You surprise me with just how perfect you are

[buyan]

Russia has seen many things throughout his many centuries of life, has spent more than he'd like to count out at arms and knee deep in the swill of war. So this war? It is not a thing he thinks much of when it comes time to don the navy of his Infantry Officer's uniform; simply another war to march into, another battle to win, another time for him to become just another dog of the military. It was expected of a nation, expected of him, and Russia's good about that.

But he didn't expect the absolute failure of Tannenburg. Didn't expect Nikolai to call him back, didn't expect the rolling disquiet of the public he could feel murmuring under his skin and at the back of his mind to have such an effect upon the atmosphere of his House. There's a solemn edge to his shoulders even as his Royal children gather about, small hands in his own and smiles upon young faces. Russia could usually lose himself in their stories, but there's a chill upon his land and it's not just his Father's touch.

Because the thing is (and he's certain of this after months spent out on the bleary war front), Saint Petersburg is gloomy. It's bleary, bleak, miserable beyond that which words can express. It taints the air and has Russia's shoulders turning up about his ears as he steps through the dim streets. There's something coming, something he can feel in his veins and it's distressing. Death perhaps, the press of foreign armies at his border, he doesn't let himself think it's anything other but either way he's on edge and---all of a sudden when he blinks its as if he's staring in a mirror.

There's a long, silent moment because there...definitely wasn't a mirror in the middle of the street five seconds ago. Well. Okay then, just going to casually blink and turn around, clearly things were bad enough he was hallucinating.

Comments

[licensetokol]

Of all the places to be deposited, another individual might have thought.

Such a thing did not even flit through Russia's mind, let alone take up permanent residence there. Troubled times were not so rare in his past that it seemed any especially bad luck to be deposited into one. On the contrary, Russia could have imagined several periods when he would have faced even more difficulty than he did at the current moment - times of chaos within his own borders, perhaps, or times in a past so far distant that even moving about would prove a challenge.

Still, for all the practical matters which are neatly seen to (clothing requisitioned from unwitting patriots, period-incongruous items carefully accounted for and made safe), he does not appreciate the less material aspects of the time and place into which he has been deposited. That he knows the eventual outcome of the coming months and years is no consolation - a vast and yawning ugliness still stretches between this time and his own, and even as an outsider to this era he can still feel an unrest quivering through the watery spaces of his body, like a sound too deep to hear. It sits cold and heavy in his belly, and he draws his coat tighter against the coming nightfall in three bleak dusks, hoping silently that the morning will find him ninety-eight years in the future.

But it never does. It is on the fourth day, when he has just begun to believe that England has probably landed himself in even worse trouble, that the midmorning foot traffic parts and he is looking upon himself. The moment is too surreal to question, not unlike the split-second of sweet and drifting peace before an automobile crash, and he has just begun to look curious when his other self turns to walk away. It is a vision that mirrors the chill in his bones too perfectly, and he lifts his voice before the thought has even properly sunk in that he is seeing himself.

"You do not want to talk?"