She always wears a low-cut red dress when visiting Russia's house. The Soviet people that pass her grimace and sneer at her as she struts the few kilometers it is from the airport to the tiny flat, murmuring such unflattering words as bourgeoisie (which is offensive for the simple fact that it is French) and food hoarder (sure, she has gained some belly, but it is simply her body's retaliation for starving while the second great war raged), but she deflects them all.
Elizabeth knocks at his door, mentally comments to herself about Russia getting thinner (confirming this when he mentions something about going to try hunting, that the ration cards just aren't enough for everyone) and climbs into his arms. Even if his vodka belly is shrinking, his muscles only grow bigger, his arms encircle her like the first hot breeze of summer, and that tiny dress flutters as it hits the floor of his filthy, filthy bedroom before she has the chance to make a comment about rats making a nest out of it.
After they're done, he holds her and she stares at the ceiling, watching the cracks above his bed and warning them silently not to drip after she leaves (she has been warned that a snowstorm is coming, but General Winter fears the presence of those that are almost old enough to remember the last ice age, so he stays clear of her and punishes Russia doubly when her plane is off the ground). Like General Winter, Russia knows that he must take great care around her, remembering all too well how many small, scrawny women he has had in his life and what sort of fates they had met.
Though he cannot help his preferences or his strength, the child within him shrinks away shamefully when he is reminded of how many of those women had died at his hand. A night spent drinking turned into a night of being drunk and being yelled at for being drunk (again), and when the blackness had faded from the edges of his eyes and his consciousness returned to him cautiously, he spent the morning holding the beaten body close to his chest, begging perhaps that God may forgive his sins, this time and all the times before.
But he never had to worry about that with England. She was older than he was, wise to the world and its ways, and she had no problem carrying herself entirely independent of him. He exits the bathroom and puts his arms around her again and she feels almost like a child until a piercing green gaze meets his eyes and she presses back against him, meeting him halfway, and he takes her body into his hands and touches it just to feel it shiver against the pads of his fingers. She has pubic hair (firmly disproving that she is a child) and yes, a slight pudge to her belly that shows she is well fed at home. But Russia is pleased to see that.
At least one person he loves can eat well nowadays.
They talk of all manner of things, secret things whispered to one another, pausing only when the distinct sounds of a baby with whooping cough in the flat above his can be heard, and the baby only stops when the mother's pained sobs take the place of its cries. And Elizabeth frowns and looks at him just so. But he does not look back at her, simply looks down and continues with his talk of their armaments program, and a new kind of submarine they're developing.
Elizabeth is on the first plane back to England in the morning. She does not tell Ivan that she will be making her way to America that evening on a red eye flight.
"You've gained weight," is the first thing he says to her. And then, "What did he tell you this time?" The only apology he offers her is scotch, which she is sure she will need if she can keep this up much longer, and it is only offered to her when she is done spilling everything to him. She shuts the door to the little corner office of his, locks it, and somehow the will to feel guilty flows out of her as she's laid down on the oak desk and looks at that same red dress tossed carelessly into a corner, the pattern on it watching her and being ashamed in her stead. She still feels naked when she slips it on later and he pulls her into his lap, his pants still undone, writing a letter to the president over her shoulder and kissing that sweet spot behind her ear with gratitude and tongue.
The next time she goes to see Ivan, she had been instructed to take notice of the state of his people. If there was one thing Alfred needed more than anything, it was insight into the minds of other people, Elizabeth grumbled to herself. Sometimes she wondered if he was even capable of putting himself into the shoes of others at all. She arrives at that same familiar flat and sees Ivan's door open, the inside filled with men in uniform, and her heart seems to stop. A woman dressed in mourning clothes peers over the balcony above, wiping tears from her eyes, as Elizabeth introduces herself as Ivan's girlfriend and demands to know where he was in the small amount of Russian she could speak.
She arrives at the hospital and feels her heart break when she sees him lying there in bed, looking so very broken himself. He smiles sheepishly as she takes his hand and kisses it. "Bears are very good for eating," Ivan told her, slowly, "But difficult to hunt."
She thinks for a moment of the woman in mourning clothes, and frowns at him. "You tried to kill a bear? Is that what happened?"
"Everyone is hungry," He shrugged. "My sisters and I, we only get one ration card for all of us to use. Bear meat is good, and I knew where a den was, so..." Russia looks past her for a moment, seeing three men at the door, and his distended stomach stops mid-inhale. He has to plead with her before she will leave him there alone with them; she tries not to think of what he is suffering through on the ride to the airport.
America doesn't believe her when she tells him Russia is starving. She keeps the part about the bear out of her story but does make light of hearing a baby with whooping cough slowly dying. At the moment it's mentioned, they both cringe. Elizabeth clutches that moment and keeps it close to her heart. Alfred has been so obsessed with reconnaissence that she worries he is losing his humanity, but at least he remembers the horrors of disease, up on this newfound superpower pedastal.
She begs him to stop, to write a true and final peace treaty and start deactivating all his nuclear weapons, and he escorts her out of his office without so much as a kiss for her trouble. Perhaps wisely she leaves, the American men watching her as if looking to see if she is familiar to them.
The long car ride in a stunning Rolls Royce out of town she manages to get when she arrives in London gets her thinking. Why, exactly, was she doing this? And the first thought in her mind is the reminder of the warm, fluttery feeling she gets whenever Alfred gets that crease between his eyebrows, when he's thinking and piecing things together, and she knows it's because she's just helped him. Perhaps the sex is just a perk. It's certainly not as physically satisfying as it is with Russia, Alfred is an idiot and rarely seems to know what he's doing when it comes to sex, but it's Alfred, her Alfred, and though their people and their cultures are intermingled now so beautifully, she can never feel as close to him as she does when he thanks her, hugs her, tells her how helpful she's being. She never feels more special than when he kisses her on the mouth.
She arrives at a beautiful manor out in the forest and steps out of the car, clutching a bag to her chest. Clementine greets her cheerfully, and Elizabeth wonders for a split second, as she often does, how old she would look if she were human. The room where the last lion of Britain is kept is warm and filled with love and light from the old windows, and though he is barely conscious he still grasps her hand and thanks her for coming to see him. She apologizes for taking so long and wishes him a happy belated birthday. Jokingly he asks if they are winning the war against the communists.
It takes her a moment to remember that they are at war at all.
The next day, Winston Churchill died. Days after that, a state funeral was held.
All Elizabeth saw of the service was the flickering of the television screen and the haze of bad reception, thousands of miles away, across the pond. America, meanwhile, had thrown his shirt off and crawled up and down the length of the White House roof, waving the antenna wildly and waiting for a response from the floor below.
He swung down like a monkey through the window and into the room and fell onto the couch and into her lap with a soft, tired huff. "Looks like you can see now, huh buttercup?" A pause.
The colors of the Union Jack reflected beautifully on the glossy surface of her tears. America kissed them away and held her there, watching and just being happy that she let him.
She made no sound, simply watched the massive coffin being carried, containing the heart of an era lost to time, lost in the hearts of the few people that remembered it as they died around her. It was a feeling, she knew, neither of them would understand, for they were only new superpowers, young and bold and standing at the top of the world. It was terrible that she knew all too well how they felt, but when the day would come that they would know how she felt now, she would be long, long dead.
It turns out, that day came much sooner than she ever thought it would.