I lost this fic with an accidental save a while back, and I just found it. It was half done so, after reading it and finding it was still ok, finished it off and here is the result. I am warning you : Character death!

Enjoy

Some things just naturally didn't seem to happen.

Feliciano being shot was one of them.

He seemed to evade so well when he was frightened, and all the screaming and flailing probably put off the accuracy of his attackers. That whipping white flag must be quite disorientating.

The moment was sudden, leaping over the trenches like an assassin.

All of a sudden all the din around – the whistling shells as they vocalized their descent, the explosions and the cut-off cries of dying fathers and sons – was drowned out by one distinct crack.

No ordinary crack, but very common around here. That from a pistol, or a rifle.

But the crack was distant, Ludwig was sure, because no one was near enough to the front line to shoot with a pistol. Unless the Allies had suddenly created 100% accurate hand firearms no matter the distance.

And so, this far away crack that alerted to Ludwig's ears only moments after it occurred, happened.

Suddenly.

Though not unpredictably.

But entirely unexpectedly.

Time suspended a little, which was an odd effect on his body. It was like for a split second there was no weight, no breath, no noise around him. A split second later the feeling returned but with double the rawness, and the two men felt their ears ringing from surprise.

Both stared at each other with a startled look.

Breath baited.

Feliciano breathed first, a sort of shudder that made an audible rattle. His gaze skittered down to his front, Ludwig matching him.

A battered, slim hand reached up blandly as darkness began to bloom over the breast of his uniform.

Feliciano looked back up at him, and Ludwig's eyes were wide and crazed, disbelieving – this moment so utterly abstract and outrageous he refused. He dared for it to be real.

Ludwig held his gaze, determined, searching a few feet away frantically into his companion's eyes for confirmation, before finding his vision drifting back down to the bloom in his shirt, the heavy stain saturating the material.

There was another wet lung rattle and Ludwig's eyes snapped up in time to see Feliciano looking down also, blood flecked on his lips, eyes making this inconsistent flutter as if he were suddenly tired or dizzy.

Time sped up.

Ludwig leapt forward, seizing Feliciano's wandering hand and wrenching hold of him in a desperate grip. "Feliciano!"

Feliciano looked at him but the Italian's hands weren't listening, the free one moving to the wound to rest there, blood collecting against his palms and trickling through the gaps in his fingers. That rush of red suddenly made the stain look much more like what it was, and Ludwig felt sudden lucidity back to reality, beckoned by the frantic slamming of his heart against his ribcage, so hard it resounded up into his skull.

Ludwig wrenched away that hand too, and felt life blood grease his calloused hands. He grit his teeth and keened a little in shock as Feliciano stumbled, face gasping but no air moving in or out. "Feliciano, please!"

"Ludwig-…" The boy mouthed, changing his mind and loosely attaching a hand onto his panicking friend. He seemed not to notice as Ludwig's expression grew more horrified, more afraid and out of place, composure lost in the whirlwind of adrenaline that made his muscles tremble.

Ludwig pleaded and shouted in his head but they couldn't make their way past his teeth. He just gaped as he tried to remember procedure, how to help his friend, what to do, how to do it, oh god, oh god, Feliciano has been shot! Feliciano fell in his direction and he caught him, feeling free-flowing blood coat his hands. Couldn't distinctly feel the opening in his wet uniform, the hole in his tender body.

Around them, fathers and sons leapt, terrified but rallied, over the first hill of the trench, up in arms to go and kill the other sides' fathers and sons. To them the occurrence of a stray rifle bullet catching a boy before he even got out there happened and was over.

Feliciano's weight began to sag, and while Ludwig's thighs were strong he felt himself crumbling with him, scrambling to hold him up like he was a faggot of sticks slowly coming apart. Ludwig gasped and desperately tried to catch his breath but it was coming in desperate panted 'ha's as he watched his friend's eyes lose a little focus.

This was never like any death before, any tradegy big or small – it was like when Feliciano had kissed him or touched him tenderly. His hands were fumbling and his arms were lame, movements frantic and clumsy, tongue knotted up and blocking his throat.

Ludwig had seen death all the time, suffering, for as long as he could remember. His childhood was wrought with war. He's had enemies and harassers all around him, which only a war-hungry brother to learn from. His brother, of course, was excellent, but it still applied. He hadn't grown up with any friends, hadn't had childhood crushes on local sweethearts.

A man so kind and affectionate to him he could have been angel, was now drenched in blood, breast and spine, like he'd been shot from the sky and wings burnt away.

And now Ludwig was clutching his only friend in his arms, watching his life drain out of his body, and there was nothing he could do. His friend who had come to him out of nowhere, given him everything, had him laugh, made him feel warm inside, had him happy with something for the first time. And now he was disappearing in front of his eyes.

"No, no! NO! Feliciano, Feli, listen to me—" Ludwig garbled in panic as they grew closer to the ground together, their strength failing each of them, tides of young men pouring over the trench wall around them. His arms were leached of power and he struggled to prop his friend up, who was bowing down towards the ground. Held up his head to frantically search for his gaze, his bloody had smearing his face, and he flinched. "Feliciano, please! Come on, I-I-..!"

But Ludwig didn't know what to say. Inside, for the first time, his mind was aflight with terror. Helplessness. Reduced to panic on his own battlefield. He couldn't think clearly, couldn't recall protocol or to even call for a medic or to apply pressure to the wound. It would have been fruitless, with a clean cut hole through one of the slight Italian's lungs.

Feliciano's eyes found a fleck of focus, and found his. Ludwig whimpered inside his head, his mouth now no longer functioning. The large man was bowed over his friend, now laid against the trench, wide eyed and staring down. Feliciano looked tired, like he was ready for a siesta.

Feliciano's mouth was touched with a smile, and he found Ludwig's bloody hand with his own. The contact was oiled with the blood, and Ludwig floated for a fragment of a second.

Then his head lolled slowly to the side, the lights behind his eyes going out.

Before he could think of what to say.

Before he could comfort him.

Before he could plead.

His best friend had just died right in front of him, and Ludwig had let him pass in silence.

It ought to be raining. Real No Mans Land rain, the kind that banished the rats and churned all the filth together. Made trenches vomit together all the sweat and blood and filth, like pouring water over a muddy field in hopes of washing it away. The rain that was a kind of cold that even the Russian's despised – bitter, vicious and wrenching melancholy. The kind that assured the little suffering people that the Heavens were crying.

But it didn't.

Feliciano had just bled, suffocated and drowned to death, and hadn't heard a word from the man who put him in that situation.

Ludwig had always wondered about Feliciano and clinginess. His abundance of love. No doubt he was a loving man. But since his Grandfather Rome had passed away due to power, and his brother bullied him everyday. His other brothers were lecherous or patronising to him. He'd always been taken advantage of. He himself must have not had anyone. And he had chosen to put his faith in a man who was rigid and awkward, alone and tumultuous. To find that….really…he was…well, he had secret, less rigid hobbies…baking…and that he could be gentle…

It was no wonder if Feliciano might have abandonment issues. And he'd just failed him at the end.

Ludwig was sure he ought to feel wretched. That he ought to be screaming and slaughtering everyone nearby, pummelling his enemy bloody with bone-bare knuckles. That he ought to be sobbing with distress that he had been so utterly wretched and useless in his friends ultimate time of need and he had just died. Alone, in silence, without a single word of assurance. That he had been so lame-brained to cry for a medic, or to follow field protocol with a wound. He ought to be absolutely in a bitter self-disgust and loathing rage.

But he wasn't. He was staring at Feliciano on the ground. Dead. Looking like he'd fallen asleep with his eyes open, big handed smears of blood across his right cheek.

It was like his insides had simple shut down. His mind could not grasp. Accept. Understand. Comprehend what was happening, what had just happened.

"Oi, West, what are yo—"

That ragged call was cut short behind him, but Ludwig didn't register that his brother was nearby.

The squelch of boots in trenchmud.

"F…Feli?"

Feliciano didn't answer.

Gilbert came into peripheral vision and towered over where Ludwig was crouched. A length of silence stretched out again.

"Bruder!" Gilbert barked.

Ludwig forgot to flinch, and slowly, slowly, painfully, his eyes dragged and disengaged from the body, head rotating on his neck. Ludwig stared at his brother with the same expression, gaping, uncomprehending, mind stuttered and body unresponsive.

Gilbert had shouted for his attention, but found himself staring at an expression he had only seen on his brother as a kid. A look that had just seen something so intense and awful his mind could not grasp what exactly had occurred, was daunted by it, and those fearful, numbing blues were begging him for an answer. It did not suit a capable, grown man, lingering on a battlefield amid chaos. Gilbert's brows knotted together, his jaw set and his mouth straightened, the tips wilting a little in quiet despair. He put his hand on his little brothers dishevelled head and said nothing.

Ludwig didn't know if he had looked down, or torn away, but he distantly felt that he had gripped his brother around the waist.

Later he would continual to be numbed and shut down from this, uncomprehending. He was feeling nothing. Eventually, after a long time, reality would drift through the defences and drown him out of his burrow. He would realise how disgusting he had acted, how he had failed his friend. And all the tears he could not force, and all the bellows he did not howl, would unleash.

But not now. Ludwig could not cry.

Ludwig trailed a hand over the dead face to drag the eyelids closed, improving the look of sleep. He then gathered Feliciano into his arms like something delicate, assembling him as comfortably against his equipment as he could. He let his head loll onto his shoulder. He imagined Feliciano would have liked that.

This fic was written on the unorthodox assumption that Ludwig would not be able to cope with loss or tradegy. In all the death fics he's in with Italy, he deals with the situation stoically like a soldier, often crying and sometimes pleading and comforting and being there for Feliciano if he does or does not pass. Tells him that he loves him, that it's going to be ok. Ludwig is awkward in alot of situations, and I thought it would make a death more heartbreaking if Ludwig could not save him and could not handle the situation when it arised. Ergo he couldn't speak, only stared, and just watched Feliciano die. Many deaths are so dragged-out and full of love proclaimations, especially on the battlefield. It's the kind of tradegy I imagine would haunt Ludwig more intensely than any other.