Pairing: No romantic pairing.
Summary: Prussia contemplates dissolution. Poland listens and offers his own brand of harsh advice.
Disclaimer: I don't own Hetalia or any related ideas. This is all just for fun and entertainment here.
There was nothing to like about Moscow. It was cold here. It would be warming up in countries further south but not here. Not in the wasteland known as the Soviet Union. It was cold and desolate and lonely and Prussia hated every godforsaken minute he spent here. He scowled, turning to gaze across the vast, snowy property Russia's home was set on.
It wasn't a direct requirement that he reside here in this empty manor that vodka loving bastard called a home. No Ally had required it. No law really forced him. But still, Russia had let his preference be known. He wanted the Nations he controlled - even the satellite states of the USSR - here with him. He said they were a family, and he wanted his family to be together. How sick.
It was a wonder to him how anyone could care for that monster. But there was Ukraine, fretful in her care for him, mothering in her actions towards him. He supposed he understood - even in the madness that had possessed Germany in years past he'd cared for his brother. But Ukraine cared for Russia with a stupid, blind dedication.
Belarus was all the most stupid. She blindly followed her brother's orders. She attended to him with fiendish devotion that shook even the terrifying monster's core. How she could find it in her cold heart to love him, Prussia would never understand. She was cold and calculating, but he did not think she was the same sort of monster that Russia was. It seemed impossible that she and her sister saw something that the rest of them did not.
The Baltic Trio, Prussia thought, had the right idea. They avoided him, feared him, obeyed him. Of course, they were cowards in his eyes, shaking and stammering as Latvia did, or scrambling to cater to his every whim as Lithuania did, or even choosing avoidance and veiled sarcasm as Estonia did. Prussia was no coward.
To be fair, he played the part of avoidance better than Estonia did. He stayed away from Russia and from every other Nation in that twisted version of a happy family. He'd stand up to him of course, but Russia, well he was the largest Nation in the world and Prussia … well he was little more than a state of his brother's own Nation now. He told himself he avoided Russia's mad, wrathful watch not because he was frightened, but because he had better things to do. He didn't run, he simply found the notion of spending time with him unappealing.
Everyone under Russia's control had found their own way of coping with the large Nations wrath. Some simply took it. Some avoided it. Some did what they could to distract him. And then there was Poland. Poland seemed to invite the large Nation's wrath. Poland never once did as he was told. His people were as rebellious and hard to control as he was - he remembered that from his brother's struggles to maintain control in Poland's country. He taunted Russia. He protected other, smaller Nations. For all he'd been beaten down for his insubordinate ways, he never once cowered.
"What are you moping about?"
Prussia jumped at the sound of the voice behind him and turned sharply to see Poland standing there in the doorway as if summoned by the thought of him. He narrowed his eyes and regarded Poland as if he had interrupted something very important.
"I'm not moping." He retorted stubbornly.
"Right." Poland snorted in obvious disbelief. "Well, if you weren't moping then what were you doing? Admiring the tundra?" He asked exaggeratedly. He held his distaste for Russia's home quite out in the open.
Prussia bit his tongue. He didn't have a good retort. For all that Poland played the part of the idiot well enough, he was quick witted when he wanted to be. It was easy to forget a sharp, keen intellect resided behind those dull green eyes. "So what if I was?" He asked, shrugging. "I'm allowed."
"Why?" Poland asked. "Because you're under the control of the most hated Nation around?" He asked.
To be fair, Prussia was certain that there were several Nations that could compete for the spot - he'd be happy to give Poland a nomination right there with Russia - but for argument's sake, he just gave a bark of a laugh. "You're so flippant about it."
"This isn't new." Feliks countered.
They stood there in silence. It wasn't new. Russia had been conquering other Nations - or as he liked to call it, 'taking them under his wing' for a long time now. Neither of them were stranger to that. They'd both done the quest for expansion in the past. They all had. No Nation was innocent of that. Nobody claimed to be. But some how, Russia was just crueler about it all.
"I've been dissolved." Prussia said finally, breaking the silence.
"And?" Poland sounded unimpressed.
The albino turned to regard him with an astonished gaze. How could he be so lax about such a statement? He had been dissolved! Prussia was no more. Of course, he considered himself as immortal as the rest but ..
"And what? I've been dissolved!" He repeated. "I … I'm not a Nation anymore." He insisted. "They've … they've just pulled me apart like I'm nothing."
Poland continued to look unimpressed. "Wow, that must be terrible." He deadpanned. "To have your lands taken away from you and to be wiped off the map as if you don't exist. I can only imagine."
Oh.
Prussia frowned. Of course Poland would be unimpressed. It wasn't as if he hadn't faced the very same thing, and more than once at that. He was taken back to the eighteenth century, to a terrified Lithuania and a grim faced Poland as their Commonwealth was taken away. There he'd been with a stony faced Austria and a gleeful Russia. It had been for the good of them all, he'd told himself at the time. It wasn't as if Poland and Lithuania were innocent. They'd been fearsome warriors in their time and gigantic pains in his ass. Besides, Old Fritz himself had told him this would restore the balance of power in Eastern Europe. That had to count for something, right?
It had counted for something … but that didn't help Poland very much, who not two hundred years later had faced near extinction again, this time at the hands of Prussia's own brother Germany and once more at the hands of Russia. He sighed softly. "I didn't mean …" He began.
"Yes you did." Poland interrupted. "You feel sorry for yourself, and you want others to feel sorry for you too." He said, his voice colder than his usual drawl was.
"I do not!" Prussia protested, but he knew the Pole was right. He did feel sorry for himself. But how could he not? He'd been dissolved, damnit! He didn't want to die.
"I don't pity you." Poland said then. It hadn't been asked of him, but he deemed it necessary to say anyway.
"I could die."
"I could have died too." He turned to regard Prussia with those deceivingly dull eyes. "You won't die."
"How do you know?" Prussia asked, his tone softer, almost fearful.
"I don't." Poland admitted. That wasn't comforting.
"That's all you have to say?" Prussia asked, frowning.
"Nobody held my hand, Prussia." Poland said calmly. "Nobody patted my back and told me it was okay. You made sure of that." He held no pity for any of the Nations who had knocked him down. Germany was in rough shape and Poland damn well believed he deserved it. Austria was nothing but a shadow of the proud empire he'd once been. It had put a smile on the Pole's face to see how poorly off the aristocrat was at the end of the first world war. Prussia was now being dissolved. Russia's day would come - that he believed.
"I don't want to die." Prussia said, somehow still clinging to the small shred of comfort that talking to Poland offered him. He didn't know what would happen to him when he disappeared like the ancients before him.
"So don't." Poland shrugged, turning back to the doorway he'd entered in through.
"It's not that easy." Prussia protested.
"I did it." Poland quipped and with that he was gone.
He had done it, that was true. And Poland hadn't had the benefit of having a brother to share in Nationhood with. Prussia sighed as he watched the doorway long after the blond had vanished. He was no Phoenix, he told himself, not like Poland, but either way, he was going to survive. He would make sure of it.
A/N: You all must think I'm nuts for taking ages to update and then posting three times in a single day. To be fair all three things I posted today were half written or outlined on my laptop for ages. Also, I needed a break from studying and rather than updating the stories I already need to update I wrote this little piece because I wanted to. It's not 100% accurate in the historical sense. Kind of like the actual series. I hope you enjoyed!
As always, concrit is always appreciated. Please review! Thank you so much, guys.