A/N: Before I begin, let me say that I have taken many, many liberties with the story, which is adapted from Jane Eyre. The basic plot is the same, but I personally found the story to be uninteresting and confusing at times, so I changed it up a bit. Forgive me any Charlotte Bronte fans.

It's written from a first-person view of an older Jane/Arthur looking back on their past, so narrative is more story-like than my other fics from Classic Hetalia.

My brothers – Patrick, Allistor, Dylan and Connor – were sitting with their father by the fire. I wasn't allowed to join in, as it was a father-sons activity and I was not Mr Kirkland's son but an illegitimate child born from an affair my mother had before she died, so I went to read by the window. But Allistor found me. Allistor was fourteen years old, four years older than me. He was tall for his age and he bullied me all the time. I always stood up to him, but he was stronger.

"You don't have any right to read our books," he said, snatching it from me. "You've got no money and no parents. You should be begging, not living here with us."

He threw the book at me and I fell, hitting my head against the door.

"Shut up, Allistor!" I shouted, as the blood trickled down my face.

He ran straight at me, and pulled my hair. My stepfather and Miss Karpusi, the nurse, forced us apart.

"Lock him in the red room!" my stepfather cried.

I struggled all the way upstairs. In the red room, Miss Karpusi sat me on a stool and stood staring at me. "You have to remember, Arthur," she said, "that if your stepfather decided to turn you out of this house, you would end up in the poor-house."

I didn't reply. I had heard it all before.

"I'm telling you this for your own good," Miss Karpusi continued. "You must try to be useful to Mr Kirkland to make up for the sins of your mother. Then you would be welcome here at Kirkland Manor."

She left, locking the door behind her. The red room was a spare room. It was cold because there was hardly ever a fire – and silent because it was a long way from the nursery. But worst of all, this was the room in which my mother, Gwendolyn Kirkland, had died five years ago.

I went to see if the door was really locked. Yes, it was. As I returned to my stool, I walked in front of a large mirror. I gazed at my white face and arms and at my blond hair – the very thing that separated me from the rest of my family, who all had red hair – and at my eyes glittering with fear and a determination to get out and be free. I looked like a ghost come to haunt the family, an outsider.

Daylight began to fade. It was now past four o'clock and the rain was still beating against the window. I grew as cold as a stone and I began to feel truly afraid. I tried to remember my mother – a kind, beautiful woman – whose influence on the family had protected me until I was born. As she lay dying, she had made her husband promise to bring me up as one of his own children.

"If mother was still alive, she would have treated me better," I thought.

I tried hard to be brave, until I saw a light gleaming on the wall. My heart started to beat faster. I gave a long and wild cry until I heart footsteps and the key turning in the lock.

"Arthur, are you okay?" Miss Karpusi asked.

"I saw a light," I cried. "It's a ghost! Let me out!"

"What's going on?" It was my stepfather. "I said that the boy be left in the room until I decided he can come out."

"Let me out, father! Have mercy!" I cried. "Forgive me! I don't like it in here!"

But my stepfather pushed me back into the room and locked the door again. I fainted.

I woke up much later in my own room. No severe illness followed the trauma of my stay in the red room, but it made me claustrophobic and I still see lights to this day, mainly in mirrors. The doctor came to visit me.

"What made you ill yesterday?" he asked kindly.

"I was locked in a room until night-time and there was a ghost," I told him. "And…and…I'm scared here. I want to leave but I haven't got anywhere else to go."

"Would you like to go to school?" he asked.

I hardly knew what school was, but I nodded. Nothing more was said. But one January morning, a few weeks later, I saw a carriage coming up the drive. Miss Karpusi scrubbed my face and hands and brushed my hair roughly. Then she told me to go downstairs. I stood in the hall, trembling from my fears, something that I'm ashamed of today but could have cared less at that moment.

I was called into the breakfast room. I bowed low in front of a tall man dressed in rich furs – a man with blond hair and a grim mask of a face. He looked me up and down.

"He's small," he said. "How old is he?"

"Ten," my stepfather replied.

"Are you a good child, Arthur Kirkland?" the man asked. I noticed the slight wince from my stepfather as his name was said alongside my own.

"Perhaps the less said about that the better, Mr Scandia," my stepfather said when I didn't answer. I was perhaps too busy contemplating my surname.

"There is no sadder sight than that of a naughty child," he sighed. "My boys would never misbehave."

"If you take the boy to Scandia School, Mr Scandia," my stepfather continued, apparently unconcerned for the shared name of the school and the headmaster. "The teachers must keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn't tell lies. He keeps saying he sees lights and ghosts. He also has to spend all his holidays at the school.

When Mr Scandia left, I stood there alone with my stepfather.

'I have to tell him,' I thought. 'This will be my last chance.' I went over to him and took a deep breath. "I don't tell lies," I blurted out. "If I did, I would say that I loved you. But I hate you more than anybody else in the world, including Allistor. I won't ever come and see you when I'm grown up, and I'll tell everybody how cruel you've been to me!"

I left Kirkland Manor four days later.

Characters so far:

Arthur Kirkland = England (obviously)

Patrick Kirkland = Ireland

Allistor Kirkland = Scotland

Dylan Kirkland = Wales

Connor Kirkland = Northern Ireland (he's the only one younger than Arthur)

Byron Kirkland = Celt (father of Patrick, Allistor, Dylan and Connor)

Gwendolyn Kirkland = Britannia (deceased)

Miss Karpusi = Ancient Greece (her given name is meant to be Helen after Helen of Troy, but I didn't specify it)

Mr Scandia = Ancient Scandinavia (he's Norway and Iceland's father, and Denmark and Sweden's adoptive father)

This story takes place in the 19thcentury England, which is why there are carriages instead of cars, and why Arthur has never been to school (it wasn't required back then)