Work Text:
She looks down at her hands, at the soft cloth over them.
Blue and yellow, Ukraine thinks so very dazedly, smiling so much she has trouble thinking.
Her colours. Not red, white and blue like her brother’s, not red and green like her sister’s or white and red like Poland’s- a light shade of blue that was practically a different colour to her brother’s, and a bright shade of yellow that reminded her of the sun.
The flag was an old design; she seen it before, flown high above the Maidan Nezalezhnosti, both from the high tower and the ground. But this was new; hopefully, this time, it would last.
She prayed and prayed and prayed it would, although she could not know.
But Ukraine has been alive long enough to know the worrying too much about the future only hurts you, so she clutches the flag close and smiles as she looks out over her country, warmth flooding her chest with pride.
Her eyes watered and she smiled wider. Her brother had always thought crying meant you were weak- she remembered trying to discuss it with him once, after finding him with slightly red eyes, staring at the floor.
“I do not cry, Ukraine. Crying is not for me. I am strong.”
She shook her head a bit; he was so silly sometimes.
She had wanted to tell him, wanted to tell the world, so many other things in that moment, throughout her life, but the one things that mattered most, that rung in her head whenever she saw him, was something she knew by heart, had learned over and over again throughout the years, had cherished no matter what pain accompanied it.
That fact was this:
Crying does not make you weak, brother. The city square is so full so light; so bright, beautiful in its nightlight.
Crying does not make you weak, it shows you are alive.
She holds the flag to her chest, feeling the smile curve upwards on her cheeks. She’s alive, gloriously so.
These things are true, she wants to say, tell him she holds them in a special memory box where his and Belarus’ smiles go, where good meals and independence and love go, where sunny days on a field with nothing but time and sunshine belong.
These things, she thinks, these things I know by heart.