The song blasting out of the radio contained tints of baby blue and a wisp of lavender. Beauty in liquid form; it dripped colors into a pool of swirls, mixing them together as they spread out to fill the blackness of his mind.

Sound made life beautiful, for all the hell he'd been through.

He couldn't play the piano. His fingers were stiff, clumsy, ungainly on a violin. Guitar strings dug into his fingers so deeply that he could feel his pulse, beating an incorrect rhythm against the strings. For one who loves music as much as he does, it pains him how so many instruments do not respond to his touch the way he wishes they would.

Flute is all he can play. The sound is crystalline, as blue as winter ice and just as fragile. When he plays, in his mind he can see the strand of blue stretching through the darkness of his mind like a bridge, though he knows it never leads anywhere. The flute's song is a delicate one, translucent and ethereal, and if he makes one mistake, the ice bridge cracks and shatters in his mind, leaving shards to rain down through his thoughts like slivers of razor-edged glass.

Lithuania knows that he is silly, reminiscing the way he does. He cannot mend the things that happened to him in the years – centuries – past; those times are gone. He isn't invaded any more. He needn't fight the Teutonic Knights. The Soviet Union is gone, dissolved; Russia can't caress him any more. He is independent; has been since August 1991. He has a future now; one that should not be compared to the azure strands of ice that the music his flute breathes out and weaves across his mind, so exquisite in their breakability.

And yet.

Yet.

He cannot stop it.

Time plays tricks on the mind, Lithuania muses as he rubs at his silver flute with a soft cloth. It shines dully under the florescent lighting, and he can see the streaks from his persistent cleansing. His flute is spotless, sterilized really – occasionally he dunks it in boiling water to be certain that it is truly pure.

In all his years, he has relearned the same lessons again and again – do not trust any one. Trust equals pain upon betrayal, a pain so agonizing that the few sweet moments trust brings do not make up for the sheer amount of agony that comes later.

The song switches from the reassuring calm colors to a darker one, streaked with crimson and indigo. His hair is getting in his face, a curtain of brown that turns the world fuzzy and softens the hard edges of the furniture in his home.

Poland didn't save him, Prussia tried to annex him, America used him, Russia took away his freedom and bound him into a union of misery. There was no color in any of those; music lost all beauty. Only the flute, in its frigid elegance, held something, as elusive and translucent as an icicle in the middle of spring.

Lithuania tries to tell himself he is not bitter, but the taste of iron in his mouth lets him know he's lying.

Alliances have to be formed, he knows, because that is the way the world works. Trade agreements will be made, relations with foreign countries have to be improved. Lithuania knows it, but he also knows that as close as his country will come to another, he, as a human, will not – can not – really trust anyone ever again.

He gently sets his flute down on his dining room table and folds his cloth up to tuck it in the edge of his instrument's case. His throat is burning, teeth grinding together – this is why he doesn't like to review the past; it never fails to agitate him and remind him of everything that happened.

He picks up his flute up again, tracing the cool metal with feather light fingers. Music is all he really can rely on now, for comfort and for joy. His wariness towards the other Nations is strong enough that he feels alone in the world now, not sure whom to trust. Poland wants to continue their friendship, but all he can remember is the look on Poland's face as Russia dragged him away. Russia still unnerves him, though he has been free from him for twenty years. And America is too tangled up in his own problems for him to possibly help Lithuania.

He's alone again. Lithuania smiles bitterly and picks his flute up, placing it against his lips and breathing out a strand of azure ice that arches through the darkness in his mind as the note rises and falls.

He begins to forget as he plays, and he feels somewhat at peace with the world.

Author's Note

...I'm not sure why I wrote this ^^

I just thought Lithuania needed more attention, so I did some research on his history - and holy hell, he's had a really bad time.

Anyway. Apparently, during the Dark Ages, he was always getting annexed and invaded by other countries. He finally got the Teutonic Knights out during the thirteenth century, and a few hundred years later entered a alliance with Poland. When Poland was partitioned, Lithuania was split up, with most going to Russia and a small part to Prussia.

During 1918, Lithuania declared itself independent, but then he got sucked into the Soviet Union shortly afterwards. He finally declared independence again during 1991, and in 1993 was the first of the Baltic states to be free of Russian military.

Also, Lithuania has the highest suicide rates in the world.

I do not know how flutes got worked into this, but they did, and apparently Lithuania has synathesia.