AN: This was actually written before the tWTiA but it lacked something, and still does. I'm not sure if I managed to describe well things in this, especially the painting and the mood. And yes, I changed the lyrics at the end to match the story, but I put the original lyrics next to them. Of course it's in an uncommon order, as the lyrics appear after the themed paragraph(s). Oh, and lastly, I'm planning to do a multi-chapter fic of this same theme: APH and tHoND with Russia as Quasimodo, though I'm still lost at whom I'm taking to the roles for the captain-whose-name-I've-forgotten, the gargoyles and Clopin. Any suggestions?
Disclaimer: I do not own APH nor the song "Heaven's Light" from the movie "the Hunchback of Notre Dame". Axis Powers Hetalia belongs to Himaruya Hidekazu-sama, and both the song and the movie to the Disney CO.
The night had reached its darkest peak that night. A street light was stubbornly attempting to light the small street but soon the flickering light died out creating dark shadows to that stop. One by one the lights from the windows in the apartment houses along the street had died out, leaving only small flickering light from a candle to the window. A dark figure stood by that same window and was looking at the street. But they weren't aimlessly looking, they had their target in sight. What had gotten his eyes was a couple walking down the deserted street.
So many times out there
I've watched a happy pair
Of lovers walking in the night.
They had a kind of glow around them.
It almost looked like Heaven's Light.
The figure's light-coloured eyes darkened from the sadness as looked at the couple. He felt his heart ache from the sadness and loneliness while there was a tiny sparkle of jealousy in his eyes as he looked at the woman embrace the man and give him a long and loving kiss. The figure turned his head away from the couple not intending to get more heartbroken and lonely. His eyes wandered at the apartment, desperately trying to find something to prove he also had someone. But nothing was what his eyes met.
I knew I'd never know
that warm and loving glow
though I might wish with all my might.
A sigh left his lips and he walked away from the window, not looking back at the happy couple. Walking across the apartment his hands unconsciously rose to touch his face, and a scar on it. He stopped and turned his eyes to a mirror and caressed the scar with his hand. He remembered getting it from his communistic twin who had gone suddenly lost it and raised a knife against the painter. The twin had then died not long after that but the scar would never leave. As much self-conscious as he had, he knew he would never get anyone to love his with this kind of destroyed face. Not that he had liked it without the scar.
No face as hideous as my face
was ever meant for Heaven's light.
But that was past now. He turned away from the mirror and walked to a large square thing that was hid under a cloth. Only he knew what was under it. His self-proclaimed masterpiece. A hand took a grasp on the cloth and pulled it away, revealing a painting of a person sitting on the steps outside the drugstore. A smile grew on his face as looked at the person in the painting trying to hold a bouquet of blooming sunflowers in his hand and a small white dog in the other. His hand found its way to the person's face and touched gently the surface of canvas. It moved across the face on the canvas and rested next the violet eyes looking happily at the dog. The shining platinum blonde hair was flowing as if the man in the painting had moved his head when the dog had started to lick his face. The painter smiled more when his eyes saw that happy smile on the surprised man's feminine naturally coloured lips. The hand full of stains from painting moved along the petite man's body until it was on the bag that was next to the man with the dog and flowers. The painter sadly knew that in that bag there were medicine and acids that could destroy the pale porcelain skin of the man on the canvas, as he was dressed as an assistant for a doctor. He knew that man was petite, yet strong. Like an angel.
The Russian painter smiled as he recalled the moment he had met and fallen in love with this person.
They had met in a department house owned by a local Estonian shopkeeper who also was the platinum blonde man's very good friend. The Russian always went there to buy new paints and canvas because it also was cheap there. One day the petite man had been there at the same time and had noticed how pale the painter seemed. No matter how the Russian tried to put against, the petite man had demanded to take care of the painter. It had been the Russian's loss but he didn't really mind that. Instead he had started to admire the other man in more than one way. He had thought that the other man had done only it to keep his own moral sense clear but he was proven wrong later.
Not only had the blonde been friendly at the painter all the time, the Russian also had gotten something small but meaningful from him. An act of acceptance and warmth. An act of feeling being loved.
But suddenly an angel has smiled at me
and kissed my cheek without a trace of fright.
It felt nice, very nice, like he was really special to him. He even dared to think that the other man liked him even though that kind of love was not much appreciated here where the painter lived. At least the painter liked him so much. The other man had just made him feel special. He was like an angel to him. In his all purity. The painter started to hum quietly, with his heavy Russian accent:
"I dare to dream that he might even care for me. [I dare to dream that she might even care for me.]
And as I paint these feelings tonight [And as I ring the bells tonight]
my cold dark home seems so bright; [my cold dark tower seems so bright;]
I swear it must be Heaven's light." [I swear it must be Heaven's light.]
Long had the painting been untitled, but now he knew for sure he had a perfect name for it. He just knew. Carefully he turned the painting around and scribbled to the back of it:
A Simple Heaven
By: Ivan Braginski