It wasn't a decisive victory at all, wasn't written in stone, and yet Holy Rome felt like it was.
His facade of power, his ability to hold his people grounded, fell apart at his feet and planted his fate like a sword to his throat.
It didn't matter that they'd signed a peace treaty, what mattered was his world falling apart at his feet, and he couldn't help the harsh shudder that ripped through him, dragging parts of himself away.
He was fading; his time to make new history had faded.
Watching every part of him grow more and more independent was like slow torture, and he felt his heart break for all that he'd lost through this; peace could only go so far.
His hands trembled, small as they were; they seemed smaller than normal in the light of it all, in the revealing nature of this dissolution, and he tried to stay strong enough to not let himself start to fade.
He sent a short prayer for little Italy's sake when she popped into his head, sent a prayer for Austria and Hungary, and found it in him to pray that with his fading, with the dissolution as he knew it, that his death wouldn't be in vain, that something would rise up from the ashes of him.
'For the people I love, Lord, protect them. Keep them safe and strong, and don't let them forget me even though its selfish of me to want me to remain in their memory forever. Just be there for them, the way that I never can again. Amen.'
He crossed himself even as his fingers went numb and as his hands shook in ways that he'd never expected before; this must be what fading felt like.
Many countries were pushed aside or faded before him or at least it seemed that way; he wasn't too young, but he felt plenty small enough as his toes passed through the air, fading into a remnant of it.
His lips trembled like he'd never guessed that they would when he started off with the Our Father prayer, and he wondered if it was okay that his elbows felt numb, that his knees both hurt and didn't in random attacks, and that his mind wandered to which parts of himself were for which nearly independent state.
'I failed you,' The Holy Roman Empire cried, and he couldn't pull his heart away from the break, the fall, couldn't stop the pain of loss that slipped into every last one of his veins.
'I love you,' It felt odd to be bombarded with memories and yet perfectly okay, and he couldn't help but envision all that the newly formed states were becoming.
How many parts of him fought or rather had just won their independence, how many parts of himself would be fractured into independent existence?
It hurt to try to count the numbers, and yet his mind supplied him with two hundred and ninety when finally he couldn't keep his eyes open anymore, when with every last fading breath, his mind skittered away from rational thought.
He hated this, and yet that thought vanished with his counting as all that he could do is feel now; an ache starting somewhere just below his heart, muscle spasms in what was left of his arms, feels like some sort of shaky pain as it doesn't stop moving, and his muscles ache and groan with the pain of it all.
Holy Rome isn't much of an empire anymore, becoming less of one by the second, losing his sense of reality, sense of being, and yet he just hopes that at the very least, he'll see God finally and be able to move past all of this life.
Cool water glides down his face, and yet he doesn't understand at all that he's crying, imagines something falling above like rain or dew.
There's a disconnect from where he lays, mind lost in some kind of haze of feeling, and finally he's lifted, body completely diminished, past the sky, past the sun and yet not really.
It's hard to describe what he sees when he stands at the Gate; it's too much for him to describe, everything's lost in a sort of trepidation that turns to joy, and he's happy again finally.
'Thank you, Lord.' Are the words that finally register in his mind, the first words to fully immerse themselves in his mind, and he's so breathtakingly happy.
