#because i am hella unorganized heheh

[pythagoreanwhump]

1981 - Pt. 1

This is part one of how my espionage OCs met each other. As suggested in the title, this is set in 1981. It’ll be at least 3 parts, but I don’t know exactly how many yet. In Part 1 Anton and Walter have met each other. David has been mentioned to them but they haven’t met yet. This small series won’t contain any whump, just setting up the relationship between my characters. Well, that’s the plan, anyway. I always find ways to put whump into things that shouldn’t be whump.

As I said, no whump, really tame, so no content warnings, but I’ll still put it under a read more for length

also some of the dialogue is in German. Translations underneath the paragraph in brackets and italics.

“Andrushin, I’ve got a new mission for you.” Melya knocked on the door, dragging Anton out of his trance of staring at the same page of his book for the past 20 minutes. “What are you thinking about?”

Anton shrugged and didn’t answer Melya’s question, responding to his first statement instead. “What mission? Where?”

“Why don’t you have a guess?” Melya had a smile that told Anton he wasn’t going to like whatever it was.

“I’m gonna have to leave the country, aren’t I?” Anton hopped off his bunk bed, already starting to pack.

“Yep. West Germany this time.”

“West Germany?” Anton asked. “Why? What’s in West Germany?” Americans, that’s what. Swathes of American soldiers in nightclubs.

“Your mission is to help train an East German spy. Be nice to him, will you? It’s his first assignment.” Melya handed Anton a file.

Anton groaned, the loudness mostly for dramatics in front of Melya. “Kids. I hate kids.”

Melya pulled Anton’s briefcase away from him and pointed to the file. “He’s only about a year younger than you. You’d know that if you read the case file. You never do until I force you to.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Anton rolled his eyes at Melya and flipped through the file about this Walter. “Who’s this?” He asked as he reached the last page.

Melya peeked over. “Ah, that. That’s supposed to be his target, an American soldier at Ramstein Air Base named David Whitley. You don’t get much information about him because it’s supposed to be Walter’s mission, not yours. All you need to do is keep him out of trouble. I have no idea why they chose you for this, you can barely keep yourself out of trouble.”

Anton reached over, trying to take his suitcase back and continue packing, but Melya pulled it further away from him. “No need to pack yourself,” He said, “Clothes have been provided for you. You’ll get it when you arrive in Bonn. In the meantime,” Melya gave Anton an outfit, “You’ll wear this. You’ll arrive in Berlin first and meet with Walter, and then drive to the West together. A hotel room has already been booked for you, Walter will know how to get there.”

“A hotel room?” Anton asked incredulously as he put on the outfit. It was loose, a sporty T-shirt and jeans. He was using his usual cover again, a university student, and he looked the part dressed like this.

“Es gibt keine Hungersnot,” Melya said with a dry chuckle. “You’re going there on a cargo plane, wheels up in 20 minutes.”

(There is no famine. An East German expression used sarcastically when people talk about how poor the government is. It actually surfaced into use more near 1986-ish but I don’t really care right now)

Walter stood near the border gate nervously, waiting for the Soviet agent he was supposed to work with. Despite having worked at the border crossing for over a year, he has never left his country. If what he was taught growing up was true (which he knew it was at most partially), it wasn’t going to be pleasant.

“Hey! Weidenmann!” A friend called out to him, “Your soviet friend is here!”

A car rolled up and Walter waved. This must be Anton then. Anton got out of the car and motioned for Walter to get into the driver’s seat.

He got in and his friend waved him through. He waved back, suddenly unsure of himself.

“Why did you want me to drive?” He asked Anton in broken Russian.

“Germans drive too fast. It scares me,” Anton replied, his German flawless.

“Your German is very good. Have you been to Germany before?” Walter asked.

“I’m a language analyst, I speak a lot of languages.” Anton looked around, taking in the sight of the West. “Been to East Germany before, this is my first to dem Westen. You?”

Walter looked over at Anton, impressed. “I went to West Berlin on official business once, straight in and out. Other than that I’ve never seen anything outside the DDR. Have you been to anywhere else? What’s the outside like?”

“Oh, dangerous question, young man.” Anton pointed to the radio, signaling that it was probably bugged, and mouthed “later”. “So, tell me about your job before. You graduated last year but this is your first mission. What did you do?”

“Border guard.” Walter was already opening up. Anton seemed friendly. “At the checkpoint we just passed through.”

“Do they know?” Anton gestured backward, asking about Walter’s colleagues at the checkpoint.

“Not officially.”

Anton nodded and smiled. “They’ll be pestering you about your experiences when you get back.”

Neither of them talked much for the rest of the drive. Walter had turned the radio on, hesitantly tuning to the Western stations. The first one that came on was a news channel, talking about Reagan. As soon as he figured out what they were talking about, Walter frantically turned the dial, remembering the warning about bugs from Anton. The next station they found was a comedy show, and Anton frowned, cringing a bit at the bad humor. Finally, they both settled on a music channel. It wasn’t very different from what they listened to at home.

The hotel they arrived at was… shabby. Anton knew that the government was broke, but is this seriously the best they could do? Walter shrugged and got out the car, looking behind at Anton and waiting for him to follow.

There was a woman at the front desk, probably a university student by the looks of her. She asked for Walter and Anton’s passports. Walter was posing as a West German, and she only flipped the passport open and scanned it for a couple of seconds. When Anton handed over his bright red booklet, however, she looked up in surprise.

“Ein Sowjetischer?” She asked.

(A Soviet?)

“Ja,” Anton replied simply.

(Yes)

“Was bringt Sie nach Deutschland?” She asked, leaning forward in curiosity.

(What brings you to Germany?)

“Besuchen bei meinem Freund,” Anton pointed at Walter.

(Visiting my friend)

The girl nodded, sensing that Anton didn’t want to say much more, and handed him his passport back and directed them to their room.

“I’m hungry,” Anton said as soon as they finished settling in. “Come on, let’s go get some food.”

“Sure,” Walter finished putting away his clothes. “What do you wanna get?”

“I don’t know, some street foods?” Anton was already out the door.

As soon as they got out onto the streets, Anton turned to Walter. “So, you wanted to hear about the outside? The room was booked by the government, so it was probably bugged as well. Safer out here. What do you want to know?”

“For starters,” Walter must admit that he was surprised Anton was so forthcoming. The possibility that this was a trap to test his loyalty didn’t occur to him until much later. “Where have you been? America? Great Britain?”

“Both of those, yeah. I’ve been to America multiple times. Britain only once. Finland a couple of times as well. France. I think that’s it.” Neither did Anton think that he shouldn’t trust someone he had just met and tell them all of this.

“Is America, you know, what they say it is? Both the bad and good.” Walter asked.

“Both the bad and good, yeah.” Anton pointed towards the busier section of the city. “Let’s actually get some food so they wouldn’t get suspicious. I mostly went to the big cities, and they seemed prosperous on the surface, but there’s more to it. They have homeless people, can you believe that? Just people lying on the streets, freezing in the winter and under the scorching sun in the summer. They have all their belongings in a shopping cart. And the government just does nothing.” He shook his head. “Anyway, let’s talk about more pleasant things.”

Walter remained silent, not knowing what to say in reply. The propaganda made everything in the west seem so bad, and sometimes he wondered if it was really true. If what Anton said were real, then it wasn’t far from the truth. Maybe exagerrated, but not completely baseless. He sighed, “I thought their government was rich?”

“Of course they are,” Anton scoffed, “They take money from the people and never give back anything. I would be rich too if I did that. Currywurst?” He pointed to a cart with a long line behind it.

Walter shrugged. “Sure, if you wanna stand in line.” He really didn’t want to think about politics right now, so he tried to find other topics to talk about. “So… Do you have a girlfriend?” He asked Anton, his voice teasing.

Anton blushed, but he turned his face away to hide it. One could almost mistake the pink glow for the reflection of the neon lights overhead. “No, do you?”

Now it was Walter’s turn to blush. “I’m engaged. We’re planning to get married next spring.”

“Wow, congratulations!” Anton beamed at Walter. “Come on, tell me about her. What’s her name? How did you meet?”

Walter’s blush deepened. “Her name is Zoe. We’ve known each other since we were kids, we grew up in the same town.”

“Aw, that’s sweet. Have you planned your wedding yet?”

“Not much into detail,” Walter replied, “I think we are going to take our wedding photos at the Alexanderplatz, but maybe that’s a bit too boring. Everyone does that.”

“Well, I can’t give you any advice there.” Anton chuckled. “All I know is that girls like big white dresses. The bigger and whiter the better. My sister has never had a boyfriend and she is still talking about how she’d like an extravagant wedding.”

“Oh, you have a sister?” Walter asked Anton. “I’m an only child.”

“Yeah, She’s just over a year younger than me.” They arrived at the front of the line and Walter quickly ordered while Anton was talking. “She the reason I’m doing this.”

“What do you mean?” Walter asked through a mouthful of food.

“She’s very sick. She has leukemia.” Anton’s voice turned gentle at the discussion of his sister. “They said they’d move her to a better hospital, with the best doctors, if I did this.”

Walter nodded, knowing what Anton meant by this. It seemed like neither of them really wanted to get into this line of work. Whether that was because of the danger, the secrecy, or the less than honorable things they have to do for it. And they obviously didn’t have a choice.

“Should we go back now?” Anton suggested as they both finished their food. “It’s rather late. You’ve got a long day ahead of you.”

“Yeah, sure.” Walter pulled his coat tighter around himself. “It getting cold out here too.”

As soon as they got back to their room, their conversations stopped. They couldn’t be sure what would be safe and what wouldn’t be, on the off-chance that they were being bugged. Anton had fallen asleep almost the minute he lied down, but Walter laid awake, thinking. Think about what Anton had said. Thinking about his mission. Thinking of all the ways he could mess up and everything that could go wrong. He kept telling himself he would do fine, but somehow he just couldn't believe it.

#mine #MY OCs #oc: anton #oc: walter #im not gonna tag it as espionage whump cuz its not whump #also not gonna tag it as whump in german #cuz its not whump #and there's #what #lemme count #a grand total of 16 German words #also I'm gonna make a masterpost now #because i am hella unorganized heheh