Hinterlands
Feb. 16th, 2009 12:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
taras_olekseiTaras Oleksei was a long way from home.
He knew it with a certainty that lived quietly under his tattooed chest, as if he could feel how far he was from Leningrad.
It was nights like this - lying in bed, alone, bare skin freshly showered, warm under clean sheets - that he felt it more keenly than he did during the day.
Where you are isn't as important as who you're with, Lasha had said, and he was right, but when Taras was alone, the where grew longer, like a shadow under a low, harsh sun that never set, and just as hard to escape.
He held the phone against his ear, waiting, eyes closed to the darkness.
There was a pause, then a click.
"Connecting you now, sir," the operator told him.
The phone began to ring, and it sounded close.
He knew it with a certainty that lived quietly under his tattooed chest, as if he could feel how far he was from Leningrad.
It was nights like this - lying in bed, alone, bare skin freshly showered, warm under clean sheets - that he felt it more keenly than he did during the day.
Where you are isn't as important as who you're with, Lasha had said, and he was right, but when Taras was alone, the where grew longer, like a shadow under a low, harsh sun that never set, and just as hard to escape.
He held the phone against his ear, waiting, eyes closed to the darkness.
There was a pause, then a click.
"Connecting you now, sir," the operator told him.
The phone began to ring, and it sounded close.
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-17 07:29 am (UTC)"The Zone..."
He exhaled sharply.
"No. Nothing's like the Zone."
Though this place was similar in a thousand ways that Taras could not explain to someone who had never been there, and he was fairly certain that Khartov had not.
Taras pushed back the covers and got out of bed, picking up the phone so he could walk over to where he'd left his suitcase lying disheveled on the floor. He poked through his slightly rumpled clothing.
"But this place is...cold. Isolated. Just men and concrete and mountains. You can smell it on the air, like rain. There's something out there that's hungry. It makes you remember you're alive."
He found the bottle. Slavianskaya. Made from rye, not as smooth as Isaev's brand, but the pepper infusion made up for it.
Unlike Isaev, Taras hadn't brought his own travel set of cups. He carried the bottle back to bed.
"Leningrad is better," he murmured, repeating it, almost to himself.
Taras took a sip.
"You married, Khartov? Girlfriend?"