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Arthur climbed the hill, feeling the grass under his boot. Finally, finally he'd have little Alfred in his arms after such a long time. Had he grown? It seemed like only yesterday he went from that little white gown to short pants. His heart beat faster and faster as he neared the house, his excitement growing. His pace picked up a little as he began to imagine all of what he and Alfred were going to over the next couple of months.

He came to the top of the rise, and all his happiness evaporated.

The manor he'd built long ago was gone but for the stone chimney and a section of blackened bricked wall, all that was left beyond that was a charred foundation. And as he ran up to the ruins, he saw that while this happened recently; there had only been a couple of weeks of wear from the rain and wind.

His heart was in his throat, beating rapidly. "Alfred?" Maybe Alfred was still here, hiding away as he'd been doing when Arthur had first found him, although he knew it to be a folly to think such. "Alfred, where are you?"

Maybe the house was hit with lightning, and Alfred had escaped down to the village that lay two miles away. Yes, that had to be it! He could think of no other reason, and his mind never even imagined that Alfred was anything other than ok.

Arthur ran back down the slope to the horse and wagon he'd been driving filled with goods, and he swung himself quickly onto the horse, spurring the mare full speed down the path, the wagon bumping along behind him, but he didn't care. No, he was only thinking about one thing, that precious laughter, that little body running into his legs full speed shouting "Arthur!", wanting to be hugged and held.

No, that little boy had to be in the village!

The unthinkable finally entered into Arthur's mind as he rode into town.

Shells of buildings, shacks where large houses had been, half ruined, most of the town in a state of ash. No….No! It couldn't be true!

He finally spotted someone walking down the trail, and he quickly got off his horse and ran out to catch up with them.

The man started to run at the sight of him, dropping the bucket of water he'd been carrying in from the nearby creek on the ground with a splash. Arthur took off after him, quickly passing him and grabbing him by the shirt.

"Please don't kill me! I don't know what you want, but the soldiers before you got everything, sorry! Please, let me go!" The man put his hands in front of his face, and Arthur could see that his fingers had healing burns on them.

Arthur hesitated. Soldiers? "Man, what do you mean, soldiers? What's happened?" There were no English militia here, he'd tried to get a small unit here long ago to protect Alfred but the king wouldn't hear of it.

The man calmed visibly, then realized who was standing in front of him. "Lord Kirkland! I thought you were one of those French soldiers that had come from nowhere and were set on burning the village down again like they came a fortnight ago!"

A red flag went up in Arthur's mind. "French soldiers? The war is over! Where's Alfred, where's my housekeeper?" His voice sounded panicky and desperate, and Arthur didn't care for once about showing weakness to this human.

"They both disappeared in the chaos of that night. Your housekeeper, I remember her running down the path to little Alfred's, trying to beat the soldiers, but I think someone grabbed her." The man sighed sadly. "the few of us villagers who'd not run off or moved off went to the manor house soon after, and found it was gone, little Alfred gone. We—Mr. Kirkland? Lord Kirkland, are you quite all right?"

Arthur no longer heard the man. His fears were realized, and he turned right around and hopped back on his horse.

He once again was at the ruins, searching the forests and fields, calling out Alfred's name, looking for any sign of him. Eventually, he came back to the house, and began digging around for the…the body if there was one.

Arthur's life was crumbling around him, his happiness gone. His little joy was…was most likely gone. Soldiers. French soldiers. Yet during all of the American theater of the Seven Years War, the war had never come this far into Massachusetts colony, that was why his little Alfred had been safe. Had France…no, no country would dare kill another for no reason. And France had disappeared, but Matthew had said he'd quickly visited, but Arthur had checked up on that. Apparently France had turned tail and sailed away back to his country about two weeks before Arthur ever had landed.

Arthur, in his thoughts, stumbled over something, and picked it up. It was towards the back of the room, and Arthur's eyes widened. It was the metal piece to a gun. He dropped it in disgust. There had never been a gun in this house except a rifle by the front door. Soldiers had been here all right. He moved on to find some clue to Alfred's fate.

At the very edge of the ruins, Arthur once again found clues, except these had fallen out of the flames.

He picked up the little buckle that had been on Alfred's shoe. He should know, he sent them over for the lad right after peace talks began with a letter. Then, hidden underneath that, he found the splintered bottom half of some wooden thing, thinking it to be the end of a broom until he noticed red and blue paint under soot and…gunpowder?

Half a toy soldier. He'd know his own craftsmanship from anywhere.

It was only then that he let himself break down, and he began to sob, there in the ash.

"Monsieur Kirkland! You're back!" Arthur ignored the French maid as he came into the house in Canada, her flustered hands flapping around, somehow taking his coat. He marched up to the bedroom he'd not left a month prior, going to take a nap even though he knew he wouldn't really sleep and would end up staring at the ceiling for hours.

As he lay there fully clothed, he briefly looked down from the ceiling to see the little Alfred look-a-like. To think, this boy lived while his was…

"Arthur, you're back very soon. Did you finish your visit with the other little boy?"

The quiet French set him off. Kinsmen of this boy possibly had a hand in Alfred's death. This was all the French's fault! "GET OUT!" He bellowed at the boy, and watched as the lad burst into tears and disappeared in a hurry. Guilt mixed in with the terrible grief he felt, and he got up after a while to find the boy.

He finally had to call out for him, unable to locate him on his own. Eventually he spotted back in his hiding spot by the stairs. He held open his arms. "I'm sorry, Matthew." The boy rushed into his arms, whispering fervently that he was sorry for whatever he'd done to anger Arthur.

For a moment, Arthur imagined that this was Alfred in his arms, and he gripped the boy tighter, as if he was trying to prevent Alfred from being taken from him once again. When Matthew pulled away at last, though, Arthur found the disappointment at the fact that this still wasn't Alfred to be almost as painful as really losing him was.

"I'm sorry, Matthew, so sorry." He brushed back hair from the boy's forehead, the hair a slightly different color than Alfred's had been…


France was shaking him back to reality, and Arthur felt tears on his cheeks.

"Arthur, Arthur that wasn't who you thought you saw." The words were desperate and pleading. "Arthur, snap out of it!"

Arthur finally pulled himself out of his reverie to realize they were sitting on the floor in the hallway of the Conference building of the United Nations. "Did I imagine that his name was Alfred or that fact that he had the same piece of hair that stuck up at a funny angle?" A whisper, a disbelieving tone, the shock still rife in his system.

"Neither, but Arthur, Alfred is dead." The Frenchman's voice was adamant, determined.

"How would you know? You said in the official inquiry long ago that you found out after the fact from your men what happened after they disobeyed orders. You said you got their statements. We both were in Quebec for the whole ordeal, you coming over from France as soon as you'd heard." Arthur paused. "They could…could have not carried out the job all the way…"

France bit his lip. Once again, he found himself not for the first time ensnared in his own lies, but he needed to protect himself at all costs. That meant the web of lies had to become even more tangled.

"I have a confession to make."

"Confession?" Arthur's voice had sounded surprisingly hollow the entire conversation, like he was fully detached from his emotions when they were internally washing over him like waves so he couldn't breath.

"I was in Quebec the whole time. That was why the boat ride was so fast. You remember remarking about that? That you'd never seen a faster trip. I was hiding in a nearby village when you visited Mathieu and came back as soon as you left, hence the surprise when you returned so early. But I saw with my own eyes that your little one was gone." So…so the boat they said he'd ridden out on…that had been fake?

Arthur's head snapped up. "I…You saw what they did?"

"I could not bring myself to tell you, I thought you would hate me for something I wasn't able to stop."

"What they did…"

"He was gone. Very gone." Francis put a hand on Arthur's shoulder, the Brit too upset by the man in the room only a couple of feet away to push his old rival away. "That isn't the same boy you lost, Angleterre."

"But…how…why do they look so similar? Francis…" Arthur was on the edge of hyperventilating, his voice so pleading, and Francis couldn't really answer him, not sure as to why the man in the room looked like a dead boy either. Although he'd never tell anyone what he'd done, he'd seen the boy, bleeding, supposedly dead, with his own eyes. He'd LEFT him in the inferno. He'd checked the ruins afterward, and again, there had been no sign of the boy, the whole 'I've seen the body' being his cover story. But there was his clone, alive and well in the other room, and it wasn't Matthew for once.

Whenever Matthew had been little and had started to cry, his face would take on that same look little Alfred's face had when Francis had done the unthinkable to that little boy, and Francis would once again be reminded of the thing he'd done in pure, uncontrollable rage. He had had to live with his actions for years, and even though Arthur didn't know it, Francis owed it to him to take care of him. So when he could offer no comfort, Francis felt as if he'd once again done Arthur wrong.

"Well, I have no idea. He has the same name, the same appearance, although the man in there is at least out of adolescence. I always wondered why Alfred had been killed. We nations have been shot many times before, yet have always survived the most grievous of injuries." Talking reasonably would calm Arthur down. It always had.

"He…he was simply a colony, the…the government structure had been quite…weak at the time when he was…he was…"

"Yes! But his government system recovered, so instead of turning out like Rome or Germania and dying off or disappearing like Holy Rome…" Germany's voice was easily picked out of the noisy conference room, and Francis remembered another little boy he'd done wrong, and that Italy and Germany had no idea that their love affair now was not their first together.

"What if…if he would of come back, been born again?" Arthur sounded desperately hopeful, and Francis didn't want to disagree with him, but he had to smother that wild hope. Arthur couldn't handle much more disappointment in life.

"I…I don't know. I think we should watch him and keep an open mind, but Angleterre, we should not mention this to him or anyone. Better to be wrong and have no one know than to be wrong and have to go through more pain." Also, Francis needed to know if this "Alfred" had any memories of what had befallen him in previous lives. Arthur could never know. Francis would do anything to prevent anyone from finding out his dirty little secret that went against all the unspeakable rules the nations had.

They made a plan to watch Alfred, and Francis warned Arthur sternly. "That man is not your Alfred. Don't believe for a moment he is. Don't get your hopes up. And don't treat him like Alfred. Treat him like Al Jones, the new representative of America. I don't want you to be hurt again."

"I know, Francis. Now come on, we have a meeting, and I'll be damned if all that running we did this morning had been for naught." Francis smiled as he heard Arthur whisper "all the bloody frog's fault in the first place" under his breath. Arthur had certainly calmed down, but if the Brit's past emotional rollercoaster was anything to go by, this wouldn't be the last hyperventilating that Arthur would be having this week. In fact, France half expected, and indeed, would hardly be surprised, if all the Brit's composure would evaporate upon seeing Alfred Jones once more. But, eh, C'est la vie.


Alfred was having the time of his life. His speech on something or other had been really boring, so he'd added his own touch to it, and by the people's expressions around the table it was far from boring.

A hand went up as he finished drawing the last point on the white board with a blue dry-erase marker.

"Mr. Jones, how would you propose we make food healthier and more nutritious using hamburgers as the staple food? I see no statistical nor researched facts or benefits from eating only hamburgers. And in countries where cow is sacred, how would we feed those populations?"

Alfred opened his mouth to answer when the Russian guy whose name he'd gotten wrong spoke up.

"It is just another stupid American idea that will never work. After all, this recession is all their fault."

Alfred, normally a pretty easy going guy even if he was a bit jumpy and excited all the time or slightly depressed (depending on the company and whether or not there was ice cream present), felt his blood begin to boil.

"Well, Mr. Bragging-ski, I would like to de—" 'diplomat, diplomat, diplomat, diplomat…that's what you are, Alfred, don't let your temper get the better of yourself!'

"It is Braginski, twice you have messed up my name, as complies with my theory on American intelligence, and I would also like to point out that the hamburger is what contributed to the obesity issue in—" Russia was cut off as Alfred jumped to slide down the table to tackle him and the big man of a nation was thrown back in his chair as a pair of remarkably strong hands came around his neck, papers scattering wildly around the two of them, the room going deadly silent in shock before erupting in chaos, Francis and Arthur slipping in unnoticed.

"GET MR. JONES OFF RUSSIA BEFORE HE GETS HURT!" Came a shout from Germany, but it was too late. A fist slammed into Alfred's face, sending him flying backwards, toppling over Japan, Lithuania and some sleeping guy with a cat on his head to crash into the wall, leaving a gaping hole as he toppled into the hallway, his body having created a second "door" to the conference room.

The whole room went very quiet once more. None of the nations expected for the new representative to be killed by the first meeting. Would they still be allowed in New York after this?

Russia was pulled from the floor by his sister, and he yanked his arm away from her. Crazy scary Belarus, just what he needed right now with everyone about to blame him for another injury to a diplomat. But the reaction, the strength the man had used, the way he'd lept across the table, it all confirmed Ivan's suspicions. He'd only said those things to get a rise out of the obviously extremely patriotic man, and he had the answer to his question. That man had been trained for something else long before he ever was made into a diplomat.

He reached up to fix his scarf after brushing off his person only to discover a horrible truth. It was no longer around his neck.

"HA! I got your stupid scarf, ya commie bastard!" There was Jones, bleeding lip and sporting a black eye, but alive and standing, holding his precious scarf. Alfred smirked at the Russian's expression of horror. Of course, it would have taken an idiot not to induce that Ivan was very attached to this piece of clothing, the way his hands petted it subconsciously or how the skin underneath it had been even more white than the rest of the Russian's body.

But he didn't realize how attached the man was until once again he felt pain, but this time was somewhat ready to fight back.

Their head to head had begun, and both instantly realized that the other was more formidable than originally thought, creating more questions for Ivan and causing more unease for Alfred than previously expected.

Adam Jones walked into the conference room a half an hour later on a noise complaint, and tsked at the new hole in the newly patched wall. But then when he looked inside the room itself, he found it to look like a bomb had gone off, the nations all in a flurry of activity, all watching a fight between two figures, the albino one taking bets from various nations as many urged the battle on. And in the middle of it all, was his uncle Alfred, taking on a Russian twice his size in what looked to be a surprisingly fair match. He turned around at the sound of his childhood friend's snicker, and saw Jason in the doorway.

"Wow, your uncle Alfred always seems to be in the middle of everything that happens in this country."

Adam couldn't agree more.


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Fun Fact: One historian once believed that both Atlantis and the Garden of Eden were located in Sweden.