Some say Hell is a fire pit full of molten lakes and demons to torture and stab with pitchforks. Others say Hell is the battlefield, bullets and bombs and fallen bodies of your comrades in pieces scattered around you.

Peter knows they're both wrong.

Hell is a tiny metal fort surrounded by water on all sides, forsaken by all. Hell is the dwindling and dusty supplies left when the last of his people left him. Hell is a throat so sore from shouting, to anyone, anywhere, that he was there, that eventually his throat gave up altogether, and the only thing he had left, his words, were also ripped away from him.

Hell was standing on the salt-coated deck of his fort and staring off into the blue expanse of nowhere, waiting for someone who wouldn't return to come back.

Hell was slowly dying with each day that passed.

Peter tried to breathe in deep, and choked on the salt air as it agitated his throat, sending him into an intense coughing fit. It really wasn't fair, Peter reflected, that his throat could hurt so much yet he didn't even have blood to show for it. Well, at least it was better than his stomach, which was twisting in on itself painfully in a constant attempt to devour itself. But Peter didn't eat, even though he was starving.

Nine days.

That was how many days he had rations left for. He could double that time if he only ate once every other day. And after that -

Peter's stomach felt like it was melting from the inside.

England was coming back, he had too. He'd promised. Though, it suddenly occurs to Peter, England hadn't promised it would be soon, or even this century. Just "when it is all over." Peter would have scoffed if he could, but he didn't want his dry lips to split again. Just his luck that the water ran out before the food. Just his luck that he - what was he? - wasn't human, and couldn't die like them.

Just his luck that he was born to go to war, and survived the war just to die and go to Hell.

Or rather, stay in hell.

"Fort Roughs."

That was the name England gave him when he first opened his eyes. Was it a prediction for how Peter's life would go? Or maybe it was a curse - England had never wanted a personification of fort! (who would?) - so maybe he did curse Peter, just to get rid of him.

No, England wouldn't do that! He wasn't pleased to see Peter, of course, but what did it matter? There was a war to be fought, and a personification of a fort that could be sent to war. So, Peter went to war. England went to war. And eventually, war went away, and so did England.

Neither came back.

He hadn't managed to speak much with England, not with the war and the orders and the rush of everything, but he remembers bits and pieces he'd caught, things that were implied but never said. Like when England first thrust a gun into his hands and showed him how to take a life. When Peter's hands shook and his stomach turned until he vomited bile.

"Don't be rid-" A sigh. "Countries don't die, not like humans. As long as they have land-"

England never finished what he was saying, but Peter understood enough. A country like England wouldn't die if he was shot. Humans would. And Peter-

Well, Peter was careful enough not to get hurt. He wasn't a human, but he wasn't a country either. He didn't have land, not real land. Peter didn't want to test if he was more country than human, or more human than country. Whether he would die like a human or not.

But now he was going to find out. Nine more days of rations and starving. Nine more days of waiting in Hell.

Too many days left to suffer through, but enough to find out the answers no one knew. Peter's stomach twisted again, so painfully that Peter curled into himself to try to contain the pain.

Not much time left until Peter found out what happened to Forts when they die.

He hoped it was a kinder fate than his current one.

Two weeks later, the starved and abandoned personification of a fort died.

Twenty-four hours later, he woke back up again.

And Peter began to laugh in a way that was closer to crying.

"I guess I must be a country after all."

And finally, Peter knew.

The place countries went when they died,

The place that Peter woke up in,

A suffering with no end;

Hell. Peter was in Hell. And he laughed, because he didn't have tears left to cry.

England did not remember to return for another three years.