Turnabout
Title: Turnabout
Character(s): Prussia, Russia
Rating: PG-13, with lots of nudging and pointedly raised eyebrows.
Warnings: Violence, melodrama, Sexually Aware Russia, aiyeeee. Dubiest of dubcons.
Summary: The prompt included "trying to outcrazy" one another. I think I know who wins.
It occurred to Prussia, as his muscles ached and his breath thinned and his heart pounded against his ribs like a caged animal battling for release, that France was utterly full of shit.
Unfortunately, he had missed the opportunity to relay this observation in person to France, who had long since vanished from sight, staggering that last bitter stretch across the border with the tattered remnants of his dignity trailing in his wake. Had France still been close enough at hand to scream at, however, Prussia still didn't suppose he'd be very able to. Not with so much running left to be done.
Not with that following him, and gaining steadily.
He did not look back. He had tried once, earlier, and firmly decided against doing so again until he was at least halfway through Brandenburg and preferably behind something very, very heavy. Wind cut at his face, cut straight through the material of his uniform, which may as well have been a dressing gown for all the good it did him here. Snow fell, insidious, piling up around him in perfect, soft-looking banks which erupted in icy flurries of protest when he slogged through them. Slush filled his boots and numbed his feet even as he willed himself not to trip, not to fall, for that would be the end of everything, and if he could just force himself a little further and not look back, just keep running a few moments more--
The thought and what little breath he had left were both knocked out of him as a horrible relentless something plowed into him, catching him around the waist in a savage hold and propelling them both headlong into frozen white eternity.
They skidded several feet when they landed, Prussia's face taking the brunt of the punishment. Something not quite buried in the snow scraped across his cheek, opening a long shallow cut that at once froze and burned. He groaned, struggled, twisted, tried with exhausted quivering arms to pull himself up, up, out from under his attacker. But just as soon as he'd managed to turn over and sit up a bit, one massive arm descended on his chest, slamming him back to the cold ground even as Russia sounded a wordless cry of vindication and lifted the rock up high in his other hand--
"Wait wait wait wait wait hold it!"
Amazingly, he did.
Russia regarded the nation pinned under him with an expression akin to that of a starving wolf considering just how long to let an injured rabbit live. He searched his enemy's face, brow furrowed in concentration. Prussia, for his part, was occupied staring quite intently at the rather large rock poised some four or five inches above his forehead. The snow, falling harder now, did not quite drown out the sound of their breathing.
"What," said Russia at last, with some effort.
"I--honestly, I wasn't expecting to get to this point," Prussia admitted, blinking. Russia growled and pressed down harder on his chest. "Ok ok ok, just--look, just calm down, alright?"
"Calm down?" His face, already a bruised and broken-nosed travesty, contorted savagely. "You invade me, abuse me, try to break my people, KILL them, and EXPECT ME TO--"
"--That's France, Russia! France did that to you! I'm not him!"
Russia, troubled, did not relent. "You..."
"I'm Prussia, remember? It's been a while. Not France. Totally different." He felt his own sternum creak ominously and winced. "Distinctly different."
A faint hint of doubt flashed briefly in Russia's sunken eyes. Ever so slightly, the rock moved away. "Not France," he repeated, slowly.
"Not at all. Prussia."
"Prussia, Prussia..." He sat back a bit and mouthed the name to himself a few more times, tentative, sifting through scattered memory like so much debris. "Sounds like Russia," he said after a pause, tilting his head at Prussia a little curiously.
"I-it sure does, doesn't it? And France screwed me over, too. Few years back; Treaty of Tilsit. You remember? He made us both sign, and it fucking sucked. And then he took my land and made me come with him when he--"
"--Attacked me," finished Russia, the beast within him rising once more. But he removed his arm, which was a start.
"Yeah. So I guess we've both got a reason to hate him now, don't we," said Prussia warmly, feeling himself slip back into his own element as he began trying to casually extricate his frozen legs from under Russia. "And I mean, with him losing and running off and all, that practically makes us allies, doesn't it?"
Russia frowned and made no move to get off him. "Allies," he mumbled, trying the word out on his own tongue.
"Exactly. Froggy bastard won't know what hit him when we're through with him. But before that," he added smoothly (as smoothly as he could with his teeth chattering like that), "if you'd just let me, I dunno, go back home and rest up a bit and get something to eat, y'know, since there's nothing here..."
"I burned the fields," said Russia softly, and Prussia slowed his careful inching escape in precaution. "I had to. So he could not use them. I thought it would stop him coming in."
Prussia watched Russia's face carefully for signs of danger, keeping a wary eye on where his very recent foe had laid down the rock just in case. "Well, it definitely stopped a lot of his guys going out," he ventured. He turned his head to look at the few black skeletal trees still standing around them. "What used to grow here, anyway?"
"People."
Prussia held very still, now.
Russia looked around, dazed, lost, snow lifting from his matted hair in disoriented wisps as his head moved. "People grew here, and in Smolensk, and Borodino, and Moscow..."
"I'm sorry about Moscow," said Prussia, nearly sincerely.
Russia didn't seem to hear him. Instead, he watched the landscape some more, one hand reaching up to paw vaguely at the soot-smeared cloth of his coat on his own chest. "It must frustrate," he said softly, "to capture someone's heart, and find it empty." He looked at Prussia again now and smiled brokenly, blood flowing freshly as chapped lips cracked anew. "But it was not his. And it won't be. Not ever." The twisted satisfaction flittered from his face and was replaced with something approaching mild concern. "Is it cold?" he asked, letting his hand fall.
"Fuckin' freezing," admitted Prussia, who had decided that terminal frostbite was not, in fact, worth more than his pride. "So like I said, if you could just maybe get off me and let me go, I'll--"
He was cut off by Russia's full weight being thrown upon him once more. For a split second, he was sure he'd gone too far, sure Russia was going to try and pick up where they had left off earlier, and his hand groped blindly for the rock...but then something very strange happened. In a motion so fluid he barely had time to register it, Russia opened his scuffed overcoat and wrapped it around the two of them, pulling Prussia close in an impossibly insistent hold and covering him as completely as he could.
"Until the blizzard stops," explained Russia, to still Prussia's reflexive escape attempt, and indeed it was a blizzard that now surrounded them, muffling the world with howling winds and the drumming of fresh snowflakes, white on white. "You'd not survive if you tried to leave now. But I can endure this." So Prussia, left with little other option, lay under Russia's warm bulk and counted to himself the differences between shielding and smothering, trying to discern just how many of these Russia truly grasped. But while the land, barren and scarred and dismal, froze over again around them, he felt the sensation slowly return to his limbs under Russia's coat and marveled at the change. He flexed his fingers experimentally.
Russia's grip (embrace?) tightened as he leaned his head down further, enduring as promised. "France will fall," he whispered in Prussia's ear, somehow audible over the gale.
And as his hands clenched and unclenched before him in ever more confident motions and his head filled itself with strategy after brilliant strategy, Prussia grinned in the dark.
"Like a fucking house of cards," he answered, relishing the thought.
Russia, he thought. Sounds like Prussia. And exactly why that was and whether or not it should be the other way around didn't matter in the slightest, because either way it sounded like revenge, and that was a sweet sound indeed.
- - -
It occurred to Prussia, over a century and a half later (though not for the first time, not by far), that "revenge" could have a very different sound depending on just whom it was directed against. Of course, even if he had wanted to impart this realization to France (and he didn't), he doubted it would have made any impression. Waterloo was long-past, blurred around the edges by the steady haze of stretching time; but 1940 still hovered clear and vivid in living memory, and la drôle de guerre had turned back then into something that France still did not find in the least bit funny.
Besides, it wasn't as though he talked to France much these days, anyway.
Moscow was whole again, but it was not snowing today. He was glad. He'd seen quite enough snow to last him for another several centuries.
His footsteps on the carpet must have betrayed his arrival from halfway down the hallway, but Prussia was still not surprised when he opened the office door to find Russia unconcernedly pouring over a stack of papers at his wide desk. He stood quietly at the threshold, one hand still on the knob, and waited. Russia ignored him awhile longer, and only the shuffling of documents filled the room's silence.
Prussia waited.
More shuffling. As he read, Russia hummed a few bars of some military anthem.
Prussia shifted his weight from foot to foot.
Russia picked up his pen, began to write something at one of the bottom of the pages in careful, deliberate strokes.
Prussia's hand, cold and clammy, perspired on the doorknob.
Scribble scribble scribble.
"You wanted to see me, Russia?" said Prussia, in a slightly desperate tone. Russia looked up and smiled brightly, setting the pen aside.
"Ah, East, there you are! I'd almost forgotten I sent for you!" (Lies lies lies; Russia never forgot.) "Do come in, won't you?"
Nodding mechanically, Prussia entered and closed the door behind him, much more out of custom than personal preference. He stepped forward and stood attentively a few feet in front of the desk, hands folded lightly behind his back, but declined to sit down in the chair waiting beside him.
Russia ignored him and held the topmost sheet of paper up proudly in both hands like a parent appraising a child's work of art. "I was just looking over some of the space program's progress," he announced. "Big plans coming up, East."
"Is that right?" said Prussia, on cue.
"Ohh yes. Big plans. Another launch next month, with live specimens!"
"That is exciting." He looked straight ahead and focused carefully on a point several inches above and to the right of Russia's head on the window behind him.
"Mm-hm. They're going to send a tortoise this time."
Prussia blinked; his brow furrowed briefly. "A...a tortoise? In space?"
"The first tortoise in space, East," Russia pointed out, looking up at Prussia somewhat reproachfully from over the top of the paper. "Don't you want to sit? It's quite comfortable."
"No, thank you." He kept his tone as bland as possible. "Er, what sort of tortoise?"
"A Russian one."
"Ah," said Prussia. Then, sensing more was expected of him: "That's very thoughtful of them."
"It is, isn't it?" Russia sighed wistfully and put the sheet down, folding his hands in his lap and leaning back in his chair to look out the window. "1968 already, East. How the time does fly."
Prussia, for whom time had had a distressing habit of drawing itself out excruciatingly since somewhere around the dawn of the 20th century, made no comment. Fortunately, he didn't need to.
"Now what was it that his boss said, a few years ago?" mused Russia, tapping a finger to his chin contemplatively. "A man on the moon by the end of the decade, wasn't it? And here it's already almost over." He smiled, or at least showed his teeth. "He's slipping, East."
We all are, thought Prussia. But he said, "serves him right, the uppity little bastard," and still meant it.
Russia chuckled. "Such blind, reckless ambition. It will lead only to trouble for him. It always does. Do sit down, East."
"No, thank you." He felt rather than saw the look directed at him. "Was there anything else?"
"How are things at your place?" asked Russia, swiveling back to lean on the desk and peering closely at Prussia over steepled fingers. "No more little rebellious incidents, I trust?"
Not until they start making people out of stronger stuff than tanks. "No, Russia."
Just the barest hint of a frown. "Only I've heard some rather distressing news about your foreign policy of late. Getting rather...brotherly with certain other nations, aren't you?"
Prussia cleared his throat. "It's nothing that serious. G--West and I just talked once or twice about kind of easing up a little on a few things. But it's not like we're all buddy-buddy or anything. He's still a capitalist." He paused, scowling. "With a totally disorganized infrastructure, and, and awful taste in music." He propped one hand on his hip and wagged his other index finger crossly, still talking to the window. "And do you know, do you know what that absolute tool had to say about my cars the other d--"
"I am happy to see you can be relied upon, East," said Russia, somewhat pointedly.
He blinked, mouth halfway open to continue the diatribe. "U-uh, yeah. Right." His hands dropped back down hastily. "You know me; I've got your back."
"Precisely. That's why I've called you here today." The chair creaked faintly as he settled back.
"Is it?"
"Yes," said Russia, closing his eyes thoughtfully. When he opened them, he gazed at the desk's surface and spoke very quietly.
"Czechoslovakia is not so obedient."
"...Oh," said Prussia.
"You remember the trouble they've been giving us this year, I trust? All those little changes and reforms the new...boss there seems to think are in order?"
He willed his expression to remain blank. "But we spoke to Czechoslovakia about that earlier this month. All of us. And you--we said that as long as it didn't get out of hand, we wouldn't inter--"
"--No, we agreed that there would be intervention if it got out of hand," said Russia smoothly, as though the wording made all the difference, which it did. "And it has gotten out of hand, East. Very much so." He looked up. "Sit down."
Prussia sat.
"I've already spoken to Hungary, Poland, and Bulgaria, East," Russia sighed as he got up from his own chair and wandered around to the other side of the desk. "And they've all agreed to give me their support in doing what needs to be done."
"You're sending soldiers in," said Prussia. It was not a question.
"No more than 200,000," Russia replied smoothly. He picked at a bit of imaginary lint on his shoulder. "And a few tanks, of course."
"You know they're not gonna like that. The Alli--the others, I mean."
"This is none of their concern, I think." He moved again, now pacing somewhere directly behind Prussia in the office. "I expect your full support, East. We move on the 20th. 11 PM precisely."
Precisely. It was always precisely now. When had Russia learned that? Precisely had been his.
Prussia nodded anyway, then furrowed his brow. "Alright, but are you really sure you wanna have me send troops in?"
"Why wouldn't I be? You have an army."
He'd had one, a great one, the greatest, and back to back with Russia and England and the others it had beaten France, wounded him, brought to his goddamned knees--
"Not a very big one."
"But we need them. We need you. You always were such a cunning strategist, East."
--Cunning, like a swift decisive campaign, like a cleverly-forged partnership, like a knife in the back when the time was right--
"Well, yeah, but, I mean, it's not really...they haven't seen a whole lot of action, you know..."
"Every army must make use of its training."
--Training training training, and what good had it done him, done them, when the Winter came on and--
"But this would..this would be the first time..."
"What would it be?"
--and he'd remembered all of it then, the wind, the snow, the miserable grueling agony and he'd watched history repeat itself it and had all been for nothing because even after all those years and all that slow creeping madness Russia could still endure--
"...The first time our, my, soldiers have invaded another country since..."
"Since when?"
--and he had made it back across the border this time, had finished his retreat, but that didn't stop his chasing, not a step, and this time it wasn't a rock he held but a gun, and the cities had crumbled around them like so many houses of cards--
"Since when?"
--Fuck off, he'd said, with a mouthful of broken teeth. Fuck off, you psychopath, this isn't over, Hungary-
-Fell, the reply had come. Like you will fall, and Germany, and Japan, and Italy, and France and England and America and anyone who ever tries this again because I am throughbeingwalkeduponand--
"Since when, East?"
Prussia shook his head violently, unclenched his hands from the chair seat he now realized he had been clutching.
"Since..."
"Since." Russia's pacing had stopped.
"Since the war," he finally managed, and braced himself just in time for the chair to be flipped violently back and crashing to the floor. Before he could twist out of the way, Russia had dropped to a low crouch over him from behind, pinning his shoulders to the back of the chair and hovering menacingly inches from Prussia's face.
"Since the war," Russia repeated. "And now you don't want to mobilize them again, for fear that people will think of you again as they used to. As you really are."
"I'm not the same person I was back--" Prussia began, and stopped when Russia craned down carefully to kiss his neck.
"I know," he said, breath warm against Prussia's skin. "Of all people, I know best."
Prussia's hand shot up, clutched uncertainly at Russia's arm restraining him. Something between a growl and a moan escaped between his teeth and he squirmed with what little leverage he could find from his awkward position. At last Russia withdrew and stood, looming over him where he stayed sprawled ungraciously in the tipped-over chair.
A tilt of the head, a smile. "Your hands are shaking," Russia said. "Is it cold?"
It was August.
"Fuckin' freezing," said Prussia, and held out his hand to be pulled up.
It was some small consolation to him that it took so long for them to get to the couch this time around. Each grappling hold, each scrape of teeth on skin, each struggling, halting step was a month in the trenches, a desperate border push, a bitter defiant stand. They were last stands, though, and he was not surprised when once again the dull grey cushions met with his back and the sudden pressure of their combined weight made the springs creak in futile protest beneath him. He ripped Russia's scarf away in one last bid for the final word and paid for it with a bitten lip.
Outside, Moscow was whole again, and it was not snowing, but some things had not changed; Russia leaned heavily on him, supporting himself with an arm propped across Prussia's chest even as his other hand fumbled blindly for a zipper, and his body was heavy and immovable, forged of iron though Prussia had seen him bleed, and his tongue did not taste of vodka, didn't need to, because these days Russia's dreams were sometimes intoxication enough, and he was hot and cold and empty and filled with sadness or hatred or longing or maybe just white, endless memory.
So Prussia, left with little other option, lay under Russia's warm bulk and kissed back (if it could be called kissing, what they did) and counted to himself the differences between shielding and smothering and knew without question that Russia did not yet truly grasp any of these, perhaps never would. But mostly he tried not to think, and instead dug his nails harder into Russia's skin just to remind both of them that he could.
When it was over, Russia made no move to get up, laying his head instead on Prussia's chest as it rose and fell in gradually slowing movements. Leisurely, he brought his arm up from where it hung over the edge of the couch and tapped Prussia once, twice, just over where the heart would be.
"Your tanks will be stationed at the border for me should I need them," he said. It was not a question.
"Yes," said Prussia.
"You may keep your delusions of non-savagery."
"Thank you," said East Germany.
"I am all the the force you will ever still need."
"You are," said the Soviet Bloc.
His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides a few times before he forced them to still. The weight on his chest did not lift.
Prussia, he thought. Sounds like Russia. And just why that was and whether or not it had ever been the other way around didn't really seem to matter anymore, because either way it had all begun to sound much the same to him.
---
During Napoleon's retreat from Russia, a large portion of the Prussian soldiers obliged to take part said 'fuck this'. There was probably no cuddling involved.
The Prague Spring.
'Delusions', finally. That has been bothering me since December.
Character(s): Prussia, Russia
Rating: PG-13, with lots of nudging and pointedly raised eyebrows.
Warnings: Violence, melodrama, Sexually Aware Russia, aiyeeee. Dubiest of dubcons.
Summary: The prompt included "trying to outcrazy" one another. I think I know who wins.
It occurred to Prussia, as his muscles ached and his breath thinned and his heart pounded against his ribs like a caged animal battling for release, that France was utterly full of shit.
Unfortunately, he had missed the opportunity to relay this observation in person to France, who had long since vanished from sight, staggering that last bitter stretch across the border with the tattered remnants of his dignity trailing in his wake. Had France still been close enough at hand to scream at, however, Prussia still didn't suppose he'd be very able to. Not with so much running left to be done.
Not with that following him, and gaining steadily.
He did not look back. He had tried once, earlier, and firmly decided against doing so again until he was at least halfway through Brandenburg and preferably behind something very, very heavy. Wind cut at his face, cut straight through the material of his uniform, which may as well have been a dressing gown for all the good it did him here. Snow fell, insidious, piling up around him in perfect, soft-looking banks which erupted in icy flurries of protest when he slogged through them. Slush filled his boots and numbed his feet even as he willed himself not to trip, not to fall, for that would be the end of everything, and if he could just force himself a little further and not look back, just keep running a few moments more--
The thought and what little breath he had left were both knocked out of him as a horrible relentless something plowed into him, catching him around the waist in a savage hold and propelling them both headlong into frozen white eternity.
They skidded several feet when they landed, Prussia's face taking the brunt of the punishment. Something not quite buried in the snow scraped across his cheek, opening a long shallow cut that at once froze and burned. He groaned, struggled, twisted, tried with exhausted quivering arms to pull himself up, up, out from under his attacker. But just as soon as he'd managed to turn over and sit up a bit, one massive arm descended on his chest, slamming him back to the cold ground even as Russia sounded a wordless cry of vindication and lifted the rock up high in his other hand--
"Wait wait wait wait wait hold it!"
Amazingly, he did.
Russia regarded the nation pinned under him with an expression akin to that of a starving wolf considering just how long to let an injured rabbit live. He searched his enemy's face, brow furrowed in concentration. Prussia, for his part, was occupied staring quite intently at the rather large rock poised some four or five inches above his forehead. The snow, falling harder now, did not quite drown out the sound of their breathing.
"What," said Russia at last, with some effort.
"I--honestly, I wasn't expecting to get to this point," Prussia admitted, blinking. Russia growled and pressed down harder on his chest. "Ok ok ok, just--look, just calm down, alright?"
"Calm down?" His face, already a bruised and broken-nosed travesty, contorted savagely. "You invade me, abuse me, try to break my people, KILL them, and EXPECT ME TO--"
"--That's France, Russia! France did that to you! I'm not him!"
Russia, troubled, did not relent. "You..."
"I'm Prussia, remember? It's been a while. Not France. Totally different." He felt his own sternum creak ominously and winced. "Distinctly different."
A faint hint of doubt flashed briefly in Russia's sunken eyes. Ever so slightly, the rock moved away. "Not France," he repeated, slowly.
"Not at all. Prussia."
"Prussia, Prussia..." He sat back a bit and mouthed the name to himself a few more times, tentative, sifting through scattered memory like so much debris. "Sounds like Russia," he said after a pause, tilting his head at Prussia a little curiously.
"I-it sure does, doesn't it? And France screwed me over, too. Few years back; Treaty of Tilsit. You remember? He made us both sign, and it fucking sucked. And then he took my land and made me come with him when he--"
"--Attacked me," finished Russia, the beast within him rising once more. But he removed his arm, which was a start.
"Yeah. So I guess we've both got a reason to hate him now, don't we," said Prussia warmly, feeling himself slip back into his own element as he began trying to casually extricate his frozen legs from under Russia. "And I mean, with him losing and running off and all, that practically makes us allies, doesn't it?"
Russia frowned and made no move to get off him. "Allies," he mumbled, trying the word out on his own tongue.
"Exactly. Froggy bastard won't know what hit him when we're through with him. But before that," he added smoothly (as smoothly as he could with his teeth chattering like that), "if you'd just let me, I dunno, go back home and rest up a bit and get something to eat, y'know, since there's nothing here..."
"I burned the fields," said Russia softly, and Prussia slowed his careful inching escape in precaution. "I had to. So he could not use them. I thought it would stop him coming in."
Prussia watched Russia's face carefully for signs of danger, keeping a wary eye on where his very recent foe had laid down the rock just in case. "Well, it definitely stopped a lot of his guys going out," he ventured. He turned his head to look at the few black skeletal trees still standing around them. "What used to grow here, anyway?"
"People."
Prussia held very still, now.
Russia looked around, dazed, lost, snow lifting from his matted hair in disoriented wisps as his head moved. "People grew here, and in Smolensk, and Borodino, and Moscow..."
"I'm sorry about Moscow," said Prussia, nearly sincerely.
Russia didn't seem to hear him. Instead, he watched the landscape some more, one hand reaching up to paw vaguely at the soot-smeared cloth of his coat on his own chest. "It must frustrate," he said softly, "to capture someone's heart, and find it empty." He looked at Prussia again now and smiled brokenly, blood flowing freshly as chapped lips cracked anew. "But it was not his. And it won't be. Not ever." The twisted satisfaction flittered from his face and was replaced with something approaching mild concern. "Is it cold?" he asked, letting his hand fall.
"Fuckin' freezing," admitted Prussia, who had decided that terminal frostbite was not, in fact, worth more than his pride. "So like I said, if you could just maybe get off me and let me go, I'll--"
He was cut off by Russia's full weight being thrown upon him once more. For a split second, he was sure he'd gone too far, sure Russia was going to try and pick up where they had left off earlier, and his hand groped blindly for the rock...but then something very strange happened. In a motion so fluid he barely had time to register it, Russia opened his scuffed overcoat and wrapped it around the two of them, pulling Prussia close in an impossibly insistent hold and covering him as completely as he could.
"Until the blizzard stops," explained Russia, to still Prussia's reflexive escape attempt, and indeed it was a blizzard that now surrounded them, muffling the world with howling winds and the drumming of fresh snowflakes, white on white. "You'd not survive if you tried to leave now. But I can endure this." So Prussia, left with little other option, lay under Russia's warm bulk and counted to himself the differences between shielding and smothering, trying to discern just how many of these Russia truly grasped. But while the land, barren and scarred and dismal, froze over again around them, he felt the sensation slowly return to his limbs under Russia's coat and marveled at the change. He flexed his fingers experimentally.
Russia's grip (embrace?) tightened as he leaned his head down further, enduring as promised. "France will fall," he whispered in Prussia's ear, somehow audible over the gale.
And as his hands clenched and unclenched before him in ever more confident motions and his head filled itself with strategy after brilliant strategy, Prussia grinned in the dark.
"Like a fucking house of cards," he answered, relishing the thought.
Russia, he thought. Sounds like Prussia. And exactly why that was and whether or not it should be the other way around didn't matter in the slightest, because either way it sounded like revenge, and that was a sweet sound indeed.
- - -
It occurred to Prussia, over a century and a half later (though not for the first time, not by far), that "revenge" could have a very different sound depending on just whom it was directed against. Of course, even if he had wanted to impart this realization to France (and he didn't), he doubted it would have made any impression. Waterloo was long-past, blurred around the edges by the steady haze of stretching time; but 1940 still hovered clear and vivid in living memory, and la drôle de guerre had turned back then into something that France still did not find in the least bit funny.
Besides, it wasn't as though he talked to France much these days, anyway.
Moscow was whole again, but it was not snowing today. He was glad. He'd seen quite enough snow to last him for another several centuries.
His footsteps on the carpet must have betrayed his arrival from halfway down the hallway, but Prussia was still not surprised when he opened the office door to find Russia unconcernedly pouring over a stack of papers at his wide desk. He stood quietly at the threshold, one hand still on the knob, and waited. Russia ignored him awhile longer, and only the shuffling of documents filled the room's silence.
Prussia waited.
More shuffling. As he read, Russia hummed a few bars of some military anthem.
Prussia shifted his weight from foot to foot.
Russia picked up his pen, began to write something at one of the bottom of the pages in careful, deliberate strokes.
Prussia's hand, cold and clammy, perspired on the doorknob.
Scribble scribble scribble.
"You wanted to see me, Russia?" said Prussia, in a slightly desperate tone. Russia looked up and smiled brightly, setting the pen aside.
"Ah, East, there you are! I'd almost forgotten I sent for you!" (Lies lies lies; Russia never forgot.) "Do come in, won't you?"
Nodding mechanically, Prussia entered and closed the door behind him, much more out of custom than personal preference. He stepped forward and stood attentively a few feet in front of the desk, hands folded lightly behind his back, but declined to sit down in the chair waiting beside him.
Russia ignored him and held the topmost sheet of paper up proudly in both hands like a parent appraising a child's work of art. "I was just looking over some of the space program's progress," he announced. "Big plans coming up, East."
"Is that right?" said Prussia, on cue.
"Ohh yes. Big plans. Another launch next month, with live specimens!"
"That is exciting." He looked straight ahead and focused carefully on a point several inches above and to the right of Russia's head on the window behind him.
"Mm-hm. They're going to send a tortoise this time."
Prussia blinked; his brow furrowed briefly. "A...a tortoise? In space?"
"The first tortoise in space, East," Russia pointed out, looking up at Prussia somewhat reproachfully from over the top of the paper. "Don't you want to sit? It's quite comfortable."
"No, thank you." He kept his tone as bland as possible. "Er, what sort of tortoise?"
"A Russian one."
"Ah," said Prussia. Then, sensing more was expected of him: "That's very thoughtful of them."
"It is, isn't it?" Russia sighed wistfully and put the sheet down, folding his hands in his lap and leaning back in his chair to look out the window. "1968 already, East. How the time does fly."
Prussia, for whom time had had a distressing habit of drawing itself out excruciatingly since somewhere around the dawn of the 20th century, made no comment. Fortunately, he didn't need to.
"Now what was it that his boss said, a few years ago?" mused Russia, tapping a finger to his chin contemplatively. "A man on the moon by the end of the decade, wasn't it? And here it's already almost over." He smiled, or at least showed his teeth. "He's slipping, East."
We all are, thought Prussia. But he said, "serves him right, the uppity little bastard," and still meant it.
Russia chuckled. "Such blind, reckless ambition. It will lead only to trouble for him. It always does. Do sit down, East."
"No, thank you." He felt rather than saw the look directed at him. "Was there anything else?"
"How are things at your place?" asked Russia, swiveling back to lean on the desk and peering closely at Prussia over steepled fingers. "No more little rebellious incidents, I trust?"
Not until they start making people out of stronger stuff than tanks. "No, Russia."
Just the barest hint of a frown. "Only I've heard some rather distressing news about your foreign policy of late. Getting rather...brotherly with certain other nations, aren't you?"
Prussia cleared his throat. "It's nothing that serious. G--West and I just talked once or twice about kind of easing up a little on a few things. But it's not like we're all buddy-buddy or anything. He's still a capitalist." He paused, scowling. "With a totally disorganized infrastructure, and, and awful taste in music." He propped one hand on his hip and wagged his other index finger crossly, still talking to the window. "And do you know, do you know what that absolute tool had to say about my cars the other d--"
"I am happy to see you can be relied upon, East," said Russia, somewhat pointedly.
He blinked, mouth halfway open to continue the diatribe. "U-uh, yeah. Right." His hands dropped back down hastily. "You know me; I've got your back."
"Precisely. That's why I've called you here today." The chair creaked faintly as he settled back.
"Is it?"
"Yes," said Russia, closing his eyes thoughtfully. When he opened them, he gazed at the desk's surface and spoke very quietly.
"Czechoslovakia is not so obedient."
"...Oh," said Prussia.
"You remember the trouble they've been giving us this year, I trust? All those little changes and reforms the new...boss there seems to think are in order?"
He willed his expression to remain blank. "But we spoke to Czechoslovakia about that earlier this month. All of us. And you--we said that as long as it didn't get out of hand, we wouldn't inter--"
"--No, we agreed that there would be intervention if it got out of hand," said Russia smoothly, as though the wording made all the difference, which it did. "And it has gotten out of hand, East. Very much so." He looked up. "Sit down."
Prussia sat.
"I've already spoken to Hungary, Poland, and Bulgaria, East," Russia sighed as he got up from his own chair and wandered around to the other side of the desk. "And they've all agreed to give me their support in doing what needs to be done."
"You're sending soldiers in," said Prussia. It was not a question.
"No more than 200,000," Russia replied smoothly. He picked at a bit of imaginary lint on his shoulder. "And a few tanks, of course."
"You know they're not gonna like that. The Alli--the others, I mean."
"This is none of their concern, I think." He moved again, now pacing somewhere directly behind Prussia in the office. "I expect your full support, East. We move on the 20th. 11 PM precisely."
Precisely. It was always precisely now. When had Russia learned that? Precisely had been his.
Prussia nodded anyway, then furrowed his brow. "Alright, but are you really sure you wanna have me send troops in?"
"Why wouldn't I be? You have an army."
He'd had one, a great one, the greatest, and back to back with Russia and England and the others it had beaten France, wounded him, brought to his goddamned knees--
"Not a very big one."
"But we need them. We need you. You always were such a cunning strategist, East."
--Cunning, like a swift decisive campaign, like a cleverly-forged partnership, like a knife in the back when the time was right--
"Well, yeah, but, I mean, it's not really...they haven't seen a whole lot of action, you know..."
"Every army must make use of its training."
--Training training training, and what good had it done him, done them, when the Winter came on and--
"But this would..this would be the first time..."
"What would it be?"
--and he'd remembered all of it then, the wind, the snow, the miserable grueling agony and he'd watched history repeat itself it and had all been for nothing because even after all those years and all that slow creeping madness Russia could still endure--
"...The first time our, my, soldiers have invaded another country since..."
"Since when?"
--and he had made it back across the border this time, had finished his retreat, but that didn't stop his chasing, not a step, and this time it wasn't a rock he held but a gun, and the cities had crumbled around them like so many houses of cards--
"Since when?"
--Fuck off, he'd said, with a mouthful of broken teeth. Fuck off, you psychopath, this isn't over, Hungary-
-Fell, the reply had come. Like you will fall, and Germany, and Japan, and Italy, and France and England and America and anyone who ever tries this again because I am throughbeingwalkeduponand--
"Since when, East?"
Prussia shook his head violently, unclenched his hands from the chair seat he now realized he had been clutching.
"Since..."
"Since." Russia's pacing had stopped.
"Since the war," he finally managed, and braced himself just in time for the chair to be flipped violently back and crashing to the floor. Before he could twist out of the way, Russia had dropped to a low crouch over him from behind, pinning his shoulders to the back of the chair and hovering menacingly inches from Prussia's face.
"Since the war," Russia repeated. "And now you don't want to mobilize them again, for fear that people will think of you again as they used to. As you really are."
"I'm not the same person I was back--" Prussia began, and stopped when Russia craned down carefully to kiss his neck.
"I know," he said, breath warm against Prussia's skin. "Of all people, I know best."
Prussia's hand shot up, clutched uncertainly at Russia's arm restraining him. Something between a growl and a moan escaped between his teeth and he squirmed with what little leverage he could find from his awkward position. At last Russia withdrew and stood, looming over him where he stayed sprawled ungraciously in the tipped-over chair.
A tilt of the head, a smile. "Your hands are shaking," Russia said. "Is it cold?"
It was August.
"Fuckin' freezing," said Prussia, and held out his hand to be pulled up.
It was some small consolation to him that it took so long for them to get to the couch this time around. Each grappling hold, each scrape of teeth on skin, each struggling, halting step was a month in the trenches, a desperate border push, a bitter defiant stand. They were last stands, though, and he was not surprised when once again the dull grey cushions met with his back and the sudden pressure of their combined weight made the springs creak in futile protest beneath him. He ripped Russia's scarf away in one last bid for the final word and paid for it with a bitten lip.
Outside, Moscow was whole again, and it was not snowing, but some things had not changed; Russia leaned heavily on him, supporting himself with an arm propped across Prussia's chest even as his other hand fumbled blindly for a zipper, and his body was heavy and immovable, forged of iron though Prussia had seen him bleed, and his tongue did not taste of vodka, didn't need to, because these days Russia's dreams were sometimes intoxication enough, and he was hot and cold and empty and filled with sadness or hatred or longing or maybe just white, endless memory.
So Prussia, left with little other option, lay under Russia's warm bulk and kissed back (if it could be called kissing, what they did) and counted to himself the differences between shielding and smothering and knew without question that Russia did not yet truly grasp any of these, perhaps never would. But mostly he tried not to think, and instead dug his nails harder into Russia's skin just to remind both of them that he could.
When it was over, Russia made no move to get up, laying his head instead on Prussia's chest as it rose and fell in gradually slowing movements. Leisurely, he brought his arm up from where it hung over the edge of the couch and tapped Prussia once, twice, just over where the heart would be.
"Your tanks will be stationed at the border for me should I need them," he said. It was not a question.
"Yes," said Prussia.
"You may keep your delusions of non-savagery."
"Thank you," said East Germany.
"I am all the the force you will ever still need."
"You are," said the Soviet Bloc.
His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides a few times before he forced them to still. The weight on his chest did not lift.
Prussia, he thought. Sounds like Russia. And just why that was and whether or not it had ever been the other way around didn't really seem to matter anymore, because either way it had all begun to sound much the same to him.
---
During Napoleon's retreat from Russia, a large portion of the Prussian soldiers obliged to take part said 'fuck this'. There was probably no cuddling involved.
The Prague Spring.
'Delusions', finally. That has been bothering me since December.