The foyer was dark, warm and tidy and surprisingly narrow, considering the size of the house.

As the yellowed carpet was clean and dry despite the snowy weather, it didn't look like anyone had come in through the front door in quite a while.

Berwald took it as sign that Ivan had not gone outside or had anyone visit recently and he pressed on.

Walking further in, he noticed that there was also a strong smell of cooking potatoes that permeated throughout the room.

Since Berwald was now within the house, he could hear the music more clearly. It was the song 'Brown girl in the ring', though who was singing it, he could not tell.

He saw light coming through the door at the end of the foyer and walked tentatively towards it and into the next room.

The room Berwald then came into was the brightly lit kitchen. He was about to enter it when he spotted something that made him stop dead in his tracks.

There, standing in the kitchen, were Tolys, Raivis and Eduard, standing as still and as silent as statues.

"Uh..." Berwald stammered. He wasn't sure how he should react. Why were the Baltics here?

'Hold on, they shouldn't even be here. They can't be here! What the hell...?'

All three had their backs to him.

Eduard was sitting at the kitchen bench, with what looked like a cookbook resting on the bench between his arms. He had his head bent downwards, as if reading intently.

Raivis was standing on a chair, peering into the cupboard. His head and most of his torso was within the cupboard, like he was searching deep into it to find something at the back.

Unnerved, Berwald walked forward, past the bench and into the heart of the kitchen.

hissss~

Berwald jumped and snapped his head in the sound's direction in shock.

And saw Tolys standing still at the stove, gingerly holding a wooden spoon over an overboiling pot of long past overcooked potatoes.

'What...? What is this? What the hell is going on?'

Berwald stepped a little closer to the frozen in place Tolys.

"Tolys...?"

Berwald gently put his hand on his shoulder, with no response.

"Ah.."

He grabbed Tolys by the shoulders and spun him around so that they were facing each other.

And promptly discovered why the Baltics were so still and unresponsive.

Berwald gasped.

'A doll...?'

All three were dolls. Cold, big eyed, life sized dolls.

They were clearly well made and cared for and would have been quite pretty to look at, but, coupled with their lifelike size, facial features that were a tad too stylised and perfect to be real and the fact that they were very close to but not quite looking like the actual living, breathing people they were clearly based on, it just made them look more like well-preserved and posed corpses.

The Tolys doll's green, lifeless eyes stared back blankly into Berwald's own, unmoving, unblinking.

"What the fuck?!"

Berwald let the doll drop down onto the floor with a loud clatter and backed away from it slowly, clearly unnerved.

'What the fuck is this?! Why does Ivan even have dolls like this?!'

Berwald thoughts were racing around in his head and he was close to actually freaking out. Why would Ivan have dolls like this? Why were they there? Who made them? For what purpose?

Berwald almost did not want to find out. He backed up into the next room, leaving the creepy dolls behind him.

Authors note: Yep. Creepy dolls. I headcanon that Sweden does not like dolls at all, especially big ones.