Chapter Text
[Spring 1312, Paris]
He’d always hated scribe work.
The quill in his hand was from a sea bird, the feather itself nearly stripped away and smeared with ink. Ugly, sooty thing. Clément licked the nib before dipping it in the inkwell as he thought. What did they have in the stores last he checked? Scratching once again filled the room as the candles guttered where they melted and fused with the old desk.
“Please don’t be upset with me, Clementine,” Marcel stood with his arms crossed and his back to the door.
Clément glanced at him, the light of the candles flickering across his eyes, lighting the blue irises wrong. “I revoke the use of that name from traitors.”
Marcel’s jaw flexed.
“You make it sound as though this was my idea.”
Pen scratched against paper as Clément returned to his Will in silence. His Templars were being hunted down in the streets like criminals, himself locked away in the Notre Dame for the crime of being considered illegitimate. Heretical. Order of Solomon's Temple was slated for dissolution when the sun rose, and they expected him to finish taking his will into consideration before his time ran out. Since he need not sleep, and if he could he would find himself winkless and sore for trying, he sat resolutely at the writing desk. He dipped the pen in ink, brushed the cut nib against the mouth of the jar, and curled three more words across the parchment before Marcel pushed away from the wall. “Leave me to it, Hospitaller.”
The boy stalked around the room until he stood behind Clément’s chair. Marcel’s palms pressed down on his shoulders, then slid up his neck and into his hair, pushing forward to frame Clément’s face. Warm, warm, always so warm as his hands wriggled over pale eyes to hold down tired lids. “I hold no blame of this.”
“You hold enough within you to hold this too,” Clément set the quill down and clicked his teeth together. “You hold the ones who hold the blame, how can I be burned for my sons but you hold no responsibility for yours?”
“I did not say it was fair,” a forehead rest on one of Clément’s shoulders suddenly, and he fought the urge to cringe away. “I do not believe you to be a heretic.”
When they stacked the wood for the pyre, they brought Templar out to watch. Wrists bound behind his back and wavering between terrified out of his mind and spitting fury, he struggled between the two soldiers holding him. “Unhand me! You know we are God’s workers, you know this!” He screamed when they forced him to his knees at the base of the pyre, the oil and sap seeping into the hem of his tunic, the knees of his stockings.
The crime was heresy. The punishment was death. These were simple ideas that had run circles in his head as his body ached from fever, a sickness that felt like burning because they were killing his men in the same way, killing them to right their collective sin. He felt like he was already being charred to the bone as they tied him to the stake, wrists bound behind his back and ankles bound together tight enough to cut off the circulation. He felt like he was burning, burning, and then he was.
The oil in his clothes caught with one of the sparks from below, singing the linen trousers and catching in the sap long enough to burn through his woolen tunic. Clément caught the gaze of his former companion then, and felt that the rest of the fire had taken far too much time to lift itself heavenward. Despite their secretive vows to live and die as brothers in arms, there was no Marcel beside him. There was no battle. There was only Clément—alone on the platform. The wind shifted, the flames arched, and then the world was obscured by Hell.
---
[Autumn 1876, Berlin]
He had grown too old for children’s playthings a few decades ago, but Ludwig’s brother had only placed the toys he had sewn and carved himself up on display shelves in his room rather than give them away or box them up for the attic. Sentimental old man. Little lop-eared rabbits flanked by wooden hogs and toy soldiers melted and re-poured from old bullets lined the room, which had been painted periwinkle at Ludwig’s request when the previous dandelion hues had made him unaccountably nervous.
Down below were Gilbert’s guests; two men who came in and our of their lives seemingly only as often as they had to. Antonio babbled when he spoke, jaws flapping about warm weather and warmer women, and Francis was only better in that he got descriptive, but kept it poetically short. With his ear pressed to the floor, Ludwig learned a number of new ways to describe the area between one’s legs, as well as the wines that paired well with which configurations. He was ninety percent sure his brother let them speak that way out of dry curiosity. It was difficult to hear this way however, and furthermore uncomfortable to kneel bent over sideways for any length of time. He was sure he wouldn’t be punished for lurking if he was caught this time, but it was always better to be safe than sorry, so Ludwig stepped carefully through the house in his stockings.
Birdsong could be heard through open windows along the hall. Gilbert liked the local songbirds a great deal, he always whistled to them when he went on his walks around the manor. He liked them so much that he refused to invite the falconers over to teach Ludwig, instead having him taken to the other side of Berlin to someone else’s beautiful manor in order to practice caring for and hunting with the creatures. Ludwig stepped nearer the window as three maids scurried past, one holding a wine-soiled pillow while the other two tittered about the incident in the parlor. He walked a bit faster.
The two visitors had not come alone. Each had brought an entourage of at least two personal attendants, as well as their drivers. Antonio had also brought his lover, but Francis had brought two seemingly not to be out done.
Lovino was a man older than their host, but one who hung off Antonio like he would perish if he were not the center of the other’s attention; good or bad. Already, Ludwig had seen the older man slap Lovino before admonishing him for his language in front of polite company. Exasperated, annoyed. Lovino had told him to eat shit and die. He did not pay Ludwig much mind except to sneer anytime he asked about the man’s brother, and when Ludwig passed the entrance to the kitchen to see him swiping a pastry from the cooling rack, he made eye contact with Ludwig, looked down at his missing shoes, and lifted his head to take a bite of the little hand pie.
Nearer to the parlor, Ludwig slowed down so he would not disturb any creaky floorboards. Voices drifted to him around the corner, a short stretch of hall between him and the entry room leading to the front door and the white arch leading to the sitting area.
“…it is not that your furniture is unsuitable, just that I am spoiled by high fashion and impeccable taste,” Ludwig stuck out his tongue as he crept closer, back to the hall now and crouched as if he might hide himself better from a lower vantage.
“You might not be so uncomfortable if you wouldn’t drape yourself over the fucking armrest,” His brother’s voice grew quieter and louder at odd moments, but Ludwig dared not peek to see if he was pacing. “You’ve already destroyed part of it.”
“Mere accident,” Francis pleaded. “I will send you new pillows, dear. Ah, and some clothes for the little boy, too.”
Gilbert scoffed, but fine silks and gold buttons already took up residence in Ludwig’s imagination. “He has plenty of clothes, thank you.”
The third man sighed, tossing his hat in the ring. “Gilbert don’t be so stiff. It takes a village to raise a child, you can’t hoard him all to yourself. Let us at least help if you’re so determined to take on an entire Nation. You might realize we know a thing or two about parenting,” Antonio’s voice was like honey water that had just begun to ferment—warm, sweet, unclear if it was alright or poisoned.
“Lechers,” The sneer was evident in Gilbert’s voice. “The both of you. Besides, he’s growing up just fine, maturing at a frankly fucking astounding rate and already taller than- well.”
There was a silence Ludwig had come to understand as mourning. It wasn’t a secret, in fact it was the first thing Gilbert had screamed at him when he’d found Ludwig in the garden, frostbitten and afraid. Ludwig knew there had been another child who had not survived, one who had walked around with his own face. It was what made his uncle fight with Gilbert years before, it was why everyone wanted to know his name (and more importantly, for him to know theirs).
“It’s not that we don’t see how big he’s gotten, Gil, Christ who hasn’t? Big doesn’t mean capable. It doesn’t make him well suited or well trained for what your family is so dead set on-”
“How about,” Gilbert’s voice had lowered. He wasn’t one to hold back from yelling, in fact, he yelled all the time, but he had explained to Ludwig once that there were more ways to intimidate people besides making yourself the bigger bear. It finally took hold of Ludwig and made him peer around the very edge of the wall. His brother stood behind one of the chairs with his hands gripping the back of it, eyes narrowed to slits and a snarl to his thin lips. “You get your whore to act right, you-” he pointed at Francis then, “worry about your little tundra pet, and let me take care of my family.”
Antonio kept his eyes downcast as he smiled at the window, cheek resting on one fist, and Francis uncrossed his legs in preparation to stand. “… If you insist, mon chere.”
---
[Winter 1916, Verdun-sur-Meuse]
The black earth churned with blood and filth, sucking at Gilbert’s broken leg until he could no longer keep from screaming. He clung to his brother as he was hauled across the battlefield. Clung, and lurched, but the rent muscles from his hip down to his numbing ankle burned like hellfire. He screamed again as Ludwig stumbled.
“Lutz, God damn it!”
“It’s over, we need to get out of here before they capture the rest of us,” Ludwig was a mass of strength and terror beside him, and Gilbert wished he could see through the stimuli enough to at least guide them through the mess. The boy—man, Ludwig was a fully grown man now, Jesus Christ—refused to leave him where he’d been struck. With the call for retreat ringing in their ears, along with the gunshots and ever-present silent whistle, he should have booked it so at least one of them didn’t get caught by the French troops at their heels.
“I’m gonna fucking kill that rat bastard!”
“Shut up! You’ll give us away you dumbass—” Ludwig’s natural base had shattered into a shrill whisper.
“I’m going to rip his arms off and eat them,” his tirade interrupted by a gag, Gilbert’s face screwed up tighter as they hurtled over the next dip in the terrain. Ludwig’s pace faltered as Gilbert suddenly convulsed and threw up, and another step in had them sprawling into the dirt as Gilbert reached for the ground and spit more bile out of his mouth. “Fuck!”
Ludwig scrambled to his feet and grabbed the back of Gilbert’s uniform. It seemed he had every intention to drag him to safety, but the ground grabbed hold of his burden and refused to give way. Gilbert’s broken leg could hold no weight whatsoever, and his opposing leg had stuck into what may once have been the door of someone’s cellar, clear through the splintered wood and forcing Gilbert onto his front.
“Bru-”
“Get off!” Gilbert clawed at the dirt and snarled up at the younger man. “Go. Now. Get the fuck back to Berlin and spit in the kaiser’s face for making me fight in a God damned trench,” he had long since stopped sounding entirely human, but the growl in his throat as he wrenched himself free of the door struck Gilbert as patently absurd. The urge to laugh shuddered in his chest, twisted his features. “You let that fruity piece of shit find me, I’m gonna slit him like a fish—get OFF of me!”
He clawed at Ludwig’s arm as he tried once more to haul Gilbert to safety. Then there was shouting from behind them, back toward the west, and a volley of bullets forced Ludwig to join him on the ground. “Bruder!”
Gilbert wanted to throw up again. The panic in Ludwig’s voice, the muddy teeth and the sting-shrunk pupils as the younger man clutched at Gilbert’s arm, all of it made something black inside him break open and deluge into his bloodstream. His mind hazed over. By the time the French soldiers came up over the rise and began the stumbling decent to their pinned quarry, Gilbert was so full of a debilitating, angry sort of despair he couldn’t feel his injuries anymore, let alone make sense of the words being spoken to him.
When the rifle knocked against his skull, all he did was glare at Ludwig like that would give him the energy to get up. He didn’t understand why the soldier didn’t shoot. He couldn’t understand the French nonsense coming out of their mouths, hell it was a chore to understand the German being hissed at him from the mud. Gilbert panted hard enough to choke on the dust kicked up from the scuffle.
Francis stalked through the commotion as the rifle pulled away from Gilbert’s head. He’d wanted to kill that guy. He’d wanted to maul him, peel him open and bite what he found, but now all he could do was roll his eyes up to watch the bastard’s mouth move without making any sense of the words. The sounds made shapes that he could latch onto at least, not that it helped. Gilbert’s breathing did not slow down as Francis spun his own rifle around.
The stock collided with his temple and he saw the brightest spark of white fire he’d ever witnessed.
---
[Summer 1945, Empire of Manchuria]
They were still on tour when news went down the wire. Four of them; Yao, Erdene, Ivan, and Tolys sitting in the back of the truck as it rattled down from one port to the next along the pacific coast. They were swimming in their uniforms, boots a disgrace of shredded leather and eyelets held together with twisted metal in place of laces that never seemed to survive long. Tolys watched Yao lean his head back against the cloth roofing of the truck, glaring a hole straight to heaven. An old argument, the same they all had but done over far more times.
Torrential rain washed out the road and obscured the landmarks they were using to get from place to place, but at least with Yao finally in the damn truck they had that innate idea of where to go. “Left. Hey, left up here!” Yao snapped when the wheels began to turn incorrectly. He crawled through the open back of the cab and yanked at the wheel when still their Russian driver did not understand his rapid-fire northern Mandarin, which made Ivan hiccup beside Tolys. Might have been a laugh, just as easily could have been a scoff. Nothing showed on the man’s exhausted face which was hidden between an early beard and the brim of his officer’s hat.
The news went down the wire, across a radio’s whip-crack through the heavy rain, and the war ground to a halt around them before they could reach the next town. Men running screaming through the mud caused Tolys to grab his gun and drop into the bed, eyes opened so wide it hurt until he realized there was no gunfire. No gunfire, no war. No war. Yao shook him and said it again, no war, Lìtáowǎn, put the damn rifle down! He let Erdene carefully tug the gun away from him as it sunk in, fizzled, and burned him straight down the the skin wrinkled in his boots.
It was over. He was still here. It was over, and he would go drinking with his comrades, and then Ivan would take him back to Moscow. With his people still in a furious uproar in Lithuania, he found it difficult to lift his mood from the truck’s wheels now hopelessly sunk into the sucking mud.
What now? Was this it?
All that war and Tolys was back in the same political sinkhole he’d been in for over a century, how was he supposed to celebrate?
Ivan knelt down with him to pick him off the bed of the truck, and pulled him into a crushing hug. He shook. Ivan shook like an earthquake and it rattled Tolys until he too sobbed and clung to the other man. His finger’s wound into Ivan’s uniform, gripping tight, pushing into the places where gunpowder had burned through to the undershirt, through to the skin. Tolys could hear himself wailing into the muffle of Ivan’s chest, but he couldn’t place what emotion he cried from.
Ivan hid him within his coat as they knelt there. Yao and Erdene had hopped out of the anchored truck when the driver abandoned it to its fate, more interested in climbing into the forest where the roots gave them pathways through the rain into town. Men still rushed around them but paid them no mind, and Tolys was glad for it, so that when Ivan cupped his face and planted a kiss on his lips it only caused a minor shock to his system. A hand in his hair cradled the back of his head and urged him to curve his back, let Ivan in. With a new sort of chaos swirling around them—joy and reassessment in the wake of a second war to end all wars—Tolys surged up on his haunches to push Ivan down into the spare artillery and car jack, the ropes and cigarette ends carelessly undressed for the field.
“Ivan, don’t ask me to come home with you. Let me return to Vilnius, I can settle them-” He was pulled at until warm lips stilled his pleading. The ache in his chest, which had plagued him since the failed escape attempt five years earlier, suddenly twisted until he pinned Ivan’s head down by a hand to his forehead. “Vanya!”
“It is too dangerous for you to go by yourself, Litva, please stop asking me for such foolish things. Celebrate, the war is over, don’t you understand? The fighting should be put away,” He pushed two gloved hands up under Tolys’ loose uniform shirt. Warm leather on skin shot forgotten electricity through Tolys and he bit his lip, then he bit Ivan’s.
“How can I be happy?”
The gloves pulled away to frame his face. Ivan grimaced at him in the storm-darkened truck, the sound of confusion and jubilation draining away into the forest. “I will make you happy. I will take care of you, I have told you this. All you have to do is allow for it.”
Tolys turned his face into one of Ivan’s palms, near eye closing so that long, dark lashes brushed against tanned hide. “You know that isn’t how it works.”
“I could be your-” Ivan’s focus pulled to the side, and then he sat up suddenly so they were merely hugging again, Pinning Tolys’ head to his breast with the hand that had cradled his face. “We will be coming along soon! It is still just such a shock, ah, we are not ready to join in yet. Sorry!”
He could hear Yao laughing as he kept his face hidden. The staccato merged with the droplets against the tarp overhead, merged with the slowing of his heartbeat, and when Ivan brought his hands down between them, Tolys slipped his own forward to intertwine their fingers. Ivan would take him back to Moscow, and Tolys would think only of flooded summer swamps and the furious screaming that rang in his ears every time his children reached their breaking point.
---
[Winter 1949, Moscow]
Cold wind would turn one’s bones to shattered glass if care was not taken. Cold wind slammed against the side of the house; howling, ravenous, closer to Kiku’s tales of otherworldly marauding hordes than a simple act of the wild. Then again, Tolys thought as he watched the heavy curtains tremble, those were not mutually exclusive.
He sat before the furnace, knees folded to the side beneath himself, palms on the carpet, and his fingers covered in coal dust. The book he had been reading before tending the fire still sat on the arm of the couch--soviet funded literature for the nutrition of a growing nation. While Ivan enjoyed the food Tolys would eat at home, there were cultural standards to uphold as national representatives. Tolys examined the soot under his nails. He did not usually do the cooking, as it was. Instead, he was in charge of making sure Olesya followed the rules of engagement here while cooking up entire stock pots of the least appealing schmutz Tolys had the pleasure of eating.
At least they did not starve.
It was so terrible when a nation starved. When they ate and ate but no food put into their body had the power to stop a larger crisis from showing through.
Once the cold had melted out of his joints, he picked himself off the floor and grabbed his book, making the journey through the estate to the master bedroom knowing it would be empty this time of night. Ivan was as bad as him, sequestered in his office with his nose buried in the books he couldn't burn or his ear to the records he couldn't break. Tolys felt through the darkness to the bed center-back of the room, feet brushing over the fur rug and the three slats of wood between it and the plush down quilt. There he paused to undress, wiping his hands off on the pants as he removed them, then the rest to be folded blindly and set on the side table he knew to be an arm's length to the left. Stripped down to his underthings, Tolys crawled, shivering, beneath the thick blankets.
The house groaned against winter's onslaught as exhaustion teased his mind into befuddlement. In it, he could hear the moaning of his dead children; of Ivan's dead children; of every little tinderbox of a village lit and snuffed in the past forty years. To this, he fell into a sleep so light that the only thing remarkable about it was that he did not wake when Ivan crept in an hour later. He did dip into consciousness briefly as an arm slid over his torso, a leg curling around one of his own, but once the movements stopped he fell back asleep until just before dawn.
He dressed in the previous evening's outer clothes to run outside into the snow for fuel. Coal from the truck that made a stop a short run down the road toward town, wood from the woodshed a short walk from the estate. He may have fed the beast two hours past midnight, but this time of year demanded no dawdling on upkeep. From the furnace to his disused bedroom for a change of clothes, to the washpot; all things necessary for him to take on his main duties of the daylight hours.
Once again the fate of those German boys was a matter of international debate and outrage. Ludwig was young and would be put under the care of three allies, Gilbert however… Gilbert was to join them at the estate. Stripped of his title and given a new one, he was to be picked up from his American handlers at the train station in Moscow, a job for the manager of the Soviet estate and whatever poor NKVD louts Ivan's boss ordered to their rendezvous point. That meant Tolys took Ivan's car into the city from his countryside property before anyone else had begun to stir.
The sky above was a multi layered expanse of grey, clouds skidding and colliding into one another as Tolys drove carefully over snowdrifts and frozen puddles. The roads out here were carved directly into the earth despite how long they'd been laid down, not turning to civilized stone until much nearer to the city, and he made sure to keep Ivan's wretched, old car in reasonable condition every time he took it out of its garage. Through wild fields and patches of dark wood, the sun rising in blurry white obscurity until he pulled into the station and waited with his forehead between gloved fists, pressed to the cold steering wheel.
He did not want to see Gilbert.
God help him but he did not forgive a single thing, past or present, and if he had to share a household with that jerk again he was going to lose his mind. He was going to crawl up the walls. He was going to plant himself in the garden until spring.
Tolys took a deep breath in, and Lithuania let it out slowly, as if through a reed. His boots crunched through the fresher drifts of snow, and he avoided the spots of road that looked more like treacherous muck as he stepped into the orange glow of the station's lanterns. Humanity's switchover to electricity had in fact made it this far, but it made little visible difference besides a distinct lack of soot scorching up the lantern glass or exposed cement walls.
It was a spark of electricity to the heart to see Alfred's face in profile in one of the half-shell shelters. He was dressed in a diplomat's suit, an air force leather jacket with the fleece collar flipped up against his neck, and a pair of paisley-tooled rancher's boots. Tolys felt his face soften considerably as the winter faded from his chest. "Al, you came too?"
With a great and joyful flourish, Alfred turned to Tolys and grinned, holding up a triumphant thumb. “You know it buddy! Someone had to accompany this guy and like hell I’d pass up a chance to come say hi to my favorite guest! Well, I’m the guest this time,” His smile faded but his eyes remained a sparkling blue too bright for their surroundings. Certainly too bright for the situation. Alfred tilted his head and glanced to check on Gilbert, who sat in his navy luftwaffe uniform and handcuffs. Tolys was mildly surprised they didn’t make him change first, maybe it was pointed. “Unfortunately, it’s just to hand off the goods. Mister Gee-Dee-Are here just got a lightened sentence and needs new babysitters while we figure out what to do with ‘em both,” Them, meaning Ludwig as well.
“You could accompany us to the estate, if you’d like,” Tolys brought a glove to rub his frowning lips in thought.
“Not gonna be enough room in that little tank, otherwise I might. GDR’s comin’ with a whole specially-briefed entourage to have a few words with Ivan. He’s been to the meetings but man, you know how these dudes get.” Al slapped one of the NKVD operatives on the back hard enough the poor man grunted and jolted forward two steps in the shelter. “Sticklers!”
Gilbert laughed, some awful, hacking thing as though his lungs were filled halfway with wet sand. “Leave the little men alone, kid, I don’t need you breaking my toy soldiers before I even get my hello-beating. The big guy’s pissed off at me enough as it is.” On proper inspection, Gilbert looked god awful, actually. Not being able to go to the world meetings was infuriating to Tolys, and he was left to wonder what state Ludwig was in. What about Feliciano? Kiku? Nothing within him felt the slightest dram of pity for the eternal soldier slumped on the train station bench, he wondered what he would feel if he saw the man’s younger brother equally as broken beside him. Gilbert ruined his ruminations by leveling a defiant sneer at him. “Who the fuck do you think you’re looking at like that, priss?”
“Oh god,” Tolys rubbed the bridge of his nose before waving his hand in the air. “Get him in the car please, adjacent to the driver’s seat.”
The agents hoisted Gilbert up by the arms until he shoved them off, sauntering in the direction of the car and leaning into Tolys' space to make absurd kissing sounds inches from his face as he passed. He laughed again once he was beyond reach. Tolys followed, getting into the driver's seat before an agent could attempt to claim it first, and he started the meandering drive back to Ivan's estate in the frozen countryside. When Gilbert opened his mouth to speak, Tolys turned the radio on to let a local broadcast of deep, bellowing opera rush forth, turning up the volume until he could no longer make out Gilbert's voice apart from the noise.
The headache forming behind his eyes did not bode well for the rest of this conservatorship.