Prussia probably changes his mind about Italian opera after Austria gets crushed in a war against France, Ludwig comes to realise. He hasn't received any news from Austria ever since, and it makes him wonder how exactly his defeat against Italy trying to break free destroyed him. Ludwig is out of this all now, out of their games, but this had been personal, all those years ago, when Austria had told him with a stern but understanding voice that this was punishment he had to accept for the war he'd dragged all of Europe into. There's something like revenge in his hand as he writes to Austria once more, and it's all caressing whispers and off-handed comments that have the same distinctive style as Austria's own very peculiar pen.

Still, he can't bring himself to write to Italy now, now that he knows that everything is over, that maybe, maybe it could work. It's the same weight as always, over his shoulder, making his back ache under years that had flown away too fast. He's growing old, but not in the same way he'd grown old before, in that eternal adolescent body that had made him always sick and weak. There's strength in his limbs now, but they are made of flesh and bone, and they'll rot, one day, just like the bones of his brothers and sisters, all those years ago.

The inevitability of his own death hits him in the face for the first time in years that seem to go by so slowly now, as a familiar figure approaches his house with something like a smile and memories that he should have let go off centuries ago.

"Hello. Do you remember me?"

It's still there, the singing accent in a language that almost feels foreign on the tongue, with all the inflections at the wrong places and the singing sound of days long gone.

It's Italy.

Ludwig tries not to think about the rights and wrongs of them meeting again. In fact, he tries not to think about anything, to smile when it is polite to smile, looking at Italy but never really seeing him. It's strange because Austria isn't here, not really, not anymore, Austria isn't anywhere but in dreams of a glory long gone, and Ludwig shouldn't feel anything about this except he does.

He misses it. He misses the way things had been, the past, now. It's an odd kind of feeling, the kind of feeling he hasn't felt in such a long time. Italy hasn't changed, not really. He's taller, and stronger, and no longer wearing the servant's clothes, but he's hasn't grown old, not the way Ludwig has ever since the war. Ludwig has grey hair and tired features, and the look of a man that has already left his best years, while Italy is as fresh as a rose, when he uses his hands to speak and giggle like a child. It hits Ludwig, hard.

"I thought about you a lot, in the last few years. You know, they never did tell me what had become of you, not even France."

Italy laughs, and it's beautiful and sadly distant. It sounds like tinkling crystal and sunny days in Rome, and so many things Ludwig had forgotten about the past. He closes his tired eyes.

"I guess they thought it was for the best."
"Probably. But still, I wish they'd let me see you. You know, I really did love you, all those years ago."

Italy's serious, or maybe he isn't. Ludwig can't know for sure, or maybe he doesn't want to know. It would be too sad.

Maybe that's the reason why he can't remember what Italy said after he leaves, can't remember anything but the soft laugh and a few words about how pretty Venice is at this time of the year. He can't remember if Italy mentioned Rome or not, the glory of a past long gone, the sounds of centuries that have gone by.

"You alright?" Bavaria asks, and Ludwig can only sigh.
"I don't know."

It's Italy's visit, and the letters, sometimes. Ludwig realises that he can't fall in love anymore, not exactly the same way as he used to. He's too young to die, he still feels, but he's too old to truly die.

It's strange, how time goes by. Bavaria doesn't get the time to worry much about Ludwig anymore, or at least not as much as he worries about the other Ludwig, the one who wears a crown, hates war, loves Wagner and wishes to live in a fairytale. The king is loved, too, with his sharp features and dreamy eyes, and the century tears him apart, as it always does to bright young futures.

The first and only time they meet, the swan king, with his sharp eyes and strong features, gives Ludwig a passing look and a sigh, before turning towards Bavaria without much of a care, and something that looks like it's about to break in the way he stands.

"Is it really your older brother?" the king asks, a bit out of what seems like disinterested curiosity, and there's weariness his tone. He doesn't like talking to Bavaria, because Bavaria is work, unlike the magnificent castles, and unlike Wagner and the true arts. Ludwig can understand that.

"It is," Bavaria says softly.
"How strange. His eyes look younger than yours."

There's a distant look in the king's eyes as he says that, but Ludwig trie not to pay any mind to it. He doesn't want to know, not really, what burns behind the young king's sharp eyes and noble features. He can feel it, still, in the tone and the inflection of his voice, even though Bavaria doesn't jave the courage to realise it himself.

When they get back home, Ludwig sits at the piano, his eyes flying over the old music scores of Schumann boredly. He realises that time has gone by too fast, that he no longers understand the times the way he used to. He'd seen the great Wagnerian operas in Munich, and he'd seen the king transfixed in their contemplation, but he doesn't understand them the way he had understood the compositions Austria used to send him, years ago.

"Austria doesn't write music anymore," Bavaria jokes with a sour look on his face that means more than it should. "He only whines."

Bavaria isn't wrong, not about that at least. Austria has changed, the same way Prussia has changed, and Saxony, and France, and Italy. They've changed in a more intimate way Ludwig could, in all those years greying and withering in human flesh. They've changed because their bones, their blood and their flesh doesn't belong to them, not the way it does to Ludwig. They've changed because men have changed, in this new century of engines and foggy cities, of kingdoms and millennial empires shaking under their own weight.

It doesn't surprise Ludwig when the king of Bavaria goes mad, mad, mad. It's the name they share, maybe, and the dreamy look of the swann prince wishing so much to be something else than himself.

The wheel of time turns, endlessly. Ludwig grows old. The hair on his head takes the silvery colour of maturity, bit by bit, and they talk about him as Herr Bayer's uncle with a commiserating smile that makes Ludwig's hands curl into fists. He plays the piano, too, but the way his fingers move on the keys has changed, a lot, ever since the war, ever since his centuries as a sickly, forever young adolescent. Spring turns into summer, and summer turns into fall.

Prussia wins, Austria loses, and then it's France's turn to do so, harshly enough for Ludwig to feel maybe, maybe a little uneasy when Prussia writes to him about a bright new future, and their homeland, their fatherland, about to take the hardness of steel. It's because his hands are wrinkled with age now, whereas Prussia's haven't changed, his writing just as sharp, while Ludwig's penmanship has grown shaky with age. Bavaria is mad with anger and resentment, and he refuses to leave Munich with Ludwig on the way to Paris, to the bright lights of things that went away more than a century ago.

It's a seemingly endless ride that finally bring him there, even though the world turns faster now, under the wheels of the locomotive and the power of steel and blood. It's because Ludwig is old, now, maybe, older than he should be. He feels it in his bones in the most intimate way, the creaking of time, the stomach-deep tiredness, the achings of a body that is waiting to die in manners that are all too familiar. Ludwig is an old man with decaying teeth and snow white hair has replaced his once bright gold locks. Ludwig is dying for a second time, a most definitive time, and once more he should be terrified except he isn't.

There's bright sunshine in Paris, and the city still looks like a wreck from the siege and the revolt and the war. Ludwig doesn't feel things as he once did, but he knows, maybe with a bit of amusement, that France is fuming, as he always is when things like these happen. Foreign troops. The colours of a new decade getting on its gear, colours that aren't exactly what France had thought them to me. Large boulevards and avenues have replaced the small, busy streets Ludwig had last seen, but the smell in the air is the same, the putrid effluves of the Seine and the early winter damp cold.

It feels odd to meet Prussia, who hasn't changed one bit, even after the decades and the wars, his eyes still as restless, his body still as sharp. Prussia won't go away like Holy Rome had done, almost a century ago, Ludwig can feel it. Prussia will go with a bang, because this is what Prussia does, has always done.

"I want to show you something," he says, and his grin reeks of dead bodies all over the battlefields of France.

The streets smell of modernity they all dreamed about, years ago, fighting wars after war for the triumph of the all mighty rationality. It smells like ashes, like human sweat and bile and grime, like this whole century that ended up eating itself alive. Ludwig feels it because he is old, with grey hair and regrets, but he's glad that at least he's not Prussia, who revels in it with a self-satisfied grin.

"Smile a little bit, will you?" Prussia says, as the horse-drawn carriage crosses a bridge that feels both familiar and distant. It's been so many years... "We're in the most beautiful city in the world, don't you know?"

France's final defeat has to be complete, because Prussia is merciless. It's towards that same house that overlooks the Île de la Cité. Ludwig knows that's where they're going; he recognises the road, even after the years, and remembers Austria, maybe, before he'd died a first time, with pursed lips and defeat all over his face after handing him to France. He doesn't say anything.

Prussia, receiving no answer, laughs more. "Human life made you a sad little old fellow, Holy Rome."
"My name is Ludwig."

Ludwig's face is turned towards the window, and he doesn't need to look to know that Prussia's smile hasn't gone, even though it did lose its spark.

It's Prussia that helps him out of the carriage, and it's strange to feel like a senile old man while Prussia himself doesn't look a day older than when France beat him into a pulp, decades ago. It's also Prussia that leads him inside, not presenting him to France as Ludwig would have thought as some kind of unfunny twist of fate, but to somebody entirely new.

It's the steps, maybe, the way he way his shoulder tense as their gazes meet. Ludwig doesn't know.

"Hello, Germany," Prussia says, and it shouldn't feel like dying all over again, but it does.

Ludwig dies exactly a century after the war, the one that had killed Holy Rome, during the first year of what would become the new century's Great War. On that day, the streets of Berlin, where he now lives, are bustling with energy, with national fervour, with the sound of Prussia's typical pedantic militaristic pride. No one yet knows that it will bring him his downfall. Trains come and go from Potsdamer Platz, uniformed men come and go die in the West, in the East, in submarines and in airplanes, formidable new machines of war and death.

But Ludwig doesn't know about it. Ludwig is an old man, and he has stopped caring years ago, when Prussia had shown him his reflection in what seemed like a broken mirror.

They bury him in the rain, ugly rain of late September that makes the Spree ever murkier than it should be. Bavaria isn't there; he's on the Eastern front, charging the Russians on horseback for what he doesn't know yet will be the last time. Austria isn't here; he's saying goodbye to his empire, one day at the time, wondering why he's so cold all the time, and why his time is slowly slipping between his fingers, playing the new, strange sounds of Arnold Schoenberg on the grand piano

Prussia isn't there either. In the skies of Alsace-Lorraine, his airplane flies, dances as the earth burns.

There's only Germany, Germany and the rain, his crisp uniform still dry under his black umbrella. He's about to leave, too, like Saxony and Hamburg and the rest. It's not a big burial, something simple, something small and quiet, as Ludwig himself had been in the final years of his life.

Still, there's something oddly tragicomic about the whole thing, Germany can't help but to think. It doesn't keep him from leaving flowers on the tomb, a solemn expression on his face as he leaves, never to return.