It's the disease of the age
It's the disease that we crave
When the scenery from every window was never-ending white, one had to wonder what Gilbert found so fascinating by watching snow. Every morning he could be found in front of a window, staring out of it silently, seeming to be completely fixated by the gleaming white that surrounded his prison, his cage... The home of a psychotic Russian. However, despite his imprisonment here, and all of the trauma that he'd suffered, he seemed completely at ease here.
The albino was, in fact, not watching the snow. His ruby gaze was unfocused, seeing nothing, his mind far from the snow and caught in faraway memories that he longed to return to. He remembered the battles he'd fought in, the wars he'd won, the king he'd grown attached to... Gilbert's memory was full of these sorts of things. As he drifted through his thoughts, he remembered finding his little brother, raising him and teaching him how to fight, the first Great War, the Depression that hit him and his brother the hardest, and then the most recent history... The rise of his brother's fierce leader, watching his own brother's eyes harden to a coldness that matched the look in his boss's eyes, he remembered the first shock of how vicious Ludwig could be when brainwashed like that, the agonizing pain of every wound inflicted on him, and the wounds on his heart that the German had inflicted by telling him his orders... If they were not of Aryan descent, they were not worthy of living... Gilbert frowned as those words whispered in the back of his mind, the pain of hearing those very words as he was stripped of his country title was unbearable. And after his hellish life living there, he was taken by Russia, and shown an even worse level of hell, ripped of everything he once had, until here he sat, finally broken and forced into submission, thinking over what he used to have, and how, just once, he wanted to see his brother again. Even if it was only a brief glimpse, he would give anything to make sure his brother was still surviving.
And yet, as he sat here, his thoughts drifted to his captor, the Russian who put him through so much more after Ludwig. He hated the tall man, for every new wound that had been ripped into his body to hide the scars his brother had created, for every internal wall that had been destroyed to lay the albino open and vulnerable to the mental torture, reopening age old wounds on his heart, playing with fresh ones left by Ludwig... It was a wonder Gilbert wasn't insane...
Yet how could he tell any more? There were times where Gilbert felt as mad as the Russian, other times he could almost see what was going on in that twisted mind, and the things he found would have made him cry if there were any more tears left in his body. He could never grasp the full understanding of what troubled the Russian, what had caused him to go crazy, and yet he found himself sympathizing for him. Russia had gone through much worse than what he put through his captive, but the ex-nation's small taste of that world gave him a glimpse of the scared child that was hidden beneath the insane man.
Gilbert's heart clenched when he remembered the dream he'd had, of the small child surrounded by snow, cut off from everything else by the dark figure that loomed over him. Gilbert had woken from that with his heart pounding, and a chill in his bones. He didn't want to admit it, but he couldn't help feeling drawn to that lonely child, to Russia, wanting to break through the ghostly apparition's icy barrier to get to the crying boy, wanting to hold him close and show him he wasn't alone, but the shattered pride of the former Prussian wouldn't let him admit that to Russia, stubbornly trying to hold up even after it's destruction. He wanted to tell Russia that he wasn't alone, that the albino was there if he would just let him in, and at the same time, he couldn't bring himself to admit that it wasn't sympathy he felt, but a twisted attachment to the pale blond man who had destroyed him.
Gilbert sighed and closed his eyes, resting them for a moment, and when he opened them again, he saw the fleeting vision of that child out in the bleak snow, curled up in a desperate attempt to be warm in the ruthless cold, icy tears calling for someone to save him from loneliness. Gilbert tore his eyes from the window as his chest ached, getting up and moving away, trying to hide his thoughts before Russia would see them.
Protect me from what I want...
Protect me, protect me...