Some 2 or 3 to a few hundred years later…
"Mr. Russia? I have your hot chocolate and blini."
Ivan sighed and pushed aside his paperwork at the sound of Lithuania's voice. He had Katyusha to advise him before the Soviet Union broke apart. Not that they did a lot of splendid things together during those days; it turned out it was much better when Russia worked alone, without Ukraine's influence and Belarus' interference. He often cringed when he remembered the Soviet days. But it was nice to have some help, even though Katyusha had eventually taken over the Kiev.
"Da, Toris, Cпacuбo," he told him, and the dark-haired nation entered, placing the tray on Ivan's desk beside his paperwork. Toris, Eduard von Bock (Estonia), and Raivis Galante (Latvia), all worked for him, and Ivan could tell that he frightened them, because they were always nervous in his presence and polite to the point of suspiciousness without necessarily being friendly. The Silent Bear, he was called, no wonder they were afraid, poor things. Who knew the unmentionable horrors the mighty Russia had in store for them behind his warm smiles?
Ivan sighed as he sipped his hot chocolate. Things had taken a turn for the worst. Nobody liked him, because nobody trusted him, and even those in his "closer circles" respected him out of fear. Katyusha hadn't asked anything else out of him, but Natasha wanted the impossible.
He could hear her nails scratching at the door in his head, "Become one with me and marry me, big brother, you know you want to! Then we will rule all this great land together!" He'd hid in his bedroom; she shot his doorknob and proclaimed cheerfully that the "damned doorknob" that had kept them separated was "gone forever now, isn't that wonderful, big brother?"
He shuddered at the thought. Then there were the nightmares of the Bolsheviks and the murder of his favorite ruling family, the Romanovs, and of the days of the Soviet Union when KGB agents hijacked planes and murdered in war. And with the nightmares came the voices, the voices that told him everything his bosses or his people had done wrong, was all his fault, that he was indeed an evil country, and that was why no one trusted him.
He sighed again and realized that Toris was standing awkwardly by the doorway, waiting to be dismissed or else receive some other order. "You may go, Toris," he said wearily, still keeping that sometimes-fake smile plastered on his face in that ever-present vain hope of being trusted. "You are free for the day."
Toris' face lit up. "Oh, thank you, Mr. Russia, thank you!" But then he walked out slowly, as if he was suspicious as to why his boss let him off early. Ivan supposed that it was simply hard for anyone to understand that he was really not that bad.
