Not there yet

7. In her arms

France held his head high as he was marched up the wooden steps as the crowd booed and hissed at him, even going so far to throw the occasional rotten fruit at him. He surveyed the pile of headless corpses beside the wooden stand calmly, their heads tossed about the crowd like toys. He wondered if the rumours about the head surviving for a few seconds after they were sliced off their shoulders by the guillotine. He had seen people decapitated before, he had been partially decapitated before himself, but they had been messy, taking a few swings to finally get the job done, not the clean slice of the guillotine.

He was also wondering if this was the true end for him. He had been fatally wounded plenty of times before, but as a nation their physical form only died when the country itself stopped existing. He remembered once when he had been young and had tried to foolishly kill England, but had failed no matter how many times he tried. He wondered if that was why there was so much hate between them? It was worth seeing the looks of horror the he would give France just before the killing blow. Though the younger nation had got revenge when he had sliced open France's neck to the bone, he had then stuffed the wound with sand and pebbles, just to make it all that harder to heal properly.

Now though France was falling apart from the revolution and he was being killed by his own people. There was also the fact that nations needed to reattach any body parts that they happened to lose as they could not grow them back. This was a simple job if it was a finger, a harder but possible job if it was a limb but he had no idea how he was going to reconnect his head to his body, it wasn't as if the disembodied parts had minds of their own.

There was a bright side though, if he did in fact die. There was a slim chance that he would end up wherever his dear Jeanne went. He didn't know if nations ended up where humans ended up, if there was anything afterwards. Did nations even have souls like humans did? He sure felt like he had no soul sometimes, when he was on the battlefield slaughtering all in his path and he had no idea how he was as sane as he was. Humans often ended up a mess after one war, after a few months, but he had seen so many wars and had fought for hundreds of years. Then he thought of Jeanne and he knew that even though he may not be human his love for her was proof there was in fact something there.

He remained calm as he was led to the guillotine and was forced to his knees.

"You don't have to bother forcing me. I'll do it by myself," he informed his executioners, who looked at each other in puzzlement. He was obviously the first in a long time who had decided to go with dignity.

He leant down and placed his head where directed and a wooden collar was secured round his neck. He kept his eyes open as the executioners moved away and even when he heard the sound of the blade rushing down to meet his neck. The next thing he knew the world was spinning and he felt nothing, but he saw everything. The last thing he saw was his own blood of the guillotine, his body thankfully hidden behind it as hands reached for his head, then all was black.

He awoke with a start, the first thing he saw when he flung open his eyes was the dark sky, peppered with stars. He lay there for a few seconds as the memories slowly seeped back into him, the crowd, the guillotine and the memory of staring back at where his head had once been attached to his body.

Was he dead? He tried to move and found his whole body retaliated in pain. That indicated that he was very much alive, but then why on earth did he have a body?

"It would be best if you don't move for a while, your body is still trying to put itself together again," informed a voice in French that had been butchered and said in a heavy English accent.

He tried to turn his head, put the sheer agony caused him to scream in pain. Well it would have been a scream, except it came out as a pathetic gurgle and he tasted blood in his mouth. England leaned into his sight, a look of frustration clear on his face.

"I told you already, don't move," said England, this time in his native tongue. "Unless you want to make your recovery more painful and slower, though knowing you it might be a new fetish."

France tried to respond, tried to ask why he was here, but only gurgled pathetically once more. England kneeled down beside him and placed something on his chest, unfortunately it was out of France's range of sight.

"You should be thankful," whispered England. "I could have left you laying there, your body thrown in a pile and you head in a gutter but I decided something, that only I can kill you. So don't take this as an act of pity or mercy, I'm only patching you up so I can have the pleasure of being the last thing you see. So forget this ever happened and so will I."

England got to his feet and walked away from France, who listened as his footsteps gradually got quieter and quieter. Hours passed before France was eventually able to move, the moon had been high above him when he first awoke, but by the time he was able to lift the object England had put on his chest the sky was red with the sunrise.

He held the small pebble above his face, yet unable to turn his head. It was small, round and covered in dried blood. He curled his fingers round it in a fist.

A/N: Blah, blah, blah. Seven chapter fic about some of the ways the countries died but were saved by their immortality. Disturbing as fuck scenes ahead. Harsh critique is very much welcome, because I'm an illiterate prick that needs to learn how to spell and use grammar properly.