Across The Mirror (Hetalia)

Author: Ashynarr

Summary: Alfred and Tommy met through magic, but stuck together through a mutual kinship borne by more than their mirrored identities. After centuries of friendship, they've reached a comfortable state of affairs between them, but what will happen when Tommy ends up severely injured where Alfred can't help?

Disclaimer: Hetalia's not mine.

Warning: 1p2p Americest

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Once, there was a mirror.

At first glance, or even a second or third, there was nothing spectacular about it. It stood at just under seven feet tall, the square plane of reflective glass held in place by polished wood. The minimal engravings were merely to give the piece texture, adding to the unimpressive image. No one would be surprised to hear the owner had stuffed it away in an unused corner of his house, hidden under a dust sheet to keep the worst of the grime off.

Though Arthur Kirkland, magician and Nation extraordinaire, had mostly forgotten about it in the handful of centuries since its creation, he'd had fair reason to place it where no one could find it readily.

(Well, no one besides curious, nosy colonies who had never had a chance to see their colonizer's house before, anyways.)

Alfred had reason to feel smug about finding the storage room - it'd been half-blocked off by a table, and the hinges had creaked horribly when he'd cautiously pushed the door open; heck, Arthur probably didn't even remember this room existed, as old and forgetful as he could be.

Of course, that meant that there was plenty of dust available for him to kick up, leaving him coughing until he thought to cover his mouth and nose with his shirt. Thus protected from the worst of it, he started picking his way through the room, looking around at all the old things his older brother had stuffed in here over the centuries.

"Woah…" He murmured as he picked up an old blade, giving it a few swings before almost hitting something under a sheet, causing him to quickly place it back down just in case he accidentally broke something and brought Arthur running. There was no way he wouldn't be punished for being in here.

Looking back to what he'd almost run into, Alfred slowly started tugging away at the sheet, trying not to unbalance whatever was underneath. Only when it fell away did he notice it was a mirror, something he hadn't expected to find in here.

'It doesn't seem broken...' The colony wondered, staring at his reflection in the dim lighting available. 'Wonder why he put it here.'

He pressed a hand to the glass, feeling nothing but smooth glass under his fingers-

His reflection rippled, matched by the one going down his arm and spine as he flinched back, wide eyed. It took him only a few seconds to realize what it could be -

Magic.

The Nation in him recoiled, not too fond of such dark arts, but Alfred himself held firm, bolstered by the stories Arthur would tell him before bed some nights. (Not to mention the door was still right there if he needed to run fast, and he could probably close the door and block it with the table again quickly if he had to.)

The ripples settled, everything about the reflection inside seeming to settle back to normal as well.

Except for his own, that is. Instead of his familiar features, the boy now facing him had darker hair, eyes, and skin, very much reminiscent of the Indians he lived with back in the New World. He looked down to himself to see he hadn't changed, his mirror doing the same, before the illusion finally broke when the other boy scowled as they looked back up at each other.

"Who are you?" The boy asked, furthering his resemblance to the Indians by speaking in what Alfred thought might have been Cherokee.

"Who are you?" Alfred echoed in English, wondering whether this counted as dangerous or not.

"I-" The other boy started, only to cut off abruptly, looking to the side with wide eyes at something only he could hear. He scuttled out of sight, leaving Alfred weirded out at having no reflection at all, before the reason for the boy's disappearance walked into view.

The man almost looked like Arthur, if his older brother had had red hair, blue eyes, and a smile that felt just a bit too fake. When the gaze settled onto him, he froze in place, hoping beyond hope that that man couldn't reach him somehow and go through with whatever dangerous threats were in his eyes.

Then Alfred realized the gaze wasn't focused on him at all, but over him. Did the man not see him? He couldn't think of any other explanation that fit.

The red-Arthur bent down, fingering the cloth that had been apparently draped over his mirror as well. His blue eyes roved around the mirror, apparently looking for the Indian boy (or maybe something else?), before shrugging and throwing the cloth back over it, leaving everything dark white before his own reflection abruptly returned.

Alfred released a shuddering breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, rubbing at an arm as he glanced back to the door. That had been way too close, in his mind; he now felt he understood why Arthur would leave something this scary where no one could find it.

...he hoped nothing had happened to that other boy, if he was actually real instead of just some illusion made up by the mirror.

Shaking his head, he grabbed his own sheet and threw it over the mirror as best he could, giving it one last glance before turning and leaving the room. He only remembered at the last second to shut the door and block it before heading back to the warmth and safety of his bedroom. Resolving to put that creepy mirror and the people inside it out of mind for good, he wiped his hands on his shirt, not noticing the small mark on the inside edge of his index finger that hadn't been there that morning.

He'd never know it, but the mirror he'd left behind was as plain and ordinary as any other now.

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AN: One of those fics I'm really looking forward to writing, along with all the other ones. And yeah, I probably shouldn't be starting so many new stories when I have things to fill as it is, but I just sorta go with what my randomizer gives me and it ends up like this. Hopefully fairly soon I'll be updating all my things on a semi-regular basis, even.

Other chapters should be longer, but this is just a prologue, so I'm not as worried about it.