xp_logs | Cruel Country: Mission

x-pressive.livejournal.com posting in

Where did Mark and Sofia get to, anyway?

So this was what hell was like. Sofia's eyes fluttered open and closed, eyes oversharpening her khaki surroundings into a myriad of diamond woven lines. A dull, even weight on her lungs and heavy, sticky air, made it impossible to breathe, and her one attempt at shifting into a sitting position made plenty sure she would not be trying again. So this was hell.

"Of course it would be taupe," she said aloud, voice raspy from under use, and tried to carefully open her eyes again, looking through damp eyelashes at a curious blur. "And with a very low thread count."

"And David said to Jonathan: 'I love you as my own soul. Let us get jiggy with it.' And lo, they did get jiggy with it for ten days and ten nights, until the Lord God struck their loins with a painful chafe. He said unto them: 'My children, seriously, take a break.'" Mark shut the small paperback Bible he'd been reading and looked up. He was smirking his usual smirk, but behind that was a clear expression of relief. "Good morning, Sof."

Sofia puzzled over the voice a moment, limply turning her head to the side. "You're not supposed to be dead."

"And wouldn't you know it, I'm not." Mark kicked himself up from the floor where he was sitting, and poured a glass of cool water for Sofia. "Good thing, too, because white robes and a halo are so last century. And I don't play the harp."

"Then wh-" Sofia started, before a straw came to rest on her bottom lip. She took it into her mouth, sipping cautiously, letting the water wet her teeth before sliding down her throat. "Thank you. I suppose I should just ask what has happened? Then we can make more tacky angel banter."

Mark put the Bible down on the small table by Sofia's cot, and reached into his dirty t-shirt to pull out a small golden cross hanging from a chain around his neck. "Guess what. We're missionaries now. We were 'working' with the Peace Corps . . . or was it UNICEF? I don't remember . . . anyway, we're relief workers who were trying to help in Sudan but were run out when our camp got massacred. You got shot and I had to carry you across the border without getting killed myself. And now we're being taken care of some honkies who are trying to spread Truth, Justice, and the Christian Way."

"You should have left me to die. Thank you." Sofia let out a soft hiss of pain as she pushed herself into half sitting with one leg. She forced a smile. "Do we get to sing songs and tell people they're going to hell, or is this the rare not crazy God spreading camp? I much prefer those. Maybe we can build a hut while we're here. Am I on drugs?"

"This is actually one of those 'We'll give you infrastructure if you just give us lip service' kind of missions. They're crazy, but not totally in the bad way." Mark shrugged and turned to gaze out the partway open tent flap. A number of dark-skinned youths could be seen laughing with a white woman, obviously one of the missionaries. "At least they managed to get the bullet out. The medics are disturbingly good at that."

"M'all for God, so long as it's not the crazy kind," Sofia slurred, squinting her eyes and giving her head a shake, as if that would clear the haze away. It wasn't one of her best ideas; she stared at him, willing the three Mark's to go back to one. "You're okay?"

Mark kept up his smirk, to reassure himself if not Sofia that everything would be okay. It was hard, though. "As good as I can be given that I had to drag your ass around this Godforsaken hell hole. And the whole lack of communication with anyone. I haven't tried to steal their radio to call SV. Last thing we need is to accidentally alert anyone that we're here and end up bringing in a whole bunch of soldiers."

His answer was met with a gentle hum of assent and the lowering of her eyelashes. "A shame to waste such a good rescue. I'll fix this," she mumbled, fighting to open her eyes again, her hands making fists in the rough sheets. "I'm sorry. Everything."

"At least you're not the one who forgot to charge their battery." He tried to keep a light tone, but it slipped a little. They were still stuck in a hostile foreign country, unequivocally guilty of capital crimes. And if the authorities managed to track them down, then not only would they be shot, but possibly the whole village and even the missionaries, too. "Just . . . get better, yeah? Get that leg fixed up and we'll try to slip into Kenya or something and get back home."

"Good point. Never mind, then." Sofia opened one eye and smiled at him, strained, but strikingly real. Things would be all right. "Come sit. You can read to me some more, maybe tell me what our fake names are. Or where I can get some underwear at some point."