Listless, Amelia came into the living room with the cat tight in her arms. Sunlight streamed in from the overcast day outside. The warm light caught itself in the curtains before spilling out onto the carpet.

She struggled to keep hold of the purring creature against her chest. The over-sized sleeves of the black cardigan she wore kept on slipping over her hands and fingers.

When the cat eventually wriggled out of her arms with a soft meow, America let her toes curl and uncurl in the soft carpet.

The carpet, she noted, had some funny mixing of orange amongst all that brown and red. Earth tones. It was Tuesday. Everything had to be of nature. She lifted her arms above her head, stretching like the animal on the floor. With a drowsy toss of her blonde hair, she looked to the nation on the couch.

England was reading. The only movement that Amelia could see as the steady, sun-held moments went by was the rise and fall of his chest. She watched, half asleep, the pad of his finger pressing against the edge of the page. The gold band on his left hand caught the light in a brief display of almost witchy glamour. The sight passed as he turned another page. The camera of America's mind shifted; the weight of his couch, pale cream and edging of mahogany. The cat jumping up onto the couch. Her soft fur brushing against the wall.

That hand, lifting again to give Isotta a leisurely stoke along her back before dropping back to its original position. Wait a moment. Turn a page.

Him, distant intellectual. Distant from her across a sea of carpet. Clothed in grey.

Isotta flicked her tail and jumped down onto the floor. Amelia watched the Turkish Angora plop onto her side in a shaft of sunlight, stretching this way and that. She blinked at Amelia with soft, copper eyes.

"I thought her eyes were supposed to be blue," the nation said. She absentmindedly tugged her cardigan sleeves.

Arthur glanced up from his book. "What?"

"Her eyes." Amelia wriggled her toes over Isotta's face. Her soft paws began to try and catch the girl's foot, but to no real success, and she gave up after a few moments. "Um, I think I read somewhere that all white cats have blue eyes."

She made her way over to the couch, staring at her pale feet and biting already too short fingernails.

Without looking up, from his novel, Arthur's hand grasped her arm and pulled her fingers away from her mouth.

"They-" he began, and then shifted a little bit to give her more room when she sat on the opposite end of the couch. "Yes, but it's only common. Not a default."

America hummed. Her fingers twisted the folds of her dark green dress. "There's a poem about a cat and peanut butter. At least, I think it's peanut butter."

"Yours?"

America shook her head."No. Yours, I'm pretty sure. Yeah."

England turned another page.

"Not about peanut butter, surely. Are you certain?"

"Are you too good for peanut butter?" Amelia smirked. His socks had a tiny hole at the ankle. She would fix it later.

"I'm perfectly neutral with the concept of peanut butter. I am, however, thoroughly confused on the combination of peanut butter, a cat, and a poem," Arthur said. His eyes looked darker when they caught the afterglow of the sun.

"The book," she said.

"The poem?"

"No, the book. Your book. And a missing king."

"In my book?"

"No, in the poem. But what's in your book?"

He thumbed his page and closed the novel, so she could see the title of the dark blue cover, written in shiny, almost golden metallic lettering: Middlemarch by Mary Ann Evans. "It's in four different parts, " England explained, "the life of Dorethea Brooke; the career of Teterius Lydgate; the courtship of Mary Garth by Fred Vincy; and the disgrace of Nicholas Bulstrode. Quite a good read so far."

Isotta was now sleeping, her side rising and falling. America watched her paw twitch in her sleep and wondered if she was dreaming about peanut butter.

"Toffee too. And a proposal." America mused.

"In the book? Or the poem?"

"Both. I think. Anyways, it doesn't matter." And with as much languid agility as the cat, she moved in a space of curiosity and boredom to cram herself against him in an awkward tangle on the long couch. Her ankle crossed over his own a bit now, and in her moving he lifted the novel up so as to let her rest fully against him, her back flush with his chest. The ribbon in her hair was threatening to come undone, so he allowed to her mark his page and leaf through the contents of the novel as he secured the soft velvet into a neater and tighter bow.

England rubbed a lock of her hair between his fingers before taking back the novel. She rested her head against his shoulder, fingers tracing nonsense patterns over the softness of his shirt. Her breaths were so warm and steady fanning along his neck and collarbone that for a moment he was lost in the rhythm.

Amelia nudged the older nation out of his thoughts. "Keep going."

Arthur smiled softly at her drowsy insistence and began to read once more.

"'Yes, I will see him,' said Dorothea. 'Pray, tell him to come.'

What else was there to be done? There was nothing that she longed for at that moment except to see Will: the possibility of seeing him had thrust itself insistently between her and every other object; and yet she had a throbbing excitement like an alarm upon her— a sense that she was doing something daringly defiant for his sake.

When the little lady had trotted away on her mission, Dorothea stood in the middle of the library with her hands falling clasped before her, making no attempt to compose herself in an attitude of dignified unconsciousness. What she was least conscious of just then was her own body: she was thinking of what was likely to be in Will's mind, and of the hard feelings that others had had about him. How could any duty bind her to hardness?"

"Dignified unconsciousness," America repeated slowly. She seemed to be rolling the phrase, testing the piquancy. As she traced the words with a finger; their hands brushed against each other. "Pretty. She should give him a chance, I think. Talking things out. It works for some people."

England hummed, shifting a little bit into a more comfortable position. It occurred to him they must look a very odd pair, land of the free and the man of yesterday. He watched sunlight pass over her blonde hair as the clouds outside parted a bit before the haze of light disappeared into warm grey again. Arthur gave a sudden laugh.

"What?" America looked at him in confusion.

"You're wearing my cardigan," he chuckled. Momentarily, the nation relinquished the hold he had on the novel to brush his fingers along the fabric hanging off Amelia's shorter and smaller frame. He secured the fabric over her shoulder.

"Oh." She blushed softly. "I must look stupid in it. It's too long. Rather, you're too tall."

"Too long," he agreed. "However," he repositioned her elbow so it was no longer digging into his side. Brushed a lock of hair from her face and tucked it behind her ear. "It looks quite lovely on you."

America gave a small smile before settling her head back against his shoulder. The novel still lay open in her lap, pages fanning this way and that.

England began to continue the story before America spoke..

"Are we?"

Arthur looked puzzled. "Are we what?"

"Some people," she mused, and then gave a snort of disbelief at herself. "Well, no. Not to us. Maybe to them." She was speaking more to herself at this point.

"You'll have to bring me to where you're at, sweetheart." Arthur laughed. "I'm a bit lost."

"Oh." Amelia sat upright, bringing one arm up and resting it along the couch. "People. Like in books, right? Or movies. Or whatever. They don't have to...work at the big feelings. Pain. Joy. And neither do we. But we aren't the same as they are."

"Ah," England gave a steady sigh of understanding. "Humanity. I'll admit, difficult to balance. Harder to understand. Though sometimes things, smaller feelings, you and I and other personifications must practice at. Compassion. Jealousy. Sometimes love. Those are facts of life. What's muddled, I think, is how we apply them."

She had taken his left hand in her own while he was speaking, examining the golden band on his ring finger from a good queen.

"Love," she repeated softly. Traced the ring as if it could disappear at any moment. "Not so concrete."

"I disagree." His smile when their eyes met was unimaginably genuine, easy, and warm. Locks of soft, blond hair lay atop his head in slight, oddly perfect disarray. "Sometimes, you know." Smoothly, England's hand maneuvered so that it now held her own, switching their previous positions. His thumb ran over her knuckles in a slow, soothing motion, watching his actions with half lidded green eyes.

America tilted her head, studying the sight of him. Listened to the combined rhythm of their breathing. "You love me."

His answer was immediate. "Yes."

"Only me?"

"No."

"See?" she raised an eyebrow. "Not so concrete." She rolled her eyes at his soft laughter. "Apart from her Majesty, and Kate ,and William, and all those people waving your funny flag."

"Yes."

"But me more than the cat. Or-" she held up a finger to silence him when he tried to speak. "Me more than your books."

"Possibly."

Even then with his chuckles at her petulant pout, uncertainty couldn't help but flicker across the back of her brain, however sleepy and sun-held. Her smile faltered as she looked at him. "And you love me?" she asked, biting her lip.

His gaze didn't waver. "Yes."

And there was that familiar ache in her chest as she exhaled a bit shakily. "A-are you happy?"

(she is so sorry, so sorry, so sorry-)

Arthur pressed a kiss to her knuckles. "Are you?"