You're playing with the big boys [Sealand]

Peter's face was so earnest in trying to get Russia to understand what he meant that it was plainly obvious and painfully clear to watch his face well and truly fall for a moment of actual disappointment that he couldn't quite place when the older man didn't get it. After a moment, it snapped back into a somewhat sad smile, but for a moment, a disappointed, lonely sadness could be seen leaking onto his pleading expression, a resignation to an end that he'd been hoping to avoid altogether if he could help it. But he shook it off.

For a moment, he stood quiet. Then, suddenly, the corners of his lips twitch. It's not entirely happy. "Sorry. I was just about to make a bad joke about my inability to program, probably something about hardware and software again, but then I figured... wrong setting, huh?" He looked down again. "Wrong sense of the word. Sometimes, I do mess that up. Just... not now, I guess. Sorry. Don't know why I'm still talking, all of this is completely irrelevant, ahah..." He trailed off slowly, twiddling his fingers for a moment.

Would it help if he said it bluntly instead of continuously spiraling into it? Would it help if he could say with the utmost conviction, "I'm sure my older brother 'saw me as a son' but that didn't mean I saw myself as one?" Would it help if he could say "You've established you care but I sometimes might need to protect him from your caring, you don't seem to know caring from hurting well enough?" Would it help if he shrugged it off? Would it help if he ignored it? It would probably help if he could bother to make himself all angry at Russia again, but he mostly just felt sad.

Peter stood there for a moment before going for just the blunt approach and nothing more. He took a deep breath. "No. What would I change it to? As it is, it's part of what holds me together. I can't change my views so quickly." He doesn't feel the need to explain that there's less frustrated ranting, nowadays, and that it's all a bit more resigned, a bit more filled with a resigned sort of prayer that nothing more falls apart, that nothing more goes wrong, that somehow enough people come out alive in the end that the war can be remembered instead of just fought. He's not sure if anyone else understands, anymore, and it makes him sad.

He just wants to see everyone friends again.

His face has closed off again. On Peter, this isn't readily apparent. To most people, it's as open as ever. To people who know Peter, though, it's as though any sadness he'd normally feel is suddenly pushed backwards, leaving only certain, easier-to-handle emotions on top. "And if you think you are the first to threaten things," he adds idly, "you aren't; I had to screen my mail for a little while there, and there was one particularly... um... "patriotic" hardly seems the right word for him, let's go with "obsessed"... member of the British navy that I'm pretty sure my brother talked down because I was pretty afraid he'd go through with his threats to blow a bunch of stuff up..." He gives a defiant expression. "So really, I don't think much'll change, though I won't be lying if I say that I hardly call you a jerk so much anymore as I once did, and that I'll probably do it even less now despite."

He takes a step backwards, or perhaps it's just that he stops walking, but suddenly Peter's behind Russia by a step instead of in front of him. "You don't get to touch my show," he says protectively, as though that would stop the older man if he'd really, really wanted it gone.

The worst part about it was probably that Peter knew perfectly well that Russia was not intentionally poking at the more sensitive parts of Peter's psyche, that he was not intentionally causing whatever Peter had briefly built up to start falling apart again. He wasn't intentionally burning bridges, he wasn't intentionally causing a disaster, he wasn't intentionally causing Peter's temper to rise. The thing was, though, with each condescending word, Peter started to build up more and more anger and frustration, he started to build up a stronger and stronger desire to blow up, he started to grow more and more defensive until-

"I AM NOT JUST A LITTLE KID!" he shouted.

"I am NOT just someone you can be condescending towards because I'm small! None of us are! None of us are EVER just little kids! Just ask Seb about the crusades! No. Better yet, as Kugel all about how he had to run things himself while his boss was in jail, or ask Lad what it's like having a smartphone be your LITERAL lifeline! No, I've got something even better- just ask ME!

"Just ask me what it's like to realize that oh, look, you're surrounded by water but you can drink none of it! That there are plenty of fish but never enough to feed everyone! That the money you print isn't something that you can actually use! That you find yourself struggling to get enough of the very most basic things, food, water, enough space, air! That's right, I have to pump in enough bloody air to breathe with! Not even that's a given! I compulsively check the air ventilation system because if one fails I am almost literally dead, maybe even actually dead!

"I get the flu when it breaks out because I don't have enough people not to, everyone ends up getting it! I don't have enough money to get standard vaccines, either, so I wound up stealing them because we do NOT need a, I don't know, a whooping cough outbreak or something equally deadly that's the sort of thing YOU don't have to worry about! And then you add the fact that one breach, one attack, and I know perfectly well what happens to a fort built largely underwater?"

He's panting a little, but Peter's face was surprisingly dark. "I am NOT," he repeated, "just a little kid. Even if I wanted to, I'm not." He crossed his arms over his chest and glared. He realized that he'd just broken into a rant, but he didn't care. He was sick of it. He loved being a kid sometimes. Okay. He almost wanted to get to act like a kid sometimes. But if he had to, he'd figure out how to stop, he really would, just to shut up the condescending adults of the world who didn't seem to think he was capable of being adult. Maybe at one point he wasn't. Not anymore. 

He looked down. "So no. I'm not just going to stop because it's dangerous, or because "oh, you're just a little boy!" Who else out there will watch the watchmen if I don't? And, believe it or not, even the people who are not in the war? I very nearly can't eat. So yeah, we get affected too," he said, his voice a little lower, his stance resolute, his voice very firm.

Peter listened for a moment. "It seems to have stopped storming. You should leave now," he said, his voice still a little shadowed.

When Peter saw that he'd visibly made the other man upset, he tried not to let it affect him as much as it did, tried to keep his arms crossed and his expression resolute. It didn't matter much, anyway. He wasn't staying too close to anyone who continued to insist that Peter was a little kid. He wasn't going to put up with that from just anyone. His Daddy only got away with it, those rare moments that it happened, because Peter had chosen him as a parent, and he was pretty sure that parents never stopped acting that way. But no one else could because it stung, because it always felt like they were dismissing him as irrelevant and unimportant, and he wasn't.

Still, he hadn't meant to blow up at him, so Peter wound up letting it affect him more than it should, his shoulders dropping as he tried to keep his arms crossed. He didn't look Russia in the eyes as he started to walk back towards one of the doors outside. He should probably warn Russia that it would be slick. The water would spread out over the metal ground and the air would smell like rust. Peter closed his eyes for a moment, as though checking for something. He opened them again. It really had stopped raining. The wind had probably died down enough for the submarine to safely surface again. Russia really could go home, now, and Peter wanted him gone so that he could think, so that he could process everything that had just happened, so that he could file it and make sense of it enough to organize it.

He heard Russia only barely. "You have far too much to learn," he'd said, echoing from down the space between them. Maybe that was true. Peter was still young. But he really didn't know why the particular rant he'd fallen into had opened that reaction. He'd been trying to explain that he was learning, that he did know times were hard, that he could take care of himself, even if he had to do so unconventionally. Peter wanted to reply, but he wasn't quite sure how to. Plus, Russia seemed to have said it from a distance. Funny. It seemed like he wasn't following Peter out. In fact...

Peter's head jumped up to alert as he turned around, just in time to see Russia's head disappear around a corner. He berated himself slightly. He normally had better awareness of his surroundings than this, especially at home! Even if he'd hadn't seen, he should have at least felt Russia walking the other direction. Stupid confusing thoughts stupidly confusing him! He started trying very hard not to run after Russia, using his expert sense of where he was and where other people were in relation to his territory to get him there. Actually, that had been a major part of why Peter had done so very badly the first few times he'd left home. He'd essentially felt like he'd lost one of his most important senses, leaving him dizzy and numb all at once. He wasn't too hurried yet, for example, because as far as he could tell, Russia was just headed for one of the older generator rooms, which, while potentially a disaster, wasn't that major of a disaster since other, harder-to-access generators had been built since.

After a few moments, hoping to make sure Russia did not take the correct turn to get to the radio station where they'd originally at least sort-of been going, Peter did break into a quick sprint to catch up to the glowing, noisy, highly conspicuous presence that Russia had on Peter's internal senses. Most Nations could sense each other, but in this case, that was exaserbated by the fact that Peter was able to sense the person-who-was-new quite powerfully as well. Peter's footsteps gave a ringing sound as he caught up to Russia, a sound that echoed around the halls. He considered for a moment what to say as he got there. He didn't wind up apologizing. Sometimes, Peter was a little bad at that.

Instead, Peter just said, in a slightly breathless voice and rather loudly from about two meters behind Russia (his long stride was hard for Peter to keep up with), "Hey! Where are you going? You're going to get lost, you know!"

Well. At least, Peter figured, Russia was being honest with that, even if it was a punch in the gut to have him openly admit that he was aiming to go destroy several hundred dollars worth of equipment Peter couldn't afford to get back easily and would probably have to improvise over the course of a year in order to make useful again- and he would put them back together. He couldn't just stop because it was mostly just a punch in the gut to think about someone tearing apart something that's become a major part of his identity over the last- how long has it been? A good fifteen years now, at least, if not twenty. It hurts, but at least he said it bluntly so Peter could visibly wince just the once before settling back to his somewhat cheerful expression from before. It was pulling off a bandage, as it were.

But then Russia keeps on talking as he turns around and Peter's shorter strides speed up to match the older Nation's long, purposeful, thankfully completely lost strides. Peter, in a moment of dry humor and slightly purposeful obtuseness, answers the rhetorical question with a quiet, muttered, not-quite meant-to-be-heard but still vaguely hopeful "Because he has a long political and cultural history of neutrality and therefore has a strong ideological support in the endeavour?" It's not quite serious. Peter's well aware that Russia's probably gunning for a completely different point. It's just probably not the point that matters.

And, sure enough, Russia goes in a completely different direction with his point, and each one is a reminder of why Peter's pretty certain his Daddy and his brother and the best friends who might as well be his brothers and sisters all think he's just a little insane with what he's trying to do because he's not Switzerland, being aggressively neutral is nearly absurd on the little shred of metal in the middle of the ocean. But then again, isn't it just a shame? Isn't it just a shame he's expected to take sides, anyway? What else was he supposed to do? It wasn't like he could afford to fight, either. So he fought in his own way.

So as Russia keeps talking, Peter interjects with "I don't have the luxury of soldiers, either," and it's honest and quiet and his voice doesn't actually interject at all, it doesn't lift up against the sinking, sinking, sinking, he feels like he's sinking again, drowning below the things he can't afford to cover his ears and not hear but right now he's an emotional little kid who doesn't want to hear Russia threatening him with things Peter's known all along could kill him in seconds (or, worse yet, fail to kill him at all). His voice doesn't interject. It weakly tries to before sinking again.

And for a moment, or maybe more than a moment, Peter's face switches again from a neutral happy or belligerent to a moment of sheer, heart-wrenching, old, sinking terror, and he slowly mouths something to himself, something about checking on the watertight systems and on warning radars and on all the things he'd never have thought of once upon a time, all of the things he wasn't supposed to need anymore nowadays until suddenly he did, mouthing to himself the compulsion that he'll probably check every system in the fort once Russia leaves because isn't it just terrifying to think that it's even sort of possible that but it's always been possible, always ery possible, and nothing makes him feel more guilty than that he had to design parts of the underwater areas to seal off to prevent the entire place from flooding because it turns those parts into a tombstone for those who are in it he shouldn't have to do this!

Peter visibly takes three deep, shuddering breaths, and then stands his ground anyway. He wasn't going to let anyone bully his worst anxieties out of him. It had already happened once today and he was through. His brain ran through scenarios (skipping daintily around you could build the equipment, Wy could write the battle plans, Lad could bring down their satellites, Seb could train the soldiers). He needs to stall, build a lie. Based on what he said earlier, it wouldn't surprise him if Russia tried to break one of Peter's unbreakable diamond promises out of him, and lying about shutting down the station wouldn't work anyway since Peter obviously wouldn't. 

He needs to stall for time and his heart is beating out of his chest and his face still looks utterly defeated, really, as he breathes another deep breath and says "You act like I don't know that, just about every second I'm alive, really..." He takes another breath. Live. Breath. You're fine. It's a threat, but he's heard too many of those. He's stopped opening his mail or letting his boss open his mail, or at least, not opening it before putting it through a stolen metal detector and a chemical test for common white powders. Not that he even really gets his mail anymore. Not that he gets much of anything easy, anymore.

He wonders if Russia's ever been afraid of the same living deaths that Peter has been, wonders if he realizes quite the magnitude of the threat that he's making. Probably not, Peter thinks, rueful but he's always known that, anyway. The bigger Nations- and this time he means geographical size- do they even have to worry about things like that, worry about having more territory that's water than dry land, worry about fires that permanently scar huge parts of your body or simple malfunctions that could suffocate hundreds? He doubts it.

Why is he still a kid, again? (Why isn't he?)

Stall. He's stalling, for now, now that they've reached a four-way intersection and Russia looks confused and irritated. Peter knows exactly where the radio station is. But Peter also knows how to lie. He doesn't break his word but he does know how to lie so he takes another deep breath and (he's never telling anyone about just how badly this is all going, Russia's the absolute worst person to keep breaking down in front of but it's been happening anyway).

So he takes another deep breath and says, purposefully looking nervously in the wrong direction, purposefully glancing towards where Russia needs to go in order to leave, "But it's- it's an ideological thing, I think. I- I just don't think the fighting is right, so, uh, why should I have to? And it's part of my identity, right? It's especially part of it now, ahah, so... So, sorry, but..." He shrugs. "You destroy it, I'll probably just rebuild it again? I put together half of that stuff anyway..." His voice is very much trying to sound braver than he suddenly feels. He feels very, very small.

He nervously glances in the wrong direction again for good measure. "...and have fun convincing your military leadership to expend resources on a neutral territory with no proper army that's making only the barest of notable impacts on the war effort," (here Peter had to pause and realize that he was making some kind of impact otherwise Russia wouldn't care and be proud of himself despite the situation,) "and is very, very deep behind enemy lines, dangerously so." His voice has slid back to bold, loud, and cheeky again. It's not that he doubts Russia could do it, if he wanted to. It's just that, as much as he hates to admit it, Peter's relative insignificance has been protecting him somewhat. While that's becoming more and more of a fragile shield, it'll at least hold up a little longer...

(...right?)

Peter knew the power of ideas, too, for Peter had built himself up on ideas. He'd built himself up on the ideas of others because once he'd not trusted himself to come up with ideas himself and once the ideas he'd let touch himself were more corrosive than the salt water that he was surrounded with. He'd built himself up on his own ideas too, though- he didn't trust the ideas of others when they lied and left behind little rusted knives of people instead of whatever steel heart had been there before, simply leaving and promising things would be okay when the world was nothing of the sort.

He'd buoyed himself up with ideas as easily as he'd dragged himself down with them, though they hadn't been his, at first, they'd been the suggestion that someone cared at all, and wasn't that just the greatest idea in the world? The idea that someone else cared, even a little bit. It had lifted himself out of a smokey void of I'm not real, anyway and why would I even matter? and why would anyone bother to care? and why should I? and showed him that brightness and he'd never let that down, never ever. He knew ideas were strong, they were painful, but they were real. They were real and they were his.

So with each word Russia said, casually, damningly, it was a little of a visceral pain because one of those ideas would still be I can make a difference and, more importantly, every life matters. He didn't understand why people kept forgetting that, because it was true. Every life mattered, every single one, and even if Peter knew he couldn't keep all of them afloat, he knew that he had to keep believing that with all he had, just to keep himself there. Every life mattered. It didn't matter if that was a life that he hated or a life that he clung to with all that he was worth, every single one, every single little one, they all mattered, and no stupid war would tell him otherwise.

Every life mattered because they were all people and, in some ways, they were all family. But there was Russia, casually- well, not casually, but- he stood there and- he hadn't done anything. He'd given the world ideas, certainly, but what was a world without ideas? A world without ideas would be a world where Peter would have let himself drown, completely and wholly, again and again, until it had finally stuck like he'd expected it to the first-

Breathe.

He's shaking. He's got tears in his eyes. "You wouldn't," he whispers, and then he whispers "Five-hundred and twelve souls aboard- two-hundred and twenty-nine are children- you'd- you wouldn't-" he whispers, and he sounds so utterly heartbroken and defeated (and he didn't even count himself) as he realizes that yes, yes he would. He would. And Peter wouldn't be able to stop it and suddenly all that Peter can feel is a blinding, numbing ghost of a pain, and he wants to scream and breathe in and out because he won't lie, he really won't, but he can't just- he built himself on ideas and by standing on other people's shoulders, but no one else was here.

No one at all.

Breathe.

He wondered when everyone had become such monsters, he wondered why he still couldn't make himself see it that way. It would be so much easier. It would be so much easier to stand up and decry them all as monsters but he couldn't because he still saw that they weren't, not quite, which made it hurt more each and every time they hurt each other and everyone else around them and everything else around them and it still-

Breathe. He has to breathe, and to think, but neither of those things are coming easily. Air's only getting to him through panicked, shallow breaths, and the more he tries to think, the more his head goes in circles, and he feels dizzy, and he can't breathe and it's just, he feels dizzy and he needs to just take a deep breath but it's just not working and he's shaking and all that's coming out of his mouth is a panicked little painful choke even as he tries to figure out what to say (because he won't make an unkeepable promise- even if Peter himself doesn't end up doing the show ever again, someone else here would, they wouldn't let it die, and Peter didn't think he could stand to stop, not really).

He doesn't try to make any sounds, though he holds back panicked breaths as he tries to make a choice and he gives in, begging desperately that nothing gets to hurt. He doesn't grab Russia's hand this time (though some part of him desperately wants to, the part of him that wants to hold on to anyone so that he can feel like he's breathing again instead of just holding in desperate panic), he just grabs his jacket and roughly pulls, not trusting himself to say anything. He doesn't make it very far. He manages to vaguely point down a hallway, up a staircase, in a door, he thinks he's shown him the way there (and it's certainly not the way out).

"...please don't break my microphone," he whispers, not sure why he's bothering to ask, "It's- it's fragile and it was a gift," he says, and then his vision's spotty enough that he decides to sit down by the wall instead of actually following him. He sits down and breathes and angry, betrayed tears slide down his face. He knows he can fix almost everything, and he tries to tell himself that, but it doesn't work very well.

He very purposefully doesn't look.

Peter still had a lot to learn, really, though he never admitted that to himself. Now, though, it was hitting him in the face as he ran through everything he could think of in his head, already trying to calculate, trying to predict, trying to figure out what he could do to prevent this from happening a second time. The problem came when he couldn't think of anything, and people weren't as easy as math, anyway. Just 'cause he'd learned some things, well, it didn't mean he'd learned everything. (He was fine, though, he didn't need any help! He'd be fine.)

He took a deep breath and buried his face in his hands. "This was a disaster," he muttered, wiping his eyes as discreetly as he could with one of his hands. Salt water flicked across them, stayed on his cheeks, even, as he stuck his chin up and decided to pretend nothing was happening. That was as easy a way to solve problems like this as any, right? Except, no. Wasn't it also important to acknowledge that problems were happening? Acknowledge and fix them? What if his problems got unfixable, huh? Because he was beginning to doubt he could fix anything, beginning to wonder if there wasn't something so inherently wrong that there was nothing he could do, nothing he could do to stop the way everything was breaking down around him.

The door opens again. Peter frowns. He knows nothing has happened yet. He would have felt it. He looks up, and there is Russia, holding his microphone. For a moment, Peter almost winces. He was already trying to figure out how he could replace it, when- well, when he's given it back.

"I know you must see me as a monster, but we all must take actions to protect our people."

Could that really just be it? What this was all about in the first place, the same reason Peter knew how to pick locks and constantly fixed, improved wiring and structure, the same reason Peter went without food or sneaked into dangerous places or took a steadying breath and let Finland teach him how to shoot a gun, the same reason... He supposed all of them had to do that. He wiped his eyes one last time and nodded quietly, taking it back. It had been a gift from his parents, when he'd told them that he'd wanted to try doing a radio thing (at the time, it had just been to remember Mr. Bates by, but by now, it had become something much, much more).

He curled up against the wall before coughing violently and wincing in pain. He tried very hard not to hear what was going on, but that didn't mean he couldn't feel it. His coughs were laced with radio static and sparks. He closed his eyes for a moment before pulling out a notebook, carefully holding it, checking dates. He had a few days before he absolutely had to have anything fixed (he wouldn't leave her to be lonely). He focussed on how he'd do that, instead of the way his throat hurt. That would go away. He'd fix the radio equipment and it would go away, but he'd also get used to not having it. It was hard to explain. Maybe it was because he was built instead of just... made, but it would fix, when he got used to having his voice somewhere else.

That didn't mean he didn't want it fixed, though. That would get fixed eventually, but it still hurt. It would also make things complicated. He curled further into himself. Maybe just a little bit. However long until he got Russia to leave, and then he could fix the horrible wrongness of the feeling. Of course it would be his voice, too, it wouldn't be anything else, not when most of his communication with anyone that wasn't in Sealand had been that radio station for a while, now.

He pounded on the door for a moment, opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was something like "▒▒▒▒▒▒▒" instead of real words. He covered his mouth. He'd been intending to ask Russia if he could just stop yet, but the screeching sound that he made, while not so disconcerting to Peter- stupid stuff like this happened when he built new things just as much as when he got rid of them- would probably freak people out. It was also a somewhat irritating (somewhat painful) reminder that Peter was still so much something that he wasn't really entirely... well... person.

He sat back against the wall again, crossed his arms, and waited for Russia to come out. He harumphed, full of cracking and messed-up noises. He took back his earlier statement. Now this was a disaster.

Peter, miserable and somewhat huffy, leaned back against the wall, quite certain that things had gone as painfully wrong as they could have gone- well, almost. It wasn't as bad as it could be, he tried to tell himself, but the fact that he was coughing up small sparks was generally on the 'utterly terrible' side of possible outcomes, rather than the 'okay' side. No. It could be worse. There were definitely worse things that Russia could have done. Peter shuddered. Yeah. Definitely worse. 

Instead of thinking of his malfunctioning voice and his pained throat and the sparks he kept on coughing up, why didn't he think of other things? His head went back to plans. He opened his notebook, looking down, simply taking the small twitches and the coughs as they came. Before long, he was working on a problem he'd found himself earlier. It was a weird quantum physics thing he'd found in someone's old physics textbook, the sort of thing he didn't normally work on and that would keep him busy for a long time. It would be hard. But it would also keep him distracted, even as he got what was probably the wrong answer again (Anna would know better than Peter, probably).On other pages, there'd been easy, busywork type stuff, too, like circuits and resistances and structural integrity. But he'd wanted something weird and hard and unrelated to anything. 

He held the tip of the pencil carefully, writing out his little typewriter handwriting, when suddenly the more abject pain stopped. Everything still felt very, very wrong, very much so, but at least there wouldn't be any more of it. It was still going to be forever to fix this, wasn't it? But it would be okay. He would fix it, or at least, fix enough that he could contact the important people and prevent them from worrying too much, or even from realizing anything was wrong at all. Yes. Peter could fix anything, if he tried hard enough (except for maybe himself and whatever was so wrong in the world that the war was happening, but he was working on the latter).

Russia came out of the room. Peter looked up, coughing one last time. His cheeks were still a little wet. Peter pretended that they weren't. He nearly closed his notebook on instinct to hide what he was doing before realizing that he'd probably need to write down what he was trying to say, anyway. There wasn't anything weird there, anyway. He'd essentially been doing homework. Math as a coping mechanism, true, and to some people that was probably the definition of weird, but it was logical and sensible and always followed certain rules. Who said that couldn't be a good way of coping?

He stood up, he nodded to Russia's statement, he paused for a second. On instinct, he'd almost tried to reply out loud, but Peter had at least already figured out on his own just how badly that was going to work. He thought for a moment before writing 'I couldn't just leave you in the rain- you could have been hurt.' His handwriting was orderly and perfect, like a typewriter. He'd written it like it was obvious, too, as though there really had been no other option. He held up the page, half-filled with numbers, so Russia could see it, nodded again, and pointed in a certain direction.

He'd be done soon, and then he'd get to fixing what was broken as best he could.