From the short nub of his poorly sharpened pencil, the fine details of Lithuania's distressed face appeared on the scrap of coarse wrapping paper Latvia had chosen as his canvas.
Dark, creased eyebrows, eyes sleepless and terrified, hair wild, unkempt...
He'd tried to write a poem earlier that week, but found that the words simply failed, collapsing like an old lung against the storm of Lithuania's fury. So he adopted a new medium and tried to capture that raw, brutal terror in smudged graphite - an ill grey, distorted negative.
But now his fingers were growing too frigid and numb to grasp the pencil properly and the bridge of Lithuania's nose came out wobbled.
He leaned back against the frozen sod walls of the shack and resolved to finish sketching it later, although he never would. Today was the first day in weeks that his labour crew had been allowed respite. The weather was fearful enough to strip the bark off the trees - that is, if trees grew there. Certainly fearful enough for the Russian guards to choose huddling by the stove in their warm brick headquarters over driving a unit of foreign men down to their brittle, exhausted bones.
They'd only been working together for a month and a half, if one counted the strenuous journey it took to reach the Arctic Circle in the first place, but already half of the men Latvia could recall were dead. Picked off by the cold, or the labour, or the malnutrition, or the shotguns. The worker who laid sleeping beside him just last night never woke up, and with neither the strength nor the ability to dig a hole in the tundra soil, he had been left there, glassy eyes staring up at Latvia because he hadn't been able to shut them.
So he closed his own eyes and envisioned a fresh, sharp stick of charcoal in his hand, the strokes bold and deliberate and not ill grey.
All he could remember was being dragged out of his cot in the early, forbidden hours of the morning, a rushed explanation, and the orange stripes of streetlights streaking across the window of the car. He barely had the time to fetch his jacket, and less time still to put it on, so he clutched it to his chest in the passenger seat instead.
He ended up in the train station.
Russia was signing papers for him, bustling him to the kiosk and then to the platform; "you're going to work" is the only explanation he is given. Later they tell him he was lucky even to have been given that. The station was crowded with KGB officers and a sizeable collection of weary Moscow residents. Residents clutching their visas and sitting on hastily-packed suitcases.
It was November.
And when the train arrived, there were no passenger cars. Only stalls for cattle. Lithuania also arrived at about that time, looking as if he had run the whole way there, pushing his way through the crowd and positively screeching Latvia's name.
The train doors were being opened, people funnelled in.
Of course, Russia immediately caught notice of his subordinate quite literally fighting his way across the platform, because by now he'd also caught the attention of the KGB. And he was close enough that Latvia could smell the laundry soap on his shirtfront. Not even 2 metres away, pleading - no, commanding - in thick, desperate Russian: "Unhand me! Raivis! Let me speak to him!"
There was a mad scramble, and then he was on his knees, still violently wrenching his arms away from the officers. Latvia's sketch ended there - Lithuania straining with everything left in him, just so he might reach out and touch Latvia's hand. Lithuania, normally so mild, so composed, unraveling before him like a worn seam.
The last stroke of his imaginary pencil had been made, but his mind wasn't finished remembering.
Remembering how Russia had made the short, sharp command and the guards loosened their hold just enough. Just enough for Lithuania to grasp Latvia's face in his chilled, trembling hands.
The words were spoken in a fierce whisper, and in English (the language of capitalist pigs).
"Never forget who you are. You are Raivis Galante, son of Livonia. You are the people of Latvia, a free Republic of the Baltic nations. Gods kalpot Latvijai!" There was no time to say anymore, because Latvia was being shuffled into the train car. There was no time to say goodbye, no time to cry or embrace or even give his thanks.
The car door slammed shut. He heard the lock slide into place.
The local tailor lifted Latvia up ("My wife! Do you see my wife?") and he had the chance to peer through the small slat of a window as the train began to crawl away. How ironic that his last glance of freedom was to be Russia, smiling sadly with one hand raised in farewell. And Lithuania, pinned to the floor of the station, hands behind his head and legs kicked apart as if he were a common criminal. The fight had fled him, and now he obliged to the officers, silently - a wilted plant being crushed in the fists of a rotund child.
The ill grey panelling of the station walls, fast, faster, and then the ill grey of autumn dawn.
The ill grey of Death.
A/N:
Gods Kalpot Latvijai!: An honour to serve Latvia! - one of Latvia's national mottos