Take A Chance On Me ☆ [Mamma Mia - Bill Anderson X Reader]

☆23☆

"Goodbye! Thank you!" you shout to the old woman that took you in for the last three months, and you walk away to the dock where you tied up your little boat. Bundled in a large jute bag the woman gave you is enough food and drink to last a good while plus the money and passport you obtained, although sadly no map. Ah well - you feel pretty sure that you could go anywhere, as long as it wasn't anywhere near He Who Shall Not Be Named. And by that you mean Bill Anderson.

You get in the boat nervously, the sides rocking a bit, lay everything down safely, untie the boat to the dock, and set off bravely. The kind old woman waves you off and you shout thanks in Turkish again before you start pushing the oars in the direction of the sea without any land attached to it.

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Eyes barely open, you finally spot a sliver of land. In hindsight, it was probably a bad idea to row by yourself in a tiny boat into nowhere for hours on end - you haven't gone to sleep in, from what the wristwatch you bought in Turkey says, 43 hours. Wait, 43 bloody hours?! How can a human stay awake for that long?!

Anyway, time to focus on forcing yourself to row until you reach a small strip of beach, covered in umbrellas and lawn chairs and people and groynes. Well, groynes are as good of a place as any for a makeshift docking.

You finally get to one of the groynes and wrap the docking rope around one of its poles, and no sooner had you stepped out of the boat you heard a voice speaking in a completely unknown language to you nearing where you are.

"здравствуйте!" the person running towards you begins, and you're in a state of confusion all the way through his smiling speech and gestures to you up until he says in broken English, "You speak English?"
"Yes! Yes I speak English!" you say quickly, desperate to know where you are, and so the man gestures back to the beach and says slowly, "Tourist information... on beach."

You nod and after collecting your things follow him down the beach, darting your eyes back and forth every so often to make sure you and your boat are okay here and suss out where you actually are.

Maybe you should get a map now.

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Okay, so... you're in Russia.

When the smiling woman at Tourist Information told you that you had landed in Russia of all places, your first thought was how on Earth you could've rowed in a tiny boat from Turkey to Russia. Your second thought was that you should definitely get a map now.

So after your chat with Tourist Information about where you are in Russia (Sochi, the 'resort city,' so at least you haven't accidentally rowed into the Cold War zone), you decide to wander the touristy streets for a map and a few photographs to snap.

You aren't staying, no matter if you've got money or not. For over 30 years now, Russia and the USA (along with the US's allies) have been settled into a Cold War, so you don't particularly like the idea of anything being set off whilst you're here. You'd rather sail somewhere where there's no constant threat of death, no matter how swanky the resort is.

But it does have nice views, you'll give it that.
You wander in and out of shops on the street, ridiculously bright and loud so tourists will ignore the political tension of the country and buy some cute inflatable lilos for the beach, angling your camera upwards to take pictures of the sky. After a while you find a map of the world - quite big, but it'll do - and roll it up and stuff it in your bag.
You don't know any Russian - the one language they didn't teach you at all on in university - so you just hand the money over and smile at the seller and bow, then walk out of the shop and bump into someone.