Archive of Our Own

It is 1947, and Gilbert Beilschmidt is dead.

Well. Not actually dead. He doesn't think so, anyway. Maybe he is, and he just hasn't noticed? After all, he knew it was coming, and this morning he read it in the paper, same as anyone else -- Prussia is gone. Really gone, now, in more than just name. He can feel it under his skin, if he thinks to pay attention -- there's something cold lingering there, where he didn't think there was room for a feeling, just muscle and sinew and bone.

He doesn't know what he's going to do.

So he doesn't do anything.

Berlin feels different after he's abolished.

It feels even stranger a decade-and-change down the road, when the Wall goes up and he can't see West anymore, not even in the secret ways they used to, his little brother sneaking in over the garden fence like a criminal in the night. He's still not entirely convinced he's not dead; Lud had always looked at him with a disgusting pity in his eyes, like he was looking at a ghost, something ephemeral, nothing like the warm exasperation Gilbert remembers most fondly. Then again, that was years and years ago; Ludwig never did look the same after the Great War, and certainly he doesn't look too good now.

He's getting better, though, or -- he was, before the Wall went up. Now, Gilbert doesn't know. That's becoming a theme: he doesn't know.

He hasn't had contact with another nation since the Soviets took over Berlin, which is -- not at all what he would have expected out of Braginski. He seemed more the type to gloat, especially given that Gilbert's been more soundly defeated than any of the others now gathered willingly or otherwise under the flag of the USSR. He's only seen humans, a constant watch kept over his door, and... well, that's not enough to deter him, really. Their weapons aren't enough to keep him down, or even knock him off his feet -- or, at least, they wouldn't have been. The problem is, he doesn't know that anymore; he knows, eventually, that he still doesn't seem to age, but he isn't sure he's dead, and so he isn't sure if they can kill him in flesh and blood the way they've killed him on paper.

Besides: where would he go? He's full of a sudden, shocking aimlessness, of a kind which he's never experienced before, that cold feeling under his skin that makes the hairs on his arms prickle up, sometimes, when he thinks about it. He doesn't know where he'd go if he could, or why he'd want to go there, or what could possibly incent him to leave the house, these days. He doesn't actually need food, after all; he's skinnier than he used to be because his people are having trouble getting enough to eat after all that's happened, not because he needs to be packing in some more calories. He doesn't need entertainment, either, or companionship, or any of the other things that might have made him walk out into the street Before.

Or maybe he does. He doesn't know that, either.

His primary problem, he decides after a while, is that there doesn't seem to be anything that interests him anymore. Perhaps that's part of death, if he is dead, but then again he saw Vater a few times even after Germania was no longer a nation in any sense, just a part of history, and he had never seemed... Purposeless, the way Gilbert feels he is now. He had always been interested in how his sons were doing, and in Rome's, too, though he never wanted to admit it, and he had -- he had been a ghost, truly a ghost, but he hadn't seemed gone. Gilbert feels gone. Probably.

He's not quite sure what he feels, either, but gone seems to sum it up as well as anything.

So: he doesn't leave the house. He doesn't do anything inside it, either, though the shelves of the library are still as full of thick old tomes as they ever were, and he's sure the radio would still work if he cared to turn it on, and the newspaper still comes every day, whole piles of them accumulating on his doorstep until eventually someone or something clears them away. Perhaps it's one of the soldiers sent to keep an eye on him. Gilbert thinks absently once or twice as the years pass that they must be rather bored; he's not the most captivating or active charge. In fact, they'd probably almost like for him to try and make an escape, or whatever it is they're waiting for; surely that's better than the monotony.

It really is monotony; the days and nights pass almost without change, especially once the Wall goes up and Ludwig no longer comes. The newspapers pile up by the door and are left alone and rot until they disappear; the seasons change and the curtains remain firmly shut and the house gets colder and warmer with the weather without so much as a match struck for warmth in the winters; the bookshelves and the countertops and the desk in the study gather dust, completely untouched for five years, and then ten, and then fifteen and twenty and twenty-five.

If he still had the wherewithal to worry about it overmuch, or even think on it with anything more than absent observation, his own stagnation would scare the living hell out of him. It probably more than would; it probably should. But it doesn't. He's -- not content, but not exactly fighting that chill just under the surface and the way he can feel every year that fewer and fewer people remember him and the way he knows that fifty years ago, he would have been fighting this. God, a century ago he would have done more than just fought it, he would have literally raised hell to Earth if that had been what it took to fix whatever it is that's been broken, but now -- now, he can hardly even summon the energy to make himself get out of bed in the mornings, and spends most of his time laid out across the blankets on a bed that hasn't been made for twenty-five fucking years.

And then the key arrives.

It's slipped under the door, easy as anything, just innocently sitting there on the dusty-ass pinewood floor in the entryway.

Really, it's sort of a miracle that he's even found it at all; he'd question how long it's been there, except there's no dust settled on it at all and it still smells less like old paper and more like whoever the hell must have delivered it, something like fertile soil or the heady wood smell of a forest after it's rained.

Also, when he's quite finished staring at it like it's not so much an envelope as it is a three-headed space alien, and actually opens the damn thing, he finds that the note inside is dated 25 February, 1972. Which -- he's not actually certain precisely what day today is, but if he had to guess, he'd say that was pretty close.

There's not much to the rest of the, note, though, just the date in the top right corner and then:

Beilschmidt --

New Prussia, Wilmot Township, Ontario, Canada.

Yours if you want it.

You'll know which one it is.

It isn't signed, and it's typed, so he can't even try to identify the handwriting, but there's something else, a smaller envelope that had been tucked inside the letter. When he opens it with fingers that are shaking perhaps more than he'd like to admit, there's a key -- small, clearly new, with something etched onto the head that he has to squint at to decipher. It takes a moment, but all of a sudden it clicks: a tiny eagle, hard to distinguish in its shallow scratches on a cheerfully shiny face but achingly familiar.

He sets it down slowly, heart pounding, and slumps against the door. The first question that comes bobbing to the surface of his mind is why; the second, who, and he thinks he's got a better idea of that one, or at least a guess.

It was probably West. He can't think of anyone else that would -- well, that would have cared half as much as it took to go to the trouble of presumably purchasing or building a house of some kind, and then hand-delivering the key in a letter to a house that's still closely watched by Soviet soldiers. Not that the soldiers themselves pose a threat -- too human, much too human; back at the beginning of all this, when he used to actually bother to look out the window from time to time, it always amazed him how often new faces left and old ones disappeared, presumably as dead as he's still not sure he isn't -- but word would have gotten back to Braginski, who he presumes is the only party interested in keeping this strange watch over his house when he hasn't so much as cracked open the front door in nearly three decades, and if word had gotten to Braginski, he would never have seen this letter. It would have been sneaking past without notice that was difficult, and nations have an innate sense of power that has always seemed to draw the human eye, though of course their citizens never understand why they're bizarrely drawn to these mysterious figures in their midst.

So: probably Lud, because he more than doubts he's worth the effort to anyone else. Frankly, he's surprised he's worth the effort even to Ludwig, but -- well, they are brothers, perhaps he shouldn't be so amazed. Perhaps he would do the same, were their roles reversed. It's hard to know -- he hasn't thought too hard about anything like that in a while. It does raise the question of why the hell the address points him to Canada, then, but there could be any number of reasons for that, and that's not his top priority right now.

His eyes shudder closed, and he's amazed to note his own breathing, the screaming rate of his heartbeat. He can still feel that lingering ice just beneath the planes of his limbs and even thicker over his chest, but there's something crackling even deeper now, too, something warm and heady that he hasn't known in -- he laughs, breathless, because has it really been that long? It seems like ages and ages, but it's only been a quarter of a century. That's nothing. He's getting soft in his old age.

It's not really fair to say he considers what to do or thinks about his choices; the key got him thinking again, true, sent a little shock to his system, but he's always been impulsive, and, well.

He doesn't exactly have much here to keep him waiting around, anymore. He feels vaguely like he should be ashamed of himself, even thinking that; he knows the Soviets haven't exactly been easy on his people, but, well -- very few have ever accused him of being inherently good, and none of being selfless.

He starts planning.

Actually getting out of the house is the hard part, and even that much less so than it would have been years and years ago; that same inherent power that draws the human eye to their kind seems to almost have been reversed in him, and the guards never so much as glance near him when he sneaks out over the back fence and through the field behind the house and out into the countryside.

It's a trend that continues as he makes his way from his house to the outskirts of the city, the eastern side. He wonders for a while if Braginski won't still feel him, and come to make whatever opinion he probably has on Gilbert leaving perfectly clear, but then again, this is still his home in spirit, Braginski's property in name only. The people even start to notice him more once he gets away from his house and out into the old neighborhoods of East Berlin, so maybe it's going to be easy to get out of the country after all.

He heads north on foot for days; he doesn't tire the way a human would, and he doesn't need to stop and sleep. Back Before, he might have wanted to, but now he moves forward with a sort of single-minded purpose that he hasn't felt in, God -- long enough that he laughs to think of it. It's a good, useful sort of drive; it makes his fingertips tingle with feeling in a way they he's almost forgotten, and his cheeks feel flushed sometimes in a way that he doesn't think is just the stiff February winds.

Somehow he hits the coast almost sooner than he had expected; the sea is cold and bleak-looking and sets a deep longing ache deep in his bones that reminds him of his youth. He has to spend a half a day after he first hears the waves crashing over the shoreline finding a town with a port significantly big enough to be sending ships to North America, and then determining which of those in the harbor is leaving soonest for somewhere close to where he's going. He gets lucky; there's a big old monster of a thing leaving for Halifax, which he thinks is probably somewhere close to Ontario, maybe. He -- well, Canada is such a young sort of nation, and if Gilbert's honest, he never really bothered to visit once the kid got off on his own, had too much going on at home to even think to. He's been to visit America more recently, since the turn of the century, even -- Jones reminds him of himself, when he was younger; it had been hilarious at the time, but now it sort of makes him grumpy to think of, God, maybe he is getting old -- but even then, only once or twice. He has met Canada; he thinks he remembers the name being Williams, those few times Kirkland brought him around once he was more than a colony.

Whatever. He can read maps. He'll figure it out.

The ship leaves for Halifax without even realizing there's something extra in the hold.

The funny thing is, Gilbert honestly couldn't tell you how long the trip takes. Somewhere between a week and a month, probably, but beyond that, he doesn't think too much between his shoreline and Canada's. He sleeps a lot, actually, catching up on days' or weeks' or months' worth of it, maybe.

When they dock in Halifax, he jolts awake with a gasp, and -- he doesn't know it (though perhaps he could guess), but in Ottawa, a less-dead, much younger nation echoes the sound.

He doesn't bother to take the time to determine much more about the direction he should be going than "west of here" before he starts walking again.

He loses track of time very quickly; it's winter and the nights are long and brutally cold, though he's been around for long enough to recognize the feeling of spring only a few months off in the air when he feels it. It becomes apparent very quickly that sticking to the major roadways is going to be the easiest way to get where he's going, so he does, passing through a few towns and one or two larger cities on the way. He's relatively confident he'll be able to sort out more detailed directions once he reaches Ontario; besides, he can feel himself getting closer, a little tug in his chest that gets brighter and warmer with every passing moment, it seems, like a compass needle pointing him where he needs to go.

Slowly the people start speaking less French and more English, which he can only assume is a sign he's getting closer, because that tug in his chest gets stronger in tandem. He passes through Toronto almost without noticing; by that point there's something like urgency yawning in his lungs, and he feels as though he won't be able to breathe properly until he gets wherever it is that he's going.

It's not long, after Toronto, and it's sudden: he crests a hill and then there it is, a little farmhouse nestled in a copse of barren trees, painted brick red, curtains open just enough to let light spill out onto the snow in a way that makes Gilbert realize with a jolt that, yes, it's the middle of the night. There's smoke curling out of the chimney, and he doesn't know why, but it makes him ache for something he hasn't had in a long, long time.

He runs down the hill before he can stop to think about it, his fingers already scrabbling in the pocket over his breast where the key is tucked soundly in the envelope it came in. It feels like he's at the front door before he can stop to blink; then the key's turning in the lock and he presses inside with a rush and a clatter and a burst of cold wind coming in behind him.

Gilbert stops dead and just looks. It reminds him a shocking amount of the way his house in Berlin looked when he was really living in it, but at the same time it's completely different; the bookshelves are the same, tall and grand, but the books are different. It's warm, both the air and the color scheme, which is half familiar and half foreign -- the smell of woodsmoke is deeply welcome, the contrast between the deep blue he's more used to and the warm reds and browns he's seeing a little alien. Everything looks… old. Rustic, maybe, is a better way to put it, because it's not old -- he can practically still smell the sawdust and paint. At the very least, someone's done some remodeling; at the other extreme, this whole place is new, but doing a pretty good of pretending to be old enough to be Gilbert's contemporary. It's weirdly thoughtful, somehow.

There's a radio on softly in the other room, but he doesn't recognize the song -- there's guitar and something he thinks might be a mandolin and a man's voice singing in English with an almost caterwauling croon. Above it, he can hear someone breathing, and soft, socked footsteps -- there are boots sitting by the door, he realizes almost dazedly, and they aren't his -- and that's all the warning Gilbert gets before his benefactor comes around the corner.

It isn't West.

"You made good time," the man says quietly, a little apprehensive, his voice soft but with something sturdy underneath. Even from all the way on the other side of the room Gilbert can smell the forest on him, and fresh-tilled earth, and something sweeter, too, like melting sugar. "I'm impressed."

"Williams?" Gilbert more splutters than says, and he gets a flash of cautious amusement for his trouble, Williams moving toward him with a little more confidence in his bearing now that he sees that Gilbert, apparently, is not altogether on top of things. He's wearing a fucking apron, Gil thinks dazedly, and he has a teabag clutched in one hand -- that must be what he was doing in the kitchen, then: making tea. And baking something, too, by the smell of things, in the kitchen of the farmhouse in the Ontarian countryside which he has either built or freshly fixed up for Gilbert, who up until this very moment wasn't even one hundred percent sure he knew so much as a last name to attach to his face.

What the fuck.

"Why are you so surprised? These are my lands, you know," he points out, close enough now that Gilbert thinks he can identify that sweet smell from desserts at parties and dinners here and there throughout the years. It's maple, because fucking of course it is, it's on this asshole's flag and he smells like it and Gilbert has never been more confused in all his centuries of life. Not once.

"Because it doesn't make sense!" Gilbert protests, and he doesn't miss the way one of Williams' eyebrows ticks up. "What the hell do you get out of helping me? You're not -- I figured it would be my brother," he tries to explain, suddenly and completely illogically feeling like he's somehow in the wrong, because Williams' face had shuttered closed when he said that. "If it was anyone, I thought it would be him, I didn't think anyone else…"

He trails off, embarrassed, not quite able to bring himself to say I didn't think anyone else cared because, while it's true, it also seems… well, melodramatic, to say the least. Williams seems to see his meaning anyway, though.

"I started thinking about it," he begins, voice low and quiet enough that Gilbert almost unconsciously leans closer to hear, and then takes a deep breath; when he lets it out, the curling fringe of his bangs ruffles upwards, and at any other time Gilbert's not even that ashamed to say he would find that adorable. Right now, though… "God, it must have been '48? '49? Not long after the end of the war, anyway."

He pauses, almost like he's expecting Gilbert to interject, but for once in his long, long life, Gilbert has absolutely no idea what to say, or how he'd make his mouth move if he did.

After a moment, he apparently gives up on waiting, and continues. "I just… No one else really seemed to be thinking about it, or if they were they weren't talking, but I sort of… especially once Al and Arthur and them started getting more and more tense about Berlin, I guess I just couldn't stop wondering what had happened to you."

It makes sense -- given the situation they find themselves in right now, it's really fucking obvious, actually -- but the reminder that he wasn't forgotten as soon as the ink dried to kill him somehow manages to feel like a thousand pounds lifting off Gilbert's chest anyway. They're practically strangers, it's ridiculous, and Williams is so damn young, but right at this instant Gilbert feels small and pathetic and hopelessly, hopelessly relieved and gratified to hear that, across an ocean, someone really had been thinking about him.

He squashes that thought down as fast as he can and really hopes he isn't blushing. Jesus, did twenty-five years spent alone turn him into that much of a sap? That's embarrassing.

"So you built me a house?" he asks, a little suspicious, partly to distract himself from further sickeningly emotional thoughts like that one. Williams just shrugs modestly, a sheepish set to his face.

"It seemed like the right thing to do," the blond says quietly. "I knew I had people here -- immigrants -- who'd called this area New Prussia, so I thought… I thought it was as close as I was going to be able to get."

Gilbert blinks. The obvious implication there is that if Williams could have gotten closer to giving him back his home -- his power, by extension -- he would have, and that. Well. That doesn't make sense. That's not pity, that's stupidity, honestly.

"You do realize we're enemies, right?" he half-spits; he's impressed despite himself when Williams doesn't flinch.

"Were enemies," the blond corrects, looking almost amused, damn him. He's wearing an apron over a flannel shirt and looking every inch the perfect lumberjack homemaker, he doesn't get to look at Gilbert like he's the one who ought to get laughed at here. "War's been over for a while now. A lot of former allies are at each other's throats, and a lot of former enemies, well…" He waves a hand half-dismissively. "My point is, I don't feel like I'm betraying anything by offering this to you."

"And what are you offering?"

He shrugs. "A quiet place, mostly. There are enough people around that you aren't completely isolated if you don't want to be, but if you do want to be, I'm sure you'll find them easy to ignore. I'm also…" For almost the first time, Williams hesitates, like he's not sure if he wants to take this any farther than he already has. "I'm also available for, you know, companionship, if you want. I'll probably come check on you once or twice regardless, since you're basically a guest, and, well, Francis and Arthur raised me right, eh?" He chuckles at his own joke. God, what is Gilbert getting himself into? This kid's completely ridiculous.

That doesn't stop him from raising his eyebrows and saying, "Companionship, huh? Didn't think you seemed like the type," throwing as much of a smarmy leer into his voice as he possibly can. It feels weird, stretching that particular muscle for the first time in… well, in a while.

"Cute," Williams says with a snort, but Gilbert doesn't exactly miss the way he's blushing. "I spend a lot of time in Ottawa, obviously, but also in Toronto, and that's not a long drive, so. I'll stop by when I'm in the area."

"Is that the catch, then?" Gilbert asks, narrowing his eyes a little. "You checking up on me? I'm much, much older than you, boy."

"Europeans," Williams mutters exasperatedly. "I'm much older than you lot think I am. You lot didn't invent the New World, you know, you just walked all over us and took what you wanted. But no, there's no catch. I mean, I'd like to make sure you're not out here causing mayhem, or anything, but I'm not…" He hesitates again, winces, then says, "I'm not Ivan, I'm not here to, I don't know, surveil you."

Gilbert raises one eyebrow. He has to admit, he's a little impressed the kid went that far; this whole thing has sort of impressed him. He sort of assumed Williams didn't have any guts, at least not compared to his brother -- while Jones was off revolting and then crashing headfirst into everyone else's business, Gilbert had mostly forgotten about his more northern counterpart. Maybe that was a mistake. "Point taken," he says, and Williams nods shortly, looking a little relieved.

Of course, Gilbert has no reason to believe him, necessarily, but he's got no reason to doubt him, either. He sort of feels like if he were going to be taken hostage or something, it would have happened by now; after all, he's near the heart of Williams' land, with none left to his own name, and he's weak and he's tired and he's still almost as shaken by his own legal death as he was the day it happened. There's not exactly much of a reason to wait around talking pretty at him instead of just -- taking him out in the way he's uncomfortably certain Williams is capable of at this moment.

They stand there for a moment, staring at each other, Williams still with that teabag in one hand, Gilbert with several hundred miles' worth of accumulated ice and snow slowly melting off of his boots and onto the rug. Then, all too suddenly, the kettle in the other room starts to whistle, shrill and loud enough to make them both jump.

"I'll just -- tea?" Williams says, and when Gilbert nods he rushes off into the kitchen to attend to it, leaving a sudden absence of warmth in his wake that makes Gilbert blink and shiver just a tiny bit despite himself.

Fucking weird, he decides; everything about this is just bizarre, and he has no idea what to do about any of it. Best course of action for now, then, is probably ignoring it for the time being. And if there's anything the past 25 years have proven, it's that he's got a massive, massive amount of skill when it comes to ignoring things.

He follows Williams into the kitchen.

He spends the larger part of the next day getting to know the place. Williams stays inside and does who-knows-what, seems to know that Gil needs to do this on his own, and somewhere in the back of his mind Gilbert's grateful for that, though he certainly doesn't say so.

There's a little barn out back, almost more of a shed than anything, but big enough for a couple of cows and maybe a horse or two, and it's already got some old equipment in the closet, basic gardening crap that's clearly seen better days but is still perfectly useable nonetheless. The previous owner, whoever the hell that was, must have left it behind; it's way too old for Williams to have picked it up.

Near the barn, there's what looks like it once might have been a garden patch; presently it's covered with snow, of course, but it's fenced in with a low stone wall and almost despite himself Gilbert's mind starts turning over the long list of things he could grow there, once it warms up a bit. In a way, he resents Williams -- and himself, and this place, and everything -- for how easy it is to give in and picture himself living here for a long while to come; then again, it's not like he's really got any other options, other than going back to Berlin and re-submitting himself to unofficial house arrest and never seeing another living being larger than a housefly for who knows how long. Here, he can see himself gardening in a way he hasn't had a chance to since he was much, much younger, and raising up some livestock, maybe putting in a chicken coop, maybe getting a dog, maybe settling into the comforting feel of dirt under his fingernails.

Really, it's hard to say no to that -- stupidly fucking pastoral the image may be, but it's also… good. In its own way.

Like hell he'll tell Williams that just yet, though.

From the garden he heads farther north; there's a dim outline of the fence line in the distance, he can just see it. Between here and there is mostly what he's going to assume is pasture, since it's under the snow and he can't actually see it, but there are scattered thickets of trees a bit farther off, and a little creek winding its way towards them, mostly frozen but with a trickle still running by underneath the ice.

The sun is starting to set by the time he's satisfied with his exploration, at least for now. He's walked systematically over every inch of what he supposes is now his property; his boots, left by the fire the night before until they'd mostly dried, are soaking wet all over again, and he shivers despite himself as he makes his way back toward the farmhouse, the steady curl of smoke from the chimney reassuring him that Williams'll have kept the place nice and toasty.

Perhaps it's a bit disingenuous, but the chill creeping up his spine is actually reassuring. He's spent so long frankly not caring about himself in a physical sense, and despite what others might sometimes think (what does Lud know, anyway), he's self-aware enough to know that isn't healthy. At least now he's awake and alert enough to want to get his ass back inside after a long day of trudging around in the snow, and -- especially as he gets closer and starts to smell the woody smell of the smoke and what seems to be cooking meat coming from the kitchen -- he's hungry, too, which seems almost like a small miracle in and of itself.

Williams is just pouring stew into bowls when Gil gets back inside and shrugs off the coat he'd borrowed for the day, toeing his boots off by the door. "Wow, timed that well," he says, with a tiny smile, and Gilbert flashes him a small, sardonic grin in return.

"Smells good," he says, because it does, and he's not a complete asshole. Or, well, he's trying not to be, considering all the kid's done for him; maybe, especially after getting the full scope of the place and all the potential it has, he's feeling a few warm feelings more than normal. No one has to know.

"Thanks," Williams says, just a tiny hint of pink creeping into his face. Damn, but he blushes easily -- and this coming from Gilbert, who, thanks to the whole albinism thing, has had to train himself really, really hard over the years not to flush over the littlest fucking things. "Maybe wait until after you taste it to compliment me, though. Just in case."

Gilbert scoffs lightly at that, and sits down at one side of the little twofer by the kitchen window with as little grace as he can manage. Williams joins him a lot more carefully a second later, and he doesn't sit on any more ceremony before he eagerly digs in, holding back the urge to moan a little bit when the first spoonfulls of delightfully warm, hearty stew hit his throat.

"You're selling yourself short," he mumbles through a mouthful, and watches with a certain glee as Williams' expression makes it painfully obvious just how hard it is to hold himself back from correcting Gil's table manners. "Shit's great, Williams."

"Matthew," the kid corrects him automatically, then appears to think the better of it and blushes bright red.

Oh, now that's just precious. Gilbert swallows and grins, shark-like. "Oh, is that so?"

"I-I mean," Williams demurs, staring resolutely down into his bowl as he takes a slow, measured bite, apparently to avoid talking. Gilbert raises his eyebrows, but decides, hey, the food really is good. He'll play nice.

"Matthew it is, then," he agrees, and Williams glances up at him for a split second, relief blatantly clear all over his face, before staring back down into his bowl. It's pretty crazy, the degree to which his face is an open book; or, actually, it's crazy that Gilbert had never noticed it before. They have met in the past, after all, if only briefly, and the Williams he remembers is a lot more steady-faced and blank than the Matthew who's offered him a house and made him tea and food and bread and is blushing so vividly practically any time Gilbert says anything. He wonders how the hell he missed that -- hell, he wonders why the kid isn't the subject of a little more attention, with a face like that. That's just the kind of personality most of their kind -- or, at least, most of Gil's contemporaries -- love to provoke.

That leads him down the unfortunate path of thinking about Braginski, and then the somehow even more unfortunate path of thinking about Braginski doing his worst to stuttery, blushy Matthew, and that -- Gilbert shuts that down as fast as he can.

He reminds himself of badass Matthew, who snuck past some probably objectively very scary (albeit human) guards to give him a key to a little cottage in the frozen Canadian wilderness and then refused to back down even when Gilbert was being an ass about it, and smiles.

"What's that look for?" Matthew says, sounding a little wary, and Gil shakes his head a little to clear it.

"Nothing," he says, then lets a wider, shit-eating grin spread across his face. "Just thinking -- if we're on a first-name basis now, when do we get to nicknames? I'm the best at nicknames. Ask anyone."

"I'm not sure I like the sound of that," Matthew says, raising one eyebrow, but he can't hide the way there's a little matching grin creeping out the side of his mouth, and Gilbert laughs.

In the morning, when he wakes up, the first thing he's aware of is that he's very warm under the blankets and the room around him is very, very cold. The second thing is that he can smell what, if he's not very much mistaken, is the scent of cooking pancakes.

The second thing outweighs the first.

"Good morning," Matthew says before Gilbert's even properly entered the room; he doesn't look away from the stovetop to do it, but he does smile, even though he's looking down at the pancakes. Gilbert valiantly tries to tell himself that that's not amusing. He's being made breakfast; the least he can do is not start the morning by laughing at the ridiculous chef.

"Morning, Mattie-boy," is what he says instead, and this time Matthew does look up at him, fixing him with a weak glare.

"I thought I told you no nicknames," he groans, and Gilbert cackles a little bit at the look on his face.

"You laugh now," Matthew tells him sternly, waving a spatula like it's significantly more dangerous than it is. "But you forget I can withhold pancakes."

That shuts Gilbert up faster than he'd like to admit.
They're mostly done with the meal before Matthew looks over at him, bites his lip and furrows his brow in a way that sort of makes Gilbert want to punch something, and tells him he has to leave, he's expected back in Ottawa -- well, right now, actually, because it's Monday morning. Which is news to Gil, actually. He supposes he should probably pick up a newspaper at some point, or at least turn on the radio in the other room, because he's completely lost track of the date.

"I just didn't want to leave last night, you know, or -- or without at least seeing you this morning," Matthew admits, and, ah, there's that blush again. Not quite as vibrant this time, but definitely still noticeable. Interesting, interesting.

"I appreciate it," Gilbert tells him, and it feels formal and kind of silly but he's almost surprised to find that it -- well, it's true.

Matthew blushes a little harder at that, though, so he considers it a job well done.

He lets a burst of stiff wind in the front door when he leaves, and Gilbert shivers and goes to stoke the fire in the living room. Having a physical task to attend to makes it a little easier to ignore how reassured he'd felt when Matthew had told him that, without a doubt, he'd be back in five days, possibly sooner.

Of course, his absence is a little bit like being doused with cold water. Almost immediately it seems like Gilbert's realizing exactly how weirdly familiar things got in less than 48 hours. It's probably Matthew's fault; between his fucking apron and his talents in the kitchen and how much he blushes and the whole fact of him pretty much out of the blue buying Gilbert a farm, actually, it's almost certainly his fault.

Well, Gilbert'll show him.

What he'll show him is an excellent question. So is why. But in the meantime, he settles into a pretty decent routine: he does housework in the mornings, all the way down to the tiny minute stuff he'd usually readily admit he's too lazy to do. He dusts the mantle, for God's sake. Every day. He also makes the bed in the mornings and discovers that there's a whole closet full of assorted shirts and sweaters and work pants, but that almost none of them fit him; he wears them anyway, because he's not quite ready to go out and interact with people just yet, and besides he doesn't have any money, and it would be kind of rude to respond to Matthew's fucking weird inexplicable act of kindness by stealing from his people.

The first time he thinks to put on new clothes, he's almost shocked to realize that he's been wearing the same exact thing for a quarter of a century. What had once been a fairly nice shirt and sturdy wool pants are now grimy, tattered, and worn thin; somehow the physical record of how time has moved on without him makes everything more real in a way he wasn't expecting.

He has no idea what to do with them, once he's taken them off -- he sort of stares at them lying on the bed for a minute before shaking his head and going to wash them and put them out of sight.

Washing clothes, though, turns out to be more of an adventure than he'd expected; he takes one look at the disturbingly new-looking machine he finds in a closet just off the kitchen and resigns himself to doing it by hand until he gets Matthew back here to tell him how to use that damn thing. Apparently he missed a few key technological milestones while he was under implied and self-enforced house arrest.

It takes him a little while to get used to the stove and refrigerator, too, but they're not nearly weird enough to deter him. Honestly, neither is the washing machine; mostly he's just lazy. At any rate, cooking proves to be a difficult habit to resume after twenty-five years, not at all like riding a bicycle. He burns more eggs in those five days than he is willing to admit, to anyone, ever. Luckily Matthew had left him well-stocked with groceries, because he has no idea where or how he'd get more if he ran out.

He discovers that the radio in the living room works, though the reception isn't the best; there's a local station that plays the news and some very, very different music, but that's about it. That's enough for now, though -- it takes him long enough to sort out just what it is they're talking about, sometimes, and he's surprised to find himself enjoying the challenge of figuring out the details of the Canadian political system using only the radio news. Besides, after 25 years alone he finds that he likes hearing another voice, even if it's crackly and distant and strange and in English, God, he's going to have to find someone to speak German with eventually. (He finds a French station with a little more effort, but that's pretty much worse. Fuckin' Francis.)

On the fifth day, it snows from the break of dawn until the sun is just dipping below the horizon. Well -- it more than snows; for a little while, it's more a blizzard than anything. It slows down after less than an hour of that, but all the same Gilbert's quite content to be inside, watching the whipping wind and nearly daggerlike snowfall, rather than out in it.

When it's done, though, it leaves something beautiful. The land around him is untouched for miles and miles; Gilbert steps outside in the dying light when the clouds are finally gone and feels something settle knotted in his chest, right at the base of his throat, where there hasn't been a good solid weight in a long time. It's grounding. It feels like -- it feels like having a homeland again.

Even if it is fucking cold and wet and gross. And beautiful, and unspoiled, and hushed, and invigorating in a way he can't help but appreciate.

But mostly cold and wet and gross. Or, at least, that's his story, and he's sticking to it.

He sleeps outside that night, and only feels a little ridiculous about it. He goes back inside to make sure the fire in the hearth is smoldering down, first, and also to get the thick heavy blanket off his bed. Then he clears himself a patch on the short front porch, wraps the blanket tightly around himself, and stares out at the expanse of smooth, clean snow that's all he can see until he finds himself able to close his eyes.

When he opens them again, Matthew's standing over him with an unreadable expression on his face. Gilbert blinks up at him slowly, allowing himself the luxury of a few more moments before full wakefulness.

"Good thing you can't freeze to death," Matthew says finally, softly amused, and Gil snorts, stretching his arms out and deciding now's as good a time as any to pull himself all the way back into awareness.

"Of course not," he says. "Takes more than some snow to kill me."

It's at approximately that point that he notices Matthew's not entirely alone. He frowns immediately, an instinctive reaction to the presence of someone unexpected in a place he's somehow already come to think of as intrinsically his.

Of course, then he feels stupid, because he's glaring at a bear. Admittedly, the bear's glaring back, but still.

"Who's this, then?" Gil asks, automatically extending his hand to it as though it's a dog. It gives him a skeptical look, but it does come closer, sniffing his outstretched fingers almost daintily for a creature with such a violent reputation.

"Who?" it chuffs, a raspy approximation of a human voice, and it startles a laugh out of Gil.

"Yeah, that's what I said," he agrees, finally tearing his eyes away to look up at Matthew with one eyebrow raised in search of an explanation.

"Kumalara?" Matthew says, then frowns. "No, that doesn't seem right. Kumahato? No. Kumagio? That feels closer."

"Kuma?" Gilbert supplies, since that seems to be the only thing he's sure of, and Matthew nods consideringly.

"Kuma works," he decides. "He's been following me for -- God, for centuries, and neither of us can keep the other's name straight." He shakes his head, a tiny smile on his lips. "I wasn't sure if you'd be all right with having him here, but he… he insisted."

"It's fine," Gil tells him, his gaze dropping back to little Kuma, who's staring up at him with an understated intelligence glimmering in his large, liquid eyes. "He's a polar bear, yes?"

"Yes. I found him up north when I was very young, long before you all showed up."

You all, Gilbert repeats to himself, amused by the flippancy; it's something he wouldn't have expected from Matthew, necessarily. He seems too polite, but apparently he can be just as dismissive of the European colonialists as his brother.

Well. Okay, maybe not quite.

"He just sort of… attached himself to me," Matthew continues, a fondly amused lilt coming into his voice, and all of a sudden his accent is nearly foreign, not English-speaking or French-speaking but something else altogether, as though just talking about it takes him back to a time long before his tongue knew how to shape Old World sounds. "And we've been together ever since."

"Who," Kuma agrees, and Gilbert and Matthew both laugh at him, Gilbert a cackle and Matthew a soft, almost giggle-like chuckle, both of them looking at the other in surprise in the next instant like they hadn't expected to hear such a noise. It feels uncomfortably like emotional closeness, actually, and Kuma looks up at Gilbert for all the world like he knows exactly what he just incited and he's smug as all hell about it.

"Come on," Gilbert says, standing up and willing completely unreasonable heat out of his cheeks. "Let's get inside. Spending the night out here seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I'm frozen straight through."

Matthew laughs again, but he doesn't say anything, just leads the way inside.

Even after only five days, it's strange to have another presence in the house again; Gilbert catches himself jumping more than once when Matthew makes a noise from another room or walks past a doorway, but not nearly as much as he jumps when he sees Kuma padding through a room or hears him snuffling around in the kitchen or smells him - he's worse than a wet dog, Jesus. Somewhere deep in Gilbert's brain, in a place he doesn't want to admit to, Matthew's already fit snugly into place here; it links the concept of Matthew with the re-growing concept of home in a way Gilbert's not sure he's comfortable with yet, but at least it means that his skin doesn't crawl to see him in what's quickly becoming Gilbert's space. Kuma, though, is new and unknown and slightly alarming, despite being, after all, just a bear -- and a young one, at that.

Well. Physically young; he's cub-sized, despite being apparently hundreds of years old, which isn't that unusual when it comes to nation-companions, Feliks and their ever-growing stable of fine, fine horses, many of which are centuries old, being perhaps the most prominent example.

Matthew takes about an hour to get settled; he has a bag with him, just a weekend traveler, and he takes his sweet time unpacking it in the spare room. Gilbert's referring to it as the spare room for now because referring to it as "Matthew's room," even to himself (especially to himself), is about twelve steps too many in what may or may not be the wrong direction.

At any rate, when Matthew reappears an hour or so later, Gilbert's in the main room, fussing with the radio, trying to get the closest thing possible to a clear signal. It's a bit tough, out in the countryside and with what's got to be an older radio because of how familiar it is -- an almost inconsequential struggle, but something to do nonetheless.

"Oh good, you found the radio," Matthew says as he comes to sit down on the soft, squishy couch that sits across from the fireplace, sounding pleased. Gilbert just sort of grunts at him, too busy concentrating on turning the tuning dial by fractions of a millimeter at a time to formulate a response just yet.

Finally, finally, he decides it's as good as it's going to get and declares victory, flopping down on the couch right beside Matthew.

"So, how was your work?" he asks, because it seems like the right thing to do and also because he has no real idea what else to say.

Matthew smiles back at him, one eyebrow raised like Gilbert's done something terribly amusing but he's keeping it to himself. "It was fine," he says. "Thanks for asking. Lots of meetings, but that's normal. My role in government is mostly ceremonial these days, you know?"

"Do you meet with the others often?" Gil asks, not sure if -- well, not sure how much things have changed since the last time he was on active duty, as it were.

"Here and there," Matthew replies with a shrug. "Alfred came up a few weeks ago. I see more of him than pretty much anyone else, of course. But Arthur visits a lot too, for his part. And then I see everyone else at G8 meetings and so on."

Gil nods slowly. So not a lot has changed, then. Of course, in his heyday there were a lot more overnight marriages and less time between wars -- there for a while it seemed there was never a year when he wasn't at war with dear Roderich for at least eleven months out of twelve -- but in the end it's all more or less the same.

They sit there in silence for a little while, apparently neither one able to come up with anything else to say. It's not really a sensation Gilbert's familiar with, this sort of awkward wordlessness; he's famous, or was famous, among all of European society for his incomparable ability to run his mouth.

"So," he says eventually, and tucks away the way Matthew startles and then blushes for further examination at a later time. "Food?"

"Food," Matthew agrees, and they both get up to start dinner.

If there's one pattern Gil starts to notice fastest about Matthew's cooking and eating habits, it's the pancakes.

It's not what he would have expected, actually. Somehow pancakes seem too… childish, maybe? Not that he doesn't appreciate them -- Matthew's clearly got a lot of experience, and they're always awesome. But here he is in a rustic farmhouse in the middle of snowy Ontario, wearing lumberjack flannel and making pancakes every morning without fail. At first, it seems a little disingenuous.

"It started with crepes and bannock -- frybread," he explains when Gil asks him about it, the following Sunday morning, with yet another demolished plate of flapjacks in front of him. "So you can blame my people and then Francis, I guess. And then we realized how amazing it would be with maple syrup, and it just sort of… snowballed."

"And now it's all you eat?" Gil asks, one eyebrow quirked.

"You're one to talk," Matthew fires back. "I was half-convinced you Germans only ate sausage and potatoes and beer."

"That's mostly true," Gilbert admits with a mock sigh, and Matthew rolls his eyes at him but laughs anyway.

He never questions the pancakes again, just learns to appreciate them in all their soft, golden glory.

They go into town for the first time on that Sunday afternoon. Well -- it's not Matthew's first time, judging by the way more than a couple of the people they pass nod at him like he's at least somewhat of a familiar sight around here, but Gilbert's staring around unabashedly wide-eyed at everything they pass. Maybe it's just the effect of having been secluded away for so long, but everything seems so loud, even though the town's by no means large.

Just as it had said in the letter Matthew had sent him to start all of this, the town's called New Prussia. It's not very large at all, a couple thousand people at the absolute maximum, but it has a grocery store and a feed store, and that's all they really need.

They get flour, enough to last for a long while, and sugar, and a variety of fruits and vegetables, and several pounds of potatoes, and meat to stock the freezer with; the woman behind the counter seems a little concerned with how they're going to get home with all of it, but she doesn't outright say anything. When they've paid, Matthew taking care of that since Gil still hasn't got anything in the way of income, they head back out into the cold, bright day and over to the feed store, where they get some work clothes that actually fit Gil. Matthew's got a good few inches on him in height, and Gil has a sneaking suspicion that under his somewhat shapeless wardrobe is a body in very, very good shape; when he pushes his sleeves up to his elbows, the curves of his forearms are thickly-cut and sturdy in a way that… suggests things about the rest of his physique.

If he's got big hands, too, well -- Gilbert certainly hasn't noticed.

They walk all the way back out to the house in the fading light. Gilbert realizes somewhat belatedly that Matthew does, after all, have a car, which he drove from Ottawa and which they might as well have driven into town. They'd have gotten far fewer strange looks that way, certainly. But it's no hardship to carry their purchases back by themselves, and, actually, he finds that he kind of likes it, likes the strain of his muscles and the way he knows Matthew's must be shifting under his coat.

It's late by the time they make it back, and the snow's just starting to fall slowly on their heads when they reach the front door; Gilbert carefully balances part of Matthew's share of the groceries on top of his own so that Matt can slide the key into the lock and jiggle the door open.

The house is quiet and a little cold; by unspoken division of labor, Gilbert puts their purchases away, shoving the things that need to be shoved into the refrigerator into the refrigerator and sorting the rest into categories -- clothes, food, miscellanea -- to be dealt with in the morning while Matthew kneels before the hearth and breathes life into the fireplace.

They go to bed not long after. Matthew will probably be gone by the time Gilbert wakes up in the morning; apparently he'd gotten in a little trouble for being sort of late last week, since he hadn't left until well into Monday morning.

"I understand," Gilbert assures him when he mentions it, standing in the doorway of his bedroom, hesitant, looking like he's at least contemplating saying that it doesn't matter, he'll stay late anyway. "Goodnight, then. I'll see you in a week?"

"Yes, definitely," Matthew responds firmly, lingering only a second longer before disappearing, leaving Gil to go to bed in silence.

Sure enough, Gilbert wakes up to an empty house. He can feel it; Matthew's miles away already, there's no other nation's presence within a reasonably close sphere, according to the hum under his skin that seems to know these things. So he gets up on his own, goes to work the fire back up into life where it had died down overnight, and pretends he doesn't miss the smell of cooking pancakes, usually already wafting down the hallway by the time he pulls himself out of bed.

Unfortunately for him, and his general sense of denial, the pretending doesn't quite work. Maybe if it had just been the pancakes he missed, but all day he finds himself disconcertingly realizing that something definitely seems to be missing. For one thing, Kuma's gone, too; he doesn't know why he hadn't thought of that beforehand, obviously the bear would leave when Matthew did, but he hadn't, and it doesn't seem to sit right in his gut once he does.

Then after breakfast comes the task of putting away all the supplies he'd left out on the counter until the morning, which mostly means putting away clothes, which in turn mostly means clearing out the too-large ones Matthew had left in the closet for him to use and replacing them with slightly smaller, newer ones not worn soft by use. This is alarming primarily because he gets a lump in his throat when he does it that he can't explain at all - and, since he can't explain it and since it's alarming, he decides the best course of action is to simply ignore it until it goes away.

And that's how Gilbert Beilschmidt finds himself baking loaves and loaves of bread in an attempt to vent his feelings -- or, preferably, pretend he doesn't even have any.

Baking is something he learned at the knees of his people when he was so young he didn't even really understand who he was, yet, and stress-baking is a habit that developed as he got older (and one he suspects he passed along to his brother, but that's another matter altogether). He's done most all the housework he can think to do, and it's snowing again in a way that's not really preventing him from going outside and walking around, but certainly isn't making the idea of doing so extra appealing, and something under his skin is itching in a way that makes him think sitting down to read or listen to the radio would be and incredibly unproductive use of his time, so, with nothing else left to do, he bakes.

It's really a good thing they went on that supply run, because otherwise he wouldn't have had half the things he needed to make pretzel bread and solid, hearty loaves with nuts in them and little buns with crosses on the top and as many other things as he can think of, besides. He doesn't have any sourdough starter, and the oven can only handle so much, but other than that he's fairly free from limitations, and he takes advantage of that.

Most of it's going to have to go in the freezer to be kept until he's not the only one in the house, because there's no way he'll be able to eat all of this, but that's all right. Matthew loves pancakes, surely he'll like lots of bread, too.

One can only hope, he supposes.

Spring comes.

By the time the snow starts to melt, Gilbert is about to go absolutely insane. He's mastered the washing machine, he's taken apart the radio and fine-tuned it at least three separate times, he's cleaned every surface in the house ad nauseum, and, perhaps most importantly, he's planned and re-planned and re-re-planned and stockpiled seeds for his garden.

He doesn't want to call it a farm, at least not as it's planned now; it's just a vegetable patch, really, but he's got it down to the limit of efficiently using the space around the house and he's beyond eager to start actually working. It spreads out in his mind's eye, complete with the feeling of earth vivid at the tips of his fingers: neat rows of herbs in squat boxes, and nearby patches of potatoes and carrots and tomatoes and squash and cabbage, good hearty things he knows how to use from centuries of experience.

He thinks maybe he'll get some livestock at some point - chickens would be nice, and maybe later a cow or goat or something too, but for now he's happy just to go out to the toolshed and find the old-but-usable things he'll need and, as soon as it warms up enough that the ground starts to thaw, putting up a little fence around his garden patch with supplies he convinces to Matthew to bring him.

Then comes a process that seems practically ingrained in his fingers after so many long centuries with green life under his fingers. First he tills the soil, makes neat little rows where he sprinkles seeds, organized perfectly in his mind into sections and evenly spaced. He gets dirt under his fingernails, stark against his alabaster skin, but that's okay; he finds he likes it, likes the way it ties him solidly to the earth, likes the way it brings the dark, promising smell of the soil inside with him and lets him carry it around all day.

It takes a while for anything to actually show growth, of course, but he's out there every day religiously watering and weeding and watching anyway. When the first sprouts and shoots do start to appear, he's a little embarrassed by how excited he gets; he practically sings, wants to walk to Ottawa on foot so he can tell Matthew, can hardly do anything all day because he keeps going outside again to check on them and make sure they haven't somehow been destroyed since the last time he looked. They never have, of course, but hey. It could happen.

It's not until later that evening, when he's curled up on the couch listening to the radio and enjoying the way the sound of human voices washes soothingly over him when he hasn't heard any in nearly a week, that he realizes exactly what it may mean that he's so invested in Matthew's involvement in his life.

He never intended to miss the sight of his -- what, his benefactor? His ally? His friend? He doesn't know -- he never intended to miss the sight of Matthew, at any rate, who has quickly gone from being Williams to Matthew to Matt or Mattie, in the kitchen in his stupid apron or in the garden helping Gil weed the plots the way he had last weekend or sitting across from him at breakfast, with the sunlight shining in the window and lighting a glowing halo on his hair.

But he does, of course, because when in his life has anything ever gone according to plan?

He takes a deep breath, his awareness of the radio and the room around him slipping out of focus as he sees glimmers and flashes of the way Matt looks here in his space instead. Okay. He's much more invested than he originally planned on being. Okay. That's fine.

He doesn't know what he's going to do about it, but that's fine, too. Realistically, there's not much riding on it, or at least that's what he's telling himself; this is no arranged marriage on which the fate of his people rides should he put too much or too little feeling into it, there is no war here being played out in the palaces and on the battlegrounds of his old Europe. This is just a quiet, peaceful little cottage in Canada, nothing he's really had in hundreds of years of power and arrogance, and -- maybe he'll just ride it out and see how it ends.

He finds he likes the sound of that.

He's spent too long on his own, and even the stopgaps of seeing Matthew every few days are beginning to feel piled up with the twenty-five years he'd spent in self-imposed isolation; riding it out will mean closer contact with someone else who's real and breathing, or so he hopes, and that's as terrifying as it is enthralling. It lights up under his lungs like a little spark and lingers there, warm and almost painful, a tiny candle in the dusk.

When Matthew does return, then, it's almost anticlimactic.

He arrives early Friday afternoon, this time, which means he must have skipped out of work at least a little early -- a move that Gilbert finds he wholly approves of.

They're both oddly quiet -- though for his part, Gilbert takes the cue from Matt, feeling fit to bursting at the return of another warm presence in the house and wanting to tell Matthew everything about the fresh new shoots in the garden and the flock of birds that have been roosting in the trees on the edges of the property the past few days and the fact that he'd listened to a hockey game on the radio on Tuesday, or, at least, he thinks it was a hockey game, but he doesn't have a lot of experience with ice hockey, so he doesn't really know -- but Matt's quiet, so he keeps quiet, too.

That lasts all the way up until dinner. Matt brought fresh salmon wrapped in butcher paper with him from the city, in a little ice chest he took from the back of his car, so Gilbert pan-fries it and they eat, quietly but together, at the kitchen table, with Kuma curled up in a happy little ball on top of Matt's feet.

The air is too quiet and a little tense, and Gilbert's about to say something just to break the silence; the sun's setting through the kitchen window and Matthew's skin is golden in the light and it seems somehow criminal to be sitting here together but not saying anything, feeling like another shoe is about to drop, but in fact he doesn't have to say anything at all.

"Ludwig's coming to Ottawa in a week," Matthew blurts suddenly, and instantly looks like he half-regrets it, nervously glancing up from where he's staring at the table in an attempt to gauge Gil's reaction.

Honestly, Gil wants to ask him if he's having any luck with that; he doesn't have a clue himself.

Part of him is swooping in elation at the notion of seeing Lud again. For God's sake, he'd more or less raised the kid; it's his brother they're talking about, and he hasn't seen him in a quarter of a century. He thinks it's pretty natural to be excited at the prospect of reunion, to want that. But on the other hand… well, on the other hand, they haven't seen one another in a while, and that's not entirely an accident.

There's a part of him -- a part that he hates, to be sure, but nonetheless it's there, simmering under his skin as though just waiting for an opportunity to burst out -- that's more than a little jealous of Ludwig, especially now. He's dead, isn't he? And Ludwig isn't -- Ludwig's on his way back to the up-and-up, shaping up once again to be one of the great powers of the western world, at least what of him wasn't ripped away with Gilbert when Braginski took over the east and built that stupid fucking wall.

Matthew's right to be a bit uncertain about Gil's feelings - right, and perceptive. Gil shakes his head to clear it.

"Um," he stalls, casting around with his gaze in an ultimately futile attempt to find something -- anything -- visual to distract himself with. "I… huh, that’s. Thank you for telling me?"

Matt bobs his head in a little nod, but he still looks hesitantly curious, and the unspoken question manifesting in the way his front teeth are digging into his lower lip is obvious. And, jeeze, it's not his fault that Gil's got… a few too many complicated feelings about seeing his little brother on the other side of all this mess.

Still -- and maybe it's the drifting smell of the sweet late-spring air, or the warm taste of sunlight on the back of his tongue, maybe it's Matthew himself, kind and thoughtful and uncertain, but whatever it is, there's something that's telling Gil that maybe it's okay to think about this optimistically. Maybe it's okay to imagine seeing his little brother again going well, and maybe it's okay to want it like a confused ache in his lungs.

"I'd like to see him," he says, more confidently than he feels, and Matthew nods again, slower this time.

"If you're sure," he says slowly, and when Gilbert half-smiles at him he appears to let out a breath he'd been holding in for the past few minutes. "I can invite him out here for a couple of nights, then, if that's all right. While his people and mine are doing what they do best."

"That sounds awesome," Gil tells him, and he's a little surprised to find that he really does mean it.

Ludwig arrives on May 1st.

Gil only knows this because Matthew tells him; he doesn't actually see his brother then, because he's too busy doing things in Ottawa and probably attending some sort of fancy state dinner with Matt and Matt's boss and who knows what else. Lud and Matt may be doing business in Ottawa, but Gil's up to his ears in frantic cleaning, planning, harvesting, baking, and worrying.

He could swear he wasn't always this much of a worrier. God's sake, Old Fritz would never have let him worry this much. Maybe it's something to do with getting older, or maybe roguish overconfidence is something you lose when you also lose your home and your people and your life all in one go. Who knows. He'll have to ask around.

As it is, though, he can barely sleep that night, because he knows Lud and Matt are supposed to get in the following afternoon, and… now that it's almost upon him he really has no idea if he's ready for it. On top of which, he's quickly running out of chores to distract himself with. He's already dusted twice.

Predictably, the next day is agony. He wakes with the sunrise and promptly falls into a near fit of obsessively cleaning every surface of the house, organizing everything he can think to organize, and cooking. He's making basically a pot roast, because unless Ludwig's tastes have changed a whole lot in the past twenty-five years, meat and potatoes will go over well, and since the vegetables are fresh perhaps especially so. There's bread he baked yesterday sitting out on the kitchen counter, ready to be cut into thick slices and slathered with butter (store-bought, because he hasn't got around to getting a cow yet, but it'll do), and of course there's beer in the fridge that should be enough for the next couple of days, even given two Germans and a Canadian taking a swing at the supply.

And that's… that's everything. He's done all the garden chores, there's nothing more he can do in terms of food, he's cleaned and cleaned and cleaned -- now all there is to do is wait.

The waiting seems to take forever, endless minutes and hours of sitting on the couch fidgeting with the hem of his shirt and staring dead ahead at the wall because he can't seem to focus on anything long enough to do anything else, but then -- very suddenly there's a the sound of a car coming up the dirt-packed driveway and slowly pulling to a stop, and Gilbert feels a shudder run through his entire body, straight to the tips of his toes.

He gets up off the couch on autopilot, and he's in the entryway wrenching the front door open before he spares a moment to think.

Ludwig looks more or less the same as he had the last time Gil had seen him, at the end of the war. Well, that's not entirely true; he looks a little older, a little wiser, and a lot more mature. He also looks a good deal less tired and much calmer and much, much less terrified.

"Gilbert," he says, uncertainty reflected as much in his eyes as in his hesitant voice, and Gil chokes on air.

"Lud," he responds, his words suspiciously thick in his throat, and throws himself across the threshold to wrap Ludwig up in something a little stronger than a normal hug.

When he pulls away, eyes perhaps a bit damp, it's to find Matthew standing a couple of meters away, discretely trying to give them some privacy. His face is soft and he's smiling, and Gilbert can do nothing but smile a watery smile back at him.

"Come on," he says finally, looking back at Ludwig and wiping his eyes on his sleeve. "There's food inside, I'm sure you're hungry."

"Thank you," Ludwig replies, eyes wide as he steps inside and looks around intently, clearly trying to absorb every detail.

"Don't thank me 'till you've tried it, eh?" Gil tosses over his shoulder, and is moderately unsurprised when his brother's deep, rumbling laughter lights up something warm and almost forgotten in his chest.

Dinner itself takes over an hour. Nations can put away quite a bit of food when they want to, and Gilbert had cooked enough to feed a small army -- not that he has much experience himself with small armies -- so it takes them a good long while to work through most of the salad, and bread, and meat, and several different types of cake. At the end, there's still plenty left over, but no matter; he's sure they'll eat it before long.

He and Ludwig go and sit out on the porch together after dinner; Matthew makes some murmured excuse and disappears, leaving the two of them with a little time to reacquaint themselves, and not for the first time Gilbert finds himself both impressed by and grateful for his perceptive kindness.

They're both quiet for a long time, content to watch the moon rise and listen to the soft sounds of the birds and crickets and let the gentle breeze that's blowing through from the east wash over their skin. It's immensely peaceful, especially now that the Ludwig-shaped knot of worry has dissolved in Gilbert's stomach. He's full of food, the night is warm but not hot enough to be uncomfortable, he has a cool beer in his hand, and, most importantly, his little brother is sitting right next to him, staring out over the fields to the tree line, his face slack with comfort and a tiny, understated smile.

Gilbert can't remember the last time he was this happy.

"So," Ludwig says eventually, his voice quiet enough to not seem out of place with the gentle night sounds. "How did you get here? Matthew told me a little, but not the whole story, I don't think." He looks over, regarding Gilbert with a look of open, innocent curiosity that makes him look hundreds of years younger. Gil doesn't think he's seen that particular expression in… well, in over a century. It makes him feel kind of old, actually. But in a good way, if there is such a thing as a good way to feel old.

"Well," he begins, grinning and shifting slightly in his chair as he settles in to tell a (perhaps slightly sensationalized) version of his tale, and Ludwig, clearly still familiar enough with his older brother's antics to recognize when he's in for a tall tale. "It started with Braginski being an asshole, but, you know, an asshole from a distance…"

The rest of the weekend is golden and sunny and perfect, and Gilbert cries maybe two or three more times, privately, because he really had missed his brother, more than he'd even realized. Be all of that as it may, Ludwig and Matthew still have to leave again on Monday morning.

"I'll call you soon," Ludwig promises as Matthew once again makes himself scarce, this time by going to load and start the car. "And I'll be back again in early August, because there's going to be a World Meeting in New York, and -- I can take a few days off to come visit, if you'd like."

"Of course I'd like that," Gilbert scoffs, but he knows well enough that Ludwig is honestly reassured, because some small bit of worry disappears from the characteristic tightness around his eyes.

"Then I'll see you in August," Lud tells him, and leans in before Gilbert can blink for a hug that positively squeezes the air out of him. Jesus, but the kid's gotten a deal of his strength back in the past quarter-century.

"See you then."

Gil walks him to the car, because he's a good older brother, and he closes the passenger door for him before walking around to the other side, where Matthew's got the driver's side window rolled down.

"Have a good week," he says, not sure how to convey his Thank you, thank you, thank you with his brother sitting right there in the car next to him. "See you on Friday night?"

"Of course," Matthew tells him, smiling, and in that moment there's something so satisfied and warm about him and Gilbert's so utterly full of feeling that he can't help but lean in quickly and press a nearly instantaneous kiss to Matthew's cheek.

They're both utterly silent when he draws away and takes a half-step back from the car. Ludwig, on the other hand, coughs delicately, clearly fighting a smile.

"Go on," Gil says finally, manfully pretending he isn't blushing. "Don't want to be late getting back to Ottawa."

Matthew rolls the window up and drives away without a word, but he's grinning madly, so Gilbert counts it as a win.

The house seems quiet and empty all over again, but this time there's something sated about it, too; he can look at the kitchen table and the dishes left dirty in the sink from breakfast that morning, and all of these things convince him that he wasn't dreaming: his brother was really here, and healthy, and happy to see him. And that means that -- sure, the house feels a little lonely, and sure, he wishes Lud and Matt both were still here, but at the same time, he's happy. Almost insufferably so.

And that makes everything -- well, not everything, but still, most things -- okay.

It takes him a while to notice it, but by about mid-June or so, Gilbert's certain: Matthew's progressively spending more and more (and more) time in New Prussia, and less and less in his capital, which is, well, where he's actually supposed to be about 90% of the time.

The kicker is when he shows up one Monday night after having left for the week just that morning, a faint blush pinking his cheekbones, and says, "I thought I could just drive back in tomorrow morning?"

"Am I getting you in trouble?" is the first question that pops into Gilbert's head and out of his mouth, followed almost immediately by, "Isn't it a five and a half hour drive from Ottawa? Did you even go into work at all today?"

"I'm in Toronto for the week!" Matthew defends. "It's only an hour forty-five! Besides, I’m mostly symbolic these days anyway; I pretty much just talk to the Prime Minister when he needs advice and sometimes help out with the paperwork --"

Gilbert's eyebrows are practically in his hairline, and Matt's face is getting more and more red with every word. "Matthew," he says, cutting off some increasingly flustered rambling. "Matt. Are you trying to move in with me?"

Matthew freezes, turns promptly scarlet, and buries his head in his hands, seemingly all at once. A beat later, he lets out a strangled-sounding moan that has Gilbert tugging on his arm to lead him away from the door make him sit down on the couch, genuinely concerned.

Gil sits down beside him, and, for lack of any idea what to say, stares blankly at the back of his head. Given that sort of a reaction, he'd guess the answer is a pretty obvious yes, but -- wow. He honestly has no idea how to respond to that.

Finally, Matthew makes a sound somewhat akin to a dying cow and looks up again, meeting Gilbert's eyes but looking plenty bashful about it.

"I suppose it was stupid of me to think you wouldn't notice," he mumbles, and Gilbert feels his heart swell in a really embarrassing way.

"All you would've had to do was ask," he says, shocked a little bit into honest frankness, and Matthew turns bright red all over again and seems to more or less forget to breathe. "Or -- just say you were going to do it, more like. You do technically own this house, you know."

"Not true," Matthew defends. "I gave it to you. Legally, and -- super-legally? I don't know, it's yours in nationality and, you know, according to the paper trail."

Gilbert flaps a hand dismissively. "Semantics. My point is --" He hesitates, not quite sure how to say that he's wanted this, forget merely allowing it.

"You're welcome here," is what he finally settles on. "More than. You should know that."

Matthew's uncertain, slow-growing, but eventually beaming smile tells him all that he needs to know in response.

The rest of the evening is a blur; he thinks they probably eat something for dinner, which he probably cooks himself while Matthew slices bread and throws together a salad to go with it, but beyond that he honestly hasn't got a clue. He knows they talk about something over their meal, but he couldn't say what. He knows that afterward, while the last vestiges of the sunset are still in the sky, they go outside and they sit in the grass together quietly for a while, one of the spare blankets from the linen closet laid out underneath them, but far be it from Gilbert to tell anyone exactly how they go there, or whose idea it was, or if there's any soft conversation before they settle in to watch the sun set.

All that he knows with absolute certainty is this:

The sky is an amazing cataclysm of red and orange and just a tinge of deep violet, and the heat and humidity are dropping off so that Gilbert's mostly sure the sticky warmth curling through his chest when he looks at Matt is his own. He's almost unspeakably beautiful like this, sitting out in the yard with the dying light warming his face and just the hint of a breeze ruffling through his hair so it curls around his face, bangs messily framing his eyes; there's a look of nothing so much as utter contentment seeping across his features, lighting him up from the inside with a warm, precious glow, and suddenly even with thousands of years of experience Gilbert just can't handle not telling him for one more shimmering second.

"Mattie," he says, his voice a little husky with feeling, and Matt turns to look at him, his expression a wordless question. It's inherently impossible not to go on.

"Thank you," Gilbert tells him, serene and sincere. Then, half a realization, half nearly an afterthought, with a feeling as though it's been lingering in the air for quite some time, only to culminate in a gently breaking wave of comfort and fulfillment and home: "I love you."

For his part, Matthew spares only half a second to look surprised before a slow, peaceful smile melts onto his face, his cheeks dimpling and flushing pink at the same time. He reaches over and takes one of Gil's hands firmly in both of his, squeezing twice before slipping their fingers together, interlocking.

"I love you, too," he says simply, only a slight waver of his voice betraying anything other than a smooth, happy calm, and Gil grins at him, shaking his head fondly.

It seems they both feel they've said all they need to say; for once Gilbert is more than content to soak in the silence, and Matthew is more than content to let him.

By the time they finally go back inside, night has long since fallen around them; the sky is remarkably clear, and the stars reflect in Matthew's glasses with a sharpness that's staggering.

There's a moment of hesitation when they reach the living room hallway, where both pause in front of the door to the spare bedroom, look at one another, and then walk on in unspoken agreement until they reach the master.

Matthew is unassuming and seems somehow much smaller in his boxers and t-shirt; Gilbert swallows at the sight of him, his hair ruffled up around his ears from getting dressed for bed, his glasses just slightly askew. Kuma comes wandering in behind them, having stayed cooped up inside for most of the evening, and curls up at the foot of the bed, shooting Gilbert an amazingly intelligent little smug look as he does so. Gil glares back at him, because he feels like he should defend his own honor, but he's grinning at the same time.

They don't do anything more than sleep side by side, curled up facing each other and staring across the expanse of a few inches of pillow and mattress for what seems like a very long time. In reality, it's probably no more than a few minutes, because Gilbert's warm under the blankets and content and tired in a good, solid way from working outside for most of the day, and he falls asleep rather easily, but it's a heady thing while it lasts, watching Matt blink across at him, blue eyes bordering on violet big and dewy and satisfied. Neither of them can stop smiling; Gilbert falls asleep that way.

In the morning, he wakes up to an empty bed and an open door; he can hear even from here the gentle sounds from the kitchen that mean one thing and one thing only, and that thing, of course, is pancakes. He grins to himself, rolling over to just stare up at the ceiling for a moment and relish the feeling of completeness that's settled over him, leaving a bright open space in his chest that hasn't been there in a long time.

He's not dead anymore.

When he comes wandering into the kitchen in Matthew's shirt, even though it's too big for his slighter, shorter frame, he's hoping for a reaction, and he gets it; Matt does a double take, glancing up at him with a smile and looking back down at the batter he's whisking together before glancing back up, eyes widening almost comically as a rosy dusting of a blush pops instantly into his cheeks.

"Good morning," Gil chirrups at him cheerfully, enjoying every second of the way it makes his blush that much darker.

"Good morning," Matt returns almost automatically, but it sounds just strained enough to make Gil want to cackle or smirk or kiss him, pressed up against the countertop, even though he's got flour on his nose and his hair's a curly crazy mess and he looks like he hasn't had nearly enough coffee yet this morning.

Only one of those options is likely to go over all that well with Matt, so that's what he does.

His lips are warm and soft, and his eyes flutter closed within a second; when they pull apart, he lets out a soft breathy noise that makes the tips of Gil's ears heat up.

"Good morning," Gilbert repeats, softer this time, and when Matt smiles at him it's all of those stupid sappy things poets say -- maybe Goethe got a few things right after all -- it's a sunrise coming up over the mountains, it's the flicker of a fireplace in the depths of winter, it's the smell of baking bread and rain on freshly-tilled earth, it's everything Gilbert wants to come home to.

God. A few thousand years on this planet, and he doesn't think he's ever felt anything like this. Maybe his memory's going, or maybe -- maybe Matt really is that special.

He supposes he'll just have to wait and see.

Once Gilbert stops distracting the cook, the pancakes come together pretty quickly, and before long they're setting the table and sitting down with the bottle of syrup that Matt has somehow managed to hide somewhere because he knows if he doesn't Gil will pretty much drink it straight, and there's only so much he can get at one time, and a pot of coffee, and Kuma lying on top of their feet under the table, because he thinks it's funny how much it weirded Gilbert out when he first started to do it. The effect's long since worn off, of course, but he does it anyway.

There's work to do in the garden once they finish eating, and eggs to collect, and chores to do around the house, but for now Gilbert is sitting at the breakfast table with his -- something? -- his Matthew, they'll work out exactly what they want to call this later, but he's with Matthew, who he loves, who loves him, and Matthew's stupid bear is laying across his feet like a living fur blanket, and there are awesome amazing fantastic pancakes to eat, and the sun is shining in through the kitchen window, bathing everything in a mid-morning glow, and whatever last, lingering vestige of cold weight lived in his chest is gone.

"Is it good?" Matt asks him, a smear of syrup on his mouth that makes Gil want to lean across the table and kiss him again. Maybe he'll do that in a second.

He's asking about breakfast, of course, but Gil smiles at him in a way that he hopes is much more real and solid than that and nods slowly.

"It's more than just good," he says, and he's never been more certain. "It's perfect."