Under the best of circumstances Arthur was careful about it. He'd be able to slink off into the night with a brown paper bag gripped between his fingers and find a tree to sit up against or head for the nearest hole in the wall and he would sip and sip from the rim until it was only his lips suctioned around wet glass so he could just dip his head back, or forward, without worrying about whether not he'd wasted any good rye. There weren't any lasting consequences to that, only the occasions when Alfred or Matthew had woken up because of a nightmare or a spooky noise or they just wanted to see him, and why wasn't he in his room with his candle flickering next to him on a bedside table and a book rested atop his lap just over the covers? The consequences weren't that he couldn't answer the question, because who would ever feel inclined to tell their little siblings about lonesome benders under starry nights or in sketchy venues? The consequences from the next morning filled with startlingly wide eyes and pouts that looked so the same were when they'd come back to him, the next time, making him look at that brown paper bag for a moment longer before he'd grab it from the shelf, and slink away into the night.

He didn't really have to, he was better off without it and he wasn't an alcoholic or anything but the sounds of muskets would infrequently start up a chorus in his ears. It was so much easier when they would all only use swords, when what lulled him to sleep was the lapping of ocean water against a hull and not battles ensuing on his continent. The hardships were fine, England was over the hardships, but the damn noise…

So he was careful when it came to the liquor, because these were his little brothers and this was a new continent and he was there for them. There when he could be, when he was able to because he had to be.

That's what older brothers were supposed to do.

So he got skilled at it, put the bottle higher and higher because, Jesus, did Alfred ever keep on growing and eventually Arthur just had to give up and put his booze behind locked cabinets. Alfred wasn't stupid, he pretended not to notice, and he kept on not asking questions when Arthur was just a little slow shuffling the bottle back into its rightful place. One time Arthur got caught by the curious colony and he had to explain himself, he didn't want to. He just remembered being that tall and the first time France had left a glass out where he shouldn't of and, a few years later Portugal arriving on his doorstep declaring their friendship be solidified with port wine and, well, he hadn't really looked back since.

But this wasn't about America seeing this or that, America was seeing anything that made itself presentable and in his vision and sure, the explanation came out sloshed and odd but Alfred understood well enough. Okay, he didn't understand why England had tears building up as he squinted his eyes across the room rambling on about Maria being mad and Alfonso following but he knew what having amber-liquid in a person did to them. When the delegates came back howling in the night with tilted smiles passing through crooked teeth Alfred knew it was something to do with the stuff they knocked back between bouts of laughter.

What he didn't know was that it could make someone look so terribly sad.

It was simple to dismiss, the sight of a perplexed little colony pulling the string at his back and reworking him; Arthur merely guiding him to bed and all the while saying how sometimes older nations needed a little extra to lull themselves into a harmony that came so naturally for the younger ones. It didn't matter then, what he was wailing about, because England knew himself well enough to know that he could stay dwelling for ages and it would eat him up, that one thing, until it broke him into little pieces. But the next would come, and it would set him back together again, and it would knock him over. He'd had this talk before.

It hadn't stopped the cycle, only made him aware of it.

Of the little nuances, of how he could feel so unbelievably heartbroken because, yeah, sometimes he took it all a little personally, and he stuffed it all into a clear bottle so he could force it down his throat later and choke it all back up in tears. It was a coping mechanism, and maybe if he could cry about it, it would make some of it less his fault, even when it wasn't his fault. Alfonso told him it wasn't… no one else ever did, because no one else ever brought it up again in the morning when he seemed to be all empty and uptight.

Alfonso never told Arthur how the blond always found something, but neither really had to. There were skeletons in their shared and separate closets that were best hidden away.

The next one wasn't a crashing wave. The next one was slow, deliberate, a hurricane that one can make out at the shore in the distance as it swirls the air around you, lashing dirt and sand and bitterness, all the rage the ocean could muster in just the right amount of time to terrify you. He'd pushed it this time, he knew, because England had the misfortune of always thinking he had one step planned ahead, suffering from the confidence that had been instilled within him ever since he had seized his first colony in perceived valour and grinned at his Mediterranean friend for making it just as far into the waters. While on a pedestal, a moderate wind can push over the stuff that isn't made of marble. So it isn't a crash, because England remains on his pedestal, the one conducting the train, but it does ruffle his feathers and it pits him once more against his enemies and this time, Portugal wouldn't be of assistance.

He had something new to cry about, when rain flooded down on them, threatening to cover the whole world with water and in those moments England sort of wished it had. Sort of wished it could wash everything away, could carry the armies and the firearms and those blue and red coats into abyss so he could just… rest. The muskets were always so loud, and when Alfred had one at his nose he knew the noise wouldn't be enough to take him away. The same moment he was praying for a little whiskey was the same moment he knew the only thing that washed away was his guilt for insisting to take someone else's queen across the ocean, replaced by this very second where he wished for something else to see. America says he used to be great, and England knows that the warmth on his cheeks are tears melding in with the soft pellets of raindrops.

England did not see himself as great. He spoke like he did, he walked the surface of the earth as if it trembled beneath him but he was not a great man. Great men did not do the things he did, and great nations… those didn't exist. But it wasn't that England thought he was great, it was that Alfred thought he was great and honestly… that meant more than the truth.

Then he's gone, and England remembers that he has a flask and so he pulls it out and takes a swig because that's what he did when the lines got all blurred. As boots slap into puddles of mud drawing closer England had stashed his liquor away again because he'd already lost one thing today, and his dignity need not be one of them. Arthur does not bother looking up, he feels an urge to roll forward and fall asleep against this soil that betrayed him. The infiltrator squats next to him, Arthur gets a glimpse of the edge of their once-shining shoes and their light trousers and he groans in response believing that perhaps it is a bluecoat having come to send him off. If losing hadn't indicated how unwelcome he was in this… country, then he wasn't sure what a warning or prompting would do. He prepares himself for it, begins to get up onto his feet and really he'd only had one sip from his flask, he was able. He didn't know how long he'd been sitting there.

It was only British North America, the one and true, but something about facing a teenaged blond with the same disposition as what he'd just lost, the same continent, the same brow that, presently then, knotted together in words that Arthur didn't have the mind to translate into any solid language… something about it implored England to sit up, to crouch and then fully become erect, and he remembered then (less remembered, more was merely confronted with it) that this Canada, the piece that was left, still did not reach his height. An inspection, a nod, a brushing off of his own and Matthew's shoulder and leading the young colony away because he wasn't fully grown yet and England was sort of regretting bringing him along and-

And Canada – Matthew – was still his little brother, and he had a job to do.

England waited until he was in his own lands to drink from his clear bottle ready to burst at the rim. But Matthew was getting more and more of that wise eye lately and he knew, and Arthur knew he knew and knowing anything never really did any one of them good. Arthur clears out any bottles he might have stowed away, and it is not until years later that he ever allows himself to bring any temptations or to seek them on the soil that thrives across the ocean. It turns out not to matter so much, the creed never coming under attack because Arthur visits less and less often and every time Canada asks when he will be back Arthur always gives a vague answer. When he asks England if he will stay an hour longer, England will play whatever Canada asks him to and they'd sometimes go out into the woods and catalogue the plants and write in the little notebook Arthur had given him and that would seem all right.

It had to, because Arthur could not give any more of himself. And Matthew always gave enough for the both of them, he was always so good, and England, for a while, didn't have to worry.

Matthew always made things so, so easy. He loved him for it, and he thought he'd told him so once or twice.

He thought Canada knew so much. Canada always cleaned up after himself, and he would wash his hands and take his baths and he wouldn't cry or complain or get himself the least bit dirty, and he'd never told England how he never came to see him enough, not when Alfred wasn't around to prompt him.

So it seemed like it was all right, and Canada still looked at him with those soft, earnest eyes that were, really, shining a whole lot more these days.

During sicker days it had been nearly impossible to slip anything in, with the ever-dutiful Matthew taking up residency in his home until the future looked brighter for 'cheery' little England. He thought maybe his ward was getting a little taller. Or Arthur was spending too long in bed with a consistent flow of tea passing into his lips and getting more and more egregious items stacked around him since apparently that was what was best for him and he had to admit upon awakening in bed that India knew him far better than he had any previous inkling of.

This was not a sickness that would never pass, whenever the day came that his country could not go on England felt as if he would somehow be able to know, as if there were to be warning signals that would go off in his bones. And so he recovered, and he kept on fighting and he could force himself into that, into facing whatever designated enemy he had and yes, that usually ended up being France and, yes, that would always be an added bonus. There were times when England was alone on the battle field – well, not alone, not if the men who could fall to the ground and never get up counted – but he wouldn't feel small, then. There had been times in the past where he'd had friends, though only one in particular had ever been consistent, and England would feel just a little strange sifting through his short list of allies ending up with someone from outside the box but it was sort of interesting. Sort of interesting, in the way that he'd be reminded just how little he knew of the contours in so many of his neighbours faces and he could only count on one hand how many of them he could fit in an ordinary conversation with and maybe it was sort of his own clumsy fault, the notion of his own isolation.

Conflict had a different taste now, so many of his little colonies were expanding and growing and they would volunteer themselves for the sake of a crown that rested on tiny British Isles and Canada might not have stood the tallest among them, or the strongest in finances but he was always there. There was something about his glowing determinism that appeared so soft and gentle when he'd first arrive with a grinning face and willing to put up arms without any single question, without any sort of worry marring his youthful features. It reminded him the most of just how young Canada still was, not yet matured to have any hardness to him. England didn't notice much when the hardness did take root, he couldn't name the year the shift happened or why or really any tiny details that would have given clarity into Canada's adolescence but Arthur never really did have much clarity when it came to his truest colony.

Canada did not make himself a spectacle, and so it was perfectly natural to have Matthew just behind him, just hovering, just listening and later they'd exchange word between them and he didn't think how strange it was, to speak of such discourse without any worry of backlash, without having to fret about whether or not what he'd divulged to Canada would pass its way onto unwarranted lips.

It was so, so natural, that sometimes… England would forget he was even there at all.

Watching him with 'Canadians', if they could be called so, happened to be the most fascinating interactions Britain had seen that involved his charge – according to himself, if that counted for anything. Perhaps it was that Arthur did not know exactly what the distinguishing features were between Canadians and Scots, or Englishman or German or any number of expats that chose, in the hopes of gaining a better quality of life, to reside here in Canada. It was the continued question he had always asked himself of America, where the lines of blood were drawn into the sand and, for his part, America had moments of his own contemplation. If there had been contemplations in Canada, he did not see it.

"What are you, Matthew?" He'd asked once, out of the blue.

It would be the first time anyone of nationhood had ever asked him this.

"Well… I suppose I'm a British sentimentalist." England, at first, stared at him. They both burst into laughter.

The first person Canada ever mirrored was not America.

A victory over the radio at their battle tent causes a hush to fall over everyone listening. News back from Vimy, on word of the first attack in which all four Canadian divisions fought together with only one British division as a sidelong - nearly every single one of them Canadian-born - had reported a win for their side. Arthur had noted how tough the countrymen were, how hard Canada had worked with little recognition and so, he had given him the chance to prove his mettle. Shouts of celebration over the capturing of a land thought to be irredeemable ruffled the flaps of the tent and the sound had only gotten louder still as Canada and his boys came back. Yes, Arthur had helped in setting this in place, providing back up, providing a training regime, discussing tactics and strategies before everything was set into motion but this was also Canada, blazing Canada and England would not take that away for a moment.

It would not be the first time that Canada proved himself, not the first time that he would seek out approval but for now the stark look on his face was enough to change the memory England had of the this day into future years.

This was not North American soil, and there was a supply of rye underneath one of the makeshift desks and Canada looked like he was in need of one.

Arthur didn't know he treated Matthew differently. He just knew Canada looked a little more mature, and that he was understanding and that Canada still allowed himself to be intertwined with him and Arthur just wanted everything to be fixed.

So he coaxed Matthew into sitting with him at the makeshift table on a crate of supplies within a space so small it fit between two supporting beams and there were already drinks everywhere. The higher ranked members of the military were divided between ensuring Vimy Ridge for the future of the Allies and the rest remained here for a good, pat-your-own-back self-serving drink. There was no hesitance in his colony… oh, it was dominion now. Right, the finer-tuned details scrawled out on thin papers were matters of great importance in this day and age, and while 'colony' had a far more pleasurable ring to it this was all the same. Canada was still here sitting across from him, had still joined the fray out of a sense of duty to Empire, to himself, and while overwhelmingly Britain felt kinship and gratitude for this there was a pride as well. Not of Canada, but of himself.

"Here you are, lad." England expertly slid an open bottle towards Matthew in a sense of comradery.

The dominion peered down at it, and England wasn't sure if it was just now dawning on him that Canada was exceedingly sombre after each battle or if he was just now remembering that tidbit about him. "It can't do you any worse," England noted as he took a heady swig of his own toxic beverage.

"Maybe… maybe tomorrow, Mr. England." Arthur, with less than half a pint sloshing around in his belly, had to resist the urge to roll his eyes. It was always Mr., Mr., Mr. with Canada, and it never mattered how often he would visit or how many times in a row. So shaken by it was England that, for years he thought it was some sort of slight against him, a sign that he could never measure up to be quite as good an older brother figure to Canada as France had been despite the clear adoration in Canada's face every time their eyes met. But he had witnessed more or less the same treatment in titles as France, and the French twat always complained of how unfair it was that 'little Mathieu' had ended up loving Arthur more.

"Nonsense, wasting a night is no more honourable than breathing. So, drink!" Arthur pushed, and Canada, he knew, would.

In all of his foresight, Arthur did not predict that the first time Matthew would see him drunk would be the first time he would see Canada drunk.

And in retrospect, it was a horrible idea.

Canada became louder and more vibrant in his colouring but he was not a hostile figure, his shoulders bounced as he chuckled at jokes heard in the distance and wore a quivering smile that looked as if it were ready to burst into laughter any second and he did not show any qualms in continuing on long into the evening. It was this distraction, this new light on Canada, that cast some of the shadows lingering in the crevices of Arthur's mind to keep at bay.

"Canada… Canada are you… intoxicated?" Arthur squinted his eyes up at Matthew, chin rested on an outstretched arm.

A snort, and, shortly, one hand covering his mouth. "Well I did finish this whole thing, but I wouldn't go that far yet." As if to prove his point he lifted the now empty bottle and without a tight enough grip on the neck, accidentally dropped it to the ground. "Oh noooo…." Bringing both hands to his cheeks the delicate admonishment came off more silly than scolding.

"That's… that's enough for you, that's too much inn't it?" Arthur chastised, pouring more rye into his own mouth recklessly.

"Oh… okay," Matthew complied without a hint of fuss, some of that vibrancy disappearing along with it.

"Ah… Jesus… you can still be… be spirited, you know! Just don't want you going around breaking things, cutting your hands on bits and pieces when you try cleaning it all up that's why I've always told you, you know, to leave the cleaning up part to me when you were small. Alfred would break these expensive vases and I, I would be the one to have to clean them up you know. And there was once I'd brought a viceroy with me and you broke the porcelain plate clean in half America-" He rambled on, not taking into account the slow depletion of vibrancy Canada had in him.

"I will be more careful from now on," Canada promised warmly. He could not help being warm. All sobriety had returned to him.

"That's just... fine, that's fine. Thank you, for that. For promising me things all the time. You always seem to make good on those. I wasn't sure, you know, when you first promised me, first agreed to let me have you as my brother," This did not trigger a warm response out of Matthew, no gentle and serene smiles accompanied this spew of information and really, Canada was not sure if England knew who he was speaking of, or to who. "I thought maybe that was another one of God's tricks at my expense, a practical joke… it couldn't, shouldn't have been so easy to win your affections… I'd expected I'd have to work for it like I did with America."

Canada shifted in his seat, his gaze more intense as he strained to make sense of what he was being told. This was not how Arthur ever talked to him, this was candid, this was raw and came from places Matthew had never been privy to.

"I've seen it coming though, your slow-burning plan to break away from me without putting any harm onto yourself. It's clever, and it's patient and maybe it's something emotional in me that hopes part of it is because you care about my dignity. That you've understood my struggles over these years gone by. But I don't know. I also think you might be good at pretending. And I wonder if you've stopped liking me a long time ago."

Unsure of what to do, Canada merely sat, on the other side of England, not knowing that this was an episode or a bender or 'another one of Arthur's drunken ventures into misery and self-pity'. What he did see was a man weighed down with his head bent low and lines underneath his eyes and the guilt that laid on his very own shoulders for reasons he could not comprehend.

"That's not true." It was the only proper response he could think to give.

"Ha." The short bark came out sardonically. "Why not? I've given you plenty of reasons all on my own. Took you from your first brother, never paid you any mind or asked you anything or took any semblance of interest in you and here I am now, dragging you places and mistaking you for the boy who got more out of me than you and all you do is stare at me and you stare and stare and never is there any malice in it at all and that's when I realize I'd done the worst thing imaginable to you…"

"I made you think that was all you were worth to me."

Arthur lowers his head, and his shoulders shake so weakly, so vulnerably and without joy, that you would not believe that they had just that day gained a foothold in a war.

Canada did not mold any more vibrancy out of this admission, but he did retain that earnest smile. "You know, Mr. England…" Matthew began as he reached an arm out, as he laid a comforting hand on Arthur's upper arm and held it there and in the back of his mind wished he was small like he used to be so he could leap around the table and embrace this country because the colony's always got away with such open affections. Remembering something about himself -

Remembering he was still England's -

Canada gracefully got to his feet, and side-stepped the table, and when he got to Arthur he lowered himself so he could wrap his arms around the older nation's torso and rest his head, for only a moment, against the blades of his shoulders and while he might have been a little too old… Canada was still smaller than England, and maybe that made it okay. Maybe, it was okay that he was just this big, just now in this moment of history, just big enough to sit across from England and just big enough to be able to cross a room and join him without any questions asked.

"That's not true," Canada repeated, muffled, into his brother's thick fabric.

England was Canada's older brother, and that still meant something to both of them.

It always would.

A/N: Now everyone this fic obviously isn't meant to undermine America and England as brothers or anything, but rather that Canada's never really... severed his more 'familial' ties to England, I guess? Also, I imagine Canada to be more representative of Anglophone Canada rather than Francophone/Quebec Canada, that's how I think Hetalia makes it seem.

Alfonso is Portugal, by the way. The Mad Queen is Maria the Mad. I suggest looking her up, it'll make more sense as to why Arthur would feel guilty for what happened with her and, congruently, Portugal. As for him being mad as well... Maria witnessed the Portugal Earthquake of 1755, which declined Portugal from it's World Power status and the country's never bounced back. All around it was rather damaging and traumatizing for anyone who'd seen it/been affected by it.

Anyways, please do review and favourite! Just renewed my pledge to the guidelines and every time I see Nora Roberts on the list of 'no fics from her works' I laugh... not trying to say I'm a better writer or something, (my fics aren't what I'd call masterpieces) but those books are honest to God terrible. Can't imagine anyone using her characters on here, especially since her books are targeted to an older demographic. Sorry if you like them, tho. ***Fixed some grammatical issues, everything's the exact same.***