Disclaimer: I do not own Hetalia.

The first time the ghost was seen, it was standing directly next to the wall, no one having seen the figure cross the open area. The dogs had not barked, no other tower gave any was just a white haired figure facing the wall. Its head was tilted back, arm raised as if to help amplify a shout. The safety catches of guns clicked off, the subtle noise somehow snagging the figure's attention for it half turned-and vanished mid movement.

The abrupt appearance and disappearance of the figure was dismissed as a figment brought on by too little sleep and stress (alternatives ignored for this was the modern age). Then the figure came back.

This time the reaction was faster (no time spent gaping at an impossibility) and guns were drawn and fired-into nothing. It was not that they missed, but rather that the barrage of bullets had simply spun through air rather than flesh and blood. The figure spun around and laughed , as heedless of the bullet holes that riddled the concrete behind him (the voice that carried so well was male) as he had been of barbed wire and nail beds. The cackle emitting from the slender figure was loud and wild (full of the viscous joy of battles long gone and the screams of dying soldiers-) and froze the guards in their places as the man vanished again.

The specter's eyes had been red, was the insisted color. Red like blood and rubies (red of an albino ghost).

The third time there was no crack of gunfire, only silence in the tower as the guards watched the ghost in the grey of winter's light. He was calling something, they knew, words that were snatched from their ears before they could be heard by frozen wind (unlike that terrible laugh). Over and over he would call, until the sky began to darken (what sort of ghost only appeared in the day?) and then he'd be gone.

He became a regular occurrence, this strange ghost of theirs (ghost of the hundreds fallen, of a single lost soul). Always seen calling to someone on the other side of the barrier.

Eventually words became distinguishable, the same two over and over and over. West and Ludwig, Ludwig and west. (One would think why "west" was called would be obvious enough, but some insisted it was said like a name-) and one guard jested that the "Ludwig" was a tall blond gentleman he'd met once during the war ("Quiet fellow", he recalled, "Always around this one Italian.") It was taken as the joke it was meant as for years, until curiosity drove the recaller to look up the man and discovered the man had an albino brother.

Once, just the once, one man swore he heard a reply one still day when the world had frozen into silence-that he heard someone calling "East!"

When the wall was overrun and the order came ("Do not shoot" thank God) a guard caught sight of a familiar shock of white hair (he could see facial features now, high cheekbones under the crimson eyes) within the shifting, joyous mass of people. He lost sight of the ghost for a moment, then he saw the ghost trapped in the arms of a tall blond, both clutching the other as if they would disappear. The stunned guard's gaze watched them until the ecstatic crowd surged and the ghosts were gone.

(East and West together again.)

This could be AU, could be canon, it's meant to be ambiguous. (And wikipedia tells me the fourth generation of the wall was called "Grenzmauer 75", hence the title. If that is incorrect, I apologize).