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There are days that Antonio wakes up seeing red.
They all have nightmares. It would be near impossible for any of them not to, with everything they’ve seen, everything they’ve done. But it’s not always talked about much between them, which is, perhaps, a bit silly, since they all know that everyone else has them too. But there’s shame and guilt that often factor into it, and amidst all of that, vulnerability.
Antonio brings it up with Francis and Gilbert, though, seeing as they’re rather close (despite it all). He suspects that Gilbert probably has the worst nightmares, between the three of them. In the modern day, the Prussian likes to laugh off the fact that he faced dissolution and still came out the otherside untouched, unscathed, but both Antonio and Francis know that the possibility of ceasing to exist haunts the other even in the present day, a spectre hanging over his shoulder just waiting to drop the other shoe.
Antonio’s nightmares are far less existential, and more so memories blurred together from his past. Franco is a frequent topic in his dreams, probably because the war and dictator are still so recent in Antonio’s memory. But sometimes the nightmares stretch back further, wars of ages long past blurred together until they are indistinguishable, just fields of bodies as far as the eye can see and Antonio there with his halberd, gleaming and dripping with blood that soaks down his clothing, soaks into the soil, soaks into every fiber of his being.
When Antonio wakes from those particular nightmares, it’s not with a scream or a shout, but as if a low haze of smoke and dust has just cleared from his vision, his nostrils burning with the smell of charred flesh and metallic blood. He knows they should bother him more than they do, but there is a part of him that cannot help but feel a glimmer of glory at the memories. They were, after all, a testament to all that he’d accomplished. In the name of his country, in the name of his empire, in the name of his God.
Historians say that it was the fervor of religion that propelled the Spanish Empire to stretch itself to every reach of the world, to justify all the terrible things it did. They say that Spain believed it was chosen by God, its destiny far greater than that of the mortal world.
And to an extent, Antonio had believed that too. A nation’s Avatar was still a vessel for his people, after all. But in Antonio’s own mind, there had always been another god he had prayed to, another god he had gladly sliced and slashed and slit throats for. Roderich had always thought him perhaps too devoted to his beliefs, too stuck in his own conviction that Roderich was his gemstone, was his sun.
Antonio thinks that the Austrian felt uncomfortable being put on a pedestal, though his porcelain skin and amethyst eyes could’ve featured in any world renowned museum. But Roderich has always believed himself plain, even at Antonio’s hundredth insistence, and he knows the Austrian takes every single compliment directed to him as a reason to look it over, inspect it and pick it clean for underlying malice and deceit.
Perhaps it is God’s way of ensuring a limit to the Austrian’s power. It is said that Helen of Troy had sparked an entire war with her fabled beauty; men had died for far less. Antonio is certain that Roderich’s beauty would have provoked far more.
In all likelihood, those days have already passed. In the modern day, Nation Avatars are hardly viewed as deities like they once were. Gone are the days where rulers would proudly send them into the thick of war, a representative of their people and a living weapon rolled into one. Instead, their modern governments are almost abashed to parade their presence too often in public, and instead they are shuttled away as government advisors and errand boys for sensitive documents like they want to forget what Nations were and what they could be.
But Antonio hasn’t forgotten. That kind of conviction, that they were gods, doesn’t just disappear in a day, a year, or even a century. And in dreams, Antonio can remember.
On the days that Antonio wakes up seeing red, and it takes him a few steadying breaths to remember where he is, who he is, it is often another face that brings him the most comfort. It had been centuries since they had last been together in any official capacity (not that most Nations care about such distinctions these days), but the faded, golden ring Antonio keeps on his thumb still bites into his skin all the same.
Long ago, he’d had a painting made of his then-spouse, Roderich standing solo in the portrait with white flowers in his hair and a slender hand outstretched. The artist had never been able to get the brunet’s eye color right, but for years it’d hung in his private study, its ornate gold frame taking up nearly the entire wall between centuries of books, mementos, and the spoils of war, and when Antonio closes his eyes, often it is that specific painting of Roderich that comes to mind, his face serene in its elegance.
Even on the most innocent of occasions, a group of them going out for a beer following yet another pointless world meeting to satisfy their bosses, Antonio can’t help but view Roderich as the god he is.
The London bar England has chosen is crowded and boisterous with too many young people, the air thick with summer mugginess and alcohol breathed spilled and poured. Those who chose to go out after the meeting had co opted a rather large corner of the pub, and to be honest, it’s not all that different of a scene than the meeting room they’d been in just hours before: lacking in order, decorum, and national boundaries. Antonio is sat with Feliciano and Lovino, the two chattering away loudly in Italian while João is giving Jan and his siblings a hard time on his other side.
But even amidst the chaos, Antonio can only focus on one other who’s sitting across from him, a head of chocolate brunet hair that’s looking slightly mused in the sheer humidity of the pub. Despite his aristocratic reputation, Roderich has a half-full pint in his hand, and a tinge of pink to his cheeks that make him look younger beyond his centuries of existence. He’s sat between Hungary and Germany, and listening politely as both of them argue with whatever it is that Gilbert has just said. (Something inappropriate, no doubt.) When he lifts his beer to his mouth, there is a brief moustache of foam left on his lip, and Antonio wants nothing more than to reach across the table and wipe it off with affection, like he’d done countless times in their long, long marriage.
The air in the pub is thick and hazy about Antonio’s head, like a battlefield in summer as the gunpowder clears and last breaths are gasped. The atmospheric lighting takes on a reddish tinge and around him, the cacophony of chattering voices become the stillness of a battle won.
He wants to kneel at Roderich’s side and take his hand, hold it to his cheek and kiss at the ring on his finger that he thought would always be there. He wants to pledge himself to his god fully, to spend his days worshiping him, mind, body, and soul. He wants to leave a wake of bodies behind him, proof of his devotion, his power, his love.
He wants it all, and still Antonio sits there, watching as Roderich raises a hand to his mouth and brushes the foam away without thinking, his left ring finger bare of any gold band.
Antonio closes his eyes and lets the images replay in his head. At least there, there is calm. At least there, he is still a believer.