Fic: Orange Sky
A long, long time ago delgaserasca posted a ficathon with prompts, in which I decided to take part. Six months later, after much angst and re-writes, I finally finished my contribution. Massive thanks to belantana ; without her fearless beta work, I doubt this story would ever see the light of day.
Title: Orange Sky
Characters: Zaf
Spoilers: Reference to events of season 6
Orange Sky
Prompt:
In Memory of M. B. - Anna Akhmatova --translated from the original Russian
Here is my gift, not roses on your grave,
not sticks of burning incense.
You lived aloof, maintaining to the end
your magnificent disdain.
You drank wine, and told the wittiest jokes,
and suffocated inside stifling walls.
Alone you let the terrible stranger in,
and stayed with her alone.
It’s been sixteen days. He shuts his eyes, cradling his elbow, unsure whether its broken, thinks for certain it is. The world sounds distant now, like he is underwater. The blurry spots in front of his eyes take over.
XxX
It’s been twenty-three days and his elbow is not broken. That’s what Zaf guesses, at least, when mobility returns to the limb and he can stretch his arms above his head, playing in the light from the grate, where he can catch a glimpse of the evening’s orange sky. He turns his hands within the stricture of the plasticuff, wiggles his fingers. His hands cast shadows in the dim room.
“A duck! A duck! It’s a duck,” he yells as he grabs Adeela’s arms, pulling his older sister from the shadow, moving into the space and thrusting his own hands into the light, making a shadowy shape flit across the wall.
XxX
It’s been twenty-seven days, and he has not seen any of his captors for the last two. On the twenty-fourth day they beat him, questioned him, pulled out three fingernails, questioned him again and put him back in the room. His hands are swollen, but he hardly feels them. He thinks of his grandmother, with her swollen hands and turgid limbs, deathly ill. The last time Zaf had seen his Nan alive had been over winter break his second year of university. The old woman had smiled at Zaf from her hospital bed, touched his hair, his cheeks, rested a hand on his forearm. Zaf had hardly ever felt so certain of the woman’s love.
XxX
It’s been thirty-six days and somewhere an animal is whimpering. They’d moved him two - no, three - nights before. The sound is interminable and he finds himself so perturbed by it that he wishes his captors would make a reappearance. He hopes to be taken back to the room on the other side of the compound. He is always blindfolded but when they move him between he has felt the sunlight on his face. They made him perform an awkward shuffle with his bound legs across a space of dry, packed earth. It’s like an artless dance, with him being pushed and pulled across the courtyard, pressed between two men.
He’d met Tanya dancing. She was a girl who went out all the time and seemed to know or be the friend-of-a-friend of everybody in London, and bits of Manchester, too. Before he knew her, he spotted her on the periphery of almost every party he attended. Tanya was wild and free and unfettered by the constraints he felt. He knew she thought he was a bit of a square - a new sensation for him - what with the unsociable working hours and ‘business trips’, the brogues and suits. She was the first woman who thought he was a safe choice.
Still, she loved to dance and had a nice arse. He could lose hours staring at the point where her legs met her back. She loved to go out, and was a last taste of a wild, but easy relationship. She expected so little, and was prepared to give only so much. Then he’d received an assignment; Beirut for eight months. The relationship ended much the same way it began: a late night out dancing, foreheads pressed together, bodies joined again at the hips, an incandescent smile splitting Tanya’s face.
XxX
It’s been forty-seven days. A month and half, and Zaf has enough of his wits about him still to realise that he’s gone pale and sallow. The cut on his arm throbs and stinks, and his body burns. They took him to the separate room for six days in a row. They blistered his skin with hot iron, slowly twisting the fiery metal into his ear. The questions were repetitive now. He knew they thought they would break him. He knew that they were close.
Somewhere in the distance he can hear a clanking sound. The fire in his head softens it, distorts it, smoothes it into the cadence of a walk.
The folder slapped down in front of him, jarring Zaf from his report writing. He had been mired in the details of a meet with a contact from the Pakistani embassy, weaving their stilted conversation into something worthy of an intelligence report that would be reviewed, filed, and tucked away in a storage room.
Zaf looked up to meet the eyes of a tall black woman, with curving lips and green-framed glasses.
“Hello.”
“Hello.” Zaf fingered the folder. “What’s this, then?”
“This is your new project.” She extended a thin, long-fingered hand. “Aimee Manners, Section C.”
Zaf shook her hand, still confused. Aimee continued before he could open his mouth.
“It was decided that Section A would be taking over the van der Glas case at yesterday’s Section Chiefs meeting . I believe Mrs Roslington volunteered you. Here is the file.”
“The van der Glas case?”
“Enjoy.” Aimee turned precisely and walked away, high heels clicking on the polished floor. Her walk was as staccato as her speech.
Zaf laid his hand on the dense folder, fingers scuffing the dull edges. He felt a twitch in his eye as he looked around the office. Anders was bent over his computer, Adam was absent on loan to Five, Richard was sequestered in a conference room speaking animatedly - at least, for Richard - to an older woman Zaf did not recognise. He turned back to the folder. The Pakistani intel could wait.
Two days later he ran into Aimee Manners, this time with a visceral thunk as they both rounded a corner in the archive from separate directions. After the requisite apologies, Aimee straightened her glasses and asked how he was getting on with the van der Glas case. In her heels, she was as tall as him and met his eyes with an easy confidence. She graced him with a smile at his weak joke about the Durban office’s note-taking system.
He caught himself looking over his shoulder to admire her retreating form.
A week later he joined Anders and Richard for a drink at the Crown and Elephant. He recognized a lithe figure at the bar. Aimee was standing with a young man who was desperate to buy her a drink. As he approached Zaf could hear the young man’s repeated request and Aimee’s snappy reply that she preferred to buy her own drinks. The young man eventually caught on and turned past Zaf, shooting him a look that clearly said not to bother with Aimee.
“Who was your admirer?” At his question, Aimee’s head snapped towards him and she flashed her teeth in some simulacrum of a mischievous smile.
He would wake up pressed against her back in her quiet second floor flat. She smelled vaguely of lime and some sort of herb that he could not identify at the moment, but would grow to recog -.
Zaf is jerked harshly back to the present as the chain again his ankle is yanked. He had not even heard his captors enter his room. They’re pulling him to his feet then, dragging him back into his present reality, dragging him to the other room.
XxX
It’s been forty-seven days, and as they work on him in the other room, he feels an ache that has nothing to do with the slow torture. They keep asking questions about an operation supposedly planned to take place outside of Herat. A ponderous throbbing in Zaf’s head distorts the face of the questioner, and the skittering illumination from the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling gives the man an occasional golden halo.
“Come back, please.” He is hunched on Sam’s stoop with his collar pulled up in an attempt to shield himself from the rain.
Sam smiles at him and shakes her head. It is the first time he’s seen her since the ceremony for Danny. Whisps of her blonde hair curl around her head.
“Why? Why did you leave?” She gives him another small smile, but for once seems to have nothing to say. “Look,” he tries again, “I know things seem bad now, but...” He cannot finish the sentence. “Just tell me why you left, please.”
“I left because I want people to tell the truth about me at my funeral.” Sam bends across the threshold to kiss his cheek and squeeze his hand. Loneliness is a type of poverty Zaf is not familiar with, but he feels it then.
XxX
It’s been forty-eight days. Zaf can see, through the small grate, that the sky is orange again. His mind goes where he’s tried to keep it from during these interminable weeks. He thinks of a blonde head, blue eyes, a heart-shaped face he cupped in his hand.
…Tipping her face upwards, Zaf presses his other hand against her cheek. Jo’s eyes close slowly and he kisses each eyelid, then her nose, then lips. He is warm and comfortable and naked as the day he was born, next to Jo in his bed. A contentment that he had not expected radiates from his chest. He pulls her closer and listens to the indistinct sounds she makes as she drifts off to sleep. Her cold toes are pressed between his legs, and her body is soft and flushed and heavy on his chest.
He had been sure they would never get to this point. He was sure she would never look at him the way he wanted her to. He had been wrong, and had never been happier about it.
Slowly he moves out from under her. She mumbles in her sleep, pulling the blankets closer to regain his lost warmth. Zaf found it nearly impossible to walk out of that room, but he had a flight to Tehran to catch.
Title: Orange Sky
Characters: Zaf
Spoilers: Reference to events of season 6
Orange Sky
Prompt:
In Memory of M. B. - Anna Akhmatova --translated from the original Russian
Here is my gift, not roses on your grave,
not sticks of burning incense.
You lived aloof, maintaining to the end
your magnificent disdain.
You drank wine, and told the wittiest jokes,
and suffocated inside stifling walls.
Alone you let the terrible stranger in,
and stayed with her alone.
It’s been sixteen days. He shuts his eyes, cradling his elbow, unsure whether its broken, thinks for certain it is. The world sounds distant now, like he is underwater. The blurry spots in front of his eyes take over.
XxX
It’s been twenty-three days and his elbow is not broken. That’s what Zaf guesses, at least, when mobility returns to the limb and he can stretch his arms above his head, playing in the light from the grate, where he can catch a glimpse of the evening’s orange sky. He turns his hands within the stricture of the plasticuff, wiggles his fingers. His hands cast shadows in the dim room.
“A duck! A duck! It’s a duck,” he yells as he grabs Adeela’s arms, pulling his older sister from the shadow, moving into the space and thrusting his own hands into the light, making a shadowy shape flit across the wall.
XxX
It’s been twenty-seven days, and he has not seen any of his captors for the last two. On the twenty-fourth day they beat him, questioned him, pulled out three fingernails, questioned him again and put him back in the room. His hands are swollen, but he hardly feels them. He thinks of his grandmother, with her swollen hands and turgid limbs, deathly ill. The last time Zaf had seen his Nan alive had been over winter break his second year of university. The old woman had smiled at Zaf from her hospital bed, touched his hair, his cheeks, rested a hand on his forearm. Zaf had hardly ever felt so certain of the woman’s love.
XxX
It’s been thirty-six days and somewhere an animal is whimpering. They’d moved him two - no, three - nights before. The sound is interminable and he finds himself so perturbed by it that he wishes his captors would make a reappearance. He hopes to be taken back to the room on the other side of the compound. He is always blindfolded but when they move him between he has felt the sunlight on his face. They made him perform an awkward shuffle with his bound legs across a space of dry, packed earth. It’s like an artless dance, with him being pushed and pulled across the courtyard, pressed between two men.
He’d met Tanya dancing. She was a girl who went out all the time and seemed to know or be the friend-of-a-friend of everybody in London, and bits of Manchester, too. Before he knew her, he spotted her on the periphery of almost every party he attended. Tanya was wild and free and unfettered by the constraints he felt. He knew she thought he was a bit of a square - a new sensation for him - what with the unsociable working hours and ‘business trips’, the brogues and suits. She was the first woman who thought he was a safe choice.
Still, she loved to dance and had a nice arse. He could lose hours staring at the point where her legs met her back. She loved to go out, and was a last taste of a wild, but easy relationship. She expected so little, and was prepared to give only so much. Then he’d received an assignment; Beirut for eight months. The relationship ended much the same way it began: a late night out dancing, foreheads pressed together, bodies joined again at the hips, an incandescent smile splitting Tanya’s face.
XxX
It’s been forty-seven days. A month and half, and Zaf has enough of his wits about him still to realise that he’s gone pale and sallow. The cut on his arm throbs and stinks, and his body burns. They took him to the separate room for six days in a row. They blistered his skin with hot iron, slowly twisting the fiery metal into his ear. The questions were repetitive now. He knew they thought they would break him. He knew that they were close.
Somewhere in the distance he can hear a clanking sound. The fire in his head softens it, distorts it, smoothes it into the cadence of a walk.
The folder slapped down in front of him, jarring Zaf from his report writing. He had been mired in the details of a meet with a contact from the Pakistani embassy, weaving their stilted conversation into something worthy of an intelligence report that would be reviewed, filed, and tucked away in a storage room.
Zaf looked up to meet the eyes of a tall black woman, with curving lips and green-framed glasses.
“Hello.”
“Hello.” Zaf fingered the folder. “What’s this, then?”
“This is your new project.” She extended a thin, long-fingered hand. “Aimee Manners, Section C.”
Zaf shook her hand, still confused. Aimee continued before he could open his mouth.
“It was decided that Section A would be taking over the van der Glas case at yesterday’s Section Chiefs meeting . I believe Mrs Roslington volunteered you. Here is the file.”
“The van der Glas case?”
“Enjoy.” Aimee turned precisely and walked away, high heels clicking on the polished floor. Her walk was as staccato as her speech.
Zaf laid his hand on the dense folder, fingers scuffing the dull edges. He felt a twitch in his eye as he looked around the office. Anders was bent over his computer, Adam was absent on loan to Five, Richard was sequestered in a conference room speaking animatedly - at least, for Richard - to an older woman Zaf did not recognise. He turned back to the folder. The Pakistani intel could wait.
Two days later he ran into Aimee Manners, this time with a visceral thunk as they both rounded a corner in the archive from separate directions. After the requisite apologies, Aimee straightened her glasses and asked how he was getting on with the van der Glas case. In her heels, she was as tall as him and met his eyes with an easy confidence. She graced him with a smile at his weak joke about the Durban office’s note-taking system.
He caught himself looking over his shoulder to admire her retreating form.
A week later he joined Anders and Richard for a drink at the Crown and Elephant. He recognized a lithe figure at the bar. Aimee was standing with a young man who was desperate to buy her a drink. As he approached Zaf could hear the young man’s repeated request and Aimee’s snappy reply that she preferred to buy her own drinks. The young man eventually caught on and turned past Zaf, shooting him a look that clearly said not to bother with Aimee.
“Who was your admirer?” At his question, Aimee’s head snapped towards him and she flashed her teeth in some simulacrum of a mischievous smile.
He would wake up pressed against her back in her quiet second floor flat. She smelled vaguely of lime and some sort of herb that he could not identify at the moment, but would grow to recog -.
Zaf is jerked harshly back to the present as the chain again his ankle is yanked. He had not even heard his captors enter his room. They’re pulling him to his feet then, dragging him back into his present reality, dragging him to the other room.
XxX
It’s been forty-seven days, and as they work on him in the other room, he feels an ache that has nothing to do with the slow torture. They keep asking questions about an operation supposedly planned to take place outside of Herat. A ponderous throbbing in Zaf’s head distorts the face of the questioner, and the skittering illumination from the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling gives the man an occasional golden halo.
“Come back, please.” He is hunched on Sam’s stoop with his collar pulled up in an attempt to shield himself from the rain.
Sam smiles at him and shakes her head. It is the first time he’s seen her since the ceremony for Danny. Whisps of her blonde hair curl around her head.
“Why? Why did you leave?” She gives him another small smile, but for once seems to have nothing to say. “Look,” he tries again, “I know things seem bad now, but...” He cannot finish the sentence. “Just tell me why you left, please.”
“I left because I want people to tell the truth about me at my funeral.” Sam bends across the threshold to kiss his cheek and squeeze his hand. Loneliness is a type of poverty Zaf is not familiar with, but he feels it then.
XxX
It’s been forty-eight days. Zaf can see, through the small grate, that the sky is orange again. His mind goes where he’s tried to keep it from during these interminable weeks. He thinks of a blonde head, blue eyes, a heart-shaped face he cupped in his hand.
…Tipping her face upwards, Zaf presses his other hand against her cheek. Jo’s eyes close slowly and he kisses each eyelid, then her nose, then lips. He is warm and comfortable and naked as the day he was born, next to Jo in his bed. A contentment that he had not expected radiates from his chest. He pulls her closer and listens to the indistinct sounds she makes as she drifts off to sleep. Her cold toes are pressed between his legs, and her body is soft and flushed and heavy on his chest.
He had been sure they would never get to this point. He was sure she would never look at him the way he wanted her to. He had been wrong, and had never been happier about it.
Slowly he moves out from under her. She mumbles in her sleep, pulling the blankets closer to regain his lost warmth. Zaf found it nearly impossible to walk out of that room, but he had a flight to Tehran to catch.