A/N: Re-upload of an edited version.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Not the show, not the nations, heck, not even the clothes on my back. Feed the starving artist? Anyone?

Warnings: This will be one of the more violent chapters in the fic. The violence is largely psychological and will touch on some heavy subjects, such as the Holocaust and if that disturbs you, feel free to just skip on ahead. (please not this chapter is also somewhat pivotal, so it may take you a couple of chapters to catch up.)

4. Fan the Flames

Estonia leaned forward to reach for one of his medical instruments, so consumed by his work he failed to notice the rasp of the door behind him opening or the footsteps crossing the wooden floor behind him.

Only a frigid hand lain heavily upon his shoulder broke his concentration, sending him reeling away from his unseen visitor.

Russia raised a single eyebrow and stared, impassive as Estonia recovered his bearings and shakily restored his glasses to their original position, lightly balanced atop his nose. He peered over them with round green eyes, lit from within by a familiar terror.

Pointedly ignoring this, Russia looked away from him, to the figure prone on the bed before them. "Everything is proceeding normally, da?" he inquired, voice like shards of ice, frigid and sharp.

Estonia flinched, a motion as familiar as breathing to both men and one that went perpetually unnoticed within Ivan's household.

"Y-yes, Mr. Ivan," he stammered, tongue paralyzed by crushing terror. "As normal as can be expected, sir."

"Good," Ivan said, turning crisply on his heel. "Keep it that way. The time has come to wake him up, I believe. You have until seven this evening."

And with that, he was gone, a wake of terrible cold cutting its path behind him.

Estonia cursed to himself as the figure stirred once more, restless and agitated with pain.

Nothing about this is normal, he thought miserably to himself, turning back to his work with a lethargy born from sympathy.

For the first time in a time too long for counting, Prussia dreamt.

His dreams began as memories, playing like a movie reel, unfeeling and unchanging in its linear depiction of his life. He saw himself and West as young nations, nations in their prime and nations at their end.

But West survived, he thought, too lost in the stream of his visions to pay much attention to such depressing quandaries.

Slowly, though, his dreams became nightmares, filled by tall men with violet eyes and shadowed faces, men who broke him and ruined his people.

Then came the dark, and the silence, broken only by promises of safety, comfort and glory. He lost himself in these words, bathed in their light and filled his broken heart with their promise.

Once upon a time he himself had spoken such words to a young nation on the brink of destruction and, dimly, he wished that it was that nation's voice which spoke to him in his fevered stupor.

But the voice of the child – and the man he had become - remained lost in the impenetrable tomb of his memory.

Somewhere far above his head, the ice began to break, thrusting shafts of bright, sharp light into the comfortable blackness of his contrived coffin.

Despite Germany's brisk pace and unusually timely flights, he arrived home far into the night, so he hastened across the city towards his brother's new domain, hoping to catch him awake.

He made it perhaps half the necessary distance before realizing that something was terribly wrong.

In the manner of nations, he understood, intrinsically, that the silence that sat on the air boded ill, chilled by the haunting quality of its wrongness. He redoubled his pace, determined to discover the reason behind this unrest and desperately concerned for the well being of his brother.

He took no more than half a dozen steps before the sirens sounded and he lost himself, running madly for the border, drowning in a sea of white noise.

Sonja Klein gazed out of the window on the house's second story, her book hanging lackadaisically from one hand, bumping rhythmically against her knee in her inattention. The man asleep behind her shifted fitfully, sliding in and out of coherence so quickly she scarcely bothered to keep track.

For all that her employers had sent her to watch him, she was no nurse. And she resented being told to babysit this strange, sick man, rather than remaining at the utter vigilance required by her position, assuring that her nation, young and vulnerable as it was, remained safe.

Behind her, the man – Gilbert, she reminded herself forcefully – cried out in his sleep, and she turned away from the window, slid down off the sill and went to him, feeling his forehead for any sign of the fever she already knew to be raging there.

Sure enough, the fire just beneath his skin, already alarming, had become yet more pronounced. Sonja reached for the rag she kept soaking in cool water on the bedside stand, rung it out and expanded the cloth with a firm snap of her wrist. Folding it gently, she placed it across his forehead, dabbing with soft, but insistent pressure at those areas crusted over with dried sweat. She threw herself into this work for a moment, utterly determined to put her discontent form her mind.

After all, this poor, sick stranger deserved none of her ire and, judging by the look of him, he needed all the caring for he could get.

She was still sitting like that, one hand holding the cool towel to his forehead, the other dog-earring a page in her book to be resumed at a later date, when the door swung ominously open behind her.

Sonja pulled a quick about face, reaching for the gun so commonly holstered in the small of her back.

The gun sitting just beside the windowsill where she had set it not twenty minutes before to move more freely about the room.

The man at the door raised both hands in front of his chest in a placating gesture, entreating her patience and trust, both commodities Sonja stocked in perilously short supply.

Somewhat resignedly, she relaxed her position and beckoned the stranger in, motioning for him to stop just short of where she sat, reasonably within arm's reach but uncomfortably far away to try anything at any speed.

He halted when she indicated and made no motion beyond what stopping required of him, standing, face shadowed by his great hood and cowl.

"What do you want?" Sonja demanded, voice sharpened indefinitely by stress.

"I want," the man replied in his great baritone, long, tan scarf billowing around him, buoyed by the motion of his face as he spoke, "to kill Prussia."

Sonja stiffened, as much from the breath of cold, sharp air that invaded the room as he spoke as his invocation of the long-destroyed country. "You should be careful how you speak of Prussia here," she cautioned him darkly. "Too many people harbor too many memories to make the recollection an easy one.

"I, too, remember," he returned, catching her off guard.

She glared at him, considering. Behind her, the sleeping man rolled in agitation, calling out in his sleep to indistinct people.

"Listen to him," the stranger scoffed, his cold voice both abhorrently disgusted and thoughtfully ironic. "Sleeping, tossing, turning, walking and talking as though he had any right to grace the surface of this beautiful earth. He deserves to die, for keeping my Germany trapped, asleep for so long."

Sonja, her nerves frayed beyond their tolerance by this man and his cruel promises, sprang from her position on the bed. For a moment, she forgot the awkward distance between them and the fact that he undoubtedly foresaw her motion in the line of her reclining body. For a moment, she thought only of Gilbert, this near-stranger comatose behind her to whom her capable protection had been assigned.

Their visitor, caught almost unawares by her leap, jerked backwards, narrowly avoiding a blow intended to temporarily stun him at worst, blind him at best. As he flailed, off balance for a moment after her initial attack, she reached up, still reeling from her own momentum, and snatched the cowl from his head.

Livid violet eyes considered her from far above, and a hand large enough to encompass her own twice over reached up to seize her wrist.

"Impressive," the man complemented, with sentiment that failed to reach her eyes. "Your employers chose well when called upon to defend their nation, although they should know no man, woman or child could stand in my way."

"What on God's green earth are you?" Sonja whispered, awed by his effortless strength, his cold, compelling eyes and the air of honest condolence, not conceit as he explained his prowess.

"That," he replied, "One such as yourself hardly needs to know. For our purposes here, tonight, I am Ivan."

"No last name?" she quipped with nervous wit, shaken yet again. Ivan made sense; the Russian accent rang unmistakably in her ears now that he made no effort to conceal it.

"Would you give me yours in a similar situation?" he asked, with no answering smile.

"Why does he need to die?" Sonja, tried, hoping that the change in topic would earn some kind of rise out of him.

"Because his living will kill my Germany," Ivan replied, not missing a beat.

His Germany? Sonja wondered silently. Aloud, she declared, "I cannot allow you to do that."

She wrenched her body to the side, a maneuver intending to rip her wrist free and pull Ivan to the ground. The throw was one of her favorites and it had brought taller men than Ivan to their knees before.

Had Sonja known that a nation held her by the wrist and that all the strength of Russia enforced that grip, she would have known that no throw, strike or dodge invented by mankind could have freed her.

As it was, she found out in good time anyway. As she flung herself to the side, ready to toss this insufferable threat to the ground, a force unlike any she had ever prepared herself to confront pulled her arm in the opposite direction, wrenching her off her feet and tossing her into the air. She crashed into the far wall and slid to the ground, ears ringing with the force of her impact.

"Silly girl," Ivan chastised her, grinning his childish grin, "I've come to kill a nation. To let a little thing like you interfere would defeat the purpose at its crux."

Sonja slumped where she landed, vision blurring as she fought to stay conscious. She observed, only dimly aware, as Ivan crossed the room to the sill where her gun rested. Picking up the weapon, he turned off the safety with a brisk flick of his thumb and wrist and carried it back to the bedside with him.

Sonja's mouth worked uselessly, pleas dying on her tongue at the blurred sight of Ivan's expression. Where his features had previously been cold, now they were carved from pure stone, unmoving and irreverent as rock.

All it took was a single shot, straight to the forehead, and Gilbert ceased to move, lying still and pale in a spreading stain of chilling red.

Sonja opened her mouth to scream from someone, anyone to come and help, but all that came out was a little wail of agonized acceptance; she knew no one could help the man now.

Her blood went cold as Ivan turned his chill to her once more and once again removed the safety on the gun.

"Do you want me to shoot you?" he asked her, all callous seriousness.

"No," she rasped in return, vision returning in margin and bringing some of her other sense back with it.

"Why not?" he inquired, flicking the safety back on. "Have you not failed in your mission entirely?"

"My mission is to defend my nation," Sonja shot back, struggling to her knees. "I should have been able to prevent you from killing him, yes, but that in no way affects my abilities in the field."

Rather than reply, Ivan laughed, a chilling, awful sound in the dark quiet of the room, now devoid of Gilbert's restless agony.

"If you only knew who he was," Ivan chuckled. "If you only knew. Perhaps you can ask him. I'd like to think I've put the poor soul out of his pretender's misery, but in the way of nations, I suppose he'll be back until I've utterly crushed East Germany."

"What are you?" Sonja ground out again, looking up through her bangs into his coolly amused face.

"I am many things," he replied easily. "I am the man who just killed Prussia. I am also the man who is burning your city."

He pointed out the window and Sonja wrenched her neck around only to be met with the sight of her beloved Berlin, as the living embers of new flames took root in buildings.

"Why?" she gasped, aghast at this underhanded attack and appalled that she could do nothing to save her country.

"To remind your people who they really belong to. Kalingrad should still be part of Russia. I, like you, am making my people's dreams a reality."

"Get out!" Sonja shrieked, lurching to her feet and jerking towards Ivan as though she meant to strike him.

With one last frigid grin, Ivan tossed her gun loftily across the room, and easily deflected her blow, knocking her down with less crushing force this time, before turning on his heel and walking back out the door without bothering to close it behind him.

"Deliver us, Lord," Sonja whispered, rising to her knees and clutching her throbbing arm to her chest in the wake of Ivan's terrible exit, her city burning bright and fast though the window behind her, casting light enough to carry her crouching shadow to the door's now-empty threshold.

The moment Germany heard the sirens begin to sound like some eerie chorus of doomed souls, he began to run, shortening the distance between himself and his brother by the moment. For the first few stunned moments, he ran alone as his city found its bearings and registered the catastrophe on its doorstep. Then, as though pulled by magnetism, his people came, rushing into the streets like a flood of panic, rage and fear given form and flight.

Finally catching sight of a man dressed in the uniform of a military officer, Germany redoubled his pace and reached the gentleman, panting an inquiry as to what exactly was happening out here.

The man looked him over for a surprised moment, then, taking in his crisp uniform and forward manner, accepted him as another soldier.

Without immediately answering, he pointed to the middle of the city of Berlin, to the very location of that ancient and hideous wall Germany had fought so hard to put from his mind.

There, stretched like a scar across the face of a city no longer exclusively his, a line of people stood. Men, women, children, all chained to one another and tethered in place, an impenetrable wall of human flesh guarded by armed soldiers in Russian uniform. Behind them, flames had begun to leap from building to building with the merciless, indiscriminate rage of fire.

"We can't get through," the officer explained, sounding exhausted and frustrated. "We can't even get close. They're shooting civilians for every time we try."

"These people will die, left to stand out like that," Germany snarled, livid with rage.

"East Germany's population could sustain a line like that, refreshed each day, for weeks on end," the officer replied, looking down, away from the angry, searching eyes of the man he didn't know to be his nation.

"By that time," he continued, "They could have built a thousand walls."

The soldier bid him a hasty goodbye and left to rejoin his fellows as they puzzled out a way to overcome this wall of human flesh, leaving Germany alone to gaze at the screaming barrier and fight the helpless tears that threatened to spill.

He had to do something. As he descended the hill, that thought alone kept him moving.

Ivan's bulk filled Prussia's vision the moment his eyes opened. Somewhere in the background, another shape huddled, pressed as near to the wall as it could manage without sinking into the paneling.

Dimly he realized that he should be afraid, but his head throbbed and his body ached with such resounding pain that he could scarcely bring himself to recognize the man, much less react to his presence.

Ivan smiled down at the figure on the bed, held captive by his own exhaustion and reached out a hand to stroke a stray strand of his white hair back from his face.

Vaguely, Prussia realized that in any other situation, one might call Ivan's smile beautific, for the joyful light hiding just beyond his eyes and the relief that shone through in every crease of his weathered face. One might call it kind.

"Welcome home, Germany," his captor whispered, reverent and gentle.

Germany… Prussia thought as he drifted back into the reassuring sameness of sleep. He knew a Germany, in the once-upon-a-time of his memories.

_end chapter_

A/N: Just gotta say, Ivan creeps me the hell out. I mean, really. Can't he just pick a mood and stick with it?

So, now you know. The figure on the bed is Prussia. (big surprise) And yes, I realize I have completely forgotten about Italy thus far. Germany's had a lot on his plate recently. Our favorite bumbling protagonist will make his entrée sometime in the next two chapters.

As some of you may have noticed, as well, I seldom use the nation's native languages. I find this cumbersome to add into a fic written deliberately in English and will continue to omit such occurrences until it becomes entirely too problematic. I will, however, keep speech tics (da?, veeee…, oui, ect.) because they are basically part of the characters.

So, if my Russia speaks uncommonly precise English, that's why.

In other news, I'd apologize for how late this is, but I'm sure the few of you that regularly check back are as sick of hearing it as I am of saying it. If you like this fic, fave it and hang on to your trousers, because I won't stop updating, I'll just continue at this tortoise-like pace.

Thanks for your attention folks,

Next chapter: Canada and England's respective, ah...conundrums.