Crossing Borders [Hetalia]

тринадцать - in transit

"Dude, is she gonna... wake up?"

Arthur shakes his head, pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation. The frosty glass of water Toris offered him upon his slight recovery sits unused, still full on the side table beside him, tiny drops of condensation crawling downwards from the lip like a steady procession of retreating soldiers.

"It's hard to say, Alfred," he murmurs, looking at the antsy blonde from beneath his heavy brows. "I warned you this could have repercussions," he reminds him, though the expected sting of I told you so is notably absent. "And the memories I glimpsed.... Mind you, I was only skimming the surface but what I saw was so... bleak. What we've returned to her, her life as Siberia.... it may not have been a blessing."

"Wait." Alfred raises both hands, palms forward, the universal sign for let's backtrack a moment. "So you're saying that Val is the personification of Siberia? You were serious about that?"

"I can see where you're going with that," the Brit interrupts; Alfred closes his mouth, desperately ignoring the rosy tint to his cheeks. With a sigh, Arthur goes on, "They're not related, if that's what's gotten you so grim. The region of Siberia is... acquired territory, so to speak, which makes their relationship much the same as ours." He pauses, a web of thought furrowing his brows. "Well, not quite the same, I suppose. Whereas we developed a sort of..."

The blonde grits his teeth, biting back a torrent of memories bubbling just below the surface; Alfred wisely chooses to refrain from egging him on.

... a sort of brotherly bond," he says at last, the tension retreating from his taut features, "they remained strangers."

"Strangers? But that doesn't even make sense. They woulda met sometime, right? Like how you and Francey Pants met me!"

"Again, not quite. Siberia was - is - a bit of a recluse. She spent her early days hiding herself in the snow and tundra, from what I can gather from her memories. She had little to no human contact until... well, until Ivan rescued her a few months ago."

"But..."

"Why did she need rescuing in the first place?" Arthur guesses. The thrum of echoing silence is answer enough. "Yes, well, that part isn't any more pleasant than the rest of her story. In truth... Siberia was fading.

"Siberia, in her earliest days of civilization, was completely made up of nomadic tribes of varying backgrounds, scarcely populated. It wasn't until the 1500s that Russia's influence began to creep east and into Siberia, and from then on it steadily claimed the region as its own territory, ridding it of the nomads and populating it with Russian citizens. This was when Siberia's power began to crumble."

"That doesn't make sense, though," Alfred interjects. From the corner of his eye he observes the Baltics fretting over the young girl spread out on the sofa; he's eerily reminded of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. "I mean... just 'cause she was absorbed into Russia doesn't mean she would disappear. Siberia still exists... right?"

It's a valid question, one Arthur isn't quite sure how to answer. "Well, the only thing I can think of to explain that... Her native people were driven out. Or, I suppose it's more accurate to say she never had a native people to begin with, considering they were all of other races. I've never heard of anyone who claims to be Siberian, have you?" Alfred mumbles a sullen no. "Right. And perhaps her powers as a personification have been declining since her birth, in the sense that she's never received power from any of her people."

"In any case," he goes on, having subdued the American's questions for the time being, "then came these past fifty or so years. Whatever power she'd been clinging to was finally running dry. She was beginning to fade. According to her memories, to stave off... dying, she went into a sort of hibernation. She awoke randomly this year, probably due to some freak event in the world. But she'd been asleep for so long that she'd completely forgotten everything. Her life as a 'country', her name... everything. And she went wandering around and... Well, we know the rest."