Dollhouse [Japan]

For a moment, Natalya had felt hesitant, but then she met Japan's eyes, and she was hesitant no more. She held her gaze there for several moments. Well. There was her answer. She supposed she should have entirely expected it. He'd been attacked by a sibling. Natalya could understand the disorientation one feels after being attacked by a sibling, the sudden inabilitiy to breathe when you realize what's happened, the immense feeling of betrayal. But she should have expected. She should have expected that when she saw Japan she'd see that tenacious warrior, not the same creature she'd seen in the photograph. When she did, she supposed she had her answer. People like Japan and she did not easily break. They did not so easily break at all.

She held his gaze for only a moment longer before nodding. She did not respond with a greeting, nor did she respond by stating why she was there. Instead, she got a slightly odd expression (though only odd to those skilled in reading them). "Good," she said firmly, as though Japan's response was all she needed to hear. In a way, it was. It put her previously mixed-up opinion back to rights, after all. This man in front of her was certainly the man who had once shocked the world by defeating her brother, after all. Perhaps she should be a little worried. They said Japan hadn't been that man in a long time, but the eyes looking back up at her were clearly that old empire she'd once fought. She wasn't worried, though. Her brother had beaten that empire once as well, and, as things currently stood, Japan was at a strategic disadvantage. Though, vicious, tenacious countries could last quit some time under a strategic disadvantage. She should know.

Natalya turned to one of the increasingly nervous looking guards China had put beside her, as though to control her actions. They would not succeed. Her shadow was much longer than it should be today, the only indication that ghosts were clinging closer than they typically did. They did have a tendency to re-orient themselves to be near Natalya, but that isn't what had extended her shadow and caused her eyes to flash. No, what had done that was that China, of all people, had plenty of ghosts. He'd been around for so long that it was only natural. And so, impossible as it may seem, Natalya was almost more intimidating than normal, especially to people who were even the slightest bit superstitious. The poor guards didn't even have a chance.

"I will be going in, and then you will leave," she said in somewhat shaky Chinese. She did not know much of the language, and she spoke it much worse than she read it. Her voice, though, was so firm that the guards knew for a fact that they were being ordered, so confident that the mistakes were less noticable than the intimidating force. They looked between each other nervously.

"But ma'am-" said one. Natalya's eyes flashed.

"One of you can stay. Do not interfere. Only if you must. Better if you leave." For a moment, they both looked like they would argue, but then slowly, quite slowly, they moved to do as she asked. She tapped her foot and waited as one of them opened the door of the cell for her. She did not say thank you or really acknowledge them, though she nodded as she went past. They argued for a moment, much faster and quieter than she could understand. Then, one relieved looking guard left, giving a slightly pitying glare to the poor sap who was now stuck looking after two very dangerous looking people (they hadn't missed the steely look on Japan's face when he'd looked up at Natalya). She stepped in and that guard nervously closed the door behind her. Natalya had to admit, the man knew his procedure. Even if Japan was in chains, his cell door should not be opened long.

And those chains... "You could easily break those," she observed. It was a statement of fact. "Your brother either underestimates you or is going soft," she added.

Seeing this, there was actually no real reason for Natalya to be there anymore. Technically, she'd gotten what she came for: an assessment to make sure China was treating Japan like a prisoner, not like a friend, to make sure he wasn't getting cold feet for that invasion. But Natalya had gone quite a long distance out of curiosity more than out of duty, and she might as well get some kind of conversation out of it. After all, Ivan would begin his bombings soon. Then there would be no conversations with the Japanese man Natalya had fought once before and who had faced the one thing that Natalya herself would admit scared her (civil nuclear disasters, she'd decided, were bad enough). She was here anyway. Why not?

There was something bitter in Japan's eyes, she thought, but Natalya supposed that made sense. There had always been something bitter in her own eyes, after all. She wondered if those eyes would turn vicious and cold over the years as well, turn into a window into something that might not be there, seeing into a void, an abyss- and what was it that they said about gazing into the abyss? Ah, yes. Except she wondered if the abyss had gazed back into her and decided she should become the abyss herself. It might explain some things that she hadn't tried to understand before, or it might not. Some things were just unknowable, like existence or why it ended.

When Natalya had come, it was out of curiosity, less than out of obligation. Now that she was here, well, there was very little else she could do but talk, yes? And this was a man she'd talk to very little otherwise. She did not talk much while fighting, after all. It was a waste of breath, and a distraction. If they met again, she suspected it would be while fighting. He could easily break those chains, after all, if he decided to try. Then he would be on the battlefield, defending against an invasion he would be at a steady disadvantage against, but doing it all the same on the off chance those odds tightened up again. And they would fight.

But here? Here they wouldn't be fighting, even as Natalya stepped deftly into Japan's cell, well aware that she was in striking range. She was not worried. She had more knives on her person than most people had in their houses, after all, and even with chains that Japan might be able to easily break holding him down, Natalya doubted China would have left him with a weapon. Natalya might not have trusted China. She might not think China wise when it came to his siblings (but who was?). She might not think China always the most sensible. But a fool? Oh, no. China was no fool.

So she regarded him calmly as he laughed at her comment. Clearly he had already noted it. He still sounded a little bitter, or perhaps not quite. Natalya was not quite certain where she placed his voice. He was nearly as unreadable as she was, sometimes. Japan's expression was well known for changing very little and expressing a great deal despite that, and his voice- there was something about his voice that she recognised as he laughed, light and airy, but in a way that seemed discordant, dissonant with the situation. She should probably be worried. She knew exactly what a cornered Nation could do.

But she'd been the cornered Nation once, and she knew exactly what a cornered Nation could do. So perhaps she wasn't so worried at all.

She looked at him with a sharp gaze before letting out something almost like laughing herself, a cold and haughty sound with a slight edge of shattered glass. "You would, wouldn't you?" she said, tugging at her collar, burn scars barely visible beneath it. "You've certainly guessed faster than my family has," she continued, "though Iryna, I think, knows more than she's saying, and my dear brother? He's always been quite good at denying things he doesn't want to be true." She shrugged slightly. It wasn't apologetic. There was something nearing a smirk on her face, though really it was only a slight deviation from her normal dark expression. "But I cannot entirely blame him. He was not exactly well, either, when he finally saw what he'd done to me."

She remembered General Winter and she remembered things they'd both said and she remembered a hospital room filled with snow. No. Not well at all.

It was almost odd, the way she was so easily admitting it to Japan. But there was something about the way he'd said it. And the remaining poison, well, that was perhaps the root of some of her problems, but it was not the root of all of them. No, the deeper root was much more insidious, and any healing she'd do would end up countered by the fact that she was now sick for different reasons. She could easily admit one weakness when the rest remained hidden and when the person in front of her had likely gone through an even greater weakness. She wondered if he'd been in one of the cities himself.

"If you are truly curious, though, they may cling to me somewhat more because of that, but they've simply always followed me, because I've simply always seen them." She looked at him with an appraising glance. "Most can only see my brother's," she added, referring to the spirit of winter that she found herself mostly hating. "How odd."

This was shaping up to be more interesting than she'd originally thought it might be.

He still had an odd smile on his face. It was... disconcerting. And then there were his eyes. Natalya felt as though she must be witnessing something very significant, something, something she couldn't quite place yet. The guard trembled outside the cell's door, watching the two circling snakes, or perhaps panthers, give their conversation, something unplaceable flickering between them. She suspected he wouldn't watch long, for the room was turning very cold and very dark, and the guard suddenly seemed to have realized that Natalya was not the only venomous creature within striking distance of his throat.

Natalya herself suddenly felt quite glad that she had more knives on her person at any time than were strictly necessary. She wasn't truly afraid- it took more than an empire to frighten her- but she was suddenly wary. Not worried, but wary. For Japan definitely did not look like the same man who Alfred had once described in a happy, laughing voice. He looked like something else, a soft, soft and clean and somehow twisted smile sitting on his features, sitting beneath chains that would be shed the moment the guard lost his nerve, and a look in his eyes that warned of fire.

He really was back, wasn't he?

She listened quietly as he spoke, looking over him with carefully assessing eyes. "I suppose that would do it," she said slowly, "though I must admit, I have only ever heard of someone gaining a slight sense for them from such a near-death experience, not the true Sight you describe." She tilted her head. "It makes me curious, I must admit. I have slowly gathered the rules of spirits in my head, you see. It was necessary for my continued survival. I suppose I will have to make revisions, though there are very rarely exceptions to the rules I have constructed. General Winter, for example, is still quite baffling."

She shrugged lightly, but also almost carefully, a gesture that was both smooth and small, both quiet and very loud at once. "I do not care, really, if he is still confusing to me," she added. "If he ever makes the mistake of hurting my brother in front of me again, well-" she pauses and finally says "My knives- they all have black handles."

She falls silent again. There is a stillness in the breeze. There is one, actually, the slightest of breezes from ventilation and from shadows, but it's oddly still for a moving current. It presses down on the room, each unit of pressure felt acutely as something shifts imperceptibly. She does not turn around to check. Instead, one of the Others tell her. The guard has left. Now she and Japan are truly alone. The air continues to press and change and Natalya continues to watch Japan with the same oddly curious eyes, and expression of intense scrutiny to those who know her but simply a blank, vigilant one to those who don't. She's drawn in by the sudden electricity.

How unusual.

She's not really underestimating her family, of course- just because none of them have said a world didn't mean they didn't know. It would have been hard for them not to have, on some level. But only Toris really, truly knew, and even he didn't know what Natalya hid in her head, the knowledge that the spirits, they'd always clung to her, but now, now, now... No one could see it, and for that she was glad. Except for the conundrum in front of her. She remembered fighting him, but not speaking, not really, and now that she has, she's infinitely more curious. How curious, indeed, that he too would see the things no one else saw (and she did not just speak of spirits).

"Your brother is quite easy to underestimate," she says easily to him, but carefully, carefully and ever so curiously. "I, however, have never trusted him, and would much prefer my brother stay away from him. Кітай did not need Ivan to show him anything." She looked up for a moment. There was an odd mix of respect and disgust dancing under her airy tones. No one could lie. She knew that her brother and China had, at least at one point, slept together. But she did not approve. China hardly met Natalya's high standards, after all, and China wasn't trustworthy; she had learned Chinese to spy on the man who had once turned away from her brother so clearly. "But to answer your question: yes. Yes, Ivan would indeed, even if he proclaimed it to be for a noble cause."

There is a long pause. "Then again, should it suit my goals, so would I, and with no such illusions."

She nearly laughed herself, the way that Japan suddenly had, bitter and hysterical. Natalya did not judge him for it. She supposed she reacted in a similar way, once. Instead, her critical eyes watched him, that same curious expression on her face. She wasn't sure what to make of this man at all. How curious he was, how curious indeed. And what an odd fascination it was. It wasn't as though he felt like the other most powerful people she'd stood beside. He wasn't determined Toris, he wasn't revolutionary Alfred, and he wasn't the bright, dangerous, terrifying magnificence that was Ivan. He was hardly any of that.

No, he was something darker, something darker indeed. Because Japan, she doubted Japan had any illusions about saving the world or even helping it, not anymore. Neither did Natalya. She was not good, she was not kind, and she was selfish. These were facts. All of them were. All of them were not good, not kind, and selfish, but they'd all constructed it in their own ways. They'd hidden. But Natalya had never liked hiding, had she?

Everything was silent again, and then he stood, the chains easily breaking under his wrists. Natalya did not move from her comfortable, easy pose. But she was battle-ready. This was a cornered Nation, but it was the worst sort, for it did not seem to realize quite how cornered it was but also knew it had to fight to stay out of one. It was the sort of creature who took Disaster by the hand and laughed. The sort of creature that had been ripped apart and therefore saw no reason to quite fix it. Quite dangerous. After all, she, of all people, should know. (How curious.)

So she too laughed while he circled, not moving but circling all the same. "Oh, I might just be," she whispered back, studying her nails, disinterested in tone but still somewhat probing, an actual interest betrayed in her actions. "After all, what is it that they say about madness? I do keep on going back, after all, again and again."

She grins. It is not the nice half-smiles she gives to her family. It is the fanged grin of a beast. "But people like you, Iмперыя, chess player, oh, you don't ever change either. We chessmen- we are the ones who should be afraid of this game Iмперыі play. After all, are we not the footsoldiers in your war? Oh, but how funny- I do not find myself frightened at all."

The room falls silent but the sudden heat does not. Natalya does not move. If anything, she lets him step closer until she is practically purring, knives seconds away from her fingertips. Somehow, she knows they will not yet be used. She might even keep them clean by the time she leaves the room. What is this? Ah, yes. Their chance to talk. What an interesting talk this turns out to be, yes?

She stands, a cold, stoic monument, and yet there is an electromagnetic sort of force around her and a sheer curiosity that is not entirely hidden as the gap between the two of them narrows to absolutely nothing. It's a talent Natalya has always possessed, her ability to slip into a form made of regal detachment, even disdain, for the situation. Because as interested as she is in Japan, she's suddenly a bit uncomfortable. He has crept far too close for the time being. They're practically touching. And this... this is not okay.

That isn't to say there isn't that magnetism, the strange, freezing electricity that had filled the room. That isn't to say that Natalya isn't intrigued. But other parts of her psych suddenly kick in and she inadvertently pushes herself closer still in an effort to back away (or at least, that's the only way she can describe it). It's not fear. It's not even nervousness. It's something else entirely, and she does not feel like explaining it, even to herself. So she remains there, a cold, stoic, detached and yet fundamentally curious figure, and her face only shows this intrigued electricity. She's curious. And that, more than anything, pushes down the momentary discomfort.

She scoffs slightly at his words. "Only that I have seen far greater things to be afraid of," she says back. Because she has, really. And then she's conquered them. In a way, she's always afraid, if you count her complete and total mistrust of almost everyone she meets. But that's not fear, not really. It's something else entirely (so much about her has always been just that, something else entirely).

They circle each other without moving, and the air itself is almost as deadly as the two of them. One wrong move... well, it all depended on who stepped first, yes?

Natalya does find it funny that Japan thinks her brother underestimates her. Perhaps he does. But then again, perhaps he does not. Ivan was difficult to read, even for herself, and if she dares assume that he does not know, she will pay, she will pay dearly and with everything she has. Oh, yes, she doesn't think her brother underestimates her ability to fight, but she does think he doesn't understand how someone who only very, very rarely lies, who is blunt in the most things she does, could be so snake-like. She suspects he doesn't quite understand quite how much she can bend the truth without ever having done so at all.

"Yes," she purrs back, "I suppose I am." For example, there she is. She's being honest because this is so very interesting, this talk of theirs. She does not, however, mention the bit she feels at the same time, the bit where she wants to creep closer at the same time as she wants to escape. She isn't nervous (no one would ever think she was nervous, here). It's something else, it's- (Here is what she almost says: "I know how to seduce a mark. You are doing it wrong." She does not. This is not that, or at least, she doesn't think it is. It's- well, it's something else entirely, and that phrase grows too familiar by years.)

He plays with her hair and Natalya's hands twitch. She has cut a man's hands off for lesser offenses, and she very, very nearly does so again, or if not that, at least break a few fingers. She refrains, but only because she has no desire to draw this conversation to a sudden halt. Instead, she barks out her own cruel sort of laugh and whispers "Do not think that I think myself a pawn, but I have no delusions of being a queen. Personally, I rather think I am the knight, with its strange, nearly unpredictable movements, and a tendency to get to places that the other side had thought safely hidden behind their own ranks. But a chessmaster myself? I have never been that." She hasn't. She's not manipulative enough, she supposes, not personable enough and not powerful enough.

"But there are certain advantages to that, are there not?" A sly stoicness falls over her face again. She knows she cannot be the chessmaster. She does not plan to become one. She doesn't have time, really. She has so little of that resource. But that does not mean that she cannot still win in her own way, after all. It does not mean she cannot make sure her side wins. (A knight, you will find, is more valuable than the bishop in the early game. But as the late game creeps in, and the knight's mobility turns less and less useful, well...)

And then she falls back to just listening, listening with only a mildly interested expression on her face, listening and watching Japan and her hand twitching towards her knifes. Natalya finds it amusing, the way he describes his brother. Rude? She wonders if rude is knowing exactly what may happen when you order an airstrike and doing it anyway. (She wonders if rude is breaking down in your own quiet way, Ivan, when you just can't quite deal with the result. She wonders if China reacted the same way, but no. She shall not give the scorpion so much credit. He doesn't deserve you, Ivan. (I don't deserve you, Ivan.))

She listens. And then he repeats her name and she simply replies "Yes." It is an acknowledgement that she's heard, that, in her own way, she understands. Cages don't last long on any of them. China is not a fool, so she suspects he knows this, but- but, well, neither is Natalya, and what would any of them do for their siblings? Natalya had to always make it quite the point, this business of never underestimating her brother. Sometimes she suspected she did. She suspected it was mostly to protect herself. But, well, there it would remain.

Natalya hears footsteps, and perhaps she understands what is about to happen more than she lets on.

Her hand is still twitching and she still feels rather tightly wound, but she's also still interested and perhaps not thinking as far ahead as she normally does so she doesn't exactly stop it, not really. He runs a hand down her cheek as he talks. She is tempted to bite it, and it probably shows on her expression. She's not sure why she's restraining himself, other than the fact that his words make their own twisted senses. So she holds back. She's never been much of a talker, more of an actor, really. Or, well, she supposes it's pronounced act-er, but the word actor is just as fitting. She's getting information, so she doesn't break his hand.

Yet.

Instead she gives Japan a hard look and nearly says "As I am painfully aware." She loves her brother. Unconditionally. And she suspects he loves her back (though she's not so certain he loves her in the same breath and soul that hates her). So she knows that she'll be a great strength and possibly a great weakness. She's hoping she can avoid being too much of a weakness for Ivan. (She already knows who hers is.)

Japan (he speaks more as the guard draws closer), it seems, has too much time on his hands. He says he has too much time. Natalya has too little. She will get everything done despite it. But the guard slips in before Natalya can ask how it must feel, somehow having too much of something she always has too little of.  He walks in just as Japan says that idle hands are the devil's plaything (she wonders who the devil is).

And they all move at once.

Japan cups her chin but she doesn't let him for long, finally pulling back out as he pulls out a knife, a kitchen knife, it has a white handle so her brother will know it is not one of hers but China will not, and he flicks his wrist as the guard, terrified to see the prisoner and the visitor so (well, she supposes they looked) intimate and Japan out of his chains, pulls a weapon but by then his knife is thrown and jammed up his throat and Natalya is up against Japan's throat as well, the sharp edge of her knife pressed against it as she moves around him in a single fluid motion. They're close once more, this time Natalya twisted around Japan's back.

"Now, now. You say you dislike being impolite? Wouldn't it be at least polite to give me plausible deniability before doing things like this? I am well known, after all, for my knives. We were having such a nice conversation." She doesn't look at all bothered by the dead guard. She mostly looks upset that Japan has done so quite so quickly, really, and while she was looking at that.

After a moment, Natalya acknowledged to herself that she'd overreacted, not that she'd even remotely admit that to anyone other than herself. Funny. Most of her emotions had been on a razor's edge lately, even more so than usual. Then again, she'd always been the sort of person to act on first instinct, even if she planned that instinct out to the nth degree. "Yes, I suspect he can." she said, her words somewhat sardonic with an underlying edge of 'he's not that much of an arrogant fool'. "However," she explained, "I also suspect that he will be looking for anything, really, to blame me for shortly. I've been meaning to have a... conversation... with him, and I find myself with an opportunity now."

Ah, yes. That conversation. She was looking forward to reminding China just what Russia's younger sister could do, remind him why even her unflappable older brother had shivered when she became determined to do something. Natalya would just also prefer to have as much control over the situation as possible once she got there. She couldn't have China blaming her for things she didn't actually do, holding any leverage, while she threatened to do much worse, now could she?

But for now, she was here, listening to another Asian sibling, her knife still at his throat, though she was less certain that it needed to be there, now that she'd actually thought for a moment. She wasn't, however, entirely certain as to who, exactly, was controlling the room. She had the uncomfortable feeling that Japan was the one controlling it, though, along with the uncomfortable feeling that he could, if he so desired, leave at any moment. So the knife stayed. The knife stayed as Japan talked.

He cut himself with the blade, but she hardly even noticed it. It was the words that she noticed first. Natalya scoffed. It was undignified and humorless. If she'd been facing Japan, she would have looked him straight in the eyes so that he could plainly see it on her face. "Bullshit," she said, calmly and clearly. Because Natalya had a brother too. And Natalya loved her brother, even when she hated him most. Add to that the fact that Natalya could often read people quite well, and she could see someone trying to delude himself, her, someone. "I cannot imagine fighting your brother ever got a bit less excruciating. Try that on someone else. Maybe they might believe you."

She had a brother, and they'd fought, and they'd separated, and they'd brought out the worst in each other, and they'd brought out the best in each other, too, with time and effort and care. They'd miscommunicated and hurt each other in their own terrible ways but they were still family, and even on the days Natalya most wanted to see Ivan's head on the guillotine, it hurt to fight him. It hurt to bring him pain. It hurt. She'd never enjoyed it, not once, and from their nice conversation, Natalya realized something: Japan was a bit too much like herself.

Beautiful. As if. She recognized that lie- it's easy to recognize a mirror.

Even once she did notice the rose blood slipping down across her fingers, Natalya only moved the knife far enough forward not to continue to cut Japan deeper, just as Japan stretched, leaned back. She slowly steps around to face him. She doesn't trust something about the way that he's talking. There's something to desperate about it. Or perhaps she'd reading into it things that aren't there? No matter. She'd prefer to be face to face again, though the knife stays there. She's not letting him control the situation too far, she's slid into a defensive position of don't get to close.

Then Japan says something that nearly makes her scoff again. "Death is hardly honorable," Natalya says, "it simply is. Nothing changes, no matter how much honor you've accumulated, no matter how hard you work. Death cares for none of those things. It is simply another ending." If a slight bit of bitterness crept into her voice for just a minute, well, Natalya does not call attention to it, does not think about it, does not acknowledge to herself that it is there. (He doesn't really know what he's talking about. He's never been death's favored child.)

And then he nearly steps to far.

'What will your big brother do?'

"Get as far the hell away from yours as possible, would be preferable," she says through clenched teeth, perfectly aware that this was not what Japan was referring to. She has no intention of harming Japan unless he makes any sudden moves. That doesn't mean that the statement doesn't sting and ring true in a way that's not a mirror at all. She doubts Japan even knows what he's just stepped on. Perhaps he does- he is quite old, after all- but Natalya's past was a minefield in its own right. 

She takes a breath, not audible, but there all the same. "Of course, if you referred to me- well there's hardly anything left to do, now is there?" Her face, always with its slight expressions, does an excellent job of hiding the fact that there's another statement that's altogether far too bitter. "Of course, I have no intention of hurting you unless you do something stupid, so perhaps this is another useless hypothetical."

(If she was changing the subject, well, she doesn't draw attention to that, either.)