I'll see you in the future when we're older
And we are full of stories to be told.
Cross my heart and hope to die,
I'll see you with your laughter lines.
xLaughter Lines-Bastille
There was a time that Prussia never talked about; it was a time that no one else knew. A time that no one else would ever know, but for the only other that experienced it. It wasn't a mistake, and it wasn't shameful or anything that had any reason to be hidden, but nobody knew regardless.
With all the bloodshed and all the wrong doings that the ex-nation had initiated, it was the last thing that should have been a secret. But Prussia wasn't a warm nation. He was never affectionate in the way that the Italy brothers were, or the way Spain was.
All his years making mayhem with Spain and France had made him long for something he was never good at expressing. A country born of a longing for power-a militant country-was all he had ever focused on when things began. But Spain and France... Ah, his best friends, sweet and caring and idealistic. Spain and France showed him things he wasn't sure he was ever meant to have. Love, passion, kindness. Prussia longed for them. He wanted to feel that warm thing unfurl in his own chest, to feel something that made the spring breeze blow and the sun shine.
Prussia wasn't an affectionate nation, but he wanted to be, and he told France as much. Of course the country of love would understand, would light up with sympathy and promise things that he couldn't make true. He called it, "La douleur exquise."
When Prussia kissed France for the first time, it felt right.
He didn't feel that warmth that comes from kissing someone that you're in love with-he and France weren't in love; he felt a comfort rush over him-a momentarily calmness and quieting of the war ever waging in his head. So began their short affair, if it could be called that.
It was never sexual. Always chaste kisses, sometimes lingering and holding hands under the evening sky. The lingering of France's cologne was ever present in the Prussian country's mind; the warm days listening to the rustling of leaves echoing though the forests they walked through lit a place in his chest. He wished it would last forever. No matter how many times they met, France would whisper to him, "We'll always meet again." Prussia wasn't sure why, but those words always let his fingers tingling with warm sensations.
It all came to end end in 1914, at the start of the Great War. Prussia's head was overtaken with thoughts of the war that he couldn't bring himself to snap out of; France was too busy fending for Europe against Germany. The Prussian often thought of France, locked up in his room, in the fleeting moments of peace. He told himself that it would all end soon, that this would be over and he could be fixed again.
The end didn't come. With World War II, France fell and Prussia was more alone than ever, carrying out orders that tore him from the inside out. Nights were the worst, dreaming of France's demise, that gleaming red symbol, the colour of Prussia's own eyes, cut into the ancient nation's back as a warning, a message, a victory. Sometimes he dreamed of the forest, and the smell of France, and he would wake, the nostalgic, melancholic feelings eating him from the inside out.
And then, it really was over. Prussia did meet France again, but the nation could not look him in the eyes. Not after all the hurt and loss he'd caused him. Waves of feelings crashed around him, the calm feeling that something was over and would never be back. The realization echoed like gunshots in his head. He was put in a cell for a long, long time, yearning for the feeling of the sun on his pale skin. Longing for the briefest of touches from France, from Spain.
On the day Prussia died, France cried on Spain's shoulder.
On the day he was buried, the remaining nation rested his head against the cold of the gravestone. Snow was beginning to fall and the air was cool and crisp.
"I'll see you again. I promised you that. I promised you I'd see you again. You saw me, but I never looked at you. I never met you again. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
There's a tragedy in missed opportunity. There's a sadness in old friends, a sense of melancholy in old places and old memories. Like the scent of old books, or a warm breeze on a summer night that makes you feel just a little homesick for a person rather than a place.
Prussia never talked about that time. He never mentioned it to anyone, because it was his, private and intimate. France thought he'd died longing for something that he had never felt for himself; what Prussia died thinking though, was that maybe, maybe he hadn't needed to long quite so much, because it was France's face he saw in his last moments.
That was enough for him.
La douleur exquise: (n.)The exquisite pain of wanting the affection of someone you know you can never have.