The Precipice
Apr. 27th, 2008 07:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kiyakotari
A piece of writing that follows directly after 聯盟 [lián méng], set in Ming Jian Yuan's point of view. This is a bit of an exercise on my part, as I've not written much in Jian's POV before now, because of the fact that The Machiavelli Protocol as I had it planned up until now was told almost entirely in Wren's POV. So while I'll probably never use this in the novel, it was a good experiment for me, and I enjoyed it. I wrote this by hand (which I NEVER do) in a little notebook I've been carrying around with me at work and school.
Those first few days on the train were strange. They were in a car together – at the beginning it was just the two of them, but after a couple of stops their car gained other passengers, and then even more. It never filled up all the way. Some would get off, others on. Only Wren and Jian remained, constant.
Jian had trouble relaxing. He could tell Wren did, too. Neither of them were able to sleep. Jian kept thinking about how vulnerable the train was, how tempting a target. He started to doze a few times, but then the train would slow as it approached another station and Jian would lurch awake, heart pounding and throat tight, hand groping for a gun that was no longer at his waist – he’d kept only the one weapon, his sidearm, and that he’d stashed in his backpack. The first time it happened, Wren looked away from the window next to her, eyes swinging around and coming to rest on his face. She still didn’t say anything, though. Neither of them had. Not yet.
Jian wasn’t sure, then, how he felt about Wren’s initial intention, that first leaving. He wasn’t ready to confront that.
Occasionally over the course of those three days, he would wish for just a moment that he was normal again – not a civilian like they both were, now, but a true civilian, someone who had never been a soldier. The first time they crossed a border, and the train was stopped while uniformed officers walked the length of the cars, checking identifications…
Jian had watched his hands fishing his old passport chit out of his bag and handing it over to the inspector, and had felt nothing, an emptiness, a teetering on the precipice of…something. Then his eyes caught on Wren’s face as the man ran his passport through the little portable reader and the lack of feeling was gone. She took it away from him, and a weight went with it. He was no longer General Ming, commander of the Szechuan People’s Army, leader of men and women alive and dead. He was just Jian Yuan, traveling on a train.
Their tickets took them up into Russia, to a train station in a small city. According to the clock on the wall over the ticket booth there, it was shortly after noon, local time.
It was colder here than it had been down in Szechuan. There, summer was already taking over from spring. Here the air still had some bite. Jian could feel goose bumps forming on his arms and neck as they walked up the street together, and when he let his eyes slide over to Wren he saw them on the skin of her shoulders as well.
Wren caught his elbow and pulled him into the narrow opening – too tight to be rightly called an “alley” – between two brick buildings. He didn’t resist, went with her willingly, pulse sluggishly responding to a sudden sense of alarm. He was too tired to get particularly excited, though. The result of three days with no real sleep, and perhaps something else as well.
Wren slid her hand up his arm, stopping at his shoulder, her eyes following it, then looked into his face. “Did you bring much money?”
Jian could only blink at her, owlish. He noted that she used Mandarin, and it seemed important somehow, but his mind was too fuzzy to identify why. Where was the threat…? He opened his mouth to answer, but couldn’t find any words. What was she trying to find out? What was she reaching for? He couldn’t–
Wren’s hand on his shoulder tightened briefly. “We need to get you a jacket, and we need a place to stay. I brought the equivalent of a couple hundred credits, in several denominations. You?”
Oh. “The same, I think. But all in WUN credits and Chinese yuan renminbi.” He paused. “We’ll need to get a jacket for you as–”
Wren shook her head. “I already have a coat.” She took her hand away from his shoulder – it left a warm spot that cooled rapidly in the air – and opened her bag, pulled out a rough and faded, crumpled reddish ball of some kind of cloth. She shook it out with one hand, and he saw that it was some kind of natural fiber, perhaps hemp. She pulled it on, switching her bag to one hand and then back again. It was too large, had a hood, and two big pockets on the front. He had a vague memory of it, a flash of Wren in Jhoon Lee’s village, her face perfectly empty, seven bodies piled near her. She’d been wearing the sakkat now tied to her bag. Lifetimes ago.
Wren slung her carry sack over one shoulder and nodded at him. “Come on, we’ll find a thrift shop and get you something a bit warmer, then find a place to sleep.”
Jian nodded. “I don’t speak much Russian. Most of it is rude.”
“I’ll do the talking.” It went unsaid that she wouldn’t be obviously translating for him. That would draw attention, make them more memorable. Show a potential weakness. He’d just have to pretend he understood what was being said around him, and act like an arrogant prick to make people less interested in approaching him with questions or friendly comments.
Jian followed her back out onto the street, and they made their way together up the sidewalk that wasn’t quite, Wren peering up at the signs they passed. Halfway up the fifth block from the station, she made a pleased sound in her throat and led the way into a shop with headless manikins, some missing arms or feet, heads, displaying an eclectic selection of clothes behind a dirt smeared window. The air in the place was thick, musty, with a sour undertone not quite hidden beneath an overabundance of some kind of synthetic floral spray.
A bell over the door clanged twice when they entered, and moments later a short and flabby man with the haloes of old sweat stains dried under his arms brushed aside a tattered curtain at the back of the shop. He walked toward them, wiping his hands on an already grimy cloth, which he then shoved into a pocket on his pants.
Wren and the shopkeeper exchanged a flurry of words, Jian only able to catch a term here and there, and then the man pointed toward the racks of clothing along the back wall. Wren headed that way. Jian followed her.
Wren flipped through the coats and other garments hanging on the metal bar – it looked like rebar, actually – and unhooked a faded denim jacket. She held it out. “Try this.”
Jian set his bag down and shrugged the jacket on. It was fairly lightweight, but certainly warmer than his tank top alone. The shoulders and sleeves were loose enough to let him move quickly and easily. He nodded at her.
Wren went over and haggled with the man briefly, gesturing back toward Jian, who picked up his bag again. A few bills exchanged hands, and moments later the two of them were back out on the street.
Wren led the way, occasionally pausing to speak with people, and Jian walked quietly behind her. Finally she ducked in through a doorway with yet another unintelligible Cyrillic sign over it, and when he went inside after her she was already handing credits over to a skinny, bored-looking man behind a little window. The man gave her a key in return, and when he looked at Jian he arched one eyebrow. His eyes darted to Wren and then back to Jian, and he smirked and winked. Jian stared back at him, and his expression faltered, then he looked quickly away and began messing with some papers on the counter in front of him.
Wren put her hand on Jian’s shoulder, and he looked away from the man. She climbed up the narrow stairs next to the little window-counter, and Jian followed her.
The key let them into the second door on the left in the hall at the top of the stairs. The wallpaper was an off-yellow, with some no longer recognizable faded green pattern on it. It was peeling around the small window, and along one seam near what he assumed to be the door to a bathroom. Wren walked over and checked the window – the latch broke off in her hand, and she looked at it, then set it down on the windowsill. Jian stared at it, unable to pull his eyes away, and Wren walked over to him and reached behind him to shut the door that led out into the hall.
He dragged his gaze up to her face, and found that she was looking at his eyes with that expression of assessment, of weighing, that he knew so well. She slipped his bag off his shoulders and tugged at his new jacket. “Take this off, and your jeans and shoes. We need sleep.” Her voice was soft, but firm. Not a voice to be questioned. He’d heard her use the same tone before, when giving instructions to wounded soldiers in the field. The thought got him moving, and he did as she’d asked while she went over and set her own bag on the floor by the bed. She stripped out of her coat and unlaced her boots, then toed them off. Her pants followed.
Jian didn’t realize he was staring at the broken latch from the window again until Wren’s fingertips touched his arm lightly, just above the wrist. He looked at her.
“Come to bed.” She stepped back, her calves brushing against the low bed, fingertips sliding down a bit to wrap around his wrist in a loose hold. He saw that the thin blankets on the bed had been turned back. He let her pull him over and down onto the mattress, stretched out beside her. Wren nudged and prodded him until he rolled so he was facing away from her. He saw that the little door was open now, and did indeed lead to a dirty bathroom. Wren must have cleared and secured the room.
Wren pulled the covers of the twin bed up over both of them and curled against his back, a warm presence. Her mouth must have been near his head, because he could feel the hot wash of her breath over the back of his neck each time she exhaled. Her elbow poked him in the shoulder when she shifted, and her other arm came to a rest on his side, laying across his torso just beneath his ribs. His eyes drifted back up to the broken latch, abandoned on the windowsill. He slept. There were no dreams.
--------------------
And for those waiting on them, I am working on the prompt responses. ^_^ Gleefully. I still need a bit more info from some of you before I can begin yours, though.
The Precipice
Those first few days on the train were strange. They were in a car together – at the beginning it was just the two of them, but after a couple of stops their car gained other passengers, and then even more. It never filled up all the way. Some would get off, others on. Only Wren and Jian remained, constant.
Jian had trouble relaxing. He could tell Wren did, too. Neither of them were able to sleep. Jian kept thinking about how vulnerable the train was, how tempting a target. He started to doze a few times, but then the train would slow as it approached another station and Jian would lurch awake, heart pounding and throat tight, hand groping for a gun that was no longer at his waist – he’d kept only the one weapon, his sidearm, and that he’d stashed in his backpack. The first time it happened, Wren looked away from the window next to her, eyes swinging around and coming to rest on his face. She still didn’t say anything, though. Neither of them had. Not yet.
Jian wasn’t sure, then, how he felt about Wren’s initial intention, that first leaving. He wasn’t ready to confront that.
Occasionally over the course of those three days, he would wish for just a moment that he was normal again – not a civilian like they both were, now, but a true civilian, someone who had never been a soldier. The first time they crossed a border, and the train was stopped while uniformed officers walked the length of the cars, checking identifications…
Jian had watched his hands fishing his old passport chit out of his bag and handing it over to the inspector, and had felt nothing, an emptiness, a teetering on the precipice of…something. Then his eyes caught on Wren’s face as the man ran his passport through the little portable reader and the lack of feeling was gone. She took it away from him, and a weight went with it. He was no longer General Ming, commander of the Szechuan People’s Army, leader of men and women alive and dead. He was just Jian Yuan, traveling on a train.
Their tickets took them up into Russia, to a train station in a small city. According to the clock on the wall over the ticket booth there, it was shortly after noon, local time.
It was colder here than it had been down in Szechuan. There, summer was already taking over from spring. Here the air still had some bite. Jian could feel goose bumps forming on his arms and neck as they walked up the street together, and when he let his eyes slide over to Wren he saw them on the skin of her shoulders as well.
Wren caught his elbow and pulled him into the narrow opening – too tight to be rightly called an “alley” – between two brick buildings. He didn’t resist, went with her willingly, pulse sluggishly responding to a sudden sense of alarm. He was too tired to get particularly excited, though. The result of three days with no real sleep, and perhaps something else as well.
Wren slid her hand up his arm, stopping at his shoulder, her eyes following it, then looked into his face. “Did you bring much money?”
Jian could only blink at her, owlish. He noted that she used Mandarin, and it seemed important somehow, but his mind was too fuzzy to identify why. Where was the threat…? He opened his mouth to answer, but couldn’t find any words. What was she trying to find out? What was she reaching for? He couldn’t–
Wren’s hand on his shoulder tightened briefly. “We need to get you a jacket, and we need a place to stay. I brought the equivalent of a couple hundred credits, in several denominations. You?”
Oh. “The same, I think. But all in WUN credits and Chinese yuan renminbi.” He paused. “We’ll need to get a jacket for you as–”
Wren shook her head. “I already have a coat.” She took her hand away from his shoulder – it left a warm spot that cooled rapidly in the air – and opened her bag, pulled out a rough and faded, crumpled reddish ball of some kind of cloth. She shook it out with one hand, and he saw that it was some kind of natural fiber, perhaps hemp. She pulled it on, switching her bag to one hand and then back again. It was too large, had a hood, and two big pockets on the front. He had a vague memory of it, a flash of Wren in Jhoon Lee’s village, her face perfectly empty, seven bodies piled near her. She’d been wearing the sakkat now tied to her bag. Lifetimes ago.
Wren slung her carry sack over one shoulder and nodded at him. “Come on, we’ll find a thrift shop and get you something a bit warmer, then find a place to sleep.”
Jian nodded. “I don’t speak much Russian. Most of it is rude.”
“I’ll do the talking.” It went unsaid that she wouldn’t be obviously translating for him. That would draw attention, make them more memorable. Show a potential weakness. He’d just have to pretend he understood what was being said around him, and act like an arrogant prick to make people less interested in approaching him with questions or friendly comments.
Jian followed her back out onto the street, and they made their way together up the sidewalk that wasn’t quite, Wren peering up at the signs they passed. Halfway up the fifth block from the station, she made a pleased sound in her throat and led the way into a shop with headless manikins, some missing arms or feet, heads, displaying an eclectic selection of clothes behind a dirt smeared window. The air in the place was thick, musty, with a sour undertone not quite hidden beneath an overabundance of some kind of synthetic floral spray.
A bell over the door clanged twice when they entered, and moments later a short and flabby man with the haloes of old sweat stains dried under his arms brushed aside a tattered curtain at the back of the shop. He walked toward them, wiping his hands on an already grimy cloth, which he then shoved into a pocket on his pants.
Wren and the shopkeeper exchanged a flurry of words, Jian only able to catch a term here and there, and then the man pointed toward the racks of clothing along the back wall. Wren headed that way. Jian followed her.
Wren flipped through the coats and other garments hanging on the metal bar – it looked like rebar, actually – and unhooked a faded denim jacket. She held it out. “Try this.”
Jian set his bag down and shrugged the jacket on. It was fairly lightweight, but certainly warmer than his tank top alone. The shoulders and sleeves were loose enough to let him move quickly and easily. He nodded at her.
Wren went over and haggled with the man briefly, gesturing back toward Jian, who picked up his bag again. A few bills exchanged hands, and moments later the two of them were back out on the street.
Wren led the way, occasionally pausing to speak with people, and Jian walked quietly behind her. Finally she ducked in through a doorway with yet another unintelligible Cyrillic sign over it, and when he went inside after her she was already handing credits over to a skinny, bored-looking man behind a little window. The man gave her a key in return, and when he looked at Jian he arched one eyebrow. His eyes darted to Wren and then back to Jian, and he smirked and winked. Jian stared back at him, and his expression faltered, then he looked quickly away and began messing with some papers on the counter in front of him.
Wren put her hand on Jian’s shoulder, and he looked away from the man. She climbed up the narrow stairs next to the little window-counter, and Jian followed her.
The key let them into the second door on the left in the hall at the top of the stairs. The wallpaper was an off-yellow, with some no longer recognizable faded green pattern on it. It was peeling around the small window, and along one seam near what he assumed to be the door to a bathroom. Wren walked over and checked the window – the latch broke off in her hand, and she looked at it, then set it down on the windowsill. Jian stared at it, unable to pull his eyes away, and Wren walked over to him and reached behind him to shut the door that led out into the hall.
He dragged his gaze up to her face, and found that she was looking at his eyes with that expression of assessment, of weighing, that he knew so well. She slipped his bag off his shoulders and tugged at his new jacket. “Take this off, and your jeans and shoes. We need sleep.” Her voice was soft, but firm. Not a voice to be questioned. He’d heard her use the same tone before, when giving instructions to wounded soldiers in the field. The thought got him moving, and he did as she’d asked while she went over and set her own bag on the floor by the bed. She stripped out of her coat and unlaced her boots, then toed them off. Her pants followed.
Jian didn’t realize he was staring at the broken latch from the window again until Wren’s fingertips touched his arm lightly, just above the wrist. He looked at her.
“Come to bed.” She stepped back, her calves brushing against the low bed, fingertips sliding down a bit to wrap around his wrist in a loose hold. He saw that the thin blankets on the bed had been turned back. He let her pull him over and down onto the mattress, stretched out beside her. Wren nudged and prodded him until he rolled so he was facing away from her. He saw that the little door was open now, and did indeed lead to a dirty bathroom. Wren must have cleared and secured the room.
Wren pulled the covers of the twin bed up over both of them and curled against his back, a warm presence. Her mouth must have been near his head, because he could feel the hot wash of her breath over the back of his neck each time she exhaled. Her elbow poked him in the shoulder when she shifted, and her other arm came to a rest on his side, laying across his torso just beneath his ribs. His eyes drifted back up to the broken latch, abandoned on the windowsill. He slept. There were no dreams.
And for those waiting on them, I am working on the prompt responses. ^_^ Gleefully. I still need a bit more info from some of you before I can begin yours, though.
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no subject
Date: 2008-04-28 06:57 am (UTC)More anon. Must go to bed.