It was ok, he could go on for longer.
His hands worked furiously, wet and chafed.
Determined to keep going.
Anyone would have thought he was up to something perverse – slick splashing noises; steady, strained breathing – coming from the locked bathroom.
He scrubbed methodically and harsh at his hands.
The lather was cheap and in no way made his skin feel any better. Maybe he ought to purchase a better brand of soap. But with his diminishing financial situation, buying bulk with anything more than the industrial, cheap brand was likely going to end in sacrifice somewhere else in his household.
He had to watch for his water bill too. He did not reuse water on his skin, no matter how recyclable it is or how good for the environment it is. It could guarantee putting an end to all pollution and its effects in the world but Ludwig will not.
The tap was running, and the lather was washed away. Eyes stared and scrutinized as the tap gushed into the sink, cerulean raking over the dry, worn skin, red from endless, religious scrubbing. His fingernails were growing flimsy from the endless water, and his skin was too dry to be pruned. Around his thumb socket, finger joints, wrist and knuckles the skin was particularly raw and rubbed away, the skin prone to splitting open if he handled them too fast. He fingered at the peeling and the slight bleeding under a fingernail, fingering out the dead skin collected under it from the scraping he'd carry out.
He looked, and Hmph'd as he came to a conclusion.
He opened the bathroom drawer opposite his eyes, his mirrored self being sheared out of view as the little cupboard was opened. He took out a fresh bar of soap from the pile inside, closed the drawer, and pulled the solidified glob of hygiene out of its paper wrappings. The paper was tossed in the bin at his feet, the soap was put into his red palms, and he lathered them under the water.
The soap stung fiercely at his abused hands, but he didn't pay attention. It got suck under his nails and rubbed open a split over his third knuckle, but he didn't wince. The surface screamed in agitation as the lather rubbed into the open, bothered breaks in skin. Once he deemed there was enough bubbles for a successful clean, he dropped the contaminated bar of soap in the wastebasket at his feet with the rest he had used today.
He scrubbed religiously once again, digging between his fingers and deep into the palms and into all the creases where contamination may be hiding, even though the worst areas had long been sucked of moisture and become scaly and cracked. Every finger was meticulously scrubbed and lathered, his hands gripped and slipped and turned and rubbed together continuously.
But as his hands when under the water to then zealously rinse away any freshly dead skin, blood and dirt he'd uncovered, Ludwig could only frown. His hands didn't feel any better. He looked down and all he saw as the white lather was being washed away were two hands covered in a layer of grime. His face twisted in distress, pale eyes flicking between them both, imaginary filth coating every inch of terrible skin. People had seen his hands and looked scared too, Ludwig knew. He'd seen their expressions if they caught a glance. Fear and disgust. He had to clean them.
He wrenched the cupboard over again, shearing his frantic expression again, reaching for another bar of soap and putting the wrapping in the bin again. He worked more lather, staring at his hands covered in trench mud and soot and ash and filth and blood and tears and possibly excrement and any other kind of intolerable substance that should be thoroughly removed from his person. But no matter how much he bled or scrubbed, the feeling of filth remained. The feeling of unclaspable, unremovable filth. It dragged him down like swimming in the water with all his clothes on, it coated his body and made him feel slimy, grimy, grotesque. Made him feel coated in dirt and death and contamination. He was bound to make someone ill, or make them look at him with disgust or pity or hatred, bound to. It only made sense if someone straight out vomited for having awful skin like him, to be awful like him.
The grime hung low in his gut, lower than his stomach like a weight and brushing against his intestines. Even his innards ought to be bothered by the disgrace on the outside.
Ludwig hung his head as he panted, his motions becoming harsher and movements more frantic, elbows almost clanging off the porcelain. Disgraceful, humiliating, downright disgusting. Who'd want to be friends with someone like him? Someone as weird and disgusting and awful as him? Someone who was downright filthy with shame and guilt, wearing it like a dead man that ought not to have lived.
He hadn't cheated death. Well, not really. He'd cheated life.
Blood leaked out between the tiles in the bathroom, and Ludwig shook his head furiously, his hands working into a blur, schlick schlick sounds of his hands whirring. The blood trailed down the white and pooled down to web at his feet like elastic, crawling up as the blood mounted. He opened his eyes and looked and his hands and they were covered in blood too, drenched. The blonde's eyes widened, gasping out and thrusting his hands under the water again to rinse it frantically away.
His hands were on fire, but not really. He knew real fire. Shell explosion fire, Flammenwerfer fire, skeletons of buildings and everyone's children on fire. Fire crackling and people screaming, but no one's screaming anymore, not really. He'd know because the screams would echo around the tiles, like screams in the mountains, bouncing off the walls like the thoughts in his skull.
It's guilt and shame, guilt and shame, burn the witch, burn the heretic, burn it all away, burn everything you don't agree with. This nonexistent mantra rattled his head and made him sniffle, not registering the pain in his hands but the pain weighing on his body, on his insides. He tried not to think about burning, about fire, it made the filth stick to his hands harder, made him sweat and retreat. He was no coward though!
Water. Washing. It was the only thing he could do. He had used fire to destroy, destroy, to get rid of things. But it left behind ash and sickness and terror and an emptiness that was not right or clean or tolerable.Heat to cold, from dirt to cleanliness. Yes. Order is restored.
Vom Feuer zum Wasser.
He was gasping now, the stinging sensation intense enough to garner his attention, his hands letting up as the tendons ached, both hands shaking pitifully in the bowl as he rested. Took a moment just to breath, reality sinking back in front of his eyes instead of a disgusted grey haze of smoke. He stared back at his reflection, bright eyes and mouth ajar from his panting, severe hair in a little of a disarray from his exertion.
Clarity pushed back the franticness squirming in his gut, and he frowned worriedly back at himself, distress creasing his brow and his eyes and his mouth. He wasn't insane. He glanced down to see his hands were still shaking. The tall, strong German man stood alone in his lonely, clean bathroom, hands shaking near the gushing water, injured and abused digits shivering above the bowl.
This time, almost everyday, the time indeterminable and not set in concrete, was his confrontation time. His alone time was his happy time, but not in here.
It was in here he came face to face with his sins. With his crimes. With all of the shame and humiliation and disgrace that littered his once proud and powerful name. Now he was nothing more than an introvert nation trying to buy back respect and friendship with the world. It looked like he was putting on all his environmental awareness and his openness to all ranges of alignments in sexuality, in his forgivingness to any mode of expression but his severity to discrimination. To everyone else it looked like he was scrambling pitifully for favour, begging 'I won't do it again, it was only a game, I'll make up for all those individual things you glorified in your textbooks'.
But as a young nation, that is all Ludwig was going to be known as now. For a long time. Almost forever. Until he forgot about it. Which he wouldn't, ever. Recovering from that ordeal, Ludwig began to slowly uncurl from his retreat to prove himself, to indulge and express himself, and it was interpreted as kissing ass.
Which he had to, or else he'd be known eternally as the dirty little Jew-Killing Nazi.
His stomach cramped violently at the thought and he jerked down a little, his expression growing more severe as he stared back at himself in upset. His mouth filled with a foul taste and he felt nauseous just at the thought. In a way, he did have to crawl about on his knees, still had to dance and reverse the order of his dark stereotype. Or all he'd get is contempt and snarls and sneers in his direction.
He sighed. A deliberate action to try to sort out his breathing into a healthier pattern, lest he exhaust himself or hyperventilate later on.
But he deserved it. Every jab, every sly little comment, every reference just for him, he deserved. It was penance. As a man, as a criminal and as a disgrace, it was his duty to take responsibility for his actions.
It wasn't just his duty. He wasn't just a soldier. He looked back in the mirror, and he was sure he didn't look just a soldier. He was a man, he half played an instrument thanks to Roderich. He liked to read and construct and spend quality time alone, and with any friend who permitted it. Roderich was good with performances and sharing fondness to baking (one he kept a private hobby), maybe even doing something mildly slobbish like gaming (rare) or drinking (often) with his brother. And all kinds of little excursions Feliciano initiated that warmed his core with gratitude and wonder. That was more than just a heartless soldier, right?
He wasn't heartless, or remorseless. He hadn't really needed the years of humiliation and abuse from the world but…it was part of the package. His internal abuse was enough, and his hands spoke for themselves. But only at times of utter, unbreakable rationality could Ludwig look at his hands and see something was very, very off.
Ludwig stared at the shaking appendages and wondered when the grime would finally rub off. When he would finally not feel so uncomfortable in his own skin, like he'd wandered into land he wasn't permitted, or violated an important rule. That general feeling of uneasiness that ground his gut and made every inch of his skin dance with anxiety.
Perhaps, Ludwig had wondered, some divine force had decreed that once he'd paid for every life lost for those few awful decades that were 'entirely his fault', he would be permitted some rest. Maybe, glances in his direction would stop being narrowed. Maybe he could enjoy a steamy beverage, lazy conversation with his family in the early evening after a delicious meal with a feeling of lukewarm contentment filling his body.
Ludwig's eyes filled once again with determination…though his hands were beyond saving now from their quivering, whom seemed to know what was coming. He reached up for a fresh bar of soap and unwrapped the paper carefully, hearing his skin stretch and crack. He was paying back his debt, everyday, just like this. Maybe in a few centuries he'll make up for all the millions of lives. Yes.
The wrapping fell into the bin with the half a dozen full bars of soap that had been discarded, and he wet his new one under the still billowing water. He still had an hour or so guaranteed of privacy in his home. He was going to make the best of it. He had plenty of life left as a nation to carry his debt and wash away every life he'd stolen.
Rational thinking or not, his hands still felt awful. Over all the pain, the sick feeling over his skin remained, even at the sharp feelings of skin splitting open from dehydration, and the bathroom was filled again with the sound of furious, passionate, methodical scrubbing.
THIS IS NOT SOME CHEAP FIC OF ANGST LEADING UP TO SAY JEWS OR NAZI. IT IS ABOUT OCD, AND THE NAZISM IS JUST A VALID SOURCE OF GUILT AND DELUSION TO HIS SHAME AND HOW TO PUNISH HIMSELF. I hate fics that go on and on and it all leads towards him being a nazi and killing jews. It's distasteful, it gets boring real quick, and its shoddy writing.