A/N: quickly doing this A/N to say that this is for usxuk livejournal community summercamp, and I'm posting this on here first because livejournal wont let me copy and paste, and to hell if I'm writing out all this again.
This is also a continuation of Until Never, and might not make much sense whether or not you have read that. This is rather and introspective piece more than anything else.
This better fit the theme D: It would suck if it doesn't Anyways, here's the story, look! Right below those three full stops!
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Alice, in her time, had a lot of good intentions. Sadly, they rarely ever came to a good fruitation.
Right now, she is sitting at the breakfast table in her cottage, sipping her drink of choice from her pristine china teacup, deep in thought, as she usually is.
Alfred was staying in her house this time around. He is due to go back to America in a few weeks and, when he does, it will be only a few more weeks until she is to go visit him. It gives them enough room to move and still have a relationship that works, although God knows how it does.
She takes another gulp of tea before humming and placing it down on the floral print coaster that Alfred always mocks her for. He seems to think that the former British Empire is not allowed have taste in more feminine attire, although she doesn't see where he gets that impression from as she wears a skirt on a daily basis.
She feels her cheeks tint before she shakes her head and goes back into her sullen mood. It has been three weeks since their ceremony of sorts and, although Alfred didn't treat her any differently afterwards, she is rather happy the talk has died down of it.
It had made her paranoid from day one that everyone knew that she didn't deserve it. She was surprised at the time that the ceremony went so smoothly and that no one complained, at least not to her or Alfred's faces.
Still, she can't help but feel that an eternity of unrequited love is no punishment for her sins and to have had only a decade or two of it is more like a few hours in her life. Alice takes a mouthful of tea, resisting the urge to gargle it to get the bitter taste out of her mouth that makes her want to retch more than anything else.
So many people have taken shots at her and failed to scar her even. So many humans have died at her feet and she has ruined so many people's empires or even mere countries. She was a tyrant and is a ticking time bomb and she wishes Alfred would listen.
But Alfred cannot listen to something he is not even aware of, she tells herself, placing her cup down on the coaster again. She can't remember picking it up.
Alfred was never aware of her tyranny. He always thought the extent of it was harsh taxes and a harsh talking down. He had never been on a battle field with her when she was at her best. Or you could call it her worst.
She won't ever tell him, but she honestly thought he would never even make it to the first battle of his revolution. She still thinks he would have failed if so many other countries hadn't financed him, wanting her to crumble in to dust and knowing that Alfred was, is, her only weakness.
She can understand why everyone hates her. She just can't understand why Alfred doesn't.
Alice smiles wryly and stands up to clean of the table. She has after spilling her tea as she must have hit the table a blow in her daydreaming. She sometimes does that; punctuates an unvoiced point in some way or another.
What has she done to deserve love? Even as a child she was nothing but a bother; a constant reminder that her mother was dead and that that was the only reason she even existed. The fact that her brothers hated her for such a legitimate reason, yet she still held it against them enough to annex them.
She throws the teacloth on to the sink, turning back to her table and returning to her previous seat. She understands why France hates her. She killed his lover in the heat of war and he never forgave her. Though, any revenge he ever sought was thrown back at him double time, causing him to lose any lingering affections for the previously cape clad child.
She'd like to say that she didn't blame him for it, but it was hard not to blame someone for something they are not at fault for when there is so much mutual hate.
Her siblings have cursed her out to her face in their native tongue and the English they were forced to use. And she had coolly cut them down to the size she had thought acceptable at the time. And in turn, they did the same to her. Only theirs was verbal and physical and hers was forceful and metaphorical.
She thought that maybe, just maybe, if they all existed under one title, under one roof, no one would be any more powerful than another. It didn't work at all and, in the end up, she was in their positions and they in hers. She was the one more powerful than them, and she revelled in it before realising that revenge was never the best answer.
The realisation only came when her world was crashing around her knees and no one was facing her head on any longer but only one single back retreated in her memory.
So, in an attempt to fix everything and make it like she had wanted in the first place, she wrecked anything that hadn't yet fallen. She would have been better off calling in the demolishing cranes.
But still, maybe none of it had been a good idea; but, when she was trying to justify her actions, if ever she was, she could understand where she was coming from; but could also understand everyone else's point of origin.
Anyone who she had thought never liked her, possibly cared for her a great deal. And she'd never know now, would she?
Alfred walks into the room, hair standing on end and, besides being a reasonably early riser most mornings, looks like he's in the holy blue horrors. Alice smiles and points at the kettle and he stumbles towards it, bleary eyed.
"Thanks!" he calls back after a few moments of silent coffee drinking. The caffeine has gotten straight to work because, by the time he comes out and plants a kiss on her- squirming- cheek, his hair looks a lot less wild and his eyes a lot more.
"You're welcome," she replies.
Alfred stares at her with puppy dog eyes and she automatically knows what he wants and how he knows he's going to get it. Alice leans over and presses her lips to his forehead, smiling lightly as she corrects her previous reply; "Good morning, love."
Alice may not admit it right away, or even anytime soon, but she thinks that Alfred might be the only thing in her past that she doesn't wish had gone any other way.
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| E . N . D |