There's a silence in the halls at night that hits him deep in his soul. He's no longer Matthieu but Matthew, now the British Province of Quebec, but he doesn't feel like himself anymore. He aches to hear the smoothness of French curling around his tongue, but he's no longer allowed to speak the same language as his citizens.
There's a gap there, Matthew realizes, that he hadn't noticed when he lived in Versailles. It might have been because of the cultural differences warring within him now that he was a French-speaking English colony, it might have been because at that time he wasn't yet established as he was now and he'd returned home before he could notice it, or it could have been neither of those, but whatever the reason, it has Matthew laying awake in bed late into the night, staring at the wooden ceiling and wishing that he knew what was wrong with him.
He and Alfred are no longer what they once were. When they were children, so much younger and more innocent than they will ever be again, they were inseparable. They'd spent their days without a care in the world and there had never been any secrets between them.
Matthew had thought, had hoped with every fiber of his being, that they could go back to being brothers again. And they were, but there was a distance between them that neither was able to fix.
{If Matthew ever admitted the truth to himself, that he was too scared to fix it, to think of how different his brother had become, it was only in the darkness of his room, late at night when no one could hear his muffled sobs.}
They had always been two halves of the same soul - Magni and Modi, Castor and Pollux, night and day - and now Matthew realizes the distance that came with being two sides of the same coin. They remained the same piece of metal, but they could never see eye-to-eye with each other. It was impossible.
And yet Matthew couldn't hate him for that. He couldn't hate Alfred just as the night couldn't hate the day. They were the same.
But they would never be alike.
Matthew was quiet, observant, content to fade into the shadows of the crowd. His smiles were rare but stunningly beautiful in the same way a lone stream in a forest is breathtaking - quiet and shy, and yet simmering with tranquil mischief. He was the moon in the night sky, seldom seen and rarely fathomed, but wondrous all the same.
Alfred smiled like the sun. He was boisterous in a charming way and thrived on the attention given to him by Arthur, and yet his ambitions could not be satisfied. He vowed to someday be greater than Arthur ever was, his blue eyes shimmering like the open sea that provided endless opportunities. He was the sun, hated for his burning light while he was there, yet mourned for long after he left.
They were out of touch now, no longer Soaring Eagle and Silent Warrior but Alfred and Matthew Kirkland. The old empires, they'd taken two brothers and shaped them into strangers and expected that nothing would be different, that those two boys could one day inherit their legacies, be better than the Old World had ever been.
Except now Matthew was heir to no kingdom and Alfred seemed to reject the responsibilities Arthur put on him. But he was still Arthur's favourite and Matthew was the proverbial second son, the prince with no deed to his name. He was crownless in a world built on status, a Nation suddenly gone from being a prized jewel in the New World to one of many colonies along the Atlantic coast far, far away.
Matthew rolls over and tugs the quilt up over his shoulders. He stares at the wall, refusing to let the tears fall.
{He wonders why he'd never realized that Magni and Modi had lost everything dear to them. He wonders why they call that a happy ending.}
