Work Text:
MARCH 15th, 1981
It's the pain that wakes him, though he's fairly sure he should be dead.
The smell of sea air, the crash of waves on a cliffside, offset by the roaring of his uneven pulse in his ears and the metallic stench of blood. He should be dead. He isn't dead. Part of him must be.
He wonders if it's possible to have a broken heart when the man it belongs to is a dead one.
After a long, agonizing moment, Charlie Crowe, Bell, Aleksei Morosov, all of them, none of them, opens his--their?--eyes.
The hidden curve of the sun is a hazy ring of light sitting low on the horizon through a filter of clouds, not thick enough to rain, which is a small mercy. Less merciful, however, is the thick, heavy, molten pinprick of pain in his chest, radiating outwards through his entire body.
The bullet hadn't gone through. That's a problem. One of many he has right now, but definitely the most pressing. In a way, it might have bought him time; he can't bleed out of the wound as freely as he might've otherwise, but conversely he doesn't think he can remove it himself.
Without consciously thinking about it, Charlie--is that his name? who is he now?--drags himself forward for just a meter, and has to bite back a cry of pain. Fuck. Taking a deep, shaking breath, he tries again.
It hurts. Of course it fucking hurts. But through the red haze of agony, he forces himself on anyway. Why?
Perseus wasn't here.
The realization freezes him, then pushes him another meter forward, with more intent this time, and the pain isn't so difficult a hurdle to overcome. Another meter. Another. Another.
Perseus wasn't here. He's still out there.
His resources have to be crippled by now, but that won't stop him. It may take years, a decade, longer, but Perseus will try again, he'll be back, and that can't happen. There can't be another Solovetsky. Next time, they might not have him to pull them out of the fire.
They might not have him anyway, he thinks, his arms giving out to send him back to the dirt. He has to survive, first.
"He's over here."
Fear-fueled adrenaline forces him to lurch a bit too hard for his breaking body, and a pained cry is ripped from his throat before he can think to silence himself. It takes until he's trying to slow and steady his breaths that he realizes a few things.
The words aren't directed at him. They're spoken in Russian. And the speaker hasn't finished him off, despite clearly knowing he's there.
He doesn't know if it's better or worse that Perseus' people may have found him, in an ironic reversal of Trabzon: Arash had attempted to kill him, and the CIA had hauled his carcass away because he was useful. Now, his usefulness to them expired, he's nearly dead again, and Perseus has returned to pull him back into the fold.
But it's not that easy. It never is. The past few weeks--months, even--have taught him that well.
"Secure him," another voice orders, and Charlie (Aleksei? Bell?) finds his body lifted, taken away. He can't fight it. He's too weak. And as ever, his future is once again in everyone's hands but his own.
He opens his eyes, and a familiar face stares down at him with pity.
"Oh, Aleksei," Perseus muses, "what have they done to you?"
He can't answer before his broken, bloodied body draws him back into oblivion.
Aleksei's (Bell's? Charlie's?) life becomes nothing but fragmented snapshots. Sometimes they must be memories disguised as nightmares, because he doesn't remember them, even blanketed with an innate familiarity. Sometimes, he thinks he might be conscious, because he stares, briefly, at a white ceiling in a room with white walls while he lays in a bed with his wrists shackled to its frame.
But he is never awake for long before the darkness returns, and it takes far, far too long for him to suspect something: they're drugging him.
Why? To share any information, I'd need to be able to answer questions.
The thought slips away, along with his consciousness, and when he wakes again, he doesn't remember it.
"...ready to talk?"
Perseus again. Aleksei doesn't know if he's returned at any point, nor does he know how long he's even been in this semi-conscious state. He keeps his eyes closed, listening.
"As far as we can tell, there's nothing in our tests that indicates he'll be a risk for sudden violence, but that's why we've kept him under. If you want to talk to him, I recommend leaving him restrained."
"Fine. Wake him."
Footsteps approach, and Bell evens his breathing, doing his best to maintain the image of enforced slumber that his body has become intimately familiar with. There's a long beat of silence, then a sudden pressure on his chest, right above the dull ache where the bullet had been.
The pain--nothing but a background throb before--becomes a searing, white-hot jolt, and it tears a sharp shout of agony from his throat, his body attempting to lurch away, but the pressure remains steady.
Another second of blinding, nauseating pain passes before the pressure on his chest relents, and Charlie's breaths heave as he does his best not to vomit. Squinting his watering eyes open, he finds Perseus, and another uniformed man who must be some sort of doctor, or at least the person who was ostensibly placed in charge of his recovery.
"Hello, Aleksei," Perseus greets him conversationally, as though they're speaking in the war room, in that bunker, and not a makeshift hospital room with Bell's wrists cuffed to the bed's railings.
"What--" Charlie manages, his throat dry; swallowing thickly, he tries again, "How long?"
Exchanging a glance with the other uniformed man, Perseus says, instead of answering his question, "You were tampered with. You know this. It led you to destroy that which you sacrificed so much for, in these past years."
Aleksei says nothing. What can he say?
"Tell us everything you shared with them," Perseus continues when he seems to decide Charlie won't reply, "and we will make them pay for ruining you."
Bell can't help the humorless huff of laughter as he closes his eyes. "There's nothing I can tell you that will make a difference at this point."
"I will be the judge of that, Aleksei." The words are harder now, spoken with a severe, uncompromising edge. "Tell me."
"It won't matter," Aleksei rasps, still with a humorless smile on his face as he opens his eyes to meet Perseus' directly, "since you'll kill me no matter what. I talk, you get what you need, so you kill me. I don't talk, I become a liability, so you kill me. Why don't you save us both some time and get it over with?"
For a long moment, too long, Perseus and Bell are locked in a silent battle of wills. "No," Perseus finally says, leaning back, "no, I don't think I'm going to make it that easy on you. You will tell me what you learned from the Americans, one way or another."
And then he's gone, for now, but Charlie is under no illusions that his nightmare is anywhere close to being over. Not when he still has work to do.
Bell, we've got a job to do.
A spear of pain through his forehead pulls a sharp wince across his face, and he closes his eyes again, focusing on his shaking breaths.
Bell (Charlie? Aleksei?) will bide his time. And then, he'll return to his mission.