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Vanya knows death.

It’s the hunger pains that have had his body weakening for days. It’s the chill of ice seeping through the cracks into the house, reaching and stealing the breath from his father’s lungs. It’s the way his brother’s whimpers taper off as his body slowly eats itself. It’s the way his mother cries and cries and cries over the little graves he helps her dig. It’s the way his thin hands hold hers as she too succumbs to the cold and the pinch of hunger. It’s the way ice claws its way into his boots and past his layers to steal away his warmth. It’s the way he shivers and it just sends his slipping and falling into snow and ice, sobbing as he hears the frozen water hidden under him roll.

Vanya knows death.

Because death is a worn face with ice for eyes and a body that shifts into snow, spindly hands with fingers like icicles that pluck him from the watery depths he’d fallen into. It’s the way his lungs ache from ice and water and something he knows should have killed him- he’s sure did kill him- and yet he lives.

Rus’ is sure he’d known death.

But he doesn’t remember. All he knows now is the way his people’s lives thrum through his blood. He knows the way the General promises his hand in times of trouble, and the way he takes his toll when there is none. He knows his lands and all their entirety, he walks through snow and doesn’t feel the cold steal his warmth, because he has none and never did. Rus is a nation, and he’s Winter’s child, there’s no more to him and no less. He knows his story started cradled in thin arms and knows nothing at all of a life without the words and dreams of his people humming in the back of his mind.

Rus' knows death, because death is Winter and his guardian takes his toll.