Wreckage of the Bellflower, Somewhere in Sigma-17
30.04.825 A.S.
A drawn out, sickly creaking echoed through the room as the thick metal of the inner airlock door gave way, fine particles of rust descending towards the floor as it retreated into the wall. The additional source of light that was revealed, being the faint red glow of the airlock's orientation lighting, started to mix with the thin cloud of particles dancing through stale air, creating an almost eerie interplay of light and shadow projected against the walls, quickly fading into darkness the farther it got away from the dim lamps.
Clack.
The scenery, quietly stagnant apart from the rust and dust ever so slowly settling on the ground was once more disturbed as someone stepped forward, obscuring what little lighting was provided for but a moment. The distinct noise of heavy combat boots treading on metal plating filled out the room.
Clack.
Again the noise, cutting through the air like a knife as another step was taken. And another. As the person, looked at from the inside nothing more than a vague silhouette against the dim red light stepped out of the airlock his head faintly swung around as if in search for something. What was it that he seemed to be looking for, however? Obstacles? Treasure? Any sign of life at all? No matter what, it soon would have become clear for any halfway attentive observer that most probably none of that could be found here, or at least around this rather deserted looking main storage area.
The newly entered figure however, after some more probing the room, seemed to have found what he had been looking for. He made his way over to a segment of metal wall into which a bulky control panel was integrated, sporting a variety of heavy levers and worn out buttons covered in a thin layer of dust. It was apparent that they had not been used in quite a while, and on the other hand it was not so apparent whether anything on that board would work at all. Yet, he reached out with one of his hands to start a short sequence of button presses culminating in a firm pull on the lever furthest to the left. From somewhere else inside the ship a but barely audible humming arose and soon after lamps on the walls began to immerse the storage area in white light. It was still faint, creating a weird atmosphere with its random flickering and spots of darkness in between the illuminated areas, but it was better than nothing. Probably.
Hannes was not all too surprised as even only the tiniest bit of life shot back into the bones of the old freighter. Admittedly, it was a quite well maintained facade that had been set up. From the outside the vessel looked battered and beaten, all signs indicating a prolonged firefight long past, burnt patches of hull plating and superficial holes leaving even doubts as to whether the ship was still holding atmosphere or not. On the inside, everything seemed thoroughly searched and plundered, leaving behind nothing but a few scattered crates and pieces of equipment amongst the dust. It was the sight of an unfortunate freighter, caught off guard within the depths of the Kunashir cloud and attacked by someone looking for an easy score. Badly shot up, boarded and ransacked for goods and perhaps even people. The wreckage then being left behind, another eternal reminder of the dangers coming with space travel in the Borderworlds.
But there obviously was more to it. Upon approaching the ship a more thorough look at it revealed that - apart from maybe the blown out cockpit – all of the damage was either only superficial or had been patched up after being inflicted, any signs of repairs carefully masked afterwards. Inside, the rusting interior and the layers of dust everywhere might have given off the impression that no living soul had been here ever since. But when you knew what you where looking for, the thin trails across the metal flooring were faint, but noticeable. Signs of relatively recent and recurring wear and tear, noticeable everywhere if one bothered to look. Signs of this relic indeed being used as some rendezvous spot for whatever clandestine activity required this level of secrecy.
At least Annika had been honest about actually wishing to meet him then. After all, if anyone was that clever and dedicated about setting up something like this it must have been her.
She however seemed to not be here, yet. That much Hannes was able to conclude after taking another look across the now illuminated cargo area. In a way, he was quite alright with this, the man had to admit as he made his way across room, towards a lonely crate resting on the floor, pieces of junk scattered around it. Being the first one to show up here – maybe the only one, even – meant he did not have to come in and straight up look her in the eyes, being confronted with the ultimate realisation of how much time had passed. How little he had actually done in all that time to stay in contact with an old friend – or even only to let her know he was not rotting in a shallow grave yet.
A sigh escaped Hannes' mouth as he sat down atop the crate. No, the way things had turned out there would have been no way to safely get in touch with Annika, neither for him nor for her, of that he was certain – or at least certain to tell himself. And she would surely understand, too. Probably.
Hopefully.
But, for really anything to happen, the most illusive Miss Haupt would have to turn up, first. So, waiting and in lack of much else to do, Hannes leant back but slightly, taking in a perhaps deeper breath of the stale air than its taste would have made him like to. With thoughts flowing in and out of his mind like a somewhat muddy stream he began to count the metal plates on the walls. With one hand mildly pushing against the crate to support his weight. The other, covered in an inconspicuous black leather glove, resting on his thigh, remaining close to where his gun was, hidden from side underneath his long grey coat.
Just in case.
Squished bigly ~Champ- Thanks, you're a champ. "What's the word for when it feels inside your heart that everything in the world is all right?"
He had brought a gun.
Not that that was exactly surprising. These days packing heat was useful, even necessary to survive. Still, it felt... Off, to think that the person in front of her was the same man as the one standing in the lecture hall so many years ago. He looked around nervously, seemingly unused to this kind of meeting. Or at least not this particular one.
Annika looked down from the steel beam, and couldn't help herself but feel reminded of the past few months, and how one ghost from her past after the other appeared. It felt ridiculous, statistically impossible, and yet, her he stood. Hannes Jensen himself. Older, and the way he walked told of a past wound, but nonetheless it was him. The first person she had called her mentor, even before Freya, the person responsible for her turning away from a life in one of the many libraries, from a fate of eventually dying of cancer caused by the asbestos-filled dust in the university - only to pull her into a life that involved a much quicker, but probably no less painful death.
Moments passed without her noticing how her thoughts trailed off before she was ripped out of the quiet pondering by a shift of light outside. The radiation storm in the cloud had begun, and the lighting in the cargohold flickered to the red, dim emergency lighting, klaxons that once blared loudly only pathetically whimpering before they died a death of age and neglect.
"You can leave it in the holster. Storm's killed the battery anyway, even if you planned to use it."
She'd used the few moments of louder noises to drop to the ground behind the man, leaning against an old metal crate as if she'd been there during his first inspection of the room, and he'd just not seen her. Time to see if there was another ghost of the past to put to silence... Or to use.
Rattling and more creaking. Pockets of the cloud discharging via the outer hull of the freighter. Some sort of alert horn letting out a desperate cry before dying out together with most of the lighting. The decrepit electrical systems audibly struggling with the sudden change of the environmental conditions.
Amongst the sudden cascade of noises a faint sound. Barely distinguishable, yet somewhat out there.
Thump.
The gloved hand twitched for but a moment in reflex, zipping even closer to his holster. Despite already having heard her words it seemed to take Hannes a moment to give them any meaning in his head. As the moment came and went, however, the hand slowly reappeared from under the coat, symbolically moving away from where it had rested before. No need to invoke any hostilities.
Plus, she was probably right about the storm.
“I guess I really am dealing with a spectre here”, Hannes uttered, not even having turned around to face whom he was talking to yet, a thin cloud of condensing water vapour exiting his mouth as he breathed out. He sure did not need to in order to recognise that oh so familiar voice. It had been shifted and roughened by times and hardships past, yes, but deep down it still beared the same tone, the same peculiar intonations. The essence of a voice that he, although long unheard, had not forgotten.
“Nika”, was the only thing the man could find himself replying as he had mustered up enough courage to turn around. As he gazed upon Annika resting against another crate as if she had always been part of the furniture the tired pair of eyes was perhaps more widened than it would have fit the profound, almost casually uttered statement. But as he made out the woman in all her details against the weak emergency lightning the realisation just hit him once more in all its significance.
A lot of time had passed. And Hannes was not quite sure if the both of them ended up on the better end of that passage.
Trying to transition the ominous silence developing between them with a quiet sigh Hannes eventually rose from his place to properly face the woman, tilting his head slightly at her posture. “Interesting look you picked up there. Tell me, did that tendency for dramatic entrances come together with it or did you get it somewhere else? Either way, keep it up! Sure impressed me - a little”.
He gave himself a faint head shake, as if to disapprove of his own attempt lighten up the mood, instead resting his right foot against the edge of his own crate. “You know, I wasn't quite sure you would show up at all, or at least without a firing squad behind you. Couldn't have even blamed you, really”.
Squished bigly ~Champ- Thanks, you're a champ. "What's the word for when it feels inside your heart that everything in the world is all right?"
She had to admit that fighting the smirk down was not as easy as it usually was. He immediately shifted to this tone, this peculiar intonation that she knew was mockery and humour, even though most of his students had always interpreted it as arrogance.
She didn't modify her posture at all, just mustered the man from head to toe. He looked weathered, his coat in particular. As if he'd just gotten it out of a dusty old bin, or fought someone in a museum. For a few moments she felt as if she was in a lecture again, tone, dusty appearance and a smirk on his face seemed so in-character for him. Then she remembered the gun, and reality caught up with her again. She noticed that she had moved a little closer, hands behind her back - although she had briefly held them up to show that she was unarmed. Well, in theory at least.
"Comes with the job. You don't acquire a reputation like mine by looking like you've just been pulled out of a cloister bunk in the middle of the night."
This time she did smile, although it wasn't just humour forcing the expression on her face. Quickly avoiding a continuation of the topic, she relaxed her stance and looked around, only to fixate on him directly.
"A firing squad? I know that we haven't been in touch, but I feel insulted. You're an old friend. At least... You used to be."
Why did she put that caveat at the end? If she was honest to herself, she didn't have a clue herself. Maybe it was the lifetime of mistrust, but possibly there was a little more behind it. Something she didn't quite want to admit to herself. And the problem was that other than her meeting with Freya a few weeks back, this time the meeting wasn't about future plans and plots. There was no reason for her mind to refocus, and so it wandered.
"Doesn't really feel logical though, if you ask me. You expect me to kill you when we meet, yet you are the one to contact me. Getting a deathwish on your old days?"
Silence ensued. A few drawn out seconds of Hannes staring barely past Annika. Her remark about the currently rather unclear status of their relation had taken him aback a little. Not because he had not expected it – with the way the two had to depart and all which must happened in, what, 10 years he had somewhat seen it coming. However, hearing the very words coming out of her mouth, her tone coloured in doubt and something else he could not even quite make out was a different matter.
It stung but a little, somewhere deep down in his chest. Another needle for the collection, he could only suppose.
He found himself clenching his gloved fist by the time his mind had returned to the immediate present, the quiet squeaking of leather and barely audible metallic clacking cutting through the silence. A grumble, followed up by a non-committal shrug. “Perhaps. I mean, going out to cancer or something sounds so much more boring than 'I was betrayed and shot dead by a former student of mine'. And you know how much I love a good story to tell”.
As he said that Hannes had gotten himself to relax his fist again, having it disappear in one of the wide pockets of his coat. The other, bare hand he used in a gesture vaguely pointing pointing towards the woman in front of him. For what he was about to say what little sarcastic levity his voice bore before had vanished.
“But I'm sure you also know how this game is played around here. I've witnessed it often enough. I've done it, too. And I'm fairly certain that in order to get to where you were before you must have perfected it”.
Hannes sighed. Perhaps that came off a little more accusatory than he had intended. But was it not the truth? In almost every experience he had made with the inner circles of the Bundschuh it became apparent that it was as much a den of wolves as it was a revolutionary movement. And the more you were involved in it the more likely it became to end up on someone's list, one day waking up to the unpleasant sight of a gun pointed at your head. Which was one of the reasons he had always tried to keep himself out of most of it. To more or less avail.
“Then again, you're probably right. What would be the point of shooting some old guy? I doubt I'd be worth the charge for a shot, even if you came to be someone who likes to hold grudges.
So, thanks for not doing that, I suppose”.
Squished bigly ~Champ- Thanks, you're a champ. "What's the word for when it feels inside your heart that everything in the world is all right?"
Was that frustration in his voice? Admittedly, it sounded like it, but she couldn't really put a finger on why he would feel like that. Sure, she wasn't the woman - or rather, girl - she used to be, but he should have expected that. Especially since he apparently had been paying attention to her recent rises and falls.
She grit her teeth for a few moments, trying to regain some of her composure. Her jaws moved as if there was something to maim between them, the room filled with a few more metallic noises as her right hand formed into a fist - a mirror to the man she faced right now.
"You know, if you called me here to passive-aggressively mock the way I lived my life to this point, we can cut this conversation short. You're hardly the first one to do that, and you won't be the last, but the times where I looked up to every single one of your doings and listened to what you had to say as if it was gospel are over, Hannes."
She sounded much more angry than she intended to, but this time she decided to roll with it. After all, a little more clear cut fronts would probably help her sort her mind out, and at the moment it seemed like she needed that desperately. While she shot back, his attitude had, in fact, hurt her. Not only because he apparently disapproved - more because he wasn't the first one of the people she had looked up to once to look at her acts so disapprovingly. A part of her wanted to curl into a ball this instant, to just go back to the meek, young woman she once was, dreaming of a revolution in writing instead of meeting in probably the most remote place of civilized space - if you could call it that. But this part was weak, and Annika abhorred weakness. She smothered it before it managed to take her aback again, her voice becoming a barely audible, threatening whisper. The tone she used when she was about to vent someone.
"Plus, judge all you want. At least I actually did something instead of hiding at the edge of Rheinland, sulking like a poor man's Achilles, terrified of doing something that is actually worth dying for."
Were was this vitriol coming from all of a sudden? This was not in the slightest what Hannes had aimed for.
Annika, in an unbridled bout of anger, almost spit her words at him. As they reached Hannes each of them felt like bullet zipping past his ears, ringing back and forth in his mind like the deafening noise of a dozen gunshots fired right beneath him. The sudden if unwittingly provoked shift in tone and the nasty bluntness of what she was saying caught him so off guard that he could not help but instinctively straighten out his posture. He took his right foot off the edge of the crate, quickly placing it down on the metal floor. While he was raising his exposed hand in an attempt to calm her down he even found himself stumbling back a step or two.
“Hey! Hey, hey, hey! That's not what I meant”, Hannes tried to interject, using a short break in Annika's outburst to look for an appropriate rebuttal to what he had just witnessed. He knew that he came off too sharp for his own liking the moment he had uttered his earlier statement, yes. But was she really trying to be this dismissive of her own actions that she would go into attack mode the moment someone implied the negative connotations that might come with them?
It was not even that Hannes had wanted to look down on her from some sort of moral high ground. Hell, aside from the fact that whatever Annika had gotten herself into during the last decade had been of a much higher profile due to her extensive involvement with the Bundschuh they were probably stuck about as deep in the mud when it came to making questionable choices. And he thought he had mad that fairly clear. But seemingly he had struck a nerve. A nerve that seemed to have been irritated a lot lately. So much that it turned into a widely open, sore spot in the back of her mind.
“Look, lectures are over, I get it”, he finally continued, using his left hand to vaguely gesticulate in support of his words. “I'm just trying to say that we both know how this-”.
Then she spoke up again.
Her voice had turned so quiet, Hannes almost did not notice it in between his own explanations and the faint ambient creaking coming from somewhere within the ship. Once he had actually seen her lips move however he quickly fell silent. For a split second he had the intention to speak up and remind her that in a proper argument the opposing sides should at least let each other finish their statements. Yet, the sheer force and grim determination behind the few words spoken once more hit him like a MagLev train, robbing him of the ability to respond in any way other than stare at Annika in disbelief.
Slowly, the still raised hand descended towards Hannes' chest. As it came to rest on his coat his expression had already turned from one of shock and surprise to something that might have been somewhere between profound sadness and grim realisation. Yes, what came out of Annika's mouth was barely understandable, almost silent compared to her previous fit. And yet this quiet hissing got to him so much more than anything she had uttered before. Not only had he never heard the once so diligent and calm girl speak with such raw fury. What she had to utter struck him so hard he almost felt like he had to take another step back.
This time, her words were no bullets zipping past barely past him. No, this time they were needles.
Aimed directly at his heart.
“Go! Get her out of here!” The voice echoed through the room, almost drowned out be cascade of noises surrounding him, despite the fact that she was standing right next to them yelling at him.
“Where to, even?! They're everywhere! We're screwed!”
With every second the din of gunshots, yelled commands, screams and muffled explosions in the distance seemed to grow louder, bouncing off the concrete walls and straight into their ears, amplified several times. With every bang cutting through the cold air like a sharp blade he could feel himself wince. And he was supposed to be a grown man and hardened resistance fighter. He could not even bear looking at Elisabeth aimlessly swivelling her head around trying to understand what was going on, fear written all across her face.
“What the hell do I know? Just out of here!”, Theresa proclaimed before proceeding to firmly push Hannes so he would finally get his arse in gear. “I need to find David. Maybe we can close one of the bulkheads and flood the atrium. Probably would give us some time”.
“Wha's going on? I can' hear where we're going! I can't hear anything!”, Elisabeth cried out from beneath Hannes, desperately trying to keep up with the two adults.
“Shh, shh, shh. Papa is over here. Come on, take my hand!” Hannes reached down, firmly grabbing the child with his left hand. With the other he reached for his holster, pulling out his pistol and clumsily trying to turn the safety switch with one hand while also running through the dark hallway.
“You're absolutely nuts! Do you even know where David is?”, he exclaimed as they sprinted around a corner. Soon after, the three reached reached a crossroad, with equally dimly lit paths going off in all four directions. Noises characteristic for ferocious firefights were coming out of all off them.
“Absolutely no clue. But he's probably somewhere down there with the others”, Theresa stated, using her rifle to point down one of the corridors.
“You're nuts!”, was the only thing Hannes could come up with to describe his view on things, firmly shaking his head in support of his own statement. Theresa was not all too pleased by that. And about as convinced.
“What, got any better idea? 'Cause now would be a damn great time for them!”, exclaimed, having to raise her voice over the noise of another distant explosion coming from somewhere down the path she wanted to take. She did not leave Hannes much time to respond, though.
“Look, you know where our fallback point is. Just...just get there and take whoever else has made it with you. I'll see what we can do about the Feds and then join up with you”. As if to formally bring this discussion to an end Theresa turned her back towards the two, symbolically taking a step down her chosen path – only to stop, and hesitantly turn around once more after a moment. Quickly she made her way over to the other two again and knelt down beneath Elisabeth. She took one hand off the rifle placed on her thigh and cautiously laid it on the child's cheek. Elisabeth, mute through fear, flinched for a second before grasping that it was her mother touching her. Upon realising, she let out but a quiet whimper.
“I'll be back in just a bit. You got to take good care of papa until then, okay?”. Elisabeth gave her mother a vague nod.
“Good”, Theresa proclaimed, taking that as her sign to quickly get up again. Wasting no more time she leant over to Hannes to give him a quick kiss, then sped off down one of the paths. The departure might have been abrupt, but they both knew that there was no time to be lost. Starting from maybe only half an hour ago everything had begun to fall apart at a breakneck pace, with the Feds breaching their hideout in the sewers. And with every minute they wasted down here it would be less likely to get out through one of the connectors without being caught and shot by squads finding and blocking them, one by one. So they had to get going.
“Come on, Li. We'll do this together, okay?”, Hannes said, looking down as he addressed his daughter with a faint smile, even though he knew very she would not take note of that gesture. Then he began rushing down the hallway, dragging her along.
“We'll do this”.
The words – his own words – kept echoing through his head even as Hannes managed to get a grasp of where he currently was once more. He found himself breathing heavily, his left hand still placed on his chest as it trembled mildly. His shocked stare had been resting on Annika up until now. However it had seemed less like he was looking at her rather than through her, not even seeming to take note of the shifting expressions of anger on her face. If someone asked him how long he had been like this he would probably be unable to answer the question. A few moments? A minute? Or perhaps indeed an eternity? To Hannes everything would feel about equally long.
Too long.
Taking his hand down in an abrupt movement, causing the long coat to flutter around a little, Hannes lowered his head. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but being at a loss of words for a few more, long seconds he gave the metal floor in front of him nothing but a frown. Why did she have to do this?
“Nika”, was the first word that Hannes eventually got a hold of, preceded by taking a deep breath. The barely noticeable tremble in his voice might have indicated the struggle inside him to remain calm himself, but it seemed to bear fruit. He did not want to shout at Annika anyway. What was the point, anyway?
“You have no idea what I've done in the time since you went underground. But just because I wasn't right in the middle of your great Volksrevolution it doesn't mean I sat on my fat arse drinking wine and reminiscing about the perfect society all my life. I have done things that I am pretty sure even you would consider 'worth dying for'. And believe me, I have died for them. Over and over again. Every day. So don't you-”.
Cutting himself of mid sentence, Hannes firmly shook his head. No, he would continue simply fuelling this argument with bitter remarks and accusations. That would get neither of them anywhere. Also, he was not sure whether he could actually bear this for much longer.
“It doesn't even matter. I didn't come here to make accusations, or to give you a lecture or anything along those lines, really. I came here because we were friends so long ago and I thought we could still be, and also because I was done fighting – why even? For me alone, it's all gone anyway. But then I heard you were still around. Still making the big plans, still understanding better than anyone else. If I think anyone can pull this mess together, then it's you. And I just wanted to see if I can help you.
Maybe I can't, though”.
Squished bigly ~Champ- Thanks, you're a champ. "What's the word for when it feels inside your heart that everything in the world is all right?"
There had once been a time where she would have immediately reacted, apologized even. Especially when she looked at the man. She could practically see him age within the short span of seconds he stumbled to the crate, taken aback by the harshness and hostility in her words.
The fact that she didn't in fact do so, didn't show compassion the way she used to back in the day, horrified her to the bone. She had always known that she had become hard, even cruel. Her entire demeanor, the mask she was wearing all day, after all was centered all around instilling fear and a feeling of powerlessness in whoever she was talking to. She had blackmailed, killed, murdered, tortured, disgraced and even betrayed, had become the terrorist people feared. The one person that could get the job done, no matter the cost. And she knew that she would stay that person... But that didn't mean she had to like it. One bit. And the feeling that she had just almost literally killed her past with this recent outburst made her feel sick. A few moments passed. First seconds, then minutes. Even in the scarce red light her face looked pale, devoid of life for a few moments, even if she didn't allow herself to cry out in frustration and self-loathing. Instead, she pulled out a canteen - another habit she had taken up in the years past - and offered it to her old friend.
"Gets you up."
She didn't say much aside from that, sitting down next to the man in deafening silence. Her mechanical hands were perfectly still, without a trace of the trembling she had once had in them during times of personal distress. Not because they couldn't do that - because she had turned that function off, a stark contrast to the way she looked in one direction consistently, staring at a point in the wall or at something behind it. She waited like this for a few minutes, giving him time to recover - and forcing herself to do so too. And maybe to finally thaw some of the ice that surrounded her heart - after all the cracks had become so visible that it wasn't really possible to hide them anymore.
"I won't ask, Hannes. If you want to tell me, you can, but I won't ask. Yet... Did you think that when you met me, you'd meet the same woman as the one you left on Hamburg with just a note saying 'they're coming'? Admit it or not, you hoped to get some of that past back by seeking me out."
For the first time in almost a year, her voice actually had color to it, a tone that wasn't indifferent or threatening. She sounded sad, the weight of her past and future sins weighing her down just as much as the grief for the ones lost along the way.
"I don't know if you can help me. I don't know if anyone can. Believe it or not, at the moment I'm nothing more than cog, spinning one way because that's the only thing it can do. Doing what's necessary. I won't tell you that I regret it, because I don't. But the way you probably thought you could help me, to 'get me back on the right path'... That's over. There's some things you don't return from, and some innocence that cannot be regained.", She sighed, a deep groan coming from the lowest parts of her chest, unable to be contained, "But I need to set you straight about something. The Volksrevolution ain't pretty. It's not righteous, it's not even 'great'. It's necessary. In it's name I've done things I didn't know I was capable of doing, crossed lines that weren't supposed to be crossed... And even if I met some people along the way that maybe brightened the world a bit - "she went quiet for a moment while her memories wandered, passing the few 'friends' she had made during her time, and how she had failed and eventually lost all of them, her facial expression changing from the faintest hint of a smile to one that was darker, much darker."- they're all gone now. Lost in the 'great' revolution, or pawns in a game of ambition.
So no, I don't know if you can help me. I don't know if you even truly want to, or know what you'd get yourself into. I won't tell you that I wouldn't value it if you provided your expertise, we can certainly use it... but at the end of this path there's no salvation, even if we succeed. Only damnation and the faint glimpse of a hope that on the ashes of what we burn down humanity will someday build a stable foundation."
Quietly Hannes had taken the flask out of Annika's hands. For a little while he gave it a good once-over, inspecting its simplistic shape and the faint scratches that were plastered all over it. There was something inside him wondering when exactly she had picked up drinking like this. But in all honesty – he felt so devoid of strength at this moment that it was doubtful as to whether anything could break the lump which had formed in his throat. Anything apart from the contents of this bottle, perhaps.
Who knew? It had worked in the past, too. For a little while, at least.
Minutes passed as they both sat in silence, the only noises filling the void being the quiet, metallic outcries of the struggling ship and the occasional sound of liquid transferring from a metal vessel into Hannes' mouth as he took another sip. Whatever it was, it tasted strange, just like someone had filtered it using a stinky, damp piece of cloth. But it had a sufficient burn to it, so there was not all too much to complain about.
It took some time – and perhaps a good half of the canteen's content – before Hannes had picked himself up somewhat, or at least enough to do anything besides sitting in this overpowering silence. The quiet sound of metal hitting against metal filled the room as he put the flask down on the floor beneath him, giving it a gentle push in Annika's direction without even looking. The hand which had held it up until now had found its way back to him, coming to rest atop his left knee. Slowly slightly shaky fingers scratched back and forth across the fabric of the heavy duty trousers he wore beneath his coat as they moved inwards to form a fist and loosening it immediately afterwards.
“Only damnation”, he repeated Annika's words, more mumbling them towards himself than trying to use them as a point to pick up the conversation again. She sure was right about that, whatever that might entail for her personally. There had not been a single person going down the path they choose that had not ended up getting destroyed in the process. Or who did not end up destroying everything around them. Hannes had seen enough of these people to understand. He had to live with this realisation himself, every day. And he was sure Annika had her own baggage to carry, too.
A line full of bags stretching out to the horizon.
“Yeah, sure”, he eventually proclaimed, realising that his tongue had loosened enough so he could get himself to speak once more. What that statement, rather lacking in context, was in reference to would, for the moment, remain a mystery. Instead, more seconds of silence followed.
“I had a little child”. The non sequitur came, as per its nature, kind of out of the blue, preceded only by Hannes pulling his right hand out of the pocket it had rested in up until now. “She was born blind, hadn't seen a single thing in her entire life for all I can be sure of”. He had not intended to, what with all the time he had taken to calm himself down, but as he spoke he could he could feel his throat clogging up again. As he continued to push through anyway his voice turned tremulous, as if a grown man was mere moments away from breaking into tears.
“But sometimes I had the feeling she could see farther than anyone else, maybe even you. She was smart and always curious, kind and considerate. Too much of a bright light for the garbage hole we had borne her into”.
As he searched for a way to continue Hannes stared at the ceiling below them for a few seconds, following the trails of exposed pipes and cable canals that were visible at points where the metal plating had been removed. Eventually he settled for taking another sip, reaching out with his gloved hand grab the flask once more. Following the quiet sound of him drinking he made a face that seemed not quite sure what it wanted to express. But whatever it was, a profound bitterness must have been part of it.
“She might have seen farther than anyone else. But she did not see that mine. Neither did I”. Now he had done it. Hannes had barely even managed to squeeze out his last words, a single tear welling up in the corner of his eye. He clenched his gloved hand into a fist. It let out a metallic creaking not all to unfamiliar to the cries of the dead freighter.
“I lost my hand. I lost her. Her mother's gone, too. And everyone I fought with. Either dead, rotting away in some prison cell or scattered across all winds. Hell, I don't even know where my son is, and I'm sure he's somewhere out there! Everything's lost, they're all gone. The only straw that was left to try and reach for was when you turned back up. So, yes, of course I wished it could have been like so many years ago, if just a little! But I'm not stupid, Nika. That's not how it works. That's not how any of it works”.
He put down the flask, this time on the small piece of crate that was free between them, diligently avoiding to look at Annika. “I know you're not the same person you once were. How could you be? I know that the revolution is not pretty. It's a higher cause taken up by a bunch of people who might be the biggest hive of scum and villainy there is. And I also know that I'm not sure if I can help you with whatever you are doing. I sure am tired of this all.
But I'll tell you, it's probably the only thing I still can do, if anything. I got nowhere else to go any more. It's either that or laying down, waiting to die. And if I'm going to do that, it would even be nice if you were to just shoot me”.
Squished bigly ~Champ- Thanks, you're a champ. "What's the word for when it feels inside your heart that everything in the world is all right?"
![[Image: 3zILYA0.png]](https://i.imgur.com/3zILYA0.png)
