A Battleground for Rival Ideologies

[chesspolitik]

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.

Comments

[pitythetrumper]

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.

[chesspolitik]

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."

[pitythetrumper]

"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.

[chesspolitik]

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.

[pitythetrumper]

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.

[chesspolitik]

"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?

[pitythetrumper]

"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.

[chesspolitik]

"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?"

[pitythetrumper]

"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.

[chesspolitik]

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.

[pitythetrumper]

"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.

[chesspolitik]

"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.

[pitythetrumper]

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.

[chesspolitik]

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.

[pitythetrumper]

"Get off me," Freddie growled, trying to throw the other man off. He hated anyone hearing about his past and it was like reliving it all over again. How his father had left and how his mother had slept with anything with a dick. How he'd hidden from them all. Finally, how he'd never called his mother to let her know that he'd actually succeeded because what if she'd forgotten about him?

By the end of the song, he managed to push Sergievsky away with a hard shove and he moved to the far end of the couch, turning his face away. He didn't want the other man to see that there were angry tears in his eyes.

[chesspolitik]

Anatoly hesitated for a moment then put his hand on Freddie's shoulder. He wasn't at all sure the other man would appreciate or understand the gesture, but it was something he had to do. It was hardly sufficient enough to be a proper apology, but it was a start.

The scene changed and he glanced over out of idle curiosity and wished he hadn't. Svetlana and Florence were singing. About him. He forced himself to keep watching, though he would have preferred to shut the damned thing off.

"I am sorry," he whispered and buried his face in his hands. He had tried, he truly had but he was seeing now that he hadn't tried hard enough.

[pitythetrumper]

Freddie's shoulders grew tighter at the hand. "I don't want your pity," he snarled. He didn't want it, but he also didn't try to shrug the hand off. He didn't want pity, but what he did want was someone who understood. Who understood that the game was everything and that it had been perverted and twisted and that they had not only let it happen...they had helped do it.

That was why Freddie hated himself and watching this only made it worse. It only made him see that there was only one time when he had actually threw the Commies and his own...his own handler the finger and been true to the game and himself.

"They manipulated us both." It wasn't really accepting the apology, but letting Anatoly know that they were in the same boat.

[chesspolitik]

"And we let them," Anatoly said dully. "I... I thought I was doing the right thing, the best thing, but this is only showing me that I was just playing into their hands."

He had also seen that his view of himself as the innocent, blameless champion against Freddie's disgraceful villain was hardly accurate or fair. His actions had not all been perfect and he caused harm by not taking things into consideration. Freddie had his own pain, no matter how much he might have tried to hide it.

It had taken some time but as that song had said - it had took time to understand the man.

[pitythetrumper]

"Oh, stop being so melodramatic. We both underestimated them. We were outplayed." Freddie was tired of the dramatics and so he used the one point he knew he could to rile the other man up enough that this wasn't just one fit of emo after another.

"You should know what being outplayed feels like. I outplay you all the time."

[chesspolitik]

At that, Anatoly's head snapped up and he turned to glare at Freddie. "You most certainly do not. At best, we are evenly matched." At least, judging by the few games they had actually played through the end they were.

[pitythetrumper]

"That's what you like to think, but we haven't played more than a handful of games without fighting. Without emotions getting in the way." Freddie smirked. In reality, he knew they were pretty evenly matched, but the point was to rile him up.

[chesspolitik]

"Who started those fights?" Anatoly demanded. He might have understood Freddie a little more but that didn't mean he couldn't get annoyed by his obnoxiousness. "It was not always me!"

[pitythetrumper]

"Hey, it wasn't always me either. You're not the nice guy that the media always seemed to think you were." Unfortunately, that was probably why they were always at odds. They were more alike than either of them really wanted to admit.

[chesspolitik]

Anatoly opened his mouth to reply but his attention was caught by the current scene. It was the two of them on the screen and they were - were they talking? And Freddie giving him advice?

He looked from the screen to Freddie and then back again. "Are you trying to help me?"

[pitythetrumper]

Freddie let out a harsh breath as he looked at the screen, the wall, anything but Anatoly. "You were going to just give up. Give in. To Viigand of all people." His eyes kept going back to the screen. Did he follow Freddie's advice or did he lose? This was what he'd wanted to know since he arrived and he leaned forward on the couch the closer he got to knowing.