Chapter Text
In early 1953, the sun sets over the sleepy hills of the southern German countryside, as it did before the war and continues to do afterwards, as if nothing has changed. Eight years after the armistice, no, the defeat, the dents and burns left by the occasional mortar shell have been healed, and the cows push past each other slowly. And the people in the houses are still drinking their milk, slowly.
In the city, they are not so fortunate. The people in the city drink their milk slowly too, but much faster than anyone can repair the concrete ruins around them. There are also the ruins that are not concrete and more ancient in composition: churches, palaces, gardens… precious crumblings instead of generic dust, though when Germany had been stumbling around and staggering about his own corpse, he hadn’t noticed a difference. He calculates that it might be half a century before physical and mental state of his people permit the reconstruction of some of these palaces.
It’s all awfully slow, as he has noted before.
Germany doesn’t really have to do much these days except cosign a bunch of papers and appear clean before parliament. “Okay,” he remembers Britain saying to him one day. “Sign this here, but you ought to change your signature. We’re looking to a new start, aren’t we, Beilschmidt?”
“When I had to change my signature after the Civil War,” America had then interrupted cheerfully, “I just started writing with my left hand. And I’m not even ambidextrous.”
The last drops empty out of the milk jug he’s been tilting as he daydreams. Germany blinks and sets the jug down. It expires tomorrow, so while he doesn’t usually take his coffee with milk, he supposes he can kill two birds with one stone like this and get more calories as well. He’s going to need the coffee anyway, considering what his agenda is today.
Because at two in the afternoon, the Soviet Union will come ringing his doorbell.
And when the clock hits 1:55 PM, Germany stands by the door in an ode to punctuality. He’ll be right there when Braginsky arrives of course, but until then, it would also be nice for some time to think. Some time to get a little more blood in his debatably existent cerebral cortex. Yet, it is now of all times, that his dragging life of waiting on the sidelines, cosigning with his left hand, strolling through parks and counting tablespoons of butter and heavy cream suddenly speeds up, and before he can blink it flys. 1:56, 1:57, 1:58…
And Braginsky rings the bell two minutes early.
It is nothing you weren’t ready for, Germany thinks.
The doorknob twists open on his own after he unlocks it (and for some reason that nearly flatters him). Corridor light pours into the dimly lit apartment, and Ludwig is greeted with a Soviet uniform and white teeth and a single gold star; Braginsky is jovial and tapping his heel like a dancer but all Ludwig can notice is the resentment in his eyes. And the doorway begins to suffocate.
“Ludwig!” Russia greets, leaning forward to cup the other’s jaw and press a few kisses to his cheeks— as was customary of him, Germany reminds himself, a little annoyed. “Wow. You look great.”
The air in the room already cold, and the feel of direct contact between the two is enough to sting. He doesn’t know how to explain it except that Russia’s touch in of itself feels heavy.
“Do I,” Germany lets himself ask, though with more than a little dryness in his voice. “It must be the Hershey’s Bars I’ve been eating. And also, don’t call me Ludwig.”
“Beilschmidt,” Russia grins. “Hy, you do. And to think that you could lose the war and come out healthier than me!”
Ludwig tries not to step back as the other moves a little closer, close enough for the German to remark the faded fingertips of the other’s gloves and the bandages that peek out of his cuffs. Of both their cuffs. Russia brushes his thumb against Ludwig’s bicep, but the blond ignores him.
“And if you are really eating America’s food, then you are still awfully thin,” Russia says anyway.
Deciding that this was just a little too much, Germany sets his palm against Russia’s face and shoves him back roughly. “You know what personal space is. Are you trying to act like a clown on purpose?”
“No,” Russia wheezes, not surprised even as he stumbles back. “Maybe I just miss you. Maybe you used to not mind. Maybe Beria is being a dick and forcing me to warm up to you, because nowadays he is such a liberal.” Braginsky flashes his teeth. “I will give you a hint; it is more likely the latter, Ludwig.”
The other nation rolls his eyes. “You suddenly out of the blue acting all chummy is the last thing that’s going to make us friends. And besides, call me Beilschmidt.”
“Chummy? You really do have the worst diction, Beilschmidt.” And Braginsky suddenly looks flustered, Germany notes with exasperation. “So we could never be friends, then?”
“You... don’t even really want to be friends. And I don’t have a propensity for acting.”
“In general.” Braginsky waves his hand dismissively. “You do not have a propensity for me. I cannot blame you. It just was simply fate.”
“Fate is stupid,” says Germany.
“But is it not true? We could never get along. You know, your brother and I were a bit chaotic. Sometimes we were the worst of enemies and other times we could rule the world together,” Russia says with a smile, and the German before him resists the urge to snarl. “But Ludwig, I do not remember a time when I didn’t hate you.”
And Ludwig realizes that he is too tired to humor the Red Empire for another second, too exhausted to maintain whatever semblance of socialization left inside of him telling him that this contact was an official meeting, not a personal decision. Ludwig is sick from the milk that must have been labeled wrong and the unmoving pool of drunkenness of the post war occupation; he misses his brother and his job and his dogs—
—and Ivan. And whatever they had once had in the snows of the interwar days, momentary though it was and now utterly lost.
“Then I would call your memory less than perfect.” Germany’s gaze is wary, before he slams the door.
It’s 1:58 PM.
1938.
Russia clicks his tongue. The radio drones on in all of its state sponsored glory, and Zhdanov is giving a speech again, when the host all of a sudden interrupts his signal and flickers over to the upcoming conference in Munich. So little Ludwig, Ivan thinks, vaguely amused, is all up and running again and West Europe has just realized how unfortunate that is.
HITLER DEMANDS THE SUDETENLAND
Ah, well. He didn’t really care much for Czechia anyway. In his view, she had kissed up too hard to America, France, and Britain after the Great War in order to consolidate her land, and when push came to shove, she could not control all of what she had gotten. Really, the scramble of land in those days had truly convinced Ivan that there was nothing but an animal inside each and every single one of them. The Soviet Union remembers how Poland had taken him to a field bombed into nothing but fourteen craters. “I call these Wilson’s fourteen points,” he had drawled.
It’s called playing your cards right, is it not? What nasty rules governed them, when all Ivan wants is for everyone to be happy together.
At least Germany isn’t good at playing his cards, even if Hitler might be. Germany is… a little childish, Russia tells himself. He’s stoic and sensitive in the opposite places and he tends to bite more than he can chew. Russia hates those sorts of nations, but that’s a given.
Just a moment later, these very thoughts are interrupted by the shrill ringing of that rare apparatus— the telephone —that very second. And Ivan nearly startles out of his seat before scrambling over his desk to pick up the line.
“Hello?” Ivan greets. “This is... Braginsky on the line.”
“Why are you hesitating?” the voice on the other end asks bluntly. “Do they not give you your own phone number? That only people who know about your existence could obtain?”
The empire frowns. “Germany? I just like to use the common line. But do not assume that we are that poor in Moscow.”
“Too late.”
“Is that a rare hint of amusement I hear in your voice? Wow, today greets me with surprise after surprise.”
“I’m choosing to ignore your games and get to the point,” Germany says easily. “Braginsky.” How he pauses adds a weight, a burden to the Russian’s name.
“Come to Berlin. With what Britain and France have agreed to, we should have a brief meeting.”
“How flattering!” Russia allows. “But if you cannot give me the manners that neither your brother or Austria somehow never explained to you, then at least give me a reason.”
A light scoff. “I know what manners are, Braginsky. Formalities. Now, please allow me to circumvent this parley.”
“No, humor me first,” Russia challenges. “Tell me, why do you think manners are just formalities?”
And there’s a pause, as if Beilschmidt is weighing whether it’s worth it or not to cede to the Soviet’s request. It probably wouldn’t be, in any normal circumstance, so it does set off a strong curiosity in Ivan when Germany sighs, and says, “All right.”
Ivan laughs softly. “Wonderful. And let me preface, you are not allowed to launch into a very winded lecture about formal systems and the axiom of human behavior. Or all the theorems of acceptable human behavior derived from those axioms.”
“But that’s true,” Germany replies, likely with the frown that tended to overtake his expression whenever someone would rewrite the rules. “Action is nothing more than a system with its rules, and perhaps worth even less. At least machines, unlike humans, are logical.”
“Logic is nothing but a needless set of laws in itself.” Ivan decides that he likes to tease the other nation. “It is imposed on our thinking in order to make some sense of this world. But if logic really worked, then we would not have paradoxes, right? So we should—
“Are you saying,” Beilschmidt interrupts, slightly offended. “That you don’t adhere to logic? What a self-fulfilling declaration.”
“And a paradoxical one. Look, if I say that I am illogical, but I act illogical, would that not mean I am being logical in the moment? All language is nonsense.”
“Your logic is flawed,” Germany scowls. “If language was so aimless, and if machines like tanks and machine guns were junk, then I wouldn’t be able to annex German-speaking Czechoslovakia, would I?”
“Of course you can,” Ivan at last tells him dismissively. “But it will never last. Beilschmidt, I am going to tell you the greatest thing that I have ever learned, and though it may seem like such a platitude at first I assure you that I am completely serious.”
“Go on, Braginsky,” Germany says.
Dear Zhdanov’s vodka soaked airway reopens to the world as the ultimatums of Hitler and the fears of West Europe take a backseat on the static-ridden channel. Russia is all too aware of the voice that croaks on books and the scribe and how pertinent language was…
“To be an engineer of human souls means standing with both feet firmly planted on the basis of real life. And this in its turn denotes a rupture with romanticism of the old type... a world of the impossible, into a world of utopian… cannot be hostile to romanticism, but it must be a romanticism of a new type, revolutionary romanticism…”
It humors Ivan.
“The meaning of life is love!” Ivan beams into the unpolished handset. “In the endless churning of this man eat man world, don’t you think that nothing lasts but love? You can forget your formulas and your war plans because in fifty years, they are superceded and lost. But you will never forget that sheer feeling that drives us to sacrifice ourselves for another, and there will never be anything more pure than that, nothing but that alone escaping what the Buddhists in the Orient might call the ‘impermanence of all things’—”
Beilschmidt straight up hangs up on him. Ivan wonders if this is the beginning of a trend.
“To Chancellor of Germany A. Hitler. Thank you for your letter. I hope the German-Soviet agreement of non-aggression will be a turning point towards serious improvement of political relations between our countries… The Soviet government has instructed me to inform you that it agrees to Mr. Ribbentrop visiting Moscow on 23 August.
J. Stalin.”
“Is this telegram in response to the Dear Mr. Stalin one we sent?” Ludwig asks, trying not to crumple the paper despite the twitching feeling in his fingertips, and the restlessness that followed a too acute awareness of everything. Perhaps another side effect of the Pervitin pills currently scattered along the lacquer tabletop, which both the nation and his leader picked at.
The snow falls quietly past the windows of Kroll Opera House: a new meeting place for the facist administration after the Reichstag had so wonderfully burned down. There are beautiful gardens with human figures strolling through them, separated from Germany by just the glass pane and the height of the opera house. Yet, a crushing feeling of isolation persisted in his heart.
He wasn’t even alone. It was just as if he had, without knowing, turned his back on some human part of himself. Turned his back on it in his attempt to become complete.
His leader assures him that it is indeed that response, with the gleeful remark that Britain and France had not offered enough on the bid for Stalin’s allegiance. This was the Great Game of the interwar days, in which the West Europeans and the Nazis and the Soviets were all trying to get the other two to kill each other, leaving the survivor ascendant.
Ludwig wants to scoff; the Soviet Union has handed him a bullet and asked, “Please, kill either yourself or West Europe!”
So it feels too easy, too fragile, when Germany boards the plane alongside Foreign Minister and ex-champagne salesman Ribbentrop and lands seventy miles from Moscow. It must be because of this awful hangover, really one of the top five hangovers in his life if he must categorize, that he nearly trips on himself as he exits the plane. The cold wind that Ludwig knows Russia has born for most of his life scrapes against the German’s cheek; the absence of green in this concrete and ice environment pledges to the sin of the Five Year Plans.
“You must be really amazed,” a member of the Soviet delegation says cheerfully, as Ludwig resteadies himself. “Yes, we wanted to give you a warm welcome.”
Germany has no idea what he’s talking about until the hymn of the Deutschlandlied, played by an orchestra, fills his ears. As he looks up, he blinks to see that the entire airport has been splattered with swastikas, burning violet with their black wings spinning lazily in unison. What in the world…? You can’t be serious…
Ribbentrop looks impressed. They board a military car and head for Moscow, and Germany scowls at the passing villages and roads. So the idiot won’t come to Berlin, but just a year later he basically preens when I come over.
In fact, Ludwig doesn’t realize how accurate his thoughts had been. Seventy miles afar, at the heart of the Kremlin, Ivan is indeed preening, though not because he wills to. Ivan scrunches his nose to the several military uniforms laid out in front of him, as Voroshilov tells him to pick one.
“They are all covered in aiguillettes and that kind of silly imperial garnish!” he protests. “I know I am an empire meeting an aspiring one, but this seems a little too much. Especially in terms of cost.”
“Beilschmidt is not vain…” he continues, but his pleas fall on deaf ears. And after he changes, he’s gently pushed into the dining hall, where meters of plates of caviar and wine await the governors of the two nations, while the people of the Ukraine and Kazakhstan starve.
It was amazing how fast it all went down, all considered.
Over the feast, Molotov and Ribbentrop work out the pact that will bear their name, though sometimes it is simply called the non-aggression pact. Fitting, really, for it does not and it cannot go as far as to promise something as drastic as friendship between these two countries, at each other’s throats since the conception of a unified Germany. It promises only “non-aggression” which Ludwig suppposes is already revolutionary.
Russia seems… surprisingly shy, which makes the whole thing even more unbelievable. He picks at the cuffs of the new uniform he’s wearing, which Ludwig will allow looks much better than the normal combination of dusty tunics and ratty Great War winter coats that he sees on the other. Maybe Braginsky also has a hard time grasping the full extent of all that is happening.
Voroshilov, that drunkard, pops open another bottle to celebrate the closure of the agreement, and just a little caught up in the relief of success, Ribbentrop goes further. He crosses the line that Ludwig has imagined still lays between him and the Soviet, and proposes that an anthem of friendship be drawn up between the Germans and Russians. Ludwig tries to hide the fact that he’s choked on his cake, and he sees a startle run through Braginsky.
But Stalin shakes his head wryly. “Don’t you think we have to pay a little more attention to public opinion in our countries? We’ve been pouring buckets of shit over each other’s heads for years now and our propaganda boys could not do enough in that direction. Things don’t work so fast!”
“I mean,” Voroshilov jokes. “We could try. Why don’t Germany and Soyuz be a little less shy and pour one together?”
Ah, yes, Ludwig thought with embarrassment. That sort of personal diplomacy that no one really wanted to decipher, and deal with.
“I’m sure we could be best of friends, quickly,” Russia says with an uneasy grin. “But why don’t we see what Mr. Hitler thinks of the terms first?”
Ludwig meets the Russian in the eyes for a flicker of a moment. I saved us both! Braginsky seems to be conveying. Ludwig smiles back for the camera, but it’s obviously dry.
So the German delegates give their thanks and get ready to file out of the room, and everyone’s shaking hands. Ludwig notices that Braginsky is still seated, glancing at his empty plate with half lidded eyes… but he doesn’t have time for whatever internal affairs are going on within the Soviet Union. Still, he walks past Braginsky in order to leave the room.
Braginsky grabs his arm before he can pass and exit, though, and motions the German to lean down a little. The room is filled with chattering voices and all the politicians are distracted, but will they stay that way for long? So Germany gives him a “no way” look and tries to leave, but the Russian practically jerks him down, and whispers something into his ear.
“When they ask us to, make it just a little believable, Beilschmidt.”
“For what? The sanctity of love?” Germany retorts, pulling his arm back. “For the vanity of an agreement that we both have made without an iota of trust within the other?”
Braginsky gives him a pitiful look, but Ludwig decides it’s rich coming from the country who specializes in human wave attacks. Yes, he’s bitter and he hates the Soviet, but that really isn’t something he cares to change.
“And for what?” Ludwig goes on. “If you don’t convince them you can play pretty, will they starve your other sister too?”
Ivan’s eyes widen and he hisses, his face beginning to color red with anger. Still, Germany ignores him and starts to walk away.
“Ludwig!” Ivan shouts, and he only turns because he’s sure it’s the first time since the 1880s that Braginsky’s called him by his first name. All eyes turn to the two of them and Ludwig has a sinking feeling that something is about to go horribly wrong, and that he’d miscalculated how sensitive Braginsky was about the famine. Accordingly, Ivan steps forward and smashes the empty champagne bottle over the German’s head.
The well woven red crowning against the navy blue fabric of his collar and sleeves, the stars and buttons that could have been made of real gold, and every other intricate detail of the lovely, new Soviet uniform jacket ends up draped over Germany’s back as Braginsky washes the blood out of his blond hair. The two men sit at the bottom of some stairs outside, as hail rattles the pock marked ground before then.
“You really are a fucking idiot,” Beilschmidt sighs. “Are you trying to get the psychics to say we’re going to go to war in two or three years?”
“I hope three,” Braginsky mutters softly. “My airplane industry is pretty shit right now.”
“Are you going to apologize,” Germany deadpans. The Soviet might be blushing.
“I’m sorry. But in all fairness! You were the one, who about a year ago, gave me the lecture about how you could not care less for manners. That they were but formalities.”
Ivan gets a fist in his collar for that, and the Soviet yelps as Beilschmidt hauls him face-to-face. “I didn’t say formalities weren’t necessary. All I said that I wasn’t good at them, and I don’t see why I should focus on them above all other things.” Braginsky stares at him, wide-eyed, and Beilschmidt glances away. “And besides. I was high back when I gave that call.”
“You…” Russia watches him in disbelief, before breaking out into a loud laugh. “You were high? For Heaven’s sake!”
“Shut up.” Now it’s Germany’s turn to color.
“You sure sounded like it,” Russia says, amused.
Germany crosses his arms. “You’re the resident alcoholic, not me. And you did too! First giving me a lecture about friendship, then suggesting we create one ourselves, right before you smash a bottle over my head.”
Ivan waves a hand dismissively. “So, our friendship does not follow the formal system of friendships. That is what reality is, Beilschmidt. But we should still be friends, or at least friendly. I was serious about that.”
“Because it’s a means to an end? That isn’t what friendship is, Braginsky.”
Braginsky sends him a lazy look out past his unnaturally pale lashes and purrs. “It has nothing to do with the pact. Well, maybe a little. But it’s because I find you interesting, Beilschimdt.”
“I fail to see what about me has changed in these last few years, that you couldn’t have found me interesting in the past half-century we’ve engaged with each other.”
“Well, now your brother is out of the way and he will not kill me,” Ivan jokes, and Beilschmidt slaps him for that.
Growling, the Russian reaches up to rub the reddening mark on his face. “Ow. What was that for, you Hun?”
“Be serious,” Beilschmidt snaps. “This isn’t a game.”
“And I am serious.” Ivan pulls the jacket higher up, as it begins to slip off the German’s shoulders. He strips the Hero of the Soviet Union medal off the back and pins it to Germany’s chest, before he can be asked what he is doing.
“You and me,” the Soviet Union declares, “Are both going a little mad. Well, I do not want to go mad alone.”
Beilschmidt shoves him away. “That’s the worst reason you could have possibly given. Go mad completely alone, asshole.”
Ivan frowns. “I am lonely.” It almost comes out as a whine, but Ivan supposes it can’t get any more embarrassing today than it already has.
Germany raises an eyebrow at him. “Is that all?”
“Yes. What more do you want? Being mad together makes you a little less mad, you know. Such is the magic of humanity.”
“We aren’t human,” Germany says, but Russia leans closer anyway.
And brushes the a drop of blood from his cheek.
“Doesn’t that feel good?” Russia asks.
And the hail has stopped.
All the other nation can do is close his eyes. “What am I supposed to say to that?"
The words were cold, but there was a tinge of hesitance in his tone, and right now Ivan recognizes how much he asks of Germany. His entire regime is based on some ethic of racial superiority over Slavs and others, of grandeur and revenge, not of the holy simplicity of the brush of a gloveless thumb against a cold cheek. But that’s exactly what Russia wants— Russia wants to be given all of him, to ask all from him. So he lets Germany believe that friendship is all that he needs.
Yet, that is still too much for Germany. The blond stands up, letting the imperial jacket fall to the floor.
“No thank you.” And he gives Ivan the same look of utter disgust that he had twenty five years ago, when German forces had destroyed the entire Russian Second Army in Tannenberg. “I’m sure love lasts while it can, but hatred does too.”
Snow stops falling past the windows of the Kroll Opera House as spring comes, and then autumn. Leaves and sheets of rainwater replace the hail that once pocked the dirt. They draw back the curtains even further, to see the roll of the tanks and the soldiers riding them.
In 1939, Germany invades Poland, then the Soviet Union does too. A year later, the Fall of France comes as fast as he could hope for. With soldiers moving faster than he could ever hope for.
(But the side effects are a little too much, so Hitler finally lets him brush the Pervitin tablets off the tabletop. Hitler himself, though, ever the activist, stays into cocaine.)
One thing that hasn’t changed despite the end of the interwar days (or perhaps it still existed between just the two of them, as long as the non-aggression pact was active) was Braginsky, and how the Soviet would keep nagging him. He’s not joking— Braginsky likes to call him every two months or so, just to taunt him, and Germany swears that at press conferences he’s just a little too open to brushing the German’s arms and shoulders.
“Why is there always blood on your face?” he would joke as he flicked the other’s skin. As if wartime atrocities materialized on their skin.
Britain notices, because of course he would notice. “You two are quite friendly nowadays-- the magic of diplomatic signatures, isn’t it?” he snorts, and Germany ignores it, despite having a biting comment about Britain’s own forays with the United States on his tongue. But Hitler, already convinced that hope of Soviet support is what keeps Britain in the war, even as the Battle of Britain bleeds both the British and German air force, has a different idea.
So here Ludwig is welcoming Molotov and Braginsky in 1940. Here Ludwig is playing best friend to the moralless empire of his East. Playing playmate when he wishes that he could get to ripping out the other’s throat already.
And he’s swears that this time it’s him talking, not his secret police or whatever concoction that the regime instilled inside him to make him feel so sluggish and dizzy and irritated in every waking moment. Ludwig had thought it was the Pervitin— if only Pervitin had been the problem. But no, though he’s one hundred percent sober, he hasn’t woken up yet. The colors of the world don’t move as fast as their outlines, until everything once beautiful is streaked and blended into an existential nausea.
Ludwig has always been looking for something absolute. Something powerful, someone powerful, who won’t fall when he does. Is it his Führer? Is it mathematics and meta-logic, laid out Bible-like in the Principia Mathematica?
Well, his Führer is on drugs. And when he promises himself that there exist facts, a truth, somewhere out there, he’s sure that he’ll be able to satisfy himself at last when he reaches it… he’s sure that he will be able to tolerate anything once he understands the meaning of this world.
So let himself bleed until then. Because there must be a meaning behind it all, behind the continuously intermittent state of war that he’s existed in since he was young.
He isn’t sure how obvious it is that he’s zoning out, or staring at the ground, until a finger taps under his chin softly before lifting his head up. “Did you get new shoes, Beilschmidt?” Braginsky asks with an unreachable smile.
Doesn’t that feel good?
Of course it does, Ludwig thinks.
Then the Russian removes his ungloved hand from the other’s jaw, and he is off without a spare glance, having gone to board the car with Molotov en route to Berlin. Right, Braginsky had finally agreed to come in person to Berlin.
Braginsky had said that love was lasting. What a lie; what a child’s lullaby the Russian can convince himself with as he betrays the women who had once done everything to protect him from the Golden Horde. Braginsky, Ludwig reminds himself with a flare of anger, is a hypocrite and practically always wrong.
There is only one thing that has ever come out of Braginsky’s mouth and made some semblance of sense. It was only that snowy midday, on the stairs outside of the Kremlin, when he had asked Ludwig something so simple that it should have been given.
Nothing in this world was lasting. Nothing can last while it shares a realm with the executed in Anatolia and Angola and the waste of souls in Caporetto and the Meuse-Argonne. But the touch of skin, that moment of tangency, a single lapse of human vulnerability and the undeniable sanctuary that it gave—
Impermanent, but utterly absolute.
To think that almost a year has passed since Beilschmidt last saw Molotov, Ivan muses to himself. What is a year to Germany anyway? Time flies by so fast for nations like them, flickering, fading, emotions coming and going in crescendos until all one asks for is something to hold onto. Ludwig must have oriented himself with the numbers, clinging onto not the arm that moves, but to the numeral to which it points. Ludwig must have felt that progression and regression were all symptoms to that ruthless crunch of time and that it could not possibly be the other way around.
That is, if Ludwig was anything like his brother.
They’re opening up caviar and vodka at the Soviet Embassy, when the RAF begins to drop bombs literally atop of them and the other Gothic majesties of their surroundings; it’s rather the fantastic interruption to these formal affairs. Beilschmidt nearly jumps out of his chair when it starts, before he catches himself, rubbing at his throat.
“The British are just upset not to have been invited”, Ribbentrop teases, setting a hand on his nation’s shoulder.
Some sort of glint runs through Molotov’s eye. “It seems that you are fighting for life while they are fighting for death tonight.”
“They are quite on the brink of death themselves.”
“If so, then why are we heading to a bomb shelter, and whose bombs are those?” asks Molotov.
It’s Ivan who helps Ludwig get up and ease out of the hall as the diplomats behind up finish up their theorems— their formalities.
Ivan already has his hand on the small of Ludwig’s back when he taps the other’s shoulder to fetch his attention. Ludwig makes a noncommittal sound of acknowledgement. He is sick, but not from just the RAF raids,” Ivan notes with a tinge of concern. How? It is not like the Netherlands is really taking a toll on him.
“If we cannot be friends,” Russia murmurs, half just trying to keep the other awake, “can we something else?”
Ludwig coughs into his hand, and it sounds a little wet. That’s… not great, Ivan thinks, but before he can do anything, Ludwig speaks.
“You know. I’ve changed my mind,” the German says. “We’re friends now.”
“This is somehow more alarming than your fits,” Ivan replies softly, and Ludwig huffs.
“Do you need a logical reason?” It’s almost sarcastic. “It’s since I need you to teach me something, Braginsky.”
“Oh? Teach you what, Fascist?”
Ludwig looks back. The medals on his chest turn with him. “Tell me, what were you were trying to get at that night at the Kremlin?”
“It was the afternoon actually,” Ivan corrects. “It is true that it was later in the afternoon, and that it would have been more poignant in the dark, but nonetheless it was the afternoon.”
“Please hurry up, I do not care,” Ludwig snaps, wary, though more of himself than anyone else. It seems that way to Ivan at least, the way he furrows his brows with discontent at the ceiling and not at the Soviet. And Ivan knows that Germany wouldn’t ask God for the answers to such a mechanical problem.
Ivan laughs. “Sorry. I will go on. That time in 1939, yes?”
Ludwig nods.
“All I was saying is that it does not have to be so complicated. Just to touch another human and breathe with them, is that not all the beauty you need in this world? So easy and clean. And Ludwig, I thought you were looking for that kind of perfection.”
“Are you looking for perfection?” Ivan asks, when Germany does not respond for a moment.
“Of a sort,” he muttered agreeingly. “But contrary to what you may perceive, I find there to be nothing perfect in humanity.” He rubs his own cheek. It is exactly where Ivan had once cleaned the blood. “Even if it is beautiful, I confess.”
“Why do you need something as abstract as perfection then, if you can just find something flawed and beautiful?” Ivan frowns.
“Are you saying I was supposed to find that in our contact? You’re hardly beautiful, Braginsky.”
The Soviet begins to roll his eyes, but Ludwig clears his throat quickly. “I don’t mean physically. I don’t care about that, either way.”
“Is it my awful personality?” Ivan snorts.
Germany shuts his eyes. “If only it were that easy to fix.”
Ivan smiles. “Tell me, Beilschmidt. I am always eager to please you.”
And Ludwig says bluntly, “Social beauty. That’s what you’re missing. I’m not even trying to find social perfection… You just are a total mess.”
“Ah, so that is why you are sick,” Ivan croons, leaning closer to Ludwig’s ear. “You are rejecting yourself too.”
“Shut up.” And the other nation’s irritation is so muddled with confusion that the Russian might just believe that Ludwig’s gone madder than even himself.
“I’m not sick because I can’t handle my own imperfection,” he snarls. “I’m sick because I’m throwing my own people in a furnace, Ivan.”
Ivan lets go of him, and watches as the exhaustion reaches the other’s countenance before Germany turns his back on him. Before he buries his face in his hands. Really, Ivan thinks with a sigh, looking at the boy who was once so bright and naive and perfect before he had become just like Ivan. We must have been made for each other.