"Ravis…?" Poland called out, trying to keep his tone light. "Everything okay?"

Every second of silence and darkness made his heart beat harder as he quickly slammed the door shut and raced into the living room. There weren't a lot of places to hide in Halina's flat, which worried him even more. And there was no option that Ravis didn't hear his raised voice.

He checked the living room, bathroom, dining-slash-kitchen niche, and finally opened the door to her bedroom with a BANG.

"RAVIS!" He shouted again, searching the room visually for the boy's form. To no avail. This time, however, he got a reply. There was a slight noise, perhaps a muffled squeak of fear, from the closet.

Trying not to think about what he was doing, he slammed the closet door open. There, in fact, was Ravis, huddled in a tiny corner and hugging his knees to his chest. Feliks couldn't see his face in the dim nook, but he could hear the occasional muffled sob escape the child.

"…Ravis?" He asked more quietly, unsure of what was happening.

The boy's head snapped up, showcasing a tearstained expression of pure terror. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I don't know what I did but I'm sorry, please don't hurt me, I'm sorry…"

The words tumbled from his mouth, eventually turning into an incoherent mass of Russian, which the Pole sort-of understood, and what had to be Latvian, which he didn't, glued together in random, seemingly unrelated phrases.

"Ravis!" Feliks knelt down to try to reach the kid, but the latter shrunk back against the wall with a look so reminiscent of trapped game that he had to take a step backwards. He was frozen, flattened against the wall. The only part of him that was moving was his chest, which was rising and falling raggedly.

"Don't! Please, I'm begging you, I didn't do it, I'm sorry…" His wide eyes were aimed directly at Poland and unfocused, as if he weren't looking at him but through him.

"Ravis, it's me!You're okay! He didn't know what was going on, but Ravis seemed to be trapped in a waking nightmare. Having no idea what to do, the older blonde reached out and grabbed the other's wrists, trying to get him to wake up. This just caused him to let out a little scream and attempt to wrest his tiny arms from the former's grip.

"I'll do anything! Don't, please don't, I didn't! Nē! Nē, ludzū, nē…" ("No! No, please, no…")

"Ravis, it's me! Wake up!"What was Feliks supposed to do in this sort of situation? He suddenly realized that it wasn't a nightmare… but a flashback. What could he do to stop this?

Ravis had stopped struggling and simply continued crying, shrieking incoherently, eyes fixed on his imaginary tormentor.

The only way he could end this was to somehow pull Ravis out of the vision. To make him realize that he wasn't Russia.

"Ravis… to ja."("It's me.")The only way that this could happen was if he did something Russia would never do. Russia didn't speak Polish.

"Hej. W porządku? Nic ci się nie stanie. Pamiętasz co ci obiecałem?"("Hey. Okay? [You okay?] Nothing's going to happen to you. Remember what I promised you?")

He was aware that Ravis didn't understand a word he was saying, but he kept his tone soft and welcoming. Just in case it was similar enough to Russian, however (it was a Slavic language, after all, and those were all similar enough that in some cases, they sounded like dialects of the same language), he spoke slowly and enunciated clearly. He prayed that the similarities wouldn't heighten the illusion, only weaken it.

"Remember what I promised you?" He repeated in English "You're safe as long as you're with me, yeah? So stop crying." Those words echoed in his memory. Not once now, but twice. And each time… Toris hated him. Did Ravis, too?

He pushed those thoughts from his mind violently.

Ravis had slumped against the wall and curled back up into the fetal position, where Feliks could still hear the occasional sniffles that signified he was, in fact, crying.

Feliks leaned in and grabbed the unresisting child in his arms, slowly, gently pulling him out of his hiding spot. Ravis instantly clung to the slightly singed material of his coat, sobbing into his chest. The Pole could feel him shivering uncontrollably.

"You're not…" He choked out weakly between sobs. "You're not… you're not him."

"No. It's me. Feliks. You're okay. Those days are gone now." Instinct's hand once again guiding him, he began to rock back and forth slowly, stroking the child's back comfortingly.

"You don't- you don't understand. I SAW him! But it was you!" The younger boy redoubled his grip around Feliks' waist, seeming to beg for comfort. "I thought… I thought… you wanted to…"

"It's okay. You were dreaming. You know Russia can't hurt you anymore."

At the very mention of Russia's name, Latvia began to sob harder. Poland bit his tongue painfully. Idiota!

"He can't get you anymore. You know that. I'm here to protect you." Latvia mumbled something so quietly, the older boy didn't catch it at first.

"What?"

"You don't know… what it's like. I can't be safe, I'm never safe, nobody's safe! You're big and powerful, so it can't have happened to you, so you don't understand…" Ravis practically shouted. Feliks didn't even flinch, looking at him thoughtfully. Had it been any other situation, he'd either have ignored the comment or laughed it off. But here, it struck a chord.

"Ravis. "

"I-I'm sorry! I didn't mean to! Really!" The boy had already begun to back out of his comment, once again in tears. "I'm sorry, please don't hate me…"

"Ravis!" He repeated, louder this time. It cut off the stream of apologetic babble at its source. "I don't hate you!"

"…You don't?" The already wide violet eyes, now red from crying, became almost perfect discs.

"No. But I want to ask you something about what you said." He waited for a tentative nod, then continued.

"Look at me. You said I was big. I'm one-sixty-five centimeters tall. My country is less than one fifty-fourth of Russia. You said I was powerful. My own capital could beat me up if she wanted. Heck, she has. The weapons count for my entire army is less than 1% of what American civilians buy in a year! So why did you say that?"

Ravis stammered something about being stupid and thoughtless and talking too much, laced with yet more "I'm sorry's."

"No." He once again cut short the kid's apologies. "No, you're not. You are brilliant, you are creative, and you have more empathy in you than I could ever hope to have. But you said that for a reason. And now I'm curious. What is your reason?"

"B-because… you don't… you're not scared like us! So you have to be! You can't not be!"

"…What?"

"You've never been scared! Toris told me about how before I was born, you captured Moscow for some time. A-and you've never been scared of HIM! You stopped him from hurting me at a meeting, remember?"

Honestly? No. Feliks thought but didn't say. He didn't remember ever standing up for the child, even if it made him hate himself for not noticing how he was treated before. But perhaps Ravis did remember something he didn't. Or a detail that had seemed minor to him…

"I'm sorry to disillusion you… I'm not. And you know what? I'm scared to death. I can't go up and talk to anyone in the street because I'm obsessively anthropophobic. I'm terrified of having my rights taken away from me again, and the very thought of speaking publicly makes me want to throw up. But most of all, I can't stand to see things happen to people I care about. And that's what keeps me going. And that is what you need to do. Find something that drives you forward. Find something to fight for, and you'll never lose hope." He didn't even know why he'd told the Latvian all that. He hadn't mentioned it to anyone but Liet before.

"Toris always said that." Ravis' voice was somewhere between a whisper and a shout. He had begun to shake again. "That's why HE would hurt me. Because it hurt Toris to see me get hurt. And he couldn't do anything about it."

It took all the Pole had not to get up and kill Russia then and there. Instead, another incident floated to the top of his mind.
It was him and Liet, trapped under the Partitions. He remembered that he had been interrogated first. The Soviet nation had beaten him until he was pretty much unrecognizable. But he just kept grinning at Russia, knowing that it unnerved him. Because a grinning, cold Russia was one thing. He was powerful and knew it. But a grinning Poland, who had nothing left except for the clothes on his back, and those were in tatters, was diametrically different. And that was unnerving. He had even managed to answer Russia's ever-polite questions about how his dear neighbor had been these past years, how he had managed without his "help."
But then had come Liet's turn. Liet himself was doing his best to emulate Feliks' grin and (like, totally) cheerful attitude. But he was in pain. And he was crying. Then, he was screaming. And Poland was banging on the glass, begging to be taken instead, shouting curse words in assorted languages when Prussia appeared to restrain him. And all the while, that awful, cruel laugh that he so despised…

Before he knew it, Feliks was talking. He hadn't mentioned this to anyone. Not even Liet remembered this day. All the better for him, too. And he didn't know why Ravis was hearing this. It was one of those memories that you try to forget. To pretend it doesn't exist. To be able to live with yourself.

And that was what Feliks had been doing. Until that day. And somehow, nobody knew how this happened, he was also crying and Ravis was hugging him, and the roles seemed to have evened out… each comforted the other, Ravis snuggled up against Feliks, leaning against a wall.

He told Ravis everything, and all the boy did was listen. He told him how he had been part of the USSR as well; Russia had simply kept him as far from Liet as possible. He explained about his years as a satellite state. About the Partitions. The Uprisings quashed as if they were nothing.

Ravis told him about finally mustering the courage to declare independence. He added about how long it took to be recognized at all, and how quickly he fell back under Soviet occupation, then Nazi occupation, then back under Soviet occupation.

Feliks told him about what happened in Poland during WWII. About how 99% of the world thinks of it as "Polish death camps" simply because they were on Polish ground. About how nobody cared that the only reason that they were on Polish ground was to make it easier to massacre Poles by the millions.

Ravis told him that he had been wiped off the map entirely. That he had first been punished by Germany for allowing himself to remain under Soviet control for so long, then accused of pro-German tendencies when Russia took him back.

Feliks told him about the Polish-Lithuanian War.
"I'm just a selfish idiot, that's all." The bitter note in his voice was aimed nowhere else but at himself. "After all I'd done to keep us from being annexed, I acted worse than Russia, Germany, or… anyone. I took his capital, and I held it for 20 years. Because it 'was rightfully mine.'I thought that. Vilnius was supposed to be mine."

There was a long silence after that. Feliks had drawn away from Ravis, crossing his arms over his chest defensively.

"You probably don't want me to help you anymore, do you?" His voice cracked slightly. "Because I wouldn't. I'd hate me if I were you."

After yet another silence, during which Feliks had, for the first time in years, allowed himself to wonder 'what if.'What if he had become powerful, not Russia? Would he be anything but a sadistic monster himself? What if it had been him that the Baltic states answered to? After all, how was he any better than-

He was startled by Ravis putting his tiny arms around him tentatively.

"I could never hate you." The little Nation's face showed something of an adult that scared even Feliks, while at the same time managing to remain childishly loyal. "And I'm sure Toris never could, either. Everyone makes mistakes. That doesn't make you an awful person."

"Yeah… but my 'mistake' almost cost my best friend's life." Poland couldn't stay depressed for long in these conditions, and even he had to give a small smile when Latvia squeezed him tightly.

"But you're saving it now… right?" Knowing purple eyes that were far too old for the round face they were trapped in were fixed on his own, narrow green ones.

"Yeah… yeah, like, I guess so…" The man gave a small laugh, returning the embrace. Ravis' logic was fairly sound.

"Thanks, Ravis."

"Thank you, Mr.… Feliks." Latvia rested his head on the elder's arm. "Nobody's ever talked to me like that. Like I'm an adult, too, and it matters what I have to say."

"Yeah? I've always thought it mattered what you had to say. I never get taken seriously either… I suppose we have that in common." Feliks smiled at the boy, who, for the first time, looked truly at peace and as if he was falling asleep on his arm. It suddenly came to Poland just how exhausted he was. Not to mention his throbbing burns, which he probably should have dunked in ice water the second he got home.

"You know, I, like, got a bit of a lead today."

Ravis' eyes flew open excitedly. "Really? Do you know who…?"

"Not yet. But I have a trail pointing quite definitely in the right direction. I got America to, like, help me out on it. He's a wizard with computers."

Suddenly, he gasped. "Alfred!" He had never called Alfred back after their call was ended so abruptly. His own cell phone had most likely been incinerated in the fire He jumped up to look for a phone (Sawa didn't have a stationary, she just didn't need it).

But as he turned to leave, Ravis clung to his arm.
"No! Don't leave me here! Please don't leave me alone! I can't stay here alone!"He shrieked.

Feliks was very surprised by this turn of events. He had been sure that only seconds ago, he'd been half-asleep, but now…
"Hey, I'm not, like, leaving, am I, yeah? I'm just going to look for a phone because I… hmm, lost mine." It was best, he decided, to keep the exploding bus story to himself for the moment.

Ravis shook his head, tears streaming from his eyes. "No, please don't go, please don't go…"

"Hey. Okay, I won't go anywhere. Don't worry." He sat back down on the floor, Ravis following suit. He was crying again, but it was more hiccupping than sobbing. Poland placed a hand around the boy's shoulders, once again pulling him against himself.

"I just… I just can't stand… being alone…" Ravis choked out. "Because… Because when I'm alone, I see HIM everywhere. It's like he's here with me, wanting to hurt me if I'm alone. I know it's silly."

"Everyone's scared of something." Feliks gave him a small squeeze. "Don't worry about it, I'm not going to leave you alone."

"…Promise?"

"Promise."Once Ravis had calmed down some, he added with a half-smile: "Can we move to the couch, at least?"

In reply, he got a sleepy "Mmmm…"

Taking that as an affirmative, Feliks gently picked up the drowsy child, carrying him to the living-room couch, which could double as a guest-bed if necessary. He somehow managed to get it unfolded with his foot, then laid Ravis on it gently. Before he had time to react to his temporary absence, the Pole lay down next to him. He was having trouble keeping his own eyes open…

He retained a fuzzy memory of Ravis curling up against him, then he was dreaming…

Okay, guys, for real this time. I'm not going to set a strict limit on how many reviews I want before I update. But I want at least two, okay? Because… you know… I don't want to update if nobody's reading.

EDIT: I left this one pretty much unchanged :) I actually like this one, sort of.