Genres: Historical, Family, Domestic, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Drama

AN: It's been thirty years since the creation of Kugelmugel, and tomorrow marks the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.


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Expressionism

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"Art is creative for the sake of realization, not for amusement: for transfiguration, not for the sake of play. It is the quest of our self that drives us along the eternal and never-ending journey we must all make."

- Max Beckman

(1884 – 1950)


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Chapter 1

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Austria felt him before he truly knew him. It was only a vague notion at first, as if he were, in some manner, forgetting about a very important detail. Then, the feeling became more defined – the sense that something else was nearby, something like him.

People claimed that being suddenly chilled was a sign of someone walking over their grave. For his kind, a sudden jolt of alert energy thrumming along one's pulse was the sign of another nation being present in their home, in their heartland.

It was entirely odd and wholly unacceptable for him to have such a feeling without knowing why, and so for weeks, he poured over the newspapers and made inquiries with his neighbors and wondered.

He couldn't think of any nation who'd have cause to mess with his head. Prussia was behind the Wall, Germany had thrown himself into work, and the others were all keeping to themselves or caught in the crisis-ridden power struggle that was the Cold War. Austria had long since passed the point of being able to offer anything of substantial value to them. Instead, he was absorbed in toeing a careful line between East and West. He no longer sought allies or spouses for his survival, only business partners. His ties were still deep with some of his fellow nations, to be sure, but never like before. Never again.

His freedom to live – to live alone, at that – had come at too high a price to risk skirmishes with other nations.

So, he had an idea of all the things it couldn't be, but still no definitive answer as to what it was.

He supposed he simply never thought that a micronation would crop up at his place, all because one idealistic artist decided he wasn't going to pay taxes anymore. It was absurd! That was why, when he was finally able to put a name – Kugelmugel – to that feeling, he was irritated. This was going to be a mess and a headache for his government, not to mention that someone would need to look after the personification.

Now, by their very nature, even the toughest and calloused of nations harbored a nurturing side for children. It was simply part of who they were, being just as dependent upon their people as their people were of them.

So, when Roderich saw that delicate boy sitting in his boss' office, fragile hands tracing smudgy patterns on the window, he was no longer angry.

He was frightened.

It would have to be him to care for this child, his aging boss explained. Until the situation was sorted out, it was only right for Austria to keep track of the boy.

That was Kugelmugel's status. A situation, a rickety, unstable structure, born of a tangled mess of lucrative hopes, creative dreams and rebellious spirit.

How was Roderich supposed to keep hold of that? How was he to be the person this child needed? His past attempts at mentoring had all ended through various methods - separation, war, death. He'd been so sure that his days of pseudo-parenthood were long-over.

But fate was ever the joker, it seemed.

I will not care too much, he promised himself. This is duty, and nothing more.

Oh, how many times had he told himself that over the years? When duty quite often included close ties to other nations, maneuvers of politics and entwined powers could so easily be confused for emotion. His weak heart had proven to be his personal ruin in the past.

And now, in this post-war world where everything was different and wounds were re-opening, healing and scarring all across Europe, here was another individual he'd have to try his best not to get attached to.

He knelt down to be closer to the boy's height, surprise flitting across his expression when violet eyes only a few shades lighter than his own stared back at him. It really was obvious that Kugelmugel was related to him. A stray strand of dove-white hair curled up on the right side of his head, springing forth from beneath a red beret, and a beauty mark rested below his left eye. The boy had long, messy braids, and a soft face.

At least he's not in a dress. Roderich mused wryly. I wouldn't want him nor I to go through that confusion.

"My name is Austria." He held out his hand. "You'll be living with me."

Kugelmugel stared at him inquisitively for a long moment, before extending his hand and allowing Austria to shake it. "Can I make art?"

Roderich raised a brow at the unexpected question. He truly had no legitimate reasons to refuse the request, especially when that bright and curious gaze was trained so seriously on him, and the small hand clasping his own was warm and trusting.

"Yes, I suppose. Let's go home."

And part of himself suspected then, at the very start, that he was already doomed.

.x.

Austria took the micronation home, set up one of the guest bedrooms for him, close enough to his own that Kugelmugel could find him if he needed to. Hopefully the child's sense of direction wasn't as bad as Roderich's lack of one.

He could provide basic comforts and see to the needs of his new charge, but Roderich quickly realized that he was out of his depth when it came to entertaining the boy. His job as a nation consisted of paperwork, messages, meetings, and occasional errands. He spent his free time composing, reading, gardening and cooking. He doubted many of those things would be fun to a child, especially not in the meticulous way he preferred to go about them.

Even supper together was an awkward affair, for Austria had fallen quite out of practice as far as conversation went. Anyway, what was he supposed to say to a boy who was freshly in existence? Welcome to the world, I've no idea what to do with you.

That didn't seem right at all.

"What's going to happen to my real home?" Kugelmugel asked, breaking the odd silence.

"What?" Ah, the spherical house which had started this entire mess. The Austrian authorities were in an uproar over the structure built without the correct permits. Roderich wondered what would happen if the home were to be demolished. He found he couldn't look the child in the eye and ponder such thoughts at the same time, so he pushed those contemplations aside.

"Someone will take care of it." He assured vaguely. "And your...the artist who built it is safe, as are you."

Kugelmugel smiled tentatively at him then, and asked if he could see the rest of the house.

It had been even longer since Austria gave a house tour than the last time he'd had a youngster sitting at his table, but he obliged.

This would be a period of adjustment for them both.

.x.

They ended up in the music room, one of the most cherished areas of Austria's estate. Although most of his home had undergone serious diminishing and downsizing, the music room was still ornate and lavishly decorated, bearing a resemblance to elegant eras long-past. It was his place of solace and sanctuary from any troubles which ailed him, either internal or external.

"You like art, ja?" He asked the boy gently, receiving a delighted nod in return.

"Painting is my favorite, but I like sketching and coloring, too. Everything is art!" It was the most impassioned thing Kugelmugel had said to Roderich so far.

Chuckling slightly, the dark-haired man felt his spirits lift. Perhaps this would work out well, after all. "Well said. Music is certainly art. Painting is your forte, music is mine."

The young micronation peered up at him shyly. "Will you play a song while I paint, then?"

Surprised by the request, Austria stared at the boy. It sounded like a very good idea, actually. "Ah... Alright, I shall."

After a quick hunt for the proper supplies, they soon settled at their respective stations. Austria positioned himself at the pianoforte while Kugelmugel sat cross-legged in front of a spread of newspapers, paint bottles and stark white paper.

Roderich took a few calming breaths before he began to play, fully expecting to be interrupted at any point by Kugelmugel throwing a sudden fit, or claiming he was bored, or any other disruptive behavior children were capable of exhibiting.

To his surprise, however, the boy didn't even so much as yawn or cast a longing glance toward the door. Instead, he seemed to focus intensely on the music just as much as his painting, often pausing in the middle of his project to stare into space as the notes lifted and dipped in melodic tempo.

Whenever Austria sneaked a glance toward him, Kugelmugel looked so enraptured by the song, it instantly endeared the swan-haired boy to him.

And after he'd let the last notes resonate throughout the room, the young man stood up and carried over what he'd painted. It was an abstract muddle of shapes and bright colors, all intertwining in circles and arcs, with spaces of dark indigo and royal blue in between.

"What's this?" He asked tentatively, careful not to sound disinterested or negative.

"It's what the song looks like." Kugelmugel grinned, pointing. "See how it rises and falls, but all comes together in the end – and the purple-blue parts, that's because you were the one playing it and you're wearing a purple coat."

There was something very odd to this statement, something that wouldn't click in the former aristocrat's mind until a later date. All Austria realized at the moment was that Kugelmugel was an eccentric child, but also a very unique one.

"Das ist wunderbar," he praised softly in response, and truly meant it.

The young micronation beamed, and then asked for another song.

All too content to agree, Roderich poised his fingers over the keys once more.

We'll get along nicely, he thought.

.x.x.x.


It could have been worse, Austria would admit. Overall, Kugelmugel was an easy child to care for. He didn't fuss over food much, he could be easily entertained for hours with painting, and he was fairly soft-spoken (although he seemed to have inherited a sense of sarcasm and a stubborn streak a kilometer wide, both of which Roderich refused to take responsibility for).

Kugelmugel loved colors and patterns, as was evidenced when Roderich took him clothes shopping and he requested all sorts of wild combinations. The boy was a whirlwind of brightness and imagination, constantly pointing out shapes in the clouds as they walked hand-in-hand along the streets of Vienna.

And Roderich found himself growing used to the chatter very quickly. Something about the enthusiastic innocence of this child put a spring in the older nation's own step.

Austria had been living alone for almost thirty years before Kugelmugel appeared. His last...house guests...were not quite so uplifting. They left in 1955, and since then he had been free, as free as he could be with old memories and ghosts of regret still threatening to wrap chains around him.

He used to have intense bitterness in his heart over all he'd been caught up in, the kind that would boil over and burn him, along with anyone who dared to be close to him.

Kugelmugel reminded him of what it was like before that time, of what Roderich was like before he lost and lost and lost so much that he nearly misplaced his mind in the process. He reminded Austria of what it was like to be young; to still hope and dream so freely, to search the world not for greed, power or revenge, but for love and beauty.

"Austria!" A sharp tug on his hand brought his attention back to the present, where the boy was pointing to one of the large, ornate buildings facing Maria-Theresien-Platz. Oh, he remembered when this area was being built, back when the Emperor was still alive, and no one had ever heard of a world war or various other dark terms associated with his name.

"Kunst! Kunst!"

"Ja," He agreed with a light sigh. "Kunsthistorisches. Let's go see, shall we?"

Cheering happily, Kugelmugel briefly hugged his guardian's legs before rushing forward, causing Austria to cry out in surprise, struggling to chase after him as he berated the boy for running.

Just because he was taking the boy to an art history museum, and that his citizens often mistook them for family when they were out like this, it didn't mean anything.

Roderich tried to quell the treacherous thoughts which suggested he wouldn't mind if it did.

.x.x.x.


After Austria, Germany was the second nation Kugelmugel met.

Ludwig came to see Roderich fairly often, for business and occasionally for companionship. Austria knew that Germany missed his bruder, and that Germany, for some odd and idiotic reason, thought that Austria must miss the fool as well.

(And he did, but that was entirely beside the point.)

The look of shock on the burly blonde's face was comical when he saw Kugelmugel come bounding down the stairs, splotches of paint in his hair and all over his clothes. He was proudly holding up his latest creation – a painting of a tree in shades of indigo, green and umber, with winding roots and white blossoms tangling in its foliage.

"That's very good." Germany declared in surprise, before turning questioningly to Austria.

"There have been some developments." Roderich explained smoothly, giving the boy a pat on the head. "Kugelmugel, say hello to Germany."

Ludwig was surprisingly good with the child, and they got along well while he told Kugelmugel about his three dogs, describing them all in detail because Kugelmugel had decided to draw them.

Roderich served them tea and Baumkuchen, which Kugelmugel soon declared was his absolute favorite.

"What about sachertorte?" Austria asked incredulously, and he was not wounded because Kugelmugel seemed to prefer a German dessert over an Austrian one, he was not.

"It's alright." The boy shrugged. "But I think Baumkuchen might be art." He swallowed a mouthful of the cake and added, "Austria, can we get a dog? Germany has three!"

Ludwig at least had the decency to shrink back slightly when Roderich turned to level an extremely unamused glare at him.

.x.

"So, a micronation?" Germany inquired after Kugelmugel had been ushered away to clean himself up.

"Ja. He's been living here for several months now."Roderich sighed, massaging his temples. "All because of one man who built a spherical house without proper permission and declared independence..."

"One is all it takes." The younger nation muttered solemnly, with more fatigue than Austria had heard from him in a long while.

"How are you?" He asked softly, feeling a hollowness settle back into his bones. This was the real reason why Germany came to visit – because Austria understood the things he tried to hide from every other nation in the world, the regret anger fear confusion guilt loneliness which resulted from the past. With Prussia still behind the Wall which was splitting his heartland in two, Germany had few true friends.

Austria had been with them then, through the absolute most despicable time of their lives, and it was he who had been allowed to remain mostly intact now, cozy in his home while the two brothers struggled on different sides of the same punishing divide.

They didn't speak much of it, still too weary to acknowledge it all in words. But they had formed this routine of checking up on each other, and somehow they knew it helped, even whilst skirting around the issue.

Ludwig's hand was tightly gripping the arm of the sofa, his gaze directed to Roderich's hardwood floor. There used to be a woven rug there, from Romania, but it was one of the many things that didn't survive the war.

Austria never really liked that rug, anyway. He'd only gotten it to spite Hungary after the divorce, which backfired because she'd never noticed. Looking back, that was probably a blessing.

"I'm fine." The blonde asserted, but he'd taken so long to answer that the older nation knew it was a lie. "There's been no word for a while of bruder..."

Austria felt his lip curl briefly as a tightness built up in his chest. The fourth-generation Wall was the ugliest structure he'd ever seen, in all his centuries of life. A hunkering monster of reinforced concrete, barbed wire and smooth pipe – of course they would have added pipe... And yet, he knew even that atrocity would not, could not hold someone like Gilbert at bay forever.

Still, he couldn't deny that the past years had been awfully...long without him.

He reached over to place his hand on Ludwig's broad shoulder. "Take care of yourself, Junge. He'll need you when he comes home."

Germany looked up at him gratefully, and for a moment Austria saw the young boy he used to be, no bigger than Kugelmugel was now. He remembered that brief time when it was he and Prussia together, raising that new nation and fighting for him, over him, about him. Austria remembered the shadow of a chance he'd once possessed to be the one to become Germany's guardian, before Prussia won that privilege and stole the blue-eyed child away.

And he thought about how none of them could regain what was lost, or the time that had been stripped away across the centuries. But maybe he was receiving a second chance instead, however little he deserved it.

He allowed himself to hope that they would all be given one.

"You too, Österreich." Ludwig told him earnestly.

Roderich didn't know if he meant for him to take care of himself, or that Gilbert would need him as well when he returned. He found that both statements were applicable in some recess of his heart, so he nodded and offered the tiniest of smiles in response.

.x.x.x.