Author's note: A couple things for this one.
1. Every time I hear « Brothers on a Hotel Bed » I think of Roderich and Erzsi, and the italic quote below is the one that really rings out for me in capturing these two.
2. I am such a sucker for Roderich and it felt so good to get to write from his POV something angsty but not necessarily depressing. He's such a great character and I love him.
3. In my headcanon after WWI Roderich spent time with Francis who sent him this woman to be his mistress. He ended up really liking the woman, taking her everywhere with him until WWII when he had her smuggled to Sweden because she was an Franco-Austrian Jew. She's the only woman beyond Erzsi that Roderich has ever cared for, though they both knew he was still in love with Erzsi.
Something he was not looking for
And I have heard
that even land-locked lovers yearn
for the sea like navy men.
Erzsi is going to leave him.
Roderich isn't stupid; he's lived with and loved this beautiful woman long enough to see the signs.
And why not? He was at the end of his life; this war would consume him. At least they were calling it The War to End All Wars. It would be one for the history books, that was for sure, and Austria would be its biggest casualty. Roderich Edelstein would come to be nothing more than the memory of an Austrian man weighing down the heart of a perfect Hungarian woman.
He hopes she won't cry over him. Roderich is still enough of a gentleman to hope she never cries over him, enough of a realist to know he isn't worth it.
He packs up those few things he has energy enough for in the empty house. Erzsi left days ago, saying she'd do her best to return.
She won't.
Oh, she'll do her best.
But she won't return.
With a stiff back and a cane in hand Roderich finishes. His whole body aches, his face is filled with lines: age is finally catching up with him. What happened to the small boy who played with Basch? The sixteen-year-old who married Antonio?
Roderich is a mess. For the first time in his life he's an honest-to-God mess, and just don't have it in him to give a fuck.
She hasn't spotted him yet. It wasn't as if Roderich was trying to hide; he had simply sat himself down at the edge of the large room, a room they both once knew well.
He remembers fondly her putting on of a dirndl, how she had smiled at the smooth fabric beneath her fingers, how she had tucked hair behind an ear and asked if she looked silly. She had felt silly and so the dirndls were replaced with dresses from Hungary, dresses she felt slightly more comfortable in.
But every once and a while when he came home early from a trip Roderich would find his Hungarian companion in one of the dirndls, singing soft Austrian songs in German. He would lean against the frame of the door and watch Erzsi until her eyes would come up and she'd blush and bustle away. Roderich used to laugh, a deep, rich laugh.
Roderich hasn't laughed in years.
Finally she turns, almost agonizingly slow if already the pain wasn't more than unbearable for the Austrian. Their eyes meet for just a moment and Erzsi's green eyes almost have that light behind them again, life like she used to have.
Life that changed him.
He never meant to marry her. He never meant to love her. He never meant to let her become his everything.
The Austrian began truly living when Erzsébet came to him; now he was done, dead.
Standing slowly, he leaves.
He watches his mistress in her mirror, purple eyes always somehow finding their own reflection. Roderich hates to see himself now; Roderich hates to no longer know the man he sees.
"Liebling?" the woman asks; he says nothing.
They would go for horseback rides, for bike rides, through winding streets and fields. They would go for hours until they were exhausted and lost and Roderich would be frustrated and that would make Erzsi laugh, pulling him down for a kiss that would always be sloppy and needy and passionate.
It was as if they could get away, far enough away, to leave it all behind. To become mortal. To become human. To be Roderich and Erzsi only, two people so in love even the angles in heaven were jealous.
Now the horses are dead, the bikes broken, the land tortured. Perhaps it was better this way; there was no chance of ever going back.
He sees her across the street. Roderich knows immediately that that is Erzsi, his Erzsi, his Erzsi that he loves and spoiled and married and lost. His body starts to shake, even his legs too weak to hold his weight. In his wheelchair he feels he weighs a thousand kilograms, rooted to the spot.
But that is Erzsi, in Vienna. He has no doubt of it, even as his mistress exits the shop to stand beside him, crouching down to follow his line of vision.
"What is it?"
Roderich shakes his head. There are no words to describe the angle he has just seen. Maybe Erzsi wasn't as strong as he'd thought she was; maybe she was trapped too.
His toes curl in the water, sitting on the Italian coast. The Mediterranean sea laps wonderfully against the shore, Roderich under an umbrella at peace for maybe the first time in months. When he closes his eyes his mind imagines there's nothing here beyond him and a smiling Erzsi, just as there had always been. No more memories of blood, of war: just Erzsi.
The Austrian's ears perk at the sound of Feliciano's voice but he lets it go, his head rolling to the side to fall asleep.
Fingers, thin but short and dainty, intertwine with his as she sits beside him in the sand. For a long time they say nothing.
Maybe, just maybe, Roderich and Erzsi have never had to say anything.
Across the table she nods once to him, not meeting his eyes. Then she stands, and leaves.
Francis gives him a look of pity but Roderich simply clears his face of any emotion, raising an eyebrow as if to say, "What? I never loved her anyway."
What he's really saying is, "What? We are in love; Fate will bring us together once more, as it has in the past."
In the sitting room, moving slowly towards the window with heavy leans on the cane, the Austrian finds her. The fabric of her dirndl is spread beautifully over the couch, her gaze low out the window. On her hand she plays with a gold ring.
Roderich knew all along Erzsi was going to leave him.
He wasn't stupid.
He also knew all along that she would return, taking his seat beside her and sighing.
They say nothing.