Prussia stood in the graveyard, quietly staring at the last grave to have been placed in its plot. Ludwig Beilschmidt, otherwise known as Germany. He'd lost his closest brother who he tried his hardest to raise up to be good. His brother had suffered from a lack of people, a lack of identity and finally fell like so many people Prussia knew. His appearance had changed greatly too. His hair was long and tied back into a ponytail. He also sported a nice slash across his face, long since scarred from the fight he had with America. A nice bullet graze back when bullets were still common. His once commonplace uniform was now a tank top and pants, a string of what looked like pins on a chain like bandelier. It was actually a piece of a flag of every country that had fallen around him, his only physical memory that wasn't painful. He had spent so many years of trying to fix his mistakes and sadness. So many dark memories of seeing his friends change, some dropping dead right when he opened his eyes. He knew there was no point in trying not to cry over his freshly buried brother in the pouring rain that seemed to always fall. It had been like that here since 2102. Now it was 2186 in 'Prussia'. Well more like the United Prussian States. His kingdom had become huge, taking over every Germanic land there was and not stopping there. He had done it to survive and hopefully save his remaining brother before it was too late. Now he knew he should have just given it to Ludwig instead of himself. He knew the burial place of everyone all too well by now. He was almost buried here so many decades ago after the Berlin Wall. Or was it centuries now. It had been so long the days seemed to blur together after long enough. He didn't even seem to care anymore about the destruction around him. After the first death the countries still alive had decided since it was the heat of war that the burial grounds would be in neutral grounds. Switzerland. Geneva, Switzerland where it might have once been a place of peace instead of destruction. He sighed and looked at the graves around him. His eyes seemed dull and dismal, lacking the joy and pride that once made them light up the room. Now there was only sadness in his red eyes. Countries that were friends, siblings, family. People he barely even talked to or got to know. They were all gone and this was the only remnants they even existed in the first place. Nobody could even remember who some of them were whilst others stayed in the history books as evil and demonic. But he knew it was completely different from what the history books had said. Completely different entirely. He could remember things that nobody else had back then. It was like time itself had been changed under his nose. And it was all his fault.
"What have I done. Ludwig. My brother. Roderich my. My love. Alfred. Elizabeta. Brighid. Mathias. Everyone. I didn't mean for this to happen! I didn't mean for any of this to happen! Pain and anger makes you do things you never knew you could do! And it made me do something stupid! But everything was so perfect! The Axis won the war and everything was going perfectly! It should have been a time of victory! But it wasn't. Nothing was right and everything had changed. You all died because of my mistake. For so long I've been alone and afraid, wondering what I did wrong! This isn't FAIR!"
He wiped the tears that loved to roll down from his face and mix with the rain that endlessly fell through the land. He couldn't help but cry. He was the one who caused this all. He was the one that let everyone die around him because he was following his orders and let his brother do what he wanted under the influence of his leader. He let himself stand by as the countries he once knew changed and warped. He saw rulers rise and fall. He saw people destroyed until there was nothing but heartache and sadness. And only he seemed to remember them as they were before. When Veneziano was happy and carefree instead of violent and angry. When Francis was happy and loved to love. When Antonio's smiles lit up a room. It was like he accidentally changed their very beings. He had seen his own personal hell. A personal apocalypse of fear and decimation. It really was the end of the world he surmised. There wasn't much left people wise. Resources were coming back slowly and it was like nobody had an identity. But at least the Earth wasn't trying to kill itself. It was actually repairing itself slowly from the destruction that people had caused. It was nice but he knew soon land wars would start and what remaining firepower was left would be the rulers. And he just couldn't stomach the thought of losing the last connection to everyone he once knew.
"God. I feel sick to my stomach. Or was I just sick in the head for letting this all happen? This has to be a nightmare or something. I. I can't live with this. Of what I did. All this time I thought it wasn't to do with me. In the beginning I thought I just had done something stupid that pumped up Ludwig. But it wasn't and it cost you all your lives. I have to do something. Anything!"
"You could always try to fix the past."
"Who's there! Wait….I'm all alone that's right. Guess I'm going crazy as well. Hearing voices that aren't there. Or maybe it's ghosts of my past. Why do I even care. Why should I care. It's not like I can actually fix the past. I already messed with the past once and it made everyone die. I don't think I could go through with that again."
"Find the book. Fix the past."
"Wait…...could it be that book from all those years ago? Why am I listening to this shit anyways! Though what choice do I have anymore. At least it's comforting. I might as well amuse whatever demon is coming to take my soul for my sins. If Germania could see what I've done….He'd be disgusted. It's better than nothing."
He walked from the graveyard back to a dilapidated home. His home or at least what was left of it after all these years. He hadn't bothered to repair it in a few decades, letting it fall around him. It wasn't like he lived in it anymore. He preferred to just sleep in the woods in a shelter where nobody would try to hurt him. He shook his head as he went past the destroyed door and started to search the house, trying to find that stupid book that had caused all this. He couldn't remember where exactly he put it as he wandered through the crumbling building. Along the way he found a broken clock, laying on the ground with it's face smashed open and the hands stuck on midnight. It's pendulum had long ago been melted down to make the holder for Germany's flag scrap. He thought about destroying it for the sheer pleasure but decided against it. It wasn't going to make him feel better or bring Ludwig or anyone back so he only nudged it with his foot.
"Stupid clock. Mocking the time of my brother's death as he lay there with his chest wound gaping open. If I didn't think my foot would go through the floor I would stomp on you. The curses of my abandoned home I guess. Well, me and Ludwig's old home."
After checking everywhere he finally descended to the basement, hoping he wouldn't get crushed by anything, especially the floors above him. He treaded carefully over the concrete floor, avoiding the blood stains that had dried in a corner. That was where Lilli had passed away nearly at the beginning of the turning of everyone. She had gotten sick. So sick she couldn't stand before she ended up coughing up blood and dying. It'd been forever since he had been down here. The last time was probably when Lilli died of the blood in her lungs being too severe. They say she literally drowned in it as it came from her mouth and nose. He eventually walked over to a bookshelf and pulled out a very old book, the leather cover and bindings peeling away and the pages worn and yellowed from age. Without it's true owner it had started to slowly lose its permanent appearance of being new and crisp. He opened it gently like an archaeologist peeling open the pages of an ancient tome, even though the book was one. He flipped through the pages before stopping on the gentle looped handwriting of someone who once was his enemy.
"We meet again my old friend. I guess after learning your language I can finally work you right. I may not be England and I may not be magic but you've worked for me before. Even if it was when everything went wrong and collapsed around me. Let's hope you still got some magic in you or this might be a huge waste of my time."
Holding the book in his hands he thought back to what caused all this pain and heartbreak. The reason he lived and everyone fell around him as he watched them slowly perish from illness or bleeding from wounds. Why he lived in solitude with the animals of the forest and cried himself to sleep, only to wake up a few hours later from the tormented nightmares of his brain. When he stole the spellbook and read out that stupid spell that changed the world around him but let his memories be retained. When everything went horribly right and then went horribly wrong.
Gilbert stood in a room at the Axis base with the book, laughing as he spun around with it clutched to his chest. He had just come back from a mission to bomb and put spies into England and the UK when he took a detour and snuck into England's home, raiding it for military plans but only finding a book in the basement in a weird pentagram thing. He had thought nothing of it and stolen the book, even when it oddly glowed and something invisible was attacking his ankles. He flipped it open without a care, trying to read England's looped handwriting with a confused expression. It looked like some sort of code so he decided to read it out loud for shits and giggles, even if half the page was missing from the book. He thought it would be funny to talk about later on.
"Now let's read you hm? Gratim et deator…..astrin aral oean. Zaren yean poeat! This doesn't sound anything like battle plans! What even is thi- GAH!"
A light surrounded him as he passed out, going unconscious. When he woke up everything was different. He could feel it. Feliciano wasn't smiling but scowling and his eyes seemed too cold to be his own. Japan was smirking instead of smiling. Something was horribly wrong. He looked the same but it was like there was something inside telling him that he'd fucked up.
'Oi get up Gilbert.'
"I didn't know I had done a spell back then. A spell that destroyed an entire country and warped reality to my own personal goals at the time. My perfect world when my mind was clouded by the monsters in my head. Poor poor Arthur…..And that was only the beginning. When the war went on things just got worse and worse. My own brother wouldn't talk to me. Nobody would even acknowledge I was there. It was like I was invisible! After all of it I watched everyone die in front of me. I had done something. I still have no idea what that spell actually did but what if I fail. What if I just make it worse. Why am I talking to the fucking air like Arthur used to!"
"I will show you what will happen if you don't fix the past."
He watched as the world around him grayed and he saw himself if he didn't fix the past. If he just walked away and never looked back on his past. If he instead chose to forget everything and just leave.
He watched as his other self sighed and flipped the pages to a memory spell, closing his eyes as the tears fell to mix with the dusty concrete floor. He'd run out of tears over what he'd done. He couldn't go through with it. With fixing the past that he had messed up on his own. He didn't want to see everyone hurt and die around him again. He couldn't live with that pain. So he couldn't live with the guilt as he drew a pentagram into the dusty floor and recited the incantation.
"Memoriamousi eyi menaet. Leayre neaian leatreoan. Erase my memory!"
A light surrounded him as he screamed and fell to his knees, sobs escaping his chest before the light faded and he returned the book to the shelf. He left that house and walked away, never to return. He knew his name was Gilbert Beilschmidt. He was the personification of the United Prussian States. He had a job to bring back civilization. That was the tricky thing about spells. They never quite work. Decades went by in front of him as he saw civilization rebuild itself around him. As much as it could at least without various land wars and technologies he once knew. He soon enough had a mansion when the world got itself back on its feet, children of all ages running through it. New countries yet to fulfill their purpose on the newborn Earth they had inherited. He sat in a chair with a few, telling stories of people that he felt that he had once known or even loved but seemed fuzzy and far away, seeing them in those little countries faces. He had a broad smile and a trigger fire hothead attitude to boot to keep his family safe. He was nurturing and kind. But he still had one thing from that old building he left that he couldn't remember why it was so special. A violin gently sitting on a nearby table with a name engraved in it.
Roderich Edelstein-Beilschmidt.
As the world shifted back into color he rubbed his eyes as he contemplated what he would do. If he went back to fix the past he had no clue what he would be getting himself into. He could have to do things that would make his friends hate him or end up in the end killing him and dissolving himself as a country. But if he didn't he would be alone and the future might not even come true. He'd lose all of his memories of the person he never got to love. Of the friends he held dear and the family he cared for. For all he knew the world would end and he'd have to colonize off Europe or spend an eternity in a bunker somewhere as the world burned around him. He stood there a moment before making his knew he had to go back and fix his mistake to right the past. Even if it meant he would die instead of them. He quickly made a magic circle from the dust on the concrete floor and stood in the middle of it. A shaky breath passed his lips as he looked up to what would have been the sky. He was scared just as anybody would be if they were about to fuck with the pas for a second time. But he knew that he had to do it or he'd never live with himself. He was the 'great' Prussia after all. With a final shake of his head he opened the book and turned to the correct page, saying the spell.
"Saret ine darum. Parets ari met naro. Watea olei xantio. Take me to the past! Reverse the clock!"
A light surrounded him as he smiled to himself and everything went dark. Meanwhile upstairs a faint ticking could be heard from a smashed clock as the hands slowly wound backwards faster and faster until they stopped again, frozen on 2:36. The time when he said the broken spell that started this in the first place. When he awoke once more he was in what seemed to be a cavern of many caves. Writing seemed to be scribbled into the stone, almost etched and most of them were blockades by possible cave-ins. A small ball of light was nearby, gently floating in front of an open and dark cave as if it was something new that made it curious. Gilbert sat up slowly, rubbing his head and shaking out his hair, the rubber band that had been holding it gone as it fell in his face.
"Ow…my head…"
'You did it! I knew you would! Oh I can't wait to tell the other back at the hollow about this! Oh they will be so jealous of me!'
"You're…You're the voice from the graveyard…So I wasn't hearing things and going crazy. But that also means England wasn't crazy either. None of those British Isles siblings were crazy."
'I prefer fairy thank you very much. And nope! They were perfectly sane! They're magic like Romania and Norway and I think Iceland. But you've been around the book so long that you can see me! You're imbued with magic! Hooray!'
Prussia sat there with his mouth open, trying to soak this in. He was partially magic. He could see and hear a ball of light that was apparently a fairy. It was a lot to take in. The ball of light soon turned into a female fairy, smiling happily. It had curly pink hair and shining blue eyes with flowers woven into its colorful hair. Its dress were of a soft green hue and looked soft like silk. It quickly grabbed a coin from Prussia and dropped a small potion to him.
"Wha-"
'You'll need it after you fix the past! Find the book. Fix the past! Then you take the potion and everything's all better! I don't know what it does to non-magic born users…..Mister Wales always got back from playing with no problem.'
"Mister…Wales? So I really am in fairyland…"
'Nope! You're in a crossroads! Well one of sorts. You didn't perform the spell of fairies but a time spell. There's a difference. A HUGE difference. Now hurry hurry! You want to be back soon right? To see if you actually manage to do it?'
"Right…Alright where to begin…"
