A/N: These are the sort of plot bunnies that spam me in the early hours of the morning. Bask in my stunted understanding of Korean history.

Disclaimer: I disclaim.

Starfish

He knows before they tell him. It's the voice in his head that springs up, the one that sounds so much like his own, but isn't. The voice is familiar and strange, all it does for hours every day is scream, then it dissolves into whimpers and panicked murmurs of pain.

At first Korea thinks he is simply going mad, and it wouldn't be the first time, but no... he would actually prefer it if madness was the reason. Is it instinct that lets him know it isn't? Or perhaps some logical deduction of his subconscious? He isn't sure how he knows what the voice means, but he does. And when they tell him, he isn't surprised.

America is the one who delivers the news, and for once he isn't all bright eyes and booming voice and declarations of heroism... there's nothing heroic about what he has to say. Korea feels a swell of hatred, of betrayal, of loss... but some part of him -the voice?- takes pity on the other Nation and simply nods to show his understanding.

He hasn't slept in days, weeks, months... it feels like years. It might be. The days all bleed into one another when you don't sleep, until he can't remember if the insomnia or the voice came first. At first it's the voice that keeps him awake. Then it's the pain.

Twinges at first, like a toothache in his abdomen, that over time grow into cramps that feel as if his organs are attacking one another. He knows why it's happening, he's just not sure what it means for the future.

They aren't phantom pains, they're real, and when he pushes aside his hanbok he can see the bruising around his waist as if someone tied a thick rope there and dragged him by it. He knows what that looks like...

His exhaustion has become obvious in his appearance and behaviour. He doesn't run about anymore, his appetite is gone, he grows thinner, weaker, paler every day. He cannot bear to look in the mirror and see his eyes, once bright and gold, now a dull beige staring out from dark-ringed sockets.

Someone gives him sleeping pills. It might be a doctor. He doesn't pay much attention anymore... he doesn't have to. He isn't the one running things, and hasn't been for a long time. There's nothing to fight right now...

Korea's so grateful for sleep, he might have taken more of the little capsules than he should have, but it won't kill him. Maybe a human, but not him.

When he wakes up, he's outside, laying in dirt, and there are men shouting around him. Hands grab him, drag him, lift him, his body screams. No, wait, that's his voice screaming, out loud, his arms flail at the soldiers carrying him away.

"You have to let me! You have to let me!"

They tell him it's not allowed, they say he doesn't belong there, that it's not his place. But how can it not be his place when it is him? They can draw their lines, they can divide his land on paper, but he still feels it as his body. He can hear the screams of his people in his ears and feel their suffering in what muscles he has left.

It isn't the first time he wakes up outside.

They take the sleeping pills away from him, but he doesn't need them anymore. The pain in his abdomen and his own weakness allow him to pass out easily whenever he lays down.

It feels like years.

On his calendar, it is thirty-eight days.

On the thirty-ninth, he wakes up to screaming that isn't his own. He looks down, sees blood, and passes out again. Odd, he was never the squeamish type.

He wakes up on a table, there are bright lights everywhere and people shouting in English and Korean and possibly some other languages he's too dazed to recognize. There is so much pain, he wants to pass out again, but it keeps growing, and when he starts to struggle they strap him down.

They're trying to sew him back together, but the flesh is rotting wherever they try to put in the stitches or staples. Korea wonders why the ones who tore him apart are so frantic to keep him in one piece. Another paradox, but he can't focus on it, because his stomach is hurting and he can't feel his legs.

Finally, someone presses a mask over his face, and he feels cold tears of relief replace the hot tears of pain, and then the blackness returns and he feels nothing.

The next time he wakes up it is quiet, dark, and cool. The smell is abominable. There is no pain, and his breathing is shallow and ragged. He knows he was crying in his sleep, because his face is sticky and swollen and he can still taste the tears.

The voice is gone.

He has to bang on the door for thirty-eight minutes before someone hears him. When the mortician pulls the drawer out there is so much hope on his face that Korea's heart breaks when the sheet is pulled away. The man passes out, his head hitting the tiled floor with a crack!

Korea has to drag himself off the shelf. The morgue is silent, and it feels like deference. He leaves his legs where they belong and pulls himself across the floor with his arms like some monster from horror films that have yet to be created.

By the time he gets there, what's left of his nails are cracked and bleeding, the pads of his fingertips are ruined, worn to the bone, and he's sure that he's scraped off a few layers of skin from his stomach. It doesn't matter. He doesn't feel it. He is numb from shock, from rebirth, from whatever they pumped into his system before he flatlined on that operating table.

It won't last. Regenerating won't be easy, and he'll be glad of the distraction of his ruined fingers in a few days when the stomach pains start again.

He doesn't envy his other half. Not yet, at least. Not this.

This time, no one stops him as he drags himself across the divide, clawing his way through a dog-sized hole in the fence, ignoring where wire bites briefly into the skin of his back. It's the least of his worries.

Maybe the soldiers who stopped him last time didn't see him now, overlooked in the darkness of the fading day. Maybe they did not want to see him. He wouldn't have blamed them.

It was thirty-eight feet past the fence when he finally collapsed. He knew when he woke again, he would be home.

The voice can be Yong Soo, he thought as the reassuring blackness claimed him once more, I will be Bulgasali.

End.

A/N: Just in case anyone's wondering... Bulgasali is, to my admittedly limited knowledge, the Korean word for starfish. It probably isn't applicable as a name, so if anyone wants to bitch me out for it, feel free.