The cold, steady rain pelted England as he ran down the path to America's front door, soaking his hair and overcoat. His breaths formed small white clouds as he bounded up the stone stairs to the covered front porch, ears suddenly filled with the thundering downpour hitting the roof overhead, even as it stopped pounding into his scalp. He turned back around to look out into the darkening evening with a wry smile, standing bare inches from the curtain of icy water, feeling a little smug at finally having escaped it. The clouds and chilling damp seemed to have followed him all the way from London. The past two weeks had been filled with dreary gray days, more so even than the usual rain one associated with that time of year. He had hoped at least that the trip would mean a temporary reprieve from the dismal weather, although he should have known better. America's springs tended to be unpredictable, and often as cold and wet as his own.
Turning back around towards the house he knocked on the large wooden door. Arthur shook out his coat and shifted his bag from one hand to the other, waiting a moment, then knocked again, frowning. A cold wind blew in through the porch as if to say 'hello, I'm not done with you yet'. He shivered slightly and sat the bag down beside him, crossing his arms and bringing his hands in close to his body. He should have heard a small stampede or yelling, or both. He would have expected something akin to that if Alfred were the only one greeting him, but he and Matthew were watching Peter and the combined noise of the twins, a small boy, a small bear, an alien, a unicorn, plus whatever other creatures Alfred might have found lately should have been enough to make the windows rattle.
Arthur reached down and rang the doorbell, although that had never really been necessary in the past, and stood for a minute more before glancing back around towards the driveway. America's car and truck were sitting in their usual places, alongside Canada's. The windows of the house glowed warmly, casting a soft light outwards into the darkness. From every indication they should have been home. He reached up to knock again, finding the percussive thumping more satisfying than the soft chiming of the bell, then thought again and reached down towards the door handle. Even after all the years of visiting Alfred he was hesitant to just let himself in, but they were expecting him and his mind was starting to formulate what-ifs. Still, he was surprised when the button above the handle eased down with a click and the door opened.
"Hello?" he called, picking up his bag and placing it on the other side of the doorway as he stepped into the dimly lit foyer. The house was completely silent, contrasting sharply with the pounding of the rain just outside. He pushed the door to and slipped off his coat, hanging it on one of the hooks that ran along the wall above the entryway bench, then slipped his shoes off beside it.
"Matthew? Alfred?" he called again, peering into the house from the foyer. Although the entry and living room were dark, there was a soft light shining from the kitchen just beyond and he walked towards it. The smell of popcorn, hanging light and buttery in the air, met his nose when he was only halfway there and seemed to pull him the rest of the way. Stepping towards the wide doorway he placed his hands on the frame and leaned in. The room was a portrait of domestic chaos. A pile of dishes lay untouched in the sink and a frying pan of hamburger grease sat on the stove next to an empty box of Cheesey Pasta. Damp jackets were thrown across the back of the chairs and two sets of prints tracked across the floor, leading to and from a pile of mud encrusted shoes near the back door. England gingerly stepped over the drying bits of dirt and glanced about the room. The bright yellows and reds of Daffodils and Tulips, gathered into a clear glass vase on the table, drew his attention. Some, he noted, were cut more sloppily than others, the lengths varying greatly at times, with the tallest sticking a good 6 inches above the lip of the vase while the shortest just barely managed to peak over. He smiled slightly, memories of small dirty hands offering wild bouquets springing to mind. No doubt, Arthur thought, examining the cluster of flowers stuck messily stuck down in the water, Alfred and Matthew had left Peter in control of the arrangement.
His smile dropped after a moment and he pulled himself back from the table. Surely if they had had to go somewhere they'd have left a note, he thought, glancing around the kitchen for a stray piece of paper or a hastily scrawled message on the drywipe board stuck to the refrigerator. And they definitely wouldn't have left the doors unlocked. He felt his shoulders tighten and he shook his head. He strode out of the kitchen, towards the door to the basement, fully expecting (or rather, fully hoping) to open the door and be greeted by the sound of a movie from the home theatre Alfred had recently set up. When he swung it back however, he was met with nothing but silent darkness.
He stared down into the dark space for a moment before closing the door back and walking back through the hallway, peaking in open doorways as he passed. No reason to be alarmed, he assured himself. America and Canada were grown nations- had been for almost two centuries (he still wasn't about to admit that America had been completely grown up during his revolution, he'd been scarcely older than a boy), and although Peter was rather a handful at times (all the time, his mind supplied) Alfred and Matthew could surely handle whatever he threw at them. He told himself this and ignored his own tapping fingers, rapping out an agitated rhythm on his right hip as he walked.
He was about to go back to the front rooms again and have another look when he noticed a light out of the corner of his eye and stopped. The seldom used stairway at the end of the corridor was lit.
Well, that was more like it.
Arthur approached the stairwell, now a little more at ease, and, standing on the winder stairs, looked beyond the corner and up the narrow passage. To his relief, the hallway of the second floor was also lit. He was frustrated to find however, upon searching that floor, again peaking in through doors, that it was empty. He frowned, looking back again towards the stairway. He didn't suppose they were on the third floor.
As far as he could recall the only rooms there were seldomly- if ever- used spare bedrooms. Alfred usually kept them closed up and locked ("cuts down on the energy bill," he said, "going green,"- though Arthur had never known him to use the floor anyway). Why he'd constructed such a large home to begin with Arthur could never quite figure out. No one living by themselves needed that much space. Not that he could say much, having occupied a rather sizeable home just outside of London for many years. And yet, Arthur thought, hearing his footsteps echo as he climbed the staircase and stepped up into the long hall, this sort of home wasn't constructed for one person. This was a family home.
Perhaps, Arthur realized, staring at the tightly closed doors that lined its walls, that was one of the reasons why Alfred only came here occasionally, spending a large amount of his time in a smaller flat in New York.
A small patch of light colored the floor halfway down the hall and he followed it until he stood in front of the door it was shining beneath. He pressed hesitantly on the door, still slightly unnerved at the odd quiet. The room that lay beyond was large and covered in dark wood. A small fire in the fireplace lit the space with a flickering glow. What truly caught his attention though was the fact that the walls were covered with built-ins, and the built-ins were utterly crammed with books. A library. Arthur crossed his arms, feeling befuddlement warring with the flame of irritation that had flared. Of all rooms to never mention to him, to hide away and keep locked up.
He'd just turned towards the closest shelf when a low murmur drew his attention to the large green sofa which faced the fireplace. He approached it quietly, the noise sounding less like whispered plottings and more like sleepy mumblings. He leaned over the back of the sofa, arms resting on the top, and looked down, irritation fading somewhat. All three boys were lying there, curled up, Matthew on one side, Alfred on the other, and Peter sprawled between them, and on top of them, in the middle. A yellow plastic bowl of popcorn had fallen to the floor and spilled out, littering the area between the sofa and the fireplace. Arthur breathed out, feeling the tension ease out of his shoulders and his gut, and walked back over to the shelves.
To his surprise, they weren't covered in dust. Well, most of them weren't, at least. Some books certainly looked as if they hadn't been picked up in a decade or two, but for the most part they looked well used. Well loved, Arthur thought with a smile, skimming his fingers over a few paperbacks, spines fraying and cracked. He glanced over the shelves, taking in the odd collection, slowly making his way around the perimeter of the room. It was an odd mixture of hardcovers and paperbacks, fresh new copies and texts old and dog eared, pages brittle and yellowing. And interestingly, considering this was Alfred after all, they seemed to be ordered, by genre it appeared. Arthur passed by several bookcases of non-fiction: science, archaeology, biographies, philosophy, names ranging from Carl Sagan to Karl Marx (An eyebrow raised upon seeing that name. Know your enemies, eh lad?). He smiled at the rather large section of Crytozoology. Still searching for Bigfoot it seemed.
The rest of the room however, he noted as he continued to walk through, seemed to be devoted to fiction, Westerns, Fantasy, horror, and science fiction, more recent popular novels and older works of literature. He turned back around, and made his way across the room, to the set of shelves nearer to the boys. There were several bookcases of comics, both America's as well as Japans, which seemed especially free from dust. He let his eyes dart over the titles before glancing over to the farthest, and also messiest cases, filled with books that were brightly colored, many of them slimmer, but of varying sizes.
His hand swept over the well-worn bindings as he read the titles: The Chocolate War, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, The Higher Power of Lucky. Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys were stacked beside several other large series, high school dramas, ghost stories, and historical novels. Arthur looked up, comparing this set of shelves with the others he had looked at around the room. This section had to be almost as sizeable as some of the other collections. Not really surprising though, considering how often Alfred acted like a child instead of the grown nation he now was. And, Arthur thought smiling, he couldn't really blame Alfred for this particular affinity anyway. There was something special about a nation's youngest citizenry. They were the future, full of hope and promise, and it was their seemingly boundless amounts of energy that seemed to be able to propel them forwards. They were the ones, innocent as they were, who could see right through them, yet trusted them anyway, politics and history not yet in the way, and a nation's love for their children was deep, reflecting that trust. That love sometimes came out in interesting ways. Arthur was looking at a very familiar manifestation of it.
It was a shame, he thought a little sadly while picking up a ragged picture book, that children's literature hadn't started really coming into its own until most of his colonies were grown. He had, of course, managed to keep them entertained well enough with old tales and stories of his own imagining, and many stories which were never really intended for children but never failed to amuse them anyways. But he still couldn't help the bit of melancholy he felt at times upon realizing just how many of his classics they had missed hearing, how many stories he had missed telling them. If only they had stayed that way just a little longer.
He stared down at the book in his hands for a second longer then placed it back down on the shelf and continued to scan the books, looking lower. The further he went the older the books looked to be. Baum, Alcott, and Twain stood out from amongst the author names. He was reaching for one particularly old copy of The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, when another name caught his eye from a still lower shelf.
He squatted down, one hand on the bookcase to steady himself, and grabbed the book which had pulled his attention. He sat it on his knees and looked at the cover for a moment before carefully flipping it open. It was a copy of Through the Looking Glass, and a first edition by the looks of it. England sat the book back on the shelf and stared for a minute at the titles in front of him. Winnie-the-Pooh, and Alice in Wonderland sat alongside Tom Brown's Schooldays and A Little Princess, some new copies, some old, several having multiple versions, tender brittle copies sitting alongside seemingly fresh prints. Some of the paperbacks looked to be in worse shape than the older texts, binding worn and covers held together with tape. There were of course more recent titles; he spied Harry Potter along with a rather large collection of Roald Dahl as well as several Paddington books, but there was also a copy of The Water Babies and several books by Mary Martha Sherwood (he couldn't help but shake his head a little at that those).
He was about to stand back up when he noticed a few books that were sticking out farther than the others. Arthur looked closer, then reached in and felt behind them. His hands brushed up against more bound paper. There were a couple of books, probably fallen behind the others and never noticed. They were old. Very old. Nearly falling apart, he thought as he pulled them out. He saw the title on the top one and he breathed in sharply, his breath catching just a little (that was the dust, he told himself). He held them in his hands for a moment before opening the first gently, lifting the worn pages with care. He shook his head at some of the tiny stories and illustrations in Newberry's Pocketbook. It had been a long time since he'd read any of those rhymes. No wonder Alfred had seemed to prefer the stories Arthur had made up on the spot. He smiled a little, proudly. He had become quite adept at that. One of the advantages to living as long as they did, he supposed, was that he was given plenty of fodder for stories. Even if he had had to edit them slightly at times.
Absentmindedly he lifted the book up to look at the one still underneath. His smile dropped a little though, as his fingers gently rubbed the cover of the smaller text. It was almost as old as the first book, but somewhat more worn. He had bought the book of ballads for Alfred at the end of the Seven Years war, partially to make up for having been away for so long. It hadn't been easy to make the trip during those years, and when he had there had been so much fighting, so many battles that had pulled his attention away from Alfred, even while his attentions were focused on the lands he represented. He'd never expected-
He felt his throat tighten just a little as he looked back up again from the small book in his hands to the shelves in front of him, his hand lifting up to dance across the titles, as if dancing through time itself, through years of-
"Snrk". Arthur stilled suddenly, hand reaching forward. The sound came from the couch, followed by the sound of a shifting body and soft mumblings, then quiet. He let out a breathe he hadn't realized he was holding and placed the books back gently, making sure to place them as exactly as he could. He stood back up, arching his back and stretching his legs before turning and walking back to the couch.
The blanket, which had lay strewn across the boys had fallen to the side, half on the couch and half off of it. He walked around and picked it up, shaking a few stray popcorn kernels out before beginning to settle it back in place.
Arthur allowed himself a small smile as he looked down on his former (or maybe not-quite-yet former in regards to Peter) charges. All three were sprawled out, limbs stretching over and under each others in a strange familial web. Peter's t-shirt- of course, he thought, featuring Spiderman, they must have gone shopping at some point- was lifted up, exposing his stomach, and Matthew's glasses were twisted, hanging partially off his face in a rather uncomfortable looking angle. He reached down, gently tugging at Peter's shirt and removing Matthew's glasses before smoothing down the blanket. His hand brushed the book, The Secret Garden he noted with a growing smile, which lay open across Alfred's stomach. His hand reached out, before he could think, to push a stray piece of hair dangling in front of Alfred's nose, and the boy jerked slightly, shifting with a grimace.
"Shh.." Arthur whispered, leaning over him, his hand coming to rest reassuringly on Alfred's head. "You'll wake up your brothers." Arthur glanced over at the other two as he rubbed his thumb gently, almost subconsciously, against Alfred's forehead, breathing a sigh of relief when the other two remained still. After a second, when Alfred's face relaxed and his breathing evened out once again, England took his glasses as well, holding them alongside Matthew's, and picked up the book. He held the place with a finger as he walked a few feet away from the couch, setting the glasses down on a sidetable and arranging himself comfortably in an old armchair.
He opened the book and looked down at the page, absorbing himself in the words and the crackling fireplace and the soft, almost imperceptible breaths coming from just a few feet away and felt warmer than he had in a long, long time.