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A flash of blinding light. Striking like lightning, in just the snap moment of a wince, it left Valeriy's eyes tearing at the burn behind the lids. White as the sun, his veins echoed shadows through the thin membrane, calling his arm to shelter him further in feeble shadow as the flashing began.
"Valeriy!" Mitya's panicked voice called out through the electrostatic squeal and roaring screech of failing lab equipment. He made a step towards his charge's call, unnerved now to have been stood apart to maintain an ideal vantage point of the experiment's exits. As if the lead scientist could make heads or tails of the room in this state, he immediately commanded, "Don't move, Major! Stay still and don't touch anything!"
As if he could do anything less, Mitya continued, "And cover your eyes! It will blind you!"
"Turn it off!" he barked, if only to communicate his location in turn. But he obeyed, even as his hand proved too thin against the arcing energy that thundered between them. The metal grated floor shuddered beneath his feet with every mechanical cry, a manmade earthquake echoing within the hollow halls of the Armory Palace with all the might of a metal processor shredding the very rebar like document paper.
Steadfast, holding his ground, he clenched his jaw and ducked his face into the crook of his elbow to safely retreat further into the dark. His ears throbbed, alert through the shattering din, anything to stay in some form of control.
Somewhere deep below, tucked against the distant subfloor of Lab Floor 9, a pressure gathered like gravity against his bones. Like the momentum of an elevator. The Commander adjusted his footing to better bear the shifting tide, head bowed and white knuckled fists aching to summon his shield to his side— but he followed orders. He would not further complicate the deteriorating situation by gathering his own energy to his side, nor would he by attempting to reach his charge's now.
Somehow, that opportunity passed before he'd known something was wrong.
"Cutting the generator furnace!" Mitya cried, barely cresting the resonant growl of their nation's atomized beast, rumbling each screw facet of their iron casket and rattling each bone from Valeriy's ribs to his skull.
Sharp as a needle, he felt more than heard a sudden near puncture of the ear, met with absolute silence. Hot and wet, liquid snaked from the canal of his inner ear, dripping from the lobe. The tide shifted in the deafened air, his blinded swallow bringing the world back with the distant shattering of glass, it's deceptively close spray catching shards in his hair and uniform. Damped, pulsing, Valeriy held firm his position as his hearing staggered from failing.
"D— - —- ———" Valeriy couldn't make out Mitya's directions. "Kee- yo— eyes cl——-" He was told not to move. While he caught his bearings, he prayed his previous directive was what was needed of him now.
Lab 9's floor rippled, the casting of flashing, flickering light cut to complete and inky darkness. Groaning beneath it's colossal dead weight, Valeriy could identify in the chaos the might of Snezhnaya's largest magnetized machine arm as it bore down unexpectedly against it's lopsided foundation beside the elevated floor.
"Don't touch anything!" muffled, Mitya more begged than commanded. "The arc is still—- Keep your eyes- stay just like that! I need you to not—-" It wasn't mere panic. No, Valeriy knew their lead scientist knew how to hold his composure under pressure. Despite his eccentricities, the decorated Major held the utmost respect for his comrade. Straining, he traced Mitya's unsteady, urgent gait through the ringing of his battered ears. Whatever it was he was doing, his charge was clearly free where he stood to act on some emergent recovery protocol.
"I won't move," Valeriy confidently assured. Loud enough to guarantee Mitya, too, might hear him as well. Perhaps going forwards, he would better maintain proper adherence to personal protective equipment within the Armory Palace. At the very least, to better protect against finding themselves deafened in service to their Lady the Tsaritsa.
A spark, a clack, Mitya's voice called out with regained poise. Strict. Controlled. Professional. "—tri ——. Back up emergency power failed. Elemental energy arc active, unrestricted. Capacitive coupling from central housing to Lab 9's lead electromagnetic crane." Dmitri, his Mitya, was making a localized voice record on the lad equipment.
In case he personally cannot leave an incident report.
Valeriy doesn't interrupt the transmission. He's recorded as the only other onsite staff member affected in the mechanical failure. According to Mitya's error analysis, the Commander stands between the projected point of failure and the destabilized magnetic crane. Radioactive, elemental current courses beneath his feet like a lightning rod, connecting him to the system, as well as the multiple stories tall industrial crane looming far overhead.
"Attempting second emergency power recall." Mitya's feet stagger from across the room, no doubt having suffered from the dizzying stun of pressure and volume from the blast at the very least. But the shaking and glass made Valeriy fear for worse.
"Permission to open my eyes," he dutifully checked in, out of respect beyond anything. The room had quieted so dramatically since Mitya had successfully cut the mainline power source, his aching ears alone could inform him the blinding light had safely passed. Especially if he were to believe Mitya was roaming around the lab floor again.
Without missing a beat, he rejected the request on full authority, "No. Not granted." He almost sounded like a stranger. His voice was strained, was he hurt? "You're doing perfectly, Sarge. Just stay put, and if you're going to fall — ——… — —- — ——- — fall, don't grab the railing." Anything short of near shouting fell beneath the humming din of his own heartbeat, his charge's softer tones failed to reliably best Valeriy's recent injury.
"3." Dmitri didn't wait for an affirmative. "2." In his position, perhaps he didn't have the time to. "1." A spark, a click, the lab thrummed with a moment of sickly vibration, lurching the floor grating like a feeble rope bridge with a single squealing arc. Heat met his cheek and outer arm with the scent of burning hair. As quickly as it came, an echoing bang cut every vibration short, warbling at his tender inner ear and tugging at his coat ends.
Silence. The wet squelch of his swallow pressing to the roof of his pallet, relieving taut sinus pressure. The heavy wing beats of each breath alone in this precarious space.
"Rerouting to generator pull on Lab 8. Lab 9 Emergency power irretrievably damaged. Critical infrastructure within restricted approach boundary, note." Mitya, his only waymarker, was far too focused to keep him informed plainly. Valeriy preferred to consider it wasn't pride nor nerves that prevented him from seeking clarification, rather he would much sooner have Mitya's sole efforts remain on the task at hand.
He was rendered prone. The Major knew his only role for the time being was to remain as small of an obstacle as possible.
An ugly step down from the main control panel sent the clatter of metal skidding across the corrugated ground. As if smothered beneath the cottony fever of a sinus infection of his youth, he strained against his limitations to hear if the other made a sound.
His lips parted to check on his comrade, and the sound of shifting rubble snapped his attention outwards. To the crane foundation. A deep, whining keen echoed somewhere overhead. Metal on metal, resting crooked on it's skeletal haunches. A short trip paled before the stakes at hand. With this weight, the operating arm, let alone the magnet itself, could easily take out the very platform they both stood should it fall.
"Mitya," he growled, but it must not have been enough to be heard. His bootfalls found a recognizable pattern, a dragging limp, however hurried, down the west access hall. Valeriy had no doubt the exit was far from his companion's mind, though it found him with no small volume of relief regardless. The way must be clear enough for now should the scientist need to evacuate.
Thirty seven seconds. The slightest of echoes made its way through the bloodied boundary of his senses. Mitya was repairing, or perhaps 'rerouting' something with his own hands within the lab. If there was a reason no personnel had made it to Lab 9 to respond to the emergency by now… Valeriy nearly dared to literally shake the idle thought from his wayward mind.
None of that mattered for now.
Right now. They both were alone.
Thirty seven seconds counted like a lifetime. But his hearing was no doubt improving quickly, and Mitya could be plainly heard panting as he made his labored return to the lab's epicenter. His wounded gait seemed to fall heavier on either foot once more, still disoriented perhaps, but the limp must've been short lived.
Clearing his throat, Valeriy called out to his partner, horribly loud within his own ears. "Mitya, what is your status?"
"Main power has been relocated to Lab 10. Lab 8-" Dmitri answered curtly, voice hitching only once through his careful temperament. "Lab 8's power has been disconnected." There's simply no way his charge has remained unharmed throughout the events of the explosion. Mitya knew what Valeriy was asking of him. He chose to ignore it.
"Are you hurt?" he demanded plainly, unsure if their shared volume was still necessary.
"No," Mitya lied. Valeriy didn't need to look the man in the eye to catch him in it. His companion would never be so short spoken of the truth, no matter how occupied. "Attempting third emergency power recall."
Frustration, as unbidden as fear, bubbled feebly to life before immediate silence.
"3." Any moment they would depend on his composure. "2." Dmitri knew what he was doing. "1." They both needed his trust.
A spark, a clack, the smallest crack in his hunched, shielded posture struck his inner eye with pure, raw white pain, as if light through the sliver of a door. Teeth grinding, Valeriy swallowed the human nature to flinch. From the silence, the blaring whine of warped, malfunctioning machinery billowed in every disharmonious vibration. Rattling his heart beat in his chest out of tune, shaking the breath of his lungs out of marching order.
Through the carefully held darkness, Valeriy began to see what he could only assume to be the violet-blue hues of that overwhelming light, slipping around the edges above and below his firmly pressed forelimb. Perhaps, somehow shining through his flesh and bone, marbling ever so faintly at his periphery.
"Realigning crane 884," Dmitri shouted above the cacophony, growing ever so quieter as he traveled up the outer stairs of the lab's main rotunda. Machine operation was never a qualification Valeriy understood Mitya to carry. "Lift elevation, set to vertical climb to total 90 degrees will prevent attracting direct elemental discharge."
The sound of stone, crumbling to the chasms beneath the Armory Palace. Mitya very well could be too deafened to have heard it too. He was standing even closer to the lab's center after all. Who's to say he's fully of his facilities in this situation? "The foundation is insecure!" Valeriy billowed. The crane began to move, it's powerful groan adjusting to straighten the operating arm immediately above Valeriy's position. Auroras of sky blue and brilliant purple danced inkily through his vision. "Mitya! The crane may not hold!"
"Stand your ground!" his partner commanded, throat straining to it's utmost. Loud. Desperate.
The ground shuddered.
The largest lift in Snezhnograd screamed, otherworldly in it's ghastly metal howl as steel buckled back in on itself. The air shifted with a weight through Valeriy's hair. His partner was forcing the crane beyond it's limits, forcing the oversized servomotors beyond a speed it was ever manufactured for.
Mitya was doing this on purpose.
"Don't —-" Like an ancient military flail, Valeriy felt the impact of magnet crashing, chain first, into it's own operating arm from where he stood. Whatever Mitya was attempting to demand of him is lost to the chaotic cacophony of sparks, iron and rock.
The once stagnant air of the lower laboratory rushed damp and electrified through his scalp. Mitya's personal landslide colliding with the outermost quarter of the lab floor's platform supports, Valeriy is forced to side step to hold firm his position, lest the sudden crooked heave of the precarious flooring pitch him properly to the ground or beyond.
It was nearly too much.
The swimming, swirling aura behind his eyes flickered in time with his every movement, brightest the moment the monstrous machine is at last wrenched free of it's historic installation. Dragged like a kraken beneath the surf of Morepesok, the crane careened down to the expanse beneath Lab 9 with a rush, it's momentum carrying the elemental current through Valeriy fast as a mid-winter's gust. Lights, brilliant as oil paints, stirred through the dark. Dazzling, dizzying. His edges softened. The floor shifts, crumbling like fresh powder. He was out of body. Somewhere far away.
And the world snapped fast, elastic, back into focus with the swift passing of the electromagnet.
Urgently, as if to race gravity, as if to debate fate, Mitya rambled, clamoring back towards the central control console table. "Lab 9 power draw readings indicate the main generator's furnace should have—"
Buffeting, heat erupted from an escalating roar beneath them. Radiant wind made light of Valeriy on his feet, coat whipping high against it's tethered sleeves to his under arms. Flames breathed patina hot through the metal heel and fastenings of his boots. Echoes rebounded, violent and tactile within the arching architecture of the Armory Palace, pressing in like mighty thumbs from all sides.
And through it all. He held steadfast. A castle upon a crumbling hill.
But must that be all?
"Mitya!" he demanded of the crumbling laboratory. The Commander's noble patience waned wire thin. The imposed darkness of his inner arm carved at his autonomy, and uncertainty ground his nerves against the grain. Without brief nor cause, Valeriy couldn't commit himself a moment longer to the pitiable role of cowering effigy.
What could he do? Where was his charge? Where was Mitya? Was he hurt? Was he alive?
The ceiling shuddered above, shivering down to the grating below.
A final warning, Valeriy toed the precipice of disobedience, casting aside niceties to call out to his target by his full and proper name. "Dmi-"
Coughing, Mitya's voice chirped through smoke laden rasps, "I'm still getting lateral arc readings from the point of failure!" As if it meant anything. As if the other man would know what to do with that information. He bit his tongue, pressure caught tight within his gut, suspended at wit's end on faith. Trust holding like a mighty dam beyond desire. Dmitri knows what he's doing. Mitya wouldn't put him in harms way.
Trust…
Valeriy steadied his breathing. Counted his pulse into even tempered submission. With one deep, smog choked inhale, he carefully held it in before releasing, scratchy and dry, through the nose. Smothering a cough of his own.
"—power is still running to the casing housing." Dmitri was mid-lecture. A promising, however agitating in the moment, side affect to his dedicated attention. "With a bit of percussive tuning, I should be able to personally complete the elevator coupling and send the inner storage vault up into until a team is ready to retrieve it."
"How long until I can move?" Valeriy grit, distant. "Can I open my eyes now?"
Dmitri sharpened, uncharacteristically cold and without a beat of pause. "No. Keep your eyes closed." Every step the scientist made around the space was met with a weathered, trembling groan, shifting the metal grating beneath Valeriy's own boots in turn. The temperature had bloomed to a furnace, but it was far too soon for the ground to have thinned the way it felt.
"I'm," Mitya continued, farther from him now, his breath catching before seeming to lunge up to something overhead, the world lurching as if afloat on ice. The floor bounced to catch the scientist, nearly staggering Valeriy from his footing. This had to jostle Mitya too. This had to catch him off guard. Valeriy refused to believe this, any of this was careless neglect. Not from Mitya. Lips drawn thin, he dug his nails into the palms of his fists, exhaling hard through the smoke. "I'm getting us out of here, Valeriy… I just need you to not move."
He needed more. The situation was dire minutes ago, this smoke is untenable, this heat is unbearable. He could hear above the flickering of flames, above the static squeal of seeping energy that danced like stars behind his eyes, that Mitya was busy. But he wasn't going to die like this. Doing nothing. Stood blind like a fool.
"What are you doing now?" his throat ground out, coarse as gravel, thick as early morning. The fumes pressed back against his swollen inner ears, dizzying. "How long will it take?"
Murmuring is what he was met with instead. As if the threat of his moving was the only pressing matter at hand. "…and then I…" It wasn't silence. No, he isn't sure how much Mitya had stopped speaking since. But it wasn't an answer. Half spoken thoughts, the sounds of grit beneath his boots, the clattering of keys, the moan of reluctant levers. And still, the hissing, spitting, crying whine of sparks and energy licked the air around his feet.
Was it still blinding out there? How was Dmitri making his way around the lab like this?
Should he test? Just another glimpse, like before?
"Mitya," he called. Panting through the thinning air. This heat... "How much longer?" He needed more. He needed something. He needed to see.
Not far above, his body near jerked to face the unexpected proximity of Mitya's voice, still obediently tucked within the futile safety of his inner arm. "Almost!" It was as if he'd somehow lost track of where he'd heard Dmitri last. "I just—" The grinding scrape of glass shards dragging against oxidized steel, Mitya huffing against some physical load, the scrambling of cloth and boots. "Just have to get this moved."
"You're close to the energy core leak," Valeriy accused. Sound to be believed, Mitya shouldn't fall within the affected shadow of contamination the scientist seemed to describe before. But Valeriy didn't need accolades to assume an accident like this doesn't just cut it's damage like a clean territory, it doesn't lay it's bruises on all at once, it doesn't care if you're a few inches or even feet away to leave it's scars deep within your marrow. "What are you moving?"
Lofted delicate as burnt parchment discarded to an office fireplace, chipped paint or perhaps rusted debris graces his exposed lip, carried on each labored breath like weakened billows. Whatever price Mitya was prepared to pay to spare him some form of injury through all this destruction was not a debt he would suffer owing. His heel adjusted on the grating, slowly blistering skin peeling from the edges of his lower pant leg, his boot dragging wet, sticky with melting where it lay. His shoulders lent, curling like a softening candle by each passing moment spent, his knees trembling beneath the burden of his own weight. Suffering for air.
"The energy core." Mitya kicked his boots into the shattered shell of the failed elemental sink. Reckless.
The engine below rumbled in a rolling blast, it's fresh, explosive claws buffeting his uniform almost like wind, almost like relief. Anger roiled alive, shattering free of careful cast shackles like the furnace that consumed them now. "The core?" he growled through snarled, locked jaw. "What are my eyes closed for?" It was a demand, the snapping of distant wires, taut no longer, deteriorating like his brittling composure.
"We're keeping your exposure lo—" A coughing fit tore through Dmitri's insistence, ugly and dry. A further insult to the Major's station, unable to protect him. And still he could hear the other struggling against the nearly twenty foot casing that once enclosed pure, untested, processed crystal.
"And what?" He wasn't waiting any longer. He wouldn't wait for the passing thunder of what he could only guess to be the collapse of an elevated equipment stage, lofted too near the ruinous crane's foundation. Its uproar a minor background sound to the metallic carnage they'd faced, a tone to simply overcome, an excuse to only raise his voice ever louder at last for the first time in Valeriy's life. "It won't kill me, Dmitri! Let me help you!"
A shard of glass, discarded on the ground near his feet, striking the charged iron like ice shattering on rough stone. Squealing, shrieking, it carried with it the thunderous lightning of the broken core. "It will!" Dmitri snapped, voice cracking in his smoke choked desperation. "Just wait, please! I've almost- I- I—"
It took the largest industrial crane in Snezhnograd to set the cruel obelisk on that platform. It wasn't about faith, it was basic fact. Mitya wouldn't be moving it. If there was no other way…
Then so be it.
"Is the west exit still accessible?" His temper cooled as his head rippled like water, swaying on his feet. Sweat dripping from the tipmost of his nose.
"Yes," Mitya huffed, his shoulder feebly shoving at the case housing. All that set up— he must have worked so hard to release the movement lock beneath the core's casing. All that effort, all that risk just to have the main table fail to engage moving the crystal onto the sink store's elevator mechanically. All his smarts, reduced to simply shoving.
"Evacuate. That's an order."
The Major's command was met with perhaps the closest they could afford to silence in this horrible space. His feet felt terribly cold. He'd begun to miss the slick of his own sweat as it dried away from cracked, blistered extremities. Now his arms trembled, shivering against the heat the only way his body knew how.
"Dmitri." He scolded.
"Mitya." He begged.
A single gear clicked into place, it's relenting clink sounding out dim beneath the roar of the fire, yet ringing in Valeriy's mind like a station bell. Delirious, Mitya cried out, laughing down to the base of the infernal contraption. Hope, fragile and fleeting bit into Valeriy's splitting lips, cruel like frostbite as what he just as easily believed to be relief proved to be Mitya's overwhelmed frustration. The small scientist continued through coughing, wheezing, shallow gasps to somehow perform the impossible.
The lock had been successfully released. That had been confirmed. Valeriy's head throbbed, unsteady as the world swung idly in the dark of his inner arm. Only the offset angle of the broken floor platform grounded up from down as his mind swam, disoriented. Nauseous.
The lab was weakened considerably. Mitya was pushing the core uphill.
"North side." Valeriy straightened. Gathering himself no matter how his leg trembled beneath. "Mitya. Find the supports to the north side. If you can break them, damage them further, the platform will shift the column down into your elevator."
If it's remaining parts would function still, perhaps there was something more they could play to their hand.
Steam hissed somewhere within the lower bowls of the lab, trapped moisture beyond boiling, wrenching free of it's iron confines. Beneath the sound, he could just barely make out, "Okay. Okay. Climbing down."
The dismount must've been ugly, softened rubber chirped against the smooth metal face of the upper pulpit, Mitya's boot slipping as he was pitched heavy and hard to the sagging wreckage. Valeriy could piece each odd angle as it struck metal, the back of an ankle, an elbow, shoulder, and skull. No doubt in his aching heart, his partner assumed the wounded sound that escaped Mitya's lips was masked by the growl of the demolished yet running laboratory's unfeeling machines.
Sprawled out on the blisteringly hot metal, the scientist's course coughing fit felt like it stretched on for a rippling eternity. He needed to get up. They both needed him to get up. His fits quieted to feverish panting, open mouthed and wheezing, fast and shallow. Valeriy needed Mitya to get to his feet. But all too quickly, the guttural thrum of the lab ablaze overtook the fading anchor of his charge's shaking breath. Fading, motionless, invisible to Valeriy in the dark.
"Mitya!" he barked to an empty hall. Valeriy needed him to get up. He needed to believe he could. "Mitya!"
Ears ringing, straining at his bloodied limitations, Valeriy dared bring his spare fist to clutch the stifling fabric that strangled his chest. Automatic clicking from heat stricken machines, crackling of glass meter covers, the groan of warping metal, all wreathing beneath the discomfort of the flames.
Traceless the sound of life.
Curling forwards on his feet, adrift to the spinning, sparkling, dazzling violet light, beautiful beyond despair, Valeriy endured. Clutching to consciousness until the very last. Shaking, he released his clothes, bringing his stiffened palm to cover the incessant panting on his own lungs. So deprived of air, he struggled to snuff out the racket of his own hyperventilation. His lungs refused all command to hold his breath only to hear, and instinct drew stronger a will to survive. In his own hands, he pressed his skin firm to his mutinous maw, silencing his body all to best hear for his companion's faintest sign.
Flames flickered, crackling as if spitting the sap free of a fresh cut log. Valeriy struggled against the vacuum of his own hand, numb fingertips clutching firm to his jaw. He had to listen. He had to hear. He had to find Mitya. They had to survive.
Shallow, a hiccup. Rhythmic. Racing. A body's desperate attempt to start, pulling at the chest like a ripcord, desperate to catch. And lurching, Mitya's body gasped to life, coughing and spluttering on arid, graveling air. He scrambled, drunken, deprived, upright, hands striking the nearest railing on misguided instinct— fighting for oxygen wherever the body may have it.
Alive.
Slouched, agape, Valeriy heaved his first strangled breath. Attention a pin light on his partner, like biting the corner of his cheek, every footfall a lightning rod. Electric, it bought him all the clarity he needed to hold awake. Just a little longer. Just a moment more.
Mitya staggered, zigzagging through the rotunda from one hand hold to the next. His location knocking to and fro, a stray wrist, a misplaced knee, knuckles to a cabinet edge, undeterred. In this moment, he was everything they needed. Mitya was everything. They were going to be alright. They were fine. They were okay. They were together.
Distant now, chain rattled from it's coils, dragging limply down short stair flights. Dmitri would figure this out somehow. He trusted him more than anything. With a mighty, echoing clank, chain struck rebar, wrapping. Valeriy drifted, his focus maintaining his form upright. The sound of books tumbling, papers fluttering, the creak of a metal cabinet groaning from it's post. Time hesitated, a soft, sleep-like nothingness, floating.
A metallic scream wailed its once and only warning, rattling Valeriy back to an agonized reality.
As commanded, Lab 9's stained platform lurched, jumping free it's final, balancing support. Nothing couldn't be torn apart, rendered to near total destruction in the hands of the Tsaritsa's lead scientist. A terrifying animal let loose within the unnatural walls of the Fatui laboratories. As per Valeriy's military training, he crouched low, obeying Dmitri's command to maintain his balance without laying a single hand to support his struggling weight. Even as the platform swung wide to lilt back, colliding with a colossal roar into the outer northern wall, crumpling the corrugated flooring like crushed cardstock.
Momentum near brought Valeriy to his knees. Thighs aching, breathless with each strike of gravity's heavy hammer.
Jerking down, the foundation plummeted two feet, tenuous cording warbling against it's remaining length. Settling precarious, crooked, wedged, on miles long stilts struck to the nearest wall.
Gears rumbled, spinning free as a safe tumbler into place, the core casing rumbling with each tethered vibration as it settled back along it's track. Far far above, an insular chamber awaited Mitya's return to the central platform. Return to the hungry, invisible tongues of flame that lapped up through the grating, all in hopes the chains of the elevator lift still heed the heavily damaged mainframe.
They were so, terribly close.
Valeriy waited.
He could barely breathe. He could barely hear.
Valeriy waited.
It was terribly, horribly dark. The dazzling aurora faded to nothingness.
Valeriy waited.
Gentle, careful, trembling, a delicate hand pulled his arm from his face at last. "Come on, Sarge." Mitya breathed, fragile and burdened. "Let's get out of here."
By the arm, Valeriy followed at his dearest companion's heels. Together climbing the wreckage on unsteady feet, they picked their way up the west exit hall. Mitya guiding him to the brisk, cool embrace of the Armory Palace halls, safely beyond the tightly sealed doors of Laboratory 9.
Tender on the back of a dirty sleeve, Valeriy scrunched his face as Mitya dotingly, dazedly wiped at the smoke powdered to his face. Breathless, he laughed, "You can open your eyes now."
Medical staff were not far beyond lab quarantine. Valeriy made sure to maintain authority for them to be treated together, so he could watch over Mitya's recovery personally.
Their contaminated clothes, spare Mitya's loyal scarf, were carefully destroyed. Mindful of Mitya's bloodied concussion from his fall within the lab, personnel thoroughly washed the ash and unstable particulate from their hair and skin. Heedless of the third degree he'd suffered along his feet and lower legs, Valeriy's full most attention remained solely to his brave, trembling companion.
Perhaps as a distraction from his own recovery, he catalogued each injury of his charge like a ledger; second degree burns marbled the bruised, dirtied and delicate skin of Mitya's hands; he'd endured a tear to the outer tendon of the foot; a minor wrist fracture.
These were the simplest of complications.
Blackened smog had coagulated like ink at the seams of heat dried tear tracks when Valeriy had first opened his aching eyes to Mitya's waiting face. The sharp, rancid pollutant had blinked in stubborn flakes to his dry eye. The medical team struggled to talk an exhausted Mitya to sit still throughout the eye wash, his guard having to ignore his own caretaker's incessant demands in order to personally manhandle his charge to lean forwards over the cleansing wash.
What was standing on cracked, bloodied bare feet for a few moments longer? Preventing any further harm to Mitya held precedent. It was the least he was owed.
The Jester guaranteed they were treated with the best Snezhnaya had to offer, approved by the Tsarista herself. Though recovery would prove slow regardless. There were numerous IVs and a strict drug regimen to be adhered to treat the raw elemental exposure, side by side in their shared hospital room. For that, he was grateful they both could rely on the round the clock care of the nurses of Snezhnograd.
It wasn't until nearly a week into their recovery that an optometrist managed to raise suspicion there had been further damage beyond tear film instability. Reluctant to admit to it, Mitya had failed to reveal to either medical staff or Valeriy he'd developed large blind spots within the centermost of his vision. Fearing it to be permanent, he'd easily hid retinopothy behind his concussion and radiation poisoning.
Valeriy took over making sure his exposure to light was carefully tended, and for the first few months healing together, helped Mitya fully find his way around to their bathroom and out for fresh, snowy air.
—Though, given how easily Mitya could mange on his own when stubborn, Valeriy believed his role as guide was more of a comfort than a true mobility aid. He served his companion dutifully all the same.
It was only fair.
And through their tireless efforts, slowly but surely, they both successfully made a full recovery within a year, far sooner than their prognosis. With only the scars on their skin to remember it by. And further access to Lab 9 closed to date.