A/N: Okay, first one in this a-Z project I've started up among… all my other fics. It's pretty 26 fics, each of them revolving around a prompt that starts with a specific letter from the alphabet. The region that I'm focusing on is the Middle East.

This first one has to do with the recent split of the Nation of Sudan, from the point of view of Northern Sudan. Okay? Okay &&

Dislcaimer: Hetalia isn't mine.

A is for Absent

Over 99% of her people voted in favor of independence. It had to be the largest margin he'd ever seen.

Northern Sudan—most knew him simply as 'Khartoum', after the northern capital—expected such. He thought that perhaps the numbers wouldn't be as high, but he still wasn't surprised. He long ago accepted that his little sister, the south—she went by Juba, similarly, the southern capital—was going to leave him. That their father, Sudan as a whole, was to fade away in consequence, just like everything else Khartoum had ever loved. He knew that this was the way things were going to be; so he didn't understand why he was as upset as he was.

The young man still didn't quite see what he'd done wrong. Juba claimed that he shot at her and killed fields of her soldiers and just as many civilians in their homes, and he denied none of that. He wasn't ashamed or repentant, because that was the nature of war. He was merely trying to keep the union together, to stop Juba from achieving her ultimate goal of independence. What no one ever saw was his side of things, why he did what he did.

His sister was selfish; she had always wanted to leave. The two of them had exchanged fire even before 1956, the year of independence, and no one ever talked about how she started it. With her words, her idea's, her unwillingness to conform. But he was just as violent as she was selfish; he wouldn't let her leave. Her territory possessed the majority of Sudan's oil, and, on a deeply personal level, the preservation of their union was essential to the survival of their father.

Sudan himself was a tall man with beady eyes and big hands which did not know their own strength. When Khartoum and Juba first began their fighting, back when he was still sane, he tried to get them to stop. He tried being stern at first; but when that didn't work, he begged—indeed, the civil war had been painful for all of them but for him most of all, because he felt every aspect of it.

Stop it! It hurts, it hurts, why would you do this to your own father?

It was heartbreaking, seeing a grown man begging his two children, on his knees. But they didn't stop, couldn't stop, because Juba was selfish and Khartoum, in his own mind, was selfless—he was trying to ensure his beloved father's survival. The preservation of their union. Someday, he knew, his father would thank him for carrying on.

But one day, Sudan broke. His sanity flew out the window, and he began to beat Juba. Khartoum walked in in the middle of it, and stood there watching—indeed, he wanted to witness his sister finally getting what she deserved. But when Sudan saw his eldest son standing by the doorway he came over to the boy in two giant steps. He took Khartoum by the throat, slammed him down, and began to beat on him as well. For once, he and his sister held onto each other, because out of everyone they never expected their gentle father to turn on them this way.

"You two are going to love each other!" he told them both when he had his full. "You two are going to love ieach other!"

So they tried, for a little while. A ceasefire. But tensions rose again when Juba began to express the desire to control her own oil fields. Khartoum was sure that, if allowed, she would use all the money on herself, when he and Darfur needed it just as much. When Sudan needed to pay off bribes in order to keep people quiet (he didn't know what his father was doing, that he needed to pay people not to talk, but he didn't question it). All he knew was that they needed the money, that Juba had the money, and that she wasn't willing to share. Their civil war began all over again.

During that second round, Khartoum won most of their battles but Juba refused to give up. So, his sister was so wicked that she didn't mind sacrificing her own people in order to meet her ends? That was fine—Khartoum vowed to beat Juba into the ground until she gave up. Until she accepted her fate, just as he had. She needed to stop being selfish and let go of her dreams.

All of their bosses—the bosses that Juba refused to acknowledge as her own—held him back, to an extent. But when Omar al-Bashir came to power, he told Khartoum to do whatever he had to in order to rein in Juba. He put in no restraints or limitations. The man told Khartoum to bring the girl back, dead or alive.

Those were the words he'd been longing to hear.

But as Khartoum began his campaign on a new level of violence, their father only got worse. Sudan began to catch people, humans and Nations alike. He would bring them home and… and…

Khartoum absolutely refused to acknowledge what his father was doing. All those horrible noises that he heard, the crying, the screaming, his father laughing like a maniac, he told himself that none of it was real. Maybe he was just going insane himself. The thought comforted him, in a strange way. He wanted to be just like his father, and he knew that sometimes Sudan heard and saw things that weren't really there. That he sometimes talked to himself. That he hurt himself when he thought that no one was looking. So Khartoum embraced the falseness of his father's evil. It wasn't real, he was just going insane.

Their house had long been absent of peace and stability and love. Even his youngest brother, Darfur, was beginning to rebel, and Khartoum vowed that he would teach Darfur his lesson as well, but in due time. His first priority was to defeat Juba once and for all.

He almost caught her, once. In the late 1990's, he found her in the middle of a hazy battlefield; she saw him looking at her and began to run. He chased her into his territory, then Egypt's, then Turkey's, through the Caucasus and into Russia. They made their way all across Europe; Khartoum had been so lost in his blind pursuit that he didn't have time to realize Juba's plan. She led him along, all the way to the Hague.

She ran into the arms of the United Nations before Khartoum could stop her. She sobbed and told the old man everything, all the horror and starvation, the tragedies and atrocities. It was all true, but then again, anyone would side with someone who was crying that hard. Khartoum never cried, he was too strong for such things, and he thought that his sister was pathetic for doing such. He laughed at her, because she was so pitiful.

But then, all eyes were on him. All the Nations, they were all glaring at him because he was the evil one, the one in the military uniform stained with dried blood. He was the one who was laughing at his sister's suffering. He was just like his father. And they were all talking, talking, talking, and yelling and reprimanding and condemning and he just wanted it all to stop. None of them knew him, they didn't know what it was like to have a selfish sister, a crazy father. They didn't know what it was to hope beyond hope. They didn't know what it was to try their hardest to keep something together when it was doomed to falling apart.

He just wanted his family to stay together. All he wanted a good sister and an obedient brother, and for his father to revert to being the gentle man that he once was. He saw some of his own people with their happy families, why couldn't he have that? His Aunt Chad once told him that love needed to be fought for, and he was fighting is absolute hardest—why wasn't it working?

When the U.N. came to their house, he caught Sudan in the middle of torturing a couple of human women for his own gratification. It was then that he knew the situation was far worse than he thought, and he wouldn't take 'no' for an answer when it came to intervention. He forced Khartoum to give some of his power to Juba, to let her people work in their national government, to let her regulate her own oil. They would give it some time, and if she was still unhappy, then in January 2011, she could vote on whether or not to have her own house altogether. What Juba always wanted. Khartoum's biggest fear.

That was in 2005. In 2011, he had already accepted the way things were going to be.

The afternoon after the results came in, he passed by Juba's empty room; on a whim, he went inside. He sat on her bed and thought for a while. His little sister, his worthy enemy, was leaving forever. Together, they drove their father insane and became yet another one of Africa's black holes. They tore their own house apart, the two of them. And the time had finally come for her to go.

His family had fallen apart. His sister was leaving. His father was going to die. His little brother, the new thorn in his side… he knew that there would be no peace in his future. Maybe some things just weren't meant for him. But to Khartoum, the worst part was that it could have all been avoided. If only she had listened. If only she had known her place, then they could have been a happy family.

Khartoum couldn't believe Juba's selfishness.

A/N: Historical notes? I go over the general history of this country in my fic, but just to reiterate:

Sudan, prior to achieving independence in 1956, was a protectorate jointly administered by Egypt (who looked after the Northern half) and Britain (who looked after the Southern half). Despite this, Sudan was still technically one colony. Even before independence was achieved, North Sudan (predominantly Arab Muslims) and South Sudan (inhabited by mostly Black Christians and Animists) were already exchanging fire. And so, that civil war continued even after independence.

The First Sudanese Civil War lasted from 1955-1972 was instigated by the Southern Sudanese, who felt that they were being subjugated to Arab rule with no representation in the national government. It was ended by the Addis Ababa Agreement, which ensured the South some regional autonomy. However, in 1983, then-president of Sudan Gaafar Nimeiry broke the agreement by trying to take control of Southern Sudanese oil fields, and by declaring that newly-imposed Sharia law applied not only to the Arab Muslims in the North, but to the Black Christen and Animists in the South. This provoked the Second Sudanese Civil War, which dragged on from 1983 to 2005, and saw some of the most causalities in any war since World War Two, with about four million killed by famine, disease, and in the crossfire.

The Second Civil War ended in 2005 with a UN-backed Peace Deal which ensured an independence vote for the South come January 2011. The results came back about 99% in favor of independence, so, as of July 9, 2011, South Sudan has been declared Africa's 54th state.

Character devices. North and South Sudan are referred to by their capital names in this fic because I wanted to put a stark contrast between them. Besides being neighbors, North Sudan and South Sudan don't really share that much in common when it comes to ethnicity or religion, so I kinda wanted to put as much difference between them as possible, as their real names obviously hint at a connection that goes beyond once being one country. Also, I go by the theory that a Nations capital is their heart. If North Sudan is referred to as 'Khartoum' and South Sudan is referred to as 'Juba', then where does that leave Sudan as a whole? I wanted to hint at him not having a heart; perhaps, once-upon-a-time he did, but 35 years of brutal civil war have pretty much turned him into a compete monster, the opposite of what he used to be.

Also, this fic is in *no way* trying to advertise that independence for the South is bad, or that the two halves should have remained united. Absolutely not. I just wanted to write about how Khartoum, the North, would have felt about it. He's a lot more serious (and violent) than his little sister, but he isn't evil. In Hetalia terms, I think he just wanted to keep his family together ;)

But in any case, I will be writing a fic about the break-up from Juba's point of view as well, and perhaps even one from the perspective of Sudan himself. So watch out for that, should be coming pretty soon.

Review? :3