Hic sunt dracones
О, старый мир! Пока ты не погиб,
Пока томишься мукой сладкой,
Остановись, премудрый, как Эдип,
Пред Сфинксом с древнею загадкой!
…
Мы любим плоть – и вкус ее, и цвет,
И душный, смертный плоти запах…
Виновны ль мы, коль хрустнет ваш скелет
В тяжелых, нежных наших лапах?
***
O, old world! While you still survive,
While you still suffer your sweet torture,
Come to a halt, sage as Oedipus,
Before the ancient riddle of the Sphinx!..
…
We love the flesh – its flavor and its color,
And the stifling, mortal scent of flesh…
Is it our fault if your skeleton cracks
In our heavy, tender paws?
/// /// ///
-Aleksandr Blok – Scythians/Скифы
December 1944, somewhere on the Eastern Front
Private Alyosha Semyonovich Raskovsky was resolved that he hated three things more than any other: war, winter, and scouting. The one good thing about winter was Christmas, and with the new year only days off Christmas was approaching fast. Then again, with the war and the hardships it brought, Christmas didn’t feel much like Christmas anymore. Mountains were – well, he could deal with mountains, he just didn’t prefer them. The eastern parts of the Alps were scenic, even, and though he missed the steppes of his Central Asian home, Private Alyosha could at least appreciate the view. The problem was that he had been appreciating the view for weeks now, and the further his unit moved west, the higher the mountains became.
And it was oh so cold. Winters in the steppes were cold, too. That didn’t mean he liked it. But, if he opened his mouth to complain one more time their sergeant would stuff that same mouth with his own socks, which he had been wearing for most of that year now, and Yevgeniy Igorovich Petrov was not a man to threaten these kinds of things lightly. And so Private Alyosha Semyonovich trudged wearily ahead through the snow, scowling at the endless white that was only marred by the dark grey slivers of rock rising up on either side of them. Alyosha had the keenest eyes, which was why he led the single file of men on the lookout for enemy soldiers. There were none, unless they were hiding in the crevices of the mountainside like spirits or trolls or whatever kinds of creatures lived hereabouts. His Babushka would know; she knew all about fairies and ghosts and goblins and creatures of that ilk.
“Try not to fall asleep up there.” Stas grumbled from behind him, voice muffled by the scarf wound around his face. Alyosha scoffed at the other Private, turning slightly to shoot him a glare. He sidestepped a little outcropping of rock while still turned and stumbled, ending up sprawled on the ground, sinking into the thick snow.
“Hrrmphh.” Alyosha said eloquently around a mouthful of that same snow.
“Is that an arm???” Stas exclaimed behind him, sounding very alarmed and no doubt looking vaguely green. Alyosha writhed a bit, struggling to turn around and sit up. The other men of their little scouting party, four altogether, were huddled around a spot by his boots, too immersed in staring at the supposed arm to lend him a hand.
“Christ, Kolya, don’t touch it! Oh good Lord-“ that was the sergeant, whisper-yelling at their medic who seemed to have no inhibitions around anything even remotely medical. Other than that troubling feature, Alyosha knew him to be a good man. Flopping helplessly a few more times, he finally managed to turn around and get a look at his comrades. Stas and the Sergeant both looked green and pale, leaning as far away as possible, while Kolya was indeed hunched over a spot by Alyosha’s feet. The snow there and on the rock face next to the site were stained with trickles of blood, and Alyosha wondered how he could have missed that detail before. Cautiously, he struggled to his knees, hindered by his thick coat and the rifle hanging off his shoulder, but eventually he managed it.
“Thanks for nothing…” he grumbled, pulling himself closer on his hands and knees so as not to risk falling again, because there was indeed a human arm lying in the snow. The hand was almost as blue as the remnants of a sleeve it peeked out of, the fingers curled inwards slightly. Blood stained the dark blue of the sleeve, which was ripped and even singed in places. Alyosha grimaced at the morbid sight, glad he was more or less sitting.
“This was ripped off with considerable force.” Kolya concluded, assessing the severed limb with that distressing calm he had. Stas had taken a few steps back; Alyosha could hear him dry-heaving a little distance off. The sergeant was mumbling a prayer under his breath. Kolya picked up the arm with ease, which seemed wrong to Alyosha. He felt like it should be harder, heavier, more difficult. In any case, he knew he would never forget the sight of his friend turning over a mysterious severed arm in his hands while standing in the almost knee deep winter snows of the Eastern Alps.
“This looks fresh,” Kolya assessed further, gripping the arm by the elbow and tugging at the sleeve’s frayed edges, “There are no bite marks or anything. The man this belongs to can’t be far.”
Stas groaned and scooped up some snow, rubbing it on his face before turning away again. The sergeant looked distinctly perturbed by the prospect of having to search for a dismembered corpse. Alyosha exchanged a look with Kolya, nodding slowly.
“If it was you, you’d want your body to be buried properly. And you’d want your family to know what happened to you.” He said quietly. Their sergeant sighed, eyes flicking over Kolya, who’d hefted the lone arm under his own, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.
“Fine, fine. Let’s go find that poor bastard.”
Stas was, of course, the first to happen upon the ‘poor bastard’, but at least this time no one stumbled across any part of him. Also, the rest of him was, blessedly, still in one piece, albeit a rather banged up one. Kolya hobbled up close, fitting the arm to the stump on the man’s left and declaring it to fit somewhat too gleefully. He did have a certain macabre streak.
“I’m gonna be sick.” Stas groaned, averting his eyes from the bloodied corpse. The sergeant stood impassively, surveying the scene warily as Kolya dropped to his knees, handing Alyosha the arm before setting to examine the man. From what Alyosha could tell, he was still young, not much older than himself. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, but the outfit consisting of boots, dark pants and a dark blue jacket still looked distinctly military. There was a puddle of blood by his head, so much that it stained the snow a dark red, forming a stark contrast to his sallow face and slightly parted blue lips. Another, smaller and paler stain accompanied the remains of the poor devil’s maimed arm.
“No tags.” Kolya mumbled the findings of his examination, “Skull’s broken.”
“A partisan maybe?” the sergeant asked, looking around the narrow valley as if it might give them an answer to this mystery. Stas had apparently mustered enough nerves to step close again, hovering behind where Alyosha had crouched next to Kolya.
“Where on earth did he come from?” he asked no one in particular. Kolya just shrugged, starting to unbutton the man’s jacket to continue his examination.
“From the injuries I’d say he fell.”
“What, from up there?” Stas questioned, looking up at the steep rock face dubiously.
“There aren’t any traces here except ours,” Alyosha supplied helpfully, “And the weather’s been clear these past few days.”
“There are train tracks up on that mountain.” The sergeant added thoughtfully. The men hummed in agreement, and Kolya was still poking around the poor devil’s shattered bones. When he pressed down lightly just underneath the collarbone, a small trickle of fresh red blood was pushed out the corner of the dead man’s mouth, slowly sliding down his cheek and jaw.
“Is this normal?” The sergeant asked, disconcerted.
“No.” Said Kolya, frowning.
“Urrgh.” Said the dead man. Stas screamed. And then the man’s eyes flew open, icy blue and wide and uncomprehending, darting between them wildly, and Alyosha fell backwards with the force of his start, knocking over Stas and hugging the arm to his chest like it might ward off the revenant that was its former owner.
“Oh good Lord!” the sergeant exclaimed for the second time that day. The apparently-not-quite-dead man groaned painfully once more, before his eyes rolled shut again. The stump of his arm twitched like he meant to reach out and his breathing was ragged and shallow, but at least it was noticeable by now.
“Didn’t you think to check for a pulse?” their sergeant yelled, crossing himself reflexively. Kolya ignored him in favor of jolting into action, seeing to the man’s wounds as best he could with his depleted medical kit.
“How is this even possible?” Alyosha asked, mechanically handing Kolya whatever he asked for. “That’s got to be hundreds of meters.”
“It’s a miracle!” the sergeant whispered reverently. Their undead man groaned lowly, his brows furrowing in confusion as if he was wondering the same thing. His eyes would flutter every now and then, but never seemed to be able to focus. Alyosha wondered whether he could even understand them.
When he had done all he could by way of tending to the man’s injuries, Kolya stripped out of his heavy coat and draped it over the prone form on the snowy ground.
“We need to make some kind of gurney.” He muttered, looking around in calculation. There were no trees that they could use though, only some rickety bushes, barely enough to make a fire.
“Why bother? He’s not gonna make it.” Stas muttered quietly, but not without sympathy. The man groaned again, low and pained, a sickly wheezing sound rattling through his lungs in the process. Kolya sent his comrade a glare.
“He’s made it this far. We have to do what we can.” He argued, crossing his arms in front of his chest, already shivering in the cold. The sergeant nodded thoughtfully, looking back the way they’d come with his lips pursed in thought.
“You think you can hold out here until tomorrow?” he asked.
“You want to go back to camp?” Alyosha asked by way of an answer. If two of them stayed here with the man, they could make it through the night. It would be far from pleasant, but it was doable. They’d been through worse. If the other two hurried, they could be back by morning. The sergeant nodded.
“He and I,” he pointed at Stas, “go back and report, then return with transportation and supplies. Even if he dies in the meantime, it’ll still be easier to transport the body that way.”
“He won’t die.” Kolya declared stubbornly, shivering in the icy wind. Sergeant Yevgeniy Igorovich gave him a long look, then turned abruptly and waved at Stas to follow.
“We’ll hurry.” He promised. “See that you’re all three still here when we get back.”
Kolya looked on grimly until the two were out of sight, then dropped to one knee next to the man.
“Don’t you dare die on me, you hear?”
The man gave a pitiful wheeze and his eyes squeezed shut a moment. He hadn’t managed to utter a single word so far, making Alyosha wonder whether maybe Stas was right, whether they’d be holding a vigil by the end of the night. Either way, this was all the answer they were likely to get.
“Kolya,” Alyosha said softly, “What about this?” He held out the severed arm. The sad thing was that this wasn’t even the most macabre situation they’d been in. They’d passed the point of utter absurdity sometime in ’42, he thought. Kolya frowned at the arm, then at him, and lastly down at the man it once belonged to.
“So does that mean it can’t be put back on?” Alyosha asked, fearing he already knew the answer. Kolya shook his head in dismay.
“No, look the fingers are already turning black. Besides, the tearing was far too messy. He’ll be lucky not to lose the rest of that arm as well.”
Alyosha nodded sadly, looking down at the limb. The fingertips were indeed already turning black under the blue. He didn’t even want to look too closely at the end where it had come off; he’d seen enough of ripped flesh and splintered bones during this war already. Kolya frowned again, in deep thought.
“I think I can use the sleeve to help me stabilize the shoulder.”
“And the rest?”
Kolya shrugged, and that was that.
Kolya and Alyosha spent the night huddled together underneath the latter’s coat, shivering in the bitter cold. Their mystery man slipped in and out of his state of half-consciousness, groaning every so often, but he stayed alive without any major complications.
Like promised, Sergeant Petrov returned with a small outfit of men. He’d even managed to procure a sled, most likely from one of the farms they’d passed in the last days. Alyosha vowed he would make sure that the sled got back to where it came from. For now, he was thankful there was enough space for him and Kolya to curl up next to their half-dead charge, sharing their meagre body heat during the trip back to camp. He must have dozed off, because next thing he knew the tents of the stationary field hospital came into view and he could hear the sounds of people bustling about. A small crowd was already waiting for their return, nurses and doctors as well as rank and file having gathered in front of the main tent. Kolya was already scrambling off the sled before it even stopped, saluting one of the senior doctors before starting to rattle off a report. The older man looked over the man laid out on the sled, nodding along.
“Alright Novakov, you go and get a bite of something warm to eat and some rest. We’ll take it from here.”
“Doctor Rostov!” Kolya began protesting immediately, to absolutely no one’s actual surprise, “With all due respect I can’t just abandon him now. He’s my patient!”
Doctor Rostov, who unlike Kolya was quite a tall man, exchanged a long-suffering look with another of the higher-ranking officers over Kolya’s head, then sighed in mock exasperation. He fixed Kolya’s vehement pout with a hard stare.
“Take a sip of tea at least, there’s some freshly brewed in the officer’s mess. Then wash up and come back here. Hurry.”
Kolya sprang to attention, hurrying off in that distinctive hoppy gait he had. Medics and nurses were already attending to the mystery man, carefully pulling him onto a stretcher. He groaned lowly. Doctor Rostov oversaw it with pinched eyebrows, hands clasped behind his back. He turned to Alyosha, Stas and their sergeant.
“Will you at least rest of I order you to, or are you as pigheaded as him?”
The three men exchanged a look. Sergeant Petrov looked tired, dark circles under his eyes as if he hadn’t slept at all the previous night – which he probably hadn’t. Stas didn’t look much better, but he’d always been able to function on less sleep.
“I have matters to attend to.” The sergeant said regretfully. “I’ll come find you later, if it’s alright with you, Doctor.”
“I’d like to wait.” Alyosha said timidly, looking down at his boots. He’d found the man; sat by his side for a whole night. He felt strangely responsible, as if by leaving now he would doom the man after all. Stas must have nodded next to him, because Doctor Rostov sighed again, though it was indulgent.
“I suppose you can rest while waiting. There are two free cots in the back, on the left.”
The cots would be free because their previous inhabitants had died during the night, but that didn’t need spelling out. The two soldiers nodded gratefully and followed the doctor through the tent flaps where it was at least a bit warmer. In the distance Alyosha could already see Kolya returning, a piece of bread between his teeth as he ran back towards them, hopping like a bunny rabbit.
“That man really does have a ridiculous run.” Stas remarked through a small yawn.
Not remembering falling asleep, Alyosha shot up at the sound of angry yelling a few paces away. Not the pained howling of a wounded soldier, or the sobbing cries of a dying one – he was all too familiar with these sounds and if he could pick, he would like a quick death, something too fast to comprehend or feel like stepping on a mine. He’d seen and heard too much of the agony of dying slowly in this war.
“No! NO! Absolutely not! I won’t allow it!” he heard Kolya shout so loudly it made him wince.
“Nikolai Konstantinovich Novakov,” Doctor Rostov began with the tone of a man whose patience was worn thin beyond reason, “I don’t know what your grief with Doctor Ivchenko is, but what I do know is that this man is in agonizing pain and we are out of anesthetics. Ivchenko can help, and I intend to let him. So, unless you have an urgent wish to be punished for insubordination I suggest you step aside and let me do my job or I will have you physically removed from this tent, understood?”
Kolya looked like he might argue again, but a look at their mystery man writhing in his own blood on the operating table made him shut his mouth again reluctantly.
“I don’t trust Ivchenko, he’s creepy. He’s bad news, I just know it! He…” Kolya struggled for words to properly explain himself, coming up short and throwing his bloodied hands up in frustration. Mystery man whimpered on the table beneath the two doctors and Kolya put a calming hand on his chest, very carefully so as to not aggravate his extensive injuries and cause him even more pain. He deflated visibly, deferring to his superior unwillingly.
“I don’t like it.” He muttered unhappily.
“You don’t have to like it.” Doctor Rostov declared coolly.
“I’m going out to take care of Mama’s grave, alright?” Tatiana said, dropping a small affectionate kiss on her father’s fine white hair. “Lunch is in the oven. I’m meeting Aunt Anneliese and Sonja and Julie after and I don’t know when I’ll be back; you know how we get. You’ll be alright, won’t you Papa?”
Novakov senior laughed fondly. “I may be old, but I can still take care of myself, my darling girl, just like I do whenever you’re not around. Besides, I won’t be alone.” He added with a nod towards James. Most of the morning had been whiled away with recounting how the old Doctor and his fellow soldiers had found their mysterious charge and James had gathered enough to know that even had his head not been tampered with in the decades between then and now he would never remember more of it than the odd flashes of cold and red blood on white snow.
He wrote it all down, too. Every last detail went into his journals and Saitchik, Kolya, Nikolai Novakov was very patient, too. He was unreasonably lucky not only to have found the man alive, but also still sharp and with his memories carefully intact. He was barely half a year younger than Steve after all, with the notable exception of course that he’d had no ice or serum treatment, but had lived out every single of his over ninety years in full. Right now the old man is smiling fondly at his daughter (the youngest of five, three daughters and two sons, and James can tell she’s her father’s favorite, though none of his children have ever lacked for love), bidding her good-bye. When she’s out the door, Kolya turns back to him and his notebook, eyes a little dewy like they seem to have been since their arrival the previous night.
“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, my friend,” and there it is again, that word. It echoes in the back of his mind like a siren, I’m not gonna fight you – you’re my friend ricochets through his skull, chased by one focused reactive thought that is just mission. But he’s in control now; in fact he came halfway around the world because he’s in control now, and if he has a mission left it’s one he set himself and it serves no one but him. So he pushes it down, holds those reflexes under the surface until they fucking drown and listens to an old man he barely remembers reminiscing about how telling his children the story of his friend from the war who vanished to help keep him alive. Considering the times even that had to have been dangerous, with Hydra’s ears everywhere and a vested interest in keeping their asset a ghost story.
“Your wife didn’t mind?” James interjected for the first time again in several minutes. Kolya smiles sadly like he does whenever his late wife is mentioned.
“Not a bit. She knew you, too. Remembered you. Fondly, too.”
“We knew each other?”
“Briefly.” The other man tapped his knee, tutting thoughtfully. “Ah. But we’re not at that part of the story yet.”
1944 gave way to 1945 in a dreary succession of uniformly cold and boring days. Their mystery man pulled through, much to the astonishment of many if not most inhabitants of the comparatively small field hospital. Inquiries to all local resistance groups revealed that none of them were missing any members that were unaccounted for, and since the man had had no other form of identification it was down to waiting for him to wake, then speak.
Wake he did, and just in time for Christmas and a commissar to be sent to handle the paperwork. Said commissar, a man called Kuryakin, soon came up short when all he could mark in his report was that the unknown man did not seem able to communicate in any of the languages available in the whole camp (surprisingly many) and was therefore stuck with the designated number 17 and to be left where he was, seeing as the Soviet Union had more important things to concern itself with.
“Like winning a damn war!” The commissar concluded what had quickly become a shouting match between himself and Doctor Rostov. The doctor, usually a man of level temperament, looked like he was about to strangle the commissar with his bare hands.
“Listen here, you snotty little pen pusher! –“
“Supplies!” Sergeant Petrov butted in before it could come to actual blows; by some lucky chance he had only just arrived and practically burst into the tent after hearing the last of the angry shouting. Both men looked at him with expressions somewhere between disbelief and disdain. Sergeant Petrov swallowed uneasily, but stood his ground.
“We’ve been following the 21st Army around for weeks now and we’ve been struggling to meet demands even before that assignment. Men are dying needlessly every day because we lack all manner of supplies to properly care for our wounded.” The commissar’s mouth tightened and Petrov seemed to lose steam for a moment. “We need supplies, by whichever way, and it’s not helpful to leave us with another wounded man we do not have the capacity to treat properly just because you cannot be bothered to…”
“To what, sergeant?” Commissar Kuryakin interrupted with a dangerous edge to his voice. Petrov wrung his hat between his hands, half-regretting his courage now.
“Forgive me comrade, but my concern is for these men out there, and those that will surely join them as soon as the next big offensive starts. They are each single one someone’s son. You have a son, do you not, comrade?”
The commissar softened instantly, all anger drowning out of him to be replaced with a deep yearning. He absently fidgeted with the wristband of his watch.
“I’ll see what I can do.” He promised and gathered up his things, leaving with a nod.
“I never thought your propensity for gossip would amount to anything useful. I stand corrected.” Rostov admitted somewhat sourly after Kuryakin was sure to be out of earshot.
They moved behind the army through Silesia. Their unit was combined with the next one to the north; that made things better. More tents, more cots, more trained medical personnel, the flow of wounded concentrated instead of arbitrarily shipping them off to whichever field hospital they thought was nearest. Seventeen still had not uttered a single word, but was steadily getting better otherwise. By mid-January he was able to get up and walk a few steps, mainly by virtue of having broken many bones but none of those in his legs. By the end of that week he could make it to the front of the tent and back with only minimal swaying.
Since he didn’t seem to favor any language over another, Kolya stuck with what he knew, which was Russian. Exclusively. There’s this book he has, a children’s book really, that his young cousin gave him out of the pure goodness of her then ten-year-old heart before he shipped out to the front. Her name is Olesya and she’d only just gotten the book herself as it was a new release (but of course she’d devoured it within days and by the time she passed it on she’d read it so many times she must have it memorized word by word). So now, almost five years later Kolya is sitting beside Seventeen’s cot every evening that he can manage and reads the man about half a chapter, which the other seems to appreciate a lot despite the fact that he apparently cannot understand a word of it.
“And yet, this war has bred stranger things than this innocent pleasure, Yasha.” He says and Seventeen nods sagely, grin crooked on his bruised face, from which Kolya chooses to conclude that the name is acceptable because –
“- Because a person needs a proper name, even if it’s not theirs. Denying someone that is the first step in denying them their humanity altogether!” the old man declared passionately and James’ pen stuttered on the page because while he doesn’t exactly recall any of this something deep inside remembers with a ferocity that leaves him short of breath for a moment.
“Yasha?” he manages, hating how it sounds gasping and affected because that’s something that could be read as weakness and if he shows weakness, if he performs below expectations he will be …alright stop it, stop it.
“Hmm, it just seemed to fit. I don’t know why, just felt right somehow.” Kolya shrugged, the action making him seem twenty-something again instead of well over ninety. Another beat of silence and then he grins.
“And I was right, wasn’t I? In a way – because Yasha is short for Yakov, which is Russian for Jacob, which is in English another version of …”
“James, yes.”
Kolya laughed, slapping his thigh with unadulterated mirth, so hard that it rattled his artificial leg audibly.
“And that’s your real name. James.” Kolya concluded, tongue tripping a bit on the foreign sounds of English.
“It is.” James confirmed, feeling an odd warmth spreading through him. It was getting late, both of them noticeably tiring even through their mutual excitement. Besides, if Tatiana comes back and sees this, he has a feeling she might bite his head off. Figuratively at least.
As if on cue, the lock in the front door clicked and not a moment later Tatiana called out that she had brought dinner. Apparently Aunt Anneliese was famous for her potato casserole.
All through February, the Soviet troops were engaged in an advance onto German territory. The fighting was tough, resistance fierce, response fiercer more often than not. Someone in the higher ranks of command had decided in their infinite wisdom that they were now to accompany the 6th Army instead of the 21st and thus they were moved further north. Their current patients were also split up according to the severity of their wounds. At the very least, it freed up a few beds as some men who were unlikely to recover enough to be in fighting shape were sent home. The barrage of shelling was distant enough most of the time, but almost constant to make up for that small comfort. Since Kolya was a medic he was out were the fighting happened most of the time, and since the other three were reasonably healthy soldiers they were called to the front line, too. Needless to say, no one really saw all that much of each other until the end of the month. The greatest surprise was probably that they were all still alive by then, and even relatively unharmed. Stas had caught a bullet in the arm, but it was only a flesh wound and healed well while Sergeant Petrov had twisted his ankle after stumbling on the muddy ground, but since this had prevented him from catching a sniper’s bullet with his face he thanked God and accepted his temporary limp with comparative serenity. (‘I thank our good Lord for making me fall on my ass in the mud and break my foot instead of having my head shot off by a damn Nazi.’ – ‘It’s not broken.’ – ‘It feels broken. I feel broken.’ – ‘You’d make a horrible martyr.’)
It was around a week into March when the fighting slowed enough for the group to meet up again in some measure of peace.
“So, he’s looking well.” Stas nodded towards Yasha, who was by now almost entirely without bandages. Also the swelling and bruising had gone down and he was getting some color in his cheeks again. “Quite a pretty one, too, isn’t he?”
“You’d know-“ The Sergeant mumbled, cursing under his breath as he drew a bad card in their impromptu game. Cards didn’t require that much in the way of language skills.
“Thanks.” Yasha said and plucked a card from where he had stuck them into the edge of the somewhat rickety table.
“You’re welcome pretty boy … Wait – What???”
Yasha repeated his previous statement with some difficulty, in a somewhat abominable accent, and not lacking in minor mistakes, but they got it. “So – thanks.” He reiterated, looked smugly upon the stunned congregation, took a moment to wink conspirationally at one of the nurses, and then went back to peer at his cards as if nothing remarkable had happened.
“You understand us now, do you?” Sergeant Petrov concluded laconically. Yasha shrugged.
“A bit. Little bit. Little bit more each day.”
“How???”
At this, he shrugged again, stalling while he carefully arranged the foreign sounds in his mouth so as not to trip over them quite as much.
“Svetlana helped.” He nodded towards the nurse, who was by now busy changing the bandages on some poor bastard’s shredded legs. She took a moment to wave in acknowledgement.
“Petya and Vanya helped.” Yasha continued, pointing the two cots adjacent to his, even though their occupants were fast asleep at the moment. He retrieved Kolya’s book from beneath his pillow, lightly tracing the title letters. The Sorcerer of the Emerald City.
“This help most.”
The group spent a moment picking their jaws back up off the ground.
“Huh…”
“Well, alright. …Devious little shit.”
“You accent is actually painful though, you know?”
“Shut up Stas, he almost died and it’s only been a few weeks.”
“Thanks, Kolya.”
“Call me Saitchik.”
Yasha computed this for a moment that looked to be filled with utter confusion.
“What…”
“Bunny. It means bunny.” Alyosha quickly butted in, throwing down a winning card in the same breath to a round of groaning. Yasha did not look any less befuddled.
“Bunny?” he scrunched up his nose and his shoulder moved as if to result in some gesture to manifest his befuddlement, which only grew when he once more remembered that arm was gone. At this, he frowned. Alyosha laughed lightly.
“You will see why when he runs.”
Kolya made a sound of protest amid the low chuckling, then gathered up the cards and shuffled them for the next round.
“Yasha,” Kolya started again a few moments later when they were well into the game, “Do you remember anything?”
The other man looked around the tent in which he’d spent most of his time since he’d been found, certainly the majority of it that he’d been conscious. He shook his head sadly.
“…No. Nothing.”