Chapter Text
10 December 1982
The snow fell relentlessly over the dimmed streets of Belgrade, thick and unyielding, muffling the city beneath its weight. It was bitterly cold—perhaps the coldest winter I had endured since that December of 1941, when even memory itself seemed to freeze. The lamps along the sidewalks glowed weakly behind veils of falling white, like tired stars struggling to remain awake.
Snowflakes clung to my heavy fur coat as I adjusted my scarf with a gloved hand. I could see my own breath lingering in the air, pale and fleeting, as though each exhale were a small confession quickly swallowed by the cold. The streets were noticeably wetter and more frozen than usual, their surfaces gleaming like cracked mirrors. Christmas was just around the corner, and although I would like to say that it filled me with excitement, things at home had not been the same for a long time now. The season returned each year with its lights and songs, yet something essential within us failed to follow.
I caught sight of the corner of the house a few blocks away. I tightened my grip on the strap of my bag; it kept slipping off my shoulder, an incessant nuisance. My hair felt damp despite the worn Šajkača resting on my head. The cold crept in through every tiny hole in the fabric, infiltrating patiently, freezing each membrane of my brain. The headache grew steadily more unbearable, throbbing in quiet rhythm with my thoughts. Every step felt heavy, as if the snow itself were clinging to my bones.
When I reached the door, Janez opened it for me. He looked at me with that half-smile that never quite reached his eyes, never showed teeth. It was a gesture shaped by habit rather than warmth. He said nothing, and neither did I. We had no need for formalities or hurried greetings—only the strange silence that had always lingered between us, stretching like an invisible thread from one room to another. It was something only Janez understood, or at least that was what I had always believed.
Inside, the air was warmer but heavier, thick with the familiar scents of wood, tea, and old fire. I hung my coat and my bag on the wooden rack beside the door. I truly felt no desire for anything—only to sit in front of the fireplace and wait for winter to pass, as though time itself might thaw alongside the ice. Šćepan lay sprawled across the living room sofa, as he always did, half-asleep and unmoving, a permanent fixture of that space. Vuk sat on the smaller couch nearby, a newspaper in his hand, the pages rustling faintly each time he shifted.
“Jutro, Tata,” I greeted him in my usual monotone, my voice sounding distant even to my own ears.
Vuk barely lifted his head from the paper. I was clearly not one of his main concerns at the moment.
“Jutro, Vlad,” he murmured after a few seconds of silence, returning to his reading—distracted enough to speak even to his own son. The words were there, yet their warmth was not.
I sat on the floor, crossing my long legs into a loose, familiar position. Nothing out of the ordinary. It was what I had done for so long I could no longer count the years. The floorboards were cold beneath me at first, but I let the raw heat of the fire press against my face without restraint. I welcomed it, letting it sting my skin, letting it remind me that I was still able to feel something.
A gentle pat on my head pulled me from my quiet trance. Janez, in his intimate silence, handed me a cup of linden tea. The steam curled upward like a fragile ghost. At last, after days of wordlessness, I heard my father’s voice.
“You should drink something. You’re frozen, my son,” he said with that soft, persuasive smile that always made me accept whatever he offered. After all, it is difficult to refuse anything that comes from your own father.
“Hvala, oče,” I murmured, taking the small cup in both hands. It looked fragile against my exasperatingly large palms. Sometimes, I resented being so big—so present, so impossible to ignore.
Not in age—but in size. That was what troubled me. I am clumsy with delicate things, like miniature airplane models. Whenever I try to assemble one, I always take far longer than expected, betrayed by my lack of finesse with such tiny pieces, as though my own body were built for a world far larger than the one I inhabit.
I have always been tall. The last time I measured myself, I was nearly one meter eighty-five. Vuk says it is a great advantage—that I command respect, that I look intimidating. Janez says I resemble a large, affectionate bear. Dražen complains that it is a nuisance to find trousers that do not require extra fabric at the hems. Everyone sees something different in me. I am never quite sure which of them is right.
I sipped the tea slowly, hoping the headache would finally ease, but with each passing day came more problems, more pain—and therefore, less will to work. The days were long, the people loud, their voices piling up in my mind like unwanted echoes. And that was without even mentioning the other nations, each with their demands, their expectations, their quiet judgments.
In the Cold War, neutrality is far more limiting than it appears. It is a narrow bridge suspended between two cliffs, and every step must be measured. It has brought me consequences in negotiations—consequences that weigh heavier on the spirit than the body. We manage well—at least, that is what the statistics claim. Numbers, however, have never been honest about the human cost.
I curled into my place, half-listening to the murmur of a conversation between Janez and Vuk. It faded into background noise until I heard my own name, whispered between them, stitched into the silence.
“Vuk… I’m worried. Vladislav is growing more and more distant,” Janez said in that tone of restless concern—or at least that is how it sounded to me. I knew what he meant. Of course I did. Distance had become second nature to me.
“Janez, stop coddling the boy. He has to get over it on his own,” Vuk muttered sharply, shifting on the sofa. I heard Janez’s hands slip away from his shoulders. “He’s not going to die. He has a country to run—can’t you see that?”
Perhaps Vuk only loved me because I was everything he had built over the years, and not merely because I was his son. Perhaps I was more project than child, more result than person. But who can truly know? I do not understand them, after all—nor, perhaps, do they truly understand me.
Or perhaps it was never about whether they could understand me or not—perhaps it is simply how difficult it is to be understood when one has made silence, enclosure, and distance into one’s refuge. When solitude becomes armor, and isolation a habit that no longer feels strange.
How difficult it is.
I lowered my gaze to the trembling surface of the tea, watching my reflection distort in the liquid. I wish I could hug them. Or say something that mattered. Or reach across that quiet gulf that has grown between us over the years.
Or something like that.
The afternoon peered through the window with a sharp clarity; the day had been tranquil enough for a semblance of normalcy to take hold. Everyone at home was falling ill. I initially attributed it to the cold, but I soon realized this was no ordinary chill.
The passing of Josip Broz brought a profound sorrow to our hearth—sorrow, and perhaps something akin to a severance; at least, that is how I perceive it. The house grows more fractured by the day, likely because no one finds reason enough to remain beneath this roof, to continue being the family we once were.
I treaded through the hallways with a measured caution; I loathed making noise at such hours, for there are nations here who crave their sleep. The wood felt coarse beneath my bare feet—timber that had once been sturdy enough to bear the weight of an entire household without buckling.
Silence within these walls was a vanishingly scarce resource, especially when the elders drank and resurrected old tensions. It was a recurring dance, one where someone eventually had to intervene to keep them from each other's throats. Yet, a voice within told me that, before long, no one would be able to hold them back.
I let out a languid yawn; sleep weighed on me, as did a formidable workload. With the shifting tides of government, the burden was mounting too swiftly, and for some reason, my mind processed the world with increasing sluggishness. My muscles ached—a recurring grievance of late, particularly as the friction between the nations of Yugoslavia began to grate.
As I passed Vuk’s study, I caught the low rumble of his voices with Janez and Dražen. The scent of alcohol drifted from behind the door—a stale, piercing, yet strangely fruity aroma: the unmistakable ghost of rakija. Can they truly never cease their drinking?
Pressing my ear against the office door, I caught the hushed tones of their exchange—though it resembled an argument more than a conversation, as did everything in this house, in truth.
"Vuk, this situation is becoming utterly untenable," Croatia’s voice echoed in my ears—as always, that man and his litany of grievances. "Do you have any idea how much I yield through tourism and industry? More than you likely produce in a year! And I haven't seen even half of that wealth." Dražen’s voice was raspy and somewhat slurred, likely heavy with spirits.
"You always harp on the same string, Dražen. If you are so consumed by coin, then let the rest of the household starve for the sake of your ego." Vuk’s voice sounded frayed. It wasn't that Serbia was particularly known for his calm or his tact, in any case.
A silence followed, broken only by the heavy breathing of Janez, who was likely present but too intoxicated to protest the talk of money or Serbian centralization. Though when Slovenia had the mind to argue, he did so—even from the depths of an alcoholic stupor.
"What did you put in this idiot’s glass?" Dražen asked, likely referring to Janez’s unconscious state.
"Nothing! Why would I bother drugging this fair-haired fool?" Vuk mocked, attempting to deflect, though it wasn't the first time they had quieted Janez to keep his complaints at bay.
I turned away from the door, simply exhausted. My eyelids were heavy from long hours of wakefulness. I dragged my feet to my room and, with a weary sigh, collapsed onto my narrow bed. I closed my eyes, trying to parse the day's events. Foreign meetings loomed in the coming weeks, and frankly, my body was crying out for mercy. My joints throbbed with a pain I could hardly comprehend—a heavy tingling beneath my skin and a tension that had certainly not been there before.
I needed rest, but for a nation so besieged by duty, rest was a non-entity. I could scarcely find a moment to read a book or escape to a film. I was tired, and truth be told, I wished only to sleep.
When I rose again to pull back the covers, tucking myself in until I was fully cocooned, I felt that sharp sting of exhaustion—the kind that signaled my systems required a total shutdown. A piercing ache refused to leave me, cutting from the crown of my forehead to the nape of my neck.
I need a respite from this bipolar world.