Chapter Text
Someone’s fucked up. Someone’s fucked up bad.
It’s a hazy thought, drifting in and out of his mind as he lays prone in a ditch, breathing in cold air and ash. His head pounds and his ears ring like someone detonated a flash bang right next to him.
Graves lifts a hand and touches his helmet. There’s a crack down the middle, and his fingers are shaking so hard he can barely get the clip open to pull the strap. His head hurts badly, but when he touches his head there’s no blood. Would have been worse if he hadn’t been wearing a helmet. Fuck.
He pushes to his hands and knees in the dirt; it’s wet, cold, and there’s snow on the ground but honestly, that’s more of a help than a hindrance at the moment. It clears his mind, gets him focused not on the sick twist in his stomach from dizziness – just because his head isn’t bleeding on the outside doesn’t mean he couldn’t have a concussion – but the sound of voices nearby in the dark.
He fumbles for his comm mic, but there’s nothing on the channels but static. He breathes out slow and easy, tries to put his back to the packed snow and dirt of the embankment and pats himself down for a weapon.
He has a knife, which does fuck all for him at the moment, and a gun with just one bullet, which seems more like an insult than an option. He supposes he could simply shoot himself with it, but like hell is he giving anyone the satisfaction of ending up dead in a ditch in Russia by his own sidearm.
Then again, someone would have to know he was here to find his body. And he’d been fairly quiet about that, taking only a handful of Shadows with him, calling in every favor he had left after General Shepherd fucked him over goddamn good and proper at the congressional hearing. The men he’d brought were some of his best, but the lack of response on the comms means Graves is probably last-man-standing in this fucking miserable battle royale.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Not that he’s surprised. Shit’s been hitting the fan since that goddamn missile caravan in Al-Mazrah went missing, and Shepherd’s betrayal was just the shit-icing on the fucking shit-cake of the last however many months.
Voices again. Graves’s Russian is rudimentary at best, but he can at least recognize it is Russian, and likely not friendlies. Graves pushes back against the embankment, beginning to shiver in the snow now, and tries to think through his options. He’s moderately injured but mobile, in the blind in a hostile environment, has one bullet, no allies, and a bunch of fucking Russians whose voices are getting closer to the ditch.
He’s fucked and he knows it, and still the thought of using that one bullet on himself feels like admitting it. Graves grits his teeth and gets on his belly, crawling through the snow, wondering how much longer he can be outside before the adrenaline drains out of him and the weather becomes a bigger danger than the fuckin’ Konni on his trail.
Not that the trail is all that long. In the time he’s taken to try and puzzle out his next move, the talking grows louder, and he hears a gunshot, followed by another. It’s an eerie, terrible echo of that missile convoy in Al-Mazrah – Russian soldiers, gunshots, silence on the comms – only this time, Graves is living it instead of trying to get answers from dead Shadows and being told to stay quiet, I’ll handle this , by Shepherd.
Yeah, you handled it all right, fuckin’ asshole.
Graves’s heart starts to pound as he hears the voices grow closer, so much so he can hear the crunch of boots on snow. His mouth is dry, and he fumbles for the pistol, breathing quick and light as he forces his cold fingers around the weapon and waits. He can take one of them with him, maybe. Come up with some kind of appropriate fuck you for his last words. He can’t believe this has gone so wrong, but the threat and danger are too much for him to dwell on the fact this is likely the end of it, for him. The end of everything.
He’d known this was a long-shot when he’d put the plan in action. But he didn’t think it would end quite this badly, fucking hell. Despite making the danger clear enough when he’d asked for backup from his Shadows, he’d thought the worst that could happen would be the intel was bad and there was nothing but fuckin’ peasants and potatoes.
The intel had been surprisingly accurate as far as a Konni convoy went. Less accurate about the RPGs. And he still isn’t sure if the target he’s here for was in that convoy or not. A goddamn loss all around, then.
He tries to sight the pistol, but there’s a problem – it’s a lot more than two people that appear, very suddenly, at the top of the ditch that’s become his hiding place. Shouting in Russian, rifles all around, and a bright white light in his eyes –
“Well, hell, how nice of y’all to give me so many choices on which one of you assholes goes to hell with me,” Graves says, and as far as last words go, he supposes it could be worse.
There’s a low throb of heat in his stomach as he wonders how many bullets are going to hit him at once. What it will feel like, for the brief minutes he’ll be alive to feel it. Fucked up ‘til the goddamn end, isn’t he?
Except there’s no bullets, there’s just quiet and him in a ditch with a fucking spotlight on him, like the most depressing stage play in existence. There’s a soft thump and then he realizes, too late, that someone’s snuck up from behind and dropped into the ditch. He’s too slow to get a shot off, so the single remaining bullet stays right where it is and all he can see is the outline of someone raising a gun –
– and then there’s an impact on the side of his head, blinding and hot and he has the singular thought of not a bullet, rifle butt, well, hell , before the world goes dark.
***
He wakes up in a bed.
His head hurts, again, and it’s worse this time but it’s also bandaged, which is…strange, especially considering he’s restrained to the frame. The cuffs are leather and are not too-tight, and the whole situation is so confusing that even without a head wound it would be difficult to work out.
He’s clean, sore, and in a bed that isn’t comfortable but isn’t a prison mattress, so that’s something. There’s an IV in his arm, and there’s a moment of panic when he thinks maybe he’s being executed by lethal poison – would’ve preferred a fuckin’ bullet, one or thirty, shit – and he tries jerking his arm to pull it out, but there are also leather restraints on his upper arms, so it doesn’t do anything but hurt when he tries it.
“What the fresh hell is this shit,” Graves says, but his voice is a dry, cracked croak and it hurts when he speaks. How long has he been here? Where is he?
Was he mistaken about the hostiles back at the convoy? Had they been Spetsnaz, chasing Konni along with him, mistaken his men for the enemy? How the fuck had they known not to shoot him after killing the rest of his men? No, he has to assume this is still somehow hostile territory and not let his guard down.
Graves glances around, but the room is so nondescript that it gives nothing away as to where he is. But he can make a few guesses, because while there’s medical equipment he’s fairly sure this is not a medical facility of any kind; there’s no window, no curtain, barely any light, and no medical personnel he can see. There’s also the restraints, which might be used for patients in actual hospitals but not unconscious men with a head injury.
“Hey!” Graves shouts, wincing again at how raw his throat is. “Fuckin’ got rid of the goddamn US Military health care, went private insurance, should have a better fuckin’ room than this!”
His voice echoes off the walls, and shouting makes his head throb , but Graves has never liked being restrained in tense situations because he fucking likes being restrained, and his body doesn’t seem to want to differentiate between go ahead, get your rocks off and get your gun out, soldier.
There’s no answer, but he doesn’t really expect one. Whoever’s brought him here, tended to his wounds and restrained him, clearly they’re playing their cards close to their chests. Graves falls asleep eventually, simply because there’s nothing to do and his head hurts. He doesn’t dream, but when he wakes up again he’s uncomfortable and hungry, would kill for some fucking water, and he’s still alone in the room. It looks the same.
He’s slightly less loopy, enough to realize that he’s in loose pants and a plain tank, neither of which are his, which is concerning. His dog tags are still there, he can feel them against his chest, which means if they didn’t know who he was when they brought him here, they do now.
The door opens, and Graves goes still as a woman enters. She’s small, with sharp cheekbones and wide dark eyes, and holds her hands up immediately, saying something in Russian that he doesn’t know. Graves is better with languages than he lets on, but all he recognizes is the word medicine , which she says twice, pointing to the IV.
“Can’t imagine why I don’t believe you, darlin’,” he says, though it’s clear she can’t understand him any better than he can her. She takes out the IV, though, and tapes up the small puncture on his hand from the needle, then holds up a cup with a straw and takes a sip. She then holds it out – showing him it isn’t poisoned, he supposes, as she warily holds the cup up to his mouth.
Graves drinks. At this point, he’s almost disappointed that it isn’t poisoned. He can handle danger, gunfights – yeah, he can…really handle those. But boredom? Not in his fucking bones. There’s a goddamn reason he signed up for the Marines in the first place.
The woman checks his vitals, his blood pressure, changes his bandage, and takes off the restraints on his upper arms. She even loosens the one on his right hand, enough for him to reach the water and the food she’s left on a tray. It’s nothing exciting, a Russian MRE that tastes as bad as the rest of them do, dehydrated apple slices like he’s a fucking toddler at MacDonald’s whose mom won’t let him have fries like the other kids.
There are two white pills on the tray, too. The woman says something, making a gesture that he should take them, and Graves pretends he will just so she’ll go away. The second she’s gone, he takes the pills and tucks them under the tray. They might just be aspirin, but fuck that.
Graves eats his so-called “dinner” because he needs his strength even if he’s still not sure where he is. The loose restraints aren’t enough for him to get them undone completely, but he’s positive that despite the relatively benign treatment – he can’t say pleasant, not after that MRE – he’s not anywhere safe. He finishes the revolting excuse for dinner and tries to sleep. He’ll need to heal up to survive whatever they’re gonna do to him next.
He has no idea why his captors are patching him up – he figures it’ll be so the torture hurts more, when they do it. And there’s a thought he lets himself have for a bit, increasing scenarios that twist his stomach and make him breathe too fast – and somewhere in the middle of these disturbing images, he falls asleep again.
Something is different the next time he wakes up. It takes Graves a few seconds to figure it out, but despite seeing no one else, he just knows he’s not alone in the room – even before he sees the faint hint of red in the far corner, catches the slightest, acrid hint of cigarette smoke.
“I hear you were looking for me, Commander Graves,” a voice says, followed by the soft sound of an inhale, a bright flare of red from the cigarette, another spill of smoke, drifting dreamily through the room.
Graves squints, trying to focus on the person hidden by shadow and smoke. Whoever they are, they’re soft-spoken, and yet there’s so much menace in that simple, quiet statement that Graves feels all the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
“Well, now, don’t know who the fuck you are, comrade, so I’m not real sure how to answer that,” Graves drawls, and he hears himself speaking, the taunt coming as easy as breathing. He tries not to fucking shiver as the man in the corner laughs . Fuck this, Graves is a lot of things but he’s not cowering for a fucking foreign dominant, he doesn’t care how sinister he sounds.
“Oh, it wasn’t a question.” There’s a rustle, and Graves goes still as the man emerges from his shadowy corner, bleeding dominance and pure threat like it’s the smoke from his cigarette.
Like blood.
“You know who I am,” the man says, stepping into the light. “After all, I’m the reason you’re here.”
Vladimir Makarov smiles coldly at him, and his dominance feels like falling into a Siberian lake in the winter – deep and endless, the kind you can’t escape, leaving you to suffer in it, freezing bit by bit until you suffocate. Makarov drags a chair over and sits at Graves’s bedside like some worried family member keeping vigil, leaning forward, his dark eyes clear and empty as glass.
“So. Why don’t you thank me for my hospitality and my… generosity …in keeping you alive, hmm?”
“Why the fuck would I do that?” Graves manages, but it comes out a little strangled and lacking the vitriol he would have preferred. He’s also not having the easiest time looking at Makarov, which makes him so angry he feels his hands curl into fists – Graves has been dealing with doms his whole career, and he makes it a fucking point to meet their eyes, to never get on his knees – he’s never knelt for anyone, fuck that , and he’s not going to lower so much as his fuckin’ peepers for this asshole. No .
“Because, Commander,” Makarov says, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, the cigarette still lazily burning between his fingers. “I have information that I’m sure you’re going to want.”
“Oh, yeah?” Graves looks up at the ceiling, affecting boredom, like that’s the reason he’s not looking at Makarov. Like the ceiling is just that fucking interesting. More interesting than the international terrorist sitting next to him. Right. “What’s that? Got another missile you’re tryin’ to steal or some other sporting event you don’t like?”
Makarov laughs. There is not a single, solitary hint of warmth or amusement in it. It makes Graves realize he’s not breathing, and he forces air out of his mouth, his nose, makes his fingers unclench from the bedding.
“No, no, this is more…personal.” He leans in a little more, and Graves – it takes every bit of his training, the Marines and everything else, not to flinch. It must be the head injury. Doms don’t have this effect on him, he’s spent his entire career making sure of it . “I know who sold you out, Commander. Wouldn’t you like to know who it was?”