Liars
The first time they saw each other, he was but a child.
The wedding was taking place and he wished he was everywhere else; he had gotten used to the Norsepeople ruling his home, he didn't mind them that much anymore, but there were other people in the church, people he didn't know but that would rule him soon, and that unnerved him a lot.
And knowing just where they came from only made it worse.
He was sitting in the bride's side of the church and couldn't bear to look at her much longer: Costance had been crying before coming to her own wedding, her puffy eyes made it apparent, and he couldn't stand the idea of a girl crying, especially because of someone, in this case her own family, so he looked away.
And that's when he spotted her on the groom's side of the church.
She was standing not too far away from Henry the Sixth, with her head held high and her chest ever so slightly puffed out; her lips and eyebrows were relaxed in a neutral way, but her light blue eyes held a sharpness that somehow almost seemed amused, despite the fact that nothing of the sort was happening and she wasn't looking anywhere in particular either; she wore a long deep blue dress and her wheat-blond hair was braided in an unusual knot on the back of her head.
Almost as if sensing the hazel gaze on her, she turned her head a little, fixing her eyes in Romano's and allowing one of the corners of her lips to tilt up in a small grin.
The small child didn't like that kind of smile, so different from the wide ones his people often displayed, it seemed fake and mocking, sarcastic.
Yes, that was the look her eyes couldn't get rid of. Sarcastic.
He scowled at her, and only gained a slightly wider grin and briefly lowered eyelashes, and even if he was too far to hear it, imagining the chuckle that had accompanied those movements wasn't that hard.
The second time he saw her, she was leaving for the Crusades with her dear Emperor and he had been semi-hidden behind a house when she had spotted him and walked in his direction.
He had jolted at that, but in spite of his embarrasment he had stayed where he was, making himself as tall as possible. The woman had cocked an eyebrow and given him an amused grin, before kneeling in front of him.
"I remember you. You're the little one from Henry's wedding. South Italy, right?" She had asked, reaching out to touch his face, only for him to flinch back with a scowl.
"And you are a Germanic" he retorted, looking at her straight in the eye with what he deemed was a tough look.
"Actually, none of us refers to ourselves as such anymore. We are no longer barbaric tribes, don't you think, little one?" She simply told him, unfazed by his look. "My name is Swabia. Didn't they teach you to recognize the coats of arms?" She then added, pointing to the one of the front of her tunic.
Romano stared at the three black young lions, or maybe they were panthers, all appearing ready to claw at their enemy and making a striking contrast with the golden background, then he just shook his head.
"You are just another person coming for our land. I don't care about your stupid coat of arms." He said at last, crossing his arms.
Unexpectedly, she chuckled, and the sound was surprisingly soft, just like her voice.
"Oh, what a tough little guy you are. I actually like that." She said, scruffling his hair before he had the chance to move away again and standing up. "I'll come visit you again as soon as I can"
And she had left.
She had appeared in his house not too long after that, more or less a year.
He had found her sitting near a window, looking out with eyes that appeared to be set far, far away. Her cheek was rested on her palm, while the other hand was abandoned in her lap, incredibly pale against her black skirt.
He knew what had happened during the Crusade, everybody did.
Some even whispered about her throwing herself in the river together with the other soldiers to try and drag Frederick Barbarossa out, but it was already too late.
Had it not been for her pride, she would've stayed in the Holy Land, but she didn't want anybody to see her like this.
So she had retired herself in Sicily for the time being.
Romano had wondered what he was to do for a while, watching her stay completely still on that chair, except for when she moved her braid so that it rested on her shoulder; then, he had decided to casually walk towards her and sit down near her.
There had been silence for a while, then Swabia had moved her previously unmoving hand to the child's head, lightly patting it.
"Thank you" she had said, looking down at him for a second. "I appreciate it."
He had grumbled and turned away, but he hadn't told her to stop touching him.
She wasn't the only one who had lost someone important because of something she hadn't had the power to control.
"Let me go, I say! You... You...!" Romano screeched while flailing and struggling to find an insult fit for a woman, which was something he really wasn't used to.
However, Swabia's hold on him, right under his armpits, wasn't affected in the slightest by his movements, and she just gave him that small smirk of hers.
"Well, aren't you grateful?" She hummed, not stopping in her tracks.
"I don't owe you shit! This is my house!" He retorted.
"Language, little one. And, excuse me if this will upset you, but I am in charge of you, so it matters little that this is your house."
The child stopped flailing and turned his head to glare at her.
"Is this about that vase I broke while playing with the ball? I already said I am sorry!" He said.
The young woman's lips tightened and she narrowed her eyes ever so slightly.
"No, it's not about that, but keep reminding me that you broke such an expensive thing and I will get angry." She warned him. "And here I wanted to show you something nice."
"I already said I don't care about some stupid poetry!" He yelled, beginning to flail again.
"Too bad, we have arrived." She simply said, putting him down. Romano huffed in annoyance and crossed his arms, following after her as she knocked on Iacopo's office door and was let in by the notary.
It wasn't like he didn't like poetry.
It was just that the idea of admitting she had been right about something annoyed him.
When he had gone to her, handing her a scribbled piece of paper with trembling hands, he had quickly told her that he just wanted her to check his grammar, nothing else; yet, once she had read through his very first short poem, smiling the first real smile he had seen on her face and bending down to tell him that it was really pretty and kiss his forehead, he hadn't managed to fight the furious blush spreading on his face.
Frederick the Second had died.
Romano had actually been very sad when he had heard the news. He kind of liked Frederick. They had played together, when the human had still been a child, and as an adult he had always appreciated him, even if he was terribly clumsy and quite short-tempered.
And now the Pope would start being annoying again, and there would be more fights caused by power, he could already tell this was to become definitely a stressing situation and, as much as he wanted to prove himself wrong, it was affecting him negatively.
One night, he had a nightmare his grandpa, just like it had happened for so long after his death.
He had seen him dead, with a knife stuck in his back and his face pressed in the bloodied dirt beneath him. Romano had tried to run to him, but it felt like something was holding him back and, looking down at himself, he could see the hands of those who had ruled his people and held him captive in their houses gripping his clothes and pulling at him, while a still bloodied one wrapped around his mouth...
Romano had woken up with a jolt and a choked scream, starting to sob by himself in the darkness of his room immediately after.
In a matter of seconds, however, the tapping of feet appeared behind his door, followed by the creacking of the wood and a soft-sounding voice.
"Romano?"
He istinctively hid under his blanket, yelling that he wanted her out of his room immediately. Instead, the pattering reappeared, followed by the mattress dipping because of a new weight pressing down on it and the blanket disappearing from above him, resting in a crumpled heap in between him and Swabia.
"Now, what is it?" She asked him.
He sniffled, before moving his reddened gaze to her and immediately looking down, curling up on himself.
"Your eyes are just like his..." he muttered, lips still quivering.
She tensed at that, before scooting closer to him and pulling him into a hug, caressing his hair.
"You had a nightmare about your grandpa, right?" She asked, and felt him nod against her chest. "I'm sorry it had to be that way, I truly am. But just remember that now you have me, and I will never leave you alone, little one."
Romano looked up at her with his glossy eyes and sniffled again.
"Do you promise?"
"I promise."
When Romano woke up one morning, few years later, he found out that she was gone.
He looked for her everywhere, he screamed, he ignored the human servants attempting to calm him down and lastly he locked himself in what used to be Swabia's chambers, starting to kick and punch furniture, to tear blankets and curtains, wanting to hurt her even if she wasn't there anymore.
He fell to his knees and curled up, hiding his face against his knees while sobs racked through his small body.
"You're a liar, a liar, a liar..." he began chanting with a broken voice.
Two years later, he heard from some humans that Frederick's last heir had died, thus ending Swabian influence over his place.
What nobody told him was that, as Conradin was being decapitated in Naples, a blonde young woman had been forced to watch and would've ended up the same way, too, had Charles of Anjou not changed his mind at the last minute.
When Peter Third of Aragon came and started a war against the French, given the circumstances, he paid little to no attention to the fact that Costance, his wife, was of Swabian descent, unlike the nobles, who had called upon the Spaniard because of that.
He briefly saw her again in 1527.
The Pope could say what he wanted, but the city of Rome was rightfully his, and so there he was, struggling to breath through the smoke and his own internal suffering as the Sack took place. He rested his back against a wall and allowed himself to slide to the ground, too pained and tired to keep running around.
Romano wiped away the sweat on his forehead and spat some bitter-tasting saliva to the side, panting as bright dots filled his vision.
And it was then, through bright dots and smoke, that he caught a glimpse of her.
She was quite far, actually, but he could tell she was wearing a landsknecht uniform, too, and walking relatively calmly, a long axe resting on her shoulder, her hair braided in a knot on the back of her head and her light blue, more sarcastic-looking than ever eyes cast right in front of her.
Soon, she disappeared from his sight, and he found out that he could finally release a breath he didn't know he had been holding.
He spat again to the ground.
More that four centuries had to pass for him to saw her again and it had been almost seven since he had last seen her upclose.
She was behind the table where their bosses were supposed to sit to discuss business, together with her German siblings and standing next to Bavaria.
She hadn't changed one bit: same sharp features and long eyelashes, same wheat-blond hair and pale skin, same sarcastic gleam in her eyes and proud standing position, with her chin held high and her chest puffed out ever so slightly.
When Romano and his brother came in, she, together with the others, turned around, making her ponytail sway lightly behind her head; when it stopped, her expression had become the perfect mix of surprise, fear and sadness, but it only lasted for a couple seconds.
The meeting went on and after what felt like an eternity, they were all allowed to leave, and Romano could only scrunch up his nose in disgust and scoff as Veneziano left with Germany, talking to him excitedly with that happy tone of his.
"Hey." He suddenly heard from behind him. Upon turning around, he found Swabia looking at him, her arms folded behind her back and her eyebrows ever si slightly tilted upwards. She was just a bit shorter than he was, but he still found it weird not to have to look up to meet her eyes.
He immediately frowned at her, lips tightening and jaw beginning to twitch.
"What do you want?" He snarled, a part of him feeling bad about talking to a girl like that and another, bigger part, reminding him that she wasn't any girl.
"I think we should talk. We really haven't had the chance for a while, don't you think?" She said, her eyes lowering for a brief second as he stayed silent, before meeting his again. "I... What I wanted to say is..." she breathed in through her nose and closed her eyes, as if trying to calm and encourage herself. "...I'm sorry." She finished.
Romano didn't say anything for a few seconds, then he burst out laughing, a bitter laughter that made her flinch.
"And why should I believe you?!" He half asked, half yelled at her, before turning his back to her and leaving the room, shaking off the hand she rested on his shoulder to stop him and slamming the door behind him.
Holy Roman Empire had told Veneziano he would come back from the war soon, and had broken his little brother's heart when he hadn't.
Swabia had promised she would never leave him, and had disappeared in the middle of the night without saying a single word.
Germania had sworn loyalty to his grandpa once, and then he had killed him.
Germans were just liars, and he would have none of it.
Hellooooo! Lately at school we have been studying Frederick the Second of Swabia (and my name means Swabian girl in Italian, which makes me feel pretty excited when we are studying this stuff), so I felt inspired to write this thingie, in which I also incorporated my headcanon reasons for Romano's strong dislike for Germans. Hope you liked it!
A few notes:
-Costance of Altavilla was dragged out of the convent she had joined when she was forced to marry Henry the Sixth.
-Frederick Barbarossa died during the Third Crusade, drowning in a river he was crossing
-The Iacopo I mentioned is Iacopo da Lentini, one of Frederick the Second's functionaries and a member of the Sicilian School, where said functionaries wrote love poetry.
-I wrote that Romano lived in his house because Frederick litteraly moved his court to Sicily, instead of ruling the island from his father's country. He, in fact, was born in Sicily, grew up there like a street boy and loved it very much, making it a very flourishing and open-to-cultures island.
-The year Swabia suddenly disappears in is 1266, after Frederick's son Manfred was killed in battle by Charles of Anjou, the French King.
-The Sack of Rome took place in 1527, when the Emperor sent the landsknechte against the Pope's domains. The landsknechte were German mercenaries who usually came from Swabia.