Forget-Me-Not
Hetalia Academy AU
Chapter I
Vergißmeinnicht
Ludwig x Feliciano
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~ 1995 ~
Ludwig Beilschmidt had always been a fundamentally rational child. Even at the age of twelve, he wouldn't believe in things like fate or destiny or kindred spirits. Therefore, all he could call the encounter he made on his very first day at this international boarding school was a truly strange coincidence.
„Ludwig? Ludwig Beilschmidt? Is-a that really you? Do you remember me?"
"I'm sorry", Ludwig frowned, trying his hardest to recognize the small Italian boy staring at him expectantly, "I can't remember where-"
Had there been any chance of Ludwig remembering, the last thing he would ever have forgotten were these shining eyes that were the warm colour of his happiest childhood days, of summers spent together in his grandfather's garden in that little Bavarian village he used to live in, of fields of daisies, poppies and cornflowers, of the carefree time before everything had changed.
"It's-a me, Feli. Feliciano Vargas." The other's smile faded as he realised Ludwig wouldn't be able to recall who he was. "We used to play together when we were little. I think you thought I was a girl, though…" He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, eagerly waiting for the other's expression to change.
The brown-haired boy's weird gestures and words brought a small smile to the German's lips, still he wouldn't be able to make any sense of them. No matter how hard he tried, he could not remember any little boy or even girl that looked anything like that Feliciano, just as he could not remember his grandfather or anything else that had happened up to the time shortly after his seventh birthday.
Feliciano looked disappointed, almost on the verge of tears. Ludwig felt sorry for him. They must have been very good friends.
"That's-a him?!", another boy that looked very much like Feliciano, probably his older brother, suddenly chimed in, "Are you shitting me? That's-a that Ludwig kid you been-a telling me about all these years and he doesn't even remember you?" Feli seemed embarrassed, trying to calm down his brother by tugging at his sleeve and low-voicedly telling him something in Italian, but the other would completely ignore his attempts and continue his rant. "It's-a just like I told you. You know why I never came along with you and nonno to visit this-a German friend of his? Because Germany sucks and Germans suck and-a you better do not hang out with that potato bastard."
Now Feli was crying for real. Ludwig hesitantly put his hand on the boy's shoulder in an awkward attempt of consolation.
"I-I'm very sorry…", he tried to find something to say, but he wouldn't, because he could barely explain to himself what must have happened in 1989. All he remembered was waking up in a hospital bed and everything being strange and new and unfamiliar, even those people that claimed to be his parents and his brother. "B-but I'm sure we can be friends again."
~ 1999 ~
"Kiku said that he won't make it tonight, he need-a to cram for that test tomorrow", Feliciano entered the rooms Ludwig shared with his brother, as usual without knocking or any other gesture of respecting the other's privacy.
"Ant you are perfectly prepared?", Ludwig turned around from his desk, raising a brow. "Not exactly", the Italian replied in a voice that sounded more like a plea than a statement, "but I thought I just could-a do a little bit of copying from you again…" Ludwig gave him a stern look. "Zis attitude of yours really got to change. You shoult follow Kiku's example ant use ze evening for studying as vell." Feliciano looked disappointed. "But I really wanted to watch this film with-a you…"
Something in the way his friend used to say this kind of thing always succeeded in making the German forget his otherwise so pronounced sense of duty. "Vell, it's okay for tomorrow, I suppose" , he gave in to Feli's unreasonable suggestion, "but you got to promise me zat you will start to work harder from tomorrow on." The Italian looked happy. "Aye, sir", he exclaimed, doing a mock salute and giving Ludwig a quick thank-you-hug that made the tall blonde teenager wonder once again when, after all these years of getting used to it, this kind of behaviour that seemed to be so natural to his best friend had started to make him blush.
Feliciano put the film he had brought along into the video recorder. "Say, Ludwig, when Lovi and Gilbert are graduating, can I move in here?" Ludwig refrained from correcting his 'when' into an 'if'. "You practically already do liff here, don't you?", he replied.
~ memories lost ~
Every year, little Ludwig would wait for summer to come with an eagerness other children all around the world would be waiting for Christmas or their birthday only. Summer holidays were the time when his mother Luise would take him all the way down from Frankfurt to Bavaria to visit his opa. He wouldn't be opa's only guest, though. It had become a tradition that opa's Italian friend would visit at the same time, together with his grandchild Feli who was just Ludwig's age.
"Opa" and "nonno" was all that Ludwig had ever called their grandfathers. In his young mind, these had been their proper names and he had never spent too much a thought on what they did apart from being grandfathers, sitting on opa's veranda, drinking wine and playing Risk all day long. His thoughts were more focused on Feli, his dearest friend, his sandkastenliebe, and he would enjoy every minute the two of them could spend together, being treated with lots of brezen and gelati by their grandfathers, playing in the fields adjoining opa's garden all day long and staying up until they could see the moon and the stars in the sky and it was time to go to bed.
"Mohnblume", Ludwig explained, picking a bright red poppy and handing it to Feli, who already had a whole bunch of all kinds of wildflowers in her hands. The flowers, soon to be neatly arranged in one of opa's vases, were to be the objects of another watercolour painting – one of little Feli's favourite pastimes. And although Ludwig much preferred playing football or cops and robbers, he'd be gentlemen enough to let the lady choose their activities most of the time.
"Papavero", Feli would reply with a wide smile and, as she did after almost any flower name that was exchanged between the two of them, break into a cheerful song that, Ludwig concluded, must have something to do with the named flower.
"Lo sai che i papaveri son alti, alti, alti,
e tu sei piccolina, e tu sei piccolina,
lo sai che i papaveri son alti, alti, alti,
sei nata paperina, che cosa ci vuoi far..."
Ludwig caught himself staring at Feli, whose sweet voice appeared to be the most beautiful in the whole world to the little boy, absent-mindedly and with cheeks as red as the poppies they had just picked only when the little girl held a bunch of tiny bluish flowers directly in front of his nose. "Nontiscordardimé", she exclaimed with a warm smile, her little hand offering the freshly picked flowers to Ludwig. Did she mean to give them to Ludwig as a present? He returned the smile shyly. "Vergißmeinnicht", he explained as Feli continued her singing, "Das werde ich niemals."
"E un giorno di maggio che dirvi non so,
avvenne poi quello che ognuno pensò
Papavero attese la Papera al chiaro lunar
e poi la sposò.
Ma questo romanzo ben poco durò:
poi venne la falce che il grano tagliò,
e un colpo di vento i papaveri in alto portò.
Così Papaverino se n'e' andato,
lasciando Paperina impaperata"
~ 1999 ~
"Feliciano", Ludwig whispered in a soft yet decided voice, trying to wake up his friend who had been asleep on his shoulder ever since three quarters of the film he had wanted to see so desperately had been over. "Feliciano", he shook the other by the shoulder carefully.
"Vee, is it over already?" , Feli opened his eyes only the tiniest bit. "I can sleep here, can't I, I'm-a way too tired to go home now."
'Home', Feliciano's and Lovino's rooms, were only a few doors away from Ludwig's, but he knew the Italian would find an excuse to sleep at his place (or, more precisely, in his bed) at least three times a week and the German had long given up any attempts to prevent this. "It's alright, I'll just go and get a blanket for you so you von't steal mine again."
He hadn't got any more than a few steps away from the sofa, when suddenly the door swung open and a distinctive smell of Sangria mixed with beer, followed by Gilbert and Antonio bawling out something that sounded like "SCHBIN DÄ KÖNISCH VON MALLORCAAAAA~" swayingly entered the room. Not too unusual a scene, Ludwig guessed, automatically pressing his palm against his forehead and uttering a small sigh - except there was something missing…
"Where's Francis?", he addressed his brother, expecting the worst, "I hope you two haven't solt him again." It wouldn't have been the first time poor old Fritz and Julchen had to come all the way from Berlin to put in a word for their mischief-maker son and spare him from being thrown out of school (Ludwig always tried his best to make up for his brother's doings in a personal act of solidarity by being extraordinarily commendable in everything he did, thus putting the Beilschmidt family back into a good light).
Gilbert let out an exuberant laugh. "Au contraire, mon chère Louis", he imitated his French friend, trying to do something inexplicable with his finger that almost ended with it gouging out one of Ludwig's eyes (luckily he possessed good reflexes), "He's somevhere between clout nine and sevenz heaven at ze moment!" Antonio was rolling on the floor, laughing as if Gilbert had just said the funniest thing in the world. "He – he-hee-heee" Gilbert couldn't repress his laughter either and Ludwig felt like waiting for ages until he finally finished his sentence "-he asked Arthur if he'd go to ze prom viz him at ze pub, ant A-ha-haaa-he was so drunk zat he said YES!"
Ludwig could only shake his head about this piece of information. First of all, how could Arthur, who for some reason was head of the student council, set such a bad example as to get drunk in the middle of a school week? Secondly, it was obvious that, once he had recovered from his inebriety, he would take back his answer, which would lead to another of Francis' infamous monologues of self-pity that even Ludwig had heard too many of already. (Thirdly, he had completely forgotten about that prom that was to be held in honour of the senior students.)
Busy with these thoughts, Ludwig must have overseen Antonio crawl to the sofa where Feliciano was lying half-asleep and take hold of his hands with a delightedly surprised expression in his face.
"Lovino, my sweet tomato, I didn't know you were here, too."
"I'm not Lovino", Feli tried to explain sleepily, with a face that was somewhere between scared and amused, but Antonio was completely ignoring him.
"Aah, you look so beautiful today, so kind and peatheful."
"Th-that's-a because I'm Feliciano, veh?"
Antonio's face was moving closer to Feli's who unsuccessfully tried to move away from him on the sofa.
"Now that Franthis got what he wanted, I might as well try my luck and ask you." He got in a kneeling pose in front of Feli, still holding his hands, "Lovino Vargath, will you do me the honour and accompany me to the prom?"
Even before Feli could start his desperate "Ludwig, ve, vee, help me!" , Ludwig had grabbed hold of the drunk Spaniard, who was lucky the person on the sofa was not the real Lovino, for this would have ended much worse for him, and was now dragging him into the direction of the door.
"Okay, you two, zat's enough for tonight."
He knew too well the kind of exhausting and time-consuming struggle it was to get the 'bad friends', as they called themselves, back into their beds. It would involve setting bait tomatoes and singing the Sandmännchen song, amongst other techniques Ludwig had developed over the years.
~ 1996 ~
Ludwig and Feliciano were sitting on the grass, eating the pasta salad Feli had made, as they would do during lunch break on most of these bright blue summer days, this time without Kiku, who said he had something important to deal with this afternoon (Ludwig supposed it was beating the boss in one of these video games he was playing all of the time). The German hadn't failed noticing that his friend had been acting weird all day.
"Ludwig, I-", he started in an unusually shy voice, "this, this is-a Feliciano, I-"
"I won't forget you again", Ludwig stated factually.
Feliciano stared at him with a weird mixture of shock and surprise, joy and embarrassment in his face for a moment, before turning away his head and covering his face with his hands.
"Wha-, ca-, can you read-a my mind?!", he heard him say in panic, "Wait, I, I was-a just thinking some embarrassing things…"
"Shut up, I can't read your mind. I fount zis letter you vere just trying to quote."
Feliciano looked relieved. "A-and-a you promise you won't forget me?"
"Yes, yes", Ludwig reassured him, offering him his little finger.
"Ah, you learned that from Kiku!" , Feliciano happily joined with his.
"I von't ever forget you and I von't leave you alone. It's a promise."
They smiled at each other silently for a moment until Ludwig realised how hot his cheeks were suddenly feeling and rapidly removed his finger to search for something in his pocket.
"I'd like you to have zis", he revealed a necklace with an iron cross pendant in his hand, "I have ze same, vati gave it to me. He used to be a big shot in ze military, you know, and vould love to see me making my career in the Bundeswehr. Anyvay, i-it's gonna be our friendship pendant now." He gestured with it towards Feli, who happily let the other put it on him. "I-it's meant to remind you zat I'm thinking of you, okay?"
Feliciano looked ridiculously happy, almost crying for joy.
"Thank you so much, Ludwig", he cheered, hugging his friend so passionately that they would both fall onto the grass, Feliciano on top of Ludwig, arms around his neck.
They'd lie like this for what seemed several minutes, Ludwig noting for the first time how fast Feliciano was making his heart beat.
~ 1999 ~
Ludwig returned from his bad friends' bedtime mission stressed and tired only to discover that Feliciano had somehow managed to get out of his clothes and was lying, sound asleep again, on the couch, wearing nothing but his boxers and that iron cross pendant neither of the two had taken off even once ever since Ludwig had given it to him. It took him one long and absent-minded glance to decide he wouldn't let him spend the night on the sofa.
"Feliciano", he tried waking him again, first softly, then louder and louder, but however he'd shout and however he'd shake him, the other would just continue breathing open-mouthedly and muttering 'vee's and something about pasta every now and then.
He didn't see much of a choice apart from lifting the light-weighted Italian up on his arms and carrying him to his bedroom, unable to not notice the increasing speed of his heartbeat while pressing his arms against the other's naked skin, yet overlooking the great foundation for inappropriate accusations he had prepared for his brother when he'd wake up the next morning by leaving Feli's clothes there, spread all around the sofa.
He had just carefully set down the other on his bed and set the alarm clock, ready to go out like a light, when he noticed Feli's voice talking to him.
"Tell me, Ludwig, are you still planning to go for a Bundeswehr career when we've graduated?"
"No, I … I zink I'll try ant apply to a university right away."
Feliciano seemed content. They'd talked about that topic several times and Feli had always been worried that they wouldn't be able to see each other anymore or that something terrible could happen to Ludwig if he contracted into the army.
"You're the best", he smiled happily, surely knowing he was the only reason for Ludwig's change of mind. "And do you think", he added more shyly, "you'll be able to find a university where they also teach-a the arts?"
"I already fount one", Ludwig confessed, and at the same moment felt two arms wrapped around him. "You're-a gonna be a great engineer. I'm sure you'll invent something super cool and efficient someday", Feliciano jubilated sleepily, causing the German to blush.
He'd almost fallen asleep in Feliciano's embrace when the other started talking again.
"Ludwig, are … are we going to that prom?"
Ludwig wondered why Feli was saying this so nervously.
"It's our duty to go zere, it's being helt in honour of our brothers." He asked himself whether Lovino would be there at all, though, or rather hide in a corner of his room grumblingly, if Antonio repeated his proposal to him in person.
"No, I mean…" Feliciano started fumbling with Ludwig's fingers the way he sometimes would when he was being uneasy about something, "a-are we going to the prom?"
Ludwig needed a moment to get what the other was suggesting. Or, was he really suggesting what Ludwig thought he was? What if he wasn't and he would completely expose himself with his answer? How was he going to put his answer into words anyway? Would it feel weird to go the prom with Feliciano? Would the others stare and talk about them? Considering the far below-average female quota of this school, it wasn't too unusual a sight seeing two boys go to prom together. He couldn't dance though. Would he have enough time to learn? How long had he already been holding back his answer?
"I-I-I-I'm sorry", Feliciano started to panic again, increasing the speed of his finger-fumbling as well as his speech, "this was-a a stupid idea, wasn't it? O-of course we need-a to find some pretty girls to go to the prom with, it would be really weird if we'd go together, right? People would talk and stare. Wh-what was-a I even thinking? Please forget what I just said. You'd probably hate it, wouldn't you?"
Ludwig tried to calm down. This was really happening. He took hold of Feliciano's hands, his grasp more secure than he would have expected, looking the other directly into the eyes.
"No, I – I wouldn't hate it at all."
The two of them stared into each other's eyes, still holding hands, for one long not at all awkward but, Ludwig supposed he was allowed to think of it as romantic now, moment, smiles growing wider, bodies moving closer in together. Feli wrapped his arms around Ludwig again, hiding his face in the other's shoulder.
Ludwig remembered he still hadn't got that extra blanket he wanted to get for him. Then again, this wouldn't be necessary anymore now, would it?
annotations
vergißmeinnicht (German) = forget-me-not (name of a flower)
nonno (Italian) = grandpa
opa (German) = grandpa
sandkastenliebe (German) = sandbox love
brezen (German) = a German snack similar to pretzels, but bigger and softer
gelati (Italian) = ice cream
Mohnblume (German) = poppy
papavero (Italian) = poppy
'Lo sai che i papaveri...' (Italian) = lines from 'papaveri e papere', an Italian song popular in the 1950s*
nontiscordardimé (Italian) = forget-me-not
"Das werde ich niemals." (German) = I never will.
"SCHBIN DÄ KÖNISCH VON MALLORCAAAAA~" = 'Ich bin der König von Mallorca', a German tourist drinking song about the named Spanish island (if you don't know it, DON'T google it, it's terrible and will be stuck in your head for weeks!)
"Au contraire, mon chère Louis" (French) = On the contrary, my dear Ludwig
Sandmännchen (German) = little sand man, a popular GDR TV character
vati (German) = daddy
Bundeswehr (German) = German army
* here's the full translation of the lines from 'papaveri e papere' used in the story (thanks to LullatheOtaku on DeviantArt!)
You know, the poppies are tall, tall, tall
and you are really small, and you are really small!
You know, the poppies are tall, tall, tall
you're born small (literally, 'ducky'), what can you do?
And, on a day on May that I don't know,
What everyone thought finally happened
Poppy waited for Ducky under the moonlight
and then he married her.
But this romance lasted only a little:
the scythe came and cut the wheat
and the wind killed (literally 'brought up [to the sky]') the poppies.
Thus Poppy has left,
leaving Ducky 'ducked'
(I really don't know what 'impaperata' means. it sure is a word that comes from 'papera' (ducky), but it doesn't make sense even in Italian. You can interpretate it as 'sad', 'lonely' or whatever. It's a word just meant to play with the assonance between papera and papavero (ducky and poppy) I hope you'll find this useful.)
author's comments
My first Hetalia fan fiction, some fluffy GerIta fluff for you! 3~
I basically tried to transfer the Chibitalia and HRE / Italy and Germany story from Axis Powers Hetalia into an alternate universe in which the Hetalia nations are normal human teenagers attending a boarding school.
If Ludwig's past is still somewhat mysterious after reading this, don't worry, that's on purpose. :3 Because there is gonna be a part two, written from Gilbert's perspective, that will include more of the Beilschmidt brothers' past, along with some childhood recollections of Gilbert himself and a portrayal of his feelings for a girl he, ironically enough, had taken to be a boy when they were younger. (...'And now you know the plot', as the Animianiacs would say.)
If I can keep up my motivation (you can help me by leaving comments ), there's even gonna be more parts of this story, each written from another character's perspective and telling their own little story...
By the way, I am, of course, not a native speaker of English, so please, if you spot anything unidiomatic, any grammar or expression mistakes, do correct me!
Thanks for reading, everyone! 3