So, there's a decent amount of religious imagery and themes in this chapter because both life and death were heavily entrenched in religion in Victorian Britain. I was baptized Protestant, but I don't really practice and would probably consider myself more agnostic than anything, but I did my very best to convey what Matthew was feeling and his experiences this chapter. A tone of research on Victorian religious practices went into this, so I hope I did alright.

Also, prepare yourself. This is a massive chapter filled with emotional rollercoasters.

The funeral was held at dusk.

Together, with the rest of Arthur's colonies and territories, Matthew followed the coffins up the hill to a small, worn church half hidden in a glen a mile from the estate. His mourning blacks hung heavy across his shoulders and his head bowed low with the weight of immortality.

Arthur and Séamus carried Louise between them. Alasdair and Owain followed, holding Hamish. The coffins, hewn from thick slabs of yew and inscribed delicately with their names, looked far too fragile to be holding Matthew's brother and sister.

His dress shoes squeaked in the mud and he kept his hands clenched at his side. He could feel their eyes on him, the whispers when they thought he wasn't listening, but he couldn't muster the energy to care. He was just numb.

The graveyard was pocketed with the occasional collapsed headstone, most of the earth untouched. Either this church had been abandoned without seeing much use, or the people buried on this consecrated ground were those who didn't have the cause to die easily.

Matthew stopped that thought before it could go further.

The church itself was rather large for such an isolated area, stripped bare of all its finery yet reminiscent somehow of the Catholic chapels he'd attended with François when he was a boy. The stained glass windows remained, however, and they came to a stop beneath a scene depicting the resurrection of Jesus.

It was a particularly cruel irony.

They set the coffins down on timber slabs crossing the empty graves, and the parish pastor stepped forward, bible in hand.

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want," the pastor began, standing at the head of the graves and speaking to both the coffins and the crowd. "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. Amen."

Matthew echoed the word, his voice blending with the dozen others around him, but they all sounded distant, hollow. He listened as the pastor droned on and on about 'painful reminders' and 'precious realizations,' but he knew Hamish and Louise wouldn't get the promised resurrection spoken of.

For whatever reason, Nations were different. They weren't mortal like men were, nor did the same laws of nature apply to them. If it were not so sacrilegious, Matthew might have thought them closer to gods than men. And gods had nowhere to go but the void when they died.

At his right, Eireann wept quietly into her handkerchief, her black mourning veil obscuring her face. Matthew felt that cold shard of ice in his chest twist further. She'd known both Hamish and Louise since they were babies, had watched them grow up.

And now they wouldn't any more.

"The righteous perish, and no one takes it to heart; the devout are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil," the pastor continued. Matthew could feel the others watching him, and a muscle in his jaw jumped as he kept his gaze straight ahead. "Those who walk uprightly enter into peace; they find rest as they lie in death."

Matthew slipped his hand into his pocket and curled his fingers around his rosary, saying a prayer for every bead he held, begging the Lord for forgiveness.

As the pastor continued the service, the overcast sky began a steady fall of rain, as though even the clouds were crying for two young people gone too soon. The rain plastered Matthew's curls to his face and soaked into his heavy wool coat, but he hardly felt it. He was drifting from his body, not entirely in the present, the rosary beads pressed against his fingers the only thing keeping him grounded.

He didn't know how long he drifted for, not paying attention to the words of the pastor or the steadily-growing storm around them, but when he came back into focus, the pastor was saying the Benediction and the coffins were being lowered into the ground.

"God our Father, by raising Christ your Son, you destroyed the power of death and opened for us the way to eternal life. As we remember before you, our brother and sister, Hamish and Louise Kirkland, we ask your help for all who shall gather in their memory. Grant us the assurance of your presence and grace by the Spirit you have given us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

"Amen," Matthew echoed again, his voice wavering dangerously close to breaking. Then with the other older boys, he grabbed a shovel and sunk the head into sodden earth, and began to bury his siblings.

The waterlogged soil made the task twice as difficult and the downpour didn't let up as they filled the graves back in. Each shovelful of heavy, sticky mud was another one of his sims. Matthew discarded his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, and while his skin was pleasantly numb from the chill, there was an aching emptiness in his chest, like the void Nations went to when they died was somehow inside of him.

He resolutely avoided looking at the gravestones. He already knew what they said.

Hamish Kirkland

Beloved Son and Brother

1621 - 1867

Do not let your heart be troubled, but trust in me, you know the place I am going. John 14:1,4

Hamish's was carved from granite and simple in its design, carved only with the words and the coat of arms of Nova Scotia below them. Rough and straight to the point, much like he had been in life.

Louise's was slightly more ornate, made of polished marble and topped with a small angel. The angel sat with his feet dangling over the front of the tombstone and his head looking up to the heavens, wings spread behind him.

At his feet read:

Louise Kirkland

Beloved Daughter and Sister

1784 - 1867

Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs. Matthew 19:14

Matthew drove his spade into the ground again and again, filling the graves back in until the dirt was too waterlogged to continue. And even as everyone else retreated back to the estate, Matthew stayed staring down at the graves.

The cherub watched him with empty, marble eyes. The shovel slipped from his grip, the wooden handle slick with mud and rain.

He took the rosary back in his fingers, the one marker of his Catholic heritage that Arthur had allowed him to keep. He wondered how Hamish and Louise, both devout Protestants, would feel, having him pray for their salvation in such a way.

But now he'd never get to know.

He clutched the rosary tighter, the wooden beads digging into his palm, and fell to his knees in the mud.

Freezing water from the swollen moors soaked through the wool of his trousers and splattered up against his crisp white shirt, staining it as dark as mourning clothes should be.

"I'm sorry," he breathed, the words choking out like a sob. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

The gravestones before him were silent in their judgement.

oO0Oo

Matthew barged into Arthur's office a week later, curls tangled and clothes disheveled. "I can't stay here."

Arthur looked up from the documents he was studying, his pen hovering over the inkwell. "Excuse me?"

"I just—I can't—" Matthew's voice wavered and he collapsed in the armchair nearest the fireplace. Arthur's cross stitch lay abandoned on the end table beside it. Above the mantle was an oil painting commissioned not five years ago of the whole family, Arthur, Eireann, Séamus, Alasdair, Owain, Matthew, Genèvive, Tobias, Dylan, Ada and countless others.

Hamish and Louise were staring down at him with glazed, empty eyes, devoid of being.

He drew his knees up to his chest, a childish action that was comforting in a sort of self-soothing way. He nibbled on his lip, ripping up the dry skin and tasting copper underneath.

"I just can't stay here," Matthew forced out past the lump in his throat. "Everywhere I go, I see them. I can't escape them, Arthur, they're haunting me."

"Don't be ridiculous," Arthur said, waving his hand dismissively, eyes flickering back to his papers, to the fire, to the window. Anywhere but Matthew. "Ghosts aren't real, Matthew."

But Matthew knew that wasn't true. Ghosts in the physical sense of the word might not exist, but he felt their presence follow him as he walked the echoing hallways and in the way their favourite foods were no longer served at dinner. He saw it in the locked doors of their rooms and the dust settling on the windowsill and the way Arthur refused to allow even the maids in, preserving their memory in a way he hadn't even done when Alfred had left.

And the others whispered as he passed, fearful of what precedent this set for the rest of them, refusing to meet his eyes when he entered a room. The way all conversation halted when he sat down at the table or how they all found convenient excuses to never be left alone with him.

His family was ripping apart at the seams and it was killing him.

And the worst part was that he caused it.

Matthew ducked his chin into his knees and blinked back the tears that stung in his eyes. He wished, not for the first time, that Arthur would hold him and promise everything would be alright, just like his mother and François had, even if they both knew that wasn't true.

"I just can't do it anymore," he whispered.

"Then don't," Arthur said, picking his papers back up. He dipped his pen in the ink. "You're your own country now, Matthew. You no longer have to stay."

"I just wish it hadn't come at such a cost."

Arthur hummed absentmindedly but made no reassuring comment, nothing to ease the burden of guilt on Matthew's shoulders, to assure him that it wasn't his fault.

Matthew felt a sliver of ice slip down his spine. "Arthur, you didn't know, right?"

Arthur paused momentarily, hardly long enough to notice.

"Did you know?" Something cold and hard coiled in his gut as he stood.

"Matthew," Arthur sighed, and finally looked up from his papers. "It's conditional immortality, you must underst—"

Matthew slammed his hands down on the desk, sending the inkwell clattering to the ground. "Don't bullshit me, Arthur! Did. You. Know?"

Arthur met his gaze with a clenched jaw and dark circles under his eyes. For the first time, Matthew wondered if he was as unaffected as he appeared.

"If you're quite done," Arthur said, pointing to the chair. Matthew sat back down, feeling somewhat like a chastised child, despite all the rage still simmering within him. He glared at Arthur's back.

"Did you know?" Matthew asked again after a tense moment of silence, his voice barely audible and wavering as he tried to keep it steady.

Arthur stared at his hands for a long moment. "No, I didn't. This has never happened before, Matthew, nothing like this, not that I know of. You're the first." He picked up the shattered remnants of his porcelain inkwell and set them on the edge of the desk. "And as with every new idea comes unexpected consequences."

"But you had an inkling, didn't you?"

Arthur sighed and walked over to the fireplace, gazing up at the massive oil painting above the mantle. In the flickering light of the fire, the eyes of the painted people seemed to dance, but not those of Hamish and Louise. They remained empty and lifeless, merely shells standing at attention next to their family. With everyone in the painting standing around Arthur, who was seated on a chair in the middle with Louise sitting on his knee, dressed in dark colours and wearing serious expressions, it looked like a mourning picture, like everyone there that day knew what the future held.

It was the last picture they all had together, and none of them looked happy.

"I suspected," Arthur said at last, clasping his hands behind his back as he gazed up at the painting. "When H—when they started complaining of exhaustion and weakness, of sickness and injuries that took longer to heal, I began to wonder, but I just chalked it up to stress or bouts of hard times in their colonies or a hundred other things rather than face the truth. You have to understand, this is completely new to all of us. The only one who may have experienced something similar was the Roman Empire, or perhaps Ancient Greece, but they're both long gone and they left nothing behind but their legacies."

Arthur's face was softer in the firelight. "I lost them, too, Matthew," he said quietly. "You're not alone in feeling this."

"But they don't blame you, do they?" Matthew shot back, full of hot fury and cold rage he couldn't explain, feeling inexplicably betrayed for reasons he didn't understand. "They blame me."

"But I blame myself!" Arthur yelled, whirling away from the painting. "I blame myself for letting them down!"

Even as rage roiled in Matthew's gut and his fingernails dug into his palms, some of the fury withdrew at that admission, at the admittance in Arthur's red rimmed eyes. "You can say their names," Matthew whispered. "Please, say their names. Don't leave me to keep their memories alive by myself. Not after what I did."

Arthur was silent for a long moment. There was only the crackling of the fireplace and the patter of rain on the windows. A charged tension hung between them, heavy and sorrowful.

"I can't," Arthur said at last. "They're gone, Matthew, there's no use in pretending otherwise. Wishing won't bring them back, no matter how much you want it to."

Matthew stood, knocking the chair over as he sprang to his feet. "Fine! Be like that! This is why everyone leaves you in the end, you don't care for anyone but yourself!"

As he stormed out the room, he pretended he didn't hear the first sobs fall from Arthur's lips.

oO0Oo

He should have been overjoyed as he stepped off the gangplank, but all he felt was shame.

His first steps on Canadian soil as his own country, and there was no one there to share it with him. He'd had it all planned out for so long: they'd disembark together and perhaps tour their new provinces, their collective country, figure out how much it had changed before going their own separate ways, keeping in touch and meeting up every other month for dinner. He'd thought Hamish and Louise would be right there beside him, holding his hands and taking that first step at the same time, filled with childish glee at finally being on equal footing.

But they weren't, the provinces were always subjective to Canada as a whole, and Canada was Matthew, had been since the first mistranslation on the banks where the river narrowed. Canada held the power and he held it alone.

Hamish and Louise weren't with him. They remained interred in damp soil at the edge of the moors, where tree and vines wound their way around the headstones, soon to make them disappear forever.

Matthew hadn't actually intended to leave after his argument with Arthur, but one look at the distrustful flickers in the others' eyes, and he'd packed his bags and booked the first ship to his Dominion.

It seemed to be his curse, to be left alone because everyone else left him. Skandia, François, his mother and brother. None of them had stayed, no one had decided Matthew was enough just because he was himself.

Or perhaps it was because he made them all leave in the end. Afterall, he and Alfred had killed their mother, and he wasn't good enough to make François consider the sacrifices needed to keep him, he'd lured his brother and sister to their deaths with false promises and lies about tomorrow, and now he was alone, hundreds of miles away from Arthur's estate and the rest of his family.

Would they even want to call Matthew family after this? Connall was probably just glad he'd escaped with his life, that he'd decided against Confederation and would live to see another sunrise. The other North American colonies regarded him with nothing more than suspicion. And Arthur… he regretted the blows they'd exchanged in his study months ago, but only a little.

Louise had been young, not even a century old, just a baby in the eyes of their kind, but Hamish… Hamish had been there forever. Born only a few decades after the rediscovery of the New World by Europeans, Hamish had been brought up in constant conflict with Edélire, the Nation of l'Acadie, the sister Matthew had never gotten to meet, before Arthur had slewn her in his quest to conquer the continent.

Even though he was centuries younger than Matthew, he'd always looked older, and Matthew couldn't help but have looked up to him—the strong, broad Nation with a rolling brogue softened only by distance and circumstance. Although born into conflict and raised much like Alfred was in the civil war-era of England, not to mention the aftermath of the Act of Union and subsequently Culloden and the Clearances, he'd always been easy-going, quick with a smile with a tradition of stories spilling from his lips, if gruff in his humor and stoic when you didn't know him.

Matthew barely noticed when his feet led him from the port to la Rue de Meulles until he was standing in front of a familiar two-story fieldstone house on the corner. The red paint on the door was peeling, and one of the shutters on the left-side window was crooked, but it was still standing. Despite never having the intention to walk into the building again, Matthew had kept up paying the lot taxes for reasons he could never justify. Nostalgia, perhaps, or to act as a stern reminder to not get attached.

Whatever the reason, the house remained just as it had been that day centuries ago when Matthew and François had fled in the wake of Arthur's invasion.

When he'd returned during the war with Alfred, he'd made it all of three steps past the threshold before his knees had buckled beneath him and he'd had to catch himself on the doorframe. With the exception of a thick layer of dust and all the finery robbed away by youth in the centuries it had been abandoned, it had looked exactly the same as the day they'd left it.

With shaking hands, Matthew unlocked the rusty latch with the key he'd kept buried at the back of his sock drawer next to Alfred's amulet. The screech of unoiled hinges was the only sound except for his breathing as he crossed over the threshold for the first time in half a century.

His footsteps stirred the dust that had been accumulating for decades as he entered the house, his legs as shaky as those of a newborn colt. The lump in his throat grew in size as he looked around the small open-plan main floor. It was separated by a stone half-wall into the parlor and kitchen, with their dining room off to one size through another door. Stairs led up to the second floor, where Matthew's childhood room was situated next to François' office, his bedchambers opposite.

It was a small, modest house, meant only for living in when they were in Quebéc, not for entertaining the dignitaries and lords that sometimes came to consult with François—no, François had a different house for that, which as far as Matthew knew, had been converted into an administrative building at some point after the conquest—but it had been home for many years.

And yet, he felt like an intruder stepping into the parlor. He turned slowly, taking in the moth-eaten, dusty furniture that for many years had been among the finest in his colony, and felt the ghosts of his childhood innocence giggling in the hallways. The salty breeze blowing in through the open front door brought with it memories of running along the ramparts of the walled city, the cold hearth remensiant of dragging François away from his cognac and papers to watch the stars out the attic window.

Matthew sat gingerly on the filthy couch, feeling far too out of place in this house-not-home. On the mantle above the fireplace hung the last thing he wanted to see.

Likely spared by the intruders over the centuries only because it was mounted in a wooden frame as opposed to gold like some of the others in the house, a large oil painting of Matthew and François stared down at him.

Matthew had been about ten when it was commissioned, only a few years after arriving in Quebéc to escape the European wars. His younger self grinned down at him with a gap-tooth smile, long curls tied back in a tail behind his head, and crisp blue suit that hid his fidgeting hands. The artist had even managed to capture the mirth and excitement that danced in his amethyst eyes, before he realized just how real Europe and their wars would become, how fast he would have to grow up to match them, blow for blow.

François stood beside him, a soft smile playing at the edges of his lips, so subtle you wouldn't know it was there if you hadn't spent centuries with the man like Matthew had. His gloved hand was resting on Matthew's shoulder, his posture full of pride and blue eyes full of love for the boy standing beside him. No hint of his many scars peaked out behind the cuffs of his shirt or beneath the makeup carefully dusted across his face.

The picture painted them as human, and for a moment, just a fleeting second when he looked at it, Matthew could almost pretend they were.

He had to look away quickly, the lump in his throat threatening to spill out the corners of his eyes.

Matthew had never intended to come back here, had been content to let it stand as a silent sentinel on the corner of the street, a reminder of what had been lost so long ago, but circumstances necessitated it.

For the past weeks, he'd had a god-awful headache pounding against his temples and behind his sinuses. It had gotten so bad on the trip over that he'd thrown up into the chamber pot inside the bowels of the ship several times. And now, just to compound with the maelstrom of emotions he was feeling now, the pain caused black spots to dance in his vision, and he could feel his head pulsing in time with his heartbeat.

Matthew had never been prone to headaches—or illnesses in general, really, likely something to do with whatever made him different from the humans he represented. But this headache… It felt like a punishment from the lord for all his sins.

He couldn't say it was undeserved. Perhaps it was a sign that change was coming, that he was going to Fade just like Hamish and Louise as the day when the colonies would officially come under one flag approached. He wasn't sure what that made him feel, exactly, but it was something akin to numbness. It could go either way, and Matthew wasn't sure he'd put up a fight.

Perhaps it would dissipate if he took a nap. Matthew couldn't remember the last time he'd slept soundly the whole night through, but it had been months, at least. Perhaps it was just the exhaustion catching up to him.

He could go to one of the beds but just the thought of walking further into the house made his stomach churn. Taking it one day at a time sounded like a much better plan. The couch would have to do for now.

He brushed off as much dust as he could off the cushions and fluffed the pillow into shape, and his eyes were closed before the dust settled back over him.

oO0Oo

His first order of business when he woke up was to deep clean the house. Decades of neglect and exposure to the elements had allowed the building to fall into a state of disrepair that would take the better part of a few weeks to fix, which was perfectly fine with Matthew. The longer he could distract himself from the inevitability of his lonely existence, the better.

Living in the country for most of his life and running with the apprentices his age when he lived in the city meant that Matthew had a wealth of knowledge that was beginning to become lost in this world of industrialization.

He wasn't sure what the neighbours thought of this young man, barely out of childhood, restoring the house that had been empty for as long as anyone could remember, much less when they saw him on his knees in the kitchen, scrubbing the floors, or doing laundry, or any one of the other numerous tasks that would have been left to his wife if he'd had one. He definitely got more than his share of strange looks those first few days, that was for sure.

He'd also gotten several offers to help him employ a housekeeper, but Matthew brushed every one of them off. This house was haunted with his memories, and it felt only right to be the one to banish them forever.

But it was difficult, made worse by the headache that shortened his temper and wrought punishing blows against his temples. One night, after a restless week of nightmares prompted by the heavy tinge of nostalgia and sorrow imprinted into the furniture, Matthew snapped and hired a cart to move every removable object from the house to a fallowing field some miles from the city centre.

There, he piled everything into a massive bonfire and set it alight, watching the last shreds of childhood innocence be consumed by the flames. The portrait of him and François was the last to burn, and Matthew watched impassively as the fire licked up the oils and canvas and burned the smiling boy in it to ashes.

Then he returned to the cart and the terrified woman driving it, and pressed a thick wad of ten pound notes into her hand and told her to buy him enough to furnish a house. She looked between him and the notes, concern melting over the terror in her eyes, but Matthew didn't care. He was just exhausted and frankly didn't care if she ran away with the money. The government paid him enough that it was just pocket change and most of it had been sitting stagnant in his bank account for years, anyways.

He was probably expected to make an appearance before the new parliament soon, but he didn't really care about that either. Let the humans run their new country for a while without his help, to see what it was like to be left adrift without a Nation. That's how Matthew felt already, losing Hamish, Louise, Arthur and the rest of his family in one fell swoop, and some dark, selfish part of him wanted them to feel the same.

The headache mounted in temper as the weeks passed, until there were some days when he couldn't move from bed because of the pain lancing through his temples. Matthew weathered it all without so much as a complaint or a trip to the pharmacist two blocks over, knowing deep in his heart that this was his penance for all his unforgivable sins. Instead, he ignored the letters that began to pile up on his doorstep and the sweltering heat of the Canadian summer as July approached and the streets seemed to come alive with preparations for the first Dominion Day celebration.

It all came to a head on the first day of July in 1867, the day he officially became a united Dominion. He should have been outside celebrating with the rest of his people, enjoying the parades and luncheons in the parks, but instead he was buried under mounds of blankets in his bedroom, trying in vain to rid himself of the shivers tha wracked his body.

The pain increased so dramatically that Matthew felt like he understood how Zeus felt when he birthed Athena from his temples, and cursed everything he'd ever done in his life to end up in this position. Nausea rolled in his stomach and he would have thrown up more than just bile if he'd managed to actually keep food down at all in the past few days.

He choked back a sob as the pressure built behind his eyes, curling into himself and wishing he had someone there with him to rub his back and hold him when the pain got too great. To bring him water when he couldn't move from the bed and read him stories to distract him from the feeling like his head was imploding.

Then, like the suddenness of a thunderclap, like the inevitability of the seasons, the pain crested and vanished. For the first time in months, his mind was clear, pulsing only with the aftershocks and the phantom pains, a mere shadow of what had been there only before.

Matthew groaned and clutched his temples, and it was echoed by shill cries at the end of his bed.

Bolting upright, he nearly knocked the four infants sprawled on his blankets right off the bed. He carefully disentangled himself from the sheets and slowly slid to his feet, keeping his eyes on the bloody, squirming babies that had definitely not been there when he'd crawled into bed.

They were so small, tiny enough that he could cradle them safely in his arms without any difficulty, likely newly born if the blood and the mewling cries they admitted was anything to go by.

But that made absolutely no sense, because there was no way for Matthew to have had a kid, and he was pretty sure he hadn't let any pregnant women into his house at any point in the past few hours. He didn't know how long he stood there, just staring at the babies that had appeared on his bed, but the sudden lack of pain made his head foggy even if it had been clear just moments before, though he supposed that could have also been the shock.

Then rational clicked in. It might be summer, but the windows had been left open to keep the air circulating and a cool breeze blew through the room, and the babies were squirming and getting blood all over his sheets.

He darted to the ensuite and returned moments later with a wet washcloth and carefully eased the closest child into his arms.

The resulting onslaught of emotion nearly sent him tumbling to the floor, both child and washcloth in hand.

Euphoria. Confusion. Exhaustion. Satisfaction.

Ontario, Ontario, Ontario, some innate part of him whispered to the beating of his heart, the same part that warned him when other Nations were near and pulsed with the golden threads of immortality that tied him to the fabric of the world.

A sinking feeling dropped like a stone in Matthew's stomach as he carefully wiped the blood off the baby to reveal a squalling, pink-skinned boy with a few wisps of brown hair curled around his head. The baby scrunched his face up and wailed as Matthew awkwardly rocked him and bathed him the best he could.

Matthew fought down the panic that threatened to overtake him, not understanding what these fledging Nations were but knowing with growing dread that they were his. Somehow, Matthew suddenly had four young Nations under his care.

Except, they felt like Nations but also not. He didn't know how to describe it, but they weren't the same as him, were like nothing he'd ever seen before. Not like colonies, not like Dominions, not like countries. If Matthew was a representative of the land and the history, then this boy in his arms felt like the people and the possibilities of the future.

It felt like staring into the void and watching his own inevitability stare back at him. Was this what it was to fear mortality? To know with startling clarity that with the birth of the next generation of Nations, your days on Earth were numbered? Was this how François felt when he saw him for the first time? Was this why Skandia left, why his mother had died?

The baby sighed and knocked his curled fist into Matthew's wrist, eyes still squeezed shut, like he knew exactly what his father figure was thinking about.

Fuck. Was that what Matthew was? A father? He supposed caretaker or guardian would work just as well for his relationship to these little stars that shone with the beating hearts of his provinces, but father… it just felt right. Like a piece of him that had been broken when France took him away was being smoothed over.

Like he was where he belonged for the first time in his life.

With a shuddering breath, Matthew put the new Nation of Ontario back down on the clean part of the bed and repeated the process with the rest of his—siblings? Was that the right word? Families with Nations were very difficult to understand, and Matthew still hadn't figured out the right terminology for everything that had gone on in his life.

Nations didn't have blood relations in the same way humans did, he knew. Many of them were poof babies, with only one parent or none. Rarely there were two, though Matthew and Alfred were among the few exceptions. It was more common as the centuries progressed and cultures crossed and clashed to make something new, but the Ancients in particular had been the first generation of poof babies. Matthew didn't know if there had been anything before them, but he knew that his mother never had parents and raised herself into adulthood, before she'd had several children of her own and had adopted several more that shared no biological connection to her.

François had one shared with him, on a night where the tumbler never left his hand and he would stare into the fire reminiscing about times long since past, that his mother had be Gaul, and he'd never had a father, though Rome had come along and killed her and taken François under his wing when he'd still be young.

Arthur, by contrast, had two Nation parents, and was actually only half siblings with the rest of the British Isles. Instead of Celtica fathering him like with his brothers and sister, it was Germania and his influence that had changed his mother, Britannica, so irreversibly that Arthur had been born into a new culture that threw Saxon heritage into the mix.

Matthew wasn't sure exactly how Nations were born, even to two of their kind, because it wasn't the same as with humans. Sometimes, the two Nations never even had to meet to have a child together. He was pretty sure it had something to do with cultures mixing and the creation of new identities, and a Nation's parents were only identifiable because they were imprinted into their soul when they were born, but he wasn't exactly sure.

It didn't really matter in the long run, because familial bonds with Nations were rarely determined by blood, and even then, they were a constant, shifting thing that changed as their human population did. His whole life was proof of that.

So however Matthew chose to raise these four children that were irrevocably his and his alone would undoubtedly never stay that way as the centuries progressed—that was assuming these children even lived that long, because if the past few months had taught Matthew anything, it was that the immortality they were promised had been, and always would be, conditional.

But… the centuries he'd spent with Alfred running at his side and Shawátis lifting him up to touch the stars had been some of the best in his life, and even if those brothers—and probably the rest of that side of the family, let alone Arthur's—had forsaken him, he wanted these children he raised to know those bonds, even if just for a little while.

The first baby Matthew had picked up whimpered and smacked his lips as he settled to sleep. Babies number two and three—the ones that innate part of himself had told him were Quebéc and Nova Scotia, respectively—curled around each other, tiny chests rising and falling as they breathed. Baby number four, the only girl and apparently New Brunswick, made a snuffling sound and drew her clenched fists closer to her curled body.

That was another thing he'd have to do, beyond just baby-proofing his house. He couldn't exactly number his children, no matter how tempting the easy solution might have been to his exhausted brain.

Instead, he kept a close eye on the babies sleeping on his bed, making sure none of them rolled over and cracked their soft heads on the floor, and settled at his desk, withdrawing a fresh sheet of paper from his notebook and uncapping his inkwell.

Ontario

Quebéc

Nova Scotia

New Brunswick

Oh Lord, he'd thought picking a new last name for himself had been bad? He was going to saddle his children with the names they might carry for centuries.

He tapped the pen against his arm, then scooted the chair closer to the bed, settling the paper on his thigh. He studied the babies. Three boys, one girl. Easy enough.

He took a deep breath. Canada was a Protestant country, and Hamish and Louise had been very much the same, so he doubted they'd appreciate him naming their new incarnations in the same fashion he had been named, and Ontario as province was filled with the descendants of American loyalists who were often very anti-Catholic.

But Matthew himself had been baptized Catholic and still followed the faith, and he wanted at least one of his children to carry on the French-Canadian naming tradition.

That settled most of the issue of Quebéc's name, then. Joseph Jean-Luc for three saints. He watched his son—his son!—sleep quietly, curled against his brother. The thin curls of light brown hair waved in the breeze, identical to Ontario's.

He jotted down Quebéc's name on the paper next to his provincial designation. Joseph Jean-Luc Antoine Williams. Praise-worthy, indeed, even if just because he was Matthew's.

He turned to Ontario, studying the face that mirrored Antoine's. John, he decided. A strong name, a solid name. John Frederick Williams.

He wrote that down next to Ontario on the paper. He'd have to file official birth certificates with the city in the morning, but for now, simple paper identification would have to do.

Matthew glanced around the room. He'd burned everything that remained from his time as a French colony weeks ago, and with it all his childhood furniture that would have been decent for these new ones to sleep in until he could have cradles made. He couldn't let them continue to sleep in his bed; not only would the sheets need to be washed—actually, burning them as well was probably the best bet. He doubted the stains would ever come out—he needed to sleep there at night. He couldn't do that if he was constantly worrying about rolling over and squashing the babies in his sleep.

His eyes landed on the dresser next to his desk. After emptying his socks and underwear from the drawer, he pulled it out and studied it. The wardrobe was wide, and so was the drawer, made from solid oak and not likely to collapse under their weight.

He lined the drawer with spare blankets from the chest at the foot of his bed and packed them tight to make sure there were no hard surfaces for them to bump into if they ended up moving. Matthew had no idea how much newborn babies actually did move, so he made sure to wrap the lip of the drawer and the handles in blankets as well, so that just in case they somehow managed to topple out of their temporary crib, they wouldn't scrape themselves on the wooden edges or the metal handles.

Carefully, minding their sleeping forms, he placed the four of them in the drawer and maneuvered it to sit beside his bedside table, where he wouldn't be in danger of stepping on them in case he woke up in the middle of the night. As an extra precaution, he swaddled them individually in blankets so they wouldn't be able to get loose and try to move about or hurt each other if they rolled over.

Right. Matthew blew out a breath. Two children down, two more to go.

He dreaded these two the most, because they were mirror images of the Nations that Matthew had killed.

New Brunswick's bald head was swathed in only the finest layer of light hair, and her eyes were squeezed shut, so he couldn't see what colour they were, but she had the same nose Louise had, and the corners of their eyes crinkled in just the same way when they slept. Matthew closed his eyes and fought down the rising flood of emotion.

These two children weren't Hamish and Louise, just as Antoine and John weren't Matthew, and it was hard to remember that when they looked just the same, but he wouldn't do them the disservice of saddling them with a name that reminded Matthew of his dead siblings every time he said them. These were his children and they deserved more than that, a fresh start. It wasn't their fault that Hamish and Louise were gone, and Matthew never wanted to make them feel as though it was.

They were a product of a bygone age, but these children—they were the future.

Scrubbing the tears from his eyes, Matthew studied the girl before him. Despite all her similarities to Louise, she looked very much like every other baby he'd seen from a distance: squishy, pink, and wrinkly. And despite that, he'd fallen in love with her from the moment he first held her in his arms and wiped the blood off her face.

Estelle Siobhan Williams. He wrote that down on the paper. A name befitting Matthew's little star, his only girl.

Finally, he turned to the last boy, sleeping curled up with his fist brushing his mouth. Red hair already crowned his head, though it was closer to auburn than a true orange. When he'd opened his eyes earlier, blue the shade of the Bay of Fundy blinked owlishly at Matthew, before settling closed again.

Kenneth Alexander Williams. Matthew already knew he'd be a heartbreaker, much like that Nation that came before him.

Settling back in the chair with a sigh, Matthew finished recording the names and absentmindedly put the paper on his nightstand. He ran a hand through his sweaty, close-cropped hair, styled in the latest fashion from Britain. He was so not equipped with raising four children, but how hard could it be?

He let his gaze drift back to the infants sleeping in his dresser drawer, swaddled in a way he had a faint memory of his mother doing the same to him. A lump formed again in his throat.

Except, unlike his mother who'd had his siblings and, for a fleeting moment, Skandia, to help raise him, he was completely alone in this. He'd burned all his bridges long ago, and now he was miles away from those he might have once called family, in a city he hadn't been in for decades. He couldn't tell Arthur—didn't want to tell Arthur—because it was too soon, the wound too raw. He had no idea how either Arthur or François—the two he might have turned to, once upon a time—would react to this, what they'd do if they realized Matthew had created an entirely new generation of Nations after killing two from the previous.

He had no allies, no friends, no one to share this burden with. He was seventeen, in the employ of a fledgling government and still under the thumb of a great empire, unable to even walk the halls of his home without being bombarded by memories of everything that had been ripped away from him.

He couldn't tell anyone. There would be no one there to help him raise these Nations, to make sure he didn't make any mistakes or lead them down the road of their own destruction. No one to help him balance the pressures of having an active role in his government and playing father to four children without really knowing how to be a father, only what he shouldn't do, which was frankly a long enough list that Matthew could put it down as another reason why he wasn't fit to raise his sons and daughter.

But they'd appeared to him. The Fates or God or whatever controlled this world had taken the lives of his brother and sister and given him children to raise instead. Decided if he survived, he had the burden to deal with the consequences.

Matthew already knew he loved his children, but he hadn't even had them for a day and he was already overwhelmed.

He buried his head in his hands and began to cry.

In case anyone's wondering about Antoine's name, I actually named him in the Catholic French-Canadian naming tradition, much like my own grandmother was named. It confused me for a very long time, because when we were doing research about my Fille du Roi great-time-a-million grandmother, it seemed every one of her male descendants was named Jean-Baptist. It wasn't until my grandmother explained it to me that I understood.

Basically, the baby is given the first name Jospeh or Mary (usually), then the name of his godfather (in Antoine's case, he doesn't have a godfather so I went with two more saint names), then their given name (the one they'll actually be called by) and finally their last name.

It's kind of confusing, so if I made a mistake, please let me know.