You and Me Against the World
Prologue
Warnings in this chapter: Suicide, homicide, alcohol abuse, implied child abuse, implied deterioration of religious beliefs, DARK, and AU (therefore, human names are used)
I don't own Hetalia, unfortunately.
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In those days, I never realized how lucky I was.
My twin brother and I grew up in inner city Chicago, near China Town. Right on the border of the gang territories, across the street from the police station. Neither of us were allowed to go outside without an adult or even open the windows. Yeah, it was that bad. Our dad was mil and our mom worked full time with extra hours. Me and Al would get dropped off before the break of dawn at the daycare near our school. They would walk us to school, pick us up, and bring up back to the daycare until Mom came around to pick us up long past bedtime.
It wasn't the best childhood, but it was something and we were happy. I loved my mother dearly. Bless her soul. She managed work almost nineteen hours a day and still come around to spend some time with her boys.
I should've counted my blessings.
Dad came home every Christmas. Al was ecstatic. He practically worshipped the man. He still does, to this day. I, on the other hand, never liked him at all. Well, okay, as a child, I appreciated him and all, and I suppose you could say I loved him for the fact that he as my father and he made Al happy, so I trusted him.
That was the first of the biggest mistakes in my life.
What Alfred and I didn't exactly know at the time was that our father was hopeless drunk and terrible gambler. He drank away our mother's savings and with what was left, he hauled to the casino in hopes of regaining what he had so stupidly wasted.
I think Mom and I only put up with it for Al's sake.
Alfred still would sit on his Dad's lap and listen to his war stories and tales of heroism, even if the smell of alcohol on his breath was thick.
I stayed in the kitchen and held Mom's hand as she cried and worried about what we were going to do with our financial problems. I told her that everything would be okay and that we would be fine, even though I barely knew what she was talking about.
Dad would leave the day after Christmas and tell us that he was sorry that he couldn't afford us gifts. Mom would scoff at that.
We would later find out that he had been suspended from service a long time before some of those Christmases.
On one of these Christmas visits of his, when we were about ten, Al and I came home from school to find Dad, drunk silly, sobbing over the bloody corpse of our mother. Shattered glass littered the floor and puddles of booze filled the air with the suffocating, too-familiar scent of alcohol.
Alfred fainted and was taken to the hospital. He stayed in a state of depression and shock for three days. He wouldn't even eat. Not even the cheeseburger, his favorite, they offered him. I stayed with him all the while.
First, Dad was arrested and convicted of first degree murder while intoxicated. Alfred and I stayed at one of the detective's homes during the trials, as we were considered witnesses. He was sentenced life in prison. His first night there, he hanged himself with his bed sheet out of guilt.
Alfred and I were transferred into foster care. Most of the time, people would only be willing to take one of us, not both, so we ended up sitting around the foster house more often than not. Like our mother always willed us to, I forced Al to go to church with me every Sunday, at least. I made him go to confession with me every Wednesday, as well. He never actually participated in confession, but he would sit outside the stalls patiently for me to finish.
We got closer and closer with Father Roma, which I would later considered another of the biggest mistakes in my life. I suppose that that was one of the first things that factored into the deterioration of my religious beliefs.
Our social lives were nonexistent. Alfred and I were just that, Alfred and I, no one else. After our parents' deaths, we didn't believe in people anymore. We didn't trust them. I, for one, was extremely anti-social. Alfred was the type to surround himself with as many friends as possible in order to mask his emotions, but he cared more about me than himself, so Al would glare daggers at anyone who came within a half mile of me. I appreciated it.
However, with a loss of trust for people in general, we still, somehow, allowed our wall to come down with Father Roma. Maybe it was because we had known him our whole lives, but at the same time, we hadn't. I mean, Father Roma only started to take us under his wing when he found out we were in foster care. I guess that may seem normal, but in reality, it wasn't. He was the priest, he was supposed to equalize his focus on all the children, right? Well, he never payed us much heed at all until my father's suicide.
About six months after my parents' services, when we first sparked the Father's interest, Roma decided that he wanted to adopt us.
That's when our lives really took a turn for the worse.
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AN: Sorry it's short. My prologues are ALWAYS short OTL I would've combined with chapter one, but the narrating style would've changed and been all weird :P
This story was inspired by a multitude of fanfictions (which I'll probably list later), movies, Criminal Minds episodes, and my own twisted headcanon.
It's already going to be rated M for implied child abuse (which won't be implied for very long :P)
I'm sorry I torture Mattie and Al so much, I really am ;_; Please forgive me.
I ramble way too much orz
-MM15
