Chapter 2: Doctor Soldat

Soldat let himself stare at Eight laying on the bed for just a moment before he started to get to work. He laid out some of the supplies from the med kit and looked over her body again. Her wounds were easier to see, now that she wasn't crumpled up between the bathroom sink and tub. The Soldier's mind clicked into work mode, starting the task of triaging the young woman before him. He leaned over her slightly and let his hands work down her body clinically, much like Eight had done before.

Bruising - she had some bruising on her face and a few cuts along her cheeks. The split lip she was sporting would be annoying for her, but that would hopefully be gone in a day or two. It already looked like it was starting to scab over.

She heals fast… he thought to himself She heals like me. He moved his hands down further, taking extra care in being gentle with his metal hand. Despite this, Eight still flinched in her unconscious state when he pressed against a few spots along her ribs. He found multiple cracked and a 2 broken ribs on both sides. So far nothing had shifted into a dangerous position, so he'd wait till she woken up to help her wrap up her chest.

Next, he lifted up the edge of her shirt to see where the blood stains were coming from. The Soldier was relieved to see that the long gash on her left side already showed signs of healing itself. The stab wound on her right, however, was still bleeding through the gauze she'd packed it with. He peeled it back slightly to get a look at the two inch puncture and deemed that wound not life threatening. He pushed the bandage back down and moved to what looked to be her most severe injury - her thigh.

The Soldier took a deep breath as he lifted the edge of the bloody gauze with his flesh fingers. He made sure to avoid jostling the tourniquet she'd applied, not wanting to risk her bleeding out if it was truly saving her life. Eight had, in fact, managed to stop the bleeding, but The Soldier was concerned that the bullet may still be inside her leg. He lifted it up gently, feeling for an exit wound on the opposite side. His lips deepened into a frown when he wasn't able to find one.

"Of course…" he sighed, "You couldn't make this easy, kid?" he asked her quietly. He wasn't sure why he went with the nickname, but it felt right with her. He grabbed a few more supplies from the kit and left her to go wash his hands in the bathroom. He glared down at his metal fingers as the blood swirled down the drain. He found himself struck by another flashing memory…

His hands, still bloodied, were wrapped tightly around the neck of a middle-aged man. The soldier had him on his knees next to a smoking car on the side of a dark road. He reared back to strike the man's face again -

Soldat cringed as he snapped back to reality, bent over the sink with his ceramic hand gripping the edge so tightly that it had cracked. He looked up at his face in the mirror, tired blue-gray eyes staring back at him. Between the fight with the Captain the day before and everything that had come to light since then, Soldat was tired. But it just took one glance behind him in the mirror at the wounded young woman on the bed for him to snap back. He couldn't waste any more time.

He went back over to the bed and made quick work of cutting away the torn fabric of Eight's leggings from just below the tourniquet and down. He wiped the affected area down with a clean gauze pad so he could actually see what he was doing. He took a few pairs of scissors and tweezers and poured rubbing alcohol over them to quickly sterilize them. The Soldier spared one last glance up at Eight's face before he started, silently begging her to stay unconscious. What he was about to do was going to hurt like hell.

Meanwhile, in the darkness where Eight was floating, she had started to dream. Initially, she just saw blurs of color, but as they sharpened she was able to make out shapes.

She could see buildings in the distance, lit up by the full moon and street lights. It looked like the D.C. skyline, peppered with monuments and capitol hill. She could practically feel the cool night air breezin against her skin as she realized she was sitting on the edge of the roof. Eight looked up over her shoulder and saw a man standing a foot behind her. She could feel a chuckle building in her chest as she smiled up at him, laughing at something he must have said.

The man had shoulder length dark hair and a very menacing physique. He was wearing all black and looked to have multiple loops and holsters throughout his suit for guns and other weapons and supplies. Eight watched as he took a seat next to her, his hand gripping hers gently. She could feel his fingers slip between her own, too firm and too cool to the touch to be normal. She looked down, seeing the glint of metal interlaced with her fingers. She let her eyes follow the metal up his wrist and his arm to the red star on his shoulder...he had a metal arm. She looked over at his face again, lit up by the moon in the cloudless sky. He looks quite handsome in this light…

"Однажды , восемь . Однажды , мы будем свободны от добра ... мы сделаем их платить …" (One day , Eight . One day we will be free from them for good ... we'll make them pay …) his voice rumbled quietly next to her. She never took her eyes off of his as she felt her lips pulling into a smile at him. She had this pleasant, warm feeling exploding in her chest. However, that warmth quickly turned into a blinding pain and Eight could feel herself falling off of the ledge.

She woke up just as she felt she was going to slam into the pavement below, screaming loudly in the dark bedroom. Eight tried to writhe and curl her body away from the cause of the pain, away from the figure she hadn't realized was with her in the room. She kicked out with her good leg, trying to get him off of her - unable to focus on anything beside the feeling of his fingers and tools digging through the flesh of her thigh. She clawed at his arms, tugging and pulling desperately

"No no….please stop!" she screamed in both English and Russian. She didn't care that she had tears pouring down her cheeks, she just wanted the pain to stop.

The Soldier stopped, but only to then grab her wrists from further harming herself as she tried to stop him. He tugged on them slightly, shaking her out of her daze to look up at him for the first time.

"Vosem'!" he yelled in Russian, trying to get her to focus on him. "Eight - Look at me!" When her tearful blue eyes met his and they focused slightly, the Soldier continued. "I know you don't know what's going on right now, but I need you to calm down."

Her eyes cleared up for a moment as his voice sunk into her mind. He was starting to look more familiar to her...The man on the roof? she thought to herself. Her chest was heaving as she tried to breathe through the pain, only managing to nod at the man to let him know she understood.

"You did well patching yourself up, Eight - but I still need to get that bullet out of your leg. Once we get it out, your healing will take care of the rest" he explained gently, his hands still gripping her wrists. His flesh fingers were rubbing gentle, soothing circles along her wrist before reaching up to wipe away an errant tear slipping down her cheek. "Will you let me do this?"

Eight looked at him for a moment, weighing her options. There was no way she'd be able to dig through her leg for the bullet on her own; she needed help. With one last look down at her exposed leg, she relaxed her body back down onto the bed. She was still heaving for air and her body shook slightly, but she managed a small nod to him. She watched warily as he grabbed a leather belt from the dresser and held it out to her.

"Bite down on this," he said quietly, "This is gonna hurt."

She opened her mouth, wincing as her split lip pulled as she bit down on the leather. Her hands started to grip the comforter till her knuckles turned white under the dried blood caked there. He looked at her again, his eyes filled with sympathy and concern, as he silently asked her if she was ready for him to continue. When Eight nodded slightly and took a deep breath to steel herself for the pain, The Soldier resumed his search for the bullet.

The whines and screams that came from Eight were enough to make The Soldier pause for a moment, feeling a deep discomfort himself at causing her pain. He tried not to focus on her as she tried desperately to stay still and not move as he used the scissors and tweezers to dig around for the bullet.

After the longest minute in either of their lives, the Soldier caught himself chanting in his head, "Please pass out. Please pass out. Please pass out." He was practically begging her to slip back under, not wanting her to have to feel this. After another 30 seconds of him searching, her whimpers had stopped and her body went still again. The Soldat checked her quickly for a pulse with his right hand before he went back to the task at hand. A moment later he felt his tweezers hit something metallic in her thigh and he quickly grabbed onto it and pulled.

He knew from his training that he should be more concerned with nicking an artery or that dislodging the bullet could lead to more bleeding. His thought process was that, if she hadn't bled out yet, she hopefully wouldn't now. With one final tug, the tweezers holding the bullet came free and he placed fresh gauze over the wound. He placed the bloody bullet down on the corner of the dresser after looking at it to make sure it hadn't fragmented when she was shot. He was pleased to find that it was in one piece and that her wound didn't seem to be gushing blood.

The Soldier let out a sigh of relief as he got the supplies he needed to dress her leg, packing more gauze into her wound before wrapping it up in a bandage. He took advantage of her unconscious state and moved to her other side to make quick work of her stab wound. It was still bleeding a bit, but not nearly as badly as before by this point. He decided that it must not have nicked any vital organs and got a few stitches in to keep the hole closed. As he wrapped another bandage around her, he got another flash of a memory.

The Soldier walked into an industrial gray room. It was lined on each side with beds and monitors, set up like a sparse infirmary. A young girl was asleep in one of the beds on the right, her left arm in a plaster cast past her elbow. As he got closer, he saw that her little face was swollen and mottled with bruises. Even though this child was only 10 or 11 years old, The Soldier felt his chest constrict as he recognized the tiny figure. This was Eight...

As he watched her sleeping, his memory shifted into another similar room. This time is was a gym and Little Eight was in the main ring fighting a grown woman. She had her blond hair tied back in a tight braid and she wasn't pulling any of her punches as she sparred with the child. Eight was able to block a few hits, but she wasn't strong enough or fast enough to protect herself fully and took a few hard hits to her face. The blonde woman got Eight trapped in an armbar and she moved to thrust upward and break the girl's arm -

He snapped out of the memory as Eight shifted slightly, the belt falling from her relaxed mouth and brushing against The Soldier's hand. He took a deep, steadying breath - ignoring the shake in his body. He had apparently known the young woman in the bed for years. From the look of her now, it had to be 10 years ago….maybe more than that.

He stood up slowly, careful not to jostle the mattress too much. He quietly grabbed all of the soiled bandages and supplies and threw them out in the small bathroom. He did his best wiping the blood off of the tiled floor and counter, deciding that they'd have to deal with the stained carpet after she woke up. He took a seat in an arm chair that he had carried in from the living room and set it near her bed. Now, he had to wait for her to wake up again and he hoped that she had more information than he did.