51 - My Death Will Have Your Eyes [Pt 2]
Title: My Death Will Have Your Eyes [Pt 2]
Characters: Russia, Lithuania.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: 1962 - In the calm before the storm, Russia reconsiders his feelings about America's threats, and possibly America himself.
TCE is co-written by wizzard890 and pyrrhiccomedy.
---
Moscow. October 26, 1962.
Russia stared into his glass. The bottle on the table beside him was almost empty. His chair creaked as he tilted it back onto two legs, and knocked back the dregs. The vodka burned, but not as badly as it had an hour ago; he was on the right track, at least.
The missiles were still coming. And the missiles were still going. Coming to Japan, going to Cuba; coming and going on slow ships, crawling across the ocean to where they would be loaded onto US Air Force planes, or into Cuban missile silos. It was something like a trade; an exchange, that was the word he was looking for. As in an exchange of fire.
Russia imagined America, sitting up late, wherever he was, bullets spread out on the table or desk or placemat in front of him; he would pick them up one at a time and chamber them into his revolver. Russia was aware that, in his own way, he was doing the same thing.
He poured the rest of the vodka into his glass, stared down into it. The side of the bottle felt sticky.
Loaded guns, cocked guns. It was all for show. That was America, down to his cells and bones. He liked to put on a show.
Russia skimmed his fingertip round the rim of his glass and listened to himself breathe. The kitchen was cold and dark. He could feel the tension between him and America stretching out across the ocean like a knotted rope; the knot pulled tighter with each ship that reached the opposite shore. America had never been one to make idle threats, he knew, but this one...this one was different.
It wasn't that he couldn't conceive of America cuffing him to the ground and putting a gun to his head. It was that he couldn't imagine him pulling the trigger.
"Something...something else to drink, sir?" Lithuania's quiet, halting voice from the hallway behind him.
The legs of Russia's chair met the floor again with a sharp crack. "Yes." He half-twisted in his seat, propped an elbow over the back, and watched the other nation impassively. "But it's late. Why are you up?"
Lithuania opened the liquor cabinet: a lush old wooden creak. His hand hesitated over the bottles. "No one is asleep, sir."
Russia picked at the corner of the white and red label on the empty bottle. "No?"
Lithuania took down another bottle identical to his empty one. Uncorked it. The Baltic nation's shoulders were hunched up too high around his ears again. "We're all listening to the radio in--" The words froze up. A rigid silence of a few seconds. "In--Ukraine's room; the, the regular radio, and it says that America won't--that he, ah...that there won't be a war, and, that America will--will back down, and..."
"The 'regular radio,'" Russia began dryly, "Is right." He beckoned Lithuania over to the table with a smooth, two-fingered turn of his wrist, and smiled. "Now, Lithuania, you know you can be honest with me. What is the American radio saying about all this?"
Lithuania edged towards the kitchen table, the bottle held before his breast like a shield. He swallowed. "W-we really weren't--"
"Lithuania."
Lithuania almost dropped the bottle, which at this hour would be far more likely to earn him a punishment than listening to the Voice of America. He paled another few shades. "I-it says--w-we'll probably be at war by the end of the, by the end of the week." He clunked the bottle down on the edge of the table, stared down at the lip of it.
Russia tipped his chin into his hand, and peered up at Lithuania. "And what do you think? I'm sure you all have formed opinions by now." He could imagine every member of his household crowded into one of the tiny upstairs rooms, perched on beds and backwards on chairs, talking in low voices.
"W-we all agree with you, sir," Lithuania insisted, and turned away from the table, pushed off towards the hallway. He only made it a step and a half before he paused. Bit his lip. Went on, softer. "But...I-I know America. We--we used to be friends. And I think--I mean--"
Russia paused with the bottle half-poised over his glass. Raised his eyebrows. "Yes?"
Lithuania took a deep breath. It shuddered in his lungs. "If he says he's ready to kill us," he wet his lips, "I think it's--it's possible that he really is."
"He wouldn't." It was instant, automatic.
He wouldn't hurt me.
Russia stiffened. Something cold slithered down his throat. If he could just--just keep talking, he could pretend he'd never thought it at all. "Not ever."
Lithuania stared unblinking at the tiled kitchen floor. "He's used them before. On Japan. If he says he's ready to use them again--h-he's very proud, and--"
Russia's hand slammed down onto the tabletop. Glass and bottle rattled, and the sound ached on in the silent room. "Don't you dare talk to me as though I've never met him."
Lithuania fell back two fast steps and went red, tear-stung, but he scowled and his eyebrows twisted together. He gathered himself up and demanded, "What makes you so sure that he won't do it? We don't all want to die if you're wrong!"
"If I am wrong, then I'll die along with you!" Russia snapped. "I'm sure you can take comfort in that." His palm ached, throbbing and flat, and the pleasant film of alcohol was drying up inside him. He kept thinking---America, that straight determined set to his mouth--
Lithuania's hands clenched in the too-long hem of his shirt. "I-I'm going back upstairs. Just--everybody is scared, Russia. I know you know him best, but--everybody is scared."
Russia didn't respond, didn't watch him leave. He stared down at the grain of the table as Lithuania's quiet footsteps faded down the hall, then pattered up the stairs. Russia's stomach jerked.
Scared.
He lurched to his feet, grabbed the new bottle by the neck. The house glided cold and watchful around him. He paused on the second floor landing, when all of the quiet voices coming from Poland's room went still--Poland's room, of course it was Poland's room; Russia kept trying to block the signal from America's radio station, but Poland always found some spot, in his closet or under his bed or on top of his dresser, where it could still be picked up--then kept going, heavy footfalls up to the third floor.
He shut himself in his bedroom. America's steady gunslinger eyes stayed with him.
Moonlight washed through the window and made a broad sweep across the floorboards. It caught on the rim and curve of the bottle as Russia let himself settle on the window seat, one leg propped up against his chest. He sloshed more vodka into his glass and took a heavy swallow.
He looked down at his garden, and imagined fire. The trees would go first, fast, a million pine needles igniting in a shower. The houses would follow close behind, all at once. the pavement would bubble and rupture...Maybe it would fly upwards and turn to glass. Glass and shadows. In Japan, there had been shadows burned into the ground. Russia remembered the photographs.
He tore at the latch and shoved the window open. A rush of freezing air slammed against him. He breathed it in, head spinning, stomach turning. What had he been thinking? America could. America would. He'd done it before.
Russia clenched his jaw and tried to picture a sleepy Nebraskan town going up in flames: the fields turning to kindling, the sky going white and then red and then black with smoke---he smothered the vision out. Couldn't bear it.
He took another desperate drink.
America, burning black in his arms--
He shut his eyes, tried to will it away, dumped more vodka into the glass and felt it splash across his fingers.
Those eyes, going dim and flat and empty--
He looked up, heart tight. Thought of the spot downstairs. The dent in the wall just inside the front room, beside the picture window: America had punched it hard enough to damage the plaster, then crumpled in on himself in the corner.
Russia hated to remember this.
"Y-you really never wanted me in the first place, did you."
"No. Never."
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have bothered you all this time. Gotten us into this mess. I just--loved you. And I thought that would mean that if I tried hard enough--"
"Then I would love you too."
Russia raised the glass, shaking, to his lips.
"Maybe it's time to stop believing in fairy stories, America."
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and it stung into the places he'd chewed his lips to blood.
America loved him. Loved him. The thought still made him want to hide behind a locked door, but it was--inescapable. It hung in the air like the glow of Christmas candles every time America kissed him--every time that flicker of hurt crossed his eyes when Russia snapped at him and dismissed him--every time he'd stroked Russia's hair and skipped so carefully over his neck...
Russia took his next drink straight from the bottle.
He'd asked for this. With the pushing, and the lying, and the false fronts, and the broken promises--He'd laid every inch of the road that brought them here.
But God, he hadn't meant it.
The roar of light behind his eyes changed from America dead, dying, burning, into America alive--America smiling, eyes shining, America's warm hands and lips and breath, America bearing him gently down, giggling and nipping and twining his fingers into Russia's hair; America was always touching his hair. It was incessant, and bewildering, and it made his hair stick up, and Russia couldn't think of any reason why America would do it so much unless he--he--really did--did think it was--
That word. The one America called him, that nobody else had ever called him. Russia couldn't even bring himself to think it. That word meant I love you, too.
His hands were trembling. He set the bottle down on the floor and wrapped his arms around his knee. Hugged it in against his heart.
Even his broken wrist--the place just below the heel of his hand where the bone hadn't healed straight...America would touch that too, spread warm kisses across it, smiling just a little. Russia had loved that smile for as long as he could remember. Loved it, yes; that was the right word. America's body, yes, he could love that. The delicate skin at the corners of his eyes, the flush that caught across his cheeks, the smooth muscles in his arms...He could...love America--America's laugh, or the way he pushed up his glasses with the blade of his hand...
It all pulsed hot and tight inside of him, pounding, painful, painful, and he--he wasn't stupid. He could feel himself flinching away from the words.
He shoved away from the window, swerved into his desk, wrenched open the top drawer. Paper, pen. They clattered down to the polished wood. He could be at the telegram office in half an hour. He had to--he needed to stop the war. His fingers clamped around the pen, and he squinted in the darkness. The moonlight wasn't bright enough to write by, but he scribbled his way across and down the paper anyway.
America,
I'm sorry. I don't know what I-- I was sure everything would be so much easier if I could finally make you leave me alone. That was wrong. I can't push you away anymore. It has become too dangerous for both of us.
Just...Please promise me that you will not invade Cuba, and I'll remove the missiles, and neither of us will have to die. I can't let this war happen. Please say you will help me.
I could never hurt you, ptenchik.
Russia paused, lifted the pen from the paper. Darkness swam before his eyes. He scratched one more line, gaze averted, never reading it. An ugly scrawl. The tip of the pen punctured the final letter of the last word.
I love you.
--Russia
+++
--As of October 25th, the Cuban Missile Crisis was ostensibly at a stalemate, The USSR had shown no indication that they would back down and had made several comments to the contrary. The U.S. had no reason to believe otherwise and was in the early stages of preparing for an invasion, along with a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union in case it responded militarily, which was assumed.
--But just when things seemed darkest, John A. Scali of ABC News met with Aleksandr Fomin (the KGB Station Chief stationed in Washington D.C.) at Fomin's request. Fomin noted, "War seems about to break out," and asked Scali to use his contacts to talk to his "high-level friends" at the State Department to see if the U.S. would be interested in a diplomatic solution. He suggested that the language of the deal would contain an assurance from the Soviet Union to remove the weapons under UN supervision and that Castro would publicly announce that he would not accept such weapons in the future, in exchange for a public statement by the U.S. that it would never invade Cuba. The U.S. responded by asking the Brazilian government to pass a message to Castro that the U.S. would be "unlikely to invade" if the missiles were removed.
--Later that same day, the State Department started receiving a message that appeared to be written personally by Khrushchev. Robert Kennedy described the letter as "very long and emotional." Khrushchev reiterated the basic outline that had been stated to John Scali earlier in the day, "I propose: we, for our part, will declare that our ships bound for Cuba are not carrying any armaments. You will declare that the United States will not invade Cuba with its troops and will not support any other forces which might intend to invade Cuba. Then the necessity of the presence of our military specialists in Cuba will disappear."
--Voice of America is the official external radio and television broadcasting service of the United States federal government. Its signal was consistently jammed throughout the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
--Ptenchik is a Russian endearment which translates to "little bird".
+++
Please read our Rules & FAQ before posting. / Пожалуйста, прочтите Правила и FAQ прежде чем комментировать.
This is a chapter from The Chosen End, a Russia/America collaboration spanning from 1780 to the present day. You can read all of the fics in this story at the Index.
Characters: Russia, Lithuania.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: 1962 - In the calm before the storm, Russia reconsiders his feelings about America's threats, and possibly America himself.
TCE is co-written by wizzard890 and pyrrhiccomedy.
---
Moscow. October 26, 1962.
Russia stared into his glass. The bottle on the table beside him was almost empty. His chair creaked as he tilted it back onto two legs, and knocked back the dregs. The vodka burned, but not as badly as it had an hour ago; he was on the right track, at least.
The missiles were still coming. And the missiles were still going. Coming to Japan, going to Cuba; coming and going on slow ships, crawling across the ocean to where they would be loaded onto US Air Force planes, or into Cuban missile silos. It was something like a trade; an exchange, that was the word he was looking for. As in an exchange of fire.
Russia imagined America, sitting up late, wherever he was, bullets spread out on the table or desk or placemat in front of him; he would pick them up one at a time and chamber them into his revolver. Russia was aware that, in his own way, he was doing the same thing.
He poured the rest of the vodka into his glass, stared down into it. The side of the bottle felt sticky.
Loaded guns, cocked guns. It was all for show. That was America, down to his cells and bones. He liked to put on a show.
Russia skimmed his fingertip round the rim of his glass and listened to himself breathe. The kitchen was cold and dark. He could feel the tension between him and America stretching out across the ocean like a knotted rope; the knot pulled tighter with each ship that reached the opposite shore. America had never been one to make idle threats, he knew, but this one...this one was different.
It wasn't that he couldn't conceive of America cuffing him to the ground and putting a gun to his head. It was that he couldn't imagine him pulling the trigger.
"Something...something else to drink, sir?" Lithuania's quiet, halting voice from the hallway behind him.
The legs of Russia's chair met the floor again with a sharp crack. "Yes." He half-twisted in his seat, propped an elbow over the back, and watched the other nation impassively. "But it's late. Why are you up?"
Lithuania opened the liquor cabinet: a lush old wooden creak. His hand hesitated over the bottles. "No one is asleep, sir."
Russia picked at the corner of the white and red label on the empty bottle. "No?"
Lithuania took down another bottle identical to his empty one. Uncorked it. The Baltic nation's shoulders were hunched up too high around his ears again. "We're all listening to the radio in--" The words froze up. A rigid silence of a few seconds. "In--Ukraine's room; the, the regular radio, and it says that America won't--that he, ah...that there won't be a war, and, that America will--will back down, and..."
"The 'regular radio,'" Russia began dryly, "Is right." He beckoned Lithuania over to the table with a smooth, two-fingered turn of his wrist, and smiled. "Now, Lithuania, you know you can be honest with me. What is the American radio saying about all this?"
Lithuania edged towards the kitchen table, the bottle held before his breast like a shield. He swallowed. "W-we really weren't--"
"Lithuania."
Lithuania almost dropped the bottle, which at this hour would be far more likely to earn him a punishment than listening to the Voice of America. He paled another few shades. "I-it says--w-we'll probably be at war by the end of the, by the end of the week." He clunked the bottle down on the edge of the table, stared down at the lip of it.
Russia tipped his chin into his hand, and peered up at Lithuania. "And what do you think? I'm sure you all have formed opinions by now." He could imagine every member of his household crowded into one of the tiny upstairs rooms, perched on beds and backwards on chairs, talking in low voices.
"W-we all agree with you, sir," Lithuania insisted, and turned away from the table, pushed off towards the hallway. He only made it a step and a half before he paused. Bit his lip. Went on, softer. "But...I-I know America. We--we used to be friends. And I think--I mean--"
Russia paused with the bottle half-poised over his glass. Raised his eyebrows. "Yes?"
Lithuania took a deep breath. It shuddered in his lungs. "If he says he's ready to kill us," he wet his lips, "I think it's--it's possible that he really is."
"He wouldn't." It was instant, automatic.
He wouldn't hurt me.
Russia stiffened. Something cold slithered down his throat. If he could just--just keep talking, he could pretend he'd never thought it at all. "Not ever."
Lithuania stared unblinking at the tiled kitchen floor. "He's used them before. On Japan. If he says he's ready to use them again--h-he's very proud, and--"
Russia's hand slammed down onto the tabletop. Glass and bottle rattled, and the sound ached on in the silent room. "Don't you dare talk to me as though I've never met him."
Lithuania fell back two fast steps and went red, tear-stung, but he scowled and his eyebrows twisted together. He gathered himself up and demanded, "What makes you so sure that he won't do it? We don't all want to die if you're wrong!"
"If I am wrong, then I'll die along with you!" Russia snapped. "I'm sure you can take comfort in that." His palm ached, throbbing and flat, and the pleasant film of alcohol was drying up inside him. He kept thinking---America, that straight determined set to his mouth--
Lithuania's hands clenched in the too-long hem of his shirt. "I-I'm going back upstairs. Just--everybody is scared, Russia. I know you know him best, but--everybody is scared."
Russia didn't respond, didn't watch him leave. He stared down at the grain of the table as Lithuania's quiet footsteps faded down the hall, then pattered up the stairs. Russia's stomach jerked.
Scared.
He lurched to his feet, grabbed the new bottle by the neck. The house glided cold and watchful around him. He paused on the second floor landing, when all of the quiet voices coming from Poland's room went still--Poland's room, of course it was Poland's room; Russia kept trying to block the signal from America's radio station, but Poland always found some spot, in his closet or under his bed or on top of his dresser, where it could still be picked up--then kept going, heavy footfalls up to the third floor.
He shut himself in his bedroom. America's steady gunslinger eyes stayed with him.
Moonlight washed through the window and made a broad sweep across the floorboards. It caught on the rim and curve of the bottle as Russia let himself settle on the window seat, one leg propped up against his chest. He sloshed more vodka into his glass and took a heavy swallow.
He looked down at his garden, and imagined fire. The trees would go first, fast, a million pine needles igniting in a shower. The houses would follow close behind, all at once. the pavement would bubble and rupture...Maybe it would fly upwards and turn to glass. Glass and shadows. In Japan, there had been shadows burned into the ground. Russia remembered the photographs.
He tore at the latch and shoved the window open. A rush of freezing air slammed against him. He breathed it in, head spinning, stomach turning. What had he been thinking? America could. America would. He'd done it before.
Russia clenched his jaw and tried to picture a sleepy Nebraskan town going up in flames: the fields turning to kindling, the sky going white and then red and then black with smoke---he smothered the vision out. Couldn't bear it.
He took another desperate drink.
America, burning black in his arms--
He shut his eyes, tried to will it away, dumped more vodka into the glass and felt it splash across his fingers.
Those eyes, going dim and flat and empty--
He looked up, heart tight. Thought of the spot downstairs. The dent in the wall just inside the front room, beside the picture window: America had punched it hard enough to damage the plaster, then crumpled in on himself in the corner.
Russia hated to remember this.
"Y-you really never wanted me in the first place, did you."
"No. Never."
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have bothered you all this time. Gotten us into this mess. I just--loved you. And I thought that would mean that if I tried hard enough--"
"Then I would love you too."
Russia raised the glass, shaking, to his lips.
"Maybe it's time to stop believing in fairy stories, America."
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and it stung into the places he'd chewed his lips to blood.
America loved him. Loved him. The thought still made him want to hide behind a locked door, but it was--inescapable. It hung in the air like the glow of Christmas candles every time America kissed him--every time that flicker of hurt crossed his eyes when Russia snapped at him and dismissed him--every time he'd stroked Russia's hair and skipped so carefully over his neck...
Russia took his next drink straight from the bottle.
He'd asked for this. With the pushing, and the lying, and the false fronts, and the broken promises--He'd laid every inch of the road that brought them here.
But God, he hadn't meant it.
The roar of light behind his eyes changed from America dead, dying, burning, into America alive--America smiling, eyes shining, America's warm hands and lips and breath, America bearing him gently down, giggling and nipping and twining his fingers into Russia's hair; America was always touching his hair. It was incessant, and bewildering, and it made his hair stick up, and Russia couldn't think of any reason why America would do it so much unless he--he--really did--did think it was--
That word. The one America called him, that nobody else had ever called him. Russia couldn't even bring himself to think it. That word meant I love you, too.
His hands were trembling. He set the bottle down on the floor and wrapped his arms around his knee. Hugged it in against his heart.
Even his broken wrist--the place just below the heel of his hand where the bone hadn't healed straight...America would touch that too, spread warm kisses across it, smiling just a little. Russia had loved that smile for as long as he could remember. Loved it, yes; that was the right word. America's body, yes, he could love that. The delicate skin at the corners of his eyes, the flush that caught across his cheeks, the smooth muscles in his arms...He could...love America--America's laugh, or the way he pushed up his glasses with the blade of his hand...
It all pulsed hot and tight inside of him, pounding, painful, painful, and he--he wasn't stupid. He could feel himself flinching away from the words.
He shoved away from the window, swerved into his desk, wrenched open the top drawer. Paper, pen. They clattered down to the polished wood. He could be at the telegram office in half an hour. He had to--he needed to stop the war. His fingers clamped around the pen, and he squinted in the darkness. The moonlight wasn't bright enough to write by, but he scribbled his way across and down the paper anyway.
America,
I'm sorry. I don't know what I-- I was sure everything would be so much easier if I could finally make you leave me alone. That was wrong. I can't push you away anymore. It has become too dangerous for both of us.
Just...Please promise me that you will not invade Cuba, and I'll remove the missiles, and neither of us will have to die. I can't let this war happen. Please say you will help me.
I could never hurt you, ptenchik.
Russia paused, lifted the pen from the paper. Darkness swam before his eyes. He scratched one more line, gaze averted, never reading it. An ugly scrawl. The tip of the pen punctured the final letter of the last word.
I love you.
--Russia
+++
--As of October 25th, the Cuban Missile Crisis was ostensibly at a stalemate, The USSR had shown no indication that they would back down and had made several comments to the contrary. The U.S. had no reason to believe otherwise and was in the early stages of preparing for an invasion, along with a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union in case it responded militarily, which was assumed.
--But just when things seemed darkest, John A. Scali of ABC News met with Aleksandr Fomin (the KGB Station Chief stationed in Washington D.C.) at Fomin's request. Fomin noted, "War seems about to break out," and asked Scali to use his contacts to talk to his "high-level friends" at the State Department to see if the U.S. would be interested in a diplomatic solution. He suggested that the language of the deal would contain an assurance from the Soviet Union to remove the weapons under UN supervision and that Castro would publicly announce that he would not accept such weapons in the future, in exchange for a public statement by the U.S. that it would never invade Cuba. The U.S. responded by asking the Brazilian government to pass a message to Castro that the U.S. would be "unlikely to invade" if the missiles were removed.
--Later that same day, the State Department started receiving a message that appeared to be written personally by Khrushchev. Robert Kennedy described the letter as "very long and emotional." Khrushchev reiterated the basic outline that had been stated to John Scali earlier in the day, "I propose: we, for our part, will declare that our ships bound for Cuba are not carrying any armaments. You will declare that the United States will not invade Cuba with its troops and will not support any other forces which might intend to invade Cuba. Then the necessity of the presence of our military specialists in Cuba will disappear."
--Voice of America is the official external radio and television broadcasting service of the United States federal government. Its signal was consistently jammed throughout the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
--Ptenchik is a Russian endearment which translates to "little bird".
+++
Please read our Rules & FAQ before posting. / Пожалуйста, прочтите Правила и FAQ прежде чем комментировать.
This is a chapter from The Chosen End, a Russia/America collaboration spanning from 1780 to the present day. You can read all of the fics in this story at the Index.