On her way to change the sheets in the guest rooms, Hungary tried to determine just which one of Austria’s visitors she hated least.
There was Prussia, but where he stood on her Ladder of Affection was obvious: at the bottom. Probably on the same rung as Austria. She imagined them bickering and trying to push each other off. Maybe, if she was very lucky, they’d both fall, and the thought brought a little smile to her face.
There was France, who would probably be fairly high if not for the fact that he had the distressing tendency to make a pass at just about anything that moved.
And then there was England, who seemed like a decent enough fellow, but he was also an empire, and an enormously powerful one at that, and so Hungary was tempted to hate him on mere principle.
So. Maybe she’d go with France, after all.
It’s like the shittiest version of “Let’s Make a Date,” pfft. (AKA: I poked my head back into my Forward and Reverse doc, and it turns out part two is a lot closer to being finished than I remember?)
For @fairywine, because our discussion of nations vs. humans over on AO3 inspired me to dig this out of my WIPs. It’s basically a hypothetical scene from Forward and Reverse (that will never make it into the fic proper, even if I can get around to actually finishing it one of these days, because it doesn’t really fit, but the idea was nagging at me all the same, so here we are, pfft). Anyway, it takes place post-engagement but pre-marriage (so probably in very early 1867), and it’s all about Austria feeling super guilty about the way he put down the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, and finding himself drawn to and semi-confiding in Deák Ferenc, because the dude’s really sensible and understanding and fatherly, and Austria’s maybe looking for advice on how to get back into Hungary’s good graces, even though he knows, deep down, that he doesn’t really deserve it.
It is too much, and Austria erupts, however vaguely, raking a suddenly unsteady hand through his hair. “I don’t know what came over me, I don’t know why I did it, I don’t know how to—!”
Make it right.
Deák regards him with something akin to academic wonder. “You love her,” he says.
Austria’s haunted eyes jerk to his. To hear it put so succinctly, so absolutely, he realizes it is true. It is true, and he can no longer deny it. “I’ve loved her for a long time,” he admits, miserable with the burden.
Deák marvels for an excruciatingly extensive moment.
“Nations are such strange things,” he finally says. “Tied to the will of the land and government and people, yet given the feelings of a normal human being. I’ve often thought it must be a terribly difficult life.” He shakes his head sympathetically.
Austria blinks at this sentiment. He has never particularly felt pity for himself, for his situation as a nation—but then, he has never known anything besides being a nation. If they were simply human, he thinks with sudden, intense longing—if they were simply human, perhaps he could simply love her.
FIC EXCERPT (from my old, historical 1848-1867 WIP) FOR THESE GUYS’ ANNIVERSARY!!!
It takes place on June 8th, 1867 (AKA, the day of the Hungarian crowning ceremony), and they’ve technically been married for a couple months now (since March 30th, which was when the Austro-Hungarian Compromise was ratified), but this is finally, like, the Big Reception™, if you will. Anyway, things are still really awkward and tense between them, due to 1848 angst that’s still hanging around, plus about 150 years’ worth of sexual tension that never got resolved before their relationship went to shit.
(FYI, if you want more anniversary shenanigans, you can check out Once More, With (a Different) Feeling (https://archiveofourown.org/works/11104341) that I wrote for their 150th, that directly references the below scene. Also, if you want more excerpts and stuff from this ancient, mythical WIP of mine, you can check out my “forward and reverse” tag.)
So yeah, they’re at the big celebration shindig, basically doing their own separate things, and Hungary is currently hanging out with Empress Elisabeth. Enjoy?
.
Elisabeth smiled tentatively, then turned back to Hungary. “And how are you doing, this fine evening?”
“I feel like a sausage about to burst from its casing,” she said, completely honest.
Elisabeth laughed, and took Hungary’s hands in hers. “You look beautiful,” she reassured. “But where is that husband of yours?” She began looking around the ballroom, and before Hungary could think of some way to stop her, the empress had spotted him. “Austria!” she called, shamelessly fluttering her fan above her head. “Oh, Austria!”
The nation looked over, apparently in the middle of conversation with some statesman. He excused himself from the gentleman with a short bow, and then started to make his way over. Hungary jerked her head back around and took a very deliberate gulp of her drink, wishing it was at least ten times stronger.
“He looks so sharp tonight,” Elisabeth said, conspiratorially. “You know, I almost never see him in a uniform at these sorts of things.”
Hungary was about to mention that the only reason he was wearing his full, formal military dress was because most of his other clothes—even his evening wear—had fallen into disrepair and had yet to be replaced, but he came up beside her before she had the chance. He bowed deferentially to Elisabeth, and Hungary gripped her glass as if it was a lifeline.
“I was just telling Hungary how lovely she looked,” Elisabeth said. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
There was the slightest pause, and then, without looking at her, Austria said, “Yes. Very lovely.” There was something unreadable and perhaps even soft in the short words, and Hungary took another drink, wishing she could think of some way to excuse herself from the conversation.
“You know,” the empress went on, “I haven’t once seen you two on the dance floor tonight.”
Hungary stiffened in some combination of terror and irritation. Austria smiled politely, exhaling as he did so. She had lived under the same roof as him long enough to be able to see beyond the expression and listen to the exasperation in the noise.
“I am still feeling under the weather, I’m afraid,” he said, the handkerchief in his hand proof enough of the truth of that statement. (His cough had not entirely gone, but he’d gained most of his weight back, along with his color, and on the whole, was looking worlds better than he had a few months ago.) Though he had no doubt declined for his own sake, Hungary still found herself grateful for the excuse, despite herself.
“Oh, nonsense!” Elisabeth said, flicking her fan. “I’ve seen you dance, Austria. A little cough isn’t going to trip you up.”
They had, by this time, gained something of an audience, and words of agreement chorused in, and then it somehow got out of their hands, because before Hungary knew it, her drink was gone, and they’d been ushered out onto the middle of the floor, and the whole congregation had quieted.
With a mild quirk of his eyebrow and a breath of resignation, Austria tucked his handkerchief away, took her right hand in his left, and placed the other on her back. Suddenly, the long gloves that had been annoying the hell out of her seemed a whole lot nicer, and she stiffly placed her hand on his shoulder, wondering if she looked as ready to recoil from him as she felt.
She was in the prettiest piece of torture imaginable, she was married to someone she didn’t love, didn’t even like, and maybe even hated, and now she was supposed to dance with him in front of an entire court. This was, without a doubt, the most elegant nightmare Hungary had ever had the displeasure of participating in.
“You waltz well enough,” he murmured, his tone making it sound more like a simple statement of fact than a reassurance, and it made her even tenser.
Her eyes jerked up to his. “That’s not the point,” she said, a little anxiously.
He broke the gaze and looked over her head toward the musicians across the way. “Ah.”
Self-consciously, she smoothed her skirt as she entered his office. Austria was pensively pacing in the middle of the room, a file in his hands, his hands behind his back, and she was about to ask if she should close the door when he at last looked over at her. Hungary’s fidgeting fingers froze and she looked right back, silent. Slowly, deliberately, Austria wandered closer, until he was directly in front of her, accentuating the difference in their heights. He was doing that insufferable thing where he looked down his nose at people, and it was a long, speculative moment before he spoke. Hungary held her chin high and determinedly met his gaze.
“I suppose,” he finally said, his mild tone not quite masking the hard look in his eyes, “a congratulations is in order.” Hungary blinked, and he—a little resentfully—presented her with the file.
All my AusHun followers will be excited to hear that I’m making some more progress on Forward and Reverse, aka my angsty, historical 1848-1867 fic. 8DDD
SO YOU KNOW HOW AUTHORS WILL, LIKE, RELEASE THE FIRST CHAPTER OF THEIR UPCOMING BOOK AS A PREVIEW OF SORTS? WELL, THAT’S ME, I’M RELEASING A PREVIEW. BECAUSE AUSHUNNNNN.
So here you go—the first part of Forward and Reverse, my angsty, complicated, historical (1848-1867) AusHun fic:
.
Their relationship hadn’t always been like this.
Oh, sure, she certainly hadn’t liked the aftermath of Mohács, passing out on the battlefield and waking up to find that her king was dead, along with so many—too many—of her people, that her lands were divided, and that she had been thrust into the Holy Roman Empire’s house, under Habsburg rule, with barely enough time for her to lick her wounds. No, she hadn’t liked that at all.
She had stood in one of the servants’ halls, reeling with enough death and defeat to exhaust her, listlessly listening as he rattled off formalities—her position in the Holy Roman Empire, the duties that would now be expected of her—paying far less attention to the words than the boy who spoke them.
Austria. A bit of an odd duck amongst their kind, who had grown up in the middle of nobles, who had discovered he was a far better strategist than a swordsman, who liked violins better than violence. He wore spectacles now, perched on the bridge of his nose, and she wondered if they were simply to make him look older or more intellectual.
“—Are you even listening?” he snapped, authority ringing coldly in his voice. He’d been soft, so much softer before. But then, she’d had more spirit before.
She didn’t answer, and instead simply said, “You got taller.”
He blinked, momentarily caught off guard, and some sort of nostalgic smirk flitted across her mouth. “Bet I could still beat you up, though.”
There was a beat where a twinge of uncertainty caught in his eyes, but then he drew himself up, squaring shoulders that were at the awkward halfway point between thin and broad. Young enough to still be defensive, but old enough to know that there was more to winning than brute force. Especially when his would-be opponent was now noticeably female. “Is that a challenge?”
She tongued her split lip thoughtfully. Felt the ache in her bones, the wounds on her skin, the loss in her heart. “Maybe later,” she said. A tired promise.
She could be patient when it was needed; she would wait.
And so she bided her time, scrubbing the floors and washing the laundry, watching the rest of her lands come back from Turkey only to watch others be given away, never once being consulted on any of it. She would take her aggressions out on the carpets, beating the dust from them with a vengeance, and when Austria would knowingly catch her eyes, a stern reproach evident in his, all she did was hit the fabric with more force. It hadn’t been so very long ago that she’d repeatedly trampled him with her horses and sent him crying back to Switzerland, and it would be good if he didn’t forget that because she certainly wasn’t about to.
She had attempted a few insurrections. Stolen a horse and ridden off in the middle of the night, trying to raise spirits and rally troops, but—to her increasing irritation—the years of housework had rusted her skills on the battlefield, and it was never very long before Austria was dispatched to retrieve her. It became something of a chore for him, until they were both tired of it, and he even voiced such to her after the Battle of Trencsén.
“Would you believe,” he said in a long-suffering tone, both of their uniforms fairly covered in mud, she too weary to retreat just yet and he too weary to make an honest effort at capturing her, “that I’m all for treating you better if it means we don’t have to keep doing things like this?”
Conveniently, Austria’s boss changed soon after that, and a workable relationship of sorts began to form between them. She still thought he was far too severe with poor little Italy, and sometimes his way of doing business was so pragmatic it bordered on cold-blooded, but the longer she lived with him, the longer she actually interacted with him, the more she learned that he wasn’t quite cruel, not purposefully so, just a bit too serious for his own good. A nation who’d needed to be the responsible backbone of a fledgling empire, and had grown up too fast because of it. Perhaps he was a little too hung up on rules and regulations, but that was probably a side-effect of dealing with court diplomacy since before his voice broke.
After that, sometimes…sometimes she didn’t mind working in Austria’s house so much. Sometimes she even found herself enjoying it, despite herself. He would let her read in his library when her chores were done; he showed concern—his polite concern, but concern nonetheless—when she caught a cold; sometimes he fiddled out her folk songs on his violin, and she would dance and he would smile, and she was able to forget that she was the servant girl and he was the master of the house.
Once she even kissed him, though she still blamed the incident on the wine. It was Christmas, and she had just carried an already-asleep Italy to bed, making her way to her own room in a tired, tipsy haze, her feet idly playing out the steps she and the young country had danced, when she had happened upon him in the hall. He bid her goodnight, and she did the same, and then she grabbed his cravat, pulled him down, and matter-of-factly pressed her lips against his before releasing him. He blinked at her in an adorably clueless manner, his mouth falling open as a blush spread across his cheeks, and she giggled, tapped his nose, and twirled away to bed.
She tried to apologize the next day, and he just briskly waved it off, saying it was all right, festivities and whatnot. But then he made the mistake of meeting her eyes, which prompted another blush and an awkward mumble about finances of some sort, and then he fled her presence. She’d thought it was just about the cutest thing this side of little Italy in one of her dresses.
And so, in a way, she grew fond of him. Even began to think that maybe he was a little fond of her, underneath that too-serious exterior of his. Some times were better than others, admittedly, but that could be said of anything.
And then the Enlightenment came.
Or rather, came to the rest of the world.
First America—who broke so fiercely and so surely away from England. Then France—whose revolution turned into disaster, paving the way for Bonaparte’s rise, and the wars that followed…
To be sure, all of Europe had felt the Napoleonic Wars in one way or another, and the conflict had left an indelible imprint on politics. Democracy was the trendy, new word on everybody’s lips, superseded only by nationalism, and it was steadily becoming apparent that the era of absolute monarchies—an era that Austria and his Habsburgs had thrived in—was drawing to an end. It was no secret that even some Austrians, themselves, were bristling for change—but, contradictorily enough, the more the people spoke out, the stricter the nation himself became.
A part of Hungary had to wonder if he wasn’t deathly afraid of ending up the same way France had, and that was the reason he was so adamantly opposed to the change that was sweeping the continent. France, who had murdered his monarchy, only to turn around and murder his revolutionary sweethearts, simultaneously laughing and sobbing loudly enough to unnerve all of Europe. Doubtless, Austria kept the memories close at hand, as he’d lost his own little darling Maria Antonia—Marie Antoinette—to France’s madness. But like sand held in a too-tight fist, the more tightly he tried to rein in control, the more discontented those under his rule became, until even she began to resent him.
Recession struck, and with it, a food shortage, and then Poland barged into Austria’s office one afternoon, intent on socking the aristocrat in the jaw and giving him a piece of his mind, but somehow ended up punching himself, instead. It was an odd little incident that might have been funny if it hadn’t carried the dark foreshadow of upheaval with it. Soon after, France again gained attention because of his revolts, though this time far less bloodshed was involved. No, King Louis-Philippe abdicated all on his own, which caused ideas to light the eyes of half the nations in Europe.
Summons came from the Habsburgs, more and more frequently, until one day Austria returned with an uncharacteristic slam of the mansion’s great double doors.
“I don’t know what they expect of me,” he huffed to no one in particular, stalking to his music room. “They’re the only ones I have to answer to, not the only ones I have to listen to.” And his hand loosened the cravat at his throat, as if he couldn’t breathe.
Vivaldi’s “Summer” concerto filled the afternoon, the third movement ringing fitfully throughout the house—and in the privacy of her own quarters, late at night, Hungary fidgeted her fingers in her sheets, listened to the wind sing outside her window, and dreamt of wild horses.
