"Tony, I'm home," Alfred sighed as he pushed the heavy oaken door of his rather luxurious West Virginian home open. He had been holed up in that stuffy meeting room with the other nations, discussing the current situation.

The current situation... The blonde sighed again, rubbing at the bridge of his nose where Texas sat. The state rarely bothered him, but today... Today they seemed particularly irritated at him. He didn't want to deal with it. Right now, there were more important things for him to mull over...

He left Texas on the kitchen table while he set about fixing himself a pot of coffee. It was times like these when he really missed Toris' company. The Lithuanian was not only very useful, but he would have also been another nation to talk to...

At least, the old Lithuania would have been. The current Lithuania had spent the entirety of the five-hour meeting glaring at him through frigid green eyes. Toris had also been sitting in Ivan's seat. Filling in for the larger nation, because he couldn't make it.

And they all knew why. Because it was Alfred's fault.

But not right now. No, right now nothing was the nation's fault. He decided it wasn't, so it wasn't. That was the way it worked. Especially for this hero.

The coffee was finished. He poured some into an extra-large mug, emblazoned with his flag and images of his countryside and lumbered into the living room. He sank into an old, leathered couch and spent a few minutes ferreting around in the cushions for the television remote. Finding it, he clicked on the television.

"The Year is Twenty-Fifteen," A newscaster who looked very much like Lois Lane, only with larger breasts and shoved into a size-zero red pantsuit when she was obviously a size eight, announced. Okay, maybe not quite so much like Lois Lane. "And this is shaping up to be the war to end all wars."

"You say that about every war," Alfred mumbled to the glowing box. But it was true. Every major war was 'the war to end all wars'. Some had even said that about his fist fight with Iraq. This, this he supposed, was simply because they didn't want to say what this truly was.

"...Rioters out side the White House have become rather boisterous as of late, protesting what has unnoficially become known as the third world war."

Correction. Apparently some did. World War Three.

Oh, and, He had started it. No, not Alfred. Heroes never did anything bad, like teasing Arthur about his faeries, or starting wars. No, It was all Ivan's fault. That communist (Well, former...) bastard. All his fault. Not Alfred's.

The rockets whizzed through the air, screeching their high-pitched whine of a battle cry. Their fearsome roar as they crashed was nothing compared to the pain, and Ivan knew pain. Winter was pain. Starvation was pain. Murder was pain.

But this, this was an entirely new level of pain. Agony. Pure, unadulterated agony. And it was all their fault.

He had thought to oppose them. Alfred, Arthur, Kiku, and even Ludwig weren't having any of that. His opposition was futile. Even Wang Yao couldn't help him now, and he needed that help. Desperately. It was what he lusted for, what he yearned for. He'd cease to exist without it.

At this moment, to achieve aide, Ivan would even williingly marry General Winter and adopt Alfred as a favoured son. He was desperate.

And he was dying.

No one was going to help. After all, it was what they wanted, wasn't it? Even though he was no longer the Soviet Union, because he had changed, because they hadn't liked his union. Even though he no longer upheld the ideals of communism, because they hadn't liked that, either, and had begun to test out the forms that Alfred and others used. His people knew both his beautiful tongue, and the strange, thieving one that had been shared between Alfred, Arthur, and the rest of the nations. Wasn't that enough?

No. Of course not. He was Ivan. The cold, dreaded,unforgiving and hated lands of Russia. The largest nation in the world. The one with arbitrary ideas and childish whims. He was dangerous. He needed to be brought down.

And so, here he found himself. Stranded in his own country during World War Three, against the superpowers of the world.

Toris, and his sisters, Belarus and Ukraine, had done their best to help him during the first few years of the war.

The first year had barely come full circle when Ukraine ran back to her house, "Sorry, big brother!" She had gasped, blood dripping from the corners of her mouth. Over half her lands had been irrevocably destroyed by the same atrocious bombs that Alfred had once casually tossed at Kiku.

It hadn't been a pretty sight to behold. More than half her population had been decimated, and she bore physical reminders of their loss. And Ivan knew that he himself was completely at fault. If he existed after this, he'd have to give her some of himself. It wouldn't be enough, but it would be something. He would feel the guilt for years to come.

Famine and disease had infected his country. It was a gnawing ache at the core of him, tearing him apart, while the bombs with their undiluted hatred tore away at another.

In the third year Belarus had been killed. Alfred's people were currently stationed there. Their heavy tanks tearing apart the land that had once been her, their clunky, military boots soiling the pure snow that had once covered her fields.

While she had still existed, Belarus had put up a valiant fight. Taking three of the combined militia for each one of her own that had been felled. Ivan had been glad that her misdirected devotion towards him had been so easy to re-direct. Recruiting her to his side, with the words she wanted to hear --with a catch("Yes, sister. When you've won this war, I will marry you. But until then, we must shall speak no more of this, da?" He had whispered the words into her hair, the rough fabric to her hairband irritating his nose. It had been worth it, though, as her eyes lit up, and she replied with an almost dreamy-sounding "Da.", before flinging herself from his arms and preparing her troops.)-- had been no problem at all. Few of her advances, during that time, had even been put up with, always cut off before things could get too awkward, while he reitterated his promises to her in her ear. ("Yes, dearest sister. You shall become one with Mother Russia, and then, together, we will revive the union. All after the war, net?")

Ludwig had delivered the final blow. She had taken hours to finally fall. Painful, heartbreaking, hours. Any other nation wouldn't have persisted so long, at risk to themselves and their troops. German perseverance had done her in.

They said her last breaths had been used to declare her love for him. Ivan didn't know how true that was. During Belarus' final hours he had been fending off a joint invasion attempt by Arthur and Kiku.

And then there was Toris. Toris had been faithfully by his side up until two years ago. It was the fifth year of thye war when Lithuania officially pulled out of the war, following Vash's example of nuetrality. "No hard feelings, Ivan," Toris apologized, shakilly laying down his weapon. "I can't do this anymore. By boss doesn't want me to help you. Not anymore. The casualties are too high. And...," The Lithuanian gulped. The larger nation still intimidated him, though they had grown something almost akin to... close... in past years. "And, if I see you again, Ivan, or, any of you, even Arthur and the others... I'm obligated to shoot you."

"And, when the war is over?"

Toris' eyes were full of hesitation as he took Ivan's hand, shaking it in farewell. "We'll see Ivan, we'll see."

x

Another bomb screeched through the atmosphere. The last one had landed in the charred remains of fields that had once belonged to Ukraine. But this one...

"Augh!" The Russian couldn't keep himself from crying out. It wasn't like he had to keep up appearances, anyway. There was no one around. He was alone, like usual. His gloved hand immediately flew to the wound, a gaping cavaty in his chest. Moscow.

He was powerless to stop it, as his blood leaked through his fingers, as if they had never existed in the first place. The blood, warm, for one so cool to the touch, melted the snow around him. Forming a tainted sludge, to mark his undoing.

He swayed on his feet, the sudden loss of blood and overly large frame proving to be an ill-thought concoction. No sooner had his thoughts reached the same rationality did his knees buckle beneath him, aggravating his wound further.

Suddenly, all control left him, and his face came to rest in the snow. "D-Damn you...," He hissed to the gray skies above, lavendar eyes glassing over.

That was it! They had done it! Alfred celebrated wildly, giving Arthur a high five. The Briton didn't fully return it, but the effort was appreciated nonetheless. "And I was the hero!" He exclaimed cheerilly. Kiku smiled politely, Ludwig outright yawned, and Arthur merely sipped his tea and had a conversation of his own (with himself.) while Alfred recounted the events of the day. Boasting.

"And I told you gettin' Moscow would do it. Yer capital's important. Yer heart. Can't live without that. Now we don't ever have to worry about that communist scum ever again, an' we can have his land. I think some of m'people always wanted to go there. Ain't too sure. But now they can. Because it's ours--"

"I'm sorry to interrupt," a newly arriving nation said, pushing his glasses back up on his face, his lips pursed in dissaproval. Roderich. "But Russia's lands belong to me."

A/N: So here we have it, my first serious Hetalia fic, for the pairing I actually support(Which gets very little love...). I suspect this will be around 3-4 chapters, so I hope you stick with me, and, of course, review, because I like that attention. Thank you for reading!