Disclaimer: I in no way own Hetalia
"Grandma, how did you and Gramma meet?" a small child asked of an old woman sitting in a rocking chair, looking for all the world as cliche as can be.
"Ah yes, I still remember it clearly now," she responded. "It all began back in high school," she started, only to be cut off by a loud groan.
"Ugh, we get it Grandma, you and Gramma met in high school and fell in love. Gross. Not much of a story there," a different child whined.
"Be quiet, Peter, you don't know what you're talking about," a little girl snapped from beside him.
"Wendy is right, Peter, that isn't what happened at all. But Wendy, dear, it isn't necessary to be rude just because you're right," an elderly woman reprimanded gently as she stepped onto the porch.
Both Wendy and Peter mumbled "sorry Gramma"s and hung their heads, before the woman they had called "Gramma" kindly ruffled their hair.
"Now, if you bunch are talking about what I think you're talking about, then it's a tale much better told over milk and cookies, don't you agree Eliza?"
"Hm...I don't know, Katyusha, what kind of cookies are they?" the woman now dubbed Eliza asked playfully of "Gramma", craning her neck around nearly backwards to see her face.
"Your favourite, Eliza, just like always" Katyusha answered before kissing her sweetly on the lips, much to the disgust of Peter and Wendy.
"Guys, Grandma and Gramma kissing isn't gross! Love is art!" the first child declared passionately.
"That's lovely, Leo dear, but I think your cousins disagree with you. Now come along all of you, inside," Katyusha said sweetly, causing the three children present to jump up and rush in the door.
"Come on Elizaveta, you too! I'm sure you want to tell the kids how we met, right? After all, there are some parts only you can tell!" Katyusha encouraged, pulling Elizaveta up by her arm.
"I suppose…" Elizaveta said playfully, a youthful spark lighting in her eyes despite her apparent old age.
She stood up, and the two women headed inside to be met with the clatters of glasses. Katyusha laughed softly and asked everyone to settle down, passing out napkins and glasses, and then warm heart-shaped cookies, fresh out of the oven.
"Grandma, Grandma, you were gonna tell us how you met, right?" Leo asked impatiently.
"Yes, I was, wasn't I?" Elizaveta sighed. "Well, it was a night not unlike any other, years and years ago…" she begane
"Vladimir, this is stupid," a young Elizaveta criticized in annoyance. "I'm almost certain that Satan doesn't exist, and even if he does, there's no way that you'll be able to summon him.:
"I bet you're just saying that 'cause you're scared," Vladimir said, not looking up from the satanic symbols he was chalking onto the floor.
Elizaveta huffed, pulling her arms tighter around herself in an attempt to ward off the chill permeating the air of the run-down old church they were in. She wasn't scared, she refused to be - but she was cold.
"Why did you even bring me here? It's not like I actually care about your occult shit."
"Because, Eliza, the summoning ritual needs the blood of a virgin to work, and, well, we both know that discounts me," Vladimir said with a smirk that was partway smug, partway triumphant, and partway practically begging for Elizaveta to punch his teeth in.
"Shove it, Vlad. Just because you got yourself a hot Bulgarian boyfriend doesn't give you the right to make fun of my love life - or my sex life! - no matter how abysmal it may seem to be," Elizaveta snapped.
Vladimir raised an eyebrow and looked at Elizaveta, before continuing to draw out his summoning circle. "And besides, I'm perfectly fine with the way things are right now! I don't need anyone else to be happy!" she squaked indignantly, sounding more like she was trying to convince herself than anyone else.
A few moments passed in silence.
"Ugh, could you hurry up?" Elizaveta demanded, letting out a breath of mist. "I'm freezing over here!"
"If you're so cold, you should have brought a jacket or something," Vladimir responded tartly.
"It was warm when we left, but it took for-fucking-ever to get up to this decrepit old hellhole - excuse me, I meant sad excuse for a former church," she gripped.
"Well, I'm done now, could you come over here?"
Elizaveta harumphed and made her way over to Vladimir in an almost leisurely fashion, holding her palm out to him when she reached his side. Vladimir, in turn, pulled out a knife and, dragging Eliza' hand to hover over the center of the summoning circle, drew it roughly across her palm, causing blood to spill out and onto the demonic markings.
Hissing in pain, Elizaveta quickly pulled her hand back, clutching it to her chest and backing away as Vladimir started chanting, ancient words long forgotten flowing from his lips as easily as the blood did from Elizaveta's new wound.
As Vladimir continued chanting, shadows started moving around the room, seeming to cause a chill wind to blow. The young man ignored this, as he did many things, but Elizaveta drew in on herself, eyes darting nervously around the ramshackle church. Shadows weren't supposed to move on their own, or cause wind.
She decided right then and there that now was an awful good time to start being afraid.
Slowly, the shadows coalesced in the centre of the circle to form the body of a young woman who couldn't be much older than Elizaveta herself. She had short-cropped blonde hair, and was fairly thick-set, wearing all black clothes that seemed at once both tight fitting and loose enough to flow around her.
Elizaveta suddenly found it strangely hard to breathe.
The young woman waved her arm in front of Vladimir's face. Vladimir didn't react, as his eyes were closed. "Uh, sir, I think you summoned the wrong demon," she said rather meekly.
"Mister!" she tried again. "I really don't think you were looking for me!" the blonde tried again, before noticing Elizaveta in the corner and waving desperately at her.
Still quite unable to untie her tongue, Elizaveta nevertheless forced her slightly shell-shocked body to walk over behind Vladimir, before roughly shoving his shoulder.
"Hey!" he barked indignantly, beginning to wheel around to face Eliza before seeing the other person in the room and stopping short.
"You aren't Satan," he observed, rather dumbly in Elizaveta's opinion. Not that anyone had asked for it, of course, but she was always willing to give it.
"No of course I'm not Satan!" the young woman objected.
"But how did I mess up? I'm certain I had everything this time!" Vladimir wailed.
The blonde backed away at his shouts, and he stopped. He may have been an oblivious piece of shit in Elizaveta's humble opinion, but even he could tell when he was scaring someone.
The blonde looked down at the markings on the floor. "Well, everything here looks about right...you did use the blood of a virgin, right?"
"Yeah, duh. Unless Eliza had sex with someone in the five minutes between saying I needed the blood of a virgin and making the sacrifice," Vladimir replied sarcastically.
"Er, um, well...when rituals ask for the blood of a virgin, they aren't actually talking about sex.." the woman trailed off. "They're talking about previous summonings, and - and anything else, really, even failed rituals count," she added in a whisper.
Vladimir dragged his hand down his face, sighing exasperatedly. Of course attempting to summon Cthulhu in the tenth grade would come back to haunt them, of course it would.
Suddenly, the young woman rushed over to Elizaveta and grasped her hands. "You were the one that made the blood sacrifice, right?"
"Y-yeah," the brunette stammered out, slightly in shock due to the proximity of such a woman who was, in Elizaveta's opinion, so amazingly beautiful.
"Well then, I have to do any one thing that you ask of me, so long as it's within my power," she paused, blowing out a puff of air. "Unfortunately, I don't really have much power. I'm really low-level, which means I can only do the most basic illusions and stuff. Do you have anything you'd like me to do?
Elizaveta shook her head no. The two of them - she and Vladimir, that is - had been attempting to summon Satan to ensure success at college, but if the blonde was telling the truth, that would be far out of her abilities.
"Well, you're hurt," she said, holding up Elizaveta's palm. "I know! I'll protect you, then! Make sure you don't get hurt. It's a dangerous world out there!"
"W-what? No! I can protect myself, thank you very much!" Elizaveta exclaimed. She may have been tongue-tied, but she would never let someone think that she was in any way incapable of defending herself.
Vladimir winced slightly, no doubt remembering the many times Elizaveta had demonstrated her defensive capabilities before.
"Oh…" the blonde chewed her bottom lip nervously. "Well, see, this is kind of awkward now, because me saying that sort of bound my life to yours."
"It what?" Elizaveta shouted, yanking her hands out of the other's.
"Ah-ah-ah you two, no fighting!" Vladimir chimed in, pushin in-between the two women. "And Eliza - no I don't care that you hate me calling you that, shut up - what our new friend here is saying is that now, her health depends on your safety, basically. The long and short of it is that if she fails to protect you, then she also gets hurt.
The silence hung in the air, thick, smothering, and unbroken, or at least until Vladimir clapped his hands. "Well then, demon-lady, it looks like you're going to be spending a lot of time with us, so we should probably all introduce ourselves. I'm Vladimir, and this charmer you see in front of you is Elizaveta. And you would be?"
"Yekaterina. I'm pleased to make your acquaintances, Elizaveta, Vladimir. I do hope I won't be much of a bother," Yekaterina said with a gracious dip of the head. Elizaveta would never have thought a demon could ever be so polite.
"Oh, I assure you, you'll be no bother to us at all. In fact, you're welcome to stay with us," Vladimir offered.
"That would be lovely, thank you," Yekaterina said before walking out of the church with a quick "places of worship make me uncomfortable, I'll be outside."
For one fleeting second, Elizaveta allowed herself to think that maybe, just maybe, Vladimir had offered shelter to Yekaterina out of the kindness of his heart, but then he turned around with the absolute most shit-eating grin she'd ever seen and said "So. Are you still so content with the empty void that is your love life?"
"Grandma, you can't just end there!" Peter whined.
"I can and I will, Peter, Leo's father is here to pick all of you up. Besides, I thought you didn't want to know how Katyusha and I met," Elizaveta responded playfully.
Leo frowned pensively, face comically serious for the nine year old that they were. "Storytelling is a form of art, you know. Can you tell us what happened next time?"
Yekaterina laughed, ruffling their hair affectionately. "Of course we will, Leo. Now, all of you get your things, okay?"
The old couple stood in their doorway, waving the children off as they left. "Bye! Have fun at the pool!" Elizaveta called out, lowering her arm as the car faded into the distance.
The old woman sighed, resting her head on Katyusha's shoulder, wrapping an arm around her waist. The blonde, in turn, rubbed soft circles onto the back of her hand and entangled her fingers with those of the other.
"How long has it been?" Elizaveta murmured. "Sixty? Sixty-five years since that night?"
"I'd put it closer to seventy," Katyuska whispered.
Elizaveta let out another sigh. It was suddenly hitting very hard very fast just how very old the two of them were, and frankly, neither of them liked the reminder.