Note: While this fanfic is a crossover between Hetalia and Alice Isn't Dead, prior knowledge of anything from Alice Isn't Dead is not required for the full enjoyment of this work, but do know that the plot of this work is heavily based off of the plot from Alice Isn't Dead.
Disclaimer: Hetalia belongs to Hidekaz Himaruya, and Alice Isn't Dead belongs to Joseph Fink. I do not own either of the works.
In a good story, there's always a Beginning, a Middle, and an End. Feliciano Vargas was not quite sure where his own story started, nor when. But for lack of a better place to Begin it- he supposed he'd have to start with the breakfast at midnight.
He was sitting in a gas station. Well, no, it wasn't quite a gas station. It was a diner that was in a gas station. The diner part of the gas station. He was in that.
It was somewhere near the middle of nowhere.
He saw a man eating his food. But it wasn't the food. It was just the way he was eating the food. He was demolishing it, big chunks of yellow omelette and burnt slices of bacon scooped up with disgusting grease-stained fingers, just shoving them into his mouth.
And he was staring at Feliciano.
The man was wearing a white hat, a baseball hat. His fingernails were white too. Not nail polish white or pale white, but translucent white, just below the surface. White collared shirt. Dirty. Absolutely filthy, dirtier than you think a restaurant would allow someone to wear, would serve. Just the word "Tribulus" on the right breast. Feliciano had no clue what the word meant, but it sent flares of alarm racing up his spine.
But that man was moving food from plate to mouth like it had nothing to do with eating, like he was just a machine whose only function was to do that.
And he was still staring at Feliciano.
Feliciano had looked away, disturbed. Looked to the left, the right, down at his food, even checked behind him to find something to focus on besides the man, and he did. In fact, the subject of interest sat at the table right next to the man's.
Another man, but much brighter. Blond and glittering hair matched with tired but cheerful eyes the color of the ocean. He was dressed more neatly than the Tribulus man, thankfully. A pair of glasses sat on his nose, and a brown aviator jacket with a fur-lined collar rested over his shoulder. A plate stacked with donuts sat on the table in front of him, and he exuded contentedness.
He looked up, and Feliciano realized he was staring. Coughing lightly, he gave an embarrassed nod in response to the friendly (albeit awkward) smile and wave he received.
Looking away in haste, Feliciano found his eyes trapped once more by the Tribulus man.
People often told Feliciano that bad experiences were like nightmares. This wasn't a nightmare. What he remembered the most about it was how real it all was. Even as it happened, he noticed the most, how real it was, how he couldn't escape that reality. How he would never be able to convince himself that he had remembered any part of it incorrectly.
Big chunks of food. Chewing them. Demolishing them. He saw Feliciano staring back, and now they were staring at each other, something bubbling and monstrous there in that diner between them. The face of death in styrofoam ceiling tiles and sagging pleather booths.
He got up and approached Feliciano's table. His clothes were filthy, and he walked like his legs weren't muscle and bone, but just sacks of meat attached to his torso. He sat across from Feliciano in the booth and coughed. When he spoke, his voice sounded like the accidental hollowing of the wind.
"It's a fine evening," he said. "Doesn't look much like rain."
Egg crusted his lips and chin. His eyes bulged out of his skull and his mouth was twisted in an unnatural way. Nothing about what he was saying matched his tone at all.
At first Feliciano didn't say anything. He thought if he stayed quiet, the man would go away, but that only works with people who aren't already in it to bother you, who haven't already made up their minds to be awful.
"Hope you don't mind if I join you," the man said. Not a question, and not a request either. A joke.
Feliciano opened his mouth and responded with a voice wrought with terror and a lilting Italian accent. "I… I was actually hoping to eat alone," he said.
"Good people deserve good things," the Tribulus man said.
Feliciano didn't know what to say to that.
The man scratched his cheek, scratched it really hard, and Feliciano swore that some of it peeled away under his fingers.
"It's dangerous out here," he said.
"Out where?" Feliciano replied, voice starting to crack slightly. "This diner? This country? Life? Life is dangerous? Did you come over here to explain death to me?"
He laughed.
"Yes," he said. "I came over to explain death to you."
He leaned in close. His breath was rotten. Not bad rotten, Feliciano thought, but like fruit turning into soil.
"Want to see something funny?" he asked.
Feliciano trembled, and his eyes darted away to the other man. The man with eyes like the ocean. The man with the eyes like the ocean caught his stare immediately, and set his food down, shoulders tensing in alarm at what he saw.
The man in front of Feliciano got up. "Tribulus," his shirt said. His face was slack and not quite arranged right. Like human, but not. He walked over to a table where there was a man, a truck driver probably. Feliciano thought he looked like a truck driver.
What does a truck driver look like?
"Hey, Davie," the Tribulus man said.
"Huh?" said Davie, looking up. He seemed just as unhappy as Feliciano to be disturbed, but then the Tribulus man grabbed him by the back of his neck, and Davie's face went vacant. The Tribulus man picked Davie up by the neck, and Davie walked with him. He looked asleep, almost, or like some part of him wasn't there anymore.
Neither Davie nor the Tribulus man paid their checks. No one did anything, and no one looked.
Feliciano stared in horror as they left out the door, and he met the gaze of other one, the one with eyes like the ocean.
He stood up first, and Feliciano followed. They reached an agreement through a shared expression of fear and worry.
Out into the parking lot. He was waiting for them.
It was what he did next.
He was holding Davie now. Davie was awake again, but the Tribulus man was holding him too tightly for him to move.
The outside lights in the gas station weren't working anymore. The four men were shadows against the harsh light of the diner windows. Decent people eating waffles and shit ten feet away.
Feliciano trembled as he inched closer to the man with ocean eyes. Feliciano noticed that he was shaking too.
The embrace of the Tribulus man was almost tender, but there was nothing tender about him. His grip was strong, and the truck driver couldn't move, couldn't shout.
They both stared at Feliciano and the man with ocean eyes.
Davie's eyes were wide, struggling with a vision of the future without him in it. The longer Feliciano stared at the two, the more he realized that the originally white clothing the Tribulus man was wearing were less white, and more yellow, as if they were faded and had been collecting dust for decades. Even his nails seemed less translucent white, and more translucent yellow.
They both stared at Felciano and the man with ocean eyes.
And then the man with the yellow nails. He took a bite out of Davie. Tore out a chunk of flesh, right at the artery in his left armpit, and Davie began to bleed. He didn't move, but only whimpered a little. Tears started falling from his staring eyes, but he didn't move.
Feliciano didn't move either, and neither did the man with ocean eyes. It was like Fear had finally settled into its new home in the two, and was determined to keep them still in her bitter embrace.
The other thing, whatever it was, because it was not a man, dug his fingers into the wound and pulled out bits of Davie the way he had picked up the eggs, with the same flat movement, the nothing demeanor.
This was not a meal. This was not something he had to do in order to survive. It was a demonstration. The Tribulus man, he wanted Feliciano to know, or maybe he wanted the man with ocean eyes to know. And God, right then, they knew.
The man with ocean eyes grabbed Feliciano by the arm and ran out to the parking lot, towards a delivery truck. He helped Feliciano in, and Feliciano was too stunned and terrified to do anything but accept the help. He locked the doors, of course. Of course, he pulled out of the parking lot as fast as a truck that size would go… Which is not fast enough in a situation like that, of course.
Of course Feliciano cried. Of course he did.
Behind him in the mirror, he could still see the two figures. Could still see the distant shadow of Davie dying without a friendly face in sight. The only other people who could save him driving themselves away to safety, just the company of a monster to accompany him into his dissipation.
Feliciano couldn't see the details anymore. Those were in his memory.
All he could focus on was the man with the ocean eyes.
'I… Holy shit. Holy shit. What the fuck was that."
Feliciano shuddered. "I don't know. Dio mio, I don't want to know."
He could hear the unsteady breathing of the man with the ocean eyes. "Christ. What the hell… God. I, uh… I'm sorry I just dragged you in here with me. Your car is probably still back there, uh…"
"Feliciano," he managed to force out through shuddering breaths. "Feliciano Vargas. Please don't apologize, I… I don't want to think about what would've happened if you hadn't grabbed me then. Grazie…" Felciano trailed off, realizing he didn't know the name of the man with ocean eyes.
"Oh! Uh. Alfred F. Jones." Alfred grinned lopsidedly at Feliciano.
"Grazie, Alfred, a thousand times over," Feliciano murmured, eyes staring ahead at the road.
They fell into silence, and Feliciano shifted around a few times, trying to get comfortable. Under normal circumstances, he would be attempting to escape through the window.
But this wasn't a normal circumstance. He had just watched a man die, get eaten alive. Feliciano shifted his head to lean against the window.
"It's the engine, isn't it." Alfred commented.
Feliciano flicked his eyes over. "Hm?"
Alfred offered him an apologetic smile. "It takes a while to get used to sitting in the front of a truck. It's the engine, the sound of it. The noise of a truck this size, the height."
"Probably the height," Feliciano answered quietly.
Alfred laughed. "Yeah. That's what I think too. None of us are used to being this height anymore. A long time ago, we rode horses."
Feliciano gave Alfred an incredulous look. "We still ride horses now," he pointed out.
"You know what I mean!" Alfred smiled softly at the road. "The height. You'll get used to it eventually."
They lapsed into silence once more, and Feliciano watched the horizon line waver as the scenery changed. He thought about it, and he supposed that he would get used to the height, given he had enough time to adjust. He supposed that after what had happened that night, he wasn't going to be going anywhere by himself for a long time, and Alfred would be good enough company. They had gone through that grotesque performance together after all, and Alfred was the one who came to Feliciano's rescue. Feliciano figured that if he couldn't trust Alfred, he might as well throw himself off a cliff.
A sudden change in the horizon caught his eye. A tower in the distance, coming out of the hillside. Looks like it's part of a factory, but just… coming right out of the earth. Three points rose out of its shimmering black structure, and a sun, moon, and star rested on each of the three points.
"Creepy," Alfred said. "Gut creepy, like something gone wrong."
"Looks like something out of a myth," Feliciano said.
Alfred squinted at the tower as they drove closer to it. "You think that's where myths come from? When the real world looks like something out of a myth?"
Feliciano sighed. "Who are we at this point to talk about unreality? After… that."
"That's so weird." Alfred paused. "It doesn't look real."
Feliciano let out a small laugh and shook his head in amusement. "Alfred, I can't stop thinking about what's behind us."
Alfred hummed. "What, the stuff in the back? I think they've got me carrying travel-sized deodorant this time. Most deodorant can go on a plane, you don't need travel-sized versions. Not that many ounces even in full-sized ones. But anything that can hold a price a single human being will lay down for cash has to exist, and so here we are. My cargo in the back, the two of us mentally scarred people in the front. Hauling what didn't ever have to be from the place it didn't have to be made to the place where it doesn't have to be used."
Alfred wasn't getting distracted, or being dense. Feliciano could read enough of the atmosphere and mood to tell that the desperately cheerful man next to him was trying to avoid bringing up what had happened in the parking lot at all costs.
And because Feliciano happened to be a respectful human being, he did not pursue the subject any further. Instead, he closed his eyes, wished Alfred a good night, and fell asleep.
In the weeks that followed, the pair didn't dare leave each other's company, and for good reason.
Feliciano and Alfred both. They've seen the Tribulus man again. They've seen him again and again, behind the bathrooms at rest stops, in the snack aisle at gas stations, sitting alone in the biggest booths of the smallest roadside bars, places with one kind of beer on the menu and video poker in the bathroom by the toilet.
Something brutal and clumsy in his movements, like he didn't understand how any part of him worked.
Sharp teeth, Alfred mentioned quietly once. Not sharp enough to be fangs, but not human either. Definitely not human.
Yellow fingernails, Feliciano whispered to Alfred while in the truck another time. Not cigarette yellow or nail polish yellow. Translucent yellow, just below the surface.
He hadn't talked to either Alfred or Feliciano again, but they saw him, and he knew it. Feliciano knew that he wanted them to know that he was following them.
He didn't know who this… He refused to call him "man." He is not a man. Feliciano didn't know what he was, but he knew it was good reason for Alfred to keep on driving.
So now, here, the road between two places neither Feliciano nor Alfred had ever heard of. Travel-sized deodorant, an unusual height, closer to the night sky than to any other human being outside of their company. A night sky that seems gorgeous and heartbreaking, even though it's not. It's not anything. It just isn't.
Feliciano would keep thinking, and Alfred would keep driving. They would keep wandering the country, until they found whatever they didn't know they were looking for.
Hopefully, Feliciano prayed, they would do it before the Tribulus man got impatient.
Every time he looked around, he worried that the headlights he saw were the Tribulus man's, and his strange dirty hands are on the wheel, pointing them at Feliciano and Alfred, going faster and faster.
This better be worth whatever is happening, both Alfred and Feliciano decided one day.
After all, nothing ever could be.