Hetalia: Axis Powers is the property of Hidekaz Himaruya.
Reader discretion is advised.
The Hidden Bedroom
May 12, 2044
A few miles west of Kalispell, Montana
Mary sat across from my sister and me, looking at us with a bland expression on her face.
"Why would you want to know?"
"It's for American History," Carrie said. "We're supposed to go and interview people who have been part of some sort of recent conflict -"
"Recent conflict? Kid, that war ended eight years ago. That ain't exactly current events."
"Yeah, but you're the only person nearby who's had an eyewitness account of anything," I said. "It was as recent as we could get, and everyone else we know lived in Maryland during the occupation."
"I realize that, Riley."
"Then help us out," I said. "You love telling stories; you've told us about the times you went to Europe since we were old enough to hear them."
My cousin pursed her lips and brought the tips of her fingers together. "Kid, there isn't much of a story. The winters were colder than hell, I had trouble getting propane, food was tight. I just kept my head down and hoped I wouldn't get it blown off."
"But," Carrie said, "what about the camp?"
Mary shook her head, shifting her stiff right leg. "What about the camp? I was there for a maximum of three days, kiddo, and then I got out. The rest you've already heard. There's nothing to tell. You guys want lunch?"
Well, I thought, that was disappointing.
Mary Stuart Cornelian was the second eldest of our many cousins, and a storyteller extraordinaire. She had been to Europe more times than either of us could count, knew at least three dozen fairy tales by heart, and could tell the strangest, funniest stories about college, high school, Girl Scouts, and life in Europe. Even the most political or historical of her stories – Mary was the first person to talk to us about the Watergate scandal and the first two world wars – were highly entertaining. It seemed like she had a story for everything.
However, there was one thing she seemingly had no story about: what she had done, and how she had survived, during World War III. My sister and I were too young to remember much about it, and as soon as the war broke out everyone in our family moved down south to avoid the inevitable German-Italian occupation.
Everyone, that is, except Mary. Barely three years out of MSU, low on cash and too tied to the land to leave, she stayed in Montana through all three years of the occupation. Most everyone thought she was dead until we moved back after the war ended; we never heard from her, after all. She wasn't dead, but had gotten shot through the right knee and done time in an enemy prison camp for trying to smuggle extra propane the winter before the war ended.
No one knew how she'd escaped the camp. We cousins had a running pool on our individual theories of how exactly she got out, but she though she listened to all of them, she never confirmed if any were true. In fact, she refused to talk about the war with anyone. I could only think of one exception, and that was her sister Cassidy, but I doubted we could get anything out of her, either. Getting anyone's secrets out of Cassidy is like pulling teeth out of a pissed-off dog.
Carrie and I ate the lunch Mary had made for us, Carrie all the while badgering her for details. She didn't give any. I noticed that Mary was awful quiet that day, when normally she'd be telling tall tales and cracking jokes.
Eventually, she went down into the basement to read for a while and left Carrie and me by ourselves. My twin started ranting immediately after she left.
"This is so unfair!" she said. "Why won't she just talk to us?"
"Who knows?" I said. "Maybe we should talk to Cassidy. She was a war correspondent around that time, wasn't she?"
"But she lives in Idaho! Can't Mary help us out, just this once?"
"Hey, take it easy. Maybe something really bad happened that she doesn't want to talk about."
"It's Mary, sis. She's been in trouble more times than I can count, and she's told us about all of them. How bad could it have been for her not to tell us?"
We were just about to find out, because at that moment, a loud bang! resounded from somewhere deep in our cousin's basement. We went over to the basement door and opened it, half-expecting to see our cousin sprawled out on the floor surrounded by six dozen old books that she'd dropped, but she wasn't. Slowly, my twin and I walked down the stairs, shutting the basement door behind us.
"Mary? You okay?" I called as I entered the main basement space. Mary's cutting table and piles of fabric – our cousin was a quilter – sat to the far right, with the sewing machine on a desk just in front of it. There was an expanse of empty space from there, where Mary had taught us how to play 21, BS and Egyptian Rat Screw as kids, and on the far left wall was a china cabinet full of knickknacks…
I blinked. I thought I was seeing things, but I wasn't. The china cabinet wasn't in its usual spot, but was now a foot or so from the left wall, facing the adjacent wall. Where the cabinet previously stood was an open doorway.
I looked at Carrie. "Where did that come from?" I asked. Carrie shrugged.
Stepping closer to the doorway, I found that the door had been screwed to the china cabinet; the cabinet hid the doorway completely. That was…weird. Why would Mary need to hide this room?
The room in question was smaller than my cousin's adjacent bedroom, and with two twin beds next to either wall. The beds were made, and looked like they hadn't been slept in for a long time. The walls were covered with posters, many in foreign languages; some were in German, some French, some Greek, some Italian, a smattering in Arabic, a handful in Japanese, a couple in Swahili. Probably Grandpa Corny's.
In the left corner sat a rocking chair covered in red cushions. On the chair was a photograph. I picked it up.
There were two young guys in it. Both were dressed informally, in white t-shirts and jeans and flannel jackets. They were sitting on one of the beds. One looked like an albino; his hair was really, really white and his eyes were a tomato-soup red, and he grinned at the camera like he was daring someone to come out and punch him. The other had this brilliant, million-dollar smile and really pretty reddish-brown hair with this one curl that stuck out. One of his eyes was closed; I couldn't tell if he was winking or what – one hand obscured it a little – but I could only see one honey-colored eye.
Carrie looked at the photo, and then at me. "Who are these guys?"
I didn't know. We both had seen pictures of Mary's friends, both the ones nearby and the ones overseas, and these guys had never turned up in her photo collection.
Just then, we heard the door close behind us. We both started and turned.
Mary stood in front of the door, her arms crossed, a sad, sardonic smile on her lips. "I am one shitty American, aren't I?"
"What are you talking about?" I said. Then it hit me: I was in a hidden room, in my cousin's house, holding a photograph of two guys I didn't know and had never seen in any of my cousin's other photographs sitting in this room.
I turned the photo over. On the back was written Christmas, 2035.
How bad could it have been for her not to tell us?
"Mary," I turned to my cousin. "What'd you do?"
Mary closed her clear, grey eyes, uncrossed her arms. "Guess there's no point in hiding it." she said. She opened her eyes. "I, Mary Stuart Cornelian, gave aid and comfort to two enemy soldiers from April 14, 2033 to July 21, 2036. During a time of war." She took a deep breath. "In other words, kid, I'm a traitor."
The picture dropped from my hand.
My cousin – my story-loving, globe-trotting, quilt-making cousin who was nineteen years older than me and had given my sister and me our first dolls – had just told me what?
"Why?" I said. "What happened?"
Mary sighed and picked the photo up. She sat in the rocker and spoke the line which began so many of her tales. "It's a long story, so get comfortable."
Carrie and I settled ourselves on the beds, preparing ourselves for Mary's ultimate story. We could not share this story with our friends over lunch, or joke about it with our grandparents; nobody could ever hear about this story. Because if anyone found out about this, the consequences would be...
I tried not to think about it.
"Now," Mary began, "It all started with the Battle of Whitefish, eleven years ago…"
April 14, 2033
Whitefish, Montana
April thirteenth, as I'm sure you two are aware, lives in infamy as being the date of the First Battle of Whitefish, and that battle lives in infamy for being one of the bloodiest in the war. God knows why there were two more; the town was never the same after the first one. The Second one bears no relevance to this particular tale, but the Third will make an appearance before all is said and done. I didn't actually see the First one, but it was that battle that led me to the two gentlemen in that photograph.
By then, I was twenty-five, and alone. My family and most of my friends had long since quit Montana, abandoning it like rats fleeing a sinking ship. Don't give me that look, Riley, it's a decent analogy. I am not making any sort of comment about the character traits of our relatives. At any rate, I, through both an unwillingness to leave the only home I'd ever had and my money trouble, had decided to stay behind and take my chances. I got into God knows how many arguments with my parents, older cousins and other close relatives over the issue of whether or not I was coming, but in the end I convinced them to leave without me. I wasn't worth the trouble.
That was mid-December, 2032. The occupation began early the next January.
I did okay. I kept at my rations, and in those early days it was easier to get propane to heat the house. Incidentally, that was when I started sleeping in the basement, because I lived too far out of town to hear the air raid sirens. I kept my head down and was polite to any soldiers, enemy or ally, that I met. Hey, in those days it paid to be nice.
Anyway, the day after the First Battle (which was before the public became aware of it, mind you), I was driving into Whitefish, hoping to check in on a Canadian friend of mine from college. Let's call him Mark Seitz. What? No, I am not going to use real names. Names in this story have been changed to protect the innocent and not-so-innocent. No, Carrie, I am not going to compromise on that point. Got it? Good.
Like me, Mark had decided that he would stay put when it became obvious that the Germans and Italians were going to occupy the northwestern states. Early on, he joined an underground resistance movement that was in league with the British RAF and the American Marines. His job was to gather intelligence on the joint German-Italian military. I should point out, however, that I didn't know about any of this until later that same year, when he and two other men showed up on my doorstep one warm, October midnight.
But I get ahead of myself. I was going to Whitefish on a prearranged dinner date with Mark. When I got into town, it was very quiet. No one was out, and everything seemed to be at a standstill. It wasn't till I got to the Chamber of Commerce that I saw the first bodies.
And then I knew that things weren't all right.
I did the only thing I knew I could: I parked my car and got out, running up Spokane Avenue as more and more dead people began lining the streets and roads. I finally got to the corner of Spokane and 2nd and turned onto East 2nd.
And immediately wished I hadn't.
I don't think either of you has ever seen The Killing Fields, but that is what the scene reminded me of. American Marines, German soldiers, Italian soldiers, civilians caught in the crossfire, all of them lying dead in the street, with gore covering the streets, the sidewalks, the buildings…It was a bloodbath that would have nauseated Dracula. No words can describe fully the horror of coming across a scene of such mass death and destruction. It numbed my body and my brain, leaving me paralyzed for – how long was it? Doesn't matter; it felt like an eternity. I hope never to see such a sight again, and I hope you never have to.
Even though it was futile, when I could move again I started running up and down East 2nd Street, yelling "Mark! Mark, where are you!? Mark?!" As I've told you, Mark Seitz survived the First Battle of Whitefish to fight another day, but at the time, I didn't know that. I ran and called out to Mark until my sides ached. Exhausted and spent, I leaned against the wall of a flower shop and let out a few tears, my hands over my face to block out what I was seeing. It seemed like the thing to do.
I don't know how long I was there before I heard breathing. I just know that it sounded loud amidst the town's as-of-yet unbroken silence. I took my hands from my eyes and looked around. Had I only imagined that I had heard it? But then I saw two soldiers in the uniforms of the German and Italian armies just a foot or so from me. And their chests were moving.
I put my ear next to the German's mouth. Hot air blew out of it and hit the side of my jaw. I did the same with the Italian; once again, air moved around in the space between my face and his.
"They're breathing," I said. "Oh my God, they're breathing."
They were breathing. They were alive.
But, looking closer at these two men, I knew that they were still in rough shape. The German had a gash in his forehead and his leg was clearly broken in at least three places. The Italian had a deep cut in his shoulder that was still bleeding, and his right wrist had been fractured, although not as badly as his German friend's leg.
I know a bit of field medicine – not much, mind you, just enough to do something when things get rough. But I knew the consequences should I take that course of action and be found out. No government takes kindly to traitors.
Still, though, do these men have less of a right to live than me, just because we are on different sides of a war?
I thought about these things, and I made my decision.
Alea iacta est. The die is cast.
"Well," I said, "better get moving."
I pushed open the door of the flower shop and propped it open with a block of wood. Then I picked up the German and dragged him through the door, being as careful as I could about his leg. I went out for the Italian, and once he was through, I closed the door.
It was time to get to work.