XXX
This Hurricane
Do you really want me dead
or
XXX
April 1945
It's suicide.
He considers this as he stands next to the phone, twirling the cord nervously around his finger. There's a lot weighing on his mind right now, an awful lot compared to what he normally thinks about. But this is war, and he'll do anything for Germany, and "anything" just might lead to suicide in the end.
He does understand, really. He understands, since it's been decided that killing Hitler is what he needs to do, that he might not make it out alive in enemy territory, and he accepts that because there is no other choice and because Germany is worth whatever price he has to pay. He hopes the other nations realize that.
The call connects.
"...Hhhhhhhh... Who the fuck is it?"
"It's me," Italy says softly.
"...VENEZIANO? WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?" Italy cringes and holds the phone away from his ear. "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT THE FUCK I'VE BEEN THROUGH SINCE YOU ABANDONED ME TO THAT HYSTERICAL TEA BASTARD AND A BLEEDING FRENCHIE? THAT FUCKING POTATO-HEAD HAD BETTER BE DAMN GRATEFUL YOU PICKED HIM OVER ME RIGHT NOW!
Romano pauses and Italy takes the opportunity to say, "Ve, I'm so sorry I had to leave you, but - but I'm in Warsaw, and things are - "
"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH ENGLAND SCREAMED AT ME?" Romano interrupts.
"Romano! I don't - "
"HE FLIPPED OUT! HE WENT ALL 'BLOODY FUCKING SHIT, THE FROG GOT SHOT!' AND HAD HIS INCAPACITATED ASS MOVED TO A LONDON HOSPITAL AS SOON AS I HAULED HIM OUT OF OUR BASEMENT AND POINTED HIM TOWARDS THE FUCKING PHONE! AND THEN - "
"Romano, please - !"
"AND THEN YOU DIDN'T TELL ME WHERE THE FUCK YOU WERE GOING! I DIDN'T HAVE A GOD FUCKING DAMNED CLUE WHERE YOU WERE, AND I WAS SCARED SHITLESS THAT YOU WERE DEAD - !"
Suddenly a suffocating silence overtakes the connection.
"...Romano?" Italy whispers. "Ro - Lovino?"
"I - I didn't know," Romano admits shakily. "I didn't h-have a fucking clue where you were, a-and that scared the holy hell out of me." Italy hears a choke, and then the abrasive tone comes back and announces, "So that Potato Bastard had better be pretty God damned grateful you showed up, because if you abandoned me for nothing then I'm going to be even more pissed than I already am!"
Again, silence reigns on the phone line.
"Are you still there?" Romano huffs.
He's there, but he can't find the way to tell Romano how much has changed since the previous day. "...Fratello, I - I - "
"Veneziano, God! Just fucking say what's going on!"
Why can't he admit anything? Why can't he find the words to explain? "Remember Spain," he finally chokes out, "after the failed English invasion?"
Italy prays that Romano understands what he's aiming to convey. Silence. There's so much silence it's suffocating him.
"...No." Romano sounds disbelieving, apparently understanding what his brother is trying to tell him. "You're saying the Potato Bastard is really that hurt? No fucking way!"
"Si! Romano, he - "
"Spain couldn't walk for weeks! He had to be spoonfed! No way! No fucking way!"
"It's - " Italy chokes and holds back a full sob. "I-it's worse!"
"No!" Romano insists.
"Germany hasn't walked for m-months! He can't eat b-because he just throws it back up! Romano, h-he's dying!"
"He... he - no, the shithead can't just die! Who am I supposed to blame everything on if he dies? Who the hell is gonna get you involved in every stupid war on the planet? If he dies, then you'll just wake up crying every single damn night of your life! God, that fucker better not fucking kick the bucket!"
Italy isn't sure how he manages it, but Romano somehow makes it sound like he's going to miss Germany if he doesn't survive this ordeal. "B-but right now, he is," Italy says shakily.
"Shit! How am - hey, wait - no - !" There's some unexpected scuffling in the background, and Romano yells "Chigi!" once or twice between shouts of indiscernible swear words.
"...Do I hear S-Spain?" Italy asks cautiously.
"Huh? Yeah, that's - no, you ASSHOLE! Stop trying to steal the phone!"
"Can I talk to him?"
"You..." Romano trails off. "Um. Sure... I guess."
"Grazie."
A few seconds later: "Bueno, Italy! What's going on?"
"How - how long have you been there with my brother?"
"Hmm... A few hours. Why?"
Italy takes a deep breath. "Are you ever going to leave?"
"I don't know. Maybe by tomorrow I'll head back home - "
"No. I - I mean... are you ever going to leave?"
"...Pardon?" Spain's cheerful tone dies and is instantly replaced with a low voice that sounds oddly serious. "Italy, what's going on?"
"I need to know. Spain, p-please answer me."
"I don't get it - why would you want to know something like that?"
"Because," he manages, swallowing the uncomfortable lump in his throat, "i-if Romano needs to take over Italy - i-in case something happens to me - I need to know he won't be alone."
Spain doesn't say anything at first; if it were anyone else, Italy would have thought that they'd missed the implications of the sentence, but because it's Spain, who would have asked if that was the case, he realizes that he's seriously thinking the consequences over. It takes him long enough to respond that Italy hears Romano in the background saying, "Oi, bastard! What'd he say to you?"
Finally, the Spaniard replies, very seriously, "I won't. Ever." He draws in a shaky breath, and it takes Italy a moment to realize that he's not the only one worn down by the situation. "Has it really come down to this?"
"Si," Italy mumbles back.
"I... I suppose you want to talk to Lovino again?"
"Per favore."
"Alright then."
The phone fumbles around for a moment before Romano's sharp voice cuts through the line. "What the fuck did you say to him? He looks like a fucking kicked puppy!"
"I... I just..." He's so close to crying again, and he doesn't know what to say, and he doesn't know if he'll have any other chances to say everything that he wants to in that moment.
"You aren't going to do anything stupid for the Potato Bastard, are you?"
He can't get the words out. He can't he can't he -
"Oh, God, you are! You are!"
His brother's voice is becoming desperate, and by God he has to say something! "Lovino, I - I - "
"You what? Huh? Why the hell do you keep using my human name - you never call me by my human name! Oh, God Venezi - Feliciano - promise me you're not going to do anything fucking retarded! Come on!"
He isn't going to promise anything, especially not over the phone; the last time he'd made a promise, he'd broken it and Germany had ended up...
"I... I... Ti..." He inhales and says the only thing that comes to mind. "Ti amo. Ti amo, fratello."
The silence, back again, is almost a physical pain in Italy's hand, like he's somehow gotten it through the phone line.
"...Oh no you're NOT!" Romano suddenly shouts. "I KNOW YOU BY NOW, AND YOU YOU ARE NOT ENDING THIS CONVERSATION LIKE THAT - DON'T YOU DARE HANG UP THE PHONE WITHOUT TELLING ME WHAT - "
Italy stares at the floor as he places the phone back on its hook.
"Hey. You okay?"
Italy looks up in surprise from the bed where Germany still lies, not moving except for his rising and falling chest and subtle expressions of pain crossing his face. "Si, I-I'm fine."
"You don't look so awesome," Prussia says bluntly.
Italy sighs, weary of everyone concerning themselves with his health. "I can handle it."
"You're sure?"
He blinks and looks at Prussia, realizing for once that there's an underlying context in what the albino is asking him. "Listen - I know he's your brother a-and that you want to kill Hitler as much as I do, b-but I need to do this o-on my own."
They'd talked it over long before he'd called Romano: only one of them can go. Prussia had immediately volunteered for the same reasons Italy wanted to do it, with a crazy fire in his eyes and his hands in fists - but then Italy had pointed out that they might fail, and Germany might still die while they'd both be gone. "O-only one of us can go, a-and," he ordered, his voice going low and serious, "it's going to be me."
That low-life is his to kill and his alone, because Italy will make him pay dearly, oh so dearly for what he's responsible for doing to Germany and everyone else - but that doesn't mean he isn't scared out of his wits that he won't be with Germany if the end comes, or that he won't ever make it back, or that a million things in-between the two can go wrong. He doesn't want to let Prussia kill the dictator, but he also doesn't want for Prussia to miss the end, whoever "the end" falls to.
"I know you can do it on your own," Prussia says, snapping Italy back into the present. "You're not as awesome as me, but I still believe you can do it."
"I can," Italy says again. "I can, a-and I will."
"I know - but can you do one thing for me?"
"Hmm?"
"Use this."
Prussia reaches to his waistline and pulls out a pistol. A distinct Walther PP, recognizable because of the engraved Prussian eagle on the side. And Italy understands what he wants. "...I will."
"The escort to the front-lines should be ready in the morning. If you're not back here within a week, I'll... I'll assume you're dead."
Prussia isn't looking at him anymore, and for some reason, it feels to Italy as though his fate is sealed.
"Do y-you remember?"
Italy is, again, sitting next to an unconscious Germany that night, holding his hand again and trying to still tell him that he's there. He doesn't know if it's possible, but if he had to judge, his closest friend is still growing physically weaker and closer to fading from existence.
It kills him, but to himself he admits that he's not surprised - nobody can look this terribly sick and not be close to death. Someone of Germany's average height and muscle mass should weigh 180 pounds, at least; one doctor he'd talked to earlier says he's currently estimated at about 70 and dropping. Despite entering and exiting the room all day long, talking to Prussia and medical personel and members of the army there in Warsaw, Germany has never stirred or woken up. One particular doctor had said that, whenever Germany did wake up, he didn't seem to understand where he was - as though he was delusional and believing he was dreaming.
"It would be better for him to be back in Krakow," Prussia actually admitted. "But they had to move him here, because the Soviets kept catching German assassins sneaking towards the city. It took a helluva long time to figure out who they were looking for, and finally England grew a brain and started looking around and found..." He'd trailed off. "Well, you know."
Italy knew.
He wipes his eyes. "Do you remember?" he repeats in the dark. "When you had that n-nightmare for the first time with me there? I... I think that was the night you let me in."
Germany doesn't stir, although his face still seems tense with pain that Italy would (will) do anything to erase.
"R-remember? You woke up scared of something, breathing hard a-and almost crying, but you wouldn't say what... A-and I didn't know what was going through your mind, but I remember..." He pauses and swallows the lump in his throat. "I remember you let me hold you u-until you fell asleep...
"And then it happened again!" Italy adds a humorless laugh and almost chokes on it. "You told me what it was, that time: th-there were cannons and screams and you were just a soldier running a-and trying to find me. I r-remember! You said th-that you screamed my name every time, and you'd been dreaming o-of it for decades, and that y-you felt so weak for getting upset a-and waking up every time!"
Italy sniffles and tries to get rid of the mucus in his nose and esophagus - he needs continue telling the story, if only for his own sake. "And I didn't know wh-what to do," he admits softly. "I didn't know h-how to make it better, a-and so I just held you again a-and hoped that it w-would go away."
He sighs. "Then there was th-the third time. You told me the same story, a-and I didn't understand. Remember? I - I thought there was something very unsettling a-about it. You knew it s-so well, inside a-and out, that it made me wonder if it wasn't really a nightmare. I - I wondered if it was a memory. But - but that didn't make sense, because y-you'd only known me f-for thirty years, a-and you'd been having that dream for so much longer, a-and by the time you ever went to w-war, no one used cannons anymore! I - I didn't understand what it meant...
"But - but then - remember? R-remember? Th-the fifth time? You - " Italy chokes and grasps the bony hand. " - you asked me a-about a nation n-named - named the Holy Roman E-Empire - a-and - and I started to put the p-pieces t-together a-and - and I didn't know wh-what to tell you."
The thin sheets on the bed are slowly turning wet.
"A-and the sixth time..." He inhales, shakily. "Th-the sixth time I - I gave you your a-answer." He holds the hand a little tighter yet, whispering softly, "I t-told you that it didn't matter, b-because - because h-he was in the past, a-and you were a-all that mattered to me a-anymore - a-and - and you were so unsure! You didn't know what I w-was saying, a-and I - and I said a little m-more boldly that i-it didn't matter who y-you were o-or who you'd e-ever become, b-because I - because - because I..."
Breathe, he tells himself. Breathe.
"I-it doesn't matter," he shakily admits, "b-because I love you j-just the same."
Saying aloud is almost too much, but he has more to finish reciting the story, so he forces his emotions to cooperate for just a little bit longer and asks the comatose nation, "R-remember what happened then? I - I kissed you. A-and it took you a moment to respond, b-but then you kissed back and - and i-it became the happiest moment of my l-life. Remember? D-do you remember?"
...So far they've come...
He doesn't know if Germany was the Holy Roman Empire or not; he would never have any way of confirming it or rejecting it, so there is no real reason for him to really wonder. But still - he wonders, at times, when he doesn't know what else to think about - and yet, he really doesn't see how it would matter. If it wasn't true, then the Holy Roman Empire really was dead - and if it was true, then Germany didn't remember, and he might as well be dead anyway. It doesn't matter. Italy loves them both.
"I hope..." He draws a shaky breath. "L-Ludwig, I hope that you think of me the s-same way."
He squeezes Germany's limp hand.
"No matter w-what I turn into or what happens to me, I-I hope you still love me."
He's said what he needs to; yet, at the same time, it feels incomplete. With tears still running down his face, and with little hitches in his breathing, he shifts in the dark and presses his lips to Germany's. The blonde still doesn't move, and Italy allows the words to roll off his tongue.
"Please... f-forgive me for what I'm going to do for you."
XXX
Historical Notes
Spain and Romano were referring to the Armada's invasion of England, again.
Additional Author's Notes
Some of you were probably expecting Hitler to die in this chapter; I thought a few things needed to be addressed in the plotline before the story moved to that point.
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