When Arthur had first found Peter, he'd been but a tiny scrap of a thing - an infant, far younger than any of the others had been. Arthur hadn't known what to do with this tiny baby that looked like him (except for his eyes, blue like the sea his "nation" had been named for).

Arthur hadn't known what to do with Peter but he had been afraid, oh so very afraid. He was so tiny - just a tiny speck in the vastness of the ocean, Sealand hadn't been built to last, but Arthur didn't want Peter to pass.

That was why Arthur named him Peter, meaning "stone" - stone stayed strong through it all. Empires rose and empires fell but stone outlasted it all, and that's what Arthur wanted for Peter.

Twenty years later Arthur knew Peter wasn't growing anymore and he felt afraid again. One hundred and thirty centimeters was nowhere near the size someone who was physically twelve should be.

Peter was so small but he acted like he could take on the world, and it scared Arthur so much because didn't Peter realize just how fragile he was?

Arthur tried to reign Peter in, tried to protect him, but he guessed that Peter found him too controlling. That was fair, he supposed, but Arthur had just been trying to keep him safe.

Maybe that was why he hadn't done anything when Sweden and Finland had "adopted" Peter. The boy clearly liked them better, even if it was somewhat alarming how the two of them seemed to indulge - encourage, even! - Sealand's fantasies of being recognized as a nation.

Didn't he realize that being a nation was dangerous, Arthur wanted to cry. Being a nation meant being completely subject to the whims of your government, stabbing even your closest friends and family in the back, and it meant being in danger.

In the end, Peter hadn't even had to be a nation to get terribly hurt, England thought bitterly as he held him close, blood seeping from into the fabric of his shirt from some unseen wound.

Arthur had known that Peter would die from the moment he was born - it was inevitable, really - but he had still never prepared himself for when that happened, and now here he was, Peter clinging to him like a lifeline as Arthur desperately tried to stay strong for him.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Arthur registered the almost poetic irony behind the fact that Sealand was being torn apart by the very ocean from which it had risen and been named for.

Arthur only allowed himself to cry once Peter was well and truly dead and gone, body dissolved into dust.

Then he yelled and he screamed and he cried and Arthur cursed the sky, for being uncaring, and he cursed the land, for having never had a firm place for Peter on all it's shores and mountains and valleys and caves and tundras and plateaus and nooks and crannies. But most importantly, Arthur cursed the ocean, for taking his son away from him.

Of all the costs of being a naval power, this was not one Arthur had ever thought he would need to pay.