The Wind, the Sun, and the Eagle (Axis Powers Hetalia, Russia/China)
...so you know how I said I would never ever ever write countryporn?
*sobs*
DAMMIT lindensphinx WHY DID YOU MENTION RUSSIA AND DUBCON IN THE SAME SENTENCE?
*more sobbing*
why is it this natural to write Russia. why.
Also I think this goes without saying but guys this is not how you treat a trauma victim and Russia is a creepy bastard and I'm just trying to understand the way his head works, I'm not condoning his actions.
I HAVE NO DIGNITY LEFT. AT ALL.
Title: The Wind, the Sun, and the Eagle
Author: puella_nerdii, with assist from Mith
Fandom: Axis Powers Hetalia
Characters: China/Russia
Rating: Hard R, for coercion, implied offscreen assault, and Russia.
Words: 2800 with footnotes
Summary: August, 1945. Russia invades Manchuria. And those who have proven themselves unworthy…well, he will not have such children. China would do well to remember this. He believes he will bring it up when they meet.
Even with Germany crippled and forced to his knees, even with Hiroshima irradiated and scorched and Nagasaki soon to follow (sometime today, if Russia’s intelligence on this is correct), even with a hamstrung army of raw recruits unsure how to utilize what little equipment remains to them, Japan fights on. Russia could find it admirable, were it not so foolish.
The desert air scorches his lungs; his army marches on, heedless of the heat. Strange that something so warm stands so close to him. Once he has the leisure to, he plans to enjoy this contrast.
And he will have the leisure soon. Japan’s men-boys, really, in uniforms cut too large for them, gripping guns they have never fired in the heat of battle-scatter and break before his advance. Their discarded rifles form piles on the ground, their boots clang against the rails they worked so hard to build as they march down the tracks in defeat, their blood seeps into the soil of Manchuria. It is not the first blood to do so, Russia sees.
The fall of the Qing, the outbreak of civil war, the predations of Japan. A collapse, a crash, a clash, a capture, a capitulation. Ah, China, sweet China. Will he stand or will his legs break beneath him? If they do give way, Russia must support him, must shoulder his weight, must teach him to walk again, for who else will?
“We advance towards Changchun,” Marshal Malinovsky commands, and Russia nods, for Malinovsky is a good man, a decorated man, with the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner nestled together on his chest, Lenin’s silver profile regarding the hammer and sickle and star with approbation. Russia is kind to his children, his good and loyal children, those who have proven themselves worthy of the honor.
(And those who have proven themselves unworthy…well, he will not have such children. China would do well to remember this. He believes he will bring it up when they meet.)
He will not accompany the Transbaikal Front. He has business here in Shenyang. So quiet now, this city, so quiet and so grey: the steel, the streets, the skies. The great factories halt their production; no smoke belches from the stacks, no waves of heat shimmer over the buildings, no whirrs and clangs and roars signify the process of steel being forged, weapons being wrought, war being manufactured. The city waits for new orders, new instructions, new masters. All of these Russia will provide, for Russia provides much. First, however, to China, to China, to whatever is left of China.
China is hiding somewhere in the Dadong District, Russia can tell as much, can feel the curious slow heartbeat unique to their kind reverberating through the ground under his feet. And if he is in Dadong, he is most likely-ah. Russia wonders, briefly, why China would choose to hide in a building twenty-six meters high, but perhaps China feels secure in a place that has weathered so much, stood for so long, harbored so many of his people. Perhaps he thinks to call on his gods here. Russia would not know. Russia killed his years ago.
China did not bar the door, and so Russia nudges it open with his hip, winds his way through the outer and inner corridors until he reaches the room in the center-four sides here, not eight, tighter and closer and safer. His gun he drops to the floor from a great enough height that China can hear the collision, hear the clatter-clink of the other arms he discards. He will not need them.
“China,” he says. “China, let me look at you.”
A dark shape in the corner, tucked away from the dirty beams of light spilling across the floor through the doorway, tucks itself away even further. Rubble litters this floor: crumbled tires, crushed glass (and where did that come from?), splintered wood. Russia thinks of the smiling Buddha stationed outside the pagoda and imitates his expression. Come, let me cradle you in my lap, let me enfold you in my arms, they are large enough to hold you. And had China wished to stay hidden, he would not have moved. “China,” Russia says again. “Japan is gone, China. Japan is going home. The war will end very soon.”
“Which one?” China’s voice is a small broken thing, barely audible over the creak of the floorboards, the whistling of the wind outside.
“The one the whole world is fighting,” he says. He recalls the first one-the Great War, the War to End All Wars, but of course it didn’t. He doubts this one will, either, nor does he want it to; his world will be born from the blood of the old one, after all. He does not say this to China.
“Go away,” says China, “go away,” and curls his little fists in front of his eyes.
Russia kneels and cups China’s fists in his hands, frames them in his palms. “Are you crying?”
“No,” he says, and the tracks through the grime on his face do look old. Russia presses his thumb to the hollows-yes, such hollows, he has grown so thin and so sharp-under China’s eyes. Dry, or at least not moistened by tears. He runs the edge of his thumb down the fading tear-stains, smears them, leaves smudged prints on China’s cheeks.
China has been marked elsewhere, he sees that now, now that he is so close. A white line scores across his chest from collarbone to sternum; red-brown stains spread over the bandage wound around his forehead. Old bruises and scratches everywhere, but thickest around his neck and on the parts of his back that Russia can see. They are uncertain things in this light; there, on China’s collarbone, is that a bruise or a spot of dirt? He presses in with his fingers, hears China inhale sharply. Ah. And China shakes, lips trembling too violently to close, and will not raise his eyes to Russia’s. Russia buries his face in China’s neck, hears a very soft sound next to his ear, breathes in and smells old blood.
“How long do you mean to stay here?” he asks, for if these walls cannot keep the wind out, what chance do they stand against shells, against bombs, against America’s new fire from the sky?
“I don’t leave,” China says to his knees. He draws them to his chest, and Russia almost stops smiling when a shiver runs up China’s back. China, China, so cold and alone. But he will not be any more, Russia will see to that, and so he circles one arm around China’s chest and pulls him close, brushes matted hair out of China’s eyes with his other hand. There: his China, in his arms. It is right.
“And if your tower falls down,” he murmurs, “what will you do?”
China cringes, shrinks. No, this will not do, Russia’s subjects must be strong, strong enough to carry Russia’s teachings with them, to pound in Lenin’s lessons with the hammer and reap the fruits of his instruction with the sickle and plant the star on every flag. “I have endured for so long,” China says. It is in his voice, weathered and dry; it is in his hands, chapped and cracked. “It…I can’t do otherwise.”
“Yes,” he says, gathers China in his arms-thin, thin, too pale and too thin-and deposits him in his lap, “yes.” One hand around China’s waist, pinning him to Russia back-to-front, and the other stroking China’s forehead, skirting the edges of his wound. “You have endured-endured so much, so quietly, so patiently.” A chaste kiss to China’s shoulder, a thumb tracing the bottom of China’s ribcage. “What are you waiting for, China?”
Again, China shivers, and Russia pulls him closer to feel more of it, to feel China’s skin tremble against his. How lovely, how warming. He squirms when Russia kisses him behind the ear; the movement propels him into Russia’s chest, not away from it.
“Surely you are not waiting for someone,” he says, surely China knows that all the other nations will pick and pick away at him, nibble at his borders until he dwindles away. (Russia is fair: he asks the same thing of China that he would ask of any other country.) “After your little brother did this to you-” He circles a bruise on China’s neck with his nail, and this time China does try to break free, but Russia holds him fast. “After your allies turned away from you…who is left?”
“You,” and here China shivers again; Russia forgives him, for it takes the hardiest of men to weather Russia’s cold. “Only you-and you want something.”
“I want to help you,” Russia says.
“You want every country to be part of you.” China contracts, curls in on himself, tries to pull his knees closer, but Russia’s arm constrains him. “You want to destroy me, too.”
“No, no.” Russia feathers more kisses over China’s neck, his swollen skin, his scabbed scratches. “I want to help you find your place in the world again.”
“I don’t want anything to do with the world-”
“Ah, China-” He presses a finger to China’s lips and taps them twice. Hush now. “The world wants you. And they will drag you from your hiding-place and parcel you up unless you stop them.”
China jerks his face away. “I don’t want anything from them…”
“That has never stopped them,” Russia says. “They are the haves, China, and they will have you, they will have your people, they will have and have and have because having gives them power. You see?”
“What do you want from me?” China repeats. Around him, the wood sighs: so tired, so tired. You will sleep soon, Russia tells the pagoda. You and the gods painted on your walls, adorning your peaks.
“Do not let them have you,” he says. “Stand against them.”
“Join you.”
“Yes.”
“No.” China lurches forward; he sobs only once, and it is dry, strangled, torn raw by a tight throat. “I won’t.”
Russia keeps his sigh to himself. Still, after all these years, after all these bickering warlords and feuding armies and invading countries, China does not understand. “Rule yourself,” he says. “That is what I want for you.”
“What-” And China’s next words die in his throat as Russia presses a searing kiss to a laceration on his cheek. The body listens when the mind does not. “What do you mean?”
“How long have you let one city rule you?” Russia asks, stops up China’s questions with his fingers. So warm, China’s mouth, and the slick ridges of his teeth dig pleasantly into Russia’s calluses. “One family?” He slips his left hand lower, grips China’s hip and kneads the bone with his knuckles. China moans; more spit slicks Russia’s hand. “One man?” he continues, and at this his left hand slides under China’s waistband, curls around the inside of his thigh.
China’s teeth and lips are working around his fingers, Russia notices. He withdraws them for the time, and the sharp high sound he is greeted with makes that decision a rewarding one.
“The,” and China gasps, clenches his jaw, oh how he must be admonishing himself now (though he should not, he is so close, so close to seeing), “the mandate of heaven-”
Russia scoffs, fingers tightening. The principles of governance, the correct principles, still they elude China, still he does not realize why he suffers like this, why Europe hungers for his ports and England feeds him drugs and America entices his men away and Japan, Japan leaves him bleeding and broken in a temple to gods deaf to the pleas of their worshippers. The things he convinces himself he sees are false, Russia must show him that…
He covers China’s eyes with his hand, presses into his temples with his fingers and thumb until red will blossom behind China’s eyelids.
“The country should rule its people,” he says. “Who else understands them so well?”
“I-” China says. “I can’t, I am not whole…”
“Not whole?” Russia asks. “I see only one of you,” and to prove his point, he takes China in hand, assesses his weight. “Only one.”
China reddens: cheeks, lips, the back of his neck. His eyelashes twitch and tickle Russia’s fingers. “I’m-pulled too many ways, I-”
“You need to decide which way is correct.”
“I can’t-the mandate of heaven-”
“Is yours.” He bites down, strokes sharply, and still China stifles his cries. This disappoints Russia, he must admit; he had rather hoped to hear him scream. “As it always has been.”
China’s breath is heavy, and heavier still is his weight in Russia’s hand as he stiffens, hardens, arches. Both of Russia’s hands are damp now, wetted by sweat and tears. “Decide what is best for your people,” he says. “Care for them. Unify them.”
“But they aren’t, they-” China chokes. “I can’t-stop-”
Russia strokes him harder. China’s hips cant, his back collides with Russia’s chest, he seizes handfuls of Russia’s shirt in his fists and grips until his knuckles whiten, uses that leverage to push himself more and more into Russia’s hand, into Russia’s grasp. He twists his neck to the side, but Russia’s hand remains clamped around his eyes. The long scar on his collarbone gleams with sweat, and Russia nips it, waits for China’s response-there, a shudder running through the length of him. “It is your time to rule your people,” he says. “Your people who have forgotten you.”
But no longer.
“They don’t want-”
“If they do not want you, if they do not agree with you…” Russia trails off, shrugs. “Then they are not your people. Why should you claim them as yours if they will not care for you, if they will hurt what you have tried to build?”
“What-if, if I do this what-” China swallows. “What do I do with them?”
“Whatever you like,” Russia says. “But they mustn’t be allowed to corrupt your loyal citizens, no?”
“No,” China breathes, and though Russia cannot tell if it is refusal or agreement, he takes it as the latter. He presses his thumbnail under China’s foreskin: encouragement.
And more encouragement, the final piece. “Heaven and earth are great,” he whispers in China’s ear, feels China shudder from it, from the insinuation of Russia’s lips against his cheek, “but greater still is the kindness of the Communist Party.”
“But,” and China tightens in his voice, breath, skin, tries to hold back such heat, “we are between heaven and earth-”
He seizes once, twice, stills and spills into Russia’s hand before he completes the thought.
Russia removes his hand from China’s eyes, smiles genially down at him, licks his fingers clean while China watches. He cannot look away, Russia notes. He cannot bring himself to.
“And we are under the rule of neither,” Russia says.
China sinks into Russia’s arms in response. Ah, of course, he is still tired. So many long years behind him, and a few long ones before him, Russia does not doubt. Well, let him rest. Russia will allow no other country to harm him.
He remembers a song for such occasions, a song from a time before this one. The composer was a terrible xenophile, but the melody itself suits.
“Sprashivala vetra mat':,” he sings.
“Gde izvolil propadat'?
Ali zvezdy vojeval?
Ali volny vsjo gonjal?
Ne gonjal ja voln morskikh,
Zvezd ne trogal zolotykh;
Ja ditja oberegal,
Kolybelochku kachal.”
Now China’s lips part, now he blinks the exhaustion from his eyes. Again, Russia smiles. “Come,” he says, and extends his hand.
China accepts it.
***
The Soviet invasion of Manchuria in 1945 began on August 9, 1945-the same day Nagasaki was bombed. (The Soviet Union didn’t officially know about the timing of the attacks, but they were well aware of it through unofficial channels.) The Japanese were under strength, under equipped, and unprepared for the actual route the Soviets ended up taking when they invaded. Japan surrendered on August 15th, in part because of the Soviet victories on the mainland.
The North Pagoda in Shenyang still stands today.
This is the lullaby Russia sings, because Russia is a creepy bastard. The translation of the verses presented in the fic:
The Wind's mother has been asking:
"Where have you been for so long?
Have you been fighting the stars?
Have you been chasing the waves?"
"I haven't been chasing the sea-waves,
I haven't been touching the golden stars,
I have been guarding a baby
And rocking gently his little cradle."
Well, Russia finds it comforting. Or so he says.
Now I will do the things I am supposed to do.
Really.
WHY IS HETALIA EATING MY LIIIIIFE.
*sobs*
DAMMIT lindensphinx WHY DID YOU MENTION RUSSIA AND DUBCON IN THE SAME SENTENCE?
*more sobbing*
why is it this natural to write Russia. why.
Also I think this goes without saying but guys this is not how you treat a trauma victim and Russia is a creepy bastard and I'm just trying to understand the way his head works, I'm not condoning his actions.
I HAVE NO DIGNITY LEFT. AT ALL.
Title: The Wind, the Sun, and the Eagle
Author: puella_nerdii, with assist from Mith
Fandom: Axis Powers Hetalia
Characters: China/Russia
Rating: Hard R, for coercion, implied offscreen assault, and Russia.
Words: 2800 with footnotes
Summary: August, 1945. Russia invades Manchuria. And those who have proven themselves unworthy…well, he will not have such children. China would do well to remember this. He believes he will bring it up when they meet.
Even with Germany crippled and forced to his knees, even with Hiroshima irradiated and scorched and Nagasaki soon to follow (sometime today, if Russia’s intelligence on this is correct), even with a hamstrung army of raw recruits unsure how to utilize what little equipment remains to them, Japan fights on. Russia could find it admirable, were it not so foolish.
The desert air scorches his lungs; his army marches on, heedless of the heat. Strange that something so warm stands so close to him. Once he has the leisure to, he plans to enjoy this contrast.
And he will have the leisure soon. Japan’s men-boys, really, in uniforms cut too large for them, gripping guns they have never fired in the heat of battle-scatter and break before his advance. Their discarded rifles form piles on the ground, their boots clang against the rails they worked so hard to build as they march down the tracks in defeat, their blood seeps into the soil of Manchuria. It is not the first blood to do so, Russia sees.
The fall of the Qing, the outbreak of civil war, the predations of Japan. A collapse, a crash, a clash, a capture, a capitulation. Ah, China, sweet China. Will he stand or will his legs break beneath him? If they do give way, Russia must support him, must shoulder his weight, must teach him to walk again, for who else will?
“We advance towards Changchun,” Marshal Malinovsky commands, and Russia nods, for Malinovsky is a good man, a decorated man, with the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner nestled together on his chest, Lenin’s silver profile regarding the hammer and sickle and star with approbation. Russia is kind to his children, his good and loyal children, those who have proven themselves worthy of the honor.
(And those who have proven themselves unworthy…well, he will not have such children. China would do well to remember this. He believes he will bring it up when they meet.)
He will not accompany the Transbaikal Front. He has business here in Shenyang. So quiet now, this city, so quiet and so grey: the steel, the streets, the skies. The great factories halt their production; no smoke belches from the stacks, no waves of heat shimmer over the buildings, no whirrs and clangs and roars signify the process of steel being forged, weapons being wrought, war being manufactured. The city waits for new orders, new instructions, new masters. All of these Russia will provide, for Russia provides much. First, however, to China, to China, to whatever is left of China.
China is hiding somewhere in the Dadong District, Russia can tell as much, can feel the curious slow heartbeat unique to their kind reverberating through the ground under his feet. And if he is in Dadong, he is most likely-ah. Russia wonders, briefly, why China would choose to hide in a building twenty-six meters high, but perhaps China feels secure in a place that has weathered so much, stood for so long, harbored so many of his people. Perhaps he thinks to call on his gods here. Russia would not know. Russia killed his years ago.
China did not bar the door, and so Russia nudges it open with his hip, winds his way through the outer and inner corridors until he reaches the room in the center-four sides here, not eight, tighter and closer and safer. His gun he drops to the floor from a great enough height that China can hear the collision, hear the clatter-clink of the other arms he discards. He will not need them.
“China,” he says. “China, let me look at you.”
A dark shape in the corner, tucked away from the dirty beams of light spilling across the floor through the doorway, tucks itself away even further. Rubble litters this floor: crumbled tires, crushed glass (and where did that come from?), splintered wood. Russia thinks of the smiling Buddha stationed outside the pagoda and imitates his expression. Come, let me cradle you in my lap, let me enfold you in my arms, they are large enough to hold you. And had China wished to stay hidden, he would not have moved. “China,” Russia says again. “Japan is gone, China. Japan is going home. The war will end very soon.”
“Which one?” China’s voice is a small broken thing, barely audible over the creak of the floorboards, the whistling of the wind outside.
“The one the whole world is fighting,” he says. He recalls the first one-the Great War, the War to End All Wars, but of course it didn’t. He doubts this one will, either, nor does he want it to; his world will be born from the blood of the old one, after all. He does not say this to China.
“Go away,” says China, “go away,” and curls his little fists in front of his eyes.
Russia kneels and cups China’s fists in his hands, frames them in his palms. “Are you crying?”
“No,” he says, and the tracks through the grime on his face do look old. Russia presses his thumb to the hollows-yes, such hollows, he has grown so thin and so sharp-under China’s eyes. Dry, or at least not moistened by tears. He runs the edge of his thumb down the fading tear-stains, smears them, leaves smudged prints on China’s cheeks.
China has been marked elsewhere, he sees that now, now that he is so close. A white line scores across his chest from collarbone to sternum; red-brown stains spread over the bandage wound around his forehead. Old bruises and scratches everywhere, but thickest around his neck and on the parts of his back that Russia can see. They are uncertain things in this light; there, on China’s collarbone, is that a bruise or a spot of dirt? He presses in with his fingers, hears China inhale sharply. Ah. And China shakes, lips trembling too violently to close, and will not raise his eyes to Russia’s. Russia buries his face in China’s neck, hears a very soft sound next to his ear, breathes in and smells old blood.
“How long do you mean to stay here?” he asks, for if these walls cannot keep the wind out, what chance do they stand against shells, against bombs, against America’s new fire from the sky?
“I don’t leave,” China says to his knees. He draws them to his chest, and Russia almost stops smiling when a shiver runs up China’s back. China, China, so cold and alone. But he will not be any more, Russia will see to that, and so he circles one arm around China’s chest and pulls him close, brushes matted hair out of China’s eyes with his other hand. There: his China, in his arms. It is right.
“And if your tower falls down,” he murmurs, “what will you do?”
China cringes, shrinks. No, this will not do, Russia’s subjects must be strong, strong enough to carry Russia’s teachings with them, to pound in Lenin’s lessons with the hammer and reap the fruits of his instruction with the sickle and plant the star on every flag. “I have endured for so long,” China says. It is in his voice, weathered and dry; it is in his hands, chapped and cracked. “It…I can’t do otherwise.”
“Yes,” he says, gathers China in his arms-thin, thin, too pale and too thin-and deposits him in his lap, “yes.” One hand around China’s waist, pinning him to Russia back-to-front, and the other stroking China’s forehead, skirting the edges of his wound. “You have endured-endured so much, so quietly, so patiently.” A chaste kiss to China’s shoulder, a thumb tracing the bottom of China’s ribcage. “What are you waiting for, China?”
Again, China shivers, and Russia pulls him closer to feel more of it, to feel China’s skin tremble against his. How lovely, how warming. He squirms when Russia kisses him behind the ear; the movement propels him into Russia’s chest, not away from it.
“Surely you are not waiting for someone,” he says, surely China knows that all the other nations will pick and pick away at him, nibble at his borders until he dwindles away. (Russia is fair: he asks the same thing of China that he would ask of any other country.) “After your little brother did this to you-” He circles a bruise on China’s neck with his nail, and this time China does try to break free, but Russia holds him fast. “After your allies turned away from you…who is left?”
“You,” and here China shivers again; Russia forgives him, for it takes the hardiest of men to weather Russia’s cold. “Only you-and you want something.”
“I want to help you,” Russia says.
“You want every country to be part of you.” China contracts, curls in on himself, tries to pull his knees closer, but Russia’s arm constrains him. “You want to destroy me, too.”
“No, no.” Russia feathers more kisses over China’s neck, his swollen skin, his scabbed scratches. “I want to help you find your place in the world again.”
“I don’t want anything to do with the world-”
“Ah, China-” He presses a finger to China’s lips and taps them twice. Hush now. “The world wants you. And they will drag you from your hiding-place and parcel you up unless you stop them.”
China jerks his face away. “I don’t want anything from them…”
“That has never stopped them,” Russia says. “They are the haves, China, and they will have you, they will have your people, they will have and have and have because having gives them power. You see?”
“What do you want from me?” China repeats. Around him, the wood sighs: so tired, so tired. You will sleep soon, Russia tells the pagoda. You and the gods painted on your walls, adorning your peaks.
“Do not let them have you,” he says. “Stand against them.”
“Join you.”
“Yes.”
“No.” China lurches forward; he sobs only once, and it is dry, strangled, torn raw by a tight throat. “I won’t.”
Russia keeps his sigh to himself. Still, after all these years, after all these bickering warlords and feuding armies and invading countries, China does not understand. “Rule yourself,” he says. “That is what I want for you.”
“What-” And China’s next words die in his throat as Russia presses a searing kiss to a laceration on his cheek. The body listens when the mind does not. “What do you mean?”
“How long have you let one city rule you?” Russia asks, stops up China’s questions with his fingers. So warm, China’s mouth, and the slick ridges of his teeth dig pleasantly into Russia’s calluses. “One family?” He slips his left hand lower, grips China’s hip and kneads the bone with his knuckles. China moans; more spit slicks Russia’s hand. “One man?” he continues, and at this his left hand slides under China’s waistband, curls around the inside of his thigh.
China’s teeth and lips are working around his fingers, Russia notices. He withdraws them for the time, and the sharp high sound he is greeted with makes that decision a rewarding one.
“The,” and China gasps, clenches his jaw, oh how he must be admonishing himself now (though he should not, he is so close, so close to seeing), “the mandate of heaven-”
Russia scoffs, fingers tightening. The principles of governance, the correct principles, still they elude China, still he does not realize why he suffers like this, why Europe hungers for his ports and England feeds him drugs and America entices his men away and Japan, Japan leaves him bleeding and broken in a temple to gods deaf to the pleas of their worshippers. The things he convinces himself he sees are false, Russia must show him that…
He covers China’s eyes with his hand, presses into his temples with his fingers and thumb until red will blossom behind China’s eyelids.
“The country should rule its people,” he says. “Who else understands them so well?”
“I-” China says. “I can’t, I am not whole…”
“Not whole?” Russia asks. “I see only one of you,” and to prove his point, he takes China in hand, assesses his weight. “Only one.”
China reddens: cheeks, lips, the back of his neck. His eyelashes twitch and tickle Russia’s fingers. “I’m-pulled too many ways, I-”
“You need to decide which way is correct.”
“I can’t-the mandate of heaven-”
“Is yours.” He bites down, strokes sharply, and still China stifles his cries. This disappoints Russia, he must admit; he had rather hoped to hear him scream. “As it always has been.”
China’s breath is heavy, and heavier still is his weight in Russia’s hand as he stiffens, hardens, arches. Both of Russia’s hands are damp now, wetted by sweat and tears. “Decide what is best for your people,” he says. “Care for them. Unify them.”
“But they aren’t, they-” China chokes. “I can’t-stop-”
Russia strokes him harder. China’s hips cant, his back collides with Russia’s chest, he seizes handfuls of Russia’s shirt in his fists and grips until his knuckles whiten, uses that leverage to push himself more and more into Russia’s hand, into Russia’s grasp. He twists his neck to the side, but Russia’s hand remains clamped around his eyes. The long scar on his collarbone gleams with sweat, and Russia nips it, waits for China’s response-there, a shudder running through the length of him. “It is your time to rule your people,” he says. “Your people who have forgotten you.”
But no longer.
“They don’t want-”
“If they do not want you, if they do not agree with you…” Russia trails off, shrugs. “Then they are not your people. Why should you claim them as yours if they will not care for you, if they will hurt what you have tried to build?”
“What-if, if I do this what-” China swallows. “What do I do with them?”
“Whatever you like,” Russia says. “But they mustn’t be allowed to corrupt your loyal citizens, no?”
“No,” China breathes, and though Russia cannot tell if it is refusal or agreement, he takes it as the latter. He presses his thumbnail under China’s foreskin: encouragement.
And more encouragement, the final piece. “Heaven and earth are great,” he whispers in China’s ear, feels China shudder from it, from the insinuation of Russia’s lips against his cheek, “but greater still is the kindness of the Communist Party.”
“But,” and China tightens in his voice, breath, skin, tries to hold back such heat, “we are between heaven and earth-”
He seizes once, twice, stills and spills into Russia’s hand before he completes the thought.
Russia removes his hand from China’s eyes, smiles genially down at him, licks his fingers clean while China watches. He cannot look away, Russia notes. He cannot bring himself to.
“And we are under the rule of neither,” Russia says.
China sinks into Russia’s arms in response. Ah, of course, he is still tired. So many long years behind him, and a few long ones before him, Russia does not doubt. Well, let him rest. Russia will allow no other country to harm him.
He remembers a song for such occasions, a song from a time before this one. The composer was a terrible xenophile, but the melody itself suits.
“Sprashivala vetra mat':,” he sings.
“Gde izvolil propadat'?
Ali zvezdy vojeval?
Ali volny vsjo gonjal?
Ne gonjal ja voln morskikh,
Zvezd ne trogal zolotykh;
Ja ditja oberegal,
Kolybelochku kachal.”
Now China’s lips part, now he blinks the exhaustion from his eyes. Again, Russia smiles. “Come,” he says, and extends his hand.
China accepts it.
***
The Soviet invasion of Manchuria in 1945 began on August 9, 1945-the same day Nagasaki was bombed. (The Soviet Union didn’t officially know about the timing of the attacks, but they were well aware of it through unofficial channels.) The Japanese were under strength, under equipped, and unprepared for the actual route the Soviets ended up taking when they invaded. Japan surrendered on August 15th, in part because of the Soviet victories on the mainland.
The North Pagoda in Shenyang still stands today.
This is the lullaby Russia sings, because Russia is a creepy bastard. The translation of the verses presented in the fic:
The Wind's mother has been asking:
"Where have you been for so long?
Have you been fighting the stars?
Have you been chasing the waves?"
"I haven't been chasing the sea-waves,
I haven't been touching the golden stars,
I have been guarding a baby
And rocking gently his little cradle."
Well, Russia finds it comforting. Or so he says.
Now I will do the things I am supposed to do.
Really.
WHY IS HETALIA EATING MY LIIIIIFE.