Chapter Text
“You want a drink?” I waved the canteen towards him.
He shook his head. “Nah, you hang onto it for now. I’ll be right.”
“Let me know when you change your mind...” I shrugged.
We were following the train tracks. He’d abandoned his transparent attempts at staying just behind me, and I was now watching his back, and not sticking knives into it. The experience was novel, and aside from the baking desert aspect, not unpleasant.
His posture was atrocious, not even in a worn-out way, we’d only been walking through the heat of the day for a couple of hours, just... the way he bent low, eyeing the horizon and loping forwards, alert, a rifle dangling from one hand.
We stopped, after another long stretch of empty track, and he took off his hat just briefly, fanning himself, then dropping it back onto his head. His hand extended back towards me, wordless, and I placed the canteen in it.
He took half a swig, then passed it back. “You drink.”
I did. “You’re the man with the gun.”
He snorted. Aware after all that I could be armed, that I had been following close behind him for... miles now, perhaps.
“Go ahead and take another.” He nodded.
“Shouldn’t we make it last?”
A quick shake of the head this time. “Common misconception. Nah, parsing it out only means you’ll dehydrate yourself before you can find a source of water.”
“... Can we find a source of water? This is not exactly—cool mountain streams, or—or—“
“Done it before. Record’s a week. That’s one week in the desert, without going back to my van. Just me, two canteens, a lighter, a rifle, and a knife.”
“Yes, but we have one canteen. And there are two of us.”
“Well... I still have a rifle. And a knife. How ‘bout you?”
“A knife also.” I admitted, bringing it out. “A cigarette lighter. Nothing else that will be of use.”
“At this point, mate, I’d rather die trying than go back.”
We were traveling together. We had no friends among our own respective teams, and no inclination to remain in what was rapidly devolving into some kind of sick game at all of our expense. I didn’t even try to talk to the others. I suspect he may have attempted to, over on his side. He may not have been close to them, but at least his team did not suspect him outright. An occupational hazard, but still...
“Look up there,” He pointed towards a structure, some way from the tracks. “C’mon.”
I followed. Once I had made my escape, there was little else I could do. I wanted to survive. Of course I wanted to survive. But I hadn’t been prepared for the... the vastness of it. I had been teleported in, as had we all, to the current location. I could have found the train tracks on my own. I could have followed them in the direction of civilization. I would have died long before I reached it.
The structure was a wooden building, perhaps the size of a small house, set up on stilt-like legs. We ascended the rickety staircase, taking the turn at the landing, going up the even longer set of stairs to the walkway at the top. Eventually we came to a door.
“Wonder why it’s abandoned.” He poked about a bit.
“It’s like... like a half of one of our... locations. Like it was never finished.”
“Guess they figured they had enough. Or it was too close to the one we just broke out of.”
Would we be hunted down, for, as he put it, ‘breaking out’? Would it matter? It might even be better. Still... in the—the places, during the battles, you can always come back. If you run, out in the desert... there’s no coming back from death out here. Maybe not even if our teams hunted us down and killed us. Probably not. We’d only try again, a liability.
Inside was dusty and dark. Cool, at least compared to outside. There were a few crates lying around.
“What if we are more than a week from civilization? Your van was blown up. No driving, no going back to it for supplies, just...”
He leveled a glare at me. “Then I break my record. Your demo blew my van, so don’t you go complaining to me about that.”
“Well, I didn’t tell him to do it. I wasn’t anywhere near him when it happened. I was in your—I mean... Well, I was doing my job. Like you were doing yours.”
“Look, we’re... we’re in this right now.” He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Two of us. Best thing for it’s to... just... Any animosity between us is gonna have to be part of a different life.”
“You have nothing to fear from me.” I raised my hands, palm out. “I need you to survive. I am highly motivated to not kill you.”
“Well that’s fine, but it’s not what I mean. I mean... you got to trust me as well.”
I looked away. “I am... not in the habit of trusting anyone.”
“You need me to survive.” He pointed out.
“Need does not mean trust.”
“I know what I’m doing, and you don’t.”
“That doesn’t change—“
“If I tell you ya need to do something,” He was pinching his nosebridge again, clearly exasperated.
“Of course, you are the expert. And it is survival. In that respect, yes.”
“All right. And I need you to trust me to... I’m not going to off you, right?”
“It would make your life considerably easier.” I shrugged one shoulder. “You would have twice the water. I would not... slow you down, or—“
“No. If they see we’re gone and think they’ll follow, you’re the only one watching my back. You need me more than I need you, but I still... you could be useful. And take that bloody thing off.”
I hesitated a moment—through this whole venture, I had gone so far as to sleep in the balaclava!—but I capitulated. The rush of cool air was like the sweet kiss of Heaven to a man who’d been in Hell. I watched as he stripped to the waist, and after a moment did the same.
“Sleep. Best time to do it, and who knows when we’ll have a set-up this nice... could be a long trek. I’ll give you three hours, then wake ya.”
I winced a little as I spread my jacket out on the floor, but it was better than lying down in the dust and splinters. I balled my shirt up as a very poor pillow and tried to settle myself.
I watched him prowl around the room. I never really took the time to admire him before, merely assess him as a threat. That, or eliminate him as the same. He doesn’t walk but he stalks, there is an economy of movement reminiscent of a cat. Clearly the man was meant to be a hunter, and if I have to trust anyone with my life out in the desert, then... well, former enemy or not, he is the best option I can think of.
And... the other thing. The sort of admiration I have avoided for a long time. The sort that gets a man in my profession killed. Oh, I have aimed to engender such an admiration, many times. And I do not mean to say I have lived the life of a monk, by any means. But the people I sleep with are people who are attractive in bland and general ways, beautiful women more often than not, who are more invested in me by far than I am in them. Or unattractive people who have something I need. There is a physical release, and some harmless fun, but it has been long years since I felt any acute longing.
I have never longed for someone I couldn’t have.
No... once. I was maybe fifteen, sixteen. I knew I would go on to be a spy then—I had a penchant for some aspects of the job even from childhood. At the age of seven I once delivered a message, and though I don’t know the full import, I do know that it was during the Occupation, and the event may have presaged my entire career. But when I was fifteen, or sixteen, I was not yet any sort of master of seduction, and while I had charmed a few girls and found that fine...
He was a boy. Tanned and lean and handsome, and he spoke in a thick Bourguignon, though from where out East he came exactly, I never found out. His skill in attracting girls was equal to mine, and owed more to looks than to effort, though he was still far more passionate about them than I. He loved them exclusively. He would not have looked at me.
The same way he will never look at me.
Damn it all.