Disclaimer: I do not own Hetalia or any of these characters.
001
It's Tuesday evening, and would be a rather unremarkable one at that, save for Gilbert's task. He had wanted to go retrieve the box sooner, but he'd be fired if had missed yet another day at work.
The circumstances, however grave and urgent, would do little to convince his boss, who forbid absence without leave. Maybe Gilbert would have gotten away with it if he didn't skip work due to a hangover the week earlier.
Thus, the idea of Matthew's letters and the treehouse weighed heavily on his mind all day, and he had found himself jittery, dazed, and unable to focus.
Gilbert walks too quickly through the woods, and his feet snag on brambles and roots. The air is crisp and fresh and, and leaves crunch beneath his boots. The sky is a dark cornflower blue at the top, melting into bleeding into scarlet at the horizon, where its colors become muddled with the red of the trees. Gilbert thinks bitterly to himself that this is the kind of day that Matthew would have enjoyed, the kind of day where he would drag Gilbert outside to take walks or look at stars with him.
After some time, Gilbert reaches the large clearing that where their treehouse is more or less situated. Nearby, there is a small trickle of a stream.
He remembers when he and Matthew found he treehouse there. In all honesty, it was less a treehouse than a three-sided box built between some trees and raised a foot or so above the ground. They had found it slightly rotten and very abandoned, with no indication of its origins. Matthew had insisted that they fix it up, so he and Gilbert had dragged planks and nails and paint into the middle of the woods in an old childrens' wagon and stayed until it was almost dark repairing the stupid thing. The treehouse is ample space for children to play in, and is just big enough for Gilbert and Matthew to sit comfortably (although very close together), and one cardboard box that once held a colored inkjet printer.
They tended to use the treehouse to wait out rain and temporarily store their things during excursions to the woods.
Gilbert steps onto the rock he moved to the base of one tree when Matthew insisted that they needed some sort of "stepping stone" to aid in getting into the treehouse. He hoists himself up and sits crosslegged on the slightly dusty wooden floor.
Sure enough, inside the printer box, there's a tin that once held some sort of holiday cookies that one often gifts to their coworkers or buys for the office to "enjoy" as a formality.
He finds a messy stack of assorted papers. At first glance, he can see sheets torn from notebooks, index cards, printer paper, the backs of discarded printouts, and even a napkin. Flipping through them, he notices that Matthew took the time to put them in chronological order, with the oldest on top.
So, Gilbert sets the box next to him, and takes out the first letter, a sheet of paper ripped out of a medium-smallish, nonstandard sized spiral bound notebook probably meant to be used as a planner folded together. He unfolds it and begins to read.
01.01.2012
Dear Gilbert,
I hope you had a nice time at that party last night. I can't say I enjoyed it terribly, but it was more fun than I had expected. To be honest, I don't remember very much of what happened towards the end.
Today morning I woke up on Alfred's couch with a hangover and my entire almost-full package of cigarettes missing. The thermostat was somehow off, and the room was icy and blue and the air was still heavy with the aroma of champagne and sweat. Alfred was still completely unconscious on the floor of the upstairs hallway, curled up and shivering is his alcohol induced coma with his glasses on the floor a few feet away, so I dragged him into his bed and put two covers over him and left his eyeglasses and a glass of water on the nightstand, despite the fact that he will neither drink the water or give two shits over the fact that I probably saved him from dying some sort of hypothermia-related complications/stumbling around blindly under the influence of alcohol.
So I was more or less alone with a headache.
Dear God, Gilbert. I hope you didn't try drive home last night. But you haven't called so I can't be sure.
I wonder if I'm even on your mind at all. Or anyone's mind at all.
But I doubt it, I really do.
Anyway, I managed to get home safely some hours later, although in a slightly dazed state, in case you're wondering. Maybe you aren't. But I still can't help but to wonder about you.
I feel sort of empty at times like this. It's like a hollow coldness in my chest that only hot soup can fill up for a little while.
I think I'm done, Gilbert. I want to die sometime soon, but I'll write you daily until then. Maybe I'll tell you why when my head doesn't hurt so much.
I don't think I'll change my mind.
Yours truly,
Matthew.
At this point, it is almost dark and Gilbert can feel a lump forming in his throat. He refolds the paper, and replaces it. Tucking the tin under his arm, he hurriedly begins his way back home, draining his cell phone's battery to use its light.
Author's Note: Here is a little sketch I did of how I imagined Matthew and Gilbert's treehouse to look like (no spaces in URL): [ sta. sh/01pqu72d1j68]
Most of this story will be narrated in Matthew's letters.
Thank you for reading. Please feel free to leave me your thoughts in a review.