DISCLAIMER: Hetalia: Axis Powers – Hidekaz Himaruya

SNOW WHITE, BLOOD RED

ONE

MATTHEW

My footsteps crunch loudly in the silence, sinking in fresh snow. It's a bright night. Ice-crystals glisten as they reflect the red glow of a pregnant moon. Blood moons are very bad-luck, they say, and I believe it. My twin brother is lying on his death-bed in my cousin's tiny thatched cottage. His fiancé—a man I love and respect—warned me not to leave the cottage tonight, not to venture alone into the forest, but what choice do I have? Al will die without medicine made from dragon's kiss, and dragon's kiss only grows at the roots of the mountain.

The trek is long, but easy. Moonlight bathes the path, unhindered by skeletal, sleeping trees, rendering my lantern unnecessary, but I clutch it tight nonetheless. The forest is dangerous on a midwinter's night, too many empty bellies and starving eyes. An owl hoots and I flinch. Arthur told me once that true bravery is when you persevere even when you're most afraid, and if that's true than I am very brave, because tonight I am very afraid. My heart is beating hard as my legs carry me into the mountain's shadow. I've never trekked the forest at night before, never this far, and never by the light of an odious blood moon. Fortunately, the dragon's kiss is easy to spot. The stalks grow straight up through the snow. The way it haphazardly litters the forest floor, red and unbending—a hardy weed—makes it look like a field on fire. I kneel in the middle of it and begin pulling, careful not to break the stalks and lose the juice. I yank with both hands, ripping the plants up by the roots and lay them one-by-one into the basket. The medicine that Al needs requires a large number of stalks to supply a small volume of juice. It takes me a long time to collect enough. I work until I'm breathless and red-palmed, the stalks staining my hands. I don't even realize that I'm talking to myself, babbling—"It's okay, Al, you're going to be okay, I'll be back soon."—until I start to sing.

It's a melodious song that I sing without understanding the words. Francis taught it to me years ago when he first came to our village. It's in a foreign-tongue that I don't speak, but I've memorized the lyrics. Francis used to sing Al and I to sleep when we were a lot younger, long before he and Arthur were engaged. It's a sad song, I think, a ballad of lost love, but the familiarity of it and the sound of my own voice quiets my nerves.

It's a long, slow song, and before I can finish a low growling interrupts.

Startled, I leap up and whip my head from side-to-side, searching for the growl's source. Despite the barren forest, I don't immediately spot him; not until he moves. He's a huge white wolf—the biggest wolf I've ever seen, the size of a stout mountain pony. White coat, white claws, white teeth, so white the snow camouflages his whole body. All but his eyes, which are red. Snow white, blood red. That's what he is, and he's looking at me like I'm something he wants to devour.

We stare at each other for a moment, frozen, then I take a frightened step back and immediately wish that I hadn't. The wolf lunges at me. I don't even have time to scream before he crashes into me, knocking me off my feet. On my back in the snow, I lie petrified beneath his heavy weight, his beastly strength.

I'm going to die, I think briefly. Then, sadly: Al's going to die.

I close my eyes, but not before a tear squeezes out. It rolls down my cheek, but doesn't fall.

A warm, wet sensation touches my face, tasting the tear. It feels like—saliva.

I open my eyes and look up into the angular, red-eyed, snow-white face of a man. A man who has just licked my face.

I'm stunned speechless. My eyes go wide in shock and my body starts to tremble, but no sounds escape me.

The man, too, is silent. He's big and tall, like the wolf, and he's strong. He pushes down on my forearms with bruising firmness, straddling me, letting his nude weight pin me under him. My heart is racing as he leans down and smells me, pressing his nose to the underside of my chin, my neck. It's very wolfish, the intrusive way he touches me. There is nothing soft or courteous about this man. There is nothing tame. When he lifts his head, he shows his teeth—sharp canine teeth—and lets me hear his growl. It's a low, throbbing sound born in the base of his throat. I don't know what it means. I don't know what he wants from me, this wild animal in human-form, so I bow my head, too timid to keep eye-contact with him. The growl morphs into a satisfied rumble.

Then he swoops down without provocation and sinks his teeth into my neck.

Finally, I scream. My whole body jolts and arches against him, and my voice breaks the silence of the forest.

Then I faint.

The wolf is gone when I wake, gone without a trace. It makes me wonder if the whole experience wasn't a fever-dream or a hallucination—perhaps I have caught the sleeping sickness—but the puncture wounds in my neck prove it's not.

I've been bitten. But by what, I don't know.

Shivering, I slowly ease myself to my feet. I refasten my cape and collect the basket filled with red dragon's kiss and begin to walk. At first, it's directionless. I'm walking because I don't want to be still. I feel so exposed. But my pace quickens when I spot the footpath, which leads back through the forest to the village. I hadn't realized I'd strayed so far from it as I foraged. I've been warned often by Francis never to stray from the path. Now I know why.

It's almost dawn when I reach the cottage, nestled beneath of copse of old, crooked pine trees at the edge of the village. Al's time limit is approaching fast. Arthur knows this, which is why he doesn't yell or scold or question me when I enter, cold as ice and covered in it. He gives me a loaded look and wordlessly takes the basket of dragon's kiss, then sets to work brewing a potion to heal Al's sickness. I intend to aid him, but my legs suddenly lock and I stumble, grabbing the table for support. My whole body is stiff with cold and aches in exhaustion. Francis is at my side in a single bound, one hand pressed to my back, the other looping under my knees. My cousin's fiancé is a lot stronger than his elegant figure suggests. He lifts me effortlessly up into the cradle of his arms and carries me into the bedroom that Al and I share. I'm grateful, because I don't think I could have walked another step on my own.

"You're cold as snow," he says, touching his hand to my cheek. My eyelids are heavy. "Mathieu?"

"I'm... tired," I whisper.

"Yes," he replies gently. "Mathieu, you're—"

He stops. He kneels down in front of me, looking incredulous, as if he can sense that something is wrong. His unblinking gaze searches my face for a sign before his eyes land on my neck. It's covered by the red cape, which I pull tighter around myself, shivering, but somehow he knows what I'm hiding.

"Sleep," he says, easing me down, covering me with a heavy quilt.

"Al?" I ask.

Francis smiles, but it's wan. "He'll be alright, thanks to you. You've done a brave thing, Mathieu. Now sleep."

I want to fight the fatigue that seeps through me. In my confusion, I want to tell Francis about the white wolf and ask him what he knows, but sleep overwhelms me and I welcome it. The last thing I feel is Francis' fingers on my neck, untying my cape, and the last thing I hear is his whispered gasp:

"Gods, no!"

ONE MONTH LATER

An entire moon-cycle passes before I see the white wolf again.

I'm in the vegetable garden when it happens. Francis and Arthur are visiting the village apothecary—Arthur is likely arguing with the village apothecary—and Al, healthy and happy, is hunting pheasant in the forest. I'm alone, but I'm not afraid. It's been a month since the events of that night, and my rational mind has managed to explain the unexplainable. I awoke the following morning with a raging fever, which I blamed for the wolf-man I'd met that night. And once the bite mark had lost its shape to healing and looked like any other bruise, I was finally able to stop staring at it and convince myself it was nothing but a souvenir of fainting. So when a very tall, very white stranger appears at the edge of the forest, I don't immediately panic. Not until he draws closer and I see the vibrant blood-red of his eyes. Then my heart jumps into my throat, strangling any cry for help. I think of Al and his shotgun creeping somewhere in the forest, and maybe the stranger—the wolf—senses this, because at the precise moment I open my mouth to scream, he steps forward and says:

"Don't scream."

His voice is low and raspy, a throaty growl. It sounds a little like someone with laryngitis, or someone who's smoked too much pipe-weed, or someone who hasn't used his human-voice in a very long time.

"Matthew," he growls, "that's your name." It's a fact, not a question. It's something that he's proud to know without my telling him.

"You bit me," I say, bewildered—a month of rationale gone.

"Yes," he confirms, advancing on me with purpose. He crushes the winter foliage by the force of his heavy footsteps. He's careless and reckless. He's not wearing shoes, but at least he's wearing a tattered, ill-fitting shirt and trousers. Not naked skin, not fur.

"Why?" I ask, stepping back in retreat.

He's eager, and his reply is allusive. "I bit you. I marked you. You belong to me now," he says, raising more questions than he answers.

My voice trembles when I say: "I-I-I—I don't."

I'm almost at the cottage threshold now. A single step and I'll be inside. I take it and feel immeasurable relief as my boots touch the woven mat. I'm safe now. Arthur has warded the cottage with faerie spells to guard us. No one, nothing—no man or creature or hybrid—that intends to hurt me can enter the cottage.

I feel confident as I start to close the door, but the wolf grabs it. I try to push, but he's inhumanly strong. He says:

"Gilbert, that's my name."

And he steps inside.