Chapter 45 - Marco
It was dark.
An ocean of black that pressed against my eyelids and filled the hollows of my bones.
I believed the darkness would keep me.
I believed I would drift here forever, a ghost suspended between one breath and the next, never again touching warmth.
Then light shattered the black.
It came without warning - flooding every corner of the void until the dark itself seemed to recoil. And in the heart of that radiance a smile bloomed, the same smile I would have known among a million others.
My eyes opened.
The world above me swam, blurred and overbright. A face hovered close - haloed by harsh hospital light - yet I knew it in the marrow of me.
Alexei.
His voice broke open, calling for doctors. Noise flooded in after it - footsteps, overlapping voices, the mechanical pulse of machines answering in beeps. Everything felt distant and too near at once, as if I floated just beneath the surface of a restless sea while the living world moved above me.
I tried to stay. I wanted to remain inside the green of his gaze a moment longer, to tell him I had heard him across the dark, that I had fought my way back for that smile. But the pull of exhaustion was softer, and my eyes slipped closed again before I could hold on.
The next time I opened my eyes the haze had thinned.
And the first thing I saw was Alexei’s face.
He was already moving before I had fully focused. One second he was in the chair against the wall; the next he was at the side of the bed, dropping to his knees as if the floor had pulled him down. Why was he kneeling? The sight of him like that - folding himself so low - made my heart twist.
His hand found mine. “You’re awake…”
The words left him disbelieving. Then I felt the fine tremor running through his entire body. It traveled from his hand into mine.
And then I saw the tears. They slipped over his lower lashes and down his cheeks.
Oh god.
What have I done to him?
I had seen his eyes wet before but never like this.
I shook my head, the movement small and weak. “Don’t… cry.”
My voice came out rough, scraped from disuse and tubes. It barely sounded like me.
Alexei lifted my hand and pressed his mouth to the back of it, lips lingering against my skin as if he needed the proof of warmth.
I felt the wetness of a tear there too. Slowly, with more effort than it should have taken, I moved my fingers.
They brushed the soft curve of his lower lip, tracing the shape of it, trying to lift the corners into the smile I knew better than my own.
And he gave it to me.
The smile came naturally. He kissed my hand again. “You came back to me.”
I did.
But how?
The question circled slowly inside my head. Had they found me a heart? Had some miracle arranged itself while I was gone?
A doctor appeared at the other side of the bed, checking monitors, adjusting something near my shoulder.
“How are you feeling, Marco?”
I turned my head toward the voice. Everything still felt distant around the edges, but the words reached me clearly enough.
“Tired…”
The doctor nodded as if that was the expected answer.
He examined me - listening to my chest, checking my pupils, asking me to squeeze his fingers.
“You underwent a heart transplant. The surgery itself went well. The new heart is functioning as we hoped. You’ll be monitored closely over the next days and weeks.
If you feel anything unusual, pain that worsens, difficulty breathing, a sense that something is simply…
off, you must tell us immediately. Do you understand? ”
I blinked once, slow.
A heart transplant.
So a miracle had happened after all.
I looked back at Alexei, still kneeling, his tears slowed, but the wet tracks remained on his cheeks. I squeezed his fingers the smallest amount I could manage.
The doctor stayed a little longer.
He spoke of my recovery but I listened with only half my mind. The other half stayed fixed on the man still kneeling beside the bed, green eyes never leaving my face.
When the explanations finally ended, the doctor adjusted the IV line, checked the monitors one last time, and stepped back.
“I’ll give you some time,” he said, and the door closed softly behind him.
I turned my head on the pillow and looked at Alexei. He hadn’t moved. Still on his knees on the cold hospital floor, one hand wrapped carefully around mine, as if the contact alone was the only thing tethering him to the earth.
“Why are you on the floor?”
He swallowed. The motion traveled down the long line of his throat. “I just… felt like I shouldn’t stand above you.”
I blinked slowly.
The guilt in him was a living thing. I could see it coiled behind his eyes. He still blamed himself. Perhaps he believed his presence had somehow poisoned the heart I used to have. I sighed. “You don’t belong on your knees, Morozov.”
The teasing edge in my voice was gentle but it was there. A small attempt to pull him back toward the light.
A smile touched his mouth. “I do,. In front of you I’ll kneel forever if I have to.”
I sighed again, softer this time. “Come up here.”
He obeyed. He rose from the floor and I tapped the narrow edge of the mattress with my fingers. “I want you to hold me.”
Alexei’s gaze flicked over the constellation of wires and tubes that connected me to the machines and concern darkened his expression.
“I don’t want to move anything around.”
I shook my head against the pillow. “Please.”
That single word was all it took. The mattress dipped under his weight as he eased onto the bed beside me, mindful of every wire, then his arms came around me and he drew me against his chest.
I let my head rest over the beat of his heart.
“It’s okay. I’m here now.” And I meant it with everything left inside me. I never wanted to leave him again. If I could keep him in my arms and shield him forever, I would.
I would spend the rest of my life making sure he never had to hurt like that again.
I don’t ever want to see tears in those beautiful eyes. They’ve endured enough darkness. I want them filled with light.