It was a day that felt like nothing could go wrong when Bella took her son Feliciano to the park, his tiny hand clasped in her slim fingers, trotting along beside her in his wellington boots. He had a strange adoration for wellies – he wore them regardless of whether it was raining or shining, and even sometimes toddled about the house in them. They had been a bright, shiny red when first bought, but had since been worn and dulled after being made to splash in muddy puddles and kick at dew-wet grass and scuff pavements. She and Ludwig had tried to coerce him into getting new ones but, as Feliciano usually did when something he didn't like was happening, he had cried, and they had given up. So he wore them to the park that day, even though the sun was a buttery hole in the unblemished blue sky and no clouds loomed to threaten rain.

Feliciano was three, and he liked running more than walking, so he kept attempting to pull away from his mother's hand whenever he saw a duck or a squirrel, eager to chase them into oblivion and then perhaps make friends with them, because he always had loved animals, especially cats. But Bella, in spite of her dainty nature, held firm to him. Feliciano didn't just like running – he was good at it too, Bella knew from watching him rocket around their garden – so she was aware that were she to let go, then he would be off like the cork of a champagne bottle, and she did not want that in such a wide, spacious park with plenty of trees and bushes and benches to hide behind. When he looked pleadingly up at her she shook her head at him chidingly. She cursed her muteness, for she couldn't explain to him why she was holding him back the way she was. If she wasn't mute then she wouldn't even need to hold him back – she could say "Okay, but don't go far and be careful!" in the same way she had seen other mothers do. But she was mute, so she couldn't set conditions, so continued to restrain him.

Feliciano was sad to be held back from play, as could be seen from looking into his chocolate eyes flecked with amber which he had inherited from Bella, but he had been raised to be good, so he didn't complain or whine like other children would have. He just kept pottering along beside his mother, looking down at his shadow, cast on the path that circled around the park's pond in a cobbled ring, and wondered why it was so much taller than he. Bella, understanding shadows better than her son, looked elsewhere, observing the families all around her and feeling happy to see them all spending the afternoon together, but simultaneously feeling a pang of jealousy at the absence of her husband. Alas, he had a bakery to run for the sake of their livelihood, so she couldn't expect for him to drop that to wonder aimlessly around a park. Still, she yearned for it. She was cheered up though, when she saw from the corner of her eye an artist.

Bella loved art. She had loved it ever since she was dexterous enough to hold a paintbrush, and she had practiced it from that day forth. When the other children in her village in Italy had been cycling and running in the streets, she had been painting. When her sister Lovina had been street-fighting the local boys for pocket-money, she had been painting. When her fellow classmates in her small, rurally-set school had been finding jobs, she had been painting, and applying to study painting in America. She loved it, so she didn't hesitate to lead Feliciano to the artist sitting at the bank of the pond. He was moustachioed, and greying, and round around the belly, and possessed the most wonderful technique for emulating reflections on water that Bella simply had to learn.

Bella could tell that the man was grinning at her when she approached, even though his mouth was obscured by his caterpillar of a moustache, because she could see the way his lower eyelids creased and his cheeks dimpled. "Come to watch?" he asked. Bella nodded without looking at him, unable to tear her eyes from the canvas. The man chuckled and shifted in his stool, turning back to the easel and dabbing blue into purple on his palette. "It's a beautiful day for painting, isn't it?"

Bella wanted to agree, "Yes, it is," and then she wanted to tell him, "but every day is a beautiful day for painting," and then she wanted to add, "though today is especially so," but she didn't bring her notebook with her on their walk, and she had stopped learning sign language as a child after her sister had upset her by telling her she was feeding the Italian stereotype with all her hand gestures, so she just silently nodded beside him and hoped that he could see the movement from the corner of his crow-footed eye. Whether he did or not she didn't know because he paid no more heed to her in favour of pressing his brush to the canvas. Bella watched, fascinated, but she still didn't know how he had created those reflections.

She let go of Feliciano's hand and pointed her forefinger at one of the reflections, and the man paused to look back at her inquisitive expression. "What's the matter?" he asked, in an almost offended way, like he thought she was pointing out a flaw, but when she traced the outline of the reflection he tilted his head back and opened his mouth in a circular shape in understanding. "The reflection in the water?" Bella nodded, and he chuckled and shook his head, endeared by her interest, "You want to know how I did it?" Bella nodded again, more vigorously, her smile victorious from having communicated with neither notebook nor an ability to talk, and the man shifted in his stool again so that he was facing her more, and he held his palette aloft for her to see. "Well, you just mix these colours together to make this hue, you see here." He pointed to a scraped-at splodge of blended colours and continued on, "And then you apply it to the canvas like so."

Bella watched as he got out a clean brush, tainted its hairs with the splodge, and then brushed it along the empty bottom of the palette in a downwards motion before swiping the wet paint across sideways. Bella noticed she was gaping, so closed her mouth, and the man chuckled again, obviously good-natured. "And there you have it," he said, holding his arms wide in a ta-da gesture. "Pretty neat trick, huh? Learnt it back in my twenties studying painting in Austria." Bella wished to tell him that she thought his trick was very neat indeed, and that she would be trying it out as soon as she got home, and then she wanted to inform him that her husband's brother's girlfriend was born and raised in Austria and was very good at the piano, but, unable to, she just nodded.

The man noticed her strangely consistent silence, and regarded her with a curious gleam in his eye. "You don't talk much, do you?" Almost bashfully, Bella tilted her chin upwards to display her neck, and patted her throat to indicate where her useless vocal cords lay. "Mute, huh?" the man asked. Bella nodded again, just as sadly as he had asked it. "Shame," he said, scratching the crown of his balding head. People never knew what to say when they found out she was mute, unsure whether to clap her on the back and say "Cheer up, dearie!" or to avert their eyes and apologise for something that wasn't their fault. Bella just shrugged in response. It wasn't nice, but she had gotten used to it and was honestly becoming weary of the unnecessary pity. She was just mute, not sick or homeless or an orphan, and she was alive and well and had a child and husband who loved her as much as she did them. If anything, Bella thought herself pretty lucky. Now if only she was able to tell people so…

"You here alone?" the man asked, waving his palette around to gesture at the scape of the park. Bella shook her head, then looked down to her legs where she expected Feliciano to be stood, smiling behind the skirt of her dress or absently following a butterfly with his eyes or some other simple thing he tended to do.

Except he wasn't.

He wasn't stood where she thought he would be, and when she turned to look behind her right leg he wasn't there either. She spun all around in a complete circle, but he was nowhere. Her breath choked off in her throat, her heart seized up and her limbs locked. She looked to the artist, searched for worn, dull red wellies underneath his stool, for a stubborn brunet curl peeking out from behind his easel, but there was nothing.

"Miss," the man asked attentively, cautiously, bemused by her face which had been eager and merry a moment ago, but was now contorted with fear as panic ripped at her gut, "are you alright?"

"No!" Bella wanted to scream. "No, I am not alright! My son is gone and I have no idea where!" She pointed to the space beside her legs, the absent space where her child was supposed to be, had always been before when she had taken her eyes off him for a moment, but the man just looked between her and the empty air she pointed at, with a crumpled brow that told her he didn't understand. She had neither the time nor the means to make him understand, so she took off without waving goodbye.

She dashed to the highest slope of the park and spun in circles on it until she became dizzy, her head snapping to and fro frantically, her eyes darting here and there and everywhere looking for red, for brunet, for smallness, for a blur running after ducks and squirrels and cats, but all the families in the park blurred together and suddenly every child looked like hers and all of a sudden there seemed to be far more flora and fauna than she remembered, cutting off her view all around.

She stopped spinning, her long plaits banging against her when she did, one at her back and one at her chest, and she gasped shortly before her throat tightened again with terror. Her eyes flicked to the pond. Nothing. They sped to the picnic site nearby. Nothing. They raced to the park entrance. Nothing. She gasped, and her throat was so dry it hurt.

Desperately, though she knew it would do nothing, she mouthed his name. "Feliciano!" She shaped her lips around those five syllables over and over as she started up running again, down the hill to the path, praying that God would mercy her and for just a few minutes bless her with a voice. "Feliciano!" she cried out silently, "Feliciano! Feliciano!" God had no such mercy for a mute mother, and she felt tears begin to well. They made her vision bleary, and a woman yelled out of surprise when Bella blindly ran in front of her.

"Whoa, are you okay there?" Bella whipped round to blink through her tears at the woman. She was holding a child's hand, and for a split-second he was the spitting image of Feliciano. But when she blinked he was not, though he was just about the same size. The woman took a step back when Bella jabbed her finger at the boy, looking at the woman and desperately trying to convey what she wanted to say with her eyes in the stead of her mouth. The woman only cocked her head at her though, so Bella clenched her teeth together to stop herself from soundlessly screaming in frustration and again jabbed a finger at the boy. She then held her hand aloft at her side, palm-down, to show height, where Feliciano would have reached to were he beside her as he was supposed to be. Much to Bella's dismay, the woman only shook her head, creased her brow, and used her hand to pull her son behind her, to shield him. She hadn't understood. She thought Bella was crazy. Bella knew that she really would go insane if she didn't find her son soon.

The woman wasn't going to be any more help when she was questioning Bella's mental state, so Bella blurred past her, headed for the nearby picnic site. She got weird looks when she ran into the fray, hair frizzy and eyes watery, but she took advantage of the attention on her to make frantic rocking, cradling motions with her arms, the universal symbol for a baby. Her efforts were fruitless. Everybody stared at her in the same way the artist had, the same way the woman and her boy had, and Bella heaved out a sob that made no sound.

She ran from the scene again, away from the people who misunderstood her, onto more people. On the path and on the grass, under trees and bushes, she stopped people, and cradled a son that wasn't there, and showed them how he only just reached the top of her knees, and pointed to the eyes and tugged at the hair he had inherited from her, and held up three fingers to show his age, but she only ever got the same confused, frightened looks.

She hated being mute, like she never had before. She was useless without a voice, a failure to her son, and it made her stomach churn sickly as she imagined what could have happened to Feliciano. He could have wondered out of the park and into the road, or waded too far out into the pond, or sweetly followed a stranger when told to do so, and the mere thought made her want to collapse on the floor and vomit. She almost did, falling against a nearby oak, trying to shake thoughts of her son hit, mangled in wreckage, drowned, sunken at the bottom of cold dirty water, abused, broken by the hands of a cruel someone.

"Feliciano!" she mouthed again uselessly. She couldn't quell her tears anymore. She let them waterfall out of her eyes, stream down her cheeks, pool at her chin as she continued to run crazily around the park. People watched her with apprehension and curiosity as she cut herself ducking into hedges, dirtied herself clambering under benches, snagged her hair peering into thickets. She became more and more dishevelled in appearance as mud and dirt and filth clung to her wet face and cruel branches and twigs raked at her skin and drew red beads of blood that only reminded her of how bright Feliciano's wellies had been the day they had bought them, how he had beamed with blossoming milky teeth as he had hugged his parent's legs in gratitude, how he had bubbled with laughter, and she ached to be able to see her son looking so happy again, to see her son alive and well and safe again. But the way she was going, she never would. She was tattered and torn and ruined, inside and out, and she needed a voice to scream out of grief for her. It was then that the idea hit her.

Her hands moved faster than ever before as they dove into the pocket of her dress and fished out her phone. Her thumbs all but flew across the keypad as she unlocked it, opened the menu, selected contacts, and then scrolled through the list of her last hopes. She paused at Ludwig, and then hit the 'message' button and clumsily typed out a cry for help.

feli missin at park help

She hit 'send' without a second thought, without a care for capital letters or punctuation or spelling. Ludwig would know what park she meant, because she had wrote in her notebook to him just an hour ago before they left that they were going to the park just a couple of blocks from their bakery-cum-home. She felt bad taking him away from his work, guilty that he wouldn't even have to leave had she just been a better mother, but it was urgent and she was sure his brother Gilbert would look after the bakery since he was there that day helping out part-time as he sometimes did. The response was almost immediate, and she breathed out a sigh of relief when she read it.

stay there, i'm on my way now.

Bella slumped against a nearby tree, facing the park entrance, and did as Ludwig had told her to, unable to do otherwise, unable to do anything. Oh, how she hated herself. She was a terrible mother, unable to look after her son. She didn't deserve to mother a child when she couldn't protect him properly. She felt that Ludwig was probably thinking the same as he ran to the park. She wished for him to. She wanted him to yell at her and angrily ask her what she was thinking and declare that he was never going to let her handle Feliciano alone again. She wanted him to, but she looked down at her dirt-caked shoes as she dejectedly realised that he probably wouldn't. He would assure her that everything was fine, and insist that nothing was her fault, and kindly forgive her unconditionally, and she felt it was more than she deserved.

Bella didn't have to wait long before Ludwig arrived, ever-reliable, hurrying towards her, having instantly spotted her pressed to the forefront of a tree. He ran towards her, still clad in his floury apron, his expression full of concern as he took in the sight of his wife, matted and miserable. She could only imagine how awful she looked to him, with filth on her face and grass stains on her dress and her hair falling out of their plaits, but no matter how she looked Ludwig still took her into his arms as soon as he reached her, and Bella selfishly clutched at him. The hug was brief and urgent, but it smelt of bread and butter cream and home, and Bella inhaled it gratefully, allowing the familiarity of it to calm her somewhat.

"Where did you lose him?" Ludwig asked after they had pulled apart, clutching at her arms and bending down so their eyes were even and focused on each other. Ludwig wasn't one to fumble about uselessly; he acted instinctually but practically, and he was usually right in doing so. Bella took him by the hand, and tugged incessantly at him, making him follow her to the bank where she had last seen him, where the artist was still sat painting the scene. He looked up upon hearing their footsteps, and was obviously surprised to see how ragged Bella had become in a matter of minutes. Bella stopped beside the artist, where she had been stood when revering his painting and neglecting her son, and threw her hands out to the patch of grass where she last remembered having Felicano's hands in hers, where she had callously abandoned his hand to point at some stupid paint which was far less important than her son.

"When did you lose him?" Ludwig asked. Bella faltered. She couldn't recall how long she had run rampant around the park. Everything was a blur of panic and shame, and it all hit her hard again as she was once more useless, even with her husband there, even with a voice to act on her behalf. God, she hated herself. Feliciano deserved better. Ludwig deserved better.

The artist piped up behind her then, while she was stalling pathetically and being as pointless as a broken pencil, and she spun to face him, eager for any information she had to help her be reunited with her child. "You were here just about ten minutes ago, miss," he said. Ten minutes? Had time really been so short? To Bella it felt like a century she had been without her son, like she had delved the bowels of the park for all eternity, forever since she had felt his hand warm and alive in hers.

"Thank you," Ludwig said to the artist what Bella had so yearned to say since he had taught her how to paint reflections, and then he was gripping her by the elbows, searching her eyes for understanding as he spoke his next words in a voice that was calm but severe, "You stay here in case he wanders back and keep a look out for him, okay?" Bella nodded, so he let go and pulled back and began to walk away. "I'll go and talk to people and find out if anyone's seen him."

As she watched him go, jogging along the path in search of people to speak to, Bella felt plagued with jealousy. How she longed to talk to people too, to ask whether they had seen a three year old boy with brown hair and eyes wandering round, to thank people regardless of whether or not they had any information. But she couldn't, and it stabbed at her and stung her more than her grazed knees and elbows.

"You lost someone?" Bella heard the artist ask. She turned around slowly to face him, her face drooping and her shoulders slumping with the burden of her sadness, and, less frantically, almost listlessly, she formed her arms into a cradle and rocked them to and fro. "Oh," he said. Bella nodded, keeping her eyes to her feet, too ashamed to look up and face the ridicule of a reckless mother. "Well, I'm sure your husband will find him. If he's little then he couldn't have wandered far." Bella wanted to smile appreciatively at him, but it hurt too much. Instead, she stood in silence, watching the world go by as normal, everybody happily oblivious to her pain and the absence of her son. She noticed every single boy that went by, and her heart broke with every single one that wasn't hers.

It seemed an age before Ludwig finally came trumping back over the grass, but when he did he had a precious something bundled in his arms that made Bella's heart soar, and had she the voice for it she would have sung. There, his arms gripping his father's neck, his face sheepish and ashamed, was Feliciano. The artist said something behind her but she didn't hear it. Everything was Feliciano, and she wasted no time tripping and stumbling into a run, meeting them halfway.

"A young couple saw him by the pond," Ludwig told her when she reached them. "I found him playing with the pebbles in the water." Indeed, Feliciano's wellies were dripping wet, and his hands and the cuffs of his coat sleeves and his trousers up to his knees were soaked through, and caked with grime and dirt. But that didn't matter, not when there wasn't a scratch on him, and, grime or no, Bella didn't hesitate to take Feliciano into her arms when Ludwig offered him down to her and crush him to her bosom, trying to mould him there, where she could never lose him again. Feeling the cold of his wet hands against her collarbone and the warm thrumming of his blood beneath his skin throughout, Bella sank into the purest relief she had ever felt, and allowed herself to cry soundlessly there. He wasn't mangled, or drowned, or abused; he was safe, and whole, and perfect as he had always been. She fervently stroked his hair as she wept, worshipping every strand.

She pulled him away for a moment, to look into his eyes, to see the life flickering there, and used her thumb to try to wipe away a patch of dirt on his cheek, but only smudged it in the process. It didn't matter; she just felt so blessed to still have a cheek to fail at cleaning. Feliciano's face turned sad when he saw his mother's tears. He never liked seeing anyone upset, and to see it upset him just as much. "I'm sorry, mama," he said with a quivering frown and a trembling chin, tears blooming in the corners of his eyes. "Don't be sad. I'm sorry."

Bella pulled him back into her then, to rest his head against her shoulder, to allow him to fist at the soft, white, dirty material of her dress, and she rocked him in the finally full cradle of her arms, gently, but urgently, to make up for the time he had been gone from her. Ludwig placed a comforting arm around her upper back, his hand gripping her shoulder and forearm in a soft, warm vice, and Bella turned into him, burying her face into the crook of his shoulder, sandwiching their child between their chests, and he let her dampen his uniform with her tears.

Ludwig brought his other arm up then, to embrace her fully, and there they stood, beside the befuddled artist, and Bella and Feliciano cried, and Ludwig let them though he was shy about public displays of emotion usually, and all the passers-by slowed to look questioningly at the baker without a bakery and his strangely sad and filthy wife and child. Bella didn't care, not when Feliciano and Ludwig were both safe and alive and warm around her. She clung to them desperately, and she hurt with relief and guilt whilst Ludwig patted her forearm and hushed her in the voice reserved just for her: the one someone as useless as she didn't deserve.

'You're useless,' a dark voice in her mind told her. 'You're useless.' For the rest of the day, it repeated those two words in a mantra, told her them from a shadowed corner in the back of her mind that she couldn't reach to fight it away. Honestly though, she didn't want to fight those words away. She took them in as truth and fact, and agreed with them.

"Yes, I'm useless."

'You lost your son. You're useless.'

"I'm a useless mother."

'Ludwig hates you. You're useless.'

"I'm a useless wife."

All day she thought as such, and with every hour she withered more, until she looked as dark as the voice sounded, her hair hanging limply around her face with its sunken eyes and downturned lips. Ludwig noticed that there was something not quite right with his wife, and so in bed that night, when he couldn't stand her unusual reserved demeanour any longer, he asked her, "Was ist los, Bella? What is wrong?"

Bella was distraught that Ludwig had noticed her change in self – that she was burdening him again with worries – and would have liked to drop the matter. But she knew Ludwig, and knew that he didn't – couldn't – just drop things once he'd decided to pick them up. And so, she picked up her notebook and pen from her bedside table, and wrote out her woes to share.

I'm useless.

"Nein," Ludwig protested, as she had known that he would. "No, you're not."

Yes I am. I failed to protect my son. I caused trouble for my husband. I am useless.

"No you are not!" Ludwig said more adamantly, pushing her notebook out of her hands before she could write more things to twist and wrench and break his heart, and pulling her into one of the hugs she loved so much: warm and safe, and just tight enough to keep her flush against him, to protect her momentarily from the dark voice. "You did your best," he told her as he brought his cheek to rest on the crown of her head. "And in the end you did the right thing, and we found him. Hush, Liebling. Bitte schreien Sie nicht." No matter how much he begged her not too though, Bella cried, long and hard into his arms and chest and shoulders. She cried until Ludwig was damp all over, until she had run out of tears altogether, until midnight turned to twilight, at which point she fell asleep with salty droplets still clinging to the lashes of her closed eyes; and Ludwig, still pleading with her in a shaking, cracking voice – "Hush, Liebling. Alles ist gut. Shush, Engel." – shed some salt of his own.


Author's Notes:

Hey. So. I guess this is me trying to get back into the Hetalia fandom? I don't know, I fell out of it for a while. I still love it dearly, but...Well, anyway, here's a thing. It's based off the human AU Bonnefoy Daycare by LadyBeemer, which has a mute fem!Italy who is married to Germany and has a child with him. It's a cute idea, so I used it. Last time I talked to LadyBeemer (granted, that was a few years ago, and I haven't really kept up with Bonnefoy Daycare for a few years either), she told me that it was fine to do what we liked with the characters, so even though in the AU Ludwig is a police officer, here he is a baker. Because who doesn't love baker Ludwig?
Thank you for reading!

Disclaimer: Hetalia does not belong to me, but to its creator, Hidekaz Himaruya.