So Al and Mattie are the first ones up. Thanks to the people who voted!

If you haven't read In the Streets of Seattle, this might not make sense.

I don't own Hetalia *is too lazy to think of a clever disclaimer*

"Alfred, Matthew! Dinner's ready!" Mom called through the back door. Alfred dropped the ball we had been playing with and dragged me inside.

"C'mon Mattie!" Alfred said as he pulled me. I couldn't help but smile a little. It seemed like it was only yesterday that he couldn't even remember my name, but now he really treated me like a brother.

I had heard that Alfred's dad had died about five months before he was born. This didn't really bother him, of course. After all, he had never met him. And it's not like he didn't have a father figure around.

Just short of one year after Alfred was born, I came into the family. Matthew Williams. Mom actually hadn't married Dad yet, so I kept her last name (and it was always weird to explain why I had a different last name than Alfred). But when I was about a year old, he became part of the family.

For the longest time, Alfred never said anything to me. He didn't even acknowledge my existence. And if I tried to talk to him he'd run away yelling something about ghosts. There were so many times where Mom would have to comfort me when I came crying to her, saying that he hated me.

Not long after I turned eight, he looked at me in shock and started laughing. I took a few steps back, thinking he had gone completely insane.

"Um... Alfred?" I whispered.

He wiped a tear from his eye and took a deep breath so he'd stop chuckling. "Sorry, but I... wow, they really weren't trying to trick me all this time!" When I asked what he was talking about, I found out that all this time he thought Mom and Dad were joking about him having a brother. He even thought that when he had seen me I was just his reflection in a mirror. Go figure.

After that, we grew very close. It still took him a long time to learn my name, but after I told him for the thousandth time that it was Matthew, he said, "I'm just gonna call you Mattie. It's easier to remember. So why don't you just call me Al?" Even to this day I'm not sure if he knows my real name, but oh well. I guess that's just Alfred for you.

We started doing everything together. We'd play and eat with each other, and we even shared a room when Dad moved my bed into his room, so every night was like a sleepover for us. And when we stayed up too late, Mom would come in and tell us a story. It was always about some sort of hero doing great things (I'm pretty sure this was the start of Alfred's hero complex).

And now there we were, a year after he found out I existed. But at the dinner table that night, everything changed. Mom suddenly passed out for no apparent reason. Within minutes Dad had us in the car and we were going to the hospital.

The doctors told us she was very sick. I don't really remember what she had, because it had one of those long names doctors use, but I do know they said they had no way to help her. She lived in the hospital for the next four months, and she never came home.

This hit Alfred harder than anybody. For months he wouldn't even talk to anybody. He would hardly even eat anything, which was a shock for everybody. One night, I heard his voice for the first time in what seemed like forever.

"Hey Mattie, you still awake?" I jumped at the sudden noise. I looked over at him and he grinned the way he would before Mom's death. "Good, you are. We're leaving."

I just blinked at him. "What do you mean we're leaving? Where are we going?"

"We're just leaving. I don't wanna stay in this boring place. C'mon, let's run away! We could look for ghosts and monsters and stuff. It would be great!"

I thought he was just goofing off, but then I could see the seriousness in his eyes. I knew that whether I said yes or no, he'd leave anyways, so I nodded.

"Great!" he said, jumping out of his bed. "Grab some clothes and whatever else you want. We're going tonight." By midnight we were on the back steps with our full backpacks.

"So where are we going?" I asked him.

"Um..." he looked around and pointed to his left. "That way!" And he ran off. I took a last look at our home and followed after him.

Present Day

"Hey Al," I said when my brother walked through the door. "Where were you?"

He just shrugged. "Just taking a walk." I nodded, but then I noticed something in his hand, and my eyes widened. It was that old ball we always played with. He had been home.

"Al..." I whispered. He noticed where I had been looking and tossed the ball to me.

"It was still in the yard. Don't worry, nobody saw me." It was then that I realized I wasn't the only one who wanted to be home.

"Al, if you want to go back, I'll come with you," I told him. He shook his head no.

"Dad sold the house." When he saw my shock, he said, "Yep, there's no going back, now. Besides, that would be like abandoning the other people here, and that's not something a hero would do."

That night, I was thinking about what he said. It finally hit me that the reason he wanted to get rid of ghosts and such was because he thought it was heroic, the kind of thing we'd hear in her stories late at night. He did it for Mom.

Wow, that was sadder than I had planned... I guess a lot of the background stories will be. Except for one or two of them, but we'll get there.

By the way, all of their backgrounds will probably be written in only one POV, unlike the main story. And they'll all be uploaded as oneshots seperate from the story.

*Pre-recorded voice* If you'd like to get an update, please review and check back later.