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Winter White Ribbons	By : ArcadiaEclipse Category: +G to L > Hetalia: Axis Powers Views: 3324 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Hetalia or its characters. I make no money from my writing.

Chapter List
- 1-Winter White Ribbons
- 2-Chapter Two
- 1
- 2
Warnings: Yaoi (RussiaxAmerica), violence, extreme angst, drug use, language, and explicit sexual depictions ahead. This fanfic is intended for adult readers only.

~ * ~ Winter White Ribbons ~ * ~

Chapter One

By ArcadiaEclipse

                “Dude, you’ve got McDonalds over here!”

                All of the apprehension that I previously held about visiting my Russian ally went out the window in an instant. After Ivan’s initial request that I visit his homeland to discuss the safe disposal of about a hundred nuclear warheads I didn’t know what to expect of my trip, but in this single moment, walking beside him down the street with my stomach growling, I knew that I would be just fine. The beautiful golden arches called out to me like a beacon in the desert and I was powerless to resist.

                “Your Americanisms have spread throughout my homeland rather quickly since the Cold War ended. I think we have thirty Starbucks now in Moscowalone.”

                “Really? Wow! God bless America!”

                I could detect a small hint of annoyance in his expression, but the thought of cheap burgers and overpriced gourmet coffee topped with whipped cream and dusted in chocolate made my eyes grow wide and sparkle in pure bliss. Thank God it was lunchtime!

                “Did you want to stop and get a burger?”

                “Hells yeah! Do they have McNuggets here too? And a really sweet Dollar Menu?”

                “I am honestly not certain what that is, Alfred. I have never eaten here personally.”

                I balked at him.

                “That’s a sin, Ivan! A sin! Do you see the commercials at least?”

                “I do not watch much television.”

                “Fine, but I’m still your guest and I say you’re going to eat American food with me today.”

                The similarities of this land and any American city struck a chord in my heart, but Ivan seemed almost like an alien in his own homeland. Perhaps the Westernization creeping up around him every day was rather blissfully ignored, but for now I could overlook the oddity of Ivan’s disinterest in American culture as we entered the restaurant. I was hungry enough to eat everything on the menu, and even the older blonde standing beside me paused his translation for the Russian cashier to stare at me while I rambled on and on.

                “I’ll take a number three with extra cheese, hold the pickles. And can I get a ten-piece nugget with barbeque sauce and…uh...toss in some ketchup just in case? I’d like a crispy chicken sandwich too, just the sandwich. And a number one- extra large, hold the onion. Do you guys make milkshakes? Can I get a chocolate one or do you just have vanilla?”

                The cashier was looking to my companion obviously confused, but Ivan just stared at me wordlessly with an utterly unreadable expression. He certainly was taking his sweet time relaying all of that to the man behind the register.

                “…Anything else?”

                “Oh, and a Diet Coke. You wouldn’t believe how bad real sugar is for your body.”

                There was another long pause between us while Ivan regarded me. I knew that I had seen that expression somewhere before. It was the same look that Arthur always turned on me before the Brit launched into another lecture on the dangers of diabetes and making my ass so fat that it wouldn’t fit through a doorframe. Luckily, Ivan was more the silent, reserved type, and the older man slowly relayed my very long order to the cashier.

                “What did you get?”

                “I am not hungry for this food.”

                “I thought you were going to try it! It’s really great food, Ivan. Well, it is in Americaanyway, so it’s probably going to be pretty boss here too, right? Here.” I grabbed the large bag of food from the confused casher and dug for a moment to fish out a McNugget and push it upon the large Russian. “Eat it. They’re good.”

                Although he didn’t seem terribly thrilled, Ivan did humor me and took a small bite of the nugget as we departed the restaurant and headed back to his home. Surely he must be hungry. I probably should have ordered something extra for him in anticipation of the Russian falling head-over-heels in love with the delicious fried food in my bag, but although I grinned up at him fully expecting to hear praises to my homeland cuisine the Russian just ate in silence.

                “…So?”

                “What is it? Are you still hungry?”

                “Yeah, but that’s not the point.” I laughed. “What did you think of it?”

                “It is chicken.”

                “Duh. But did you like it?”

                Ivan shrugged.

                “I like chicken.”

                Conversations with this man were usually pointless and more often than not I found myself annoyed and nursing a painful headache after any attempt to speak with him at length. Most of all, I found his heavy accent to be insanely frustrating to deal with on a regular basis. It was really fucking annoying that the other delegates spoke my language in their own native accents.

                Once we had returned to his kitchen, I sighed and watched him with my chin in my hands.

                “Your American sucks, you know.”

                “Pardon?” Ivan looked up from where he was putting my food onto a plate for me. I honestly didn’t see the point in it but he insisted that I not eat like a baboon in front of him. At least my food found its way back to me rather quickly, and I immediately feasted like a starving teenager which, in retrospect, I suppose I was.

                “Your accent,” I clarified between enormous mouthfuls. “It’s so weird. Makes it hard to understand you when you speak American to me.”

                Ivan stared at me from across the table for a long moment while watching me stuff my face in earnest.

                “You do realize that ‘American’ is a nationality, not a language. What you speak is actually English.”

                “Nah. That’s what Arthur speaks. It’s like…the uptight, super-gay dialect no sane person would be caught dead using in my country any more.”

                “…I see.”

                “Did you want some?” I grabbed a handful of napkins to wipe the smeared condiments from my mouth before spotting a lone french fry that had apparently escaped from my plate and tumbled onto the floor below. Ivan watched me pick it up and dust it off briefly before popping it into my mouth with a grin. “Five second rule!”

                “I don’t want to know.”

                “You’re sure you don’t want any?”

                “I seem to have lost my appetite somehow.”

                “Oh? That really sucks.”

                I had barely finished the last nugget before my stomach began to hurt in a way that didn’t seem like the normal discomfort from overeating. There was probably some weird Russian additive in the food that I wasn’t aware of and now my poor body was suffering from the consequences. Ivan clearly saw me clutch at my stomach and start to sweat, but the older man just watched me silently for a moment with an unsettling little smile on his lips. It probably did serve me right for eating so much, but I found his apparent pleasure stemming from my misery to be extremely annoying.

                “Ugh. I am definitely gonna be sick...”

                “Try not to vomit on yourself, Alfred. The bathroom is this way.”

                I really wished that he would hurry, but the Russian took his sweet time leading me down the lengthy hallway and into a large lavatory in the eastern wig. Forgoing all common decency, I left the door wide open while I ran to the toilet and collapsed in front of the thankfully immaculate commode just in time to purge the contents of my aching stomach. Never before had I regretted my love of hamburgers like this, but although I was nearly crying while still hunched over the toilet, something rather unexpected made me do a double take.

                Blue? What had I eaten that was blue? Surely I would have remembered that.

                Something cold and very solid moved against my ankle, however, drawing my attention behind me again just in time to see Ivan snap a thick metal shackle just above my foot. What in the world was going on?

                “Ivan…?”

                “Welcome to Russia, Alfred. Forgive me, but I must insist that you stay for awhile.”

                “You… You bastard! You poisoned my food, didn’t you?”

                “Not poisoned, no. Poison implies that I want you dead and that couldn’t be further from the truth.”

                Anger alone helped me fight the next wave of nausea washing over my body. In that moment I wanted to pound the amused smile right off of the Russian’s face, but although I snarled and lunged at him Ivan was already halfway to the bathroom door and I was unable to reach him given the limited range of the chain connecting my foot to a hook bolted deeply into the wall.

                “Ivan! Get the fuck back here!”

                But he had already departed the bathroom, purposely leaving the door open just a crack as if trying to tempt me with a freedom that I was utterly incapable of reaching at the moment. By the time that my stomach settled and whatever drug he had given me to cause the sickness had left my body, I was very aware of the silence, the mounting cold, and the miserable feeling of being utterly alone in a place run by a man that my friends whole-heartedly trusted. No one would suspect that the Russian had imprisoned me here. I still didn’t understand why Ivan would go to such lengths. He couldn’t keep me here forever. Perhaps he was planning a nuclear attack or something equally stupid though it would surely fail. My head was flooded with possibilities and it was nearly dawn before sleep overtook me, angry but exhausted.

                I awoke a few hours later hoping against hope that this was all just a bad dream but my eyes slowly focused and I took in the large bathroom again, the toilet beside my prone body, a sink just a few feet away and there, like the proud Angel of Death himself, sat Ivan in a chair tucked into the corner watching me intently. There were so many things that I wanted to yell at him, but the first thing out of my mouth was a growled “fuck you” that barely seemed to faze him.

                “Good morning to you too.”

                “Go to Hell!”

                “Aren’t you even a little curious why I decided to chain you up in my residence, Alfred?”

                At least a hundred different ideas had already paraded through my brain but none of them were appealing and at this point I didn’t really care to know the reason. The most important thing was getting free and booking the very next flight home. My thought process was interrupted, however, when Ivan stood and picked up a tray that I had missed somehow in my earlier once-over of the room, moving with a definite air of foreboding to set it in front of me. My jaw dropped.

                “Secretive though you are about your more troubled years, I am quite familiar with your history and I think that this might bring back a few memories for you as well, correct?”

                “You…W-What the Hell?”

                “We are going to play a little game, Alfred. “ He grinned but the expression held mostly malice when gesturing to the tray again. “You see before you a bag with five ounces of cocaine and everything that you will need to use it. Once you have used all of it, you are free to go.”

                It was insane! I had not touched the drug in nearly three years and now he wanted to try and tempt me into giving up everything good that had come to me since leaving my addiction behind?

                “You’re an idiot, Russian. I swore I’d never use that shit ever again and I meant it.”

                “You are in control of how long you stay imprisoned here, American. This,” he nudged the bag of white powder closer to me with his fingers, “is the key to your freedom. Above all else I am a man of my word. You are free to leave here after you play my little game.”

                Furiously I growled at him, grabbing a handful of the hypodermic needles from the tray that Ivan had given to me, but the Russian quickly shifted back a pace before I could lodge them soundly into his arm. I could no longer reach him, only listen to the older man chuckling darkly at me.

                “That isn’t very polite, Alfred.”

                My arm moved of its own volition to violently throw the needles at Ivan’s retreating body, and although the older man managed to cover his face, at least three of the needles hit their mark cleanly and remained protruding from his shoulder and thigh. There was definitely a touch of smug satisfaction on my face while I watched him pluck the needles from his flesh with a low string of curses but I refused to relent, now throwing the spoons, cotton balls, rubber bands and finally the bag of cocaine itself at him in a furious barrage of anything that I could reach and had the strength to chuck in his direction. My greatest satisfaction was seeing the bag of drugs explode when it connected with Ivan’s chest. The Russian’s grin was gone now, malice clearly etched across his face instead as he regarded me coldly.

                “If you would like the chance to win this game, Alfred, you will play by my rules however much you dislike them.”

                “Fuck you! I’m not playing your twisted little game, Russian!”

                “Oh, but you will. If you want your freedom, you will play.”

                Before I could unlace my boot to throw it at him, Ivan slipped out of the room once again leaving me alone with my thoughts. Three years it had taken me to rid myself of a powerful cocaine addiction, and although I was clean now for thirty-two months and ten days, Ivan knew of my past apparently and the Russian was bastard enough to exploit my lingering weakness for the drug. I hated him for his sick and twisted plan to test the bounds of my willpower and overall self restraint, but mainly I hated myself for the giddy, fluttering feeling rising up in my chest that bade me to try just a bit of the white powder now strewn across the floor.

                Instead, I chose to bite my lip and dull the craving with pain before rolling onto my side to turn my back on the spilled cocaine in hopes that my dreams would take my mind somewhere much farther away from my hellish imprisonment even if my body remained trapped in the nightmare that Ivan had fabricated for me.

                By the time that I awoke I had lost all sense of day and night. Ivan had probably chosen this room specifically for its lack of windows, hoping to disorient me by skewing my sense of time, but whether I had been his prisoner for hours or days it didn’t matter. I refused to give up all of the good things in my life that had only come to me since getting clean: the respect of my fellow nations, the love and sweet moments shared with my Canadian neighbor and the overall feeling of a weight being lifted off of my shoulders. I was a slave to nothing now, no drug or drink.

                And yet when I sighed and rolled over again to sit up the first thing that I saw was the tray beside me again, clean and neat with a collection of razor blades, a mirror and another bag of cocaine. Already my heart began thumping a little faster and a familiar yearning starting growing in the pit of my stomach making a bead of sweat appear on my brow and trickle down my cheek. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t let myself go down that path again no matter what he did or promised me. Deep down, I just knew…

                If I used this time I would never manage to quit again.

                “No more syringes.”

                Startled, I looked up to see the Russian sitting silently in his darkened corner again watching me stare at the drugs. Ivan’s irritatingly friendly smile was back on his face, but there was a touch of hesitation there too evidenced by the careful distance that he kept between us. Even chained as I was to the wall he didn’t trust me and that meant Ivan did not yet have the upper hand in our little standoff.

                I picked up a razor blade and smirked at him, cutting the bag of cocaine open and dumping its contents on the floor to join the white powder still dusting the tile from yesterday.

                “We can do this forever if you’d like. Eventually you’re gonna run out of cocaine though.”

                “You know, Alfred,” the Russian chuckled but rose to slowly approach me, “I considered making you shoot up every last ounce from the floor after what you did yesterday, but I am kind and didn’t think it would do your body a bit of good should there be any contaminants on the ground here. I am considerate, after all.”

                “Bullshit.”

He probably thought that I was a complete idiot. Why else would the older man suggest that any aspect of his behavior during my forced imprisonment was the Russian’s idea of compassion? Slowly Ivan came to crouch before me on the ground but instead of turning the razor blade on him this time I pressed it to my own throat making Ivan pause.

“I won’t use again. I promised myself that a long time ago.” Swallowing hard I could feel the sharp edge of the razor cutting a hairline slice into my neck while I regarded him. “Let me go or you’re gonna have a really ugly mess to clean up, Russian.”

“You don’t really want to do that, Alfred.” The gentleness in his voice rather surprised me but I wasn’t fool enough to let my guard down now when Ivan was smiling so sweetly at me just a few feet away. “I know it’s hard for you to believe me, but my intention was never to cause you any harm. I just wanted you to need me. I wanted to make you mine and still know that you could never leave because your body and mind weren’t strong enough to abandon me.” I gaped at him during Ivan’s soft admission and remained frozen even as the Russian bit his lip and gently stroked my jaw with the tenderest of touches. “I wanted you to be addicted to me, Alfred. This was the only way I knew how.”

“Ivan…”

I was tragically unprepared when the Russian’s soft touch on my cheek shot downwards and locked brutally onto my wrist to force the razor blade away from my jugular and out of harm’s way. Like everything else his words were just part of the game and I was furious with myself for humoring the thought even for a second that Ivan was being genuine with his words. Pain flooded through my body and I screamed as the Russian overpowered me easily, grabbing my arms to twist them behind my back and lash my wrists together painfully in a plastic zip tie that he must have hidden in his pocket should the need for one arise.

“This is what happens, my friend,” Ivan spoke low and somewhat unbalanced into my ear as his hand covered my mouth tightly, “when you love someone so desperately that you refuse to live your life without them for another second.”

My screams were muffled by his hand, and though I shook my head violently there could be no mistaking the Russian’s intention once I saw Ivan’s free hand collect a portion of the spilled cocaine and hold it forcibly beneath my nose. I couldn’t breathe or I would inhale the drug but I couldn’t live without air either. For a full minute I struggled violently beneath him, but his grip never wavered over my mouth and eventually my body betrayed me, gasping through my nose for precious oxygen and with that single breath my lungs were filled with a powerful dose of the drug that Ivan forced upon me.

I coughed violently but this time his hand left my mouth and used the razor blade to cut my wrists free while I was preoccupied with gasping for air. He didn’t intend to keep me bound longer than was necessary, but with the white powder still decorating my nose and upper lip as I lay on the floor crying I could only stare up at him in shock and disbelief while panting. Already I could feel the familiar effects of the cocaine in my system. From the way that my chest heaved and my heart rate began speeding out of my control I knew that I had inhaled a rather large amount of the drug in that single gasp for air but all the willpower in the world couldn’t save me now.

“I’m sorry,” Ivan leaned over me to cup my cheeks and press our lips together in a brief first kiss, “but I need you, Alfred Jones. You’ll need me too one day…”

Fury and hate bubbled up like bile in my chest and I snarled as my hands suddenly grappled for his throat, his face, trying to hurt him in any way possible but the Russian quickly pulled back and left me firing curses at his retreating form long after he had departed the room altogether. I was alone again but hardly reassured that I was safe now. My heart was going crazy, thumping so loudly that I swore I could hear it about to burst from my chest. Each time that I got high in the past I always had the same fearful exhilaration after snorting or injecting the drug directly into my vein.

I wanted to run, to scream and to die. It was a potent cocktail of emotion to be dealing with all at once but as my chest throbbed and my mind soared I could still feel tears trickling down my face and damping the tile beneath my head where I lay hugging myself in misery.

Although food always appeared as if my magic on the tray beside me while I slept, Ivan did not return during my waking moments for quite awhile. I estimated his absence to be about two days based on my own sleeping schedule but maybe the Russian didn’t see a need to visit me right now. My crash after the initial high that he had forced upon me was brutal but in the aftermath I found myself weaker and more willing to snort just a small dusting of the drug on rare occasion to make my hands stop shaking. This time as my body throbbed and my fingers trembled when dividing a bit of the cocaine into thin ribbons of winter white powder on the mirror I caught sight of my own reflection staring back at me and I paused.

It was the same. I was exactly the same as I had been five years earlier after my first relapse when my drug-clouded brain kept trying to convince me that just a little bit wouldn’t hurt. It would just take the edge off quitting, but it didn’t make me an addict. I was drowning in my lies again, and yet my body screamed for me to take a hit just so all of my unhappiness would fade into apathy.

I was addicted again and unable to find the willpower to fight it when trapped in a room with nothing to do but sleep and get high. Mourning my lack of freedom, I cried while snorting the first two lines of coke but even when the drug began dispersing rapidly into my system I couldn’t help but feel the mounting desperation closing in on me. I had to find a way out and if Ivan had only given me one way then so be it.

“Ivan!” I yelled at the door but honestly didn’t know if he was even there to see or hear me. “You goddamn bastard! Fine! I’ll play your fucking game!”

There was no telling what it would do to my body but I angrily swept a handful of cocaine from the tile floor onto the mirror, sobbing now but still cutting new ribbons and snorting each in turn like a crazy person. I might die but I didn’t give a damn anymore what happened to me. I knew that I had lost this game long before the Russian ever forced the drugs into my body.

My mind was swirling and I never heard the door open or the sound of feet padding swiftly across the tile but someone grabbed my wrist and squeezed until I cried out and released the razor blade to clatter uselessly on the floor. Words filtered in and out of my ears in a jumble but I couldn’t make out a thing being said, far too occupied with yelling and doing everything in my power to kill the creature attacking me.   I had never seen a wolf so large with the hulking body of a man and eyes that glowed like hell itself, but the creature was trying to kill me and I screamed and tore at its face in a mix of terror for my life and absolute fury.

I almost had the upper hand, my fingers locked in a death grip around its throat, but my body betrayed me again as convulsions set in and my torso began jerking forcing me to collapse back on the floor gripping my chest and staring wide-eyed at the fearsome beast hovering over me. It growled but didn’t rip my throat out as I had anticipated, instead simply forcing a foul-smelling cloth over my mouth and nose. Even though I screamed and clawed at both the face of my attacker and also the tile floor beneath us, breaking my nails and leaving streaks of red in their wake, the room began spinning around me and eventually catapulted my body into darkness.

No one could have been more surprised upon my awakening hours later than I was. Not everyone survived a cocaine overdose and had I not been young and in good health Ivan might have been rolling me from the room in a body bag instead of sitting a few feet away in his corner again staring at me warily.

“Ivan… What the fuck happened?”

“I was going to ask you the same question.”

The fearsome beast was gone but I could see distinct scratch marks on Ivan’s face and neck, some deep and with a small bandage over his flesh keeping the wounds clean. Biting my lip a little sheepishly I sighed and lay back on the tile floor with my arm over my eyes, willing my headache to fade.

“..Don’t suppose you have a pet werewolf, do you?”

He snorted but moved to sit on the floor beside me anyway and I could feel his hand stroking my hair softly.

“That answers most of my questions.”

“It’s all your fault, you know.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t.”

With my arm over my eyes I didn’t see the Russian lean in but I could feel the warmth of his lips hovering over mine for a second before Ivan’s mouth descended and he kissed me slowly, so gentle sweet regardless of the ill feelings that I still openly harbored for him. Only when he laid a final kiss each to my chin and throat did I uncover my eyes and turn my head away. Something was different now.

“You swept the floor.” And the tray was gone as well. I didn’t see a hint of cocaine anywhere nor the tools to snort or inject it but before I could get too hopeful that Ivan had given up on his game the older man tipped my chin back to regard him.

“I am rationing you, Alfred. Believe me when I say that I do not want you to cause harm to yourself. I need you, but a dead you won’t bring either of us any benefit.” He reached into the large pocket on his overcoat producing a set of three capped syringes already loaded with a controlled amount of the drug in what I assumed to be a water base, setting them an arm’s length away so I could not grab them while laying prone on the floor now and try to stab him with the needles again. They would be easily within my reach should I want to use them later though. “I am changing the rules a little.”

“I’ll play your fucking game the way I choose. Changing the rules now is cheating.”

“It was never my intention to make it easy for you to win, Alfred.”

“Then why the fuck should I play your game? You’ll just keep upping the amount I gotta use! How am I supposed to know how much is left if you’re the one giving it to me?”

My point was valid of course but Ivan simply rose again and nudged the loaded syringes closer to me with his foot.

“You have sixty of these left and I will allow you three a day. If you use all three every day then you are three weeks away from your freedom.”

“Bullshit! You’re a liar and a cheating bastard, Russian!”

He paused at the exit to smirk at me but although I snarled and threw the syringes at him yet again, in my rage I had forgotten to uncap them and the needles bounced harmlessly from his body to clatter on the ground and roll a short distance.

“You might regret that later, Alfred.”

“You’re right. I should have used you like a fucking dart board.”

Ivan opened the door to leave and although the Russian never looked back over his shoulder at me I could still hear a touch of unrestrained cruelty in his words when he spoke.

“Perhaps. Although any remotely sensible addict would have thought twice about throwing his drugs where he can no longer reach them once another craving kicks in.”

All of the color drained from my face in an instant and although my body was behaving for the most part before Ivan spoke, his words now seemed to trigger a sense of panic in my drug-addled brain and my hands began sweating while my chest ached.

“Ivan…”

“I will see you tomorrow, Alfred.”

“Ivan! Damn it, get back here!”

My angry shouting fell on deaf ears, however, and I was left alone again to curse and grumble over the injustice of my ironically self-imposed situation. I stripped off one of my shoes and attempted to hold the laces while throwing the boot itself in my futile attempt to lasso the nearest syringe and drag it back to where I remained chained firmly to the bathroom wall. If nothing else at least I had something to occupy myself for the next twenty-four hours until Ivan returned. Although I found him to be a loathsome bastard, Ivan was my only human contact now, and without so much as a mouse to keep me company as the days wore on I found myself actually missing the Russian whenever Ivan left me alone.

~ * ~ To Be Continued ~ * ~
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Winter White Ribbons