It Could Be Worse - I Could Be In Russia [Sealand]

Peter's first response to Venezuela's comment, of course, is instinctively to apologize, but he does stop himself in time. Stupid Venezuela giving him a trick statement like that. He clearly can't apologize for apologizing too much, that would just sort of prove the older Nation's point! But he can't just say nothing, because then he'll look like he's ignoring it! What is he supposed to say to that sort of thing, anyway? He wonders this for a moment. Is there a middle ground he can find? Yeah. Look for a middle ground, then that'd work!

"I try to be polite, I guess, except I I'm not so good at regulating between what I think in my head and what comes out of my mouth," he says, not actually apologizing but trying very hard in a roundabout way to get his point across, "so I do try to regulate what I say a little, and then I often have to backtrack? I just- it's not that I can't tell what people are thinking, it's just that..." He trails off. This is what he wants to say: "I just don't always care what they think/say about me." This is what another part of him says: "because they'll think the same things of me, no matter what I do." This is closest to the truth, but not quite: "I like acting like I don't care, even when I do, so I sort of do it on purpose."

Instead, he leaves the sentence hanging, shrugs lightly, and keeps on going. No use staying on this topic, and he had managed to sort-of apologize without actually saying "I'm sorry," so hah! Take that, trick statement! Not gonna trick this sea fort! He was pleased with himself for that one, actually. It was nearly as good as his half-apology to Russia that he'd managed to pull off without blushing or stammering too much or anything (and that he still-only-sort-of knew why he'd said, other than that no one should really be lonely). He was getting better at this, though he'd never hide the genuine emotion from his voice when he did things like that. His brother did it all the time, but Peter was no good at it.

He listened to Venezuela's point of view. He made a slight face. "But that's different," he starts to say, and then Peter quiets himself because he doesn't actually want to argue at all if he can help it. He can't imagine that kind of risk-taking being but so fun, though, now that he thinks about it. Not if he's gambling actual things, actual people, actual lives. It's fun to play Risk, it's fun to imagine how they'd take over the world, but he doesn't- he just can't, he doesn't think. He doesn't think he could (unless maybe he could string it all together, unless maybe something different happened, something painful, something terrifying, and he realized he didn't have a choice, but that hadn't happened and it wouldn't and it wasn't his job and he shouldn't think about that). 

He'd started to say that it was different but his voice cut off part way through and he just nodded. He'd concede the point (even if he didn't really) because he was fairly certain that was the only diplomatic thing to do in this situation. Besides, Peter figured neither of them would see the other one's point with any expediency and he really did need to get Venezuela inside. He looked like he was getting cold again. There was no point (he'd tried explaining before but everyone had their own point of view he just didn't get it, didn't get it-)

So he walks quickly when he gets to the top of that platform. "Okay," he says simply, and he leads Venezuela to the door inside, to the hallway, and just keeps walking. To the guest room- it was apparently empty right now, which was good! He'd learned his lesson about letting people he didn't already like into private rooms, yep!

(One of the doors has flowers in front of it, but Peter walks past it just as quickly, if not faster.)

Peter shrugs as he looks at Venezuela. Rather be honest than polite? Peter supposes he's that way, sometimes, too, but his powerful desire to make many, many friends mostly drowns out his tendency to say exactly what he means when he means it. Plus, he'll admit it: while he'd never, ever break a promise, he doesn't make them often. He's not always the most honest of people. He doesn't really like that when he thinks about it for very long, but it's unfortunately true. Honestly occasionally gets in the way of other things he'd rather see done.

Besides, he never tells the worst lies, anyway, those lies that are all like "it'll all be okay" and "you'll grow up, and then you'll understand". It's mostly just basic stuff, like "no, officer, that's totally not a gun in my carry-on!" or "I was nowhere near there, what are you talking about?" Yeah. Lies like that are the harmless ones. It's always the ones people think are harmless that end up hurting the most, y'know? So he never told his friends those ones. He never said "I promise it will be okay." He only ever said "I'll do my best to make it better for you, and I bet we can make it at least mostly okay." He just wished everyone else was a bit more like that, too.

The man next to him looks much better the moment he steps inside. Oh. Peter hadn't even really noticed the wind chill, but in hindsight, he really should have noticed that first thing. He was just, well, used to it, he supposed? The fog had been the only out-of-place thing that he'd really noted, and so the chill from the water in the air was the only thing that he'd thought of. But just watching more color go back to Venezuela's face reminded him that it had, in fact, been relatively windy, just not nearly enough to measure on Peter's radar. Whoops.

Then the man introduces himself, and Peter's struck by how long his name is. Even Peter's Nation name isn't that long compared to some, simply being "The Principality of Sealand". But Peter can't really talk, he supposes. He has too many names, after all. Some part of himself is still just Fort Roughs. Another part of him is Sealand. A lot of him is a Kirkland, even if he'll never admit it to his brother's face. He's Peter Oxenstierna, also, or at least that's the name that's currently on most of his passports. He's a Bates, too. How many names is that? Five? It doesn't help that he makes up names when he needs to, and, after a little bit, even made-up names can become quite real, a part of his identity in some odd way.

At least he doesn't have a middle name. That would just get ridiculous.

"Nice to meet you," (here he spends a moment to decide whether or not Vicente is Mister Venezuela or Vicente, though he's certainly not Mister Torrealba, which would be more of an insult than anything if Peter chose that), "Vicente!" he finally decides. The "Mister" is normally just afforded to the older siblings or parental units of his friends, and Venezuela is neither of those. "You've got a cool name!" he adds, chirping.

And then he blushes and rubs the back of his head. "Ahah, no, it was nothing! Would'a done the same for anyone," he murmurs, trying to make things a little bit of a lesser deal. He's grinning a little bit, though. It always makes him grin when he actually gets an older Nation to use "Bates" instead of "Kirkland", though most of them don't really seem to understand why. The 'why' doesn't matter too much, though. He just... sometimes he gets tired of having his life be defined by his brother. Actually, he sort of just wanted to escape that. His recent decision to tell people a different last name might help it work?

A moment later, he found himself in front of a door. "Okay so this is a guest room? I'll try to find you a new set of clothes, too, so you can change." He nods to him.

Peter blushed again. He wasn't good at handling when people actually praised him openly, mostly because he wasn't used to it. It always felt brilliant when it happened, but he wasn't sure how to respond. How does one respond to things like that without sounding bad? And- and did he have to do it so plainly? But he was grinning. He was grinning real widely. Because he really did like hearing that he'd done okay, and he always liked hearing that someone liked him.

"Ahah... thanks," he said, a bit red but clearly happy. Peter very nearly tried to say it was nothing again, but he wound up just opening his mouth to close it again, still grinning. He probably looked like an idiot. Oh, well, he didn't mind. He shook his head for a moment, trying to get the bright blush off of his cheeks. It was, at least, not as pronounced as it would be on some other Nations, thanks to his typically cooler body temperature. He remained looking at the floor and grinning for a moment before finally shaking off the weird giddy feeling and looking up again.

"Oh! Yes!" he said. "I can let you use my phone real quick. I'll just have to go get it. I brought my radio out, but I really, really can't afford to have my cellphone break, so I didn't want to bring it out on the water. It's a satellite network," he explained. "The exact, uh, legality of an international call is occasionally... debatable? Yeah, that's a good word for it... Because of the way a lot of networks are- um, yeah. But I assume you don't mind, I mean, I'd probably want to make a call home too- I'll go get my phone."

Peter realized that his tendency to ramble was coming back full force, so he attempted to cut himself off before he went on about the specifics of how he'd set up a phone network to begin with. That didn't mean, though, that as he left the room he didn't keep on talking for a moment. "It'd be cool to have states, I think," he says. "I'm so small I basically fill all of those roles for myself. Who even knows... I've tried to figure these things out, but..." He shrugs.

Peter has actually spent time trying to work out the mechanics of Nationhood and personifications. It was something that he felt was sort of necessary, but it was confusing, but he really needed to know. He just sort of needed to figure out what he was doing here in the first place, what made him and his friends so odd in the grand scheme of things, what made the world tick the way it did. He was no closer to an answer (though he had his theories) than he was when he was little, but he did look for it.

He left the room a moment later before trying to remember where, exactly, he'd left his phone. Probably in the radar room, so he'd go get that first. Then, a supply room for a set of spare clothes. Thank goodness Vicente was a normal sized person. Peter hadn't been lying when he'd told Russia that he probably didn't have any clothes that would fit him. He could only afford to make but so much clothing in the first place, so most of it wound up in average sizes. Larger or smaller sizes grew progressively harder to find, and Russia wasn't small. Vicente, though, was a pretty normally sized teenager, so it wouldn't take Peter too long to find a change of clothes.

By not too long, though, this did actually mean a good fifteen minutes, since it also involved getting to the supply room in the first place and that happened to be in the underwater part of the fort. Luckily, Peter had a zero chance of getting lost and knew exactly where he was going. Otherwise it could have taken much, much longer. So it was a somewhat winded Peter who wound up back in the guest room a little later, holding a very, very generic looking outfit, "This... is probably a bit small... but it's as good... as I could do," he said, catching his breath.

Peter stood for a moment before pulling his smartphone out. It was a weird little phone, actually, looking a little bit like it had been made out of spare parts and was lucky to be working at all. (This was, of course, because it had been made out of spare parts. However, it would work fine. Peter was many things, but bad at building things wasn't one of them.) He handed it to Vicente. "It's not a factory model," he said wryly, "so if you need help making a call I can give it."

Vicente makes what looks like a beeline for the bed nearly immediately. Peter can't really blame him. He doesn't entirely understand what he's going through, really; Peter's healing factor has always been longer and more painful than other nations, just very, very hard to activate. A plane crash into the ocean, for example, wouldn't do that much vital damage unless it was on fire. Fire. Shudder. Fire. Peter did not like fire. Fire was bad, very bad. He didn't even like birthday candles, because they were on fire. No fires.

Actually, Vicente didn't look all that burnt or anything, so Peter supposed there weren't any fires, and he put that thought aside and just listened for a moment. He grins back. "Good! Then you won't have any issues!" The way Peter is grinning suggests that, yeah, a little bit too much of his stuff lately was filched from scrapyards and yeah, the degree to which he was actually paying for cell service and an internet connection was significantly less than the degree to which he actually had cell service and internet connection. Desperate times called for desperate measures, after all, and Peter felt significantly less bad after reading another report on civilian casualties (he hated shellings and airstrikes and fires, he hated them so much).

It surprised many people, this fact that Peter had a vindictive side. He didn't seem to hold grudges very easily, and he was normally so easy to read. But that was part of the problem- all of his emotions were plainly pushed forward, and so sometimes, seemingly little things piled up and piled up until he just burned and then acted. He wasn't entirely a kid, after all.

Except, perhaps he mostly was. "Useful?" Peter said, baffled. That hadn't really been why he wanted states at all. "I was thinking that it was a- a big family to have with you! I've always wanted a big family. I mean, one that I got to keep."

And then he leaves Vicente to rest so that he can go get the phone.

When he gets back, Vicente's collapsed onto the bed. It doesn't entirely surprise Peter. He assumes he'd be exhausted as well. He can't help but grin at his comment about the clothes. "Alright! I'll just leave them here, though I bet they're warmer and drier than what you have on now." He puts the still neatly-folded, very plain clothes at the foot of the bed. Then he hands Vicente the phone and lets him talk in rapid Spanish, quickly fading into the background. Peter had no clue what Vicente was saying, anyway.

Those clothes- they aren't quite neatly folded, actually, no, they're a bit wrinkly and put out of place from where Peter was carrying them. But they're mostly folded, at least- he shuffles his feet for a moment before re-folding the clothes so that they're not so messy while he waits for the call to finish. Peter could, if given nothing else to look at, get weirdly compulsive about making things neat, and since he was bored and it was there, they wound up just about perfectly folded by the time Vicente finished his call.

Peter looked up as soon as he heard the call click off. "No problem!" he chirped. "Is everything going okay there? I had no idea what you were saying- well, I suppose that was sort of the point, actually. Anything else to be done or do you just need sleep?" 

Peter thinks for a moment when he hears the other boy explain how states work. He guesses that must be right, but... well, it was still nice to imagine. "I guess so! Ahah, I'd have no reason to know!" he says, still a little bright, as he leaves. He's a little upset, he supposes, about how Vicente dismissed them as just subordinates to order around. Was that really how that worked...? It made Peter feel almost disappointed, actually. Disappointed and a little cheated. He dismissed it for the moment, though. Perhaps it worked differently in different places? Besides, if Peter ever got states, he bet he'd probably treat them differently.

Still, he cracks up the moment Vicente proclaims his family so terrible. It takes him a moment to calm down. "Sorry," he says, still grinning. "That was probably unnecessary, but..." He feels a little like laughing again. "How does the saying go? 'All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way'? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's it- I think it's probably a universal problem. My older brother and I, we- well, I'm trying harder to get along, but England can be such a jerk sometimes, just the biggest jerk in the world."

Peter pauses for a moment, still grinning. "Actually, most of my family's adopted, and a lot of what I like to consider family is really friendship. Maybe I just like the idea of a big, connected family, one that's not all messed up like we all tend to get? 'Suppose we wouldn't be human, then, if we didn't..." He trails off, suddenly feeling a little philosophical. "I guess it's better phrased that, um... I want a family that's not my brother? Yeah. I just love the idea of having that many people who care around you!" His face falls back into a contemplative smile.

He does have a family that's not his brother, actually, and that's one thing he likes. Peter just wished he could actually see them, mostly. Except, well, there's always the Bates family, and Peter had always been a Bates. He was going to go play with the little Princess later today, actually. She was nine and she was beautiful. There was Jamsie, his boss, and Freddy, and the little Princess. Only, the problem with the Bates family was, as much as Peter would always, always be one, they grew up. They grew up and Peter, Peter... didn't. He did in a way, slowly, maturing, occasionally growing, but he didn't grow old (watching the man who was like his father start to forget everyone was one of the most painful things Peter had ever done).

A bit later, a phone call is made and Peter is back in the room. He smiles at Vicente again, because that's certainly one thing he's good at, smiling a whole lot. "That's good!" Peter says. "I mean, uh, not the part where you need a tonne of rest, and where you don't feel good, but the part where he said everything was going smoothly! You should rest, though. I can leave, if you'd like and that would make things easier, but I'll put a radio or something in here. You probably shouldn't go wandering around on your own. I've been told it's easy to get lost, but I can't, so if you need anything just ask me? I can stay here too, if that makes it easier for you to rest, but I can do either!" His voice is almost irritatingly chipper as he explains this. He doesn't even really mind sitting around in here while Vicente sleeps, though he suspects the older Nation probably would. 

Peter smiled good-naturedly at the other Nation in the room as he spoke. He wondered if there were any Nations without dysfunctional families...? Nah. He wasn't quite certain it was possible for them not to, unless, perhaps, they didn't have much of families in the first place. Peter had his Daddy, sure, but even that was hardly normal. He wondered what the story was with Vicente's family, but he could only assume. He knew that there were a good three fronts in South America, and he suspected that at least some of the people that he was fighting had to be family. That... couldn't be very nice...

"That seems pretty true, too," Peter said, his smile a little crooked and a little bit more forced. "It's a good way to, I guess, make your own sort of family! I have a lot of friends," he said, "It's just too bad that this stupid war makes them a whole lot harder to see," he added in a mutter. He didn't really want Vicente to hear that part, since he didn't want to start a debate about that at this very moment. It was just, if anything, just something that had slipped out, one of those moments when Peter completely lacked a proper brain-to-mouth filter. He didn't entirely care. It felt like something that needed to be said.

(Honest moment: even for says-what's-on-his-mind Peter Kirkland, there are a lot of things that he should be saying that he bottles up anyway. There are those things like whatever it was that makes him so sensitive about his brother and the demons from his short little history, those things like a nasty phobia of fire or a tendency to put on his Stepford Smile when he needed to be upset most. For such a transparent person, he's awfully good at hiding. It's no wonder small things leak out.)

He smiles and nods. "Alright! I'll leave a radio in here, in case you need anything. My boss and I were supposed to be doing an audit of my finances anyway... I actually have to go do that now, don't I..." He made a face. "Get some rest, then! It was nice meeting you!" A moment later, he's skipping out of the room towards that audit he doesn't want to be doing. Ah, well, at least he got something a little fun and exciting along the way, yeah? Okay, maybe not fun, but something that wasn't going over the dismal state of his ability to remain financially stable. Now, he just had to find a way to get Vicente home safely.

Here's some famous last words: can't be too hard, though...