A/N : Happy new year's, guys! All I can say is I love you all, and thank god this most miserable year of our lord 2020 is OVER. May it never reoccur.

Chapter 22

Lost Connection

The dark room lit up sometimes in orange and dull yellow whenever a car passed down the street.

Everything was quiet.

Ludwig hadn't moved or lifted his voice once, in the long while that Alfred had spoken. Just stared up at the ceiling, hands clasped over his abdomen, and listened without offering input. Alfred had listened to Ludwig once when no one else had, and Ludwig paid that forward.

But he stood now before Ludwig's judgment, the only person he cared about, and had to risk losing Ludwig's confidence.

Alfred had failed someone before, and perhaps Ludwig would rethink how safe he actually was within Alfred's hands.

Whatever was going on in Ludwig's mind was a mystery, and the silence was heavy as the lights faded from blue to yellow. The snow was falling heavily outside, a downpour, and the window was frosted over, casting a chill into the air despite the heater blowing.

Below, the family had quieted down, no doubt turning in for the night.

At last, Ludwig suddenly asked, over that awful quiet, "Is that why you became a bodyguard?"

Alfred had wandered north over the years, through Virginia, Washington D.C., Maryland, Pennsylvania, and then he had reached New York, and still hadn't found what he had wanted. Never found anything, because he was always lost and alone.

In the back of his mind, Alfred had hoped that during his six year period as a reserve in the army he would suddenly be summoned, sent off somewhere, sent to war even, but he never was. His contract with the army ended without him ever once being back in uniform. The college education Alfred had earned from it went nowhere, was never put to use.

Alfred had only done it to support Meg. When she was gone, he hadn't cared anymore.

What was the point?

Alfred didn't turn to look at Ludwig when he responded, "Yeah. When I got here, I had a few jobs, here and there, normal things. And then, one day, I was looking around and saw an ad in the paper, for a bodyguard. I thought... I'm not really good at anything, I ain't smart like you, so, I figured I could at least do that. If nothing else, I'm pretty good at punching people. I thought it would be great. Getting to protect someone. I thought, being a bodyguard, I would get to protect good people. But...didn't really happen that way. All I ever got was looking out for jerks, criminals. People that I would rather have hurt than protect, you know. I hate it. It's not what I signed up for. It's not what I thought it would be."

Ludwig was quiet.

Alfred had foolishly become a bodyguard because he had envisioned becoming a hero, redeeming himself. He had daydreamed about protecting some other woman from a violent man. Had gotten it into his head that as a bodyguard he would end up saving someone that might have looked like her. Becoming a knight, as it was, for a woman who might have had a little kid. Maybe a boy.

Hardly. Instead, Alfred walked beside men who were far too much like the man he had wanted to kill. Protecting assholes like that, walking them home, and sometimes standing outside the door for a while and hearing screams from within. Knowing that he was guarding the wrong person but unable to do anything about it because he needed the money so badly.

And now—

Abruptly, Alfred added, "Until now. Until you. This is always what I wanted. You— I feel like, with you, I get a chance to make something right. I'm not— That didn't sound right. I'm not using you for something, I'm not. I know I can't ever fix it, I can't change anything, I know that. But I... I let her down, and I don't ever want to let anyone down again. I'll do anything to keep you safe, anything. I'd give my life to keep you safe. I mean that. As long as I'm here, I won't let anything to happen to you. I can't."

Hoped to god that Ludwig understood what he was trying to say. Hoped that Ludwig understood that Alfred wasn't trying to use him as a source of redemption, because it wasn't like that anymore even though it had been at first, but Alfred wasn't good enough with words to say exactly what he was thinking.

He loved Ludwig, and that was why he was such a wreck, why he tried so hard, because letting someone down was bad enough, but letting someone down that he loved all the way was shattering.

Couldn't fail again, and he hoped that Ludwig understood why.

The snow fell outside. Wind against the window.

Ludwig's irises lit up in shades of silver and gold in the changing lights.

Finally, Ludwig spoke.

A low, rumbling mutter, as Alfred could feel the reverberation in his chest.

"You asked me once, what Gilbert saw. You were right, I was afraid to tell you. It... Maybe I just didn't want to see it like everyone else did. Maybe all of you were right all along. Maybe I really did just see what I wanted to see. I didn't want it to be as bad as it was."

Alfred stayed patiently silent, even though some part of him didn't want to know, didn't want the truth anymore, didn't want to hear Ludwig talk about it because they were doing so well and making so much headway.

Alfred had stopped caring about Ludwig's denial in order to focus on fueling his own.

But it was too late to go back, because Ludwig had already started speaking and Alfred was paralyzed.

Ludwig stared up at the ceiling, skin and hair tinted in somber shades of blue and green from the lights.

"It wasn't that she didn't trust you. It wasn't your fault. Did you really think it was? You didn't do anything wrong. She just didn't want to lose someone she loved. It wasn't that she didn't trust you."

Not his fault?

Alfred rolled his head to the side then to stare over at Ludwig, was fascinated then, utterly fascinated, because it was the opposite side of the spectrum, the other side of the mirror, as he looked at pale Ludwig. It was like being able to speak to his sister, to get a glimpse into her mind, to try to understand what she had been thinking, to attempt to comprehend why she had done the things she had.

Ludwig, after all, would know.

Couldn't ask her anymore why she hadn't called him, so he could only listen to Ludwig.

No one had ever said that it wasn't his fault, and Alfred desperately wanted that to be true, even though he had shaped and formed his entire personality and identity around the notion that it had been.

Ludwig's voice was deep, soft. Calm.

"One of my first memories is of Toris protecting me. You can't see, but— Our father raised Gilbert very strictly. You would know the sort of man he was. Gilbert has these awful scars on his back. When he was little, our father beat him whenever he made the smallest mistake. He would whip him with a cable until he was bleeding. He has so many scars, you can't imagine. When I was small, one night I had a nightmare. I ran into Gilbert's room in the middle of the night, crying. Gilbert was angry with me, because I'm not supposed to be scared of anything. Gilbert never wanted a child. I was put upon him. He didn't know what to do. He didn't know how to react in any other way than what he was taught. I don't remember Gilbert hitting me, exactly, but I remember Toris running in between us. That was the only time I can ever remember Toris screaming. He was so mad at Gilbert. Toris pushed Gilbert back, and I remember hiding behind Toris. Gilbert didn't realize that it was abnormal. For him— He just did what he thought was appropriate. But Toris kept me safe, and Gilbert never hit me again after that. So I know that I could always have gone to Toris."

Ludwig swallowed a little, nervously perhaps, as he shifted his hands a little there atop his stomach.

Alfred had long since resumed staring at the ceiling.

Toris and Gilbert. Alfred wanted them to be villains, maybe, because he wanted to be the only good person in the story. As Meg's husband had isolated her from everyone else to make himself seem better, as Ivan had isolated Ludwig, so too did Alfred want to keep Ludwig to himself. Alfred wasn't like them in that sense, but underneath he really was his father's son, and those latent tendencies manifested themselves in ways that seemed normal to Alfred. Alfred didn't want anyone else to outshine him, to be helpful, to be loved more than him, and so he found flaws in them, used their disadvantages to put himself in a better light.

Ludwig had always spoken about Toris with fondness and love, but Alfred had never once deemed him anything but useless. He had ignored the numerous times that Ludwig had said that Toris had come between him and Gilbert, and indeed it was always Toris in the end who saved Alfred's ass from Gilbert's wrath.

Gilbert was controlling beyond normality, and Alfred hated him for it, but Gilbert didn't know any better, really. Gilbert knew only what he had grown up with, had never been prepared to raise a child himself, had never had time to adjust and figure out some other way, some different path than his own.

Alfred knew that growing up with it didn't excuse it, he knew that very personally, but sometimes it was impossible to completely disconnect from it.

"I know you don't like them. I know why you don't. I know you never believed me when I told you that they aren't as bad as they seem. But please believe me when I say that they love me. I always knew they did. We're all just...a mess. Ha. What do we know about being normal? They're not bad people. If I had told Toris and Gilbert the truth from the beginning, they would have come running. Toris would never have let any of this happen. It wasn't their fault. It was mine. I made my choice, like she made hers. It wasn't your fault, anymore than it was Toris'."

It was Alfred that time who swallowed.

He wished Ludwig would fall still and stop speaking, because it was Alfred then who was the most uncomfortable.

But Ludwig just kept on, as he often did once he started rambling.

"It wasn't anything terrible at first. The first time Ivan punched me, I held my phone for hours, thinking about calling Toris. He's not...outwardly affectionate, like you're used to here, but I trust him, all the way. But I didn't call him. When it started getting a little worse, I still didn't tell him. I knew I should have. I knew all along that I should have told someone, but I— It's not so easy to explain, being in love. I didn't want to lose him. And then later Gilbert just told me that I got myself into this mess, and so I had to get myself out."

Alfred spoke up then, to utter, softly, "I thought you didn't tell anyone?"

"I didn't," Ludwig clarified, without looking away from the ceiling. "One day... It was quite bad one night. It was difficult to move. It was a Tuesday. I was a little late coming into Gilbert's office. He— When he held me over the glass, my collar came down. He saw the bruise around my neck. But he... At first, Gilbert didn't realize how serious it was. My fault, really. You know, don't you, the things I say."

Yeah, too well.

Could easily see Ludwig changing the narrative to Gilbert and coming up with a million excuses. Gilbert was hyper-possessive of Ludwig, very overbearing and smothering and protective, but in that moment in time Gilbert and Ludwig had been on shaky terms because of Ludwig's prior rejection of Gilbert to Ivan. With Ludwig's smooth words, Gilbert had initially been placated.

Ludwig had passed it off as accident, perhaps, a one-time thing, nothing to worry about, and Gilbert, bitter and wanting Ludwig to lie in his bed, merely turned his head aside.

At first.

"Gilbert and Toris never wanted to hear anything about Ivan. They didn't care that he was getting worse. They hated him, they always did, and so they said I should have known better. They thought at first that Ivan just had a bad temper. Things like that. And, well, that was true, he always was a little intense, but this was different than what they thought. When it got worse, that was when they began to intervene. It was because— What Gilbert saw, that time— It was stupid. Pitiful. I was always too scared to call out from work, because Gilbert would be so mad at me. I always protected my face when Ivan hit me, always, because as long as I didn't have any bruises there I could just go about my business. I couldn't that one time. I had so many bruises. I think my nose was broken. I tried to rush in and get to the office without anyone seeing me, but I think Lovino did. He must have said something to Gilbert or Toris. Gilbert came to my office. I had never been so embarrassed as I was then, sitting there like that with Gilbert staring at me."

Could only imagine how helpless Ludwig must have felt, eye swollen shut, bruises all over his face, cuts, trying hard to sink down into his desk chair and disappear as Gilbert stood there in the frame and gawked at him. Must have been that same wide-eyed, taken-aback expression that Alfred had seen when he had confessed to Gilbert. When Gilbert first saw how things really were, what was really happening, that everything Ludwig had ever told him was a lie. To look at his little brother, that he had raised more as a son, and to see him so beaten up that he looked as if he had just come out of the boxing ring.

Not a fair fight.

"I had never heard Gilbert scream like that, as he did at me that day. I didn't even know his voice could sound like that. Toris came in a while later, and they barricaded me in there. They wouldn't let me leave until I told them the truth. I didn't want to, I kept making more excuses. I kept trying to explain to them that it wasn't like that, it wasn't what they thought, but they wouldn't let me leave and it was getting late, and I just kept thinking about how angry Ivan would be, if I got home late. I was scared, so what could I do? I told them. I just wanted to go home."

Alfred turned his head to stare over at Ludwig, and even as Ludwig said it, it was impossible for Alfred to comprehend. He couldn't understand how Ludwig could have had Gilbert and Toris there, demanding the truth, and then still have held out for so long, denying it for so long.

When Alfred had screamed at Meg, she hadn't told him the truth, either, and it was beyond Alfred's breadth of comprehension.

How you could love someone so much that you protected them even as doing so could have meant your death?

"I didn't get to go home. Toris grabbed my arm, and they forced me to go back to Gilbert's. Just like that. Right then and there. I was terrified. I didn't want to go with them. I begged them the entire ride just to let me go home. I wanted to go back to Ivan. The next day, Gilbert gave me his ultimatum. It happened so fast. My head was a mess. I hadn't been away from Ivan in so long, and I didn't want to be. They wouldn't even let me call him. Gilbert took my phone. I finally agreed to apply for divorce. I think— I never really thought it would happen. I was stupid, and I thought if I told Gilbert that I would divorce Ivan, that maybe he would let me go back home. That I could even divorce Ivan if I had to, but still live with him. Still be with him. I did every possible gymnastic in my head to convince myself that I could find a way around it."

Alfred had grown up protecting Meg from everyone and everything, had done everything right, had told her everything she wanted to hear, had been there without fail, but once she had fallen in love nothing else had mattered to her.

Ludwig did what Gilbert and Toris told him to do, all the while knowing in his heart that he wasn't really planning on following through. Ludwig had never planned on leaving Ivan, and wouldn't have done so had the circumstances not played out as they had.

What a dismal mental image for Alfred to have : Ludwig lying on his childhood bed as Toris tended his cuts and bruises, staring off at the wall and the entire while knowing that he was never going to really give Ivan up, even as Gilbert raged outside the door.

Ludwig would have just been another Meg, if not for the stroke of luck of Ivan beating him nearly to death but not quite.

"Five days later, the papers were ready. Gilbert told me to go home, give them to Ivan, demand he sign them, and then to return to the house precisely at seven with signed papers. I went. I was going to do as he said, but he had never once said that I couldn't be with Ivan after. He only said that I had to divorce, after all, and I planned on exploiting that loophole. Gilbert is very literal, very bound to his word, very professional, and I very much intended to use that against him."

Alfred's brow twitched in anger at that.

Stupid. The stupidest thing he had ever heard. Ludwig had only given those papers to Ivan because he had already thought he had found a way around it. All rational thought had left Ludwig by that point, so in love with Ivan that he refused to see reality, that he couldn't see things as they really were.

Meg's happy voice on the phone, as she had announced to Alfred that she was getting married, though surely by then she had already seen the shadows.

"I was so happy to go home. I thought I would walk in, explain to Ivan what had happened, give him the papers, let him sign, spend one more night with Gilbert just to appease him, and then afterwards I would be free once more to live my life. I was happy when I walked in, even though Ivan was furious that I had been gone. He beat me a little then, but it wasn't too bad, really—" Alfred scoffed despite himself, derisively, "—he was naturally upset. When your spouse disappears for days without a word, one tends to be angry."

Even now, Ludwig continued to play things off. Make it sound better.

Had anyone ever said such a stupid thing?

'Oh, yeah, he beat me, but just a little! Really. It wasn't that bad. Just a little beating, like normal people do.'

Gilbert had been beaten as a child. Perhaps because his father had been, and his father before that. Ludwig had been controlled and dominated but not beaten, because Toris had intervened in that endless circle, just enough to break one little bit of it. It was always a cycle, always, and when Ivan hit Ludwig, Ludwig just remembered the scars on Gilbert and thought that maybe it wasn't so bad, after all.

Bruises faded, and maybe Ludwig had even thought he was lucky that Ivan's beatings had never left him scarred like Gilbert. In that sense, maybe Ludwig considered Ivan loving and gentle, because he had seen someone else looking worse than him.

Alfred had been right after all : it was because of Gilbert that Ludwig had become a victim.

He had just been wrong about the reason.

Ludwig had looked at Gilbert and reaffirmed to himself that he was in a better position than Gilbert ever had been, less helpless, and therefore everything was alright.

"Afterwards, when Ivan calmed down, I managed to tell him everything. I put the papers on the kitchen table. I thought he would understand, because I told him that after I gave them to Gilbert I would come right back to him. But he didn't see it the way I did. All he heard was that I was divorcing him. He went...crazy. That's all I can really call it. I had never seen him like that. I don't remember all of it. I just remember him saying that I would never leave him. I remember..." Ludwig hesitated suddenly, although he wanted to say something, and Alfred quickly knew why Ludwig had paused. "He grabbed a knife when I was on the floor. I thought then that he was going to kill me."

Oh, those awful images in his head.

Replaying everything over and over again. Wouldn't it ever stop?

Always Ludwig, and yet always someone else.

"He got down on top of me, and I remember seeing the knife in the air. I don't know what stopped him. I can't recall if I said anything. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in the hospital with Gilbert asleep on the bed beside me."

Hated that thought, all those scenarios Alfred had long envisioned.

And yet even though he didn't want to know, Alfred asked, "How did you get to the hospital? Did Gilbert come over to look for you when you didn't come home?"

A thoughtful silence.

Ludwig's voice was deeper and yet softer when he murmured, "No. Ivan took me. Just picked me up and walked me right into the hospital and handed me off to the nurses. He left right after, before anyone could speak to him."

Meg's husband had called the police for help immediately after stabbing her, so in a way Alfred wasn't really too surprised that Ivan had snapped out of that rage and panicked when he saw Ludwig was dying.

After all, no one could ever say those men hadn't really been in love.

"It had been three days when I woke up. My skull was fractured, so I had bled into my brain. That was why I was on the respirator. They had been waiting to see if I would wake up at all. Gilbert slept there all those nights, Toris said, because he thought if he was there I wouldn't dare to not wake up." A humorless laugh. Dry. Wry. "Perhaps he was right. I was lucky to be alive, they said. I didn't feel very lucky. I just wanted to see Ivan. I love Gilbert, more than you know, but I was still disappointed that it was him there next to me when I woke up, and not Ivan."

How could anyone ever think like that?

Ludwig turned his head at long last, eyes locking onto Alfred's, and his expression was strange, because he looked so sad and yet he was smiling.

"I'm sorry. I don't know how to put into words very well what I'm tying to express. It sounds so stupid, I know, but I love him so much. Even though I knew there were other people that cared about me, he was what I wanted more than anything. Even if he was the worst thing for me, I would have kept him if I could. If I hadn't been forced, I would never have left him. I would have stayed with him, even if I had known that it would have ended with him killing me. Being away from him seemed just like being dead, anyway, so what was the difference? Somehow, it was scarier to me to think of not having Ivan than it was to think of him killing me. She must have felt that way, too. It wasn't your fault. She just loved him. I know that Toris would have protected me, but I didn't want him to. I guess—sometimes people don't make any sense."

Alfred was held under Ludwig's gaze, everything went bleary, there was something wet on the bridge of his nose, and Alfred realized with a jolt of horror that he had started crying.

Shit—

He turned his head quickly away, staring at the ceiling and attempting to appear stoic, and tried damn hard to pull it together. That awful feeling of tears trickling down his face and into his ears as he attempted to pretend that he wasn't crying at all. The last time he had cried had been upon that hill in Kitty Hawk, staring down at someone's glasses. Where would he stand and remember Ludwig?

In the mountains, where Ludwig had watched fireflies.

He couldn't stop crying, however he tried, because he had let it all build up too much.

Ludwig reached out, and grabbed Alfred's hand. They didn't speak anymore, and Alfred quietly cried.

Meg and Ludwig would have stood before one another and perfectly understood the other. They would have been able to lock eyes and comprehend, for they stood upon the same plane of existence. In their own universe, in some way, and Alfred could see them, but just couldn't connect. Even now, as Ludwig tried so hard to explain, Alfred still couldn't understand. He grasped the basic concept, of course he did, always had, knew that they were fueled by love, but beyond that everything was mysterious.

Alfred could understand being a victim to an extent. He understood being beaten by his parents as a child, unable to escape. He understood not fighting back, because he had never once tried to hit his mother or father in self-defense. He got that, because that was beyond someone's control.

But he could never understand staying with someone like that because you wanted to.

Ludwig tried his best to make Alfred understand the way Meg's mind had worked, but all Ludwig had accomplished was reaffirming to Alfred that he never would see things the way they did. For the rest of his life, Alfred would never be able to view the world as Meg had, as Ludwig did, and it was clear to him, then.

Supposed all he could do was believe Ludwig when he said that it wasn't because Meg hadn't trusted and believed in him. She had just loved someone else more.

Didn't make it hurt any less.

As Alfred stared at the ceiling and his mind wandered, one thing from Ludwig's words stood out to him :

'I love him,' Ludwig had said.

Not, 'I loved him.'

Alfred always seemed to be one step behind.

Before he drifted into a restless sleep, he saw Ludwig there in his mind's eye, lying on the kitchen floor as Ivan held a knife above him. Somehow, even then, Alfred imagined that Ludwig had been smiling at Ivan.

Funny, how love could be the worst thing for some people.