here's part two!

Eleventh Hour – The Final Time to Act

-x-x-

He remembers there was a door, that split the entranceway and divided it into two paths.

"Aren't you excited, Gil? It's your first world meeting!"

"Sure am, Liz. Lead the way!"

Maybe, he thinks, it was a foretelling of their future; that they were never meant to be together, and that they were destined to split up and spend it apart. He took the left and she took the right, and sometimes he wishes he hadn't taken the other way.

"Everyone calls me 'Hungary' here, so maybe I should start calling you by that name now, too…"

"Hm? What? What is it?"

Most other times, however, he wonders what would've happened if he didn't take that first step.

"Prussia."

-x-x-

Roderich returns home to the sight of puffy eyes and bedraggled hair, pink lips no longer curled up in their usual smiling expression.

"Is there something the matter, Miss Hungary?" he asks, noticing the red flush of her cheeks and the lack of the cerise tulip that used to always rest on her temple.

"No," she replies tersely, gulping yet another glass with a breathy hiccup. The alcohol burns down her throat, though not as much as the bitter sting of the name that lingers on the tip of her tongue. "I'm fine."

But the look in her eyes says otherwise, and Austria knows better than to pry and push the matter further.

"Alright," he says instead, pressing a handkerchief to her palm and letting his hand rest on her shoulder, his touch lingering a minute longer than it should. He presses a kiss to her lips, a chaste brush so warm and honest and brimming full of concern. "Get some rest, Elizabeta."

-x-x-

"You're greying," she tells him then, amazon green eyes ever keen with their observations.

"Really? You can tell?" he jests, combing through his tresses and feigning surprise. "Took you long enough to notice. You're kinda on the slow side, aren't ya? I've had this hair color for centuries, millennia even…"

She rolls her eyes. "Pfsh. Gil, please."

"You're like, how old? Four hundred twenty? A thousand and three? I bet if the world saw your real face, you'd scare the children so badly that the shock would lead them to have hair the same color as mine," he quips, before his eyes soften at the sight before him. "But hey, thanks to your make-up and anti-aging creams and whatever magic you use to hide your flaws, you still don't look like a day over twenty-five to the world, Liz."

"Well, as much as I'd like to say the same for you," Elizabeta stifles a laugh, "I'd have to be honest, Gil; with all that white hair of yours, at most, you don't look like a day over sixty-two to me."

"Hm…I'll take that as a compliment," he says, flashing her a crooked, toothy grin. "Beats being bald, anyway."

-x-x-

We're all living on borrowed words, and (quite possibly, even) borrowed time.

-x-x-

"I wonder if this is what he felt like," Gilbert alludes, "back in 1786."

It's a heavy statement, and Elizabeta feels the overly familiar lump lodging itself at the back of her throat. She knows what it means. She knows what he means.

"I'm sorry-" is all she manages to say, wincing at the pain as she swallowed back the tears before she let them flow.

"Don't be. It was his time," Gilbert says it with a chuckle and the saddest of smiles. "He lived it well."

Elizabeta only watches, pondering over the concept of human lives, the brevity of it all, and why it was so that some people's times were significantly so much shorter than others.

Humans were fragile creatures after all, with bones more brittle than even the needle-thin frameworks of their countries. It came to both parties as no surprise that Prussia outlasted Friedrich – his father, his leader, his king. He was a nation then.

But he is a human now, Hungary thinks as she worries her lip, skin dry and cracked and white from the pressure, specks of blood drawn at the fissure forged by the sinking of her incisors and front teeth.

"What about you?"

How much more do you have left? Elizabeta wants to ask, but perish the thought; she shuts it out of her brain before her sentiments escape her and the words slip past her lips and find the time to reach his ears. "Did…did you live yours well?" she says instead.

But Gilbert knows the fear shielded by her words, like a heavy burden weighing down the tone of her voice. He knows her better than anyone else, sixteen centuries and all; has mastered the mechanisms of her mind and the trains of her thoughts and the gears that put all her habits into play.

For Prussia, it is an easy feat to crack her code – to break down the walls of Hungary's carefully built barrier of precautions and anxieties, the artillery of her words, and the armor of her expressions. A simple task – for him, he is sure – to rip off the veil of her poorly acted indifference, tearing it to shreds and exposing Elizabeta's vulnerable form.

He understands her more than anyone else – more than he understands his own self, even.

And he knows that she, too, can do the same for him.

"I..I d-don't–" he stammers, and his answer is enough to break the glass in the mirrors of her green, green eyes.

I don't have enough.

It is unspoken, but it is still there.

"I'm sorry, Liz."

He doesn't say much else and neither does she, so when his eyes begin to sting and the water rises to a flood and the silence washes over the scatter of their bones, they feel their emotions quell at the quiet of it all. And when his body bends over, almost breaking at her touch, she leans into the embrace, still and without faltering, before their souls crumble and their breaths catch and they both shatter at the mercy of the hands of time.

NOTES:

*Austria x Hungary was made canon in light of post-marriage/post-union stuff; like I meant for them to have that we're-not-lovey-dovey-and-actually-kinda-unstable-but-we'll-make-it-work-maybe-because—there's-some-domestic-love-we've-managed-to-develop-together vibe of arranged marriages and stuff, since they were initially together in a political marriage set-up… but the relationship I intended to display between Prussia & Hungary here was that of a platonic-best-friends-til-the-ends-of-the-earth-kind. If you still prefer to ship them like a regular couple in this fic, though, then go ahead. I won't stop you HAHA

*The Hungary that we know today began as a principality that was founded in 895. At present (2015), Elizabeta would be 1120 years old. At the set time of their conversational banter, it was still 1947, so Liz would be 1052 IRL but since she's still a country, she'd have the visual appearance of someone in her mid-20s.

*The allusion made in the final segment of this fic (obviously) referred to Old Fritz's death; he passed away on August 17, 1786. [src: wiki]