Author's note: Dedicated to wifeofbath, this is the companion piece to « A Bohemian thing ». That story was to celebrate 100 fanfics posted; this one is for 200. You need to read that first to understand what's happening here, but I think beyond that this needs little explanation. When I wrote that story I had to figure out what Austria and Czech were doing that Hungary would never know about, so maybe those who were angry with Hungary's harsh tones will see the other side with Czech's thoughts since the two experience the marriage very differently. Also, I shake my head at you Austria.

An Austrian love

And the king loved Esther above all the women, and she obtained grace and favour in his sight more than all the virgins; so that he set the royal crown upon her head, and made her queen instead of Vashti. -Book of Esther, 2:17, KJV

The first time a man ever comes to her is December, Anna preparing for bed alone as usual. Her back is to the door when it opens; she turns quickly to watch him close it. "Roderich?" she breathes.

When his eyes come up to meet hers they are empty, lost, with maybe a little puffiness around them as if this was greatly upsetting to him to even physically be in her room. He's still in his clothes from the day, the Bohemian in her nightshirt and robe.

Quietly and with great strides Roderich walks to her, immediately wrapping her up in his arms and holding her to him as he kisses her. Anna tries to push him away but he refuses to let go, burying his head in the crook of her neck and holding her tightly. "What are you–" she tries to get out.

"I know," and with the Austrian's words she stills, the only sound his voice and the fire in the grate. "I know you do not like me, do not trust me, despite your sudden elevation. And I know you do not necessarily want this, but... I must consummate this union with you." She nods.

He is… gentle, at least. Anna understands immediately that she must do this; her own officials had written her to say she would be expected to be willing when the Austrian was ready. But her heart still pounds in her chest, her face flush, as he lays her down and strips her of her clothing. His movements are automatic, lacking the romance that he must surely give his wife when they share their wedding bed. Anna hides under the sheets to ward away the cold, her eyes wide as she watches Roderich too undress. Part of her mind screams to stop him, stop this, it's all too fast; the rest of her looks at his lean body as he joins her under the sheets and likes what it sees.

The Austrian doesn't speak, just does, and Anna knows enough to just lay still and let him do as he wants. There's an excessive amount of kisses all over her skin, Roderich looking everywhere but at her.

"I am sorry," he says as he leans over her, holding her legs forward, "but this will hurt and I cannot stop that." When he pushes in Anna cries out in pain, wanting this to be over so badly.

When it's done Roderich rises, sitting on the edge of the bed with his back to her, watching the fire. His bare skin prickles from the cold air; the Bohemian wants to reach out and touch his pale flesh as if then she could hear his thoughts, but instead stays hidden under the sheets knowing she never wanted to have sex with a man again. The Austrian dresses without looking at her and leaves.

And like that her virginity had been used to better her people, just as she had always known it would. Left alone she feels empty.

The first time she impresses the Austrian he's brought her to a shooting range, the Hungarian nation left home like a wife should be. Anna hates her for doing so easily what the Czech girl finds so hard, how the once resilient female has been made domestic. She could be domestic too, better than Erzsi.

Yet when one of the men eyes her up, taking in her blue dress and blonde hair piled high atop her head, Anna rises to the challenge and snatches the gun from his hands. Those around her laugh as she loads it.

"Please do not shoot yourself," Roderich mutters behind her, following as she lines herself up to shoot at the target. That makes Anna smile, her breathing slowing, as she pulls the trigger. She hits, with ease and little effort, the target dead-on. "Wow," the Austrian says and turning she can see his wide eyes behind glasses taking in the sight. "Even Erzsi cannot do that."

Anna could do anything better than Erzsi, if that was what Roderich wanted.

She bursts into his office, her cheeks flushed. Roderich looks at her over his glasses, sipping his coffee, as Anna runs to his side, falling to her knees.

"What?" the Austrian demands in a bored voice, leaning back in his chair to allow her to sit on his lap. Anna likes sitting on his lap because he rarely lets Erzsi do it, and if the Czech girl gets to then maybe he'll realize he likes her more than the Hungarian. "Does this involve Bonnefoy?"

Anna nods. Roderich Edelstein, she knows, is a jealous and possessive man. He would not like it when he heard what she had seen the Hungarian and Bonnefoy doing on the balcony. Maybe then he would make her leave and Anna would be his only wife, his prized wife, and her people would be free like never before.

His first wife isn't sent away. If anything the woman seems more certain of her position, laying casually between her husband's legs as they lounge out in the garden. Anna watches from the balcony as the brunette turns to kiss their husband, listening to the moans of approval Roderich makes. She could do that, if he liked it. Anna is smaller too, would more easily fit between his thighs like she did that night he came to her.

But her eyes keep falling back to the Hungarian: the sweep of her neck, her hair piled high and messily atop her head, her exposed ankles and the way her legs drape over Roderich's.

Anna hates to admit it, but that woman is quite beautiful.

The woman stands beside her, looking in the mirror. "You look incredible Anna," and Erzsi kisses her cheek. "I know it is nothing elaborate, but believe me when I say, Roderich will prefer it this way."

The Bohemian woman smiles, nods, then wraps her arms around Erzsi's neck. The wedding is days away and Anna is so grateful to have the Hungarian helping her planning and preparing. She's not sure she'd want to do this alone.

Their booth is tucked away in the restaurant, Roderich easy between his two wives. Erzsi on one side feeds him, her bosom spilling out of the top of her tight dress. The Austrian moans, his eyes slipping closed; he steals a kiss, then two, before turning and pulling Anna to him so that she can feed him next. He doesn't just groan but also smiles down on her.

A hand reaches out, laying itself on Anna's thigh; threading her fingers with Erzsi's she rests her head on the Austrian shoulder. Between the warmth in the south of the empire and the warmth of her spouses', everything feels just right.

With their husband gone the women go out for a ride through the Hungarian countryside. Erzsi leads for the most part along their invisible path, Anna keeping close behind. The hills roll beautifully before them, green grass as far as her blue eyes can see. There's no one around them as they work their way through bumpy terrain, the sun warming their skin.

The brunette is beautiful in her men's clothing, a vest tight to her torso, her hair pulled up and back and away from her face as the wind whips at them. Anna takes her opportunity when Erzsi slows, riding out in front of her to show off her excellent riding skills. The light gray horse is put through his paces as the Czech moves through the field until, satisfied, Anna joins Erzsi again who reaches out to pull the blonde close. Their lips meet, softer than even Roderich's kisses; hands slip through her loose hair as hers pull Erzsi close to press their chests together.

"Let's go home," the Hungarian murmurs in German, their husband's language they share. "I want you so badly."

No longer afraid of them, no longer afraid of herself, no longer afraid of the touches and quickening of her heart and the love they share, Anna sets off to lead the way.

He sits on Anna's bed, wincing and hissing each time she dabs the ointment to his skin. The Czech wife had told him the Hungarian would probably be more skilled at this, but Roderich had insisted that he didn't want Erzsi to see. He didn't want her to know how bad it was or what was happening in Vienna.

Then he had looked her in the eye and made her promise to keep his secret. Anna had sealed her vow with a kiss.

"Shit," the Austrian curses and she pauses to give him a moment where he puts his face in his hands and cries. Anna hates the sight.

She sits bolt upright, her chest incredibly tight, her heart pounding rapidly. Anna has to blink a few times before she realizes that it's still dark out, still night. In the low light of the room she can see Erzsi on the other side of the bed sleeping soundly, Roderich between them awake and smiling smugly at Anna.

"Do you feel it?" he asks. He pulls his arm from the Hungarian to sit up further, Austrian and Czech faces so close. "Do you Anna?"

But she doesn't know what he's talking about, her chest paining her like it's never done before. She wants to make it stop and yet she also wants to hurt Roderich: her blue eyes fall on her loving husband and all she wants to do is pick up her pillow and smother him until he dies.

His smile grows. "You do. I long ago learned how to suppress those feelings in Erzsi," and he turns his face to look fondly on his first wife. "She has not felt how the Hungarians turn against the Austrians in decades. I do not know if I could ever suppress those urges in you though," and violet eyes narrow as they look at Anna. "I kept you locked away in the Bohemian countryside to try but maybe I should have done something more drastic." Roderich shrugs. "Will you be trying to kill me then, to satisfy the need? Pillow perhaps? Here," and he hands his pillow to her before laying down, careful to leave space between himself and the Hungarian. "Go quickly and do not wake Erzsi; not that you will be successful, but I am sure you will feel much better after."

There's a pumping in her ears and rushing in her veins. Anna can't resist, putting all the strength she has into covering Roderich's face. His body lays still as she starts to cry, giving it all she can, until finally he starts convulsing, fighting her off.

But the Bohemian won't relent, knowing she can't kill him but wanting too much to do something.

Eventually Roderich stops struggling and pulling the pillow from his face she sees him laying motionless: unconscious, she'd probably cut off his breathing. Anna crawls over his body to lay instead in Erzsi's arms, the Hungarian pulling her close.

Anna's chest relaxes; the urge of her people had, for now, been satisfied.

The week after Anna sleeps alone, telling Erzsi she felt sickly and didn't want to ruin the couple's time together so completely. The brunette had smiled sadly and kissed her wife's lips delicately, fingers ghosting her skin.

This time when the will of her people tells her to push the Hungarian to the floor and shoot her, Anna resists.

"Come in!" a man's voice calls out and so Anna enters the study, holding a box behind her back. She approaches his desk where Roderich is still working before he puts his pen down and looks up. "Yes Anna?"

Her face burning she holds the box of chocolates forward, not trusting her voice to apologize for what she had done to him. His words were always smooth and elegant, Erzsi's just as practiced, but she was young and she had lived alone for so long; the Bohemian isn't sure if she can match their skill.

The Austrian sighs heavily, leaning back in his chair. "Anna," and he takes the box from her hand, laying it on the table and opening it, "come here." Quickly the Czech girl moves to sit on his lap, his arms holding her close calming all fear in her chest. "Anna, I had told you to try and kill me; stop feeling so guilty, it is not becoming of you. Here," and a chocolate from the box presses at her lips, the blonde taking it willingly. It had been the best chocolate she could manage, making the truffles herself while her husband and wife were outside. She wasn't nearly as good at this as Roderich is, but Anna's hopes she's still better at it than Erzsi ever was.

For a long time they say nothing, feeding one another and stealing chocolate kisses that are hot and needy and go right to Anna's center. Lips brush her neck and she feels feverish from the passion.

"Have I told you," the Austrian sighs against her shoulder, "how I love how feminine you are? Erzsi was never this soft; she was never the kind of wife you are, my love."

Anna's heart races: he normally only called Erzsi his love. So she pulls Roderich to her, to press her lips to his and slip her tongue into his mouth. The hot cavity she explores joyfully, her husband groaning and feeling her back and waist and breasts. If only his study wasn't so far from the bedroom, they could slip away now– or maybe they could do it here, on the desk she knows his first wife had bought the Austrian empire years ago.

"I love you Roderich," Anna breathes, their faces close, eyes locked. He smiles, genuinely smiles, stroking the side of her face before pressing their lips together more softly.

"I love you too Anna."

A couple more bonbons are passed between the two before someone enters the study. Anna doesn't look, too fixated on the curve of Roderich's jaw, the point of his nose.

"Do you require anything my love?" her husband asks as she pops another truffle into his mouth, sucking on Anna's fingers and making the Czech girl laugh quietly.

"I'd wished to speak with you alone, Your Highness." Anna's eyes dart quickly to Erzsi before deciding she didn't care today to try and see any of the hidden games her spouses played with one another.

"Secrets!" Anna squeals, tucking her head under Roderich's beautiful chin. "Secrets are no fun, Erzsi." And she smiles brightly, happy in her husband's arms, until the Austrian roughly shoves her from his lap.

"Stop it," he chides and Roderich's words are like ice, his face no longer relaxed but twisted in anger. "You are no child, control yourself."

What had happened? One minute they were content, in love and satisfied– then Erzsi had walked in and it was if suddenly Anna was no longer enough for the empire. He had needed two wives to keep his power; what if soon neither of them were enough?

"I'm sorry," the Czech tries, leaning towards him as he clearly ignores her. She looks to Erzsi as if her sister-wife would help her; they had been happy together too! They had made love while Roderich was gone, or while he watched, or while he worked. Erzsi only turns her face from Anna.

In the end, what they had given the Bohemian had only ever been temporary. What they gave they took, and Anna was sick of it.

She stomps out of the room, slamming the door, and yet her feet won't take her to her room and so she finds herself listening at the door.

"She was always so childish," Roderich mutters. "She was never you."

"No, she never was."

In that moment Anna has never hated them more.

Her husband comes to bed late, Anna having been laying in their room since she had been dismissed. He crawls under the sheets behind her, his lips finding her shoulder, his hands sliding up her thighs. She pushes him away, scooting farther over to where their wife normally was.

"Where's Erzsi?" Anna demands, angry with both of them but confused as well. Roderich's eyes darken but he doesn't answer. "Where is Erzsi?" she repeats again, in Hungarian: she'd had a lot of time to learn many different languages, Czech for her people, German for dealings with the empire. Anything that she came in contact with she absorbed like a sponge: just like riding a horse as the Hungarians did or firing a gun as well as Austrian soldiers, Anna had a talent in excelling quickly at those things, as if she had always been meant to know them. "Roderich, where–"

His hands grab her, Anna resisting as he tried to push her into the bed. Maybe she hadn't had the strength to the first night he'd come to her, but the Czech girl wasn't going to lay quietly and take it like a lady was expected. She was the Czech people, she was more than that, even if Roderich had kept her hidden away somewhere to break the connection.

One of his hands finally covers her mouth, Anna biting the flesh but the Austrian never relenting. "Shut up!" he yells. "Shut up, you stupid girl!" He's angry like she's never seen him and more than that he starts crying, screaming things she can't understand until it occurs to Anna that Roderich is yelling in Old High German. "Shut the fuck up!"

As suddenly as he's there he's gone, up and pacing the room. The blonde checks to make sure she's not injured, eyes darting to her husband's hand that is clearly bleeding where she'd bit him.

Finally he stops at the end of the bed, meets her blue eyes, and announces, "Erzsébet is gone, and so too will be Hungary soon enough." Then he leaves.

The house is silent. There's never a laugh from Erzsi, a tune from the piano as Roderich plays from her, a huff from Anna as the older woman picks on her. The Hungarian used to pull her close and kiss her but maybe they'd both begun to hate one another, at the end. Anna wouldn't blame Erzsi for that, for the harsh things she'd called her; Anna understands.

She watches Roderich stand out in the back garden and shakes her head. He was who she really blamed because had he ever told his first wife what he'd done to her? How he'd kept her at his side using lies and deceit if necessary? Maybe the Austrian really had loved her but Anna can't excuse him.

Where once her love flowed freely, finally surrounded by others like her and respected, the Bohemian only felt empty. Her Hungarian love had left, and so her Austrian love had died.

What starts the argument, the Bohemian will never remember: did she say it? did he? or was it nothing, really, but the spark for an explosion?

No matter what it had been the end result is Roderich lashing out, the back of his hand slapping Anna hard across the face. Immediately he seems to regret it, falling to his knees, but she's screamed for him to stay away, to not touch her, and even the servants who had begun to ignore the fighting rush in. The men pull the Austrian back, the women helping Anna down the hall to her room.

In the end she had only ever been something to keep Erzsi with Roderich, and Anna can no longer ignore that fact.

The letter comes almost too easily for the Hungarian: how could Anna leave Roderich Edelstein as well?

A response comes less than two weeks later, tidy and neat and cold but caring as well, just like Erzsi had always been. Her once-sister-wife tells her what to say, how to do it, and encourages her to be strong. If Anna could leave Roderich, Erzsi would contact the Czech politicians and tell them to act.

Roderich is at his piano. He hasn't dressed properly in weeks, always just pants and a half-buttoned shirt; he almost looked like any other man, modern, relaxed, and that's what it made it so wrong.

The Austrian doesn't look up as she enters, the way he had for Erzsi. He doesn't even look when Anna walks cautiously towards him, her face burning up, her heart pounding against her ribcage. Awkwardly she puts her wedding ring down on the shiny black surface of the piano, Roderich reaching out to take it without looking.

"Go on," he says, "tell me whatever you want and then leave. They always leave, in the end. Roderich Edelstein: the man no one wanted to love."

The woman in her with her own thoughts and mind and hearts wants to say that that's not true, that maybe their kind just can't stay in love forever. Or if they could, then it wasn't Anna would could love him forever: it was Erzsi, she was the one he should have fought for. The Czech woman thinks that if she had been him, she would have dumped herself to go chase the Hungarian. That was the closest to love their kind could ever be.

As it was the thoughts of her people and the words Erzsi had given her override the woman, and so Anna takes a deep breathing before saying, "I was only ever meant to be a way to keep your first wife. I have spent my whole life being used by you for your own means, and my people being ruled by yours. The time has come for the Czechs to take our place." She stutters over the last word when Roderich looks at her with dead amethyst eyes. "Goodbye, Roderich."

With that Anna turns to leave but a hand grabs her. She dares not look back as the man kisses her skin one last time, whispering, "I really did love you, Anna of the Czech people." He releases her hand and with it she feels she is also released from all ties to him, quickly exiting the house.

Prague smells different than she last remembers from centuries earlier, and that makes Anna smile. The streets are different and the people are different and for the first time in her life the nation incarnate is free to explore her own land, to get to know these people and their ways. To feel their pain, to share their joy, to be.

Free.

As Anna moves further into the square a woman catches her eye, a woman in man's clothing with beautiful brown hair pulled high and back from her face. Erzsi smiles serendipitously as she approaches, kissing the Czech woman gently before linking arms with her. "I had often wished," the Hungarian whispers, "that someone was with me, when I first returned to my people, to share my delight."

Anna nods, understanding that this was about them as humans. Because they had hearts that beat, whether for Roderich or each other or no one at all. Because they had minds that could choose, no husband to tell them what they were or weren't to do instead. But most of all because they had memories of the past working with them, and time fighting against them.

"Let's go there first," Anna says and Erzsi follows.