On the dawn of Maria Theresa's death, Austria is contemplates the haunting fragility of life, a melancholic ambedo of things he knows and what will never understand. The knowledge that the only ones he can trust are the ones that seek his downfall, it's a tune he plays too well, a song he knows by heart and a lesson he has learned so many times before.

It was many year in the past, to many to count, but he could give you the date if he looked in a textbook. To him it seems like yesterday, and he is the only one still alive to recall the event with clarity, if you can call his state of consciousness living.

He tries not to dwell on the past, on the fact that he will never see any of them again, his people, his past kings and queens; they're lost to him forever, replaced by new ones before they can be missed. It's a cycle he knows all too well, a fact that he's been forced to accept. He doesn't like it, but what can he do?

He's in the room when Maria Theresa passes. He's standing by the door and watching with furrowed brows as her children surround her and she takes her last breath. He watches, watches, thinking, calculating. Each short breath she takes makes his heart clench and curse humans for their weakness and mortality. He's gone through this painful process so many times, but he still isn't used to it.

It seems surreal how something could cease to live like that, be breathing and living one minute and then, not in the next. He can't begin to imagine how it must feel taking each shuddering breath, feeling your body fail and collapse on you… He wonders if the humans ever get used to the threat of death looming over their shoulders. He wonders how they live with this. How they can live like this.

He's no better than they are, he supposes, he's worst because he's an imposter. He's not a human; he wishes he were, so that he didn't have to be subjected to this painfully living for all of eternity. He wishes he could get a break like all of the humans did in the end.

Death, it sounds enticing, strange and beautiful and he wants to taste it, breathe it in and understand what is so marvelous and cruel to be stolen from him. He wants to understand it, he wants it to be an available end for him, he wishes he could learn to fear it, as if it were a threat. He wants to revel in it, the blank nothingness, the release, sweet freedom and nothing else.

He wishes for falling, endless peace and relief, no more wars and never hitting the ground, falling and falling… He has no time to be foolish, to waste time over things he already has been forced to accept.

He wants to be free of this, he will never be free. He has a nation to take care of, an empire to build. Oh, how he wished his burdens were taken from him, he wished he could start fresh and forget. Oh the curse of the nation, immortality and friendship in all of its forms.

He should not linger here. He has to go. There's work to be done.

He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and doesn't give himself too much time to think about the fragility and shortness of a human life. He tries to steer his thoughts away from the history that had been written under her rule, all of the thing's he'll need to tell her successor. There'll be time for that later, now there's work to be done.

He has the rest of his life to grieve, quite literally. The future is too vast and endless with opportunities to think about. He has so many things he needs to be doing right now, he's waiting for her children to leave so he can stand over her and mourn in his own way, waste time thinking about how he let himself get comfortable with a human again. When will he learn?

Never, that's his curse, to fall into the trap of reliability, learn things like the feeling of safety and the failures of dependability. Learn how petty things like trust and friendship can be, they get you nowhere when the only people you can trust are the ones like you, nations, and yet the ones that you have sworn to never trust are the ones like you, the same nations under a different rule.

Who's to say that his next ruler won't turn him into a monster, someone unrecognizable? Who's to say that his next ruler won't be his downfall, or the height of his empire? There's no telling, that's the mystic beauty of history unrolling, the unknown of each new day.

There are but few that understand, nations that help you, nations that support you, nations that betray and lie, that burn treaties and tear alliances apart, that befriend you one day and try to kill you the next, oh the woes of the traveler, the constant vigilance of the nation. Will he never rest? He's no time for rest. There's work to be done.

Always working, no time for sleep, rest a moment and they're all five leagues ahead, ready to knock you down, waiting around every corner. Never friendly, never sincere. It's a dangerous path he treads, not one he chose but one he was born for, but what can he do?

He's no more time to linger. There's work to be done, let the humans mourn, he has his own path to follow. They are a part of him, but he can never be a part of them, they're forever separated by a cruel barrier, one he knows better than to break.

Joseph the Second, her son, is her successor. He meets Austria with innocence, he is already a Holy Roman Emperor, but he is ready to lead, Austria can see it in his eyes, a fire, a passion. Austria regards him with calm, dead eyes, and although Joseph is considered strict, Austria has seen too much to take him seriously.

Joseph is cold and young, he speaks only business and is silent when he has nothing to say, Austria likes that about him, he feels that they will get along well. Thus begins another chapter of his long tale of suffering, another day of his tragedy.

He has no time for pity, no time for answers. His work is never-ending and he cannot sleep.