"Well, bird have big noses," Veneziano had suggested.

What a fool he was.

The doctor had looked at Veneziano like he was god. "That's a good idea," the doctor mumbled as he scurried away, carefully stepping over the people who were lying in the street.

Veneziano forgot the exchange he had with the doctor, working almost around the clock to help the people who had come down with the Plague. It had spread so fast, it was all Romano and Veneziano could do to try and help the sick.

Veneziano helped a young woman up from the ground, telling her jokes, though she was half delirious. Romano worked nearby, comforting her children. His older brother bit his lip and looked at Veneziano.

"You don't think we'll catch it… right?" Romano looked guilty for even asking. Veneziano laughed.

"We don't get sick, Romano! Of course not," Veneziano let out another tired laugh, shaking his head.

Venenziano worked till his bones hurt. He finally decided that he was going to get sick unless he took a break. He collapsed into his bed at home, sighing. He faded off into a fitful sleep. He saw dim visions of people crying out for help in the streets.

"Veneziano, wake up," his brother's voice broke through his dreams. "Get up, you lazy bastard," Romano clucked.

Venenziano opened his eyes to pure horror.

He screamed, launching himself backwards in his bed. "Bird monster!" He screamed, throwing his pillow at the demon. "Get away!"

The bird monster swatted the pillow away. "Stop screaming! It's me, you bastard!" The bird monster sounded remarkably like Romano. The bird monster reached up and removed its face, revealing Romano. "It's the mask the doctor was talking about."

Veneziano took a couple of deep breaths. "It's really, really scary."

Romano rolled his eyes. "Look, you fill it with flowers and potpourri so you don't get sick. That way, we don't have to worry."

"It still looks scary."

Veneziano was not the only one who thought this. When the brothers went out a little while later with their masks, healthy people ran away while the sick began prey to the 'Angels of Death.'

"I told you they would scare people," Veneziano pouted, voice muffled through the beak of the mask.

"Oh, shut up," Romano growled, moving toward a new group of people who hadn't yet seen the brothers.

Venezaino tugged off his mask and approached the sick, explaining that the masks were to prevent infection. It took a solid month of explaining before people made the connection between 'scary bird monsters' and 'doctors.'

Romano and Veneziano moved up Italy, following the trail of infection as it spread. Eventually, instead of being the first people to show up into a town with a bird mask, the doctors there were already sporting them.

Veneziano was still terrified of them.

One time, he and Romano entered a richer town with glass in the window shops. Veneziano had been walking by a shop and looked to his right, only to find a distorted and terrifying version of the bird mask staring back at him. He screamed and scrambled away, realizing that it had only been his reflection.

Romano had scared himself like this three times.

When it was getting dark, Veneziano would see the white masks of the other doctors approaching and shiver in fear. He did wonder why the morgue workers didn't wear them. Eventually, he wondered why the people who bricked up the infected houses didn't wear them, either.

"Just be happy you don't have to see more of the damn things," Romano snapped when Veneziano had asked him.

By the time the infection left Italy, Romano and Veneziano were haggard. Veneziano had stopped counting how many people he had to bury months ago. People stopped getting sick because—it seemed—there weren't any more people to get sick.

It took fifty years for the nightmares of bird masks to stop reoccurring nightly. Another hundred for them to fade completely.

Veneziano never had a pet bird.

History: People used to believe the plague spread through bad smells. The masks doctors wore were filled with sweet smelling potpourri to ward off sickness.

The Bubonic plague started in the lower half of Italy and spread north, eventually infecting the rest of Europe.

Toward the end, those who had caught the plague were bricked up in their houses and left to die, so they wouldn't infect anyone else.

PROMPT IDEA FROM:

Tumblr user gilbertfjones: Someone write me a fanfic where the nations are in the bubonic times and all of them turn into those doctors for their people, and Veneziano and Romano wear the bird masks and scare the shit out of everyone