lothinielflowermaiden

Warnings: The warnings from previous chapters still apply, and, as stated in previous chapters, any foreign language bits might be wrong, as I used an online translator. Also, this chapter will contain an apparent suicide attempt.

Chapter Three

After that, they had gone home. There had been some debate about exactly where to go, as there was no question that the family was staying together for the time being. None of them felt comfortable with the idea of leaving Norway alone in his current condition, especially after he had disappeared for five the months the last time they left him alone. In the end, they had taken him to his own house, believing that he might recover sooner in his own territory.

For the first day it seemed to work. Norway had spent most of the day resting, as he was still weak and still had a little bit of a headache from the concussion. They were able to get him to eat a little, but he did not have much of an appetite. Once he fell asleep that night, they left him alone, hoping he would sleep through the night.

They were proven wrong in the middle of the night, when they were awoken by a scream. They hurried to Norway's room to find him caught in the grip of a nightmare. Norway had curled up on his side, his blankets tangled around him and soaked with sweat. He was crying in his sleep.

"Norge." Denmark approached the bed, and reached out to touch Norway's shoulder.

"Wait. Don't touch him," Finland said. "You don't know how he might react."

There was no reason to dispute that, as by now the whole family had learned what had happened in the hotel room. None of them knew what to do, though, and they could only watch as a member of their family suffered. Shortly after they had entered the room, the nightmare intensified.

Norway had begun thrashing around, making the covers become even more tangled around him. Since that scream that had awoken the rest of the family, he had been quiet; even the tears running down his face were silent tears. Now, though, a couple of soft cries escaped him, and soon he started talking. "Nei . . . nei. Stopp det! Gå vekk! Nei!1" With one final scream, he awoke.

Like every other time he had awoken from a nightmare, Norway was breathing too rapidly and looking around the room with no sign of recognition. The fact that he was in his own bedroom made no difference in his ability to calm down.

Finland approached the bed, but made no attempt to touch Norway. He kept his voice as calm as he could when he spoke. "Norja, you're safe. You're in your own house."

"He was here," Norway said. He did not seem any calmer; the fear had settled deep in his eyes. "He won't leave me alone."

"Norja, no one is here except us."

Norway shook his head. "No-he was here. He won't go away. Make him go away."

The rest of the family exchanged concerned glances. None of them could make any sense of what Norway was saying. However, at the moment, the important thing was to get Norway calmed down, and none of them were sure how to do that. After all, they could not really address his fears, and they had been given instructions not to encourage the fear.

"Norja, no one here is going to hurt you. You are safe. You're in your own house, and your father isn't anywhere near here," Finland said, making another attempt to get through to Norway.

Norway didn't respond, and he still seemed to be having trouble catching his breath.

Well, that was something that could be dealt with at least. Once the panic attack had been dealt with, they could deal with convincing Norway that Scandia was not a threat to him anymore. "Norja, try to focus on breathing." As he once again helped Norway recover from a panic attack, Finland made a mental note to teach the others how to do this.

It took longer this time for Norway to calm down, and even once his breathing had returned to normal he still seemed afraid. He was also completely exhausted, as the frequent panic attacks were using strength that he didn't have to spare.

As exhausted as he was, Norway was obviously forcing himself to stay awake. Every time his eyes would start to close, he would force them open again. None of the others said anything, but they didn't leave the room either. They weren't sure what to do. Norway needed rest in order to regain his strength, but he didn't seem able to sleep without nightmares.

When morning came, Norway was still awake, and the rest of the family had left him alone a few hours ago. He was glad they had left him alone, as he was getting tired of being watched almost constantly.

Norway got out of bed and walked slowly to the bathroom. His pace was slow and somewhat unsteady, and a couple of times he had to steady himself on something when a wave of dizziness came over him, but he managed to avoid collapsing again.

As he stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom, he was shocked by his appearance. Dark shadows around his eyes stood out in sharp contrast to the sickly pallor of his skin. He had always been on the thin side, but now that was even more pronounced. His nightclothes were so loose they were almost hanging off of him. Until that moment, he had not really noticed his changed appearance. Now, he realized why his family watched him so closely.

Although Norway had been aware that he had lost weight, he had not realized just how much. He hadn't looked this bad since during the Occupation, and at least then he'd had a valid excuse.

Hoping it would wake him up a little, Norway took a quick shower. Then he got dressed and went downstairs. By the time the rest of the family came down, he was already on his second cup of coffee.

"Did you get anymore sleep last night?" Finland asked as he poured his own cup of coffee.

"A little," Norway answered. He knew the others would probably realize he was lying, but he didn't really care.

"You need to eat something as well." Finland decided there was no point in making a big deal about the sleep issue. If necessary, he would give Norway one of the sleeping pills the doctor had prescribed.

Norway didn't respond to that. He merely took another sip of his coffee.

Once breakfast had been prepared, they did get Norway to eat a little, but nowhere near as much as they wanted him to. He didn't have much of an appetite after several months of barely eating.

"You don't all need to stay here," Norway told them after breakfast was over. "I can manage on my own."

"We're not leaving you alone in this condition, Nor," Denmark said.

"I'm an independent nation, Danmark. I don't need you to take care of me anymore." Norway turned to Sweden and Finland. "And the two of you have your son to look after." Then he looked at Iceland. For a few moments, he didn't say anything. Then, at last, he said, "Island, I told you to leave before I hurt you again."

Iceland reached across the table and placed his hand on top of Norway's. "You didn't hurt me," he said.

"I hit you," Norway whispered.

"But you didn't mean to." Iceland had never blamed Norway for what had happened in the hotel room. If anything he blamed himself.

"I'm no better than far."2 Norway was no longer able to keep up the pretense that everything was okay.

"Norja, you are nothing like Scandia. We all know that you didn't hurt Islanti on purpose. And we know what you went through to protect him. And we aren't leaving you until we know that you'll be all right."

"You don't know what I did," Norway whispered.

"Norge, n'thing y' did could change th' fact that w' care 'bout y'. Y're our l'ttle brother. W' should've done a bett'r job of protect'ng y'."

"No, you don't, søta bror3." The nickname was said with the usual amount of irony. "You never cared about me. You never thought about what would happen to us when you ran off with Finland. You took me away from my son, just because you needed a replacement for Finland. You never trusted me to take care of myself! You've been waiting for me to fail since I became independent! And you let them through!"

None of them were quite sure what Norway was talking about with that last accusation. The others had been easy enough to figure out, though. Before any of them could ask though, Norway got up from his seat at the table and walked out of the room. There was no sound of the door opening and closing, though, so they just assumed he had probably going upstairs to his bedroom, and that it might be best to leave him alone for a little while. They were no longer sure what they could do to help Norway, and it was becoming clearer every day that he needed help. This didn't seem to be something he could get over on his own; the condition he was in after five months of trying made that quite clear. They were also beginning to suspect that there might be something else bothering him, something more than what Scandia had done.

For the rest of that day, Norway stayed in his room. At lunch time and dinner time, one of them would take a tray up for him, and leave it outside his door when he refused to let them in. Later, the tray would be gone, so they knew that at least he was eating.

Like the previous night, they were once again all woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of his screams. This time, though, they were unable to get into his room, as he had locked the door.

The next day, Norway did not leave his room at all. Any time that one of the others would go up and knock on his door, he would refuse to talk to them. The only bit of relief they got from their worry, was that he would accept food when they brought it up for him. After all, in the condition Norway was currently in, he really couldn't afford to lose any more weight.

By the fourth day of such behavior, the rest of the Nordics decided this had gone on long enough. They needed to get Norway to talk to them. Somehow. Although how they were going to do that when Norway wouldn't even come out of his room . . . well, that was what none of them could figure out. They had tried all day to come up with a plan, and by evening, they were seriously considering Denmark's idea of breaking the door down with his axe.

Realizing that destroying his house was probably not the best way to get Norway to talk to them, Finland decided to make one last attempt to get Norway to open the door. He went up and knocked. "Norja, we're all getting worried about you. Please talk to us."

There was no reply, but considering the usual response was being told to go away, the lack of response may have been a good sign.

"Norja, if you don't let us in, Tanska is going to use his axe to destroy your door." Finland was starting to agree that they may need to resort to drastic measures. For all they knew, Norway could be hurt . . . or worse. "Norja, if you won't talk to any of us at least find someone you can talk to."

This time there was an answer. "I don't want anyone to know what I did." The statement was barely loud enough to have heard through the door, and there was something off about the way Norway's voice sounded.

"There is nothing you could have done that would change the fact that we all care about you. Norja, we want to help you, but you need to trust us."

For a long time, there was no response. Then there were sounds, as if someone was moving around on the other side of the door. After a few moments, the lock clicked, but the door remained closed. A few moments later, when Finland tried the door again, the knob turned easily and he was able to enter Norway's room.

Norway was sitting on the edge of the bed. His face had no color in it, except for the shadows around his eyes. His hair seemed to be in need of washing, and it was partially obscuring his face, instead of being held back by his hair clip. There were tear stains on his face. Most disturbing of all was the bloodstain on the left sleeve of his sweater.

Finland quickly crossed the room to the bed, and studied Norway for any other sign of injury. "Norja, let me see your arm."

Hesitantly, Norway held out his arm, so Finland could examine it. Immediately, Finland could tell that the situation was as serious as he had feared. Most of the blood on the sleeve had come from a large cut on Norway's wrist. The cut was still bleeding steadily; and the blood was dark red in color. There were other small cuts, in addition to the dangerous one, but those cuts all looked older, and none of them were currently bleeding.

Finland looked around for something he could use to stop the bleeding. He found a pack of gauze that he could have sworn hadn't been there a minute ago. Not wanting to waste time questioning this, he grabbed some of the gauze and held it over Norway's wound in an attempt to stop, or at least slow, the bleeding. "I need you to keep your arm raised and try to hold this in place with your other hand. I'm going to call for help."

"No, I don't want anyone to know." Despite his protest, Norway did as he was told.

"You pretty much lost the right to make that decision when you tried to kill yourself." Then realized a statement like that probably wouldn't help the situation, Finland added, "I'm just going to get the others. I understand that you don't want any of your people to know about this, but we may not have a choice." Not allowing Norway the chance to protest again, Finland went out into the hall. He didn't want to be out of the room for too long, though, as he knew that leaving Norway alone was not a good idea right now. So he went to the top of the stairs, and called, "Norja's hurt!" Then, he hurried back to the bedroom, and resumed putting pressure on the wound.

Only moments later, Denmark, Sweden, and Iceland entered the room. They immediately came to the same conclusion that Finland had - that Norway had tried to kill himself. There was no time to think about it, though. At the moment, the only thing that matter was making sure the attempt didn't succeed.

"Sve, Tanska, I need the two of you to find where Norja keeps his medical supplies," Finland said. "I don't want to leave him alone for the time it would take to look." Since the nations had to keep their true identities secret from most humans, and since they sometimes suffered from symptoms that had no physical cause, their homes were kept stocked with a decent range of medical supplies.

Sweden and Denmark immediately left to search for the medical kit, for once actually able to work together without arguing. Their inability to get along was pushed aside for the moment by the need to save their brother.

Not having been given anything to do, Iceland just stayed by the door of his brother's room, watching what was happening. Norway had not looked towards the door since the others had entered, and he didn't seem fully aware by this point anyway; he hadn't spoken since that comment about not wanting anyone to know, and if possible, he was even paler than he had been a few moments ago. Finland's attention had been focused completely on Norway, and it was not until he turned away to get another piece of gauze, as the first had been soaked through with blood, that he ever noticed that Iceland was standing there watching.

"Islanti, why don't you go downstairs? You don't need to watch this." If he had been thinking about it before, he would have kept Iceland from entering the room in the first place. This really wasn't something that the younger nation should be witnessing. "I'll make sure someone tells you, once we know if Norja will be all right, but right now, we need to focus on taking care of him."

Iceland seemed about to protest, but then, he turned and left the room to go back downstairs.

Translations:

11No . . . no. Stop it! Go away! No! (Norwegian)

22Father (Norwegian)

33Sweet brother (Norwegian)