This was first written in Chinese. I translate it into English because I think it was one of the best hetalia fan fictions I've ever read and I wish to share the experience with fellow English speakers. This is also posted on Deviant Art and download is available there.

Author: 远方的小白桦

"My humble piece of work could be presented here to you all thanks to our translator's hard work. This story's focus isn't ideologies, but of young men's simple and tenacious relationships under the austerity of war, as well as the sheer yearning to peace of us all. If you could enjoy the reading experience, it will be my biggest pleasure."

Special thanks to Qingmu (DA) who helped me with formatting and did an awesome illustration for this fiction, as well as xblkdragonx (DA) who help with the proofread!


CP: Ivan x Wang Yao (RoChu); Toris x Natasha (Lithuania x Belarus)

Genre: Historical, Angst, Drama, Bromance (or Romance?)

Background: Battle of Moscow, WWII Eastern front.

This fiction is dedicated to commemorating the Victory Day of the Great Patriotic War, as well as to RoChu fans worldwide.


Имя твоё неизвестно. Подвиг твой бессмертен.

Your name is known to none; your feat remains immortal.

-Anonymous tomb, Moscow Red Square

Ch 1 The Old Veteran

"Why don't we go ask Professor Braginsky?"

To celebrate the sixty-sixth year's anniversary of the triumph of the Great Patriotic War*, Moscow Art Academy was planning to commemorate it with an art exhibition. Professors and students shared high enthusiasm in their artistic creation. "But, there lacks a good portrait painting." said the academy president . "Certainly, there are quite a few portraits entering the exhibition, but none of their creators have experienced war…"

Yes, there needed to be a genuinely moving portrayal of a soldier. The creator should be just like the dearest hero, depicting his war-torn passion and pain, tears and laughter, love and hatred, in the sincerest way possible. If only did the creator actually fought along with the subject, things would be easier. The president himself had attempted the mission but was never satisfied. After all, he was seven years old when the war ended.

"Isn't Professor Braginsky working on a portrait?" A student suggested.

Speaking of the Great Patriotic War, no one in the academy could have been more sentimental than the ninety-year-old Professor Ivan Braginsky. He was the only teacher still alive who had been to the front. When the war broke out, he left his second-year study in the academy and enlisted, spending the following four years of wartime in the front. After the victory, he went back to college and had since held a teaching position owning to his excellent artistic achievement. For decades, every year on Victory Day*, this proud veteran would put on his clean old military uniform decorated with dozens of medals on his chest, walking in solemness through the admiring eyes of young students.

Now he had retired at home, still remained hale and hearty. Students who came to ask for his expertise would always found the professor in front of a young soldier's portrait, lost in deep thoughts. The portrait had been under cultivation for a long time. In fact, the first bunch of students Braginsky taught since he came back from the front had seen it—President Vasilenko was one of them. At the first sight, Vasilenko (who was still a student back then) was deeply touched by it: a young handsome soldier with black hair, his soft facial structure characteristic to East Asian was effused with a young man's disposition of nobleness and bravery; the delicate but firm lips brimming a sense of austerity and tenderness peculiar to someone who had endured the ordeal of war-flame. "What a heart-touching portrait!" Even decades later when the academy president Vasilenko recalled, he could not help but gasped in admiration. "Professor Braginsky never drew eyes for the young soldier, but even as an unfinished portrait, one could still see the beautiful soul of this young man."

"It was a Chinese—my comrade from the front." Every time with curious inquiries, Ivan Braginsky would answer as such. "He returned to his country when the war ended."

For decades, Professor Braginsky had painted numerous pairs of vivid eyes, but below the brows of this young soldier's portrait was still shadowed with uncertainty; otherwise, the painting would had claimed the name of another masterpiece. It became a mystery of the academy. Later, another curious incident regarding this portrait started circulating. According to a student who had recently seen the portrait, Professor Braginsky added a pendant with shape of a white horse to the subject's neck in the painting—exactly the same as the one hanging from the professor's chest.

To plead the professor for completion of this masterpiece, students came to visit him. As they stood in front of the painting, even in the absence of eyes, the youngsoldier's soul that the professor cultivated through a life-long labor gripped these young men's peace-grown hearts in an instant.

"My boys, I'm so sorry. I could not make his eyes…" The white-haired professor apologized in a child-like remorse. "You see, I've been trying for decades…"

Just then, a student murmured as if he was talking to himself, "It was him. This man, I have seen…"

The professor suddenly grabbed the student's hands in eagerness.

"What did you say?"

"I lived in Topol' on the Volga River till three years old." Said the student, "Even before I had much memory as a child, I remembered this Chinese man's face…"

"For real? Young man, you are serious?" Professor Braginsky interrupted the student with unusual loud voice, and then lowered his head. "That's impossible… Wang Yao returned to his country sixty-six years ago… Even if the man you saw was indeed him, he would have been an old man…"

"I don't know that man's name." The student was confounded, "I was only three years old at that time. I don't remember under what situation had I met the man; however, I do remember the face." The student spoke firmly. "He was about this young, with such a face and expression, and he's Chinese. That's why I remembered him at such a young age." His voice was of unquestionable certainty that other people, even very perplexed, did not think he lied.

The professor looked as if a shooting star swept across those old eyes. The students noticed the his apparent agitation and politely excused themselves, and wished him to eventually complete the painting as to add splendor to the sixty-six years anniversary of victory.

When he was once again by himself, old Ivan Braginsky walked to the painting, trembling. His hands, coarse like pine barks, gently brushed over the young man's handsome face in the portrait like his dearest. A drop of tear glided down his wrinkled face, fell down to the white-horse pendant hanging on his chest—the one exactly the same as in the portrait.

"Yao, was that you?" The professor murmured in a dull voice, fixing his eyes on the shades below those brows. "Please forgive me. I never forget your eyes. I know how to paint them, but I could not. You know…when I've lived to this age, how could I believe such nonsense—that you didn't return home, that you lived on the Volga…and looked so young…..."

"Grandpa!" He didn't notice when his granddaughter Lyenochka stood beside him, and gently held his hands, "Grandpa, were you thinking of your Chinese comrade again? Let me and papa and mama go to Topol' with you. Maybe you could meet him."

As the train carrying the Branginsky family slowly drove away from Moscow, the old soldier and art professor told himself over and over: it's not a big loss if they couldn't find Wang Yao—after all, how could things like attaining one's youth forever even possible? He only wished to take a stroll down the village by the Volga, when he was still able to, and perhaps to find new inspirations. During the war, there were battles fought in Topol', too.

Ivan was preoccupied with the endless green field rushing by the window. Seventy years ago, in the difficult year of 1941, he and his dear comrades had fought along death to defend Moscow… After the war, he often wandered around in the field where Battle of Moscow had been fought, and made sketches. It didn't matter the amount of inspiration he got; what mattered was that he could once again walk upon the land where he and Wang Yao had fought shoulder to shoulder. Every inch of soil and every tree there remembered their youthful faces, along with every bit and piece of memory they shared together…

…Like the way he marched on towards Topol' on the Volga, in search of Wang Yao…


* Great Patriotic War: refers to the portion of WWII fought from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945 between Soviet and Nazi Germany on the Eastern Front.

* Victory Day: celebrated every year on May 9 for the victory of defeating the invasion of Nazi Germany.