The Story of You and Me Chapter 1: TOP, a hetalia - axis powers fanfic

From Top to Bottom and Everything in Between

TOP

They met when she was ten and he was fifteen.

Elizabeta had just moved into the neighborhood that was not quite poor but not quite rich yet you couldn't really call it middle class. The house was small, twin windows sat above a small blossoming garden with varying shades of flowers. Upon first glance Elizabeta hated that house. It wasn't like the large two story house she had been used to with the maid, the cook and the nanny and she felt no familiarity upon glancing at the old kind woman on the doorstep of this new little house. Her grandmother was kind with stringy white hair and withered wrinkled hands.

She wanted her big house. She wanted the maid, the cook and the nanny. She wanted her mother and father, she wanted to go back home-but the accident had left no one alive and all Elizabeta had was her father's mother Anya who was kind and small and wrinkled.

Her new bedroom had been small and she had kept it up until she had left for college almost eight years later. The room had only a twin sized canopy bed with lace curtain matching the sheets and pillow cases. There was a wardrobe made of cherry wood and newly polished already filled with her clothes and beside the dresser was an old wooden chest which all her toys had been placed in. Beside her bed, which was pressed against a wall, was a large window which overlooked an identical window from next door.

"I hope you like this room," Grandmother Anya said. "It was your father's. I've had it cleaned and the wood nicely polished."

Elizabeta gave her grandmother a glance and shook her head. There was no way this old woman had been able to clean and polish all this herself no matter how little. When she had asked her grandmother who had helped her Anya had gave a smile. "The boys next door come over every other day to help me keep the house neat. I asked the oldest boy to polish the wood while I changed the sheets and dusted. He was happy to do it."

Grandmother Anya never paid the boys next door, they never accepted any money she had ever offered, she said. The only thing they ever wanted from her grandmother was a place to stay after school while their father was at work and during the weekends when their father drank. Grandmother Anya added very sadly; "Oh, how that man loves to drink."

The next morning there was a knocking on the door. Grandmother Anya, who had been sitting in front of the small television weaving asked Elizabeta to answer the door. Elizabeta placed her action figures on the table and skipped to the door wrenching it opened.

The sight would be something that would stay with her forever.

There were two boys standing in the doorway. The smaller one that came just below her shoulder had bright blond hair and glossy blue eyes. His overalls were covered in dirt and he was crying. The other boy, the one taller then Elizabeta had red eyes and bright silver looking hair. He had a split lip, a bruise just below his left eye and his left ear was bleeding.

"Is Mrs. Hedervary in?" He asked.

"Y-yes hold on just a second."

"Can we please come in?" The blond boy asked through hiccupping sobs. "Please."

"Y-yes."

By the time she turned around Grandmother Anya was already ushering the children inside. The small blond boy was rushed to the bathroom to take a bath while the taller boy just stood by the door, his eyes trained on the peach colored sofa. He looked almost ashamed standing there, obviously a pathetic looking child who didn't know what to do. It was often that Elizabeta felt that way too.

"Are you ok?"

"Of course I'm ok!" The silver haired boy shouted in an obnoxious voice. "I'm too awesome to not be ok!"

Elizabeta decided immediately that she hated him.

"Oh Gilbert, what has he done to you now?" Her grandmother asked. She took the teenager by the hand and led him to the kitchen.

"Nothin' I aint used to Mrs. Hedervary, it was my fault anyway, I pushed Ludwig into the dirt. Dad just got mad, it was my fault."

Grandmother Anya made a tutting sound. She opened the cupboard and brought out a first aid kit, seemingly used to something like this. It was the first time Elizabeta had seen a boy so obviously beaten not crying. If she had ever bled from her ear she would have been screaming-but this boy was so much older then the boys she knew. Maybe that's why he didn't cry.

"Oh, Elizabeta, this is Gilbert Beilschmidt. His younger brother Ludwig is in the bath. These are the boys who helped clean out your room."

The teenager, Gilbert, gave her a rueful smile that didn't look quite right on a bleeding swollen lip and despite looking quite bruised his arrogance spoke of some sort of boundless exhausting energy. "It's nice to meet you." He said. "Hope we can be pals or something."

Tak

There was tapping against her window. Sitting up Elizabeta almost shouted in fright at the two faces she saw. One was the blond boy again rubbing his tired eyes and the other was the silver haired arrogant teenager. He was looking behind him almost afraid of being seen.

She opened the window, the boys climbed in.

"What are you doing here?" She asked. "It's the middle of the night."

"Well," Gilbert began. "my dad went to the bar and got himself real drunk. He brought a friend over. Didn't want Ludwig to have to hear something like that so we snuck out and well, since it was too late to knock on the door-"

"You didn't want to wake Grandmother so you woke me up instead."

"Yeah."

She rolled her eyes heavenward, what have I done to deserve this, she thought. She climbed out of bed and went towards the door.

"Hey Beta, what are you doing?"

Beta?

"I'm going to sleep on the sofa. You and your brother can take the bed." She said.

"No it's cool. You take the bed with Ludwig and I'll just get some sheets and make a bed for myself on the floor. I don't want to scare Mrs. Hedervary in the morning if she sees me on the sofa."

This became a habit until Elizabeta was fifteen. By then Ludwig was twelve and too embarrassed to sleep in a bed with a girl while Gilbert had other places to stay being twenty. The gap in their age became blaringly obvious to them both so he tended to not sleep over anymore.

Besides, he had many girlfriends, Elizabeta thought annoyed.