Here's the second part of the chapter that got too long. Enjoy the tragic backstories of our vampire and aspiring journalist.

The light levels in the room indicates it is late afternoon as Gilbert appears on camera, sitting on a fold out chair he's borrowed from a storage closet. He is still noticeably tired looking, but otherwise in a well kempt state. Just visible within the frame behind Gilbert is Arthur; the self confessed vampire is apparently unconscious and still tied to the desk chair. "Hello to everyone who has taken an interest to this investigation," Gilbert says. "It's been a week since Erzsébet somehow decided to take Roderich's hyperbole as a legitimate suggestion, and throughout that entire time Arthur hasn't said a single word." His tone is detectably more aggravated than usual. "Oh and it gets better," Gilbert continued his diatribe. "Also in that time; I've barely seen our floor don or his 'campus heroine' girlfriend, because apparently Roderich is 'very understandably stressed about this whole situation' and they've been going on little picnics and long walks and generally not being of any help at all. Then there are the nightmares; which haven't stopped – and in fact they're getting even weirder – even though we've supposedly caught the bad guy!' Gilbert stops to take a calming breath, deciding he shouldn't take out his need to vent on his viewers any further. "So basically," he continues once he is collected. "Right now we have no further information and a stubborn vampire hostage who won't speak, which is all he has to do if he wants blood!" Gilbert says the last part a little louder to push his point in case Arthur was listening. "In the meantime, there's nothing else we can do. So I'll give you guys an update once he finally talks."

As soon as he'd posted the video Gilbert felt that something was wrong. Getting up from the chair to check on Arthur, he saw that the vampire had started to convulse, skin ashen. Immediately, Gilbert began to panic.

'No, no, no, no!' he cried, racing to the refrigerator to search for the blood filled soy milk container. 'You are not dying on me!' He unscrewed the cap on the carton and ran to over to Arthur, forcing the half empty container to his lips and tilting it downwards. 'Please don't die on me! Oh why didn't you just talk?'

Gradually the convulsions stopped and Arthur began to cough, Gilbert released a breath he hadn't realised he was holding and pulled the milk carton away.

'Oh thank god,' he breathed. 'You want some more?' he asked after a moment. Erzsébet wouldn't be happy about this, but Gilbert didn't care; she hadn't come into the room for days and he was tired of just making Arthur suffer.

Arthur glared at him weakly then nodded almost imperceptibly. Gilbert held out the container again and let him drink from it.

'You're not going to let me out of here anytime soon, are you?' Arthur stated bleakly when the carton was emptied, voice hoarse from disuse.

'When did you figure that out?' Gilbert muttered sarcastically, then grimaced. 'Look, we need information, and you're not in a very good position to refuse it. I mean, before Erzsébet came into the room, you were looking at me like you were hungry.'

'I wasn't going to bite you, if that's what you thought,' Arthur spoke listlessly, looking away from him.

'Then –' Gilbert broke off as a realisation that made him feel terrible hit him. 'All the gifts and you suddenly being nice… That was you hitting on me?'

'Oh just stake me already! That would be less painful and humiliating!' Arthur snapped before breaking into another fit of coughing.

'I'm guessing that's a "yes" then,' Gilbert tried for uneasy humour, but it did nothing to ease the guilt he felt.

'And the whole time you were just setting yourself up to play the part of the virgin sacrifice,' Arthur said as soon as the coughing stopped. 'And now I'm stuck tied to a chair based on the accusation of something I didn't even have the pleasure of doing.'

'Then what were you doing at the parties? And how did you know all of the missing students?' Gilbert decided to ignore the first part. 'You can't expect us to let you out of the chair if you don't tell us your side of the story.'

'My side of the story?' Arthur laughed bitterly. 'Now that's something long and dark.'

'Well I've got time,' Gilbert tried and failed not to look at all the readings he'd been procrastinating, then retrieved the fold out chair anyway and set it up next to the chair Arthur was tied to.

'I guess you'll just keep pestering me to tell you until I do,' Arthur spoke in defeat. 'Very well, strap yourself in, Snowflake.

'I was born in 1680 as the youngest son of a minor baron in London,' he began before Gilbert could object to his new nickname. 'I lived a sheltered life among the high society, everything I could have ever wanted was at my fingertips, but there were some things that were always just a too far out of my reach. When I was eighteen, I attended a ball – one of the many of the day – where I was murdered.'

'What!' Gilbert wasn't sure he'd heard properly, given the flat tone of Arthur's narration.

'I said I was murdered, weren't you listening?' Arthur responded impatiently.

'Right of course,' Gilbert muttered, signalling for him to carry on.

'Pater saved me,' Arthur continued. 'Father,' he translated when he realised Gilbert didn't understand. 'Not my birth father –no, his only interest in my life was to make sure I found a suitable bride with a considerable dowry because he'd already carved up his estate for each of my four older brothers to inherit, I'm sure he was quite relieved when I disappeared actually – this was the father I knew after death. All I knew about him was that he was very old, wise, and the only person who cared enough to rescue me from the grasps of death.

'In death, I had a whole new world in my hands, the ability to do exactly as I wished as I'd never had in life. I visited more balls without the need to fear what might be lurking just off of the glittering dance floors, I saw the stars in faraway places that few had ever been to before. Every night was a grand moment of opportunity.

'Every twenty years we'd come here, to this very place, and a ritual would be performed. Silas was a lot smaller then, and much of what took place occurred just outside of the original campus. Pater would arrange for me to befriend someone, he would pretend to have urgent business and leave me in the care of somebody with a child my age. A young woman, a young man, it didn't matter, I charmed them all the same. We'd immediately become inseparable, but soon they'd fall ill.' He paused to regard Gilbert. 'I think you'll recognise these symptoms: strange behaviour, weakness of the mind? Well, soon enough Pater would retrieve me and it would be another twenty years before I was sent to make another friend.'

'This really isn't helping your case of innocence,' Gilbert pointed out, unnerved by the sudden eye contact.

Arthur shook his head adamantly.

'I never abducted anyone, I was only a lure. And then I met Elle.

'The year was 1785, and there was a great sense of change in the world. Britain had just lost one of its most important colonies after a war lasting eight years, and people were beginning to question the way things always were. I was back here, ready to play along with what Pater had planned. The game was the same, I was left in the care of a man with a daughter my age, and soon enough we were inseparable.' Arthur stared off into the distance. 'But this time it wasn't a lie. Elizabeth was beautiful; flaming red hair, with sharp wit and spirit, I couldn't bear to give her up to Pater when the time came. So I planned for the both of us to escape, I told Elle we'd elope together, but Pater found out.

'I'd gone to great lengths to never let Elle know what I was, and Pater told her the night we were supposed to escape, painting me in the worst light possible.' His voice became slow and pained. 'Elle believed I was a monster, and led Pater straight to me. I was punished for my insubordination; orced to watched Elle be taken away to some awful fate, then sent away from my homeland – to the fields of France – and sealed in a coffin of blood so that I couldn't die, but would waste away for eternity in the knowledge I'd angered Pater.

'For over a century I remained trapped under the earth. I missed the Enlightenment and the age of revolutions. Then the artillery fire of the First World War freed me from my tomb, and I walked out of the remnants of no man's land into a world that had changed so much. I wandered the continent for some time, never daring to return home; it was too dangerous, and the memories would be more painful there.' Arthur sniffed, and Gilbert sat transfixed, unsure whether to look away or to offer his sympathy. 'Pater found me anyway - during the Second World War. He said he didn't have the heart to reinter me, but I knew he was hoping the horrors of the war I'd seen would disillusion me from humanity and return me to his side. Though nothing could make me forgot what he'd done to Elle, so I pretended to go along.'

'You went straight back to helping abduct people?' Gilbert questioned indignantly.

'No,' Arthur said tiredly. 'You're still not listening to me – I said I pretended.

'Silas had gotten a lot bigger while I was out of the picture, but the game remained the same even if some rules had changed. I ruined opportunities where I could, sending students back to their parents, or to other universities where they could be safe. I had to be satisfied with these small acts of revenge as I bided my time trying to find out what Pater was doing, what I'd betrayed Elle to before she betrayed me.'

'So you're saying that you've been helping people to escape?' Gilbert was slightly baffled with this rearrangement what he had thought were the facts.

'When I could,'

'Did you help Mattie then?'

More than ever, Gilbert wanted to know what had happened to his first friend at Silas, and what he could do to help him.

'I tried,'

Gilbert took a moment to assess that Arthur was telling the truth.

'So someone Mattie knew and trusted was actually a vampire pretending to be his friend? A vampire who then abducted him?' He asked.

'In short - yes,' Arthur's tone was as flat as ever.

'So if we just stop your, uh, dad, then everything then would end and we'd be able to get everyone back, right?' Gilbert suggested optimistically.

'You can't stop him,' Arthur laughed cynically. 'Do you think no one has ever tried?'

'We caught you,' Gilbert argued.

'With sheer dumb luck,' Arthur shook his head, frustrated that his point wasn't getting across. 'Besides, I'm nothing compared to Pater, and you're already terrified of him.'

'How can I be terrified of someone I've never met?' Gilbert was confused.

'Oh you've met him alright, he's the Dean,'

Arthur looked almost smug as Gilbert was finally at a loss for words.

'Oh,'

'"Oh" is right,' Arthur's tone was very grimly satisfied for someone who was still tied to a chair. 'So you might as well give up now and run away while you still can, now that you know exactly what you're facing. Oh and let me out of here while you're at it.'

'No,' Gilbert spoke defiantly, watching Arthur be taken aback. 'There has to be a way. There's no way in hell that I'm giving up on anyone - not Mattie, not Kiku and Lili, not even Natalya.' He paused in his tirade to offer an apologetic look. 'Also I can't just let you out of there before conferring with Erzsébet, else forget confronting the Dean, she'll kill me first.'

'After everything I told you, you still want to play the hero,' Arthur shook his head in disbelief. 'But what else did I expect from you, really? Well, don't say I didn't warn you.'

They sat in silence for a while, Gilbert had sent a message to Erzsébet and was waiting for her to return. Finally he made up his mind to speak.

'Hey,' he began uncertainly. 'You told me your story, and well, my life has been nowhere near as bad as yours, but it's only fair that I tell you mine.'

Arthur made no indication that he didn't want to hear it, and Gilbert took it as a sign for him to carry on.

'I wasn't meant to be an only child,' he confessed, it was the first time he'd told anyone this, and so far it was just as hard as he'd expected it to be. 'Or even the oldest. I was supposed to have an older brother. I've been told he was my dad's pride and joy when he was born. He was by all descriptions a healthy child with a mop of blond hair and bright blue eyes. Dad named him after both of his grandfathers - Alexander Ludwig. But Alexander only appeared healthy, my mother had had complications during the pregnancy and he was born sickly. My parents were always taking him in and out of hospital, and he died before his second birthday. My dad was heartbroken, and my mother even more so, she wanted another child so badly and eventually my dad agreed even though doctors had warned them of the risks.' By this point Gilbert didn't care if Arthur was even listening. 'She got pregnant with me, and well, the complications from carrying Alexander had damaged her health, and she died during childbirth. All of my relatives who were in the room that day said my dad was never the same afterwards. That he'd given up all hope, and expected me to die as well. But I was the opposite of Alexander, I looked sickly but was completely healthy. And so my newly widowed dad was left with a second son who looked nothing like the first.

'Ever since I can remember, he's always been strict and overbearing. Always wanting my grades to be perfect and being disappointed when they weren't. I was hardly allowed to leave the house, and when I was, he always checked who I was going with and I had strict orders to come back before a certain time.

'I'm sure he loves me though, Gilbert's voice broke, it hurt to finally voice his insecurities, but still he let them out. 'He just doesn't want to lose another person. But I think he still compares me to what he expected Alexander to be though, and that every time he sees me he's reminded of the loss of his perfect son and wife.'

He finished flatly, staring at his hands as moisture blurred his vision in the silence that followed.

'But yeah,' he said when he trusted himself to speak again. 'As I said, it's nothing compared to what you've been through.'

'I wouldn't say that,' Arthur said so quietly that Gilbert wasn't sure if he'd imagined it. 'That wouldn't be an easy life to lead as a normal human. There's no shame in crying.' He added sagely when Gilbert looked over at him in surprise, furiously attempting to blink back tears. 'It's always hardest to tell the first time.'

'How did you know I'd never told anyone before?' Gilbert asked, astounded.

Arthur tried to shrug despite his bindings.

'Lucky guess,' he replied. 'I didn't imagine it wouldn't be something you told to everyone you met.'

'What about you?' Gilbert asked as he remembered the way Arthur had spoken. 'You said that "it's always hardest the first time" like you've done it many times, but I can't imagine you would tell many people your story either.'

'I didn't tell it to other people,' Arthur admitted, shutting his eyes. 'Just to myself. I had to do something to keep sane all those long decades under the earth – remind myself who I was – even if it meant torturing myself.'

'Oh,' Gilbert said once again as another pinprick of guilt drove its way into his heart.

The door opened then, and they were subjected to the sight and sound of Erzsébet kissing Roderich goodbye before she strode into the room.

'You said he talked?' she asked interrogatorily of Gilbert, business as usual as soon as Roderich had left them alone.

'He did,' Gilbert replied. He looked over at Arthur, who was watching him carefully with a cautiously neutral expression.

'Well?' Erzsébet questioned, patience waning.

Gilbert sighed and relayed everything he'd heard, glancing at Arthur occasionally to gauge his reaction and taking care to not mention too many details about Elle. He also left out the part where he'd shared his own story with Arthur. Roderich had come back into the room as Gilbert finished up his summary, taking a seat beside Erzsébet on Gilbert's bed.

'So can we let him out of the chair now?' Gilbert asked after he'd given the couple time to take in what they'd heard. He looked at Roderich in particular, knowing Erzsébet would be harder to budge.

'Absolutely not,' Erzsébet declared after scrutinising Gilbert. 'Why would you even ask that question when you're the one who heard his confession about kidnapping people for centuries firsthand?'

'Because if we're going against the Dean, we probably need as much help as we can get,' Gilbert excused, keeping the thoughts that perhaps they'd gone a little overboard in the last week private; he didn't like the look Erzsébet was giving him.

'I wouldn't take anything he says without a grain of salt,' Erzsébet replied coldly. 'And that isn't really much help.'

'What about you, Roderich?' Gilbert asked with some desperation. After all, he had all but promised Arthur he'd convince the others to release him. 'You didn't want to do this in the first place.'

Roderich shook his head.

'If we're to believe that he said,' he began. 'We've just kidnapped the Dean's son, and we really can't just let him go after that.'

'You seem quite adamant to let him go,' Erzsébet said accusingly, narrowing her eyes at Gilbert.

'I just want my chair back!' Gilbert defended, not breaking eye contact with Erzsébet .

'You can deal with it,' she replied smarmily, accepting that as a valid explanation and setting her suspicions at ease .

'It's getting late,' Roderich said as he stood up. 'I think I'll take my leave. Erzsébet?'

'Oh I'm coming with you.' Erzsébet stood as well. 'We can discuss how to deal with the Dean together tomorrow morning.' She told Gilbert

'Can I get my chair back then?' Gilbert called as they left.

'Don't hold your breath,' Erzsébet said dismissively as she shut the door.

Pater means father in Latin, and from my understanding (which is actually in an Australian period detective novel context) was the form of address to their fathers by children of wealthy upper class Anglo families. The Dean's identity will definitely be revealed in the next chapter, so this is your last chance to take a pot shot at which Hetalia character he is. I daresay all the clues are laid out by now.

Elle, of course, is an incarnation of Elizabeth I - the queen who proclaimed herself married to England (sort of like Lisa and Joan of Arc in the Hetalia canon)

Prussia's backstory alludes to the death of HRE, who I've portmanteau'd with Germany in this fic.