Genres: Historical, Drama, Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Warnings: Rated T for references and implications to traumatic events surrounding WWII, including Kristallnacht and concentration camps. There is also minor violence, along with indications of survivor guilt.
If this material is extremely sensitive to you, please refrain from reading. It is not my intention to offend or trigger anyone.
x.x.x.
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Zerschmettert
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1940
It was quiet at Germany's house.
The silence was greatly due to the fact that Germany himself was gone, along with chatty Italy and the ever-observant Japan.
The Axis were often out, and Austria cared very little these days about where they went, what they did. He knew there was more to this war than the news he received about it, and as much as it irritated him to be treated as little more than a begrudging asset, he was also somewhat grateful to not know.
And yet, he knew enough.
He was kept from the front lines of this war, but the war had originated here in Germany, before spreading like a plague of deception right to his doorstep in Vienna. It was there that he'd made his own choice, the only one he could.
Austria had never liked to think of himself as a fool. He knew Germany would not have taken no for an answer, and so he had been prepared - prepared, but never ready for this - when Ludwig had shown up to collect his answer.
He'd smiled slightly, shrugging off the warnings of Hungary and Italy as if nothing was wrong. He'd sat there with teacup and saucer in hand, cloaking himself in impeccable dress and collected countenance.
It was not so different than how he held himself in Germany's house now, seated at the kitchen table with a glass of clear, cool water, a purely domestic scene sheltered from the horror and chaos of the outside world.
Austria had willingly given himself, his people and his land over to that man who was once a child he'd helped raise, in order to survive.
And when he realized the full extent of the madness planned, it was just long enough to be too late. He could not back out now, though he thought about it, when he saw the toll it was taking on all of them; how Germany's thundering rages shook the house, how Italy broke down in tears with the stress of a war far too large for him, how Japan's observant gaze had turned uncharacteristically dark and calculating.
This is not how it should be, Austria would think, this is not how any of us should be.
Worse, still, was how those moments of clarity sometimes disappeared.
Austria too found his own personality changing, shaped by the influence of his people dividing and dispersing into two different groups, the persecuted and the tormentors. Austria had been through many wars previous to this one, certainly, but never before had there been such a spirit of irrational hatred among the people.
It was this that broke Roderich's brittle heart more than anything else. Like any nation, he'd wanted his people to be strong. He'd wanted a better future for them. Now they would be lucky if they had a future at all, if the combination of the Third Reich and the Allies did not bomb and burn and break his cities and children - not even his legal citizens anymore - to unrepairable bits and pieces.
It was this which made him regret his decision more than anything else, this that caused thoughts of walking out to do something, anything to flit through his mind. The rage, turmoil and helplessness would flood him with a staggering bout of Sturm und Drang, twisting in his gut. He had no one to blame but himself, no one to direct that anger at save for those who lived in this house with him.
Occasionally, Germany required his presence during meetings elsewhere, and there in public he could not allow traitorous thoughts to surface.
He had tried to reason with Germany, once even going so far as to shake his shoulders and snap that he was a fool, that this was insanity.
The argument ended in a thinly veiled threat that the territory of Ostmark would still be perfectly useful if Roderich were sent elsewhere.
After that day, Roderich didn't say as much. He spoke coolly, only when necessary, and he never allowed his expression to show more than a flicker of emotion. He often stayed holed up in his bedroom, save for nights like this when the others were all gone.
Well, all except one.
A beer stein clunked heavily onto the table as Prussia took a seat across from him, carelessly leaning back to lay his boots across the table.
Gilbert had always been one constant in Roderich's life, even now, when Prussia was a word heard less and less, and Austria was just as forbidden. How befitting that they would be stuck together through this time, two tired old minds in the bodies of young men, caught in a war through ties to the same blue-eyed younger nation.
Something hit Austria smack in the forehead. He was jolted out of his bitter dinnertime ruminations, looking down to find a piece of bread on the table before him.
"I would appreciate it," he bit out in a quiet, cutting tone, "If you acted like a grown man for once in your life and refrained from throwing food at me."
"You were thinking too hard." Gilbert replied easily, not looking perturbed in the least. When Roderich met his eyes, he found a spark of petty triumph in them, glittering crimson. "Besides, you look like somebody could snap you in half." He raised a brow at Austria's glass of water-more than half-empty-and snorted. "Light dinner, huh, Priss?"
"I've had enough." Roderich countered vaguely.
Curling his hand around the glass, he took a long, delicate sip to drain it of its contents. He had to work around a lump in his throat to swallow it, and perhaps Gilbert was right. He was thinking too hard, and he would never make it through a time like this by doing that. He would go insane before it was all over if he kept thinking about it -...
This time the bread hit his spectacles, crumbs sticking to the lenses. He set the drinking glass down much harder than necessary, glaring rather ineffectively at the now snickering man across from him.
"Ich schwöre, I am not here for your entertainment, Preußen!" He finally snapped, placing his palms on the table and rising out of his seat slightly.
Gilbert smirked. "No, but you're not here for much else. You could stand to loosen up."
Outraged by the smug look in the other man's eyes, the amused curl of his lips and the sight of his dirty boots upon the table, Austria stood up and sneered. It was an ugly, twisted expression, but Prussia didn't even flinch. They were both so used to this game, and the reactions were scripted just as much as they were sincere. Seeing his cue, Austria would take it as an opportunity to retreat again.
"I don't need to hear this from you. You can be the one to clean this-" He nodded sharply to the bits of bread from Gilbert's roll. "-up before Ludwig throws a fit."
With that, he snatched his glass away and turned on his heel, striding to the kitchen.
A frazzled sort of energy pulsed along his nerves. In his hasty haze of fury, he accidentally knocked his hip hard against a corner of the kitchen counter, the unexpectedly searing pain causing him to falter.
Something broke.
One moment he was holding the glass in his hands, and the next it had shattered, shards laying scattered on the unforgiving linoleum floor.
The blood drained away from his face in an unpleasant, dizzying rush, and Austria had to swallow hard once more, his throat suddenly dry.
It wasn't right.
He'd ruined it, and it looked so different, far more sinister now.
A memory began to crack through a more fragile section of the protective barrier his mind had constructed. The knowledge came tenuously at first, because Roderich had tried very hard, most days, to fool himself into not remembering, just as he tried not to think of what was happening in the present.
He'd had years of practice for pushing painful memories to the back of his mind and smoothing over them with false indifference. He did it with memories of Switzerland, of Spain and Hungary, and definitely of Prussia. One day, he would add memories of Germany to that starkly aphotic place. Anything too hurtful, too horrifying became blurred in his memory - like photographs soaked in water and left to bleed their details away.
Perhaps it was a cowardly way of coping. Even so, he could hardly help the way his head attempted to protect what remained of his heart.
Now, frozen in place, staring at the damage with wide, horrified eyes, he remembered that night less than two years past in vivid detail.
It had been cold, cold in Germany and cold in his homeland, the sky pitch black when the attacks began.
He remembered the scent of gunpowder and ashes carried about on the clothes of men, the acrid taste of hate and horror on his tongue. The way the shouts and pleas and sobs of the people - his people, some had been his people - rang out through the dark night now reverberated anew in his ears, along with how the wretched racket of glass shattering and falling to the ground had echoed all across the land.
Death had been present then, carried out by the Sturmabteilung and the non-Jewish civilians coerced into joining them. Death had been present ever since, every day since Kristalnacht, waiting in dark alleys and at the ends of railways, lingering in bullet-ridden trenches and on the open seas between nations.
Death had been ushered in on that night, and it had stayed. It was always there now, to hang in the air along with madness, to cloak them all in urgent fear and needless hate, fed by the insanity of one man with an agenda even nations were powerless to immediately stop.
When that glass hit the floor, every horrific piece of that despicable night shattered through to the forefront of Austria's mind. His surroundings began to fall away, present reality blurring and meshing with the past, forming a crushing weight which threatened to drive him to his knees.
The glass was broken.
It was all there, but it wasn't whole anymore, it wasn't right.
He needed to pick up the pieces, but they would never be the same because he'd let them all fall, crystal, glass everywhere, screaming please, his people, his children, broken mess, please save them, what had he done what could he do...?
Dropping to the floor, he began to frantically sift through the pieces with shaking hands, pricking his fingers with each jagged part he plucked from the floor.
It can never be repaired, he thought, there is no method to bring it all back together again, can't bring them back, they're gone, someone please save them, too late, too late...
Someone was sobbing, quiet, shuddering intakes of breath. When his chest constricted to the point of pain and hot tears burned in his eyes, Roderich realized that it was him.
Still, he could not bring himself to stop.
He could hardly think to do anything at all but continue his futile attempts to pick up the glass, cradling the shards in one hand close to his chest. They weren't pure anymore, they were scratched from the fall and stained with his blood, there was blood on his hands, he couldn't pick them all up, there was no way to clean up this damaged mess...
"What the hell are you doing?!" An obstreperous voice asked in rough shock, startling the nation kneeling on the floor and causing him to hiss as a long shard cut into his palm.
Roderich didn't look up. He didn't need to. He didn't care to see Gilbert or face his apparent anger.
All that mattered was the glass.
"I have to..." He feebly attempted to explain. The words were half-obstructed, rasped out in a tortured tone as if the glass was in his throat instead of his hands. "I have to - save them."
"Save what?"
The question only served to spur him on. He ignored the man, focusing on his useless task.
"Roderich..."
Footsteps thudded closer, heavy and determined. Roderich had always envied that – that determination, that strength. He could feel the vibrations against the floor from the footfalls, and he curled his fist around the glass in his hand protectively, hunching over the mess.
"I have to!" He repeated agitatedly, his heartbeat hammering in his chest. Every part of him began to tremble with the phantom feelings of fear and terror, accompanied by a very fresh, agonizingly bitter wave of regret.
Something was spattering down onto the glass, clear. Tears. He didn't feel himself crying. He certainly didn't think the man approaching should see him crying. It was another thing he needed to keep to himself. If secrets were all he had left to his possession, then he should hold onto those.
Crying was useless. Crying wouldn't save them...
The steps stopped right beside him, as Gilbert crouched down. "Look at me." He commanded, milder than before.
Austria shook his head defiantly. He would not, could not bear to look at Prussia now.
As tears dripped unbidden down his cheeks, he grieved.
Austria mourned for all of his children - both the ones following orders and the ones without any rights at all.
The cold, armored facade he wore was by no means infallible, and beneath that uncaring exterior Austria was being torn apart. He was caught between the poisonous, powerful prison of his position in this war and the painful realization that he had failed his children, becoming more ensnared in these bonds each day.
Survive. Survive. He curled his hands into fists, heedless of how the glass was slicing into his skin. Please survive, he thought, as much a prayer as he could bring himself to manage these days.
"You idiot," he tried to scoff, but he choked on bitterness instead, the words coming out far too shaky. He hoped Prussia didn't notice, and wouldn't ask whether he was talking to himself or not, because Austria didn't the know the answer to that.
Strong arms hauled him to his feet. He fought them, using the adrenaline from the fear and pain to lash out against the only one he could at the moment. It was a short battle, however, and soon he found his chin in a firm grasp as he was forced to gaze upon the face of his past enemy turned companion.
"What is wrong with you?" Prussia was looking at him contemplatively, a confused mixture of scorn and astonishment.
The argent-haired man stared at the face of the former aristocrat, then down at the glass. Realization passed over his features, softening them slightly as he, too, recalled that night which had added an entirely new and horrifying aspect to their lives.
"Österreich ." Prussia uttered, and Austria could not bear to hear his true name then, not when the grief and guilt were caving in upon the farce he had so carefully constructed to keep those feelings at bay.
In that moment, Austria resented everything, from Prussia's clunky boots, to Germany's tile floor and fragile glassware, and especially his own stupid, selfish being...
"I need to get out." He whispered abruptly, as if he'd just realized where he was, what he was, what this was.
"Take your hands off me." Kicking out, he shouted a hysterical plea. "I need to get out of here, Preußen, right now!"
"You can't!" Prussia retorted, effortlessly jerking the dark-haired man back when he lunged suddenly toward the doorway. "Where would you go?"
It was a valid question. Austria wouldn't even make it far enough to be able to surrender to the Allies, not when he was in Berlin, in the center of the stranglehold of the Third Reich.
Roderich fell silent, horrid scenarios running through his mind.
He would never make it out of the city.
They would bring him back like a wayward stray, and there would be questions. If he answered incorrectly, he might be sent away...away, to where those with a surname like his went. His own railways may even cart him there, and wouldn't that be a twist, beyond anything he had imagined even in his worst of nightmares.
His breath came in short, shallow bursts, his gaze darting about the room, anywhere save for the man clutching his arm tightly.
He could not trust Germany's mental stability.
The man might leave him there until the wretched war was over, and in the meantime, Austria would be even more powerless than he was now. He would be stripped of everything and forced to watch as people - some of them still his people, just as they had been back then - died around him each and every day.
Spots began to dance in his vision - black and white - blurring into dark, derisory images. His chest felt so tight and heavy, Roderich expected it to collapse at any moment, crumbling away just like his pillars of independence and security had.
Regret, fear and loathing clawed at his heart – intense loathing of this war for what it was doing to his people, to Germany, to Prussia and Hungary and every nation he'd ever known. It was combined with loathing of himself, for how incredibly easily he had been reduced to this because of the choice he'd made, regardless of what he knew the alternative would have brought.
Where would he go? Who would he ever look in the eye again, now that he was this?
Even so, he renewed his fight against Prussia's hold, desperate to chase away the hollowness in his bones, the heaviness in his heart.
His chest was burning, hurting, hot slicing pains which made it hard to breathe. He didn't need to breathe, did he? It would be fine if he didn't breathe, he shouldn't have wasted time on his own breaths back then...
All dignity lost, he struggled like a frantic animal, but even after being effectively abolished as a nation, Prussia was still stronger than him. He caught Austria's thin wrists and pinned them together in one hand.
He was louder, too, his voice rising above Austria's frenzied string of protests and curses, cutting through his rapid panting.
But Roderich refused to hear anything, offering no recognition to the other man's words.
Only the 'crack ' of flesh smacking flesh penetrated his hysteric haze of upheaval.
The hard slap snapped his head to the side with harsh force, pain stinging deeply against his cheek and jaw. There was a ringing in his ears, echoing throughout the room as both he and Prussia quieted and froze.
Swaying slightly from the blow, Austria curled his cut up hands into fists, nails digging into his palms. The slap had cleared his head, and the physical ache grounded him as his mental and emotional statuses slowly returned to resigned, forced sort of numbness.
"This is the safest place for you." Prussia whispered, a firm hiss. There was something which was antithetical to his personality in his expression for just that moment, something which softened it and hardened it in grief all at the same time.
It was the closest thing to an apology that Austria had ever seen upon his face in all their years of life.
Roderich stared at him, the heavy weight of horror sinking into his bone. He sagged against the other man's grip, limbs shaky as the fight left his body. Blood was welling from the cuts on his hands, small, thin streams flowing down the curve of his wrists to slowly congeal and stain Prussia's fingers where he held them.
"I don't want it." Violet eyes bore into crimson desperately, some maddened glint swimming within their depths as if he was pleading, for escape, for forgiveness, for comfort, all those things he didn't deserve.
Gilbert stared back at him steadily, saying nothing for a long while. He refused to let Roderich go, though he made no move to pull him closer.
Instead, his expression hardened into a more familiar one of gruff irritation.
Steering the dark-haired nation around the mess and over to the sink, he turned the faucet on and felt the temperature before thrusting Roderich's hands beneath the cold water.
"No one can give you what you want." He muttered, and if there was any resentment in his tone, Austria had little time to dwell on it.
Gilbert reached for the beer he'd brought in with him. He grabbed it and poured what remained over the cuts on the musician's hands, a needless precautionary measure over a being who couldn't die of any mortal infection.
Nevertheless, the sting was enough to bring Roderich further out of his panicked haze. Flexing his fingers slightly, he bit the inside of his cheek and silently allowed the treatment, until Gilbert rinsed the remnants of blood and alcohol from both their hands and dried them.
Austria examined his hands, angry pink lacerations layered over old scars. He knew Prussia was watching him, and he was still reluctant to look him in the eyes. He didn't particularly want to look anyone in the eyes anytime soon, least of all himself.
A loud, exasperated huff met his ears. "Why did you do this?"
"You can't possibly be ignorant of the reason. You remember, just as I do. You remember that night..." Roderich murmured, trailing off with a shuddering breath.
Turning away, he wiped at his face with his sleeve to try and regain some semblance of dignity, although he honestly couldn't bring himself to try as hard as he usually did.
"Don't tell the others." He warned.
Both of them knew fully well that Austria was hardly in a position to back up the words with a valid threat.
How could Roderich have forgotten where he was, disregarded who was there with him? He could not allow such slip-ups.
If nothing else - if there was not a single thing he could control outside this household, the least he could do was keep his behavior in check.
"I don't want your bruder to know." He added, straightening his shoulders and setting his jaw firmly.
"Fine." Gilbert agreed at that. "Keep your secrets if you want. But if you do something like this again..." He trailed off, wrapping an arm around Roderich's shoulders from behind, as if to hold him back and hold him together all at once.
"This is all you have right now." His words were slow and serious, the closest he would ever come to begging the musician to listen. They grated against Roderich's ear. "I need you to stay safe, not cause trouble. They need you to stay safe. You get it?"
Shutting his eyes, Austria refused to lean into the steady weight supporting him.
Under any other circumstances, he would have laughed at the irony of the once-great Prussian Empire taking a concern in the welfare of the Austrian people, in his welfare.
But the lines were much more blurred than that now; not even the very borders of their bodies were the same.
They were both sickeningly intoxicated with the meshing and merging of some monstrous force neither had the power to end, trapped together by circumstances and set apart by their very nature.
Not so far apart, however.
Prussia remained a constant still throughout his existence, whether enemy or ally, or this bizarre combination of fellow prisoner and simultaneous jailor - someone whom had also been swept to the hell within hell that was the Third Reich, even if his place in it was different than Austria's own.
"I understand." Roderich conceded hoarsely.
He brought up one of his hands to shakily rest over the arm of the man he once envied, never truly hated, sometimes relied upon.
None of this was what he'd wanted, but it was all he had.
And he found himself grateful for the barest moment, if nothing else, for the presence of another soul who knew what it was like to lose it.
This was hell, but he was not alone in its horrors.
.x.
The next time Austria broke something, it was a teacup off a tray he'd spilt in front of Germany – porcelain, strewn in a semi-circle of broken fragments across the hardwood floor. Another instance of unrepairable damage, one small case wholly insignificant in the span of the world.
While Ludwig shouted something idiotic about the importance of the cup, Gilbert strode over purposefully and handed Roderich a broom and dustpan. The action would have perhaps been demeaning under any other circumstances, but in their situation it was something much more personal. It was an agreement passing from crimson eyes to amethyst ones, a silent understanding that Prussia would keep secrets while Austria struggled to keep it together.
"Be more careful." The this time went unsaid, but as they gazed at one another, Roderich caught the meaning well enough.
He accepted the items with hands that were scarred, but healed. The marks would never disappear, but they would fade in time, if he could simply wait this out - simply survive.
"It won't happen again."
Never again, he vowed to himself, only wishing that his people could hear him.
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Ende
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AN: This was incredibly difficult to write. I apologize for historical and grammatical inaccuracies.