Hetalia - Down the Rabbit Hole

Chapter 17 and hoo, hoo does shit hit the fan in this one. I don't think I've ever written a chapter this intense or angsty, and honestly, I really feel like I need a lie down after it.

A special shoutout thank you to ShortyKatezey, Chiisaioni and NeahZoldyck13 for reviewing on the last chapter. You guys were superstars when I was seriously struggling with motivation to write this.

If you haven't already, be sure to check out my tumblr: lollipoplou where you can check out fan art has inspired the story, character playlists that I put together, and other cool fandom stuff :)

Without further ado, I present you, with chapter 17 of Down the Rabbit Hole!

Are you ready for the love square to be broken? ;)

Hearts District, Red Light District, The Jasmine Dragon.

Alfred wouldn't lie: things weren't great. Five guys on him, and a gun to Britannia's head (hung limp like the rest of him as he was dragged on ahead) that kept him from shaking them off as they were escorted up to the pagoda's grand staircase to the upmost levels.

Each level was progressively more luxurious and expensive than the last; they passed seclusive bars, dance theatre stages; sweat slick, beautiful young men and women that weaved to pulsing electric-swing in revealing lingerie. All smelt suffocatingly of thick, rich tobacco smoke that wafted up from extravagant hookahs, and dark eyes followed them as they were led through the dark dens.

'Acadia, can you hear me?' Alfred whispered as softly as he dared, but his only response was the scrambled static of a jammed comm. Wang's security had obviously been upgraded since the DIA had penned their intelligence report on it.

When they came to the top of the staircase, Alfred could not help but be awed at the magnificence of the hall that opened up before them. Well, to call it a mere hall would be an understatement; this, this was a throne room. Bordered by a high catwalk and jade columns, fierce golden dragons spiralled up the glossy stone, the throne room was lit aglow by hundreds of draping round red lanterns that hung above.

Alfred could feel the radiated hostility from the masked yakuza as they stood to attention when the man in the emerald robe strode past, leading the charge up to the elevated peacock throne of gold where the king sat waiting.

Yao Wang, yakuza crime lord of the underworld, was clothed in a crimson traditional Chinese and with his long black hair pulled back, Alfred might of mistaken him for a woman hadn't he already read his profile. A pretty asian girl was lounged over his lap, pawing at the priceless silk of his robe, and a trail of wispy smoke rose from the pearl pipe pursed between his thin lips as he deeply inhaled with closed eyes.

A grunt left Alfred when he was forced to his knees close to the foot of throne, a quick glance over saw the still slumped Britannia; the yakuza pressed the barrel of his pistol against the back of the Brit's head as though to warn Alfred to keep complacent.

'Brother. I present you, our intruders.' The jade man announced, and when Wang opened an lid to peer down at them, the pearl pipe dropped from his mouth with an expression of wonder.

'Is that?' Wang breathed, and icy water trickled down Alfred's spine at the glint of perverse glee in his eye as he gawked at Britannia.

The man in jade stepped to the side, allowing his boss for a better view of the captive. 'Indeed. The infamous Britannia Angel, unconscious for the time being.'

Wang carelessly pushed aside the girl on his lap as he stood up and glided down the steps, and Alfred imagined that if a snake were ever personified, it would take the shape of this man. With trembling hands, Wang reached forward and flipped off Britannia's hood to reveal his globe of choppy locks.

'Precious celestial gold,' Wang sighed as he carded his fingers through Britannia's hair before twisting them at the roots and wrenched his head up. 'How you've alluded me.'

'Hey! Let him go!' Alfred thrashed against the men holding him down, the zip-tie digging painfully against his wrists.

'Columbia. The pup of Terra's self righteous guard dogs.' Wang scoffed with hardly a look over to him.

'And you're Yao Wang, big bad crime lord and S rank douchebag. Great. Now that we know each other, why don't we skip to the part where you monologue the details of your evil plan.' Alfred jeered, aiming to keep Wang talking and distracted from Britannia.

Wang dropped Britannia's head with a chuckle and regarded him with the same distaste one would have finding a fly in their soup, 'Evil plan?,' He theatrically drew out the 'n', 'and what, pray tell, has given you the impression that I have such a dastardly scheme? I am but an honest entrepreneur, there is no fault with that.'

'We know that you're the one behind the neuroscientist kidnappings, Wang, and we know that you're using them to mass produce 'X'. We found the crates of it in your warehouse, so just give it up! Tell us where you're keeping Edelstein and the other scientists!.'

The crime lord's eyes darkened. 'I see. You have been busy.' He sneered and made a pleased noise in his throat when Britannia stirred.

'Answer him.' The Brit slurred with difficulty, and Alfred grimaced as he imagined the killer headache he must have.

'It is a pleasure to see you again Britannia.' Wang purred as he rounded on him; a spider looming over a helpless butterfly caught in it's tangled web.

'We've…never met.' Britannia gritted through his teeth, obviously having trouble forming a sentence.

'Oh, but we have, you see. Though I must admit, the conditions were considerable different. You didn't have this mask on for one,'

Britannia went stiff, and Wang seized his chance to lean in and tauntingly trace his index along his jaw. 'And you had had that lovely shock collar on to,'

Wait,

What?

'You looked positively divine on that stage, Britannia. Bound, gagged, and yet, stubbornly fierce. Wild. Incorruptibly radiant. A true angel in chains,' Wang reminisced with the faraway look of a dreamer in love, 'how desperate I was to own you, but alas, the competition was too much. I did so want you.'

'What—what are you talking about?' Alfred weakly heard himself blurt aloud, his whole body feeling quite numb and cold. As though snapping out of a trance, Britannia jerked away from Wang and the man gave a cruel laugh.

'He hasn't told you? Too ashamed to, I would wager. Afraid that if he does, you would not look at him the same. Understandably so, who could if they knew the truth? Of what really lies behind this mask,' Wang paused and tilted his head. 'Tell me, Columbia. What has Britannia told you about the one who wore the mask before him?'

'Mentor,' Alfred muttered, his lips feeling too chapped, too dry to properly move. 'She was his mentor.'

Wang made a thoughtful noise. 'A grave understatement to her character. See, she was a tricky woman, a cunning, dangerous woman. Yes, she was a mentor, but more than that, she was a mother.'

With that, Wang stared pointedly at Britannia, who stared back; apparently petrified into silence. Alfred's eyes went wide when he realised what Wang had insinuated.

No way.

'But make no mistake, the Britannia prima did not have Britannia to have a son. She conceived him to have an apprentice. She raised him to be a weapon.'

Alfred felt the blood drain from him and he looked over to Britannia, silently willingly him to deny it. But no such response came. A sadistic smile spread across Wang's face as he took in Alfred's lost expression.

'Does that surprise you, Columbia? Does it truly? Have you never considered why Britannia possesses such a unique skill set?,'

Yes. Of course he had. He had from day one, but— maybe, maybe the reason he had never come to an answer, was because he had deliberately putting it off.

Deep down, in a small place that's existence he would deny, Alfred already knew why Britannia might have had all his extensive combat and stealth training. No one would train you from birth just to be a vigilante. No one would invest so much time and money into something that they wouldn't think they would one day make back.

Wang reached out again to tug back on Britannia's hair. 'You are pedigree, aren't you? She carefully saw to that. Specifically choosing to have your father to be a man that could provide impenetrable protection, The King of the Singapore underworld.'

Alfred glanced over when he heard Britannia give a sharp hiss. 'He is not my father.'

'Oh lovely Britannia. If that were true, then I would have come for you a long time ago,' Wang sighed before turning back to Alfred.

'Now you see, Columbia, when you are in business with our special line of work, having a child is no small feat. Not only because no one expects to actually live long enough to have children, but because of the vulnerable position it places the parent in. The child of a powerful individual is powerful leverage, and it was the Winter Syndicate that had the balls to apply that logic to Britannia.'

'You mean—' Alfred gasped, and Wang nodded.

'It was brilliant plan on their part. They got close, and when the first Britannia was distracted, snatched Britannia here and spirited him halfway across the world to collar him like one of their lucid slaves to sell off to the highest bidder.'

Alfred's bile threatened to jump up his thorax. The very image, thought, idea that that had happened to Britannia was...

'How— how can you speak about him as if, as if— Britannia's a human being, not some piece of mechanise you can—'

'Weren't you listening?,' Wang sneered and yanked on Britannia's hair to draw a hiss from him. 'Britannia was begot by two lucid individuals powerful enough to be considered gods. He is a specimen, an angel breed to serve the gods of this world. That is what he is, and that is all he ever will be.'

The only thing worse than Wang's words, was Britannia's silence; how he had denied none of them. He actually believed what Wang was saying: that he wasn't human. He was nothing but weapon to be used, a knife to slit the throats of his master's enemies.

Something poisonous coiled deep in Alfred's gut, and rose up inside like a spitfire flame, setting every nerve aflame until it felt his very skin couldn't contain it's heat.

How fucking dare they.

'As soon as I am out of this tie, I am coming for you, Wang,' Alfred heard his own voice growl; no, snarl; pure venom with no antidote dripping from each syllable. 'I am coming for you, and I'm bringing the DIA with me. Germania is going to shut you down.'

Wang's smile immediately dropped and Alfred didn't flinch when he felt the barrel of the pistol that had been pressed against Britannia's head, transfer to his.

'So. Not only are you a mutt, but you are a tagged mutt.' Wang snapped and his brother drew the nearest yakuza's pistol and pointed it at Britannia.

'We should kill them now.'

'No!,' Wang screeched, his eyes bulging out of his sockets for the briefest of moments before he quickly cleared his throat to regain his composure. Alfred stared at him bewildered, completely baffled along with everyone else by the desperation they had all heard there.

'No,' He corrected himself, softer, more in control. 'Take them down to the live stock cells. I'll deal with them once I've decided how.'

Alfred had been combing the damp, four by four metre square cell for any rouge nails when he felt Britannia stir against him, 'So, when can I expect the cavalry to get here?' His voice thickly slurred with sarcasm, and he jolted when he tried to pull away, and discovered that they bound back to back by their wrists.

'Cavalry?,' Alfred frowned, eyes forward looking into the adjacent cell that was near pitch-black. 'Oh. You mean the DIA…Yeah, they're not. I was bluffing. They don't know I'm here.'

'Of course you were,' Britannia sighed and shuffled to get a better angle on the cuffs, tracing their outline, 'seems like a pretty important detail to mention, don't you think? An government agency approaching you.'

'Seriously? Like you can point a finger here? Back there with Wang, everything he said, you weren't denying any of it. Like it all true, which it can't be.' Columbia retaliated and got a dry, bitter laugh from the Brit.

'I did tell you that I had bad history with the Syndicate.'

'I'm glad you find this funny Britannia, because I'm not fucking laughing,' Alfred growled, his fists balled into shaking fists between them. 'Like, what the fuck! The actual fuck! They freaking kidnapped you? And tried to sell you!? A—and I don't even know where to begin with…with your mom.'

'Lost interest, have you? Now that you know how much baggage I come with.' Britannia half heartening teased with an indivisible glum smile that drew a hiss from Alfred.

'Baggage? That's not baggage, not even close. That is a steaming pile of shit, Britannia. A complete dump pile that I can't believe is actually real.'

'It doesn't matter if you believe or not. It's the truth, Columbia. That 'steaming pile of shit', as you so elegantly put, is my life.' Britannia curtly asserted.

'But, that stuff about your mom. There's no way any of that could have been true…Britannia, please tell me that it wasn't true.' Alfred begged, sounding pathetically like a child to his own ears.

'Had you asked a decade early, I would of be able to give you a definitive answer. She was only my mother back then…Now, knowing who she was, everything she put me through, had planned for me, I wouldn't put it past her if I was never just her son.'

An uncontrollable shiver rippled down Alfred's spine.

Oh god.

'H—How could you live with that? Knowing that she saw you as a—Like— like come on, B. ' He rasped, knowing that he just grasping for straws. He needed something, any kind of reassurance that Britannia's life wasn't the hell that had been described to him; that he had had some kind of normality, a chance to be, well, human.

Britannia's shoulders brushed against his with a shrug. 'I never knew that I could have any different. That there could be more,'

A long, solemn silence stretched between them; the dripping of water too faint to properly fill it.

'That night, at Clover bank—'

'When you used me as a spring board? Yeah, I kinda remember that.' Alfred cut off, able to physically taste the salt on his tongue at the memory. Britannia ignored the comment.

'The Syndicate had me. I was stupid, got shot by their sniper. If not for my mother's blood jar, I wouldn't of escaped and you wouldn't be in this cell.' He confessed, heavy with shame.

Alfred's gut squirmed at the finality direction of the confession, and he drew in deep breath when he knew what he had to do.

If—if this was it, then he couldn't go without telling Britannia the truth; no matter how painful it was. He couldn't die with the knowledge that the one he loved hated him.

'I've never lied to you Britannia. Alfred didn't have those files because I told him to put them together. I got those files from the DIA, in prep for tonight's mission. How they got into Alfred's bag was an total accident.'

Britannia went perfectly still. 'That doesn't explain why the Syndicate tried to kill him.' He muttered.

Alfred got another deep breath, readying himself for the worst. 'The Winter Syndicate went after Alfred because their leader, General Winter, saw him with Arthur.'

'What?' Britannia breathed, soft enough to be missed. 'Who?'

'Doctor Ivan Braginsky. He saw them together at the Mia Everson exhibit. He put that hit on Alfred to get to Arthur, to get to you—'

Alfred stopped when he felt Britannia curl in on himself, violent trembles shaking his thin frame as he bowed his head. 'It's my fault. It's all my fault. Alfred almost died, because of me,' He sobbed, voice cracking. 'Wang was right. I am a monster.'

'Britannia! Britannia, no! You—,' Alfred choked on his own tongue, but what could he say? 'you're…not a monster. It's not your fault. You did nothing wrong, you're a victim in this, innocent!'

'Methought I heard a voice cry "Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep". The innocent sleep, sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care. Macbeth shall sleep no more",' Britannia recited lowly with monotone warmth before Alfred felt his gloved hands brush against his own, tracing their clenched shape.

'I can't sleep Columbia. Not like everyone else can. The night terrors won't let me. I don't have good dreams, and I'll never know the peace of them...I can't—I can't rest, Columbia, and I am so, so, tired.'

'Britannia,' Alfred uttered, uncurling his hands to hold Britannia's, comfort him, but Britannia had slumped against him, his shallowed breaths evening out as he sank back under into unconsciousness. 'Britannia?'

'Who knew an angel could have such demons.' A scratchy voice remarked from the inside of the next cell, and Alfred snapped his head up to see the dirty face of a young woman pressed between the iron bars.

'Who are you?' Alfred asked, glancing behind her to see more faces in the cell with her; many of them thin and pale, faces that were too young, had seen too little of the world to fully understand the dire gravity of their situation. Alfred's teeth gritted against each other. Wang had stolen children from their homes, and he had branded them as livestock.

'What does it matter? We're all going to be sold off and given new names anyway.' The girl resigned with a shake of her head, and one of the younger faces whimpered.

'Wang won't get away with this.' Alfred promised, and the girl gave a huffed laugh.

'Don't kid yourself, we heard that you have no backstop. And even if you did, what's the point? It doesn't make a difference if you break us out of a cell, because it's not the bars that's got us. The yakuza has something on all of us, whether it be parent's debt, blackmail, or even addiction to the new drugs that we're being shipped off with.'

Alfred winced, remembering Edelstein's horrific lab results on the 'X' experiments. Wang had got these kids hooked on it? There was no end to his derangement. 'Shipped off with? Where?' Alfred prompted with a furrowed brow.

'Wang's chain of private nightclubs, Cardverse. Each district in Terra has one with the corresponding deck symbol. Wang's going to launch his new drug line with a big event in four days, that's when we get shipped out to. I'm going to Spades.' She finished with a sigh, and Alfred slowly nodded as he progressed the info, filing it away for later use.

'Thank you for that, and I swear to you, all of you. On my honour as a hero, the DIA, the good guys will come and help you free yourselves from the yakuza.' He promised, and after a moment's pause, the girl nodded back.

'I'll hold you to that then, hero.'

Alfred took the time to memorise her face; the thin bridge of her nose and the discoloured bruise under her right eye. 'So, now that you know that you're getting out of here, I never did get your name.' He said with a offered smile and saw the girl chew on her bottom lip before returning the friendly gesture.

'Ellie. My name is Ellie Brooks.'

'Brit—….'

'B….'

…

'Britannia!'

Britannia startled awake and tried to blink the heavy sleep from his eyes, when he realised the oddity of the action. Heavy…sleep? He didn't—He had slept. He had slept, without dreaming. Without any Hatter interference...How had that even been possible?

At his back, Columbia jostled him, rousing him enough to understand his urgency; a group of footsteps were traversing down the corridor towards their cell block.

'How's the concussion? Will you good to run?,' Columbia hissed as he tested the cuffs.

Britannia gave a single nod and found that the pounding in his skull had ceased. He would never ungrateful of his healing magic. 'I'll be fine. What about the cuffs? Can you break them?'

'You know it. Uh—Small prob though. Even when we jump these guys, comms are jammed. We'll have no idea where we're going.'

Britannia raised his head and scanned the stone walls that surrounded them. 'The trap door corridor that I used to get into the warehouse was the same type of stone as this. It's damper in here though, so we must be deeper underground that it.' He deduced.

'Maybe there'll be signs with directions to the stairs up.' Columbia optimistically quipped, despite both of them knowing with near certainty that there would, in fact, not be any signs to the stairs that would helpfully guide them to the exit.

'I wouldn't hold my breath on that,' Britannia deadpanned back and rolled his shoulders to loosen up the knots in his upper back. 'Can you not remember anything distinct when they brought us down here?'

'Oh! Actually, yeah! There was fire extinguisher at the end of the same corridor the stairs down were connected to. And there was water fountain after that.'

'What about the stairs themselves? Did you count how many flights we are underground?'

'Three, but once we hit the stairs, it's a straight road up to the surface,' Columbia filled in and Britannia tensed alongside him when the footsteps paused outside the cellblock door, a key jingling in the lock. 'Okay, when they open the door, I'mma break the cuffs and charge them. Sound good?'

'Never better.' Britannia muttered before the door was thrown wide and five yakuza stalked into the corridor, smug smirks on all their faces as they approached. The iron bar door screeched as it swung open, and the moment they crossed over the threshold, Columbia sprang. Off came the cuffs, and down went the men as the all American hero barrelled into them, Britannia right on his heels.

'We'll be back for you!' Columbia yelled over his shoulder and the yakuza men's shouts as they ran out the door and down the L corridor, a sharp turn at the junction opened up to four more doorways; each one indistinguishable from the other.

'Columbia, which way,' Britannia demanded before a piercing siren deafened the air. The guards had sounded the alarm. 'Columbia!'

'Uh-um, maybe— uh, second left?' Columbia blurted, his eyes frantically jumping between their exits.

'Columbia.'

'Second left!' He decided and grabbed Britannia's hand to pull him after him and start running again. The stone walls gave way to plaster, and Britannia squinted ahead to see a red fire extinguisher at the end of hallway.

'There!' He cried out and he and Columbia launched themselves up the staircase at the end of the connecting corridor, taking the steps two at a time whilst the entire building seemingly throbbed on alert.

When they broke the surface, it was though someone had amped the alarm's volume to it's maximum; Britannia's heart pounding against his ribcage with the same earthquaking power as it would have at a rock concert. The entrance hall was as grand as the throne room, and completely cleared out. No, all the activity was coming from the floors above them as hundreds of Wang's goons swarmed the main staircase.

'The gondola. This way.' Columbia tugged their linked hands and they ran for the colossal entrance doors fixed open wide. The night's air was refreshingly crisp in contrast to the dampness of the cells and tobacco perfume of the throne room, and it helped sharpen Britannia's focus as they belted it for the gondola's rail station; the explosion of gunshots and whistle of near miss bullets told him that Wang's yakuza were right behind them.

'What are you doing?' Britannia hissed when he felt his hand slip from Columbia's, the American having skidded to a stop and was looking back to the station's control shed, leaving Britannia alone in the gondola carriage that was already starting to pull away.

'Making sure they can't stop us!' Columbia called out as he ripped the shed's door off it's hinges and punched his fist through the control console. The console burst with a shower of sparks and Columbia sucked in a quick succession of shallow breaths in prep for a running jump before launching himself at the carriage; Britannia surging forward through of the gondola's glassless window to catch his outstretched hand.

Columbia's body slammed against the metal side just as a bullet ricocheted off it. Britannia exhaled a drawn out groan as he kicked up a foot and used it as leverage to heave Columbia over the ledge; a task by no means easy given his impressive build and the nausea-inducing way the carriage swayed; reminding Britannia of the equally nauseous height they were suspended at, almost several times that of the height they had fallen from on the cruise ship nights ago. The cruise ship had produced waves that had disturbed the seawater and kept their bones from shattering upon impact. Here, there was no cruise ship.

With the controls destroyed, Wang would have no way to stop the gondola from arriving at the other side. They'd made it. 'Way to think ahead.' Britannia complimented between pants with an indivisible smile on his lips, undeniably impressed by the American's rare display of intelligence; the brilliant woman who had said that brains were the new sexy, had been right.

'I'm not all hunky muscle and great hair, you know.' Columbia grinned back, and Britannia wrinkled his nose.

'Afraid I'm going to have to disagree with that last part.'

Columbia's hand jumped to his blond mess, and his face fell for a faction of a second, before it was back brighter than ever with boyish cheek and charm,'But you agree? I do have hunky muscles.'

The gunshots had long stopped (out of range most likely by Britannia's logic) when Britannia rolled his eyes and gave the American a playful shove, to have his good mood evaporate at the sight over his shoulder.

'Hey, B? I know this isn't the greatest of time, but I- I just want you to know—'

'Columbia—' Britannia tried, but Columbia was determined to say his piece.

'I want you to know that whatever was said back there, about your past, I—I'm here for you. Not gonna lie, it scares me. Good god, it scares the freaking crap out of me. But I love you, and I want you to know nothing has changed that, or can change ever that.'

'Columbia, look!' Britannia shouted and grabbed Columbia's chin to make him look back to the Jasmine Dragon.

A huge crowd had grown at the front of the Chinese pagoda, and it was at the forefront where Wang and the man in jade stood. There was a suspended second in which the four men just stared at each other, before it was broken with Wang leaning to whisper in the jade man's ear. The man nodded and then, unbelievably, as if pulled straight from an action scene, ran and leapt up onto the steel core wire of the gondola's pulley system to begin nimbly running along it with the grace and agility of a master acrobat.

'You gotta be effing kidding me.' Columbia groaned behind him.

'Of course it couldn't of been that easy,' Britannia spat and manoeuvred to hoist himself up and out onto the carriage roof. 'Stay low.' He called down to Columbia as he sank into a stance.

'Nu-uh! You are not having a rooftop fight without me.' Columbia insisted as he climbed up beside him, the metal groaning with the new weight distribution.

'Best not fall then, love. I might not be able to save you from the ocean a second time.' Britannia smirked at him with a quick look before fixing his sight back on the jade man as he drew closer.

The asian man gave a high war cry as he closed the distance with a flying kick. Britannia gritted his teeth and sidestepped to avoid the strike. The man landed delicately on the balls of his feet, and Britannia swung for his temple, only to have his fist caught by the jade man's gauntleted one.

A scream was ripped from his throat when a blisteringly electric current jolted up through his arm to cause it to uncontrollably spasm. With immense effort, Britannia curled his other fist and slugged the jade man's face. The man tumbled, severing their painful connection, and was forced to step back when Columbia charged his flank.

Quick and short breaths to try to control the pain, Britannia clutched his twitching arm and lurched right when the carriage rocked beneath his feet. Flailing for balance, Britannia's cooperating hand reached into his belt to take out his set of handcuffs, and he poised; ready to slap them on the jade man at his first opening as he wrestled with Columbia.

The carriage, however, had other plans and violently shuddered to make Britannia's boot slip. The Brit fell to his knee with a cry and his torso smacked against the carriage roof as he scrambled to desperately cling on; forearms straining with effort to pull himself back up.

Columbia's head snapped to him, and his uncertain hesitance was opportune enough for the jade man to swivel out of his now flax headlock, rear up behind him and jam his electrified gauntlet against the nape of the American's neck. Columbia's scream was raw as the jade man slowly forced him down to his knees like David and Goliath, perfect teeth chattering as his every muscle seized up to immobilise him.

With an exasperated roar, Britannia heaved himself up, feet stumbling for ground as he hurtled toward the two, and with one fluid motion, slapped one cuff around the jade man's gauntleted wrist, reached high, and clipped the other around the gondola's pulley wire that carried them.

'W-Wait!' Was all the jade man got out before Britannia gathered up all his strength and spartan-kicked him off the carriage, sending him screeching back down to the Jasmine Dragon, dangling erratically by his thin -and most probably broken- wrist .

Britannia squatted over, hands on knees with his head hung as he caught up on his breath. He glanced right, and sighed with relief when he saw that they had made it to the other station; the Heart's red light district never looking more inviting at the top of the gravel hill.

His gaze dropped to Columbia, who was still resting flat on his back. The American had really come through for him in clutch again. Britannia would have to properly thank him when they got back to the apartment, and then have a much needed talk about, well, everything.

'Columbia. Come on, we made it. Let's go,' Britannia huffed as he straightened back up, and had his stomach knot itself thrice over when he saw the unnatural stillness of the hero.

'Columbia?'

Nothing.

Britannia's legs were boneless when he took a step closer, and felt his stomach plummet when he wasn't able to see the rise and fall of a chest.

'Columbia!' Britannia shrieked and lunged, skidding to his knees and shoved his ear against Columbia's agape mouth.

No breath.

Britannia's focus instantaneously shifted to his neck, thrusting his fingers against it and felt.

No pulse.

Dead.

'No! No, no no no!' Britannia pleaded and interlocked his palms to initiate CPR, Bleeding as he did. With each compression, he enforced it with a pulse of his healing magic to restart the American's heart. But every time he thought the magic would take, it's golden light faded, and Columbia's heavy body remained lifeless.

'Why?' The Brit stared in horror at his glowing hand. Why wasn't his magic healing him? What was wrong with him?

'You killed him,' an evil little voice jeered in his head. 'He's dead because of you. He died because he loved you. This is what happens when people try to get close to you. You kill them. You can't be like them. You aren't one of them. Your hands can only destroy.

This is all your fault.'

'No,' Arthur growled and resumed his compressions, shoving against Columbia's ribcage with renewed determination. 'No. You are not going to die, you idiot! I know you, I know that you're too bloody stubborn to die! We're partners, you and I, we're a team. Y-you're my friend, and I will not give up on you!'

He ripped off the Britannia mask, tipped back Columbia's head and pinched his nose. With a deep inhale, Arthur pressed their lips together and blew hard. Columbia's chest rose as his lungs inflated with air, and Arthur jerked back when it spastically convulsed. The American hero exploded with a hagged splutter as he choked on nothing, his body jackknifing as life rushed back into him; heart hammering a mile a minute, pinprick blue pupils darting about hysterically before they latched onto Arthur's green ones.

'An…gel?' Columbia's glassy stare sharpened for a faction of second before the ghost of a smile touched his lips. 'Ar—thur…' He breathed happily, and his lids slid shut as his eyes rolled up to the back of his head.

I want to both laugh and cry, simultaneously. Honestly, I'm the one who bloody wrote it and I feel like I'm being put through the ringer every time I reread it whilst editing.

Characterisation. Where do I even start? There were so many little moments in here that threatened to choke me up.

Alfred: Boy deserves a freaking medal. The real MVP of the chapter. Seriously. Alfred learns of the truth of all the trauma that has been inflicted upon Arthur, who doesn't even recognise it as trauma, and instead of recoiling after learning that Britannia is not the man he thought he was, says 'Fuck that. No. This is not right. You are a victim in this, and you deserve better. I love you and I will be there for you.'

Alfred's compassion shines in this chapter, and I love him for it (As does Arthur).

We finally learn about what the deal is between Britannia and the Winter Syndicate, previously alluded to back in chapter 7 with a throwaway line where Britannia remembers 'past hauntings of it's (the shock collar) cruel weight around his own neck.' and in Arthur's dream flashback where Maria mentions that Ivan takes a keen interest in Arthur's 'education'.

And Arthur's/Britannia's development toward Columbia. At the start of this fic, Britannia saw Columbia as a nuisance, writing him off as a big mouth-big head wanna be hero. In this chapter, Arthur was terrified at the prospect of losing him, going so far as to expose his identity to save him. Speaking of which...

The Love Square is finally broken! Alfred knows! Ready to cut your lifeline and fling yourself into the suffering pit once more!

Questions remain though; who was it that brought Britannia at the auction? What is the animosity between Arthur and his father? How is Alfred going to react now that he knows Arthur is Britannia? All to be revealed soon.

Thank you for reading this chapter and I hope you 'enjoyed' it :) If you are liking this story so far, please take the time to leave a review telling me your thoughts, opinions and questions. Once again, thank you for reading and as always,

Until next time folks!