"Intimidating” Stakh leaves bread and butter. He leaves an apology much more effective and lasting than words on the counter next to all of the clock pieces and repair tools. The man fills his woodstove for him, and it’s very, very hard not to feel out of control and quite guilty when the small kindnesses add up. Notkin listens to the directions even though he isn’t fond of them, and sets a pot from his kitchen up to boil some water.
Grief does his part, hooking his fingers around the stool leg and slowly tugging it over the floor into the back wash room. It disturbs most of the floorboards and leaves a scrape impossible to find among the other dozens and dozens of identical scrapes in the swollen boards. The house is in disrepair, the heat doesn’t carry, and there’s not much he could do about old awful history or how it shaped the house around it.
“Never thought I’d get you chirpin’ to strip me down to my knickers. People usually pay for that, Stakh.”
He laughs, quietly, throwing the old curtains in the washroom open to let the winter light absolutely blind him for a moment. Even the glass is cracked and home to a few very determined spiders. It’s chilly in here, and he shivers when he strips his many coats and vests off to make a puddle of clothes. His shirt’s stuck to him with mild fever, and unbuttoning it turns to regret immediately when the chill hits him full force.
He’s a mess of ink, blood, sinew, and wounds old and new under all the clothes. It’s a hide that Isador used to treat. There’s been fatal wounds before this latest, and most effective fatal wound. Stabbings, slashings, explosions, burns… His ink’s destroyed in some places beyond a possible repairing point. Some of him refuses to heal anymore, despite the fact that he’s young. Artemy had packed the last wound with Stakh’s help and he couldn’t help but wonder how much of a sad joke their inheritance was.
They got to inherit the work of their father, which was him. It’s just scorched earth and it’s so much work to keep him moving.
Grief leans forward and braces on his knees. The crack in the window casts thin shadows over him.
“… When we were told Olgimsky hired people, we weren’t really told from where. Turned out he scalped a labor camp and prison for recruits, n’ when they came in they were… hard to control for me. N’ one of em’ was a fuckin’… I don’t know, contract killer. Kind of guy that slits the throats of well guarded folk. Look at this jab, n’ tell me I ain’t wrong.”
It’s a fatal blow he managed to live through. The wound’s still suffering from poison damage, leaking, and bleeding.
“Ain’t none of em’ left now. I don’t make a habit of gettin’ stabbed.”
He had a few stab wounds, regardless.
The sound of the stool dragging across the floorboards should irritate Stakh, but something about the unnecessary noise feels more right than silence. There's comfort in knowing exactly what Grief would say if he took the bait and groused at him, something about just following doctor's orders and not exerting himself. He lets the bait lie, but the temptation to fall into Grief's rhythm tickles the back of his mind like always.
Stakh snorts at the joke, "Nothing I haven't already seen, and for free." The flood of light throws Grief into silhouette as he abides instructions, revealing ribs adorned with stitches tugging man-made gills closed. Grief's as skinny as they've always seemed to Stakh, and he's seized by the image of them turning with a wink and simply disappearing. Instead, Grief shivers and lowers himself onto the stool, resting his elbows on his knees and his forehead on his knuckles, looking like he's ready to bear the world on his back.
Stakh moves his supplies into the space; the light is good, and the dust settles quickly. Old dirtied bandages wind into coils on the ground around their feet. The bullet glance and gashes on Grief's shoulder and sides are already healing decently, the wound ends puckering around black thread that will soon be overstaying its welcome. Stakh makes a note to have Artemy remove the outermost stitches at the next check-in. It's a visual effort to take in the texture of Grief this close, the edges of tattoos chewed up by burn scars, burst capillaries and semi-permanent bruises crisscrossed with cut marks and topped off with chaotic freckles.
Notkin bustles in with the water and hovers curiously as Stakh fills the unusual looking water bladder he brought with him. A long flexible tube extends from one end of the watertight pouch, tipped in a wicked-looking hollow metal needle. Stakh tucks the vessel under his elbow gingerly, taking the tip in his fingers like a dart. Calling on nearly two decades of apprenticeship, Stakh expertly directs a spurt of water at the back of Grief's neck, just behind their ear, to wake them up a bit before moving on to clean the lesser wounds. The dig on Grief's collar bone and the blessedly uninfected bite on his leg are taken care of in quick succession as they ease into a conversation.
Filin fills him in on the who and the how while Stakh pulls his stuffing out. He's not surprised to hear about the elder Olgimsky cutting corners, it fits everything else he knows about the bastard. He gives a whistle of acknowledgment regarding the expertise of this particular knifeman, this last worst wound was clearly intended to kill and would have been successful were it not for some form of miracle. Stakh casts his mind back to the sight of Grief on their throne in the warehouses when he went begging for a place to hide. Absorbed in his own troubles, he hadn't given a second thought to the other people scattered around Grief's domain, to where they had come from or why.
Now the last vestiges of Brin's existence fester near Grief's spine, still trying to drag him into a grave. Stakh can feel a slight fever simmering under the surface of the skin, and doesn't have to lean in to catch the scent of necrosis. He gestures for Notkin to come closer and is pleased to see he has already washed and scrubbed his hands pink. He hands the boy a spare cloth mask and directs him to take hold of two squares of sterile gauze, "Here's where I'll need your help; palms flat on either side and press gently in opposite directions. Keep ahold of the gauze and don't let your fingers touch the skin. You probably won't want to look." Turning to Grief he adds, "This will hurt, but we have to be thorough. Cross your arms for me, left over right. Ready?"
Notkin follows his orders to the letter upon Grief's go-ahead, and Rubin gets to work with the water tool and a curette. The necrotic tissue seems to tuck along the lower border of the gash, and comes away in reds and yellows, washing out of the wound and down onto the floor, exposing the pink of healing tissue underneath. Notkins cheeks and forehead go pale above his mask as he watches the tip of the curette slide into the hidden depth of Grief's wound and Stakh feels the barest tinge of guilt for his macabre amusement. Years of this work may have permanently altered his sense of humor, "Look at that, you open right up for me, Grief. You don't have to do all this to get my undivided attention." He plumbs around the deepest part of the wound gently, but no amount of gentility can hide the sensation of metal where it shouldn't be and he can see the spasms of pain and cold wracking Grief's ribs as they endure Stakh's attentions.
Satisfied with the results, Stakh retrieves his tools and rinses the aperture until the water runs mostly clear. They let a few more crass jokes fly between them as he folds clean gauze back into the wound and packs it into place with clean forceps. It takes less to fill the gap this time, a good sign despite initial concerns. There's palpable relief as he goes through the motions of re-bandaging Grief and packing away his supplies. “That’ll teach me to check up on you more often.”