Head, shoulders, knees, and... oh.

Warning: Violence, fight scene, gore, threats, mental torture, references to RusAme, mention of rape, some offensive slurs.

Disclaimer: I DO NOT OWN HETALIA. I have fun manipulating their characters, though

"I can see the sun, but even if I cannot see the sun, I know that it exists. And to know that the sun is there—that is living."

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Humanity

All he could smell was smoke and burning flesh.

Ivan's head was pounding, his brain swelling in his skull, his bones aching without even moving, his skin rubbed raw. His hands were woven together behind his head, and when he tried to move them he practically had to rip them apart, the skin stuck together. He lifted his heavy head and brought his hands to his face, staring. The skin on the backs of his hands was burned off, revealing the pink, vulnerable lower layer beneath. His knuckles were bare, the white of bone capping each little bump like snow on mountain peaks. The bone was encircled by a ring of red flesh, around which was a crust of black. Ivan stared, stared at a pair of hands that weren't his, couldn't be, and then he remembered where he was.

He managed to push himself onto his elbows, feeling oddly light and numb. His eyes scanned the barren land before him, the earth scorched and the snow, beaten back by the explosion, black with soot and ash. He could hear combat, but he couldn't see it; he was alone, completely alone, save for a couple stray bodies thrown flat against the ground a few yards ahead of him. One had been hit by a scrap of Abram, his head crushed like a walnut. The other appeared to have broken his neck. His face was trained on his comrade, as if he had turned to witness the horror of his death and had stumbled and snapped the delicate vertebrae in his neck. The men Ivan had been trying to save.

A few minutes passed before Ivan regained enough energy to lift himself up and roll onto his back. His eyes locked on the tank, a withered shell of melted metal and leaking, smoking oil—a black husk that could very well have been his coffin. The planes were gone as was the threat of shells. The sky was gray, and the sparse flakes of snow that fluttered to the ground were swallowed up by the destruction. Pure white devoured by sinister black.

And then Ivan's eyes trailed lower, down his torso, splattered with earth turned to slush by the heat, down his thighs, the material of his pants having been eaten away by fire, a few threads still marked with its smoking signature. When Ivan's eyes ventured lower, he blinked, not understanding what he was seeing.

One of his legs had been hiked up when the explosion had thrown him to the ground, but the other had been stretched out, left behind in his haste. And for that reason, his bloodied right knee was now stretching to meet his shin. Ivan blinked again. Surely his shin couldn't bend that way, couldn't jut out to the side like it wasn't attached? There was blood between his knee and his shin, bits of tendon and muscle stretched out like grappling hooks that had failed to do their job. Then reality slowly came to Ivan, the gentle tide rising in his mind. His lower right leg was absurdly positioned, black and melting, bubbling from mid-shin down. The skin had been stripped away to reveal the ripe red flesh beneath, the brightness of bone. Ivan's leg had been blown off by the explosion, and the fire had ensured that he would never get it back.

Ivan stared as he had before, feeling strangely calm. Everything seemed so surreal, so fake. This kind of thing only happened in movies. It happened to other people. It could never happen to him. He took a deep breath and resignation filled him. It was almost like he knew what was going to happen, like he was expecting this. He felt more grounded than he had since everything began, and while one part of him was screaming for him to lose it another was wrapping him in a warm blanket of security, shielding him from the shock that would surely paralyze him when he finally came to.

Hours seemed to pass, sanity feeding him its oversweet mix of acceptance and detachment. And then everything shattered, the shield gone, and reality a pile of cinder blocks crushing his entire body. He couldn't feel pain, though he knew he rightfully should, and instead of offering relief his numbness made him worry. He knew it was shock, but was he dying? How much blood had he lost? Every nerve in him was shot to the extent that he wouldn't know when or if he might end up like one of those men lying crumpled and broken ahead of him, one's neck broken, the other's head crushed like a walnut.

In a way, he longed to feel pain. Anything to remind him that he was alive, to convince the adrenaline slowly building within him to burst the gates and flood his system. Panic was slowly setting in, tortuously building until Ivan was near hyperventilating. He had never felt like this before, had never been in such a situation. No longer was he a country that could just regenerate limbs, die and come back to life days later at the most. He was human, dispensable and made of glass. One little tap and it could all be over, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.

No, no, he thought, the words repeating like a mantra over and over again in his pounding head. No, no, no. A piece of him was missing, and he swore over the numbness that he could still feel his toes. But how could he when half of his leg was lying feet from him, skin melting or turning to ash? So easily the Organization had bested him, had taken something away, just like they had taken before. He had loved his sisters despite their faults. He had loved his country despite its troubles. The Overlord had taken everything, everything, and now he sought to dismember Ivan piece by piece until there was nothing left.

But Ivan wouldn't let him.

He had managed to put his foot—his only remaining one—flat against the ground, crook it, bring the knee close to his body. The heels of his palms dug into the mushy ground, not knowing how exactly he would move or where he would move to but prepared to go nonetheless. Then something slashed through his head, window curtains snatched aside to reveal a burning shaft of light. In his mental absence, his mind had sought consciousness in someone else.

"Mon dieu, mon dieu, il est mort, mort—oh, je suis désolé, mon ami. Je suis si faible que je ne pouvais pas vous sauver. Todd est mort… il est mort et ils viennent."

Ivan's mind was fuzzy, but he understood just enough of Francis's frantic thoughts to know that he and everyone in the tunnels were in trouble. He reached out with the one sliver of his conscious not wracked with pulsing pain.

Francis, you must calm down.

A pause. "Ivan? How—"

Never mind that, Ivan snapped. Todd is dead?

"Yes." Francis's voice was heavy with guilt. "Not all the defenses are decommissioned and I do not have the code. What do I do?" His last words were whispered, like a child lost in the dark.

Ivan was just as much that child as Francis, but he gave him his answer anyway. I… I have the code.

"You do?"

Ivan cringed at the lie. But he knew he could do it, knew that he could probe the mind of anyone, go through their memories, find what was needed. All he needed right then was someone from which to steal the secrets. He was silent for a moment, regretting what he had said, and then he saw a figure approaching the blackened pit that was Ivan's depleted world. It was a soldier, dressed in all black just like the others, but he could tell by the way he walked that he was different. At first he thought that this could be one of his own men, come back to get him. But he was too hopeful, as he almost always was with everything in his life, his mind brushing that of the indecipherable soldier, flinching as he encountered something of a mental electric fence, shocking him back into himself and making his head feel twice its normal size.

Ivan just stared, not knowing what to do, how to respond to Francis, could hear the man's impatient questions bombarding the back of his mind. The soldier appeared to have been headed past him, but then the figure stopped, head swiveling, and Ivan could feel those unforgiving eyes on him, like the Overlord himself was staring him down. And then he saw the man reach for the weapon at his hip and pull it free, so cocky that he hadn't even bothered to reload, changing magazines in casual, unhurried fashion. Ivan never blinked, not wanting to miss a second of living, even if right then part of him, mostly physical, was longing to die. His mind was empty when the man cocked his gun, the sound slicing through his ear, knifelike. He raised the weapon. Took aim. Fired.

Ivan gave a cry, startled at the sound of his own voice, made hoarse from having breathed so much burning smoke. Fresh pain bloomed in his shoulder, close to his collarbone, the bullet carving a burning path through his flesh and making the hollow of a shoulder blade its home. The muscles that had strained so much to hold him up gave out and he was on his back, his head sinking into the swampy mess of mud beneath him. He could hear the man coming and closed his eyes, waiting, planning. In the minute it took for the soldier to arrive Ivan indulged his guilt, berating himself for not having thought of anyone before he was shot, not even Alfred. And he vowed to make up for it.

A bloody boot squelched in the mud beside his ear, and Ivan mustered everything in him to flip his sore body over, hand shooting out and bare-boned fingers wrapping around an ankle like a manacle. In the brief moment that the man stiffened and grunted with surprise, Ivan was able to wriggle through that electric barrier, the power having been abruptly shut off, flipping through memories, honing in, snatching what he wanted. He had barely fled before the wall was up and working again, the punishing jolts licking at his heels. Then he reached out to Francis, even as the soldier lifted his foot, intending to crush his nose into his skull.

Francis, the password is… is…

The foot stilled, hovered, muscles bunching as Ivan lost his breath.

"What is it, ami? What is it?" Francis asked frantically.

Ivan's heart jumped into his throat like it never had before. It's… 'He will die.'

"… What?"

'He will die', Ivan snapped, angry that he had to say it again, had to feel his heart lurch painfully. Who was 'he'? Ivan kept asking himself that, but deep down he knew what the message meant. Because it was a message. And Ivan realized, amid Francis asking him if he was sure, if he had heard right, and the boot coming down on his face, that the Overlord knew and Alfred was right where the bastard wanted him.

"Well, well, lookie here." Ivan was busy holding his broken, bleeding nose, cringing and squeezing his eyes shut when he felt the delicate bones jar against each other. When he opened them he was met with cold, dark eyes that were staring right through him as if the man had known him for his entire life. "A bleeding Russian cripple. But, then again, you like the color red, don't you?"

Ivan stared, searching his mind and trying to match a name with a face. Although he found nothing of the sort, there was something about the leering man before him, with his messy salt-and-pepper hair, patchy stubble, and steely eyes that made him stand out in Ivan's memory. And another thing…

How did this man know he was Russian?

The stranger read Ivan's question in his searching eyes. "Ah, we haven't been introduced. But I'm sure you remember the way Alfred wailed for his daughter, how broken he appeared even after he beat one of my men to death." Ivan continued to stare, all of it coming back to him now, and he knew this man, he knew him, but damn if he couldn't recall a name!

The soldier didn't give him time to ponder; a heel pressed on Ivan's chest, the mud sucking the Russian's torso into the ground. Ivan didn't like the way the man peered down at him like he was a bothersome insect that he sought to punish by relieving him of his wings and appendages. "You remember how he cried, don't you? Then the fucking fag went and puked like the pussy he is. Getting rid of him will feel just as satisfying as getting rid of that bitch in Montana, even if I don't do it myself."

Ivan blinked and then the name hit him. Gordon. This man must be Gordon. Ivan had never seen the man himself, but this was the man who had killed Marge and made Alfred hurt. He tried to keep stony-faced, but he knew his rage was pooling into his eyes from the smug grin that was pulling at Gordon's lips.

"Yeah, see, there ya go. I may never have seen you, but I know who you are. The Overlord knows all and he's shared some information with me. You know what that was?" Gordon shoved his hands arrogantly into his pockets and bent over Ivan, throwing a shadow across the Russian's body that felt colder than the icy mud he was trapped in. "When your pussy boyfriend was crying, what were you doing? You just stood there and watched. You watched him break without any sort of empathetic gesture whatsoever. Ya see, you and I have something in common. We're both cold. We'll always be cold. When I shot Marge and killed her, it gave me a rush to know that I could make someone else turn so suddenly into the monster they never thought they could be. I have the power to change people, Ivan, and you do too."

Ivan's muscles began to tense, wanting to snatch Gordon down and beat him just like Alfred had beat Higgins, give him a taste of his own medicine. "Do not call me that."

Gordon ignored him and continued, "That time you were standing apart from Alfred and watching him cry and turn into a monster—you liked that, didn't you? Alfred vowed to kill you not once but several times in the past, just wipe you off the face of the earth without a care in the world. At that moment in the woods in Montana you felt validated, empowered, watching someone so arrogant and self-assured crumble into a thousand little pieces, give in to an animalistic urge he thought he had control of, break his own unrealistic ideals."

Ivan, for one of the few times in his life, felt sick, not only because he hated what Gordon had said but because he recognized a note of truth in it. He truly hadn't done anything. He had been a spectator. And having such a truth thrown back in his face by someone so despicable for reasons of convincing Ivan that he too was just as despicable was something the Russian simply could not allow. Ivan meant to tell him off with some witty comeback, but all that came out was a withered excuse, "I was in shock."

Gordon barked with laughter, raspy voice wheezing like some three-pack-a-day smoker. "Centuries of unrest, and one becomes numb to shock. You're lying to yourself, Ivan. We both know it. Just admit that we share a common fancy: we love to watch people suffer, especially those who are against us." His smile stretched grotesquely wider, almost inhuman in its malformation. "If you're worrying about your little fuck buddy, don't. The Overlord sent me to fetch you so you can both see each other, though really it'll only be Alfred seeing you. I need my fix, ya see? That's why I'm gonna kill you and bind you in your own innards, maybe scoop out your eyes and make Alfred eat them. And all the while he'll be breaking and crying like you two actually had something that was more than just screwing, like you were anymore than just someone like me. I'll watch him shatter, but I won't let him pick the pieces back up. The little fag will stay good and broken, never a smile to cross his face, and he will live a long and terrible life of agony and despair. And all because you wanted to see him change, wanted to see if you could make him like you. Because you wanted that control, didn't you?"

Ivan's mind was spinning at the accusations he knew he should be rejecting but was too flustered to do so. He had never felt so unsteady, even with everything that had happened in his life, because at a time when he had thought that he had finally managed to snag a chance at being happy, when he had been surer than anything, it was all falling apart with just a few venomous words. All he could do was stare, blood rushing through his temples and putting pressure on his eyes, prompting an image of Alfred sobbing as he was force-fed the remains of someone he had denied loving for longer than Ivan had expected. "Exciting, isn't it? Imagining?" Gordon's voice invaded Ivan's thoughts like a snake in a garden. "The rush—oh, the rush I'll get. Shame you won't be there to witness it. And maybe you weren't wrong in screwing him." Ivan's ribs ached from the harsh pounding of his heart, faster, faster, perpetuated by Gordon's returning leer. "Maybe I'll bang 'im next to your dead body, so he can see how hopeless it really is. He'll be so broken by then, I bet he won't even make a sound, just get down and take it like the good little bitch he's gonna be for as long as the Overlord wants his sorry ass alive." His steely eyes flashed with a look that told Ivan he was seeking common ground with him. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

Ivan didn't know how it happened, but suddenly Gordon was beneath him, Ivan crushing him with his weight and shoving fistfuls of ice-cold ash and mud into the man's mouth. "You like rush, da?" he was growling as Gordon fought to turn away, to lock his jaws up. But Ivan dug his elbow into Gordon's collarbone, snatched him up by his stringy hair, breaking teeth as he stuffed in glob after glob of sludge. "Take it! Take it! You like, da? Is your heart pounding yet? Are you having rush? Swallow your own poison and feel it for yourself!"

The Russian was numb with rage, not hearing, seeing, feeling anything outside his desire to rip Gordon to shreds. That's why he didn't notice Gordon wriggling around beneath him, getting his hands loose enough to punch Ivan on the side of his head, sending the Russian's vision bursting. Paralyzed only for a second, Ivan came to beneath Gordon, confused as to why he could barely breathe until he felt cold hands squeezing his windpipe.

"You're in denial," Gordon spat, fingers digging into his throat like iron braces. The man had strangled many a time before, that much was certain. A vicious squeeze and Ivan's vision exploded with black spots. Mud splattered onto Ivan's face as the man spoke, flicks of it flying from Gordon's mouth. "Look at you, wanting to make me break. Wanting to see me suffer just as I described Alfred suffering when you're gone. You're gonna be gone when he suffers, so you wanna make up for it by seeing me like that. You wanna at least get something outta my description. You wanna see it, even if making me suffer doesn't give the same rush as making Alfred suffer."

Ivan felt himself burning from the inside out even as his head felt like it was ready to explode and his chest felt caved in from lack of oxygen. His eyes were swelling in their sockets, threatening to escape, and he could feel the blood vessels in his neck close to bursting beneath the force of Gordon's fingers.

Even so, Ivan managed to hook his stub around Gordon's waist, the man becoming startled at the feel of it and giving Ivan just enough time to roll them over and subdue him. Before Gordon's sadistic eyes could lock with his own, Ivan dug his thumbs into them, pushing, pushing.

I'll scoop out your eyes, Ivan thought, too angry to speak, muddy nails scraping at the gelatinous spheres. And then you will be eating more than just mud.

And Gordon screamed. It was animalistic, it was terrifying, it was bloodcurdling. The man clawed desperately at Ivan's burned back, finding bits of peeling flesh and burying his nails in, tearing bloody gashes, but still Ivan grit his teeth and pushed. It was only when Ivan was seized with an overwhelming sense of satisfaction that his roiling stomach forced him to stop. He extracted his thumbs and his mouth began to water in the beginnings of a retch, bile soon following as he examined his thumbs, bits of blood and whitish goo smeared on them up to the first joint. Gordon's eyes had been massacred, were now hollow cups of blood and white fluid and mud. Ivan thought he saw a dark portion of pupil dribbling down the side of the man's filthy face.

And just like that, Ivan realized all too late that he had submitted to Gordon's desires. He had made Gordon suffer, just like the man had said Ivan wanted to. Now Gordon lay, a writhing heap in the sucking mud, hands going to his face as Ivan rolled off of him, the blind man's body returning to its earliest state, curled and withdrawn, like an egg. Ivan raised himself to a seated position next to him, watching Gordon whimper and rock himself back and forth, fingers feeling the remnants of his eyes as they trickled down his face. When he tasted some on his lips, he began to cry. No tears came.

"You got what you deserved," Ivan told him, but he knew his words were hollow and he knew Gordon would pick up on that. Ivan had given into temptation despite his certainty that he had gotten over the habit. He had gone too far, as always, pushed too much. And now the only way to make everything stop, to make the feeling of failure go away, was to get rid of the source.

Ivan went off silently, elbows squelching as he dragged himself through the mud on his belly, searching for Gordon's dropped gun, the fire having melted his own down, but he didn't have to look for long. Behind him he heard Gordon move and he turned around to see the man brandishing another weapon, his Organization-issued glock versus the semi-automatic that so kindly had planted its share of lead in Ivan's shoulder, which was throbbing dully in the wake of Ivan's adrenaline rush. There was no point in looking for the other gun; he was sure the ashy mud had swallowed it whole. But what Ivan wasn't sure about was how Gordon was aiming directly at him, his eyes no more than smears of white on his cheeks.

"I made the Overlord a promise," Gordon said firmly, though his hands were trembling. "I'd kill you and bring your sorry ass back to him for Alfred to enjoy. And I'm not gonna break it."

Ivan didn't know what to do. It seemed that every time he so much as flinched in one direction, Gordon's aim would shift to accommodate. Ivan wondered how and then he recalled that electrifying mental wall.

The Overlord's power. And then he thought in morbid, almost manic amusement, He can make blind men see.

"Go on, try to get away, try to take it from me," Gordon spat. "C'mon you cripple. Die nobly like all your other friends. Now's the time. You can't escape my bullet."

Ivan was frozen, unsure of how to handle this situation. The Overlord's power was something he had never felt before, not consisting entirely of magic, but something darker and unearthly. There was no way he could break through Gordon's mind, not unless he wanted to slip into the void, be alone forever and ever. Then he thought of Alfred, remembered that time Jeanne had him held at gunpoint, how he himself was held at gunpoint, all of them had been, how he had inched the gun out of Nathan's hand.

Within moments, Gordon was scrambling to catch his glock, Ivan having mentally yanked it from his grasp. He gave a triumphant, "Ha!" when he'd managed to catch it, but by then Ivan was looming over him, coming down on him, hands going to Gordon's arms, to the gun. But the Overlord's eyes shone through the man's empty sockets, arms flailing, keeping the gun out of Ivan's reach even as one hand dealt the Russian a nasty blow to the jaw, sending pain flaring through his bones and up to his broken nose, clogged with dried blood.

And Gordon was laughing. Hysterically. If he'd still had eyes, he could have been crying with glee. "Do it! Do it!" he dared, bringing the butt of the glock down against Ivan's temple and giving the man enough of a shock to wriggle further from Ivan's grasp. "You know you want to! Strangle me! Stab me! Beat me! Rip me limb from limb! Be what you really are and you will be useful to the Overlord. We need more violent men like you, men not afraid to be monsters in the name of humanity!"

Ivan's head pulsed and his whole body was sore, but anger still coiled in his gut, fingers finally finding Gordon's wrist, wrapping around. "Our humanity is what separates us from the beasts. And you, тщеславный ублюдок, are a beast of the worst kind."

Ivan snatched the glock from Gordon's hand, and he could imagine the light dying in the man's nonexistent eyes. He could feel the Overlord's power retreating from him, knowing that Gordon was not worthy of his help, having been defeated, having broken his promise. And as Ivan brought the gun down on Gordon's head, the Russian at least at the satisfaction of knowing that Gordon was now alone and would die alone, and that Ivan wouldn't ever die alone because someone loved him, whether that person be alive or dead, and that was more than a beast like Gordon could ever hope to have. Because love was something human.

The death was fast and brutal. He forewent a bullet and pistol-whipped Gordon until his skull became concave and blood replaced eye fluid on his cheeks. Then Ivan dropped the glock and let go, letting the mud swallow Gordon's lifeless body in place of what could have possibly been his own.

Ivan could still hear Francis milling around in the back of his mind, but the Frenchman was too preoccupied to send him many coherent thoughts. Ivan decided to send his mind out to Alfred, wherever he was, just to check. It took a while, and when he finally came into contact all he felt was pain, immense pain and almost blinding despair and anger. Alfred was in danger, and where was Ivan?

Sitting back and watching. Just like he had back in those woods in Montana.

Ivan forgot his mission. The world hadn't been like this for more than a couple of years, but he hadn't had Alfred return his affections for centuries until now. He needed to balance the scales, and to do that he needed to run to him. Run to him and do all he hadn't done when he should have.

He lifted one leg, boot sinking into the ground and then the other. Pain shooting up his thigh, burning through his whole body, reminding him that he couldn't run, he couldn't do anything. The frustration was almost more overwhelming than his incapacitation, every nerve on fire as he let out a scream that sounded so agonized and foreign he was stunned he could produce it. His vision began to go, and he realized he didn't have much time, fingers digging into the mud, pulling himself along toward the ruins of the buildings in the distance, where everyone was expecting him and where Alfred could be dying.

In the end, he had barely gotten a few feet from Gordon's corpse before he seized up, muscles too shaken by pain to lend so much energy to movement. And so Ivan was on his belly in the mud again, not far from where he'd begun, the frustration of helplessness unbearable. He was aware of Francis tittering in the back of his mind, still connected, draining his energy further, but Ivan was too weak to pull back. He heard Francis address him, heard his voice rise in pitch with the silence he was met with, and he also heard a helicopter droning past, heard the vehicle spin frantically off course before colliding with some building in the distance at his back. Pain took his consciousness before he could hear the building collapse in a heap of dust and rubble and dying screams.

Translations:

Mon dieu, mon dieu, il est mort, mort—oh, je suis désolé, mon ami. Je suis si faible que je ne pouvais pas vous sauver. Todd est mort… il est mort et ils viennent-My God, my God, he's dead, dead-oh, I'm sorry, my friend. I'm so weak that I couldn't save you. Todd is dead... he is dead and they are coming.

тщеславный ублюдок-conceited bastard

A Word From the Writer: Okay, so I know I'm a little late, but I'm pressed for time. Like really pressed for time. Anyway, Gordon reappears! Just a bunch of people you'd never wanna meet, a whole parade! It got a bit violent, but Gordon's a bastard so... he had to die like that. Again, another fainting spell, but what else do you expect? The man just lost a leg! And seeing as I left you with a bit of a cliffhanger considering if Russia's gonna make it or not, you'll find out if he lives through other POVs... and that helicopter. You'll find out about that later as well.

Well, it's late and I'm signing off. Got a lot of shit to do still this weekend and prom ate a big chunk of that away, so expect more delays. As I said earlier I will finish this. Eventually. Not-weekend, here I come!