A Cossack in Odessa
this may or may not have come about because World War II In Colour was on the Discovery channel.
historical accuracy is not at all guaranteed.
this is not crack. and it hasn't been betaed.
sober warning: i made Eames German. character deaths.
this is not a political piece. this is not an expression of sympathy for Nazism. it is a consideration of two individuals.
July 1941, near Odessa
They decide on random selection for the responsibility of scouting.
It’s been a full six months of relentless trudging from the Romanian heartland. West to Hungary, then doubling back toward Moldova (“the fuck is in Moldova?”). Then up over the Carpathian mountains and through endless grasslands, winding their way to the port city of Odessa, where the Soviet and Romanian Navies are in a sullen face-off.
Some ways past the Moldova-Ukraine border, the small band of offshoot soldiers from the Wehrmacht’s 11th Army resorts to decidedly unofficial methods to foist off unsavory duties, honor be damned.
A scrap of used filter paper unfolds to reveal a scrawled 26.
“Eames.”
All eyes slide to a quiet man in the corner whose broad shoulders slump upon announcement. He sighs, emitting a groan as he stands up.
“Cheaters. All of you.”
Raucous laughter and a “Marlene Dietrich sends her love!” follow him out, as he goes to fetch his provisions, map, and two-way radio pack.
+
With supplies and a Karabiner rifle slung over his back, Eames covers a good one and a half kilometers ahead of the troops.
Flicking on the radio transmitter, he tests the reception and reports in. Eyes automatically canvass the surroundings in a broad sweep.
Flatlands. Silent apart from the wind.
+
Absently tugging on his chinstrap, Eames eyes the dregs of his rationed bitter tea.
Gone, after only three days. He sighs and surveys the woods before him, stretched out to a dark and distant curve.
Finding a source of water is definitely in order.
Eames opts not to think about the thirst of the three-hundred thousand behind him.
He steps carefully past the first treeline, rifle in hand, watching for a flicker in the stillness.
Affords a brief glance over his shoulder at the long tips of sun-burnt grass. Their relative inability to hide Soviets would be missed.
His gaze shifts forward reluctantly and he treks on, senses fanning out on heightened alert.
Around him, deciduous trees flush with late summer leaves cast warning shadows.
The rapidly setting sun doesn’t afford the German much time.
+
He keeps his distance, but continues following the stream he eventually finds.
It cuts low but there would be others looking for it, too.
With each night that falls, he dares not light a fire.
Sleep drifts in and out, as his spine bends into hollowed spaces.
+
The sun dips westward in the nineteenth hour.
This is when Eames’s rifle slips silently from his shoulder and into his hands.
In the clearing ahead-
A silhouette, its back towards him, crouched over a fox’s den.
The German makes no sound, but the silhouette’s head suddenly cocks to the side. The body unfolds, rising steadily from the ground.
The controlled turn of a sheathed ankle.
Long shadows cast by branches slide over the visage before him, but the face - this man’s face - is clear as day.
Eyes meet, and Eames is sure he is misreading the other’s expectant look.
He struggles to identify him:
Clothed in grey, neck-high, with looped tassels and flared sleeves.
A black sheepskin hat, pulled low and tight.
Skin pale as ice and scored dry by fast winds.
Whip-thin, with the posture of a hunter.
A rider's build.
Eames’s grip tightens.
“Declare yourself,” he demands, voice harsh from habit.
The other comes closer, eyes flecked like the coat of a tawny owl.
Graces a smile slowly, mockingly.
“I'm a Cossack.”
+
He lights a cigarette, one of a precious few.
“You have a name?”
“Artur.”
“Eames.”
A raised eyebrow.
“Not German.”
“Not the name, no.”
“But in German uniform.” A smirk. “Interesting.”
“I grew up in Munich,” the German-of-mixed-heritage bites out, despite not owing this Arthur any kind of explanation.
“Did you now.” Casual inflection. “So, where's your family?”
“None of your business.”
The Slav barks out a laugh.
“Still somewhere in Germany, then.”
“Good luck getting past our borders,” he snaps. The rider shrugs and waves a placating hand.
“I have no interest in invading your country.”
“Where's yours?” Eames diverts. He doesn't really feel like discussing invasions.
Arthur holds the other man's gaze as he considers the last nine months.
His home, his stanitsa, was wiped out. His parents committed suicide. And his sisters fled out of reach.
The corners of his mouth twist upward.
“In the Caucasus. Where else.”
+
Six days pass before the rider reappears.
“You need to stop following me.”
Behind him, a hum of amusement.
“Is that what you think I’m doing, Kamerad?"
“I'm definitely not your comrade.”
“Aren't we? Two of millions, carrying on this mass destruction of the world.”
Eames stares meaningfully.
“If we were comrades, then it wouldn't be my job to kill you.”
Low, cracked laughter from dry lips.
“Well, that's true!” A thoughtful look. “Who will go first, I wonder.”
Eames is aware of the odds. A Terek Cossack contingent, flanked by the rest of the cavalry corps and two tank regiments. They ride war-hardened horses trained to survive where machinery cannot. But the German and Romanian troops have ten times as many men, and are reinforced with heavy artillery and assault battalions. The bulk of the Red Army's might is amassed a distant 500 kilometers to the north in Kiev. Odessa will be a complete and utter annihilation. It's simply a matter of time.
He looks up to see Arthur's knowing, infuriating smile.
“Indeed.”
+
“What,” Eames sighs flatly in response to Arthur’s urge for him to guess what is fascinating about the two of them.
He really has no idea.
“You, a non-German who will die for Germany. And me, a White Army descendent who will die for Communists. Loyalists fighting in lands that are not our own. We make a strange pair.”
Eames is getting sick of being told he’s not German.
The rider peers at his face.
“I mean, you look like one. But you’re not.”
This is clearly an argument he is not going to win.
Not without a bullet, that is.
Or two. The Cossack is almost certainly a persistent son of a bitch.
+
“There’s something off about these oak trees, don’t you think.”
“I don’t know. This is your territory.”
The leaf in Arthur’s hand drops to the ground.
“Oh, you think this is ours? That we're welcome here?” A grin. “You obviously don't know your history.”
“Odessa wasn't really featured in the manual, no.”
“Cossacks aren't nice people.”
“I didn't think they were.”
“Yes.” An earnest look. “Now, which one sounds more frightening, Nazi or Cossack? If you were Ukrainian, which one would make you run for your life?”
Eames doesn't answer.
After a stretch of silence, the rider tuts impatiently.
“Not accustomed to hunting Ukrainians, then.”
A lingering side-glance at Eames, before Arthur turns on a well-enforced riding heel, imprinting the packed dirt beneath. Rhythmic steps and again, like a specter-
Gone.
+
“Nothing to report.”
Is what he chooses to say, each time.
Eames looks down at the radio in his hand.
Waits for the crackled “acknowledged” before he clicks it off.
Tiredly cradles his head afterward.
+
“Halt!”
Eames ducks instinctively as his head snaps skyward, eyes honed in on the treetops.
A familiar laugh drifts down.
“City people - you don’t know the woods at all. Not like we do.”
Eames takes a steady breath, lowering his standard-issue Parabellum.
“Christ, what are you doing up there?”
“Surveillance.” The slight swing of a leg.
“I almost fucking shot you.”
“City people, like I said.” His face materializes between the foliage. “You can shoot, but have you ever seen a man skinned alive with a kindjal? Your scalp could be hanging from this very branch right now.”
“Sounds like a considerable amount of work.” Wry tone. It’s what he feels like saying.
“How else am I supposed to prove my worth.” A serious mien.
Eames genuinely can’t tell whether Arthur is joking or not.
He decides to keep an eye on the slender dagger tucked firmly in the rider’s belt.
+
Either his map is wrong, his compass is possessed, or-
“Odessa is closer than you think,” the Cossack remarks.
Irritation simmers low in the pit of Eames’s gut.
“I don’t trust you.”
“Nor I you.” He flicks the back of the German’s map from where he sits. “But I’m right, all the same.”
“Your arrogance is really unbecoming.”
Arthur ignores this.
“We are at a crossroads.”
A suppressed sigh. “What do you mean.”
The Cossack’s attention shifts eastward, hardened expression on a sharp, white profile.
For the first time, Eames glimpses the famed severity of the Slavic peoples.
Except there is also…an unassuming, captive handsomeness that belongs, all at once, solely to the land and solely to Arthur.
A clipped and even tone.
“It means you have to leave.”
Faint disturbance breaks the air, in the form of echoed cries.
“Tovarisch!”
“Artur!”
Near-black eyes narrow, then turn back on the German.
The rider hesitates for the briefest of moments.
Not concern, but something close-
He stands abruptly. Moves to vanish into the trees.
Mutely, Eames slips behind a beech and wonders if Arthur will look back.
If he’ll look to confirm that this is not the work of an elaborate dream-
But he doesn’t. Doesn’t even pause.
The German checks his chamber and recalls a tale:
Once there was a man, who struck a deal.
The deal is: he can lead his dead lover out from the underworld, if only he doesn’t look back.
But, at the brink of finality, the man fails.
Eames thinks that maybe this, whatever it is that they have, will end differently.
Follow me.
+
“I suppose I owe you,” he murmurs.
“You don’t.” His throat tenses reflexively when he sees the tin of Rinderbraten. “But I’ll take some anyway.”
Eames gives him all of it.
+
“I saw you, scouting. That first day.”
The German pauses to listen.
“I was going to shoot you. In the back of the head.” The Cossack slides a palm down his rifle. Then looks up abruptly. “But things changed.”
“Changed how?” His voice is hoarse.
“Your hands. They shook.”
Eames doesn’t recall this.
“And the way you sleep, with your head tucked in. Like a fox.”
“You-”
“I decided I wanted to see,” Arthur drags a bare thumb along the curve of Eames’s cheek, “your face.”
He smiles, a softer thing than Eames thought possible, and leans forward.
His teeth leave a blood trail at the corner of the German’s mouth.
And his breath tastes like smoke and ashes.
+
Later, in the dark, he tongues the wound incessantly.
+
At the edge of the woods, they stand in the shadows.
Looking out toward scattered homes.
The point where the jaws will clench.
Three-hundred thousand, he recites to himself.
"See you on the battlefield.” The rider turns to meet his eyes.
Eames immediately looks down, away. Sucks in a final breath of nicotine.
Doesn't change the fact that he wants to grab Arthur and run.
He can almost hear a low laugh at the absurdity of it.
The German's eyes follow the slope of the Cossack’s back until he disappears.
He clutches his radio, and doesn’t move for hours afterward.
+
August 1941, Odessa
Eames never actually sees him die.
But he is there for the aftermath, with his brothers-in-arms.
Treading through the wreckage of a skirmish like there are landmines beneath their feet.
An inhuman whine tears through the smell of the place.
And they all flinch in synchrony.
A mare, her forelegs shattered and all but gone.
She thrashes weakly before stilling, then starts anew.
High-pitched sounds of agony, and Eames is ready to vomit.
No-one says it, but please god, someone hangs in the air like poison gas.
The German suppresses his gag reflex and cautiously approaches her from behind.
Gives a wide berth to spasming hind legs.
And that is when he discovers a body, crushed underneath.
He stares, unmoving.
This is Arthur’s corpse.
It is broken - graceless and mangled. There is bone protruding sharply from the cheek.
The right eye socket, empty, with the surrounding cold flesh softly caving inward.
The hands and wrists are exposed raw-white and cut with red crusts of wounds.
The neck, black bruised, is bent too far back, as if in apology-
A black fly crawls forth from the hollow of the mouth.
Eames wants to scream. To be stripped of nerves and consciousness and fallibility and this.
Instead, his legs stride forward, his hand aims the barrel between the mare’s eyes, and his finger pulls the trigger.
+
When he is tired, he sometimes dreams.
Dreams of flesh separating from bone.
Of teeth seeking out the junctures of his body.
But he doesn’t remember when he wakes, left with the phantom of aches he can’t explain.
+
Eames hums the excerpt of a tune, familiar as the back of his hand.
The other listens for a moment and inquires about it.
“Brahms,” he replies quietly.
A blank look.
“Who’s that?”
“German composer.”
“Still alive?”
“No. He was from a while ago.”
“You play, then?”
“The piano? I used to.” He pauses. “Before.”
Arthur turns away, expression unreadable. He startles Eames by leaping to his feet.
“Here.” Arthur tugs fiercely on a fallen log until it settles at the German’s feet. “I want to hear you play. From the beginning.”
Eames searches the Cossack’s face, and tentatively rests his palms on deadened grooves.
“Okay.” Stares down at imaginary ivory. “I must warn you, though, the acoustics aren’t very good.”
Humming the melody, Eames coaxes his hands into dusty memory. And he feels a little ridiculous, but a glance at the rider proves it is anything but.
When the final note resonates (soundless), Arthur’s sharpness has faded to a shade, his mouth relaxed and fingertips curled.
Eyes bright with something that causes the German’s chest to flare, the Slav bites his lip to hide a half-smile.
+
August 1944, Bucharest
Mein Gott, Lauft! is the last thing Eames hears before his eardrums are blown out by a high-explosive, anti-tank charge that aims wrong and rips apart half his company.
Awareness bleeds in and out, as he chokes on the black, acrid remains of bodies.
He’s submerged in silence, a haze of disorientation.
His hand flies to his waist. He still has his gun.
A dampness. He looks down.
Part of his left thigh is gone.
Eames stares. It doesn't feel like it belongs to him.
This is someone else's shrapnel-shredded leg.
He sinks to his knees, unaware of when the shouting begins.
"Over here! Over fucking here! Christ, we got 'em good."
Then, the German is faced with the wrong end of a semi-automatic pistol.
The first jerk, and he feels his lungs drown in blood.
The second jerk, and he falls inelegantly to the ground.
Coarse impact into mud blinds the left, but his right eye is unscathed.
It lands on a distant promontory. On white, forbidding woods.
Half-hidden there, a horse with quiet breaths. Warm puffs of air clouding around her form.
He feels her gaze bore into his flesh.
When the edges of his vision begin to blacken, she turns to leave.
Guided by a young Cossack riding her. His lissome back, swaying away. His head, just starting to turn, to look back at-
Odessa, he tries to say. And then-
"Goddamn, he's still breathing. Motherfucker."
A click. Bang.
historical accuracy is not at all guaranteed.
this is not crack. and it hasn't been betaed.
sober warning: i made Eames German. character deaths.
this is not a political piece. this is not an expression of sympathy for Nazism. it is a consideration of two individuals.
July 1941, near Odessa
They decide on random selection for the responsibility of scouting.
It’s been a full six months of relentless trudging from the Romanian heartland. West to Hungary, then doubling back toward Moldova (“the fuck is in Moldova?”). Then up over the Carpathian mountains and through endless grasslands, winding their way to the port city of Odessa, where the Soviet and Romanian Navies are in a sullen face-off.
Some ways past the Moldova-Ukraine border, the small band of offshoot soldiers from the Wehrmacht’s 11th Army resorts to decidedly unofficial methods to foist off unsavory duties, honor be damned.
A scrap of used filter paper unfolds to reveal a scrawled 26.
“Eames.”
All eyes slide to a quiet man in the corner whose broad shoulders slump upon announcement. He sighs, emitting a groan as he stands up.
“Cheaters. All of you.”
Raucous laughter and a “Marlene Dietrich sends her love!” follow him out, as he goes to fetch his provisions, map, and two-way radio pack.
+
With supplies and a Karabiner rifle slung over his back, Eames covers a good one and a half kilometers ahead of the troops.
Flicking on the radio transmitter, he tests the reception and reports in. Eyes automatically canvass the surroundings in a broad sweep.
Flatlands. Silent apart from the wind.
+
Absently tugging on his chinstrap, Eames eyes the dregs of his rationed bitter tea.
Gone, after only three days. He sighs and surveys the woods before him, stretched out to a dark and distant curve.
Finding a source of water is definitely in order.
Eames opts not to think about the thirst of the three-hundred thousand behind him.
He steps carefully past the first treeline, rifle in hand, watching for a flicker in the stillness.
Affords a brief glance over his shoulder at the long tips of sun-burnt grass. Their relative inability to hide Soviets would be missed.
His gaze shifts forward reluctantly and he treks on, senses fanning out on heightened alert.
Around him, deciduous trees flush with late summer leaves cast warning shadows.
The rapidly setting sun doesn’t afford the German much time.
+
He keeps his distance, but continues following the stream he eventually finds.
It cuts low but there would be others looking for it, too.
With each night that falls, he dares not light a fire.
Sleep drifts in and out, as his spine bends into hollowed spaces.
+
The sun dips westward in the nineteenth hour.
This is when Eames’s rifle slips silently from his shoulder and into his hands.
In the clearing ahead-
A silhouette, its back towards him, crouched over a fox’s den.
The German makes no sound, but the silhouette’s head suddenly cocks to the side. The body unfolds, rising steadily from the ground.
The controlled turn of a sheathed ankle.
Long shadows cast by branches slide over the visage before him, but the face - this man’s face - is clear as day.
Eyes meet, and Eames is sure he is misreading the other’s expectant look.
He struggles to identify him:
Clothed in grey, neck-high, with looped tassels and flared sleeves.
A black sheepskin hat, pulled low and tight.
Skin pale as ice and scored dry by fast winds.
Whip-thin, with the posture of a hunter.
A rider's build.
Eames’s grip tightens.
“Declare yourself,” he demands, voice harsh from habit.
The other comes closer, eyes flecked like the coat of a tawny owl.
Graces a smile slowly, mockingly.
“I'm a Cossack.”
+
He lights a cigarette, one of a precious few.
“You have a name?”
“Artur.”
“Eames.”
A raised eyebrow.
“Not German.”
“Not the name, no.”
“But in German uniform.” A smirk. “Interesting.”
“I grew up in Munich,” the German-of-mixed-heritage bites out, despite not owing this Arthur any kind of explanation.
“Did you now.” Casual inflection. “So, where's your family?”
“None of your business.”
The Slav barks out a laugh.
“Still somewhere in Germany, then.”
“Good luck getting past our borders,” he snaps. The rider shrugs and waves a placating hand.
“I have no interest in invading your country.”
“Where's yours?” Eames diverts. He doesn't really feel like discussing invasions.
Arthur holds the other man's gaze as he considers the last nine months.
His home, his stanitsa, was wiped out. His parents committed suicide. And his sisters fled out of reach.
The corners of his mouth twist upward.
“In the Caucasus. Where else.”
+
Six days pass before the rider reappears.
“You need to stop following me.”
Behind him, a hum of amusement.
“Is that what you think I’m doing, Kamerad?"
“I'm definitely not your comrade.”
“Aren't we? Two of millions, carrying on this mass destruction of the world.”
Eames stares meaningfully.
“If we were comrades, then it wouldn't be my job to kill you.”
Low, cracked laughter from dry lips.
“Well, that's true!” A thoughtful look. “Who will go first, I wonder.”
Eames is aware of the odds. A Terek Cossack contingent, flanked by the rest of the cavalry corps and two tank regiments. They ride war-hardened horses trained to survive where machinery cannot. But the German and Romanian troops have ten times as many men, and are reinforced with heavy artillery and assault battalions. The bulk of the Red Army's might is amassed a distant 500 kilometers to the north in Kiev. Odessa will be a complete and utter annihilation. It's simply a matter of time.
He looks up to see Arthur's knowing, infuriating smile.
“Indeed.”
+
“What,” Eames sighs flatly in response to Arthur’s urge for him to guess what is fascinating about the two of them.
He really has no idea.
“You, a non-German who will die for Germany. And me, a White Army descendent who will die for Communists. Loyalists fighting in lands that are not our own. We make a strange pair.”
Eames is getting sick of being told he’s not German.
The rider peers at his face.
“I mean, you look like one. But you’re not.”
This is clearly an argument he is not going to win.
Not without a bullet, that is.
Or two. The Cossack is almost certainly a persistent son of a bitch.
+
“There’s something off about these oak trees, don’t you think.”
“I don’t know. This is your territory.”
The leaf in Arthur’s hand drops to the ground.
“Oh, you think this is ours? That we're welcome here?” A grin. “You obviously don't know your history.”
“Odessa wasn't really featured in the manual, no.”
“Cossacks aren't nice people.”
“I didn't think they were.”
“Yes.” An earnest look. “Now, which one sounds more frightening, Nazi or Cossack? If you were Ukrainian, which one would make you run for your life?”
Eames doesn't answer.
After a stretch of silence, the rider tuts impatiently.
“Not accustomed to hunting Ukrainians, then.”
A lingering side-glance at Eames, before Arthur turns on a well-enforced riding heel, imprinting the packed dirt beneath. Rhythmic steps and again, like a specter-
Gone.
+
“Nothing to report.”
Is what he chooses to say, each time.
Eames looks down at the radio in his hand.
Waits for the crackled “acknowledged” before he clicks it off.
Tiredly cradles his head afterward.
+
“Halt!”
Eames ducks instinctively as his head snaps skyward, eyes honed in on the treetops.
A familiar laugh drifts down.
“City people - you don’t know the woods at all. Not like we do.”
Eames takes a steady breath, lowering his standard-issue Parabellum.
“Christ, what are you doing up there?”
“Surveillance.” The slight swing of a leg.
“I almost fucking shot you.”
“City people, like I said.” His face materializes between the foliage. “You can shoot, but have you ever seen a man skinned alive with a kindjal? Your scalp could be hanging from this very branch right now.”
“Sounds like a considerable amount of work.” Wry tone. It’s what he feels like saying.
“How else am I supposed to prove my worth.” A serious mien.
Eames genuinely can’t tell whether Arthur is joking or not.
He decides to keep an eye on the slender dagger tucked firmly in the rider’s belt.
+
Either his map is wrong, his compass is possessed, or-
“Odessa is closer than you think,” the Cossack remarks.
Irritation simmers low in the pit of Eames’s gut.
“I don’t trust you.”
“Nor I you.” He flicks the back of the German’s map from where he sits. “But I’m right, all the same.”
“Your arrogance is really unbecoming.”
Arthur ignores this.
“We are at a crossroads.”
A suppressed sigh. “What do you mean.”
The Cossack’s attention shifts eastward, hardened expression on a sharp, white profile.
For the first time, Eames glimpses the famed severity of the Slavic peoples.
Except there is also…an unassuming, captive handsomeness that belongs, all at once, solely to the land and solely to Arthur.
A clipped and even tone.
“It means you have to leave.”
Faint disturbance breaks the air, in the form of echoed cries.
“Tovarisch!”
“Artur!”
Near-black eyes narrow, then turn back on the German.
The rider hesitates for the briefest of moments.
Not concern, but something close-
He stands abruptly. Moves to vanish into the trees.
Mutely, Eames slips behind a beech and wonders if Arthur will look back.
If he’ll look to confirm that this is not the work of an elaborate dream-
But he doesn’t. Doesn’t even pause.
The German checks his chamber and recalls a tale:
Once there was a man, who struck a deal.
The deal is: he can lead his dead lover out from the underworld, if only he doesn’t look back.
But, at the brink of finality, the man fails.
Eames thinks that maybe this, whatever it is that they have, will end differently.
Follow me.
+
“I suppose I owe you,” he murmurs.
“You don’t.” His throat tenses reflexively when he sees the tin of Rinderbraten. “But I’ll take some anyway.”
Eames gives him all of it.
+
“I saw you, scouting. That first day.”
The German pauses to listen.
“I was going to shoot you. In the back of the head.” The Cossack slides a palm down his rifle. Then looks up abruptly. “But things changed.”
“Changed how?” His voice is hoarse.
“Your hands. They shook.”
Eames doesn’t recall this.
“And the way you sleep, with your head tucked in. Like a fox.”
“You-”
“I decided I wanted to see,” Arthur drags a bare thumb along the curve of Eames’s cheek, “your face.”
He smiles, a softer thing than Eames thought possible, and leans forward.
His teeth leave a blood trail at the corner of the German’s mouth.
And his breath tastes like smoke and ashes.
+
Later, in the dark, he tongues the wound incessantly.
+
At the edge of the woods, they stand in the shadows.
Looking out toward scattered homes.
The point where the jaws will clench.
Three-hundred thousand, he recites to himself.
"See you on the battlefield.” The rider turns to meet his eyes.
Eames immediately looks down, away. Sucks in a final breath of nicotine.
Doesn't change the fact that he wants to grab Arthur and run.
He can almost hear a low laugh at the absurdity of it.
The German's eyes follow the slope of the Cossack’s back until he disappears.
He clutches his radio, and doesn’t move for hours afterward.
+
August 1941, Odessa
Eames never actually sees him die.
But he is there for the aftermath, with his brothers-in-arms.
Treading through the wreckage of a skirmish like there are landmines beneath their feet.
An inhuman whine tears through the smell of the place.
And they all flinch in synchrony.
A mare, her forelegs shattered and all but gone.
She thrashes weakly before stilling, then starts anew.
High-pitched sounds of agony, and Eames is ready to vomit.
No-one says it, but please god, someone hangs in the air like poison gas.
The German suppresses his gag reflex and cautiously approaches her from behind.
Gives a wide berth to spasming hind legs.
And that is when he discovers a body, crushed underneath.
He stares, unmoving.
This is Arthur’s corpse.
It is broken - graceless and mangled. There is bone protruding sharply from the cheek.
The right eye socket, empty, with the surrounding cold flesh softly caving inward.
The hands and wrists are exposed raw-white and cut with red crusts of wounds.
The neck, black bruised, is bent too far back, as if in apology-
A black fly crawls forth from the hollow of the mouth.
Eames wants to scream. To be stripped of nerves and consciousness and fallibility and this.
Instead, his legs stride forward, his hand aims the barrel between the mare’s eyes, and his finger pulls the trigger.
+
When he is tired, he sometimes dreams.
Dreams of flesh separating from bone.
Of teeth seeking out the junctures of his body.
But he doesn’t remember when he wakes, left with the phantom of aches he can’t explain.
+
Eames hums the excerpt of a tune, familiar as the back of his hand.
The other listens for a moment and inquires about it.
“Brahms,” he replies quietly.
A blank look.
“Who’s that?”
“German composer.”
“Still alive?”
“No. He was from a while ago.”
“You play, then?”
“The piano? I used to.” He pauses. “Before.”
Arthur turns away, expression unreadable. He startles Eames by leaping to his feet.
“Here.” Arthur tugs fiercely on a fallen log until it settles at the German’s feet. “I want to hear you play. From the beginning.”
Eames searches the Cossack’s face, and tentatively rests his palms on deadened grooves.
“Okay.” Stares down at imaginary ivory. “I must warn you, though, the acoustics aren’t very good.”
Humming the melody, Eames coaxes his hands into dusty memory. And he feels a little ridiculous, but a glance at the rider proves it is anything but.
When the final note resonates (soundless), Arthur’s sharpness has faded to a shade, his mouth relaxed and fingertips curled.
Eyes bright with something that causes the German’s chest to flare, the Slav bites his lip to hide a half-smile.
+
August 1944, Bucharest
Mein Gott, Lauft! is the last thing Eames hears before his eardrums are blown out by a high-explosive, anti-tank charge that aims wrong and rips apart half his company.
Awareness bleeds in and out, as he chokes on the black, acrid remains of bodies.
He’s submerged in silence, a haze of disorientation.
His hand flies to his waist. He still has his gun.
A dampness. He looks down.
Part of his left thigh is gone.
Eames stares. It doesn't feel like it belongs to him.
This is someone else's shrapnel-shredded leg.
He sinks to his knees, unaware of when the shouting begins.
"Over here! Over fucking here! Christ, we got 'em good."
Then, the German is faced with the wrong end of a semi-automatic pistol.
The first jerk, and he feels his lungs drown in blood.
The second jerk, and he falls inelegantly to the ground.
Coarse impact into mud blinds the left, but his right eye is unscathed.
It lands on a distant promontory. On white, forbidding woods.
Half-hidden there, a horse with quiet breaths. Warm puffs of air clouding around her form.
He feels her gaze bore into his flesh.
When the edges of his vision begin to blacken, she turns to leave.
Guided by a young Cossack riding her. His lissome back, swaying away. His head, just starting to turn, to look back at-
Odessa, he tries to say. And then-
"Goddamn, he's still breathing. Motherfucker."
A click. Bang.