Title: To the Victor the Spoils

Summary: The title sums it up pretty well.

It was mid-September by the time I arrived back in the States. I was battered and bruised like no other with a fractured wrist, broken ribs, and a multitude of bullets and pieces of shrapnel still wedged somewhere in my body. But still I was alive, for better or worse, and that's more then I could say for a lot of my men. For every boy who came back to a tearful mother or wife, another came back draped in a flag, and another didn't make it back at all.

I made my way through the crowds to the black car that awaited me. They always sent a black car, but this time it seemed particularly fitting. The streets were decked out in red, white, and blue to welcome the returning soldiers but the atmosphere was dark and bleak. We'd won the war, but at what cost? To the victors the spoils, but what goes to the dead?

A chauffeur approached, took off his hat and saluted me. I returned the gesture, though with my left hand to avoid the fiery pain that would shoot straight up my right wrist if I moved it even a fraction of an inch. For kicks I sent him the brightest smile I could muster.

"Welcome back, Mr. Jones," his tone respectful of my authority even if he was looking into the eyes of a 19 year old boy. He replaced the cap on his head. "It's wonderful to see you in such good spirits."

My smile wasn't even fake that time, wide and genuine at the amusing irony.

"It's great to be back!" I replied, back to faking the bright-eyed teenager. "Japan was hot as hell," though that wasn't the only resemblance it had to Satan's lair, "I missed New England's cool summer nights."

Either no longer interested in me or forced to keep a tight schedule, the chauffeur nodded, ending our conversation, and opened the rear door for me to slip inside.

"I know you must be eager to get home, but there's a visitor waiting to see you so we'll be making a brief stop."

I jutted my lip out and pouted but it hardly mattered. My opinion was worth nothing and so at some point along the line I'd stopped arguing. Nobody cared that I'd seen more than 300 years pass me by. I'd seen does give birth and flowers bloom but I'd also seen men mutilate and kill both their enemies and their friends. But none of that mattered since I looked like a kid, so they'd lock me up with a record player and a radio and tell me to stay out of the way and entertain myself. Imbeciles. All of them.

I'd been expecting to arrive at some US government building, but at about half past two we pulled up to the British consulate of all places. By then I was desperately craving a cigarette. I'd been given a pack on the boat but they hadn't last, and now my fingers were itching for something real and sturdy to hold, and my brain for a few moments of hallucinatory pleasure. I didn't get any of that, though, 'course not. What I did get was an official escort from the car into a private meeting room somewhere in the back of the building and a guest waiting for me there, just as promised.

We looked at each other for a moment as the door closed but neither said a word. Arthur looked like hell. His arm was in a sling, just as it had been in May when I'd last seen him. Wisps of blonde hair peeked out from sterile white bandages that were wrapped around his head and neck. He stood leaning on a crutch, with one leg having been seriously mangled and the other no longer strong enough to support his weight. God, he looked awful, and that was only the outside. I knew too from his letters and a few official reports that he had a punctured lung and several broken ribs. He was a goddamn mess, but even still he somehow managed to stand tall and speak evenly as he pulled a box of cigarettes out of his pocket and tossed them at me.

"Look at me fostering your bad habit." I caught the pack and rolled my eyes, desperately digging through my coat pockets for my state-issued lighter.

"You never were a good guardian," I said sharply, finding the lighter and sticking a smoke between my lips. I brought the flame to my face, and smiled at Arthur. "You look like shit."

For a moment he said nothing, only focusing himself on standing upright and ignoring the pain he was so clearly in.

"I stopped caring about appearances at some point between the Somme and Ypers."

I let loose a laugh, thinking back to an Arthur caked in dirt and mud, cursing the torrential rain that would follow him everywhere. France, Belgium, every last trench had been filled with streams of rain and blood.

"You've grown," Arthur started up again, as I let out a puff of smoke right in his face. He scrunched his eyes shut and wrinkled in his nose in irritation which made me chuckle again. "Perhaps not as much as the rest of us," he continued, opening his eyes a moment or two later after the smoke had cleared, "But I still see it in your eyes."

"You flatter me, babe," I winked at him, taking another drag and letting it loose in a thin stream like a warm breath on a cold day.

"Make jokes, Alfred, but I can tell you've started to internalize everything," he said, voice flat but serious, as he awkwardly started to limp toward his desk. I followed him, half out of curiosity and half out of an intense urge to trip the bastard.

"You think more and speak less," Arthur spoke as he arrived and leaned heavily against the old oak. "You question feeling and wonder if it has any virtue when put side by side with reason and logic." He took a short but clearly painful breath and looked me in the eyes. "You've become mechanized, just like us, and now, as much as I hate to admit it, you've surpassed even me in power and glory."

I wasn't sure how you could measure glory but I kept my mouth shut rather than question the now frail and crumbling British Empire. Giving him a hard time was only fun when I elicited a reaction but I could tell I wasn't gonna get much today.

After a moment of silence in which Arthur was probably hoping I was considering his words and having a deep moment of self-reflection, but I was really wondering when I'd get my next meal, he opened the second drawer from his aged desk and pulled out a ratty old book. It was bound in leather and had some Latin lettered in gold across the top.

"Christ, I just got back and already you're gonna give me a lecture."

Arthur said nothing, just pushed the book toward me with a black and blue hand, before quickly pulling it back to re-balance himself. I shook my head. What a sorry state. If only Queen Victoria could have seen him now, struggling to stand, the dictionary definition of pathetic.

"Fortes fortuna iuvat," Arthur's voice was this time sharp and powerful, as he read off the cover of the ancient tome. "Do you know what that means?"

I didn't. And he knew I didn't.

"Fortune favors the brave." He nodded toward the book, urging me to pick it up. I did, and as I thumbed through the gold-rimmed pages, my eyes widened.

"You are fortunate, Alfred, for you have now been given a great deal of power." Arthur was talking but I was hardly listening, flipping through page after of this textbook, reading words in every language and in hundreds of different people's handwriting. What was this? Some kind of joke? "In your hands lies the ability to write history."

I glanced up at Arthur then, dubious and confused, but his stern bandaged face offered no comfort.

"Whoever holds that book bears the key to humanity's past and future struggles," he said, still calmly, as if this were a simple matter. "I've held the book for many years. In the past many of us have held it: Francis, Antonio, and Sadiq, just to name a few." I blinked at him, still refusing to believe what he was saying. "But each of us, in our attempt to guard the book and maintain power has instead managed to lose it. None of us can now truly say we have what is needed to protect it.

"So the burden falls to you. The United States of America must protect such a treasure at all costs. I've kept it out of Ludwig's hands, and so too you must do with Ivan and anyone else who will come for it."

I opened my mouth but nothing came out. My thoughts were moving too fast for my vocal chords to keep up and so they were numbed into function failure. I couldn't even speak after having such a burden placed upon me, and this time I truly did expect to reprimanded, but instead Arthur only smiled.

"History is written by the victors," he said softly, and staring at the shattered form of a man who had once been so great, I suddenly felt like nothing more than a colony once again.

"Think carefully, Alfred, and write. For you have won."