Page 43 of Ascendent
Rolling sideways, he fell from the bed, landed hard on his hands and knees on a plush rug. He scrambled backwards, backing up until his spine slammed into the hard wood of a nightstand, a bedside table. One hand reached for his side, covered the ache just under his ribs.
Where he’d been beaten by his wing mates at Andreapol. Where his sergeant had punched him, had kicked him, years ago. Was this the first or the fifth time he’d been broken?
Wild, his scattered thoughts reformed, the ice storm quieting in his mind, the wind fleeing, leaving his memories where they’d dropped, tumbled on the storms of his soul. Where was he? The 473rd? No, he was a pilot now, he’d never see that place again. No, not a pilot anymore. He was dead. Not dead. He lived in a reprieve, a purgatory that was as sweet as it was agonizing, seductive and terrifying at once. He lived on the knife edge of his dreams. He craved, so deeply, that it cut to his quick.
He was in Sergey’s bedroom. Stitches beneath his hand were almost healed.
Sergey’s soft voice rumbled from the front room. Sergey worked in his apartment now, watching over Sasha as he recovered. He’d protested, insisting Sergey shouldn’t change his routine for him. Sergey had laughed at him.
His chest ached. Not beneath his palm, where his stitches were. Around his heart, where his pulse hammered against the ice that was consuming his soul, was shrouding his heart, his lungs, his everything, from the inside out.
“Sashunya?” Footsteps crossed the bedroom quickly. Sergey dropped into view before him. “Are you all right? Are you in pain? Have you pulled your stitches?”
He shook his head and allowed Sergey to help him up—hands touching his skin, his bare chest, stroking him.
He’d flinched the first time Sergey had touched him, so unused to the feeling of hands on his skin.
Ten years, it had been ten years since the 473rd, since—
He allowed Sergey to help him sit on the edge of the bed.
Sergey was in dark trousers and a sweater over a white long-sleeve shirt He hadn’t bothered with a tie or jacket, not working from his apartment. Sasha pitched sideways, buried his face in Sergey’s midnight cashmere.
“Did you have a nightmare?” Sergey wrapped an arm around his shoulders and squeezed.
He used to think he’d have to fly to outer space to escape the memories, break free of the planet where he’d been held down and—
He’d never thought another man’s touch could banish the hands that reached for him from the blackest of his memories.
He shook his head. Snow fell away from his mind. Sergey was so warm, always so searingly warm.
In Russian, ‘tletmeant both to burn and to die. Fitting, for a frozen language, a frozen people.
Sergey was going to break him, burn him and kill him. He was going to break his heart, or the ice around it. Maybe his soul. Or his sanity. He turned into Sergey’s hold.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Days before, Dr. Voronov had changed his IV, the last one he needed, and sat on the edge of Sergey’s bed as Sergey had taken a private call from Ilya outside the apartment.
“Have you spoken to Sergey at all? About your nightmares?” Dr. Voronov had asked.
He’d shaken his head. How could he tell Sergey he was both a dream and a curse to Sasha? How could he begin to describe the way his soul had frozen? There wasn’t a mine dug in Siberia deep enough to reach the pit where Sasha had buried his past, not even Oleg Ostrovsky’s diamond mines.
Dr. Voronov had clucked at him, pursed his lips and shaken his head. “You can’t go on like this, Sasha.” He’d called down the zigzagging patronymics of Sergey, of Ilya, of even Sasha’s own father, to try and impress upon him the weight of expectation the state had for him. “You must let yourself heal,” Dr. Voronov had said. “You must, or you will break. Do you want to break apart in the stars?”
I’ll never get that far. You shouldn’t have put this spleen inside of me. I’ll never make it out of this bedroom alive.
Sergey’s voice, again, roused him from his stupor, the heat-drunk way his thoughts went sideways whenever Sergey was around. “Zvezda moya?”
You have to find a way to heal your soul.
You cut it out of yourself. You cut out the parts of yourself you do not want. Threw them away like you could get rid of them.
I left the door to the underworld open.
“I want to go to Siberia,” Sasha croaked. “Ineedto go back.”
Sergey blinked, once, twice. His hand stroked up Sasha’s back, down his arm. “Why don’t you rest––”
