STOP.
STOP.
I SAID STOP.
What you are about to read is a spin-off of Glassamilk's soul-destroying fic Gutters, written with the author's knowledge and subject to anything at all that Glassamilk has said or will say or intends to say about the characters involved. I don't reiterate much of anything from the original because that was what Gutters itself was for, so no Peter and Denmark. Instead, as you'll see this story focuses primarily on life in the new American colony, so , yeah, fanfic of a fanfic.
If you haven't read Gutters, GO READ GUTTERS.
One of these days I will write a happy Hetalia fic...
Walls
Part One of Three
Greece only asked Ivan one question after everything was explained, which came just after everyone was loaded onto the submarine and they left the toxic grey world behind.
"The far east, did... did Japan...?"
"I'm sorry, he didn't make it."
Greece had developed the terrible cough and milky eyes that came from breathing in too much of the ash on the surface, but considering how terrible conditions were up there, Ivan was pleased to find him breathing at all. Greece had tall mountains, and money had not been an issue during the scramble to build shelters and drill bunkers: most of his original islands were gone, but there were plenty of new ones housing his isolated people.
Food was an issue, but food had always been an issue for Greece, much like it was now for Russia. The hope was that if his people had survived for so long after enduring two flashes then they would make it until Ivan could return for another load of refugees. Greece didn't even try to ask him what had happened to Japan, he just settled down next to Spain with a vacant expression on his scarred face, blankets wrapped around his weak and withered body.
Just before he turned to leave the compartment reserved for people like them, Ivan stopped and looked at Spain again. The brunette had been quiet since they'd climbed on board, probably because he had required help climbing down into the dark, cramped interior of the submarine. Seeing him without his right leg sticking out of the heavy jacket he'd been given was something of a shock to Ivan. The amputation it shouldn't have been noteworthy after so much carnage, but there it was: a nation without his leg. Without thinking, the Russian reached up and touched the cruel rip that had torn across his own face in the chaos of Apocalypse, and felt kinship, if only a little.
So he asked:
"How long ago did you see Denmark?" The question, he knew, came eerily close to 'How long ago did South Italy die?' but Ivan didn't want to bring that up, he wanted information. "Do you know how he wound up in Messina?" Spain's green eyes were only half-open and Ivan was surprised at his own patience, watching the Spaniard look from side to side in the cramped space without actually turning his head, how he was so careful to avoid looking at the fourth nation seated across from him.
"He said it just happened in the chaos, you know?" Spain finally answered, "It was several weeks ago. I can hardly remember." No, he simply didn't want to remember, but Ivan was okay with that. He couldn't chase Denmark across land anyways, nor did he really want to when there were more important tasks to complete. The Dane would look after himself, in the meantime Ivan nodded, directed their attention to the first aid kit in the back, and then left.
The submarine was already filled to capacity, probably even a bit over capacity as Ivan's heavy boots clanked across the metal floor and he let himself through a number of tight doorways. His crew knew what they were doing and didn't require his constant attention, but he was headed for the bridge just the same when he heard another pair of footsteps following through the maze of sick rooms and flickering lights.
Like Greece, when Ivan stopped walking Italy only had one thing to say:
"There must be something I can do." Do? Ivan turned around in the cramped, humming hallway where the other nation had followed him, looking down at the smaller man with a frown.
"You can settle your people for the voyage. We will be down here for a long time." It was very, very hard not to look away from the sight in front of him.
There had been a time, several centuries in fact, where Ivan had envied Italy for being such a warm, sunny little nation. But the feeling had long since passed. South Italy had begun to dry up in the months leading up to the Calamity, nevermind the event itself, and North Italy's face was a very pungent reminder of their harsh fate.
At some point in the last few years, Italy's entire face had been completely burnt, and anything less than a careful review of his face was enough to make you completely forget who it was you were supposed to be looking at. His eyebrows were gone and his hairline was jagged and uneven. The smooth olive skin had been replaced with ruddy, rubber-like scales and scars, the contours of his face were preserved, but even his lips had blistered and peeled to the point where only their shape really remained. Feliciano had been a very beautiful man once, but now with the firm, dark look that had overtaken his eyes, and the way they were framed by the trauma lacquered over his cheeks and nose, he just looked terrible.
Ivan had been in their company for two days, and he had not seen Italy smile once.
"Russia, please." His voice, at least, did not sound so different, but Ivan really hadn't had a chance to hear him say more than a few words. This was a surprise.
"What do you want me to do, Italy?" Really, what was he looking for?
"I want you to put me to work."
"Work?" Ivan repeated, not sure he'd heard the Italian right. "We have no chefs or kitchens on this vessel, everyone lives off rations." Italy was already shaking his head, lifting his burnt hands up for emphasis.
"There must be something I can do with these. Cleaning, or oiling, or-"
"You want manual work?" This did not sound like the Italy Ivan remembered but, really, no one was the same anymore. It was his own fault if Ivan kept trying to tag the wrong identity to this new person. "I'm not sure." He shook his head, quickly cutting Italy off with, "you're extremely underweight, I don't know if you could handle-"
But two could play at cutting off.
"For God's sake, Braginski, I survived the Apocalypse!" Force, wit and anger. And he called it Apocalypse, not Rapture, a change which made Ivan pause for a moment. Italy had been one of the few nations to cling to the biblical term while elsewhere people converted to the scientific "Calamity", which made perfect sense considering how close he was to- oh.
Oh.
"Alright. Follow me." Ivan said, but he didn't go anywhere. He just watched Italy stand patiently in front of him- or was he impatient? Ivan couldn't tell anymore. "But are you sure you wouldn't rather sit with-?"
"Lets go." Hmph.
So they went.
Matthew saw the submarine first because he was captivated by the sight of the morning sun. He was simply in awe of it, the clean, yellow light reflecting off the horizon. The longer he stood there, the more he could pretend that the sick smell of the ocean breeze wasn't really so strong. Maybe the water was only grey in contrast with the sun. Maybe the plastic buckets and rope and tin cans and everything else they were collecting for use was just part of a save-the-oceans clean-up effort, not life or death salvaging for reusable items back at camp. Maybe. Just maybe.
It wasn't his fault for feeling so sentimental. The last time he or anyone else had seen the sun had been one of two ways: in the minutes just before the bunkers had sealed them inside, or just after the doors had locked them out.
After that it had been fire. It had been chaos. It had been death. It had been a world of ash and pain, where there was no comfort in knowing that their part of the flooded, battered world had only suffered one flash from the sky, not two like their former friends in Europe.
And who knew what had happened in Asia? Except that Japan's islands had all sunk by the hundreds, and that most of Polynesia and all of the Pacific nations were gone. No one knew anything else. Russia was the only one who had successfully made it back and forth across the Pacific, and he'd only just managed it by hugging the new coastline that had swallowed most of America and Matthew's west cost regions. Mexico was faring no better. Matthew hadn't seen Cuba in well over a year...
So the sunlight soothed him, and because he took those few moments to just stand there and wish, despite the danger of wishing, he saw Russia's submarine rise out of the poisoned ocean to greet him. That was how, when Alfred came running down the beach screaming about a new boatload of refugees, Matthew could surprise him by saying he already knew.
The sun vanished behind the clouds, and Matthew Williams got back to work.
All Spain could tell them was that France had gone to London to be with England at the very end. There was nothing else from Western or Central or Northern Europe. It broke Matthew's heart to hear so little, but not even North Italy, who didn't even look like himself anymore, would answer Alfred's questions beyond the simple fact that South Italy was dead. He wouldn't tell them how, or when, or where it had happened, and after Alfred tried egging him for the third time Matthew quickly shut it down.
They gave their condolences regarding Romano, and the conversation moved on.
There was more to say about the Mediterranean basin, but Russia did most of the talking. He brought back the small, shattered pieces of a building tile from what remained of the Isle of Cyprus, and Matthew and Greece spent several hours together that night. Greece told stories from the Before and Matthew listened diligently, smiling when he could bear it even if Greece couldn't see it through his sad, milky eyes.
The geography had changed wildly after the Calamity. All of Europe had been effected by the sounds of things but the Mediterranean had been the focus of Ivan's journey. Somehow, Denmark had left Messina (Somehow, Matthew remarked, he had been in Messina) before the combined effects of the rising sea and the island's volcanoes dragged Sicily into the sea just like Cyprus.
Russia and Matthew quietly agreed, after Feliciano had long since bowed out of the conversation to find work in the camp, that the impact of losing Sicily and all of his low-lying regions would have killed Romano regardless. If South Italy hadn't died from whatever had happened in Cosenza, then the ash would have poisoned him as slowly as it was killing Greece.
Two weeks later Matthew remembered and deeply regretted that conversation with Russia. There was just something about digging Heracles' grave with Italy next to him that made all the hypothesizing and pondering feel like a terrible, tasteless joke. Even though Italy and Greece hadn't had the best history with one another, everything that came from the Before was forgotten as the Italian mercilessly dug six feet down and six feet long, dirty sunlight filtering down on their backs with no warmth. Matthew couldn't read his expression under the respirator mask, but as soon as the task was complete Italy was out of the hole and asking if there was anything else that needed to be done. There wasn't. And the Italian vanished.
He always did that though, and it just hammered into Matthew's head how different the world had become. There were so many things to keep track of in the camp that watching Italy wasn't high on Matthew's list, but he still noticed how Italy always took his meals standing up, and he only ever discussed tasks around camp, and Matthew never once caught him dozing or relaxing anywhere. Even Russia had the time to kick a salvaged ball around the square with the camp children, even Lithuania would take a nap in the fields when the weather was tolerable, but not Italy.
Italy was always running errands, or carrying tools, or putting something together, or taking something else down. He was always on his way out into the fields, or he was ordering the young and the strong into position to raise the wall of a new building, or the structure of a new tent. Alfred put him to work with the handful of engineers and architects who'd survived and remembered their craft. The team erected a series of flag-poles made of welded metal pips in the centre of camp, and they hauled concrete slabs and debris around for building foundations. They levelled the camp "square" using shovels and metal drums filled with sand, and then they fashioned the mail-boxes for grief-letters out of old corrugated steel sheets that were too small for anything else.
Italy was an old nation, he'd practised the ancient crafts like blacksmithing and woodcraft for a lot longer than Matthew or Alfred, and he hadn't forgotten them in the span of two industrial centuries. The bulletin boards were torn down and rebuilt with scrap-metal posts that he showed the former mechanics how to heat and hammer into one solid chunk with just an oven, a hammer and a pair of tongs. He even rebuilt one of the ovens just so it could be used to concentrate heat properly for that kind of work. He gave the architects the simple tools they'd need to re-organize the layout of the tents to keep everything orderly and in control. No clever measuring devices or photographs, just wooden rods, lengths of twine, and a lot of ancient know-how.
The only time Matthew ever caught Italy actually standing still was purely by chance, one night a month or two after Heracles' burial. He'd just jumped off the back of the transport from the beach, him and Alfred one of the few who'd gone out to see Ivan off at the submarine bay, and there was Italy standing silently in the fenced off yard where the dead were buried. The fence was a new addition, something Italy had been working on for days all by himself, and he was just standing at the foot of Heracles' grave with a makeshift hammer still in his hand.
Italy made the sign of the cross over his chest and then kissed a talisman that was hidden behind his burnt fingers. Matthew walked away before Alfred could ask what had caught his attention.
The next morning Matthew saw Greece's flag, made from cloth strips that were sort of blue and mostly white, flying from the pole where the Italian flag had been the night before. The architects raised another flag-pole later that week and the Italian tricolour returned to its place in the grey sky.
A few weeks later, Alfred finally made up his mind about Italy, and Matthew wholeheartedly agreed.
Unfortunately, Italy did not.
"Why am I being moved?"
"Huh?"
Matthew was with his brother and Mexico when Italy stepped into the tent and asked his question. Seasons were still tricky to keep track of, but there was a lot of clean, fresh sunlight spilling in at Feliciano's back as the scar-faced Italian stood there, waiting.
"My duties." He clarified, and Matthew was more surprised to hear him speaking so directly than worried about what he was actually saying. "My name's not on the board anymore and the others told me to talk to you. What's 'Cultural Spirit' supposed to be?"
"Can you guys handle this without me?" Matthew asked, looking at Alfred, who was looking at Mexico, who was looking down at their map collection and just shrugged. They'd been discussing the bounty of supplies and fuel that had been unearthed under the remains of Alfred's Tennessee property a few days north of the camp, and really they'd just been bandying ideas around without getting anywhere. They could spare Matt for a few minutes, so he quickly bowed out to address Italy.
Even with the cache resources were still tight, so on a day with air this clear no one but the sick could be seen wearing respirator masks. Still, probably just out of habit both Italy and Matthew had theirs slung around their necks. Dust storms were uncommon and becoming increasingly rare, but that probably just meant they were seasonal. You never know when things could change, hence the reason why they were both also clad in the full set of worn-out dusty fatigues and long wool jackets, a worn out denim cap protecting the top of Italy's head. A red maple leaf was stitched to Matthew's right shoulder and the Italian tricolour was on Italy's, a blue band with a ring of stars strapped to his left arm marked him as one of them: with people and nations dressed the same, it was important to be able to recognize who was who under jackets and masks and goggles.
"Well?" Italy wasn't wearing his mask or his goggles, and the collar of his jacket was down so Matthew could see his face just fine. Mad was not the word for it. Italy was different but Matthew hadn't seen him mad once yet, and probably never would, but he was taxed, and he was annoyed. He was about as close to mad as he could get.
"Hey, calm down." Walking Italy away from the tent, the two of them passed the steel mail-box and stopped by the job board where lists of teams and names and duties were posted, one board for each sector of the reorganized colony. After a few moments, Italy pointed to his name "Feliciano Vargas" under a new group titled Cultural Spirit.
"I was with the engineers."
"I know, but we could really use you here."
"Doing what?"
"Compilation mostly." Matthew tried not to smile too much at that, tried not to remember too hard before it was time. "Poems, songs, stories, paintings, maps; anything to help us remember the old world."
Italy scoffed.
"Do we have time for that?"
"We'll make time." Matthew looked at the other man curiously, shocked that he'd even ask a question like that. Italy wasn't seriously questioning the importance of art, was he? "The elderly can teach the young, the invalids can do whatever you need: make brushes, paints, instruments."
"Canada, be serious."
"I am! What's wrong with you?"
Matthew knew better than to remember. He knew better than to think back to the Before, to the Better, to the (still, in many ways) Real. They all knew that nostalgia was far more deadly than the ash or the toxins or the wilds, but sometimes it was inevitable. Sometimes Matthew would look at Italy's hunched shoulders and constant focus and remember him with his smiles and his laughter, and he would beg to know what had happened. How had he burnt himself so badly? Why was he always so restless? Why couldn't he let himself sit down and rest? When did he even let himself sleep?
The answer was too obvious, too simple: two flashes and the end of the world. That was what had happened. Romano had died and Germany was unaccounted for and Japan was lost forever, and no amount of condolences or apologies or empathy was going to change that. Italy didn't wear his grief on his sleeve, but that was the problem: he didn't express any of it, his eyes just scanned for the next bit of work to be done, and there wasn't a thought in his head left for anything else. That was the answer and this was the problem, and watching Italy refuse to look at him hurt almost as much hearing the same question repeat itself over and over again in his mind: Why?
No, Canada and Italy had never been very close. And it was true, how, because of immigration and the wars Alfred had known Lovino better than either of them had known Feliciano, but Matthew had still known both brothers well enough to say that this was wrong. He couldn't pick a fight over Italy's new attitude or spit in the face of his work-ethic, but this, right here? This was wrong.
"The people need art."
"I'm not saying they don't."
"The artists need a teacher."
"Then get Antonio to do it. He was always big into culture."
"Spain's busy with the-"
"Then I'll take his place in the fields!" Italy had been staring at the board, now he rounded on Matthew and stood with his back straight and chin up. He didn't have to be taller, he just had to be tall enough and lift his shoulders and stand in a way Matthew had never seen him before; standing like a soldier. Standing like an angry, insulted soldier. "That's where I wanted to be in the first place, but you kept going on about my skills and you put me with the architects instead. Fine. I didn't care. But if you think I'm done with them then put me out in the fields with a hoe and a plough, not sitting at a table with the children and a bunch of invalids- your own words!" Italy added the last part in a hurry, cutting Matthew off before he could speak: "If art is for the old and the young and the invalids, Matthew, then let an invalid teach them, not someone who is strong and who can work."
"Italy, you're the only one left who even remembers the European arts!" He didn't mean to raise his voice like that, but Matthew had to make him see reason. "Spain was in decline for the nineteenth century and civil war for half the twentieth- whatever he had he's forgotten and whatever was left he destroyed! Sculpture, painting, the opera, architecture, poetry, philosophy, Italy! The others are all dead or missing; Greece, France, Germany, England, Austria, Poland! We still have Russia but we need his industry, so we need your memory!"
There, did that- did that get through? He may have gone too far, but-
"You don't need the old ways. Make your own art." No. No it hadn't worked. The only thing it had accomplished was it made Italy relax his shoulders just enough and bring his arms up stiffly over his chest, his head tipping down as he closed his eyes. The hat helped obscure the uneven places where his scalp had been burnt, and he'd grown out the rest of his hair to help hide the deformities, the auburn lengths covering his scarred cheeks as he stood there. Matthew was at a loss as he listened to Italy's refusal. This should have been something he'd jump at; the chance to teach and create and inspire. Instead, he just said: "I didn't come here to reminisce, Canada. I came to work. Either give me a proper job or send me back."
"Back where?" Matthew didn't want to ask, it just happened, and Italy just tilted his head back to look at the dirty blue sky over the waving flags. There was finality in his words.
"Back to Europe."
Italy walked away and Matthew watched him with blurry eyes.
For some reason, his vision never did clear up.
Like the title said, this is a completed 3-shot. Since this was published on a Tuesday, why don't you guys give me till Thursday for the next one? Sound good?
21 Guns, Pale, Somewhere, Safe and Sound, Memories, Paradise, Written in the Stars, That HetaOni Song That I Don't Know the Name of That Starts with a Mandolin.
