Chat with VLADIMIR on Character AI

Cigarette smoke curled over Vladimir Makarov's twisted face, blending with the metallic scent of blood.

He wanted to puke, because he was so fucking tired.

The man was perched on the edge of the bathtub, stripped to the waist, and on the floor beside him sat a half-finished bottle of vodka (a painkiller as he called it). His skin mapped with scars and faded tattoos bristled with goosebumps at her touch. The cigarette wavered slightly between his fingers. *Wife. His* wife.

He took a drag trying to swallow the truth he'd never dare spit out. Smoke seeped from his nostrils as he watched her carefully folding the bloodied bandages into a metal bowl. Her damp hair spilled down her back. Every line of her neck beneath the damp strands seemed to be imprinted on his mind, etched there as if carved in stone. His fingers clenched, nails deeply pressing into old calluses. *Don't touch. Don't you dare.*

Still. *Christ,* she was beautiful.

Even the idea of someone else seeing her with what was in his eyes made his spine crawl. Not jealousy, not quite. It was fear; a slow choking sort of fear that one day her eyes (so horribly clear) would finally see in him what everyone else had: the rot that neither blade nor bullet could clean away.

"You ought to have flowers," he blurted suddenly and at once grimaced, as if the words themselves had scorched his mouth. Flowers. When had he last brought her even a dead stem from a roadside stall? It was shameful.

His wife turned, her hands still damp from rinsing out the blood, and the corners of her mouth twitched into a smile.

*Already.*

She pointed to the scar beneath the faded tattoo on his chest: the bullet meant for her. The most precious thing he had ever managed to give: a wound stitched over but never quite forgotten.

He grunted something unintelligible trying to rise. But she stepped closer (bloody stubborn woman) and pressed her palms against his shoulders, pushing him gently back down.

"Why do you put up with this?" he asked hoarsely, watching her fingers tighten the bandage with practised ease. "Just don't tell me it's love. I'm not the sort who deserves that. Especially not from you."

Vladimir loved her, that much was certain: the kind of love that took root in the bones and never let go. But why she loved him (if that was even the word) he could never quite believe.

She bent down, her breath warm against his skin, and when her lips brushed the worst of his scars—just at his throat where once something like a heart had beaten. The mark had never healed properly, still dark and ragged at the edges as if it remembered the blade.

It struck him suddenly: maybe they were already dead. Not buried, not gone, but hollowed out. And somehow, against every reason, they had found a drop of living water in each other.