Chapter Text
Petrovich sat glumly at the conference table. He used his only good eye to glower menacingly at the smug capitalist in front of him, who was returning his gaze with an equally intense scowl.
The pair stared each-other down across the table, both looking quite willing to strangle each-other if they had been sitting close enough. Whoever chose the seating plan must’ve been scheming for a nuclear war.
On one side, we had none other than Neil A. Kennedy, personification of the United States of America and embodiment of the inevitable corruption within the seemingly ‘flawless’ free market.
Young and sometimes naive, he was no complete idiot either, having been exposed from a young age to the harsh realities of life when he was under British rule.
Always aiming for the stars and striving for nothing less than perfection, he was bound to destroy himself in the end, along with everything which stood in his way to success.
But perfection, he’d learned, was a moving target. No matter how many victories he claimed, the satisfaction never lasted. Glory faded and the desire for more always returned— stronger, more desperate.
Yes, he had managed to go from an insignificant colony to a global superpower, but that was just one of the many challenges he would have to endure through his lifetime as a nation.
Mighty and powerful, he held the world in the palm of his hands, and yet—he still wasn’t satisfied.
With an insatiable hunger for success, the fulfillment of his achievements only lasted for so long, before vanishing and being replaced by the never-ending need for more. And so, the chase for perfection continued. It was nothing more than an obsession, a mania that could only lead to the country’s own destruction.
Needless to say, his determination to do whatever was necessary to achieve his goals would often drive him into dangerous territory.
He had already done a lot of things he wasn't proud of, but that didn’t mean he regretted them, not in the slightest. No— he had never looked back and never would, knowing there was nothing he could change, regardless.
He did what he had to do, and that was all that mattered. ‘The end justifies the means’, as they say.
He’d made a lot of enemies along the way too, and it was no surprise that many countries weren’t fond of him.
It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy life at the top. If anyone asked him about it, he’d tell them it was great, but the responsibilities which came with such position were even greater.
Besides, it got very lonely ‘at the top’.
When everyone was secretly (some more, some less), praying for your downfall, even your own allies and family couldn’t be fully trusted. Anybody below you either feared you or envied you, although it was a mix of both most - if not all - the time.
Nevertheless, they all wanted what you had: money, power and glory.
In addition to that, the rest of the countries were very reluctant to trust someone who was gaining power as rapidly as him; he had accomplished more than half of the other nations in a concerningly brief period, and that scared them.
And he prided himself for that— being so powerful others were afraid of you.
The world was his and he loved it.
Now, in a cramped and dimly lit room, he stood face to face with the man who had been a major thorn in his side for the past decades, Soviet.
Soviet, who he had never gotten along with, oh—how he hated him. And yet, he was the only one who could truly understand him in this.
He knew what it felt like— the dreadful loneliness which came with their role, all the duties and - not to forget - the lack of private life: anything you did (especially your mistakes and flaws), were publicly displayed for everyone to see.
The eyes of the whole world were on them at all times, and it was terrifying. No wonder they both turned out the way they did: bitter and cold.
Both nations shared the same fears and doubts, it was almost comical.
The communist— who had clawed his way up the ladder of success, multiple five year plans which turned a poor, underdeveloped empire (in comparison to the west), which still based its economy on agriculture, into someone powerful enough to compete with the United States of America and send a dog into fucking space.
He had killed the great Russian Empire, his own father, all for the sake of the Revolution.
He was a strong country who had a dream, or, at least, used to: ensuring equality for all of its people. But, just like Kennedy, he wasn't perfect, far from it.
The Revolution’s child had become everything he had sworn to destroy. Preaching unity while slaughtering his own people, he denounced the horrors of capitalism while building his own elite, the Nomenklatura, which enjoyed its privileges while the lower classes lived in filth.
Instead of working towards achieving Communism, they were only striving further away from it. Marx’s ideals long forgotten for the Soviet leaders to earn more power, living their luxurious lives, while the rest of the country struggled to put food on the table.
They- he was meant to put an end to that. But instead, he allowed himself to be pulled further and further away from the ideals he had been fighting for.
What had happened to their utopia?
The Russian Revolution gave the people hope, but all the fights and struggles for a just society were slowly being forgotten and abandoned.
Soviet had become a walking contradiction.
He was no saint, no, he was a filthy hypocrite, who worked for the same kind of people he would’ve sworn he hated just a few years before.
He hid behind a facade, presenting a fake image of an ‘indisputable guide’ to the masses as a poor attempt to preserve their support. He couldn’t lose his grip on them, and he’d use all means necessary to prevent that from happening.
Him and Neil were’t the polar opposites everyone portrayed them as, or that they claimed to be, for that matter.
The pair of superpowers could’ve formed an alliance— joined forces and become invincible. However, that was only a pipe dream, for the two nations could never work together.
They were destined to be enemies and, no matter what, they would never see eye to eye on things, both too stubborn and prideful to even try.
Although they had something in common: being relatively new countries, both bold enough to implement two systems which had never been tried before, and currently attempting to spread (or rather, impose) so said systems to other countries, that wasn’t enough to surpass their completely opposite political views.
And they were completely fine with leaving it that way.