Chapter Text
“Anyone ever tell you about Dyatlov Pass?”
Rumlow can’t feel his feet. The numbness is marginally better than the hot, icy sting of frostbite, but every stumbling step he takes is making his stomach swoop like he’s about to plummet into some vast hidden crevasse. Beneath his boots the crunching of compressed snow isn’t exactly reassuring, though it’s at least helping him to remember that they’ve made some progress.
Step by step. Foot by foot. Mile by fucking mile.
“This is a place in Russia?” the soldier asks. It’s a testament to how concerned he is about their situation that he bothers to respond with more than a single word.
“Yeah,” Rumlow says, teeth chattering. “You know what happened there?”
His left arm is draped around the soldier’s broad shoulders, wrist clamped in the bruising grip of the perpetually cold titanium hand. He can’t feel his fingers either.
“It’s relevant to the mission?”
“Guess that depends on what your mission is right now, soldat.”
They’re going in the wrong direction: westward down the mountain instead of east towards the remote Alaskan weather station where the target is supposed to be working, alone and unarmed. They were so fucking close...
“Parameters shifted,” the soldier grunts, taking Rumlow’s full weight as they stagger through a deeper patch of snow, sinking into it up to their knees. Like wading through quicksand... “New priority: escort injured commanding officer to safety.”
He doesn’t sound especially happy about it. Rumlow isn’t either.
“You say the sweetest things, baby,” he murmurs.
It’s starting to get dark, the snow covered slopes paradoxically bright, illuminated by a pale blue glow that makes everything glitter like it’s encrusted with crystals: glass shards and chipped, polished quartz.
Rumlow sags against the soldier’s side. He's finding it harder and harder to lift his legs. He’s so fucking tired.
“Quarter klick to the treeline,” the soldier tells him, nodding at the distant blur of a black spruce forest, tops partially concealed now by a low layer of slate-grey cloud. It’s going to snow again. Fuck. “Ten minutes. Then we make camp.”
“The Reds headed for the trees too,” Rumlow slurs. “Much fuckin’ good it did them.”
“You should save your breath.”
“You should watch your mouth.”
“Da, ser,” the soldier replies, deadpan. “Prasteetye.”
He pulls Rumlow closer, flesh arm solid across his back, fingers curling around his ribs. He usually runs hot but now he’s barely warm – his body heat serving only to melt the coating of ice that’s been clinging to their clothing for the last half hour. Rumlow’s gear is meant to be waterproof; he doesn’t think the labels mentioned anything about avalanches. A steady trickle of glacial water is running down the back of his neck, seeping into the collar of his under-shirt.
“I’m trying to say,” he says, shivering convulsively, “That none of those fuckers survived.”
“Ser?”
“The Soviets. On Kholat Syakhl.” He sighs, and is momentarily distracted by the way his breath comes pouring out of his mouth like smoke, wispy and white. Christ, he would kill for a cigarette right now. Though a cigarette lighter would probably be the better investment... “You should know this shit, soldat. They’re your people. Were your people, I s’pose.”
“Ya nye paneemayu,” I don’t understand. The soldier looks down at him, eyes narrowed. Even half-frozen, his hair is pleasantly soft as it brushes against Rumlow’s forehead. It still smells vaguely of ozone from the chair. “You’re confused?” he says, “This is not Russia.”
“I know it’s not Russia, moron,” Rumlow snaps. “I’m talking ‘bout those hikers... Died in the Urals sometime in the fifties. Or was it the sixties?” The soldier gives him another troubled frown. He’s wearing the muzzle but Rumlow can picture his lips, dark pink and chapped from the cold, downturned with poorly-disguised uneasiness. “The bodies were all fucked up when they found ‘em. Crush injuries. Missing tongues, eyeballs... Their tent was cut open from the inside, like they didn’t have time to unzip it, like they were too scared to wait to get out. It’s a mystery. Nobody knows what happened to them.”
“This was an avalanche too?” the soldier asks.
“I just fuckin’ said ‘nobody knows what happened to them’,” Rumlow replies. His right foot is starting to drag, boot leaving a deep groove in the snow behind them with every shuffling step they take. He’s distantly aware that he should probably be worried about tracks, but he can’t find the energy to care – mind too hazy, body too weak. “Y’know, Jack thinks you might’ve had something to do w’it. We watched a documentary once. He said,” Rumlow laughs, a little dizzy, “Said that you probably killed them.”
“This sounds like an avalanche,” the soldier replies mildly, and Rumlow’s left arm bounces as he shrugs. “Maybe animals ate the soft parts. There are many scavengers in those mountains. Lynx, wolves, wolverines...”
Rumlow hums, wanting to argue. He thinks that he had something else to add to the story, something important, but he can’t quite remember what it was. There’s a shitty Imagine Dragons song playing on repeat in his head. Radioactive.
“Why would I take their eyes?”
“I dunno,” he says, with a shrug of his own. “You’ll have to ask Jack, if we ever make it back...” Rumlow snorts at the accidental rhyme. He suddenly wants nothing more than to lie down, snow be damned – at least it’s soft. Maybe the soldier could pull him along like a husky dragging a sled, let him get a few precious minutes of sleep. But the treeline is looming ahead of them now, a seemingly impenetrable barrier – shadowy and unwelcoming. “’m fuckin’ tired...”
“Three minutes,” the soldier says, apparently reading Rumlow’s mind. “Your heart rate is slowing. Keep talking.”
“S’near Yekaterinburg,” Rumlow tells him, “The mountain where they died. Well, I guess ‘near’ as anything can be in Siberia. Prob’ly more than three hundred miles between ‘em...”
“I know Yekaterinburg,” the soldier says.
“Yeah, you do. Did some good work there. Back in the day.”
“I don’t remember this.”
The soldier tenses slightly, like he always does when he’s reminded of a memory that he hasn’t been allowed to keep. He doesn’t stop walking.
“S’OK,” Rumlow says. He tries to stroke soothingly at the soldier’s titanium wrist but he still can’t feel his fingers. He can’t feel his hands at all now, even encased in two layers of thick, fleecy mountaineering gloves. “You don’t need to remember, soldat. Don’t worry ‘bout it. I only meant that they all died, y’know? In the snow. Hypothermia, or exposure, or...”
Is hypothermia different to exposure?
“You aren’t going to die,” the soldier tells him, decisive. “I wasn’t there.”
“Maybe you were,” Rumlow says, his judgement as clouded as the tips of the snow-capped trees that are towering above them. As clouded as their breath, carried away on the chill night breeze that’s now sweeping down off the mountain. “You don’t remember Yekaterinburg. Maybe you don’t remember Dyatlov either...”
The soldier scoffs, a noise somewhere between disturbed and disbelieving. “You shouldn’t be saying these things,” he says, voice muffled slightly by the mask. “And I shouldn’t be listening."
“You’ve always gotta listen to me, soldat,” Rumlow reminds him, only half joking. “’m your commander.”
“Ensuring your survival overrides following your orders,” the soldier says. “You’re compromised.”
“I’m not!” he protests. He tries to clench his fists but his knuckles are stiff, frozen in place with his fingers partially curled, bent at right-angles like he’s halfway up the mountain again, buried in snow and frantically trying to dig his way out.
“You aren’t shivering anymore,” the soldier says, his tone as even as ever. “You aren’t panting. Your pupils are dilated. You’re compromised. Hypothermic.”
Rumlow realises abruptly that he can’t even feel the cold now; he can’t really feel much of anything, enveloped in a strange lukewarm bubble of comfortable nothingness.
“It’s getting dark,” he counters, less authoritatively than he intended. “’Course my pupils are dilated.”
The soldier replies with a non-committal hum and manoeuvres their bodies so that Rumlow’s back is pressed up against a broad tree trunk, heavy evergreen branches splaying out just above their heads, a snow-dusted, drooping canopy.
“We can stay here,” the soldier says. “You shouldn’t move anymore. This place is good. I’ll make shelter.”
“You’re gonna pitch a tent for me, soldat?” Rumlow asks with a suggestive wink. He tries to laugh, but the freezing air feels like a knife in his lungs and he gasps instead, chest cramping.
“Da, Komandir,” the soldier replies seriously.
Rumlow’s legs give out the second that he’s left to stand on his own. Something rips behind him, the fabric of his jacket snagging on rough, jagged bark as he slides down the tree trunk to slump at its base. The soldier catches him under his arms before his ass can hit the snow and props him back up, expression stern.
“You can’t sit,” he says firmly. “Three minutes.”
“Think it was ‘three minutes’ three minutes ago,” Rumlow says, but he manages to lock his knees and lean back at an angle that keeps him from collapsing again, hips jutting forward, arms limp by his sides.
“Three minutes, Komandir,” the soldier repeats. “You should stay awake.”
“Gettin’ real comfy giving me orders, ain’t’cha, soldat?” Rumlow challenges.
He should probably be more annoyed about it – about the soldier pushing him around and telling him what to do. He should probably be more worried that he isn’t annoyed about it. As it is, he’s just drowsy, mind drifting, muscles loose and lax.
He tilts his head back and watches the clouds, shifting like mist, and shimmering in the darkness. A single snowflake spirals down through the night air to land on his cheek. Rumlow flinches, but he doesn’t feel it as it melts.
“Tell me more,” the soldier prompts. He’s paced out a clearing – eight feet square. He has both of their packs on the ground at his feet. Rumlow doesn’t remember removing his own. “About the dead hikers, in the pass.”
“Think I told you pretty much everything,” Rumlow says. “Maybe I’ll show you the documentary... When we get home.” This time ‘if we get home’ goes unspoken.
The soldier crouches down to rifle through the bags, his tac pants making soft, rustling sounds as he moves. It’s unnaturally still now, quiet under the cover of the trees – everything enfolded in that crisp, eerie silence that always precedes or follows heavy snowfall. Brock hums to himself, watches as the soldier pulls out an emergency two-man tent and goes about setting it up.
“But you said this is a mystery,” the soldier says, frowning in concentration as he threads a length of cord through the top line of the alpine camo, foil-lined canvas, “Why do people think so? It sounds like an accident – a storm or a slab avalanche or...”
“They think..." Rumlow shrugs. "I don't know..."
A few snowflakes stay for longer than they should where they land on the soldier’s black leather-clad shoulders. He pulls the cord taut, ties it securely between two sturdy trees so that the tent can hang between them.
“Maybe people don’t know what it’s like out here. How easy it is to get... How quick you can just... expire, y’know? Nobody wants to think about how vulnerable they are if nine fit ‘n healthy young people can just get wiped out in instant by something as mundane as the fuckin’ weather. They want to believe that the world cares about them; that nature is more kind than indifferent, more reliable than unpredictable. More orderly than chaotic.”
“They would rather imagine an assassin?” the soldier asks, doubtful, as he stakes out the tent’s wide rectangular base.
“Or aliens,” Rumlow says. “Or military testing. Or a fuckin’ Yeti.”
The soldier makes a very uncharacteristic snorting sound that sends lines of fog streaming out through the air holes of his mask, like steam from a dragon’s snout. “Maybe this is why Agent Rollins accuses me,” he says, stamping the last peg into the frozen ground with unnerving accuracy, “Because his relatives are the real culprits.”
It takes Rumlow a few seconds to understand what he means, then he laughs, surprised. “Did you... Did you just make a joke, soldat?”
“Nyet,” the soldier answers, poker-faced. “He is a big man. Hairy.”
“You know I’m gonna tell him about this, right?”
The soldier just shrugs, unfolds a space blanket as he walks back towards Rumlow’s position. “Is a compliment,” he says. “Take off your clothes.”
“What?” Rumlow recoils, the impact of his instinctive ‘I’m-your-goddamn-commander-show-me-some-goddamn-respect’ reaction somewhat diminished by the way his legs are wobbling beneath him, by the way he can’t stand up straight on his own anymore.
Unperturbed, the soldier reaches out with his flesh hand to tug down the zipper of his jacket. “You’re wet. You won’t get warm. You should undress.”
“You should fuckin’...” Rumlow begins, ready to argue. But the soldier’s right. Of course he’s fucking right. “Yeah,” he says, deflating. “OK.”
He peels off the layers one by one, anticipating a sudden rush of icy air that never comes. It’s almost a relief to shed the heavy clothes; he was starting to feel strangely warm. He pulls his compression shirt off over his head and the soldier immediately enfolds him in the thermal blanket, guiding him away from the tree trunk. His gloves are taken off for him, and then the edges of the heat sheet are being pressed between his fumbling fingers.
“Hold it closed,” the soldier says. “Ser,” he adds belatedly. He steers Rumlow by the shoulders over to the opening of the tent, and gently pushes him down until he’s sitting in the packed snow just outside of it. “Lie back,” the soldier tells him.
Rumlow obeys, too exhausted to complain. Once his upper half is lying safely in the shelter of the tent, the soldier unbuckles his belt and unceremoniously drags off his pants.
“Fuck, baby,” Rumlow murmurs. “Always thought that you were the frigid one, but here I am freezing my balls off while you’re...” he trails off, struggling to think of a decent punchline.
The soldier ignores him, strips off his boots and socks. Rumlow barely feels any of it. He watches through the gap in the tent flaps, fighting to keep his head raised enough to see. The titanium arm is looped underneath Rumlow's bent knees and he's pushed persistently until he’s sliding further into the tent. He gets the idea and shuffles backwards, hauling himself inside. The lightly padded groundsheet crackles beneath him as he collapses, foil blanket falling open on either side of his bare chest.
There’s something nice about being enclosed in such a small, sheltered space – his own breath warming the air around his face. He forgets where he is for a moment, calm in the quiet winter twilight. His eyelids are drooping; his pulse a dull, sluggish tattoo in his neck, lulling him to sleep. For a moment, he could maybe convince himself that it’s all a dream – that he’ll open his eyes and find himself in his own bed, comfortable and safe.
A blast of cold brings him at least partially back to reality, and he looks up to see the soldier crawling into the tent, canvas fluttering shut behind him. He’s naked too now, except for his muzzle and a beanie that he must have put on to cover his wet hair.
“S’cute,” Rumlow murmurs, lifting a hand like he could touch the soldier’s face without moving any closer.
“Komandir?” The soldier says something else, a question, Russian, but Rumlow doesn’t catch it. He doesn’t ask a second time, so it can’t be important.
He zips the tent closed and kneels down to drag a pair of thick socks onto Rumlow’s feet. He’s got a second heat sheet tucked under his arm, along with a spare downy jacket that must have been in the same dry bag as the socks.
“You had that the whole time?” Rumlow asks, with a soft laugh. “You just wanted me naked, soldat?”
The soldier frowns down at him, unfolds the blanket and drapes it around his own shoulders, shaking it loose so that it billows behind him like a cape. In the low light, the thin foil matches the metal arm perfectly, dim silver streaked with black creases.
He crawls up to cover Rumlow’s body with his own, lays down over him carefully, mindful of his weight. He smells like winter, crisp and clean.
It’s bright enough outside that Rumlow can see the freshly fallen snow beginning to collect on the sides of the tent above them, dark patches that get darker as he watches, soft around the edges.
“Only for your protection, ser,” the soldier replies, his heartbeat strong and steady where it beats against Rumlow’s chest.
“Yeah,” Rumlow murmurs. “S’what they all say.”