This one's later than normal, sorry. I was working on Cantarella's one-update-per-day requirements. You should read that one, too. ^J^

Review! :D

Spain's head was full of fog. It was cold, and rainy, and full of fog. Somewhat like England's weather.

He opened one of his eyes, squinting into the too-bright light. It seemed to drill into the back of his head.

A girl rushed over to him. "Oh, good, you're awake."

He opened his other eye, trying to place the voice. "Liechtenstein?"

She looked at him with those big aqua eyes. "What?"

"Where are we?" His voice hurt.

She looked uncomfortable, fingers toying with the hem of that pink dress. "I don't know. I wish my brother were here, he'd know what to do..."

And then the Spaniard became fully aware of his surroundings, and the bruises splashed across the other nation's face, and the bruises and scrapes in kind across his own body. His lungs felt as if they'd been dragged through a desert, and his head felt like it was splitting in half, not to mention the pieces of his store-window glass embedded in his back.

"I remember...aliens." Spain said finally, and then his eyes widened. "Roma... Dios mío, what if they've taken him too..." The thought made something twist inside him. "Ah..." He tried to sit up, winced, and reached behind him to start yanking out the glass pieces. Liechtenstein watched with wide eyes as he continued his story. "They were going to take Roma, but I defended him, and they took me..."

Liechtenstein worked her way behind him and began plucking at the glass with her small fingers. "I was in my room, getting a present I'd made for my brother, and my window was broken, and I saw this big tall shape, and then I was here..." Her voice shrank until at the end it was nothing more than silence.

"How long were you here?" Spain pressed gently, trying not to flinch each time glass exited his skin.

"I-I don't know. A day, maybe, I think, and then you were here for hours not moving in this room but before that you were in the glass room over there-" She pointed at a spot through the opaque glass doors, where table legs were just barely visible, and continued- "Where they studied you or something, and you bled, and the total time they were busy I was awake, and I don't know what to do I wish my brother were here..." And she suddenly burst into tears.

"Hey, hey now." Spain turned around to give her a one-armed hug. The other was badly bruised. "It'll be all right." He tried to conceal the hollow frailty of those words, and wasn't entirely sure if he'd succeeded.

But Liechtenstein sniffed and looked at him. "You really think so?" There was a barely evident tremble in her voice belying her hope.

He looked down onto her upturned, tear-streaked face. "I know so," he lied.

At that moment, there was a thump. The silhouettes of alien feet crowded around the table through the opaque blue-green glass, and there was a barely audible, deafening sound of pain from the other side of the door.

"Don't look," said the Spaniard quickly, grabbing the other nation's as she turned towards the glass and holding her close. Through the pane of glass came another sound, and then there was a sound he instinctively remembered as the shivering sound of a stinger slicing the air, and then the fleshy thump of contact. The voice went silent. Spain didn't even want to guess who was the unlucky victim.

"You know," he said loudly, to drown out his thoughts, "you're a bit like an adorable, good-tempered version of Romano."

Liechtenstein took the hint. "Really?"

Spain nodded, wincing as his head told him it didn't like the movement. "You're nicer. When he was little, he was a heck of a trouble-maker. Once, he got captured by Turkey, and I had to save him." Spain reiterated the whole story, drowning out the sounds of pain from the other room.

After long minutes, there was silence. The doors slid open a crack, and two gray hands shoved an unconscious Greece inside. He looked beat up and battered, as if he'd been inside something that'd gotten crushed. There was a long gash slicing from the top right side of his face to his chin, just barely missing an eye. In fact, the whites of it could be seen through a place where the skin had torn more. Blood dribbled upwards into his hair. There were other assorted injuries, but this one was by far the worst.

Immediately Liechtenstein tore off a strip of her dress and wrapped it around the Grecian's head. Blood quickly turned the pale pink shade darker.

"Compress this," ordered the girl. "Maybe the bleeding will stop." Spain obeyed while the nation felt for other head injuries. She clicked her tongue at a nearly black bruise circling his neck, and then turned to Spain and said, "Do you have a needle, per chance? His head is going to need stitching."

For a moment, Spain blinked uncomprehendingly at this sudden shift from tearful girl to practiced medical person. "What? Oh, I don't think so, but I can check..." He took his good arm off the compress to check his pockets. A wad of paper, a handful of change, a leaf, a rock, his keys, a partially squashed tomato...

No needle.

"Sorry, I don't," he said, returning both hands to try and keep the Grecian from bleeding out.

Liechtenstein shrugged, then pulled a bobby pin from her hair and tried to sharped it against the metal floor. The room was filled with an awful screeching sound as metal grated on metal. It hurt his ears, and by the look on Liechtenstein's face, it hurt hers too. But it was absolutely necessary if they were going to save the Greek's life.

For ten minutes, Spain stared into space, hearing the shriek of the needle-to-be and smelling the blood pumping under his hands. There'd hardly ever been injuries like this, even back in his pirate days. This was very bad.

The awful noise stopped. Liechtenstein held up the sharpened pin. "There," she said, and threaded the needle with a thin pink thread from her dress. The little nation moved with a clinical air, but her hands were shaking, and she stared at wound for a long time before dropping the needle and turning away.

"I can't do it," she cried. "My brother taught me how, but I just can't do it..."

Spain knew it was left to him. Unless Greece woke up and somehow sewed his head up, he'd die. So Spain had to do it. He picked up the needle. "Lili," he instructed, "Please take my place holding his head." She obliged.

Closing his eyes, he poked the needle through one flap of skin. There was a little resistance, and then it gave way.

The Spaniard opened his eyes again, and focused on not having his hands tremble too much while he reached the other end of the split and pulled it a little bit shut.

One down, he told himself. You can do this. It's just like fixing clothes. The image of Greece's face as a burst seam in a pair of shorts didn't help much.

It was a horrible business, especially when the thread wasn't long enough and Liechtenstein had to pull another free. With pulpy, wet fingers, he had to knot them together, double the length. His fingers kept slipping and sliding and felt horrendously clumsy, and the simple thing seemed to take forever.

And the skin around the Grecian's eye was just too close to the actual eye for him to risk closing the gap. Spain did not want to be working and then find the needle embedded in the soft white surface. He was forced to skip that part.

When the grisly work was finally done, Spain flung the needle down and scraped the blood off his hands fervently, desperate to forget the past thirty-nine stitches. His bad arm hurt worse than ever now, and Liechtenstein, who'd been silent for the entire procedure, finally spoke up. "Is your arm dislocated?"

Mutely, he nodded.

"Here, I think I can try to fix it." She tried to smile at him, but the effort failed and she looked away, probing his arm gently. Her small fingers poked at the painful joint, and he flinched and tried to hide it.

"It's dislocated," she said finally. "Do you want me to fix it?"

He nodded again. "Yes, please do."

"Okay, so you have to lay back like this, with your arm to the side, and brace your other arm here, and-"

snap

"-there, it's done." The joint was popped back into its socket with a fresh burst of agony. When he was sure he could, he sat up and offered a strained smile. "Thanks."

The opaque doors opened again. The two nations scrambled to the far wall, pulling Greece with them. Who would come through next?

Three aliens dragging a body shoved it through the door, where he landed on his face. Neither Spain nor Liechtenstein wanted to move to see who it was until the aliens were gone.

The pale-skinned creatures backed out again, and the door slid shut silently. Leaving the cat-loving brunette alone, the two of them went to the new body, who was immediately recognizable by his distinctive white hair. They both rolled him over. "Prussia?" asked Spain, poking his long-time friend's cheek. "Are you all right?"

Of course, there was no answer. But in the albino's hands, something moved rather weakly. They caught a flash of yellow feathers, and Liechtenstein unfolded them to pick up Gilbird.

The chick squirmed free of her hands and hopped onto his master's face to nervously peck his forehead.

Prussia groaned, moved a little, and spat out a gob of bright silver liquid, like mercury.

"Oh, Scheiße!" exclaimed Liechtenstein suddenly, and Spain almost jumped out of his skin to see her swear. The world's gone mad!

"Did you notice all those stings on his back?" she continued, oblivious to the Spaniard's shocked silence. "He must be in so much pain right now-" she pushed at the albino's side to turn him back over, and Spain came to his senses and helped her. Liechtenstein rolled the Prussian's shirt up -any other time, he'd be cracking jokes about it, but this was an exception- and studied the inflamed infinity brands.

Gilbird hopped a few steps, chirped, and then looked up at them, as if to say "DO SOMETHING!"

But there really wasn't anything they could do. Scratches could be bound and sewed, but they couldn't do much for bruises, let alone the stings. They simply did not have the resources. Unless a tomato could heal the stings, Prussia would have to deal with the pain.

Just in case, Spain pressed the squashy tomato to the wound, and then looked at it. No such luck. Oh well, I hadn't really expected anything to happen...

There was only so much one could do in a metal cage.

Translations- They're pretty self-explanatory...Did you know the national language of Liechtenstein was German? I didn't...

And I feel like I should add something else down here instead of just 'translations', so...one the bright side, Bad Touch Trio assemble, sort of?