Disclaimer: Hetalia isn't mine, else I'd have a better computer :\ Damn Japanese technology.
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"'Sunlight in the hair,' he whispered, 'and the blue sky fixed forever in your eyes.' He seemed almost meditative as he looked at me. His breath had no smell whatsoever, nor did his body, it seemed. The smell of mold was coming from his clothes."
- Lestat de Lioncourt (The Vampire Lestat)
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Moans.
How kind of God, Francis thinks darkly. He bites back a cry—or a curse?—when he stumbles across another one. Another somebody, with rotting black flesh. Somebody, whoever the hell he is. Or she? Francis spits, his scant saliva landing near the cadaver.
Where are those gravediggers when they're needed?
Dead, perhaps. Most likely.
I'll probably be next, he thinks, gloomily, bitterly, as he ambles forward.
His own skin is withered black, putrid flesh roasting with the crows. What in hell did the people do to deserve this?—at least some must be spared for Judgment Day.
He tries to spit again, fails horribly. All that is achieved is the suppression of a groan. It hurts there.
Pfah. It hurts everywhere. He expects to drop dead there and then; though he doesn't, and he continues his funeral march. For himself, if not Europe.
His throat is raw when he sees dark eyes flickering at him—"Water?" croaks a man, dark through and through—black in skin, black in hair, black in eyes. "Agua," a woman wails, clutching at her sores.
"Please, some water"; a small child drops a baby, who begins to cry, gurgling mouth wide open. The child ignores it, instead staring with eyes of death. She has buboes like scales.
The living and undead raise their hand upward if they can, having seen the man who still walks, whose skin is still fair, whose hair is gold as God's sun itself. Heaven! Salvation!
"Water!"
"Lord!"
"Save us!"
Francis stares at them all as they lay and cry and wail—they stink as he does. He is like them, all tattered clothes and ragged soul. How can they not see...how can they see a useless, golden prince as an angel, who backs away from all?—they are not the first he sees who dance with the skeletons, and it's so, so cruel that he must lay witness again and again, while he can do nothing. Nothing!
Francis throws his head back as the flopping fish reek and die; he faces the blue, blue sky where the Kingdom of Heaven lays, glaring; the sun that forsakes them as they bathe in soot, beside the crows. The beams are tangled in his hair, the heavenly dome within his eyes as he laughs. Laugh, laugh, laugh, because it is the end of the world—damnation! Rejoice!—for there is no way out! Why bother, he stinks, the world stinks, and they are all dying, dying, dying. He only hopes there are enough skeletons to dance with, lest hell be boring. What is fire without sinful, sinful frolicking?
Laugh with the sun. He is no savior; he is one of them, to hell with nations! They do not see his arms.
You are crazy, Francis thinks, before spinning upon his heel and running somewhere, wherever, but no away. There is no fleeing the Black Death.
--
The sky is so beautiful.
Wicked, traitorous silk, the sky smiles at the dancing crows. A festival. That is what this is.
Francis has stopped laughing. He stops because he has no idea what to do anymore. Should he find Antonio, and play with him till they are both burning? Should he cry? Should he find Gilbert and drink away sin? Dull, dull, dull, when he is about to die. Nothing is fulfilling.
He still stinks of sooty ravens.
Oh, what is the point.
Disgust.
He leans in on the corner, contaminated stone touching him, scraping at his skin beneath his clothes. The sun is vain, and so where is he?—himself?—Spain?—Italy?
Where in hell...
"Merde." Who cares? And why should he? This is the age when it is every man for himself, when care is withered with hope. Unclean. Is this what God wants...why...why...
Ah, I'm dying, the French lunatic notes, as he ignores the dead upon the street. Oh, to know that he is a nation—all those years, those struggles in simply being alive, gone to waste. But his people will soon be gone by God's will, and this infernal plague will send him to join. God's will be done.
This is his final battle.
Death has won.
Death always does.
Francis huddles up against the bloody walls, where others died before. They, like he will be, are nameless. How utterly demeaning.
Death is pulling at the strings, his strings, ads the sun becomes hotter and hotter, beaming ever the more brightly. It's enjoying this, as Francis lets his eyelids droop, not even gagging on his own stench. Death's perfume, would you like to try?
And there are useless posies scattered over the stone as well. Trash, just as he will be. Fitting.
Faster, he tells Death, in a somehow eager monotone. Take me, you cold bitch.
Going—
"F—France..." A wheeze. Painful.
Bam, goes his eyelids as Death slaps him across the face; there shall be no comfort for him, come low hell or high heaven.
At first there is nothing, but he keeps looking, glazed eyes melting, for he knows that voice.
It is the voice of broken, hastily-mended innocence.
His heart has started again, and his veins are blue with blood, as he searches, searches for that phantom purity.
"Hello?" he calls out; croaks out, more like. The air rushes into his sticky damp mouth, and it's both dry and refreshing. Again, there it is—his best friend—desperation.
A squeak, of a small bird dying. "Big Brother France...," mewls something pitiful. His heart quickens. It's real. He has wandered far, far in those days past of searching for Death and not wanting it. No wonder the sun cares not, no wonder there is still gold in the sky.
He knows where he is.
"Big Brother..." The plea, already thin, is rubbed away. Silence settles.
No.
No, no, no...not him. At the very least, not him—he is but a child, who has suffered again and again—
Not him, not him...he does not deserve the fires of hell!
Francis's awakened heart quickens; it is his instincts as a self-proclaimed brother that drives him, for only one person, the only one, who accepts it...
Shifting his round blue eyes about, he lifts himself from his pitiful spot to die; he groans at the pain and heightened senses.
But the child is more important.
"Italy!" he calls out in kind to the boy, palms pressed flat against the wall. There are bodies everywhere, either spread-eagled for acceptance of heaven, or else facedown to welcome hell. One of them must still be alive...
It must be a little figure.
"Italy?" he calls again, stronger this time, if anything. The rasp, however, lingers.
Silence again.
Then that would mean—
No, he wants the body then. If he cannot pull him from the cliff, then he can still retrieve the broken form; he cannot just leave everything—him—like that. He will not leave, not until he has found the child, either dead or alive.
He has resolve.
He turns bodies over, kneeling and ignoring his cracked spine; he can hold. Yet he still shudders in disgust, in a way that again even glorifies his position as a half-son of Adam; humanity has not been sapped from his veins, at least not all of it. Sucking in a dirty breath, he turns away from each dead-fish face, one by one. Italy. None of them are Veneziano.
Then he sees—the curled-up white form, huddled in the shadows as it waits, shivering, for death. This is not the first time the wretched thing has looked pathetic, helpless—but this...
"Italy," Francis breathes, nearing the small child.
His clothes are stained, and torn; of course they could be. When Francis reaches to pick him up, he finds his fingers freezing before they can touch him; and merde, he is afraid, of becoming filthier. Swearing, he shoves those vain hands forward—to hell with sickness!—he is already dying, so why not?
Italy is small. That is what he notes when he looks, truly looks, and feels. So, so small.
Francis takes one look at the little face, tries not to drop him when he sees the black lumps around the child's throat. Grotseque, on such a child, an innocent boy. Gazing upward, to face the heavenly dome, he asks, simply, miserably, "Why?"
Of course he receives no answer.
Looking down, he drops the appeal, for no one spoke when he first found his people dying. There is now a dwindling life in his hands.
"Italy?" His voice is hesitant, scratchy. A small whimper replies when prompted: Francis has pulled him closer, cradling the boy oh-so awkwardly.
One eyelid flicks open, and Italy shakes his head with weak wonder; Francis grips him all the more tighter for that—and he knows that he is alive.
"Big Brother France?" Italy squeaks, though the last note dies quickly.
"O-oui, mon cher." He smiles, or grimaces, at his brother. At least he lives.
Italy closes that eye, then opens it again, its twin following. They are startlingly brown, as they always are. But they blur as he shakes his head again; "I'm dead."
"You're not," Francis soothes, wincing. How can he not catch the whiff of death about them? Probably the illness cannot relieve the child of his own smell as he lies dying as well, and he cannot tell from his stench to the next corpse.
He begins to rock the now-quiet child, every so often stroking the auburn hair that lacks a hat. The eyes have closed again, weighed down by fever; beneath are the flickers of eyes as fish below ice. He lives.
Then a tear.
It comes unbidden, uncalled for; completely and utterly unwelcome, but hither it comes, stings at the edges of Francis's blue, blue eye. Each sliver of salt, each sliver of water, gathers at one single corner; he blinks, and it squeezes itself out. He curses.
The tear, uncaring, washes down a clean stripe upon his face till it dangles from his chin.
Italy lives.
Right?
Francis shakes him, wondering why—why, why, why—why must one such as Italy, one such as a child suffer? Why has their Lord abandoned even those who have not learned their left to right, let alone wrong from right? What crime has Italy committed?—what is the charge for all others innocent?—what are any of them guilty for?
"Big Brother," murmurs Italy sleepily, "why are you crying?" The tear has dripped to his feverish brow.
Francis blinks.
His sense...this sense of care shatters. It divides and comes together again, and he touches something...
To hell with it! he thinks angrily, and holds his younger brother ever the closer. "Who's crying?" He smiles.
"You are..." He squeaks, Italy. "Big Brother, why is this happening? I'm going to die!" he cries.
To hell with it!
Francis laughs again. "You are not going to die, Ita-cher. None of us are going to die!"
"But my people—"
"Will move on once this infernal plague is over. They'll rebuild, and so will you." He shifts his position to ward off a slew of rats at the corner of his eye. Glaring, he kicks at them; the scatter. Turning back, he bounces the boy on his knee. "We'll both get better."
"Soon?" the child asks, trustingly.
"Soon," he promises, and hopes that the lie is a turncoat. Glancing up, he appeals again.
Italy then smiles; it is so beautiful, so pure, that Francis is awestruck. "Big Brother is right," he says, almost—almost—proudly. "Fratello mio..."
"Oui?"
But there is no answer, and it was probably only spoken for the sake of acknowledgement. Children are children, after all.
Soon Italy has fallen asleep, battered by sickness, seeming miraculously healthy with the way he breathes like a child should. Francis watches with some wonder—is this hope he suddenly sees?
Looking up once more, he blinks at the gold, pleading, cajoling, hoping for the end of this pseudo-apocalypse. And if his promise falls short...then...
To hell with it.
PT: Pft. Currently in Global class, I'm learning about the Black Death. Nothing really new until we watched a documentary. It showed a lot O_o Like, holy mother shittin' God. So I had the strange idea of brotherly fluff for France and Italy at the time. And in the end I thought, "Fuck it, I will write it D8" This was, however, written in my notebook while I was in a hotel in Italy, and completed in my cabin on the ferry to Greece. As soon as I got home, I wrote it down (after dealing with speaking to my friends and other matters, of course). –Blinks- Yeah.