Our Last Liaisons: Skin Deep

What Pavel had gotten used to by now, was that the first thing you always smelled, was the smoke. Trying to look for the vast plume, billowing into the sky was useless here. In this part of the world, the sun never truly rose, and was bathed in the eternal blue of a twilight. It wasn’t even that much colder than home, even crossing the sea and hiking for too many weeks. But you had to rely on other senses than your eyes. 

When going up against the Bloodless, the Cold, the Parasites, who had the natural advantage in the dark, this was dangerous. 

So smelling smoke, burning wood, singed hair and scorched meat? A blessing and a curse. A beacon to follow, with most of them sensitive to fire especially. But also a sign. That there were already casualties, that numerous people could have already lost their homes. That they were too late. 

It was doing something to him. Everyone at one point or another had to do two years here, patrolling and fighting and sleeping and barely living until the next regiment came in and they could finally go back out. And while Pavel had never called himself an optimist or an idealist, as his group finally breached the top of the snowy mountain, looking over a settlement that had settled into a yawning, expansive darkness, he felt like each hour was eating into him. Taking something from him. He didn’t even think he had smiled over the past year and two months. Maybe once, when, for the first in the initial seven months, the letters didn’t get lost, the courier didn’t die, a ship didn’t go down, and he finally got to open letters from his family. Didn’t mean the things made him continue to smile. He remembers that he had to be sent to the medic for frostbite treatment when his boots had finally fallen apart after a longer hike. Meanwhile, as his foot was being tended to, he got to read about Aksana’s engagement party, the mountains of food and games. About how well the yearly Hunt had gone so well, and over two hundred noble families from all Houses got to enjoy all the stag, deer and bear they could, along with wine and brandy and vodka and then chocolate and strawberries and sugared plums for dessert. His smile was gone by the time he was sent back out, his foot constricted by bandages and foul smelling ointment. And nothing from his youngest sibling. They probably wrote some months earlier and now their own letter was torn to pieces from the courier being eaten, or in goopy, split pieces at the bottom of the frigid sea, or maybe they never even wrote. 

And now, as he and the men descended down into the emptied village, so much of him had rotted away inside, he struggled to remember a time when the sun shone off the pristine white snow, or his favourite horse happily eating from his palm, or the sound of his siblings fighting, childish little spats, while he was sitting in his room, with his tutor.

Pavel hated the melancholy that weighed at his shoulders, something heavy and scaly with claws that could never get comfortable and would stalk from his right to his left and back again every hour. But he hated it for more than the feeling it gave him. Because he shouldn’t even be feeling it. 

As he searched for survivors, keeping up a guard incase of an attacker, in the burnt down houses, the charred corpses, curled up in the fetal position, he shouldn’t be feeling bad for himself. What right did he have? Looking down at two bodies trying to shield a smaller one, barely the size of a child. The only thing worse than the bodies, burned alive in their homes, was the ones taken out to what used to be the marketplace, stripped naked and drained into near husks, looking like skeletons with old skin stretched over the bones. What terrified Pavel though, was the missing ones. It was like seeing a family portrait with overly obvious missing figures. Not that there was an awkward gap, but there was an unpainted silhouette, showing the flesh behind the painted skin. Once you knew what you were looking for, a room with two beds, one striped bare while the other had the covers bloodied, a body ripped from the sheets. 

As Pavel and two others set about finding more bodies and bringing them to the marketplace, his guilt, which usually hid just behind his stomach and nibbled at him, began to take larger chunks out of him. He wasn’t a child, and even when he was younger, he had been a staunch realist, much to his mother’s bemusement and stepfather’s horror. He had never been under the illusion that he was going to be some sort of hero. Saving towns, freeing people, protecting the peace in high risk areas. No, he doubted that he and his compatriots would swoop in in the nick of time. But coming up on two years of this? They had managed to save just a few people with each attack, and as time went on, the headcount of survivors went down steadily but surely. There was no way to anticipate, there was no way to warn, there was no way to move any faster than they could. It felt he was running uphill in the snow, with the bodies of each failed village dragging him back. In his weakest moments, he craved going back home. Walking back to Salander House, the doors being opened for him, and getting to drop his bag, getting to rest his head in his mother’s lap like he was but a child again, grieving after his father’s funeral. Laszlo excitedly told him all the celebrations they had in store for his return. Hugging Aksana close, enjoying her soft huffing before hugging him back. Sasha flatly tells him that he hopes he doesn’t think that he will get to rejoin the line for the crown and then throws their arms around his neck when he says he wasn’t planning to. Getting to see his half siblings, spending time with them that was stolen by his time away. Getting to see Stas as the man he had become, taking the twins hunting, finally keeping all of his promises to the one he always saw as the baby of the family, despite the arrival of the two youngest girls. Finally taking them on all the trips he planned, the horse rides, finally getting to just sit together and listen and talk. Getting to finally hold Inga, to play with Kissy. But even as the tears would prick at his eyes, he’d simply bite down on his knuckle and turn over in his bedroll. He’d never forgive himself if he did that.

Pulling a small body out from some of the debris, he couldn’t even focus on his thoughts on who this was. What they must have been. He used to, right at the start, as if he could channel his rage and bitterness at the loss of life, into some sort of justice for them. It felt just, it felt right, it felt like he was doing something, but, as it turned out, he could keep learning. No, these days he sank deep into happier memories, skimming over his most recent letters, the joke one of his peers said at the fire, the gratitude of the people he managed to pull free of the rubble six months ago. Letting his guard down. 

And that’s what led to him shifting a charred piece of wood, too lost in himself to notice the rapid breathing, the blackened fingers, blending in with the scorched surroundings, the scent unable to be separated from the burnt meat of the bodies. He didn’t even see them at first. The first thing that Pavel would ever know about the only person he’d come to trust with his life, love and secrets, was that they had very nearly cut out his eye clean out of his face. A deep cut into his eyelid, deep into his cheek. 

A blur. A bloodied blur, with blood covering most of his face, a hoarse, screaming voice as skeletal fingers scratch at his face, as if trying to drive them into his other eye, but most of all. Sobs. Horrifying, raspy, deep sobs as he was pushed down and beatings raining down on his body.

“Stop!” One of the soldiers shouted, voices coming closer. “We’re here to help” 

Sharp nails, or finger bones, scratched at his cheeks and Pavel struggled to raise his arm up from where it was pinned under this… Husk. Even through the blood clogging his eyes, it was… Nothing more than a skeleton, burnt black with vivid red breaking through, cooked skin barely covering raw flesh. And the screaming. They… The thing. It wouldn’t stop screaming. 

“Cease! Or else!” 

They were going to kill it. It was a person. They were under the rubble, the torched remains of a home. A person. Scared. 

“Stop.” He managed to wheeze out and got fingers scratching at his mouth, feeling like fish hooks tearing at the inside of his cheek.”Gonna-” 

The sound of the pistol cut off his words, his ears filled with blood and a ringing sound. The person on top of him fell back with a broken gasp. They were going to die. Pavel felt it. Their blood gushing free from their throat. The lead ball had torn through the fragile skin but no blood was seeping out the back of the neck. Pavel, fighting through the pain, his eye feeling raw and loose in the socket, blood pouring down over half of his face, into his mouth, clogging his ear, rolled to his side and patted around for the twitching body. Charred skin. Crispy. Twitching. He dragged himself forward, reaching his bloodied fingers out, searching and rubbing and trying to find the ripped hole through the throat. There. A middle finger was all he needed to stop the bleeding. Using his own blood to staunch the flow. The body didn’t fight him anymore. Just twitched and curled their skeletal fingers around his wrist.

They were taken to the medic. Pavel’s eye couldn’t be saved. The medic reattached one taken from one of the bodies in the marketplace. The Survivor has to be kept in bandages, having lost most of their skin. Pavel eventually got to sit up and walk over, looking down at the husk. They seemed to have noticed him and slowly turned to look, only one of their own eyes staring out too. 

“Look at that. We’re matching.” Pavel couldn’t help it and thank goodness, The Survivor hadn’t attacked him for it. Instead just sat up and shrugged their shoulders. Pavel sat down in turn and smiled gently. 

They couldn’t send them anywhere. The medic doubted they’d survive a solo trip to Varan, or any place closer. So for months, the Survivor tagged along, spending days just resting, the exposed pale lavender eye staring out, the pupil almost completely lost in the haze of a pastel sea. After a few days, a pale film developed over the exposed eyeball. Symptom of an Upyr attack, and nothing to be done about it, but it upsetted the Survivor further. They drift further into solitude, only seeming to emerge from their splintered shell in his presence. Before too long, their bandages were allowed to be removed, but instead they would just cover up completely, hiding away burnt skin and scars  and skeletal fingers and Bloodless Eyes. 

People slowly forgot that they were found, trying to shred Pavel’s face to ribbons, cutting out his eye in the process. Maybe it was the fact they were a proven fighter, even without Sanguinemancy. Maybe it was because they had lost enough, along with every other soldier in the regiment. Maybe… Maybe.

And then, Pavel Volchek made the hard decision of sending them away.