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Denmark had no memory as to why he was wandering along the northern shores of what was now Norway way back then. He was likely alone and simply exploring. He was always a curious soul. He didn’t know many people at the time. He only knew a select few humans who had come and gone. People he knew to be his, but he hadn’t the faintest idea of what that meant at the time. There were no humans in the far north that he had traveled to. At least, not any that he knew of.
Cold, shivering, and thinking of turning back, Denmark had only halted when he had seen a shape in the distance. It wasn’t a rock. It appeared pale. It looked like a person. A very little person.
He had met Norway, newly born and washed up along the frigid shores of her land. A human wouldn’t have survived. They would have gotten frostbite and died. Norway was clearly alive in some form when he got closer, for her body had shivered. It only made Denmark bewildered by her very existence.
Norway looked to be about a bodily and mental age of five years at the time. Denmark was assumed to be eight. With very little survival skills, as he was a child with more wonder in his heart than would do him good, he threw his collection of things he’d picked up to help himself survive and dragged her out of the water, bringing her to the driest part of the land that he could manage.
She was young. She was alive. Yet, most notably, Denmark could immediately tell: she was like him.
He didn’t know what he was, but he did know that she was exactly that. He had never met anyone else like him, but something about the way she existed, the way she was alive, the icey cold temperature of her body, the way her almost glowingly pale skin made her appear almost slightly supernatural told him that she was like him. They didn’t look alike at all. He was firey and warm, tan and strong-looking even for his young age.
But she was like him, so that meant he was to take it upon himself to make sure she stayed alive. He took her further away from the ocean, to a drier patch of land and worked on starting a fire until she woke up. It was the most determined he’d felt since he was first born—a memory of which he did not recall himself.
Norway was Denmark’s first contact with another countryperson such as himself. She was his first friend. First ally. First hug. First kiss. First love. First marriage. His first everything. The sentiment was shared on her end. No one ever came before her. No one ever would.
When she’d woken up, tired yet frightened at his existence, he’d responded by holding her hands in his startlingly warmer ones. Their temperatures would equalize each other. They completed each other.
He promised he would never hurt her. He would always try to protect her. He had only just met her, but she meant everything to him.
Norway had even been the first person to kill Denmark. It was a complete accident, truly, and it made him laugh afterward even with how terribly she felt for it. She simply got mad at him for laughing at her after she had slipped and fallen on her face while they played on sheets of ice in a frozen over river. She pushed him in irritation, and he stumbled backward, landing hard on his butt and atop a thinner sheet of ice. He broke through, and she was not able to pull him back out fast enough. He froze to death quite quickly.
Little Norway still scrambled to pull out his dead body. Her unnatural state of form made her practically immune to the deathly cold temperature of the water. The only issue was actually finding his body, as stupid Denmark thought it to be smart to try and swim under and punch through a different part of the ice to hoist himself up out of. Eventually, she’d found him, and dragged him off of the ice and into the snow. She cried over him, hugging him tightly as her tears froze on her cheeks.
He woke up after mere minutes, laughing and coughing up water. They learned of immortality in that instant. Norway frantically rubbed the tears from her cheeks to appear more level-headed, trying to force her typical stern look back on her face. Denmark only hugged her in response.
Something he prided himself in was the fact that he’d never killed her. After all, he promised he would never kill her. Her first death was an accident under his watch. She merely fell off of a cliff. He begged for her forgiveness after, and she gave him a weird look. It wasn’t like he could’ve grabbed her in time, anyway. But every death she suffers is another blow to his heart.
Sweden had killed her before. Few times, but still enough to take note. He hated himself for it, and that made Denmark very happy. The two of them fought over her often. Most of the time when Sweden killed her, it was an attack meant for Denmark instead.
Denmark was the first person that Norway had confided in, expressing her fears of being in a more proper relationship. She saw herself as unfit for such a thing, that she was too distant, too cold. Something so surreal to Denmark—she was wonderful in his eyes. It was only a few years or so before they had gotten married.
Norway was Denmark’s first marriage. Norway was Denmark’s first divorce, too.
While Denmark insisted they try to find a way to stay together after their union split, Norway stiffly, clearly reluctant, replied, “I think I should leave.”
Denmark wasn’t a man to give up, but willingly embracing death crossed his mind in that moment for the first time in ages, if ever. Leave it to her to give him more firsts. He lived, though. He would live. For her. Even if it meant he had to watcher marry Sweden instead. Not that it mattered. That man would always come second.
Everything about them changed in the twentieth century. War raged and then stopped. Peace finally settled over the north. So much so that it was unnatural. There was nothing to protect Norway from. There was nothing to hit Sweden over. There was no reason to call Iceland a little boy anymore; it was still baffling that he was far from ten years old now. There wasn’t much to do, so he drank with Finland and whined about the dread of being at peace.
Finland only mumbled that he truly could not relate to him there with Russia breathing down his neck. It was a Soviet decade at the time. Denmark felt the need to offer an awkward apology that Finland batted away.
He missed Norway, and Norway did not want to marry him again. In fact, she didn’t even seem to want to be his girlfriend. They would spend time together, go on dates, have sex, speak intensely about things that he had never considered. Such as the centuries of possessiveness from him that she had endured and he had not once noticed until it was pointed out, and plunged him into a bout of guilt that she smacked him on the shoulder for. There was quite a lot that she would forgive him for, she said. Even if she had every right not to, she said. She only wouldn’t forgive him for taking her heart, she said with a giggle.
With little context, it sounded romantic, but Denmark knew the meaning. In the fourteenth century, he destroyed the valuable parts of Saint Olav’s shrine. In doing so, he destroyed her heart. Her chest has existed hollow ever since. Times when he would rest his head over her breast in a cuddle only to feel and hear nothing shot him with a wave of unease.
Norway was in love with Denmark and Denmark was in love with Norway. However, marrying him a second time was too difficult for the two of them. They didn’t like to talk about their feelings much. It was difficult enough for her to bring up his bad behavior from the past.
She loved him, though. Closer to modern day, Denmark picked up a habit of asking her to be his girlfriend again, or to flat out marry him. She would turn him down with great hesitation. His smile would falter, but he would keep his head up high. They’d kiss and laugh like lovers even so.
Matthias sat next to Sigrid on a hillier area of the northern part of her land. They liked to visit each other for extended periods of time. They weren’t very far from the shores. It felt close to where he had found her.
Sigrid was tense. It likely was close to where she was born, then.
His legs were pulled to his chest, forearms resting on his knees. Matthias’s head inclined forward, chin on his arms. Sigrid sat on her knees, hands folded neatly in her lap. Ribbons of wind blew at her hair gently. Her cross pin gleamed in the sun.
The two of them were dressed warmly, Matthias more so than Sigrid. Sigrid didn’t need to dress the same as he did. While he could withstand heats due to the fiery passion of his soul, she could withstand the cold for the opposite reason.
Wind blew in his face. It was uncomfortable. Matthias wasn’t too fond of being in a place so chilly, but she insisted upon it. If he’s going to be at her house for a little bit, then she has every right to drag him around like a good little puppy to wherever she wants to go. He was always happy to oblige, but sometimes her destinations of choice were rather sucky.
He missed Copenhagen a bit, he thought. He could make her a nice dinner in his crappy little apartment. Then they would sit together and she would watch him play a video game, commenting on his skills as if she even knew how to use the controller. Then they’d head off to his bed because they did not know how to sleep in the same house without tangling with each other. He would hug her, and their temperatures would combine to create a whole and normal person. His double-hearted chest would beat twice as much in place of her hollow rib cage. His fat made up for her bones.
Sigrid leaned against his shoulder, snapping him out of his yearning thoughts. This was nice, too, he mused. She had shifted, sitting somewhat on her side.
“If I asked ya to marry me right now, what would ya say?” Matthias blurted the words out with little thought. Immediately, he thought of throwing himself off of the hill and running to the shores, freezing himself to death in the Norwegian Sea.
Hesitating, Sigrid sucked in a breath. She took longer to respond than usual. “I don’t know,” she eventually replied. “You’d have to ask.”
Freeing an arm from his knees, Matthias put it around her shoulders. His hand gripped her tightly as if she were to blow away.
The silence met them again.
When he first proposed to her, it was romantic and planned. It was perfect. Young love sparkled between them as she practically squealed her affirmative answer, embracing him quickly before he peppered her face with kisses.
She deserved nothing more than perfect execution. She deserved a perfect proposal. She didn’t like public spectacles, so he knew better than to do that.
Close to the shores of her birth, the moment felt right. But it wasn’t planned. It would be abrupt and wrong. She wouldn’t accept his hand, even though it would bring her to wince at her own answer.
“I might say yes,” she spoke, breaking their silence.
Matthias’s breath hitched. That was also the issue. She might say yes. It was a gamble. “But ya might say no.”
“I might say no,” she parroted, much quieter this time.
“I’d want ya to commit to me, though,” Matthias murmured. “Less of all of that runnin’ around to other guys. Not that I’d stop you if ya wanted to. But less of it. You get me?”
“I do,” she replied. “I think I would be happy with that.” She paused. “I think I would be happy with you. Only you.”
That was new, he thought. That was very new. Still, he held himself back. He can’t rush into things. “But I don’t wanna be that controllin’ guy again.”
“You’re not,” Sirgid whispered. “You’re not.”
Matthias sniffed, nose growing runny from the cold. He changed his position slightly, sticking his left leg out and to the side. He let his other arm rest there while rubbing up and down Sirgrid’s side with the one around her. He cracked a little smile. “Ya make it sound like you’re in love with me.”
Quiet passed over them again.
He remembered when she married Bjorn. He never could tell if she was happy with him. She seemed to like him. Enjoy him. Love him. But was she happy with him? He never was able to tell. Bjorn was an odd man. He was a little bit obsessive when he liked someone. It was evident enough in his infatuation with Finland (which he had remained very determined with despite the verbal abuse he endured from the man until he won him over after ages of very justified hate). Sweden was in love with Norway from the moment he met her just as Denmark was. They quickly fought over her. It was no wonder that Sweden, Bjorn, Sverige, was happy to have her. Not only was it a victory over Denmark, Matthias, Danmark, but he had the girl he always wanted. Maybe she was happy with him, but a part of Matthias’s heart told him she was happier when she was with the Dane.
“I do love you,” Sigrid spoke.
Matthias let out a strangled sound of surprise. It wasn’t often she said something like that, much less so directly. He couldn’t keep the nonchalant act up much longer—his head quickly swiveled in her direction, eyes wide.
Sirgid’s face was tinted pink, but it was not from the cold. Her pale hair was almost entirely swept off her face. The bonnet around her head was close to flying off. She was looking at him.
Stuttering, Matthias replied, “I- I love- I love you, too.”
She blinked at him, unsurprised by his response but still flustered by the flutter it brought to her empty chest. She sniffed. Her nose was running, too. “Mads.”
“Yes?” His reply was instantaneous. Anything. Tell him anything.
“Please back yer face up,” she said in a wobbly, embarrassed little voice. “You’re a bit close,” she added.
He didn’t even realize he did such a thing. He backed up slightly, still staring at her alertly.
“If I asked for ya to be my boyfriend—“
“Yes.”
Sigrid blinked. “Mads?”
“Yes?”
“Shut up. Don’t interrupt me.”
Matthias slumped slightly like a scolded dog. “Sorry.”
Sigrid gently pressed two chilly fingers over his lips as if she was sealing them closed. “If I asked ya to be my boyfriend, what would ya say?” She took her fingers off of his lips.
Once permitted by that simple movement, Matthias again gave his initial response: “Yes.” He waited for another beat. “Please.”
Silence hung in the air, and it took only that moment of waiting for Matthias to realize that that was, in fact, her way of asking. Doing so directly would only put her in a more emotionally vulnerable state.
Genuine joy filled his body for the first time in ages.
Losing his sense of self control that he spent so long trying to build up, Matthias’s hands came to Sigrid’s face as he twisted his torso entirely to face her. He waited for her nod of approval, and then clumsily brought their faces and lips together.
She could be his first second marriage in time.