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The Wandering Fleet, they're called.
Officially, they're the United Earth Fleet, a fleet with no home base, nothing to return to, no where to go. A fleet made up of the last remnants of an entire species. Homo sapiens, humans as they call themselves, generally regarded as pleasant if a bit odd in the head.
Famous around the galaxy because for all that they look like each other, the odd thing is... The odd thing is, if you've spent enough time with them, known enough of them, you can tell what ship of the Fleet they come from by the way they talk, the clothes they wear. Each ship has its own culture. The humans will tell you with pride that each ship represents a country of their long dead home world, the AIs have been programmed to make sure each culture stays intact.
The ships of the Wandering Fleet, in fact, have no captains. The AIs serve as those, as well.
But the secret is, what no one knows, not even any humans, is that the AIs are not artificial at all.
Not at all.
The ships are all different in design, some larger and some smaller, some sleek and some bulky, and one with stars spangled all the way down the sides, again supposedly reflecting the cultures from which they come. But all the ships, every one, has an element in common. Every bridge, beyond where the humans sit to help delegate duties from the AI-captain, has a solid, plain door set into a wall thick with blast proofing. They're unmarked, no sign of what lies behind, and on some ships it's even hidden behind decorative screens or hinged sections of shelving. Each door carries only a single small panel to one side, identical on every ship and just large enough for someone to place a thumb print.
But were a human to touch it, or in fact anyone of any race or species, nothing would happen. The lock was designed and built by no human hands - dark almond eyes and a quiet solemn smile - and it doesn't rely on anything so trivial as thumb prints to activate.
The locks will open to no physical characteristic at all, in fact. They open to a wish and a touch, to something that resonates with what lies within.
There are very few who can open those doors. Very few indeed.
~*~
The comm channel crackles, but Arthur - England - Arthur doesn't bother to open his eyes. He doesn't even bother to move. It's not one of the intercomms, one of his humans asking for his attention. It's not even the private hand line that the Nations without ships of their own have access to. No, it's one of the privately encoded ship-to-ship lines, the ones no human will ever have access to.
And with that comes the knowledge of just who it is that's calling.
He still doesn't open his eyes, wondering if he can just ignore it and hope he'll go away. But the insistent crackle-buzzing continues, and finally he sighs. It still doesn't require moving, at least, just a mental command to the computer to open the channel. Ha, channel.
"What do you want, frog?"
"Why Angleterre," the familiar, smooth voice echoes in his ears, and Arthur resists the urge to sigh again. "Aren't you happy to hear my voice?"
"I'd be more happy to hear it if you could go a bloody day without talking to me," Arthur ground out. He can practically picture the amused smile on Francis' face.
"And what is there to do besides talk, my dear?"
Arthur just snorts, but isn't really able to answer. Neither of them had even bothered to turn on the view screen that went with the comm channel, neither of them had bothered for years. Decades. Centuries. They always looked the same, reclining in a bed of wires and sensors, pale and gaunt.
But a change in the note of Francis' voice brings Arthur's attention back. He sounds unsure now, his voice gone soft and French accent gone thicker the way it always does when he's thinking too hard.
"And Mathieu was asking me, awhile ago, if I remember what it's like to walk in tall grass, or deep snow, or running water, and I... Arthur, I don't. How long has it been? How long since this neverending madness began?"
Arthur doesn't answer. The records are all there, in the memory banks he's connected (chained) to, but he doesn't. Francis could check just as well. So could Matthew. None of them wants to know.
They all refrain from using words that mark the passage of time, that remind that they're probably fighting a losing battle. So many of their kind have faded already. Arthur will always remember Wales, but his memory isn't enough when there are no humans left who remember too.
Humans, as a species, will survive. There's enough of them now, they're certain of that. But the Nations are selfish, they want to survive as well.
Arthur knows a lot of them are just plain scared. Personally, he's bloody terrified. No one is sure if they're strong enough to stay through sheer tenacity and a little cultural manipulation or if they'll fade as their cultural identity does despite everyone's best efforts. Liechtenstein is barely a ghost, and only remains at all because Switzerland forces the humans in their shared ship to remember her.
And he's tired.
He's tired of sitting here in the dark, in the echoing emptiness of space with no land to call his own. He's tired of watching the others fading, wilting, losing colour and culture in little drips and drabbles, their essence leaking away into the ether. He's tired of feeling his own life fade as his people become less English, so slow that it doesn't even hurt, just makes him go numb.
And, in the quiet places he'll only admit to himself, he's tired of not seeing America's - Alfred's bright Hollywood smile. He's tired of not being able to ruffle Matthew's hair or kick Antonio when he deserves it. He's tired of not being able to drink (tired of not being able to pub crawl with Gilbert). He hasn't seen Francis' eyes (blue like the summer sky over a long-dead planet) in thousands of years.
He's afraid, way down inside, that he never will again.
And if he thinks too much about that, he knows that he'll go mad. France - Francis has always been there, right by his side, with at most the Channel between them. Even when he was teasing and tormenting, hell even when they were at war he was still there, close enough to touch or smack, whichever the situation called for.
And now he's not.
Now he's nothing more than a voice on the other end of a comm line, purring sultry tones lost in static, and Arthur never would have thought that he'd admit to missing a frog but all he dreams of these days is running his hands through silky hair and over rough stubble and staring into the sky in those eyes-
~*~
As near as they can tell, it began somewhere in the deep wet jungles of Africa.
But they didn't notice until it had spread as far as India; a hundred million people dropping dead and the Nation herself toppling over in the middle of a meeting, stricken with a burning fever.
There was nothing they could do.
They couldn't find a cure, but after a week of working non-stop several top doctors announced they'd developed a vaccine. There was no time for test groups and planned distribution, the incubation period for this new Plague was long enough that it had managed to jump the Atlantic. South America was dying along with Africa and most of the Middle East, and the Plague was sweeping north.
The Nations vaccinated themselves at the insistence of their bosses, just in case it would help, somehow. Europe and Asia were scrambling to get the vaccine out to as many people as they could, North America took a different route and simply shut its borders completely. Australia followed suit.
But it didn't really matter, in the end.
To this day, they still don't know where the Plague came from, whether it was a bio-weapon someone released deliberately or a monster of nature grown out of control, they don't know. But its effect was devastating. Fever and chills and vomiting, and then the kidneys would shut down and the liver would follow and the victim would die no matter what was done to preserve them. They learned fairly quickly that the Plague flourished in heat, and began evacuating people as far north as they could go.
But not before they lost all, all the Nations in Africa. India. Turkey and Greece and Macedonia and Croatia. Peru and Brazil and Venezuela. Israel and Iran and Iraq.
They'd thought, for awhile, that they were going to lose South Italy and Spain and Portugal as well. All three had become sick, but enough of their populations had been vaccinated and evacuated by then that they managed to recover, though they remained weak for a long time after.
And the devastation to human life, to the Nations themselves as they watched friends and comrades and long time adversaries fall sick and cease to be, was only a part of what was in store.
The Plague mutated, and jumped species. Japan said that was more evidence that it was a bio-weapon of some kind, but no one confessed to its creation and in the end it didn't matter. Animals had begun to die as well, cattle and horses and sheep.
Soon, even if they did manage to preserve human life, the Earth would be unliveable.
It was America, still young and bright and determined, who suggested leaving Earth altogether. They'd already been developing the technology, and if everyone worked together and pooled their resources, they'd be able to escape and survive. Take to the stars.
Really, there wasn't any choice.
~*~
The sealed and protected rooms that contain the AIs are almost never opened. Even though Prussia, Italia, the others who can move around freely have access, they hardly ever exercise it. They've all decided they prefer it that way; the free(r) Nations don't want to see their fellows caged and wired and bound, and the AIs prefer not to be seen that way.
But in the beginning, when they first left Earth, sometimes they would open the doors and touch, just to remind themselves they all still exist.
And so Prussia knows that Austria is laying with a flower clip pinned in his hair, and missing his glasses (he doesn't need them, after all. All his 'seeing' is done through the ship's sensors). And Prussia knows that Hungary is curled on one side, hair falling unbound around her shoulders, her hands curled protectively around a folded pair of antique glasses.
He doesn't think they know he knows, and he never mentions it anyway.
Once upon a time, he would have teased them both for their hopeless sentimentality, and earned himself a frying pan to the head for his troubles.
But those days are long past, and now sometimes he wonders if those trinkets, that small connection, is all that's keeping them going.
~*~
Since the Plague and the subsequent abandonment of Earth to take to the stars, the humans have adopted a whole new mythology, new legends and heroes, some of them true and some of them false.
The man known as 'Prussia' falls somewhere halfway in between.
There are some that would swear he really exists; a man made of bones with eyes the colour of blood and a cackling laugh that would freeze even the strongest and bravest still in their tracks. His avatar is supposed to be a little yellow bird, usually described as a baby chicken but sometimes just a yellow songbird. Some swear that Prussia can actually turn into the bird if startled. There are sightings of him from nearly every ship; shadows that dart across the dark mouths of alleys, a pale apparition seen entering the bridge long after it is closed. A ghost for sure, since the AIs control the bridge locks rigorously, and never let anyone in after hours. No exceptions.
And to have him be seen going into every bridge at one time or another, well... That just proves he's a ghost, doesn't it?
(Though some of the humans know, or have guessed, that the AIs all communicate. They'd have to, wouldn't they? How else would the Fleet stay together and coordinate their movements? Of course the AIs can communicate.)
The humans from the UEF Germany have a few extra bits to add to the legend, and they'll tell it to anyone who cares to listen. On their ship, they say, there are two distinct social groups, based on old national alliances from Old Earth. The Germans, and the Prussians. The country of Prussia, they say, originally had a ship of its own. But there was a disaster, soon after leaving Old Earth. (This is the part they get wrong, the part that makes Prussia a legend, the part that Prussia started putting about himself...) No one can quite agree what it was. A fire, some say, or an outright explosion. Some say that the engines failed, and the actual ship is still floating somewhere far away, somewhere close to home, filled with old ghosts...
But the thing that they agree on is that some of the Prussians were saved, and transferred to the UEF Germany, and there they remain. The ghost-man, Prussia, is the spirit of those that died, the old ship left behind, and rather than being frightened of him, or going so far as to put up wards against him like those on the UEF Poland sometimes do, the Germans and Prussians see him as a guardian of sorts, and welcome sightings of him.
There's another scrap of legend, really more just like an odd piece of tradition, that at any given time a substantial minority of the Prussian men are named Gilbert. No one quite knows why, except that it's a name that's supposed to have a strong tradition backing it, perhaps a warrior from Old Earth - and it makes it so easy for him to slip in and out of any of the ships and be accepted, when all he has to do is pull a surname out of the air.
(What no human quite seems to realize, what the AIs are careful to mask, is that Prussia is not the only one, just the most distinct and indiscreet. There are others, and they all come from ships of dual nationality, which is the fact the AIs guard most closely. A tall Swede who keeps to himself on the UEF Denmark-Sweden ninety-eight percent of the time, an Italian who is more often that not at Prussia's side but usually slips by unnoticed, a quiet young man on the UEF Norway who can usually be found on the bridge silently going about duties others can only guess at, a small sickly girl on the UEF Switzerland who is nearly a ghost herself, a red-headed pair of a sister and brother who move through the edges of the UEF Britain, careful not to stay too long in one place, lest their immortality be noticed. Their secret is so fragile. Humans are not sheep, it would be all too easy for a group of them to decide they do not like their lives being dictated by an invisible AI dictator, and none of them quite know what the humans would do if they realized that the AIs are not...)
~*~
Humans are free to come and go between the various ships of the Fleet, with shuttles that run at regular times or can be rented, and so they all have synchronized clocks, set to familiar and comforting 24-hour rhythms.
It's the night cycle now, and the UEF Germany is silent and dark, lighting in the service corridors and city sections dimmed to a minimum. All the shielding and the distance reduces the hum of the engines, but it can still be faintly heard in the silence, felt through the soles of their boots as two men walk down the corridor outside the doors to the bridge.
No humans are around, but both are quiet anyway, walking close together and fingers of their hands entwined between them. They stop outside the bridge doors, and the taller, paler of the two says, "West."
The doors slide silently open.
They step inside, the bridge a dim hush of sleeping panels and silent electronics. Automatically, both their eyes are drawn to the heavy door set in the side wall, innocent and inconspicuous but so very, vitally important. The smaller of the two trembles a little and turns away, crossing to lean against one of the consoles near the forward windshield (even after a thousand years, he can't help but think of it like that, because he still misses Ferraris and Fiats and the autobahn).
"Germany," Feliciano whispers, his eyes not on the doorway (unyielding and cold as ever) but rather on the stars outside the windshield view port.
"Yes?" Germany replies promptly, but his voice echoes strangely, emitting from the speakers mounted around the bridge.
Feliciano's breath hitches a little, then he lets it out in a sigh, hands coming up to curl around the iron cross at his throat, a relic of something long, long ago. "I miss you."
"We miss you," Gilbert echoes, coming up behind Feliciano to put his arms around him. The Italian sighs again, leaning back gratefully into the warmth, feeling the matching iron cross pressing against the back of his neck, both of them staring out at the stars.
Germany - Ludwig is quiet for a long time. When he finally speaks again, it's almost too soft to be heard. "I miss you both, as well."
~*~
Few animals survived the Plague. Technically.
The UEF Japan and UEF Madagascar both carry full DNA records of every animal and plant from Old Earth that could be readily gotten ahold of and sampled before leaving. They can be recreated at any time, if there ever comes a need. But a few survived in a more literal sense.
The UEF America holds the Fleet's only dog breeding facility, and supplies the pets for the rest of the Fleet. Many people on the UEF Germany hand-raise chickens, proclaiming them to be the familiars and favored animals of their mythical hero, Prussia. Australians, on the other hand, are known for the large and exotic tropical aquariums that many of them like to keep.
And the UEF Spain has turtles.
No one is really quite sure why, but no one really minds either, and the Spanish see the turtles as a sort of good luck token and a lesson of what life should be; slow and humble and unworried. And so the turtle population has bloomed, and at any given time there are probably just as many turtles making their unhurried way around the ship as there are humans.
Sometimes, in idle moments in the middle of the night, after the humans have all gone to bed and France has just signed off the comm after some long, rambling story, Spain - Antonio wonders whether animals have Nations too.
It's something he's always been curious about, even before they left Earth, and something he's never really found an answer for. It's hard to tell if a turtle is immortal, no matter how much one observes them. But he still wonders, because there's certainly enough of them to make up a Nation. Is the numbers what make a Nation? Or is a Nation only born when there is some sort of organization, some sort of culture? Or is it only a human thing? They've never been able to get a straight answer out of any of the alien races they have trading contracts with, after all. Though America does swear that his old friend Tony once told him, long ago, that his race had something they called Representatives, which as far as America could tell was sort of the same as Nations.
But that still doesn't answer the question about the turtles.
Antonio likes contemplating the turtles, especially these days, because thinking about turtles means he doesn't have to think about Gabi - Gabriel - Portugal.
They'd tried. He'd tried, so hard, tried to make sure the Portuguese culture stayed strong and separate, but eventually the passage of time had become too much and their ship was just too small, their cultures too similar after all. And maybe what hurts most is that Antonio can't exactly remember the very last time he saw his brother, can't quite pin-point the year, the month, the moment he faded away.
He wonders if it's the same for England, remembering Wales, but he's never quite worked up the courage to ask. He's not really sure he wants to know, and maybe, maybe he isn't cruel enough to deliberately remind England that Portugal is gone. For good.
It hurts, because Antonio will always, always wonder if maybe there wasn't just a little more he could have done, some thing that would have made a difference.
Maybe it's all his fault that Gabi's gone.
And so he gets on the comm and chatters to France and Italy, sinking into routines that're ingrained into his bones and letting Italy's insults roll off his back like always. Like water off a turtle shell. If he pulls his head far enough inside, he won't ever have to think again.
Maybe the turtles have a Nation too. Maybe the Portuguese didn't die, maybe they just shifted, became good-luck turtles to protect their Spanish brothers. Maybe Gabi was reborn too, a Turtle-Nation to keep an eye on his idiot little brother, who really, deep down, doesn't think he deserves to be the one who survived.
It's a nice thought.
~*~
Arthur wonders, sometimes, what would have happened if more of them had done what Belgium and Netherlands did.
When it became clear that the Plague was going to wipe out everything if they stayed, when they began designing the ships that would carry them away, they'd all known without really saying it that if they, as Nations, were going to survive, then they would have to keep their cultures strong. That entailed making sure that the humans went onto the ships based on nation of origin, and it stayed that way. Through any means necessary.
But there were problems.
The Plague thrived in the warmer climates, leaving Russia and the Nordics and Baltics mercifully mostly intact. Even after the devastating effects of the Plague, Russia, China, and the United States all had populations far too large to contain in even the largest ship that could be built. Solutions were debated and discussed, but there was really no choice but to split the populations among multiple ships.
But each ship would need a Nation at the controls, to serve not only as pilot and navigator but also as a cultural guide for the humans within.
Each of them handled it a little differently.
America was the lucky success story.
Canada and England, both with larger ships and comparatively smaller populations, had offered to take in America's overflow. The Americans who went to the other two ships went of their own free will and choice, and over time their descendants became Canadian and British, and slowly forgot their American roots. The cultural boundaries remained intact.
Russia was not quite so fortunate.
Similar to America's case, both Belarus and Ukraine had offered their ships to carry Russia's excess population. But for both of them, the Russian people they took on far out numbered the native Belorussian and Ukrainian population, and over time it had only gotten worse. Ukraine and Belarus still exist; they have to, since they are serving as the AIs for their ships. Their cultures are still there, barely, vastly overshadowed by the Russians. Their three ships travel in a tight cluster, a fair distance away and barely in communication with any of the others. Arthur himself hasn't tried to talk to any of the three of them for a long time, he's afraid of what he might find.
But that still pales in comparison to China.
Like the other two, his siblings had offered to take the overflow. Japan alone had politely declined, saying his ship would only be able to handle his own people. This had turned out to probably be a wise move. South Korea, who by then was just Korea, is these days in the same situation as Belarus and Ukraine. His own culture is still there, in the shadows of his ship, but the Chinese far overpowers it. As for Taiwan and Hong Kong... Well. Their native populations were very small to begin with, and very similar, so easy to blend into the Chinese. The only reason they haven't faded completely is because they are serving as AIs, and in their cases Arthur thinks the "Artificial" is probably pretty applicable. He suspects that for a long, long time, China has been controlling all three ships out of necessity.
Just thinking about it gives Arthur chills. No one really mentions Hong Kong or Taiwan anymore, as though they're already dead. For all intents and purposes, they probably are.
But, way back to the beginning. There had been Nations with the opposite problem as well, populations too small to feasibly take up an entire ship. And so the negotiations and debates had begun all over again. Arthur had already known that he'd be sharing a ship with his siblings; the UEF Britain rather than just UEF England. Similarly, it seemed only natural at the time (tragic in hindsight) for Portugal to go with Spain, for Liechtenstein to share her brother's ship, for New Zealand and Australia to join forces, for all three of the Baltics to share a ship, which (after surprisingly little argument) Lithuania would command. Mexico took in the few in South America that had survived the Plague, mainly those from the mountainous regions of Chile and Argentina, but there were only a very few of them and it wasn't long at all until only Mexico remained.
After a lot of debate and two near fights, the Nordics had finally settled. Finland would have a ship of his own, Iceland would share with Norway, and Denmark would share with Sweden. This had turned out to be a stroke of genius, since the old, deep-seated animosity between the Swedes and the Danes meant that it was easy for the cultural identities to remain strong and distinct with only a little coaxing, even after decades and centuries. Denmark had decided on the role of AI for himself, joking that if Sweden took it he would terrify all the humans, but also for the more serious reason that Denmark's population was smaller. If he took the helm, it would be just that much harder for his people to disappear into Sweden's.
The Italies shared as well, of course, with South Italy taking on the role of AI and loudly proclaiming that things would only end in fiery disaster if North Italy tried. Over time, their efforts in keeping their cultures strong had actually caused their people to split. They were two distinct Nations now, Italy and Italia, intermingling and intermarrying but still separate and keeping Lovino and Feliciano strong.
But Belgium and Netherlands, after a long private discussion, had decided to try something else.
They share the role of ship AI.
They exchange it, pass it back and forth between them like a game of catch, switching every ten or fifteen or hundred years when one of them becomes tired. The people of the UEF Dutch Belgium are used to it, after so long, treat it as one more eccentricy of daily life that their AI was taciturn and male yesterday yet bubbly and female today.
They are the ones who are always closest to figuring out the truth, and they don't even suspect it. Over hundreds, thousands of years, the humans have come to associate the "male AI" with the Dutch, and the "female AI" with the Belgians. They have no idea how close they are, at any given time, from taking two more mental leaps and toppling a house of cards that has taken so long to build and maintain.
But the amazing thing is that it works, somehow. Their cultures were never terribly far apart to begin with, but even with the way they've blended further on the ship, both Nations are still strong. The humans almost seem to treat it like they're rooting for a favourite football team; whether they're Dutch or Belgian is a matter of fierce pride and friendly rivalry, and it works.
And Arthur tries not to wonder if some of the others (Spain and Portugal, Australia and New Zealand, why do their losses have to hurt so much-) could have done the same, pulled the same trick to save themselves.
He tries not to wonder because it reminds him that it probably doesn't matter.
It's been thousands of years. None of them want to keep count, but they know they're all running out of time.
It's only a matter of who's going to last the longest.
Arthur doesn't like thinking of that at all.
~*~
They didn't want to die.
And that means something very different for them then it does for humans.
They left the logistics of getting the humans onto the ships to their bosses. The Nations had more important things to attend to, and each of them spent their last days on Earth differently. If there'd still been anyone paying enough attention to notice, there were a sudden rash of museum break-ins.
America's bosses were already arranging for the transfer of the Constitution and Declaration onto the ship, and the Liberty Bell. Alfred made a whirlwind tour during the last week and collected a stone from each of the fifty States (even before he knew they would die...). He keeps them on shelves with him in the AI room, and he never bothered to label them because he knows, he knows which is which.
Arthur spent his last evening on earth on his hands and knees in Westminster Abbey, murmuring prayers and apologies over and over as he carefully scooped spoonfuls of dirt from the graves of kings and queens, poets and musicians and scientists. He didn't have the time or jars to label them all properly or separately, but he couldn't bear to leave them behind.
Kiku spent the last month overseeing the careful transfer of the core buildings of the Ise Shrine onto the UEF Japan, and carried the Sanshu no Jingi onto the ship himself, wrapped carefully in a long shroud of cloth.
The UEF France carries the bells from Notre Dame Cathedral, the UEF Italy stones from the Colosseum and the Vatican (Lovino had actually apologized to the Pope). The UEF Denmark-Sweden carries a small section of the Øresund Bridge.
Ludwig had stared when he saw Gilbert coming up the entrance ramp to the UEF Germany with a spray-painted hunk of twisted rebar and concrete across his shoulder, but hadn't said anything as his brother carried it inside.
Their culture is their life, and they don't want to die.
China has as many original and ancient scrolls as he could carry. England made sure to bring the Rosetta Stone, at the very least, in memory of Greece and Egypt. All the ships' memory banks are filled with as much text as could be gathered; stories and poems and textbooks and recipes and field guides and memoirs and propaganda. And audio and video files too; music and movies and documentaries and anime.
History and culture and life, records of the Earth they left behind.
~*~
Francis is pretty sure that he's going to lose his mind if this goes on for very much longer.
But then again, he's gone for this long without running off the deep end, so to speak, so perhaps he'll be alright after all.
Either way, he just wishes there were a way to make it stop.
At the beginning... well, it was never fun, but at least at the beginning there was a sense of victory, that they'd beaten the Plague and escaped with their lives and people. A sense of duty, to guard those same people and make sure they survived. A want to make sure the French culture survived, and himself with it, if only to be sure that England did not survive longer to get the last laugh.
That had lasted until America's States, Canada's Provinces and Japan's Prefectures had begun to fade and disappear, one by one. Francis saw how much it hurt them, had his own hurts to worry about; Andorra and Picardy and Normandy.
When they were gone, when he realized that Wales was gone too, at around the same time, that's when horror had begun to set in. The true horror of what they'd done, the slow, maddening deaths they'd set themselves up for. He realized, probably before most of the others, that it didn't matter how carefully they tried to preserve their cultures and their people, they were all doomed.
But he'd fought anyway. He told himself it was because it would hurt Canada and Spain and Prussia if he was the first to go, but really, it was because he was afraid. Afraid to die. Afraid of what might be beyond dying, for a Nation.
And, perhaps, if he was truly honest, afraid of hurting not just Canada and Spain and Prussia, but England.
England - Arthur, more abrasive than ever thanks to thousands of years without tea. Arthur, with his pressed ties and slouching sweater vests, argyle and paisley and a dozen other beastly patterns. Arthur with his gentleman's face and his sailor's mouth.
Francis knows, distantly, that they've been on the ships now longer than most of them were on Earth. It has been longer since he's seen Arthur's face than all the time he'd had to see it before.
And he can't...
He can't quite remember.
He remembers Arthur's eyebrows are gloriously large (he teases him about it often enough, endlessly teasing), but he cannot quite picture them in his mind anymore. All he remembers when he pictures Arthur is;
1) the tip of an arrowhead pointed at his nose, the taut draw of a longbow behind it.
2) The sunlight gleaming off of golden hair, darker than his own and Canada's, lighter than America's.
3) Hands callused from archery (or horsemanship, or holding a rifle, or needlepoint, he cannot remember what time period this memory comes from) cupping around his face (it was the rifle, it must have been, because this was just after the Second Great War, he's almost sure of it-), thumbs rubbing gently over the bandages on his cheeks, soft lips pressed to his brow as he feigns sleep, and
4) Green eyes, the color of the first unfurling apple leaves in spring, after a solid thunderstorm when the sun is just coming out to steam the water off the trees.
He misses those eyes so much, more than he ever thought possible.
He misses that touch, misses touching in general, misses being able to drape an arm over Arthur's shoulder or bury a nose in his hair or grab his arse just to make him screech.
He misses wine and cheese and satin sheets and the smell of Paris after a storm, the colour of the clouds over the Channel when things are going well and the smell of wind coming down from Dover.
He was never claustrophobic, until now.
And it's infinitely lonely, closed up in a metal box and wrapped in unnatural electronics that serve to interface him with the ship that's become his body. He misses having fingers and toes (though he knows he's still got them, really).
He thinks, if he had the chance for one wish, just one...
He wants, more than anything, to rub his thumbs over furry eyebrows and lean down to steal a kiss.
Just one.
That's all he wants.
~*~
He's almost always on the bridge.
He doesn't really have to sleep, doesn't really have to eat, though he goes and does those things every now and then, to break routine and keep from growing too bored. Sometimes, every few years, he'll go and see the others (meet with Prussia and Italia for a drink, take flowers and a new book to Liechtenstein to remind her that they still remember her, sit with and then curl up to Sweden just to feel those strong arms around him and inhale a familiar scent that's almost the one he's been missing), but usually he's on the bridge of the UEF Norway.
He makes a point of keeping up the pretense, of ignoring the humans when they speak to him. He knows they think he's a ghost of some kind, but that's better for him because that means he can be in here all he wants and none of them will question him. His legend hasn't spread quite as far or fast as Prussia's, but that's fine with him. Prussia has always adored attention, and he does not.
So he sits, and does incomprehensible things at a panel to make it look like he's performing some sort of work, but mostly he's not seeing what's in front of him and remembering the past instead. Trying to remember what it felt like to have snow in his hair, or magma bubbling up somewhere deep inside him. Without the heat of it beneath his skin, he feels strangely numb. Has been numb. Forever, it feels like sometimes.
And so he sits, and pretends to work, because he can't quite fathom what else he could be doing.
It has long been habit that he takes the seat closest to the thick metal door that never opens and (he knows, as no human does) protects Norway laying curled inside. Some days, he welcomes the closeness. He can talk to his brother whenever he wants, of course, through the intercomms or the more private hand unit he carries. He knows Norway always has a bit of attention on him. But it's not the same. He likes thinking that he's close, that maybe he can protect him, or at least keep watch.
Prussia and Italia, they've adopted the whole fleet. They take one of those fast little shuttles Japan designed a hundred years or so back, and they travel, making the rounds and visiting everyone. Even Russia, though Prussia won't let Italia go on those trips and refuses to speak about them after. But maybe Prussia and Italia are what's keeping all of them alive, the steady heartbeat that runs through them all, reminding them that they're still alive.
He doesn't know how they do it, circling the Fleet in all its depressing futileness and then repeating it, again and again for centuries. He couldn't do that. Sometimes it's all he can do just to sit this close to Norway and know there's nothing he can do, nothing that will make it better. He knows Norway is fighting to keep them both alive and separate and there's nothing he can do to help except sit and be a ghost.
He hates it.
Or he would, if he wasn't so numb.
"Sir?"
He jumps, and actually turns to look at the human who addressed him. She looks just as startled at his acknowledgement as he is, and for a moment they just stare at each other (she's young. He notices that. She's young, and she's not Norwegian, she's one of his).
She swallows, fidgets a bit nervously, then smiles. "I just thought I'd say hello. It's my first day working here, I volunteered to help regulate the day-night cycle. I just thought I'd introduce myself. I-" She hesitates, glancing back over her shoulder at the older human workers and then dropping her voice as though she's imparting some great secret. "Everyone says you're a ghost."
He blinks at her, slowly. "Maybe I am."
She squeaks, but smiles, bright and so young. "Oh, I'd like that! There's so many legends that have been lost since we left Old Earth, I think. It would be fabulous to get to make some new ones. Are you a ghost, sir?"
He blinks at her again, feeling something deep inside his heart shift a little, like boulders settling at the bottom of a river, or a dam about to break, both concepts this human girl, ship-born and bred for centuries, would have no concept of except through books and recordings.
"Yes," he tells her. "I'm a ghost from Old Earth."
He turns away from her then, and ignores her until she goes away, more excited than she has any right to be. He feels curiously heavy, and hot, and sits in silence until long after night cycle is initiated and all the humans leave, plunging the bridge into darkness and silence, going home to their families and their beds in the city section of the ship.
"Noregur," he whispers, and knows his brother's attention is fully on him, for just that moment. "Noregur, I want to go home."
"I know," Norway sighs softly, after a very long silence, voice piped through just the speaker nearest his shoulder. He can almost imagine Norway standing behind him, ready to put a hand on his shoulder and maybe, if he's feeling charitable, wrap him in a hug.
"I know, Island. Me too."
~*~
America and Canada haven't spoken for hundreds of years.
Alfred and Matthew have, though.
They make that distinction, they have to, because otherwise they think they'd go crazy from the pressure.
The comm line between them is always open, even if they have nothing to say. Usually, even when one of them is talking to someone else. And so Alfred knows that Lithuania still feels consumed by guilt that Estonia and Latvia are gone, because Poland told Matthew so. And Matthew knows that Alfred still calls Russia, every other year, and listens to him cry and ramble and howl and break a little more.
Usually, the comm line between them is silent, not because they have nothing to say, but because they don't need words to say it.
They exhausted all their words in the first two hundred years or so (I love ya, Mattie, swear I do. I'm not going to leave you, Al, as long as you don't leave me) because it hurt so much, more than either of them thought possible, and both of them thought maybe when the States and Provinces died, they would to. But they hadn't, they'd managed to survive.
And so now they didn't need to repeat the same endless declarations, they just needed to be. They could feel each other, so close, sometimes it was hard to believe they were really thousands of miles apart on separate ships, locked in separate solid rooms.
All it takes is a brush of minds, the thought of a sad smile, a ghostly caress.
They haven't touched, haven't seen each other in thousands of years. They might never get to again.
They refuse to let that stop them, for as long as they're both here.
~*~
Occasionally, once every decade or so, Prussia and Italia - Gilbert and Feliciano - take one of the two-person exploration shuttles, and they run.
They'll leave the Fleet for a month or more, though usually never more than three, and take the time to relax and unwind (though they never stop thinking about the others, the ones who can't escape) and just be themselves, together. They love each other, their love has only blossomed in the time since they left Old Earth, because they've clung to one another for so long. Two hearts battling against the heavy burden weighing over one hundred and fifty (ninety-six... forty-three... they're down to thirty-five now. Only thirty-five) down. Even Feliciano can't remain chipper all the time, watching everyone else trapped and fading, and so Gilbert takes him by the hand and they escape, for just awhile.
And none of the others can quite begrudge them that.
But what even the other Nations don't know is that while Prussia and Italia could very easily spend their 'vacation' time on some exotic resort planet or casino world, they don't. When they leave the Fleet, their ship is always fully fueled for a long distance haul, and they range as far as they can, searching because the others cannot search, because the others don't have the strength and hope left to search.
And so it is a complete surprise when they return and before they've even reboarded the UEF Italy they demand all Nations wake the fuck up and patch into a conference feed.
They've got news. Big news.
After centuries of searching, of even Italia's hope beginning to fade, they've found something.
There's a long silence, so rare with all of them patched into the comm.
It's Hungary who finally speaks, voice a little shrill with disbelief and strangled hope. "Prussia - Gil, are you serious?"
"I wouldn't fuck with you guys," Gilbert's expression is serious on the view screen, and amazingly so is Feliciano's where he's leaning over his shoulder. "Not about something like this. It'll work. The environment is almost a perfect match, the rotation cycle and year is a little longer than Earth's, but hey, we can adjust."
There's another long silence, until Finland hesitantly speaks up with what most of them are probably thinking. "It's not Earth."
"Earth is dead," America says flatly, then he takes a deep breath. "Guys, it's a planet. Do we really want to keep wandering around out here until there's none of us left, until we're all blended into one identity?" He doesn't say it, but Arthur knows he's thinking about his states, how he watched them fade and die one by one during the first century or so on the ship because the American humans didn't care so much about region of origin anymore. New York, Texas and Hawaii had hung on the longest, but by now even they were long gone.
"Then, if there's anyone who truly objects," Germany says slowly, "Speak up now."
No one says anything. America's right, this is their only chance. And, maybe, it wouldn't be fair to the humans they've sheltered so long, if they passed this up just because they were scared of losing their Selves. They were already losing their Selves, so they might as well give the humans a planet again.
"But," It's Denmark who speaks up this time, his voice tired. "If we do this, if we colonize and reestablish our roots in land, we have to do better this time, guys. No more stupid fighting."
"Humans always fight," Lithuania says, quietly, and he should know. Latvia is gone, and no one has seen Estonia in years.
"But we're better than them," Netherlands says. "Or at least, we should be. We just have to guide them, show them that war doesn't work. We know that, better than we know anything else."
"Besides," France says, and Arthur - England has the feeling France is speaking right to him. "How often in the past did we let ourselves get caught up in human wars, hating each other just because our people did?"
"Yeah, no more," Poland says firmly. "Like, there's not enough of us left to lose any more, y'know?"
"There'll be new ones," Canada speaks up softly, and stuns the rest of them into silence for a moment. He continues, "If we colonize, some of the humans are sure to go off on their own, make new Nations. Even if some of us fade, there'll be new ones to take our place."
The silence this time is profound, as they all think on this.
But there isn't any other choice, really.
One by one they sign off, quietly promising to think and then let everyone know what they decide. Some of them - Norway, Japan, America - say they're already ready to go, to colonize. Others - Finland, Austria, Spain - are less sure. But they're all thinking.
Finally, only France and England - Francis and Arthur are left.
"So what do you think, frog?" Arthur asks, shifting in his seat and absently wondering if he can even still walk.
He can practically sense the fluid shrug Francis gives him, can picture it in his mind's eye. "We exist for our people, we always have. We've been cheating, all this time, to keep ourselves alive, and we've lost sight of that."
Arthur sighs, but he's glad that someone, at least, feels the same way he does. Even if that someone is Francis. "I was thinking the same thing. The humans deserve to be their own masters again. That and it's bloody exhausting trying to manage them all."
Francis' soft chuckle carries across the comm, crackling a little in his ear. "We were never meant to be more than guardians, I don't think, and we've done that. We've guarded them, and ourselves, all this way. If we're meant to fade after this, then so be it."
Arthur nods, and knows Francis can sense it. "I wonder if Russia and China will be able to pull themselves together, once we're off the ships."
He senses another of those Gaullic shrugs. "Who knows. I suppose we shall have to see. Ukraine and Belarus and Korea may recover, but I fear Taiwan and Hong Kong may be lost."
"Yeah," Arthur sighs, soft and sad. Poland's right, they've lost too many already. "We'll have to wait and see."
For a few minutes they sit in comfortable silence, but neither cuts the comm line. After a bit, Arthur rouses enough to muse, "I wonder how we'll decide to settle," He senses the question from Francis, and smiles a little. "I mean, the landmasses will all be different. There won't be any Channel, no Alps. For that matter, no Atlantic Ocean. We can settle wherever and near whoever we bloody well want."
"It won't matter," Francis says sagely, and Arthur can picture that little amused, thoughtful smile of his. "We're all so set in our ways. We are still ourselves, we love who we love," Arthur shivers and feels his face heat up, but Francis is still talking. "The Nordics will all settle in a cluster, for sure. Mathieu and Alfred shall still be side by side."
"With us nearby," Arthur's lips move entirely without his consent, and his heart thuds almost painfully when Francis pauses.
"...Yes, I suppose so," Francis' voice has gone soft. "We wouldn't have to, you know. But I'm not sure what I would do without you nearby to poke fun at, sourcils. And perhaps we can find some of those new Nation bebes and raise them, together this time."
Arthur swallows hard, and if his voice sounds a bit rough he hopes Francis assumes it's from anger. "We'll have to find two bits of land with at least some water between them. I've been an island too long to change now, and I think I'd really kill you if we were in direct contact, frog."
"It's a new world," Francis' voice is still soft, something in his tone making Arthur's insides flutter in ways they haven't for hundreds of years. "A completely new beginning."
"Who knows what'll happen!" Arthur counters, harsher than he meant to.
But Francis just smiles, Arthur can hear it when he says, "Yes. That's what makes it an adventure."
Ahead of the Wandering Fleet, a new home turns quietly among the stars, shining blue and green and white with promise.