Work Text:
July 7th, M.E. 1980.
Craig hung against a third-story window of the headquarters of the Communist Party of Inkadia. Inkopolis was clear today, the skyline lined flat with concrete buildings apart from the Great Zapfish’s Inkopolis Tower and Deca Clocktower breaking through the sky.
The square was laid in grey brick below, with a statue of an octopus, squid and cuttlefish carrying a sicke and hammer, symbolizing unity. No salmon, yet. He had warned the Central Committee that any ill-whimed attempt at liberating the Salmonids from eastern imperialism was laid with mines akin to what's going on with the Confederates ‘cross the sea. What an embarrassing shitshow. He couldn't let that happen. Couldn't let that happen...
They keep blaming him for the terrorist attacks. Well he didn't regret a thing, never will. You take an option then you stand by it, god damn it!
Sigh. He held a foreign newspaper in his hand—the paper worn by overseas transport—but in his language. An artifact of the reactionary Inkadian diaspora that fled to the Fengwienese upon the victory of the workers in the 1914 revolution. Royalists, nationalrepublican protofascists... The nastiest people, and given a megaphone by Bayfin.
He read them because it's good to know your enemy, of course, but also because the drivel their best propagandists write in was simply hilarious.
‘The Arowana Times’. He scoffed. Arowana was here, and it will never be capitalist. But he was just dodging what headline:
Inkadian queen-in-exile Octavia I dead at 84
His heartbeats stopped reading it, even the second time.
There were holes in his hearts that weren't there before, knowing he was dead.
Craig held his head on his palm. Even though the last time he saw him was during the Revolution, when he tried to kill him on orders directly from the Premier himself. He didn't regret a thing he did that day—better to live without regrets. Besides, it was for class war. Though he'd be remiss to admit he kept a tab on him all these years—decades.
That arrogant prince, he jabbed light-heartedly. His direct enemy—the Reds and Whites, the Scaleiqazi Communists and Nationalists. He wanted to send back the Inkadian nation a century, but... heh.
Now he'd be the only one who ever knew he was a king.
When he read down the headline...
Trash. Propaganda. Lies. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
He put it down. What a trash paper. Squealing as they're swept up in the ashes of history.
“Comrade Atarime?” said the distinct voice of Valentina, her claws and awfully round ears ‘n all.
“Naw, comrade, I just look like him and talk like him.”
She chuckled, only a little, “Sure. Wanna get food somewhere? I'm free. And not the cafeteria shit, in case you thought.”
They walked together down the corridors of the former aristocratic palace to the exit. Craig was already in his nineties, while Valentina was just in her late fifties. A generational gap, Craig was old, part of the old guard who remembered the time of royal elections. Valentina was part of the younger generation, who Craig thought had intriguing ideas on how the Workers’ Republic should be run...
“The Inkopolis S.E.Z.—in theory—would raise productivity rates up to four hundred percent. And it wouldn't be surrender to capitalists because... the proletariat is still on top. You know the quote ‘hang a capitalist by the rope he sells you?’”
“You had me at ‘four hundred percent’.”
“C’mon Craig, take this seriously.”
“I'm serious. What is socialism, if we deny the people their prosperity? National prosperity."
She held her hand on the handlebar of the entrance door, in the reception area. “...That's exactly right. You're all they say you are, Comrade Atarime. Your mind hasn't molded a bit.”
They kept talking through the doorway as Valentina closed the door on their exit.