A/N: it's dark, but in a character study/emotionally dark way.
They can't call it love.
So they don't.
For a nation, love is blasphemy -
For a nation, a word like love is but the curse of a fleeting moment of insanity.
A moment that destroys a future, shatters empires and floods cities.
Love is more than pain - for a nation, to love is to die.
They can't - won't - shouldn't - don't say it.
To express love is to show weakness.
To mean it is to bare their hearts.
So they observe one another.
They stay quiet.
They say nothing.
For a century, they loved each other.
They had said it.
They had meant it.
For a century, they had been loved.
In a moment, their realities crumbled around them.
In a moment, they tore one another apart.
For almost a century, they destroyed each other.
Love…
Love had faded away from them.
Hatred festered in the whispers of their peoples.
Mistrust coursed through their veins.
Paranoia consumed Alfred. Fear consumed Ivan.
They broke one another apart, brick by brick tearing their walls down, shredding their boundaries and limits, spitting acidic words at each other that corroded through their strongest defences.
And love was a forgotten lie of the past.
And love was supposed to be a forgotten lie of the past.
They claim it isn't love.
They claim there's no trust.
No forgiveness.
They believe it.
They want to believe it.
(But they trust one another, because they broke one another.)
A nation can't love.
A nation shouldn't love.
Love is a bleeding wound, waiting to be infected.
And it's the mantras of think about your people,
The flashing memories of gruesome wars, betrayals, battlefields and slain soldiers,
How intermingled their lives were already without entangling themselves in the whirlwind of personal affairs -
Too much is at stake.
Everything can be lost too easily.
Love had become illicit, taboo.
And so love was not spoken of, thought about, considered.
Is it love, then, when two nations become one another's lives?
They don't call it that, anyway.
Their interactions are unstable.
Sometimes, the cold frost of the war that wasn't settles again, freezing their smiles and their glares and their words.
Sometimes.
Sometimes, the cold melts, but the warmth isn't there.
There can't be warmth.
They can't let there be warmth - warmth, or comfort, or trust.
And yet, they know they only trust one another.
(Yet, they refuse the idea of love.)
Sometimes, everything is odd.
Not loving.
Never loving.
Dislodged in time, awkward words in a strange place.
It's in the "Where do you want to go?" Ivan asks nonchalantly, in Alfred's shrug and "I don't mind, you pick."
It's in the minutes after sex, in the moonlight that pools through the window, when Alfred's frown isn't on his face and Ivan's smile softens for a moment.
It's in the four a.m. vodka shots they're doing, laughing their asses off when Alfred imitates the nations at the meeting earlier that day.
It's in the, "Here, let me help," when Alfred can't reach the top shelf, and the grumbled "You didn't have to, I can get a chair."
It's when Ivan turns to Alfred with an odd look in his eyes and a tense "I - er - drive safe," when Alfred leaves for his government's emergency meeting.
It's when Alfred finds Ivan crashing on his couch, and he doesn't even question it before putting a quilt over the sleeping man.
It's when Alfred is running his hands down Ivan's arms, his lips tracing across his chest, his mouth whispering nonsense and beauty and tenderness.
It's when Ivan sees Alfred frowning at his reflection and begins to point out every single thing that - single thing that he… he can't bring himself to say it, but they know what he means when he says, "This scar,... I remember it."
It's in the spilt coffee and the knee-jerk response Alfred gives when he's asked if he cares about Russia, and the snarled "Who the fuck do you think you are? That's ridiculous."
It's in the cold silence Ivan falls into when Francis speaks of love and caring and nations and intimacy before he finishes his drink and slams the glass down, walking away without another word.
When Ivan mentions the incident to Alfred, Alfred's response is a mere, "Francis is mad."
Ivan agrees, and leaves it at that - it's not an unknown fact that Francis is considered a lunatic among madmen.
(Francis used to speak of love.
He no longer does, not unless it's the description of the hair of the prostitute he fucked the night before.
He no longer does, not since Arthur drove a sword through his chest with a choked, "I don't believe you.")
Ivan doesn't think anything of the fact that Francis spoke to him about real love.
He doesn't think anything of how he sees Francis shake his head with downcast eyes before he left the bar.
Doesn't think anything of how Francis so shamelessly spoke of love between nations, as if Ivan might understand.
Of course he doesn't understand.
How could he?
And when Alfred looks at Ivan, as if to ask something, but turns away, Francis' words crash like a wave against Ivan's rocky mind.
"Love isn't a word, Ivan," he'd laughed, before staring at the bottom of his glass, the burgundy wine breaking off the light that then landed on the table, a smudge of purple. "It's a state of existence."
It's isn't friendship. Not hatred, not any more.
It's violent, sometimes.
Other days, it's more quiet.
They will never dare call it love.
An awkward state of existence, perhaps.
In some fleeting moments, all thoughts of the "what" and the "why" flee from their minds.
In some fleeting moments, they don't care what they call it.
In some fleeting moments, their silence betrays it all.
Their words don't.
But their language does.
They can't let it slip.
(And yet, they do. Perhaps not in the way they'd planned against.)
They reason that love is helping. Love is healing.
How can they heal something they each helped break?
It can't be love.
They don't heal.
They're hurt.
They're broken -
They broke each other.
And now?
They're really just keeping each other alive.