Warning: Lovino/Romano has a dirty mouth in this.

Ludwig found a place at the very back of the church to stand stiffly, Gilbert at his side. Some people - Kiku, for one, and a couple of other students who had known Feliciano - had tried to approach him and offer condolences. Ludwig's stone-hard glare had quickly sent them away.

The church was too small for the number of people who had gathered. Ludwig had to force down a rising claustrophobia that had threatened to overtake him since he had arrived at the funeral. More than anything he wanted to be alone, not surrounded by the eyes of almost a hundred classmates, prying at something they didn't understand. Now more than ever he wanted to hide from their scrutiny. Most acted sympathetic, but he heard the whispers. Even before this, he'd never been trusted.

Feliciano's grandfather had asked him if he'd like to eulogize. Ludwig had politely declined.

The world felt muted. When the mass was finally over, Ludwig was first to stumble out into the pale winter sunlight. He couldn't have stood another second in there. Gilbert followed immediately. Ludwig couldn't help but notice how closely Gilbert stuck to him, almost hovering. He didn't really mind. If there was anyone he would allow close to him today it was his brother.

He looked up at the sky. Bright, clear blue, with only a few white strands of clouds. It was exactly Feliciano's kind of day.

The thought gnawed at the edges of the gaping hole of emptiness in his chest.

"Hey, bastard!"

Ludwig turned.

The boy running towards him looked almost exactly like Feliciano, but no-one could have mistaken one for the other. The bite in his voice, his dark, angry scowl - those things were all Lovino.

"Running away?" Lovino demanded.

"I don't see any reason to stay." Ludwig was aware his voice sounded cold and insensitive. Fine. Let people think he didn't care, if that would make them leave him be.

"No, I don't suppose you would." Ludwig had seen Lovino irritated, annoyed and even mildly angry - those seemed to be his default states, at least around Ludwig - but now he looked downright feral. Fists clenched, teeth bared, and quivering with tension, he was like a wild animal preparing to pounce. Ludwig averted his gaze. "I thought I told you to stay the fuck away from my brother. I knew the moment I saw you that you were bad news, but no, of course he didn't listen. And now look where it got him." Lovino brushed at his eyes angrily.

Ludwig swallowed, but when his mind searched for words to respond with he found there were none within reach. To his side, he saw Gilbert looking between the two of them with a look of fierce protectiveness. He placed a hand gently on his brother's arm. If Gilbert intervened he could see things getting ugly.

"Well? Aren't you going say something?"

There was nothing he could say. Grouchy, suspicious Lovino had proved himself a far better judge of character than his twin; Ludwig had no choice but to concede that. I attract trouble wherever I go, even if I don't mean to.

Ludwig's silence seemed to infuriate Lovino more than anything. He stepped up and shoved Ludwig angrily backwards. Ludwig didn't even sway; Lovino was not much stronger than his brother. He might as well have been pushing a brick wall. "Dammit, you bastard, speak! This is all your fault!"

If Lovino had been holding on to some restraint thus far, it was all gone now. Tears streamed freely down his face; whether they were of grief or rage, Ludwig couldn't tell. Most likely a combination of both.

Ludwig saw Gilbert's movement out of the corner of his eye, but too late to stop him. Before he could do anything, Gilbert was standing between them, grabbing a fistful of Lovino's shirt. "Listen up, I don't care how upset you are. You do not speak to my brother like that."

"Gilbert..."

Lovino's eyes widened, then narrowed. "At least you've still got a brother," he hissed.

"Gilbert!" Ludwig spoke more sharply this time, and Gilbert turned to look at him. "Let it go."

Gilbert met his gaze with one as fierce as Lovino's had been. "Tell me you don't really think you deserved that."

"Do you honestly think I don't?"

Gilbert opened his mouth to answer, but was interrupted by another voice from behind them.

"Lovino!"

Ludwig watched with a sinking heart as the rest of Feliciano's family approached. He had already had one painful conversation with them that day. He didn't think he could handle another one. "Gilbert, we should -"

"There you are, Lovino." Feli's grandfather wrapped an arm around the youth's shoulder. "Ah, Ludwig -"

"I'm sorry, I really have to -"

"We were just leaving," Gilbert interrupted. Ludwig sent him a look of profound gratitude. Gilbert turned towards the car. "Coming, Ludwig?"

Ludwig inclined his head. "We can catch up later," he offered, with absolutely no intent to keep that promise, before following Gilbert.

The silence in the car was suffocating. So were the frequent worried glances Gilbert kept shooting at Ludwig. He probably thought they were subtle, which was almost enough to make Ludwig chuckle. Gilbert wouldn't know subtlety if it hit him over the head with a hammer.

"Keep your eyes on the road," Ludwig said at last, tonelessly, when he had had enough, "unless you want us to crash."

He wasn't going to think about Feliciano's awful driving skills. Not now.

Gilbert sighed, but for once did what Ludwig asked. As soon as he found a suitable place on the side of the road, though, he pulled over and parked so that he could turn fully towards his brother. "Right, West, we need to talk."

Ludwig drew in a deep breath. He felt like he was still stuck in a nightmare that had started the moment he'd felt blood dripping onto his forehead. No, if he was being honest, it had started ten years ago when Gilbert had dragged him out of the house with no words of explanation and it was catching up to him again now.

He rested his head in his palms. "You're right. We do," he said.

Gilbert's gaze didn't waver from him once. "What are you going to do now?" he asked. Ludwig sighed.

"I should think that's obvious."

Gilbert's eyes narrowed. "Well, forgive me if my awesome powers don't extend to telepathy, but it isn't obvious to me."

"I'm not going to get any peace until Yellow-Eyes is dead." He rubbed his forehead with the tips of his fingers, but it did little against his mounting headache. "I've come to accept that. So I suppose now I just have one more reason to stick by you while you hunt him."

"What about Stanford? Law school? Your degree?"

Ludwig shook his head. "Staying is not an option. Even if I still wanted to... put together my mysterious background, my arrest on our last hunt, and now this... what conclusion do you think people will come to?"

Ludwig saw Gilbert pale. He couldn't believe his brother hadn't realised this on his own, but then, maybe Gilbert wasn't entirely familiar with how other people at Stanford saw Ludwig.

He sighed. "I just want to have some control over my own life, for once. So we kill this demon that's been haunting us our entire lives, as quickly as we can, and then maybe I'll be free at last."

Gilbert was looking at him with that expression he reserved for when his little brother was hurt or in danger - tender, worried, and completely unlike his usual self. "I can get behind that," he said.

Erzébet was getting really worried about Gilbert.

Granted, it was normal enough that he would be upset. Anyone who'd just watched their family burn to death would be. But that didn't mean she couldn't worry about the changes in him.

Ever since Roderich's parents had let him stay with them, he had shut himself up in the room they'd offered him and not spoken to anyone except a bare few words - not even to his brother, the one person in the world Erzébet knew he was closest to.

Erzébet stopped pacing and narrowed her eyes at the wooden door in front of her. Well, she thought, jutting her chin out. He would talk to her. Rude, cocky, occasionally anti-social jerk that he was, he was her best friends and there were no secrets between them. Erzébet wasn't going to let this be a starting point.

She knocked.

She wished she could say she was surprised by the resonating silence that answered her. Normally, if Gilbert was annoyed at being disturbed he would holler insults through the door, and Erzébet would holler right back, but Erzébet knew this wasn't 'normally'.

Steeling herself, she pushed the door open.

Gilbert was sitting cross-legged in the middle of an unmade bed, a leather-bound book on his lap. The moment he saw her, he straightened, head jerking up, and snapped the book shut, but not before she could see that the text inside was hand-written. A journal, most likely.

The name on the spine caught her eye. 'Jonas Beilschmidt'. His father's journal, then.

Several more such books formed a haphazard stack at his side. Some of the spines had the same name on them; others read 'Frederick Beilschmidt'.

She remembered what Gilbert had been like after his grandfather's funeral. It was the first time she'd seen him drop his arrogantly playful attitude and act serious, though it had nothing on his behaviour now.

The thought of Gilbert spending all day holed up in this room tearing relentlessly through his father's and grandfather's journals saddened Erzébet.

"Hey," she said carefully. Gilbert said nothing, just pressed his mouth into a hard line.

Erzébet sighed. So it was going to be like that, then. Well, Gilbert's stubbornness was nothing she couldn't handle. She'd been putting up with him most of her life.

She smoothed out a section of the mattress near Gilbert and plopped herself down on it. The state of his bed was another warning sign; in spite of what you might think upon first meeting him, Gilbert was actually very disciplined. An unmade bed was not something he would usually let slide.

She felt her friend tense at her presence, levelling one of his most forbidding glares at her. "Did I say you could sit down?" he snapped.

"Nope," Erzébet said cheerfully. "Do you know me to need your permission to do anything?"

Erzébet half expected him to cuff her on the back of the head, or throw a book at her, or anything at all like that. Then she could wrestle him down until one of them gave up and the other retained bragging rights for the rest of the week. That was how things were meant to work between them.

Gilbert's silence was just unnerving.

Erzébet groaned inwardly. What had she gotten herself into? She didn't know the first thing about dealing with emotion. Luckily, with Gilbert, she'd never had to. Roderich was the weepy and sensitive one.

It just wasn't right. Gilbert wasn't meant to be like this. She felt like she was looking at a stranger.

She wanted to throw something. It wasn't fair; she just wanted her friend back! Nothing that had happened these past two weeks even made any sense.

"What are you reading?" she asked. She'd already figured it out, but she wanted to check if Gilbert trusted her enough to tell her.

"Nothing," he said sharply. With his shoulders hunched in like that, he looked almost... defensive.

Erzébet got that he was upset, she really did, but what the hell made him think he needed to defend himself against her, not tell her things?

More moment past. She heard Gilbert sigh. "Can't you just leave me alone?" he muttered sullenly.

She was on the point of admitting defeat. She'd gotten absolutely none of the things she wanted out of this, but she frankly didn't know what else she could try.

With a huff, she made her way to the door. "Let me know when you're ready to talk to me," she called over her shoulder. As hard as she tried, she couldn't stop a hint of annoyance from leaking into her voice. Gilbert just wouldn't be Gilbert if he wasn't being difficult.

She just wanted to help.

That had been the last time she'd seen Gilbert. Two days later he and his brother were pronounced missing. Another few months, and the police had tagged on 'presumed dead'.

There were no words for how she'd felt when Ludwig's appearance in Stanford had proven them wrong. All she knew was that since that night, she had understood nothing about Gilbert anymore, and it was slowly driving her insane.

Hi! I'm back. This is not discontinued, I've just had a very busy few weeks. Thanks to everyone who's sticking with it in spite of that.

There is a purpose to the flashback at the end. Well, kind of. It's also true that I've wanted to write a scene that contains interaction between Prussia and Hungary practically since I've started this fic, but there are still reasons why the relationship they had as kids is important, and I hope those reasons will become evident fairly soon.

The action will pick up again before long but I felt like at least one chapter dealing with the characters' emotions was necessary at this point.

Please let me know what you think! Reviews encourage me to write :).