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konstantyaTitle: Forward and Reverse (1/3)
Fandom: Hetalia
Genre: Drama, angst, romance, historical.
Characters/pairings: Austria/Hungary, AusHun (with minor appearances of various other nations and real-life historical figures).
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 7,564 (8,847 with notes)
Summary: The circumstances that led to their marriage were hardly the stuff of fairy tales. From the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 to the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. Historical!AusHun.
Warnings: History, some mild violence, an assault of sorts, and more history.
If you’d like to leave a comment, please do so on AO3!
A/N: So…this fic is old. Like, really old. It was actually one of the first Hetalia fics I ever started writing (so that means that, yes, this bitch dates back to motherfucking 2009). It was supposed to be a one-shot, but ended up being long enough and complicated enough that I eventually broke it up into three parts—which was kind of a death sentence for it, unfortunately, as I am The Worst at finishing multi-chapter stories. (There’s a reason I stick to one-shots, after all.) And the way I write is so all over the place and out of order that I couldn’t even, like, post the first part.
However, over the years, that first part, at least, has gotten close enough to being complete that I decided to hunker down and finally finish it. So here we are. Since it took more than ten years just to get this much up, I’m not going to make any promises about the rest of it, but it’s my sincerest hope that it can (will?) still be enjoyable, even in its unfinished form. And hey, you never know—maybe posting part of it will inspire me to get to work on finishing the rest of it? It’s the AusHun fic I always wanted to read but ultimately could never find, and maybe the same is true for others? At the very least, it’ll probably help give some context to some of my other fics, particularly Once More, With (a Different) Feeling (which references some things that happen within it) and The Edelweiss Arc (which follows the same timeline). If nothing else, I’ll be able to stop being so coy about just how much of a dick Austria was at this point in their history, pfft.
As it is so old, there are no doubt some things about it which don’t entirely match up with canon these days (the Czech Republic/Czechia, for instance, had yet to be introduced back in 2009-2010, so I called the character “Bohemia”), and no doubt there are a lot of things I would do differently if I was writing it from the ground up today, but, well, it is what it is. Please be forgiving and all that.
Lastly, this fic is, without a doubt, the most history-laden story I’ve ever written (which is part of why it’s taken me this long to even finish the first part). The translation from history book to Hetalia is not always smooth (to say the least), so I obviously had to streamline some events and take artistic liberties with others. Historical notes covering most of the details can be found at the end, though as occasionally happens in this fandom, they were too long for the official “end notes” section, so they had to be tacked onto the bottom of the fic proper.
Anyway, without further ado, part one!
I.
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 flickered 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 morale 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 firmly 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.
---
The breaking point came in March:
“Mr. Austria,” Hungary said, for the third time, the patience in her voice growing thin. She felt oddly like a school-teacher, trying to grab the attention of some daydreaming boy.
Finally, he jerked his head up, blinking feverishly for a moment, as if he couldn’t quite focus on her. Belatedly, her tone set him off and he frowned irritably. “Yes?”
Hungary resisted the urge to let out an irritated sigh of her own. Even so, she was pretty sure her posture deflated a little. She lifted the tray in her hands demonstratively. “Your coffee.”
He blinked again. “Oh. Yes. Of course.” He nodded shortly and set down his pen, forsaking the paperwork he’d been staring at blankly. Absently, he checked his cuffs, then ran a hand over his hair to make sure it was still in place. Nervous habits he’d developed as of late. As if buttons and buckles and brushed hair could hold him together. Hungary gave him a skeptical, sidelong glance and set the tray down on the usual side table.
Austria pushed himself back from his desk with a heavy sigh and stood as Hungary set about to pouring his coffee. Very grimly, he walked over, took a long, indulgent drink, then sighed again.
Next to him, Hungary fidgeted for an awkward moment. She figured it was probably nostalgia that made her ask—a longing for the days when he would confide in her, even if the confidences were simple day-to-day annoyances—when by all means, she should have just kept her mouth shut. Maybe, in some idealistic part of her brain, she thought it might even ease some of the recent tension between them.
“Rough day, sir?”
“It’s nothing,” he said automatically. He took another sip and darkly amended, “Nothing out of the ordinary these days, at any rate.”
“…Sir?”
Austria rubbed his temple, as if he had a headache, seemingly at odds with himself. Eventually, with another little sigh, he relented. “Bohemia keeps bothering me about a ‘pan-Slavic’ conference she wants to hold in Prague. And Veneziano keeps going on about how he wants a constitution.” He scoffed and added under his breath, “As if he’d know what to do with one.”
Stiffly, Hungary wiped a fingerprint from the edge of the serving tray. “That’s not entirely his fault, you know,” she pointed out lowly.
The cup and saucer hit the table, hard enough so that some of the coffee splashed over. Hungary started at the noise, her head shooting up, and she suddenly found herself on the receiving end of a very sharp, admonishing look. “I don’t recall asking for your opinion, and I’ll thank you to keep such remarks to yourself,” Austria snapped—and it was as if that popped a cork off her throat, because she simply couldn’t help the next words that came tumbling irately out of her mouth:
“Censorship is one of the reasons this is happening in the first place! If you’d at least—”
And it was then that it happened. That he struck her across the cheek.
It wasn’t a hard blow by any means, more to silence her than cause any actual damage, but it was shocking all the same, and she stared up at him in utter disbelief, feeling the left side of her face grow pink.
Austria blinked and at least had the grace to look surprised by his own actions. He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, wincing distractedly. “I didn’t mean to do that,” he muttered contritely, almost more to himself than to her. He took a breath, straightened his posture, and replaced his glasses. “But honestly, Hungary, you forget your place. You are a servant in this household, not a diplomatic advisor, and you would do well to remember that.”
All she could do was glare, trying to hide her clenched fists in the folds of her skirt.
He unflinchingly met her angry gaze with his own. “Is that understood?” he asked curtly.
Hungary ground her teeth and just barely managed to push the words out. “Yes, sir.”
“Then you’re dismissed.”
She forced herself to curtsy, her spine rebelling all the way down.
---
She wasn’t sure what she was trying to accomplish, sneaking out later that night, running another stolen horse ragged as she rushed to Pest. Suffice it to say, though, something had to be done.
It was well after midnight when she stormed into the Pilvax Café, that hotbed for political activity, and the noise in the place suddenly ceased as everyone turned to stare at her. She stood there, hair wild and heart thrumming, drinking in her countrymen as surely as they drank in their coffee, and slowly, eventually, the looks of confusion turned to looks of awe, as they realized who—what—stood before them.
Lajos Kossuth—a man she knew so well and yet didn’t know at all—was the first to step forward. “…A nemzetem?” he finally asked—my nation?—reverent and amazed, and Hungary wanted to laugh and cry. All she could do was grab his shoulders and kiss his cheeks over and over and over again.
“Yes,” she said, so joyful she could have burst. “Yes.”
---
It wasn’t even three days later that she made her way back to Vienna, but for all the change in atmosphere, Hungary wondered if it hadn’t been three years. The streets were absolutely abuzz, and it was only when she came across a newspaper that she found out why:
Just two days ago, on the 13th, Klemens von Metternich, Austria’s great Foreign Minister and a champion of the controlling conservatism that had become so characteristic of the empire, had been forced to resign after a massive demonstration. It was such a buoying turn of events that Hungary literally ran back to Austria’s house. Upon arriving, she threw the servants’ door open, half-expecting to interrupt an impromptu party, but instead she found herself met with an eerie silence.
“Hello?” she called. The whole mood was entirely strange, to say the least; even on the most dismal of days, there was still the hustle and bustle of the staff going about their duties. She made her way further into the kitchens and tried again. “Hello?” There was a sound from the next room over, and she moved toward it, only to come face-to-face with Slovenia as she suddenly appeared in the doorway.
“Hungary!” The other woman glanced around and her voice lowered to an astonished hush. “Where have you been?”
Hungary raised her chin and straightened her back, pride written all over her countenance. “I went home—” she started to say, but Slovenia cut her off with a wild shake of her hands.
“Shh! Not so loud!”
Hungary furrowed her brows at the dark-haired nation. “Why?”
Slovenia stopped and actually gaped at her. “You mean you haven’t heard?” she asked.
“What? That Metternich resigned?” Sure, it was a pretty big deal, but Hungary didn’t see why that meant she had to—
Slovenia grabbed her arm and pulled her close. “That’s only part of it. You heard about the protests?” Hungary nodded. “Well, they’re saying,” she whispered pointedly, “that Austria walked out on his boss and joined the masses in the streets.”
Hungary blinked. “What?” she breathed, disbelieving. Slovenia nodded. Hungary tried once more, just to be sure. “Austria?” Slovenia nodded again, with a hint of aggravation. Hungary blinked again.
Austria? Straight-laced, I-follow-the-rules-so-well-I-know-them-by-their-first-name Austria? Walking out on his boss? Oh, Hungary thought, with a perverse sort of excitement, what she wouldn’t have given to have been in the room when that happened.
A surge of hope overcame her, and she suddenly asked, “Where is he now?”
“In his music room, taking a couple days off. Some say he was actually ordered to, but who knows? That’s why it’s quiet as a nunnery around here. After that little demonstration, he’s been coiled as tight as a spring.”
Hungary’s shoulders set resolutely. “Good. I have to speak with him.” She started to make a move for the main part of the house, but Slovenia grabbed her arm again, bringing her up short.
“What?” she demanded. “Are you serious? Did you not just hear what I said?”
Hungary shook her off. “I heard exactly what you said. Which is why I have to speak to him right now. If he’s pulling stunts like walking out on his government, then this is the perfect time.”
“The perfect time for what?” Slovenia asked, but Hungary was already gone, too eager to waste any more time on explanations.
The trek to his music room was a blur. Her heart pounded and her mind raced, and she paused in the hallway outside to gather herself, straightening her bodice and running her hands down her skirt, trying to scrub the sweat from her palms while simultaneously listening to the comforting crinkle of the piece of paper in her pocket. After a good minute, with a deep breath and her chin held high, she stepped up to the door. It wasn’t completely closed, and she peeked her head in, trying to get a preparatory look at Austria, as if seeing his state would help her decide how precisely to proceed.
He sat at his piano, with his eyes closed and his fingers trailing slowly over the ivories. The tune he played was a careful one, cautious and soft. Somehow, it put Hungary in mind of a hostage situation—trying to disarm tensions before they led to catastrophe.
Bracing herself, she knocked lightly on the door-frame. “Excuse me, sir.”
At the interruption, his hands landed hard and cacophonously on the keys. “Goddamn it!” Immediately, Austria seemed to regret the uncharacteristic outburst. He took a great breath, momentarily closed his eyes again, and then collected himself. Stiffly, he turned his head toward her. “Hungary. What is it?” If his playing had been a hostage situation, apparently negotiations had broken down and someone had just been shot.
She pressed her fingers against the paper in her pocket a little harder and planted her feet firmly against the floor. She couldn’t back down now—she wouldn’t back down now. “I’d like to discuss something with you.”
Austria blinked at her exasperatedly. His hands hovered over the piano keys. “Must it be now?”
“If not now, sir, then when?” she asked pointedly, perhaps even coldly. He was often out of the house as of late, sometimes for days, even weeks at a time, and they both knew it. For that very reason he didn’t have many opportunities to sit down to play anymore, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to feel guilty about tearing him away from the comforting hobby.
There was a stretch of silence, and then he exhaled in a huff, closing the keyboard lid with more force than strictly necessary and standing in one swift movement. “Fine,” he yielded, stalking past her and out the door. She realized he meant for her to follow him, and scrambled to catch up as he went toward his office. Once there, she debated whether or not to close the door, and finally did so, a little uncertainly.
Austria paced for maybe a short five steps behind his desk, stopping to put a hand on his hip as he raked the other through his hair. He dropped down onto his chair and gestured off-handedly for her to do the same in one of the seats opposite him.
Hungary declined. Instead she fished her copy of the paper out of her pocket and set it down in front of him.
He took it in his hand, his eyes skimming the print. “‘Twelve Points’?” He frowned, then looked at her sharply. “What is this?”
“A proposal.”
His hand twitched, almost as if he wanted to crumple it right then and there, and his eyes bore into hers. “It looks like a list of demands to me.”
“Only if you choose to read it as one.” She was surprised the ceiling wasn’t growing icicles.
“Well, then. What if I refuse this…‘proposal’?”
Cards on the table; she pulled her ace.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if there are mass demonstrations in Buda and Pest today.”
He blinked at her incredulously, and looked like he was ready to both faint and strangle something. This time his hand did crinkle the edge of the paper.
“I’m not looking for independence,” she clarified. “I’d still work for you; I’d just like to do so from my own land. Is that really so much to ask?”
Austria leaned forward slightly, taking off his glasses with one hand and pressing the fingers of the other against his temples. His frame radiated with tension, and after a moment, he pulled his hand back from his face. Almost vengefully, he hooked the spectacles back over his ears and gave the pamphlet another glancing over.
“I’m left with no choice, then, am I?” he asked—virtually demanded—rhetorically.
You’ve left me with no choice, she wanted to say, but didn’t.
Austria huffed. “I will…discuss it with the emperor,” he grudgingly acquiesced. Hungary sucked in an elated breath at the words, and his eyes snapped up to hers in warning. “I’m not promising anything.”
Soberly, she nodded. “Thank you, sir.” Her tone could have been interpreted in any number of ways, and Austria shot her a look that might just have been capable of freezing the surface of the sun.
She dipped into a perfunctory curtsy and turned to walk out, her legs almost trembling with the realization of what she had just done.
---
It was almost a month before she heard anything else, and in that time, things descended even further into chaos. Fighting broke out with Italy, and with Austria gone to protect his claims in Lombardy-Venetia, Bohemia took the opportunity to high-tail it home to Prague. Even Romania, who was currently under Turkey’s roof, managed to break in one day just to steal back a carpet. Hungary was almost on the verge of doing something similarly drastic, herself, when Austria came striding down the hall one day, apparently having just returned from one of his campaigns, if his scuffed uniform was any indication.
“Hungary, I need to see you in my office,” he told her, his pace firm and broad and—if she was any judge of body language—extremely irritated.
For an apprehensive moment, Hungary simply jerked her head back and forth between the picture frame she was in the middle of dusting and Austria—who was quickly disappearing down the hall without even a backward glance to see if she was following. At a loss, she scrambled down the small step-ladder, dropped her duster onto one of the side tables, and trotted down the corridor to catch up with him.
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.
Blinking again in confusion, she took it, opening it up to find a collection of documents. Her eyes flicked over them, skimming with increased fervency upon realizing just what they were.
Newly-passed Hungarian laws. Reform laws. Laying out budget policies, foreign policies, a national guard, the removal of censorship, the removal of serfdom, along with a slew of others. And at the end, Emperor Ferdinand’s signature, validating it all.
An exuberant, almost disbelieving breath pushed out of her, and she looked back up—but Austria was now seated at his desk, already sorting through his own paperwork at an anxious pace. Her mouth opened, wanting to say something, but he cut her off before she had a chance to.
“I’d be packing my things, not standing there gawking, if I were you,” he said, not bothering to look up from his papers. “Your carriage leaves in an hour.”
Her mouth snapped shut, and she nodded, more to herself than to him. Her feet started to stumble backwards, and without another word, without even a curtsy, she fled his office, down the hall and towards the servants’ quarters, her legs progressively picking up speed until she was practically running, her eyes almost tearing up in sheer exhilaration.
Home. She was going home.
---
It was Lajos Batthyány, her new prime minister, who met her in Pest, and Hungary was so excited that she didn’t even wait until the carriage had stopped before she jumped out and threw her arms around him. He laughed at the display, his great beard tickling her cheek, and put an arm around her shoulder when they parted. “Come,” he said, leading her down the street like an old school chum. “There is much work to be done. And we must get you settled in, after all.”
What followed was a whirlwind of activity. There were personal effects to unpack, an office to familiarize herself with, and a near-constant slew of countrymen to see. Her days were filled with politicians and paperwork, and her nights were filled with tokaji toasts and csárdás dancing, and even when she would collapse into bed, exhausted, Hungary was sure she’d never been so happy.
---
That happiness was somewhat dampened when Croatia barged into her office one morning, looking like he had just ridden in.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing!” he demanded. Hungary looked up from the plant she’d been in the middle of watering, and Croatia indignantly held up some papers he had in his hand. Hungary blinked at them.
“They’re the new laws,” she said.
“Exactly!” He threw them on her desk and pointed at one particular line. That to be eligible to vote, one had to speak Hungarian.
Hungary looked up. “So?”
“So how is that any different from that pencil-necked prick saying we all have to speak German?”
“Because it isn’t German.” Croatia only blinked, uncomprehending, and a scoff of a laugh came bubbling out of her throat. “You don’t get it, do you?” she marveled.
Croatia sobered, and for a long moment merely looked at her with something resembling pity. “On the contrary, Hungary, you’re the one who doesn’t get it.” And with that, he turned on his heel and walked out with the resolute stride of someone who’d just made a very important decision. The papers he’d brought in with him, the newly passed reforms, lay forsaken on her desk.
Hungary sank thoughtfully down into her chair, replaying in her head the exchange that had just happened. She worried her bottom lip and looked around her office—her office, her office, when for so long she’d had to put up with only a bedroom, and other countries managing her affairs—before she reached for her pen and paper and began to draft a letter.
To: The Austrian Empire. Regarding: The uprisings in northern Italy.
She couldn’t let this go. She wouldn’t. Not for anything.
---
Austria never got back to her. Not personally, at least. The closest she got was a field marshal, a Count Franz Philipp von Lamberg, who’d been sent to take control of her armed forces. To say his arrival was received frostily was an understatement at best, and after a short, futile meeting with one of her generals, the count retired to lodging in Pest. Hungary bristled at his presence, his carriage along her streets feeling like a flea across her skin, so it maybe wasn’t a surprise that an angry mob got word of his being there and proceeded to snuff him out like an invasive insect.
Maybe not a surprise, but a political nightmare all the same, and Hungary almost immediately went from suffering itchy nerves to suffering an aching head. Batthyány took it upon himself to travel to Vienna to try to smooth things over, but the journey proved to be a fruitless one. Upon his return, he called the various ministers to convention, and Hungary held herself off to the side, waiting with baited breath for the news he brought.
“As I’m sure most of you are aware by now, Ferdinand has stepped down as emperor,” he announced gravely, “…and his nephew, Franz Joseph, has replaced him.” He paused for a careful moment, then continued. “In light of the incident with Count Lamberg, he has ordered the dissolution of this government and its parliament.”
A dark cloud seemed to gather in the room at that, and it rained out the question of what now?
Hungary took it better than she thought she would have. Or maybe it simply couldn’t sink in, and that was why her breathing was steady and panic avoided her veins. Her eyes roamed over the present faces, some worried, some angry, Batthyány’s unreadable but strong, and she realized that she loved, loved, loved these men—her fathers, brothers, sons—fiercely and completely, would not stand to see them struggle under an Austrian monarchy again, would not stand to leave them now that she had known their company, and so the answer sat there, clear and obvious:
“War, then,” she said, and she almost didn’t recognize her own voice, it was so frightfully calm and resolute. “We go to war, then.”
---
Oh, she had missed this.
Hungary had always felt oddly at home on the battlefield, and nothing was quite as motivating as fighting for one’s freedom. Poland had even sent help, with a note that read:
“Like, Russia’s being Russia, so I can’t make it out myself, so here’s Józef Bem, who totally kicks major ass, because you deserve the best. Also, it would be awesome if you could break Austria’s glasses for me. xoxo, Poland.”
The only problem was, Austria hadn’t been around. Oh, sure, his armies had, but she had yet to spot the nation, himself.
There had been news of an uprising in Vienna. Sympathizers protesting, trying to stop soldiers from leaving the city, and though they had failed, it gave her a surge of hope. Austria was prone to following the rules, admittedly, but nations were not their governments, and maybe…maybe…
Rumors regarding his whereabouts were all over the place: that he was busy in Tuscany, or Moravia, or Galicia; that he was bedridden, sick and delirious with fever caused by the revolt in October; that his new boss had actually locked him up to cool his rebellious heels. Who knew what the real story was.
It mattered little to Hungary. Austria or no, her spirits were damn near irrepressible this time around. The winter had admittedly been rough, as she’d been forced to cede both Buda and Pest, but the following spring had seen her regain them, and furthermore push the Austrian forces almost completely off her lands. She took a brief break from the fighting on April 14th, to help celebrate her newly-declared independence—getting as drunk on sovereignty as she did on pálinka—but then it was back to the battlefront, back to Bem and Görgey and Perczel and all the others, as spring slid definitively into the heat of summer.
No more peeling potatoes, she vowed to herself. No more sweeping someone else’s step. No more servants’ dresses, and holding her tongue, and renting her land. When all this was over, she would don her old breeches, leave her hair uncovered, climb bareback on a mare, and ride and ride and ride, and no one—least of all, Austria—would be able to tell her what to do ever again.
And so it continued, until one early morning in August, outside of Temesvár, when Bem came up to her on horseback to survey the approaching legion.
“They’re saying that Austria himself was finally sighted,” he told her—a simple statement. The nation lowered her spy glass, but kept her eyes on the horizon.
Well, she thought. Even supposing the information was true, it was hardly relevant at this point. Hungary was feeling positively battle-bright. And Austria had never been much of a fighter. Not when he’d actually had the ambition as a child, and certainly not now, when the only calluses he tolerated were those from his violin.
A small smile, grim with determination, tugged at her lips. Her gaze did not waver. “Let him come, then,” she said.
And so he did.
---
The cavalry thundered. Horse hooves pounded against the ground, and the crack of gunfire pierced the air. Hungary lowered her rifle to peer through the smoke of the battlefield and couldn’t help the satisfied smirk that came to her mouth. Hah. Austria might have had more cannons, but between the two of them, whose forces were currently retreating? Here was a hint: not hers.
A part of her had to wonder why he had even bothered to show up. His personal presence—wherever it was in the chaos—didn’t much seem to be helping his troops, that was for sure. Hungary grinned fiercely, and like the Magyar warrior she was, she reared her horse, raised her arm, and let out another rallying cry that would push her closer to victory.
Only to have it muffled by a large hand as she was unexpectedly pulled off her steed from behind. Another hand clamped around her, trapping her arms down as she struggled—and then her blood froze, and the rest of her with it, when she realized who was holding her.
Russia’s blond head peered around into her line of sight, a small, benign smile on his face, as if he had found a lost puppy or a wayward child. “I think someone is looking for you, yes?” Her mouth unable to answer, her eyes jerked toward his, little lavender crescents that were almost lost in the jovial crinkles around them. And then—he simply lifted her feet off the ground and began merrily walking through the battle, toward the Austrian side.
That—that smooth-talking, aristocratic prick. Of course he refused to get his hands dirty; why bother, when you could just convince someone else to do it for you? Panic began to set in, and Hungary thrashed desperately, trying to kick her legs behind her. Her heel managed to connect with Russia’s knee, but he just laughed.
“Such a bad-mannered house-guest,” he chided, and his grip tightened enough to push the air out of her. It was consequently enough to put an end to her struggling, and his soft, lilting voice went on: “I told Austria that if he let you stay at my house for a while, I could fix that for him. I know he likes good behavior, yes?”
A chill ran through her entire body, demanding oxygen from lungs that were barely capable of breathing. During his interims in Austria’s house, Poland had told her stories of his time with Russia, and his ways of “keeping order,” as it were, never failed to horrify her. (The casual, blasé tone with which he told the stories had always horrified her a little more, but you could, like, get used to anything, even almost dying and whatever, and those imperialist assholes only care about landmasses on maps, anyway, so who are they to try to break you when you’re obviously all spirit?—or so Poland said. Sometimes she thought the cross-dressing was simply a strange outlet he had developed out of sheer necessity.)
Even Austria, himself, who had the power of a whole empire behind him, generally had to walk the fine line that was Russia’s good side. Hungary doubted she could step so gracefully.
It was when they reached occupied Pest that she finally saw him. Among his armies, dressed in full uniform, arms crossed. Collected, stern, arrogant. Not quite the soldier, but every bit the tactician.
More fear slipped down her spine. Out of the frying pan and into the fire—wasn’t that what they called this?
Russia dropped her unceremoniously on the ground in front of Austria—like some mouse a cat would leave on the doorstep—and she fell to her hands and knees, raggedly gasping air into her starved lungs. Before she could even catch her breath, Austria grabbed her arm, hauling her up again. He gave a slight bow of acknowledgement to the Russian nation, regarded her briefly, coldly, and then turned on his heel, dragging her behind him, away from her home and closer to his.
He didn’t say a word, which was perhaps the worst thing, and she tried to dig her boots into the earth, tried to claw at that perfectly manicured hand of his, but all he did was grab both wrists and continue along, and as exhausted as she was, she couldn’t do much more than stumble behind him.
“Y-you agreed to it,” she tried, voice sounding smaller than she would have liked. “My government. You agreed to it.”
He deigned to glance back at her. “Ferdinand agreed to it.”
“That’s not true!” she cried, frantically. “You agreed to it, you did—”
“Well, then I lied!” he snapped, whirling around, still grasping her wrists in one hand while the other clamped around her waist, fingers digging into her lower back as he jerked her close.
The action was so unlike him, it startled her into silence. His body was lean and tense against hers, and she stared up at him, searching his eyes for something she couldn’t find anymore. They were toward the outskirts of the Austrian camp, a fair distance away from anything, offering them auditory privacy if not visual privacy.
He spoke again, his voice sharp and clipped. “You are going to return to Vienna. You are going to resume your duties. And you are going to stop conspiring against me.” Statements, not threats.
Her voice was barely above a whisper—defiant in its sheer lack of defiance. “And if I don’t?”
He said nothing, but a twitch in his jaw betrayed him. For a long moment, they just stood like that, one angry and speechless and the other not-quite-resigned, staring steadily at each other. It might have continued for even longer, but it was then that a messenger entered the periphery, hanging back cautiously, as if he was seeing something he shouldn’t and didn’t want to interrupt.
Austria broke the gaze to look over. “Yes?” he huffed.
He was young, perhaps seventeen, and his gaze nervously flicked between the two countries before it settled on his own nation. He swallowed. Saluted. “Uh, General Haynau wants you to know that he has the r-rebel”—he gave another glance at Hungary—“generals captured at Arad, sir.”
For a moment, Austria looked down at the country in his hands, as if considering. Hungary unwaveringly met his gaze. And then calmly, coldly, he turned back to the boy.
“Good. Send him a message that they’re to be executed.”
“No!” The word was out of her mouth before she even knew it, her composure broken, her will to struggle returning full force.
His grip around her wrists tightened painfully, and she gasped. Her fingers were starting to go numb. The messenger hesitated, and Austria snapped, “That was an order.”
“Y-yes, sir.” He quickly saluted and scurried off.
Hungary was shaking, her expression the very definition of betrayed disbelief, her arms trying to fight for freedom even as her legs felt like giving out. “How…how could you? H-how—?” She wanted to cry and scream and run away and trample him into the ground, all at the same time.
He shook her to silence her. Hard. Was sharp and unapologetic. “An example obviously had to be made.” He paused to take a breath. “And we are leaving now.” And without another word, he set off, pulling her along. She couldn’t even attempt to resist—what little strength she had left was being rationed between her knees and her throat, to keep the former from buckling and the latter from letting tears leak up to her eyes.
She couldn’t cry in front of him, she simply couldn’t…
Upon reaching his home, he wrenched her inside, slamming the door shut and shoving her back against it. In the empty privacy of his foyer, he bent down, voice quiet and intense and dangerously intimate. “Did you honestly think I would let you just waltz out of here?”
She had hoped… He was strict, not cruel, and she had hoped…
He shook her again, fingers digging into her upper arms. Like trying to force an answer out of a disobedient child, and a wince betrayed her. “You’re mine. Don’t forget that.”
That struck a nerve. Her lips curled back fiercely. “I was never yours.”
“Oh,” he said, rueful and haughty all at once, “you were.”
She didn’t say anything, suddenly leery of the position he had her in—caged against the door. And then, behind the steel rims of his glasses, there was a glint in his eyes, and her own widened. “No—!”
But he had already pushed his lips down hard on hers, muffling her protests. She tried to wrench her head away, but his hand tangled painfully in her hair, forcing her chin up, and when she gasped, his mouth outright invaded hers. Like he was staking a claim. Or re-staking one, as the case may have been. She tried to fight him off, but stuck between his body and the door as she was, she could do little more than futilely push at his chest. An old-fashioned knee to his vital regions might have worked, but even his legs had hers pinned, preventing their movement. He was hurting her, violating her, and she couldn’t even manage to bite his lip in retaliation.
Some distant part of her, that remembered Christmas and wine and awkward blushes and girlish daydreams, told her it wasn't supposed to be like this.
Eventually, against her will, her tired, trapped body simply gave up, ceasing its struggling, tears involuntarily pooling at the corners of her eyes.
He’d won. He’d really won.
And then something changed. His hand unfisted to cradle her neck, fingers trembling, and he pressed into her not to keep her still but as if he needed the support, and his mouth went from punishing to almost needy, passionate really, and—
On a gasp, Austria abruptly broke away, gloved palms braced on either side of her. Hungary blinked up at him warily, breaths shallow, heart racing in fear, cheeks flushed despite herself, pressing her back against the wood of the door—possibly to hold herself up, possibly in an attempt to back away from him.
He obviously hadn’t been faring well before she’d left, but it seemed that this had maybe pushed him over the edge. His breathing was labored. His glasses, crooked and low on his nose. His hair was downright riotous. And, for a moment, he looked more desperate than angry. In all the years under his roof, even through wars, she had never seen him like this. Unraveled. Undone.
In the back of her mind there was the fleeting realization that it was she who had reduced him to this, and how, in that instant, there was something so uncharacteristically wild about him that was almost attractive—but before she could contemplate the significance of that thought, he set his mouth and swallowed, regaining some of his self-possession.
He straightened his glasses with one hand, caught her arm with the other, and the controlling master was back, as if he had never left, and Hungary had to wonder if she had imagined that vulnerable look on his face. And before she knew it, he had yanked her from the door, dragging her down the halls, then down the stairs, throwing her into the cellar that Italy had so often occupied as a child, the door clanging shut, the key grinding in the lock, his footsteps stalking away.
It was only then, alone in the cold darkness, that she wept—hot, angry, helpless tears falling to the flagstones below.
-----
Historical Notes:
Note about the historical notes: As previously alluded to, the research for this fic was complex as hell. To the best of my knowledge, I sorted everything out here in the notes, but I will freely admit that I used wikipedia as my main source (not my only source, but the main one), and I’m only one person, after all, so it’s entirely possible that I got some facts wrong. Other facts I purposefully simplified because I didn’t wants these footnotes to be as long as the chapter itself. Basically, don’t take what’s written below as the definitive TRUTH, is all I’m saying. Cool? Cool.
-Mohács, etc.: The Battle of Mohács, in 1526, between Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. The Hungarian king, Louis II, died in the conflict, so the rule (of the land not already taken over by the Ottomans) defaulted to Louis’s brother-in-law, who was of the Austrian Habsburgs. It was a devastating defeat for Hungary and basically marked its end as an independent nation. The ensuing relationship between Austria and Hungary was pretty abysmal, and Hungary tried numerous times to break free of their rule. One of the more significant uprisings was Rákóczi's War for Independence (1703-1711). The Battle of Trencsén, a major defeat for Hungary, was part of this war (taking place in 1708).
-Come 1711, Charles VI became Holy Roman Emperor and essentially said, “Hey, how about we stop being dicks to Hungary, eh?” (There were political reasons behind this, but hey, whatever works, right?) While Hungary still would have preferred independence, the 1700s saw a significantly better relationship between the two countries, including Hungarian support in wars (like that of the Austrian Succession) and a great cultural and intellectual exchange. (In my headcanon, this is what I like to refer to as their “good period,” before things started going downhill again in the 1800s.)
-Napoleon, despite being a megalomaniac, implemented some pretty sweet policies in his time—like freedom of religion and due process, to name a couple—that people wanted to keep around, even after his demise. Austria, who skewed conservative and had already had to put up with too much change because of the wars (the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, to name the major one), put his foot down and said, “Nein! We’re going back to the way things were, feudal law and everything!” This understandably ruffled some feathers, but the more tensions rose, the more strict Austrian laws became, hoping to squelch revolutions before they had a chance to break out. As you can probably guess, this just pissed people off even more, so that by the time 1848 rolled around, the Austrian Empire was something of a powder keg, waiting to blow.
-Poland punching himself: A reference to the Galician insurrection of 1846, where the Polish nobility rose up against Austrian rule, only to be put down by their own peasantry.
-Vivaldi’s “Summer” concerto: The third movement is commonly called “Storm,” and is one of the most popular and recognizable pieces of Baroque music, even to this day.
-Originally, Hungary wasn’t looking for independence so much as just some autonomy within the empire—the ability to manage some of her own affairs, basically. The Twelve Points essentially were a list of demands, calling for just that, along with the abolition of some ridiculously oppressive laws. Austria, who was not only busy putting down revolts just about everywhere else, but who was also struggling with internal tensions at home in Vienna, basically had no choice but to say, “Okay, fine, whatever,” and grudgingly signed off on it. Hungary, who hadn’t had this much self-rule since she first became Habsburg territory, went on a political redecorating spree, declaring her house ALL HUNGARIAN ALL THE TIME FUCK YEAH!—which was all well and good, except for the fact that there were more than just Hungarians living in Hungary. Ethnic minorities (like the Croats) who had been all, “Yay! :D” at the prospect of a new, non-German government were suddenly all, “Wait, we’ve seen this shit before… :|” and started leaning back over to Austria’s side, since war was looking pretty imminent. Meanwhile, Hungarian politicians were themselves divided, with conservatives saying, “Let’s keep being friends with Austria, yo,” and radical liberals calling for, “FULL INDEPENDENCE RAWR.” Hungary, realizing that, “Oh, shit, this harder than I thought D:” tried to get in good with Austria again and also distract him from her internal bickering by offering to send troops to still-revolting Italy.
-Austria, however (who was still seething over Hungary’s well-timed political victory and had been casting dark, resentful looks her way in what little free time he had), saw through to the bigger picture and was like, “Hold up—you’re not supposed to be forming your own army.” Field Marshal Count Franz Philipp von Lamberg was sent to Hungary at the end of September 1848, to hopefully smooth the situation over and take control of whatever army was being formed, but an angry mob got word of his arrival and murdered him. Murdered him, then mutilated the body, then paraded it around on scythes, to be precise. Austria got wind of it, put his foot down and said, “Okay, that’s it, you’ve played your little revolution game long enough, time for your ass to get back here—except—wait—maybe I should let you go! Oh, God, I don’t know what I’m doing anymore!” (This, of course, refers to Austrian troops being ordered to invade Hungary, and the October Revolt in Vienna, where Austrian civilians tried to stop them from deploying.)
-Toward the end of 1848, the dissension at home had been suppressed (along with the other revolutions in the empire), and Austria got a new boss in the form of eighteen-year-old Franz Joseph. (Ferdinand, being mentally deficient, had been convinced to step down, as Austria was kind of desperately in need of a capable leader at this point.) Franz Joseph’s argument was basically, “Well, I never agreed to anything, so therefore the Hungarian government is null and void. Get your maid’s ass back here.” This led to the full-out war of independence, and Hungary put up such a fight that Austria eventually had to ask Russia for help, after which the rebellion was crushed quite succinctly.
-The Battle of Temesvár (now present-day Timișoara, Romania) was the last major battle of the Revolution, and while it was initially going okay for Hungary, a combination of munitions issues and Józef Bem falling from his horse meant that things took a decisively bad turn and it ended up being a horrific defeat. It shattered morale, left the Hungarian forces fractured, and led to the Hungarian general, Artúr Görgey, formally surrendering to the Russian Imperial Army a mere four days later, on August 13th.
-Arad: A city in present-day Romania, though at the time it was part of Hungary. After the revolution was put down, the Austrian general Julius Jacob von Haynau was made Regent of Hungary. Haynau was, to put it mildly, Kind of a Dick, and instituted some pretty brutal martial law, including the order that all thirteen rebel generals be put to death. These later became known as The Thirteen Martyrs of Arad. Batthyány was executed on the same day, in Pest.
A/N: Whew! Welp, the mystery behind what exactly went down between them in 1849 is no more. Thanks for reading, and especially for slogging through all those notes. <3
All other fics can be found here.
Fandom: Hetalia
Genre: Drama, angst, romance, historical.
Characters/pairings: Austria/Hungary, AusHun (with minor appearances of various other nations and real-life historical figures).
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 7,564 (8,847 with notes)
Summary: The circumstances that led to their marriage were hardly the stuff of fairy tales. From the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 to the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. Historical!AusHun.
Warnings: History, some mild violence, an assault of sorts, and more history.
If you’d like to leave a comment, please do so on AO3!
A/N: So…this fic is old. Like, really old. It was actually one of the first Hetalia fics I ever started writing (so that means that, yes, this bitch dates back to motherfucking 2009). It was supposed to be a one-shot, but ended up being long enough and complicated enough that I eventually broke it up into three parts—which was kind of a death sentence for it, unfortunately, as I am The Worst at finishing multi-chapter stories. (There’s a reason I stick to one-shots, after all.) And the way I write is so all over the place and out of order that I couldn’t even, like, post the first part.
However, over the years, that first part, at least, has gotten close enough to being complete that I decided to hunker down and finally finish it. So here we are. Since it took more than ten years just to get this much up, I’m not going to make any promises about the rest of it, but it’s my sincerest hope that it can (will?) still be enjoyable, even in its unfinished form. And hey, you never know—maybe posting part of it will inspire me to get to work on finishing the rest of it? It’s the AusHun fic I always wanted to read but ultimately could never find, and maybe the same is true for others? At the very least, it’ll probably help give some context to some of my other fics, particularly Once More, With (a Different) Feeling (which references some things that happen within it) and The Edelweiss Arc (which follows the same timeline). If nothing else, I’ll be able to stop being so coy about just how much of a dick Austria was at this point in their history, pfft.
As it is so old, there are no doubt some things about it which don’t entirely match up with canon these days (the Czech Republic/Czechia, for instance, had yet to be introduced back in 2009-2010, so I called the character “Bohemia”), and no doubt there are a lot of things I would do differently if I was writing it from the ground up today, but, well, it is what it is. Please be forgiving and all that.
Lastly, this fic is, without a doubt, the most history-laden story I’ve ever written (which is part of why it’s taken me this long to even finish the first part). The translation from history book to Hetalia is not always smooth (to say the least), so I obviously had to streamline some events and take artistic liberties with others. Historical notes covering most of the details can be found at the end, though as occasionally happens in this fandom, they were too long for the official “end notes” section, so they had to be tacked onto the bottom of the fic proper.
Anyway, without further ado, part one!
- Forward and Reverse -
I.
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 flickered 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 morale 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 firmly 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.
The breaking point came in March:
“Mr. Austria,” Hungary said, for the third time, the patience in her voice growing thin. She felt oddly like a school-teacher, trying to grab the attention of some daydreaming boy.
Finally, he jerked his head up, blinking feverishly for a moment, as if he couldn’t quite focus on her. Belatedly, her tone set him off and he frowned irritably. “Yes?”
Hungary resisted the urge to let out an irritated sigh of her own. Even so, she was pretty sure her posture deflated a little. She lifted the tray in her hands demonstratively. “Your coffee.”
He blinked again. “Oh. Yes. Of course.” He nodded shortly and set down his pen, forsaking the paperwork he’d been staring at blankly. Absently, he checked his cuffs, then ran a hand over his hair to make sure it was still in place. Nervous habits he’d developed as of late. As if buttons and buckles and brushed hair could hold him together. Hungary gave him a skeptical, sidelong glance and set the tray down on the usual side table.
Austria pushed himself back from his desk with a heavy sigh and stood as Hungary set about to pouring his coffee. Very grimly, he walked over, took a long, indulgent drink, then sighed again.
Next to him, Hungary fidgeted for an awkward moment. She figured it was probably nostalgia that made her ask—a longing for the days when he would confide in her, even if the confidences were simple day-to-day annoyances—when by all means, she should have just kept her mouth shut. Maybe, in some idealistic part of her brain, she thought it might even ease some of the recent tension between them.
“Rough day, sir?”
“It’s nothing,” he said automatically. He took another sip and darkly amended, “Nothing out of the ordinary these days, at any rate.”
“…Sir?”
Austria rubbed his temple, as if he had a headache, seemingly at odds with himself. Eventually, with another little sigh, he relented. “Bohemia keeps bothering me about a ‘pan-Slavic’ conference she wants to hold in Prague. And Veneziano keeps going on about how he wants a constitution.” He scoffed and added under his breath, “As if he’d know what to do with one.”
Stiffly, Hungary wiped a fingerprint from the edge of the serving tray. “That’s not entirely his fault, you know,” she pointed out lowly.
The cup and saucer hit the table, hard enough so that some of the coffee splashed over. Hungary started at the noise, her head shooting up, and she suddenly found herself on the receiving end of a very sharp, admonishing look. “I don’t recall asking for your opinion, and I’ll thank you to keep such remarks to yourself,” Austria snapped—and it was as if that popped a cork off her throat, because she simply couldn’t help the next words that came tumbling irately out of her mouth:
“Censorship is one of the reasons this is happening in the first place! If you’d at least—”
And it was then that it happened. That he struck her across the cheek.
It wasn’t a hard blow by any means, more to silence her than cause any actual damage, but it was shocking all the same, and she stared up at him in utter disbelief, feeling the left side of her face grow pink.
Austria blinked and at least had the grace to look surprised by his own actions. He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, wincing distractedly. “I didn’t mean to do that,” he muttered contritely, almost more to himself than to her. He took a breath, straightened his posture, and replaced his glasses. “But honestly, Hungary, you forget your place. You are a servant in this household, not a diplomatic advisor, and you would do well to remember that.”
All she could do was glare, trying to hide her clenched fists in the folds of her skirt.
He unflinchingly met her angry gaze with his own. “Is that understood?” he asked curtly.
Hungary ground her teeth and just barely managed to push the words out. “Yes, sir.”
“Then you’re dismissed.”
She forced herself to curtsy, her spine rebelling all the way down.
She wasn’t sure what she was trying to accomplish, sneaking out later that night, running another stolen horse ragged as she rushed to Pest. Suffice it to say, though, something had to be done.
It was well after midnight when she stormed into the Pilvax Café, that hotbed for political activity, and the noise in the place suddenly ceased as everyone turned to stare at her. She stood there, hair wild and heart thrumming, drinking in her countrymen as surely as they drank in their coffee, and slowly, eventually, the looks of confusion turned to looks of awe, as they realized who—what—stood before them.
Lajos Kossuth—a man she knew so well and yet didn’t know at all—was the first to step forward. “…A nemzetem?” he finally asked—my nation?—reverent and amazed, and Hungary wanted to laugh and cry. All she could do was grab his shoulders and kiss his cheeks over and over and over again.
“Yes,” she said, so joyful she could have burst. “Yes.”
It wasn’t even three days later that she made her way back to Vienna, but for all the change in atmosphere, Hungary wondered if it hadn’t been three years. The streets were absolutely abuzz, and it was only when she came across a newspaper that she found out why:
Just two days ago, on the 13th, Klemens von Metternich, Austria’s great Foreign Minister and a champion of the controlling conservatism that had become so characteristic of the empire, had been forced to resign after a massive demonstration. It was such a buoying turn of events that Hungary literally ran back to Austria’s house. Upon arriving, she threw the servants’ door open, half-expecting to interrupt an impromptu party, but instead she found herself met with an eerie silence.
“Hello?” she called. The whole mood was entirely strange, to say the least; even on the most dismal of days, there was still the hustle and bustle of the staff going about their duties. She made her way further into the kitchens and tried again. “Hello?” There was a sound from the next room over, and she moved toward it, only to come face-to-face with Slovenia as she suddenly appeared in the doorway.
“Hungary!” The other woman glanced around and her voice lowered to an astonished hush. “Where have you been?”
Hungary raised her chin and straightened her back, pride written all over her countenance. “I went home—” she started to say, but Slovenia cut her off with a wild shake of her hands.
“Shh! Not so loud!”
Hungary furrowed her brows at the dark-haired nation. “Why?”
Slovenia stopped and actually gaped at her. “You mean you haven’t heard?” she asked.
“What? That Metternich resigned?” Sure, it was a pretty big deal, but Hungary didn’t see why that meant she had to—
Slovenia grabbed her arm and pulled her close. “That’s only part of it. You heard about the protests?” Hungary nodded. “Well, they’re saying,” she whispered pointedly, “that Austria walked out on his boss and joined the masses in the streets.”
Hungary blinked. “What?” she breathed, disbelieving. Slovenia nodded. Hungary tried once more, just to be sure. “Austria?” Slovenia nodded again, with a hint of aggravation. Hungary blinked again.
Austria? Straight-laced, I-follow-the-rules-so-well-I-know-them-by-their-first-name Austria? Walking out on his boss? Oh, Hungary thought, with a perverse sort of excitement, what she wouldn’t have given to have been in the room when that happened.
A surge of hope overcame her, and she suddenly asked, “Where is he now?”
“In his music room, taking a couple days off. Some say he was actually ordered to, but who knows? That’s why it’s quiet as a nunnery around here. After that little demonstration, he’s been coiled as tight as a spring.”
Hungary’s shoulders set resolutely. “Good. I have to speak with him.” She started to make a move for the main part of the house, but Slovenia grabbed her arm again, bringing her up short.
“What?” she demanded. “Are you serious? Did you not just hear what I said?”
Hungary shook her off. “I heard exactly what you said. Which is why I have to speak to him right now. If he’s pulling stunts like walking out on his government, then this is the perfect time.”
“The perfect time for what?” Slovenia asked, but Hungary was already gone, too eager to waste any more time on explanations.
The trek to his music room was a blur. Her heart pounded and her mind raced, and she paused in the hallway outside to gather herself, straightening her bodice and running her hands down her skirt, trying to scrub the sweat from her palms while simultaneously listening to the comforting crinkle of the piece of paper in her pocket. After a good minute, with a deep breath and her chin held high, she stepped up to the door. It wasn’t completely closed, and she peeked her head in, trying to get a preparatory look at Austria, as if seeing his state would help her decide how precisely to proceed.
He sat at his piano, with his eyes closed and his fingers trailing slowly over the ivories. The tune he played was a careful one, cautious and soft. Somehow, it put Hungary in mind of a hostage situation—trying to disarm tensions before they led to catastrophe.
Bracing herself, she knocked lightly on the door-frame. “Excuse me, sir.”
At the interruption, his hands landed hard and cacophonously on the keys. “Goddamn it!” Immediately, Austria seemed to regret the uncharacteristic outburst. He took a great breath, momentarily closed his eyes again, and then collected himself. Stiffly, he turned his head toward her. “Hungary. What is it?” If his playing had been a hostage situation, apparently negotiations had broken down and someone had just been shot.
She pressed her fingers against the paper in her pocket a little harder and planted her feet firmly against the floor. She couldn’t back down now—she wouldn’t back down now. “I’d like to discuss something with you.”
Austria blinked at her exasperatedly. His hands hovered over the piano keys. “Must it be now?”
“If not now, sir, then when?” she asked pointedly, perhaps even coldly. He was often out of the house as of late, sometimes for days, even weeks at a time, and they both knew it. For that very reason he didn’t have many opportunities to sit down to play anymore, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to feel guilty about tearing him away from the comforting hobby.
There was a stretch of silence, and then he exhaled in a huff, closing the keyboard lid with more force than strictly necessary and standing in one swift movement. “Fine,” he yielded, stalking past her and out the door. She realized he meant for her to follow him, and scrambled to catch up as he went toward his office. Once there, she debated whether or not to close the door, and finally did so, a little uncertainly.
Austria paced for maybe a short five steps behind his desk, stopping to put a hand on his hip as he raked the other through his hair. He dropped down onto his chair and gestured off-handedly for her to do the same in one of the seats opposite him.
Hungary declined. Instead she fished her copy of the paper out of her pocket and set it down in front of him.
He took it in his hand, his eyes skimming the print. “‘Twelve Points’?” He frowned, then looked at her sharply. “What is this?”
“A proposal.”
His hand twitched, almost as if he wanted to crumple it right then and there, and his eyes bore into hers. “It looks like a list of demands to me.”
“Only if you choose to read it as one.” She was surprised the ceiling wasn’t growing icicles.
“Well, then. What if I refuse this…‘proposal’?”
Cards on the table; she pulled her ace.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if there are mass demonstrations in Buda and Pest today.”
He blinked at her incredulously, and looked like he was ready to both faint and strangle something. This time his hand did crinkle the edge of the paper.
“I’m not looking for independence,” she clarified. “I’d still work for you; I’d just like to do so from my own land. Is that really so much to ask?”
Austria leaned forward slightly, taking off his glasses with one hand and pressing the fingers of the other against his temples. His frame radiated with tension, and after a moment, he pulled his hand back from his face. Almost vengefully, he hooked the spectacles back over his ears and gave the pamphlet another glancing over.
“I’m left with no choice, then, am I?” he asked—virtually demanded—rhetorically.
You’ve left me with no choice, she wanted to say, but didn’t.
Austria huffed. “I will…discuss it with the emperor,” he grudgingly acquiesced. Hungary sucked in an elated breath at the words, and his eyes snapped up to hers in warning. “I’m not promising anything.”
Soberly, she nodded. “Thank you, sir.” Her tone could have been interpreted in any number of ways, and Austria shot her a look that might just have been capable of freezing the surface of the sun.
She dipped into a perfunctory curtsy and turned to walk out, her legs almost trembling with the realization of what she had just done.
It was almost a month before she heard anything else, and in that time, things descended even further into chaos. Fighting broke out with Italy, and with Austria gone to protect his claims in Lombardy-Venetia, Bohemia took the opportunity to high-tail it home to Prague. Even Romania, who was currently under Turkey’s roof, managed to break in one day just to steal back a carpet. Hungary was almost on the verge of doing something similarly drastic, herself, when Austria came striding down the hall one day, apparently having just returned from one of his campaigns, if his scuffed uniform was any indication.
“Hungary, I need to see you in my office,” he told her, his pace firm and broad and—if she was any judge of body language—extremely irritated.
For an apprehensive moment, Hungary simply jerked her head back and forth between the picture frame she was in the middle of dusting and Austria—who was quickly disappearing down the hall without even a backward glance to see if she was following. At a loss, she scrambled down the small step-ladder, dropped her duster onto one of the side tables, and trotted down the corridor to catch up with him.
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.
Blinking again in confusion, she took it, opening it up to find a collection of documents. Her eyes flicked over them, skimming with increased fervency upon realizing just what they were.
Newly-passed Hungarian laws. Reform laws. Laying out budget policies, foreign policies, a national guard, the removal of censorship, the removal of serfdom, along with a slew of others. And at the end, Emperor Ferdinand’s signature, validating it all.
An exuberant, almost disbelieving breath pushed out of her, and she looked back up—but Austria was now seated at his desk, already sorting through his own paperwork at an anxious pace. Her mouth opened, wanting to say something, but he cut her off before she had a chance to.
“I’d be packing my things, not standing there gawking, if I were you,” he said, not bothering to look up from his papers. “Your carriage leaves in an hour.”
Her mouth snapped shut, and she nodded, more to herself than to him. Her feet started to stumble backwards, and without another word, without even a curtsy, she fled his office, down the hall and towards the servants’ quarters, her legs progressively picking up speed until she was practically running, her eyes almost tearing up in sheer exhilaration.
Home. She was going home.
It was Lajos Batthyány, her new prime minister, who met her in Pest, and Hungary was so excited that she didn’t even wait until the carriage had stopped before she jumped out and threw her arms around him. He laughed at the display, his great beard tickling her cheek, and put an arm around her shoulder when they parted. “Come,” he said, leading her down the street like an old school chum. “There is much work to be done. And we must get you settled in, after all.”
What followed was a whirlwind of activity. There were personal effects to unpack, an office to familiarize herself with, and a near-constant slew of countrymen to see. Her days were filled with politicians and paperwork, and her nights were filled with tokaji toasts and csárdás dancing, and even when she would collapse into bed, exhausted, Hungary was sure she’d never been so happy.
That happiness was somewhat dampened when Croatia barged into her office one morning, looking like he had just ridden in.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing!” he demanded. Hungary looked up from the plant she’d been in the middle of watering, and Croatia indignantly held up some papers he had in his hand. Hungary blinked at them.
“They’re the new laws,” she said.
“Exactly!” He threw them on her desk and pointed at one particular line. That to be eligible to vote, one had to speak Hungarian.
Hungary looked up. “So?”
“So how is that any different from that pencil-necked prick saying we all have to speak German?”
“Because it isn’t German.” Croatia only blinked, uncomprehending, and a scoff of a laugh came bubbling out of her throat. “You don’t get it, do you?” she marveled.
Croatia sobered, and for a long moment merely looked at her with something resembling pity. “On the contrary, Hungary, you’re the one who doesn’t get it.” And with that, he turned on his heel and walked out with the resolute stride of someone who’d just made a very important decision. The papers he’d brought in with him, the newly passed reforms, lay forsaken on her desk.
Hungary sank thoughtfully down into her chair, replaying in her head the exchange that had just happened. She worried her bottom lip and looked around her office—her office, her office, when for so long she’d had to put up with only a bedroom, and other countries managing her affairs—before she reached for her pen and paper and began to draft a letter.
To: The Austrian Empire. Regarding: The uprisings in northern Italy.
She couldn’t let this go. She wouldn’t. Not for anything.
Austria never got back to her. Not personally, at least. The closest she got was a field marshal, a Count Franz Philipp von Lamberg, who’d been sent to take control of her armed forces. To say his arrival was received frostily was an understatement at best, and after a short, futile meeting with one of her generals, the count retired to lodging in Pest. Hungary bristled at his presence, his carriage along her streets feeling like a flea across her skin, so it maybe wasn’t a surprise that an angry mob got word of his being there and proceeded to snuff him out like an invasive insect.
Maybe not a surprise, but a political nightmare all the same, and Hungary almost immediately went from suffering itchy nerves to suffering an aching head. Batthyány took it upon himself to travel to Vienna to try to smooth things over, but the journey proved to be a fruitless one. Upon his return, he called the various ministers to convention, and Hungary held herself off to the side, waiting with baited breath for the news he brought.
“As I’m sure most of you are aware by now, Ferdinand has stepped down as emperor,” he announced gravely, “…and his nephew, Franz Joseph, has replaced him.” He paused for a careful moment, then continued. “In light of the incident with Count Lamberg, he has ordered the dissolution of this government and its parliament.”
A dark cloud seemed to gather in the room at that, and it rained out the question of what now?
Hungary took it better than she thought she would have. Or maybe it simply couldn’t sink in, and that was why her breathing was steady and panic avoided her veins. Her eyes roamed over the present faces, some worried, some angry, Batthyány’s unreadable but strong, and she realized that she loved, loved, loved these men—her fathers, brothers, sons—fiercely and completely, would not stand to see them struggle under an Austrian monarchy again, would not stand to leave them now that she had known their company, and so the answer sat there, clear and obvious:
“War, then,” she said, and she almost didn’t recognize her own voice, it was so frightfully calm and resolute. “We go to war, then.”
Oh, she had missed this.
Hungary had always felt oddly at home on the battlefield, and nothing was quite as motivating as fighting for one’s freedom. Poland had even sent help, with a note that read:
“Like, Russia’s being Russia, so I can’t make it out myself, so here’s Józef Bem, who totally kicks major ass, because you deserve the best. Also, it would be awesome if you could break Austria’s glasses for me. xoxo, Poland.”
The only problem was, Austria hadn’t been around. Oh, sure, his armies had, but she had yet to spot the nation, himself.
There had been news of an uprising in Vienna. Sympathizers protesting, trying to stop soldiers from leaving the city, and though they had failed, it gave her a surge of hope. Austria was prone to following the rules, admittedly, but nations were not their governments, and maybe…maybe…
Rumors regarding his whereabouts were all over the place: that he was busy in Tuscany, or Moravia, or Galicia; that he was bedridden, sick and delirious with fever caused by the revolt in October; that his new boss had actually locked him up to cool his rebellious heels. Who knew what the real story was.
It mattered little to Hungary. Austria or no, her spirits were damn near irrepressible this time around. The winter had admittedly been rough, as she’d been forced to cede both Buda and Pest, but the following spring had seen her regain them, and furthermore push the Austrian forces almost completely off her lands. She took a brief break from the fighting on April 14th, to help celebrate her newly-declared independence—getting as drunk on sovereignty as she did on pálinka—but then it was back to the battlefront, back to Bem and Görgey and Perczel and all the others, as spring slid definitively into the heat of summer.
No more peeling potatoes, she vowed to herself. No more sweeping someone else’s step. No more servants’ dresses, and holding her tongue, and renting her land. When all this was over, she would don her old breeches, leave her hair uncovered, climb bareback on a mare, and ride and ride and ride, and no one—least of all, Austria—would be able to tell her what to do ever again.
And so it continued, until one early morning in August, outside of Temesvár, when Bem came up to her on horseback to survey the approaching legion.
“They’re saying that Austria himself was finally sighted,” he told her—a simple statement. The nation lowered her spy glass, but kept her eyes on the horizon.
Well, she thought. Even supposing the information was true, it was hardly relevant at this point. Hungary was feeling positively battle-bright. And Austria had never been much of a fighter. Not when he’d actually had the ambition as a child, and certainly not now, when the only calluses he tolerated were those from his violin.
A small smile, grim with determination, tugged at her lips. Her gaze did not waver. “Let him come, then,” she said.
And so he did.
The cavalry thundered. Horse hooves pounded against the ground, and the crack of gunfire pierced the air. Hungary lowered her rifle to peer through the smoke of the battlefield and couldn’t help the satisfied smirk that came to her mouth. Hah. Austria might have had more cannons, but between the two of them, whose forces were currently retreating? Here was a hint: not hers.
A part of her had to wonder why he had even bothered to show up. His personal presence—wherever it was in the chaos—didn’t much seem to be helping his troops, that was for sure. Hungary grinned fiercely, and like the Magyar warrior she was, she reared her horse, raised her arm, and let out another rallying cry that would push her closer to victory.
Only to have it muffled by a large hand as she was unexpectedly pulled off her steed from behind. Another hand clamped around her, trapping her arms down as she struggled—and then her blood froze, and the rest of her with it, when she realized who was holding her.
Russia’s blond head peered around into her line of sight, a small, benign smile on his face, as if he had found a lost puppy or a wayward child. “I think someone is looking for you, yes?” Her mouth unable to answer, her eyes jerked toward his, little lavender crescents that were almost lost in the jovial crinkles around them. And then—he simply lifted her feet off the ground and began merrily walking through the battle, toward the Austrian side.
That—that smooth-talking, aristocratic prick. Of course he refused to get his hands dirty; why bother, when you could just convince someone else to do it for you? Panic began to set in, and Hungary thrashed desperately, trying to kick her legs behind her. Her heel managed to connect with Russia’s knee, but he just laughed.
“Such a bad-mannered house-guest,” he chided, and his grip tightened enough to push the air out of her. It was consequently enough to put an end to her struggling, and his soft, lilting voice went on: “I told Austria that if he let you stay at my house for a while, I could fix that for him. I know he likes good behavior, yes?”
A chill ran through her entire body, demanding oxygen from lungs that were barely capable of breathing. During his interims in Austria’s house, Poland had told her stories of his time with Russia, and his ways of “keeping order,” as it were, never failed to horrify her. (The casual, blasé tone with which he told the stories had always horrified her a little more, but you could, like, get used to anything, even almost dying and whatever, and those imperialist assholes only care about landmasses on maps, anyway, so who are they to try to break you when you’re obviously all spirit?—or so Poland said. Sometimes she thought the cross-dressing was simply a strange outlet he had developed out of sheer necessity.)
Even Austria, himself, who had the power of a whole empire behind him, generally had to walk the fine line that was Russia’s good side. Hungary doubted she could step so gracefully.
It was when they reached occupied Pest that she finally saw him. Among his armies, dressed in full uniform, arms crossed. Collected, stern, arrogant. Not quite the soldier, but every bit the tactician.
More fear slipped down her spine. Out of the frying pan and into the fire—wasn’t that what they called this?
Russia dropped her unceremoniously on the ground in front of Austria—like some mouse a cat would leave on the doorstep—and she fell to her hands and knees, raggedly gasping air into her starved lungs. Before she could even catch her breath, Austria grabbed her arm, hauling her up again. He gave a slight bow of acknowledgement to the Russian nation, regarded her briefly, coldly, and then turned on his heel, dragging her behind him, away from her home and closer to his.
He didn’t say a word, which was perhaps the worst thing, and she tried to dig her boots into the earth, tried to claw at that perfectly manicured hand of his, but all he did was grab both wrists and continue along, and as exhausted as she was, she couldn’t do much more than stumble behind him.
“Y-you agreed to it,” she tried, voice sounding smaller than she would have liked. “My government. You agreed to it.”
He deigned to glance back at her. “Ferdinand agreed to it.”
“That’s not true!” she cried, frantically. “You agreed to it, you did—”
“Well, then I lied!” he snapped, whirling around, still grasping her wrists in one hand while the other clamped around her waist, fingers digging into her lower back as he jerked her close.
The action was so unlike him, it startled her into silence. His body was lean and tense against hers, and she stared up at him, searching his eyes for something she couldn’t find anymore. They were toward the outskirts of the Austrian camp, a fair distance away from anything, offering them auditory privacy if not visual privacy.
He spoke again, his voice sharp and clipped. “You are going to return to Vienna. You are going to resume your duties. And you are going to stop conspiring against me.” Statements, not threats.
Her voice was barely above a whisper—defiant in its sheer lack of defiance. “And if I don’t?”
He said nothing, but a twitch in his jaw betrayed him. For a long moment, they just stood like that, one angry and speechless and the other not-quite-resigned, staring steadily at each other. It might have continued for even longer, but it was then that a messenger entered the periphery, hanging back cautiously, as if he was seeing something he shouldn’t and didn’t want to interrupt.
Austria broke the gaze to look over. “Yes?” he huffed.
He was young, perhaps seventeen, and his gaze nervously flicked between the two countries before it settled on his own nation. He swallowed. Saluted. “Uh, General Haynau wants you to know that he has the r-rebel”—he gave another glance at Hungary—“generals captured at Arad, sir.”
For a moment, Austria looked down at the country in his hands, as if considering. Hungary unwaveringly met his gaze. And then calmly, coldly, he turned back to the boy.
“Good. Send him a message that they’re to be executed.”
“No!” The word was out of her mouth before she even knew it, her composure broken, her will to struggle returning full force.
His grip around her wrists tightened painfully, and she gasped. Her fingers were starting to go numb. The messenger hesitated, and Austria snapped, “That was an order.”
“Y-yes, sir.” He quickly saluted and scurried off.
Hungary was shaking, her expression the very definition of betrayed disbelief, her arms trying to fight for freedom even as her legs felt like giving out. “How…how could you? H-how—?” She wanted to cry and scream and run away and trample him into the ground, all at the same time.
He shook her to silence her. Hard. Was sharp and unapologetic. “An example obviously had to be made.” He paused to take a breath. “And we are leaving now.” And without another word, he set off, pulling her along. She couldn’t even attempt to resist—what little strength she had left was being rationed between her knees and her throat, to keep the former from buckling and the latter from letting tears leak up to her eyes.
She couldn’t cry in front of him, she simply couldn’t…
Upon reaching his home, he wrenched her inside, slamming the door shut and shoving her back against it. In the empty privacy of his foyer, he bent down, voice quiet and intense and dangerously intimate. “Did you honestly think I would let you just waltz out of here?”
She had hoped… He was strict, not cruel, and she had hoped…
He shook her again, fingers digging into her upper arms. Like trying to force an answer out of a disobedient child, and a wince betrayed her. “You’re mine. Don’t forget that.”
That struck a nerve. Her lips curled back fiercely. “I was never yours.”
“Oh,” he said, rueful and haughty all at once, “you were.”
She didn’t say anything, suddenly leery of the position he had her in—caged against the door. And then, behind the steel rims of his glasses, there was a glint in his eyes, and her own widened. “No—!”
But he had already pushed his lips down hard on hers, muffling her protests. She tried to wrench her head away, but his hand tangled painfully in her hair, forcing her chin up, and when she gasped, his mouth outright invaded hers. Like he was staking a claim. Or re-staking one, as the case may have been. She tried to fight him off, but stuck between his body and the door as she was, she could do little more than futilely push at his chest. An old-fashioned knee to his vital regions might have worked, but even his legs had hers pinned, preventing their movement. He was hurting her, violating her, and she couldn’t even manage to bite his lip in retaliation.
Some distant part of her, that remembered Christmas and wine and awkward blushes and girlish daydreams, told her it wasn't supposed to be like this.
Eventually, against her will, her tired, trapped body simply gave up, ceasing its struggling, tears involuntarily pooling at the corners of her eyes.
He’d won. He’d really won.
And then something changed. His hand unfisted to cradle her neck, fingers trembling, and he pressed into her not to keep her still but as if he needed the support, and his mouth went from punishing to almost needy, passionate really, and—
On a gasp, Austria abruptly broke away, gloved palms braced on either side of her. Hungary blinked up at him warily, breaths shallow, heart racing in fear, cheeks flushed despite herself, pressing her back against the wood of the door—possibly to hold herself up, possibly in an attempt to back away from him.
He obviously hadn’t been faring well before she’d left, but it seemed that this had maybe pushed him over the edge. His breathing was labored. His glasses, crooked and low on his nose. His hair was downright riotous. And, for a moment, he looked more desperate than angry. In all the years under his roof, even through wars, she had never seen him like this. Unraveled. Undone.
In the back of her mind there was the fleeting realization that it was she who had reduced him to this, and how, in that instant, there was something so uncharacteristically wild about him that was almost attractive—but before she could contemplate the significance of that thought, he set his mouth and swallowed, regaining some of his self-possession.
He straightened his glasses with one hand, caught her arm with the other, and the controlling master was back, as if he had never left, and Hungary had to wonder if she had imagined that vulnerable look on his face. And before she knew it, he had yanked her from the door, dragging her down the halls, then down the stairs, throwing her into the cellar that Italy had so often occupied as a child, the door clanging shut, the key grinding in the lock, his footsteps stalking away.
It was only then, alone in the cold darkness, that she wept—hot, angry, helpless tears falling to the flagstones below.
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Historical Notes:
Note about the historical notes: As previously alluded to, the research for this fic was complex as hell. To the best of my knowledge, I sorted everything out here in the notes, but I will freely admit that I used wikipedia as my main source (not my only source, but the main one), and I’m only one person, after all, so it’s entirely possible that I got some facts wrong. Other facts I purposefully simplified because I didn’t wants these footnotes to be as long as the chapter itself. Basically, don’t take what’s written below as the definitive TRUTH, is all I’m saying. Cool? Cool.
-Mohács, etc.: The Battle of Mohács, in 1526, between Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. The Hungarian king, Louis II, died in the conflict, so the rule (of the land not already taken over by the Ottomans) defaulted to Louis’s brother-in-law, who was of the Austrian Habsburgs. It was a devastating defeat for Hungary and basically marked its end as an independent nation. The ensuing relationship between Austria and Hungary was pretty abysmal, and Hungary tried numerous times to break free of their rule. One of the more significant uprisings was Rákóczi's War for Independence (1703-1711). The Battle of Trencsén, a major defeat for Hungary, was part of this war (taking place in 1708).
-Come 1711, Charles VI became Holy Roman Emperor and essentially said, “Hey, how about we stop being dicks to Hungary, eh?” (There were political reasons behind this, but hey, whatever works, right?) While Hungary still would have preferred independence, the 1700s saw a significantly better relationship between the two countries, including Hungarian support in wars (like that of the Austrian Succession) and a great cultural and intellectual exchange. (In my headcanon, this is what I like to refer to as their “good period,” before things started going downhill again in the 1800s.)
-Napoleon, despite being a megalomaniac, implemented some pretty sweet policies in his time—like freedom of religion and due process, to name a couple—that people wanted to keep around, even after his demise. Austria, who skewed conservative and had already had to put up with too much change because of the wars (the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, to name the major one), put his foot down and said, “Nein! We’re going back to the way things were, feudal law and everything!” This understandably ruffled some feathers, but the more tensions rose, the more strict Austrian laws became, hoping to squelch revolutions before they had a chance to break out. As you can probably guess, this just pissed people off even more, so that by the time 1848 rolled around, the Austrian Empire was something of a powder keg, waiting to blow.
-Poland punching himself: A reference to the Galician insurrection of 1846, where the Polish nobility rose up against Austrian rule, only to be put down by their own peasantry.
-Vivaldi’s “Summer” concerto: The third movement is commonly called “Storm,” and is one of the most popular and recognizable pieces of Baroque music, even to this day.
-Originally, Hungary wasn’t looking for independence so much as just some autonomy within the empire—the ability to manage some of her own affairs, basically. The Twelve Points essentially were a list of demands, calling for just that, along with the abolition of some ridiculously oppressive laws. Austria, who was not only busy putting down revolts just about everywhere else, but who was also struggling with internal tensions at home in Vienna, basically had no choice but to say, “Okay, fine, whatever,” and grudgingly signed off on it. Hungary, who hadn’t had this much self-rule since she first became Habsburg territory, went on a political redecorating spree, declaring her house ALL HUNGARIAN ALL THE TIME FUCK YEAH!—which was all well and good, except for the fact that there were more than just Hungarians living in Hungary. Ethnic minorities (like the Croats) who had been all, “Yay! :D” at the prospect of a new, non-German government were suddenly all, “Wait, we’ve seen this shit before… :|” and started leaning back over to Austria’s side, since war was looking pretty imminent. Meanwhile, Hungarian politicians were themselves divided, with conservatives saying, “Let’s keep being friends with Austria, yo,” and radical liberals calling for, “FULL INDEPENDENCE RAWR.” Hungary, realizing that, “Oh, shit, this harder than I thought D:” tried to get in good with Austria again and also distract him from her internal bickering by offering to send troops to still-revolting Italy.
-Austria, however (who was still seething over Hungary’s well-timed political victory and had been casting dark, resentful looks her way in what little free time he had), saw through to the bigger picture and was like, “Hold up—you’re not supposed to be forming your own army.” Field Marshal Count Franz Philipp von Lamberg was sent to Hungary at the end of September 1848, to hopefully smooth the situation over and take control of whatever army was being formed, but an angry mob got word of his arrival and murdered him. Murdered him, then mutilated the body, then paraded it around on scythes, to be precise. Austria got wind of it, put his foot down and said, “Okay, that’s it, you’ve played your little revolution game long enough, time for your ass to get back here—except—wait—maybe I should let you go! Oh, God, I don’t know what I’m doing anymore!” (This, of course, refers to Austrian troops being ordered to invade Hungary, and the October Revolt in Vienna, where Austrian civilians tried to stop them from deploying.)
-Toward the end of 1848, the dissension at home had been suppressed (along with the other revolutions in the empire), and Austria got a new boss in the form of eighteen-year-old Franz Joseph. (Ferdinand, being mentally deficient, had been convinced to step down, as Austria was kind of desperately in need of a capable leader at this point.) Franz Joseph’s argument was basically, “Well, I never agreed to anything, so therefore the Hungarian government is null and void. Get your maid’s ass back here.” This led to the full-out war of independence, and Hungary put up such a fight that Austria eventually had to ask Russia for help, after which the rebellion was crushed quite succinctly.
-The Battle of Temesvár (now present-day Timișoara, Romania) was the last major battle of the Revolution, and while it was initially going okay for Hungary, a combination of munitions issues and Józef Bem falling from his horse meant that things took a decisively bad turn and it ended up being a horrific defeat. It shattered morale, left the Hungarian forces fractured, and led to the Hungarian general, Artúr Görgey, formally surrendering to the Russian Imperial Army a mere four days later, on August 13th.
-Arad: A city in present-day Romania, though at the time it was part of Hungary. After the revolution was put down, the Austrian general Julius Jacob von Haynau was made Regent of Hungary. Haynau was, to put it mildly, Kind of a Dick, and instituted some pretty brutal martial law, including the order that all thirteen rebel generals be put to death. These later became known as The Thirteen Martyrs of Arad. Batthyány was executed on the same day, in Pest.
A/N: Whew! Welp, the mystery behind what exactly went down between them in 1849 is no more. Thanks for reading, and especially for slogging through all those notes. <3
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