✧ 02

[notyetlost]

[A. 1333 Benny Road]

[Lauranatis family, your favorite neighbor is here. He'll just let himself in, no need to trouble yourselves with getting up.]

Liet! I heard you were like totally diseased and stuff so I made my wife make you something to make you feel better!

[Hope you like Lime Jello Marshmallow Cottage Cheese Surprise!]

[B. Phone - Filtered to Stone 456]

Hey Lizzy! Ditch your obnoxious husband for the afternoon and lets go shopping, I'm bored.

Oh and while we're out I want to annoy the shoe salesman who was harassing me about wanting to try on the polkadot heels before I bought them last week.

We can make him pull every pair of shoes in the store to fit us with--you take the ladies side and I'll take the men's side-- and we won't buy any of them! I figure we can make him break down and cry after an hour. Maybe forty-five minutes if we're totally on our game.

It'll be fun!

Comments

[vytis]

[Lithuania hesitates--he doesn't really want to be hopeful about this sort of thing--but he has to at least check and see if what happened to Poland was what he thought it was.]

We were talking about Poland. Or the--Communists, I suppose. You were saying it was a godless, heathen nation?

[That has to get a reaction, right? Poland's practically more Catholic than Italy. Poland uses Bible passages when he gets into ridiculous Mayfield-fueled arguments about friendship.]

[willbeurprincess]

[Koharu blinks at them both, what are they talking about. It's making her head hurt and she rubs her temple. She shakes her head and picks up the plates, never quite turning her back on the conversation.]

[notyetlost]

Oh. Um. Yeah, like for sure!

I mean we go to all that trouble and then they end up going full blown commie anyways. Like, what the heck? Talk about a total betrayal.

[As he hears himself speaking, Feliks can feel some part of himself becoming agitated. He's not sure why. For some reason the word 'Yalta' comes to mind momentarily, before getting abruptly pushed out by a throbbing pain.]

Can we talk about something else?

[vytis]

Why? Is something bothering you?

[He can't just straight-out say no without seeming incredibly suspicious, but he can't drop the topic either when it seems to be bothering Poland.]

[willbeurprincess]

[Koharu stands off to the side and rubs her temples. It hurts to think about communism. It reminds her of something that happened, she thinks, maybe. Maybe.] ...Can we? Talk about something else?

[notyetlost]

Yeah see, you're like totally traumatizing Koharu. She doesn't need to hear this stuff.

[vytis]

[Lithuania hesitates when Koharu asks--and the pause is enough to make the pain of his headache refocus in his mind.] ...Fine.

[He feels exhausted, like he's constantly running a mental marathon except if he loses the consequences are far worse than losing any race. He drops his head onto the table again.]

Ugh, I hate this place.

[willbeurprincess]

...Toris are you alright? Why would you hate this p-...[ She hates it here too. She remembers--No she doesn't remember anything.]

...Do we have any tea?

[notyetlost]

What place, Mayfield?

Oh my god Liet how can you hate Mayfield it's like the best place ever!

[vytis]

We should, in the-- [Lithuania growls in frustration at Poland, because the sense of wrongness that accompanies his words is matched with more pain.]

Shut up. [He says it in Lithuanian to make the pain feel like it's actually worth something.]

[willbeurprincess]

[Her head is killing her now and she wishes Toris would stop taking. The more he says, the more memories float to the surface and her head throbs] Lithuania, Poland, stop fighting.

[ Oh that made it worse]

[notyetlost]

[Feliks frowns, understanding that perfectly for some reason.]

No, you shut up-- [This time the pain actually makes Feliks gasp midsentence and he clutches his head tightly. Koharu's intervention somehow manages to make it even more painful.]

[vytis]

[In the back of his mind, Lithuania feels incredibly guilty for causing both of them pain (especially Koharu). But if it's between that and having them be something worse than drones, things with their faces and their personalities but with their memories and feelings scooped out and replaced--a headache is probably the lesser of two evils.

Introspection aside, they both seem to be reacting to Lithuania not using English, so he plows ahead and keeps speaking Lithuanian.]

No. You can't make me and neither can Mayfield.

[willbeurprincess]

[ She can't understand but the inflection and the language are enough. Enough for her to start trying to understand only to find that she feels sick to her stomach. The nausea that the headache seems to be causing is pretty overwhelming ] ...Lito...Please you two stop.

[notyetlost]

I'm not doing anything it's all him!

[Each word seems to dredge up another set of memories in his head, but the building pressure in his skull makes it seem like there isn't room for both of them without his brain exploding all over the kitchen. Feliks shoves his fingers in his ears to drown Toris out.] Stop it!

[vytis]

Should I just let you two stay like this? [This time the language is a mix of Lithuanian and English as he falters--he doesn't like hurting them so deliberately. The grammar is more matching Lithuanian than English, though, so it's more incomprehensible in English than Lithuanian.]

[willbeurprincess]

[ Koharu really isn't used to pain like this. She never gets headaches. It's worse than breaking her arm somehow. More relentless, unforgiving. Except remembering when she broke her arm ( in the dark scared and searching and why was she scared in Mayfield ) sends a fresh wave off pain through her head.

Don't mind her rushing to the sink, she's trying to be sick quietly]

[notyetlost]

[Feliks drops his head on the table, fixing his eyes on a spot on the tile floor in an attempt to focus his vision. Anything to make the room stop spinning. He just wants to get out of this house and away from Lithua-- No. Liet.]

I'm going home-- [Despite saying it Feliks doesn't move from the chair. He doesn't know where home is as two conflicting memories clash in his head.]

[vytis]

[Lithuania feels himself wilting; he hates doing this and he's so exhausted--more than just from this, from so many things Mayfield has done to them that he's tried to push aside and keep moving on from. But being alone like this even when he's not alone--it just reminds him of all the other times he's failed to help anyone at all.]

I'm sorry. I don't--I'm not trying to-- [The apology is automatic; the fragile, lost, almost pleading quality to his voice isn't something he notices himself, though it's obvious.]

[willbeurprincess]

[Koharu clings to the sink, trying to force her breathing back to normal. The tone of his voice makes her want to cry--the whole situation makes her want to cry. Running water to wash her sick away, rinsing her mouth--none of it really makes it better.]

...I'm sorry. [ She looks small now, curled in against herself. More like the teenager she is than the mature wife Mayfield made her into.]

1/3

[notyetlost]

[The apology rings hollow for Feliks at first. If Liet were actually sorry he'd stop whatever he was doing that was causing them so much pain instead of continuing to do it.

But... there's something about his voice as he says it. Feliks can hear the vulnerability of the words even through the digits crammed in his ears. He knows that tone, he knows the desperation, he knows the guilt from hurting someone in an attempt to save them.]

2/3

[notyetlost]

[The false memory of last year's christmas erodes away; the laughter, the happiness, the warm glow of togetherness. It never happened.

In place of laughter there had been tears; in place of happiness, there had been sadness.

The only warmth he'd felt was from the blood oozing onto him from where he'd stabbed Lithuania with a kitchen knife… and from the bullet hole in Lithuania's skull he'd driven him to make on his own.

"Liet, proszę... proszę się nie…"

The words had been foreign, but the pleading desperate apology could have been understood by anyone who listened.

"Lietuva ne--"]

3/3

[notyetlost]

He didn't want to remember it. It was painful. It hurt. The violent migraine was nothing compared to the pain of having to acknowledge that this happened again. He wanted to forget it, he wanted forget everything.

All the terrible things this place had done to him, but even more than that all the terrible things this place had made him do to people he loved.]

...Lietuva.

[He struggles to lift his head from the table, but eventually his eyes reach Lithuania's.]

Lietuva ne...