Snow For Leaves
Part 1
Far as Kate Beckett and Peter Bishop were concerned they couldn't have fallen into a more remote element. Kate hated it for no other reason than lack of choosing the destination herself and found zero redeeming qualities. Peter cheerlessly enjoyed it and found the bitter cold a perfect external balance to the bitterness freezing in his chest.
Neither knew the other inhabited the same city. They never crossed paths, never spared each other glances from behind their respective shaded goggles (behind which, at this moment, Kate's nose itched like crawling fire, but clumsy gloves, tight passenger space, and jostling prevented respite) and they never bumped into each other while one left a store as the other entered (which Peter did at this moment, enter a bakery, and the baker's smile waned into familiar weariness).
It wasn't serendipitous, had nothing to do with fate since nothing like that existed. Peter and Kate didn't believe in predestined anything because the rest of the divided world refuted it repeatedly with characteristic vicious fervor. Separation, isolationism, and paranoia cultivated by a severely inordinate echelon of self-preservation and barefaced wantonness pervaded, as it had for centuries, sharpening like a fine blade until every back was, at least once, pierced and bleeding. Fate had nothing to do with how much one gained, how much one kept, or how much one lost. Only capability did that. Intelligence, ruthlessness, a keen eye and, most important of all, willingness. Which, for both Peter and Kate, required they temporarily reside in the freezing, curved western jut of the northern continent in the western hemisphere in the freezing cold country of Baranov.
The capital of Baranov, Bering, sat at the lip of the peninsula, flirting with the Chirikov Sea. This far north, mostly by choice, cars were a rare and even then not often used commodity, aside from specially crafted snowmobiles and snowploughs that also occasionally doubled as taxis. It was in one of these snowploughs where Kate, sullenly huddled inside mountainous clothing layers, accidentally had her boot spat on. A strangled gulp of disgust escaped her throat. The driver's crescendo of hacks and coughs, impressively sordid if she was so inclined to think that of repulsive half-gags, ended up soaking into the laces. No twenty-three year old woman wanted a gnarled man's phlegm fused to their shoes, but she sucked her anger to her bottom lip and clamped it in her teeth, remained otherwise silent. Her fingers drummed, agitated. She could have stopped him right then and gotten out, and she certainly wanted to. But she wanted to walk to her destination—a firewood warehouse of all places—even less.
Walking anywhere in Bering was, to a foreigner especially, a chore. Not entirely because of reliable snow, but because of the lengths locals had gone to shelter from the cold. Bering in particular developed a unique web of ground level tunnel-like walkways that replaced regular roads. Like veins, walkways throughout the heart of the city flowed with pedestrian traffic, most extending shop to shop to shop. Unlike veins, the walkways crisscrossed, had some dead-ends, ran parallel, and were cryptic to anyone who didn't already know where they were going or had a good enough handle on the language to read the many directional signs. It was into a closed-off section of an older tunnel Peter shined his flashlight. He cast a shadowed grin at the older man who, with sessions of finagled befriending, begrudgingly allowed Peter access to the back of his bakery built specifically to section off the dangerous tunnel. Even at the age of twenty-five, like most young men, Peter still couldn't quite resist a possible deathtrap. Besides, he relished the jaws of compressed cold gnawing through his minimal, almost inadequate clothing layers, and this tunnel was a shortcut to the wood warehouse where a special order waited his retrieval.
Aside from importing certain specialty order tree logs to be chopped into little hunks perfect for burning in fancier fireplaces, Baranov remained one of five neutral countries in the world. After quietly seceding from the Motherland Baranov attempted no grabs for stakes in global markets, acquired no alliances, and kept loose strings around the borders, preferring to remain mildly to themselves. Baranov's harsh climate kept all but the most curious or most desperate anyway, creating an unassuming safe haven so long as authorities never caught wind of unwanted foreign trouble a visitor, or escapee, might attract. Which, again, for reasons pertaining strictly individual, brought Kate and Peter one hundred and two miles south of the Artic Circle, to Bering. Not fate.
Not when Kate dropped out of the plough taxi into a snowdrift level with her knees just as Peter shut the silver, rust-streaked warehouse door. Not when Kate swore as she waded through the snow and the plough kicked more at her back while Peter, teeth clenched, hunched over his injured hand he'd thwacked with the open office door right beside the entrance, willing himself not to shed tears and mostly failing.
No. It was all circumstantial.
For Nat, whose unending patience unfortunately fed my unbroken habit of artistic wallowing and putting things off. Thank you for such an interesting and difficult story to write (and I'm not being sarcastic). This turned out extremely different from that first draft I showed you. Hope you still approve.
I tried a different storytelling style for fun, but didn't expect the repercussions on the second half of what was supposed to be one whole chapter. It doesn't flow well enough (or maybe I'm just tired of looking at it, I dunno). So I'm breaking it up. Mostly to finally get this out, stop fretting about it just sitting on my computer. And because I can.