Gilbert Beilschmitt ran away from home at seventeen.

It wasn't like he wanted things to turn out like this, and God knows he hadn't planned on it. It just sort of... Happened.

Throughout most of his life, he was generally happy. In primary school, the other kids didn't mind his silver-white hair and red eyes. While it was rather unsettling, they were children. The children were more accepting of him than their parents.

Every once in a while, some brat had to pull up his appearance in front of everyone and mock him, but he could defend himself pretty well. And his younger brother, Ludwig, always had his back if things went bad.

It was when he got to high school that the bullying started to get bad. They called him demon, goth, and fag. He retorted they left out awesome.

It was also around this point that his parents marriage started to blow up, his brother became distant, and he realized he was gay. Gilbert felt alone, really truly alone, with no-one to understand the confusing thoughts that swirled in his head.

He told his brother first. He was sixteen, his brother fourteen. Ludwig was understanding, even told him he had a crush on a boy himself.

The two preserved each other's secrets for a year before Gilbert felt ready to tell his parents. By then Ludwig was dating his crush, a sweet Italian named Feliciano.

He told his parents on a Sunday evening, after he'd spent the entire day working up the nerve. He was sure his mother would accept him, but his father... It made him queasy thinking about it.

He sat them down at the dinner table, and methodically explained that he'd started liking boys three years ago. He said he didn't care if they accepted him or not, but this was the way he was and nothing was going to change that. He looked up from his knees, where he'd been intently staring for the entire speech, and the expression on his father's face was too much to bear.

It was bright red, livid with rage, tears pricking his crow's feet. His hands were clasped together tightly, but that didn't disguise the fact that they were shaking.

He was in shock for a second, then he started to yell.

Horrible, awful things, things Gilbert gasped at, things that stabbed his very soul with shame. How dare you, he yelled. On a Sunday, too. You have tainted the Beilschmitt name. I can't look at your face anymore. You disgust me.

Gilbert didn't cry very often, but that night he did. He burst from the dining room and ran upstairs, the tears marking his path like bread crumbs in the forest of broken hearts.

He spent a week preparing. It was a horrid week, his father shunning him and making comments, his mother awkwardly trying to console him, his brother out at all hours of the night with his Italian boy-toy.

Every time he took money from his father's wallet, or spent time memorizing his credit card numbers, he pictured his father opening up his bank account and seeing it had been emptied.

After he'd gathered all the money he could, he threw a couple outfits and his computers in a backpack and left.

For a week, his father had been saying he could just go ahead and move right out if he was going to like boys like that. And that was perfectly fine with him.

He'd left a note for Ludwig. He told him not to worry, and to tell his mother that he loved her. He also reassured him that he hadn't said anything about him and Feliciano.

He spent a year working odd jobs, hitch hiking, squatting, and mooching other people's (and occasionally Starbucks') wifi, until he had a moderately successful website. It was a website where people could post their opinions, confessions, give and receive advice from him or any other user. He moderated it himself, so hate was rare.

And then the golden day came. The day he discovered online advertising.

Now it wasn't just a hobby, it was his full-time job. The checks were addressed to an anonymous mail box which only he knew about. He claimed an abandoned house, and set up camp there for his website. The government kept that house for tax purposes, so he was all covered there. As his website grew in popularity, so did his paychecks.

By his twentieth birthday, he had his own place and full-time job, and he knew the web like the back of his hand. He wasn't just a teenage runaway, he had managed to slip out of the noose and build himself an empire. And he knew exactly what he wanted for his birthday: A new name.

He visited a friend he hadn't seen in a while, but who knew how to do basic tattoos. And he'd understand, because even though his name was Francis, everyone called him France.

Using a needle and a pot of ink, France tattooed a roman eagle onto Gilbert's wrist, and from then on, he answered only to Prussia.


hello guys... Hehe... I kinda just wrote this on a whim, i have really no idea where its going or what's gonna happen. Plz reveiw! I would really appreciate it, this is my first hetalia fic and i hope ill do well.