Work Text:
Petrograd, Soviet Russia
25 November 1917 [N.S. 08 December 1917]
Russia still remembered the time when they first met. Her, and the personified Provisional Government. She could see the shock within his eyes, even more so when she introduced herself to be the living communist he should refer to as Soviet.
It wasn't something surprising when her own people started to treat her like the former Russian Empire, albeit a bit differently and more casually. The Empire was an imperialist who endeared herself to the titles of nobles and royals, but she was not. The Provisional Government did not, though. As well as Moscow, for the two knew of her death.
The Provisional Government, then after known as Russian Republic, called her a demon who took his mother's skin, after the Great October Socialist Revolution.
He wasn't wrong. If seen in a certain point of view, she really was a demon with the façade of the former empire. Well, she didn't believe in those sorts of things. So perhaps demon was far from the right word for her state of being.
It shouldn't hurt, it really shouldn't. But it still did.
Many asked when she started to exist. She told them that she was always there, ever since the Decembrists. It was just that she wasn't a communist back then, at least until the turn of the century. A more concrete answer that they'd get was during the first revolution in the last emperor's reign.
She remembered of a question the empire asked to the then-tsesarevich when he was younger. On what he would've done if he became older and represented a country like she did. His answer was a simple, "To prosper!" She can't see that ever happening to him any time soon.
Not when she was here. Not when she's still alive. There will be no other Russia other than herself. It will be her, and her alone.
That was the fate of who would be and what would become of All of Russia. It makes his birth even more a tragedy, with his mother knowing that her son wouldn't survive this onslaught. All the more tragic, really.
She didn't have the power to change fate. She can see what would soon come to be, but not to change it. The Russian Empire also noticed it. Her son kept being sent to the waters with one admiral in particular. Though not always, it was always peculiar that he never met Kolchak.
At least until the autocracy ended. Though it was a brief moment, he'd come to meet him for the first time, and his views began to waver. She couldn't prevent what fate had for him planned. Whatever it might be, it wouldn't be good. It never would be good. Not when the Russian Republic was the Voice of the People.
Not many knew of this, but the Voice of the People would retain that title in only one government time. Now that he's lost it, he wasn't that anymore. Something told her that she'd see one more of that happen in the near future. At least when the Great War would end.
Russian Republic stared at her with so much contempt and sadness, she really wasn't sure which one triumphs over the other. His rage over the demon or the fact that the demon had his mother's face.
Russia knew that her stronghold was little by now. But knowing that she was the one who became the Soviets rather than her son, it was all the more obvious to her that the Bolsheviks would be the one to win this power struggle.
The former tsesarevich didn't seem to appreciate it when she went up to him and took off her crucifix necklace. The way he looked at her was more akin to shock than anything else when he received it. Maybe because he knew that that belonged to his mother. Maybe because he knew that that meant she was saying to him directly that she had forfeited her belief.
It was almost hilarious to her, the way that the empire's faith began to stumble yet strengthened in moments which mattered the most to her. Perhaps that was how it should work, but it really shouldn't happen in the first place. The Russian Empire was a hypocrite to her own religion's commandments. Yet she still played as if she was the vassal of God.
How ridiculous she was. Whatever Russian Republic would be in the future, he should dedicate himself more to the state than to some belief. That was why the empire fell after all, because she let herself be so entwined with those aspects that she abandoned her duties as a Personification.
Russia knows that there was a reason why her second eldest called her the Greatest of All the Great Liars.
It may have not happened by now, but there was a certain air that monarchs carried with them. Russian Republic never had that when he was both the Provisional Government and the Republic, but he did now. Maybe that's what it meant. What meeting Kolchak meant. That it was bound for a repeated attempt once more.
She felt the same whenever it came to a military dictatorship. So it was either or. Perhaps even both. Just how ironic would it be, for a democrat like him to suddenly be a monarchist and militarist at the same time? It would be strange to the unseeing, but Russia knew that this was the general fate of the Voice of the People if they lost their state.
France was lucky. The threat would still loom for as long as her brother lives.
Russian Republic looked at her with sorrow. And pain, and regret, and grief, and despair, and shame, and fear, and—
God save the Tsar!
God wouldn't save him from herself. She'd done this once, she'd do this once more.
Give her five years. She would succeed in sustaining her position as All of Russia.