Chapter Text
The second month Jim was brought to Kamchatka, he met the strange guard. He didn’t notice him at first. The man was dressed no differently than the others – just another faceless grey blur among the endless biting cold and constant dull pain of hunger.
As time went on, Jim thought he probably wouldn’t be able to distinguish the two sensations anymore – cold and hunger – one flows into the other to form an endless bitter stream laced with despair, and the occasional foreign words shouted into his face.
He had developed the ability to tune out the now familiar, yet still impenetrable sounds, guttural and nasal at the same time, which used to bother him as much as the grey sour mush that was his lunch.
But that also meant he’s not learning any Russian by not listening, which probably would not serve him well in the long run.
Like how when one of the guards started to scream at him as he was shoved into the snow after a back breaking day at the rails. How the man's face reddened with cold or anger or the effort of shouting, his vowels harsh and shrill like he was trying to talk to someone with hearing difficulties. Until he gave him a hard slap across the face with a pair of leather gloves, then repeated the words once more that twisted into something incredibly ugly.
Jim’s temper flared and for the first time since he’d arrived at that particular hellhole, he couldn’t find a reason to care. He shouted something back along the lines of I don’t understand you stupid fucking pig, and predictably got punched in the stomach.
His hands came up to protect his head as he bent towards the muddy, icy ground, as more blows kept coming, as a few more guards at some point joined in.
A voice rang out, a hand on his collar lifted him out of the circle of fists and boots. The momentum sent him into a pile of iron railings stacked by the road. Jim barely spared any effort to look up, busy trying to find his footing.
The man – dressed as any other guard – loosened the grip and let Jim fell into a heap by his feet, and leaned back lazily against the pile, exhaling white puffs of cloud around the cigarette hanging at the corner of his lips.
He spoke in a bored voice to the rest of the guards, who grew curiously quiet with something akin to contempt or apprehension lingering in their eyes.
As the group slowly, reluctantly dispersed, the man turned to him and uttered the first sentence Jim could actually understand ever since he’d left the ruins in Hawkins and a broken heart behind however long ago.
“That’s very stupid of you, American.”
It didn’t register for a second. Then it dawned on him what it was –
The shock of hearing a perfect generic American accent combined with the absurdity of circumstances lifted Jim’s head. He met startlingly blue eyes and a sharp smirk.
“What the fuck?” was the only response that came out of Jim’s jumbled mind.
The guard barked out a laugh, suddenly slowed his voice into a deeper, more deliberate rumble, and drawled with a thick Russian accent.
“Is this easier for you to understand?”
Jim stared at him, uncomprehending and unbelieving, until the guard rolled his eyes and continued in that much too artificial rolling and clicking of tongue, putting on a show, delivering almost a cruel mock at Jim’s sense of reality.
“I need to get used to speaking English this way again. They might not know any word I say here but they do recognise the voice of a traitor.”
The man purred and bounced his last syllable like a cat. It was too much. It shocked Jim into speaking.
“Who are you?”
He watched the guard closely as his brain unfroze itself a little. No matter how American the guy had sounded before, the now “fitting” accent plus the sheer Slavic-ness of his look (Jim had learnt sometime ago to recognise that particular angle of jawline, the subtle slope of forehead and the little dip between the brows) almost made Jim doubt what he had heard seconds ago.
“Someone who could appreciate the finer point of human communication.”
Jim narrowed his eyes into a wordless "is that so".
The guard extended out a mitten-covered hand that looked ridiculous compared to what the others wore, which were standard issued leather gloves. And the rare exchange after months of not being able to converse made Jim accept it – made him growl a second too late after being immediately shoved back down by that same hand into the snow. Some of the slush got into his collar.
The guard shrugged non-apologetically after two soldiers walked pass them.
“Can’t be too friendly now can I.”
It was that damn perfect American voice again, quietly spoken, yet pierced through the cold and hunger like a thunder, making Jim shiver not just because of the icy water running down his back.
The guard gave him a wink without moving the rest of his face. And casually sauntered away, leaving Jim half lying in the snow.
–––
By the second time he met the guard, Jim had learnt the man’s name – which dissolved the last thread of doubt in Jim’s mind about him being actually related to Good Ol’Uncle Sam – and the undeniable fact that all the other guards seemed to hate him and fear him at equal measures.
There were about two dozens of them roaming the ground during work hours, and most seemed to enjoy being hands-on with the prisoners. Meaning, they punch and kick and whip to keep themselves from freezing or simply being bored to death.
Jim had never seen Antonov touch anyone except that singular tug and shove, no matter how cold the wind bites, or how hard the shouty one poked his finger into the man's chest, obviously trying to provoke.
Jim saw him (a head smaller than his colleague, still wearing the absurdly fluffy mittens) leaning slightly into the finger and muttered something calm that made the other guard step back in alarm, anger transformed into hesitating hatred. After a pause the man spat at his feet and stormed off. The gesture only seemed to amuse Antonov, until his eyes, crinkling, found Jim’s across the rails.
Jim looked down sharply to refocus on his work. But he could sense the weight of the other’s gaze, growing heavier by the second, until the voice Jim thought about too often than he wanted to admit spoke softly from behind, muffled by the ear flaps on Jim’s hat.
“What do you miss the most, American?”
And in that second Jim wanted to punch him for speaking in that pretend and too-perfect-to-be-real voice, for reminding him of all that he had lost and would never get back again.
Jim didn’t look up when he answered back with a question, with too little bite for it to be purely rhetorical.
“And what do you know about the things I miss?”
“Oh I know enough, I have seen the pictures. Hollywood, Camel cigarettes and peanut butter. The best America has to offer.”
“Are you honestly saying you got all that from watching films?” Jim gestured with his chin, trying to point to the absolute contradiction that is the existence of him.
“The Great Escape. My son’s favourite. We went to the cinema four times to see it.” Antonov ignored his question in favour of something that looked like genuine reminiscing.
Jim stopped his hammering and straightened up to his full height.
“What’s the point of this conversation?”
He doesn’t think there’s a single cinema in the whole Soviet Union that would show American war films openly. Let alone four times.
Antonov grimaced a little before answering, a grimace that made his face look strangely vulnerable.
“Don’t you want to go home, American?”
Jim stopped breathing, choked by an unspeakable mixture of anger and hope.
“The biggest mistake Steve McQueen made was the fact they had no friends on the outside. One can not break out only from one side of the wall.”
Jim’s voice broke a little. “What are you saying? What’s in it for you?”
Antonov shrugged, like what he was offering Jim wasn’t a possibility to escape, a reason to live. Like he wasn’t offering Jim his whole fucking life back.
“What would anyone want in this situation?”
Jim nodded, heart pounding still too slow to catch up with his brain.
“I can’t offer you much. But I have a trust fund in America. You help me get contact, you will get your money.”
Antonov watched him for a while, face betraying nothing. Then, just as Jim opened his mouth ready to promise more than he could give, the Russian suddenly smiled with teeth.
“That will do just fine.”
Jim later realised he never said how much, and the guard never asked.
–––
The second person in the entire camp who spoke English to Jim, was the head warden.
One night not long after they'd talked about the logistics of getting a coded letter to America, two guards came to drag Jim away from his cot.
They pushed him into a room with thick soft carpets and tall wooden bookshelves. Jim allowed himself a small moment of disorientation, suddenly conscious of where his shoes had been.
The man sitting behind the desk glanced at Jim over the top of his glasses, pen never stop scribbling in a leather bound book.
After a minute he spoke without looking up.
“Dmitri Antonov.”
And Jim’s heart stopped, sank, churned, and then started up again, hammering louder and louder until everything else was drowned out.
He was stupid. So stupid. El was right to think him stupid all along. How could he ever gave his trust away like a fool just because some guy can pronounce “r” the American way – and now they know Joyce’s address, they can get to her, her sons, and El –
“What about him?” Jim forced out before he could throw up on the warden’s desk.
“You seem quite friendly with one another.”
The warden put down his pen, closed his book, and stapled his fingers together on top. He looked like a fucking university professor.
“How would you like to make your life a little easier, American, by doing me a favour?”
The way the warden pronounced his words made Jim realise bitterly how good an actor Antonov was. He kept his silence because nothing really made sense or mattered.
“Get close to him. Ask him about his previous job. You come back and tell me everything he said. Names, places, everything. I will see to it you be put on kitchen duty for the winter, yes?”
Which meant no more lifting and beating iron in a blizzard, which meant less cold and less hunger. Jim’s mind was reeling again.
“Who is he?”
The warden’s lips thinned and Jim knew he would be punished for asking questions of his own.
Surprisingly, after a beat, the man answered in a matter-of-fact tone.
“A traitor, a parasite, someone who turned his back on his own family.”
He snapped his fingers at the guards standing at the door. The conversation was over.
“Choose your side carefully, American.”
As the guard slammed shut the door to his grey little cell, Jim snorted out a hollow laugh in the dark. He is the American as everyone was so fond of reminding him – how is it possible there are sides to choose among the enemies?