DISCLAIMER: Hetalia: Axis Powers – Hidekaz Himaruya
SNOW WHITE, BLOOD RED
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Please excuse my taking liberties with some character names & relationships.
This story is very loosely based on several different versions of "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Beauty and the Beast".
CAST OF CHARACTERS (in order of appearance):
CANADA — Matthew
ENGLAND — Arthur
FRANCE — Francis
AMERICA — Alfred
PRUSSIA — Gilbert
ROMANO — Lovino
SPAIN — Antonio
PROLOGUE
MATTHEW
Mathieu is just tired, darling, let him sleep."
"He's barely spoken a word since he returned from the forest, Francis. And he's cold as death. I'm worried that he's caught the sleeping sickness, like Alfred. He's so pale."
"Mathieu is always pale, no need to fret over that."
"I wish he would eat something."
"He will when he's hungry. He is sixteen. Just let him be."
"I worry, you know—about both of them."
"I know, Arthur, but you're the most skilled healer in the village. Alfred will recover. And Mathieu? He spent a long, cold night in the forest. He's just fatigued.
"Let him be," repeats my cousin's fiancé. I can hear his gentle voice fading as he leads Arthur away from the shared bedroom, where Al and I sleep. It's dark, but it's not quiet. I can hear my twin brother's laboured breaths as he sleeps, fighting a pneumonic illness commonly called the sleeping sickness, because once the victim falls asleep they rarely ever wake. I'm not worried about Al, though. Francis is right, my cousin, Arthur, is the best healer in the village. He used the dragon's kiss I collected in the forest to brew medicine to save Al. (Dragon's kiss is the common-tongue name for the red stalks that grow wild at the roots of the mountain.) That's why I had ventured into the forest tonight. Francis had warned me not to go—"not tonight, not beneath a blood moon"—but Al's state was worsening and Arthur was panicking and I knew that my twin brother wouldn't live to see dawn if he didn't get the medicine. So, I snuck out. I left the cottage and stole away into the night with nothing but a lantern and a basket and wearing a long cloak as red as the dragon's kiss I was going to find.
Now my brother is safe, but I don't think I am.
Lead-glass windowpanes are not enough to silence the wolf howls that echo through the night. I hear them—him—calling and I shiver. I pull a big patchwork quilt tightly around my shoulders, hugging myself, feeling cold, but it doesn't still my racing heart. Gingerly, I touch my fingers to the deep punctures in my neck; the ones that feel hot, as if inflamed; the ones I lied to Arthur about when I reported to be unhurt. He was too distracted by Al's needs to notice such a simple wound, especially hidden under my cloak, but Francis knows, I'm sure of it. I think he knows something that I do not. He didn't confront me about it, but he looked at me in a way too sharp and scared to be ignorant.
I don't regret leaving the cottage tonight. I fetched the ingredient that saved my brother's life. But I do wish I had taken more heed of Francis' warning.
"There are wolves in the woods," he had said.
If only I had known what kind.