The wind whipped through Maidan Nezalezhnosti, rustling the blue and yellow banners as Pavlo Volkov stepped onto the makeshift stage. Rain threatened, a chill tracing under Pavlo's collar. Oksana caught his eye. She nodded once: the crowd, the cameras, the world—waiting.
A burly officer murmured at his elbow, "We have clear sightlines, Mr. Volkov."
Pavlo nodded, his voice low. "No one's ever safe, Mykola. But we cannot live in fear."
He gripped the podium. His words rang out, carrying over the square and into the hearts of thousands. "Friends. Do you smell the rain? It is the scent of change, of earth ready for new seed. Our city is scarred, but we are not defeated."
A cheer, ragged but real, rose up.
"Kyiv stands because you refused to fall. Every one of you—soldiers, mothers, shopkeepers, children—every one has paid for our freedom with dreams and tears. The price is high. But it is not for nothing. Not for—"
He faltered. A ripple in the crowd: a flash of metal on a nearby building. Oksana stiffened, her hand going to her earpiece.
"…not for sorrow alone. We owe the fallen—not with mourning, but with the promise to build a country worthy of their gift."
The crowd's murmur grew restless. Mykola barked orders into his radio. Oksana's face paled, eyes darting between the rooftops and Pavlo.
A child in the front row—dirty sneakers, threadbare jacket—cupped his hands and yelled, "We believe in you, Pavlo!"
Pavlo smiled. "Then let us live so that courage is never wasted."
Oksana's voice crackled, tight with alarm: "Pavlo, get down—"
A single, horrible crack split the air. It wasn't thunder.
Pavlo's chest erupted in fire. His vision lurched. Mykola tried to catch him, panic etched deep in his face.
Oksana screamed, stumbling through the press of bodies. "No! Stay with me—stay—"
The banners whipped, grotesquely bright against the shade that rushed over Pavlo's sight. Knees buckling, he pressed one hand to the hot wetness over his heart, tasted blood at the edge of a cough.
He was dimly aware of hands grappling at his coat, voices dissolving. Oksana's tears spilled onto his cheek.
"My fault—I should have—" she gasped.
Pavlo tried to speak, to tell her the fault was only history's, or fate's. Sound would not come.
Children's cries. Sirens. The hard flagstones blooming with red.
His last sight was the square—the pride of Kyiv, the place he'd once dreamed of seeing rebuilt—fading into a whirl of grey and gold, a thunder trembling on the horizon.
Then nothing, not even pain, only a silence wide as the clouds overhead.