Whiskey Lullaby
An adaptation of the Whiskey Lullaby CMV by VandettA Cosplay Group
Disclaimer: I don't own Axis Powers Hetalia or any of the characters in this story. That credit belongs to Hidekaz Himaruya. Additionally, the original idea of this story is credited to Cim, Mica and Fia of the cosplay group VandettA. I just borrowed the idea from their CMV. If you haven't seen it, or any of their other works, I suggest checking them out on YouTube. Their work is definitely worth watching.
Chapters One through Eight are laid out based on letters written to Gilbert Beilschmidt from Roderich Edelstein. These letters have been used with original author consent and are copyright to Vandetta Cosplay Group. I lay absolutely zero claim to them. I have done the best I can to keep the original intent of the CMV and to change very little in my interpretation. Any creative liberties that have been taken have not been taken in any attempt to alter the original piece of work.
Warning: This story will include a somewhat graphic sex scene and depict two suicides. I've never written a deathfic before, so please bear with me.
Dedications: To VandettA Cosplay, for being so kind as to allow others to adapt their CMVs into fanfictions. To my beta reader, Shannon A. Bernstein. Even though I elected to not have you beta-read this fanfiction, I appreciate what you have done for me in regards to The Ties That Bind, and I definitely will be sending you another chapter when this fanfiction is complete. To my wife, who always supports me, even though she doesn't understand my love of anime. And to all Hetalia fans out there who have kept this fandom alive. Thank you for watching, for reading, and for sharing.
Prologue
The letter had come completely out of the blue, and had brought with it the fury of a bullet train and left in its wake a sort of merciless aching that never faded. Instead, with every passing day, it became ever worse, as though perhaps someone had torn his beating heart from his chest and left in its place a cancerous tumor. As days transitioned into weeks, that tumor grew like a poisoned fetus, until it seemed to develop a heartbeat of its own; a half-dead thing that somehow kept his body alive, though nothing else about him could be considered living.
Gilbert had never been one who took to the bottle to solve his problems. Enjoying the occasional night of inebriation over several beers with his friends hardly made him an alcoholic. After the letter had appeared, the empty whiskey bottles had come in their wake. With the whiskey had come the cigarettes, a filthy habit he had indulged in now and then and had given up entirely almost the day he first laid eyes on the man who had subsequently broken his heart.
The empty bottles and ill-placed ashtrays had started off by taking over the counter tops at Ludwig's home, then had migrated their way steadily to the kitchen table. From there, they divided themselves each night and engulfed the coffee table like a plague of locusts, destroying everything they touched. Finally, when Ludwig had put his foot down and demanded his brother at least isolate his bad habits where no one else could see them, they took up permanent residence on Gilbert's bedside table, his bedroom floor, and even within the bed itself. A midnight cigarette over a bottle of whiskey suddenly became a good-morning cigarette to motivate him out of bed. A late-night nip to help him sleep suddenly became the only thing that helped him make it through the day. The days blurred into weeks and then into months, and though the seasons changed and the earth continued to spin, Gilbert felt as though he were stuck in the same Hell with the same crippling agony and was only aware that things were moving because the scenery changed. Nothing within him changed, unless a slow internal death could be considered a change. The fetus inside his chest gnawed away at what little living flesh remained, and he became lifeless and zombie-like because of it.
Some days lay on the cusp of just miserable enough to stay in bed and just bearable enough to go out in public. On the days were getting out of bed wasn't excruciating, he went out to the market to view the street vendors and shops. The roaring fifties had somehow managed to migrate their way over from the United States and take a hold on Germany, and many shop owners peddled suits, hats, leather jackets and all sorts of odds and ends that had become popular amongst the citizens. It was good for the economy, after all, given the fact that World War II and Hitler's hold had subsequently devastated Germany and split her down the center, West Germany could use all the help she was offered.
On this day, Gilbert purchased himself a leather jacket and a pack of Lucky Strikes, propping himself languidly against the wall that enclosed the marketplace as he lit up and exhaled the smoke from between pursed lips. It was unseasonably warm out, even for late spring, yet the warmth that seeped in through the long sleeves of his jacket and brushed sensually against his chin did nothing to penetrate the cold grief that had blossomed inside him like a dark flower, macabre magnificent and untouchable.
Familiar voices caught his attention and the muscles of his shoulders and back tensed, though he continued with the reflexive motion of lifting the cigarette to his mouth, taking a drag, and exhaling slowly. Two sets of footsteps approached the arched opening to the market, and his eyes were instantly attracted to the slim figure of Roderich Edelstein and his petite, long-haired companion as they crossed the threshold and continued walking, arms linked and matching strides relaxed and confident. A flare of fury welled up in his chest as Elizaveta said something he didn't catch and Roderich laughed in reply, squeezing her arm closer to his chest.
'Stupid bitch. What right do you have to laugh with him, knowing that he is mine?'
Except that Roderich wasn't his, not anymore. He was Hers now, and perhaps that was what hurt the worst. He had never liked the Hungarian woman, but he had come to trust her with all of his heart, because Roderich himself was his entire heart, and since Roderich had trusted her, Gilbert was given no choice but to follow suit. In his letters, Roderich had claimed that she was helping him with finding work in Germany. She was on their side, even if she did not fully understand the full spectrum of their relationship. So when she had accepted the Austrian's sudden wedding proposal, it was like being kicked in the balls. It was like having the rug pulled out from under his feet and hitting his head so hard that by the time he came back to coherency, the thief had slipped into the shadows and left him alone, mortally wounded and completely unable to defend himself.
Gilbert's gaze practically bore into Roderich's back, until the other seemed to finally take notice that someone was staring at him, and he reflexively turned to look over his shoulder. For the briefest of moments, their eyes met and locked. There was something unreadable in those purple irises, something that seemed to try and reach out to touch him, to caress the festering cancer-fetus within him and to assure it that it wasn't alone, that it had a twin and that twin was slowly eating away at the host it had taken residence in.
Just as quickly as it was there, it was gone, and Roderich's face became deadpanned and emotionless as he turned his gaze away, directing it back at Elizaveta once more.
'… so I was that easy to get rid of? It was really that easy to forget about me and move on? You told me you loved me, Roderich. You told me that you fucking loved me. I told you not to use those words so lightly, and you promised me forever. I guess we have different definitions of forever.'
He wanted to scream, rant and rail. He wanted to stomp his feet and beat his fists against the wall. He wanted to chase them down, grab Roderich by the throat, and rip his heart from his chest. Perhaps then the Austrian man would understand what he had done. Perhaps then, Gilbert would understand what had compelled the man he loved to leave him so suddenly. Perhaps then, if nothing else, the pain would recede just enough that he could sleep without his eyes drifting to the bottom of a bottle and his lips kissing the tangy death of a cigarette.
He went home instead. Nothing would be resolved by delivering an eye for an eye, and he knew that. In the end, Roderich was still the man he loved, and he could never do a single thing to bring harm to the person he loved the most. Even if it was glaring apparent that Roderich did not share the same sentiment.
Ludwig was not home. No doubt he was out with Feliciano Vargas, the wide-eyed and cherubic-faced little Italian his brother had taken a sweetness to that baffled even Gilbert. He never would have expected that his straight-lace, serious younger brother would choose to share company with someone so loud and unabashedly shameless, but he himself was proof that opposites attracted in the strangest of ways. Gilbert was unsure as to the nature of their relations, but he suspected that they were much the same as what he had once shared with Roderich. If that were the case, he could only pray the same fate did not befall them as well.
The whiskey was exceptionally bitter tonight. He was unsure as to if that was a direct result of his chance encounter in the marketplace, or if perhaps it was simply that he had not touched the bottle at all today and as a result had forgotten until now just how vile the potent liquor was. Whatever the cause, he downed it in heavy gulped, paying no mind to the sticky rivers that ran down his chin and soaked the front of his last clean dress shirt. These past few months of a whiskey-and-cigarette diet had not been kind to his body, and his clothes hung from his body like he was a snake shedding its skin. He did not have to look in a mirror to know that deep bags had taken up permanent residence under his eyes, nor that his hair was a stark-white mess atop his head and his face was unshaven and sloppy. His once-vibrant red eyes were dulled down now, constantly glazed over with a disassociated sort of a pain that effectively cut him off from the rest of the world. Even the East Berliners, who claimed to be suffering oppression and isolation at the hands of the Soviet Union, could not hope to understand the kind of pain he endured. In a way, being an Eastern Berliner might have been better. At least then, fate never would have allowed him to meet the Austrian musician Roderich Edelstein.
With the inebriation came the tears. He had not cried when the letter came, not at first. In fact, at first he had attempted to play it off as a sick joke. A way to test him, in retaliation of all the ways he had tested Roderich. His sloppy appearance, devil-may-care attitude, and boorish excuse for manners had caused many disagreements between them, and he had always wondered what a refined and dignified aristocrat such as Roderich was doing keeping company with a man like him. Whenever he had asked, Roderich had merely shaken his head and given a shrug and a smile. Apparently, he didn't understand himself either, but it had never seemed to bother him. Because it had never bothered him, it had never bothered them.
When a week went by a no other letters came, that was when the panic had started. That was when Gilbert had considered going to Austria and seeking out Roderich himself. That was when his heart made connection with his mind and he came to realize that this was anything but a sick joke; this was reality, a reality that was his and a reality that he did not want to face. Where there had once been letters with subtle declarations of love and promises of a life together in Germany, now there were only five earth-shattering words. Where there had been an open line of communication, now there was only silence.
When the announcement of their engagement was made official in the Berlin Times, that was when Gilbert had accepted it. Or, at the very least, accepted that everything he had built his hopes upon had crumbled like towers constructed of sand crushed under the weight of a sudden tsunami. In its wake, it left nothing but a barren wasteland and a book full of unanswered questions.
He stepped away from where he had been standing at the window, and made it as far as the table before his legs buckled out from under him and he collapsed. Empty whiskey bottles and half-full ashtrays scattered haphazardly across the floor as his head dipped down so his arms could cradle its weight. He didn't want to think anymore, he didn't want to feel anymore, he didn't want to live anymore.
"… I loved you…"
Perhaps he hadn't said it enough. Perhaps Roderich had left him because words were never something he was good at. He had tried so hard to convey in actions what he could not articulate, and it had always seemed to be enough. Until those five simple words effectively washed away every action Roderich had returned to counter his own.
Five. Fucking. Words.
His hand flailed out blindly until he located an empty bottle at his side, and he was able to find the energy to rise only so he could hurl the bottle at the wall directly across the room. It made contact and shattered on impact, sending glass shards and stray whiskey droplets flying across the room. If any of them hit him, he took no notice of it.
"I fucking loved you, Roderich! I would have given up anything for you! I would have died for you! And God help me, even if I don't understand it, I still would!"
The energy brought on by his tantrum drained as quickly as it had appeared and he dropped to his knees once more, letting his head drop to the tabletop and one sob wracked his shoulders, then a second.
"… I still would…"
A sort of realization dawned on him. It came on slowly, creeping up on him like a predator stalks its prey, striking the back of his mind with the same deadly precision and accuracy. He lifted his head, directing his half-drunken gaze across the room until his eyes fell on Ludwig's pistol. Rarely did his brother leave home without it, but Feliciano did not condone violence of any sort, and so the younger Beilschmidt brother had taken to leaving it behind more and more these days.
Gilbert was not even aware that he had moved until he found himself suddenly bent over a discarded notepad, scrawling out a sloppy note in handwriting that was already atrocious but seemed to become even worse thanks to the belly full of liquor he was currently sitting on. He did not even have to look at the words to know what he was scrawling down, for these words had been perhaps the only ones Roderich had given him that had impacted him as deeply as his last letter had. His last letter was a parting, and these words had been a greeting between two people who had already met and fallen in love.
Ich werde ihn lieben, bis ich sterbe.*
Even if Roderich had never meant them, Gilbert always would.
He positioned himself on the couch, clutching the loaded gun in right hand and the note in left. He kept his eyes closed as his arm moved, raising the gun up and up and up until he could feel the cool bite of the barrel at his temple.
For the briefest of moments, he wondered if it would hurt. He wondered if there was any truth to the Christian belief that those who took their own lives would condemn themselves to burn eternally in the fires of Hell. It would concern him, if it weren't for the fact that he was a gay man who had engaged in a relationship with another gay man in post-World War II Germany. If there was a ticket to Hell with his name on it, then he had already purchased it. And, really, God himself could never create any place that was as painful at this. He already lived his life as though he were dead, and found little solace somewhere in the bitter bile of cheap whiskey and the burn of cigarettes. If there were a worse place than this one, Gilbert was almost excited to see it.
Eyes still open, focused on nothing, his finger shifted and he compressed the trigger.
TBC
A.N.
*Ich werde ihn lieben, bis ich sterbe = I will love him until I die.
