Pangaea

by RobinRocks

*Manifest your destiny* On the eve of the outbreak of the Second World War, England and America disappear. From history. UKUS/USUK with GerIta, RussPruss, Franada et al. Cowritten with Narroch.

5. Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye

Anyone who got an alert for this chapter initially: This is basically the same chapter. In fact, it is the same chapter as chapter 5, just with a few additions/edits, because admittedly we weren't quite utterly and perfectly satisfied with the version posted up two weeks ago. If you DID manage to find and read this chapter the first time, there isn't a pressing need to reread it. Plot is the same, ending is the same, the wording is just a bit different in a few places towards the end. You might not even notice. With that said, that's actually not the reason for the entire reposting of this chapter. That is entirely down to the fact that you may in fact not even be aware that this was posted two weeks ago due to FFNet having problems with its alert system. Hopefully this problem has been resolved so that our entire readership for this fic is made aware that it has been updated. =)

Apologies for the spam if you already received an alert for this chapter and read it/reviewed it/ignored it/whatever!

Thank you to: suzako, DetectiveLinky, Synonymous Brian, watchulla, dryeyes, CinnaTheConspirator, octavaluna-801, Affera, DesktopNeko, Aria DC al Fine, hoshiko2kokoro, WhiteCrow10, raevyn93, HeartGoesKaboom, fictionhime, OrangePlum, jenn955, Just Call Me Zyzix, Nickel Xenon, MaryLittle, Rina B, IthoughtIsawyoutry and lucimonk; and to those who already reviewed the initial run of this chapter: Bulmaaa, Just Call Me Zyzix, I Ran Over The Taco Bell Dog, DesktopNeko, TwistedRoses132, pandawolf, IthoughtIsawyoutry, moyashi-neechan (and also both Hakuku and AutumnDynasty, because I know you both read it!). None of you guys have to review again, obviously!

Two things about this chapter:

The title: It's a line from'Wish Me Luck' by Gracie Fields, who sang it in the film Shipyard Sally. Fields, like Vera Lynn, became an icon of the Allied war/homefront during WWII, with this song in particular – with its lyrics about being hopeful while a loved one has gone away – becoming synonymous with the British war effort. 'Wish Me Luck' was released, ironically, in 1939 – the year the war began and this fic is set. =)

The original release date: …Which was 23rd April. It was picked specifically because 23rd April is St George's Day (somewhat-acknowledged in this fandom as England's birthday). St George is the patron saint of England – with a name for killing dragons, much to the displeasure of Wales' St David! But more on St George later! Incidentally, as a fun-but-less-important fact, today is also Shakespeare's birthday! …And deathday. Oh, Shakey. What a spoilsport, dying at your own birthday party. "It's my party and I'll die if I wanna…"

Well, enjoy today's update! Germany and Italy are back (accompanied by two other fan-favourites), there's plenty of Prussia and America sees some action (no, not that kind of action, you perverts)!

[Thanks to AutumnDynasty, who partially betaed this chapter!]

Pangaea

Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye

"England."

America clutched tighter around England's palm as he stopped dead in the private street he knew well, feeling the older man stop next to him with rather the same shocked abruptness.

"Um," America said, bewildered.

"Quite," England replied faintly.

They both looked a while longer.

"So," America went on weakly, finally turning properly towards his companion. "Your house is sinking."

The statement dropped uselessly like a stone into the silence, rippling the edges of the scene with a cringing clumsiness that even America regretted the moment it tumbled from his mouth. However, the utterance didn't seem to reach England. To be perfectly honest, America had been expecting a short, terse, rude reply; something along the lines of "I can see that, you idiot" or "Thank you so very much for pointing out the obvious, America". But he got nothing. Nothing at all. England was just staring mutely at the house, white in the face, holding America's hand very tightly.

Sinking. The hard-packed ground, the old hand-hewn cobbles – Victorian, Georgian, older still – were all sliding and slanting inwards, barely tremoring, the lines of orderly rosebushes uprooting with the pull as the ancient stones heaved the house helplessly down with them; but it wasn't even just sinking. The entire thing, the whole quasi-Gothic three-story building, was collapsing into itself, folding inwards like a pyramid of cards, leaving a gaping negative space in its wake – but with a slowness, a viscosity, of melting tar, of cooling magma, without the noise and dust and destruction which usually accompanied the falling-down of a house. It was instead engineered with a preciseness and a silence that was more dreadful still, an eerie and deliberate compression – a theft – of all a man's worldly possessions. And it was a theft, because the house wasn't doing it on its own, a whim, a change of pace; between the folds and breaking layers of brick and wood and stone came flashes and slithers of hard thick green, the haul of roots and the brush of dense, roiling foliage. The house was being pulled, anchored, dragged into its grave by some autonomous hand of nature, reclaiming the space in a matter of minutes rather than centuries.

As they stood there silent and still but for the trembling of England's fist within his own, America could feel the slightest breeze against his back, the air itself flowing around them dry and fine as desert sand, a strange sensation for a normally damp maritime island. It seemed as if the very atmosphere and all its moisture was being wicked away by the yawning void left behind by the slowly tamped house.

"Sorry," America amended, after staring a moment longer at the struggling structure doing a rather dramatic impression of the word 'concave'. "I meant to say that a giant tree with a mind of its own is pulling your house into the ground."

"Yes," England agreed absently.

America frowned at the lackluster response, purposefully swinging his arm and their clasped hands to engage England.

"You're not responding to this the way I was expecting," America said pointedly.

"Sorry." Again, softly, almost absent-mindedly.

"England!" America turned fully and stepped in front of him to block his view of the buckling house. He seized his shoulders and shook him. "Your house. Is. Sinking! Panic and freak out! Yell! Curse! Cry! Get drunk! Do something!"

"What do you want me to do?" England sighed at him, taking America's wrists and delicately removing his hands as if picking lint from his jacket. "What can be done?"

America looked at him in utter despair. His mouth hung open as if to argue against the defeatist attitude but a loud crack, akin to a gunshot in the otherwise silent milieu, caused them both to jump and America whipped his head back around to the house. The spine of the gabled roof had finally buckled under the pressure, giving the entire house a sickly swayback. He glanced side-long at England, hoping it had been enough to shock some sort of reaction from him, but his visage was the same: pale, wide-eyed, but otherwise devoid of emotion.

"Okay," he breathed. He pressed a hand to England's forehead. "You know what? You're in shock or something. This is not a normal reaction to coming home and finding your entire house being eaten by a tree – and especially not from you. You shout at me if I don't put your cigarette lighter back in the exact same corner of the drawer I took it from. I mean, gee whiz, you're acting like you were expecting this or something…"

England pulled away from him, side-stepping America to stare at the floundering house.

"It's so soon," he said quietly, the stench of guilt becoming apparent on his voice. "I didn't… I thought I'd have more time than this, at least time enough to…"

America grabbed him again, growing impatient.

"What are you talking about?" he demanded.

"It's…" England sighed at him. "Oh, how can I explain it to you? You won't understand. Or, rather, you won't want to."

America blinked over the top of his glasses at him as the guilt and subdued reaction suddenly sidled against each other and clicked into place with sickening recognition.

"…You did this?" He looked at the house himself – at the monstrous, hirsute root crushing a welt into the roof, making the tiles skitter and slide and spin off the edges as the whole thing capsized beneath the slow wave of nature. "Why… why would you—?"

"It's something that needs to be done," came England's clipped and cryptic reply.

America ignored the obvious deflection and burrowed his fingers into England's shoulder as he dug into the unsatisfactory answer.

"What, destroy your house?" he exclaimed incredulously. "What is this, some crazy military maneuver so Germany can't pinpoint you? What the hell are we supposed to do now, England? Sleep on France's floor?"

"America, don't overreact—"

"I am not overreacting! I'm just reacting, unlike you!" America snapped. "Are you stupid? What good is this going to do, huh?"

Again, England's reply was a sullen yet completely guarded stare that conveyed nothing.

He was on the verge of shaking England again, just to try and get a proper reaction out of him, when movement out of the corner of his eye stilled him, alerted him. He turned, still holding England's arm with one hand, to find themselves being approached slowly and deliberately by two powerful figures he recognized from earlier that afternoon as well as from every fairytale England had spun for him as a child. Apparently as reality swallowed England's home whole, it was left open long enough for something to come out, for dreams to don weight and color – one purest moonlight-white and the other a tawny-brass, carved from wood and plated in gold no longer but with muscles and tendons flowing potently beneath skin, beneath fur and hair and hide and a singular horn.

The two creatures, unreal in their size, the swirling spike, the serene sentience of their eyes, paced closer.

"Lion." He backed away, pulling England with him. "Holy shit. Lion."

"You're afraid of the lion?" England sounded grimly amused despite everything. "The unicorn is the one you should watch out for."

"Nuh-uh. Teeth. Claws. Tendency to eat people." America still pulled against England's arm, trying to get him to move without actually running away. England held him back.

"Her horn could run right through you. She's faster, too."

England pulled away and went to them; gentle, fearless, welcoming, his arms open in familiarity. Both beasts nudged and nuzzled at him, the lion against his shoulder and the crook of his neck, the unicorn dipped her powerful neck against his cheek, for she stood three full hands taller than him. America knew the nature of the rapport, for bald eagles – wild ones, ones that were not his own – would circle him on high when he was out in his wilderness, and sometimes they even went so far as to land on his shoulder or arm without being bidden. They knew. It was a bond between symbols that didn't need words or reason. It simply existed because they could know him instinctively for what he was even when his citizens could not.

These, however, were England's own. His lion and his unicorn; his symbols, his guardians. America had never seen them before, had never seen him summon them nor they come to him like this. For all he mocked England's little bleating eccentricities about fairies and unicorns, he could see these creatures as clear as day and believed in their presence, even her with her helix horn.

Why were they here?

"England—" America began desperately, stepping towards the group with intent to tear apart the fond reunion in the name of a reality check.

The lion growled at him from over England's shoulder, lips flaring back to give glint to the teeth he hadn't exactly forgotten about; the unicorn pawed the ground with a cloven hoof and lowered her head, aligning her horn with his throat.

"Steady, steady," England crooned at them, his hands in thick manes and rubbing behind ears. "We'll have none of that. You remember America. He too was yours to protect once – and at any rate, I shan't have you hurting him. He's all I have."

They grew calm again but America didn't dare approach, looking briefly up at the house. Its decent was slowing, creaking and struggling as the crushed mass of it began to clog and compact at sinking-street-level. He was starting to wonder if this wasn't all simply some very strange dream he was suddenly having, the disappearing house, the mythical creatures that had come slinking out of the wreckage to greet their master—

"America." England turned to him, flanked either side by his lion and his unicorn. Their imposing presence made him look smaller than usual – but stronger, also. "I have to go somewhere. That's what this is." He nodded towards the house. "My gateway."

America frowned at him.

"…Go somewhere?" he repeated blankly. "Wh-where?"

"That doesn't matter." England wasn't smiling. "What does matter is that you cannot come with me – so please don't follow me."

America's frown deepened. He didn't like the finality in England's voice, the way the 'please' sounded more like a tagged-on habit than an actual request.

"When are you coming back? 'Cause, uh, there's a war on that you started, if you remember."

England didn't answer for a moment, averting his gaze; with an effort like iron pulling from a magnet, he withdrew himself from the animals and came back to America, taking his hands.

"I won't be," he said in a low voice. "History will not give me up once it has me. I won't be able to come back."

"You…" America shook his head at him. The words wouldn't go in. It wouldn't compute. He didn't understand. "You… you can't… just… I mean, it's…"

"I'm sorry," England said softly, squeezing America's hands.

"No, you can't…" America couldn't even articulate what he wanted to say, everything frothing and fizzing up at once, reason upon reason why England was being so completely ridiculous. "That doesn't make any sense, there's… there's a war, we need you, you can't just… go, like… like, whenever you want—"

"I don't have a choice in the matter," England interrupted quickly. "I have to go. There's nothing else for it. History has come for me. If I don't go now, the gateway will simply widen and widen until it has me. There is no escape from it, America. It's either go now without a fuss, with my head held high, or run and cower and allow it to take all of London, all of my land, Wales and Scotland and Northern Ireland, until it has swallowed everything to get me. Until there is nothing to hide behind."

"Why?" America cried, grabbing at his lapels. "Why do you have to go?"

"America, please." England wrestled him off. "This is difficult enough as it is—"

"It's a simple enough question!" America shrieked at him. "And reasonable too, given the circumstances!"

"…You're right – but it isn't something for you to know." England shook his head, lowered it. "I thought I'd have longer…"

"England, you can't go!" America exploded. "We need you! How are we supposed to defeat Germany with one man down already?"

"I've already told you, I don't have a choice!" England snapped. "For god's sake, don't you think this is painful enough? I know I'm letting you all down and I'm sorry, I didn't mean for it to happen like this, I thought—"

"Yeah, you thought you'd have more time," America cut in coldly. "You've said that twice already."

"Don't be unkind," England said stiffly. "This is it, you know. Goodbye."

"No, it isn't," America insisted. "This is nuts, all of it. You're not going anywhere, England. I'm not gonna let you."

England sighed at him.

"This isn't something to be solved with brute strength and misguided heroics," he said. "If I don't go, I'll be taken."

"I'll protect you!" America snatched England's wrists, gazing pleadingly at him. "I won't let anything hurt you or take you away, I promise."

England gave a watery smile.

"That's very brave of you," he said gently, "and kind and good, too, but there is nothing you can do. I have to go and you must not follow."

"…You… you're a country!" America cried, his desperation mounting. "Where is there for you to go? You're on maps, you're in atlases and history books, you're a nation with citizens and a language – you're England, you're Britain, you're the United Kingdom. You can't leave – you can't just disappear and expect that everything will be amended to erase your existence!"

"That's exactly it." England squeezed America's hands. "That is why you mustn't follow me. You carry my history in your heart. When I'm gone, the world will still have its Britain within you. There will be no need to revise or erase anything as long as you hold what I gave to you." His fingertips dipped beneath America's shirt cuffs, tracing the thin skin at his wrists, his veins a steady pulsing kiss against them. "As long as my blood is in your body, I will not be forgotten, nor resigned to the fate of Rome."

The admission was a slow burn; realization smoldered for entire seconds before the full glaring heat rose to America's eyes.

"Is that why you did it?" America pulled his hands away fiercely, pressing a palm to one of his wrists. "Is that what this is, England?" He shook his head and gave a bitter little laugh. "Wow, you sure sold me on that, huh? Telling me it was a pact, a promise, a blood-alliance. Guess I'm pretty fuckin' naïve and stupid to have fallen for that load of symbolic crap—"

"This isn't about selling you anything—"

"Except your history," America shot back, becoming angrier by the second. He could feel the shock and fury fusing into something black and unstoppable, an evil train that was going to drive England away from him even if he didn't actually have to leave. He clenched his fists until they shook, taking stock of the ramifications and settling on the safest one. "How dare you treat me like this! I'm not your heir – and I'm not some convenient old pirate chest for you to cram full of all your treasures and then bury to keep them safe, captain. You already tried this once, remember? Trying to fashion me into some little well-dressed doll to sit quietly on your lap at parties and do you justice by being perfect in your image. You recall what came of that, surely?"

"That makes no difference!" England sighed disgustedly at him. "Oh, make of it what you will, then! What was I expecting? We've never been any good at goodbyes, have we?"

He gave a dismissive wave of his hand and turned away, starting towards the sinking house with clear intent to simply leave America standing in the street; his lion and his unicorn fell into step alongside him, one on either side, making him the precious emblem that they guarded.

"England! For God's sake, where do you think you're—?" Losing his patience altogether, America lunged forwards and seized England's wrist, wrenching him backwards and forcing him to face him. "You aren't leaving! Not this world, not this war, and you definitely aren't leaving me!"

America barely got the words out before they were drowned in a volcanic roar, so loud and so close he could feel his insides quiver from the reverberations. The lion pivoted in an instant and followed through with his war-cry, rearing up and batting America aside with a dinnerplate-sized paw, the battering weight slamming into his thigh and hip and knocking him squarely off balance; winded, he stumbled and toppled, slamming to the pavement with a force that nearly knocked the sense out of him. The lion was over him in an instant pinning him with his heavy front paws, the claws visibly extended. Massive and imposing, fixing him with a chillingly piercing stare only a truly successful predator could pull off, the lion's maw hung open, a low gurgling growl dripping past a battalion of dagger teeth on each breath. The air hit America's face, warm and raw, and he didn't dare move a muscle even though his head spun and morphed the single lion into three.

England looked down at him for a moment, rubbing at his wrist; the unicorn had her head on his shoulder, regarding America with her inscrutable equine eyes, a wise yet uninterested peripheral gaze beneath her downward-slanting lashes.

"I told you that you can't fight this," England said flatly, absently scratching the underside of her rounded jowl as he spoke. "Though that was uncalled for, I feel."

He gave a long stroke down the center of the lion's back and the beast obediently stepped off, sinking to his haunches and allowing America to sit up, though his piercing gold eyes still actively tracked the bobbing pulse of America's jugular.

"So what?" America said quietly, rubbing at the back of his head as he stared at the ground between his splayed legs. "You're just gonna run off? You're gonna walk away and leave me standing here?"

"Don't," England cut in, looking away as well. "I wish it didn't have to be like this."

"It doesn't!" America insisted, volume increasing, fists pummeling the ground to give emphasis. He knew it was the classic position of a childish tantrum on the ground but the situation was so unfair, so far out of his reach and over his head; there was nothing left for it but to fall into the old, useless mien.

(Though he had done it before, countless times, as a child; clinging to England and wailing at him not to leave. It hadn't worked then, either.)

"Yes, it does." England looked briefly at the shuddering house before stepping forward and extending his arm. "And I'm running out of time."

Wary of the creatures but a few paces away, America accepted England's hand and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet, not letting go of his hand when he was standing.

England tugged. America tightened.

"America, don't." England's voice came out raw now, choked, close to breaking. "Please don't. This is hard enough as it is."

"I'm not gonna let you go anywhere." America pulled England against him, wrapping his arms tightly around his back.

"America—" England put his hands against America's chest in a weak bid to push him away.

America clung to him, folding himself around him, burying his face in his shoulder.

"I'm not gonna let you go," he said again in a low voice, bordering on threat. "Take me with you, at least, if there's no avoiding it."

"I can't," England replied quietly. "You need to stay here."

"Why? So I can be you? So we're not all deprived of Shakespeare and Queen Victoria?"

"Yes," England sighed. "And also… so that you'll be safe."

"Leaving me alone in a war is not my idea of 'safe'!" America spat the word derisively, as if it were dirty. "And besides, I'm not a child! I don't need you to keep me safe—"

"If you're not a child then don't cling to me like one."

"You're being unfair. I'm doing this because you are the one acting like a selfish brat." The lump rising in America's throat, even though he fiercely willed it down, ached as he swallowed. "Everything… everything was all fine fifteen minutes ago and suddenly you're saying that you're going to disappear and never come back?" He couldn't help it even though it made him feel like an idiot; the first few hot tears came wet and fast on his cheeks and he squeezed his eyes shut to stop them. "How do you expect me to react to that?"

"I know it isn't fair of me," England whispered close to his ear, almost managing to sound lulling if only the words themselves weren't made of crystalline splinters barbing their way to America's heart, "but you need to take this responsibility. I'm counting on you to stand with France and Canada against Germany; I'm trusting you with my history." And then, even gentler still, "I haven't any use for your tears."

"Well, they're all I've got to give you," America choked, simultaneously tightening and shrinking.

"Sshhh." England pushed America back from him and wiped at his face with the pads of his thumbs. "None of that, love. Let's not have it like that other goodbye – with one of us in tears."

"Ha." America looked away. "Is this your idea of revenge for back then?"

England shook his head and put his hand to America's cheek.

"As if I'd still be seeking revenge over something so trivial," he said gently.

America looked at him again.

"Is it trivial?" he asked.

"Of course it is," England replied, "if we're allies now."

He took hold of America's lapel and pulled him into a kiss; America tightened his grasp about England's back, the leather of his new bomber jacket creaking thickly as he wrapped his arms around him. It was long, deep, with England trying to shape his goodbye by it; America hesitated, caught between yielding to the passion and rejecting the finality inherent in it. Instead he tried to lengthen it, make the kiss extend past the deadline tearing them apart. He calmed himself enough to breathe through his nose and move his head to keep their mouths together whenever he felt that England might be about to pull away. At this, they were on the brink – it wasn't over until they parted. America would be willing to give up all of his own history and England's inheritance, too, in place of this moment, stretched forever across the frame of time so that it never began and never ended and there were never any goodbyes where one of them cried.

England took him by surprise, twisted free and pulled back. His eyes were wet but his face wasn't.

"I love you," he said; his voice was pleading, promising, as he stepped away.

"I love you too," America said desperately, trying to reach for him again—

He stumbled and almost fell, tripping as something tightened painfully about his legs when he attempted to take a step forward.

"I'm sorry," England said quietly of the rosebushes, thickly lengthened and multiplied across the lawn to have wrapped their coiled stems about his legs to still him.

He hadn't noticed. England had distracted him.

"I know you too well, America," England went on sadly. "You'll only follow me, no matter what I say."

"Let me go!" America tried to grab at the cords crawling and swirling higher to his waist and chest, dragging their thorns across his body, scratching lightly when he was still, biting in deeply when he struggled. He withdrew his hand with a sharp hiss of pain, turning them up to see the bright bloom of blood across his palm to match the incarnadine bloom of the flowers. "England, stop! These things hurt!" His wrists were trussed before him, bound by several thorny circlets, so that he stood like a prisoner in the docks, unable to take a step for the confines of England's red roses.

"But what else will bind you but the bloom that we share as our national flower?" England pressed his hands to his lion and unicorn, bidding them to turn with him, to escort him towards the house. "They'll rot and break when I'm gone, so don't worry."

He paused briefly, as though debating looking back at America over his shoulder. He didn't.

"I'm sorry it has to be like this," he said somewhat stiffly. "Goodbye, America."

He was beginning to walk away. America watched him for a long, silent moment, desperately and helplessly unable to stop him. He couldn't move. The tears stung at his eyes again and he tried to blink them away. He couldn't even bring himself to try and manipulate a response from England by whining. He wanted to scream at him, stop him with his voice by pleading, by begging, by sobbing, but it all stuck in his throat like jigsaw pieces that wouldn't fit together to be anything coherent; despair had its cold hand tight around his viscera, stifling absolutely everything.

All he could do was watch him leave.

---

His breath clouded before him; stepping back once, twice, heel-to-toe with the snow crunching beneath his boots. The wind tore at his thick coat and scraped his hair back from his face. His red eyes gleamed as he watched, assessed, waited.

Denmark grinned at him. He was not amused in the slightest.

No other remedy than to get stuck in.

Prussia lunged through the snow, all lungs and legs and limbs, all brilliant, all blazing; he burned in spite of the icy wind that needled at him with every motion, with every breath. Dirty work though it may have been, he wanted this (the dirtier, the bloodier, the better). He wanted to kill.

Denmark swung at him, roaring low while his axehead whistled high, and Prussia, at the last awkward moment, had to feint and duck into a roll in order to avoid having his head lopped off by the hungry crescent of metal. He tumbled up with an angry exhale, snow spiraling off him like sparks, and slid and spread to regain his footing. Denmark spun, his hair following like pale flames, and was swinging again, driving the momentum behind the liquescent attack. The blade flashed like a jewel, a deadly spinning circle of hardened steel, and the motion was defensive and offensive all at once. Denmark was a meat grinder – and again Prussia had to leap in an ungainly sprawl to keep the cutting edge from finding flesh. Slamming to the icy ground, he locked his arm against it and used his elbow as a fulcrum to sweep his legs under Denmark. The Dane stumbled but didn't fall, using the long handle of his axe to balance his stagger and keep himself up with a muttered string of cursewords in his own language. It was ungainly, however, and enough to break his perpetual motion.

It was the only opening Prussia needed; he pulled his legs into a crouch before launching himself up with a jaw-shattering uppercut. Denmark grunted in pain as his head was snapped back with a sickening crack. He stumbled again and lost his hat, spitting blood into the snow; but the concussive hit didn't slow him much beyond that. He twisted, shunted, so that the butt of the axe handle slammed into Prussia's gut, knocking him back. Though the move was instinctual, the force behind it was pure, trained precision.

Caught off-guard or not, Denmark was dangerous.

Prussia staggered back, coughing, arm protectively clutching his stomach; with his other, he fumbled more clumsily than he would have liked for his handgun. Denmark was moving again, the axehead's silver crescent rising like the moon, and Prussia whipped his left arm up and squeezed off a misaimed shot. Denmark easily deflected it with the wide head of his weapon, the cheap bullet denting and bouncing off uselessly as though it was a pea. Denmark was warier now, though, his clear eyes on the weapon. He made no attempt to charge again, instead passing the axe from one hand to the other, distractedly back and forth like a pendulum. Prussia knew it was useless to shoot him unless it was point-blank but held the gun level all the same to keep some distance between them until he could get his breath back. He could taste blood pooling in his mouth under his tongue, iron blended with the odor of fresh gun smoke. It was like swallowing fire, all his throat alight, and it made Prussia laugh even with his dented diaphragm still straining to pull in frigid air.

Because, despite the bone-soldering cold and the blood-bright injuries, Prussia couldn't think of anywhere else in the world he wanted to be besides that very hill in the tundra wasteland of the far North. Battle-lust sang a homicidal and merry tune in his blood and adrenaline hummed along in harmony. His entire body was ablaze with delight because the pain and the cold and the wary glint in Denmark's crystalline eyes were all proof of his existence. Proof that he could still fight, that he could still hurt, that he could still win.

Complete verification that things were going to be different.

And Russia, lovely Russia, had been right earlier. Their blood was warm.

It pebbled the snow with pinpoints of color, baptizing their battleground with pain. All their blood. There was a war and he was fighting in it. This was enough.

Still entertaining the snarling grin stretched viciously over his bloodied teeth, Prussia leaned forward and charged again, skimming over the snow like deadly quicksilver. Denmark was ready for him and raised his axe in an over-head swing, intending to split Prussia's skull before he reached him; throwing his entire weight into the down stroke of the eager edge.

Prussia saw it, knew without needing to think that it would be all over if it hit him, at least for long enough to let Denmark win, and yet he continued with his reckless rush – even more excited for the doom quite literally hanging over him.

It was barely a hair's breadth from him when he realized properly that it was about to cleave his skull in half—

And then he slipped.

He never would have made it to Denmark before the axe split him in two, no matter how fast he thought he was – but Prussia didn't mind taking credit for the fact that Denmark's axe was now lodged a good foot into the rock-hard ground and that he couldn't pull it out as easily as it had slammed in.

Prussia stood again, grinning wickedly as he watched Denmark strain futilely to retrieve his weapon. He let him struggle for a second more before striding forward, shining boots crunching on the very thing that had saved him. Denmark saw him move and left off the stubborn handle to raise his fists but Prussia was faster now that there wasn't metal-death orbiting Denmark's center. He sprang forward, ducking under Denmark's defense, and kicked him brutally in the side. The Nordic country bent around the blow and fell with a harsh bark of pain, landing on his back with all the breath knocked out of him; Prussia noticed for the first time that his adversary was bleeding, the bright smear standing out beautifully against his pale skin and even paler snow framing his face.

None of this – the sadistic artistry of Denmark's bloodied visage – stopped Prussia from leaping onto him, pinning his arms with his sharp knees. Denmark snarled and twisted like an ensnared animal; he was almost strong enough to push Prussia off him with nothing but brute berserker brawns.

Almost.

Despite being smaller than Denmark, Prussia had gravity on his side and a hardworking knowledge of anatomical weak points. His knees ground against the ball joint of Denmark's shoulder, which he knew was undoubtedly excruciating even if they were both sitting perfectly still. The fact that Denmark was struggling violently to pitch Prussia from his painful perch despite the extra agony he was no doubt inflicting on himself told Prussia a more drastic prompt was necessary.

"Hey, settle down – I've beaten you," Prussia cackled; despite his words, he actually enjoyed the way Denmark was squirming, hoped he would continue to struggle, give him an excuse to get messy.

"Says who? I can still fight, fucker!" Denmark snarled in German, shoulder grinding in its captive socket as he thrashed.

"Says who?" Prussia parroted back, dark delight glittering on the undertone as he pressed the cold barrel of his gun against the edge of Denmark's collar bone.

The threat stilled him for an instant before the Dane growled and shifted again, clearly thinking to call Prussia's bluff. Prussia's cruel grin instantly stretched until it was downright vicious and he pulled the trigger point-blank. He felt the shot tear through Denmark, a reaction he briefly experienced in stereo as the gun bucked against his hand and Denmark simultaneously bucked against his body. The noise was also echoed from two sources, though Denmark's howl of pain far outlasted the deafening crack of the gunshot.

Denmark continued to writhe, this time due to star-colliding pain rather than defiance, and the snow around them quickly slipped on a sickly sherbet color. Prussia laughed again, more triumphant this time, nosing the barrel of the gun against the entry wound just to rub it in, quite literally. Denmark jerked beneath him as if he were being electrocuted, muscles spasming unchecked as trauma quickly drained his faculties of self-control.

As the nation writhed and cursed breathlessly beneath him, Prussia finally settled his own singularly-focused aggression enough to notice the scuffle that had been dragging distractingly in his periphery the entire time. Russia, on the other end of the hill's spine, was fighting off Sweden and Finland, who had formed a tag team against him. They were smaller but faster and Prussia saw with mingled surprise and smug superiority that Russia was actually taking damage. However, the moment the thought of getting up to help him idly crossed Prussia's mind, Russia delivered a kick to Finland, landing him several feet away before he knocked Sweden down completely and pinned him, knees digging painfully over his arms in a move mirroring Prussia's current position. However, instead of a firearm to bloody him up, Russia simply relied on his own arm (though both methods provided much the same result). Russia viciously punched him, two, three times, and then his hands were around his throat.

Finland had tottered back to his feet by this point, letting out a high-pitched battle cry as he rushed forward to help his downed ally. Prussia grinned again and leveled his still-warm gun, shooting Finland from behind. The bullet burst into his leg, another crimson shower to arc prettily on the white, and he crumpled in the snow with a surprised shriek of pain. Sweden visibly struggled at the sound, trying to get past Russia's choking grip. He couldn't.

"Heh, it's cute how they try so hard," Prussia murmured. He hadn't been addressing Denmark but the Dane nonetheless took it upon himself to answer despite the way his words half-gurgled on pain.

"Shooting him... from behind," he wheezed in disgust. "Do you have no honor?"

Prussia turned slowly to affix a cold and unamused stare upon Denmark.

"Of course I have honor. But I also know its limits; I know exactly how far it can carry a country and exactly where it dumps you." Prussia let a palliative smirk tug the corner of his mouth when he saw Denmark's pain-riddled confusion. "And if I'm going to get my hands dirty anyway, I'll take victory over honor. It's an easy enough decision for me when it's about the only choice I'll have."

Several yards away, Russia was getting up and Sweden was staying down. Maybe Russia had throttled him unconscious, maybe he was dead; Prussia didn't really care. He too got up, knowing full-well Denmark was harmless at this point, and he strode over to meet Russia halfway.

They were both covered in blood, some their own, some their enemies', and both were beaming with their own unique brand of smugness; Prussia's grin full of sharp gloating teeth, Russia's smile hooded with deadly demure.

Prussia was tall but Russia was taller; his large arm went around the small of Prussia's back to help tilt him, lift him, as they kissed. Russia's scarf whipped about them. Prussia exhaled through his nose and felt it mist against their cheeks. Somebody's lip was bleeding and it was difficult to tell whose. Maybe both. Russia wasn't a good kisser; he suffocated – but he also yearned. He held Prussia – battle-scarred, warlike, condemned Prussia – so gently that it made his large rough hands alien, a backwards and upside-down sun to a bloodstained, broken world. The kiss tasted of iron, of machinery, of war.

Then it stopped and they pulled apart. Prussia spat out some blood and Russia spoke first.

"Shall we fetch the others, then?"

"Hold your horses," Prussia grumbled. "Let's dump these three in Denmark's house and use his telephone to call West. I'll bet he's having fucking kittens over whether or not we got the job done."

Russia smiled idly.

"Why should he doubt us?"

Prussia snorted.

"Doesn't trust us."

"Even you?" Russia tilted his head. "After all you have done for him?"

"Yeah," Prussia said thoughtfully, "he wasn't as grateful as I thought he'd be…"

Russia put a hand on Prussia's shoulder.

"I think you have done a good thing, comrade."

Prussia finally put his gun back in its holster and absently looked westward. Towards Norway. Towards Iceland. Towards Britain and France and the Atlantic.

Towards the war.

"Yes," he said flatly, "I think I have, too."

---

"Is this necessary?" Austria asked irritably. He made a show of daintily tapping off his spoon against the rim of his teacup and carefully putting it on the patterned saucer; distancing himself, as it were, from the uncultured, uncouth individuals he found himself surrounded by. "I mean, really, Germany, I've been with you since 1938 and the annexation was something that I agreed to—"

"Agreed with," Hungary pointed out with a frown, putting a hand to his arm. "They're not quite the same thing."

"Well, yes," Austria sighed. "No matter," he replied in concession; annoyed less by the soft rebuke and more by the fact that she was right.

Again.

He gave a dismissive wave of his hand and sipped delicately at his tea; only England was more meticulous about it but at least England was genuinely rapt about the thing. Here, Germany merely got the impression that Austria was trying to intentionally irritate him with the genteel display. He said nothing, however, for Austria could be a thorn in the side (quite deliberately) when the mood took him; he glanced obliquely at Italy, who, at his side, was equally and uncharacteristically silent.

Well, he always had been rather afraid of Austria (though Germany couldn't fathom why).

"What is this, then?" Austria inquired shrewdly a moment later, squinting cautiously at Germany over the rims of his glasses. "A call to arms? A disciplinary meeting?"

The needling tone automatically knitted Germany's eyebrows into a frown and he had to make a conscious effort to smooth out the irritation. He knew Austria was being intentionally obtuse; Germany was determined not to rise to the insolent bait dangling in his demands that Austria tried to pass as thinly-masked query.

"Neither," he began tersely, "and if you would just—"

"Never mind that," Hungary cut in coolly. She gave a haughty toss of her head, her brown hair bouncing about her shoulders; unlike Austria, she was in military uniform and sat with her arms folded and one leg crossed over the other, eyeing Germany rather coldly from their side of the table. "Where's that idiotic brother of yours?"

Italy perked up, looking at her.

"Romano?" he asked innocently.

Germany coughed into his fist.

"She means—"

"I mean Prussia, sweetie," Hungary said, briefly turning her prettiest smile on Italy. "Dear Germany's idiotic brother. Underneath all the abuse and foul language, Italy, I've always thought that yours is rather a darling." She scowled. "Which is more than I can say for Germany's."

Austria gave a sage nod, punctuating it with a little 'hmm' of agreement. Germany rubbed at his temples; they were giving him a headache already. Self-righteous, the pair of them. Oh, he liked Austria and Hungary as much as any man liked his neighbors, they had been good allies to him from time to time and they were, he supposed, both quite nice in their own way, but…

Well. The Great War. These two had started it and Germany had gotten the blame; and now they sat back and shook their heads at him as if to say "We told you so", perched on their pompous presumptions, sipping English tea and making demands. He cleared his throat again, although the noise came out sounding more like a cautionary growl.

"As I was saying," he tried again, looking warningly between Austria and Hungary, "Prussia and Russia are running… a small errand on behalf of our agenda. This…" He gestured now to the four of them. "This is merely a little gathering to bring the both of you up to speed. It's not a call to arms, necessarily, so you needn't worry about getting your cravat dirty just yet, Austria."

Austria gave a snort, averting his gaze, nose tipped up just enough to be disdainful but not quite disrespectful.

"We took Poland's house!" Italy piped up cheerfully. "Germany was so strong and brave! Poland was kind of scary and shouty but Germany kept him in line!"

Hungary arched an eyebrow and leaned back in her chair.

"That sounds like a call to arms to me," she said flatly. "Didn't France and England distinctly say that they would declare war on you if you invaded Poland's house?"

"I don't want to go to war with England," Italy moped. "I'm scared of him."

"I didn't want to go to war with England either," Germany replied, his voice taut. "I tried to talk him out of interfering, even offering to let him keep his imperial assets in return for his neutrality, but he was adamant that he was not interested in being anything other than antagonistic towards us." His fists clenched. "He and France want a war."

"Didn't his boss allow you to keep what you took of Czechoslovakia's lands?" Hungary pointed out. She put her hand on Austria's shoulder. "And neither he nor his boss said anything last year when you annexed Austria."

"We approached the matter as a means of uniting German-speaking peoples," Germany answered; he turned to Austria. "You, of course, speak a dialect of German, so the matter of annexation was untouched by England and France. Czechoslovakia was… a little more complicated. All I took of her lands were what was originally mine before the end of the Great War – areas full of German-speakers. France and England had the areas taken from me and repartitioned into Czechoslovakia's territory at Versailles. I was merely taking back what was already mine, and my boss…" Germany hesitated suddenly. He gave a shake of his head. "…Ah, well… that was… how he rallied the people behind the National Socialist call for expansion. We have stolen nothing."

"Except Poland's house," Austria said curtly.

"Much of the land which Poland's house now takes up was, as you know, also once mine and my brother's. Prussia and I were geographically severed entirely by the expansion of Poland's territory after Versailles. With that said, it was easy for us to take his house with a two-pronged attack. Italy and I entered from the west and Prussia and Russia came in from the east."

Hungary looked pointedly at Italy.

"Well, I see that you have allied yourself very firmly with Germany," she observed dryly; Italy gave a fierce nod and moved his chair closer to Germany's as visible confirmation. "Fine. What about Romano?"

"I don't know," Italy admitted. "He is with Big Brother Spain. They are both Fascist like me but I think that they are neutral at the moment."

"And what of Portugal?" Hungary pressed, looking back to Germany, probing for weaknesses. "He's the one to watch. He's been allied with England for centuries."

"Neutral for now, as far as I know," Germany said, "but he can be blockaded if need be. Spain's arm can be easily twisted if it comes down to it."

"Well, either that or you could chase both Portugal and France to the British mainland and bomb the three of them in one go," Hungary murmured thoughtfully, looking up at the ceiling. She pressed her hands together. "Belgium?"

"She might have learnt her lesson from last time but I'm prepared to go through her house again to get to France if I need to."

Hungary's eyes gleamed as the largest chink loomed.

"And America?"

Austria gave a bored sigh, cutting the interrogation off.

"Is this necessary?" he asked, draining his tea.

"No, she's right," Germany said, straightening. "We were defeated last time by being careless, by not taking these things into account. The last thing I expected last time was the intervention of some nations – Australia, for example, and Canada and America."

"Well, you did torpedo America's civilian cruise liner," Austria pointed out.

"I torpedoed England's civilian cruise liner," Germany snapped. "It just happened to have some American passengers on it. Besides, England was lying when he said it didn't have weapons on it. It did have weapons on it – an entire underbelly of them, the little bastard."

"Alright, ladies, settle down," Hungary cut in. "Let's not get bogged down with the politics of the past. I just want to know where we stand concerning the American continent. Canada may prove to be a problem, too, of course – but America is very, very powerful, or has the potential to be, at least." She looked again at Germany very pointedly. "I merely inquire if we are ready to play with that kind of fire."

"If all goes to plan in Europe," Germany replied, "and Japan finishes the machine on schedule, yes, we will be more than ready."

"Those are two very big 'ifs'," Austria said morosely, examining the tea leaves left in his cup.

"It was never going to be anything other than a gamble," Germany replied. "Those who stand against us are formidable – the victors, even, the last time around. We must stand together in order to succeed."

"Ah, yes," Austria mused, finally setting his cup down as his eyes took on a sudden zealous glint. "The creeds of Nazism, of Fascism – strong in our union, in our shared blood, language, future. We must go forth and forge our destiny."

Italy felt for Germany's hand and clutched at it, passionate and hot-blooded, roused by the words; Germany, however, met Austria's gaze across the table.

"The foundation of the Third Reich and the belief of the Führer," he said. "How fitting that you would put it into words, Austria."

"Mm." Austria gave a sudden wry smile, resting his chin on one hand as he become keenly more interested than he had been for the entire meeting thus far. "On that note, I've been meaning to ask, Germany." He nodded towards Germany's uniform – at his upper right arm. "Where's your swastika?"

---

"I wish you wouldn't treat this like a game," Germany said icily, pulling at Prussia's hands; they covered his eyes firmly, however, as his brother urged him steadily onwards with little bumps from his knees.

"But it is a game," Prussia replied dryly. "And a surprise, of course."

Germany snorted, resisting the urge to let his hands hover in front of him to feel his way.

"I doubt I'll like it."

Prussia gave a wry, unseen smile.

"I doubt you will," he agreed. "But you will thank me. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. But one day you will thank me."

Germany stalled suddenly, hesitating, too cautious to take another step; Prussia dug insistently at the small of his back.

"Come on, West, don't be such a fucking coward," he hissed in his ear.

"Is it cowardly of me to mistrust you?" Germany bit out. "God knows you've not done a useful thing for me since before the Great War—"

"To hell with your wars, you stupid prick," Prussia snapped. "You'll ruin us before you resurrect us with the attitude you've got right now."

"It is not simply my own attitude," Germany replied coldly. "Do not forget that the whole of the nation is behind me – an entire political party founded on the promise of our return to greatness. How can I help it when it is in the cheers and salutes of my people?"

"It's not your people I have a problem with," Prussia replied lightly.

"Me, then?"

Prussia shook his head; Germany could feel it rather than see it.

"Try again," he said; and he kicked open the doors, taking with a flourish his hand from Germany's blue eyes.

Germany blinked as the sudden assault of light left him momentarily blinded, blurs swimming into crystalline focus as the surprise slowly raked itself over his senses. He was utterly speechless, all thought and breath leaving him a silent witness to the horror slowly, painfully tattooing itself across his body.

Germany tried to swallow, found he couldn't as his blood thickened with repulsion, nausea, confusion, leaving him moving in slow motion.

"Wh… what…?" It was the only thing he could articulate, finally tearing his eyes away to see if perhaps he was imagining it, hoping to see that his horror was not mirrored on Prussia's face. However, his brother's visage held neither revulsion nor reassurance; rather, he looked fiercely pleased with himself, his crimson eyes gleaming like blazing coals in his pale face.

The look of vicious pride was nearly as shocking as the surprise itself, enough to jar Germany's voice back into compliance.

"Did… did you do this?"

"Gleefully," Prussia answered, grinning.

"I…"

Germany looked back at the room – at the mess, what was left of the main office of the Braunes Haus. It was in ruins, the furniture overturned and broken, splinters scattering the floor in an ugly mockery of parade confetti. The drapery, thick red velvet, had been torn down; and the flags, boldly crimson and black to represent blood and soil, hung in tatters, deliberately and delicately slashed out to deface the stark swastikas at their hearts. The eagle, perched proudly atop another encircled swastika, which had once sat at the center of the drapery-and-flag display had been shattered irreparably, Germany finding a part of wreath so far-flung as to be near the toe of his boot. And over everything, wind whistling through a broken window pane lifted all manner of paper, plans and maps and battle strategies, and showered them about the room like scheming snowflakes.

The wreckage, however, was not the crowning glory of Prussia's "gift"; this was the further red which pooled darkly on the floor, fast congealing, drying stickily on the brown uniforms from which the Nazi headquarters in Munich took its name. How many bodies (he could barely bring himself to count them)? Six, seven...

He put his hand to his mouth, stepping backwards involuntarily. His palm was not enough to stay the shocked words which rasped out next:

"…You have killed my Führer."

"Mercy killing," Prussia said blandly, folding his arms. "Mercy on you, that is." He paused, casting his own gaze over the room; his smile broadened in satisfaction. "…And mercy on me. Now he cannot use either of us as an excuse." Glancing sidelong at his brother, he went on; "You don't need him – you don't need his words to drug you. Believe me, this regime is disastrous. It will not end well for us if you pursue solely the Führer's doctrine. By all means, make us great again – crown the Third Reich with German victory, take all of Europe if that is what you want. But trust me on this."

Germany simply stared at him.

"I thought... you were on my side," he said quietly. It was all he could muster, letting the weak half-accusation bounce about the desecrated room, echoing uselessly off the pooling human pitch as the shock of losing his leader left Germany completely numb.

Prussia unfolded his arms and stepped towards his brother, his footsteps echoing in the wake of the words. He reached up and straightened the Iron Cross at Germany's collar before touching his own, his fingers closing around it.

He met Germany's still-wide eyes.

"I am on your side, West," he replied.

---

England was gone and the street empty.

The world was shrinking, edges crinkling to black, sucking the very color from the air and leaving America swimming through monochromatic tunnel vision. He wasn't sure if the blinders arose due to the blood roaring in his head or if the land was truly reacting to the loss of its symbol, the gyre pin for reality. Regardless, there was only one goal, one thought, one direction screaming through him and the sudden limit on his vision simply verified what he knew he already had to do.

There was no question about it, really. England had told him not to pursue and had given some kind of cryptic, half-assed reason why he shouldn't. He had tried to keep him out here by force.

Naturally, America was going to follow him; absolutely no question about it. The strange hard-boiled effect of the air around him only augmented his determination.

America pulled and heaved at the roses wrapped about his wrists, thrashing with single-minded panic as England burrowed further away from him. His muscles burned and fizzled with lactic acid from the effort and the thick stems tensed in response – as if they were living things, anaconda coils barbed with inch-long thorns. They stretched when he yanked but offered no further give; he was strong, yes, but so were they, and the thorns, too, shredded his skin, scraped audibly at the fur and leather of his jacket. His hands stung and bled in a patch-work of pulsing puncture wounds as he wrestled them free, cursing under his breath, a ragged gash given to the back of his right hand to mark its reluctant escape.

Here, however, they suddenly began to weaken, reaching their half-life and giving up on their hold on him as if they no longer felt him worth their holding prisoner; though America felt that this wasn't something to rejoice in. It could only mean that England's command over them had been brought up short – and he wasn't exactly sure he wanted to know the reason why. Scrambling free, tripping a bit in his haste and tearing a few more gashes down his legs from the last tenacious tendrils, America could right himself only by breaking into a run; he made a straight sprint for the house, the sight of the thing visibly drowning before him only making him more determined still to break into the protective shell of it that England had retreated into like some precious pearl.

Half of the house was already below street level, meaning that the front door was definitely out of bounds – he took note of it as he carefully picked his way across uprooted cobbles and paving slabs, turning his attention upwards to the pitched gable as he leapt lightly onto the nearest of the massive roots for better footing. Reaching for the nearest vein – the thickness of a generously-sized branch beneath his hand – he started to pull himself up, his gaze fixated very determinedly on the lit window six feet or so above him. He clambered higher, taking footholds and handles wherever he found them, wondering how the hell England had gotten in – he hadn't seen him squirreling it up the fucking house like this, that was for sure—

He slipped and lost his footing, grabbing in a panic at a handful of foliage and stopping himself with a terrified gasp; there went his overseas hat, fluttering back to Earth like a camel-colored autumn leaf. He pushed up his slipping glasses, which he had almost lost as well, and heaved himself up again, dragging his body the final foot or two and catching onto the jut of the windowsill. He sat on the curve of the root, one foot braced against it and the other on the windowsill, as he appraised the window itself.

The glass had a single crack splitting diagonally straight across it like a lone, stationary strand of spider silk, although the wooden frame was beginning to creak under the pressure of the forceful compression. America felt that he didn't have time to sit here, nonetheless, and wait for the window to give in by itself. He pressed his palm against his fist to double the force of the blow and used the momentum of his entire torso to slam his elbow against the brittle pane, smashing it inwards with one sharp motion. He scrambled onto the sill, took hold of the top of the windowframe and swung into the room feet-first, landing non-too-gracefully on dark red carpet that he knew well.

This was the bedroom. The light was on, swinging back and forth so that the circular glow roved across the walls and floor, flickering every now and then as the damage to the house toyed with the electricity. The floor was slanting downwards, angled to the left, and the bed and all the other furniture had slid towards that wall, cluttering like a dam. The dresser was on its side and the mirror had smashed, the scattered pieces glinting on the carpet beneath the moving light; smaller roots from the tree had slipped beneath the joinings in the wallpaper and were spreading across the wall below it, pushing upwards against it like veins beneath hot skin. The sickening slither of them made America's flesh crawl as he made his way across the tilted floor, his hand and side pressed by gravity against the thick bough that weaved across the floor like a giant snake, swallowing up the room.

The bedroom. England's bedroom. It wasn't all that special to look at. The wallpaper was plain, the furniture was nice but not terribly unique, the bed was comfortable but old; the things in it, too, the possessions – they were replaceable enough. Suits, mostly; shoes, combs, underwear, ties, cufflinks, little odds and ends, not just England's but America's, too. Material possessions that were bothersome to lose but not heartbreaking. No, it wasn't that physical loss that made his heart ache when he saw the ruin.

It was that this room was the circlet of their intimacy (here, at least, in England's home). The bed was their bower; and to them, then, the vessel of their private world. Here was their haven from prying eyes, from politics, from foreign policies. It wasn't about war or peace, about language or culture or history. Here, tiny details designed by their odd domesticity were instead at the core of their world; a kiss, getting dressed whilst making idle conversation about the weather, inquiring if the other had seen a lost tie clip, lovemaking, waking up in each other's arms, snuggling up with tea in bed on a cold rainy morning. Every intricacy was an escape.

It really was just a room, he supposed; it really was just a bed. It was memory, existence, that had etched those meanings into these walls, into the fixtures. Laid to waste against the wall, he could clearly see that the bed was no more than any other bed. It was history that made it hurt; that made it hard to let go.

The ceiling shook, creaked, and a fine shower of plaster came loose, scattering across the floor like sickly, powdery snow; the light gave a final shudder and went out as America panicked and scrambled the last few feet towards the bedroom door. The doorframe was collapsing, almost entirely blocked by the root as it descended from the bedroom and out into the hallway; another had slithered across the top of the crushed frame, leaving only a small, difficult, obviously-tight-fucking-squeeze of a gap for him to get through. He planted his hands against the top root and pushed it at with all of his strength, trying to make the opening bigger, but it budged barely a centimeter or so before it was like shoving against concrete, for all the good it did. The room shuddered again, a crack splitting the ceiling like a bolt of lightning so that the lampshade fell and swung by its wires like a hanged man, and America knew it was either get crushed trying to get through the gap or get crushed standing here wringing his hands about it.

He put his hands on the bough and hoisted himself up, squirming through the awkward triangle-gap whilst praying to every deity he could think of (and a few he made up on the spot) that he didn't get wedged and then squashed like a bug when the doorframe inevitably gave out. His language became considerably more profane when he did jam about the waist, the practically-nothing jut of his hips having none of it so that, after angrily kicking a bit, he had to actually stop and rethink the angle at which he was trying to slither through the positively un-human-shaped opening. During this brief pause, at which he slumped over the contour of the bough like a limp sock on a washing line, he found himself quite glad that the object of his search (England) was not in the immediate vicinity, knowing that said object of said search (England) would crow at him for having gotten his fat arse stuck – which may or may not have been the case but was rude nonetheless and he felt indignant about the remark even though England hadn't actually made it. It made him quite determined to prove that he wasn't stuck, thanks all the same for the concern, and after a bit more quasi-mathematical finagling, he managed to twist his hips marginally the other way so that the bitch of a gap agreed marginally more with him not being fucking triangular in shape. He wriggled loose victoriously and landed flat on his face in the hall.

There sounded the telltale clatter; he pushed onto his hands and knees with a groan and began to grope for his glasses, wishing that it wasn't so dark and that he wasn't so short-sighted. From here, without them, he could see a blur of light further down the hallway but couldn't make out what it was. He fumbled in his uniform jacket pocket for his lighter as he squinted at the feathery flare of light, his thumb finding it, cold and smooth, nestled deep in the lining with a few stray coins. Pulling it out, he snapped it open and lit it, the catching spark bright like a lodestar in the dark landing and the flame itself boldly yellow, a tiny sun in his hand. His glasses glinted in the light a foot or so away and he snatched them up gratefully, jamming them back on as he stood with the lighter held out before him.

"England?" he called, his voice bouncing off the sliding walls and sinking ceilings. Again, the eerie, unnatural silence of the demolition impressed itself upon him; even his own voice seemed muted, as though shouting against dusty velvet.

No answer. Again. He looked to the light with his vision cleared; it was coming from under the door at the end of the hall, streaming through any gap that it could as though to beckon him forward. He flipped off his Zippo and pocketed it, starting down the hall very carefully.

"England!" A second time, more impatiently, he tried the name, once again receiving nothing for his pains. "ENGLAND!"

Huh. Well, the lion and unicorn had appeared, meaning that this whole thing was probably pretty formal. "England", after all, wasn't England's official name as a nation. It was more of an informal nickname, proper and accurate enough for it to not be too familiar whilst remaining far less of a mouthful than his more certified title – which, at nine words (and still eight if you dropped the article), took the cake for being pretentious, America had always thought.

Not to mention that England actually had several names, which America (having had the whole list downloaded into him) now began to run through in a bid to reach him. He tried Britain, Great Britain, United Kingdom, UK, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; growing more desperate with British Empire, Albion and Angle-Land, all to no avail; before falling back on the human plea.

"Arthur?" he tried, pausing briefly at feeling the banister close by his hand. "Arthur!"

It sounded odd to his ear. He had never called England 'Arthur' in his life.

He stepped forwards again – just as the landing gave a sudden violent tilt. The roof pulled sharply inwards, so close that one of the splintered rafters almost touched his head as he stumbled where the stairs had been mere moments ago. Naturally, they were no longer there to break his fall and he fell backwards, saving himself by grabbing again at the banister and clinging to it, chest heaving and feet dangling, as the quivering house stilled once more.

Swinging in oblivion with no foothold, the wrecked banister creaking in protest at his extra weight on its twisted frame, America was suddenly struck with the very novel notion that he hadn't entirely thought this rescue mission through. Noble and heroic as it was – and it was, very much so, he felt – he was probably going to be killed carrying it out.

Something in the banister broke and the whole thing lurched a foot or so lower, America flailing on it, clinging harder as he squinted about in the darkness for something sturdier to climb onto whilst simultaneously being unable to entertain any thought other than a mantra of I'm going to die I'm going to die I'm going to die—

There was a flash and a clashing of metal as the banister shuddered again and a cold, hard hand snatched America about his wrist and pulled him upwards just as the whole thing broke away from the landing and went crashing down the hole where the stairs had once been. Panting, his feet gratefully touching solid floor again, America pulled out his lighter again as his rescuer let go of his wrist, holding the flicker aloft to see by.

A man of about his own height stood before him, clad in a suit of armor which blushed a beautiful burnished gold beneath the lighter's glow. His hair, too, was a class of gold, darker and brassier than England's bright straw-shade, matching his short, well-trimmed beard. He did not look terribly unlike France, in fact, but for his eyes, which were the same distinctive, jealous green as England's. A gold band set at sparse intervals with deep-colored jewels flashed at his pale brow.

The man – whose name from England's borrowed experiences America sought desperately to unearth – frowned handsomely, looking America up and down.

"You are not whom we are expecting," he said in a low, deep voice. His accent was different to England's, more lyrical and lilting. "And yet you called me by name."

It clicked.

"…Arthur," America managed to say weakly. "You're… King Arthur."

Closing his eyes briefly, King Arthur gave a slow, sage nod.

"An attendant to my England on this, the final day of his choosing." His jade eyes opened again, appraising America. "You, sir, called to me – and called to England, too, by each of his names. If you are one of his servants, however, I cannot profess to know you. I find, also, that each of us is gathered but for one – for him we wait. You are not he."

"N-no, I'm… I'm, uh…" With "America" on the tip of his tongue, he nonetheless paused, thinking better of it. America. What was America to King Arthur, who had "existed" so many centuries before his birth?

However, he felt that he didn't have to lie, either.

"Alfred," he said. "My name is Alfred."

Arthur nodded; but looked him up and down once more.

"How strangely you are clad," he said. "And a historical figure, no less, who descends to join us. I am surprised."

"He… he means everything to me," America said desperately. "England, I mean. Please, if you know where he is, your majesty, take me to him."

Arthur gave a nod.

"Very well, if it pleases your majesty," he replied, turning on his heel; his richly red cloak swayed at his back. "Come. We are assembled. The presence of his last Anglo-Saxon king cannot hurt."

Still holding the lighter, America followed King Arthur across the shaking landing to the lit room; the doorframe was laced about with English roses, which slithered like serpents and twisted more tightly around the wood. He ducked beneath them after King Arthur, coming into the tiny storage room he had stood in with England only the afternoon before, admiring his collection of sentimental old trinkets. It was lit by a few old gaslamps, placed here and there about the floor, whilst everything remained untouched, even the royal coat of arms still swinging on the nail where America himself had hung it.

Ah, but here he nonetheless found himself in quite different company.

Snapping the lighter shut and slipping it back into his bomber jacket pocket, he glanced around; even with Arthur at his side, he still found himself at the moderation of three other figures, all of whom surveyed him with varying degrees of interest (and all with those same brilliant bottle-green eyes he long and intimately knew as England's). The nearest, sat on a nailed crate, he recognized immediately, having often seen him in the company of his own Uncle Sam; a portly man with white hair, a red velvet tailcoat and a black top hat, this was John Bull, the frontispiece of Britain in political cartoons or propaganda. Perched on the windowsill, knife in hand as he worked on an arrow shaft, was a spry, narrow man with fair hair, clad all in green but for a red feather stuck in his cap; with his image having been borrowed by his own film industry in the 1920s, America knew the fellow at once as Robin Hood. To the right, arranged majestically upon a chest, her Union Flag shield and spear glinting and her white robes folded and flowing just so, lounged the beauteous Britannia, again the counterpart to America's own Columbia. Her Roman helmet was the same color as the tawny beast which lay at her feet – the lion again, which stirred and rose on account of America, growling low and rumbling in his throat as he recognized the young nation as the pest from before.

"Does our lion not know you?" Arthur asked with interest, looking to America as he backed up a step from the creature. "How curious."

"Not only the lion; who is this fellow?" John Bull inquired haughtily. He squinted at America. "Hmm. He looks like Sam's boy, if you ask me." He gave a snort of a laugh. "How ironic of you to bring a Yankee into your court, Arthur."

"This is Alfred the Great," Arthur conceded mildly, not doing much to prevent the lion from backing America up against the doorframe regardless.

"King Alfred the Great?" Robin Hood asked lazily. He scoffed. "Why would King Alfred come amongst us?"

"Why indeed?" Bull agreed, his eyes gleaming at predator and prey as Arthur finally began to move his hand towards Excalibur. "Leave him, Arthur – let us see what comes of this."

The lion, having cornered America, sniffed at him, suddenly growing more cautious. The growling stopped and instead he inclined his great head towards one of America's hands, broad tongue flickering out to lap a long wet sand-paper swipe at the blood left from his battle with the rose thorns. America held his breath, hoping that the thing wasn't getting a taste of him and deciding whether or not he'd make a good meal.

Presently, however, the lion seemed to nod and drew back, returning to Britannia's side. Her white hand came to the lion's head, caressing him as he lay at her side again.

"He is of England's blood," she said, looking at America, "as we all are." She gave a nod of her own. "If you wish to attend, Alfred, then by all means join us."

America gave a shaky nod of thanks, glancing around; he rubbed his hand on his uniform trousers, grateful for England's borrowed blood, that it had forced the lion to recognize him (falsely) as one of Britain's stock.

"Where is he?" he asked. "Where's England?"

"He will come presently," Arthur replied.

"We wait for him," Robin added placidly, going back to his arrow. "And for George."

"Bloody George," Bull grumbled. "Always late." He was still regarding America rather suspiciously. "You there, boy."

"King Alfred the Great," Arthur corrected reprovingly. "You ought to address his majesty properly, Bull."

"Ah, th-there's no need for that, really," America said, waving his hand at Arthur. "Uh, your majesty, King Arthur, sir."

Arthur looked at him in bewilderment as Bull gave a fake, pronounced cough to draw America's attention back to him.

"It cannot have escaped your notice," Bull said archly, "that we assembled here are of a symbolic nature." He gestured first to himself, then to Britannia. "His propaganda and his spirit." Nodding towards Arthur and Robin, he added, "And his folklore heroes. St George is his sword and shield. None of us have any grounding in history. That is why we are here." His eyes narrowed. "And yet you, whether you are who you say you are or not, are unmistakably of his history, not of his word."

"Ah, yes," Robin agreed musically, standing. He canted his head to one side with a smile. "Look at his eyes. They are as blue as the sky."

"Does it matter so much?" America asked frostily. "Why should your goodbye be so exclusive?"

Britannia gave a slow, thoughtful nod.

"Why, indeed?" she said. She gestured to the floor next to her – one of the only empty spaces left in the tiny room but for the vacant centre. "Will you not make yourself comfortable, your majesty?" She looked reprovingly at Bull. "Really, Bull, you have no manners at all."

"But I have eyes," Bull replied coolly, folding his arms as America sat next to Britannia on the floorboards. "And I say that he really does look most awfully like Sam's brat."

"I do not care much for Sam, whoever he is," Robin said blandly. "Do stop talking about him."

Bull gave another irritable snort and pulled out a pocket watch on a gold chain from his yellow waistcoat to consult the time. The lion, having taken a sudden more amiable turn, nudged his head against America's arm; America patted absently at him, rubbing the animal deep in his mane behind the ears, which he seemed to enjoy. America glanced about at his silent, somber companions; he could barely hold his tongue amidst them, aching to ask all that they knew about what was happening to their nation. The room stank of waiting, hung heavily and humidly in the air, and he didn't know how they could all stand it so calmly.

He looked at Arthur, standing guard at the door with one hand stayed steadily on his sword. Mighty King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, his wise teacher Merlin and his beautiful queen Guinevere; England had lulled America to sleep once upon a time to tales about this noble king of legend, too wonderful to have a grain of truth to them, and yet here he stood before him, real flesh and blood, having simply stepped out of a storybook and onto the pages of reality.

He looked, too, at Robin Hood, whose tales also had been what England had so generously fed the appetite of a child's dreams – his adventures in Sherwood Forest with Maid Marian, Little John and Friar Tuck, robbing the rich to give to the poor. Here, two of the heroes of his childhood stood silently in the same room as him, waiting for the same thing. He didn't have it in him to be starstruck at this precise moment but it nonetheless awed him to silence; he looked up at King Arthur, from whom England's people had given their nation his human name, and found that he couldn't utter a word.

The room gave a sudden shudder and the floorboards began to buckle and crack, forcibly pushing apart to allow several thick tendrils to come bursting upwards into the room. They frayed outwards like a crown, the heart empty of a jewel, whilst the ends of the vast roots took purchase of the walls and ceiling, pausing when settled; and pulsing, ready, waiting. America scrambled to his feet with the others, turning towards the doorway at their lead, his heart hammering in his chest. The roses embroidered about the doorframe now began to grow and spread, weaving like wildfire across the walls, blooms unfurling fast and red like drops of blood; their thick stems began to wind around the vines, stitching themselves into the design of the crude bower bursting upwards from the floor. Across the floor, too, they began to flourish, creating a crimson carpet which weaved across the floor, lush and thick like velvet. It threw itself before the figure who, with the unicorn at his side and England in his arms, stood in the threshold.

A man, but barely; he was perhaps about nineteen or twenty, dark brown hair falling tousled almost to his shoulders, with those same vividly green eyes. He was dressed plainly, silver mail glittering coldly at his limbs, with no armor over it – only a white tunic with a simple red cross emblazoned boldly on the breast. From his leather belt hung a sword in a basic scabbard.

King Arthur was the first to go down on one knee before St George; the others followed suit in silence and America felt that he should do the same for fear of blowing his cover as a great English king. He looked up through his eyelashes, however, watching England limp and unconscious (perhaps asleep) in George's grasp. Despite his youth, George appeared to be very strong, for he carried his country – an adult man, in human terms – with might and care, holding him under his back and knees with his head supported on the chainmail at the saint's shoulder.

America wanted desperately to spring up, snatch England out of his patron saint's arms and shake him roughly; but the mood of the room stilled even him. He barely dared to breathe, let alone think such rebellious thoughts, as he rose again with the others. St George had nodded to each of them without a word and followed the pathway of roses towards the splayed roots of the tree, the unicorn following him closely; reaching it, he placed his country in the cradle of it with careful ceremony, arranging him like a corpse with his hands folded just under his ribcage.

Don't, America wanted desperately to say as he watched. Don't act like he's dead; don't treat him like a corpse in a coffin.

St George stepped back, patting at the unicorn's muzzle as she nosed miserably at his shoulder, and looked about the room.

"We seem," he said, his voice light and pleasant but devoid of any emotion, "to all be gathered."

"That is correct, your grace," Britannia replied.

St George nodded to her and looked at America, who was determined to stand his ground against the newcomer as he had against John Bull.

"This is Alfred, your grace," Robin announced boredly. "That is what he goes by, at least. Bull insists on going on about a relation to a fellow named Sam."

Bull harrumphed impatiently and George merely tilted his head.

"Alfred," George repeatedly absently.

"Yes, your grace," America replied tersely, his fists clenching.

It wasn't a lie, after all.

George shrugged his sloping shoulders gracefully, his tunic rippling with the motion.

"Very well," he said. "Whatever pleases you. Join us if you will – but know that we are gathered here to leave this world forever."

"And that's alright with you?" America asked, meeting George's gaze. "With all of you? You don't think this is totally fucking selfish of England?"

"Mind your language," Bull bit out, eying America with dislike. "There is a lady and a saint present."

America ignored him, gazing intently at St George – who met his eyes emotionlessly.

"Well?" he prompted. "Is this alright? He's dragging you all down with him—"

"We exist solely for him," George interrupted, "and because of him. If he goes willingly to history's mercy, we have no choice but to go with him."

"Doesn't that make you mad?" America pressed desperately; he wondered if his George – his first president – had been named after this man. "Don't you feel like defying him? Why don't you simply refuse to go along with his wishes? He's selfish, you know; I guess he can't help it, he always has been, but he's pretty accustomed to getting his own way and I can only reckon it's because you guys let him walk all over you in matters like this!"

"Alfred," Bull intoned unkindly, "I suggest that you keep your revolutionary poisons to yourself."

St George put up his hand to command silence, for both Robin and Arthur, in addition to America himself, had been on the verge of speaking out at this.

"I will not hear argument on the matter," he said flatly. "All of you will kindly hold your tongues."

This they did; though America obeyed with a dose of salt, wanting badly to argue his point. It wasn't as easy to speak against England's symbols, however, as it was to argue with England himself. They didn't bait as easily, he thought, and they were all rather high and mighty about themselves – more than England, in fact, who was rather stuck up himself at times but nonetheless didn't parade around in Medieval dress carrying a shield emblazoned with his own flag.

And at least he smiled. At least he laughed. At least he got flustered and embarrassed and angry; sentimental, sometimes, sweet and downright slushy if the mood took him. He at least, for all his faults, had a personality, which appeared to be more than America could say for these splintered symbols of his, all of whom were stoically invested only in their singular duties to serve and represent.

"You are not like us, Alfred," St George concluded, looking at America. "It is obvious. For this we will not judge you. If England means so much to you that you have followed him here, we will not punish you, nor turn you away. Stay, if you will – you will be welcome amongst us, who exist only to serve our England."

"That is not my purpose," America said coolly. "I do not serve him."

"Then clearly you come amongst us for the other reason we gather about him now," St George went on gently. "We love him." He held his hand out towards America. "For that, too, you are welcome."

America hesitated to put his hand in George's, looking around at them all; they had gathered into a circle about the tree roots which formed for England's lifeless body a crude casket and the patron saint, the most important of this group of figures made up of representatives and fictional heroes, was inviting him in even though there really was no place for him.

"I want to protect him," America said in a small voice, suddenly feeling a bit pathetic compared to them (given that he had followed England initially more out of sheer defiance than anything else); they who stood around their country without an opinion, rightful or otherwise, upon his decision, without question in their loyalty. He realized that he wanted to be like them only now – when he could see that there was no undoing this and that England was already surrounded by more protectors and guardians than he could ever possibly have need for. "…I want…I want to make sure that he's safe."

"Then come," St George said. "He will be glad of your care."

America took his hand and allowed himself to be led into the circle; Britannia closed her pale hand about his other palm as they all linked up.

St George looked at King Arthur.

"It is you with whom he shares his name," he said. "It should be you, Arthur."

Arthur gave a nod.

"Very well," he said, "but I will not use Excalibur for this. Only your sword will do."

"Ah," St George hummed, "Ascalon for Avalon. That is fair indeed."

He reached for his own sword, drawing it from its bland leather scabbard; the weapon, too, was plain, much simpler in its construction than what was noticeable in simply the swirling, bejeweled hilt of Excalibur at Arthur's hip. George kissed the cross-guard of Ascalon as he handed it over; Arthur carefully took it and raised it above his head – above England, his sacred ground, his country.

"W-wait…" America stalled in horror as the preparatory motion shocked him breathless. "What… what are you doing…?"

"Ending our history," St George said calmly. "How do you end a history, do you think?"

"No… you'll kill him…!" America tried to wrestle free of George and Britannia but they kept a firm grip on him as Arthur aligned the point of Ascalon with England's heart. "Stop! You… you said you all loved him…!"

"And so we do," St George replied, suddenly sounding more like the young man he actually was; vulnerable, somewhat, and perhaps secretly unhappy with his duty. "We are doing as he asked us to. We cannot break a vow that we made in love to our nation. To do otherwise would make us traitors."

"Better traitors than murderers!" America cried, still straining against the hold on him, fighting in earnest now; though they, like the roses, held him fast for all his twisting.

"Not in this case," St George said softly.

The blade hovered in the supernatural light, sharp edge gleaming for its final duty, and America couldn't help but notice the way it hung there for an eternity, a broken and stationary pendulum that refused to tick the moments of England's life any longer, rather fixing to end it with that very stillness. Whether it was through the King's hesitation or his own denial, America felt a shock sluice through him when the statuesque pose shattered and the sword descended. King Arthur plunged down the sword, deaf (as they all were) to America's choking, pleading shout. It went in easily without any resistance, without any noise or blood or spasm, as though England's body – Arthur's earth – was accepting it as a natural part of his form. Ascalon's blade glinted, boldly upright and half-submerged, as King Arthur stepped back, relinquishing his hold on it. The room suddenly shook violently and the physical reminders of England's history, all the old useless forgotten things that crammed the shelves, began to slide and crash to the floor as though in a precise and practiced symphony.

America pulled furiously again and they finally let him go; he stumbled on the shuddering floor and threw himself across England as though prostrating himself upon his ground, groping blindly at the legendary sword and tugging—

To no avail. It held fast. The ceiling cracked and buckled inwards, pressed suddenly downwards by one of those gargantuan roots so intent on taking back Britain. England didn't stir and his ringed guardians encircled him still in complete silence, the lion curled about Britannia's legs and the unicorn at St George's side.

The room was sinking beneath them and they with it.

America spoke; but the words, he felt, were not truly his own, welling up from within his heart; bubbling from his borrowed blood, the history that wasn't truly his.

"Is there no remedy?" he asked, his forehead pressed to England's clasped hands.

"As good to die and go, as die and stay," Arthur replied gently; and here, too, America knew his words well. "Heaven take my soul – and England keep my bones."

---

Boatload of ANs here. Sorry! You don't have to read them all if you don't want to. XD

Some literary references:

1] This final exchange between America and King Arthur are lines from Shakespeare's King John (which is one of his lesser-known ones, to put it mildly); all three lines are spoken by a character who is also named Arthur. The final one used here, "Heaven take…" is, in fact, Arthur's very last line before he dies. We used these for several reasons: The name of the character, obviously, but also because Arthur was, like most of the characters in this play (it's one of Shakey's Histories), an actual historical figure. What happened to him? No-one knows. It's speculated that he was murdered (he had a claim to the English throne) but, to all intents and purposes, he simply disappeared. (c whut we did thar?)

2] John Bull refers to King Arthur's bringing America into the room as bringing a Yankee into his court: It's a very obvious play on Mark Twain's novel A Connecticut Yankee in the Court of King Arthur.

On Prussia (and why he did what he did): Well, with this fic, by this point it's no secret that some of the characters know rather more than others, things that they shouldn't know. In Prussia's case, it's been implied more than once that he knows what is going to happen to him after the war unless he does something about it. So here's the real history: Hitler was a huge "fan" of Prussia and its famous king, Frederick the Great (or 'Old Fritz', as he's affectionately known!) and modeled a lot of the Nazi social and military regimes on those of Frederick's Prussia. 'Prussia' became synonymous with 'great military power', something which Hitler wanted his new Nazi German to emulate. Given that Prussia, in Pangaea, knows what will befall him in the aftermath of the war that his side will lose (and knows, also, the damage that it will do to Germany), he decides to take some initiative and prevent his "name" being used as the frontispiece for eventually crippling his brother and leading to his own abolition. His solution is to remove Nazi power from Germany's government and see how far the Axis cause gets on its own, which means he's still not really the good guy here…

Incidentally, Prussia has actually technically been abolished twice; the Kingdom of Prussia was abolished in 1918 by the Allies after WWI for much the same reasons as the later, final abolition in 1945 of the Free State of Prussia, which it became after the Treaty of Versailles had carved a lot of it up. In 1933, Prussia came under the rule of Hitler – it was the beginning of the end. D:

On Nazism: Both of us were extremely critical of Hetalia Axis Powers when we first heard of it. We judged it before ever having seen it simply because it sounded like the show was chibifying history; taking things like war, the Holocaust, the atomic bombings and all other things grim and gruesome in human history and making them into something cute, profitable and acceptable. Something to fangirl over.

It took all the cosplayers at Yaoicon 2009 combined to convince us to even give the show a viewing. Predictably once we actually watched it we were hooked and jumped fandom and everything. However that initial knee-jerk disgust for the concept still lingers, especially when fandom does idiotic things to make us all look bad and we cringe at mere association with it.

We think the reason why Hetalia was palatable to us despite all that misgiving is because the show never touches on the darker side of the history it's poking fun at. It keeps thing very light and funny so even the stereotypes it's playing up can't be taken seriously; you just have to laugh at it (which is also why we don't like the dub very much because of the unnecessary crop of Jewish jokes they decided to insert). Germany specifically was an important character that convinced us this show was a good thing; they never even bring up the word Nazi, let alone make it into a plot device. Because it is a very messy question for Hetalia's rendition of Germany: Is he or is he not Nazi Germany? Not all Germans were Nazis so can he be both? And if he is, what does that mean for him? For the show? The lens you view him through is very important and has drastic ramifications for what message they are sending (whether intentional or not). Not bringing it up at all and leaving it open to interpretation is really the only acceptable way of going about it from a canon perspective.

Which leaves fandom as the place to get into the messy bits and pieces. And so, this chapter. Germany's Nazism is exorcised via Prussia before it has a chance to "sink in". We chose to do this very intentionally: 1. It's important for the story we are telling; this removal has significant consequences. 2. Germany as a country can never be wholly Nazi to begin with, and portraying him as such is dangerously reductionist. 3. The Milgram experiments of the 60s and the Zimbardo experiments of the 70s show just how easily swayed humans are to do ugly, degrading, and unspeakable acts under the right circumstances. The term 'banality of evil' sums up this phenomenon. And we are consciously choosing to remove the banality that Nazi leaders created.

Whew, enough heavy stuff! We want to thank you all for reading and we hope you enjoyed this chapter! Things are getting interesting, no? ^^

RR and Narroch

xXx

P.S: Last orders for this plug: Rockets, a USUK doujin collaboration between Hakuku and myself. It's an AU about fashion designer!Arthur and model!Alfred. I wrote the script and Haku is currently working her socks off on the lovely artwork! There's a link to Haku's accompanying tumblr – which in turn supplies links to the first two chapters of the doujinshi – on my profile so please check it out! =)