Chapter 9

Disclaimer: I do not own Hetalia

Wow, chapter 9 already. This is going to be the size of a novel haha. I hope you guys like it! :)


Thunk.

The ground made firm contact with Matthew's head and the book next to him gently floated to the ground.

Ivan smirked. "A Matthew, I am so glad you could drop by." He unleashed the rather clever greeting onto the hurting prince, who glared at him. "T-Thanks Ivan." Matthew said a bit sourly, but he couldn't keep a small smile from his face.

The Russian's banter was usually harmless and it was all done in good humor, it was almost as if he was encouraging Matthew to join in on the fun. It would've been rude not to accept the invitation.

During his frequent visits with Ivan, Matthew realized something about the Russian.

Matthew's vague suspicion had been proven correct, the extremely patient and considerate Ivan was but a face, it wasn't who Ivan really was. Or it wasn't how he normally expressed himself.

True to Toris' book, Ivan was a bit snappish and had a cynical side of him that dripped with sarcasm. It didn't bother Matthew very much, mainly because he could often read in between the lines of Ivan's seemingly venomous and insensitive words.

"You again? You must be lonely if you have no one else to visit da?" Ivan snickered.

Welcome back, how was your day?

Matthew rolled his eyes and cracked open his thick history book.

"W-well it's not my fault. T-This book won't l-let me free." Matthew defended himself. Interestingly enough, Ivan was also able to interpret Matthew's words.

Pretty well, tired. I'm going to read a another several pages.

Ivan made himself as comfortable as he could be under his given conditions and listened to Matthew's smooth Russian. Truthfully, he didn't have much interest in the story. It was all old news to him, old memories. He found the teenager so interesting, how he stuttered in his native tongue but was completely fluid in a foreign one. Against Boer's will, Ivan allowed himself to enjoy the odd prince's company. He deserved at least that much.


Ivan had his good days and he had his bad days. Unfortunately for Matthew, today was a bad day.

He could sense something was off when Ivan didn't greet him when he slammed into the floor that night.

Normally he would greet Matthew with a small comment, but this time he was eerily silent. The prince walked over to his usual spot in front of Ivan sat down to read the book.

This was the routine they had settled into, Matthew would read a few pages of Toris' book and then they would talk for the remaining time. Today was different, today was much, much different.

"Aha, and the prince visits me today da?" Ivan said casually.

Matthew closed his eyes and took a deep breath- he knew that tone. It meant that Ivan was having a very, very shitty day.

"Oui, if the book had caught me a minute before I would've been naked." Matthew shook his head for emphasis and a few droplets of water splattered onto the stone floor. It was Matthew's last ditch attempt at humor to perhaps veer off the explosive path they travelled on.

Of course nothing could avert Ivan's anger.

"I see."

Matthew cracked open the book and decided to read by himself today, he knew what was to come.

"…Silence Boer. I've had enough of your rambling." Ivan growled.

Yup, Matthew thought, there was that thing again. He didn't know much about Ivan's inner musings, but from what he gathered- Boer was a very persistent being bent on turning Ivan against him.

Soon Ivan had a one sided argument with himself, and he was obviously losing to this Boer person.

"…Just let me be. I want to talk to someone other than you, is that a sin?" Ivan angrily switched back to his mother tongue.

Boer frowned and folded his large arms over his chest.

"Vanya, you are now being selfish. What will you do for this boy? You cannot lie to me, I have sensed this feeling before. You feel for this boy the same way you felt for Toris? Foolish! Your feelings are one sided, this child is here due to inconvenience. You are only going to hurt yourself-"

Ivan scowled and muttered various obscenities under his breath.

It was inevitable that Matthew was going to be dragged into his argument as well.

And the argument ended badly.

"…Boer is right. Please Matthew, don't visit anymore." Ivan said with resignation. Matthew exasperatedly looked at Ivan and put his book down.

"I couldn't even if I wanted to. Where is this even coming from?"

Ivan's tired mind misinterpreted Matthew's words and he humorlessly laughed. "Da, I see. You would not visit if you did not have to. Well burn the book then! I don't want to see you anymore." He dismissed the young magician, who stood up with anger. Who was Ivan to just dismiss him like this?

"Why? Is it something I've said? Something I've done?"

Ivan angrily growled and exploded."Da! It is, it is what your wretched ancestor has done to me. You who visit me every day is free to come and go as you please while I am to be eternally damned here until my death from the collapse of this horrid cell or to be murdered by your descendants.

"Do you have any idea how much it taunts me? You come in here every day and you leave- and why do you come back? When this book is finished, I will be alone again and you shall go on to have a family and make new friends. I will be forgotten, just a memory within the back of your mind!" Ivan shouted.

Matthew grit his teeth and didn't even notice the tears that streamed down his face when he clenched his fists.

"Don't make assumptions about me! Do you think I can have a family? As the second prince I have no rights to have any children or marriage! Who says I will forget you?

"God damn it Ivan, I actually like talking to you! I feel horrible for what happened to you and there's nothing I can do about it! Fine then, if I'm to be labeled for what my ancestor has done then I will label you for what you've done. Murderer." Matthew whispered the last word so quietly, Ivan wasn't sure if he actually said it or not. And he couldn't ask either because Matthew teleported away a second later.

Ivan sat there in stunned silence and Boer, for the first time since his creation, regretted his decision.


Matthew angrily walked out onto one of the dozens of fighting arenas in the coliseum and twirled his wooden staff. Alfred worriedly looked on at his brother on the arena next to him and put his staff in front of him.

Matthew was never angry, it was the first time he's seen his little brother so upset. They only needed three wins to qualify for the games, but Alfred was afraid that those three unfortunate souls were going to be unable to participate when Matthew was done with them.

Matthew's opponent was another Myrlian noble that was easily a foot taller than Matthew. The man grinned and firmly shook his hand, "Royalty or not, I hope you don't have any ill will towards me after this." He said rather cockily.

Alfred paled a little and glanced over to his brother, who didn't say anything. Matthew's silence was proof that something was very off.

"I mean no disrespect man, but I'm really going to have to finish this fast. I think my little bro is going to explode." Alfred told his opponent, who was a C-class wizard.

Ranks from top to bottom are:

SS
S
A
B
C
D
F
K

The magician frowned and took his place on the other side of the arena.

"To review the rules, no spells above the Arcane level(3 highest) are to be used. No lethal spells that inflict any long term damage may be used, no spells to render the opponent unconscious through hypnosis or a poisonous gas may be used. The match ends when one participant is either knocked unconscious or is knocked out of the arena. Ready, begin!"

Two seconds later, Matthew's opponent was blasted out of the arena.

The noble slammed into the stone wall and groaned. Electric static crackled all around him as remnants of a hastily casted shield spell, but it wasn't his own. The man looked at Matthew, who's defense rune lingered in the air before it faded away and he glared at the prince.

That was a dirty trick.

Matthew had created an image of himself right before he launched himself to be right behind the noble. It was then that he made the image vanish and seized the chance to blast him out of the arena.

A few seconds later Alfred knocked his opponent out with a strong lightning spell and quickly walked over to his silent brother.

"Hey Mattie, are you alright?" Alfred carefully led his brother away from the prying eyes of the audience and back into the changing rooms.

"I'm just tired Al, I'll be fine." Matthew couldn't meet Alfred's gaze. He was too ashamed at letting his emotions get the better of him.

"What's been with you this last few days? You've been acting weird, at first you were super happy and now you're angry. You're scaring me Mattie."

Matthew closed his eyes and sat down on the bench, what was wrong with him? Ivan was just this random guy locked in the bottom of the castle, and yet he was getting so worked up about him.

"There's this guy… I've been seeing him for a couple of weeks but…" Matthew discretely cast a spell to their voices wouldn't be heard and he provided a vague description of Ivan.

Alfred's eyes widened with alarm and he grabbed Matthew by the shoulders, "You know about him then? Damn it, father lied to me. I knew something happened that night with the magic circuit." Alfred began to pace in the room when his questions were finally answered.

Matthew's eyes widened with shock, "You knew? You know about Ivan?" Matthew demanded.

Alfred glanced at his brother and shook his head.

"No, I wasn't sure. Every time I'd try to find out I'd get blocked by a court mage, he tried to erase my memory for a while but he forgot that mom blessed us under the great tree in her capital so we're immune to such spells like that. God damn it!" Alfred angrily kicked the bench with unexpected anger.

"Why are you so angry about this Al? You don't even know him, Ivan's just a bipolar an asshole anyway." Matthew said tiredly. Alfred sighed and sat next to his brother.

"Mattie- this means that Dad has been violating scared laws just keeping Ivan here. No matter what he did in the past, no one deserves to be strapped to a chair for three hundred years. Yeah I want to pulverize him for what he said to you, but I'm going to be the better man. Mattie- this is about justice. I hear it from my room, I can hear his voice and it's so small, and so afraid." The elder looked away and realization dawned on Matthew.

"Al, what happened all those years ago," Matthew said slowly.

Alfred nodded and rubbed his temple, "Yeah, after I passed out something happened. I could hear voices at night, sometimes I would hear three at once." He confessed. He would've said more but the judges came to get them. Matthew immediately dispelled the spell and they had to finish their matches.

They were both obviously distracted, and in the last match Matthew paid the price for his inattentiveness.

He wasn't paying attention and an elf managed to slam Matthew's head into the ground from a powerful fire spell. The sensation of his head nearly splitting open was all to familiar to Matthew and he was able to recover with astounding speed. The vision in his left eye went red and he was barely aware of what he was doing. He summoned his unique magical circles and layered them on top of each other to form a powerful ice spell that swept his opponent from the arena.

Matthew rubbed the spot where his head had come into contact with the floor and winced when he felt something warm and sticky on his hands.

Blood dripped onto the arena and his brother was the first to rush over and heal his wounds. Despite Alfred's rather barbarous personality during duels, he was actually very well versed in healing magic. Matthew didn't even know his legs had buckled underneath him until he saw Alfred kneeling right next to him.

"Oh god Mattie, why didn't you dodge that attack?" Alfred furiously whispered when he stopped the bleeding. Alfred's words seemed to echo in Matthew's ears and he shakily got to his feet.

"I-I'm sorry. I t-t-thought I heard someone call my name and then, I don't even know." Matthew stuttered in a jumbled mixture of French, Russian, and English.

Alfred grew alarmed by Matthew's barely coherent sentence and got his brother onto his back. The crowd applauded when the two got off the stage and Alfred sat his brother down in one of the empty stands of the coliseum.

Alfred worriedly sat next to his brother and bandaged his head. He flatly refused the help of the palace paramedics and more precisely, he wanted to keep their prying eyes from his brother's back.

"Mattie, you completely spaced out back there. And that last attack, if I hadn't intervened and shattered that last magic circle you would've blasted that guy all the way to the Fenrican border. I know you're super smart, but compiling all those spells on top of each other isn't exactly the safest thing to do. And also, it's completely unlike you to let me intervene in your spells like that."

Matthew sharply inhaled and leaned back against his seat.

"I-I d-don't know w-what happened Al. I-It was like time j-just stopped. I h-heard a child's v-voice and I-I spaced out." Matthew was obviously not all there and Alfred decided his brother needed some time to himself.

Meanwhile, Alfred went to go placate their enraged father.

"Hello there." A soft voice greeted Matthew.

The prince jumped and managed to smile despite his pounding head. Thankfully the day was cloudy so it reduced the glare around the rocks, but the man still came out to be a little blurry, but he was recognizable.

"H-H-Hello." Matthew greeted.

The man in a grey robe kindly smiled and his blue-green eyes flickered over to Matthew's wound a bit worriedly.

"Are you alright? You took a rather nasty fall back there." Matthew blissfully sighed, for whatever reason Toris' voice didn't worsen his headache. But he noticed the words had a curious accent to it, he couldn't quite place what it was though.

"I-I-I'm f-fine." Matthew bit his tongue, his stutter obviously wasn't helping his cause.

The man's chuckle was like a soft instrument playing, it soothed and completely disarmed the prince.

"Forgive me for not introducing myself," The man began as he placed his hand over Matthew's wound to continue healing it.

"My name is Toris, I am part of King Fenris' royal court. I don't believe we've met before, but my King thought we should become acquainted." Toris explained.

Matthew blinked a few times when a cooling light relieved him of any and all pain and his vision cleared to perfect clarity within a few blinks.

Toris' smile faltered though when he completely fixed Matthew's concussion and he slowly lowered his hand.

Matthew noticed this and wryly smiled, could this be the person who gave him that accursed book?

Still, he couldn't help but be taken by how young Toris looked. For a man who was at least a few hundred years old, he didn't look a day over 24.

"T-Thank you. Y-You're t-the Court Historian e-eh?" Matthew said.

Toris smiled and nodded, "Yes… Although I apologize, it seems I couldn't heal your wound all the way." The Lycan remarked when he observed Matthew still had his stutter.

The prince shook his head, "N-No, I've always h-had it." He assured him.

An awkward silence settled over both of them and Matthew stood to leave. "T-Thank you for healing me. I must be going." Matthew stood onto his feet and was about to cast his teleportation magic when Toris called out to him.

"Y-You, what did you do with the book I gave you?" Toris called out.

Matthew paused in the middle of his spell casting and looked away. "I-I did what any self respecting citizen would do, and I burned it."

Matthew lied and closed his eyes when the scenery instantly changed into his room. His feet gently touched the floor and he cast his staff aside. That was real teleportation magic, it truly was different with a staff.

He barely sat down on his bed when his father, mother, and rather livid brother stormed inside of his room.

"Silence Alfred, not one more word!" Gregory shouted at his son, whose blue eyes burned with rage.

"I am tired of being silenced! This is a match of wizards, father! It's a competition of wits, magic, and strength! Every man and creature entered this competition and acknowledged that they might be humiliated and potentially hurt. Look at Mattie, he just got a concussion!" Alfred shouted at the top of his lungs. His mother quickly grabbed his arm to calm him down and their father seized this opportunity to scorn the youngest.

"Matthew, you cannot simply go blasting nobles out of the arena like that! That elf you froze out of the arena is the youngest prince of Alfheim and the Myrlian noble you blasted out of the arena was the son of my most trusted right hand man! Must you go to the world and prove how superior you are to them? You made our entire army look like a fool out there, you shattered the record set by the riflemen and our archers with your foreign weapon- it was a mistake allowing you to participate!"

Matthew felt tears stream down his face and he had not the confidence to speak, because he was afraid if he showed his anger now- their relationship would be irreparable.

"Sweetie, that is harsh. Matthew has just shown what a capable magician he is." Their mother stepped in.

When Gregory shook off her comment, Alfred really lost it and his magic momentarily went rampant.

"You're such a shitty father! Why do you have to focus on all of the negative things? Why can't you just be happy that your son just broke the preliminary record, that he proved that our race's magic just might be superior to the others, that our lineage still holds power over the nobles, and the fact that both of us just completely destroyed our competition!" Matthew swore Alfred's shouts could be heard across the country.

Gregory didn't falter in his anger and took a step towards Matthew and roughly turned his son's head. When Matthew yelped in surprise, his father sneered. "He doesn't have a concussion. He's fine, he was just acting."

Alfred frowned, "No, Toris fixed it for him. I saw them while I was taking a break from yelling at you for being so ungrateful about your second son!"

Gregory paused at this new information and roughly shoved Matthew back onto his bed.

"This is what I'm talking about, do you see this? This! This is why our country has become less powerful, we cannot be indebted to other countries- Matthew I raised you better than that. I was right, you are not fit to be in line for the throne! Can you not defend yourself? Must Alfred baby you every time you get into trouble? Speak!" Gregory commanded his youngest son, who quietly sat on his bed and took the abuse.

When Matthew refused to speak, Gregory continued to berate and yell at his son. Alfred shouted back at his father, this time not for the sake of his brother, but for the sake of the family.

He's only ever seen Matthew blow his top once, and that was many, many years ago at their mother's country. It was when the snotty brats continuously bullied Alfred to the point of tears and Matthew so thoroughly attacked them with words unfit for his age and oppressive magical pressure. The children had been so scared that Mattie was prohibited from interacting with any more of the palace children.

And from the looks of Matthew's magic, his fuse was about to blow.

"Mattie, please be the better son than this fucking hoser. We'll talk, we'll ride through the mountains- actually let's go right now and get away from here." Alfred changed his tactics and decided to forcibly remove Matthew from his own room.

"Alfred, take your brother and go off to the mountains. Have the cooks prepare your supplies and go camp for the night." Their mother commanded them above the shouts of their father.

"Yes ma'am." Alfred muttered under his breath and tugged Matthew towards the stairs.

Perhaps their father felt ill that day, and they would never know because Gregory intervened their hasty exit and forced the two to return back to the room.

"Alfred, I have been patient with you because you're the crown prince- but you cannot continue to disrespect me like this. Let go of your brother and step away from Matthew- this is a fight you cannot win." Gregory went ahead and physically separated the two brothers.

Matthew remained like an object, still and silent while Alfred's anger doubled twofold. And then, for the first time in his life, Gregory slapped Alfred- and Matthew broke his silence.


I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it! As always, criticism and thoughts about the chapter are always appreciated. Make sure to favorite this story if you liked it and follow it to get regular updates :)

-Preuss