Across The Mirror (Hetalia)
Author: Ashynarr
Summary: Alfred and Tommy met through magic, but stuck together through a mutual kinship borne by more than their mirrored identities. After centuries of friendship, they've reached a comfortable state of affairs between them, but what will happen when Tommy ends up severely injured where Alfred can't help?
Disclaimer: Hetalia's not mine.
Warning: 1p2p Americest
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Kidnapped.
Alex still couldn't believe someone would have the sheer gall to attempt such a thing during a delicate stand down between the two local superpowers of the world. Very few humans knew of the existence of personifications, and those that did knew that harming said personification did nothing to affect the state of their people. Tommy would be useless as a bargaining chip due to his immortality, and not even the most hardheaded extremists would think deliberately pissing off the Canadians was a smart idea.
No, this had to be the work of another Nation, and it had to be a message. 'If I could do this to your precious territory, right under your nose, without any sort of fight, I could do it to you too.'
If they had been aiming just to cripple him economically, he might not have been so wary. Forcing him to ground all his planes, civilian and military alike, for several weeks would be enough to prove their point. But they had gone a step further, snatching Tommy away while he was vulnerable and deliberately leaving evidence they were there.
He could have blamed the Chinese. He should be blaming the Chinese. Zhang had the most to gain from the incident, able to make trade and political deals while Alex was stuck dealing with this crisis. The middle east might have been angrier with them, but they didn't have the resources to plan and coordinate a strike like this, or even the organization necessary. The rest of East Asia was under the man's thumb, Africa was as bristly and isolationist as ever, Western Europe knew better than to piss Alex off at this point, and the less said about that failure of a Union under Mironov the better.
Zhang didn't leave evidence behind.
And that was exactly what was there - glass shards and debris around blood stains? Footprints? Even if he was trying to throw Alex off the scent, he would have done everything to make the place seem abandoned, make the Canadian think he'd been wrong about his territory living there, not show his hand so soon after committing the deed.
No, he'd have made sure Tommy had been away, simply witness to an accident, make both of them unsure as to whether to make the accusation so soon after a disarmament talk. But that left him with no one and everyone to suspect instead, for all intents and purposes back to square one.
He threw down his half written report in disgust, doing his best to not look down the hall to Tommy's bedroom, where the stains were still untouched. He needed to take pictures for evidence before anything happened to them, but going back in there while he was like this would only make him frustrated and baffled all over again.
Alex closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to refocus himself. What did he know?
A plane carrying food north had exploded. The schedules for all such food flights had been kept quiet in case anyone thought to try something funny, but that didn't rule out internal forces in either Tommy's people or his own who would have the most access to them for obvious reasons.
How had it been timed, though? More combing of the interior showed no bodies of potential stowaways, and anything rigged to the engine or rotors should have detonated at the first pickup location, not the last, no matter how fancy said trigger or bomb was. Even if it had been timed to a schedule, the plane had been delayed for hours, meaning if it'd been meant to go off there it would have taken the plane out in midflight.
He paused, frowning. If it had been timed for a non delayed flight, where would the plane have been? He tried to recall the final destination of that food; hadn't it been on one of the eastern isles? Yeah, it could have landed by then, taking out one of his airstrips and some of his people with it.
Still, that didn't add up. A timed bomb wouldn't have had anyone close by to taken advantage of the explosion, not unless they had scrambled to account for the delay AND had known this was the exact place Tommy was staying, which was hard to believe when the territory basically only told Alex when he was moving; not even the Canadian government knew exactly where Tommy was most of the time.
Likewise with the whole thing being an accident; even if they hadn't been involved, that they had been prepared to take advantage of it despite the narrow timeframe was just too much of a lucky coincidence. Not to mention getting transport out of here when people would have been on high alert for any sort of follow up on such short notice would have been close to impossible.
That only left the idea that this had been planned, that people had been in place, and that someone had activated the trap deliberately, at the exact moment Tommy would have been caught off guard and thus rendered vulnerable without being able to see the person or people doing so.
That level of planning was something he only trusted the Chinese to pull, but again, he couldn't see Zhang being so sloppy, even if it was a double bluff to ease off suspicion.
And with thinking like that, he'd just be going in circles for hours, unable to make a decision. There was one thing he could do to check his suspicions, and that required him to go into town to investigate. If any foreigners had been through recently, surely someone would have seen them, right?
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"I hate them," Alfred swore, eyes shining in the dimly lit room. "I hate them so much."
Chetan watched silently as his friend raged and grieved all at once, unable to handle the duality of his feelings.
"I was only defending myself, couldn't they see that?" The white boy whimpered, staring at nothing as he hugged himself tightly. "They had no right to take my people, they knew that, but England, fucking England-"
The boy swung back around to rage, his fist hitting the wall next to the mirror and making it creak in agony from the force. "He turned my twin against me, just so that I'd be alone out here. He's trying to break me, trying to make me come crawling back, but I'll show him; I don't need any of them, not Canada, not France, not England."
The native boy raised an eyebrow, while Alfred quickly turned around to face the mirror again, wide eyed and apologetic. "I don't mean you; you're basically me, after all, so saying I don't need you is like not needing myself, which is just ridiculous-"
"I'm not you," Chetan corrected slowly, frowning. "I'm not European-"
"I'm not either!" Alfred snapped back. "I'm American, I won my independance from them-"
"But you are still born of them. You still hold their ideals, their way of life, their languages. I am an indian," Chetan spoke the word distastefully. "My people are not yours, and yours are not mine. I can understand keeping Europe out, but saying you aren't-"
"But yours could be mine!" The white American protested. "I don't see what's so bad about just accepting our way of life-"
"-because we have our own!" Chatan snapped back. "We have thousands of years of history that you haven't given one shit about, we have our own languages, our own cultures, our own ideals and beliefs and hopes If you're really so desperate to stop being European, you should try being a bit more like us instead!"
"But you're primitive," Alfred balked, about two seconds before he wished he hadn't said a thing, because his friend's face was absolutely flat.
"Good to know you aren't any different from the rest of them," The native boy replied tersely, cutting off the connection abruptly enough that it took a minute for Alfred to recognize his own reflection.
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AN: Finally getting back around to this! Updates should be on Tuesdays from here on out unless stuff comes up, since that'll be an easier schedule to keep in mind than just 'whenever I feel like during the week'. Also more 2p stuff, with mention of all the 'main' power groups of the world. I'll see what details I can get into each of them as we progress, but lemme know if there's anything in particular you're interested in.