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Only one of his eyes seems to be able to open and he looks up at me with a crystal-clear blue eye. Like ice in the dead of winter when the sunlight hits it just right. He doesn’t move or flinch from me as I start to blot at some of the worse wounds. Everything looks like it’s clotting at the very least. I offer him water - and that’s the first real response that I get from him. The bottle is gone in seconds. Who knows the last time that he was given anything. I don’t even know if they have been feeding him. Not much. That’s obvious. There are hints of the man that he once was when he looks up at me again. A little less crazed, a little less distant. I don’t even know if he’s capable of really seeing me or feeling what I’m doing for him but I hope it helps. Even if it’s just a little.
Then he speaks. A rumble of words from somewhere deep in his chest. His voice sounds like he’s close to death, knocking on the gates of hell. Maybe that’s why he keeps calling me angel.
When he grabs my wrist, his touch impossibly soft and cold. He keeps a cage of fingers around my wrist without actually holding too tight, like somehow I’m the fragile one, while he claims that there’s no saving him.
“That’s impossible.” I force a tight-lipped smile. “There’s no such thing as being beyond helping.”
“Why else would an angel be here to take me to the afterlife?” He asks. I can tell that he means it. I wipe a bit more of the grime off him and try again. I can’t imagine the sort of pain he’s suffering this very second if he’s asking me questions like this. My stomach ties into knots and I bite back tears. No point in crying, I have to help him.
“I promise you I’m no angel.” I force another smile. Maybe if we both relax a little, it won’t feel so hard.
“Look like one.” he grouses and slips back down to where he’s lying on his side. The purple bruising on his torso bothers me the most. The pants that he has slung low on his hips are filthy. It can't be helping. He’s seconds away from raging infections if he doesn’t have any already.
“How can you tell? Having only one working eye and all.” I tease, hoping to bring some levity to the situation.
The corner of his lip quirks upward and it transforms his whole face. Even as battered and swollen as it is, I can see more of the man underneath it all. I can’t imagine how strong he must be to not have broken.
“Careful, he doesn't like it when I laugh. Walls probably have eyes.”
A single fingers of his moves, attempting to gesture to the walls around us. His brow knits and he stares at his hand for a moment like he doesn’t understand why only one finger moved when he meant to move the whole limb.
I don’t want to think about what that might imply.
“Do you have a name to go with your sense of humor?” I ask, hoping to bring him back into himself.
“Maybe.”
“Very unique name. I’m sure you got a lot of crap for it in school, didn’t you? Teacher calls attendance and you’re just like, maybe.” I laugh at my own lame joke. More of a nervous gust of air than anything else.
“Stop, smiling hurts.” He wheezes and lets his good eye close. “It’s Alek.”
“Got a last name?”
“Ivankov.” he runs his tongue over dry lips. I move for the water bottle as the weight of his surname crashes around me. One that’s not uncommon but only one person with that name would have meant anything to Nikolai. The woman that he almost married. The one who caused enough damage that I had to repair him.
“Helena’s brother?!” I blurt with more affliction than I mean.
He rolls his good eye toward me. “Maybe.”
He is probably wary of me now, but I can’t stop. I can’t help myself. “I’m sorry…”
He doesn’t answer me at first.
“For your loss… I mean…” I mumble pathetically. How can I feel guilty or jealous over a deceased woman? What does that say about me?
“She’s not dead,” is his only answer.
My eyes widen in shock. Of course she’s dead. Nikolai told me how he did it. He told me what happened that night. There’s no way that somebody could survive a fall like that. I never thought to ask what he had done with the body, if anything at all.
“Don’t put that on me, either. My sister is very much alive. And Nikolai is keeping me here until I tell him everything about her, but I won’t. I have ruined a woman’s life, that’s true, but I will not ruin hers. I’m guilty enough without adding more to it.”
“What are you talking about? Whose life did you–”
Whatever else I might learn from the conversation with this man is cut short by the door banging open wider behind us. Nikolai’s hulking frame fills most of the open space and the rectangle of light that I was sitting in just moments ago is now in the shape of his large body.
I whip around to look my husband in the eye. I know he’s going to be mad at me for doing this. I know that I’m going against his orders but until this very second the only punishment that I thought that I was going to get from it was a sound spanking. Which, I’ve never minded from him before. But the look on his face is something that I’ve never seen before.
Nikolai and I have been through a lot. He’s done some not awesome things to me before the nature of our relationship changed. He wasn’t always the man that I love - but I’ve never been afraid of him before right this very second.
