Feliks is sitting on his hands, leaning back to look at the sky.
"You know," he says, "no matter what you think of me… I'm always gonna like you. Even if you hate me, I'll still like you."
He tilts his head down to flash Tolys a brilliant smile.
The rye is waving gently in a hot summer breeze, gold against the cottony blue that blankets the sky. Feliks is in red, his eyes slitted against the sunshine and a clumsy wreath of orange poppies falling apart on his hair, where it's fluffy from the humidity. There's just enough room on the rock for Tolys to sit down next to him. In the distance, the sound of the river, and the shouting of the harvestmen. It's a beautiful day, the kind of day that he wishes he could see more often, instead of being stuck inside doing paperwork—the kind of day he fondly remembers; the kind of day he dreams of.
"C'mon, Liet," Feliks teases, "aren't you gonna say anything?"
This isn't right, Tolys thinks. You're dead. You shouldn't be here.
"Tell me a story," Raimonds whispers, nestling into Lithuania's side like he used to back in the Duchy, for warmth and comfort. Involuntarily, Tolys glances over at Ruth—at Byelorussia. She pointedly bends her head down over her sewing so that her now-shoulder-length hair hides her face.
He sighs a little, thinking of days long past, and turns back to Raivis, smoothing the boy's thick curls down across his face and chuckling when he wriggles.
"Long, long ago, there was a girl," says Tolys, "who was to be married the next day. She loved her husband-to-be very much. But as she was dressing in her bridal clothes, she received word that there had been an accident, and her lover was dead. Brokenhearted, she…" He feels a lump in in his throat. Russia is looking at him from the other side of the room, chin propped on his big hands.
"She set aside her beautiful wedding clothes and retired to her bedroom to mourn. No one could stir her. She laid on her bed and wept. For seven days and seven nights she wept, and finally, she slept.
"And as she slept, she seemed to see her bridegroom, dressed in the wedding finery she had never been able to see him in, and he spoke to her. 'Cease your weeping,' he said. 'Your tears are filling up my coffin and I cannot rest.'
"'I weep because I still love you,' she whispered. And so the apparition remained with her through the night, and they spoke of all the things they had never had a chance to say. And in the morning—"
"What happened?" Raivis whispers.
Tolys looks down.
"It was only a dream," he says abruptly. "The dead cannot return from the grave. Now it's time for bed, Livonia."
"You are good at telling stories," Russia drawls, "but you are bad at finishing them, Litva."
Lithuania feels himself blush against his will.
"And how would you end it?" he challenges. He tenses for a moment, but Russia is in a good mood tonight, and merely rolls his massive shoulders in a shrug.
"Do you not have some tale about dreams?" he says. "That dreams are sent by the one dreamed of. Perhaps the young man was not truly dead. Such things are good to hope for."
And where, thinks Lithuania bitterly, has hope ever gotten me?
He'd had to wash the stains off of Russia's beloved scarf. The other man had entertained himself by describing every twitch and every scream Poland had made when they cut him up.
The poppies are the colour of blood. There's a petal caught in the corner of Feliks's mouth.
"I was always so lucky to have you. I should've told you earlier, but I was scared, you know?" He laughs, high and bright. "I was 'lucky', haha!"
"That's not funny," says Lithuania without thinking, "won't you ever get tired of that joke?"
"Nope! Never!" Feliks carols.
The wreath is coming apart like soap dissolving in water.
He remembers Russia's hand stroking his hair.
"I like you a lot, Litva," said Russia then, and his voice was half-gentle, almost wondering, not quite reverent. "You are not very smart, it seems. But I still like you."
Tolys spat at him, that time, so weak he couldn't get his head up off the pillow and the saliva dribbled down his chin. Ivan wiped it away tenderly, while Raivis looked on in terror and Natasha in horror and Irina in something like speculation.
"Next time, perhaps you will ask me permission to leave, instead of climbing out your window. Then I can give you a proper coat. And boots." His eyes brightened with a sudden thought. "We can all go out together, to play in the snow! Wouldn't that be fun, Litva? Wouldn't you like that, летний мой?"
"I'd rather freeze," Tolys whispered hoarsely, then. Inkstains on his gloves, but he'd made the dropoff. He couldn't be shot, he didn't have a family to deport, and so he spat at Russia and cajoled help from Prussia, because, he told himself, he didn't have anything to lose anymore. His language was printed on his hands, dripping black onto the floor, and he thought of a thousand tiny barbs delivered carelessly by laughing pink lips but couldn't work up the energy to be angry—even that was better than this. I wanted that. (Didn't I?)
He doesn't know what he wants anymore. The ban's been lifted; he is purposeless. Russia pets his hair from behind, and he doesn't spit.
He's so tired. There's ice in his bones.
Feliks's skin is translucent under Tolys's touch. Not the pale veins-showing translucent of a noblewoman; there's light shining through his body from the other side.
"I'm gonna try to be less selfish from now on," he whispers, and Tolys lets out a half-laugh-half-sob. His fingers brush the last poppy and it falls all at once, dropping severed and sudden to the ground, and Feliks's thick lashes are wet.
The sky is such a bright blue it hurts his eyes.
He wakes up curled into Russia's side with his hand outstretched to the air, grasping at an unseen hand.