To brush your fingers over the surface of them was to see them as such opposites. Darkness and light, sun and rain, deafening noise and crushing silence, good, and bad. Red and blue.
To whom each role belonged depended on whom you asked.
There was one, unflinching in her resolve, unshakable in her ideology, powerful, strong, stubborn and terrifyingly beautiful.
But which one was it?
To hold them and their relationship in your hand was to hold something ever turning, impossible to see only from one side the more you understood it. It was a shifting, changing thing, so multifaceted it was more like a kaleidoscope than a picture. You would strain your eyes, trying to hold a single piece of it in your vision long enough to make sense of it, but it would never remain; just before you were sure you had grasped the image, it would flicker, shift, fall away and be replaced with something else, or turn to some new angle you had never before considered. To stare too long was to be consumed.
They had been consumed already.
Eaten up by the layers, cut away by the edges, wrung dry by the weight.
Their relationship was the blaze of a hot summer sun baking down on the Arizona plain, hardening the earth until it cracked and split like an open sore, draining energy from everything beneath it and making all those beneath its fearsome glare take shelter.
And they were dying.
Only they didn't realize it. It seemed to them they were invincible to the heat of the sun; already having succumb to delirium from the heat, they staggered around waving weapons and insults, shouting at invisible men and as like to hit themselves as each other with their daggers.
It had begun as a soft spring morning. Gentle, quiet, misty. It had begun with America's youth and Russia's curiosity. It had opened with quiet giggling and shared smiles and a great big dismissal of Europe's rejection. Lost in the beauty of the morning and the growing warmth, they never saw the sudden turn ahead.
It was crippling.
Knocking them both onto their knees, gasping for breath, frantically piecing together the knowledge that the other had dealt the blow. They never saw the treachery from inside, until it was plastered on newspaper titles and across television screens. Russia bore hers in silence, with clenched teeth and nails digging into her palms, because no one spoke of the betrayals of Soviet politicians. At least, not when those betrayals were against the Soviet people themselves. America bore hers publically, listening to everyone's analysis of it with open beer cans on the back porch at twelve, wondering why she hadn't seen it coming.
But they bore up. And this—to dig your fingers into the tendons and muscle and sinew of them, was to understand they were not at all separate. They were merely two sides of the same coin, cast down centuries apart, but no more different than anything else in this world.
The appearance of difference came from the different shades of them, the masks they wore to the world. And through this, the symbiotic relationship which both drove and destroyed them. Even as their throats burned and their minds grew foggy, they clambered for more.
Pharmekon.
They strove towards the same ideal—a utopia for their people. To each, they even called out to it with the same voice, with the same idealistic drive! Blindness, they blinded themselves, refusing anymore to see the similarities between them. They covered themselves in thick layering and secrets, masters of smoke and mirrors, until they so disguised their cores the similarities seemed to fade, and they felt safe.
I'm not like her. She will lead her people down a road to destruction. She doesn't care about those that get in her way; she only wants to raise herself up. She's bull-headed. She's impulsive. She's naïve. But I—I've learned from my experience. I will save my people and I will protect the ones I love from her ambition.
Grasping the sink, looking into the mirror, repeating the words. But their arms grow shaky and their voices grow weak and they question the meaning of the words. What qualifies destruction? Can you quantify ambition, and is it truly bad? What's "I" and is it really me? They start to ask questions rather than make statements and voices crack, followed by mirrors, and bloodied hands scramble for tissues.
It drives a woman mad.
Mad, mad, mad. Mad like the pigs, mad like the dogs. Mad like the Dems, mad like the Reds. Screaming yourself hoarse doesn't make her stop, she's still going, her lips still moving, the hateful sound of her voice still filling your ears until you cover them and howl. If you hit her again, it'll be quiet in the room. If you hit her again, it'll be quiet it in your head. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again.
Why isn't it quiet? One more time.
Split knuckles are a prize, they think. A badge, a medal, a gold star. To say "Look how strong I am. Look how well I fight for my country. See! I am not afraid. I will never be afraid."
"I am not afraid!" she shouts. "I am not afraid of you! I am not afraid of anything!"
But she won't look in the mirror anymore. They are little girls. Soft, tender little girls and they cry out in agony, because they are so alone.
"No one said it would be like this," they gasp in choked whispers, clutching at their shins in the night, knees rammed up against their chests. "No one said—no one warned me. Why? Why?"
Their allies begin to fall away, because the drug isn't to them like it is to the superpowers. They only get the secondhand smoke, where Russia and America breathe deep, sucking the poison into their lungs and stabbing each other with cocky grins.
"See, it doesn't affect me. Have another drag. See if you can take as many as I can." Choking, gasping, wheezing behind an elbow. "See how easy I breathe? Bet you can't take another."
They stumble into their graves, bellowing, "Look how much dirt I have covering me! I have more than you! I dare you to put another shovelful on!"
They were beautiful girls.
They were clever and kind and determined. They were quick learners and hard workers and good people. Their faces were dewy and awed, watching the beauty of the world. And in turn, the world destroyed them.
Or did they destroy each other? Did the world let them destroy each other? Was there anyone to blame but themselves? Was it fate, that pitted them against each other? Was it a cosmic entity that had woven them together and then ripped them apart and used them to beach each other? They wondered.
The game began to run faster, the clock began to tick and dominos to fall. They cast down their final hands and victory was in her grasp. Her palms sweaty, her tongue pinched between her teeth, her eyes manic, America lunged for the prize she had hungered for for so long.
At last, Russia's knees buckled, Atlas' feet on her shoulders driving her into the dirt when she could no longer stand. There was a second of triumph and America's heart turned to horror. It was her voice that screamed when the dust clouded up around Russia's body.
If Russia was dead, was she dead too? Who was she, if not the opposition to the USSR? What use was a coin with only one face? If she could not define herself by the twin superpower—the good, the cowboy, the lone ranger, the hero—then how? It was as though, by falling, Russia had taken America too—she had reached inside and torn out something vital, to spite America for winning.
"If I will lose, then so will you."
Grabbing her ankles, dragging her beneath the surface of the icy waters, while America kicked and screamed and swore, but nothing could dislodge the vice around her legs.
How do you take something that is a part of someone? To commit such an act of violation, to slip your hand beneath their ribcage and wriggle free what you want, you have to be chest-to-chest with them. Sharing their breath, hearing them swallow, smelling their sweat. It's impossible to take without being so close.
America was cheated. She was cheated and she would destroy the world in her fury, but in the end, she could only destroy herself. In a mushroom cloud, in a burst of fire, in a rain of bullets; she had come into this world like a shooting star and she would leave it like a dying one, taking out everything around her as she went and leaving a deadly emptiness where she had been.
Or so it was expected.
What is a soldier who has no enemies left to kill? What does he do when the war is won, the game over, the armistice signed? What does he do, when he has come to know nothing but the fight? He might become a baker, or a tailor. He might become a businessman, or a bum. To everything America reached out and her fingers closed on smoke.
She was so young, a spirited mare driven to insanity by her jockey. Taught to think against the Soviets, taught to fight against the Soviets, taught to live and breathe democracy and take up every arm against the possibility of communist expansion. And when that was all over, and they had trained the perfect Soviet-fighting machine…how were they to reprogram her? They didn't. They left her to do it herself and how could she?
She couldn't find the buttons, couldn't read the programs, couldn't begin to fathom her own inner workings. How does a manmade device fix itself?
But there was someone who did know her. Who understood her better than anyone could, even her own family. Who understood the paranoia, the fear, the self-doubt, the inexplicable desire to weep looking up at the moon in the late night hours when the paperwork was finally done for the day and the silence of the house was suddenly overwhelming.
Amelia and Anya put each other back together with hesitant touches and shaking hands, in silence. Anya understood before Amelia, what was needed to make things right in them again. She made herself available, and coaxed Amelia to the conclusion she had to reach.
Never words. They were an unwelcome and unnecessary intrusion into their quiet work. It took time. It calloused their fingers with toughened, pliable skin. To move with such caution, to treat each other like fragile things, was something they had never learned. But they did now. They could learn, they could adapt; had they not proved themselves to be among the best?
They had never been torn apart, they realized. Only become toxic to each other, like cells that reject one another with a small hiccup in the coding of DNA. Since that misty morning, they had been linked together. They had never lost one another, only lost sight.
No one knew when the fixing would be done. Perhaps it already was and there was no need to lie on Amelia's back porch in the tepid summer heat, tracing constellations with their fingertips and silently mouthing the names. Perhaps everything was healed and done, so there was no need to huddle together walking along the Volga River, watching the snow catch in blonde eyelashes. It was entirely possible things were fully mended and then, it was hardly required to corner her after a meeting, hands brushing, to check on her.
But if she was happy to keep silent on that account, there would be no protests.