Page 35 of Ascendent
“No. They don’t.” Sasha held Sergey’s stare. “Everyone loves you. Everyone.”
“It’s all about who you know, and who can help you. I’m the president, but I don’t have many friends left.”
Sasha’s eyes flicked away, his gaze going distant, as if staring into the past.
“No one will care at all about me anymore if food shortages begin again. If inflation spikes. If the economy crashes. Love can turn to hate in an instant. People just want to live. If living comfortably means corruption, and President Puchkov’s anti-corruption measures and civil war brought riots and famine, well––” He shrugged. “There are a hundred men who will try to replace me.”
“What about what Putin did in St. Petersburg? Could you give authority to the cities, the districts? Allow them to export materials for direct imports? It’s the 21stcentury. There has to be a way to make the process more accountable.”
This was what he always wanted, him and Sasha together, working through Russia’s problems. Sasha had the mind of the youth, his gaze fixed firmly on the horizon, the future, while his bones were made of pure Russian fortitude. There was no one better to help him chart Russia’s future. “I want to, but I am very cautious. I saw it go horribly wrong in my past.”
Sasha inhaled sharply. His hands clenched down on Sergey’s. His skin was cold once more. “If things went wrong once, does that mean it should never be attempted again?”
There was an edge to Sasha’s question, a harshness to his voice. As if he were asking more than just about food imports and financial balance sheets. He tried to step outside the moment, look at everything from the distance. What was Sasha asking him? What didn’t he know?
Nearly everything, really, about Sasha’s past.
“I think we learn. And adapt. And find out better ways to be. And to do.” He stroked Sasha’s fingers, his scabbed knuckles. “For example. I’m twice divorced. But I’ve learned each time, and I would marry again.” He waited, until Sasha’s gaze found his. “I would.”
Icebergs floating in space, a little boy’s wonder, a thousand stars streaking the night sky over Simushir Island. He could get lost in Sasha’s stare, in the guarded hope, the banked terror, the naked, raw plea. He leaned forward, pressed his lips to Sasha’s. “I would, for you,” he breathed. “I would do anything for you.”Even restart a bankrupt space program. Even pick you over the entire nation.
Tolstoy said when you love someone, you love them as they are, not as you’d like them to be. Even with all of Sasha’s frustrations, the way he made Sergey’s soul bleed and his heart scream, he wouldn’t change a thing about him. Not one single thing.
But, he had to ask. He had to, even though he knew it would eviscerate him. Some truths should lie in the dark, in the quiet of the soul. “What about you?”
“You are asking me to marry you?” Sasha’s expression detonated, a bomb going off somewhere in his soul. Sergey felt the deepest inside of Sasha shiver, saw his heart hiccup.
“No. If I ask, I will ask properly.” He kissed Sasha again, rescuing him. Sasha’s lips were chilled, and he kissed him once more, trying to warm him up. The fire, their embrace. He thought Sasha would be warm by now. “Do you cut the past off? Do you learn from it or do you lock it away, never to be seen again?”
It seemed like a black hole opened somewhere within Sasha, something that sucked him away. One moment Sasha was there, a finger’s width away from him, and the next, everything about him seemed to vanish, the light inside of him shuttered. Extinguished. Faint trembles settled over his body. Shivers. Sergey rubbed his hands up and down Sasha’s arms.
“I don’t know,” Sasha said. “I’ve never looked back before.”
“Tell me about you?” Sergey hitched closer, tried to draw Sasha into his arms. If he couldn’t feel Sasha’s heartbeat beneath his palm, he’d have worried. Sasha was still desperately cold. “Tell me stories about you?”
“You’ve heard stories already.” Mechanical. As if Sasha were brushing him off.
“I’ve heard of your favorite flights. Going supersonic. Seeing the curvature of the Earth and the black of space below the Karman Line. Your first call sign.”
Sasha flinched.
Sergey stared.
“Tell me about the boy Sasha Andreyev? Your military file said you are from Siberia?” He had the pale skin, blond hair, and blue eyes of a Nordic Russian, the angular planes of a Muscovite. Not the wide face of a Siberian, the darker complexion. Maybe, generations ago, a family member had been exiled to Siberia, part of Stalin’s gulags. He wanted to know everything. Sasha’s childhood, a Russian born at the millennium. His entry into the military. Was it conscription or was it voluntary? How was he picked for flight training?
Sasha sucked his top lip into his mouth, sucked and sucked until the pink was gone, only pale skin remaining. His eyes were unlocking, spirals of storms that ravaged the Chuckhui Peninsula spinning in his depths.
The greatest warrior of all is Time and Patience.
I will wait for you Sasha. I will wait as long as you need.
“Have you ever heard of Kayerkan?”
“No.”
“You have of course heard of Norilsk?”
Sergey groaned. “The most polluted city in all of Russia? Yes, I’ve heard of it. I hear about it every year when the international inspectors come calling. When the UN reports are put out. When the environmental agencies scream for us to undo what it took the Soviets a century to destroy.” He shook his head. “You know, as part of the cleanup, they are now mining the surface dirt? The air pollution, it was so bad for so many decades, and rained so many heavy metals, that now palladium and nickel are just in the dirt.” He scoffed. “Amazing.”
