[Fanfiction] Prisms
Title: Prisms
Fandom: Axis Powers Hetalia
Genre(s): Drama/Angst
Character(s)|Pairing(s): Korea/Japan, Korea/China, Korea/US, Russia
Rating/Warning(s): R/NC-17, language, sexual content, violence/gore
Summary: An alternate to the twin/sister theory of Korea… considering wounds that will not heal and the dimensions of a mind.
Dedication: Tometallic_sweet -You freaking bring out the worst out of me in my literary thought processes. And I love you for it.
2006
He finds it easier to treat Yun-soo like a slightly feeble-minded acquaintance, sighing when his brother makes this claim or that. If it makes him feel better, let him have his delusions, he tells himself. Even when he wants to grab the taller man by the shoulders and shake him silly, like he watches Arthur do to Alfred (though not as often anymore). But it isn’t polite and it isn’t profitable (to say nothing of the fact that he’s just a little hesitant of physically laying hands on the other man).
Today, they go out to eat yakiniku and he silently endures a tirade about how it’s Korean barbeque and don’t they have any kimchi? All in Korean, of course; his brother refuses to touch Japanese despite understanding it perfectly.
Yun-soo embraced Western culture extremely well, much like Kiku had a long time ago. The roles were reversed this time, the smaller man thought with distant irony as he sits in his kimono, a light haori of dark gray draped over his shoulders. The kimono beneath is dark green and patterned with thin white stripes in a sinuous pattern that suggest water ripples. Traditional, even staid, and remarkably masculine for such a small, delicately built man, but he has learned not to care. Nonetheless, he keeps his top of the line cell phone on the table beside him and his wallet is from Italy.
Yun-soo had recently dyed the tips of his dark hair blonde, a color in between America’s hair and Ivan’s, and he has a massive pair of Italian sunglasses on the table between them, the golden logo glittering against the imitation tortoiseshell of the frames. He bares his collarbones with the strategically opened throat of his finely tailored black shirt, his neck draped in pewter and silver chains, and his legs shift in close fitting gray slacks. While Kiku sits stiffly and properly, Yun-soo drapes himself carelessly, as much as one could do so in the straight-backed, hard wooden booth. He plucks at a silver pendant around his throat with long and nervous fingers, gesticulating with his other hand and speaking a bit too loudly, to his fellow nation’s and diners’ united consternation.
“Would it have killed you to make the series out of the original comic?” he demands, gesturing with his hands but not his chopsticks. He stabs a bit of roasted pork and garlic at the same time, tossing both into his mouth with ease but not grace.
Kiku does not precisely frown as he finishes a bite of chicken cartilage and roasted leek. “Fewer people would be acquainted with that piece. Drawing an original story with recognizable character designs was wiser.”
Yun-soo growls something under his breath, probably a random curse that he picked up from America. “And fucked it up,” he says in a low voice.
“Language,” Kiku says a bit more sharply than he intended, now starting to get truly riled. Korea always had a way of riling him in ways that few could.
The other man smirks. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” he replies sweetly, in mocking imitation of the murmured apologies both their nations are famous for. “I ask your forgiveness.”
Kiku would have instantly stood up and left if he were less polite and more willing to lose face. As it is, he hides his sudden flare of anger behind his teacup and the two of them finish their meal in a stiff silence. And when they fuck each other that night at a nearby love hotel, Yun-soo keeps on his shirt and jewelry, even as he runs his hands and nails all over Kiku’s narrow, pale chest gently and possessively.
2004
The bathhouse is very quiet for this time. Then again, at two in the afternoon, most people are at work or school. It is at night when the bathhouse will fill, with families and friends and drowsing individuals who would watch everything through narrowed eyes while thinking whatever thoughts haunt them between dreaming and waking. Water unites them all, even as it cleanses and refreshes. He traces a long and languid hand in the pleasantly warm, green tinted waters of the pool, a tub filled with tea for them to soak their bones. The air smells refreshing and astringent, like mint mixed with pine, though just a touch of bitterness lingers beneath, the smell of dried mugwort.
He bundles his hair up, not caring whether he looks like a woman, particularly with a strip of toweling holding strands form his face like a turban. Across from him, Yun-soo leans back, perfectly at ease in the water, with his usually flyaway hair now slicked back from his forehead. Like that, he looks professional, older, Yao thinks to himself idly. Not that he chooses to act like it.
He remembers other days and other bathhouses. The trouble he has with this place is that you cannot hear the distant sounds of a mandolin being played as a counter point to the gentle gurgling of water in an otherwise silent, mist-filled chamber. No music here, save for the rush of water being constantly replenished and very occasionally a brief echoing burst of K-pop when someone opens the door to the lounge. But he cannot complain, particularly when his younger brother has treated him so well lately.
Nonetheless, he cannot bring himself to look at his brother’s chest. He turns his head away when he finds his eyes going over there, and his mind tries to think of other things. But memory is traitorous and locks her doors to him and he is left only with the present and its sharp immediacy.
He closes his eyes then and his heightened senses hears the soft rippling waves of water crash along the sides of the pool as someone slowly, gracefully moves towards him. His eyes immediately open and he looks down to see the mostly submerged body of Yun-soo, kneeling on the floor of the pool, dark eyes looking up at him.
“Is something troubling you, Hyung-nim?” he asks in sweetly accented Mandarin, his words softer and not quite precise but somehow all the more endearing, even with the startling jolt of a Korean honorific at the end.
“No, nothing at all,” Yao manages to say, a smile easily coming to his lips. The next moment, he hears a surge of water and in the wake of sudden, startling violent movement in the languid and heavy atmosphere of the room, he feels soft lips on his. He kisses back without thinking of anything in particular. They kiss languidly, because bathhouses are a place where time runs slowly, as river rapids run to deeper beds. He can feel calloused, oddly soft hands on his chest, causing goosebumps to skitter across his skin like the wake of ants’ legs.
Yao incongruously remembers colder and larger hands upon his skin, when his chest was not damp with water but was instead sticky with sweat. He remembers hard, cold-chapped lips crushing his, even as gentle, experienced fingers go to his nipple and gently twist it, worrying it like a pearl. His eyes look downwards and then, he puts his hands on Yun-soo’s shoulders and gently pushes him from him, unable to look at his face. His brother’s hands go to his throat and softly, softly surround it. They tremble and twitch like the hopping movements of sparrows on the ground, but they finally let go as Yun-soo turns away, splashing through the waters to get out of the pool.
A long, sharp streak along his back starts to ache.
1989
If dealing with Russia was freaky enough, dealing with North Korea was an exercise in mindscrewing. It’s like dealing with Ivan Braginsky, but different, a very, very different sort of head game. North Korea has just as many swings in mood and temperament, like a vicious-minded child, and yet he pretends at none of Russia’s joviality- Just trying to describe it is enough to give you a mindscrew on its own.
Alfred shrugs and rolls his shoulders under his leather jacket as the other man enters the room, crisply dressed and looking as stiff as newly made cardboard.
“America,” he says with a thin, thin smile that looks like the first glint of a new razor blade. “My apologies for my lateness.” He bows crisply.
“I wasn’t waiting long.” Less than fifteen minutes. If he weren’t so tense, he’d almost be impressed with the other’s speed.
“It is still less than polite. But we must move on.”
Those kinds of uniforms have no business looking that good, Alfred thinks to himself, as the other man takes a seat. They talk, not of business, but of films and actors. Alfred is chagrinned to realize that the other man is far more versed in film than he is, not that he has an extensive background or education in the subject. He clears his throat after a polite and slowly tense exchange about Natalie Wood.
“About this matter of you stockpiling…” he begins.
“Experimental purposes,” the other man says smoothly, as well-practiced as a greeting or pleasantry. “Renewable energy.”
“That is not what I have here,” Alfred says, seeing the bullshit for what it is, opening up the dossier he has on him.
Another sort of smile, a vague and presumably unassuming sort of expression, crosses the smaller man’s face, but it seems all the more deadly. “You have your own stockpile, I believe,” he returns quite smoothly.
“We have no intention of using it,” Alfred snaps.
“Neither do we.” He pauses and then adds, thoughtfully, “Under the right circumstances.”
“Are you threatening me?” America hisses.
A cold smile crosses that wolf-like face. “Never something so… crude,” is the reply, delicately formed and pronounced exquisitely. And his thoughts go to Kiku, with his grammatically precise and elegant English…. But the tiny nation never was this… over the edge.
A vein pulsates in his forehead. “What do you want?” he asks.
“You know what I want,” is the level, even soothing response.
“The demilitarized zone stays where it is.”
“It is as simple as that, America. You merely have to… step away. And I will take care of the rest.”
“Not in this century,” Alfred snaps.
“Then we remain at odds with each other. Or are you planning on winning this game by not moving?” Their eyes meet. Then, in a smooth movement that causes his medals to gently clink against each other, the other man rises to his feet and strolls over, deliberately, gracefully.
“I frighten you, Alfred, do I not?” he asks conversationally and Alfred, finding that time has slowed, notices how all of his dark hair is precisely combed and slicked, not one single strand out of place.
“I’m not scared of anything,” he retorts, realizing how petulant he sounds a minute too late. “Least of all you.”
“But you are,” breathes the other man, coming close. “You are afraid of all of us little ones. Your… once ultimate weapon is no longer heaven sent. It is no longer merely yours. And you realize now how a thrown knife can be returned.”
He draws a finger over his own throat, his narrow, column-like throat. His lips part and he bites down on the tip of his crisp leather glove, draws it from his fingers. The other glove is disposed of in a similar fashion and Alfred is suddenly aware that he has forgotten to breathe.
“We may be small, but we know how to bite, Alfred,” North Korea declares.
“And blow up the world while you’re at it?”
A short, surprisingly bitter laugh warps the pleasant voice. “As my mentor Ivan would say, ‘We will be one.’ I am not sure if he meant Armageddon, though I will not put it past him.” A curious expression crosses his face. “Tell me, America. Do you ever feel… torn?”
“What do you mean?”
“All of those states,” the other man says, gesturing idly. The sleeve of his uniform coat flops about in a fleetingly familiar manner. “Spread out everywhere, one not even part of your own continent. Do they ever… wear at you?”
“No,” Alfred replies shortly and he pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He tries to forget memories of searing pain in his abdomen, headaches that felt like they would split his skull, all that damn screaming…
“Then it explains what you have done to me.” North Korea’s face has an expression of childish amusement even as his voice has absolutely no life, no emotion. Hatred would be more soothing, rage would be more comforting. Nervous fingers unfasten brass buttons with lightning speed and pull apart the heavy jacket with its colors and medals. They do not hesitate or falter on the smaller buttons of the shirt underneath, and pull away at layers of gauze and sticking plaster. And Alfred feels sick.
He had pulled Kiku from the rubble of Hiroshima, blistered and burned and bleeding. The sight had sickened him for days, as every morning he would vomit up his breakfast in memory of seeing pale flesh blotchy with red, blood blisters popping on the lightest contact, skin actually black as ash from charred flesh. And yet- the present sight overwhelms him, fills his vision and he knows he will have sleepless nights for weeks to come.
The scars start at the top of Korea’s chest, below the collar bones, an uneven “Y-incision” he has seen medical examiners use for autopsies. One branch of that Y overlaps the thin man’s heart and the longest, extended section goes all the way down his torso to stop just above his navel. It is an unusually clean wound, on the other hand, just as clean as a master surgeon might make, in sharp contrast to the other branch of the “Y” which seems a little newer and crueler and more painful, a jagged laceration on the right side of his chest. Disturbingly, it looks like it has been constantly worried at with fingernails, the flaps of skin pulled and pushed this way and that. Both wounds bleed sluggishly, even as new stitches march along the incision and the laceration, black and neat as the edging on a blanket.
Alfred is suddenly aware of a soft hand on his cheek, oddly tender. “You make your dragons,” a stranger with an acquaintance’s face tells him, softly and sweetly. “And then you slay them. Only to make more in the ashes.” He slowly pulls Alfred’s glasses from his face, gently folds them up and places them on the table.
“Nothing will change,” he says conversationally, even as he unhurriedly undoes America’s shirt. “Nothing will change at all.”
Alfred doesn’t nod and he curses himself for his own powerlessness, as cold lips with the memory of winter descend on his.
1947
The bleeding has stopped at last. He watches the blood-drained face of the mostly unconscious boy on the hard bed as he mops up the newly stitched wound with vodka on a clean cloth and then starts to bandage everything neatly. The boy’s breathing comes erratically, hissing through teeth as his eyes roll round and round under his partially closed eyelids.
“All done,” he tells the boy, softly, soothingly. “You must be careful not to over extend yourself in the next few days.”
He gently pushes back sweat-sticky locks of brown-black hair, watching pitch black eyes for signs of fever. None can be seen, but endorphins war in the boy’s body, wracking him in both pleasure and pain and nothing like blissful cessation of either. Ivan can remember moments like that and he can feel something like pity.
“Hurts,” the boy whimpers through dried and cracked lips. Ivan thinks back on a catatonic child who first took his hand and mindlessly followed after him one autumn not too long ago.
“You are very brave,” he says to the boy softly. “We will make you whole again. Soon.”
The boy smiles then, a child’s expression of trusting joy. “We- shall?” he asks, disjointedly. His breath rattles in his thin chest.
“Yes, yes. You will be one again.” He wonders if Alfred does this every time he receives the child again, every spring, this methodical mending of a doll of flesh. Ivan muses on the image of clumsy America attempting to stitch up the boy’s wounds but decides that it is not likely. Maybe the boy does it himself, or asks someone else to do it for him, hiding his shame and pain with all the stubborn pride of an adolescent, instead of weeping like a child.
“That is good,” the boy whispers. “That would be very, very good.” His thin face continues to stretch in a smile that is both cheery and frightening. Russia finds himself gently stroking the boy’s hair again.
“We will get you a new uniform, parnishka,” he says, as though this would distract the pain (and in a distant rose-tinted memory, he sees himself promising toys and sweets and gentle rides to another boy stricken in bed).
“It will be red?” his charge asks. “That is a good color.”
Ivan smiles then too. “Da, a very, very good color,” he agrees.
“And stars? Gold stars?”
“As many as you want.” With that, he undoes the badge at his breast and gently, gently slips it into a pale, frail hand and closes the skeletal fingers around it. The boy cranes his head to see the handsome gold star gleaming in his hand, a star on a red ribbon. He tries to laugh but it is too painful for him to do so.
“It is pretty,” he exclaims breathily, delight overwhelming pain. “Thank you.” He has astonishing manners, when he remembers them.
Russia gently strokes his hair in a fond manner and then drapes a blanket over him. “Rest now,” he tells the boy. “Rest and when you are well, we will continue our studies.” He finds it easier to talk to the boy than he thought, though he speaks his mind long and often these days to anyone who will listen. “The winter is long and cold, but it will make your mind burn brighter and your heart stronger.”
“Yes, yes,” the boy murmurs as his eyes finally close and his fingers continue to hold onto the star in his hand as Ivan exits the room.
He thinks on the long-limbed child on the bed as he opens a new bottle of vodka in his own bedroom and swallows the first burning mouthful. That wound would not kill him, for he is a robust nation, a stubborn nation, which Russia admires. But they would hurt him down to the bone, to the heart, and continue to bleed him dry, until he wishes desperately for a swift death instead of a slow lingering existence. He laughs then, in pity and exultation and who knows what else as he drinks in a silent toast to a dead host and to an absent object. Tomorrow… he would bring books over to his charge and teach him Russian and Marxism. Later, they would tramp out into the snow and there would be pain and blood but the boy would learn to fight and not merely survive.
When spring came again, Ivan would bid farewell to his innocent, eager protégé, watch him die a little death and be reborn to a little life. And in autumn, the boy would die again and come back to the snows of winter.
-Yun-soo references Ragnarok Online and Ragnarok the Animation.
-Hyung-nim: A formal way of saying “older brother” in Korean
-Incidentally, they do have massive tubs in bathhouses in which you’re basically soaking in tea. Quite pleasant, really, and it makes your skin smell fantastic.
-1989: The U.S. received intelligence through satellite photos that North Korea was developing a nuclear complex, despite having signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1985. Upon this development, the U.S. started attempting new relations in order to ensure compliance to the NPT.
-Parnishka: “Young man,” a Russian endearment
Fandom: Axis Powers Hetalia
Genre(s): Drama/Angst
Character(s)|Pairing(s): Korea/Japan, Korea/China, Korea/US, Russia
Rating/Warning(s): R/NC-17, language, sexual content, violence/gore
Summary: An alternate to the twin/sister theory of Korea… considering wounds that will not heal and the dimensions of a mind.
Dedication: Tometallic_sweet -You freaking bring out the worst out of me in my literary thought processes. And I love you for it.
2006
He finds it easier to treat Yun-soo like a slightly feeble-minded acquaintance, sighing when his brother makes this claim or that. If it makes him feel better, let him have his delusions, he tells himself. Even when he wants to grab the taller man by the shoulders and shake him silly, like he watches Arthur do to Alfred (though not as often anymore). But it isn’t polite and it isn’t profitable (to say nothing of the fact that he’s just a little hesitant of physically laying hands on the other man).
Today, they go out to eat yakiniku and he silently endures a tirade about how it’s Korean barbeque and don’t they have any kimchi? All in Korean, of course; his brother refuses to touch Japanese despite understanding it perfectly.
Yun-soo embraced Western culture extremely well, much like Kiku had a long time ago. The roles were reversed this time, the smaller man thought with distant irony as he sits in his kimono, a light haori of dark gray draped over his shoulders. The kimono beneath is dark green and patterned with thin white stripes in a sinuous pattern that suggest water ripples. Traditional, even staid, and remarkably masculine for such a small, delicately built man, but he has learned not to care. Nonetheless, he keeps his top of the line cell phone on the table beside him and his wallet is from Italy.
Yun-soo had recently dyed the tips of his dark hair blonde, a color in between America’s hair and Ivan’s, and he has a massive pair of Italian sunglasses on the table between them, the golden logo glittering against the imitation tortoiseshell of the frames. He bares his collarbones with the strategically opened throat of his finely tailored black shirt, his neck draped in pewter and silver chains, and his legs shift in close fitting gray slacks. While Kiku sits stiffly and properly, Yun-soo drapes himself carelessly, as much as one could do so in the straight-backed, hard wooden booth. He plucks at a silver pendant around his throat with long and nervous fingers, gesticulating with his other hand and speaking a bit too loudly, to his fellow nation’s and diners’ united consternation.
“Would it have killed you to make the series out of the original comic?” he demands, gesturing with his hands but not his chopsticks. He stabs a bit of roasted pork and garlic at the same time, tossing both into his mouth with ease but not grace.
Kiku does not precisely frown as he finishes a bite of chicken cartilage and roasted leek. “Fewer people would be acquainted with that piece. Drawing an original story with recognizable character designs was wiser.”
Yun-soo growls something under his breath, probably a random curse that he picked up from America. “And fucked it up,” he says in a low voice.
“Language,” Kiku says a bit more sharply than he intended, now starting to get truly riled. Korea always had a way of riling him in ways that few could.
The other man smirks. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” he replies sweetly, in mocking imitation of the murmured apologies both their nations are famous for. “I ask your forgiveness.”
Kiku would have instantly stood up and left if he were less polite and more willing to lose face. As it is, he hides his sudden flare of anger behind his teacup and the two of them finish their meal in a stiff silence. And when they fuck each other that night at a nearby love hotel, Yun-soo keeps on his shirt and jewelry, even as he runs his hands and nails all over Kiku’s narrow, pale chest gently and possessively.
2004
The bathhouse is very quiet for this time. Then again, at two in the afternoon, most people are at work or school. It is at night when the bathhouse will fill, with families and friends and drowsing individuals who would watch everything through narrowed eyes while thinking whatever thoughts haunt them between dreaming and waking. Water unites them all, even as it cleanses and refreshes. He traces a long and languid hand in the pleasantly warm, green tinted waters of the pool, a tub filled with tea for them to soak their bones. The air smells refreshing and astringent, like mint mixed with pine, though just a touch of bitterness lingers beneath, the smell of dried mugwort.
He bundles his hair up, not caring whether he looks like a woman, particularly with a strip of toweling holding strands form his face like a turban. Across from him, Yun-soo leans back, perfectly at ease in the water, with his usually flyaway hair now slicked back from his forehead. Like that, he looks professional, older, Yao thinks to himself idly. Not that he chooses to act like it.
He remembers other days and other bathhouses. The trouble he has with this place is that you cannot hear the distant sounds of a mandolin being played as a counter point to the gentle gurgling of water in an otherwise silent, mist-filled chamber. No music here, save for the rush of water being constantly replenished and very occasionally a brief echoing burst of K-pop when someone opens the door to the lounge. But he cannot complain, particularly when his younger brother has treated him so well lately.
Nonetheless, he cannot bring himself to look at his brother’s chest. He turns his head away when he finds his eyes going over there, and his mind tries to think of other things. But memory is traitorous and locks her doors to him and he is left only with the present and its sharp immediacy.
He closes his eyes then and his heightened senses hears the soft rippling waves of water crash along the sides of the pool as someone slowly, gracefully moves towards him. His eyes immediately open and he looks down to see the mostly submerged body of Yun-soo, kneeling on the floor of the pool, dark eyes looking up at him.
“Is something troubling you, Hyung-nim?” he asks in sweetly accented Mandarin, his words softer and not quite precise but somehow all the more endearing, even with the startling jolt of a Korean honorific at the end.
“No, nothing at all,” Yao manages to say, a smile easily coming to his lips. The next moment, he hears a surge of water and in the wake of sudden, startling violent movement in the languid and heavy atmosphere of the room, he feels soft lips on his. He kisses back without thinking of anything in particular. They kiss languidly, because bathhouses are a place where time runs slowly, as river rapids run to deeper beds. He can feel calloused, oddly soft hands on his chest, causing goosebumps to skitter across his skin like the wake of ants’ legs.
Yao incongruously remembers colder and larger hands upon his skin, when his chest was not damp with water but was instead sticky with sweat. He remembers hard, cold-chapped lips crushing his, even as gentle, experienced fingers go to his nipple and gently twist it, worrying it like a pearl. His eyes look downwards and then, he puts his hands on Yun-soo’s shoulders and gently pushes him from him, unable to look at his face. His brother’s hands go to his throat and softly, softly surround it. They tremble and twitch like the hopping movements of sparrows on the ground, but they finally let go as Yun-soo turns away, splashing through the waters to get out of the pool.
A long, sharp streak along his back starts to ache.
1989
If dealing with Russia was freaky enough, dealing with North Korea was an exercise in mindscrewing. It’s like dealing with Ivan Braginsky, but different, a very, very different sort of head game. North Korea has just as many swings in mood and temperament, like a vicious-minded child, and yet he pretends at none of Russia’s joviality- Just trying to describe it is enough to give you a mindscrew on its own.
Alfred shrugs and rolls his shoulders under his leather jacket as the other man enters the room, crisply dressed and looking as stiff as newly made cardboard.
“America,” he says with a thin, thin smile that looks like the first glint of a new razor blade. “My apologies for my lateness.” He bows crisply.
“I wasn’t waiting long.” Less than fifteen minutes. If he weren’t so tense, he’d almost be impressed with the other’s speed.
“It is still less than polite. But we must move on.”
Those kinds of uniforms have no business looking that good, Alfred thinks to himself, as the other man takes a seat. They talk, not of business, but of films and actors. Alfred is chagrinned to realize that the other man is far more versed in film than he is, not that he has an extensive background or education in the subject. He clears his throat after a polite and slowly tense exchange about Natalie Wood.
“About this matter of you stockpiling…” he begins.
“Experimental purposes,” the other man says smoothly, as well-practiced as a greeting or pleasantry. “Renewable energy.”
“That is not what I have here,” Alfred says, seeing the bullshit for what it is, opening up the dossier he has on him.
Another sort of smile, a vague and presumably unassuming sort of expression, crosses the smaller man’s face, but it seems all the more deadly. “You have your own stockpile, I believe,” he returns quite smoothly.
“We have no intention of using it,” Alfred snaps.
“Neither do we.” He pauses and then adds, thoughtfully, “Under the right circumstances.”
“Are you threatening me?” America hisses.
A cold smile crosses that wolf-like face. “Never something so… crude,” is the reply, delicately formed and pronounced exquisitely. And his thoughts go to Kiku, with his grammatically precise and elegant English…. But the tiny nation never was this… over the edge.
A vein pulsates in his forehead. “What do you want?” he asks.
“You know what I want,” is the level, even soothing response.
“The demilitarized zone stays where it is.”
“It is as simple as that, America. You merely have to… step away. And I will take care of the rest.”
“Not in this century,” Alfred snaps.
“Then we remain at odds with each other. Or are you planning on winning this game by not moving?” Their eyes meet. Then, in a smooth movement that causes his medals to gently clink against each other, the other man rises to his feet and strolls over, deliberately, gracefully.
“I frighten you, Alfred, do I not?” he asks conversationally and Alfred, finding that time has slowed, notices how all of his dark hair is precisely combed and slicked, not one single strand out of place.
“I’m not scared of anything,” he retorts, realizing how petulant he sounds a minute too late. “Least of all you.”
“But you are,” breathes the other man, coming close. “You are afraid of all of us little ones. Your… once ultimate weapon is no longer heaven sent. It is no longer merely yours. And you realize now how a thrown knife can be returned.”
He draws a finger over his own throat, his narrow, column-like throat. His lips part and he bites down on the tip of his crisp leather glove, draws it from his fingers. The other glove is disposed of in a similar fashion and Alfred is suddenly aware that he has forgotten to breathe.
“We may be small, but we know how to bite, Alfred,” North Korea declares.
“And blow up the world while you’re at it?”
A short, surprisingly bitter laugh warps the pleasant voice. “As my mentor Ivan would say, ‘We will be one.’ I am not sure if he meant Armageddon, though I will not put it past him.” A curious expression crosses his face. “Tell me, America. Do you ever feel… torn?”
“What do you mean?”
“All of those states,” the other man says, gesturing idly. The sleeve of his uniform coat flops about in a fleetingly familiar manner. “Spread out everywhere, one not even part of your own continent. Do they ever… wear at you?”
“No,” Alfred replies shortly and he pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He tries to forget memories of searing pain in his abdomen, headaches that felt like they would split his skull, all that damn screaming…
“Then it explains what you have done to me.” North Korea’s face has an expression of childish amusement even as his voice has absolutely no life, no emotion. Hatred would be more soothing, rage would be more comforting. Nervous fingers unfasten brass buttons with lightning speed and pull apart the heavy jacket with its colors and medals. They do not hesitate or falter on the smaller buttons of the shirt underneath, and pull away at layers of gauze and sticking plaster. And Alfred feels sick.
He had pulled Kiku from the rubble of Hiroshima, blistered and burned and bleeding. The sight had sickened him for days, as every morning he would vomit up his breakfast in memory of seeing pale flesh blotchy with red, blood blisters popping on the lightest contact, skin actually black as ash from charred flesh. And yet- the present sight overwhelms him, fills his vision and he knows he will have sleepless nights for weeks to come.
The scars start at the top of Korea’s chest, below the collar bones, an uneven “Y-incision” he has seen medical examiners use for autopsies. One branch of that Y overlaps the thin man’s heart and the longest, extended section goes all the way down his torso to stop just above his navel. It is an unusually clean wound, on the other hand, just as clean as a master surgeon might make, in sharp contrast to the other branch of the “Y” which seems a little newer and crueler and more painful, a jagged laceration on the right side of his chest. Disturbingly, it looks like it has been constantly worried at with fingernails, the flaps of skin pulled and pushed this way and that. Both wounds bleed sluggishly, even as new stitches march along the incision and the laceration, black and neat as the edging on a blanket.
Alfred is suddenly aware of a soft hand on his cheek, oddly tender. “You make your dragons,” a stranger with an acquaintance’s face tells him, softly and sweetly. “And then you slay them. Only to make more in the ashes.” He slowly pulls Alfred’s glasses from his face, gently folds them up and places them on the table.
“Nothing will change,” he says conversationally, even as he unhurriedly undoes America’s shirt. “Nothing will change at all.”
Alfred doesn’t nod and he curses himself for his own powerlessness, as cold lips with the memory of winter descend on his.
1947
The bleeding has stopped at last. He watches the blood-drained face of the mostly unconscious boy on the hard bed as he mops up the newly stitched wound with vodka on a clean cloth and then starts to bandage everything neatly. The boy’s breathing comes erratically, hissing through teeth as his eyes roll round and round under his partially closed eyelids.
“All done,” he tells the boy, softly, soothingly. “You must be careful not to over extend yourself in the next few days.”
He gently pushes back sweat-sticky locks of brown-black hair, watching pitch black eyes for signs of fever. None can be seen, but endorphins war in the boy’s body, wracking him in both pleasure and pain and nothing like blissful cessation of either. Ivan can remember moments like that and he can feel something like pity.
“Hurts,” the boy whimpers through dried and cracked lips. Ivan thinks back on a catatonic child who first took his hand and mindlessly followed after him one autumn not too long ago.
“You are very brave,” he says to the boy softly. “We will make you whole again. Soon.”
The boy smiles then, a child’s expression of trusting joy. “We- shall?” he asks, disjointedly. His breath rattles in his thin chest.
“Yes, yes. You will be one again.” He wonders if Alfred does this every time he receives the child again, every spring, this methodical mending of a doll of flesh. Ivan muses on the image of clumsy America attempting to stitch up the boy’s wounds but decides that it is not likely. Maybe the boy does it himself, or asks someone else to do it for him, hiding his shame and pain with all the stubborn pride of an adolescent, instead of weeping like a child.
“That is good,” the boy whispers. “That would be very, very good.” His thin face continues to stretch in a smile that is both cheery and frightening. Russia finds himself gently stroking the boy’s hair again.
“We will get you a new uniform, parnishka,” he says, as though this would distract the pain (and in a distant rose-tinted memory, he sees himself promising toys and sweets and gentle rides to another boy stricken in bed).
“It will be red?” his charge asks. “That is a good color.”
Ivan smiles then too. “Da, a very, very good color,” he agrees.
“And stars? Gold stars?”
“As many as you want.” With that, he undoes the badge at his breast and gently, gently slips it into a pale, frail hand and closes the skeletal fingers around it. The boy cranes his head to see the handsome gold star gleaming in his hand, a star on a red ribbon. He tries to laugh but it is too painful for him to do so.
“It is pretty,” he exclaims breathily, delight overwhelming pain. “Thank you.” He has astonishing manners, when he remembers them.
Russia gently strokes his hair in a fond manner and then drapes a blanket over him. “Rest now,” he tells the boy. “Rest and when you are well, we will continue our studies.” He finds it easier to talk to the boy than he thought, though he speaks his mind long and often these days to anyone who will listen. “The winter is long and cold, but it will make your mind burn brighter and your heart stronger.”
“Yes, yes,” the boy murmurs as his eyes finally close and his fingers continue to hold onto the star in his hand as Ivan exits the room.
He thinks on the long-limbed child on the bed as he opens a new bottle of vodka in his own bedroom and swallows the first burning mouthful. That wound would not kill him, for he is a robust nation, a stubborn nation, which Russia admires. But they would hurt him down to the bone, to the heart, and continue to bleed him dry, until he wishes desperately for a swift death instead of a slow lingering existence. He laughs then, in pity and exultation and who knows what else as he drinks in a silent toast to a dead host and to an absent object. Tomorrow… he would bring books over to his charge and teach him Russian and Marxism. Later, they would tramp out into the snow and there would be pain and blood but the boy would learn to fight and not merely survive.
When spring came again, Ivan would bid farewell to his innocent, eager protégé, watch him die a little death and be reborn to a little life. And in autumn, the boy would die again and come back to the snows of winter.
-Yun-soo references Ragnarok Online and Ragnarok the Animation.
-Hyung-nim: A formal way of saying “older brother” in Korean
-Incidentally, they do have massive tubs in bathhouses in which you’re basically soaking in tea. Quite pleasant, really, and it makes your skin smell fantastic.
-1989: The U.S. received intelligence through satellite photos that North Korea was developing a nuclear complex, despite having signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1985. Upon this development, the U.S. started attempting new relations in order to ensure compliance to the NPT.
-Parnishka: “Young man,” a Russian endearment