Author's Notes: I am not very familiar with Netherlands's personality, so please forgive me if he seems out-of-character. I haven't really seen much of him, so I just tried to make a personality based on Himaruya's description. There will also be OCs in this chapter although they are posthumous characters.
Name Guide: Alaric - Germania, Silvia - Etruria, Mariazinha - Portugal
Place Name Guide: Tysk - Germany; Norden - Nordic Countries/Scandinavia and Greenland
Lovino swung his battle axe with practiced grace, the weapon like an extension of himself. The sharpened blade cut neatly through the straw dummy's torso as easily as a sickle through a field of grain. He lifted the battle axe high above his head and brought it down on the dismembered dummy, again and again, until all that remained was a shower of fine straw. Panting, he whirled, swinging the axe in a wide arc. It severed the second dummy's waist completely from sheer momentum. The dummy's upper half had barely touched the ground when he proceeded to hack it into the tiniest pieces he could manage.
Still not contented, he flipped the battle axe and pounded the butt of the shaft against the head of a third dummy repeatedly, ineffectually deforming it. He stopped, realizing he wasn't accomplishing anything, and neatly split the dummy down the middle with a vicious overhead strike.
"Got a problem, kid?" he heard Zio Lars say from his usual spot near the door.
Lovino ignored his uncle and let the head of his axe hit the ground with a metallic thud. He let it drag across the cobblestones as he made his way to the fountain to wash his hands and face.
"You know, dulling your axe won't make Antonio stop giving you lessons," Zio Lars said as he sharpened his own weapon with a whetstone. "He'll just have it sharpened again."
Lovino continued to ignore his uncle. Instead, he dipped his arms up to his elbows in the cool water. It felt good on his cracked palms, callused from six years of handling weapons on an almost daily basis.
"Look, kid," Zio Lars said with an exasperated tone, "I probably hate your father more than you do, but even I see that he has a point with all this training."
Leaving his axe where he had dropped it near the fountain, Lovino stomped inside the house. He didn't like training anymore; he'd enjoyed it at first, but it took up most of the hours he didn't spend having lessons with tutors, leaving him tired and with very little time to do much else afterwards. By comparison, Feliciana had plenty of spare time to squander on leisurely activities like painting, singing or horseback riding.
It was so unfair. They were twins. They were supposed to be the same, yet they were treated so differently.
Over the years, he had begun to notice how he and Feliciana differed more than he had first thought. Nonno was wrong; they weren't mirrors of each other, even physically. His hair was darker, more subdued in colour while Feliciana's was lighter, with a fiery vibrancy. Feliciana's eyes were a pure, clear golden brown the colour of honey while his were dirtied by streaks of green and darker brown. Years of exposure to sunlight had tanned his skin while Feliciana's complexion remained creamy. Even the curls on their hair grew in different directions with his growing high on the right while Feliciana's grew low on the left.
They were different, but they were supposed to be the same. They had the same parents, but Feliciana was destined to be queen while his place was beneath her as her loyal guard. It wasn't fair.
He punched the wall in anger, only managing to further hurt his hands.
"What's the matter, Lovi?" Nonno's voice startled him.
He hadn't realized that he had wandered into the drawing room where Nonno Romulus had been painting by the window. Embarrassed, he looked away and crossed his arms over his chest so Nonno wouldn't see that he had skinned his knuckles.
"Nothing," he replied curtly.
"Oh, okay, then," Nonno said before going back to painting.
A sudden anger flared within Lovino. These days, nobody seemed to care about what he felt anymore.
"I don't want to train anymore," he said softly, his voice betraying his anger.
Nonno stopped painting and looked at him. "Why don't you want to train?" he asked, setting his palette and brush aside.
"Because I don't want to anymore," Lovino replied, not wanting to admit that he was jealous of his sister. "Because I'm tired and I want to do other things."
"Then, no, you can't stop." Nonno's words made Lovino's entire body numb.
"What?" he exclaimed when he regained control of his tongue. "What do you mean I can't stop?"
Nonno picked up his palette and continued to paint likenesses of the tomatoes outside the window, intent on capturing the way the sun shone against them.
"This is so unfair!" Lovino continued to rage. "If it was Feli, you'd probably have let her."
Nonno set aside his brush and palette once more. "So you're jealous of your sister," he said with neither anger nor disappointment. "That's why you want to stop training."
"And why shouldn't I be?" Lovino asked angrily. "You all treat her better than you treat me. She's going to be queen someday and I only get to be her guard. I'm not even allowed to get married. I don't even get to choose what I want to do."
"And you think your sister chose to be queen?" Nonno asked calmly.
Lovino quieted down; he hadn't even thought about that.
"You see, Lovino," Nonno said, putting a comforting hand on his forearm, "I don't think you quite understand what being queen entails. It's not just about meeting people and signing documents. It involves a lot of long, boring work, too, and plenty of people could become her enemy." Nonno smoothed back Lovino's hair from his eyes. "That's where you come in. It's your job to protect her.
Lovino looked at Nonno, hurt still in his eyes. "But why do I have to be the protector? Why can't I be king, so then, I could protect myself and Feli wouldn't have to do anything but paint and sing and dance all day?"
Nonno shook his head. "I don't think I've ever told you about how our Empire was founded."
Lovino shook his head and leaned against the wall.
"Long ago, before the walls of our Kingdom even existed, there was a king," Nonno began. "The king had two sons, both young and strong and full of ambition. Now, large and brutish men from the North often rode down to attack and raid the king's people, so they lived in fear. So the king's two sons decided that they would build a wall to keep the Northmen away." Nonno's voice grew solemn. "But there was violence in the brothers' hearts and they waged war with one another, each wanting to be solely credited for the construction of the wall. In the end, one brother ended up killing the other." For a moment, Nonno was silent. "The remaining brother, Remus, for whom our Kingdom is named, realized the gravity of what he had done and became afraid of his own destructive nature. So, instead of ruling the Kingdom himself, he crowned his younger sister, Julia, queen, making a law that allowed her children to carry her last name instead of their father's, and chose to become her loyal protector. The Kingdom prospered and, from then on, it is the women who had ruled in Remuzzia and all the provinces that chose to follow it while their older brothers protected them from their enemies."
"If that is so, why are you king?" Lovino asked, his anger having somewhat subsided.
Nonno was silent, a certain sadness settling on his features. "Because I was a failure," he whispered after a while.
"How?" asked Lovino, curious.
Nonno pointed towards a portrait of a woman with vibrant brown hair and honey-gold eyes filled with patience and understanding. "You see her?" he asked. "She was my younger sister. Her name was Silvia."
"What happened to her?" Lovino couldn't resist asking; he had always wondered who that woman was, but nobody had answered his questions.
"She was killed," Nonno said softly. "By the Tyskian Prince, Alaric Beilschmidt, and I wasn't strong enough to protect her."
Lovino swallowed and clenched his fists.
"I had waged war against Tysk, because I was young and foolish," Nonno continued, looking at his hands as if remembering something he had held so long ago. "I had held her as she died. If I hadn't been so stupid and started that war, she probably would have never been taken hostage and she'd probably still be alive today."
"Nonno, you don't have to go on," Lovino said comfortingly, placing a hand on his grandfather's shoulder.
"I don't want you to fail like your father and I did," Nonno said, not seeming to have heard him or felt his hand.
Lovino drew his hand back, his whole body going numb again.
Nonno pointed to another painting, this time, of Papa when he was young and a girl with spirited green eyes and a cunning smile. "She's your Zia Mariazinha. She died when she was only seventeen-years-old. She had always been too spirited, not knowing when to be afraid." His voice cracked as he spoke as if he was on the verge of tears. "She had made your Papa wage war on Norden. She rode into battle herself, although I had warned her not to. Nothing could really stop Mariazinha when she had set her mind on something." Nonno smiled, but, to Lovino, it looked sad and broken. "She was killed in Norden. It took us days to recover her body and, when we got her back, she was covered in bruises as if she had been beaten to death. Your Papa blamed himself. He said it was his fault she got captured, because he couldn't defend her."
Lovino stood silently, feeling a lump forming in his throat.
"You cannot fail, Lovino," Nonno told him softly. "Your sister… she'd be better at ruling than you would ever be, because violence has not touched her heart, but she wouldn't survive without you." He turned in his chair so that he faced Lovino. "Remuzzia has many enemies and it hasn't gone beyond their notice that the people are discontent because a queen of Vargas blood had not sat on the throne for two generations. They think our House had grown weak and, sometimes, I think that they are right." Nonno's voice bore a tinge of shame. "But you have the chance to prove them wrong. Be strong enough so that your sister may live. Don't fail."
Lovino forced down the lump in his throat and willed his tongue to move. "I won't fail, Nonno," he managed to say.
Suddenly, Feliciana burst through the doors, pushing a serving cart. Cheerfully, she brought the cart to Nonno and Lovino and began pouring them drinks. Afterwards, she removed the cover of a pot with a flourish revealing a delicious-looking, tomato-based soup.
"I made gazpacho with Papa," she announced happily as she began serving three bowls.
Lovino grimaced, feeling somewhat ashamed on the inside; he couldn't believe that he had actually been jealous enough to hate his sister.
"Fratello, you're hurt!" Feliciana said, noticing his skinned knuckles as she handed him his bowl. "Wait right here. I'll go get some bandages."
As soon as she was out the door, Zio Lars walked in, Lovino's battle axe resting over his shoulder. Roughly, he shoved it into the boy's hands, almost as if he was angry, but did not bear even a hint of irritation. He towered over Lovino, his eyes looking down upon the child expectantly.
"I hope that you've been reminded of the exact reason why you have to train," he said. "Yeah, I've been listening," he added when he saw his nephew's stunned expression. "You know, I'll die for your Mamma if that's what it takes to keep her safe," he said in a gentler voice than Lovino had ever heard him use. "I was wondering if you'd do the same for your sister."
Lovino adjusted his grip on his axe and nodded. He'd do anything necessary to keep Feliciana safe. He wasn't going to go back on the promise he had made to her so many years ago.
More Author's Notes: I like to make most of my OCs countries as well since putting in a random human to be part of their family seems kind of weird to me. Etruria is the name of the an ancient civilization in what is now modern Italy. In this story, Spain and Portugal's mother would be Iberia, but she is dead and does not play any significant role. Gazpacho is a Spanish tomato-based soup commonly eaten during the summer.
The story of Remuzzia's founding is mine, but it is based on the original story of Romulus and Remus, altered to suit my needs.
Additional Information: Germania's human name was a choice between "Alaric" and "Odoacer", both famous Germanic "barbarian" kings who had fought against Rome with varying degrees of success. "Alaric" just looked less ancient. I am aware that "Silvia" is a Latin not an Etruscan name, but I chose it because Rhea Silvia was the name of Romulus and Remus's mother. "Mariazinha" is the Portuguese diminutive form of the name "Maria".
"Tysk" is derived from "Tyskland", the Danish, Swedish and Norwegian name for Germany which comes from the Old High German "diutisc" which is the root of the word "Deutsch". "Norden" is the German word for "north" and also what Scandinavia is occasionally known as. Basically, I named each in the other's language.