Guess what guys?! Another chapter!
Sorry I make you wait so long, but I've been really bad about keeping things in the loop. So to speak. But no, this had become top priority. I will finish this hopefully within the next few months, I know what I want to do with it, and some of you may hate me for a while in the middle of it, but I know what will be done.
Thank you to all the lovely people who follow this story, I'm sorry if I frustrate you.
-Em
Ludwig cried, he admitted that, even when he had finished. Alfred had been stiff like a board, rigor mortus stiff; A corpse covered with a scratchy sheet. But once his tears dried up, unable to continue any longer, he sat and ran his hand through Alfred's hair. His eyes dull, face pale and sickly, his eyes were those of a corpse, much like his beloved. If anyone had seen him at that moment, they would have thought it cruel to place a body from the mortuary next to the bed of a peacefully sleeping boy. Katyusha looked solemnly on, not able to bring herself to take a place beside the mourning boy, not able to look in his eyes and see the empty pain. She had seen those eyes many times in the trauma ward, but Alfred wasn't yet dead.
She had fooled herself into thinking that Ludwig was coming to enjoy the company of his dearest friend, she understood with a new sort of horrible clarity that Ludwig came to mourn. Even if Alfred woke up right now, he would not be the boy Ludwig remembered or loved, he never had the chance to grow up, and Ludwig wouldn't know him anymore. The ice blue eyed boy idolized Alfred, had boosted him onto a pillar that no one could reach, could touch, not even the boy himself. If Alfred woke now, he would only disappoint Ludwig, not intentionally, not even if he'd tried, but because Ludwig's idea of the boy must have aged up as well, he expected someone different from the boy who would wake up.
Alfred would still be a child, and Ludwig would be a man, and no matter how much Ludwig loved him, he wasn't the sort you would expect to stay with someone who acted anything less than their age. Katyusha cried into her handkerchief, quiet so not to disturb Ludwig and his silent vigil and she moved to make her runs, seeing that all her patents were properly attended to.
When she returned an hour latter, Ludwig was reading to Alfred, his voice hid the obvious pain shown from his stiff shoulders and hunched back, but Alfred couldn't see him like it, so he probably didn't care what anyone else thought. How long could Ludwig keep up the act of being fine? Being made of stone instead of fragile glass. She knew the answer would be something along the lines of waiting for Alfred to pass on, but she could see the cracks forming already. She had noticed them before, but had never quite paid attention to them as she did now.
Ludwig was slipping. His calm exterior was cracking. He was falling to ribbons inside, but he'd hidden that, there would be nothing to hid what she could tell was coming. He might not see it, but she could. Alfred was running out of time. If he didn't wake up soon, Ludwig might put himself in the hospital, or worse. She felt awful for thinking it, for considering it, but perhaps...
... just maybe...
... maybe it would be better if Alfred was dead.