A/N: Oh my God, you guys have given me such a massive influx of reviews these past two chapters! You have no idea how kind that is; thank you all so much. You're really keeping me motivated. I actually had this chapter written a long time ago but didn't post it then because I wanted to post it simultaneously with the next one, as not much happens and it leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Anyway, thanks again so much for the reviews! Enjoy!

Warning for violence and (technically) self-harm.

Rapid chatter and the smell of antiseptic washed over Mathieu as he entered the hospital.

A strong grip latched onto his arm out of nowhere, and a French-accented voice asked, "Really America, how many times are we going to do this?"

Then suddenly he was being led somewhere by someone who was walking far too fast and Mathieu kept tripping and he had no clue if he was about to run into someone or where he was and he was starting to panic—

Hinges squeaked, the air pressure changed. The hands on his arm pulled him through a doorway before coming to a dead stop, and Mathieu collided with a rough silk shirt and gunsmoke-scented hair.

"Mattie! What are you doing here?" Alfred's voice, concerned, indignant, and from across the room.

"Bloody h*ll, there's two of them," a stranger said, sounding awed.

"Mattie! Run! Make a break for it while you can! They've been holding me hostage here for three days now! I can't believe you *ssholes kidnapped my brother too! I'm going to kill y'all!" There was a grating sound of groaning metal that made everybody in the room clench their teeth.

Mathieu bounded over to where he thought Alfred was, knocking into two people and an iron bed frame in the process, making him hiss in a sharp breath. He really needed to buy a cane one of these days.

The painful sound of fist hitting flesh. Alfred's frightened death grip enclosed around his wrist, then… relaxed. And fell away.

"Thanks for that," the voice from earlier said.

To whom? For what?

It was times like this that he genuinely missed being able to see what the f*ck was going on.

But he didn't need vision to be able to recognize what was obviously a hostage situation.

He sensed someone behind him, and whirled around, kneeing them in the groin. Three people cussed, realizing they had merely traded out one combatant for another.

Good. Now he knew where they were standing.

He shoved the doubled-over man away, and he fell on the tiled floor with a thud. Mathieu kept in contact with the hospital bed, leaning against the end of it to give his kick at someone else more power.

Odd. He should have heard stumbling feet after that, not… rolling…?

He swung a closed fist where the third person had been, but hit only air. Sh*t. Where were they?

Behind him, apparently. Bony fingers dug into his shoulder, and Mathieu whirled to fight them off, but then there was a needle in his arm, and his head started swimming…

"…why am I always the one keeping your kids in line? Isn't that your job? If you aren't capable of controlling children, then don't have them! If you ask me, you two became empires at far too young an age. You weren't ready for the responsibility. Should have waited—"

China's rant about his allies' immaturity was almost enough to make them wish Russia was here so that he would shut up. Russia never put up with China's rants. He always said or did something outrageous when they started up, just to break the monotony, even if it resulted in a fight between the two of them. That man could not stand being bored.

But Russia wasn't there, and if they have their way, he won't be until everything is smoothed over. He had his own reasons to be fighting Germany, and the only reason they were allies is because they have a common goal of taking down a common enemy.

The other Allies didn't trust him in the slightest. They hadn't even told him about the Manhattan Project; he had found that out through his own spies. They most certainly weren't going to inform him of the very sensitive situation of two newly-found personifications.

The two newly-awoken personifications.

Mathieu felt the stiff, crisp sheets of a hospital bed draped over him and the pinch of an IV in his arm.

Great.

"So how'd they get you here in the first place?" Alfred asked him, not caring to acknowledge that 'they' were still in the room.

He knew that anyone who tried to kidnap Mathieu could expect him to come kicking and screaming, fighting until his last breath. It was frankly surprising he hadn't gotten away. He didn't make dumb mistakes like Alfred did. He had been so shocked to find his brother in the same situation as him. Didn't make sense, in his mind.

He had been relying on them not knowing about his brother, being very careful not to give away clues about his existence. Once he realized Alfred was missing, surely he would come rescue him. Mathieu was his ace in the hole, his secret weapon, his—

Mathieu pinched the upper bridge of his nose in exasperation. The other Allies exchanged glances, purely because England made the same long-suffering gesture so many times that they now permanently associated it with him. "Alfred, you are in the hospital. I am your emergency contact. They picked up the phone and dialed."

…his emergency contact.

Oh.

Darn it. Foiled again. Stupid hospitals always ruin everything.

"You guys have a h*lluva lot of explaining to do," Mathieu drawled, now addressing—accusing—the other three people.

"This wouldn't be necessary if you two would stop attacking before you think and just listen for five minutes," a bitter voice hissed.

Mathieu chuckled. "Don't you go all high and mighty on us. I may have thrown the first punch, but I didn't start this. You have been literally holding my brother hostage."

"No! No, we have not!" the voice said, somehow sounding even more embittered. "He only said that because in his twisted logic, forced bed rest is the height of abuse!"

"Keeping me here is not some charitable act when you put me in the hospital in the first place!" Alfred chimed in. "You shot me full of tranq darts until I fell off the observation tower and broke my neck! You killed me!"

"You weren't supposed to fall! We were only trying to sedate you because you were attacking everybody!"

"I wasn't attacking; I was running away!"

"You nearly flung British Columbia right out of the tower!"

"I didn't mean to! That kid weighs about as much as a bundle of toothpicks!"

At this point, Mathieu was yelling out repeatedly for both of them to shut up, but they didn't seem to hear him. Possibly because the Frenchman who had brought him here had now also joined the shouting match, screaming for 'America' to be reasonable and sounding very much unreasonable himself.

Mathieu jumped when a hand clapped onto his shoulder. Why could he never hear this guy coming? He didn't usually have that problem.

"You," the man said. "You are going to fix this. Come."

He unhooked him from the IV and Mathieu knew he was moving and expected him to follow but his footsteps were nearly silent. He didn't hold onto him like the other man had. He was walking way too fast and there was a crowd they would have to weave through.

More embarrassed than he had ever been in his life, Mathieu hung on to his sleeve so he wouldn't get lost, praying to God that the slight tug wouldn't be enough for him to notice. His face felt like it was a thousand degrees.

This was never a problem when Alfred was there. Even before he had been blinded, Alfred was the kind of guy to always be dragging him around excitedly or sling an arm around the shoulders of anyone he was walking with. The transition had been so seamless it may as well have never happened. It had not changed how they interacted in the slightest.

The rest of the world, however, now treated him differently and he had to interact with it differently.

F*ckin' sucked.

"…most of our duties are very simple. Report to and obey bosses, advise them, review laws and sign a great deal of paperwork. That's everything you need to know. Do you understand?" the stranger asked.

This was the third time he had explained the entire situation to Mathieu. Everything about nations, everything that had happened since the pretest, everything.

America was not going to listen to them no matter what they said. But he seemed to hold his brother in very high esteem. China figured that maybe he could get through to America.

But the teenager—by now China had determined he must be Canada—seemed very reluctant to believe him, despite how the explanation fit everything perfectly.

Leftover distrust from his brother's claim that he had been 'kidnapped.' It was a wonder he listened at all.

No matter how he felt about the… nations, Mathieu could not deny that every word seemed to ring ever truer, clearing up one mystery after another. All his unwanted abilities, his unnaturalness, the gripping fear that pervaded the past and had forced him to be an outcast. There had been a reason for it.

He wasn't some abomination that had never and would never belong, some being that lived in society but could never truly be a part of it. No. He was one of them. He was all of them. They had hated him, and he had hated himself. The people and the personification both being tragically uninformed.

But now he knew.

He wasn't an abomination. He was a nation.

Representative.

Something grand.

"Okay, I think I understand," he said slowly.

Finally! This had taken forever.

"But just in case, explain the whole thing one more time."

China pulled his lips back in a tight smile. "Of course."

When they got back to the hospital room, they were pleasantly surprised to be able to hear their own thoughts. The three arguing nations had lapsed into terse, angry silence; all of them thoroughly annoyed with the others.

"So Alfred, it turns out these guys are telling the truth," Mathieu said.

He gasped in horror, and pity tinged his voice, "They brainwashed you."

He rolled his eyes. Alfred could never be told anything. He had to be shown.

"Remember that time that you first met me? You immediately dragged me off into the forest and then you pulled a switchblade and—"

"Oh my God!"

"What sort of colonies were you two running?!"

"—sliced into your arm with it? And then I did the same thing?"

"Yeah, so?" Alfred asked.

"What the h*ll, is shanking yourself some sort of customary American greeting or something?"

Wordlessly, Mathieu took out his pocketknife and set it firmly on the hospital bed. Understanding clicked. Alfred held the blade over the back of his arm.

The moment of truth.

He pressed down and across. Blood welled up, and he wiped it away to reveal the cut closing itself, cells repairing instantaneously.

"You guys insist that we're alike?" he gave the knife handle first to France, the nation with which he felt most comfortable doing so, as China appeared to be almost twice his age and England really didn't look like he needed more injuries. "Prove it."

Ooooooohhh.

Right.

The scientist requires proof.

Rolling his eyes, France sighed dramatically and repeated the same process America just had. The light cut was gone in seconds.

Alfred paled. This whole time, they had been telling the truth. He was like them. Except they had all the answers.