Of Fools and Fears
He hadn't meant to loose his son. Honestly, he hadn't. It just sort of…happened.
N-not that he was concerned, or anything, oh no. For all he cared the child could be dead.
He stopped in his tracks. Dead…no, he didn't want that at all. Not for the boys sake of course, but for his own. He would never be able to forgive himself if he knew that his own negligence ended the life of another, even if it was only that little brat.
Sighing, he continued on, making sure that the frogs were still in his rucksack. They were indeed so there was no need to turn around and track down some more. A tiny part of him twanged.
That boy would be the death of him, he could feel it in his bones, and he hadn't wanted to take on the burden in the first place, so his loss was truly no huge concern of his.
"Hey! Hey Vati! Look what I did! I bet you're jealous, huh?"
Germania shook his head, as if doing so would fling the memories out of his ears.
He really, honestly hadn't meant to loose the boy. Really.
The forest was unusually warm and wet, and the child was just so annoying. He yapped and yapped until his voice grew weak and weary and after that he whined to him and to the trees and to the heavens about anything and everything that came to his mind. And he really couldn't stand to carry him anymore so he put him down, told him to walk and not to speak again until he was told to do so.
Germania had forgotten that children have tiny legs and tiny strides and he was unusually tall to begin with, so it really was no surprise that his son had fallen behind. When he finally noticed the absence there was no way to tell for how long he had been out of eyeshot and therefore it would be counterproductive to turn around and go look for him, so he continued onward.
No, he didn't mean to leave the boy behind. But he couldn't complain. It was…peaceful without him.
"Th-that's a really big tree. Have you ever seen a tree that big? I've never seen a tree that big. Once I saw a bush. It was small so I peed in it, but then a squirrel jumped out and bit my –"
A coarse laugh. Another sigh. Germania stopped again, looking up past the trees and into the sky. It was getting dark; soon the wolves would be out. The large, ferocious wolves with teeth like knives and claws like daggers. Hungry wolves with glowing yellow eyes and bristling tails that hunted in packs and tore their prey apart.
The boy was strong. Time and time again he had proven this by yanking out his father's flyaway hairs and crushing the insects that sometimes swarmed with his little hands. He would be fine until he could find someplace to hunker down. He'd grow up strong in the forest just as his father had.
"Daddy!" The tiny voice was scared and worried. "Please don't leave me Daddy! I can be strong! I promise!" He usually garnered strength from hugging himself close to his father's body and his knees were not an effective substitute, as much as he would have liked them to be.
Chills ran down his spine but he did not stop. He needed to get out of the forest before nightfall himself, lest the frogs escape and he be out a meal.
It was easy to convince himself the boy would be fine. Too easy, in retrospect. He was small but he had a semi-decent head on his shoulders – which was all he really needed – and a pair of sprightly legs – good for running, something that came in handy more often than a good head did when alone in the forest – so really, he would be fine.
He hadn't meant to loose him. He just wanted some peace and quiet, that's all. Just a short break from the pitched buzzing, that's it. He didn't intend for the boy to fall behind and get lost.
He was just so unused to being what the humans called an 'active father'. He had always known that he had quite a few aspiring children, he had even met a few of the older ones, but he had never taken a proactive part in insuring their wellbeing. They were all either old enough to fend for themselves or wanted no part of him. This little one though had been so alone and helpless it had hurt to think of leaving him by himself in the frozen north, to he took him along.
"I'm not lonely, just alone. But…if you want…I wouldn't mind being together with someone."
Germania had always been alone and he knew well the difference between the two. He had never expected one so young to understand as well.
Somewhere to his left the bushes rustled and a pig squealed, feral snarls and grotesque slopping noises following shortly thereafter. The pig continued to squeal (scream really) until the last little bit of life drained out of it and all that remained was the slopping.
The image that took shape in his head was enough to make him sick but he held himself. The boy would be fi-
It had been a few weeks prior, Germania awoken to his sons screams. After it had been determined that a night terror was the cause of the trauma rather than physical assault, he tried his best to comfort the boy. It had been an awkward ordeal, considering Germania's general discomfort at having another cling to his chest for dear life. The boy had whispered quietly to him then, "I'm afraid of wolves, Vati. Don't let the wolves get me."
Before he even had time to process his body's actions, Germania had spun on his heels, taking off in the direction he had come from. What had he been thinking?
He had lost his son!
~Hetalia~
"I'm not afraid," Prussia muttered, stepping carefully over the root of a tree. He had fallen a number of times because of those roots and he was determined not to do so again. "I am not afraid."
It had turned into a mantra of sorts. He was not afraid. No, he was not afraid. There was nothing to be afraid of, because…because he was Prussia and he was awesome and nothing would ever, ever be able to hurt him!
But outside his head he was a little less confident.
The sun was beginning to sink below the treetops and he knew that soon it was going to be dark. He was very, very afraid of the dark. Monsters came out when it was dark. Monsters like bogeymen and demons and werewolves. Especially werewolves, because they only were werewolves at night, otherwise they were just regular people, if it bit hairy. His Vati had told him so himself, so it must be true. It certainly kept him in the house, and close when they were out.
But now he was not close. He was all alone in the forest with trees and the lady bug that was stuck to his shirt and the werewolves that were undoubtedly following him, waiting until they turned into wolves when the sun sank behind the horizon to strike.
"I'm not afraid of werewolves," he lied to himself. He knew that Vati told him not to say another gods-damned word until they got home but he figured that as long as his Vati didn't know, he wouldn't get in trouble. "I'm not afraid of ladybugs, either!"
He was afraid of ladybugs, along with a few other insects, but he didn't want to touch it so he let it stay on his shirt. He climbed over a rock and cut his hand on one of the sharp edges. A trickle of blood dripped onto his pants.
"Great, n-now Vati's going to be double-mad at me; for being slow and for bleeding on my clothes," he sniffed the mucus in his nose up so he could breathe. He noted the hot wetness of his eyes. "Triple mad because now I'm crying too and crying is…" It got hard to speak so he didn't. Instead, he licked the gash on his palm of clean it out. He didn't want to get an infection but he didn't know how to get the little bits of dirt and rock out. He hiccupped.
"I wish I wasn't so slow and small, and then maybe I wouldn't be so bad at this. Maybe I wouldn't need Vati to take care of me, and then he could be happy all of the time."
There was a deep growling sound and he jumped, startled. Was it a werewolf? A bear? He hoped it was a bear.
The growling happened again and he realized it was his stomach. He was hungry. He had found a lot of berries while he was walking and he knew that some of them were the good-to-eat berries that Vati had shown him, but he didn't eat any. He wasn't supposed to eat food before dinner because it would ruin his appetite. He wondered if he was allowed to eat berries before dinner if he was making growling noises and felt dizzy and his legs were so wobbly he slipped climbing a rock and cut his hand. Probably not.
He was too tired to walk anymore so he slid to the side of the rock and pulled his knees to his chest. Vati would be really mad if he didn't come home until the next morning but Prussia was so tired and hungry and he didn't think he would be able to walk all the way home, considering he wasn't even certain he was going the right way.
The sun was almost gone now and Prussia could feel the eyes of the werewolves as they traced over his skull. They were probably licking their lips and thinking about how delicious a little boy like him would taste. He knew they were out there, just beyond the trees, breathing heavily and shaking with anticipation.
The ladybug was gone because they slept at night like he did, but now there were spiders and he could see them crawling on trees, on roots, over rocks, towards him…
He was more afraid of spiders than he was ladybugs. They had fangs while ladybugs only had shells and they wrapped their victims up in silk coffins, then liquefied their insides and drank them up. Vati said that spiders usually only ate bugs like flies and moths, but sometimes they ate naughty little boys, so he had to be extra-good so his insides weren't liquefied and drank by a spider. He hadn't been good – he got lost and bled on his clothes and cried and on top of all that he was hungry before dinner – and now he was going to be eaten by werewolves and drank by spiders. Maybe even a were-spider. That would be really awful.
There was another growling, but it wasn't his stomach. It wasn't as deep and it sounded almost whining, like it was looking for something. No doubt, this was a werewolf and it was coming for him. The spiders were already there and one of them was trying to touch one of his feet with its spidery legs, and he pulled himself closer to the rock.
"I'm not afraid, I'm not afraid," he repeated it to himself over and over again, even when more tears started to stream down his cheeks and he started to hiccup and he could have sworn he felt a hot breath on his face. "I'm not afraid! I'm not afraid! I'm not afraid!" His whispers were like shouts only quiet and he pressed his hands over his ears to block out the sounds of the woods at night. They could not silence the sound of rustling bushes and loud footfalls that had to have been a werewolf because what else would be coming so quickly towards him in the forest after dark?
"Not afraid! Not afraid! Not afraid!" The something with the feet that was rustling through the bushes stopped abruptly and he was swept into the air. He wasn't to scream but when he opened his eyes he felt a swell of desperate relief. Nobody had hair quite as long or quite as blond and nobody wore clothes that felt quite like that of his father. "Vati!"
Germania wrapped his arms tightly around the child, he too feeling a rush of relief, his a bit different from that of his son. "Thank the gods I found you," he whispered, pressing the most important thing in his life closer to him.
Almost instantly, Prussia began speaking again. "I'm sorry Vati! I'm sorry I talk too much and I'm sorry I'm slow and I'm sorry I bleeded on my clothes and I'm sorry I cried and I'm sorry my stomach keeps yelling at me and I'm sorry I'm weak and not a good son and I'm sorry you don't like me and I'm sorry I talked when you said not to and I'm sorry you're not happy and I'm sorry I listen to Rome's stories about God and I'm sorry you – " as he went on, Germania let his hand cup the tiny child's head. It was so small; the boy couldn't be much more physically than a human four-year-old; what had he been thinking, having the child walk by himself?
"I'm sorry for being so foolish." He stood up, hanging his head. No, he was not the best with children. The boy would be lucky to make it past his hundredth year with Germania as a father.
"I-I'm sorry, please don't let me be eaten by a were-spider!" Germania blinked. Were-spider, that was new. He hushed the boy, ignoring the strangled hiccups and placing a hand on his back.
"Nothing is going to eat you. Now calm down, we'll talk about it in the morning." Prussia was gasping for breath as he tried to suppress his tears and shudders. "Shh, breathe, breathe. There you go, remember to breathe."
Prussia pressed his face into his father's shirt. It was a bit scratchy but it smelled and felt like safe. He knew the monsters were still there, but his Vati was bigger and stronger than any werewolf or spider or were-spider could ever hope to be.
A/N: Yay! What is this, my third one-shot in three weeks? Woohoo! Anywho, I should definitely learn better time management, ahaha... homework and all. And it's my best friend's birthday Monday and I haven't finsihed crocheting his present. And he lives in NY soo...
But you don't care about my life and how I procrastinate! I was looking at pictures of Germania and Prussia on deviantart and a few of them all smashed together in my head to create the most annoying plotbunny that just kept saying "Germania looses Prussia in the woods! Germania looses Prussia in the woods!" And thus, this was born. In two hours. wow. So please, if you spot any - and I mean any - spelling, grammar, or other mistakes that don't seem intentional please let me know; I don't like looking stupid on the internet :P
Also, I thought it would be funny to have Germania be one of those parents who tries to scare his children into behaving. I was told that I used to have an older sister who was 'a very bad girl' and left with my imagination. Apparently, Prussia was told he would be eaten by werewolves and spiders if he misbehaved. I'm sure we all have similar tales. I also tried to make Germania seem like a terrible father. I picture him as this twenty-something year old with no wife and no mother and absolutely no idea how to raise a child; I also see him as not really wanting Prussia around, not really wanting him gone, and trying desperately to convince himself that Prussia would be better off without him.
If you are reading X over Y, I assure you, I have been working like a beast on the chapter! It's really good but low on action, so I want to get to the exciting part before I post. There's a poll up on my profile, so please vote on it if you care about the frequency of updates, and let me know if the poll is actually up or not. I'm not what you would call tech-savvy.
Thank you so much for reading a please review and check out my other stories if you liked this! Or throw me an idea; I might not take to it but I like to play with them, so it may show up somewhere :3