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fly away [sid traveling moods]
#1
[note: i apologize in advance for however much i butcher the Russian language. some of it's on purpose!]

The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Two Towers


Week 1
The first week is an adjustment. Russia. Moscow. Flags hanging from balconies, people speaking in hushed tones in the streets. It's not a place for a tourist, but the red-haired American known to some as Sid Rhodes and to a growing number of others as Dr. Amelia Weston is not a tourist. Like she declared at the Customs desk, she is here on business. Like she put in a note left for those she left behind who cared to know, she's here on assignment. It had all be arranged months and months ago by her superiors at her new company, but a part, a cog in the machine had gone bad and had needed replacing. Sid is that replacement, and she's finding it an interesting and desperate struggle to fit into that slot. At least, fitting in is the first step. There will be other steps, but one thing at a time, Weston. One thing at a time.

It gives her something to think about. Packing, planning, canceling other plans, cleaning out her room at the Chantry, so on so forth so on. For a few weeks her mind is off her troubles and she can breathe easily. She does not eat much, but at least she can breathe. She has an argument with herself and an internal tantrum every morning, but in the end she has to get up. She has to go out. She has to take care of things.

And then there is the flight. Flights. Oh, to be trapped in an airborne metal can, no escape, nothing but thousands and thousands of space to scream before she finally hits the ground. Nothing but hours to think about that. Thinking ahead, she'd asked Luke to prescribe her something.

"I don't want to be unconscious," she told him, brow furrowed, mouth pursed. She does not want to be asleep in the presence of so many strangers while trapped in that airborne metal can. He gives her something else, Valium probably, something to calm her nerves and make it possible to get through the flight to New York and from New York across the Atlantic, and one final leg to her first destination. It's going to be something like a tour, they'd told her. She needs to meet her colleagues, all of them, and hey so long as someone else is buying all those plane tickets and booking all those rooms, who is she to complain?

The first week in the city is an adjustment, to be sure. There's a language barrier, covered at least in part by a shared knowledge of a dead language. Sid, lead scientist of the United States division, and Zoya, a scientist at Karelian, communicate through an odd mixture of Latin, English, and Russian. Eventually, both will have a better understanding of each other's language, but that first week? That first week is interesting. There's housing to be sorted, transportation, discovering the area around the hotel's compound, and becoming accustomed to the occasional but still all too frequent sound of a siren's wail going up throughout the night. It doesn't take long, actually, to start to get settled in. And with the settling comes a reminder of the constant ache in her chest of a heart broken and shattered by loss. Of the tightness and pressure of each breath as the guilt and the shame and the sadness tries to crush her ribs. There are days that it's a wonder she can drag her eyelids open at all, and days when it's not so hard to wake and rise and prepare for the day. There are moments throughout the day where she is fine followed suddenly and inexplicably by moments where it's a wonder she doesn't collapse dead in the street, in the cafe, in the lab.

Cycles, switching at random, or not random but still quite suddenly. Sid forges ahead, though, she must. Just because she doesn't remember living doesn't mean she should stop trying to remember it.

The emails she gets from home help. Frank sends her daily updates and pictures of Cecilia, usually of the bird peering intently into the camera's lens or lightly gripping the man's fingertip in her large beak. It helps. It does not take long for a package to arrive from one Kalen Holliday to her hotel room, because emails, such a bother. Texts are so much easier, and she has to agree that this is true. They text each other frequently, and it helps. They and the others help to keep her afloat, help to keep the intense homesickness at bay for a little while at least.

One night while she goes out for some fresh air and wanders outside of the city, to the other side of the Москва-река, she has a chance encounter with a fellow scientist who is also a fellow American who is also a fellow Mage. They talk about the Avatar Storms which keep him locked in this world, and they talk about a few other things. Sid is not at her best, but she's not at her worst, either, and so they get by. It helps. Ralph Aaron may leave Moscow never to see Amelia Weston again. He may never know how much his presence - strange and familiar and unfamiliar all at once - helps her.

The next day has her wandering the city after work, restless. Yearning. Desperate for something she can't put a name to. Sid makes her way along several small side streets and along one main thoroughfare and down an alley and hm, what is this? Did Fate draw her to this place? Or did her spirit decide without her Avatar guided her the rest of the way? Whatever the reason, coincidence or other, Sid finds herself standing in a small alley with a bar, a cigar shop, and a tattoo parlor. Hanging outside is a sign that reads: Тату феникс. Sid does not understand it (those are words she hasn't learned yet, but she will, and soon), but the pictures in the window tell her what she needs to know. With only a little hesitation, she enters the tattoo parlor.

The place is nicer inside than she would have guessed from the outside. It's clean at least, with a few pictures on a front wall with designs one can choose if one does not already have an idea or an image or a phrase in mind. Sid goes to the walls as an older man with iron grey hair steps out from the back. He calls a greeting to her that she politely returns. He asks her something and she looks at him, apologetic but confused, the hallmarks of a tourist. He doesn't seem to mind. They get all sorts wandering into this out of the way place. He comes around from behind the counter to stand with her, and ask her again. Sid takes a phrase book from her bag and, with both heads bent toward its pages, they stumble through a conversation.

"Чего ты хочешь?" he asks. To which Sid can only frown, shake her head, and shrug. He thinks about this, or perhaps he is counting in his head, Sid can't tell. But he is quiet a moment, looking to the ceiling. Then, "Кем ты хочешь быть?"

Sid considers.

"задаром."

His brows lift high on his forehead and he asks, unable to suppress a huff of amusement. "что?" Her own brows lower, but she has already given up being embarrassed at her faint grasp of the language. There's a lot to learn and a lot of mistakes to be made. That must not mean what she thinks it means. She looks at the wall of images, there must be something there that can- ah. There. She points to a picture of a bird with wings outstretched and looks back to him. "задаром как птица."

To which he laughs, not unkindly. "вольный как ветер," he says, moving his hand like to rest it on her shoulder, but Sid shifts. Moves away from him, frowning. The man expresses surprise, but moves his arm, holds his hands palms up to show he means her no harm. Well, no harm like that, anyway.

"вольный как ветер," she repeats slowly, and he nods, smiling. He points to her phrase book, then hooks his thumb back over his shoulder. They will find a way to discuss and plot and plan what it is that she wants done. It will take time, and it will be painful, but then, not all transformations happen all at once. And they are almost always painful.
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#2
Week 4
It is Sid's final week in Russia. Her time here has been more or less quiet. Quiet time in the lab with Zoya and her team, ignoring the looks that Zoya gives her. It's an illusion, isn't it? The closeness that people feel. It's only because Sid is a new face and they've spent time cloistered in a lab poring over slides that Zoya thinks she feels an attachment. Sid knows that now, or at least that's what she tells herself. There are true attachments, true friendships like what she's building even over a distance, even over electronics with one or two people back in Denver. And then there is this other kind of attachment. The one that is so easily broken. Sid avoids Zoya to the best of her ability, outside of the lab, at least. Only accepting the occasional dinner offer, only accepting the occasional lunch trip. Zoya is smart, Zoya is perceptive. It doesn't take her long to realize her attraction isn't reciprocated. It doesn't take her long to turn her attentions elsewhere.

Sid doesn't think that she's closed herself off. She doesn't think she's shut herself down emotionally, gone back to who she was when she first came to Denver, reset the clock. She doesn't feel like that person, anyway. There are others in the area that she spends time with, going to bars and clubs. Being a tourist with. She's not hiding, not like she did for years and years before settling into Denver Colorado. So she doesn't think it's the same.

Most of her free time is spent at Phoenix Tattoo, leaning forward while Sergei puts the needle to her back. What she's having done should take months, it should take ages, but she heals more quickly than he was expecting. Sid takes the pain well, too, but then, she would, wouldn't she? When she removes her shirt he can see the scars. The first time he saw them he found them disturbing, but now, as the time nears that Sid moves on to some other place, he's used to seeing them. He assumes they are a part of her, just as the lines he makes on her back and shoulders and arms. He's never asked about them, it's not his business. They talk about other things, and it's from him that Sid learns the more conversational side of the Russian language. From him she learns slang, and the vernacular sayings. From him she learns to speak less properly and more like an ordinary human being. He tells her stories, things to make her laugh and take her mind off...this. That. Everything outside the four walls of the parlor.

And she continues to make contact with the people back home who wish to contact her. Lena gets pictures of the clubs Sid visits, and gets grainy shaky-cam samples of what this or that deejay is playing. She sends Adam pictures of the bookstores she finds, asks him if there's anything he'd like while she piles up on her own. Before she leaves Moscow she'll have a box to send home, and that box will be full of books and nicknacks and things. And Kalen? Kalen gets the random things. Pictures of food and drinks, pictures from the tourist places and the parks and the courtyards. Some commentary on this or that thing. Sid does not contact them often, she is busy after all.

The last week comes almost before she knows it, and certainly before she's ready for it. But Zoya and her team don't need her anymore. They're on the right track for this and that project. It's time to move on.

Sid takes one last stroll around the city, following the line of the Moscow River, wondering if she'll run into that Etherite again, or if it'll be someone else. Vaguely, she starts to wonder if she'll see the one she wants to see - but before the thought can fully form she pushes it back, because no. That's unrealistic. That's impossible. And from now on she's going to listen to her gut when her gut tells her not to want more than what's possible.

Early morning (so, sometime in the middle of the night for them) on May 10th, Sid sends a message to Lena, Kalen, and Adam.

"Headed to Sydney today. See you on the other side."
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