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This Chapter: Eliza wakes up and has an interesting discussion with a certain green-eyed girl named Lili. Sarcasm, mild annoyance, vague explanations here and there, name-dropping for later characters... all aboard S.S. Plot.
Stars in Dystopia
Part 1: Chapter 2
Learning
There was a startled yelp as Elizabeta shot awake. Panting, she raised her shaking hands to her face, staring at them breathlessly. She clenched and unclenched her fists, turning them over. Raising them closer to her face, she sat up, staring at them. They were clean of her blood.
Thank god.
There was some shifting around as someone sat up, smoothed their skirt, and muttered that they were going to go and report this development to the Council. Shaking, Eliza curled in on herself, clutching her arms. Noticing her apparel, she realized that she was wearing navy-colored leggings and a loose-fitting black t-shirt dress over them. Not her own clothes, which were probably ruined with her own sweat, blood, and injuries. She steadied her breathing, and looked up at the person still sitting beside her.
From her chair, the girl peered down at Elizabeta. She had short, cropped blonde hair with a dark cerulean ribbon tied into a limp bow on the left side of her head. Her wide emerald-green eyes blinked at Eliza nervously, and it did not escape her that the girl's eyes appeared to lack pupils. She was wearing an old-fashioned rogue-colored dress, and her hands were clasped together nervously. Leaning on the wall by the slightly propped-open door stood a stoic young man, who looked a bit like the girl, with emerald-green eyes and chin-length blond hair, but he wore a dark green trench coat matching his eyes, brown military pants, and was polishing an old rifle. He glanced up at her for a few seconds before loosing interest and glancing back down at his work. Eliza looked back to the girl, who quietly spoke.
"How are you feeling?"
"Mediocre. Who are you guys? What's going on?" Eliza responded, rubbing her wrists restlessly. "Where am I?
The green-eyed girl looked back at her. "First of all, my name is Lili Vogel, and I like to think of the man over there as my adoptive older brother, Vasch Zwingli."
Eliza looked Lili up and down with the new realization that she was one of the people that she had heard right before she woke up. "I heard you and someone else talking before I woke up," she murmured. "Lovina, I think her name was?"
Vasch looked up from his work again curiously to give Elizabeta a weird stare before resuming his polishing. Lili's cheeks pinkened and her hands shook as she stared at Eliza and spoke. "You heard that conversation?" Her voice came out as something between an embarrassed squeak and an apologetic tone. "I'm very, very sorry for Lovina's behavior and the fact that she called you a bitch. She acts like that towards everyone."
"I could have guessed," Eliza muttered sarcastically, under her breath, and sighed. "Going back to my original questions, what's going on and where am I?" Lili's tone changed as she spoke again.
"You're at Sastra, which is a bit of a refugee camp for people who survived the Disappearance. As for what's going on..." She glanced back up at Vasch shakily, before looking back to Elizabeta. "One of our guards, Gilbert Beilschmidt, found you being attacked in the forest. He scared your attacker off and brought you back to our camp, where you were mostly healed. You were pretty badly injured. To be honest, for awhile there, we weren't sure you were going to make it."
"I also could have guessed that last bit from your previous conversation," Eliza sighed again. Lili's cheeks brightened. "I'm sorry!"
"No, it's fine." Eliza rubbed her eyes and Lili bit at her lip.
"What's your name?"
"Elizabeta. Elizabeta Héderváry. You can call me Eliza, though." The words rolled off her tongue, and they felt right, unlike some of the other false thoughts swimming through her mind.
"Alright, Eliza," Lili glanced back up at her. "Do you remember what happened before you were attacked? What happened to you?"
Eliza thought for a moment, uneasily, before responding, her voice soft. "I don't really know. I basically just woke up somewhere in the forest, leaning against a tree, and wandered around like a nomad for a bit, before I heard footsteps behind me and someone unsheathing a sword." She bit her tongue, hissing in startled pain before she spoke again.
"I dodged the first swipe, and started running. I didn't know where I was going. I just needed to get away from them. I had run for awhile, and it had turned into this sick sort of cycle, no, game, where my attacker would catch up, and inflict some kind of damage, and I'd speed up, running away quicker. Eventually, I reached a clearing, and I thought that I had lost them. But I apparently was wrong, and they stabbed me in the gut and twisted the blade upwards. Eliza's words were bitter as she reached the end of her tale. "Before that, I remember nothing." Her words hung in the air like a soggy, wet blanket that darkened the mood.
Lili thought for a minute, rubbing her hands together and tapping her foot before she spoke again. "Having issues remembering after you wake up isn't really... rare... here." She spoke slowly, choosing her words carefully. "We have a few residents who had mild amnesia after they woke up. They vaguely remembered some things, but nothing big. The people who forgot things were the people who were asleep the longest, so, judging from how long you must have been asleep, I guess it's natural for you not to remember anything before this."
Eliza stared at Lili curiously. "What happened here? Is waking up in a forest with memory issues common here or something? What do you mean that it's natural for me to have forgotten?" Lili stifled a shaky laugh.
"I should probably explain the history of this place, right? The name of this land as a whole is Gaia. Years ago, the Disappearance happened. According to those of us who don't have any issues with their memory, people started randomly disappearing, and then the remaining residents of Gaia just... collectively fell asleep. Some of the people who don't have issues remembering were able to put together that everyone fell asleep for about a year or two before the first people woke up. We refer to these people as the Original Twelve, because they were the first people who woke up and they were the people who established Sastra. Eventually, others started waking up and they were either found or they found their way to Sastra." Lili looked at Eliza uneasily.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" Eliza questioned nervously, "I can tell that there's something else going on."
Lili took a deep breath before continuing. "Not many people "escaped" the Disappearance. A few years back, people stopped showing up, and eventually our magic-users did a test and determined that there wasn't any more survivors. But then, about a week ago, years later, Gil happened upon you, and not only you, but someone else who was attacking you, trying to kill you. That's two people at the same time, one of which was violent and escaped." Lili absently tucked a lock of hair that had fallen into her face behind her ear restlessly.
"The total timespan during which people woke up and came to Sastra was about a year. Months later, like I said earlier, our magic-users did a test and determined that there were no more survivors left in Gaia. The total survivor count amounted to about thirty-ish, if I remember correctly. That was a few years ago. In all that time, we had not found another survivor, let alone a violent one. Other than the occasional relatively harmless fight from time to time between a few residents here, we have never had any issue with violence at Sastra, let alone attempted homicide."
Her voice hissed frustratedly at the last few words as eyes darted around the room uncomfortably. "Do you understand?"
Elizabeta sat in silence for a full minute, trying to grasp what Lili had just said, before she replied. "Yeah. Mostly."
Lili breathed a sigh of relief before starting again. "Something else that you should probably know..."
Vasch interrupted her, pausing his work, his steely green eyes meeting Eliza's own hazel ones. Lili shot him a look of mild annoyance, before waving her hand as a signal for him to continue where she had left off.
"People here most of the time are pretty accepting, but don't be surprised if some resent you." He scanned Eliza up and down as he spoke, boredly, making her feel a little uncomfortable. "Some might see you as some poor soul who ran into misfortune, but others might see you as a harbinger of violence. Like my little sister so eloquently reiterated, we've never had problems like this before, so calling this subject a little controversial would be a major understatement. Don't hold it against the people here who resent you. They're just... scared, for lack of a better term."
"I see." Her voice dripped in mild sarcasm. "And what side are you two on?" Lili started to speak, but Vasch cut her off again.
"We're neutral. Why else would we have been assigned here to keep an eye on you?" Lili nodded in agreement, but not without shooting another look of mild annoyance at her adoptive older brother at being interrupted again. Vasch sent her back an equally annoyed look, and resumed polishing. Lili sighed in defeat and grabbed something off of the nightstand and leaned forward, handing Eliza a mug. She just stared at it.
"... what is this?"
Lili laughed a little, before responding sweetly. "It's a mug of broth. Drink it up."
Raising it to her lips, Elizabeta smelled the liquid. It smelled good, and she quickly took a sip. It tasted as good as it smelled, and she slowly drank it up. Glancing back at the emerald-eyed girl, she raised an eyebrow when she noticed that Lili was looking at her curiously.
"Do you like it?"
Eliza nodded slightly as she drank it. As she finished, Lili spoke again. "It should be good. Lovina's sister, Felicia, made it for you and one of our magic-users, Alice, added a little bit of healing magic in it so that you can fully recover even quicker. And Felicia's cooking is always good as it is, and while Alice's cooking on the other hand is positively atrocious, her magic is splendid, so..." She shrugged elegantly. "You get the idea."
After Eliza set the empty mug down, everything was quiet for a minute, the exception being Vasch's steady polishing, before Lovina returned, throwing the door completely open with a large bang, panting. Glancing quickly at Lili, Vasch, and lastly, Elizabeta, she spoke inbetween heavy breaths.
"Good to see that you've finished up your little discussion. Lili, did you get the information?" Lili nodded in response, and Lovina quickly picked up on it. "Good. Anyway, I reported to the Council that our little Sleeping Beauty was awake. Vasch, they've relieved you of your boring duty of waiting here with your sister, and you can return to whatever you'd normally do at this time in the-" She checked her watch. "-very late afternoon Almost evening, really. All they ask of you is that you don't repeat any of the information shared here to anyone else, they'll take care of distributing it after this meeting. They want to see our little Sleeping Beauty awake and in person, and Lili, you've been given permission to sit in on this Council meeting. Now come on, chop chop, you don't want to be late, do you?"
A/N: For the sake of this story, the only people who will retain their biological sibling relationships are the Germany brothers and the Italy sisters. This is why Lili points to Vasch as someone that she likes to think of being her adoptive older brother. The same thing will happen with America and Canada, Iceland and Norway, etc. They will be considered adoptive siblings in name only, but not biological siblings. One of the reasons for this is because of most sibling pairs in Hetalia not sharing the same last name, and honestly, author-chan doesn't really have the energy right now to dream up a reason for that. But to be honest, a lot of the sibling pairs in Hetalia were kind of adopted by their older siblings... so I guess it kind of fits?
Gaia, besides being the name of the land where this story takes place, is also the name of the Greek goddess of the Earth. As for the reason why Sastra was called Sastra, according to Google Translate, Latin for hope camp is spem castra, so I compounded the two and got Sastra. I'm sorry if the Latin is wrong, but I do not speak it so, like I said earlier, I went to google translate.
I made a couple references to Hungary, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein's histories if you didn't pick up on them. Virtual cookies for those of you who picked up on them!
So, school for me starts in a day. Yayyyy. Notice my enthusiastic sarcasm. (Help me.) I may have my hands tied for awhile because of this, so I apologize if I'm not able to update for awhile. On the brighter side, this chapter is a bit longer than the last one. Forgive me? Please feel free to review, and Hima bless the reviewers! Thanks for reading this chapter, and I hope you liked it! Ciao!
Next Chapter: Eliza attends a Council meeting where some verbal blows are delivered, suspicion reigns supreme, and more characters are introduced.
