A Broken Alliance

3

~1st of June, 1875

Austria-Hungary had gotten the room next to the Russian Empire, since those also happened to be the biggest ones in the castle.

Since it was still early, they still had time before dinner was served. Vienna was who knows where, probably off talking with other capitals, the Russian was somewhere as well, and not to mention the German, who seemed to just melt into the shadows of the palace the moment the meeting had ended.

Sighing and with nothing much to do, A-H wandered around, trying to find any signs of a garden. If they come more often to the Berlin Palace, they should really bring flowers with them to decorate one of the rooms, or even better, the whole palace.

Roaming the halls, the Monarchy noticed paintings hanging on one of the especially large walls. Looking closer, it seemed to be portraits of the German Family members.

All of them had golden frames, contrasting from the dark background in the portraits themselves. There seemed to be no specific order, as they were scattered all around, for example, there was just a painting of one that had the exact same flag as Austria right where A-H stood, with the only virtual differences being that the white was slightly wider and that the coat of arms looked very distinctly different.

According to the text at the bottom, it was the "Großherzogtum Hessen und bei Rhein" (Grand Duchy of Hesse and by Rhine). There were just too many duchies and just these small states to remember them all. Sometimes, A-H was pretty glad to be less affiliated with the other Germans just for that reason.

The whole corridor was filled with such portraits, and the Monarchy had also noticed that the more important one was, that the bigger their portrait was. Nothing out of the ordinary, but there were also a lot of small long gone states that had been taken in by neighbours in filling up tons of space.

There were a couple bigger portraits that stuck out to them though, especially those of Prussia and the German Empire. It felt quite different from the other more relaxed poses, their stance uptight and tad bit rigid. Whilst the other portraits screamed money and wealth, or at least tried to, their portraits stared with rigidness and discipline.

A-H themselves didn't have too much against Prussia, but the Austrian Empire, their mother, felt huge amounts of animosity towards him, albeit for a valid reason.

Next to those two portraits, they noticed a large suspicious rectangular shape on the beige wall where is was slightly brighter and cleaner than the rest of the wall. A-H guessed that someone's portrait got taken down, although they weren't sure why. The frame seemed pretty large, so it must have been someone with much influence, but it was also weird because every other portrait was still hanging there, dead or alive.

They had been getting sidetracked by the wall, so they headed on, continuing their little exploration. First left, then right, forwards through a whole corridor with more stairs heading to different directions, then down the stairs, again getting lost in the amount of doors and stairs.

Who designed this? They need a raise for the amount of effort put into making this place inescapable in case someone tried to steal something.

It was impossible to get even more lost if one was already lost, so A-H continued down random paths, still trying to find that garden that may not exist.

The Monarchy was just about to turn around at yet another corner, as they felt Vienna getting slightly pinched. They felt alarmed instantly and pivoted around on the spot.

There was no way Vienna was in real danger here right? Maybe they were just messing around. Whatever the reason, they still had to check.

After opening numerous doors, A-H felt like they finally reached the room where Vienna was, and slammed that door open.

"Wien!" (Vienna!)

There were a couple of countryhumans in the room, who all turned their heads towards the newcomer.

One of them laughed.
"I told you it would work!"

It took a moment for the confused and slightly out of breath Monarchy to process what had happened.
"Ooh you did not." A-H hissed at Moscow, who said that.

"But it worked! Вена is fine and you are here," the Russian retorted. (Vienna)

Vienna scoffed at that, the displeasure radiating off of her face and pose.

A-H glared daggers at the Muscovite. "You better not pull that stunt again, be glad you are under protection right now."

Diverting the attention, the German suggested that they should take a seat at the table. A-H begrudgingly did so, sitting down next to Vienna.

The Austro-Hungarian leaned over to their capital, "are you okay?"

She nodded in return, still looking pretty grumpy.

Austria-Hungary decided not to poke any further, and just started eating the things put on the table, which included coffee, wine, caviar canapes, Schnitzel and Charlotte russ. There was more, but A-H honestly did not care nearly enough for fancy food to name them. The lessons remembering them were mostly forgotten by now.

The dinner went by pretty quietly, everybody minding their own business, with the exception of Berlin, who kept trying to discretely glance over at Vienna. Keyword: discretely

Afterwards, after everyone had finished, everyone stood up and went their own ways. Austria-Hungary still wanted to find that garden, and initially wanted to ask GE, but alas, he was gone with the shadows.

So they continued walking around, with little to no sense of orientation. Little to no light illuminated the hallways, making it hard to see, especially with the eyepatches making everything even harder.

They took off their eyepatches, hoping that it was so late that no one would be around anyways.

Suddenly, the Monarchy felt a light breeze. Was there an open door or window around? Curios, they followed the breeze to an ajar door leading outside.

A-H carefully nudged the door open.

It was a little garden lined with flowers of all sorts. It wasn't big by any means, but it was fully covered in them, with just a little pathway in the middle leading through it. They wandered along the path, admiring the flowers and occasionally stopping to smell them.

"You like the flowers?"

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~1075 words