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A premonition and a change in the way the wind blows makes Rykov look away from Yagoda to scan the crowd, gaze casting over the innumerable bodies feather-light. He does not see the assassin with his hand buried in his coat and face drawn tense in anticipation.
Shots ring out and the flash from a muzzle behind unsuspecting pairs of shoulders makes him flinch.
"Comrade Rykov, get down!"
She throws herself onto him, they fall together to the hard wood deck, and he feels her shudder after another loud bang; the shriek of pain rings directly in his ears. Blood soaks the ground. Not his but it's in his hair now. He opens his eyes and she has this glassy-eyed, distant stare that's looking at him and something past him at once. She hisses something undistinguished at him and holds him down and in place until a deputy is kneeling down with them too, ready to shield him as well.
Yagoda's quick and nimble and on her feet even as she clutches her injured shoulder with one hand, holding tight her pistol in the other, screaming at the nearby officers after another breath asking, "If that motherfucker hasn't been shot dead already- no, don't shoot him dead now, he's going to answer for this- you, secure the premier and get him away- Yes I need a medic, do I look well to you? Are you blind?"
Blood and more blood seeping out from between her fingers, her palm presses hard against the wound to no avail, the blood trickles down the neat uniform- Rykov remembers that she adores her uniforms and oh, she's going to have a fit if they won't budget for a replacement- burgundy stains, wine-dark.
He remembers cutting his lips on the shards of a broken bottle and she tilted his head towards her and wiped his mouth with her sleeve before kissing him. Stupid drunk asshole, she called him. Lingering too long, as long as the taste of iron. Feeling saliva build up in his mouth and mingling with the blood. This kiss goes on forever until the next second of the moment tips over in slow drunken time.
A disembodied young set of arms hauls him up onto his feet. He stumbles and holds onto another person- that photographer they brought along- and he looks back to see her also staring after him, an expression nearly identical to the one that he saw many years ago when the police broke into her father's apartment and smashed through the Sverdlovs' illegal printing press and she, as a child not even fifteen, could only watch it happen. It's full of hate but not for him or anyone else.
The men surround her and flank out to the sides, two of them are dragging a kicking, shrieking bedraggled figure whose arm hangs limp and broken, and Rykov recoils at the sight and sound hitting him all at once of Yagoda raising her pistol and bringing the barrel down on his head, a loud crack of metal on bone, the man collapsing like brittle wood beneath her.
By her sickbed.
Rykov can still feel the stickiness of her blood on his scalp even though he's washed twice now. He only caught bruises and scratches from the incident, yet the nurse fusses over him as much or more. He is valuable. Already, letters and flowers of condolences for him flood the mail. No one cares about Yagoda.
Doctor said it'll be a few months because of how they have to dig it out of her. The bullet met bone and let itself in. She looks paler, an oddity to his eyes since she spent those voyage days in the sun with him, standing or sitting on the deck and watching the cities and birds go by. Even the moon seemed to have given her a healthy glow. Rykov had stood in the doorframe of his cabin, listening to her tell the American journalist about her battles up and down the river, liking her voice when it grew sentimental and thick with emotion. Her deputy Prokofiev will be her replacement instead, but that means she'll miss out on the rest of the tour. Shame.
Rykov stubs out the cigarette in the ash tray on the nightstand, then goes to open a window to clear out the smoke that has accumulated. Yagoda eyes the cigarette with undisguised longing, but Rykov won't let her have one- doctor's orders. For the surgery. She said that she's felt worse and Rykov has heard her stories of worse such that he believes that she wasn't just trying to impress the doctor with her resilience.
Yagoda picks at the bandage and Rykov moves his head towards her in silent disapproval. She stops doing it.
"Alexei, do you want to know what I was thinking when I tackled you?" She says this with the sides of her mouth already drawn up into a grin.
"Cursing me for not letting you bring all of your officers to bury me? Or not permitting the arrest of a hundred former Whites?" Rykov crosses his arms as he leans against the wall, eyebrow raised. "I should have agreed. You paid the price. I owe you my life."
"What I was going to tell your wife, idiot. But yes, premier, I was also cursing you for your stubbornness. Look what you've done to me." Yagoda moves her injured shoulder with a wince and he does frown to his credit, then rests his hand on her other shoulder and gives it a tender squeeze. She pries his hand off not without affection.
"I'm sorry. I'll tell your wife that you're very brave," he says. Simply meaning it.
Yagoda shrugs, a half-formed expression on her face between smugness and dread. "You know that GenSec never likes to hear apologies without actions. He will want to know why I've permitted this failure of security. You better cover me- not literally. Never take a bullet for anyone. To the Politburo."
"Is the attacker?..."
Her eyes seem to glitter a little in hunger or maybe that's just a trick of the light and the fleeting impression of her typically gaunt frame, which seems even more sickly in hospice. "My men will tell me everything they will get out of him. No stone left unturned. Promise."
"..."
Rykov looks like he wants to say something that would perhaps offend her. Maybe some remark about how she's changed from the untalkative pimply kid setting the type of tiny, tiny letters or counting the money in the register at the end of the day or really how she hasn't changed at all. It's not like she was very happy back then, but she didn't seem particularly vengeful either. But he could tell that she was very sad beneath the prickly teenage pride. And to be honest, he would be sad too in her place.
Now Rykov searches her weary face again and meets a mask, as well-crafted as any literary character and one he recognizes instantly: the soldier happy to be injured in the line of duty of protecting the people; the tool itching to return the damage to the exploiters tenfold. A story that they tell in new books of avenging angels where Dzerzhinsky finds his wings and halo of fire and he wields a sword that he could never actually lift in life. He was too nervous to even bear shooting anyone dead personally- that one time in Kronstadt almost killed him.
Yagoda is good at acting; Rykov has watched her exercise a full range of personas: one in front of large crowds, one for the Chekists in closed meetings, one for the Central Committee, one for the little Politburo, and so on... and she's shown many personas for him. Nervy and young, withdrawn and cryptic, old souled and new-born, tense and cruel, hopelessly idealistic and cynical at once.
So then, he thinks, it was not an accident at all nor a slip of self-control. Nothing she does can be an accident because she's too careful to make mistakes anymore. Because mistakes will get you killed even now. She indulged him believing that it would lead to disaster- a dereliction of duty in legalist-Cheka-speak. Why?
"You know, you didn't have to..." Rykov tries to say this gently, but the stare he's returned is enough to make his stutter worse. Sharp silence. The gap between them echoes. She picks at a loose thread from the bedsheets.
"You have no idea what I have to do," she begins to say, then abandons the sentence as Rykov gets up from his seat to go to the window and simply looks out of it. There are only Chekists on the nightwatch, illuminated by the sparse street lights and by their own lanterns. New moon and cold wind. A tiny sliver of it is visible overhead. He closes the window and curtains.
Looking back at her, he says, "You're right. If there's a way I can make it up to you, I will." Yagoda scoffs. But Rykov thinks the gap between them is not a chasm. Or he wants to believe that he can understand her just enough to bridge it and meet her on the other side. Or coax her over.
"What, how? Like kissing me again? Another blessing from your great mediator's lips?" She says this ironically, yet she reaches her hand out to touch his cheek. Then her tone turns serious, but the words are yet another repetition, always the same formal dryness that she memorized by rote long ago. "It's unwise for a bodyguard to consort with his charge. Too many personal complications become introduced to the work."
"You're off duty," says Rykov, leaving "All thanks to me" unsaid. He feels the hair on the back of his neck raise at just the brush of her fingers. They're callused from various walks of life, the fingernails cut almost to the quick, maybe still smelling of ink if he closes his eyes and imagines it. She cups his jaw, her thumb pressing into his cheekbone.
"How many times have you used that excuse now?" She speaks with a whisper, barely registered to him. He nods, a tiny nod, but does not brush her away. Now Rykov leans closer so that their noses touch. She tilts her head.
"Who could know about this?" Rykov feels his back start to hurt from the way he's leaning over her so he plants his hand on the bed frame and sways.
"Half my men think I'm in bed with you," she says, the puff of breath passing over his face; he detects it by the tiniest movement of hairs.
"The other half?" Apprehension: a warning. Rykov tries to look suave and unbothered.
"They know. But, they don't mind it at all, Alexei," she says.
"Then I don't either, Gena," he says and they lock lips, his hand creeping to the back of her neck. An innocent symbol of fraternity and true equity, of course. Even through a closed mouth he can feel the distant impression of teeth waiting to gnaw on him and remake old marks throbbing on his collarbone and chest.
She pushes him away after a few heartbeats of frozen time. "Don't call me that right now," she snaps half-heartedly, unable to muster the usual sharpness when some invisible (to Rykov, at least) line has been crossed. "It's not right. Any of this."
"Since when did you care about right or wrong? What about revolutionary expediency?" But he straightens up, happy to not contort himself anymore, a responding ache in his back reminding him of his years.
Yagoda sighs, then looks to the curtained window pointedly, then to the door- unlocked. "We shouldn't be doing this here. I wanted us on the boat, under the moon, like..."
"A date?" He says this with a poorly-concealed guffaw. Yagoda glares at him, a flash of hurt on her face rippling only for a second to be replaced with a filtered, muted indignation.
"Why do you think I agreed to go? I don't enjoy just standing there while everyone adores you for being such a great statesman," she says. "Nor do I enjoy being shown to villagers like a creature you found in a jungle."
"You wanted a secret honeymoon for two star-crossed lovers like out of Menzhinsky's filthy novels?" he continues; the idea is too absurd to him. Yagoda looks troubled at her supervisor's name, but whatever reaction she has he does not understand.
"You know what, nevermind, let's not," she says after Rykov laughs again.
"It's so- Genrikh, it's funny. That someone like you could want more sentimental and tender things than French wine and cheerful women to dance with? Really?" He speaks in pure honesty and Yagoda wilts under it like sad leaves under a hot sun, unable to keep her aloof façade. He doesn't notice it.
"You're cruel. First you get me shot and now you mock me for wanting to have a nice time?" Rykov realizes his mistake all too late when she sniffles, her eyes watery, hands fisting the sheets.
"Oh no, no, I don't mean that, I'm sorry," he says and moves his hand to cover hers. "Look, if you're that sad about the boat-"
Her next words spill out in a hurry like she's racing to finish before she collapses into tears. "It's not about the boat! And don't talk to me about love, you know damn well I didn't marry Ida for that- she's like a daughter to me. We were still both kids, practically, I didn't have a choice- Alexei, I thought that..." She blinks hard and wipes her eyes. But she does not continue. Unable to. She slips down the pillow that kept her propped up and now pulls the blanket up to her chin, staring holes through Rykov, at something he cannot see.
A quiet pause, in which both of them merely inspect the other. Yagoda's face stays at once peculiarly distressed and unfeeling even as small tears trail down her cheeks, and Rykov's regret is clear, his posture slouching, frowning at himself, unable to look at her properly, only now realizing his ignorance.
Another character she plays? No. This is not. As if he disturbed the ice of a frozen pond and discovered that the depth was far greater and darker than he knew. And he looks away to the wall, where a clock ticks and wavers over the minute.
Then Yagoda composes herself, agitation like sediment settling slowly into a gloomy mood, and says with finality, "The trouble with me is that I want things, comrade Rykov, things that I can never have."