Russia looks at East with an empty look on his face as he screams and throws rocks at the Baltic as if the sea had personally wronged him. Maybe it did, Russia can't know. The whole universe, at this very moment, has wronged East, and East wants it to burn for it. It won't so he screams and hisses and throws things until his arms ache. Russia just happens to be the accidental witness so East can't really take out his anger on him. He doesn't really care about him being there, it's not like he hadn't seen Russia's fits of fury back in the days, but he still somehow wishes he could just gorge the asshole's eyes out for giving him that kind of look. He doesn't do it because it would be useless. It's not Russia that he especially wants to kill today.
At one point or another, his throat goes raw from the screaming and his fingernails ache from digging sand to throw at the water. East stops, lets himself fall on the sea strand. He feels pearly grains of sand and mud against the back of his head and knows instantly that his hair will be a hell to clean. It's not enough of a motivation to make him move from here. He's drained, weight of the years crashing on his shoulders and making his whole body ache, drained like a dead man walking should be. He doesn't want to rise. He closes his eyes and prays for oblivion.
It doesn't come.
Or maybe it does. Suddenly there's a large shadow over East that blocks him from the sun. He doesn't react right away because he still vainly hopes that if he wills it strong enough, he's really going to get himself to die just by staying like this. He stays there, eyebrows frowned under the effort, for at least a good minutes. It doesn't work because God has stopped even listening to anything East has to say somewhere in the turn of the last century and East hated him for it, still does. He opens his eyes.
Russia is standing over him, holding over his face the leather jacket East had abandoned in the car. As it dangles over his head, he remembers that this place is still a piece of shit land where nothing grows and that he's starting to get cold. He raises his hands up and they fall back in the sand. He's too tired.
East can't see Russia's expression but he can see him shrugging, taking something out of his jacket's breast pocket. Stealing the cigarettes back seems like a typical Russian thing to do, and East would like to protest but it would need him to speak and his throat aches from the previous incoherent screaming. He's agreeably surprised when Russia slips a lit cigarette between his lips. He breathes in, takes the filter between his fingertips and away from his mouth, breathes out. The smoke curls swiftly into ragged, fleeting forms as it disappears in the cold air of the Baltic. East watches as if it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
Russia is still an asshole but damn if this isn't just what East needed right now. He raises himself up lazily, give a look at Russia who's sitting right next to him, his jacket still in his hands. East grabs it with a quick movement of the right hand, meets no resistance as he draws it back to him. It ends up simply sitting on his lap, even though his teeth going to start clanking from the cold soon if he doesn't put it on. Too much effort for little pay-off.
Russia doesn't speak right away so East stays silent too. When he does, though, East can't help but to grit his teeth out of annoyance. He needed a cigarette, not Russia indifferent curiosity.
"I thought that coming to Königsberg was your way of celebrating the anniversary."
East shrugs.
"It's Kaliningrad," he says and it's enough of an answer to make Russia go quiet for a few more moments, an amused smile curling his lips. East throws away his half-finished cigarette with an angry huff. Even that doesn't feel good anymore.
"You're unhappy to be here."
"No fucking shit, Sherlock."
Russia lets out a quiet laugh and East wants to break his neck right here and right now. He remembers that he's on Russian land right now, gives up the idea of trying to start a fight he knows he's going to lose. He wants to die but not like that.
"I should have told you to fuck off back on Alexanderplatz. This was a stupid idea."
"I don't think it was. It's been a long time since I came to Poland. Pretty countryside."
"And fucking shitty roads."
East lets out a tired laugh that leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. Russia sighs in amusement, rises up his head to look at the sky. East imitates him in silence. It's blue and infinite and it reminds him of West's eyes when he tries to hide that devouring guilt that gnaws his bones into fine dust whenever he looks at East. Fucking West and his fucking conscience, dragging his feet down and making his steps sound like one of those ominous marches Austria liked to play so much back when they were fucking on a semi-regular basis. Austria had pretty hands, still does, flower-like and moving like water as he speaks.
He closes his eyes, feels the caress of the sun against his face and he's a little bit less cold. There's nothing here, just the Baltic and the sea strand, nothing but East and Russia and the car behind them on an empty road. The winds of November blow and the sea roars.
They stay like that for a moment, and Russia isn't moving, isn't saying anything. He doesn't smell like pity yet, probably never will because he's Russia and he doesn't feel things like westerners do. Coming here was a stupid but maybe bringing Russia wasn't that bad. At least he has someone to verbally assault before he has to come back to the city and its slow, agonizing grinding of the days that succeed one another without ever changing. It could be worse. He could have brought Austria with him. East thinks of awkward angry sex in the car his brother paid for, and he would laugh at the idea if he wasn't so tired.
"I wished that you would take this occasion to truly end your days, but you won't. I've come to understand this. It's odd. I've always thought that you would go down in flames instead of choosing to stay until everybody forgot your true name."
Russia's words have that soft, detached tone they always have when he talks about things that truly matters, and East suddenly hates him for it. He hates him for surviving the centuries and modernity, for turning the east, his east into dust, and he hates him because he's speaking the truth. East thought that he would go down in flames, but somehow he didn't. He didn't go and shoot himself on the shambles of his empire as soon as the wall fell. He drank beer and burned the cardboard car he had learnt to hate.
East looks at Russia and his eyes are still fixed on the horizon, looking eastwards. Somewhere behind the line that separates the sea and the sky, there's the canals of St-Petersburg waiting for him to come back. This is but a second in Russia's life, because Russia's not half-dead the same way East is. Their time doesn't come and pass the same way anymore.
"Well you don't know shit about me. Shut up." is all East manages to reply. His wit is as tired as his vocal chords from screaming.
Russia takes a moment to himself, his brows frowned from reflection. East doesn't want to think, and Russia's question are draining him even more than all the shouting. He looks straight in front of himself, at the sea that looks so beautiful at this time of the year. He misses the knights and the cross, and the smell of blood in the desert and the rust it left over the men's armours. He misses war so fucking much.
Russia gives him a look, his eyes concentrated, as if he was trying to read his mind. It works.
"Your brother called. This is why you're angry. Your brother called and told you, ordered you to come back home."
East turns his head away, doesn't answer. Russia's face lights up in understanding. He continues with the same heavily accented German, slowly and mercilessly pronouncing syllables one by one.
"You're not staying alive because you fear death, Prussia."
It's funny, how Russia's throat makes the "r" rolls and how his tongue twirls around the "ss" in a low hissing sound. Preußen. It's been decades since anyone has ever called East by his real name. The sound alone makes his spine shake in its very core. He feels even deader than before, but there's no more relief. East wants Russia to shut up. He wants him to shut up because no one ever knew about East, no one ever needed to know, especially not someone of the likes of Russia.
"You are staying-"
"Shut up."
"You are staying because you love him."
Russia's eyes shine with childish cruelty and East feels like someone is grating sand paper inside his chest. He feels like he's choking on his own breath and it makes his throat burn. Russia says other words, but East isn't listening, tries not to. It's all too accurate and it makes East's head ache.
"You've always loved him, from the start, from the ashes of the battle field he was born out of. You fought for him, sacrificed the brothers you've always hated for him to grow and live. You would have burnt the whole world if he had asked you to. You nearly did. But now it's over and all that's left is shame in his eyes and it's the worst kind of agony, but still, but still you can't bring yourself to go away just yet."
East doesn't know how exactly he ended up pining Russia to the ground, his palms against his throat and wishing, wishing so much he could bring himself to squeeze. East isn't the soldier he used to be, but he's still in shape, still able to let rage take over his body and strike. He can't get himself to fight Russia, somehow, of all people. Maybe it's because he can't get himself to fight anyone anymore.
His hands just lay there, motionless, and Russia doesn't even make a move to defend himself. There are wide, piercing violet eyes observing him, and East, no, Prussia can see the battlefields, Austria and France and the rest of them, and Bavaria with rage in his eyes and spitting hate up until his last breath. There was Versailles and there was the ruins, the chaos, the shame, West's anger in his large blue eyes. He remembers turning Poland into ruins because West had asked him, burning the continent and laughing as he did. He remembers Potsdam and the guilt in West's eyes as he looked at his own hands, unable to wash away the blood he saw. He remembers the east and the slow grinding of days, the marches of the first of May and the prisons without windows.
He remembers the drive towards Bonn, decades ago, the sound of the cheap out-dated engine of the Trabi, thinking about how he wanted to turn around and shoot himself instead of seeing West again. West had smiled, that stupid smile of him, hugged him awkwardly. There weren't a lot of words exchanged. West smiled, talked about a bright new future and East tried not to make any correlation with West's previous talks about a future for the both of them. He had, his voice hissing low, and West's eyes had taken that greyish shade of regret he still wore to this day.
East had grown to miss those days. He misses it all because West thought of him as something else than a past he's afraid of. He misses that quiet admiration of his brother as he built an empire for him, the fuming, screaming anger and the wonderful fights they used to have before West changed under the wheel of time and turned into a monster of compassion and self-hate. Every time he looks at him and thinks of the glory of days long gone, it hurts, it hurts so much that he throws up blood in the middle of the night when he knows West is sleeping. He misses it and he doesn't want to die because every time he thinks about leaving West, something, somewhere inside his mind fears that there would be this slight, nearly imperceptible sign of relief on West's face if he did.
He retires his hands from Russia's throat, lets himself fall on the beach's sand next to him. Russia doesn't rise, only turns his head towards him. His eyes aren't showing anything more than that same detached curiosity he had shown him back on Alexanderplatz, but there's something that might be just like compassion in the curve of his mouth and the frowning of his eyes. Easy might be imagining it, though. He probably is.
They part ways in the afternoon, as East leaves Russia in Kaliningrad's train station with nothing more than a nod and a wave. Russia understands, because Russia isn't like the rest of them and East knows that he doesn't nearly care about him enough to give more of a thought to whatever happened in front of the Baltic this morning. The puzzle was solved and Russia would move on onto whatever he did these days, missing the exquisite power Lithuania gave him or some shit. East doesn't really give fucks. He drives away, back to West and to Berlin, the Ramones screaming in the Maserati's loud speakers.