#iii. ds ; chasing liberty

[sachingja]

around them, the people are moving past them as in waves, but right here, right where they are, in the space between them, time seems to stand still and all the noise - the loud music, the voices piling on top of each other, the children yelling - is swallowed up, and the only thing dmitry can hear is the frantic beating of his own heart, the thrum of his pulse, like someone is chasing him. how ironic, he thinks, after all he has never been the one chased, he has been the chaser all this time, disguised as a friendly tourist, an amicable companion, and the lucky fool who allowed himself to fall into bed with the daughter of the president of the united states. but his luck always has a way of running out, so this really should not come as such a surprise to him, he shouldn't be standing here in disbelief, his brows furrowed at the sight of her, in the face of all her reluctance. what did he think was gonna happen? that she would fall into his arms and forgive him? of course not. if he has learned one thing about katherine in the past few weeks, entirely removed from the briefing the secret service had given him and only founded on the intimacy of knowing someone, is that she follows her own will, like a gust of wind rushing through fields of reed.

his thumb brushes her wrist, and he can feel her pulse mirroring his own, quick and quiet, only the tangible sensation of her adrenaline beneath his fingertips. fight or flight. he has been there, too many times to count, but he never thought he would be at the receiving end of it quite so soon. this was all supposed to play out differently. he was supposed to do a good job. an easy job.

he opens his mouth to speak, to retort something - anything, and how is it suddenly so hard to talk to her? but she pulls out of his grasp, sand between his fingers after all, and the words are dying then and there, leaving nothing but dust in his mouth, the taste of dry ash. his mouth clicks shut, lips pressed into a resolute line. sure, if she wanted to do this her way, he would not deter her any further, but the one thing she has to know before she leaves him here, before she vanishes into thin air and out of his sight -

" i will not do anything you don't want me to, " he says, and it might sound hollow after all he has done already, but he finds that he means it, every word. if he could change the past and make it come undone, he would, but he is just a man and nothing else. he doesn't possess the power to change anything, cannot rewrite history the way it would befit him, not the way her father can, anyway. all he has is his word; all he has right now is a few precious moments more with her, the kind of luxury he should have never indulged in but couldn't help himself to do so anyway. " miss pulitzer, " he adds, and he takes a step back, respectfully, the distance between them already bigger than just those few steps he allowed himself.

then, he tilts his head and watches her, trying to commit her to his memory in case this might really be the last time they will see each other. the way her hair falls in careless disarray, how the sun has kissed her skin in a lovely shade of pink, the kind you would only find in paintings in museums, where dmitry would dwell to kill time with a roof above his head, the fury in her eyes, and the tears that she cannot refuse, that she seems to be angry about, that he would want to brush away. his hand flexes once, twice, but in the end he shoves it into the pocket of his pants, or else he might do something really stupid.

she doesn't want you to touch her, he reminds himself.

" if it means anything to you, " he speaks quietly, as if someone might overhear them. as if anyone cares. " i never lied about this, " he gestures between them while retaining a mindful distance, as if the air he might stir would be too much. " yes, i lied about why i am here, but i never lied about a single touch, or a single night, or any minute i spent with you. " the words sound clumsy, feeling unfamiliar and thick in the midst of his accent now, but he is too tired to do anything about it, or try to disguise it. this is who he is; she might as well know.

FOR A SPLIT SECOND SHE THINKS SHE MIGHT HAVE SUCCEEDED; that enough people have swarmed the streets and filled the space between them, allowing her an escape from dmitry's sight. but then her name rolls off his tongue, the intonation or pronounciation just slightly unfamiliar ─ is it an accent colouring in the edges, yet another lie floating to the surface and revealing itself? the sound is enough to make her halt, which grants him just enough time to catch up and wrap his hand around her wrist. the feeling of his skin on hers is warm and familiar, a painful reminder of how close they've been & how affected she's become by his touch, and despite everything it still sends goosebumps up her arms.

❛❛ it doesn't matter where, so long as I get away from you. ❜❜ the grasp he has on her hand isn't harsh, only determined ─ if katherine wanted to, she could pull away from him and run for the hills. but other than a weak ( not even half-hearted ) attempt at slipping from his hold, she doesn't. the prideful part of her brain assures her that it's only because it's logical: he has longer legs than her, is in far better shape than she is, and, considering his line of work, is likely trained to follow in pursuit for long periods of time; none of these facts can katherine claim for herself.

the other part of her brain knows that the reason why she stays is because she wants to. even now his touch burns scorching hot, and she wants him like she's never wanted before. insatiable even as her heart aches and her fury rages. love makes you vulnerable, and at last she knows for certain that love is what this is. but to wear that plainly on her face now would be to lay down as prey before an apex predator & offer her neck willingly to the wolf's open maw. no longer can she afford herself this vulnerability ─ a kind she's never allowed herself to wear, until now, until him; whoever he is, if he's even real beyond a bureau assigned cover story. it is this final thought, coupled with a glance at his face and those deep, blue eyes, that makes her yank her arm from his grasp at last.

❛❛ don't touch me, ❜❜ she says, cradling the wrist he'd held in her other hand. embarrassingly enough, tears well up in her eyes again. ❛❛ you don't get to touch me anymore. ❜❜ her voice cracks just as the tears spill, trickling down her cheeks in silence. avoiding his gaze she scans the crowd for an exit, even while knowing he will follow wherever she goes. it is his duty.

it doesn't take long before resignation truly settles in. the chase is over, he caught her. glossy eyes find his face once more, her own quickly mirroring what she thinks she sees in his features: furrowed brows, a detached look in her eyes. at least that is what she attempts to convey. ❛❛ and it's not katherine to you. ❜❜ she's not so sure the severity comes across, what with the wet tear tracks running down her cheeks. a sniff follows then, as she uses the back of one hand to wipe away the evidence of her heartache. ❛❛ it's miss pulitzer. ❜❜

[kristen-versionofevents-blog]

Best Version of GTA

We did it with Halo, so let's do it with another on the planets biggest game series, Grand Theft Vehicle. And by "it", I want rank the activities from "best" to "underside of the number".

Let's say you're new to a series. Or are in a station in which you're recommending a… Look at more Why? You could be new to the progression. Or diving back into it. These games take a long time to get done, therefore a person should probably start with the good ones head. Before... you might just be arguing with colleagues. That's the beauty of these items. With a string like Great Theft Auto, every game holds its ups and downs, the experts and cons, and investigating just what ticks people's boxes can be a blast.

Just before we plunge in, some see: these aren't Kotaku's cuts for the pecking purchase of the GTA series. They're just mine. You'll no doubt get the colleagues chiming in below using two cents! Also note that, like with Halo, I've had to put about boundaries by what I'm including then what exactly I'm not.

It was a lot tougher to pull out a policy from the GTA series, since it spans so many systems (and stable decades), bar on the threat of offending purists I've decided to follow hardly the standalone titles. That agency no "Reports" or "Events" rights, because near bit a drawing they're sharing half the experience (getting them much more of a increase, in my view, even using own words), but I'll think about them as part of the main games they're based on.

1. Vice City

It may not be the perfect Grand Theft Auto game, but that the perfect Grand Theft Auto experience. Sure, on a superficial level that the car chases and gunplay that make a GTA game fun, but it's the strength of the world which aids put these activities apart from each other. And no world became greater realised than Rockstar's take on 1986 Miami. Once you run past pink neon lights while Jan Hammer plays for the radio, you'll feel, just for a minute, that you're quite literally again inside 1980s. It's a little bit terrifying. GTA 5 Online Cheats,

It also helps the game boasts perhaps the series' strongest range of individuals, commanded through Ray Liotta's Tommy Vercetti, who is nevertheless overtaken by Bill Fichtner's coke-addled lawyer turn.

2. Grand Theft Auto IV

Drab as it may be, Rockstar's most recent door in the collection built a new so sweet they can put three pieces in it and still be aspect of the road feel make new. While dialling formerly the turmoil of San Andreas upset about, for me it was a hail run, the included "realism" of 2008's Liberty City constructing a personal capital that times with breathes like no different to all of video games.

3. Grand Theft Auto III

The most revolutionary record in the collection, since the idea this gave the permit into the 3D world, I don't think GTAIII gets enough credit for the intensity regarding its place. While the legend with personalities remain so hot, Rockstar clearly finding their base here which regard, GTAIII's road is I think the best from the total series, since this small adequate, then every neighborhood is unique enough, that it doesn't work long to learn the whole thing away with heart, something that's practically impossible in later games.

4. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Why isn't that higher? I supposed San Andreas overreached. The RPG material they added to the game wasn't enriching, it was annoying. The size of the chart wasn't a good thing, this entirely wanted here were a lot of room you'd get stuck without a auto. Next I don't think the whole early-90s machine was executed as well as Rockstar's action in the mid-80s in Vice City.

But... good Lord, that a big entertainment. Plus a mad one. Rockstar given that earlier with GTAIV's Gay Tony (the benefit of parachutes, etc) because, while world-building can be important, sometimes you just want to escape a plane fighter in then parachute against the top of the car or hit it in place with the RPG.

5. Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars

It's not as quite as bigger games, or perhaps even as engaging, but it certainly is gaining, both for the focus on Chinese-American gangsters (something not really include in previous games) and its novel control systems, which got a unique GTA happening to program like the DS and mobile phone which previously (and yet should) endure poorly-implemented ports.

6. GTA London 1969

Why is this the best-ranked "original" GTA game? Because it remains the only GTA game set outside the United States, which in default also is that one of the most interesting.

7. GTA 2

I became certainly not the biggest supporter of the original 2D games, because viewpoint deny them in the sensation of situation and scale of which stay so crucial to the 3D games, but GTA 2 at least introduced several important elements found in later games, such as ability to but the ready with to perform different objective for another teams.

8. Grand Theft Auto

Not a bad activity before any means—it spawned that collection, with all!—it's really became small to recommend that over any of the games listed above unless you're entering a article about the heritage of the contract.

[sachingja]

this entire thing had been a terrible idea from the start, before he even set foot onto the plane that would take him to europe - he remembers in quite infinitesimal detail how he told the president the same thing, who had only scoffed, of course, as if his protest would be of no use (and it wasn't), as if he should be grateful for the opportunity given to him. a former russian asset, a fugitive in a country he never would have voluntarily moved to if he would not necessarily have to, standing in front of the leader of the free world. what else was he supposed to do? say no?

maybe, he thinks, as he is pushing against the crowd of people trying to separate them, the loud, incessant beat of the horrendous music they are playing pulsing beneath the pavement like a heartbeat, or a pulse. she is short enough to get lost in between tourists and party-goers, the eager and the drunk, but dmitry has spent the past weeks with his eyes glued to her, allowing himself to absorb the way she moves and every little antic of hers, how she is always too stubborn in the face of her own emotion. how she is so much smarter than him, and he knew, and he had bid his time and wondered when she would find out.

it was only a matter of time.

and here he is now, chasing after her again, only this time he has no idea where she might go. she does not want you anymore, a voice inside his head says, sounding too much like her father, and dmitry is cursing underneath his breath in the only language he is fairly sure no one will understand here, despite how they have shortened the miles between himself and the city he used to call home, that used to teach him so much.

" it not semantics, " he stresses, though a part of himself is pressing against his rib cage as if to demand release, a way out in between the words that fall off his tongue in thick vowels and sharp consonants, the accent he has kept so carefully tucked away announcing itself as soon as he loses hold of himself. her father would probably laugh at him, at how lousy this man he has hired to keep his daughter safe is. he feels like laughing at himself, a little, if only at how absurd his life has become. " can you - christ, will you stop? katherine, please. "

at last, he reaches her, in a pocket of air inside the moving mass, his hand snatching her sleeve, curling around her wrist before she can run any farther and escape his grasp again. like sand slipping between his fingers, and the feel of her skin against the dry palm of his hand is a startling reminder of how close they were just hours ago, and how dmitry has never let anyone get this close to him before - not with the same intentions, at least. he got this whole thing wrong from the beginning, that he is sure of now, but no one ever told him he was particularly clever. quick on his feet, sure, and street-smart, but he has never prided himself in being in touch with his emotions, or at being so horribly understanding. it is what has made him excel at his job, the perfect weapon, a pawn to push back and forth, lead him wherever he needed to be. now, he is in the one place he has no idea of, that he has never planned to go to.

" do you even know where you're going? " he asks, exasperated at her mindlessness and the blinding fury, at his own foolishness. what are they doing? " let me get you home, at least. don't - don't run away from me. "

‘  forever  is  the  sweetest  con.  ’ (for kath, from dima ♡)

❛❛ YOU'VE BEEN LYING TO ME FOREVER. ❜❜ the words are spat at him, an accusation she isn’t looking for an answer to; it’s true, after all, the phone call she overheard moments before confirming it beyond any shadow of a doubt. their first meeting, the fountain and the soaked shirt ─ it was all a set up, his presence in her life nothing more than a lie meant to shelter her, keep her safe, keep her from ever truly living without a tightening noose around her neck. and what a fool she’d been to fall for it so quickly. the debriefs he must have had with his supervisors, the laughs they must have shared while he recounted how easy she’d made it for him. the embarrassment is but a slight stab of discomfort compared to the heartache she feels, but it helps spur her on, quickens her feet as she tries her best to leave him behind.

katherine knows it's his voice she hears calling out, but what he says is muddled by all the laughter and music blasting through the crowd; ❛ forever ❜ and ❛ exaggeration ❜ are the only words she can make out for certain. whatever the rest of them were, the tone in his voice was familiar; he must have been trying to appease her, to soothe her rage and heartache, by calling to focus her excessive use of hyperbole. it only angers her further.

❛❛ oh, you're worried about semantics, are you? ❜❜ her exasperation is clear as day in the harshness of her voice and the angry glance she throws at him over her shoulder. like they’ve been doing the entire summer, she’s rushing off in the direction her heart takes her while he follows at her heel, desperate to keep up ─ the only difference now is that gone is the hope that he’ll continue to follow. instead she wants to shake him off her tail, to lose him for good in the crowd of people surrounding them. well, that and the fact that she now understands why a man like him decided to follow her around europe for an entire summer; he was guided not by love ( like she'd thought and hoped, like she was for him ) but by her father, by money. the moment this thought begins to echo off the walls of her mind she feels a sudden urge to scrub her skin raw, erase any trace of him and the dirt left behind in the wake of his betrayal. ❛❛ fine. you've been lying to me since we met. happy now? ❜❜ perhaps he would argue that it wasn’t a betrayal, not really, for he was just doing it for her own good, protecting her against the harsh, cold realities of the word. if that was true, then it would be her own shame she’d be rinsing off.

despite her anger and fury, despite her stubbornness and refusal to seem weak in front of him, tears well up in her eyes and no amount of desperate blinking will dissipate them. instead they roll down her cheeks, quickly wiped away by her frenzied hands. ❛❛ consider yourself relieved of your duties, mr. sudayev. you can stop trailing me now. ❜❜

𓆩 — PROMPTS, accepting • @sachingja