2.
Revy awoke to movement close to her – slowly sleep faded to reveal harsh breathing, and she sluggishly lifted her head, cracking one eye open – the room was still encased in dusk, blinds drawn. The absence of dawn meant their time together had not yet come to an end, when the sun rose and swept its merciless heat across the city, like a blanket that slowly drove them all to the brink of insanity.
She turned in the bed, which was soft and wide enough that it instantly told her where she was – linen fabric, a soft pillow, yet the spot next to her was cold.
Revy blinked in the haze of sleep and found Balalaika further away in the bed and it roused her completely. The blonde was stiff, her muscles coiled tight, her eyes squeezed shut. Her face twisted in a strange expression.
Revy reached out to touch her when a large hand snatched up to grab her throat in a chokehold. Revy instinctively flinched, gasping for air as she grasped at the sheets, trying to find something to hold onto.
"Sis –" Her lungs constricted with lack of air.
Icy eyes stared at hers in the low light, then widened slightly. The grasp loosened, allowing Revy to take a stuttering breath.
"Sis, what the –"
The hand lingered softly on her throat for a moment, stroking the skin it had previously pressed down onto, before it withdrew completely.
Revy sat up, rubbing her throat, about to ask her what the fuck she was doing, but Balalaika had moved as far away from her as possible, sitting by the edge of the bed like she had before. The sleeping robe she wore made her look like a corpse. Her hair was illuminated by stray light slipping in between the blinds.
Revy sat on her knees among the crumpled-up sheets. "What did you dream about?"
Balalaika gave no reply, still like a statue with her back against her, and Revy wanted nothing but to crawl over again and tug her back into an embrace. Yet a part of her was frozen in place, not daring to move closer.
"Did you dream of that fucking war again? ... Afghanistan?" I made her like this. I made her think of that before.
Balalaika stared blankly at the window. Her hair fell like a veil around her shoulders, heavy like the imaginary crown on her head.
Then she lifted her head to glance at Revy. "Do you really wish to know?"
Revy nodded, slowly.
"My men rescued me, back then," she said, her voice so low and hoarse that she had to focus to hear her clearly. "I didn't know how long it had been, but I found afterwards… that it had been almost a month. I thought I had forgot most of it. I... remember more than I thought I did."
Her gaze was hard, staring down the blinds, as if the event she spoke of was there, just out of reach on the other side, among the lights flickering in the distance against the sky. Her eyes were like dark pits of blue in this light.
"I remember my comrade Sergeant's face that day. They had been searching without stop for weeks. He found me first." A strange expression swept past her face, hard like steel. "I wasn't fit to be their Kapitan in that moment."
Revy tried to imagine the tall, stone-faced man she knew as Boris, carrying Balalaika out of whatever place she had been in – she couldn't imagine what she would have looked like – younger, and those scars would be fresh, maybe bleeding - would Boris have been crying at the state of the Kapitan?
She swallowed, her palms growing sweaty. "Sis, you were still their captain, of course they'd fucking look up to you no matter what–"
Balalaika tilted her head back as if she was deep in another conversation, ringlets of pale hair curling down her back. "I was sent to a makeshift, filthy hospital, but I discharged myself and returned to my men. I had to show them … that I was still their leader, and I would not let them down."
Her eyes closed for a moment, then opened, her face impassive again. Her eyes focused on something far away, as she spoke, even quieter.
"My wounds were not the only thing that had changed about me. Everyone saw the burn marks marring my skin, but... that wasn't all." There was a bitter edge to her voice, and it froze Revy in her spot. For a moment only her own loud breathing was heard.
"My body had started changing. It just wouldn't do, now, would it?" Balalaika turned her icy eyes to her then, and Revy found herself unable to meet her gaze. There was a sick, almost morbid curiosity rising inside of her.
"You- holy fuck, Sis-"
"I do not get attached." A cold smile graced Balalaika's lips, one that didn't reach her darkened eyes. After another moment she spoke. "I used what I could find. I bled for days, and then it was over. I disposed of it myself."
Revy clenched her hands in her lap. She had heard those stories before, yet hearing it from someone like Balalaika, the woman on the roof, was different. She tried to imagine herself, her own body and the feeling shuddered through her, then looked at the other woman, and it made her want to wrap her arms tightly around her and hold her as tightly as she possibly could.
She imagined Sofiya with short hair, one side of her face covered, bleeding through the bandages from the strain, her shaking hands, spread legs and blood smeared on the floor and between her scarred legs. Her hands would hold it - Revy didn't know how large it would be - large enough to fit in her palm, maybe larger. Would it have gasped for air, looking like a dead thing, there in her hands?
The Balalaika of the present looked at Revy and her gaze was blue, deep and dead. Like a near bottomless part of the sea, Revy felt like she was staring down an abyss, pulled to the bottom.
A part of her wanted to ask holy fuck Sis what did you do with it? but something else made her press her lips tightly together.
Balalaika misread her expression.
"Are you going to ask me if I regret it?" There was an almost playfully cruel smile on her lips, daring her. "If I felt - what would that salaryman call it -" her fist twitched in distaste, the bite of her accent prominent - "maternal feelings."
"No, Sis -" Revy took a deep breath to quell the rage in her chest that rose at the thought of Balalaika in all that pain. Thinking of her face, twisted in agony from whatever sharp object she had used, Revy had never wanted to slaughter a man as badly in her entire life, shaking in sympathetic rage.
"If that- if…" Revy tried to find the words but they stung her on the way to her mouth, like a malevolent swarm of bees. "I would have killed it too. Hell, Sis, Sofiya, I would have done the same -"
Balalaika looked at her then, like Revy was a teenager listening in on a conversation she barely understood, and Revy stopped, unsure what to say. Balalaika went rigid again at the sound of her name, her head slightly bowed, a glimpse in her eyes that made Revy's heart beat faster. Then, her body shook once with something that seemed to be choked up laughter, silent and restrained.
A startling sense of fear flowed through Revy, remembering Rock on the hood of that rental car in Japan, how Balalaika had looked at him as if she was about to tear out his throat like a cat with a bird. Enjoying the fear of the prey and their squirming.
Balalaika's face softened then, ever so slightly, at the sight of Revy flinching. The shadows underneath her eyes were deepened in the light when she turned her body to face her fully.
"That is the past," she said quietly. "It doesn't do to dwell on it, no?"
Yet her gaze was far away, unreachable.
"You're still fucking upset, I can tell." Revy looked at her, wanting to say something else when Balalaika rose from the bed, her robe falling like a waterfall around her body, shiny fabric moving fluidly.
"I am going to get something to drink."
Revy followed her a few steps behind, watching the tall woman move around in the apartment, her movement slightly less steady, yet she walked with the gait of a commander, her head held high, her steps well-measured. With the slope of her muscular back and shoulders and heavy hair falling behind her, she looked ghostly pale in this light, an apparition that made Revy's knees go weak.
This woman, with her hollow eyes and sharp smile, was only hers.
Balalaika put the kettle on the stove with practiced ease and waited for the water to boil in the silence, producing two cups that looked like they cost more than anything Revy owned.
She almost held her breath watching her, how Balalaika stood by the stove, and for a second she almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all, how this could have been Balalaika – Sofiya – in another lifetime, in another life where she had not joined the army and had her entire life stripped away, piece by piece – standing by a stove in an apartment that wasn't right behind the Russian mafia's looming headquarters.
The thought of Balalaika in the role of a housewife, displaying a jarring sense of normalcy, almost made her snort, despite it all. At her breathy sound, Balalaika turned her head, a questioning look on her face. Revy shrugged.
The silence hung heavily in the air for a moment as the older woman turned to pour water into the cups, adding teabags. Revy didn't care for the taste of the black tea, bitter with a tinge of lemon, but liked the way Balalaika watched her when she drank it.
She approached when Balalaika turned to her, and she looked at the wide column of her scarred throat, how lonely it looked, and she wanted to bury her face there.
Balalaika raised her hand, placing it at the back of her head and pulling her close, her fingers entangling in her hair. Revy moved in, wrapping her arms tightly around her waist, fists resting against her back.
Balalaika's lips brushed her forehead, then pressed against her skin and Revy breathed deeply that scent that was so delicately hers, pushing her nose against her throat and tightening her grip around her, as if to physically anchor her in the present.
The blonde's other hand settled in her hair as well, grasping her head gently, and she looked down at Revy, their gazes meeting.
Revy had nothing else to say in that moment, a mess of words getting stuck in her throat, come back to here and now, I won't let you disappear into that shit again, but she was at a loss for words. Balalaika must have seen that expression on her face, running a finger across her lips silently.
"Drink your tea. Then we need to sleep, моя дорогая."
Revy felt her cheeks heat at the name and the tickling sensation of her nail grazing her lower lip, reluctant to part from her warm body for even a moment.
Balalaika pressed her close to herself, putting her chin on top of her head. Revy grasped her tightly.
Once they were back in her bed for their few remaining hours together, Balalaika curled into her body, her arms holding onto her as if she was drowning, until the morning light mercilessly slipped through the blinds.
Revy wondered if she ever dreamed of anything else.
.
.
.
Your ability to experience love will come back.
It will come back.
Eventually.