A/N: First off:

I killed history in this. I'm sorry. I know, I know, the camera wasn't invented until AFTER the revolution and as such this isn't possible. Just… ignore it, okay? Please? I needed the picture to make it work.

In other news…..

This was written for a competition on a Hetalia roleplay board I'm a member of (if you're interested send me a message, I'll link you). This is my entry. If I get enough interest in it/reviews I'll write Alfred's half of this as well.

Thoughts are in italics.

It was raining. This wasn't that surprising, really. It was London, so it was a very rare day that it didn't rain. However, this was not your everyday light drizzle that came with the notoriously terrible English weather. The water was beating down on every available surface as f it held a personal vendetta against it - about four levels above pouring, really. Even the stoutest of Londoners were crowding under covering and rushing for the protection of indoors against the pelting drops that were more felt more like hail than the liquefied version they supposedly were.

It was (a certain Englishman thought darkly as he stared out the window of his home, green eyes awash with a heavy mix of bitterness, anger, and regret, face a strictly controlled mask that nonetheless managed to carry an air of tight pain) quite possibly the hardest it'd rained since that day.

England hated the rain (this was unfortunate, as he was a nation that was nearly always raining somewhere, and very often that 'somewhere' was his home city and capital of London). Whenever it grew heavy enough to graduate from a light drizzle to real rain his head got muggy, and when it progressed from there…. Well, the only thing that could stop him from thinking to much was drinking himself into such a stupor that he couldn't think.

Which was exactly what he was working on now.

He was three glasses in - brandy, his staple get-drunk-quick drink, as opposed to the scotch he usually preferred - not under the table yet, with just enough to slur his speech and wobble his step but not enough to turn off his brain quite yet. Which was quite unfortunate, really. When the Brit stood to retrieve himself a fourth serving he saw something that made the glass slip from his fingers and clatter to the floor, forgotten.

A picture.

One he was careful to hide away whenever a certain American dropped by on one of his many unplanned visits. One he could never bring himself to throw away, despite it's poor quality and never-fading ability to make his heart ache like anything. England had never been a packrat, but this…. This he had never been able to let go of.

It was black and white, grainy and blurry, made doubly so by the fact that it's subject would not - could not - sit still to save their life. It was, of course, America. Young and bright eyed and sitting on England's lap, turned around to talk to the once-Empire and throwing off the picture with his actions, but the best shot he could have taken because his impatient actions had let the camera-man capture him smiling up at England, and keeping him stiff and unsmiling would have…. Well, it wouldn't be America if it was kept that way.

Usually the picture caused England to develop a sad, far-off sort of look, with a small not-smile. Usually, he wasn't half way to being to pissed to walk. Now, though…

Shaking hands took the frame from the wall and he found himself joining his empty glass on the floor as he dropped to his knees. Unbidden, a violent shaking took him, shoulders hunching against the welling emotion as his eyes grew hot and stinging with the tears he only allowed to fall when there was rain to wash and hide them away. His fingers trembled, then clenched hard over the frame, knuckles bleaching white as one of his tears splattered against the glass. As if that added weight made it to heavy, England dropped the painful memorabilia and clutched instead at his sides, holding himself in. When the frame crashed to the ground the glass on it cracked, right along the old nation's face, and that was more than he could take.

The shaking of his shoulders grew until he was trembling so hard his whole body rocked back and forth, wracked with silent sobs that he never meant to let fall. Over two hundred years later and it could still break him apart.

"Alfred..." His voice was cracked and heavy with tears. You were never supposed to grow up. You were supposed to be Peter Pan and stay my boy forever. Why couldn't the New World have been Neverland? Why did time have to work? Why did he have to grow up? Why did...

"Why did I have to love you?"

It was so wrong of him, too - loving the nation who was supposed to be his boy. He had grown up so fast. One day his little boy, the next… And he had made the leap between the love of a father and another kind almost as quickly. It was something he had kept quiet - his secret shame, that he could love as a man that which was supposed to have been his child. It was something he'd never forgive himself for.

And, bloody hell, but he still did. Even now, for all his annoyances, his constant burgers and special talent for getting on the Englishman's nerves, he still loved him.

That was how Alfred would find him, some time later when he burst in uninvited as he so often did: a pathetic ball on the floor, tears dried out but still sobbing, shoulders shaking softly, lips moving in silent words, eyes clouded over as he stared at the old photograph, fingers tracing the line of Alfred's face over and over again.

The over-the-top 'Hi, Iggy!' dying before it ever formed to be replaced with a quiet "Arthur?"

No response other than a re-doubled sob as he curled further in n himself, convinced that Alfred's voice was only his alcohol clouded brain cutting him deeper out of some strange subconscious masochism. It wasn't until strong arms wrapped around him, pulling him off the floor and cradling him into a broad chest that England turned to Alfred. If he was more himself his face would have heated with shame at this role reversal. At Alfred seeing him so broken down over a simple storm and a picture. At wanting this gentle hold, these strong arms around him, at his desperate need for the soft words being whispered for him, the calloused but careful fingers tugging through his wild hair.

At any other time he would never allow himself to break like this.

But this wasn't any other time, and so he turned his face into America's chest, one hand fisting in his shirt.

"I'm so tired of being alone!"

Gentle lips pressed to ever-mussed blond hair.

"I know, Arthur. I know."

England discovered that he was not yet out of water, and his eyes echoed the rain pounding beyond his door.

A/N: I'm not super happy with it, but…. Eh. If I do write Alfred's half it'll continue onward. We'll probably even get a happy ending.