Dextra2: I'm glad you think so, the OC's in this story aren't really there for Romantic interest just saying.
Guest: Here you go and thanks for the review
Special thanks to AzamiBlossom for following and InvisibleGoldStar for favorting and following.
. . .
Prussia's weary eyes gazed down towards the glimmering knife he now held softly in his rough hands, an opportunity arising. The man in front of him had turned away, unintentionally letting his guard down to what he believed to be a harmless and useless dying man. A part of his mind tugged at him, enticed him to plunge the tool deep into the man's back and let him bleed out. However, another part of him restrained the feeling and tried desperately to continue to keep it at bay.
The man, Aldo watched the figure approach them, irritation evident in his callous stare. The outline of a woman with ivory skin and amber hair became more and more visible to the point of her being just as solid as the man upon stopping beside him; her stance and expression challenging him to make another move.
"What reason did you have for following me out here?" The man kept his tone low, though, he did nothing to hide his frustration.
The ash brown cloth she pressed into her face hid much of her expression from him, but Aldo was not oblivious to what she presumably felt, for a moment everything was silent. "I had to tell you something." Her voice although just as soft as his also gave off a commanding edge, one which the man detected just as easily as the Prussian behind him who also made note of her rough British accent.
He grunted, rotating slightly as if ready turn around completely and finish his previous actions. "Anything you had to say could have waited until I got back. No one, even you, should ever follow me out here." He paused. "You'd get lost," he said with malice rather than concern.
Her spring green eyes shifted from staring directly into the man's dark brown ones to Prussia's, gasping slightly at the color. "This man . . . who is he?" Aldo's blistered hand shot out and griped the woman's arm, stopping her from bending down to Prussia's level.
Instantly, she snapped her gaze back to him, letting her eyes battle a silent fight with his. "He's sick." Slowly, his expression matched his calm tone and now looked at her like a doctor with bad news. "It's unlikely he'll get better." The man motioned with his chin towards the ground where the knife had been, still unaware of its absence. The woman, however, was able to see it in Prussia's hand from where she was. "We can, however, help him." The suggestiveness of his tone only registering as sick and twisted in her mind the moment she realized what he was getting at.
With some force, she jerked her hand out of Aldo's grasp and tumbled to her knees, only a few feet from Prussia. It wasn't until then that she noticed that he was giving both of them little to no attention for his eyes were solely focused on the blade, his face oddly trance like. Had he of known what he looked like at that moment, he might have agreed with man when saying he was sick.
"Your right." She looked at him as if looking at one of her children, but with more pity than motherly love. "We can help him, help him by getting him food, clothes, and letting him stay among us." The more she had continued the more Aldo shook his head in disagreement.
"There's nothing at the camp that can help him, just look at him." He took a step towards Prussia, looking down at him as if he was nothing but a shell of a human being. "He's far from any other country's villages and is walking practically naked in all this dust. Judging by his skin and hair I'd say he's been out here for days. If he doesn't die from illness he'll probably die from exhaustion or any number of other things."
The woman only looked to Prussia, not even glancing back to the man as he ranted at her. "Your god would want you to help this man through this even if it's the end for him."
Aldo stiffened as she spoke, but it was not enough to stop him from adjusting his features to their neutral tone. "God would want me to end this man's agonizing journey and let the faults of his past disappear." The built up aggravation slowly evaporated into the air. "Paige . . . let this man no longer suffer bitter loneliness, so he can be among family and friends once more."
"He will be." Paige's head slowly turned back towards his, "But not in heaven."
"Everyone is already weak, it would be unfair to take more food from them and give it to some man who most likely won't make it."
Her eyes narrowed towards him. "They'd deem it unfair if we didn't give him food."
"I think they made it clear who they wanted to represent them already." Even without the cocky look most people would have given her, she was still even more enraged with his statement.
"They don't know what they were getting into!" She began in an inaudible murmur that turned to a bitter mutter that was heard by the man.
"They didn't want death to be in their immediate futures."
A few tense seconds passed as she tried to let her resentment settle, if only for a little while. "They were fine then and they will be fine now."
The knife's blade finally caught the man's attention but rather than move to yank it out of Prussia's hand, he stood motionless. "Look into his eyes." She hesitated, puzzled by his request before complying. "You're looking at him but he's not looking at you, I bet he's not even conscious of the reality around him. The only thing that's going through his mind right now is what to do with that knife. Do you really want a man with intentions like that around everyone else?"
A growl escaped her desperate hold on her negative emotions, all it would take was one more jab, one more word and she would lash out; a move that even to her saw as unwise. "You had the knife on him first; this man only contemplates if he can kill you not what else he could use it for."
He gave a disbelieving gasp. "You don't see the intentions behind those dying eyes, that's not fear; I can see that killing is nothing new to him."
"You know nothing." She hissed.
"Coming from you, it's almost as if a child was saying it."
Silence followed Paige; in her mind she also contemplated something. "Let me bring this man back with us, no one will have to suffer in caring for him-only me."
There was a hesitation on Aldo's part, but he eventually turned away from both of them; leaving without a yes or no reply. A few moments, later the woman refocused her attention back upon Prussia who seemed to have not moved in any form. He finally flinched when she outstretched her hands to cradle his face between them. Slowly, she inched his face up so that his eyes locked onto hers and for a few moments reality seemed to fade back into Prussia's eyes. "You're going to be fine, I can already tell that finding you was only a sign that God has higher plans for you."
. . .
With her arms crossed over her chest, she watched the man in front of her gradually walk away from her. Hungary stood in front of the door of her house, making sure for that Prussia really was leaving.
Biting his lip he suppressed any sound that would compromise his facade to the woman watching him with a somewhat curious stare. Each labored step caused a throbbing sting in his back and head, but Prussia didn't dare stop or show any weakness as he trudged on in his accustom way; telling himself that hurt pride was much worse than any pain from a blow from Hungary or other nation could deliver.
He stopped yards away at the sound of a soft sigh. "You're a terrible faker." He gave no response to Hungary and continued on the moment she too, began walking in his direction.
She didn't see him scrunch his nose at her like a snob only that his pace picked up despite his body's protest. "Well you're a terrible liar . . . and hitter."
He stopped once more at the feeling of her hand coming down heavy on his shoulder. "Is that so? I could always try harder next time or maybe even now if you want?" A look of alarm was evident in his eyes for only a few moments before he recomposed himself.
He placed his hand upon hers; letting it linger there. "I wouldn't want you to exhaust yourself while trying to." With little force, his hand pushed hers off of his shoulder and he once again, began to walk away.
She snickered, to her the response was to pathetic for anyone to believe other that himself. "Is that just your way of saying you've had enough?"
He couldn't see her shake her head in amusement at his disbelieving laugh that had a slight nervousness in its sound. "Please a-a little girl like you could never-"He stopped mid-sentence, no decent retorts coming to mind.
"The only thing about you that I can't hurt is your ego." He winced, a surge of pain running up his leg made him stop once again. "There's no one you can blame other than yourself for this and if you don't want any help than that hurts no one but you."
"What are you talking about, I'm perfectly fine so I have no reason to blame anyone which hurts your ego."
"I beat you with my skillet and now you're going to walk away in pain because you don't want to admit that I hurt you."
"Whatever, I don't even care if that's what you think 'cause that's obviously not true." Silence followed him much to his surprise, he had expected her to reply to his lie with the truth that he would immediately shoot down and they would continue their familiar bickering.
Finally, after much deliberation, he turned around only to find that she was already gone.
. . .
In his mind, the memory dispersed the moment he came into consciousness. And although he had woken up, he kept his eyes closed and listened to the voices that now surrounded him.
"Mum, I think Mr. Urich is coming by again," The voice was clearly young, a couple years too early for puberty. Judging by the tone, Prussia believed it to belong to a young girl.
"Go tell him the same thing as before." Even though he was out of sorts when he had first met the woman, he identified it as belonging to the woman from before, Paige. She let out an exasperated sigh, before continuing. "With all of these visits, you'd think it's almost as if he has nothing better to do."
"Love, I'm sure he's just looking out for everyone." This voice was rather masculine and older; Prussia bet it belonged to a man in his forties-or close to it, anyway.
"What could a sick man possibly do to all of us?"
"He could make us all sick or if he's dangerous then he could hurt a good number of us-even if he can't kill us all." There was a pause. "With that said, I think it might be best . . . if we have the kids stay else where for a while."
"Johnathan, there is nothing wrong with him."
"How do we know that? Even if he won't try to hurt us, he's sick and should we really have them around something they could catch?"
"You say that as if there's a good chance he will intentionally try something." The patience in her voice beginning to falter.
"I . . . I don't trust some of the men banished here."
"You trust Aldo though." Even though she mumbled, it both of them were able to hear it.
"Aldo doesn't act the same way that people like Marco Costache do."
There was a thump as if someone was dropping something on the ground. "What's wrong with Marco Costache?"
"He's just . . . strange, I don't like the way he looks at Violet Harris and the other girls."
She chuckled at him. "Violet's a very pretty young lady, almost all the men look at her. How does that make him different from them?"
"There's something different about him and a lot of people can see it."
"Hush, he's a very nice man. He was one of the few that tried convincing people that I should be the leader."
"That bears no indication of him being a trust worthy person."
"Don't worry about Marco, love, I bet this man is just as good as him."
A laugh built up in Prussia's throat, one in which he could not contain for long. "Hungary would beg to differ . . ." He whispered in a hoarse voice, unaware that he had said it aloud.
"I knew he was awake." A third voice rang into Prussia's ears, one which he identified as being Aldo's.
Knowing that they now knew that he was awake, Prussia slowly opened his eyes seeing no reason to keep them closed. The world was blurry for a second but it soon became clear. His eyes darted around the room, well, if you could call it that.
To him, it looked like a decent sized Arab looking tent, it wasn't furnished like a room; having only poor quality blankets covering the ground, a couple of bags in the back filled with unknown items, and four blankets made beds other than the one he was currently sitting up on. It was barely enough space for four, maybe five people to fit in comfortably.
At the entrance of the tent were four people, two of which he recognized quickly. but the remaining pair were a mystery to him. The one sitting next to the women he believed to be called Paige, was rather scrawny and short for a man who looked and sounded his age. From what Prussia could make out in the shadows he had long, dark ash-blonde hair that meshed into the scraggly beard that covered the lower half of his face and what he wore appeared to be made of materials similar to that of the tent's.
The other person he didn't recognize was a child who hovered a few feet behind Aldo as he stood in the tents opening, the young girl had hair of a similar color to Paige's, yet it was longer and kept back from her face with a braided pony-tail. Her dark brown eyes looked at him with a nervous curiosity.
From this view he had a better look at Aldo, he unlike the other three was rather well built in muscle and height. To Prussia Aldo looked barely young, most likely early to mid-thirties.
"Jonathan take Agatha somewhere." The man, Jonathan, complied with Paige and took the little girl behind Aldo out of his sight.
Aldo stepped into the ten further and stood next to Paige. "Your husband and daughter?" Paige blinked at Prussia, a bit taken back at him.
"Husband, what's that? The little girl's my daughter and Jonathan's her father yes, but husband?"
Before he could answer, Aldo stepped in. "I'll explain it to you later. We have more important matters to discuss."
"I can assure you both of two things; the first being that I'm not sick, this is just my natural eye color and the second being that I'm not a murderer, however seeing as you've been hesitant about not killing the awesome me it's not going to matter one bit to you." Aldo narrowed his eyes in annoyance at Prussia's somewhat cocky tone.
"Your right, I'll judge that for myself-"
Paige cut him off. "But before all that we need to ask you some things."
"Make it quick, I have somewhere to be you know."
Aldo snorted. "Of course you do."
Neither of them noticed the irritated look Paige gave him, though, even without seeing her face, Aldo was pretty certain she'd sent them one. "Why were you ou-"
She cut him off again. "What's your name?" She smiled at the low growl Aldo made behind her; she wiped it off before turning around to face him. "Don't you think that it would be better to know his name first before anything?"
Aldo gave no response, but Prussia did. "You want to know who I am." He started to laugh, earning him strange looks from the both of them. "I am the awesome Prussia."
He had expected a number of different reactions...the ones they actually gave him were completely unexpected, Aldo was about to speak up, yet like the other two times he was cut short; not by Page this time, however.
All of them were dumb folded as a young boy, no older than six or seven rushed in and jumped into Paige's lap. "Noah-what are you doing here! Were you listening in on us?"
"I wanted to know who he was."
"I could have told you later."
The boy ignored this. He glanced once towards Prussia, his eyes widened slightly at the strange sight of his eyes while Prussia resisted the urge to roll his own at yet another strange reaction to his red irises. "Mum . . . why's his name the same name as our country's?"