Prompt: Don't panic.
Sorrow makes us all children again - destroys all differences of intellect. Even the wisest know nothing.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
1845. The Republic of Texas.
Alfred had heard so much about her, but wasn't nearly prepared for the sight that met him. He hadn't expected her to be so young, first of all, kneeling by the Rio Grande and washing her hands in the water there, suppressing a rather harsh cough that sounded rough in her slim chest. Alfred knew that the girl's home wasn't far at all from the river, and he'd been lucky to run into her here like this, his horse tied to a nearby post and noticing that hers was as well.
The girl bent lower to drink from the murky, dirty water; a girl that was the equivalent of only about six human years, her skin a light cinnamon brown that wasn't quite as dark as Maria's but not white as his own either. Her hair was brown, expectedly, pulled back in a braid at the back of her head. Another cough wracked the thin body and she covered her mouth quickly, catching the blood clot there. On her head was a hat very similar to his own, not quite as pointed in front, more round-brimmed like the hats Pablo wore, and it tipped dangerously on her hair when she knelt to wash her hands free of the rheumy red that coated her hands now.
"Well, that hardly sounds good," he finally spoke up, making her jump and stumble a little as she looked up at him in fear. "Even less for a little girl like you."
His accent was still hard, the vowels sounding strange in his own mouth from being outside of familiar territory, but he'd long since given up trying to tame his voice. Gave it up because it's not like Arthur was ever coming back to see him after the fit he'd thrown; no, Arthur hated him now, and Alfred couldn't quite blame him for that. So let his accent sound ridiculous; he didn't care anymore, just grateful that his British accent had long ago faded and left him with a bit more of the west in his blood, starting to leave the memories of England behind him, or so he hoped. No more cellars that he was afraid to enter, no more rooms left untouched and locked.
"I like your horse," he tried again, but still, that suspicious look remained on the girl's face. Alfred stepped forward and clicked his tongue to bring the hose closer towards him. "Handsome thing. What's his name?"
He hadn't been stalking her, not exactly. He was just... intensely interested in the land down here, in growing taller and in taking in this little sickly thing whose eyes shone dark under her eyelashes.
The girl watched him a moment but then stepped forward herself when Alfred went to pet the horse's snout, grabbing the reins in both hands. "S-Santiago," she told him in a soft, bitter stutter. Her own accent was almost similar to his own; not quite as hard as the one from further north, but not quite as Spanish as Maria's, either.
Alfred nodded thoughtfully as though considering the name. "It's a good name for him. I came on one of my mares today. Funny, ain't it? I get how people don't wanna use them as much, but I love her to death. Her name is Angelica. She's a bright, bright Palomino with a really shiny coat."
The girl's eyes flicked from the horse and then back up to Alfred, her shoulders squared as she stood straighter - an intimidation method. Alfred had done the exact same thing after gaining his own independence from England. "I don't think Maria would like me talkin' to you very much. I'm not supposed to talk to strangers."
Alfred smiled at that and then shrugged, fishing about in his pocket for a peppermint candy wrapped in a clean handkerchief; he almost offered it to her, but realized how that would look. "That's a shame," he said. "I thought Maria and Pablo wouldn't mind an old friend visiting you." He stopped walking about so as not to intimidate her more than necessary. "My name's Alfred. I'd offer you a candy for yourself, but I guess I really am a stranger to you, aren't I? And you look like a smart enough girl not to take candy from a stranger."
Still warily, the girl stared at him, though her eyes averted a little when he smiled wider. "I don't think they think of you as a friend," she said as she stroked her horse's snout. Another cough took her, but this one was suppressed enough to have almost not happened at all. Alfred's smile faded as he looked over her condition: thin, with dark circles around her eyes, and the corners of her mouth caked in white. Her eyes were large and dark under her lashes, so different from Maria's own. "T-Teresa. My name is Teresa."
There was a bit of a pause, and Alfred almost opened his mouth to speak again before the girl - Teresa - cut him off.
"What do you want?"
The question threw him off a little, and he thought about it as he looked her over, unable to see the full extent of any injuries she may have had, but still concerned for her well-being. He bent down a little, squatting in his spot to make it easier on her poor eyes that seemed to be fighting the sunlight.
"Me?" He rested his arm on the knee of his bent leg and shrugged. " I don't rightfully know myself. I just know I wanted to meet you, to talk to you, and now that I've done that... I don't know."
Alfred glanced over her wardrobe now, a right little tomboy in a boy's vest and britches. He had made sure not to come dressed in anything official either, nothing like those suits that Arthur had tried stuffing him into; the ones he'd worn in front of a full-length mirror, or the ones he'd worn when he'd bowed before the French court, or the one he'd worn for signing the Treaty of Paris. No, today he was dressed in his stable clothes, roughed up and dirty just like hers.
"Is it alright if I bring my horse over here to drink?" he asked her, and watched her flush and give him a childish glare.
"It's not like I own the damn river," she told him, cussing in a way that Pablo would, all too recognizable to his ears by now. Her little fingers fiddled with the straps to her vest restlessly as Alfred wondered if she and Pablo had been close. He could just imagine Pablo, like an older brother, teaching her to ride horses, or how to plant flowers - calling her nice endearing names and making her feel special until maybe the siblings ignored her again. How familiar that sounded. "Well, if you don't want anything, then I don't wanna talk to you." But then, softer, shier: "Why would you want to meet me?"
Those words stung a little, so very familiar that it was as though they came from his own mouth. "Never said I was done," he said as he smiled at her, sadly. "Why wouldn't I want to meet a sweet little thing like you? I... I heard all about you, Teresa. Can't I talk to you a bit?" He bit his lip, turned his head and whistled three times, enough to get that bright yellow mare of his to come trotting along. He held a candy out to her, a little sugar cube for her to eat, trying to look more casual than he felt. "Does Santiago want one too?"
Teresa was quiet for a second, looking dizzy in the bright heat, so dizzy that Alfred wanted to reach out and hold her just to keep her safe. She held onto the rail of the post that Santiago was tied to, and she shook her head. "No." In another moment, she'd found her balance again, and adjusted the hat atop her head. "How come you heard about me? I'm no one."
"I've got eyes and ears all around," he told her with a smile. "You know, I think we have a lot in common, Teresa. I know just what it's like to have no one believe in you, or to think of you as how much you're worth. Want to know why? See, I've got a little - just a little - in common with those two. They have a second name, don't they? Mexico del Norte y del Sur?" And maybe his accent didn't work well with the Spanish, but he would work on it. He stood up to move closer to her. "Well, I have a second name too. A different one, a better one."
Without a moment's notice, he was before her again, and kneeling once more right in front of her, giving her a charming smile. "People call me the United States of America. And I've decided I want you help you out. You don't deserve those bruises under those pretty eyes of yours." Reaching out, he touched the spots gently, but then Teresa pulled sharply back from him; however, he saw the trust in her wide, dark eyes now.
"You? You're Los Estados Unidos?" He nodded and her voice wavered a little. "You want to... help me?" Again, a nod, and Teresa turned pink with surprise. "B-but Mexico del Norte, Maria, she'll get mad at me... she's already mad at-"
Here, Teresa cut herself off to turn away again, tugging a handkerchief out of her pocket to hack into it painfully. Sweat beaded on her forehead and her body clenched with each wracking cough.
"I know I don't look like much," Alfred said, "but I swear I am. And who cares what Maria thinks? You're independent now. From one free nation to another, you can make all your own decisions now. I'm just saying that I... I want to help. Protect you." She turned by the time he offered her a winning smile. "You wouldn't be the first one I took under my wing to help out a little."
1846. Washington D.C.
He'd been putting this off for days.
The doctor had come a few days ago and explained everything to him after closely inspecting the sickly girl. That she was dying and it was going to hurt; that she should be getting sicker soon, a turn for the worse, that the coughs weren't consumption but rather a side-effect of the poison. Poison... who would do that to such a sweet little girl?
And yes, he might have drawn it out, but he knew what to do. His hands shook like anything as he knocked softly on the girl's bedroom door, the bedroom he'd been lending out to her for the last week or so, a nice large room since it used to quarter the female slaves.
"You still awake?" he asked quietly, and could practically hear Teresa's bright smile from beyond the door.
"Yes." The rustle of blankets as the girl sat up, and his heart ached, hands shook, throat bitter for some reason as though he might vomit. "Did you come to say goodnight?"
"Y-yeah. And I wanted to talk to you a little if you aren't too tired. May I come in?"
It was more formal than he'd been this entire time, but he couldn't imagine calling her any nicknames or endearing terms right now. He'd only acted a few years older than her once he'd gotten her to agree to live with him. His mind drifted back to thinking about that whole war a few decades ago, that war of cannonballs and tears that had torn off faces and legs. Sick with the thought, he shook his head and stepped forward a bit.
"You can come in," was Teresa's response, and he opened the door to see her in her nightgown, all tucked into bed and with her dark hair loose and sleek around her shoulders. Her fingers were twisted up in the sheets to pull them closer and she was grinning happily. "I like it when you say goodnight to me."
Oh God, the look in those eyes... it would haunt him and he knew it. "Yeah?" Alfred sat on the edge of the bed, right by where her shins were under the blankets, and smiled at her. "I like saying goodnight to you. You're a real sweetheart, Teresa." He held out his arms to her to bring her into a hug, and she obediently climbed out from under the blankets and into his arms. "And beautiful too."
Her head rested against his collarbone now, so that her hair feel shiny and straight across his chest. "I like living with you," Teresa murmured. "It's nice here. Much better than Mexico."
"And I like having you here," he replied, but then his eyebrows raised when the girl turned from him to cough again, and the coughs turned more harsh. "Oh- god, oh god... H-hold on!" Quickly, he pulled the little metal pail from under the bed and held her hair back as she vomited into it. Unable to see much in the dim candlelight, he merely held her and whispered, "H-here, it'll be alright... it'll be okay..."
The stench wafted up to him, bloody and sour, and made him nearly retch right along with her. His eyes watered and he swallowed, unable to do much as she finished up and wiped her mouth with that handkerchief of hers, leaving smears of brownish red on the white cloth.
"I- I'm sorry," the girl cried. "I'm so sorry, lo siento, I thought it would get better... I thought it would get better if I stayed with you..."
"Sh-shh, don't apologize... it's okay." Pulling her into his lap, he wrapped his arms around her tiny waist and tried to turn her so he could cradle her closer to him. "Shh, I know it's awful. I... I know how to make it better for you, though. I know how to make it st-stop hurting."
He kissed her cheek, and she looked up at him with those wide dark eyes of innocence. "You do?" Hopeful. So very, very hopeful. It broke Alfred's heart to hear it. "You have the answers to everything, Alfred... you're so smart..."
Well, that was definitely a first to hear, coming from another almost-nation. No, a state now, he supposed, perfectly annexed as his very own, which must have been why it hurt so bad to think about doing what he had to do.
"I- I'm really not that smart," he admitted softly, stroking back her hair. "See, my best friend Ivan... he's way smarter than I am. He comes to visit me sometimes." Though in reality, he hadn't seen Ivan in a while, but might as well be best friends since he didn't exactly have much else. "I can make it stop. But... not right now. I need a little more time. It's kinda a hard thing to do. R-really hard."
He bit his lip and chewed it for a moment while she looked confused, and then asked her, "Where's your favorite place to be?"
Teresa's expression softened into one of near embarrassment, and she muttered, "P-Pablo's garden." Alfred wasn't expecting that, not in the least, and his eyebrows rose in confusion. "It's so pretty... and smells so good..." Her eyes dropped down to her lap, then lifted back up at him. "Why?"
"Just wondering." Alfred supposed it was a good location. Pretty and shady and brightly-colored but not so bright as to blind oneself. He couldn't, though, not there. "Besides that. Give me your top three besides that." He paused as though to continue on, but then turned and lay down with her on his chest, the same position Arthur used to hold him. She thought about it again, and he could almost see the gears working in her little head, and finally she poke up again.
"Um... the river. The Rio Grande." Where they met. Of course; Alfred's heart twisted again. "Or that swimming spot down by the Gulf where I took you that one time, remember? I love swimming, especially with you."
Alfred smiled at her wearily. "I love swimming too." He swallowed, stroking her hair softly. "You want me to tell you a story before you go to bed? It's getting late, but I can squeeze one in. I can tell you one of the ones England told me when I was little."
Teresa began to pout, but then smiled at him, climbing off of his chest to tuck herself back in. Such a good, obedient little thing. She beamed. "Yeah, a story," she said with a delighted nod, and Alfred climbed in next to her, lying down on the pillow right next to hers.
"Alright. It's a story about a man... a hero of his people, and how he falls to corruption in order to gain the crown and keep it." He cleared his throat. "It starts with thunder and lightning and three old, ugly sisters burying something on the beach. Three witches."
He had a hard time recalling the first line of the play, and struggled to remember. "'Wh-when will we next meet?' asked the first sister..."
Despite feeling like he was missing something vital somewhere in there, Teresa listened intently as he went on through the story, carrying on with the witches talking about cursing a sailor's wife, getting to the part when they hail Macbeth as future king before he notices that she's asleep, her heavy eyelids fallen shut now. She held an armful of blankets like some sort of stuffed animal and his breath hitched softly as he thought of what he had to do.
He listened intently for any protest or sign that she was still awake as his story drifted into silence. When no protest came, he silently sat up in bed and grabbed the pillow that he'd been lying on, gripping it tightly in both hands. "G-goodnight, Teresa," he choked out, his breath starting to shake along with his hands as he positioned the pillow above her head. "I'm- I'm so sorry."
With a whimper, he dropped the pillow over her face and held it there as tears flooded his eyes. Beneath him, the little body startled awake and lay still for a moment before beginning to fight back, flailing under his weight, legs kicking out at him and hands scrabbling to claw at his wrists with blunt little fingernails, and he sobbed, choking out, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," over and over again as she flailed under him like a drowning fish.
Taking an innocent life. Even if it was a mercy killing, it still broke his heart, and he felt the tears drip down his face and hit the pillow, no longer a hero but a villain, even worse when he had to crawl more fully on top of her to keep her limbs pinned.
"I'm sorry!" he shouted through sobs. "I'm sorry, the- the doctor said you weren't going to get better and so I... I have to do this, just... just go to sleep... just stop and go to sleep and it'll be okay... It won't hurt an-anymore, Teresa, God, I'm sorry..."
The girl beneath him began to cough, just like that same cough he'd heard a million times before (coughing red as though suffering from consumption), and shaking hard as though being shocked. Her little body tensed and twitched under his own until she was slowing... slowing down... limbs barely twitching and then finally, no movement at all, the barest of tremors before absolute stillness...
"I'm... I'm sorry..."
It was all he could do. All he could do at all to just repeat that apology, and hold the pillow strongly over her face even long after she stopped moving, needing just a few moments to realize that the movement now was only himself, his own violent tremors as he tried to come to terms with what he'd done. The blindness he saw wasn't her own, but the tears obscuring his vision with horrid blurring.
After a long while, he finally pulled the pillow off of Teresa's head. Beneath it, the girl was peaceful as though merely glancing up at something, dark and slight, though the pillowcase where her mouth had been pressed up to it was spattered in little red droplets.
The only noise in the room now was no longer her choking and muffled gasped, but his own ragged breathing and sobs as he pulled her into his lap and held her there, sobbed into her sleek hair until he lost track of the time and until his tear ducts could produce no more, and then lay her back down, quietly standing up with a whisper of promising to protect her people.
And then without fully realizing what was happening, he tucked her in with harshly trembling hands and blew out the candles. Only when he stood outside of her shut door and slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor did he glance down at his palms where the creases from the pillowcase were still visible - and cried until he was hoarse.
Alfred had never quite understood the concept of mercy when it came to the matter of revenge.
He remembered hurling a flaming torch at Matthew's head after the buildings had gone up in flames after being denied a full union of the two siblings; remembered the things spat at Arthur before Arthur quietly and calmly broke his wrists and threw him from the flames of the burning White House.
He recalled holding those Natives at knife-point after they had so rudely denied him their parentage, told him he was different because he was paler than the rest of them, feared him as a spirit and told him that his true parents would show up soon and that all they had to do was wait. But he hadn't wanted to wait, and once he grew older, shed the burden of his Abenaki "mother" and forged his own path.
And now he would have a new memory of vengeance to add to those: the feel of Maria's curly hair gripped tight in his hand and his gun pressed hard into the small of her back.
"Worthless, stupid woman. Don't you dare stop walking on me." He heard her give a soft sob when he yanked her hair down harder, dug the barrel of his gun a little harder into the tender muscles of her lower back. "You'd better be crying over how much I'm gonna hurt you and not over what you've done. Lord knows you aren't crying nearly enough to try to repent, or enough to feel upset about hurting a little angel like her."
Their house - Pablo's and Maria's - was starting to come into view now. He shoved at her harder and heard her breath hitch.
"Keep walking."
"Y-you don't understand, America, let me go..." Maria's voice was strained due to the way he held her hair and bent her neck back. "You don't... don't have any idea of what I had to-" Here, she stopped only to see the house in the distance, and he felt her digging her heels into the ground, her voice panicked now. "No! No, Pablo, hermano, don't... don't hurt him, leave him alone...! It was... it was about the land, not about... let me go...!"
Angry, he jerked her head the opposite way by her hair, as if trying to lift her from the ground. "Land?" Twisted another bit around his hand and didn't let up at all. "She was a little girl! You were supposed to take care of her and you killed her!"
She flinched but he didn't care, couldn't care anymore that she was once the girl he'd played hide-and-seek with as a child. No; all that mattered now was that she'd tried to kill such a perfect little angel as Teresa.
"No, I don't understand what it's like to be a monster like you. Enlighten me, Maria. Why are you upset? She didn't hurt enough to satisfy you? Didn't cough loud enough?" Alfred pulled harder, all but pulling her hair out, and she winced with a gasp. "She was throwing up blood all the way up until the end! How dare you think I'm letting you both get away with this..."
He had no right. No right at all, and he knew it as much as he knew Maria did. Maria was the one to issue the declaration of war with the United States, not the other way around - or perhaps that was the precise reason why Alfred struggled to hold her still. Try to kill such an innocent little thing, and then when he takes her in, these two pretentious little brats decide to declare war on him? More than infuriating, and he tugged to pull her forward so he could get close enough to scream up at the house.
"Pablo!" He knew the other was in there, and a sort of smile tugged at his mouth. "Pablo, come out here, won't you? I've got at least six presents for you and your sister."
It didn't take long. Obedient as ever to his only sister, the younger sibling threw open the front door only moments after being called, and looked on with a stunned expression. "M-Maria?" He was checking out her position in this headlock Alfred had her in, hair taut in one hand, other hand pushing that gun into her as though trying to push it through. America... what are you doing, let... let her go-"
"She's dead!" Maria spat out, with tears dripping down her face, far more broken than Alfred had ever witnessed. His only though was, Good. "T-Teresa... Teresa's dead, Pablo." And with a tone that suggested she knew that Alfred would shoot no matter what was said, she choked out, "H-Hermano, lo siento... hermano, por favor, help me..."
"Wh... what?" Immediately, Pablo's hands flew to the thick round glasses that Alfred so envied - made him look so smart, and the land, all that land - and his voice dropped. "America... America, did you...?"
For a moment, he hesitated, and then Pablo stepped forward with far more bravery than what showed on his face. "Let Maria go, we can... talk about it. Let her go."
"Hell, no," Alfred hissed, eyes narrowing in what he hoped what a glare harsh enough to peel the paint off of that little house. "Me? You think I killed her? She was... just a little girl!"
No, he knew. He knew full well of the extent of his crime, and knew that those pretty dark eyes would haunt him for years to come. Decades, if this democracy of his continued to work out. But how could he possibly be held at fault for doing what he had to do? It wasn't he who had poisoned her meals, told her he loved her only to watch as she slowly died. No, not he, which is why he thought of Teresa as his little girl, in a way - a baby sister since he'd taken her in. Teresa Jones, how she would forever be remembered. Not... Not Teresa whatever-the-hell the siblings were calling themselves these days.
With a wavering tone, he continued on, "Don't you dare. I'm a hero, not some sort of monster. I tried to save her, I- I took her in, gave her doctors and medicine and an actual life. Everything a little thing like her could possibly want and this thing-" Here he jerked at Maria's hair hard enough to pull another one of those sharp gasps from her. "-went and killed an angel."
Pablo looked to be on the verge of some sort of panic attack, hands up as though to show a lack of weaponry; not that the brat would know how to defend himself anyway, not against the United States of America. "Please. Por favor, hurting Maria won't make it better. It won't bring Teresa-"
"She killed her!" Alfred almost lost it here, almost started sobbing, but managed to barely hold it together, shaking Maria like a rag doll. "Poisoned her. So don't you dare say that I killed her. Not when she..." His throat closed up but he just swallowed, looked up, that dangerous look of his alternating between the two. "Not when she died in my arms."
"It won't make it better, America-"
"I know it won't make it better. But it'll make me feel better."
Alfred wanted to hurt them. That was the thought that spun through his mind as though in a loop. He wanted to hurt them, make them go through the pain Teresa had been forced to endure; hit them so hard that their ribs snapped and they started coughing up blood too.
But Maria tried to reason with him. "America, let me go. I did what I had to do - for land, you might have done the same thing; I earned that land, me and hermano both. You had no right to take it from me!" Her breath shook with sobs and yet still she sounded childishly professional, ridiculously so; he might have laughed had it not been so serious. "She wouldn't... wouldn't have had to die in your arms if you'd just minded your own business-"
"Shut up!" Alfred snapped at her, and before he knew it, he'd kicked the back of her knees to force her legs to give, and the sharper pull to her hair made her give a loud whimper. "Don't ever compare me to you. I'm not filthy, I'm not immoral - I'm just a... a decent Christian man..."
Man, not boy. Never boy, despite the lanky appearance of a teenager and the baby face.
"I don't even know what you are anymore. Not human, not decent, neither of you. Not a single damn moral left in you since you decided to act like little brats mad at your daddy for not playing with you enough..."
Slowly, he dragged the flintlock pistol, loaded of course, along from behind Maria, starting from her lower back and tracing up her spine. A scare tactic, and it worked. He stopped at the nape of her neck, just long enough to pull the hammer back, essentially cocking the gun, and jammed it right into the little notch where her spine met her skull.
"Give me one reason why I shouldn't," he challenged.
Panic - that was the only way to properly describe the emotion flickering like a weak flame across Pablo's face. His hands flew forward in a 'wait, no' gesture, and his voice shouted, "NO!" so loudly that Alfred worried about his vocal cords. "D-don't... America, Dios, don't..."
Tears were pricking Pablo's eyes, visible even from this distance between them, and his thin body shook with the very real threat before him. This was one of the only times Alfred wasn't bluffing when he had someone at gunpoint, and he didn't blame the younger for panicking.
"Pablo, c-calm down." Maria's voice was one of shaky reason, even while she was still quietly crying in his hold; brave of her, and he admired that for a moment. "C... calm down."
She was shaking still, and her breath was almost as shaky as his own had been only a few days before. "What do you want from us... from me? I can't... can't take back what I did." She swallowed with a wet little noise and he felt her heart pound even from where he stood now. "But I can offer you something. Any- Anything you want."
"M-Maria," Pablo quietly protested. "Maria, don't-"
"Callate, Pablo!" Maria's shriek startled Alfred as well as Pablo, both of the boys jumping before Alfred's grip tightened. Pablo shrunk back as he was told, looking frightened, and Maria took a slow and shaky breath. "T-trade... trade? You can have anything you want if you just let me go... anything you want out of our house..."
Alfred thought of what France would want in exchange, and his face colored; no, no, only thirteen years old and far too innocent to ever think about doing anything like that yet. He knew about how many others had fallen into that trap, and felt sorry for them - imagined what it would be like to fall for that trap himself, how painful it would be to look at Arthur and know that his promise wasn't kept.
He thought about what he wanted. Land, but he had that now; money, but he was working on getting that too. Finally his eyes lifted to glance at Pablo again, a nervous and bespectacled thing, and he smiled, with no attempts to remove the pistol.
"You can start," he said, "with handing over those glasses of yours. Texas is mine now. You don't need any part of it."
His slip was caught all too late, calling Texas an "it" instead of a "her." His face colored in embarrassment even if no one else seemed to care for it, sounding all too much like those hoity-toity European countries he tried so hard to avoid.
Pablo's hands flew up to his glasses again, and Alfred knew why. After the Texas annexation, it was probably the only thing he had left of her. Oh well - his now. All of Texas was his now, all the way down to her dead body which now rested six feet underground by the river where they met.
"America... no, no, I can't-"
"P-Pablo, give it to him," Maria cut in again, so bravely trying to control the waver in her voice; it didn't work. "Give it to him, hermano. They're just... just fucking glasses, Pablo, give it to him."
Pablo's voice squeaked in panic, "They're all I have left!" His fingers tightened around the sides in a refusal to give them up, a refusal to do much else than stand there and look scared. Pathetic. "Anything else... please, not the glasses, I-"
"Pablo!" Again, Maria's voice was one of divine reason, her breath short as her fingers tightened too, over Alfred's wrist. "Pablo... calm down. Give him the gl-glasses, come on... you'll be alright, we have one another."
"But..." Pablo held on tighter. "But they're all I have left-"
"That's where you're wrong, amigo," Alfred cut in, still in that white-bread accent he'd used since gaining independence. "They're all I have left. You had your chance and you went and let her die. Hell, maybe you were poisoning her too." He let his gaze wander briefly, tilting his head to judge the distance between Pablo's feet and a certain rock beside them. "Better listen to your sister, Pablo," he continued. "Wouldn't want me to put a hole in that pretty head of hers. How is she supposed to mouth off to you or anyone else if I do a thing like that, hm?"
Too much like England. Far, far too much and he knew it as well as anyone else - cruel and cold and awful, but he couldn't care less right now, not when trying to gain some sort of vengeance for that little girl. So wrong to kill a child, and these two little brats didn't see it the way he did. That was fine; he'd make them see it.
But still Pablo hesitated, those eyes of his wide and sad, childish behind the lenses of the Texan frames, so Alfred rolled his eyes and fired a warning shot at that rock, sending the dust around it exploding upward in a plume and sending the boy jumping about three feet in the air in fear.
"Stop screwing around, kid!" he shouted, though knew he had no right to call Pablo that when he himself hadn't even reached fourteen yet in human years. "Looks like your little brother doesn't love you after all, Maria. Maybe he just wants you out of the way so he can crawl back into his daddy's lap and be the favorite instead of you for once. " Cruelly, he looked on to Pablo's pale face, the sick look there at the insult - and though he didn't quite understand why Pablo looked so ill, he felt immediately awful for what he said. "The glasses, Pablo. Before you find out just how much blood your sister has in her head."
Maria was crying again. Alfred couldn't possibly blame her; he'd been in a similar position once himself and had had the same reaction almost to the letter, sobbing uncontrollably, possibly a bit more shameless than Maria was acting now. She kept murmuring, "the glasses, the glasses, please," until Alfred's heart twisted with horrid guilt that he wouldn't feel the full effect of until later.
Pablo's eyes softened and a few tears slid down his face, and though he tried to hide them, Alfred had already seen. "Al...alright," he whispered brokenly, sliding his glasses free of his face just as those few tears dripped from his chin to land softly in the dust beneath them. "Alright, America, just... let her go... please. She's the- the only sister I have, so please don't... don't hurt her..."
Two hands, holding out that pair of round glasses specially for him. Those eyes still crying when Alfred had never seen them cry before in the short time they'd known each other. Maria's body trembling in his hold with her own sobs and choked gasps of fear, and finally Alfred felt that pang of wrongdoing that caused his grip to slacken slightly, caused him to reconsider his actions. He looked up at Pablo, seeing the young face and young hands, younger even than himself, curly hair and wide eyes and shaking, long limbs and softly trembling breath making him swallow back an apology that the siblings didn't deserve. Not today. Not after murdering an innocent girl like that.
So Alfred felt himself smile at seeing those glasses held out - glasses that were soon to be his own, and he didn't release Maria, but rather tightened his hold on her and dragged her through the dirt so that he was about a yard away from the younger boy.
"There. That wasn't so hard, now was it?" Condescending, but he couldn't help it. "Now be a dear and put them on my face for me. See, my hands are full and I wouldn't want to accidentally fire or anything. Holding a deadly weapon and all."
He watched closely as Pablo moved closer on those still-hesitant feet, closed his eyes briefly when Pablo slid those glasses onto his face. They fit him perfectly, round in the frames and with the wire hooks hugging the backs of his ears; made him feel so intelligent, so refined, like those rich guys that wore spectacles for show. He opened his eyes again to a world in sharp clarity, to Pablo in full focus as he shook there in his boots...
Absolutely brilliant.
"See? Not so terrible after all," Alfred said, but his own heart was pounding now too, his hands shaking a little with the rush of power he felt at being able to get Pablo to look so afraid of him. He even started to lower his gun, hearing Maria murmur prayers in Spanish under her breath - or at least, he assumed they were prayers. "You're a good kid. Maria, on the other hand..."
In an instant, that gun was back and pressed into the space between her neck and shoulder, nowhere fatal, but certainly enough to hurt like hell, and he cocked it again.
"You should have said sorry when you had the chance."
The sound of gunfire shot through the air and caused the birds in a nearby tree to take flight in alarm; he imagined the pain quite vividly from the scream that tore through her throat, and then the startled yell from Pablo, something in Spanish he didn't quite know as he caught the girl in his arms and pressed his hands over the wound immediately. Good reflexes, Alfred had to admit.
Maria's teeth were gritted, most likely to keep her from making noise, and Alfred's mind flashed back briefly to the Revolutionary War. He remembered when a dead red-coat had fallen atop him, the blood as red as his jacket and staining the royal blue of Alfred's own; remembered the horror he had felt, the same horror that now flitted across Pablo's face in the span of seconds. They weren't so different, at times.
"Monster!"
And how many times had Alfred called Arthur that, himself?
"You stupid... stupid fucking monster, look what you..." Pablo collapsed over his sister and tried to stop the bleeding with both of his hands; the metallic stench of blood and sweat and possibly even tears, though he wasn't sure, could never be sure with Pablo's eyes glaring at him so sharply. The word - 'monster,' that word - it brought a chill to his spine and made him grit his teeth a bit, made his hands clench.
To no avail. He unclenched them a moment later and just looked on, almost sadly, that smirk of his fading as he watched Maria bleed and watch Pablo flail to make a decision on whether or not to attack him.
"Take care of her," Alfred told him. "Teach her to treat people better." In the back of his mind, he knew that even if Pablo ran inside or pulled a weapon out of nowhere, Alfred would be fine. Pablo was just so harmless, so very harmless; he looked him over and felt almost sick again. "And remember that I can shoot you just as easily as I did her."
Still shaking and shivering, Pablo glared up at him with those sharp green eyes and hissed out, "Fucker." Alfred didn't care. What bothered him was when Pablo shrugged out of his flannel overshirt to wrap Maria in it, the sleeveless white shirt underneath revealing Pablo's long, stretched arms and the numerous scars there.
"And-" The display of familial love made Alfred's heart twist, but he swallowed it back, eyes suddenly flooded with tears. "And teach her some manners too, while you're at it!"
Pablo just stared after him with that silently fearful expression in his eyes. Alfred's mouth felt dry and his hands were shaking, and he opened his mouth to say something, but... but no. He had business to do back in the states, soldiers to prepare for a full-scale war. Pablo may not raise a gun against him anymore, but Maria would, he had no doubt in his heart about that.
Alfred turned and went quickly back toward the center of town where he'd left his horse. This wasn't over, and Teresa's warmth in his heart was fading, slowly.
The new pair of glasses on his face slid down his nose as he hurried from the two he hoped would understand.