Likho

Red Dawn

Soviet was startled awake from the small spurt of nap he had been able to catch with Ukraine missing now and a particularly bad nightmare to a sense of power, of knowledge, of Being flooding into his veins.

His breath stopped.

He knew that feeling.

Maybe not this exact shade, but he was a personification of a people, then of a Navy, then of a Union. He knew what this was, even if this exact flavor of head-spinning power-induced vertigo was not one he had experienced personally.

He stifled a cry.

He needed to know.

He needed to know which one of his sons was dead.

Everyone else was accounted for, locked in the house since Ukraine had been taken.

Was it Ukraine?

Or was it his other son, the one he sent off to the Americas, to the US of A, his old rival, to see if he could figure out what was going on? The one who had already reported so much danger, so many threats to his life?

Soviet did not want to look at himself.

As much as he needed to know, he could not bear seeing either of their flags on his face. His face was supposed to be a flag no longer used for its original purpose. He did not want this flag, whichever it was. He wanted his sons, both of them, back here.

Under his control.

Safe.

Alive.

But he knew that stalling would not give him that. Stalling would only lead to greater harm, greater heartbreak.

If he couldn't keep control, if he couldn't fix this.

As he stood to walk over to his mirror and check his face, he noticed numbly that his hands were glowing.

He'd lost control of his magic, then. So tightly under wraps for so very many years.

He took a step across the room, then another.

His magic would be the last thing he'd lose control of.

Nothing more.

He would get his living son back.

He would keep everyone else safe.

He would avenge his son.

Or die trying.

He looks up into the mirror, his eye meeting a muted red mouth.

Maybe he was wrong and something else had happened.

But then his eye travels further up, and the hope that had dared lift wing in his chest was squashed.

A muted blue, and an off white.

Fuck

He felt himself sink to the floor. His head hit his hands, his elbows hit his thighs, and his eyes were streaming with tears. Silent sobs racked his body.

Russia was...

He shook himself.

He needed answers, he needed them now, and he knew exactly how to get them.

He stood up.

He reached under his bed and grabbed the small backpack he always kept ready. He threw on his coat, his boots, and pulled a scarf tight around his face, tucking it under his ushanka.

The run to the train station would be shorter than trying to get any other form of transportation.

He throws his door back, barely registering that everyone sitting in the living room except Alaska and Hawai'i jump.

"Stay here. Do not leave. Hawai'i is in charge." He cannot manage any language but Russian. He knows his children will translate for Hawai'i.

Kazakhstan was the only one of his children to be looking at his face, and Soviet saw his face fall and him begin to open his mouth to ask what had happened, but he shook his head and turned away, coat twirling behind him.

He slammed and locked the door behind him.

America had questions to answer.