Ivan Press

Kazakov

True to his word, Kazakov is silent as a shadow when he slips from the room. He takes with him the towel she provided. Compared to his initial entry here -- the mad flight through the Umbra, hounded by a dozen relentless weaverlings; the tumble through the Gauntlet, which felt roughly like running headlong through plate glass laced with razor wire; the limping scramble from one flimsy hiding-spot to another while residents of the dorm passed him by obliviously on their way to the bathroom, the cafeteria, the hospital -- this is very nearly a cakewalk.

He lets his senses unfurl. The shadows grow transparent. The slightest of sounds achieves clarity. There is no one awake; no one patrolling, no one moving to or fro. He alone moves through the halls, his footfalls silent. He passes the door of Parker's neighbor. Then the door after that. A bomber passes overhead, and somewhere a woman whimpers in her fitful sleep.

Then, the bathroom. He pauses for a long moment, listening. Assured of the silence within, he presses the door open gently, gently, slipping in. It smells of standard-issue soap in here. He follows the scent until he finds a bar, still wet from earlier use. He takes it into a shower stall.

Kazakov does not dare spend long in the shower. He washes quickly, using the same bar of soap from head to toe. Afterward, he scrubs out his clothes the best he can in the darkness, hoping he rids them of the worst of the stains. He cannot be sure. Even his senses are not sharp enough to see.

Shivering in a towel, he makes his way back to Parker's room. He was being crude when he told her he could find her by smell, but it was also truth: he did not need to memorize where her room was because he finds it again easily. There are no other women here who smell of purity, of silvered blood. None with her sharp, troubled refinement.

She does not wake when he lets himself back into the room. Nor when he closes the door. Nor when he locks it, wary of some nurse or matron barging in come morning. He does not know she has no friends who might enter without knocking -- though perhaps he suspects it.

His wet, washed clothes -- if hospital pajamas could be called such -- he hangs up to dry, one over the back of her chair and one off the footboard of her bed. Then he climbs back into his makeshift bed, unable to stifle a quiet groan as his sore muscles and bones meet that exquisitely uncomfortable surface.

Midthought, he catches himself being ungrateful, and thinks instead of the danger he has placed his unwitting hostess in; the terrible conflicts of interest he has forced her to endure, also. He stops complaining in his own mind, shifts the rolled-up blanket under his head to a slightly more comfortable position. He lets himself grow, changing shape into that larger, cruder approximation of man, in which his wounds will heal faster. And he closes his eyes.

Sleep comes far more easily than he might have expected, deep and dreamless.

--

Morning comes, heralded not by dawn through a window but by the jangle of a mechanical alarm clock in the pitch-blackness. Startled awake, Kazakov is bolt upright and tensed against some terrible attack when the alarm abruptly shuts off. The pieces of his reality snap back into place an instant later. He recalls where he is, why, how. He sinks back down.

A moment later, light. A stirring from the narrow bed, blankets drawn back and Nurse Parker rising, which he politely keeps his eyes closed to. In fact, he says nothing at all, stirs not at all, though it doesn't take a detective to know he is awake. It is there in his quietness and his stillness.

When she is pinning her cap over her hair, he does open his eyes. He is still in that monstrous near-man shape, and his eyes gleam more gold than green.

"See you tonight," he says quietly.

The dormitory is as quiet as it can be, given the circumstances. Many of the sleeping women have woken, if only fitfully, to the sound of a new round of shells. None scream or wail. Some of them heard horrifying screams today as dressings were pulled from savage burns on soldiers, and kept a steely expression through it. A few just wait for it to stop so they can go back to sleep.

Those that cry do so as quietly as they can. Nothing will by helped by their crying, and they've all been told that at least once since becoming nurses.

--

No one comes into the washroom while Kazakov showers. The water isn't what one would call hot, but nor is it icy cold. No one pokes their head out the door into the hallway as he walks back to Parker's room.

Finds it in the dark. Finds her sleeping still, jerking slightly as he locks the door but otherwise insensate. She does not snore or roll around or kick in her sleep. If he could not hear her breathing, smell her, all but feel her pulse in the very air, he might say she is as still as the grave.

He groans as he lowers himself; hears an answering sound from her, as though she's replying to some grunted conversation. A funny thing, that; hard to imagine her so relaxed in her waking hours, or even conversational.

She sleeps on.

--

The alarm in the morning is a back-up; Parker turns it off almost as soon as it has rung. She is already awake, though there is no window in her room to alert her of the sunrise. She still has her hand on the button when Kazakov sees her, his own waking far less calm than her own. She is staring at him, motionless, until he calms again. Waits for him to lie down and roll his back to her before she turns on the lamp.

Not the overhead light.

It keeps the room rather dim, but she manages. It's a small thing.

She does not dress in the room but takes her uniform and so on back to the washroom to wash her face and do her hair. When she comes back he is still curled up, not really asleep, or wakes again when she enters: he can smell food. Eggs and toast and tea, little else, but he can hear her eating quietly. One might wonder if she takes her breakfast like this every day, alone in her room, away from the mad chattering of the kitchen.

She probably does.

--

He, looking at the wall as he dozes in and out of sleep or tries to pretend he is not awake, does not know that she looks at him. The healed wound on his back, or his back in general. The blankets are not large enough for him in this form, but there are a few of them, so he doesn't get too cold.

She looks at him. She doesn't know why.

...She does, but she denies it.

--

Then she is pinning her cap to her hair, using the flat metal mirror nailed to the wall by her door, and she catches a glimpse of him turning in the hazy, mottled reflection. She turns, both arms still folded upward, one holding a pin, the other a curl of dark hair.

There is a napkin on the table, with a slice and a half of toast and a couple of boiled eggs. No tea. The dishes from last night and this morning are stacked for her to take down on her way out.

He says a form of goodbye. She pauses a moment, then nods.

"Try to keep the lamp off, if you can bear the dark," is all she can think of to say, and then she picks up her coat and umbrella and the tray of dishes. Then another pause, a hesitation before she decides: "You should use the bed, while I'm away. I did not intend for you to sleep on the floor."

She doesn't give him a chance to answer. She sees herself out, letting the door click shut behind her.

Kazakov laughs quietly. "I will not have it said -- "

whatever he will not have said is lost. The door clicks shut, and she joins the steady stream of white caps and dark capes flowing toward the hospital.

--

Left to his own devices, he sleeps a while longer. It is a rare luxury for him, accustomed as he is to rising with the dawn bugles. It is a strange and guilty thing to recognize, this luxury, when one is in essence a fugitive behind enemy lines.

Still, he sleeps. And somewhat later -- hours after dawn and perhaps an hour or two before noon -- he wakes again. It is very dark in the room, but the dormitories are quiet and he risks that enhancement of his senses again. He finds the food she left him, wolfing down the eggs and the toast. It hardly touches his hunger. It is still better than nothing. There is no tea, but perhaps he finds a pitcher of water in her room, and drinks thirstily.

His clothes are dry when he feels them. He puts them on, the fabric scratchy from air-drying. He looks at her bed, neatly made. He hesitates before sitting on its edge. Stretching out, his feet hanging off the end. If her room smelled of her, her bed does threefold. He wonders who her husband was, and closes his eyes.

--

Several more hours elapse. It is easy to lose track. When he wakes again the darkness has become oppressive, and his body burns with renewed energy. He feels for his wounds in the darkness, blindly assessing himself. He is getting better. He could probably leave in the morning. He still thinks he should stay another day. The morning after next, then, perhaps.

Lying in the darkness, he presses against the air around him. Leans into that sensation of oppression, of being contained, compressed. This time crossing over is slower, but less traumatic: a gradual slide across a tight membrane, emerging into the grey-lit Umbra with a gasp. The ground beneath his feet gives way immediately. He falls through glistening webs, hard as diamond, fragile as glass. When he hits the ground it drives the breath from his body, but leaves him scarcely worse for wear.

The moon hangs low, near-full. The cityscape is a dim hell of violence and smoke. London is so old, its history so bloody, but never before has the darkness loomed so grimly. He sees spiders in the distance, some of them already skittering over to repair the damage he has caused. Soon enough they will see him, but he doesn't intend to stay long enough. He moves: clambering through the shadows of the dormitories until he presses through the outer walls. Then he's in the alleys; follows them away from the hospital, into the crowded tenements of the working poor.

Squeezes out of the Umbra there, back into the cold and smoky world. It is filthy: ashes and muck, the stink of coal-smoke and refuse. Keenly aware of how much his clothes, his accent, everything about himself would mark him an intruder, he keeps to what shadows he can find. Makes a blur of his shape, staying on the move, hiding from passing voices and footsteps. He finds an unattending clothesline and steals trousers, shirt, a cap. He lifts a pair of shoes -- relatively clean and free of stench -- from someone's stoop. Hiding in a narrow alleyway, he changes, leaving his hospital clothes bunched up and stuffed into a garbage bin.

His back is starting to ache from exertion, his unhealed wounds beginning to burn. He keeps the cap pulled low, walks with his head down and his pace quick, just like every other citizen of this embattled city. At the corner he finds a vendor hawking roast pigeons; he suspects the birds are caught off the eaves and awnings, each one sold for a premium. He has no money, and his pride would otherwise be above stealing food -- but it can't be helped. His metabolism is on overdrive, burning through whatever scraps he can get. He bumps a passerby into the cart, causes a commotion, grabs four of the scrawny birds and walks away without a glance back.

--

The pigeons are cold by the time he makes it back to the dormitories. He enters the way he came out: precariously, climbing thin silvery strands of weaver-webs, avoiding the multitude of spiders now frenetically and methodically repairing the earlier damage. When he thinks he's about in the right place he crosses, squeezing out of the moonlit Umbra, back into darkness.

--

It is dark outside, too, when Nurse Parker returns to her room. The overhead light turns on when she flips the switch, though. Her uninvited guest has, indeed, availed himself of her bed in her absence. Waking to the light, he sits up, dressed in stolen clothes that are too tight in this form.

Which he shifts, seeing her. The strange courtesy of Garou, perhaps. He gets up from her bed, too, ceding the spot back to her to sit on the floor instead.

On the table, wrapped in a napkin, are the four roast birds.

Nine o'clock, and Nurse Parker unlocks and opens her door, stepping inside and turning on the light with her elbow. She is still in her coat. It isn't raining again (yet) and there's only been one pass of shelling. Her umbrella hangs hooked on her forearm. She is carrying a tray of dinner up from the kitchen, her first stop upon returning to the dormitory.

Her room smells like roasted pigeon. She blinks at the werewolf on her bed, dressed differently than before. She looks at the birds on the table. She looks back at him, raising her eyebrows.

Kazakov's eyes track hers to the table, back.

"I visit your city today," he says, wry. "Very lovely. Do not worry. I was not seen." He gives the stolen shirt a light tug, "I will leave London by foot and I cannot walk through city in hospital clothes. As for birds, you say you have no more meat this week."

Again, as the night before, he gestures to the food. "Please. We will eat together, yes?"

"It is not my concern if you are seen," she says, with the slightest emphasis on my. She crosses over to the table, setting down the tray. There is no meat this time, but more boiled potatoes, boiled carrots, another pair of boiled eggs, some toasted bread. It really isn't much. Rationing is in full force, and she only has so much time to put together something to eat before she needs to be abed.

He goes on to tell her about leaving London. She glances at him when he says this, then away, putting her umbrella in the stand. Her pale hands lift to unbutton her coat finally. He mentions why he brought the birds. She looks at him again, her gaze... still. As still as her body is when she sleeps. As still as the darkness is when she isn't in it.

Parker -- Josephine Parker -- hangs her coat up. She glances at the clock on the nightstand, then back to him. "I'd like to prepare for bed before the washroom gets crowded," she says softly. "I will go quickly. You should not wait to eat. I know you are healing."

She doesn't wait for him to respond. She's already gathering things from her dresser, her little basket, bustling around much as she likely does in the hospital. "I will eat with you when I get back, all right?"

"True," he admits, smirking. "I would not give you up. Nurse Parker harboring fugitive is safe secret."

She unbuttons her coat. There he goes again, following her hands with his gaze. That bright sly gleam when he's making a joke -- almost always at least a little at her expense -- mutes; his eyes hood, and his smirk fades. When she turns away to hang the coat up he is still looking at her. When she turns back he pulls his eyes back to her face.

"I will wait," he says, decisively. "I do not starve in fifteen minutes."

A flat stare is his reward for his joke about her criminal activity.

No, not criminal; treasonous. But they both, in their own way, answer to an older -- and far more primordial -- allegiance.

Parker may notice the way his eyes follow her hands, but she doesn't acknowledge it. She is hanging up her coat, and turning again, and perhaps she notices that he has to pull his eyes up. Again: if she sees, she says nothing of it.

He says he will not starve in fifteen minutes, and -- perversely -- she smirks.

And then:

She is unpinning her cap, removing her apron and her sleeves. She doesn't fold these items this time; they are to be laundered, and she has a clean uniform for tomorrow. She puts them in a basket under her bed, a makeshift hamper.

Going back to her little metal mirror, she unpins her hair, and perhaps he watches this, too. Watches it come down in dark, dark curls and waves, listens to pins clatter together in her pocket as she lets it down, runs her fingers through, shakes it out a bit.

Parker takes her time doing all this. She does not spare him a glance as she gathers her things for the shower, towel and pajamas and all, but does -- briefly -- look his way as she leaves her bedroom. Closes the door behind her. Walks down the hall.

--

The bathroom is less filled with steam, but it is not empty. She undresses, and showers, but does not wash her hair. She combs it out while she stands before the mirrors and sinks, but does not braid it. She brushes her teeth. She packs up her laundry and her shower items and puts on her slippers.

This time when she comes back in, she is wearing a different set of pajamas: these are blue-striped cotton, instead of pink. Her hair is loose, down her back and over her shoulders, falling in loose waves from how it was pinned up before.

Parker locks the door behind her, and if he has not already, instructs him: "Pull the trunk over to the table, if you will," before she sits down in her little chair.

She only has the one, after all.

Pins come out of her hair. So many pins, each one muted and dark, easily hidden away. And then her hair comes down, more of it than one could imagine tucked up beneath that little white cap. Across the room, which is not very far at all, Kazakov sits with his back to the bed, his wrists on bent knees.

And he watches. Which isn't to say he stares, because he is not uncultured and uneducated. Which isn't to say he sneaks peeks here and there, either, because he is not shy, and he is not unbold. He watches with his eyes following this strand of hair, that lock. He looks away to his hands, the idle entwining and unentwining of his fingers. When she shakes it all out, finished,

he inhales. It is almost instinctual.

Their eyes meet as she leaves the bedroom. The door closes. He hears her walking away; hears the other occupants of the dormitories going to and fro while he waits.

--

When the door cracks open his eyes are on her again, drawn as quick and sure as any carnivore's. Something must amuse him, because his smile is lopsided and irrepressible. Wisely, tonight, he doesn't comment on the color of the pajamas.

Then, thus bidden, he gets up from the floor. Mindful of noise, he picks the trunk up, grunting, and moves it to the table. He sets his makeshift seat across from hers, as though they were dining in truth. Taking his seat, he unwraps the birds from their napkin and shifts them a little close to her in unspoken invitation.

"What is it you do, Josephine Parker," he says her full name like one accustomed to the rhythms of Russian patronymics, to whom a single name seems somehow bare, "before the war made nurse of you?"

Josephine Parker has napkins. They are sewn from some floral calico, the edges stitched down to hems. She gives him one, and folds hers over her lap. She is hungry: little dinner last night, little breakfast today, whatever she was able to pause to eat during her shift. She takes one of the birds without any preamble and begins to pull it apart with a ruthless sort of efficiency.

"I was a nurse before the war," she answers him, perhaps offended -- her tone is always so stark -- that he assumes she's new to this. "They rush the girls through training now. I studied and practiced for much longer than they do of late."

"Ah." He, too, helps himself to one of the roast pigeons. Squabs, if you want to be fancy about it, but he neither knows the word nor would use it to describe something swiped on a streetcorner. "A veteran."

There can be very little politesse when they are strapped for utensils, for food, for space. He uses his hands, tearing a wing off, sucking meat off the thin bones. Pairs that with a bite of boiled potato, which he eats like an apple.

"And after war? You will be nurse, still?"

She uses a fork, has a knife, but she couldn't bring up more without being suspicious. She passes him the knife, as if perhaps he can eat with it in lieu of a fork. She does this without comment or indication; just slides it across the table.

They both keep their voices down. He is not supposed to be here. She is, while housing and feeding and hiding him, betraying her country. She knows.

"I am a widow, Mist-- Nikolai. And not a wealthy one. So yes, after the war, I will still be a nurse."

"No need to defend," he says evenly, with a hint of smile. "It is only question."

Given a knife, he does at least use it to pare meat from bone, carving the bird quickly and expertly. Then he passes it back and resumes eating with his fingers.

"You are from London? Born here?"

Her lips press together. She does not answer his little smile, his accusation of her defensiveness. She does not use the knife. She eats with her hands without concern, at least as far as the bird is concerned.

He asks another question. She looks at him. Chews. Swallows. Daubs her mouth with a napkin, and says:

"I am eating. And someone might hear you. We don't need to make conversation."

Puts her napkin down again. Picks up her fork. Stabs a potato.

A flicker of frustration, which to his credit he hides quickly, and well.

"I am interested. Who you are, where you come from. But if you wish, we eat in silence."

"I know," she says, quickly, quietly. "But I do not want to find out what happens if someone finds you here. If one of the other girls recognizes you from the hospital."

Her eyes close a moment. There is a flicker, then, a heartbeat of understanding in the air between them: how much of her treatment of him is personal. How much more of it is fear.

Her eyes open again. She resumes eating.

In silence.

--

She eats a whole pigeon by herself. Half the potatoes. Most of the carrots. She saves the eggs for additional breakfast, since she wasn't expecting meat tonight. She saves her bread for tomorrow, too. There's no wine with dinner, not even tea after. She lives such a sparse life. There is nothing fine here: no jewelry he's seen, no silk or satin garments. One of the only personal items out in view is the quilt, which perhaps she or her mother or grandmother made. He has not even seen a photograph of her son, her husband, her brother.

She is a sparse person, too; not conversing over dinner does not seem to bother her. No one comes to her door to see if she's heard the latest gossip, or to invite her to a quick game of gin rummy before lights out. She seems empty and angry to most who pass by her.

Up close, seeing her across the table, she seems sad... and tired. Tired in the way someone stretched very thin is, someone who might find it hard to discover small pleasures or moments of happiness even on a normal day,

and impossible, when halfway through dinner the city is being bombed.

--

Leftover food is set aside for the morning. The tray is packed to take down when she goes to the kitchen for breakfast. She should brush her teeth again. She thinks about it. She remembers, suddenly, and gets up from the table without explanation.

Goes to her coat, digging in a pocket. Produces something wrapped in cellophane, and brings it over to him.

A toothbrush. Nylon bristles. She exhales, the cellophane crackling as she holds it toward him.

She can hardly blame him for his curiosity. It's not just the scarcity of kinfolk in his world, nor the scarcity of women overall; it's not even just the sparse grace of her movements, the cold loveliness of her face. That thick dark hair. It is all of these things, to be sure, but it is more as well -- the yawning spaces in her story, the unhappiness which seems bone-deep in her. The puzzles he can't even begin to work out. Not when he has only the simplest of English words. Not when he can't even speak, because then she might be discovered.

Yet she is, it seems, capable of small kindnesses. She holds out a toothbrush, swiped perhaps from some hospital floor. He looks at it and finds himself genuinely touched. Which is absurd, when once his family owned tracts of land, chests of jewels and fur. When even now, even in the depths of war, they are doing well for themselves; some in the Army, some in the Party, some in those very industries that feed the war. This -- a two-pence toothbrush -- could hardly even be called a gift. Hardly requires the sort of reaction he feels.

He takes it, though. He hides his emotion with a smirk: "Is this comment on my breath?"

He takes it. And smirks at her. And makes a joke.

She sighs. And as she turns away, says something vicious-sounding under her breath.

In French.

There is, just then, a knock at the door. Ten minutes, ladies, ten minutes.

Parker decides to brush her teeth again after all. She plucks her brush and her toothpaste from her little basket, her feet still in slippers, and walks out.

"Wait," he catches her as she turns away, his hand, her wrist. "I -- "

the knock on the door. Kazakov falls silent immediately, his eyes going to the door. He has no idea if the matrons have master keys. He suspects they do. He doesn't move; it is possible neither of them do. Like statues they exist, barely breathing, until the matron outside moves on.

He lets her go. Takes a slow, long breath.

Whispering, "I did not mean that. You thought of me, and I am grateful."

Her skin is cool. Not hot to the touch, like this. Not icy, like a dead thing's. But cool the way a slender woman would be in autumn, in a room with precious little heat of its own. And her hand doesn't clench into a fist when he touches her, nor does she go limp. Her fingers flicker; they almost dance. There's a shiver up her forearm. She looks at him, while one of the trio who keeps this house -- the impatient one, she can tell by the sharpness of the voice -- knocks, calls out, warns.

They do not move. They scarcely breathe.

Until footsteps go on. And his hand lets go and her arm falls to her side and her palm itches, the inside of her wrist tingles, she wants to rub her hand and her arm but she doesn't do anything at all but stand there, staring at him as he speaks.

She doesn't move for a moment.

It turns out they are both terrible, terrible people, incapable of true warmth, moments of kindness. She cannot meet him there, or perhaps

she just meets him there very strangely:

leans forward, her voice a whisper, and says -- perhaps snappishly, perhaps mockingly, perhaps neither really:

"Your breath does stink."

And then she goes, hurrying to go clean her mouth after dinner, before bed.

--

Comes back just in time, as last night. Shuts the door, looks at him to make sure he's ready, then clicks off the light and the lamp. Locks the door again. She knows where he is in the darkness only because she looked.

"Sleep in the bed," she whispers, and he finds that she's only a few feet away. Not quite close enough to feel her breath. Always close enough to smell her. "You do not know when you will again."

Possibly, he'll never know where that came from. Whether it represents kindness or cruelty; whether some shred of humor still exists in her taut, narrow little life. But it surprises him into a laugh, nonetheless -- a silent blurt of air, a quick flicker of his mouth.

She leaves the room. He stands where he is a moment, his thumb rubbing along his forefinger, his hand closing and opening again.

Then he kneels by the bedroll and packs the pillow-blanket a little tighter. Smooths the bed-blanket so that it's not so lumpy.

--

When she comes back, her trunk has moved back to its usual place at the foot of her bed. Kazakov is sitting in his bed. He has no pajamas to change into now that he's disposed of the hospital rags, but if he intends to strip out of his borrowed clothes he at least has the good manners to wait until it's dark in the room. Besides, he still intends to wash. And brush his teeth, it seems: the toothbrush is in his hand.

The overhead lamp goes off first. Then the one on the nightstand. He listens for footsteps, creak of bedsprings. Her voice comes instead. He lifts his eyes to where he knows her to be. There's just a hint of light in here, the stray photons that leak in under the door. He can, after a few beats of silence, begin to make out her shape in the darkness.

For an instant, he thinks she means something else entirely. He feels foolish when he understands. Then a newly dawning understanding, which makes him wince in the dark again, unseen.

Whispering in turn: "You are asking me to leave tomorrow?"

"No," she responds, a rush of air. "I just meant --"

A breath. A sigh. "I know it will be treacherous for you."

With so little light to work by, they have only sound. He can hear every door that shuts, every footstep that falls.

Every breath she takes, too.

Every blink of his eyes.

He should say something. Give some indication of how long he intends to stay. Give some notice of his plan to leave the day after tomorrow. It seems strange: he's allowed himself only one day extra, and yet the thought of departing in the morning was a sudden raw wound.

He should give some sign, too, that he knows what she risks with him here. What sacrifices small and large, tangible and emotional, she may be making.

"I prefer floor," he whispers at last. "You should sleep in bed."

Another sigh, short and annoyed, but not terribly. "Have it your way," she finally says, and he hears her turn -- can almost feel the air move around her. Hears the rustle of the quilt as she pulls it back, hears the soft creak of the mattress as she beds down.

She doesn't remind him to wait a bit before he goes to the washroom. She knows she doesn't need to.

Some stirring and rustling on his part, too. He crawls under the blankets. He stretches out with a sigh.

Outside, it grows quiet. The lights click off. They are in darkness again, utter and complete. After a time, he whispers, "If you want, I can look for your boy, on my way. Bring him something from you."

He knows she is awake, as he knew last night. How could he not be as aware of her in the darkness as if they were touching? She is of his blood. His tribe.

The way he hears her swallow seems so close, as if she were right beside him, even facing him, and not the wall as she truly is.

"It is a kind offer," she says softly, "but the people in the country would spot you faster, and fear you more, than Londoners."

A quiet moment.

"They write to me, and tell me of him. I write to him, and they read my letters to him. They don't have a telephone."

He can almost hear her eyes closing. Lashes touching.

"Please don't offer again," she says, finally, and very quietly.

"As you wish," he whispers.

Perhaps it sounds final. Perhaps it sounds insulted. Perhaps he is insulted, and final; but perhaps not. It is only the darkness. Hard to read tone into three whispered words.

A long time goes by, and if they were anything close to friends they might have wished each good night and turned to sleep. But he is not asleep yet -- waiting to wash, yes, but also simply waiting. His mind turning. His heart beating, his breath drawn from shared air.

"I wish you are..." here he hesitates. Words are as hard to come by as light, and it takes him some time. "I wish you are less unhappy one day," is the best he can do, in the end.

Her breathing is getting steadier. Last night, she didn't fall asleep til he'd left the room. He can hear it softening, becoming rhythmic, and then shifting -- a hitch -- when he speaks again. She was not quite asleep, but close.

She listens.

But she pretends to sleep. And then, not very long after, she is not pretending anymore.

He hears her breathing catch. How could he not, when it's so dark, when they're mere feet apart, when the purity in her blood makes her burn like a candle, like a flame, like the heart of a star? He knows she hears him. He knows, just as certainly, she does not want to answer this, either.

Her silence turns into sleep. And then he is alone with his thoughts and his consciousness, lying on the floor while his heart beats in his chest. While his blood beats in his veins.

--

Tonight, as with last night, Kazakov rises from his bed when he is certain everyone sleeps. Tonight, as with last night, his movements are silent as he finds towel, toothbrush, door. The corridors almost feel familiar. He finds the bathroom silent and abandoned; lets himself in and, just as before, sneaks a shower in the far stall.

Tonight, unlike last night, he has a toothbrush. And he uses it, scrubbing at his teeth and spitting down the drain between his feet. When he's finished he dries himself on the borrowed towel, pads back to the room. Toothbrush clutched in hand, still: a precious and useful gift.

Opens the door. Closes the door. Locks the door.

After a moment's hesitation, he leaves his stolen clothes in a small pile by his bed. He shifts into that hulking, crude form he was too polite to maintain over dinner, and then he climbs under the blankets; turns this way and that until he achieves something approaching comfort, and sleeps.

When he comes back into her room, he hears her wake to the door opening. In the darkness he can dimly see her, shadow among shadows, turning slightly.

"Is it you?" she whispers,

and perhaps he whispers back, confirming that it's him. Hears her breathe in and sigh, turning over again, exhaling slowly as she drowses again. She can hear him shift. She can hear him breathing. Thoughts try to take her: husband. Son. The Russian pilot himself, sleeping on her floor because he refuses to take her bed.

But she dips beneath those thoughts. She is so tired.

"Goodnight," she whispers, finally, when things are still again. She doesn't know why she bothers.

She doesn't ask.

She sleeps.

Who knows why she asks. Who knows who else she could possibly expect. A ghost, back from the grave. A brother, back from the front.

An interloper, an intruder, a wolf who shares her blood and her tribe. Back from the washroom. Back in her room, where he has somehow grown familiar enough that she can sleep. He has closed the door when she whispers from her bed. Halfway across the small room, he pauses where he is; a different sort of stillness from the heartpounding silence that followed that matron's knock on the door.

Stillness nonetheless, caught and pinned to the moment. He sees her as a shadow amongst shadows. She sees him, if at all, as the barest impression of movement in the night. He takes a step closer, then another.

Lifts the edge of her blanket. Pulls it up over her shoulder. Covers her, gently, his hand never brushing her body.

"It is only me," he whispers, and retreats to his bed. The building is poured out of concrete, and the floor does not creak as he lies down. The blankets rustle a bit. He sighs.

"Goodnight," he answers.

He sleeps.