Chapter Text
Alfred Jones stared at the dark void that was the Russian sky. Snowflakes collected on his eyelashes. It was freezing.
His legs were trapped under rubble. The hospital he was working in had exploded. The sick people he made more alive were now more dead. Soon he’d be dead too. He stared up to the heavens and asked for answers. Am I a hero? He asked the sky. Dead heroes from ages past looked down on him, but they did not answer. He was helping people. He came to Stalingrad to help people who made more people dead, and now he was dying. Is this holy retribution? He asked the sky. It ignored him. How cruel.
The hypothermia was slowing his brain. Alfred knew this. He knew his organs were slowing, and his fingers were icicles and soon his brain would be too frozen to know it was frozen. His legs were trapped and warm and his arms were free and frozen. His white doctor's jacket blended into the snow surrounding him. If he had a mirror, he knew his face would be as blue as the blue in his eyes that made the girls swoon.
The crunch of boots on the snow was louder than the explosion was to Alfred’s ears. He perked up, his brain scrabbling at its last reserves of consciousness like a drowning man to a floating log. He willed his voice to speak, but all that came out was unintelligible cries of someone with no voice. His arms were numb and his voice box was broken. The crunching stopped.
It came closer. His brain soared, yes! He will live. Someone was breathing loudly. So loud it was excessive. The loud breathing personified itself in the frozen air above his face. Somewhere his brain dimly acknowledged it was him, gasping for breath with frozen lungs.
Someone was speaking softly. The pressure on his legs was gone. The soft voice soothed his aching bones and frozen brain. He was being carried by warm hands. He snuggled into the soft fabric on which he was resting his head. “Goodnight Ma…” Above him, the flickering stars faded away to darkness.
…
When Alfred woke up, it was in flashes. He was travelling through time and space. He was in New York making pancakes with his brother. He was in school, studying hearts and blood and disease. Most of the time, he was on the edge of a volcano. The heat was eating him inside out, his blood was molten lava.
In many ways, Alfred realized the volcano was very similar to the Russian sky. It was a void that embodied heat and promised death, except the sky was cold.
He woke up again, and this time, the place was more unfamiliar than the volcano. It also felt more real, or as real as a place could feel to someone delirious like him. Through blurry vision, he saw he was in a small bedroom. There were no windows, but a large rug filled the space on the wall opposite the bed. To his left was a small bedside table made of a small crate, and on it stood his glasses, unharmed from the explosion. He put them on with clumsy fingers.
The room, in all it’s clarity, was very bland. On the bedside table was the only splash of colour in the room. A small glass vase of paper sunflowers.
A heavy comforter trapped his legs in the bed. He was dressed minimally, in what he could feel was an undershirt and loose pants, hopefully his own. Despite feeling ill and confused, he supposed this was the best he'd felt in a while.
The door to the room opened and a strange man walked in. The man was huge, possibly the biggest man Alfred had ever seen. He was followed by a smaller man, who was carrying a wash basin and cloth.
They stopped awkwardly by the door when they realized Alfred was awake. The huge man said something in what he knew was Russian but didn't understand. Alfred opened his mouth to tell him so, but heaving coughs came out in place of words. They racked his form and rattled his skull, and they hurt. The large man rushed over, and without hesitation rubbed at his back with a big hand. He spoke in Russian again, cooing at Alfred in soft tones.
The coughs subsided, and the smaller man with the wash bin was still at the doorway. The large man beckoned him over. Hesitantly, he approached Alfred’s bed. Alfred still did not know where he was. He felt dizzy and ill, and the coughs left his body tired.
The huge man said something hurriedly in Russian, to which the short man finally made eye contact with Alfred. He appeared nervous.
“You are American, yes?”
The small man spoke English with a thick Eastern European accent, but it was not Russian. Alfred, for the first time in his life, did not feel like speaking. He nodded his head, but that hurt too.
“My name is Toris. You are in my home. You had hypothermia, so we have been helping you get better. Ivan found you outside and brought you here.” Toris was small and timid compared to the huge man beside him. His brown hair was hacked off at the shoulders, and his eyes were wide and frightful as if everything he saw was horrifying.
The huge man smiled. His teeth were slightly crooked, but it was a handsome smile. “Ivan is me.” He was barely comprehensible through his accent. His English was limited, explained Toris. Ivan had cropped blonde hair and a long nose. His face was somehow simultaneously baby-like and defined. Around his neck hung a wilting scarf that was once pink but now a matted off-white.
“You name?” Asked Ivan. Alfred found he liked his voice, it was high pitched and soft for such a huge man. Unexpected, but not unpleasant.
Alfred tried talking again, but still could not will his thawed voice box to speak. He coughed a little, cleared his throat, and the two men watched as his mouth silently spoke his name.
Frustrated, Alfred lifted his hands and scrabbled at his throat. Speak! His throat did not appreciate that and refused to speak. “It's okay,” said Toris. “Next time.”
Alfred found he was suddenly very tired. He nodded off in the bed as the two strangers conversed quietly beside him.
…
The next time Alfred awoke, he felt more aware. His legs still hurt, but he did not feel dizzy or delirious. He sat up and didn't feel like vomiting his guts out, which he considered a win. Someone had removed his glasses, and they were folded up on the beside table. Next to him, in a small wooden chair that somehow held up a massive figure, the huge man- Ivan, was reading a novel. Toris was nowhere in sight.
His throat felt dry, so he cleared it. “Hey pal,” Alfred said awkwardly. What else was there to say? Ivan jumped, snapping his novel closed.
“Awake.” He said in his thick accent and high pitched voice. It wasn't a question, but Alfred nodded anyway. Ivan seemed to be studying Alfred. Whatever he found made him smile.
“Thank you for saving me, by the way. I really didn't want to die out there in the cold.” Alfred started. Ivan simply stared, so Alfred took that as his cue to continue. “I always wanted to die falling off the Statue of Liberty, or taking a bullet for the president, ya know? And now that I haven't died in Russia, I can have my true American death, so thank you.” Talking didn't hurt, which was good. Alfred had a lot of things to say.
Perhaps it was too many things to say, because Ivan was looking at him blankly, a slight smile still etched onto his face except now it was hesitant. “Sorry, I just wanted to say. Thank you.”
“Hmmm…” Ivan replied, looking pensive. It was a bit unnerving, how Ivan seemed so intensely there yet far away at the same time. “How you say… You have welcome.”
Alfred smiled. He missed smiling. There was nothing to smile about in war, but now in an unfamiliar bedroom in occupied Russia with no windows, a stranger who was the biggest man Alfred has ever seen made him smile by butchering a common English phrase.
“Oh and, it’s Alfred,” He stated, out of nowhere to any onlookers but out of somewhere to the two of them. “Dr. Alfred F. Jones, if ya want to be formal.”
“Awlfyred.” Ivan repeated. He frowned. “Awwlllfyred.”
“It's okay, Eye-van.” Alfred joked. Why he was joking when his situation was not funny, he did not know. But he wanted to make Ivan laugh.
Instead Ivan glared. It was unexpectedly serious and took the baby-ness out of his baby-face. “No, I-vahn.”
“Eye-van.”
“Awlfyred,” Ivan said darkly, leaning into Alfred’s space. Alfred stared straight back into Ivan’s eyes. He was not scared because he was never scared of anything but Ivan was factually huge so he was logically scared. He was, afterall, still crippled from the waist down.
Except Ivan’s face broke into a smile, but this one was amused and a tad mocking. Alfred found he liked this smile better than the previous ones. Ivan was surrounded by war but had a smile for every occasion.
“Funny, Fyredka.”
“Fredka?” Alfred had never had any nicknames. His brother called him Alfie to piss him off sometimes, but that was not a nickname. That was a let's-piss-off-Alfred name.
“Da.” Ivan replied. “Fyredka from Amerika.”
When Ivan said it, it did not sound like a let’s-piss-off-Alfred name. It sounded pure.