i literally slacked on this for two fucking weeks before pulling this out of my arse by shutting off my internet and writing like a fiend for two days

so yes. this is not prewritten. yehay. but i really struggled with this one since it's a lot more mature than the stuff i'm used to.

also where is everyone im

as always, i do not own the selection nor hetalia. these belong to kiera cass and himaruya hidekaz respectively. disclaimer for mature themes, but nothing passing the M rating, etc

Alfred nervously loosened his jacket, draping it on his right arm before checking his watch again before knocking yet again on Marianne's door.

Of course, this wouldn't have been his favourite thing to do on such a nice, clear evening when he could go stargazing (especially with – well.), but since Marianne had asked so sweetly and he felt so bad for not giving her much of a chance. Even with the competition so close, he still felt like he had to, not just because of her prowess with languages and important family…

"Lady Marianne?" he asked, clearing his throat. "Are you okay in there?"

"Oh, Your Highness, I'm very sorry for being a little late! I just want to make sure that everything's perfect," she simpered, and Alfred adjusted his tie again, swallowing.

"Thank you-" he began, but was interrupted by her entrance – her maid standing to the side, bowing and closing the door. Marianne paid her no interest as her heels clacked on the marble floor with a strut that made Alfred's jaw drop…amidst other things.

All that effort in waiting definitely had refined her even more tonight – her makeup, amongst other things, was flawless, her fringe carefully pinned away. Not even a single hair was out of place, and her perfume practically surrounded the air between them. Her eyes stood out underneath all that even so – maybe that was the point?

But that wasn't the thing that made him feel so intimidated and completely out of his depth, as her dress…

It wasn't anything he'd ever seen like it. Yes, Emma had previously worn things that had made him blush and look away for a few minutes, but this was on a completely new level. Even if he could look past the seductive red of the silk, how it clung onto her and elbowed its way to the forefront of his mind with those sheer gloves of hers…

"Where do you want to go tonight?" she asked, looking up at Alfred behind her lashes as she took his hand and laced it in with hers. He swallowed tightly, and squeezed her hand once.

"Uh," he stuttered. He wasn't quite sure what she was trying to do, but… "You want to go walk around or…?"

"I don't mind, as long as it's with you," she said, both her gloved arms moving to latch onto his as she smiled flirtatiously at him. "By the way, I absolutely adore the colour of your tie tonight," she cooed before they proceeded down the hallway.

He couldn't lie, that compliment alone felt good. It had taken a good portion of his evening to choose it, darn it all!

"Oh, I can see that," Marianne giggled, tucking a strand of her blonde hair behind her ear. "You've definitely spent a lot of time working out, hmm?"

"Heh, I mean – being the only prince in the castle, I guess that means I have a bit more freedom." Alfred grinned, pausing to turn around a corner, but being a little surprised when she tugged him somewhere else, following the tiny winded path around the outsides of the gardens until coming to the large, intricately carved ivory that made up the main fountain, the twilight casting a violet shadow against the structure and the waters churning along like his stomach.

"Sit down," she sang, patting down the spot next to her and fanning out her skirt as if that was how she usually sat. By the Fates…

…he usually chose not to read the atmosphere and keep on going with whatever he did, but if she was trying to do what he thought she was, well…

"Uh," he said, pausing, and she tilted her head onto his shoulder, her eyes lidded beneath her lashes.

All this, all the compliments that she showered on him, her virtually flawless appearance, the hooded, provocative looks that she kept on gazing at him with, especially tonight. It made him feel uncomfortable, like it was all so wrong

Yes, the Deciding virtually allowed him to do whatever he wanted to to find love, but this definitely wasn't it.

Which is why, with a pang of guilt, he sprung away from her, brushing off his suit hurriedly.

But Marianne still didn't let go, her arm lingering on his chest before tilting her fingers around his chin, cooing gently as she moved her mouth against his ear, kissing it lightly before moving lower. Alfred swallowed, trying his best to keep her at arm's length as the sweeping end of her gown swished around his ankles, but he was as rigid as ice.

This wasn't supposed to happen. What - he never thought –

"Oh, what's wrong?" she said, her tone sultry as she brushed her nose against his cheekbone, lacing her fingers in his tie. "Don't look away just yet."

Alfred nervously looked away, and her ice coated eyes followed his gaze before staring back at him, her uniform eyebrows scrunched before she leaned closer.

"I…I…uh, I should be going, I," he stammered, but she shushed him, her dark red nails fixed tightly against his lips.

"But this is just the beginning," she said tartily, her luscious lips curling into a smile, seeming to the prince like a cat sitting on top of a pedestal. "There's so much in store for us tonight."

"Wh – what? What do you mean?" he said uncertainly, a faint dust of red that was probably from her seductive words rather than the cold. That wasn't what she was thinking about, right?

"Of course," she said, pouting a little and resting back on her heels with a clack. "Nowhere else but in my room."

Alfred's throat and mouth turned dry.

"Duchess, what are you – no, I mean, of course not," he said, shaking his head rapidly. "You're…you're a very pretty girl, yes, but not like that! I wouldn't ever think of doing that to you!"

"But you want to!" Marianne cried, flattening out her dress. "You didn't seem uncomfortable with what we were talking about! Not even about the compliments I gave you!"

"That's not what I'm looking for in a person, please," Alfred said, desperate to not mess up this conversation, mess up her feelings even though he doubted she had any in the first place, and get her to please back the fuck off, I don't want this! "I wasn't being appropriate with you tonight, and I apologize-"

"Then what are you looking for?" she spat, her eyes now filling with a venom that he couldn't do anything about. "Aren't you just looking for a pretty little thing to warm your bedside?"

"No! No, I'm-"

"I'm…argh! This is why no one left in the competition is still in this for your heart!" she snarled; braid stridently following behind her flaming, contorted expression. "Emma's a little skank, pretending to love you so she can get that mess of gold on her head! She's as desperate as I am, if not more, and twice as clingy, begging for your attention! Alfonso's not any better, keeping up that stupid smile while he fades more and more into the ranks of royalty like the commoner family he was born to, and Arthur-"

Alfred's blood seemed to burn in his veins at that moment. The words she was using, the name seeming to burst out of her mouth in that heartbeat, tore.

Something else, something that was roaring in his ears and was twisting his heart like an old, torn patchwork being wrung again and again, broke inside of him.

He snapped.

"Don't you dare lay a single word against the rest of the Elite!" he shouted, blue eyes flashing like minuscule bolts of lightning. "You…you thought you could seduce me to the crown, throw down lies after lies against the others to bring me to send them away for no reason? It doesn't work like that!" she screamed, panting.

"Then, if you didn't want all that, then why did you go along with it? And after all that just happened! It looked like you were going to be the one to take me to my room!"

"I thought I was just trying to make up for my mistakes by not spending a lot of time with you by coming out here tonight," Alfred said coldly, his words sharpened like a cracking glacier. "But all you've done tonight is something that I can't deal with."

Marianne held her stead, but her stance faltered, curling into a frown as it seemed that the fight had gone out of Alfred.

It hurt. The words seemed to have formed into dozens of small knives, stabbing themselves and lodging themselves in his heart. Alfred just turned around, closing his eyes and cleaning his glasses to try to occupy his freezing hands before turning back to Marianne.

"You are eliminated from now. Please pack your things and leave," he said flatly, before walking back to the palace without looking back.

It was a little over ten in the morning the next day, after an unusually lonely breakfast, before Arthur heard the voices of busy chatter in the Drawing Room, even though it sounded like two voices instead of the occasional three. He'd taken breakfast by himself since Anna had been on shift since seven o'clock unlike how they usually woke up together, and so had asked her to run the extra errand on her way down to the sewing room for her daily tasks.

Not to his surprise, it was Emma that he had identified, her freshly cut brown locks bobbing on her shoulders as she leaned forwards, her legs crossed tightly as Alfonso nodded something in confirmation. They both jumped up to greet him as soon as they saw him, clustering around the confused boy.

"Do you know what happened with her? Did Alfred tell you anything? Did you see anything last night?" Emma spoke in such a flurry, so different from her usual speech, that Alfonso stepped in with a shaky nod.

Something had definitely affected her in the week that had happened, and he was willing to guess that it was Louis' murder more than anything.

"Arthur…have you heard the news?" he blurted, looking at his friend's eyes. "About Marianne."

"Um, what about her-"

She had been sent home, he quickly found out as Emma stood up to close the Drawing Room doors.

"What? All of a sudden, as well?" Arthur gaped, but Emma who had returned, shook her head so fiercely that her green hair tie wobbled.

"My maid said she caught the two of them last night, and Marianne was trash talking the three of us," she said tightly. "Alfred got angry, naturally, and then sent her home. That's what she overheard, at least."

"Serves her right," Alfonso said, with a show of uncharacteristic bitterness.

Arthur's surprised gaze met him, and Alfonso pressed his mouth in a thin line defensively, folding his arms into his chest.

"Well, she doesn't have any right to say things about us when it's very obvious she's the one snooping around, doing things – I wish I could have told you last week, but what happened to her could have happened to me last night. If you'd understand, I…"

"I think we all want to stay in this competition as much as you do," Arthur said quietly, patting his shoulder and gesturing him to sit down next to him in the velvet chair. "Go on."

"There shouldn't be any secrets between us, since we're the last three," Emma confirmed. "No tattling on either of us to get the other out of the competition."

Alfonso rubbed at his mole again, a habit he had developed when he was nervous, and began slowly.

"She…was planning on physically seducing him. You know. Stuff I don't want to say out loud."

"What?" Emma hissed, even though she still had curled into herself. "Why in the name of the Fates did she think that would work against him?"

"Maybe she thought she didn't have any other way, and the only way to win his heart was using herself," Arthur said flatly. "He's got layers and depth – sometimes, I feel like he's untouchable."

"Alfred's not untouchable," Alfonso said. "At least, not for me – us. He's just a great guy, which, you know, personally ticks all the boxes.'

"But that wasn't like that for her. She didn't get to spend a lot of time with her, and after Sakura left, it was kind of obvious that he only kept her out of pity. But why do you think he's untouchable?"

"The prince thing, for starters."

"Okay, the prince thing's reasonable," Alfonso said. "But other than that I don't really, uh, understand why she decided to do it anyway. Maybe that's why we're not leaping to her defense, I guess. But this is a competition at its core, and that's how Marianne chose to do it."

"She probably put him on a pedestal, like I used to just a little bit. But that still doesn't excuse her behaviour, treating him as if he's that stupid minded," Emma said. As the two boys turned to face her, she nodded gingerly. "The Deciding's a competition that's something like I've never seen before. Even the Hearts version is different – it doesn't require the competitors to do this weird sort of dating. Maybe that's why you understand her more than either of us?"

"Hey, Arthur isn't anything like Marianne," Alfonso said quickly, noticing his friend's shoulders tense up. "They're different. We don't know what Marianne really did or what she thought of Al. But do you really see him like that?"

"I used to, all the time." I still do, sometimes. "But now it's a lot less. And I don't plan to do anything like that with him, Emma. I just, well, think he should decide. Without all that."

"Okay," Emma said slowly, looking at him for another moment before her gaze relaxed and she sat back on her chair. "No, I'm sorry about that, Art. But I really can't stand her."

"She's gone, now. We can't let what happened to her divide us," Alfonso said. For a moment there, Arthur was relieved that he was his friend. All they needed was something else dividing them.

After an awkward half hour of just sitting around, with Arthur reading but fiddling with the pages idly; Alfonso peering at the television and Emma staring at the outside view from the largest windowsill, the trio not interacting after their lengthy conversation, Emma stood up, straightening her dress and tapping on the floor, one foot at a time as she stretched.

"I'm going to see Alfie," she announced, and strode out of the room.

Arthur waited until she was out of the room, and then leaned back to face Alfonso who also placed down the remote and turned in his general direction.

"Um. You would think that she would be a bit more affected from Louis," he said quietly. "I think it's still in the news."

"It is, which is why I muted the TV. But she…if anything happened to Antonio, I'd be leaving this competition in a flash. That night, I sent a letter to him as soon as I could, even though I think he mentioned something about a military job. Guess that this Deciding runs a lot deeper than that with her, for some reason," Alfonso whispered back.

"I called Dylan the night it happened," Arthur agreed. "Either she's very strong or something else is happening with her and him."

"Some high pedestal, indeed."

But I promised to trust Alfred full heartedly. I shouldn't be doubting him or her – but if anything happened to Dylan or anyone in my family, for that matter, I wouldn't be able to handle it at all.

"I don't want to talk about it."

Night had now fallen on the Kingdom of Spades, and straight after Yao had finished up on the lesson with the Elites – well, one less than the day before – he had come to see Alfred, who had cooped himself up in his study for the whole day after what had happened the night before. He was slightly relieved that his mentor had left Matthew to his own devices today, this kind of talk he didn't want his twin to hear about.

"Was it that bad? Did she physically try to…well," Yao said awkwardly, but his expression was stern. "I believe you, Alfred. If…if she even dared to touch you like that-"

"No!" Alfred cried, mortified. "She didn't take me that far. I wouldn't let her. She said something about wanting to take me to her room, but it stopped before she could try to do anything to me like that."

"Very well." Yao said, slumping on the chair opposite Alfred's desk. "That was the worst of my worries gone. I know that this may sound harsh, but that's essentially rape. And, Fates forbid, that grant a child…"

"I'm sorry. I should have conducted myself better," he said flatly, his hands scrunching into fists as they crumpled in his lap. "I don't want to even imagine what could have happened to me."

"Neither did I. Thank Duchess we got to see her true nature before we let her get any closer to the end. But," he continued, setting a steady hand on the mahogany desk. "Do not blame yourself. It was not your fault that she tried to pursue you like that. It's happened, plenty of times."

"Plenty of times…?"

"The only reason that we can't screen out candidates like these is that they get desperate near the end and seem to do anything to try to obtain the title of royal." Yao sighed. "I wish that there was something we could do to protect you from any kind of that persuasion."

"Has…" Alfred swallowed haltingly before pushing on. "Has any Deciding ended with a pregnancy?"

"Yes." Yao said, with a serious expression. "One of the first Decidings ended with the pregnancy of a female King. Since the Virus had only began to release its hold on humanity, she and her female candidates were extremely fertile, and that's why it only took a misplaced night for it to end prematurely."

"Which means what? Why did the Virus make them so easy to have children?" Alfred asked, confused. "I don't think Dad or Mom ever got the chance to tell us what really happened."

"Well, the Virus only affected those with a specific gene, or chromosome, after the sickness mutated," Yao said. As a child scholar, he had been taught extensively about the start of modern day Cards practically more than any other subject in history. "It targeted the chromosome set that determined if a person was a female. Males would only contract moderate illnesses, but after a set period of time, the Virus grew to render almost every single female victim infertile."

"Infertile…does that mean they couldn't have any babies? Didn't you once tell me this had something to do with the awakening of the Fates?" Alfred questioned. Suddenly, old tidbits that seemed to make no sense during his private tutor sessions with Yao seemed to fall in line together, like stacking up pieces of paperwork ever so neatly.

"Yes, that's what happened then." came the confirmation. "The illness eventually got so bad that they managed to cause the full order of Fates to be reborn as a mass war broke out. They each managed to take a different human form in the small space of three months as soon as they reawakened. The world was so unstable by that point that their rebirth retriggered the presence of magic in the world."

"It's because they came back that we have magic, right? Didn't they, uh, come back a few times before but they realized they weren't needed?" Just like me.

"Right, that's how the idea of witches formed…but the spirit of the Hearts took a terminally ill child's form, the Clubs chose a woman deemed infertile by the sickness, the Spades chose a dying mage in training, and the Diamonds chose a demented king descending into insanity. That's why they are what they are today." Yao sighed, pausing for a moment to press his hand to the silver bell sitting on Alfred's desk, used to call his maid. He went outside, and Alfred could hear the little zing of magic before the loud ringing of the bell amplified. Coming back inside though, he cited something about tea for his throat before sitting back down.

"Uh, we can do this later," Alfred said worriedly. "If it's chafing your throat-"

"No, it's more of a warning than a story. But that magic still resonates with us today – the Hearts Fate gives out that blessing with a lot of things she does. Since the young girl wasn't the best vessel for the Fate, it's a little harder to control but gives the magic more potential. But if you've asked for a blessing from the Fate like Matthew contacted me about, then you should be careful. Chances are, your fertility was affected as well. So, you have to be careful – not just around her last night, but from everyone. Er, until your wedding night, that is."

Just then, a knock came from the door, obviously with Yao's mug of tea. Alfred tensed, ready to get it, but the Jack shook his head.

"I'm sorry you had to go with that. Do you want to move onto the Trials? They're coming rather soon."

"Yes, I'd like that a lot," Alfred said, feeling a lot relieved.

There had been enough shock for the rest of the year.

replies

alfredo'sfan - gosh is literally the most passive aggressive word i've seen other than :), and it's not a word

pastaaddict - noope. and arthur sort of has an agenda lmao

russia says hello - i hope i executed it well. it was kind of a backthought that i kept putting on and off...but it was implied in the flashbacks, but i wanted you readers to find out at the same time emma did, since she doesn't know exactly why.

gatita-yaoi - omg welcome lmao. some usuk coming up soon, i promise - been writing up a scene i've been planning for a bit ;) but being both a and b type tsunderes, i don't think not being stubborn sometimes aren't in their vocabulary

hearthorse11 - i have mocks so no traveling for a bit :V i'll try my best to keep up i promise!

overworldly - it feels like i keep putting off the trials lmao. we're finally getting there!

reviews, favourites and follows are what will keep me writing, so please go ahead and leave them!