Funny enough, I started out not liking Spamano all that much. Romano seemed far too whiney and "tsundere" to me and I thought Spain (although ditzy at times) didn't deserve to put up with all the abuse that fans made him go through shipping them together. And then I realized that Spain was just was Romano needed - a gentle, kind soul to encourage him to soften. In a way, Spain needed Romano too: to teach him to grow a backbone. I guess I'll use this space (also) to thank all of you who review and even read! It means quite a lot to me, mainly because I muse that all these stories are really endless crap I keep throwing out into this community that's tired of me already.

EHWS

Romano could remember certain things about before. He could remember the Spanish sunsets. He could remember green eyes. He could remember ripe tomatoes.

But what he could remember most was battles. He remembered blood and metal and gunpowder. He remembered foreign words ripped from foreign mouths as death with his sickle laid his damnation down.

He remembered his name, called by a man he knew to a fault, before everything went dark. His fingers remember grasping, dully, silently screaming at empty sockets that once contained something so dear to him. He was still sobbing when he felt hands come over his, forced him to stay still as shock grabbed hold of him and made him shudder back and forth, back and forth.

Romano.

The voice was in his ears somewhere, beyond the rough calloused skin of a Spaniard and shots and clashing metal. A shot went off dangerously close to his ears and he screamed again, struggling against the arms, attempting to escape. Tears dripped onto his lips, along with a more metallic and saltier substance he instantly knew was supposed to be blood. Blood should have tasted the same no matter where it came from. Blood from a split lip tasted the same as blood from a broken tooth which tasted the same as blood from a thorn prick.

But blood this time tasted of something horrid enough to make him want to retch onto his boots. He gagged, but the hands never let him go, if anything they tightened their grip around his face.

Romano.

The voice again. It sounded so familiar, so wounded, and yet so foreign to him. All there was, was darkness. He couldn't find his way out of it, and it dug its dark claws into his head, as if attempting to force him into madness. He wanted to vomit, and yet he couldn't make himself do so. The same horrid liquid that should have been blood seeped into his mouth through his cracked lips and still the hands and arms never left him.

"Nostro Padre che sei nei paradiso-"

His voice didn't sound right between his lips. It sounded hollow in his prayer, tears dripping from an unseen void through his cheeks into his skull.

"Santificato il tuo nome-"

Romano stop it.

"Tua regno vieni-"

Romano, please.

"La tua volontà sia fatta sulla terra come essa è in paradiso-"

Romano!

Everything was so deadly silent suddenly Romano could almost hear his own sobs breaking the ribs in his side.

Did he lose his hearing too? The sudden and startling lack of sight damaging his ear drums as well?

Creeping feelings of insanity dug their claws into Romano's body. It dragged his body into the ground dizzily, even as he was held up by strong hands. Everything hurt and the darkness became more and more real with every passing second as he lay inside it, writhing in his own sudden guilt and pain.

It swallowed him up with a gulp and he festered in it until the darkness became too real and he succumbed, willingly, to its acidic consumption.

EHWS

When Romano awoke, he couldn't tell if it was morning, afternoon, evening or night. Dizzily he sat up, leaving the comfort of pillows behind and felt something claw at him yet again in the darkness. It still hurt to breathe, as if his lungs had collapsed inside of him, leaving his chest hollow and without air.

He suddenly became aware of fabric restricting his view, and his heart slowed paces significantly. Perhaps it had all being a terror-ridden nightmare and the reason for his sudden lack of vision was because his brain mistook reality for imaginary dream states.

Quickly Romano found hold and ripped the layers away from his eyes as fast as he could. But the light never came. It remained dark even when Romano knew that daylight (or some sort of light) should have been coming through the thin layers of fabric.

Suddenly a hand was over his, jolting Romano back into the memories of his dreams. The hands were rough and calloused and smelled of years of spices and yard work.

"Spain?"

Romano had never felt as unstable as he did in that moment, tears threatening on the verge of his lids.

"Romano. . ."

The pallor in his voice was enough to make Romano's heart choke him again. His tone promised nothing good, and yet there was still part of Romano that grasped hold of the idea that he was only see-less because of the fabric and if only Spain would let him remove the entirety of the thing, he could look at him with the same condescending look as normal and tell him to get the fuck out of his house.

"Spain, what's going on?" he asked, quietly, as if that would make a difference to Spain's answer.

But his friend was silent as the dead, and Romano felt the insanity take hold, making him see things in the abyss that grasped at his dead heart and left him weak.

"Spain! Answer me you bastard!" he cried, voice stronger now, grasping at the hands over his eyes.

But the fingers, if anything, tightened a fraction around his skull, as if to attempt to keep him from ripping them away.

"Spain!"

There was a long sigh and then the hands that had stopped Romano slowly began unraveling the fabric themselves, pulling it away as Romano sat in quiet and frustrated silence.

"I'm blind." Romano whispered, pulling his hands up to his eyes, or lack thereof. He felt the outer rims of his lids with his fingers, never daring to go farther for he feared he might become physically sick with the lack of what should have been there.

"Cut. . . ."

It seemed to be hard for Spain to go on, but when Romano felt the tears that had welled up spill over his cheeks, Spain continued.

"They were cut by one of Francis's soldiers. He has been killed, I can assure you. But the doctors were not able to save your eyes Romano. They were far too damaged. In order to prevent infection they had to remove them completely."

Spain was forlorn. The happy go lucky bastard who had nagged at Romano for the majority of his life was. . . unreachable.

It seemed futile to ask, but Romano couldn't help the words that next spilled from his mouth.

"Will they grow back?"

It was a stupid question. All laws of biology and anatomy told him that it was. Human bodies did not grow back body parts once they were maimed.

Spain was quiet.

"Will they grow back Spain? I'm a nation, they have to grow back!"

"It will take centuries Romano. Decades at best." he finally responded.

"But they will grow back." Romano said, closing his lids and probing at the empty flesh underneath them.

He let his hands fall and he felt Spain catch one, bringing it up to his mouth and pressing it gently to his lips. Romano for once didn't pull his hand away. For once in his long, long life, he wasn't angry. He couldn't force himself to feel frustrated with Spain, and he couldn't force himself to feel angry. There was just this emptiness that had made his chest cave in on him. He could only focus his energies on not collapsing in on himself, and if Spain wanted to kiss the knuckles on his hand, then let it be.

Spain almost seemed to sense this, and Romano felt his hot breath move away from his knuckles and let his hand drop.

"I'm so very tired." Romano whispered, letting himself fall back onto the bed, and he curled up into himself, feeling so utterly defeated sleep was the only positive thing about the entire ordeal.

Sleep, however, was not merciful to him. Sleep plagued him with night terrors so frightening he woke suddenly in the darkness, choking on air and Spain holding his arms back so that he wouldn't hurt himself. Romano had never felt so utterly terrified in his entire life, so utterly terrified that he surrendered to the rocking motions of his body to comfort him. At some point in the night (or early morning Romano, for years, would never be able to tell), he stood and paced. By morning his hips were bruised from walking into nightstands and the edge of the bed, and his lips and the inside of his cheeks were chewed red and raw and bloody.

No one did anything to stop Romano as he wandered the halls of his house, losing himself in the mansions twisting hallways he once knew so well. His thighs and shins were bruised from askew chair legs and table corners, his toes stubbed over and over to the point that they turned black and blue and Spain finally had to force him to bed to keep him from injuring himself any further.

Romano was never truly the same again.

EHWS

This was getting a bit longer than intended so I decided "Well, why not just split it up into a chapter story! A bit easier to read as well, right?"

So that's what I did. I hope you don't mind, but because I did this, I might update this a bit more frequently. . . ? It's a lot easier to write three pages and post it than wait until it's all done at 30 pages and god knows how many words.