Title: Awake Like Dreaming
Pairing(s): Prussia/Austria, some allusion to Spain/Austria and the Habsburg marriages. For some reason.
Disclaimer: Never mine. Tears of sorrow.
I literally wrote this at midnight, once everyone had gone to sleep. I don't much care for sharing a house with nine or ten people, to be honest. Is this confusing? YES. Confusing one-shots are how I show my love.
-x-
On the first night of his captivity, Gilbert shouts obscenities and words of bravado at the guards lounging down the hall, making as much noise as humanly possible and pulling at the chains until the manacles rub his wrists raw, much like the yelling does to his voice. After that he sits there lividly, wishing death and destruction upon the men who hold him here right before he starts to laugh, the sound less than sane even to his own ears.
He'll get out of here. They can't hold his awesome self for long; no prison can hold him and Ludwig will come if he can just hold out a little longer.
-x-
On the third night of his captivity, Gilbert Beilschmidt dreams.
At first he's not sure it's a dream. Stretching in front of him is a battlefield, bodies strewn every which way, mangled and defenceless as looters and the elements come to claim them. Blood stains the ground, and all around him there are chunks blown out of the earth, filled with more bodies; more carnage. Francis stands next to him, his usual jovial expression gone, replaced with something grim and dark. It looks completely out of place on the blonde, but as he looks over his eyes catch something else: Antonio crouches on the ground, clenching something in his hand – another hand, Gilbert realizes belatedly, attached to a slim wrist encased in white and stained with even more blood. He wonders who it was, though the devastated look on Antonio's face prevents him from doing anything, but when his friend stands up to walk over to them, Gilbert sees the blood leaking out of a wound in the green-eyed man's stomach, and from another on his neck.
"Antonio," Francis says then, his tone flat and devoid of anything regarding an emotion. "You're dead."
And Antonio looks at them before glancing at himself, some of the old humour returning to his face. "Huh," he replies. "So I am."
-x-
On the fourth night, he thinks he might be dreaming again. A man stands across from him, brilliant in a uniform of white and blue, and for some reason Gilbert thinks he can see, for a moment, bloodstains. But he must be mistaken – the man's clothes are pristine, not a rumple to be seen, and though Gilbert recognizes it as a uniform of the enemy, he cannot bring himself to do anything other than stare, noticing belatedly that, on one hand, the man wears only a single white glove.
"Who are you?" he asks, his tone defensive, but the man says nothing, giving him a small frown before he turns his head to survey the cell, and Gilbert can feel the irritation rolling off of him in waves.
"Hey," Gilbert tries again. "Who are you?"
The dream-man looks at him, scorn evident on his face even as he sits primly on one of the damp stones of the small prison cell, his mouth curving into a small grimace of distaste.
"I don't like it anymore than you," Gilbert snaps irritably, trying to shift from his spot on the ground, but the manacles hold him tight and he can do nothing. His scowl only deepens as the man gives him another look, his violet eyes narrowed – and Gilbert doesn't know how he knows what colour they are; it just feels right and he's going with it – as if it's Gilbert's fault he's in this hovel. The man doesn't take his eyes away, and Gilbert finds his neck heating with shame despite himself, just before the anger takes over because who the hell is this priss to judge him?
"If you don't like it, then leave!"
To his surprise, the man vanishes, and Gilbert is surprised when he has to swallow the urge to desperately call him back.
-x-
The man is there again, on the fifth night, his eyes closed and his expression far off, body swaying as if to some invisible melody. Gilbert thinks he looks stupid, and tells him so, but he is ignored. Disliking this, Gilbert picks a rock up and throws it, and feels disappointed when it only serves to pass right through the other man.
He doesn't know why he expected it to hit, as what else could this man be other than a figment of his imagination?
-x-
He's back on the battlefield for the sixth night, Ludwig standing beside him, looking smart in his uniform. Francis stands somewhere up ahead, and Gilbert remembers belatedly that it's because his brother and his friend don't share the best of histories. Francis is speaking to a short blonde man dressed in red, red like the blood around them, red like the flames of Hell.
"Ready, brother?" Ludwig asks, and Gilbert snorts, about to ask for what? when suddenly the bodies get up, ignorant of the fact that they were dead only a few seconds ago, and though they stab each other with bayonets there is no blood, even as they fall back to the ground with vacant, milky eyes.
He sees Ludwig up ahead, and he tries to push through the others to get to him, and for a moment he thinks he sees something white, but that's ridiculous because the red covers everything, even Ludwig.
Antonio stands beside him then, battleaxe in hand, blood smeared across his face and a terrifying expression of glee on his face. The flash of white is there again, and suddenly Antonio is rushing towards it, and Gilbert sees another soldier, but it's only a nobody; a streak of white, of blue, and of red among the thousands.
He doesn't even see the sword that ends Antonio's life, just as he doesn't see the man in the white uniform that falls next to him, a golden ring falling out of his single gloved hand, glancing off Antonio's palm before it is lost to the war.
Beautiful things just aren't allowed to exist here.
-x-
"My brother will come for me," Gilbert says on the ninth night, his tone smug and sure. The dream-man from before is there again, and he inclines his head, and even though his face is pinched together in the usual show of confusion and disapproval, Gilbert thinks he gets it.
-x-
On the tenth night Gilbert nurses the new cuts and bruises given to him by the guards, the ones that dribble blood onto the stone floor of the cell, its final resting place.
A hand covers his arm, suddenly, and Gilbert looks at the slightly transparent limb before raising his head to meet the violet eyes of the dream-man.
"Roderich," Gilbert says suddenly, not knowing where this information comes from, but suddenly he can't stop, there's so much of it.
"Roderich Edelstein," he says hurriedly. "Twenty-two years of age, musician, aristocrat, born in the year of our—" he is cut off by a finger pressed against his lips, but when he meets the dream-man's – Roderich's – eyes again he thinks he sees, however fleeting, a smile before the man vanishes.
He doesn't notice the gash on his neck has been healed until the next morning.
-x-
On the seventeenth night the guards tell him Ludwig is dead, their cruel laughter echoing in his ears as they describe how they killed him, how he fell at their hands, but Gilbert doesn't listen to them; doesn't hear them, because the violet-eyed dream-man, Roderich, is there again, standing in the shadows, and for a moment Gilbert thinks he can see the shape of a taller man, broad-shouldered with a sorrowful look on his face. And though he can't hear him, Gilbert can feel the apology being drilled into his skull by familiar blue eyes before Roderich snaps his fingers and they're both gone.
-x-
He loses count of the nights shortly thereafter, but if he were to hazard a guess, perhaps he would say around twenty-three.
The man isn't there, not at first, and Gilbert watches the place where he usually sits obsessively, because he can't take not seeing him, he needs him, he has nothing else.
So when the man shows up, his face carefully blank, Gilbert allows himself to exhale in relief.
He realizes, then, that he doesn't know how much longer he can keep up with this, and as if sensing his thoughts Roderich steps forward, forgoing his usual spot in the moonlight to kneel in front of Gilbert, holding out a single hand, and Gilbert realizes that he has removed the white glove, letting it flutter unceremoniously to the floor.
"I can kill you," the man says simply, and even though it's the first thing Gilbert has heard him say somehow it doesn't surprise him. Nor does the fact that, when the man reaches a hand out to him, the only logical answer – the only acceptable answer – he can find to say is please.
He takes the hand in his own, and feels no more.
-x-
In the morning, two men survey a cell, their faces filled with irritation.
"Another one dead," one says, unlocking the door and gazing with disdain at the body – the "Devil's Son," as they called him unoriginally, after the man's red eyes and white hair.
"Another one for the pits," replies the other, and as they grunt and lift the body, they pause.
There, lying on the floor, pristine and pure, is a single white glove.