I don't own Hetalia
The man takes the street in strides, seemingly bent on one sole purpose. He is tall, maybe clearing 6 feet, and the shadow he casts against the ice-coated asphalt is twice that length, hallowed by the dirty yellow illumination. The touch of light falls across only half his chiseled face, while the other is like the dark side of the moon. What is visible is hardened in a somber mask, a mask one wears when close to surrender.
The neighborhood he walks in does not seem used to such surrender or sacrifice. It is lush, stately, and decorated for the holidays, sprinklings of red, green, and gold casting more blotted shadows of doubt across the man's face. His one visible eye seems to question what he's doing in this community, but he shrugs it off, and quickens his pace, blocking out the sounds of carols and laughter and children baking cookies and pouring milk.
His destination is unclear, he merely continues forward along the edge of the road, splashing the muddied slush further into the gutter. Finally, he stops, still without turning, hulking silently in front of the one house on the street that isn't celebrating the date that will arrive in mere hours. Its windows are shut, its driveway empty, its porch light darkened. The only sign of life resides in one lonely window, to the upper left.
The man takes one steadying breath. He climbs the cobbled stone steps of the suburban work of art with a gait more suited for an infantry. Or perhaps, suited because of an infantry. He seems like he could be a man of war, a veteran.
With one gloved hand, he reaches for the rather old fashioned, gnarled, brass door knocker, and raps it smartly. Then, he takes a step back and he waits. In the far window, the light flickers uncertainly, and the curtain gives a slight twitch, as though the inhabitant momentarily forgets that they cannot see down to the street below.
In the strange silence that accompanies the lonesome house, the stoic man can hear the soft thudding of footsteps. The door is opened without the sound of a lock being undone, and before the man stands a woman.
She looks equally as somber in the dim, shadowed lighting. Her hair shrouds her face, but the man seemingly relaxes at the sight of her. She does the opposite and stiffens, eyes wide.
She welcomes him in with a quick, "You," before stepping back from the door and disappearing into the house. In usual circumstances, the man would politely remain at the threshold until she formally spoke words of invitation, but in his current situation, he doesn't have the time to spare on her broken heart.
The woman, long hair rustling, moves to the opposite end of the room, and switches on a table lamp. It casts halfhearted light upon her pale face, but barely stretches far enough to reach his. "Ludwig. It's been a while," she sighs, seemingly unhappy at the man's presence, but before long, she stands, crosses to the visitor, and wraps him into a hug. He doesn't seem surprised at this act of informality, but instead hugs back, giving her the briefest kiss on the cheek.
"I know, Eliza." He doesn't ask how she is when she pulls away and holds him at arms length, briefly fussing with his flaxen hair and rubbing his ice bitten cheeks with smiling eyes.
She asks him, however. "How are you?"
He takes a minute to re-acquisition himself to her ways, but realizes within a second who she's really talking about. He nods softly; it's a perfect lead in. "He's not well, Eliza."
Her eyes darken, and the little flame in them dies. She brushes a lock of chestnut hair behind her ear, shivers at the exposure of the skin, and takes back the action. "Is that why you're here?"
"Ja." He scuffs a polished shoe against her carpet, but does not break the eye contact.
"Ludwig, you know I can't- There's nothing I can do for him anymore. He brought this upon himself," the woman hisses, wrapping her arms around her waist. The knuckles whiten, and Ludwig regrets bringing this problem to Eliza. He always regrets bringing his brother to Eliza.
"He's getting worse. Every week it's worsening. I keep an eye on him, I don't buy beer anymore, I never leave his side, but it isn't enough. Nothing's enough."
She turns her back on the desperate man, fury and panic and despair chasing themselves around her face. The lamp lights up her eyes, and they spark a fiery green.
"I don't even know if it's the beer anymore."
This elicits a vocalization from Eliza. "What do you mean?"
"It's no longer on his breath."
Her heart catches, and she squeezes her eyes shut, willing the memories of a drunk, laughing, happy Gilbert to disappear, to leave her in her own misery. She remembers all too well the foul stench of beer that would drift from between Gilbert's lips when he chuckled, or when he stumbled and slurred over corny, shameless nothings to her as she drove them both home.
Ludwig, sees her back stiffen in shock, and he pushes the heartless advantage. "He drank to get rid of his pain, Eliza. If he feels like it isn't working anymore, I don't want to imagine what he'll resort to."
A shameless tear slips from her closed lids. "Why?" It's a weak, strained attempt to hear the truth.
Ludwig delivers it. "He still loves you."
The lone silver tear slides to the edge of her chin, and drops to the floor, shattering into thousands of droplets. No others follow. She turns once more to face Ludwig, and she almost cracks at the look of resigned desperation. "I won't be able to do anything."
"He hasn't seen you in months! He loves you, Eliza, he loves you." Ludwig repeats the latter, as though it is the only oxygen left in the world; the last chance for his brother.
"He broke my heart."
"And it broke him!"
The woman shakes her head, "Sajnálom."
Ludwig's expression doesn't change, he simply nods, and leaves, speaking not a word to the girl who could have changed everything.
When the door shuts, Eliza slumps to the floor, and the tears that so yearned to follow their leader pour from behind the dam, spilling down her face and onto her shirt. Her breath shoots sporadically out of her chest and into the suffocating air. After a moment, she collects herself and gets to her feet, swaying shakily as she wipes the last of her tears away. Without a word, she finds herself walking up, to the second floor. Her feet carry her to that closet, and she reaches with fingers that are hers, but a will that is not, towards that box. Her fingers close around it and suddenly its contents are spewed across her lap, pictures and faces and memories surfacing and drowning her in nostalgia.
She sifts through them quickly, removing the ones of her family and her friends until nails scratch against that one. She pulls it out and tears start afresh. It's a picture of her. Beside her stands Ludwig's brother, as a handsome man, no, a boy, in his late teens. His skin is pale, and his eyes are red, but he wouldn't be Gilbert without the genetic defect. She can't help but feel the corners of her mouth pull up at his smile, a smile that was always so contagious, big and toothy and honest. There was always mystery behind his red eyes, and a plan under his white hair. He has his arm slung around her waist, holding her close, beaming at his accomplished feat. It was the first time he kissed her, and in the photo her cheeks are stained a bright red. In the long run, his plan failed. He'd captured the moment right after the kiss. In Eliza's opinion, however, they were all the more beautiful that way, in the blushing, stuttering afterglow.
She lets the six year old shot flutter to the floor and her eyes drift out the window. Snow has begun to fall.
With sudden, jerky, movements, she's running for the stairs, past the door, forgetting her coat, but not her keys. She barely lets the lock slide home before wrenching the metal out and sprinting to her old Civic Honda. The engine is spluttering to life and rolling down the driveway in a matter of seconds.
Her heart beats faster at every red light, and the colors of the road stain her white skin with watery hue. She doesn't have to think anymore about the way; she would always know the way to the Beilschmidt house.
Her car rolls to a lurching stop. She lets her gaze fly to the weathered wood she has dreamed about for weeks. In her minds eye she can see younger versions of herself and Gilbert playing in front of the very same oak tree. She can remember all those kisses against the frozen panes of the kitchen window, and she can remember the teary haze in which she ran from his front door on that day.
"I can't do this anymore."
"Can't do what?"
"I can't be with you anymore. I hate having to see your face every day, having to live with that."
She hisses at the wrenching in her gut, the tightening around her heart, but she shakes it off and slams the car door shut.
There are a few lights in the windows she recognize to be those of the kitchen, the basement, and Ludwig's room.
She takes one deep breath before ringing the doorbell. It's a foreign feeling, one she hasn't experienced since the age of six. She's never had to ask for entry into this house.
Frantic stomping reverberates through the wood before Ludwig throws it open, eye wide and hopeful.
"I need to try, don't I?"
He just nods, disbelieving, and when she steps against the tiles of the kitchen floor, the only thing that goes through her head is surprise. "You redid the flooring."
"Last summer. Antonio, Feliciano, and Lovino helped us."
The smallest of smiles flits across her face as she tries to imagine that group getting anything done. When she glances down, little things alert her to the fact they weren't much help. Several tiles are crooked, and few slide under her feet when she crosses the room.
"Is he in the basement?"
Ludwig nods. "Ja. I- Danke, Eliza."
She turns away. "Don't expect anything to change."
Ludwig nods, and quickly crosses to open the basement door for her.
"Always such a gentleman."
After a moment, Ludwig shuts the door, leaving her still standing on the first step, heart pounding. She doesn't know what to expect.
Silence seems to rein, before a scratchy, painful, unrecognizable voice floats up from below. "Lud? That you? I'm still fine, you checked five minutes ago."
She tries to cover the little gasp of horror that escapes, but she doesn't, not in time. Silence reins again.
"Hello? Who the hell's there?"
Eliza lets out a pained breath, before slowly descending into the basement. She has to strain her eyes against the shitty light bulb, but when she does, she wishes they hadn't adjusted.
Gilbert is sprawled in a position that reminds her of the lazy summer days they used to spend together, only now, he's frail, thin, and haunted looking. His face is unshaven, and he has great dark bags under each eye. She searches for something of the happiness, the vivacity, the mischief that she had learned to expect on those chiseled, handsome features. Nothing remains in them but misery.
"Lizzie."
"Gilbert." She doesn't move from her position by the stairs, too afraid of upsetting this delicate balance between disconsolate misery and dogged loyalty to pride. He always was stubborn, and now, she sees, he's too stubborn to give up on living.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" he snarls, turning away.
He doesn't scare her with his anger, but rather emboldens her. Her gaze flashes, and she strides across the cluttered floor, suddenly finding what she had thought she lost. "I'm here because you're becoming a fucking moron, that's why."
"Never could do anything right, could I?"
It's not the answer she is expecting, but she responds in kind. "Never. You always go and fuck things up, break people's hearts, ruin people's lives."
"Then leave, if I'm so hopeless."
Her fingers dig into her palm as she tries to keep composure. "I'm not here for you. You made it very clear you never wanted me to help you again. I'm here for Ludwig."
Gilbert tries his hardest not to seem like this information bothers him, but something flashes across those ember eyes and she sees it.
"He came to see me, you know. Said he didn't know what the fuck to do anymore."
"He shouldn't worry," Gilbert snaps, slowly rising to a sitting position. "It's my problem, not his."
"Like hell," Liza hisses. "You're in his house, wasting your life in his space, living off his income. You make it his problem."
"No I don't!" Gilbert yells, standing angrily. It hurts Eliza to see how thin he his. He was never good at keeping on weight, but now it scares her.
Something upstairs clatters against the floor, and Liza wonders how long it's been since Gilbert was this lively, if this experience has been just as dated for Ludwig as for her.
"You do. You make yourself a problem for all of us."
"Fuck off."
"Nem. What do you call drinking yourself away? Noble? I call it fucking cowardly. Whatever it is that you can't deal with, drowning your pain in alcohol- nothing will come of it."
"I was never drinking my pain away, I was drinking to it."
"Drinking to your pain? You always were a dramatic fool. You always make the wrong choice!"
"What would you suggest I do, then?" Gilbert sneers, folding his bones into something that Liza supposes should be intimidating.
"If it were up to me, I'd tell you to either get your act together or die already." It's terrible, and Eliza knows it, but she needed to say it.
He reels back in shock, stumbling into the couch. Eliza takes the advantage and storms up to him, towering over his shocked face.
"You fucking ass hole." And finally, she can't hold it in anymore. "I LOVED you! Goddammit, I loved you." She sinks to the basement floor until she's level with Gilbert's knees. He seems even more shocked now, as the sobs she wouldn't let him see on that day flood over her.
"I don't- I can't- Maybe you should just leave, Liz," Gilbert sighs, his face draining of all the life it held a moment before.
Suddenly, the woman is standing, and before she can control it, her hand smarts and there is a very large, very red mark slapped against Gilbert's cheek. He takes it without a word.
Eliza turns to leave, anger boiling in her heart, but she stops after a few steps, desperate to know. "Just... just answer me this, Gilbert, and you'll never have to see me again."
"Ja, what is it."
"Why?"
He doesn't have to ask what she means. He's always known her like the back of his hand. He opens his mouth to answer, to give the simplest response, but she cuts him off, because she too, knows him like the back of her hand .
"Was I not good enough? Did you meet somebody else? We were perfect, Gilbert, could you not stand it? Did you come to hate me? You were so much better than Roddy. You never saw it, but it was true. When you abandoned me, he tried to pick me up, help me back on my feet. He was so sweet, but so gay."
Gilbert lets out a hacking laugh that shakes his body. "I won because I'm straight?"
"Nem. Because I loved you. So why?" She turns one last time, wanting to read his eyes. Gilbert was never good at hiding the emotion in his eyes, but now, now, as they are flat and unreadable, Eliza's heart sinks. The deathly, bitter silence is prolonged by both parties. She finally turns toward the stairway feeling empty, so empty, so broken, so vulnerable, but somehow satisfied. She has finally faced nine months of lonely, forgotten, angry pain. And she is satisfied. Still lonely, still sad, still nursing that gaping hole, but satisfied. That miserable panic is gone, and there is nothing more she can do.
"I wasn't good enough."
She freezes in shock. "What?"
Gilbert runs a tired hand through his hair. "I wasn't good enough for you. You seemed so happy, but with what? I had nothing to offer you, and I couldn't be what you wanted."
She turns slowly, feeling that panic begin to spring once more into life. Nem. "Nem. Nem. You told me you couldn't bear to see me every day of your life-"
"Ja! I couldn't! I couldn't bear to see you blindly happy with such shit. I was never as perfect as Roderich, or as strong as Sadiq, or as 'bad boy' as Vasile. Gott your boyfriends had weird names..." Gilbert mutters, trailing off as he goes back to flip through his mental files on all her past men.
Seeing him like this, seeing him after all those months of bad memories and sadness, and then just now as a gaunt shadow of his former self, seeing him getting back to normal solidifies several things for the Hungarian woman.
She knew of only one way to show that.
In five strides she's beside him, glancing down once more. Now Gilbert is the one who can't tell what she's about to do.
She bends and kisses him. It's a fragile, uncertain brush of lips because she's almost afraid to break him. She's almost afraid of breaking herself. But in less than a second, he's responding, hungrily, like he's been dying to do just this. As though from the moment she walked in, all he could imagine was this.
She lets out a little gasp of pure happiness, and realizes, that after all that time of misery, she had come to know it like a friend. This happiness, this joy, is something only Gilbert had ever brought her, and something only Gilbert could ever continue to bring her.
His hand is tangled in her hair, and she comes to sit beside him on the filthy couch, grasping his bony shoulders like a lifeline.
When they break away, there is a light in both pairs of eyes, a light that hadn't been there in a long time.
But nine months of anguish has left its scar, and Liza immediately distances herself, creating a gaping hole between them. "This- this doesn't make what you did to me better."
Gilbert regards her softly, unable to deny the fact that he was expecting her reaction. "But nothing can do that, Liz. I can't take it back; life's a bitch. But I never stopped loving you. I've always loved you." He nears her quaking body with slow, calculated caution. He can't ruin this a second time.
"I hate you," she says emotionless. "And I swore I would never forgive what you did. How can you expect a kiss to make things okay?"
He stops in his advance, and watches her, watches the way she turns her head, the way she obstinately ignores him. Yet, he knows Liza. When she's finished with something, she ends it, she doesn't beat around the bush, she doesn't keep it alive. She kills it. His heart twinges at the fact that she was never able to kill her memory of him. She held onto him, when he wanted her to let go. "I hate myself for what I did to you. But you've always been a part of my life. Without you," he breaks off, and raises his face to the ceiling, as though asking for the guidance he needs to make this right. "Without you... I wouldn't be where I am, you made me, and I can't... I can't keep going like this," he waves a helpless hand around the disarray of the basement, "without you. What drove my decision was selfish, I see that now. I was only thinking of what I couldn't be, rather than what you needed. I fucked us up. Gott, I ruined everything, but I love you more than I should. I wanted you to leave to save you from the pain I thought I would cause you in the future. All I did was force that pain on you sooner. But I made sure to suffer for it, Liza. I don't want you or me to suffer anymore. I want you to be happy, and if that's with me, than I can never ask for anything else. If that's with you finally moving on, then I can come to accept what makes you smile again."
He waits, barely breathing, for her reaction.
She turns, a hairsbreadth at a time, but finally, those flaming green eyes land on him, and he thinks that it's been to long that he's survived without them.
"I need to move on."
His brain shuts down and there's a numb before he starts to stand, as though his first act of compensation will be to go without a fight.
"But so do you. And we need to move on together. I love you, and I will always love you, and what we need is to forget that pain, and remember what it feels like to be happy. I can't be happy without you."
He turns so fast, Liza's afraid the air will swallow his raw-boned body. "You'd better not fucking screw me over this time, Beilschmidt," she growls, brushing a stray piece of hair from her eyes.
"Never. Never again! I swear it to you, whatever I need to do-"
She bridges the distance between them. "You need to show me how much you love me."
He breaths in the smell of her. "I've been doing that for my whole life, liebe. Fuck, I was stupid," the man sighs, rubbing his cheek and wincing at the scratchy sensation of stubble. "How did you manage to kiss me with all this?"
Liza almost laughs at this familiar tendency to switch subjects. "Desperation can make a person accomplish great feats," she drawls. "Promise me you'll shave. And eat. And get out of this basement. And get a job."
Gilbert flinches. "Ja, ja, I get it, I did a terrible job of moving forward with my life."
"An awful job. Ludwig had me thinking that you were about to commit suicide." Liza leans back against the piece of ancient upholstery and lets out a hefty sigh, one she'd been holding in for months.
Instead of answering, Gilbert pulls her in for another kiss. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Ich liebe dich, Elizaveta."
She buries her face in his chest and answers with a mischievous smirk. "Merry Christmas, ass hole."
::A/N::
What is this? I don't even... Most depressing Christmas fic ever, guys – with a happy ending of course XD But I thought of this plot bunny, and it was a great way to re-inspire my writing. So, if you keep up with any of my other stories, expect updates soon~
Translations:
Ja (German) = Yes
Sajnálom (Hungarian) = I'm sorry
Danke (German) = Thank you
Nem (Hungarian) = No
Liebe (German) = Love
Ich liebe dich (German) = I love you
Arigatou, danke, merci, gracias, köszönöm, grazie, thank you for reading; please review.
And merry Christmas, happy Chanukah, or just plain have an awesome holiday! Thank you~