Wow, this fic's getting much longer than I originally had planned. Warnings for drugs, violence, death, abuse, sex, and China being an utter bastard. Conspiracy to commit murder is not an acceptable part of rape recovery in real life, okay? However much the victim deserves it. Also some intense psychological messiness.)
By early March China's body had recovered without a mark, with the exception of the jagged bayonet scar leading right into his heart. His mental health was another matter, but he couldn't afford to stay in bed any longer. He went back out into the world, pasting on a smile, apologising to his bosses for spending so much time away.
After a particularly tedious meeting, he slipped away from his human handlers and sneaked into the red light district. Even despite knowing that a nation's own people would almost never try to harm them, and despite the knife hidden in his clothes, he was nervous about being in a crowd again, but he felt he needed it. He'd been in brothels a couple of times before - not often, but four thousand years is a long time to mostly spend single - and thought nothing of it, but this time he saw how tired and scared the girl they'd given him looked, and how young, and knew how much she wanted to be anywhere else.
(shit no i can hear my daughters screaming leave my girls alone take me instead please)
He broke down all the girls' locked doors, smashed open the cashbox for them, and instructed them on how best to burn the building down. That was actually far more satisfying, in the end.
The girls' "employer" was still inside when they lit the fire. Witnessing his citizens' deaths always hurt, but this time China ignored it. A nation cannot directly kill their own people (on Bloody Sunday Russia had handed his gun to one of his men, and stood back and watched with childlike glee), but "directly" is such a relative term, and in China's mind none who would do what had been done to him counted as "his" people anymore.
He knew his soldiers would do the exact same thing Japan's had, given the chance, and he couldn't stop them all. If he even tried, someone would ask why. All he'd told his human leaders was that the city's fall had affected him, and since it was his capital they assumed it was something to do with the place's importance, not anything that had happened to his body. He'd rather face the massacre again than try to explain this to anyone but family.
One of the runaway girls offered him a grateful fuck against the wall in an alleyway a safe distance away. She looked sickly and bruised, but he could tell she meant the offer out of something other than obligation; she was high on freedom, and he was pretty. Wasn't like he couldn't handle anything he might catch from her.
(i don't believe it she really is a boy no way)
He was as awkward as a virgin, unsure whether he should be rough or gentle, staring intently into her face but paying more attention to the sounds of the normal bustling city around him than to her. It's okay. Nobody's dying. She agreed to this, she doesn't hate me, she's not afraid. We're both safe. He wasn't able to finish. Opium did that to him.
(guess it doesn't like pain since he's not getting any use from it shall we cut it off i hear they like eunuchs here no not yet i got this watch i'll get it see he likes that)
Finally, he gave up trying, buttoned his clothes back up, not looking at her anymore, and mumbled "I swear I'm not usually that bad. It's been a while."
She looked concerned, but didn't ask for further detail. She fled into the night, and he slumped against the wall, not sure whether he felt better or worse. He pulled a hypodermic from his inside pocket. Worked much faster than the pipe.
(fuck will someone plug its mouth up already no way didn't you see him bite fine then knock its teeth out cut its tongue out just stop it making that damn noise)
He ran the needle straight into an old scar; the First Opium War. The Second Opium War was on his other forearm, the scars looking appropriately like trackmarks. Japan's conquest of Manchuria had taken a chunk from his leg, and of course Japan's first betrayal had given him the deep wound in his back. That wasn't counting all the little marks from his centuries of civil wars.
(look something's really fucking wrong here he was practically dead when we found him and look what he did to my face no normal person should be this strong he shouldn't still be breathing never mind conscious and look at all those scars what the hell happened to this guy)
He remembered back in the early 1800s, before England had forever become the "opium bastard" in his eyes. They were friends once. He remembered them reading Shakespeare together, England translating.
"O, I have suffered with those that I saw suffer."
He made his unsteady way back home, bursting into random fits of tears or laughter. A normal human in his state couldn't have made it down the street, never mind out of the city and up a mountain back to Dragon's house. Not being a normal human had its benefits.
Dragon looked up when China slammed open the door, whooping with meaningless laughter. "China? Are you okay?"
"What's it look like?" China shrugged off Dragon's concern and staggered to his bed. He collapsed without undressing, curled up on his side. He couldn't sleep on his back anymore; he felt exposed and helpless in that position, like a butterfly pinned to a cork board, half-expecting something to loom over him and kick his legs apart again.
He slept with his knife in his hand. He trusted it. Knives didn't run out of fucking bullets.