FIC: 155 kilometres: Chapter 3: Midnight

[dorkery]

Fanfic masterlist here.

155 kilometres

Chapter 3
Title: Midnight
Length: 2210
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: N/A
Genre: Horror, thriller
Characters, Pairings: fem!Prussia, Russia, Germany || Russia/fem!Prussia
Summary:

They were building a wall.

More than a decade after separation from her brother, the building of the Berlin Wall has unintended, horrible consequences on the psyche of Prussia.

Notes: The poem quoted in this story is Song of the Bell by Frierich von Schiller and will be a recurring piece. It was written over a 10 year period and was published in 1798. The Kingdom of Prussia at this point was partitioning a lot of land and had absorbed a great deal of Poland to the point that the Kingdom of Poland ceased to exist. It was also an immediate precursor to the Napoleonic Wars in 1801. Here is the 1916 translation I used and here is a modern translation juxtaposed with the original German and with the Latin inscription.

Photos of the construction of the Berlin Wall on the 13th, specifically: one (source), two (source) and three (source).

Chapters: [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ]



Hello.

Prussia rubbed her eyes, the beginnings of a massive headache pulsing through her temples as a faint drum beat knocked dully in the back of her skull. Everything was a thick fog, over-bright and out of focus, and she couldn’t bring herself to sit up. She groaned, slowly rolling onto her side, pinching into the corners of her eyes in order to stave off the hurt that had begun to take a very real, very painful quality. All that vodka had been a terrible idea. She felt like throwing up. She buried her face in her pillow and groaned again.

Hello…?

She forced an eye open, peering blearily through the mess of her hair. Unfortunately, her vision was still distorted and sleep-heavy so all she could make out was the blurry outline of a… person. Fair hair. She felt the other side of the bed with a twitch of her fingers and found it cold and empty. Probably Russia or one of his goons. If bald, probably Ulbricht.

Hell-

“Heard you the first time, fuck’s sake,” she rasped, throat like sandpaper, tongue like lead. “Say you got water or coffee or something.”

Prussia felt the person smile, felt him shake his head. She groaned again.

“Whaddya want?” She squinted. “What time is it?”

Silence. Another slow shake of the head.

“Jesus fucking… You have something to do or don’t you? Why the fuck are you waking me up?”

Prussia grumbled as she rolled onto her back once again, brows knitted together irately and eyes closed as she began to wake herself up, limb by limb. Under the sheets, she wiggled her toes and shifted her legs, feeling the static itch of soft cotton slide against her skin. Her skin felt strange, tighter than usual. She grimaced lightly, recalling the night before. She was probably covered in dried come. Russia could be a great many (sickeningly, sweet, tender, soft) things when it came to the sack, but an attentive lover, he was not. She didn’t know what on earth they saw in each other but Prussia was pretty sure there was an adage that went along the lines of, ‘Use it when it’s useful, discard it when-

Her eyes shot open.

Prussia?

No.

No, no, no.

East Germany.

East. Germany.

Prussia-

“Stupid fucking inside voice,” East Germany ground out, “I just corrected you.”

There was a soft touch on her face and she almost recoiled from it. Instead, she turned her head, eyes focusing on the person who, as it turned out to be, was a child. A boy. He was familiar and he wasn’t familiar, but he had a calm face that made her feel ashamed for some reason. She suddenly remembered her nakedness then, hesitating to draw the blankets further along her body, but the boy didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he didn’t even seem to notice.

You need to wake up.

“You can’t make me,” she bit out of habit, though her tone was distracted. He stood silent, waiting patiently with a mild expression on his face. She thought she heard him whisper in her ear, wake up, but he hadn’t moved so it was probably her imagination.

“If you’re standing over there,” she finally said, “Who’s touching me?”

The boy smiled.

Like a shot of lightning, she grabbed the wrist of the hand on her face, gripping it like a vice. It was small, the wrist of a child, and she scowled down at it but the owner of that hand seemed to be just outside of her peripheral vision. She followed the line of that tiny arm and… it led to the boy. She stared at him. Both his hands were clasped behind his back. She looked down at the hand in her grasp. It led to the boy, but when she looked at the boy, he was visually not connected to her even though she could feel his wrist in her hand.

East Germany was obviously still drunk.

She let go of him, suddenly feeling tired, “Why are you here?”

Joy unto this city bringing, peace shall be her first glad ringing.

She stared at him. He cocked his head slightly.

Joy unto this city bring-

“I heard you,” she interrupted, “That’s Schiller. Why are you quoting him?”

I was reminded of it.

“Oh? And what reminded you?”

The bell’s toll.

“The bell? What bell?”

Don’t you hear it?

“I don’t know what you’re-”

She heard the chime of the grandfather clock, just then, aware that she hadn’t been paying attention to her surroundings since she started this weird conversation with the boy. East Germany counted the chimes (chimes, not tolls, chimes): Six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Ten o’clock in the morning. She wondered if she had a meeting to attend; she felt like there was something very important that she had to do but it escaped her there and then.

And so upon us falls the witching hour.

Witching hour. Cute. “It’s ten in the morning.”

The boy cocked his head again.

It is midnight.

“Ha. No. I heard the clock last night. If it rang twelve times, it’s noon.”

The boy, mild expression on his face, pointed across the room to the window. The curtains were drawn back. Outside, it was almost completely black, only a faint outline of the new moon visible against the night. Stars dotted the skies partially, obscured by slithering clouds that curled with the wind. She blinked. Inside her room, it was almost fluorescent bright, as bright as it would be on a hot summer’s day with the sun high in the sky. She couldn’t understand. When she tried to think, her head was still a mess. Alcohol. Sex. Exhaustion. All of it blended to this nauseating sense of surrealism, or that could just be the alcohol talking.

It is midnight.

“Right. Of course. Is that significant?”

Joy unto this city bringing, he said with a private smile, like they were sharing a joke. She didn’t know what kind of joke they were sharing.

“I must be dreaming,” East Germany finally mumbled.

The boy squeezed her shoulder without touching her.

You need to wake up.

“Oh, I guess I am dreaming,” and she’d be lying if it didn’t feel like a relief.

Wake up.

“Come on-”

WAKE UP.

East Germany rubbed her eyes, the beginnings of a massive headache pulsing through her temples as a faint drum beat knocked dully in the back of her skull. Everything was a thick fog, over-bright and out of focus, and she couldn’t bring herself to sit up. She groaned, slowly rolling onto her side, pinching into the corners of her eyes in order to stave off the hurt that had begun to take a very real, very painful quality. All that vodka had been a terrible idea. She felt like throwing up. She buried her face in her pillow and groaned again.

* * *

Steady clack, clack, clacking of pickaxes against asphalt and cobblestone. Thick-soled boots beating against the street in a run. Tinny sound of wire modulating. Snap and click of rifles. Rickety gasp of unoiled wheelbarrows. Heavy thuds of shovel against dirt. East Germany looked on with a vague sense of distaste, arms crossed. She watched the soldiers along the line demarcating the border turn away East German civilians with a sneer on their face and a twitch in their trigger finger as workers unraveled barbed wire and fencing. This was most certainly not what she had expected of the previous night’s resolution but she hardly found herself surprised. This was one way to close the border, certainly. Horrified as she knew some of her people were, she felt a tingling in her chest which she knew meant something was mending. The economy, likely. It usually always was.

Once she had addressed the issue of cutting off the Western and Eastern occupation zones for good through an albeit suspect means, East Germany had to admit with a certain swell of pride that, at the very least, her people were industrious to the bitter last. They’d begun at midnight and worked diligently throughout the hours to rip up the roads and put up anti-tank barricades. She wondered how on earth they’d managed to move forward with this plan without her really feeling anything, and she felt a familiar pang of guilt and disgust well up at the recollection of way too much alcohol.

She was about to mull over the lack of Western presence across the border (surely her people, her government, couldn’t have been so very efficiently discreet - they were practically tearing up the streets with tanks and military by then) when she heard frantic footsteps running down the road. Skidding up against the short brick wall. Keeling over. Panting.

She stood her ground, refused to show anything beyond cool disdain on her face even as she felt her insides twist at the sight of that dishevelled head of bright blond hair and disbelieving baby blues. He’d gotten a haircut that he hadn’t grown into yet and all that running had tossed his usually neatly slicked back bangs out of place. He had both hands firmly planted on the wall that was still in the midst of having its bricks laid so that it only came up to his waist. He looked aghast, and then his eyes found hers. The workers hesitated with him there, nervously glancing at the armed soldiers who had already unholstered their guns. They paused, bewildered, as East and West began to speak to each other.

“I… I can’t believe it’s true.”

“Can I help you?”

“But I, I thought you said, Prussia, you’re building a wall-”

“East Germany,” she said sharply, eyes narrowing. “Lest you’ve forgotten.”

“I’m sorry,” apologies tumbled from his mouth as they never did before. “But you’re building a wall.”

“Yes, I am,” she snapped. “What’s your point?”

“I,” West Germany gripped the front of his shirt, “East, I feel like something’s tearing me apart. It hurts.”

She told herself to be firm. “Unfortunate.”

“How are you,” he was breathing hard, face red, was he having a seizure? “How do you not feel it?”

“Numbed by betrayal, perhaps?” She was gratified to see him wince at her sarcasm.

“Since last night, I’ve been hurting since last night, it’s getting unbearable now. I don’t understand, isn’t, isn’t Berlin part of you? Isn’t-”

“I don’t know. I don’t care. You have your part, I have mine. Frankly, neither of us want anything to do with each other, so I don’t think closing my borders should matter to you.”

East Germany had calculated to do as much damage as possible with the cold edge to her voice, and to see the expressions on West Germany’s face go through the changes was immensely satisfying. She raised her eyebrows as he opened and closed his mouth to speak, unable to say whatever it was on his mind. She realised, for the first time, she honestly, truly didn’t care. East Germany turned around to leave.

“Please don’t do this,” he pleaded, “I’m sorry, please, I don’t want us to be apart.”

East Germany’s gaze was stony.

“Well, I do.”

He continued to plead even as she nodded to the workers to continue laying their bricks. True enough, West Germany backed off from the wall to stare after her as she disappeared into a sea of soldiers and police and tanks. As the jeeps rumbled from afar and the sound of voices rapidly growing in volume began to penetrate the air, she thought, Ah, there’s the crowd I was looking for.

The commotion came from the Brandenburg Gate. Of course, it did. The key border crossing point. She walked there, watched from a distance an entire line-up of fully armed East German infantrymen making a human chain to seal off movement. The West Germans on the other side were starting to swell - angrily, she noted - and she glimpsed West Germany at the heart of it all, arguing desperately with a non-responsive East German guard.

Briefly, she touched her chest. The tingling was no longer there, had not been there for quite some time now. It was strange, she thought, that she hadn’t felt a thing; not throughout the night, and nothing even now. She supposed Berlin wasn’t her heart. Königsberg and Friedrich must have both taken it for ransom. It made her smile a little, the first time that day.

The Politburo seemed grimmer than usual. She walked to Ulbricht, a frown on her face.

“I seem to recall you saying, ‘Nobody intends to build a wall’.”

“Circumstances change,” he said. “And it was about time, too.”

East Germany recalled her meeting about mass defections and brain drain and rebuilding the country. The depleting economy. The lack of skilled workers. The ache in her bones.

Joy unto this city bringing.

She nodded to Ulbricht. “It was about time.”