Mask and Angel Trap
As the fog lifted from my weary mind, a small throbbing in the back of my head suddenly became obvious, of course my first reaction was to touch the painful area to search for any sign of an injury, but was instead taken by surprise when my arm refused to raise. Still without opening my eyes, which were covered by what felt like iron curtains in place of my eyelids, I attempted to raise my other arm, becoming bewildered when it wouldn't raise off of the arm rest either. So the only logical explanation I could conjure at the time was that I was in some state of sleep paralysis, which was really inconvenient, but nothing more.
Until a terrified voice broke the silence in the room, it was the first sign that I hadn't been alone, but even through the still lingering haze in my mind, I could recognize the voice instantly. Hearing him afraid or close to tears was no new experience, but something about his tone worried me, and willed me to fight against my heavy eyelids until they finally opened, leaving only a fuzzy blur of colors for my mind to decode.
"V-ve! G-Germany?! A-are you awake n-now?" Now that the world was coming into focus, a few hard blinks helped speed up the process until everything was clear and It was easy to tell that I was staring straight ahead now, nothing I saw clicked right away as my mind still struggled to comprehend the situation, but when it did, my heart plummeted, the sight of Feliciano was enough to make me feel sick, physically sick.
There was a harness holding him a foot or two above the ground, which then the harness itself was being held up by thick chains that were somehow embedded into the metal framing of the ceiling. There were what seemed to be an iron fixture against his bare chest, each separate rod had some sort of wire that connected it to the metal contraption that surrounded him. Straining to look closer, it was almost to much when it became apparent that there were thin lines of blood running from each place on his chest that a metal rod seemed to touch, leading me to believe that the iron around him wasn't all that was there, by the way it was placed and from the obvious blood saying there was some sort of open wound, something in those rods across his chest were embedded into his ribs.
Tearing my attention from the contraption that held the smaller nation, my eyes trailed up to his face, where the sight of his tear stained cheeks made my already racing heart ache. Not only was he terrified, but, he had to be in pain...
"Feliciano, what's going on? Where are we?" Trying my best to keep as calm as I could for his sake more than my own, it took everything I had to stop from rushing to his aid, though any normal person might have, something in the pit of the tight knot called my stomach told me it would only make things worse if I did.
At a strange new sound, both of us looked away from each other to place our gazes on a television pushed against the wall to my left as it turned on, showing a distorted face of a young girl, the voice coming out just as twisted as the picture on the screen
"Hello Feliciano, Ludwig. I bet you're both wondering why you're here. Ludwig, you helped kill millions of innocent people, in just one war. Feliciano, you lead everyone to think you're just this innocent, helpless thing, does anyone know the true you?" Glancing over curiously at the girls words, I saw a strange look appear on the small Italian's face, it wasn't quite fear as I was used to, it was more of anger, then as the girl started to speak again, I turned my attention back to the screen, finding myself actually intrigued by what she seemed to know. "Ludwig, the nation in front of you isn't all that he's cracked up to be, all those times you worked to save him, he never needed your help. He just wanted to see what you'd do."
My eyes snapped back to Feliciano, the anger was suddenly gone and had been just as quickly replaced by shock, his honey colored eyes locked with my blue ones, and he started to shake his head violently denying the claim with all he had.
"Ve~! Ludwig! That's not true! I love you and you know that! I swear it's not true! I wouldn't never do that to you!" For a third time the girl started to talk with her strange altered voice, but I didn't, no I couldn't, take my eyes off of the frail seeming country before me, how much did I really truly know him? There wasn't much I knew of him from before the wars, and then after, he always kept any serious questions at bay with his carefree attitude.
"You have the choice of who lives here. You can let Feliciano die, you can die yourself, or both of you can die together. There is no saving both of you. That trap he's in, it's set up to tear his chest open, the one around your neck, is ready to close around your head, when that happens, the spikes on the inside, will be forced into your skull. You have thirty minutes till the traps go off. Make your choice soon, oh and Ludwig? X marks the spot."
The television shut off, leaving me still staring at Feliciano whose body was now being wracked by noisy sobs as large tears tumbled down his already stained cheeks, it wasn't until it clicked that the girl had said thirty minutes that I started looking around for a clock. Finally I noticed one hanging on the wall over what seemed to the be door. It read seven fifteen, but there was no way to know if it was AM or PM... Thirty minutes she said...
Quickly dropping my gaze to find whatever was restraining me, it could only be said I was relieved to find it was just duct tape holding me down, getting straight to work at trying to stretch the tale enough to slip my arm out, my attention stayed glued to the task, even as a quivering voice broke the silence that had fallen over the room once more.
"Ve~? Ludwig? Wh-what are we going to do?" Concentrating on getting my arms free, he didn't get his answer, but then I couldn't help but grin in triumph when I had gotten my right arm free, quickly tearing at the bindings on my other arm, I could hear Feliciano's voice crack from crying when he spoke next, making my heart ache even worse than it already did. "Please talk to me! I'm scared! Please!" Ripping the tape around my ankles off, my gaze lingered on the ground longer than it should have.
This couldn't be actually happening, could it? Just one of those realistic dreams, right? The last thing I remember was falling asleep next to Feliciano in my room.
Nein, this couldn't be a dream, could it? Dreams don't hurt like this. Do they? No dream could be this real... Nein... This is no dream...
"Ve! Please! Stop being so quiet! You're starting to scare me" Finally raising my head to look at him, I decided to break my silence, regretting it almost immediately when even my voice trembled in fear, which I'm sure he picked up on instantly.
"Feli, please, stop. I'm thinking. I don't care what that kid said, I'm getting us both out of here!" Noticing him nod both a forced smile, my hands come up to feel the trap around my neck and grimaced, it was fastened tight around my neck, with no chance of being able to slip it off, so lowering my gaze the shape of it was roughly that of a human head, and, just as the girl had said, there were metal spikes sticking out of it. So the chance that this was just one of America's damn jokes was out of the question.
Climbing to my feet with a struggle due to the weight of the contraption baring down on my shoulders, I staggered over to Feliciano with a quick nervous glance toward the clock, twenty minutes, surely I hadn't taken that long to escape had I?
Upon getting closer to the Italian and the strange trap his was stuck in, I saw that the iron was truly hooked up to each of his ribs, yet with all the things that it had on it, I couldn't find one way to get the thing off of him. The bars refused to move from around him because of the wire, and even pulling on the iron caused him pain though he tied to hide that fact but he wasn't to good at it. Glancing at the clock once more, my heart raced, ten minutes! Looking back at him, my eyes went straight to a mark on his neck that I hadn't noticed before, a big black X was drawn onto his naturally tanned skin, X marks the spot, he seemed utterly confused when I reached forward touched his neck, and I was disgusted to feel the outline of a key under his skin. Studying it closer, it became apparent that someone had stitched that one patch of skin back together. With the right medical equipment it might be possible to extract it, but, a quick scan around the room confirmed that there were no such tools, which meant...
"That sick ass!" Startled by my sudden outburst, he flinched in the harness, making a few more fresh trails of blood trickle down his chest, the sight of that just making me more outraged.
"What? What is it?" With an aggravated sigh and a hard kick to the machine holding him hostage, a sudden feeling of nausea washed over me as I raised my eyes to his, already knowing what I had to do now.
"The key to the trap around my neck, is under the skin on your neck! That's why she said only one of us can live. For me to get out..." Unable to hold back any more, tears welled up in my eyes and quickly ran over, sliding down my face once after another. "I would have to kill you..."
On just one hand I could count how many times Ludwig had cried in front of me, and seeing the tears rolling from his eyes made everything seem just that much worse and my heart, no, my whole chest hurt...
"Just kill me then! It's obviously impossible for me to get out of this thing! Save yourself, because you can't save me! Please Ludwig! Please!" Ice blue eyes narrowed furiously at me, even as the tears continued to fall, sure he had gotten angry at me before, but this was something completely new, he had never been this angry...
"Never! When I first told you I loved you, I said I would never let anything happen to you! I intend to keep that promise! I'm going to get you out of there! I swear it!" Nervously my gaze slid over to the clock settled above the door and his eyes quickly followed only to clench his hands into tight fists, somehow we had dwindled down to just three minutes.
When his eyes met mine again, I could see he wasn't going to give up without a fight, but to me all that look said, was that we would die here together... "Feliciano, remember, I love you... Don't ever forget it..."
Watching amazed as he grabbed the wires holding onto the iron contraption holding onto my ribs painfully, he, with surprising ease, tore them from the machine on the right side, then quickly moved and tore them from the left with just as little resistance. Then he did something even more insane. He twisted the chains that held the harness around his arms once and held them tightly in his fists, tearing them, and even some of the rooms training, down with one yank so now my feet were back on the cold ground once more.
Before there was any time for my mind to wrap around what had just happened, Ludwig carefully lifted me up and away from the machine until we were both standing in the center of the room, where he then proceeded to try and gently remove the iron bars from around my ribs. It hurt, I wasn't going to lie, but after what just happened, it was easy to keep myself from screaming as I bit down hard on my lip, not wanting to worrying him anymore.
As he worked, I just stared at him dumbfounded, is what he just did, actually possible? Yes nations are strong, but, that strong? I don't think even America could do that with an adrenaline rush! Turning back to the clock, dread completely washed away any sense of hope that had started to well up inside of me, more tears streamed down my cheeks, then without even thinking I started clawing at the spot Ludwig had said the key was on my neck, only to be stopped by him grabbing my wrists as the last metal rod clattered to the ground, tears in his own eyes.
"Ve! NO! Let me get the key! Please? I can't lose you! Not now! P-please! I don't want to lose you!" His blue eyes stared back at me sadly as he tried to wipe the tears in his eyes away but they were quickly replaced, so he gave up and just shook his head, then looked at the clock, by now, there was only mere seconds left, there was no way I could get that key in time...
"All I wanted was for you to be safe and I did that... I love you, Feliciano, too much to watch you die..." Sobs escaped my throat as my knee buckled and sent me to the floor and he quickly knelt down in front of me.
What had we done, besides listen to our boss' orders, to deserve this?
Ludwig didn't deserve to die! Yet he sacrificed himself for me...
"I love you, too Ludwig, and I'll always wait for you to come back... Just like before, I'll always wait..." Wrenching my eyes shut tightly, my stomach did a flip when the sound of that metal contraption around his neck start to close with a whine of protest caused by the old rusted parts.
When I heard the sound of metal clashing against metal it became impossible to move, unsure of what to do as Ludwig's body fell at my side, trying to climb to my feet to get to the door, my legs buckled again only a few steps later only now a wave of nausea forced any contents of my stomach out onto the floor.