11) MEMORY
It is always when it's dark, and he is half-asleep, when all the memories come back to Arthur.
12) INSANITY
As much as Arthur told him otherwise, Alfred knew it was only a matter of time before America became Russia. The thing was, every day he cared a little less.
13) MISFORTUNE
Arthur didn't know how, but somehow he'd ended up camping with Alfred, in the middle of a blizzard, with only one sleeping bag and a dying gameboy to entertain them.
Besides the blizzard, it wasn't all that bad.
14) SMILE
Alfred had a whole arsenal of smiles. He had his usual 10 thousand- watt grin, his arrogant smirk, a sweet and sheepish smile and almost everything in between.
15) SILENCE
It wasn't often that was a comfortable silence between them, so Arthur treasured them all the more.
16) QUESTIONING
There were times, at the end of the Great War, when Arthur lay awake on his cot, listening to the sounds of the battlefield.
'Are you sure…' a voice in his mind murmured, 'Are you sure…he isn't something…more to you?'
17) BLOOD
'Civil blood makes civil hands unclean.'
That was one of Arthur's things, wasn't it?
There was blood everywhere- on his hands, on the ground, leaking out of the still-raw wound on his left side.
Dear god it hurt. He was a house divided, a nation torn asunder. Shit, where was Arthur? It hurt so badly.
Some days, he woke on the remains of a field, smelling the metallic tang of blood and the sulfur of gunpowder, hearing the moans of the dying.
"A-arth-thur…"
18) RAINBOW
Arthur was sitting in Alfred's living room, watching an animated children's musical that his former colony refused to let him turn off, even though Alfred was very nearly asleep.
"After the RAIN goes, there are RAINBOWS," warbled the heroine. Arthur could have sworn his ears were bleeding.
"I'll find my rainbow…soon," Alfred crooned in duet with the movie. He had a surprisingly nice voice- when he wasn't trying to be the loudest, that is. Arthur wondered where he had gotten it from.
19) GREY
After the grey of the cities, it was nice to escape to the dwindling countryside.
20) FORTITUDE (determination)
'Never quit, never give in. Never quit, never give in…'
Even as the rain poured down, Alfred kept repeating his mantra. Even as Arthur shouted at him, fought with him, he refused to give in.
A/N: Please review? If you don't it's ok. I'm so horrible at reviewing! But they do make me all warm and fuzzy inside. Chapter three should be longer, so no worries, ok?