Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Last night he had the dream again. 

He’s running up the stairs, taking two… three… even four steps at a time. He can feel the blood thudding in his ears, punctuated by the breakneck staccato of his shoes against the stairwell and the hollow sound of his ragged breathing. He’s surprised he can breathe at all: the tightness in his chest is so excruciating that every breath feels like it’s being punched out of his lungs. 

He follows the voice all the way up. Low, gravelly rasp rising above the niggling haze of mechanical whirring:

         What is the cost of lies?

...until, at last, the stairs run out and he’s standing at the end of a long corridor, doors on both sides, stretching as far as the eye can see. 

He starts to run again, eyes darting from side to side 

In the distance, there’s a sharp clicking sound.

Click. Swoosh. Release. Click.

         What is the cost of lies?

And again. And again. And again. 

         What is the cost of lies?

He stops, panting, feeling the taste of blood in the back of his throat, metallic and bitter. The noxious smell of ozone in the air, like after a thunderstorm but stronger, much stronger, makes him sick to his stomach.

“Don’t!” he screams at the top of his lungs, yet no voice comes out.

His eyes fall on his watch. 

1:25:38. 

“DON’T!!!”

Click. Swoosh. Release. Click.

         What is the cost of lies?

He screams again, and, this time, he can hear himself as he collapses against a random door, wailing, sobbing, begging: “Please… don’t…”

The door gives in. Just like it did that night. He can feel its weight disappear under his shoulder. 

He falls, hitting the floor so hard the air is knocked out of his lungs. There’s a dark shadow swinging above him. And, right there, next to where his head hit the fading carpet, is a pair of thick-framed glasses.

Blind with tears, he gropes the floor until he’s clutching them in his fist.

Click. Swoosh. Release. Click.

         What is the cost of lies?

His head falls back, eyes fluttering shut, thumb shakily tracing the slick plastic. 

“You,” he breathes.

And, as if the whole thing’s been nothing but a wicked, elaborate riddle he was supposed to solve, the noises stop, and, just like it did that night, it all goes black.

December 7, 1988, 18:17
Moscow

The shrill sound of a phone cuts through his layers of consciousness with the fierceness of a gramophone needle dragged viciously across a record.

Rolling over the once snuggly and purry, now startled and perturbed, ball of fur in his bed, Andrei stumbles into the hallway where he nearly trips over a haphazardly dropped pair of shoes. In a phenomenal save that could be easily featured in the Olympics (he’s thinking Pommel Horse… or Volt) he manages to twist himself in a manner that safely propels him across the opening, using his right hand to block the fall while his left snatches the receiver.

“Allo?”

There’s a soft click, followed by an unfamiliar female voice:

“Andrei Alexandrovich Olenyev?”

“Yes,” he crackles voicelessly, then, upon clearing his throat and with an undertone of an inquiry this time around, repeats: “Yes?”

“Lieutenant Junior Grade Olenyev with the Committee of State Security?”

“Uhm…” He twists the side of his fit in his eye before rubbing a palm over the rest of his face. As official ranks go, his favorite is still ‘the KGB finest’ (which of course immediately makes him both smile and feel sick to his stomach as his mind flashes back to his dream), but who’s he to—

“Comrade Olenyev?”

He stands straighter. “Yes. Who am I sp—”

“I have deputy chairman Shcherbina for you. Please hold.”

Okkkay. 

Click.

“Andrei,” the line crackles. No questions. No formalities.

 Still disoriented, Andrei struggles to get his bearings.

“Boris Evdokimovich?” he asks sleepily, sounding a hell of a lot more incredulous than he means to.

There’s a muffled cough followed by the forceful sound of clearing one’s throat. “There’s been an earthquake. In Armenia.”

Blinking his vision clear, he grabs the clock from the cabinet in the corner… How long did he sleep?! At the sight of the little hand skewed just west of six, his mind retraces the thread of events over the last 16 hours, starting from a double shift on duty last night and ending with his passing out this morning before his head even hit the pillow.

“Andrei?”

Forcing himself into full awareness, he stares blankly at his ashen reflection in the hallway mirror.

“How bad is it?”

In a calm, measured voice of his typical gauged and studious manner, the deputy chairman lays out the facts for him: the short version, followed by the long version, followed by the numbers, followed by what’s been discussed by the hastily put together government committee, followed by, eventually, the plan. The latter being—

“We’re leaving in an hour.” 

We.  

We’re leaving. 

Could he really mean— 

A hand through his hair, Andrei’s legs fold underneath him until he’s seated next to the phone atop of his small hallway stand.

“Boris Evdokimovich, I—”

“I know. I know. I promised you there wouldn’t be any pressure. And there won’t be. There isn’t. I meant what I said. It’s your decision. Whatever you—” There’s another choked coughing spell. “Whatever you decide. The only problem is, if you want out, you have to decide now. I can have a man pick you up in twenty minutes.”

That’s not quite what—

Pushing the crown of his head through the neck of his sweater while sliding a foot down the leg of his jeans, the cord of the phone stretching miserably across the apartment, Andrei tumbles back into the hallway, this time actually tripping over his snickers, and, well—

“Andrei? What’s going on there?”

“Uhm…” Struggling to an upright position, he tugs on the coiled cord. A gutted - yet surprisingly still working - rubble of Soviet plastic follows. “I might need a new phone.”

On the other end of the line he recognizes the same soft laughter that nearly seven months ago he’d given up on ever hearing again…

...and, in a heartbeat, it all comes back: his own ragged breathing, the excruciating tightness in his chest punctuated by the breakneck staccato of his shoes against the stairwell, the knocking, the buzzing, the waiting, the weight of the door against his shoulder, the deafening sound that it makes as it finally gives way, the tape recorder, the cigarette butt, the glasses.

The time on the clock. 

1:25:38.

And, finally, the silence.

He should’ve known. 

How could he not know? How could he not *see*?

That day in the park: what he said, EVERYTHING he said…

“Someone will be there in twenty minutes. Be outside. I’ll see you in an hour.”

Andrei snaps back, taking a deep breath. “I— I’ll meet you there. I’m gonna need to—”

“What?” Boris snaps, clearly losing his patience, before he catches himself once again and his tone softens. “Andrei? Is there a problem?”

Andrei pinches his eyes. Always the fixer.

He doesn’t like bringing it up. Every time he does, it’s like a punch in the old man’s gut. And he can’t bear it: watching this imposing, grounded, authoritative man crumble with grief like a sand castle; least of all now.

“It’s just— I need to—” He reaches down to slide his hand under a soft belly, scooping a purring ball up to his chest.

He’s about to make some poor-ass excuse about having to make a few phone calls when Sasha, tucked happily under his chin, decides to nuzzle the receiver with a soft, contented trill. 

On the other side of the line there’s a sound of a hitched breath, followed by a long, measured exhale. 

The voice comes back with a faint wobble. “Can your sister take her?” Andrei nods, nose buried in the thick fur, then, realizing he’s on the phone, adds a verbal confirmation. 

When it comes back once more, Boris’s voice is as low and steady as ever. “Good. I’ll have my man take a detour on the way to the airport.”

And the line goes dead. 

Chapter Text

December 1987, Moscow
Hospital No. 6, Internal Medicine Ward (Tерапевтия)

When, emerging from the blazing magnificence of fire and smoke, Vostok 1 was shot from its launchpad at Baikonur, its flaring tail drawing a line that split the entirety of human history into before and after April 12, 1961, Andrei was not even born yet. But he remembers the day that his country's proudest achievement had taken over his life with perfect clarity. 

He remembers sitting high on his father’s knee in front of their old black-and-white TV set. He doesn’t remember how he got there, what else had happened that day, or even what day it was. But that exact moment is so vivid and clear in his mind, it’s as if it were preserved in some kind of special container designed to withstand the impact of time. 

He remembers the warmths of his father’s thigh and the tides of his steady breaths where they pushed gently against his back. 

He remembers his father’s heartbeat merging with his own as his father leaned closer, nuzzling the dark tuft of Andrei’s hair and whispering:

“Now. Watch.”

He remembers wiggling deeper into his father’s embrace, clutching the impervious wall of arms with his tiny hands, both holding their breath as Korolev’s voice emerged wobbling from the crackle of radio noise:

“...Predvaritel'naya stupen’… promezhutochnaya… glavnaya… pod’yom!” ^[1] 

And right then, with his eyes wide in awe and his heart impossibly high in his throat, his father’s mouth pressed to the back of his shoulder, breathing Gagarin’s “Poyekhali”^[2] into a shaky exhale that slipped through his shirt, he remembers arriving at the most important decision of his life. 

He remembers knowing, beyond any doubt, with the emboldened certainty of a dazzled four-year old, what he was going to be when he grew up.

Sometimes he wishes he could step into that moment and tell that little boy that there’s no such thing as certainty. Or, maybe, all he really wants is to have that little boy tell him that there is.

Because today, at the age of twenty five - veteran of three tours in Afghanistan, the last of which ended with an injury so severe as to flush his dream of becoming a cosmonaut down the toilet, dropping him out of the Moscow Aviation Institute - junior rank KGB operative Andrei Olenyev knows that some certainties are as fleeting as the scent left behind on a piece of unwashed clothing. At first, all you need in order to feel swaddled in your father’s embrace is to bury your face in his favorite flannel shirt, the one you secretly snatched from the laundry basket the day he was taken to the hospital for what you knew would be the very last time. Until one day, despite keeping the shirt tucked away in an airtight box, the dizzying scent of his heavy cologne and tobacco is gone, and all you’re left with is an oversized plaid piece of flannel that you can neither wear nor bear to throw away.

And now, three months into his current assignment, one that started with a little note attached to his “subject’s” file and a creepy, meaningful stare across the conference table from first deputy Charkov, he’s not sure what to believe anymore.

Bitterly disillusioned, he’d been effectively disabused of any notion pertaining to patriotism or duty during his time in Afghanistan. And, prior to that morning’s briefing, the only thing he’d been certain of was that he’d seen the worst in people, and had witnessed the most gruesome of crimes. 

He doesn’t remember much of the moment that, in a manner of days, would have it all changed. Unlike the memory of watching Vostok 1 shoot from its launchpad, there’s nothing clear, nor vivid, about it. All he remembers is staring in puzzlement at the words scribbled across a piece of paper, thinking that he has no idea what ‘authorized to make occasional contact’ means, and wondering what he would even say to a man like ‘Legasov V.A.’ - aka the name on his subject’s file - if he did.

“You’re quiet today, Andryusha.” 

The low, raspy voice snaps him back from the melancholic depths of his reverie, tearing his scattered gaze from the checkerboard on the hospital night stand and directing it upwards, where he’s met with contentedly inquisitive, steely-blue stare. “What is it?” the deputy chairman grumps with a heartly squint. “Girl trouble?”

Andrei chuckles, the heat crawling up his face as his eyes flutter back to the checkers. If only.

“Just… thinking,” he quips after a long pause, motioning with his chin to the board between them before the man in the hospital gown gets a chance to lecture him once again on how Shashki is not a game that requires thinking so much as it does intuition. “Your move, Boris Evdokimovich.”

“Boris,” Shcherbina corrects him, again, in a low grumble, slamming a piece of white plastic against the wood. 

“Maybe next time,” Andrei promises, again, with a small smile that he knows melts the old apparatchik's heart.

One day, when he was little, his baby sister lost two out of eight pieces of her big-chunk kiddy jigsaw puzzle. Despite their parents’ most ardent promises to get her a new one first thing in the morning, she was inconsolable. 

Eventually, after she’d finally cried herself to sleep, their father grabbed a pair of scissors and the remaining pieces of the puzzle, and got to work. 

The next morning, it wasn’t a square jigsawed picture of Cipolino and Cipollone surrounded by their friends from the garden anymore. It was a round, much smaller yet magically complete puzzle with eight differently shaped pieces, albeit without Mr Carotino and Mr Squash, the tragic loss of whom his squealing in excitement, over-the-moon-with-happiness baby sister never even noticed.

“You can lose a piece of the puzzle,” his father said, with that all-knowing wink of his when it was just him and Andrei in the living room. “But as long as you have a working imagination and a good pair of scissors, you’ll never lose the picture.”

Sometimes it feels like his whole life has been rearranged and re-jigsawed by a pair of scissors in the form of a note in the file. 

It’s as if the picture is still there, looking no different than it did the night before that morning’s briefing three months ago, but the pieces - everything he thought he knew, what he thought he believed in, the person he thought he was - have been reshaped entirely, cut to fit together in ways he never imagined possible. Until one day, not long ago, he realized that the pieces whose loss he had grieved so deeply, bloodied bits of his childhood hopes and dreams that were now scattered across the battlefields of South-Central Asia, suddenly didn’t matter anymore.

Because, while some of the certainties he once believed in are definitely water over the dam of his innocence, there are still some things he knows for sure.

He knows, for example - and this is in no particular order - that deputy chairman Shcherbina is right about one thing: you don’t actually need a functioning brain to play Shashki. Proof? Before coming to the hospital this morning he had been on duty, shadowing his “subject” from behind the wheel of a black Volga, for a little over 36 hours without sleep. And, while the fact that he’s here instead of being blissfully passed out in his own bed certainly brings into question whether or not he had a brain to begin with, he’s still beating the perpetually grumpy deputy chairman after fuck-knows how many times in a row.

He knows that blood, while not actually significantly thicker than water, is infinitely harder to remove in washing, something he first learnt during his years in the service and is now reminded of every time the deputy chairman reaches to pick up a fresh, albeit permanently stained, handkerchief from the pile on his hospital night stand. 

And, speaking of which, over the past couple of weeks he’s gotten quite versed in medical terminology. That is to say, he knows what thrombocytopenia means. And, while he doesn’t understand much in the numbers on top of the lab-result pad, he can tell just how bad it is using his own scoring system, namely the number of aforementioned handkerchiefs used per hour. 

He knows, or at least has been told, that “ everything is chemistry”. Although, while he wouldn’t presume to question the word of a world-renowned inorganic chemist on matters pertaining to chemistry, that last bit is actually a work in progress. That is to say, he’s yet to be given an explanation that would satisfy the many questions he has posed since the ostentatious assertion was first stated. 

It’s become a game of sorts, an endless sparring match neither one is playing to win. Every time they meet, Andrei has a new challenge for the professor: a phenomenon or an everyday occurrence, seemingly unrelated to chemistry, that would need to be explained in such a way that would convince Andrei that it too is, indeed, chemistry. 

To date, the longest it’s taken the academician to come up with an utterly satisfactory chemical analogy to any posed riddle was the whole of a three and a half minutes, two and a half of which were spent looking for a pen.

With a slight shake of his head Andrei smiles, unable to hold back a soft chuckle as, rearranging the checkers, he peeks at the inside of his right hand. There, scribbled across his palm in his own blue ballpoint (because why would the deputy director of the Kruchatov Institute have a pen or a piece of paper?) lies the answer to this morning’s challenge: family.

“Oh, that’s easy,” the brittle, gravelly bass in his head ringing so clear, it's as if they're still standing on the steps of Kruchatov’s, his unceremoniously un-gloved hand serving as a makeshift notepad. “Nuclear fusion. Not fission, mind you. Fusion. Which is… well, quite the opposite, actua— oh for God’s sake, hold still! Who let you into the KGB, you big baby?!”

...the latter referring not so much to the principles of atomic binding energy as it did Andrei’s struggles to contain the snorting and fidgeting whenever the drag of a ballpoint would throw him into a ticklish fit. 

“I knew it,” Shcherbina’s voice booms. “It is a girl!” 

Startled, Andrei flinches as Boris’s teasing, good-natured growl snaps him back to reality once more. 

With some effort, the deputy chairman leans closer for a cordial shoulder slap. “Of course it’s a girl. You’ve been grinning like a smitten fool ever since you sat down.”

His eyes glued to the checkerboard, Andrei’s grin broadens. “Takes one to know one?” he quips, and, when a good-humored snort follows, makes his next move. “Thought so.”

“Helium balloons,” the ‘fixer’ proposes.

“Beg your pardon?”

“‘Tis a new thing. American. I think. I hear girls love it. Helium, it’s lighter than air, so it makes the balloon float.  It’s a…" screwing his eyebrows, "What’s it’s called…”

“...noble gas?”

“Exactly." Would you look at that? Weren’t *they* taught by the same noble gas expert. 

“Well…” Taking three of Boris’s checkers in one move, Andrei finally lifts his eyes to meet his opponent's. “I’m afraid that to win the heart of that particular ‘girl’ —” his gaze flickering to the listening devices they know to be there: “...I might need—” he winks, eyes boring into Boris’s now, as he meaningfully articulates every syllable of: “... all of the helium in the Soviet Union.”

With a flaring spark of a smile reaching deep inside his pale, weary eyes, the otherwise unfazed deputy chairman swats dismissively in front of his face. “Girls like that - nothing but trouble. Impossible to please. Believe me,” his deliberately slinked eyebrows amending : "I would know."

Andrei stifles a laugh. I dunno about that. Throw in a couple of lunar rovers and they might just come around. And, with another faint wink, adds out loud: “That they are.”

Visibly relieved, Boris lies back against the pillows, and, puffing his way out of another coughing spell, finally musters a faint, quivering smile. “So, everything’s alright then?”

For a moment, Andrei is hit with a torrent of grief so vast that he can barely kick his way to the surface. It's not the questions left unanswered that haunt us, he knows - it's those unasked .

He rises from the edge of the hospital bed and, tucking the blanket around Boris’s legs, fixes and fluffs the pillows. He does it all - slowly, with great care, and despite the patient’s grumbly protests - just like he does every day before leaving. And, just like every day, he takes his time, waiting for the knot in his throat to loosen enough as to allow his voice to come out as calm and assured as intended. 

“Yes,” he says at last, with every bit of cheer he can muster, his hazel-dark eyes latched to Boris’s. “Everything is alright. We’re alright. She’s alright.” And, with a waggish wink, adds: “But it’s good to know that should I require helium balloons…”

Shcherbina squeezes the young man’s hand, holding his stare so hard as if to pour what he can’t say - what he wants to say - directly into Andrei’s heart. “Anything you need, Andrysha. You hear me?” Men, materials, lunar rovers... “ Anything you need.”

Chapter Text

One thing Andrei’s parents could never agree on was the color of gladioli in the black-and-white photograph of his sister on her first day of school. His mother, who had spent the day before scouring the market for the perfect bouquet, was sure that it was priscilla. “Andryusha,” she’d say, having exhausted her usual arguments, and bringing out what Andrei’s father teasingly called ‘the big guns’ . “You’re not senile like your daddy - tell him!” Andrei’s father would laugh, lifting his eyes from a pile of blueprints and folding Andrei, who by then would start giggling as well, into his arm. “You leave him out of this!” he’d say. And then, pointing to his old Zenith camera proudly displayed on top of the china buffet, he’d remind her that the reason he knows the flowers were, in fact, purple, was because he was the one who took that picture.

As much as Andrei would have loved to resolve that argument once and for all, the problem was, he could never remember the flowers at all. To this day, all he remembers of that morning is… the smells. Like the burnt chemical smell left by the steamer; or the smell of his father’s cologne that, at nine years old, he’d secretly tried for the first time; or, most of all, the cinnamon-thick, yeast-infused, stomach-flipping smell of his grandmother’s baking.

Because, the thing is, memories are not made of images. Not just images, anyway.

Ask a woman on her fiftieth anniversary about the day her husband proposed and she’ll swear  she remembers every little detail of it like it was yesterday. She’ll remember the way the light broke into a million shades of gold in her champagne glass, or how uncomfortably wet her shoes were because she’d stepped in a puddle getting out of the cab. But she may not recall what her husband was wearing that day, what color the tablecloth was, or even which pair of shoes it was that got hopelessly ruined.

We don’t remember all that we see, or just what we see, because we don’t just see what we see. We feel it. Every moment that passes is filtered through the wildly misshapen prism of who we are, warped by factors that range from what we had for dinner the other night to whether or not we believe in a higher power.

Until, in the end, when enough time has passed and the image has faded, all that remains is a bunch of seemingly insignificant details - a distilled essence of what that moment had made us feel.

It hasn’t been long enough for the memory of the last time he was summoned to the office on the fourth floor of Lubyanka to have entirely faded. Some of it has. But he did remember how it felt the second he stepped out of the elevator this morning. One moment he was trying to figure out which of the long corridors stretching to both sides of the atrium he was supposed to take, and the next he was covered with a cold sweat, his vision flashing a violent blaze of white, his stomach knotting so hard he nearly retched then and there. 

“He’ll be right with you, Lieutenant,” the young receptionist announces with a tight, apologetic smile.

Natasha. He remembers that much.

He nods, tipping his buzzing head backwards, drawing a breath, and clenching-unclenching his cold, clammy palms. 

It was September 1 the last time he was here, a little over three months ago. He remembers because… it was his “subject’s” birthday, of all things, a fact that was casually mentioned during that morning’s briefing as they were reminded to be on the lookout for unexpected visitors. 

He was sitting right where he is now, in the small waiting area, containing, in addition to the state-obligatory portrait of V.I. Lenin as the sole item of wall decor, a single brown couch and a coffee table. In his hand he was still holding the peculiar note from Legasov’s file he’d been instructed to bring along.

He’d been on Legasov’s detail for nearly four weeks at the time. And, while he wasn’t sure what “authorized to make occasional contact” meant, it wasn’t the first time his instructions were about to be changed mid-assignment, nor would it be the last. 

So, when the door to Charkov’s office had finally opened and a tall, pale, silver-haired man stepped out, Andrei was… unconcerned. After all, whatever the note meant, one thing was for sure: he was the most inconsequential man to ever hold a KGB badge in the history of the Soviet Union, and if it was he who’d been chosen for this assignment, it could not have been serious.

“Oh my God,” he’d heard Natasha’s hurried whisper as he was rising to go in, the moment Charkov’s prior appointment disappeared into the hallway. “Do you know who that was?!”

Andrei peeked out the door. “That?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah! That’s Boris Shcherbina!”

“Who?”

“The deputy chairman of the council of ministers, durachok , that’s who! Don’t you read the papers?”

Uhm… “Right. Isn’t that the guy who was…” 

Tactical pause...

“...in Chernobyl, yeah!”  

...always works on the weak minded. Mental note: he’s GOT to stop with the Star Wars reruns.

Clearing his throat: “Right. Well, I’ve never seen him on TV. Or in person. So…”

The deep, husky baritone, coming from inside the office, cut him off. “You can come in now, Lieutenant.”

Were he the dutiful operative he was expected to be, he would’ve listened to his superior officer, gone inside, and would probably never see Boris Shcherbina again. But then, had he been known to follow orders, five years ago he wouldn’t have found himself carrying Vitaly through that minefield, and none of it would matter today.

“Lieutenant?”

He couldn’t move. As if his feet had sprouted roots deep into the building’s concrete, he just stood glued in the doorway, watching as the deputy chairman made his way to the elevator foyer, feeling his stomach twist and flip.

There had been something. Something he couldn’t quite put into words, nor bear attempt to. Like a foul taste in the back of your throat when you’ve had too much to drink the night before, the feeling of dread so raw all you want is to down a bottle of mouthwash just to make sure it’s gone for good.

Something just… didn’t fit; whether it was the barely noticeable, strangely symmetrical disarray of Shcherbina’s otherwise perfectly combed hair, or the way the man walked, not like a senior party official, but a little slouched, with a slight shuffle, and oddly subdued. Or maybe it was the way that his knees all but buckled when he just stopped, one hand propping him steady against the wall while the other reached frantically inside his coat pocket for a handkerchief that was immediately pressed to his gagging mouth. But mostly, it was the way he just stood there, thrashed and defeated, breathing shakily into his palm.

It wasn’t until he heard the door close behind him that he realized it was Natasha who’d grabbed him by the elbow, peeling the whole six-foot-three of him off the doorframe and physically shoving him into her boss’s office, probably saving them both from the likely scenario in which her boss would lose his patience and do it himself.

If the first deputy chairman was disturbed by the incident, it never showed.

“Thank you for coming on such short notice, Lieutenant,” he said (as if a choice was implied).

“Sir.” Andrei nodded.

He was still dizzy and nauseous, struggling to appear unfazed by the flood of unsettling images that swirled in his mind. The stale, musty air, coupled with the heavily draped windows and a sickening sheen of sweat on the first deputy’s face, did little to help.

Patting his desk for a lighter, Charkov got straight to the point. “There’s been a… development,” he said, without further ado, his face in the flickering light looking particularly hedonistic. “...in your subject’s case. Legasov, is it?” 

Because you don’t know, you sick son of a bitch. Swallowing a bile-tasting lump in the back of his throat, Andrei stood taller. “It is, sir.”

“Forgive me. As you know, I no longer deal with routine surveillance details. But, like I said, there’s been a development - a tiny detail that I won’t bore you with - a request, really, that, seeing how we’re not without leniency, I did not see a reason to deny.”

Andrei flashed back to the tall figure dwindling down the corridor. A request, he thought, but, overcome by a fresh wave of nausea, jammed every cog of his mind to stop if from grinding further.

“I hear the old man is quite lonely,” Charkov went on. “And, I’m sure, his health is not what it used to be.” Andrei glanced at the open file on the first deputy’s desk, a copy of the medical report he himself had submitted earlier that week, facing up. Always the master of understatement, aren’t you? “It’s been brought to my attention that the social isolation the poor man has found himself in - a tragic, albeit rather inevitable, side effect of his current predicament with the state - may have been too hard for someone in his… condition to handle.”

In his mind’s eye, Andrei could almost see a gigantic red sign billowing above the yellow monstrosity of Lubyanka, the slogan, in huge white letters, saying: “KGB. Because we care.”  

The stifled snort was masterfully disguised by the dutiful clearing of his throat. “Will there be a change of instructions for the surveillance team, sir?”

“For the surveillance team? No. Oh no. I prefer, because of the rather sensitive nature of said… uhm, request, to handle the matter… off the record.”

“Sir?”

Smothering the cigarette butt amongst the bodies of its comrades, the first deputy lit another. “The way I see it,” he said, wincing ever so lightly, as if the mere necessity to discuss it was as offensive as stepping in dog poop. “If, on occasion, the old man should need a hand carrying his groceries, or, I don’t know, crossing the street, for instance… and, provided you were inclined to offer such assistance, I guess, it wouldn’t be… the worst thing.”

It took a long moment for Andrei to realize that he’d been holding his breath for nothing. No further instructions  - or clarifications - followed. He glanced at the note still clenched in his palm. ‘Off the record’... no *shit*, he thought. The only way this request could be made more ambiguous was if the first deputy asked Andrei to… ‘never underestimate the value of Pi’... or something.

“Now that that’s taken care of...” Charkov’s suddenly cheerful voice broke unbidden into his thoughts. “How have you been doing, Andryusha? How’s the leg?”

A sharp current of pain shot from under his left knee at the mere mention. 

“I’m fine. Thank you. Sir.”

Getting up from behind his desk, Charkov crossed over, both hands landing squarely on Andrei’s shoulders. “Oh, don’t be like that!” he cheered, feeling the young man shudder and back away. “We missed you at dinner last night. Your mother was worried. So was your sister. You should visit more often.”

Andrei felt the goosebumps spread from where the well-manicured fingers dug into his flesh. 

Breathe.

It took every ounce of self-control he could muster to NOT wrap his hands around the throat of the man in front of him and finally do what he’s been dreaming of ever since he was just a boy, old enough to know he wanted to, yet too young to understand why. 

Breathe.

“Will that be all? Sir?”

With a sigh, the old man let go, and, before the air trapped in Andrei’s lungs siphoned out, was back at his desk, slamming Legasov’s file shut and making a point of disdainfully tossing it onto the pile in the corner. 

“Dismissed,” he coughed, falling back in his chair and fumbling for his lighter. “But Olenyev, this is strictly off the books. Do you understand? Any information you get should you decide to…” impatiently waving a hand, “... engage with the subject, goes directly to me. You don’t file it, you don’t discuss it with anyone on your detail, you definitely don’t discuss it with anyone else. Is that clear?”

The first *clear* thing you’ve said all day. “Yes, sir.”

Every step that took him further away from the KGB headquarters felt like cutting through bands of constraints on his chest. He was still panting, stomach tied in a tight knot, even as he crossed the street to the right of the peach-colored dreadnaught of Lubyanka towards Teatral’nyy Proyezd. And it wasn’t until he was face-to-face with Apollo’s Quadriga, crowning the regal facade of Bolshoi, that he finally felt himself begin to relax, and stopped.

Taking a moment to gather his bearings, he brushed the heel of his palm across the cold sheen on his forehead, looking around as he tried to remember where he had parked earlier that morning, which seemed like a life-time ago. 

And that’s when he saw it, just as he was about to retrace his steps back to Neglinnaya - a tall, feeble figure clad unseasonably in a long, black coat, slouched on a bench next to the fountain on Theatre Square.

Just like he’s still unsure what it was five years ago that made him disobey an order to fall back and, instead, leap across an uncharted minefield, or even whether or not it was a conscious choice, he’ll probably never know what made him pull the same reckless stunt on September 1, 1987. But there he was, all the same, in violation of a direct order, jumping onto a busy street and, accompanied by a raging cacophony of startled honks, walking up to a senior party official he’d never met before in his life.

Because right there, as he was taking his last steps, having no idea what he was even going to say to the deputy chairman of the council of ministers Boris Shcherbina, for the first time in many years he’d had a moment of perfect clarity. As if the mirror labyrinth he’d been trapped in shattered, and suddenly, among the many things that became painfully clear, he knew exactly what the note in his hand meant.

Three months ago, before he’d even sat down next to Boris and, without saying a word, handed him the note that would change their lives forever, he'd known that, sooner or later, today would come. And that, when it did, chances were he would end up losing a hell of a lot more than he did the first time he had disobeyed an order.

So, when Natasha’s voice jolts him out of his reverie, his eyes flutter open with the quiet resignation of someone who knew this would be the end of the end of their journey from the moment they set on.

“He’ll see you now, Lieutenant,” she says. 

...and, exhaling through pursed lips to soothe the dull pain in his leg, he stands up.

The drapes are open this time around, the low winter sun filtering through the frost-ornamented windows and painting the carpeted floor with the faintest origami of delicate shadows. 

There’s a long, menacing pause, the same kind he was given as a child every time he’d be late for a family dinner, before, pointedly setting down the thick file in his hands, Andrei’s uncle looks up.

“Comrade Olenev,” he starts, two words that, under the circumstances, instantly reduce an active operative to a person of interest in an ongoing investigation. “What is the nature of your relationship with the deputy chairman Shcherbina?”

Chapter Text

There are five. Five ‘shadows’.  

They were four, at first. To this day Valery isn’t quite sure whether having his surveillance detail expanded within a week of his return from Chernobyl was supposed to make him feel utterly humbled or seriously concerned. Just in case, he was a little bit of both.

He doesn’t know any of their names. Or at least he didn’t, up until three months ago. But, having realized he was stuck with these people until death do them part - and because, as it turns out, facing mortality was just the boost his sense of humor needed to finally cross the ‘detectable’ threshold - he’d spent the first couple of weeks creeping the shit out of his KGB agents by using the ‘scientific method’ to observe - and catalog - them.

So…

There’s ‘МИША’. A short, bull-necked, sweaty man with a good-hearted laugh who smokes the same brand as Valery. Which is how Valery managed to get close enough to notice the four letters he later used to label the… um, specimen... tattooed on his beefy knuckles. One day, feeling particularly adventurous and emboldened, he just walked up to the black Volga, and, watching the agent’s jaw hit his shirt collar, asked for a smoke.

There’s ‘Red Shirt’ . A particularly clumsy young man who, on account of his height and excessive scrawniness, had been initially indexed as ‘Stick’ , only to be further reclassified following a near-fatal car accident he’d caused while… well, wearing a red t-shirt.

There’s ‘Kickback’, the latest addition to the team. A quiet, laid-back, low-key kinda fella with a shock of red hair and a ruff of well-cared-for, meticulously shaped mustache. A man who, usually engrossed in a book propped up against the steering wheel, has earned his designation by unwaveringly exhibiting near-zero interest in his surroundings; including his subject’s movements.

There’s ‘The Sentinel’, of course, whom Valery suspects to be the team leader. Never late for his shift, the most assiduous and diligent among the five, he fits the profile of the somberly looking vigilante who always seems to be more serious about his duties than the next guy to the dot. 

And then, there’s ‘The Little Prince’, a nickname given long before their first ‘authorized’ contact. One that has little to do with the thick wisp of hair crowning Andrei’s unsettlingly open face, or the way he carries himself with a humbling grace that seems to belong in a world long gone, and everything to do with the sheer, inexplicable sadness about him.

He knew he wasn’t supposed to talk to his ‘shadows’ , nor they to him. But there was nothing to stop him from waving a courteous ‘Good morning’ on his way to work, or tapping the hood ‘Good night’ before heading back in. Or - and this was reserved for such times when he’d feel particularly bold and adventurous - dangling a bagful of fresh pastries in front of the passenger side window long enough for it to be rolled down in exasperation. 

“Kindness begets kindness,” his grandmother used to say. 

And maybe it had.

Or, maybe, the reason was much more mundane and prosaic.

Maybe Valery had found himself occasionally getting an extra pack of cigarettes for ‘МИША’ because nobody wants to live out the rest of their lives surrounded by faceless shadows. And ‘Kickback’ would quietly slip Valery the morning paper to read on the bus because nobody wants to be one.

One of the most vivid memories he has of his early years is that of his grandmother waiting for him by the window every time he’d come home from school. Up until the day she died, no matter how long his day had been, he’d look up, emerging from the alley next to their apartment building, and there she’d be: smiling down at him over the rim of her thickset glasses, a fretted tome of Nabokov in one hand, and a steaming cup of strawberry jam tea in the other.

One day, during his high-school graduation exams, caught up in his study group, he didn’t come home until way past eleven. The light was still on, the book and the cup in their usual place on the window sill, and Valery’s grandmother, chin dropped to her chest and glasses askew, was snoring softly hunched in her rocking chair. 

“You don’t have to wait up for me, Nanna,” he implored, helping her to her feet. “Once the university starts I’ll be coming home at all kinds of crazy hours. You shouldn’t be sleeping slouched in that chair. You know it’s not good for your back.”

“Oh, pfft, nothing’s good for the damn thing anymore and you know it.” She waved him off, and, looking up, softly touched her hand to the side of his face. “And I don’t wait up for you because I have to, love.”

He sighed, breathing a smile into a grateful kiss on her papery-creased palm. “I know, Nanna, but—”

“No, you don’t.” She shook her head, cupping his face with both hands now. “How could you? Look at you, Valerochka. You’re so young, your whole life is ahead of you. So many things to look forward to. Me?” Her lips pressed bitterly together. “I only have things to look back at now. And that’s fine. That’s life. But this, Valerochka, you, waiting to see my beautiful boy come home every day… Aye, that I still have to look forward to. And no goddamn ‘crazy hour’ will take that away.”

Three  months ago, having just turned fifty one, with the words of his hematologist - ‘Two years. If you’re lucky’ - billowing like an old communist slogan over his head, quite frankly, he couldn’t imagine looking forward to anything ever again. And, what’s worse, with his friends turning their backs and the entirety of his life’s work shredded to pieces, there wasn’t much left to look back at, either.

He could probably find solace in the fact that, even with most of his duties snatched away, his work, nowadays mainly involving mentoring doctoral candidates, still brought him a great deal of joy. And he would, were it not for the side-dish of watching his former colleagues avert their eyes as they passed him in the hallways of the institute he’d given his whole life to, and to which he was now but an ugly stain on an otherwise perfectly white wall.

And so, just a few weeks after his testimony in Chernobyl, unable to bear the isolation and hostility any longer, he resigned to limiting his time at Kurchatov to the minimum required to keep appointments with his students.

In fact, up until the afternoon of September 1st, his day would consist primarily of commuting to and from work, an occasional stop by the grocery store, and a long, lonely evening of reviewing dissertation drafts followed by a quick meal - usually consumed in bleak silence while standing over the kitchen sink - and, eventually, a patchy oblivion of dreamless sleep.

It wasn’t until he glanced out his kitchen window this morning that, after more than three decades, his grandmother’s words finally struck home. And, right there, he knew that whether or not it would be Andrei slouched in the driver’s seat never really mattered. Because for the five-in-one chance that it were, the sheer thrill of that moment had become the single highlight of joy on the canvas of otherwise dreary existence.

___________

While it’s true that they weren’t officially introduced until the day of Valery’s birthday, the first time they talked was not on September 1. 

It was actually closer to mid-august, on a particularly muggy late afternoon. At the time, Valery was… quite busy. On hands and knees, cursing his perpetual clumsiness, he was chasing the final draft of a candidate’s dissertation set free by an overly whimsical summer breeze. Just handed in for review that morning, the lone copy had been ripped out of his carelessly dropped briefcase and was now scattering all over Kurchatov’s Square.

Increasingly exhausted, puffing out his frustration, ominous white flashes creeping along the edges of his vision, he was beginning to wonder if, after everything he’d been through, this was how he was going to meet his untimely demise. When there was suddenly a firm grip under his shoulders, and, in one smooth motion he was pulled to his feet.

“You alright, Valery Alexeyevich?” he heard through the dizzying buzz in his ears, the world spinning so hard that the only thing keeping him upright was the strong arm wrapped tightly around his back.

Before he could gather his bearings, a hand came up to his face to carefully adjust his skewed glasses. And there, held up against the human fortress of his Not-So-Little-From-Up-Close Prince’s body, was when he first saw it - those big, hazel-flecked, Bambi-sad eyes lit by a smile so boyishly sweet that for a moment all he could do was stare.

“The— papers,” he rasped voicelessly, blinking. 

“Right here,” Andrei confirmed with a broadening smile, pointedly lifting his free-of-professor, full-of-crumpled-doctoral-dissertation hand.

Valery exhaled, only now realizing he’d been holding his breath. And, as his knees threatened to give out once more, the half-circle of arm around him drew tighter. 

Before he had a chance to object, they were across the square where he was softly, albeit quite unceremoniously, unfolded onto one of the benches. Still panting, his vision a muddled gauze of streaks and shadows, he opened his mouth as if to ask or to say something, but the air he’d drawn flowed wordlessly out. 

“Thank you,” he managed at last, his face every shade of incredulous, as Andrei’s eyes closed and opened in concert with a gracious nod.

Satisfied that Valery wouldn’t tip right over as soon as he loosened his grip, Andrei slowly withdrew his arm, his hand drawing a hesitant line across the professor’s back and shoulders.

And that’s when Valery saw it. Really saw it. Wondering how during his studious observations he had managed to notice the smallest things, like the barely discernible deviation in Andrei’s gait, or the ever so slight wince of Andrei’s face whenever his left foot hit the pavement, but he had somehow entirely missed this.  

Stretching from the back of Andrei’s hand, up along the length of his arm where it disappeared under the sleeve of his t-shirt only to continue above the collar, covering the entire left side of his neck and face, was a pale, blotchy grot of a pitted burn scar, skin taut and molten away almost entirely.

“What happened?” he grated, catching himself too late and cursing his wayward mouth as soon as the words were spoken and Andrei’s arm instinctevely jerked away. “I’m sorry—” he breathed, making an effort to lean forward before dejectedly falling back. “It’s none of my—” The words caught in his throat, he closed his eyes, shaking his low hanging head. “I’m sorry.”

He was jolted out of the throes of self-loathing by a light touch on his arm. When his eyes snapped open, Andrei was crouching in front of him, left leg bent at an awkward angle, a hand curled softly over Valery’s wrist.

“Land mine,” he said with a small shrug and a sad smile, simply, quietly, as if it were the most trivial thing in the world.

Valery shuddered, unsure whether it was the question marks in his observation notes that suddenly vanished, or the many new ones - infinitely more grievous - that popped up. 

For a long minute neither one of them spoke. Valery just sat there, his stare anchored deep in those woe-haloed eyes. The muddled blur of his vision was slowly dissolving, his breaths evening out. He felt grounded, the warmth from Andrei’s hand tethering him completely. As if, in that moment, following an obscure principle of quantum entanglement - that, to be fair, he never really understood -  they’d become virtually indistinguishable. And, for the first time in months, even if for an instant, the gnawing disquiet in Valery’s soul had dissipated completely, shattering under the weight of Andrei’s resolve. 

“So…” Andrei smiled, shaking them both out of melancholy as he let go of Valery’s wrist. “How about you take a minute to catch your breath while I—”

Valery followed his gaze to the empty briefcase and the crumpled mess in his hand.

“Oh, no. Please. That’s not— You don’t have to—” 

But before he could even finish, Andrei flopped back onto the pavement, his right leg folded beneath him as his left stooped awkwardly to the side.

“Please,” Valery implored, watching him leaf through a hundred-page long draft that was now but a jumbled-up jigsaw puzzle. “You’ve done so much already. I can sort it out when I get home.”

Without breaking his concentration, to his utter astonishment, Andrei unmistakingly pulled out what appeared to be the abstract, and, setting it face down in the briefcase, motioned to the black Volga across the street. 

 “Well, Valery Alexeyevich..." He winked, looking up from under the hood of his palm with a coy grin. "Seeing how you’re here, it’s not like I have places to be.”

Valery chuckled, an actual laugh rolling out of his chest with remarkable ease, like a clumped ball of duct-tape dusting off ages-old layers of misery on its way. And, given that there wasn't much he could say to dispute that logic, he leaned back, squinting in the warm afternoon sun, resigned to savor every last bit of grace, peace, and quiet that this small misfortune had tossed his way.

After some time of watching Andrei clear a path through the hand-written mess of the methodology section, he couldn’t help arching a baffled brow. 

“You’re quite good at this,” he noted, genuinely impressed, only realizing that his tone had left an unintentional ellipses when, with a soft snort, Andrei completed his thought:

“...for a KGB agent?”

“Yes. NO!” For God’s sake, get a grip! Shaking his head, Valery cursed indiscernibly under his breath. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean—”

“That’s alright.” Andrei laughed, stacking more papers onto the growing pile. “My father was an engineer,” he said, the subtle crack in his voice betraying that the past tense did not imply early retirement. He cleared his throat, forcing a smile to cover the twitch of his jaw muscles. “You know: papers, blueprints, sketches everywhere. Drove my mother insane. To make matters worse, my father wasn’t just forgetful or untidy. She used to say he was inherently incapable of keeping his stuff together. To which he used to say that it wasn’t a mess but a rather intentional disarray that helped his creative process.” He breathed a faint, wistful laugh. “They used to bicker. All the time. Not in a bad way, you know, but—” 

His voice trailed off, and for a long while neither one of them spoke. That is until Valery leaned down and, fetching a bunch of unsorted pages, joined the effort. 

“So, is that how you learned?” he prompted. “By sorting your father’s papers?”

Andrei nodded, chuckling. “Somebody had to.”

“How old were you?”

“When I first started? Pfft, I dunno… eight, maybe ten.”

“See, I wish I had scientific papers to sort when I was that age. When I told my father I wanted to study chemistry, he flipped.”

Andrei looked up, incredulous. “He did?”

“Oh, big time. He was hellbent on dragging me through ‘fire, water and brass pipes’ until he was sure my career choice reflected my ‘enormous potential’, which in his mind was equal to ‘the potential of being enormously useful to the motherland’.  Were it not for my mother - the only one who could ever convince him of anything - I don’t think we’d be talking today.” It was Valery’s turn to motion with his head to the black Volga. And wink. “Which, I suppose, under the circumstances, wouldn’t be the worst thing.”

They both laughed at that, after which they resumed their work, falling into the kind of comfortable silence people have when they’ve known each other for quite some time. Until fifteen minutes later Andrei was carefully tucking the newly assembled dissertation away. 

“Nice handwriting,” he noted, admiring the flawless cursive. “And a very concise style.”

“Ah. Yes. She’s a very impressive candidate. One of the best I’ve mentored in years. Although, she could, no doubt, benefit from your organizational skills, seeing as they are supposed to submit the drafts in a binder.” He carefully picked up the pile, weighing it in his hands. “You have to understand, this is more than a sole, handwritten copy. This, right here, is the result of years of grueling work and dedication. What you’ve done…” He shook his head. “Sasha - forgive me, comrade Fadeyeva - should count her lucky stars you were here.”

___________

As should I, he thinks today, staring blankly out of his kitchen window.

“As should I,” he repeats out loud, as if speaking it into the void would give him magical powers to change the past.

He should’ve told him. That day, on September 1, and every day since. 

All those years, decades of commitment and dedication, of putting everyone’s needs ahead of his own in his fervent pursuit of advancing science, and it’s only now that Valery realizes what it is that he really wants, what he should never have taken for granted. Which, coincidentally, is the one thing he can’t have. Time.

It’s not the kind of time people usually need. Or want. Oh no. That ship had sailed the moment he stepped into his  hematologist’s office a couple of weeks ago. Probably long before that.

He doesn’t need time to put his affairs in order, either: thanks to the ardent efforts of KGB first deputy chairman Charkov to rid him of those, he’s got that covered.

He doesn’t need time to figure out who he is. Or was. Or wanted to be.

All he wants is a chance. To be that man. To live. Not for the greater good, or the sake of millions. For Andrei. For Boris. For himself. All he wants is a chance to be grateful. A chance to love. And, most of all - a chance to show it.

He still remembers the sudden chill hitting him to the bone through the layers of winter clothing last night, when the answer to his usual ‘So, I’ll see you in the morning, yes?’ was not the bright, reassuring smile of ‘Of course you will, Valery Alexeyevich’ but a rather unsettling wince of ‘Actually… probably not till the late afternoon.’

“What does he want with you?” he gasped upon hearing the reason, his vision vignetting pitch black.

“Well, he is my boss,” Andrei tried to laugh, a dry, cheerless sound that made Valery’s heart sink even further.

“He’s the first deputy chairman of the KGB,” he rasped. “You’re a junior rank officer.”

“Yes. Which makes him my boss.”

Valery huffed. “No. It doesn’t. It makes him your boss’s boss’s boss’s boss’s - and probably a dozen more boss’s - boss. Which means, if he wants to see you, you’re in trouble.”

Andrei laughed, for real this time, throwing his head back and watching the plume of his breath fluff in the wintry sky. “You don’t know that! Maybe they want to make me the KGB Employee of the Month.”

“NOT funny.”

“Oh, believe me, it is. You just haven’t seen my service record.”

They were in the middle of Andreyevsky Bridge, one of their favorite routes for a night stroll. In the distance, the shimmering city light cast a dazed halo over the dome of the night sky. 

Valery stopped, his legs refusing to carry him any further. Sensing his growing distress, Andrei tugged with his elbow until the arm leisurely laced through it drew the rest of the professor close. He pulled off his glove and, like he did every time Valery got anxious, placed a warm hand on top of the one clutching the sleeve of his coat.

Valery’s eyes fluttered closed. “I”m sorry,” he breathed. “I’m so sorry. I know I have no right to…” He shook his head, snorting. “I’m not good at this. The worrying.”

Andrei smiled, puffing a laugh of silvery air and rubbing Valery’s whitening knuckles. “Oh, I think you’re doing just fine, Valery Alexeyevich,” he winked, “worrying-wise.”

Valery swallowed around the thickening lump in his throat. “You don’t understand. That man... You don’t know him. What he’s capable of.”

He still wonders if he imagined the harrowing shadow cross Andrei’s face.  Or the way his jaw clenched for a brief moment before he forcibly shook it off, and, resuming their walk, gave Valery the most reassuring smile he could muster. 

“Just… Trust me, Valery Alexeyevich. It’ll be alright. I’ll be alright. I promise.”

But it wasn’t.

With his stomach issuing a new wave of dread with each flip, Valery looks down again. 

It’s been two hours. The black Volga is parked in its usual spot across the street, the sheen of condensation on the windshield nearly obscuring the dark silhouette in the driver’s seat. 

The new guy. A boy, really. A different boy. 

Not his boy.

Because his boy… 

Valery shivers, feeling the same gnawing numbness that taunted his sleep scramble from the base of his spine to the roots of his ebbing hair. Oh God, please, please be ok.

______________

Ironically, the first thing they really talked about was the shadows. 

The Tuesday of September 1 was shaping out to be like any other day, with the slight aberration at 7:30 when his parents called to wish him a happy birthday. Like every conversation they’d had since his return from Chernobyl - awkward and reticent, with a garnish of stifled sobs - this one was no exception. And by quarter to eight he was out the door, briefcase in hand, ready to start yet another round of work, grocery shopping, correcting papers, and a lonely dinner as a prelude to senseless oblivion of sleep.

It all changed when a typically harmless four words startled him into a near stupor as he was leaving the grocery store that evening: “Happy Birthday, Valery Alexeyevich!"

Looking up at the smiling face of a young man who seemed to have materialized out of thin air, Valery realized two things. 

One - he’d missed him. As ridiculous as it sounded - he’d actually missed an operative on his KGB detail. They’d never crossed paths again since that one time in mid-august, after which Valery went back to living out the rest of his life in torturous isolation, and Andrei - to watching him do just that. But he’d missed the way his eyes softened and crinkled whenever he smiled, and the way his laugh rolled and bubbled like that of a child. He’d missed the thick, generous warmth of his voice, and the tethering weight of his touch. His bashful charm, his quiet resolve, even his sadness - he’d missed everything. 

And two -

“I don’t even know your name,” he mused, and, cursing under his breath, added: "I actually said that out loud, didn't I?"

Andrei laughed. "Afraid so.” 

And he did what gave birth to the first of their many ongoing jokes, where, rolling his eyes in mock exasperation, Valery would teasingly suggest Andrei get in his time machine and go back where he came from, which, depending on how ridiculously old fashioned Andrei’s behavior would be at the time, usually ranged from between the 16th and 19th centuries.

Standing straight, arms pressed to the sides of his body, he gave Valery a sharp, gallant nod.

 "Junior grade Lieutenant Andrei Alexandrovich Olenev with the Committee of State Security at your service.”

Fairly amused, Valery found himself stifling a snort. “Now, that’s a mouthful.”

“But impressive, eh?” Andrei probed with an impish smirk.

Valery grimaced a skeptical “Meh.”

“...intimidating?”

“Oh, under different circumstances - perhaps.   But…” His index finger drew a round of circles in front of Andrei’s face, “... when you’re grinning like a three-year-old on the ferris-wheel with that stalk of grass dangling from your mouth - not so much, no.”

Impossible as it seemed, Andrei’s grin grew even wider. In return, Valery’s head bobbed a distinct ‘I rest my case’ .  

“If it helps, it does have a nice ring to it. Your name, that is, not that… other part,” Valery admitted. “Speaking of which…” It was only then that he noticed ‘The Sentinel’ in the driver’s seat of the black Volga, looking every bit as bewildered as he was. “You’re not on duty.”

Following his gaze, Andrei gave his dumbfounded colleague a cheerful wave, that, if anything, seem to deepen the man’s confusion even further. 

With a jesting shrug, he returned his attention to the professor. “It’s my day off.”

One of Valery’s eyebrows slinked up. “See, that really raises more questions than it answers.”

“Oh, I know.”

“And…?”

“Aaaaand… seeing how this morning I was authorized to make contact with the subject of my - uh, you - I figured, I’d stop by to see if you needed a hand with…” Peeking into the net bag that hung heavily from Valery’s hand, “...kefir, is it?”

Valery blinked. “I”m sorry, you’ve been authorized to… what?”

“Make contact,” Andrei repeated nonchalantly, reaching for the net-full of dairy products. “May I?” Before Valery could answer, he carefully took the bag from his hand, and, turning sideways, offered a courteously bent elbow. “Shall we, then?”

To this day he’s unsure what made him step closer and lace his arm through Andrei’s. But he did. And, just like that, they were walking towards his apartment building: a weary, slightly bemused professor, and an off-duty junior rank KGB operative, bag-full of groceries dangling from one arm, sickly frame of a world-renowned chemist wrapped around the other.

And that’s when it happened.

“Did you see the shadows?” Andrei asked as they passed through the front door, climbing the stairs to Valery’s apartment.

As if awakened from a spell, Valery raised two hazy eyes to his face, his tone, neither question nor statement, falling squarely between curiosity and befuddlement. “The shadows?” 

“Yes,” Andrei nodded. “Like in Hiroshima? My father, he said after the attack they found black shadows on the walls of some buildings where people were incinerated by the blast. Burnt onto the stone.”

“Oh.” Genuinely surprised, Valery gave him the kind of ‘you’re-not-so-dumb-after-all’ look that over the following months Andrei would grow rather fond of.

“So, did you see them?”

“Um. No.”

“Because you couldn’t get close enough to the reactor building?”

“Well, that, of course.”

“But…?”

“But what?”

“Sounds like there was another reason.” 

“Well, yes, of course.”

Andrei lifted the hand laden with groceries, propelling it forward in a slow, circular motion. “Which waaaaasssss…?”

“...something that, thanks to the glorious institution for which you’re working, I’m not at liberty to discuss.”

Touché. “Yes, but—”

“With anyone.”

They covered the last flight of stairs in silence. Valery - cursing himself for being unnecessarily abrupt yet unable to utter a word of apology, Andrei - with a sad, understanding smile that made the guilt so much harder to bear. 

“Happy Birthday, Valery Alexeyevich,” he wished again with a chivalrous bow, placing the bag’s knitted handles back in its owner’s hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow. For what it’s worth, I hope you have a nice evening. And a good night's sleep.”

He had already started down the stairs when the fussy jingling of Valery’s keys ceased abruptly, stopping him in his tracks.

“We didn’t see the shadows,” Valery began, hesitantly at first, “because they weren’t there. And they weren’t there, because, under those conditions, they weren’t possible.” And, just like that, the dam behind which his voice had been trapped for weeks was breached irreparably. “See, what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, those shadows you refer to, had nothing to do with the radiation - not the kind of radiation there was in Chernobyl, anyway - and everything to do with the explosion of a nuclear bomb . The closest we’ve come to understanding this phenomenon is that it’s not the object that’s burnt into the stone, but rather the stone itself that is ‘bleached’ as a result of being exposed to the enormous amount of thermal radiation carried in the blast. A part of this radiation is inevitably absorbed by the body separating the blast from the wall, thus creating a kind of a… photograph, actually… but in reverse. Like a negative, where the underexposed parts are the ones showing.”

A long pause followed. His hand on the rail, fingers tapping distractedly, Andrei seemed to consider what he’d heard with due gravity. 

“Are you certain?” he asked, at last.

Blown out of his comfort zone so fast his head spun, one of the world-leading experts in nuclear energy blinked an indignant sequence of question marks.

“Am I cer… I’m sorry, what?”

“It’s just—” Andrei smiled, shrugging charily. “I think you may be wrong.”

Valery’s brow hit his hairline. “You think I'm wrong.”

“May be wrong. Yes.”

“I see. And— Forgive me, but— may I ask what scientific principle you’re basing this… um, hypothesis on?”

Andrei squinted, winking. “Uhm… trust but verify?”

Good one. “NOT funny.”

“Are you certain?”

“Am I cer…”

He was beginning to see a pattern. 

Andrei’s laugh filled the stupefied silence. “Tell you what. How about we continue tomorrow? I’m off at seven… ish. There’s a nice little coffee shop on the Gorki side of Andreyevsky Bridge.” Impossibly dumbstruck even further, Valery swallowed. He was about to say something, or at least he had hoped he was, when, already on the lower stair landing, Andrei turned around. “And, Valery Alexeyevich? In this weather, I’d hurry to put the kefir away.”

Unbidden, Valery’s eyes fell onto his net bag, widening in awe at the sight of an envelope tucked between the dew-peppered bottles. 

When he looked up, having recovered from the initial shock, Andrei was gone. Vanished. As if pulled back through the same portal from which he came, the only proof he ever existed held in the spellbound smile plastered on Valery’s face. 

That, and the quite substantial envelope labeled ‘Happy Birthday, Valera’, containing a sole piece of paper with, arguably, the most awe-striking gift he’d ever received. 

On one side, drawn in great detail, were three rather elaborate schematics of nuclear reactor designs - none of the RBMK type. Highly particularized, each one also included what appeared to be a fairly intricate list of reasons behind their choices of coolant and moderator.

On the bottom of the page, the schematic was underlined by a painstakingly thorough exemplification of the entire Uranium 239 decay chain, with a rather badgering footnote that stated the following: ‘The half-life is actually more like 24,200 years, you smartass. Fair warning: it’s taken me over three weeks to put this together. You point out a single mistake, you smug dork, and I’ll have Andrei throw you under a bus.”

On the other side, causing Valery’s sight blur and muddle, it read:

‘Now I know how a nuclear reactor works.’

Followed by:

“And I still need you.’

Chapter Text

Three months ago, before he’d even sat down next to Boris and, without saying a word, handed him the note that would change their lives forever, he'd known that, sooner or later, today would come. And that, when it did, chances were he would end up losing a hell of a lot more than he did the first time he had disobeyed an order.

So, when Natasha’s voice jolts him out of his reverie, his eyes flutter open with the quiet resignation of someone who knew this would be the end of the journey from the moment they set on.

“He’ll see you now, Lieutenant,” she says. 

...and, exhaling through pursed lips to soothe the dull pain in his leg, he stands up.

The drapes are open this time around, the low winter sun filtering through the frost-ornamented windows and painting the carpeted floor with the faintest origami of delicate shadows. 

There’s a long, menacing pause, the same kind he was given as a child every time he’d be late for a family dinner, before, pointedly setting down the thick file in his hands, his uncle looks up.

“Comrade Olenev,” he starts, two words that, under the circumstances, instantly reduce an active operative to a person of interest in an ongoing investigation. “What is the nature of your relationship with the deputy chairman Shcherbina?”

Out of the many comebacks on the tip of Andrei’s tongue he twizes the one that, from life-long acquaintance with the man, he knows will send him flying over the edge with most effectiveness.

“Private. Sir.”

He barely holds back a smile at the sight of the bulging vein on Charkov’s temple. 

“What?”

“Private,” Andrei repeats in a low, measured voice, holding the man’s stare with cold derision. “The nature of my relationship with the deputy chairman,” he adds. “It’s private. As in none-of-your-fucking-business.”

A concept, he realizes, whose meaning is entirely lost on anyone within the walls of Lubyanka, let alone his uncle.

Unsure what to expect, he watches the first deputy slowly circle his desk and eventually come to a stop several feet away.

“You will cease all contact immediately,” Charkov hisses under his breath, disregarding Andrei's outburst. “Do you hear me? From this moment on, you’re not to meet, speak on the phone, or have any kind of communication with Shcherbina. Is that clear?”

Andrei clears his throat. “Cristal, sir.”

“And you’re off Legasov’s detail. Effective immediately. Report to your supervisor for reassignment as soon as this meeting is over.”

Andrei huffs a cheerless snort, closing his eyes for a moment. When he opens them again, their color is all but gone, swallowed almost entirely by the dark of his blown pupils.

“No.”

Charkov steps closer. “I think you misunderstood me. This wasn’t a request.”

“I understood you just fine. Sir . And the answer is still no.”

There’s that bulging vein again. “Mouthy little turd, aren’t you?” Charkov spits, the pungent stench of tobacco on his breath adding to the gravely zest of his tone. “You think you can get away with talking to me like that just because you’re my sister’s bastard?”

Swallowing the last insult, Andrei narrows his eyes. “Worked so far.”

Charkov moves his face closer still. “I raised you, you ungrateful piece of shit. If it weren’t for me, you’d still be drinking yourself into a near-stupor every day. Or worse, stick your head in a noose like that buddy of yours that you carried on your back across the minefield, a lot of good that did, to either of you. I was the one who plucked you off the streets, got you into the best rehabilitation program, best orthopedic surgeons in the country. I got you this job, vouched for you, when nobody would, not even your own mother.”

Andrei presses his lips into a thin, contemptuous smile, raising both eyebrows. 

"Something amusing?" Charkov barks.

Andrei seizes him up with sheer, undisguised mockery. “Circle of accountability is a fickle bitch, isn’t it?”

Charkov chuckles, matching his tone. “Always the wiseass," he shakes his head. "Just like your dissident rat of a father was. Always too smart for your own good.” And he closes the gap between them further. “Do you know what we do to treacherous toads like you in this country?”

Andrei doesn’t budge, standing even taller and eyeing the man with a sharp, icy stare. “Well, thanks to this job you got me, I’d say I have a pretty good idea.”

“Don’t you forget that. And don’t you think for one second that I’ll put up with this shit forever just because you're my flesh and blood.” Seeing as Andrei just continues to glare, he presses on. “And, Andryusha, even if that were true, even if I had to continue to tolerate your  sorry, ungrateful, one-legged ass for the rest of my life for your mother’s sake, it would behoove you to remember that I have no such reservations when it comes to your new buddies. Either of them.”

A dark shadow crosses Andrei’s face but is gone just as fast. With deep intake of breath he regains his composure.

“On the other hand,” he speaks at last, meeting the first deputy’s menacing stare with a smirk of thin-veiled aversion. “Why worry about something that isn't going to happen?”

Charkov crosses his arms. “And who, may I ask, is going to stop me? A pathetic, one-legged drunk like you? You wouldn’t even be in the same room as me if it weren’t for who you are.”

Andrei closes and opens his eyes again. “True as that may be...” he says as his half-lidded, narrow-eyed stare latches onto Charkov's in what feels like stranglehold. “See, we all have those little relationships whose nature is…" He pointedly clears his throat. “...private. Don't we, uncle? The only difference is: mine involves visiting a dying, old man at the hospital. While yours…” He lets out a humourless snort. “Let’s just say that your private affairs aren't exactly the kind of thing that wins one bonus points with the senior party officials.”

Seeing as his message has finally struck the nerve, he closes the rest of the distance between them.

“And if that doesn’t work, there’s always another way.” He towers over Charkov completely now. “You've read my military file, didn’t you, sir?” he spits the last word. “You know what I did in Afghan. So it would behoove you to remember that my best kill was a taliban huddled in a trench just under two kilometers from where I was posted. And while I realize it’s been awhile, and my aim may have gotten a little rusty, what with being a drunk and all -  rest assured: you touch one hair on either one of their heads, and when I come for you, we won't need to be in the same room. Nor would I need two legs, for that matter."

He’s almost at the door, reaching for the handle, when he hesitates, spins around, and crosses the room in three determined strides. 

Sharp pain shoots through his knuckles all the way to his neck at the same time as he watches the form of the first deputy twist awkwardly as it’s set flying sideways before slumping to the floor like a boneless sack. 

For a moment that feels like eternity Andrei hovers over him, eyes wide, jaw clenched, shaking his throbbing fist open. 

“And don’t you dare speak of my father ever again,” he growls at last, gritting his teeth.

And he walks out.

Out of the room, down the stairs, out of the yellow mammoth of Lubyanka where the high, afternoon sun spills gallons of graceful light on his tear-stained face..

...where he walks, and runs, and walks, and runs again... 

...through the crippling pain that rips through his body from under his left knee…

...through the rights and wrongs of his life...

...for hours…

...all the way across town...

...to Kruchatov’s Institute of Atomic Energy.

Chapter Text

It’s almost noon when Valery catches a glimpse of Andrei approaching the surveillance car from the far side of the street.

The sense of relief tears through him in ripples, each wave wrenching the air out of his throat in a shaky exhale, sending his heart into a frenzied flutter and bringing his knees to a near-buckling state.

The baffled expression of the operative currently occupying the stakeout spot suggests apprehension at being, it seems, untimely dismissed from his post. For a few moments Valery watches the terse exchange taking place at the driver’s window, until he feels he's seen enough. Briefcase in hand, he hurriedly worms his arms through the sleeves of his winter coat and is out the door. A panting, fatigued mess, he stumbles down the stairs of his building and onto the street, paying no mind to the screeching and honking sea of the afternoon traffic surrounding him.

Judging by the bewildered look on the face of the young man vacating the driver seat as he approaches, it occurs to Valery that he’s probably the only subject in the history of the KGB to be seen rushing towards the surveillance vehicle.

He doesn’t care. And, dangerously out of breath, he crosses the last few feet by basically stumbling forward into the iron grip of Andrei’s ready arms.

“Easy,” he hears through the rush of blood in his ears, followed by a soft breath of laughter punched out of Andrei’s chest by their collision. “Easy, Valery Alexeyevich.”

He pulls away, a panting, embarrassed twine of limbs and panic, glasses askew, hands clasping Andrei’s arms and shoulders, patting him up and down as if to make sure he’s really there.

His stare remains anchored deep in the liquid-gold of those smiling eyes, hazel flecks set ablaze by the shimmering sunlight. “You’re… My God, you’re ok…” is all he can muster before another wave of relief snatches his breath.

Gently squeezing his shoulders, Andrei nods, “I’m fine, Valery Alexeyevich,” and, with a  broadening smile, slightly tilts his head to the side: “Are you? I went straight to the Institute after my meeting. They said you never showed up this morning.”

Mumbling a litany of excuses  - something about needing more time to review some papers and having to make a couple of phone calls from home - he realizes halfway through that, judging by the increasingly adoring look on Andrei’s face, he isn’t buying any of this.

“I was worried,” Valery admits, at last, bashfully fumbling with his briefcase.

Andrei smiles. “I told you, you shouldn’t be.”

“I’m sorry, but having witnessed first hand what that man is capable of, you’ll have to forgive my not being entirely convinced by the whole ‘it’ll be ok, Valery Alexeyevich’ assertion.”

His admission is met with another exhale of laughter and a courteous nod. “Fair enough,” Andrei says, and the reverently bemused look on his face gives way to a devious grin as his eyes flicker toward the Volga. “So… Save you a bus ticket?”

Valery imagines his eyes expanding to the size and shape of his grandmother’s pancakes. “You're not serious.”

Andrei shrugs. “Why not? It’s not like we’re not going to the same place... eventually,” he adds, winking. “Consider it part of the service package.”

“Part of the KGB surveillance service package,” Valery clarifies with an unmistakable whiff of sarcasm.

“Exactly.”

“You’re out of your mind. You know that, right?”

“Interestingly, you’re not the first person to point that out to me this morning. And yet my offer stands.”

To show just how serious he is, Andrei circles the car and, holding the handle of the gallantly opened passenger door, waits for the profusely befuddled professor to come around. Which, inevitably, Valery does, albeit still muttering weak protests under his breath as he clumsily climbs in.

The few moments it takes for Andrei to cross over and slip into the driver seat feel like they stretch interminably. And even then, despite the comfort of his voice warming the cold interior and the solace of his proximity wrapping Valery’s entire existence like an armored bubble, the gnawing unease remains.

Wheeling into the rush of the afternoon traffic, Andrei keeps his eyes trained on the road. Given this rare chance to really study his face, it's only now that Valery sees what he'd missed before: the wet clumps of the dark eyelashes, a muscle twitching occasionally where the forcibly clenched jaw connects to the rest of the face, and the delicate cobwebs of swollen blood vessels shredding the whites of Andrei’s eyes.

“What did he want with you?” he rasps. And, seeing Andrei’s throat visibly spasm as he struggles to swallow, adds, “Charkov. What was the meeting about?”

Taking a right turn, Andrei switches gears again, his face an impenetrable mask save for the bitter curl of a smirk.

“Attitude adjustment,” he grinds after a long moment.

Valery’s stomach coils in a knot. “Yours or his?”

With a small smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, Andrei lets out a dry chuckle. “We had a difference of opinion on the topic.”

A cold shiver runs down Valery’s spine. “You’re in trouble, aren’t you? Because of me. And Boris.”

For a moment, Andrei’s frozen features soften as he reaches to squeeze the professor’s forearm. “Don’t worry about it, Valery Alexeyevich.”

Glancing down reflexively at his touch, Valery’s throat elicits a low, gravely moan as his eyes fall on a set of swollen knuckles. Too late, Andrei quickly withdraws his arm.

“What happened to your hand?” Valery demands.

“Valery Alexeyevich—”

“Andrei, what happened to your hand?”

Andrei opens and closes his fist with a wincing grimace. “I punched my uncle,” he quips with a thin smile. 

“Your uncle.”

Rolling his eyes, Andrei adds, “Well… he’s also my boss.”

As the reality seeps in, the dark patches cluttering Valery's peripheral vision start bleeding inwards. "Your boss. As in… Charkov… the first deputy of the KGB is… you punched…"

With a small, breathy laugh, Andrei casts a sly grin sideways. "Tell me you're more eloquent than this when you teach classes, Valery Alexeyevich."

He’s about to retort with “You think this is funny?” or another comeback to that effect, when a sudden shift in mood, the sight of Andrei’s face suddenly draining of blood, stops him.

“My God, you’re shaking,” he mutters, noticing Andrei’s trembling hand struggling to hit the next gear. 

“I’m fine, Valery Alexeyevich.”

“Stop the car.”

“I’m fine.”

“Andrei, stop the car. Please.”

Suddenly, as if an imaginary screen has been lifted, the whole of Andrei’s face wobbles as he futilely attempts to blink back the tears flooding his eyes. 

The snort he stifles comes out sounding more like a dull sob. “You know... I’ve never been particularly good at taking orders.”

“Yes, I’m starting to see that,” Valery attempts to joke, bringing the last of Andrei's walls crumbling down all together. “Please,” he adds in a much softer tone, his hand coming to rest in the fold of Andrei’s elbow, his eyes on the bloody whitening knuckles where his hand grips the wheel. “Please. Turn around, drive back to my house, and stop the car.”

Sucking a sharp breath through his clenched teeth, Andrei finally manages what looks like a small nod.

The flawlessly executed U-turn at the end of the street sends not just Valery’s body into inertial spin but his mind, too, as he’s hit with the realization that this gentle, attentive boy with his flamboyant smile and impeccable manners, who loves Dostoyevsky, and Babel, and Gorki, and Beatles, of all things, who can recite Yevgeny Onegin by heart and has more of a knack for molecular physics than most of his graduate students, is, above all, a highly trained operative in one of the most merciless law-enforcing establishments on the planet. Which, in turn, makes him wonder how someone who enjoys playing guitar, singing old bard songs, and strolling the river bank at his leisure, ended up where he did; and why.

By the time they pull into a recently vacated spot across the street from Valery’s building, Andrei’s breathing has grown less ragged, the sheen of sweat on his forehead all but gone.

Still avoiding Valery’s eyes, he kills the engine and, for a long moment, continues to stare off into space through the dusty windshield. The soft touch that closes around his hand makes him flinch.

“Let’s go,” the professor says, in a low, insistent tone that leaves little room for discussion.

Andrei’s frozen features come alive with a faint flicker of puzzlement. “Where?”

Valery points up in the general direction of his window. “Home,” he says, unceremoniously removing the keys from the ignition and unbuckling Andrei’s seatbelt. “Where I can tend to your hand,” he proceeds to elaborate. “And where you can keep... surveilling me, but, you know, from really up close.”

The attempted humour, however lame, breaks Andrei’s pained expression into the smallest of smiles. “Thank you for the offer, Valery Alexeyevich,” he says at last, finally letting the air he’s been holding funnel out. “But I don’t think I should.”

“You know, even if you were vying for the ‘KGB employee of the month’ spot, I’m fairly certain that ship has sailed.”

Andrei laughs, his eyes closing with a sigh of exhausted exasperation as he’s beginning to realize that saying ‘no’ to the first deputy of the KGB is about to prove the second hardest thing he’s done since the morning. 

“It’s not—” he shakes his head, smiling softly. “I have a—” The words feel like shards of glass in his throat. “I have a condition,” he manages finally, gulping. “When I get like this… It’s not… pretty.”

Unfazed, the professor reaches to squeeze his arm again. “Neither, I’m sure, is my coughing up blood in public. And yet, you’ve seen me do that on more occasions than I care to remember.” He nudges a little more forcibly, making Andrei’s thrown-back head roll to-and-fro against the black leather. “Come on.” He winks. “I make a mean cup of tea.”

Closing his eyes again, Andrei snorts.

“Got anything stronger than tea?” he asks after a long moment, finally turning to meet the professor's eye.

Unbuckling himself and reaching for the passenger door handle, Valery chuckles. “Haven’t you heard? My excellent vodka shots are what I’m really famous for.”

Not even five minutes later, following the non-negotiable command to “Sit. There. And take your coat off,” Andrei slumps into the couch on the far side of the living room, watching Valery disappear into the bedroom only to emerge a few seconds later with a neatly folded throw blanket and what looks like a makeshift first-aid kit.

Ignoring his weakening by the minute protests, the world-renowned chemist drapes the quilt over his slouched back and shoulders, muttering “My God, you’re still shaking” under his breath as he continues to rub Andrei’s arms up and down with increasing force and intensity.  “Should I get a warmer one?”

Andrei shakes his head, smiling weakly. “Thank you.  But it won’t help. I’m not cold.”

“Right. Right,” Valery catches himself. “The… condition.”

Andrei nods. “It’ll pass. It’s the… post adrenaline rush tremors. I sometimes get them.”

“Right.” And, upon short hesitation, the professor slaps his knees, standing up. “Well, I’m sure a cup of tea won’t hurt.”

Before Andrei can object - or request that aforementioned “something stronger” - Valery disappears into the kitchen. 

When he comes back, carrying a tray with two cups, a plateful of biscuits, and an old chipped at the top brewing pot, he finds Andrei doubled over, rubbing around his left knee.

“Take it off,” he says, setting the tray on the coffee table. And, answering Andrei’s quizzically arched eyebrow, he points to his awkwardly stooped leg. “The prosthesis. You can take it off. Looks like it’s killing you.”

The perplexed look in Andrei’s eyes is replaced by that of astounded bewilderment. “How do you—”

Valery sits next to him on the couch, elbows on knees. “Why, you think you’re the only one good at watching people?” he asks with a sad, quivering smile.

Andrei blows a chuckle. “Touché.” 

Rolling up the sleeve of his jeans, he carefully unstraps the wood-metal-and-plastic contraption that’s been mercilessly rubbing against his eroded flesh since his two-hour walk-run across town this morning. Letting out a sigh of relief,  he pulls it out from the now calfless folds of the rough fabric.

“Here.” Valery takes the prosthesis, setting it down next to the side of the couch, just within arm’s reach, so that Andrei wouldn’t need to get up should he decide to strap it back on. “Fancy,” he mumbles, admiring the elaborate design, and, cursing at his treacherous lack of tact, retreats just as quickly. “I’m sorry… Forgive me. I didn’t mean—”

Andrei laughs. “It’s fine. And it is - fancy. German. ‘The latest marvel of artificial limbs design’ I believe they called it. My uncle…” He puts an extra emphasis on the last word. “He likes making people feel like they owe him.”

Shaking his head, Valery resumes pouring the tea. “Same land mine?” he asks at last, eyes flickering to the splotchy patch of the burn scar on the side Andrei’s face.

Andrei nods, slowly. “The one and only.”

“So… this condition of yours. “Wouldn’t happen to be PTSD, would it?”

Andrei lets out a bitter snort. “Haven’t you heard? We don’t have PTSD in the Soviet Union. That’s just some capitalist mumbo-jumbo the weak have in the West.”

“Is that so?” Matching his tone, Valery runs a hand over his head, pointedly showing a fistful of thin, sickly hairs. “What a coincidence. As it turns out, we don’t have radiation sickness, either.”

They both laugh, a cheerless sound followed by another stretch of dreary silence.

“Have you gotten any treatment at all?” Valery inquires, unsure if he should, but feeling compelled to say something.

Andrei shakes his head. “No. None of us have. And a lot of the guys I served with are a lot worse off than I am.” Before Valery can answer, he reaches into his pocket to produce a small, crumpled object, tossing it on the coffee table between them.

Valery’s breath catches at the sight of a faded coat of arms, red star at its heart crowned with a billowing canvas of Soviet flag. “Is that—”

Andrei nods. “Order of the Red Banner,” pointing at the symbol of highest praise a Soviet soldier could ever dream of. “Hero of the Motherland, returned from the battlefields of a country we had no business invading in the first place. That’s what I got for carrying a man on my back through a minefield - an order of valor.” His voice trails off for a moment. “You know what happened to that man?”

Valery’s afraid to ask. 

“One day,” Andrei starts, “a couple of months after we got back, a tire blew outside his apartment building. His daughter - three years old at the time - was near the window. So, he throws himself at her, tackles her to the ground, and doesn’t let go. For a good half an hour. Nearly suffocated the poor thing by the time his wife got the neighbors to help her get him off of the child.”

“My God."

“Oh, there’s more,” Andrei promises with a bitter smirk. “He had nightmares. We all had. Nightmares, flashbacks, rage fits - the whole deal. Some worse than others. He said he kept seeing the moment that mine went off, a deafening blast, a flash of fire, me crawling towards him, then both of us - crawling the rest of the way out of the minefield, until the medics picked us up. He’d wake up in the middle of the night, screaming his head off, scaring his wife and daughter, waking the neighbors. It had gotten so bad - that, plus the rage fits and drinking - his wife finally asked him to leave. Three months later, he hung himself in his parents’ kitchen.”

For a long while Valery doesn’t speak, neither one of them does. “I’m sorry,” he mutters, eventually.

Andrei sets down his cup of tea on the coffee table, hand slightly shaking again. “It’s… it is what it is, I guess,” he sighs, pinching his eyes. “I used to drink too. You don’t have dreams when you black out, did you know that?” He breathes a dry laugh through his nose, motioning with his chin to the medal. “For two years I used to look at the damn thing as I’d drink myself to sleep every night and try to remember why I’d signed up in the first place.”

Without saying a word, Valery once again retreats into the kitchen, returning some minutes later with a frosted over, half-full bottle of Stolichnaya and two clean glasses. Resuming his place by Andrei’s side, he fills both with more than either of them would be able to stomach, handing one to Andrei as he lifts his own.

“Are there listening devices in my apartment?” he inquires, before making a toast. 

Andrei frowns. “I’m… on the active surveillance detail, so I wouldn’t know.”

“Humor me. Please."

“I’m guessing there are. Quite a few."

Valery nods. “Good. Good,” and he raises his glass higher. “To the Motherland,” he proposes, eliciting a raised eyebrow from the man next to him. “May it burn in a hell of its own making long after the men and women who’ve given their lives and limbs for its fraudulent honor are gone.”

Andrei smiles, the first real one Valery has seen since he stumbled into his arms what feels like a lifetime ago. “Best toast I’ve heard in years,” he says, clinking their glasses together.

And they both drink up.

A few shots later, his knuckles thoroughly cleaned and bandaged, unceremoniously unfolded onto the couch and, despite his repeated protests, wrapped in another blanket, Andrei feels the anxiety-jammed cogs of his mind slowly wheeling back into motion. Eyes half closed, from the throes of a pleasant, dizzying buzz, he finally lets go of this morning’s anger, losing himself to the brittle, smoke-permeated bass of Valery’s voice.

Valery sits next to him on the edge of the sofa, still sipping his tea, lighting cigarette after cigarette, and occasionally rubbing Andrei’s arm though the tremors are long gone. 

He talks. Whether it’s to take Andrei’s mind off whatever happened this morning, or to lose himself to the memories of a life that had once held promise and joy, he doesn’t know. But he keeps talking, telling Andrei riotous anecdotes of his most ostentatious students, of scandalously disproved papers, of poorly designed experiments that went wackily wrong. He tells him about the woman he almost married once and whom he lost - before he’d even gotten a chance to propose - to failing to carve enough time out of his busy schedule. He tells him about never really regretting not having a family until it was painfully too late. 

Andrei listens, cocooned in layers of wool, the familiar smell of tobacco, and more kindness than he’s been shown in decades. For the first time since he was a lost, grief-stricken fourteen-year old walking behind his father’s coffin, he allows himself to give in to the memories he’s kept locked away in an aging-proof bubble. Each time he closes his eyes, he’s back in his childhood bedroom, swaddled in the warmth of a flannel-laden embrace, his ear to his father’s chest where words are born that make up long and magnificent stories of magical lands, bold inventors, fearless dreamers, and pioneers of first avionic and naval designs.

“Thank you,” he whispers, feeling his eyes sting.

Smothering another cigarette butt in the small ashtray, Valery shakes his head. “No,” he smiles, tucking the loose edge of the throw blanket under Andrei’s arm. “Thank you.” His grin broadens further as he reaches to scratch the soft, purring ball nestled nex to Andrei’s face on the pillow. “And you are a traitor,” he admonishes flippantly with a low, husky laugh, watching Sasha snuggle her head even deeper into the crevice.

For a long moment of blissful silence neither one of them speaks. And then, unbidden, Valery’s eyes fall again on Andrei’s bandaged knuckles. 

“What did he say?” he asks. “Charkov. What did he do to make you punch him?”

Andrei closes and opens his eyes with a long, drawn out sigh. “What he always does. Badmouthed my father.”

“Oh,” Valery’s head cocks to the side. “So that wasn’t the first time you punched him.”

Andrei snorts. “Probably not the last, either.”

Lighting another cigarette, Valery takes a sip from his tea. “I take it the two didn’t see eye to eye,” eliciting another snort. “Understatement of the century?” he props with a thin smile.

“I’d say,” Andrei hisses.

When the pause becomes too long, Valery back-pedals. “I’m sorry. I did not mean to pry.”

“No, it’s…” Propping himself higher, Andrei seems to gather his thoughts. “My father,” he strains finally, swallowing hard. “His family. Who they were before the Revolution. ‘White bone,’ he calls us. My uncle does. ‘Royal blood’. ‘Vestiges of the past’. ‘A shameful stain on the proud face of our proletariat nation’.”

Astounded, Valery sets his cup on the coffee table. He’s never really given it much thought, and now he’s wondering how he could possibly have missed it. “You don’t mean…” He shakes his head at his own daftness. “Your last name. You don’t mean— the Olenev?” When Andrei just raises and drops his eyebrows, he whistles. “Olenev as in—  Grand Duke Olenev?”

With a feigned, embarrassed smile, Andrei nods.

“My God,” gasps Valery. “I thought— I didn’t think any of them survived the Revolution.”

“Almost didn’t. My great grandfather escaped to the far East by the skin of his teeth. The rest of his family was butchered. My grandfather was born in Yakutsk. It wasn’t until 1941 that he and my grandmother moved back to Moscow. He tried to leave it behind: joined the party, fought in the War - the 3rd tank battalion, Moscow and Stalingrad. He thought if he fit in, embraced the change, his past wouldn’t catch up with him or his family. But it did. And in ‘45 he was taken. Disappeared during the Stalin Purge. For no other reason than ‘white bone’. My grandmother didn’t think she’d ever see him again. But in ‘48 he came back, a shell of a man. In 1950 my father was born. Two months later my grandfather died of pneumonia.” 

He takes a moment, lost in his thoughts with a sorrowful smile.

“My grandmother named my father Alexander. After my great grandfather, the only surviving heir of a centuries-old dynasty. I’m named after his baby brother, Andrei Olenev, who was killed along with the rest of the family in 1917.”

For a while, Valery is stunned into mournful silence. Not by the sheer injustice and tragedy of a story he knows to be that of many. But by once again seeing this country - a desperate dream of millions - for what it’s become: a resplendent facade hiding rotten interior, built on a graveyard of lies, phony slogans, limbless boys, broken lives, and generations forced to endure subjugation, and shaming.

Craving the fragile feeling of joy he had just minutes ago, he pushes the thought away.

“I guess, I wasn’t too-too far off, was I?” he quips with a playfully impish smile, and answering the unspoken question posed by Andei’s wrinkled brow, adds: “My nickname for you. Before we met. Seems like you are a ‘little prince’ after all.”

“You had a nickname for me,” says Andrei, in what comes out more like a statement than a question.

“I had nicknames for all of you. I figured, if I was going to spend what was left of my life with the five of you, I might as well call you something.”

He watches Andrei’s features shudder before briefly breaking into a wistful smile. He breathes out, no longer fighting the deluge of tears. "I think he would've liked you. My father. I think he would’ve liked you very much.”

Valery smiles, running a hand back and forth over his arm. “As, I’m sure, would I,” he says hoarsely, watching a big, glistening drop plunge from the bridge of Andrei’s nose onto the crocheted pillow. 

Minutes go by under doleful cover of silence. 

"Why don't you get some sleep," the professor suggests as the patchy, erratic rhythm of Andrei's breathing slowly flattens. "I'll wake you up for the shift change at 7."

Fresh out of excuses and too exhausted to argue, Andrei nods a "Thank you," finally allowing his lead-heavy eyelids to drape over his teary eyes.

"Sweet dreams, Your Grace," teases Valery, earning himself a soft, sleepy snort.

"I'll never hear the end of it, will I?"

With a flippant "Not if I can help it, no," Valery begins to gather the cups and the glasses onto the tray when a clumped strands of hair tossed absentmindedly on the table hits him with a wall of grief over the realization that "never" may not be as long as Andrei thinks. 

He sits back, sifting through the jumbled flux of his thoughts as he desperately tries to locate the feeling he’d had only three months ago, listening to the dry facts of his dire prognosis outlined by his hematologists. He felt sad, true, but also - relieved. Relieved that he won’t live long enough to have watched the entirety of his life’s work snatched away and dismantled, that this torturous isolation he’s been doomed to endure will soon come to an end. 

He’s been living in the shadow of imminent death for so long it’s become like an old friend: always there, a rather comforting presence that has somehow managed to nearly alleviate the burden of fear and regret. 

And now, fear and regret are all that remains. Fear - of not having enough of these quiet, blissful moments before it’s too late, and regret - for not having more of them back when he still had the time.

“I think you were wrong about the shadows.”

He follows the soft, sleep-infused murmur of Andrei’s voice to the surface, blinking as the dreary gloom of his reverie parts in front of his eyes, replaced by a weak, cheekily boyish smile. “Not the shadows again,” he grumps, adoringly shaking his head in mock admonishment. “Sleep already.”

Sasha stirring and stretching under his chin, long whiskers mercilessly tickling his neck, Andrei nestles the side of his face on top of her head, grinning wider. “Boris Evdokimovich agrees with me.”

“Yes, quite an expert in nuclear physics your Boris Evdokimovich,” jests Valery, rolling his eyes in exaggerated exasperation.

Andrei breathes a laugh. “Ok, one - he’s your Boris Evdokomovich. And two…” He gives him a small, tentative shrug. “...maybe not everything is nuclear physics.”

More than a little bewildered but feeling compelled out of a decades-old habit to consider alternative explanations, for the first time since the question was first posed, Valery forces himself to stop thinking in terms of nuclear blasts and thermal explosions. 

Instead, as if suddenly able to look back at his time in Chernobyl through a newly adjusted prism, all he sees is lives - lives lost, lives given, lives taken away. 

Lives… inadvertently fused together.

And that’s when he finally sees them too. The shadows. Charred silhouettes. Them . Boris, himself, Ulana, the divers, the soldiers, hundreds of miners, tens of thousands of liquidators, even Andrei - all of them…

...seared onto one another by the callous, unsparing flames of Chernobyl...

...forever etched in the crumbling stone of what’s left of their lives.

Chapter Text

As someone whose job often requires him to work through the night, this isn’t the first time Andrei awakes confused and disoriented. There are days when it takes him a good five minutes to come to his senses as his consciousness shifts from the state of deep, often dreamless, sleep to that of complete alertness. It’s as if each time he goes to bed he’s pulled through a deviously warped wormhole whose other end is never where it’s expected to be.

This time, however, it’s even worse. It’s not enough that he can't even tell if it's day or night, what with the room being nearly pitch dark, but the few items his gradually adjusting eyesight does make out look utterly unfamiliar. 

It’s not until he feels a slight movement next to his chest, his groping hand immersing into the silk of unmistakably feline fur, that his surroundings finally start making sense. 

He must have slept for hours, because the small gap in the draped curtains reveals a patch of indigo-deep sky speckled with scarce stars.

The long streak of light crossing the living room appears to emanate from the kitchen, at least that’s what his sleep-and-vodka-impaired spatial orientation deduces as the events of this morning and afternoon slowly begin to string together. Along with the sole source of light, the tiny crack in the kitchen door ushers in mouth-watering smells of cooking and muffled sounds of hushed voices.

Voices. Plural. Two distinct ones, but he can’t be sure there aren’t more. There’s the brittle, gravely rasp that he knows to belong to Valery, albeit sounding entirely different than it did just hours ago. Measured, flat, studious - it reminds Andrei of the way his highschool geography teacher used to read out exam instructions. The other voice - hurried, intense, and impassioned - is undeniably female, and a young one at that.

Unable to discern enough of the overall topic but catching some random words such as ‘abstract’, ‘paragraph’, and ‘discussion’, he assumes the professor is busy reviewing one of his students' papers, probably - the conjecture that comes with a ping of guilt - keeping an appointment he’d missed after never showing for work this morning.

Over the months he’d spent surveilling this building he’d seen a lot of Valery’s students come and go, mostly late in the evening, some just once, others - on multiple occasions. It goes without saying that, unbeknown to them, their names and faces, along with detailed accounts of their backgrounds and circumstance, are diligently cataloged and included in their professors’ thickening-by-the-day KGB file. That, of course, doesn’t mean Andrei would be able to put a name to a face if he randomly saw one. Which, before he can finish the thought, is exactly what happens. 

For a brief moment, the light seeping through the crack of the kitchen door is obscured by a moving shadow, and then, as the door is pushed ajar, the room is filled with a blinding abundance of matted amber.

The woman that enters, grabbing a tattered briefcase from the stand under the halfway mirror, is one of the "frequent flyers". In the course of his watch alone he had seen her visiting the professor at home more than once. She’s here at least twice a week, always coming at late hours, sometimes over the weekend, often carrying a bag of groceries on her way in,  never on her way out. 

Her name is—

The sharp gasp as she absentmindedly glances in his direction to find him awake and propped on his elbow startles them both. Wide-eyed and perturbed, she clutches her chest, leaning against the wall behind her. “MY GOD, you scared me!”

He barely opens his mouth to utter a doubtfully earned apology when, already past the initial shock, she steps closer. With undisguised curiosity, she eyes him from head to toe for a long moment, cocking her head when she stops to study his rapidly reddening face.

“So, you’re him, huh?” she jests. “The KGB’s finest. In the flesh.”

Unsure as to what would constitute a proper response to the questionably flattering greeting, the most he comes up with is “Uhm… hello…?”

The unintentional spike in pitch at the end of his inarticulate compilation of syllables does not go unnoticed. “I’m sorry, is that a question?”

“Uhm… No…?”

“Is that a question?”

He’s never been particularly shy around girls. But then again, he’s never been a prodigiously smooth talker, either. So, getting a grip, he fully intends to remedy the predicament by standing up and properly introducing himself.

Which seems like a good idea, at first, until halfway there he realizes - too late - that he’s missing a leg, and ends up flopping back on the sofa, his promptly outstretched for a handshake arm failing to break the fall.

She laughs, not in a way that makes him embarrassed or angry - a bubbling, mirthful sound that, inevitably, elicits the same from him.  

She steps even closer, taking his awkwardly offered hand. “Sasha. Alexandra.” And a moment later, “...Vladimirovna Fadeyeva.”

From the few times he's seen her passing close enough to the car, he remembers her eyes being the color of muted green. But now, in the dim light, engulfed in a flurry of dark eyelashes, they appear to be almost translucent, a sea of silvery-grey. She may not be conventionally pretty, but her face framed by strawberry-blonde locks held in a sloppy knot by what seems like a - pen, is it? - is so strikingly earnest and open that all he can do is stare.

She prope ls her hand forward in slow, centrifugal motion, just like he often does. “Traditionally, this is when you tell me your name.” 

He shakes his head at his own inelegance. “Andrei,” he says, and, catching himself, adds: “...Alexandrovich Olenev.”

She winks. “Well, to be fair, I already knew that.”

This time around, he’s - figuratively - quick on his feet. “Well, to be fair, so did I.”

Sparing him the follow-up questions, the answer to which, given the nature of his occupation, seems fairly obvious, she tilts her head even further and crosses her arms. “So, you’re the hero, huh?”

Unbidden, his glance falls on the Order of the Red Banner where he’d tossed it on the coffee table earlier in the day. He grabs it, instinctively hiding his hand under the covers. “I’m no hero.”

“That’s not what I hear,” she disagrees, pointing with her thumb to the kitchen behind her back. “Valery Alexeyevich tells me you were the one who saved my doctoral dissertation draft from becoming one of the city’s early Revolution Day decorations. If it were up to me, that Order would be the Hero of the Soviet Union.”

Andrei runs a hand through his sleep-tousled hair. “Well… in case that was meant as a ‘thank you’, you’re quite welcome. As for the other part - I’ll pass.”

Once again, she appears to study his face, her expression shifting from curious to outright amused, which, in spite of the covers, makes him feel blisteringly exposed and self-conscious. “What?”

Her index finger pointed at his head, Sasha draws a number of virtual circles. “You got that cute pillow face thing going on there.”

Andrei swallows, suddenly realizing what it is she’s really looking at and wishing the couch would swallow him whole. “It’s a scar,” he rasps. “Not a pillow face.”

To his utter surprise, her smile widens. “Yes. I can see the scar. I meant the other side.”

Instinctively, he reaches to rub his face, as if doing could un-wrinkle his creased skin, an attempt so preposterously futile as to make her burst into laughter again. 

In the pause that follows, Andrei’s eyes fall on the clock. “What time is it?” he asks, squinting.

“Six. Almost,” she says. “Don’t worry. You still have a good hour before your shift change. You should wash up. Dinner's almost ready.” In response to the dubious look he directs at the kitchen, in a mock-conspiring whisper she adds, “Valery Alexeyevich is making his famous fried potatoes.”

“Famous as in…”

“...as in the only thing he knows how to make. But shhhhh. It's a State secret.”

Andrei winks. “I guess it’s a good thing then that protecting the State's secrets is what I am here for."

Coming from the kitchen, Valery’s flippantly scolding voice muzzles them both. “I heard that.”

At that moment, one of the world’s leading experts on nuclear energy appears in the doorway wearing an old apron and holding a… spatula, of all things, an image so exceedingly out of character as to make Andrei snort to the point where he ends up averting and palming his laugh-reddened face.

“Yes. Very funny,” Valery rebukes, shaking his head. “You can add that to your report tomorrow morning: ‘On occasion, the subject prepares and consumes food’. Now, listen to Comrade Fadeyeva and go wash up.” Turning his attention to his student, “Sashen'ka, we should really finish up before my brain shuts down completely.”

The unconventional familiarity of the chummy address and the long, smiling look that follows don’t escape Andrei’s notice. He can’t quite put his finger on what it is, but there’s something about their closeness that seems to transcend even the often blurry environs of cordial.

Promising to be “right there”, Sasha turns back to Andrei. “Sorry for getting you in trouble,” she whispers with a tauntingly impish grin.

He snorts again. “I’ve been in worse.”

Speaking of which, he reaches for the side of the sofa, groping in vain in search of his missing limb. Before he can bend over to see if it’s fallen behind the couch, Sasha is already there, picking up the prosthesis and handing it to him like it’s the most trivial thing in the world. 

“Here.”

Under any other circumstance, acutely self-conscious as he is when it comes to his disability, he would’ve been so embarrassed as to make the skin on his face peel and blister. But there’s something about the way she looks at him, eyes level with his as she crouches next to the couch, that works like a scram button, halting the chain reaction before the flustering meltdown begins. It’s not one of those dotingly overbearing looks that he gets from his mother and sister, like he’s made of porcelain and may shatter if not handled with care, nor is it the poorly concealed aversion that the rest of the world throws his way. She just looks at him, straight at him, into his eyes and beyond, with a small, endearing smile. 

“Don’t lose it again,” she winks, patting his knee as she stands up and giving him a disarmingly cheerful wave. “See you at dinner. Don’t be late.”

She leaves him stupefied, stumped, flabbergasted, with a dumbfounded grin that fails to wipe clean even after he splashes cold water all over his face. Brushing his teeth with a drop of toothpaste squeezed on the tip of his finger, he straightens his shirt collar, palm-combs his hair, abandons the failed attempts to rid his sweater of shedded fur, and, for a while, just stares at his red-eyed reflection.

He runs a hand over the molten pits of the scar on the left side of his face and neck, head slightly turned to allow for a better vantage point. 

He rarely does this - look at himself in the mirror for so long. 

It’s not like he’s repulsed by the scar, or by the way that it makes him look, or by the harrowing moment of which it serves an eternal reminder. It’s the way that dwelling on it makes him feel - like if he looks too hard or too long he will someday forget the real horrors he’d witnessed, forget what happened to some of his friends, forget Valery’s receding hair and the pile of heavily stained napkins on Boris’s nightstand. He’s afraid he’ll forget that a shortened limb and a patch of shriveled skin, all in all, are a small price to pay.

He doesn’t mind people asking about the scar, or talking about it, except that nobody ever does. She was the first one. Sasha. “Alexandra Vladimirovna Fadeyeva,” he mouths under his breath. In almost four years, she was the first one who didn’t just stare in horror, or compassion, or disgust, or all of the above. “Yes. I can see the scar,”  she said, shrugging, like it was not something you notice about a person, but something you see, like the shade of their eyes, or a peculiar constellation of freckles, or an unfortunately shaped nose.

He finds the kitchen a working mess, the small dining table littered with handwritten pages, notes, and articles. Smiling, he remembers his mother coming into the living room of their old apartment, rolling her eyes at his father’s “artistic disarray” of sketches, textbooks, and blueprints.

As if reading his mind, Valery lifts his eyes from the table, elbowing his student who, engrossed in her work, wearing disproportionally large glasses and another pen in her hair, looks like she's been plucked from a comic book featuring an absentminded (albeit dazzlingly brilliant) science geek. 

“Better salvage whatever you can before he starts tidying up,” the professor says with an all-knowing smirk.

Andrei opens his mouth to protest, “I wasn’t going to—” when Sasha shoots him a borderline sneering look.

“No. Please. Be my guest,” she says, using her forearm to separate the papers she doesn’t use from the ones right under her nose and pushing the pile towards him. “That’s a way better use of the taxpayers’ money than what you normally do. Well, that, and sleeping on your subject's couch during working hours.”

Taking a deep breath, Andrei suppresses a smile, and, with a slight shake of his head, narrows his eyes at her. “Just curious… you ever get to buying that binder you’re supposed to keep your drafts in? Because you know,” grabbing a handful of handwritten notes and motioning to the window, “Novy God is coming. The city could use more decorations.”

Sasha snaps her head at her teacher. “You told him about the binder?!”

Unfazed, Valery taps the back of his pen on the table. “The lack of a binder. Yes. And please, kindly leave me out of…” moving his finger from one to another, “whatever this is.” His eyes back on Andrei’s semi-triumphant face, he nods to the living room. “Top shelf, on the right. Take the red one. It’s old, but it’ll do until you buy her a new one.”

“Until I— what?!”

Sasha’s mouth slacks victoriously open. “Oh wow, look at that. Looks like you’re buying me a binder.”

Shaking his furrow-browed head at Valery in an unequivocal we-shall-discuss-this-later , Andrei aims an indignant finger at Sasha’s complacent face. “I’m not buying you a binder.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because—” Halfway through the rather elaborate repartee on the tip of his tongue which, he realizes, will only drag the bizarre discussion interminably, he elects the path of choosing his battles. “Fine, I’ll buy you a binder,” he mumbles under his breath, retreating into the living room.

“What was that?” she yells after him.

“I’ll buy you a binder,” he repeats out loud, rummaging through Valery’s papers.

“How about two?”

“Tell you what, how about you keep quiet for five minutes and finish your work and I’ll buy you twenty?”

She barely makes it five seconds before her ostensible lack of filter saves him from spending half his government paycheck on office supplies. “See, that’s just not fair. I could really use twenty binders.”

Back in the kitchen, assiduously ignoring her equal parts coy, bemused, and defiant stare, he pulls a chair, opens the newly emptied binder, and gets to work. 

Half absorbed in sorting the papers, half heeding their hushed discussion, he fails to stifle an awestruck smile. He may not understand much of the issue at hand, but he marvels at the vehement passion all the same. He hasn’t seen Valery quite so content, relaxed, immersed in his element - probably ever, save perhaps for some of their more pertinacious debates in regards to everything being chemistry . 

Maybe everything is chemistry, he thinks. The tiny, invisible building blocks of the Universe, the driving forces of what they do, who they are, and what binds them together. To be fair, he doesn’t remember much of his high school science. But, stealing increasingly lingering looks at Sasha’s lively, expressive face, he’s reminded that certain elements are highly excitable and reactive by nature, while others remain at the lowest energy level until they encounter one.

He’s almost done when, tiptoeing her fingers across the table and onto the top of his hand, she gives him a warm, grateful squeeze. 

“Thank you,” she mouths, smiling, eyes soft on his face as he looks up.

With a small smile of his own, he squeezes back. “My pleasure.”

“You don’t really have to buy me a binder.”

Andrei muffles a chuckle. “I know. But I will.” His expression turning the shade that’s half-cheeky half-teasing, he winks. “See, it’s a self-preservation thing. Chasing papers with one working leg is not as much fun as it used to be.”

Their banter continues on and off throughout dinner, Valery serving as a semi-reluctant, flippantly-stern, self-appointed referee who seems to enjoy the rare moment of mirthfulness more than he lets on. At five to seven Andrei runs to his formerly abandoned surveillance post to officially hand the shift over to Misha, after which he returns, shakes off his boots, at which point the chatter moves to the living room.

Drowned in tea and a cloud of cigarette smoke, the conversation goes on for another two hours, briefly subsiding when Andrei shares some of his academic experience, from before he was drafted, during his short-lived time at the Moscow Aviation Institute, and further resuming with a vengeance when it’s finally time for Sasha to go home. 

It starts with Andrei saying that no, no way in hell she’s taking the bus home, alone, at this hour, to which Sasha replies by inquiring if he suggests they both sleep on Valery’s couch, to which he says that no, what he suggests - insists, really - is that he takes her home, at which point she reminds him that she’s been coming and going, leaving alone, by bus, at this hour, for many years, long before he came along, making him say that true as that may be, it doesn’t make it any less dangerous. Oh yeah, she blasts, so how come this whole time he was watching her come and go from that black Volga of his downstairs and he never offered his chaperone services which, by the way, are not needed, and he calmly reminds her that one - during those times he was on duty, and two - he did not know her back then. Needless to say, the latter opens a whole new can of worms, labeled “What makes you think you know me now?”, to which he replies that, true, he doesn’t, but just in case he may want to, one day, although, really, at this point he can’t think of a reason why he would, the task would be made immeasurably easier by her being “...you know - *alive*..."

It ends with Valery putting his foot down. “He’s taking you home.”

“But Valery Alexeyevich—”

“He’s taking you home,” the professor repeats in a tone that doesn’t leave room for debate, handing Andrei his coat. His eyes and voice soften as he comes closer, gently taking her by the shoulders. “Please. I know you’ve been doing this on your own for years. But you know I worry when you leave this late. I would feel much better knowing you’re not alone.”

Deflating like a punctured balloon under his soft stare, she mutters something incoherent, but, eventually, nods. “But only this once.”

Valery laughs, pulling her into his arms. “We’ll see about that.”

Watching them come together in a long, tight embrace makes Andrei wonder again. He still doesn’t know what it is, but he knows there is something, a bond that goes deeper than that of a student and teacher. It’s the way she holds on to him, her hands clutching fistfuls of sweater where they clasp at his back, the way she buries her face in his shoulder with a long, shuddered sigh as her eyes fill with tears and close, the way she reaches to stoke his thin, ebbing hair just before letting go. 

Valery cradles her face in his hands, thumb reaching inwards to wipe an escaped tear. “Hey,” he whispers, planting a kiss on her hairline. “Don’t. I will see you tomorrow, yes?”

She blinks the rest of the tears away. “Don’t go to bed too late. And please, please take your meds. I’ll call you as soon as I get home.”

He smiles. “I’ll be here.”

Sasha’s briefcase in hand, Andrei is about to open the door when a hand on his shoulder turns him around. Without a warning, he is gathered into the same lingering, tobacco-infused embrace. Hesitantly at first, he raises his arms, adding them to the circle that further tightens until he can no longer tell if it’s Valery that’s holding him , or is it the other way around. 

Valery draws a breath, as if to say something, but the words seem to choke in his throat.

“I’ll take care of her,” whispers Andrei, answering the unspoken plea and smiling as the hand on his back spasms in a grateful squeeze.

“Who will take care of you?” he hears, exhaled into the coat on his shoulder.

His mouth curls in a half smirk. “Well, Valery Alexeyevich… if today is any indication, that would be you.”

He feels the arms around him drawing impossibly taut . “I wasn’t talking about today.”

He’s hit with the same tsunami of grief he imagines Sasha experienced moments before. Whatever he wants to say, whatever he thinks he could say, seems painfully futile and hollow. 

As if sensing his growing distress, Valery pulls it together, loosening his grip but not letting go just yet. His voice still uneven but feigning cheerfulness, he pats Andrei on the back. “So, this is what it feels like,” he teases. “A hundred years ago a peasant like me would’ve had his arms cut off for throwing himself on a nobleman. Let alone a Duke.”

Huffing, Andrei pulls away, holding him by the shoulders with a playfully exasperated look. “I don’t know about a hundred years ago, Valery Alexeyevich, but in present day, this kinda talk just pisses the Duke off.”

The bus ride to Sasha’s place is much longer than he had imagined. They take a trolley at first and, after a few stops, get off, cross the street, take a light train for another couple of blocks, and only then get on the bus for the final leg of the journey.

The whole time, Sasha is quiet. Not a word. At first, he thinks she’s still angry, but as the time passes, the cautious glances he casts towards her face return nothing but sheer, unadulterated sadness. On the bus, they sit side by side, physically separated by no more than a few inches; emotionally - by light years. The whole time she stares off, her scattered gaze lost in the dark vastness of interchanging streets muddled by the hazy reflection of the dimly lit interior of the bus.

He wants to say something, desperately, like if he does, if he finds the right words, the right mood, it will tether them both to the present. But there are no words that he knows of that could possibly fight off the grievous inevitability of the future.

He looks over when he thinks she’s said something, barely audible, muffled entirely by the clamorous roar of the bus engine. From where he’s sitting, he can only see one side of her face, the rest a blurry reflection in a frosted window.

“Did you say something?” he asks, inching a tiny bit closer.

She turns to face him, but not entirely, her eyes still cast on her absentmindedly fidgeting fingers. 

“He doesn’t have long,” she utters, a little louder, just barely past a whisper. She looks up, straight at him, long streaks crossing her pale cheeks from under her eyes all the way to the fur of her coat’s collar. “Months. Maybe a year.”

He doesn’t know what to say, if there is even anything he can say. Unsure if he should, but unable to think of anything better, he reaches over, the tips of his fingers grazing inside her wrist as he carefully separates her restlessly clasped hands, and takes one into his.

He half-expects her to pull away, but she doesn’t. Instead, he feels her cold fingers fall in between his until their palms are pressed flush together.

“I know,” he whispers, stroking the back of her thumb. 

She sucks a faint sob. “He’s all alone.”

“No. He’s not.”

She shakes her head with a bitter snort. “You know what I mean.”

“I do. But he’s not alone. Not like he could've been.”

For a long minute she appears to be far away, staring at their interlaced fingers. “I don’t know what to do.”

He gives her a soft squeeze. “You’re doing enough.”

Her eyes flicker upwards. “Bringing groceries twice a week? Staying an hour or two after we’re done working? In what world is it possibly enough?”

He smiles down at her, using his free hand to tuck a strand of flaxen hair under her knitted hat. “I wasn’t talking about the groceries.” Eyes perplexedly searching his face, she remains quiet. He lifts both eyebrows. “I’m talking about your doctoral dissertation draft.”

A shadow flickers across her features. “What do you mean?” 

“What I mean is,” he starts, slightly tilting his head so as to allow him to really face her, “that three and a half months ago, in August, after I chased it across the Kurchatov’s square, I read some of it as I was sorting it out.” She gulps, ashamedly breaking eye contact. “It was ready. Back then. It was ready to be submitted. You could’ve defended by now. And from what I’ve seen today - not that I understand much of it - there’s nothing of substance, nothing that really requires mentor reviews, that’s changed ever since.

Sasha doesn’t retort, saying nothing at all for a long moment, but her grip on his hand grows tighter. “Do you think he knows?”

He opens his mouth to say that, what with Valery having mentored hundreds of doctoral candidates, he’d say the answer is pretty obvious, but realizes at the last moment that ‘obvious’, warped by loneliness, grief, and uncertainty, is an exceedingly fluid concept.

“I think… maybe, he doesn’t want to know, or chooses not to see it.” he replies, at last. “But I saw you today, the two of you working together, and I’ve never seen him more happy. What you’re giving him is what he really needs - feeling useful, feeling like there’s still a part of that world that he loves so much that wasn’t taken away completely. And that…” he nudges their hands from side to side. “That’s more than enough.”

The bus stops, doors hissing open and closed, letting a few grim, workday-weary passengers in and then pulls onto the road once again with an increasingly loud whir.

Shifting his eyes back to Sasha, Andrei finds her looking at their joint hands, no longer staring in numb detachment but really looking, studying the back of his scar-covered wrist, her fingertips  over the pale grots where the skin had been almost entirely scorched away.

“How did you survive this?” she mutters.

He shrugs. “I wasn’t hurt very badly,” he says at first but, realizing how dismissive it sounds, corrects himself. “I mean, it was bad. But, you know, not life-threatening.”

She shakes her head, lifting her eyes to his face. “I wasn’t talking about the burns. Or the leg. I meant… How does one survive something like this? What you’ve been through, over there, and after. How are you still you?”

Her words, the way she says them, the way she looks at him when she does, not just at him but through him, stirring up something inside that he thought to be long gone, make him break open in ways he never imagined possible.

“I don’t know that I’m still ‘me’,” he strains, battling the treacherous burn in the back of his eyes. “I don’t even think I know who ‘me’ is anymore. Maybe I never did. I think I’m just starting to figure it out.”

Her fingers slide under the sleeve of his coat until the palm of her free hand covers the scar completely. And for a moment, he feels like it’s really gone, all of it, from the back of his hand to the tip of his ear. He feels like under his throbbing knee his leg is back, too. As if for the first time in years, from before his time in Afghanistan, all the way back to his father’s funeral, body and soul, he’s whole again.

“I think you’re more ‘you’ than anyone I’ve ever met,” she says softly, just when he thought he couldn’t possibly break any further.

He wants to ask what she means by that, but realizes he doesn’t have to. Nor does he get a chance to when, suddenly sitting up, she half turns towards him.

“You mind if we…” She nods her head to the bus door. “It’s just a few stops away. Would you like to take a walk instead? I could use some fresh air.”

He smiles, “I would love to,” and moves to let go of her hand, but her grip draws tighter.  

“Please. Not yet.”

Streaked by the tracery of electrical wires and bare branches of poplar trees, the sky is a quilt of flurry grey and patches of deep, distant blue; the air - an iced, biting crisp. It’s snowing lightly, tiny flecks swirling in hazy confusion, set ablaze when caught in the blur of shimmering aureoles engulfing the street lights. Under their feet, the fresh layer of snow is dry and squeaky, slippery where it’s been partly compacted by footprints into dapples of glistening ice.

Aside from the rare car and a few hurried bypassers, the street is empty. They walk in silence, hand in hand, chins wedged in their scarfs, breathing the raw, dazzling serenity of night-time Moscow.

“It’s so beautiful.” Sasha’s voice is soft, dreamy, and thin with wonder. “I don’t normally walk here alone after dark. I’d forgotten how beautiful it is at night.”

Andrei tugs on her hand, pulling her closer. “Well, I may not run very fast these days. But I do have my service weapon.” Her eyes widen in shock and, immediately, he regrets bringing it up. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“No, it’s just…” She shakes her head. “I know what you do, and I know you were a soldier, but…” She shivers. “It’s just… picturing you with a gun ...” She shivers.

He laughs, breathing a soft plume of white. “How about with a sniper rifle?”

“Oh God,” she huffs, squinting as if trying to erase the image from memory. Her fingers wrap around his hand even tighter. 

“Change of subject?” he proposes.

“Please. Anything but you holding a cold piece of metal that kills things. I’ll take satellite images of a burning nuclear core over that.”

His expression shifts to thoughtful. “Ok. So, speaking of burning nuclear cores.” Taking a moment, he tries to decide if he should ask what’s been on his mind ever since they left Valery’s apartment. “Can I ask you a question?” And, before she can answer, he adds: “It’s… sort of personal. So, please, if you don’t want me to, or if you choose not to reply, it’s fine.”

Her half a grin extends to full size. “You want to know if he is my father.”

“Is he?”

She lets out a smal, joyous laugh. “No. But he almost was.” His confusion appears to deepen, and she smiles. “He and my mother… they had a thing. Before I was born. Before she got married. It was an on-and-off kinda story. They’d break up, then get back together. They were both very busy. She’s a physics professor at Lomonosov. She said they kept drifting apart because they were both ‘married to their jobs’ . In the end, they broke up for good and she married my father. They got divorced when I was four. Over the years, Valery Alexeyevich and my mother grew close again. Not romantically, but… they became close friends. He came to visit a lot, and we were over at his place all the time. I won’t go so far as to say he raised me, but he might as well have. He was the closest thing I had to a father. And I was the closest thing he had to a child. Even after I’d grown up, he always looked out for me.”

When he takes too long to reply, she laughs. 

“It’s a boring story, I know.”

Still deep in thought, he pulls up her arm, rubbing her cold fingers with the palm of his free hand as he remembers the story Valery had told him this afternoon and a lot of the question-marked-shaped puzzle pieces click into place.

“No. Not at all. It’s beautiful. A little sad. But definitely not boring. ...And you need gloves,” he adds, blowing on her knuckles when rubbing alone seems to have no effect.

She laughs. “I know. I keep forgetting them. Valery Alexeyevich says one of these days I’ll leave my head at home. And besides,” she adds with an impish smirk, curling her fingers inside his palm. “Your hands are a furnace enough. How are you not freezing?!”

He winks. “Probably too much vodka this afternoon.”

Sasha’s face lights up like a Christmas tree. “Ah, that explains it! I wondered why Valery Alexeyevich sounded funny when he called to ask me to come over.”

Eventually her words sink in and he stops in his tracks. “Wait, he asked you to come over? I thought you had an appointment he had missed because he wasn’t at work this morning.”

“Nope. I was at the library all day, looking up papers. I didn’t even know he hadn’t come in. He called me at home around four. Said there were some things he would like to review in my methodology section. Asked if I wouldn’t mind stopping by.”

What Andrei says next, he says slowly, like reading aloud a riddle. “He asked you to come in to review a dissertation draft that doesn’t need reviewing when I was passed out on his sofa.”

Visibly perplexed, Sasha narrows her eyes. “Yeeesss. Why?” The question mark at the end of the ‘why’ is not yet fully formed when her expression flips like a light switch. “Oooooooh!”

Muffling a choked growl into the palm rubbing his face, Andrei shakes his head. “This is a… whole new level of embarrassing.”

Sasha snorts. “A whole new level of weird is what it is. He’s never done anything like this before. And I mean never . When it comes to the guys I'm dating he's like a cynical mother goose on steroids. Although, to be fair, most of them were total douchebags.”

They resume their walk and, for some time, there’s an awkward silence filling the space where just moments ago there was comfort and joy. Even her hand, still tucked into his, feels unsettlingly cold and foreign. He would’ve let go, but he is afraid to offend her. He wants to ask if there’s a “ douchebag” currently in the picture, but realizes as soon as the thought crosses his mind that the pinch of jealousy under his sternum is just as misplaced as it is uncalled for. 

Sasha, on the other hand, seems to have no such misgivings. “Are you seeing anyone?” she asks.

As grateful as he is for the unease-permeated stretch of silence coming to an end, all he really wants is to rewind the time five minutes back and stop himself from ever bringing it up.

“No,” he says, trying his best to sound casual. “Not since I got back. Once, but… that didn’t go too well, so…”

“Why not?”

He looks over, finally daring to meet her eyes . He half expects the spark of embarrassment to be set aflame once again, but, instead, the genuine incredulity on her face unclenches something inside him. 

“Don’t tell me it’s because of the scar, or the leg,” she adds. “Because that’s just—”

“It’s not,” he interrupts, more abruptly than he had intended, but in a voice devoid of embarrassment or anger. “There’re just some… things I’m still dealing with. It’s not something— I’m just not the easiest person to be around when it happens. And…” He sighs, unable to stop looking at her, feeling the momentary numbness from before thawing further and further under the earnest care in her eyes. “Relationships…” He gulps. “I think, if you’re really serious, it’s hard enough work without the extra baggage.”

She seems to consider it. "What if it never gets better? Those 'things' you're dealing with. What, you'll never go out on a date again? Never even consider having a family? Stay alone forever?"

He's been asking himself this exact same question, time and again, for the past four years. 

"I don't know," he replies honestly, and, in an anguished attempt to shake off the rancid embrace of dejection, musters an almost cheerful smirk. "'’Forever' just seems like an awfully long time. I haven't really thought that far."

When she doesn’t say anything for a long moment, desperate for the change of subject, he tugs on her hand. 

“So, do they still keep in touch? Valery Alexeyevich and your mother?”

Her face falls, twitching as, for an instant, she looks away. “No,” she croaks. “Not since… you know.”

“I’m sorry.” 

Reminded once again that he is a part of the merciless apparatus responsible for grinding hundreds of thousands of lives, he feels those words sink to the pit of his stomach like a ton-weighing boulder. 

“They all left him,” she continues in a broken voice. “All of his friends and colleagues, people he mentored, people he worked with, for decades , whose careers he helped advance. Even her. They all just turned their backs on him.”

He gently squeezes her hand several times until she returns her tearful eyes to his face. “You didn’t,” he reminds her softly. 

At first she nods, breathing her way through another wave of frustration and anger, and then, suddenly pulling him closer, leans on his arm. “Neither did you,” she whispers, as if reading his guilt-ridden thoughts. “You have nothing to be sorry about.”

“Except maybe not choosing a different career path,” he attempts to lighten the mood. 

A faint but genuine smile crawls back to her wobbling face. “Well, there is that.”

They pass the next few blocks in comforting silence. 

“Why don’t you quit?” she asks in that staggeringly simple way he’s starting to get used to.

The realization that he’s about to finally voice what’s been constantly on his mind over the past three months hits like an avalanche of relief. 

“I am,” he says, feeling his broadening smile reach the back of his ears. “It’s just not as simple as it sounds. There’s a whole process that I haven’t even started yet. But I am getting out. I was actually thinking about going back to school. I mean, obviously, a one-legged cosmonaut is out of the question, but…” He winks. “Avionic Engineers, from what I hear, require no legs at all.” 

Welling up again, albeit with joy, she squeezes his hand impossibly tight. “Like your father."

He closes and opens his eyes with a breathy chuckle. “Is there anything he didn’t tell you about me?”

“Are you kidding? You’re the only thing he ever talks about nowadays. Well, you and those riddles of yours about, you know—”

“... everything is chemistry,” they say at the same time, mockingly matching Valery’s studious tone, ending with an outburst of laughter.

“Yes, that.”

Andrei smiles. “I’m starting to think he’s right.”

“Oh, he’s always right.  You should know that by now. And he never jokes about chemistry.”

By the time she says “Well, this is me,” as they stop in front of an old, five-story building identical in appearance and design to the many Khrushchovkas built in the early sixties, his relatively new preoccupation with time travel - namely rewinding certain events - reaches a whole new height. For a moment, all he can think about is what he wouldn’t have given for a chance to open his eyes again, dazed, confused, and disoriented, splayed on Valery’s sofa. Because if he could, he knows, he wouldn’t have changed a thing - not a single word, not a single look, not a tease, not an awkward moment - if he could, he would live through those few mind-altering hours, just as they were, all over again.

Reluctant to let go of his hand just yet, she steps in front of him, their fingers still coiled in a messy knot. “I’m sorry,” she starts, smiling weakly. “About before. About making a scene back there. Thank you. For keeping me company. And for keeping me safe,” she adds with a sly smirk. “You and that big gun of yours.”

He gives her a small, gallant nod. “In reverse order,” he quips. “One - it’s not that big. Two - the pleasure was all mine. And three - I’m sure next time I offer to take you home it’ll go much more smoothly.”

They both smile, letting the ‘next time’ hang in the air between them like a fluffy, comforting cloud. 

Standing on tiptoe, Sasha lets go of his hand and, placing a palm on the side of his face, presses her lips to his scarred cheek. “Until next time, then,” she whispers. 

He’s still struggling to swallow around the rapidly swelling lump in his throat, and she’s already gone, disappeared into the gaping mouth of the dark entrance.

He stands outside a while longer, eyes cast upwards, scouring the somber facade of the building. He doesn’t know which window is hers or if it even faces this side of the street, but he hopes for a sign - a shadow crossing behind a drawn curtain, or a light suddenly turned on. But no sign comes, and, letting out the air he wasn’t aware he’d been holding, he feels the cold starting to creep in. 

Draping a loop of his scarf over his chin, hands in his pockets and shoulders pulled up to his ears, he turns to leave, but the dull thud of something dropped in the snow makes him stop.

He sees the carelessly tossed briefcase a few feet away when she’s already molded around him, all of her, from the tips of her toes where they clash with his boots to the tip of her head tucked under his chin, as if there’s a space where his arms lock around her that's been gouged with flawless precision to fit no one but her.

He’s about to ask if something’s the matter, when she lifts her eyes to his face. “You’re the easiest person to be around,” she says, not a hint of a smile, holding his stare until, swallowing hard, he finally nods.

His “Thank you” comes on a shaky, drawn-out exhale. 

“And I will go out with you,” she adds, still deadpan, clutching the coat on his back.

From the depth of his mind there emerges a thought as wondrous and strange as this oddly singular day. He thinks if he dies tonight, if he dies in this very moment, having said no other word or made no other choice ever again, for all of his life’s unfortunate turns and twists, after today he will not have a single regret.

“I don't recall asking you out,” he rasps, near voiceless, cocking his head to the side as he uses the last of his will power to keep his tone teasingly light.

With a devious smirk, she matches it. “See, that is not really my problem."

One arm around her, he brushes the side of her face with the back of his fingers, breathing a laugh as he flickers a waggishly bold snowflake off the tip of her nose. 

He thinks - no, he knows - if he kisses her now he will probably hold on to her forever. And, while “forever” does sound like an awfully long time for which he may not be ready, he knows he is ready for this, for her, for letting go of his doubts and fears. For just letting go.

"So…" he starts hoarsely, coughing to clear his throat. "Should I ask you out or shall we assume I already have, seeing as, you know, you've kind of already agreed?"

As she wrinkles her nose, her devious grin turns even more impish. "I think you should ask me out. Or it wouldn't be proper."

"Yes," he laughs. "Because ‘proper’ is what today’s been all about.”

"Well, maybe that's even more of a reason. At least some of it ought to be."

Without further ado, he draws her to him even closer. "Would you do me the honor of joining me for lunch tomorrow, you nutty, adorable nerd?" he asks, his teasingly courteous tone matching the doting look in his eyes as he laughingly fixes her crooked glasses.

She squints at him. "Well, when you put it like that…" With a huff of exasperation he motions to pull away, but she yanks him back by his coat lapels. "Yes, you brooding, not-easy-to-be-around wannabe-clown,” sha laughs, taking his face in her hands. “I will have lunch with you. And dinner. And breakfast. And every meal in between. Just not tomorrow. I have faculty meetings all day." 

Taking her hand, he presses his lips to the tips of her knuckles, bowing his head lower still as he touches his brow to her wrist.

When he gathers her into his arms for the last time, his crooked smirk is a foil to his gracious gesture. 

"See, that,” he quips with a broadening grin, "is not really my problem."