The little auburn haired man shivered, he had no idea why he was so cold but he really wished that he wasn't, because being cold was just a plain unpleasant feeling. He remembered being warm when he had curled up in his German's bed the night before, after they had watched a really scary movie and he just couldn't sleep any other way or he would be dealing with nightmares all night. The blonde he had shared a bed with protested a little, complained a lot, but, eventually, he was nice and scooted over a little. Just a little, of course. The amber eyed man rolled to his side and sighed, yes, he was cold but he really did not want to get up and do something about it, for fear of just getting colder. And the fact that if he got up now he would never get back to sleep.

A sudden movement from the other person on the bed, he was sure that it was a deliberate shove just to mess with him, the auburn haired man toppled from the bed and, was not surprised, when his side was immediately occupied afterwards by the, seemingly, considerate man. Standing up and shifting on the tips of his feet, the wood floor was cold and unwelcoming to his bare skin; he huffed, crossing his arms over his chest. The German could not share a bed to save his life; the amber eyed man was surprised that he hadn't gotten kicked out of bed before now. Poking the other man's shoulder a few times to see if he would shift over, he ended up getting no reaction whatsoever, so he decided that he was sleeping on the floor. He laughed as he walked away from the bed, hoping that the blonde tripped on him when he woke up. The man's cheery amber eyes, darkened with shadow and sleep, searched the darkness for the closet he knew held a few extra blankets.

Before he got anywhere near the closet, of course, he tripped over what, he hoped, was a discarded article of clothing. He put his hands out in hopes of bracing himself against the fall, and he distinctly remembered when he had begged the blonde to replace the wood with carpeting. The auburn haired man could feel a few of his knuckles crack painfully on impact, but nothing else seemed too bad off, though his elbows would probably be bruised for a few days. And he wouldn't be talking to the blonde man for those couple of days, because logically, at least to him, this was all that German's fault.

Groaning, he slowly got back to his feet, using the dresser that was in front of him as an easy way of doing so, he found himself face to face with the mirror above the wooden furnishing. Blinking in confusion, he was sure that he had gone the other direction, seeing as the closet in the room has always been opposite to the dresser; sometimes he was glad that the blonde was so OCD. He rubbed his forehead at the headache he could feel coming on, and turned away from the mirror to continue to the closet, all he really wanted was to go back to sleep. Something sparkled in the corner of his eye however, making him turn his head back to the object, wondering why there was a... light reflecting off a mirror that was, presently, in a nearly black room.

"This is getting ridiculous," he muttered, glaring at the mirror that had continued to delay his progress.

He put his face as close to the mirror as he could, nose nearly touching the surface, and scowled at the small light in the reflected room... which he was beginning to notice other differences in as well.

The auburn haired man put a finger to the glass in curiosity, brow furrowed in concentration, trying to think of reason for the images in the mirror that were just... wrong.

The bedding was a dark, bloody red with splotches of white appearing every once in a while, the bed was on the back wall opposite the mirror instead of below the window like it had always been. The floor was a darkly stained oak-like wood, same as all the furniture; it wasn't even close to the German's own light coloring.

What was the scariest about all of it though were the things that were lying all around the room. Knives, gags, an ax next to the closet, guns, every weapon that the amber eyed man could name was in that room.
He looked between the room he was in and the room in the mirror, unable to completely understand how the reflection could look so different from the original. The Italian would have sworn it was a trick of the light, or he was half asleep, but even he knew that those excuses sounded stupid, and he was not one for dumb excuses, no matter the situation. Everything in the mirror's room seemed lit clearly, everything that could be seen in the image was completely visible to him, so there was no way it could be the light. Though, he still wasn't sure where the other light had come from to begin with, so, who knows, he could just have gone insane, but either way, he was not going to try to explain something that, obviously, was not going to let itself be explained.

So he went back to trying to find the extra blankets, because he would like to get some sleep before tomorrow's meeting, otherwise he would end up falling asleep there and he didn't want to deal with the blonde yelling at him after the night he had. Most of which was the German's fault anyway.

But he froze in his first step, realizing that there was one thing that the mirror hadn't changed, because it hadn't even been there to begin with. The auburn haired man took a deep breath and turned his head to look back over his shoulder, to stare at the spot where his reflection should have been, but wasn't. There was no one in that other room, not even the German was in the bed, no, it was neatly made, like the people who lived there had, yet, to return to their home. Which didn't make sense, because no one should live there, it was just a reflection.

"What is going on?" He asked himself, having never seen anything so strange before, and he was a nearly immortal nation... that was, at one time, a cross-dresser.

The little Italian tapped at the glass, looking for any edges that could be from a sticker, thinking that, maybe, one of the other nations was just playing at prank on him and the blonde, "I wonder what Ludwig would say to this?"

"Probably, 'you are insane and will be confined to a mental ward at once, Feliciano'."

Feliciano froze in his place for the second time that night; a chill shuddering down his spine, the voice was dark and terrified the Italian man to no end. The fact that it was nearly identical to what he was sure his own voice sounded like, made it just so much worst.

"Who are you?" The auburn haired man asked, not even turning around to look at the intruder, scared, hopelessly scared of who the man behind him was, or could be. Their was a pressure in the room that had not been there before, making it almost unbearable for Feliciano to even stand anywhere close to the man. "Why are you here?"

There was a chuckle from the man, the noise sounding wrong to the small Italian, grating against his ears like a nails on a chalkboard, the only way he could think to describe the feeling. "I think you know who I am," the other man's breath breezed across the amber eyed man's ear, warmth and pressure on his back telling him of the close proximity that the intruder had taken in response to the cold shoulder Feliciano had given him. "But you won't know why I am here, because I can't tell you, not yet."

Feliciano shook his head from side to side, auburn bangs swishing across his forehead with each movement, curl bobbing, "No, no, I have no clue who you are. I don't."

Teeth that were sharper than a normal persons bit down on the outer edge of the Italian's ear, making his eyes widen with shock at the sudden pain, the teeth released pressure not long after, so that the mystery man could speak once again. "I know that you think you know who I am, and that you think you're crazy, that you've seen me before, but, of course, that would be completely insane." Feliciano shuddered at the rough tongue that ran over the few droplets of blood that he could feel dripping down from the bite marks that were most definitely present on his sore ear. "But, what if. What if, all those things you thought you saw were real, what if you weren't crazy like Austria claimed? What if I am right here behind you and that you no longer had to close your eyes to keep from looking at the people who you. Had. Seen. Die."

The last word hissed itself into Feliciano's ear, the soft breathing, softer than what he would have expected from the man he had known as a child, from the man in the mirror, whom he had witnesses murder again and again for no reason.

"No. That would never happen, I wouldn't let that happen, these people are my friends. I don't care if you are a hallucination, if I am going insane, I will protect them, I may lie to myself, keep myself hidden from what is actually going on in the world, but this, I swear, is true, no matter what."

The man's face was now in the crook of Feliciano's neck, giving the auburn haired man a way of feeling the grin that he knew was spreading across the intruder's lips. "You are adorable, no matter what age, I don't know whether to kill you now, or wait until later when your spirit is crushed and your will broken."

Feliciano could feel himself glaring at the mirror, the item that had been the cause behind this torture for centuries; "Like you could kill-" he choked on the last word.

A searing pain filled his chest, a long weapon, most than likely a knife, was now wedged into the far right of the Italian's chest, making him gasp and flounder for a hold on himself through the pain.

The auburn haired man could tell just by the pain alone that something major in his body had been hit by the blade. What, he couldn't be sure, he had never been great at anatomy, but it was definitely nothing that felt entirely great.

The mirror man gave one last sharp nip to the back of Feliciano's neck, and patted his cheek, the touch lingering as if reluctant to go, reluctant to stop the torture for now, but it soon left. Leaving him almost exactly as he had started, cold, so cold, but with a blinding heat that threatened to consume him with every moment…

And then, like that, Feliciano open his amber eyes wide and stared up at the ceiling, breathing still ragged. Those same startled amber eyes looked around the room, everything was exactly as it should have been, there was no blood on the floor from the knife digging deep into his skin, and there was no knife to speak of, at all.

Next to him, Ludwig lay there, still soundly sleeping, a warm arm wrapped around the Italian's torso and the other beneath his head like a pillow, giving him warmth to make up for the chill that his feet felt, uncovered from the blankets and left to the mercy of the cold, night air.

Feliciano could not remember the last time that he had a nightmare like that, it had been years ago, back to times that his memories of had begun to fade. The man, whose dreams had petrified just moments ago, turned himself on the bed so that he was facing Ludwig, getting as close as he could to the comforting heat that the man always seemed to offer.

"Feliciano? Are you okay?" Came the mumbled voice of the drowsy German, brilliant blue eyes blinking open to look at Feliciano with a mixture of concern and offered comfort.

The amber eyed man opened his eyes just the slightest to look at the man, they showed of the fear that he still had, that he was still scared of what would happen if he went back to sleep, but he gave his German a small reassuring smile. "Don't worry, I'm fine, it was just a nightmare, nothing terrible. Just go back to sleep, Luddy."

And the Italian continued to smile until those wonderfully kind blue eyes had closed once again, and only then did he allow the thoughtful frown to return to his face as he too closed his eyes. Tomorrow seemed like it would be a long day.

0x0x0x0x

Ludwig noticed something different about Feliciano the next morning, he couldn't exactly put his finger on it, but, there was just a tickling feeling in the back of his head, it told him that there was something wrong.

'Twitchy' that was a word that he would use to describe it, though that was not entirely what was happening to his Italian friend. It seemed, to the German, that everything done by the auburn haired man had some level of paranoia to it, and it had all started with that dream, no, nightmare, that Feliciano had told him about last night. Well, told him about in the sense that the blonde knew it had happened, but not much more, other than that the Italian had seemed dazed and confused coming out of it, not to mention the terrified wild look in amber eyes that were, for once, wide open.

So he decided that the next time he saw Feli, the blonde had gone to prepare for the meeting that was, again, his responsibility to hold, what had exactly happened. While he had never, ever, been very good with emotions, especially ones of sadness, he knew how to at least make someone feel safe after something bad had happened; he had spent years perfecting the act with his own brother. The Prussian had, yet, to return completely to the person he had been before, but he was getting there. Now if only Ludwig could get him to relinquish the gun under his pillow, maybe, things wouldn't be so hard on them both.

Ludwig returned to his home not long after the decision, making a beeline straight for Feliciano when he did. "Hey, Feli?" He asked, confidence draining from him as soon as he spotted the auburn haired man in the kitchen, eating a plate of leftovers from the day before.

Feliciano looked up with eyes that spoke of stress and worry, concern and an emotion that Ludwig could not name, which the German was, in no way, used to seeing on the man's face, "Yes, Luddy?" He spoke, a smile bright on his lips, though the blonde could see the strain of the muscles, and the difficulties he was having keeping it up, for even that brief moment in time.

"I was wondering…" he coughed; shifting his weight from foot to foot, reconsidering if bringing the subject up was really that good of an idea. He decided right then that he would just jump in and stop second guessing himself. "I was wondering about your nightmare last night, what was it about exactly?" He spoke quickly, not giving himself the chance to pause again.

The Italian looked surprised by the question, as if he had never expected it to come up again, "It was nothing, Luddy, I promise, just a little nightmare, nothing to get worked up about."

Ludwig frowned, not liking the way that Feliciano was lying to him, whether for a good reason of not, because it was almost startlingly obvious that what had happened in that dream had affected Feli more than he would like to think.

"Feli, are you sure? You look like what happened is still bothering you." The blue-eyed German let out a deep sigh, "I just don't want you to have to deal with anything-"

"Ludwig!" Feliciano snapped, lips now snarling instead of smiling, the Italian going on the defense from the questions, "Nothing happened, okay?" And he stormed out of the room, leaving a shocked blonde in his wake.

For a few minutes, Ludwig did not even move from his spot, he wasn't sure that he could completely comprehend what had just occured.

And he wasn't sure that he wanted to try either.

0x0x0x0x

So... hey guys! First chapter of the rewrite and already much longer than most of my other chapters, 2,880 words before my Author's Note! I was really happy with this chapter and how it turned out, much better than I expected actually. Now, all I need is feedback from you guys to tell me what you think about the direction of this story now. It won't be too much difference between them both, but you'll definitely notice somethings that are not what they were before. You'll also see me going into more detail about what is happening, because I want to.

Till next chapter!

Snuggles~

Kate.