This Time Tomorrow
One petal
It flutters to the floor like a sigh, the dusky crimson centre bleeding to dark edges, a forlorn, sorrowful wound from the soft loops and dips of the carpet. Russia stares at it awhile, twisting the stem between his fingers, and thinks that it shouldn't look so peaceful.
Not for what used to be a martyr's symbol, anyway. The knowledge rises unbidden to the surface of his mind, a latent monster accidentally awakened from beneath the peaty waters, and he clutches the stem tighter as he rides out the murky ripples it'd stirred with its shifting.
They're a good place to focus; it helps him ignore the other monster – though he knows that he can avoid it about as far as he can avoid his own shadow, black with a thousand dark refractions, and if he holds each thin sliver up and looks into them, he'll be able to see a mirror in negative in each one, all slightly different. Pain and suffering and the like all have colours, he knows. But no matter the light you look at things in, pile those jagged shards of himself together and all those shades of light only come to black in the end, after all.
His shadow slinks by him: wherever he goes, the reminder of his suffering follows, unwaveringly loyal and unwelcome in equal parts. Sometimes, times like this, he just sits down and watches it distort into a squatting creature along with him, and wonders yet again how it got no darker.
Now is not the time, though. It's too early for that, too early for the swell of grief and realised expectations. He needs time for the blood to cool around this new weave of barbed-wire into his soul, already cross-hatched with long-coagulated slashes: perhaps he will rage, crush something between his fingers just for the satisfaction of its subjugation, break all the furniture into little matchstick-splinters of wood.
Perhaps he'll hurl himself from the top of a building and end up spread-eagled with iron railings through his limbs; perhaps he'll douse himself with gasoline, that foul-smelling by-product of Germany's beloved mechanics , set himself alight with the glowing end of a cigarette (he doesn't smoke; Stalin had put him off that), and have his catharsis that way.
Funny how he knows these monsters so well that he's even formed this sketchy little routine. (Which isn't to say they obey, though.)
It's a shame that acquaintance doesn't make it hurt any the less.
A petal for each of the five wounds, France had taught him that. Of course. They'd been watching the spiralling descent of a leaf falling, falling–
Two petals
Falling from where the sweep of wind had tugged it from the tree that fanned out its leaves of burnt red and dark gold high above them. The scraping of their hardened edges, along with the tossing of the trees as the wind passed through them, like horses shaking out their manes, made for an oddly pleasant cacophony of sounds.
A child, a little blonde girl wearing bottle-green wellingtons and a padded purple coat, made shrieking noises of delight as she chased after the swirling brown flakes of autumn with both arms outstretched, her small hands opening and closing. Her mother stood a little way off, wayward strands of hair blown wild and shielding her face, with a warm jacket of her own and a warmer smile for her little girl.
Aside from them, France and Russia were the only two in the park.
They sit together quietly, comfortably, side-by-side on the park bench, France leaning his head against Russia's shoulder, arm hooked under his, and they feel like the insides of a snowglobe.
Russia wishes it could last forever, but it's like wishing that the white, magical world behind the wardrobe is real, that when he pushes past all the thick fur coats he can really find himself falling, falling–
Three petals
He screams and he screams, but he's the unfortunate type of person who doesn't wake from nightmares. Even when he's already regained some level of consciousness, he still hasn't come up from wherever it is he's drowning, even though some ineffectual part of him has realised that it's only in his own cold sweat and the stifling mass of the sheets he's entangled in.
Sometimes he screams when he wakes too, because then he realises that his terrors aren't just figments of his imagination.
It's dark and cold inside, and his eyes must be open because they sting with it, but then he's not sure anymore and it's so dark that he's not sure of anything anymore, and he wants to close his eyes but aren't they closed already?
This time, however, just as he drags in the first choking lungful of ice, something warm wraps around him, and somehow he knows that this isn't another monster of the deep. Something has come to save him, something is anchoring him in this frozen expanse of nothingness, and he is grateful.
He still shudders and spasms, he still thrashes his head side to side on the pillow, he still screams his horror, but through it all, even to the part of him far lost in his nightmare, it's no longer so bad.
The lakewater has a faint scent of roses and he knows that he's being held.
(He never meant to stay outside for as long as he did, but the unexpected whirl of a blizzard had thrown him off course and he staggered lost in white wastelands. Sometimes he crashed into something hard, and he identified them as tree trunks, and he was tempted to curl up at the foot of one and just go to sleep, and when he woke up maybe the servants would be here and they'd carry him to his bed, but he knows better than to make himself the centre of a snowdrift. And anyway, he had to be back before dark fell.
He had to be back before dark, he had to be back before dark…
The ice on the lake was thin, but he didn't even notice he'd stepped onto it until there was a crack and suddenly he was falling, falling–)
Four petals
Falling to the bed in laughter, genuine bubbles of delight that only France could coax from him. They roll among the puffs of goose-down for a minute, until the giddy glee had quelled enough for France to come a few degrees back to his senses and sweep the curling white feathers from the sheets in their immediate area, off the edges of the bed to where it didn't concern him right now.
As soon as he'd found out that Russia had never once had a pillow fight, France had set about remedying that right away. The results weren't so bad, hm?
France hums to himself (in tune, he can't help it) as he snuggles up to where Russia lies, happily settled in the last vestiges of his euphoria. In slow, sure movements, his fingers follow the seam down the side of his shirt to trace the edge of his waistband, then back again, burrowing into the fabric as they travel up to skirt about his neck. When he gets no protest, he takes it as an assurance that that was fine, and starts pawing at Russia's scarf, which he only ever seemed to take off when he slept. He probably dreamt of garrottes enough than to have one there.
The effect is instantaneous: Russia tenses, hand fisting around the sheet, and there is a tension-wrought pause that France has an ominous feeling is a prelude to his being thrown right off the bed.
"Trust me," he breathes, and he is patient as he waits for Russia's limbs to unlock, and then, about as close to relaxing as they'll get.
He slips the scarf off gently and with infinite care, as if he really were unravelling it strand by strand. Russia stays perfectly still throughout, and had France closed his eyes, there'd have been no indication that he was there, save for his breaths that came a little too quickly and a little too panicky for his comfort of mind.
When he's done, he drapes the length of wool over the headboard, and turns back to touch a moth-flutter of a kiss to the back of Russia's neck.
Around them, soft light feathers are falling, falling–
Five petals
Fallen petals strew the ground in splashes of dark tears: that's all his hurt and disbelief and anguish totals up to.
He loves me, he loves me not. It's pointless, because obviously not.
Je t'aime, he'd said, as if it were the one thing in life he could grasp hold of and it would never let him go – je t'aime. Perhaps he'd even meant it, when he said it at least, because France is a creature of the moment, and the love of today isn't necessarily the love of tomorrow.
Or perhaps Russia just doesn't want to think that he was probably just another of France's whims, grass that was no longer green now that he'd had it (so completely) in his possession, and there was greener grass to look at – he doesn't want to believe that he's just another to be added at the end of a very long list of people to send that final crimson rose to.
As is the way with denial, he doesn't want to believe it because it is most likely true.
A symbol of love is a cruel last message to leave.
A petal for each of the hearts he'd broken, and one of them is his.