. Diego and I still sleep alone, Eudora insisted on sharing with Stan when she moved in with us,” Lila said as she motioned her head towards the respective things that Viktor had to ask about. He had given her the run through of what he would be looking for when she first came to the clinic and told him that she thought she was pregnant. He knew that with the chaos of a twelve-year-old it was a little bit hard to keep a flat as clean as it needed to be for a home delivery.

Viktor walked through the apartment as he surveyed the walls and the floors to make sure that there were no mouse holes or mold growing underneath the paper. Everything was up to code, which meant that it was time for him to examine the baby since Lila hadn’t shown up to her last several appointments.

She had worked with him, which was a surprise since she usually put up a fuss and insisted that she and the baby were fine. He knew that word of his almost-episode and subsequent husband-imposed house arrest had gotten around Poplar very quickly, but he didn’t know that it would affect Lila of all people. He was ushered out of the shop and apartment so that she could get back to work after being reassured three times over that she would ring him when the baby came, if she had any concerns, and that she would let one of the other nurses come with the birth pack.

---

He rode his bicycle to his last scheduled visit of the day before he got to go back to Nonnatus House for lunch and any deliveries that he might be called out to. He was hoping that the day would be rather quiet so that he could reassure Five that both he and their unborn child were fine despite the downpour. The rain had lightened up during his last two calls so that it was more of an annoying drizzle than anything that was going to get him drenched or help him catch cold.

Viktor parked his bike outside of the tall apartment building that he was prepared to go into. The couple that he was seeing was nice enough, even if the wife had a mean tongue about her and was rather reclusive. She had been very difficult to persuade at the beginning of her pregnancy, but she had come around to Viktor when he had realized that he needed to handle her with the same sharpness that she handled everyone else with. Jayme was becoming a dear friend of his, and he was hoping that the visit would be a pleasant one. 

“Mrs. Velenos?” he asked as he knocked on the door and waited to be let in. 

When the door opened, he was met with the husband instead of the wife as he had been expecting. Usually, when he came calling in the middle of a weekday, Alphonso was off at his job. He worked at the same butcher shop that Five’s mother had before she was bade to retire back to the countryside to help take care of her own parents. He was a tall man with short brown hair and warm brown eyes, but his face was marred with scars from an incident during the second world war.

He clicked his tongue and moved to the side so that Viktor could walk in. “Good morning,” he greeted pleasantly, as he always did when he was dealing with the family members of his patients. Alphonso was just a little bit softer than Jayme, but still liked to be dealt with a roughness.

“Did they not tell you what happened?” Alphonso asked once he finally shut the door behind Viktor. The house seemed to have taken a bit of a dreary look to it where chipper livelihood usually stayed in the corners. It was something that was so prominent in the front rooms and the places where the couple spent more time, which is why Viktor enjoyed coming to visit them whenever Jayme couldn’t make it to the clinics like she should have.

“No, Sister Grace just told me that you were the last on my rounds today. Did something happen?” he asked worriedly as he set down his pack on the kitchen table. He glanced around the home to try and figure out where the missus of the house was. Usually Jayme was very quickly present whenever anyone was in her home, very protective of all of her things and her space.

Alphonso turned towards the stairs that led up to the bedroom. He let out a small sigh and said, “I guess that it’s possible we could have forgotten to telephone. It was a rather traumatic experience for us, after all.”

“Mr. Velenos, what happened?” Viktor asked. He was becoming more and more worried as the information that he needed refused to come to him. It was growing into his stomach and beginning to slowly spread throughout all of his limbs. He had become familiar with that feeling during the war and then it later adapted so that it happened whenever something was happening with his patients. The other midwives and nurses called it a superpower, but Viktor always thought that it was a mix of nerves and good observational skills.

He motioned for the other man to follow him and then stepped through the house. Viktor glanced around at the items scattered on almost every surface, something that Jayme was usually railing on her husband for since she liked to keep a relatively clean house. It was odd that the home was in the state that it was in, compounded only by the fact that Jayme herself was nowhere in sight.

“The pregnancy was going fine. We missed one of the appointments that we were meant to go to but Jayme said that everything felt fine. She was glowing…” he paused, a heartbroken expression taking over his marred features. Viktor had been working as a nurse and a midwife for as long as he could, so he immediately knew that look and it sent cold shivers through his entire body. “Then one morning we woke up and she started bleeding. Didn’t stop until yesterday night.”

Viktor stopped and looked directly at the husband of his patient. “Where is she?” he asked, making sure that his voice was filled with enough urgency to convince the man he did need to see her but not so much that Alphonso might mistake it for something being critically wrong.

“Right through here, up in the bedroom,” he pointed to the end of the hallway once they were finally up the stairs.

The midwife gave him a nod of acknowledgement and then hurried down the hallway. Once he got to the door, he paused so that he could wrap on the wood and let the person inside know that he was there. “Midwife calling, would it be alright if I came in?”

Just like when he had been at the front door of the home, the door opened and one of the occupants was revealed. Jayme was still in her nightdress, though it was a different one than the item that Viktor had seen her in when he first dropped in on her to check on the pregnancy. Her eyes were dull and her hair was pulled into a messy braid that was more flyaway than braid at this point.

“You don’t have to be here,” Jayme said tiredly. She leaned heavily against the doorframe with an exhaustion that Viktor had seen in many women before and knew that he would see in many women after. “Didn’t Alphonso tell you? I lost it.”

He gave a small nod. He didn’t reach out to touch her since he knew that Fei, a blind woman that lived next door, and Alphonso were the only ones that were permitted to get away with that. “I know, he did. That’s exactly why I need to be here. Mind letting me through?”

Jayme thought about it for a moment, her eyes boring into the nurse’s until she finally gave in. She shifted to the side and allowed Viktor to walk into the bedroom. She shut the door behind her and then drifted over to the bed, where the covers were upturned next to her nightstand, like a ghost might.

“How are you feeling?” Viktor asked, setting his bag down on the edge of the bed. 

She was quiet for a bit as she lowered herself down onto the bed. The midwife sat down next to her so that he was close enough to reach out and offer her comfort should she need it but far enough away that she didn’t feel crowded. Jayme turned her head towards him as she said, “I don’t know why you’re insisting on staying here. You don’t have to, I’m not pregnant anymore.”

Viktor let out a little sigh. It was hard to lose something that you had so much hope for the future in. “I know what you’re going through, Jayme. That’s why I’m here.”

“How would you know what I’m going through?” she nearly snarled, the venom dripping from her every word.

Viktor didn’t jump back, he felt no hurt or anger. He knew what kind of pain she was in and he was the safest place that she had to release it. Her husband was going to be going through something similar though also entirely different, but she loved him and wanted to keep him so he was off limits. Viktor knew how to deal with that kind of anger because he had both felt it himself and seen it before in some of the other women he had helped in his career. 

“I’m pregnant again,” he admitted. It was the only way that he felt like he could say it. Phrasing it any other way would have made it all too real, the event that had happened what felt like a lifetime ago now. 

Jayme’s brows furrowed and she turned so that she was looking at her midwife with a serious expression. “What do you mean again? I know you, I think I would have notice if you had a bump or even a little one running around if it was from before you came here.”

He took in a deep breath. He knew that this was something she needed to hear, and now that he had admitted the pregnancy to someone other than his husband and the close friends that had been able to decipher it, he figured it would be easier to talk about. Jayme intimately knew the pain that he had gone through as well, since she was in the middle of going through it herself. “Around two years ago, my husband and I realized that we were going to have a baby. We were very excited about it. Then one day I started to get these small little stomach cramps. I ignored them. As nurses, we’re taught to put things aside so that we can help others. I pushed myself too hard when I was riding my bike back to Nonnatus house and by the time I got there, my entire uniform was soaked with blood. I had lost the pregnancy and it was on display for everyone to see.”

She listened intently to the story that he was telling. As soon as he got to the hardest part, the part where his voice faltered awkwardly because it was so hard to speak the words out loud. “I know what it feels like to lose a pregnancy because I already have. I know what it’s like, to feel like you entire future just slipped out from your hands without anyone asking you. I know what it’s like to feel as though you disappointed everyone around you without ever meaning to. But I promise that it does get better, as all grief does. Your next pregnancy is going to be the most nerve wracking experience of you and your husband’s life, though,” he chuckled weakly.

Jayme tilted her head down and let out a little sniffle. She wiped at her face with the sleeve of her nightdress and then collected herself. “It’s not something I ever expected to happen to me. I knew that it happened, I knew that other women experienced this kind of thing, I knew that it was a possibility. But for some reason, I never considered that there was a chance it could happen to me or my baby,” she held her stomach with one hand.

“No one ever does. You want to think about the future in the best way possible because pregnancy is such a hard thing. It’s not something that you think about because you’re too busy looking forward to having your baby or worried about what will happen after birth. It’s okay to be sad about it too, you know,” Viktor murmured. She had reached over and taken his hand at some point when he was talking to her, so he rubbed over the back of her thumb.

She tilted her head down every further so that her hair was a black sheet around her face. Viktor remembered doing that when he was younger, before he had decided that he was going to keep his hair short. Her shoulders began to shake as tears wracked her form and the grief overcame her for what might have been the first time since her miscarriage. She was well and truly feeling everything that she had been bottling up inside until she got the permission she needed to feel it.

Viktor sat with her, holding her hand the entire time.

---

The day felt like it had been going on forever and also no time at all once he got back out on the busy streets. Sloane had been doing an appointment a few houses down, so they were walking their bicycles down some of the busier streets where they wouldn’t be able to ride side-by-side as they talked. She kept turning to go down the streets that were closer to the piers, and Viktor knew why. He let her steer them that way so that they could catch a glimpse of some of the cargo ships while they came in and out of the docks.

The wistful look on her face when she caught the edge of the harbor was something that he hoped she wouldn’t have to live with for the rest of her life. “I just wish that he would come home. Or choose some kind of career that wouldn’t take him away from me for so long,” she sighed.

“I think that these pay better than anything he’d be able to get with his skills that would keep him in town. He’s probably saving up so that he can whisk you away to the countryside,” Viktor teased.

Sloane giggled and her face turned bright red. She was so enamored with her beau, it reminded Viktor of when he had first met his husband. Sometimes he missed the giddy feeling that came with first falling in love, but he adored what he had now. “I know that he has his reasons, he told me that himself the last time that he was here, but I do miss him so dearly. He can barely even spend any time in town with me because our schedules so rarely match up,” she pursed her lips.

“I’ll tell you what. If it’ll actually cheer you up, then I will take all of your patients the next time that he’s in town so that you can have some actual time with him. Sound good?” he asked as he turned slightly so that he could see her reaction better.

She looked at him with the kind of adoration and appreciation that only someone who had been given exactly what they wanted could have. “Would you really do something like that for me?”

“Sloane, we’ve been friends for the entire time we’ve been working as nurses in the London, of course I would do something like that for you!” Viktor laughed. They had just gotten to the edge of where the docks were visible, so Sloane parked her bike and then leaned against the railing so that she could look out over the rolling waves. It wasn’t anything like the ocean where Viktor had come from, but the Thames held a reassuring noise to it that he couldn’t find anywhere else in London.

The duo stood there in silence for a moment as they took in the cool breeze from the river and the sound of people working all around them. Viktor turned to go back to his bike so that they could make it back to the house before they were missed, when he paused. He leaned back against the railing so that he was facing inland and watched as the tall, blond stranger walked over to them.

Luther was a hulking mass of man. He was easily seven feet tall with shoulders so wide that sometimes he had to go through a door sideways just to be able to fit. He had buzzed blond hair and the sweetest smile that anyone was possible of possessing, one that hung heavy in his eyes even when he was frowning. When he noticed that Viktor was looking, he held a finger up to his mouth so that the smaller man wouldn’t say anything.

Slowly, Luther approached Sloane and then wrapped his arms around her once he had gotten close enough. He whirled her around in a circle with her squealing excitedly the entire time. When he had finished, he set her down and she was able to wiggle until she turned around and could wrap her arms around him. “I thought that you weren’t going to get back for another month at least!” she gasped.

“I managed to pull some strings by being the best sailor that a cargo ship has ever seen, so we’re back a little bit early. I also have a weeks leave,” he beamed. He leaned down and kissed her sweetly on the lips.

That was when Viktor had decided that he had seen enough. “I’m going to take up some of your patients today Sloane, but I did promise Five that I wouldn’t push myself too hard so despite your wonderful surprise you are going to have to come back to work in an hour or two,” he called over his shoulder.

He didn’t get a response but he knew that his friend had heard him. He hoped that there wouldn’t be too many soon-to-be mothers calling in with their labors in the next couple of days if he really was going to be filling in for Sloane. He didn’t want to face the worrying and fretting of his husband anymore than he already had to.

#fanfiction #fanfic #writing #ao3 #archive of our own #tua #the umbrella academy #call the midwife #crossover fanfiction #the midwife called vik fic #fiktor #oneshot #viktor hargreeves #number five #tua number five #five hargreeves #diego hargreeves #lila pitts #grace hargreeves #sloane hargreeves #ben hargreeves #sparrow ben #klaus hargreeves #luther hargreeves #jayme hargreeves #alphonso hargreeves

[twyrrinren]

Voyager's costume reminds me of the Soviet formal school uniform for girls. She's such an interesting character because she's just a young girl, dressed in the Soviet school uniform, who plays a violin, but she prefers music to speech, and nobody knows her origins

#reverse: 1999 #reverse 1999 voyager #fun facts #reverse 1999 fun facts

[sovietpostcards]

"This is the school radio center speaking". Photo by Semyon Fridlyand (Moscow, 1953).

#1950s #soviet school uniform

[allwaswell16]

Hi! I'm relatively new around here, but I just finished Take My Breath Away (the Top Gun fic) and I'm obsessed with Top Gun 1D AUs. Would you happen to know any others with a Top Gun storyline?

Hi, anon! Oh, I love that fic so much! Here's the fic anon is talking about, if you haven't read it...

Take My Breath Away by RealityBetterThanFiction

There is a prestigious school in the British Royal Navy classified as Premier Delta - or as it is known by its flyers, 1D. These select pilots are an elite set of Naval lieutenants who are trained in the skill of aggressive aerial combat. They are instruments of war, trained in times of peace. They are dogfighters, relentless and fearless in their mission to protect their beloved country. From their lofty vantage, they are always watching, waiting, and ready to lay it all on the line.

Lt. Harry Styles, call sign Sparrow, is a prodigy when it comes to flying. The owner of an unrivaled Naval pedigree, being a pilot was always written in the stars for Harry. With his trusty RIO, Lt. Niall Horan, Harry has made an unprecedented ascension in the ranks of the Naval aerial combat elite, and has been recruited to the esteemed Premier Delta flight school, carrying on his family’s legacy. What he finds there are unexpected friendships, perilous challenges, and something beyond what he ever thought possible. Because as his father had always told him, before the great Captain Styles went tragically missing in combat, you don’t fall in love with the sky, you fall in love with what keeps you on the ground.

There aren't very many other Top Gun aus, but here's what I could find...

Top Gun by photo41 

The Royal Navy's premier flight school, TOP GUN is located in Lossiemouth, Scotland. It accepts only the best Royal Navy Aces, and churns out the top pilots in the world.

Hot shot pilot Louis Tomlinson is confident him and his RiO, Stan, are going to kill it.

That is, he didn't figure on contending with the other ace pilots of the Navy; specifically Liam Payne and his RiO Zayn Malik, who seem to be able to read each other's minds.

He also has to contend with a green-eyed curly haired distraction, not helpful at all.

Between the Soviets, dog fights, annoying helicopter pilots, career women and beach volleyball, will Louis have what it takes to become the Royal Navy's Top Gun?

Here Between Earth and Sky by ohnoscarlett

Louis is an RAF pilot, along with his best mate Liam. They've been bounced from station to station for years together, until they finally end up in Scotland. Louis is unimpressed with how his military career is progressing, so he suggests they go train at the American tactical fighter school, otherwise known as Top Gun.

They're transferred one more time, even further up into the wilds of Scotland, and Louis is ready to call it quits. But then they meet the incredibly friendly Zayn and Perrie, who introduce them to everyone else they know, including their fun neighbors and co-workers.

There's a baby, an unconventional proposal of marriage, lots of airplane!porn (because airplanes!), and then a little regular porn after Louis and Harry get it together.

Lots of picturing lads in uniform, looking very sharp indeed. Then, wait--what? An opportunity to join the European Space Agency to possibly go to the International Space Station? Or Mars! Ok then.

I also have this rec if you want some pilot fics...

🌸 Pilot Fics

Happy reading!

#ask #anon #ficask #topgunfics #ficrec

[kirsteninthesun]

Time to work on Alexis and Sayana’s school uniforms.

The girls have two- traditional styles for back-to-school aka Knowledge Day, which are based off the earlier Soviet era uniforms. The second is their blue jumper, worn over a white blouse, which is their every day uniform.

Their formal uniforms consist of a black dress with a white apron over top. Sayana wears her mother’s old apron, while Alexis wears one bought new. I’ll have to work a little harder on Sayana’s, because it involves some lace and frill, while Alexis’s is pretty basic and will be a slightly modified version of Kirsten’s apron. Sayana’s I might model on Samantha’s pinafore. Both girls wear their hair in two braids with puffy white bows on the ends and carry flowers for their teachers. They wear white stockings and new dress shoes.

Sayana wishes she could wear the formal uniform every day, and she loves the pomp and extravagance of wearing her mom’s old apron. The first day of school isn’t so fun for Alexis, who packs herself a lunch without knowing that school meals are free. Still, by the end of the day both girls are happy, and it’s hard not to get caught up in the excitement.

#sayana and alexis #sewing #doll crafts

[accuratepicuresofanthropologists]

Eric Wolf

Wolf and his mother in 1925, via the Ghani AE interview

Eric Wolf was born in Austria in 1923, the son of an Austrian father and a Russian mother. The family was Jewish but hardly religious: His father was a textile designer and freemason, his mother a Harbin-born liberated woman who aspired to be a doctor and "talked rather admiringly of what was going on in the Soviet Union" (Ghani interview). Wolf spent his early years in Vienna, and then he moved to the Sudetenland (now the Czech republic) when his father sent to improve productivity at one of his company's textile factories there. When the Nazis took over Austria in 1938 the Wolfs knew Sudetenland would be next, and they fled for England, settling in Essex. (timeline, NAS obit, wolf on Elias)

In 1940, Germany invaded France and the English realized war would come to them. They responded by rounding up immigrant German families and interning them. Wolf's family was sent off to detention camps at Huyten, near Liverpool (). The camps were hardly full of Nazi sympathizers ready to sabotage England's factories -- just the opposite, in fact. Wolf found himself interned with all of the communists and socialists who had fled the Nazis. The organized camp activities, including lecture series (this was before Tiktok when people arranged lecture series when they were bored). As a result, the camp was Wolf's political awakening. He read CLR James and listened to lectures by Norbert Elias, developing left wing and Marxist sympathies.

Wolf's family was eventually released, and immigrated to New York, where they had family. Their boat, the Scythia, arrived in Ellis Island on 7 July 1940 when Wolf was 17 (ancestry). He and his family settled in Jackson Heights, Queens. (NAS) (Elias). Wolf had grown interested in science and nature when he was a student at The Forrest School in Essex (Ghani interview), and continued these studies at Queens College CUNY.

Wolf getting a haircut at Camp Hale in 1944, via the Ghani AE interview

Wolf did not finish his studies before he was called back to Europe -- this time as a soldier. He enlisted in the army on 12 March 1943 to fight the fascism he had fled from just a few years before (Tumblr). He was 19 years old, 5'9" and weighted 149 pounds. For reasons I don't yet understand, he was sent off to Camp Hale to become part of the famous 10th Mountain Division (he was 35th regiment, H company) (10th Mountain Name Index). This unit, originally formed by expert skiers, would have a unique and prestigious history. It included many men who would go on to develop skiing as recreation in the US, as well as Bill Bowerman (found of Nike and inventor of the waffle-soled running shoe), and future politician Bob Dole, who was soon to be almost mortally wounded. More recently, the 10th has served with distinction in Iraq and Afghanistan. Wolf was training was rigorous -- he was taught to ski, climb mountains, and conduct warfare in frigid mountain conditions. Those soldiers you see in movies who pop up out of the snow in white uniforms to ambush people? That was Wolf.

Wolf's division played an important part in the liberation of Italy. It arrived on the peninsula in January 1945. The allied army had spent the better part of two years advancing up the Italian peninsula but has stalled south of the Apennines, where the German 'Gothic Line' held them back. The Fifth Army needed to cross through a mountain pass to take Bologna, but German artillery on the high ground made the road impassible. Wolf's regiment ascended to the mountains behind the German position and encircled them, providing artillery support to the other regiments in the 10th as they took the German positions. Not expected to be surrounded on a mountain top in the middle of the winter, the Germans were defeated.

From there Wolf's division pursued retreating German forces across the Po valley, into upper Lombardy, and up into the Southern Tyrols around Lake Garda, an area he had once vacationed in as a child (Hidden Frontier, 4). In May 1945 the Italian army surrendered, and by July Wolf was being shipped out for an even more difficult assignment -- the invasion of Japan. The US bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki while his division was in transit across the Atlantic. Wolf arrived in New York Harbor in 11 August and four day later Japan surrendered. On VJ day he found himself in his home town with a month's furlough and a lot of celebration to do. His service officially ended in 30 Nov 1945. (10th mountain chronology)

Wolf (right) in Italy with a buddy, NAS obit

After the war Wolf returned to New York and used GI Bill money to finish his degree at Queens in 1946 (NAS obit). It appears that he fell under the influence of Hortense Powdermaker there, and then went on to Columbia to study anthropology.

Wolf encountered Columbia in its first years without Boas. He was influenced by Ruth Benedict, and interviewed Tyrolese as part of her Research in Contemporary Cultures project (Hidden Frontier 5). A more important influence, however, was Julian Steward, a Berkeley grad and protégé of Alfred Kroeber and Robert Lowie. Steward was politically conservative and interested in natural history and evolution. He ran a large program called the 'People of Puerto Rico' project to examine how different crops in Puerto Rico such as coffee and cotton shaped life in areas where they were grown. Wolf got his Ph.D. in 1951 studying coffee plantations on the western side of the island. He thus developed an interest in political economy and Latin America.

Even more important than his formal teachers were Wolf's colleagues. He became part of a circle of similarly minded male veterans who identified at part of the 'MUS' or Mundial Upheaval Society -- the jokingly serious name of the reading group they all participated in. This group included Robert Murphy, Morton Fried, Syndey Mintz, Robert Manners, and others.

Wolf in 1943 -- this is why he would have looked like during his time at Columbia, NAS obit

Wolf spend most of the 1950s teaching at a variety of short-term positions (UIUC, Virginia, Yale, and Chicago). It was during this period that he did fieldwork in Mexico. He also married a social worker named Kathleen 'Katia' Bakeman and began conducting research in Mexico. Eventually, in 1961 he settled down to a permanent position at Michigan, a place where his 'evolution and revolution' brand of anthropology was welcome. (NAS obit 5).

Eric Wolf wearing a beret, on the left, being interviewed during a protest against the Vietnam War. Via the University of Michigan.

At Michigan he also became increasingly politically active. The main target of his ire was the Vietnam war. He helped to organize the first teach-in, and also became active in AAA politics, opposing those who thought anthropologists should help the US defeat the Viet Cong.

During his time at Michigan Wolf returned to the Alps, this time to do fieldwork alongside his student John Cole.

Wolf, with son David, during a 1960-61 fieldwork trip in the Italian Alps, via the NAS obit

1971 was a key year in Wolf's life. He left Michigan for the Grad Center at CUNY, where he was to remain for the rest of his life. He also left his wife, who remarried another Michigan anthropology professor -- 1971 was a popular year for divorces -- and married Sydel Silverman, an anthropologist of the Italian alps whose previous husband had died of cancer a few years before. Wolf became a father to Silverman's children and the couple had children of their own, becoming a single happy family. Silverman is best remembered today as the long-time head of the Wenner-Gren foundation. In 1974 Cole and Wolf produced their volume on the Italian alps, The Hidden Frontier. Wolf dedicated it to his first wife.

Wolf with Sydel Silverman

Throughout the 1970s Wolf's intellectual ambition broadened beyond Europe and Latin America, and in 1982 Wolf's magnum opus, Europe and the People Without History, was published. In 1990 he won a MacArthur. He retired in 1992 and died in 1999.

#Eric Wolf #biography #anthropology

[sistervirtue]

trying to find images of early soviet school uniforms like stop telling me about how bad propaganda is and how uniforms are evil i just want to know what the regulations were

[anabanana-romanova]

MY FAVOURITE OPENING LINES OF STORIES/SNIPPETS I'VE WRITTEN/ AM WRITING

I still remember the day my mother died. I was barely a child, the age when you first begin to develop memories. (As Blood is Spilt on Snow)

Winter ran through the streets of St. Petersburg, his icy touch leaving curling artworks of frost as he trailed his icy fingers across the gromy walls. (Matryoshka Doll)

Vincas Alekna didn't hate many things. In his mind, hate was a strong word, but there was one thing that warranted that word and it was war. And th Soviet Union. And Adolf Hitler. So really, he hated three things. (Boarding the General Black)

The most memorable birthday present Tintin had ever received was Nazis marching through Belgium. (The Boy With the Red Lantern)

The last place DmitribSudayev wanted to be was in the city covered with his wanted posters, but seeing as he had spent his whole life there he wasn't expecting anything else. After all, he had escaped conscription for a civil war, abandoned and spoken out against the Bolshevik movement, saved a count from a firing squad, evaded arrest on multiple occasions, dedicated his whole life to cons and plans to leave the country and caused a whole lot of grief for the Cheka and Bolsheviks, but that was all in a day's work of a Sudayev. At least Dmitri thought so. He was, after all, the only Sudayev left, so he had no clue. (The Key to Her Heart)

Peter lay starfished across the bed, glaring at the ceiling. He did not want to go to this new fancy-shmancy school, with its fancy-shmancy uniforms and fancy-shmancy classrooms and fancy-shmancy people. Nuh-uh, no way. Never in a bajillion years. (New Kid)

That is all, thank you.

#yes i write an unhealthy amount of historical fiction dont judge me #writing #books #prose #writer things #wannabe author #writersofinstagram #writeblr