Work Text:
“You look so much like him,” Yao murmurs during a break in the meeting, the flames in his eyes burning softer than usual. Long dark hair falls over his face, hiding his expression.“It’s….almost scary, in a way.”
“You look like him,” Roshanak mutters with a shake of her head, and a long sigh. Her eyes, usually as hard as rock and vivid as her carpets, painfully so, seem to soften. “I worry you’d walk the same path as he did.”
“You look like him, Signore Vargas,” a historian chirps. She was a young thing- barely thirty. What’s her name again…Sarah? Sally? “Did you spend a lot of time with him?”
“No. I didn’t.”
“What? But- But you’re his grandson! And his Heir!”
Silly bambina. Humans and their innocent minds and fragile lifespans, who try to fit what they can’t comprehend into what their minds could understand and digest.
Nonno Rome loved him, he knew. He’d cared for him, as much as a warmongering semi-immortal being who conquered nations and killed many of their kind could. He could recognise that. He understood that better now.
But it was with Feliciano, whom Nonno spent almost all his time with.
Often he would wonder whether Nonno secretly felt tired of all the fighting, the bloodshed, the violence, all those unspeakably brutal acts commuted in his days. Whether under the ruthlessness and cruelty and depravity he wore like a second armour, he felt ashamed and exhausted and just. Tired.
Lovino….he was rough. Hard. All sharp edges and blunt facts. He was strategy, the first decisive strike against the enemy. There is fire and lava simmering just under his surface, ready to erupt at a moment’s notice and cover everything in soot and ash, freezing it all for millenia to come.
But Feliciano?
Feliciano, with his bright brown eyes, sparkling like the waters of Venice, when the sun hits it. Feliciano, with auburn hair bright and warm like the fresh tomatoes that bastardo Antonio loved to grow in his garden. Feliciano, with the smile brighter than the stars, with more life than Michelangelo’s paintings or (God forgive him) Madre Madonna.
Feliciano, who could worm his way into anyone’s heart with a smile and a warm hug, or a sniffle and teary eyes.
That potato bastard was undeniable, indubitable proof of that.
He was art. Freedom. Escape. Floating away on the gondolas, serene and tranquil. He was the comforting water that blanketed his city, his heart for centuries till now and would continue for centuries more (if Dio permits).
And it was in Feliciano, that Gaius Lucius Augustus Aurelius, The Princeps Primus of Rome, Slayer of Carthage, Gaul and too other personifications to name, probably saw a kinder world.
Yes, water can be dangerous. Ruthless. Swallow everything up and leave no traces of it behind.
(He remembers, when they were small, hardly 9 in body, when Veneziano would outwit and strongarm traders into deals. He would never forget the day when Vene defeated that old bastard Sadik (who, back then, was rougher, more cruel and powerful) with nothing but his bow and arrows.)
And yet, in the World Wars—
He could have fought. Better than that tea bastard Arthur, or that little baby America. Could have held his own against that creepy vodka bastard, even.
But he didn’t. He just cowered behind the potato bastard and the sushi bastard Kiku to fight for him while he waved his stupid white flag.
(His people (their people) had fought well however. (Despite that flip-flopping in World War 2.))
No nation (peoples or personifications) had come out of either world war completely unscathed.
Horrible crimes had been committed, ally against ally, friend against foe, brother against brother. Families ripped apart.
The personifications freely hurt each other, rivers of blood flowing. Their regions were torn asunder, either from colonialism or war or petty politics— either way, everything changed so drastically that somedays, he couldn’t believe it.
He admits it, none of them— the personifications— were as completely guiltless and innocent and helpless as certain Internet forums like to portray. Yet, they weren’t all cruel, bloodthirsty monsters gleefully carrying out every order their governments gave them. Many of them were secretly helping the refugees, the ones hurt by all this warmongering the most, as much as they could.
They were the people given form! The spirit of the land, in a shell of flesh and blood! They couldn’t disobey their bosses at all (Dio, why, why did you curse us like this) but they’d be damned if they would just sit back and allow this suffering to continue, all because some humans wanted all the power!
And yet, despite all the horrors and pain and crimes, Vene….just kept smiling. Kept skipping forward, hand in hand with the potato bastard, Vene guiding him, pulling him out of the oceans of his own guilt and trauma and shame.
Bastardo of a little brother he hated him he hated him he—
He didn’t hate him.
Stupid bastardo.
Not when he somehow, helped them all march forward. Made them all hope. (He was scared of that word. Hope.
Hope meant there would be a brighter dawn.
Hope meant things would be better. Hope meant they’d be allowed to heal someday.
Hope meant he- all of them- would see a better day.)
Maybe that was why Nonno preferred to spend his time with Feliciano, whenever he came back from war. Because he was hope and light and warmth, when Lovino was far from those things.
Maybe Nonno saw a kinder, younger version of himself in Feliciano, back when he had been innocent (had he ever been?) and soft.
He didn’t know.
He didn’t want to know.
Because that would mean he would finally know whether he was right or not— that the reason the tomato bastard tried to trade him for Vene with that piano bastard, the reason why even now, that wine jerk Francis flinched at him sometimes, brief flash of fear in what he could see of those royal purple eyes under wavy silver-blond curls, was because they see the monster underneath, about to erupt and blow its top, and are wisely trying to escape, before it traps them all under ash and lava, only for the eons gone by to remember them.