Berwald did not want to do this, to go to Ivan's house and talk with him but, sadly, it had become necessary.
Nobody had seen Ivan for a number of weeks and, Ivan being the Russian representative, it had become difficult to actually get anything done (more so than usual) during the world conferences with him absent.
Berwald sighed and gripped the steering wheel tighter, navigating through the dark and snow-covered back road that lead through the woods to what was hopefully Ivan's current location. He began to go over the current situation in his head.
The other nations had grown concerned about Ivan long before his sudden hiatus. Ivan, who was usually quite upbeat (and somewhat intimidating to certain others) had started to become more and more distant and, dare he say it, melancholic.
The sudden aloofness had then turned into him avoiding interaction and, as of a month ago, cutting off all contact with the other nations entirely.
Berwald shook his head slightly at this thought. The last time Ivan had done something like this was just before the official collapse of the USSR.
However, nothing of that caliber was occuring at the moment, which just made Ivan's behaviour all the more odd.
Berwald knew that Natalya, Katyusha and some of Russia's higher ups had made multiple attempts to contact him, but have had no luck, turning an already concerning situation to one of urgency.
"If Natalya and I cannot find him, who can?!" Katyusha had been wailing to Eduard, just a mere few hours earlier before Berwald had left.
Eduard's response was to make a suggestion. The suggestion being that the Eastern European and Nordic nations form their own search party and go looking for Ivan themselves.
This was the reason Berwald was now currently driving along a dark and desolate back road deep within a dense forest at night in the middle of nowhere.
He had been told by Tolys that Ivan owned a property of some sort in this area and that he was known to use it as a retreat for when things got stressful, but had not been there since the collapse of the USSR.
The only trouble was that the property was difficult to access and Tolys, who was the only one who remembered where it was located, had broken his leg two weeks previously and could not go there himself.
And thus, Berwald was given this task, guided by Tolys's voice on the phone.
"Can you see any small roads on your left?" Tolys asked, Berwald's phone crackling on loudspeaker as he did.
"Ja, slightly ahead. 'Round 50 metres" Berwald replied.
"Good. Turn left and go straight down there. It should be around three kilometres down there until you get to the house." Came Tolys's response.
Berwald complied and steered his car carefully down the path.
Somehow, the forest was even more dense here, leaving the surroundings near pitch black, barring the car's headlights lighting up the road some couple of metres in front of the car.
The whole scenario, coupled with the scenery, made Berwald slightly nervous, though one could not tell due to him having his usual stoic expression.
He would not admit it out loud, but he had sorely wished that he could have brought Tolys along with him.
Berwald did not know Ivan very well outside of meetings, wars and hearsay and, if there was a chance Ivan was here, there was a real possiblity of him reacting violently to his presence due to those factors.
At least with Tolys here there would be somebody that Ivan was more familiar with.
Alas, it was not possible. And thus, Berwald had to press on alone.
Authors note: Gah! Sorry about the lines here. For some reason, this site keeps eating my line breaks and without them the whole fic looks like a wall of text!
Name key.
Berwald: Sweden.
Ivan: Russia.
Tolys: Lithuania.
Eduard: Estonia.
Katyusha: Ukraine.
Natalya: Belarus.