Disclaimer: I do not own Hetalia.

Warnings: Slash, AU, swearing, sub-par writing, wonky plots, appallingly slow updates, and Hitler jokes.

IMPORTANT: This chapter contains mentions of torture. I don't consider it to be graphic or intense in nature, but, if this is a trigger for you, please, be prepared. Better safe than sorry.

I don't know what I'm doing. I also don't know how missile silos work.

Unbeta'd.

[Chapter 18]

Those weren't clocks.

It was about the only thing that Alfred's mind was able to process.

Those weren't clocks. Those weren't clocks. Oh God, those weren't clocks.

Well, they were if you counted countdown clocks as clocks. However, Alfred was more concerned with somehow stopping the oncoming shitstorm than arguing semantics. Unfortunately, his efforts amounted to little more than fruitlessly banging at a keyboard with increasing amounts of force. Lily flitted about behind him, unsure as to whether she should try and help him or to persuade him his task was futile.

Eduard had curled up on the floor by a desk chair and was obviously waiting for whatever end would come find him first, be it Tino or nuclear holocaust. He was watching Alfred and Lily at the terminal with an air of someone watching something happen from very far away. It was probably shock.

"I told you." said Eduard listlessly. "We can't stop it. They've locked in the launch sequence and we don't have the codes."

"Well, somebody has to have the codes." Alfred retorted, becoming even more desperate. He was getting nowhere with this. Maybe if he took the paneling of the console and went in that way?

"Tino." whispered Lily.

"Tino." Eduard echoed. "Tino has the codes. He shot a man for them. We couldn't upload our program without them."

"Program?" Alfred looked up from the console for the first time. "Program? What program?"

"A- A complex targeting algorithm." Eduard struggled with the words. "It's what he kidnapped us for. The army had a prototype that could handle a simultaneous launch of this magnitude, but Tino couldn't steal it. So we made one. Jury-rigged. Not perfect. He was angry."

"Eduard." Alfred knelt in front of the man, trying to coax him out of his panic. "Please, I need you to focus. You made this?"

Eduard looked past him, at the wall of little red numbers, and nodded, eyes full of pain.

"Yes." he spat. "Yes, we made that. Tino threatened and we made him this madness like good little dogs." He looked more focused now, less scared and more angry. Alfred saw a chance and grasped at it.

"The prototype the army wanted, it had the access codes?"

"It was supposed to be able to interface with multiple missile platforms, I think. It should've been granted access. Why does this-"

"The replacement you made Tino, you said there were flaws?"

"We didn't have enough time to-"

"Good." he interrupted. "Could you exploit those flaws to terminate the program without any of those missiles launching?"

"I don't- Yes?" It was more a question than an answer. Lily looked back and forth between the two of them, looking lost.

"Could you do it?" Alfred pressed, grasping his arms tighter and giving him a little shake.

"What does it matter?" he cried. "I already told you, we can't do anything! We don't have the access codes!"

"Actually." Alfred corrected, pulling away for a moment before presenting the two of them with Hitler. "We do."

They stared blankly at the slapdash amalgamation of computer parts for a minute before it occurred to Alfred that an explanation was probably in order.

"I know it doesn't look like much, and I know this is going to sound unbelievable, but this is the prototype Tino tried to steal. Well, the prototype is inside anyway. I didn't have any means of interfacing with it, so I sort of built my own platform around it. Point is, I can access the prototype, and the prototype can access the launch sequence. All we have to do is figure out how to plug it in."

And hope that Alfred's crude attempts to get the thing working didn't fail at an inopportune moment, but now didn't seem the best time to bring up how tenuous Hitler's inner workings were.

Eduard gaped at him for a moment before exploding to his feet, nearly losing balance, and scrambling along the desk to reach the console. "Yes! Wires! I need-!" He vanished under the main controls and surfaced not a moment later with a tangle of wires, picking frantically through them for something in particular.

Alfred and Lily rushed over and met up with him just as he offered a particular cable to Alfred. "This one! Quickly!"

Alfred hastily shoved it into one of Hitler's ports and set it down, only to unplug it and jam the next cable in when a connection failed to be established. Three wires applied to several different ports and a judicious amount of careful wiggling later, Hitler hummed faintly and began to slowly sync with the launch systems.

The seconds stretched on like an eternity when measured against a countdown clock.

Finally, finally, a message appeared on screen.

ADMINISTRATIVE CODE VERIFIED

The cursor blinked a few times, and then-

ACCESS GRANTED

The system opened up before them and Alfred wanted to cry. Lily choked back a sob, her hands, which had been nervously covering her mouth, did nothing to muffle the noise. Eduard said nothing, completely focused on Hitler's screen, trying to navigate to wherever it was he needed to go. It was going to be ok. Everything was going to be-

"Damn it." Eduard pounded his fist against the console and leaned back, running his hands through his hair. "It's not going through! Why isn't it working?"

Alfred and Lily were behind him in an instant, peering at code. "What do you mean it isn't working?" he asked.

Lily said something and began to point at a specific line of code, but Eduard snarled and brushed her off. "I know! Alright? That was the first thing I thought to check. Code's fine, but it's not going through. It's just not going through!"

"Could Tino have made some sort of change to the program? Maybe added another layer of encryption?"

Eduard was already shaking his head. "No, it's more than that. It's like the missiles aren't even there. There's nothing to respond to my attempts to terminate the launch."

"That's impossible." Alfred gestured towards the rows of clocks that were still counting down. "There's clearly missiles here, unless someone's decided to commandeer military launch clocks to count down to the next episode of their favorite reality TV show."

"Don't get snide with me!" Eduard snapped. "I'm not completely disconnected from the reality of our situation. I know perfectly well-"

"Oh!" breathed Lily. The two men turned to look at her and she pointed at the console. Specifically, at a series of cables that Eduard had ripped out in his search to connect Hitler and then deemed unimportant.

"Son of a bitch disconnected the hardline." Alfred realized. "Where's the main hub? We have to-"

"It's somewhere further in. Down that hallway, I think. Some of us were taken that way, but I wasn't one of them."

"Lily?" he asked, but she was already shaking her head.

"Right. Ok. Eduard, you stay here and keep trying to send the program through. Lily," he turned to her, and she nodded to show she was following along, "you're with me. Grab whatever wires aren't plugged into anything essential. Tino might have taken the connectors, not just unplugged them. We'll need whatever we got if we want to-"

"You're going out there?" Eduard interrupted. "Are you mad? You can't go out there! Tino's out there! And his guards!"

"How many?"

Eduard blinked. "What?"

"Look." Alfred replied, behind him Lily was already yanking things out of inactive systems. "I think we can both agree that what's going on in this room is worse than anything that might be roaming these halls. Worse for everybody. So, how many guards?

Eduard paused to think, fiddling idly with his glasses as he did so. He looked more determined than he had in the entire time Alfred had known him.

"I don't know." he announced. "He had a good number when we took the base, but the only one I've seen lately is the big one. The smiling one. There were two others, the pale haired ones, but Tino sent them somewhere after they apprehended your spy friend. I don't know where they went. Or why. All the others were- ah- downsized."

"That makes four of them and four of us. Even odds."

Eduard opened his mouth, like he was going to say something about Alfred's opinion of even odds, but thought better of it. "I'm going to barricade myself in." he said instead. "When you leave. I'll keep trying until it works or they come in here and shoot me. Or we all blow up."

"That's the spirit." Alfred clapped him on the shoulder. "Lily, we good?"

She gave him a spirited look and a thumbs up, arms ladened with wires. He held the door open and together the two slipped out into the hall.

"Good luck." he said, giving one last look at Eduard, Hitler, and the wall full of clocks.

"Good luck." Eduard replied as the door slid closed.

They crept down the hallway, a shuffling screech of Eduard pushing something heavy in front of the doorway followed them. Neither of them looked back.

Missile silos, as it turned out, were simultaneously bigger and smaller than they seemed. On the one hand, the hallways seemed to be so small as to be claustrophobic. On the other hand, they went on for forever. Literally forever. Every turn, ever door checked and then passed by, lead them deeper and deeper into the complex. The emptiness was starting to grate. So was the lack of success. If Lily felt as frustrated as Alfred was, she said nothing, just continued to search for the room they needed.

Alfred tried not to think about what would happen if they didn't find it before their deadline.

Tried not to think about what would happen to Arthur. What possibly was happening to Arthur.

At least things couldn't get any worse.

As if on cue, a door opened in front of them and Mathias stepped out into the hall. He froze, not even daring to breath, and felt Lily do likewise. The man stretched, yawned, and turned to head down the hall in the direction they were headed. Apparently, he hadn't noticed them and Alfred couldn't believe how lucky-

"Nah!" Mathias chuckled, spinning around to face them. "I'm just fucking with you."

He closed the gap in two brisk strides and then he was standing in front of Alfred, uncomfortably violating his personal space.

"Well, hello there!" Mathias sang. "I was hoping I'd be seeing you again. Had to thank you for this, after all."

Alfred had a half second to notice the bandage plastered over Mathias' forehead before an absolutely devastating right hook collided with his face sending his glasses flying off into the hall and Alfred tumbling to the floor. He lay there, stunned, as Mathias loomed ominously. Or at least he thought Mathias was looming. His opponent's willingness to hit a guy with glasses had transformed Alfred's vision into a collage of colored blobs.

"Comfy? You're gonna be there a while. I got lots more to thank you for."

Alfred tried to scramble away, but a boot came down on his stomach and he hit the floor hard, his breath leaving him in a single gasping wheeze. Mathias kicked him again before he could draw it another breath. Alfred instinctively curled up on himself, trying to protect his vulnerable stomach.

"I know, I know. I could just shoot you." The Mathias blob patted a black blob at his side roughly the size of a semiautomatic rifle. "But, you see, I got another couple minutes until the fireworks go off and not much to do till then, so-"

He kicked Alfred in the head.

"We're just gonna play piñata until I get to see your insides. It always was my favorite party- Well, hello there, Little Miss. I thought I told you to stay in the-"

Alfred wasn't sure if it was the lack of glasses, the lack of oxygen, or the kick to the head which was responsible for what he thought happened next.

He thought Mathias drew his gun, pointing it at Lily and ordering her back to the command room.

He though Lily punched Mathias in the face and grabbed the end of his rifle.

He thought Lily kicked Mathias in the balls and twisted the gun out of his grasp as he flinched reflexively.

He thought Lily performed a dainty pirouette to build up momentum before slamming Mathias' gun into his already injured temple like a club.

He thought small and precious Lily dropped large and imposing Mathias with the thoughtless ease that most people display pulling their coffee cups out of the cabinet in the morning.

He thought he heard and felt Mathias hit the floor next to him, not even stirring.

This was, clearly, the head injury talking.

"Alfred?"

He blinked. There was a Lily blob above him, pushing something into his face. His glasses. He put them on. Lily came into focus, peering worriedly down at him. There was an assault rifle grasped in her hands.

"What?" he groaned. "How did-?"

Lily smiled. Alfred knew just enough German to get the gist of her response.

"Your brother? Your brother taught you how to do that?"

She nodded.

Alfred decided then and there that he never wanted to cross Lily's brother. Anyone who could teach a twelve year old look-alike to channel Batman was clearly not to be messed with.

He heaved himself up off the floor, midriff protesting the whole way. "We probably shouldn't leave him out in the open like this. What was he doing here anyway?"

He looked over at the door Mathias had walked out of. It was marked SECURITY.

Well, that looked promising.

They quickly hogtied Mathias using one of the cable spools and together dragged his bulk into the security room and dumped him in a corner after searching him for any more weapons. The room itself was little more than a glorified storage closet with a swivel chair and a bank of monitors showing grainy, not quite black and white, not quite color security footage. There was a map with clearly marked fire exits as well as the locations of important systems access posted on the wall behind smudged glass. Alfred placed his pointer finger on the image of the security room and traced his way down a series of hallways to the room they were searching for.

"Got it. Looks like we get out of here and take a left and then the- third door- on the-" Alfred trailed off. He'd turned to address Lily and in doing so also turned to face the security feed.

Arthur was on one of the screens.

So was Tino.

This wouldn't have been so bad if they both didn't happen to be on the same screen.

Arthur was strapped to a chair and Tino was circling him slowly, like sharks did in the movies. There were dark spots on Arthur's face that dribbled down his chest. The video quality was poor enough that Alfred couldn't tell if it was blood, vomit, or sweat. His head was down, hiding his eyes, but every so often he'd tilt his head to one side or the other, following Tino's circling.

He was alive. Arthur was still alive.

Alfred gravitated towards the screens, trying to get closer to the image of Arthur.

Lily put her hand on his shoulder and shook her head when he turned to look.

You don't want to watch this, her face said.

"I have to. Even if- I have to."

She gave a gentle tug away and shook her cables.

"But-"

A finger abruptly shot into his face, it darted away towards the image of Arthur then arced back to the cables. She shook them again for emphasis.

"You're right. He would- He would want me to finish the mission."

They left Mathias and the monitors, Lily leading the way this time. Alfred floated along almost listlessly behind her. He wondered if this is how Eduard had been feeling. Disconnected. Like nothing was quite real. In hindsight, he was impressed the man had been able to pull himself together as well as he had. Alfred barely felt able to plug wires back in and reconnect systems with fumbling fingers. Lily seemed to be moving so much faster and it was embarrassing that he'd been the one to press so hard before only to fall apart now.

"I think we've got it." he announced. "But the system will need a minute to reboot before Eduard will be able to send."

He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes and immediately stopped as his right eye, which had long since started to swell, protested.

"If it doesn't work- Well, if it doesn't work, it was very nice having met you."

Lily nodded likewise.

"If it does work, it won't take Tino long to realize something's up. He'll come looking for us. We have to do something before we lose the element of surprise. I don't like the idea of being in a fair fight with someone who's clearly lost his mind."

He breathed out through his nose, trying to pull himself together long enough to construct some sort of plan. Even a basic outline would do.

"We need to head back to security, see if we can figure out where Tino is. Maybe then we can, I don't know, surround him or something? We should also make sure Mathias hasn't gone anywhere. Shit, if he wakes up-"

Lily interrupted him by taking a take no prisoners stance and hefting the rifle in a fashion that made it clear she knew what she was doing. She leveled a look at Alfred that suggested he was a colossal idiot for worrying about such things.

"Right, if he wakes up, you've got it."

A thought occurred to him.

"So, if you had awesome kung fu skills, or whatever, why didn't you fight back until now?"

She started into an explanation in German before breaking it off and rolling up one of the sleeves of her dress. There were bruises on her forearms. Now that Alfred was looking, her nails also seemed jagged and broken.

Defensive wounds.

"They outnumbered you." he guessed. "They were also probably armed, and you weren't."

He could picture it. The first few guards going down like pins before a bowling ball, not suspecting someone so small to put up such a fight, before man- and firepower finally forced Lily to submit.

Another thought occurred to him.

"Does that brother of yours know you're gone?"

Lily grinned.

"Ok. That's- Well- I think I'll stop asking questions now. Come on, let's see if we can't get the drop on Tino."

The security room was still there when they got back and not a smudge of radioactive ash, so Eduard had managed to at least delay the launch, if not stop it completely. Mathias was also there, exactly where they left him.

Alfred checked the cables keeping him bound and Lily kept her rifle trained on him, just in case.

The map didn't magically reveal where Tino was, there was no bright red dot indicating 'maniacs here.' A search of the rest of the room only reveal a scattering of papers, some outdated magazines, and a grayish box on the wall that seemed to be some sort of intercom. There was a mic sticking out of the monitor controls, which Alfred guessed was part of the same system.

Alfred knew he'd have to look at the screens, but he'd been putting it off. He was afraid of what he'd see if he looked. He looked anyway.

Tino had stopped circling. He was sitting on a desk he'd pulled from somewhere and chatting in an almost bored fashion with Arthur, who'd crumpled in on himself a little bit more since Alfred had last seen him. He didn't look broken though. Not yet.

Alfred grit his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, wanting to look away, but knowing he wouldn't be able to. He'd left Arthur before. He wouldn't do it again.

There was a number four taped under the screen. There was also a little symbol in the corner which indicated the monitor had been muted. Alfred swallowed, mouth suddenly spitless, and pressed a button on the console.

Tino's voice floated into the room, as grainy as the footage it accompanied.

"-before. I wonder who will ally with who when WWIII starts up?" Tino mused.

"What makes you think this is going to be the start of WWIII?" Arthur gasped.

Tino just laughed.

"Arthur, please. You should know better. Americans won't let an attack of this magnitude be anything but the start of the next World War. Their tendency to take immediate and aggressive action will ensure that everything will go exactly as I have planned."

He leaned back and waved his hand in front of him, as if gesturing to a sprawling landscape only he could see.

"Picture it. Cities reduced to rubble. Millions reduced to ash. Radioactive fallout spreading poison through the atmosphere. You have to imagine the survivors will be pretty upset about that. So, naturally, they'll go looking for who's responsible for such an-" he paused, rolling words around in his head before selecting the right one, "atrocity."

He giggle, as if worldwide devastation was a funny cat video, nothing but an amusing diversion. "I've planted a nice little treasure trail for them, and guess who's at the end of it?"

Arthur said nothing, but Tino reached across the gap between him and gently tapped Arthur on the nose.

"That's right." he cooed. "YOU."

"Such a shame, really, that a loyal member of the British government would sink to such depths. He was always such a hardworking and dependable member of the workplace. It will come as shock to everyone who knows you that you would do such a thing. But, you know, history is full of outliers. Sometimes ordinary, unremarkable people like yourself just snap."

He paused.

"Of course, in no way does that excuse you for what you've done."

A smile spread across Tino's face. Or, at least, he bared his teeth. His eyes were too devoid of emotion to be called a smile.

"You're going to be the next Hitler, and everyone will hate you forever and ever. Well, everyone left."

"Tino." Arthur tried. "You don't have to do this. Blame me. Blame me for what happened to Ber-"

Tino darted forward and grabbed Arthur's arm. There was a dull crack from the speakers and Arthur jerked suddenly. Alfred made a soft sound and covered his mouth to keep his stomach from climbing up his throat.

"Don't say his name!" he pulled a gun from somewhere, the angle was wrong to see exactly where, and jammed it under Arthur's chin. "You don't get to say his name!"

Whatever tenuous grasp Tino had on reality had obviously frayed to a breaking point. Alfred took action.

"Attention. Your attention please." he spoke into the mic, voice calm, collected, and completely opposite of how he was actually feeling.

"There's nothing wrong with your intercom." Alfred's voice boomed through the base. "Do not attempt to adjust your speakers. We are controlling this transmission. We control the horizontal. We control the vertical. We control everything you see and... Well, actually, we just control what you hear. Put the gun down and step away from Arthur."

[End Chapter]

I like to think that Switzerland knew he couldn't always be there to keep Liechtenstein safe and so taught her how to break people in his stead.

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