The first morning that Alfred woke up with bruises covering his skin, he screamed.
His fingers blindly scope out the surrounding bedspread, his bruised skin caked in the sweat of panic - he thinks, it's happening again, and his fingers close around the familiar orange bottle, fighting it open with his sweaty palms difficulty. He swallows two large di-colored pills dry, but the lump in his throat is still there. It doesn't make sense, he thinks, to take the pills this early in the morning when the sun's barely up, when he should be sleeping, but he doesn't remember falling asleep last night. He doesn't remember going to bed.
He doesn't remember this bed.
But Alfred thinks he's used to it. He lies to himself, tells himself that one day the medication will help, or that he'll get used to the epilepsy, the strange dreams - if they aren't nightmares - the infinite blackness where unfamiliar beds and alleyways await him on the other end.
He thinks - one day I will live a normal life. Not to say that his life is not normal. He lives alone in an apartment in New York City, has a steady job writing columns for a local paper, thinks about his brother Mattie who he barely sees; he might've moved to Montreal, and though the two see each other so scarcely, Alfred dreams about him a lot. Alfred cannot remember their childhood. He likes to think they grew up like any other, with a loving mother and devoted father. They were both blonde, he imagines. And sometimes he'll envision a man with thick brows and emerald eyes, but it's only a whisper of a memory, and it goes as soon as it comes.
Alfred thinks he's normal. Just a normal boy with epilepsy who wakes up in strangers' beds with bruises on his neck and - oh - he fingers several on the inside of his thigh. He's scared, scared of what left those, thinks that maybe he scratches himself in his sleep as his fingers brush over deep marks on his shoulders. He'd be lying if he thought it was the first time this happened.
But the bed next to him stirs. He notes the contours of the moving body beside him, the way the dim light of the sun outlines hips and torso and a wave of sheets just above the pelvis. Alfred takes note that the back is much too broad to be a woman's. The man confirms that, turning to face him and noticing the horrified look in his bed-partner's eyes. The man reaches out, and Alfred lets him, lets his strange, yet familiar fingers sooth over his cheek, and the familiarity is the only thing keeping him from flinching away, because Alfred is afraid.
His fingers close around the white lid of the orange pill bottle. His blue eyes shut. He thinks he should take more, then thinks he shouldn't so he can fall asleep again and maybe wake up back in his own bed, tired and alone. He'll wait for another epilepsy episode, have another strange dream and maybe see his brother in it and the friends and enemies his brain created. Back on his desk at home, he's drawn them: the twins with the brunette hair, the man with the flirtatious smile, the boy (girl?) with rich red silk robes, the tall man with the scarf trailing to his ankles, and his father - the one with the green eyes.
They all had names, but Alfred could never remember them when he woke up.
"America." That's what they called him. It was what the man beside him was calling him. He was used to responding to it, and it sounded strange, being referred to as the country in which you lived, but something about it felt normal. He still corrects the stranger - "Alfred," he says, as if it matters. The man chuckles.
"You hate it when I call you that," the figure rises, and Alfred notes his height advantage. The darkness cannot define any more features than his height, build, and the mattered pale hair. Alfred notes that on his pale skin, too, are several bruises. (He wonders if there are any on his thighs, too).
The man reaches past him for the nightstand, and Alfred remains still until he feels a weight on his nose. Alfred peers through the thin lenses at the other man. It's a wonder why Alfred insists on wearing them when they're nothing but glass. They don't impair or help his vision, but something about wearing them feels right. They make him look older so he can order drinks at the local bars. He takes note that the man, who has now loomed in closer, has eyes of an unnatural violet hue, like Mattie's.
He recognizes one of these men to be a figment of his dreams, and distantly wonders if this is a dream. "Ivan?" It was the name he'd given the man, and judging by the onset of focus Ivan had given him at that moment, it was the right one.
"You have not called me that in a very long time, Amer- Alfred." Ivan looks confused, Alfred can tell through the darkness, and his tone accentuates the emotion. Alfred notes that in the tugging feeling on his lips that he's confused also. Suddenly Ivan's face relaxes as if he's fully understood something.
Alfred barely has enough time to register Ivan's next movement; hands, impossibly cold hands, close around his throat. He falls back onto the bed, his own hands clawing and scratching at his aggressor's. He sees darkness prickle at the edges of his eyes. (Alfred briefly wonders if maybe these hands are the cause of the bruises.)
Alfred thinks, I'm going to die.
America thinks otherwise.
-:- -:- -:-
France says it's normal. America remembers that France said it was normal as he stares down at the little orange cylinder with the white cap cupped in his palm. It's epilepsy medication, and America still remembers the day when the doctors prescribed it. Alfred thinks he has epilepsy, but America knows he doesn't. He considers hiding the medication, but he thinks that it brings Alfred comfort, and then he remembers France telling him that it's normal - it's normal for people like Alfred and Francis and Arthur to come into existence sometimes.
France reassures him that one day Alfred will cease to exist, and that he'll be nothing more than a little orange bottle with a white cap. That what Alfred is to America is what the little bottle with the white cap is to Alfred: comfort in a falsehood. That America can pretend to be normal, pretend to be normal, as Alfred can pretend that he's not actually America and that each blackout, when he becomes America, is just another epileptic episode.
Russia says, "he is nothing but another part of you," and then leaves a love bite on his neck. Alfred knows, because he's met Ivan before, and known how timid the man is, how afraid and confused he was hidden away in his Moscow home. How Alfred had to bandage the re-scarred marks on Russia's neck when Ivan would tear away at them.
"It's normal," Russia assures America as the two of them settle in Russia's bed. America places the orange bottle on the nightstand and closes his eyes, lets his fingers run over the bruises on his neck. America will never be normal, even if France tells him so.
And if America can never be normal, then Alfred cannot be normal either.
So America dry-swallows another pill, hoping that like France promised, Alfred will go away, too.