'ᴜɴᴅᴇʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴇᴀᴛʜᴇʀ' || ʜᴇᴛᴀʟɪᴀ

15

"Explain."

"I cut myself."

"I can see that. Why?"

"I had to check something."

"Elaborate."

Arthur sighed. "I need to check the state of my immortality. Something's not right, Alfred."

He held up his right hand and glared at the paper cut he could still see--the paper cut that shouldn't exist. He turned the hand slightly to show Alfred next to him and the American looked at it ambivalently. He wasn't quite sure what he was supposed to make of it, and upon seeing his vacant face, Arthur rolled his eyes.

"I cut myself on some paper about half an hour ago," he said. "This should've healed ages ago, but all it's doing is scabbing over like a normal human's cuts do."

"And . . . Your hand?" Alfred asked slowly.  He was barely hiding his alarm, his frustration and his fear.

"I had to be sure. If this," Arthur said, now holding up his bandaged left hand, "doesn't show any signs of improvement within the next hour or two, then I think an emergency meeting is necessary. The others need to know, and they need to be checked too."

"Shit, Artie . . . If all of these personifications have lost their immortality, what exactly are we meant to do?" Alfred muttered, at a loss. "That's a quarter of Europe!"

"I-I don't know! Maybe I can speak to Lukas and Vlad, work something out . . . There has to have been something like this recorded somewhere," Arthur said in an attempt to reassure both of them, perhaps.

Truthfully, however, he knew it was a lie. If such an unusual epidemic had been seen by the world before, Germany would likely have found some files on it within the first twenty-four hours, knowing how vigilant and meticulous he was. Arthur made a mental note to start writing up notes regarding his own symptoms and experience for future reference, just incase the world ever needed them in decades or centuries to come.

"Besides," the Brit hastily added, "We don't know for sure yet. Give it two hours, we'll check my hand, and we'll go from there."

Alfred slowly nodded. "I just hope it's good news . . ."

'Don't we all?"

The screen of Alfred's phone suddenly lit up on the coffee table, the time of four o'clock beaming brightly into their eyes, and then it began to noisily vibrate. Arthur winced at the intrusive noise, and held his breath so as to avoid sneezing again. Alfred hurriedly answered the call, unsure of how to feel about the call and who was making it.

"Hey, everything alright?"

"Not really," Ludwig replied through the phone. Alfred wondered if he'd ever take a break from monitoring all of the continent, but doubted it highly.

"What's wrong? Has something happened?"

"Something, yes, but we don't know what for sure," the German said through a sigh. "Spain's isolated himself, but . . . There was a bit of an incident."

"And incident? Is he OK?"

Arthur sneezed into his cupped hands, and huffed. "Put him on speaker, I can't be doing with all this secrecy."

"One second, Germany," Alfred apologised. He removed the phone from his ear, put the call onto speaker and placed his phone on the table. "Sorry, dude, Arthur wants to hear too."

Ludwig paused. "Well, as I was saying, Spain had a bit of an incident. He went missing for nearly eight hours earlier today, and my brother, Italy and I had to head over to help Romano find him."