Darkness. She needed darkness.
Ana raised the spoon to her mouth slowly, concentrating on the action. It was stupid; this fear was stupid. They'd hidden, hadn't they? Even Angelica had remained concealed within the tent rags! For the circumstances, everything had gone as well as could be expected, and they remained undiscovered. Hell, Ana had even managed to get what she assumed to be some good photographs, and she'd done so with every bit of professionalism she ever knew she had.
But the fear was setting in, the realization of just how close they came to- death, apparently. Food would stay here nerves, and she finally swallowed the mouthful of rice, but she desired darkness. A hiding place. A-
The portable darkroom was still within the wreckage of her tent, protected within its leather casing. How had the photographs turned out? How much detail had she managed to capture? Placing the bowl beside her into the ground, she stood to retrieve the darkroom. The group would be engaged in their vote for the foreseeable future, and she didn't really care where they went. All she knew, all that mattered, were the pictures.
A few pairs of eyes noted the young chronicler’s movements, but only one lingered.
How Peter retained the ability to watch Ana move away was inexplicable. Andrew had made good on his promise of gin once they returned, and Peter - tired, beleaguered man that he was - hadn't paid much heed to abstaining. Yes, the pain had dulled greatly...and so had any other cognitive thought and concerns. His head felt as if it had been stuffed with cotton balls.
Even still, concern laced his features. Ana broke away from the group, and Peter set his own bowl of rice porridge down. Back in the woods, he'd managed to find a thick walking stick of sorts, and with its aid he rose slowly, wincing as he limped after the Russian. Andrew’s words echoed in his head like a somber song.
“Do you notice anything… strange about Miss Ana?"
Peter's brows worried together.
"Ana?"
He got a grunt in reply, the effort of hoisting the fallen tent cloth and its posts in one go something of a challenge for the journalist's small frame.
"Huh?" she replied, breathlessly, turning. The damned humidity, the fright of the airship, the focus on her task, and certainly the struggle of lifting more than she ought, had already left Ana with beads of sweat on her brow. She hardly seemed to notice. By this point, it was honestly more concerning if you did
not sweat. And anyway, her general hygiene was not nearly so important as was finding that darkroom.
Identifying her tagalog by sight and greeting him with a smile, she returned to her task. The cloth was moved aside, true; still, no small amount of chaos remained beneath it. To her memory, the leather case had been stored under her cot. She went to clearing the mess with gusto, and no small amount of desire to get the
damnable pictures printed.
Peter's returned smile was fleeting. He stepped a bit closer, watching the frenzied, somewhat fuzzy activity of the woman with no fair amount of puzzlement.
"Y'alright there?" He asked.
Not that there was much the man could do to help with...whatever she was doing. With the end of the stick, he gestured loosely at the mess she was pawing through.
"Looking for something?"
"Da, Petrov. Something."
Clothing, books, sacks, and bags, she tossed aside, giving little care or even consideration about their contents. There, finally, was the cot. And there, hiding in its shadow, was the darkroom. The leather case was to all appearances still whole, somehow reasonably pristine despite the long journey it had taken with them. Ana pried it up and slung it across her shoulder, carrying it much like a carpenter might carry a length of wood.
"Come! Let us see what the pictures will show us."
Without further ceremony, she began the short trip back to the small gathering.
To focus on one subject in particular was proving to be somewhat of a challenge. Had Peter not been so encumbered with his weakened leg and, er,
muddled thoughts, his reaction may have been spared delayment. He pivoted, following Ana much like a household pet, his demeanor equally as earnest.
“Pictures...I see,” came Peter’s absent-minded reply - even though he had no idea what the woman was referring to. Ana had some object or the other about her person, and hazy eyes went from that to the Russian’s face with fading focus.
“So. Ana. You, ehm…” He rubbed a bit at his chin, a nervous tic. “We’re getting after a bit of time here, and I meant to ask for yesterday how you were getting along, so it were?”
"Oh, you know. I am getting." It was a short hike, and they were quickly drawing near to the crowd again. Bearing not quite directly toward it, Ana slowed to a stop some yards away. She had already been opening the casing, and she crouched down before spreading the constituent parts and chemicals before her.
"Anyway," she said, nonplussed by the attempted shift in subject matter, "Mr. Greene requested I photograph the, er,
incursion. I managed to get a few from the trees."
Short stakes, a dark and opaque sheet, a few shallow pans, and several bottles of chemicals were quickly assembled. Where proper darkrooms encompassed the entire project, person and subject matter, this instance necessitated lying down and crawling forward beneath a curtain to maintain the dark integrity of its interior.
"Well, bit of a chancing the arm there, but no fair bit of surprise to me," Peter murmured somewhat incoherently. "You've got the proper skills."
The smile brightening his face hopefully helped to clarify his thickening brogue; he had apparently meant the comment as praise. With nothing to do but stare blearily at her progressing activity, the nucleus for his initial attempt at conversation returned to his mind. He blinked slowly, worry resurfacing in his eyes.
"Ms. Ana, do ya- well, I...heard you're after a bit of a fright yesterday. In the temple, I mean. Haven't really had much time to talk to ya and, ehm…"
The thought skipped away unfinished. Peter cleared his throat.
"You sure you're fine?"
From the shoulders on up, Ana had disappeared. The black curtain of the darkroom obscured her, where she had disappeared with her camera after giving Peter a non-committal shrug. Stoppers popped, mechanical releases clicked, and for a few moments, only the sound of activity came from within. Indeed, the quiet ambience of the nearby group conversing about their next step created the greatest auditory distraction. A breeze picked up; soft and sticky, it nevertheless was a welcome change to the country's humidity, carrying as it did some of the cool sea air in its wake.
"None of us are fine, Petrov." Her voice was muffled, the dark cloth thick to keep out the external light. Yet the strain in her tone was obvious, like a tea kettle finally whistling from the pressure within. "This is already more than we agreed. Last year was- [l]obydennyy[/I], normal, compared to this time. We said yes to an expedition to find a plant, yes? Why, then, are we looking into ruins? Why, then, is a Siamese airship scouting above us?"
Ana fell quiet, and the gentle patter of activity replaced her concern.
"Ah! But you were injured!" Her arms remaining within the room, she poked her head out to cast a look of worry first to Peter's leg and then to his eyes. "You seem to be getting on okay."
"Yeah I suppose I am...getting on okay, like ya said…" Peter chuckled. "Thanks to Lung El’s tea and, ehm, Bertrum's...Andrew’s stock."
The awkward, unfocused pauses. The overtly nonchalant tone of voice. The relaxed stance that Peter took in the presence of a woman that was no kin of his own. Gin had degraded the man's own tenets of propriety. With a grunt, he came to sit beside Ana and her contraption, the distance between them suitable enough for another man but...certainly closer than Peter would have ordinarily allowed.
His head swiveled to face her, heavy on his neck.
"Ya know, Ana, I was oft- I often wondered how you were getting along and such after...with Roland. No man or woman ought to see such a thing." The Irishman's hands kneaded together, and he broke eye contact to stare blearily at the ground. He nodded once, twice. "I'm grateful to see you're alright. Doing well and such. Stout of mind - God could not have afforded a better thing."
A blank look, a small snort, and Ana was back inside the darkroom. The sound of dripping, sloshing liquid emanated from within, followed by the
wah wah wah of waving paper. It took some time. Photography was a tedious, time consuming activity, relying on the slow process of chemical reactions to bring the oft times blurry negatives to obscured life. And that was assuming the negative wasn't ruined in the process; an all too common result of photograph development.
"
God."
The muttered word was filled with vitriol and venom, obvious even through the dark cloth. A few moments later, and Ana withdrew from the darkroom fully. The fingertips of her hands were strained, and she brushed them off on her skirt.
"Petr-
Peter," she corrected, casting a slightly disparaging look at him. "You are too drunk to hear, maybe. We are not okay. I am not okay. God, your God, has not given me a stout mind;
I've developed that myself. Apart from my country falling to ruin. Apart from my- my father's death while I was visiting in the god-
damned jungle.
"I am
not 'okay'. No one here is. The only hope I cling to is that I can find answers." She gestured to the darkroom. "That these
pictures will give me answers."
She held Peter in a wordless, momentary stare.
"What do you hold to, Peter?"
It was the only thing to cut through the fog.
Neither profane talk nor biting tone stirred more than a blink from the devoutly Catholic man. He had heard worse from the heathenous dregs of mercenaries, and in his subdued state, he could only manage a slight grunt and the uncomfortable curl of his heart. No, it was not
that which filled his face with a sudden and sobering clarity.
He stood at the precipice of a danger only he could fully explain. It was a gate as of yet unopened, and with his inhibition impaired, he felt the words spill unbidden from his mouth in one big rush of air.
“Me wife needs me. She needs me so.” There was a horrid pause in his voice, a short, desperate inhale of air. “Deathly ill, so she is, and Lord I didn’t want to leave her side, but He knows I needed the money. Lord knows I…I’ve got to take care of Delia.”
I feel poorly, acushla.
His hands gestured helplessly in the air.
Ana grew quiet, her features softening from the iron look she had given him moments prior. She shifted, no longer kneeling, to sitting with her legs beside her, knees bent.
"
Bog dayet, a Bog beret.," she muttered. God gives, and God takes away. Life was unforgiving, and then you died. Alone. Like her father did. Like Peter's wife certainly would. Her thoughts strayed briefly to the source of her welcome distraction, the photographs, but they were still developing; it would be some time before the process was finished. In her forced patience, her dissatisfaction with- with everything had come flooding back, and all the moreso in light of her friend's inebriated confession.
"I am sorry, Peter."
Maybe Greene's fabled plant could save her, she wanted to say.
Maybe, if they were lucky, he could return with it in time. But she was not in the business of false hopes. Reality was cold and harsh, and setting expectations against likelihoods was cruel. All she could really offer, therefore, was pure and honest sympathy.
"I am sorry."
"No, no, no…Don't."
The muffled protest shot forth from his mouth like bullets. Peter's position was nearly infantile: hunched forward, curled neatly against himself, his fingers kneading at the bridge of his nose in anxious repetition. He repeated his affirmations in the same agitated manner, and he shook his head against his hands.
"Don't apologize, Ana, please. Don't. Please."
Something was twinging in the back of his subconscious like a brute banging on the front door. Though Peter had downed a fairly good portion of the gin bottle on his own, the stout Irishman was not yet past the edge of drunken oblivion. There was a pullback evident in the slightest catch of his final words, the sudden, fleeting sharpness of his green eyes. Sobriety lingered in his dismayed state: he was disturbed, utterly and completely, by his friend's chosen words to mollify his sorrow. The semantics told of an unspoken hand in his troubles, and he was resolutely against any such admissions from the Russian chronicler.
Of course, it was quite possible the woman hadn't realized the subtle wordplay. But Peter never considered such a thing.
Besides - his emotions could only be staved off for so long, and as his tongue had been loosened, so too his mouth opened once more.
"I'm sorry too. I'm sorry yer back in this god-forsaken land with the rotten lot of us when ya ought to be home, happy, with your father - God
bless him - not feckin' miserable with the lot of us. I'm sorry I ever let him get in me feckin' head and get me wound up thinking I'd be happy with a wife and child and home of me own whilst knowing the good Lord's truth that I'm a good for nuthin bastard's boy wanting for nuthin but trouble. I'm sorry. I'm sorry...for the both of us."
She shook her head.
"
Nyet. If I am not allowed, then you are, neither.
"Besides, the effort counts for something," Ana continued, leaving off the following
but bad soil still yields no crops.
The photographs. She spared the darkroom a look. The effort she'd taken to procure them. The risk. Yet, they might have been badly focused. Perhaps the film was poor quality, and the negative was badly blurred. Perhaps her own fields would prove barren, her efforts in vain. Naught was to be done but wait.
Peter, though. The man was a shell of his usual, stoic self, his strength drained by injury, alcohol, and impending tragedy. His was a longer, harder row to hoe. The pictures still needed time to develop; they would not be ready before she returned. Muttering something about checking their progress, Ana ducked her head back within the red darkness. A tiny lantern inside illuminated the workplace in muted fashion, casting tinted light. Indeed, the photographs needed more time.
A whim, or perhaps inspiration, struck her. Carefully, so as to not disturb the set up, she removed the chain about her neck. The Khuman Tong followed; it seemed to her to shine with hellfire in the red lantern. Almost, she returned it within her blouse. But she did not. Instead, she held it close to her lips and whispered.
"
Eti kartinki ochen' vazhny. Pozhaluysta, zashchitite ikh."
These pictures are very important. Please protect them.
Setting it gently beside the row of hanging photographs with almost ritualistic care, Ana extracted herself and inspected her friend. Still there. Still a crumbling mess. Dusting off her knees, she stood.
"Come," she said, leaving no room for argument as she crouched down to lift him by his shoulder, taking care to grab his bad side. "This day finds you in dour mood. You need sleep; it is the best healer."
Ana's charge complied with obedience due a child. With her aid, the rifleman rose. He hardly noticed the dull throb of pain shooting down his leg. Something else had the man’s brows knitting together in their characteristic state of reflection, and he stood still, stalwart in his position.
"Wait."
His eyes flitted about unfocused, hazy.
His mission had in its inception held a dual purpose. Perhaps a less beleaguered Peter would have thought his following actions unthinkable, but as discerned so easily by Ana, the man was worn down from all fronts. With sleep came rest, clarity, and inevitably,
regret, and he knew his next action would be the furthest thing from his mind.
Conservative thoughts no longer barred him. Only the worries of a friend remained.
The simple act brought him back a year before. With a pinched look, Peter took Ana's hands and pressed his trusty pistol into her palms. Cold metal met the warmth of flesh; retracting his hands away, he nodded, apparently agreeing with some thought within his own head.
"Ana, I can't be getting after you in a pinch like I'd like to...not anymore, not with, well- my
leg like this, so I...well, ehm. Here."
Ana took it without argument, turned it about in her hand to hold the pistol barrel, and
thumped Peter on the head with the wooden grip. It was not a heavy hit; feeling the weight in her hands, she had pulled her punch. But it was certainly meant to be felt.
"
Lenivyy idiotskiy trus," she rebuked, pressing the weapon back into Peter's hands. The unsettling fear she felt at even holding the thing again, she tried to cover with indignation and bravado; the sudden cold sweat on her brow indicated her true emotion. Her willingness to learn the previous year had been smothered in Roland's violent death.
"If your leg will constrain you, then I will cut it off myself. Otherwise, you improve, leg and demeanor both." There was a moment, heavy with the tension of fear and concern and trepidation. The empathy Ana displayed before was still in the background but now overshadowed. "Now speak no more of this, Petrov."
“Well.”
The rebuke - both verbal and physical - had landed soundly on the rifleman. A bit dumbfounded by the unexpected response, Peter stood there blinking slowly, much like a child who had been met with a fierce tongue lashing. In truth, he had...and just as meekly, he returned the pistol to its holster as gin and exhaustion helped evaporate the rest of whatever plan he’d undertaken regarding it.
Without another word, Peter retrieved his walking stick from the ground. A bundle of grumbled, heavily accented words tumbled from his lips, sounding loosely like
thank ye kindly, and the man set off, his leg throbbing dully with every step, helped along by the sturdy arm of his Russian friend.
And true to Ana’s command, not another word regarding the gun crossed his lips.
For her part, Ana gave the darkroom tent one last look. It should be fine, right? The Khuman Tong should be fine.
Right?