The nonexistant man wakes up in a pitch black room, startled.
"Where..." He mutters, feeling the ground. It is cold and not worth paying attention to.
He decides to look around this strange place.
There is nothing.
Nothing.
The man stares around the room.
"West?" No answer.
"BRUDER(1)?" Only an echo.
"C'MON! ISN'T THERE SOMEONE TO TALK TO THE AWESOME ME?" Silence.
He suddenly feels cold.
Very cold.
The man falls to his knees, wrapping his arms around himself.
Is this the pain of not being a country? He thinks, but pushes it aside.
He does not want to think about that right now.
He wants to find a way out of wherever this damned place is.
Hours have passed, hours drifted away trying to find a way out.
He has realized that there is something in the ceiling.
He does not know what.
But he knows that he will get out.
Suddenly, there is an echo of a voice in the darkness.
"Your crimes are getting old, Gilbert. You'll be far from me forever."
He knows this voice.
"Old Prussia(2)?" He asks.
But the voice is gone.
There is nothing now.
Suddenly, thoughts drift into his head. Thoughts of the Second World War.
He is cringing, trying to block it out.
But he cannot.
He knows this.
There are screams, glass being broken, the crackle of flames.
"Stop... get out..." He hisses, not wanting to repeat that.
He is forced to remember the days with his brother, remember the days when they were both happy and he still had an ego the size of the world.
"Hey, West!" He yelled, running up to his little brother. "I just had an awesome idea! Do you want the awesome me to awesomely show you something?"
"Ehm... sure, bruder," The child replied as the elder almost literally dragged him over to the river near their house.
The Prussian shoved a bottle, a roll of parchment, and a quill into his brother's hands and stood there expectantly.
"What am I supposed to do with it?" The younger brother inquired.
The elder sighed dramatically. "Here, West, let the awesomest person alive teach you."
He then wrote something on a piece of parchment. "See, I'm writing a wish on this, and now I put it in this bottle." He said, shoving the parchment into the bottle but somehow not destroying it. "If it doesn't tip over, then your wish comes true! Isn't that so awesome?"
"I guess." The younger said, trying to figure out what to write.
"Guess what I wished for, West."
"What?"
"I wish that you'll finally grow bigger and someday be as awesome as me!"
The younger had to laugh at that. "But you're the awesomest person alive, how could I be that awesome?"
"Well, you see, Luddy, you have awesome Germanic blood, and you're part Prussian, so you've got to grow up and be awesome and put all those dummkophs(3) like Austria and Hungary in their place!"
He lets out a choked sob, not wanting to remember that time.
But he does.
He does and it hurts and he just wants to go back to his family, to see West and Hungary and maybe even Specs(4).
But he knows that he can't.
The man found out a time ago (he can't keep track of days without seeing a clock or the sun) that his hands and feet were in chains.
His hands have blood red handcuffs wrapped around them, surely symbolizing the color of the blood someone is spilling.
His legs are in blue chains the color of tears, surely symbolizing the tears someone is shedding.
Even while those colors remain, he is forgetting color rapidly.
He is forgetting the color of grass on the ground, of the sun in the sky, of the trees in the forest.
But he remembers blue and he remembers red.
He is bored as he is every day as he looks for a way out of this darkness.
Just as he is giving up, he hears someone singing.
"Draw a circle, that's the earth! Draw a circle, that's the earth! Draw a circle, that's the earth! I am Hetalia!" He hears.
"H-hallo(5)? Is there anyone..." He says, his voice ragged.
He has not spoken in days.
Weeks.
Months.
Years.
"Draw a circle, that's the earth! Suddenly, there's the earth! Lie on your back, there's the earth! I am Hetalia!" The voice sings.
He closes his eyes, letting the sound of someone speaking, of someone singing, wash over him.
"Aaah, a wonderful world can be seen with the stroke of a single brush! And now, we give a toast with our boots! Hetaaaaliaaaaa!"
He has been listening to the refreshing song when he realizes that the lyrics mean something.
They speak of what it is to be a country, they speak of what it is to be the country of Italy.
Somehow, this reminds him of what it is to be Prussia, the title he had once held.
But now he is no one.
That is okay, he thinks, as long as I can hear this song.
Suddenly, he hears new lyrics.
"Hey, hey, papa, could I have some wine? Hey, hey, mamma, hey, hey, mamma! I can't forget the taste of the bolognese I ate before!"
The man who does not exist suddenly feels tired.
He lays down, closing his eyes and letting himself drift off into dreams about his family and his friends and his awesomeness.
The man has been lonely for a while.
He hasn't heard the song in a while.
He looks around for something interesting.
But what he sees surprises him.
There is a tiny light in the ceiling.
He has not eaten in days.
Weeks.
Months.
Years.
He has not drank anything in days.
Weeks.
Months.
Years.
But he forgets this, struggling to his feet and staring up at the light.
It is a color he does not know any more, the color of the sun in the sky.
"It's not that your sins are not tolerated, Gilbert, but the water and the evil spoke. I'll try to change these facts."
The red handcuffs that have been on his wrists for so long shatter and fall to the ground, fragments of them falling everywhere.
He attempts to talk but can not.
"You can go back now."
The room that had been the world to the man is now painted in a bright, beautiful white. He decides that it was better than the darkness that had plagued him for days, weeks, months, years.
He looks up at the bright, seemingly familiar color.
Time to go home.
The loneliest man in Berlin, in Germany, possibly in the world, stares at the half-complete paperwork.
He is tired.
Tired of being alone, even among the other nations. The Italian nation has not looked at him for the longest time.
He knows that Italian nation is trying to forgive him, but he hates the fact that the goofy Italian is now so mellow, so sad.
He is also so tired of missing his brother, all since that fateful day at a world meeting.
There was a world meeting at a particular American's house, and the German was, to say the least, excited.
He did not usually get excited.
He also did not usually not see his brother for five years.
He walked into the doors of the American's house, walking to the makeshift meeting room.
The German was so early that, somehow, no one was there. Not even the immature American.
He was either freakishly early or everyone was lazier than he expected.
Nations of all kinds flowed through the doors a good thirty minutes to an hour later. He was waiting for someone, waiting for a flash of white hair in the crowd.
But he did not see the flash of white hair, nor did he see the person he had been waiting a long, long five years to see again.
He walked up to a Russian who had almost tripped over a pile of nations who were fighting over something.
"Where is he?" He asked the Russian.
The Russian in question simply shrugged.
"I... am not sure. One day he was there, the next, he was gone. I have been attempting to locate him for a while. I am thinking that it would be safe to say that your brother is... gone." He said, attempting to put this lightly.
The German's eyes widened. "He's... he's dead?"
"Da(6), I am thinking that he is. I will tell you if I find him, da?" The Russian said in response.
"Th-thank you, Russia." The Germanic stuttered, wandering over to his seat at the meeting table, which was not much more than a bunch of coffee tables hurriedly shoved together.
He stared at the table, eyes wide.
That day, not a single word was uttered by the German, and not a single word was spoken against the nation that had disappeared.
And so the man sits, staring at the paperwork. He does not exactly know what paperwork it was, nor does he know if it needs to be completed. He just stares at it absentmindedly.
Suddenly, there is a polite knock on the door. The man gets up. He thinks that he probably has a meeting with his boss today and has forgotten it.
He is interrupted in his thoughts as the person on the door impatiently begins to pound on the door, yelling, "WEST, OPEN THIS DAMN DOOR, I'M HUNGRY!"
The man known as West to only one person's eyes widen, him rushing to the door. Could it actually be...?
He unlocks and pulls open the door and to his surprise he sees a Prussian with an angered look on his face.
The Prussian's facade of toughness fades as the loneliest man in the world and the man that does not exist meet eye to eye for the first time in years.
"...West, you've grown," The Prussian sniffles. For the first time in a long time, he is smiling.
The Germanic hugs the smaller, weaker Prussian tightly.
"I've missed you, Prussia."
"Missed 'ya too, West. Now can I come in? I'm freezing and hungry. Oh, and you'd better have some beer, West." The Prussian put up the tough guy facade again, but the tears running down his face and the smile that refused to be silenced betrayed him.
"Of course I do." The German replied.
"Hey, could you invite over the trio and Hungary? Oh, and that aristocrat(7), invite him too... you know what? To hell with it, invite everyone!" Gilbert laughed.
"Fine, I'll invite them over. You're cleaning up the mess from the party, though."
"Deal! Now go get me a beer, I'll be on the couch being awesome."
The German smiled as Prussia rushed past him to jump onto the couch.
For the first time in a long time, Germany laughed.
Prussia was finally back.
Hallo, Fanfiction dot net! I'm here and awesome.
Please critique on my writing style and point out any grammatical errors or mistakes, I love constructive criticism.
This is set to the song 'Re-Birthday.'
I blame plot bunnies.
1. Brother in German
2. Old Prussia is a Baltic nation that was conquered by Prussia and was easy to use as a plot device.
3. Idiots/fools in German.
4. Nickname for Austria.
5. Hello in German.
6. Yes in Russian.
7. Another nickname for Austria.