Chapter Text
The night is cold, and Norway walks along a forest path. It’s almost dawn, he should probably head back to the capital- Stockholm, not his own heart Oslo. He reaches the edge of the forest which clears into an open field, one that should be golden with ripening barley, but instead is dry and dead, littered with mines from wars gone by, and Norway doesn’t want to think about it.
The truth is that he is tired. Tired of being weak, having to answer to someone else. Tired of having to rely on someone else. The constant struggle of Denmark and Sweden fighting over him is all he can remember, and after all this time, he still can’t defend himself.
Oh god, they’re all so old. It’s been so long. Norway sits down on a flat rock and looks up at the same moon he watched in wonder a millennium ago.
He can’t deny that he needs them. There are times when he breaks down, and only the sound of Sweden’s heartbeat as he holds him to his chest can calm him. Sometimes, he’s so cold, and Denmark is the only one who can warm him up. It isn’t that he doesn’t like them, or that he wants to leave them, it’s just that he wants to be their equal, and they want to control him. They’re both delusional, and he’s tired.
Denmark would always tell him he’d never let Sweden touch him, that he would protect him and they would be together forever. That Denmark’s heart would be forever his, and his heart Denmark’s. Norway would hold his tongue and not tell him that he would never belong to anyone but himself, dreaming of the day he could openly announce that to the world.
That day finally came, at the end of one of many bitter wars. Staring down the barrel of certain defeat, Denmark sat on a hillside with Norway under the stars.
“They want to take you from me,” Denmark said, resigned. “I can’t stop them.”
Protect me, Norway wanted to demand. It’s your fault I’m involved in this.
“I don’t belong to anyone but myself,” he finally said.
Denmark had smiled and let him go. Figuratively. Politically. Physically, he held him close for one last night before the dawn brought the end of their union, and for the first and final time, Norway held him too.
England had suggested they fly a white flag. The banner they raised was red.
Denmark lay unconscious on the ground, his flag strewn over him. The red was bleeding into the white cross, or maybe he was. Norway had felt oddly exposed without the Dane in front of him. He wasn’t used to standing alone.
“You can’t take me,” he’d said, holding up his new constitution. He was covered in dirt and blood and feeling faint like he was going to blow over in the wind, but he looked Sweden in the eye and willed himself to stay standing.
Sweden had just smiled at him, dipped a brush in his Swedish blue and dragged it down and across the torn Dannebrog. He pulled it from Denmark’s body, handed it to the newly independent nation and turned and walked away, knowing Norway would have to follow.
Norway had stood for a long time staring at his new flag, another reminder that he could never escape his past, nothing truly his own.
That reminds him. His national day is next month, and nobody can stop him from decking out the country in the flag he’d come to love, one day for his people to be proud and happy. Finally, something to look forward to, and Norway remembers there’s always hope, there’s always tomorrow. Tomorrow might be a better day. He isn’t going to give up yet.
The night brings a taste of freedom, but the sky is going to lighten soon, and Sweden is going to question his whereabouts. He finally starts heading back towards Stockholm. The night is silent except his soft footsteps on the dirt, but then there’s a click he barely registers, and then suddenly everything flashes and he might’ve heard an explosion and then he’s staring up into the sky.
He becomes vaguely aware that he’s bleeding out. It feels like warm water running down his skin- that reminds him, Iceland, beautiful Iceland, with its geothermal springs, he needs to go visit his brother soon- and he can almost hear it bubbling, like a stream flowing down a waterfall, headed for the ocean. He must be laying on the ground, but he can’t feel it anymore. He’s falling. The wind is beneath him.
Is this what freedom feels like?
He hears a voice calling his name, quietly, far away, but he ignores it. He’s comfortable, the Stockholm sky is pretty. The faintest glimmer of green in the cloudless night. Surely it is even better in Oslo.
Maybe he’ll go see it tomorrow. There’s always tomorrow, right? He doesn’t need to wake up right now and deal with Denmark, or Sweden, or the barren fields covered in mines from all the wars gone by.