Title: Devil in a Midnight Mass
Fandom: Axis Powers: Hetalia
Author: It was me the last I checked.
Genre: fluff, angst, romance, adventure, slice of life, AU
Pairing: USUK, FrUK bromance, (past) PruCan, SuFin, GerTalia, Spamano, and some other shizzle
Rating: T
Warnings: Angst: Dude, it's USUK. Character death: mostly background death, but hey, you never know. I'm not guaranteeing anyone's safety this time. I got Arthur this far, he's in just as much danger as everyone else now. Fluff: a fair bit of it. Slash: a lot of it. Language: everything bar fuck. Violence: blood, gore, torrents of mind-fuckery maybe. You know. The usual. Oh, and uh. Ghosts. And more mind-fuckery.
Chapter Summary: Life has continued, and the beginning of the end begins to end.
A/N: Hallo once again, audience! Was that a shameless Tobuscus reference, why yes it was, I fancy the pants off the man, I'm allowed, or something, IDEK. Anyway, here we are, back in for the long haul. So I'm ill, no surprise there – got some kind of chest infection and it hurts to breathe and I can't stop coughing and it feels like there's something lodged in my chest, so what did I go and do? I went and watched HetaOni, didn't I? And promptly, squealed, screamed, cried and laughed my way into a stupid amount of pain. And then I nearly twisted my ankle pacing like a twat. So you know. I suck eggs. But ANYWAY ONWARDS. Notes at the end, some other stuff besides, and OH YEAH! Enjoy my lovelies!
Chapter One: Mercy Me, I'm Falling Free
Life continued. Moved on at a steady, uninterrupted pace, as though the darkness hadn't come to tear them apart and put them in places only nightmares could thrive in. It was as though there had been no death, no investigations, no love lost and found and kept. It just was. So they picked up the pieces and moved on, did all they could to tape the cracks of their world shut once more.
A year in prison for obstructing the course of justice. A year in England. A year in America. A year fighting for what they had, what they didn't, fighting to stay and to go, and to just be.
But the years came and went, the seasons waxed and waned, and they fell into their niche, hit their stride, their little corner of the world gaining momentum and gathering moss, calm and noisy, silence and movement all at once, and it was right. Not good, necessarily, but right.
And so life continued, even as death lingered, clung to the recesses of minds, leered from the shadows of souls.
"You were screaming in your sleep last night."
It was breakfast, but they weren't at the table. The owner of the house curled himself into his armchair, wrapped in the rattiest pair of tracksuit bottoms any man had ever owned and a faded T-shirt with the worn slogan 'I see dead people' emblazoned across it. His socks were odd, his hair dishevelled, and there was a mug of tea in his shaking hands.
"It always rains on my birthday, have you noticed?"
The twenty-third of April had come again, and Arthur Kirkland was thirty years old.
"Don't ignore me."
"I'm not ignoring you, love," Arthur assured idly, though his eyes didn't move from the rain on the window. "I'm merely making an observation. Have you fed Salem?"
An irritated snort, the clink of a mug on the coffee table. "Fine, be that way. I hope she chokes."
To which Arthur snorted in amusement, but he didn't reply. For a moment, Alfred Franklin Jones watched him watch the rain, and then he sighed, hauled himself from his seat on the couch and went back into the kitchen. Arthur's eyes flicked to his retreating back, and then he rubbed furtively at his temple, willing the threatening migraine to abate.
He hadn't realised he'd been screaming. It had seemed so real at the time, and he remained convinced at least part of it was. As for which bit, he had no idea.
Go to the Church of your Fathers. Remember the loose flagstone there? By the door? The one we used to hide letters under? Put a ward on it, hide it under the stone, make it your safe place. Call them to you, Arthur, but keep from becoming what they are.
What did that mean? Why was it him who had to talk to him, why that voice? Did he even know he was being used in such a way? Was he genuinely speaking to him? Or was it his mind fragmenting as he'd been told it would, was he disassociating himself from his life and thinking the dreams were reality?
What was real?
"There," Alfred huffed, throwing himself back onto the couch. "Fed the damn cat. You should be grateful, birthday boy."
"Shut up," Arthur replied, bitter and angry and hurt, confused and tired and lost, because he was the only person to hate having his birthday remembered.
The response was a noisy little yawn from Alfred, a satisfied sigh of cracking joints and loosing muscles. "Where did you put the next load of story sheets? I might as well make a start before Kiku gets up my ass over it."
"On your desk," Arthur told him, attention back on the rain. He took a sip of his tea, and added, "I'm pretty sure you put your coffee mug on them."
"Ah, right." Alfred lingered for a moment, and then crossed the room to cage Arthur into his chair, noses brushing for a second before Alfred worked his way to Arthur's ear, buried his nose behind it. "Why don't you go back to bed? You look like hell."
Finally tearing his eyes from the weather, Arthur gave him a drolly exasperated look. "Thanks, love, thanks for that."
Alfred looked clueless as he backed away to let Arthur get to his feet. "What?" he asked – whined, really – as Arthur made for the stairs. As he followed the older male up them, he whined some more with variations of, "What? What did I say? Artie."
"Don't call me that," was all Arthur said in reply.
He staggered, missing the top step, but Alfred's hands were already on his waist, steadying him with a low chuckle, and those same hands didn't leave his waist as he was guided back into his – no, it was theirs now, wasn't it? – bedroom, and he could feel the press of Alfred's fingers against his bones, curling around the cradle of his hips as if measuring. And he was measuring, he did it almost constantly, always measuring, silently weighing his lover, testing him when he thought he wasn't looking.
"I'm fine," he said, as Alfred manhandled him back into bed, and he let him do it, because Alfred would throw a strop and he wouldn't focus and then he'd have to listen to the angry phone calls in Japanese to explain why Alfred hadn't finished the next issue. "I'm fine," he repeated.
Alfred scoffed. "Excuse me if I don't believe you. You weigh, what, eight stone now? And it's still dropping. It's not healthy, Artie."
"And your diet is?" Arthur snapped back, unnecessarily harsh as he yanked the blankets over his head. "Just do your job, would you?"
This was how it always was, he mused angrily, buried under the layers of blankets – hand-stitched patchwork, some of them, some bought, some from Alfred's bedroom back in the Williams-Jones household – and scowling into the artificial darkness, head throbbing. They always argued over weight and food and the state of Arthur's mind.
As if that was its cue, the migraine came flooding in, splitting his eyes and crushing his skull from the inside out. Even though his eyes were screwed shut, even though he was curled into a ball in his bed, he could feel his world swimming, feel the nausea welling in his gut, bile in his throat. His heart thumped against his ribs even as he curled in tighter, breaths stuttering as he tried to calm himself. If Alfred felt it – and he would, there was no denying that – there'd be no getting away from it.
"Artie?" Alfred's voice came from somewhere very far away and somewhere very close all at once, and it broke through the static, through the whining and groaning of the Ghosts shoving at Arthur's brain, at his very soul, breaking his way through even as he tore the blankets from the Englishman's body. "Artie, come on, look at me."
He couldn't, he knew he couldn't. This world now, it wasn't the same, he wouldn't be able to see Alfred properly to look at him. He knew it, and yet still his eyes opened of their own accord, latched onto the vague sun-kissed gold, the wheat-blond, the ever-blue eyes made of sky and sapphires, and there was no logic to the colours, no logic to the shapes, no texture or being, just the vaguest of presences. The air was stale now, the walls white-washed and fog curling in from the open windows. There was no colour here, not really, just the emptiness of the death.
"Artie?" Alfred whispered, worried now. "Come on, look at me, please?"
But the more he focused, the more indistinct and vague Alfred became. Even his voice wasn't enough to cut through the fog, leaving him left in nothingness.
He was cursing, Arthur could hear that, nothing would ever take that from him, he knew Alfred far too well for that. But then the silence broke, and it brought with it noise; screaming and shouting, and there was blood all over the walls, glass shattering behind his eyes and Arthur winced against the pressure of it, the weight of the death that surrounded him, curling tighter in on himself even as Alfred's indistinct hands pulled at him, tried to open him out so that Alfred could get in and fight the darkness, and there was nothing that could be done, only endless silence, endless noise.
The chair at the end of the room was occupied. Not Alfred's desk chair, the armchair Arthur curled in when he couldn't sleep. It was an occupant he had never thought to see again, and the batshit insane grin on pale features was as much a blessing as it was a curse. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out, and he received a cackle in response.
"Well, well, well," it said, the accent too familiar, but different somehow. "I've got to say; I'm impressed."
"Wanker," Arthur replied, because there was nothing else his brain, splintered and aching as it was, could think of to say. How could he react?
"That's not very nice. And I've come here bearing important news, too."
"I thought you were dead," Arthur whispered.
"I was," the Ghost replied. "Am," it corrected after a split second. The grin never left its face. "But that's the thing, isn't it, Artie? We've got a bit of a problem. You remember the Gateway? The one I threw myself into because I'm totally a selfless bastard like that?"
Arthur's eyes narrowed. "Of course I remember, I live in the damn thing these days. Get to the point."
"Ooh, snarky. Well anyway, thing is, it's kind of – you know – open again. Me and Mattie, we've been doing some digging on our end, and you – Alexandrus – too, all of us, we've been asking questions, since we're not bound to time and space like you living, unawesome things are."
"Gilbert," Arthur snarled.
That insane grin finally split and turned into something more serious, a frown that more suited Matthew's face than Gilbert's, and even as the East German leant forwards to rest his elbows on his knees, Arthur thought he could see a fleck of lavender in those crimson eyes, blond in the shock of white hair. The marks of his death still littered his skin, of course, and they always would as long as he was on this plain, but there were Matthew's marks there too, a rip in his T-shirt, bare toes curled into the carpet, bruising on his face.
"You see, the thing is, Artie, your… Well, Alexandrus, he was onto something when he said that the Gateway opened onto all plains of existence. But it's not just every plain of existence – and I swear to you now, I swear to God I met an honest-to-God alien the other hour, Alfred would wet his knickers if he knew – but anyway. There are other plains of existence, besides the ones we know. There are other places."
"Get to the point, Gilbert," Arthur told him, a warning note threading its way in.
Gilbert sighed, exasperated. "Fine, fine. Jesus. Anyway, so this Gateway? It opens into Perdition. I know, I know, I think it's a load of shit too, but hell, I've seen a lot of shit these last seven years, and damn if my death wasn't one of the weirdest. I mean, I don't believe in God, and I certainly don't believe in the devil, but wasn't that Ghost of Mattie's a demon? Wasn't it evil? Either way, Perdition? It's a real place, and it's where all the real baddies go. Me and Mattie got back through the Gateway 'cause that's how we went out, but we can't stay, it's too dangerous for us. We're here to give you the heads up, and to tell you the obvious."
"Which is what, exactly?"
"That it needs to be closed."
"No," Arthur snapped, shaking his head, his world spinning off-kilter with the movement. He clutched at his head and tried to settle his brain as he processed what that meant. "I'm not doing it; I'm not giving myself up for it, not now. I've got too much to lose." He spared a glance at the rest of the room; Alfred was nowhere to be seen, though there was warmth on his wrists, on his temples, fingers that weren't his own in his hair and on his back. "I'm not doing it, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not."
"Jesus," Gilbert whistled. "They said that you'd totally lost it since I died, but I wasn't expecting you to be this bad. You've lost weight and sleep and your marbles too, haven't you?"
"Get out," Arthur demanded. "Just, get out and stay out. I don't want this, I don't need it. I just want you all gone!"
And just like that, it was daylight, mid-morning, and he was sat in his armchair by the window, curled into a ball and tearing at his hair, and Alfred was holding his wrists, trying to open him up and get through the barriers to calm him down.
Arthur Kirkland was thirty years old, weighed eight stone to his five feet seven, and was steadily losing his mind.
++End Chapter++
NOTES::
Story title is a song by Billy Talent.
Chapter title comes from David Gray's song Falling Free.
I know most people use 'Fredrick' as Alfred's middle name, but I thought AlFRED FREDrick was a bit weird, especially since I nickname him Freddie most of the time. So I did a little recon on the web. Franklin is an English name, derived from the Middle English for 'freeman'. There is a definition of freeman devoted purely to Colonial America, in which a man is not tied to the legal system after escaping from slavery. I thought it appropriate, considering how America viewed English rule.
As a hereditary migraine sufferer, fuck yes this is what it's like. My grandma used to have to spend days in bed in pitch black, because painkillers don't touch it. I'm almost that bad, except I'm on full-strength prescription cocodamol for it and I couldn't lie in silence if it killed me. The only reason I haven't keeled over is 'cause I tank myself up on painkillers before it hits. Doesn't always work, and it's probably not a good idea, but who cares, it stops me passing out. BUT ANYWAY.
As to Arthur's weight, look at a BMI chart. He's actually beyond 'underweight'. He was verging on underweight during LSN.
Well, boo, this chapter's boring as hell. And it's supposed to jump around, just so you don't go 'I don't get it'. Which you probably will anyway, since you know, nothing's really making sense at the moment. Damn you, HetaOni.
Hope you enjoyed, my lovelies, and I shall see you next chapter! ++Vince++