Title: Life Starts Now

Fandom: Axis Powers: Hetalia

Author: Me, I should hope.

Genre: fluff, angst, romance, adventure, slice of life, AU

Pairing: PruCan, USUK, GerTalia, LietPol, Bela-Rus, Ukr/Can hinted at, FrUK hinted, PrUK bromace, FrPru bromace, SuFin

Rating: T

Warnings: Angst. Character death. Fluff. Slash. Language.

Chapter Summary: Gilbert might be comatose, but Arthur's lost.

A/N: Second, and last, timestamp until the deleted scenes at the end of the story. Pay attention guys. Four words for this one: There Was a Silence. 'Nuff said. Notes at the end, APU. Enjoy my lovelies!

Timestamp 2: Born Like This

A single groan, low in the back of a throat made hoarse with screaming and thirst, smoke and death. A curse, bitter and for the most part redundant. A pair of lime-green eyes fluttering open, squinting into daylight and worn stone flagstones. A body, prone on the uneven, cold floor of a room, a bit battered and bruised, but dressed and in one piece, which was, all things considered, nice.

Arthur Kirkland lay in utter stillness for a good minute or so, soaking in the quiet, the reverent air surrounding him, birdsong whispering in the distance, a familiar sounding caw close-by, trees sending dappled shade across his skin. He had no idea where he was, or how he'd gotten to be there, but he whole-heartedly blamed the bloody Frog for it.

Francis is not to blame.

"Ah, shit," Arthur groaned, rolling onto his back and sending a withering glare up into the cobwebs on a beamed, arched ceiling. "Not this again, not now. Go away."

You were in danger.

"I'm always in danger, now piss off," Arthur griped back, and hauled himself, unsteadily to his feet. "Where am I?"

In a safe place.

Clearly, his 'aide' was going to be anything but, so he staggered over to the window, clutching at a throbbing temple. The scenery was pretty enough , he supposed, all rolling hills and old trees with their fruits, and a clear sky, the dew and last of the rain, but it was the large iron gates and the stones beyond that attracted his attention. He put a hand on the leaded glass, mouth falling open.

"Oh my God," he whispered. "Oh my bloody God. Where am I?"

This is where I was buried. You are some way away from your home, and for that I apologise. The landscape has changed much since I inhabited it.

Arthur rested his head on the glass, willed his pounding headache to abate, and groaned helplessly. "Oh great. I'm lost. How is this safe?"

It is hallowed ground. The demon cannot hurt you here.

"And what about Gil?" he asked, glaring at the reflection on his eyes only an inch or so away. "Where's he?"

I do not know.

"Bullshit," Arthur hissed, turning his head, the glass cool on his temple even as he glared over his shoulder at the empty space behind him. "I'm not a fool, Ghost, so do not play me for one. If you have strength enough to possess me and bring me out here, you have strength enough to take a physical form. I suggest you do so."

The apparition was slow to appear, and even slower to solidify, and even then, it maintained the consistency and appearance of a fine mist, of curling smoke and early morning fog. He appeared, for it was, despite the androgyny of the mist, male, as though descending, first one bare foot on the flagstones, then the other, lowering his weight with the fluidity of being supported. Slender and dressed in something vague and white, a tunic of some sort, torn across one shoulder, maybe, it was hard to tell how he'd died. With pale skin, and hair so pale as to look bleached, tinted with dark shadows, Arthur stared into his own face, sans scars and bruises.

"What the hell?" he demanded. "What. The. Hell."

"My name is Alexandrus," the Ghost told him, the accent torn between everywhere and nowhere, nothing he could have ever placed. "I do not think I need to tell you who I am to you, do I?"

Arthur shook his head. "No. No, you don't. I know. I've heard stories of it, but… I didn't believe it possible. Is it true, what they did to you?"

Alexandrus nodded, solemn and serious, and he crossed the nave of his church in several easy strides, standing at the exact height of his descendant. "Rome did not tolerate dissent amongst its captured kingdoms. To them, I was a thorn, and one that was easy to remove." The Ghost sighed. "Oh, Arthur, the things that I have seen."

"You said 'demon'," Arthur told him, frowning a little. Alexandrus frowned back, so Arthur expanded with, "When you told me why you brought me here, because this is hallowed ground, you said that the demon couldn't hurt me here. What demon?"

The frown on the Ghost's face made the lime of his eyes shine a little brighter, fire in the fog. "The Asylum in which I found you, there is a gateway there, I know not what, but it allows those that are dead to return to the living world. It appears, to me at least, that I am not the only one to have crossed through."

"I might be stood in a church talking to a martyr," Arthur began, "But there's no such thing as demons."

"You believe in angels, why not demons?" Alexandrus countered. He shook his head. "But it is of no matter; the demon that now resides in those hated grounds, it is not a monster of the Devil's devising. It has created itself, nurtured its hate and pain and formulated it into something tangible, something that it might use to infect those around it."

"That's why the Asylum was so bad," Arthur supposed. "Because it had gotten its hands on the patients, turned them into what it had become."

Alexandrus clapped his hands, a smile curling his lips. "Yes, exactly that. You have felt but a minute percentage of its power, Arthur, you know how disturbed the demon's mind has become over its years spent allowing its wounds to fester, drawing more and more into its coils until it was gross and swollen, unrecognisable."

"You… You say that as though you knew it."

"I did, once." But he said no more, so Arthur turned back to the window, looking out over the church graveyard.

"All this time, you were here, and I never thought to look." He rested his forearms on the sill, staring off into the distance. "How did you find me?" he asked after a moment. "When you pulled me from the Asylum, how did you know I was there?"

"I always know where you are, Arthur, even if I am not on this plain. I always know where every part of my bloodline is, just as you will know where all of your descendants are."

"Oh." A moment passed, and then Arthur said, "Be honest. What do you know about where Gil is?"

"Just as I came for you, another came for your Prussian friend – oh yes, he's Prussian, he's as Prussian as they come, born in East Germany or not. He has suffered great ordeals in his short time on this plain, and I fear they are not over."

"What do you mean?"

"The one that came for him was a recently deceased young boy, I believe you know him. He died a most violent death, to be sure, but he has kept his head well enough, though it will not last. I felt the anger and the pain in him even as I tore you free of the demon's grip, and it is the same anger that held you in that place."

"Matt's been infected by the demon?"

"I believe he is the demon. At least in part."

"What? No," Arthur denied, wheeling round. "No, no he isn't. He can't be! He's losing his humanity, sure, but no more than any other Ghost!"

"He has done something dark and forbidding with his time in the Asylum," Alexandrus intoned, slow and calming, but Arthur was not to be calmed. "Something that has bound him to the demon there, and it is a bond that cannot be broken without the correct payment."

"A deal," was Arthur's response, face and voice both etched with disbelief. "You're telling me that Matt made a deal. What the hell, Alex, what the hell?"

"Hard though it is to accept, it is a conclusion to which you must steel yourself. The only solution that might be available to you might be the path you wish least to tread."

"Jesus Christ," and Arthur was fully aware that blaspheming in a church was probably not his best idea, but damn if he cared, "This is not happening to me. Why are you telling me this?"

"Because it will fall to you to make the decision as to what to do when the time comes."

"That's not fair. I'm a mediator in this," Arthur whined. "I'm not the one who went off calling the Ghosts. Sure, I told Gil how to do it, but I didn't expect him to care long enough… Oh, Christ, what's he unleashed?"

"He has unleashed hell unto your heads, for the demon is seeking payment it did not find in the boy's death."

"What'll happen to Matthew if the demon doesn't get payment?"

"As I say, he will become the demon, as the patients in the Asylum did. The transition, I believe, has already begun. He has already possessed your Prussian friend once already, and the means to do it again are at his fingertips. You may have only days before it is complete."

"Great, thanks. I could have done with this three weeks ago."

Alexandrus looked vaguely apologetic. "I am sorry, Arthur, I am so sorry for you to bear this burden. We have all born burdens such as these throughout our many centuries on this plain." It was obvious there was something he wasn't saying, but Arthur really, honest-to-God, didn't want to know. The Ghost sighed through his nose. "I can give you little advice in this."

"I don't want any," Arthur snapped, though he wanted all the advice he could get. "Shit," he cursed, kicking ineffectually at the wall. "Shit," he repeated, because his throat was seizing up, and his heart was pounding, and the throbbing in his temple was getting worse.

Alexandrus eyed him. "There is more that you might yet wish to hear, and more still that you won't, but have need to."

"Go on then," Arthur muttered, waving a hand idly, still staring off out of the window.

"It may be possible to save boy if there is payment given to the demon appropriate to what he asks for. I know not what the cause of his death was, nor why he made the deal, but I believe between you and the others whose company you keep and treasure, you know the truth of the matter."

Arthur let him talk, feeling something sharp prick behind his eyes and willed himself not to cry.

"The only advice I might provide you with is to discover what deal was brooked between the boy and the demon, find the cause of it, and calculate the payment before time is scant enough that you have no way of providing it. If you fail, you will have no choice but to destroy all that keeps the boy's soul here, and the Prussian will be the only one able to do it."

The living Briton turned, looking back at his ancestor with horror and fear, and everything in between. "What am I supposed to do?" he asked, a pleading note creeping in. "How am I meant to say anything to either of them? How can I look Gil in the face and say that Matt's going to kill him if we don't kill Matt first?"

Alexandrus smiled. "You are stronger than you believe yourself to be, Arthur. I have faith that you will find your path, no matter how it might try to hide from you, and you will do as you need in order to protect those you love. I cannot work the miracles you wish me to, but I am here" – he reached out as he spoke, and pressed a cold, insubstantial hand to Arthur's heart – "No matter what happens. I will always be with you, though I cannot remain in this plain, with you here."

"Can I get out of here?" Arthur asked. "Can I physically leave this church?"

"No," Alexandrus admitted. "I have sealed everything from the outside, to keep you safe here, until such time when you are ready to leave."

"And when will that be?"

"You will know when you hear the call of the eagle."

"What the hell does that mean?"

But Alexandrus was already gone, leaving Arthur shouting at thin air. When he'd determined that, yes, he was alone, Alexandrus had done a runner, the utter coward, he stomped off to the doors, and shook them. They were, as the Ghost had promised, sealed from the outside, and there was no way Arthur was a vandal enough to smash a century's old window. His head pounding, and heart racing, Arthur collapsed in a corner, buried his face in his knees and wept pathetically until there was nothing left in him, and then he just sat there, shaking and praying for the first time in over a decade to a God he didn't really believe in for something, anything that might give him an idea of what to do.

And because clearly God was a fickle bastard, if He was tangible enough to be such a thing, Arthur's mobile rang, the tinny, too-familiar here we are buck-naked, yeah, but, where should we begin? When it's not the flesh we're after but the howling ghost within echoing across the floor, vibrations across his hip and elbow, jarring him into something a little more capable of coherent thought.

The display was welcome, and the voice less so, if just for its fear and sheer relief.

"Artie? Where are you?"

"I don't know," he replied. "I woke up in a church, and I've no idea how I got here. I'm in the middle of nowhere."

"Can you get out?"

"No, I tried that. I think it's locked from the outside." He wondered, vaguely, whether Alfred could tell he was lying. There was no use saying that the Ghost of his ancestor had appeared and told him so; Alfred would laugh, and freak out, and just generally get in the way and be a nuisance and not help Arthur at all.

"Well, alright. Gilbert's missing as well, no one can get in touch with him. I mean, I would have called you earlier, but I've just come round, 'cause I've been thinking and I wanted to talk to you, but you weren't answering your door, and then it was unlocked, and you weren't in, so I thought I'd ask around, and apparently Gilbert's gone as well, and now everyone's panicking, and yeah. So, uh, stay there, yeah? I'll come and get you. Do you know where this Church is?"

A smile had split Arthur's dry, chapped lips, and he sat there, grinning like the fool he was for a moment, before saying, "It's the Church of the Martyred Alexandrus, out in the cornfields."

"Dude, really, I thought that place had been closed down."

"It had. But I'm here all the same, so, uh, don't break the speed limits, it's not like I'm going anywhere, and I can wait a few more hours for you."

"It'd take 5 hours in a car," Alfred mused, and Arthur could hear him jingling keys, and slamming doors, and there was a rustle of fabric. "But I put the Triumph in for maintenance a couple of days ago, so it shouldn't take me three to get to you. I'll see you in a bit, don't get doing something stupid."

Still grinning like a fool, Arthur said, "Scout's honour," and hung up.

He imagined he could hear that engine's purr, feel the tank's vibrations under his fingertips and he realised, as he climbed to his shaking feet and returned to the window to look at the ravens littering the cemetery, that he'd just received the call of the eagle.

++End Timestamp++

NOTES::

Did any of you see this coming? Apollo doesn't count because I told her it was coming.

I tried to make it obvious, but in case I didn't, Alexandrus is Britannia Angel. He's also a Ghost, duh. It's in my head!canon that the reason Britannia Angel came about anyway was because England, a toddler at the time, was unable to stand tall against Rome's invasion and his subsequent punishments to the nation for its 'heathen' ways. stepped in to take over what Arthur couldn't. I tried to translate that into a human scenario, I don't know if it worked.

Incidentally, Arthur's ringtone is David Gray's Draw the Line. It's one of my favourite songs, and he's deffo in the top 5 of my favourite artists ever in the history of ever. Go and listen to it, seriously. I'm not sure that you'll agree with me that it's USUK, but whenever I hear it, I dunno, it just hits me. Off the album of the same name, this – along with Full Steam Ahead with Annie Lennox, is the song that hits me the most. I don't know why, but it does, and I honest to God cried the first time I heard both songs.

OH ARTHUR WHAT WILL YOU DO NOW.

Oh yes, before I forget. Apollo and Silence are aware of this, but how would you guys feel about a sequel (I swear to god the number of times I've written 'squeakquel', because of Alvinandthe bloody Chipmunks grawr) for this fic? It's approaching the end now – there will probably be negligible Chapter Notes after this, so as the pace isn't interrupted, so this'll be my only real opportunity before the end, and I want to get your opinions now, and then see if they differ at the end. But ANYWAY. Sequel: USUK-centric, rather than PruCan, and set after the events of this fic, because let's face it, I've opened up the USUk story here. It would still have ghosts and ghouls in it, and maybe some other things as well. But yes, thoughts? Hope you enjoyed, my lovelies~! ++Vince++