Operation Red Herring (Countryhumans Alternate History)

Chapter 27

TW: Implied/Referenced Homophobia

Italy needed to get out of here.

Granted, he had been wanting this for years now, but with each passing day he was becoming more and more sure in this conviction.

Which was odd, because these past five or so months had been relatively good. He was hanging out with America during the day, Japan seemed like she was starting to warm up to him (as much as Japan could warm up to someone), and even Third Reich had been less vindictive towards him.

So how come he spent every waking moment positively nauseous from anxiety (or guilt. The two emotions seemed to bleed together nowadays)?

...He knew why. He may have been stupid, but he knew.

It was because it was all a lie. A facade. A grand-puppet show in which he was a mangled marionette with tangled strings, being jerked about for the benefit of Third Reich's elaborate plan. His 'masterpiece'.

He was a tool. He knew that was how Third Reich viewed him. If it wasn't for the general way he treated Italy, the drugging that had been going on for the past months was a dead-give away.

Yes, he knew about that. He had originally had the suspicion at about a month of it happening, but had no idea how to handle the situation. Third Reich would have obviously denied it if he had attempted to confront him, America was clueless about the whole thing, and at the time he had an extremely hard time talking to Japan. Granted, he had been able to ask her to look into America's situation regarding the land raid, but that was because it was about someone else. He knew that Japan cared about America, whether she would admit it or not, so he knew that she would want to help the woman if possible.But Japan didn't care about him. Why would she have ever helped him?

So, he continued playing along, allowing himself to be sentenced to months of unavoidable unconsciousness after supper. His limbs would grow heavy, his speech would start to slur, and he would slip dizzly into his room, crashing onto his bed and allowing sleep to overcome him. It had definitely been a nice change of pace from lying in bed for hours, awake due to his constant nervousness, but he missed the late night conversations with America. He missed being able to choose to live through his struggles, instead of being forced to escape them for someone else's benefit.

But even though his night-anxiety was diminished by Third Reich's actions, during the day it was steadily growing worse. Everything was going too well, and he knew the storm that awaited them all once everything came to light.

And that was the worst part of it all for Italy.

He knew it was fake.

He knew he was a tool in Third Reich's game, and yet he continued to play along. He thought of it everytime America smiled at him, a lopsided show of joy that he knew was based on the lies he continued to keep kidden. He had confided in him that she felt like she had finally found people she could trust-

That made Italy want to vomit.

Before all of this, he could say that he was the victim. That he had been tricked into working with the Third Reich, and that he was not at fault for any of this. But, as soon as he made the conscious decision to keep America in the dark about everything (whether it be to preserve her feelings or his life, he wasn't sure) he knew deep in his soul that he was no better than Reich. He was doing the same thing to America that the German and his government had done to him, with the only difference being that it caused him emotional turmoil, whilst Third Reich did everything with an unsettling smile.

It hurt, and it made him sick, but he was too scared to disrupt the peace that had fallen over their base.

He was a damn coward, wasn't he? His first instinct was always to run away from conflict.