Author: Cyhirae
Edited: Lumineux

Disclaimer: Hetalia, the characters and the songs referenced are not mine or Lumineux's; they belong to their respective creators. We just borrowed them for this dark little story.

Empty foundations were the kindest thing to meet his eyes as Norway wandered the 'streets' of the city. He couldn't even recall its name now; part of him was in denial to think it may have been his capital. This devastated wasteland couldn't be that.

The more cruel things to greet his gaze were the evidence of those who had perhaps survived the bombing itself; people who had come here to seek shelter without knowing they were going into a graveyard. There were not even carrion birds left any longer to have cleaned the remains to the bone where they appeared.

There was only the gray, ashy remains of the city to the wind had been kind enough to provide as a poor blanket in place of soil; masking the devastation weather and fall out alike had surely done. Norway stumbled away from a foundation that contained what had looked to be a whole family, huddled against a half wall that had somehow survived.

There had to be someone; he was still here. He could feel them; why couldn't he find them?

The blond stumbled, then proceeded to run through the ash, rubble and corpse laden streets; his barely used voice raised in near hysterical cries for anyone to answer him. He lost track of the turns he took in the dead city, no longer knew it as he once had- it was as dead to him as any of the corpses.

Dead, alien; not his. Not anyone's. This piece of earth no longer lived.

The screams tapered off as Norway stumbled again, this time falling to his knees in the ash. Tears made a weak attempt to clear the ash and dust from his cheeks, to keep him from being as gray and ruined as the land around him.

It hurt too much; he couldn't find them. He never would; he was dying, much as this city and his people within it had. He had been all along; he just hadn't understood it.

Norway swayed and let himself fall completely into the ash; he would let it bury him as it had his people. What hope did he have if he could not even find them?

~oOo~

Denmark stepped slowly off the ship that had brought him and the other rescuers across the sea; to a port that could only barely be called that. The piers were burned and rotted where wood had survived; the metal was to be avoided at all costs.

He wore the same suit as them all, though only for their peace of mind; he didn't need it. His people were still strong, still protected; the war had done little to them or the land on which they lived. He was a bit tougher, a bit more scarred, perhaps…but he had come out strong from the chaos, as he always had.

The same couldn't be said for the land before him. He stood on the soil as the searchers began to pile off the ship, though the hopeful mood that they had done all they could to keep alive on the journey was gone. How could anything be alive here?

The rescuers were working on setting up their encampment; a rescue center but one they plainly didn't think would see much use as that. Denmark walked away from them, leaving the whole behind swiftly. Everything looked the same here; there was no point of reference, no land mark he could make out. The missiles had left nothing standing at all.

He closed his eyes, imagining a different Norway; the trees, the bitterly cold but clean air…a sky that impossible blue one saw only in the colder regions of the world, spreading over the city of Oslo and its mix of new and old. A testament to the Norwegians themselves and their iron clad determination to not let change take over.

And most importantly, a rather dour and blond man standing in the street ahead of him beneath that sky, informing him of what he thought of Denmark's latest caper. That was what should have been here.

He walked in those memories, the phantom of Norway at his side as they passed by the landmarks that no longer stood in that stricken, ashy reality. Only the sound of the shorter blond's voice could not be summoned forth; the crunch of ash and rubble beneath his boots could not be denied.

"Where are you..?" He finally asked the phantom what he most wanted to know; and received the same look he surely would have from the genuine thing. But still no sound; the lips moved to form words that had no substance; then he began to walk again. Denmark watched him go, then ran after, but now the memory was moving too fast for all the seemingly lazy walk.

At last it turned a corner to disappear; and the ash laden reality crashed back into being. The blue skies, the parks, buildings new and old…they were all gone, as was Norway. Denmark threw the hood to the hazmat suit aside, bitter curses thrown into the cloud laden darkness.

Too long; they had waited much too long. It had been several years; no one had been allowed to approach Norway for fear of the radiation and whatever diseases other weapons may have dispersed among the people. They had to wait for the radiation to die down and to get the tools needed to clean it ready; they had had to prepare vaccines and medicine for the diseases and illnesses.

All of that, while Norway had been dying. If he had even survived the attack. He found himself hoping he may not have; what if there had been survivors slowly fading off? If he had to die in this, he could hope it had been quick and clean…

"He's alive." Denmark shook his head and proceeded to storm through the streets; he wasn't dead. Norway had lived too long to fall to something like this. "You're alive, Norge; now tell me where the hell you are!"

The demand fell flat among the ruined foundations; not even the phantom born from his memories reappeared again. Tears began to sting his eyes more than even the ever present ash; he could barely see when his next stride set something flying loose from the ash piled in the streets, chiming surprisingly loud as it found a place to rest amid the rubble.

Denmark paused and stared hard at the unearthed item. He shook his head again, this time to shake the tears away as he stared and willed his eyes to focus. Was he imagining it? The blurriness departed his vision to reveal the small cross shaped clip resting there. It was tarnished but whole; and most importantly, it gave off none of that sickening feeling of metal tainted by radiation.

The tall nation hurried to the clip and cradled it in his fingers as he looked around; it was Norway's, no mistaking it…and it hadn't been here when the bombs fell. It was too clean in all ways for it to have been. But a quick check of the figures beneath the ash nearest where he found it revealed only Norwegians…not Norway himself.

He had nearly given up when he noticed it; indents in the ash like footprints in snow. Shallow now and fading steadily as the wind blew more and more ash to fill them in, but he could still make them out. And they crossed where his own path had halted. He looked desperately along them; some were still deeper than others- the fresher ones, he hoped.

Denmark ran along the path then, discarding the rest of the suit as an inconvenience while he ran. The wind seemed determined to sweep the trail away and his steps grew slower as he realized he could no longer tell the tracks from what might simply be the ash settling more firmly. He clutched the clip tightly as he scanned the ash desperately for some sign of the vanished trail; nothing. There was simply no more trail to follow; the wind had erased it.

Frustration and raged clawed at the Dane's throat as he cursed the wind and began to move forward again; the ash was so much thicker here. It wafted through the air like the pure snows Norway had once been known for, mocking him as he searched desperately for any clue.

There were so many bodies in this place; or perhaps they were simply harder to avoid since he could barely make anything out beneath the ash. He eventually stopped wincing as he found one corpse after another with his boots, resigned to the inevitability of it…until one of those corpses groaned at him. He stumbled back in surprise, then dove into the ash, throwing handful after handful aside….

Purple was what the ash revealed as it was scooped aside; purple cloth and blond hair. Denmark seized the figure up as it groaned again, tears falling freely now but with no curse…only a softly spoken word, offered up like a prayer of gratitude.

"Norge…"