Chapter 57: A Common Path

The next memory cleared to show Feliciano sitting on the bathroom counter. His left leg swung lazily off the side as he leaned against the wall. Luci was staring back at him through the mirror, a somewhat haunted look in his eye that wasn't there before.

Feli sighed, leaning his head against the wall. "I'm sorry, Luci... I couldn't protect you."

"Idiot. It's not your fault... It was my own arrogance and stupidity that led us here." Luci argued.

"What loop number are you on?" Feli asked, shifting his gaze to lock eyes with his 2P.

"108." Luci stated with a grimace.

"So young..." Feli muttered, causing Luci to give him a strange look.

"Young?"

"I'm on loop 10,835." Luci choked on his spit in shock, causing Feli to snort in amusement.

"Dear God, Feliciano! How the hell are you still sane?!" Feliciano laughed. It was quiet at first before he dissolved into a fit of unmistakably unhinged laughter.

"I'm sorry." He wiped away a tear from his eye. "I just didn't realize my acting skills had gotten good enough to fool even you. Luciano... I haven't been sane since Loop One."

"I can see that, now... Wait... what's that shadow behind you?" Luci pointed to a transparent Yang, and Feliciano winced.

"Something I don't want to explain at the moment."

"Understood." Luci sighed. "So... apparently we can only communicate when we're in the same room? I tried to contact you earlier, having figured everything out—sort of—but all I saw was a reflection of the room I was in."

"I suppose so. How irritating. And here, I thought I'd finally found someone that could help me carry this..."

"What am I? Chopped liver?" Memory Yang complained.

"No; even liver has value." Feli retorted back mercilessly.

"Buuuuuurn..." America whispered.

"Shut up." Yang twitched.

"At least we aren't truly alone..." Luci said, smiling softly at Feli. "I mean, even if we're moving at different speeds..."

"Different speeds?" Feli tilted his head in confusion.

"Si... you mean you didn't realize?"

"Realize what?"

"Most loops... we move at different paces. I could have one loop in the time it takes you to have several."

"Is that why I'm so drastically far ahead of you?" Feli wondered. "And here I thought you just went in 108 loops ago for me."

"It makes sense. Parallel worlds and parallel Mansions... time's already screwed up beyond even our comprehension... why can't our Mansions be moving at different paces?"

The scene abruptly shifted to show the two of them talking in the other bathroom, where Japan would fight the Thing in the early part of most Loops.

"I'm on Loop 173." Luci sighed.

"10,947" Feli answered.

"So you really do move faster than me..."

"What's your loop average?" Feli asked. "I mean, roughly how long does each loop last?"

"Four to eighteen months."

"Good Time, that's a long while. Mine's usually 1-4 weeks or so..."

"So it's possible that we do move at the same rate, but because of the difference in our loop lengths...?"

"I don't know, Luciano... it's probably best not to try to figure this out right now." Feli shook his head.

"Uhh... Feli?" Luci stared over Feli's shoulder in shock.

"Huh?" He looked behind him, and his eyes widened when he realized that Luci had caught sight of Yang—and he wasn't just a shadowy figure anymore. "Oh, shit. Damnit."

"Hehee~ So you can finally see me, Mr. Second Rate Ryuuzu?" Memory Yang teased.

"Who the fuck are you?!"

"I'll explain..." The scene faded out.

"You told him?" Flavio asked, somewhat surprised.

"Just about everything." I nodded. "It was nice to finally be able to let it out."

"After ten thousand loops, I've no doubt." England agreed.

"You neglected to tell me everything though. But I do appreciate you sharing part of that burden with me." Luciano smiled.

"You were livid." I chuckled. "I half-expected you to climb through the mirror and kill my group... or Yang."

"I wouldn't do that while they're mortal, you know that." Luciano defended.

"While we're mortal..." America shivered.

The next scene pulled up. "11,429..." Feliciano sighed as he wondered about the Third Floor Library. "I guess I'll read again until it's time for Japan to find me, now that I've set everything up."

"Start of another loop?" China asked.

"Yep. And Jason, look~! You'll finally get the answers about those shimmers that have you so frustrated!" I chuckled, causing him to glower at me.

"I guess I'll start over—" Feli cut himself off when he caught sight of a badly injured Kiku lying against the bookcase. His half-opened eyes stared at a nothingness that only he could see, and his blood-coated hand lay limply beside him.

It took the nations a moment to realize he was see-through.

"Wh-what?" Feli hesitantly went over to check his pulse, but found that his hand passed right through him. "I... there used to be a shimmer here..." His eyes widened in realization as he quietly bolted from the room.

He looked all down the hallways. Everywhere that there had been a shimmer, was now a dead ghost-like comrade. The once pristine white walls dripped with a ghostly red, and some hallways were so bad that you could hardly even see the floor.

"W-what is this?!" France cried out, horrified.

"It's... the memory..." Feliciano whispered to himself in shock. "They're like shards of memories... they match up with the locations and methods of their deaths in every loop so far..."

"Every drop of blood." I stated solemnly. "Every severed limb."

"Every gruesome death and unnecessary sacrifice." Luciano continued.

"You mean... when you say you remembered..." Markus gulped.

"We see it all." Luciano looked over at him.

"Every damn day in that accursed Mansion." I spat, startling the others with the sudden venom in my voice. I took a deep breath and sighed. "We call them Time-Shards, by the way. I stopped calling them Memory-Shards after I realized that, no matter how many memories you got back, you still couldn't see them."

The memory changed to show Feli and Luci talking again.

"I'm on 12,035." Feliciano stated.

"245 for me. I forgot everything... I was a complete amnesiac for several loops."

"Let me guess... You've an eidetic memory, now?"

"Y-you too?" Luci smiled bitterly.

"Si..." Feliciano noticed something behind Luci. He tilted his head to get a better look. A somewhat see-through Oliver lay there, covered in blood. His chest was painted red, and looked to have been hit with the spiked tail of the Thing rather hard. A grin was frozen on his face, even as his dulled eyes stared blankly at the floor.

"What's wrong, Felice?" Luci asked, looking behind himself.

"You can't see it..." Feli realized.

"See what?"

"That dead England behind you." Memory Yang chuckled. "Though his 2P looks admittedly more fun than the 1P." He remarked to himself.

"Shut the fuck up, Yang." Feli glared at his white-haired ghost. "Who invited you to this conversation?"

"I did." Memory Yang replied.

"I'll take that as a compliment, Dearie~" Oliver grinned at Yang.

"You would, wouldn't you?" England remarked dryly.

"Of course! I'd rather not be boring." Oliver grinned back.

"The dead... What?!" Luci glanced behind himself, but it was obvious that he didn't see what Yang and Feli did.

The scene faded out again, as Feliciano explained the Time-Shards to Luci.

"Ve~ Maybe there's something in here, after all?" Feliciano questioned as the scene came to life. They were in the Bloody Handprint room on the Fourth Floor. Kiku, Yao, Ivan, Arthur, Francis and Feliciano were there.

"Oh... Loop 12,485." I remarked idly, as I recognized the clock that Ivan was holding in his hand.

"I was not thinking that there would be clock in this barren room." Ivan smiled happily. "I am wanting to break it."

"Then hurry up and do so, so we can leave this creepy room." Arthur shuddered. "I feel sick." He remarked quietly to himself.

There were several Time-Shards in the room, and it unnerved the Nations to see themselves laying dead.

Before Feliciano could speak up against the idea of breaking the clock, Ivan snapped it. The room seemed to fluctuate for a moment, like reality itself had been distorted. Feliciano winced badly and a quiet, yet incessant, ringing sounded.

"Every time you snapped a clock, I'd get a migraine, so thanks for that." I gave the nations a flat look. They had the decency to look somewhat ashamed.

Most of the nations in the memory had come out of their daze after a few minutes, but Kiku seemed to still be trapped in whatever he was seeing.

Then, with no warning, Kiku's eyes rolled into the back of his head as he fell backwards into a dead faint.

The nations fussed over their Japanese friend before Feliciano made the call to return to the Safe Room. He lingered behind for a brief moment, looking at the shattered remains of the clock on the floor. "I don't understand... Kiku... What did you see that affected you so badly?"

"Italien! Don't fall behind!" Ludwig lectured, and Feliciano looked off in the direction of the group, unperturbed.

"I suppose I should get going, then." He sighed, before plastering a fake smile on his face that looked convincingly genuine. "Ve~! Coming, Germany!"

The scene faded back in to show the nations gathered in the Safe Room. Kiku was laying on a bed, with a worried Yao sitting nearby. "I don't understand what's wrong. Physically, he's just fine. My best guess is that he saw something in that clock that deeply disturbed him, aru."

"Deeply disturbed...?" Feliciano echoed absentmindedly. "What could it have been?" He muttered.

"There's no way of knowing." Yao answered, startling Feli out of his mutterings.

"O-oh, was I talking out loud?" Feli chuckled.

"Nice going, Ying. Wanna just tell them everything and be done with it?" Memory Yang mocked, crossing his ghostly arms as he leaned against the wall, an amused smirk on his face.

"It's okay... all things considered... It's entirely understandable. You're allowed to be worried, man." Alfred piped up.

But a moment later, Kiku groaned.

"Ah! He's waking up!" Matthew grinned. "How're you feeling, Japan?" But the darker haired nation didn't seem to even realize anyone was in the room. For a moment, he looked completely disorientated, as if he was in a dream. Then, without warning, Kiku let out a bloodcurdling scream that sent shivers down the spines of every nation—both watching and memory. Poor Feliciano startled so badly that he nearly fell over.

"W-what on earth?!" China asked, shaking badly. None of the nations had expected such a reaction.

But Kiku didn't stop there, he started clawing at his eyes, as if trying to scratch them out of his head.

"STOP HIM!" Yao shouted, desperately. Feliciano and Gilbert were the first to move, pinning down his arms to prevent him from injuring himself.

For a brief moment, Feliciano looked absolutely shocked and baffled. Then, an abrupt realization passed over his features. "The Bloodbath..." He breathed, before his eyes hardened.

He relinquished his hold on Kiku's right arm for a moment before hitting a pressure point on Kiku's neck to knock him out. The resounding silence in the room rang as loudly as the screams that had come before it.

The nations stood, frozen. They didn't really know how to react.

"What the fuck just happened?" Markus looked at me.

"He got back the memory of Forbidden Loop #3—the Bloodbath Loop." I stated simply. "It's the only memory that gives Kiku that kind of reaction."

The memory faded out.

"When he woke up, he had no memory of the Loop or the memory he'd seen." Yang explained.

"I was very careful, after that, to only break that clock alone."

"I can understand why." Luciano shrugged, looking at me. "I wouldn't want my Secondary losing his head every time the clock broke."

"Who is your Secondary, actually?" England asked, curious. His 2P hadn't been able to get an answer out of Luciano earlier, so he wasn't overly surprised when Luciano also refused to acknowledge his question.

The scene faded in to show Francis sneaking out of the Safe Room.

"What are you doing?" England asked, a raising an eyebrow in accusation.

"I don't know, mon cher!" France defended himself. "I don't recall this. You know that!"

"You'd seen something in the clocks." I supplied, sending him a baleful look of my own. "Though I didn't figure that out for a bit, myself. This looks to be Loop 12,993, by the looks of it." I stated. "I'm sorry to say that it took me a bit to figure out why you kept leaving and getting yourself killed on the Fifth Floor—nine loops."

The nations watched as Feliciano stopped him and talked about his 'idea' that the Memories that they receive from breaking the clocks were merely possibilities instead of outright lies.

"Oh, so that's when you came up with that idea." Luciano remarked.

"Si. Telling everyone that they were outright lies merely made some of them more suspicious. By saying that they were possibilities, I not only convinced them to avoid such situations altogether, but I also was able to move around more freely."

"Oh yeah!" Prussia snapped his fingers in realization. "You could just say that you saw something in the clock and we'd probably believe you without a second thought."

"Precisely." I grinned, making a few nations shudder.

Feliciano seemed to be wincing as he explained.

"Another headache from the Time Fluctuations?" England guessed.

"Not quite. There was something else this time." I answered cryptically.

"Oh, so we're finally coming to that, then?" Yang smirked.

"Yep."

"Wait. Coming to what? Did something else happen? Are we nearing another Forbidden Loop?!" Romano shuddered, praying he was wrong.

"Not exactly. It wasn't necessarily bad, but..." I trailed off.

"It also wasn't exactly good, either." Luciano finished.

A quiet ringing sound filled the hollow background sound in the memory. The scenes passed too quickly for anyone but myself or Yang to recognize. Loop 12,995... 12,997... 12,998... 12,999 each new scene made the ringing intensify almost tenfold, until it was so loud we could hardly think.

The nations covered their ears and some were even forced to their knees. Feliciano was no better off against the onslaught of ringing that only he—and to a much, much lesser extent, Arthur—could hear.

Then, finally—at Loop 13,000—the ringing had reached a fever pitch. Feliciano didn't even bother... the first chance he got, he wondered away from the group and towards the Annex. Nobody had died, but he reached up as if in a trancelike state, and reset the Clock. A deep, bone-shaking chime sounded, signifying the activation of the Ryuuzu Spell.

And like many times before, the familiar white-ish glow of Time Magick enveloped the nations. However, unlike before, a tinge of black-red seemed to worm its way into the spell, and suddenly the familiar backflow of time was interrupted.

All as quiet for a moment, before Feliciano was thrashed about violently. He was thrown like a ragdoll in a hurricane, and the nations feared that his limbs would be torn off. He let out a cry of agony and confusion.

Did I finally hit my limit?! Is there even one?! I... I don't understand!! What happened?! Before he could think much else, the memory went black.

A/N: Happy August 15th, everybody! Today is the day that Feliciano first entered the Mansion! Happy Angst Day! >:D

I literally wrote the last part of this chapter at the beach (Lived in SoCal for almost a year, and I FINALLY made time to do this, people.) So forgive any mistakes... I can't see my screen well. XD haha. [And yes... I'm that weirdo who brought her computer to the beach to write instead of playing in the COLD ASS water.]

Hope you've enjoyed, the Switch is NEXT chapter—I promise this time. Sorry for the false alarm, but this is a nice lengthy chapter to make up for it~! ^^

Words: 2,585

Pages: 6

Posted: August 15, 2019

I also cannot remember if I used this photo in another chapter or not, so here you are! I drew this!! I own the picture!! WOOHOO! I own something! :D (Including the physical copy I used as a reference for that.