Alfred's POV

Kiku and I walked out of the school together, amidst the crowds of students anxious to be free. We didn't need to talk, it was nice to walk together in silence for a bit, kind of like how he acted with Arthur in World History, back at the Academy. I heard thundering footsteps then a strong hand grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back a little.

"Alfred!" Arthur gasped, trying to regain his breath.

Kiku raised an eyebrow. He knew that Arthur was my friend, but he had never seen Arthur communicate with me outside if the three classes we shared. I was just as surprised as he was.

"I have to be somewhere, I will see you later," Kiku said politely, his eyebrow still raised. Arthur and I stood watching him as he walked away.

I turned back to Arthur, and looked at him expectantly. He blushed a little and moved his left hand, which was still on my shoulder. It was surprisingly callused.

"Well?" I asked.

Arthur's face reddened even more, and for a brief second he tensed like he was about to walk away. He sighed and looked up at me.

"I, uh," he paused, "wanted to know if you would want to spend a few days at my house while my family is away, " he finished, all in one breath.

"Of course!" I replied without thinking. I regretted it almost instantly. Not because I didn't want to spend time with Arthur, but because he might ask too many questions that I wouldn't be able to answer. And when Vladimir worked his magic I would have no way to explain.

Arthur's face showed so much hope that I couldn't say anything. Against the nature of the Arthur from my time, he started walking with a slight spring in his step in the direction I assumed he lived in.

It was not the direction I took to get to my park bench.

I followed him in silence. How long had I been here? Thinking back was hard, everything seemed to blur together. Eleven. That was the magic number. This was my eleventh day. I had used over an eighth of my time and had accomplished a minimal amount. The best case scenario would be to open my locker and see more vials.

"A few more weeks, Vlad. Just a few more," I whispered under my breath.

"What was that?" asked Arthur, turning his head to the side to look back at me.

"Nothing, I was just talking to myself."

Arthur turned back around and we continued walking. We didn't go through nice tree lined paths like I usually did. Instead we walked along quiet roads with barely any traffic. Eventually we started walking down residential streets. Arthur stopped in front of a white house with light blue shutters. The landscaping was perfect, not a leaf out of place. The windows were clean and a welcome mat sat on the front porch.

Arthur looked absolutely disgusted.

"I hate the way they keep the outside of the house. They don't welcome each other in, let alone anyone else. Let's go."

He produced a little key from the depths of his pocket and inserted it into the shining silver lock. He swung open the dark blue door and walked into the house without bothering to take his shoes off. As I unlaced my gym shoes I looked at the dark entryway. Stairs led to a hallway on the left, a door to a dining room to the right, and straight ahead of me was a hallway.

Arthur had somehow disappeared into the house without me noticing.

I set off down the hallway. It opened up to a nicely sized living room with a nice kitchen to the right. A doorway in the living room gave me another view of the dining room. Two doors sat in the corner opposite of the dining room. I opened one to see a small bathroom.

The second door led to an office. It smelled like Arthur.

Wait. Where did that come from? Why would I think that? I sat by Arthur but it was just the school smell. Wasn't it? Maybe it was because I roomed with him in the future, and he… this was just a creepy train of thought to jump on. I shook the thought from my head and breathed in the scent of old books and dust that cowered in corners.

If I faced reality, this was probably the smell that clung to Arthur. I don't know why I noticed the scent of a person. It was being in a different time. It sharpened my senses. I decided to go with that to keep myself from going insane.

On the wall was a lone decoration. It was a small framed picture that hung right in the view of someone at the desk.

I walked over and looked at it. It showed two adults, smiling and laughing with four kids who looked like they were having the time of their life. They were at a park. It looked like my park. There were trees and even a bench in the exact perfect spot to be mine. You could just see a pond across the path.

It was definitely my bench. And there they were. Arthur looked to be the littlest. One child, maybe a year older, had hair that was a nice brown/red mix. The oldest had the same. The one in between the brown/red mixes had wild red hair that made his head look like it had tiny flames leaping around. It was about as messy as Arthur's, which definitely said something. They all had the same bright green eyes. The two adults stood together. The woman looked a lot like Arthur, but her eyes were closed so I couldn't be sure. The man was taller and had hair that was a paler blonde than Arthur's. It was long and messy, tied in a loose ponytail by his neck, and his eyes were a blueish purple. He looked lovingly at the woman.

"I see you've found the family picture, " said Arthur, leaning on the doorway. I jumped.

"When did you get here?"

"Oh I've been here. I didn't have to open the door and make any noise, you left it open."

He looked relaxed. His posture was casual and his eyes didn't look quite as harsh as usual.

"How old is this? Are these your brothers? How old were you? What are their names?"

He sighed and walked over to me. It seemed that my questions brought him down. I felt bad, but I was positive it would be important to know.

"This," he pointed to himself, "is me. I was five at the time. This," he directed my attention to the one that looked a year older than him, "is Dylan. He's a year older than me. The next one up is Allistor." He had moved his finger to point at flameboy. "The oldest is Seamus. Last I saw him his hair was a little longer, about to his chin. Last I saw Dylan he had a ponytail. It suited him, even though our mother threatened to cut it off. Allistor looks like an older version of that, plus a silver earring."

He turned and walked toward a bookshelf.

"What about your parents?" I asked.

"They're my parents. What else is there?"

"I don't know, but you talked about your brothers. You didn't mention your parents at all."

His eyes cut through me like knives when he turned back around. I must have hit a sensitive spot. His parents must be the reason he hurt so much.

"My mother was amazing. She loved us all so much. She was full of life. My dad showed us a little tough love, according to what I've been told, but he had nothing except gentleness for my mother. When we were about that age, Allistor was my best friend. He's only two years older than me. We did everything together. We got along well with Dylan and Seamus, but we were a pair.

"If you hadn't noticed, he's still around here. If you hadn't noticed this either, I only invited you over because Allistor and my mother are gone. They went to visit Seamus. Now I just said the best possible things about them, so can you guess that something went wrong? That something would be my father. About a year after that picture he got fed up with me. He basically said that he hated me and that I ruined our family. He left the next day. He divorced my mother and moved on."

I had been watching Arthur's face the entire time. He had softened when he talked about his mother and brother, but practically spit out the words about his father. It was like his father was a foul taste in his mouth that he couldn't get rid of.

"Allistor adored our father. Dylan looked up to Allistor, and Seamus loved Dylan like nothing else. So when my dad left because of me, Allistor turned against me. We were close, but he treasured our father more. He hasn't been the same since. Dylan couldn't look at me for the longest time, and when he does now it's usually to remind me how much he hates me. I haven't seen him in years. Seamus just refuses to acknowledge my existence. Note that I didn't go with to visit him.

"My mother can't stand me. I ruined her perfect life. I took everything she loved and made it a mess. She didn't care that it killed me. I was the mistake of the family. They loved me enough, until I did something. I'm not exactly sure what it was. This was my father's office. No one comes in here anymore except me. They haven't since he left. So that's my family. Great, isn't it? How's your family?"

I couldn't talk. What Arthur had just said explained a lot, but gave me even more questions. No, I told myself. Now isn't the time. I should answer him.

"It's pretty normal. I've got my parents, they get along great and like me enough. I have a twin sister, and they show her a little favoritism. It's okay though, Amelia is a good sister. I've got a cousin named Matthew, and he's basically my little brother. His parents don't mind that he spent as much of his childhood with me and my family as he did with his own. He's still my best friend."

Arthur studied me carefully. Eventually he turned and left, and I followed. He closed the door carefully behind me. We headed into the kitchen in hopes of finding food. After digging around he produced pasta.

We cooked in silence. It didn't take long to make, and as we sat there eating I decided it was time to get him to talk, at least a little.

"Hey Arthur?"

" Yeah?"

"I'm sorry if I pushed you into talking about your family. I didn't intend to."

"No, it's okay. It felt good to talk about it. It's been a while."

I was surprised that it didn't bother him. If that had happened to me I would be a train wreck. This edgy version of the future Arthur didn't seem to mind. He didn't seem all that different, aside from the lack of perfect manners.

We washed everything in a much more comfortable silence. As he was leading me upstairs I stopped and grabbed my backpack. At the top of the stairs he paused.

"Mother," he said, pointing to the only door on the far left. "Bathroom" was the door closest to his mother's on the long wall, and next to it was Seamus. On the other short end was Allistor on the right and Arthur's room to the left on a short expanse of wall by the stairs. Dylan's was on the short area of wall to the left of the staircase.

We headed to Arthur's room. I couldn't help but think of children ranging from nine to five running up and down this hallway, just having a fun time doing nothing.

The room was small, with minimal decorations. There was a desk with a plant, a bed, closet doors, a dresser, and a bookshelf. Everything was net and in its place. There was some open space on the wall and in the middle of the room. Everything was a dark wood. The bedspread was a dark blue and the walls were a light gray. It was a nice room. I pictured a more adult Arthur living in this room.

Apparently it made me laugh out loud, because Arthur looked at me strangely.

"What's so funny?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing. I was just thinking about one of my friends trying to exist in this space," I responded, holding back more laughter.

He nodded, not knowing that my "friend" was just a future him.

We spent eternity completing homework. We were laying on the floor finishing the last bit when Arthur looked at a clock perched on the shelf.

"Why does this nonsense take so long?" he asked, gathering everything up. After we had sorted out who's paper was who's and shoved them all into our backpacks he lent me a pair of running shorts and a tee shirt to sleep in. He was extremely awkward about it.

We camped out on the floor where we had just done our mountain of homework. In the dark I could hear Arthur lightly snoring. He had warned me that he did, but I already knew. With the number of times he had fallen asleep while watching movies with me there wasn't anyway I could forget.

He had smiled. It was a small smile, and it was while he was asleep. It was the only time he had smiled since I entered the past, or at least that I had seen.

It was just one, but it was a start.

He had rolled the other way after that, so I had no way to know if he had smiled again.

I was about to roll over myself when I remembered something. The journal, I was supposed to document everything. I sat up and dug a pen out of my bag, along with the cute little book. I recorded the last few days, and paused before I closed it. I didn't really think, but I started writing something else. The story of the time I made scones with future Arthur. Well, we tried to make scones. I left for two minutes, two. But when I came back smoke filled the little kitchen we shared. It the middle of the room stood Arthur, green oven mitts on his hands and the tray of scones being held up.

Some of the scones were legitimately on fire.

The rest were black as charcoal. Two minutes ago they were perfect. Then I left Arthur alone with them. He looked up sheepishly, as if to say "they don't really look that bad." They did, and he knew it.

Needless to say, from then on I was in charge of the kitchen.

Writing that little story felt right. It was a mix of past Arthur and future Arthur in one little book, and it was keeping me sane. This whole past life was getting to me. I smiled as I closed the book, and I flopped down onto my back. Bad idea, I was sleeping on the floor.

I was just drifting off when he rolled onto his back again. I sensed that the rolling around would last all night. The times he had fallen asleep watching movies he had been sitting up, and I wouldn't have known he was asleep except for the fact that his head nodded.

He should have told me that he moved around instead of that he snored. It would have been new information.

My eyelids started to droop.

It was a good day. I could only hope that tomorrow would be just great.