chesspolitik | A Battleground for Rival Ideologies

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A Battleground for Rival Ideologies

If Anatoly had been thinking more clearly, he would have been suspicious of the little reel in the bookcase bearing the label of "Chess 2009". The bookcase had been on a cycle of giving him things he didn't like or need, so the fact that it was cooperating now should have registered as a bad sign.

None of this crossed his mind, however, as he painstakingly threaded the reel to the projector. Whatever it might be - a documentary on the history of chess or showing of a match between two grandmasters, he was certain he was going to enjoy it. This was clearly about his beloved game and there was just no way that it could show him something he would not like.

His first inkling that he was terribly wrong about all of this was the very first shot showing an enormous concert hall. His mouth dropped open as he heard the announcer call "Josh Groban" and he saw himself walk across the stage. The case fell from his fingers as he saw Freddie follow after someone who bore a rather strong resemblance to Maureen. What was this?

The concert started but things still failed to make any kind of sense. Who would write a concert about chess? Why would someone write a concert about chess? He wasn't sure which was more disconcerting - that or that people who looked exactly like him and Freddie appeared to be in it.

When the song about what appeared to the history of chess ended and the main singer with the gloves started speaking, he was horrified. This wasn't a story about chess, this was about him. Him and Freddie and what happened between them and if he could have found the strength to get up to shut the damned thing off, he would have.

He was too shocked to move, to do anything but watch his nightmares play out in song and bizarre chorus. The only comfort he could find was that at least they had gotten Freddie behaving like a bastard right.

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"Didn't pause to consider what?" Anatoly asked, annoyed that Freddie was still choosing to blame everyone but himself for how he and Florence had ended. If he couldn't see how his behavior had caused all of this, then there really was no hope for him.

Freddie's jaw clenched. "Nothing. Never mind. Ignore everything I say, you always do." He winced as he started talking to Florence after the second game. He'd remembered that. Blaming her for setting him up to fail. Maybe she hadn't been, but it had definitely seemed like Molokov's plan.

"No, I want to know!" Anatoly spared a brief glance for the fighting on the screen but turned his attention back to Freddie. He'd heard what had happened from Florence - he didn't particularly want to see the play-by-play.

"Since when do you care about anything that I'm feeling?" It was meant to sound snide, but it mostly just sounded tired. The problem was that he'd been right about the conspiracy and right about being used. It just hadn't been Florence who had been a part of the plot. She'd been used, like he'd expected from the beginning. What was uncomfortable was that Anatoly had been used, too. They all had been.

"Would you just tell me?" Anatoly sighed, running a hand through his hair.

The clamor on the screen drew his attention and he winced to see the reporters shouting all of their questions. It had felt like a set up back then and judging from Walter's expression of glee, he was right. He should have known, but he had only been thinking of Florence, then.

And now it looked like another part of his soul was going to bared and he buried his face in his hands, not waiting for Freddie to respond.

He had crossed over borders indeed but he had really never left Russia, had he?

"That you might have killed the only thing I loved that wasn't chess," Freddie answered and then when silent as the Anatoly up on screen started talking. Singing. Jesus. He didn't want to feel sorry for the man. He didn't want to feel pity. Actually, what he felt was something closer to jealousy. He knew where he belonged. Freddie had been kicked out of the one place he might have called home.

His heart started pounding and he couldn't seem to keep his eyes off the screen. With the accent, it should have been easy to tell that this wasn't Anatoly, but right now? It was so very hard. Did he really feel that way?

A quick glance at the man revealed that he did. Shit.

He hadn't want to believe Freddie loved Florence. With the way he had treated her, how could it have been possible? She had done everything for him and he had thanked her by calling her a parasite and telling her to get out.

It had never once occurred to him that there could have been love between them and chess had gotten in the way as it had for him and Svetlana. There were a thousand reasons he could give for this but the truth was just simply is that if he had, it would have made his intentions of pursuing Florence a little less noble. He loved and wanted her so much that he just chose not to consider Freddie at all.

"I don't think I can watch any more of this," he finally said, staring fixedly at the floor.

"You're not turning it off." The words were rough and Freddie still couldn't take his eyes off the screen, even when the thing had faded into some logo. Jesus hell. Maybe he shouldn't keep watching either. He didn't want to feel anything for the man who was his enemy. How could he hate him if he understood?

He couldn't.

No one should know this much about one person and it was kind of funny, because he still didn't know much, but he knew enough.

His jaw dropped a little when he saw himself. "What in the hell?" Oh, Christ. Bangkok.

The change in music made Anatoly look up and he gaped at the screen. This was Bangkok, it seemed, though he didn't remember it being so... vivid. He didn't remember Freddie being so familiar with the locals, either.

"Are you - are you leering at those men?"

The sheer insanity of this was enough to make him forget everything else for the moment.

A little of the tension from the earlier song relieved, Freddie was able to manage a chuckle. "What, you thought that my interest in men was a recent thing? Unlike you, the island did not suddenly turn me gay. I've always been interested in men. Especially in bathrooms and alleys outside clubs."

He exhaled slowly. "Before Florence, at least."

Any other time, Anatoly would have let the comment slide or found some other thing to call Freddie on, but all his defenses were stripped him tonight with his - their - life on the screen. What did it matter, hiding the truth now? He was half surprised they hadn't shown that.

"Unlike you, I had people watching my every move, people who told me to find a wife because I must be a shining example for all of the USSR. I didn't know anything. How could I know?"

Even now, he wasn't sure of anything other than that he had loved Svetlana once, Florence passionately and Lex completely. He had many mistresses once upon a time. He had a spark of interest in another player that had been quickly encouraged to be snuffed out. What did that make him? Did it make him anything?

Freddie didn't know what to say, which was probably good because the next thing that came on the screen was him as the newest representative of Global Television. God, he had hated that job. It meant he was able to be around chess, but he'd felt like such a sell-out. He was working for 'the man' even though the man had ended up turning on him in the end.

This time, he was the one looking at the ground.

Anatoly shook his head in disbelief. Freddie had said over and over that they had not played each other in Bangkok and while he had paid lip service to the thought that Freddie might be telling the truth, he had never seriously believed him. Until now.

"I don't understand," he stared at him. "How could - why would you quit? Chess is your life as it is mine."

"Because I lost," Freddie said sharply. "Not to you. I could handle it if you won on your own merits." Maybe not happily, but it wouldn't have been a crushing enough blow to cause him to quit chess. It would maybe just inspire him to come back and win the rematch.

"But you didn't. Instead, they struck at the one place they knew I had a weakness. Florence." It wasn't 'you' anymore. He'd had the evidence thrown out at him that Anatoly hadn't had any plans, much as he might hate to admit it. Molokov, on the other hand, had plenty of plans and one of them had been to steal Florence away.

Freddie wondered if he'd known that his plan would backfire so much.

For the first time, Anatoly was considering the possibility they were both victims. Perhaps he had been manipulated more - he certainly felt that way, but he wasn't the only one.

"Freddie? Did you really want to do this job or did Walter make you?" His fear was that must have been part of a plot, that the only reason they gave Freddie this job was to intimidate him. His counterpart on the screen certainly thought so and he couldn't disagree.

Freddie sucked in a sharp breath between his teeth. He hadn't ever thought about it. "He...offered," Freddie said slowly. Jesus. "Yes, he offered. I was sick of playing and so I took him up on the offer." In reality, he hadn't been sick of playing, he had been sick of playing for them. Maybe that was why he liked the island so much. He could play for himself.

"But he couldn't have..." He thought about what came after. "Shit."

They'd used him. Twice. No, three times. They hadn't just taken advantage of his presence, they'd set it up.

"It was like some game for them," Anatoly said in disgust. If they were using Freddie, then they were almost certainly using him. And Florence. "They are using us all - you, me and her."

As if to punctuate his words, the scene changed and Anatoly was greeted with the sight of Molokov singing very triumphantly about his plans for thoroughly demoralizing him.

"I take that back. It is some game for them." Any minute now, Walter was going to join in, wasn't he?

"And I thought I was shameless. I have nothing on him." He had been singing about Bangkok and about Chess. Molokov was singing about domination, if not of the world than at least of them. It was some kind of perversion of the game. Once upon a time, Freddie had imagined that he played the game of manipulation as well as he played chess and now he saw how wrong he really was. He wasn't an expert.

His stomach twisted. He knew what was coming and he could almost see the look of hate in Sergievsky's face as they sat across from each other. He hadn't cared. He'd just wanted the other man to hurt as much as he did.

And now? Did he care about hurting Anatoly? He wasn't sure. Even that much was far past where they were here on screen.

"The interview," Anatoly remarked flatly as he watched, his fists clenching at his side. It was the same scene, the same questions - only here, Freddie was asking them rather than a group of reporters. That was more than a little disturbing and he wasn't sure how he should react.

He could be angry at Freddie, but what point would that serve? He had been manipulated by Walter, that was clear enough, and as much as Anatoly hated to admit it, if anyone had a right to give those questions, it was Freddie.

"Why am I not surprised that both of them were involved in this as well?"

"They were working together. Fuck." He had somehow expected it and, at the same time, it came as a shock. "And they lied. Nobody won." How could he win? He didn't get Florence back. She didn't somehow come magically to her senses. Did Florence win? Freddie still didn't know. And...oh.

"Your wife is very beautiful," he admitted. He fell silent then, wondering if he would get another peek behind the mask at hearing what she would say of Anatoly.

Anatoly had to agree that the woman on the screen was very beautiful. The problem was that she looked nothing like his Svetlana. Where she was tall and blonde, his wife was dark-haired and petite. It was strange that they would get other things so right and that so wrong - and that this was apparently how it had been for Freddie.

"Sveta didn't look like that," he said, bemused. "I showed you her picture before, remember? She was beautiful but not like this."

Then the woman began to sing and it was worse than what he had feared. He'd imagined that she would be angry with him, and deservedly so. He hadn't ever thought that she might still love him after all that happened between them. He hadn't realized just how badly he had hurt her.

"Different worlds, remember?" Freddie murmured. "This is me. This is what happened to me." Funny how that didn't seem to strange, now, seeing it on screen and knowing that it might have been different for Anatoly. He swore under his breath when he saw Molokov tutoring Svetlana what to say. He knew what was coming. He'd lived it. He'd followed his lines and might have added a few of his own.

He sunk down in the couch as he waited for it. What did he get off being judgmental when he'd played into their hands as much as anyone? There was only once, only one time, that he had been his own man.

"I think I might be sick," Anatoly muttered. "How foolish were we to think we were only playing a chess game?"

He couldn't even summon the energy to be angry anymore, not when he saw how clearly everyone was being used. Svetlana, Florence... and of course, Freddie and himself. "I'm learning things I didn't want to know" - perhaps truer words had never been sung.

God, he could still remember it like it was yesterday. More than simply shooting him down, she'd almost mocked him. He stared at his knees and didn't know until it was too late what was next. Until he heard his own voice. Talking about his past.

His head jerked up. "Shit." No. No way was anyone watching this. He leaped off the couch, hell-bent on getting to the projector before anyone, especially Sergievsky, could hear anything damning.

The first thing that shot through Anatoly's mind was that if he had to sit and suffer through this showing details of his own life than by god, Freddie had to do the same. He dove after Freddie, trying to pull him back to the couch.

His second thought was one of horror as he listened to the song. If it were true and he had no reason to think it wasn't... then Freddie's life hadn't been as wonderful and golden as he had always imagined. He had suffered in his own way and had turned to chess for solace.

They... they weren't so different, really.

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