Antidote for the unknown soldier

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

It was odd, Polya thought as he opened the infirmary door, armed with the antidote Khostov had provided from the base's medical supplies. These past days he had been preserving life more often than deciphering the messages left in the act of dying. It did little to balance the harm he had done to a man already lost and afraid.

Maybe in the interim he had remembered his name.

The room was cool and white.

"I've brought the antidote," Rakitin said quietly, loath to unbalance the delicate approximation of peace.

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[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

He woke with a start and an indrawn breath, his heart thrumming, disoriented.

Infirmary, he remembered, after a moment. Then, bol'nitsa. Right. He remembered, now. He still felt flushed and feverish.

He had fallen asleep without meaning to - the nurse must have given him something, in between the murmured words and cool soothing hand on his forehead. Something about her had reminded him of home.

But there was no nurse now. He had no idea how much time had passed, but the KGB pathologist stood just inside the door, looking like he wanted something, but not quite looking him in the eye.

At least it wasn't a bevy of guards, come to haul him away for questioning, he told himself, but even so, he felt his own gaze skip away.

He remembered what the pathologist had told him.

He couldn't dwell on that, not now, though, and he pushed it aside and focused on the man instead. The pathologist was unexpectedly tall, he realized, just eyeballing it from the where the man's head leveled on the door frame. He didn't stand like tall men usually did, looming with the knowledge of the subtle yet visceral psychological advantage their height gave them. The man almost slouched, as if it vaguely embarassed him.

The nagging feeling that the pathologist had told him his name earlier tugged at him. He seemed to recall that he had a good memory, which was ironic, though he could remember his own name now. David.

"Privet," he said, carefully. "Rakitin, right?"

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

Polya smiled, relieved. The damage to the man's memory wasn't ongoing, then.

"That's right," he confirmed. "Have you remembered anything else? Like- your name?"

Which meant he must remember what else Polya had said.

Rakitin decanted the antidote into a syringe.

"Your arm, please."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

"No," David lied.

His brows creased slightly as he spoke the single word, his tone softened by a quiet, bitter note.

He was good at this, lying. He had been trained well.

He remembered it, siting in a chair under spotlights with his sleeves rolled up and shirt unbuttoned, monitors strapped to his skin. They measured blood pressure, heartrate, respiration, among other physiological responses. The tricky one was galvanic skin response, but they'd drilled him until he could even overcome that, spin the most outrageous lies and keep the needle steady.

It was a fine enough thing to fool a machine, which David didn't think much of anyway. Much harder were people, circumventing instinct and the most minuscule tells.

He didn't know how sensitive to emotional cues this Rakitin was, but if he was KGB, he'd at least had the minimum training in how to look for a lie, the hesitant speech or avoidant gaze, clearing the throat, overly formalized diction. David knew all of those, too, but what it boiled down to was that you needed to keep every lie as simple as possible. Less to screw up later, as well.

David eyed the syringe in the KGB pathologist's hand, but only for a moment. Instead of hesitating, he made a show of offering the wrong arm but getting it caught in the tubes, fumbling as the pressure pulled on the IV bag.

"Sorry," he said, wincing, pausing to untangle himself. "What's that? Is that the antidote?"

He looked up at Rakitin as he said it, a let a cautious glimmer of hope flicker in his eyes.

It very easily could be, but he couldn't take chances, just in case they'd figured out who he was and thought the easiest way to subdue him would be to simply have the seemingly-friendly pathologist come in an administer a shot. He needed to be sure.

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

"Da," Rakitin said, a little confused. "What else would it be?"

Something in his chest twisted at the sight of the man's disorientation. To have your own memory abandon you at a moment of such terrible vulnerability, leaving you among strangers inside and out...it was no mystery why he would consider anyone to be at best a step away from an enemy.

"Other arm," he added.

Something had echoed strangely in the man's voice as he confessed that his identity still eluded him. A reluctance, almost. As if it took something out of him to admit that such a fundamental detail was still lost to him.

"That's all right," Rakitin said. "It will come back to you eventually."

[gg-infimary.livejournal.com]

The night nurse was poking her head in to check on the patient.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, alarmed, "Lieutenant, you can't open the syringe like that- you'll get air in it!"

She bustled quickly in with an indulgent smile.

"Here, golubka, let me," she admonished as she pinched his cheek. She plucked the unsealed syringe out of his hand and clucked. "How did you even get that chamber open? It's supposed to be hermetic!" she marveled, like a proud mother at the exploits of her dangerously precocious son.

She patted his bicep.

"You military boys. Too strong."

The Lieutenant looked too bewildered to protest as she took the vial from his other hand.

She took a fresh syringe and put the tip in the liquid, drawing back the plunger.

"You see? This way, you get no air in there. And if there is any, you just tap it out-" She held up the syringe and stared into it, flicking the glass lightly with her index finger, "- like this."

When she was satisfied, she handed it back to him.

"There you go, golubka!" she sang. "Now he won't have an embolism!"

She stroked Rakitin's cheek and patted it lightly.

"I know, you can inject dead bodies with anything, but live ones need a little more ceremony."

Then she picked up the soldier's empty dinner tray and turned to go.

"Oh!" she said, "If you boys are hungry, there's some lovely sweet pastries that Svetlana made. I can bring you some tea."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

David blinked, taken aback.

Fortunately, confusion was realistic, and in this case, authentic. He looked to the nurse first.

"Some tea would be be nice," he said, slowly. "Thank you."

It bought him a little more time, while he thought furiously, considering.

He'd read Rakitin's reaction as honest, which had relieved him in the few seconds before the nurse had burst in. Now he wasn't so sure. Had the pathologist purposefully been trying to give him an embolism?

David thought that his knowledge would be more valuable than his dead body, but perhaps they didn't want to take any chances.

He wondered what he'd stepped into, though he still had no memory of anything after he'd started his first close recon of Groznyj Grad itself. He'd been moving through the woods, then...

Nothing. Not that he thought he wanted to know. Some things were better left in the dark, even though that idea was the antithesis of his profession.

Given his position, though, and relative vulnerability, he didn't think he had much choice in this situation. Either throw in his lot with this Rakitin, or risk seeming too distrustful, too aware of the various factors at play. An amnesiac didn't have much choice about who he trusted.

Cautiously, he held out his left arm.

"So," he said, conversationally, but letting a note of caution spike his tone, "You work with dead bodies?"

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

Ippolit blinked. He felt as though he had been assaulted by a well-pressed doily.

He moved to take the man's arm, and paused.

Something had sharpened in the nameless man's demeanor at the sight of the syringe, though he had already been edgy as a fighting fish in a hall of mirrors.

His question revealed the reason. Anyone would be reluctant to let someone more accustomed to corpses jab them with anything. It was a superstition that often caught Rakitin by surprise, as well as he should know it.

"I'm in forensics," Rakitin said. "Investigating deaths, mostly. I'm qualified with the living as well, especially simple things like this. I just don't have quite as much experience."

He glanced from the needle to the nameless man.

"The nurse could do it, if you prefer."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

"No," David said. "Go ahead."

He nodded at his arm once, in encouragement.

It seemed important somehow, to reassure the man. To give him a small show of faith, and trust.

David waited, quietly and calmly for Rakitin to administer the shot, but after a few seconds, he frowned.

"You found an antidote? Then do you know - "

He paused, jaw tightening, and he felt his heartrate pick up slightly.

David knew he needed to stay calm, that the poison would spread faster if he gave in to emotion, but even so, he found it difficult to divorce himself from his feelings at this moment.

"Do you know what happened to me, out there? How did I get poisoned? By what?"

His voice remained low, and he purposefully spoke more slowly, though his words were edged.

"How did I get these wounds?"

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

"It's strange," Rakitin said as he administered the antidote, making the fine motions with businesslike care. "It's not a man-made poison at all, or even a mixture with an animal's venom added. It's entirely a natural toxin."

Apropos of nothing, as he drew the needle out, he thought of the showers and the broken body of the Ocelot boy, of Nika slumping against the wall, of kneeling beside him and talking Irinarhov through the process of another needle. The sniper's steadiness and almost preternatural calm. Telling him he would have been a good spotter. He had been afraid, then, as if life would instinctively and immediately flee from wherever his fingers fell.

It felt like a long time ago.

"That tells us the criminal isn't neccesarily a chemist, but is most likely a local. Someone familiar enough with the area, and agile enough, to chase little creatures through the forest, extract their poisons, and apply it to some sort of weapon. We'll find him. That's a rarified set of skills."

Star-shaped, the nurse had said. It tugged on the back of Rakitin's mind, but he couldn't figure out why.

"Unless," Polya added wryly, "you were licking poison dart frogs."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

"No," David said, frowning. "I don't think so."

The needle had barely hurt. Nothing compared to the deep, ragged ache of the wound in his chest, which he knew by experience was a fairly bad one. Not life-threatening, but definitely the worst of his injuries. The drugs dulled it, but also put his head in a fog. He would rather feel the pain.

He sighed, easing back, letting the antidote do its work. He couldn't feel anything different, yet.

David eyed the pathologist for a few moments, thinking. He had to be careful with this next part.

He met Rakitin's eyes, which were dark, unusual for a man of his coloring, that straw-pale hair. He almost didn't look Russian, but as David studied the angle of his cheekbones and jaw, he could see it.

He wondered if a real Russian would know the pathologist's heritage as a matter of course; there were things that David simply didn't know, by virtue of the fact that he'd grown up somewhere else, far away from the Motherland, regardless of how well he'd learned to speak the language. His father had seen to that, but there were everyday knowledges that David just didn't have. It made some things problematic.

David decided not to ask.

"So...what will happen to me now?"

His voice was careful, but more tired than wary.

"What if...I don't remember? At least, not right away."

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

"Well- I don't know," Rakitin said, blinking. The man spoke as though he were waiting for his execution. "If you still can't remember, we'll find someone who recognizes you. It's a big base. It might take some time, but there's got to be someone who knows you. In any case, you'll have to stay here until your wounds are healed."

He smiled wanly.

"You're a patient, not a prisoner, you know."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

David had to force himself to relax, and nod.

"I know," he said, slowly, realizing that the pathologist was thinking down entirely different lines than he was. It probably wouldn't be good to disabuse him of the notion that David belonged here, just a hapless soldier who'd run afoul of something unfortunate while on wide patrol.

Then again, maybe David was overthinking this whole thing, and that was exactly what Rakitin's superiors thought, too. Maybe he'd be so lucky.

He realized that the baseline thought that anyone would have upon waking in a strange place with no memory of who they were was that they belonged. Not that they could possibly be foreign spies and in danger of being tortured for information.

David closed his eyes.

"It's just...knowing that I was..."

He hesitated.

"...poisoned, and not knowing what happened, it's hard to know who, or what, I can trust."

He opened his eyes to regard Rakitin with a careful, cautious gaze, but only for a few moments, before letting it drop away.

"I think I trust you, though," he said, quietly.

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

It was a disquieting confidence.

Especially considering what he suspected the man had been going to say.

It was natural that a soldier, finding himself injured and in an unknown environment, would default to considering himself in hostile territory.

"No one here is your enemy," Rakitin said, low but in earnest. "Except for whoever did this to you. But we'll find him."

Anger twisted through him like a snake through tall grass.

He lowered his eyes.

"I'm sorry. About-- what I told you before. I shouldn't have dropped that on your shoulders."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

David knew he should say something to the pathologist, maybe thank him or reassure him that he didn't hold it against him, but he couldn't.

He couldn't even quite bring himself to look up.

David didn't know what he'd find in the other man's gaze, but he imagined with was something like pity, or sorrow, or sympathy, and none of those things he wanted to see.

Talking about it made it real, somehow, summoned it from the darkness where it lurked. He could not think about it for a while, and it would recede, almost like it wasn't true. But he supposed that was just a way to lie to himself.

"I'd rather know," he said, roughly.

He was silent for a few seconds, then shrugged with an almost violent motion of his shoulders.

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

It had needed to be said.

That was all. Let the monsters lurk out of sight while gathering reinforcements to defeat them.

"Have you remembered anything at all?" Polya asked, abandoning the topic for one less treacherous. He took a chair by the bed. "Your unit, where you come from, who it is you're looking for, or why? Anything could help."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

David let out a breath, and some of the tension left his shoulders.

Ironic, somehow, that it was easier to contemplate the lie rather than the truth he couldn't remember.

"Not...anything like that," he said, slowly.

Because that was what he couldn't say: David Petrovich Kerensky, Special Agent, Central Intelligence Agency. Formerly Lieutenant, Junior Grade, United States Navy SEAL Team One, hailing from Chicago, but more lately, Langley, Virginia.

He couldn't say that he'd grown up playing baseball and going to games at Wrigley Field, that his father had taken him to see the last four games of the World Series when he was eight years old, on the government's dime. Political defectors like his father got perks, and that was one of them. It had been heartbreaking when the Cubs had lost, but he could still remember the thrill of actually being there amidst the screaming crowd.

He couldn't tell Rakitin that the name of the first girl he kissed was Maggie Spencer, and that she had red hair and blue eyes and perfectly straight front teeth and a multitude of freckles. They'd kissed behind the bleachers after school one day, and they'd held hands and stopped by the soda shop afterward and shared a chocolate malt.

He couldn't say that he'd been a Navy SEAL, and had been deployed to Vietnam before being recruited by the CIA. Six months of training in Langley, and this was his first assignment: Operation Snake Eater. Find out what had happened to the operative code-named Snake, a man David had known back at Langley. Snake had taught an advanced form of martial arts called CQC to select students. David had been one of them.

None of that, he could say out loud, because regardless of how well disposed Rakitin seemed to him now, it wouldn't be prudent to let any of it slip. He had to be nothing more than a simple Russian soldier.

Who spoke English fluently.

That was still a problem, but at least Rakitin hadn't brought it up.

"It's...strange," he started, slowly, frowning as if concentrating hard. "It's more like I have impressions of things. Impulses. Things that remind me of things I can't quite remember."

He gestured toward the door.

"Like...that nurse. She reminds me of someone. A woman, someone with a kind voice. It could be my mother."

He shook his head.

"Other things like that...just impressions. It's not all gone, but it's not like I can remember anything useful, either."

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

"That's something, then," Polya said, with careful optimism.

He wondered what it would be like to lose everything, down to memories of his mother. How strange to see in his mind a tall woman, a few shades to the dark in every aspect but for hair as pale as his own, and not associate it with a low, warm voice telling fairy stories, or a hand on his arm when he'd been burt poking at the fire to make it crackle and spit sparks, or reading glasses sliding low on her nose as she fell asleep over a book in the late afternoon, or a smear of blood on the pavement.

There was meaning to everything. It was no mystery. Epilepsy was caused by abnormal neuronal activity in the brain. The angle and force of her fall were determined by gravity and momentum.

It was a clear day. That morning, a magpie had tapped on the window.

"You remembered Angliskii pretty well," Rakitin pointed out wryly. "I could never get the accent right. Where did you learn?"

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

"I don't know," David said, shaking his head like he was quietly bemused.

"Was my accent good? Maybe I learned at university. I think I must have gone. I seem to remember learning, reading books, studying."

That was true enough. He had gone to Annapolis.

He looked at Rakitin.

"You must have gone to university, to learn forensics. You learned to speak English there, right? I don't think your accent was bad, as far as I could tell. I understood you just fine. Do you speak other languages, or just the two?"

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

"Oh, right." Rakitin smiled apologetically. "I keep forgetting you wouldn't know."

He leaned back, letting his eyes roll up to the ceiling as he tried to think of a way to put it. He found his background indefinably embarrassing, like trying to handle an object of awkward and unbalanced shape.

"That from university, and some odd things picked up here and there. Nothing terribly useful, except in the purely theoretical sense." He shrugged. "But then, you don't hear much English out here, either. Goes to show you never know."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

"Tell me," David said, quietly.

He turned his head and looked at Rakitin until he drew the man's gaze.

He told himself it was for the mission, out of necessity. Information-gathering, but also ally recruitment, in a way. Forge a personal bond with the subject, make them more favorably disposed. More inclined to give assistance. Using the bonds of friendship as a tactical advantage.

But there was another reason why he wanted to hear about the pathologist, one that had nothing to do with his mission. It was more personal, the need to keep this man's company, to not be alone with too much idle time to think about what had happened to him.

He studied Rakitin's expression. The pathologist seemed open, quietly attentive. Even curious. David almost started to feel bad.

He closed his eyes and settled back in the bed, trying to get more comfortable. He wondered if the antidote was working; he felt suddenly tired.

"It might help me remember something, to hear about...anything. Your parents. The university. How you went to work for the KGB."

David glanced over at Rakitin.

"If you don't mind, that is. I can't tell you very much in turn."

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

"It's all right," Polya said, a little surprised. "Just not very interesting."

The nameless man looked at him steadily, as if he really wanted to know. Even in this setting, his attention was sharp enough to be uncomfortable.

He decided to answer the last question first, as it was the easiest.

"It was a good opportunity. My parents were gone by then, and someone had to support my grandmother and little sister...."

Rakitin stopped, and shook his head. In the man's quiet gaze, anything less than full honesty fell flat.

"No, that's not it. That is, it is-- but not completely. Really, it's- Think of it this way."

He leaned forward slightly.

"At some point, everything makes sense. Even if the world is essentially random, the way it acts out that randomness has pattern and reason. It's another kind of language, one that can't lie. Like a blood sample. Look at it normally and it's only liquid. Look at it closer, ask the right questions, and the name of the poison writes itself in its own ink, and that in itself tells you the cure."

Polya was gesturing with one hand, as though its erratic motions would make his thought processes clearer.

"A body left somewhere - it's the most anonymous thing there is, isn't it? No voice, no connection to anyone. But it can tell you all sorts of things, if you know how to look for it. Where it came from, what happened, maybe even some of why. The victim of the simplest and least premeditated violence can lead right back to the perpetrator."

In the back of Rakitin's mind as he spoke, the past played, like an old film strip accidentally left in the projector.

He'd never known what it was that gave him away. His face, his voice, the way he held his hands as he told Lyova why Kira had come to visit him and he had come back alone. All shock and sympathy until Ippolit reported that the murderer had been found and sentenced on the strength of evidence recovered from the remains. Then the horror, slow and inexorable as flame licking along a piece of paper, transforming his old friend's face into a stranger's. "You did it. You sick little fuck. You took her apart yourself."

All the things that Ippolit knew were true, about funeral rites, and how it wouldn't be right to leave it to someone else, withered at the revulsion and discovery in the once familiar voice.

Rakitin paused, letting reality restore itself to full magnitude. He smiled ruefully.

"I'm not making any sense at all, am I."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

"Not really," David said.

But he smiled then, with genuine goodwill.

Rakitin reminded him of a fellow cadet he'd known back at the academy. Simon Federman. David considered himself to be intelligent, but Simon had operated on a different level altogether, like the way dogs could hear a frequency beyond human ears.

Rakitin was like that. He clearly made connections between things that David couldn't fathom, conceptual links that were lost on other people. David didn't mind not being able to follow it.

"You remind me of someone," he said. "A friend, I think."

He leaned back, and closed his eyes again.

"So you're saying...you went into forensics because you wanted to understand. To make sense of why things happen beyond cause and effect. To find some order and meaning in the unknowable."

David cracked open his eyes to look back at the pathologist.

"Am I close?"

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

"Actually, yes." A smile wore its way onto Polya's disarmed features. "That's it exactly."

Some of the tension seemed to have left the nameless man. A distraction could be a useful thing.

"I don't believe there's any such thing as the unfathomable. Just things no one's figured out how to fathom yet."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

"So you're an optimist as well as a philosopher. I didn't think those two went hand in hand."

David's tone was gentle, jocose. One side of his mouth curved upward.

He thought about what the pathologist had said.

"So what do you here? Besides examine dead bodies? Or are there enough of them to keep you occupied full time?"

That was strange, David thought, suddenly. He had almost meant it at a joke, but as he looked back on his words, he realized that his mind had pulled to the surface something that had been bothering him subconsciously. What was a KGB pathologist doing in such a remote place? It didn't make sense.

The circumstances under which Snake had disappeared were strange. No one had said it aloud, but David could tell that they were thinking it, the worst case scenario: that both Snake and his mentor had defected. Now David wondered if it wasn't that at all, and Snake was actually dead.

If that were true, he was talking to the right person.

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

"I wouldn't call it optimism, quite," Rakitin said, eyes lowering. "Causes can be as bad as effects."

He glanced up at the man's question. Polya had never known the base without the underlying atmosphere of a predator on the hunt, his own presence as anything other than a logical result.

"That's right," he said quietly. "You wouldn't remember."

It was strange to think that there could be someone here divided from it.

"I was called here as part of an investigation. There's been a chain of murders."

Rakitin's fingers interlaced.

"The last was five days ago."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

David looked at Rakitin, quietly stunned.

Of all the things he could have expected to hear, that wasn't one of them.

"Murders?" he asked, frowning.

That was sobering.

Questions flooded his mind, and he wondered if the murders were in any way relevant to his mission. He wondered if this had anything to do with Snake. He wondered if this had anything to do with -

His jaw tightened.

"What kind of murders? What's been happening?"

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

A new animation had entered the man, visibly tensing him.

"A serial killer," Rakitin said carefully. "Ritualistic. A very specific kind of sickness. His targets are blond men."

With missing limbs.

The charred, twisted thing that had once been a man named Molokov. A pristine torso, the empty space where arms would have been spread as if in benediction. Nika, pulled out of sight in less time than it took to breathe.

Polya noted that the last thought didn't quite follow.

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

David ran a hand over his hair.

It was a deep, coal black, he knew, cut military short, with bangs that spiked across his forehead.

He supposed a true amnesiac wouldn't know what he looked like. David hadn't had the opportunity to see himself in the mirror since he'd woken up, after all.

"I'm not blond," he said, and let it be a statement. The fine hair on his forearms was dark.

His gaze went to Rakitin.

"You are."

There had been a serial killer in Chicago at the turn of the century that David remembered learning about in school, a little sordid bit of local history. The man, a medical doctor, had opened a hotel for the World's Fair, and lured women there with promises of employment, then trapped and murdered them. They called him the torture doctor.

"What's his MO?" he asked, more curious now than anything. It seemed unconnected to either Snake or him, but if he had stumbled into such a volatile situation, he wanted to know as much information as possible.

"How many victims so far?"

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

"Two. Dismembered and...posed. He likes to make a show of it."

Rakitin hoped that was enough detail to discourage further questions.

His hand unconsciously went to his hair, mirroring the man's gesture.

"That's true," he said thoughtfully.

It wasn't the first time someone had mentioned that Rakitin fell rather neatly into the demographic of potential victims himself.

"There's something surreal about thinking of it that way. Then I'd never see how he gets caught."

That aspect was the more disquieting. Ippolit had long since accepted that death came, like a cat, at its own whim.

"I don't think I'd make a very good hungry ghost."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

"Don't worry about it," David said. "You'll see how he gets caught. You'll be instrumental in catching him."

He spoke matter-of-factly. Even not knowing the man well, David could see his obvious competence, though Rakitin seemed to try to downplay it at every turn. He wondered why that was.

"So I imagine that with a killer running around, finding the person who...poisoned me is less of a priority," he said, and his voice was matter-of-fact for that too.

Professional and emotionless, like he was discussing an op.

That made it easier.

"Unless you think it's connected somehow," he added.

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

"No," Rakitin said, his voice taut with resolution and low, banked anger. "We'll find him, too."

He met the wounded soldier's grey eyes.

"Count on it."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

"No," David said. "That's not what I meant."

He held Rakitin's eyes even though he wanted to look away.

"I really mean that it's less of a priority. Your work on these murders has to take precedence."

David regretted he'd said anything now. He wasn't even sure what had prompted him in the first place. He'd still been poking at the connections between things, but if the two perpetrators weren't related, that made it different.

"Look, forget I said anything."

There were some things a man had to handle on his own, he decided then and there.

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

Confusion knitted Rakitin's brows.

"Don't you want him to be found?"

Give horror a name and a face, a reason, and you take away its power.

"In any case, this one at least has a limited pool of suspects. There's only so many people with the skill and wherewithal, let alone the inclination, to extract venom from local fauna and apply it as a weapon against a random target."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

"All right. I'm sure...you'll find him."

David decided to give up, stop protesting. Any more would look too suspicious.

He lay back, and didn't have to feign exhaustion.

"How long until the poison is out of my system?" he asked.

It was better, to change the subject, move on.

"When do you think I can get out of here?"

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

"The poison should be gone within twenty-four hours," Rakitin said. "It was never meant to last. The antidote just sped up the process. This poisoner wasn't intending to kill you."

What the assailant had wanted was less clear. Could it have really been so simple as a random act of violence?

"As for here, well, the poison shouldn't have slowed down the healing process much, so it depends on your wounds." Polya smiled crookedly. "And when the nurses will let you go."

The man's movements spoke elegantly of exhaustion.

"Sorry," Polya said quickly, standing. "I should let you rest."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

"Do me a favor," David said.

He paused, and glanced at the door for a moment, then lowered his voice.

"After the poison clears and I'm doing a little better, put in a good word with the nurses for me so I can get out of here early."

David smiled, slightly, faintly. He wasn't in the mood to smile at all, but he managed it, a faint press of his lips.

"And I promise I'll take it easy and rest in my quarters. I just don't want to be here."

His look was intent.

"Could you do that for me?" he asked, quietly.

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

"For that, we would need to know which quarters are yours," Polya pointed out gently.

He could sympathise. He hated the unnatural sterility of hospitals, the endless blank white. It was no place for a living soul.

Unfortunately necessary, like any number of things.

"I don't think asking that favor would get the results you're hoping for."

The businesslike Eurenides that had the run of these hallways had no reason to be kindly disposed toward Polya to begin with.

Rakitin's eyes flicked across the bandage on the soldier's chest concealing the star-shaped wound where the primitive poison had been administered.

"Don't be in any hurry to push yourself."

He wondered if amnesia felt like an itch across the memory, trying to make a connection that you knew was there but that refused to come to light.

"For now, just try to remember what you can."

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

"Okay," David said.

If even the pathologist - who was qualified to work with the living, but still - didn't think he should leave the infirmary early, he supposed he was stuck.

The antidote must have been starting to work, because he felt warm and dizzy, as if the cure was flushing all the poison from him forcibly.

David nodded, getting drowsy.

"Are you - "

He hesitated.

"Do you need to check to make sure the antidote's working, later?"

[hajimenoippolit.livejournal.com]

The man must have been tired if he was agreeing that easily. Though Rakitin could hardly say he knew him well, he suspected this was not someone accustomed to giving up.

"That's right," he said. "I'll be back as soon as I can. To check on the antidote."

Hopefully no one else gets poisoned or murdered for a while.

[zabytsya.livejournal.com]

David murmured his assent, and closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, Rakitin was gone, and it was not difficult to close them again and succumb to the shadows.