Title: Black God (2 of 4)
Fandom: Axis Powers Hetalia/Good Omens
Genre(s): Drama/Angst
Character(s)|Pairing(s): Russia, Famine
Rating/Warning(s): PG-13, gruesome imagery
Word Count: 914
Summary: Russia has had a long and vicious association with Famine. Crossover with Pratchett's/Gaiman's "Good Omens." Story two of a series of four.
He hates black.
General Winter is clad in gray and silver and white. His mustache quivers with icicles and his breath freezes the very air. Snow falls in his presence and blankets the world in soft perfection. He kills quickening shoots in place and for a day or two, leaves stand in preserved crystalline perfection before they blacken and shrivel and break apart. It is his nature to do so, even when he comes early, before the people can truly prepare themselves, and stays long, when even the most careful preparations are for naught.
At the footsteps of General Winter is the Black One.
Ivan can freely hate the Black One, unlike his kind-cruel benefactor, who never gives him any less than he promised. He is able to feel rage and bitterness as he bites his tongue until it bleeds. And the black-clad man, with his perfectly groomed sable hair and his wonderfully pointed beard that makes him look so much like that long time enemy of Ivan's-the Mongols, the stinking horsemen who trampled across his lands and whipped his back raw- only smiles, his teeth flickering white. He gathers his coat around him, the massive coat that has a trailing hem that brings decay to whatever it touches. His boots dig deep into the earth, crushing young plants as he laughs and laughs.
The Black One is a regular visitor to his land, sometimes visiting poor harvest, sometimes visiting scorching droughts. His touch withers fruit, kills grass. He breathes out and cattle ribs show through stretched hide, chickens flutter and die. Sometimes, he reaches out and devours, his grasping pale hands seize eggs and golden grain and apples and sticky chunks of honeycomb. He shows no signs of enjoyment, worst of all, only an insatiable hunger. His wide mouth will gape, his thin lips will stretch to a breaking point, and he would devour the whole world if he could. And he will never be sated.
Ivan hates the slow and agonizing suffering the Black One brings. Every cycle, he watches his people die slowly, becoming skeletons before succumbing as their bodies betray them, devouring themselves in a wild, mad frenzy to survive. His sisters, his brothers, they too suffer, and helplessly, Russia watches Ukraine's sweet, sweet smile lose its light in her pinched face. A blighted shadow in golden sunlight, the Black One passes by him and smiles at him, before blowing a field of sunflowers into dry brittle husks that rattle in a scorching breeze. Russia stares blindly at the vanishing form, and he cannot cry, for the will to weep dries up within him.
The heavens cry enough for him in 1315, and those tears bring suffering in a wide and terrible wake across Europe. England grows wan and Prussia snarls like a winter-starved wolf while France attempts to take advantage of this time, only to be chased out by an enemy more implacable than mere mortal weapons. Russia sees the Black One tramping over rain soaked fields in his massive coat, kicking over pots of stored grain to ruin them in the incessant showers. Skeletons devour rotting corpses and one wonders why God does not simply drown them all and be done with it.
In 1601, they water the empty fields with blood in desperation. Blood spills onto the perpetually clean mantle and the dark cloth eagerly drinks it up, leaving not a trace. "Spare us!" scream the mothers, holding up their manikin children. "Save them!" these hollow-eyed wrecks shriek. He waves his hand and they shrivel in their mothers' arms. And yet they still bawl and mewl and try to latch onto a withered dug. The Black One walks on to curse more places. General Winter says nothing but he lingers long during those cold, cold years, and his winds bring no end to the dark and pale days. A shrunken, pale, hollow-eyed Ivan picks up a blood-soaked crown, a stinking robe, a sticky scepter, and his mouth waters greedily against his will at the hot coppery stench. He passes the regalia to his new Tsar, his new Emperor, as a ghostly, ghastly court prays that this will somehow please God.
When the Black One comes in 1921, in the wake of war-ravaged fields, Russia smiles in the way one smiles at old friends and old enemies, with courtesy. He holds his pipe in a shaking hand and he feels too small for his worn out coat and heavy coils of his scarf. Famine, in his handsome, beautifully fitted dark suit and massive, shining boots, does not smile back. His black coat flutters in an eddy of cold, bitter wind.
"Hello," Ivan says, with a little bow. And he bars the way, though he knows that he cannot hope to stand up to this enemy-like he had never been able to stand up to many enemies before-. True to form, he is knocked aside with one blow to the head that makes his ears ring. He smells blood that fades away for the stench of burnt fields and decaying things. Cries and wails, shrill and swiftly fading, echo in his ears. Dizzy and dazed, he starts to laugh, first softly then louder and louder until his entire body is wracked with giggles and sharp intakes of breaths as tears pour down his cheeks.
You have taken, always taken. And I have given you everything I have. Will it ever be enough?
He will always hate the color black.
-According to Wiki, droughts and famines came around with alarming regularity in Russia's history, with famines occurring roughly every 10-13 years and droughts occurring every 5-7 years, depending on the region.
-From 1315-1316, heavy spring rains ruined crops all across Europe, leading to wide-scale famine that did not completely end until 1322. During this time, France did attempt to invade Flanders but was soon bogged down in the lowlands of the Netherlands and was forced to retreat. It is suggested that this period helped originate the story of Hansel and Gretel, as many parents did in fact abandon their own children and cannibalism was documented by archivists of the time.
-Russia's worst famine was in 1601, which resulted in nearly two million dead and the violent establishment of the Romanov dynasty in 1613, part of a period called the 'Time of Troubles." Some historians and scientists believe that it was connected to the eruption of the volcano Huaynaputina in Peru, leading to a worldwide effects ranging from longer, colder winters to a ruined wine harvest in France, but Russia was hardest hit.
-Russia, already devastated by the effects of World War I and its recent revolution, was struck by famine in 1921, a consequence of the brutal tactics used within WWI that ruined the land and the violent civil war between the Red and White Armies which resulted in the forced requisitioning (and often, outright theft) of grain and other food.