Simple Division
Title: Simple Division
Character(s): Prussia and Germany; bits of Russia and Hungary here and there
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language, length, geeky German culture references and the Weimar Republic which probably warrants some kind of warning in general.
Summary: A long long LONG overdue gift for madelineusher, the prompt being two crazy brothers and cultural divergence of the East-West variety. I went a little overboard with it.
Ahahahaha there are a lot of references in this. Uh. Sorry. Here's a couple of 'em.
The Fate of the Animals, Franz Marc, 1913
November 1923
Bertolt Brecht; emphasis on Mahagonny
Degeneracy
Hamletmachine
Other stuff follows general trends and headcanon ramblings, mostly and ohgod Aisu I hope you like this because I don't even know anymore ffff
Well, that was a bit of a let-down, now wasn't it?
Prussia traces work-weary fingers over the newest scar, just under his chin, and takes another contemplative drag of his cigarette. The taste somehow isn't the same in a house as in a trench, or maybe that's just the other chemicals in the air he's missing now. Well, alright, not missing. Definitely not. Still, it tastes even less like victory this way.
"So Kaiser Wilhelm can go fuck himself," he concludes, aloud, "Because that one was definitely not over with by Christmas."
"He has long since abdicated," Germany reminds him, or rather Germany's voice does because its owner still hasn't come back from whatever he's up to in the other room. Prussia hears rustling, the scrape of moving furniture, and the odd muffled grunt whenever Germany no doubt does something to pull his back again. Idiot.
He sighs or maybe hisses. "That's not the point," says Prussia to the living room lights. Sprawled as he is backwards over the couch, head on the cushions and feet dangling off the back edge, he can almost imagine himself walking on the ceiling. Closest he's getting to the sky for a while, anyway. "The point is that was a fucking disaster and he should have listened to Bismarck. Listening to Bismarck worked just fine for his old man's old man, didn't it? No sense fixing something that's not broken, I say. Also have you ever noticed that crack up there by the door frame? Someone should fix that, it's ugly."
"I'll see what I can do later," Germany says, louder now as he makes his way down the corridor (not that one, not the Polish corri--ah, fuck it, and Prussia's arm starts aching again: phantom pains). He's moving slowly, even more than stiff joints should account for, thanks to the thing he's struggling to drag into the room. Prussia tries to tilt his head to see better and shivers when he feels something pop.
"Painting?"
Upside down, Germany's scowl still does not in the slightest resemble a smile. He props the canvas against the wall and steps back to afford them both a proper view. "Franz Marc. You remember him? He painted a lot of animals."
Prussia concentrate and taps his cigarette against the rim of the ashtray balanced precariously on the couch arm. "Oh, yeah, him. Horses and whatnot." He squints at the artwork. It is, in Prussia's highly refined estimation, kind of screwed up. "Can't remember, did he usually paint them dying like that?"
"No." Germany's back, turned to Prussia, shifts from one shade of tension into another. "This is from 1913, Prussia," he says, and there is a touch of wonder in it. "Right on the verge of...does that strike you as unusual?"
"Pretty sure that one would strike me as unusual any damn time he painted it," Prussia snorts. "And anyway why're you asking me, you've at least got the time off now to go pester him yours--" Amazing, how the line of Germany's shoulder blades tells him exactly when to stop.
"I can't now," Germany says, entirely devoid of wonder. "Marc is one of those who did not return."
Ah. Prussia puts out his cigarette. "Country comes first," he offers, but the angle is all wrong for an accompanying shrug.
Germany shakes his head. "It shouldn't have happened this way," he says, and Prussia has to strain a little to hear it. "And now everything is quieting down again, but that just means I can count everyone who isn't here anymore more easily." He gestures at the painting, plainly annoyed. "And I can't even ask them about these things they left because..."
"'Cause an artist in soldier's clothes is still just a soldier to the other guy," Prussia cuts in. "Sorry, but that's how it works, you know?"
Germany ignores him, still facing the canvas. "The colors are all wrong. Deer aren't blue," he decides, frowning at the beast in the painting's center, impaled at the throat by a spear of nameless energy. "Deer aren't blue and horses aren't green."
"Saw a horse fall over in the city today," Prussia offers. He stretches and flexes his neck, yawns at the ceiling. "One of those carriage-pulling ones, you know?"
"Exhaustion," Germany does not ask. Germany does not need to ask.
Prussia nods and fancies he can hear the blood sloshing around at the top of his skull. "Mmhm, right there on the pavement, smack," and he strikes one hand against the other in fleshy imitation. "Don't gotta worry about cleanup, though, some people took care of that pretty quickly. Uh. Really quickly." He scratches at his nose thoughtfully. "Actually I'm not totally sure the thing was dead yet before they started in on it. But everyone's gotta eat, right?" he adds, in response to Germany's stifled groan. "These things happen." He's about to add something else when a knock sounds at the door, rapping and insistent. "Oh, that'll be France, won't it."
"Of course it will," says Germany through gritted teeth. He lurches out for the front hallway, leaving Prussia alone in the living room to contemplate the fate of the animals. Prussia wonders if the shapes make all that much more sense right-side up.
---
November of 1923 only started a few days ago, but somehow it's already starting to feel cold around here. Prussia makes a point of pulling on his coat before leaving work, even stops at Germany's office down the hall to insist he do the same before they step outside together. Catching a chill would be a drop in the bucket at this point, but habit dictates that he show concern and that Germany listen to it. Besides, they've only got about enough money at home left to light a week's worth of fires in the evening, so there's no sense in letting the cold get its foot in the door already.
He's glad Germany follows the advice. Germany seems to be having some trouble with listening lately.
"Just think of something else," Prussia counsels when the decidedly non-classical music floating down to them from an apartment building's open window makes Germany grimace at his side. Not the wrong notes, exactly, but certainly the wrong arrangements. Austria would have something nasty to say about it, if Prussia gave a damn about what Austria had to say about anything. Which he doesn't, so never mind. Prussia's just saying he'd like to know how shit like this keeps getting under Germany's skin when there's plenty of other stuff to get all twitchy about. Hell, not like anyone's forcing him to go to concerts or anything.
Meanwhile Germany's still making a nails on the blackboard face, like someone shoved a trumpet right up next to his ear and went at it just to push him over the edge. He tries to shake it off, says something wishy-washy about thinking someone's trying to tell him something with that racket. Prussia doesn't get why he hasn't covered his ears yet.
"They might try asking with a nicer tune, then. But stop worrying about it for five seconds and focus, would you?" He shoves out with his shoulder. Germany half-stumbles. "Got more important things to see to than music." Like getting food on the table, first off. He wants to keep going in that vein, about priorities and statehood and yes, being a republic is still rotten work even if you're not quite as young and stupid as you used to be...but then something else--something else hits Germany and he stops like he just took a slug to the jaw, then slowly and magnificently trips over his own feet into the alley to lean on the closest wall he can find. Prussia trots around the corner after him and narrowly avoids getting his coat soiled.
Germany's vomit is not half as colorful as his paintings; a reflection of diet, Prussia supposes. He cranes over to pat his back ineffectually where he's doubled over face-to-face with the brick, feels raw muscle twitch and spasm under Germany's shirt. "Alright there? Watch out for your shoes, you won't get another good pair like that for a while." Not on his salary, anyway. Hell, maybe not on anyone's.
"It's--" Germany coughs and spits, fighting back dry heaves. "Munich. Something's happening in Munich." He presses his forehead to the wall, eyes squeezed tightly shut in concentration. "Something not about music." And he's away from the wall and going from a limp to a run fast enough that Prussia hardly has any time to feel pleased at the industriousness of it.
By the time they get there the putsch has already mostly fizzled out apart from a few loose ends (very loose, the bastards must be crazy trying to start shit in a beer hall and now there's something about a bloody flag but who cares, people've been shot for plenty of less stupid ideas so what's so special about their blood, huh, right-wingers bleed just the same as anyone else), but Germany sticks around to speak with the cops, gets all his facts straight and waits for the call they both know will be coming from Hindenburg any minute now. When it does it's Prussia who grabs the phone, and so Germany stands back with his hands in his pockets and his face only slightly green while some fucking clarinet player in one of the buildings hits another deliberately sour note.
---
Prussia fumbles searchingly in his front pocket, cigarette wobbling between his teeth as they walk from the theatre. "So anyway," he says, waving the match pointedly, "I think the point is supposed to be that you don't forget what you're watching is a play." His steps briefly weave more erratically while he lights the smoke, almost but not quite sending him reeling into Germany's shoulder. The matchstick, burnt out, lands in the yawning grey gutter where he tosses it. "No escape, no immersion, sorta thing. Can't lose yourself in the moment 'cause of the message."
"I do not wish to escape into that world," says Germany, firmly. He sounds ill again tonight. "Nor lose myself in it. Prussia, whatever happened to good music?"
It is 1931 and they have just finished watching a city rise and fall. Well, no, they have watched a play about a city's rise and fall, a play on a stage performed by actors-not-characters. Brecht's script, Weill's music. Mahagonny. Odd name, Prussia thinks. Can hardly expect a city to stick around long with a name like that, even a fake one. Gotta have a name with character, you wanna last in this place. "Still not a fan of dissonance, I take it," he says.
"No." They are walking nearly side by side; Prussia in idle zigzags and Germany in a steady, straight line. Prussia likes the way Germany walks. Prussia's pretty sure he taught him that. "There was something wrong with that, maybe even more than the others they did before. There's something wrong with all of it." Germany draws his collar up higher. "It's not just the music, either. The words sound wrong too, now."
"Not 'thou shalt not' but 'you may'," Prussia recalls. "Scary fucking thought, all that freedom. Lotte's got a decent voice, though. Matches her legs." Their shadows, backed by street lamps, stretch and intertwine before them. Prussia slows, falls back, jumps ahead again to watch them change order on the pavement. Who's haunting who, then, eh?
Germany shakes his head, frustrated. Frustrating, he was getting better there for a while; new currency and everything, but now it's all going to hell all over again. Someone should have another talk with Hindenburg, see what's up with that. "I know they're not happy, I know that already. But I can't fix it with them carrying on like this, all they're doing is making it worse. And it's--" He grasps helplessly at the air, trying to force thought into tangible form. "It's all too sharp now, Prussia, all points and corners, and I miss curves."
"Been to Berlin lately? Something with curves on every corner there these days."
Would you believe it, the poor kid winces. "God, Prussia."
A laugh, perhaps a little reedier than usual. "Everyone's gotta eat, yeah?"
Germany doesn't answer. Prussia supposes he may have gone too far with that one, then wonders why it doesn't hurt him as much as it probably should. They are walking nearly side by side; now one in front, now the other, on streets at once too bright and starved of color. It doesn't matter who's first if home is still the same place for both of them, does it?
"Dissonance is not beautiful," Germany decides. And he sounds convinced enough so Prussia nods, but the tune stays in his head long after they reach the house and Germany holds the door open to let them both in.
---
Adolf Ziegler, as Prussia deduces in the summer of 1937, is probably not such a fan of dissonance either, or however you'd translate that to something on a canvas. Damned if he knows, there are folks all over the place now who'd know better, it seems, and the head of the Reich Chamber of Visual Arts must surely be one of them. He doesn't ask, though; Ziegler'd probably find some way to take offense at it. Touchy little creatures, those artists.
It's a hell of an exhibition, he'll give them that, and as he wanders cramped rooms to look at the nasty things they've dredged up from other museums he thinks they'll have no trouble at all getting exactly what they want out of this. Nothing beats a little show and tell if you want 'em to know exactly what you don't want to see from here out. Wrong works wrong style wrong presentation, but boy is the reaction priceless. God, look at that sculpture. Mongoloid. Where the hell do they find this stuff? No, this style is nothing suitable for Germany. Now it's the old stuff they're trying to bring back, all those statues with the even features and the parts that stay faithful to detail, if not to scale. Prussia sidesteps another (rightly!) unnerved onlooker and remarks, turning to Ziegler at his left, "Those slogans on the walls are an especially nice touch. All yours?"
"All truth."
"Uh-huh."
He reaches out towards a painting hanging crooked and unframed from ratty twine, holds back for a second, then decides that no, he's probably encouraged to put his hands all over these ones however grubby they might be, so he presses his palm right onto someone else's work because it's there and in the way. Of course Germany didn't paint these, Prussia silently agrees, not even the ones from the artists stealing all his surnames. He couldn't have. Germany has a much better sense of proportion, for one.
But then, well. Prussia doesn't paint. So where did all this come from?
Degeneracy is a sneaky thing, Prussia guesses.
---
"Whatcha reading?"
"Nothing."
"I don't mean like right now, idiot, I meant, you know, in general. You're always two chapters deep into something or other."
"I know what you meant. The answer is still nothing."
"Oh. What are you writing, then?"
"Directives."
Oh.
---
Russia only runs away from you fast enough when he's running in the wrong direction. He's a contrary son of a bitch like that.
It started way back east with an honest-to-God chase and ended in something a little more embarrassing than that, just as soon as Prussia hauled himself out from under the last of his own buildings he got thrown into and grabbed the closest thing he could get a grip on. Which happened to be Russia's ankle, which happened not to be much of a hindrance to the rest of Russia, which is why Prussia's uniform is slowly wearing down to tatters as he hitches a ride through what still looks like Berlin in a couple of areas if you turn your head and squint.
He wishes he had a sword right now. Even if he couldn't lift it enough to swing it anymore, it'd still mean that he had a sword and Russia didn't, and that thought's a lot more comforting than the gravel and broken glass grinding into his skin the further he drags along the concrete.
That's Prussia's blood there, isn't it.
Seriously, even a dagger over here.
"Really, Prussia," Russia sighs, looking down at the weight latched to his leg. It's a mere scolding, tired motherly fretting where white-foaming vengeance should be, and his exasperation isn't even enough to slow his stride. "Are we not done with this foolishness yet? Civilized people simply don't do such things." He stops at the angry buzzing that threatens to drown his voice suddenly and looks around and above them, at the swarm of aircraft overhead on the way to a horizon Prussia hoped he would never see from this position. "Ah, bombers!" Russia says, like greeting an old friend. "England and America said they would like to visit Dresden." The plane drone grows louder. Russia shields his eyes against the sun to watch, smiling. "There are so many wonderful museums in Dresden. Will you miss them, I wonder?"
Prussia, in response, sinks his teeth into Russia's left calf through as much bootleather as his teeth can mangle. Russia's pipe upside his head isn't so civilized either.
---
Ow ow fucking damn it ow, thinks Prussia with almost comforting lucidity, as he tries to straighten his knee. Almost but not exactly, because now that he can feel again he can't seem to stop, which does not help matters in the slightest considering the task at hand. Every nerve, every tendon, every inch flares up in pricking agony, so he grits his teeth and moves faster to get it all over with in one go. The knee locks with a strange, organic crunch he nonetheless takes as a victory. For the time being he lies sprawled on his back in the dirt and gasps for breath, trying to remember how thinking is supposed to work.
What time is it? What year is it? He...he remembers voices, more than Russia's alone, and conversation that came out all buzzing to him from inside the haze. And then there was louder talk, and the kind of silence that presses down on your ribs until you think you can feel your lungs squeezing out between the slats, and pens scratching--sick. That's what he remembers, nausea. His stomach's still rolling from it now, or maybe that's a new wave altogether coming on. Hard to tell without a working sense of time. He'll have to fix that first.
It was a hell of a lot more of a let-down this time, wasn't it? Not even Bismarck would have something clever to say to that, probably.
The cigar smoke, heavy, cloying, is the first thing Prussia smells. It is also the first thing he sees when he at last cracks his eyes open: blue-grey choking tendrils on a sky today not choked by planes. Prussia tilts his head, weary, and blinks against sunlight and the reflection off round glasses lenses he well recognizes. "Oh moon of Alabama," he recites, dry-mouthed.
"We now must say goodbye," concludes Brecht. "Hello, other Germany."
"Picking sides now, then, are we," Prussia mumbles, and Brecht nods to a rhythm all his own, naturally, naturally. God, everything aches. "And you've picked mine?"
Brecht shrugs. "I thought perhaps you would be the better listener," he says, lifting the cigar to tap away the ashes. He is considerate enough to avoid letting them land on Prussia's person. "This was not the case as I had hoped during my time in America, and I am afraid your other half puzzles me still." Thoughtfully, he takes another drag. "And I was told I might have my own theater if I came to you, truthfully."
Prussia remembers discord, scattered shadows and not losing himself, and nods. "You can have a whole damned company, if you like."
Smiling, Brecht offers a hand down to him and says, "Then I am yours."
"Neat," says East Germany, taking it. "Don't think I've ever had one of you before."
---
--You know, with the radio on and soft music crackling all peaceful-like, it's almost a little hard to remember how many of the houses in this neighborhood still need patching. But he's warm and, er, secure and sure as hell not in the mood to start anything right now, least of all while he's entertaining company. And he does hope he's entertaining, dear God, there's funding to be discussed.
East Germany reads now, by the way. East Germany reads a hell of a lot in the privacy of his own living room, usually with a big black marker twirling in his free hand while he checks the passages for unfortunate printing errors he'll have to be sure to make before things get to the publisher's. Like this one, for instance--can't have that going into the new history books, people might get the wrong ideas. Or this here--my, that's a lovely poem, but you can find something nicer to say about the State that rhymes there, too. Or you could just not say anything at all. That's the beauty of choice, right?
An especially poorly thought-out novella makes him pause, the marker cap rolling and acquiring new dents between his teeth. It's got a few of the red-flag (ha) words and phrases cluttering the narrative up, but there's something else that--hm. "Do you ever, uh." He holds his place with one finger and glances up at Russia, curled expansively in the chair opposite the couch with a small stockpile of books of his own to flip through. Russia doesn't have a marker; he's moved straight on to scissors. "You know, ever read any of them?"
"Some," Russia answers, calmly, tearing a section of pages away from a spine. "Though I think I like it best when they tell me about their stories in person. Such funny little things, my writers. If only they thought to look after themselves better."
If only. "There's a lot of alliteration in this one," East says when he finds his place again, but he'll be damned if he knows why he says it.
"This, in itself, is not objectionable." The scissors flash merrily in the light while shards of paper flutter like snow. Russia stops, pulls away to unfurl the chain of paper dolls he has cut out of East's regrettable subversive tendencies, accordion-style. "Look, Baltics!"
East stares blearily at the tiny figures with their snipped-out smiles. "Shouldn't Latvia be in the middle?" he asks, squinting at what features he can make out. "Like on the maps?"
Russia sets the dolls aside, smiles curiously. "Does this really matter anymore, East?"
"...No."
Russia stands, stretches, and takes a luxurious round of the room to wind up behind the couch, chin settling in East's hair when he leans down to read along. His lips are moving; East can hear the barest whispers above his field of vision. "You've missed an allegory there," Russia says, pointing helpfully with the scissor blades still in his hand. "Quite a clever one, actually." He tangles the other hand's fingers in the ends of the red, red scarf pulled snug around East's throat and sighs wistfully. "So many bright minds one can see in these things. That says quite a lot about you. The whole passage, I should think."
East dutifully blots it out. It doesn't hurt.
"You see?" Russia beams when East tells him this. "And they'll understand. There are much nicer allegories they can use." He is accommodating enough to twist his own head to an awkward angle so that East's neck doesn't ache when Russia pulls him into the kiss. A quick one, congratulatory.
Auferstanden aus Ruinen comes on the radio again. Russia is sure to reach over and turn down the volume dial before the lines about unity and brotherhood can come up. East has such a very pretty anthem, Russia is remarking now, while East picks up the next submission and resumes twirling his marker. A lovely tune all on its own really, such pretty sounds, and wouldn't it be easier to enjoy them without letting all those lyrics distract from the heart of it? East Germany agrees that it is excellent music and bites down another notch on the cap in his mouth.
--Ooh, this one's full of symbolism. It. It's too bad they're all the wrong symbols.
---
He's not on the job anymore but he still hasn't taken the uniform off for precisely three reasons. One: it looks cool. Two: It's cold out and he can't find a sweater. Three: there is a fucking piano blocking the fireplace. East sits on the floor and watches it between his fingers over his face while the phone dangles limply from the other hand. It refuses to move. The piano, that is, the phone does whatever East wants it to do, when he wants it. East Germany likes the phone. East Germany likes other people's phones. Nobody in East Germany's home has a phone which does not belong to him, eventually.
The piano's still there.
He dials.
Ring ring ring. Ha ha ha.
"Austria? East here. Listen, so I got this piano."
For a second Austria forgets and calls him by the old name. Silly, silly Austria.
East staggers to his feet, paces around the room while trying not to stumble over the phone cord while the receiver jerks after him. "I dunno, found it? Confiscated it probably, I can't remember, but it's in my living room and I'm not actually sure how but I figured you'd have some idea of what to do with it next." He scratches his head, then remembers he's doing it with the hand holding the phone. "Hm? Oh, you know, one of those big ones." He tilts his head down, down, down to read, keeps it there at a funny angle. "Says Bösendorfer on it here. Yuh-huh. No, I haven't started smashing anything, calm down. No, shut up, don't tell me where they made it, I don't want to know that."
He'd forgotten how much Austria talked, shit. East straightens and pops his neck. "Yes I'm sure, I'm looking right at it. I think I might name it Roswitha. Of course it is, idiot. Who asked you, anyway? What? Well no shit I am, I'm talking to you!" He runs a gloved hand over Roswitha's side and assures her that no, it's a very pretty name and Austria just doesn't understand, Austria's a dirty goddamn capitalist is what he is and ooh, there's a piano stool too. East sits on it: heheh, it's one of those rolly ones. "Well I don't know, I'm not the one who left it here, now am I?" He stares at the keys. "So what happens now?" (Whoa, there's a bug on the ceiling.) "Uh-huh?" East settles the phone in the crook of his shoulder and holds extremely steady hands aloft over the keys, searching. "This many from the left, gotcha, three keys down from there..." He presses down experimentally and nearly jumps at the sound. "Ha! You hear that?" He laughs again, a startled bark. So that's a chord, huh? Nifty.
Austria's saying something else now. East can't really hear him all that well, but that's okay since it's not like he ever cared what Austria had to say any of the other times, right?
Ha.
He's called him by the wrong name again.
Ha ha.
"Hey, Austria, you sucked at fighting, right?" East twists back and forth on the stool, squeak squeak. "That must suck to suck at what you were born to not suck at. I didn't suck at fighting, not at all. But you sort of figured something out in a really sissy way, I guess. When did they invent pianos, do you know that? Because it's not the sort of date I would have written down and anyway they're all gone now. The things I wrote down, I mean. My archives got all scattered, remember, because we were afraid they'd get bombed so we shipped things in all different directions and then I think some of it got lost, and my own journals were there too and some of them were really good, I mean, I could have been a writer too probably if I'd had the time it just didn't ever work that way but--what? Oh! Oh. Yeah. Ok! " The chord sounds again, booming, when he slams his fingers down in the same places. East feels the tingle run down his spine and snickers into the phone. "Haha, yeah, lots better. You know nobody can know about this," he grins, walking the index and middle finger of his left hand down the keys like a spider. "I think I'll just leave the piano here. Or maybe I'll take it down to the basement! Then it can be like that book with the phantom, but I think that was France's book and opera's not mine anyway now is it ahahaha."
He pushes sharply back from Roswitha, spins around on the rotating stool while the cord tangles around his legs and the phone gets yanked across the floor toward him. "What's that? Nah, I don't want you to send any of your stupid music, I'll write my own. God you're dumb. So what's a good time signature? Right, four-four, yeah, good beginner's foundations. So listen, I think I'll start with something with sevens in it." (Like no, a huge bug and it's crawling right...over...his...head...) "Huh?" East shakes his head violently. "What? What? Hungary? No, that's stupid, why would you want me to go get her, she doesn't even play the--POLAND! That's who I should talk to! Poland knows all about pianos." And he doesn't so much hang up as throw the mouthpiece across the room, but by the time he's tried to stand and tripped all over tangled wire the line gets disconnected anyway.
---
"Russia, this is bullshit."
"Hm? But you like realism, East! Look, I have painted every flower just as it truly is! Surely--"
"Not that, this. The paint-mixing, it's bullshit! You can't make red."
"Can't I?"
"...'S a primary color."
"Oh yes, that. I shall have to find more, then. Mm, how funny that I once doubted there could be only seven colors! But now I am much smarter and know that there is just the one. Well, two, if we consider yellow."
"Do you?"
"Oh, always."
"You're dripping paint on yourself. Oughta wear clothes you don't mind getting dirty next time, beat up jeans or something."
"I beg your pardon, I do not wear jeans. You are thinking too far west again, little one."
"Of course."
---
Before the years turn to decades and start bleeding into one another too badly, he's switched cigarette brands as many times as the glorious market will allow him (which is to say sometimes he scribbles new pictures on old cartons to keep himself busy), but every pack still tastes and smells the same to East, still has the same friendly feel hefted in his mostly-steady hand. And he's fine with that, long as the packaging still crackles the same way breaking into a new one. Some things you need to count on, day in and day out. That's what security's all about, isn't it?
They're clever little bastards, most of them. Sometimes they sneak things into their works he has to look over twice before he notices something off, just the tiniest bit of wordplay here or there that might mean something else if you read it from the corner of your eye. Some of them aren't so subtle. Some of them have downright sick senses of humor, and he can't quite help but smile a little at that.
Occasionally he'll stop in on his own to visit before the censors get around to fixing things, since after all it's only sporting to look a person in the eye when you're about to tear him down, or maybe that's just a sentimental way of seeing it. Most of them hesitate to let him in when he knocks because of the uniform. Some of them see it and raise an eyebrow and invite him in out of sheer twisted principle. (This one time he fell into Christa Wolf's living room out of her vents and he wasn't wearing it but she recognized him anyway and even gave him a bit of licorice before she booted him out. That was kinda special.)
So he shuts the door after himself and they read little snatches aloud but not too loudly to him while he rifles through their kitchens, and if it's someone he decides he likes this is usually where he says, "Nah, hell with that, there's no fucking way you're getting away with that in a museum." No way you're getting it on the radio, on the television, not even on a fucking billboard, no sirree. They're watching too closely for that, and they're waiting for you to slip up so they can take you down because these are the real dangers all that military training's going towards even if the guys up top aren't wise to that yet. Anyway it's not like he can turn a blind eye forever.
...Though there is the smallest chance he's not watching the theater people quite so closely. Just maybe. He's a busy guy, after all.
He used to like fields, open horizons, land as far as the eye could see begging for the taking. He often wonders just when he grew so very fond of his dark little corners.
Which is why, very very occasionally, this is also where East looks around and pulls the curtains shut, props his feet up on the table and says, hands steepled, "So here's where you might get away with it."
---
If anyone asks, everything is as it should be. Everything is organized, efficient, smoothly running as a machine does, as progress undauntedly marches toward tomorrow. Straight, even lines; clockwork. But East Berlin's streets are jagged concrete and twisted steel, bent into and over each other and themselves in idle madness, and even the lights shatter when they trample through the puddles where the pavement dips. His buildings rise in stifling functional stacks to bounce their own voices back to them, amplified, breathless with laughter and just plain breathless.
Hungary gasps and stumbles. East tugs harder on her wrist and doesn't, keeps running.
They hit the wall in unison, two slaps of clothing on stone, but only he cranes his neck to see around the corner and keep a lookout. She's slipping, that girl. What if this were a battlefield, huh?
"East," she says, with that particular emphasis she always puts on the word that she knows he hates, "If you don't stop screwing around I'm going to deck you." He shushes her and fumbles for his key, opens the door just the barest fraction it takes for them to slip in one after the other. Quietly, so quietly; these are the dead hours of the morning which belong only to the depraved and the police, so really it's only half a transgression if you think about it. East fumbles in the dark for the light switch, misses, then settles for a table lamp instead, and they collapse side by side on the couch without so much as bothering to remove their shoes first. He'll vacuum in the morning, hell with it. He tells Hungary that much but she just rolls her eyes and leans into him on the cushions, warm hands warm breath and would you look at that her chest has gotten bigger again, maybe next time they should do this at her place if she's got all that extra food lying around now--
And then Russia walks out of the kitchen.
It takes a few seconds for East to swallow his heart back down, but once he does, you know, at the end of the day Russia's out awfully late too so there's not much he an say about it, right? And he's not smiling the bad kind of smile or frowning the bad kind of frown, mostly he just looks tired and sorta confused with his hair all a mess and his hand wrapped halfway around a glass of --water. Well, that's new. Russia blinks. It looks like it takes some effort. "You were out late."
"So were you." Carefully, East disentangles Hungary's fingers from his shirt before they tear something. Um. Huh. "And you are wearing jeans." And a T-shirt. And not a lot of badges.
Russia carefully examines his own wardrobe, looks dully at East and Hungary for a moment, then lays his glass gently on the counter, crosses the thinning carpet to the couch and, heedless of their desperate protests, sinks onto it with them and stretches himself full across both of their laps, pinning them.
"Ff--God, Russia, my legs!" East writhes in agony; Hungary barely tugs her purse out of the way before it can get squashed into her lap.
"You went out tonight, didn't you?" Russia says, and he sounds a little sadder and a lot more sober than East has heard him in a long long time but East can't tell which is scarier. "Both of you."
The short answer, of course, is always no. The longer answer is no of course they didn't go anywhere, what could they possibly get up to at this hour if they wanted to be decent, moral citizens, and anyway that music is all terrible so they certainly did not go dancing in a club that certainly does not exist in a city that certainly only has one side.
But really both of those are wrong answers and it's not like Russia's going to move on his own so East settles on "Maybe a little."
"I see."
"But--But you did too! And we caught you. So. Ha."
"Mm."
"And 'm totally not drunk."
"Hypothetically speaking..." Russia begins, though it's kinda muffled with the way he's hugging that throw pillow now.
"Hypothetically," East assures, and manages not to slur the word too badly. Hungary yawns and tries to arch her back.
"There is nothing terribly wrong about me spending an evening with my people, even the ones who forget their good manners. Why, this could very well have been an underground operation."
"Russia," he says, while Hungary pats that massive back like a horse's flank, "I'm pretty sure it's all an underground operation." He resigns himself to losing all feeling below his waist tonight and leans back, head in the cushions. The hangover is going to be weird. "I used to seize territories."
Hungary snorts into his collar: there'll be makeup caked there in the morning. "I used to seize them back."
"Moscow had no electricity," Russia sighs. He crushes the pillow more tightly to his face and nuzzles it with his cheek, eyes closed. "Oh, but now it is electric."
If anyone asks, everything is as it should be. And if no one asks, it might almost be almost true for a little while.
Where oh where does degeneracy come from? Sneaky sneaky.
---
Over there becomes over here, or vice versa. Uh, yeah. Pretty much just like that.
If the night of is maybe the most incredible thing that's ever happened to him since chain mail came into fashion, the morning after is maybe the most awkward one to happen since France's lace and ruffles upstaged it. It's not like they don't have anything to talk about. Just. How do they talk about it?
They think about that for a while, both of them. West Germany shows East Germany around one of his art galleries while they think. East Germany says ouch. Later they swap and West doesn't understand East's artists for a while until East starts pointing out the things hidden there in plain sight; and then West says ouch too and keeps looking.
And then there's the music (not that East couldn't get the other stuff, if he wanted), and then there are the grocery stores (the produce section keeps him busy for about half an hour), and then there's home or whatever that word means now.
Years ago, West built his new house with one room too many by accident; it's a studio now. East wanders around it to have a look at the sculptures in there (looks but doesn't touch, mind), then turns on his heel and says brightly that there's no need to clear any of it out, he'll find somewhere else to sleep. Germany protests. Prussia whacks him with his suitcase and tells him he'd better have a decent couch in the basement, or there'll be hell to pay.
And that's that, pretty much.
---
"Oh, so you have read it?" Prussia is trying hard not to smoke now since Germany keeps harping at him about blah blah health consciousness and blah blah environmental concerns and also because cigarettes eat up a lot of pocket money, so he chews a toothpick instead as they walk together, side for side for real this time in a park in broad daylight and everything. It's not a terrible change. "What'd you think?"
"I liked Hamlet," Germany says slowly. "I'm not sure what I know what to think about the Machine just yet."
"Pretty sure that was the point." Prussia leaps up onto a fountain wall, walks along its edge in careful balance and counts the coins sparkling at the bottom. He tries to remember some of the other bits that were the point, but most of the parts where Müller got into blah blah ecology and blah blah feminism don't stay in his head the same way as the general weirdness does. "You ever talk to Müller? You should. Man, that's a trip. They couldn't've taken him down if they tried, near the end. If they even wanted to try."
"He is, at times, quite overt," Germany observes, looking at the sky. "I think I like that."
"Yeah, like the bit about Hamlet's dad dying from an axe to the skull 'stead of poisoning, you catch that?" Prussia laughs, nearly overbalances. "Totally not anything to do with Trotsky, yeah?"
"Yes, I saw," Germany replies, thoughtful. "It was very clever."
"It's just--how do these guys do it? They're so smart, fuck."
"Yes?" says Germany.
Prussia puts one foot in front of the other, steady, straight lines. It takes practice sometimes. "Seriously, they figure out everything that's going on, it's crazy, and it...it fuckin' messes with your head, is what it does."
"Yes?" says Germany.
They both stop, almost in unison. Prussia waves his hands to make Germany grasp the magnitude of what he's saying. "No, no, dude, 'cause it's like...states are made of people."
"...Yes?" says Germany. He's smiling, almost.
Prussia pauses, teetering at the fountain's edge. He elects to jump off on the side that has solid ground beneath it. "Yeah, well, I just thought you'd like the play, is all." He pats at his coat pocket vaguely as they turn homeward. "Put the script in here and forgot about it, I guess. Only a few pages long, y'know, no trouble to carry."
"Mm." Germany half-turns, looks curiously at the script. It is dissonance on paper. "May I borrow it?"
"No." The pages when he refolds them are crumpled and worn, but Germany takes them as though they were printed on gold leaf. "But you can have it back."
--It does hurt, just a little. But that's probably a good thing.
---
There is a room in a basement in a house in Berlin, and the room has four walls. One is covered by maps and a flag, black and white and older than the house but still very clean and well-cared for. Two of them have other pictures on them, posters and copies, museum prints, and in between them old playbills and ticket stubs and maybe a scrap of someone's rough draft or a phone call transcript if you really know where to look. You more than likely don't.
The fourth wall is empty, apart from a calendar. But in front of it in one corner (right next to some spray paint cans from when someone forced someone else to look at a Wall again and see what thirty years of collaborative effort did to the other side), there is a large white sheet covering something large and heavy and suspiciously piano-shaped, but of course nobody uses that word in this house, or at least not in the basement. On very particular nights when someone is in a very particular mood, you might hear music coming from that room in the basement, wrong chords right chords any chords, or at least you would if the room weren't properly soundproofed. And it is.
Some of them called their work classical. He can't quite help but smile a little at that.
Character(s): Prussia and Germany; bits of Russia and Hungary here and there
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language, length, geeky German culture references and the Weimar Republic which probably warrants some kind of warning in general.
Summary: A long long LONG overdue gift for madelineusher, the prompt being two crazy brothers and cultural divergence of the East-West variety. I went a little overboard with it.
Ahahahaha there are a lot of references in this. Uh. Sorry. Here's a couple of 'em.
The Fate of the Animals, Franz Marc, 1913
November 1923
Bertolt Brecht; emphasis on Mahagonny
Degeneracy
Hamletmachine
Other stuff follows general trends and headcanon ramblings, mostly and ohgod Aisu I hope you like this because I don't even know anymore ffff
Well, that was a bit of a let-down, now wasn't it?
Prussia traces work-weary fingers over the newest scar, just under his chin, and takes another contemplative drag of his cigarette. The taste somehow isn't the same in a house as in a trench, or maybe that's just the other chemicals in the air he's missing now. Well, alright, not missing. Definitely not. Still, it tastes even less like victory this way.
"So Kaiser Wilhelm can go fuck himself," he concludes, aloud, "Because that one was definitely not over with by Christmas."
"He has long since abdicated," Germany reminds him, or rather Germany's voice does because its owner still hasn't come back from whatever he's up to in the other room. Prussia hears rustling, the scrape of moving furniture, and the odd muffled grunt whenever Germany no doubt does something to pull his back again. Idiot.
He sighs or maybe hisses. "That's not the point," says Prussia to the living room lights. Sprawled as he is backwards over the couch, head on the cushions and feet dangling off the back edge, he can almost imagine himself walking on the ceiling. Closest he's getting to the sky for a while, anyway. "The point is that was a fucking disaster and he should have listened to Bismarck. Listening to Bismarck worked just fine for his old man's old man, didn't it? No sense fixing something that's not broken, I say. Also have you ever noticed that crack up there by the door frame? Someone should fix that, it's ugly."
"I'll see what I can do later," Germany says, louder now as he makes his way down the corridor (not that one, not the Polish corri--ah, fuck it, and Prussia's arm starts aching again: phantom pains). He's moving slowly, even more than stiff joints should account for, thanks to the thing he's struggling to drag into the room. Prussia tries to tilt his head to see better and shivers when he feels something pop.
"Painting?"
Upside down, Germany's scowl still does not in the slightest resemble a smile. He props the canvas against the wall and steps back to afford them both a proper view. "Franz Marc. You remember him? He painted a lot of animals."
Prussia concentrate and taps his cigarette against the rim of the ashtray balanced precariously on the couch arm. "Oh, yeah, him. Horses and whatnot." He squints at the artwork. It is, in Prussia's highly refined estimation, kind of screwed up. "Can't remember, did he usually paint them dying like that?"
"No." Germany's back, turned to Prussia, shifts from one shade of tension into another. "This is from 1913, Prussia," he says, and there is a touch of wonder in it. "Right on the verge of...does that strike you as unusual?"
"Pretty sure that one would strike me as unusual any damn time he painted it," Prussia snorts. "And anyway why're you asking me, you've at least got the time off now to go pester him yours--" Amazing, how the line of Germany's shoulder blades tells him exactly when to stop.
"I can't now," Germany says, entirely devoid of wonder. "Marc is one of those who did not return."
Ah. Prussia puts out his cigarette. "Country comes first," he offers, but the angle is all wrong for an accompanying shrug.
Germany shakes his head. "It shouldn't have happened this way," he says, and Prussia has to strain a little to hear it. "And now everything is quieting down again, but that just means I can count everyone who isn't here anymore more easily." He gestures at the painting, plainly annoyed. "And I can't even ask them about these things they left because..."
"'Cause an artist in soldier's clothes is still just a soldier to the other guy," Prussia cuts in. "Sorry, but that's how it works, you know?"
Germany ignores him, still facing the canvas. "The colors are all wrong. Deer aren't blue," he decides, frowning at the beast in the painting's center, impaled at the throat by a spear of nameless energy. "Deer aren't blue and horses aren't green."
"Saw a horse fall over in the city today," Prussia offers. He stretches and flexes his neck, yawns at the ceiling. "One of those carriage-pulling ones, you know?"
"Exhaustion," Germany does not ask. Germany does not need to ask.
Prussia nods and fancies he can hear the blood sloshing around at the top of his skull. "Mmhm, right there on the pavement, smack," and he strikes one hand against the other in fleshy imitation. "Don't gotta worry about cleanup, though, some people took care of that pretty quickly. Uh. Really quickly." He scratches at his nose thoughtfully. "Actually I'm not totally sure the thing was dead yet before they started in on it. But everyone's gotta eat, right?" he adds, in response to Germany's stifled groan. "These things happen." He's about to add something else when a knock sounds at the door, rapping and insistent. "Oh, that'll be France, won't it."
"Of course it will," says Germany through gritted teeth. He lurches out for the front hallway, leaving Prussia alone in the living room to contemplate the fate of the animals. Prussia wonders if the shapes make all that much more sense right-side up.
---
November of 1923 only started a few days ago, but somehow it's already starting to feel cold around here. Prussia makes a point of pulling on his coat before leaving work, even stops at Germany's office down the hall to insist he do the same before they step outside together. Catching a chill would be a drop in the bucket at this point, but habit dictates that he show concern and that Germany listen to it. Besides, they've only got about enough money at home left to light a week's worth of fires in the evening, so there's no sense in letting the cold get its foot in the door already.
He's glad Germany follows the advice. Germany seems to be having some trouble with listening lately.
"Just think of something else," Prussia counsels when the decidedly non-classical music floating down to them from an apartment building's open window makes Germany grimace at his side. Not the wrong notes, exactly, but certainly the wrong arrangements. Austria would have something nasty to say about it, if Prussia gave a damn about what Austria had to say about anything. Which he doesn't, so never mind. Prussia's just saying he'd like to know how shit like this keeps getting under Germany's skin when there's plenty of other stuff to get all twitchy about. Hell, not like anyone's forcing him to go to concerts or anything.
Meanwhile Germany's still making a nails on the blackboard face, like someone shoved a trumpet right up next to his ear and went at it just to push him over the edge. He tries to shake it off, says something wishy-washy about thinking someone's trying to tell him something with that racket. Prussia doesn't get why he hasn't covered his ears yet.
"They might try asking with a nicer tune, then. But stop worrying about it for five seconds and focus, would you?" He shoves out with his shoulder. Germany half-stumbles. "Got more important things to see to than music." Like getting food on the table, first off. He wants to keep going in that vein, about priorities and statehood and yes, being a republic is still rotten work even if you're not quite as young and stupid as you used to be...but then something else--something else hits Germany and he stops like he just took a slug to the jaw, then slowly and magnificently trips over his own feet into the alley to lean on the closest wall he can find. Prussia trots around the corner after him and narrowly avoids getting his coat soiled.
Germany's vomit is not half as colorful as his paintings; a reflection of diet, Prussia supposes. He cranes over to pat his back ineffectually where he's doubled over face-to-face with the brick, feels raw muscle twitch and spasm under Germany's shirt. "Alright there? Watch out for your shoes, you won't get another good pair like that for a while." Not on his salary, anyway. Hell, maybe not on anyone's.
"It's--" Germany coughs and spits, fighting back dry heaves. "Munich. Something's happening in Munich." He presses his forehead to the wall, eyes squeezed tightly shut in concentration. "Something not about music." And he's away from the wall and going from a limp to a run fast enough that Prussia hardly has any time to feel pleased at the industriousness of it.
By the time they get there the putsch has already mostly fizzled out apart from a few loose ends (very loose, the bastards must be crazy trying to start shit in a beer hall and now there's something about a bloody flag but who cares, people've been shot for plenty of less stupid ideas so what's so special about their blood, huh, right-wingers bleed just the same as anyone else), but Germany sticks around to speak with the cops, gets all his facts straight and waits for the call they both know will be coming from Hindenburg any minute now. When it does it's Prussia who grabs the phone, and so Germany stands back with his hands in his pockets and his face only slightly green while some fucking clarinet player in one of the buildings hits another deliberately sour note.
---
Prussia fumbles searchingly in his front pocket, cigarette wobbling between his teeth as they walk from the theatre. "So anyway," he says, waving the match pointedly, "I think the point is supposed to be that you don't forget what you're watching is a play." His steps briefly weave more erratically while he lights the smoke, almost but not quite sending him reeling into Germany's shoulder. The matchstick, burnt out, lands in the yawning grey gutter where he tosses it. "No escape, no immersion, sorta thing. Can't lose yourself in the moment 'cause of the message."
"I do not wish to escape into that world," says Germany, firmly. He sounds ill again tonight. "Nor lose myself in it. Prussia, whatever happened to good music?"
It is 1931 and they have just finished watching a city rise and fall. Well, no, they have watched a play about a city's rise and fall, a play on a stage performed by actors-not-characters. Brecht's script, Weill's music. Mahagonny. Odd name, Prussia thinks. Can hardly expect a city to stick around long with a name like that, even a fake one. Gotta have a name with character, you wanna last in this place. "Still not a fan of dissonance, I take it," he says.
"No." They are walking nearly side by side; Prussia in idle zigzags and Germany in a steady, straight line. Prussia likes the way Germany walks. Prussia's pretty sure he taught him that. "There was something wrong with that, maybe even more than the others they did before. There's something wrong with all of it." Germany draws his collar up higher. "It's not just the music, either. The words sound wrong too, now."
"Not 'thou shalt not' but 'you may'," Prussia recalls. "Scary fucking thought, all that freedom. Lotte's got a decent voice, though. Matches her legs." Their shadows, backed by street lamps, stretch and intertwine before them. Prussia slows, falls back, jumps ahead again to watch them change order on the pavement. Who's haunting who, then, eh?
Germany shakes his head, frustrated. Frustrating, he was getting better there for a while; new currency and everything, but now it's all going to hell all over again. Someone should have another talk with Hindenburg, see what's up with that. "I know they're not happy, I know that already. But I can't fix it with them carrying on like this, all they're doing is making it worse. And it's--" He grasps helplessly at the air, trying to force thought into tangible form. "It's all too sharp now, Prussia, all points and corners, and I miss curves."
"Been to Berlin lately? Something with curves on every corner there these days."
Would you believe it, the poor kid winces. "God, Prussia."
A laugh, perhaps a little reedier than usual. "Everyone's gotta eat, yeah?"
Germany doesn't answer. Prussia supposes he may have gone too far with that one, then wonders why it doesn't hurt him as much as it probably should. They are walking nearly side by side; now one in front, now the other, on streets at once too bright and starved of color. It doesn't matter who's first if home is still the same place for both of them, does it?
"Dissonance is not beautiful," Germany decides. And he sounds convinced enough so Prussia nods, but the tune stays in his head long after they reach the house and Germany holds the door open to let them both in.
---
Adolf Ziegler, as Prussia deduces in the summer of 1937, is probably not such a fan of dissonance either, or however you'd translate that to something on a canvas. Damned if he knows, there are folks all over the place now who'd know better, it seems, and the head of the Reich Chamber of Visual Arts must surely be one of them. He doesn't ask, though; Ziegler'd probably find some way to take offense at it. Touchy little creatures, those artists.
It's a hell of an exhibition, he'll give them that, and as he wanders cramped rooms to look at the nasty things they've dredged up from other museums he thinks they'll have no trouble at all getting exactly what they want out of this. Nothing beats a little show and tell if you want 'em to know exactly what you don't want to see from here out. Wrong works wrong style wrong presentation, but boy is the reaction priceless. God, look at that sculpture. Mongoloid. Where the hell do they find this stuff? No, this style is nothing suitable for Germany. Now it's the old stuff they're trying to bring back, all those statues with the even features and the parts that stay faithful to detail, if not to scale. Prussia sidesteps another (rightly!) unnerved onlooker and remarks, turning to Ziegler at his left, "Those slogans on the walls are an especially nice touch. All yours?"
"All truth."
"Uh-huh."
He reaches out towards a painting hanging crooked and unframed from ratty twine, holds back for a second, then decides that no, he's probably encouraged to put his hands all over these ones however grubby they might be, so he presses his palm right onto someone else's work because it's there and in the way. Of course Germany didn't paint these, Prussia silently agrees, not even the ones from the artists stealing all his surnames. He couldn't have. Germany has a much better sense of proportion, for one.
But then, well. Prussia doesn't paint. So where did all this come from?
Degeneracy is a sneaky thing, Prussia guesses.
---
"Whatcha reading?"
"Nothing."
"I don't mean like right now, idiot, I meant, you know, in general. You're always two chapters deep into something or other."
"I know what you meant. The answer is still nothing."
"Oh. What are you writing, then?"
"Directives."
Oh.
---
Russia only runs away from you fast enough when he's running in the wrong direction. He's a contrary son of a bitch like that.
It started way back east with an honest-to-God chase and ended in something a little more embarrassing than that, just as soon as Prussia hauled himself out from under the last of his own buildings he got thrown into and grabbed the closest thing he could get a grip on. Which happened to be Russia's ankle, which happened not to be much of a hindrance to the rest of Russia, which is why Prussia's uniform is slowly wearing down to tatters as he hitches a ride through what still looks like Berlin in a couple of areas if you turn your head and squint.
He wishes he had a sword right now. Even if he couldn't lift it enough to swing it anymore, it'd still mean that he had a sword and Russia didn't, and that thought's a lot more comforting than the gravel and broken glass grinding into his skin the further he drags along the concrete.
That's Prussia's blood there, isn't it.
Seriously, even a dagger over here.
"Really, Prussia," Russia sighs, looking down at the weight latched to his leg. It's a mere scolding, tired motherly fretting where white-foaming vengeance should be, and his exasperation isn't even enough to slow his stride. "Are we not done with this foolishness yet? Civilized people simply don't do such things." He stops at the angry buzzing that threatens to drown his voice suddenly and looks around and above them, at the swarm of aircraft overhead on the way to a horizon Prussia hoped he would never see from this position. "Ah, bombers!" Russia says, like greeting an old friend. "England and America said they would like to visit Dresden." The plane drone grows louder. Russia shields his eyes against the sun to watch, smiling. "There are so many wonderful museums in Dresden. Will you miss them, I wonder?"
Prussia, in response, sinks his teeth into Russia's left calf through as much bootleather as his teeth can mangle. Russia's pipe upside his head isn't so civilized either.
---
Ow ow fucking damn it ow, thinks Prussia with almost comforting lucidity, as he tries to straighten his knee. Almost but not exactly, because now that he can feel again he can't seem to stop, which does not help matters in the slightest considering the task at hand. Every nerve, every tendon, every inch flares up in pricking agony, so he grits his teeth and moves faster to get it all over with in one go. The knee locks with a strange, organic crunch he nonetheless takes as a victory. For the time being he lies sprawled on his back in the dirt and gasps for breath, trying to remember how thinking is supposed to work.
What time is it? What year is it? He...he remembers voices, more than Russia's alone, and conversation that came out all buzzing to him from inside the haze. And then there was louder talk, and the kind of silence that presses down on your ribs until you think you can feel your lungs squeezing out between the slats, and pens scratching--sick. That's what he remembers, nausea. His stomach's still rolling from it now, or maybe that's a new wave altogether coming on. Hard to tell without a working sense of time. He'll have to fix that first.
It was a hell of a lot more of a let-down this time, wasn't it? Not even Bismarck would have something clever to say to that, probably.
The cigar smoke, heavy, cloying, is the first thing Prussia smells. It is also the first thing he sees when he at last cracks his eyes open: blue-grey choking tendrils on a sky today not choked by planes. Prussia tilts his head, weary, and blinks against sunlight and the reflection off round glasses lenses he well recognizes. "Oh moon of Alabama," he recites, dry-mouthed.
"We now must say goodbye," concludes Brecht. "Hello, other Germany."
"Picking sides now, then, are we," Prussia mumbles, and Brecht nods to a rhythm all his own, naturally, naturally. God, everything aches. "And you've picked mine?"
Brecht shrugs. "I thought perhaps you would be the better listener," he says, lifting the cigar to tap away the ashes. He is considerate enough to avoid letting them land on Prussia's person. "This was not the case as I had hoped during my time in America, and I am afraid your other half puzzles me still." Thoughtfully, he takes another drag. "And I was told I might have my own theater if I came to you, truthfully."
Prussia remembers discord, scattered shadows and not losing himself, and nods. "You can have a whole damned company, if you like."
Smiling, Brecht offers a hand down to him and says, "Then I am yours."
"Neat," says East Germany, taking it. "Don't think I've ever had one of you before."
---
--You know, with the radio on and soft music crackling all peaceful-like, it's almost a little hard to remember how many of the houses in this neighborhood still need patching. But he's warm and, er, secure and sure as hell not in the mood to start anything right now, least of all while he's entertaining company. And he does hope he's entertaining, dear God, there's funding to be discussed.
East Germany reads now, by the way. East Germany reads a hell of a lot in the privacy of his own living room, usually with a big black marker twirling in his free hand while he checks the passages for unfortunate printing errors he'll have to be sure to make before things get to the publisher's. Like this one, for instance--can't have that going into the new history books, people might get the wrong ideas. Or this here--my, that's a lovely poem, but you can find something nicer to say about the State that rhymes there, too. Or you could just not say anything at all. That's the beauty of choice, right?
An especially poorly thought-out novella makes him pause, the marker cap rolling and acquiring new dents between his teeth. It's got a few of the red-flag (ha) words and phrases cluttering the narrative up, but there's something else that--hm. "Do you ever, uh." He holds his place with one finger and glances up at Russia, curled expansively in the chair opposite the couch with a small stockpile of books of his own to flip through. Russia doesn't have a marker; he's moved straight on to scissors. "You know, ever read any of them?"
"Some," Russia answers, calmly, tearing a section of pages away from a spine. "Though I think I like it best when they tell me about their stories in person. Such funny little things, my writers. If only they thought to look after themselves better."
If only. "There's a lot of alliteration in this one," East says when he finds his place again, but he'll be damned if he knows why he says it.
"This, in itself, is not objectionable." The scissors flash merrily in the light while shards of paper flutter like snow. Russia stops, pulls away to unfurl the chain of paper dolls he has cut out of East's regrettable subversive tendencies, accordion-style. "Look, Baltics!"
East stares blearily at the tiny figures with their snipped-out smiles. "Shouldn't Latvia be in the middle?" he asks, squinting at what features he can make out. "Like on the maps?"
Russia sets the dolls aside, smiles curiously. "Does this really matter anymore, East?"
"...No."
Russia stands, stretches, and takes a luxurious round of the room to wind up behind the couch, chin settling in East's hair when he leans down to read along. His lips are moving; East can hear the barest whispers above his field of vision. "You've missed an allegory there," Russia says, pointing helpfully with the scissor blades still in his hand. "Quite a clever one, actually." He tangles the other hand's fingers in the ends of the red, red scarf pulled snug around East's throat and sighs wistfully. "So many bright minds one can see in these things. That says quite a lot about you. The whole passage, I should think."
East dutifully blots it out. It doesn't hurt.
"You see?" Russia beams when East tells him this. "And they'll understand. There are much nicer allegories they can use." He is accommodating enough to twist his own head to an awkward angle so that East's neck doesn't ache when Russia pulls him into the kiss. A quick one, congratulatory.
Auferstanden aus Ruinen comes on the radio again. Russia is sure to reach over and turn down the volume dial before the lines about unity and brotherhood can come up. East has such a very pretty anthem, Russia is remarking now, while East picks up the next submission and resumes twirling his marker. A lovely tune all on its own really, such pretty sounds, and wouldn't it be easier to enjoy them without letting all those lyrics distract from the heart of it? East Germany agrees that it is excellent music and bites down another notch on the cap in his mouth.
--Ooh, this one's full of symbolism. It. It's too bad they're all the wrong symbols.
---
He's not on the job anymore but he still hasn't taken the uniform off for precisely three reasons. One: it looks cool. Two: It's cold out and he can't find a sweater. Three: there is a fucking piano blocking the fireplace. East sits on the floor and watches it between his fingers over his face while the phone dangles limply from the other hand. It refuses to move. The piano, that is, the phone does whatever East wants it to do, when he wants it. East Germany likes the phone. East Germany likes other people's phones. Nobody in East Germany's home has a phone which does not belong to him, eventually.
The piano's still there.
He dials.
Ring ring ring. Ha ha ha.
"Austria? East here. Listen, so I got this piano."
For a second Austria forgets and calls him by the old name. Silly, silly Austria.
East staggers to his feet, paces around the room while trying not to stumble over the phone cord while the receiver jerks after him. "I dunno, found it? Confiscated it probably, I can't remember, but it's in my living room and I'm not actually sure how but I figured you'd have some idea of what to do with it next." He scratches his head, then remembers he's doing it with the hand holding the phone. "Hm? Oh, you know, one of those big ones." He tilts his head down, down, down to read, keeps it there at a funny angle. "Says Bösendorfer on it here. Yuh-huh. No, I haven't started smashing anything, calm down. No, shut up, don't tell me where they made it, I don't want to know that."
He'd forgotten how much Austria talked, shit. East straightens and pops his neck. "Yes I'm sure, I'm looking right at it. I think I might name it Roswitha. Of course it is, idiot. Who asked you, anyway? What? Well no shit I am, I'm talking to you!" He runs a gloved hand over Roswitha's side and assures her that no, it's a very pretty name and Austria just doesn't understand, Austria's a dirty goddamn capitalist is what he is and ooh, there's a piano stool too. East sits on it: heheh, it's one of those rolly ones. "Well I don't know, I'm not the one who left it here, now am I?" He stares at the keys. "So what happens now?" (Whoa, there's a bug on the ceiling.) "Uh-huh?" East settles the phone in the crook of his shoulder and holds extremely steady hands aloft over the keys, searching. "This many from the left, gotcha, three keys down from there..." He presses down experimentally and nearly jumps at the sound. "Ha! You hear that?" He laughs again, a startled bark. So that's a chord, huh? Nifty.
Austria's saying something else now. East can't really hear him all that well, but that's okay since it's not like he ever cared what Austria had to say any of the other times, right?
Ha.
He's called him by the wrong name again.
Ha ha.
"Hey, Austria, you sucked at fighting, right?" East twists back and forth on the stool, squeak squeak. "That must suck to suck at what you were born to not suck at. I didn't suck at fighting, not at all. But you sort of figured something out in a really sissy way, I guess. When did they invent pianos, do you know that? Because it's not the sort of date I would have written down and anyway they're all gone now. The things I wrote down, I mean. My archives got all scattered, remember, because we were afraid they'd get bombed so we shipped things in all different directions and then I think some of it got lost, and my own journals were there too and some of them were really good, I mean, I could have been a writer too probably if I'd had the time it just didn't ever work that way but--what? Oh! Oh. Yeah. Ok! " The chord sounds again, booming, when he slams his fingers down in the same places. East feels the tingle run down his spine and snickers into the phone. "Haha, yeah, lots better. You know nobody can know about this," he grins, walking the index and middle finger of his left hand down the keys like a spider. "I think I'll just leave the piano here. Or maybe I'll take it down to the basement! Then it can be like that book with the phantom, but I think that was France's book and opera's not mine anyway now is it ahahaha."
He pushes sharply back from Roswitha, spins around on the rotating stool while the cord tangles around his legs and the phone gets yanked across the floor toward him. "What's that? Nah, I don't want you to send any of your stupid music, I'll write my own. God you're dumb. So what's a good time signature? Right, four-four, yeah, good beginner's foundations. So listen, I think I'll start with something with sevens in it." (Like no, a huge bug and it's crawling right...over...his...head...) "Huh?" East shakes his head violently. "What? What? Hungary? No, that's stupid, why would you want me to go get her, she doesn't even play the--POLAND! That's who I should talk to! Poland knows all about pianos." And he doesn't so much hang up as throw the mouthpiece across the room, but by the time he's tried to stand and tripped all over tangled wire the line gets disconnected anyway.
---
"Russia, this is bullshit."
"Hm? But you like realism, East! Look, I have painted every flower just as it truly is! Surely--"
"Not that, this. The paint-mixing, it's bullshit! You can't make red."
"Can't I?"
"...'S a primary color."
"Oh yes, that. I shall have to find more, then. Mm, how funny that I once doubted there could be only seven colors! But now I am much smarter and know that there is just the one. Well, two, if we consider yellow."
"Do you?"
"Oh, always."
"You're dripping paint on yourself. Oughta wear clothes you don't mind getting dirty next time, beat up jeans or something."
"I beg your pardon, I do not wear jeans. You are thinking too far west again, little one."
"Of course."
---
Before the years turn to decades and start bleeding into one another too badly, he's switched cigarette brands as many times as the glorious market will allow him (which is to say sometimes he scribbles new pictures on old cartons to keep himself busy), but every pack still tastes and smells the same to East, still has the same friendly feel hefted in his mostly-steady hand. And he's fine with that, long as the packaging still crackles the same way breaking into a new one. Some things you need to count on, day in and day out. That's what security's all about, isn't it?
They're clever little bastards, most of them. Sometimes they sneak things into their works he has to look over twice before he notices something off, just the tiniest bit of wordplay here or there that might mean something else if you read it from the corner of your eye. Some of them aren't so subtle. Some of them have downright sick senses of humor, and he can't quite help but smile a little at that.
Occasionally he'll stop in on his own to visit before the censors get around to fixing things, since after all it's only sporting to look a person in the eye when you're about to tear him down, or maybe that's just a sentimental way of seeing it. Most of them hesitate to let him in when he knocks because of the uniform. Some of them see it and raise an eyebrow and invite him in out of sheer twisted principle. (This one time he fell into Christa Wolf's living room out of her vents and he wasn't wearing it but she recognized him anyway and even gave him a bit of licorice before she booted him out. That was kinda special.)
So he shuts the door after himself and they read little snatches aloud but not too loudly to him while he rifles through their kitchens, and if it's someone he decides he likes this is usually where he says, "Nah, hell with that, there's no fucking way you're getting away with that in a museum." No way you're getting it on the radio, on the television, not even on a fucking billboard, no sirree. They're watching too closely for that, and they're waiting for you to slip up so they can take you down because these are the real dangers all that military training's going towards even if the guys up top aren't wise to that yet. Anyway it's not like he can turn a blind eye forever.
...Though there is the smallest chance he's not watching the theater people quite so closely. Just maybe. He's a busy guy, after all.
He used to like fields, open horizons, land as far as the eye could see begging for the taking. He often wonders just when he grew so very fond of his dark little corners.
Which is why, very very occasionally, this is also where East looks around and pulls the curtains shut, props his feet up on the table and says, hands steepled, "So here's where you might get away with it."
---
If anyone asks, everything is as it should be. Everything is organized, efficient, smoothly running as a machine does, as progress undauntedly marches toward tomorrow. Straight, even lines; clockwork. But East Berlin's streets are jagged concrete and twisted steel, bent into and over each other and themselves in idle madness, and even the lights shatter when they trample through the puddles where the pavement dips. His buildings rise in stifling functional stacks to bounce their own voices back to them, amplified, breathless with laughter and just plain breathless.
Hungary gasps and stumbles. East tugs harder on her wrist and doesn't, keeps running.
They hit the wall in unison, two slaps of clothing on stone, but only he cranes his neck to see around the corner and keep a lookout. She's slipping, that girl. What if this were a battlefield, huh?
"East," she says, with that particular emphasis she always puts on the word that she knows he hates, "If you don't stop screwing around I'm going to deck you." He shushes her and fumbles for his key, opens the door just the barest fraction it takes for them to slip in one after the other. Quietly, so quietly; these are the dead hours of the morning which belong only to the depraved and the police, so really it's only half a transgression if you think about it. East fumbles in the dark for the light switch, misses, then settles for a table lamp instead, and they collapse side by side on the couch without so much as bothering to remove their shoes first. He'll vacuum in the morning, hell with it. He tells Hungary that much but she just rolls her eyes and leans into him on the cushions, warm hands warm breath and would you look at that her chest has gotten bigger again, maybe next time they should do this at her place if she's got all that extra food lying around now--
And then Russia walks out of the kitchen.
It takes a few seconds for East to swallow his heart back down, but once he does, you know, at the end of the day Russia's out awfully late too so there's not much he an say about it, right? And he's not smiling the bad kind of smile or frowning the bad kind of frown, mostly he just looks tired and sorta confused with his hair all a mess and his hand wrapped halfway around a glass of --water. Well, that's new. Russia blinks. It looks like it takes some effort. "You were out late."
"So were you." Carefully, East disentangles Hungary's fingers from his shirt before they tear something. Um. Huh. "And you are wearing jeans." And a T-shirt. And not a lot of badges.
Russia carefully examines his own wardrobe, looks dully at East and Hungary for a moment, then lays his glass gently on the counter, crosses the thinning carpet to the couch and, heedless of their desperate protests, sinks onto it with them and stretches himself full across both of their laps, pinning them.
"Ff--God, Russia, my legs!" East writhes in agony; Hungary barely tugs her purse out of the way before it can get squashed into her lap.
"You went out tonight, didn't you?" Russia says, and he sounds a little sadder and a lot more sober than East has heard him in a long long time but East can't tell which is scarier. "Both of you."
The short answer, of course, is always no. The longer answer is no of course they didn't go anywhere, what could they possibly get up to at this hour if they wanted to be decent, moral citizens, and anyway that music is all terrible so they certainly did not go dancing in a club that certainly does not exist in a city that certainly only has one side.
But really both of those are wrong answers and it's not like Russia's going to move on his own so East settles on "Maybe a little."
"I see."
"But--But you did too! And we caught you. So. Ha."
"Mm."
"And 'm totally not drunk."
"Hypothetically speaking..." Russia begins, though it's kinda muffled with the way he's hugging that throw pillow now.
"Hypothetically," East assures, and manages not to slur the word too badly. Hungary yawns and tries to arch her back.
"There is nothing terribly wrong about me spending an evening with my people, even the ones who forget their good manners. Why, this could very well have been an underground operation."
"Russia," he says, while Hungary pats that massive back like a horse's flank, "I'm pretty sure it's all an underground operation." He resigns himself to losing all feeling below his waist tonight and leans back, head in the cushions. The hangover is going to be weird. "I used to seize territories."
Hungary snorts into his collar: there'll be makeup caked there in the morning. "I used to seize them back."
"Moscow had no electricity," Russia sighs. He crushes the pillow more tightly to his face and nuzzles it with his cheek, eyes closed. "Oh, but now it is electric."
If anyone asks, everything is as it should be. And if no one asks, it might almost be almost true for a little while.
Where oh where does degeneracy come from? Sneaky sneaky.
---
Over there becomes over here, or vice versa. Uh, yeah. Pretty much just like that.
If the night of is maybe the most incredible thing that's ever happened to him since chain mail came into fashion, the morning after is maybe the most awkward one to happen since France's lace and ruffles upstaged it. It's not like they don't have anything to talk about. Just. How do they talk about it?
They think about that for a while, both of them. West Germany shows East Germany around one of his art galleries while they think. East Germany says ouch. Later they swap and West doesn't understand East's artists for a while until East starts pointing out the things hidden there in plain sight; and then West says ouch too and keeps looking.
And then there's the music (not that East couldn't get the other stuff, if he wanted), and then there are the grocery stores (the produce section keeps him busy for about half an hour), and then there's home or whatever that word means now.
Years ago, West built his new house with one room too many by accident; it's a studio now. East wanders around it to have a look at the sculptures in there (looks but doesn't touch, mind), then turns on his heel and says brightly that there's no need to clear any of it out, he'll find somewhere else to sleep. Germany protests. Prussia whacks him with his suitcase and tells him he'd better have a decent couch in the basement, or there'll be hell to pay.
And that's that, pretty much.
---
"Oh, so you have read it?" Prussia is trying hard not to smoke now since Germany keeps harping at him about blah blah health consciousness and blah blah environmental concerns and also because cigarettes eat up a lot of pocket money, so he chews a toothpick instead as they walk together, side for side for real this time in a park in broad daylight and everything. It's not a terrible change. "What'd you think?"
"I liked Hamlet," Germany says slowly. "I'm not sure what I know what to think about the Machine just yet."
"Pretty sure that was the point." Prussia leaps up onto a fountain wall, walks along its edge in careful balance and counts the coins sparkling at the bottom. He tries to remember some of the other bits that were the point, but most of the parts where Müller got into blah blah ecology and blah blah feminism don't stay in his head the same way as the general weirdness does. "You ever talk to Müller? You should. Man, that's a trip. They couldn't've taken him down if they tried, near the end. If they even wanted to try."
"He is, at times, quite overt," Germany observes, looking at the sky. "I think I like that."
"Yeah, like the bit about Hamlet's dad dying from an axe to the skull 'stead of poisoning, you catch that?" Prussia laughs, nearly overbalances. "Totally not anything to do with Trotsky, yeah?"
"Yes, I saw," Germany replies, thoughtful. "It was very clever."
"It's just--how do these guys do it? They're so smart, fuck."
"Yes?" says Germany.
Prussia puts one foot in front of the other, steady, straight lines. It takes practice sometimes. "Seriously, they figure out everything that's going on, it's crazy, and it...it fuckin' messes with your head, is what it does."
"Yes?" says Germany.
They both stop, almost in unison. Prussia waves his hands to make Germany grasp the magnitude of what he's saying. "No, no, dude, 'cause it's like...states are made of people."
"...Yes?" says Germany. He's smiling, almost.
Prussia pauses, teetering at the fountain's edge. He elects to jump off on the side that has solid ground beneath it. "Yeah, well, I just thought you'd like the play, is all." He pats at his coat pocket vaguely as they turn homeward. "Put the script in here and forgot about it, I guess. Only a few pages long, y'know, no trouble to carry."
"Mm." Germany half-turns, looks curiously at the script. It is dissonance on paper. "May I borrow it?"
"No." The pages when he refolds them are crumpled and worn, but Germany takes them as though they were printed on gold leaf. "But you can have it back."
--It does hurt, just a little. But that's probably a good thing.
---
There is a room in a basement in a house in Berlin, and the room has four walls. One is covered by maps and a flag, black and white and older than the house but still very clean and well-cared for. Two of them have other pictures on them, posters and copies, museum prints, and in between them old playbills and ticket stubs and maybe a scrap of someone's rough draft or a phone call transcript if you really know where to look. You more than likely don't.
The fourth wall is empty, apart from a calendar. But in front of it in one corner (right next to some spray paint cans from when someone forced someone else to look at a Wall again and see what thirty years of collaborative effort did to the other side), there is a large white sheet covering something large and heavy and suspiciously piano-shaped, but of course nobody uses that word in this house, or at least not in the basement. On very particular nights when someone is in a very particular mood, you might hear music coming from that room in the basement, wrong chords right chords any chords, or at least you would if the room weren't properly soundproofed. And it is.
Some of them called their work classical. He can't quite help but smile a little at that.