Of all the places to be deposited, another individual might have thought.
Such a thing did not even flit through Russia's mind, let alone take up permanent residence there. Troubled times were not so rare in his past that it seemed any especially bad luck to be deposited into one. On the contrary, Russia could have imagined several periods when he would have faced even more difficulty than he did at the current moment - times of chaos within his own borders, perhaps, or times in a past so far distant that even moving about would prove a challenge.
Still, for all the practical matters which are neatly seen to (clothing requisitioned from unwitting patriots, period-incongruous items carefully accounted for and made safe), he does not appreciate the less material aspects of the time and place into which he has been deposited. That he knows the eventual outcome of the coming months and years is no consolation - a vast and yawning ugliness still stretches between this time and his own, and even as an outsider to this era he can still feel an unrest quivering through the watery spaces of his body, like a sound too deep to hear. It sits cold and heavy in his belly, and he draws his coat tighter against the coming nightfall in three bleak dusks, hoping silently that the morning will find him ninety-eight years in the future.
But it never does. It is on the fourth day, when he has just begun to believe that England has probably landed himself in even worse trouble, that the midmorning foot traffic parts and he is looking upon himself. The moment is too surreal to question, not unlike the split-second of sweet and drifting peace before an automobile crash, and he has just begun to look curious when his other self turns to walk away. It is a vision that mirrors the chill in his bones too perfectly, and he lifts his voice before the thought has even properly sunk in that he is seeing himself.
no subject
Such a thing did not even flit through Russia's mind, let alone take up permanent residence there. Troubled times were not so rare in his past that it seemed any especially bad luck to be deposited into one. On the contrary, Russia could have imagined several periods when he would have faced even more difficulty than he did at the current moment - times of chaos within his own borders, perhaps, or times in a past so far distant that even moving about would prove a challenge.
Still, for all the practical matters which are neatly seen to (clothing requisitioned from unwitting patriots, period-incongruous items carefully accounted for and made safe), he does not appreciate the less material aspects of the time and place into which he has been deposited. That he knows the eventual outcome of the coming months and years is no consolation - a vast and yawning ugliness still stretches between this time and his own, and even as an outsider to this era he can still feel an unrest quivering through the watery spaces of his body, like a sound too deep to hear. It sits cold and heavy in his belly, and he draws his coat tighter against the coming nightfall in three bleak dusks, hoping silently that the morning will find him ninety-eight years in the future.
But it never does. It is on the fourth day, when he has just begun to believe that England has probably landed himself in even worse trouble, that the midmorning foot traffic parts and he is looking upon himself. The moment is too surreal to question, not unlike the split-second of sweet and drifting peace before an automobile crash, and he has just begun to look curious when his other self turns to walk away. It is a vision that mirrors the chill in his bones too perfectly, and he lifts his voice before the thought has even properly sunk in that he is seeing himself.
"You do not want to talk?"