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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Date: 2009-02-27 12:21 am (UTC)He trailed off, his thoughts skirting around memory, thinking about it without letting himself dwell on the particulars.
The dancer was silent, patient, content to simply wait for Taras to elaborate, as if knowing he would.
"Things happened there and nobody cared. Murder and muzhelostvo, none of it mattered. But that wasn't freedom."
He tugged at the blankets, bringing them up closer around his broad shoulders.
Taras closed his eyes.
"If I think about that...not being able to shower, sometimes not being able to eat...this life, I have now, because of Isaev, this is being free. The things I do in exchange are very small, compared to what it was like there."
He rubbed his chest, fingers seeking the tiger's ink lines, tracing them lightly.
"You love what you do," he repeated, not quite a question. "You love it."