Title: Cornflower Blue

Author: Myself.

Length: 1,231 words.

Warnings: None, other than some really odd wording, not Beta'd, and a particularly long sentence that might irritate some.

Rating: PG

Characters: Prussia-Centred; Germany, mentions of Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Russia, and very briefly Frederick the Great of Prussia

Pairings: Russia/Prussia, if you squint and turn your screen one-hundred-and -eighty degrees clockwise whilst dangling upside-down.

Summary: Drabble! Prussia, post-1990, is bed-ridden and having some interesting dreams after some nation-y complications and such. Insert my silly writing-style here, and we have...something utterly impossible to read. Apologies in advance.

Author's Note: I really have no idea what brought this on, but whatever, it was an interesting thought at the time.

This is heavily influenced by a book I've read recently (don't ask me the title, I've lost the book and can't remember it) which happens to have a lot of passed-out people having some really nifty dreams. Apparently, severe pain does silly things to one's head.

The title comes from blue cornflowers, which, as far as I'm aware, were Prussia's national flower.

Anyways, yes, another drabble from me (I specialize in these things, you see) to help me work away some – rather ridiculous – writer's block.

Disclaimer: Hetalia is obviously not mine, otherwise it would never be finished and it would all be Prussia-centric. Gee, aren't I creative?

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Kaliningrad would never be Konigsberg, they discovered the day they tried to make Prussia Kaliningrad Oblast the day East Germany ceased to exist.

The task of changing the heart of a country was a long and painful one, which was why countries did their best not to go through such a thing, but this was different. Throughout the entire process Gilbert had screamed his throat quite bloody, while his heart cried for its lands (Konigsberg, Kaliningrad, in ruin, in wealth, it belongs to us!) and his mind begged for its people, its language, its lifeblood. It was a pain he had not known since the day English planes soared over East Prussia and laid waste to its capital, a pain that was forever embodied as a scar in the pattern of bomb-craters.

Kaliningrad, though strong and fortified, would never equal its predecessor, for it was not quite Prussian.

So instead they changed course, returning to him his half a heart of Berlin, the heart that had shouldered him through the course of sixty years strongly and would, no doubt, support him until his failing.

The whole ordeal had left the Eastern half of Germany too exhausted for what felt like millennia, to tired even to lift his eyes nor breathe too deeply, and left him to lie in fitful sleep, plagued by hallucinations and faces of men long dead.

The visions came in waves between spaces of the darkest of blacks - men with steel helms unpainted and chains about their head one could only find in museums and old castles and re-enactment movies and tunics of dirtied and stained white with a blurry splash of black that if he stared to long at it, it would fling him into a dizzying tumble through the dark again stood above him, hands covered in more steel clasped over the pommel of intricate, ever-changing swords; men with laughing faces and smiles that never quite reached his ears danced around him, holding each-other's hands and occasionally flinging wreaths of flowers about as long grass swayed in an un-felt wind beyond, and the sun hung forever poised in the west in a brilliant show of colours; Ebony keys that moved about on their own, playing a tune that he knew well yet could not remember, a woman twirling happily in a rag of a dress, lips parted in a smile so wide it crossed rivers and a man holding her hands as they danced, his own smile, however reserved, lit up his face and his robe that fluttered gracefully with the skirts of the woman's dress in a dance of their own; a man with a powdered wig and a kind, soft smile and a silver flute that played colours in the air rather than made music. Each in turn made him happy and so heart-wrenchingly sad at the same time, and he longed to reach out and touch every person he saw, but his arms were so heavy and he was much, much too tired to lift them an inch, so he just watched, frozen in place.

Soon, in a very slow, wavering fashion, he became aware of his surroundings. During one of the blank, dark breaks one day, he felt the softness of a mattress under his back, and the faintly scratchy, warm blankets that covered him, and a cold, trembling hand caressing his cheek, before he fell headlong into another image of a girl who very much looked and acted like a boy prancing about on a pony. After that, his waking moments lasted longer and became more and more frequent, though he did not yet have the strength to open his eyes, let alone touch the hand that so often found his face.

His dreams showed him, after some time and on the odd occasion, of people sitting beside him in an out-of-focused room. People he knew not too long ago – Germany, tall, blonde, and serious as ever sat beside him most often, nose buried in a book (or, what he thought was a book) or hand in his own, lips forming words unheard; Austria had the gall to show up, accompanying Germany once or twice, but usually came on his own and sat in that ever-refined way of his, talking to himself or the wall, but never looking at him; Hungary came a few times, refusing to sit in the chair and always pacing about, waving her arms in a manner that he couldn't decide whether it was angry or anxious; Switzerland showed up once, much to his surprise, and prattled on while waving a gun in what he assumed was supposed to be a threatening way, but almost seemed distressed, which was odd, for they never had much to do with anything together.

But most surprisingly of all, Russia came. He came more often than Austria, yet never as much as Germany, always bearing some sort of flower (usually a blue cornflower, which he supposed was supposed to mean something, but he never could remember) to place in the ever-growing bouquet that sat just out of his vision. He supposed the vase must surely be quite full by then.

In between those dark spaces and the visions of people visiting, he found himself staring at a ceiling. At first, it appeared a plain white, but as time passed it became more detailed: slow, spiralling vines stretched across the white canvas, forming intricate patterns that became more fascinating each time his vision glanced across it, and he came to realise that he truly was awake then, and that he was seeing the ceiling of his room and the people who came to see him in his sickbed.

After his realisation and the next time Germany visited him, he managed to smile at his brother, who nearly dropped the book in his hands and rushed over to his side, lips moving almost frantically. He found it most odd that he couldn't hear anything, until he found that there was a single voice singing in his ears too loudly for him to hear above it. His brother had looked at him most clearly that moment, almost as if he had grown a third eye upon his forehead, and he felt himself laugh – for it must surely be a laugh that shook his vision so, as no hands were upon him to shake him – before the calm, warm darkness came and pulled it into its comforting embrace.

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"What's that you're humming?" Germany asked over his shoulder, hands that were busily peeling a potato stilling for a moment.

Gilbert looked up from his newspaper bewildered, for he had not realised he was making any noise at all. "Hm? Oh, it's..." He thought for a moment, humming the tune again and remembering the men that danced in the golden meadow and their wreaths of flowers, and he smiled, "It's an old Prussian folksong, sung to bring good health."

Germany chuckled, returning to his potato-peeling. "Surely, someone must have been singing it to you while you were ill, then, and I'm thankful. Without it, this family would certainly be missing its definition."

Gilbert, plain Gilbert, as no longer would he hold the status as a nation again, smiled softly and played with a small blue cornflower from a vase on his nightstand while Kaliningrad and Konigsberg danced in the place in his heart left empty by Berlin.

End.

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