Existenzdruck
Title: Existenzdruck
Character(s): Germany, Italy, Japan
Rating: PG-13 for darkness, maybe?
Warnings: Stereotypes, existential melodrama, general incoherence and a very special flavor of nationalism.
Summary: So I did some Thinking about the general nature of nation-tans and sat down to write a humor fic. Then I did some More Thinking and wound up with this instead. Go figure.
It starts with a headache and keeps growing until it becomes something wholly unpleasant, so finally he goes to Kiku's place to ask for his help. Some sort of herbal remedy, perhaps, something he hasn't thought to try yet. That's what Kiku does, isn't it?
"It brings me great sorrow to hear of your discomfort," says Kiku, as he pours the tea. Incense fills the room, thin tendrils of sandalwood smoke drifting up, up, and out into indistinct pale clouds. "Do you remember when it first began?"
"No," Ludwig answers. He frowns at the scrolls on the wall, all flowing lines and simple brushstrokes and soft cascading waterfalls. "A while ago now, I'm sure, but I don't know when I first really noticed it." He blinks, shakes his head. "I only know it's getting worse."
"Most unfortunate." Kiku sits, or does his version of sitting, graceful in every movement. Flat, black eyes peer solemnly back at Ludwig. "Though it may be difficult to help if I do not know the cause. Have you been under a particularly undue amount of stress recently?"
"I'm always stressed," grumbles Ludwig, leaning heavily on the too-low table. "Nothing new about that. But something about this feels different. Like it's...like it's not entirely mine somehow."
"How can that be?" ponders Kiku, lifting his tea cup in both hands. Long, embroidered sleeves drape elegantly over delicate fingers. "All that happens to you is yours. You are the center of your own existence, are you not?"
Ludwig blinks again dully, trying to process the words. "I think so. What else would I be?" He picks up his own cup and feels the fragile porcelain warm his hand as he swirls the contents contemplatively, still frowning. "I must be imagining it. State of mind, that sort of thing."
"Precisely. Your unease, and the power to end it, are yours alone," says Kiku, soft as rustling silk. Smoke wafts around them both, twisting in swirling eddies when he inclines his head thoughtfully. "Unless you feel that something else is shaping you?"
Ludwig shrugs and looks away. "I am myself," he asserts, and drains his tea in a single gulp. Kiku nods and sips politely.
- - -
"You're probably just worrying too much," Feliciano says one day, sitting in the middle of the foyer. He comes over fairly often these days, so Ludwig doesn't mind it as much as he should when he removes his boot and pours its contents out over the freshly-swept floor. Feliciano regards the mess for a moment ("Haha, look at all that sand!") and glances up, grinning. "So what'd Kiku have to say? Oh, oh, did he try to poke needles into you to make you relax? He's always doing weird stuff like that, right?"
"No," says Ludwig, leaning on the stair banister, arms crossed. "He just gave me some tea and talked with me a while."
"See? Totally weird," Feliciano giggles, as he removes the other boot and repeats the process. "But seriously, you should relax! You even said things were getting better for you with all the new roads and dams and jobs and stuff, didn't you? And that's all good enough to make up for a little thing like a headache."
Ludwig grunts in the affirmative and drums his fingers against his own arm. "It's just...he said the strangest thing while I was there. About things shaping me. Things that I don't control."
"Gosh, that does sound like something he'd say," says Feliciano cheerily. He clambers to his feet, now brushing the dirt off his uniform with accomplished satisfaction. Ludwig watches his tile floor turn darker and tries to mold his own thoughts into something manageable.
"Do you ever," he begins, slowly, eyebrows knitted in concentration, "do you ever wonder what makes us us? The way we are, I mean. The way we act."
Feliciano appears to consider this, head tilting awkwardly to one side as his hands continue their brushing motions. "Noooo," he decides, "not really. We act like us 'cause we are us, don't we?" He looks back at Ludwig and laughs again, and his skin is clear and bright and still tinged a browner shade by a warmer southern sun. "And just now you kinda sounded like Kiku! That's so funny!" He smiles broadly and advances into the house, grabbing Ludwig's wrist as he passes the stairs on his way to the living room. "But come on, forget about all that weird mystic Asian stuff! I've got the best stories about Eritrea to tell you!"
He should have expected as much, Ludwig thinks to himself as he is led away. After all, Feliciano can hardly be counted on to take such things seriously.
- - -
And they are nice, he reminds himself, those roads and dams and jobs; they were what he wanted, what he needed to become himself again. He should be grateful for it, and he is.
But still he does not feel entirely at ease, and the searing, throbbing pain in his skull seems only to grow with each passing day, and he is left with the distinct impression that he has missed something rather important.
- - -
"Mirrors," says Feliciano, unprompted, as they walk the streets of Rome one evening. Ludwig looks up, startled out of his reverie.
"What was that?"
"Mirrors," Feliciano echoes, without turning his head. He is walking along the top of a low, narrow wall, arms held out to his sides for balance as he moves. "You asked me what makes us the way we are and I didn't say this, 'cause I forgot it, but now I remembered and it's mirrors."
Ludwig frowns and keeps walking. "Go on," he says, when Feliciano doesn't seem to take the hint on his own.
"Something Francis was telling me a while ago," Feliciano says, stepping carefully. "It's like, like everything is in the eye of the beholder, right? Only it's harder to see yourself 'cause your eyes are in your head, so you can't, uh, behold yourself with them like you could other people, you know?" His boot nudges a loose bit of stone and a few fragments of dusty concrete spill over the edge of the wall and onto the cobblestones below. "So Francis said that everyone is like a mirror to everyone else so we can know what we're like from the outside too. It's like, people watch you, and what they see is what they reflect back to you, so the longer you see that, the more it becomes a part of you. Or something."
Feliciano turns suddenly, pivoting on his heel to face Ludwig even as he walks backwards and fights for balance, and the setting sun is a red-orange halo behind him. "Crazy, huh?" he says, smiling enthusiastically. "So? Am I what you think of me?" He pauses and seems to ponder this himself briefly, and before Ludwig can answer, he mumbles, "Ohhhh wait, but that's silly, isn't it, of course I must be, or else you wouldn't think it about me and then it wouldn't get bounced back to me at all, would it?" Turning back around, he stops walking and leaps lightly down from the wall, landing in front of Ludwig. "So I guess Francis is wrong, huh?" he says, blinking.
"Do you think so?" says Ludwig, when the definite answer which he so badly wants does not come to him.
"Well, I haven't talked to him in a while, so maybe I forgot some stuff," Feliciano admits, scratching behind one ear. "Buuut that's mostly what he said, as far as I can remember, and it sounds kind of funny now that I think of it so he might have been drunk when he said it (Francis does drink all that wine all the time, y'know), and I don't know, but I don't feel like anything but myself, 'cause that's what I've always been, right, and I think, and I think..." This whole time, he has been looking around slowly at the empty streets around them as though seeking their input, and now he stops his survey and at last drops his hand, looking faintly confused for a beat or two. But then it is gone and he brightens up with a sharp, deep breath. "...And I think I'll have pasta for dinner," he says, smiling bemusedly.
"I'm sure you will," replies Ludwig, whose head has not yet ceased to ache.
They watch the sunset together. Nobody joins them, but then it's rare that they see a lot of people out on the streets at this hour these days.
- - -
He almost thinks he's figured it out, once or twice, pouring sternly through the books at his heavily-laden but carefully organized desk. There is something Buber writes that resonates somehow with him, but it slips away before he can figure out just why, and just what he is supposed to do with the Ich and the Es when he may be both and may be neither; but it doesn't matter because he probably shouldn't be reading Buber anyway.
Heidegger is only better politically. He can't quite get his head around it, Dasein, existence, the being in time. Ludwig thinks he's been around for some time, can even recall snatches of those older poems and writings from centuries long past if he tries hard enough, but it's all blurred somehow. It was easier to figure these things out before, part of him says, or then again maybe it wasn't. He wants to ask Gilbert about it, but he hasn't seen much of Gilbert lately for some reason.
- - -
"Huh? Oh, sure I still talk to my brother, all the time!" Feliciano says, and the wind muffles the surprise in his voice only a little. "Well, it's mostly him yelling at me about stuff, but it's pretty much always like that so we're used to it by now. Why?"
"No reason," sighs Ludwig. They are training, or they should be, but the weather is so nice today and the open green field so inviting that Feliciano keeps insisting on taking breaks and sitting, to which Ludwig grudgingly consents. He pulls up a few blades of grass and releases them, watching them flitter away in the afternoon breeze. Beside him, Feliciano is picking flowers. "My head still hurts," he adds, to nobody in particular.
"That's too bad," coos Feliciano, to the growing bouquet in his hands, pink on yellow on white. The petals stand out in stark contrast to the fabric of his uniform sleeves. Ludwig asked him, once, if it wasn't far too hot in that thing, but all Feliciano said then was something vague and airy about having liked the red ones better, so Ludwig doesn't bring it up anymore. "Have you tried just taking some time off and not worrying so much like I said?" he asks, tossing a bloom at Ludwig playfully.
"You know I don't have that much time to simply take off," says Ludwig curtly, flicking the offending plant away and straightening his uniform reflexively. "Besides, I don't think it would help. This doesn't seem to be something I can just think away."
Feliciano snickers. "So what, Arthur and Francis are coming over at night to hit you in the head?"
"No, that's not it, that's not what I meant," he says, squeezing his eyes shut and digging his fingers into clean, well-combed hair. It was easier to figure these things out before, and he was a philosopher, too, once, he's sure of it, so why why why can't he do the same now; when did it get so hard to just stop and think for a few seconds and...? He sighs again. "I mean that it's inside as well as out, but I don't know how to fix it because I'm not sure where I am between the two, or which side I'd have to start from. Does that make any sense?"
"Oh, I guess so," says Feliciano, unconcerned. "Maybe you should talk to Antonio about it. I bet he knows a lot more about that sort of thing."
"What sort of thing?" says Ludwig, frustrated. Feliciano just hums and starts to tear the flowers apart.
- - -
"It's something to do with the oath," Ludwig announces, the next time he visits Kiku. Kiku, for his part, hides any surprise at the unexpected declaration.
"I am afraid I do not follow you, friend," he says, head inclining apologetically. There is no tea today, so he folds his hands politely in front of him on the desk in lieu of something else to keep them occupied. Across from him, Ludwig straightens up in his chair.
"About those headaches I told you about. It's the oath, the military oath. It's what's been bothering me lately, or part of it, it must be. They changed it so long ago, reworded it, but I've only just started to really think about it and--"
"And what have you discovered?" prompts Kiku, all ears.
"It used to be to me," Ludwig insists. "I remember that much."
Kiku nods slowly, still not understanding. "As it should be," he says. "They must have loyalty to their nation, must they not?"
"Yes, that's exactly right," Ludwig trails off, looking sternly at the maps on the walls. His brow furrows suddenly, and he keeps his eyes on those meticulously drawn borders as he speaks. "So then why did they change it to be about him?"
Perplexed, Kiku leans back slightly and peers at Ludwig over steepled fingers. The cuffs of his sleeves are still beautifully made, but they do not flow or fold. "Because he is the one to whom you must have loyalty. Is that not how it goes?"
"Yes, but. What about the people?"
"What of them?" says Kiku, without passion. He shrugs elegantly. "You are far greater than they."
"I thought I was them, before. Or at least I think I thought that."
"You are the sum of all of them, and he the sum of all of you, and that is why you follow him," Kiku explains, as though it is perfectly natural. Which, to him, it is. "Why this should cause you distress I still cannot say."
"Nor I," says Ludwig, flatly, and there's no smoke in the room today, but his vision still does not feel clear. "Do you remember," he begins, glancing at Kiku again, "what you said to me before, about things shaping me?"
"I do."
The inkwell on Kiku's desk becomes suddenly infatuating to Ludwig, so he focuses on the polished black container which shines instead of black eyes which do not. "Do you think we do that to each other? That it comes from the outside as much as the inside?"
"Do you?"
Italy, can't you take anything seriously for once?
"No. Not really. People don't listen to each other enough for it to work that way."
From the corner of his eye, he sees Kiku nod again. "It is said that all things influence one another. I doubt, however, that even we have the power to affect such a thing single-handedly."
Thank God for you, Japan. I don't know what I'd do without your support sometimes. You're so focused.
"Right," says Ludwig, doggedly. "And besides, it's not as though we could entirely change each other just by thinking something. There has to be truth in it first."
"Indeed. A mirror cannot reflect that which is not there."
Ah, Germany! Germany, you're so scary when you're angry!
The corner of one of Kiku's papers is sticking out from the others. Ludwig leans forward and straightens it out, with more care than is strictly necessary.
"What about you?" he says at last, thickly. "Are you your people? Or your Emperor?"
"I, like you, am myself," says Kiku, soft as a half-drawn sword. "I am merely trying to determine which part."
"Ah," says Ludwig, still coordinating Kiku's desk (though he doesn't need to; it's so orderly already). In casting about for something to fix, he actually looks at the papers for the first time. "'Shanghai'," he reads. "You have plans, I see."
"I am considering possible courses of action. Does your head still hurt?"
"A little. But I'm sure it's only stress," he sighs. "It'll go away once I just have a little more room to think."
And for the moment, he believes it, and they move on to discuss more practical matters. But he still finds himself missing the tea, somehow.
- - -
Notes: There are several specific dates I could throw out here (and I'll happily babble about anything you may have found confusing more extensively if prompted), but let's settle for saying that this takes place at various points between 1936 and 1937, just when the future Axis powers were really starting to build up formal alliances and other things were happening in the world.
Buber and Heidegger were famous existentialist philosophers of the time period. Buber was Jewish. Heidegger was not.
The Reichswehreid is disturbing as all get-out.
I should probably not be allowed to write Italy again.
Fic journal update: Don't mind me, just posting everything here so I've got one point of reference for myself. Well. Almost everything. Ahem.
Character(s): Germany, Italy, Japan
Rating: PG-13 for darkness, maybe?
Warnings: Stereotypes, existential melodrama, general incoherence and a very special flavor of nationalism.
Summary: So I did some Thinking about the general nature of nation-tans and sat down to write a humor fic. Then I did some More Thinking and wound up with this instead. Go figure.
It starts with a headache and keeps growing until it becomes something wholly unpleasant, so finally he goes to Kiku's place to ask for his help. Some sort of herbal remedy, perhaps, something he hasn't thought to try yet. That's what Kiku does, isn't it?
"It brings me great sorrow to hear of your discomfort," says Kiku, as he pours the tea. Incense fills the room, thin tendrils of sandalwood smoke drifting up, up, and out into indistinct pale clouds. "Do you remember when it first began?"
"No," Ludwig answers. He frowns at the scrolls on the wall, all flowing lines and simple brushstrokes and soft cascading waterfalls. "A while ago now, I'm sure, but I don't know when I first really noticed it." He blinks, shakes his head. "I only know it's getting worse."
"Most unfortunate." Kiku sits, or does his version of sitting, graceful in every movement. Flat, black eyes peer solemnly back at Ludwig. "Though it may be difficult to help if I do not know the cause. Have you been under a particularly undue amount of stress recently?"
"I'm always stressed," grumbles Ludwig, leaning heavily on the too-low table. "Nothing new about that. But something about this feels different. Like it's...like it's not entirely mine somehow."
"How can that be?" ponders Kiku, lifting his tea cup in both hands. Long, embroidered sleeves drape elegantly over delicate fingers. "All that happens to you is yours. You are the center of your own existence, are you not?"
Ludwig blinks again dully, trying to process the words. "I think so. What else would I be?" He picks up his own cup and feels the fragile porcelain warm his hand as he swirls the contents contemplatively, still frowning. "I must be imagining it. State of mind, that sort of thing."
"Precisely. Your unease, and the power to end it, are yours alone," says Kiku, soft as rustling silk. Smoke wafts around them both, twisting in swirling eddies when he inclines his head thoughtfully. "Unless you feel that something else is shaping you?"
Ludwig shrugs and looks away. "I am myself," he asserts, and drains his tea in a single gulp. Kiku nods and sips politely.
- - -
"You're probably just worrying too much," Feliciano says one day, sitting in the middle of the foyer. He comes over fairly often these days, so Ludwig doesn't mind it as much as he should when he removes his boot and pours its contents out over the freshly-swept floor. Feliciano regards the mess for a moment ("Haha, look at all that sand!") and glances up, grinning. "So what'd Kiku have to say? Oh, oh, did he try to poke needles into you to make you relax? He's always doing weird stuff like that, right?"
"No," says Ludwig, leaning on the stair banister, arms crossed. "He just gave me some tea and talked with me a while."
"See? Totally weird," Feliciano giggles, as he removes the other boot and repeats the process. "But seriously, you should relax! You even said things were getting better for you with all the new roads and dams and jobs and stuff, didn't you? And that's all good enough to make up for a little thing like a headache."
Ludwig grunts in the affirmative and drums his fingers against his own arm. "It's just...he said the strangest thing while I was there. About things shaping me. Things that I don't control."
"Gosh, that does sound like something he'd say," says Feliciano cheerily. He clambers to his feet, now brushing the dirt off his uniform with accomplished satisfaction. Ludwig watches his tile floor turn darker and tries to mold his own thoughts into something manageable.
"Do you ever," he begins, slowly, eyebrows knitted in concentration, "do you ever wonder what makes us us? The way we are, I mean. The way we act."
Feliciano appears to consider this, head tilting awkwardly to one side as his hands continue their brushing motions. "Noooo," he decides, "not really. We act like us 'cause we are us, don't we?" He looks back at Ludwig and laughs again, and his skin is clear and bright and still tinged a browner shade by a warmer southern sun. "And just now you kinda sounded like Kiku! That's so funny!" He smiles broadly and advances into the house, grabbing Ludwig's wrist as he passes the stairs on his way to the living room. "But come on, forget about all that weird mystic Asian stuff! I've got the best stories about Eritrea to tell you!"
He should have expected as much, Ludwig thinks to himself as he is led away. After all, Feliciano can hardly be counted on to take such things seriously.
- - -
And they are nice, he reminds himself, those roads and dams and jobs; they were what he wanted, what he needed to become himself again. He should be grateful for it, and he is.
But still he does not feel entirely at ease, and the searing, throbbing pain in his skull seems only to grow with each passing day, and he is left with the distinct impression that he has missed something rather important.
- - -
"Mirrors," says Feliciano, unprompted, as they walk the streets of Rome one evening. Ludwig looks up, startled out of his reverie.
"What was that?"
"Mirrors," Feliciano echoes, without turning his head. He is walking along the top of a low, narrow wall, arms held out to his sides for balance as he moves. "You asked me what makes us the way we are and I didn't say this, 'cause I forgot it, but now I remembered and it's mirrors."
Ludwig frowns and keeps walking. "Go on," he says, when Feliciano doesn't seem to take the hint on his own.
"Something Francis was telling me a while ago," Feliciano says, stepping carefully. "It's like, like everything is in the eye of the beholder, right? Only it's harder to see yourself 'cause your eyes are in your head, so you can't, uh, behold yourself with them like you could other people, you know?" His boot nudges a loose bit of stone and a few fragments of dusty concrete spill over the edge of the wall and onto the cobblestones below. "So Francis said that everyone is like a mirror to everyone else so we can know what we're like from the outside too. It's like, people watch you, and what they see is what they reflect back to you, so the longer you see that, the more it becomes a part of you. Or something."
Feliciano turns suddenly, pivoting on his heel to face Ludwig even as he walks backwards and fights for balance, and the setting sun is a red-orange halo behind him. "Crazy, huh?" he says, smiling enthusiastically. "So? Am I what you think of me?" He pauses and seems to ponder this himself briefly, and before Ludwig can answer, he mumbles, "Ohhhh wait, but that's silly, isn't it, of course I must be, or else you wouldn't think it about me and then it wouldn't get bounced back to me at all, would it?" Turning back around, he stops walking and leaps lightly down from the wall, landing in front of Ludwig. "So I guess Francis is wrong, huh?" he says, blinking.
"Do you think so?" says Ludwig, when the definite answer which he so badly wants does not come to him.
"Well, I haven't talked to him in a while, so maybe I forgot some stuff," Feliciano admits, scratching behind one ear. "Buuut that's mostly what he said, as far as I can remember, and it sounds kind of funny now that I think of it so he might have been drunk when he said it (Francis does drink all that wine all the time, y'know), and I don't know, but I don't feel like anything but myself, 'cause that's what I've always been, right, and I think, and I think..." This whole time, he has been looking around slowly at the empty streets around them as though seeking their input, and now he stops his survey and at last drops his hand, looking faintly confused for a beat or two. But then it is gone and he brightens up with a sharp, deep breath. "...And I think I'll have pasta for dinner," he says, smiling bemusedly.
"I'm sure you will," replies Ludwig, whose head has not yet ceased to ache.
They watch the sunset together. Nobody joins them, but then it's rare that they see a lot of people out on the streets at this hour these days.
- - -
He almost thinks he's figured it out, once or twice, pouring sternly through the books at his heavily-laden but carefully organized desk. There is something Buber writes that resonates somehow with him, but it slips away before he can figure out just why, and just what he is supposed to do with the Ich and the Es when he may be both and may be neither; but it doesn't matter because he probably shouldn't be reading Buber anyway.
Heidegger is only better politically. He can't quite get his head around it, Dasein, existence, the being in time. Ludwig thinks he's been around for some time, can even recall snatches of those older poems and writings from centuries long past if he tries hard enough, but it's all blurred somehow. It was easier to figure these things out before, part of him says, or then again maybe it wasn't. He wants to ask Gilbert about it, but he hasn't seen much of Gilbert lately for some reason.
- - -
"Huh? Oh, sure I still talk to my brother, all the time!" Feliciano says, and the wind muffles the surprise in his voice only a little. "Well, it's mostly him yelling at me about stuff, but it's pretty much always like that so we're used to it by now. Why?"
"No reason," sighs Ludwig. They are training, or they should be, but the weather is so nice today and the open green field so inviting that Feliciano keeps insisting on taking breaks and sitting, to which Ludwig grudgingly consents. He pulls up a few blades of grass and releases them, watching them flitter away in the afternoon breeze. Beside him, Feliciano is picking flowers. "My head still hurts," he adds, to nobody in particular.
"That's too bad," coos Feliciano, to the growing bouquet in his hands, pink on yellow on white. The petals stand out in stark contrast to the fabric of his uniform sleeves. Ludwig asked him, once, if it wasn't far too hot in that thing, but all Feliciano said then was something vague and airy about having liked the red ones better, so Ludwig doesn't bring it up anymore. "Have you tried just taking some time off and not worrying so much like I said?" he asks, tossing a bloom at Ludwig playfully.
"You know I don't have that much time to simply take off," says Ludwig curtly, flicking the offending plant away and straightening his uniform reflexively. "Besides, I don't think it would help. This doesn't seem to be something I can just think away."
Feliciano snickers. "So what, Arthur and Francis are coming over at night to hit you in the head?"
"No, that's not it, that's not what I meant," he says, squeezing his eyes shut and digging his fingers into clean, well-combed hair. It was easier to figure these things out before, and he was a philosopher, too, once, he's sure of it, so why why why can't he do the same now; when did it get so hard to just stop and think for a few seconds and...? He sighs again. "I mean that it's inside as well as out, but I don't know how to fix it because I'm not sure where I am between the two, or which side I'd have to start from. Does that make any sense?"
"Oh, I guess so," says Feliciano, unconcerned. "Maybe you should talk to Antonio about it. I bet he knows a lot more about that sort of thing."
"What sort of thing?" says Ludwig, frustrated. Feliciano just hums and starts to tear the flowers apart.
- - -
"It's something to do with the oath," Ludwig announces, the next time he visits Kiku. Kiku, for his part, hides any surprise at the unexpected declaration.
"I am afraid I do not follow you, friend," he says, head inclining apologetically. There is no tea today, so he folds his hands politely in front of him on the desk in lieu of something else to keep them occupied. Across from him, Ludwig straightens up in his chair.
"About those headaches I told you about. It's the oath, the military oath. It's what's been bothering me lately, or part of it, it must be. They changed it so long ago, reworded it, but I've only just started to really think about it and--"
"And what have you discovered?" prompts Kiku, all ears.
"It used to be to me," Ludwig insists. "I remember that much."
Kiku nods slowly, still not understanding. "As it should be," he says. "They must have loyalty to their nation, must they not?"
"Yes, that's exactly right," Ludwig trails off, looking sternly at the maps on the walls. His brow furrows suddenly, and he keeps his eyes on those meticulously drawn borders as he speaks. "So then why did they change it to be about him?"
Perplexed, Kiku leans back slightly and peers at Ludwig over steepled fingers. The cuffs of his sleeves are still beautifully made, but they do not flow or fold. "Because he is the one to whom you must have loyalty. Is that not how it goes?"
"Yes, but. What about the people?"
"What of them?" says Kiku, without passion. He shrugs elegantly. "You are far greater than they."
"I thought I was them, before. Or at least I think I thought that."
"You are the sum of all of them, and he the sum of all of you, and that is why you follow him," Kiku explains, as though it is perfectly natural. Which, to him, it is. "Why this should cause you distress I still cannot say."
"Nor I," says Ludwig, flatly, and there's no smoke in the room today, but his vision still does not feel clear. "Do you remember," he begins, glancing at Kiku again, "what you said to me before, about things shaping me?"
"I do."
The inkwell on Kiku's desk becomes suddenly infatuating to Ludwig, so he focuses on the polished black container which shines instead of black eyes which do not. "Do you think we do that to each other? That it comes from the outside as much as the inside?"
"Do you?"
Italy, can't you take anything seriously for once?
"No. Not really. People don't listen to each other enough for it to work that way."
From the corner of his eye, he sees Kiku nod again. "It is said that all things influence one another. I doubt, however, that even we have the power to affect such a thing single-handedly."
Thank God for you, Japan. I don't know what I'd do without your support sometimes. You're so focused.
"Right," says Ludwig, doggedly. "And besides, it's not as though we could entirely change each other just by thinking something. There has to be truth in it first."
"Indeed. A mirror cannot reflect that which is not there."
Ah, Germany! Germany, you're so scary when you're angry!
The corner of one of Kiku's papers is sticking out from the others. Ludwig leans forward and straightens it out, with more care than is strictly necessary.
"What about you?" he says at last, thickly. "Are you your people? Or your Emperor?"
"I, like you, am myself," says Kiku, soft as a half-drawn sword. "I am merely trying to determine which part."
"Ah," says Ludwig, still coordinating Kiku's desk (though he doesn't need to; it's so orderly already). In casting about for something to fix, he actually looks at the papers for the first time. "'Shanghai'," he reads. "You have plans, I see."
"I am considering possible courses of action. Does your head still hurt?"
"A little. But I'm sure it's only stress," he sighs. "It'll go away once I just have a little more room to think."
And for the moment, he believes it, and they move on to discuss more practical matters. But he still finds himself missing the tea, somehow.
- - -
Notes: There are several specific dates I could throw out here (and I'll happily babble about anything you may have found confusing more extensively if prompted), but let's settle for saying that this takes place at various points between 1936 and 1937, just when the future Axis powers were really starting to build up formal alliances and other things were happening in the world.
Buber and Heidegger were famous existentialist philosophers of the time period. Buber was Jewish. Heidegger was not.
The Reichswehreid is disturbing as all get-out.
I should probably not be allowed to write Italy again.
Fic journal update: Don't mind me, just posting everything here so I've got one point of reference for myself. Well. Almost everything. Ahem.