AN: Hey, it's my second Hetalia story! Another GerIta themed one, but this one is decidedly much darker. This was actually started about two months ago (? maybe one and a half) and was inspired by reading The English Patient for my lit. class. The reason I mention that is because this story is focused on the Italian Campaign, which is mentioned heavily in the book (much of the setting is in the aftermath). I only did a little outside research so I can't attest to how accurate I'm being with every detail (sorry! I'm a bad writer I know, taking historical liberties) but the Germans did do a whole lot of destruction to Italy on their retreat back north, and they did lay a lot of bobby-traps and bombs and killed several civilians. Also, I used the Japanese names when they speak to one another b/c I thought it was minorly less confusing. Also, please forgive any butchering of languages, I've only taken one semester of Italian so Google was used.

So anyways, here's the story and there are some other languages used that I will translate at the end in case you wanted to know. P.S. I don't own Hetalia and thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoy!

Blood was in his shoes. His feet felt warm and wet, liquid copper seeping out through the holes in the worn bottoms, coating the ground, glittering in the sunlight, over the pieces of glass that had punctured through the old leather. Throughout the entire war he had been wearing these.

They bore the mark.

They gave no hint of his Italian pride: scuffed, old, torn. No amount of polish would ever bring them to their former sheen, just as no number of stitches could ever hope to properly fix the seams.

Still he held onto them dearly. There were no happy memories attached to them, no sentimental value he might have once felt. Indeed, when he looked down at them and tried to recall those calmer, pre-war days, the recollections of sunshine, of music and cooking and art, of long, quiet siestas and joyous feste, all vanished, clouded in the heavy smoke of gunfire. Now all he could see were the blood streaked faces of his vacant-eyed countrymen, forever gazing into the great beyond and the bombs that fell like Hellfire.

Could he have he would have torn the boots from his feet and flung them far away. He would have covered his ears and shut his eyes and kept it all far away from him, the muck and the dirt and the blood and the glass and the shrapnel. He would have set those boots afire in a glorious blaze, one to mock the very ones turning his country to rubble and ash. But alas, he was doomed to wear them. They were all he had left.

How his feet constantly ached. Every step rubbed a bleeding wound and stretched open one beginning to heal. Glass and metal tore through the threadbare leather soles and gouged his feet. All of his home had become one unending field of landmines. Every step was treacherous, taken shakily with a prayer to God.

Men, women, even children, he saw the looks on their faces, the ones he knew were mirrored in his own: a constant, draining state of fatigue and terror. They were always weeping; in fear, in exhaustion, in hopelessness, in pain, in mourning. Every day another one died, blown apart into pieces before loved ones, a sacrificial lamb and a warning to the ever present danger.

Nothing was sacred any more. Nothing was safe. Every object was a reason for hesitancy; not a thing could be touched without trembling fingers and an unsteady heart. Instruments, doors, bookcases, trees, drawers, clocks...all were booby-trapped with bombs. Those that had survived the Germans' initial retreat, those that had considered themselves so fortunate...how many lucky fingers had reached for a book, a piano key, an apple, only to have a hand blown clear off?

Of course there had been the Allies too, who had rained bullets and bombs upon the Italian countryside, whose missiles had lay ruin to farms and destroyed so many churches; but their demolition was less painful, more straightforward and direct in intention. They wanted the Germans, and if Italy happened to be laid to waste in the process, so be it; they had been enemies before, it was to be expected. But Germany...Germany had been so much more insidious, so much more thorough in achieving its goal. This wasn't tactical, it wasn't strategic; it was retribution, it was punishment. And it was brutal.

In every act of every German he saw those steely, cold eyes reflected back at him: the anger, the hatred, the contempt. Every village burned to smoldering debris, every family lined against a wall and shot down, every church raped of its purity and broken apart, every statue smashed and painting torn in two...He was a traitor and this was the price of his sin.

His tears would gain no sympathy, no pity, but still he wished to fall upon the ground and cry for all that had been lost, all the pieces of his precious home that would forever linger on only in memory and name. Hobbling along his bloodied path he continued on; if he stopped he knew the German hounds would sic themselves upon him, sink their teeth into the flesh of his limbs and rip him into pieces, devouring him entirely.

Those German hounds; well-trained, hackles raised and teeth bared, snarling with docked ears—so disciplined that the saliva in their foaming mouths would not fall to the ground unless directed to do so. Those hounds who were only a reflection of their masters, a horde of beasts raised to be copies of an army of men.

And in all of them he saw him.

Doitsu.

All of them bore him in their being: their taut, rigid bodies, their humorless faces, the cold steel of their eyes, the harsh bark of their native tongue, the fastidious appearance of their officers, their devotion to regimen, their obsession with rules. They were him—right down to the snap-click of their boots.

What he searched for in them, while they plundered his country and tore it down brick by brick, he never found. He cast quick, surreptitious glances at them while he hid behind crumbling walls, in collapsing homes and under wrecked church pews, always looking, never finding, what he desperately longed for. Something akin to what he had seen in their short friendship: a blush, a soft gesture, a kind word. There were none though.

Did Doitsu really hate him so? Was this the man or was this the man behind him, the crazed boss determined to spread a German fire across the world? He could no longer tell; he hadn't seen Doitsu for a long while, since before he had surrendered.

He hadn't wanted war from the beginning, only allegiance and protection. And now the very people he had prayed to protect were suffering, shot and burned and blown apart by the ones they had once called "Fratello".

Fratelli d'Italia, l'Italia s'e desta, dell'elmo di Scipio s'e cinta la testa. Dov'e la Vittoria? Le porga la chioma, che schiava di Roma, Iddio la creo.

Yes, and where was Victory? Who was she a slave to now? She wasn't here, too proud to linger in the burning rubble; she had fled as soon as the bombs had erupted above her cloistered cell in the heart of Rome, escaping into the dark European night. Or perhaps she had been cajoled away by the call of the Deutschland. Had her ownership unwittingly changed when they'd stood together and vigorously shared the songs of their nations? Had the power in those fierce words entranced her and pulled her from Italy's grasp?

Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles, uber alles in der Welt, wenn es stets zu Schutz und Trutz Bruderlich zusammenhalt. Von der Maas bis an die Memel, von der Etsch bis an den Belt, Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles, uber alles in der Welt!

Yes, Germany for all...Germany for the world.

Even faced with destruction Germany would not lose. Germany would bring the rest of the world to its knees with it and have them burn in the pits of Hell together.

Italy dropped. The rough, dry ground tore at his clothes and a threadbare patch on his left knee gave way; more blood leeched into the ground. From his tired bloodshot eyes rivulets of tears began to stream, mixing along with the dusty grime covering his sweaty cheeks.

"Doitsu," he cried aloud and fell forward. He slammed his fists into the dirt and raked his chewed fingernails through the ground til they bled. With shudders and soft, hiccuping weeps he slumped down pitifully onto his side, gazing with empty eyes into the ravaged Italian landscape, dingy even in the bright daylight. "Doitsu...Mi dispiace Doitsu. Che ho fatto...che ho dovuto fare...Doitsu, vi chiedo perdono."

"Italia."

"Doitsu!" The hazel eyes, alight with focus once more, searched eagerly up only to jolt back, staring down through the barrel of a Luger .08 pistol. It stayed pointed right at his skull, waiting to determine his fate with the cylindrical metal resting hidden in its belly.

The German's name fell with his voice once more, involuntarily, like an echo of his own breath.

"Italia. Schweinepriester." Steel blue eyes full of ice simmered with a fire underneath, threatening to expose the passion within: betrayal, rage, pride, volatility, madness, disdain, hurt, sadness, pain, despair...

There was a near compulsion to reach out. He wanted to pull him in close and embrace him; he wanted to cry with Doitsu's head on his shoulder and promise that one day the insanity would end and everything would be all right again. He wanted to say that one day they would be friends again.

"Doitsu..." No sooner did his filthy hand extend than the trigger-finger twitched, the squeak of tightening leather carried impossibly loud in the desolate space. "Doitsu," he whispered.

"Italia." It was full of hatred, quietly quivering with a rage that threatened to spill over. The gun rattled with the shaking of its bearer's hands. Slowly they came up and forward, inching to the soft skin of a slightly tanned forehead, now less than a foot away, close enough to blow a hole clear past the auburn locks and white skull to rupture the brain matter inside.

Then it stopped.

They remained there, frozen, both hands still raised to one another, almost touching— a strange recreation of a painting Italy barely remembered.

All was still as death but for the unsteady gun. Silence hung until the second the low squeak of slick leather signaled the clench of the trigger finger.

Without a single noise of protest, the despondent wails he was so known for, Italy slowly let his swollen eyes shut and before screwing them tight. Tears slipped between the lids and formed muddy tracks on his cheeks, his jaw rattled as he bit his lower lip between his teeth, but there was no defiance, no defense. He was tired, and he was worn. This was to be his fate; he could fight no longer.

A pop ruptured the air and tore the fatal peace in two. Italy opened his eyes in time to see the last falling of dirt and debris in the distance as his ears attuned to the sound of approaching forces.

The Germanic man-nation before him, crazed, desperate, and far from the god Italy had once seen in him, cursed and let the gun's position drop, arm falling to his side.

"Go, go men! Let's get those German bastards!" "Allez soldats! Marchez-maintenant! Liberté, égalité, fraternité!"

There, coming strong and fast and full of vengeance, were the Allied forces. Italy could hear their voices, their languages melding into one furious roar; the English, Indians, Canadians, and Americans merging with the voices of the French-Canadians and displaced free Frenchmen, and soon they would be followed by Brazilians, Greeks, Poles, South Africans, Australians...all coming together to bring down the nation-man who stood broken and mad before him.

"Scheiẞe!" Germany turned to run.

"Doitsu!"

For just a moment the Germanic nation stopped and turned and when he looked into Italy's eyes he was just a man again, his eyes weighed with the regret and fatigue that came as the tole of so much violence passed. Italy's mouth opened but no noise left him and his mind could find no words to speak, no words of consolation or condemnation.

Something shined deep in those ice-blue eyes, something pure shimmering beneath the murky waters of his war-tainted soul, but before Italy's amber eyes could decipher their meaning they turned away. Germany's mouth opened and moved to form words, but the blast of approaching bombs and gunfire rumbled about them.

Italy squinted to make out the words those rough lips spoke, but could only make out one.

"Italia..." Though more was said the words were lost to Italy as Germany turned to run once more.

"Doitsu! Aspetta!" Germany did not stop and Italy did not give chase, did not move from his position on the ground. He sat and watched his while his friend and enemy ran north.

The thunder of the coming soldiers rang through the sullied air, ripe with gun powder and smoke, darkening the skies with the portents of bloodshed.

"Doitsu, stava valsa la pena?" Italy softly asked the disappearing figure, now only a blur amidst the kick-up of dust and dirt and smoke.

What had this war done for anyone? How many lives had been lost?...How many unspeakable crimes had been committed...And just what would happen when this was all over? How would they be punished, by the Allies, by their consciences, by God? Were they damned for eternity now?

The battle cries were near upon him now, trampling in hordes across the torn Italian fields, pushing the enemy back to the Fatherland. Soon it would all be over, soon the Allies would be the victors and they would decide what to do with the spoils of war or Germany would set fire to the entire world and bring it down alongside him. All too soon their fates would be sealed.

Against the roar of the soldiers words finally poured forth from Italy's chapped lips. Gazing to the space his long-gone friend had occupied his heart whispered its truth freely.

"Doitsu, se io brucio, spero di bruciare con te."

Thanks for reading! I really appreciate any feedback!

feste- parties

fratello- brother

*The single line of Italian is from the national anthem and basically says that Victory was created by God to be the slave of Rome

*The lines of German are from the German national anthem under Nazi rule (also the first stanza of the original German anthem) and basically says Germany above all.

Doitsu...Mi dispiace Doitsu. Che ho fatto...che ho dovuto fare...Doitsu, vi chiedo perdono- Germany...I'm sorry Germany. What I did...what I had to do...Germany I beg forgiveness.

Schweinepriester- (Got this from a supposedly German fellow with an online blog about the language) 'pig priest' literally, but used to refer to someone who betraysor sells out their friends.

Allez soldats! Marchez-maintenant! Liberté, égalité, fraternité- Go soldiers! Now march! Liberty, equality, brotherhood! (the last sentence is the motto of the French Revolution and has generally become the French motto)

Scheiẞe- shit

Aspetta- Wait!

stava valsa la pena?- was it worth it?

se io brucio, spero di bruciare con te- if I burn, I hope I burn with you.