I do not own Hetalia okay? I love seeing how much you guys love my "Of the heart" or as I call it on Ao3 Historical Heart. It makes me feel so good about my writing and self. But you don't want to hear about that. So enough of this A/N, on with the fic!

December 30th 1918

(from the diary of Natalya Jones nee Arlovskaya)

Today was a very somber day, even though it was supposed to be happy. I cannot lie, it was a welcome relief to see my beloved older brother again, but he seemed to change. His personality was more depressed. Normally the sight of the children would make his day. The worst days he had at work or if he was depressed, they cheered him up. He had loved Nikolai so much and spoke so much of longing to see him and the twins who were born while he was off at war and had only seen a picture of. He had written to me many times expressing how the first thing he had wanted to do when he had gotten home was to see the twins and play with Nikolai again. Sometimes he sounded like he loved them as much as Fredka does. First thing that made it somber did not bother me until all the events of the day was that because of the cold, that it was just Fredka who had welcomed Vanya home from the pier. Katyusha had warned the cold would make the children sick and thought it best if we waited at his house for Fredka to bring him back. I should have had her sit the children and gone with my husband. I mean that is my brother after all. I had also wanted to throttle that brother of Fredka's for just telling me everything he had seen of his fellow Canadian Corps veterans saying he knew a few who came home in a similar state. I then reminded him that it was because of his brother and MINE's generosity he had a home and wasn't wondering the Canadian wasteland looking for work after the Mounties decided they were done with him after his injury made him useless. If not for Anya crying in the room Katyusha was watching the children in, I would have shown him. I am just so shook up that something like this happened to my big brother. I had always seen him as invulnerable. Childish that thought may be, he was the one who had gotten us here, who had gotten a good job, better than many of our fellow immigrants had, and had found an unlikely friendship and what many said was unlikely, me a husband like I have.

But him meeting the twins for the first time and Nikolai again, I could sense there was some of his old love for the children there. No war could extinguish that flame. But other demons that war forces on men were there. Obviously the loss of his ability to work and I pray that it is the small chance that it is like one of the doctors told Katyusha said that it was a slow healing injury of the spinal cord and not just a direct severance. Sure he won't be able to keep up with Fredka and Nikolai like he used to but there is great dignity to a man when he can walk on his own, even if it is with a cane. I hope that it is that case as I feel that is a part of the major reason that Vanya did not want to join in on the celebration that we had planned for him. Never one for celebrating his own birthday, even if Fredka insisted on it since they became friends, one of his favorite things was just being together with the family. Although I am sick of Matthew acting like he knows it all. Sure he had his own combat related injury and SLIGHT disability and he cowers at trucks backfiring but he does not understand Vanya at all.

So how was that? Good? Bad? Short? Long? Let me know in a review. I don't have much to say here, so remember to read (well you just did) and review. Ciao for now,

otherrealmwriter

aka

Realm.