His Iron Cross

by mizuritamanami

Prussia's disappeared for good this time... Or... Has he? Short drabble, I guess.

::The taxing process of legally reviving a nation::

"Fraulein… Frau, are you alright?"

"I'm fine, Ludwig- are those the newest UN forms?"

"Ja… These were mostly all filled out."

"Mostly…. Our little problem countries again?"

Ludwig sighed and nodded. "Russia is trying to deal with his boss, and so is Austria, along with a lot of the smaller satellite countries in the area, but…"

"Money-politics remains the issue." Lyn replied, sighing heavily. She took a page from the top of the stack in Ludwig's hands. "… Have Russia look over these, some of the forms are filled in incorrectly- they're trying to make it look like we're falsifying our information so they can void our contract in international court."

She looked down at the papers, and helped Ludwig take half of them to the table behind her, and then set to looking up a reference on the shelf she'd put into that particular room- specifically for books she had found especially helpful in the mission she was spearheading.

"Fraulein…. You should eat something… And put a proper bandage on your arm."

"Do you know how many times the russian mafia has tried to blow me up because of this project? I have to save supplies for when I'm really in trouble."

"But we have plenty- and you should really have gone to the hospital- Plus you need to eat and definitely get some sleep- you look exhausted."

She stopped and slammed the book shut, and then gingerly set it down. "Look at everyone working on this. We are all exhausted, Ludwig. But we want to see Gil alive and well more than we can afford to laze around and be tender with ourselves. If we don't meet the deadlines set by those greedy, leaching politicians, we lose our chance. You lose your brother. We do not have time for rest."

She picked the book up again and turned from him, open to a page near the middle in her left hand and her eyes darting back and forth between the book and the stack of papers she was holding.

"We have a meeting with the UN leaders tomorrow. I'll be up at four thirty with breakfast for everyone. We leave at half past five, and should arrive in New York by around two thirty, maybe three. That leaves time to check into our hotel, prepare, and eat before the meeting at seven."

Ludwig affirmed that, and said that he'd make sure to tell the accompanying party what the plan was. For a moment, he wondered what his big brother would make of the woman before him. When she'd met Gilbert, she had been shy, stuttery, and hated to speak in a confrontational manner. Since Gilbert disappeared (everyone who knew what had happened refused to believe that he'd actually died, given what the new plan was), she'd become like a rock, solid and immovable, an impeccable public speaker and a stunning actor. There wasn't an audience she couldn't stir. Except of course, the hardened hearts of money obsessed political leaders. With each passing day, Ludwig could see her disdain for the corrupted system grow- but, during the long years his brother'd been gone, the last four she'd spent studying and working, she'd learned to exploit each and every loophole she could find. Her legal prowess had even amazed the top international law institutions.

Still, though her work ethic, and her real cause (Reviving a man who was supposedly the incarnation of a country was not going to fly with the general public) was admirable, she was starving herself, and working far too hard to keep going the way she was for too much longer. Ludwig set down his papers and gripped her shoulders.

"Go upstairs, get ready to go to sleep. I'm cutting off the Ethernet connection because I know you'll try to work online if I let you." he said, and then pointed at her thin body. her shirt hung off of her so that he couldn't quite see her ribs, but he knew they were there, poking through her skin. "And I'm going to bring you up something to eat, too. Ivan, Roderich and Arthur can finish up here, and Jin will help them with anything they need. Kiku and Feliciano are down in the basement organizing things, so it's alright for you to lie down for a while. Please, just go get some rest. Bruder would be angry with me if he could see you now. You look terrible."

Lyn sighed deeply, and crossed her arms. She didn't like leaving her job to someone else- not something this important. But Ludwig was right. She was, put simply, rather emaciated, and if Gilbert could see her, he'd have thrown a fit. She was his friend, and he protected his friends fiercely- even from themselves. So she grudgingly accepted Ludwig's order- (he always was rather militant, even when he wasn't trying to be) and trudged upstairs. She was unconscious the moment her head hit the pillow.

A half hour later, when Ludwig came upstairs with some hot soup and bread, and a beer, he was met with the sight of his brother's human friend smiling in her sleep, her hand over the iron cross on her collarbone. He smiled and set the food down, along with the drink, and shut the door behind him.

"We'll see you again soon, bruder. I'm sure of it. And it's all the little fraulein's fault, too." He chuckled, going back downstairs. He picked up the page that she'd left on the table, and looked at the map.

"This'll be something…. that's for sure….. The commonwealth of Preußen… I guess you're really... too "awesome" to been forgotten after all."

If anything at all sticks with you about Gilbert Beilschmidt, also known as Prussia, these three things should immediately spring to mind.

First, if that man didn't put on about a ton of sunscreen during the winter, he turned redder than Francis' wine.

Second, you would have had to been blind (and deaf, as he tended to be rather boisterous) to miss him- he was a head turner- in more ways then one, and he often caught people- especially women- staring, and responded with a smirk and a wink.

Third, throughout the entire time I knew him up till this point, I don't think there was ever an instance where he could go a full twenty four hours without smiling.

It was always popping up in places, and it meant one of two things. A; the funniest thing you'd ever seen since his last prank or innuendo was about to or had just happened, or B; the worst thing since his last prank or innuendo was about to happen. It depended on who's point of view you were looking from. From Roderich and Ludwig's perspective, it was usually the latter. From mine, well, it was generally the former.

He loved smiling. I mean, sure, he got upset, he got indignant, he got angry just like anybody else, but the smiles he flashed so generously were dazzling. Especially the ones he gave when something had really made him happy- instead of just feeding his ego.

That's why when he invited me to go with him on one of Alfred's tours, I accepted near immediately. It didn't matter whether he liked me romantically or not, he was the kind of person who could laugh at anything. And when you can laugh at anything, chances are the people around you are going to be able to laugh at at least something. Even if I didn't get his sense of humor sometimes, eventually he and I would find something that was absolutely hilarious- and it'd keep us and anyone who was with us giggling all day. He was just good company, as long as you weren't the butt end of his joke.

Anyway, he and I went on the tour, and flew out of Berlin to New York. Despite having lived in America almost all my life, I had never been, so Gilbert was showing me around until we got to the United Nations building, and Alfred started the tour. I won't bore you with the details of that, since you wouldn't get the humor unless you were actually there, so I'll skip to after the end of the tour. After running all around Times Square and stuffing our faces with junk food, Gilbert started talking.

He had this... bittersweet smile on his face, and he told me what he was- who he was, and who he used to be. He told me that he'd been dissolved a long time ago, but that it was alright, because he got to stick around and look after and bug his little brother. He said that he didn't care about not knowing why he got the chance to live so long; "Don't look zhe gift horse in zhe mouth!" he said with a chuckle, "I'm not going to question it.".

If we hadn't been in a massive crowd at the time, I'd have cried. So instead I told him that Ludwig- that Germany- was lucky to have him. He laughed, smiled at me, and raced me back to our hotel. The next day, he and I left New York via plane.

…..

That's…. where things started going downhill.

Halfway through the eight hour thirty minute flight, I hear yelling. The only reason this worries me, is because it isn't Gilbert yelling and being happily loud and causing a ruckus as per usual. It was angry, harsh, and demanding.

"Don't turn around, fraulein…" Gilbert said to me, right before standing up and turning to walk towards the angry voices. I have identified at least three different yellers, but they were speaking a language I didn't know. I recognized them, though, even though I couldn't understand what was being said.

There was German, and Russian; at least as far as I could make out. And then Gilbert's voice joined the fray. His voice was… Jovial compared to the others, and after a little bit of talking (and by that I mean they were angrily yelling at Gilbert, who was smiling and joking while they continued to go back and forth for about three hours. Several times they pointed their machine guns at Gilbert's head, as seen from my pocket mirror.) they went up to the cockpit and had the pilot land us safely in Cognac France. Quaint little place, beautiful, but rural where we landed. Luckily, there was cell phone service, and most of the passengers called the police and a cab.

Gilbert and the men, who totaled seven, ushered everyone off the plane. Gil stood with me near the inflatable slide thing and filled me in. There had been two Russians, two Hungarians, a german, and two Austrians. He snorted when he told me what their heist had been about. "They wanted Prussia restored to its old borders." he laughed. "If anybody vants zhat span of land to be called Prussia again, it's me, but you don't see ME vaving around a semiautomatic on a flyin' sardine can. Kesesese- I mean, really." he turned to smile at me, because he thought they were just so ridiculous, and opened his mouth to say more.

He never got the chance. The next thing I knew, I was startled by what had to be the loudest bang I'd ever heard. Gilbert looked down at his chest, then up at me, and then behind me, glared, and cursed.

"Scheiße."

It was forty five minutes between then and the ambulance's arrival. Five between the shot and the moment that the other men who'd jacked the plane had their former Russian ally subdued and removed of his weapons. Fifty five agonizing minutes between the moment that terrible bullet was fired and the police arriving. One particularly sweet officer dropped me off at the hospital to see Gilbert, and the doctors said it was a miracle he'd lived- another nanometer to the left and he'd have been dead, shot through the heart.

I was unimagineably relieved, but still worried- and suddenly very drained, but unable to sleep. To keep myself busy, I phoned Ludwig to tell him that his brother would be alright, and Gilbert's projected recovery date. It was strange though, throughout the entire ordeal, Gilbert had never once stopped smiling.

The moment I saw Ludwig enter the lobby of the hospital, I knew that he hadn't been getting any sleep. He looked haggard, and his golden locks were falling out of their usual slicked back places, like he had tried to look decent, but got fed up with his hair and abandoned it.

"How is he?" He asked.

I tried my best to smile at him. "He was awake this morning- but he's been slipping in and out of it for about a week now. The doctors said his wake ups have been more frequent, so that's good news."

Ludwig nodded and stared down the hall, then down at the floor. "What exactly happened?"

"He stopped a terrorist attack. Then when we got off the plane, one of the hijacker's got mad and shot him."

"That was reckless."

"That was Gilbert. He's your brother, you should know that Gilbert is like a recklessness magnet by now."

Ludwig looked at me with darkened blue eyes. His appearance told that he'd been worrying ever since he heard our plane went down in France. "I know. The reckless part… that's not even what really bothers me."

"Huh?"

"Have you noticed…? The more time goes by, the more reckless things he decides to do, and the more reckless he becomes… Its like he's stopped caring about whether or not he could get hurt. You couldn't possibly have seen him a few centuries ago, but, take away his bravado, and you'd hardly recognize him for the same man…"

I watched Ludwig shake his head and slump into one of the lobby chairs, drained and upset and worried out of his mind for his big brother. I was struck by how much he cared, even though he and Gilbert regularly argued like cats and dogs, even when I was around. His elder brother meant the world to him.

"Well, when he wakes up, you'll have to talk some sense into him. He told me… that you were always really good at that. You helped him keep from going insane, he said."

Ludwig just looked up at me, and gave a tired smile that just barely reached his eyes.

"Ja, well, he's been driving me up the wall as long as I can remember. But I guess I can't really complain. He's done a lot of good, and he's helped a lot of people, even now. …. He's… he's a pretty awesome bruder."

Three days.

Gilbert had been home a grand total of three days. He kept saying he was tired, and he had slept most of the first two days. The third, he was rambunctious and annoying his brother as if he was good as new.

We thought he was.

Well… We were wrong. Very much so. That third day, he smiled at us and said he loved his brother- and that he was glad to have me over…. But that smile…. it was different from most of the smiles he usually gave. It was almost as if he was saying goodbye, and looking back on it, I think that's exactly what he was doing.

When Ludwig went to wake him up the next morning, he was gone.

I had still been asleep when Ludwig discovered that, and I was jolted awake by the sound of a large German man in hysterics blasting the door to my bedroom into pieces with his foot.

I sat up straight almost immediately, and looked up at him from across the room.

"What the he-"

"He's GONE!"

"Wha- Gil? What do you mean, he's gone? Where did he go?"

"Nein, Fraulein- You don't get it! He's GONE, VANISHED, DISAPPEARED— his clothes are still in bed where he was lying!"

Suddenly, I understood Ludwig's distress, and threw back my covers to race downstairs to Gilbert's room. Sure enough, where Ludwig had thrown back the covers, were Gilbert's clothes, and his iron cross. No matter where he went, Gilbert would never have left that behind- it was far too important to him. And thus, any and all hope that this was a cruel prank, or that Gilbert had merely run away were cruelly and effectively crushed as I picked up the pendant, hung on a black wire chain.

I stared at it for a long time, unaware of the tears running down my chin until one of them landed on the cross, and I tried to hand it to Ludwig before I broke down completely. he took it, and then looked down at the floor.

"Verdammt…." He hissed, half looking like he wanted to throw the small cross, half like he couldn't let it go even if he wanted to. I slowly backed out of the doorway, out of the room; I couldn't stand there and stare at what was left of my friend. I tore back up the stairs and locked myself in the bedroom next door to mine, since Ludwig had destroyed the door.

I didn't come out for days.

—-

About a week and a half later, I finally went downstairs to eat. I poked a little at the food, and then wandered aimlessly around Ludwig's huge home. Without Gilbert running amuck, it was eerily quiet, and strangely oppressive for the place I had been calling home for more than two years. Eventually, I found myself in Ludwig's library, staring out the massive panoramic windows.

I was looking out on the lawn that Gilbert and his two best friends used to play soccer on. They would play, and I would either be down with them keeping score, or up in the window, where they would occasionally wave while one or the other took a water break. No one was there now.

Turning my eyes from the nostalgic view, and trying not to think of the wrecks Antonio, Francis, Elizaveta and Roderich were, not to mention the other nations that had no doubt been notified of Gilbert's… his death, I turned a little to the right, where I could just see the heart of Berlin on the skyline. While I was staring at that, a reflection in the glass caught my eye; it was a book. I turned, spending a few minutes trying to figure just where it was, since the library was huge, and it was hard to tell which section it was in since it was dusk, and then, after I found it, I pulled back its spine to open it.

How to revive a fallen Nation; a history of rebuilt economies, militaries, and nations that have lingered through the ages.

I gasped at my luck, and then began to look through the other books on the shelves- many in legalities with keywords from the first book, until every table in the library was overrun with notes and papers and opened tomes. When I felt satisfied with my work, I took the book that had started my mind whirring, and ran around the house to find Ludwig. When I did find him, he seemed slightly peeved that I seemed so excited and bouncy- at three o'clock in the morning no less, and he glared at me.

Then I handed him the book, and his eyes widened.

" …. Das ist …. Das ist unmöglich … "

"It's more possible than you realize. I've done some research." I said with excitement and hope in my voice. "Your library is more useful than you can imagine- It's actually possible! But we'll need all the help we can get."

"Getting people to help isn't going to be a problem." He said. "You're sure it's possible?"

"Absolutely."

"I'm calling Alfred- He'll get everyone together, it'll be our next topic at the world meeting." Ludwig said with a new voice. I stood there, fidgety and restless until he got off the phone with an exhausted, hopeful smile.

"Looks like you and I are going to New York this veekend." He said, before pulling something from around his neck and settling it around mine.

"T-This is Gilbert's cross! I-I can't wear this!"

"You're going to. Don't forget who ve're doing this for, fraulein." Ludwig said firmly. I looked down at it and then up at him.

"I'll... I'll do right by him." I said quietly. "He's got to know we believe in him… we support him. We will not lose. I promise."

"Amiga, you can't keep doing this…" Antonio sighed, shaking me awake. I groggily opened my eyes to see him, Francis, Ludwig, Elizaveta and Roderich standing over me.

"What do you mean? Of course I can- I have to!" I replied, gesturing to all of the papers across the table.

"The sooner I get this done, the sooner we can get Gilbert back!"

"Mon ami, you asked us to help you, so let us help. Go get some rest, we'll take it from here."

Elizaveta and Roderich nodded, and the pianist spoke. "Gilbert vould hate to see you like zhis. Get some rest, and something to eat vould be good too."

I looked back at the papers I'd fallen asleep going over, and then back at them, and sighed, tidying up the small amount that I could before they ushered me out of the chair and down the hall to my room. Elizaveta smiled at me when she closed the door.

"He'd be proud of you, I think."

I sighed again and shrugged, plopping down on the bed as she left and the lock clicked. I hoped so.

—

"I passed."

"You passed?!"

"Yes! I'm officially an international lawyer now!"

"Sugoi! That will make things far easier for us now."

"Vee! E 'incredibile!" Feliciano grinned after Kiku and Ludwig spoke. It had been two years since Gilbert's disappearance, and now that I had passed my bar exam, I could legally act as our causes own lawyer. That meant we had a fighting chance against the politicians who didn't want to cooperate.

"Now, we just need to get signatures from these countries- to get these landmasses back- here, here, and here." I said, laying out a map. I grinned up at the boys and let myself finally have a moment of peace. It really was possible. It was going to happen!

—-

"They're …. they're WHAT!?"

"They want to back out, da. I'm trying to convince my boss otherwise, but…"

"Do what you can, Ivan. I'll talk to Hungary and Austria to see what I can do about this, and I'll see if I can't get their bosses to see reason… They're not giving up land, they're creating a commonwealth. It'll boost their economies since they all have a share in it and can use it. Make sure you tell that to your boss."

Ivan nodded and left, and I slumped into my chair. "…. Like hell they're backing out on me now."

—-

Ludwig collapsed face first on the couch of the joint living area in the hotel we were staying at. It had two rooms that lead into it from each bedroom, and I had just collapsed into the sofa across from him.

I ran a hand over my face. My feet hurt, my head throbbed and my eyes and throat ached from raising my voice and coming close to tears on the conference floor.

Kiku said I'd given a very moving speech.

I had better have, I thought, staring blankly at the wall. We've been doing this for five years, and the Russian Mafia tried to kill us the other day… I sighed again and stood, heading toward my bedroom. Ludwig had been doing all of the heavy lifting with our supplies and conference materials, as well as standing through the entire six hour conference, and keeping me from being shot when we were very nearly ambushed, so I let him lie without saying anything. Had Ivan not warned us, We, excluding Ludwig (and the other countries), who was too exhausted to speak, even though I knew he heard me open my computer to start working on our next conference speech and collect materials, would have been dead.

Then again, I was close to doing the job myself. Had I been paying attention to my own reflection in the mirror, I would have realized that by now, I had gone from five two and 120 pounds, to five three and ninety five; but I didn't care. A simple glance down at the iron cross around my neck was all that was necessary to keep me going, and I was determined to get Ludwig's brother, my friend back. I had stopped caring what it cost me.

—-

I bit my lip, staring down at my laptop screen. It was opened to Google Earth, and was displaying a zoomed out view of Europe. Now was the moment of truth. After seven agonizing years of back and forth politics, and tears, and forced meals and overworked bodies, we'd fulfilled our goal. Now all we had to do was wait, and see if it paid off.

All the documents had been signed, all the construction had been done and paid for, and signs had been put up on the roads, saying in a variety of languages, that "You are Now entering the Commonwealth of Prussia". We were standing in the dead middle of Berlin, across the street from it's very center. All of us were waiting, less than a minute before new years day, while the rest of the world waited for the ball to drop in New York, or whatever major city they happened to be in. But we were waiting for something else.

Then, when the clock struck Midnight, everyone cheered as the red lines showing the new nation spread across the realtime screens, and not a moment later, something else happened.

Honestly, it looked like one of Arthur's spells had finally gone right, but that wasn't what it was. A soft glow of two colored light- reddish pink and grey, formed in the center of the square. Out of it, stepped a young man around my age, who looked for all the world like he didn't have the slightest clue what on earth was going on. (He probably didn't.)

He was wearing only a pair of jeans, no socks or shoes, and had pale, pale skin, silvery hair and crimson eyes.

I smiled as Ludwig shot forward to hug his brother, and throw his coat around him, smiling and laughing and repeating Gilbert's name over and over again. At first, Gilbert was shocked and didn't speak, but then he recognized the big lug hugging him and grinned back- both men bawling (in a totally awesome and manly way) as they laughed, and Gilbert began to recognize everyone else standing around.

I hung back a little- my work was done and I was exhausted, and just seeing him with his family, and his friends, alive and well and looking a bit younger and rejuvenated; that was enough. I started packing away my things, and went to go sit in the car- but a hand on my shoulder stopped me. It was Gilbert's.

"Just gonna stand there and not say "Hey?", Fraulein?" He asked, grinning like he couldn't believe he was back. I smiled tiredly. "Welcome back. Gilbird missed you." I said, watching the little yellow chick land happily on his head with a "Piyo!"

"Ja, looks like I got quite the welcome party." He replied. "…. bruder says you did all this."

"He's being modest. I was just the spokesperson- Countries can't exactly be politicians in the public eye."

He looked me over, then poked my side, and his finger easily touched my rib bones.

"You did a lot. A lot more than you should have on your own." He said knowingly.

I smiled. "I just wanted my friend back. And I wanted your brother to have his brother back. You needed to know we supported you." I said quietly, climbing into the big SUV. "You should probably see if someone has a spare pair of shoes. Your toes must be about to fall off."

"Nah, I'm alright. I'm a nation…. Man, it feels good to say that again."

I giggled at him, and then pulled the iron cross off of my person. "This is yours." I handed it to him and smiled.

"…. Thank you, Frau. …. Really, thank you."

I just smiled and shut the door.