The bottle was empty. France looked up the neck, tried to shake a drop out of the bottom, then gave up and set it down heavily on the bar.
He couldn't believe it. He'd left him again. And it wasn't like last time either. There had been a promise before; France had agreed to let him go.
He'd been stupid, these thousand years, not to keep a closer eye on his dear little rabbit. Now he was gone again, run away into the forest, where any dirty fox could take advantage of him.
The fox was still there, sipping sadly from his own bottle. How dare he just sit, how dare he wallow in his own—this was his fucking fault.
He stood up far too fast, his vision clouding for a moment, and snatched at the fox's bottle. Spain choked as wine splashed over his face. "¿Qué hay?" he demanded.
"You have no right," France replied coldly. "It's your fault."
Spain stood up and backed away, tripping over chair legs. France pursued him, step by step, until he had him backed against a table. "Don't deny it, you son of a bitch, this is still your fucking fault!"
Spain was cornered. A thought bubbled to the surface of his sodden brain. "But amigo…Lovi…I lose too!" he pleaded.
France looked at him, and suddenly all the anger he'd held in for a thousand years came to the surface. "Yes, you do lose," he growled. Dropping the wine bottles, he picked Spain up and threw him bodily into a wall.
The few patrons who were left scattered. France didn't see them. Everything was red and hazy now, and lonely, and angry.
He didn't feel the chairs he threw into the walls, or see shards of wood falling everywhere. He felt the Battle of Agincourt, arrows tearing him apart, and saw the boy in the tree raising two fingers and grinning.
He didn't feel the bottles smash, or see the blood the glass drew from his hands. He felt the Bastille burning, and saw heads roll, the blood of thousands soaking the ground.
He didn't even notice the tables he tore the legs off, or how the splinters and nails bit into him. He saw Hitler in Paris, and Germany behind him, pushes him facedown onto the bed and says his boss wanted to unite them, and later, in pain, he saw the fox and the rabbit together, far away, laughing. Cruel laughter filled his mind, and he threw a table at them, screaming as if it would make the Nazis and the Terror and that scheming thieving fox go away—
And then suddenly he wasn't angry anymore. He stood panting in a ruined room, a scared child, Rome's bastard, who couldn't even remember the language his own mother spoke to him. He was alone, not even a bastard fox or a stubborn little rabbit to keep him company.
But there was wine. He snatched a bottle from behind the bar and sat down, wrenching the cap off and cradling the bottle as if it were a child.
Drinks don't leave you like people do.