1

Train Tracks

Maybe it was that vase's fault.

Alfred pictured it, in its voluptuous figure, its pear-like, purple body, its coupling of three fake flowers or one real one. He remembered what it sounded like when it broke. He had been in bed, drawing on his arms with a washable marker - his parents wouldn't allow him to use pen - when he heard a voice shoot up. It felt like the thudding of a gong. That yell, that sharp snap, that vibration that shook the house from base to top. Followed afterwards was a mumbled argument. A louder sound erupted. Alfred felt the argument beneath his floor, beneath his green rug and his scattered papers. For some reason he had the need to turn off his lamp, the snake half-drawn on his arm, its bodiless head staring at him.

The second voice evolved from a patient banter to a rising yell. Alfred curled up in bed, closing his eyes. He willed it all away. He willed it to be seven years back, when he was just five and his brother was four, and they were toted across parks and given ice cream. Everything seemed to go wrong when Alfred had turned twelve. The fights start becoming less of a row and more of a duel.

"Take it with you!" Alfred heard.

"It's yours." Came the beg.

"Well not anymore."

There was a moment of silence. As if, by falling, the vase had sapped the sound from the world. It fell for aeons, it felt like. And then it snapped. A dull crack, a booof, followed by a clatter of broken clay. It had fallen on carpet and fanned out to the wooden floor.

Silence.

Then, thudding up the stairs. Alfred peered through the diabolic grin his door split open into the hallway, light slipping into his room, cutting across the shape of his body under his blankets.

In the hallway he saw his father, Francis, standing frigid in the doorway. He couldn't see his face. He jerked away when his Dad, Arthur, brushed past him, thundering. He could practically see the fumes of smoke churning in his features.

Arthur turned to stare in Alfred's room. Pain washed over his face.

Alfred felt the image burn permanently into his memory. The way Arthur stood in the doorway's sneer, the wetness on his cheeks, the way his fingers moved in and out of a fist.

Then the way he turned into the other room. Whispers rose like fog on a lake. Francis walked into Alfred's room, slowly, his lips pressed together. The door's smile ripped open, into the dusty yellow light from the hallway, Francis' lanky figure cutting shadows into Alfred's room. He walked closer and kneeled by Alfred.

"I know you're awake. You can open your eyes."

Alfred had shut his eyes. He was too afraid to cry.

He felt a warm hand on his forehead.

"Come on."

Alfred looked at him, in time to see his younger brother, Matthew, stumble sleepily and tearily behind Arthur, his hand enveloped in Arthur's.

"Where are they going?" Alfred asked.

Francis shook his head.

"Where are they going?" Alfred demanded hotly when Francis remained silent.

"Listen."

Alfred began to protest. He heard the door open and shut. He sat up in bed. Scrambled to the window pane. Felt pain.

"Where are they going?"

The mantra pounded away in his head like the beating of a drum, over and over, a war drum calling the soldiers of comprehension into the battle of confusion. Francis walked up behind him.

"Wait." Francis said.

Arthur's car pulled out of the driveway, its lights fanning out into the driveway, mingling with the deep orange lamplights. In another minute it was gone, out of their neighbourhood.

Alfred stared.

"But…"

Francis sighed. "Alfred."

Alfred wanted him to say that everything will be ok, that everything is just perfectly fine, that the world will keep spinning and soon enough, after enough rotations and after the sun had gone up and down a couple more times, Arthur would come back. The vase would fly in reverse, collect its broken pieces back together: no cracks, no strains, and it would be on the coffee table all over again. That the world would be fine, at peace, and that in a couple dream hours, Alfred would wake up and smell pancakes and hear his parents laughing.

Instead, Francis said "Things aren't well right now."

Alfred sat back down on his bed, staring at the half-finished drawing of a snake.

Francis sat besides him.

"We've had a lot of fights lately, your Dad and I."

"I know."

"And fights can sometimes end badly, as you know. I didn't think things would go like this. But I'll explain that someday. Just know that things are hard right now and soon, really soon hopefully, we'll be back on our feet and things will feel normal again. Granted, 'normal' will be a different normal, a new normal, a change of scenery."

The house felt silent, gutted.

"Will I see Dad? Or Matthew?" Alfred asked, still tingly with shock.

"I think so. I don't know anything right now, except that I am tired and that Arthur didn't lock the door… He never locks the door." Francis' voice sagged with pained love.

Alfred watched him leave, shutting the door.

"Do you need anything?"

"No."

"Go to sleep, Alfred. We'll talk about it again when our emotions aren't so intense."

Alfred nodded, even though Francis couldn't see him, and lay down.

Nightmares.

. . .

"Never locks the door." Francis muttered, locking it. The driveway sat in loneliness.

. . .

"Where are we going, Papa?" Matthew asked, staring out the window. Streetlights flitted past the window, like glowing moths fluttering past.

"Home." Arthur said.

"But we just left home? Are we going in a circle?"

"No."

"But —!"

"Matthew."

Matthew said nothing. Arthur looked in the rearview mirror. The steers were empty at this hour. Arthur gripped the steering wheel. His heart hurt.

"Matthew?"

"Yes?"

"Are you cold back there?"

"A little…"

"Wrap up in your blanket." Arthur said, "It's ok. No one is here to mock you for it."

Matthew picked up his striped blanket, one that if his classmates knew existed he would be strung up for, and wrapped himself in it, tugging his knees to his chest, and sitting by his lonesome in the backstreet.

They drove in silence. Matthew wondered if there was nothing to say or if there was too much to say. Arthur drove so not to rock the car, lest Matthew have fallen asleep.

Matthew didn't.

There were many things Matthew didn't do for a long time.

. . .

Maybe it was the vase.

Maybe if it had fallen, or been pushed, or have been knocked over, everything could have remained intact. Or, if Arthur and Francis got back together and glued all the shattered pieces back together, they would be back together.

Back together…

Alfred sat on the staircase, looking at the last few crumbs of thick purple scattered around the table's legs. Francis had put the larger shards in a plastic bag, forbidding Alfred to come near. Francis walked back to it with a vacuum, cleaning up the final bits of debris.

"Are you gonna throw it out?"

Francis had the bag of shattered realities in his hand, several purple spikes attempting to poke out from the bottom. The dead flowers sat on the table, homeless. Francis looked down at the two items, now separated, and appeared to get lost in his mind.

"No. Not yet."

The bag went into a closet, into the furthest corner. Out of sight, out of mind: but still there and not in some stranger's truck riding to a compost site.

. . .

When Alfred had gone to school and Francis had gone to work, Arthur came back to their house. He stood in the doorway, staring at the now empty table, at the kitchen that smelled of lilacs, and of home.

"Take what you want, Matthew." Arthur said quietly. Matthew went upstairs. He wanted to take Alfred, but Alfred wasn't there.

Arthur began packing his things. He made the calls, he got the airplane tickets, and now he needed his things. The pain was real and hanging like curtains. It surrounded the home in its dense aura. He didn't want to go into the bedroom and takes his clothes, but he had to. He had to rip off the bandage. He had to go.

Legalities and moralities aside, Arthur knew he was making a mistake. He knew that Matthew would have his own set of troubles in London, a place he went only once and had little desire to go back to.

There was a sigh escaping Arthur's lips, as if that would seal fate like a licked envelope.

The train had begun chugging along, leaving one world behind for another. The path was chosen. It could have been Alfred who went with Arthur, it could have been one choice. But the tracks were set and the engine whistled.

I do not own Hetalia

I wonder if anyone still uses this site, to be honest. But this story had to come out.