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"Are you really dead or am I going crazy?" He asks.
"Do you really wants to know the answer?" Boris replies.
In the dark of his messy apartment Valery Legasov laughs.
"Damn it, Boris I missed you so much."
"Shouldn't I be the one to haunt you as a ghost?" He asks while washing some bowls for Misha. He bought her favorite food, he hopes she’ll forgive him.
"You're not dead, Valera, you can't be a ghost."
"I'm not dead yet. Yet is the key word. It's just a matter of hours now. But you already know that because you are a product of my mind and you know everything I think."
"I've never had the answers with you."
"Yes, you always had the answers, as I had the answers with you. Only we didn't know what to do with them."
"Did you miss me?" Valery lets himself fall on the sofa with a deep sigh. "In all this months without see me, without a call, did you miss me?"
"If I'm in your head how can you believe to what I'll tell you?"
"Because I always believed you." Then he lets out a little laugh "But if you weren't only in my head I never would have dared to ask you this question."
Boris softens his voice. "Of course I missed you. We spent so much time together and I was so used to see you all the time that not having there it was..." He struggles to search the right word. "unusual. Ss if I missed a leg-"
"It's not what I asked."
"I think it is. Not having you around it was like missing a part of me."
And Valery knows what the Boris in his head is saying. He was whole for all this life and then he met Boris and he wasn't whole anymore without him. It was like his body and his mind could really work only with Boris with him.
Valery is arranging the tapes before going to hide out of the house, Boris behind him.
"They aren't for you, do you mind?"
"Hm?"
"I thought about it, you know. To leave them to you, leave a tape just for you."
Boris doesn't respond.
"It's not because I didn't trust you that I didn't, it's not because I thought of you as a party man but I couldn't risk hurting you with my choice. You told me about it, do you remember that? That day with Ulana you said that when it's your life and the life of the people you love at risk your moral convictions doesn't mean anything and the only thing you want is for them not to shoot you. I never had any problems walking towards a opem core but I would never let them shoot you. "
"They didn'teven want to interrogate me after the trial." Boris says."I expected them to do it but they took you away and nothing happened."
"Because I lied and they believed me. Not bad for a naive idiot, right?"
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be, tell me I've been good."
"You were perfect."
“I’m so tired, Boris. I’m so tired all the time.”
“I know.”
It's late night, Valery is getting dressed, when he changes his tie he smiles at Boris' reflection in the mirror.
"I'm wearing a tie, don't you see? You won't be mad at me when they'll find my body."
Boris' smile is sad "I couldn't be mad at you anyway."
"I am. Mad at you, I mean."
"Oh, I see. Why is that?"
"Because you never talked!" He lowers immediately his voice. They aren't listening to them, they would have kiled him before if they had listened while he was recording those tapes. Boris isn't even there for real. Still Legasov lowers his voice in some sort of conditioned reflex. Stay in your place. Don't talk too loudly. Don't make trouble. "Because you never talked."
"You knew it anyway." Boris's voice is hoarse but soft, he wonders if it would be like that in reality.
"It doesn't matter. We talked all the time, you talked all the time. You yelled to everyone and everyone listened to you but you never spooke." He sighs. "You never did, Boris. And I never did too."
"I knew about you too." Says the Boris in his head.
He laughs. "Oh I know, It pretty obvious at the time. But we never said anything and it doesn't matter if we knew, we should have. There were so many times... You got up in the middle of the process and asked to let me finish to talk but you never did it when it mattered. And I'll never forgive you for this. I’ll never forgive myself for this."
Valery doesn't speak for a couple of minutes. " I wanted to be brave, I tried so hard to be when I was scared in that room but I've never been brave with you. We wasted it and I'm so angry with both of us."
"You were the bravest man I ever know."
"I'm not. I could never have talked in that process if I had the courage to talk to you. I would never be able to not be selfish."
"I dream about you every night." Boris whispers.
"And am I brave in your dreams?"
"I am. I speak and you says that there is no need to speak, because you already know, because you already feel it. And then you take my hand and lie down with me."
"It looks like a beautiful dream. I hope I'll dream about that."
"You will."
"Boris?"
"Mh?"
"Fix my tie before I'll go, please."