Sometimes there would be days when England would have nightmares. Sometimes he went weeks without them, others years. It was never a constant thing.

At a certain point-and he couldn't remember when it was, now—he had taken someone's advice and written them down. He had a book; it was a small, leather-bound journal with yellow pages and creases in the paper. The thing was small enough to fit into a pocket, no thicker than the average man's wallet. For some reason, he never left home without it tucked into the inside pocket of his coat. England really didn't think that it made much sense. Half of the time, he didn't even have a pen with him.

Curiously enough, he never read it.

There would be days when he would pick it up and leaf through the book, fast enough that he couldn't read the words but could see every ink blot and tea stain that marred its pages. If he was to be totally honest with himself, he had no idea what was written inside. His trembling hands may have been the ones to write the words, but his mind seemed to have buried the memories a long time ago. So the book stayed mysterious. Unopened. Almost sacred. There was a part of England that was afraid of the thing.

But one thing stayed constant in the book. In the right hand corner of each marked-up page, there was a date scrawled in loose script. And England could swear on his very life that each and every time that he had picked up a pen and put it to the pages there had been thunder. Rolling thunder that sounded like waves crashing against cragged cliffs in the midst of a storm. Roaring in his ears and reducing him to a shell of empty emotion until the storm moved on and the thunder had died overhead. And when the danger did pass and he was alone again, he would wrap his arms around himself and the tears would flow because he remembered.

And he would thank God that he was alone, so that the silent sobs and the words murmured into the darkness wouldn't be heard by anyone. So that he wouldn't be a burden.

It was so childish that he would almost laugh through his tears. Thunder. England himself had stayed awake many a night with America when he was younger, explaining the frightening sounds and singing away the tears with a lullaby about a father protecting his children through a storm.

He still remembered the words. Some nights he wondered whether they were scribbled somewhere within the pages of the notebook, the overflow of his heart onto the sheets in his moments of weakness and fear and vulnerability. But he never checked. No simple lullaby could sing away the tears now.

There was a part of him that was afraid to; afraid that whatever was in the book would suddenly bring the weight of the world crashing down on his shoulders once more. Afraid that somehow, by reading the looped script that had painted its way shakily across the pages, it would be those years again and the world would fall away around him into destruction and the screams of his people as they ran.

He hasn't written in the book for quite some time now. But it is always there, always constant. In a way, it's almost comforting.

Thunder.

England never could forget how much it sounded like the Blitz.