Work Text:
The nights after he left were not peaceful, and they hadn’t been for decades—maybe they never would be.
Countries were fated to develop countless ties and alliances in their time, form and sever hundreds of relationships to remember, but there would always be something about the first. There was nothing logical about it: an ingrained, sentimental instinct no matter how misplaced it might be.
Like humans, nations were more malleable when they were young, susceptible to novelty, to naïvety. In the depths of a long winter, they clung dearly to the memory of the first person to extend some warmth and compassion to them. The skin would never forget the first nurturing shoulder-squeeze of a mentor, the kiss of a first love against the collarbone. The land would never forget the first impact of a catastrophic meteor, burying its sins and reshaping its quintessence.
The images swirling in China’s head bled into darkness, the red of the bright sun and the deep blue of a sky that looked like the ocean, all dissipating as he opened his eyes to the night. The sheets were neat as if he had slept perfectly still despite the spectres bouncing around in his head. He knew he always did.
He climbed to his feet, kicking aside the slippers on the floor and throwing open the window. Leaning over the sill, hanging his head out of it and gulping down breaths of oxygen like a lifeline. The whistling breeze had the bite of cigarette smoke, coloured with the distant blare of car horns and voices. That life sounded as if it was far away, only viewed by China through a smoke screen, or perhaps distant and distorted from underwater.
Closing his eyes to this night air would always invite fantasies and memories into his head—unbidden and unwanted—so he kept them open. The eyelids of the night sky stared back at him with stars choked out by the smog. The moon’s hazy corpse hung in the heavens, a lonesome reflection.
His only option was to describe the sweet embrace of sleep as a torture, only for fear of instead finding relief in its escapism—that would never be an indulgence he could let himself entertain.
China pulled a jacket across his shoulders and stretched awake, reaching for the doorknob.
-
In the end, it wasn’t the brightest-burning memories of Soviet—at his glorious peak, in the ashes of victory, clad in sunlight and his proud uniform at the parade—that persisted in China’s mind. Instead, it was something infinitely worse. A whisper instead of a shout. The vulnerable underbelly of the beast rather than its protective armour. A string of words passed back and forth between the lips at midnight, too sweet to be real but just sweet enough for him to wish that it was.
He used to look up at Soviet in the darkness they shared together, indicating a level of trust in itself. The prospect of standing side-by-side at the peak in the far future and gazing upon the empire they would build was like a distant promise. The process of it, the blood, sweat, and tears, each other’s lowest and most bone-weary moments—that was the earthly secret they held in their palms.
He didn’t know whether this was one particular moment or a culmination of those nights, something that happened so many times that the instances had blurred together in his mind.
Soviet, with strands of candlelight in his hair, specks of it reflecting in the whites of his dark-rimmed eyes. He smelled faintly of sweat and something blunt and industrial, a constant ashy thing. Even if there wasn’t active fighting, there was always production and planning to be overseen, always work to be done.
He had reached out and placed a calloused palm against China’s cheek as they sat across from each other at the desk.
To break the well-settled silence, Soviet had said: “Someday, we should go to the ocean.”
China blinked. “The ocean?”
“Yes.” The smile had melted right into Soviet’s voice. “I would like to do that with you someday.”
“Then, we must do it. You should get whatever you ask for.”
China had looked at him with pure reverence, loyalty bordering on devotion. Like a moth drawn to a flame, a sunflower with its face turned to the sun. A mortal gazing up at the visage of a god.
Soviet’s fingers had climbed toward China’s eyes, brushing the bangs away from his forehead before sliding his eyelids shut. The world had plunged into darkness, the rough warmth of Soviet’s palm across his face.
“What is it?”
“Just close your eyes.” Came the sound of Soviet’s voice, like a guiding force in the dark. “Imagine it now.”
The faint crackling of the fireplace and the storm had morphed into the waves crashing against the shore. The scent of sweat and gunpowder—China had decided, now that his eyes were closed, that it was quite similar to that—turned into the tang of sea salt, earthly wet sand.
“Do you see it?”
He saw Soviet, his Soviet, a phrase that he would never dare to repeat then and there. Ankle-deep in the ocean, his sleeves rolled up, hair damp and shirt soaked with seawater. What would he look like, with an expression unburdened by the pressure of his role? Without everything he was and had to be, if everything he wished to be just simply fell away?
It was a thought that crossed China’s mind often back then: humans were so lucky . They had the privilege of seeing the sea breeze run its fingers through the hair of a lover, feeling a warm body like an anchor against your own as you jumped into the water together.
China knew he wasn’t human, never would be, yet he couldn’t help but dream like one. About his future, the faraway utopia he wished for. A million other things that were so close to him yet so far, the things that he could never have.
“Well?” Soviet’s voice pulled him back to the present, hand falling away from his face and letting the light rush back in.
China nodded, voice weighted with the spark of simplicity as if there wasn’t a single doubt about the certainty of his words. Not even the most war-hardened veteran could resist the pull of such guileless conviction, the most dangerous and doomed of dreams. Most hopes were statistically not meant to be fulfilled, yet impossible to eradicate completely—the cruelest purgatory of them all.
“I see it. We’ll go to the ocean someday, when the war is won.”
Soviet’s gaze fell back to his document. China tried to decipher the storm brewing in his eyes, wondering what could be turning in his intricate head.
“That’s right.” He said quietly. “When the war is won.”
-
There was a place by the seaside where the sky was clear enough to see the stars, air fraught with salt and fragments of distant lands carried by the breeze. The wind in Vladivostok giggled along with the bubbling of the waves far below, sighing when the ocean pulled back and held its bated breath only to rush forth moments later.
The reason this land belonged to Soviet and his people and the reason China's land possessed no coastline up North was because of Soviet’s predecessor.
This place meant many things to China: A cruel opportunity seized by an empire who technically had every right to do so, a stranger who owed nothing to him. The natural order of the world, to prey on the weak, to strive for the ranks of the strong. An attempt made by a successor to right a wrong. Soviet’s defiance of the norm, to help someone up rather than kicking him down.
Of course, this courtesy didn’t extend infinitely. There was no such thing as a totally altruistic country. There held no rational reason for Soviet to return this territory when it had already been integrated into his own nation for so long, when it gave him access to trade ports and strategic advantages. Maybe that part was fitting, too—sometimes it felt like Soviet had taken a part of China with him when he had gone, something that he would never get back.
The cliff he stood on was a few meters above the beach, but China could still hear the ocean rocking back and forth. The sea breeze caressed his cheek, ruffled his hair, trailed its fingers down his arm and invited him to come down to the coast with a whisper against the shell of his ear. Him, alone.
China turned away.
-
There were always questions, only some of which had answers that the two of them could give. A teacher’s prying litmus tests to gauge his student’s knowledge, his philosophy, his resolve. Those from a naive student to his teacher, whom he believed held all the answers of the universe in his sharp mind and decisive hand in diplomacy, in war.
Once, China had asked his mentor, in a voice as raw and uncertain as its owner at the time, “Are we so different from humans?”
Soviet stilled from where he was examining the machine, tinkering with a stray part.
“Yes, we are.” Came his instant reply, so sure that it was almost uncertain—as if it was a reassurance against fear, an attempt to convince himself as much as China.
“How come?”
“We cannot afford to think like that.” Soviet said without any trace of idealism in his voice. “We will never be human. A human will never know—”
He straightened up.
“Our minds.” He tapped a finger against the side of China’s head, making China blink his eyes shut for a moment. They often had scrambled and contradicting thoughts to sort through: that was what happened when you tried to unite such a vast culmination of values, traditions, viewpoints, a whole nation into a single person.
“Effective invulnerability. The freedom to be reckless.” Soviet said this almost with a trace of amusement, as if he knew that this was a freedom which China exercised often. His soot-stained fingers trailed down the side of China’s neck, sending a shiver down the path of his spine.
He paused before settling a hand on China’s shoulder, his gaze smoldering. “Our burden.”
That was right, wasn’t it? Pain and responsibility was the job description, their lives and everything they held dear being the risk and survival as the reward. China’s intuition agreed with Soviet, despite how he had never been wired as a compliant person or the type to take things at face value without question.
Back then, things were too uncertain for him to be mystified by the curiosities of the world. He accepted the answers plain and simple whenever it seemed they could be that way, one thing to be sure of despite thousands of unknowns.
Was that not human, in itself? He wanted to ask, but instead what he said was, “Okay.”
Soviet turned back to the metalwork. The smell of sweat and machine-oil drifted through China’s senses, sinking into the drone of machinery. The factory heat was suffocating against their skin, making a bead of sweat drip down Soviet’s neck as China’s gaze followed its trajectory.
There was something about the sight of the high and mighty being brought down to Earth, the single most important person in the nation doing the work of the common man by his own will. To his people, Soviet in that moment would look nothing like the proud leader they were used to being presented, his jaw streaked with coal dust and fingers stained black with grime. To China, it made him look like a great of the greats. A god amongst men. Heart of gold, his blood red.
-
The questions didn’t disappear when there was no one around to hear them. People liked to believe that they became more sure-footed with experience as life went on, but deep down China hypothesized that most merely got better at masking uncertainty. Faking it until you made it was cornerstone to the game of life.
The office would never stop feeling too big for China to fill all by himself. Sometimes he still looked up from his paperwork, a question on the tip of his tongue only to be swallowed down when he found the seat across from him empty.
Even when there were no words or contact exchanged between them for hours, China grew accustomed to knowing that Soviet’s presence was there. The way you could look out at the night sky and be certain that you would find stars waiting for you. Things were always constant until they were not, never missed so dearly as when they were gone.
The glow of firelight fell across the office, dyeing it with orange and nostalgia. Sometimes, his sleep-addled brain invited an image of Soviet to flicker in the corner of his eye and slink around the room as if he were just reading over in the corner, resting on the couch, working across from China at the desk with his pen scratching across paper and his foot tapping against the ground. It was like China could still taste the memories barely out of reach, like waking up with a name still warm in his mouth but fading fast in the cold night.
And then China looked, and there was nothing: only the ember of a dream that dwindled ever faster the more desperately he grasped at its smoky heels.
-
They never quite talked about the Korean Peninsula after the fact, letting it pass them by like the winds of change. It wasn’t a time either of them particularly wanted to remember.
Even back then China had known over the course of his short life what it was like to be used as a pawn. Soviet had known how it felt to play people like puppets for his goals, but it always felt different with each other. Even when neither of them had known what to make of it yet: the embers of a searing, damning secret half-formed to warm the chest on cold nights. Nameless and shapeless, yet its presence was felt.
On those evenings, the two of them had set aside whatever ill will had settled into the pits of their lungs. The heavy resentment of China’s leaders, the unwavering suspicion of the game of politics. The cold calculation of Soviet’s politburo, ruthless and impersonal in its gambits, sacrifices made with someone else’s neck on the line.
The two of them set up camp by the glow of the firelight and formed the bonds that soldiers might have made with each other. Far away from home, masking fear and inexperience, pictures of mothers and brothers tucked into the deepest cranny of the uniform like the dirty secret of vulnerability.
Soviet had always fought like a human, right in the thick of the battlefield with his men. Dirt streaked across his cheek, strands of hair sticking to his face with sweat and messy from his helmet. Bandages visible from where part of his clothes had been singed away in the blast, changing the dressings himself because that was before he had ever let anyone else treat his wounds—even the medics.
Soviet had turned to China and looked at him intently as if he was truly interested in talking to him, fire playing across his features and casting them in harsh shadow.
“How are you?”
There were a million things that could have been said between them, countless tensions weighing on their strung-up minds and ready to sever this tenuous connection. Instead, China told him, “Good,” before he was choked by how sheerly ridiculous it sounded. “Well. I’ve been better.”
His response sent Soviet into a bout of surprised laughter. “Should we discuss it then, comrade?”
China gave him a sideways glance, a smile fighting its way onto his face. “I think you know enough about it already.”
They never spared a thought about it afterward, but somehow this is what made its way into China’s head on those nights many decades later.
It was far from simple, but in retrospect it was the easiest that things could truly get between them. Talking across the campfire as if the world ceased to exist for a moment, as if not a single barrier stood between the two of them joking and laughing with each other. Was there anything more human than companionship—the simplest and purest form of love?
China remembers his god by the moments when his divinity was stripped away from him, laid bare in the dirt at his feet and the slight hunch of his shoulders after a long battle.
Taking things apart revealed the imperfect, the incomplete, the uncertain. Those words by structure implied that something was lacking: negating prefixes that informed you of what wasn't rather than what was. In the interest-cold representatives of nations, it solidified the urge to rectify the wrong, provide what is needed and demanded. In humans, it prompted a reassurance; despite this, because of it— I will love you anyway.
That was how China loved Soviet, irrationally and completely—like a human.
-
On a single day each year, he allowed himself a single moment of indulgence in the irrational. Theoretically, there was no reason why an anniversary should prompt any more pain or emotion than any other day of the year. Representations of nations didn’t have the privilege to grieve like humans, because their obligations wouldn’t ever end and the world would never stop turning for anyone. On this day, none of that mattered.
He crouched before the headstone, running his fingers across the cracked surface. The lake behind it was frozen over, far away from the sea. His annual fare of sunflowers lay at the foot of the grave as China polished at the stone with his sleeve, clearing away the snow and debris that clung to it.
If China had asked him now— how are you and I different from humans? — he doesn’t know whether Soviet would still have that same answer for him, after all was said and done.
China thinks he would do anything to ask him that again, to test every refutation which he has accumulated for Soviet’s words in his lived experiences. Or maybe China wouldn’t say anything at all, just to see the self-satisfied expression that settled over his mentor’s face when it seemed that he had rendered his student speechless. So terrible, so terribly human.
Perfection would later come to be what he demanded from Soviet, impossibly high expectations that could never be fulfilled. It was what forced and fractured them apart for all those decades, yet a nation could not promise anyone perfection. It could only offer a flawed effort made with everything it had, identical to a human in this regard. It didn’t matter whether that was enough, because it simply had to be until it wasn’t anymore. Given the chance, China would go back in a heartbeat to stop himself from cutting short the time they had together. To tell Soviet, desperately, that was enough, but he never could—and that fact would just have to be enough for China.
In another life or another timeline, I will take you to the ocean, is the silent pledge he makes to Soviet’s grave, another empty promise destined to fall through the cracks and be forgotten to history.
The sky would be blue, and clear enough to see the sun during the day and to see the stars at night. There would be salt spray on their skin, sunlight breaking across their faces, scattering and sparkling over the waves. There would be room to dream as delusionally as they wished, to claim to belong to each other for as long as they lived. The sunset would dye the ocean in red and gold, and that loss would never be a tragedy because there would be infinite time to wile away, a hundred more sunsets to see. There would be a sea of stars to guide wanderers in the right direction, to promise that a long night would always have an end.
And now, the sun was rising, wasn’t it? It mottled across the frozen lake, hitting the back of Soviet’s gravestone and throwing a watercolour shadow over the snow. Fears and uncertainties scattered free like cockroaches beneath lamplight. The daylight demanded that grief be shelved away, a brightness too burning and blinding to accommodate it. Too full of possibilities to allow it to fester.
China stood up and turned away, pale sunlight dripping across his skin like a beginning. No, a continuation, because history would always be a part of him whether he liked it or not. The sun’s gaze felt like his own warm exhale visible in the frigid air. Like a declaration that he was still breathing, still fighting.
-
The morning light slanted across his sheets, chasing ghosts that were slipping away. It was one of those rare days when China woke up in his bed without any midnight wanderings cutting his sleep short.
If you asked China what was the single most human thing about them, he would have told you it was the instinct to get back up again, the will to survive no matter the odds. To put one foot in front of the other, and again, and again.
The sound of life outside the window was the reminder that the world would never stop turning for anyone, no matter what. The cruelest fact of life to regret, the most venerating salvation to succumb to.
China stepped forward.