A/N: Good lord, I fell in love with Hetalia the moment America opened his mouth on the very first episode (and that was the dub version – god bless Netflix or else I would never have discovered Hetalia). Soooo many characters, soooo many possibilities. I fell in love with each country as they came onto the screen. I wanted to write something, but could not come up with something worthy of the characters.

And then one night it came to me. The concept might be a little cliché, sorta x-man/hero-ish. People born with superhuman powers. However, this is neither a crossover nor fusion. There will be some historical parallels, and some deviations….basically I'm just trying to tell a good story ^_^

Disclaimer: Hetalia and all characters are not mine. I speak neither Russian nor Lithuanian, so the translations are curtsey of Google.

Summary: AU - The night he lost his family, Toris was forced to keep a dark secret about himself. However, there are others like him out there, seeking each other out so they don't have to be alone in a world that would only see them as monsters.

Pairings: Russia/Lithuania…and more….

Warnings: This is not a very nice story. Violence of both superpower and human kind. Nonconsensual sexual situations, some that might include minors. Drug use, gangs, and prostitution…

Chapter Warning: Blood.

Go forth and enjoy! And tell me what you think! I love hearing from readers!

Monsters
Prologue: Fate in the Snow

"By heaven, he echoes me,
As if there were some monster in his thought
Too hideous to be shown."
William Shakespeare

There was cold, there was darkness, and there was pain. It pierced through his skull and ripped through his body, pieces of him strewn about like shattered glass. He could feel parts of him scattered around, far away yet so close, and it was agony. He was torn apart; bits here and there, separated when he was supposed to be molded together, whole, and warm. It was overwhelming, terrifying, unwanted.

He wanted the pain to stop, the darkness to be lifted.

So Toris willed it.

Slowly, agonizingly, the parts of himself bent to his command, coming together and solidifying into one whole being. The pain slowly eased and warmth oozed into his broken joints so that he could feel his frigid fingers spasm, the soft beat of his heart, the chill of the winter wind in his hair.

And when Toris opened his eyes, it was night.

He was curled in a crumbled mass on the floor of the car, the carpet itching at his cheek. His head felt heavy and sticky, his fingers caked as if he had played in mud, soiling all his clothes. He should have been sitting in his seat, clean. He should be asking Motina1 and Tėvas2 how long till they got home, because it was late and he was tired. He did not like falling asleep in the car, cause then Tėvas would lift him like a child, and Motina would tuck him in and kiss his cheek even though he was too old for such displays.

"M…Motina...?" he called; shuddering as he felt like his mouth was glued. He choked, feeling his stomach heave as he felt as he tasted something metallic, dry and flakey like a scab.

Something cold touched his cheek, and carefully Toris turned his head. The window above him was broken, glass shards poking from the rim, snow fluttering in though the opening.

It was cold, and the window was broken.

"Tėvas...!" He cried out, pushing up on his elbows. " Tėv... "He stopped.

A hand lay on his lap, wide and large, with light brown hair brushing the top, and a gold band on the finger. A hand, simply a hand, Tėvas's hand, on him, bleeding on him, severed on him, Tėvas's hand.

Toris screamed, his arms flailed knocking the limb off him, his feet kicked out in complete panic. The hand rolled sluggishly under the driver's seat, yet even in the dark Toris could see his father's dead fingers curled. He screamed again, twisted, hands grasping for the doorknob. He could see now, the sticky stuff on his hands was dark and red. Blood. There was blood on his hands.

The door flew open, and Toris upper body fell right over, face and arms slamming into ice cold snow. He lurched up, gasping for breath, and twisted to untangle his body. He froze, eyes widening out of their sockets and filling with tears.

They had been driving back home. Motina, Tėvas and him. They had gone to a shopping center, Tėvas had complained, but smiled, and Motina had convinced him to take them out to dinner. It was fun, and late and snowing. Tėvas cursed, and Motina laughed, and Toris wanted to be home soon so he could sleep in his bed.

His mother was arched backwards, her body completely pierced through by a giant pillar of ice that came from beneath the car. Motina's brown wavy hair was ruffling in the winter wind, her cheeks, pale things were glistening as snowflakes gently kissed them. Another pillar had come from the driver's side, so large was the ice that there was nothing left of the top half of the driver's seat and Tėvas, its sharp lethal edge having been driven all the way back, through the back seats and into the trunk of the car...

...where Toris had been sitting...

There was blood, dark and thick blood everywhere. Coating the ice, covering the husks of his parents. Pieces of flesh and bone were everywhere. Hair, clothing, bloodied completely.

Toris scrambled back, and he watched in horror as blood trailed off his clothes into the snow, staining the white in red.

"Ne...Ne...aš bijau... aš bijau!"3

He was scared. Scared. He wanted to go home...he wanted to go home...

Frozen hands came up to his mouth, covering them, sealing his screams as more threatened to come out as he stared at his family's car, completely peirced through by two large mountains of ice that sprang from the snowly ground.

And then he noticed it...the headlights of the car were still on, illuminating the snow covered road, the snowflakes sparkling like fairies in the light. There, just a few feet from the front of the car there was a small figure huddled curled in the ground.

Shaking, Toris managed to climb up to his feet. He could feel the snow melt into his shoes. He had worn sneakers not his boots even though Motina had warned him that it would not protect him from the snow. Slowly, he took a few steps forward, keeping his eyes trained on the figure rather than the massacre in his family's car. One foot in front of the other, blood red in the snow, sticking to his fingers, and caked to his face. He could taste it in his mouth now, and dry in his coat collar and shirt. He was drenched in it, heavy and sticky in it...

...yet there was no pain...

...just the shaking...and the terror...and he was covered in blood...

As he approuched the figure, he started to hear a young voice speaking, "Не моя вина4…Не моя вина…" It was foreign sounding, yet somehow familiar. The closer he got the more he could hear it clearly, "Не моя вина… Не моя вина…not my fault…"

It was a boy, small statured, with white blondish hair whose bangs fell over his eyes sloppily. His eyes were shut tight, and he was curled over his knees in the snow. He wore rags, torn and overlarge, and Toris could smell that he was unwashed from where he stood. Small hands were buried in his hair, and Toris could see that there were ungloved, and bruised on top of the hand and at the wrists.

Suddenly Toris's knees buckled and he fell once more into the snow, feeling a wave of nausea and dizziness. His stomach twisted painfully, as if his insides were completely frozen, and he doubled over, brown hair falling over his face, his nose nearly touching the icy snow, his breath puffing out of him as he tried to breath. He shut his eyes, tears leaking out of them.

"Sustabdykite,"5 he gasped as he felt the cold burn into his veins.

"Not my fault…not my fault…"

He was dying. He could feel it as the cold spread up to his chest. He could feel his heart struggling to beat as ice crept closer to it, to stop it, to kill it, to kill him…

"STOP IT RIGHT NOW!" He screamed it, screamed so loud that his voice echoed over the snow frosted trees that stood darkly witnessing the scene. His voice felt torn, yet his voice carried, his heart bursting, and the ice within him receded leaving him burned yet chilled to his very core.

He did not move, to shaken by whatever had just attacked him to even look up. Suddenly, he felt small fingers touching the top of his head, running through his hair, and trailing down to his face. Toris managed to lift his head up; trembling as his insides slowly thawed, and found himself staring into a pair of magnificent purple eyes.

"Довольно,"6 the boy whispered, eyes wide in awe as his cold fingers continued to run over Toris's face. "You're so…so warm!"

Looking at him now, Toris could see that the boy was not much younger than him. His face still round with baby fat.

"Are…are you hurt?" The boy suddenly asked, pale brows knotting as he drew back. His white ice hands came back red. Blood. Toris still had blood on him.

"No…" he replied back, his voice breaking and eyes filling with tears. "Are you?" he asked.

"Нет,"7 the boy shook his head, one hand coming up to brush at Toris's cheeks.

Toris took in a shuddering breath, "T…that's good. But Motina and Tėvas …they…they're hurt…" he swallowed a sob, and brought one hand up to scrub at his eyes and rub at his nose.

The boy looked away, eyes gazing at the wreckage in front of them. "They're dead…" he stated.

Something deep inside Toris broke at those soft spoken words, yet he could not even voice a denial. This time he did not even try to hold back the tears as he sobbed out, "Y…yeah…"

The boy's small hands continued to stroke his face and hair, wiping the tears that would not stop, and brushing up straggles of blood caked hair. Toris could not muster a protest when the boy took some snow and rubbed it over his cheeks and hair, gently scrubbing the blood and tears from his skin.

After a few moments Toris was able to control his grief, calming down to a hiccup as the other boy leaned in, staring right into his eyes. "You're alive," he said, "and warm."

Toris nodded his head, moving his hands and gently removing the other boy's hands from his face. "I don't know …there was blood…everywhere…" His whole body shook and he shut his eyes to force the gruesome images away.

"You're just like me…"

Toris blinked, startled as he looked at the younger boy who was still staring transfixed at his face, fingers once again coming up to finger his chin and then drifting up to toych around the edges of his eyes. The boy's odd purple eyes shimmered with wonder, as if he were trying to memorize Toris's face and engrave it into his heart. "You're alive," the boy repeated, "and warm, and so pretty." He left Toris's face and took hold of one of his hands, lifting it from the snow to rub his cheek against it, ignoring the blood and ice that was still there. "You're like me," he said, a small smile stretching across his colorless lips, snow falling to his pale cheeks like tears, "I'm not dead, 'cause I'm like you. We're together."

"What -"

A shot rang through the air, startling them. They shot to their feet, and when Toris took a step towards the sound, he was yanked back. He stumbled, and looked at the other boy who began to drag him back towards the wreckage.

"Wait…" he stuttered. "We need help…there's someone who can help..!"

When he tried to pull back he was startled by the force in which the younger boy pulled him forward. "Нет!" the boy shook his head fiercely, a frown marring his brows and pulling down at his young face seriously.

As it became obvious that the strange boy was pulling him right TO the wrecked car, Toris began to struggle in earnest, his other hand flying and trying to pry at the other boy's hold icy. "Ne! I don't want to go back!" he cried.

All sounds were swallowed when Toris watched the boy waved up his rag covered hand, red wounded fingers spread out, and on the descent down, the giant ice pillars slowly sang back down into the snow. Toris's family car sank down to rest securely on the iced over ground, two massive holes piercing through it like swiss cheese.

Toris nearly swallowed his tongue when the other boy pulled him all the way back to the open backseat door. Grabbing onto the front of Toris's coat, he flung him backwards, so that the back of his knees collided with the entrance and he fell backwards into the backseat floor. His elbow knocked into something, and when he looked he saw his father's hand.

He lurched forward, letting out a yell which was muffled by the hand of the other boy who pushed him back down and held him in place as he thrashed in terror.

"Shh…shh!" The younger boy hushed him, eyes becoming frigid icicles, "There are bad men coming. They've been after me for a long, long time, and want to hurt me. Do you want them to find me?"

Toris stopped his struggles, blinking back tears and shaking his head. "No," he managed from behind the boy's iron grip. And it was the truth, this strange boy who could command the ice, he did not want bad men to touch.

The boy loosened his harsh hold, instead letting his arms come around Toris's neck, pulling him into an awkward embrace. "We're friends, да?"8

"Taip,"9 They were. The moment he felt those cold fingers and saw those odd eyes, he knew it.

The boy's eyes warmed up at this, and he rubbed his face into Toris's neck, his cold nose pressing affectionately into his flesh. "Don't let them know that I was here," the boy whispered gently into Toris's ear. "Don't let them know that you got hurt. If they catch me, they'll hurt me again." He lifted his head up so that he could look right down at Toris. "They will hurt you too if they know what you can do."

And Toris understood immediately what those cryptic words meant. Why he was covered in blood yet there was no pain.

And again, Toris could not doubt this strange boy. "It…it's a secret," he said.

The pale boy smiled. "Yes, a secret."

He pulled away, and Toris shuddered as the boy stepped back. He stood alone in the snow, his overlarge torn clothes fluttering in the wind like a torn flag, the snow flowing around him as if in dance. And then suddenly he turned and was gone, as if the winter itself swallowed him whole.

Toris lay curled in the car, his back to bodies of his family, his knees tucked into his belly, and arms wrapped around himself. He kept his eyes gazing out into the dark road, watching as the snow accumulated and the wind blew to cover all traces of strange boy's existence.

He continued to stare, even when men in black cars and black suites drove up to the wreckage and pulled him out. Even when they wrapped him in a blanket, and someone gave him bitter coffee from a canteen, he continued to look at the spot where the boy once stood. And when he was questioned about what happened, and if he had seen anyone else, Toris finally looked straight up into those adult faces and shook his head.

He didn't see anyone. He didn't know anything.

It was a secret.

A/N: Yay! Prologue is finished! I hope it intrigued you! I am a diehard Russ/Liet fan, and my writing tends to lean more to the dark and twisted aspects of their relationship. If you liked this story, then click the wonderful little button on the bottom of the page and REVIEW! Trust me, it makes us writers happy.

^_^ See...HAPPY!

Translations:

1 Motina – Mother in Lithuanian

2 Tėvas – Father in Lithuanian

3 Ne...Ne...aš bijau... aš bijau – Lithuanian "No...no...I am afraid...I am afraid."

4 Не моя вина – Russian "Not my fault."

5 Sustabdykite – Lithuanian "Stop it"

6 Довольно – Russian "Pretty"

7 Нет – Russian "No"

8 Да – Russian "yes"

9 Taip – Lithuanian "yes"