Author's Notes: Please forgive me for the genealogies in this chapter. I will try to explain myself at the end.

Human Names: Athaulf - Germania; Caesar - Rome; Andrei - Romania

As far as Roderich could tell, dinner had been an absolute failure, a comedy, even. If there was any sure way to start things wrong, it would have been the farce of a meal they just had. All they needed was to sing and it would have been an opéra bouffe; then, it might have been, at least, enjoyable to watch. Instead, it made him feel like an utter fool to have been part of it.

For much of the dinner, he had tried his best to be civil. After all, Ludwig was a good boy and their grandfather, Athaulf Beilschmidt, a quiet man who spoke only in German the few times he talked, seemed to be a respectable gentleman. It was Gilbert alone that irritated him with the way he kept talking about himself during dinner and how atrocious his table manners were which made it seem as if he had been raised by barbarians. Aside from looking at the teenager sternly and making veiled comments about his upbringing, Roderich had been mostly nice to him. His sons also seemed to be behaving, something unusual these last few months. That was, until Lovino decided that Gilbert's unending blabber was the best excuse to say some rather rude words, which he had doubtlessly picked up from his grandfather. At that moment, the entire table, even Gilbert, went silent and Roderich, red-faced and embarrassed beyond belief, wordlessly excused himself from the table and didn't come back until their neighbours had gone home.

He didn't know if he should cry or get angry. Normally, he would have expressed it through music either way, but they had left his grand piano back at their old home and that only made this so much worse for him.

"Are you still angry at Lovino?" Elizabeta asked as he was setting the dishwasher. "He's only seven-years-old. He didn't know what those words meant. Don't worry. I made him promise he wouldn't use those words again."

"He won't learn if he keeps escaping punishment," Roderich replied somewhat bitterly. "Feliciano should learn a bit of discipline, too, sometimes," he added. "He should stop acting like a baby."

"Do try to understand your sons," Elizabeta said and tugged him towards the living room. "They just lost their grandfather. It's a difficult time for them."

Roderich let himself be pulled out of the kitchen. "Yes, I know," he said. "I was just hoping that moving to a new house would help."

"Give them some time," Elizabeta said as she forced him to sit down on the sofa. "It'll get better. I promise. For now, just open this." She placed the rectangular box across his lap. "Gilbert tried to force it sideways through the door, so the box might be a little battered, but it should still work. Go on. Open it."

Roderich tore away the brown paper and beheld the glossy image of a black electronic keyboard printed on the box.

"Elizabeta, I…" He could boast of a vast vocabulary any other time, but, right now, he couldn't think of a good enough word to express how thankful he was to have someone like her.

It didn't matter. Elizabeta already seemed to know what he had left unspoken. "Aren't you going to play it?" she asked with a smile.

With a nod, he removed the keyboard from its box and plugged it into the nearest socket.

"Since it appears that we'll be here for a while, I shall play the piano to pass the time. Does the signorina have any specific piece she would like to hear?" he asked her in Italian, repeating the words he had said many years ago when they had just first met.

For a moment, Elizabeta seemed to be deep in thought, although it was evident in her mischievous smile that she was playing along. "Could you play La Campanella by Franz Liszt for me, signor?" she asked in exactly the same way she did back then.

They had met because of music. She had been the estranged, half-Hungarian daughter of a wealthy Italian painter attempting to reconnect with her father after the death of her mother. He had been a fresh graduate with a degree in music trying to introduce his talent to the world. Elizabeta's father, Caesar Vargas, a patron of all arts, had heard him play the piano at a small theatre and had invited him to perform at his daughter's welcoming party. It was at Caesar's mansion that they had first met, her on the dance floor with her half-Romanian half-brother and him at the piano. She liked his music, but she probably wouldn't have given him a second thought and he wouldn't have even noticed her, if not for Andrei insisting that she meet the young pianist after the party and, subsequently, locking them in the ballroom, forcing them to spend two hours with nothing to do but get to know each other. It had been painfully and awkwardly quiet, at first, until he decided to play something for her and their conversation started off with Liszt. When somebody finally opened the door, they were already talking like they had been friends for a long time.

One of these days, Roderich would have to thank Andrei for locking them in, although he knew better than to encourage him.

"Liszt would be wonderful, signorina," he said and began to play.

The plastic keys felt strange and fragile beneath his fingers, unlike the ivory and ebony keys he was accustomed to. It almost felt like the keyboard would break if he played it too roughly. Even the music it produced, a soulless, unchanging sound, was strange. It was a weak, lifeless sound that he didn't like. Whereas his grand piano had produced music so full of life and beauty, this keyboard produced a crystallized, preserved sound that was beautiful but dead at its core. He couldn't deny that it tried it's best to mimic a piano, attempting to replicate its vibrations, but one can only do so much with sampled sound and, ultimately, it failed, much like how a funeral artist tries to make a corpse appear like a sleeping person, but, in the end, it appears doll-like and unnerving. As he ended the piece, the music did not linger in his ears, clinging to existence for even a few precious moments, but died abruptly without a struggle, as dead things were wont.

"That was beautiful, signor!" Elizabeta said in Italian, her voice filled with admiration, still playing the nineteen-year-old heiress she had been years and years ago.

That was all Roderich needed to hear and he could almost forget the dead sound. "Would you like for me to play another one?"

More Author's Notes: The main reason for making Hungary related to Rome in this is because of its historically deeply Catholic, hence Roman, influence and also to allow her to be the Italies' biological mother in this; Austria could have also been a candidate for that due to its claim at being the heir of the Holy Roman Empire which had been the heir of the Roman Empire before it. Romania is also influenced by the Roman culture, most evident in its Romance language, which is actually closest to classical Latin among the Romance languages. Anyway, it is a human AU so I might have some level of leeway.

Let me explain why Austria and Hungary were speaking in Italian in this. Since, in the story, they had met at Rome's mansion in Italy, which would have made it a likely language to have conversed in, probably because they were in Italy and assuming that the other spoke Italian, presupposing that Hungary learned it to speak with her father and Austria must have known some of it to have been able to converse with Caesar.

As for the names, I often change the names of characters who have no official names, especially the Ancients, between stories. Andrei is a typical Romanian name and was selected mostly to avoid Vladimir, which seems more common in the fandom. Rome was named after Julius Caesar, a famous Roman general you probably all know about from world history class, as well as the name that Roman emperors styled themselves with. In other stories, I had called him Romulus. Germania, on the other hand, was named for a more obscure historical figure, Athaulf. In other stories, he had been called Adalbert and Alaric. So, who is Athaulf and why had that name been chosen, you may ask? Historically, Athaulf was the King of the Visigoths and he is most remembered for his dream of reviving the glory of the fallen Roman empire with a new Gothic vigour. As a fun fact, it is also the predecessor of the name Adolf, meaning "noble wolf".