Chapter Twenty Three: Stay With Me

Artyom sat quietly, still absorbing the last words of her story. He wasn't particularly shocked by the information, but still found himself in awe of the exact circumstances; how insanely lucky for her to have chanced an encounter with such an elite member of the Order – to think the legendary Hunter would be sitting in one of dozens of bars in the Metro when Aleks happened to show her skills and for him to take notice of it. His head wavered slightly as his mind was trying to picture every detail. It was exactly as he had suspected: the veteran Ranger was near-instantly captivated by her and was reeled in, hook, line, and sinker. It was hard to understand what his intentions were beyond getting to know her and offering to show her his own abilities but Artyom didn't really want to think too much about it.

"Have you ever thought to yourself," Aleks began anew, shaking Artyom from his thoughts. "That if you went back in time and done something another way that things wouldn't have come out like how they are now?"

"Of course." Artyom hoped she wouldn't be asking him about any specific instances he had been through but the desire to hear her continue overcame him. "Why?"

"Could you imagine how different it could have been? If I had just… and how could I have known? He'd returned from worse sounding missions before." Aleks took in a sharp breath. "I would do anything, to go back, and follow him."

Artyom understood she was talking about Hunter's request.

"He always wanted me to come to Polis with him. But because of Nikolai, Dmitri, and Ivanovich… I couldn't just leave them. After all we had been through together, I wouldn't have survived without them, certainly not without Ivanovich after we left Reich – if I had been alone then I don't know what would have become of me. But even after we were settled down in Avtozavodskaya; I could have left Nikolai in charge a long time ago, but it just seemed wrong to me. To just abandon them to live in luxury in Polis after everything we suffered through together."

Artyom gently nodded his head as she talked, so that she would understand that he was listening intently.

"I should have just done as he asked!" Aleks said loudly, then halted herself and began again. "If I had just listened… maybe I could have gone with him to the Gardens… then he wouldn't be—"

"You can't think like that." Artyom leaned forward, trying to physically interrupt her thought process with his hand held up.

"I had opportunities, so many chances to change my mind. I told Hunter over and over again that I couldn't go with him. That was the deal, from the very beginning: if I chose to stay with Roten Spaten, then he would never make mention of me to anyone, to protect me. I guess he told Melnik that I existed, but no other details, otherwise the Order might have contacted me first – like any other military wife whose husband—" Aleks cut herself short with only a tiny squeak coming out and no more words, then she covered her eyes with her right hand.

"So what happened the last time you saw him?" Artyom urged her to talk again, so she wouldn't succumb to an abyss of sorrow in her own mind. He knew what that abyss looked like.

She sniffed and rubbed the bridge of her nose but didn't look up from the floor.

"There was a time he had asked me again to come with him and I told him that I wanted to but also why I couldn't, and then for a while he didn't ask about it although he still came to see me. Only Hunter would come alone in the tunnel from Paveletskaya, so if we ever heard footsteps, we knew who it was."

Hunter walked slowly along the tracks, his massive strides consuming three cross ties at a time, although he was holding himself back. He hadn't traveled to see her in several weeks and regretted that now he was coming to tell her of his uncertainties about his upcoming expedition. Not because she deserved to hear what he was involved in, but because she was one of the very few people in his life that cared – that wanted to know. When last they spoke, she had again turned down his plea to go to Polis, and so this time he intended not to ask or even to mention it at all. But trying to decide what he should say first was taking far too long to figure out, and thus his steps grew ever slower the closer he got to her station.

He stepped into the service room corridor hesitantly just before the platform at Avtozavodskaya, pulling off his helmet entirely and placing it on one of the tables by the door.

Aleks could recognize him by the sound of his balanced footsteps, the sound of his armor and equipment shifting, although she knew he could be almost completely silent if he wanted to. Turning away from her book, sitting by the warm stove, she instantly put the volume down and hurried over to him. The way he had stopped just inside the door frame was not a good sign, and judging from the dead expression on his face she knew something was wrong.

"What's going on?" She eyed him suspiciously, taking his automatic weapon from his hands and laying it beside his helmet on the table.

"You know me too well." He attempted to smile, but the forced expression wasn't enough to convince her otherwise. "I'm going on a dangerous mission."

"When is it ever not dangerous?" She said tentatively, not daring to suggest that they sit down to talk about it. Clearly something was different this time; he seemed hurried, as if trying to tell her goodbye as quickly as possible to lessen the pain of having to leave. "Please, tell me."

"It's the attacks in the north; I've been hearing the rumors more lately. My old friend Sukhoi at Exhibition is the security chief; he can tell me the truth about these happenings. The perpetrators are relentless and they threaten to invade the entire Metro if something isn't done to avert them." Hunter adjusted his stance, shifting from one foot to the other. "We need more information so that we can strike against them precisely. I have to find out where they are coming from before more people are killed."

"You're going alone?" Aleks took a step closer to him.

"Melnik can't spare anyone; he won't listen. It's up to me to search them out." He said flatly, trying not to look into her eyes.

"You can't go without a full patrol, and to where – from the surface? Then you would be in their territory where they tread daily and you are essentially feeling around in the darkness!" Aleks pleaded her case convincingly, but he avoided the depths of her eyes at all costs.

Only one person in the whole underground world could make him doubt himself; it was both the blessing and curse of entrusting your heart to another. But he had already made up his mind to go north, and he couldn't put aside the lives of every survivor in the Metro simply because she was worried about the unknown danger that was inherently involved. After all, he would ultimately be protecting her, too.

"It's just a reconnaissance mission, I have to find their source, or where they are coming in from. Figure out exactly what these new mutants are. I don't aim to do battle with them but if that's what it comes to – so be it." He clenched his fists.

"Let me go with—"

"No, Aleks." His use of her name stunned her momentarily. He knew she would ask, and although he didn't have a particularly good reason to deny her, something deep in his gut told him that he needed to do this alone. He could not risk her safety so far from her home station, and if Melnik found out that he had included her as an accessory in his mission to convince the Order to mobilize against this new threat, there would be hell to pay. "This is my duty alone. It is different from what I have trained you for, these creatures supposedly attack psychologically."

"You've already decided everything." She sighed, defeated, taking one of his hands with both of her own. "You can't just… I-I need you."

"You don't need me; you learned everything I had to teach long ago." He said coldly, attempting to begin severing his link to her in case the impossible odds finally outweighed his effort. But at second thought, he knew that all she was looking for was reassurance, and so he tried again in a different voice. "You're stronger than you know."

"Maybe that's true… but I want—"

"I know what you want, Aleks, but this was also your choice, and you know that I can not involve you in this. That's why I kept it a secret! If anything ever happened to you…" His harsh appearance folded, the stoic mask he had tried to keep plastered over his affections cracked and he couldn't hide behind it anymore. Stepping closer, he gently stroked her face with one hand and committed as much of her flawless visage as he could to memory.

"Please, this is too much for you to do alone." Tears had gathered in her storm grey eyes, filled with genuine worry, and she pressed his hand tighter against her cheek in hopes to anchor him there forever.

"Remember what I told you." With his free hand he untucked the brass cartridge from her shirt to remind her of their pact. Then, almost using the string as leverage, he leaned down and kissed her squarely on the lips. She relaxed slowly, and he lingered for as long as he dared before he felt that her fearful and passionate energy would start to overwhelm him and force him to change his mind and stay here with her forever.

"Hunter…" She breathed in a whisper, holding him as closely as she could before he pulled fully away from her. "I'll go with you, okay? When you return from the surface, I'll go with you to Polis."

"Then I have to come back." He smiled genuinely, wrapping his arms around her thin frame, even with the melancholy undertone he hoped it came across as sincere.

"Please be careful." She cooed next to his ear, and he struggled with himself to release her.

"We will speak again soon." He said as he always did before leaving her, rubbing her soft cheek with his fingertips before turning away. He took his helmet from the table and fitted it snugly on his head before grabbing his machine gun and heading out the door.

She followed after him, watching him slowly fade into the blackness of the tunnel where he had appeared from only minutes ago, not able to force herself to run after him, or try to prevent him from going to where he felt he was truly needed. She tried to make peace within herself about her promise, imagining the moment when he would reappear and she would finally leave Avtozavodskaya and go to Polis. Before he had completely vanished, she called softly out to him, hoping he would hear but not expecting him to reply.

"I love you."

"I love you too, Aleks." His voice echoed off the tunnel walls with perfectly clarity and she could have listened to it on repeat for eternity. What she couldn't see were the tears in his eyes, both of hope and of sorrow. And he was lost to the darkness.

"After that, I didn't hear anything from him - just the rumors about your situation up there. Valya sends me a report every night of the things going on." Aleks continued rambling, even after the story had ended. "I heard all about Exhibition, even the Partisans came by Avtozavod with news. Everyone was afraid of the Dark Ones, all the way around the Ring and maybe further. And after the news spread about D6 being found, I still waited, I figured he had gone back to Melnik immediately and set back out to destroy them with a platoon... he could get really focused like that. But almost a month had passed since that day he said goodbye to me and he never came back even after the Dark Ones were annihilated. I knew something was really wrong, so we set out our net, hoping to find anyone from the Order to get the answers."

"And then I came along," Artyom smirked as he filled in the next part for her. "It wasn't planned out that way, you know, we were fighting off watchmen at the Church outpost. Me and another Ranger, Senya, got separated from the group, and he told me how to get to Novokuznetskaya before he died."

"I'm sorry, if I wasn't very hospitable to you then. I was just so afraid, and when you told me that not even anybody in the Order had heard from him…" Aleks took in a deep breath to keep herself from sliding down that slippery emotional slope again.

"It's okay, I'm glad it happened this way." Artyom tried to straighten his face to express his sincerity but she didn't look back up at him.

"I didn't sense anything." Her gaze was fixed at her own feet and she pressed her hands between her knees. "I think I would have felt something; if he was hurt, if he died, I would have known."

"You think he's still alive?" Artyom tried to mask the doubt in his voice, as he had gradually given up hope for Hunter's return the more people had talked about his disappearance. "Why wouldn't he have come back then?"

"Maybe he found something else up there besides those Dark Ones, maybe they just wiped his mind and he's just wandering around aimlessly, maybe he doesn't know who he is anymore – or how to get back." Aleks finally looked up, her eyes wide, but her body was stock still. She looked as though she were about to jump up and go looking for him in an instant.

"They've been looking for him, on every patrol, at every outpost, every station. Standing orders." Artyom tried to sound reassuring but the words only came out coldly as if from a record being heard for the hundredth time. He switched gears, offering up his own recollections to ensure that the fire of her hope remained lit, as maybe it was only this desperate desire of hers that kept Hunter's memory alive. "I had a dream about him, I guess, a vision, after he had left for the surface. Everything was white, and he was speaking to me. He told me that it wasn't a dream and that I had to keep my promise and go to Polis. And he sounded really desperate, like he really needed me to do it. And Khan saw him, too, do you remember Khan from Arbatskaya? Hunter spoke to Khan this way too, and that's how I was saved by them from the tunnel at Turgenevskaya – all in white and telling Khan what he needed to do and how to find me. This was days after he had left, you know." Artyom finished his little memory dump, never having spoken of these visions of Hunter to anyone else before, and still not knowing what to make of them. It all seemed so impossible; the crystal clear visions, the way Hunter had so forcefully spoken to him, and the coincidence of Khan telling him the exact same thing.

"Then it's possible he's still…" Aleks spoke breathlessly, gaining a distant stare that seemed to go through Artyom's body, the walls, the very earth itself. "But I had no such visions. Only dreams, horrible dreams."

Artyom remained silent, though not intentionally, as he was trying to reconstruct the image of that impossibly bright clean room, with Hunter standing casually in a long white robe, expressionless, commanding him. Had he been transformed into some kind of God? Did the Dark Ones liquidate his body, and only his consciousness survived and was able to permeate the thickest tunnel walls to reach out with desperate messages? But then why would he not expend one ounce of that consciousness to speak to the one he loved?

"Do you think something like them could make him forget about me?" Aleks interrupted, staring into Artyom as if he were some kind of expert about what the Dark Ones were capable of.

"No one could forget about you." Artyom reached out for her hand and grasped it firmly with both of his own.

A tentative smile spread across Aleks' face, her worriedly arched brows softened.

"Will you tell me about when he was there at your station? What did he say to you?" Aleks gripped back at his hands as if she would never get to know his answer if she let go.

"Yes, I'll tell you, but you should relax more, okay? It's safe in here, and you should get comfortable. It's your own room now." Artyom slowly rose from his seat on the bed, being careful not to loosen his grip on her until she silently agreed to lie down in it. Daring to let one of her hands go, he pulled the wool military blanket up over her and resumed his previous position on the edge of the bed next to her.

"Hunter and I weren't close at all, really. He was friends with my stepfather, Sukhoi, who is, or was, the security chief at Exhibition. He didn't visit often, as you heard. Most people were afraid of him, but he also knew Andrey who was on watch with us that day..."

Artyom's voice droned on into the night as he slowly recounted his watch at the four-hundred and fiftieth metre and how Hunter forced him to explain how he'd run off with two friends when he was little and left the hermetic door open at Botanicheskiy Sad. An exchange of secrets, he'd said. And Hunter's secret was that he was going to go after the Dark Ones alone, and that Artyom was not even to tell his stepfather Sukhoi the truth about where he had gone to. Aleks watched him carefully, soaking in every word as if it were some holy gospel, and she never interrupted until he was finished with the tale – explaining to her every conflict and detour he took on his first journey to Polis under Hunter's command.

A bell was ringing far away, faintly. There was shuffling outside the door and mumbling. Artyom reluctantly opened his eyes to the sounds but was confused because this room did not have any of his personal affects. He blinked a few times, and shifted slightly, which elicited a gentle moan from Aleks who was still tucked under the blanket beside him.

He wasn't immediately sure how he wound up spending the entire night in Aleks' room, only remembering the gleaming lantern light and the warmth of her hand because she had never let go of it while he told his stories to her. He guessed that she had eventually fallen asleep as he had talked, and he hadn't wanted to wake her by opening the door. She had asked him to stay with her and he certainly had fulfilled that request. As long as nobody got the wrong idea if they saw him leaving the women's barracks, he didn't mind having had someone to sleep next to. He also had no nightmares, no dreams even, just peaceful blackness.

The bell must have been announcing the start of a shift, and the shuffling was the clamoring of a few ladies who were about to be late for duty. Artyom immediately pictured Melnik, impatiently tapping his foot outside the barracks door, though he hadn't actually told either him or Aleks a time to report.

His mind quickly replayed everything he had heard and learned last night and he was beginning to narrow down what he might need to repeat to Melnik – the relevant bits he spoke of. In the interest of getting to know Aleks better, if she was indeed a good fit for the order, if everything Hunter had longed for was even possible. On the other hand, why were any of these intimate details and stories so relevant now anyway? Artyom was reasonably sure that Hunter was not going to come back, and he didn't want to go repeating every personal account that Aleks relayed to him to anyone else. Precisely none of her stories were relevant to Melnik's orders about finding out if she would stay in D6 or not. And she had specifically asked him not to tell anyone else how she and Hunter had met.

He considered going to procure them some breakfast, but didn't want her to awaken to an empty room. Surely she would remember that he had spent the night here? He hoped her attitude didn't reverse, as it sometimes did, though she had seemed much more trusting of him after they had gotten to D6. She was completely out of her element here, and such a large bunker would be intimidating to anyone. But as well as trying to make her first impression on the organization she was trying to join, she also had Hunter's doomed name hanging over her head, and it seemed only a few people could see her as an individual. Most of the Rangers only speculated about her relationship with him, and Artyom felt sorry for her.

"Artyom?" Aleks said quietly with a yawn.

Shit. Before he could even figure out how best to handle the days' first conversation with her, it was already happening.

"You're still here, thank you." She leaned against his back, laying her head squarely between his shoulders.

"Yeah, sure." He squeaked out, not knowing how to respond to any of her.

"Do you think Melnik wants to see me right away? He said he'd send someone but I assumed that would be you." She sat up as she finished her sentence, allowing Artyom to fully concentrate on words again.

"I don't know, but I can go find out." He stood up and took a step towards the door, but turned around to gauge her reaction to the proposition.

"No, it's okay. The man must have to sleep, same as we do." She giggled. "We'll see about breakfast first, yeah?"

Artyom could agree to that with no hesitation.