Hello! I'm so sorry that it took me so long to update this thing. I just couldn't find the inspiration for it last week. Hopefully you'll be pleased with this chapter!

Disclaimer: I don't own Hetalia or any of the real events and things mentioned in this work. SO YEAH.

Schizophrenic Minds

"Knowing that you're crazy doesn't make the crazy things stop happening."

―Mark Vonnegut, The Eden Express; A Memoir of Insanity

8 July was as uneventful a day as was possible when fighting a war.

Matthew was sipping tea, a nameless brew that a soldier had made for him a few minutes before, when he found out the news.

It was a good thing that the mug he had sipped the tea from was tin, because porcelain would have broken the minute the cup hit the ground. Francis was watching Matthew with a note of concern in the tweak of his eyebrows and the line of his lips.

Matthew had gone ghost white, staring aimlessly at the bullet-marked wallpaper across from where he was sitting on the floor. They had found a vacated and relatively undamaged house to set up shop in, and were thus foraging through the pantry and drawers to find something actually appealing to eat. Francis was next to the shaken Canadian, his body tilting towards the confused man with all the watchful attention a husband would give his wife.

The words echoed in Matthew's head, cruel and biting with their truth. 156 Canadian POWs had been killed. 156. The number echoed harshly in his head, spinning and pounding off of his skull as if by doing so it would get to escape.

Francis looked inquiringly to the man who had delivered the news to his Canadian comrade, and upon being told it himself, he understood why Matthew was reacting in the way he was.

156 of his countrymen were dead.

Francis scooted so that his arm could fit comfortably around Mattie's shoulders, letting the man decide from there whether or not he wanted further contact. Evidently he did, as he quickly turned into the Frenchman, curling his knees to his chest and burying his face in Francis's shoulder, which encourage the other man to sling his right arm over Matthew's shoulder and pull him even further into him, as if by doing so he would be able to protect the fragile soul from any further atrocities that would result from this war.

18 July was the first day of Operation Goodwood. Francis and Matthew were roped into the battalion of men that were going to be carrying it out, partly because they both spoke French and partly because they were two able-bodied soldiers that could be put to good use. The mission was to capture the two remaining German-held portions of Caen that were south of the Orne River.

The Germans were, of course, well prepared for such an offensive attack, even though they were a little dazed from the earlier aerial bombardment.

They managed to fight the on-rushing Canadians off fairly well, though number was drastically beginning to overwhelm them.

Matthew's lips were pulled from the skin of his teeth to create a filthy snarl of grime-caked skin and vengeful purple eyes. He was going to avenge his Canadian soldiers, by taking out a couple of boches.

Francis was a little more weary of this manic blood lust that Matthew seemed to hold so dear. He knew what war-craze did to someone, and he made it his goal to keep Matthew from delving into that level of crazy.

But that didn't mean that he wasn't pissed off at the Germans too. They were in his fucking country after all.

So he drove forward with Matthew, forcing the excitable garcon to be smart about his attack. IT would be for the best that neither of them get shot or killed.

So he pulled Matthew behind a tree here, or a piece of rubble there, or a bomb crater to the left, or a morbid pile of dead bodies to the right.

He knew he was pissing Matthew off with how he was micro-managing him, but it was not a major concern for him to address. His goal was to keep them both alive, Matthew's attitude about it be damned.

Francis wheeled out from behind a tree that he'd cached himself behind when he ran smack-dab into a German soldier. Reacting on reflex, and perhaps with a bit of fear fueling his way, he whipped his dagger from his hip and quickly imbedded it in the German's chest. Blood began to bubble from the boy's mouth, for he was just a boy, his eyes glazing over as he slid to the ground, collapsing at Francis's feet.

He was dead.

Trying to remain unshakeable, Francis tugged his knife from its snug position in the cavity of the boy's chest, wiping it shakily off along his pants legs before returning the weapon to its sheath at his hip.

His hands were unable to hold the gun after word, and he soon found that he'd sunk to the ground next to his victim. He was in the same state of shock and panic that Matthew had been a few days earlier, though this one could not possibly have been worse-timed. They'd moved on from offensive maneuvers to defensive ones, as Panzer divisions tried desperately to retake any land they had lost in the initial attack.

Francis curled up, clenching his fingers in his long blond hair and pressing his forehead forcefully in the dirt. The zipping sound of bullets snapped around him, accompanied by the chug of tanks and commands tossing through the air.

He wanted everything to just shut up, for all of it to stop. He wanted to be in peace, to realize that he had just killed a fourteen year-old. A german, granted, but a fourteen year-old nonetheless.

The boy's dead eyes stared benevolently at him, his parted mouth still marked with dried blood. His body was fresh, so the skin was still warm. He looked like he could be alive. Francis's hands scrabbled to the kid's throat, searching for something that he could use to recognize his name, or perhaps where he came from. Anything, anything, anything, anything.

He found a tag around the boy's throat, sliding along a chain. On the other side of the tag was a number, the child's blood type, and his unit. Francis would never get to know the name of the boy that he had killed face-to-face.

He let the tag slide from his fingers as he leaned away from the corpse, his blue eyes slowly crawling up from the lifeless form to meet the eyes of yet another German soldier.

This one didn't make any violent motion. He lowered his gun, which had been aimed right between Francis's eyes. There was something in those eyes, something haunted, that told him this man was not malicious. He was not going to be a threat for a little while yet.

Aware that there was a language barrier, he made a motion with his head for Francis to scat. Leave the corpse to him, the blond-haired, blue-eyed boy would get a funeral worthy of an élite soldier.

Francis understood this sign language and he slowly backed up, getting to his feet and collecting his gun from where it had fallen to the ground. He maintained steady eye contact with the German until he was a sufficient distance, and then he turned and fled from the man.

Matthew said nothing at Francis's flustered appearance, just cast him a quick look, checking for injury, before focusing back on the task at hand. He had vengeance of his own to exact.

Francis was not a very effective soldier for the rest of the day, and by the time the fighting ended on 20 July, he was tapped out and dying to hide away from the world. He wanted to go to his home, to wrap himself in the warm and comforting and familiar smell of baguettes wafting from a bakery across the way. He wanted to be surrounded by the bustle that was Paris, to gaze at the magnificent lights that so often trellised up the Eiffel Tower. He wanted to feel the familiar unevenness of cobble stones, to experience the rich smell of French air in Normandy without gunsmoke poisoning it. He wanted his old life back, and he was becoming more and more aware of that impossibility.

Matthew was in the same boat as Francis at about that time. He was feeling worn down. They'd lost so many men in their campaign for Caen. Roughly 50,000, which the higher-ups claimed was better than the predicted amount of 60,000. But it wasn't better by much, and those were people. People who were now well and truly dead.

Mattie and Francis found themselves gravitating towards one another, to take comfort in their shared language and the gentle comfort of one another's hugs and hushed whispers.

Matthew, though he wasn' t entirely willing to admit it, was beginning to fall in love with Francis Bonnefoy.

Arthur Kirkland was no pushover. Everyone knew that. But no one expected him to be so harsh on the young American soldier that he always seemed to be around.

The other soldiers duly noted the way that Arthur would yell or snap at Alfred if the guy began to slack off during their training. They were on reserve, and would replace No. 46 in a week. So the commanding officers and other higher-ups were ensuring that the soldiers remained in prime condition, and that involved training.

When Alfred snapped, no one was surprised. It was more of a when than an if, after all. No one can undertake so much verbal abuse, not even the oblivious and delightfully ignorant American.

"Arthur, what the hell is wrong with you!?" cried out Al, lunging away from the Englishman's sharp words that were slapping at his push-up form. He was sick of being treated like some incapable child. For fuck's sake, he was a United States soldier, not a two-year old who knocked over its carefully constructed block tower.

"Oh, do calm down, overreaction is never becoming," sighed Arthur, rolling his eyes and returning his focus to his own exercise. The only change in his demeanor could be read into the stiffening of his muscles, and that was so faint that Alfred normally wouldn't have noticed it, if he hadn't been so ridiculously pissed off at the nitpicky Briton.

"No," he said firmly, one hand hooking into the back collar of Arthur's uniform and tugging the British soldier to his feet. "We are going to fucking talk about this."

Arthur groaned and ran a hand through his rat's nest hair. "Fine. Whatever is the matter?"

Alfred was incredulous, and at a complete loss of what to state from there. "I-you-er…" he trailed off, confusion crinkling his brow before he collected himself. "You are an asshole." He said finally, without waver or inflection in his voice.

A soldier who was doing push ups close to where their standoff was coughed out laughter under his breath.

A harsh glare was thrown his way by a pair of acid eyes.

Alfred's dog tags jangled nervously as the man shifted from one foot to the other, anxious to know what was bothering his British companion so much so that he had to take it out on Alfred.

Arthur watched Al for a moment before sighing, apparently having noted the steely determination in those eyes. He was not going to get out of this situation without forking out some answers.

"Oh, very well," he grumbled, crossing his arms huffily and a little protectively in front of himself. "I do not want to see you die, alright? So I figure that if I can make sure that you are in the best shape you can be, than you won't." He cast his gaze to something somewhere to the right of Alfred's face, reluctantly to actually meet the person in question's eyes. It was too painfully awkward to initiate any such intimate form of communication as eye contact.

Alfred chewed over this answer a minute before his lips widened into an annoyingly shiny, obnoxious grin. Americans in their dental hygiene, Arthur would never understand them.

"Well, if that's the case, than don't worry about it dude! I'm the hero, so I can't be killed." He puffed out his chest, filled to the brim with pride.

Arthur had never wanted to punch the other man's lights out more so than in that moment. This man, this child was so obnoxious it made him want to hit his head on something.

He settled instead for slapping the back of Alfred's head. "Whatever, that does not mean that you are without a need for training. So get your arse back into push up position, we have some physical fitness to work on."

With that conversation semi-over, both of the duo ducked their heads and diligently resumed their working out. None of the observers had called them out on the chit-chat they'd been so blatantly doing earlier, no doubt because they had a feeling it was over something important, and because it was hardly as if they were still in rookie boot camp. These men knew what it was like to be in a combat zone. This wasn't about focus, just about keeping in shape.

Their workout clothes were comfortable, and a lot more breathable than the stuffy uniforms they were normally forced to wear. Those things were designed to be resistant to all types of shit, and at the same time it was susceptible to a lot of it too.

Short black shorts and white shirts were what they were normally told to wear. Every once in a while, they would be ordered to don their combat uniforms, but this was rarely; the officers themselves were uncomfortable in the outfits that had brought death to their colleagues and friends and fellow soldiers. Those uniforms would and could remind people of the battlefield, and more than one soldier had collapsed with the early signs of shell-shock upon putting the dreaded clothing back on.

Alfred was no exception. Where Arthur was rather cold and emotionless when he wanted to be, Alfred had no such control over his own emotions. He was as volatile as one could get, and his hormone levels would jump rapidly as a result of this. One minute he would be laughing and grinning with some other soldiers of the battalion, and the next he would be on the ground, scrabbling at his ears and groaning about making the voices go away.

It was kind of really terrifying, and most soldier's left Arthur to handle the strange, demonized American.

Whenever it was particularly horrible, Alfred wouldn't even let Artie touch him. He would hiss and warn the Briton to go away, to not even come one more fucking step closer or he would fucking cut him in half. Arthur, of course, never pushed it in these moments of defensive vulnerability. He knew a dangerous soul when he saw one, you don't fight in wars to come away with expertise in fields that you never had even heard of before enlisting.

Dealing with people who had schizophrenia was one of those.

Alfred was unwilling to acknowledge that he was abnormal, so to speak. He didn't want to admit to another person that he heard voices, and they weren't just his own. He didn't want to admit that it was so debilitating, to hear one thing and then another and another and another and another emanating inside of his hand, telling him to do that but wait! don't and then telling him to listen here or not listen there or go this way and then go back to where you were and then reading off useless facts and so much noise. It was merciless and just never over and Alfred couldn't admit to the fact that he suffered from it.

Alfred could not admit that he saw hallucinations, though to him they were real, of people dying, of himself dying, of a bomb hitting the tent, of a Krauts scaling the horizon, of any number of horrifying, war-fueled images.

Arthur felt sympathy, felt pity, but did his best not to show it. People, especially soldiers, really hated pity. That he knew for a fact, as he experienced it frequently as well.

Most of the time Alfred handled it pretty well. But every once in a while, he would go a little off base with something, or he'd start to hyperventilate, or begin to talk back to those voices.

Arthur was always there, as much as he could be anyway, to bring Alfred back to himself, to bring him back to camp and to the men and to the gun that he was currently pointing threateningly at Arthur himself.

"Alfred," said the Briton, his heart in his ears, thundering through them and bringing an annoying, radiating heat to his cheeks. "Alfred, it's me. It's Arthur. I promise that I'm not going to hurt you. Alfred, Alfred," he repeated Al's name over and over and over, desperate to reach the terrified person within. The one who no dobut was thinking that everything was a conspiracy. They were practicing alone a distance from the main camp, so it wasn't as if someone could come and help Arthur out of his current predicament. Though, that was probably for the best, as Alfred would surely be killed for turning his gun on a fellow soldier.

Arthur tried again to reach the clueless man that he knew was down there. The voices were overwhelming Al by now, no doubt about it. He was only ever this unresponsive when he couldn't hear anyone but the other occupants of his mind.

"Alfie…" murmured Arthur then, taking the nickname approach.

Miraculously, it worked. Alfred's gun faltered a moment before crashing to the ground and scooping up a good clump of Earth upon impact.

Alfred's hands were shaking, as was his head as he struggled to remember and figure out what in the hell was going on.
"Artie?" he asked, tone heart-achingly vulnerable.

"Alfred, good God Alfred," said Arthur then, stepping forward to hesitantly and carefully collect the trembling American into his arms. Alfred acme willingly, ducking his head into Arthur's shoulder and letting himself lean into the strong, capable Englishman.

Neither of them said a word. Arthur knew what had actually happened, and he had an idea that Alfred was figuring it out for himself.

Arthur wouldn't acknowledge that he was quivering. He wouldn't, because he needed to be the strong one at that moment. Alfred needed him to hold him up.

SO he stood there, rubbing one hand up and down Alfred's back in a comforting gesture that spoke a thousand times more than words could.

He didn't know where this had come from. He'd known Al a good few weeks by then, and this problem hadn't shown itself until recently. Which meant that the experiences he was catching now were triggering that gene misalignment in his brain.

His environment was bringing a darker side of him more into the light. And it was up to Arthur to help the young man learn how to control it.

Arthur led Alfred soundlessly back to camp, and they both curled up in their respective cots upon reaching their cabin. They'd been housed together because the higher-ups had noticed how close they were compared to the rest of the soldiers.

Arthur wasn't expecting Alfred to climb into his cot five minutes later, but he made no protest. He slid his arms around Al's broad shoulders and moved over slightly so the bigger guy could fit.

He fell asleep, as did Alfred, to the steadiness of one another's breathing.

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