Never Forgotten - Oneshot
Disclaimer: Luckily for hetalia fans, I don't own Hetalia. If I did, Hetaoni would be canon.
Rated: T
Tino still remembered exactly what happened the first time he met his partner, Berwald Oxenstierna.
He remembered it perfectly because when he'd been introduced to the stern bespectacled man it had been one of the most frightening days of his life.
It had started out as a normal day for him. He had woken up early that morning, made a nice breakfast, and fed his dog, Hanatamago. And as usual, she didn't like what he'd tried to feed her.
On his way out the door, he'd paused in front of the mirror in order to straighten the collar of his black uniform.
However, at the same time, today wasn't a normal day. Today was the day he'd be assigned his partner for the police force. After a whole year of schlepping around with minor jobs, training, learning the rules, and being everyone's gopher, Tino had finally become an officer instead of a trainee.
Now he'd be the one ordering the newbie around.
'I wonder what my new partner will be like.' Tino hummed as he made his way to his car. 'I hope it's someone who will be easy to talk with, or at least has a good sense of humor. Otherwise it'll be pretty awkward during assignments.'
He didn't live too far away from the station, so the drive itself wasn't too long. If there had been any traffic along the way, Tino was sure he would have exploded just because he was dying to find out who his new partner is.
"Hey Tino! Would you mind like, getting me some coffee from the break room?" Feliks Łukasiewicz, a fellow officer, called out as he walked by. Feliks, a blond, slightly long hair, green eyed man, was one of the many who used to order him around all the time, but now that he was at the same rank as him, he didn't have to listen to the blonde's requests anymore.
"Very funny, but you and everyone else in this office knows I'm off coffee duty now." Tino laughed.
"Awh man. I was so hoping you'd like totally forgotten. Now I've got to break in the new recruits into how I like mine made." Feliks pouted. "So are you like heading over to the conference room to meet your new partner?"
"Yup, do you know anything about him?"
"Well I've heard he's like scary good at interrogation. Also, I think I saw him walk in earlier, because there was this new guy that walked in earlier and he totally fit the description."
Tino looked at Feliks curiously, wondering what he meant by that, but then he decided to just head over there now. No one really knew much about the man who was to be his colleague other than he was a bit new at the job and was being transferred from a different county to here.
-o0o-
"Tino, this is your new partner, Berwald Oxenstierna. Berwald, this is Officer Tino Väinämöinen." Arthur Kirkland, the chief of police, told him. "From now on you two will be taking on your assignments together."
"Hello." Berwald said quietly with a stern and intimidating face. The man was taller than him and had a light blond hair with greenish blue eyes, but there was no emotion on his face. "I hope we will work together well."
However, instead of sounding like he wanted to be friends with Tino, it more sounded like 'you better listen to every order I give or I will force you to do as I say' since his tone and face were missing any sort of warmth or happiness.
'HOLY MARTIN LUTHER FELIKS WAS RIGHT! THIS GUY IS SCARY!' Tino hid his cringe and with a nervous hand, held it out for Berwald to shake. 'It's almost like he's threatening me to get along with him!'
"H-Hi, nice to meet you." He said to the tall blond as the other shook his hand.
"Well I'll just leave you two here to get to know each other." The police chief said as he left the room.
'NO! Don't leave me alone with this guy!' Tino silently begged, but to no avail since the man soon shut the door as well.
"So, uh, how do you like it here so far?" He asked Berwald awkwardly to try and fill the silence. "You're new here right?"
"It's nice. When I got in line to get a cup of coffee, everyone just left so I could get in line first."
'That's because they were all scared of you!' Was what Tino wanted to say, but he knew in this situation it was better to keep comments like that to himself.
"That sounds good. But I bet it was really because Arthur made the coffee this morning." He joked, hoping to get a laugh out of the bespectacled man.
A cold mirthless laughter came out from Berwald, which although was a laugh, it was not the type of sound he'd hoped to hear. If anything, the laugh only made the air even tenser between them.
"L-Let's just go report in and get our first assignment." Tino said quickly as he sped for the door.
Those first two weeks had been hell for him. No matter what situation they were in, Berwald always had that stern emotionless face of his.
Tino didn't get it! How was it possible for a guy to never smile! And sometimes it seemed like the man was trying to, but the end result was even scarier than his normal face.
He knew inside he shouldn't be so stressed out over this little thing. A few rare moments had shown him that Berwald could actually be pretty funny when he tried, but because of the fact a single emotion was never expressed on his face, Tino just became too distracted by that to think about what Berwald was like on the inside.
It wasn't until after attempting what had to have been his thousandth try to make Berwald laugh in a normal non-threatening way, that he finally confronted him about it.
"W-Why don't you ever smile?" The shorter man asked hesitantly. They were both in a police car patrolling through the town. As usual, Berwald was driving and he was in the passenger seat.
Berwald looked at him, and for a second Tino could have sworn he saw something flash through the man's eyes. It wasn't until much later on when he'd looked back on the memory that he would realize the expression in his eyes had been one of despair.
"It's because I can't."
"What do you mean 'can't'?"
Berwald sighed as he gripped the steering wheel tighter and then loosened.
"I have a disease. It's called facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy."
"Fashioskapa- what?"
"FSHD for short. It means that I have weakness in the facial muscles, making it hard for me to smile or express any emotion at all." He answered in his normal monotone. But for some reason Tino tell that this wasn't the first time he'd had to explain this. Maybe it was because of the man's body language or by how readily he answered the question, but whatever the reason was, what the bespectacled man was doing at the moment just seemed to say that this was probably something that had happened many times before.
"Oh… Well, I guess something like that could come in handy… Like if you ever got caught by your parents or something, they wouldn't be able to tell if you're lying right?" Tino laughed nervously.
The car suddenly screeched to a halt causing him to slam into his seat belt.
Startled, Tino quickly peered out the window wondering if they'd stopped because there was a crime happening outside. But then he looked at Berwald and realized otherwise.
The blonde's eyes were like ice as they stared forward; their normal greenish blue hue had turned to something completely different than the normal warmth he got from them.
If Tino had thought Berwald was intimidating before, he was completely wrong.
Nothing was more scary then the look on the man's face at that moment.
"This disease has never been a good thing." He stated with a voice just as cold as his expression.
Neither Berwald nor Tino said anything for the rest of that car ride.
However, Tino had reverted back to his normal peppy self by the next day and began acting as though the conversation before had never happened. If anything, he was now more determined than ever to amuse his partner. So for the next week he'd spent it being nothing but smiles when he was with Berwald.
"Hey Berwald!" He called out cheerfully to the man as he approached him in the break room.
"Oh, hello Tino." Berwald replied as he took a sip from his mug. Now that he'd been here for almost two weeks, Berwald had gotten down most of the way the office worked around here.
Some of them were: if Arthur ever offered him something to eat or drink that wasn't tea, he should either politely decline or just plain out run away; higher ranking officers were allowed to ask the new lower ones, like himself, to get them coffee or do other errands for them and they would have no choice but to do so.
But so far, no one had had the guts to make Berwald get them coffee. Not even their deputy, Alfred F. Jones dared to ask. However, he knew that Ivan Braginski, one of their commanders, wasn't afraid to ask Berwald to do something for him. Most likely the Russian hadn't simply out of amusement over the fact that he wasn't the only one everyone feared anymore.
But Tino wasn't afraid of Berwald anymore. Now that he knew why Berwald acted how he did, he'd started noticing other things about the quiet man.
One was how much emotion the man could express through just his eyes. Before, he'd been too distracted by that unmoving mouth to see it, but now that he'd gotten past that he finally noticed there was much more to an expression then just through smiles and frowns.
He'd already learned before that the man could be humorous at rare times, but now it was much more noticeable since he was more at ease with the man.
Tino had also recently learned that Berwald liked art.
"Oh do you like this artist?" He'd asked him once he'd noticed the tall blond staring at the painting for awhile.
They were currently searching through the house of a suspected criminal for any contraband but had stopped to rest a bit in the hallway.
"I like painting and art in general." Berwald had answered him before continuing on down the hall to complete their search. "I find it a calming way to express what I really feel."
Tino smiled to himself as he finished thinking about the past event and began pouring coffee into a mug for himself.
"Wait I wouldn't drink that, I saw Arthur in here earlier making this pot of coffee." Berwald warned, but it was too late since the blond had already taken a drink of the concoction.
Tino immediately felt his face contort into a grimace as he rushed to the sink to spit out the black sludge he'd thought to be coffee. After thoroughly scrubbing the burnt taste off his tongue, Tino poured out the rest of the pot into the sink.
"Thanks for trying to warn me." He sighed.
'Why can't he just listen to our pleas and stick to making tea? Seriously, how does he even manage to burn coffee?' The blond sighed as he took out the supplies in the cupboard to make a new pot. He might as well refill it before Arthur noticed he'd dumped out the previous batch.
Three months passed between the pair in a flash from there. Throughout those months, both Tino and Berwald had gotten to know each other a lot better and earn the others complete trust.
This was why they'd now been assigned their first major mission; an overnight stakeout.
The two were supposed to go undercover in plain clothes and follow a man under the suspicion of being part of a gang of drug dealers they'd had a lot of problems with lately. A reliable source of theirs had recently tipped them off that the man would be doing a large deal the next day and they were hoping to catch him in the middle of it so they could arrest the man's buyers as well.
"You ready to go?" Tino asked his partner as he fixed the sleeves of his jacket. They'd both had to change out of their uniforms and into street clothes so they wouldn't draw suspicion to themselves.
"Yes." Berwald stated as he opened the door for him so they could exit out together.
They both headed out to the normal looking car they'd been loaned and, as usual, Berwald took the driver's seat so he sat shotgun.
It wasn't long before they reached the coffee shop where they would first spot their man they needed to follow.
The suspect's name was Dmitri Alvang and he had short cropped blond hair and a rather strong slim build. He was probably in his early thirties or late twenties, but those details weren't important other then so they would be able to identify him.
According to their source, every Tuesday night around seven, the man stopped by this coffee shop, got the same iced coffee and then would leave shortly after finishing it. But before that, he would head to the newspaper rack and take the third paper from the top and then hail a cab. Inside the paper was supposedly the address of a motel where he would meet a woman to sleep with but they weren't positive about that.
But if their suspicions were right, that woman in reality delivered the information of where the next location for a deal would take place.
-o0o-
"That's him right?" Tino gestured with a shake of his head.
Berwald nodded as he took a sip from his cup of coffee. They'd already ordered their drinks and were sitting a rather reclusive spot so it wouldn't be noticed as they watched Dmitri.
Tino turned the page of his newspaper and pretended to read as he took a slow sip from his drink as well.
"We should probably start talking just so it doesn't seem odd that we're so quiet." He instructed Berwald.
"Well what should we talk about?"
"Uhhh, oh, I know one. Where do you come from? Like, what's your ethnicity?" Tino offered up helpfully. "I know my parents were from Finland so I'm Finnish even though I was born here in America."
"My parents were Swedish."
"What do you mean 'were'?"
"You could say I'm estranged from them, so I really don't know what their current status is. Thus, I refer to them in a past tense." Berwald explained calmly.
"I see…"
Tino suddenly remembered how the blond had reacted when he'd brought up parents that time when he'd first learned of the man's disease. Now that he knew Berwald was on bad terms with his parents, that scene made more sense now.
"He's leaving now." Berwald suddenly cut in as his eyes flicked over to where Dmitri was dumping his mug into a trash can and taking up the newspaper. "Let's go."
-o0o-
"Come on." The bespectacled blond said as he unbuckled his seat belt and exited the car, Tino following his suit as well. They'd managed to successfully follow Dmitri to the motel without the man knowing and were now going in after the blond after having waited a few minutes.
Even though Tino was of a higher rank than Berwald, it seemed like Berwald would be the one in charge for this mission since he was the first one to speak with the portly man behind the desk who ran the motel. Or, as his name tag specified, Blake.
"Me and my wife would like a room next door to that man who just entered." Berwald stated with a perfectly straight face.
Tino smiled but then realized what Berwald had just said.
'Wait… what?' Tino deadpanned, but for the majority he managed to keep his face from showing what he was thinking.
'WIFE? WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN BY THAT!' The blond looked at his partner from the corner of his eye to try and figure out what he was doing.
During late night shifts, Tino had played many a game of poker with Berwald and the other officers at the station that he'd figured out how to tell when Berwald was lying. An odd gleaming look would briefly pass over his eyes before he'd cover it up with his normal blank expression.
"Oh I thought you were a guy." Blake said in surprise as he pointed at Tino.
"He is. We're gay." Berwald answered. Tino looked at his partners face to see that gleam, but to his shock and the motel owner's shock of the statement, Tino realized he didn't see that gleam at all.
'Where's the gleam! Maybe his eye doesn't always do that…'
The man rolled his eyes at them for a second, muttering something under his breath about 'fags' as he pulled out the desired card key. Berwald swiped the credit card they'd been given for their expenses through the machine and then took their key once the card was accepted.
Tino waited until they reached their room before he finally spoke up.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN WIFE? We're not dating or even married for one thing, and I'm not a girl!" He whisper shouted at the man so no one would hear them through the cheap paper thin walls.
"I did it to distract him from the fact we asked for a room next to Dmitri's. It's an odd request for normal people to be making in case you hadn't noticed." Berwald replied, an amused twinkle in his eyes.
Tino could tell from that look that his partner was having a lot of fun with this.
The two then began setting up their spying equipment in silence before Tino finally spoke up.
"Well then, how come your eyes didn't gleam for a moment?" He demanded in a hushed tone.
"What?" Berwald laughed, but as usual it came out with no emotion and almost sounded as though it were a condescending tone.
"Your eyes, they gleam. Whenever you lie, they flash a little gleam for a brief moment."
"Well I guess that's because I wasn't lying for the most part."
"What do you mean by that?"
"I'm gay."
Tino stopped his questions as that last statement rang through his head.
"I-I see." He stammered as the room got quiet.
"Good."
The air hadn't been this tense since that first time they'd met. Now he wished for nothing more than this moment of awkwardness to be over.
Tino thought about the situation quietly as they looked around the room. For some reason, the thought of Berwald being a homosexual actually didn't bother him too much. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he realized he might be the same.
For one thing, he'd never really been all that interested in girls; even after he'd entered his teenage years and everyone had begun realizing that girls didn't have cooties and such he just didn't really feel like having a relationship with any of them. Now that he thought about it, if anything hearing that Berwald was gay was making him feel a little swell of hope inside for some reason.
"Well, I-I think I might be gay too so it's not that big of a deal." The blond stammered as he looked off to the side towards the ground.
"Yeah, I know."
Tino stared at him in surprise.
"Wait what? How would you know that if not even I did until a moment ago?"
Berwald let another one of his mirthless laughs.
"No straight man would call himself "a delicate flower"."
"Hey! I was barely awake when I said that and I'd been up all night!"
"Sure, sure. Whatever makes you happy," Berwald's face was still as emotionless as ever, but his eyes were practically sparkling with how exuberant he was. "my delicate flower."
"Cut it out!" Tino quietly shouted at him as he blushed in annoyance.
"So you prefer wife then?"
Tino refused to answer and instead sulked as he began tinkering with the tv and hooked up a device so they could view the feed of the hallway from a small camera they'd set up.
He and Berwald then settled on the bed as they stared at the screen. The most boring yet somehow exciting part of the mission had begun. They now had to watch and wait for something to happen or someone to come.
-o0o-
Tino wasn't sure how long they'd sat there bed making idle chatter as they waited for the woman to arrive, but when his stomach suddenly made a loud growl, he realized he'd skipped lunch.
And they hadn't picked up anything for dinner.
"Are you hungry?" The Sweden asked curiously.
"Yeah but we don't have any food… oh wait! I have a tin of salmiaki in my bag!" He cheered quietly as he reached for the bag. Both of them had one, but they were more like brief cases and only had room for their spying equipment, but Tino had managed to squeeze it in.
He eagerly took out the dessert and popped one of the licorice pieces in his mouth.
"Want one?" He asked Berwald as he held the container out to him.
"Only if you'll try some Surströmming." The man replied, his eyes twinkling mischievously as he reached into his bag and pulled out a sealed can.
Tino was at first confused as to why Berwald would have such an expression on his face. That is, until the man popped the lid open.
"HOLY MARTIN LUTHOR! CLOSE THAT LID!" He shouted quietly as covered his burning nose to try and seal out the awful smell emanating from the jar of fermented fish. "If you didn't want any salmiaki you could have just said so!"
"But this way was much more fun."
Just then, a quiet beeping noise from the speaker connected to the sensor they placed in front of Dmtri's door began going off. Tino looked back at the screen just in time to see woman with brunette hair enter. He and Berwald both shared a look before nodding and got up the press their ears to the wall.
"—pleasure to meet you Dmitri. The drop off is at eleven am at the abandoned warehouse on Bakers Street." They heard a feminine voice say. "Don't be late."
"I know I know." Dmitri answered. "The boss already gave me the lecture on the 'importance of timeliness.'"
"As long as you don't make them wait, I don't care."
And then the obvious sounds of love making began ensuing so Tino quickly moved his ear off the wall with his pale face turning bright red.
"Well they won't be leaving the room anytime soon, so let's try and get a little sleep too." Berwald suggested as he headed back over to the bed and, after taking off his glasses, crawled under the covers. He didn't change his clothing at all since they might need to leave at a moment's notice. Seeing as it really wasn't the best idea to chase after a guy while wearing either no shirt or no pants.
Tino nodded and then got in the bed as well and curled up in the blankets.
It took a moment or two before he even realized something. He had just willingly crawled in next to Berwald in the same bed. And they were now really close together.
Even though his face wasn't looking at Berwald, he could already imagine what the blonde's expression was.
Sure enough, he turned and found himself being almost analyzed by a pair of greenish blue eyes.
'Oh god this is so nerve wracking! Maybe I'll just wait until he's asleep and then move to the floor. Yeah, that'll work! And when he asks me why I'm on the floor I'll just say I rolled off or som-'
Just then, Tino felt an arm wrap around him and pull him in closer.
"Night." Berwald murmured before falling asleep.
'Well there goes that plan'
-o0o-
When they next awoke, it was around eight am and Berwald's arm was still wrapped around Tino. The smaller blond quickly moved the arm away and hopped out of bed while trying to smooth some of the wrinkles out of his clothes as the Swede fixed his hair and did the same. They then quickly went back to watching the screen.
An hour passed by before they saw brown haired woman from the night before exiting the room.
Tino and Berwald waited a little longer and then began packing everything up so they could leave the moment Dmitri did.
Just then, they heard the door beside them open and close. Dmitri was on the move. They waited a few moments before exiting the room as well and heading after him.
-o0o-
Tino never once thought that maybe things were running a bit too smoothly as they progressed through their assignment. Not even when they just happened to come in at the perfect moment to catch Dmitri and the buyers.
If anything, there previous successes so far had lulled him into a sense of security. A security that almost put a bullet through his head. Had Berwald not tackled him down in time he would very much be dead by now. But because of that they let Dmitri get away; still though they managed to capture the would be buyers of the drugs.
At the time, Tino had been so frustrated with himself that they'd let Dmitri get away, but it wasn't until now that he learned why.
Over the next few months, Tino and Berwald got many more assignments involving the same drug selling gang, but each time they went in for an arrest, something would always go wrong. Either the customer or the seller would somehow escape and sometimes even with the drugs. But no one in the task force ever got too upset over it since it was always a reasonable mistake and they still did a very good job in all the other aspects.
And as the months passed, Tino and Berwald began getting closer. As in the "more than friends", kinda way. Yes, to the delight of a certain officer Elizeveta Héderváry, they'd started going out. Surprisingly to Tino but not to Berwald, no one was taken aback by the news.
In fact, they'd all started a bet as to when it would finally happen.
Elizeveta had of course won, which lead to everyone taking notice of just how scary accurate her "gaydar" was. So in reality, it seemed only Tino was the one who hadn't known about his own sexual preferences.
But still, Tino kept wondering what it was they kept doing wrong in the missions.
Everything always went perfect up until the confrontation.
It wasn't until late one night as he was thinking over the matter that he finally realized it; every mess up they made had something to do with what Berwald did. At first when he'd come to this conclusion he thought he was just trying to place the blame on his partner but as more and more facts started adding up, he realized it was true.
So Tino had confronted him about it during another mission, much like that first one just without the stake out part since they already knew the location of the drop off.
And that confrontation changed everything.
Berwald had looked at him with despair written all over his eyes, even if his face betrayed no emotion.
The taller man then leaned down and kissed him softly.
"You weren't supposed to find out." Berwald said quietly as he took his hand out of his pocket.
Tino stared in shock as he saw the gun clutched tightly in the blonde's hands. In this type of situation he knew he was supposed to disarm the blond as quickly as possible, but he was just too shocked in order to defend himself.
'Am I about to die?'
Tino cringed as he expected to hear the crack of a gunshot right before the bullet would pierce through him, but instead Tino felt the cold metal handle crash onto his head as Berwald pistol whipped him. The force clean knocked him out and he fell right into Berwald's arms.
-o0o-
Tino had felt something dry but sticky on his forehead, most likely his blood. Looking around he saw that he was lying on his side in some sort of old big abandoned house with his arms and ankles bound behind him. He felt completely disoriented as he tried to piece together how he'd gotten there despite his pounding headache.
And then he remembered; Berwald's betrayal.
'So that entire time, he was working for the other side? I can't believe it. I should have never trusted him.'
'I should have never let myself fall in love with him.'
That last thought he'd finally admitted came as quite a shock to himself. But he knew it was true. He was in love with Berwald but now it turned out that the stoic man had utterly betrayed him.
"Well, look who is awake! Seems like our little guest has finally woken up, eh Berwald?" A mocking tone called out.
"Yes. He's awake now." He heard Berwald answer.
Tino couldn't see that traitor's face from his position on the floor so he really couldn't tell what the man was thinking, but at the same time he figured it was a good thing.
The mysterious speaker came into Tino's view allowing him to finally get a good look at his face. The man had short wild blond hair and blue eyes and seemed to be a couple of years older than Berwald but had a youthful look to him that made him want to think he was the same age.
"Don't know what you see in him Berwald. You really should have killed him awhile ago like instructed." The blond told Berwald; who in turn did not answer.
"Oh wait, where are my manners! I forgot to introduce myself didn't I? The name's Simon Densen, but you would know me as the leader of that gang of drug dealers you and Berwald have been chasing around." Simon smirked.
"So you really are with them." Tino muttered sadly as he looked down and refused to meet with Berwald's eyes.
"Could I have a moment alone with him?" Berwald asked Simon.
"Sure. Why not? Might as well seeing as he's gonna die soon anyways. You have five minutes." The blond said as he departed.
Berwald then crouched down and undid Tino's hands so he'd be a bit more comfortable.
Instead, Tino punched him in the face.
"What the hell is your problem? I can't believe you were with them the entire time!" Tino hissed angrily. "All those mess ups were on purpose weren't they?"
"Yes." Berwald said, his face blank and his eyes only showing hurt. But Tino didn't want to see that so he avoided the blond's gaze. "Just let me explain why."
"No."
The bespectacled man sighed and sat down beside Tino.
"Well I'm going to explain anyways."
-o0o-
When Berwald was a child, his parents used to always ask him why he'd never smile. None of them knew yet of his disease, so when he'd tearfully say with that blank face of his "I am" they never believed him.
Because of this, his parents slowly began to stop trying to make him smile and grew to hate their child with that creepy blank face of his. Berwald in turn, became lonelier and more depressed as he continually tried to earn his parents love.
But it wasn't until they finally took him to a doctor and found out about his disease that they snapped.
"He's never going to smile?" His mother had asked his father during the car ride home. "I can't live with that. That child's emotionless face scares me. At least before we thought there was a chance he could express emotions but just didn't want to, now we know that he can't and it would take an expensive surgery just to make him smile a tiny bit."
"Then what do you suggest we do?" His father had asked in that calm voice of his; the voice that Berwald had inherited.
"Put him in an orphanage."
And so they did.
But after a year of staying there and never even getting close to adopted because of his expressionless face, he finally ran away.
It was then that he'd met Simon.
Simon, a teen at the time, had found Berwald living on the streets scrounging for food and barely making ends meet.
"Hey what'cha doing digging through the trash?" Simon had asked him, popping out of nowhere it had seemed at the time. "I know where you could get much better food. Follow me."
To someone who had been shown very little kindness in their life, Berwald had been utterly shocked that Simon was so willing to help him even though this was the first time either of them had met. After Simon had treated him to a meal, in which he ate enough to feed a family of four probably, Berwald had found out that Simon had first approached him out of curiosity because of how not a single emotion was expressed on his face.
After Berwald explained his disease, Simon hadn't been disgusted at all like his parents had. In fact, Simon had gotten all excited if anything about the news.
"That's so cool! You could be like the perfect spy! No one would ever know whether you were lying or not." The blond had told him. Berwald had only looked at him with his blank face at the time while on the inside he was bursting with happiness. That had been the first time ever that someone had so willingly accepted both him and his disease and hadn't even went so far as to praise him.
But still, he didn't think his illness was cool at all like Simon had exclaimed since it had caused him so much grief. So after making that apparent, the teen had agreed not to talk about it too much.
Instead, Simon invited him to join the gang he was in. Berwald, having nowhere else to go, agreed.
At the time, the gang had been a small one and barely worth notice by the police, but after Simon had stepped up and taken the position as leader of the gang, it slowly grew to become so much greater.
So it happened in a couple of years that through a certain incident, they were put on the radar of the local police department. Simon then decided to finally put to use that idea he'd come up with that day they'd met and made Berwald infiltrate said police under the guise of being a new transfer officer from another county by using fake papers and documents.
That police department had been Tino's.
Berwald's job was to gain the trust of those in the police department and then from there sabotage any attempt to arrest important clients and/or gang members. After that, he was to kill his partner and make it look as though they'd taken the gang down as well.
But then Berwald had gotten to know Tino and care for him, so he was no longer able to carry out the last part. In fact, that day when Berwald had tackled him over and stopped Dmitri from shooting him was supposed to have been the day Tino would die.
Berwald hadn't been able to do it. He couldn't go on with that plan anymore, so he intervened. And intervened. And intervened. In fact, almost every mission having to do with the gang, Berwald had sabotaged it in some way where he was still doing his mission, but Tino wouldn't die.
All the while, Berwald had been silently hoping that Tino would never find out; but now that was no longer the case since Tino had figured it out.
-o0o-
"—and that's everything." Berwald finished quietly.
"So…this entire time, from the moment you joined us, you'd been lying to me and planning on killing me?" Tino asked bitterly.
"No, I told you, I don't want you to die."
"Yet here I am trussed up like a turkey waiting to get killed."
"I unbound your hands though."
"That's beside the point—"
"Okay times way up!" Simon announced as he suddenly cut in. "I take it Berwald has probably filled you in on everything right?"
"…"
"Good! Then I hope there are no hard feelings but I have to kill you now." Simon smiled as he cocked his gun and aimed it at Tino.
"Wait, don't shoot him." Berwald said as he looked over to his boss. "Isn't there another way? We could let him join the gang or something."
"I'd never join your gang." Tino said.
"See? The only option is to kill him. We certainly can't have him go back to the police station seeing as how he knows everything now." Simon reasoned.
"But—"
"No Berwald. You've grown too attached to him. You weren't supposed to have. So, now I have to get rid of him." The blond stated coldly as he pointed gun at Tino.
Every fiber of Tino's body was telling him to run away or at least do something, but his mind just didn't want to. After everything he and Berwald had been through, after all the jokes and great times and the love he still held for the blond, he didn't think he could go on living knowing that it had all been a lie.
So Tino closed his eyes and tried to keep his shaking to a minimum as he kept his face directly in the line of the gun.
Time slowed as he waited to hear the click of the pistol. For a second, he briefly wondered who would take care of Hanatamago and whether or not anyone at the station would ever find out what happened to him. He also wondered if they'd miss him.
Tino cringed as he heard the trigger pulled, but the pain never came. Instead, he felt something heavy fall to the floor. Peeking an eye open, he gasped at the sight.
Berwald was on the ground bleeding profusely from a bullet wound on his chest.
"BERWALD!" Tino cried out as he quickly untied his feet in order to move over to the blond.
"Shit! Berwald why did you do that?" Simon shouted. "He was supposed to die not you!"
Tino wasn't sure what came over him in that moment, but he just jumped to his feet and before Simon even knew what was happening, he slammed his fist into the man's nose. Now having the upper hand, Tino quickly used his training to not only disarm the man, but also knock him unconscious.
In truth, Tino probably managed to do that so well because Simon was simply so shocked that he'd killed Berwald, his best friend, that he hadn't been able to fight back.
The blond let out a shaky breath of air as he headed back over to Berwald.
"Berwald…" He murmured, as the man coughed out blood.
"L-Looks like I-I punctured a lung." Berwald gasped.
"Why did you jump in front of the gun for me?" Tino sobbed as he clutched the taller blonde's hand.
"B-Because… I really do l-love you. Me f-falling for you w-wasn't an act…"
"I love you too, that's why you shouldn't have taken the bullet for me. Either way I would have lost you!"
"No e-everything's going to be f-fine… T-Tomorrow we'll have A-Arthur's horrible coffee and y-you'll tell jokes. I'm n-not going to die…"
Even though Berwald was saying that, Tino knew better then to believe him.
Because at that moment, the man's eyes held the gleam they always did when he was lying.
So when those greenish blue eyes dulled, all Tino could do was cry.
-o0o-
Tino eventually did call for backup and had Simon arrested while an ambulance picked up Berwald's body.
He never told anyone of Berwald's betrayal and instead only spoke of how they'd both been captured and Berwald had taken the bullet for him.
Berwald was made a hero and without Simon as their leader, the gang quickly fell apart and were all soon caught and arrested.
At first everyone in the station had been depressed at the news of Berwald's death since by then everyone had taken a liking to the expression-less man, but in time they came to accept it and found closure through the man's funeral.
Only Tino was the one who remained changed.
Of course he still smiled and told jokes to everyone as usual, he knew Berwald would have been sad if he'd stopped doing that, but he was no longer as scared of people as he used to be.
After looking death in the face and instead being saved and having his love die in his place, nothing scared him really anymore. Not even Ivan.
Tino remembered that day he met Berwald, because that day was when he'd meet the man who saved his life in exchange for his own.
It was also the day he met the man who would be the only one he'd ever love.
Sighing, Tino wiped the tears off his face as he placed a single pink carnation down on the tomb stone. Smiling softly, the blond then left the grassy area and headed home.
In loving memory of,
Berwald Oxenstierna
Born June 6, 1990
Died April 25, 2012
Friend, Officer, Hero, and Lover.
He will never be forgotten.
This is my SuFin story for the first round of Fanime-Sensei Strike's Back's contest.
My friend gave me the idea to have them be officers and she learned about FSHD in science class so she said I should use that as well. Truth be told, I've never read a SuFin fanfic and before this contest, I knew next to nothing about them. So you can imagine how heavily I had to research them in order to write this.
I know Sweden is supposed to slur his vowels together, but hey this is AU. My fanfiction, my rules.
Also, Simon Densen is one of the possible human names for Denmark so yeah, Simon was Denmark heh.
Sorry for any ooc, but I tried my best!
To my readers of Gehena Heiretsu, I swear I'm working on the chapter, but as you can see by the 7k+ words in this, I was rather busy. So far I have 2k+ words on that so no worries, it'll be done soon (I had a major writer's block though...)
Thanks for reading! Comments and criticism are greatly appreciated.