Edit: forgot the bloody line breaks. /shot

a/n: This is Cameron Kennedy's Christmas present. And holy crap, I swear to god I'm done fic-bombing now. Merry Christmas, darling. Hurray for AUs, ammiright?

Disclaimer: Don't own Hetalia.

"Internal Monologue of the Perpetually Left Behind."

Also known as "Painting Berlin."

1943.

It's August. Not here, but somewhere, surely. Surely, there's still such a thing as August, warm air and unhurried thoughts carried on breezes, when the world is falling apart. Such a thing as lights and laughter and ice cream that's too cold to eat, dripping down the side of your hand.

And you and I. You and I are caught in it, frozen in the middle, while the edges slowly melt off and send us on our way.

This is a prologue, if you like. A sort of window into what you might see later. This isn't the beginning, though. This isn't even the end. It might be a middle, but it might not, too.

This is a story, however, so it probably had a beginning at some point. Maybe the beginning was a promise on the platform of a train station, or a morning in a sun-soaked kitchen. Maybe the beginning was a man who didn't join an army and a man who did. Who could ever know?

Not me, that's for sure.

We trace our lives in snapshots, with the dates scribbled on the back of the photos with your favorite blue pen. They aren't common pictures. They aren't uncommon, either. They fit together somehow, if you were to look. A collage, a painting, a mix of colors and stories and words that join awkwardly at the edges. Holding hands, they face the world.

Do you even realize how much I love you?

This is a prologue, if you like.

It's four in the morning and they're sitting at the kitchen table, bleary-eyed over cups of coffee. Ludwig has forgotten to buy sugar again because he never uses it, and their hands almost brush when they both reach for the cream.

It's quiet, except for Feliciano's occasional yawn and the clinking of spoons against cups. The sunlight reflects off the glass of the window and scatters across last night's dinner dishes piled in the sink.

The air around them seems stupidly empty. It seems wrong, to Ludwig. And the way that Feliciano rests his chin on his palm and stares off into space makes him wonder what he thinks he's doing.

"D'you think it'll be cold, Ludwig?"

"What?"

"Where they send you. Do you think it'll be cold? I mean, I know it's cold here, but it could be colder, and you don't actually know where you're going, and this one time I went on a trip and I didn't know what the weather was like there and it was so cold the whole time, and all I wanted was another sweater, and—well, okay, I wanted some pasta, too, but they have to have pasta there, right? I mean, everyone has pasta—anyway, what I'm saying is maybe you should pack an extra one—a sweater, I mean, not pasta, although I suppose—"

"Feliciano."

Feliciano blinks and looks at Ludwig. "Yes?"

Ludwig hesitates, then folds his hands carefully on the table; looks Feliciano in the eye. "You do know that I'm... not going on a vacation. Right?"

Feliciano laughs a little. It's kind of hollow, and echoes emptily around the kitchen, blending itself in with the light peeking through the east window. "Of course, silly!" He bites his lip and curls his hands a little tighter around the coffee mug. "I know. I just..."

"I know."

The sun creeps slowly, casting shadow's across Feliciano's face as he tips his head down and squeezes his eyes shut.

Ludwig sighs.

I know.

Then Gilbert comes in to slam the window open and smoke a cigarette, breathing out into the early-morning air and letting the rest of the light in to remind them that they don't have forever anymore.

You're looking at me from across the table. And I almost catch your eye, but you turn away too fast, before I can read you. You always do that, and sometimes I wish you wouldn't. I wish you would let me look at you. I wouldn't look too deep, if you didn't want me to. I promise.

Some people deserve a love story. And I… I don't know if I'm one of them, but for a minute, just a minute, let's pretend that I am.

I would want to write it with you.

And the ending. The ending would be the happiest thing in the world.

I'd paint the pictures. All we'd have to do is make up the words.

It hangs in the air between them, weighing down the words that they normally would say, making them heavy in their mouths, tripping up their tongues.

It's an unspoken taboo, because it brings up questions that no one wants to answer, and the army holds too many secrets and too many lives.

I could track the days, except I'd probably misplace time.

I'm always misplacing everything.

What am I going to do without you here to find it for me?

What if I lose myself when you're gone, and you come back and I'm not there?

What'll you do?

What—

"How long?"

"I can't tell you."

"Why?"

"They don't want you to know."

"Who? The army?"

"Yes. The Wehrmacht."

"Oh. Do you want me to know?"

"Feliciano…"

"Yes, Ludwig?"

"… I don't know how long. I don't know."

Your story is different, with no rhyme or reason. It's not mine to tell, but I think it deserves a mention.

You should get a poet, but all you have is me, and a few words that I scribble during delusions of grandeur in between coffee breaks. I could never hope to do it justice, you and all of your perfect imperfection.

But here is the thing.

I like to try.

I like to try and capture you in those little moments, when you're caught up in something and you don't notice the way I like to watch your hands as you read the newspaper. I always do things the easy way, because beauty is in simplicity, but everybody likes a challenge sometimes.

You are my sometimes, and my in-between, caught between the cracks of my life like sunlight. I don't know what to do without you, and I guess I'll figure it out, but here's the other thing.

I don't want to figure it out. I don't want to figure out a morning when you're not there pressed beside me, or an evening where the stars don't lose themselves in your eyes and take me with them.

Is that too weird of a way to say I'll miss you?

Feliciano sees him off at the train station. It's strange, maybe surreal, packed in between too many people tripping over Ludwig's suitcase. Feliciano clings, of course, but not for very long, clutching the folds of Ludwig's jacket for a minute before letting him go and smoothing out the wrinkles.

"Ludwig?"

"Yes?"

"You... you won't forget me. Right?"

"Of course not."

"Promise?"

"Yes."

"Pinky-promise?"

"I— yes. All right."

"Good. I love you. Don't forget that?"

"I won't."

"Okay! Then we'll be okay, right? As long as we don't forget each other?"

"... Right. I... um."

"Yes?"

"I love you."

"Oh, good! I always knew you did!"

And then the conductor screams for boarding and the whistle of the train cuts through the air as people shove between them, catching them in the swarms of the crowd.

"I'll write!" Feliciano calls over the din, and Ludwig would answer, except he's being swept away by the tide of bodies.

He looks for Feli's blue mittens through the windows on the train as it pulls out of the station, but he's already been lost, blending in with the rest of the people and the station's smog.

We would paint Berlin yellow.

Yellow, like your hair, and the sun in your eyes, and the shirt you bought on sale when you were drunk that time you can never remember. We'd paint it together, you and me, and I'd show you how to hold the brush and the right way to drag the paint over the canvas.

It would be a great canvas, I think. An entire city to ourselves. And then, when we're done with Berlin, we can do Venice, or maybe Rome, even though Lovi would scream something awful. We would show him, you and I. Show him that it's not something to be afraid of.

But we'd do it all after I got to hold you one more time.

It would have to wait until after that.

This is a prologue, if you like.