Hello, dear readers, and welcome to this new brain-child of mine that was started at two in the morning.
Title: Alice
Author: fullmoon'11
Characters: Russia, France, England, China, America, and Canada (... who? Nah.)
Warnings: Contain mentions of Nyotalia versions of the countries and cursing (oh, France, watch your mouth!). Oh, also contains violence (especially towards small animals), Snapped!China, hints of Empire!England, and France singing. And a giant wok, a rosebush, rebellions, and hanging heads. All that lovely stuff.
So, without further ado, I present to you, "Alice".
Come, let me tell you a story…
There was once a little scarf-wearing dream. It was a very small dream, the product of a madman's nighttime dreams and illusions. No one knows who had dreamt it. It had just one day come into existence. But it was really such a tiny, insignificant dream. It was so small that it was not always there. It was always in danger of disappearing at any moment.
This made the little dream think, "But I don't want to disappear… How do I make humans dream me?"
The little dream racked his brains for ideas, and finally came up with one.
"I will make people come to me, and they will make my world wonderful, and I will keep them there forever..."
A wide grin crept across his face, and violet eyes lit up with a slightly manic glow.
It had been a long day for China.
The nation collapsed on his bed, tired out from a day of chasing Hong Kong and South Korea around. Hong Kong had even tried to set off fireworks under his chair, the little devil. And South Korea had egged him on. Aiyah! Sometimes he just didn't know what to do with his annoying brothers.
Oh, and Russia was annoying too. She always had to bring up the topic of "everyone becoming one with Mother Russia". Why couldn't she understand that no sane nation would want to?
He sighed and closed his eyes…
And opened them to absolute darkness.
"Where am I, aru?" he wondered out loud. He could see nothing in the darkness. Even his finely honed senses were useless in this pitch black space. He could hear nothing but his own breathing and heartbeat.
A small form appeared before him.
"You are the first Alice…"
The whisper resounded in the air before fading away, and suddenly he was standing in the middle of a forest, wok in hand. An owl hooted overhead, but he paid no attention to it.
He thought of everything South Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan had done in the past few weeks. Something snapped in his brain, and he grinned eerily. This was exactly what he needed to take his stress out on.
The first thing he stumbled across was a small rabbit. It looked at him, ears twitching. He looked at it.
"Ah, how cute."
And the wok came down and the rabbit was nothing more than a bloody pulp on the ground. Blood splattered across his shoes.
He smiled, brown eyes aglow with insanity. He left a trail of blood and small animal bodies behind him.
The dream was growing tired of this monotonous killing.
Suddenly, the branches of the trees snaked out and caught China. They wrapped tightly around his ankles and wrists, successfully pinioning him there.
"Aiyah! These stupid branches, getting in my way. They do not deserve to – "
Then the bars came down, and he disappeared from the wonderland. If it weren't for the trail of carnage he left behind him, no one would think that he had ever existed.
France felt unnaturally sleepy. Maybe it was the world meeting that had tired him out earlier, or the usual fight he had with England, or maybe it was America's usual antics afterwards. Maybe it was China's sweets that she had (successfully) stuffed down his throat today at the meeting.
Whatever the cause, he was tired.
He flopped down gracefully (he never did anything ungracefully) on the bed in the hotel room and closed his eyes.
"Huh?"
He was standing in a forest. He looked around for any sign of civilization. None as far as he could tell.
He jumped when he heard an owl high overhead. Nothing stirred, except for the owl which he couldn't see. This forest was starting to creep him out, just a little…
Great. Just lovely.
"Merde…"
"Hello to you too… You are the second Alice."
"Quoi?"
He couldn't find the owner of the voice, so he shrugged and decided to ignore that weird whisper.
It certainly was very quiet in the forest. Nothing chirped, rustled, or moved except for himself.
The silence was deafening. He could not shake the feeling that someone was watching his every move. All his senses were on edge, like they were in the trenches in the First World War. Then, it had been bombs and bullets flying overhead. Now it was silence.
To calm himself down, he started to hum. Soon, the silent woodland glade was filled with song. He laughed in the awed silence that followed.
The dream thought, "This is an interesting human… But it's not interesting enough just yet."
And the dream, smiling eerily, picked up a pistol. Without a warning, a shot rang out.
He put his hand up to his forehead. It came back red and bleeding.
"Putain de merde…" he breathed, staring at his lifeblood trickling down his face.
He crumpled to the ground, blue eyes unseeing.
Somewhere in the silent forest a vivid red flower bloomed.
England listened to Germany droning on and on about something to do with the Eurozone. Well, it had nothing to do with him, so he might as well take a nap to make up for the lost time yesterday night when the bloody Frenchwoman decided to call in the middle of the night to prattle on about that "lovely boy she picked up" the other day.
His mind wandered through castles of spun glass, a lovely rose garden with a rocking chair in the middle of the path, and finally to a dark, silent forest. An owl hooted overhead, breaking the silence with its sudden noise, and England jumped.
"Where is this?"
"Welcome to my world, human. And you are the third Alice… Feel free to keep me entertained."
The whisper faded.
"What?"
He searched for the owner of the whisper, but instead stumbled across a person carrying a load of wood. They stared at each other. The person smiled at him. He raised one eyebrow, confused by this person's reaction.
"Do you need some help with that?"
"That would be nice, thank you."
He stayed with the peasant in the village they lived in. Gradually, he grew used to life here. Just as he was beginning to enjoy the work, a messenger arrived from the palace.
"Good afternoon, Your Majesty."
"I have found my heir. Take him."
Well, that was unexpected.
He didn't complain, though, and eventually created a wonderful country in the midst of this realm where nothing seemed as it was. After all, unknown strangers stumbled across wood-carrying peasants, and peasants became princes.
As his kingdom grew, so did his power. He felt invincible. Such a nostalgic feeling…
He hadn't felt this way since his empire crumbled. That heady rush of power, the feeling that everything was his and his alone. He liked this feeling.
But he also remembered the pain that came with losing it.
The pain he felt as each one of his colonies left. First, it had been America. Then Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Then the wars came, and his empire collapsed.
He didn't want to feel that again, the feeling that his colonies had broken off with him and left him behind with the ghosts of yesterday, those smiling, bright-eyed clean-faced small children they had been but were no more.
So he decided that not one person would be able to rebel.
The first rebellion he discovered, he crushed overnight. The next day, there was no trace left of what had once been the hideout for the revolutionaries, or the revolutionaries themselves, except for a line of heads hanging outside the castle gates.
No one dared to rebel afterwards.
He built up a perfect world around him; one where he wouldn't have to feel pain, loss, or agony.
He liked this world. This perfect dream world where he was completely in control, where he wouldn't have to deal with those hard-to-control emotions, where he could live as he hadn't, up in the world of reality.
And the dream liked it too.
A scream pierced the night. Canada sighed as his brother latched tightly onto his arm.
"Al, why did you invite me over to watch a scary film with you again?"
"Because the monsters from the movie will come to life and – AHH!"
Canada took deep breaths to quell his urge to kill his idiotic brother right now, never mind the fact that he was his brother.
Later that night, as Canada was getting ready for bed, someone tiptoed into his room.
"Al, come out, I know you're there."
"M-mattie…"
Even the curl on his head was crinkled from fright.
"Let me sleep with you tonight!"
"You're not going to let me sleep until I say yes, huh… Fine, get in here."
Alfred grinned.
"Thanks, Mattie! You're awesome!"
"Eh… Just shut up and sleep, Alfred."
That night, an invitation arrived in a dream. Five-year-old Alfred held the creamy envelope in his hands and studied it closely.
"What do you think this is, Mattie?"
Canada shrugged, violet eyes puzzled. "It looks like an invitation, Al, open it."
Alfred's greedy hands tore open the envelope and it fluttered to the ground, not unlike a hurt bird.
"It reads… 'Dear Matthew and Alfred, I humbly invite you to join me at tea today at three. Sincerely, Arthur.'"
"Who's this Arthur it mentions?"
"I don't know… Maybe Alice knows something about it?"
"Yeah, let's find her and ask!"
So their little feet stumbled along the well beaten path. Soon they entered a small wood, which seemed like it had an end but really didn't. The trees started looming over the path ominously, and the trailing branches brushed at their hands and faces, as if they were trying to catch the two small boys. Somewhere close by, an owl hooted, and the sound echoed in the stillness of the forest.
It was as if nature itself was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen.
The path became darker as the trees began to block out the sunlight. Alfred's hand clenched tighter around Matthew's, and in return, Matthew gave his hand a comforting squeeze.
Suddenly, they saw dark spots on the path ahead.
"Wha're those?"
"I dunno…"
They continued walking. In the distance, in a gap between two trees, they spied a lovely castle, all gold and green and shimmering in the sunlight, with some weird dark spots hanging from a gate. It seemed so unreal, so refreshing, so fantastical from such a faraway distance, that things like this could exist was a miracle.
On the side of a path, lit by a single golden strand of sunlight that somehow managed to peek through, a rosebush was lit up. The petals were of a red so scarlet that it looked like drops of blood. A blue ribbon was tied onto the biggest bloom.
Up ahead, the path was blocked.
They stared, rather unnerved by how the drops of dark liquid on the ground seemed to end in a puddle right there.
And was that…
"Mattie… Is that… a human?"
Matthew nodded, violet eyes wide and fearful.
"Mattie, let's go back…"
And Matthew nodded again.
But when they turned around…
A swish, a scream, and nothing more.
"The first Alice fell, dyed in his own creation…"
"The second Alice fell, giving new life to a rose…"
"The third Alice fell, entranced by visions of power…"
"The fourth Alice fell, caught by curiosity…"
"When will the fifth Alice come? And who shall it be?"
The dream giggled at the thought.
Far, far away, in a silent forest, an owl hooted.
The End
So hey, how'd you guys think of it?
By the way, the curse France uses literally means "fucking shit." And "Merde" means "shit".
If you don't understand, I promise I will post an explanation... That is, if I get enough people telling me that this makes no sense.
Rate and review (this is where you tell me that you didn't understand it at all.)
Thank you very much for reading!