Work Text:
Nationkind weren’t supposed to die. It was one of the few universals of their kind: so long as their culture lived, so did they. It was the reason Prussia was still somehow alive, the stupid, stubborn bastard. It was the reason Eduard had lived despite so many centuries of torment. As long as the Estonians survived, so would he.
It was Christmas Eve when that long-held belief was shattered. Raivis was asleep on the hearth, dangerously close to the fire; even though it had been years since they’d lived with Ivan, he still slept curled up in a tight ball, like he was expecting to be kicked at any moment. Tolys was sitting at the dining room table, texting someone - Feliks, probably. A halo of paperwork surrounded him, and his laptop was half-propped open with its ancient, patched-up cord stretched across the table to the nearest outlet. Eduard himself was in the kitchen, looking for the gingerbread, which he could’ve sworn he’d left in here somewhere-
His phone began to buzz. He’d left it on the island with the alarm muted, hoping it’d be less annoying when it went off, and he was dismayed when it was still just as annoying as before. He scooped it up and checked the contact information.
Kiku?
Kiku never called him. Hell, Kiku never called anyone except Alfred, and only because Alfred was usually the one calling Kiku. For reasons that eluded Eduard, Kiku preferred to use the post.
Unnerved, Eduard slid the call button into place and lifted it to his ear, finally putting an end to the infernal buzzing.
“Hello?”
A puzzling silence greeted him. Eduard’s brow furrowed. Might’ve been a butt-dial. Or a prank. He was pretty sure Kiku was with Herakles, and that was the kind of prank Herakles would pull.
He almost dropped the phone at the sudden sound of raspy, staticked breathing. His yelp of alarm drew Tolys’s attention.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Eduard nodded.
“Just a little startled! I-”
He was cut off by a voice. A familiar voice. A voice he’d expected if this was a prank, but not like this.
“Estonia?” Herakles asked. He sounded out of breath, maybe even a little terrified.
“If this is a prank, I-”
“It’s not a prank.” A faint sound almost like a sob echoed in the background. It sounded like Kiku. “I wish it was. Eduard, you need to get out of there. Are the other Baltics with you?”
“Yes, I- what’s going on? Why do you have Kiku’s phone? Why are you calling me?!”
That was definitely Kiku crying in the background. Herakles sounded shaky himself; his breath rattled in his lungs when he finally spoke again.
“Someone broke into Yao’s house. Him and Ivan are dead, and they’re not waking up.”
A cold, hollow feeling washed through Eduard.
“Wait, what were you doing at Yao’s house?”
Herakles hesitated.
“...it’s a long story,” he conceded. “Now probably isn’t the time. I’ve been trying to get in contact with the rest of the Nationkind, but you and Feliziano are the only ones who’ve answered, and I…”
Herakles fell silent. Eduard heard what sounded like a whimper in the background, and could be reasonably certain it was Kiku who made it.
“Something’s coming after us,” he said, voice rattled and warped at the edges. “They…they broke in right after Feli picked up. I heard them all shouting before the line went dead. We’re going to check on the rest of Southeast Asia just to be safe, but I need you to try calling the rest of Europe to warn them.”
“What if it’s just a prank or a false alarm?”
“Better to be safe than sorry.”
There was a low shuffling sound that made the speakers crackle, followed by Herakles’s voice again.
“I have to go,” he said hurriedly.
“Hera-”
The phone beeped. Eduard cursed.
“Tolys, get yourself and Raivis to the safehouse,” he said.
Tolys stared at him blankly for a moment, not comprehending. Then his eyes widened.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Herakles thinks someone’s trying to kill us,” Eduard said. “He said they found Yao and Ivan’s bodies. I don’t know if it’s a prank or a false alarm, but he sounded pretty convinced and I’d rather not put you two at risk.”
Tolys nodded. He made his way over to Raivis, stopping to grab their coats off the hooks, and shook him awake. Eduard could hear them murmuring to each other quietly, Raivis confused and Tolys concerned. He turned his attention back to his phone, deliberating in his head what he should do.
Herakles wouldn’t pull a joke that mean-spirited, but someone else could’ve. But at the same time, Eduard couldn't live with the blood of the others on his hands if this wasn’t a joke, no matter how temporary it might be. Someone able to take down not one, but at least two Nationkind wasn’t someone to be crossed. But what could he-?
Timo. He trusted Timo. He’d…he’d humor Eduard, at the very least, and if this was real, if anyone could take down someone insane enough to fight two of the most powerful Nationkind on Earth and win, it’d be Timo.
He punched in Timo’s number from memory and waited. Tolys’s footsteps rattled on the wood floor. When Eduard looked up, he saw Tolys standing by the back door, Raivis half-cowering behind him, confused and sleepy and acting on the instinct drilled into all three of them that anything unexpected was a terrible omen.
“Eesti? Are you coming?” Tolys asked.
Eduard shook his head.
“I’ll be right behind you,” he said. “I need to talk to someone first.”
Tolys nodded. He placed a hand on Raivis’s shoulder and gently guided his younger brother out the door, which slammed shut behind them with a weight and noise that made Eduard flinch.
The phone rang. Again. And again. Eduard knew Timo didn’t like being called on Christmas Eve and that he usually had his phone muted to almost all contacts, but Eduard was always on that list, and the longer the ringing drew on, the more he began to worry that maybe Herakles was right, and maybe Eduard was too late, and maybe-
The phone beeped, and Timo’s familiar, cheery voice filled the room, distorted a bit by the crappy speakers.
“Estonia!” he said cheerfully. “It’s been a while since you called me! How have you been?”
“Fine, fine,” Eduard muttered, distracted. “Listen, Timo-”
“You should come over sometime, you know. I think it’d do all three of you good to get out of that house-”
“Fin. Someone’s attacking the other Nationkind.”
Timo went dead quiet. Somewhere in the background, Eduard could hear the sound of voices and clattering pots. He was with the other Nordics, then.
“...what?” Timo whispered, then laughed. “Eduard, that’s-”
“I’m telling the truth, at least as I know it. Call Herakles if you have to. He’s the one that called me first.” Assuming the lazy bastard even picks up. “Look, even if it’s a false alarm or a prank, it’s better safe than sorry, right?”
Timo was quiet for a moment. When he finally responded, he sounded worried, maybe even a little frustrated.
“Eduard, are you sure you’re okay-?”
“Timo, please listen to me!” Eduard begged. “I-”
His attention was ripped away by the sound of wood creaking. He drew in a sharp breath and looked up. He could hear the ceiling groaning under the weight of someone who wasn’t supposed to be here-
Timo, thankfully, seemed to hear it too.
“Eduard. Eduard, please tell me that was one of your brothers.”
He shook his head.
“I sent them to the safehouse.”
Timo drew in a sharp, hissing breath.
“Perkele. Do you have a-”
“It’s in the attic.”
Eduard had started backing towards the door, gaze fixed on the ceiling as if that might keep whoever - or whatever - was up there from coming down. He glanced at his knife block and ripped a butcher’s knife free, then reached for the doorknob with a shaking, half-full hand.
“Timo, get the kids to safety. Where are you?”
“Uh…we’re at Matthias’s house in Bornholm.”
Eduard hissed through his teeth.
“Hope Matthias still has that stupid battleaxe,” he said.
He turned the knob and pushed the door open, not even bothering to close it behind him. The cold, biting winter air dug through his sweater and straight into his core, and he realized too late he hadn’t gotten his winter clothes on. All he had on were his socks, pajama pants, and an ugly Christmas sweater Timo had given him back in 2007. He glanced back at the house, but the cold was forgotten the second he saw the shape looming in the open doorway. He sprinted down the gravel driveway; his house was a little cut off from the outside world, probably about half a mile from the nearest paved road. It wasn’t that long by drive, but by foot…
His breath rattled in his lungs. He could hear footsteps behind him, slower than his, but steady, and the cold air was slowly leeching away his stamina. He could only go on for so much longer.
Finally, he reached the road. He didn’t dare stop there, either. Was it his imagination, or were the footsteps growing closer-?
The whistle of a knife past his ear startled him into dropping the phone. It crackled against the pavement; the screen went black immediately. He spun around, bracing himself, knife in hand.
His attacker wore all-white, although it was stained grey and brown by this point. Embroidered over his chest was a golden sun, and in his hand was a dagger with a distinctive wing-shaped hilt. Unlike Eduard’s butcher knife, he could tell that thing was made solely to kill.
The man attacked first. Eduard dodged to the side and slammed the blade of his butcher knife into their side. They staggered, clutching at the wound; blood stained the surrounding fabric, but only a few drops touched the ground before the man took his hand away. The skin had stitched itself back together, seemingly almost instantly.
Eduard stared in dumbfounded horror. “How…?”
The man charged, snapping him out of it. The next strike wasn’t so easily avoided; the blade’s tip grazed Eduard’s chest, cutting through his shirt and leaving the faintest of marks across his skin. Despite the shallow blow, a pain so severe he thought he’d been set ablaze ripped through Eduard, who gasped in pain and clutched at it. The skin surrounding the narrow cut had started to blister and turn an ugly shade of grey.
The man flipped his dagger to a more comfortable position and charged again, and Eduard turned tail and ran.
The nice thing about being on his soil was that he knew the place like the back of his hand. It was a part of him, and he was a part of it.
He slid down an embankment. His breath crystallized in the air, and his toes were starting to feel numb. The scar across his chest simmered with pain. He could hear his attacker pursuing him, footfalls muffled by the snow. Eduard didn’t dare look back to see how close he was, though.
His foot caught on a root, and he stumbled, but didn’t fall. Fingers brushed his sleeve. The cold air burned his lungs, but he couldn't stop. If he stopped, he would die.
The safehouse was an old bunker buried in a clearing about a mile from his house. Eduard had moved in and taken over it when it was abandoned after WWII and had worked on it intermittently ever since, first building stashes of long-lasting rations he skimmed off of Ivan when he got the chance, then shielding the walls in lead plating in case of nuclear war. He didn’t know why he bothered, since if anyone survived he’d come back to life anyway and if everyone died he’d be soon to follow, but it gave him some comfort and a feeling of control in a world that felt like it had gone mad.
He’d made it to the edge of the clearing when his attacker caught up with him. A hand grabbed the collar of his sweater and yanked him backward. He was thrown to the ground, and his attacker straddled him, holding the knife to his throat.
“Where are the rest of you?” he growled in English. He had a vague accent - Italian?
Eduard didn’t dignify him with a response. He slashed his own knife against the man’s hip; the man grunted and his grip weakened, but not enough. The knife lodged in his hip bone, and at this angle, Eduard wasn’t strong enough to rip it out. He watched in undiluted horror as the man’s skin healed around the blade, far faster than a human’s, faster than even a Nationkind.
“What are you?” Eduard rasped.
His attacker reached up and pulled away his hood and mask. He was young, alarmingly young, maybe in his twenties at most, with blond hair and eyes as cold as frost.
“I’m a demon,” he said. “Like you. Where are they?”
Eduard gritted his teeth. The man frowned, then drove his knife into Eduard’s wrist.
Holy fucking shit, that didn’t feel like a stab wound; that felt like a gunshot. It took everything in him not to scream; if he screamed, Tolys and Raivis might hear him, and they might come to his rescue, and he didn’t think any of them would stand a chance against something like this.
This man looked human, and probably was at some point, but that humanity was long gone. His hungry, empty eyes bored into Eduard’s skull.
“You have three more limbs left before I’m going to have to start going after the rest of you, so I’d advise you to tell me before I bleed you dry: where did your friends go?”
He drew in a shaking breath. His eyes were starting to burn; from fear? From pain? From the growing realization that he wasn’t going to make it out of this situation alive? “Why are you doing this to us?”
“Thou shalt not suffer a demon to live,” the man said. His tone was utterly impassive and far too familiar. “I’ll give you three seconds to answer me. One.”
Eduard seethed at him. Terror and fury burned brightly in his chest; terror because he was trapped and pinned down and knew he was going to die here, alone in the snow with a monster, and anger because he’d sell his soul before he ever sold Tolys and Raivis out, especially to a man like this.
“Two.”
“Fuck you!” Eduard spat, startled by the fury in his own voice.
“Three.”
The man plunged his knife into Eduard’s other wrist. It took all he had to choke down another scream.
When Tolys Laurinaitis and Raivis Galavantis emerged from the bunker six hours later, this was the sight they found: Eduard lying on his back, his skin painted with cuts and smears of blood. Two pairs of footprints, one ending at Eduard’s body and the other curving back around into the woods. A butcher’s knife wedged haphazardly in a pile of snow, its blade glinting red; and a dagger with a winged hilt buried in his chest.