He does not like the silence of the country. He grew up in a bustling metropolis; he grew up surrounded by the chatter of people and the squealing of brakes. At night, puddles of dull white light from the streetlamps provided shelter against the crushing blackness with the glow of houselights to illuminate the streets. There was food in the freezer and a heater in the basement and all of life was good.

But the bombs took it all – took the chattering people and the cars with the squealing brakes. The bombs took the streetlamps, the houses, the freezers and the heaters. The bombs took his sister, his mother, his best friend and leveled his world to stacks of bricks at the corners of streets covered in rubble and old skeletons lying in the road. The scattering remains of the bomb, the radiation, seeped into the one thing that remained of his old world – his watch, given to him by his mother for his twentieth birthday – and nearly took him too.

Now, he is weak. His hair fell out and there is an ugly burn on his wrist where his watch once was. His bone ache dully within him.

Now, he has no one left.

Now, he is alone.

He tells his story in a slow, measured tone – no emotion (he doesn't have any), no extra details (they're unnecessary). The woman sitting cross-legged next to him looks like she's about to cry; her eyes are shining, almost black except for the flicker of orange from the dancing flames. She has not lost so much – her family, yes, but she still has her friends and her body, so she does not understand what having truly nothing left is like.

She has grief, however, and rage, and that makes her useful. She wants the people who gave her this grief to pay nearly as much as he does.

"And that," he concludes, leaning back slowly in his wooden lawn chair because his muscles are starting to shake from the exhaustion of holding him upright, "Is why we must wipe this world free of the Nations. They must suffer as we did, lose as we did. They must know of everything they have done to us and we must repay them tenfold."

The people are him nod, shadows dancing across their faces as the fire leaps into the air. They have all lost something. The Nations – those personified countries who have all the time in the world, centuries upon centuries– can never understand what grief really and truly feels like.

He doesn't know where all the Nations are, and he admits this freely. Lithuania is back in his own land, about ten in England, and two up in what was once upon a time Scandinavia. He doesn't know how to make them suffer, make them pay for the pain they have caused. He knows nothing, except that they have to try to do something to make the Nations understand the grief and pain they have caused to what remains of mankind.

Author's Note

A variety of reasons mean I'm just going to rewrite this. Anyway. Expect delays; my exams are also coming up but I'll try to post.