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groznyj_grad2007-08-27 02:31 am
heartofthunder.livejournal.com) wrote in groznyj_grad2007-08-27 02:31 am
Entry tags:
Antivenom [February 20, 1964, 1:17 pm]
Volgin opened his eyes.
His vision came only in smears of colors, differentiated by darks and lights.
His throat ached, and his mouth felt dry.
He remembered vague things...Alexei, Ocelot, various young women coming in to talk to him about topics he couldn't remember. It all seemed distant now, and he felt so tired. So weak. It angered him at the same time it exhausted him. He wondered vaguely if he could summon his power and charge his body with so much voltage he could purge the poison from him. Too bad he thought of it now, when it was far too late to do so. He couldn't summon the strength to control his power, much the less charge it up. Perhaps he should have tried at the outset, but...
Volgin heard a voice, then, one of the women. Not speaking to him, too far away for that. In the hallway, perhaps. But then there was a short pause, and a shadow made him blink.
He tried to focus, and even though the face above him was a blur, he'd know the accompanying presence anywhere.
"Alyosha," Volgin murmured, raw and soft. "You're back."
His vision came only in smears of colors, differentiated by darks and lights.
His throat ached, and his mouth felt dry.
He remembered vague things...Alexei, Ocelot, various young women coming in to talk to him about topics he couldn't remember. It all seemed distant now, and he felt so tired. So weak. It angered him at the same time it exhausted him. He wondered vaguely if he could summon his power and charge his body with so much voltage he could purge the poison from him. Too bad he thought of it now, when it was far too late to do so. He couldn't summon the strength to control his power, much the less charge it up. Perhaps he should have tried at the outset, but...
Volgin heard a voice, then, one of the women. Not speaking to him, too far away for that. In the hallway, perhaps. But then there was a short pause, and a shadow made him blink.
He tried to focus, and even though the face above him was a blur, he'd know the accompanying presence anywhere.
"Alyosha," Volgin murmured, raw and soft. "You're back."
no subject
Lynx didn't seem put off at all by his presumption, even to expect it.
"It must have been formidable, to put you out of commission." It was difficult to imagine the solidly-built man being injured by much of anything.
"Actually," Rakitin said brightly, "that's a popular misconception. Lightning tends to strike the highest point, whether or not it's been struck previously. Some tall buildings in areas with frequent storms have been struck hundreds of times...."
His head caught up with his mouth.
"That's not what you were talking about," he concluded glumly.
no subject
Alexei raised his eyebrows, and laughed, although it was with a wry, black humor.
"I would be the highest point, wouldn't I?"
He paused.
"Excepting the Colonel, of course."
Volgin was not immune to the force of nature he channeled. Alexei remembered that well enough. On rare occasions when Yevgeny would lose his grip on the power that coursed through him, he would bleed.
Actually bleed.
Little rivers of wounding.
Lynx shivered inwardly at the memory of Volgin lying back on his bed, dazed and dull-eyed, with crimson crowning his scalp in trickling, rich rolls like candle wax-looking like a martyr on an internal cross.
He had hurled Alexei away at the last moment during a session in his quarters when he sensed himself spiralling out of control. He had said it was an anomaly that time would cure, the uncertainty. The suit could be refined, his conduits and quarters insulated. His own understanding was growing- but so was his power.
Lynx believed him, then. Trusted him, trusted his power.
Nothing had changed.
"What's that phrase he always says?" said Alexei after a moment, smiling unprovoked. "You know the one. You must know it. About...bushes."
Try as he might, he couldn't recall the phrase. It eluded his memory, like staring at a blank page where the outline, the shape of once-held knowledge remained, taunting. Even when he seemed utterly whole and unblighted, there were lapses. Lacuna.
It was always something like this, always something small, that reminded him he would never be truly the same again. Some things were irretrievable to him, no matter how he tried- there were residual effects of the massive shock to his system.
His smile faded, and he looked helpless, bemused for a moment.
"I don't...I can't remember it," he said, quietly.
His voice was pained.
"Do you? Can you tell me what it is, Lieutenant?"
no subject
Abruptly, Ippolit felt again the keen sense of being an intruder on the connection between the two men, as though he were eavesdropping at a confessional being put to a far more tender and primal use.
As if in an effort to back away, he felt his mind drop back into thoughts of lightning, tripping from the ways of mechanics to aesthetics. The sublimity of the torrent striking his face unimpeded as he stared and his young untried heart went wild at each distant bright bolt, wishing with a child's flawless intensity that one would fall near him so that he could gather that searing, flowing light into his hand like a firefly gone supernova. Being dragged in out of the rain, pressing his face to cold glass as water struck the other side and listening to the muttering chant of an old voice yet to lose its last resonance.
Lynx's question took Rakitin by surprise, phonetics echoing and mixing with memory's stored storms.
"Kuwabara?" Polya guessed absurdly.
no subject
He hadn't expected the pathologist to come up with it, in all honesty- after all he'd only been here for a few weeks at the most- what were the odds he would have heard Volgin say it?
And yet, Volgin had said it often enough when Lynx knew him. Why should that have changed?
When nothing else had...
"Thank you," he murmured. "You're a good soratnik."
no subject
He hadn't expected the trinket left by his odd and rather embarrassing heritage to have any significance. It was a feeling of distant nostalgia, like finding something you thought you had left a thousand miles away at the bottom of a drawer.
"Strange soil things grow in," he remarked obscurely, glancing into the middle distance.
Something about the subject had made a change come over Lynx, accentuated by his brightening at the word. His eyes had saddened, and for a moment the big, powerful man had seemed almost fragile. Almost lonely. It had vanished, impermanent as purged poison, leaving only traces behind.
"It's funny how easy it is to forget the little things," Polya prattled. "I used to leave things on the burner all the time, and just forget all about them. Well, until it exploded the second time."
He looked upward in thought.
"Or was that the third....?"
no subject
No, there was no irony or wry jesting in Rakitin's expression, only a certain wistful glumness in the wake of his little chirped soliloquoy.
The pathologist's words were not a mindful attempt at sympathy, but a straightforward admission, leaving Alexei with no doubt in his mind that Rakitin's lab did witness its fair share of boil-overs.
Alexei's lip curved at the corner.
"That's all right. I'll tell you what they used to say in my specialist training. They would say: 'You've got to break a few eggs.' "
Rakitin watched him politely, as if waiting for him to go on.
"What?" said Lynx, after a moment.
no subject
Little good came of struggling against destiny without reason. Rakitin went along with the current.
"You...cook?" he said, looking up at Lynx quizzically.
no subject
"Actually, I can. But no, that was a little joke. Something they said to us. It's probably only funny to barehand specialists."
The whole phrase as originally intended was "you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette". The covert Spetsnaz version was apocopated, wryly, truncated to exclude the latter positive clause.
There were a lot of injokes like that one, now that he thought about it.
He decided against telling the pathologist the one his own mentor had favored.
The pithy, unvarnished: "Do unto others."
He scratched his arm absently and gave a quiet laugh.
"Sorry. That was a myopic reference to make."
no subject
He cracked a smile.
"Actually, it is kind of funny."
As was the thought of the composed, formidable soldier wielding a whisk and a mixing bowl.
"It's sort of hard to imagine you beating eggs."
no subject
His eyebrows lowered slightly, studiously.
"I need to see to my comrades, Lieutenant. Can't leave those snipers alone. You never know what might happen."
Nothing, he thought, silently. For now, anyway. He'd put the fear of god in everyone, hadn't he.
That was what he was really worried about.
Leshovik had looked at him like a boy who had suddenly realized the great new toy he'd been playing with was an unexploded land mine.
His gaze leveled, as he regarded the pathologist with quiet acknowledgment.
"Again...I appreciate your expertise and your...candor in the situation. I owe you one."
Lynx nodded, shortly.
"Let me know if there's ever anything I can do for you. And take care," he added, cryptically, turning away. "It was nice meeting you, Lieutenant. I'm sure I'll be seeing you around."
no subject
"Give your comrades my best," he said, smiling brightly.
As he watched Lynx depart, he hoped they would meet again.