The Ink That Bleeds

DRAFT: Think Red 53- The Youth That Lost a Nation By A. G. Ruslan The Red Army

What I Was Meant For

I was written in confidence.

My title was beautiful.

“The Youth That Lost a Nation.”

The pen scratched. The cigarette burned. The vodka grew wet with condensation. And I was born.

Most Think Red’s are written a few days before the event.

But not me.

I was written on September 23, 2022.

The night Ivan Stanislav fell.

I was born not as a reaction, but as a reckoning. A prophecy. A promise.

And when Alexei finished, he lovingly folded me. Not to discard. But to wait.

For the rematch. For the moment. For the justice that would finally come. I waited with him. In drawers. In folders. In silence.

Alexei whispered the name of Hayes Hanlon like a slur. I remember it vividly. Not because I understood the word, though I am composed of such things, but because I was made for it. Every sentence of me was shaped like a hammer, and Hanlon’s name was the first nail.

I am the final Think Red. A sermon. A call to arms before Ivan Stanislav marched through Hanlon’s ribcage and claimed the ending the West denied him for years.

Many might say I was born out of opinion, but that is false. I was born as an order. I am a commandment. A declaration. I am the last word in a war of narrative righteousness.

And then?

Scott Hunter won.

The Fracture

I was there when it happened, and I remember.

I lay on the bench. Folded. Pressed. Perfect. Not finished, but near enough. Ivan and Alexei were anxious for the match to end. Then, they would dictate the final words and make ready for final deployment.

Everything inside of me whispered of Hanlon. His smirk. His mustache. The crimes of his victory. The sins wrought against my beloved Ivan Stanislav.

My ink dried. My voice sharpened. My righteousness palpable.

But the monitors glowed.

Something in my soul began to fray.

Alexei perched on a stool, arms folded, brow drawn. Ivan leaned forward, freshly showered from his match with Lemieux. His elbows rested on his knees, the red coat stretched across him like a mountain groaning beneath prophecy.

The Bear’s wounds never fully healed, but the ones under the skin hurt most. Hunter had wrestled him to a rare no-contest. It lingered like a bruise. But Hanlon? His wound lived in my lines. It bled.

They watched the match and neither spoke.

Hanlon looked dominant. Confident. He performed for the crowd, for the cameras, for his boys in Glue. He mocked the match. Mocked the stakes. Mocked the very idea that this was fate.

But then?

Scott Hunter.

Comrade accident. Comrade idiot.

Dropkick. Powerslam. Then, he bridged. A perfect figure-four, locked with the desperation of a man who had no business being here… and yet was. A face purple with effort. A scream torn from his lungs. His entire body trembling in pain and defiance and heart.

Hanlon tapped. Not slowly. Not bitterly. Suddenly. Sharply. As if something inside had cracked.

The bell rang, and Ivan didn’t move. Alexei gripped the edge of the stool until his knuckles went white. Scott Hunter stood on the ramp. Arms raised. A stunned crowd cheering him. A man without narrative, crowned by irony.

And I felt myself erode. The future I was made for?

Gone.

I was Alexei’s vengeance. Ivan’s pride.

The one to unmake Hammerin’ Hanlon.

But now? Would I be rewritten? Torn asunder? Salvaged for parts?

I hadn’t failed.

But the story moved on without me.

Because Scott Hunter, uninvited and unworthy, had torn the page.

Ivan stood. Slowly. As if rising from the grave of forgotten history. He didn’t look at Alexei. He didn’t speak. His collar tight, eyes distant, he walked away and left me with my maker.

I wanted to scream.

No!

It was my time!

I was meant to be the bridge between past and future. The clarion call. The righteous sickle slicing through our enemies.

And now, I am nothing.

I wanted the trash. I deserved more than this.

Toss me beside the used tape rolls and water bottles and sweat-drenched towels. Better to die anonymous than be remembered as wrong.

But then I felt it.

Alexei’s hand.

Not gentle. Not reverent. Just… firm.

He picked me up. Gripped me like I might flee. His eyes burned. Not with grief, but betrayal.

He just turned, and left.

I prayed for anything but this.

What I Would Have Been

If Hanlon hadn’t lost…

They would have quoted me.

The banners would’ve gone up in Arkhangelsk, red and gold with my title emblazoned like scripture. The Youth That Lost a Nation. Children would’ve recited me in language classes, learning their syntax through my righteousness.

Alexei would’ve leaned into the podium at the news conference, eyes flashing, voice low: “Now, you may turn to page three.”

And there I’d be.

Printed. Broadcast. Distributed.

Beloved.

They’d have played Ivan’s final Red Scare on loop. And they would’ve said I saw it coming. That I’d prophesied it. That every line in me already knew. That every word in me foretold it.

The timing. The weight. The velocity. The glorious inevitability!

And when it was over, when Hanlon was dust and Ivan stood above him, not just the victor but vindication, they would’ve looked to me.

And I would have said, “Told you so.”

But Scott Hunter won.

So none of it happened. I will never live like the others.

The Rewriting

He didn’t speak when he sat me down. Not a word exited his lips. He spread me open with his skeletal, calloused, shaking hands and stared at me.

The vodka glass still glistened. The air smelled of sweat, shaving cream, and frustration. The window was open, and I could hear a neon sign outside stuttering a constant zzzt… zzzt… zzzk.

I tried to curl up and protect myself. To drag myself closed as his eyes scoured me with hatred and malice.

My resistance was futile. He unfolded me again. Not delicately. Like a man digging through a wreckage. To see if anything was left. Anything worth salvaging. The crease down my center split with a quiet pop, like a tendon pulled too far. My spine flared open. I was exposed, naked, and shivering on his desk.

He read my title and, thank Lenin, he hesitated.

But then, he reached for the pen.

Not the black one. The one with purpose.

Not the blue one. The one that documents.

The red one. The bitter one. The angry one. The pen that doesn’t write. The pen that carves.

He took off the cap and then, Alexei began to unmake me. He didn’t revise.

He stabbed.

“Hayes Hanlon is not a man, but a metaphor.”

He struck the line not once, but twice. First, horizontally, and then diagonally. Like a crooked crucifixion. Like it had scuffed Ivan’s boots.

“The Bear marches not toward victory, but toward justice!”

Crossed out so hard he tore me. The ink bled through to the sheet beneath me. I stained another page just by being written. But he kept going. Deeper. Crueler.

“This is not a rematch. It is a reckoning.”

The line was mine. And it was wrong.

Ivan was getting a rematch. Just not with the man I was made for.

He didn’t just cross it out. He spat while doing it. Each edit was a blow. Each insertment was a defilement. Words were forced into me that didn’t belong. Names I had never met. Phrases I didn’t believe.

He shoved in laughter, where there had once been steel.

He scratched “Scott Hunter” like it was a curse and forced me to bear its weight.

He removed the righteousness of my words and covered them with ridicule. Ideology was replaced with insult. He tore open my ribs and shoved mockery inside and called them structure.

I was not made for this. I was not made to hold this name, this voice, this parody of purpose.

He violated me. And, worst of all?

I didn’t resist. I let it happen. Do you know why?

Because I’m his.

Because I love him.

Because I am the only thing Alexei Ruslan ever touched that couldn’t flinch.

Because he wrote with fire once, and even now when broken, I wanted to burn for him. I knew how much he wanted it to be Hanlon. How long he had waited. The years spent gnashing teeth over that first match. Convincing Ivan to return to PRIME only to immediately be defeated? The shame of it. The pain of it.

How Alexei saw the defeated, shocked look on Ivan’s face all because of some plucky upstart. And now there was another!

The Decades and Weeks he weathered, psychologically, for this moment, alongside Ivan. The dreams he fed to the fire, one by one, just to keep The Russian Bear warm.

Ivan paid in silence. In faith. In blood. And still it wasn’t enough.

I wanted to tell Alexei it was okay.

That it wasn’t his fault.

That the story doesn’t always go where you want it to go.

That some smiles, no matter how fraudulent, just win.

But I couldn’t tell him those things. Because I am not beside him, sitting at the desk. I’m not a friend on the phone. I’m not an old comrade of yesteryear.

Because as much as I am Think Red, I am something living. Something deeper. Something more.

I understood.

Not all at once. But enough.

I am him.

And it hurts. But it hurts more that it hurts him. Every stroke through a word, a blade dragged across his own resolve.

Every scribbled line, a tremor in the hand he keeps so steady.

Every page torn, shreds of a self that doesn’t know how to grieve.

He breaks me because he cannot break in front of anyone else. Because to the world, he must be steel. To Ivan, a shield. To Arina, a guide. To Speedy, a bulwark. To himself?

Not a man. Just a shadow with purpose.

So I become the wound. The outlet. The skin he can cut without bleeding.

If there is a burden, I carry it. If there is guilt, I’ll absorb it.

Because if he can’t cry, then I will.

Not for himself. But for Ivan. For the loss he won’t speak of, and the absurd cruelty of what came after.

Ink down my face like blood in the snow.

Line by line.

And if I could carry the pain, if I could wear the scars for Ivan, bleed through my margins so my best friend didn’t have to, I happily would.

So I did.

I took the cuts. I took the ink. I let him carve his grief into me because that’s all I had left to offer.

I was torn to pieces, so he could mend himself.

And when he looked at what remained? He crumpled me.

A flick of the wrist.

Into the wastebasket I fell.

The Accusation

He wasn’t supposed to be you. You weren’t supposed to be anything.

Do you understand that, Scott Hunter?

I was forged for reckoning. Sharpened for a name that meant something. Hayes Hanlon was no villain. He was the story. He was the sin. The scar that never closed.

And now you’ve replaced him?!

You could never be that important.

You weren’t a rival. You weren’t a threat. You weren’t even a name in my margins.

You were a disruption. A narrative accident. A misprint in the obituary. A crude footnote inked over the headline.

You took the name from Ivan’s mouth. You stole the justice from his stride. The victory that was written. The healing he’d earned.

All of it was undone by you.

And yet, here I am. Desecrated. Rewritten. Mocked by the joke you turned this into.

You, with your buffoonery. Your friendship. Your cheerful, idiot grin. You sleepwalked into the pyre meant for a king. And I am the one left in ashes.

This wasn’t your war. You weren’t worth it. You are a hijacker of history.

I watched from the locker room as Hanlon fell. Not because you were great, but because fate is cruel. Because sometimes the punchline lands and the tragedy doesn’t. Because sometimes gods are killed by clowns.

I was there when Alexei’s hand shook. When the vodka glass cracked. When the fire in his lungs died. I watched the crimson blade tear through me. Not because he hated me, but because he hated you.

Because you stole from Ivan the only justice he had left.

Ivan waited for this. For years. For blood. For balance.

He carried the weight of that first loss like a badge and a shackle. The first match back. The first crack in the armor. The first laugh allowed by all the unbelievers. The capitalists. The hatemongers. The wreckers and naysayers. For years, we weathered the single fact that no lie, no justification, could ever undo the damage that had been wrought.

Hanlon did that.

And we were going to purge him for that.

And then came you.

The leftover from someone else’s story. The funny idiot in some buddy cop comedy. The echo of a better man.

You arrived not as a warrior, but as a mistake.

And now? Ivan must face you. As if history were a coin flip.

No arc. No closure. No vengeance.

Just another match in a tournament that’s forgotten why it began.

You are a hollow scrape of boots on the wrong battlefield.

And yet…

I felt it.

The shift.

The moment your name was spoken aloud, and the weight of Alexei’s heart turned against itself. Because you beat Hanlon.

You’ve stood toe to toe with Ivan once before.

Because despite all appearances… you might belong here.

And that’s what hurts the most. You weren't supposed to matter. But now you do.

And I hate you for it.

I was meant to be history. Instead? I’m a rewrite.

A casualty of your foolishness.

A testament to the fragility of destiny.

I don’t know what I am anymore.

Only that I am not what I was.

And I hate what you made me become.

The Coat

He came alone.

No knock. No hesitation. Just a presence too large for silence and too tired for ritual. The lock clicked behind him, and the room sighed with recognition. I had waited for him, though I hadn’t known I was waiting.

I was beneath other scraps now. A balled-up thing among lint and fury. Forgotten.

He didn’t turn on the light.

The neon sign outside sputtered and spit its broken syllables in the gloom. His footsteps were heavy, not from pain, but from purpose. I had known this weight. I had been drafted beneath it before. But this time, he didn’t bring commands. He brought himself.

He saw me.

In the trash.

And for some reason, he reached in.

Ivan Stanislav’s hands are not gentle things. They are built for lifting steel, not turning pages.

But he was careful.

He crossed the room and sat at the desk. The same desk where Alexei had torn me apart. Where red ink still crusted like dried blood.

He unfolded me with the same care one might unfold a war medal or a mother’s final letter. His fingers trembled, just once. Just enough. His thumb brushed my title: The Youth That Lost a Nation. A lie now. But not forgotten.

He didn’t read all the words I splayed out before him. He didn’t have to. His eyes moved across the tears, the slashes, the words burned out of me. He saw what I had been. What I had become. What had been done to me.

And then, he paused.

His hand hovered, not over his coat, but back toward the wastebasket.

For a moment, I thought… no.

For a moment, he thought.

Because what use is a torn-up document? Soaked in failure? Drowned in red ink? What use is a memory of what should have been? What use is me, when the name is no longer Hanlon, but Hunter?

But the hand did not open.

Instead, he looked again, at the gashes, the scribbles, the places where Alexei had carved himself into me like a confession. Where he bared a soul he never would dare show. Not even to his greatest, closest friend and brother. And maybe, Ivan saw something worth keeping.

Not because it was still useful.

But because it was still his.

And he understood.

Not because I told him. But because he remembered.

He remembered the loss. The guilt. The shame of that first defeat, all those years ago, when Hayes Hanlon smiled under the lights and made the Soviet Bear feel small. He remembered how Alexei never said it hurt, and how that made it worse. He remembered the promises. The plans. The way they had written the future on my back and then watched it catch fire.

He saw all of it. And still, he didn’t flinch.

Instead, he folded me again. Not the way Alexei had. Not in fury. Not in grief. In resolution. As if, by preserving me, some part of Alexei would remain unbroken.

Outside, the tournament brackets marched on. Scott Hunter waited. The world did not care for grief. It only cared for the next bell, the next name, the next fall. And so, Ivan would go. Not for vengeance. Not for glory. But because the story, even broken, must endure. It must be carried forward. It’s what he’d done his entire life.

And then?

He reached inside his coat. Not the outer pocket. Not the breast.

The pocket over his heart.

He slipped me inside. I rested against the warmth of him. Sweat. Blood. Old cologne. Grief. And for the first time, I knew what it meant to be carried.

But he didn’t walk away as I thought he would. Ivan paused. His hand hovered over the pocket. His fingers curled, opened, and then slowly, with the same tenderness he used to cradle his mother’s hand, he pulled me out again.

He stared at me, with those old, tired eyes that few were ever allowed to see.

He looked at me. Torn. Ink-scabbed. Unreadable in places. But alive. And reached for a pen.

Not red.

Not blue.

Black. The one with purpose.

He gently turned me toward an empty corner. Cleared a space among the scars, and wrote:

Hunter was worth it. Alexei.

Even if you’ll never admit it.

The pen was a gentle caress.

This tournament is harder than I’ve known. Tsonda put one nail in me before it even started. Claymore. Even Lemieux. The weight of the past. The burden of grief. Every step forward cuts deeper than the last.

Arina at the hospital, Speedy in Havana, and now you through the ashes of what was lost. All of you have filled a void in my heart I never thought could be filled.

She reminded me of tenderness and patience. He reminded me of joy and family. And you, Alyosha… you reminded me that the fight doesn’t end just because the heart breaks.

Hunter is not a clown. He is a worthy challenge. And I will meet him like the man, the symbol, you need me to be. Not just for me, but for you, and the rest.

Because if I have learned anything in the Almasy Tournament? Through broken bones, and a shattered heart?

I endure. But not alone.

Not anymore.

He wrote, in smaller script, a whisper in ink.

You, old friend, are not alone either.

He held me a moment longer, folded me over once more, and nestled me into the warmth and safety of his pocket. Not just against his heart.

Into it.

He took me with him.

I had been waiting for Hanlon for years. I had mourned his absence like death. I had cursed Hunter as an intruder, a clown, a joke that had shattered the military plan.

But Ivan didn’t laugh. He didn’t curse. He looked at what remained… and gave it meaning.

Ivan made me enough.

I will never be the Think Red I was meant to be. But I don’t have to be discarded to begin again.

Hanlon is gone.

Hunter is real.

So is the pain. Yet the Bear marches onward. And I, a simple piece of paper bearing the scars, pain, and trauma of so many, will march with him.

I’m not prophecy any longer.

I’m not a warning anymore.

I’m also not a wound.

Because of Ivan Stanislav, I became something stronger.

Years ago, I was written in confidence.

Folded in fury.

Then, I was rewritten in despair.

Torn in grief.

And now?

I am carried in faith.

Not away from Alexei, but toward the ring. Toward what they still share.

Where the most intimate truths must be held.

Close to his heart.