"I knew you could be taught to behave," Russia told him happily as he led him back upstairs with a new spring in his step, an almost upbeat air which grated on Prussia's nerves. "I only regret it took so long. I am sure before long you will wonder why you were so stubborn. I am happy to have you as part of my family, you know. I will—"

"When are you going to let her out?" interrupted Prussia sharply. He was not in the mood to listen to this, and already he was being assailed with a storm of different emotions. Guilt; he blamed himself for Hungary being hurt at all, and simultaneously he felt as though he had betrayed everything he had been fighting for. Anger; how dare Russia use Hungary to get to him, how dare he hurt her—that was entirely unjust; he was not acting honorably. Concern; he was simply allowing himself to be led away from one of the people he cared about most, and she was hurt, and there was nothing he could do about it. Shame; he had held out for so long, and now it seemed as though he had failed himself and betrayed his people.

Russia shrugged as he continued up the stairs. "A few days, I suppose. I want you to settle into your home before I do; I don't want you misbehaving any further, and clearly she is a bad influence on you."

Prussia stopped on the stairs, feeling almost childish as he did so, but he could think of nothing else to do. Russia, a few steps ahead of him, stopped as well and turned around to look at him inquisitively.

"I don't want to settle into your damn house," he said, resisting the urge to use German lest Russia take it out on Hungary again. "And I don't want to obey you. Let her go or I'm not going to cooperate with you." He hated how weak his words sounded, how pathetic; he sounded like a little boy trying to argue for a later bedtime, not a captive nation fighting for the condition of another nation. Russia did not look impressed.

"You are not, nor have you ever been, in a position to negotiate, GDR," he said, frowning a little; not with anger this time, merely with confusion, as if he could not comprehend such forwardness. "You have no power here; you never have. And you know perfectly well that you will cooperate with me."

"You said you wouldn't hurt her again," Prussia shot back. "I've got your word for that."

Russia's face fell slightly, but he quickly rallied. "I will let her out soon," he promised. "Until then, you will behave, or you will merely extend her sentence. Do you understand?"

Prussia nodded reluctantly. "Soon?"

"A few days; it depends," Russia said cryptically, and would not say anything more until they had reached the top of the stairs. Then his voice took on a friendlier tone as he began to show Prussia around the house.

"I think I do not need to show you around the basement, da?" he said, with a note of amusement in his voice that made Prussia's blood boil. "However, there is lots more to your home than you have seen before, and I think you will like it. It is a very beautiful house, you know."

"Yeah, I'm sure," snapped Prussia. The seeming immunity to his tone that Russia appeared to have gained was angering him as much as the larger nation's words; he hated not being able to get to him, to even irritate him, even if irritating him meant that he would get hurt. He had never been able to properly fight back, but he had, at the very least, had his words; and now these weapons too seemed to have been disarmed.

"It's true," Russia confirmed pleasantly. He paused for a moment at the top of the stairs, waving his arms around. "You have been through the kitchens, I think, but I will show them to you again."

Prussia was trying to ignore him, to shut out the sights around him. He could remember being thrown to the ground there, knew where blood would have had to be mopped up from the wooden floor, could hear Hungary's cry of dismay—she had been standing just over there. Vaguely, he heard Russia's voice speaking, but it did not matter much what he was saying now.

He clenched his fists, pulled himself together with a great effort; he simply could not afford to fall to pieces every time he encountered something associated with bad memories. He supposed that, now he would be able to move around the house more freely, it would only a be a matter of time before the rest of the house had bad memories associated with it as well, and he had better learn to deal with it now.

"There is not much else on this floor," Russia said as he led the way towards another set of stairs; Prussia followed him in stony silence. "The Baltics sleep down here; that is all. The rest of the bedrooms are on the top floor. The next floor is far more interesting."

Prussia perked up in spite of himself when he saw the next floor; he had never gotten farther than the stairs, since the staircases were arranged in such a way that there was no need to walk through the house to get from one to the other; one could simply descend all the way down, from the top floor to the basement. This floor was far more brightly lit than the lower one, and was the first place he had seen that did seem a little more like home.

They entered the dining room first; a long table was laid out and there was a chandelier hanging from the ceiling. This sight gave Prussia a pang; the dining room in his own home in Germany had had a chandelier in the ceiling as well. The room could almost have been called beautiful. The length of the table unnerved him; he did not like to be reminded of how many other nations were in the same position as himself, how big the Soviet "family" really was.

Russia gave him a few minutes to look around and then led him into the next room, the living room, which Prussia looked around more dispassionately; this, at least, had nothing to remind him of home. It was not as beautiful as the dining room had been, and did not look anywhere near so comfortable as the living room in his German home. There, everything had been soft and slightly worn out, and the chairs would have half-read books with bookmarks in them on them, laid aside for later, and the couch would usually have at least one dog curled up sleeping on it and everything would be slightly covered with dog hair despite Ludwig's obsessive vacuuming to try and prevent that.

Thinking of this made him even more homesick, and then all of the sudden he wished that Russia had a dog. Even a Russian dog would be far better company than any of the nations in that house.

"It's nothing special," he told Russia savagely, and Russia merely shrugged off the criticism.

"Perhaps not," he agreed good-naturedly. "I am not especially fond of it myself. I am sorry you do not like it, little GDR, but I have saved my favorite room for last. I think you will like it as well."

Prussia followed after him, immediately deciding that he would have to hate this room, if only so that he would not share an opinion with Russia, but his resolve faltered right away as soon as he saw the room. It was a library: lit warmly, with high wooden bookshelves lining all of the walls, all of them filled with books up to the top. Beautiful books, too, with leather bindings and gold writing on the spines; some of them old and worn and others looking almost brand-new.

He could not read the Russian titles, but decided rather reluctantly that it might be worth learning just to be able to take advantage of such a library. It was magnificent, though he admitted this to himself only grudgingly and would never have vocalized such an opinion to Russia.

He had not had a library in his home; all of the bookshelves were in the living room. Still, while none of his bookshelves at home matched, at least one of them was the same color of wood as these bookshelves.

He did not like this at all; did not like the faint reminders of home, just similar enough to make him more homesick than he had been in a long time, and yet different enough that he could not pretend it was really his home, different enough to be uncomfortable.

Russia stood in the doorway, watching Prussia's reaction with some pride; he seemed to have caught his initial admiration and missed the later homesickness that was now threatening to overwhelm his prisoner with misery.

"See?" he said, pleased. "I thought you would like it. Now you see all you have been missing out on with your stubbornness, malyutka. Come along now; the top floor is the bedrooms, and you know where you are to sleep, da?"

He left the door open when he left.

Author's note:

First of all, thank you to hanamiyoko1, rookanga, takelo14, tapion580 , Don't Tell Them I'm Not Real, and MusicalsAndAnime for reviewing the last chapter! And sorry this one is shortish, the next one should be a bit longer and, hopefully, a bit more interesting as well; this one is more of a transition than anything else.

Second: I'm afraid a lot of you are mad at me after the last chapter . . . Sorry! I promise you'll like the next chapters a bit more, and don't worry, there's still going to be violence. I thought a lot about what I wanted to happen and I'm still not positive I made the right choice, but here's my justification:

He DID start out as a group of Christian knights. There's going to be a lot of chivalry there, and he would have felt protective of any woman; really, of anyone weaker than himself. And honestly, I really didn't want his protectiveness of her to be a romantic thing; I like to think Prussia would absolutely take a hit for any of his friends as well. I added the pairing because I did want Russia to see plainly that he could use her to get to him; I think eventually he would have realized that any of the others might have worked as well, but Hungary was the obvious choice.

Also, in the Soviet Union the families of those who spoke out against the government were often harmed, rather than the dissenters themselves, to keep the people in line. So in a way you could look at that as a historical method of dealing with difficult people.

Speaking of which, for those of you who asked, no, there's not going to be any sex, and I don't want this to be a PruHun fanfiction, so, to those of you who didn't like it, don't worry; and to those of you who did, sorry, and they're still my OTP so maybe I'll write a fic for them later. But it won't be this one. I want to keep this one dark, not romantic or fluffy.

Anyway, thank you all for continuing to stay with me, and I hope you still like the story! If you're a new reader please favorite or follow if you enjoyed the story, and all of you please review if you read it! I love the feedback!