There were moments of perfect clarity. There were.
Moments not taken up by trying to kill rats that did not exist, moments not spent singing or reciting fairytales. Moments when he did not feel the intrusion of another mind into his own, trying to take over.
They were rare, but they did exist.
In these moments, Norway tried to sleep- he couldn't sleep otherwise, not for fear that when he woke, he would not be himself.
However, he often couldn't sleep even in these moments of clarity. The nightmares kept him up. That, and the persistent ache in his heart.
But during one of these moments, he discovered a tray sitting on a crate. There was a cup of coffee (miraculously still warm), some pancakes, a small pitcher of maple syrup, and some assorted medications. Canada had obviously been here, but when?
It didn't really matter, Norway decided. It had been…a long time since he'd eaten. Still, he forced himself to eat slowly, so he wouldn't make himself sick. It would be a shame to waste those delicious pancakes.
Even so, it did not take long to finish the pancakes, nor to sort out the medications- heart, pain, blood pressure -and to take the appropriate dosage of each. (He checked; there wasn't enough of any of them to give himself a fatal overdose. He wasn't sure what he would have done if there had been.) The coffee was gone shortly after that.
In these moments of perfect clarity, he thought.
Sometimes, he thought about the distant past- better days, when he was young, and strong, and free, without a care in the world beyond making sure his ship didn't sink.
Other times, he thought about a past that was not so distant. A past that had reshaped a care-free boy into an embittered, world-weary man. He had learned the true meaning of betrayal during that time, and what it meant to love someone who did not- could not -love you back.
More often, he thought about the very neat past, and the future. (He did not dare think about the present.) He wondered how his family was, how Normandy was doing. Was Denmark taking good care of her? Denmark was good with children, but Norway found it difficult to trust him after certain events in during the Napoleonic Wars. Then again, Greenland and Faroe Islands had turned out okay, though it was still painful that they refused to have anything to do with him.
He wondered what would happen once this was all over. Surely the world would not just go back to being the same as it was before. It couldn't. After all, the glass vase, once broken, is never quite the same as it was before.
Sighing, he closed his eyes. Maybe his nightmares would let him sleep, just this one time.