General Note: I'm only going to reformat my fics so much when this site is the one at fault. So if the formatting is weird, please check out my profile for more info. Thank you.

EDIT: I've flip-flopped on this fic. It was the first Hetalia fic I wrote (though not the first published), before I had really settled into the fandom and my head-canon, and so after a while I was inclined to not like it so much anymore. But, at the same time, there's some language in here I'm actually quite proud of, and while it might not fit with my head-canon anymore, it's hardly a bad fic. I'm not sure what I mean to say by all this, but enjoy, and be aware that the premise will be visited again (a "take two" of sorts) for a chapter of the Edelweiss Arc. ^^

Obligatory (but ultimately pointless) CYA: I don't own it.

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Chance of Rain

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A picnic.

It sounded like an innocent venture and had been advertised as such. Just some good food, good drinks, and good conversation on a summer's day. Innocent. Almost comically so, and indeed, the very idea had started as a joke—a joke that alighted on a wing and a prayer and flew all the way to a serious proposal in barely a month's time:

The fences would be cut. The border would open for three hours on the afternoon of August 19th. For a picnic. With Hungary.

Barring the fact that it was clearly a miracle the governments had managed to finagle even a temporary break in the Iron Curtain, Austria didn't know how to feel. It had been over forty years since he'd last seen her, and even longer than that since they'd last spoken. The First World War had driven a wedge between them, and though seventy years was a significant amount of time, even for a country as old as he, he was not the sort of nation to easily forget.

But the truth was, he had tried to forget. Because leaving it all in the past was so much easier than trying to sort out the tangled heap of history their relationship was. Like a child who kept piling old clothes and toys in a closet, dreading the day he'd have to open it and all the memories would come tumbling out, on top of him.

Opening a closet and opening a border fence. Much the same thing, when it came down to it. Both were inevitable. Both were going to create a mess, one physical, the other emotional (and, he suspected, political). And Austria had never really felt all that comfortable with emotions, didn't particularly like to analyze his own.

Freud would have had a field day with that, he was sure, and the irony was not lost on him.

But, inevitably, the day had come, and there he was, in the midst of the maize fields, Austrians on one side and Hungarians on the other. East Germans, too, and he wondered if perhaps long-lost Prussia was somewhere there amongst them, his name gone and his appearance changed.

And there, at the front, looking like some ghost or echo or forfeited dream, stood Hungary.

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It wasn't so much that he'd been a fighter in his younger days, but that he'd been ambitious. Of course, they'd all been back then. When it was a matter of conquer or be conquered, one had little choice. Youthful and impetuous, it seemed it was always a matter of who could get more—more land, more resources, more power—and even he'd managed to get caught up in it all.

But he'd never been particularly fond of warfare. Not like Prussia, who loved to fight for the sheer rush of battle; not like England and France, who loved to hate each other so much, one would gladly jump into a war the moment the other did; not like the Holy Roman Empire, that fledgling dynasty with stars in his eyes, who fought to imitate the Rome of the past.

Fighting was something of a necessary evil for him, something to be avoided when possible, but not backed down from when not, despite how most blades never sat easily in his hands. They were heavy, clunky things matched with equally heavy, clunky armor, and he'd never really gained the heft or the breadth of Prussia or Turkey, or even the stout stability of Switzerland, that would have allowed him to wield such weapons with any proficiency. It was only when swords became thinner and lighter—slender and lithe, much like he himself turned out to be—that he'd had a bit more luck, because it became less about physical strength and more about technique, and if there was one thing he'd grown to be good at, it was studying.

But by then he'd discovered that his niche for victories wasn't in powerful militaries but in political marriages. (Manipulative and a bit underhanded, perhaps, but all was fair in love and war, or so the English said.) And it had been one of those very marriages that had landed Hungary on his doorstep so very long ago.

Hungary, who had repeatedly trounced him when they were mere children, who had become so obviously feminine in appearance (pretty, he'd found himself thinking on more than a couple occasions, and it was always an embarrassing realization that he hid behind cultured stoicism), but who could still be so masculine in behavior. Ingrained courtly manners insisted he treat her with the gentle respect befitting a woman, even if she was a servant, but when she kept instigating rebellions, his desire to keep order insisted he punish her according to her actions, and he'd never quite known what to do with her, really.

There was such a guileless honesty about her and in everything she did, from fiercely raising the morale of her troops, to fussing like an older sister over Italy, to eventually growing an odd fondness for Austria, himself. His past falling out with Switzerland had anchored a suspicion in him that had yet to rust away, but he couldn't help but find himself intrigued by the sheer sincerity of her person. He could prompt a warm laugh with just a word and a blushed stutter with just a quirk of his eyebrow, and somewhere in between her defiance and his discipline, and her smiles and his sonatas, a familiar rhythm somehow settled.

And then the turn of the 19th century loomed its way closer, and it seemed everything in Europe started to go to hell at that point.

First England's upstart America. Then France's own revolutionary madness. Enlightenment ideals swept across the continent like wildfire, and while, retrospectively, it was a good change, at the time the point was that it was change, and nations could be as afraid of that as humans—perhaps especially Austria, who liked his afternoon coffee at precisely four o'clock, who had religiously attended the concerts in Vienna and nothing short of a national crisis could tear him from them, who had grown comfortable with his Habsburgs and Hungary's presence in particular.

Perhaps if he'd been a little less strict, perhaps if he had managed to relax a little, for her sake, for his own sake… But that was neither here nor there, now. The fact of the matter was that she, rather rightfully, had gotten the idea of independence in her head again, and he, in a fit of selfishness, had forced her back into his house. And not kindly, either. Sometimes he wondered if their relationship had ever really recovered from that.

And then while she'd silently and bitterly resumed her duties, things continued to slide downhill for him. Italy had grown up and set his heart on unification, which wouldn't have presented much of a problem, except that little Veneziano—possibly due to his childhood fear of Austria—had had the foresight to go looking for allies. Prussia in particular jumped at the chance, and that coupled with the weakened state Austria had slumped into led to an embarrassing and painful defeat. Austria landed with his arm in a sling (he hadn't been able to play the piano for weeks) and a terrible cough he couldn't shake (he was fine, he stubbornly insisted, just put more honey in his tea next time), and Franz Joseph had finally stamped his foot down and refused to see his country fall further into disrepair.

His solution, which was so typically Habsburgian, was, of course, a marriage. To Hungary, of all nations.

Their union had, to say the least, started a bit tensely, but the mutual attraction that had always sort of hovered between them, previously ignored, tentatively blossomed into love, and the marriage grew to be surprisingly pleasant. Pleasant enough, at least. There were problems of course—there were always problems—but as long as they were together, they found they could weather them. She had her warm strength and he had his cool sophistication and it worked. Perhaps he should have tried such an equal partnership earlier—for all his rules and restrictions, he suspected there was a part of Hungary that would always be untamed, and he shouldn't have tried to control such a wild, beautiful thing.

Again, neither here nor there. Because he'd brashly jumped into another war, that had disastrously snowballed before he'd known what was happening, and with all the countries involved, he hadn't stood a chance, even with Hungary at his side.

Their marriage was dissolved against their will, and on top of that, she lost even more of her lands than he had—he remembered that he'd thought she had looked shorter after all of that, but perhaps it had simply been due to her defeated posture. In the end, they'd both been humiliated and hurt, and things that shouldn't have been said had been, and, feeling very much like a spurned lover, he had bitterly left her to her own devices.

He had little time to think about her, anyway. If possible, the post-war years crippled him even more than the actual war had, and it got to the point where he barely managed to hobble out of bed each morning. And then Germany came knocking on his door—a tall, healthy, recovered Germany—speaking of unification and strength, and after the devastation of the Great War, it was difficult to not be seduced by such an idea—League-of-Nations-approved or not. And Germany had become a dangerous, powerful figure behind his logical, charismatic clothes, and Austria hadn't wanted another war, was hardly strong enough for another one, besides. No more wars… Just a bit of his old glory back. The ability to walk without a limp, even.

But he'd found too little of the latter, and far too much of the former. And by then, he was in too deep to ever hope to get out without any scratches.

He had seen her, briefly, at the end of World War II, the fighting drawing to a close, their houses in shambles and overrun with Allied forces. England, France, America, and Russia had each held one of his limbs, the Western countries playing tug-of-war with the Soviet nation, using Austria as the rope, new tensions already rising even as old ones were put to rest, and their eyes had caught. Both of them wounded and hurt yet again, a thousand and one words had been on his tongue and none of them had made their way out of his mouth. What he would have said, he still didn't know to this day. And then a sea of Soviet lines came, and she disappeared behind them.

And so that had seemed the end of it. She resided with Russia now.

But whereas Austria's rule had been strict, he had, for the most part, tried to be fair. Practical, at the very least. Maybe he hadn't been kind, but he certainly hadn't tried to be cruel. As others had suspected and the world soon saw proof of, Russia had no such stipulations.

Austria had just begun to relax with a new superior and a stable government when news of the 1956 revolution hit.

He had tried to shake it off, tried to ignore it. She wasn't any of his business anymore—that had been made painfully clear. But with a history as long as theirs, denial was difficult. And finally he admitted it.

He was worried about her.

But unfortunately there was little else he could do besides that. So he had worried silently, and eventually, she herself grew quiet again. He had cringed in the solitude of his own house—smaller now, with only a scant few servants of the human variety—and tried to not think about her war cries and the methods that had stilled them, even as his hands mournfully pulled Haydn's "Care Spiagge" from his piano.

And now, more than thirty years later, the strings of patience among the Eastern Bloc had grown too thin, tension stretching them too much, and they were on the verge of snapping if Russia didn't relax his grip.

Unrest was rising, and not just rising, but breaking the surface. It had started with Poland, who, for all his flaky cross-dressing tendencies, had never forgotten his glory days, and—as Austria personally knew—seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of energy when it came to revolting. He became the first of the satellite states to successfully establish a non-communist government, and it was being said that even Russia himself was tiring of it all, and at this rate, reform would tear through the Bloc like a fashion trend.

And now Hungary had picked up the torch Poland had lit, and the only sure thing was that change was once again on the horizon.

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For what felt like forever, they simply stared at each other.

Her hair was limp, her clothes hanging loosely on her now-too-thin frame, and he thought he might have even caught her eyes shimmering with tears. Battered and bruised, small and vulnerable. But her mouth was firm, and she held her chin high, despite everything.

Still proud. Still defiantly strong in spirit, if nothing else. He had loved that aspect of her, back then—until she had begun to defiantly lift that chin at him, at least.

A part of him still wanted to resent her for that, still stung from old wounds she had inflicted, still ached with tainted memories. His empire was long lost, but he still had his pride—toward the end of the Second World War, it had been his dignity and his Steinway alone that he had clung to, possibly the only things that had saved his sanity, trapped in a house with an increasingly unstable Germany. On unconscious instinct he squared his shoulders, held his head just as high as hers.

But… But…

Despite not even being a full hundred years yet, the 20th century had been a grim rollercoaster of one. Long, and tiring, and it had aged them both; that was clear. He wondered if old grudges had any place in such a tumultuous era.

Truthfully…truthfully…he was happy to see her, despite her present condition, despite their past circumstances. Found himself remembering the good far more than the bad, despite how the bad should have been so much fresher in mind. Seeing her in person, so close after so long, brought so many waves of nostalgia, he was surprised he was still standing while they washed over him.

It wasn't surreal. Not quite. More superreal than anything, to where the periphery of the people around them faded, and the center was left sharp and focused, and everything felt magnified and almost oppressive in its intensity. The blood in his veins and the grass beneath his feet and the breeze between them. He breathed, and stared, and breathed.

"It's been a long time," he finally said, quietly. A simple, severe understatement that was at once pathetic and perfect.

Her expression softened. Her lips trembled. "Yes."

Just her voice, just on one soft word, and something in him broke like a violin string. The air pushed out of him, his spine relaxed its defensive stiffness, and all he could do was open his arms to her. And on a sob, she rushed into his embrace, hands clutched around his familiar, forgotten shoulders as he dropped his head to rest his cheek against her hair. Without words, they just held each other tightly.

The Iron Curtain tore, and the borders opened.

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A/N: About the Pan-European Picnic of 1989. I also reference a bunch of other history stuff I am too lazy to point out, sorry. ^^'

Other notes:

-Sigmund Freud, as you probably already know, was an Austrian psychologist.

-The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 officially united the countries of Austria and Hungary into the dual-monarchy state of Austria-Hungary (until it was dissolved at the end of WWI, in 1918). I refer to only this 51-year period as their marriage.

-"Care Spiagge": an aria from the opera "La Vera Constanza," by Joseph Haydn (famous Austrian composer). It's essentially about two lovers who married long ago, then have a very drama-ridden (and almost tragedy-ridden) falling out before eventually reuniting. It was originally written for the Eszterházy court in Hungary.