AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is not a story about an OC. The female character in present in this fanfiction is insignificant, and will not engage with canon characters in significant ways (to them, at least). She is merely a one-way window into the world of the 2Ps.
It's on a cool September eve when the incident happens; Luciano, wandering the streets with Kuro and Lutz at the time, does not care to remember it clearly. The sharpest images that come to his mind at the time was the sensation of water flowing past his teeth, the fierce desperation burning in his mind, and the tug of a little girl's hand in his hair as he pulled her from the water.
No more. No less.
...
It's on a cool September's eve when the screams started. Luciano whirled instinctively at the noise, tilting his head to listen, like a dog scenting fresh blood. Kuro, standing the closest to the shadow of the ally, only gives the direction Luciano was staring at the barest of glances. Lutz jolts to attention, purple eyes widening with fear and anticipation, and looks to his leader for confirmation on what to do next.
It's an interesting occurrence, Luciano muses. What the hell. Might as well check it out anyways.
By the time they make it to the docks, the crowd around the water has gotten bigger. The screaming is clearer now, more distinct; it's clear now that the wailing is issuing from several women gathered near the water's edge. The loudest cry, long and piercing, issues from a woman kneeling dangerously close to the edge of the dock, one arm milling through the water as if searching for something lost.
"My baby!" she sobs. Italian. "She fell! She fell into the water! Oh please, someone help! She'll drown!"
Several men mill around, arguing, pushing, vainly trying to help. Snippets of words drift on the wind, carried with the cold, unforgiving scent of the sea's salty breath.
Too turbulent-
Can't risk the swim-
Too dangerous-
Do something, by God-
Can't see her-
It's too late.
Insignificant, Kuro muses, turning away. Just another one fallen to the clutches of fate. He cannot feel the pull that indicates that the lost child is one entrusted to his care, and he turns, heart devoid of emotion.
-A bedraggled brown head of hair crests the surface of the water. A sharp wail fills the air, issuing from the lungs of a child no older than four, before she disappears under the waves again.-
People are lost all the time. One less would not affect the course of time, nor influence him or his nation's safety in any way.
He opens his mouth, ready to give his thought on the matter to his leader, but is roughly pushed aside before he has a chance. Luciano barrels down the pathway, combat boots thudding heavily on the weathered wooden planks of the dock, and, without a second glance, jumps into the water.
"Luciano!" Lutz's panicked yell next to him sends his ear ringing as he reels, hissing at the unwelcome physical contact. The enraged Japanese leader half-unsheathed his katana, glaring daggers down the path to where Luciano disappeared, then straightened with a jolt of disbelief.
Luciano had surfaced, coughing as he expelled seawater from his lungs. The tide pulled at him, dragged him under as if trying to drown him, trying to sweep him away to yet another human grave. He fought the water with the same intensity that he usually reserved for his worst enemies, a fierce, burning determination in his eyes, and dove, form rendered invisible by the frothing waves.
By the time he resurfaced, Lutz and Kuro had made it to the docks, unsheathed weapons and glowing eyes clearing a large swathe in the crowd. Purple and red eyes met exhausted magenta as Luciano swam back to the ledge, one hand gripping the edge as he shoved a waterlogged little girl up onto the platform.
A large roar rose from the human onlookers. Two men and the weeping woman rushed forward, grabbing the toddler away from the edge, the men pumping water from her lungs as the woman clutched her hand and cried. Luciano climbed his way back onto the deck, looking very much like a soaked cat, bone-numbing exhaustion clear in his eyes as he panted for air. The people parted as he stood, head hanging, then watched silently as he dropped back down to check on the child, luminescent magenta eyes sweeping over her shivering form.
Luciano climbed slowly to his feet and walked back over to Kuro and Lutz, head high, feet dragging in his soaked boots. He was shivering violently, face pale, but rejected Lutz's coat as it was offered to him, glaring at the jacket like it had personally offended him.
Kuro turned as he passed, noting the way Luciano resolutely avoided eye contact, and hissed venomously,
"What was that for?"
Luciano turned, raised one eyebrow in condescension.
"She was one of my own," he whispered, voice cold. "I do not let them die under my protection. Not when I know they can be saved."
...
For him, an immortal, it was nothing.
For her, a mortal, it was everything.
She remembers, perhaps more vividly than she should, the feeling of salt water rushing down her throat, the press of the water's weight in her lungs. She remembers terror, and blurred sight, and screaming, though she cannot remember if it was her own or her mother's or the sound of the ocean roaring as it consumed her, dragged her down into the darkness.
She remembers the feeling of a gloved hand closing painfully tight on her wrist, shockingly warm in comparison to the sea, and she remembers being dragged up with a strength almost as powerful as the water around her. She remembers that power radiating from that figure like heat from a fire, and she remembers the awe and fear she felt as she grabbed hold of her savior's hair, the first thing she could reach as he lifted her from the ocean's frothing grasp.
She remembers feeling a different kind of fear as she's pushed harshly onto solid land, the man's grip leaving red prints in her pale skin, and she remembers feeling that fear again, sharper, as the person who saved her crouched above her to check if she was still breathing.
It's something instinctual, something dangerous, like she can sense the predator lingering in the shadow above her. Her first instinct is to duck, to cower like a rabbit under the claws of a hawk, but as she feels the presence draw closer, she can't help but peek up at the person above.
Her first thought isn't so much a thought as an observation. Her savior was lithe, a young man with reddish-brown hair, facts that she absorbed without much interest; they, to her, were nothing but scenery.
Her second thought is: People don't usually have pretty pink eyes.
The figure above her huffed a quiet breath, turning away without a second glance. She relaxed as the predator-leader, alpha? Alpha wolf?-disappeared into the crowd, the people next to him parting as he walked away, silently recoiling from the power radiating off his frame.
Ah, so they felt it too. The pull and repulsion. The feeling that the man with the magenta eyes was one of them, and not one of them, a being made of danger and higher power. The awareness of him as leader of the metaphorical pack.
She pulled out of her daze, felt the warmth of her mother's blouse clenched tight between her fists, and wept.
...
Later, when she is older, she learns.
It's taught in the kindergarten that she attends, the teacher smiling despite the weary look in her eyes at the words she speaks.
"This is our king, class, and this is his brother!" A picture flashes up of the king, his face surly, scowling at a point away from the camera. The girl's breath hitches in her throat, eyes widening, toy rabbit clutched close to her chest as if it could hide her. She barely notices the smiling blonde man beside him, too frozen with memories to laugh along with the other children as their teacher tells them a story of the empires and leads them through a sing-along rhyme of the people who rule them.
-"Flavio and Luciano are the best, protecting their people from the rest!"
Later she learns that Luciano is a hallowed name, not to be spoken of in the streets of their town, nor at home, where safety is-was- an unspoken guarantee.
She learns that they are nations, idealistic concepts of the government and military, and that they have taken over when mortals of the past failed. She learns that Flavio is a little bit better, a little bit more forgiving, and she learns to cover her ears and silence her tongue when that dreaded L-word appears in a conversation, or when the talk of the nations grows heavy with a tone both harboring fear and dreaded respect.
(She also learns to not question why sometimes the alleyways between the streets of her town are awash in blood, the dark red liquid trickling down through the cobblestones to the gutters below).
(One time, she asked, and then immediately regretted it. The terror and uneasiness present in the stares she got were not worth the courage used to inquire.)
She learns that Flavio, the prince, is seen as somewhat of a hero figure, a hero with the uneasy hope of the people riding on his shoulders. She sees him sometimes, in parades, walking among his people with a smile on his face, though she doesn't often approach.
(Once, when she was ten, she did. She had held a red flower up and had stared, awestruck, as he received it, his white-gloved hands pressing around hers as he thanked her. She had felt that spark of power then-the whirl of energy that she learned was the mark of a nation, the draw that meant that she belonged to him and he belonged to her. It was different from what she experienced when the king had saved her- less powerful, less dangerous, but in her mind, no less terrifying.)
She learns that their nations are violent and prone to war, though none have been as violent as the one unleased over sixty years ago. She learns that this is why even the most exquisite of cites are almost nothing more than a ghetto, or why sometimes the food runs low and her family goes hungry for weeks. She learns that this is why the men talked in hushed voices-not because they were afraid of their rulers, as she had thought as a child, but because sometimes men ganged together to try to provide for their families, and that sometimes Luciano and Kuro and Lutz prowled the streets and painted the buildings red with the blood of the defiant.
(She learns, later, that this is why they have curfew once the sun leaves them in total darkness. Once, they heard the thud of booted feet on their roof, fast and urgent, and the chill that rocked over them as they sensed the presence of a nation, of a predator, was enough for the family to remain silent for days.)
(That night, two of her father's close friends had been killed, their corpses dangling from the rooftops, hung in nooses of corded intestines.)
She learns of the Axis Powers. She also learns that they are citizens of the Italian empire, the richest in the world, and she learns, indirectly, that Luciano is continuing his soldier's death march in the hope of conquering the world. She laughs quietly, a humorless dry chuckle, once she realized that their king, their so-called protector, is insane.
(And she suppose that he does protect, though in mundane, twisted ways. Their bellies are often fuller and their clothing richer than in any other country, except for America. But she has also learned to hate Luciano, to fear him like the rest of them do, and to memorize the sweeping pattern of his knife-marks on kills so that she knows how long to stay down.)
(Weeks. Luciano does not hurt those who do not hurt him, or his empire. The problem is that food prices have gone up and many have now turned to crime to survive, deeming the measly rations not fit to live on. The kill count has gone up, too. She's learned to pinch her nose at the sickly-sweet scent of rotting bodies, to walk uncaringly past the bloated corpses-the bloated warnings- in the streets. She's a young woman now. She can handle it as good as the rest of them can.)
She learns to grow accustomed to the rumble of war-machines. Young men are growing harder and harder to find nowadays, though that does not bother her just yet. She is unwilling for a family, unwilling to bring children into a world so cold.
(Later, she changes her mind. She finds a soft-spoken young man with a cap in his hair and a tender heart, and she cries when he is taken from her; once, twice, three times. She bears him two children-one for each meeting that he is alive.)
Two wars occurred in her lifetime-two wars close to home. Once was an assault on Northern Italy, an attack lead by the allies of America and Canada. The fires burnt for days, bombs thundering low on the horizon, some uprooting her, her house, forcing her to flee from place to place like a bird as she moved her family of three (her two children and a cat) away from the danger. Three times enemy soldiers ran past their place of hiding, eyes glowing like the eyes of nations in the light of the flames, and she shrank from them and threw her children under her shawl so they could not see the hell that she had brought them into.
(She's never seen rallies for Luciano grow popular so quickly. In all the times that Flavio walked the streets of his country, Luciano had rarely attended. Now he was present, a dragon pulled from the depths of his lair, the fury of his army driving back the attack with an almost terrifying amount of power and rage. He became a beacon to the people, a figure made of fire and hope, and he rallied the people up into a battle-craze that sent the Allies running like dogs with their tails between their legs.)
(She skipped out during the first war, too terrified of the bloodthirsty roars of the crowds, too terrified of the monster she may meet.)
The second war was different. It was an attack on the front lines, a conflict started by who-knows-what and made worse by who-knows-who. The shelling rumbles on for months, a constant background noise, but the prizes won by the advance of Luciano's forces made the hardships of war irrelevant. Her children run and play noisily with a ball made of rubber salvaged from the massacred American troops, and, with their joyed shouts playing like music in the background, she finally decides that war is not all that bad; not, at least, when they get to feast like kings.
(That night she brings them over to a neighbor's house for a 'sleepover', and, with them safe, slips away into the night.)
...
She's not quite sure what to think of the rallies, except that everything is awash with blood-red light and that the thrum in her heart is something primal, something made of a raw carnal desire for violence, and war, and death.
The press of the people is what stabilizes her, the scent of a thousand human beings mingling with the burning smell of torches. Above her, standing on a platform, are the Axis powers, beings thrumming with power, like a powerful weapon just waiting to go off.
(Their presence makes her dizzy. The danger radiating from them is intoxicating, the adrenaline rush the only thing keeping her on her feet. That, and the crush of millions of bodies around her, all shouting. All praising their rulers, their leaders, their nations.)
Japan and Germany incline their heads at the praise, eyes stoic and lifeless. Behind them, angled to the sides and away, stand Spain and Prussia, heads tipped back, watching the three highest-ranking from the corner of their eyes. Luciano stands the tallest, bedecked in a dark uniform and a red cape, the badges for superior officers gleaming on his chest and the edge of his feathered military cap.
(Flavio, coincidentally, is nowhere to be seen.)
"My people," he purrs, and suddenly, the crowd goes silent. Luciano's voice projects over them with ease, the overwhelming extent of his power holding them in his thrall. Glowing magenta eyes slide over the crowd, and, in one brief second, stare directly at her.
(Does he remember? She thinks suddenly, as she shrinks away. Does he? Does he?)
(Does he remember what, exactly?)
"We are growing more powerful as we speak," Luciano gestured to his allies, and the crowd let out an appreciative roar. "Even now, Prussian-German forces have managed to isolate the remaining English units. Britain is on its knees. Oliver is beaten and bloody, and Francois lies comatose in my dungeon. They will pay for their actions shortly, and though that pink-haired freak may have escaped from our grasp-"A disgusted lip curl and a glare at Lutz prompted a wave of laughter through the horde. Luciano's anger faded as quickly as it came, a sadistic smile curling his lips back from sharp white teeth.
Like a wolf, she thought. An alpha wolf.
"-Kuro here has found a loophole in his disappearance act. Kuro, would you demonstrate for us, please?"
The nation of Japan stepped forward, ruby-red eyes glowing with disgust and hatred. He refused to look at the mob, a slight bow the only acknowledgement of their existence, and, with a single fluid motion, holds a small object up to the crowd.
She has to strain her eyes to see it.
It's a doll, its crude shape lovingly stitched, locks of pink hair surrounding a delicately-embroidered face. Her mind flashes back to old school lessons on the countries, and she recognizes it as a caricature of the personification of England instantly.
It's in poor shape, figure marred with slash marks, pink vest and blue tie stained with blood. It looks so harmless and domestic, so innocent and pure, that the damage done to it almost seemed like a crime.
A child's toy should not be dangling from the fingers of one of the world's most bloodthirsty leaders, she thinks, suddenly sick to her stomach. This is horrifying. This is monstrous-
Luciano's voice drones on, talking about magic, sneering at the possibility of it, telling the crowd that the scientists are still working on the secrets England must have hid from them to hold such power. He reassures them that once they have Oliver within their grasp, he would not hesitate to use the information the scientists gain to aid the lives of his people.
Scientists that have not been used before, have never turned the knife on one of their allies. Because of course, the king of the world would not allow them to experiment on him, even if it could have saved the lives of the millions of people starving in their nations.
-"I do not let them die under my protection. Not when I know they can be saved."
Luciano must have said something to Kuro, because suddenly he springs to life, drawing his katana from its sheath. The appearance of the bright silver blade, a cold, piercing light against the warmth of the fire, jolts her from her reverie.
Too late, she recalls her nation saying something about Oliver's life force being linked to the puppet. Too late, because Kuro lifts his sword in a high sweeping ark and lets it fall, slicing through the body in a frenzy of long, slashing cuts.
Once the deed is done, Kuro drops it, backing away. Bits of fluff stained in red cling to the edge of his sword, like the doll is bleeding, and perhaps it is. She can't see from here, but she can imagine, imagine with vivid clarity the torn toy lying on the dais, the white cotton leaking from the wounds dissolving to red as it touches the obsidian.
Luciano steps forward, picks up the doll with an elegant sweep of his arm. The thing is lifeless now, a drooping bundle of cloth weeping white, limbs barely attached by frayed threads.
Luciano looked at the typhoon of cuts. Analyzed the damage. Smiled.
His golden knife rose, a startling contrast to the black of his worn leather gloves, and, with a flick of his wrist, sliced it to pieces.
The scraps fluttered to the floor, disturbingly macabre in the king's hand. The crowd went wild, their approval rolling off the buildings like thunder, and, she, mind disturbingly blank, joined them.
The flames didn't die for a long, long while.
...
Author's Note: I did not beta-read this. I wrote this all in one sitting. Please, if there are errors, contact me straightaway, for I am too tired to bother with them right now.