This is, at over 3000 words and 8.5 pages single-spaced on Word, the longest short story I've ever submitted... my wrist hurts...

Title: None (a.k.a. I couldn't come up with a creative title)
Rating: PG for swearing and for minor violence
Plot: AU It's time for the yearly camping trip and Lovina has a plan to get Antonio to ask her out... sort of. Campfire stories, tent-pitching, and angry Polish girls abound
Characters: Antonio Fernandez Carriedo, Lovina Vargas, Arthur Kirkland, Feliciana Vargas, Ludwig, Gilbert Bielschimdt, Francis Bonnefoy, Felicyta Lukasiewcz, Alfred F. Jones, Toris Lorinaitus, Vash and Lilli Zwingli, Carlos Fernandez (OC)

Language notes:
Brüder (German) Brother

Buenas noches/Buona notte (Spanish/Italian) Goodnight

Note about the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (As told by Alfred F. Jones):

For those who aren't aware, the Legend of Sleepy Hollow is an American short story by the author Washington Irving. It is based on an actual legend from that part of rural, Dutch New York. The story that Alfred tells is a mostly faithful (albeit shortened) version of the original short story though Alfred and I doctored the ending a little to make it a little more frightening for the non-American kids who don't know the story.

I DON'T OWN HETALIA


"No! No! Don't put that there! It goes in here!" Carlos was flailing at Francis who was attempting to help him set up a tent. Attempting being the key word as the product of their hard work turned out to be a jumbled mess of canvas, nylon, and what appeared to be fishing line.

"Shut up and let me do it my way!" the blond Frenchman snapped, trying to untangle his leg from the monstrosity.

"Your way is wrong!" the lanky Spaniard countered.

"And yours is any better?" Francis gestured towards the tent, that shut Carlos up effectively enough. Ludwig marched over to help fix the tent and soon it looked like the others that ringed the campsite.

"Hey, Cyta, want some help…?" Toris wandered to the blonde Polish girl who was busy setting up her tent and having a little bit of difficulty.

"Shove off!" she snapped, obviously frustrated with the clip that didn't seem to be clipping correctly.

"Here… let me do this—" he knelt down in an attempt to help her, and instead got whacked in the face by a tent pole, "Ow…"

"I said go away," the blonde growled, pushing him a little to prove her point.

"Ve~ Sorella, what do we do now?" Feliciana asked, setting the last pole into the ground.

"Hope it doesn't collapse on us in the middle of the night," Lovina said, going over the directions one more time. Why the hell were they out here in the middle of nowhere in the woods again? Oh, right, it was a retreat for them to "bond" and "get to know each other" like they hadn't known each other for years before now. She looked around the clearing. Most of the people she saw she'd grown up with or gone to school with since preschool.

"Are you going to get Antonio to ask you out?" Feliciana asked, bursting with excitement as usual, "You've been waiting all week to do it, right?"

"Shh!" Lovina put a finger to her lips. "Don't blurt it out!"

"Why not? Everyone knows you like him…" Feliciana trailed off when she noticed Lovina glaring at her. "Come on, you and me are on cooking detail, we've got to make sure that idiot Alfred doesn't try to blow up the grill like last year."

"Oh right…" Feliciana trailed after her.


The foodstuffs were secure and tucked away so that no hungry animals (or kids) could come steal them, and Feliciana and Lovina were free to just roam and talk. "Lovina, Feliciana," the Italian sisters turned around to see Cyta walking towards them with Lilli Zwingli who looked upset and like she had been crying.

"Ciao Cyta, Lilli~!" Feliciana grinned and waved as the other two approached them.

"Is something wrong?" Lovina asked, noticing that Lilli's face was, in fact, a little tear-stained and Cyta seemed upset about something.

"It's Vash," Cyta said evenly, "Lilli's been worried. Apparently she hasn't seem him for a few hours."

"And you want us to help see if we can find him?" the Polish girl nodded in response to Lovina's question, looking unhappy at the though of the missing boy. "Well, Feli and I will ask around, if you'd like, maybe we could talk some of the guys into looking in the woods."

"Tak, God, I swear, when I get my hands on him…" Feliciana sighed and Lovina grinned. Vash would be in for the ass-kicking of his life when Cyta found him and she wouldn't feel a bit sorry for him.

Deciding that splitting up would be faster, Lovina and Feliciana took different sides of the campground. "What? You're looking for Vash? Can I help?" Antonio asked after she asked him.

She was about to turn him down, but remembered what she was trying to do and sighed. "Sure, why not?" He grinned at her and hopped up from tuning his guitar. "Why don't we go ask Ludwig? I mean, they're cousins right? He's bound to know where he is."

"Yeah, couldn't hurt to ask Gilbert either… of course, Vash might be hiding from him…" Antonio scratched his cheek, something that generally meant he was thinking, a rare occurrence for him.

"Why's that?" to answer the question, he gave a noncommittal shrug as they walked up to Ludwig who was reading a magazine he quickly stashed upon noticing them and blushed furiously. Lovina rolled her eyes at the action and posed her question.

"Let's see… He pitched his tent immediately after getting off the bus and that's the last I saw of him," Ludwig said after a few minutes, "Knowing him, he probably went off into the woods. He's not the most social of people."

"Antonio," Lovina shot a glare at the Spaniard who was watching a butterfly a couple meters away, "thinks he might be hiding from Gilbert."

"Probably to avoid a repeat of last year," he sighed when he noticed her blank look, "You left early because you were sick so you missed Gilbert getting him drunk enough to start yodeling."

"Oh…" she'd heard rumors about the incident but never once believed them to be true. "Anyway, if you see him, tell him that Lilli's worried sick and that he'd better get his ass back here so that he can assure her he's still alive." She left out the part about Cyta kicking his ass because for one, it was inevitable, for another, Lovina wanted to see his face when he got jumped the moment he made an appearance, and lastly, the beating was his own damn fault in the first place.

"Alright," the German nodded stiffly, yet politely and Lovina turned away, her work done.


Later that evening, the campfire had been lit and they were all laughing and chattering as they roasted marshmallows over the flames. In an effort to get Antonio to notice her as more than a mere friend, Lovina had purposefully sat beside him on his log and, claiming the night air was making her cold, had leaned up against him. This seemed to have worked since he had draped his arm around her body and pulled her close. He was absentmindedly stroking her arm, making her blush, but silently triumphant. Now… if only she could get a kiss out of him…

"Now the Hero's going to tell a story!" Ever the loudmouth, Alfred had leapt to his feet, nearly upsetting Arthur and… that one quiet kid whose name no one could ever remember. "Girls, hold onto your boyfriends and hope they can protect you," he laughed. "This is the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. A long time ago in upstate New York a man named Ichabod Crane came to the small town of Sleepy Hollow from Connecticut to be the new schoolmaster. He was a tall, skinny man with a small head and a very large nose. Many people said that he resembled a scarecrow that had gotten down off its cross, he came into this isolated little town one fall day and that is where the story begins…

"Ichabod was news the moment he walked into town. He was a good schoolmaster, though pretty lenient towards his students, especially the ones whose mothers were good cooks because, though he was extremely thin, he had a large appetite. He was very good at singing, according to people and often made a bit of extra money teaching people how to sing. He was known as a flirt and soon became very popular with the ladies in town. However, there was one girl that especially caught his fancy. Her name was Katrina, and she was the only child of the richest farmer in the area. She was the most beautiful girl any man had ever set eyes on and she was rich, which made her quite the catch for any man looking for a wife and wanted to get rich himself. After a while, Ichabod had fallen in love with Katrina and decided that he wanted to marry her.

"This did not sit well with Bram Bones, a young man with the reputation of being an irresponsible practical joker, for he wanted to marry Katrina too. However, he didn't have the same respect around town that Ichabod did, in fact, Katrina herself had been put off by his rowdy manner and his habit of scaring off all other potential suitors, a fact which Ichabod himself ignored and openly pursued her, much to Bones' annoyance. In the race for Katrina's heart, Bones found himself losing as Ichabod began to gain the favor of the young lady's father and so he came up with a plan to scare the man, who had a firm belief in ghosts, out of town.

"Sleepy Hollow has always had numerous legends and stories about ghosts and the locals were well familiar with all of them, particularly the story of the Headless Horseman. They say that the Headless Horseman is the ghost of a German Hessian who lost his head in the war and that he comes looking for his missing head, riding a large, black horse and carrying a pumpkin. The story was frightening enough to someone like Ichabod who came from another state, but Bram had another trick up his sleeve. On Halloween night, the entire town was invited to the home of Katrina's father for his famous party. It was there, when it was nearly midnight and everyone had gathered around the fireplace to tell stories that Bram Bones stood up and recited the tale of the Headless Horseman. He noticed the fear on the man's face, and he dropped his voice. 'If you encounter the Headless Horseman,' Bones said, 'Be sure to ride for the covered bridge and make it all the way across, otherwise he'll take your head for his own!'

"Ichabod left the party early that night so that he would make it back to town in time to get a few hours sleep before having to teach in the morning. It was dark that night, the clouds covering the moon in short bursts. The wind howled, making eerie sounds as it whistled through the trees. The branches swayed, casting shadows of clawed hands in what little moonlight there was. Poor Ichabod was scared out of his mind as he passed through the woods and rounded the bend, coming upon the quiet Sleepy Hollow churchyard where the Headless Horseman was said to be buried. He passed the churchyard without incident and the covered bridge was in sight. Maybe the legend was wrong after all and there was no Headless Horseman.

"But then the schoolmaster heard the strangest, most spine-chilling noise he'd ever heard in his life. The hair on the back of his neck rose and he turned around slowly to see a rider on a tall, black horse standing on the hill behind him. Ichabod could see from here that there was something odd about the rider, but he couldn't quite make it out. Then, the moon appeared from behind the clouds, illuminating the figure. Now Ichabod could see what was wrong: the man had no head. Terrified, Ichabod spurred his bony horse onward and the Headless Horseman uttered another terrifying cry, galloping towards the poor schoolmaster who turned around hand forced his mount to go faster, hoping to make it to the bridge before the specter could catch up to him. However, since this was no mortal horse and rider, the thing gained easily until he could hear the horse's hot breath at his back. Ichabod was almost to the bridge when his exhausted horse gave out and he went tumbling to the ground. Pure fear ran through his veins as he got up and ran with all his might, trying to get across the bridge where he would be sure to survive…"

Alfred stopped and Lovina sat back, realizing that she'd been leaning in to hear the American better.

"V-Ve… Alfred, did Ichabod make it…?" Feliciana asked quietly.

"No one knows," Alfred told her, "when he didn't show up for school the next morning, the townspeople went out to look for him. When they crossed the bridge, all they could find was his hat and a few droplets of blood. Several people, including many residents of Sleepy Hollow believed that the Headless Horseman had taken his head. Some people thought Bram Bones had killed Ichabod Crane in order to do away with the only real rival he had, especially since he and Katrina were married shortly afterwards, however no one could come up with any proof that Bones had killed Ichabod. After that, people searched for the unfortunate man for weeks, and never found the body so he was ceremoniously put to rest in the Sleepy Hollow churchyard and to this day, people have claimed to see a tall, thin apparition wandering about searching for his missing head and for the man who got away with murdering him… "

"Hmph, can't you do better then that?" Arthur grumbled, crossing his arms. "That story's absolutely preposterous!"

"That story was pretty scary…" Lilli whispered from where she say huddled at Cyta's side. "I don't want any headless people to come get me…"

"They won't," Cyta promised her, "I'll make sure they won't" She didn't believe in this ghost crap that Alfred and Arthur were pretty passionate about, not for one second. Even still, it had been a good story, and something she would remember to tell later on.

Lovina shivered, forced to admit that the American was actually good for something besides getting news passed around. She'd found herself hanging on to every word he'd said and had even felt a shiver of fear pass through her at the mention of the Headless Horseman. "You ok, Lovi? Did the story scare you?" Antonio smiled down at her, rubbing her arm again.

"N-No, I'm still cold," she huffed, using that as an excuse to press herself even closer to him. He laughed a little and shrugged out of one arm of his jacket to wrap it around her. She flushed as she got a whiff of his scent from the material and laid her head on his shoulder. Things around the campfire returned to normal: Alfred and Arthur argued, people roasted marshmallows, laughed, and told jokes, Cyta pushed Toris when he tried to scoot closer to her, Feliciana started babbling at Ludwig again about pasta or something very similar.

The sound of a snapping twig startled them all into silence. In the dark woods behind them, they could hear rustling, the noises becoming steadily louder as time passed. There was something out there, and it was coming towards them. Lovina felt Antonio's grip tighten around her and he seemed to pull her closer as if to protect her from something. Feliciana had grabbed Ludwig's arm, holding it in a vice-like grip as she stared terrified into the dark space beyond Cyta and Toris' shoulders. Alfred had ducked behind Arthur, quivering as he peered out from behind the smaller Englishman. Carlos and Francis were clinging to each other, looking absolutely moronic and sniveling in fear.

Unafraid, Cyta picked up a rather large, dangerous looking stick and stood up, ready and waiting for whatever it was that was scaring the hell out of her classmates. The bushes rustled and someone barely had time to emerge from the woods before getting Cyta's stick to the face. Alfred shrieked loudly, in a pitch that most girls couldn't even reach, Arthur covered his ears and started swearing. Francis and Carlos actually began to cry while Gilbert had hidden behind Ludwig's back, begging whatever creature had come upon them to not "Kill him because he was too awesome to die." Antonio actually lost his goofy grin and scowled at whomever it was who had come into their camp, still holding onto Lovina.

"Ow… what the hell…?" Vash Zwingli sat up, a hand to his bleeding nose.

"Brüder!" Lilli cried, getting up and practically tackling him, "I was so worried! I didn't know where you went or why…!" Extremely confused by everything that was happening around him, Vash patted Lilli on the head, still holding his nose, trying to staunch the bleeding.

"She's been worried sick about you," Cyta growled, glaring at the blond boy as Toris wisely got Lilli out of the way. "You left for no reason and didn't tell her… do you know what happens next?"

"Should I…?" he gulped at the slightly murderous gleam in her eye as she advanced towards him with her stick.

"Cyta… do you have to do this…?" Toris pleaded, hoping he could calm her down enough to reason with her.

"Tak," she gave him her blank stare and he squeaked, pulling Lilli to the other side of the fire, knowing that reasoning with the Polish girl would be impossible at this point. Calmed down after the fright, everyone returned to normal, except for Vash who was shouting, trying to plead with Cyta to let up as she gave him the ass-kicking of the century, talking late into the night when the chaperones chased them into bed.

"Well, tonight was interesting," Antonio grinned down at Lovina before they made their ways to their tents.

"Yeah…" she mumbled, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

"So, buenas noches then?" he turned to go to his tent and Lovina gathered her nerve, grabbing him by his shirt.

"Wait…" she blushed as he stopped and turned back around to face her once more, looking confused. Then, she didn't think, she just reached up on her tiptoes to kiss him softly on the lips. "Buona notte…" Lovina's voice was soft and she just wanted to run and hide in her sleeping bag. Antonio grinned again, pulling her close to kiss her back.

"Maybe we could meet for dinner after we get back?" he asked once he'd broken the kiss. Lovina nodded, and they separated to go to their tents. She felt like she could fly and she settled down to sleep with such an uncharacteristically dreamy smile, Feliciana worried, but Lovina didn't care. She'd finally gotten the dumb Spaniard to ask her out.