<div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="background-color:#353535; border:1px solid black; margin:10px 10px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;">"Vegetables," sighs Ivan. He has only the most vague idea of how to turn that into a gourmet meal that might put Vlad in better spirits, meaning it'll be a thin stew/soup hybrid - like it usually is.<br/><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-weight: bold">- = - = - = - = - = - = - = -</span></span></div>Ivan sets his kalash down on the floor, near the thin blanket he sleeps on. Always keenly aware that death could come at any moment, it none the less is slightly safer at the station. The ugly, gray-white, cracked tiles of the floor have been here since before the war, and will stick around even after Ivan is long gone. You need to find some sense of permanence and normalcy down here.<br/><br/>He finds the only pot they have; small and with one ear missing, but it can be used for what it needs to be. He shreds some thin, yellow-leafed cabbage into the pot, cutting mushrooms in half with a knife that wasn't made for cooking. Water, mostly collected through a complicated communal condensation system of Teatral'naya, is added to the soon-to-be meal. Ivan sniffs at the light steam rising from the pot and fishes out his only spoon from a pocket in his jacket.<br/><br/>"Maybe we could get a new pot in Polis," he says, wondering how on Earth to get Vlad to agree with him to go there. He just wants to see it. And maybe stay. And get a better life where he doesn't have to be on guard duty all the time.</div></div>