For a contest on Gaia. Prompts: Winter; action/apocalypse fiction; a major character must become deceased; "How much longer do I have to wear this humiliating costume?"; three snowballs in a line.

Part of a series called Learn or Learning, I haven't decided yet. May or may not be connected beyond their titles, haven't decided yet.

“Daddy,” Kyle complains, looking at me. “How much longer do I have to wear this humiliating costume?”

“Watch your tongue,” I say, glaring at him from the opposite side of the room. He stands atop a pedestal as a maid tries to get his outfit onto his uncooperative body. “You are my son and I expect you to wear it for as long as I say.”

He sticks his lip out. “But Mommy wouldn't've made me wear it.”

I sigh and approach him, kneeling. “Kyle,” I begin, then pause and look down, unsure what to say. “Do you remember, a few months ago, when your Nan got sick?”

Stumbling as the maid pulls on his sleeve, Kyle nods.

“And one day, you went in to play with her and she was gone?”

“She went away,” Kyle finishes. “Did Mommy go where she went?”

I smile weakly, proud of his reasoning skills. “Yeah,” I say. “Which means she can't come back for a long time. So you, young man, need to make Mommy and Nan – wherever they are – proud of you, okay? You should wear that outfit proudly, because you and I need to make this world better for when Mommy comes back.”

Kyle tilts his head. “But don't we have to die before they can come back?”

“Yes,” I reply. “But we have until then to make this place a paradise. We have – Kyle?”

Something about his eyes changed: The way he looks at me is subtly different. He doesn’t respond to me, but as the maid pulls his other sleeve, he collapses, falling from the pedestal to the floor. On the back of his jacket, a red stain spreads from a small hole in the brown fabric – he was shot.

I yell his name, turning him over. His eyes stare lifelessly up at me. “Wake up, Kyle!”

“Sir,” the maid says. She touches my shoulder. “We should go, sir.”

“No,” I snap at her. I begin to hear the pinging of more bullets as they hit the wall and the mirrors in the room. I clutch Kyle to my chest, fearing that if I let go, I will truly lose him.

The maid grabs my sleeve and shakes me. “Mister Calloway, sir, we have to go now. Come on; there's a servant's passageway over there – we can escape that way.”

I look at her, then down at Kyle's face, taking a few breaths to calm myself. Silently, I scoop up Kyle's small body and follow the maid across the room to where she slides back a piece of paneling and steps into the passage behind it.

Once she closes the hidden door, she locks it and pauses to catch her breath. “I'm sorry, sir,” she says gravely.

I follow the wall to the floor, Kyle in my lap. Carefully, I close his eyes. “I never wanted anything to do with this.” I look at the maid as she sits beside me. “What happens now?”

She ties Kyle's shoes, a task she did not quite reach when dressing him. “We can get nearly anywhere on the property from here,” she says.

“I want to bury Kyle.”

“We can get to the garage,” she says. “But you will surely be killed if they find you.”

“Not until I bury Kyle.”

She watches me as I gently touch Kyle's face – he looks so much like his mother. “I have an idea, sir, if I may explain.”

I shake my head slowly, but not as a response. “Drop the sir crap,” I say. “That life is over.”

“Okay, sir.” She pauses a moment. “They'll let women out, servants,” she says. “We can go to the servant's quarters and...” She trails off when she sees the look I give her.

“You want me to dress as a woman?” I say.

“If I may be frank, sir, you have a slim frame. The men out there don't expect servants to be attractive, so you wouldn't draw much attention.”

I look at her, struggling to say, “Are you saying I wouldn't be an attractive woman?” I manage to smile so faintly I am not sure she sees it.

She smiles back. “We should go soon.”

“What's your name?” I ask.

“Eve,” she replies.

“Eve.” I stand, Kyle in my arms. Swallowing a lump in my throat – I will not cry for him here – I begin down the corridor. The space becomes darker as we move away from the light coming from the cracks around the door.

“Hold on a sec,” Eve says. I hear her feel around on the wall. She finds a flashlight and taps it on her palm until it turns on. She shines it on my face, then down the hall.

Minutes later, she pushes through another door into a small, dim room. She flips a switch on the wall and steps inside to let me through. “You can put Kyle on the couch if you want,” she says. “I'll find you something to wear.”

I take a seat on the couch she indicates, Kyle still on my lap. “I want to bury him with his mother.”

Eve looks over her shoulder as she digs through a wardrobe. “We can pull that off,” she says. “We'll just have to be a bit more careful.” From the wardrobe, she pulls a dark purple dress. “I would only give you a top,” she says apologetically, “but someone might make you get out of the car. This isn't too bad, though. It's warm, at least.”

I lay Kyle carefully on the couch and approach Eve, taking the dress and holding it against myself in the cracked mirror. “Will it fit?”

“The woman who used to wear it had square shoulders,” Eve says. “You should be fine. Why don't you go try it on?”

Closing the door to a servant's bedroom, I begin to unbutton my jacket. It feels heavy, like the memories attached to it weigh my entire body down. I slide it off my shoulders and drop it to the ground, waiting for the impact as it hits.

“We can wrap Kyle in a shawl or something,” Eve calls through the door. “You're going to want a shawl, too – it's cold out there.”

“I'll bet it is.” I stare at myself in the small mirror above an old dresser. As much as I hate the uniform, I can hide behind it – conceal all my scars and pain. Turning away, I pull the dress over my head.

“That doesn't look too bad,” Eve says when I step out. She brings me to the mirror and zips the dress. “You need some padding, but other than that, you are quite feminine.”

I twist in front of the mirror. “And my dad always said it was a bad thing.” I have to take short breaths in the tight fabric, but if I avoid looking at my face and my lack of a bust, I can fool myself for an ugly woman. “I hate this.”

“Cal, look at me.” Eve holds my gaze. “I know you just lost your wife and son, but you need to focus on getting yourself out alive. Do you hear me? I can help you, Cal, but you have to work with me.”

I lower my eyes, then look in the mirror again. “Where will I go after we bury Kyle?”

“My brother's,” Eve replies. She searches through a dresser and returns with two wads of cotton, which she shoves down the front of the dress. “Sorry,” she says offhandedly before continuing: “He started up an underground resistance, and he can provide us with safety there. Whoever shot at you knows you’ll be influential in the future of this country, so you need to stay alive, no matter what it takes.”

The mirror shows a fractured image of me, a crack running through my torso. I look away, covering my mouth with my hand to fight back another lump in my throat. I have been reduced to a childless widower, and Eve has put me in a dress for my own safety – I now match the chaos outside, my carefully built glass bubble shattered around me.

I sit on the couch at Kyle's feet and gaze at his face.

“Cal,” Eve says. She moves to the opposite wall and presses an ear to it. “I think they're in the house.” She begins to scurry around, looking for more clothes to put on me. “We have to go soon.”

“I don't want anyone else's children to die,” I say calmly, in a haze. “Or any more wives to suffer their husband's flaws.”

“I know, Cal.” Eve stands in front of me and brushes my hair back with her fingers, pulling hard enough to hurt, but I do not feel it. Satisfied that my hair will stay put, she ties a sheer wrap under my chin, then pulls me to my feet and ties a heavy wool shawl around my shoulders. “Don't cry, Cal,” she says as she sees my expression. She turns my face away from Kyle.

“I'm trying not to,” I say, forcing a small smile. “It can wait till we're out of here.”

“Good.” She disappears into a bedroom and returns with a quilted blanket. “Put this around Kyle,” she tells me.

I do as she says, wrapping Kyle's body in the blanket. Eve moves around the quarters, preparing herself to leave. When she is ready, she motions for me to follow her into the hidden tunnel again. We pause a moment after closing the door, trying to figure out where the men storming the house are headed.

Eve taps my elbow. “Come on,” she whispers. We move through the passage by flashlight, myself becoming disoriented with all the twists and turns. I have no idea where we are in my own house.

“This door goes to the back entrance,” Eve says quietly. “It's where the servants used to go in and out. We can pretend to go into town and hopefully not get caught.”

She pushes through the door and leads me to a sleek car parked in the driveway. After brushing snow off the windshields and roof, she climbs inside after me. “Put your hood up,” she says, reaching over my shoulders so I can hold on to Kyle. “And keep your eyes down.”

Goosebumps run up my arms as the cold sets in. Eve turns the heat on as she begins down the driveway. The path is not the house's main one, going the opposite direction and meeting a main street later on. We manage to get to the main road without a hassle – whoever raided my house must have known that I released all of my servants after my wife died.

People watch as we drive down the street. If they know the town well enough, they know that the car belongs to me. I try not to look at them as they wander aimlessly down the sidewalk. They struggled while I stayed holed up in my house – and even there, I was no safer than them.

Eve glances at me occasionally the entire trip to my wife’s grave. The land belonged to my father once, but my wife loved it there so much that the new owner let me bury her there. I do not know where the landowners are now.

We stop by an empty barn to look for a shovel. “The ground's probably frozen,” Eve says as I close the car door, shovel in hand.

“I don't care,” I reply. “I'm going to bury him.”

She says nothing as she drives the car up the slick path to my wife's grave. As I struggle to dig up frozen pieces of earth, she sits in the car and holds Kyle's body, watching me. When I dig a hole deep enough, I approach and lift Kyle from her arms; we walk together to the hole.

Using the sides of the quilt, we carefully lower Kyle's body into the grave, and I set about filling in the hole. My body shakes from the cold as I shovel, and the hem of the dress I am still wearing grows damp with snow. When the hole is filled, I toss the shovel aside and drop to my knees, allowing myself to focus for the first time in nearly an hour.

I stare absently at the fresh dirt, slowing turning white with newly fallen snow. Clasping my hands, I close my eyes and pray to the God my wife believed in, hoping that both she and Kyle have found peace.

Eve kneels beside me and places a hand on my back. “I'm so sorry, Cal.”

I look up at her. “Is it okay to cry now?” I ask slowly.

“Yes,” she replies, nodding. Her eyes are filled already.

Hiding my face with my hands, I bend forward and let my tears fall down my frozen cheeks. Eve holds on to me, something I am not comfortable with but have no energy to fight – her touch only reminds me of Kyle, of my wife.

As I calm down, Eve lets go. I hear her moving, but do not look at her. “One for Kyle,” she says, and I look up to see her place a snowball at the head of Kyle's grave. “One for your wife.” She places another one beside it. “And one for this world.” A third one rests beside the other two.

“Snow melts,” I say bitterly.

“Only because the spring warms it,” she replies. She stands and brushes off her knees. Offering a hand, she says, “Come on. We need to find my brother.”

I take her hand and she helps me up. “Where is he?”

“Far away from here,” she says as we walk to the car.

“Do I have to wear this dress until we get there?” I ask, some semblance of humor in my voice.

Eve smiles. “Not if you don't want to.”