The Road to Recovery

Chapter 1: PoW Hospitalization

A dull, agonizing ringing. A calm, black nothingness. Warm bedding. Blood. Sanitization products. Pain. That was what Rhine could sense at the moment.

Everything ached, stung sharply, throbbed dully, and there was a strange, needle-sharp twinge of pain in his chest when he inhaled. He hated it. He wanted to be unconscious again.

And then there was that goddamn ringing in his ears. That ringing that always followed after being near an explosion. He wanted to have someone slap him across the face (preferably TR) and yell at him. That almost always seemed to work.

Wait does TR know where I am? Where am I? Rhine thought, opening his eyes. Where was he again?

Certainly not Berlin, or TR's territory for that matter. No place was as bright white and sterile-looking as this place, at least not that he knew of. This had to be… nein. It couldn't.

Rhine struggled to sit up, but was gently forced back down by gloved hands that seemed to come from nowhere. Where the fuck was he and who the fuck was this?

Rhine opened his mouth to speak, to say something, but he couldn't hear himself well. That ringing…

He heard a muffled voice, like someone was shouting at him while he was underwater. But he couldn't understand what they were saying, so he tried to convey that somehow. But how could he convey that if he couldn’t hear well?

“W-who… you?” Rhine asked, trying to ask who the person was but only really hearing parts of the sentence. He moved his head to see what was on his side, and saw the blurry form of a… woman? A woman wearing some sort of thick coat and hat with… ear flaps?

Why didn't I tell her that my hearing was bad? Rhine asked himself, before hearing part of the response, “....SR…”

That was all Rhine needed to hear to know he was a captive of the USSR, infamous for taking down her father and being a cold-hearted country.

Rhine let his head relax back into a more comfortable position on the pillow, even though it was putting a bit of uncomfortable pressure on the back of his head. What had happened to him anyways? What made it so that he was a captive of the USSR?

“...you?”

Rhine blinked, and asked, “Pardon?” This time he could understand what he was saying clearly, though it was a lot deeper than he was used to hearing.

“Who…you?” Came the question again, fading in and out of focus.

“Commander Rhine Schultz,” Rhine answered, using his job alias instead of his position as the human counterpart of TR. He didn't know how USSR would react to that.

“Commander? …sure about…?” USSR asked, seeming to raise an eyebrow.

“What do you mean?” Rhine asked, confused.

USSR gently grabbed Rhine's right arm and unwrapped some bandages around his wrist, uncovering the small oddly shaped birthmark on the inside of his wrist. He had always thought it was just something weird that was unique to him. But it seemed like he was wrong.

“This mark…are a...counterpart…to who…not sure,” USSR said, quite a bit of what she said not cutting through the ringing in Rhine's ears.

“Can you write that on a piece of paper?” Rhine asked, needing to know exactly what she said. He wasn’t going to try and guess.

USSR seemed to understand and nodded, grabbing a piece of paper and a pen from the bedside table and writing on it. She then handed it to Rhine.

He had to squint in order to read what had been written - not because of the hand writing, but because his vision was still blurry. It read: “This mark shows that you are a human counterpart. Though to whom, I am not sure.”

Rhine felt himself pale slightly. If she knew that… What else did she know? Did she know about-

“Why… on the battlefield?” USSR asked, tilting her head to the side slightly.

Rhine didn't respond, only remembering how TR had told him to do so during the past few years, but imploring him to get out as soon as he got injured or the fighting got fierce. But when the fight had been brought to Berlin, there had been nowhere to run. Other than the bunker. But he didn't like being trapped in a small space.

Translations:

Nein = No