DISCLAIMER: I may be inundated with Hetalia hand towels but in no way to I own the franchise.
Oh my gosh I am so sorry I haven't updated for ages… basically I hecked up and lost the use of my laptop, but it's all good now so woo
I hope I will be able to post chapters more regularly, but shdiosdjdio life and gaming and novel require me to do things
I have a question; would you guys prefer an aspect of romance in this fanfic? Or should I just keep to this kind of stuff?
Please review if you liked this chapter, if you don't, tell me why, and I will promise to post more!
"I told you five minutes ago, he's in the nurses' office. Maybe you should find the grace to fetch him yourself."
Ivan couldn't find the courtesy to look up from his meal, instead just grunting at the Estonian who had so kindly informed him of the whereabouts of possible the most irritating life form he'd ever encountered. Although, at the moment, Eduard was proving to be the primary contender for this role, as he didn't seem to recall the rule about not mentioning the German.
The mess hall, in all its candlelit, rickety glory, was only half full, considering most of the men were already asleep. Ivan and his gang had spent the rest of the day off, coaching a certain new member of the gang, putting together everything they knew about the camp in order to keep him out of trouble. Ivan had only participated because the Warden had very sharply told him he had to, and to listen in on the others to see if they knew anything he didn't. It was unlikely; he'd been there the longest, but sometimes things circulated in the lower groups that didn't always reach him in their original form.
"So now you're ignoring me." Eduard's voice sounded distant, and, as usual, irritatingly nasal. "Raivis, he's ignoring me."
Ivan continued to chew his oatmeal in a placid manner, eyes averted and focused on a knot in the wood of the rickety table they were sat at. As far as he knew, at around midmorning, Gilbert had taken it upon himself to introduce his stomach to the oatmeal that each man received in the morning. As a result, the meal had quickly returned in a less solid manner, and Tino the Self-Proclaimed Hero had declared he was not fit to work for the rest of the day.
"Sh'tup 'dwrd." Ivan growled through a mouthful of oatmeal, scraping his tiny spoon around the bowl in the hope that the ceramic would magically turn into more food. They barely ate enough food to fill the belly of the smallest squealer; Ivan could have easily eaten three times the amount of what they were given each day, just as one meal.
Eduard waited with the patience only a man of cynicism bates his breath with, before addressing his less sarcastically able companion. "Say, Ivan, you haven't been in the nurses' office yet, have you?"
The nurses' office was the station for all minor wounds, headaches, and faked illnesses, where men would go to get some rest or, most likely slack off work. It was a small, squat building near the Warden's office, and had an almost constant stream of men going through it. It was, as he recalled, where Toris worked, tending the men who were too injured to work, but too healthy to abandon. It was an easy job, Toris claimed he had previously been a medic before he was sent to the camp, but few managed to worm their way into working there. Ivan had certainly never tried.
"Once." He muttered, placing his spoon back into his pocket, and sliding the now completely clean bowl over to Raivis. "Go."
Raivis, as commanded, stood up, taking the bowl with him. He deposited it where all the other bowls were kept; in stacks in front of the serving station, then left the mess hall after glancing once at Eduard.
"Once?" Ivan hated it that whenever Eduard talked to him, he was always suppressing a chuckle. "What for? A broken nail?"
"I broke a man's jaw." Ivan stated bluntly, enjoying the way the smaller man's smirk lessened a little when he realised Ivan himself had not been the one injured. "They wanted me to apologise."
"And did you?" Eduard asked, bright magpie eyes trained keenly on him. Eduard was responsible for the majority of the rumours that circulated around the camp, extracting minute pieces of information from the other men which he then retained and 'let slip' when something concerning said information had arisen.
Ivan looked up at him sourly. "No."
Eduard slumped in his seat, chin and mouth lost in his freshly mended collar. Since he had started to use the opportunities trade opened to stay afloat, his clothes were always mended for him by various other gang members who had enough fingers to stitch reasonably well. Many other things were done for him; an extra lump of bread appeared on his bunk every morning, his boots were always present and completely dry after parades, he even looked cleaner than the majority of them. That was the one thing Ivan envied about him; his ways of swaying people into thinking they were benefitting themselves, when really they were spoon feeding him everything he needed to survive.
"You know, I remember when I first came here," Eduard smiled thinly at him. "When I was transferred into your gang because some idiot Finn ratted on me for some reason- you never used to speak at all."
Ivan raised his eyebrows, but allowed Eduard to continue speaking, he was curious as to why this topic of conversation was being brought up. The man never said anything without an ulterior motive, everything was precisely planned and timed in order for Eduard to get the best of what he wanted, which at the moment seemed to be an emotional response from Ivan. So far, it was not working too well.
"I remember you standing there, ushering all the new arrivals through." Eduard continued, still smiling that same, undermining smile. "You didn't look at them; you just tapped each man on the shoulder to say you accepted his place in the gang. You didn't even seem to be conscious of what you were doing, it was just 'tap, go', and then you'd move onto the next man." He chuckled quietly, and Ivan actually began to listen to him, concerned as to where this story was going.
"You didn't seem to like touching the men; your hand recoiled like you were touching a corpse." Eduard began to fiddle with the ends of his tattered scarf, but always kept his eyes fixed on Ivan. He always found it mind numbingly uncomfortable that Eduard wasn't afraid of staring a man down like he was. "It's different now though, isn't it?"
Ivan blinked in surprise, but didn't say anything.
Eduard smiled that lazy, calculating smile of his, the one he did when he had reached the conclusive moment of his stories. "You seem to like touching that Beilschmidt fellow. You push and pull him around like a little baby goat, wrapping his feet, making sure he eats and sleeps; you even introduced him verbally to the entire gang, which I recall for the previous new arrival was not so sincere. Is the Tin Man's heart finally thawing out? Or is it true that you are a sadistic demon, and your real motive is to devour the young German's soul?"
Ivan looked appalled. Eduard continued to smile. It wasn't true; nothing he ever said was the entire truth, even when he was speaking with Raivis. He lived atop a tree spun with lies and half-revealed truths, the reason he'd been sent to the camp was hardly an honest condemnation, if such a thing existed. He was only showing Gilbert through the ropes, teaching him how to survive for more than a week so that he didn't have to apologise to the Warden or bury the resulting body. He was just doing his job, nothing more. Although, being a sadistic demon sounded a little better, but the flattery, if it indeed was flattery, would do Ivan no good if he responded to it.
"Just for a few days," Ivan was fighting to keep his tone level and calm, whilst Eduard's eyes glittered behind his spectacles. "So he doesn't die in the winter."
Eduard tipped his head to one side and leaned forward, just as Raivis was returning from whatever venture he had been on. "We keep secrets Ivan." His voice was naught but a whisper, but the words rang like screams in his head. "Even to ourselves."
Ivan was eager to stand up and thump Eduard until he cracked, and would have probably done so if Raivis hadn't sat beside his friend with a shy smile and a wary look at Ivan. "They want us on the wall." The Latvian mumbled to Eduard as he half-heartedly brushed the snow off his many layers of clothes. Eduard traded cigarettes and shrapnel for clothes, and swaddled Raivis in all the ones that didn't fit him or didn't 'suit him'. Eduard took pride in his looks, more so than most and it wasn't unusual to see him eyeing up another man's coat or turning his nose up at one he was offered.
Ivan acknowledged Raivis' mutterings with a curt nod, stood up, yanked rags over his mouth and left the mess hall. If had been observant, he would have noticed the closeness in which Eduard and Raivis sat, and the care that Eduard enforced into his shaking hand to gently press a half loaf of bread into the Latvian's mittened hand. However, he cared not for the actions of others, and currently, the wellbeing of the Estonian, so ploughed through the snow to the wall. Men who were already working had been let off for a few minutes break, and were perched on the ladders like gaunt, tattered birds.
The ladders; stark, black and painfully rickety, made Ivan's stomach lurch just by looking at them. He knew it would be fine when he had ascended and had absorbed himself in the world of bricklaying, but the climbing and balancing was the part he dreaded. He saw Toris, obviously on a day off from the nurses' office, lounging seven feet up on a ladder that swayed dangerously every time he laughed at whatever Tino was rambling on about. A couple of the other men looked uneasy about climbing the ladders, but only Ivan caught Tino's amusement.
"S'matter, Tin Man?" Tino called. "How come you can handle Germans but you can't handle a ladder?" Every man who was working on the wall turned to face him, but Ivan kept his head down and trudged over to his ladder, picking up the wooden pail of freshly turned cement and the only trowel that the gang had not yet broken. Tino seemed to be a little more intellectually active this morning, as when he realised Ivan was less in the mood as he ever was to be a source of entertainment, he launched into a story concerning a heavily tattooed Lithuanian in another gang. Ivan sighed in relief. He could ignore them until their midday break.
Placing his feet carefully on each rung of the ladder, he gripped the pail tightly and focused on the lines of bricks directly in front of him. Luckily, some other man had been up the ladder already, so the ice that usually formed on each rung had been scraped off by boots. He ascended quicker than usual, set his pail on top of the bricks he'd laid yesterday, and reached for a brick. The bricks were in sacks suspended from hooks hammered between layers of bricks; a new hook had to be hammered in for every ten layers of bricks, and the sacks had to be checked in case they split. That was squealer work; it was the only work they ever did well, and the only thing they did that benefitted him. At least it kept them occupied, unlike the wood collecting gangs where the squealers just got lost or picked off by bears.
After about an hour and a half, when Ivan was well into his third layer and fourth pail of cement, Tino decided it was the time to continue irking Ivan. "I can never remember what you got sent in for." He mused slightly louder than what would normally be considered a musing tone, in order for all the men working on the wall to hear.
Ivan had been so absorbed in his work, that when he raised his head to answer Tino, he was genuinely unaware of Tino's knowing smirk. "I was transferred." He said slowly, pausing to lay his trowel on top of the freshly laid line of bricks. "You know that."
Tino sighed in mock exasperation. "Yes, I know that, I meant what did you get sent in for in the first place."
Even the chatting Estonians fell silent. Every man who was up a ladder or mixing cement stopped what they were doing to listen. The only sound was the slight hiss of the falling snow, and the scrape of metal on brick as Ivan ran his trowel along the top of the wall to remove any loose bits of cement. In the distance, the group of gangs who were in charge of collecting the wood were returning, shouting jokes and insults at each other as they hauled the sacks of wood up to the single boiler room. Everyone's eyes were trained on Ivan, waiting with bated breath to hear what he said. Most of them, well, the ones who had any sense, knew Ivan would probably ignore them and continue laying bricks, but Tino's eyes were bright with expectancy as the pause dragged on and on.
Ivan opened his mouth to say something, to tell them to stop gaping and to get on with their work. But some of the faces, the upturned faces of the squealers with eyes like soup plates, the faces of the older and more rugged men who were waiting patiently to hear the story they had heard many times before, made Ivan want to tell them. He wanted to see their faces widen in awe, disgust and surprise as he retold his story as he had done hundreds of times before to hundreds of men. It wouldn't hurt too much, to use his vocal skills to the fullest extent to give these men what they wanted.
"I…" He began, setting his trowel down gently again and turning slightly to face them. There was only a certain amount of turning on a ladder his mentality could take, and he could just manage to twist his neck and shoulders around awkwardly so he wouldn't be talking to the bricks. Well, some of the men were no better off than the bricks, but at least some of them occasionally responded to what he said.
Tino had leaned forward so he was almost hanging off his ladder, his round face aglow with amusement. He loved to make Ivan explain things in front of the whole gang, to watch the Russian fumble with his words like he fumbled with his foot rags on a colder-than-usual morning. He was patient though, which was his saving grace at that moment, as Ivan took it upon himself to grasp for words and continue to speak.
"I used to fight in the army." Ivan had no idea why he was doing this, he just hoped it wasn't going to be the topic of conversation between every gang for the following nine weeks, as it had been the last time he'd cared to explain his abrupt exit from normal life. "Then I turned my gun on them."
Ivan began to descend the ladder as the silence continued, the men still staring at him as if they were expecting him to launch into a ballad or dig out some deep poetry he had written about it. He was only interested in stating the facts, the bare minimum people needed to understand; there was no use adding detail or making the story sound more like a story. He had told them, they knew now, they could leave him alone. He looked up into the sky; saw a dim light that reminded him of the sun, its position alerting him that it was midday.
Midday was when they would receive their bread ration. Before, when the old Warden had run the camp, they would receive their bread rations at reveille, then would have cold oatmeal at midday, then at dusk they would heat up the remaining oatmeal and whatever vegetables they had and eat that. Now, however, they got the meal at reveille, the bread at midday, and meal and vegetable mush which, luckily, could just count as being lukewarm. It had been changed in order to give the men more energy during the day, so they wouldn't collapse in the snow on their fifth round of collecting wood, but all it really did was mess up their stomachs and prolong the hollow feeling inside them.
Ivan was not overly concerned about the bread, as he was gang leader, there would be shrine-like offerings of bread on his bunk when he returned in the evening, but he wanted to see if the new arrival had dragged himself out of the infirmary and if he was able for work again. Ivan had a shattered reputation to fix, and so far he wasn't doing too well at keeping his German 'child' out of the major danger areas in the camp.
Tino looked disappointed when Ivan picked up his pail, dumped it by the cement vat, and walked around the wall to the mess hall. "That it?" He called, asking the same question all the other men had been thinking for about ten minutes. The wind picked up, sweeping his light blonde hair over his face and spitting snow in his face, so he ducked his head and followed Ivan to the mess hall. As soon as he had left, the voices started up again, babbling in all manner of confused languages about what had just happened. Many of them had never heard Ivan even mention the fact that he had once been a normal man, so this was more information than they had ever received about Ivan before, except perhaps for his name. They needed not worry though; more information would soon be coming their way.
Ivan's eyes were turned up to the sky as he reached the mess hall, contrasting with his mostly hunched form. He'd never had bad posture before he entered the camp, but there was no-one, not even the Warden, that he'd stand up straight for. The sky was worryingly grey, blotting out the pale, cold disk that was the sun. Ivan had learned to tell the severity of blizzards by the colour of grey the clouds that held them were, and judging by its ominous slate colour, this cloud wasn't going to be moving from over their heads any time soon. It wasn't dark enough for the Warden to feel something akin to sympathy, so they would be going out to work for the following week, but it was severe enough for Ivan to remind himself to warn his gang about the increased likelihood of frostbite. Since they were laying bricks and keeping their fingers moving all the time, they need not fear of a finger dropping off, but it was the feet that required the most concern. Once one toe had got it, the entire foot was damned.
He hadn't waited to see the reactions of the eager faces waiting to hear what abominable tale he had to tell, but he knew they probably weren't awestruck or pale with horror. As soon as he had opened his mouth he had regretted it, and there had been no other way but to conclude it as quickly and suddenly as he could. It wasn't like he wanted to remember what had happened, he had enough trouble with his subconscious throwing up memories in the middle of the night, and he didn't need fifty men talking about it or asking questions about his ordeal. If, he was narcissistic enough to call it an ordeal. It seemed to him it was just life.
The mess hall was dimly lit; the squealer in charge of the candles was in the infirmary, so there was a single sputtering oil lamp which one of the more resourceful men had procured from somewhere. Ivan shook the snow out of his hair, stamped his boots on the floor and froze as he locked eyes with the only man sat in the entire hall.
Gilbert Beilschmidt was pale, paler than he had been yesterday, and was resting his chin on his palm like his neck had ceased to function. His form, which would have looked lean yesterday, looked thin and flimsy in the expanse of the hall, his limbs like twigs. His eyes were dull but still retained that odd colour, and he had unbuttoned his coat to mid- chest. Ivan also noticed that he was nursing a lump of bread slightly smaller than the average squealer's, and that it looked half-frozen and completely untouched.
"Beilschmidt." Ivan nodded sharply, striding across the hall to sit opposite him. Much to his general disgust, he had remembered the German's name, and he had deemed it socially appropriate at this moment to sit opposite him, like they were friends. Sometimes he didn't even understand himself.
"Your Russian oatmeal made me sick." Gilbert's voice was raspy and quiet, and Ivan realised with cruel approval that he was shaking. Good. He'd learned his lesson. Which lesson, he did not know, but one of the many ones he required to learn after his mistakes yesterday evening.
Ivan was not offended by his remark; Russian oatmeal made Russian men sick, but he was in no mood to pander him. "Get used to it. You eat it every morning and evening." Due Tino's question, he was in a considerably fouler mood than he would be on a regular Saturday afternoon, so his afternoon had quickly revealed itself to be full of conversation and work that he didn't want to do.
"What about the bread?" Beilschmidt was pushing it around the table, prodding the hard lump as if it was a corpse, and he was a crow. "Why can't we have it for every meal? It's a damn lot better than semi-dry slime."
Eduard would have commended the fact he knew what 'slime' was in Russian. Tino would have patted his shoulder and told him he would get used to it after a while. Ivan just stared blankly at him. Bread was to the gangs what targets were to the Kremlin; precious, precious things that could not just be procured out of nowhere.
"Slime," Ivan's eyes were bored, and he drawled out every word like he despised them as much as Gilbert. "Is cheaper than bread. Less money, more slime." Despite everything, he was finding it remarkably and painfully easy to converse with Gilbert.
"So less fucking bread." Gilbert raised the lump of bread to his mouth, tore a chunk out of it and chewed it grimly, still watching Ivan. Even though he had moaned about the slime, Gilbert had not complained about being hungry. At least he had learned something from yesterday, so Ivan didn't have to hammer one more extra thing into his ungrateful head to stop him from getting killed.
Ivan shrugged as the other members of his gang filed into the hall and occupied the benches around them, exchanging glances and laughs as they saw the Russian conversing with the German. "It is what it is." He stated, before turning away to snap something at the boy who handed out their bread rations. Even though he was a squealer, he had excellent memory, and could be given fifty portions of bread and know exactly which man each one was for, even without the cook telling him.
"Tin Man!" Tino bellowed, sitting himself on the bench next to Ivan. "What was that all about?" The Finn was closely followed by Eduard and Raivis, and Toris too, all leaning forward to hear what he was saying. "I thought you were going to tell us the whole thing."
"You've already heard it." Ivan said, taking his bread from the squealer as he was doing his rounds around the men. He was a pretty boy, tall and skinny as a rake with big doe eyes and mussed up brown hair, and the stronger and more lusting men often took advantage of his status as a squealer. You could do what you wanted to a squealer, providing they still remained standing at reveille. The notion disgusted Ivan, but he still nodded his head at the boy as he continued handing the rations out. "There would be no point."
Tino punched his shoulder lightly, making Ivan scowl. If anyone else had done that, Ivan would have simply stood up and walked away, leaving him to the rest of his gang- but because it was Tino, and the Finn was a little less obsessive about personal space than he was, so he allowed minimal contact whenever Tino spoke to him. With other men, Tino often tackled them or slung his arm around them, actions which were too friendly for Ivan to take, but no-one seemed to mind. Tino was everyone's friend.
"Come on, Ivan," Tino wheedled. "Just one more time." A crowd had gathered, and they were staring like they had done outside.
Ivan sighed, and tried not to look at Gilbert who was staring just as intently at him. Evidently, he was not as stupid as he looked, and knew that any information retained was valuable, and could be sold to other inmates for things like food and extra clothing. Sometimes Ivan didn't know why he didn't do that himself, but he didn't want to turn into a gossiping woman like Tino was.
"One more time." He said finally, looking for something inanimate to stare at as he spoke. He found a crack in the eaves above them and decided to focus on that, looking away from the men as he started to speak once more. "I used to fight in the army," He began, speaking slowly so he didn't trip up on his words or say too much. "My regiment were in charge of making sure the grain quotas were met. We did it for two months, recording the figures, helping the villagers who were too weak to carry the sacks to our vans. It was going well, we got orders telling us which village to go to, how much grain they had to give, what to do when they wouldn't give it to us."
Everyone was deadly silent. This was more than Ivan had said for the past month. Even the other gang leaders who had dubbed Ivan the Tin Man stopped eating their (and the squealer's) bread to listen. Gilbert's chin left his hand, and he was sat upright with renewed interest.
Ivan sighed. "They didn't tell us what to do when it came to our own villages. My village was small, too far away from any of the major towns to trade things we had mined for wheat seed, so we managed on whatever seed we could save from the previous year. The grain that was harvested, evidently, was not enough to meet the quota."
Nobody moved. Not even the boy handing out the bread. They were all staring at Ivan like he was reciting the Ten Commandments.
"The village men didn't think it was a big issue, they would just give whatever they had excess and work hard to make up for it before the next harvest came. I hoped too, that the men who set the quotas would ignore the lack of production and focus on the more resistant towns that refused to give any of their grain at all. I was wrong, and when we received our orders the following day, I could not follow them anymore."
Tino nodded sadly, as if he had been there too, but Ivan ignored him. His eyes were still fixed on the ceiling, focusing on every blemish and flaw on the wood, blocking out the faces of all the listening men.
"No man, no sane man, can shoot on the people he has lived with for all the years he has existed on this earth. I could not; I would not do it, not for all the money and glory in the world. I told my family to hide in the grain barn and told the rest of the villagers that they had to find a way out, and I turned to the men I had once called my comrades and-"
"Men! Is this a girl's camp?" A voice rang out from the door of the mess hall, cutting Ivan off and making all the listening men jump in their skins.
The Warden chuckled at all the surprised faces gawping at him, and gave Ivan a slightly more amused look. "Listening to the Tin Man recite his tales of glory, are we? While I'm sure he has many a magical tale to tell, I'm sure his words are not able to lay bricks by themselves. Am I right?"
There was a collective. "'S'sir." From everyone but Ivan, Gilbert and Tino, and the men left the hall with their bread rations, sullenly glancing at Ivan as they did so. He had been interrupted at the bit they had all been waiting for, and now they had to lay bricks in the bitter cold without anything to yell at the wood collecting groups about.
The Warden waited until Ivan was filing out before he dropped his smile. "Telling stories isn't like you, Braginsky." His voice was cool. "I expect you'll keep these girls a little more in line if you don't voice your life story to them."
Ivan's cheeks heated up in anger, but he nodded and left the hall. He noticed that Gilbert had gone ahead and was walking with Tino and Eduard, and was evidently (but not surprisingly) enjoying their company a little more than he enjoyed Ivan's. Which wasn't a problem, of course, Ivan didn't care for any man's company, particularly a German's.
He spent the rest of the day in clockwork monotony, not speaking to anyone, even when they were asked if they had much of the wall left to complete. He just grunted and continued to lay bricks until it was too dark to continue working.
His dreams that night were more alive than his life ever was.
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