Mid-December, 1943, Small Austrian Town

Lukas sat up in his bed and looked at the calendar. It was a week until Christmas. He sighed as he sat back against the pillows. His wounds still hadn't healed, but all he wanted was to get back to that man that he was in love with….wherever he was. He was certain that it was a man, though. All he could do was wonder what that man looked like.

This was how he normally spent his days when he wasn't allowed to get out of bed. Either he would sit and read or he would daydream about his love and imagine what he looked like. That was all there really was to do. Sometimes he would sit and relax whenever Roderich played the piano. If Elizaveta was home when that happened, sometimes they would help Lukas out of bed and take him to the piano room to listen in person. Those days always made Lukas the happiest.

That day was a rainy day mixed with a bit of snow and ice. It was a little cold, so Lukas was glad that Elizaveta left him an extra blanket that morning. He snuggled up into it and smiled as he watched the snow and rain fall outside of his window. It looked so pretty to him, but he felt bad for anyone who was outside in it.

And just like that, a memory stirred deep in Lukas's mind. A memory of a man that he couldn't quite make out handing him wool socks in a military setting. Then his feet were warm.

And just as soon as it came, the memory was gone, leaving Lukas feeling empty and confused. Surely that must have been his love who had done that. He wanted to tell Roderich and Elizaveta of his newfound memory, but just as quickly as he remembered it, it was being forgotten. Slipping away back into that locked part of his mind along with the rest of his memories from the past six years.

Tears streaked Lukas's face. It just wasn't fair! Why did he have to have that accident and lose all of those precious memories of his? Why couldn't he have held on a little bit longer to that memory? Just long enough to see the face of his love! That was all he wanted!

Lukas pulled his knees up to his chest and buried his face in them, sobbing. It wasn't fair!` It just wasn't fair!

.

"So you're saying that you remembered something, but you forgot it immediately after?" Elizaveta asked him, cocking her head to the side.

It was a few hours later and Elizaveta had come in to check on him. She had been worried when she saw how much of a wreck he was. Her usual smile turned into an immediate frown as she rushed to his bedside and demanded to know what was wrong.

"It was him!" Lukas said. "It was my love, and I couldn't even remember his face or any distinct features! Not even his voice! But I know it was him! I could just tell!" He sobbed a little harder. "Why did this happen to me?!"

"Lukas, please calm down," Elizaveta softly said. "No one knows why these things happen. They just do." She smiled a little. "Roderich and I have a friend who has been in England for awhile now. He'll be coming here for Christmas and staying with us. Maybe he has run into your love if he's part of the same branch of military with you. I'd assume you were stationed in London, and that's where he was. He knows a lot of military men. Maybe you even knew him." She shrugged. "You never know."

.

Same Day, 1943, London, England

Gilbert leaned back in his chair at the bar and eyes Mathias evenly. "So if I find him anywhere, is there anything you'd want me to say to him?"

Mathias thought for a moment and then sighed. "This is absurd," he said. "Why am I even getting my hopes up? How the fuck would you even come across him? He's dead, Gilbert. I need to accept that fact instead of getting my hopes up over thinking that there could be a chance that he's alive, okay?"

"So you wouldn't want me to say anything to him?" Gilbert asked, raising an eyebrow.

Mathias sighed and pushed a piece of paper across the table to him. "This is for his eyes only. And to make sure you don't read it, I wrote it in Swedish. Lukas is fluent in Swedish, so good luck with that, Gil."

Gilbert smirked at him. "You really love him, don't you? To go to great lengths and trust a complete stranger to deliver a note to a person he might not even be able to find?"

Mathias sighed. "It's the only hope I have left." He tok a drink of his vodka. "It's all I have left. Lukas is everything. I mean, yeah, I have family back in Sweden, but Lukas is my future. Without him, I have nothing." He groaned. "And today, I got terrible news."

"What's that?" Gilbert asked.

"His mother is on the brink of death," Mathias said. "But I didn't put that in my letter. I didn't want to upset or trouble him any more than he already may be. I mean, if he didn't contact anyone back here yet, he must be in pretty bad shape, huh?"

Gilbert sighed. "You're a good man, Mathias. I'll give you that." He stood from his chair. "I leave for Austria tomorrow and I may not be back. You've got my information if you ever need anything, right? I'm pretty sure I gave that to you and Alfred yesterday."

"Yeah," Mathias sighed.

"Good luck out there, Mathias," Gilbert said, offering his hand. "I hope things end up well for you. And if I find Lukas, I'll send him your way."

Mathias managed a small smile to appease Gilbert. "Thanks, Gil." He finished off his vodka and stood as well. "Let's leave together. I shouldn't drink alone anyway."

.

Christmas Eve, 1943, Small Austrian Town

Lukas sat in the piano room next to the tree. He gazed up at the magnificent beauty of the tree that Roderich and Elizaveta decorated. He couldn't believe that two people could decorate something so beautiful with their bare hands in one day. It amazed him.

"As soon as Gilbert gets here, we can start eating the Gebackener Karpfen," Roderich said.

"The what?" Lukas asked. He was confused, never having spoken German.

"Fried carp," Elizaveta explained. "And afterwards we will be eating Sachertorte, or chocolate and apricot cake, and Weihnachtsbaeckerei, or Christmas cookies." She smiled cheerfully. "It's going to be delicious.

Lukas smiled. "I can tell. I could smell it from my room!" His mouth had been watering all day from Elizaveta's cooking. He looked at the tree and smiled. It looked similar to the trees back home that his father used to decorate when he was a child.

There was a knock at the door. Elizaveta gasped. "Oh! That must be him! I should go answer that! Lukas, I promise I'll be right back!" She then rushed to answer the door.

Lukas waited until he saw a man walk into the room. He could instantly tell that the man had albinism from the fair, white hair and the red pupils of his eyes. He just eyed the albino man curiously from where he sat, but he didn't say a word, feeling almost threatened from the almost familiar way the man was staring at him.

Elizaveta followed into the room. "Gilbert, I'd like you to meet the man who is staying with us right now," she said, gesturing to Lukas. "This is Lieutenant Lukas Bondevik of the British military."

"Lieutenant Lukas Bondevik, you say?" Gilbert asked with a smirk, eyeing the Norwegian pilot from where he sat across the room. "I know a guy or two who are looking for you."

Elizaveta swatted him with her hand towel. "Don't scare him like that!" she snapped when she saw Lukas's eyes widen.

Lukas didn't hear anything else Elizaveta said in his defense. He was too busy wondering who was looking for him. Elizaveta did say that this man was in London. Did he know Lukas's love? Was that someone who was looking for him?

"I'm not afraid," Lukas stated, face blank, like usual. "In fact, I am intrigued. What are the names of the people looking for me?"

"They go by the names of Alfred Jones and Mathias Køhler. You know them?" Gilbert asked.

Lukas shook his head. "Can't say that I do," he stated. "The names don't sound familiar to me at all."

"Thought so," Gilbert sighed. "You had some damage done to your memory, didn't you?"

"How did you know?" Lukas asked.

"One of those men," Gilbert said, "but I'm not saying which, is madly in love with you."

Lukas sat in a stunned shock, wondering which of the two it was. Could it be the one with the foreign name, or the one with the Scandinavian name like his? He bit his lip, trying to figure it out. He closed his eyes, trying to concentrate.

"I don't suppose you would happen to return the feelings of his, would you?" Gilbert asked.

"I do," Lukas answered, honestly. "I know that I do, but I just don't know who he is or what he looks like or anything like that. I just know that I love him. Very much. More than I've ever loved another person."

"How much do you know about yourself?" Gilbert asked.

"Gilbert, stop this right now!" Elizaveta commanded, tears in her eyes. "I can't take it anymore! Leave the poor man alone! He's been through enough!" She moved to stand in front of Lukas and block Gilbert's view of him. "Let's just eat and talk later!"

.

The meal wasn't as joyous as they had all planned it to be, with Lukas silent and Gilbert contemplating what to do next regarding Lukas, Mathias's note deep in his pocket. Lukas was poking at his food as everyone else ate, but that was expected, considering his condition. He didn't know what to do while he watched everyone eat, so he made it look like he was eating a lot.

Suddenly, Lukas's eyes went wide as another memory came to Lukas just like earlier before. It was of a silvery-haired toddler crawling into his lap, crying and clinging to him, begging in Norwegian to take his fever away. Lukas's arms wrapped gently but tightly around the little boy as he mumbled in gibberish to the boy and then the boy broke out into a sweat moments later as his fever broke.

Then just like that, the memory was gone, flittering away back into that locked part of Lukas's mind before he could grasp it once more. The silvery-haired boy with those tear-filled violet eyes, who was he?

"Faen!" he cursed in Norwegian, slamming his fist on the table and breathing heavily, making everyone else at the table jump. He then remembered where he was and switched back to English. "My apologies," he softly said. "I just remembered something."

"What did you remember, dear?" Elizaveta asked him.

Lukas sighed. "I don't remember. It was a memory of mine from the past six years, and then it slipped away." He then looked at Gilbert. "You asked me what I knew about myself. What do you know about me, Gilbert? Do I have any siblings at all?"

Roderich and Elizaveta looked to Gilbert expectantly as he said, "You do. His name is Emil, and he's five years old. Your lover was the one who gave me this information."

Lukas felt like hi head was going to explode. So that silvery-haired boy must have been his little brother! He had to be! "I have a little brother?" he softly asked, eyes filling with tears, the same way they did when he held Emil for the first time. Even though when he held him for the first time he hated him, he still loved that boy deep down. "Oh, my God…"

"Gilbert, look what you did!" Elizaveta hissed at him. "You upset Lukas!"

"I don't think he's upset," Roderich said. "I think he's actually happy."

"I'm a big brother," Lukas said, smiling. "I have a baby brother."

Elizaveta smiled. "I'll bet he's cute."

"He is," Lukas said. "I saw him in my memories. Though I can't remember now, I know he was cute. The cutest little boy I had ever seen."

.

After all of the gifts had been handed out that night, Gilbert sat down next to Lukas. "Look," he began, "I know that you don't really know who I am, but I'm a good friend of your lover's. He trusts me. He put so much blind faith in me that I'd find you. Even though everyone back where you're from thinks you're dead, he still put in enough faith in you to write you something, and I think maybe you should read it. Maybe it could spark a memory or something."

"He wrote me something?" Lukas asked, surprised. "What kind of something?"

"I don't know," Gilbert said. "I can't read it. It's in Swedish."

Lukas smiled to himself. "So it is that Mathias person, isn't it?"

"You figured it out," Gilbert said with a smug grin. "Alfred's a cool person too, you know." He smiled. "I think Roderich and Elizaveta might be heading off to bed soon. How about I help you to your room and I can answer some more questions about Mathias if you'd like."

"That would be nice," Lukas answered. He offered Gilbert his arm to help him up. "My leg was damaged pretty badly," he explained. "I just need help walking a bit until it fully recovers, and then I'll be able to go back to England and join back up with Mathias."

Gilbert smiled. "Would you like me to tell him that I found you?"

Lukas thought about it for a moment. "No," he decided. "I think I would like to keep it a secret for now. If there really were people out to kill me like Roderich and Elizaveta said there were, then maybe it's best that I stay 'dead' for now. At least until I get back to England."

"That sounds like a good plan to me," Gilbert said, helping Lukas up. He smiled. "You're so much lighter than him. Thank you."

"Is he fat or something?" Lukas asked, confused as they began to walk to his room.

"No, he's just very tall and quite muscular," Gilbert answered. "I've had to help him walk through the bar a few times before pawning him off on another military man."

Lukas smiled. Just what he always wanted, a tall, muscular man. "What does he look like?" he asked, trying to imagine him.

"Who? Mat?" Gilbert chuckled. "Well he styles his hair all spikey every day and it's blonde like yours only a little darker. And his eyes are like an almost ice blue."

"Ice blue, you say?" Lukas asked, imagining this man. Other than the spikey hair, he sounded perfect to him. "So is he handsome?"

"Very," Gilbert said. "And he can hold a good amount of alcohol before he starts getting weird."

"You don't say," Lukas chuckled. He opened the door to his room and turned on the light.

Gilbert shut the door after them. "He wants what is said between us to stay between us. No middle man other than me, got it?"

Lukas nodded. "I understand."

"Mathias may act like he's all big and bad and tough, but I know him. I've gotten to know him since the night of your accident. He's a wreck without you. From what Alfred said, he was a pretty swell guy before your accident, but now he's all mopey and down. All he sings is that depressing 'If I Didn't Care' song in his free time and drink at the pub with me." Gilbert sighed. "What a poor excuse of a man he is at the moment without you. So we need to get you well so you can get back to him."

Lukas nodded. "That's the plan. I don't care about this goddamn military anymore. I never want to fly again. I never want to fight again. I just want to go back home and be with the people I love."

"Then that's what I'll do with you," Gilbert said. "I'll get you back home to the people you love. There is no more noble of a cause than that, right?"

"What are you?" Lukas asked, blinking.

"Consider me a friend," Gilbert told him. "That's what I want to be."

Lukas nodded. "Then that's what you'll be to me. You'll be my friend. Any friend of my love is a friend of mine."

"You have so much trust in someone you don't remember?" Gilbert asked.

"I have to," Lukas said. "After all, if he loves me enough to send you to come looking for me then he must have put a lot of trust in you, right? If he can trust you, then that must mean that I can as well, right?"

"I like your logic, Lukas," Gilbert stated, smiling. "You're very smart."

"Thank you," Lukas said. "I've been told that I am rather clever when I need to be."

"Well whoever said that is not wrong," Gilbert stated with a smirk. "Glad to have finally met you."

Lukas smiled. "So let's get down to business with this. Where is that note, Gilbert?"

"You really are straight to the point, aren't you?" Gilbert asked, reaching into his pocket. "If you really must know, it's right here." He reached deep into his pocket and pulled it out. "If you have no questions tonight, I will retire to the living room couch and talk to you in the morning."

"That would be fine," Lukas said, stretching his legs out onto the bed as he sat. "I wouldn't mind that." He didn't care if he was being rude. This could be a key into his past! He held the note carefully in his hands as if it would crumble into ashes at the slightest touch.

"Then I'll see you in the morning," Gilbert said. "Merry Christmas, Lukas."

"Merry Christmas," Lukas said, more focused on that note than anything.

The moment Gilbert had left the room, Lukas unfolded the note, eager to read what it had to say. He was desperate to hear the words of his love back home. He was eager to know what his lover had to say to him. He wanted to see if he could unlock a permanent memory.

It took him a moment to begin reading the note, having been reading in English for so long, but e quickly picked up on it and reading through it was a breeze.

My Dearest Lukas,

I'm hoping that Gilbert got this note to you. He really is a nice man, I swear. After all, he got this note to you. I am forever in his debt for that. Since you're reading this, that can only mean one thing. You're alive!

I miss you so much, and I can't stand it without you. I don't know how I lived my life before I knew you. You're the only reason to live. I've realized that now. Life is just dull and boring without you, and I hope that you come back to me soon.

We all need you back here. Me, Elsa, Emil, Tino, Berwald, Aunt Sigrid, all of us. Make it back home to us, because life is just terrible without you.

I love you more than words can say, Lukas. I need you to come home for my sake as well. I feel as if I am losing my sanity and I want to feel your touch once more. I want to kiss you one last time. I want to pleasure you again like I did before. I want to grow old with you one day. Please come home to me.

I love you,

Mathias Køhler

The last paragraph made Lukas blush like a schoolgirl, but that was when his heart began to flutter in his chest as he remembered the feeling of making love with Mathias. It wasn't the full memory, but he remembered how wonderful it was and how sacred and precious it felt. He remembered how it made it seem like they were the only two people in the entire world and that nothing else mattered at all. Oh, how he wanted that again. And he would stop at nothing to return to Mathias. After all, love always conquered.