he's one drop in the river. one pulse beat in the artery. quick, painful, but unyielding. until he isn't. until falling cracks the ice and what surges up from the rupture is shockingly hot. an inferno he may afford a grand berth, but doesn't avoid entirely. can't. it rings in his ears and deafens the world. jumbles a frequency of objectives into a rash decision what's landed him here. sharp eyes through crooked slats in a safehouse's upper floor window. a survey of the road beneath, devoid of activity, though the city beyond its wire-strung skyline is a'buzz with sirens and an armada's influx. racket enough to dull the air with it's ring, maybe, but miles away. searching the water for a body. or two.
they wouldn't find any.
hydraulics hum when the blinds are abandoned, and there, across the toppled insides of a decade's untouched room, still laying in the puddle that'd leaked from his body, is a failed mission. a relic he's slowly realizing the worth of, perhaps, but not one he's quick to broach that subject for. not when his weary body moves a sluggish line, back behind a half-crumpled kitchen countertop. somewhere for his boots to shuffle. an about-face and he's peering, again, into a setting sunlight that reminds him he's been in the field, now, long enough to've seen that twice. long enough to feel the pit in his stomach shrinking in around itself.
pacing might've had longer life were he not tuned in on the quiet creak of soggy floorboards and how they whined beneath the waking shift of unknowing weight. where the pungent stink of blood permeates outside of his own, still rust-crusted, in the plates of his fingers. in the length of his hair, bobbed into his vision. what half-obscures a body more red than white or blue. blond hair stained.
blond hair, a wide smile around the lip of a glass that smells sweet of strawberries and whipped cream. music in the background, he doesn't recognize the tune. at peripherals he knows people are moving, but his attention is on blue eyes. blond hair, a wide smile..
the soldier's head shakes the ghost away. blinks the room back into focus.. eases him through the motions that slide a rickety stool from where its capsized towards the core between himself and @riphalos , who, finally, groans himself awake. " <не вставай.> "
