lightning over the tatras

Aneta pulled her knees to her chest, gazing out at the dark Russian sky. She was perched atop a wooden crate in her bedroom, the bedroom that wasn't really hers. The city lights blotted out the stars, but as someone who had been alive for hundreds of years, she knew the positions of them all, anyway.

Summer was drawing to an end, and soon September would bring an array of colorful leaves to the northern hemisphere. After three years of living in Moscow, as was the deal made by her, her partner, and the personification of the Soviet Union, she still was not used to the Russian seasons. The winter came much earlier here than it did in Czechoslovakia, and therefore the leaves turned bright sooner. The temperatures back home were still hot, but here, they were getting cool. It wasn't odd for September to be chilly. It was different.

She didn't like it.

"Moscow looks beautiful tonight, now, doesn't it?"

The words were spoken clearly in Russian, and Aneta spun around in shock, nearly tumbling to the ground in terror. As she looked up at the intruder, she was greeted not with the representative of the Soviet Union, but instead with a face she had been familiar with most of her life.

"Slovakia!" she growled.

He snickered. "My Russian is getting pretty good, don't you think?"

It was, Aneta couldn't deny that. The words flowed past his lips as confidently as any other Russian citizen she had ever met, not like she would ever admit it.

"Janko, you need to stop doing that," she hissed back, still in Russian. She still had a thick accent, and her grammar was slightly flawed, but at least her German was better than his.

"Why? Afraid that some big, scary commie might come and abduct you?" He held out a hand to help her to her feet. She stuck out her tongue but accepted the assistance anyway. "You are quite the grump, aren't you?" Janko muttered, switching over to Czech, which he was nearly fluent in. There were still mistakes that Aneta caught onto, of course, but she never had the heart to correct him. Not when he had tried so hard to become familiar with her language and culture after they had decided to unite.

Aneta was not sure if she could say the same for herself.

"How are you doing, love?" Janko asked as he sat down beside her. The joking tone from his voice had gone, and now he was looking at her with an affectionate sadness in his eyes.

"Oh, fantastic." She fell silent for a moment, then smirked. "In fact, better than I've ever been. It would be even better if Ivan stopped trying to get me into his bed."

Janko's gaze immediately whipped to her face. "He's still on that? He hasn't learned his lesson?"

Aneta rubbed her wrist, where just the night before, Ivan had grabbed her after she denied his advancements. She ended up with a sprained wrist, but he ended up with a black eye, courtesy of the young woman herself. Win some, lose some, she muttered in her head.

"I guess not. But I don't understand why he's trailing after me when he can have Romania or Bulgaria or Belarus or whoever else is wiggling their ass in his direction."

Janko made a face. "Belarus is Russia's sister! That's disgusting." Then his grimace morphed into a smirk. "And it's not like Romania and Bulgaria are desperate to begin with. They have each other!"

Aneta gazed at him for a second as the words sunk in, then she burst into a fit of laughter, the constant weight in her chest feeling lighter than it had in months. Janko took the opportunity to wrap an arm around her shoulders.

"But," he murmured, "I wouldn't be surprised if they did, considering how...friendly they are."

Aneta wiped tears from her gray eyes. "If they did what? Slept with Russia or with each other?"