Title: A Soft Reboot (2/?)
Rating: PG (Subject to change)
Warnings: Swear words
Summary: Once every couple centuries, the nations inexplicably disappear and are reborn as humans. But the memories and nationhood gradually return and they have funny ways of getting back to each other.
Note: Because I'm a derp, I forgot to mention in the summary that this will probably end up UKUS with mentions of various other pairings along the side. Sorry for tricking you into reading nonUKUSfans! I'll change the summary in a moment.
Before James and before Mitsuru, there are nations.
Even before he opens his eyes, China knows that today would be different. He wakes up slowly, almost having to fight for every sliver of consciousness. He breathes with care and feels that if he doesn't concentrate on the in out in out of air, he'd forget entirely and just sink back into something like sleep.
But China manages to get up and he feels his body creak and groan as he shuffles into the bathroom.
The mirror reflects China's young man's face and says nothing of the thousands of years below his skin. China leans forward, searching for something in his pores and in the fine hairs on his cheeks.
He finds it.
'Ah,' he thinks, rubbing tiredly at his eyes. The bone is firm under the paper-thin skin under the socket. 'So it's that time of the millennium again.'
He splashes water on his face and goes to make tea.
China is tired and the fatigue weighs heavily on his shoulders. There are a billion people whizzing around inside him, one billion out of the Earth's six with many more of his children settled around the world. He is still attached to them; strings stretch from his heart to theirs and they vibrate and oscillate with their fears and dreams. China feels bloated and the bubbles in his stomach won't rest.
(Jasmine tea is meant to be good for the digestion. Too bad it can't solve overpopulation and politics and 150 million people living in poverty.)
He sits in the stiff armchair his hotel room provides and gazes out over the German city centre. It is early, but he knows that people are waking in their homes, each of them flickering like blades of grass in a windy field. Can Germany feel them stirring in his body – blood cells oxygising and deoxygenising? A bell rings out, six peals, and China imagines Ludwig stretching the sleep away. Which city is the summit in again? Bonn? Berlin? He can't remember; his head is clogged up with economy and debts and controversy, like wet tissue in a plughole.
Is it important?
No, not really. In the grand scheme of China's life of thousands and thousands of years, nothing is really that important. Which is the problem.
If it is going to happen today, he thinks, there is absolutely no point in planning anything in the immediate future. Or worrying about anything, and he has had enough of that recently. So he sits back, lets the tea warm his hands and wonders what tie to wear that day. There is time - the small nations are always the first ones to go.
And he is anything but small.
His phone rings and the tinkly theme tune of Shinatty-chan shakes him out of this thought. His aide wants to go over the day's schedule. China listens with flagging interest, only interjecting with necessary sounds to show that he is paying attention. Before the aide says goodbye, China says, "Have you booked the return tickets to Beijing yet?"
"No, sir."
"Don't book a ticket for me, I won't be joining you on the flight home."
There is a beat, a small silence. This isn't normal. "Sir?"
"You'll understand. Zài jiàn." There is a sense of finality in the goodbye and in the click and beep of China hanging up.
The aide doesn't understand, even after he goes to the conference room in the Rathaus in Düsseldorf to deliver a folder that China has forgotten. This also isn't normal; China doesn't forget things and the manila folder containing the data on today's presentation is not something that could have been forgotten –
(But China hasn't forgotten it. He left it on the hotel dressing table almost as a message: There will be no presentation that day.)
There is no answer when the aide knocks on the door. There is no answer when he knocks a second time. Or when he opens the door and finds the room empty, save for the scattered clothing of the nations.
China's suit is almost neatly gathered on his chair. His shirt is still inside the jacket, his tie still around the collar of the shirt, his socks inside his shoes. It is almost as if he had just vani
There is a triangle lodged inside their hearts. Each time something hurts, -the pain of your people: their hungers, their frustrations, their needs- the triangle turns, digging its corners into the beating flesh of their ventricles and atriums and oh how it aches. But over time, with enough hurt and enough rotations, the flesh becomes hard and the corners of these triangles are worn away, leaving a smooth disc. It spins and spins and spins and nothing hurts at all.
They can't feel.
This is the problem and renewal is the answer.
AN: Thank you for all your kind reviews for the previous chapter! I was absolutely blown away by all the support I got for what is really just an indulgence fic. I'll try and make it good and make it make sense, rather than just writing willy-nilly. I hope you review again (even though this is a ridiculously short chapter.)