The words reached him in garbled unison. Almost like a ripple, but they all came too fast that only the last was the only one noted. How long had he been in this dark place, why was he here? A voice echoed to him in the far off distance. It was angry and shouting, he never liked it that way. Still, only the last word reached him.

"IVAN . . . - Ivan . . . - Van . . . - van . . . – an . . ."

Another voice, one his faint mind told him to loathe spoke next.

"WEAPON . . . -Weapon . . . -Eapon . . . -eapon . . . -pon . . ."

Ivan . . . Weapon . . . Ivan . . . Weapon. He was a weapon. He was the trump card of the Polish-Lithuanian Empire. And all against his own will. This was his will, buried down in this darkness and looking, scouring, for the faintest point of light. He didn't know when, or how, or even why, but he saw it once; the smallest of holes in his utter darkness. It illuminated his pain and thawed out his frozen mind. He could think like himself again, understand his fears. He had felt this way once before:

"When you tease people, hurt them, it scars their minds more than their bodies. It is much more painful to have those scars on the mind, because they never seem to fully close. Just the slightest prodding and they tear back open even wider than before. It torments them even in their subconscious and runs deeper than the bones, than a sword through the heart. Do you understand any of this Ivan?"

He looked up to the wavering light, "I do understand!" he screamed as loud as he could, praying the man who told him this would hear someday. Then the light flickered out as a flame in the snows. The darkness returned.

He found the light again, but how much later he didn't know. It was in a new place, but just as small. He ran to the light and looked into the brilliance of it. The first was realization. Now that he knew and understood himself a little better, it was time for acceptance.

"Germany is going to attack you! You have to believe me!" the Prussian soldier pleaded to the nation as the albino stared down with a darkening expression. His violet eyes dead though the body still breathed in the cold night.

He raised the pipe above his head, a present from Germany's garden while making the Non-Aggression Pact. The man screamed as the metal came down upon him, "LIAR!"A sickening crack echoed in Russia's numbed mind as he contacted flesh a bone; he had smashed the soldier's head clean open. Still, with tears of grief and rage filling his eyes, he continued to beat the body as blood splattered the walls and his clothes.

"WHY! WHY WOULD YOU LIE! YOU LIAR! LIAR! LIIIIAAAR!" he screamed before collapsing to his knees in the puddle of blood, the childish smile on his face as tears streamed from his left eye, "It's not nice to lie you know."

He backed away from the light and it began to flicker in like. Frightened of the dark, he stepped back in to face his sins. The light became brighter, bigger.

The whip cracked down once more on Lithuania's bare back as he sobbed in chains. He screamed as the glass cut over older wounds that were still in the process of repair. Ivan had a small, childish, sad smile on his face as he pulled back and dropped it for a second.

"Why would you leave Torris? You know I don't like hurting you, but why would you leave me to go with America? I've been so lenient to your transgressions and you do this to me? Why? I don't understand," the leather came down again at the last word.

Lithuania screamed in agony before quieting himself to a reasonable point, "I-I'm sorry Mister Russia. Pl-please. Please forgive me!"

"Only if you promise," he said kneeling down behind him, a gloved hand snaking around to the prisoner's face and stroking softly. He leaned down further and licked a dark drop of thick blood, "Never to leave me again."

He cowered slightly, the pain of it being felt on his mind. He hadn't just hurt those people in his other life . . .

"You do not work good. Not a good Communist at all. You're useless to our people. You've failed your family," he said with a sad smile, "He is to die."

"NO!" the man screamed as the Secret Police grabbed him, "NO! PLEASE! I HAVE A FAMILY TO FEED! MY WIFE IS GOING TO HAVE THE BABY ANY DAY NOW! YOU CAN'T LEAVE THEM LIKE THIS, WHITHOUT A HUSBAND!"

"A husband that can't be a good communist, mustn't be a good father, da?"

He hadn't just scarred them, their families and friends . . .

"BRING US THE CZAR! THIS NATION HAS GONE MAD!"

"FREEDOM AND HIGHER WAGES!"

"THINK OF OUR SUFFERAGE!"

The peasants lined the way to the palace; Ivan gazed dejectedly out the window at the citizens. The Czar was out having tea, Toris came and informed him; always so helpful, what would Russia do without the smaller country? Still, the insults were hurled, panic began to rise inside his gut. Had he worked so hard just for this? Made his people strong and a force to be reckoned with just so they could rip him down and destroy the world he had made for them. His children . . . so ungrateful and violent, no weapons; but the words hurt more than anything in the world could.

"Why does it always end up like this . . . ? I finally made this nation stronger and more prestigious than others by myself. I worked so hard . . . why is it nothing goes right . . . ? Why do they always end up hating me?" The words strangled him, his throat, his heart; he was suffocating from the inside. Lithuania stayed silent, not sure where to go from that statement. Tears broke from Russia's eyes, the pain mangling him, how was he to live through this. "Everyone says it's my fault. MY fault. I've endured it for centuries . . . Why can't everyone just get along nicely with each other . . .?"

What happened next, he didn't know. The second afterwards, he came up with a solution to it all, a fix for all the hate. Hate stemmed from these people who shouted insults to him, threatened to destroy him. If you know you'll be killed, kill them first.

He threw open the window with a shaky smile, "Lithuania?"

"I-Ivan!"

"We don't want children . . ." his voice changed from moderately deep to that of a small child, a rifle resting in his grasp, "who can't play nice . . . right?"

He had scarred himself.

The light grew to a blinding state. It pushed away the darkness and the endless waves of agony and helplessness. He was waking up to whatever lay aged, but could he do what he knew he must?

No one can rewrite history, but we all have a chance to change the future.