One of a group of mostly unfinished fanfictions from years ago I'm piling online.

Disclaimer: I do not own nor claim to own Axis Powers: Hetalia or any characters and places associated with Hidekazu Himaruya and Gentosha Comics. No profit is made from the writing for this fanfiction!

After centuries of menial existence looking upon so many pointless wars, it comes to a point when you numb yourself to the pain of human screams and cries of anguish. Flesh torn from bone, children ripped from mothers, the smash of knees against stone in sorrow; these sounds and hundreds more all blurred into a listless drone in your ears. A father too old to do anything but listen to the wireless and fret, wakes to a man at his door with a little yellow slip and his eyes scan over "MISSING IN AC…" Have you ever heard a grown man's heart erupt from his throat?

The sound fizzes when that sinking reality finally hits: There will never be an end.

Boys crawl in the dirt; they claw at it for weapons as their feet slip. Rain runs down their cheeks as freely as the tears their sisters shed for them. Lips curl and teeth grid, blood slicks their hands but your eyes frost over and all you see is motionless, grey pictures as you close them against the gentle spray of shrapnel.

It doesn't hurt. It never did. Dirt digs under your fingernails, it rubs in your wounds… infection crawls in way through. You swear, and shiver and your vision fades in and out, but you feel nothing because it isn't you. You still move and breathe. You're alive; they lay dead at your feet.

Different weapons and different fields. Sometimes the same fields only just able to weather the evidence of centuries past.

Same boys.

Same blood.

For the first time since those days my eyes opened violently to the screams tearing through my skull. The nails dragging through the mud where mine and the sting of dirt in my wounds made my lip tremble in pain. I struggled in to no-man's land with mud heavy boots and barbwire torn flesh just to look across the smog stretched out over the broken bodies of my hero's.

Nothing could truly describe it, after years of blindness to awaken to the one reason you blinded yourself to begin with. I wanted to cry, to collapse, to tear my eyes out.

It truly was the War to end all wars. Too many innocents, all innocents on both sides. It wasn't a battle of kings by soldiers, it was a battle of politics by civilians.

Then I caught his eyes from across the field and my breath scratched at my lungs. I spluttered, he stared; blue standing on a grey background.

He spoke to me and I couldn't hear but it didn't matter, I knew what he was saying.

"Let's bring the boys home."

I nodded in agreement. "Yes. Let's bring the boys back home."

Thanks for reading!