"I didn't know."

Please come back.

"I'm sorry."

Please come back.

"I didn't mean to hurt you."

They won't come back.

"When you tease people, hurt them, it scars their minds more than their bodies. It is much more painful to have those scars on the mind, because they never seem to fully close. Just the slightest prodding and they tear back open even wider than before. It torments them even in their subconscious and runs deeper than the bones, than a sword through the heart. Do you understand any of this Ivan?"

Not then, not at that time. He didn't know what those words meant. Now he did, now he wanted to show he did understand, but no one could see. No one would see. No one wanted to see.

The snowy landscape was filled with the bodies of soldiers and civilians sleeping in the endless white of death, forever uncaring of the world and its affairs. Families left behind who would always remember, even if the dead didn't bother to. And He remembered, even as he stared on into the hatred filled green eyes of his enemy. Nothing to stop the invaders, nothing to protect him through their vengeful invasion, what use was this metal pipe now when it was all he had between certain defeat and a miraculous victory. This had been a long time coming, and finally the wait was over.

Puffs of heated air billowed around his face as he panted, unused to the everlasting chill of the Arctic Circle. To think, setting fire upon Moscow and St. Petersburg had been nothing, chasing after the vile Demon of the East all the way to Murmansk. Here was where it ended. Toris stood behind his friend, unsure of what to look at. He couldn't bear to watch his enemy, the way the violet eyes burned into his soul. Still, to look at the city was just as harmful, the flames licking the brilliant buildings; he could even see the golden domes of the church he had loved so much during that time. The time he didn't want to remember, because while it justified what was happening, it also brought too many good memories. Memories that hurt now more than the darker memories ever could, the AK rifle model in his hands shaking lightly in his grip as they rushed and ebbed around him like a tide.

Poland leveled his breathing, the cold air burning his lung, exhilarating the predator within him. The chase was over, but the fight was just beginning. He could not imagine a better finale; wind howling in protest as snow and ash was hurled in their faces, a fire raging behind the Devil himself, and the bodies of men and women and children and elderly who lay in the ice with their blood staining the white purity of heaven. And it caused his heart to race, his mind so far behind compared to his body. He didn't even notice how his Ishapore 2A1, once raised as a gun, suddenly became a sword with its bayonet gleaming in the demonic light. His emerald irises soaked up the Hellfire as a feral smile split his face.

"So long now, so long you have run away, so long you have cowered up here in your frozen castle. How does it feel to watch as your world collapses around you in a plume of smoke and ash?" he barked, his voice losing the rhythm the world had grown accustomed to. He sounded dangerous, he felt dangerous. It was the best feeling he had in his life.

Ivan looked surprised at the remark, seeing that Poland obviously wanted an answer. He glanced up to the monotonic, overcast sky and the fluffy bits of thin ice that looked so childishly innocent as they fluttered to the ground, but he knew the song of deception they whispered. He held his hand out to touch them to the brown leather. As they landed gently on his outstretched fingers, they melted from the heat of his fever, but some white flakes remained. He blinked in surprise, the ashes blending in so carefully that he didn't even know the difference. His lips twitched into a meager smile, "It feels like winter, Poland. The winter is so beautiful, but deadly and malicious, never knowing if you'll make it through to the end. Yes, just like winter: it'll always arrive sooner or later, bringing destruction and death as a white cape that smothers all underneath."

"How poetic Russia," Feliks sneered, "You, like, never did age well with the times."

"I shall take that as a compliment." His hand gripped tighter around the neck of metal in his hands. He may not be as strong as he was when younger days seemed to inch by, every second being milked to the fullest, but he was not going to beg for mercy. He had always been too proud for that. He could recall the heart-filled cries from over the centuries building a cocoon around his mind.

"Follow the Motherland into war!"

"Hear her call, come, and raise your voices with her!"

"Free the Motherland!"

"Save the Motherland!"

"She shall stand, now, and forever. Nothing shall kill the Motherland. She shall stand, erect and powerful, never faltering, never wavering. She will love and protect her children until the end of the world. God Bless the Motherland, and keep her safe."

If only they knew. He lifted his pipe, barring his chest from any attack.

'For my children of the many centuries. For their long suffering and sacrifices. For their blood they spilt time and time again. Now is the time that I save you,' he thought hardening his resolve. He held out his pipe with a quick spin of his wrist, the pipe gripped as a saber, "If I fall, I shall never die."

"We'll see about that," Feliks sneered. Toris was caught off guard as his friend dashed forward, aiming for the taller country's chest. The pipe swung up at the last second, throwing the gun off balance. Ivan sidestepped and pushed the small blonde pass him, almost into the snow. Poland whirled around and came back with another attack, this time making Russia back away from the ferocity of the blows. Lithuania could see that he was weak, too weak to put up much of a resistance. The pipe was slow in his hands, barely blocking the vicious blows Feliks rained upon him. They were nothing but silhouettes against the raging fire that consumed the city.

Burned flesh, charred bodies not yet dead, but no longer living reaching out. Their mouths open, as they sobbed no tears left in their dried bodies. A corpse of a baby, left without a chance for life, shriveled on the ground of a burning building.

He took a step back, why was he seeing these people, they were not his children, but were Russia's. His stomach churned from the smell of cooking meat filled his nostrils, smoke and ash coating his mouth, tar flowing thickly through his blood. Whatever was happening, he knew not what brought it on. It seemed to affect Poland as well, because he suddenly halted in his attack and began coughing, turning deathly pale in the orange light. Ivan took his chance and swung, impacting his opponent in the left side of his jaw. The blonde fell into the snow with a sickening thud, blood seeping between his parted lips and into the snow.

Lithuania gasped and took an unsteady step closer, not sure whether to be worried for Feliks or Ivan. Russia turned to face him and he gasped at the radical change. His eyes glowed unnaturally in the light of the flames, hard and frozen, shielding from pain and loneliness. He stepped towards the brunet, his near white hair a bright orange, "Is this what you wanted Lithuania? To erase the past for good?"

"Y-yes," he asserted, though his mind was not with him. 'No!' his thoughts screamed, 'You were my good friend before that day. You never abused me or raised your voice. You were careful and cautious with your underlings and children. Why has it come to this? Why have we been brought to this?'

"BRING US THE CZAR! THIS NATION HAS GONE MAD!"

"FREEDOM AND HIGHER WAGES!"

"THINK OF OUR SUFFRAGE!"

The peasants lined the way to the palace; Ivan gazed dejectedly out the window at the citizens. The Czar was out having tea, Toris came and informed him; always so helpful, what would Russia do without the smaller country? Still, the insults were hurled, panic began to rise inside his gut. Had he worked so hard just for this? Made his people strong and a force to be reckoned with just so they could rip him down and destroy the world he had made for them. His children . . . so ungrateful and violent, their words hurt more than any sword or rifle could.

"Why does it always end up like this . . .? I finally made this nation stronger and more prestigious than others by myself. I worked so hard . . . why is it nothing goes right . . .? Why do they always end up hating me?" The words strangled him, his throat, his heart; he was suffocating from the inside. Lithuania stayed silent, not sure where to go from that statement. Tears rolled down Russia's round cheeks, the pain mangling him, how was he to live through this. "Everyone says it's my fault. MY fault. I've endured it for centuries . . . Why can't everyone just get along nicely with each other . . .?"

What happened next, he didn't know. The seconds afterwards, he came up with a solution to it all, a fix for all the hate. Hate stemmed from these people who shouted insults to him, threatened to destroy him. If you know you'll be killed, kill them first.

He threw open the window with a shaky smile, "Lithuania?"

"I-Ivan!"

"We don't want children . . ." his voice changed from moderately deep to that of a small child, a rifle resting in his grasp, "who can't play nice . . . right?"

"I'm tired Lithuania," Ivan's voice cut his memory off, "I'm tired of all the fighting, all the struggles. I only wish for my people to be safe. I cannot give in, not you or anyone else."

A movement in the snow caught Toris' eye for just a moment before he recognized the blonde hair, the smoldering green eyes, blood dribbling down their chin. He opened his mouth, to respond to Russia, to warn him? Who would know, for surely even he did not know himself. The sad, violet eyes widened in surprise, pain, and shock. What would have been a flesh wound had caused more internal trauma than his body could handle. He was weak with fever, not being able to heal from the pain coiling through his body. Toris watched in fear, shock, what would happen? Surely Ivan would simply beat them senseless with his pipe, that demon look in his eyes. Would Lithuania fall back under Russia, after all the years of freedom, captured once more, just like that? The sand colored hair slowly darkened, blood trickling thickly down his temple, black in shadow of the fire. He collapsed to the ground.

Ivan didn't know what to make of this, the snow was no longer cold, but warm like a blanket. Maybe it was ash, or perhaps the fire was getting to him. The world was a beautiful white and he closed his eyes. The snow became clouds and he was flying, the sun was warm on his back No, it was a little more intimate. Like the warmth of a soft embrace after being in a blizzard. He had felt it many times as a small child after playing outside with Natalya all day in the snow. His big sister Yekaterina would wipe the snow off his garments, change him into his sleep clothes, and hug him tight with a kiss on his cold nose. He felt that warmth snuggled into bed with his sisters on either side of him on the coldest nights. It was warmth that happiness planted in the heart that could thaw even the coldest blizzards.

He smiled gently as he saw his sisters in a field below him, waiting in a field of sunflowers. The amethyst eyes fluttered close, snow and ash resting on his dark eyelashes. He no longer felt the cold.

A/N: Tell me what you think . . .