After this, things will get better.

0o0o0o

Antonio had come sometime when he was sleeping. Feliciano woke up long enough to ask him where Lovino was. Antonio had just shook his head, limp curls flopping, cheeks and eyes hollow. He put a fork in Feliciano's hand and food in front of him what must have been several times a day, if Feliciano could make sense of time anymore. Sometimes he ate. Sometimes he didn't. He followed the instructions to sleep and brush his hair and teeth and shower robotically. He slept, and sat silently with Ludwig, who appeared and disappeared like he was the pale ghost of his brother, and waited. There was nothing but the waiting and the grey nothingness of pain.

'I want to go visit him,' Feliciano said one day, and was shocked at how raspy his voice was. Antonio knelt down beside him. His eyes were sunken and shadowed, and when he tried to force a smile, it came out a grimace.

'Not right now.'

'I want to,' Feliciano repeated. 'I deserve to, I'm his grandson. This isn't fair.'

'None of this was ever fair, Feliciano.' Antonio looked old, older than his years. 'People let this happen. People cheered this. The kind of life we have to live-loving truly only in the shadows and under different names-that kind of life was never fair, and that life will be the one we live for a long time yet.'

Feliciano didn't say anything. Antonio hovered like he wanted to say something more, and he reached out like he was about to ruffle his hair, but he thought better of it and left him alone.

One day, Antonio woke him up and told him they were allowed to go in. Feliciano didn't feel the relief he expected, or even the anticipation. He left a note on his window since he hadn't seen Ludwig in a few meals and went to clean up.

He met the eyes of his reflection in the mirror and the sight shocked him out of the grey weight on his shoulders. His reflection wasn't as gaunt as Antonio, but it's eyes were dull and unrecognizable. Feliciano took a deep breath and ducked his head in the sink, the freezing water dragging him back into reality. When he came back up, his reflection's face was redder with cold, and maybe his eyes were more aware. It was enough for now.

The car ride was too long and not long enough, but definitely long enough for Feliciano to see that the world was carrying on, as bright as ever. Antonio's words about not being fair echoed in his head again.

Antonio led him into the hospital with a few words at the nurses and stopped outside a simple door in a back wing, tucked away from the rest. Because this virus was something people got fired over. The kind people died from, and yet it was seen as acceptable simply because of who they found beautiful. Antonio's hand was gripping his shoulder like he was thinking the same thing.

'Feliciano,' he said, and his voice caught.

'Has Lovino been here?' Feliciano asked. Antonio's eyes shone with tears.

'I...I don't know, Feliciano, just be careful. Be gentle with him.'

Feliciano had always been too gentle, but right now he does not know if he can find it in him when he was already looking for so much gentleness himself.

The door opened. Feliciano stepped in.

'I need to go home,' the gaunt man in the bed was insisting, making a move to sit up. One of his nurses pushed him back down, and the man looked at them, brows furrowing in anger at his helplessness. Feliciano knew the look-it was the one people wore when they argued.

'You can't, you're in no state to-'

'My grandsons need me-Feliciano!' The man locked eyes with Feliciano, and the nurse held him back. Feliciano rushed forward.

'Nonno-' The emotion that had been building up since Feliciano's world started collapsing burst out of him, rendering his pleas and explanations and demands for both into a choking, screaming horrible noise that didn't stop until the nurses let go and Feliciano was grasping bone-thin fingers in his.

'Feliciano, you came,' Roma said, eyes spilling over, holding onto him like he was a lifeline.

'Lovi hasn't?' Feliciano asked, already fearing the knew the answer. His grandfather hesitated and shook his head.

'No. Not yet. But he will, he will.' Roma struggled further up, his tears rolling down his weathered cheeks. 'Feliciano, what can I say to you? I'm sorry.'

'I know,' Feliciano said. The words of forgiveness stuck in his throat. He would not say them now, not now. 'I-I have some things to tell you.'

Roma's eyes sharpened, like he knew, and he turned to the nurses, silencing the protests. 'Ten minutes. Ten minutes alone. Please.'

The word of a dying man carries much weight, and silently, the nurses withdrew out of earshot, keeping careful watch. Feliciano turned back to his grandfather, taking in the waxy cast of his skin and the sores around his mouth and the smell of the hospital that clung to him, so different than his normal spice from cooking. This disease stripped everything away.

'Please-' The pain was rising up his throat, catching on the broken edges of his world, choking off the future. There was nothing but the grey now, every second an eternity. His words were the whisper of a boy who just wanted something better than the hell that is now. 'Please don't get mad at me.'

'I would never,' Roma assured him, gently patting his hair, and Feliciano was so heavy with the weight of words and pain that he did nothing about it.

'How long have you had it?'

'Longer than you'd think.' Roma chuckled, but the action seemed to hurt him, and he winced. He wiped at his mouth with a tissue that came away red. 'I learned I might have it in Europe, and decided it would be best to move away for a while.'

'But-' All the words from the sermons about hate and sin flashed in front of him for a moment. 'But you're not-'

'This isn't about me, Feliciano. I have spent too long making things about myself. You wanted to tell me something.'

Feliciano swallowed the tears and the fear and the knowledge that past hopelessness was acceptance, which he didn't know if he would ever be able to find. How do you accept your world falling at the edges?

But he gathered his small, childish words and wants and closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to see the disappointment.

'Lovino's in love with Antonio.'

Instead of shouts, he received a soft, sad laugh, and a hand in his hair. 'Oh, Feliciano. I know. I knew from the moment Lovino set eyes on that boy that they would be in love.'

'You didn't want him to be,' Feliciano said. His voice sounded naive and unknowing. Lovino never would have told, but Feliciano thought their grandfather should know.

'No, I didn't. Antonio naturally loves as openly as I once did, and in the end, so does Lovino. Loving like that means you get hurt.'

'You hate it,' Feliciano tried again, but they both knew it wasn't true.

'No. I tried. I tried to hate it. It would be easier to have hated it.'

Feliciano took a deep breath and tried to make his voice steady and understand maybe this.

'You said not to talk about you, but I need to know. Were you...like that? Homosexual?'

Roma fixed him with the kind of gaze people have in war-steady and piercing. Finally, he said, 'I met a man before the war who I thought I understood. During the war, when he was on the opposite side, we met again. He was armed, I was not. Instead of killing me, he let me go. I never saw him again until I learned I had this disease. Then…' His shoulders rose and fell in the suggestion of a defeated shrug. There was the hint of a sad smile on his face. 'I decided to go see him one last time.'

Feliciano had nothing to say. The words that would make everything make sense would not come.

'You didn't make a good choice. He-he argued a lot. He hated people like that.'

'You don't choose who you love, Feliciano. And he was...different back then.'

'Where is he now?' he asked, barely daring. Roma turned to stare out the window, an expression of pain flickering over his face.

'They made him leave.'

The knowledge was the kind of thing that makes the world stop and start again, and Feliciano moved closer, trying to feel a hint of warmth, of the safety that would soon be gone.

'What about you?' Roma asked gently. Feliciano felt slack, released, the horrible pain having left him for just a moment. He could breathe in this respite, cradled in his grandfather's arms, holding onto childhood a few heartbeats more. He wanted to tell. He didn't want his grandfather to leave without knowing.

'I'm in love with Ludwig,' he said, so quietly he wasn't sure his grandfather heard. He did, and just nodded. A tear fell onto Feliciano's hair.

'I thought so.'

'We tried to hide it,' Feliciano said. His eyes were sliding shut. The world was slowing down for a moment, because for just once, Feliciano was safe from the world and the danger of being himself. 'But he's beautiful.'

'It's his eyes, isn't it?' Roma asked. 'Aldrich had the same when he was that age. The war changed them.'

Feliciano nodded. He was floating. He didn't want this moment to end.

'You look at him like he is the world,' Roma said sadly. 'And he looks at you the same way. I should have told you to watch out for boys with the sky in their eyes.'

'What do I do?' Feliciano asked. He needed a final instruction, something to build himself on. He couldn't be left alone, left without his grandfather. He needed a memory so he wouldn't be as scared.

'You don't do what I do. You don't fall in love and then war.' Roma stroked his hair. 'Remember me, but do not follow me. I am just a man who made the wrong decisions. Be happy. You are an incredible boy, Feliciano. I am proud that you are my grandson. I don't think I told you that enough.'

'You didn't,' Feliciano whispered, tears choking his throat, his silent scream stuck behind the wall of emotion. His hold was slipping and he would fall, but for now, he was suspended, holding on for these last few moments.

'Tell-tell Lovino that I am proud of him.' Roma's voice had dropped to a rasp again. He looked Feliciano in the eyes. I am just a man, he had said, but he was also the cornerstone of Feliciano's life. The world could not go on without him, but it had to. Feliciano tasted salt and loss and all the things that would never happen. 'Tell him I said goodbye,' Roma finished, his tears barely hidden in his voice.

'Goodbye, Nonno,' Feliciano whispered, and Romulus Vargas held him close, whispering the apologies that had gone unsaid for too many years into his grandson's hair. They lay there in the hospital bed, and Feliciano listened to his grandfather's heartbeat and wondered how many more times it could be heard. He knew that this would be the last time for everything, and yet everything they needed to say would remain unsaid.

The world was not fair, how there was pain and fear and hate that made people silence love declarations and forgiveness before they were spoken. Feliciano was helpless against all of that, and all he could do was keep loving. And yet he could not form forgiveness. Not yet.

When he stepped away, it felt like a piece of his heart had been left behind. He thought he heard Roma say I'm sorry, but he turned his tearstained face away and stared out the window. Feliciano touched his arm, words choked off, and left.

Antonio was waiting outside the door. Tears tracked down his cheeks. He silently led Feliciano back to the car. Feliciano didn't remember driving home, but standing in front of the house he had grown and loved in for the last few years, the relief came, if that was what it was called-the bittersweet pain and release racking out of him in sobs, in screams, demands of the world to change, to make things better. There was a hurt in him that took over everything, until all he could feel was loss. His grandfather was dying.

After that, all he remembered was being put to bed and dreaming of Nonno.

Two days later, Antonio got the phone call. When he picked up and listened, his face went blank with pain. He hung the phone back up and turned to Feliciano.

'I'm sorry,' he said, and that was the thing about Antonio, that he hurt for people even though he knew it was useless. Feliciano didn't know how it was possible to hurt so much, and how nothing made it better.

The world hadn't stopped like it was supposed to, and if all those poets and writers spoke about human grief moving empires and continents, why wasn't Feliciano's enough to make the world stop moving forward so quickly for just a second? Why was the world leaving him stuck in the antiseptic room with the blood sores and the guilt that had hung over them both like death's shroud?

If he'd just been braver or smarter, if he had just been better, maybe Nonno could have been saved. Feliciano hadn't understood why Gilbert drank when he was hurting-what he'd had that one golden night that seemed so far away now had been nothing but pure dizzy energy in his veins-but he understood now. He wanted something to make the pain stop, to make it all stop for just a moment.

Ludwig let him cry, and even though they did not speak, they sat together until Feliciano fell asleep. Sometimes, the pain was less around him, and then more often than not, because Ludwig made him better. Feliciano said the first words after it to him-Thank you-and slowly, slowly, began to speak again. The crushing weight was never gone, but sometimes it was less.

Lovino came back looking like he'd fought his own hell and lost. Feliciano didn't ask if he'd gone to see Nonno. He didn't want to know the answer. One day, Lovino touched him on the shoulder and said they were moving back to Europe. He looked exhausted and no longer angry. The news was a cold shock, jolting him out of the haze, making him remember that he could not keep ignoring time even if he still wanted the world to stop and let him catch him.

Feliciano waited for Ludwig to come back and told him.

'We're going back to Europe.'

'I...I thought you might be.' Ludwig looked like he didn't know what to say. Feliciano took his hand-what he hadn't done in weeks-and Ludwig looked down at it, shocked.

'I'm sorry, Ludwig.'

'Don't.' Ludwig hesitated and gently pulled him closer, mouth pressing at the back of his neck like it had so long ago. 'I love you, Feliciano.'

'I love you, too, Ludwig.' Feliciano squeezed his hand. Ludwig cupped his face, eyes searching, and slowly, slowly leaned in. Feliciano made a sound like a desperate laugh and a sob and curled a hand in his hair to pull him closer. The kiss tasted like salt and loss and promises, the kind of kiss that cannot be the last. When he pulled away, both held on, two people scared of what the world would do to them but still in love.

'I'll come back one day,' Feliciano promised. 'After all of this. When the world is better-or maybe when it's not completely better, so we can make it better. I want to show you Venice and maybe Florence. I want to show you the world.'

'I'd-I'd like that.' Ludwig turned away to brush at his eyes, reddening in the kind of way he did when he was angry at himself.

'You're allowed to cry,' Feliciano said. Ludwig shook his head incredulously, and Feliciano cut him off. 'You're allowed to hurt and love and feel everything, Ludwig.' He reached back and undid his slicked-back hair. Without it, Ludwig looked like he had been before he started trying to be strong in a way nobody was but he thought his brother could be. 'You don't need to be your brother.'

Ludwig's grip slackened in surprise, and Feliciano smiled for the first time in too long, tears turning his vision crystalline, making the sunset through the window a golden sunbeam settling on them both, writing love declarations on their bones.

'Du bist wunderschön, Ludwig,' Feliciano said, closing his eyes, finally feeling safe in the curl of strong arms.

'Sei bello, Feliciano,' Ludwig replied, tears at the edge of his voice, kissing his neck again. They stayed like that and nobody told them to stop, and so they fell asleep together.

0o0o0o

The grey moving truck was back. Lovino sat on the step and smoked, thin trails curling up between his fingers. Feliciano sat with Ludwig by the fence. His pageboy cap was crooked on his head. He spoke first.

'Ludwig? I just wanted to know if I could have that language map. If you still have it.'

'Oh.' Ludwig had wanted to keep it, but he nodded and went inside to get it. Feliciano took it, looking like he wanted to say something more but not sure how.

'My smock-you know, my paint smock-is too small,' he said after a moment, gesturing at himself. 'I finally outgrew it. It's been...a long time. Do you remember the apple tree?'

'I remember we met here,' Ludwig said, looking at the fence.

'I ran into you,' Feliciano agreed, but his slight smile disappeared when they remembered what had happened after. There was a silence that could not be entirely broken here, like the emptiness under Ludwig's chest that he felt when he realized Feliciano was going to be gone. The most confusing and wonderful person he'd ever met would be gone and Ludwig dug his nails into his palm until he hissed with the pain because he wasn't ready for it. He didn't know what to do.

Feliciano put a hand on his arm and Ludwig refused to meet his concerned look.

'Ludwig.'

'Don't worry about me, Feliciano.'

'Ludwig, I…' Feliciano made a soft noise. 'I don't want this to happen.'

'I don't, either.'

They cannot say more in front of everybody here, but Feliciano leaned in and under the pretense of fixing his hair, kisses his cheek. Ludwig turned into it and caught him half on the mouth. Feliciano did not protest. His eyes shimmered with unshed tears.

'I love you,' he whispered.

'I love you too,' Ludwig whispered back. Feliciano smiled, a terribly sad, soft thing, and backed away and spoke quietly with Lovino, and they both went back inside. Ludwig went back inside as well, past Vati, who had come back, and the silence where they'd accepted Gilbert wouldn't do the same, and stared at Feliciano's painting of him and thought about how much everything had changed.

They did not say anything more than goodbyes on the day the big grey moving truck pulled out. Lovino started the car and at the last moment, looked over at him. Ludwig thought he might look like he wanted to say something, but Lovino turned back around and shouted for Feliciano to hurry. Feliciano looked at him and just like the first time, his beautiful golden eyes made Ludwig feel alight and vulnerable and wonderful and right. He smiled like a promise, whispered sei bello, Ludwig, let go of his hand, and left.

Ludwig watched Feliciano disappear from his life and went back inside and thought of Gilbert's broken-wing drunkenness before he slept and dreamt of the heat of a hand and kiss.

0o0o0o

Two weeks later Ludwig was still walking around the emptiness where brightness and Feliciano had been. He was trying to be good, but one night he couldn't stand it.

His fear of falling from the roof was less than his wonder about Feliciano-what was he doing in Europe? Was he happy, was he thinking about him, was he kissing someone else?

Something bitter filled his mouth and Ludwig dropped to the ground, seeing the remains of cigarettes in the dewy grass. He unlocked the back door and wandered the garden in the moonlight. It was too empty. Life without Feliciano was too empty. He should be here among the stars and the cornflower blooms, talking about the constellations and grabbing his hand.

Ludwig missed Feliciano in the deep-set kind of aching way, where everything was a reminder. The kind of longing poets write about. He missed Gilbert, too, but he was able to step back from that, to think of his wildfire brother at a distance. Feliciano broke down all his boundaries and was everything he never expected. Feliciano had found his way into his heart and he'd taken part of it back to Europe with him.

Ludwig found himself climbing the apple tree. He settled close to the top, leaning back to stare at the moon. He closed his eyes, remembering the exact way Feliciano had laughed and looked at him and the curve of his shoulders and his eyes in the moonlight. Maybe one day he wouldn't be able to, but right now, it was like he was still here, which was what Ludwig needed.

Feliciano's old sword was leaning up against the tree, and when Ludwig climbed down to grab it, a piece of the tree shifted.

He froze until he realized what he'd grabbed. In the crook of the branches was wedged Feliciano's old paint smock. Ludwig pulled it out, already confused. In the front pocket, protected from rain, was a piece of paper folded into a tight square. Ludwig opened it. It was their old language map. On the back, in looping handwriting, was a letter.

'Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.' -Henry James

I found this quote in one of Lovi's books and I thought you'd like it. Gilbert was always better than either of us at writing but I still know what beauty is in words.

I'm not a sculptor or a poet either but I know you're beautiful and language is wonderful in having so many ways for me to tell you. I want to tell you everything about the future and how it will all be okay but I'm not even sure what I feel except that I really do love you and hope you remember me. However if you find a girl you like then go with her. Don't be unhappy because of me.

You don't have to be like Gilbert. I didn't fall in love with you for your brother. I fell in love with you because you're you and kind and your smile is incredible and you say my name in a way that makes me think of love letters and your eyes are very very blue and because you love me even when I'm scared of things and when I don't know what to do. You're amazing and I love you so so much.

I told you about the stars and the moon and how there are people all over the world looking at them and thinking they're beautiful, and even though they look the same in Italy, it won't be the same because you're not there beside me looking at them.

I already miss you sometimes.

Ti amo, Ludwig.

Ludwig stared at the words, at Feliciano's goodbye, and reread it until his eyes were spilling over with tears and turning the world silver and then he laughed, wild and relieved and pained, the kind of laugh that happens after battles and wars are won. He could imagine Feliciano writing this, imagining how he'd read it, whispering the words to himself.

Don't be unhappy because of me, Feliciano had written, and for a second Ludwig spun in the quiet of the moonlight, wielding the sword in the moves Gilbert had taught him on the kind of night where he'd fallen in love.

He took a cornflower and wore it behind his ear like he had on that golden night and after a moment, took the sword as well. He slept and for once woke up without feeling like he'd lost something.

0o0o0o

The second part will be happier.

:: Finding an old book you still love