Hey! This is a gift to my 200th reviewer of "National Security!" Ziashapshifter101! She asked for a Spamano one-shot. This is probably different from what she had in mind.
Uhm, it acts from the idea that countries are bound to their land, and can't travel to places they don;t own. So once Spain stopped ruling Italy, they couldn't be in the same place. Get it? ai'ght cool.
Never read Spamano. Never written for Spamano. Here's to. . .
Lyrics an title come from, "This is the end" by RElient K.
I own nothing.
Well, here you are dear.
This Is the End If you Want It.
"But don't forget the speed that I can go away
Cause this is the end if you want it
Yeah this is the end
I've been convincing myself that I'm worthwhile
Cause I'm worth what I'll convince myself to be"
It was a small, cheap looking, piece of silver plastic. Dents and nicks decorated the sides and there were areas where the color had been completely rubbed off. It was pointlessly bulky and older than almost every version people had now, and it was even older than some of the people he had working for him. The pad had been well-worn and the black writing was faint, if not entirely gone in certain places. The thin plastic was cracked in several areas, and some of the information was pixelated beyond recognition.
The harried business men and politicians heavily advised getting a new version and dumping the old one out, and the ones who didn't talk, just stared distastefully at the innocent square. It was uncouth and stuck out like a sore thumb among the smooth and edgysurroundings. Perhaps it wouldn't be as bad if it worked as efficiently as the other models, but alas, it was using its own time measurements and even the most mundane tasks took seconds longer than they should have.
Despite all the protests and urging that it wasn't proper for a country to have such an outdated model, he just waved them off with a smile and some laughter. They were properly mollified by his natural easy behavior so no one really pushed the matter. Though outwardly he laughed off their requests, inwardly it was nonnegotiable.
No way in hell Spain was getting rid of his phone.
Not even for all their protesting, or their promises of how much better the new one would be.
To him a phone was more than that. It meant communication.
And this phone was meant for communication with more than just anybody.
Like many things, it was all America's fault. It was him and his new telegraph. It was revolutionary. A message could be passed around the world in less than thirty seconds.
In those thirty seconds it flew through the lines and was received and passed on down another pathway until it reached its destination. It was nearly instantaneous, and that opened a new world of rapid messaging. Spain was one of the heavy abusers of this new development. A line passed underneath the ocean for hundreds of miles to every place imaginable though he really only ever over-sent to one place specifically.
And that certain place always returned with gusto, even if it was only to tell him to stop messaging.
Spain knew he really didn't mean it. Even when it was just said through lines and dots on a paper, Spain knew he didn't mean it. He could picture the blush that slowly rose up that face as he protested and swore and shouted in angry trails of Italian that left his personal telegraphers quitting on a weekly basis. Each message left its own image that was in such contrast with itself that it was painting a picture every time.
The beautiful Italian man with the mouth of a sailor and the blush of a virgin; suffice to say that Spain could never be bored by this anomaly in the universe.
He kept every telegraph he received from the man in a small box beneath his bed, and often went through them when he couldn't sleep.
Spain had found that instant messaging was so much more rewarding than letter writing, in which it may take weeks, if not months to hear back from the recipient. Especially, because sometimes, all he wanted to do is say hello. (The other man was particularly bothered when he got letters with only a few lines of text and a message to write him back promptly.) But with telegraphs, he could often be responded to in the day, especially when he abused his privileges a little and marked the messages "URGENT."
In a way, Spain had always felt his mind operated too ahead of the times. When he finally got around to writing a letter and waiting for the reply for weeks, and then when he finally got it, his mind was already on other topics, other questions he wanted to ask.
But with this, we could know in less than a day.
Then the telephone happened. And for whatever reason, they could no coexist.
As telephones gradually replaced many telegraphs, Spain found himself reluctant to make the total switch. Yes, it was amazing being able to pick up a phone and talk to anyone around the world and have decent conversation, but there was just something about messaging that had Spain melancholy about the development. (Not that he didn't use the phone to accost the other man on a regular basis, that was a given.) Sometimes when he picked up the phone, he really had no clue what to say. The Italian man would get impatient with him and yell at him to stop wasting so much time. It was just different.
The invention of the cellphone itself was a bit blasé for Spain. He didn't really see the difference, but of course, kept up with new developments for his citizens sakes. Emails were nice, though booting up the computer and signing on took longer than the Spanish man liked and when he left it on at all hours of the day, eagerly anticipating replies, the various workers in his house would shut it down and berate him for being wasteful. IM-ing was a true flash of genius, but it just wasn't practical to leave the computer on all the time and most laptops at the time were more like metal briefcases.
Then, when they were just bordering the 2000's and Spain was going to give up on his desire for easy messaging without a phone call, it happened. The advent of the text.
The change had happened with the arrival of a small brown package with international stamps dotted across the white sticker space. Feeling surprise at the sender's address he opened it eagerly. Inside was a silver phone that closed in on itself. He remembered the surprise he felt at the tiny size and laughed because nowadays, by modern standards, it was practically a brick.
He already had one, though it was a year or more older, and he couldn't help but wonder at what the other man meant by sending him this. There were no notes that he could see inside the box, leaving him mystified why the other man felt such a bizarre spur of randomness.
He booted up the phone, a bright gleam of light accosted his eyes. Regarding the clean pixilation with the appropriate amount of admiration for the clean make, he was surprised to see that unlike his current phone, this one was enabled with the new instant messaging. A little glowing icon at the bottom informed him that there was a message waiting for him. It took him a few moments to get a grasp of the controls but he eventually found the message menu.
"Stop filling up my voice-mail you stupid bastard,"
There was no name assigned to the sender, just a string of numbers, but the identity could not have been any clearer to Spain. He smiled to himself, a short bust of excitement welling up as he clicked the reply button. Fumbling around on the buttons as he oriented himself on the controls, he shot a quick ninety character text.
Spain sat back in anticipation.
The digital display hadn't the time to flick to the next number when tinkling notes filled the air and the message alert icon popped on the screen.
"My name doesn't have a 'Q' in it. You suck at typing."
Spain had never been happier.
All was as it should be.
And for the next decade and a half, it continued much like this. He could reach him at all hours of the day! The Italian man could never abandon his phone because of hour central it was to hos their business happened these days. Spain's messages were always received, seconds later, from thousands of miles away. That lone fact, in itself was beautiful.
Things carried on much as they had the past few hundred years.
They should have carried the same for so much longer.
But they didn't.
Spain clutched the phone so tightly that he heard the plastic creak, deciding whether or not it should give and collapse in on itself. The Spaniard wasn't putting enough pressure to break it, but it was in that sweet spot, where it was just on the precipice of destruction, that he grasped it.
His arms were curled around himself. The eyes that were one full of warmth were empty and weighted. His light and bouncy curls now seemed dark and ominous, and it gave the surrounding people the chills.
They tried to coerce him out of his funk. Murmurs and whispers of worry and query echoed around him but he hardly noticed. The politicians hovered around him, more out of concern for the effect his brooding had on the country.
For once, Spain couldn't sum up the feelings to care.
Seventeen days, four hours, twenty-nine minutes and six seconds and counting since Romano had last responded to him.
It was the longest they had gone without talking since the invention of the text. The previous record was eighteen hours when Spain partied too hard and slept through most of the day.
This was on a whole new level.
One hundred four texts and no reply.
While the gratification was often instantaneous, in this case the empty cold feeling of loneliness was just as sudden and even more poignant.
Spain's initial reaction was that Romano was busy.
But as the days stretched on, it became apparent that this wasn't the case.
It was then that Spain had the slow, and sickening thought that poured doubt into his veins. The kind that pumped through his system and would not leave and simply multiplied the longer it incubated in his bloodstream.
Was it possible that they had simply run out of things to say?
Words to someone who you never see. Do you still know them? Are the words enough? How long can you keep talking about nothing? A few months? A few years? A few decades?
Perhaps the answer was a few centuries. God it hurt.
Spain almost wished that texting hadn't been invented. The more they talked, the less they had to say, and now Spain wished he could have dragged it out into the millennia's, far past the lives of stars.
He wanted it to last forever.
But he had been greedy, never getting enough. He had used all that they had and now there was none left, not even for a minute.
It was time to move on.
It was time to cope.
With the fact he had not seen Romano since the day he left the country, no longer a ruler, those hundreds of years ago.
That they were unable to set foot on the same ground, being bound to their countries and the land they possessed.
And when Romano fell out of Spain's control that they could no longer be together on the same territory.
Always separated by thousands of miles of water and land, and borders.
And only words to tie them.
Spain should have known it wouldn't last forever. Because nothing could, he had seen everything be whittled away by time in his long and extended existence. He knew this to be true.
And yet .
And yet . . .
He clenched his eyes shut, his arms grasping harshly on his shirt, pulling, ripping the fabric, and leaving dark red streaks on his skin. The emotion pulled his head into places darker and more desolate of hope then it had been for a long time.
And yet, why did it still hurt so much?
He knew everything ended but why was it this, the closing of their thin, fragile line of communication that made him feel like his heart was falling apart at the seams.
He gasped at the feeling. The cold and empty hole clawing a circuit around his heart. Or where it was supposed to be.
It was time to let it go.
Shuddering with emotion, he grasped the worn, and blocky phone in his hands. The outdated model made him smile a little manically at the irony. How outdated their relationship was when they hadn't seen each other for decades upon decades.
It was just so funny.
He laughed sharply, startling all of those around him.
They had never seen him like this. They never saw him during the hard times.
Sometimes that little box of telegrams was all the kept him moving.
He moved to crush the device. Fingers easily cracking the fragile plastic. It just showed how easy it was to demolish this. Just a breath. Just a push.
He wondered if it could be said that they even had a relationship at all.
A small brown package was placed in front of him. His boss quickly backed away, as though fearig the reaction.
He went pale as his noted the familiar senders address. Heart thumping, he tossed the phone on the floor beside him and tore open the bow easily.
There was an Iphone staring at hm. Mocking his wet face with its reflective surface.
Spain's hands were trembling as he carefully turned it on.
The bright display read one new message, and that itself was so fantastic that Spain nearly wept then and there.
The message had a picture attached to it, the profile picture by the looks of it.
Romano was taller than he remembered. He also wasn't wearing a dress.
He was posed awkwardly and seemed to be shooting annoyed glances to the phone as though this was its fault.
It was like Spain was really there.
"Hey you dumb tomato bastard. That stupid phone fell out of an airplane, so I had to get a replacement."
Straight to the point.
He fumbled, like a bird just learning to walk, as he tapped his reply impatiently on the new touch screen.
Moments later the siren screamed signaling a response.
"Shut up it was buy one get one free, and I didn't want the extra phone cluttering up my desk!"
He typed quickly.
"My name doesn't have a 'J'in it. Learn to spell you tomato bastard!"
This time Spain did cry.
Because he remembered that good communication doesn't have an expiration date. It just evolves. So long as both parties work at it.
And they had succeeded.
And that was a feat worthy all on its own.
Looking below the instructions and packaging he spied a brightly colored plastic container. Inside there was a little red orb hung on a keychain.
He smiled quietly and hung it on his new device.
The little tomato hung brightly in the light.
And he knew it would never fade.
I hope you liked it dear and that you aren;t staring at it like, "What is this?"
I tried to keep their actual interaction minimal, to make it more striking or like simplistic.
They aren't complicated, I feel.
anyways, thanks again Ziashapshifter101!
REview?