Long Road Ch17

[lothinielflowermaiden]

Author's note: Well, I managed to get this chapter finished a little ahead of a schedule, since I was originally planning to post it next month. So, here's a slightly early update to make up for the late update last chapter. As usual, see previous chapters for warnings.

Chapter Seventeen

It took the rest of the family a little while to realize that Norway wasn't anywhere downstairs. They had started leaving him alone for a little while after dinner some nights as part of their attempt to give him some space. As far as they knew, he stayed in the living room the whole time while they took about fifteen minutes to half an hour to work on paperwork or whatever.

However, that evening, when they entered the living room, Norway wasn't there.

At first they weren't too worried, until a quick search revealed that he didn't seem to be anywhere in that part of the house. Then, they started to worry.

They all knew he wasn't in the best condition physically, and they were worried that might have caught up with him. They were also worried that he might not be in the house anymore—that he might have run away for the third time. But they didn't want to consider that possibility yet, because it meant that it might be too late to save him. They had already seen that he would not take care of himself while in his present emotional state, and they did not want to risk losing him if there was still any way to save him.

The one hope they had was that maybe he was just in another part of the house that they hadn't looked in on their quick search. With that in mind, they began a more thorough search.

For several moments, they split up and checked different rooms downstairs, calling for him as they did so. They were just about to conclude that he was no longer in the house when they heard an answering call from upstairs. That was the one place they had not thought to look, as they were all aware of Norway's refusal to go upstairs.

And somehow, they just knew that something was wrong.

"Islanti, will you stay down here with Sealand?" Finland asked. He didn't want the younger members of the family to see something they shouldn't again. "Once we know if Norja is alright, we'll let you know."

"He's not alright, though." That was something they were all aware of really—after all, Norway hadn't really been alright since Scandia's visit.

"We at least need to make sure he's not hurt or anything. And if anything other than the usual is wrong, then you shouldn't have to see it." The two younger members of the family had already seen more than they should have since both of them had witnessed the confrontation with Scandia, and since Iceland had witnessed the incidents in January.

Leaving the two kids downstairs, the other three went upstairs to find Norway. They didn't have to search very far, as Norway had not gotten very far past the top of the stairs.

He was sitting on the floor, and his knees were drawn up to his chest and arms wrapped around them. He was incredibly pale, even more so than he had been before. And when he looked towards them, he showed no signs that he recognized them, or possibly that he even saw them. He was breathing a little too rapidly as well. The others were reminded of the episode he had had at the hospital before they had been sent away. And they all remembered how hard it had been to get him out of that state.

"Nor?" Denmark took a couple of steps closer to Norway and reached out to put a hand on his shoulder.

"Wait, don't touch him yet," Finland said. "We need to make sure he knows we're here first. Otherwise, we might make things worse, especially if he thinks it's someone else touching him." It had been shown several times that Norway reacted badly to touch when he was in a state like this.

And of course, they weren't sure how to get him out of this particular state. The one thing they knew was that he had been aware enough a few minutes ago to answer their calls, and that apparently something had happened since then that had upset him. However, they had no idea what that might have been, as they were sure no one else had been upstairs. And the last time they had seen Norway in a state like this, they had at least known what had triggered it. But this time, the only thing they knew was that something had made him come upstairs after more than a week of refusing to do so. And that something had upset him once he had gotten upstairs.

Finland knelt down across from where Norway was sitting, although he made sure to keep some distance between them. He did not want to risk doing anything that might make Norway more frightened than he already seemed to be. "Norja, you're safe now," he said. Since he had no idea exactly what Norway was frightened of, he couldn't be more specific than that. And, he couldn't even be sure if he would get a response, since Norway didn't seem to be aware of them at all.

Thankfully, a few moments later, Norway seemed to finally become aware of them. For the first time, he showed some sign of recognition, and some of the fear that had been visible deep in his eyes began to fade. Norway still didn't say anything, though. He merely looked around at them, noticing the way they had basically surrounded him. Slowly, as he began to become more aware of their presence his breathing began to even out.

The others were ready to help him if necessary, but it seemed that Norway might be able to recover from that episode on his own. And, based on previous experience, they all knew there was a risk that something as simple as saying the wrong thing could make him worse or make it harder for them to be able reach him.

However, the signs of fear were fading only to be replaced with the exhaustion that always seemed to follow one of these attacks. He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes while the others exchanged concerned looks.

They had all seen how tired Norway usually was after one of these episodes, and they knew he would need to be taken somewhere to rest—he obviously couldn't stay where he was all night. However, they had no idea where to take him. He was uncomfortable upstairs, and they knew his usual room would have traumatic associations. But they weren't sure if he could manage the stairs safely in his present state, or if they could get him to accept help. At the moment, they were just very relieved that he had at least gotten up the stairs without falling.

After a few moments, Norway opened his eyes again. He still seemed to be aware of their presence, although he had not spoken yet.

"How are you feeling, Norja?" Finland asked, once he was sure of Norway's awareness.

Norway did not respond immediately. He looked at each of them again first. "I'm alright," he answered at last. "I don't need your help right now. I can take care of myself."

"But you're not taking care of yourself. You're barely eating anything, and you're already critically underweight. You've been admitted to the hospital three times in the last five months. That's not taking care of yourself."

Norway did not reply to that admonishment, but it clearly had some effect on him. He looked down at the floor, and his eyes were closed again, so he could not even look at any of them. They couldn't tell if those words had had the intended effect or not.

"Norja, we're trying to help you because we care about you. And right now, we'll all scared of losing you, and that's what will happen if you keep acting the way you have been."

This got no more of a response than the reprimand had, leaving the rest of the family at something of a loss. They no longer had any idea if they even had a chance of being able to help Norway, because he did not seem willing to accept their help. But, especially given the way things were going, they knew he might not survive if he did not get help from someone. But, they had no idea who might be able to help him.

"Can you stand up?" That was a valid concern, given how tired Norway usually was after one of these episodes, especially considering the fact that he wasn't in the best condition anyway. And they did want to get him away from the top of the stairs.

"Yes." Norway was still noticeably exhausted, but he managed to get to his feet. He was using the wall for support, though.

The others weren't sure if Norway could get downstairs safely when he couldn't even stand without support.

"Would you be comfortable in one of the rooms upstairs, for a little while, or do you want someone to help you downstairs?"

A few minutes passed before Norway answered. "I'll stay up here," he said at last. He seemed a little hesitant though.

There were a few extra rooms upstairs, although not that many since each member of the family had their own usual room. (Well, Sweden and Finland shared a room, but everyone else had their own.) A couple of times in the last few weeks, they had offered to let Norway use one of the spare rooms, but until now he had refused to come upstairs.

And they still had no idea why he had done so, but there would be time enough later to determine that. Right now it was more important to make sure that Norway would be alright. Although that got harder to believe with each new setback.

One of the extra rooms was close enough that Norway was able to get to it without help. He was clearly shaken and exhausted, and the others noticed that he had to support himself against the wall a few times. They suspected that it was only his usual determination not to show weakness that allowed him to make it to the other room. And they were all relieved when he was safely away from the stairs and settled in the bedroom.

"I want to talk to him, and see if I can find out what made him come up here," Finland said. "And then I think the rest of us need to talk again. We're going to have to do something different, I think." He wasn't sure if Norway would talk to him, but it was pretty definite he wouldn't talk to the others yet. "He's alright for now, though, or he will be once he gets some rest." There was a chance that might not be true after another incident like this though.

---

There were large portions of the evening that Norway couldn't remember at all. He remembered being left alone after dinner and standing at the foot of the stairs. The next memory that made sense was of being upstairs. Then there was another gap. He remembered hearing footsteps, and then his family had been there. But he had not seen them come upstairs, although he thought he remembered telling them that he was upstairs.

He tried not to let on how much these gaps in his memory bothered him, or even that they were happening. Instead he tried (unsuccessfully) to get the others to leave him alone. He didn't want them to know about the gaps in his memory of the evening, or that this wasn't the first time that had happened.

It had taken every bit of willpower he could summon to walk even the short distance to the closest spare room without needing help. That was the only thing keeping him upstairs—he was aware enough to know that in his current state he might not be able to walk down the stairs without falling.

Once he had been settled in the room, he was left alone for a few minutes, while the others were talking out in the hall. Norway knew that he wasn't going to be left alone for too long, though. Eventually, he was going to be questioned about why he had gone upstairs and what had happened to leave him in this state, and so he used the time to prepare himself for how to answer that without revealing that he couldn't actually remember coming upstairs.

Even knowing that some of the other members of his family were right outside the door, Norway still felt uneasy. Even few moments, he looked around the room as if expecting someone to appear out of the shadows. Not that there were that many shadows, since the lights were on the room—only the corners were left in shadow. He knew that no one else could be in the room, and yet he kept looking.

A few moments later, Finland came back in the room. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"I already told you I was alright," Norway answered.

"We were worried when we couldn't find you earlier. We didn't know if you'd left again, or if something else had happened."

Silence fell for a little while. Norway wanted to say that he didn't want his family to worry about him, but at the same time, he couldn't miss the fact that he had given them reasons to worry. But, admitting to that meant admitting to weakness, and he couldn't do that, not when he was trying to convince his family to let him return to his own house. And, he just didn't want to talk at that moment, as he still hadn't figured out how to cover up the fact that he didn't remember coming upstairs. "I don't really want to talk right now," he said at last.

"If you need to rest now, we can talk later. I just wanted to make sure that you were alright, and that you'd be okay up here on your own."

Norway hadn't thought of that when he had agreed to stay upstairs—that he might be left alone upstairs again. He tried not to show any signs of the unease he felt at that thought, and not to look towards any of the shadowed corners. Any questions he may have had about that tactic's effectiveness were answered a few moments later.

"Will you be okay up here?" Finland asked. "I could stay with you for a little while, if you're not ready to be alone yet."

"I want to be alone," Norway said. There was some truth to that statement. He wanted to be alone to try to piece together exactly what had happened that evening. But he did not want to be alone upstairs—not after what had happened up there the previous summer. Those memories were just too closely tied to the upstairs of this house, and he was afraid they would overwhelm him if he was left alone. Or that the nightmares would return.

"We're all be right downstairs if you need us, then. Try to get some rest, and we'll talk to in the morning.

When Norway was alone again, his eyes strayed once again to one of the shadowy corners. The lights were all still on, and he had no intention of turning them off. As long as the lights were on, he felt safer from the memories that threatened to overwhelm him at any moment.

Objectively, he knew that he was safe. The rest of his family was all downstairs, and in a few hours, they would come upstairs. All night they would be right down the hall from him in their own rooms. And he knew that they would not allow anything to hurt him, if they could to do anything to stop it.

And yet, even though he knew he was safe, he still kept all of the lights on, and fought to keep from surrendering to the sleep that he needed after the earlier episode.

---

The rest of the family was growing increasingly worried. They all knew that evening's events signaled that some new crisis might be coming. And they were afraid that Norway might not survive another crisis.

The two younger members of the family had been told very little about what had happened upstairs. They were told only that Norway had gone upstairs and was now resting in one of the spare rooms up there, but that he was alright. Iceland knew that there was probably more to it than that, but decided to wait until later to ask questions. He was just as aware of what this new crisis might mean as the older members of the family were, and he was scared that he was going to lose his brother.

Nothing more was said about Norway's situation until later that night. For a couple of hours they had tried to pretend that it was just a normal evening, and if they happened make sure that one of them was always close enough to the staircase to hopefully be able to hear any sounds from upstairs, well, that was just a coincidence.

It was obvious that there was something that was going unsaid though, that there was something the adults didn't want to discuss in front of the younger members of the family. That, more than anything else, made Iceland suspect that Norway wasn't really alright, and as soon as he was got a chance to be in a room alone with them, he confronted them about what wasn't being said.

"Noregur isn't really alright, is he?" he asked.

"He had another episode like the one that he had that night in the hospital," Finland answered. "He's tired from that, but he should be alright once he gets some rest. I'm more concerned about what made him go upstairs, after the way he's been refusing to do so."

"But isn't it a good sign that he did so. It must mean he's starting to get better," Iceland said. He couldn't see why the others seemed so concerned about that, but then, he hadn't seen what had happened upstairs. He didn't know any details about the condition Norway was in.

"I think that's what he wants us to believe. He doesn't want to talk about it, so I don't know what's going on with him or why he went up there. But you didn't see the condition he was in when we found him. I'm afraid that if he does something like that again, he could end up getting hurt. If he'd had that attack on the stairs, or if he'd tried to come back downstairs during it, he easily could have fallen."

Iceland looked over at where Denmark and Sweden were standing. Neither of them had said anything about what had happened upstairs, but he could tell that they also felt that what was going with Norway wasn't a positive sign. And that they also realized how easily that night's events could have been much worse. "Do you think he'll be alright?" he asked, dreading what the answer might be. He couldn't bear the thought that he might lose his brother.

"I don't know," Finland answered. "There's something else you need to know about as well. I found out about it earlier this month, but I promised Norja that I wouldn't say anything unless I believed that his life was in danger. After what happened tonight, I think you need to know. It might be hard to believe, though, which is part of the reason he didn't want you to know about it. I'm not entirely sure if I believe it, but you need to at least know that he thinks this."

Silence fell for a little while, as the others all began to feel a growing apprehension at what they might be about to be told. An apprehension that only grow as they heard what it was that Norway hadn't wanted them to be told about. They had all known about the nightmares that Norway kept having, but they had never suspected that he believed Scandia was actually visiting those nightmares. It sounded crazy, but at the same time, they all somehow suspected that there might be some truth to it. But if it was true, then it was just one more danger that they had no way of protecting Norway from. A danger that, as was revealed eventually, Norway did not want to be protected from. And the hardest part of that to deal with, at least for Iceland, was hearing the reason why Norway did not want to be protected from whatever influence Scandia might still have. A reason that was not revealed until the very last part of the recounting.

"Norja is afraid that if he does anything to stop Scandia from bothering him, that Scandia will go after Islanti, and he doesn't want to take the risk that his child might be harmed."

"But I thought he didn't—" Iceland couldn't bring himself to actually finish that sentence. He knew that Norway had been trying to protect him—he had known since everything that had happened the previous summer. And yet, he still kept thinking that Norway hadn't wanted him.

"Norja really should be telling you this himself, but he really doesn't hold any of what happened against you."

"Then why hasn't he said that." Truthfully, it had been said in the letter, but they had never really talked about—well, about any of this. Of course, Iceland kind of overlooked the fact that he had been avoiding Norway for several months now, and hadn't exactly given his brother any chances to talk to him.

"If he knew what you were thinking, he probably would talk to you, or you could try talking to him. I know that he wouldn't want you to think that you weren't wanted."

"I don't want to upset him," Iceland said. After all, the last several times he had tried to talk to Norway hadn't gone that well. Maybe it was for the best if they just didn't talk to each other, or at least not about any of this. He knew that something he had said the last time they had tried to talk had upset Norway, but he wasn't sure why. And he really didn't want to talk about this anymore right now.

And, there were other things to worry about than the reason Norway had wanted the truth about the dreams to be kept a secret.

"We have to do something to protect Nor. We can't let him be hurt again." It was obvious just how worried Denmark was about the possibility that Norway might still be in danger. But then, everyone in the family knew how important Norway was to him.

"I don't know what we can to, though. I've been trying to think of something since Norja told me about the dreams. But I don't see how we can stop something like that, when we don't even know exactly what's happening. And we need something better than your trying to declare war on Scandia, since you've already been told you can't do that."

"Well, if he ever shows up again, I will kill him for what he did to Nor—especially if he really did have anything to do with how Nor got hurt." The flaw in that plan was the fact that Scandia was technically already dead, but apparently Denmark hadn't thought of that fact. And, he had been threatening to kill Scandia since shortly after finding out about what Scandia had been doing to Norway.

"I thought you needed to know about the danger that Norja might still be in just in case, but we may not need to worry about Scandia going after him again. I don't think he's had any of the nightmares since he's been staying with us, and I doubt that Scandia will do anything as obvious as show up again, since we all know what he did. At the moment, I'm more worried about what Norja is doing to himself than about what Scandia might still try to do to him. He's still barely eating, and the one time I tried to talk to him about that, he said that he had it under control. He seems to have no idea of what he's doing to himself, or to show any signs of actually wanting help. If anything, he's trying harder to hide the fact that he has a problem. I don't know what to do for him anymore."

Silence followed that last statement, as the rest of the family was forced to deal with the one possibility that they had all continually tried not to think about. They might not be able to save Norway—they might really lose him. And they might lose him because of something that none of them had any way of fighting.

"So what are we supposed to do? Just stand by and watch him slowly kill himself?"

"If we can't find a way to get through to him soon, that may be exactly what will happen. That's why I thought we needed to talk again. We need to decide what to do, while there's still time to actually do something."

"I'm not going to let Nor die." Denmark said, without even having to think about it.

"Neither am I," Iceland said. He didn't want to lose his brother, who also happened to be the only parent he was willing to acknowledge.

The discussion continued along similar lines long into the night. The entire family could agree that they needed to do something—that they couldn't just stand by and risk losing Norway. However, none of them could come up with a plan for what to do exactly, and by the time they finally stopped the discussion in order to go to bed, they were no closer to having a plan than they had been when they had started. The only difference was that they had finally spoken about the fear that all of them had tried to keep from acknowledging—the fear that they might not be able to do anything to help Norway, and that they really might lose him.

---

Author's notes: First a note about the update schedule. Starting next month, I am going to be doing another writing challenge during February and March. However, this time, I'm doing it with this story. If I'm going to get anywhere with this story, I need to just write without having to stop after every chapter to edit. Especially since I'm starting to really think about stuff coming up, including how this story will ultimately end.

Anyway, during the next two months, I will continue to update on my usual schedule, but I will probably be a couple chapters ahead of the one that gets posted each time. I don't know if I will finish the story by the end of March, but I'm hoping to at least get enough ahead that I will have a couple of extra chapters that I can post if I have another bout with writer's block.

The reason I'm mentioning this, since like I said, I still plan to post new chapters on schedule, is because I would like to give my readers an opportunity to tell me anything that they want to make sure I address before the end of the story. I have made note of things that readers have asked in previous reviews, and just because I haven't addressed something yet doesn't mean I won't. There are some things going on that have only been hinted at, and I've been considering at least leaving the possibility of writing more stories in this series eventually.

I want to thank my two reviewers from last chapter. It's nice to know that people are still enjoying this story.

I don't think I have any story related explanations this time, but if someone has a question about something in this chapter, I can try to address it next chapter.

And, back to the issue of update schedule—the next chapter should be out sometime in mid to late February. I've already started working on it, so it should definitely be on schedule.