[Part 14] Beloved (or, if Nobody Wins, Who Writes History) - Lithuania/Belarus {12a/14}
anonymous
November 14 2011, 20:59:08 UTC
Uh, yeah, this thing... exists still. Sorry about the delay. I'm warning you though, this chapter will be long one.
She understands that things are going badly for him. The schadenfreude is vaguely undermined by the fact when things go badly for him, things sort of start going badly for the rest of them.
Tonight, he makes her dine with him, sitting across a table with candles and fine food. Like he is genuinely trying to romance her, or like this is some kind of anniversary celebration. She wonders if this is what he always wanted, really; the way he would have treated her if she hadn't always been so determined to defy him and everything he asked of her.
They don't make much conversation. They don't really have anything to talk about, as for all his obsession with her over the years they don't seem to have much in common. Not for the first time, she wonders why he is so obsessed with her to begin with. He saw her once and decided she must be his forever. Was he following her before that? Did he see her with her family and decide she belonged somewhere else? She shivers and tries to block off the thoughts. They don't even matter, really.
“Do you like the meal?” Toris asks her, focusing her attention again. She hesitates.
“...It's edible.” Of course, the food is fantastic, but she refuses to show her appreciation. Not to him. It doesn't seem to work, in any case, by the way he smiles at her.
“That means good to you, correct?” It doesn't seem like he needs an answer, so she just ignores it. She eats the food (fuck, it is really good).
“...Maybe,” she says. It feels too much like giving up, but she's tired of trying to come up with excuses for everything ever.
He smiles softly at her, and she avoids his eyes. “I understand, Natalya,” he says. “I've gotten used to equating how you actually feel about things with what you say.”
She gulps. “You don't understand me at all.”
He sighs. “Natalya, just eat your dinner?”
After a pause, she concedes and does so.
“So,” she says, “I've heard you've been talking to my brother lately.”
“Natalya-”
“What? Don't I have the right to ask about that? I do live with you, and he is my brother-”
There's suddenly a smashing sound and Toris has risen to his feet. “God, you're so ungrateful!”
“Toris!”
“Haven't I done everything for you?” he shouts. “I've given you room, and food; I haven't worked you to death; I haven't made you become just like me - most women would be grateful! Grateful! But no, not you, you just try and escape and go on about your beloved brother - and I let you! I've never once punished you for the way you treat me! It's pathetic; I'm pathetic.”
Delusional, maybe. Has he forgotten it all? How he's taxed her? How he took her people for himself? How he's beaten her for daring not to love him the way he loves her, when she never even wanted to meet him to begin with? “Don't you dare pity yourself,” she says and takes another bite. She wants to stay calm.
He yanks her plate away and smashes it too. She jumps. “Don't tell me what to do.”
She narrows her eyes. “Why not? It's not like I'm naive enough to believe it'll actually work.”
He smiles. It's a soft smile, and it frightens her much more than the yelling. He's just completely unpredictable. “That's right. You think you're so powerless, don't you?” She about to reply with something about having been held captive for the last half a millennium or so, when suddenly he yanks her out of the chair by the wrist. “Really, Natalya, do you think I don't know?”
“...Know what?”
“Who I am! What I am around you.” He starts to laugh, still keeping her firmly in place. “I'm not a bad person, Natalya. I'm far better than anyone else you know. Far, far better than that brother of yours you're still so obsessed with. I mean, what happened to you when he and Sweden invaded... but it's just when I'm around you.”
She keeps her head high and her gaze steady. “What the hell are you talking about? And what do you think you're doing, dragging my brother into this?”
“You already dragged him in.” He shakes his head, and slowly strokes her face. She doesn't bother flinching; it wouldn't help. “You make me crazy, Natalya. A monster. A madman.”
[Part 14] Beloved (or, if Nobody Wins, Who Writes History) - Lithuania/Belarus {12b/14}
anonymous
November 14 2011, 21:03:05 UTC
He grabs her by the waist and pulls her in close, making her gasp. “It's all your fault. Don't you even feel guilty?”
She's trying to stay composed, but her breath gets shallow. “That doesn't even make sense,” she says, avoiding his eyes. “I'm no angel, but I'm not your guiding light. I'm not responsible for what you do.”
He pulls back and pushes her back onto the table. Ow, she thinks but she doesn't cry out. She quickly pushes herself back up again, just to stare at him with contempt. He runs his fingers through his hair. “You are such a bitch.”
“You know for all the insults, you've always actually seemed quite fond of me.”
He rolls his eyes. “There you go. Again with those sarcastic comments. Don't pretend you're so self-assured - you're a scared little girl, and I'm the one scaring you; we both know that.”
“Then what do you want from me? If I'm this horrible woman whose led you on and broken your heart, what exactly am I meant to do to make it all better?”
He goes still and gives her a long, slow, lingering look. “You know what,” he whispers.
She clenches her jaw. “No.”
He just keeps looking at her for awhile, until a bitter smirk spreads across his face. “Of course. You're special,” he says. “You know, anyone else would have just given in by now. Would have made it easier on themselves, if nothing else; given them some kind of control over the situation. But that's you, always with the honour and not the reason. It's actually rather annoying.”
“I'm sorry, are you asking me to manipulate you?” she asks, getting increasingly confused by this whole situation. “Or do you think I'm still naive enough to let you trick me into being whatever you want?”
He laughs. “I'm sorry, in what alternate universe are you not naive?” he asks. “Or are you not listening to yourself? Word of advice, people like you - they don't become the powers. They don't get to control their own destiny. Underhanded manipulation is pretty much the only way forward, and you're too damned self-righteous for that. And you still think that one day, your big brother's going to come in and fix it all. And he'll care. That you'll still be more than just a bit more territory to a guy who's already invaded pretty much every land he could get his hands on, just because he could,” he spreads his hands out like a magician, directing her gaze to some miracle. She looks away, ashamed. “It's not going to happen. You're stuck with me,” he says. “I mean, how long has it been so far?”
She looks up, burning with pain and rage and guilt. “Oh really? No-one cares about me?” she says, leaning back against the table slowly. “Well, that's not true. You clearly do. And you know what, you're right; I have been decidedly ungrateful. Well, okay then.”
She lifts up her skirts and spreads her legs, still avoiding his eyes. There's still lots of stuff on this table, so she brushes it off and makes loud, cluttering, destructive noise - when she looks up, he's just staring.
“Well? What are you waiting for?”
“What do you think you're doing?”
She shrugs. “Giving you what you want. If I'm stuck here anyway, why bother resisting, right?”
He seems confused. Bastard, he does not have the right to get confused by this shit. “Why?”
“Didn't I just explain that?” she says, and he's likely about to point something out, but she's not giving him the opportunity to interrupt and (what's the answer to his goddamn question?) make this into another one of those things that he does. Another way to make himself into, somehow, the normal one in this whole fucked up thing. “Come on. I doubt you've changed your mind that much. After all this nagging and self-pity you'd think you'd jump at-”
Suddenly her back's on the table and that's harder than she imagined, he's on top of her and she just freezes. She wants to scream. She wants to scream, bite, kick; do whatever it is she's been doing for the last five hundred fucking years to ward him off, and that doesn't even make any sense; she just told him to do this but god only knows she wishes she could remember why.
[Part 14] Beloved (or, if Nobody Wins, Who Writes History) - Lithuania/Belarus {12c/14}
anonymous
November 14 2011, 21:20:11 UTC
He pulls back, not far enough that she can see anything past him, but enough that she can't possibly pretend he is anyone else. She holds her breath. “I'd like to make it very clear: you have a choice here,” he says. “I'm not forcing you into anything.”
She gulps. “Right. You're a stand-up guy; you'd never do anything like that?”
“This was your idea.” He snaps into soft mode again (god, she gets sick of his mood swings), stroking her hair gently. She doesn't know what to do. “Are you changing your mind?”
She swallows hard. She wants to cry. She wants to do a lot of things she's been avoiding for the last five hundred years, but she doesn't because fuck it, she doesn't give in to him... all evidence to the contrary. She shakes that thought away and squirms into a more comfortable position on the table. “No. Do what you want. I'm being pragmatic.”
“Really?”
She nods. “If I'm stuck with you, this will keep you happy. If not - then I've got something clear to complain about when they come for me.”
There's a pause as he brushes her hair away, cups her face and lifts it off the table. And he smiles. “Thank you, Natalya. Thank you.”
When he kisses her, she freezes again and she still doesn't know what to do. She has to put up with it. Wasn't that the whole idea? He's not exactly being rough with her, probably because he's still got that whole idea that his feelings for her are noble. But her clothes are coming undone and he isn't pausing at all, and she wants to fight back but she thinks it's useless. Pointless. There is no going back now. She's panicking and she knows it, but if she can just keep her mouth shut for five minutes, she might just figure out whatever the hell it is she was meant to do with all this to begin with.
He grabs her and he pushes her and he touches her, and it's dirty and cold and disgusting and wet, but she'll be just fine as long as she can follow what's going on and keep breathing.
*
“M-Miss Belarus?”
She jumps a little at the sound but soon realises she's got nothing to worry about; it's the tiny, shaky kid who probably couldn't harm a flea just because he doesn't have the muscle tone. “What do you want?”
As always, Latvia looks like he's about to cry. “I - I was worried about Lithuania.”
She snorts. “Of course. Everyone's always so frightened of big brother,” the idiots, why can't they see he's just trying to help them- “What makes this special?”
Latvia bites his lip. “I - Russia's been focusing so much on Lithuania lately, and he's - well, he's the favourite.”
“...Pardon?”
“Russia treats him like-” she's clearly driving the boy even further into the depths of mental illness than usual, but nevermind - “Russia likes him. Wants him, in some way that's more than just... well, uh, I just - with someone like Russia, I worry he'd - do something. If he really wants...”
The boy is clearly desperate for her to step in and stop him having to explain this further, but Belarus says nothing.
She wants to hurt him. Stab him, beat him, anything; how dare you think brother would do something like that! She screams in her head, desperate to force reason into him. Just hearing it physically hurts. She can't breathe.
“Do you really think Russia is capable of that?” she asks quietly.
“Well, y-yes.”
She takes a deep breath. Liar! Idiot! “I see,” she says. “I don't.”
“O-oh,” the boy stutters. He seems frightened. Good. “I just thought - you may have seen something-”
“I haven't.” She doesn't think of those scars running down Lithuania's back. Whatever happened there, he deserved everything he got. “Leave me alone.”
“Oh, of - of course, Miss Belarus.”
He stands to leave, but she changes her mind. “Latvia - have you ever been in love?”
He turns around, looking confused and more frightened. “N-no, Miss.”
She nods. “Good,” she says. “You're lucky. It is - terrifying, and consuming. It will destroy you from the inside out. And you will destroy those around you. Be grateful.”
“I - I will,” he says. She knows he doesn't mean it. “Good - goodbye.”
She understands that things are going badly for him. The schadenfreude is vaguely undermined by the fact when things go badly for him, things sort of start going badly for the rest of them.
Tonight, he makes her dine with him, sitting across a table with candles and fine food. Like he is genuinely trying to romance her, or like this is some kind of anniversary celebration. She wonders if this is what he always wanted, really; the way he would have treated her if she hadn't always been so determined to defy him and everything he asked of her.
They don't make much conversation. They don't really have anything to talk about, as for all his obsession with her over the years they don't seem to have much in common. Not for the first time, she wonders why he is so obsessed with her to begin with. He saw her once and decided she must be his forever. Was he following her before that? Did he see her with her family and decide she belonged somewhere else? She shivers and tries to block off the thoughts. They don't even matter, really.
“Do you like the meal?” Toris asks her, focusing her attention again. She hesitates.
“...It's edible.” Of course, the food is fantastic, but she refuses to show her appreciation. Not to him. It doesn't seem to work, in any case, by the way he smiles at her.
“That means good to you, correct?” It doesn't seem like he needs an answer, so she just ignores it. She eats the food (fuck, it is really good).
“...Maybe,” she says. It feels too much like giving up, but she's tired of trying to come up with excuses for everything ever.
He smiles softly at her, and she avoids his eyes. “I understand, Natalya,” he says. “I've gotten used to equating how you actually feel about things with what you say.”
She gulps. “You don't understand me at all.”
He sighs. “Natalya, just eat your dinner?”
After a pause, she concedes and does so.
“So,” she says, “I've heard you've been talking to my brother lately.”
“Natalya-”
“What? Don't I have the right to ask about that? I do live with you, and he is my brother-”
There's suddenly a smashing sound and Toris has risen to his feet. “God, you're so ungrateful!”
“Toris!”
“Haven't I done everything for you?” he shouts. “I've given you room, and food; I haven't worked you to death; I haven't made you become just like me - most women would be grateful! Grateful! But no, not you, you just try and escape and go on about your beloved brother - and I let you! I've never once punished you for the way you treat me! It's pathetic; I'm pathetic.”
Delusional, maybe. Has he forgotten it all? How he's taxed her? How he took her people for himself? How he's beaten her for daring not to love him the way he loves her, when she never even wanted to meet him to begin with? “Don't you dare pity yourself,” she says and takes another bite. She wants to stay calm.
He yanks her plate away and smashes it too. She jumps. “Don't tell me what to do.”
She narrows her eyes. “Why not? It's not like I'm naive enough to believe it'll actually work.”
He smiles. It's a soft smile, and it frightens her much more than the yelling. He's just completely unpredictable. “That's right. You think you're so powerless, don't you?” She about to reply with something about having been held captive for the last half a millennium or so, when suddenly he yanks her out of the chair by the wrist. “Really, Natalya, do you think I don't know?”
“...Know what?”
“Who I am! What I am around you.” He starts to laugh, still keeping her firmly in place. “I'm not a bad person, Natalya. I'm far better than anyone else you know. Far, far better than that brother of yours you're still so obsessed with. I mean, what happened to you when he and Sweden invaded... but it's just when I'm around you.”
She keeps her head high and her gaze steady. “What the hell are you talking about? And what do you think you're doing, dragging my brother into this?”
“You already dragged him in.” He shakes his head, and slowly strokes her face. She doesn't bother flinching; it wouldn't help. “You make me crazy, Natalya. A monster. A madman.”
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She's trying to stay composed, but her breath gets shallow. “That doesn't even make sense,” she says, avoiding his eyes. “I'm no angel, but I'm not your guiding light. I'm not responsible for what you do.”
He pulls back and pushes her back onto the table. Ow, she thinks but she doesn't cry out. She quickly pushes herself back up again, just to stare at him with contempt. He runs his fingers through his hair. “You are such a bitch.”
“You know for all the insults, you've always actually seemed quite fond of me.”
He rolls his eyes. “There you go. Again with those sarcastic comments. Don't pretend you're so self-assured - you're a scared little girl, and I'm the one scaring you; we both know that.”
“Then what do you want from me? If I'm this horrible woman whose led you on and broken your heart, what exactly am I meant to do to make it all better?”
He goes still and gives her a long, slow, lingering look. “You know what,” he whispers.
She clenches her jaw. “No.”
He just keeps looking at her for awhile, until a bitter smirk spreads across his face. “Of course. You're special,” he says. “You know, anyone else would have just given in by now. Would have made it easier on themselves, if nothing else; given them some kind of control over the situation. But that's you, always with the honour and not the reason. It's actually rather annoying.”
“I'm sorry, are you asking me to manipulate you?” she asks, getting increasingly confused by this whole situation. “Or do you think I'm still naive enough to let you trick me into being whatever you want?”
He laughs. “I'm sorry, in what alternate universe are you not naive?” he asks. “Or are you not listening to yourself? Word of advice, people like you - they don't become the powers. They don't get to control their own destiny. Underhanded manipulation is pretty much the only way forward, and you're too damned self-righteous for that. And you still think that one day, your big brother's going to come in and fix it all. And he'll care. That you'll still be more than just a bit more territory to a guy who's already invaded pretty much every land he could get his hands on, just because he could,” he spreads his hands out like a magician, directing her gaze to some miracle. She looks away, ashamed. “It's not going to happen. You're stuck with me,” he says. “I mean, how long has it been so far?”
She looks up, burning with pain and rage and guilt. “Oh really? No-one cares about me?” she says, leaning back against the table slowly. “Well, that's not true. You clearly do. And you know what, you're right; I have been decidedly ungrateful. Well, okay then.”
She lifts up her skirts and spreads her legs, still avoiding his eyes. There's still lots of stuff on this table, so she brushes it off and makes loud, cluttering, destructive noise - when she looks up, he's just staring.
“Well? What are you waiting for?”
“What do you think you're doing?”
She shrugs. “Giving you what you want. If I'm stuck here anyway, why bother resisting, right?”
He seems confused. Bastard, he does not have the right to get confused by this shit. “Why?”
“Didn't I just explain that?” she says, and he's likely about to point something out, but she's not giving him the opportunity to interrupt and (what's the answer to his goddamn question?) make this into another one of those things that he does. Another way to make himself into, somehow, the normal one in this whole fucked up thing. “Come on. I doubt you've changed your mind that much. After all this nagging and self-pity you'd think you'd jump at-”
Suddenly her back's on the table and that's harder than she imagined, he's on top of her and she just freezes. She wants to scream. She wants to scream, bite, kick; do whatever it is she's been doing for the last five hundred fucking years to ward him off, and that doesn't even make any sense; she just told him to do this but god only knows she wishes she could remember why.
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She gulps. “Right. You're a stand-up guy; you'd never do anything like that?”
“This was your idea.” He snaps into soft mode again (god, she gets sick of his mood swings), stroking her hair gently. She doesn't know what to do. “Are you changing your mind?”
She swallows hard. She wants to cry. She wants to do a lot of things she's been avoiding for the last five hundred years, but she doesn't because fuck it, she doesn't give in to him... all evidence to the contrary. She shakes that thought away and squirms into a more comfortable position on the table. “No. Do what you want. I'm being pragmatic.”
“Really?”
She nods. “If I'm stuck with you, this will keep you happy. If not - then I've got something clear to complain about when they come for me.”
There's a pause as he brushes her hair away, cups her face and lifts it off the table. And he smiles. “Thank you, Natalya. Thank you.”
When he kisses her, she freezes again and she still doesn't know what to do. She has to put up with it. Wasn't that the whole idea? He's not exactly being rough with her, probably because he's still got that whole idea that his feelings for her are noble. But her clothes are coming undone and he isn't pausing at all, and she wants to fight back but she thinks it's useless. Pointless. There is no going back now. She's panicking and she knows it, but if she can just keep her mouth shut for five minutes, she might just figure out whatever the hell it is she was meant to do with all this to begin with.
He grabs her and he pushes her and he touches her, and it's dirty and cold and disgusting and wet, but she'll be just fine as long as she can follow what's going on and keep breathing.
*
“M-Miss Belarus?”
She jumps a little at the sound but soon realises she's got nothing to worry about; it's the tiny, shaky kid who probably couldn't harm a flea just because he doesn't have the muscle tone. “What do you want?”
As always, Latvia looks like he's about to cry. “I - I was worried about Lithuania.”
She avoids his eyes. “Why?”
Latvia hesitates. “I - it's - Russia. I'm frightened.”
She snorts. “Of course. Everyone's always so frightened of big brother,” the idiots, why can't they see he's just trying to help them- “What makes this special?”
Latvia bites his lip. “I - Russia's been focusing so much on Lithuania lately, and he's - well, he's the favourite.”
“...Pardon?”
“Russia treats him like-” she's clearly driving the boy even further into the depths of mental illness than usual, but nevermind - “Russia likes him. Wants him, in some way that's more than just... well, uh, I just - with someone like Russia, I worry he'd - do something. If he really wants...”
The boy is clearly desperate for her to step in and stop him having to explain this further, but Belarus says nothing.
She wants to hurt him. Stab him, beat him, anything; how dare you think brother would do something like that! She screams in her head, desperate to force reason into him. Just hearing it physically hurts. She can't breathe.
“Do you really think Russia is capable of that?” she asks quietly.
“Well, y-yes.”
She takes a deep breath. Liar! Idiot! “I see,” she says. “I don't.”
“O-oh,” the boy stutters. He seems frightened. Good. “I just thought - you may have seen something-”
“I haven't.” She doesn't think of those scars running down Lithuania's back. Whatever happened there, he deserved everything he got. “Leave me alone.”
“Oh, of - of course, Miss Belarus.”
He stands to leave, but she changes her mind. “Latvia - have you ever been in love?”
He turns around, looking confused and more frightened. “N-no, Miss.”
She nods. “Good,” she says. “You're lucky. It is - terrifying, and consuming. It will destroy you from the inside out. And you will destroy those around you. Be grateful.”
“I - I will,” he says. She knows he doesn't mean it. “Good - goodbye.”
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