⸸ㅤㅤhessㅤ

tripolitania used to handle most of their exterior life as the host, she felt responsible to do so. barqa seemed stressed enough managing everything when she wasnt there, and she had thought it might give them something of a break to have one person handle everything else for them and fezzan. barqa didnt have much of a opinion on it. it was alright for tripolitania, though, easy enough to manage even if she did sometimes struggle with keeping things from spiraling too badly, but its not like either of them would berate her about it. by comparison, fezzan didnt front nearly as much (still like this in the present yasss 💖💖). barqa acted as their collective memory and identity holder in the meantime, taking care of those roles mostly internally.

and then the year is 1911 yayyyy!!!!!!! colonisation starts right NOW!!! barqa fronted most during the genocide & pacification portion of it before transitioning into being a traumaholder (insert here a detailed description of how distressed and overwhelmed they become which leds them to shut down almost entirely) while libya had started forming during it as a defensive reactionary mechanism And also because of italy's constant attempts to destabilise the three of them. libya starts actually fronting in the 50s—before that he was confused and just settling in so hes not sure of alot of things barqa has experienced and remembers only vaguely but its enough that he was there co-fronting for a period of time atleast. He really does not like the fact his existence is partially owed to italy. ❤️❤️❤️ this also means the flashbacks in the libya fic was barqa fronting so. yay 🤔

the masking starts pretty early on—libya struggles with remembering their names sometimes, it scares him more than usual to admit. maybe some guilt from believing hes a direct representation of their failure to keep each other safe, maybe he'd rather not think about them that way. he doesnt know. either way hes quick to distance himself from them, or atleast, from barqa—he really does not like them, atleast the others are somewhat tolerable. barqa in the meanwhile stays away from the outer world as best they can. they refuse to let someone hurt them ever again when they were meant to be protecting the rest of them. tripolitania & fezzan cant do much beyond assuring barqa that theres nothing more they couldve done for them to stop it from happening, again, they had no control over it all, there wasnt anything they could've done. its difficult to convince them.

libya ends up isolating them for a while, or at least tries his hardest to, mostly because they as a collective really cant trust anyone right now, its too dangerous. And then libya punches himself in the face by getting with egypt and now barqa wants him dead. tripolitania's pretty conflicted over it but she understands barqa's concern. fezzan doesnt comment much either, it doesnt affect him nearly as much. its worse for barqa than anyone else because of Their Issues And Grudges Against Egypt and how similar he acts to italy which triggers and scares them. their initial protest goes nowhere because now theyre forced into proximity with him💔 libya thinks theyre exaggerating things and that its perfectly fine. they disagree. barqa tries shutting themselves down when possible—fezzan & tripolitania usually have to make sure they dont attempt anything. its a thousand times worse when libya isnt fronting and the other two are busy taking care of him because barqa has to front in his place. they do Not attempt masking as him like fezzan & tripolitania do and they usually end up panicking before having a meltdown. either way neither barqa or libya get much peace in these moments since egypt insists on being annoyingly present during them but barqa definitely puts up more of a fight than libya does 💖 which is freezing or threatening egypt or otherwise refusing to accept whatever comfort theyre offered—libya usually just. melts down immediately due to overstimulation. slash neg

fezzan & tripolitania spend the rest of the time dealing with the aftermath and damage control of barqa's episodes. not pleasant overall. barqa usually apologises afterwards for when it happens—not about the whole threat thing, theyre fully serious about that—but for freaking out and making everything worse for everybody. libya sees it as more evidence he needs to take charge rather than share it; everyone else views him being stubborn about it.

and it stays the same for a while, somewhat, although things calm down a bit after a decade or two that barqa has some relief (keyword some), they still panic fairly regularly regardless. and the four of them start growing a little more used to one another again—at least well enough that they tolerate eachother's company.