A/N: Inspired by Engel, by Rammstein.
Bist Du Ein Engel, Papa?
Prussia is really quite disgusted to find himself becoming more and more human. Take the simple matter of food, for example. Previously, he need not have concerned himself with it unless the shrunken black claws of mass starvation had taken his people in its tenacious, unrelenting grip. Now? He has to peddle to the insistent cries of one stomach instead of thousands just for peace of mind alone, and it's disillusioning to find that what used to be a perpetual candy-shop had drudged down into a necessity for his sustenance. And even then that only affected one miserable person. He'd jumped headlong through rabbit warrens to his own dreamlands just to shirk responsibility, and now that he's burnt it all down he sits in the ashes and curses its going.
From the flag-bearer of thousands to a plain, grubbing mortal was some demotion; God forbid the toppling of the social classes that sent a nation tumbling on a one-way freefall to all the rest of the hoi polloi, who had once, once upon a happier day, made up only the roughest bulk of him – the raw meat, if you will, that served to fill the space between the history-carved structures of his bones, his values, firm and ancient, that hold him upright, and the skin that stretched as a canvas for painters he could only pray were apt, as it was the creations that sprung from beneath their fingers that everyone else saw.
And so it is nations, he believes, who are the only ones with a legitimate claim to clothes: it was of the utmost importance to keep their blemishes hidden under obscuring fabric that spoke of the place of their making and little more, as wounds equated to weakness, and scars, the vulnerability or lack of foresight, skill, judgement that allowed the formation of the more experienced, battle-hardened tissue. The progress of damage is easily followed upon their skin, and with the vague unease of someone raking over a nightmare that their mind would much rather remained buried, he recalls how Russia for one liked to watch it as one would watch from atop the tallest branches of a tree a hunt unfold, or from the high banks of concrete safety, the voracious blaze of wildfire raze to the ground the same stretch of woods where short time ago screams were set up for the life of just one arrow-pierced hare.
Russia, he remembers, also loved to see how just one strike could set up a resulting chain of bruises erupting like dark blotches of careless ink quite of their own accord, like the fall of tremulously grounded dominoes, or a rather sick rendition of a game of Jenga: a little nudge, and then lean back to survey, appreciatively, how the rest all tottered and slid and finally collapsed in a slow-motion tsunami of total devastation. Reflexively, he grips his glass tighter, as if to remind himself that it's alright, because he's already fallen as far as he can go.
To go without would be pure folly, but even though that's no longer applicable, he plays the hypocrite, and wears them nevertheless. As a nation, he reflects, hypocrisy had been perfectly reasonable: their responsibilities were such that they could manipulate their cards and pull their puppets in any manner they would as a means to their own not ending. 'Hypocrites are the only honest liars', Prussia's new – it makes his skin crawl with regiments of red ants beneath them to think of how he must fraternise with them, let alone consider them as friends – are fain to say over their second, third, fourth and counting beers, when the alcohol started to swill and lap in their minds, sufficiently enough to reveal them as armchair philosophers, quite literally.
Prussia, however, fails to see how it matters, fails to see what it has to do with anything. But Sigmund Freud need not concern himself: he's already given his condition a name, and yes, that matters, because he is Gilbert damn Beilschmidt, and once he was called upon by Preuβen. Nation-complex, that's what he has, and what's more, failed nation complex.
His sense of humour, however, seems not to have degenerated (just warped, warped like the rotting wood of sinking duckboard-planks over the swamp of a graveyard where the feet of increasingly younger men pounded to their deaths), and for that he is grateful. Sliding his hands down his glass, he watches the thin edges of condensation form around where his fingertips had been, watches how the light plays in his drink and on the lacquered wood of the table beneath it, and he laughs.
What's a little more or less flesh?
***X****
His immortality remains with him, for whatever obscure reason he doesn't feel inclined in the least to fathom, and he finds that fifty, sixty-odd years haven't made so much as a scratch on either his appearance or the tireless workings of his body, which though he abuses it nightly with drink, don't seem to be teetering unsteadily on the brink of slumping over in the death-throes of old age.
All in all, he finds himself the very image of Prince Charming née Dorian Gray: a few years shy, yet, of thirty summers by his face – barring, he supposes, the flaxen-haired sapphire-eyed guise of an angel; he has been held for the Devil times enough for his eyes to banish that thought as he himself has been – and a true disciple by nature, too, embroiling himself in the low and the unsavoury as a toad would in the turbid scum-waters of its dwelling. Beer and even vodka, if only to burn the bitter tang of irony right off his tongue, to scour out his mouth with the vile bleach, as he must before he can pull it back into a grimace of a laugh again. He hadn't prayed for this.
Still, lasciviousness had somehow managed to slip the catalogue of sins, and even when wares are flaunted to him by the flock, the parade accompanied by the syrupy croons of artificially-sweetened voices as a backing track, he can only see the same bare skin and the same luring grins, wet tongues darting over red lips. Hookers, he thinks, torn between disgust and a lurid, sickened fascination. Strumpets, o fie.
No, when human limbs and human loins tangled themselves in animalistic unions, Prussia sought out no other than a hero, the fantasy-stuff of unrealised fairytales that none of they-who-laid-themselves-down-so-easily could hope to ensnare but he could. One who had got it right, and did have the sun crowning Apollo's very own hair, and eyes that even Poseidon himself could very rarely match. Errant curl, half-framed glasses.
Because if he too was going to chalk scratches on the bedpost, why, what courtesan didn't want their records to boast of their own prowess in netting the best right away? Being an ex-nation brought its privileges, and damned if he was going to let them stew in neglect.
And his prize? No other than the famed Canada.
***X****
"So eager to be rid of me? How hurtful."
Prussia lounges on the blue cushions of the couch, scraping a finger round the inside of what had not so long ago ben a full jar of maple syrup, idly eyeing how the gold-brown collected and built up, leaving the loosely rectangular strip glass it had just taken its leave from clean and clear. He completed the circuit, but swirled his finger round twice more just for the heck of it before lazily licking the condiment from what of course had to be his fingertip, so by the time he had lapped down to his knuckles, the syrup had already made a bid for freedom past his wrist.
"You'd better catch it before it runs to your elbow," Canada notes in a tone of semi-detached interest, threading his fingers through the coarse, white fur of Kumajiro, who lay contently on the rug. He looks up from where he is similarly situated. "There are limits to your capabilities, you know, oh Silvertongue."
Prussia shoots him an amused side-glance through stray strands of silver hair that have fallen across his face, crimson eyes narrowed slightly, as if against sunlight. "Mm? What might you be referring to, there?"
"Nothing," Canada answers, not pausing in his petting of Kumajiro, not faltering or even blinking at all, something Prussia, blowing away the hair from the corner of his mouth, has to credit him for. Beneath the prim coating he detects flippancy, and trawling his tongue down the length of his forearm, he thinks that Canada doesn't receive nearly enough of that, and indeed, Canada himself actually strives to keep it so. Why that is Prussia doesn't really care to know, but he does think upon it sometimes, when he has nothing better to do than chase glimmering trails of unanswered questions that stirred faint interest through his mind.
"Nothing at all, but your utter infatuation with your own insufferable chatter. Which is why," and he throws him a look that Prussia fumbles and in the end finds that he isn't primed to catch because the mix of dry fondness and drawling, sarcastic mischief is all too unfamiliar to him, "You're being packaged off to stay with Italy next week. And we'll see if over forty degrees of Italian swelter is finally enough to cook that tongue of yours."
"What, will Italy be sending daily reports of my behaviour back to you?" is all Prussia can say with a suitably sardonic arch of his brow, and even that is what his mind does for him automatically in a reflex arc that picks over Canada's words and aligns his own in fitting response, a process that he thankfully doesn't need to think over.
"Much as I'd love the peace and quiet if it were otherwise, no," Canada replies simply. Well, trust the nation of silence-when-it's-really-important (like at world meets, where Prussia swore Canada cast himself invisible for all the notice he received) to skimp out on the details. Prussia gestures a little irritably for elaboration, at the same time wondering whether it wasn't his own brain that just wasn't keeping up today, and rarely enough Canada, who is actually surprisingly strong-willed if not strong-lunged, obliges.
"I'm coming with you, idiot," he says with a would-be exasperated sigh, and he spares one of the two hands so busy grooming at the now-asleep Kumajiro to bat half-playfully at Prussia's arm, the one that sinks into the couch at the elbow and props up his head at the hand. "Knowing your three-second attention span – and let's not even mention your memory-span here - someone has to make sure you don't come back at the end of the week in all the sunburnt glory of a tomato."
He talks like a friend before they sent him careening to his downfall in the flick of a fingernail, like his brother before his visits dwindled to once a month, then once in several, then only at the good old reliable time of warm family gatherings, Christmas, with his shoulders hunched inwards and a frown on his brows and a brightly, obliviously prattling Italy hanging off his arm, oozing apology and all sorts of discomfort that Prussia takes his bitter, petty revenge by not doing anything to ease. Darling Bruder Ludwig should have taken Japan as his role model and not turned up at all, though it was true that Japan's excuse had been that he was grateful for the invitation but it wasn't his place to interfere at so familial an event, and Germany didn't have that excuse, no, Germany had no damned excuse to act as if he had forgotten so soon that Prussia was his brother.
He can't say that he talks like a lover, because that may be true and that may not, and in his experience of the last half-century among the common, lovers were something to wade through quickly and sloppily, leaving a mess of emotions and declarations and falsifications like footprints leading from the pool to the cocktail bar at the house parties where these faithless lovers are picked up, footprints that would dry quickly enough anyway, or be wiped away with a rag and a hangover. But that's neither here nor there, as he's never been one for promiscuity even when the rest of his morals lie buried, littered all around the back alleys of the world as he went around dropping them one by one in quick succession.
"Why, so you won't have to battle with Romano and Spain, too, since I'm already quite good enough to eat, huh?" he smirks, mind somewhere far, far away, perhaps hopelessly turning over stones in the Falklands or some obscure corner of the earth in search for what he'd so easily tossed. Otherwise, one could just picture droplets of cream beading at the end of smugly satisfied whiskers.
To his disquiet, Canada continues to ruffle through Kumajiro's fur, mussing up what he'd so meticulously smoothed to perfection earlier, and doesn't answer.
***X****
Canada's planning, he'd contemplated for the whole course of the journey, had been immaculate down to the last detail: luggage? Two lightweight bags equipped with everything they could need and Italy may not be able to provide. Transport? Long sorted, and the first-class cabins didn't go unappreciated, either. Kumajiro? Happily stowed away with someone or other who didn't live in the forty-plus degrees of summer so loved by polar bears.
To be honest, though, that was beating round the bush. Because truthfully? The only thing he cared about at the moment was how Canada had arranged it that they'd arrived at Italy's house in the late-afternoon-ranging-evening: early enough for them to unpack and put their things in order and carry out any number of miscellaneous endeavours such as taking a good half hour to let Italy's excitement simmer down, touring the house, giving all of Italy's numerous cats a pat on the head and etcetera and etcetera, but late enough so that they could bolt down a hot dinner courtesy of Italy, whose effort went a little astray as they were for most part too spent to taste it, then stagger through the toiletries and at last, to cool, inviting sheets.
It's one of these that Prussia has tangled around him, snarling round his legs and knotting in an indecipherable disarray at his midsection, as he thinks that even Canada didn't foresee this. He's lain on the hard varnish of the dark floorboards of the room that Italy insisted they all share, after declaring that he preferred it over the bed, for very little reason save to declare something. It offers him the view of Canada's feet, poking from beneath the covers, Italy's hand right by the left side of his face, the slightly curled fingers just protruding into the corner of his vision. The ornately carved leg of Italy's bed: birds flitting about slender, finely-shaped willow leaves and leaning, recumbent sycamore branches.
And the calves and thighs of the visitor who kneels by Prussia's head, completely and wholly fixated on Italy. The air conditioning that lines the ceiling, its humming and whirring like the drone of some ever-present insect that'd slipped in through the half-drawn slats of the window, blows its dry breeze with its trace of melting, softening plastic past him and towards Prussia, and he can smell the musky sheen of the skin, the faintly spiced scent of the rich folds of cloth, the leather straps of the sandals.
The Roman Empire, his papa's, Germania's, closest, longest-standing friend and dearest companion and truest lover and fiercest rival all massed together to form the mighty warrior who would sit proud and straight-backed astride his horse atop the peak of the tallest hill, and claim the world as his for the brief while it took for Germania to hurtle there, the glint of a thousand sharpened blades in his eyes, and challenge it otherwise, and the midday sun would glare upon their swords as they clashed yet again in that pattern so familiar to them.
And at other times, the fleeting snatches of time where battle lulled and peace dipped low, low over their lands but knew well enough not to settle, and Rome would seek Germania out when the sun sunk behind the grassy knolls they fought with wild beasts' ferocity over, and the tip of each blade glowed an orange-red above the silken green, and they would slip out together into the dusky night, sometimes not returning until several days later, when they would spark with the pleasure of the stolen hours, and each return to their own camps to ready themselves for the next time they hurled themselves against each other in the fray.
And Prussia, who wasn't Prussia back then but the blood-eyed child of Germania, would rock back and forth on the cracked dirt ground curled in a tight ball of jealousy, vowing that some day he would grow as great and as strong as his papa, and he would take down the Roman Empire himself. And perhaps then his papa would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him, and they would charge into battle together. Instead of being pushed backwards where it was safer, or being told that he needed more practice first.
Oh, it was so long since he last saw Rome, who he used to throw pebbles and mouldering vegetables and other refuse at when he passed down the road, who took it all in good humour and even flung a few harmless missiles back, and he remembers his fury at being covered in the half-rotten tomato he himself had pitched just a few moments ago. How he missed him, the figure he would picture in his head lying awake at night, the figure he hated with a raging passion and grudgingly, resentfully, admired.
Prussia is still motionless as the blissfully dead even though he has no need to feign sleep, since Rome's so absorbed in his little Italy that he hasn't even a glance to spare for the other, immobile and rolled to his side on the floor, who also used to play not far from him long, long ago. Envy for Rome used to eat at him like a pack of ravenous, slavering wolves, and now the honour has been transferred to his grandson.
Surely they had more in common now, he and Rome, both fallen from the wings of their former glory, both outcasts of a strange sort? He may creep around Italy, because strictly speaking he isn't supposed to leave wherever it is he currently resides, and if he does then no-one must know of it, but Prussia, why didn't he realise that Prussia would understand more than anyone, and certainly more than a lithe little form under light cotton covers that did little more than sleep and occasionally snore?
He lets the jealousy fester like a wound he's intent on re-opening time and again, putrefying flesh side-by-side with living, brews it like poison, and he savours the agony of having to keep his back from arching and his limbs from convulsing as he clenches his fingers, driving bloody crescents into his palms, and all the while it dissolves the nerves inside him.
It almost, almost, distracts him from the all-too-obvious, all-too-painful fact that crushes down upon him like a slab of rock: Rome sometimes visits Italy, frequently visits Italy, always visits Italy, but Germania never visits him.
***X****
When Rome leaves, sometime during the dubious time where the dark chill outside could not decide whether it was very, very late or very, very early, he takes all the last hints of warmth with him, away to where the Mediterranean sun shone as a perpetuity, and Prussia, who had drifted off to a troubled, uneasy slumber a little while before that, shivers slightly in his sleep, and fumbles for the sheet, but doesn't find it.
Cold hands twitch on colder floorboards, and he dreams of bugle-calls, of blood-matted hair, of the cries of the slaughtered deep in the woods, whether human or animal he can't tell. He dreams of Germania, of Germania gone, and of slicing, burning anguish like swallowing broken glass. His own lips part; no sound escapes them.
Perhaps this at last deems him eligible for the soothing salve of deliverance, for a winged creature descends into his dreams, in the sweeping of long, supple white feathers. Britannia angel, who slides into the dreams of nations in distress with a healing touch and a kind word, but Prussia pounds his fist on the floor and twists away in white-hot panic, unrealised ghost-tears sliding down pale cheeks.
I can take you to them, the angel murmurs gently, reaching out a hand, the wrist slim and the fingers delicate. He turns and runs like a terrified, hunted animal, eyes darting sharply about the place but seeing only rays of light reaching as far as his sight will allow that will trip and catch him, and he will trip and he will fall, and he mustn't let that happen but doesn't know how.
You needn't suffer like this, not anymore, the angel says, compassionate.
No, he shouts, he doesn't want salvation, except he isn't able to muster a sound, and it seems that he has no lungs and no throat and no larynx to pull at the strings in like he would haul at the cords of bells hanging desolate in the empty vacuums of tower-tops. He doesn't want to leave this tenuous place of shadows and veils of dislocated, drifting mist; he doesn't want a stake through his heart and a mound of silver in his mouth, doesn't want to wake from the still-warm cross of the weightless, charred, flaky remains of wonderland.
Don't you want to join them? the angel, and its luminescent fall of words, softly-softly: to Prussia its face distorts, convoluting like previously still waters disrupted by a stone's fall, as if it had only just discovered that it was in fact a mere reflection, and the cadences of its voice jar and jam and twist like the cries of the nether-lands flanking Heaven and Hell and Purgatory, where the spirits stretch thin and thinner between great ever-turning water-wheels.
Don't you want to be with them again? Don't you want to see your –
Fingers fly up to his throat in a wild desperation to claw away the muffling flesh and expose the tarnished music-box that screeched, the beat of its tinny heart spasmodic and irregular, and threw itself about jerking against the chains that had bound it shut so long that the links had fused into the surface in a congealing of age-old rust and the cobwebs strung from the fibres of screams, screams of cruel, fiery iron and branded skin.
And your pa–
He wails, silver wolf at a fingernail moon, but he can't hear it; rips and tears but he can't feel it, not his fingers and not the red jolts of pain that should be clamping their jaws around his neck, and there is none of him at all but the angel, golden doe's lashes tipped against forest green eyes and the sleek downwards curve of the wings, and the light, the incinerator to beam him away and leave his ashes upon its departing as the slow, desolate drifts of grey snowfall. The light intensifies and he howls.
The moon shines through the thin wooden slats that lie crouched over the window like half-lowered eyelids that hide the sharp, dark alertness of the predatory eyes behind them, surveying the sprawled recesses of the floor, the skewed positioning of the couches, and the shapes scattered about the deserted landscape that blurred to indistinct sentries, standing guard for or over their prisoner, the one who wandered lost in the arid stretches of murky sand. It's as still as the poisonous vapours of jade that hang over the lake's surface of a mirror, as still as the intake of a breath.
The only movement is as the shadows shift and curl over the silent words of no.
***X****
Morning, with cold pink-grey sunlight through air imbued with tiny, invisible salt crystals, finds Prussia still there, in the narrow dribble of land between the cliff, which drapes behind his back, and the grey froth that the sea spits onto the pebbles just short of him at every incoming of the tide, sitting with both legs bent at the knee, his right tucked to his chest, and managing to make it seem unnatural, as if the fabric stretching over the acute turns were actually concealing snapped splinters.
There is a certain air of empty, passionless pathos about him: in his fingers, dangling long and thin and still over his knee; in the dispassionate arch of his spine, a cracked bow collecting dust in the corner; in the hanging of asymmetrical strands, limp, the colour of old, forgotten cobwebs. And he seems paler, too, substantiality gone from his static, jutting frame, the melting of mercury from his limbs.
He looks like a ghost, a wraith who had been washed out by the churning crests and falls of the sea onto the seaweed-slimed rocks after having been pulled under the waves long ago. A semi-transparent smudge in the sea-mist that would wane away again as the sun rose, and pushed past the filmy haze of eddying white.
And the wraith thinks of Canada and thinks of Germania, and wonders, whether it wouldn't have been better to be an angel rather than a ghost.