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: 2009-02-28 01:12 am (UTC)He exhaled softly, rubbing his chest with an absent hand.
"Why would this Liadov even come back, if they're still at each others' throats...and...how can it not be over?"
Barshai felt a distinct sense of solitude, suddenly. There was no sound from the living room beyond the door. He surmised that Khartov had mellowed out with his vodka, switched off the television and fallen asleep on the plush rug without his shirt.
The large bed was empty without the bulk of another. Empty of breath and presence.
"You've talked to him? Beyond the parameters of the investigation?"