CONTENT WARNINGS:

- Graphic description of death, specifically death of a child
- Disturbing imagery
- Strong language
- Discussion of triggers
- Alcohol as a coping mechanism

Many thanks to draw-a-circle-thats-the-foxhole for being a springboard for ideas and also for lending her knowledge of French Canadian curses.

Autumn, 1682

Massachusetts Bay Colony, British North America

The air was still cold and wet from morning dew when they lifted him up on the makeshift platform, and he couldn't stop shivering. Some of the tremors were from the autumn chill, some from fear, and some from the cold iron chains coiled round his wrists and his ankles.

He'd been bound by hemp rope when they brought him out of his cell at daybreak. By light of torches, what few women had known to come down to the clearing beyond the square had wept and wailed over him, beseeching the men to spare him. "A child," they'd cried, "only a child." But then, as they'd approached the platform and the tree behind it, panic had overwhelmed him and he'd split open his thrice-coiled bonds and bolted, overpowering four men and breaking one's jaw before running down the old Wampanoag trails as fast as his heels would carry him.

They'd caught up on horseback in short order and must've hit him hard, because the next thing he remembered he was being dragged from a cell once more. It was lighter outside by then, and the iron chains were heavier and colder than the hemp had been. As they ushered him back to their macabre destination, the women no longer wept for him. Instead, Mary, who'd taught him his letters and prayers for the last three years, gripped a bible and prayed for God to spare her and the school for harboring a witch. Sarah and Henry, the closest thing to parents he'd had since decades before, hid their faces and huddled close together by the minister who whispered prayers of mercy over them. He knew not a word was meant for him.

Now teetering on the platform, the loop of hemp hung before him at eye-height, swaying in the breeze, a forlorn personal prophecy. Through it, he watched with a trembling chin as the lead freeman read from a sheet.

"Alfred Jones," read the freeman, "thou hast been found guilty in the eyes of both God and the free men of this his Majesty's Colony, of familiarity with Satan, the great Enemy of God, and that at his command thou hast inflicted harm upon his Majesty's subjects and their bodies, and their livestock, and their children…" the words seemed to fade in Alfred's ears, and all he could hear was the pounding of his own heart and the rush of air, in and out, of his own rabbit-quick lungs.

He found himself looking side to side, around, behind, desperate to find a friendly face in the sparse assembly, and finding none. In a passing moment of fancy, he convinced himself that Arthur would come riding over the crest of the hill, mounted up on one of his great warbeasts, which would quicken its master to his rescue. Perhaps even, Alfred thought, Arthur would bring him back home with him to Boston.

Hands tightened on his upper arms, and his shoulders were forced upwards as the men struggled to lift him so his chin would reach through the noose.

"...holy scriptures command us, thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. And by this command, and by the will of the subjects of his Majesty the King, you have been sentenced to hang by the neck until you are dead. May the God of all Heaven and Earth have mercy on your soul."

Cheeks rubbing roughly against the robe, Alfred turned once more to look up the hill in the direction of Boston, but the grass lay silent and still against the lightening sky. One of the men turned his head forcibly back around while the other pulled the noose tight. Below him, Sarah had begun to cry, and pushed her husband away to flee the scene. Alfred realized it was the last time he'd ever see her.

His eyesight throbbed as the rope strained across his pulsepoint. The men beside him began to step down and away, and Alfred's heart began to beat faster, his lungs working quicker on the air as a man about to dive into the sea.

I didn't do it, he longed to say, but he'd already told them all as such days ago. I didn't do any of it, I'm a good person, I didn't mean to. I loved Elizabeth as family, I longed for the harvest as much as any of you, I didn't mean it, I didn't mean to do whatever God says I've done.

Alfred knew from Arthur that he could die and come back to life. It'd never happened to him before, but he knew he could. Would he, now? Was there any trick to it that Arthur had forgotten to teach him? Was there a prayer he was meant to recite? A thought he was supposed to think? All Alfred could think about was his mother, who'd left him as a babe, and the warmth of Arthur's long-absent embrace.

The barrel under his feet wobbled and Alfred's breaths became a sob, and he was surprised to feel tears on his cheeks when he looked down. As he did, the barrel toppled over, and his chin was torn upwards to the grey sky dappled through the tree branches.

It burned and it ached and it burned, and it seemed to go on for eternity. He couldn't help but try and reach up to the rope hooked under his jaw, but the chains held fast and could only thrash like a fish, fear overwhelming him like ice water. He heard voices speaking and praying, some shouting or crying, but soon they were replaced by the lonesome battledrum of his own heartbeat before sound faded away entirely. His vision grew dim. The pain in his chest and throat grew like a cresting wave, seafoam trickling down his mouth. Hands like a razor-sharp reef took hold of his legs and pulled, and the wave crested in one last surge of agony before it crashed into the shore.

Death was a void of thoughtless suspense.

While the details of his hanging would eventually fade from his recollection, for as long as he lived, be it a hundred or ten thousand years, Alfred Jones would never forget the horror of what followed. Of waking up with soil in his eyes, his nose, his mouth, arms and legs pressed in place by damp earth, choking him, drowning him in a suffocating blanket. Of the pain in his chest, in his bowels, in his mouth and his head. Of the need to vomit, and to cry, and being unable to breathe. His limbs were shaking as he fought through the soil, hands digging up from his sides up to his face and up, up, hoping it was towards the land of the living.

He was nearly gone all over again when his fingertips broke through to loose soil and into the cold air above. He tore through the earth and heaved himself out of the ground, crying and gasping. He vomited soil and congealed blood and curled up on his side there in the open grave, shaking too much to stand.

It was dark out, effervescent rain falling over him and the entire forest as mist. It collected on his brow and beaded down his cheeks, so he could not differentiate between water and tears. At great length, he pushed himself up and stood, realizing with some discomfort that he was not only covered in mud, but in his own filth. Still shaking, wanting very much for a fire and a bath, Alfred staggered forward, realizing he had no idea where they'd buried him. It was not hallowed ground.

He found an old trail he recognized and turned left, because he knew it would lead him home. He followed it for not a small amount of time before he stopped suddenly, mind overtaken by the memory of Sarah and Henry's faces, of the daughter they'd lost, the affliction they thought he'd wrought on her. He shuffled to a stop and looked over his shoulder at the trail he'd followed, and back to the path ahead where he'd no longer be welcome. Not knowing what to do, Alfred turned into the woods and travelled deeper, away from the rain, towards some unknown future away from his people who feared him.

Saturday, October 29th, 2012

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

"Womp womp," Alfred sing-songed, and Matthew wanted to punch him. "Zombies, six, Mattie, zilch."

"Go fuck a porcupine," Matt threw his controler at his brother, who dodged and lost a handful of Reeses Pieces in the process.

"Hey, watch the goods!" Matthew watched him scramble after the candies with a frown.

"How many of those have you even eaten? Christ, Alfred, you're going to make yourself even more sick."

"Playing as a zombie makes me hungry," Alfred pouted. "You should be glad I don't like the taste of brains, or I'd beat you and eat you." He popped another chocolate in his mouth and grinned. Matthew rolled his eyes.

Halloween was two days away, and normally this time of year Alfred would be well south of the border, holed up in a workshop somewhere engineering a prank intended to scare the pants off Arthur Kirkland, but this year's transatlantic halloween scare-off had been canceled due to Hurricane Sandy. The hurricane was also the reason why Alfred was in Ottawa, having been flooded out of his usual autumn haunts in New England.

"Hey, grab me a beer, will you?" Alfred called as Matt stood.

"No alcohol while you're on meds," Matthew replied, rote, kicking Alfred's hand aside as he tried to grab his pant leg as he passed.

"I feel fine," Alfred protested, having grown immune to the deepened sound of his own voice or the nasally congestion audible in his whining. "Oh come on, you drink yourself silly whenever you're sick, let a man live." Matt peaked around the fridge door with a baleful expression.

"I'll let you have soda, but no alcohol."

"God, you're such a hypocrite. Fine." Alfred barely caught the can when Matt tossed it to him and cracked it open immediately. Matt put another package of popcorn in the microwave and opened a new beer while he waited.

"What do you say? Round seven?" Alfred called from the living room. When Alfred had shown up at his door, soaking wet and sniffling, and asked if Matt was interested in Halloween Weekend Video Game and Scary Movie Extravaganza, Matt had hidden his pleasant surprise with a great sigh and grumbled about how he'd have to go to the store for enough food to satisfy his bottomless pit of a brother. It couldn't have crossed his mind that Alfred would've already 'test-played' all of the off-brand games in the $15 halloween bundle he'd bought off Ebay, leaving Matthew struggling with the controls while Alfred's character ate his brains.

"Pick something else," Matt groused from the kitchen. "I'm not playing Great Value Walking Dead anymore."

"Aww, but you were so bad at it, it was fun!"

"Pick something else," he repeated.

"Well, what do you want to play?"

"I don't care."

"It's no fun if you don't want to play," Alfred grumbled, presumably at a volume he didn't think Matt would hear. The Canadian rolled his eyes and shook his head. A few seconds later, the microwave beeped, and he shook out the bag and took it back into the living room. Beer in one hand and popcorn in the other, he kicked at the fallen pile of pillows that had been his chair to fluff them back up. Alfred helpfully reached out and set them back to rights before resuming shuffling through his case of badly-made video games.

"I can't believe these even work on Xbox," Matt commented as he sat down, "they look like they were made by some comp sci student in his mom's basement."

"That's what makes them fun," Alfred insisted, spreading out the cases in front of them. "Come on, help me pick." Matt sighed and leaned forward. They'd only played two so far, both of which Matt had royally sucked at, mostly because Alfred had taken the time to practice beforehand.

"Vampire hunters sounds promising. You play that one yet?"

"Yeah, it's good. Kinda glitchy on level seven though."

"Level—you got to level seven? No, you know what, no, what about this one?" Matt picked up the case and read from the back cover. "Collect as many ghosts as you can before the ghosts collect you—Jesus that's cheesy—have you played this one?"

"Yeah, it's actually really fun," Alfred spoke around a handful of chocolate. Matt slumped, his hand and the CD case in it falling to the floor.

"But you hate ghosts," he said.

"But these ones are so cute," Alfred took the case from Matt's hand and pointed affectionately at the soft mint green and baby blue blobs, "look at their little faces! They remind me of the turrets in Portal. They want to kill you, but they look adorable doing it."

"Crisse de câlice—Okay," Matt interrupted, spreading his hands over the assortment of games. "Which of these have you not played?"

"Uh," Alfred looked suddenly uncertain, eyes running apprehensive over the collection. Matt looked with him, and spotted something he'd missed before.

"Aha!" he exclaimed in triumph, picking up a case from in front of Alfred. "Still in it's plastic wrapping, you can't have played this one, surely. Surely, right?" He shook the shrink wrapped case in front of Alfred's face, and his twin batted it away.

"No, I haven't played that one," he confirmed grouchily.

"Great! Let's do it." Matt tore into the plastic.

"Okay," Al agreed, suddenly and uncharacteristically subdued. He shoveled a handful of chocolate into his face and downed it with soda while Matt loaded the disc.

While his Xbox struggled to read what Matt was sure was not a standard disc, he flipped the case over and read from the cover.

"'Salem: The Witching Hour.' Kind of on the nose, don't you think? 'The year is 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts, and you (and up to 3 of your fellow players) have been accused of witchcraft! In this escape-room style game, you must use your wits (and maybe a little bit of magic) to stall your inquisitors, shift blame, escape prison, and do whatever you have to do to escape the hangman's noose.' Jesus, who writes these things? Did the same guy make all of these games?"

"No," Alfred muttered, nursing his soda close to his face, "it's a few different people." Matt looked at him oddly.

"What's gotten into you?"

"What?"

"Oh, come on," Matt elbowed him as the game menu came up on the screen. "You aren't scared, are you?"

"What? Pfft, no," Alfred was a decent liar when he needed to be, but his poker face around Matt had always been terrible.

"Come on, Al, this is Salem, this is your shit, right? Ultimate American Halloween Gothic. You're the one who wanted a scary game and movie extravaganza. Want me to hold your hand?"

"Fuck you."

"You want player 1 or 2?"

"It's a co-op game, does it matter?"

"Player 2 for you. Maybe if you die I'll get to keep playing."

"Jeez, Matt."

"I'm hitting start, load up on popcorn now or forever hold your peace." Alfred dug a handful out of the bag sitting in Matt's lap and tossed the customary Twin Tax—one Reese Pieces, in this case—at Matt, who expertly caught it in his mouth and crunched happily.

"Fuck yeah, puritans!" Matt said as the black screen gave way to the opening cutscene. "You batshit bastards!"

Alfred only sighed.

The cutscene was, as could be expected, roughly animated and inexpertly voiced, but Matt had to give credit where credit was due, the music and the atmospheric elements were pretty well done. Replete with thunder and lightning, the initial cutscene gave way to a word puzzle game that required them to use various books and letters at their disposal to determine what crimes, exactly, they were being charged with—presumably so they could make some shit up to get out of it.

Matt heard rather than saw Alfred's breath seize in his chest whenever they pulled up a new book on witchcraft or satanism. All of these old puritan books were generally wilder than the last, but it looked to Matt like the developers had taken scans of real books wholesale and stuck them in the virtual world.

"Oh come on, Al," Matt tried to be encouraging, "you know it's all just a word game. Look, you can clearly see where they've photoshopped this page, this must be the word we need."

"I don't fuck with magic, dude," Alfred muttered, playing along anyway in the game. "Shit gives me the creeps."

"Arthur must've told you some fucked up bedtime stories."

"You got bedtime stories?" Alfred quipped, and Matt snorted.

They shuffled through a few more books, and a few letters written, apparently, by a minister who'd been interviewing townsfolk for accounts of "Matticus" and "AFJ". Matt snorted whenever his username popped up on screen, but Alfred's face remained serious.

"Al, lighten up, will ya?" Matt elbowed him lightly. When this did not work, he looked back at the screen before saying, as casually as he could, "we don't have to keep playing if you don't want to. Did you say that ghosts game was good?"

"I'm good, dude, seriously, just… concentrating." He was lying, Matthew could tell. "What's this thing? We haven't looked at it yet."

They continued on with Matthew doing the majority of the directing and decision making, pointing out clues and tools as they went. They passed one level, and then the next, but on the third level they ran out of time and were shunted off into a half-level where they had, apparently five minutes to figure out how to escape before they would be taken to the gallows.

"Aw, shit," Matt wrestled with his controller. "They've disabled some of the controls. Fuck. Yours work?" Alfred was staring at the screen, and in the screen-lit light, Matt couldn't see how pale he'd grown.

"No," he said quietly.

"Damnit. Oh no! Fuckin' puritans are gonna have my ass," Matthew laughed at the badly animated ministers and townspeople as they shuffled toward the players. "Dude looks like a fuckin minecraft character for real," Matt joked, still pivoting his player to see if there were any tools around them. They were by a roughly-set up gallows stationed by a tall oak tree. "Maybe we can climb the tree? Is that an option do you think?"

Alfred wasn't listening. His hands were frozen to the controls. The music of the game had turned frantic, and above the soundtrack there was the sound of a speeding human heart, beating faster and faster as the countdown clock in the bottom left corner ticked down from five minutes. Four minutes. Three.

"Fuck, shit, fuckity, fuck-shit, fuck," Matthew chanted. Two. One. Thirty seconds.

"God damnit, when did we last hit a checkpoint?" Matt had given up, and was gesturing frustratedly with his controller. "We're going to have to do this all over again." Ten seconds.

Alfred's hands were fused around his controller and he couldn't feel his fingertips. Something in his chest was squeezing, and amid the horrible animation the oak tree looked, for a moment, photorealistic. He could smell the ozone in the air of an autumn storm, he could taste dirt and bile. The clock hit zero, and suddenly the screen flashed black before entering a new cutscene, the camera controls taken over from both players. The lead figure, clothed in ministers' black, approached with sinister music playing.

"Thou hast been accused…"

"God damnit."

Alfred couldn't breathe. He felt small and cold, and immobile as iron chains.

"Thou hast been tried…"

How long had it been? How long had it been since he'd even thought about it? Three hundred fucking years, and still not rid of it. His breath caught on the back of his throat and he thought for a second it was dirt, and began choking.

"Thou hast been found guilty of witchcraft,"

He couldn't stop choking.

"Al, you good?"

"...hung by the neck until you are dead."

"Al?"

"Y-yeah," Alfred choked, ignoring the involuntary tears welling up and pounding on his chest to clear some imaginary object. "Just need some water, I think."

"I'll get you some-"

"No, no, I got it," Alfred stood quickly, dumping his controller and leaving the room in a rush.

"Oh," Matt watched him go, bewildered, "alright." He glanced back at the screen, which faded to black just after the nooses went over the camera. Game Over, the screen read. Play again?

In the kitchen, Alfred hid behind the fridge where he knew he'd be out of Matthew's sight and heaved for breath, bracing a hand against the wall as he tried to unfreeze his ribs from the sides of his chest. He couldn't breath, he couldn't make his lungs suck in air, because there was too much soil, too much rain, too much weight on top of him, burying him—

"Pee break!" Matt announced from the living room. They'd obviously lost. "If you want more snacks grab 'em now." He heard the bathroom door open and shut. Quickly, before Matt would see, Alfred opened the fridge, seized a beer, cracked it, and began to drink. He didn't stop drinking until the can was empty. He pounded his chest and breathed out a belch, crumpled the can, and took it to the recycling bin—and ran into Matt's chest.

"Jesus, Al, careful—what are you," Matt froze, "What the hell is this?" Before Alfred realized what he was talking about, Matt had snatched the crumpled Moosehead can out of his hand.

"Is this- did you- did you just shotgun a beer while I was in the fuckin' bathroom?"

"I- uh," Alfred's heart was still racing beyond his control, and he had a hard time thinking about anything else.

"Alfred, you're sick, we've talked about this, what the hell,"

"Listen, I just…"

"You said you needed water,"

"I did, I got some water," he lied, "and uh, then, I uh,"

"Is it that scary?" Matt asked.

"What?"

"The game," Matt set the can aside and crossed his arms, blocking Alfred's path out of the kitchen. "I know it freaked you out, but jeez, is it really driving you to drink? Honestly, we don't have to play it."

"It's not that," Alfred said, unable to meet Matt's eyes.

"The hell it's not, look at me." Al did not. "Look at me."

"No," Alfred crossed his arms in a mirror to his brother, frustrated and wishing he were elsewhere. His head hurt. "Okay I'm a little freaked out, ha ha, it's a dumb game. Let's just keep playing, okay?"

"What, so you can go shotgun another one of my beers when we lose again? Come on, Al, the goal was to have you hiding behind the couch, not crossing alcohol with DayQuil and ibprofen." Matt stared at him, and Alfred resolutely looked elsewhere, lips pursed tightly shut. "We're not going to play that game any more."

"Yes we are," Alfred insisted. "I can take it, I'm not a wimp."

"I never said you are, but it's clearly getting to you."

"It's not."

"You're pale as a fucking sheet and you just chugged a tall boy in less than a minute! It is getting to you, now tell me what the fuck happened so we make sure it doesn't happen again."

"No."

"Al-"

"I don't want to talk about it, okay?"

"Alfred Fucking Jones," Matt began.

"It's just… it's stupid, okay? You'll think it's dumb."

Matthew adjusted his arms, leaned back, and continued to stare. Alfred heaved a sigh. The alcohol had gone straight to his head, but the beer was sloshing uncomfortably in his stomach, probably not the best mixer for chocolate, popcorn, and soda.

"Whatever, okay, it is 'my shit'," he said, framing the words with air quotes. "Salem, witches, American fucking New England gothic and all that. I just… I was there, okay? Back when it was actually like that. And I don't like being reminded. Someone dies, a kid gets sick, you look at old man Miller the wrong way, and suddenly they're interrogating you about what books you've been reading, then everyone's talking about how you haven't aged in three years and how someone once saw you lift an entire shed with one hand—which never happened, by the way, it was one log, Jesus—and next thing you know you're up on a barrel with your neck in a noose for witchcraft or satanism or whatever self-righteous charges they can slap on you before the Governor can tell them to stop. It's stupid, absurd, but it happened, and okay, yeah, maybe it still freaks me out a little." He stole a glance at Matthew's face but didn't let himself linger for long on his raised eyebrows or bemused expression. "So hardy har har, we've all had our laugh at Alfred and his dumb phobias, let's just… make some more popcorn and I don't know, watch Nightmare Before Christmas or something. It's just… stupid." Alfred brushed past Matt back to the living room.

Matt stood in dumbfounded silence, staring at the place where his brother had stood.

Eventually, after he'd recovered enough of his composure, Matt returned to the living room to find Alfred's stash of chocolate abandoned on the floor. Alfred himself was sprawled out on the couch under a Toronto Maple Leafs throw and scowling at the Netflix menu as he scrolled. Matt went over and kneed him gently in the shoulder until he sat up, giving Matt enough room to sit behind him. Sitting on the couch sideways, he wormed one leg between Alfred and the back of the couch, letting the other dangle. He pulled a large throw pillow, one of the ones he never used, into his lap and patted it.

"No," Alfred groused.

"Come on, Al."

"No."

"Well I'm not sitting on the floor for a movie, and if I sit at your feet you'll end up kicking me on the jump scares."

After a moment of consideration, Alfred leaned back, now partially resting against his brother. Matt held out a new package of Reese's Pieces and, much to Alfred's surprise, a fresh can of Moosehead. The American looked quizzically back at his brother.

"You're right, I am a hypocrite."

Alfred accepted the offering silently and cracked open the beer in favor of opening the chocolate. Matt waited for Alfred's attention on him to wane before he said,

"Did they really hang you?"

"Mmm."

"When?"

"'82? 85? I can't remember the exact year," Alfred muttered quietly. "It was before Salem."

"What did you…? I'm sorry," Matt realized he sounded interrogative. "I just… I had no idea, Al, Christ." Alfred picked at the tab on his can.

"There was this… couple I used to live with, when Arthur wasn't around. Supposed to 'socialize' me or whatever. They had a kid, maybe six years old? I watched her since she was a baby, she was practically a sister. She started having seizures, I dunno what it was, epilepsy maybe, maybe a brain thing. Who knows. Anyway, the mom started to blame me. I don't know why. I guess it was easier than admitting there wasn't a reason." He shrugged. "She died after a really bad fit, and it just snowballed from there. It was a bad harvest that year. May as well blame the creepy brown kid who speaks with the Indians."

Matt didn't know what to say to that, so he said nothing. Alfred took a long drink of his beer. Afterwards, perhaps feeling the need to fill the silence left by his brother's speechlessness, he snorted and added in a rueful tone,

"You know I'd never fucking died before? Last thought I had was 'fuck, I hope there isn't some trick to this that Arthur didn't tell me, that'd be just my luck. Woke up with a mouthful of dirt like twelve hours later, though, so I figured it hadn't taken any effort on my part." He laughed about it, and glanced back at Matt to share in the joke, but Matthew wasn't laughing. Alfred's smile faded. "Oh, don't look at me like that."

"Like what?"

"All sorry and shit."

"Alfred…"

"It's not a big deal, okay? It was three hundred years ago."

"That doesn't make it…"

"What do you want to watch? Nightmare Before Christmas or Beetlejuice?"

Matt's mouth opened and closed, preoccupied with the fact that he'd been a toddler in the 1680s, but that even in his infancy he remembered that Alfred had only been slightly older, perhaps eight or nine years old to a human's eye.

"Either is fine with me," he said eventually. "Though to be honest, claymation kind of freaks me out."

"Beetlejuice, then. I'll warn you when the clay effects are coming up."

"Kay."

The opening credits began to roll in silence, and the air felt joyless between them. Silently, Matt leaned forward and wrapped his arms around Alfred's shoulders, pulling him back further into his lap. Alfred stiffened, but after a moment he sighed and relaxed. Matt looked down at the top of Alfred's head, examining the dark blond waves that he knew would bleach to a rolling gold in the summer's sun. He tried to imagine his hair as it'd been in childhood, wispy, young, and long, and how it must've looked pinned in place by a noose. Mary, Jesus, and Joseph. He wished he could kill them all, but of course Father Time had already stolen that opportunity. Matt began to fiddle with the gentle waves of Alfred's hair, too short to curl quite like his own, but mesmerizing in the way they fell when brushed.

"Does Arthur know?" he asked as Winona Ryder came on screen. Alfred took in a deep breath and took a drink.

"No."

Where Alfred didn't see, Matt raised his eyes toward heaven. Of course not.

"I can't believe you never told anyone."

"What, like you didn't die from some crazy shit, back in the day?" Alfred turned to look at Matt, his hair falling from the twin's fingers. "Surely all those Catholics screwed you up once or twice."

"They sure didn't hang me," he said. "I think I caught smallpox from the eucharist once, but that's hardly the same, and I didn't die that time."

"Well, la dee dah," Alfred shrugged. "We all got our shit." That was true, but did not, Matthew thought, adequately encapsulate what Alfred had described. First Death was a capital letter event. Matthew still remembered his, an accidental drowning in the lakes of Quebec. He'd been barely more than a bairn at the time, and still under the care of Francis, but even Francis in all his horrible parenting instincts had been there when Matthew awoke, to calm him and explain what had happened. The memory still haunted him in high-definition, a wellspring of sensation for his subconscious to spin a multiverse of nightmares.

A mouthful of dirt, Alfred had said. Some trick to this that Arthur didn't tell me. Arthur had once told Matthew that Alfred had been practically grown by the time he'd had his First Death, that it hadn't been until the Seven Years War when he'd caught a nasty fever and faded out on the banks of the Ontario. Arthur had told him the tale to boast on Alfred's strength and vitality, to challenge Matthew to measure up to the constitution of his southern twin. But from the sounds of it, Alfred had already died at least once by then, nearly a century before, as a child, and it'd been a hanging. And Arthur apparently had no idea, even today.

"Protestants really don't talk about anything, do they?" Matt asked, petting Alfred's hair a protective way, nails scratching gently over Alfred's scalp in a way he knew would relax him. Alfred huffed.

"Not really, no," he said, and drank his beer.

By the time the beer was gone and the movie half over, Alfred had melted further down, so he was leaning fully against his brother, Matthew's arms wrapped around him, his temple brushing against Matt's stubbly chin. Eyes glued to the screen, Alfred said,

"Oh, there's some claymation here, if I remember right."

Matt groaned and hid his face in Al's shoulder. Claymation didn't actually bother him, but he knew Alfred would only ever acknowledge his own weaknesses when allowed to see the weaknesses of others.

"God, this movie is fucking weird," Alfred said by his ear, and Matt savored the moment to quietly hug his brother with the excuse of a movie to keep his emotions to himself. "Alright," Al said at length, "I think it's over."

Matt looked up, and Alfred offered him his box of Reeses Pieces. He dug out a handful and munched on them. Al did the same. When the box was empty, Alfred tossed it at the wastebin and settled further against Matt.

"Mattie?" He said after a while. He sounded sleepy. Matt found himself wondering where he'd put the NyQuil.

"Hmm?"

"Thanks." Alfred didn't need to explain what he was thanking him for. Matt gave his brother's chest a pat.

Please talk to me, he wanted to say. Please tell me the things I don't know, because you're my brother and I'm supposed to know you as well as I know myself. Your hurts are supposed to be my hurts, and you deserve better than three centuries with us not knowing.

"Hmm," he said instead. "Go to sleep, Al."

A/N: I have an idea for a part 2, but I have no idea if I'll get around to it. Let me know what you think!