Australia made damn sure he wasn't noticed when he walked away from the beach resort – his beaches and their isolated resorts made wonderful places to host the world meetings when his turn came around, which seemed to be quite a bit more often than was strictly accurate, probably because of said beaches and isolated resorts. The nations might not get much done, but they sure enjoyed relaxing – and Australia enjoyed not having to clean up any disasters between the nations and his people.

Which was why he was slipping quietly away, having noticed Prussia disappearing into the distance with an esky tucked under one arm. Australia was quite sure the thing was full of beer – Germany and Prussia had quite the taste for beer, and once they'd got used to the lighter taste of his lagers and agreed it went well with Australia's weather, they always went through a phenomenal amount of it.

They couldn't drink him dry, but they tried.

That said, slipping off to drink alone was a bad sign.

While he followed, Australia tried to work out what had set the often loud and unpredictable former nation off this time. Insults were usually met with insults, embarrassing missteps with loud laughter and claims he totally meant that.

Several of the Europeans had been in foul temper, what with the unpleasantness in their lands, but…

Prussia slid down a steep sandbank to sit on the pale sand, and took a long swig from a bottle of… was that vodka?

Australia considered speed-dialing Germany, discarded the idea when Prussia drank again. At this rate the man would be unconscious before anyone else could get here.

Instead, he settled himself beside Prussia, his senses hyper-aware in the warm night.

"...fuck do you want?" Prussia snarled.

"Nothin'." Australia lied smoothly, and waited while the other nation did a remarkable imitation of Russia and downed the rest of the vodka in one long swig. Whatever had sent Prussia seeking forgetfulness at the bottom of a bottle – and for him it would take something like vodka to find it – would be revealed at its own pace. Or not.

Either way, when Prussia passed out, he'd not be left alone to face his hangover somewhere unfamiliar.

Prussia just grunted and cracked another bottle.

Australia winced. A dozen bottles of cheap vodka sat in the esky, any one sufficient to kill a human if drunk in one hit. Even Russia would have trouble putting that lot away in one sitting.

"Tastes like shit," Prussia grumbled about half way through the bottle. "'kin' Russian crap booze." He turned and frowned at Australia. "Why in th' fuck you care, anyhow?"

Australia shrugged. "I like you. You're a good mate." Pub crawls with Prussia and Germany were a riot, sometimes literally, and he and Prussia had built up something of a friendship since the fall of the Berlin Wall had left the other nation with a lot more free time than he was accustomed to.

"'S'warm here." Prussia muttered. "No fuckin' snow. Hate that shit. No commies either." The level of the bottle dropped further. "Dunno how y'do it."

Australia wouldn't have said no communists: it wasn't like he'd ever tried to ban them or anything. It was just that… "Land of everything trying to kill ya, remember? We kind of ignore the bosses and do what we think works. Mostly." It worked for him, although he doubted it would work too well for any other nation.

Prussia snorted. "Better'n fuckin' bendin' over'n lettin' th' fuckers screw ya."

Australia sighed. "Mate, I'm gonna have ta switch ya over ta beer. This Russian piss ain't doing ya any favors."

"Beer ain't strong enough." Prussia finished the second bottle with a hefty swig.

"Ya want to forget something?" Australia wasn't asking, not really. "A good adrenaline rush'll do that for ya. Drives everything out for a while."

Prussia turned to stare at him. In the dim light his eyes seemed like dark holes against his pale skin. "The fuck?"

"I'm serious." Best not to mention his fling with Russia, he decided. Danger made both of them hot and bothered, and things… well… progressed. "There oughta be a tiger shark or an old man croc out in that water right about now."

If anything, Prussia's stare grew more intense. "You seriously fuckin' wrestle sharks when you're upset?"

"Sharks, crocs, anythin' dangerous." Australia spread his hands. "It's good fun, and ya don't think about anything else while you're doing it. Then ya feel too bloody good to care about whatever got you in the dumps."

Prussia shook his head, and invaded the third bottle. "Ain't gonna work, kid." He closed his eyes, the moonlight making it look liked he'd become a rather disreputable statue, at least until he took another long swallow of vodka. "You c'n get off on it, an' th' fuckin' Russki, but it ain't me."

Australia sighed. "Sculling bloody turps till you bloody pass out then puking on the beach works better?"

Prussia opened his arms wide in what was probably meant to be some kind of expansive gesture. If Prussia hadn't overbalanced and toppled onto the sand, it might have worked. "'sfine..." He stayed where he was, the rest of the bottle draining into the sand. "No dreams that way, see?"

Australia gently picked up the now-empty bottle and set it aside before lying down beside the other nation. "Figures you'd have nightmares now and then," he said in a casual tone. After getting this close to whatever was eating the other nation, he didn't want to balls it up by jumping on what could have been just an off-hand comment. "I get 'em, and you've done way bloody more than I have."

"Had a fuck-ton done t'me, too," Prussia said in the dazed, not-quite-there manner of the thoroughly drunk. "Mostly by fuckin' Russia."

Well, that wasn't exactly surprising. Russia wasn't known for being nice in any of his incarnations. Drinking with him and having sex after doing something ridiculously dangerous was one thing, but having to live with him didn't bear thinking about – and that was without considering that Prussia had ended up in Russia's household as spoils of war, or the rather large grudge Russia had against all things Germanic at the time.

"Stupid." Prussia seemed to have forgotten that he had company. "Not like I hadn't been through th'same shit with Poland, it's just how shit happens when you lose a war an' get annexed. Th' big bastard even apol… said sorry, and Poland never did."

For a time, it seemed that was all Prussia was going to say, then his voice rose in an an anguished wail, "So why the fuck can't I get over it? Quarter of a fucking century and I still fucking freeze when he's there."

While Australia was quite certain that Prussia had forgotten his presence: the other nation wasn't one to admit to any kind of weakness, much less something like this, he figured at this point he might as well take the risk and try to help. They were as human as they were nation, and Prussia was perhaps a little more human than most of them, what with his nation having been dissolved damn near seventy years back. Well, what was left of it, anyway. "What was different about when Poland stopped than now?" He kept that calm, matter-of-fact. "Apart from the obvious, anyhow."

Even drunk as he was, Prussia was dangerous. It took him a while to realize that Australia wasn't some kind of figment of his imagination, then in less time than it took to blink, the older nation had twisted on the sand and now held a sword to Australia's throat. Even in the moonlight, his snarl was clear.

Australia did not flinch or try to move away. Two and a half bottles of vodka notwithstanding, that weapon was completely steady, telling him it had stopped exactly where Prussia meant it to. If he did what his nerves were telling him to do, he'd likely spend the next few days recovering from fatal injuries, and that wasn't his idea of a good time.

Prussia's voice was a low growl, a string of German curses – to Australia, most German sounded like a declaration of homicidal intent, and this was particularly hostile – followed by, "You tell anyone about this and I'll fuckin' demonstrate what th' fuckin' fucker did."

Australia rolled his eyes. Europeans. "Just calm down, mate. I'm not a bloody scab." After a moment, he added, "I won't say anything." He sighed. "You don't need to threaten me to shut me up."

That at least got through to the other nation: the sword vanished into wherever Prussia kept it – Australia wasn't quite sure what to call it, but it made a handy place to keep a few beers for emergencies – and he rolled back to lie on the sand again. "You're a strange one, kid."

Australia let himself fall to the sand. "So people tell me."

The murmur of water lapping the sand was the only sound for a while, then Prussia spoke again. "Ya gotta understand, with us conquering always meant control, you know? Controlling everything." He paused, then let his breath out on a long sigh. "The usual way to stop any bad memories out of that's to conquer someone else, preferably the one who did it to you." His laughter was soft, bitter. "Like I can do that now." Another short pause. "It generally wasn't so bad, if you behaved and your people weren't too rebellious." Another of those painful laughs, followed by a snort. "I think you can guess how well that worked for me, ja?"

Australia risked a bit of a dry joke. "Mate, you bloody near define defiance."

"Damn right."

Australia would have sworn the other nation was grinning in the darkness right then.

"Obedience to proper authority, sure, but nothing that's not Prussian can ever be proper authority."

It made sense, in a weird kind of way – but then, not much that Prussia did was ordinary.

"So, yeah, after Tannenberg, and then after I got pushed into becoming a Duchy, Poland did his best to control me." A brief silence. "You kids are so fuckin' lucky, you know? We all thought England had lost it, treating you like you actually were his kids, not his property, an' never claiming you the way it was always done."

Well, fuck. No wonder Europeans were so dysfunctional, if their nations behaved like that and thought it was normal. England might not have been a particularly kindly parental figure, but he'd been decent enough, and Australia remembered fondly the times he'd met the man's standards and been awarded England's sparse praise.

Prussia snorted. "Anyhow, I had people to look after then. I could focus on them an' let the stuff happening to me get distant." He sighed. "No fuckin' way t' do that now."

In short, he'd never really dealt with it, just let it get sufficiently distant that it no longer traumatized him – not that Prussia would ever admit either that he'd been traumatized, or that he hadn't dealt with the aftermath.

No bloody wonder the rest of the world behaved like insane children. At least him and the Yank – and the Kiwi and Maple boy, he reminded himself – actually were children by nation standards. The older nations tended not take anyone seriously unless they had a good five hundred years as an independent entity to their name, and China was always boasting about his four thousand years of functional government. To them, America was barely reaching adulthood, maybe, depending on when you counted from.

Insane children with severe PTSD, and Christ, but the flashbacks had to be horrible. He had enough issues each fire season, but that was nothing to being systematically brutalized and, well… raped (Australia mentally cringed from even thinking the word).

"So, got any bright ideas, sunshine?" Prussia asked sardonically, after finishing a bleak recitation that left Australia's stomach churning in queasy horror.

Russia really had done "everything" to the other nation. Who, to be fair, had done his share of terrorizing the rest of Europe, though he appeared to have left the… the rape out of it. Not that Australia was going to put money on that: Prussia was, like the rest of them, human enough to present his own deeds in the best light possible and make strategic omissions if needed.

"Honestly?" Australia had to work to keep his voice calm. "This probably helps all by itself. Makes the whole thing less of a nightmare and more something you can face directly." He would have shrugged, but his position in the sand didn't really allow for that. "Maybe write it down sometime, read it over later. Doesn't matter if you destroy it once you're done – that might even help, kind of a symbolic letting go thing." The difference between those of his people who counseled trauma survivors and Prussia was that Prussia was likely to be facing his nemesis more often than not. Avoidance wasn't an option.

Prussia said nothing for a while. "Huh. So that woo woo shit does kind of work."

Australia snorted. "Only partly. You don't get all over it because you tell it once. It's more… ya know, the way they treat phobias, by exposing you to it in controlled doses until you stop freaking."

That earned him a sound that hovered between real laughter and insane, broken giggles. "Russia-phobic… I reckon most of Eastern Europe has that issue."

"More than likely." Australia kept the relaxed, not-quite-flippant tone.

Another long silence followed, then Prussia said, "You said something about beer?"

Australia laughed. "Sure, mate." He reached into his private stash, withdrew two cold cans and handed one to Prussia. "Enjoy."

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