Chapter Text
The Soviet Union is cold in winter.
Georgia less so, but the wind from the mountains is still bitter, and bit through Nico Robin’s shoes as if they weren’t there, the heavy fabric no defense for feet once frostbitten and toes now forever numb.
She pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders. It is a huge, warm thing, a bit above the budget of the struggling anthropologist her cover demands. But it is a memento from her time in Siberia, and she was damned if she was going to leave it behind.
Not that the coat provides much protection from the worst of the cold, that bitter bite that worms its way in not from the wind, but the guilt of what she was doing.
Nico Robin, lead anthropologist for the USSR, should not have doubts about her motherland. Nico Robin, daughter of the disgraced Nico Olivia, should not even think about disobeying her handlers, lest she face her mother’s fate.
But that didn’t mean she was immune from the regret and guilt. Oh, being an informant was easy enough when it is the rich and powerful she was assigned to. So many of the oligarchs felt themselves about the law, believing that their contributions to the Party would protect them from punishment for their corruption. Watching them fall was one of the best parts of her job. There was a light in their eyes, when they realized they had been betrayed by the one person who seemed too unimportant to lie to, or too indebted to think of betrayal, that gave her a grim satisfaction. Her clients had learned their lessons well, as even the most innocuous scholar was equal to the greatest crime lord, according to the Communist doctrine.
So the man called Crocodile had fallen, and dozens before him, and she had no regrets on that score. But it was the ones with no list of crimes and cruelties that made her feel the cold of winter guilt. The leaders stripped of their power for daring to set aside more than required for their workers. The spokespeople too silly to realize when they accidentally spoke out against the Party. The doctor jailed for using contraband antibiotics. The farmers or factory workers who struggled against idiotic leadership and inefficient design, only to find themselves shipped off to Siberia for speaking their minds.
And perhaps worse of all were the people harmed by her scholarly work. Ruthlessly analyzed and observe, her papers were more often than not used as justification to strip the identities away from her subjects. How many unique cultures and stories had been lost in favor of conformity? It chilled her to the bone to think that it was her work that harmed so many.
But this time was different. There was an ugly current in the offices when she had returned from Siberia. Furtive looks, glares between different factions at the [KGB] branch office where she worked. When she had received her posting from Ao Kiji he had glared down at her with ice in his eyes and said “be careful”, the one hint that her handler cared at all.
And now she was here, wandering the streets of Tbilisi, wondering what he expected of her. Yes, there was resentment in Georgia. There was resentment everywhere. But here, in Stalin’s very country, there were few people stupid enough to hold anything but the Party line. No one would open up to an outsider, even one so harmless as a visiting scholar.
So she pulled her hood up and made her way away from the tall buildings and grim factories of the city center into the ramshackle slums of towering tenement buildings interspersed with bars and commissaries. Light poured into the street from wavy glass windows and the murmur of voices picked up the further away from the main streets she got. There was little laughter and most of it was muted. Food was scarce, here in the depths of the Georgian winter, and most stayed in their homes hoarding what they had. But people survived, and each step she took brought her further away from the ever-watchful eye of the Party, and further into the limited freedom of the weekend revelry.
Somewhere in this muddled city was the small room she had been given as part of her cover, but frankly she had no interest in unloading her books and belongings in another soulless hole, finding further coded instructions beneath her pillow and discovering which poor sod she would expose next.
“And then you say Viva La Revolution!”
Robin froze, half way down a grungy alley, words of French flickering out from another back-street bar. Here, in the midst of Soviet power, someone dared to speak as one of the enemy?
“No? Well, all Comrades should know this one. Die Capitalist Scum! “
She felt the world shake beneath her feet. English. Who would openly speak English in Georgia? Did the fool not know that such a sin would bring the spies and snitches crawling from the woodwork, ready at any moment to report for nothing more than a crust of bread or a slightly larger consignment of coal? Even here, so far from the heart of their great nation, an idiocy as great as English could not be ignored.
And as such, it was her duty to observe it. And perhaps if the man was amusing she would let him go, if just for the relief of keeping her from her lonely room for a few more hours.
Tightening her hand on her bag, she pushed open the grimy door of the pub, snow and cold following her in.
“Then you have to say this All Hail Mother Russia!”
There was laughter, real laughter, and intoned repetition of the English phrase from half the bar. Most spoke the words with such heavy accent that only a scholar, such as herself, would even recognize it for what it was - some reflection of not just English, but American English.
Certainly the bar patrons had no idea. They could barely differentiate from the French, English, and the half-Russian, half Georgian slur that their teacher gave. But they chimed along, none the less, seeming oblivious to the danger they put themselves in.
She scanned the room, looking for the loud-mouthed culprit, and she slowly realized that her case was weaker than she had feared. True, an idiot was speaking English in public, but it was almost safe English. She even heard snatches of their national anthem, butchered beyond recognizability by the admittedly drunk patrons, but none-the-less an English rendition of Gosudarstvenny Gimn SSSR.
Robin herself was beneath notice, only gaining a wolf-whistle as she slipped inside the door, enjoying the blast of warm air. Then a man shoved his way past her, forcing her into the light and towards the bar. Surrounding her everywhere were rough-hewn faces well on their way to intoxication. Fewer farmers than she had expected, but many who looked like laborers in the factories. An equal number of women and men, all gathered around short tables or sitting at the bar letting out the day’s stress. And while in Moscow her entrance and eccentric garb would have left the whole room staring ice into her, here she wasn’t even noticed.
“What do y’all want next? Can’t say I know much of the pretty languages, but I could probably figure out some Mandarin. Or do you want to give the bastards some lip in their own tongue? How ‘bout Damn Capitalists!? That one’s easy!”
There were general nods and laughter that allowed her to hone in on the speaker, a man with a huge voice that boomed from the back of the bar. The English phrase was repeated again and again, with more expletives added each time, until the whole pub erupted into laughter at the mangled phrases even the most degenerate Georgian could recognize to be butchered English.
Finally she found the speaker. He wasn’t hard to spot, with his sandy blond hair so white it almost appeared blue under the flickering lights. He had a broad back and heavily muscled arms covered in grease and burn marks. A welder, perhaps. He would have to be a welder required to carry the iron beams he had to secure, if he had shoulders that wide.
Cautiously she approached the table, wincing at the raucous laughter and the yells. Duty kept her moving forward, rather than hanging at the back and simply observing.Her handler would have words with her if she failed to spot such an obvious anomaly. And those words generally resulted in more frostbite and and a stark reminder of what happened to the last Nico who defied the Party. Even worse, this man could be a plant, sent to test her to see if she reacted as a true informant would, and the thought of what would happen to her if she failed propelled her forward against her own wishes.
“Excuse me.” She had to repeat herself three times before the table quieted itself enough to notice her. That itself was unusual; normally people took notice of a tall woman, no matter how politely she stood.
“Might I ask who is speaking in such poor English?”
Immediately the bar turned wary. She went from anomaly to outsider in the space of a second, an unknown with a full Russian accent. But no one would hurt her, she knew that for sure. No one would risk the ire the Party would reign down upon those who would dare defy or desecrate one of their own. Just as she feared the big man before her, they feared her for the same reason. She might be exactly as she looked, a poor worker in some strange office, or she might be a spy, and the people here knew all too well what happened to those who dared question the latter.
Just once, Nico Robin wished that she could go somewhere where distrust wasn’t the logical reaction to life. The circles and circles of distrust wore her down, made her desperate for friendship she knew she never deserved, and brought the freezing cold into even this warm respite.
But the big blond man apparently took no notice of the looks, and simply turned and stared right at her.
Robin stared back.
Chiseled chin, blue eyes, up-swept hair; all innocuous on their own. But taken together, and added to an unrecognizable expression on his face, and the man screamed foreigner.
But no foreigner would be so stupid as to do what he did next.
“Alright, comrades, I think its time to learn a new word. One that describes this lovely lady perfectly. Repeat after me…SUUUUPER!"