*Sheepishly* Hi~
...Pleasedon'tkillmefornotupdatinganythinginsolong! Seriously, life caught up with me & things have been crazy, but I'm so happy I got this done. I had one sentence for several months & I had severe writers block. Again. So I got out the longest chapter so far
To my Promise readers, I misplaced the last chapter, but I do know where it is. It's just a difficult dig and I don't have the time to get it, but when I do, I will have that insanity up for you sweet, patient readers. I love you all
Now, without further ado, Nor, will you-
Norway: No
I know you don't like the chapter, but-
Norway: Do you think I like it when yousefnsgjsjnsf
*Slapped hands over Norway's mouth* Don't spoil it
*Sighs* Nony & Sterling don't own Hetalia. We know. You're devastated
Norway: For anyone queasy, this may not be the easiest chapter to read
Nightmares plagued Norway. His encounter with Belle, the tortures her psychotic grandson put him through, the pain of the fires that ravaged his country. Loud music had played all night, or at least what he thought was night, from the headphones around his burn covered neck.
So that's what they were for, Norway thought miserably. Why can't this just end already?
Blinding light flooded the dark room as the door of doom opened. With that same stupid, smarmy smile, Jared entered the room with a large container. Norway squinted as his pupils shrank from their long – dilated state. Multi – colored spots obscured the nation's vision from the transition.
"What do you want now?" Norway spat.
"Good evening to you too," Jared replied. "Then again, for all you know it's three in the morning and I'm just messing up your internal clock more than it already is." At Norway's glare, the older man added, "Don't look so happy to see me, unless you've chosen to take this curse off."
"Whatever this curse is, you deserve it," Norway snarled.
After picking up his leather belt from the ever present wooden stool, Jared glanced at it for a moment before striking Norway's face, irritating the burns. Norway held back a cry of pain. Jared pulled Norway's face close to his by yanking the blond's collar. With a malicious look in his eyes and an overly sweet smile, Jared explains in a low voice, "I came up with a great idea while I was cleaning my sink."
What little color Norway had left in his face vanished. Knowing Jared as he did, ideas while performing common household tasks never ended well. Jared let Norway's head go in favor of pulling on a pair of bright red, heavy rubber gloves and unscrewing the cap of the jug he brought down. The noxious odor hit Norway quite fast. Drain cleaner.
Jared struck a new level of insane.
The salt and peppered haired man placed a funnel in Norway's mouth. "I'd say this will get you talking, but it's more of a punishment for not," he crooned. With surprising strength, he lifted the heavy, almost – full jug and tipped the contents into the funnel and down the personification's throat. A fair amount of the cleaner was emptied before Jared placed the jug on the floor. Taking advantage of Jared's momentary distraction, Norway sputtered to spit the toxic liquid out. But Jared was too fast, despite his age and disabilities. The older man's hand clamped over the personification's nose and mouth to force him to swallow the drain cleaner. Norway had no choice but to ingest the chemicals if he wanted to breathe again. Which he did.
Burning pain flowed through Norway's mouth and throat. He felt the passage of the mixture of lye, hydrochloric acid, and trichloroethane as it traveled through his body. He couldn't scream. The feeling of his internal organs being damaged trumped any other feeling he had left in his body. Excruciating agony overwhelmed the Norwegian. Every inch of his body burned. Nausea twisted in his damaged stomach. Doubled over in pain, Norway heaved violently. Each movement sent another wave of torture through his frail frame.
Jared wrinkled his nose. "Disgusting," he scoffed.
In response, Norway sent him a weak glare, which wasn't as threatening as his usual glares due to his trembling body and heavy breathing. Before he heaved again. After a few moments, Norway slumped shakily against the radiator. Fresh chemical burns swelled his lips and surrounded his mouth and chin. Internal damage ravaged his esophagus, liver, stomach, kidneys, and digestive tract. Overall, the poor nation really needed medical attention. Not that Jared cared much. He just wanted answers.
"Cat got your tongue?" Jared sneered.
The pain became too much for Norway to bear, so the blond promptly proceeded to slump unconscious. Nudging the personification with his foot, Jared made sure Norway was completely unresponsive before leaving. The older man had other tricks up his sleeve that he was itching to use. The drain cleaner was just an experiment to see if the rumors about the speed of nations healing was true. Just imagine the medical breakthrough if the DNA of these personifications can be used in medicine! Jared Wolf would be able to break his curse and become rich and famous in one shot. Talk about killing two birds with one stone.
Jared shuddered with excitement. He had a lot to prepare.
It was the pain that woke Norway. Disoriented, all he could process was the dissolving sensation in his organs and the burning tingle on his face and in his throat. And the nausea. Oh, how terrible the nausea felt gnawing at his already damaged stomach. He could not control himself. For the second time that day/night/whatever the time was, he heaved. This time, blood dotted the bile and chemicals. Norway's indigo eyes widened at the sight of the red substance. What little color he still had in his face drained in an instant. His thin frame trembled. Again, he lost consciousness.
Nightmares continued to plague him. He could almost feel the dull knife and acid piercing his arm. The molten fork stabbing him. The burning skin of his wrists attached to the water heater. The many times he'd been struck with the belt. The numerous occasions of having his head bashed. The hunger. The thirst. Norway just wanted proper sleep, water, and new organs.
Actually, he wanted to believe that the past few days, which he didn't know was really two weeks, were just one big terrible nightmare and he would wake up in his vacation home in the fjords. And everything would be back to normal. He would go to another Nordic meeting that would end in everyone wanting to kill Denmark. He would pester Iceland to call him "big brother." He would cook again with Denmark and Sweden while ensuring that Iceland, Mr. Puffin, and Hanatamago would occupy Finland, so the eccentric Nordic wouldn't try to "help" with his creativity.
But he knew his dream was just that. A dream. Norway knew he would wake up to the dingy basement where he was being held captive and only had more tortures and experiments awaiting him when he would open his eyes. Jared was dead set on making Norway's life miserable for the sake of lifting an old curse that his grandmother deserved. The old man was surprisingly persistent. He never ran out of creative torture ideas and didn't look like he would any time soon.
Had Norway been awake, he would have sighed at his rotten luck.
Jared decided to give Norway a short break. Not a long one, but one to simmer over his burns, pun fully intended. The cursed man cleaned out his fire place, dumping the ashes in a large bucket. Once he finished, he hefted the now heavy bucket and brought it outside. Already in the yard was an enormous barrel with a corked hole near the bottom sitting on top of a platform of bricks. Over the past couple days, Jared had been working on a special project for his research of the mysterious personification. He peered inside the barrel. At the bottom lay flat stones he had collected during a trip to a fjord, dried up grass, rainwater, and a lot of ashes that have been leaching for several days. For one who hasn't figured out what Jared was making; it was lye.
The older man emptied his bucket into the barrel. He wanted the pH of the lye to be as high as possible. He was close and he knew it. Originally, he wanted to use it for some heavy duty cleaning when he was finished with Norway to clean up the mess made in the dingy basement. Now he had other plans. Spring cleaning had never been so exciting!
He left his ashes to continue leaching to check on his captive. He found Norway in such a sad state. The personification lay limp against the radiator pole. His burns from the forest fires began fading, but still starkly contrasted against his paler – than – usual skin. Speaking of Norway's pallor, it had become whiter than hospital walls. At least the skin not marred by chemical burns and the remnants of the forest fires. Dark shadows had long since settled beneath the blond's dull indigo eyes. And he seemed so thin and bony. For good reason, as Jared had been starving the poor man. Norway's once smooth skin had become dry and clammy from dehydration. What he wouldn't do for fifty gallons of water and double that in coffee!
Norway glared weakly as his tormentor.
"Well aren't you a Little Mr. Sunshine," Jared taunted. "Would you like something to eat? I'm sure your stomach will appreciate it."
Norway glared as best as he could, but Jared just found it amusing.
"Get some rest," the old man crooned. "Let's see how you recover, and then continue working to break this curse. Your punishments will start coming faster and harder. Time is something I am not as fortunate as you to have and I need this curse broken."
"Nej." The one word rasped out with an enormous amount of effort held a surprising amount of force. It left the injured personification coughing up his guts again, though.
"You know, I was thinking about what a good punishment for liars would be," Jared suddenly proclaimed. "I found it." Satisfied, he noted the muscles tensing in Norway's neck. "I'll be back later. Or tomorrow. Not that it matters for you." With a little taunting wave, the older man limped out of the room and up the stairs, mentally patting himself on the back for his wit for the punishment for lying being lye. So clever.
It was actually two days later when Jared decided to use a little of his lye. Taking a heavy plastic bucket, he exited the backdoor to inspect his barrel and the contents. A smile crossed his face as he checked the pH level. Fourteen. Perfect. Jared uncorked the barrel and allowed the lye to drain into his bucket. Once content that he had enough, he shoved the corked back into the hole. He hefted the bucket to bring it down to the basement.
Norway spent forty eight hours in terrible paranoia. At least in the time he spent awake. His body was trying to heal itself, after all. With a completely off kilter internal clock, the blond had a difficult time gauging the passage of time and floating in and out of consciousness certainly did not help at all. He didn't know if ten minutes passed or if it were five hours. What he would give for a shred of sunlight at this point, so he could gauge the basic time without seeing a clock. Automatically, memories of small vacations in the fjords going completely off the grid come to mind. So much time spent in the fjords without a shred of electricity. And there was even a time when clocks did not exist and he would tell time from the sun's position. Norway decided that not having any source of sunlight was the worst part of being held captive in a basement.
After hours upon hours of relentless fear, the basement door opened, revealing Jared wearing heavy gloves and hauling a bucket.
This should be interesting, Norway thought bitterly.
Jared set the bucket down.
"Is your hair naturally blond?" he asked out of the blue.
Taken aback, Norway slowly nodded, unsure of why Jared would ask such a weird question.
"Do you like lutefisk?" was Jared's next question.
Norway arched an eyebrow.
"Do you cure food?"
In response, Norway nodded. Despite preferring to use fresh food, the Norwegian knew it would always be handy to have preserved foods in case of bad blizzards keeping him home or any shortages or any surprise visitors. The latter was usually Denmark.
"Have you ever made your own soap?"
Again, Norway nodded. In the Viking age, he and his brothers would spend time making soap out of…lye. Indigo eyes widened with realization.
"I guess I don't have to ask what all these questions had in common," Jared crooned with a smirk. "I told you I had a punishment for those who lie." He held the bucket up. "What better punishment than lye?"
Norway forced himself to speak. "How long did it take you to come up with that one?"
Narrowing his eyes, Jared picked up his belt and struck his prisoner with it. Norway bit back a cry of pain as the belt irritated his chemical burns. Without missing a beat, Jared began rubbing his homemade lye on Norway's arms in heavy layers. A sudden thought hit him as he saw the forest fire burns on the other's face fading right before his eyes. He looked at the lye being applied to the Norwegian's skin.
Jared became curious – Was a country effected by the physical state of its personification?