Ivan Press

Kazakov

All night, for the thirty-seventh consecutive night, the bombs fell. They shook the plaster on the walls, shattered windows blocks away from detonation. In the morning the government took stock: a paper factory in flames, an elementary school reduced to rubble, countless streets and buildings pockmarked and crumbling from the abuse. Heads down, handkerchiefs shielding their noses and mouths, the working men and women of London forged on through the smoke and ash.

The wounded prisoner didn't stir all night. Not when the walls shook, not when the windows rattled, not when the lights swayed in their fixtures. Not when a man, a young soldier who'd fought in France, who'd stepped on a mine, who'd suffered through a botched battlefield amputation, who'd thrashed and moaned through a raging infection that left him bleeding from every orifice, shuddered quietly and died three beds over. Not when the morning shift came and began to sort through the terrible mundanities of life and death.

IVs that have clotted are swapped. Fresh bags of saline are hung. Sheets are changed. Someone opens a window, but the outside air is too full of smoke, and someone else closes it again. Those fortunate enough to be able to limp down to the cafeteria. Those who remain are served rationed breakfasts.

And the prisoner, lying in his screened-off bed in the corner, is awake. He is staring out the window at clouds, the buildings, the smoke.

It is the beginning of her shift now. It was the end of the shift, last time he saw her. Close to eight at night. He'd missed dinner. This morning, eight again, Nurse Parker comes around the sheets that cordone him off, carrying a tray. She is starched and straight-backed, as before, her face cold and impassive. As before.

"Good morning, Mister Kazakov," she says simply, and sets the tray on the nightstand. The tray has a plate on it with a small, plain breakfast. No coffee, no juice. Balanced, healthful, but scarce. She sits on the stool beside the bed, picks up a napkin, and shakes it out, leaning over to tuk it into the collar of his hospital gown. "Time for breakfast," she says.

[TUCK. OH GOD.]

Kazakov is more alert this morning -- notably so. The moment she steps around the screen, his head turns; his eyes are on her. He starts to sit up, but his bandages are stiff and his wounds are yet healing, and besides: he is handcuffed to the bedrails. Steel clanks. He gives up, lies back. He smiles, but it's a touch tight.

"Dobroye utro," he says. His eyes flick to her nametag, "medsetra Parker."

She leans over. He tilts his chin up to give her room, but also to see her; keep his eyes on her face. When the napkin is in place, he lifts his hand, gives the cuffs a rattle.

"Why not take this off." It seems he can speak some limited English when he wants to. "I feed myself."

The orderly, hearing the clank, glances around the curtain, watchful. Parker doesn't acknowledge it at all, other than to raise her eyebrows at the patient as though to reproach him for not remembering that he's wounded.

He rattles. She eyes him, and those dark eyes narrow when she speaks English. She doesn't seem to like that he continues speaking in Russian or German or whatever it is if he knows even this much English. Or maybe she just doesn't like him, period.

"I will not take it off," she answers, drawing his tray to her lap and lifting up his fork, picking up a bit of egg with it in order to feed him, "out of respect for the widows and mothers whose husbands and sons have been lost,"

the egg is in front of his mouth, and her eyes are on him,

"thanks in no small part to you and your fellows."

"Vse v poryadke, drug," he says to the wary orderly, flashing another of those tight smiles. "I am good obedient prisoner, da?"

The orderly glances at the nurse and, receiving no signal either which way, withdraws again. There's a rustle: the orderly is reading the newspaper. The headlines don't make him like their foreign guest any more.

Meanwhile, Nurse Parker has a forkful of eggs. Prisoner Kazakov looks at it, then at her.

"I told you last night. Ya predpochitayu tebya."

She continues to hold the eggs in front of his mouth. He mixes English and Russian again.

Then she leans back. Sets the fork down. Stares at him, folding her hands in front of herself. Takes a moment, then says:

"I was going to tell you this after your breakfast, but you do not seem to wish to eat. So it is my duty to inform you that now that you are awake, you will shortly be arrested."

A beat.

"Would you like some eggs before they come for you?"

"Nyet."

He struggles upright. It takes a little while, but he manages, rolling his weight first to the less-injured side and then rising up. When he has achieved a good approximation of sitting up in bed, he smiles. It shows no teeth. Nor does it reach his eyes.

"I would like you, Nurse Parker." He pauses; considers. "Please."

When he begins to rise, she leans back, straighting her spine a bit more -- if that is possible. He struggles, and she tenses, wondering what he plans to do, and what he plans to do is

say something foul.

His meaning isn't lost on her. She was feeding him. He wants her instead. Wants to eat her up, perhaps. But she seems to know precisely what he means. Something in her eyes flashes when she hears it.

But she doesn't slap him. As far as he can tell, she doesn't even react at first. Then, she leans over and begins to remove his napkin. "You are hardly the first soldier to flirt with a nurse," she informs him, "but perhaps hungry has simply made you think you're more clever than you are."

Something glimmers in his eyes. Some measure of surprise and, curiously, appreciation. Interest, even, genuine for the first time.

He settles back. "Maybe it is ... " he searches for the word, finds it, "desperate."

His napkin is taken. Breakfast, it seems, is over. He waits for her to finish, to gather the tray, to stand. Then:

"Take this off." He lifts his wrist again. "Consider it last request. Where would I run, anyway, with broken leg?"

She only scoffs at this. His so-called desperation. It seems he has not yet garnered her sympathy. Looking at her, at those chillingly dark eyes, one has to wonder if she has any sympathies to offer. To anyone.

She does gather up the fork, the plate, the napkin, rearranging the tray and rising to her feet. He tells her -- asks her, perhaps -- one last time to take off his handcuff.

There is a quiet between them, as she stares at him, as he looks at her, as she appears to consider.

"I think not, Mister Kazakov."

And she turns, walking away again.

She turns. She hears him laugh, or scoff. She hears him call after her, "Proshchay, medsestra Parker." She sees --

well. She does not see what he does. She does not look back. Outside the screened area, the orderly folds his newspaper and stands. He looks sympathetic. He wants to offer words of support, solidarity, sympathy for the rude behavior she's had to endure, but something about her black eyes, her straight spine, the utter hauteur of her carriage silences him. He clears his throat and shuffles his feet, looks away as he mumbles some meaningless greeting and takes his seat again.

--

A little later, soldiers arrive. They are all business. They don't converse with their wounded comrades. They don't dilly-dally with the nurses. They go directly to the screened-off bed in the corner.

In the hush that has fallen, everyone in the ward hears the lieutenant reading the arrest warrant. Everyone hears the rattling of the bedrails lowering, the handcuffs unlocking and then locking again. A young doctor puts up a feeble fight -- awake does not mean well enough to stand trial -- and is summarily ignored. His mentor shushes him. The prisoner is half-marched, half-dragged from the ward, bandages and leg cast and all.

The patients in their beds watch him go. Some sitting up, faces taut with hate. Some lying limp, eyes dead already. The younger nurses watch as well, eyes wide, new still to the war. The soldiers disappear out the door, down the rattling elevator.

Then the charge nurse claps, sharply, and orders everyone back to work. Life goes on.

--

Four new patients in the afternoon, dragged from crumbling buildings. One is placed in the recently-vacated bed. The rest wait in beds in the hallways. The ward is already full.

As twilight gathers, the bombing begins again. Air sirens wail. A shell falls across the street, so close that the ground shudders beneath their feet and a crack opens in the ceiling from one side to the other. Lights flicker and dim, then brighten again. Someone cries out in fear, but overhead the bombers are growing farther away.

Seven-fifty, and Nurse Parker begins signing out to the night staff. Eight-fifteen and she leaves the hospital. It has begun to rain outside, a steady, cold, dirty rain that brings ash out of the skies and onto windows, vehicles, sidewalks.

Parker is watching as he's led away. She stands next to someone else's bed, someone who can eat on their own, taking a few notes. She looks at him as he's led away. She does not smile. Or wave. She certainly does not weep.

--

At the end of shift, the other girls are out the door by eight-o-five. They all walk to the pub together, a brief visit before going back to the dormitory. Parker does not go with them. She takes more thorough notes; she insists on a more detailed transfer of information to the new shift. She is also a bit older than most of them, and trusted by the Matron. So she leaves alone, wrapping herself in a dark wool coat. She has an umbrella, which she opens up when she steps outside. She walks as straight-backed as before, though she holds a handkerchief over her nose and mouth.

She begins to walk. Not to the pub, though. No, she goes straight back towards the dormitory-tenement where she and most of the nurses live, a block or two away.

In the dark, the devastation is not so obvious. The chipped facades, the bombed-out tenements, the great gouges left in the streets by one bomb or another -- they all fade into the shadows. The clouds overhead are lit by the glow of countless fires, but streetlights gleam off the wet pavement like they always have. The air smells more of rain than of smoke.

Music and conversation pour out of the pub, receding as she walks away. Soon enough there is only the sound of her shoes on pavement, and the occasional passing car. No planes for the moment; no bombs whistling down. For the moment, London is almost beautiful again.

The dormitory is quiet when she arrives. Most windows are dark. Those who are home are reading, or perhaps mending an apron or a cap. Those with the early shift are trying to get some sleep.

A few bulbs flicker in the damp stairwell, in the long hall to her room. As she fits key to lock, a distant siren begins to wail. The nerves must fray after so many days of ceaseless bombing; so many months of war. She's seen wild looks in the eyes of some of the girls; the way they toss down their after-work drinks, the thread of strain in their voices when they joke about it: if I hear that siren one more time I might leap out the window.

Overhead, a rumble. A bomber flying low. No distinctive whistle, no earthshattering explosion. Must be someone else's unlucky day. Her door opens. She steps into her apartment and, perhaps, reaches thoughtlessly for the light switch.

Click. Darkness. Perhaps the bulb is burnt out? But then there's the preternatural stillness; her instincts all a-jangle. Then a shadow moves, speaks.

"Medsestra Parker," says her uninvited guest, "perhaps you would be kind ... and stitch a wound."

Her room is almost a cell: a narrow space, without its own water closet or kitchen -- those are shared. There's a single bed, covered with a heavy quilt and an extra blanket at the end. There's a small table and a chair, a radio on the nightstand, a calendar pinned to the wall. No pictures. No paintings. No flowers in a jar or vase. A dresser against a wall, a trunk at the foot of the bed.

And a light that won't go on. It wouldn't be the first time. Sometimes whole buildings cut the power to rooms, especially when the sirens go off. Hard for bombers to hit buildings they can't see.

She feels a prickling on her skin though, and pauses after she shuts the door, setting her umbrella in the coat-stand. She is reaching for the buttons of her coat, and he speaks.

Parker does not move. Then, slowly, her hands return to her sides.

"What are you doing here?"

A dry huff in the darkness, followed by an audible wince.

"Obviously," he says, "I escape. And am fugitive."

A pause. Stirring, fabric moving against wood. He is sitting on the trunk, must be.

"Do not be afraid. I am going to turn on light."

He tells her not to be afraid and she scoffs at him.

When the lights come on, she is standing there, her eyes trained in the direction of his voice, her coat still on, her cap still on, her hands folded in front of her.

She hasn't screamed. She hardly even seems aware that she hasn't screamed, though. It's as though it hasn't occured to her to scream for help.

A click.

The lamp on the dresser comes on. Low-wattage bulb. Age-yellowed shade. Despite that the light is sudden and bright; it takes a moment to adapt.

It takes longer than that for the eye to understand, for the mind to believe what it sees. Or perhaps she has seen such things before; such things as the creature sitting on her trunk, man-like but not, far larger and more muscular than he had appeared in the hospital bed, hair shaggy and unkempt.

He is still wearing his hospital gown, or what remains of it. It is ripped and bloody, rumpled on his lap as though after all those indecent comments he suddenly grew decency. On his body are numerous wounds, but none of them are the ones she might remember from the morning. That mangled leg, broken so badly the surgeons were only able to partially correct it -- the leg that he should never have been able to walk on again: healed. The burns and scrapes and bruises and lacerations: gone. In their place are several dozen cuts, some shallow and others quite deep, all of them oddly pristine and precise.

"Do not be afraid," he says again, though it hardly seems necessary. She seems to have no fear at all. Slowly, without sudden movements, he raises his hands. Shows her in one hand what appears to be a small nut -- something botanical, at any rate.

"This is stitch," he tells her, which makes no sense. "I have readied, but cannot reach. My back. If you please."

Still, she does not scream. Seeing him as he is, monstrous but still half-human, she does not startle. She almost looks annoyed, her head tipping, her stare flattening out. She crosses her arms over her chest as he tells her, again, not to be afraid. She is one step from tapping her foot on the floor in obvious irritation.

What he says makes no sense.

He says please again, but it doesn't soften her. She lifts her eyebrows and unfolds her arms, unbuttoning her coat. She does not speak to him. She hangs up the coat on the rack, then walks over to him, standing in front of the trunk, looking very cross.

"Just heal yourself," she says, quite snappish. "I hardly see why you're insisting on my help."

Anger flickers in his eyes, and in the set of his mouth. Then, with an obvious and voluntary effort, he sets it aside. Laughs under his breath.

"They say English girls, they are polite. You are not."

He straightens, looks her in the eye. "I did not bomb your city. Much. I am Captain Nikolay Leonidovich Kazakov, Red Army Air Force, undercover. My people believe Germany will turn on Mother Russia soon. There are dozens like me, pretending to be Nazi sympathizers, joining the Luftwaffe, the Heer, the Kriegsmarine. Sent to find out where and when we will be attacked, so we may be ready.

"I drop bombs where I see empty buildings, broken buildings. Not where I see men, women, children. Now," he holds the nut out again, "help me."

"I am not a girl," she retorts, flatly.

He looks up to tell her... what he does. About what he has and has not done. About why he does what he does. And her expression never changes: stony. Cold. Untouched.

This only: how she addresses him, next time.

"I still do not see why you need my help, Captain Kazakov." She looks down at the nut in his hand. "Garou do not need stitches."

He grimaces, wipes a clawed hand over his face. "Not real stitch. I spoke... obrazno. It is..." he has reached the end of his vocabulary; visibly frustrated, he fumbles around for words, the silence growing.

"It heals," he finally manages. "I will crack open. I need you to put on back. Understand?"

Her brows tug together at the Russian. Everything seems to annoy this woman.

She doesn't interrupt the silence, though. Where anyone else would jump in, filling the void, she just stands there, still fully uniformed, waiting for what comes next from his mouth.

"...I see," she answers, after a long moment. And then, after an even longer moment of consideration, she gives him a terse nod and holds out her hand, palm flat and up, fingers together.

Few things annoy this man. This wolf. Typically, anyway, though at present he seems every bit as cross as the woman. He cracks the nut in his hand, the way one might crack a walnut. What begins to leak out, however, is neither solid nor powdered, but a slightly viscous fluid.

He gives the nut to her. Then, exhaling, he leans forward, bowing his head, elbows on his knees. On his back, an impressive wound, carved down to bone. The edges are straight and, like the rest of his catalog of injuries, curiously precise, clean, surgical.

Despite the strangeness of the fluid, the nurse does not look disgusted. She seems disconcerted, briefly, then leans over his shoulder as he leans forward.

It says something about what she has seen over the last almost-forty days and nights that he hears no sharp intake of breath, no gasp, no stifled outcry of dismay and horror. And it says something of her training that when she applies the contents of the 'stitch' to his back, it is careful, even gentle, but thorough. She does not fret over her unwashed hands, not with a werewolf, but makes sure that the entire wound is covered as best she can, edge to edge.

His blood is all over her palm when she draws back, when he sits up again. She doesn't seem terribly concerned with watching the wound heal; she thinks it would make her angry to see it. So easy. So unfair.

With her other hand, she takes a handkerchief from an apron pocket and begins wiping her hand off, watching him.

"What happened to you?"

To Parker's credit, she is hardly cruel. To Kazakov's credit, he holds entirely still during the ordeal, doesn't let a single gasp or sound escape.

Unfortunately, his flesh and bone hardly seem to care about her preferences; nearly as soon as the liquid contacts the raw edges of the wound, they begin to reknit. Muscle grows together and skin fills in. By the time she steps back, he is able to straighten with far less strain and discomfort than he had bent down.

Her question cause a smirk, humorless. "I was dragged from hospital," he replies, though clearly it is not what she meant, "asked many questions, beaten when I would not answer, thrown in cell. They broke my leg again. That was particular fun.

"Then they leave me alone. I step across, you know what this means? I try to leave London, but your city is very big and very ... city. There were many spiders."

He shifts, taking on his more civilized form.

"So I came out. Night by then. Easy to find nurse apartments. I see them from air many times." Beat. Pointedly: "Did not drop bomb on. Easy to find you too." He demonstrates, inhaling sharply: "Can smell you."

Her eyebrows do flick slightly when he mentions that they broke his leg again. And she gives a small nod when he mentions stepping across, into the spirit world. Another frown, still small but present, when he speaks of spiders. She has no idea what that means, apparently.

As he shifts, she steps over to the table, drawing the chair out, and sits. She does exhale a sigh: she is on her feet for twelve hours a day, most days. Continues to listen, legs crossed at the ankle, hands folded on her lap, holding the re-folded handkerchief with his blood on the inside. Her jaw tightens when he mentions not bombing the dormitories, so close to the hospital. Stays set like that, tense, when he mentions smelling her.

"Now what will you do?" she asks him. "Now that I've helped you."

He watches her move. The single dim lamp throws her shadow across the wall, sweeps it from corner to corner, across the ceiling. Casts his shadow against the wall, too, though opposite hers.

"I need to stay here, until rest of this heals. Two, maybe three days. Then I leave. Find Caern. Go back to Moscow."

Parker's nostrils flare. But she exhales, slowly, and says:

"Fine. I will see about getting some extra blankets from a neighbor."

She rises. "I am also going to get something to eat from the kitchen. Is there anything I can get you?"

For a moment, one expects to make some dreadful pass at her again. Yet his reply, when it comes, is positively courteous:

"I will share what you have. Please." Wryly, "I wish I did not refuse the eggs."

"Hm."

That alone. Knowing. Not sympathetic. She glances at him as she goes to the door of her room. "You will need to be very quiet. Men are not allowed in the building, much less our rooms. I could be turned out. So do not let yourself be seen or heard."

She listens briefly at her door before turning the handle. "I will return shortly," she assures him, and slips out.

Parker

It is some time before the nurse returns to her room, but not long enough to make one worry. She comes back carrying a stack of neatly folded but not terribly cozy-looking blankets, atop which sits a tray bearing food. It's not much: some ham, peas that look like they came from a tin, some boiled potatoes. It looks like a decent dinner for one, which means she probably was doing her best to make enough for both of them. She slips in, closes her door with her foot, and sets the whole stack down on the table.

There's a ruthless efficiency with everything she does, down to the way she moves. It has an odd grace to it, the way she goes from one task to the other, but it's clear that she is not in the habit of asking for -- nor expecting -- assistance. She moves the tray from the stack of blankets to the tabletop itself, picks up the blankets, and walks over to a bare spot of floor that, at least, has a rug on it. She begins to unfold the blankets and arrange something like a bed -- however hard and flat and cold that bed will be -- then looks over at him.

She gives a sharp little nod from him to the table. "Have at it, then, Captain Kazakov. I'm sure you're hungry."

Ever presumptuous, Captain Kazakov appears to have been asleep on Nurse Parker's bed when she returns to her room. By the time the key turns and the door opens he's awake, sitting up, at once rumpled and taut and ready. It's only her, though, not the police or Her Majesty's armed forces. His guard relaxes. He gets up as she shuts the door. She may not have expected assistance, but she gets it: he takes the blankets from her, tray perched precariously atop. Then he's at a loss. There's precious little room in here, nowhere to put things away. After a moment, he pivots, sets the stack on the table.

In her absence, he's put his much-abused hospital pajamas back on. Tattered and bloodstained as they are, he looks like the last survivor of some sort of inpatient-ward apocalypse, but the truth is even in those two or three hours she was out of the room he is looking more hale and whole. He is standing now. Stands there, in fact, taking up room and getting in the way while she goes about her business with that terrifying efficiency of hers.

It is apparent from a glance that she is accustomed to being alone, and to working in understaffed conditions. It doesn't seem to occur to her to ask for assistance, let alone explain what she's doing. He is left to draw conclusions from observation, and so it's not until she begins to lay out the bare minimums of a bed that he understands what she's doing. He is instructed to eat. He crouches down instead, grunting a little in discomfort, and helps her with the task. He doesn't need to ask to know this is his bed.

"No one else comes to room?" he wants to know.

When he decides to 'help her', she exhales a sigh that sounds... well. Prissy and irritated. She doesn't wave him off or snap at him, but it's rather clear that she considers his help as something to be overcome, not appreciated.

Regardless: they end up with something like a bed. A folded blanket here, an unfurled one there, a rolled-up one at one end, and... it's something. A place to sleep.

"No," she answers simply, and looks at him again. "I did use my whole week's ration of ham for that dinner, Captain Kazakov. I suggest you eat before it gets cold."

He is already looking at her when she looks at him, and judging by the cant of his mouth, he's about to ask her something inappropriate and borderline indecent.

Yet what she says silences him. He is vaguely ashamed and uncertain of the sensation. His eyebrows twitch together ever so briefly. He looks down at the flat, hard, cold approximation of a bed they have created; thinks of the pitiful amount of ham and peas and potatoes she has procured. A whole week's rations. The Luftwaffe eats much better. Especially the officers.

"I am grateful," he says. Puts a hand on the floor and pushes himself up, wincing. "Spasibo, you know this word?"

"No," she informs him, just as crisply. "I speak English, French, and a bit of Latin, but no Russian. Or German."

He snorts. "It means thank you. Do not be disrespectful. Russia is motherland. Your motherland too. What do they teach you English Serebryanyye Klyki?"

Told not to 'be disrespectful', Nurse Parker's lips press together. They whiten slightly. He tells her that Russia is her motherland. He slurs something, knowing she cannot understand him, only the tone he's taking with her.

There's only a pause though. Not an eruption. Not an explosion. No shells go off in this room.

She simply turns to him, hands folded in front of her, and regards him for a moment.

"Excuse me?"

An exasperated exhale. "Silver Teeth. Your wolf tribe. You know what you are, yes? Do they tell you where you come from?"

"I am a British citizen," she says, adding: "but yes, I know the lineage of my family has roots farther east. That was not what I was questioning.

"My confusion, Captain, is why you accuse me of disrespect for informing you of the languages I do and do not speak. It was a simple statement, and not one -- I think -- deserving of a scolding."

She begins to remove her starched white sleeves. She still hasn't changed from her shift. It's well past nine now, nearing ten, and she's still in her frilly cap. "Please eat your dinner. We have strict rules here, and it will be lights out shortly."

Her words, as ever, come at a crisp clip. There are words in there that rush by too quickly for him, and others he has only a tenuous grasp on. He holds a hand up, more conciliatory than commanding, patting the air between them like it might slow the deluge.

"All right," he says. "You are correct. I was rude. And ... assuming. I thought I hear hate when maybe there is not. But there is language difference between us, yes? We do not always understand."

He looks at the table, then. The cooling meal, filling for one, not enough for two. And meant, apparently, for an entire week -- at least in terms of meat. His courtesy is vaguely absurd when he gestures toward it with outstretched hand, "Please. You will join me?"

The hand he puts up actually seems to slow her. Stop her. She is frustrated.

Truth be told, she is also exhausted. And hungry. And worried. Perhaps it even occurs to her that he is tired, and hungry, and wary. But perhaps it does not. Those dark eyes are hard to read. That tight face is not terribly expressive.

He mentions the fact that they simply do not understand one another, and she gives a small nod. She exhales through her nostrils, making them flare, but it's a calming breath -- for her, at least -- and not another irritated little sigh.

She folds her white sleeves over, and sets them atop her trunk. She reaches up and begins to unpin her hat from her dark hair, apparently content to simply be silent if they aren't fighting with one another. She is setting pins down on her nightstand, her cap off and her hair... somewhat matted, in all honesty... when he asks her to sit.

Give her this: she considers it. She is tired, and hungry, and doesn't want the woman who enforces the curfew and other policies of this building on the young women who live here to knock on her door because there is still light coming from underneath it after ten at night. She doesn't want that woman to discover this man here, either, especially bloodied and very clearly not British.

But she exhales, softly this time, and says -- more slowly: "Eat. I have no appetite this evening, and I must wash up and get ready for bed before lights out. Go ahead," she adds, nodding at the plate. "It is all right."

It is hardly as though she were disrobing, but still, out of politeness, he averts his eyes as she takes off her sleeves, then her cap. Yet politeness, it seems, only lasts so long. Soon enough he is looking at her again, his eyes narrowing in some indefinable reaction as she lets down her hair. Matted or not.

If she expected further argument from him, even for the sake of manners, she does not get it. He shrugs, and then he pulls out the small chair before the small table and sits, his back to her. Even were he not freshly out of a two-week coma, he would be sleek and svelte at best, and never bulky or hulking. Yet there's a surprising breadth to his shoulders, a largeness to his bone structure. He seems to loom over the table, the plate, and he eats with great gusto.

As she leaves the room to wash, he says over his shoulder: "I appreciate if you bring back a damp towel. I am quite dirty."

There are so many pins in her hair. It's all bound and coiled up above her neck, but it turns out it is much longer. It falls in waves and whorls and odd kinks from how it was held up, but eventually it is all down, well past her shoulders, almost as dark as her eyes. He doesn't argue with her again, and she's relieved, as she removes her apron as well. These three white garments are carefully set aside on her trunk for tomorrow morning, and then she opens her dresser, taking out some folded clothes. Under her bed there is a little basket that she picks up to take with her to the washroom, as well as a small towel.

Meanwhile, he is eating. The chewy ham, the mushy peas, the bland potatoes. She heads for the door, listening at it again before even thinking of opening it. He speaks. She looks over at him, almost as if startled to find that he's still there.

Her brows lift. She thinks for a moment, then says quietly: "If you wait a while and are very, very quiet, you might be able to use the washroom. There won't be any light, but they do not turn off the water. There are showers. I can leave you a towel. Will that be all right?"

Kazakov laughs, a short and almost soundless thing. "I am good at very very quiet," he assures her. "It is all right."

--

There are a few young women in the washrooms still, rushing through their bedtime routines after staying out a little too late. Matrons are walking the halls, calling out their chronological warnings: Ten minutes, ladies! Ten minutes to lights-out! Two girls rushing for the same sink nearly collide and burst into giggles. Another shivers out of a shower stall, drying herself as she goes.

"There you go, Parker!" she calls. "That one still 'as a little warm water left!"

By the time she is finished, she is the last one in the washrooms. A matron come to turn out the lights startles to see her.

"Were you out with the others, Parker?" she asks, pleased. "Well, see you in the morning, then. Good night."

No light leaks from beneath her door when she returns to her room. The room is as dark as she first found it tonight. The overhead lamp, the single best source of light in the room, still doesn't respond to a flick of the switch.

Her uninvited guest is stretched out on the floor already, eyes closed. She finds the dinner tray on her bed, and perhaps for an unpleasant instant she thinks he's left it there for her to dispose of, like a servant. But that's not it after all. Set aside on a napkin is a meager little meal: two small potatoes and a hunk of ham.

"Do not argue," Kazakov says from the floor. His eyes are still closed. "I will not have it said I starved a lady of the tribe to feed myself. Especially not a krasivaya devushka as you."

There is a rush in the washroom, but it's the girls who stayed out past their shifts, the ones who had drinks at the pub with men too cowardly or infirm to be soldiers, or soldiers too lazy to control themselves. That is how Parker thinks of them, at least. She goes to a sink at the end of a row of them to brush her teeth and wash her face and comb her hair, staring ahead at her reflection.

The other women don't talk to her. Certainly they giggle around her, gossip around her, but they have all learned in their own ways that she is... not one for conversation. She doesn't laugh at their jokes and makes none of her own. She seems bothered by idle gossip, especially regarding patients. She doesn't even seem to have the morbid gallow's humor that everyone is leaning on these days to survive.

A while ago a girl was crying because her sister an brothers were sent away to the country, and some of them thought at least maybe Parker would show her some compassion, some kind of warmth or gentleness, but

they were disappointed. Parker only seemed uncomfortable, avoiding the girl for days after seeing her cry.

--

The trio of ladies who run the dormitories -- ostensibly called apartments, but far more strictly controlled, given the populace made up entirely of young, single women -- have their own shifts, their own schedules. Inspections are on Saturdays and they escort ladies to church on Sunday mornings, all too aware of who stays in bed instead of praying or working at the hospital. The three of them are, respectively: forbidding, impatient, and a bit daffy. It's the daffy one who is letting the girls in the washroom know they have ten minutes til lights out. She's the one whose presence doesn't silence all the giggling and chatter.

She's the one who, despite having Parker here for some damn time, has not yet processed that Parker is not like the other girls in her charge. She speaks to her like that: gleeful that Parker went out, that she possibly had a good time or made friends, because she never sees her up this late. Parker just looks at her, briefly, but does not answer.

The shower she takes is terribly brief, just a few minutes to scrub off the worst of a twelve-hour day's effect on her body, and then she changes into her pajamas, hurrying back to her bedroom with her clothes stacked, her basket held, her feet in slippers.

--

The light switch goes click again when she steps inside, out of habit. She comes in with her long hair up again, braided and pinned in a sort of crown across her head. She's in simple button-down pajamas made of pink striped cotton, with long pants and long sleeves. She exhales a frustrated sigh, as her room has no window and the room is too dark to see anything.

"The light, please, Captain Kazakov," she says quietly. "It is not yet ten."

There is a rustling in the dark. Then a click. The tabletop lamp goes on again. Kazakov squints in it, then smirks.

"Pink," he says, bedding down again. "Not what I expect."

Able to see again, Parker goes about finishing her night-time routine as briskly as she can, since it has been postponed. She clearly does not like the change, the aberration, and the look on her face -- at least, beneath the irritation -- is one of exhaustion and something approaching misery. She does not complain, but sees that he is on the floor and her tray is on her bed, rather than the table.

He tells her 'not to argue' and she wheels on him, eyes flashing, as though she is about to verbally assault him for... god knows what. For speaking Russian again when he knows she doesn't understand. For assuming he knows her character enough to tell her what to do and not do before she has done or not done anything. For taking the wrong bed when she made the floor up for herself. For putting the tray on her bed for some godforsaken reason instead of just leaving it at the dinner table where it belongs. For commenting on her pajamas when he shouldn't even be here seeing her at bedtime.

Her knuckles are white.

She exhales. She picks up the tray, sets it down with a slight slam on her night table, and silently climbs out of her slippers and into bed, clicking off her light as she goes. Just a minute later, there are footsteps passing by outside, the flicker of a flashlight, the sound of a few doors with lights still on being knocked on.

And quite a few minutes later, there is still not the sound of steady breathing from Parker in bed. She is not asleep.

It could not be more clear that she does not appreciate his amusement. Or his little attempt at generosity, or at least: at not being utterly gluttonous. She does not appreciate his presence, either, though he can hardly blame her for that one. She certainly does not appreciate his patronizing brand of chivalry.

Her anger is almost palpable. Were she a wolf like him, he would expect her to leap out of her human skin and go for his throat. Fortunately for him, she is not. She rejects the food. She turns out the light. She gets into bed.

They lie there in the darkness. What light there is comes from outside, and on the stroke of ten it flickers out. Now it is truly black; so dark that the swing of a passing flashlight strobes from under the door. So silent, too, that the footsteps can be heard long after they have passed.

Her breathing, also. And his. Neither of them are asleep. The blankets rustle: he is turning over, trying to get comfortable. A few moments later he turns back the other way.

And whispers from the floor, "What is your name?"

There is a merciful goddess, after all. One who does, against all evidence and odds, appear to love her creation, all that which is one with Her. Because she did not make Nurse Parker Garou. Nor will she, in countless other lifetimes. Parker will remain, for most of her soul's existence, kinfolk. Regardless of the strength of her lineage or the purity of her blood, there is something dark in that soul.

Kazakov is right about her in that moment: were she a wolf, she would leap for his throat. But she does not. She goes to bed, angry and -- for whatever specific reason -- unsettled. Unhappy. Sad, even.

After a while, there isn't even noise from other rooms. The girls who live here are, almost to a woman, nurses. The ones that aren't here are doing the night shift at the hospital. They are all tired. They are all exhausted, right down to the bone, and no matter how giggly they were ten minutes ago, sleep overtakes them all too quickly. For many of them, that sleep involves nightmares. For a few, they stare at dark walls waiting for some of the things they've seen to go away.

But most sleep. Heavily, and quickly.

--

She doesn't answer him at first. He knows she's awake, though. Perhaps she even knows there's no hiding that from a wolf.

But after several long moments, she answers in a whisper: "Josephine Parker."

A beat.

"I forgot yours."

"Zhozefina," he repeats. And then, perhaps because he has learned she despises it when he speaks in a language she does not understand: "Josephine Parker."

And then: "Nikolai."

A few more moments pass. Then it occurs to him to say, "No more 'Captain Kazakov,' please. I am now deserter from one and failure in other. Perhaps when I return to Moscow they will have use for me again. Until then it is Nikolai."

"What do you mean, a... failure to the other? Your last name?"

"Hm? No." He thinks a moment. "Perhaps yes. I mean one army and the other. The Luftwaffe will think me a deserter if they know I live. The Red Army will think me a failure when I return, mission half done.

"But perhaps to my last name too. Aleksandr Kazakov, do you know this man?"

It sounds familiar, distantly, but not enough to ring a bell. She's silent for a bit though, proof that she's thinking.

"I'm afraid I haven't had the pleasure," she says, ever so proper.

"Well," just a hint of stark, cool humor, "he is dead. So of course you have not.

"He was my uncle. Imperial Russian pilot in Great War, the best. After Empire fell and Bolsheviks murdered the tsar, he flew for your Royal Air Force. After Britain washed her hands of Russia, he flew his plane into the ground. Young man, thirty years old. A patriot."

Kazakov falls silent for a time. In the distance, a siren starts up again. Low concusses, then, vibrating through the sturdy concrete construction of the dormitories.

"Flying for the Red Army, let alone the Luftwaffe: I do not think he would have approved. But there is no White Russia now. Red Russia is all Russia. This is how we protect our homeland now."

Should she ever go to a library and ask about Aleksandr Kazakov, search through newspapers for the name, or simply ask some very old airman one day, she could learn much of what Nikolai tells her now. But she would also know, after some research, that Nikolai's uncle flew his plane into the ground when she was four years old, small and pale and wearing ribbons at the ends of her braids.

He hears the rustling of her bedding and the creak of springs as she turns over in bed. Her eyes have adjusted, but not much. It is pitch black in here. She cannot really see him, or even the shape of him, only guess at him by his voice.

Then: sirens.

Neither of them. He hears her breath change as bombs hit. He does not hear her pray. He does not hear her weep. But he can hear, in that breathing, that some part of her is waiting to die. But he doesn't wait for it to pass; they cannot. This is only the beginning.

What she says comes in an exhale:

"I had a husband in the RAF. My brother is at the front."

Silence. Tight, furious silence.

"My son is in the country."

The silence that follows this is neither tight nor furious. Not on Kazakov's end, anyway. There, it is only awkward, and regretful.

"I am sorry," he says at last. "I did not know."

The buzzing of a bomber overhead. His eyes track it across the ceiling in the dark, instinctual. Perhaps he knows the man flying it. Perhaps it's some boy from Cologne, here to exact vengeance for the British decimation of his beautiful city. Perhaps it's some vile and vicious true believer of the Nazi creed. No telling from the ground, and at any rate, the plane passes. No bomb drops on the nurse dormitories tonight either.

"Why are you not in country?" he asks after a time. "It is more safe there."

Tautly, perhaps offended, she says: "I am not a coward, Cap-- Nikolai."

A moment. Softer: "I am needed here. We all are. I am not the only one with a little one far away."

"I know you are not a coward. I know that well."

This, close on the end of that sentence. Quiet, but steady; forceful in its way. Only after does that momentary silence fall. And only after, her explanation.

Some more time goes by.

"He is with family? Your son."

"No," she says. "Just... one of many families, taking in children from London. They raise sheep." A deep breath, a harsh exhale. "I do not wish to speak of this any more. I only --"

In the dark, silences are total. Even when they are brief.

"I understand why you -- and those like you -- do what you do. But I cannot condone it. I am not sure I can forgive it, either."

In the dark, silences are total.

In the dark, expressions are lost. She cannot see how he reacts to her words and so, paradoxically, he is free to react. He is free to wince, faintly, briefly. He is free to close his eyes.

"I will leave as soon as I can," he says quietly. "I am grateful, Josephine Parker."

There is not much she can say to that. She cannot beg him to stay. She cannot tell him she didn't mean it. The kindest thing he could do for her is leave, as soon as he is well enough to do so, and never see her again.

But that is a few days hence. He needs a place to sleep, to heal, before he'll be ready to leave London. She knows this. So she finally does speak, still in a whisper:

"Do not leave before you are truly ready. You'll only come back wounded again, if you do."

Kazakov laughs softly in the darkness. Something -- though she might not know what, and neither might he -- about what she said has amused him. It passes, though.

"I will not," he promises.

Then, rustling of blankets. The sensation, felt rather than seen, of movement and motion. He gets up; she hears him feeling around, finding a towel, finding the wall.

"I am going to wash," he whispers. "Sleep."

Perhaps he sees better in the dark than she can. Sees her yawning behind her hand when he gets up to leave. Sees her turn over, as well as hears it rustle. Sees her staring at the wall, where some women would be looking at a picture of their fallen husband, their brave brother, their faraway son.

Perhaps he can see that the napkin on her bedside table is empty when he comes back, the ham and potatoes gobbled up finally. Perhaps he can see her sleeping now, too tired to wake when he returns.

But perhaps not.

Perhaps the darkness leaves her as much a mystery to him as she ever was.

Parker

They are near the edge of winter, and it seems there is always ash, and dust, and blood. Sometimes there are worse things than blood. A girl slipped in it just two days ago, got a mighty bruise on her thigh, but Matron was annoyed that it hadn't been mopped. She wants the girls to remember this is a hospital. She refuses to buckle. She refuses to behave as though things are in any way out of the norm. There is no crying on duty. There is precious little crying in the dormitory, either.

They've sent many of the children away. It leaves pockets of odd and unnatural quiet here and there in London. Somehow the quiet feels as strange and frighting as the nightmarish barrage of bombs that now come nightly.

This corner of the ward is quiet, at least for now. Most of the men on the beds are sleeping, sedated or simply exhausted. Sheets separate people here and there, when need be. Beside one such narrow bed, barely illuminated by a small lantern on the nightstand, sits a dark-haired nurse with thin wrists, sharp features, and a back as straight as an iron rod.

One of her hands is on the patient's wrist, fingertips to pulse. Her other hand is turned, inner wrist towards her, so she can watch the second hand of her watch. There is a clipboard on her lap and no expression on her face.

The patient is unpopular.

Not because he is uncharming, or abusive, or crazed, as altogether too many of the patients -- those that have the strength for it -- can sometimes be. In fact, he cannot have been judged by his personality or his actions. He has not opened his eyes once since he arrived here. No, he is unpopular because of the circumstances of his arrival. He not dug from the rubble of a bombed-out building, nor evacuated here from that hellish continental front. He was dragged from the smoking wreckage of a Luftwaffe bomber shot by down the British defense, still marginally conscious then, reaching for his sidearm before someone smashed a rifle-butt into his temple and put an end to that.

Since then he has been unconscious. He was grievously wounded when he arrived. There was some amazement that he was alive after plummeting from the sky in flames; very few others have ever survived a crash like that, and none long enough to be questioned. So he is, in a sense, precious, and he has been treated as such: his numerous wounds cleaned and bandaged, his shattered leg reset to the best of the surgeon's ability, any simmering infection kept at bay with vial after vial of that rare, expensive miracle of a drug, penicillin.

There has been resentment in the ward. Patients and staff alike have eyed him askance, this interloper, this enemy in their midst, leeching off their scarce resources when days ago he was dropping bombs from the air. One night they caught one of the other patients, a soldier evacuated from Dunkirk, advancing on his bed with a pillow. So now he sleeps in the corner cot, screened off by sheets, pale beneath his bandages and his burns, handcuffed to the bedrails, guarded constantly by an orderly -- both for the safety of the others and for his own.

It has been two weeks. His medical condition has improved. The mangled leg has not turned gangrenous, which in and of itself is a miracle. His wounds are healing and his burns are nearly healed, and his pulse is steady and strong.

He has not woken once in two weeks, but now, as the nurse checks vitals and makes notes,

his eyes are open. He watches her.

The patient is precious, and also dangerous, and also despised. So he is in a corner, and his bed is curtained off, and an actual doctor has seen him repeatedly. And he is chained. And just outside the curtain, there is a yawning orderly.

But inside the curtain, sitting on a wooden stool and staring at her watch, is the nurse. She's not as young as some of the others, who in a better world would be in school, or starting their own families. She's halfway to her thirties, but looks neither old nor young. She has a certain regal bearing, a coolness about her that he can observe for some time while she finishes taking his pulse.

Then her fingertips leave his wrist. She takes the pencil attached to the clipboard and he can hear it scratching softly on the paper as she makes notes.

She glances at him, and pauses. Sees that his eyes are open. She narrows her eyes for a moment, then looks at her watch again, and then --

-- makes another note on her clipboard.

His consciousness is a feeble thing, barely there. His stare is flat, fixed, dull. He blinks slowly. One could imagine the gears of his mind moving: he thinks slowly, too. He does not have the strength to be insulted that his return to the world of the waking is greeted so coldly.

After some time, though, he summons the energy to say something. It is a hoarse whisper. It is not English.

Nor German.

His stare is flat, but his eyes are a bright color despite how clouded they are. They are the opposite of hers: pitch black, even moreso in the dim light. It's like looking at black pearls, or caviar, or the soil of a graveyard.

Or garden. It could be a garden. But perhaps a cold one, just after the thaw, wet and dark and not yet filled with the new shoots of true spring.

She looks up from her note-taking as he speaks. She is impassive. She does not understand him. But she addresses him: "You are in London, Mister Kazakov." Then, perhaps appallingly or unsurprisingly, depending on the British nurses you've encountered, she reaches out with her pencil-holding hand and uses said pencil to tap three sharp times on the side of the handcuff that is attached to the bed.

No words are needed for that one. He is an enemy combatant in the very city he was tasked with destroying, and they have him chained to a bed,

and his nurse doesn't care if he isn't speaking German. It isn't English, either, now is it?

It is impossible to tell if he understands the words. Even his name is quite different with a British clip; perhaps he doesn't even recognize it. He does understand the tap of her pencil, though. He does understand, when his eyes drift slowly to it, the cuff on his wrist.

He emits a small huff. Perhaps it's meant to be a laugh. His eyes come back to hers. He has green eyes, flecked in gold. He has blond hair, though somewhat tawnier than the Nazis would prefer. Like everyone touched by this damned war, he's a little too thin, more bone than muscle.

Another word or two. Now, perversely, it's in German. Perhaps she ignores him again, or simply does not understand. The detente lasts for twenty seconds, thirty.

A third try, and this time, a heavily accented English: "Water."

Doesn't ignore him. Stares at him, though, in icy silence. She has a cruel sort of patience, as though she is willing to let him starve or squirm until he finds his manners.

Speaking of which: he says 'water'. She says, with a raise of her brows:

"Let us try that again, Mr. Kazakov. 'May I have some water, please, Nurse Parker?'"

His eyebrows furrow. Her English is more rapid than he can follow. He closes his eyes.

And reopens them:

"Water. Please."

She stares at him another moment. A long, dead moment, where perhaps it seems she is going to hold out for all proper politeness. But she doesn't. She sighs, sets her pencil down, then rises. She puts her clipboard on the nightstand and lifts a pitcher that stands here, pouring some water into a glass.

When she turns to him with the glass, though, she actually puts her hand under the pillow beneath his head, carefully and rather slowly lifting him up somewhat even as she brings the glass to his lips with her other hand. It's entirely possible that he's capable of both these things on his own, but she performs this strange act of compassion with the same briskness as she demanded his request water in English, with a 'please'.

"Slowly, then," she says, more softly, like a reminder that's half for her own benefit.

Regardless: she helps him drink, and if he tries to do it himself she snips at him: "I won't have you pushing yourself when you've just woken, Mister Kasakov. Please let me do my duty."

But he is given water. Cool, but more or less room temperature. Until he indicates that it's enough. Then she lets him down again, and sets the glass on the nightstand, but does not sit again. Stands beside his bed, hands folded in front of her. She's in the same uniform as the other girls: a slightly frilled white cap, a blue dress, white apron and sleeves. No bloodstains that he can see. Everything starched to perfection.

There is pride in him. It was there in that momentary linguistic rebellion; it was there in the please. It's there when she starts to slide her hand beneath his pillow, too: he turns his head away, too weak to do much else.

For his trouble, he earns another string of rapid English. This time he does catch his name in there. Also, a please.

He sets his head back where it was, sighing. And she lifts him. And she holds water to his parched lips. And he drinks, staring her in the eye, as though the only remedy for bruised pride is to confront it as directly as possible.

It is not long before he lifts his chin. Barely a few sips. It's more for comfort than necessity: he's had an IV running for two weeks. Saline, and nutrition, and several times a day, penicillin. Which is too precious to squander on even the wounded soldiers shipped back from the front, so many of which have died in the two weeks this bomb-dropping bastard has lain here. She deserves credit: she neither drowns him nor drops him back on the narrow bed.

When he's resettled, she remains standing. And he looks at her, clearly exhausted by even the minor task of drinking. His eyes wander: he notes the iconic little cap and apron; the dress.

"Ya by predpochel vas," he says. "Ty kholodneye vody." He offers her a small smile, crooked. "No krasivaya..."

His eyes close. Unconscious again.