I'd like to thank Sigve and Jumu for their so very needed work as beta-readers of this story. Without them, this couldn't have been possible. And, I'd also like to thank Albel for the help he gave me when I was indecisive, my brother for the criticism of the plot and characters and my friend Bicci for the never-ending support.

And, I'd also like to thank you, reader, for giving this an opportunity.

All characters belong to Himaruya Hidekaz and his work Axis Powers Hetalia.

Reviews/criticisms/opinions are accepted!

Gilbert clearly remembered what his last words to him were.

Those were, somehow, the words he had always wanted to say when he was about to die. His dream since childhood had been to be renowned, respected, remembered, just like the heroes of those childhood stories his father used to read to him until he fell asleep. He found their way of acting laudable: they kept protecting the people they cared about the most, sacrificing their lives instead of someone else's, claiming out loud they were not afraid of death itself. Dying in the end, but dying in the most epic and awesome way. He thought for himself that, no matter what, true heroes were prideful until the very end, the very extreme to its inevitable consequences.

Just as he himself was. And that, that, could only be the sign that told him he was meant to die there, in that very moment, protecting him.

Taking the hay fork, he placed it against his shoulder and put one of his hunting knives in his pocket- just in case- before he knelt down, putting the right hand over his shoulder. With his other hand, he left a razor blade upon the boy's open palm and then closed the hand over it.

"Ludwig." He called him by his name, looking at his scared sky-blue eyes. He simply nodded, his whole body shaking and trembling, but still trying not to lose his composure. After all, that was what he was taught since he was a little kid by his older brother, that he should never falter or let the fear overcome reason. "Listen to me. Take this and run away from here, and go find somewhere you can hide. Make no noise and everything will be alright. I promise."

"B-But, brother, what about you?" he inquired with a broken voice. The older one grunted and abruptly rose, turning his back to indicate his answer.

"Stop asking questions and just do what I told you!" he ordered in a harsh, authoritative voice, the one he knew the younger would not dare argue with. But then he remembered what was he about to do; so, after letting out a long and deep sigh, he looked back at him, once more, for one last time looking at those eyes, and added with a little, warm smile "Just… just do one last thing for your big brother, okay? It's the only thing I'm asking for. Save yourself, Lud"

The little boy simply nodded, gripping the blade tight, trying with all his inner strength to fight back the tears, right before he turned around and ran away from there to a safer place outside the house.

When he disappeared from his sight, the older brother suddenly realized he was alone, all alone now. Left there to die, with all certainty, in the middle of fire and ruin and chaos. What a life had his been, after all? What had he left behind as an inheritance? Moreover, what should he feel about himself, about his own experience in life? He hadn't tasted Bavarian beer, he hadn't learn to read, he hadn't found a good girl he could be married with- he hadn't even had sex, for God's sake!

"Calm down!" he ordered himself when he felt like running away for a brief, stupid moment. He breathed in and out calmly a couple of times, putting his thoughts in order.

His new priority, giving his life to save his brother's. After all, if he had to die having lived such a miserable and insignificant life, he could at least forge an awesome legend upon his death.

He started to move through what used to be the large barn, avoiding the blazes that were burning down the wood and turning the hay bales into ashes. The air was thick with the resulting black smoke, and he was beginning to struggle to breathe properly. At first he did not mind it that much, but when the fit of coughing started, he realized that maybe it was quite a serious thing to care about. So he tried raising the collar of his shirt up to his nose, but the fabric was too thin to make a difference. He needed to let that smoke out of the house first, if he did not want to fuck up his whole genius plan of becoming the town's most celebrated legend with such a pathetic death. He let his body rest for a moment against one of the walls, using his own arm as a rudimentary air filter as he looked for the door. Stupidly enough looking for a goddamn massively huge door, but the smoke was so dense and dark he could not see much farther than his nose.

"Damn it" he mumbled to himself, coughing badly. He was starting to get trapped, wasn't he? "I need to get out of he-…" but his sentence died in the very moment a loud and strident collection of shrieks from the outside travelled all the way to his ears. In an abrupt move, he turned his head instinctively to the origin of that sound.

There were those bloody motherfuckers.

He forgot about anything else: the smoke, the fire, the whole house burning down… Nothing mattered, he thought to himself, as he sprinted through the big barn, passing a hair's breadth away the burning straw piles, avoiding the falling wooden pieces of the ceiling, jumping over the ones already fallen, feeling the blazing ashes against his skin.

Nothing mattered, he thought to himself, except killing those bastards.

He was getting closer, the shrieking was getting louder, his beating heart was starting to be overwhelming, pounding all over his brains. Just a little closer, just a little more…

But all of a sudden, the door broke down to pieces.

The inhuman shriek echoed all around. And before he could even see a thing, a shadow crossed the distance.

He had it right over him.

Taken by surprise, he tried to step back but landed heavily on the floor, just second before the creature fell on him. His senses were luckily fast enough and, hitting it hard with the pitchfork's handle, he deflected the creature, throwing it against the floor quite far away before it could even harm him.

Fuck. That had been too close.

Rising up slowly, he fixed his eyes on his attacker, not ready to look anywhere else until the fight was over. It was almost ironic, the half-smile that started to form on his lips, considering how close he'd just come to death. But he knew it was the animal instinct again.

The thought that he finally found his prey was reason enough to make him smile in eagerness.

Truth to be told, this was the first time he saw one of them for real. All he knew about them before this was mostly thanks to books and those stories that run from mouth to mouth in order to instill the children with fear and teach them the importance of obeying their elders.

And- let's admit- it would have been almost impossible to know what it was exactly if it hadn't been for the shrieks before. Right now, on the floor, it really looked- well, human. Just like a lady who had been lost for far too long, perhaps. The tangled and messy strands of long, platinum blonde hair, or even the once beautiful but now ripped and filthy dark blue dress could fool anyone's eyes into thinking that she was a damsel in distress that needed to be saved. What a fatal error that would have been, for as soon as the helping hand would have reached her, it would have been already too late.

Slowly, with clumsy and rough moves, she shifted her body, trying to get up after such a hard hit as her hair parted, revealing her face. She may have been quite a beauty in the past, he thought to himself, but now not even a single trace of sanity could be seen in such a terrifying visage. Reddened eyes open far too wide, lined underneath by dark bags, looked right at his and at the same time didn't even focus anything clearly. Skin that looked just like that of a corpse: thin, creased, chapped and pale, disturbingly and sickly pale. And the mouth, stained all over with a thick liquid of such a deep shade of red, leaving only the pure white teeth and fangs untouched.

No, she was no longer human, no more a human. She turned into one of those monsters sent by Satan himself, whose only purpose is to forever seek for people's blood in order to feed.

A vampire.

Poor soul, he thought to himself as he pointed at her with his weapon in a clearly hostile position, the one of the person whose blood had been nourishment for such a pitiful and vile creature. The vampire woman just looked at him, breathing slowly, still trying to get up. At least, that's what he thought she was doing, right before she jumped towards him.

This time he kicked her in the stomach, sending her to one of the walls with a loud crash. She had barely landed and he was already racing toward her, pitchfork at the ready, trying not to lose any more time, but she recovered fast and counter attacked with her long, sharp nails. A swear crossed the room when one of those scratches hit his left arm. The itching pain was only the perfect excuse to make him go even wilder, using the handle again to hit her roughly in the head, enough to make her fall in the floor once more. She hissed and sprung, mouth open wide, aiming at his neck.

He was prepared to defend himself from that attack, but suddenly he heard clearly the sound he had not expected to hear, the last one he wanted to hear.

Ludwig's screams.

Everything cracked and broke. His carefully maintained concentration, his cocky attitude in battle, his only desire of killing her, everything. It was easy for the vampire girl to take advantage of that moment of weakness and be able to make him fall hard to the floor, as it was also easy to just reach his skin with such sharp teeth.

And that could have been the end, his end, if only he had not been Gilbert Beilschmidt and had one more important thing to do in what was left of his life.

Because at the very moment the pointy fangs got to pierce his skin and the blood drops ran down his forearm, his other hand flew from his pocket to her throat, sticking the knife from behind. He felt unusually cold, thick blood bubbling in his hand as he pushed it even further and made the fatal wound even wider. The vampire woman fell to the floor just like a heavy bundle as soon as the blade roughly tore free, red stained, her neck, unable to even let out her last aching screech.

He only had this brief moment to breathe deep before running desperately to aid his little brother, forgetting completely to take the hay fork that had fallen to the floor, his only weapon now the knife tightly gripped in his right hand. It was desperation itself that clouded all his senses, because he couldn't find where his brother's screams came from. Almost blindly, he opened all the doors, crying out his name, and finding only the bright flames eating everything. Ludwig's screams became louder as he called out for his protector over and over, and all that was on Gilbert's mind was the anxious prayer of being able to find him safe and sound.

He wasn't expecting to see, the moment he kicked a door out of its frame, the sight of the terrified face of his brother turning to see him once more, nor that of his hand, his little hand trying to reach him but suddenly plummeting.

Lifeless.

His knees weakened, probably at his own body unable to handle all that had happened at once, and looked with a haunted gaze as that monster sucked up what blood was left from his poor young brother.

He surrendered, completely, knowing that was the end. He had nothing left now: he had no house, he had no family, he had no brother, he had no story, he had absolutely nothing. He could have had at least the opportunity to have given his dear brother the chance to live on, to have a proper life himself instead. But he hadn't done it, he couldn't doit.

And he realized then that there was something the books avoided by all matters: the stories of those who failed and died trying to become a legend. The incomplete stories serving as brick in some other's legend wall. The stories of the people who did not made it far, who did nothing special, whose names won't ever be said again once dead.

He realized not only that he was never going to become a legend, but also that he was never going to be remembered ever again. A nobody.

His vision blurred and trembled as the blonde haired, big nosed vampire breathed out, its mouth dripping blood from the sides. It looked at him with its piercing violet eyes as it rose up from the floor, as big as he was, making his brother's corpse fall to the floor as a heavy bundle, and started to walk the distance that separated it from its next defenceless prey.

Gilbert Beilschmidt was going to be no mo-

"BRAGINSKY!"

That voice crossed the room along with the sound of glass crashing into pieces. A fully covered person had burst into the room through the window, landing flawlessly among a hail of shining glass shards. In one smooth movement, his hand flew fast to the tightly worn coat to get hold of a big, flashy and seemingly very dangerous gun, and did not even say a word before starting to shoot once again at the vampire.

It was, despite its looks, faster than the bullets and managed to dodge the gunshots. As it came closer and closer to its aggressor, the person in the coat had to step back as that big thing was almost over him, prepared to attack. The very last bullet of the burst managed to pierce him through the shoulder. This seemed lucky, but the monster did not even falter. It left no time for the other to even make a move before it hit him so hard with its big clawed hand that he landed against a wooden closet on the other side of the room, breaking it in half.

"Pathetic…" it talked – it talked! – with too soothing and soft a voice with a thick Slavic accent as it gripped the shoulder it had been shot in, moving slowly toward the mystery guy that was now trying clumsily to get off the floor. "So, so pathetic… just tell me that was just a try, please."

That thing had taken its eyes off him. Was he… was he safe now? Well, clearly not yet. But there was a chance, right? Maybe he'd be fast enough to run, take his brother's body and scape from there while… No, he wouldn't be. And leaving the guy who saved his life to his own luck was not fair. Yeah, well, he'd help him, but how could he? It was not like…

Then his eyes grasped it. There it was. He received such a heavy hit he had dropped the gun on the floor. Moving fast, he jumped to take it and pointed at that creature's back. Only he and the Lord knew it was his first time using a fire weapon in his whole life, but either by desperation or by luck, his only and last shot hit its target. The little glass-like bullet flew the distance and pierced the vampires back, and the very force of the impact made it burst into pieces, as what looked like a liquid was released from the inside.

The characteristic smell of burnt flesh arrived along the savage, beast-like howls of pure pain the vampire uttered. It turned its head in one abrupt movement to look at him with a berserker glaze.

"Who… who dares to…?" it mumbled, in a voice of rising anger.

"Gilbert Beilschmidt "he started to rise up from his knees as he kept on pointing at him with the now unloaded gun haughtily. "Remember that name, you monster, because you dared to kill my brother ,so I won't stop until he is avenged. I won't rest in peace until you have paid for this, I won't ever stop until you are oh so dead, because I, and only I, will be the one to kill you!"

A moment of silence, of stupidly silent silence, as a little grin started to form in those lips still filthy with the red, flesh blood and his eyes sparkled with what it seemed like delight.

But it was all of a sudden when a cloud of thick, grey smoke quickly covered the whole room, and he was left there, shocked, unable to see not even a thing. He was looking around desperate and confused when a hand gripped his arm tight.

"Run!"

"What…?" Gilbert mumbled, completely puzzled. But before he could do a thing, he was pushed along the room through that dense smoke and right through the window. He felt like he was free falling to death, but the very moment he knew he was going to die beaten up to a pulp against the fucking floor, he could see how that person shot a roped harpoon that embedded violently in the opposite's house façade.

They still made quite a hard and hurtful landing against the pavement, though.

He opened his eyes slowly, as he tried to catch his breath after such a long time. "Gott… " he muttered, holding his head with his hands for a moment after turning abruptly to his 'savior'. "What have you fucking done now, dude? Are you demented? You could have killed us!"

"I saved us, asshole!" He rose slowly from the floor and then, with an angry move of his ponytail of brown wavy hair, he turned his angry face at him.

Wait, what?

"Are you a girl?"

"Huh? Of course I am! Are you blind or something?" She snorted, looking at him with her pair of pure green eyes instilling irritation.

"Well, sorry for confusing you with a guy when you were all covered up, missy!" he replied, getting up. She hissed something through tightly closed teeth that sounded like a curse in some weird language before she put her fingers in her mouth and whistled. It almost took no time for a big, brown horse to appear from behind, tapping against the pavement in a fast gallop.

"Come on, jerk, let's get out of here!" she said as she took the reins of the horse, and climbed upon it with style.

He took a look at his burning house. The flames were eating what was left, and pieces of wood were starting to fall violently to the floor. He had a brief glimpse of all the life he had lived there, but, moreover, he remembered his little brother. A tight, hard lump in his throat made it hard to breathe right, and it was difficult to fight back the tears when the images and the voice of his now dead brother clouded his mind completely.

"Only… only the living can avenge the dead" she merely said, with an almost imperceptible tone of tenderness in her voice.

He nodded slowly, and then turned and used the hand she was offering him to get on the horse behind her. She cracked the reins and shouted something to the horse, again in that unintelligible language of hers, and the animal started to run, as fast as he could, from that nightmare-like place Gilbert used to call home.