(AN: This is my first attempt at a Hetalia fanfic. Russia may be kinda OOC, but this is how I imagine him in my head. By the way, "dacha" means country house in Russian, and Kuntsevo is where Stalin lived in the years before his death.)
As soon as Ivan Braginsky opened his eyes, he knew that something was wrong. Well, maybe wrong was the wrong word for the feeling. If what he suspected was true, then it was very right indeed.
He felt a strange hollow sensation in his chest and a giddy weightlessness through all his limbs. It was the feeling that came from not having a leader, which meant that Comrade Stalin was dead.
Ivan sprang off his mattress with a speed that was startling for the usually slow-moving country. He dressed hurriedly and left the room, stepping around the sleeping bodies of the people whose tiny apartment he shared. Even Russia himself had to live like his people, and the people were currently surviving in collectivized rat holes like this one.
Before the Revolution, Ivan had stayed in the palace with the Romanov family. He rolled in the sunflowers and enjoyed all the privileges that came with high nobility. After all that business with Mongols and invaders, he felt he deserved to have a grand old life.
Perhaps those times will come again… he thought as he walked down the icy road.
And I promise to do better.
If the death of Stalin meant the end of the Soviet Union, Ivan would not repeat his past mistakes. He would not have fits of random insanity. He would not ignore the people's hunger even as it gnawed at his own bones.
Ivan was so lost in wishful thinking that he didn't immediately realize what was wrong. But when he did, the strangeness hit him over the head like his favorite lead pipe. Where were the parades? The funeral procession? The radio broadcasts? The secretly joyous people forced into mourning out of some residual fear? Even if Ivan realized that Stalin was dead, it seemed that the rest of the world did not.
Ivan tried to think about the meaning of this strange development, but he had never been the sharpest tool in the shed. For the first time that morning, he felt lost without a leader, unsure of what to do next. Should he go to Stalin's dacha to personally confirm the leader's death, or at least alert the guards about it? Maybe he should just sit tight and do nothing until the people found out on their own.
Ivan's mind did not know what to do, but his body seemed to. He walked the 15 kilometers from Moscow to Kuntsevo in a blissful haze. By the time he arrived at the country house, it was mid-afternoon. Ivan stopped and stared at the imposing double-fence, then shrugged his shoulders and started to climb.
He cleared the fence with a minimum of trouble. He was a country after all, and physical barriers could not keep him off his own land. Ivan was not technically allowed inside the dacha, but he turned the guards' eyes away from him as he entered. They would not remember seeing a strange man on the grounds or letting him in. This manipulation was a trick most countries had mastered. They had to be able to twist the minds of their citizens, or else their true identities would have been discovered and taken advantage of long ago.
Ivan strode through the silent house, his boots making hollow clicks against the floorboards. He didn't stop until he was staring at the set of double doors that was the entrance to Stalin's bedroom. He was so close, he could somehow sense the man inside, and Stalin seemed to be very much dead. But Ivan just had to make sure…
As he moved to turn the doorknob, Ivan heard a shout behind him and found himself in the grip of two strong men. He didn't struggle, but reached for the guards' emotions. He found their minds to be a mixture of anger and… fear? No, more like panic. They were afraid that Ivan would see what was behind those doors.
"I was just going in to see Stalin," said Ivan to the guards. In their heads he planted the notion that he was some sort of important official in Russia, instead of the country itself.
"No, you can't do that!" said the younger of the guards, eyes shifting sideways to his partner's face. The other nodded confidently and spoke up as well.
"Comrade Stalin is sleeping."
And then Ivan knew. These guards weren't idiots or murderers or terrified mice, but some strange creatures that combined all three.
Ivan casually pushed the guards aside and wrenched open both doors at once. It took his eyes a second to adjust to the dim light and drawn shades, but the sight before him told him all he needed to know. The man he had loved and feared and hated was sprawled on the floor in a puddle of his own blood and urine.
Ding-dong, the tyrant's dead… thought Ivan. And then, rather hysterically, he began to laugh.
(AN: This fanfic is based on historical events. Josef Stalin died of a stroke in his bedroom, and might have been saved if his guards had called for a doctor earlier. Instead, they kept everyone out of Stalin's room for most of the day, claiming that he did not want to be disturbed.)