When Feliciano was 10, he got himself a pet vine which was all ten-year-old him could care about. He sang and spoke to it, and after 6 months, it infested the house with pests.
When Feliciano got his first boyfriend, he told him he would do anything and everything for him. In retrospect, he was young and foolish, but he did mean some part of it, no matter how small. The boy in black dumped him three months later.
When Feliciano got his first girlfriend, he didn't make that kind of promise but he loved her all the same, with the same intensity and wretched emotionality. That didn't matter anyway- the girl said she didn't really know if she likes Feli anymore and runs off to a boarding school half a world away.
When Feliciano was a child, he didn't play sports like boys apparently had to, but he couldn't run half a mile without wheezing anyway. He was bullied of course, but he just smiled and never did a thing to his body to change that. Not because he was moral and saintly, but because he was damned if he'd change for them. He could exercise all the same for himself of course, but it just felt like he was yielding to them, accepting defeat.
He was stubbornly hopeless and hopelessly stubborn. Like how, no matter how many times he was betrayed or dumped, he would never let himself stop falling so badly, so irretrievably (he tried not doing that before, just not caring about anything or anyone. Sure no pain came of that, but it was terribly dull, like spending each day with downcast grey skies. He'd rather the beautiful warm summers and roaring thunderstorms, alternating in some perverse rhythm).
This was not to say of course, that he was always some sort of love martyr. He just always needed something or someone to throw his entire being into.
And no, that did not change a single bit either.
When he did get to puberty, we started exercising because that was finally fcking over. His body lost quite some weight and then gained some muscle tone, but with the same characteristic stubbornness, it simple refused to pack on more or grow him into any respectably intimidating height.
When he got even older, he finally gained his Ability and by some genetic lottery, his was exceptional- he displayed a highly regenerative quality, deeming him as the Starfish. He couldn't become a Ryder field agent however, but he was not then dismissed to become a lab experiment either- they needed his technical expertise in Ryders.
"Ryders are mech suits, each with their own unique way of being charged. Each can store a certain amount of backup energy for use at a later date." ("use" usually being an abbreviation for "use for destruction"- read a snarky remark, in Arthur's all too posh cursive, at the margins of the book) "They can also charged in a different way on-the-spot." ("on-the-spot" usually meaning "while running from gunfire and getting screamed by coordinators through an earpiece")
(P.S. On the spot charging is important because these wretched things run out as fast as overpriced touchscreen smartphones- read the last scribble).
He was nothing but everything. As an agent coordinator, he was supposed to devise the best ways to backup charge Ryders, provide comm and other assistance to field agents, as well as helping them with on-spot charging. As the Starfish, he was supposed to be dragged away randomly for experiments to make something of him into a workable serum. He was supposed to somehow help with that too, despite the fact that he has precisely zilch knowledge in anything medical.
His regenerative abilities lent him near-immortality and much safety from all danger, but of course his expertise meant he was not one to face danger, but one to perpetuate it, professionally and clinically, all across the world, across their entire network of agents. It was a 24/7 thankless job, so he's learnt to coordinate the lethal missions while making pasta at home.
Feliciano was harmless.
He couldn't become a field agent because he had zero navigational sense, a most tragic inability to follow instructions, an almost as tragic inability to remember anything beyond Ryders and good food, physical fitness which was not Spartan in nature, and more than any of that, a penchant to hum the Mission Impossible theme while working.
Feliciano picked up the cannoli from his favorite baker, bounded into Ludwig's office, cooed at the German's dogs (Ludwig gets away with almost as much as Feliciano in the office), then he put the box aside and practically pounced onto the man.
In the middle of the attack-cuddle, a distress call from an agent came in through Feliciano's earpiece. After a tad bit of instructions on using Feli's gadgets, a hundred people died in a flash thousands of miles away from Ludwig's office.
Feliciano gave Ludwig the cannoli. His smile, notably, hadn't faltered throughout.
Feli was harmless, innocent, weak. That's why he was picked on as a child, ignored as a teen, left out of the coordinators' truth and dare games.
Ludwig didn't think him weak.
At some point, despite what was seen as robotic, mindless loyalty to the organization, Feliciano just about had it.
He could have just ignored the shadow group, stepped a big circle around it all, bribed them- it was not the primary objective of the mission to take them down. And they were too preoccupied with another threat to care about the organization (for the time being anyway, always the time being). That's what they always do, always, always, definitely without fail.
So of course he didn't, not this time. Time and again, they were forced to submit to them, to play by their rules, claim to be so strong when actually they were so meek that the shadow group never took effort to really deal with them.
He was told, in other words, to accept defeat, although never explicitly of course.
So instead, he sent the Ryder agent on a elaborate not-mission to take them down which ended with the city (and some of the neighboring towns) in chaos and flames, all through coercion by a shock device he had secretly installed into the Ryder (hey if you were going to break protocol, go all the way).
His superiors called him in (his fellow coordinators none the wiser), and proceeded to yell at him, but only briefly. It soon quietened into a lecture because he had managed to eradicate the shadow group, plus he was the Starfish and their most dedicated coordinator. And he just gave them that choked up, quavering voice, that glint in his eyes which was meant to look like sorrow, like "I'm sorry, I was just doing what's best for the organization". And it did look the part, it just didn't look genuine to Ludwig, but perhaps only to Ludwig.
He knew how Feli's real sorrow looks like, or that no matter how hard he tries, he used to blush in the face when he was angry and in the ears when he was embarrassed.
He says "used to" because the day after he pointed it out, Feliciano "makes something happen" and ended up mysteriously in Medical for days with facial bandages. After he was discharged, he never blushed nearly as much as he used to.
He would get another glint in his eyes sometimes, also genuine. It came about when his Alfredo recipe finally worked and he proceeded to scream and cheer and parkour, somehow, around his entire room. It came about when Ludwig told him, yes it's a goddamn tomato ring and he's sorry that he's such a knobhead but he's serious about the whole affair. It comes about whether they lie in bed cuddling within a sea of way too many plush toys, hoping they didn't damage the similar abundance of priceless Renaissance paintings on the walls with the much rougher activity that had occurred moments earlier.
Ludwig thought him terrifyingly adorable and adorably terrifying.
The personifications of nations die all the time, usually a more orderly system is in place for a replacement, but occasionally the Game will commence upon their death and the winner takes the job. When Feli first heard of the Game, the second thing that came to his mind was how much of a hunger games ripoff it was.
The third thing was damn, Italy and Germany were simultaneously up for grabs, so the organization would definitely make sure the Game commenced this time, what with their abundance of European agents.
The first thing he thought, actually, was Ludwig's love of his country.
When one wins the Game and becomes a personification of a country, they lose their entire self, memories and identity, they take on the physical appearance of that personification and all the memories of the previous personifications.
Sometimes, they get to keep their names (it becomes known as their "human name") because they've lost so much, and the name used so rarely, that it doesn't really matter, not really.
It took Feli a long time to uncover that and a lot sooner to realize he really didn't want the Game to start at all.
A few weeks later, his mind hazy from the narcotics and his tortured body feeling like it was slammed into the sun, he realized that firstly, that his captors are very rude and no, he is not going to help them with Ryders if they don't even introduce themselves. And that secondly, he has no idea how long it's been but it's definitely been way too long, the organization just gave up on him. Fck the organization. Thirdly, he realized what has to be done to make the Game more likely to kick in, so then he thinks, well the organization is bound to do just that, so fck the organization so hard.
And so of course, he wanted the Game to start even less than he already did.
And of course, he heard that the commencement of the Game is definite and imminent.
They left him for dead- but Ludwig didn't.
"So...you're not going back to the organization?"
"Isn't it rude to let your agents get tortured by I-still-have-no-idea-who for two whole weeks?" he laughed, or at least attempted to, "Also you know what they're gonna do to start the Game, right?"
Ludwig tried to tell him about what became of their organization anyway, something about competitors, double crosses, intrigue, lies, enigmas...he doesn't hear any of it because it doesn't matter.
He already knew what they were planning on destroying (and will definitely succeed in destroying) to start the Game and that was enough to know, enough for him to make his decision.
"So what will you do now?"
"Whatever you're doing. Actually, what you will be doing, in the Game I mean. That thing is about to start anyway."
"...What do you mean?"
"Whatever you want, whatever makes you happy, I'll help you. Unless, of course, giving you what you want in that moment is not for your own good."
It took him a while to process that but when he does, well it's just absurd. They don't even know what at all the Game entails, there are way too many variables, and what even is "your own good", that phrase practically waits to be abused.
Feliciano didn't say anything for a long time. In the cobblestone bunker, he stood there, staring at Ludwig blankly, his bloodied, scarred chest moving in and out with each shallow breath from broken ribs.
"You are my job now," he finally said.
The silence dragged on.
It was of course, very uncharacteristic of Feliciano to be so quiet. Ludwig started to realize that it's so obvious- him spelling it out was to him, some wounding of pride.
It meant that no matter how Ludwig pushed him away, even if he has to operate from the darkest shadows, he will help him, Ludwig will be helped even if he isn't grateful for it. From their work interactions and the various excuses he made to invade coordinator territory, it meant that no matter how he would try to shake Feli off, everything would just come full circle and he would realize any favorable outcome from the mess to be Feliciano's doing.
He was stubbornly insane and insanely stubborn.
Ludwig swore he could start seeing some ghost of a smile on his lips at the dawning of realization in the German's eyes.
"Look, let's just...get out of here, Feliciano."
He could feel the shorter male's smug grin aimed at the back of his head as they walked out.
When Ludwig dies, no, wins the Game, Feliciano doesn't cry. With his last few breaths as Ludwig, he tells Feli how much better it would be if he could keep his physical appearance, so that he would still sort of be Ludwig.
That was absurd to Feliciano. Memories make a person. The real Ludwig would be gone anyway.
It isn't that Ludwig doesn't care or love Feliciano (he was the one who proposed, for goodness sake, back when Feli was totally unprepared for such a thing), it's just that he cares a lot more about other things.
It takes a long time for Feliciano to realize that but when Ludwig wins the Game (dies), it takes way sooner for Feliciano to practically will himself into dying (winning the Game) as well.