I wrote this for International Holocaust Remembrance Day. I've debated as to whether or not I should rate this M, but I decided against it. I describe a couple graphic incidences, so if that sort of thing isn't good for you, I would advise that you not read this.

Prussia and Germany belong to Himaruya Hidekaz.

It had been a long seventy years for Germany. It appeared as though he had moved on. He had grown his economy, stabilized his government, finally paid off all of the reparations and his country had progressed as one rich with intellect and science. Although his stock market still struggled to get by from day to day, his country was mostly free of the dark string that had bound his past.

His past.

It had been seventy years since that day; since the day that the most despicable place standing had been revealed to the world. Auschwitz-Birkenau. The brick building at the end of a one-way train stop, where the final breaths of so many were taken. Taken in writhing pain.

It had been seventy years for all else, but not for him. For a time, he would go every week, his conscious aching with the unbearable memories of what his people had done. He would sit there, staring at the ground that covered so much sin, so much hate, and so much ignorance.

But it had been a long time since he had forced himself to lay his eyes upon that savage place. Not since the last century at least. He had been trying to forget the atrocities of his past, and to focus on his present. But today he could not stay away. Today there would be a ceremony held for those who remained. The people who had death's edge held against their throat, and were saved before the artery could be cut.

He was going today. He would claim that he was a grandson of someone who couldn't make it, along with his brother. When it came to this, his brother was unusually quiet. It was as if his mind had gone numb, leaving his eyes empty and sorrowful, a look that rarely passed over his brother's face. While Germany used to go quite often, Prussia had gone more. Perhaps the atrocities were somehow ingrained in his brother's remembrance. He could not know. And if his brother did, he would refuse to tell.

They had arrived early in the morning, driving alongside the train tracks that had hosted so many lives that were now extinguished. The sky was cloudy, as if the atmosphere itself hung heavy in remembrance and pain. When they had arrived at the opening gate of the town, the wrought-iron message glared down at them. Arbeit macht frei. No one would be free there.

The simple facades of the houses were so devoid of life, no longer housing the men who murdered millions of Jews. As the two countries walked down the dirt road, the trees seemed to gnarl and twist, blackening as they walked past, the shame evident on their faces. It was as if every particle of air, stone, and grass recoiled, aware of the horrors they were responsible for.

As they neared the heart of the camp, the cordoned barbed wire fence came into view. As Germany looked towards it, he could hear the stomping of SS boots, heavy on the gravel, and the clicks of officers playing with guns for fun. Prussia could hear the ugly commands shouted in a warped version of his grandfather's tongue and the barks of snarling beasts that took the form of dogs.

Prussia pulled his scarf up and tried to look away unsuccessfully. Germany followed suit, eyes lingering on the wire, still able to hear the hum of electricity that no longer coursed through the metal.

They walked further still, starting to hear the signs of other people walking far behind them. As the fence turned to their periphery vision, something much more horrifying approached their view. The crematorium. As soon as the tall chimneystack came into view, Prussia felt sick. He nearly doubled over, hand covering his mouth as he coughed, desperately trying not to wretch. He could still smell the acrid scent of burning flesh in the air and the gray ash that fell like the snow did in the winter. Every time he tried to screw his eyes shut, condensed films seemed to play behind his eyelids, conjuring images he so desperately had tried to forget.

"Gil-" Germany started, lightly placing a hand on his brother's back.

Prussia shrugged the hand off, jolting away. "I know you mean well, but don't touch me." It was somewhere in between a harsh snap and a voice on the verge of tears.

Germany, although he did not quite understand, identified with it enough that he immediately stepped back. After Prussia regained his unusually steely composure, they continued on, Germany desperately trying not to hear the roar and crackle of flames as they passed by.

They walked for a while more, the ground gray and dead beneath their feet. They were confronted with the rows and rows of low brick barracks, still filled with the remains of the clothing the dead-men-walking had worn. Filled with the shoes that had once carried their feet in dances, before rubbing them raw from miles of walking.

They avoided those buildings.

But there were far worse horrors to come as they forced themselves to continue walking.

They soon approached a small plaza in between two inconspicuous buildings, a blank wall at the end of the stone stretch. Although Germany had managed to maintain his composure to some degree, as soon as he stood at the opening of the courtyard and stared at the rows of bricks, he could barely breathe.

It was there, splattered with blood that was no longer really there, long washed away by rain, that the guns that the officers liked to play with were put to use. He could hear the gunshots going off, one after another after another after another, and the crimson that ran the streets red. All Prussia could see was the lifeless form that fell after the sonorous boom rang through the small stone space.

Germany's hands started to shake, unable to look away from the horror that was not really happening in front of them. He felt his throat constrict slightly, forcing his heart to beat even faster.

It was then that whatever strings were holding his brother together snapped. A strangled sort of sob escaped Prussia's throat, and he frantically turned away, cheeks wet. Although not visible, he bit the insides of his cheeks so hard that he scraped them raw with his own teeth. He felt the skin knit itself back together slowly, but refused to stop.

Finally, Germany managed to tear himself away and joined his brother, who stood in front of a placard stating the carnage and the statistics of what had happened here.

"Humans really like numbers, don't they." The way Prussia said it, it wasn't really a question.

"You think so?" He responded, staring at the metal plate, embossed letters raised above the dull surface.

"It wasn't enough that… our people," He forced the words out of his mouth. "Killed all of these people. That wasn't quite tragic enough. They had to assign a number to it. It couldn't just be that tons of people were murdered because of a goddamn God, so for pretty much no reason at all. No, they had to label it with a number."

"Facts make evils easier to process." Germany responded. "We both know it better than any human."

Prussia ran his hands through his hair harshly, pulling on it as they fell. He had that same dark, empty sort of look on his face. The one that Germany could barely stand to see on someone as outwardly cheery as his brother.

There was a long bit of painful silence between the two. Perhaps they were paying their respects. Perhaps they were praying to the God that was the reason behind to much death. Perhaps they were just trying to rationalize what went wrong.

"How the hell did this even happen?" Germany forced out. "How the hell did we let this happen? We should have been able to influence our people and stop this before-"

Prussia shook his head gently, sadly. "You know we couldn't have changed it if we tried every second of every day. Believe me, I tried."

"Why couldn't we have? All of this is our fault, when you look at it. If only we'd been stronger after the Great War, if only we'd stopped those thoughts in our people-" Germany had almost reduced himself to tears at this point. "I have been going over this and over this in my mind for seventy years, Gil. We must have been able to do something."

"It's not our fault." Prussia responded. "We couldn't have done anything."

Germany almost looked angry at the response. Prussia lowered himself so that he was crouched by the ground, head in his hands. "Humans just love violence. They think it feels good."

Germany almost tried to refute, but stopped himself. Prussia was right. Although they were forced to carry the guilt and the pain of what happened here and all throughout Poland and Germany during World War II, they could have done nothing to stop the events of the past.

He looked down at Prussia, who pressed his lips to his hand and touched it to the placard with melancholy, lingering there for a moment, eyes fixed on the text. Then, he stood, his face still blank, but somehow lighter.

"There is still more. You swore you would walk through all of it, didn't you."

Germany nodded, tempted to hug his brother; something to make him feel at ease, but ultimately decided against it.

"Are you two young men alright?" They heard a scratchy voice call from behind them. An old women, age etched into her very face, was approaching them.

"It's just… overwhelming. The tragedy that happened. My grandfather, he was here for a time." Germany tried to respond with something that would make sense in human logic.

"Ah, yes, I understand. It is so difficult for me to be back here after all of this time. I swore that I would never come back, and yet here I am." Her voice was laced with pain. "Now, why don't you come with me? I hear that the news stations might interview us."

"Alright." Germany leant the older woman his arm, and they began to walk towards the train station to meet the news crews from everywhere from America to Japan. "Gil, aren't you coming?"

"Oh, yes." Prussia walked up behind them, trailing, not quite wanting the two to see his lack of composer.

Although the terrible crimes against humanity still lingered in the air around him, he thought that it was quite funny how humans could still manage to trudge ahead despite that.

How resilient they were.

At first, I wasn't going to write anything, but then I remembered something in my history class from last year. My teacher told us about the shoes they found at Majdanek. He told us about all of the lives of the people who had once owned them and how they had been brutally destroyed. I remember that every single person in that class cried. We stayed for ten extra minutes after class because we couldn't go to lunch in that condition.

I remember hearing the stories as a child about my Polish relatives left behind in the 40's that were never heard from again, whose bodies lie somewhere in an unmarked grave.

I remember hearing the other stories about my grandmother hiding her father's SS uniform in the attic, ashamed and scared of what he had done.

I decided that I should write something.