Shche ne vmerla Ukraina
AN: Deanon from the Livejournal meme. A human finds out about the existence of nations and decides to prove it to the world.
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Nikolai Zaytsev is sixteen.
He is a Russian-descent Ukrainian, currently living in the capital city of Kiev even though he secretly harbours a dream to one day move somewhere quieter. Though he does enjoy the rush of the city, he longs for the peace of the countryside every now and again because he thinks he'd prefer a simpler life, a farmer's life.
And he is in love.
Nikolai doesn't know her name but he knows she's something special; he sees her walking through the streets near his home every day when he gets back from school so it must be fate. He's always been an idealist.
She is known to his friends as 'the one with nice tits' because she's quite... well-endowed, to be polite. But he doesn't love her for that. He loves her because she's always smiling, dressed like a farmhand as she runs through the city and takes her time to wave back at people that wave to her first. She must be well-known, Nikolai thinks, and she must be popular for a reason.
Her smile is pure sunlight and he really wishes he knew her name.
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Nikolai Zaytsev is eighteen.
He's been studying for important exams at school and he's been trying his best to cling on to his friends, even though most of them are too preoccupied with their girlfriends to care about their classmates. One of Nikolai's friends is even engaged.
Two years now. That's how long Nikolai has been in love with a woman he doesn't even know by name.
Sometimes, when he pauses outside his family home before unlocking the front door, he hears her talking to people as she passes by. Occasionally she speaks in Ukrainian but she usually just speaks in Russian, and she's often accompanied by her 'sister' or her 'brother'- never both at the same time.
The way she talks to her siblings, flustered and nervous and sweet, is charming enough for it to play on Nikolai's mind, long after he's slipped into his house and moved away from her voice. He's not obsessed with her by any means, but he'd like to get to know her.
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Nikolai Zaytsev is twenty-two.
He hasn't been home in a year because he'd fallen out with his father during a finance-orientated argument, disowned and thrown out into the street like a dog before heading away to find other relatives to live with. But now, after an entire three hundred and sixty five days exactly, he's decided to bury the hatchet and come home again.
She is there when he enters the street, staring down at the house he grew up in and wondering how he can possibly face his family again. She's standing with her sister and they both look exactly like Nikolai remembers, one with the clothes of a farmhand and one with a formal gown. And even after all this time, when Nikolai sees the farmhand, he still likes her best.
"You're back!" the farmhand says with her bright grin. "I wondered if you would ever return."
"You remember me?" Nikolai asks, shocked. They'd never even spoken before.
The farmhand's sister- a sour-faced lady with a bow in her hair- sniffs. "Of course she did. She is your country."
"Bela!" the farmhand hisses, reaching out to press her sister's lips shut with an outstretched thumb. "Don't say such things!"
They promptly leave, in a half-walk, half-run. Nikolai stares after them and wonders what the sister with a bow in her hair could have possibly meant. His family greet him and welcome him back to their hearts with open arms, but he can't focus on the joyful gathering because his thoughts are all of her and her sister's strange remark.
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Nikolai Zaytsev is twenty-five.
He has kept in contact with his family but he doesn't talk to them much anymore, living on the opposite side of Kiev in a small apartment that overlooks the business district. He has an office job and has been dubbed a 'workaholic' by his colleagues. He does not have any friends.
He blames his hobby. His hobby chases people away.
It's because ever since that day, he's known that countries are real. But of course, not in the conventional sense. They are people. They live and breathe and walk amongst their citizens, an ever-glowing beacon of light that guides their people through their petty time on Earth.
That's the only possible explanation for how such a beautiful farmhand can possibly exist.
She is Ukraine itself, and Nikolai hasn't seen her since he was twenty-two but that hasn't stopped him searching for her. He trawls the internet to find information on her when he's at home and he is determined to prove that countries have humanoid embodiments because he knows he's not crazy, regardless of how others might label him.
He's even started a blog about it. Blogs never lie.
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Nikolai Zaytsev is twenty-six.
His boss has demoted him from full-time to part-time because, even though Nikolai is a hard worker, people are still slightly scared that he might end up overworking and hurting himself due to mental exertion. Nikolai doesn't care. All it means is that he has more time to use for researching her. A decade has passed since he first saw Ukraine.
Ukraine, the beautiful farmhand with a dazzling smile, shows up on television every now and again. She was there during the arrest of Yulia Tymoshenko and she was there on the day of sentencing, watching with sad eyes as the sentence was delivered and broadcast to the nation.
Nikolai hates Ukraine now. He hates her because she doesn't make her existence known. He hates his Government because he knows that they know she exists, but won't tell the public. Nikolai posts all his opinions on his blog.
He's been told by his therapist that he should take down his blog before he upsets the Government by making such strange accusations, but he doesn't listen to her.
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Nikolai Zaytsev is twenty-eight.
By now, he's been on national news shows a few times to discuss his theories about Ukraine because his internet blog has spread from one website to a few dozen. He is a regular columnist in his spare time for conspiracy sites and he has a strong following on Twitter. The 'Nations are Among Us' movement has been growing, albeit in an underground way, for a few years.
People brand him insane and call for him to be sectioned, but his therapist can't find anything mentally wrong with him.
Though Nikolai hasn't accomplished much in his life, he knows his research into the existence of personified nations will pay off. He's even met Russia. Yes, the mighty Russia- he's a man with silver hair and violet eyes. Nikolai had seen him before when he was a teenager because Russia and Ukraine used to walk through Kiev streets together now and again, but of course at the time Nikolai hadn't known they were countries.
Russia hadn't actually admitted to being Russia when Nikolai ran into him again. But he'd made it quite clear.
"If you don't remove your Internet posts," Russia had said, with a smile and a flash of disgust in his expressive eyes, "I will have to make you very sad and that would make me sad, too. Stop spreading lies. You are foolish."
Nikolai is not scared of Russia. He will never be scared of Russia.
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Nikolai Zaytsev is thirty-five.
He's married now, to another 'Nations are Among Us' believer. They have a son together. Nikolai named him Ivan, but he's not sure why.
'Nations are Among Us'-NAAU being its abbreviation in English- is a movement that has steadily been growing in Ukraine and parts of Poland. It's not very well-known outside of Europe but there is a very small article about it on the BBC News website, so Nikolai knows at least some of the world will have discovered the truth.
The article accuses Nikolai of being a fantasist, but he is certain that intelligent people will be able to understand.
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Nikolai Zaytsev is forty-three.
He is divorced with an eight-year-old son and a new girlfriend- a fellow NAAU supporter. He's become quite the celebrity in his home land, even though he's been targeted by the Government quite a few times. He knows they spy on him, and he doesn't care. Let them spy; it's only because they're concerned about how much of the truth he knows.
There has been an assassination attempt. The Government pretended it was a homeless drug addict that got his hands on a gun somehow. They're lying, because they're the real culprits.
To his credit, Nikolai knows quite a bit about the Nations- well, the ex-Soviets at least. He has dived into history books and his research has been meticulous, finding instances in the past in which countries- the humanoid versions of countries- interfered with their citizen's actions. Ukraine, with her smile and farmhand clothes, has been painted many times down the centuries, captured in portraits and always the same gorgeous woman, involved with the high-life and nobility of the country she represents.
Ukrainian politicians can lie all they like, but Nikolai knows everything about her by now.
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Nikolai Zaytsev is fifty.
He's been travelling around all the ex-Soviet countries to learn about them and find their personifications. He's researched them extensively and he has seen, with his own eyes, Lithuania's and Estonia's human forms. He hasn't found Latvia's yet but he's working on it.
Nikolai's girlfriend has left him and his son has gone to live with his mother. None of them believe in NAAU anymore, because they say they've 'grown up' and 'moved on from that silly fad', and they think Nikolai should too. There are no longer many people that think Nikolai knows some grand truth about the Universe. The media of his country thinks he's a lunatic and the Government don't intend to defend him at all.
He has still kept his blog, as technology changes and the internet invades more areas of personal life. His blog is now obscure from having lost most of its readership, but he has an impressive following in Romania for some reason. He's never been to Romania; maybe he should go and hunt down its personification.
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Nikolai Zaytsev is fifty-three.
His mother dies and he doesn't go to her funeral because he has work to do in Romania. He's found links between various vampire stores in Romanian folklore and he's come to the conclusion that Romania's personification must be a vampire, so Nikolai brings garlic and steaks as he searches for Romania's representative.
All Nikolai's work on uncovering the truth about countries living in humanoid forms has taken its toll because he has high blood-pressure and he's not healthy at all. His doctor says he should take a break. He doesn't listen to his doctor, just like he didn't listen to his therapist.
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Nikolai Zaytsev is fifty-five.
The sun is setting outside on the eve of his fifty-sixth birthday. He only has four hours to go until he reaches it but he doubts he'll make it. He's in a dull, uncomfortable hospital bed, surrounded by cut-outs from newspapers and his scrapbooks on different countries. A firm believer in NAAU to the end, Nikolai regrets nothing.
Well, perhaps he regrets a few things. He never did get that farmer's life he wanted.
The door to his room opens and he raises his head, slowly because his neck is limp from morphine, to see who it is that's walking in. It might be the nurse. It might be his son, coming to visit Nikolai as he's on his deathbed. It might be his ex-wife.
But it isn't any of those people. It's her. The farmhand with a daylight smile. Ukraine herself.
"You're dying," she says, as she walks to stand by his bedside. She's not dressed in the clothes of a farmer, not right now- she's dressed in military uniform out of respect for the sick. Nikolai is thankful that she has some sort of respect for him, at least.
He was wrong when he thought, all those years ago, that he hated her. He loved her when he was seventeen and he still loves her now.
"You are the first person to figure out who I am," she says, and she gives him that glorious smile. "You're very clever, Sir."
She looks exactly the same as she did when he was seventeen. She looks exactly the same as she's always done throughout history. Nikolai, on the other hand, is old and balding and fat from middle-age and he's ashamed of himself but she doesn't judge him because she's seen it all before- she's seen thousands, millions, of humans age as they live on her land.
"Ukraine," he says, and it's all he can manage.
"Shh," she says, sitting down in the only chair in the room and taking his hand. "Don't speak. Save your energy. I will stay with you until the end."
He's grateful of her company. He closes his eyes. They don't open again.
Ukraine can't even remember her age. Nikolai Zaytsev was fifty-five.
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