Hey. Um. I finished the epilogue, if you like epilogues. I promise my motivation to finish was not significantly influenced by my resentment/rage that stupid Russia made the Grand Final and the Prussiatastic Austrians didn't. That would make me a bad person, which I'm not.

The house was silent. Emptily, maddeningly, unbelievably silent. Russia didn't like when it was so silent. It made him afraid.

Russia looked out the window of his kitchen. Years ago, when his family still lived with him, the snow was crunched and thrown and rolled and played in. He distinctly remembered Ukraine and Belarus arguing over what to use as a nose in their snowman of their brother. He remembered Lithuania sketching the sleeping tree covered in snow while Estonia and Latvia battled each other with snow balls. He remembered the way Prussia's red eyes filled with tears the last time he ever walked on Russian snow. It was so many years ago.

Or was it yesterday?

Russia looked at his motionless clock and back out on his yard. The snow was not trampled on. It was smooth, clean and heavy. It had been that way for a very long time.

How long? How long had it been since Winter was anything but loneliness and white? How long had it been since the snow brought joy to anyone's heart? How long had it been since Russia warmed up his family with a hot pot of soup after a long day playing, singing, laughing in the cold?

Russia lifted the bottle of Vodka to his lips. Too long, he thought.

Something caught his eye and he paused, looking at the dark purple bruise on his knuckles. He frowned. He didn't really think he liked bruises, but he must have, deep down. Otherwise, why would he keep asking for them?

The kitchen echoed around Russia. It sounded exactly the way it looked- swirly, blurry and gray. Russia's head pounded with Vodka whispers and he tried to take his mind off the pain in his head, in his knuckles, his shoulders, and the empty, deadly pain in his chest. He lifted his voice in a hushed melody so he could focus on anything but the pain.

"You are my sunshine… my only sunshine…"

Unbidden, thoughts of his old albino pet flooded his mind. He moaned from the pain of them, but Gilbert's hurt, blood colored eyes bored pitilessly into Russia's soul.

Guilt pulsed through Russia's veins. He should have been able to fix his pet. He should have been able to fix all his pets. Maybe if he had paid more attention to them, they wouldn't have run away. Maybe they would all be spending Christmas together this year, just like a family. Maybe if he had fixed Gilbert, there would be no accusing stain in his Bleeding Room or emptiness in his house.

Russia looked at the door to his basement. It used to be splinters, smashed to bits the day Gilbert tore his wrist open with the key and Elizabeta ran away from home. It wasn't splinters anymore. His big sister had replaced it the day before she left, crying softly the entire time. It was her goodbye, she'd wept. One last piece of her to keep in his big, empty house. Katyusha had always been so generous with pieces of herself.

And then she took their little sister's hand and they walked out together, one sobbing and the other screaming for Russia not to worry, she'd be back someday to marry him. Then they could be lonely and cold together.

Was it a hundred years ago that they'd said goodbye, or tomorrow?

Russia twisted the cold metal knob of the Goodbye Door. It opened. Ukraine had been fierce, for once, in her insistence that the Goodbye Door not have a lock. Russia couldn't remember why she cried when she said it, but it seemed important to her, so he agreed. It made him uncomfortable to not have a lock. He was a kind brother, though, and always did his best to make the people he loved happy.

The basement air was black and damp. He touched the walls and his fingers came away wet. On some level, he knew walls were not supposed to bleed like that, but like most things in his house, he'd come to accept it. His bare feet padded the cold concrete floor and he lifted his voice again to distract from the lonely echoes.

"You make me happy… when skies are gray…"

The rotting wood hit Russia's nose and he caught his breath. The door to Bleeding Room echoed whispers and whimpers and screams. It made him afraid.

Russia looked back up to the Goodbye Door at the top of the staircase and wished his sister had reconsidered installing a lock. Whenever Russia went into the Bleeding Room, he wanted privacy without having to remind himself that he was all alone in his big house anyway. He gently pushed open the door to his penance and stepped inside.

The Bleeding Room was small, but it was nearly empty, so it seemed rather larger. The only color other than the gray, gray, gray, was in the corner of the room, where Russia kept the last of his family. A red stain in the concrete floor that looked up at him expectantly.

The very last piece he had of his pets.

Russia knew on some level that a blood stain was nothing to love, but it was all he had. So he cared for it, as he had the pet that made it. He wiped the Room's mildewed blood away so it wouldn't wash out. He sang to it to give it sweet dreams. When it browned and crackled and shrank, he fed it.

He smiled and sat on the floor next to the blood. He stroked it.

"You'll never know, dear, how much I love you…"

A few brownish flakes came off the floor and Russia frowned. He thought he'd fed the blood just the other day. Or was it last year? The unbelievable white outside his kitchen stretched forever, muddying nights and days and time. Or was that Vodka?

Suddenly, Russia felt like he understood why everyone he'd ever loved left him. What kind of owner forgets when to feed and play with his pets? Had he always been this irresponsible? He couldn't even remember the last time he'd eaten anything. Vodka filled his stomach more deeply than bread could. And bread didn't make his heart stop aching the way Vodka did.

"I'm sorry," Russia whispered to the bloodstain, wishing he could run away from himself too. He pulled his knees to his chest and tried to cry. He only tried to cry when no one could see him, and no one had seen him for a very long time.

But the tears didn't come. They never did, not anymore. Not since his family left him. Something broke in him the last time Natalia kissed his cheek, the last time Katyusha straightened his scarf, the last time Toris stared at him without saying a word. Something broke, and now his tears froze in his eyes before they ever touched his cheeks.

Russia hugged himself and the walls of the Bleeding Room echoed with his dry sobs. There was a time, maybe this morning or last Christmas, when he could stop from feeling sad. He remembered Elizabeta smacking his hand with a spoon when he tried to take a hot cookie from the pan. And Eduard making tea just the way he liked. And Raivis building armies of snowmen in the yard.

And Gilbert. Russia's stubborn, beautiful little kitten. Once, stroking Gilbert's silver hair as he slept in the Bleeding Room had been enough to make Russia stop wanting to die when the snow tumbled through the sky.

But Gilbert was gone now. Everyone was gone. And all Russia had left of the people he loved was a dry, starving bloodstain from the day he started to lose them.

The dry sobs almost sounded like laughter as Russia pulled a rusting switchblade from his coat pocket. He opened it and took a second to wonder why the brown patches on his knife were exactly the same color as the blood on the floor. Then he rolled up his sleeve and sliced his wrist.

The new blood poured from the scarred arm like a clean glacial river. It was sickeningly bright crimson and the floor drank greedily. Russia's dry sobs gave way to pants of pain as he sobered, just enough to wish he could die this time.

But the stain needed him to nourish it, just as once upon a time, his family had needed him. Russia's eyes burned, but the tears wouldn't come. He squeezed his fist tight just as he started to see black spots dancing in the corners of his vision.

"Please don't take… my sunshine… away…"