Chapter Text
Let's start the end, though you are free to pretend it's not. It won't matter once we get to the beginning.
Prussia didn't deserve to die that way.
Certainly there were very few who did.
He was not numb, though that would have been preferable. There was simply an unbearable nothing.
It ached.
Incomparably.
It made him want to tear and shred and break, but he could not, for there was only the emptiness that surrounded him. He could not even imagine the sensation, for his muscles had left long ago, dragging the memory they carried behind them.
How terrible to be a prisoner of your own body, he mused. It was about all he could do in the stillness. And it must have seemed still, if someone were watching him. But Prussia, he knew better.
It wasn't fair how he died in the dark, with the inky blackness spilling into his throat and stifling his screams. It wasn't as if he had lost his senses; he had been stripped of them, as if he were not worthy.
Perhaps, Prussia thought, as his mind began to unravel, he wasn't. His sanity was unraveling at the speed of a spool, the kite flying higher until he felt the final inch of string give a bittersweet tug. He was no longer sure whether worthy was worth it.
He tried to look up. There was blue, and figures dashed across that field of sky. He had blond hair and blue eyes and the sweetest smile Prussia had ever seen. Prussia wished that, above all else, he didn't have to see that boy go.
He struggled to grip the string, but it slithered out of his grip.
He wanted to tell the boy to stop running, to turn back, jump from the heavens into his arm, and please don't leave him here.
Prussia tried to open his mouth, but the words couldn't even form before static seemed to stifle his thoughts, cutting into them into fragments like a knife.
It wasn't right that he was dying silently, that he was pinned to the ground by the oblivion. He should have died loudly, to the anthem of smashing swords or smoke drifting lazily from the barrel of a gun. He would have even preferred snickering and jeering to the loudness of the quiet.
His limbs had disintegrated long ago, and he was left with nothing but the conciseness that even now seemed to be slipping away, pooling on the floor in lieu of blood.
There was someone telling him something, phantoms in uniform whose eyes glistened and leaked. He thought that must've hurt too, whatever they were doing. Prussia felt an unfamiliar tug at his chest.
Then they were gone, wrenched away. Not cruelly. It felt more natural than intentional. As if it were always meant to be this way.
He wasn't spiteful, though he wanted to be. He wished for anger, boiling fury that burned though flesh and manifested in red.
Kings shouldn't die on the floor.
He remembered that bit. He held it like a treasure, even if it meant he was no longer a king.
They were destined to be executed on a block or murdered in bed.
Maybe he had never been a king then.
He would have preferred an execution right then and there. He would have liked to see a wave of cheering crowds or the coattails of betrayal.
Because mostly, Prussia didn't deserve to die alone.
He awoke to light.
Everywhere.
There was the soft creak of a mattress and the shuffle of discarded blankets as they tumbled off his body. The sound of him panting was loud enough to wake up the whole world as he greedily stole its oxygen
The air burned, setting his lungs on fire and smoldered his ashy skin.
The grounded king who drank the scorched air.
Prussia's breathing was fragile.
He realized that now. There was a shame, twisting and wringing out his stomach.
It could not quell the flames of relief licked almost every inch of his body.
Almost.
When he screamed, he momentarily reveled in the fact he could.