Alone on the homestead
Small drabble dump for Hetalia. Oh, philosophy is funtimes. And I'm expanding my horizons beyond just writing my usual characters. :D The third is for underthered -- we did a gore exchange but the second one ended up way more gory than the one I actually wrote for her...
Warnings for GORE, Nazis, Hiroshima, and current events.
Yao sat upon his Great Wall now, at the northernmost border, and risked closing his eyes to turn his face into the wind. So very far to his left was Moscow. So very far to his right was Pyongyang and Tokyo. So very far behind him was his own Beijing.
He closed his eyes because he thought for the moment that North Korea was bluffing. He had been threatened with nuclear war before, when Ivan had been angry and frightened, and it had failed to scare him into submission then. North Korea's playthings would not make him flinch.
The world, he thought, is in a very precarious sort of balancing act.
In the time in which he had built this wall, maybe the kinds of threats a nuclear war posed him would have frightened him into fighting. Or, or building this wall--it was fear that finally motivated him to do that, wasn't it? The desperate need for security, which the Wall had ended up being useless for. But no one had ever envisioned planes or modern politics that were so incredibly intrusive.
What he had not learned then was that it was no use, really, being frightened. He was over four thousand years old. He had sat back and watched the Roman Empire rise and fall. He knew Russia as a frightened child, he alone knew Russia's descent into his curious brand of madness. He watched the world change, the earth breathe. He was its sole survivor.
The thought did not comfort him. What he did not know when he first met Rome was that all empires fall. And young as he was then, he outlived the mighty and far-reaching Roman Empire. He alone was alive to know exactly how his kind died and was born, because he alone witnessed it. There had been others so old, but they hadn't reached this modern age.
He sat there on his Great Wall, once such a comfort to him, and looked out over the expressionless land. One day he would go the way of all living things--and he would be but a memory, or strange artifacts, or lessons to the young. And these younger nations, so caught up still in their ephemeral struggles, would be in his place: witnesses to their own kind's demise, and if the memory of China the nation faded from the textbooks it would not from the hearts and minds of Yao's kind. Rather than the downfall of a nation...to them it would be losing a friend, or an enemy, as the case may be.
The enemy was always time, in its slow and inexorable march. It seemed to have merely forgotten Yao for the moment.
Time had birthed the Roman Empire, reared him into something proud and strong. Time had made him lax, made him weak, made him decline, and then sealed his fate. The earth merely breathed around Yao, inhalations birthing nations, exhalations causing them to fade, quietly, away. Ideas flickered away that quickly.
Time had brought the child Ivan out of his snowy woods. Yao remembered him, young and small and naive, sad and forlorn alone in the snow. Yao watched him under Mongol rule, watched something deep inside the boy shift permanently, so that his innate sweetness was tainted. Yao watched his struggle to live, to prosper--he watched that struggle become an obsession, watched it wrought with fear and paranoia, watched Ivan go insane from the deep-seated internal desire to be safe above all else. Though it seemed maybe he was doing better these days, time would still march on.
It had merely paused for the moment, forgetting.
----------
It worked. For a moment that was all Alfred could think--that oh God, oh Christ, it actually worked, it worked--
The possibilities are now staggeringly infinite, if we can split an atom and destroy a city then what else can we do?
He was not on this godforsaken Pacific island, he was not holding a pistol in his hand, he was not looking at Kiku--he was back home, on the mainland, in the throng of excited scientists, ecstatic military officers, all smiling and cheering for the victory that America won, or would win, because how could Japan ever hope to stand strong in the face of something so massive and
and
Alfred had never seen someone explode from the inside out.
The warm splatter hitting his face and his hands and his uniform was blood. Kiku did not scream, Alfred only realized it later--he did not scream, his eyes hard and blank and stunned as his side exploded and he went down on one knee and his pretty white uniform untainted by the jungle's green went RED.
Even though Kiku still had the gun in his hand Alfred dropped his.
There was a gaping hole in Kiku's side that looked like a paper cut-out, it was so very perfectly circular. The white uniform hung in red tatters, strings of bloody cotton or something, fluttering over peeled-back muscle, exposed ribcage, the russet gleam of the liver, the grey hose of intestines.
Alfred stared.
Acid was bubbling through the exposed flesh--Kiku's stomach had ruptured. And he did not scream. Alfred was almost sure he saw the flicker and heave of hidden lungs and now the red was at Kiku's lips too, he was coughing it up, maybe those hidden lungs had punctured too. And he did not scream. And he did not drop the gun.
Somewhere behind it Alfred realized that one bomb would not make Japan surrender. Which meant they would drop another one and this is not right.
That was not America. That was Alfred--but, he told himself blankly, as he shrieked and scrambled towards Kiku, but if my people saw this--if they saw this they'd know it's wrong, they wouldn't want to do it anymore--
Gunfire ripped through the Pacific air. Pain blossomed right underneath Alfred's ribcage, and he suddenly couldn't breathe. He stopped, gripping the hole in his diaphragm, surprised at the sudden flowers of warm red that bloomed from it in his green field of a uniform.
Surprised, fascinated, at the way he could feel his own heart pumping blood out through that hole.
"No, stop!" he screamed hoarsely, as Kiku re-cocked the gun, blood streaming, innards exposed like some kind of living corpse, and yet he still gritted his teeth. "Stop, stop--let me help you--"
Kiku shouted something in his own language then, and shot Alfred again. More red flowers, on his left arm, just a flesh wound...
Alfred got close enough and ripped the gun out of Kiku's hand, threw it away. He grabbed Kiku's arms, and Kiku grappled with him, despite his labored breathing, the pulse of blood that formed a small pond around Kiku's ruined boots. Alfred pushed him down, then, held him down--Kiku was so much smaller, it wasn't hard, but God, why didn't he scream--it must hurt, it had to hurt, it had to hurt so bad that Alfred would want to die, wouldn't he--
"You will not kill me," Kiku snarled, still struggling, pinned, and Alfred was half-scared his thrashing would dump his intestines out onto the shore rocks.
"Stop," he pleaded, barked, begged, shouted at Kiku, "stop stop stop stop please just stop, for fuck's sake--"
"No," Kiku snapped, and for a half-second Alfred couldn't help being impressed--he was crazy but goddamn was he tough-- "Get off of me, Alfred-san, and we will continue where we left off."
"Your intestines are hanging out," Alfred said, with Kiku's blood soaking into his shins, God..."Kiku, Kiku, just stop, okay, let the rest of them fight--"
"Alfred-san," Kiku barked, "we do not stop. You are too young to understand."
"What the fuck, no," Alfred cried, and maybe England had been right, maybe this modern warfare stuff was beyond him, "no, Kiku, I knew you before this and all it was supposed to be is we fight and make up, that's all--"
"Yes," Kiku panted, with so much suppressed rage, "that is why my American cousins are in camps, because we will be friends again--and now--no, I think not--you must learn that war is vicious, do not give me your pity, I do not want it--"
"Kiku, I don't control this, you know that," Alfred shouted down into his face, "just like you don't control anything Japan does, we just reflect it, we're older and bigger than this, it's just a stupid war--"
"That is Alfred-san talking and not America," Kiku interrupted angrily. "And yes, you reflect it. You will reflect it all, all of it--the hate too, you must--now get rid of your dishonorable pity and get off of me and we will continue this as we are supposed to, as nations, not as people."
Alfred felt sick, looking at the wound in Kiku's side. But he got up, and off of Kiku, who flipped over and snatched for his gun. Alfred dashed for his, grabbed it up just as Kiku dragged himself to his knees.
"Remember, you are not a human being, Alfred-san," he said, getting laboriously to his feet, ignoring the blood, ignoring the pain. "You are America, and I am Japan."
----------
Gibert didn't usually make a point of noticing anyone else's behavior--just that his younger brother always acted as though he had a stick up his ass. And he'd been kind of busy, both of them had, with the new Chancellor. There was just so much to be done that Gilbert wrote his brother's new, strange bearing as his bizarre expression of excitement.
It had started, now that Gilbert thought of it, as a simple push--"No, mein bruder, I will do it"; "No, mein bruder, I do not need your help." Well. Well. And to think Gilbert had once been an empire while this little Germany had been just that--small, fledgling, and incapable of achieving the kind of greatness that Gilbert introduced him to.
But then it was always "No, this is mine." "No, Gilbert, it is not your affair." "No, no, Prussia, this is for the greater states."
The ever-widening gap between them. And now this.
The door opened and there was Ludwig, and Gilbert had to admit that his brother's new black uniform was damn impressive. With it on and his blond hair slicked back he looked less like a prick and more like a real villain. And was that what they were, the villains? Or maybe they weren't even in this together anymore.
"No, Prussia, please stay at home while I meet with the Chancellor."
"Prussia, this is Herr Goering. He will be your new commissioner."
Because now it just seemed like Ludwig's circus. Oh no wait. Germany's. Since apparently they were no longer brothers enough to use their human names.
Tonight he was different still. He had attended every rally, hung on his beloved Chancellor's every word. He had spent long hours with his Chancellor and Gilbert half-wondered what they did together. Or rather, what his Chancellor had done to Germany.
"Good evening, mein bruder," Ludwig said quietly, entering with all his military grace. There was nothing like a good soldier and Gilbert had to admit that his brother was just that. Ludwig closed the door behind him.
Gilbert looked up at Ludwig from the sofa, and far and away his old warrior instincts told him to be very, very cautious. Ludwig looked...off. Less clear, less coherent in the eyes. And oh so very distant and removed and cold.
He put down the beer. "Is it?" he said, noncommittally. "I dunno, West, you never let me outside."
Ludwig smiled tightly. His eyes did not. Gilbert's eyes, red where Ludwig's were ice-blue, fell to see that Ludwig was armed. Why was he armed?
Gilbert picked the beer back up.
"It isn't necessary for you to do anything but relax, mein bruder," Ludwig murmured, and moved like a bunch of shadows to pick up one of the bottles of beer. "Your part in this is over."
"Y'know, that pisses me off," Gilbert said irately. "What happened to us doing this thing together? It was working pretty well in the last war."
Ludwig's blue eyes flashed at him. "Yes, and see how badly everything ended up after that," he said. Gilbert hesitated. There was something very wrong here.
And then he realized that Ludwig was holding his black pistol in his hand, not a beer--I am too drunk for this, probably, he thought--and had it cocked and loaded and pointed at Gilbert's stomach. Gilbert stared at this, incredulous.
"What are you getting at?" he said, surprised. "You can't kill me, West. We don't die."
"The Roman Empire fell," Ludwig pointed out very, very quietly, and moved the barrel up, until it was level with Gilbert's head.
"You're fucking bluffing," Gilbert said in disgust. "Give it a rest, West. We don't die. Put the gun away and go sleep with your Chancellor. For fuck's sake." He turned away, fuming now.
And then his head split, and he was surprised to find himself on the ground, covered in glass and beer and blood--the blood was trickling down the side of his head, over his eyes and mouth, in his white hair, and he could feel even drunk the hole in his skull, the brassy bullet embedded in his brain but it was just like he'd told West, he was not dead
what the fuck did he think he was doing, shooting his broth--
He blacked out for a moment, because Ludwig kicked him.
"I do not bluff." He put his boot on Gilbert's side and leaned down, and holy hell it hurt, and Gilbert could not move but he could see the blond hair gleaming above him, and there was glass in his arm. His lips moved uselessly, vision sliding in and out like a focusing telescope, tunneling until he saw only Ludwig, and he could sort of feel how the blood was welling up out of his skull, filling the hole like a lake, and bubbling up and over the sides. Could the brain leak, he wondered.
See, he wanted to say. We don't die.
"The German government is of the opinion that the Prussian state needn't have so much power anymore," Ludwig said softly, his face as severe and unsympathetic as ever. The GERMAN government. The PRUSSIAN state. Oh, Gilbert thought, this is all about you wanting power.
Except you never were this way.
What the fuck did they do to you while I wasn't looking, West.
Ludwig kicked him again and the blood went across the floor like a Rorshach test. Gilbert let the pain take him, let himself pass out--you wait, he thought. I'm your brother. You can do this but I know it's not fucking you.
It's not you.
Warnings for GORE, Nazis, Hiroshima, and current events.
Yao sat upon his Great Wall now, at the northernmost border, and risked closing his eyes to turn his face into the wind. So very far to his left was Moscow. So very far to his right was Pyongyang and Tokyo. So very far behind him was his own Beijing.
He closed his eyes because he thought for the moment that North Korea was bluffing. He had been threatened with nuclear war before, when Ivan had been angry and frightened, and it had failed to scare him into submission then. North Korea's playthings would not make him flinch.
The world, he thought, is in a very precarious sort of balancing act.
In the time in which he had built this wall, maybe the kinds of threats a nuclear war posed him would have frightened him into fighting. Or, or building this wall--it was fear that finally motivated him to do that, wasn't it? The desperate need for security, which the Wall had ended up being useless for. But no one had ever envisioned planes or modern politics that were so incredibly intrusive.
What he had not learned then was that it was no use, really, being frightened. He was over four thousand years old. He had sat back and watched the Roman Empire rise and fall. He knew Russia as a frightened child, he alone knew Russia's descent into his curious brand of madness. He watched the world change, the earth breathe. He was its sole survivor.
The thought did not comfort him. What he did not know when he first met Rome was that all empires fall. And young as he was then, he outlived the mighty and far-reaching Roman Empire. He alone was alive to know exactly how his kind died and was born, because he alone witnessed it. There had been others so old, but they hadn't reached this modern age.
He sat there on his Great Wall, once such a comfort to him, and looked out over the expressionless land. One day he would go the way of all living things--and he would be but a memory, or strange artifacts, or lessons to the young. And these younger nations, so caught up still in their ephemeral struggles, would be in his place: witnesses to their own kind's demise, and if the memory of China the nation faded from the textbooks it would not from the hearts and minds of Yao's kind. Rather than the downfall of a nation...to them it would be losing a friend, or an enemy, as the case may be.
The enemy was always time, in its slow and inexorable march. It seemed to have merely forgotten Yao for the moment.
Time had birthed the Roman Empire, reared him into something proud and strong. Time had made him lax, made him weak, made him decline, and then sealed his fate. The earth merely breathed around Yao, inhalations birthing nations, exhalations causing them to fade, quietly, away. Ideas flickered away that quickly.
Time had brought the child Ivan out of his snowy woods. Yao remembered him, young and small and naive, sad and forlorn alone in the snow. Yao watched him under Mongol rule, watched something deep inside the boy shift permanently, so that his innate sweetness was tainted. Yao watched his struggle to live, to prosper--he watched that struggle become an obsession, watched it wrought with fear and paranoia, watched Ivan go insane from the deep-seated internal desire to be safe above all else. Though it seemed maybe he was doing better these days, time would still march on.
It had merely paused for the moment, forgetting.
----------
It worked. For a moment that was all Alfred could think--that oh God, oh Christ, it actually worked, it worked--
The possibilities are now staggeringly infinite, if we can split an atom and destroy a city then what else can we do?
He was not on this godforsaken Pacific island, he was not holding a pistol in his hand, he was not looking at Kiku--he was back home, on the mainland, in the throng of excited scientists, ecstatic military officers, all smiling and cheering for the victory that America won, or would win, because how could Japan ever hope to stand strong in the face of something so massive and
and
Alfred had never seen someone explode from the inside out.
The warm splatter hitting his face and his hands and his uniform was blood. Kiku did not scream, Alfred only realized it later--he did not scream, his eyes hard and blank and stunned as his side exploded and he went down on one knee and his pretty white uniform untainted by the jungle's green went RED.
Even though Kiku still had the gun in his hand Alfred dropped his.
There was a gaping hole in Kiku's side that looked like a paper cut-out, it was so very perfectly circular. The white uniform hung in red tatters, strings of bloody cotton or something, fluttering over peeled-back muscle, exposed ribcage, the russet gleam of the liver, the grey hose of intestines.
Alfred stared.
Acid was bubbling through the exposed flesh--Kiku's stomach had ruptured. And he did not scream. Alfred was almost sure he saw the flicker and heave of hidden lungs and now the red was at Kiku's lips too, he was coughing it up, maybe those hidden lungs had punctured too. And he did not scream. And he did not drop the gun.
Somewhere behind it Alfred realized that one bomb would not make Japan surrender. Which meant they would drop another one and this is not right.
That was not America. That was Alfred--but, he told himself blankly, as he shrieked and scrambled towards Kiku, but if my people saw this--if they saw this they'd know it's wrong, they wouldn't want to do it anymore--
Gunfire ripped through the Pacific air. Pain blossomed right underneath Alfred's ribcage, and he suddenly couldn't breathe. He stopped, gripping the hole in his diaphragm, surprised at the sudden flowers of warm red that bloomed from it in his green field of a uniform.
Surprised, fascinated, at the way he could feel his own heart pumping blood out through that hole.
"No, stop!" he screamed hoarsely, as Kiku re-cocked the gun, blood streaming, innards exposed like some kind of living corpse, and yet he still gritted his teeth. "Stop, stop--let me help you--"
Kiku shouted something in his own language then, and shot Alfred again. More red flowers, on his left arm, just a flesh wound...
Alfred got close enough and ripped the gun out of Kiku's hand, threw it away. He grabbed Kiku's arms, and Kiku grappled with him, despite his labored breathing, the pulse of blood that formed a small pond around Kiku's ruined boots. Alfred pushed him down, then, held him down--Kiku was so much smaller, it wasn't hard, but God, why didn't he scream--it must hurt, it had to hurt, it had to hurt so bad that Alfred would want to die, wouldn't he--
"You will not kill me," Kiku snarled, still struggling, pinned, and Alfred was half-scared his thrashing would dump his intestines out onto the shore rocks.
"Stop," he pleaded, barked, begged, shouted at Kiku, "stop stop stop stop please just stop, for fuck's sake--"
"No," Kiku snapped, and for a half-second Alfred couldn't help being impressed--he was crazy but goddamn was he tough-- "Get off of me, Alfred-san, and we will continue where we left off."
"Your intestines are hanging out," Alfred said, with Kiku's blood soaking into his shins, God..."Kiku, Kiku, just stop, okay, let the rest of them fight--"
"Alfred-san," Kiku barked, "we do not stop. You are too young to understand."
"What the fuck, no," Alfred cried, and maybe England had been right, maybe this modern warfare stuff was beyond him, "no, Kiku, I knew you before this and all it was supposed to be is we fight and make up, that's all--"
"Yes," Kiku panted, with so much suppressed rage, "that is why my American cousins are in camps, because we will be friends again--and now--no, I think not--you must learn that war is vicious, do not give me your pity, I do not want it--"
"Kiku, I don't control this, you know that," Alfred shouted down into his face, "just like you don't control anything Japan does, we just reflect it, we're older and bigger than this, it's just a stupid war--"
"That is Alfred-san talking and not America," Kiku interrupted angrily. "And yes, you reflect it. You will reflect it all, all of it--the hate too, you must--now get rid of your dishonorable pity and get off of me and we will continue this as we are supposed to, as nations, not as people."
Alfred felt sick, looking at the wound in Kiku's side. But he got up, and off of Kiku, who flipped over and snatched for his gun. Alfred dashed for his, grabbed it up just as Kiku dragged himself to his knees.
"Remember, you are not a human being, Alfred-san," he said, getting laboriously to his feet, ignoring the blood, ignoring the pain. "You are America, and I am Japan."
----------
Gibert didn't usually make a point of noticing anyone else's behavior--just that his younger brother always acted as though he had a stick up his ass. And he'd been kind of busy, both of them had, with the new Chancellor. There was just so much to be done that Gilbert wrote his brother's new, strange bearing as his bizarre expression of excitement.
It had started, now that Gilbert thought of it, as a simple push--"No, mein bruder, I will do it"; "No, mein bruder, I do not need your help." Well. Well. And to think Gilbert had once been an empire while this little Germany had been just that--small, fledgling, and incapable of achieving the kind of greatness that Gilbert introduced him to.
But then it was always "No, this is mine." "No, Gilbert, it is not your affair." "No, no, Prussia, this is for the greater states."
The ever-widening gap between them. And now this.
The door opened and there was Ludwig, and Gilbert had to admit that his brother's new black uniform was damn impressive. With it on and his blond hair slicked back he looked less like a prick and more like a real villain. And was that what they were, the villains? Or maybe they weren't even in this together anymore.
"No, Prussia, please stay at home while I meet with the Chancellor."
"Prussia, this is Herr Goering. He will be your new commissioner."
Because now it just seemed like Ludwig's circus. Oh no wait. Germany's. Since apparently they were no longer brothers enough to use their human names.
Tonight he was different still. He had attended every rally, hung on his beloved Chancellor's every word. He had spent long hours with his Chancellor and Gilbert half-wondered what they did together. Or rather, what his Chancellor had done to Germany.
"Good evening, mein bruder," Ludwig said quietly, entering with all his military grace. There was nothing like a good soldier and Gilbert had to admit that his brother was just that. Ludwig closed the door behind him.
Gilbert looked up at Ludwig from the sofa, and far and away his old warrior instincts told him to be very, very cautious. Ludwig looked...off. Less clear, less coherent in the eyes. And oh so very distant and removed and cold.
He put down the beer. "Is it?" he said, noncommittally. "I dunno, West, you never let me outside."
Ludwig smiled tightly. His eyes did not. Gilbert's eyes, red where Ludwig's were ice-blue, fell to see that Ludwig was armed. Why was he armed?
Gilbert picked the beer back up.
"It isn't necessary for you to do anything but relax, mein bruder," Ludwig murmured, and moved like a bunch of shadows to pick up one of the bottles of beer. "Your part in this is over."
"Y'know, that pisses me off," Gilbert said irately. "What happened to us doing this thing together? It was working pretty well in the last war."
Ludwig's blue eyes flashed at him. "Yes, and see how badly everything ended up after that," he said. Gilbert hesitated. There was something very wrong here.
And then he realized that Ludwig was holding his black pistol in his hand, not a beer--I am too drunk for this, probably, he thought--and had it cocked and loaded and pointed at Gilbert's stomach. Gilbert stared at this, incredulous.
"What are you getting at?" he said, surprised. "You can't kill me, West. We don't die."
"The Roman Empire fell," Ludwig pointed out very, very quietly, and moved the barrel up, until it was level with Gilbert's head.
"You're fucking bluffing," Gilbert said in disgust. "Give it a rest, West. We don't die. Put the gun away and go sleep with your Chancellor. For fuck's sake." He turned away, fuming now.
And then his head split, and he was surprised to find himself on the ground, covered in glass and beer and blood--the blood was trickling down the side of his head, over his eyes and mouth, in his white hair, and he could feel even drunk the hole in his skull, the brassy bullet embedded in his brain but it was just like he'd told West, he was not dead
what the fuck did he think he was doing, shooting his broth--
He blacked out for a moment, because Ludwig kicked him.
"I do not bluff." He put his boot on Gilbert's side and leaned down, and holy hell it hurt, and Gilbert could not move but he could see the blond hair gleaming above him, and there was glass in his arm. His lips moved uselessly, vision sliding in and out like a focusing telescope, tunneling until he saw only Ludwig, and he could sort of feel how the blood was welling up out of his skull, filling the hole like a lake, and bubbling up and over the sides. Could the brain leak, he wondered.
See, he wanted to say. We don't die.
"The German government is of the opinion that the Prussian state needn't have so much power anymore," Ludwig said softly, his face as severe and unsympathetic as ever. The GERMAN government. The PRUSSIAN state. Oh, Gilbert thought, this is all about you wanting power.
Except you never were this way.
What the fuck did they do to you while I wasn't looking, West.
Ludwig kicked him again and the blood went across the floor like a Rorshach test. Gilbert let the pain take him, let himself pass out--you wait, he thought. I'm your brother. You can do this but I know it's not fucking you.
It's not you.