They begin at the only place they can: with what they already know. Viktor tries his best to recall anything from before the accident, but it's like trying to chase his own shadow. The life he once knew is on the tip of his tongue, but some unseen barrier in his mind just wont let him bring it to light.

"It's there!" He moans hopelessly "I can see it but I just can't... can't get to it!" Mikhail nods along and listens loyally. It doesn't take a doctor to see that Viktor's burning himself up with all the effort he's putting into this, effort that is ultimately just being wasted.

As for his own role in all of this, right now he's at a loss – there's nothing to shoot at and no enemy of any sort. This just isn't the kind of battle he knows how to fight. In other words, he's completely powerless.

All he can do is sit and nod and listen, as the broken man before him racks his brain over and over in some desperate search of a beginning. He moans and complains, but he doesn't give up. Mikhail can't help but admire that.

Exhausted and defeated, Viktor sighs and lies back on the bed. Mikhail pours a fresh cup of water and hands it to him. His movements are getting better; this time he can just about hold the cup with two shaky hands and swallow without choking. This was what the doctors called 'Development in leaps and bounds'. Mikhail saw it more like baby steps. Really, really tiny baby steps. To be honest is was a glorified crawl. At best.

He hands the cup back and rubs his tired eyes. "Everything's so blurry." He mumbles, blinking rapidly up at the ceiling. "Even my vision is fuzzy. It's all so blotchy, I figured it was an after effect of the concussion, but I thought it would have cleared at least a little by now."

"Well, could ask doctors. But is probably because you are not..." Mikhail trails off slowly, his entire body seemed to cringe and turn away.

"Because I'm not what?" Viktor probes.

"... You are not wearing glasses." The Heavy breathes guiltily.

"Glasses?"

"Da." Mikhail breathes slowly; unable to believe he had forgotten something so obvious. "Used to have little spectacles, round ones. Perhaps hospital is having them in your personal possessions? Could be of some help. Will ask Sally if she-"

"Wait. You knew me before all of this?"

Mikhail looks at him and frowns.

"Da, why else are you thinking I would be here?"

Viktor opens his mouth but the words don't come, shrugging his shoulders sadly without answer.

The guilt suddenly presses down on him like a bad hangover. Of course he didn't know why he was there! The man had woken up that morning barely knowing his own name, never mind their less-than-savoury past times together. Somehow it had become something of an automatic assumption that he would know him, considering how attached he was and how he spoke to him.

It appeared Viktor was not the only one who needed to re-learn some basic principles.

"Well, err... how should I be saying... we are, or were, what is called 'Combat Partners.'"

"Combat... you mean fighting?" Viktor says, somewhat alarmed.

"Of sorts." Mikhail reasons. "Well, you were not. But I was big fighter. Was Heavy Weapons Expert, biggest man in defence class, in charge of greatest weapon store in all of base. But you were..." He begins to choose his words carefully, since Viktor seems to be hanging off every last one of them. It's hard to find the words without spelling out what a complete monster he had been, if it weren't for Viktor's hopeful smile he doubts he'd be able to keep a straight face through such a bluff. "You were Medical Professional. Field Doctor, in charge of main surgery on base."

Viktor's eyes practically bulge out of his head.

"I was a Doctor..." He breathes slowly, taking it in before fixing Mikhail with a sudden grin. "So that must be why I know what all this gear is!" He says ecstatically, motioning round the room to the monitors and machines that are still attached to his every breath and heartbeat. "I must have used them before. That's it! And that explains how I know things like the names of all those bones, and why I can understand what the doctors are saying, and know what a translabyrinth craniotomy is! Oh, this is all starting to make sense."

Mikhail nods. He's not sure exactly what he's just said, but he seems happy enough to be saying it. That's good enough.

"So, if you were a... a weapons expert was it? And I was a field doctor, then I guess we were in some sort of military regiment?" Viktor asks hopefully. "Like the army, or the air force? Or even the marines?"

"Ah, nyet. Nyet, not quite... is being classified as - what did Soldier call it?... Ah! Private Warfare."

"Private Warfare?" The glee drains from Viktor's face.

"Um, da... fighting for Reliable Excavations and Demolitions. Fighting against Builders League Untied."

"Was that some kind of political party?"

"Ahh, nyet."

"Is 'Reliable Excavations and Demolitions' a new country?"

"Ah, nyet nyet, is in United States of the Americas."

"So are they two new founded states? Was it a civil war?!"

"Are both in New Mexico actually. They are companies."

"C-companies. We fought for... for-"

"Profit."

"I was going to say a greater good, but I suppose not." He looks down at his hands and speaks in a much softer tone. "You're saying we were hired to fight. Making us... mercenaries."

Mikhail feels his gut tense, and then nods.

"Did you, umm, did you ever kill anyone?"

He nods again. Slowly. Fear replaces the delight in Viktor's eyes. Mikhail knows what question is coming next, and feels a different brand of dread worming its way through his body.

"Did I?"

He wants to tell the truth. He wants to reel out every last sordid detail of Medics past. He wants him to know the same pain and humiliation that he had inflicted on Mikhail, and the others that aren't here today because of it. He really, really wants to.

"Nyet." He only just manages, wrestling with his tongue. "Nyet, you kept us alive. All of us. Would come to you with worst injuries: bullet wounds, blown up limbs, holes in places that holes should not be, and you fixed us. You let us live. Can only hope other team had Medic as good as you."

The lie rolls off his tongue as if it were made of honey, honey that still had bees attached to it and which sting his pride making him wonder if there is a single drop of dignity left in black excuse of what he once called his soul.

But for the smile it puts back on Viktor's face, the price almost seems worth it. "Though I am guessing they did not. Because we won. And they lost. Horribly. Was like two hundred train wrecks all at once. Was fire, explosions, arms and legs fly-"

"I get the picture." Viktor interrupts, holding up a hand to stop the description from going any further. "Thank you."

They're both silent for a minute, content to let everything they just said out loud sink in and just to listen to the hive of activity echoing through the hospital. Mikhail wonders what happens next; having a completely new doctor in the stead of the old fiend had never factored into his plans.

"Mischa?"

Sally's soft tone draws his gaze to the head propped round the door. She's a little more dishevelled since he last saw her, after explaining his decision to stay she'd hugged him so tight he thought she'd never let go! Her cap is crooked and her eyes seem to have lost their shine, but the sight of her brings a smile to his face all the same. "Just thought you should know that visiting hours are almost over. The night staff are about to clock on and I'll be leaving soon."

"Is dark already?" He's a little shocked at the time, more so at how he had forgotten to check it in the last four hours. "Give us moment, will walk you home after am done." Viktor shuffles nervously in his sheets. Sally nods acceptingly and pulls the door closed behind her.

"You're going." He looks almost betrayed, as if he'd expected Mikhail to lie down and sleep on the floor beside him like a Labrador.

"Well, cannot spend night here, and must let doctors and nurses do their own work while you rest. Will be good for you, you will see."

"Will you be back? Soon?"

He doesn't answer for a moment, because he honestly has no answer.

Viktor senses it in an instant. "I mean you don't have to, you really have no obligation to come back, it's just... you know more about me than anyone does. And I just- just want to know more about... everything."

It's not exactly the kind of request he can refuse.

"Am understanding. Do not worry. Will come by tomorrow if I am having any time to spare. Can talk then."

The little bones in his spine crack and pop as he gets up from the chair; he stretches them out briefly and, with the contingency bag unopened on his back, turns to leave.

"Mikhail?"

"Da?"

"Thank you."

He's just a forlorn looking bundle of bones on the bed, something in between a marionette strung up to all those machines and a skeleton wrapped in blankets. Even so, a tiny part of him still cringes in terror when his grey eyes squint to find him through the growing darkness of the room. It brings back one to many memories he'd much rather forget.

"Da..." He murmurs hastily, closing the door behind him.

He doesn't phone his family that night.

He can't bring himself to tell them he's thrown away the opportunity to return home. It would mean having to explain why, and he has no intention of ever telling anyone just what Medic had done out there. Besides, he didn't want to put images like that into their heads. He knew the girls weren't naïve, and his mother even less so, they'd all suffered through the same hell of the gulag together, but even that didn't come close to what he had experienced at the hands of the Medic. Its breaking him just thinking about it, god knows he doesn't want to give them the same nightmares.

He settles instead for the five-dollar bottle of vodka he has stashed at he the back of his cupboard, and also the twenty dollar bottle hidden behind the fridge safely tucked away from Jacks drunk-hungry eyes.

He drinks alone that night.

Sally offered him a listening ear, and Jack rang once or twice to see if there was anything he could do, then rang again to bollock him for scaring him half to death and leaving him to man the yard and the shop on his own for the whole day. It's all settled with a couple of Irish cuss's that Mikhail reckons could damn the sky blue and an offer to spend the night drinking round at his place. Mikhail declines. He's not in the mood to watch Jack play happy family's as Sally puts the girls to bed. Such a kind cruelness could only drive him to despair, especially with the amount he was intending to drink.

He cries that night. He hasn't cried in years.

He's drunk, and confused, and more alone than he's ever felt. He wonders round the apartment, clumsily knocking over everything he seems to touch and it all comes rushing at him with a terrifying speed: He doesn't belong here. With a desperate logic that only a gallon of vodka could offer, he paws through his old keepsakes from his time in RED. There are some of the original blueprints he'd drawn up for Sasha, a few shell casings carved with their teams symbols, a dog tag from an engineer he had known long ago, and finally he pulls out their old block and white squad photo.

It's a little battered now and he has to lay it down on the table to stop himself seeing double, but he can make out all their faces. The old squad. All of them with their chests puffed out and their eyes gleaming mean. He was stood on the back left, Sasha perched by his hip with the goggled Engineer grinning like a basket case at his side. The others looked just as menacing, many of them brandishing their weapons with reserved smiles, all looking as if they could jump out of the photo and floor him at any second.

They couldn't call themselves friends, what they had been through made it all stronger than that whimsical term. They had been brothers, bound through a code that many of them died by; kill the enemy, protect your own, win the war. They were merciless bastards, every last one of them, but they were his kind of bastards. There, on that battlefield, they belonged.

It had all been so simple.

But then his drunken eyes fix on the one face he can't escape from.

Medic.

There's no smile. No bond. It's just a sharp white lab coat staring up at him through perfectly rounded spectacles. Than angle of his clenched jaw, the permanent furrow in his brow, even the shine of his eyes makes him feel sick with fear.

The photo hits the wall and the frame shatters before Mikhail even knows what he's done.

It all comes flooding back.

He can't block it out. That face is looming over him, and a thousand nightmares run riot in his head.

He shouts, and yells, covering his ears to stop himself hearing the echoes of those cold, callous words.

It's no good.

Staggering over to a corner of the apartment, he curls up as tightly as his body will allow and sobs until the terror envelopes him completely.

When he wakes the next morning with his nerves still pickled in cheap spirits and his entire body groaning with pain, he can't begin to remember why he's curled up on the floor.

The day passes too quickly for his liking. He turns up to the yard with a colossal hangover that Jack can obviously see but won't acknowledge. He wordlessly pats him on the back with a smile and points him in the direction of the backlog of scrap metal built up in the yard. Mikhail's grateful for a task so large since it takes his mind off of everything, not to mention shifting three hundred kilogram loads lets him relieve some of the tension that the last few days has built up on his shoulders.

Hauling and lifting and shoving saps up the hours until shadows begin to arch from the perfectly organised piles of scrap metal around him, and by then he's so exhausted he almost forgets his promise to visit the hospital.

The thought drives tension into his gut again. Having to go back and talk to the Medic-but-not-Medic-but-is-actually-whole-new-man is a thought that really messes with his head. Somehow he gathers the will he hasn't pushed down into the bottom of the vodka bottles and begins the trek across town to the hospital.

Viktor is waiting.

The door to room 104 opens and a gaunt little face smothered in an ill-fitting beard beams back at him with a relief that stuns Mikhail. All the fear and apprehension that had built up inside him dissolves instantly. It's clear that in Viktor's presence he has nothing to be afraid of, simply being there was enough to quell his worries – he knows he's being the better man and doing the right thing.

He greet him and settles down into his spot at the bedside as Viktor chatters about his day, what new things he's remembered and the discovery of his old possessions in the hospitals storage facility. It turns out the glasses must have cracked when he fell, for all that was left of them were several pieces of shattered glass held together in the old warped frame of the spectacles. Mikhail says he will get his prescription and buy him another pair. Viktor practically explodes with gratitude.

He explains that the doctors are keeping him in the critical care until for one more day and then moving him to ward that deals with physiotherapy, his muscles have wasted away so badly after the past month that he's still finding it hard to move his arms and its quite impossible for him to even walk. He'd tried that very morning, only to end up wriggling on the floor again like a helpless worm on a pavement slab. But that was enough about him, how was Mikhail's day?

The conversation doesn't follow quite as Mikhail expects. He had assumed there would be a Spanish inquisition of question like 'Where am I from?' 'Do I have family?' or 'When do I go home?', the kind he had no answers for. Instead Viktor takes the time to ask about him: What was his homeland like? When did he come to the United States? What was he doing before they came together at RED? What's he doing now? It's odd at first, but he finds that the more he talks about it all the easier the words come. He doesn't get too explicit about his past, but he tells him enough about Russia, his family, his time before RED, and especially Sasha, to satisfy the little mans curiosity. He finds himself telling stories of life in Siberia when he forgets something vital, he scratches his head and grits his teeth in frustrations when Viktor makes a joke about Mikhail's own bad memory. They share a brief moment of laughter, and it's like part of a wall breaks down between them, one that separates them from a mutual understanding of the others misfortune. Mikhail still doesn't know quite where he stands when the visiting hours are over and he gets ready to leave, but when Viktor's face drops he finds himself convincing himself that it couldn't hurt to visit tomorrow.

He doesn't feel the need to drink so much that night.

The next day he turns up he follows the hospital corridors automatically to room 104, only to find the room empty. The bed is spread with clean sheets topped with a pair of freshly plumped pillows, and the overwhelming sting of disinfectant nearly brings tears to his eyes. His stomach drops a little, and moves off in search of a nurse, or anyone that could tell him what's happened to Viktor.

"Oh, Mister Chekov?" A small plump doctor waddles past him and catches him by his arm. "You are mister Chekov aren't you? You're exactly the sort of man he described. Are you looking for Mister Roth?"

"Da! Are you having seen him? Is not in room."

"Yes, he's been moved to the next ward over out of critical care. He asked us all to keep an eye out for, and I quote, 'A larger gentleman with a head like a boiled egg. Although his memory may be more on the fried side.' Had me and the nurses chuckling for a good while did that."

Well, it had Mikhail let out a short bark of a laugh. A large boiled-egg head, was that really all he could think to describe him? Perhaps the man was blinder than he had originally thought. Either that or he had forgotten what boiled eggs looked like along with the rest of his life.

He thanked the doctor and bustled off to the next ward, turning this way and that through long halls filled to their capacity with bedbound patients. Some were missing arms and legs, others missing a whole lot more, but he'd seen enough of this horror in his time at RED for it not to faze him. As he was about to reach the end of the ward he finally spotted his own bedridden, bearded catastrophe. When he finally got close enough for him to make out, his eyes lit up like fireworks. In that instant nothing around him, not the pain of the other, nor the horror of their wounds, seemed to bother him at all.

"You found me then!" He smiled, motioning for Mikhail to sit on the end of the bed.

"Was told that 'Man who is thinking you look like boiled egg is waiting for you in physiotherapy ward.'"

"Ah that!" Viktor laughed. "Well, I couldn't trust your memory knowing it's almost as bad as mine. I did tell you I'd be moving here yesterday."

"Da, but that is not the issue."

"Then what is it?"

"Well, have always been told I have more of a 'potato' likeness over 'egg'."

Viktor howls with laughter, and Mikhail allows himself a small potato-esque chuckle. Whatever that may look like.

The rest of their few hours together are spent chatting about everything from the hospital food to the tow truck Mikhail ironically ended up towing today, although again Viktor avoids the subject of his own background. Since that small revelation of his past, it had seemed he was almost desperate to know something, but the topic has been shut down at every other opportunity Mikhail gives him. It's not that Mikhail's not happy about it; it's just a bit strange considering everything he's been through and how anxious he was to know at the beginning. Nevertheless, whilst they're here and at ease with each other's company it wouldn't do any good to ruin it with important questions he can't answer, and so he does his best to let the subject slide.

When he eventually leaves, waving goodbye from the end of the ward with a smile on his face and few of Viktor's jokes still tickling his sides, he decides that he definitely likes this new sense of humour. In fact, he's starting to like this entirely new man. Every time he see's him he reminds him a little bit more of himself. A little bit lost, confused, but determined to do right by any means possible. And that is in no small way a bad thing.

With that, he decides to definitely come back and visit again tomorrow.

And just maybe, the day after that too.