Chapter 28
The KGB was an organization not hemmed in by stupid considerations like the Geneva Convention, the International Agreement on Human Rights or any of the other numerous considerations in how to treat a prisoner. When Brian arrived at Lubyanka prison they made it clear to him that he would tell them what they wanted to know, and they started the process with their fists.
Part of him hoped that Davey would somehow come for him, but on the second day they gave him copies of Pravda, the main newspaper. Later that day they threw in copies of the New York Times. Yeltsin was dead, Gorbachev had ceded power to the men who had started the coup, and their hopes for a better future were dead as well.
If they thought that news would break him, they were wrong. Nor did he believe the claims that Davey and the others had been captured. He wouldn't believe anything they told him about Davey until they showed Brian his lover's body, alive or dead. The beatings continued for several days, and then they began the next course of treatment.
Brian remembered the War on Terror and the secrets that came out of the second Bush that caused him to be a one-term President. Davey's father had spent a great deal of time rebuilding the
These men didn't care about any of those things. Nor were they constrained by the semantics that limited the
They didn't believe him.
As he stuttered out his confession of time travel and the intention of forging a stronger, more independent
The same men laughed at his screams of pain, and his stuttering insistence in Russian that every word he said was true.
He didn't know how long the next phase of torture lasted, but when it ended he was little more than a bleeding wreck of a human being. That was when they started giving him morphine for the pain, and even after his fingers started healing, they kept giving him the wonderful, blissful pain medicine. Brian knew he was becoming addicted, but the desire for the sweet feeling of numbness and total release from the physical confines of his body had him craving for more, begging for more when they suddenly stopped giving him the drug.
All sense of time had left him when the pains of withdrawal began to cramp his stomach, and he lost the tasteless gruel they had fed him for breakfast. For days he went through withdrawal, nausea, cramps, and the awful sweats filled his days and nights while he begged for some form of relief. When the worst of the withdrawal symptoms had passed, his wishes were granted and a soldier came in to give him another shot of the drug.
"You will wash yourself today." The guard said as he left Brian's small cell. The door opened a little later, and another soldier brought in several basins and washrags that Brian used to clean himself. His body was beginning to recover, and even his fingernails were beginning to grow again as he washed the crusted blood off of them. His hair had been shaved off to guard against lice in this place. The bruises on his face had largely healed, leaving only the palest of splotches on his once-pristine skin. Davey might not have liked what he saw if he could see Brian at that moment, but with the morphine in his system, Brian cared little about his lover's thoughts. All of that hurt, and only the numbing drug coursing through him let him look at himself in the small mirror they had provided.
"He will shave you." A guard said after Brian had dressed in the faded black jumpsuit they provided him. They shoved in a kid with a shaved head like Brian's, wearing faded jeans and a dingy shirt. The boy was barely eighteen, if he was even that old, and his hands were only slightly steadier than Brian's would have been on the razor. Still, he managed to shave off Brian's growing beard with only a few nicks, and then the guard was taking him away.
They came for Brian a few minutes later, leading him through the narrow concrete hallways up into the ‘proper' area of the complex. The room they left him in was small, with bare concrete walls and a chair on either side of the table. He followed their instructions to sit in one of the chairs and didn't move as they chained him to it as they'd done before.
He sat in the room for a long time, long enough for the effects of the morphine to start fading, and he was preparing himself once again for the withdrawals that would come when it left his system. It was obvious this was done on purpose, so that whenever his interrogator came in, he would be more cooperative, hoping they would give him more of the drug. That was what the small corner of his brain that still worked objectively told him while the greater part of him began plotting how he could make them happy so he would stop hurting.
"Greetings, comrade." An older man said in Russian as he entered the room. Brian had not seen the older, overweight man with the slightly bald head before.
"Privyet." Brian replied, also in Russian. He wasn't sure if he could even speak in anything but the most basic English anymore.
"You are looking better, comrade." The man said as he sat down across from Brian and placed a stack of papers on the table.
"Thank you." Brian said as politely as he could manage.
"I believe you should be a writer of fiction, comrade, with the story you have spun for your interrogators." The man continued. "I am Colonel Bradikov, and your case of treason has been given to me to handle. Cooperate with me and you will find me a much better person than your previous handlers."
"I will cooperate." Brian murmured and hated himself for the words as soon as they left his mouth. The shakes were beginning again already, though, and he knew cooperation was the only way to get more.
"Yes, you will." Bradikov agreed. "Even in your stories, there are grains of truth, and together we will work out those grains of truth. There will be no more interrogation sessions. Just you and I here in this room. Work with me, and you will be given better food, allowed to clean yourself, and of course, medicine for your pain."
"What do you want from me?" Brian asked sadly, knowing he would do whatever the man wanted now that he had promised Brian more morphine. Part of him wondered how he'd gotten to this point so quickly, but most of him didn't care.
"Truth." Bradikov said simply. "Your story is a sad one, of course. You were born to Soviet dissidents, raised in the
"I… that's not…" A spark rose in Brian, trying to resist, but it faded as the shakes grew worse.
"It is the truth, comrade." Bradikov said gently. "The
"I… I…" Brian stammered and then frowned. There had been nothing said about Davey, or the others, and he felt a glimmer of hope. If they were free, they could build another time machine and go back in time again. They could obliterate this timeline and start afresh. He held little doubt they would find the Brian of that timeline and he would help them, so it mattered little what he did now. "Okay. You are right."
"Very good, comrade." Bradikov smiled and he got up, crossing over to Brian's side. With a key he took out of a pocket, he unlocked Brian's shackles. As Brian rubbed his wrists, the man took a needle out of his pocket, setting it down in front of Brian with a gentle smile. "Here, comrade, for your pain."
"I…thank you." Brian stammered out as he blushed, ashamed for the greed that filled him. He did snatch the needle though, and injected himself so that he could feel the sweet release of the drug coursing through his system.
"You are very welcome, comrade." Bradikov said gently as he watched Brian closely. Brian was lost in the sweet numbing sensations of the drug, and didn't mind when the guards came to escort him back to his cell. Every day after that, Bradikov would summon Brian and they would go over his ‘confession' in detail. Certainly it was as filled with fiction as anything, but Brian only protested when they tried to pin everything on Davey.
That protest earned him a week in his cell going through the pains of withdrawals, and then they dragged him back to Bradikov who demanded that Brian agree with the confession that would place most of the blame on Davey. When Brian didn't break, he was sent back to his cell for another week.
After a month of this, when Brian had made it through the worst of the withdrawals and his head was beginning to clear up enough that he could almost think straight again, Bradikov realized his approach wasn't working. The beatings resumed, and his fingernails that had almost finished re-growing were ripped off again. Then they forcibly injected him with more drugs, stronger drugs this time. Having to guess from the effects on him, they were stepping him up to pure heroin or something similar.
"I always assumed that perverts like you only cared about the physical things." Bradikov said after doctors had spent a month nursing Brian back from the brink of death. His body still craved drugs, but his mind was clearer than it had been since he'd been taken to this hell hole. There had been times in the last few weeks that he couldn't remember his own name, but he'd never forgotten Davey's.
"You have no idea what we have been through together." Brian murmured in Russian.
"You have chased each other across time and space according to your story." Bradikov huffed. "Your friends have tried to free you, by the way, with the backing of the new American President, but to no avail. It would have been easier on you to have another to blame, but we will proceed with your confession."
"Nyet." Brian protested.
"It is too late for anything else." Bradikov laughed. "We have recorded your confessions, and you look quite healthy and convincing on the video. It will be better if you stand before the court and repeat your confession, but either way, it will be done. Cooperate, and you will lead the rest of your life in a work camp. Resist and you will face the firing squad for your treason."
"It doesn't matter." Brian murmured.
"You believe your friend will build another time machine and erase all that has happened?" Bradikov laughed. "We have learned the Australians believe their wild story, even if the Americans do not. We know better. Our top physicists assure us that it is impossible. Truly though, if you believe we will all cease to exist when they are done, what does it matter if you cooperate?"
"I will do it." Brian murmured and ignored the smile on Bradikov's face. When the Colonel set a full needle in front of him, Brian turned his face away from the small thing.
"What, you have beaten your addictions?" Bradikov laughed and Brian frowned. Oh how he wanted that needle, but he knew better than to take it now. He'd never, in all his life used drugs like this, and he knew he never would again.
"Not all of them." Brian sighed, yet he did not take the needle that was offered.
"You are a man of many surprises." Bradikov laughed.
The work camp he went to after his trial was deep in the Siberian forests. Warm during the summer, freezing cold in the winter, he lived in one of five long barracks buildings with others that had been arrested and exiled following the pro-democracy demonstrations. They were well-guarded day and night, although the work of cutting trees and preparing them for shipping left Brian too tired to even contemplate escape. The food was horrible, and the company even worse.
Brian found himself facing angry people that blamed him for their being here. When he fought them off one against one, or two against one, five of the toughest brutes in the camp jumped him. Still, he injured three of them badly enough they were in the primitive medical clinic alongside him. By the time his broken ribs healed and he was put back to work with the logging crews, he'd earned grudging respect.
Most of the camp drank the home-brewed alcohol every night, passing their lives into oblivion. Brian stayed away from it with the well-earned aversion he now held to all types of drugs, not just heroin or morphine. The idea of being drunk was as abhorrent now as getting wasted on a needle full of heroin which was somehow plentiful in this place.
His biggest hope, as the months and then the years went by was that Davey and the others would one day finish their time machine and end the misery of this existence. Even that hope grew dim as the years went by and many of the camp's worst drunks began dying in the harsh winters. He'd long ago taken young Misha, the thirteen-year old boy that was the youngest inmate in the camp under his wing and to his bed.
Not for sex, but rather to stay warm during the freezing nights that claimed so many lives. Without his protection, Misha would have long since died although he did drink himself into a stupor nearly every night. He wasn't even a legal adult, and knew he'd die in this place. The few times he'd reached out to Brian for sexual release, he'd been gently rebuffed, but never strayed from Brian's bed.
When Misha began to cough at night, Brian grew worried. Part of his mind warned that he should not let Misha sleep in his bed if he was sick, but Brian cared for the boy, the one bright spot in this miserable existence. Misha was a symbol to him, a symbol that even here in this hell hole he could make the world a slightly better place for even one person.
Three weeks later, Misha was in the hospital wing as pneumonia claimed his life, and Brian was soon in a bed there as well as pneumonia took root in his own lungs. Modern antibiotics could have healed both of them, but the camp's doctor would not waste them on prisoners. Only guards got that sort of treatment. Even the food rations of sick prisoners were cut so that the food would go to other, stronger workers.
Brian knew he was going to die, and welcomed the delirium as his fever began to grow. They were sweet dreams in the delirium, dreams of Davey and a few other men raiding the camp, freeing him and somehow sneaking him out of the camp. Dreams of a time machine, and whispered assurances that everything was going to be okay. He had the dream several times, and when the last one happened, he knew it was going to be the last dream ever. His body was weak and he no longer even tried to cough up the fluid that was filling his lungs. As he drifted off to sleep, he hoped that he would drown from the fluid in his lungs and die dreaming of his Davey.
"Brian." Oh great, instead of dreams about Davey, he was now having dreams about his mother. At least they would distract him from the realities of the cold Siberian winter, and he could feel the warmness of his childhood bed. Hearing his name in English sounded odd, after all these years though, and he wondered why he was dreaming in English. He hadn't dreamed in that language in a long, long time. "Wake up, Brian!"
"Nyet." Brian murmured as another male voice was added to the dream voice of his mother's. He told them in Russian that he loved his dreams more than reality.
"What language is that?" His mother's voice asked as he dreamed of feeling her cool hand on his forehead. "He has a fever. Feel his forehead. Oh dear, he's sick on the first day of school."
Thinking of the first day of school made him think of Davey. Ah, this was better after all. His last dream before he died would be about the first day of middle school, where he and Davey always seemed to meet for the ‘first time' in a timeline. That would be a wonderful thing to dream about, to dream about the future of their lives together in a new timeline, even if it never came to reality.
"Now who could that be?" Brian's father's voice sounded worried and Brian thought he could hear the chimes of the doorbell.
"Oh, hello." Brian's mother's voice was filled with surprise and worry. "Brandon, Trevor, we didn't expect to see you here. Brian's not feeling to well."
"That's what we figured." Came the familiar voice of Trevor. "Mrs. Breckenridge, these are some of our friends, Sean Rule, Todd Williams and Davey Jones. They came with us to get Brian and take him to school."
"I'm afraid he's too sick to go to school." Brian's mother said.
"Beloved, open your eyes." Davey said in Russian, and his voice sounded much younger. This was a good dream, Brian decided and opened his eyes to see a twelve-year old Davey Jones smiling at him.
"Young again, you look so young again." Brian said and was surprised that his chest didn't hurt. Naturally he spoke in Russian.
"What language is that?" Brian's mother asked in a slightly high voice.
"It's Russian." Trevor answered.
"Brian doesn't speak Russian." She snapped.
"He does now." Trevor answered. "Look, there are some things we should probably share with you. Why don't we go into the living room and we'll try to explain while Davey helps Brian."
"What's wrong with him?" Brian heard his mother ask.
"He's had a rough couple of years."
"This is a nice dream." Brian said as he lifted his hand and ran a finger along Davey's cheek. His lover was always a little overweight at this age, but he still looked wonderful.
"It isn't a dream." Davey whispered in Russian.
"Yes it is." Brian said. "It's my last dream. The pneumonia is going to kill me, I know it and I'm okay with it. You'll finish the time machine and make this awful timeline go away. Just don't mess up the next one, okay? I'd hate for that version of me to go through this hell. Still, I didn't betray you. Never you."
"I know love, I know." Davey whispered softly as he bent down and planted a kiss on Brian's nose. "We did build the machine, and before we used it, we got you out of that damn place. It was close, and you were right, the pneumonia was killing you. Still, we were able to bribe the right people and found out where you were being held. The mercenaries we hired were good, and we got you out with the KGB hot on our trail."
"They didn't believe me about the time machine." Brian murmured.
"They figured it out in the end, and they believed alright." Davey laughed. "They tried assaulting the facility, but we held them off, with the help of the Australians. Who would have believed it, the Australians helping us when our own country turned their backs on us?"
"What did you have to give them?" Brian asked, playing along with the wonderful dream.
"Our solemn promise to not try changing the course of history again." Davey laughed. "I expected them to demand one of their own go back, but they laughed and said they knew better than to mess with history. The only reason they helped us at all was because the Soviet Union was starting to duke it out with Europe and the
"Sounds awful." Brian murmured, just letting himself get lost in those wonderful blue eyes that he'd dreamed about, and was still dreaming about.
"Your temperature is dropping." Davey said softly. "Sean was worried that your fever in the other timeline would be replicated here because you believed you were sick. At the end you were delirious, and even though your body is healthy in the here and now, the mind has an awful lot of control over how the body works, and I know you've been through hell."
"We've all been through hell." Brian murmured, letting himself feel Davey's hand on his chest, and relishing the smile. This was definitely the best of his delirious dreams.
"This is the last time, I promise." Davey whispered. "We set it so we got back here a week before you, and we had time to prepare for today."
"What do you mean?" Brian asked with a frown and something deep inside began whispering to him that this was real, not another dream. It certainly felt more real than any other dream he'd had.
"We made a promise to the Australians, and we're going to keep that promise." Davey said with a firm expression. "No more mucking with the timeline, for the most part. No more trying to save people from AIDS, or stopping Osama bin Laden, or getting rid of the second Bush Presidency. If people are stupid enough to vote for the man, then they're going to have to live with the consequences."
"But…" Brian's voice trailed off and he realized that Davey had said the last in English. The language was coming back to him, slowly but surely.
"No buts, love." Davey said in a soft whisper. "Some things will change. The others are telling your mother and father right now. They need to know because we'll need their help making sure my father doesn't do… some of the stupid things he's done before. Papa knows too. He's a smart man and he's proven in the past he can help us, and he is, you know."
"Let me guess, he won some money on a bet." Brian laughed softly, and English felt a little odd on his tongue, but good as well. This was how it should be.
"It worked, and it's enough to get things started." Davey said. "No one will be rich, but we will be able to get our families off the ground in their own businesses. There will be fights when they figure it out about us, but we can win those fights as well. No going to the President though, no warning him about the future, or the next President, or the one after that. We let those events play out as they will."
"Is that not a little selfish of us?" Brian asked as he sat up and leaned against his headboard to look at Davey.
"I think we've earned the selfishness." Davey sighed.
"What about making the world a better place?" Brian asked determinedly. "I didn't go through all that to just give up."
"What would you have us do?" Davey asked with exasperation. "I don't want to lose you again."
"Maybe, maybe there's another way." Brian asked with a shrug. "I don't know, but if we really are here, well there has to be a way. We've always tried changing things from the top. Maybe we can change them from the bottom."
"It's worth trying." Davey said gently and he leaned forward until their lips met. Brian's mind was still hazy, and he knew there would be a lot of issues for him to overcome. His treatment at the hands of the Soviets had been bad, and would require a lot of time to undo all the problems he had experienced.
As their kiss deepened, and he felt his love and passion for Davey grow again, he knew that it was something they would be able to do together.
Together they could conquer the world.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The End.
This story brought to you by a lot of hard editing from Emoe, and
beta-reading by Trebs.
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