Red
A/N: the relationship between Germany (Ludwig) and Prussia (Gilbert) can be viewed however you want it to be. I intended for it to be a family bond rather than a romantic one, but it's up to you.
The sterile air, shivering with the passing of each nurse, hung around him like curtains. Gilbert rose to trembling elbows and pulled himself up, so his back was supported against the hard hospital beds. He waited, waited patiently. For what? He didn't know. He waited for something to happen. For someone to come or to go.
A nurse came in, a kind smile on her face that spoke fathoms of pity, but she was used to it. She set a tray on his bedside and helped him eat it. His cheeks were gaunt. The pale skin showed hard bones protruding forwards. His teeth were yellow and uneven, from lack of care in his childhood. His hair was white and falling out in clumps but he refused to cut it, like some form of final stand. The last stand. It was poetic. The nurse liked it. She looked into his red eyes, not wincing anymore. He noticed and thanked her for the soup. She had been afraid of his deep, blood-red eyes. Despite being a nurse, they had instituted fear within her.
He sipped the tasteless mixture of broth. His fingers were shaking, but he managed to pick up a slice of bread and spread a bit of packaged butter over it. He brought it to his mouth and took a bite, chewing hard and long, savoring each passing flavor like a wish.
His roommate, a woman in from two broken legs, watched him politely, then looked away. He was very young, really, but held himself like a man succumbing to the final blow of life; death.
Gilbert caught her staring and smiled. She was pretty, not pretty in the magazine-sense, but pretty in a real sort of way. Her hair was braided and fell down her dark shoulders. Her eyes were like glimmering stones and very honest. He liked honesty.
Gilbert continued to eat, trying to shove the food down if only for the tastes. If it was up to him he wouldn't really eat at all. He finished, triumphant, and sipped the water. It was mandatory, he told himself, but, deep within his body, there was still the savage desire to live; to eat. He never had many eating problems, up until the past years, that is.
The past two years, right after he moved out of the shabby basement of his brother's, he found himself a cramped apartment. He was short on cash and had to do what he could do. He ended up living off of water and stale bread, the not-so archaic diet of the impoverished.
It was during that time he got sick. His schedule was simple: try to scrape up money at his minimum-wage job at a post-office, already a dwindling career, and stay at home. He had no television, only a tiny radio that played whenever it pleased. Once, Gilbert remembered this fondly, it had jerked him awake from a decent slumber with a sports announcement. He fell asleep listening to an over-excited man describe the gymnastics routine of some far-off country.
Gilbert slumped back, groping for the remote control on his white bed-sheets. He couldn't find it and thought, "to hell with it". Any fight within him, and he had an abundance of it, was drained out. Only the dregs remained, the dregs that pushed him to eat the bland hospital food.
"Hey," he looked over at his roommate, who was flipping through a magazine. Her nails were painted gold. She looked up at him. She had only come in two days ago.
"Yes?"
"What happened to your legs?"
Tell the awesome me…
That ghost of a phrase rose in his mind briefly. It made him nostalgic. Not sad… Just, nostalgic.
"Oh? I got into a ski accident. I was having a good time until some kid decided it would be funny to through a snow-covered rock. It hit my knee and it all went downhill from there." She explained, closing the magazine. A vigor burned in her features and it inspired Gilbert.
To do what?
Who knows?
"What's your name?" He asked her.
"Angie, you?"
"Gilbert,"
"Lovely name."
"There's someone here to see you, Mr. Bielschmidt." A woman said from the door. She wasn't his regular nurse, he could tell that by how she brutishly pronounced his name.
"Send 'em in," he said, waving his hand. Angie chuckled. He may as well act like kind while they were serving him breakfast in bed.
A tall, brawny blonde man walked in, smirking at Gilbert. He had a package in his hands, wrapped in very thin paper.
"Ludwig, nice to see you here," Gilbert said, astonished.
"I came to deliver a package," he said gruffly.
Things hadn't been to hot between the brothers, lately. Gilbert was kicked out, rather than leaving by choice. Ludwig had had enough of the late night yelling and constant parade of shady looking guys mess up his living room. In a wild fit where mean names were tossed around like confetti, Gilbert ended up outside, in the cold night air, with only his suitcase and dignity. He hollered some more at Ludwig, who responded by slamming the door shut. Thus, with nowhere to go and no one to look to, Gilbert built himself a meager life out of nothing. It felt good.
Ludwig placed the box, which was very light, on Gilbert's lap. Gilbert looked at him, but Ludwig didn't budge. He didn't pull up a seat either.
Gilbert shrugged it off and opened the box carefully. It was one of those cheap jewelry containers you could buy at second-hand shops. He opened it and stared.
It was a necklace, a chain with a cross at the end. Gilbert touched his neck, feeling its absence. When he was kicked out, Ludwig had accidentally torn off the chain Gilbert treasured, and tossed it behind him, to drown in the shadows of their home. Gilbert was blind with fury and didn't notice, but Ludwig felt stains on his hand, stains of folly.
About a year after Gilbert left, Ludwig spotted the chain, broken and morose, in that corner, and set to fixing it. He never got around to doing it until Gilbert fell sick, though.
Gilbert pulled the chain from its box and hung it around his neck, feeling tears threatening to spill out of his eyes. He didn't though.
I'm too awesome for that
A faded ego. An ego so big no one would ever imagine it collapsing. Like Rome.
Gilbert smiled sadly at Ludwig, who bent down and scooped his brother into a hug, feeling pain prickle at his heart. Gilbert buried his face into Ludwig's chest.
But he still didn't cry.
Ludwig pulled away and rumpled Gilbert's hair affectionately.
"I'm sorry, brother," Ludwig said. The necklace was a form of atonement, before it was too late.
"Don't worry about it. I'm sorry. I made some bad choices and was punished for them. Crime and punishment, you know?" Gilbert felt suddenly weak, utterly sapped of energy. He lay back, closing his eyes and trying to regain control of his breath.
"Are you alright?"
Gilbert couldn't tell who had said that. It was all too hazy, as though the room was filled with liquid, thick, thick liquid. Like molten gold.
"No…"
Maybe, maybe that last bit, the forgiveness from his brother, was enough for Gilbert. It was a way of saying
Hey you did good old boy old pal
Kind of like rubbing a dog while he was being put down
We love you boy, we always will… We forgive you for all the times you peed on the carpet and chewed up that old dress…
Gilbert wished he had had a dog. It would have been nice. Ludwig had a dog. He had bought it once Gilbert left. Maybe he felt lonely.
"Gilbert…"
Hazy, hazy… like a long-forgotten dream, everlasting in concept but fading from reality…
"Gilbert!"
Louder, but not quite—
"GILBERT!"
Piercing the darkness, shooting a missile through that liquid
Gilbert pried his eyes open. His heart rate was too slow. He could feel his ol' ticker give out. He could feel his lungs trying to work. He suddenly regretted all those cigarettes.
Ludwig was bending over him. He could hear Angie saying something, but it was distant… So, so far away…
"I'm fine…" Gilbert said, not really, but he imagined saying it.
"call…. Doctor…."
Snippets of emotions.
(panic)
Oh yes, panic
Don't panic over me, Ludwig, don't don't…
Gilbert slid into unconsciousness.
Ludwig looked at his limp body, but the chest still rose and fell shallowly. Darkness was dripping into the sky. He looked at the nurse, who had rushed in. She smiled weakly, her lips trembling.
"You're going to stay, aren't you?"
"Of course."
Ludwig sat down, gripping Gilbert's cold hand.
Not like this, no please-
Not like this
My brother
My only brother
I love you
I really do
Why
Why did I kick you out? I shouldn't have. I'm an idiot, you can throw me insults in the afterlife, but I really am sorry
No not sorry like, oh I bumped into you in the hall, or I accidentally spilled some coffee on your lap. No, sorry like I truly regret it, like I love you so much, like how I can never atone for this. I'm so sorry. A useless word…
Angie had fallen asleep, her face away from the brothers. Tears stained her cheeks. She felt a deep sadness, death was so close. And here she was, two broken legs and by some strange chance a meeting with these two brothers with full, lovely lives. She wanted to know more, but she didn't need to, no. But she wanted to. Sometimes wanting something isn't too bad. She knew these two brothers had lives of epics, of great stories she could only read about and dream of experiencing, though she wouldn't want to anyway. Their lives must have been soaked in tragedy and sadness and sorrow and punishment and evil and crime and forgiveness and beauty…
She slid off to sleep, forgetting about dinner.
Gilbert's heart pumped for the last time around midnight. Ludwig was weeping, unsure of what to say or feel. The nurses came in, to collect the dead body. But first they let Ludwig whisper rapid German at the corpse. To disentangle the brothers would be a crime, they all felt it. Ludwig kissed Gilbert's forehead.
Eventually Ludwig rose and nodded at them. They scurried in and draped Gilbert in a cloth, pushing him away. The nurse, the one who was afraid of Gilbert's eyes, lagged behind, writing up something on a clipboard.
She understood then why she stopped being afraid.
When she first saw those eyes she thought; blood, fire, horror, evil, torment, agony, lust, sin, lament, punishment.
And then, when she looked that last time, his eyes were no longer that kind of red. They were the red of passion, of love, of the blood that gives life, of a beating heart, of beauty, of the setting sun, of rubies…
It was beautiful
Yes it was
That red color.
I do not own hetalia
-willow