A/N: De-anoned from Kink Meme
Warnings: Self-harm in the form of self-starvation and intentional sleep-deprivation
Disclaimer: I do not own Hetalia - Axis Powers
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If anyone notices the way he now stumbles into World Meetings instead of loudly kicking open the door and announcing his awesome presence, they say nothing of it. 'Why would they?' flashes through his mind, but he shakes his head of the thought as his stomach growls loudly in the empty corridor and he staggers down the hallway, sticking close to the wall for support. When he reaches the door to the meeting room, he summons all the strength he has left to push it open, and it slams against the wall with a bang. He offers a simple – and if he were being perfectly honest, rather lame-sounding – 'hello' to all the other nations as he lets go of the wall and stands before them on unsteady feet. (He can't remember the last time he's allowed himself more than three hours of sleep.) It doesn't take more than a fraction of a second to register the range of facial expressions in the room - extending from mildly surprised to outright and thoroughly disgusted – and England is the first to break the silence.
"Bloody hell, Prussia. Again?" The harsh tone is accompanied by an accusatory finger from across the room, and in his current state Prussia cannot help but think that it looks like a spear – albeit a blurry one – pointed directly at his nose. "You're not even supposed to be here, so if I don't get to show up to meetings pissed, you certainly don't get to show up absolutely bloody plastered!"
Prussia says nothing, and opts instead for staring down England's finger as it blurs in and out of focus. (His vision is not swimming nearly as much as it was last week, and he decides that he's been eating too much. He makes a mental note to clear out the mini-fridge he's set up in his brother's basement, even though he knows that the only things in it are two cans of beer and a half a bottle of maple syrup.)
"Bruder, do you need something?" Germany asks with an annoyed frown as he attempts to pry Italy off his arm. When Prussia doesn't respond, Germany continues. "If you don't, go back home. This isn't a playground for you to come to when you're bored."
"This meeting is clearly lacking in awesome. I just thought I'd help out a bit." His voice is so weak he can barely recognize it as his own, and the way the syllables run together in his mouth – almost as if he really were drunk – makes him suddenly nauseous. He takes to the wall again as his empty stomach churns violently. Beside his brother, Hungary rolls her green eyes and turns away, exasperation clearly written on her face. Next to her, Austria's lips are a thin line as he clenches his jaw, refusing to so much as glance in Prussia's direction. Prussia's eyes narrow, and if he had the strength, he would be in the aristocrat's face, reminding Austria that there was once a time he didn't dare turn his back on the awesome Prussia out of pure fear. Had he the strength, he would have demanded that attention that he has since lost, but he barely has enough strength to stand, so he does nothing but smile sheepishly at his brother.
"Prussia, go home. You know you're not allowed in here." 'Only nations are allowed at World Meetings, and you're not a nation anymore,' goes unsaid, but Prussia hears it anyway – in Germany's voice, loudly and right next to his ear – and his footing falters beneath him.
"G-Gotcha," he answers as he backs out of the room, fingers trailing the doorframe as he goes, trying to stand without any support. He lasts as long as it takes for the entirety of his silhouette to clear the doorway before he collapses against the wall. The nausea is still there, and he claws his way up the wall, pushing himself into a standing position before sprinting down the hallway to the bathroom. Running is easier than standing still; that was one of the things he learned over the past few months. When the world is swimming before his eyes and his legs buckle under his weight, the easiest thing to do is to keep moving, even when black spots cling to the edge of his vision and his feet don't necessarily land in all the best places.
He manages to make it to the bathroom easily – he only trips and collapses three times – and once there, he wrenches open a stall door so he can dry-heave into a toilet. When he is finally done retching, he looks down and finds that he has upturned nothing but a thin, yellowish bile. That's all his stomach has in it to empty.
Weak from the running, Prussia flushes and then turns to sit, propping his head up on his hands as he tries not to nod off. He can feel his consciousness slipping as he sits, and he slaps himself in the face harshly to stay awake. It works for a few minutes as his cheek stings and burns, but as the pain fades his exhaustion returns, and he staggers out of the bathroom and into the hallway.
The single elevator in the building is all the way across the hall, but the stairs are immediately to his right, and though he knows he probably won't be able to make it to the bottom of them without slipping and breaking at least one bone, they beckon to him nonetheless; he's not quite sure he can make it to the elevator. He resists temptation, though and sprints to it. He collapses twice before getting there, and as he stumbles and trips past the knowing looks of the country's citizens all the way back home, he is again thankful that the meeting is being held in Germany.
After a few minutes collapsed behind his front door, Prussia manages to make it to the kitchen and leans heavily on the counter as he looks around, contemplating the thought of food. He knows he doesn't want to eat; he's been eating too much already, and the simple thought of doing so again renews his nausea.
Still, he vaguely wonders what West has in the fridge. He can't remember the last time he's taken a look. Before he realizes it, though, there's a knife and a loaf of bread in his hands, and he warily eyes the sizable slice he seems to have cut. Too much, he decides, and he cuts it in half. It is about as thick as his palms now, but still the piece looks too big. He halves it again, and then twice more, whittling it down to a mere sliver in his hands. His hunger has not yet overcome his stomach's uneasy tossing, however, so he simply wraps the pieces up with the rest of the loaf and places it back in the basket whence it came.
The knife glints in his hands as he examines it. Several years prior, he knows he would have been using it to far more violent ends – (a memory of trying to clean the kitchen counter of blood before Germany arrived home and with only one functioning arm resurfaces) – but that has since lost its appeal. No matter how many times he dragged the knife up his forearms, or dug it into the junctions behind his knees, or stabbed it into his stomach, his body patched itself up in a matter of days, as if it had never happened. The gashes healed and the scars faded, even the ones left behind from the two or three times he had tried to blow his brains out.
Prussia puts the knife back. Standing still for so long restores some of his energy, and he makes it to his bedroom in the basement easily, only tripping once on his way down the stairs. Two of his alarm clocks are going off, and he manages to maneuver around the clothes littering his floor so he can turn them off.
Nails digging into his palms to keep himself awake, Prussia lays back on his couch-turned-bed and stares at the ceiling, letting his thoughts wander. He can't figure out what to make of himself – an existence neither human nor nation – and he wonders how long it took Germania to die. He wonders if Germania woke up one day simply knowing 'today is the day' or if he found himself on a battlefield with wounds that weren't healing as quickly as they should have been, or if he maybe, just maybe spent decades dying, trying to die, knowing his time was up and wondering why he wasn't disappearing.
As much as Prussia hopes, though, he is sure that it was probably none of those things and that his grandfather was likely struck down quickly in some battle somewhere, surrounded by whatever was left of his countrymen as he fought 'til the bitter end.
Prussia can't help but feel jealous. The only proof he has of his impending death is a constant aching where his heart is, as if being slowly – torturously slowly – squeezed away to nothing by an invisible hand. In a moment of delirium, he wonders whose hand it is that's killing him, and Hungary's grinning face materializes in front of him, smiling maddeningly like she does. He reaches out to swipe at her with a growl – one last fight for life – and then her face disappears, dissolving into Germany's permanent scowl, the remnants of an 'I'm sorry' on his lips as the grip on his heart tightens. Prussia has no answer to give him, but it doesn't seem to matter; Germany's face quickly shifts into Austria's and the fucking snob doesn't even have the gall to crush Prussia's heart with his hands like Hungary or Germany. He simply presses one inordinately pointy heel of his aristocratic boots into it, as if Prussia isn't even worth dirtying his hands over. Prussia wants to grab him by his stupid cravat and shake him senseless and scream at him about how he used to be great, and how he's done nothing to deserve that aloof, condescending attitude, and how please god just let him DIE isn't this torture enough already he never asked for any of this please all he wants is to finally FINALLY die.
His thoughts dissolve into a deafening screech as he tries to voice them, to release his frustrations on the stupid, unfortunate man in front of him, but he finds that he can make no sound even as his lips move frantically with desperate words.
His eyes snap open to the shrieking of one of his alarm clocks blaring away some bastardized digital version of Beethoven's 5th, and Prussia sits up to turn it off, brain barely registering the fact that he's been asleep for an entire hour and a half before it turns to the beer in his fridge. He needs alcohol.
He's across the room in a heartbeat – a bit steadier on his feet now than he was before – and he digs out a beer from the fridge with shaking hands, unsure whether to pin what he had just seen as a dream or a hallucination. At least, he thinks, in a tiny, private place in the back of his mind, he can find some solace in his body's reactions – the way it struggles to stay upright when he's not had enough sleep, or the way spots appear before his eyes and his vision swims when he hasn't eaten. He knows he's dying. (He doesn't mind. He'd rather be dead than the empty representation of a nation that no longer exists.) All he's doing is providing the sensation. (The slow squeeze on his heart isn't enough. It never is.)
He's finished the beer, and by now he knows the alcohol won't stay down even if he wants it to, so he staggers to the bathroom, feeling the burn as it bubbles back up his throat, and he kneels down in front of the toilet to vomit. When he expels nothing but beer – looking exactly the same as it did when he swallowed it down- he spends twenty minutes trying to throw up again, trying to rid his body of something other than the thin, bitter bile coating the inside of his mouth. When nothing comes up, he screws his eyes shut and rests his forehead on the cool ceramic of the bathtub, his stomach feeling distinctly like it might start eating itself from within if it could ever settle properly enough to do so.
Another alarm clock – this one producing a shrill, infernal series of bleeps – goes off in his room at about the same time Prussia catches the sound of the front door being unlocked, and he manages to get to his feet and cross the basement to shut it off, only to immediately afterward stagger and trip over the empty beer can he'd tossed to the floor. Prussia laughs as well as he can with his nose buried into the carpet as Germany's agitated voice carries down the stairs.
His precious baby brother will probably just think he's drunk again. For some reason, Prussia finds that incredibly funny.
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Translation notes: 'Verfall' means 'Downfall' in German.