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Northern Waters	By : Domina_Ecca Category: +G to L > Hetalia: Axis Powers Views: 1538 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Hetalia - Axis Powers and I'm not making profit off of this story.

Chapter List
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Berwald almost couldn’t believe what he’d heard, but the short set of sharp knocks sounded again and a cold pit formed in his stomach.
“Stay here.” he ordered and left, shutting the door behind him.
He knew who it was. He didn’t have to wonder about that. But why now? If they had come at any other time it would have been perfectly fine. Just, not now. He wondered if he could get them to leave. Reaching the door, the room suddenly felt far too warm, making the cold that he let it almost welcome. The people that intended to come in with the cold, less so.
There were two of them, standing there, just as he knew there would be. Mathias and Lukas stared at him with nearly opposite expressions. The amber-tinted blond who waved excitedly and grinned at him was a Dane. Mathias was excitable and sporadic, and sometimes Berwald wanted to tear his head off. Still, sometimes he could be enjoyable. Next to him, the shorter man stared ahead with a blank face and blank eyes, looking irritated or perhaps bored. Lukas understood Berwald better than any of the others, but sometimes he could be rather frightening. Those near-purple eyes just seemed to lack any amount of consciousness, but the times he had seen them gleam were usually moments before something big happened.
“Hi-ya Ber!” Mathias shouted gleefully, stepping loudly and boldly over the threshold.
Berwald remained firmly in place, not moving to allow either of them in, but then realized that Mathias was keeping his arm fairly close to his body, an abnormality for the animated Dane. Upon closer inspection, he could see bandages on his right arm.
“What happened to you?” Berwald asked. “Shoot yerself again?”
He crinkled up his nose in a sneer, but then shook his head. “Got in a tussle…with a German soldier.”
Berwald couldn’t even pretend to hide his surprise. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped, not all the way, but just enough to part his lips.
“Lukas shot the bastard, though,” he told his frozen expression, nodding to the pale, blond Norwegian next to him.
“Shot ‘em dead?” he asked quietly after a moment of meeting Lukas’ intense gaze.
He began to shake his head, but the Dane spoke over him. “Nah, just in the leg, but still, the fucker turned around and ran!”
Berwald’s ears began to ring, stunned by what he was hearing. Could…no. Could it be? That was impossible, right?
Lukas’ eyes flashed suddenly. How the hell did he know these things?
He didn’t ask anything, they just stared at each other.
“But it’s fuckin’ cold out here, aren’t you going to let us in?” Mathias demanded, still trying to sound cheerful and carry a lively attitude.
“Or, are we interrupting something?” Lukas asked knowingly.
Shit.
Mathias was catching on, looking between them before discarding his smile and his voice darkening a bit.
“What?”
Berwald swallowed, nearly gulped, and then stepped back to let them in. “We…have a situation,”
Neither of them spoke back, simply entered the shut the door. Then, Berwald straightened himself up a bit, and nodded down the hallway before leading them towards his bedroom. They followed him, Mathias’ loud steps to match Lukas’ catlike ones, but with each step closer his heart was pounding louder. He had no idea how they would react, nor how the German would respond. He didn’t quite know how to justify saving him, especially when he had apparently shot Mathias, but everything he knew about the stupid Dane told him that he had been asking for trouble. Where the hell had he found a German to get shot by, anyway?
Reaching the door Berwald paused with his fingers on the cold knob, and then glanced at them both, and they both stood a bit straighter, trying to look prepared as his expression asked. Then, he cleared his throat, and pushed open the door.
The soldier was still in bed, sitting just as he had left him, his back slightly propped against the backboard and the pillows, staring at the door with fairly calm, questioning eyes. That is, until he saw Mathias and Lukas behind his shoulders. Then, the blood drained from his face so fast Berwald thought he was going to faint.
“What the fuck…?” Mathias rasped as they entered a bit further, although Berwald was careful to make sure he was close enough to still be between them.
“Berwald?” Lukas asked slowly after a moment of tense silence.
“Found him, in the forest, bleedin’.” he explained, trying to keep the timidity out of his voice.
“Of course he was bleeding! We shot him!” Mathias roared and out of the corner of his eye, Berwald could see the soldier flinch a bit.
“And, was that before or after ya shot him?” he demanded, not really sure if this was going the way he had wanted it to and his anger making words harder.
Mathias’ face turned red with his quick anger, but Lukas breathed out deeply for him. “Shut it. We need to figure out what to do with him now.”
There was a pause while the two taller men broke their intense stare down and threw their gazes to the man between them. If nothing else, Berwald liked Lukas because he was logical.
“You know you could get in a lot of trouble, Ber, if anyone finds out you took him here.” Lukas told him with his calm eyes.
He hadn’t known, but he trusted Lukas’ word. He was more familiar with the laws than the lawmakers.
“What the hell did you plan to do with him, anyway?” Mathias demanded, ignoring a glare from Lukas. “Just patch him up and send him right back to Germany with a slap on the back? You some kind of goddamned medic?”
Berwald stared for a moment and then looked at the soldier who looked back at him in confusion. “Don’t know.”
Mathias spluttered in his anger, but Lukas stepped forward, walking passed them to the bed. Ludwig sat up a bit more, looking obviously nervous, but as if he were trying to hide it.
“You remember us?” it was strange to hear German awkwardly fall from Lukas’ lips, and the soldier seemed surprised too.
After a moment he glanced at Mathias, and then nodded.
Lukas glanced over his shoulder, those dull eyes meeting Berwald’s. “That’s not good.”
He didn’t respond. The Norwegian turned back.
“What were you doing, out on the road?” he asked.
Ludwig’s eyes suddenly hardened as his intense eyebrows lowered a bit. He didn’t want to tell him.
“Has he told you anything?” Mathias asked Berwald.
Berwald began to shake his head and then stopped and grunted. “Name’s Ludwig.”
“Cute, you named the puppy,” he said mockingly.
“That’s enough,” Lukas snapped at him before Berwald could punch him in the nose and then stood. “Come on, we shouldn’t talk about this in front of him anyway. Let’s just talk in the kitchen.”
They both watched Lukas nod to the German, who looked too stunned to do anything, and then he led the way out. For a moment, Mathias looked like he wasn’t going to leave, but rather, stay and glare at Berwald, but Lukas snatched him hard by his injured arm and dragged him out. Before he left, Berwald glanced back at a very confused looking Ludwig.
“Just wait here,” he said awkwardly. “We’ll be back,”
Ludwig nodded to him and then he stepped out, shutting the door softly.
“Well, fuck,” Mathias said as he and Lukas already sat at the small dining table.
“We can’t tell anyone,” Lukas mumbled, but more to himself than to the others.
Berwald sat down too, after he and Mathias exchanged a tense glance, and then they both looked to the peace keeping Norwegian
“What do you think he was doing on the road anyway?” Mathias asked after a moment.
Lukas shrugged as he closed his eyes and reopened them slowly. “I don’t know…deserting, maybe? A German train had been scheduled for yesterday; he could have been on it,”
The word was enough to make Berwald and Mathias’ backs tense. If they shared nothing else, it was a strong, ancient sense of honor.
There was a long stretch of silence and then Lukas sighed.
“Well, even if he wants to go back to Germany, he can’t. He knows too much knowing me and Mat’s faces,” Lukas was always cautious, even if sometimes it bordered on the verge of paranoia; he was the only one they entrusted any kind of explosives to.
“I’m sure he’ll take that well,” Mathias sneered.
“Well, if he was already leavin’,” Berwald muttered. “Maybe he doesn’t want to go back,”
“Defecting…” Lukas said and again they lapsed into silence.
“Well, even if he is,” Mathias cleared his throat with his eyes low before continuing. “We can’t just let him leave, can we? He could still try to turn us in,”
“Has he said anything else, Ber?” Lukas asked.
He shook his head.
“Does he know your name?” he asked suddenly and Berwald’s inability to meet his eyes gave him his answer.
“Shit.” Mathias sighed; that annoyed him more than it probably should have.
“We couldn’t send him back, not without fear of him reporting us,” Lukas murmured.
“I don’t want to go back,” a voice suddenly said in awkward Swedish behind them, and they all whirled around to see the German standing in the hallway.
Berwald honestly couldn’t believe he was standing as his eyes immediately fell from his exhausted and pain expression to his leg and feet.
Silently, Lukas pushed out a chair with his foot; it was partially a silent invitation, but also a test to see if he could make it. Lukas was like that. Ludwig tried to walk with strength, but it looked extremely painful. After they all watched him hobble it to the chair and sit, they all looked back at Lukas who had thus taken charge of this whole foreign relations disaster.
“Why don’t you want to go back?” Lukas asked.
“Because,” he swallowed and his eyes dropped shamefully. “They set me up. I was supposed to be sent to prison.”
Lukas and Berwald both exchanged a shocked expression while Mathias, who looked too angry to speak, stared intently between them.
“Set you up?” Lukas asked.
He nodded. “Some of the other soldier in my unit, they framed me. They wanted me sent away.”
“Why?” his eyes were still dull and his face still expressionless, but Berwald could see his curiosity lying beneath.
“I don’t know, I didn’t really get a chance to ask them before they chained me up.” he said with anger, but it wasn’t directed at Lukas and he was instead glaring at the table.
Lukas sat back and looked at Mathias who frowned in distrust as they both folded their arms. Then, when something had been silently communicated, they both looked to Berwald.
“We could keep him here,” Lukas said slowly.
“An’ after he’s healed?” Berwald asked.
“I suppose we could let him go. No matter what we do, it sounds like me and Mat have to lie low for a while, maybe leave town just to be safe,” he said.
Berwald grimaced. They had done it before, had to leave town, but the last time they did was when they had taken Tino. His heart suddenly wretched at the realization that he hadn’t thought of him since this whole thing had begun.
“There’s not much else we can do,” Lukas told him looking bored again, as if it was all very obvious.
After a moment of thought, Berwald sighed and nodded with a grunt.
Then, they all turned to Ludwig.
“You can stay here, until you’re healed,” Lukas told him in German so he could better understand. “But in exchange, you can never tell anyone of us, any of us. Understood?”
Ludwig stared, but then gave a steady nod. Lukas nodded too, and then everyone looked at Berwald. He looked at Lukas.
“We should get going then,” he told him. “You know how to reach us,”
With that, he and the tall Dane simply stood, and went to the door.
“And Ber?” Lukas called.
“Hm?” he asked, raising his head to look at him.
“Be careful. There’ve been patrols out. It’s best just to stay inside for now.” Lukas told him, and then opened the door.
The wind reached all the way in to brush his face before they left, but not before he and Mathias exchanged a strange look that was something between a farewell and the desire to tell the other to go to hell.
The door shut again and Berwald stood, walking over and locking it. For a moment, he watched them walk away out the window, but then he sighed and turned around. Ludwig was looking at him, looking wretched.
“You okay?” he asked
Ludwig nodded and offered something like a small smile. “Thank you, Berwald.”
This surprised him, enough to make him stutter, so he coughed. “’It’s nothin’. Now come on, ya need to rest,”
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Northern Waters