Work Text:
When it's cold
And the world ends
I wanna be high
– 013, Ashmedai
December 25th, 1991
The sweet sensation of absolute power, that so sapid, so ambrosian, was one he had come to know in the pitiless summer of 1945 and had chased like a drug ever since. In every motion, every movement, every advancement he pushed in the name of necessary triumph, he had craved for the exhilaration like shooting tar into his veins, and had fed from the adrenaline of success like the purest, most beautiful crystal.
It was all self-serving, in truth. Done for little reason more than just to prove that he could. That he had risen above those before him, they who had doubted him, who had looked down upon him with scorn and laughed their greedy lungs empty. He had overcome every obstacle, surpassed every meager expectation, and had come out through everything live and on top. He had walked through the rubble of the eastern empire, stood before the nation on its knees, that which he had brought down there himself, and been gratified. Unbothered to try and hide the contentedness from revealing itself upon his smile, the smugness from lacing through his aura—and though been decent enough not to say it aloud, had thought to himself: Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
Now, some nearly fifty years later, it had all come unto him again. The euphoria of victory, rising up to grace him; to envelop him as ardently and familiarly as an old friend, as eagerly as a lover. It ran hot in his blood, keeping him warm even as he stepped unbidden through the frosted streets of Moscow, and nothing else had ever felt so right. What a fine way to spend his evening, he thought, and hummed a little tune for the satisfaction of it.
Alfred was, admittedly, not actually supposed to be in Moscow at all. Bush had given no approval for it, and, as far as Alfred was aware, was under no impression that his Nation was not exactly where he was supposed to be. That was, perhaps, tucked up at home listening to carols over the radio, or watching Rankin-Bass television specials, or something else similarly domestic. Maybe spending time with his quote-unquote family like a regular person—as though Alfred had actually done such a thing in true earnest since he’d been no more than a colony. Oh, for all that he saw the attraction and merit in the cultural celebrations, the aged and ever-growing traditions of Christmas and the rest, he really just had no time these days for inane ventures spent in urge to commemorate the holidays. And anyway, he was certain that the gratification he was to receive now in this journey would far surpass any gift his brother could possibly have gotten him.
He came slow to a stop, and before him stood the dreary abode of his one greatest rival. It was a fast-delapidating gosdacha, which might have once been a fine home but had long since grown visibly neglected. It was of splintering wood and chipping paint, and the stone stoop Alfred stepped upon to reach the front entrance was overgrown with dead foliage and cracking dangerously open. He looked down, swiping the sole of one shoe against the surface to hear the grit of the loose pebbles, and raised a humored eyebrow up.
A hand upon the doorknob told him the door had been bolted shut, but that meant nothing to him. Through the entrance he went, when a firm twist had broken the lock, and there he found upon stepping in the single object of his every impulsive desire. Russia, lonesome, standing at attention in the corner of the compact main room like a rabid, caged animal. Alfred closed the door behind him out of courtesy, though he wasn’t positive it fit so entirely well in its frame anymore, and leaned his back against it, facing the other. He smiled pleasantly, hands in his pockets and ankles crossed, and said, with a casualness that did not befit the stiffness of the atmosphere surrounding him, “Hi there.”
Ivan's manner in response made him seem to Alfred only all the more akin to a dog, the way the black pupils of his ever-wide eyes had thinned to sharp slits, and how his clenched teeth were bared threateningly when he growled out in return, “You.”
Well, he thought, he could have some fun with this. Alfred put out his hands, palms forward, and shook them jazzily. “Me!”
Ivan did not seem very tickled by the showy display. If anything, his indignation, hampered as it was just so by the caution he so clearly held throughout him, seemed only to grow. “You dare come to me now?” he hissed.
Alfred's amusement came in the breath of his short exhale, a little chuckle far more gentle than he felt at all himself. He lowered his arms and shrugged noncommittally, playing a face of innocent ignorance. "Well, what do I gotta be afraid of?”
A calculated jibe, to poke at the sleeping bear. He knew well that Ivan could not possibly be handling the fall of his grand communist dominion with grace, and to remind him of that, his fast overtaking weakness—when he had before been so proud of how well he kept pace with America—was sure to anger him fierce. Or so Alfred hoped, at least.
The Russian's face curled up in contempt, and his voice held venom like a vitriolic snake when he spat out next, quelling the short-lived doubts of his intruder, "Иди на хуй (Fuck you)."
Well, as appealing as that sounded, he had no time for that, though he was sure he’d miss it. Alfred laughed again, a heartier thing from the thick of his chest. “I don't think you're in any kinda position to be doing that right now,” he said, his smile playing impish, “but thanks for the offer.”
“What are you doing here?” Ivan questioned. His words were slow and drawn out, and his eyes narrowed with suspicion. “You have no reason to be here.”
Alfred pushed himself off the door and began to step leisurely about the room, taking in idly the few details of the space. It was not a room of especial decor, as was customary for the people of his political disposition to oppose the private ownership of luxury and extravagance. And at that, Ivan had not been so opulent since the fall of his monarchy. His possessions were aged, perhaps some even older than Alfred himself, and nothing that he had bought. Gifts, or things taken. Probably some things from his sisters, and likely pillaged from his subordinates; and so the only things left being whatever they had all failed to take back when they'd fled him. Out of everything, the house was probably the most lavish thing that he truly owned—or it had been at some point, at least.
Alfred could feel the other’s eyes trailing him like a hawk’s with every one movement he made. “Well, what, can’t I just come and check on a friend?”
“Friend,” Ivan repeated, and scoffed a harsh laugh. “Right, yes. Do not try to be funny, Jones.”
Perhaps it did seem sort of like a joke, to try and relegate them to something as simple and certain as that. There was no one particular term that could describe them, Alfred thought. Nothing that could encapsulate with true ease every intricacy and detail of their ceaselessly-faceted relationship. Once, perhaps, they had been honest acquaintances, something unadorned and without fault. What had ruined it, since then? Collapse and reconstruction, the molding of the new from the old; and then, that the phoenix reborn had been too unlike the ashes it had risen from.
They had been since, all at once, allies and enemies and bedroom lovers. Brutal adversaries, but then, at the very same time, the only two who could ever pray to understand each other. He considered, in thought, if one of them might be able to live without the other, and how they would go on. Perhaps, on this night, he might come to find out.
“Aw, c’mon, we can pause the animosity for one night,” Alfred grinned, all teeth, white and perfect. Perhaps a touch too wide. “It’s Christmas, you know, and you’re having such a tough time and all. I feel like I’m being pretty considerate here.”
“There is an ulterior motive; there is always one with you,” Ivan maintained. He really was so stubborn sometimes, which was something Alfred had oft enjoyed about him, even for the intermittent times that it’d been more aggravating than anything. He thought it was sort of inspiring to see Ivan so assured in his ways, so heartily steadfast. It made it, to him, all the more satisfying to go in and break that wall down. Chipping at it until it fell, as in Berlin. An immovable object versus an unstoppable force.
“You think so little of me.” It was not an unwarranted statement from the former, considering everything, but Alfred liked to complain just for the sake of it when he found himself able. It didn’t hurt anything, really, except perhaps some capacity for patience. “Seriously, can’t a guy just pop in for a visit every now and then? Maybe I had a Christmas gift to give you.”
Ivan considered him, unfurling from his position against the wall only slightly. Yet he imagined aloud, at the same time, “Ah, a nice shot to the head, perhaps.”
“I don’t have a gun,” Alfred tsked. “You’re so freakin’ paranoid.”
“You have no gun with you?”
He huffed a show of disbelief, as though that much ought to have been obvious. “And just how do you suppose I’d get that through airport security?”
Ivan, in return, gave him a flat look. “One would not consider that you would have made this journey through the legal routes.”
Alfred let his demeanor of faux-offense fall and shrugged again, absentminded. “Well, maybe not,” he conceded, but left it at that. Still walking aimlessly about, he stopped finally before a dark wood buffet pushed up against the wall, lined on its smoothed surface with little trinkets of various order. He picked up a medium-sized matryoshka doll, likely the mother of the bunch. “These are cute,” he commented amiably, lifting up the top to view its duplicate, downsized innards. “Is this how you keep yourself occupied these days, dusting off your little knick-knacks? I mean, since you don’t have Tolys to do it for you anymore.”
"Put it down," Ivan snapped. "Чёрт (Devil). Stop touching things."
Alfred sucked his teeth and chuckled, but obliged accordingly. He replaced the top and restored the figure to its spot, tracing the tabletop a final time before turning away from the sideboard. “It was an honest question,” he defended, looking to Ivan again. Behind his back, he slipped into his sleeve a souvenir. “I notice there’s no Swan Lake looping on every device this time, so I got curious. I think anyone would wonder what you get up to all holed up by yourself. God forbid.”
“No one is so nosy as you,” the other returned, and his lip curled up in distaste as he spoke it. Which, yes, perhaps that was true. But Alfred found it well to know as much as one could about their opponent, to hunt for any openings of weakness. Personally, he thought that should make him more conversant than nosy. Russia just always had to go and make everything sound negative.
Alfred drawled, sarcastic, “Oh, how kind you are. Don’t stroke my ego too much.”
“Why are you here?" Ivan demanded again. If Alfred tuned his hearing just enough, rattled the outputs of his brain just so, he could almost hear that the other sounded desperate, pleading to know. Alfred liked him like that, desperate. He fought back the simpering grin threatening to play across his lips, pushing the satisfaction back down lest he give himself away.
“How many times are you going to ask the same question? I told you, man, I just wanted to see how you were holding up. Let me not be an asshole for once, yeah?”
Ivan reached into his coat and pulled from the inner folds of it a shining pistol. Without hesitation, and only the very minor shaking of his hand, he pointed the barrel across the way directly at Alfred's head. Voice low, husky with malignancy, he told him, "I do not believe you.”
Slowly, a smirk grew upon Alfred’s face. There it is, came the thought, hot in his mind like a rushing ray of light. Finally. You know meekness ain't such a good look on you, doll.
"How did you get in?” Ivan grilled. His brows were pulled tight over those still contracted eyes of his, and Alfred found that he could scarcely look away from them—only, not by reason of fear; if anything, something precisely opposite. “I do not understand."
He meant to know how Alfred had gotten into the country more than he meant to know how Alfred had gotten into the house. Evident that he didn’t buy any of that crap about public airports. Not like Alfred had very much expected him to, anyway, but it was just so fun to tease him like that. No, of course the official channels were off the table; that much was obvious. How else would Alfred be able to sneak around under the government’s nose, after all?
"I have my ways," he replied, nonchalant in that way of his he knew only ever irritated Russia further. Especially when he had a gun pointed to his head. "Don't worry about it.”
Ivan barked a short laugh, harsh and angry. His gaze bore fire upon Alfred's being, but he did not burn by it. In fact, he relished it, the warmth in the malice. It evinced that, above all, Russia still cared in some aspect. Alfred wasn't quite sure what he would have done had he walked in here to find the other cold and catatonic. It surely wouldn't have been as entertaining, in any case.
Yes, that was all it came down to, in the end: entertainment. Something to occupy him, to satiate his ever-festering need for advancement. Alfred had never been so good at staying stationary, and he seemed to bore so easily in recent. Really, he’d not even realized how much he had craved it until it had come upon him, all of the anxiety, all of the thrill, every wound and every ague—the fast-pacedness of his heart, the marks upon his skin, and certainly the high blood pressure that the race had brought unto him at times… It had all almost been like a thing of God. Holy and divine; that which, even if he had not appreciated them in the moment, he had later come to cherish. The things of the weakness of regular humans, but things nonetheless that proved that he was real, that he was alive. The things that portrayed his eagerness in winning, and how much he craved to drive his opponent down into dissolution.
He wondered, very briefly, when it had been that he'd become so callous. He thought it must have been Russia who had made him this way; Ivan who had ruined him.
“Really, you've gotta calm down,” Alfred aired, and slowly, very slowly, he came close to Ivan, every footstep upon the hard floor almost echoing in the heavy, sudden silence of the room. They both seemed to hold their breath, and though Ivan’s pistol did not falter, nor did Alfred; and finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Alfred stopped just before him, palms raising up to graze Ivan’s cold cheeks, and the muzzle of the gun pressed an indent into his forehead.
“You’re so uptight,” He looked up at Ivan through his lashes, and his smile came up small, relaxed, as though trying to be soothing. “That’s what got you into this mess to begin with.”
"Заткнись (Shut up)."
Alfred laughed breathily. Leaning forward, pushing the cool metal further into his skin, his eyes fluttered shut as he assured the other, ever soft, “You can do it, if you want to. If it’ll really make you feel better.”
He could not see Ivan’s expression, what with his view obscured and face so low, but he could hear in the other’s voice the skepticism that brought on his hesitance. Ivan questioned, almost cautious, “You would let me shoot you and put up no fight?”
Alfred nodded slow against the gun. It moved with him, up and down. “I don’t mind.”
Ivan scoffed again. “You have lost your mind, is what it is.”
“Maybe I just wanna help you out. Do you a favor, y’know.”
“And when have you ever been so gracious?”
“I can be,” his palm ran over Ivan's broad shoulder, down his chest. He heard the other's breath hitch slightly. “When I wanna be.”
Ivan hummed, a low rumble from the base of his throat. Alfred could feel the pressure of the muzzle against his forehead lessen minutely. “Is that so?”
“Mhm.” He opened his eyes to find Ivan looking down straight at him, emotion indiscernible, but the narrowing of his lids had lessened, and so too the tight pinchedness of his face. Alfred trailed the hand back up until it reached the covered nape of Ivan’s neck, and toyed with the worn fabric of the scarf wrapped around there. “So, can you put the gun down now, baby?”
Ivan raised one thick brow up slightly. “I thought you’d let me shoot you,” came the rehash from his parted lips, “if I wanted to.”
Fingers rose still until they could card through the short ends of Ivan’s silver hair. Sleek, but brittle. “But you don’t, do you, or you would’ve already. Am I right?”
Ivan tsked, but just as Alfred had expected, the pistol came gradually away from his head, and Ivan’s arm returned to his side, placing it down. “You think you may charm your way out of everything,” he said, sounding as though he were trying to give off an air of disapproval, but Alfred thought he seemed pretty charmed, all things considered. How the monolith softened steadily under his careful touch, malleable like clay, ripe for Alfred to take and form as he pleased; the glacial ice melting under the unrelenting eye of the sun. He drank it up like nectar, that intoxicating sensation.
“Not everything,” Alfred returned. “If you really do want to, I won’t stop you. But I think-”
He was cut off, suddenly, by the feeling of Ivan's lips crushing against his. Again, muffled against the pucker, he heard Ivan mutter the demand for silence again, and Alfred smiled and laughed through his nose for it before opening his mouth dutifully and allowing the other entrance.
Ivan fed upon him like a man frantic, despondent and starving, as though he were drowning in all of his turmoil and Alfred’s warm breath held the only oxygen left in all the world for him. Maybe that was so—Alfred wasn’t quite sure. For everything he had been made to endure in the sparse few centuries since his birth, every torment he had suffered, never had he been so close to destruction as the Soviet Union stood then. Not in any plague, in any war, in anything he could ever recall. Perhaps Ivan feared the same fate as Gilbert: Russia doomed to complete dissipation, land left to be cannibalized by the neighbors remaining. Only this time, it’d be by its own hand, and not by the hand of the victors of war. It was not America taking down the Soviet Union, as much as Alfred enjoyed the idea of that. No, they had done this to themselves. Ivan was to be killed, in all proper essence, by his own people, and that was why it did not matter what scourge Alfred put upon his weakening flesh here and now. All it would be, in truth, was the finishing point. The sharp ring of finality.
And America would be all that was left. The ultimate champion, as fate had written it, as Alfred had always known that he would be. Better than all, forevermore, in all of past, present, and future. What a wonderful, beautiful thing. All that he deserved for all that he had done for the world, and he was doubtless in that assurance. I've tried for too long.
Upon one short break for air, Alfred went carefully, with the one hand already up there, to unwrap the scarf from its covering of Ivan’s protected neck. It was no secret, of course, all that laid hidden underneath, the wounds of weakness that the man went so far to conceal. Alfred had seen them all before, in the times Ivan had revealed himself wholly, stripped bare. When their tensions had coalesced together and melted down into bed and nothing else had mattered outside of that. The warm, instinctive vulnerability of sex; something tightroping upon love, toeing the precipice, though still not quite there. Something feeble, something newborn—primal and animalistic, but so, so human.
Alfred wondered if that was what Ivan had envisioned when he'd spoken of ulterior motives. His heart beat very near to the surface of his chest, and Alfred could feel it for how close the two of them stood there, pressed together in need. A shame, then, that Alfred had to go and disappoint him by doing what he did next. He twitched his lowered arm, and from the fold of his sleeve the souvenir he had hidden slipped down, bracing concealed in his palm. He gripped with his other the hair at the crown of Ivan’s head, yanking it back until the space was entirely exposed. And in one swift motion, he raised the weapon up there to the already-scarred skin that had revealed itself upon the unraveling of the scarf, and drew it hard across the fibrous flesh and slit Ivan's throat.
Ivan stumbled back, shellshocked, slamming into the corner of the wall again. His large hands went shakily beneath his maw, and he stared down at the slick blood quickly coating them like he didn’t entirely understand where it was coming from, or what had just happened. Alfred took a step away and watched him with wide eyes, awaiting, though for what he was not entirely certain. Perhaps for Ivan to snap out and attack him in turn. Perhaps for the gun to be gripped and raised again, and for a smooth bullet to be buried in the space between his eyes. The anger would be familiar, and so too the violence. Maybe it would be warranted, even, as penance for the trickery, even for all that Ivan had grown so awfully weak. But for all that Alfred stood there, for all that he anticipated his karma almost impatiently, none of it ever came.
“What did you do,” Ivan rasped, almost disgustingly hoarse, and it was hardly so a question as much as a stunted, garbled exclamation of disbelief. "Какого хуя (What the fuck). What did you do."
He thought of the old song. That tune, some one score in age, played a loop in the recesses of his mind, blending through with the overlap of his every rushing, screaming thought. And so this is Christmas, and what have we done?
Perhaps Alfred ought to have soothed him, ought to have balked at his own actions and fell into a whirl of horrified apologies. I’m sorry, he should have said, Oh God, I’m so, so sorry, I don’t know why I-
“It’s okay,” Alfred told him, frighteningly calm. A soft murmur, like a parent comforting a terrified child. “It has to happen. It has to be this way.”
He did not defend himself, did not explain himself. There was no remorse to be relinquished as he watched Ivan slide down the wall to the floor, front stained fast with beckoning scarlet, and he crouched low to meet his agonized eyes as Ivan forced out, “What?”
The wound was not so deep that he couldn’t speak, not yet, only so much so that it likely pained him terribly to do so. Alfred considered the sight of it, the flapping skin and unveiled sinew, torn from the serration and darkening against the cold air. He had the sudden urge to dig his fingers in there and see what he couldn’t rip out himself, bare dirtied hands and all.
“You had a good run,” Alfred consoled. “Did some cool shit. But this has all gone on too long, and you’re going to die anyway, you have to realize. By tomorrow, your commie empire will be gone, and America will be the only power left. As it always should’ve been. Your time is up.”
“So, what,” croaked Ivan, low and wet, “you just come to speed the process along?”
“I guess you could say that. Came to prove a point, mostly.”
“And what… would that be?”
I'm like a God, don't you know? I am the greatest, the greatest, I am the only one to ever exist. The only one who has ever mattered. With you fallen, I stand alone, now, on the highest pulpit of the world stage, the first-place stand of the winner's podium. I am the most powerful Nation in the entire world; unbeatable, unbreakable. I always win, and I always will, and it was always going to end this way. You never had a chance, not for real. Success is all that I know, and all that I ever want to, and I would do anything to keep it that way. Anyone who doubts me, who goes against me, will be razed down until they relent. Until they fall before me, either subservient or dead, and I stand forever above. Just as it is now.
You refuse to submit, Russia, and that is why you have to go. That's why I do this. Do you understand now?
Upon the floor Ivan laid, supine and gored. Alfred straddled him, planting upon his heaving midst, taking the blade again to hold before the gaping cavern he had carved upon his body. And he said, rather than all of that, “I think you know.”
And Ivan did. Perhaps that was why, rather than fighting it any longer, trying to hold his fists to his throat to staunch the escape of his lifeblood, he merely allowed a grim smile upon his scarlet-spattered face, and he coughed out, fresh ichor spilling from his trembling mouth, “Maybe. Nonetheless… I enjoyed our game. Our… time together. Amerika.”
Alfred looked down upon him, eyes half-lidded, swirling dark with something beastly. He felt no pity, not as he took his stolen weapon into the meat and sawed; as the arteries tore, spewing the slip of slaughter across the blank canvas of his own face, as the choking subsided and the other grew finally still, utterly and completely. Mania clouded his mind to lead the butchery, and nothing else mattered. Any remorse he might have felt later, any contrition, that he might come to recognize the weight of his actions and despair over them… it paled in the face of his duty, his onus to his country. America was the only thing that mattered, and Alfred could not ever want for anything that went against it. Never ever would he dare.
And so when the sun arose to the morning and the new day came upon the land, the papers would be signed that made the Soviet Union no more, and Ivan would be lying on the floor of his gosdacha still dead, and it would have all had been by Alfred's unrelenting hand. Russia would know it, if he ever came to again, and they would both know that Alfred did not regret it. They would both know, in pupils blown and skin bruised, that such an ending had always been coming.
(War is over, if you want it. War is over now.)
Russia’s head parted from his neck with a terrible wet squelch and cracked hard upon the floor. Alfred dropped the blade with a muffled clang, reddened so entirely that it would have slipped too if only his grip had not been so knuckle-white. With steady, stoic hands, he reached forth, palm upon each cheek, and lifted the pate up, up, until he could meet Ivan’s glazed-over eyes with his own.
He took in the sight with muted satisfaction, how the entrails hung from the defiled stump of the neck, a most beautiful flower of cruentus and exposed viscera, coming down like streamers of sinew to grace the celebration of America’s success. He stared for an eternity into those milky pupils, sweet violet draining out, and he… he…
A lurch. Lips met again, torn to torn, warm and quivering against cold and still. Alfred kissed him, kissed with the fervor that Ivan had before, kissed him like Russia could ever pray to kiss him back. One sharp exhale, stuttering with emotion. Too little, too late.
When he broke away, the head came down to meet the body again, and Alfred considered it for a moment longer. Two parts of one whole, rended forcibly from each other with all of the superhuman strength America had ever possessed.
At the still chest, a new, overlarge spot of red had bloomed, staining further the outercoat the body wore. Too much to simply have been drip-down from the neck wound, Alfred knew. He undid the buttons like he did when they would unclothe for intimacy, but he moved now with far more gentle nimbleness than any time they'd had sex, where they'd always acted instead with rushed desperation, and it'd been violent fucking rather than tender care. Peeling the two sides open and crawling his hand beneath the hem of his undershirt, Alfred's hand met the cool skin of Ivan's pec, coated with wetness, and felt at a protruding swell.
Well, if the viscus already tried to escape from a body living, as Ivan's was always wont to do, Alfred supposed that the meager barrier of stretched skin would not be enough to hold it back over a body dead. Coiling his grip about it, Alfred pulled out from the cloth Russia's static, beatless heart. It weighed heavy in his hand, and Alfred's fingertips curled around the sides as though he might squeeze it in his fist and crush it entirely; if he had not crushed it already, in every essence that mattered, by being such a traitor. The idea came upon him very briefly, if he should not console it with a kiss as he had the head—but then considered that, if he brought it there up to his bloodied lips, he just might bite it, take it in and feast with all of his greater greed, and so consume Russia entirely. It would be his right, as the stronger one, as the victor, wouldn't it?
After a dragging moment of deliberation, he uncurled his digits and took up the old weapon once more in his other hand. With the last dregs of his bloodthirsty might, he drove the blade into reviled muscle and was coated again with the essence of the dead. He dropped the organ like it had burned him, and it splatted to the floor beside its host.
It was almost a shame how pathetic Ivan had become in the end. His weakening had been steadfast, coming closer and closer over the last few years. His subordinates had forsaken him, and all snubbed him in word and decree now. Once, it had been a thrilling thing to fight him, to compete in everything. It had felt good, so good, and now there was nothing. Now, Alfred would need to find someone else. Someone worthy of going toe-to-toe with him. It'd be a hard bargain; even for as many countries as there were on the planet, they were all just so useless in comparison. Were he to pick by accident someone who could not contest him, it'd just be a waste of his time. He had thought Russia to be his man, the Soviet Union his proper competitor, and look where that had gotten them both. The end had not come with a bang, as much as America would've much rather exaggerated it to be so. Ivan had gone in a gurgle of blood, cynical acceptance his mourning shroud, and Alfred had been left there bored once again.
Don’t ask me to be sorry. Don’t make me beg for a forgiveness I know I’ll never receive. Please, just don’t.
Clement and delicate, soft fingertips came to the weary lids of the desecrated corpse, and Alfred closed Ivan’s rolled-back eyes into sleep. He rose slow after, looking down to the body beneath; something below him, something terribly unworthy. America on top, forever.
“Merry Christmas, Vanya.”