Remember to forget
Pairing: Nyo!CanxSey with eventual SeyxGer
Summary: Madeline is dead and Monica is grieving. Ludwig is patient and everything else is confused.Things tend to get worse before they get better.Apocalypse AU
They descended without warning, inky black creatures with irrationally large wingspans and the peculiar desire for the rending of human flesh. Their victims were often left split completely in two, often with smiles stretching farther than they had any right to, or bodies not dissimilar to a magic trick gone horribly wrong. Mankind eventually finds a solution, after months of mass panic and failure and infighting. The world is saved. The nations, weakened but victorious, count their numbers and find them wanting. War is never without cost.
For the first three days he goes out at 6 am and lifts her sleeping body off the grave. The first two times she screamed. The third night it rains and when he gets there she is nearly frozen, lukewarm tears staining his shirt behind the thick jacket.
On the fourth day she stays in bed and the silence is suffocating and he checks every once in a while to make sure she's still breathing (She is. The blank stare and fixed limbs suggest otherwise.) On the evening of the fifth day they bite their tongues and nurse fresh wounds and choose to forget. Ludwig wakes up on the sixth day to a truly silent house. He checks the rooms anyway, then checks the graveyard, and by noon he has expanded his search to town. He comes home ten o clock that night to start calling around and finds her in bed with alcohol seeping from her skin. He lets it go.
On the morning of the seventh day Ludwig is sitting at the kitchen table nursing a cup of coffee when he hears, faintly, a soft thump and a muttered curse. She appears shortly afterword, swaying somehow gracefully down the hallway, one hand occasionally on the wall. "G' morning" "Good morning to you too" The first civil words she'd given him since he came. Well. An hour later and she had cooked a breakfast that put him to shame, and as they ate the meal (her first this week, his third)she wore an expression that was just a tiny bit closer to what he remembered before everything went to hell.
Three months in and Monica is becoming acutely aware of just who she's coexisting with. His eyes when he finds her barely awake and still at work in the early hours. His arms when he carries her to bed.(The glimpses of his back when she sneaks back out after he's gone a bit down the hall) She wonders if she should feel guilty. The week after she is flipping through an old magazine and sees an ad for maple syrup. She won't let Ludwig touch her when he finds her on the floor.
It has been 6 months and he is (still) there when she is found, sees the hope in those eyes under near impenetrable darkness. He is also there when Madeline stares at her with innocent confusion and says "who?" (Somewhere, the body of a long dead polar bear comes back to life and sneezes) "I...I'm" (a beat) "I lo-... Nevermind" She smiles so brightly that Ludwig swears that he can almost taste the sugar on her lips (artificial), begs her leave, and stumbles out of the room. At various points that night the house is filled with bitter laughter. Ludwig's because an hour after they left the damned bear was scratching at the entrance to the ward. Monica's because she could now describe in great detail what it felt like to have one's heart ripped completely in two. (No one mentions the sobbing)
3 months pass before she can look Madeline fully in the eyes. She is a traitor and a liar and a thief. It is the first world meeting since "the calamity". Everyone is all business until the first break.When they return Italy is sitting between Prussia's legs. Everyone is looking at Ludwig and she can feel Ludwig looking at her and she is trying her best to look nowhere in particular. Matthew catches her eye and shoots her a look somewhere between anger and pity and maybe, maybe forgiveness. Madeline smiles. Madeline understands. Madeline wants me to call her Maddy again and nononothisiswrongyouarewrongicantimsorry. Madeline looks at the stiffness in her everything and her smile is slightly less bright.
"It's alright" she whispers in her ear during another break.
Monica leaves the meeting early.
A few hours later Ludwig joins her on the floor.
A year has passed and the world is looking better and for one night they can rest, for one night their people are content. They sit with their drinks on the balcony of some Parisian hotel. The countdown starts inside.Ludwig's arms are around her and she's not crying or tired or drunk and for once no one feels guilty.He kisses her for the first time under the fireworks.