Chapter Text
The Burakh house settles loudly.
Both the inhabitants and the house itself, Daniil finds. Murmurs and arguments leading up to bedtime, clatters of doors and the splashing of water. Creaks and groans of wood, first under pattering feet, then seemingly under nothing at all.
In the Stillwater, the name was almost too apt—the place was strangely silent in the absence of conversation and the bustle of people needing him. That dreamlike suspended moment after the clock struck two and Daniil found himself stuck, unable to go anywhere or accomplish anything but note down his understanding of the day and steel himself for whenever he must go to next—it was always quiet, save for the soft sounds of Eva playing the piano downstairs. And then when she left—
He doesn't want to think about Eva.
He doesn't want to think about her, but she haunted the silence left behind by her departure, still haunts the few comforting memories Daniil has of those horrible infinite days. How can he credit those impossible words about her existing for him, existing as a tool of the Kains and whatever power overtook him then—existing as an extension of some grand plan and not as her own person, her own agency? Yet how can he disbelieve them when the moment he chose to "release" her, she was gone?
Those few moments of comfort, false and derived from a lie. That feeling of being understood, all part of someone else's plan. It curdles in his gut, weighs down every painful bite of dinner that Artemy watched him force down and which now sits in him like a concrete block attached to a drowning man. He swallows against it, hunched in this bed that must once have been Artemy's own, his back pressed to the wall, his eyes magnetized to the doorway.
He hasn't left the room since settling into it, save for a brief tiptoe to the washroom when he judged the rest of the house was distracted. Artemy brought him food in his room—"for now," he said, and Daniil knows he won't be allowed to languish here forever—but otherwise let him hide from the children, from the world. From the people he can't show his face to again.
What has happened to him? All that time he was trapped in his own hellish loop, he managed to force himself onwards, to plow through each renewed day with sheer spite if nothing else. To brazen his way through conversations with people whose opinions of him sank no matter what he said, no matter how many times he tried. It was an endless, unstoppable nightmare, and he made his way through it.
And now it is over—over. Time will not restart, he will never recover what he has lost. For better or for worse, it is done. And he is—
Huddled in the corner of a room not his own, in a house where he has been taken in on the sufferance of a man kinder than Daniil deserves. A man who does not know what Daniil has done, who does not have the memories Daniil has robbed from him. Who does not know what he is capable of, because in his memory, Daniil has never forced him to find out. Who does not know that—
A whine is building in Daniil's chest, vibrating at the back of his throat, begging to be let loose. He buries his head in his knees and forces it down, digs fingernails into his own legs to distract himself from the building internal pressure of the wailing cry that wants to emerge.
If he let it out, they would all come running. The children whose bustling voices have finally died down after Artemy's coaxing to bed, whose last impression of him he does not remember. Sticky, who watched him collapse into apathy after a misplaced question; Murky, who demanded a story from him and heard it at least two different ways. Maybe more. Daniil does not remember any longer. The children whom he has hidden from all evening, unwilling to let even them see what has become of him—and of course, Artemy. Artemy who has given him more kindness than he deserves, because he doesn't know how little that really is.
The scream vibrates a notch higher in his chest and he bites down on his tongue, the pain too far behind the clench of his jaws to regulate the force. He tastes salt and copper, and then the pain throbs through him, partial paradoxical relief to the pressure in his chest.
Partial and temporary. It is back, the pressure, thrumming under his skin and in his blood, threatening to burst. Biting himself isn't enough; he needs more—he needs to split open, lay bare his flesh and blood and let his roiling insides spill out. He needs to—he needs—
He needs his gun. Or a knife. Or—
Or to calm down. He can calm himself down. He can take something. He is in a doctor's house. Artemy has hidden his scalpels, he has hidden Daniil's gun—at his own worthless request—but he must have morphine. Daniil didn't dare to pack the dregs of his own, not under Artemy's watchful eye, but the hospital supplies were redistributed after the end of the plague. Surely at least some of them have made it here.
Surely.
Daniil holds his breath. It's easier to hold back the vibrating with a plan to assuage it. He just has to be patient—to ensure that the creaking of the house now has nothing to do with its inhabitants. To ensure that no one is out of bed to watch as he slides his feet to the floor, tiptoes across the room, eases the door open.
The house is not as dark as he feared, windows open to allow shafts of moonlight to slant across the halls. Daniil navigates by their light, tiptoeing down the hall and freezing every time the floorboards creak beneath his weight. Still, he perseveres: past the door to the study he's already seen too many times, and down the stairs to the room Artemy has been using as a clinic.
He's already seen the inside of this room once, of course, as a patient. Now he scans it with a doctor's eye. The basin in the corner, sterilizing supplies, stethoscope. The cabinets—surely that must be where the painkillers are stocked.
Bottles. Bottles, bottles, labeled in a language he does not understand, in colors he cannot parse. All, it seems, to be taken orally. None recognizable as morphine.
His heartbeat kicks up as he searches further, scanning hectically for something he must have missed. His pulse is beating beneath his skin, rhythm frantic and unstoppable, and the pressure is building again, the unreleased scream vibrating in every cell of his body, and he is frantic for something, anything, to make it stop. He is not a doctor any longer, but a looter himself, and—and—
And he needs it. He needs it with a desperation that screams from every nerve, with a shame that sickens him at his core even as his scrabbling becomes more frantic. He needs it to calm his pounding heart, his burning blood, needs it more than the food or water he frequently forgets, needs it like the air he reflexively breathes. Needs it like Katerina Saburova, like any other common addict he would have treated during his medical residency. Like anyone other than the doctor he is supposed to be.
Damn this. God damn this all to hell. When did this happen to him? How?
Did you think you were above forming a habit, Dankovsky?
You're no better than anyone else.
Is twelve days enough to form an addiction?
What about weeks? Months?
Is it a dependency born in his mind or his body? Is there any difference? What use is diagnosis, anyway, when there is nothing he can do about it?
For indeed there is nothing. Nothing in here he can use, nothing that will help, and he clings to the edge of the cabinet with hands that can barely grip, breath sawing at his throat, tears burning at his eyes. He will not scream. He will not.
"Oynon?"
The voice in the doorway cuts through him like a blade of shame. Only his grip on the cabinet keeps him from crumpling to the ground.
"Daniil." Artemy's voice is sharper now, more urgent. His footsteps creak on the floor like Daniil's must have, like the noise he must have made to bring him here to witness this. "What are you doing?"
Daniil squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head.
And then Artemy's hands are on his arms, practiced gentle-firm grip of a doctor with the balance of care and authority that Daniil has never mastered. They do not hurt but they won't be ignored, pulling Daniil back from the cabinet, supporting him again when his legs buckle, guiding him to sit once more on the table. "Please," Artemy says. "Daniil. What were you looking for."
He folds in on himself, face into the concealing cavern of his own palms, rocking forward and back as if such motion could ever ease the wail still building inside him. But what use is it holding back? What shame has Artemy not already seen?
"Morphine," he chokes. "I was looking for—I need—I c-can't—"
"Your heart is racing," says Artemy in alarm, though his voice is dim over the rushing of that same pulse in Daniil's ears. "Here, let me listen."
But Daniil curls up tighter at the probe of Artemy's hands at his chest, the last vestiges of his self-preservation instincts urging him to fight against this final point of discovery. "I know," he grits out. "Happens—often."
"Often?" Artemy's hand has moved to Daniil's neck again, and he makes an unhappy sound at the throbbing of Daniil's pulse. "How often?"
"Enough." How often is often? And how should Daniil have kept it in check anyway, with so much else to concern himself with? What was his own heart when people were dying in the streets, when water was contaminated, when people were acting against their own best interests and demanding his help when that inevitably backfired? How could he have kept track of the dependency he should have realized was building, the one that has him now desperately, shamefully saying, "Morphine helps—slow it down."
Helps, yes—helps too much. How could he not have realized? How could he have done otherwise? He can't take more now, not now that he knows how badly he has ruined himself already, but if he doesn't take any then he's going to die in agony right here, his heart beating out of his chest, his blood sizzling in his veins until he burns from the inside. His fingers turn into claws scraping down his forehead, ungloved fingernails raking over his skin.
"I don't have any morphine," Artemy says, with the deliberate calm of someone skimming the edges of panic. "But I have something else that might help. Stay."
As if he could move! Daniil fights the wild laugh that surges on his lips, the scorn that crackles at his consciousness. As if anything can help him now, as if the destruction he's wrought entirely on himself can be undone. As if—
"Here." Artemy's hands are back, one on his shoulder blades, one nudging against the hands Daniil still holds clamped to his face. "Drink this. It will calm you down."
"Calm!" This time Daniil can't restrain the bark of sound, the word ripping its way out of his chest. "Calm—as if I—"
His throat strangles whatever would have come next into a high, thin breath. He grips his own face harder, doesn't dare to let go. If he lets go, something terrible will happen—he'll fly to pieces, burst at the seams, spray blood and viscera all over Artemy's examination room. It'll be a disaster to clean.
"Calm," Artemy repeats, the hand pressing harder to Daniil's back. "Just try it, oynon. You can criticize me all you want if it doesn't work."
If it doesn't work! Nothing can possibly work on Daniil in this moment; his heart is squeezing in his chest, everything throbbing around his overheated head. He can't let go of himself to take the bottle Artemy offers, can't release his clench on his face. He is falling into a chasm in his mind, clawing at the walls of his own body until his fingertips come away bloody, he is lost to himself and to the world alike, he is a worthless waste of flesh that he wants nothing more, in this moment, than to tear apart—
Strong hands seize his wrists, pulling them away from his face. Daniil gasps and loses his grip on his voice as well as his hands, half of that cry breaking free in a long, high-pitched whine pressed free from his throat, and Artemy catches his hands in one of his own before they can seize his head again. And then the bottle is at his lips, liquid flowing into his mouth, salty and bitter and tasting, somehow, of blood-soaked mud; his throat contracts around it but it keeps coming; he splutters, and can only swallow or choke. Artemy is relentless, pouring in a thin trickle against Daniil's reflexive struggles, pinning his arms to his sides with an arm around his torso, and he submits at last, swallowing helplessly against the flood.
The bottle withdraws, and he gasps for air, newly freed hands flying up to clutch at his chest and throat before being pinned again. Both of Artemy's arms are around him now, a tight band around him from behind, pressing his arms to his sides and his thundering heart back into his chest—
Back into his chest. The frantic, splitting beat of his heart is slackening; the ache in his sternum has already begun to subside. No longer does he feel as if his ribcage is about to shatter apart, rip his skin open from within. He gasps again, and the breath reaches lower than his throat.
"Like that," Artemy murmurs—into his ear? When did he—? "Breathe with me."
His own breath is a long, slow rhythm; the pressure of his arms replaces the clawing grip of Daniil's own hands. Daniil can't follow it, not quite—his own breathing falters and stumbles, shudders and quakes—but it is slower than before, easier. His heart rate is still too fast, but no longer fast enough to burst in his chest.
"What," he manages at last, gasping, "what was,"
"Folk medicine." The irony in Artemy's voice would make Daniil crumple again in shame if he hadn't already fallen as far as a man can fall. "The disturbance was in your blood, and so is the cure."
"Cure..." His voice trails off into something thin and frail, something that can't bear to hope. Not any longer.
"Not a final one," Artemy confirms. Do his arms tighten around Daniil when he says so? "The dependency is something you'll have to break for yourself. But I can at least slow your heart while you do so, emshen."
Daniil's head drops again, chin nearly to his chest. Of course such a dependency can't be cured in a moment, not with how it must have been developing while he didn't notice—while he thought he was only managing each moment, just trying to make it through the day again and again and again. And now—
"Do you regret inviting me into your home now?" he murmurs between numb lips. "Think of the children."
"If anything, I'm even less inclined to let you out of my sight," Artemy says dryly. "I didn't realize this was happening to you, and I'm sorry I missed it."
Daniil laughs, irony thick and metallic in his throat as the blood from Artemy's tincture, from his own tongue. It will be sore for days, and he will deserve every one of them. "It should never have been your responsibility to manage me," he says bitterly. "I should have done it myself. I should have—"
"You did," says Artemy gently. "Daniil. Do you think I blame you for doing what you needed to survive?"
He doesn't know.
"You should," he chokes out, instead of confessing why. "You should blame me for—"
For all of the dead. For all of the loss. For everyone I couldn't save.
If you knew what I've done, you'd never welcome me here.
"For doing your best?" Artemy says. "For running this town on your own and taking all the blame for what didn't work? For giving up every piece of yourself for us?" He shakes Daniil gently, a slight rocking back and forth. "I have some people in mind to blame for that, and you're not one of them."
Daniil says nothing. He should confess now, should remind Artemy of all the things Daniil has taken from the town in turn, but—
But he can't. Artemy's arms are warm and strong, and he is pressed against Daniil like undeserved forgiveness, like something solid and strong, like a shore to break against. He remembers, still, how much he ached for this kindness—remembers watching Artemy's compassion turned towards patients at the hospital, towards the children in his care, and wishing, so selfishly, to know what it would feel like to be on the other end of that attention. To know what that compassion could be like if it were directed at him.
And now it is, and he deserves it less than he ever has, and he allows it to happen. Confessing, breaking away, would be the right thing to do, and Daniil can't do it.
"So, the morphine," Artemy continues. "It was for your heart?"
"Among other things," Daniil whispers. For his heart, for his mind, to keep from snarling and tearing Georgiy's head off after one too many impossible challenges and dead ends, to bear any conversation with Andrey Stamatin. "I didn't realize—how dependent I must have become."
Artemy hums. His arms tighten again, then loosen, a press imparted for comfort. "May I look you over?" he asks, yet again. "If there are other impacts we should be concerned with—other things you might have done to yourself that you can't recognize—we should know."
And Daniil is too far gone to refuse one final time. Artemy has seen so much of him already, has seen his insides stripped bare. What use is this one last secret, what good in hiding it from him? What, in the end, does he have to lose?
"Fine," he says, and moves his hands, at last, to the buttons of his own shirt.
Artemy has never liked Old Vlad Olgimsky. (Either of the Vlads, really, but the father is the worse evil by far.) Even as a child, he could pick up on the man's general odiousness, the entitlement, the willingness to be cruel in service of a greed Artemy could never understand. Even then, when the Kin were simply his sometime friends who treated his father with an ingrained deference, he knew that the man who ordered them to work would never be any friend of his.
Now...
Now they meet as equals, however reluctant Vlad’s gritted-teeth acknowledgement of that status. Now Artemy speaks for the Kin on their behalf, their protector, as is his right after the loss of his father. As is the right he has won in combat, defeating the man who wore Olgimsky's chain around his neck in the first step to freeing his people from those chains as well.
...If only he knew how he ought to do that.
"I will not," he growls now, "send people with lung damage back into the Termitary." There is too much of that, still—both lung damage and demand for work: people who have not recovered from the plague. Perhaps people who never will. Those who expect the town to look the same in the wake of what has happened will do well to wake up sooner rather than later.
"You'll do... what is in the best interest of this town," Vlad grumbles at him. "As... I have done."
Artemy bites back his first instinctive response. If Vlad has ever done anything in the best interest of anyone but himself, he has yet to show it. "I'll do what is in the best interest of those I serve."
"And who decides... what that best interest is?" says Vlad. "You? I thought... we'd had enough of doctors making decisions for this town."
That comment is too pointed; those eyes stay on him too long. Artemy opens his mouth, closes it again.
"I would have thought you'd agree," says Vlad. "Until I heard... the rumor that Dankovsky has been staying with you."
Artemy fights the urge to bare his teeth.
He doesn't bother to ask where the rumor must have spread from; he's heard it himself often enough already to know that their journey to the Stillwater and then back to his own home was witnessed by enough people in town to put the pieces together. And he hasn't asked Sticky and Murky to remain quiet about Daniil's presence in their home—only about what it currently entails.
"Why does that concern you?" he says instead.
"Not concern... but curiosity," says Vlad. "You ought to know that your loyalties... will be questioned, menkhu. Your associations. Many in town... feel little fondness for Bachelor Dankovsky."
His sneer of distaste reveals well enough that he is one of them.
Artemy doesn't know what transpired between the Olgimskys and Daniil—he had concerns enough of his own to worry about. But surely whatever it was can't have been good, and he isn't fool enough to assume Daniil would have had nothing to do with Vlad's son's decision to leave town following Maria Kaina.
Perhaps especially if...
Artemy has tried not to think too relentlessly, too endlessly, about that impossible confession of Daniil's, the one which can't be true but which feels truer every day. And if it is true, what else must Daniil know about the Olgimskys; what other options must he have tried and discarded?
"It's no one's business who I have in my house," Artemy grunts at last. Giving away too much, but what other choice does he have? It is no source of shame, and best to give away enough not to pique anyone's curiosity to call on Daniil while he remains... indisposed.
"Maybe not," says Vlad, "but this town... will make it their business anyway. And then..." His gaze pins Artemy down. "You might have to decide where your loyalties truly lie."
Artemy extracts himself from the conversation with no true concession made or won, and with unease churning deep in his belly. Either because of Vlad's words, or simply the thought of Daniil in his home, as vulnerable now as a man could ever be.
He finds himself walking faster on his way home, as if a few minutes might make the difference in Daniil's own sense of safety. As if Daniil is likely to be parsing time in this way at all.
For three days, Daniil has been shut in the room that was once Artemy's, either under constant supervision or physically restrained at his own request. For three days, he has been unable to keep down food or water, sweating and shivering with fever, shockingly lucid or rambling nonsense, as his body purges cravings developed over who knows how long. Screaming and raving, then apologizing amidst floods of tears for the state of him—a sight no one in town would want to see from their onetime emergency commander, and a sight Daniil would want no one to witness. He hasn't been able to hide from Artemy himself, so the least Artemy can do is shield him from the rest of the world.
It is dizzying, when he allows himself to think of how many secrets Daniil has been hiding, how much of himself he has already laid bare to Artemy. The scars across his chest where breasts were long ago cut away, a history Artemy can read in his Lines as well as in the shape and markings on his body. Even if Daniil hadn't explained it, Artemy would have understood something of the procedure merely from that reading—the surgery was not performed by someone with a menkhu's training, but it was performed along the Lines nonetheless. He can practically hear the echoes of it, the cries of a body demanding that flesh be severed to bring it into shape with itself. Whoever made these cuts could read those cries as well, cut Daniil’s body to bring it into closer alignment with his mind.
So much he has hidden, so much he has sacrificed. So much of himself spent in service of Artemy's town, leaving him this shuddering, shivering wreck now—and how can Artemy not see that as a mark of the sacrifices he is willing to make? How can he not look at Daniil and recognize him as kindred?
The house is empty when he returns, Sticky and Murky out on whatever children's errands have taken them away. Artemy's heart thuds in his throat at the realization of it, of Daniil alone in the room for however long. What if he needs something? What if he’s done something?
He pushes the door open.
The bedroom that was once Artemy's is now a sickroom—it could hardly be called anything else. The air is warm and stagnant, bearing the faint sour tang of sweat and vomit, but Artemy has smelled worse. He schools his face into as neutral an expression as he can, raises his eyes to the man in the bed.
Daniil is currently half-reclined, propped up by pillows into a makeshift seated position. His eyes are closed, but they open at the sound of the door, dark hollows in a pale face under the strew of sweat-damp hair. "Hello," he manages weakly as Artemy enters.
Lucid, then. Something in Artemy unclenches at that, and he pulls the door closed behind him. "How are you feeling?"
"Better, maybe? I don't know." Daniil's eyes flicker down again, avoiding Artemy's gaze. "I wanted to apologize again for last night; I didn't—"
Artemy waves him off. Last night was the worst yet, when Daniil's half-mad cravings seemed to peak in screaming, begging, threatening. He hardly seemed himself, possessed by a need that had transformed him into a thing of claws and venom, throwing himself against the door, accusing Artemy of torturing him out of spite. And Artemy knew he didn't mean it, knew even then that Daniil's words could not be credited, but the sight of him weeping and wailing and demanding, writhing against the restraints Artemy had finally had to place on him, had sliced him open anyway, precise cut through muscle and bone to lay open the center of his chest.
"I know you didn't mean it," he says. "I know."
Those restraints are still on him, the loose band about his waist that Artemy fixed there this morning at Daniil's own request. He left his hands free, both a necessary measure in case Daniil needed something while Artemy was gone and a sign of trust, but it seems he hasn’t used them. A sign of trust in its turn? Or yet another revelation of how deeply he distrusts himself?
"All the same," Daniil says. "You're—you have work enough. I never intended to be an additional burden of care."
I'm glad you did, Artemy does not say. Glad that Daniil trusted him enough to pass him his gun; to tell him, tacitly at least, about his own fears. Better this by far than the alternative: to have heard nothing from him for weeks, to have gone looking for him at last and been greeted by nothing but a corpse.
He shudders himself, a flinch of horror working through shoulders and spine, and says none of that. Instead he just shakes his head and crosses the room to the window. "Shall I open this?"
"Probably." Daniil sighs, runs a hand down the side of his face. "I'll confess that lying in one's own filth for days does somewhat desensitize one to the smell."
"I just thought the fresh air might do you good," says Artemy mildly, and opens the window. "Do you think it's easing?"
"Maybe," says Daniil. "This isn't something I have firsthand experience of. I've been—" A grimace, a brief crumple of shame, before he recovers himself again—"inclined to reach too easily for certain substances before, but never to this extent."
"I imagine you never had this much reason," says Artemy.
Daniil shrugs, flaps a hand weakly in the air. "How was Vlad?"
Artemy's stomach warms at the question, fondness curling low in his gut as he settles onto the chair beside Daniil's bed. In the days of Daniil's recovery, between the moments of agony and fear and distress, there has been this as well: this new, almost domestic routine, in which Daniil will ask Artemy questions about his day, about his duties and his life, and Artemy will answer. That Daniil remembered, even weak and panting after a night of delirium, where Artemy was going, that he cares enough to ask after it now, is a kindness Artemy would never have thought the city doctor capable of. It is another of those ways, he is realizing now, that he did not credit Daniil with enough care.
"A waste of precious breath, as always." He's been allowed this, too, in this new closeness between them: the chance to be even more forthright than he already was. Artemy has never been one to censor himself, but has at least learned over time to prioritize silence as a diplomatic response. But Daniil lets out a huff of laughter, the ghost of a smile flitting across his pallid face, and that warmth curls around his insides again: the thought that Daniil might find him amusing, might welcome his opinions. That they might have been allies all along, even more than Artemy had ever realized.
How might things have been different if he'd realized earlier? Maybe he could have made those days easier for Daniil. He still doesn't know what to think about Daniil's confession, about his description of the fragmentation and repetition of time—but surely, even if Daniil's experience of Artemy must have been out of order, they might have been able to help each other more.
"Unsurprising," Daniil mutters. "Will you be able to challenge his authority, now that Oyun is out of the picture?"
"I hope to." Artemy sighs, rubbing his forehead with the heel of his hands. "He seems determined to be a problem, though. He..." He hesitates, but Daniil deserves to know. "He was asking about you, as well. He doesn't seem very fond."
Daniil blanches, but shakes his head. "He wouldn't be. He knows the role I played in his son's departure."
"What... what was that role, exactly? He followed Maria, I thought."
"It's a long story," Daniil says. "But the only other option would have been his death, after what he—" He looks up at Artemy, eyes pained. "I know he deserved it," he says, and there is a note of pleading in his voice. "I know his actions were unforgivable. But I couldn't bear what happened otherwise."
A chill creeps over Artemy's spine. "The Inquisitor?"
He remembers the day the gallows was erected in the town's square, this out-of-town man from the capital descended from his perch to pronounce judgment, the other out-of-town man who Artemy and everyone else had felt sure would aid him in doing it. And then he remembers Daniil's dogged insistence in fighting for him, for Peter Stamatin, for everyone the Inquisitor would have strung up. He remembers the gallows hanging empty, the chill he'd felt at even the sight of its intrusion in their town.
“Death,” Daniil says. “Death as punishment for an unforgivable crime. What kind of justice is that? Whether by the noose, or—oh, God…” His face pales, contorts. Artemy watches in concern at first as a grimace twists his face, a swallow rippling at his throat—then turns away out of courtesy as Daniil rolls to the side and bends over the basin strategically placed beside the head of the bed.
Artemy breathes slowly, letting his thoughts grow distant, trying not to hear. Not so much for his own sake, but to pretend to some measure of privacy for Daniil, who has not borne the indignities of the last several days well. He is affirmed in his choice when Daniil struggles upright at last, with a cleared throat and a murmured, "Excuse me," clearly seeking to draw as little attention as possible. He wipes his face with a cloth on the bedside table, takes a sip from the cup of water Artemy has been careful to keep refilled, and rushes on with, "What was I saying?"
"Karminsky," says Artemy, trying not to let his eyes linger on Daniil's sweat-damp forehead, the pallor of his face. Striving to keep his pity and concern buried where Daniil will not see them. "Hanging."
"Of course," Daniil murmurs, shudders. "Karminsky. Barbaric, I find it. It's—I know that what the Olgimskys did deserves to be repaid with death. Morally, it seems only right. But how could I stand by and let it happen? I, who have sworn to fight death with everything I have? How could I let it be imposed in cold blood?" He plucks at the sheets again with a trembling hand. "After the first time through... and then the hangings—and Peter, and—and—"
His voice breaks, his eyes overbright. "I'm sorry," he whispers, wavering. "It's only—it was—"
"You don't have to explain." Artemy leans forward at last, breaking the pretense of indifference to reach for Daniil's forehead. "Is your fever coming back?"
But Daniil's hand catches Artemy's before he can touch his face, fingers latching into his with shocking strength—with desperation. "I'm sorry, Artemy," he whispers, and the tears lurking in his voice have begun to pool in his eyes in earnest. "I'm sorry I couldn't—I tried—but he wouldn't listen to me, he didn't care—"
"Daniil!" Artemy says urgently, squeezing Daniil's hand back, his free hand coming up unbidden to cup the side of his face. "Daniil. You have nothing to apologize for."
"I do," says Daniil miserably, shaking his head against Artemy's hand, a jerky motion that goes on far too long. "You don't know. How could you know? You don't remember, and I never told you—"
"Shh," says Artemy. When did he begin stroking Daniil's hair? When did his hand find a home cupped around the curve of Daniil's cheek, as if gentling a startled bull? "It's all right, Daniil. Everything is all right."
"It's not," says Daniil, but he goes quiet and closes his eyes, leaning his cheek into Artemy's hand. His tears spill warm over Artemy's fingers.
The other hand remains clutched in Artemy's own, holding on for dear life, as if never to let him go.