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: 2009-02-26 11:34 pm (UTC)"No, of course I'm not free."
He paused, rubbing his shoulder absently.
"None of us are."
He frowned, shifting, stretching it out.
"There are different kinds of captivity. Everyone belongs to someone. even the ones who belong to themselves are beholden to what their own convictions and burdens hold them to. Or their own preconceptions, habits, infinite loops of pattern and circumstance. Trapped from the cradle, or at least somewhere along our path, we become that way."
Merkurii paused again, rueful, considering the disjointed mouthful.
"Well. Not to be all...you know, Russian about it. What I ask myself every day is, am I freer than an ironworker, a miner, a member of the urban proletariat. And I am, in the ways that matter. As an artist, an object, a treasure, they overlook words and deeds and thoughts. As a pet of the State, I'm indulged. Tolerated."
He shrugged.
"And I'm left to do what I love."
Merkurii flicked his eyes to the window once more. Water continued to sheet down the glass, undissuaded.
"Why?" he asked, obliquely. "Do you think you're free?"