Author's Note: Erm… I got this up rather quickly. I mean, compared to usual ^^; But, that's probably because it's considerably shorter than my previous chapters, so I'm sorry about that.

Once again, thank you to everyone who reviewed, alerted, favorited, read, etc.; every little notice seriously makes my day~ I adore each and every one of you *bakes each of you a cake*

Disclaimer: I do not own Hetalia, or its characters.

~X~

Roderich Edelstein

~X~

"You realize I can't make him go home, right?" Roderich asked into the phone's receiver.

He had called the Beilschmidt home in order to confirm some of his suspicions and get more information. Somehow, he ended up trying to tell Ludwig that he couldn't bring his older brother back to him.

"But he listens to you," Ludwig argued. "Can you at least try?" It was obvious he was at his wits end; why, Roderich wasn't sure.

Roderich pursed his lips. "Your brother doesn't listen to a word I say," he retorted. If anything, Gilbert was more likely to listen to Ludwig; memory served, the Prussian would go to the ends of the earth for his younger brother.

"Yes he does!" His voice was beginning to turn into a plea. "Roderich, we need him home. I can't take much more of this, and he promised."

"Ludwig, get a hold of yourself," he snapped. "This isn't like you. What's going on?"

"Don't pretend like you don't know," he said. "Gil's always going on about how 'smart' you are; how 'observant' you are. Don't pretend like you don't know what's going on."

"You're beginning to act just as paranoid as your brother. That's not a good thing, Ludwig," Roderich commented dryly. "Look, if it will help, I'll talk to him about it. Though, I doubt he leave just because I ask him to." 'He never has before,' he thought.

To be honest, Roderich still wasn't sure if he wanted Gil to leave. Or, to be more accurate, he wasn't sure why he didn't want him to leave. Was he still hoping for the truth? Was he just trying to protect him from whatever was scaring him so thoroughly? Or… Did it run deeper than that? Something he didn't dare put into words, even in his own mind?

While lost in thought, he almost missed Ludwig's relieved response. "Thank you, Roderich. And, sorry for… I shouldn't have spoken to you like that. There's no way you could know."

'Because neither of you Beilschmidt boys can give me a straight answer,' he thought disdainfully. "It's no trouble," he said. "Now, there's a reason I called. I had a few questions about your father, if that's all right."

Ludwig snorted. "I wouldn't exactly call him our 'father', but go ahead."

Roderich's theory on parental abuse just kept getting stronger. He tapped a pencil against his open notebook. "Gilbert mentioned something about being locked up?" he started, unsure if he should bring out the violence right off the bat.

"He's been telling stories again, hasn't he?" Ludwig deadpanned. After a moment, he sighed. "Yeah. Our father used to shove him in the cellar for days at a time. Used to say that he was a freak that the world didn't need to see."

To say Roderich was shocked would be an understatement. The fact that the blond teen was so straightforward about something so wrong was unsettling.

"But that's not what you wanted to ask, was it?" Ludwig countered. "You want to know if he used to beat my brother, don't you?"

"What? No, I—"

"Because he did," he interrupted. "Gilbert's been having nightmares again, hasn't he? There's no way that he would just tell you about that straight up. Or… Can you actually understand his stories?"

Roderich unconsciously started doodling on the margins of the page as he thought about that. Sometimes, he thought he perfectly understood what Gil was trying to say. Other times, it was like he was speaking ancient Greek. "Has he always told them?"

"My brother has always liked fairytales," Ludwig hedged. "He's been telling them since we were children. Back in Germany, they were always about mysterious lands and monsters. When we moved here, it was all about some foreign princess, and a prince. Is he back to monsters then?"

Again with the princess, Roderich thought. "Yes. Do you know who they are? He's mentioned three."

"Our father, our mother, and Mr. Winter," he replied promptly. "Or, the King, the 'water demon', and the 'ice demon', respectively."

It took a moment before Roderich would ask another question. He was writing down names.

So, he had been wrong about the water demon… He had been sure that it was a step-mother. Now he had to add that to the list of stories he needed to figure out.

"Mr. Winters?" he repeated, realizing he didn't actually know the name. "I'm not sure I know who that is."

"You wouldn't. We knew him back in Germany; Gilbert was close friends with his son, Ivan."

Another name Roderich never heard before. Now that he thought about it, Roderich knew astonishingly little about Gilbert, despite the amount of time they spent together. "So, why is Mr. Winters a monster? Or, why would Gilbert mention him now?"

He heard a noncommittal hum from Ludwig. "Let's just say our poor excuse for a father was better than Ivan's. He didn't like his son having any friends, and I know that Ivan used to come to school with more cuts than bandages.

"Now that I think of it… The injuries used to coincide with the timing of Gilbert's 'visits', if you call breaking and entering 'visiting'."

Well, now Roderich knew why Ludwig never batted an eye when those charges were brought against his brother. Perhaps he thought it was normal. "What are you suggesting?"

"I wouldn't put it past Mr. Winters to beat his son for disobeying the 'no friends' rule," he said bluntly.

'The oldest prince was trespassing,' he remembered. That's why Gilbert was punished, then? He tried to go see his friend, and then the father snaps?

That seemed rather irrational, in Roderich's opinion. Then again, so did everything else Gilbert said. And almost all of that has been proving true, lately.

"Do you have any other questions, or can I hang up?" Ludwig asked, breaking the other's train of thought. "I have to leave for work soon."

Roderich flushed slightly. It wasn't like him to space out like that. "No, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to take up so much of your time. Good-bye, Ludwig."

~X~

Roderich made sure to hide the notebook where Gilbert wouldn't find it. Gil was starting to act somewhat normal again, and Roderich didn't want him to go paranoid again.

Shuffling multiple piles of sheet music around, he finally managed to hide the thing in the piano bench. It wasn't like Gil spent much time in this room anymore, anyways.

With that mindless task completed, he had to get to the real work: finding out who this Mr. Winters character was.

It didn't take long to get the internet up, and multiple search sites open. To be blunt, he didn't have that much to go on. He couldn't be certain he even had a real name. A vague age and location, but that was really it.

But, money buys secrets. That was the only useful thing his parents had taught him. When the internet failed, he could always go back to the people who got him Gilbert's medical file.

If the albino knew what he could possibly dredge up, he doubted that he would ever cross the musician. Although, just because he could do something didn't mean he necessarily would.

The phone was raised once more to his ear, and the unfamiliar number was dialed. "I need information on a Mr. Winters," he stated, not even bothering with a greeting. "He would be approximately my father's age, and living near the boy whose information you gathered earlier. He would have a son named Ivan."

The generic response from the woman on the other line didn't even catch Roderich's attention. He knew that any information the agency managed to garner would be sent directly to him within a fortnight.

That's how it always worked with his father, at least.

~X~

If the previous file made him feel sick, it didn't even remotely compare to what this one entailed. This one may not have been as large or as detailed, but the added information he had brought a special context to every word.

Mr. Winters, or Winters Braginski, was a life-long drunkard who fathered three children, two daughters and a son. When his wife finally left, he managed to keep his son in his custody.

From there, Roderich found a list of arrests, and rehab stints. There was even a mention of a psych ward.

Winters was looking more and more viable for the role of Gilbert's captor with each passing page.

The few mentions of Ivan were chilling to say the least. Several hospital stints for severe injuries ranging from stabs to a collapsed lung, a few escapades in foster homes, and the constant returning back to his father.

Just when Roderich finally thought that he had the person responsible for Gilbert's disappearance, he flipped through the last page. Those four words completely destroyed every single thought of finishing with this monster business.

'Deceased August 19th, 2007.'