Chapter Text
The first time Jack saw the prisoner was through the bars of a cell door.
His captain had brought him down the corridor at an impatient, almost predatory pace, like a hunter eager to show off a kill. That’s how Jack arrived on the outside of the cramped cell.
There was a man hanging in the center of it, from a short chain bolted to the ceiling. He was naked, his skin soiled with blood and dried sweat and other fluids Jack forced himself not to identify. His wrists were bound above him, shoulders pulled up and out at an angle that meant they were either already dislocated or shortly would be. His toes, caked in grime, barely grazed the floor. He was tall, a frame that might have been called lean once, now merely skeletal.
“Claims he’s a doctor,” his captain said, a leer twisting his face.
Jack looked at the prisoner. The man’s eyes were closed, the colors of his beard and hair indistinguishable from the blood matted in them. Thirty perhaps, maybe older.
“A doctor?” Jack repeated.
“Yeah.” The captain kicked the iron bar of the door. The clang was tremendous and Jack had to fight down a flinch. But the man hanging in the center of the cell didn’t stir at all. “Says he works for MSF. Reckon he’s lying.”
“What’s his name?”
“Robinavitch,” the captain spat almost contemptuously. Then, having satisfied his need to show off his kill, he turned sharply on his heel, leaving Jack alone at the cell door.
Jack stood at the door a moment longer. Then, he followed.
<><><>
The first time Jack was sent into the cell, Robinavitch was on the floor.
He had just survived an interrogation. Jack’s order was to make sure he suffers a bit but not die. His captain had delivered the command with perfect nonchalance, just a minor footnote between discussions of lunch and the weather. Jack had replied, yes, sir, and left it at that.
Robinavitch was still naked, and in the intervening days, he had grown even thinner. Cuts and burns mapped his body; lacerations and bruises in different stages of healing turned his torso into a morbid abstract painting—colors everywhere from a putrid yellow-green to lurid purple. There was a large gash across his abdomen that was fresh and bleeding. It was deep; even from the doorway Jack could see subcutaneous fat peeking out pale and yellow at the wound’s edges.
Robinavitch was lying on his side with his knees drawn slightly toward his chest, as though cold, or afraid, but too spent to curl up all the way. He was pressing one hand to the laceration but his shoulders were still out of their sockets and the position was too awkward for him maintain enough pressure.
He looked up when the door clanged open.
Jack was struck by his eyes—sharp and hawk-like despite the blood loss and the pain the man was obviously in. Beyond his eyes, his face was a record of recent trauma. A gash above his brow barely a day or two old, a bruise spreading all the way from his left temple down to the jaw, his cheekbone a deep aubergine. And his nose, broken and probably left untreated, now settled permanently into a crooked bent. It would have been a straight nose, Jack thought. Sharp and straight, a match for those eyes.
Jack stepped inside and set his kit down carefully. The cell was dark and dank with a coppery taste of blood that had seeped so deep into the concrete to have become infused into the very existence of the room, as if whenever someone walked in, their movements would again shake it loose out of the air.
Robinavitch’s eyes tracked his every move.
He flinched hard when the cell door slammed shut behind them, then clenched his teeth, as though frustrated by his own instinct.
Jack crouched and reached toward his wrist. Robinavitch didn’t flinch, although it was a close thing, instead, his body went rigid, every muscle pulling taut, his arms curling in towards his torso, fingers clenched tight. Then, with visible effort, he loosened his fists and spread his fingers against the floor, knuckles whitening with strain. His fingers were long and strong—a pair of hands built for precise, intricate work. Needle and track marks littered the back of his hands, and again at the underside of his wrist and inner elbow. Jack wondered how many needles had punctured his skin and what drugs had been in each and every one of them. Then he decided that he would rather not know.
He gripped one wrist firmly. Robinavitch’s pulse was rapid and thin.
Jack turned to the job at hand. He had been given pathetically little to work with. Just disinfectant and a small suture kit. No anesthesia. He had stopped asking for it after the first few requests were met with nothing but sneers and jeers. He soaked a cloth in disinfectant and pressed it to the abdominal wound. Robinavitch let out a strangled cry that he tried to stifle, teeth digging into his lower lip, the tendons in his neck jutting out sharply like coiled springs.
After a minute, Jack dropped the now blood soaked cloth, wiped his hand as clean as he could on a spare scrap of cloth and began to thread his needle. Then he bent down again and tried to suture the gash.
He wasn’t built for working on a concrete floor without proper tools, and by the third time he had to pull the thread out because the needle wasn’t going where it needed to go, Robinavitch’s teeth had broken through the scab on his lip. A thin thread of blood hit the floor.
“Sorry,” Jack muttered out of habit.
Robinavitch’s eyes snapped to his, startled. And then did Jack realized what he had said and how out of place it was. He almost laughed at the absurdity of it, how a simple sorry could be jarring in a place where people discussed their favorite torture methods between bites of dinner.
For a moment, Jack couldn’t think of what to say. His mind had gone blank, the only thing he could think about was that Robinavitch’s eyes were a rich, warm brown. Their gaze held for a second. Suddenly, there was a loud scrape of a boot on stone somewhere outside and the spell broke.
Jack went back to the wound, trying to hold it closed and suture at the same time, and failing just like before. Then Robinavitch’s hand came down and pinched the wound edges together precisely where Jack needed them held, and kept them there. Despite the sweat gathering steadily along his hairline, despite the blood slipping out quietly between his teeth, Robinavitch held himself very still. He moved only when Jack needed him to move, and only where Jack needed him to move, anticipating each stitch without Jack having to say a word.
When the abdomen was closed, Jack moved to the rest of his injuries. Two broken ribs (at least), but nothing he could do about them. Lacerations across both forearms in various stages of healing, some of them reopened. The shoulder wound was the worst—a deep puncture from what could only have been a nail or a hook, stitched together badly and already infected, the skin around it hot and tight and beginning to ooze. Asking for antibiotics would be a battle lost before it had even begun, no point in even bringing it up. So Jack cut out the old stitches and poured disinfectant directly into the wound.
Robinavitch’s jaw clenched so hard the crack of his teeth echoed into the small cell. Fine, involuntary tremors wracked his frame, but he made no sound.
When it was over, Jack sat back on his heels. Robinavitch was still watching him and Jack found himself strangely unsettled by that gaze. Later, lying on his narrow bunk in the barracks, Jack would realize that Robinavitch’s eyes held no hatred, not even hostility. He couldn’t find the right word for the look, only that they gave him the oddest sense that he was the one being assessed, appraised for something he didn’t yet comprehend.
Jack packed up his kit and left, those brown eyes trailing him the entire way.
“I don’t think he’s lying,” he told his captain later. “About being a doctor.”
“Not your concern,” his captain replied.
<><><>
Three nights later, Jack stopped outside Robinavitch’s cell.
He was sitting against the far wall. Someone must have given him a thin blanket at some point and he had it pulled around his shoulders. His hands rested in his lap, palms facing upward, and he was looking at them with an expression impossible to read. He didn’t move for a long time, long enough that Jack began to think that was all there was to see, and then Robinavitch began to move his fingers.
The movements were small at first: a pinch, a turn, then repeat. There was a rhythm to it, a set sequence, and Jack watched him work through it, adding more elements. Dip, twist, pull, bend, roll, the sequence grew more complex, almost dance like.
It took Jack a while to recognize it for what it was. Robinavitch was suturing, guiding invisible lines through wounds made of air.
He ran through the procedure carefully, unhurriedly, letting muscle memory lead the way, finishing the air wound with a perfect square knot. His hands hung in the air for a moment longer, his eyes blinking slowly as though resurfacing from a memory. Then he let his hands fall back into his lap. He gave himself a little shake, pulled the blanket tighter around himself and closed his eyes.
Jack stepped away from the door.
His captain was wrong, he thought. Or maybe he knew, but didn’t care. Either way, those hands told Jack everything he needed to know. Whatever else Robinavitch was or wasn’t, he had been a doctor.
And he still was one, here in this cell, in the dark.