The blood gurgled a bit, as it hastily gushed out of his shoulder. Streams of blood trickled down his arm, only to collect at his wrist before dripping off. A good chunk of his shoulder had been brutally torn off, but the dull pain wasn't as bad as he had expected it to be. It was a stinging sensation, mixed with a horrendous muscle pain. A strange thing that Spain noticed was that it felt as if his shoulder was on fire. Flames that ate at his skin, and embers that tore at his flesh. Hell, he could practically smell the smoke from the flames that sizzled his shoulder. Yet, he had definitely felt much worse. There have been countless times that this scenario would have been babied compared to scenarios centuries ago; when swords clashed, when axes chopped, and when heads were held high in triumph.

Yes, this chunk of flesh torn from his shoulder was nothing compared to those days. However, that missing piece of shoulder had a more sinister tinge to it than Spain would have liked to admit. He furrowed his brows as he could only watch the blood seep out of his veins, sometimes dabbing the open wound with peroxide.

The depressing part about this, Spain concluded, was the fact he had technically done this to himself. He frowned deeply. A twinge of old familiar insanity sparked in his chest. That craving for blood, and that unsatisfying yearning for power over others. That little twinge of insanity caused him for just a brief second, to want to play the roll of God once more; so he could tower over his victims, telling them when he would let them die.

But that little spark was ripped away within less than a second.

Once again, it caused the normally happy country to detest the fact he was doing this to himself. He wanted this pain to be inflicted onto himself, as if there was a slight need to have that insanity taken out on the people of Spain. His own people to be in fact.

"Mierda," he cursed under his breath.

He tried to surpass that gut wrenching feeling of self mutilation. He tried to swallow it, forcing that terrible burden of a pill down into his stomach, where he no longer had to worry about it. However that pill had other plans, and continued to choke him as he swallowed.

All Spain could do now was lower his head, while trying to rinse off the blood that spewed onto the bathroom floor.

A period of time passed.

Spain never was certain how long. Perhaps a few seconds, minutes, even an hour could have gone by and he wouldn't have registered it.

Well it took a while for him to pick up the presence of another person standing right behind him. He hadn't heard the bathroom's hinges squeal in protest as the door was opened, nor the few number of steps from the doorway to where he sat. It wasn't until a hand hesitantly placed itself on his right shoulder did he recognize Romano's presence.

"…Spain. What are you doing?"

It was a simple question. Just…something you'd ask every day. What are you doing? Oh, I'm just cleaning the kitchen. But this time it had a heaviness to it. A dark, ominous weight that drug itself down out and off of Romano's tongue.

Spain sat a moment, trying to comprehend the question. That in of itself took a time to click. Now he had to come up with a reasonable answer. How was one suppose to answer to that when half their left shoulder is gone? How was one suppose to completely tell the truth when there was a bloody blade that sat at his feet? It wasn't necessarily self infliction, but it was completely self infliction!

"…Ah…Roma…I'm…I'm not really sure," he smiled.

It was the best answer he could come up with. And quite frankly, he was not sure what the hell he was doing.

"Spain…did you…" Romano rubbed his temples, "…Just…why?"

He knelt down and took the bloody rag out of his lover's hand. He stood only to rinse it off in the sink, before diving back down to dab it after soaking it in peroxide.

Spain shifted so Romano could get a better angle.

"Roma…please…don't make me answer that."

The Italian didn't look up. He already knew why. He…he just needed Spain to tell him himself. He needed Spain to physically spit the words out why he was doing this to himself. Romano wasn't stupid. He wasn't an idiot. He knew perfectly well why Spain did what he did. He also didn't need justification.

Romano was a country too, and sometimes shit like this just happened to come up. No one could really help it, and all the countries could do was bear the pain.

All that pain…was forced onto their shoulders. And all those countries could do was wait it out.

Spain wiped off oncoming tears. It had been decades since he had last cried. He sniffled and swallowed.

He was surprised when he felt two comforting arms coil around his finger, carefully avoiding the wound. They squeezed. Romano buried his head into Spain's neck, and murmured something incoherent.

"Damn bastard…hurting yourself like that…!" Romano's voice trembled.

Spain rested his head onto Romano's. They stayed like that for a while. Romano continued to hold his Spaniard close, damning the conflict that arose inside of the tomato-loving country, while silently expressing his grief and sympathy. This form of care and comfort…this extreme level of emotional bonding that the two had worked so hard on building, had paid off; for just those few moments of embrace were enough to rebuild Spain's unstable mindset and emotions.

It completely threw off the Southern Italian when he heard that oh so familiar chuckle emanate deep within Spain's stomach. It was full and hearty. As annoying as it usually was, Romano was pleasantly pleased while relieved to hear it.

Spain turned his head to peck Romano on his head.

"Don't worry about me, amor, it's just a flesh wound."

Romano lifted his head to see the most beautiful reassuring smile he could have ever seen Spain produce.


Hello! Hello!

Well this is based off of current events in Spain. Now before you yell at me for writing about real scenarios, let me say I mean absolutely no offence, and I deeply apologize for offending anyone.
But basically right now, there are violent protests and/or riots in Spain against the government's decisions about the economy. There was a very recent one in Barcelona (north eastern Spain; hence his left shoulder) where they were throwing smoke bombs, lighting things on fire etc. They'd even had strikes that closed factories. Lots of things that have to deal with people loosing jobs, bailout systems slowing the economy, etc. My sources come from the ABC World News. Look it up yourself if you want...

But anyways, it was a sense of inspiration for a fic since I haven't written lately. Also, I realized, that most of my fics are AU's. And Spain and Romano aren't presented as countries. So here's that! :3 Please review! I'm sorry if it's not very good. I tried to keep it in a simple basic structure. But hopefully it got the job done.

I hope that Spain, Europe and all of the world for that matter can get out of this economic shit hole!

thanks for reading! review!

-TC