Disclaimer: I do not own Hetalia or the charecters mentioned in this story... No matter how much I wish I did.
Mist lazily floated up from the Austrian mountains from the mornings rain. I can still hear soldiers returning from battle: it had been exactly one month since he had returned from the war and not once had he touched that piano of his. I look across the carpeted room at him, he was doing the exact same thing that he had done every single day since his return: sitting at a small table, staring at his left hand. I hadn't bothered with trying to comfort the saddened man because with each attempt he walks away from me mid-sentence, never saying a word; I force myself to go over towards the large instrument and wipe the collecting dust off of it. A month of dust sticks to my finger as I traced them along the keys. I lightly play a chord and jumps at the sudden noise. He turns his head to look at me, he almost has a pained look on his face as I tap the keys.
"Please stop." he pleads tiredly.
"Why?"
"Because I can't stand to listen to that wretched thing anymore." he trails off focusing back on his hand.
"Whats wrong with your hand?" I question, I kept playing simple melody's I knew from him trying to teach me.
"Please stop!" he says hoarsely.
"Why?" I need more answers. He hasn't spoken a single word since his return and it was good to hear his voice again, even though it was saddened by some unknown burden.
He stands up, I can hear him mumbling beneath his breath as he crosses over to me. He clenches and raises his left hand as if to hit me, face tightening into an angry look that didn't suit his normal expression. He then calms resting his hand on my shoulder gently.
"Please..." he says, he looks like he is going to fall over with some weight, I can see dark circles around his eyes "Stop." he then removes his hand, oddly it snags on a bit of loose fabric. I hear a slight ripping sound and his face suddenly contorts with pain.
Trying to hide his pain, he lets loose a small grunt that was probably supposed to be a laugh but was actually more of a painful hiss as he clutches his left hand and leaves the room. I glance at my shoulder where his hand had been. I see the loose string that had once been white but now was died crimson and hurriedly follow him.
"Austria! You need to tell me what happened!" I scream at him.
"I can't..." he is now leaning against a wall.
I run over to him and grab his bleeding hand. I wipe away the clotting blood as Austria struggles to keep me from seeing what is under the blood.
"Please! I don't want him to hurt you to Elizaveta." He yanks his hand away from mine and stands.
"Who is 'him'?" I question as he dodges another attempt at me grabbing his hand.
"Why do you wish to know this!" he demands, I cower at his sudden out burst.
"Because, I want to help you. I don't care if I'm sucked into this mess." I say.
He leans his head back up against the wall, as if considering the idea: "No Elizaveta." he turns and leaves me.
The sun slowly starts it's descent into the mountains as I force myself out of bed. I sneak into Roderich's bed room and find him sleeping, his brow is furrowed as if deep in thought. I slip over to the left side of his bed and see a bandaged hand resting limply, and aggravatingly on the wrong side showing me the back of his hand.
I gently pick it up, freezing as he sighs in his sleep. I flip it over and slowly unwrap the bandages, I can see his face wincing as he shuts his eyes tightly as a piece of bandage snags on loose skin. I hold my breath, eyes skipping from his pained filled face to the hand and back to the face again. Please don't wake up I think to myself. He seems to calm down again and I
continue to unwrap the bandage. I let a small gasp escape my lips as the last wrap comes of, it is soaked in stale blood which smell makes me wrinkle my nose. I remove the bandage completely and I hear him wince but his eyes stay shut. I use the hem of my dress to clean the wound. I start to see what looks like an X carved into the palm of his hand and as I continue cleaning I stare horrified at the symbol carved into his hand. The swastika gleams with fresh blood as I recoil from it, letting hand fall heavily to the bed staining the covers red. It seems unlikely that he did it himself, he was left handed in the first place so whenever he tried writing with his right hand it was sloppy and disorganized. I slowly inch myself back to my sitting place by his bed and trace his wound with a finger, staining my skin a deep crimson.
"You decided to disobey me then." his violet eyes stare coldly at me, normally they are tinged with a light blue that makes him look pleased, but now they stare disgusted and cold at me.
"I-I am sorry Sir." I say.
"No," he seems to be calming down, "I suppose I should be the one apologizing for this, this concerns you as well, and I tried to protect you from him." He stared down at his hand. "Austria has been annexed and overrun by Germany. I tried rebellion at first but" He holds up his hand "This happened. I did not want you to find out because I thought that you would wind up with the same fate. Now please, stay away from Germany, I do not wish harm upon you." He says it in one breath and when he has finished he is pale, either from blood loss or no breath getting into his lungs while he spoke.
"I want to help you though.." I say through gritted teeth, trying to hold back the urge to smack him, which was short lived because my will broke and I clout him sending his glasses skittering across the floor. Where I had hit him soon had a red mark. "I'm sorry." he says almost to himself.
How dare he think I was weak! I can hold my own against that potato-eating Nazi any day of the week. I get up and leave, I can see him sitting on his bed staring at his hand like he had before. Not looking back I storm out of the room and march through the entry hall.
After two hours I see him come out of his room and go over to his piano "Hey, what are you doing?" I question bluntly, he doesn't reply. His eyes look dull, and unimaginative as he stands over the grand piano.
I see him open the sound board and reach inside. I hear the flicking open of a knife as he starts hacking away at the inside of his beloved piano.
"Hey! What do you think your doing?" I bark at him, wielding a frying pan I walk over to him.
He yanks out a piano string from inside his now gutted piano and leaves back to his room, I hear the door click shut and lock. I'm struck with the sudden realization of what he was going to do. I run over to his room and start to bang on the door.
"OPEN UP! Please! Don't do this! I'm begging you!" I scream, pounding at the wooden door. "Please! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" I finally feel my knees give in as I sink to the floor, I feel hot tears running down my face as I hopelessly pound at the door. I ram myself up against the door and finally give in to the helpless feeling and give in to the feeling of drowning in regret.
After about half an hour of sitting by the door I stand up shakily and trudge down the large flight of stairs to the servant's kitchen: the servant's kitchen is a small gray concrete room which is also used by us as a bomb shelter, it has a wash tub and a small water tap. I halfheartedly toss my frying pan into the sink and start to scrub it.
When I have finish I walk over to fetch a towel and spy the dumbwaiter opening in the wall in the corner of the room. I cross over to it slide open the hatch, the thing looks like it hasn't been used in about 500 years back when Chibitalia and the rest of us worked as a servants for the Holy Roman Empire. I squeeze myself into the dumbwaiter and pull myself up to the second story. I am stuck twice on the way up, once almost I let go of the rope sending me falling back to earth, both time I caught myself and now my fingers and hands bled with rope burn. I haul my self up the last couple yards and slide the door to his room open quietly. I see him sitting at the foot of his bed, staring at the small noose he had created dangling in between his fingers. I slowly step out of the dumbwaiter and carefully walk over to him, I lay a hand on his rigged shoulder and sit next to him.
"What am I without the ability to play music?" he questioned the noose.
"You are a lot of things, Mr. Austria, not just a musician." I told a small lie which he immediately saw through.
"Oh yeah?" he almost smirked "like what?"
"You can cook." I blurted out, "You are a very good cook Mr. Austria."
"I'm not ambidextrous, I can hardly use my right hand." he grunted.
"What do you mean! I saw you play piano all the time with both hands." I interjected.
"It's not the same. If you played you would understand." He pathetically mumbled.
"Well, have you tried playing yet?" she wrapped an awkward arm around his shoulder and leaned against him.
"Yes," he paused to untie and tangle the piano string "I only tried when you were out though, I was afraid that you would not like what I played."
"Why?"
"Because I sounded like a foitrottl (complete idiot) when ever I tried to play anything." He buries his head in his good hand and speaks to his palm.
"Let me hear you play then." I say.
He pauses, and removes his head from his hand and stares at me glumly "I'm guessing that I cannot say no to you then."
I nod, and stand with him in tow we leave the small dark room room. When we enter I see the grand piano that has been hacked to pieces in the side room of the dining area.
"Oh, to bad, I suppose I should go back up and finish contemplating suicide." He spins on his heels but I catch his arm.
"You have that one on the beach don't you?"
He stutters as I haul him down to the bay area where we find Ludwig sitting and watching Feliciano splash around in the waves.
"Hey Roddy!" I hear Feliciano call towards us.
"Hi Feli, come and watch Roddy play, he injured his hand and now he's going to try it aga-" I notice Germany glaring daggers at me and I realize he knows exactly what happened.
"I don't think this is a good time," I can feel the angry glare between the two men as they glare at each other, "Let us depart miss Héderváry." Ludwig nods in agreement and the two turn around and start to leave.
"No!" Feliciano and I cry simultaneously and latch onto their arms dragging them back towards the beach.
When I have finally force Roderich into a sitting position on the bench and gently forced his right hand onto the piano. He turns around to see Ludwig glaring at him, willing him to not play and finally give up to the Nazi's rule. I see Roderich smirk and turn way from the younger man, laying his right hand on the piano he plays a chord. I see Ludwig stand and start to walk over to us. Roderich takes a deep breath, on the exhale with his right hand, he starts to play; I hear the ocean rocking me to sleep, or is it the music? They both sound like the tides gently hitting the earth and rhythmically cowering away again back into the ocean, carrying me away into the soft waves I feel my self rock back and forth on the bench seat. Then he starts to over lap his ocean melody with a deeper, richer piece he is playing with his left hand. This snaps me out of my state of serenity and I look at his injured hand which is painting a bloody trail following his movement with his hand. The blood slices a red wound through the pristine black and white of the keys.
"Does it hurt?" I question, I expect that he will be his normal self and lie about his feelings and say that he's fine.
"Yes, it hurts a lot." he mumbles through gritted teeth. He winces and falters slightly as loose skin catches on a key but he keeps playing his ocean melody.
I lean myself against his shoulder and stare up at the stars; I glance to where I saw Feliciano trying to stop Ludwig. I inhale sharply as I glance up at the tall, blonde, Aryan man standing over us, calmly cracking his knuckles.
"He still can't stay away from that piano, ja?" he grumbles and glances at Roderich: who still is playing his piano hypnotically, seeming to not notice the Aryan standing right behind him.
He grabs Roderich's shoulder and drags him to his feet, interrupting his song as he is unceremoniously spun on his heels and glared at by the Aryan. Ludwig snatches his left wrist and holds it to his own face so he can look at the jagged swastika carved into the palm. The two men glare at each other for what seems like an eternity until Ludwig finally speaks:
"I don't think you could ever forgive me for this, cousin." Ludwig sighs and lets Roderichs hand fall to his side.
"Wait." I interject "You two are cousins?"
Roderich nods; "His grand-father was Germania."
Ludwig grunts in agreement at me and then turns his gaze back to his older sibling: "I am sorry." are the only words he can get out before Roderich cuts him off.
"You caused me a lot of trouble."
"Ja. I know but-"
"I won't be able to play piano frequently until my hand heals." Roderich glares at him.
"Ja. I know." Ludwig sighs.
"Your an idiot."
"Ja. I kno- wait. No I'm not!" He declares.
I can see the faintest glimmer of a smile flicker across the Austrian's face as he stands eye to eye with his younger cousin. "You are forgiven."
"Whoa, hold on a second, he mentally scared you Mr. Austria, you almost hung yourself!" I clench the hard wood of the piano until I feel my finger nails create scratch marks which run up it's blackened side.
"I said:" He calmly repeated to me, "Ludwig is forgiven, it is not his fault that his boss is a genocidal maniac." He patted my head softly.
"Maniac, isn't necessarily the word I would use but yes, I agree." Ludwig nodded.
"Hey guys! Lookie here!" we all glance over to where Feliciano is sculpting a giant plate of sand pasta. "Isn't it magnificent?" He proudly gestures to the pile of sculpted sand.
"Now if only I had the Mona Liza to show it to..." Feliciano sighs heavily "Then she would know what to add."
I look over at Ludwig who is now deep in thought at what the short Italian said. "I need to go, Italy, were leaving!" he calls to the boy who is now skipping over to us. "I wonder if I can steal it back from Feliciano's older brother..." Ludwig mumbles to himself as they leave the beach.
As we watch them leave the beach I hear Roderich heave a sigh of relief. He clutches his hand and sinks onto his knees into the sand. "Dammit..." He winces in pain. "I'm glad there gone. I didn't want to frighten Italy on how awful my hand looks." I crouch next to him wrapping a protective arm around his shoulder.
"Let me see it then." I whisper into his ear and reach out for his hand.
He reluctantly lets me pick out the sand and grit that was wiped into it from the piano. I tear a strip of my dress off and wrap it once it's clean. I glance at his face which was unnaturally pale. I still can hear the short song he played, replaying over and over in my head as we leave the beach. I think of the stain of deep crimson cutting through the black and white keys as he slowly rocked back in forth in time to the beat.
"Who wrote the piece of music that you played Mr Austria?" I question.
"Oh," He stumbles a bit on a rock in which I catch him "A colleague and I collaborated on it."
I nod my thanks and continue up the path to his house: The old thing stood tall and mighty even after centuries of attack from enemies, and attack from re-decorators. I wonder how long he had lived in the house but I hold my tongue not wanting to put him into an awkward position to explain things. Again the music played softly in my head, distracting me from my thoughts. And I figured it out. They both composed music seemingly nonstop- it is why he has an extra piano on the beach, to converse with his colleague, because his colleague: is the ocean.
End
Okay, so, I get that Austria is a little OC but I tried and this is my first fanfic! Please, fire burns so no flames, constructive critisism is okay though. This is pretty much my piece on the annexation of Austria. The piano hanging idea is actually a historical element to this story because in 1944-ish the German Nazi's were told by Hitler to execute a number of civillians by hanging them. But normally pepole were hung by rope but Hitler ordered them to be hung by piano strings. Most likely because it was a slower more painful way to die. The movie Valkyrie (also not mine) uses this method when hanging people too. If you enjoyed this and want more historical crap like it please tell me in da reviews! Thank you for reading my story and now GO REVIEW IT NAOUGH! (now.) :3