Look. I saw a fanart online, and I was hit in the head with the magical rainbow of inspiration. God, I love Austria far too much for my own good. But then again, I say that about almost all of the Hetalia characters sooo... Austria may seem a little O.O.C. here, but that's intentional. After all, the people who seem the quietest or the calmest or the happiest are normally the ones who are suffering the most inside. And after all, the wisest of us are normally the ones who have seen the most suffering. Enjoy!


Blood Song


"Let me sing to you a song of life and death, a song of blood and toil, a song of war and a song of destruction, but a song of a man seeking forgiveness for his sins. Let me sing to you a song of twisted, torturous, redemption and heartbreaking loneliness he experienced. Or, shall I sing, of the untold truth of life itself, and how truly unforgiving life can be for the guilty."


"Sometimes I can only groan, and suffer, and pour out my despair at the piano."

- Frederic Chopin


Roderich sat at his grand piano, bleeding. Bleeding his heart out, into his music, pouring every inch of his life and soul, all of those unspoken words, all of those saddening regrets into a beautiful piece of music, not yet touched by the world in all of its angst and all of its terrible "glory".

He sat there, speaking the piano's language, interpreting each mournful cry of his past, each sorrowed voice, each sin he had committed. He sat there, crying out for someone to hear his pain, for someone to sympathize with his music, for someone who would finally understand the hell he went through on a daily basis. The guilt he felt for all of his sins.

But no one had yet understood the true highlighted meaning behind each of his compositions.

And so he bled. He cut a straight, horizontal line along each one of his fingers, a small cut lining the pads of each finger, and he let them bleed as he played the piano, stretched them out as he hit each and every key, hitting each one perfectly, creating a piece that didn't belong in this world. The cuts might have been small, but they bled a lot and scattered blood all over the black piano, throwing and creating bloody puddles into the midst of the keys, which the other fingers splashed in and left little crimson red fingerprints everywhere they touched. His fingers flew across the keyboard, flying, flying, flying, as if to escape some sort of horrible reality, some sort of desperate truth needing to be forgotten.

Sin.

Roderich liked to imagine that for each bloody fingerprint made, a sin was forgiven.

Be even he, a dreamer, knew that, deep down, the sins he had committed were too unforgiving to ever be washed of him.

He knew that no matter what petty words were said, he'd never be cleansed of the wrongs he had done to others and to himself.

He knew that he didn't deserve to be forgiven.

So he contented himself with throwing blood all over his piano as he played his tunes, his tunes of melancholy and joy long gone past that would never be recovered. He contented himself with cleaning his piano of the blood every time he was done with a composition, cleaning it so thoroughly so that no one would ever see just how much blood he had shed.

So no one would ever see just how much he was suffering inside.

Because he knew better now.

He didn't deserve the fleeting, imaginary, redemption he held onto so dearly, that never truly would be his.

He didn't deserve the pity, the tears, the time wasted on him by his friends.

He didn't deserve any of it.

Roderich used to take pride in his music, in his piano. He used to love composing a new song, a song telling of happier and better times. He used to love talking about just how pure and clean his music was. How untouched his piano was by the blood and death of war. How cleansing it was to him, how life-saving and defining it was.

But now his piano was shed blood upon on a daily basis, and later cleaned so perfectly and meticulously as to appear that no blood had been shed at all, but Roderich knew better.

His piano was no longer so pure and clean and untouched by anything but music.

It was now soaked in blood.

And, most horrifying, all he admired about his music now was how it could cut deep, like a knife, and touch a heart or soul.

How it could reduce a man to tears in realization that he could have stopped so much death if he had only pulled his head out of his ass and thought for one, long, bloody moment.

All he took out of his music now was the satisfying cuts that it made on his heart and soul.

And how much it killed him inside.


A/N: Props to those of you who play an instrument. My two best friends (you know who you are) each play an instrument: one the piano, one the violin. I myself used to play the piano and recorder a couple years ago, the main thing I took from that experience was that playing an instrument demanded hard work and lots of patience. So props to you guys. Thanks for spending the time to read this, I hope you enjoyed it. I knew I was going to write some angst this weekend, but I just wasn't sure what it would be about. How I do love the weekends. So full of possibilities. (And props to those of you who understood that reference.) School is officially out for me, so I'm going to try to post new stories/chapters 2-3 times a week instead of one a week. Consider it my summer goal, but I'm not making any promises that I'll be able to fufill it. Ciao!