David drew back, startled, struck by uncertainty and another impulse that felt infinitely more unidentifiable.
"Why?"
It escaped from his lips, an uncalculated whisper, uttered before he could evaluate its impact and the thousand other vectors that would arc away from that point.
As questions went, it was a good one, though he supposed. Rakitin's vehemence had been fueled by the anger of a brother, of man protecting his wife, a father seething with hate and helplessness over some harm done to his child. Strangely genuine in a way David was unused to.
He searched Rakitin's strikingly odd, dark gaze. The KGB lieutenant had pupils and irises that were almost the same shade. Unfathomable, hard to read, but David never went solely by the eyes anyway. Facial tics, body language, those held many more clues, but at this moment, with this particular man, David felt at a loss to understand any of them.
David's brows cut in, sharply.
"Just...like that?"
The lieutenant's earlier words came back to him now, drifting across his consciousness like a cloud that had a shape to it, a first formless, then recognizably distinct.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2008-05-02 04:01 pm (UTC)"Why?"
It escaped from his lips, an uncalculated whisper, uttered before he could evaluate its impact and the thousand other vectors that would arc away from that point.
As questions went, it was a good one, though he supposed. Rakitin's vehemence had been fueled by the anger of a brother, of man protecting his wife, a father seething with hate and helplessness over some harm done to his child. Strangely genuine in a way David was unused to.
He searched Rakitin's strikingly odd, dark gaze. The KGB lieutenant had pupils and irises that were almost the same shade. Unfathomable, hard to read, but David never went solely by the eyes anyway. Facial tics, body language, those held many more clues, but at this moment, with this particular man, David felt at a loss to understand any of them.
David's brows cut in, sharply.
"Just...like that?"
The lieutenant's earlier words came back to him now, drifting across his consciousness like a cloud that had a shape to it, a first formless, then recognizably distinct.
"Like it would happen in a vacuum?"