Eva

A/N: Human names used. Historical notes at the end. Enjoy (and Happy New Year 2012)!

New Year's Eve 1944, Budapest.

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Ludwig didn't want to wake up. There was nothing to disturb him in sleep, not even the image of his brother falling to the Russian shells and gunfire—he was too exhausted to dream these days, and furthermore, that was not a dream but an achingly fresh memory. "You're having a nightmare." It felt like a part of him was dead. If he didn't have to wake up, maybe…

Ludwig was shaken awake, violently. Staring at him was a pair of shadowed green eyes.

"It's over," he said abruptly, unthinkingly. "We've lost; we can't hold—"

Elizaveta drew her hand back and slapped him right across the face. "You promised us you would win this war, so don't say that!" He ought to be angry, not just that she had struck him—he couldn't even believe that it had actually happened—but for the very fact that she had accused him of going back on apromise. The sorry fate she was facing was at least partially her fault too and she couldn't blame it all on him. But he wasn't angry. He only felt defeated, which was infinitely worse.

Also, she had been crying.

Wearily, Ludwig observed the wet streaks through the dust and dirt on her face. It was the first time he had seen even a trace of her tears.

As his sensibilities returned, Ludwig considered all the factors afresh. This was her land and Elizaveta was understandably desperate to save it; already they had lost too much ground and now the very capital—and its civilians—was at stake. She had stood vigil longer than he had; she had heard the news of Gilbert's death too and probably imagined it in her sleep like he did. Even the harshest of commanders ought to know when his subordinates were pushed to the limits.

"Any movements on their side yet?" Ludwig asked. He got up, brushing his military fatigues off. They had both been standing guard on the ramparts of the watch tower when he had, apparently, slumped against one of the pillars and fallen asleep.

Elizaveta shook her head. "I don't think they're attacking until dawn, but you never know, those two are cunning, especially that bastard Ro—"

Then she broke off, swaying slightly. The drugs gave her dizzy spells. It seemed ridiculous to insist that she kept taking them, but it was a non-negotiable condition of her occupation. Ludwig didn't understand. The Fuhrer said it was supposed to cleanse impurities, but what was the point if it hampered the war effort? He steadied her with a hand on her shoulder. "Go rest for a while, I'll stand guard for now."

Seemingly relieved, she departed.

The watch tower offered the best view of their surroundings. Or rather, given the circumstances, the most depressing one. Budapest had been completely surrounded. Russia and Romania were going to launch their attack the next day and all their units were in place. But it was almost midnight and the enemies were covered by the darkness.

There was nothing to see. Except darkness.

…

"Has it begun?" Elizaveta asked when he entered her personal quarters. She was sitting on her bed. Nations didn't really need to sleep; they usually did, but that was in peacetime. In total war, everything changed.

Ludwig shook his head. "I've assigned sentries to stand guard in case a night attack is launched; they'll sound the alarm when the invasion begins."

Elizaveta gestured for him to sit beside her. He did. She leaned on him like he was a pillar, and he remained still like one. "Are you afraid, Eliza?" he asked. "Urban warfare is the hardest on nations."

"Tired," she answered. "1945. I wish it was over already. I've sent a telegram to Roderich to tell him the siege is about to start."

"But you only wrote 'See you later'." Belatedly, Ludwig realized that he had accidentally let it slip that he screened all her messages, incoming and outgoing, but it wasn't as if that was news to her. It was how she had been caught communicating with England in the first place. Elizaveta continued, unfazed.

"We cherished the time we had together. That was all that was left to be said between us, for now anyway." Their odds of victory had been slimming since the winter of 1943. When she returned to Budapest this time, she had anticipated the possibility that she wasn't going back to either Vienna or Berlin in the near future. Settling affairs with Roderich was one thing that she didn't have regrets about.

"So what do we do now?" she asked.

"Wait," he said heavily. "Defend. Counter."

"Win," she said with a smile. "What happens when we win?"

The very thought of having to push all the back to Stalingrad was enough to make him want to throw down his arms and quit. "We get everything back, of course. Everything we deserve and more. And we'll finally have peace."

"We can still have peace even if we lose, Ludwig."

"But not the kind that humans get six feet under. That's not the peace I want."

"We'll still have death even if we win. Too much of it."

Maybe she was counting the losses that had stacked up in her place already. Maybe she was thinking about her citizens being rounded up in ghettos and carted away to camps. In any case, Elizaveta was picking a bad time to be contrary.

"I see why your army lost at the Don," he said, exasperated. "It's that low morale and defeatist attitude."

Her response was cold. "We lost because we weren't well-equipped. We lost because we were stretched too thin and my soldiers had to be your human shields."

Ludwig was sorry he had brought it up. "Sorry," he said out loud. "I didn't mean to—"

As quickly as her anger had come, it retreated. Elizaveta shook her head and smiled to show him that there weren't any hard feelings. "Maybe you're right too. I just don't see the point. You have to remind me."

He could take out Mein Kampf and read out the selected passages to her. He could talk about the Great War, Versailles and Trianon. He didn't want to. She looked downcast and agitated, tense as a taut wire, as if she was waiting in the trenches for the signal to boost herself up and dash across no man's land. He remembered that feeling himself. A bit too well at the moment.

"Well?" she prompted. A thread of teasing entered her tone despite the grimness of the situation. "Is it going to be Mein Kampf or the unfair peace?"

"No," he replied, sighing. "Not today."

They listened to the silence. Still no alarm. How much longer was the torture going to be dragged out? Maybe it would be better if it was just over and done with, at least then it wouldn't be as straining on the nerv—Ludwig shuddered. A defeatist attitude killed a nation quicker than a bullet to the heart killed a human.

1945 was here, and it terrified him. For all the differences with their human compatriots, nations still had aspirations, emotions and bonds like humans. They were still mortal, still susceptible to the same fragilities. It was the first time Ludwig was putting the feeling into words, but it had been there for a while, swimming in his thoughts as the Axis broke apart and his partners drifted away one by one.

"I'm glad you're still here with me, Elizaveta," he said in a voice barely above a whisper. "I don't really care why you are anymore. At least you're here."

"Of course I'm here," she replied, shrugging. "This is my home. This is my room. The question is why you're here."

There was a pause. "Can I … stay with you tonight?"

Elizaveta smiled bemusedly and got up, making the motion for him to get up as well. "I'm glad you asked." She pulled down the covers. Then she unbuttoned her jacket and dropped it on the chair next to her desk, revealing the black sleeveless top she wore underneath. "I guess it's more practical this way too. Aren't you going to at least take off your boots? Or… do you want to sleep in the nude? You usually do, but I don't think it'll be very appropriate."

Blushing furiously, he started, "No, what I meant was… was…"

Elizaveta turned to stare at him quizzically and Ludwig quickly seized his chance. His lips ended up somewhere between her cheek and her jaw—he had missed his target by a considerable distance, but he tried again. He felt their lips connect, and then he simply pressed on. The tiny spark of attraction grew as his hands instinctively rose to hold her waist and pull her closer to him. It confirmed what he had suspected; that he still wanted more from her. More than oil, more than a foreign battlefield to fight on. The fumbling kiss was soft and uncertain but not chaste. He gave it to her with the desires of a man.

She was surprised, nervous and shy when she realized the full implications of what he meant. Even though she didn't say no, he had to gently grasp her wrists and pry her arms away from her chest, gently lay her down on the mattress and gently tell her that he wanted to make love to her before she was willing to meet his eyes.

"Am I your first?" she asked finally, brushing the loose strands of hair that hung down to frame his face. She knew he put it up to look older than he was.

"Y-Yes. You'll have to teach me."

"Don't want to die a virgin, huh? But I guess … everyone has to learn sometime," she said. "You should at least know how to kiss by the time I'm done with you."

Maybe it was a bit late to be learning the lessons of love from scratch and Elizaveta didn't have very much to teach him anyway; he was only her second. But if Ludwig didn't make it to the next year or even the next day at least he would die a man in more than one sense of the word. And they would have killed an hour or two. So she accepted him as a woman and opened her heart as a nation, and after that, they slept together as many nights as they could. Sometimes there was nothing but sex and sleep but more often talk and sleeplessness.

"You've given me more trouble than you know, Ludwig. Remember that little argument we had when you tried to go through my house and get Feliks? Pál was so relieved when I turned you away. He wasn't fooled by your smart uniforms. He really only tolerated you and Gilbert because you brought us gifts and carried guns with you—did you do it on purpose to scare him?"

"Sort of," Ludwig murmured, recalling her unfriendly, rather melancholic Prime Minister from the distant past of six years ago. "It was part of my orders, but we used to think it was funny. Both of us," he admitted.

"I thought so." She pinched him in the side and nestled closer. "I wasn't good at listening to Pál, but I liked him. I wish he hadn't killed himself. It's so… final with humans."

Ludwig stroked her hair, ignoring the dust, dirt and grease, then climbed on top of her and pushed in. He didn't mind the musky smell of dried sweat and unwashed bodies anymore for the selfish reason that it somehow eliminated the need for the stilted decorum, the awkward courting, and all the troublesome things that had put him off seeking female company in the first place. But if she got pregnant, he would take care of her—that much about responsibility he hadn't forgotten. War was the wrong time to have a child, but maybe after… After? He didn't know if there would be anything after. Elizaveta was kissing him, shifting and sliding her way up from under him as she coaxed him to let her take control. The siege was going badly for them and she needed to vent. They shook her bed as they ground together with fervent need and greedily took their pleasure from each other.

Both of them had been careful to keep their personal boundaries no matter what their governments did, but in this final leg of the war, the relationship changed irrevocably. It had been a reckless decision, but he didn't regret it. She had been his first in body and maybe in soul as well.

Ludwig had stopped thinking about Feliciano entirely. It was an infatuation of the past and seemed wholly insignificant. He felt justified for putting Italy out of his mind; whatever his reason, acceptable or unacceptable, he wasn't here now. Ludwig didn't even think about his brother. He and Elizaveta had been brought together because of Gilbert, but this wasn't about him or his death. It was about them facing their own deaths together. There was no reason why he shouldn't be lovers with Elizaveta when she was going to follow him to Hell.

They surrendered Budapest on February 13th .

On Valentine's Day—though neither of them remembered it at the time—she woke in the middle of the night to find him sketching out the plans for the new counteroffensive at Lake Balaton. She asked what it was going to be called. Ludwig had never been particularly inspired at naming operations and he snapped that he was too tired to care what it was called as long as it worked. She suggested Spring Awakening and he wrote it down on the front of the proposal. He sent it back to Berlin. At that point remorse overtook him and he would have said yes to any request she made that he still had the power to grant. It was that day Ludwig made himself the promise that after the war, he would give her a new hairpin to replace the battered one she still wore and, better yet, fresh flowers every anniversary.

But maybe it would have to be flowers left on a grave.

The winter thawed, but it made no difference to their war effort anymore. They kept falling back, back, leaving behind more scorched earth, destroyed infrastructure, blown up train lines, cut communications… And then, finally, she disappeared behind him.

A year ago, Ludwig would have never envisioned that it would be Roderich comforting him and not the other way around when he stumbled back into his house in April, alone, with the bad news. He didn't talk about Elizaveta even when interrogated by his boss. Any more than the bare military facts was unnecessary. He wouldn't have been able to explain it anyway, what had happened between him and Elizaveta in that stolen handful of days as they were cornered and bombarded. He still couldn't fully grasp the puzzling depth of pain festering in him now, the overwhelming gratitude that had led to the sudden blossoming of affection.

Maybe something was wrong with the picture; maybe it was all wrong and it never should have happened this way or come to this. It didn't matter.

It was May of 1945. The year wasn't even half done and already it felt all over.

Ludwig was waiting at his desk. The side of the pistol was pressed against his right temple as he propped his head up in both his hands, one wrapped around the handle of the gun and a finger squeezing the trigger. Ludwig's hard gaze was fixated on the door to his office. The footsteps were coming closer.

Just last month, Elizaveta had finally let go of the hand that had been dragging her along as they retreated from her shrinking territory; she was already bleeding and limping and she couldn't go any further with Ivan hounding them. He didn't have the strength to carry her, and anyway he had been ordered to leave her behind when the oil fields were gone and she wasn't of any more use. "Go, Ludwig, I'll see you later!"

But that 'later' would never come. It was all over. That was what the Fuhrer had said.

Ludwig closed his eyes, reopened them, and blinked slowly.

If the war had been won as planned she'd have been just another woman to him, just another mistress in the harem of the world and not even the most desirable within it. Instead, when there was nothing left, she was the warmth, the light, and the last bulwark between him and destruction. He had been so desperate to hold onto the last good thing left in his possession that he finally married her. Pretty, cheerful, loyal Fraulein Braun had become Frau Hitler just a day before they both committed suicide, she with cyanide and he minutes later with a bullet.

Elizaveta was Ludwig's Eva. He had shackled her to himself, used her as a life jacket and had only fallen in love with her in the eve of the end.

Except… Except they were not humans, he was not his boss and he was going to see her again alive.

Relaxing his stiffened muscles, Ludwig pushed back his chair and he stood. Setting the gun down onto the desk, he held his hands up when the Allies finally broke through the door. The words that had been so hard to say at the end of the first Great War almost three decades ago flowed smoothly from his tongue.

"I surrender," he said clearly, passively.

His reaction seemed to disappoint them a little, especially Ivan who was reluctant to step back and let the others cuff his wrists behind his back. He and Roderich in the next room were led away with guns pointed at them from all directions. They had probably expected him to resist, attempt vainly to fire one more shot before going up in the very hellfire he had created. But he wasn't going to. He was going to stand trial and, this time, accept the result come what may.

"Jesus, are you smiling?" an astounded Alfred asked the prisoner held in the solitary confinement cell. He had caught sight of Ludwig's face even though his head had been bowed. "Aren't you even the least bit sorry?"

"No, it's not that…" Ludwig answered, but the thin smile had already faded away. He wasn't so sure he was happy—maybe just alive, maybe just… grown up. "It was hell. I was feeling people die every day, left and right. I thought I was going to as well; I thought I had to, if I lost. But it's not going to be like he said. A lot of what he said was wrong. I have a future beyond the Fuhrer, beyond this war, beyond ... Beyond the end."

Alfred seemed surprised by his words. "Yes, you will, and it may even be a good one once you've atoned for your crimes. The other Allies and I think that maybe we might have caused some of your grief too; pushed you too hard with the reparations. You've lost, Ludwig, but it's not doomsday. I'll see what I can do to help your people."

"Thank you… How are the others?" Ludwig asked anxiously. Kiku was still fighting his war, he knew, and Ludwig hoped that when the time came for him to decide Kiku would understand that surrender didn't have to end in death. "Elizaveta, Roderich, Feliciano…"

Alfred laughed. "Lovino's just a tough talker and words alone haven't killed anyone so far, even guys as wimpy as them, so Feliciano's definitely all right. We're calling Roderich your first victim so he'll be fine too." Ludwig would laugh at that irony later on.

"Elizaveta …" Alfred chewed on his lip, and Ludwig's heart stopped. "Well, I guess it's accurate to say that she's okay and Gilbert as well. I'm glad he made it through after all. Your brother trained me before my independence, you know. Was one hell of a coach; really left an impression on me, though not always in a good way… They're both in Ivan's custody now and the tricky thing is that he's being a bit territorial, but I think you'll still have plenty of opportunities to see them later, so don't—"

This time, Ludwig was weeping openly. Alfred edged away and left him alone.

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Fin

Historical references (for you who haven't studied WW2 history):

Treaty of Versailles: Laid all the blame of WWI on Germany; notably included heavy reparations which led to a lot of economic strife…The Treaty of Trianon was the Hungarian equivalent of Versailles; after the split from Austria, the Kingdom of Hungary lost 2/3 of its land to the neighbouring countries.

The First and Second Vienna Awards were gifts of land that Germany (and Italy, but mostly Germany) helped Hungary reclaim, basically by intimidating the countries who had benefited from the Trianon Treaty, including Romania.

Initially, Germany asked Hungary to grant access for the invasion of Poland but Hungary refused due to the long friendship between the two nations.

Hungary's Prime Minister Pál Teleki opposed Hungary's entrance into the war on Germany's side back in 1941. Kind of a controversial figure, but he committed suicide shortly after Hungary invaded Yugoslavia with whom an Eternal Friendship Treaty had been signed, stating in his suicide letter that Hungary had "lost her honour" and had become a "nation of trash".

In the war against the Soviet Union, Hungarian troops were routed at the River Don. Hitler thought the Hungarians were poor soldiers but it seems like it was a combination of factors, including poor equipment and lack of support.

Germany's occupation of Hungary in March 1944 prevented her from switching sides/surrendering; Germany was afraid that Hungary was going to surrender like Italy had in 1943, especially since there had been indications that Hungary was carrying on negotiations with America and Britain; also, the Hungarian government hadn't lived up to Hitler's demands (for more exports of oil and food and the deportation of Jews). Hungary's Regent Horthy announced an armistice with the Soviet Union in October 1944 over the radio but was later forced to abdicate when the SS kidnapped his son. After the takeover of the Arrow Cross Nazi-supported party, the Holocaust in Hungary intensified.

The Siege of Budapest was the attack by Romania and the Soviet Union (Romania had switched sides a few months earlier) that lasting from January 1st to February 13th.

Operation Spring Awakening in March 1945 was a last ditch attempt to save Lake Balaton and the oil fields (Hitler was particularly hung up on this), but it quickly failed.

Finally, Eva Braun was Hitler's mistress and he married her about a day before they died, though the relationship had been kept secret and only emerged after the war. It was a complicated relationship, but I felt historical Hungary was a fitting parallel—Hungary was the fourth member to sign up to the Axis (after Germany, Italy and Japan, of course). Apart from Austria that had already been annexed to Germany prior to the war (and so had technically ceased to exist—probably the reason why Austria got off comparatively lightly), Hungary was the only remaining European partner to fight on the Axis side until the end (unless you count the Italian Social Republic puppet state that Mussolini created after the Italian surrender).

Phew, history lesson over!

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Depressing? Uplifting?

I can't even determine what the mood of this piece is considering that the Cold War follows… Not sure if I'll continue; it seems to me like Ludwig and Elizaveta's relationship won't survive now that the dependency has "died" with the end of the war, but I do love Germany x Hungary so… maybe?

Anyway, hope you liked it!