Note: This story is part of a larger historical AU involving the Nordics, which it seems I will never be able to write chronologically, or as fast as I would like to, for that matter. For now, I give you a glimpse into the Kalmar Union.
I do not own Hetalia.
There was new wisdom to be found in every day of one's life, Berwald pondered, even in such a life as a nation was cursed to live, that spanned centuries of wars and anger, of friendships gone unforgivably astray and barely whispered what if's.
He thought he had known pain, but then again never before had he been forced to the ground, battered and bleeding from wounds uncounted, only to have a hot iron brought to his face. Never before had he felt the white of his eyes trickle down his skin like milk turned sour, while the fiend above him laughed that jarring laugh of his from which sanity had long been banished and forgotten.
He thought he had known terror, but never before had he woken up in a cell, with his arms fastened in heavy iron and his sight burnt away, while the agony in his empty sockets burrowed through flesh and bone and marrow and made him crave for nothing but to scream scream scream.
And he thought he had known shame, but never before had he sat bound and helpless his young Finnish charge lingered merely steps away, where the shadows of the corridor shaped a fragile shelter, too frightened or maybe too sickened to move forward and stand at his side.
When steps came down the stairs and voices rose, one pleading, one proud and cold like the northern wind, Berwald sighed and bowed his head in defeat. He did not need his sight to recognize the one who approached disdainful and aloof.
Norway. The traitor who consorted with the beast.
The bolt slipped away and the heavy door was pushed open with practiced ease, but the smaller nation stumbled on the threshold as if an invisible barrier had fallen in his path, then turned on his heel without a word, leaving the Swede alone once more. Chill air assaulted the open door and entered the cell through the space left empty by the other nation's absence, creeping along the wounded contours of Berwald's face and easing his pain a fraction. Had his lips not been scabbed over and his mouth less dry, Berwald would have found the strength to chuckle. Surely he looked quite a sight to send the ever-composed Lukas over what must have been the glacial nation's edge, for the way in which the other man's breath had caught in a strangled gasp had not escaped even his hearing where blood was pounding an unrelenting beat for the dance of pain.
Minutes flowed by and Berwald was ready to surrender once again to oblivion when the steps returned, determined but stumbling as if under a great weight, and Lukas slipped inside, pausing to place his burden atop what sounded like a pallet of dry straw. The bundle shifted, releasing a sleepy, childish whine and Berwald breathed out sharply in understanding. Things were dire indeed for Lukas to deem it safer to bring his brother with him to this dismal place, even asleep as he was, where his gaze could fall on the very same kind of sights from which the Norwegian had been sheltering him all along.
Lukas stood very still, hushing his brother back to sleep, then the Swede felt him kneel at his side and fingers ghosted over his face with a feather-like touch. The other nation whispered a warning and warm droplets fell on the tender skin under Berwald's eyes, washing away blood and grime. Berwald hissed but bore the sting willingly. There was not much that could be done for him, both of them knew, bar keeping his wounds clean until the same magic that kept them immortal and whole would make new flesh grow from ruin, and when that came to pass Berwald hoped the Norwegian would have enough mercy to knock him senseless until his eyes were restored.
But first... first, he needed to know.
"T'no?" he croaked, the word shaping strangely from injured lips.
Lukas huffed in disapproval, then settled back on his heels and spoke in a muted voice.
"I sent him to help clean the stables. Not ours, mind," he sniggered quietly, "the royals'. Not even he should ever think about searching for him there. Although," he added as an afterthought as he dipped a cloth into whatever soothing concoction he had brought with him, "your little pet is bound to hate me now more than ever before."
Berwald did not bother to deny it. All of them knew by now who hated whom, and how much, and why, and exactly what made their hatred spark off like oil meeting fire. Lukas' fingers moved lower to clean the dried blood around his lips and Berwald found he could move them easier once the constricting scabs peeled to reveal healing flesh.
"And you," he asked bitterly, "how can you still suffer that monster's touch? How can you fall asleep every night at his side in a Danish bed?"
Lukas' hand paused merely inches above the other man's face, and he blinked slowly, as if his eyes were going through the same torment as the Swede's. He would have gladly tossed the jar of salve in the taller nation's face and leave him to his fate, but his own guilt was keeping him in place with iron hands.
A deep crease on the Dane's brow that he knew only too well and the glint of inescapable madness marring his gaze had pushed Lukas to take his brother and flee out of the way of the approaching storm. At the gate, the guards had let him pass - how could they not, when the bonds chaining him to that place were neither iron nor rope? The evening had found him riding listlessly along narrow streets, with the Icelandic child sleeping safely under the cover of his cloak, his back straight and his gaze unwavering even as each unwilling touch of the rein only brought him closer to his cage. But as he stepped inside the shadows of the walls, two different kinds of pain had bored into his soul like poisoned spears. He had followed the most urgent, the most anguished, unraveling its thread along empty rooms, unprepared for the sight of wanton cruelty that had finally opened in front of his disbelieving gaze.
He could have stayed. He could have halved the punishment.
"This," Lukas said finally in a dry voice that barely disguised his weariness, "this is something you don't understand and clearly never will, so mind your own business, Swede, lest you dig for yourself a hole so deep that no one will be able to reach you and pull you out."
With fingers much less gentle than moments before he tied a cloth around the other nation's ruined eyes and stood up, but to Berwald's mute wonder he made no movement to leave. The straw rustled as he sat down against the wall, and for a while the silence was broken only by the breath of the sleeping child.
"He's upstairs," Lukas offered quite unexpectedly as if answering a question not asked, "Matthias is. He was waiting for me in my room. I found him passed out on my bed. And," he added with a sigh, "I barred the door from the outside."
Berwald shifted his head against the wall, grateful despite himself for the fleeting relief that Lukas' work had brought him, and considered the other man's words. For Lukas to speak to him out of his own will was quite rare, even more so in the past years when the Norwegian would wrap himself more and more tightly in the cocoon of his thoughts.
"He will become mad once he comes to and discovers you've locked him in," he said carefully. "He will destroy everything, Lukas. Your books..."
"My books?" Lukas let out a bitter laugh. "My books are pitiful, crumbling things. Some are half eaten by mold, some nothing but faded pages inside tattered covers. And even the others will fall inexorably apart as years pass by. I should have thrown all of them away long ago, like..." he spat in a half-broken voice, "like everything else."
Once again they remained in uneasy silence, until Lukas sat up hurriedly.
"He's coming," he said ominously, and Berwald did not question him, for the smaller nation had always possessed an uncanny gift for reading the Dane's thoughts long before they were spoken. He carried his brother outside and shook him awake, and his whispers floated in through the open door. "Run along, little one, and find Tino at the stables. I will come for you before long."
Lukas paused to listen to the patter of small feet climbing up the stairs, then stepped one more time inside the cell and fastened the cloth more gently around the other man's eyes. A door slammed and Lukas froze, then worked faster through the knot and moved back across the threshold, closing the door quietly behind him.
"What are you doing down 'ere?" a voice slurred out of nowhere, and Berwald winced. He was always forgetting somehow how noiselessly the Dane could move when stalking his prey.
"Putting your damn mistakes right, as always, that's what I'm doing," Lukas countered, his voice keener than the edge of broken glass, and the other man snorted at his side.
"Meddlin'. You're always meddlin'. Now let me pass."
"You've done enough harm for today, don't you think?" Lukas snapped back impatiently. "Look," he added with more composure in his tone, while the bolt slid back into place too carefully to be pushed by Danish hands, "he's trapped inside. He'll still be here come morning. Now let us leave this place."
Matthias' steps shuffled forward and for a moment Berwald feared he would knock the smaller nation to the ground and break through the door, but the Dane's thoughts seemed to have changed their course altogether.
"Always so cold, Norge, so cruel," he muttered darkly. "Can't you see it's me who needs you, and not that wretch inside?"
A body slammed against the door and the rustle of clothes filtered through wooden planks, then a moan, and then another. Berwald dug his fingers hard into the edge of his shackles. He knew both voices so well, their pitch and their undertones, one restless, one calm but with the depth of the quiet ocean, and a frozen rage rose in his chest. Surely the Dane couldn't be so callous as to take his lover right outside the cell where his erstwhile victim suffered, in a sort of twisted punishment against them both, and surely the Norwegian couldn't have become so warped as to draw pleasure from it. But the bodies struggled briefly and Matthias released a sharp hiss of pain.
"Fine, you imp, you win this time, let us go," he said with less malice than Berwald would have expected from him and soon the last echo of their retreating steps died down into the shrouding silence.
Come morning, Lukas had said. Come morning his pain would have increased thousandfold as his sight emerged anew, and yet a small price to pay to escape from the clutches of lingering shadows.
Come morning Matthias would release him without a word, and Lukas would bleed from concealed wounds, and they would know one more day of fragile peace until they felt whole enough, and strong enough, and guiltless enough to join together again in that dance of blood and tears that had swallowed their lives whole.