hetalia_kink

Original prompt: Something happens that makes Germany's borders change significantly. Maybe there's another German-Austria thing, maybe they make Prussia a country, make there's an invasion, it doesn't really matter. What does?

Oh, hai, guess what: our blond haired, blue eyed German does that memory loss thing. Again. (Obviously, going off the HRE->Germany theory.) Either lulz or angst insures. Bonus for the Prussia/Austria/France custody battle.

(And, aww, poor NItaly.)

Parts 1-4 here: http://hetalia-kink.livejournal.com/10960.html?thread=18526672

Parts 5-7 here: http://hetalia-kink.livejournal.com/10456.html?thread=22579928#t22579928

8. “Ich weiss dass ich dich liebe, egal was auch geschieht“

(“I know that I love you, despite what might happen“)

-

‘Men at some time are masters of their fates.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that ‘Caeser’?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
Write them together, yours is as fair a name:
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well:
Weigh them, it is as heavy: conjure with ‘em,
Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caeser.
…Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!’
- Cassius; ‘The tragedy of Julius Caesar’, Shakespeare

-

Rome finds people immediately across the river. They’re mostly in skins and talk in many strange and guttural languages that Rome’s people cannot understand at all. The men lead him to a figure who sits alone before a large bonfire. He removes his helmet and dips his head in acknowledgement. The blond warrior continues to toy with his axe and says nothing.

“So you’re the empire? The nation?” Rome asks easily.

“Empire?” the man replies lowly.

Rome cocks his head. This man has eyes as blue as the summer sky above his capital. “The land to which your people belong. The empire to the north of the Rivers. What’s your name?”

“I don’t have one,” he retorts expressionlessly.

“Come on,” Rome stresses, getting a little exasperated. “What they call you.” He indicates the men standing around him, waving his arm around.

The other’s eyebrow twitches at his behaviour. “I am of many peoples. Some of them are the Germani, some the Goths-“

“Germania, then!” Rome declares and claps a hand on the man’s shoulder. “That’s great! I’m Rome, and you’ve probably heard of me. Right?”

Germania stares at the offending hand with acid in his eyes enough to melt flesh from bone. Rome just keeps smiling, and takes his silence to mean a yes.

“Awesome! So we were thinking that we could settle here. We’ll let you stay here too. How’s that? Aren’t I kind? Magnanimous? Beautiful?” He starts getting teary-eyed from his own generosity.

Germania just looks at him.

This man, he is certain, is an idiot. And he proves himself to be one again and again. Before Germania knows it he’s moved in with his travellers and taken food from his own people, started trading trinkets- the last straw comes when Rome follows his womenfolk and tries to lure them onto his boat with promises of food and luxury. Rome is acting as if he owns Germania’s land and his people, simply because he has swords and soldiers here.

He takes a club to Rome’s head from behind as he eats by the fire, pummels him with everything he has. He collapses, but in a moment Rome has whipped around and grappled him to the ground. And by the Gods the man is strong- they scuffle in the dust for near half an hour, kicking, biting, punching- until finally, Germania rolls Rome onto his back and has the other man’s sword against his heaving breast.

“Get off my land,” he snarls shortly and to the point.

Rome starts laughing. “Friend,” he tells him between breaths. “Friend, I am bested, but that sword won’t kill me. You’ve got it on my breast plate. Only place you can get that right is the neck.”

Germania’s eyes widen; Rome continues to laugh.

“You’re strong, friend.” His body is still pressed under his knees. Rome’s armour clinks and creaks under the larger man’s weight. “You know? Keep the sword. Your people can have swords and armour and money and safety a plenty. We’ll pull back beyond the river.”

“If?” Germania presses. Rome grins that stupid grin again. The sword tip twitches.

“If you come back with me. I’ll teach you the stuff of the Roman legion.”

As a student or a slave? Germania asks himself as he lowers the sword. But Rome is smiling at him.

Germania thinks that this is the first time he has been called a friend.

-

The last time Rome kisses Germania is the beginning of the end. Out on some god-forsaken post along the Rhine (Aachen, he thinks. Or Wiesbaden.), he’s lying on a divan and bored and lethargic with nothing to do.

Germania’s there. It’s been so long that he can’t imagine a room without internally seeing the imposing shadow of his friend at the entrance. “Man, I wish some barbarians would attack, or something,” he complains expansively. Germania takes soundless steps towards him.

“Maybe they don’t want to,” he replies haltingly, standing over him.

Rome just laughs shortly at that, and it’s explanation enough. “They always want to. Fact of life, my friend.”

“No,” he rumbles. A pause. “I don’t think so.”

Making a quizzical expression, Rome rolls over to properly look at him. He’s tired, so he’s not really thinking all that clearly. “We’re on the northern border. Savages attack, we beat them back. It’s just the way things are.”

“Is that really how you think?” Something dark flutters over Germania’s face. He looks like he’s swallowed something bitter.

Rome pushes himself up, not doesn’t understanding the soured air between them. “Friend,” he says gently, with the air of a teacher explaining something simple, “they’re not like us. They’re not civilised. Slaves, you know. Not like Rome.”

“Oh.” Germania tries to pull away. His hands are shaking in tight fists. “Us. Rome. Of course.”

And as quick as a flash Rome’s grabbed his wrist as he leans away, balance screwed to the Gods; there’s hardly a second before he topples back down into a kneel over the prostrate nation on the divan, face an inch away. Rome, who’s bored, is about to lean in and kiss him, again, but beneath his fingers Germania’s pulse is racing hot-hot-hot with angry tremors that make him stop. He licks his lips. Stares.

“…You were going to kiss me.” Germania means to say it shortly, but so close it’s a snarl- a challenge- that neither of them expect.

They breathe. “…Yes. I was.”

In one swift movement he wrenches his arm away, his teeth still unsettlingly close to Rome’s neck. “You were going to kiss me,” he hisses.

So he does. It’s furious, and Germania grabs his hair and pulls, and the pain is new to Rome - because who can overpower the greatest Empire on Earth?- but they’re kissing and it feels wonderful. And then Germania bites his tongue, hard. Blood fills his mouth by degrees, fills Germania’s mouth by association and he eventually has to surface for air and to get away from the damned taste- but he can’t. He can’t. He struggles, tries to let Germania know that to breathe is what he needs, but there’s a vice-grip on his shoulder and another inching towards his neck, and Rome can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t fight him off.

Then, it’s over and Germania is looking down at him with blood on his lips and a fury of emotion in his gaze. Rome gasps; the only thing he can feel is the prickling atrophy of his muscles as oxygen reaches his brain again.

“Us,” the man pressing nails into his chest says very clearly. “Which of us, do you think, is really Rome?”

His head spins. “I am.” He thinks.

“Because I’m not like you. We’re not like you. Isn’t that right?”

“I,” he says numbly, “don’t understand what you’re saying.”

Germania laughs. Really laughs. “Because you’re stuck in the past,” he whispers. “Because all you care for is the history of your life, and you’re too much a fool to see what we have now-”

“…I have you.” Closing his eyes, Rome gorans, head and body aching from fatigue; he thinks he hear Germania’s paces as he walks away, a million voices in his head and-

-it’s over.

-

Smoke. In his lungs and in his air and in his people. Rome is being overrun. He can feel it- individual souls leaving his collective body, deaths and swords and war in his life-blood. Standing on the plains of the Rheine valley where the blood runs red and the sky burns with smog and murder, Rome can feel his borders collapsing.

Rome turns. Germania’s there. “You…they-“

“They are my people,” Germania snarls, “and I feel what they feel. You are Rome, and you feel what your people feel. And do you know the pain of being enslaved and used to protect the very people we so hate-”

“You don’t hate me.” He doesn’t understand this betrayal. “You were happy to serve-”

Germania screams in frustration, blue eyes flashing. “You don’t understand, you bastard of a fool! You proud, proud fool- no one is simply happy to serve! No one is happy to be considered a barbarian by one who lies and cheats and lives in luxury! We are proud- I am proud, I am more than you see me as-“

“I’ll stop you,” Rome declares, reaching for his sword. “Rome will not fall-“

The sword is knocked out of his knuckles by a hand and a half sword blade that nicks the skin deep into his palm. Germania laughs a choked laugh, madness rising in his throat. “You and what army?"

Germania takes heavy steps forward in the mud, sword tip wavering at neck height. “Only place without the armour,” he rambles to himself more than to Rome. “Right there- take the capital it’ll only be a decade, only 20 years, and they’ll dissolve-“

“You told me you were going to die, you lying bastard!”

“-am going to die. You’re going to die as well. You didn’t care did you? Told you, and that’s all you said, and you didn’t care. What a shame- but slaves come and go, and I’m not anything more than that, you hypocrite. Who treats a friend the way you have treated me? And if I don’t kill you now, I’m going to die, going to die, I don’t know-“

Rome backs a little further. His sword is a few feet away. “You wanted to mean something to me. You wanted me, friend-“

In history, in a world that only Rome still lives in perhaps, Germania still wants him.

“Shut up.” Cold metal grazes Rome’s chin. Germania’s countenance has frozen. “That…wasn’t me. That wasn’t me. That is not a part of who I am today- my people- Stop speaking.”

And Rome sees the steel in his friend’s eyes and knows then and there that Germania, the Germanic tribes, the Goths, is going to kill him, even if one tribe, one part of him, loves him and will not attack Rome, and that this had just been an exercise in futility.

“If you had just,” Germania whispers, swallowing and staring at him down the sword’s edge, “just listened, just accepted me for who I am, an equal…”

I did, Rome wants to say. I did, you were a friend and an equal, believe me. But he knows it’s not true, and his Emperors have never thought it, and in the end, Germania’s right: they are nothing more than the people that make them, whether they cling to the past or lose themselves in the future.

“…and you never did,” he finishes. The sword’s there, and Rome is trembling like a rabbit before a snake, and it makes Germania feel dangerous. “And now we die.”

“…And so,” Rome whispers, “it comes to this.”

-

‘After five centuries of mutual antagonism and several barbarian attacks on Rome, the weakened Roman Empire fell in 476. Without a common enemy to unify them, the Germanic clans simply dispersed.’
-Germany on a budget, History of Germany (extract)

-

The Holy Roman Empire hasn’t been acting normally recently.

Italy knows that he’s not that smart, but even he can see it. He may only be a maid, and little at that, but he knows that there’s something wrong. Austria doesn’t say anything about it, but Hungary shuffles so Italy knows that she’s worried. He talks when no one’s there to hear; he wanders the house and mutters complicated words like Protestant and Schism but mostly Rome, Rome, oh Rome.

Feliciano wonders if he means his brother Romano.

When he disappeared, Italy knew that he’d be back, because he promised, all those nights ago, that he’d protect him, and that he liked him. So he’s not surprised when he corners him in the courtyard, emerging swiftly from bushes like a pantomime villain. “Come,’ he demands, older and wiser and haggard beyond his seemingly tender years. “Come with me, and we’ll make Rome again. Come, and we’ll defend Catholicism and we’ll be the Roman Empire, you and me.”

But Italy just shakes his head. “I’m not allowed -“

“Scheisse!” All of a sudden Italy is pressed against the wall of the house and the Holy Roman Empire’s eyes are an inch from his and his grip is too painful on his poor arm. Italy’s heart pounds and rises into his throat; for the first time that he can remember, his face is contorted into an expression so painful that he doesn’t recognise the usually stoic boy before him. “Just for once,” he yells, “won’t you listen to me? I can’t stay here! Don’t you realise I love-“

“But I like you the way you are!“

He stutters at that, chokes- lets out an exasperated, panicked sob or snarl. “I can’t stay here! I’m going to tear apart if I do- I can’t stay like this! Come with me, Italy!”

He shakes his head.

“Why not?”

Italy looks scared now. Deep down, the Holy Roman Empire may be beyond caring. “Because…you’re not Grandpa; you’re not Rome-“

“I was more Rome than he ever was!”

“But,” Italy sobs, “Grandpa looked so hurt, and he looked so sad! He was too big and then he died! I don’t want you to end up like that! You don’t have to be Rome, I like you like you are. Let’s stay like this-”

The Holy Roman Empire swallows his own words and stares as Italy cries. As just as he wants to lean forward and hug the small figure in the dress and never let go, he knows that Italy’s wrong. She’s wrong; Rome didn’t die because he was too big. He died because he’d stood in the way of the future; it was certainty that Rome had died because he hadn’t caught up to the present leaving history behind.

And if the Holy Roman Empire stays as he is, now, he’d be making the same mistake.

Again.

-

Warte, warte, wilder Schiffsmann,
Gleich folg ich zum Hafen dir;
Von zwei Jungfrauen nehm ich Abschied,
Von Europa und von ihr.

…Ei, mein Lieb, warum just heute
Schauderst du, mein Blut zu sehn?
Sahst mich bleich und herzeblutend
Lange Jahre vor dir stehn!

…Alles Unheil brachten Äpfel!
Eva bracht damit den Tod,
Eris brachte Trojas Flammen,
Du bracht’st beides, Flamm und Tod.
- Heinrich Heine, Lieder, VI

-

They’re at Versailles, right in deep in the belly of the palaces. Prussia is leading the man he calls his brother through the shifting darkness of the early morning twilight, one hand warm on the other and telling him not to peak though he’s not.

“Okay,” Prussia announces through his grin. “You can open them now.”

And he opens his eyes. “…What is it?”

“It’s a flag, you blockhead!” Gilbert knocks him upside the head, kindly. He can hear the excitement in his voice- it’s contagious. Prussia leans into him, nudging him in the ribs. “It’s ours!”

His eyes widen. “No! But Prussia, this…this is- I’m not even a country-“

“You are now. Otto and me, we talked about it for ages.” Prussia is playing with his hair fondly; soon he won’t be able to do even that, because his brother is growing at an astonishing rate. “Cause…you know, you’re getting bigger. You need a country if you want to be as awesome as I am.”

He’s thrilled. Electricity is running under his skin in the dusty air of the hall. Prussia’s fingers release him; the young man takes a few steps towards the banner draped across the ends of the room. Three bands of colour- black, red and yellow.

“Feels different. But I reckon I’ll just stick the Eagle on it- smack in the middle, yeah?- and it’ll turn out awesome.”

“Ours?’ he whispers, reaching out to touch the flag, only half believing. “Together?”

“Well, I suppose I’m still Prussia, deep down,” Gilbert laughs from behind him. “Always will be. Forever.” He pauses for effect. “But it’s ours. This is where the history of the German Empire begins.”

In his head, all the new Germany can think is ‘Me?’; he doesn’t have his memory, but that’s alright because he’s Germany now, the German Confederation, and he’ll have an identity now. A new one. It doesn’t matter what had come before. That’s what Prussia’s trying to show him, with flag and name and country. “Me?” He whips around.

Prussia’s standing there with a sheepishly expectant look in his eyes. “Well?”

The German Confederation’s smile seals it. He turns around and wants to thank him but the words don’t come out. So, overwhelmed, he just hugs him close and buries his empty words in Gilbert’s uniform. His chest smells like clean linen and dust and cold steel, and Germany feels like something new is unfolding in him- a freedom. From the past.

“…I always thought, if I had a brother, that I’d call him Ludwig,” Gilbert adds, almost as an after-thought.

Heart too full to say anything, Ludwig just nods.

In 1918, a century and a lifetime later, Prussia finds Ludwig lying on the marble floor in the same room in a tattered military uniform, shackles of Versailles heavy and invisible on his wrists. There is no flag on the wall. There is no Eagle. There is no German Confederation. In Ludwig’s empty blue eyes there is seemingly nothing at all.

Prussia nurses his broken arm and stands over him. “Germany?” He doesn’t respond. “Ludwig?”

“The ceiling,” he hears him mutter.

“Germany?”

Ludwig weakly turns towards him. He brother, his beloved Ludwig, struck and battered and broken up, doesn’t seem to recognise him very well. “Who’s he?”

“You are.” Prussia swallows very carefully, fear prickling in his stomach. “You are.”

“I don’t think I am.”

Something in his brother’s voice holds back the panic and the outburst on the edge of his tongue. He recognises this look. He recognises this from somewhere, this sensation of beginning again. “We lost the war.”

He nods. “I’m the Weimar Republic,” he tells him placidly, in a voice that should be Ludwig and the German Empire and their shared history, but instead is something else entirely. “America and France and England told me so. Who are you?”

Then Gilbert forces himself to smile to quash the undeniable feeling of betrayal and resent and says, “I’m Gilbert.” The Weimar Republic winces and looks back at the ceiling.

“It’s very white,” is all he says.

-

In the late 1930s Austria is sitting at the window watching the wind stir through the garden and letting a pot of tea stoop. Elizaveta, regrettably, is gone- has been since the end of the last War when his world had exploded. He didn’t used to be angry about it- it’s only recently that something red and dark is starting to inflame his chest in ways that he is only barely comfortable with.

It’s not his fault. It’s not their fault; Ludwig didn’t deserve Versailles, he didn’t deserve any of this-

Boots snapping to attention on the polished floor make him jump. “Prussia,” Roderich begins, turning to scold, nut he stops short, suddenly a deer in tank head-lights.

Ludwig removes his cap and clears his throat.

“Oh.” Austria blinks, not sure why he’s shaken. “I was expecting Gilbert.”

Germany raises one rigid eyebrow in question. “I had assumed that you had received my memo.” Austria doesn’t think he has. “I am here to discuss the conditions of the take over. May I?” He indicates the seat opposite him.

“Take over?”

Germany remains standing. “Anschluβ.”

Roderich shakes his head sharply in disbelief. Germany’s eyes are earnest and expectant, if severe. It’s his new boss and government, and even Roderich can feel it, the biting sort of pride pulsing beneath his skin as if something travelled in the ground beneath his feet, outwards. It feels like empty energy. Empty. “Where’s Prussia? Where’s Gilbert?”

He is ignored. Ludwig’s eyes are focused blowtorch blue. “You’re coming to live with me, cousin. As part of the Greater German Reich- that’s what they said. I thought that you'd know.” He frowns. “By now.”

“Let me speak to Prussia, Germany-“

“That’s what they said,” he repeats lowly, voice changing. “And that is what I believe. We’re mobilising.” And it’s only then that Roderich realises that he might just be in danger of something, as Ludwig takes another step closer. Prussia’s gone.

“This is insane,” Roderich spits. “Germany, do you understand what you’re doing? Don’t you remember what happened after the First World War? You killed yourself. After Versailles, you could barely stand, and now…Anschluβ-”

Germany’s back is very straight and his eyes are very blue. “That was not I,” Germany tells him very firmly. “I have no recollection of that.”

Austria can’t believe that. “Not remember the Great War? Ludwig, you lie.”

“But I speak the truth.” His expression is clouded for a moment before it clears. “That wasn’t me. That was the Weimar Republic.”

“But that was-“

Germany pulls a pistol from his hip, and the mechanical click of its loading spring is shockingly loud in the music room air. Roderich swallows.

“I think,” Germany explains in clipped tones, “you have mistaken me for someone else.” Very casually, very slowly, the gun is aimed at his head; from where Roderich is, half of Germany’s face is cold black steel. The other half of his mouth is in a thin frown. He does not say anything for a long while; when he does the words are short on his lips. “Tell me. Has the Third Reich ever lost a World War, Austria?”

To anybody who doesn’t know Germany, the sentence is not a question but a statement, but Roderich knows Ludwig well enough, and it’s a question. Beneath his uniform and his armband, Germany isn’t sure whether it was he who lost, or who he is in the first place. Which is precisely why Austria feels a chill slide down his spine.

This is a question of continuity- of links between past and present that everyone has.

His finger is trembling on the trigger.

“…No.” Austria drops his gaze to the floor. “You have not.”

He counts Ludwig’s steps across the room. He can’t see Germany’s face, but his words are coloured with something like relief, perhaps. It hurts to hear-a physical ache in his throat. “I…Good. That’s right. I’m Germany.”

“Germany,” he echoes, lips twisting bitterly. “The Third Reich.”

“You will come quietly now?”

Roderich closes his eyes and lets his head tilt backwards.

-

‘Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such thing as ‘the truth’ exists. …The implied objective of this is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the present but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’- well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five- well, two and two are five.
This prospect frightens me much more than bombs.’
- George Orwell, ‘Looking Back on the Spanish War’

-

After Italy is captured in World War II Japan and Germany meet only once. It’s a quiet affair, because they’re both distracted by the sound of their lives collapsing around their ears. Somehow they’re meant to reassure each other, Germany knows. They can’t do it; they just sit after a fashion and are slowly consumed by their own thoughts.

There’s so much to say, but for no reason at all Nazi Germany can’t stop staring up at the ceiling. “It’s very white,” he remarks.

Japan has his face buried in his hands, gripping at his hair. “No they’re not,” he muffles. He can hear the madness there. “They’re filthy. You must be blind, you fool.”

Germany nods. “But I just can’t stop staring upwards. Like…like I’m meant to see beyond it. Like there’s something missing. Like someone…keeps painting over it, or something. It’s stupid.”

“Yours are too. Red, I mean. Look at them. It’s disgusting. You’re disgusting. We’re all disgusting, and it’s never going to stop.”

Kiku’s not really sane right now; it’s to be expected. He looks down at the red armband that’s torn and faded from the bullets on the Eastern Front. It is disgusting- all dust ridden and falling off like a rag.

“What in Heaven are you talking about?”

“Blood. Right there on your hands. On mine.” He raises his head to reveal eyes haunted by genocide. Sure enough, when Germany looks there is salted iron dripping off of his fingers. He must be mad as well. The world’s gone mad. Japan starts laughing, shrilly, pointedly asking him, “What are you talking about?”

Insides sunk into a trapdoor, Nazi Germany just tilts his head back. The ceiling is very white, but it’s cracking.

He thinks that maybe there should be a War up there, back there.

“History,” he mutters. “I guess.”

-

And so, after everything has died and Germany has lost the Second World War, and Gilbert is taken away from him the strangest urge overtakes him. His mind seems to be going.

He even finds himself thinking, quite calmly, that now that Gilbert is not in him- DDR, BRD- he really doesn’t need to remember him and who he was. Or the Eastern Front. Because they’re not him and now. Then he realises what he’s thinking and starts to shake.

“I’m forgetting,” he tells America feverishly. “Don’t let me forget.”

Alfred doesn’t understand. “What are you forgetting? Why?”

And West Germany begins to stare up at the ceiling above him, but the pain in his back and the sickness in his veins help him to pull away. Guilt. Guiltguilt-guilt. World War II, you’re Germany and you lost, and your brother is suffering because of you-

This time, Ludwig will make himself remember, he thinks. He doesn’t know why he knows this, or even what the other times were, but he will remember this time. Italy, and America, and-

“World War II,” he hears Japan’s voice hiss under the door to his hospital room, where he must be dressing his wounds. “Two. Why did we not learn the first time, if this is what it feels like?”

-

Sadiq, who is at Ludwig’s house more often than not these days, is the first herald of bad news. It’s not long after the Economic Downturn- that’s what they’d called it- and people are starting not to believe in America any more. It’s a headache more than anything. Ludwig’s mind buzzes with numbers and national debt and despite it all, he’s still feeling good, until Turkey strolls into his office and stops in the middle of the room.

“Greece won’t wake up,” he announces simply.

And he won’t. Spain tries to talk him up. North Italy plays Puccini on his iPod. South Italy punches him. France tries to seduce him, as a last resort. But he just stays slumped over his table, asleep and barely breathing while his cats meow plaintively at their feet.

“You’re meant to be the EU.” Turkey places a stiff hand on Germany’s shoulder. “Do something.”

“But we tried everything!” Feliciano mumbles sadly, playing with a kitten. “I’m tired." There’s a general murmur of agreement. Spain barely raises his head. He looks at them all with creeping alarm building in his mind before Germany pulls Francis aside.

“Wasn’t America meant to be helping him?” he rumbles stiffly.

France shrugs. “I rarely talk to Alfred anymore. And besides, he will have a new boss at the next election, we are all saying in Paris. He is broke.”

“He can’t be broke,” Ludwig insists, casting a look at Switzerland as he polishes his rifle, unconcerned. “Heracles sold his entire public transport system to him-“

“Antonio will not last,” Francis just states under his breath. “Or the Italies.”

Germany doesn’t say anything to that. Suddenly, the only thing that crosses his mind is that France’s youthful face is older and more tired than he remembers it being.

“The only thing we can do,” France continues, eyebrows rigid in resolve, “is help them ourselves.”

Disbelief. “Economic aid? For all of them?”

France looks at him pensively for a moment. “You’ll never last. Not with all of us-“

“We,” Ludwig interrupts. “The EU is all of us. We all have to help.” Behind them, Austria holds Hungary’s hand and runs the other absently through her hair.

He’s brought abruptly back by the gentle touch of France’s fingers at his temple. “Oh, the EU used to be about that,” he says enigmatically as he wets his lips. “About all of us. Used to.”

Ludwig pulls away a though burned. He shoots a glance to Feliciano; he’s dazed, tired. This isn’t right.

“I’ll talk to my boss,” he mutters, turning and stepping swiftly away.

-

Hungary kisses him after that. Guilt roiling in his lungs, he kisses her back because she’s not really aware- or awake. And she doesn’t want him; she wants the money and his adamant perseverance to livelivelive and Roderich doesn’t have that. Europe doesn’t have it anymore, just when they need to, because India’s invaded Pakistan again and China’s staring him down like he did to America and now Alfred’s changed again.

And Ludwig understands the concept of change.

-

‘We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.’
-George Bernard Shaw

-

“Let’s make a new kind of ASEAN,” Australia says. Kiku jerks.

“I was just about to make a similar proposal, Australia-san. Am I to understand that ASEAN does not refer to the meeting we are currently attending?”

He grins cockily at him, and Japan almost recognises the steel in the blue eyes that stare at him. “Like the EU. Only better.”

Yao looks interested but pretends not to be. “A club, aru?”

“Like that.” Australia, all young muscle and rough fingers and sun-streaked hair, leans across the table towards him imperceptibly. China swallows, hungry. Australia panders to that hunger now, by wearing his hair long and his shirts loosely buttoned. It’s a stupid high school romance, Kiku thinks, but the power between it makes his heart stop. “For South-East Asia.”

Yung Soo doesn’t say anything. Kiku squeezes his hand (humanitarian aid), so he takes a breath. “I think,” he begins in Hangul, ending in Chosongul, “that East Asia is wiser. That is what Kiku and I were talking about.”

Yao turns back to Korea and fusses over him. “Hanguo! Don’t push yourself! Are you feeling alright?”

“It’s been 6 months,” Australia says, dismissive. “He’ll be fine. You’re going well with the reunification, right?” The North and South Republic of Korea nods, visibly brightening at Yao’s attention.

Japan clears his throat. “An exclusively East Asian alliance would be most prudent, I imagine. My Prime Minister and I have discussed this at length. I think it is time that we were honest with each other.”

Yao smiles, looking at all of them. “A family?” Hardly hoping.

Australia’s still fighting. “South East Asia. There’s growth there. You’d be crazy not to take them as well. Singapore. Vietnam.” Japan knows this is a problem, because Australia is not East Asia. The only way they can indulge him is to include all of his island neighbours.

“How about this?” Yao exclaims. “East Asia. And Australia. Together. Australia will help the pacific nations- I can help mainland Asia, yes? And Japan will talk to America!”

No one says anything. It’s dangerous, that talk. This is economic warfare, and Australia being accepted as part of East Asia is as good as a kick to the face to the likes of Vietnam and Cambodia. This is a risk. Russia will not be happy. India will not be happy- the world will not stay quiet.

“Why not?” Australia lets out eventually, eyes strangely glittering. "Why not?"

China laughs. He can say this only because Yao and Kiku like him, and in this current world, Yao is the only one who makes the rules. They’re safe, because Yao has a dragon curling somewhere inside his belly.

Screw the past. Forget it; let it go poof over their heads. They’re not who their ancestors were. The future is bright like the rising sun over the middle kingdom and the wide brown land that spreads below.

Forget it.

Imperceptibly, Kiku’s eyebrows narrow.

-

‘If the Führer wants it, two and two makes five.’
-Hermann Göring

-

This part is too long.

DYK?

My computer crashed last christmas. I was only able to get it fixed about 3 weeks ago, which owes for my long break. Sorry everybody. I'll try to finish this baby ASAP (though there's still too much to put inot 2 parts...>.<)

I would like to think that Germany is not as messed up as he is here. But he really has had bad luck the last couple of centuries, and everytime something goes wrong, his leaders decide to change who he is.

He's not the only one, though.

Next: The world goes to hell. In a Chinese handbasket.

I kinda may have gasped out loud when I saw you updated. Maybe.

I'm sorry for doubing you, author anon! I'm also very sorry about your computer. Life is so unpredictable, isn't it?

As for this part... ah, I'm not sure I got it. I'll... have to reread the previous parts, I think. Which really won't be a problem, ahah. ;)

thank you so much for your hardwork! I'll comment again once I've had the time to reread and think about it.

Damn, I love fics that make me go WTF I NEED TO THINK! ♥

FUCK FUCK FUCK YOU UPDATED THIS AND IT'S ORGASMIC

I mean

This is one of my favorite fills on the meme, because you took a simple prompt and turned it into a nightmare of postmodern mythology, and the way you had left it unfinished at the moment things were starting to reach closure had left me grieving - a part of me liked to think you did it on purpose, anytime it passed your title in the bookmarks, to signify an impossibility of catharsis for the apathetic modern human

I mean

Your labyrinthic vision of relationships between people/nations and history as memory, and just like with memory we have to forget something, because those who remember everything go insane, or become bloated and die, and your vision of Rome and Germania is honestly moving and the only one that makes sense to me now

I mean

Take your time, write as much as you want. I'll follow you wherever you want to take me, after so much waiting.

Uh. Sorry for creepiness. But I really like the way you write. Can you tell?

Has anyone ever told you that this is a beautiful piece of fanfiction and you are incredibly talented? :D

I have been following this from the beginning.

This--

This, I think, is what Hetalia would really be like--this is the reality that would be if the countries truly existed as beings.

Anon, you are truly talented; as a hopeful writer, I am more than humbled by your mastery of words and prose, and hope that one day I can craft a story just as wonderful as this.

I await the next part eagerly.

I'm so glad this is updated!
I love so much your fill, your part are never long enough.
*gives cookies*

Ouch, that thing with Greece. Talk about a creepy dose of reality...

9. “Ich werd dich nie vergessen”

(“I will never forget you”)

-

The world used to be a big place. Recently, Germany knows that it’s getting smaller. He’s making it smaller.

-like Greece.

Italy is the one who touches and feels. Germany does not like to touch. He respects people’s space and besides, sometimes it reminds him of things like rape and Hungary and Prussia and World War II. And it’s not as if Germany doesn’t like to remember, it’s just that it’s painful and not really relevant now.

But.

Greece, Germany tells himself, was Francis’ idea. It was all above board- a few million Euros here, a couple more there- and Heracles was in a hospital bed in Brussels before anybody could wonder or complain. That should have been the end of it.

The doorbell rings, and it’s cold outside where Roderich is stamping his feet of snow. “Ludwig, thank goodness- let me in or I’ll freeze to death.”

He just looks at him. Austria’s fingers twitch into a fist as he stands there. Ludwig’s eyes drop. “Is that your bag?”

“Yes, you fool. It’s my suitcase.”

“Why?”

He flushes. “Because the heating at my house is broken, Ludwig. Why else?”

Because you’re like Greece and you want my help, Germany thinks, but he doesn’t say it.

Elizaveta whirls in after that, scolding Austria for bothering Ludwig at a time when the EU is so busy. Then Belgium, then Holland, smelling entirely too much like marijuana, then Luxembourg, shifting his glasses with one finger.

And all the while, knowing that he shouldn’t be helping these countries just because they border onto him, Ludwig doesn’t think that things could get any more twisted than this.

But they do. Because suddenly (alcohol and foreign debt and-) Hungary tells him stories of a blonde boy who fell in love with a scullery maid onceuponatime, and Germany snorts to swallow down the uncertain quaver in his stomach as he kisses her neck (because she told him to and Francis told him to- stimulus, economic aid, verdammt!). Germany’s philosophy is that Fairytales are just Fairytales and he tries to alert her instead to a man who plays piano and knows what’s happening and breaks a little inside every time he smells tulips on Germany’s sheets.

Because…it reminds him of rape and Hungary. And Prussia. And Italy. Even though he tells himself that the EU wants him to, that he has permission to do this.

But still.

The tension builds and panic spreads. One day he gets angry at the Netherlands for hoarding food(hiding debt) in his room(budget). There are other countries knocking on his door asking for his help and he doesn’t have time to put up with this kind of shit. So he punches Holland in the face and throttles him without thinking, reflexes (They told him to, it was against his constitution, but he told him to!). And the next thing anyone knows, Holland is gone. Then Luxembourg.

He tries to tell Belgium that he’s not feeling right. She disappears too, after a night spent talking in her room that ends with Germany with chocolate on his lips and a headache somewhere under his ribs.

No one notices, except for Prussia. He doesn’t say anything and places a hand on his shoulder to tell him about this awesome book he read, on how agriculture stimulates national economy, West- isn’t that awesome? No one cares about absences. Because Ludwig? Ludwig’s thriving, and he’s all that matters.

“What about Austria?” he finally manages to ask Hungary one night, as she stands milk-white in a slip that Roderich had bought her as an anniversary gift. “…What about Gilbert?”

It is the first time that Ludwig thinks he’s seen Hungary cry. She asks him to protect him and Italy; Ludwig doesn’t understand what he’s meant to protect them from. Poland is up in riots. His government wants help, but his people don’t- it’s all hot and cold, black and white. Germany is helping Europe recover. Germany is helping the EU starve.

Just as the Bundestag comes up with the new name for their alliance (DVWE- the German counselled Economies of Europe), just as EU peacekeepers enter Warsaw, Germany wakes up in a house he does not recognise.

The ceiling, when he looks, is very white.

-

He should get up. He has to move; the world is slowly falling to pieces (Rome is burning) around his head. He should get up.

The German Administered Alliance of European Nations stays bowed over Poland’s bed and can’t bring himself to face another day.

Feliks is alive, but not awake. He might as well be Greece. He might as well be dead.

Click.

Looking back on it now, without the fog of forgetfulness, Ludwig knows that he’d seen it coming. Perhaps they’d all seen it coming.

Click.

God, he’s a fool.

Click.

He raises his head. Something is hitting the wooden edge of his window-frame. There. Again, as Ludwig pulls hair out of his eyes. Presently, he sees a rock hit the middle of the glass with a bang.

Someone is throwing pebbles at the window.

Without thinking Ludwig pulls himself to the glass and looks down onto the path below. Guilt floods him afresh- but now that he’s on his feet he can’t stop himself from pausing and then running down the stairs of his empty house, heart thudding with disbelief.

It can’t be.

“Hello Germany!”

It’s Italy.

“Ludwig?” Italy smiles and twists his wrist in a nervous gesture. “Ve. Are you…are you still angry at me?”

“…No,” he finally croaks. “I…Why are you here?”

Italy leans in closer and presses the heel of his palm against Ludwig’s forehead. He frowns- the motion draws the GAAEN’s eye downwards and inwards to the fine stubble on the other’s chin, and now Ludwig recognises it. This. All of it, because Italy had slept beside him all through the war until he’d disappeared and Germany had begun to forget.

“-healthy! Japan says-“ It’s only when he pulls away that he realises he’s been talking the entire time. Listening to him babble makes Ludwig feel like a fraud in his own skin.

“Italy.” He interrupts. Don’t talk like that. Breathe. “I’m not Germany anymore.”

Italy seems to wilt a little as he falls back onto his heels; still smiling, his gaze fills with some sort of glad emotion. “Oh. I know.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I’m moving in with you! I’m out of pasta, and now Lovi’s gone.” A heavy trunk is by his feet that Ludwig feels a fool for missing, but the light’s just too bright, and Feliciano’s smile makes him sick. “Lovi’s gone,” he repeats, “and I thought, if I have nothing left, then I have to go to Germany, because he promised-“

I’m going to kill you, Ludwig wants to say. He tries to say. He doesn’t say it at all. It reeks too much of Rome and melodramatics and Roderich.

“-to look after me,” Feliciano finishes.

Ludwig replies with an “oh” that is more of an “oh, God” and shuts the door in his face.

-

At sun down, Ludwig opens the door and lets Italy in and just gives up.

He doesn’t know what to do when Italy sits there with that expectant, hopeful look on his face.

-

“Where’s Austria?” Italy asks presently, lying on his bed and sketching something in charcoal.

Ludwig, curled into a foetal position on the carpet with guilt and worry consuming him inside out, doesn’t know how to answer that. “He’s gone.”

“Oh.” He leans over the edge of the bed and fixes him with his sunny gaze. “What about Hungary? Is she-“

“No.”

“…Where did they go?”

The GAAEN just tilts his chin to the television where the news is showing a press conference with the head of the UEBC economic alliance.

“Germany?”

Ludwig shakes his head, looking away. “I’m not Germany,” he adds.

“Belgium-“

“Italy,” he bites, hollow. “Shut up. Shut up, I swear. Gott im Himmel-“

“I’m sorry! I won’t try to flirt with her, I promise-”

“You’d think,” Ludwig says, petty, with the intention to hurt, “that you would have learned to shut up after losing World War II.”

The room is strangely silent. It unnerves him after five minutes- he grits his teeth after ten. Frustrated at his short temper and Italy’s goddamned Italy-ness, Ludwig eventually turns expecting Feliciano to be in tears. Or asleep.

He’s not. He’s watching him with barely concealed pride on his features.

“You do remember!” Italy’s expression then is happier and more at home than it has the right to be. “You are Germany!”

Ludwig has nothing to say to that, not even when Estonia declares that Russia is sharing its nuclear weapons cache with India and the Commonwealth.

-

On the other side of the world, Alfred jerks awake. “What?”

Matthew normally knows better than to wake America. He spends more and more time sleeping now; if Canada lies next to him and listens with his face buried in the bedclothes he hears words like China and Russia and Depression and sometimes Hero. Canada doesn’t say anything about it- about how it makes him want to cry sometimes.

“1984,” Matthew says, now, into the darkness between them.

“What?”

“…I was reading it.”

America was never good with books, at least until they became movie scripts. “Yeah. Orwell, right?” A pause. Alfred is not comfortable with silences anymore, not after the crash that came down on his ears. They make him twitchy and feel dangerous. “You woke me up for that?”

“You…remember what Russia said?” he whispers in his sweet, low voice.

“…”

“…what are we going to-”

America sits up with a curse. “What the Fuck, Canada? I’m fucking America. I don’t…I’m not going to listen to whatever the fuck Ivan says.”

“Which one do you think we are?”

“Who?”

Matthew turns to look at him, thinking of India and China and how they’re almost at each other’s throats. If one more accidental bomb blast reaches Pakistan or Afghanistan or any of the disputed regions, then something’s going to happen. Eastasia and Eurasia at war. Nuclear fission. “In 1984. Which country are we?”

Canada doesn’t care what America’s republicans say anymore. They’re going to have to take sides eventually.

America doesn’t say anything for a long time. Just as he supposes that he’s gone to sleep again, Alfred stirs beside him. “I dunno,” he whispers, bitter and solemn for once. “The one…the one that wins. The good guys.”

He turns over viciously.

“Fuck it all,” Canada hears him say under his breath, after that.

-

Voicemail: “Deguo, I know you can hear me. I would appreciate your presence in Beijing at 0900 hours in three days. This is important. I know I can trust you to be on time. I do not wish to think of what may happen if you are not.”

-

Ludwig is in the largest diplomatic maze since World War II, glasses askew and papers everywhere as the television regurgitates news reports and the world winds down like sprung clockwork.

“Germany~”

And Italy is hungry.

Ludwig tells him in a growl that food can wait.

“But I’m hungry…” Italy’s words float up to him from the couch where he sits and sketches. “Germany~”

The GAAEN snarls under his breath and lets his pen drop onto the desk. Fine. Fucking fine. He storms into the kitchen and sets a pot boiling with water and tries to find some Speck and some Potatoes.

Ludwig leans against the kitchen bench and bows his head. He’s in over his head and he knows it. If he’d just had more time; if he’d just remembered. If he hadn’t- what would he have done? He…he needs to talk to the EU. What’s left of it. He needs…he needs Francis. Ludwig squeezes his eyes shut at the memory of France and lack of memory and that night in Strasbourg. What was he meant to say to him, to India, to China, to-

He opens his eyes. Something smells like burning.

Scheisse. The pot’s boiled over and the potatoes are rapidly blackening on the bottom the pan. He can’t even cook anymore, he thinks in that frozen moment, stupidly reaching for the handle. As it burns him reflexes take over; metal clatters to the bench top, spilling moisture on the flame. Ludwig manages to get it into the sink and turn off the gas before he just crumbles to the floor.

He may just be very close to curling up and crying at the pointlessness and stupidity of it all.

Of course, Italy finds him holding his wrist and wincing up at the ceiling. He sniffs the air. “Ludwig? What’s wrong?”

The GAAEN doesn’t think he has the heart to answer almost everything.

But, Italy just takes one look at his hand and the pot sizzling in the sink and lets out a kind, gentle laugh.

“Ve, is that all?”

No, he thinks. That’s not all. It’s not even the beginning.

“You’re just a perfectionist.” He lifts the pan out of the sink just sniffs at it for a second, placing it back on the stove. He flits to the pantry and bends down at the waist to find onions, exposing a sliver of skin at his belt. “Germany’s been a perfectionist since the 900’s,” he sings with an indulgent little smile.

There was a time, Ludwig suddenly recalls, that he would have flushed at such a sight; now the bones of Italy’s hips are entirely too thin and reeks of dead weight and economic baggage.

“I…Germany wasn’t alive then.” A few clicks as the stove is turned back on. “Gott- just leave the food-“

He is ignored. “Germany tries very hard to be perfect. And every time that he makes a mistake, he has to start all over again. Like…Like drawing! Every time I tried to help him, he’d just throw the paper away and then he wouldn’t get better at drawing rabbits at all.”

Ludwig stops and swallows. “…Wait. How do you know that?”

Italy has started chopping tomatoes and reaches for rosemary, humming under his breath. He laughs very softly, almost happily, and tells no one in particular, “I make a lot of mistakes, but how else am I going to learn anything unless Germany yells at me first?”

Nursing his hand, the GAAEN steps away, fleeing to his office and papers and news reports and the end of the world, to hide from the feeling of déjà vu. Because Italy is a little girl in a dress is a man in a tomato crate is a best friend is a lover is a country whose national debt made Europe crash and made Ludwig like this in the first place.

Later, Italy places a steaming bowl of something like stew on his desk which makes Ludwig look up and open his clenched eyes. It smells delicious.

And Ludwig finds that he is hungry after all.

They spend the night on the couch in his office, and as Beijing responds to New Delhi, Feliciano ignores the apocalypse around them to take the GAAEN’s hand and say something stupid about Italian politics.

-

France cuts a solitary figure in the polished halls outside the EU meeting room. It’s fitting, thinking on how many times had Gilbert teased the two of them- married couple, Mutti und Vati, wie Suss - for shouldering Europe’s problems together.

“The others didn’t come,” Ludwig surmises, settling next to him.

“Non. Too scared. Too tired.” He exhales sharply and pushes his hair back out of his face; Ludwig is surprised to smell tobacco curling around their feet. France hasn’t smoked in years- not since he’d heard Germany disapproved. “Where is Italy?” he asks without looking at him.

“Not here.”

Francis plays with the burnt out stump of a spent cigarette. He laughs abruptly; when he shakes his head and presses sharp fingers at the arch of his nose his eyes are humourless. “He will miss you. You should get him.”

“…I would not trust Italy with my foreign trade,” he says simply, and this time France laughs with genuine warmth, if for a moment. It thaws the still between them.

“Nor would I England,” he quips back, still chuckling, and then he pauses for a beat. “…The last EU meeting could be the most efficient yet.”

They both know that their pretence is too late now.

“Would you believe,” Francis begins once they’re seated in a room far too big for the two for them, “that Estonia contacted me two days ago?” Ludwig tenses, but France waves his hand easily. “No, it was innocent enough.”

Ludwig grits his teeth. “He wants the ASEAN gone. If that idiot hadn’t decided to promise that to India and Iran-“

“-if Japan and Australia had not decided to pull into Beijing, then India would have had no problems with China in the first place,” France retorts with a note of finality. “It is no one’s fault.”

Of course, Germany thinks in clipped tones, France has always understood Russia better than most. “And?”

“Ivan went to propose a mutual protection act to Alfred. America turned him down. For now.” France’s wristwatch hits the table between them with a clack as he shifts. “. But I remember what he was like, and what we all were like in the wars, Ludwig, and he will, eventually.”

“…That’s impossible.”

“Oh, I assure you-“

“No,” Ludwig stresses. “To remember everything. It’s impossible.”

France just blinks. “Why? Some people try to hide from the future by living in the past. And some try to hide from the past by living in the future. Humans are strange creatures.”

“We are not human,” Ludwig protests, frowning. Francis leans closer and places the tips of his fingers together in a gesture that reminds Germany of late nights in the EU conference rooms, when everybody else had gone home. Even emaciated and with eyes haunted by an inability to breathe, France is a tactile, sensual being.

There is always something about France that makes Ludwig want to feel and not think.

“We are not human,” he agrees. “But we are humans. We are collective consciousness, you and I, Ludwig. I think of Napoleon and Gaul and because as a nation I am proud of what I have done. Because my people think of their past and do not wish to forget.”

They breathe for a moment over the table. “You say that I exist because my people didn’t want to remember?”

Francis senses the defensiveness there; he smiles gently and places a palm on his fingers, warm and forgiving. “No. It is a balance, of course. I remember the past and remember the pain that the wars have done to us. But in doing so- we become static. I become irrelevant. Others, who do not hold onto the past- they become stronger because they can embrace the present.”

“America,” Ludwig breathes without thinking. Young and living and immediate. France keeps talking.

“It’s a balance. And when Alfred dies, we have no one left to rely on. Greece and Spain were going.” Ludwig senses rather than sees the fingers move upwards to his wrist, up his arm to his shoulder. Feels, like France makes him feel. “We…we had no choice. We had no one left.”

“You had me,” he hisses, lips curling ironically. “You made me do it. You made me fix it. I didn’t want to, but the EU made me, and then-”

France doesn’t answer that. Instead, he pulls Ludwig’s head down to his level by the hair (longer and more tangled that Germany’s ever was) and presses his lips shortly against his, soft and pliant and speaking silent words in the inflection that Ludwig feels through his fingertips. How it was his duty to Europe; this is how your debts are repaid, my poor dear cousin-neighbour-friend; how unfair this all was. All thoughts that had plagued Ludwig for years, until last August when he put them all behind him.

He pulls away. “I am so sorry, Ludwig,” Francis whispers to him, pressing foreheads, “for making you this way. Dieu, I’m so sorry.”

“You killed me,” he murmurs. Again. Napoleon. Battlefields and Prussia’s eyes. Holy Roman Empire. Greece and EU and economic swords sharpened to points. “…How long?” he asks as France places a kiss over each eyelid.

His hands let the lapels of his uniform go, smoothing down the plane of his chest to rest again on the table. In one movement he slides away, irrelevant but with memories behind his eyes. Heels clicking on the polish, France takes five steps backwards and outwards.

The GAAEN, what is left of the EU, is left sitting alone.

“How long do you think?” Francis’s voice replies from beyond Ludwig’s eyelids. “Take care of Italy.”

It all seems to come back to that one point for Ludwig, no matter what age he is in.

-

Merkel denies Greek bailout

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has shot down claims by European Union politicians that a rescue deal for Greece is imminent, denying that Berlin has agreed to underwrite the Greek bond market.

“That is definitely not the case. We’ve got a treaty that does not include any provision for bailing out states. We can best help Greece at the moment by making clear that Greece has to do its own homework, just like it is doing at the moment,” she said.
The emphatic tone suggests that EU officials and a French-led bloc of states have gone too far in trying to create a sense of inevitability behind the rescue package. There is clearly irritation in Berlin that EU integrationists are trying to bounce Germany into a historic commitment- a step towards EU fiscal federalism.
Professor Paul Kirchhof, a leading German jurist, told Der Spiegel that alleged bailout plans breached Germany’s constitution.
…Germany’s finance committee has questioned the legality of state bodies buying euro zone debt. The mood has been poisoned by Greek rhetoric over Nazi war crimes.
…Otmar Issing, the former chief economist at the European Central Bank, warned last week that a Greek bailout would be a grave mistake, leading to a breakdown of euro zone discipline and the demise of the EU’s Economic and Monetary Union.
- The Daily Telegraph, February 2010

-

Ludwig does not recognise Yao as he walks into the Parliament in Beijing. Not that Ludwig had ever had all that much to do with China in the first place, but the man that Germany remembers is a small-boned delicate man with a pony tail and impeccable manners.

“Deguo.” Yao shoots him a pleased smile that doesn’t really reach his eyes. “How nice to see you here.” His hair is in choppy spikes; the red of his communist lapels are very noticeable against his pale neck. The inflection of his eyebrows is impatient and immediate and angry.

Ludwig wonders why no one had noticed China changing these past decades.

“Aodaliya!” he calls abruptly, and Australia flicks his head their way from where he stands. He’s playing with an old rifle- one with a bayonet- and his eyes are eager like the red stars on his uniform. The effect is disturbing more than anything. “Take us to Kiku.”

Korea falls into step beside him. “Aniki-“

“Not now, Hanguo.”

Yung Soo is silent.

It’s about then that the GAAEN realises that there’s going to be a war. And nothing he says is going to stop it.

-

Sometime after this, in the same room, it’s just Japan and he. Like old times.

Ludwig breaks the silence, staring at the white ceiling as if it’s familiar. But this time, he can see through the whitewash on his glass ceiling, and there are storm clouds there. He knows what will happen at the end of this story. “If this war happens…I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

“It was never a good idea in the first place,” Japan whispers, not looking at him. Staring up at the heavens.

“What wasn’t?”

“This. All of this. You. Me. Europe. Asia. The EU, the UN- money. All of this, countries in each other’s pockets, all this lying and cheating and scrabbling for money and politics.” He pauses, then adds almost as an afterthought, “It’s not your fault, Doitsu-san.”

“It’s yours. If we…If you lose this war, it’ll be China’s fault.”

“It’s no one’s. It’s just human nature.” Japan laughs, gently. This is what their relationship is about, perhaps- solemn remembrance of a time when Alfred had built them again from the ground up. “Yes. History is written by the victors. But the losers who remember. Everyone else forgets.”

Ludwig furrows his brow. “No. It’s not…winners. You only remember if you make yourself remember. When you say goodbye…when you try to put the past behind you-.”

Kiku finally tilts his head to meet his own gaze, as emotionless as ever. “So you are still Germany, Doitsu-san? Not the DVWE? Or simply Ludwig?”

He doesn’t know. Germania and Rome and the Holy Roman Empire and the Weimar Republic and Germany, and now the GAAEN. “You only remember when you know that it was you. Not someone else doing all of that. I lost wars, and I committed genocide, and it was me. Germany is me. Ich war’s, immer.”

“You remember, then.” He nods. “That is good.

“Yao…will fall,” Ludwig, whoever he is, rumbles.

Japan knows. “And I will be ready to catch him. That’s why I’m still here.” He smiles sadly at him across the table. “And you will die, GAAEN-san. It doesn’t matter if China will win or not. They’re fighting in you as we speak.”

He closes his eyes and feels himself sink into the chair and into oblivion. “Europe will survive,” he clips, bitter with despair. “Somebody will survive, but it won’t be me. I may even become Germany again.”

“…That would be nice,” Japan utters into the dusty air, but he doesn’t count on it.

-

When he returns Italy is asleep on the couch.

Ludwig spends a long time standing in the middle of the room in his raincoat and in his boots watching him sleep in the moonlight.

Feliciano is something that Ludwig cannot explain. He’s always there. He’s often a pain, and he’s useless in battle. He’s a failure of an economy. He’s incapable of growth, of progress. And yet he survives.

He finds himself unconsciously leaning closer to hear the gentle breaths that escape his lips, and as his eyes travel down from face to neck to arms draped artfully down to loose fingertips, he notices the sketch-pad and stick of charcoal on the carpet, dropped and casting shadows.

Trapped in the fluidity and sanctity of the moment, Ludwig kneels silently and retrieves the pad, smoothing the wrinkles out of the paper with his broad fingers. He traces the lines of black, mind processing. A picture. A portrait. He takes a shaky breath in wonder.

It’s of him.

It’s in profile; he’s leaning over his desk, glasses in one hand, his fingers kneading the bridge of his nose in a familiar, tired gesture. His hair reaches the nape of his neck and the ends curl outwards- he wonders if it’s Belgium or Austria, that kink. He looks defeated. He looks powerful.

It takes his breath away.

The next page is another portrait. It’s Ludwig again. Hair straight, gelled back, he’s in a business suit and looking annoyed. The next page. In an overcoat, breathing on his hands, wistful- in a shirt he’s only worn as the BRD on one side of the Berlin Wall. The next makes him jump- SS Uniform. In the snow. Next- with a rifle on his back. World War I. He flips the page again. A sense of- what? Inevitability?- washes over him at the smudged wide eyed cheeks of the Holy Roman Empire.

Italy’s loopy script forms a caption at the bottom of each drawing. The same word, over and over.

“…Germania.”

He stays there, frozen, for what feels like a lifetime. He’s overwhelmed by a crushing feeling of defeated acceptance.

“…Germany?” Italy stirs, lids fluttering.

Still kneeling beside him, Ludwig feels detached but filled with emotions and a thousand voices. “Italy.”

“I tried to stay up …for you. Ve-”

He swallows. “You should get to bed. You’ll catch a cold,” he tells him, and it’s almost like an order. It’s almost like Italy in a uniform without his pants on, so Ludwig takes a chance before he can stop himself. “…Germania?”

He nods as he stretches. Italy leans forward and upwards to his earlobe, breath hot and weak in Ludwig’s hair at the nape of his neck. He tries to pull away, but it’s too late now- almost 3000 years too late for that now as Feliciano winds sleepy arms around his neck.

“Germania.” He yawns, content. “It’s Italian. That’s what we call you.”

It’s wrong. Because Germany isn’t Germania. And everybody knows that- Nazi is not Weimar, is not GAAEN. Progress and time and future dictate it.

But Italy isn’t governed by progress. And that’s why, Germany realises, old Europe still exists; because they remember, and without Italy, Germany would-

“-Carry me?” Italy whines as he falls asleep.

So Ludwig does.

-

The end of the world, when it comes, involves a poor man with two personalities named Yung Soo, nuclear warheads, Russia, India, China and America. It starts with a dispute which makes a thousand alliances conflict, and so when India finally declares that China’s gone too far, Australia, Japan and Korea are there to call his bluff. And then Russia (The UEBC) growls Great-Bear down in his throat but does nothing.

But after that, Japan comes back to Beijing to see Yung Soo curled up in a ball, laughing and crying, and it takes minutes before Kiku can make sense of what he’s saying.

“I did it,” the Northern part of him says. “I did it, for you and for China, and now they won’t ignore me anymore-“

“What have you done?” Kiku hisses, shaking him. “Yung Soo!”

And South Korea appears for a moment, unification be damned. “I…They shot him. Ivan.”

Japan knows what shoot means. It’s a separatist terrorist attack, but it’s enough. And Moscow explodes in a storm of violent bloody anger, because ASEAN has just dropped a short range atomic bomb on Khaborovsk and Ivan is bleeding from the stump of one hand.

And then Alfred wakes up for the slightest moment- better the devil you know- and then decides, once more, to care.

(It could be Afghanistan. It could be Iran instead. It could be all of it together; Yung Soo could collapse completely, or Ivan could shoot him back.

It doesn’t really matter how it happens.

Despite what may happen in the pages that make up this text, the future is not important to this story. What is important is the past and our relationship with it.

What matters is Germany and remembrance.)

What matters is that Ludwig wakes up the morning after the world goes to hell, and Italy is not with him. He’s gone.

-

The GAAEN doesn’t move after that. He just sits in his office chair with a gun in his lap in the dark. Because the future’s right there, and the past (Italy) has gone, and now the GAAEN doesn’t have Germany as an excuse anymore.

The creaking of floorboards heralds his last visitor. Ludwig’s been expecting him. “I killed your Grandson.”

“That’s fine,” Rome responds as he stops beside him to look out on the Berlin skyline. “He’s still in there, somewhere.”

Ludwig refuses to look at him. Presently, he gathers his breath and just goes. “What happens to us, Rome, when we die?”

Rome smiles kindly. “Are you thinking of dying soon, old friend?” When Ludwig doesn’t answer he sighs and shifts closer. “We’re countries, Germania. We’re not alive. We can’t die.”

“I’m not Germania,” he responds automatically. “Not anymore.”

“And when exactly can one draw the line between past and present, my friend? If we live not, then how is it that we can die?”

Ludwig’s not in the mood for philosophy. “I’ve killed most of my family. We can die, you fool. I’m not Germania because there are thousands of years between now and then.”

“But we only truly die,” Rome adds, “when people forget that we exist.”

Something claustrophobic is prickling behind Ludwig’s eyes. “So it all comes down to that old argument. Forgetting. And remembering.”

“Germany, look at me-“

“Why should I?” he cries, twisting away, covering his eyes as though afraid. His spine curls up defensively, gun cradled in his lap. “Verdammt nochmal! You’re dead! You’re dead and gone. Shut up!”

Rome, beyond his field of vision, doesn’t say anything but the air is thick with his expected response. Ludwig cringes against the weight of his words as if they were a raised fist.

“But words are all I have before one such as you,” he states under his breath. “Do you want to betray yourself again?”

Ludwig slowly raises his head, and it’s only then that he realises the hot claustrophobic ache in his lungs is sobs, and that he’s crying. Rome is standing before him, gazing down on him impassively. From where Germany is, slumped over a storm of wartime controversy, he seems somehow larger than life, impenetrable. Something familiar and terrible and awesome.

“You can ignore me, Germany. You can block me out, if you want. If that’s what you really want. But I’m here regardless. I won’t go away.”

A wave of tiredness washes over Ludwig at Rome’s grim smile; Japan had looked like that across the empty meeting room. France had looked like that. And, with a new certainty, Ludwig knows that Prussia must have looked like that before he disappeared.

Gott, why didn’t Germany look like that? “I just…I can’t. You’re history.”

“…And isn’t that the point?”

“No.” Anger spikes through him. “In a world where Italy has to die, and where war has to happen to me again and again, that’s not the point. The point is that to win a war you have to forget history. And then…we never learn anything at all. That’s just how it is.”

Isn’t it?

The GAAEN will declare war on Russia tomorrow, or at least try to. Ludwig knows that it’ll be difficult, because he can hear the voices inside of him, and none of them agree, and like Germania, it’s going to kill him. Rome’s voice grows fainter.

“You don’t need to forget things to move on. You proved that yourself. Wirtshaftwunders, Mauerfalls. Every time you try to escape from your past, Ludwig, every time you make a mistake and try to forget it, is when things go wrong.”

Because Roma and Germania are antonyms, like past and future, like dead and alive. Like remembering and forgetting. Progress and inertia.

“And what about tomorrow?” he asks bitterly, closing his eyes.

Rome shrugs and smiles at him like a lover would. Like Italy had, and he leans forward and kisses him. The kiss smells like bronze and dust from history books but it feels like something over, already dead and gone. He pulls away and Germany’s eyes are still closed when he feels fingers replacing his glasses.

“What about tomorrow?” his voice comes from beyond his eyelids. “That’s why we keep living! Tomorrow! Who knows? Who cares?”

He opens his eyes, and Rome is no more. He never was. Like most of Europe now, he coils deep in Ludwig’s stomach, runs through his veins and sees out from his own eyes.

The gun in Ludwig’s palm is burning hot and heavy, like responsibility.

-

Tomorrow there is a world war.

China loses.

The German Administered Alliance of European Nations falls into civil unrest.

And the GAAEN, the EU, Ludwig Weilschmidt, thankfully, disappears.

-

10. Epilogue: “Dies ist mein Abschiedslied”

(“This is my parting song”)

-

"At bottom, this is a tale about the moral effects of suppressing a true story, about the abuse of history, and what happens to you when you pretend there is no history."
- The New York Times Book Review

-

“It didn’t happen. It didn’t happen. It didn’t happen-“

Kiku squeezes the washcloth and fills the room with the gentle splish-splosh of water in a shallow basin. There are a great many scars on China’s back; he has to be careful how he touches him because they bleed all over Japan’s pale fingers if he’s not. Yao flinches.

“It didn’t happen, it didn’t happen. It didn’t happen. It didn’t happen-”

“Hush,” Japan whispers. There’s a big one, right on the indent of Yao’s spine. A nuclear scar from Ivan and India. There are three of them now. Absurdly, Japan pictures a club, an exclusive one, where he sits in the foyer and welcomes them with open arms and a smile and says, Onii-san! Mr Braginski! Welcome! Sit down; it hurts, doesn’t it? Don’t worry- the radiation sickness passes. It’s alright.

“It didn’t happen. It didn’t happen. It didn’t happen. It didn’t happen-“

Kiku grabs his chin and jerks his face into view. The cloth drops to the floor. Yao’s eyes are wide and full of fear and tears and self-hate. Hysterical. “It did happen, Yao. I’m sorry.”

China doesn’t collapse, but he shakes like a man possessed. The world’s greatest economy has just been nuked and lost a war. “What do I do, Japan? It can’t have happened. I…I can’t have. I’m a monster.”

“No you’re not,” he tells him firmly. “You are China.”

“I…I killed people, and I…Yung Soo-“

“He’s fine. Ivan let him go. He’ll come in to visit you tomorrow, when he can walk again.” Yao lets out a shaky laugh that rapidly becomes a scream. Kiku shakes him, hard.

It’s a lie when Japan tells himself that he’d planned it all. He hadn’t. He wouldn’t have- couldn’t have. It’s just history, and he’s beyond revenge or irony. Kiku wants forgiveness, not revenge.

China sits, trembling and watching him with wide uncomprehending eyes. He is a child. He is in the danger of becoming a child again, like Japan, like Germ-

Japan peels off his robe and stands half naked before him. Then, he grasps China’s wrists and places them on his back, to the bottom, to the left. Yao stops shaking as his fingers brush the two black scars sunk into his flesh.

“They heal,” Kiku tells him, quietly. “So did the guilt.”

“…Kiku…”

Pressing his forehead to his brother-cousin-father’s hair, he breathes in the scent of radioactive fallout.

“You’re a country. Keep breathing. Just keep breathing. You’re a country- never forget that.”

It smells faintly of redemption.

-

Australia is on his doorstep with a bouquet of lilies. England stands in the doorway and doesn’t have anything to say.

He has a poppy at his lapel, so eventually Arthur sighs and holds open the door.

Arthur’s letting the tea steep in the teapot when he hears the footsteps behind him. Australia opens the cupboards at their feet. He tenses his fingers on the teapot and refuses to look him in the eye.

Presently, Australia wets his lips, still staring ahead. “…You used to keep vases ‘ere, in this cupboard, didn’t yer?”

So he still remembers. “I moved them. Up there.” He motions to their left. Neither of them move.

“Look-“ he begins, but doesn’t continue. The grandfather clock clicks the passing seconds. He tries again. “Look-“

Arthur is a father bitter with the loss and experience that a fallen family brings, but as he sighs and unclenches his fingers, he thinks he might just be getting used to all this. “Just get the blasted vase and put your flowers on the table and sit down. Just…just do it.”