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Who\'s Afraid of Roderich Edelstein	By : CyreliaJ Category: +G to L > Hetalia: Axis Powers Views: 1826 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own Hetalia or any of it's characters. I'm also not making any money off of this.

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Note: Thank you everyone for reading and commenting! Now we're really starting to get into the meat of the story. I think the warning at the beginning covered everything. I really look forward to your feedback :)

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"Toy Soldiers"

I'm not afraid to take a stand

Everybody come take my hand

We'll walk this road together, through the storm

Whatever weather, cold or warm

Just let you know that, you're not alone

Holla if you feel that you've been down the same road

-Eminem Not Afraid

Berlin, Germany

Reich Chancellory

March 1942

Austria stares at the 1879 revolver on the ornately carved coffee table with a faint look of revulsion.

“I have always loathed those things,” he says softly giving the weapon a disdainful look. He shifts on the red velvet cushions of the sofa trying to get comfortable. He makes no move to touch the hateful weapon.

“Yeah, I know.” Prussia slides it forward across the table and looks at him as if needing to confirm something. “Take it.” Of course you’d remember that. Somehow you’ve never forgotten anything about me... Silently contemplative, Austria is finally able to force himself to be still and ignore the painful impulses of his nerves; he tries to focus on the victrola playing Haydn in the background. There’s a vial of clear nirvana on the nightstand in the bedroom that they’re waiting for him to turn to in desperation. He refuses to so much as touch it. Surely they know he’s lived through worse than this in the past without the filthy opiates.

He hears Prussia babbling- no, not babbling he would say ‘cause only women babble- and wonders when he stopped being able to bear the silence of speechlessness. “‘Course knowing you… you’ll probably end up shooting Tirol clean off, right?” Prussia laughs quickly, nervously, as if he’s expecting something otherworldly and awful to happen. He hasn’t started pacing yet, but that usually follows soon enough. He paced plenty in the last war. Austria blinks at him. The words are slow to filter into his mind and he almost misses Prussia’s vulgar comment entirely while he forces himself to reach for the gun. He stops his hand as he’s about to bring his finger up to bite; somehow it’s always been more satisfying than a rolled cloth. Pull it together. Are you really as weak as they all say you are?

Prussia is still ‘not babbling’. “Hey, it’s just a little insurance, right? They’re all a bunch of perverts around here and a little sissy girl with an ass like yours doesn’t need-” and on and on as if he hasn’t had a proper conversation in months. Austria once again lets the insult slide and can’t help but wonder what the other’s reaction would be if he knew just how close to home his words hit. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath forcing those thoughts from his mind, compartmentalizing them for when he’s alone. What’s one more secret, after all? Prussia and Germany both need to focus. They don’t need to know what goes on anywhere but the battlefield.

Austria brings a bonbon to his mouth thoughtfully and considers the last time that Prussia was here. It has been awhile, hasn’t it? The last time he stopped by he wasn’t quite so agitated but it’s been difficult to keep track of time and the outside world now that they’ve isolated him here. They say they don’t want him influencing on their little Aryan poster child. Foolish humans, he’s been under my influence far longer than you can even comprehend. Do you have any idea... do you idiots even understand how much I’ve done so that you can rule the world? And yet, far from being angry, he looks around his gilded prison with amusement. They, like all the others, have no idea the sacrifices he’s made for them. They’d had no idea the power he’d given them when he laid his hands over theirs. And this? This is only the first stage of whatever nonsense they’re planning to break him down. He’s not concerned. There isn’t a man or nation alive who’s ever broken the Austrian Empire.

Prussia for his part, starts pacing and watches the bright blue sky out the window. It was bright like this on that day as well- when he’d met her. He hardly thinks of Acre anymore. Back when he was still just a child really. He can still remember the hoof beats shaking the ground and banners flying high when the Crusaders arrived anew to the battle. He can remember the day when the sky turned black with the arrows fired and how he’d trembled with excitement from the bedsides of the wounded wishing he could be out there fighting and not merely tending to the injured. And sometimes when it’s melancholy like this he allows himself to remember those few moments of glory when he finally did steal away and take hold of his own destiny. How many centuries has it been now since he’s known little else but war? How many since he refuse to subjugate himself to the banner of another? He picks at the patch on his arm as he talks wishing he could just rip the fucking thing off. Dying- he definitely remembers dying.

He’d burned their fucking flag after reviewing the minutes from the conference. I won’t slaughter for God anymore and I won’t slaughter for you. But he remembers waking up awash in blood and that damn chicken farmer grinning at him; he hadn’t thought he’d ever stop vomiting. He hadn’t lifted a hand against his own people like that since the 13th century. He still remembers awakening in the middle of the night and searching the mirror to make sure he was still himself and that this maddening dual identity hadn’t finally broken him. Once he thought he’d seen a face other than his own staring back at him and shattered the mirror with his fist, not listening as Germany assured him there was nothing there. But it has to be me. It has to be me that holds the damn banner because if I don’t do it then it’ll consume him instead. I can do this. I won’t let it control me. When the knights broke the old Prussians I endured. I’m stronger than that now and I won’t let the monster control me, I’ll use it to build the greatest empire the world’s ever seen like all of us pledged and if it takes dying a fucking fourth time to be reborn again so help me I’ll do it.

He forces himself to move more casually and not look like he’s about to jump out of his skin at the sound of the church bells outside. They have a lot of nerve to continue ringing them. Christ what’s the matter with all of you? If God ever existed he sure as shit ain’t here now... No, God had left him some time ago along with everything else he’d ever believed in. He dares a look at Austria, who is sitting primly, drinking his tea as if the fucking world isn’t falling down around them. Empires fall and gods die but you? You’ll still be sitting there on your prissy little furniture and listening to your damn orchestra when the world ends, won’t you?They’ll be burning you and Ludwig alive for all this shit and I bet you won’t even give ‘em the satisfaction of screaming. He can almost believe when he looks at Austria, composed, glancing at him over the teacup even as his finger idly traces the barrel of the gun, that nothing’s changed. Because even when he had Austria on his knees in the dirt in Torgau the first time he finally laid eyes on him, the sonofabtich never gave him the satisfaction of breaking.

Haven’t changed a bit since then have you? Those stupid fucking glasses to look down your nose at everyone. Even when I broke the damn things and had your fucking picture painted when I won you still made me feel like I fucking lost. He doesn’t let himself see the tremors or the light sheen of sweat, and he doesn’t allow himself to hear the strain in Austria’s voice because as long as the damn aristocrat is around to drink his stupid tea with his stupid little finger sticking out and his stupid fucking piano waiting to be played in the corner everything will be fine.

Prussia forces himself to breathe more steadily as the red overtakes his vision and the room spins. “Must suck balls to be as weak as you, yeah…” and on he goes again. He still feels as if he’s going insane. He’s felt patriotism; he’s let himself be swept away under the tide of his people’s love and exhilaration. He’s felt the zealotry of the crusades and when he was reborn he felt as if he could’ve cleansed the world of all of its non believers in one grand conflagration. When the knights swept through Prussia and made it theirs he’d felt like God himself. But this cold exorcism?- This is fanaticism and madness and fear and it makes him feel invincible when it’s at its peak and sick to his stomach when he’s lucid. Up until now he hadn’t thought anything could hurt as much as that first transformation when he died at Acre. The sword through his chest right when they conquered the old Prussians had hurt like a fucking bitch but he arose like Jesus on the third day- see me blaspheme fuckers, I told you words mean nothing to me anymore- and he felt like the world was his. But Christ when he awoke from the shot in the back in the middle of that mess with Rohm and his fucking fairy corp he felt almost as if he were still dead.

How young is Germany as a mature nation? He remembered so little after he’d become Germany that Prussia almost couldn’t bear to see the empty look in his brother’s eyes when they fell upon him. How much easier would it have been if he’d boosted up a nation with experience and cunning like Bavaria or Saxony? Hell any of his other brothers was older and far better equipped to handle such an unpleasant business. But when he knelt down to where his baby brother lay on his deathbed while France forced the fucking Treaty of Pressburg down Austria’s throat and tried to shut those beautiful blue eyes he couldn’t do it.

He looked down at the pale figure on the bed and as close as he and France had been in the past he’d never wanted more to murder the fucker where he stood. When France had given him that gun during the revolution he should’ve fucking pulled the trigger. As he and his brothers watched the youngest among them fading away, and Prussia felt his rage building.

“He’s gone, brother,” Bavaria had said not unkindly but stiff as he’d always been. Wurtenburg had already left and with the steady procession of their family trampling in and out of the room to wish him goodbye Prussia had never felt so fucking murderous in his entire life. Everything, every goddamn stupid fucking thing he’d given to the lord to be rewarded by this?! Taken down by a fucking human?! By his love’s brother?!

You wanted to become a man, Ludwig? To prove yourself to her? Well look at you dammit, it was that fucking Lovino who passed his power to Bonaparte right along with Francis. France, that fucking whore would do anything for one of those little pieces of ass. He’d get his, so help him Prussia never forgot anyone who’d ever fucked him over. And as Prussia silently cursed everything he’d ever believed in and held his brother’s hand tightly he finally felt the eyes of his eldest brother to be too much.

“Get out, Joseph.” And he didn’t care right then about the stupid uptight asshole’s insistence on calling him fucking Bavaria right now Prussia was murderous and he was reckless, and as the stiff backed Bavaria was the last to leave he threw his arms around the seemingly fragile child and held him tightly. “You idiot,” he swore at him even as the small weak arms raised to encircle him back.

“m‘sorry... Gil.” He heard that whisper against his shoulder and didn’t think he’d ever stop shaking.

Austria, fucking weak stupid useless Austria couldn’t stand up against a fucking strong breeze without Hungary at his back and if he hadn’t lost...if he hadn’t been such a goddamn useless motherfucker then his brother...

“Ludwig?” He felt the form start to still, start to breath more slowly, yet somehow more shallowly, and he thought of North Italy who’d never know just how much his stupid little brother loved her. He thought of the rest of his brothers who’d be clamoring for the damn new title and most of all he thought of the man his brother had set out to become and never reached and he made his decision. Damn them all but he just... couldn’t do it. He couldn’t lay him to rest like this. There should’ve been a new Germany born but fuck them all. He too should’ve died at the hands of the old Prussians but Hungary, for whatever reason, had pressed her lips to his and let him be reborn as a new nation; as Prussia.

Prussia couldn’t bear to let it end this way. So help him if he went to hell. God was dead and who knew what the fuck to believe anymore. It wasn’t just them and the heathens, it was so many other things crossing and fighting and fuck them all if he was going to sin, if he was going to become a servant of evil, it would be for his brother and no one else. As he set the small figure down and those blue eyes glazed over he brushed the fine blonde hair from Ludwig’s pale, still warm, forehead and he rose. He made sure the door was still closed and locked it before sitting down on the bed carefully. His brother wasn’t dead. Ludwig wasn’t fucking dead because he remembered how Hungary had done this and if it fucking killed him then so be it.

“Rise, Germany,” he whispered as he leaned forward and pressed his lips to Ludwig’s while they were still warm. One hand cupping the side of his soft, young face, he breathed it in, breathed out his power as a nation and God how many times had this been done for him?

It felt as if his own life was being drained out and yet he felt no stir beneath him. Wake up. He tilted his head, focusing harder, unaware of how his tongue lapped at the small mouth as if he could remember every taste of him. Live, dammit! And he sealed their mouths together, embracing him, kissing him as deeply as he had any lover, the two of them separated for so many centuries and how fucking long had it been since he’d been able to hold him. And he continued to pour everything out that he had until he truly thought he’d die himself and the small body finally started to stir once more beneath him. He smiled crookedly at Germany, before passing out on the floor.

He should’ve told Austria to go fuck himself when he asked for the young German Empire after they’d sacked Bismark. He saw the brief unguarded expression when Austria had first laid eyes upon the man Ludwig had grown into and could’ve put a sword to his neck in anger but instead he used it. He saw a weakness and he saw a chance and Christ why the hell hadn’t that asshole ever looked at him with equal acknowledgement like he was the fucking Prussian Empire and not still a knight in the service of some old man? Fuck him. Fuck him he’d use that weak asshole’s lust against him and so help him Germany would forgive him. He’d forgiven every other time no matter how long it took and he’d forgiven him for bringing him back when he’d rather have died. He’d forgive him this as well.

The Iron Chancellor had envisioned an Empire without Austrian interference and seeing the way Germany had looked back at that stupid piano playing sissy Prussia couldn’t have agreed more; perhaps there wouldn’t even be anything to forgive with Germany just as smitten with that loser as he’d always been. And hell Bismark had envisioned a lot of grand things, really, but Prussia had always sided with the monarchy right or wrong and the Kaiser wanted a place for them in the sun- whatever it took. It ended up taking a deal with the fucking four eyed devil himself but for the Hohenzollerns he sucked it up and set the parchment down in all its golden lettered glory.

Austria read it over curiously in the darkened antechamber. Germany wouldn’t be privy to this and neither would Hungary. Prussia wondered in that moment if this was the only secret that he’d kept from his wife but something told him that Hungary was never really in the dark about anything. He watched the violet gaze linger over a certain line and crossed his arms, drumming his fingers. He knew what Austria was reading, after all. Knew there hadn’t been an arrangement like that since South Italy had given France Bonaparte. And Austria knew that he’d never forgotten that. He had his own grudge against France to settle, after all.

“So we have a deal, right, specs? A brother for a son?” Austria looked at him curiously, his hand hovering over the page.

“I trust your... feelings for your brother won’t cause any issues?” he asked delicately. Prussia snorted. “I’m not fucking him if that’s what you mean. I’ll leave that sin to you, Amnon” Austria frowned.

“I hardly need to force him, Gilbert. The language we share... the people... I’m sure you feel the pull too.” Prussia turned away with a violent puff of breath.

“Yeah, I know. I also know there’s a reason crap like that’s forbidden, so when the two of you burn later, just remember I warned you. I offered you a hell of a lot better than damnation and my pigheaded brother.” Austria nodded as he placed his seal upon the agreement. One that only nations were privy to.

“Perhaps Elizaveta will forgive me my sins when all of us stand at the top of the world even if God does not. What did you say, Gilbert? A kingdom that shall endure for a thousand years?” Austria smiled at him- only for him- in that moment. It was like a second sunrise and for just a second did Prussia allowed himself to remember that the woman he loved and the man he despised were one in the same.

Germany is too immature and he’s forgotten too much; Prussia can see that now. He doesn’t know how to fight the influence of their boss and he doesn’t know how to say no to the darker impulses of humanity when they rise up like a red tide. When he’d told him in the darkness, clinging to him like a damn lifeline about all the things horrible he’d done and seen. Prussia had told himself that Germany was only exaggerating. He told himself that his little brother was tired and that the pressure of the war was making him see things. He talked with Austria and they both put the fucking screws to him because they’d worked too hard for him to back down because of a little blood on his hands. Germany hadn’t slaughtered anyone because Germany would never hold a gun to the back of an old woman’s head and pull the trigger and whatever he thought he did was just the damn stress and rapid change and he just needed to get as used to war as they were.

Prussia stops at last, winding down, and his hands rest on the sill of the large bay window. His head is bowed as if in prayer but Austria knows that he hasn’t prayed in years. Austria pulls his hand away from the gun and takes a moment to bow his head with him in the silent moment, his head between his knees now that no one can see and tries to breathe out the agony. Through his own labored breathing he hears Prussia speaking in an oddly soft voice and he looks up sharply at the words.

“They say... they say the humans we give our power to are like a fucking mirror of ourselves. Explains why fucking Bonaparte was a pervert with a fucking short man complex and all that. So what’s that say about us? What’s that say about us when our fucking “son” is a-”

“Don’t you dare say it,” Austria grits out in interruption because if Prussia never says it then they never have to acknowledge it.

Because the “führer” isn’t just their boss but the man touched by Prussia’s hand and Austria’s and he inherited whatever they poured into him and for chrissake their “son” is not a fucking demon. And if he’s a mirror of everything inside of them both and whatever they might have done over the years then Jesus Christ what sort of monsters are they? What the hell kind of darkness lurks inside both of them? No, God no I’ve done some fucked up shit but that doesn’t mean... But he saw the numbers on Austria’s arm and he had to stop lying to himself when it was staring him undeniably in the face; somehow he hadn’t felt he’d failed until that moment. And over Austria’s fucking objections he’d insisted that Germany join both Italies in North Africa with Rommel.

Austria refused to tell him exactly what had happened. Prussia, in his anger, lacked such mercy when he realized what was starting- what had already been happening under their noses. Instead he threw each word at him viciously- not hysterically because hysterics were for crazies and women. “You wanted Ludwig, Roderich?! Well now you’ll have a whole fucking world of him and that fucking blonde haired blue eyed aryan perfection! How’s that for a wedding present?!” Austria had replied with silence and a look half pitying and half guilty. He’d broken the door when he stormed out. God when did he become so weak? Why should he give a damn about humans or that damn aristocrat or anything else but conquest?

“Humans die and we endure. Sometimes they die more brutally than other times but they always die.” Isn’t that what Germania had told him centuries ago? Isn’t that what he’s always believed? This was no worse than anything he’d ever done, right? But this wasn’t just about his people. Something about seeing that haunted look in the eyes of his brother- seeing what crimes he’d forced himself to commit to become “strong”... it was unbearable. He could’ve laughed at that. Austria’d told him at Torgau that the only unbearable thing is that nothing is unbearable. The words had always stuck with him, despite coming from such a weakling.

Austria looks at Prussia keenly throughout his disjointed rantings, carefully hiding his thoughts behind the china. You’re afraid, he realizes with a terrible insight. When had he become so easily able to read him? He tries to force himself to focus- to see through the haze of his throbbing nerves. He wants to reach out and touch Prussia. If it were Hungary standing there about to collapse he wouldn’t hesitate to silently put his arms around her. He wouldn’t hesitate to tell her that no, she wasn’t a monster, that it was he that was the villain for continuing to demand such sacrifices. He wouldn’t hesitate to tell her that together they’re stronger than this and together they can still conquer the world and that he still loves- He nearly drops the teacup then goes still as death as the thought violently aborts itself in his mind. Did they finally resort to putting the drugs in my drink?

“I’ll take it,” he says at last. And as Prussia looks about to fall apart he remains steady. Austria is calm and he takes the gun because Prussia needs him to and right now a thousand years seems far too long for anything to endure, let alone this twisted empire of theirs. We were so damn arrogant back then, weren’t we? Nothing could stop us right? We’d own the world: you, me, and the greatest thing that’s both bound us together and kept us apart. He bows his head and looks down and wonders why he would ever desire a child when he has a man who’s given his very soul because of a promise for his boss: a man who’s spent centuries loving a damn illusion because Austria’s allowed it. Why had he been so fixated on one boy when he already had a woman strong enough to match his ambition and forgive him his duplicity.

He looks at Prussia and then around at the rest of the palatial room. His eyes dart to the bedroom doors and the room beyond where he’d held Adonis like quicksilver and felt him spill into every part of his being. He wonders why he feels ill at the thought of finally getting everything he’s ever wanted. He wonders what it would be like to be held as himself by one who knows every facet of his body, who’s held him so reverently like he was the only thing on earth but only so long as he believed him to be another. No! I’m Roderich Edelstein. And Roderich Edelstein hates you just as much as you hate him... Suddenly, the room feels stifling, it’s hard to breathe, and he’s sure now that they put something in his drink.

“What would you have me do with this old relic anyway?” Austria asks at last, cradling the piece like a newborn child. It’s heavy in his hands and somehow he can still feel the ghost of the other’s soul in it. Prussia stares, seeing in his mind’s eye not Austria but France seated in front of him and it isn’t 1942 but 1793 when he and France were still on speaking terms. And France had handed him that pistol, the dark circles under his eyes like bruises, his hands scarred and shaking.

“Please Gilbert, if this doesn’t end- if I become that thing again- shoot me.” Prussia blinks again and looks at Austria, bringing himself back to the present. The man is so deceptively fragile, yet he knows after all these years that Austria won’t hesitate if the time comes.

“Do whatever you fucking have to do.”

Notes:

During the 13th century the Teutonic knights were sent to forcibly Christianize the old Prussians. The new Kingdom of Prussia ultimately rose from this violent suppression.

"minutes from the conference" is referencing the Wannsee Conference held in 1942 which laid out and approved the plan for the "Final Solution" of the Jewish question as they had put it.

"chicken farmer" refers to Heinrich Himmler, overseer of the SS, concentration camps, extermination camps, and the einsatzgruppen. He had a short lived apprenticeship as a chicken farmer.

The Battle of Torgau was the bloodiest battle fought in 1760 in the Seven Years War resulting in an outnumbered Prussia defeating Austria at a great cost.

Ernst Rohm was the leader of the SA and more or less openly homosexual. During the Night of the Long Knives, there was a massive purging of the SA in part to “clean up” the Nazi party of undesirables, and in another part to supposedly suppress a plot against Hitler.

The Treaty of Pressburg was signed in 1805 between France and Austria where Austria was forced to cede major holdings in Germany to both France and Italy. It marked the effective end of the Holy Roman Empire.

Amnon in the bible was the son of David who desired his half sister Thamar. He tried to seduce her and when that failed he raped her.

Erwin Rommel, aka the Desert Fox, was a famous and decorated German Field Marshall who led the German and Italian forces in the North African campaign in WWII. He was considered one of the last great heroes of Germany and was never accused of any war crimes. He was also part of the conspiracy against Adolf Hitler.

1793 was the height of the Reign of Terror in France.
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Who\'s Afraid of Roderich Edelstein