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 11:26 pm (UTC)He paused, uncertain.
"Oh, god," he murmured, running his hand back through his hair, shaking his head. "No. No, I can never feel anything about his...his associations."
Barshai exhaled, softly.
"I killed his mother. I have no place to feel anything but...fortunate."
The slightly leaden feeling his chest was easy to disperse.
"Even if it did bother me," he said, voice gaining an anchor in pragmatism, "I know it won't impact my circumstance. I existed in the Captain's life before his partner left, and I exist in the Major's now that he's gone."
A fringe of drying chestnut hair brushed his lips as he lowered his head.
"That won't change."
A small pause, and Barshai frowned, suddenly.
"How about you?" he asked, almost in a whisper.