Forgotten – Prologue
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Hetalia
(A/N) This is a Hetalia AU featuring Lithuania/Belarus (Toris/Natalia), as well as Estonia (Eduard), Latvia (Raivis), and Russia (Ivan). Just thought I'd get that out there. ENJOY!
I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou
The cold was invasive. When they had arrived, every single one of them had been warm on the inside. Not anymore. The question floated aimlessly behind their eyes - had they ever? Had they ever really been able to go home to a fire, some food, and a bed? The warmth associated with hope had fled many of the weary, tired figures now shuffling their way across the freezing landscape. They were a stain, an unnatural fixture in this strange and unforgiving land. They acted like it too. Their shoulders were hunched and their gazes downcast like the pariahs of society their government had told them they were.
Most saw themselves as no better than a greasy spot on humanity left to be cleaned up by the furious forces of the North Pole. This mentality had been beaten into them by their trials of neglect and abuse; months, weeks, even days ago this had not been so. But one by one they had succumbed to their environment, which itself was embittered against all forms of life hoping to survive in the icy drifts.
All but one, that is.
He was just as hungry, just as tired, and just as sick. Even still, despite the sweet beckoning of despair and self-pity, he alone was the exception. He was straggling behind the pack of deflated persons, slowed by the gusts of snow-laden wind determined to bring the young man to his knees. What distinguished him further from the others - and made his task of survival even more difficult - was the woman in his arms. Her angular, starved face was bare to exposure from the harsh elements.
He'd tried his best to keep her warm and awake, he truly had. The young man had been filling the air and her ears with words for the past twenty miles until the inside of his mouth was as dry as if he'd eaten a cup of sand; the saliva coating his gums, teeth, and tongue had been evaporated by the wind. But despite his efforts, sometime in the last hour she had slipped into sleep. The slumber which had taken her was - in this place - unbearably dangerous.
He was dehydrated, verging on the beginnings of water-deprived madness. He could not stop and eat the snow. If the almost certain hypothermic death failed to ensnare him, becoming separated from the advancing group would undoubtedly spell the end for the both of them. And so, though he knew he should have been conserving his energy if worst came to worst, he talked.
"We'll be warm soon," he told her confidently. "I'll get them to fix you up, and we can eat. Don't you want to eat?" He even managed a small laugh, defying all emotional odds.
"You can take a break from working. Just hold on a little longer."
It did not matter she couldn't hear what he was saying. Speaking aloud soothed his inner voice, made him think – no, believe – they would reach their destination and everything would be alright. Deep down, he really believed at least some of what he said had permeated the young woman's catatonic consciousness.
A determined mantra was replaying in his mind like a skipping record on a gramophone.
Keep going…keep going…keep going…keep going…
His joints were practically frozen, and secretly he was amazed he was able to still move at all. He had ceased to feel any sensation in his gloveless hands over a day ago, the morning they started their march across the arctic. They were useless, at least until he could find a fire for the two of them to warm themselves by.
Keep going…keep going…keep going…
He had to continue on; and if not for him, for her. For the friends and the family they had left behind.
God be with those still ensnared in this special level of hell.
The group ahead of them drew further and further away, most of its members blind to the struggle for survival occurring not even twenty yards away. Those who did notice pretended not to. Why should they risk their own well-being to preserve the lives of two individuals for whom they cared nothing? The man – he was a boy really, but his experiences had aged him – knew this, and he knew it well. After all, it had been their lives for the past eleven months.
He refused to accept it.
It was all around him, encompassing the entire world and almost every inch of the continent people called "Europe." The bombs dropped in the west, the machine guns chit-chattering across the snow and the ice in France, Germany, Belgium, Norway, Finland…the roll call of battle went on and on.
But here, here in this isolated spot located in the far eastern edge of a country he didn't even belong to, they were fighting their own war. A war which pitted it's participants against society, nature, and other men all in one. In essence it was a fight for the ultimate prize – life.
No one knew. No one knew they were here but for themselves, their families, and their captors. They were a secret. Swept away amidst the chaos of the already existing conflict and forgotten in the terrible aftermath. Thrown out like trash.
"No…," his legs were giving out, like frozen gears in a faulty machine. "No!"
Was he really shouting this? It sounded and felt like he was, but at the same time the action had seemed mechanical and not real. Was it his deceptively bright disposition playing a trick on his addled conscience? He didn't want to die of course, but above all he didn't want her to die – that was why he voiced his dissension of the inevitable, or gave himself the illusion he did.
I don't want to die…don't want to die…don't…want…
He cried out as his knees buckled and he tumbled to the ground, spilling his precious passenger onto the snow where she lay in an unmoving, jumbled heap.
"Come back…," he tried to shout. The plea came out a rusty whisper instead, carried away by the wind beyond where any human ear would hear it.
The thought of dying filled the young man with white-hot desperation, eating at his insides like the hunger which had made itself his companion all those months ago.
He called out, again and again, "Come back! Come back!" No one heard. Either they chose not to, or they were already too far away.
They'll look for us…they'll notice we're missing.
This hope, this wish, was most likely in vain; it was highly improbable for them to be granted such a grace. The two were prisoners of the state after all, and two less prisoners meant less expense on the tax payers' behalf. There would be no search party, no rescue. Their guards and tormentors knew full well the environment in which they held them was not only a prison, but a suicide attempt in the rough. The reason they never looked for escaped or missing inmates was because the mere landscape did their dirty, dehumanizing work for them.
He watched helplessly, cursing his legs and his weakness, until he could no longer see their fellow companions in misery. The storm had swallowed them, like a beast devouring its prey.
The weather bore for them no pity. Fierce winds whipped back and forth, slicing through every single worn layer of his clothing and rattling his bones like the malnourished, meatless things they were. His hair stung his eyes as it was flung into his face, the recently clipped strands collecting drops of chilled moisture.
He looked his companion, at the grey and angry sky, and at his now blackened hands. He hurt so badly, every inch of him. His limbs shook, for they were almost frozen to the core and weakened from their recent strain. He was so hungry, so tired, and so very thirsty.
What did I do to deserve this? What did we do?
When the NKVD had torn apart his family and sent them to different corners of the Union, the agents had said it was because all of them had been found guilty of treason. Treason? Guilty? Not one of them was given a trial, much less committed acts worthy of being categorized as subversive. And now he was here…
"Why?" he asked the sky. Why? The sky had no answer, just the lonely howl of the maelstrom and more snow.
He lay down slowly, cautiously. After fighting for so long, was he really going to sign off on his life so easily? His throat tightened uncomfortably, but with superhuman effort he held back the tears – crying in this godforsaken place would only bring discomfort and death quicker.
Mama…Mama I'm sorry…it was a checklist in his head, all the people he wished he could have said good-bye to, one last time.
I'm sorry Raivis, I'm sorry Eduard...their faces flashed through his mind, those two young boys whose corpses they had left behind.
I'm sorry Niele, and I'm sorry to you too, Daina…his sisters, so little and fragile – who knew what had become of them, or his mother for that matter?
Once the names had been brought forth for him to examine along with the memories of the individuals who bore them, he was able to relax. He felt something inside of him unwind, reconstituting itself into an impenetrable wall of acceptance and calm.
I'm ready.
No – there was still one more person left. How could he have forgotten?
The girl...
As the briefly staved off dread of the unknown resettled in his chest, he mustered what remained of his energy and crawled through the snow towards her prone form over what little distance separated them. The cold tried to bite at his bare flesh, worming its way into his jacket and shoes. Sensations and pain as such were almost beyond him now.
Once by her side, he lay down next to her. The snow fell heavy and fast, blanketing the pair. The young man extended his arms to draw her closer and closer, millimeter by millimeter, until her chest was flat against his own. With a resignedly contented sigh, he gently pressed his lips to her cool forehead.
Her shorn hair framed her face in a way that was breathtaking, even when she was unconscious and frostbitten. Her eyes were sunken and her cheeks were gaunt, but so were his. Her lips were dry and cracked, exposed to the cold and the icy polar breeze one-time to many, but again, so were his. He smiled – a matching pair. It was strange it would end like this.
It was only a matter of time before something like this happened, he told himself, the edges of his vision already blurring from blinding white into a soft and delicate black.
He nuzzled her hair, ignoring the cracked, bloodied scalp and the lice – he knew his own was no better. It wouldn't matter soon, anyhow. Physically he probably had it in him to make it. He could have ridden out the storm, for surely the rest of the group would have hunkered down somewhere. The guards wouldn't want to risk their own lives in the gales and the ice, so they would have stopped the prisoners nearby.
The young man could muster the last dregs of his strength; call on that latent human ability to tough out even the worst of conditions. He would survive. And yet, he couldn't bring himself to leave her alone to die.
What an awful thought.
He closed his eyes, breathing a sigh which sounded almost like relief, not caring anymore for the body he had managed to sustain for just over eighteen years. He had sustained hers too, and the young boys he'd come to love as brothers, his family…
He had protected them all – or, at least, tried too. He was sorry…so, so sorry…
They always said I'd give too much one day.
That day was today, wasn't it?
"I'm sorry, Natalia."
(A/N) See, this is what happens when I read Between Shades of Grey and watch Hetalia season 3 in a short amount of time… XD This fic is set in Siberia (of course), and it's heavily influenced and inspired by Ruta Sepetys's Between Shades of Grey (amazing book – go read it!). I'm just going to warn you now – this story will not be happy, but I promise good plot throughout :D
This here is pretty much a teaser – I can't promise regular updates until I finish my other story and figure out the rest of the plot for this one, but I won't be abandoning it!
Stay classy ~ Vots ;)
(EDIT!) I actually replaced the chapter already on here with this revamped, better version…just because. Long story short, I revised this for a writing contest my teacher drafted me into and I realized the revised was a million times better than the original ^_^