A/n: Just two poems I wrote. One is from Serbia, the other is from Croatia. Don't worry; the next chapter of "Undefeated" is coming soon. As is the next chapter of "Phobia".

Enjoy.

Xxx

Serbia's Poem

"Truth and Lies"

I am ill prepared to remedy all that is burned into my mind,

Yugoslavia; my brainwashed dream of pride,

War; tattered cities and people dead from my crimes,

But was it all as bad as we perceived it to be?

Was it really our people,

Or do you think it was just you and me?

I think back to those days far too often,

They bury me like I'm already in a coffin,

What we once shared you've become ignorant to,

What we once had is lost between me and you,

But sometimes I look and I start to see,

Nothing back then was ever what we believed,

Our dictators were geniuses of the wrong mind,

Our people were enraged at all the wrong times,

We were the ones who were forced to leave behind,

The ways we had lived our lives all the time,

We constantly are forced to succumb to change,

But must it feel like we're still in a cage?

I hope you, as a man, can still feel,

And remember the days where the threats were still real,

Every word you shouted and malevolently said,

I want you to know that it got to my head,

I wanted to get away, I fled,

My own reality was torn apart and turned red,

I started to hate and feel so irritated,

By every little saying that penetrated,

My weak mind and the ways that I had learned to live by,

I laugh nowadays seeing how brainwashed I was,

It caused me to lose everything and have to pause,

I now have picked up on every one of my flaws,

Now you probably know I regret quite a bit,

Every war, every crime, every word that didn't fit,

You were everything to me not just for your land,

But because you weren't afraid to be a man,

You may have been a country, but you were so humble,

You knew you weren't great, and it caused me to crumble,

You showed me reality, the way it truly had become,

You led me outside, I noticed blood on your thumb,

I asked you about it and you simply told me,

"Blood from a soldier I tried to save on the street",

That's when I realized what my mistakes had caused,

That's what I realized that this couldn't be paused,

I was stunned by what you had told,

Yet you seemed unfazed,

Why did you seem so used to death in this way?

I would learn of it in years to come,

When you claimed to be free,

You weren't afraid of death unlike me,

I didn't realize how much you had been through,

You'd been through everything including World War Two,

I would've asked when we married why you targeted Serbs,

When your men killed my people even when they weren't Jews,

But I never did, and I'm puzzled to this day,

That part of history will always remain gray,

I look back at old photos and videos sometimes,

I remember that nothing was in black and white,

It was all in color, the blood and the pain,

It was all in color, even the shame,

The flags hoisted up under an unfaithful name,

The colors of countries not meant for that game,

War isn't a game though, that's not what I mean,

It is on paper, but not everything unseen,

I learned that through years of unending pain,

World War One, Two, and who knows, maybe Three,

You know I'll be there,

You know it'll be me,

I guess I should say that I'm not confident,

That this will get you to see how I feel,

It's more like I'm rambling; maybe it doesn't seem real,

I just want you to know how much I have seen,

How much I have gone through,

What you truly did to me.

Croatia's Poem

"Realize"

I didn't think this was the way things were supposed to turn out,

Me with my independence and you trying to keep others to go without,

Nothing ever goes the way things are planned,

I never wanted to leave you, but it was my people's demand,

You see, Novak, I loved you so much,

I think you realized this possibly out of luck,

I tried everything to hold you close to reality,

But you broke away and I felt you left me,

You threatened me with ideas that seemed so hard to reach,

And forced me to be irritated and unable to see,

That you longed for greatness and prolonged unity,

You longed for something greater than me,

Perhaps I'm a hypocrite for saying that being great isn't as great as it seems,

Seeing that I once had it all and enjoyed it inevitably,

But happiness can't last forever, it never ever does,

I told you that when we were married,

You proposed marriage to me back after World War One,

You had been devastated by that war but you still made me feel at home,

I had no clue how far your want would go,

I had no idea how much you would make me love you,

And it comes as no surprise now that I look back,

I stayed for a while; I stayed because you made me smile,

But I soon realized there was no compromise,

I soon realized that everything you said was all a lie,

I saw nothing in you and your crazy ideas of greatness,

I saw nothing in your people or your army of fools,

There was nothing to believe when you tried to tell me,

"Don't worry, you other nations aren't my tools",

It was all too revealing that your words were deceiving,

You were just a liar brainwashed by your government,

When I claimed to be my own it was relieving,

But only for so long,

Why did you try to stop me when you knew I was going to win?

That war was pointless, but I suppose that it taught you a lesson,

I told you before I left that if you tried to stop me that you wouldn't get far,

I didn't lie; I pushed you out and you retreated until you were as distant as a star,

Hostilities still remain, don't they, Novak?

You can't hide your anger from me,

Coming from someone filled with regret and overwhelming hate,

I just want you to remember that you chose this fate,

You forced it upon yourself and tried to take me down with you,

It almost worked because I was in love,

I escaped, though your actions revealed,

You were desperate to stray away from the battlefield,

But this is what you chose; a life full of unrest,

You chose yourself over me, over all of the rest,

Do you have any clue how many times I've broke down,

Due to my memories of you being triggered by sound?

I hear a gunshot on the streets of Zagreb,

It reminds me of when I shot you in the back of the leg,

That day was hard for me, I hope you realize,

I never wanted to cause you pain, I just wanted you to admit your lies,

It saddens me now to think of then,

When we pretended to hate eachother in spite of ourselves,

We hurt ourselves more than we ever hurt eachother,

Can't you see that my anger was my cover?

I loved you years ago,

More than you would know,

Maybe I still love you today,

But you and I alone is the way things will stay.