Chapter Text
He had never expected to wake up again.
There were a million reasons why he shouldn't have, reasons personal and reasons of nature, and even, deep down, a couple reasons of soul; he didn't believe in souls, not really, except that you saw things in the city, you saw things that defied any explanation besides some lingering will or memory of the dead, and what could you call that but a ghost, a soul, a person lasting beyond their meat?
Deep down, Pavel knew he deserved to die, deep in his soul that he didn't have but knew he had; and even if he didn't deserve to die, he couldn't expect to fall in the ruins of Moscow and get back up again, not when monsters and mutants and his own gas mask could kill him; and even if they didn't, Artyom, his Artyom, the man he'd betrayed to the mercies of the Red Line, to save his own skin, to-- to-- to try and keep him close--
Even if no ghost ripped his soul from its shell for his sins, even if no demon or nosalis tore his heart from his chest, then Artyom, sweet and cold-blooded Artyom, Artyom the ranger who could slice a man's throat open one second and chuckle hoarsely at a joke in the next, Artyom who'd nearly sliced his throat open in Venice... Artyom put knives and arrows and silent ball bearings in men for infinitely less than what Pavel had done to him.
And yet,
Pavel woke up.
It hurt to wake up, and his side felt cold, clammy with congealing blood-- but his mask still filtered his breaths without trouble, less trouble than he had filtering his swirling thoughts and blurring memories of things beyond his explanation. He knew, he knew, that his last waking moments were with the little mutant coming for him, Artyom standing over him with those bottle-green eyes cold behind his dusty mask, but his last memories-- his last memories are from after that, he remembers red and fear, he was so afraid, and there were hands and claws grabbing at him, cold and desperate as his heart. His last memory is of warm arms around him. His last memory is Artyom, face inexplicably bare, pulling him free of the clutching hands, his face stained red and eyes turned black with the light, mouth in a stony line.
He lays there, coughing, on the floor, and stares at the wall, and wonders how, why, how could Artyom leave him alive...
Was it even possible to know? Could he know the mind of his silent-- his silent-- of silent Artyom, who'd looked so cold, as cold as death, and yet left him alive? Did he even want to? (Yes, he wanted to, he needed to know why he'd been spared, needed to know what Artyom had thought, how-- was he just not worth even the single bullet it would have taken to finish the job? Was there something else--)
He draws in one deep breath, and pushes himself to chilled and shaking standing, and touches his filter. He could worry about that later, he thinks, and then he thinks, oh, fuck, will there be a later?, because he'd already been on thin ice with Korbut, thin ice that could break under his boots any moment-- better, he had thought, to die at Artyom's hand, deserving, than at Korbut's orders...
For a wild, dizzy moment, Pavel imagines chasing after Artyom, begging him to do something, to put his knife to the neck he's saved so many times and spare him a bullet in the brain, or to take him with him, take this red spy and help him run-- but then the daydream passes. He's left standing in the whispering stillness of Moscow, with only one place to go.
He delays it, stopping to gather the tags and filters and bullets of his felled, failed comrades, the men he'd known Artyom would cut through like so much rat meat and still ordered forward anyhow. He swaps the filters when he finds his breath growing labored, and stares at the used one in his hand, unfamiliar and clearly marked with the symbol of Sparta. He turns towards the only home he's known for most of his life, and walks towards the death he's certain is coming, because all his paths lead to his death. He's certain of it. His soul, his poor, ignored soul, is so certain of it that it winds around his neck like a nazi noose, presses down his throat like poisoned air, chills his hands like rope around his wrists, the impression of death in a dozen close calls stamped into his skin.
There is only so long a man can delay. Pavel's feet lead him home, to his line, to the people he's lived his life lying and fighting and killing and spying for, to the only place that has ever given him anything in return, and he knows that this time it won't give him anything he wants. He has to go there. There's nowhere else to go but to his death.
He wonders if Artyom would care, that his silent mercy was wasted on Pavel.
He wonders if Artyom cares.
He wonders if Artyom lives at all, or if he's already gone, killed under the weight of Red bodies, of a train of death, as helpless before death as any man he'd killed had been helpless before him.
Pavel wonders if it'd be easier, to pull his mask off and die out here in the cold and the wet, put his body to some use in feeding the awful crows and nosalises and demons, and let himself be that helpless as well; but his heart shudders, and he draws in a breath before the building that will take him back to the red line, and sinks into the ground. If he's going to die, might as well die buried in the Metro, eh? Might as well die and feed the rats that would feed his people. Might as well die an officer rather than a coward, if he's going to die.
But when he gets there,
Death doesn't come.
--
The problem is, it's Korbut who's dead.
"Dead?" Pavel echoed to Nikolai, voice thin, and then hears: so many more are dead, so many officers, the rangers had somehow harnessed mutants, mutants that could reach into your brain (and Pavel shivers, feeling dark fingers on his face) and pull you apart before you could pull a trigger, and so, Korbut is dead, and so are most of the men who'd launched the attack, and so many of the brass--
Nikolai's face is haunted, haunted in a way it hadn't been a day ago, when Pavel had last seen the colonel.
"I-- I'm," Nikolai stammers, uncharacteristically, "I'm nearly top brass, now, Morozov." He looks into Pavel's pale face, his eyes shadowed and mouth creasing into his face. "You're lucky you weren't there."
"Oh," says Pavel, thinly, and starts to laugh, a pale and empty laugh that comes from nowhere, his head dizzy. "Then I'd-- I'd better get, uh, get this gunshot looked at, huh?"
Nikolai nods, and slumps into his hands, rubbing his face and looking more exhausted than a single day should warrant.
"--Oh," he breathes, voice nearly solid, as Pavel is about to close the door behind him, "do you know how to get into Korbut's plans? His desk is trapped--"
Pavel shakes his head, shrugs his shoulder, says, with hollow brightness, "Ahhh, comrade, he never shared that with me," and drags his living body away.
They never find out what idiot tried to get into Korbut's desk and triggered the fire-bomb, burning away all the most sensitive intelligence the Red Line had.
Pavel doesn't know if it's a grand enough offering-- and he doesn't know who it's an offering for, God or Nature or his own soul or the debt he owes to Artyom-- but when Nikolai looks at him afterwards, seeing him in the clinic, he gives him a nod that could mean anything, and that Pavel hopes means he understands.
--
"I'm not superstitious," Pavel explains to Pyotr, his fellow officer watching the little fire burning in Pavel's cup, shoulder to shoulder in the back of the bar. The precious paper is halfway gone, and the unpleasant smell of singed hair is starting to fill the air, but neither of them move to snuff it out. "It's just-- in case, you know? I'm no psychic, not like--"
Pyotr has felt the shape of someone that Pavel's editing out of his sentences, and he says, "Ahh, a psychic, Pashenka?" in a voice that teases, but the teasing is soft around the edges, none of his usual mocking bite. "Did your psychic tell you that the dead love a bit of burning hair?"
Pavel flushes, and shoves his fist against Pyotr's shoulder, and says, low and thin, "It's not something-- it's something of me. Something I can give of myself. Like-- like--"
"Like a less messy blood offering," Pyotr murmurs, and Pavel nods, despite himself, despite how silly it sounds. The paper is nothing but soot and ash, and the fine dusting of shavings in the cup are invisible, burned away with their wrapper. Pyotr glances at the bar, to see if there's eyes on them, and then offers the dead a splash of his vodka, before the last ember fades, the blue flame licking up hungrily.
Pavel doesn't say, aloud, that he thinks the dead will like it, but he presses his warm and living shoulder to his friend's, and they stare at the eager flame, letting it warm their hands as the vodka warms the bellies of the dead.
"I'm not superstitious either," Pyotr says, once the fire's died down, voice firm. "I'm an officer."
Pavel laughs, softly, a knot untying in his gut, and asks, "Then why'd you add the vodka, Petya?" before stealing the bottle and taking a drink.
--
He dreams, in the night, though night means little enough underground-- but in the night, when he sleeps, he dreams.
He dreams that Death is above him, with pale green eyes and a soft head of hair, cutting the noose from his neck and offering him a hand up. He never knows if he should take it. He never takes it before he wakes up, shivering, his hands feeling cold and empty.
He dreams of Death, with a soft, hoarse chuckle, taking the knife from his hand, looking into his eyes, and pressing it into his gut, leaving him bleeding on the floor with the dead nazis, and wakes with the wound in his side itching and hot.
He dreams about Death pulling him free of those cold, cold grips, tearing him away from nails that dig into his flesh to his self, whatever that self may be, and pulling him close, close enough that even in the harsh red light Pavel can see the beauty mark under one eye, see the chain of his ranger tags around his neck, see the worried way Death fits a new filter to his mask.
He dreams that Death finds him, and frees him, and chains him, and kills him, and makes him feel alive.
Pavel thinks he might be obsessed.
--
"I know I, that I, I can't take leave," he says to Pyotr, and rubs his cold nose, trying to warm it against the chill of the tunnel.
Pyotr, caught off guard, gives him a look that asks if he couldn't wait until Pyotr had swallowed, and washes down his jerky with a gulp of watered-down vodka. "Were you wanting to take leave?" he asks, once his mouth is cleared, and offers the canteen across to Pavel, the liquid sloshing as their cart rattles down the tracks.
He shrugs in reply, takes the canteen, looks behind them at the dark that presses in. "Maybe," he says, softly. "I wasn't... ahhh, blyat, don't, uh, don't worry about it, yeah?"
"Hmm," Pyotr says, and tears a bite off his jerky, and offers that across, too. Pavel takes it, takes a bite, drinks the vodka; then he hands them back, and Pyotr watches him chew, his pale eyes glinting in the lantern-light. "You know, if you asked, I think Nikolai would give you Intelligence," he says, after a moment, voice level. "No one else wants it. No one wants to follow up Korbut."
"I, uh, think it's that no one wants a psychic to rip their brain apart," Pavel says, darkly, and his hand finds the spots where Artyom's beast had touched him. "No one wants to, to meet the fate of Korbut, yeah?"
Humming again, Pyotr swishes the vodka in its canteen, eyes turning out to the dark, and his voice goes slyly innocent. "Maybe it depends on the psychic, Pashenka," he suggests, and Pavel thinks, for a soft, dying moment, of having Artyom's hand on his face instead of the beast's--
"I'm going to pitch you out of this, this fucking train," Pavel says, without fire, and holds his hand out for the canteen.
--
"Major Voronin," Nikolai says, and his face has aged a decade in the past couple months, the creases deep and sharp, "has suggested that we... that Intelligence needs to find what contacts will still speak with them. I don't know who he means by 'intelligence', unless that's my job now too-- but if we're to rebuild..."
"Ah," says Pavel, and glances over his shoulder like Pyotr will be there, to explain himself-- the man's never been a spy like Pavel, he doesn't know shit about intelligence, except he always seems to know what Pavel is thinking.
"... I think you need," the colonel starts, then stops himself, and waves for Pavel to sit down. It's an uncommon gesture from the stuffy officer, and Pavel obeys more out of surprise than any desire to relax in Nikolai's office. "Major Morozov. Pavel," he says, seriously, and folds his hands together on his desk, the card table whining softly under the added strain.
"Colonel Vasiliev," Pavel replies, baffled.
Their eyes meet, and it's desperately uncomfortable as the moment drags on; Nikolai breaks the contact first, to duck down and pull a flask out from one of the boxes holding his desk steady. Pavel never would have believed it if Pyotr told him there was booze in this office.
The flask is flicked open, offered to Pavel first, and as Pavel chokes on the rot-gut moonshine burning down his gullet, Nikolai takes a sip like it's as mild as mushroom tea.
Then the flask vanishes again, and Nikolai says, again, "Pavel," and their eyes meet, and had Nikolai's eyes always been green as Death's?
"Sir?" he rasps, uncertain of where this is going.
"You were ready," he says, soft and even, "to disappoint Korbut, weren't you?"
Pavel's hands twitch, find his knees, curl into the cloth of his pants, and he squeezes out a heartless laugh. "Ahh, well, he, he wasn't an easy man to please, eh?" he jokes, and smiles at Nikolai, who doesn't smile back.
"Did you want to?" he asks, next, and Pavel licks his lips, looking back at the man. Did he?
"... I," he says, uncertain, "don't think I saw any other choice. At the time."
Nikolai sighs, and nods, and tells Pavel, even softer, so soft it's hard to tell what emotion is in his voice, "I don't know if I would have made the same one. But I can trust you to come back, Pavel."
It wasn't a question, but Pavel nods anyways. He may deserve to die, maybe, he may know that Death spared him for reasons inscrutable and might come back to finish the job any day-- but he'll come back.
"Right. First, we need to reestablish contact with friendly stations--" Nikolai starts, and lays out a plan with Pavel, who does not run Intelligence, but could if he asked.
--
"Petya," Pavel says, surprised, when he looks up from packing and sees his friend leaning against the doorframe.
"Going away?" Pyotr asks, looking smug, tapping his heel against the frame. "Where to? Is it for business or... pleasure?"
Pavel, in a split-moment choice, lobs the socks he's holding at Pyotr's face, and gets an impish laugh as the man catches it, tossing it in one hand without even looking. "Go fuck yourself, Petya," he says, and he means for it to be affectionate, but it comes out with a strained note underneath; the man's smile melts to seriousness in an instant.
"Will you look?" he asks, and Pavel shrugs, not denying that he knows exactly what, who, Pyotr means. "Do you know where?"
That gets a shake of Pavel's head, because he doesn't know where, doesn't know... if...
"While I'm gone," Pavel says, instead of anything about where he's going, "would you--"
He rubs a hand over his head, and Pyotr nods, and says, "The hair thing is weird, Pasha, but there's plenty of vodka to go around, for now."
"Thanks," he says, softly.
Silence hangs between them, like a bubble they're reluctant to pop, until Pavel closes his bag. Then, "Just promise to come back," Pyotr says, and Pavel looks up, surprised. "I don't need another ghost drinking my vodka," he says, putting on airs, turning his nose up. "The table's already too empty."
Oh my friends, my friends, forgive me, Pavel's brain sings, and he nods to Pyotr. "I won't leave you alone too long, priyatel," he says, and it's softer than he means to, gentler than he means to, and a real emotion passes over Pyotr's face like a cloud, there and gone.
"See that you don't, Pasha."
--
Stepping into Polis is like stepping into another world, for the first time in months, and for a second Pavel feels like he can breath again, his soul's bruises fading. There's so much more... no, he can't, won't, think things about the Red Line, about the orphans and widows and mourning in the tunnels, even after...
No, it's not the Red Line, he thinks, and firmly tells himself that the Red Line is better, and finds himself standing at a balcony, staring down at the water below, ears ringing as time slips away from him.
Death finds him there,
a tingle in his spine even before he looks up,
meets green eyes across the void between them,
the noise of the world around Pavel fading away until he can only hear his heart.
---
He wasn't ready.
Artyom doesn't look ready, either, a heavy box of mushrooms in his arms, his eyes wide in surprise that seems... so young, on his face, on the face that's haunted Pavel's dreams with stony determination and smiling murder. He looks young, standing there in civilian clothes instead of ranger gear, and Pavel begins to wonder if it's really Artyom--
But who else could it be? Those eyes, green eyes, he can't see them from here but he knows their greenness, has seen it every time he closed his eyes, they narrow with laser focus, and Pavel thinks, regretfully, that *this* is it, the death he's been expecting, and that he'll break his promises to his friends. But what can he do? If Artyom wants his life--
Artyom hands the box of mushrooms over to the woman beside him, who gives him a confused look but takes it, continues on when he flaps a hand without looking at her, a dissatisfied glower on her face. Pavel sees it all, but can hardly care, not when he's losing balance, wobbling between peace and panic. What if Artyom drags it out? What if Artyom wants Pavel to suffer, or hands him over to someone else who'll tear a Red apart with glee? Oh, but what if it's simple, deserved, that trench knife Pavel gave Artyom so long ago sliding between his ribs and cutting out his heart, taking back the months of stolen beating...
It's beating harder, as if to get all the life out that it can, and Pavel's shoulders slump as he leans against the railing, eyes breaking away. Does it matter? What's one more dead Red, when it's one who deserves it as much as him? What's one more notch on Artyom's knife (not that Pavel had ever seen him notch it-- it'd be chipped away entirely, if he'd bothered--), what's wrong with finally, finally, knowing that his death survived the slaughter?
Artyom's footsteps are so familiar, even on the other side of everything, that Pavel doesn't even have to look at him-- but he does, heart fluttering, stomach rolling, skin prickling with unknown emotions. He opens his mouth, to say something clever, funny, something that might draw a smile to Artyom's face, no longer young with surprise-- there he is, stony, cold-eyed Death, Pavel knew he was there-- and tells him,
"I'm sorry."
In slow motion, his heart crowding into his choking throat, Pavel watches Artyom reach into his jacket. He makes no move to escape. He makes no moves at all, and Artyom's gaze catches with his, friction keeping them from sliding apart.
It's almost disappointing, that it's not a knife in Artyom's hand, and he sighs, slumping back against the railing, fleeing Artyom's gaze as the man scratches something down on his clipboard. He can feel it, a shudder in his gut, every time Artyom looks at him again. He can feel the sweat on his thighs and inside his elbows, on the back of his neck, cold, as Artyom thrusts what he wants to say in front of him-- it takes him a moment, to find it under a scratched-out to-do list, and then it's just one little question:
Why?
"I don't know what to tell you," he says, soft, and Artyom yanks the clipboard back, watching Pavel with-- with something that twists his brow, draws it down, darkens his eyes. "I-- do you mean-- of course you mean," he stumbles, into the silence, and turns his head away, breath locked in his lungs for a second before he remembers to let it out, squeeze it through his throat, around his choked heart. "It's-- I thought. I thought it would be different. I hoped for too much, Artyomuchka," and the pet name, too familiar for the gap between them, slips out, lands in it.
Artyom looks at him, steps closer, and now they're in arm's reach, and his head bows to speak, the pencil nub's scratching swallowed by the noise of Polis around them. Pavel feels like his soul is drifting out of his body, feels like it might curl around Artyom's ankles, beg for him to do what Pavel's been waiting for, let him free of this endless nightmare of suspense. (Poor Petya, back home, doomed to an empty table--)
What did you think would happen?
Pavel watches, floating away inside, as his mouth opens, and he speaks thinly, "Now? I'm expecting you to, to, to finish me off, priyatel."
Artyom's full-body flinch crunches him back into his body, and he shakes his head, violently, taking a step back from Pavel, letting Pavel's shaking thoughts swirl into the space between them. Can Artyom hear them? Can his psychic friend hear that Pavel's been waiting for death, watching for the axe coming down for weeks and weeks and weeks, every moment since he woke up? Can he feel that Pavel doesn't understand why he was spared?
In the air between them, Artyom's writing out a word with his penciltip, sharp and almost angry strokes-- NO, he spells out, нет in big letters, and it cuts through the thoughts, leaves Pavel unmoored again, mouthing "No?" back to him-- and Artyom glances away, across the people of Polis, and then turns back to Pavel, jerking his head.
Numb-hearted and numb-headed, Pavel follows Artyom, the same way Artyom had followed him into the theater, but that Pavel is ready for the jaws to snap around him.
There's no snap, though. There's no jaws, just a bench, tilted and shoved into a cubby, with a flickering electric bulb above it; it lights Artyom's clipboard as he scratches something out, and Pavel waits, suspended, wondering what's left to say, what there is for Artyom to say to him. It's torture, he'd say, except he's seen torture, seen a slim body and a bruised face stretched like a carcass under Korbut's untender attentions...
He swallows his heart back down to its place, and leans his head back against the cool wall, listening to the rush of people and the rush of his blood and the rush of his thoughts, a million what-could-it-bes and a million maybe-answers, and lets Artyom write, slow and struggling with his own words. It hadn't bothered him, before, that when Artyom needed to say something with more than smiles and his hands and quiet curses, he had to scribe it out, but-- had it taken so long, before? Had it taken a thousand years?
Finally, the clipboard is passed to Pavel, and he looks down and reads, in the hand of Death,
I already forgave you.
He laughs, he thinks, shoulders jumping, and he echos his thoughts, says, "What?" and catches Artyom's eyes, for a second; then they both look away. "Yo moyo, Artyom! Only-- only you would look in the face of, of a traitor, and-- and fucking..." And Pavel's shoulders jump again, a broken sound jagging out between his almost-cheery words, and his face is hot, and Artyom looks deeply alarmed and very young beside him, clipboard already in his lap again and fingers flexing against it as he looks into Pavel's face.
He flinches a little, when Artyom raises his hand, but all the man does is use the cuff of his too-long sleeve to dab tears away from Pavel's burning face, a gesture terrifyingly tender. Then he writes again, letting Pavel sob beside him, his own hands shaking a little.
Pavel wonders what a sight he is, crying on a bench in public, because it keeps his wondering what Artyom's writing at bay.
You didn't ever want me dead, is thrust before his face, and Artyom swallows, audibly, beside him. I thought for a while it was because you always wanted to sell me to your bosses. That you'd never meant to help me at all. But later, when you tried to get me to kill you,
and that makes Pavel's heart turn to lead, he didn't know Artyom had been able to tell--
when the little one said it could only feel sadness from you,
and Pavel twitches, a little, that even before it had set hands on him the mutant had seen his mind--
I felt like it must have hurt you nearly as much as it had hurt me.
Artyom looks at him like he's asking if he's wrong, and knows that he's not. Pavel turns his head away so he doesn't have to see that face, doesn't have to face Artyom, doesn't have to tell him he's right.
Instead, he shrugs, and says, softly, "I'd thought... I thought I had the pull to make you comfortable. Keep, ah, keep you safe, maybe. Knowing what was coming." The tiles here are almost intact, the pattern nearly discernible beneath decades of grime, and Pavel's eyes try to pick it out as his tongue searches for words.
"I remember what-- I-- if it wasn't a dream," he says, but the chill of those hands on him has never felt like a dream. "With the... ghosts."
Artyom lets out a little huff of air, and shifts, clothing rustling, besides Pavel.
Pavel nearly spills every thought of his, nearly tells Artyom a thousand feelings he's been having, tells him that he's been dreaming of him coming to kill him and dreaming of all the times Artyom saved him, but unfamiliar boots crossing into his vision still his tongue, and a woman's voice asks, "Who's this, Artyom?"
Drying his red and exhausted face before looking up, Pavel sees the woman Artyom had been buying mushrooms with, and sees Artyom gesturing rapidly, speaking more quickly with his hands than he ever had with Pavel-- of course, if this is a friend of his, she'd know how to speak with Artyom more quickly than some guy he spent a couple days with, months ago--
"Well, a friend of Artyom's is a friend of mine," she says, with a husky chuckle, and asks Pavel, "Are you coming to our apartment for dinner?"
"Ah," Pavel says, caught at a loss, and looks at Artyom, and looks at this woman, and processes that-- our apartment-- and shakes his head, rather helplessly. He's certain that any forgiveness he's been granted won't stretch this far. "No, thank you. I-- I have places to be."
She hums, and looks to Artyom, who gesticulates with precise and steady hands. "Well then, friend, we'll see you around," she says, cheerful enough, and offers a hand up to her... beau, Pavel supposes. "If you're ever hungry, stop by, and I'll make Artyom cook for you."
Artyom chuckles, and to Pavel's ear it sounds forced, but the woman seems not to process that anything might be amiss as she pulls Artyom to his feet, as easily as if he were a child, and takes him away from Pavel without fanfare, leaving him drifting with Artyom's words in his head.
--
"So," Pyotr leads, halfway through Pavel's attempt to drink a bottle on his own, and slides into the seat beside him, "no luck, eh, Pashenka?"
Pavel shakes his head, and says, hoarsely, "I found him," and then feels like an idiot. He takes another drink to drown out that feeling.
His friend draws in a slow breath, and lets it out as an illuminated ah, and holds out a cup; Pavel obligingly splashes some booze into it, and says, plaintive, "I mean, sukaaa, I don't know what you're talking about, Petya..."
"Where was he?" Pyotr asks, his voice sinking low, keeping the conversation between the two of them,
and Pavel's head sinks to the table with the question. His forehead finds a sticky splash of unknown spirits, and he doesn't really care. "Polis," he says, softly, "with a-- with a girl."
"Oh," is the next sound Pyotr makes, and his hand finds Pavel's shoulder, patting lightly.
"He didn't..." Pavel breathes, thumb rubbing the lip of the bottle, eyes blank as he gazes past it at nothing at all. He didn't take Pavel's heart in payment for the stolen months of life he'd claimed. He had left Pavel alive. He had been... "At least... At least I know he's alive, yeah?" he says, lifting his head, and gives Pyotr a lopsided and barely-hearted smile, one met with nearly open pity.
"Well," his friend says, and summons up a smile of his own, "at least you've got me, eh, chuvak? Me and the Red Line-- what do you need with psychics here! We can handle our own ghosts."
He can't help but laugh, softly, and toast with his friend, and try and draw his mind away from Artyom, at least for a minute.
--
"Pavel," Artyom says, and there's warm hands around his wrist, Death's green eyes looking into his; he's never heard Artyom speak, but he knows, knows, it's his voice, that sweet and gentle hoarseness, wrapped around his name.
"Hey," he says back, "hey there, chuvak," and he can't help but smile at Artyom, so serious and upright, gas mask pushed up into his hair. He can't remember-- they don't usually-- Death doesn't speak, in Pavel's dreams, just smiles and frowns and takes revenge; but tonight, Death is looking at him, searching his eyes, his face, and Pavel touches knuckles to his jaw, tilting his head up a little more. Maybe, he thinks, exhausted, maybe this means something,
or maybe he's just going insane, but
when Artyom stares up at him, and it
feels so real
that Pavel's heart quivers in his chest
and he asks, with a nervous laugh under his words, "Something on my face, my friend?"
and Artyom asks, softly, "Why are you so loyal to your line, Pavel?"
Pavel has to think. He has to think, he can't just let the dream carry him, he has to let Artyom know, and it feels like those early, early years, those first years after the bomb fell, are unfurling in his memory, draping down the space around them, and Artyom pulls away from his touch to look around, see the things that Pavel saw. See the chaos, the fear, the hunger, blood on his hands when he was barely ten and the bandit with a knife in his throat and the rats and flies descending before he knew how to move,
and the red soldier who found him and took him home, like something heaven-sent, when he'd still believed in heaven,
and the first full belly he'd had in a million years, nodding eagerly to anything he was being told, because they kept him warm and fed,
the dog-eared and damp-paged book that had been thrust into his hands to keep him occupied on the train, the wonder of a world bright and complicated and so far away from here,
and the next bandit he killed, this time with a gun, arms aching from the recoil and his savior smiling at him, telling him how well he did as the blood cooled on his face,
and the warmth of approval, hotter than the terror and disgust at killing.
Pavel looks, too, and feels his stomach shrinking around its leaden core, and he says, softly, "I-- because-- there was nothing else to believe in, you know? It was... it became home. How could I not be loyal? Without it, I would have..."
"With it, you nearly had nothing, too," Artyom says, a little heat in his voice, and his hands curl tighter around Pavel's wrist, where he'd nearly forgotten them. They're so warm. "With them, you nearly died. You would have died, without me."
"Ohhh! What a high opinion you have of yourself, priyatel," Pavel teases, trying to smile, and curls his hand around the back of Artyom's neck, his memories dulling around them as he focuses on his... on Artyom. His thumb rubs over the nape of Artyom's neck. The hair there is soft... "You, eh, you nearly died for your Sparta, too."
Artyom's brows draw down, and he looks like he's going to object, and Pavel interrupts before he can begin,
"I'm glad you didn't. I-- I'm glad you lived."
and Artyom's expression softens, eyes so sweet and green, and Pavel
loves him
a little bit
as his mouth tilts into a little, cautious smile.
"You're an asshole, Pavel," he says, and the memories curled around them pull close, tight, like a blanket, and one of Artyom's hands lets go of his wrist, to cup over Pavel's grip on the back of his neck.
They're not Pavel's memories, anymore-- they're memories of Pavel, and it's strange, seeing his face like this, hearing his voice, d'Artagnan, tyomik, artyomuchka, hand outstretched-- but strange things happen in dreams, don't they?
Artyom's forehead is warm against his, when Pavel leans closer, presses their faces so gently together, everything dimming with the closeness, and it's almost like he can feel the tension in Artyom's forehead, feel the thump of blood under his fingers, it's so, so real for a second...
"I would never deny it," Pavel answers, late, and squeezes the back of Artyom's neck, and everything dims more, it's like it's only him, only Artyom, here at the end of the world,
and he wakes up, cold and alone, in his cot.